you you Okay. Good morning and welcome to the San Los Biscayne Board of Supervisors on May 20th, 1959. I was going to say 2025. Oh, sorry. So hearing devices are available on the left side of the dice. The board chambers are teak, coiled, compatible for those who need hearing devices. That works really well. And then speaker slips are available at the back of the chambers. So if you would like to make public comment, please fill out one of these speaker slips. And now I invite you to join us for our FAI salute. 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. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. You're done. Happy birthday to you. Oh my gosh. APPLAUSE I really appreciate that. Thank you. We appreciate you working on your birthday, thank you. Well, and it's a great day to have a birthday here because we get to see the future right in front of us with the WIRAC award. So I'm really thrilled about that. Okay, so let's see if there's any posted agenda changes there. Are none. That's correct. Right. And so we're going to open the consent agenda. And for consent agenda I'm going to open with public comment and here we have some public comment and we're going to start with Megan O'Brien filed by Kate Valentine. Please Good morning. My name is Megan O'Brien Health health agency staff. For item 14, we just wanted to clarify an error on the contract attachment and the table of contents it refers to exhibit G. When the contract was being negotiated, county council and the contractor agreed to remove exhibit G so it's not attached to the contract itself and that reference on the table of contents is just an error. All right. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the Board, Kate Valentine Public Works. I am going to be withdrawing item 22 off this morning's agenda, and we plan to return to your board on July 8th. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Peter Brown. Followed by April pause. Thank you, Chair Ortiz Leggan, members of the board. Peter Brown with Oceano Community Services District. I'm here to discuss briefly item two. I know that the county is considering a fireworks ordinance and I think it's important to have those enforcement provisions. I also believe you've all received a letter from the OCSD board requesting some consideration for some temporary pre-even in terms of how fireworks are sold in our community. I know with the recent transition and the divestiture, there's been a little bit of a transition period and maybe even some confusion with our nonprofits who rely heavily on the fundraising efforts that fireworks sales really drives in their annual fundraising for really important services they provide in the community. So I know we've submitted a letter and I'm sure you've all read that and maybe even received a few emails on the subject. But I'm here for questions. I know there's a few more speakers on the topic. I just wanna let you know that this is important for the community of Oceano. We obviously 100% support safe for the July season. And I think that we have had success with our surrounding communities in terms of how we've operated for the July. And I think there's some, maybe some creative ways to continue that going forward and allow the non-profit sometime, perhaps, to transition their primary fundraising efforts. Thank you. Thank you. April Paz. Good morning supervisors. My name is April Paz and I'm a resident of Oceano and I volunteer for several things within the community. I stand before you today to discuss the matter that is affecting our community, the potential prohibition of safe and safe fireworks in Oceano. While the intention behind such a ban may be rooted in safety concerns, we must carefully consider the broader implications of this decision. These fireworks are not just about celebration, they're about community engagement, tradition, supporting local causes, although safe and sane fireworks have long been a part of the community celebrations. Beyond the joy they bring, these fireworks cells are a significant source of fundraising for residents in need. The proceeds support essential programs and community services that benefit residents in a year round and a need for year round. When funding for dire services for many may no longer be available, eliminating the cell of safe and safe fireworks in Oceana would not only dampen our community spirit, but also strip these organizations of the vital revenue stream. This loss could hinder or halt their ability to provide services that many in our community rely on. It is important to recognize that banning the safe and safe fireworks does not equate to the cessation of firework usage. In fact, such bands often lead residents to seek fireworks from neighboring towns or states where cells are permitted. This not only diverts revenue away from our community, but also increases the likelihood of individuals obtaining and using illegal, more dangerous fireworks. As we know, these illegal fireworks pose greater risks, including higher chances of injury, fire hazards, horrible effects on our pets and traumatic experiences for folks with PTSD. Without adequate enforcement in place, prohibiting safe and safe fireworks will inadvertently encourage the use of illegal alternatives. Communities that have implemented similar bands, often report continued or even increased incidents involving illegal fireworks, highlighting the challenges of enforcement and unintended consequences of such prohibitions. The persistent use of illegal fireworks can say that bands alone will not be sufficient to address the issue. Rather than opposing a ban, Oceano could consider balanced approaches that include education and awareness, implementing community outreach programs to educate residents on the safe use of fireworks and the dangers associated with illegal variants. Support for local organizations continuing to allow the sale of safe and safe and safe fireworks to support local nonprofits, ensuring they have the necessary resources to serve our community and enhanced enforcement allocating resources to better enforce existing laws against illegal fireworks. By adopting such measures, Oceano can preserve its chair's tradition, support local organizations, and address safety concerns more effectively. The last time I was here, it was mentioned that the potential ban was due to the loss of our fire surfaces. I thought I might mention that currently, we receive our fire services from five city's fire authority. Both the Grover and AG departments are located just a couple blocks away from Oceano closer than most cities have for their very own neighborhoods. Thank you for your time and consideration and I also have some more letters as well from members of the community which I'll leave with her. Thank you. Michael Shendol is next, followed by David Yo. Yeah, yo. Good morning supervisors. They said most of my words about the fireworks. You know, because I'll tell you a story what we did is because back in 2000, about 25 years ago, food bank used to have that fundraiser. And what happened was they had to move to San Luis for somebody to take over. So we used to use our funding of different ways for our man's retreat. But you know, we decided that there was a community that was in more need. So we took this money that we get yearly for the fireworks to turn around and give back to the community. We feed people twice a week with health and with food and we also three times a week we get out food because there's a lot it's not just homeless it's a lot of people that are in need that are especially the way the prices are going on groceries and they need these groceries and they come out and there's some residents that can't go far And my pastor goes out in his van and brings it to them because so they can have a meal. And this is what we need to have this fireworks going, this fundraiser so we can continue letting our van run and get in those groceries so we can support the people of the community that need this food and groceries that we help. And then I know Dave Myers is not here, but he also uses his fundraising to help the children of his schools that he has so the mothers can work so he can help them. And these are two different important education, education and food to help each and one of those that earn need. And I think I plead you that you have to let us know what's going on because it was just too late of a notice what you guys said. And it's just around the corner that everything was going to go into place so we can get and do these, to help feed these people with this fundraising that we were doing. But all of a sudden, like she said, is it because the cowfire just accidentally went out? But why? Because what's going to happen, it's not going to stop the big fireworks from going up. It's just going to double, like she said. And because there is a why. And also, you're only going to be hurting the fundraisers. Because all they're going to do is go to aging Grover and buy the fireworks, fireworks and say, you can say, and come right back to Oceano and light them. And they wouldn't matter. There's a lot of people that way and they're just going to do it. And the ones that are going to win is the other cities and the nonprofits. So think about it because we have two good nonprofits that help the community. I want to thank you for letting me speak. God bless. Thank you, sir. David Yo will be followed by Gina McMahon. Good morning, David Yo. Mono Bay. Happy birthday. I prepare myself for, or I try to prepare myself for a lot of different topics. I'm lit up here by number five, which has to do with militarizing our streets. I'm not quite sure how the district attorney is involved with organizing police enforcement and whether that is a decent connection or not. I'm not real clear on what the requests are, what are being put on the table. I do not feel personally that it's a safe thing to invite the military type industry into our community. We've got a nice peaceful community so far. As far as I know, little boys with big toys tend to use them when they are needed or when they are not needed just because they're insecure and they need to play. I'm very hopeful that you will take into consideration that the district attorney has expressed his devotion to a third world and their future. And by inviting military, industrial, complex equipment into our community, we'll probably through him be related to Israel and Israeli technologies. Once those technologies are invited into this community, you will never get them out. So please be aware of what your choices are from here and for the future. I thank you very much. Thank you. Gina McMahon. Followed by, I think John Diadotti will be the last speaker. Good morning supervisors. My name is Gina McMahon. I am a resident of Oceano. I am here in regards to the fireworks and the sale for our community. I have a son. He is now 18 and it has been a tradition for us to have safe and seen fireworks and there's purple rain that's my favorite. So he went and with an adult and purchased one to surprise me. So that's our joy of the year and it's just something really special that we do together and we pick a nonprofit that we like to support. It has been I've talked with many of the community members and my family and we are very much in support of supporting our community and the things that they do with the money there in the community. I know living in Oceano. There is problems with illegal fireworks. I don't feel like this has any connection to that. We are safe and sane. And that is something that needs to be addressed by the right people on the right places to take care of these issues for us. I just feel that it's very strongly we are grassroots community that we've worked really hard to bring our community together to help our people in need and work together. And I feel by losing this, the sale of the fireworks would be devastating to our community and the people in need in our community. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. I'm just not sure if I'm going to be doing that. scholarships, recipients, congratulations on your award. My name is John D. Addy, Public Works Director, and I'm proud to announce that this week is the American Public Works Association's Public Works Week. As you know, our department is an accredited agency, meaning our policies meet or exceed the nationwide standard, set by this association. We are only one of five counties in the entire state of California to hold this designation. Public Works Week is intended to bring awareness to the important role of public works in our society and recognize the individuals who do the work. This year's theme is people, purpose and presence and it couldn't be more fitting for our county. Our people are the heart of our department. There are over 300 dedicated and passionate people and public works who work hard behind the scenes to make sure the services you rely on every single day work every single day. These people make sure there is clean water at your house and they treat it after you use it. They make sure your trash will be picked up and properly disposed of. The road you drive on or bicycle on is safe and public buildings like the one we're in right now are functioning and clean. At least half in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. We are now in the city of California. Functional and remains beautiful for everyone who lives, works or visits here. And our presence has felt every day. You may not see us, but we're out there and our impact literally touches every square mile of this county. Public Works has 13 items on your agenda today. That represents over half the action items that you'll be considering. This is another example of our presence in this county. You'll be considering and improving items on the 2023 storm repairs, the Bob Jones twirl, water supply, recycled water, building repairs, and even work at the regional airport. And why Rick Scholarship recipients? You are awesome and inspiring, and again, congratulations on your award. You will do amazing things in life. Public works is on the front lines of solving some of society's most challenging problems And we need brilliant minds like yours to be successful. I hope some of you consider a career in public service. You won't regret it. I promise. Thank you board for recognizing public works with the resolution and your support for all the work we do. I just want to let everyone know we're're going to have a booth at farmers market with every other agency in the county and a bunch of utilities. We're going to have cool equipment, educational booths, art stuff, and fun times for the kids. So come down and learn more about public works as Thursday and San Luis Obispo. Thank you. Thank you so much. Congratulations for this recognition this week of your staff for this recognition this week of your staff and all the work you do to keep the county moving, eating, running, doing all the things that we do every day that we just take for granted. So it's a big thing. Any further public comment today? Please come forward. We have Shirley Gibson. Give some. Hi. Good morning, Chair and member boards, the members of the board. Sorry. I'm Shirley Gibson and I am the president of the Oceano Community Services District. And I'm here to support the sale of the fireworks for this one year. I think that our non-profits are very worthy, and we want to see that happen at least this year. I also think it's important to remember that the illegal fireworks are the problem. Those are the ones that start in June ahead of time and then starting on the fourth, the bombs and the whistler start going off early in the morning and continue to midnight. So we are just promoting the safe and sane. And I'd like to mention our worthy nonprofits, Church of God of Prophecy, Open Door Church, and the CHP is planning a booth for toys for Oshanukets. So keep our community in mind. Thank you. Thank you. One more here. Lewis Lennie, please. Good morning, Madam Chairman. Also happy birthday. Tough happy to work on your birthday. My name is Lewis Lennie. I am a vice president with TNT fireworks. We are the largest importer of consumer fireworks in the country. I've worked for them for approximately 40 years now. My initial intention of coming here was actually to congratulate the board and to thank you. It's very rare that I actually attend board or city council meetings in closed jurisdictions. Because for the most part closed jurisdictions tend to take the attitude of we've outlawed everything the problems gone And that's clearly not the case in the state of California We're overrun with illegal fireworks in this state. So it's very encouraging actually to see an agency try and take an Attack against what really is our largest competitor of illegal fireworks that are pouring across our border from the state of Nevada primarily. I want to let you know that we're 100% in support of the additional enhancements against illegal. We think the idea of the social host is actually a result of a state law that we passed several years ago that now allows communities to do that. We're very excited to see people take advantage of that. There is actually one other thing that we can offer that can potentially help you in that case. We've developed and deployed a smartphone reporting app that cities can opt into and they can use different very different variety of ways. One of which we've got the community of Mantika that has it set up now, along with their social host to the point where citizens can take pictures and submit them through via the app. And after reviewed by the appropriate administrative officer, those tickets were sent out via the mail up to 30 days later, similar to a red light violation. They can be done by administrative officers like a parking, parking people. on top of that just one last word probably you're tired of hearing about Oceano but one thing about Oceano now is in your ordinance there is no differentiation between dangerous illegal fireworks and safe and safe fireworks. So what you've done is a person who goes to Grover Beach or who goes into to AG and brings some product back and is shooting it in their own backyard. You've made them as much of a criminal as you have anybody who's bringing in dangerous product from from Nevada. So if possible, you might want to consider differentiating between state approved fireworks, which are illegal in the county we understand and dangerous illegal federal fireworks. So thank you very much. I appreciate your time. And once again, I even sang Happy Birthday. By the way, Supervisor Moreno, a personal thank you for Hogi's. So I put her on the spot and made me a restaurant reservation that did not involve going to a task aderro. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any further public comment? Seeing none, I'm going to close public comment and bring it back to the board of supervisors. Board. Madam Chair, I'll just briefly comment in line on 18 hats off to public works. Thank you, Mr. Diadotti, and well done on the recruitment speech that you, the recruitment pitch that you slipped in there. Excellent work. Thank you. Supervisor Pichon. Oh, I'd like to pull number two for a separate discussion and number 17 for a separate discussion. End vote. Okay. Two and 17. Supervisor Paul Ding. And I wanted to pull item two as well. So appreciate you pulling that supervisor Pasha. Okay, so we have two and 17 pulled. Can we have a motion or a yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, no, I just also wanted to think public works. It's one of those things where you know, you don't always know what they do until something has gone wrong and then we're like ah and then we're so grateful for them but you guys hold through the foundation of of everything we do on a day-to-day day-to-day life so thank you yeah yeah here here okay so um a motion on item one so move the approval okay second give us in first Marano second supervisor Gibson yes supervisor Marano yes ma'am supervisor Pashon. Yes. Supervisor Paul Dean. Yes. And Joe Persono, Teeth Lake. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Motion on consent. Absent 2, 17, and 22. 21, 17, and 22. We have to have a separate, um, four-fifth vote on 13 and 22. 22 is removed. 22 is removed. Yeah, 13. We'll assume a four-fifth vote unless otherwise demonstrated. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Move approval of balance of consent absent 217.22. Second. We'll call please. Supervisor Gibson. Yes. Are you guysvisor Paul Dean. Yes. Supervisor Prashan. Yes. Supervisor Marano. Yes, ma'am. And Chairperson Oatees, light. Yes. Thank you for your efficiency, Supervisor Gibson. We'll now go back to item two. Okay. The boards to start. I just, um, I'll let it out. Let the supervisor of the district speak, but I just don't support this right now. I do believe that there should be a cutout for our chiano. Thank you, supervisor. Yeah, it's no secret that I'm going to advocate for what the community asked for today, which is to exempt Oshano from our prohibition on the use of safe and sane, as well as the sale of safe and sane fireworks. As we heard from members of the community today, there are nonprofits and churches that rely on that ability to sell those fireworks and fundrais for their noble causes. And I think the timeline that we're working with here is insufficient to give proper notice to the community. It is a longstanding tradition for those in South County to use Safe and Safe fireworks. And I just generally oppose the idea of banning it, especially for an urban community like Oceano, when the neighboring communities of Grover Beach and Aroio Grande also allowed the use and sale of safe and sane while they prohibit illegal fireworks. And the intent of the ad hoc committee that our board created with staff with Cal Fire, with the Sheriff's Office and the Planning Department and County Council was to look at how we can increase enforcement related to the use of illegal fireworks. And we developed a new tool. That's the social host ordinance. That's on the agenda for today for approval. And I support adding that tool to the toolbox. I also want to encourage additional education and outreach efforts to the community. So they're aware of the new requirements of that ordinance. But again, I'll appeal to the board for at least a transition period on the Oceano situation. Well, we may apply the overall county policy that prohibits use and sale of safe and sane in the future. If we could give the community some more time, I would really appreciate that. And I've got a motion prepared to make and ask for the board support on that. Supervisor Moreno, thank you. I can appreciate the the bind that everybody feels themselves in in Oceana within nonprofits and the traditions and all of that. My problem with a carve out is that this is, we're being asked as policymakers makers to make a public safety decision. And this really lies with our, with our firefighters, with our chief, with those that set the policy. And so unless they come forward and say there's a reason to do a carve out, or we have some policy in the future that they come to us with, says, hey, yeah, safe and sane fireworks in these areas is acceptable. And we have a brand new policy, but just a carve out when we're talking safety, I'm uncomfortable doing that as a policymaker in overwriting what are safety professionals. I have to say. Thank you, supervisor Gibson. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I concur with Supervisor Moreno's comments and certainly appreciate Supervisor Paulting's advocacy on behalf of Oceano. I understand the bind that this puts those organizations that have sold safe and sane fireworks over the years. But with the transfer of the fire service from the CSD to the county, the Oshana does fall within the rules that regulate safe and safe fireworks elsewhere in the unincorporated county. Supervisor Moreno rightly speaks to a carve out based on public safety issues. My concern, which I articulated at the introduction a couple weeks ago, remains that any other community, you know, if we do this for Oceano, where is the equity on any other community that might want to come forward. So as at this point, I'm supportive of moving forward with what we have in item two without a carve out on this, and would be happy to help in any way I can any kind of alternative fundraising that the nonprofits in Oceano might want to undertake in this year. Okay, so for me I also, you know, I think this is really great for the students to see how something as simple as allowing fireworks can be such a challenge because it's true that here we have a community that's had a tradition and we all love this tradition and also it's been very helpful for its nonprofits which I have to say isn't it sad that we have to sell fireworks in order to help feed people But so it is, that's something that they've been doing and utilizing that opportunity. And yes, supervisor Paul, you've tried to convince all of us in the need for this and having a blanket period time. But I too, I think it was very well put by supervisor Moreno in regards to a a decision like this regarding public safety and Only just a short six months ago five months ago We saw what happened in the eat and fire and at the palisades fire and you know Because our fire marshals have asked this and have this on the books It's it's just too grave of a decision that one simple thing could spark something and And I know people say, oh, come on, but it's happened and it can happen. And it's just something that, you know, it's a huge enormous responsibility. So what I would hope is that we can find out the kinds of monies that's been raised with this fundraising and try to find alternatives. But I too support the Fire Marshalls approach. Supervisor Prashan. So it appears that there's, you know, we're going to, I'm going to lose this vote, but I'm going to continue to support Oceano and their ability to be able to sell. I'm sorry that this is going to go the way it is, but it's just, to me, this is, it's about, it's about individual freedom and it's about the ability to be able to raise money for nonprofits and you've been doing it for a very, very long time. And I appreciate what you've done for the community because what you've done has made a difference in people's lives by selling these fireworks. So thank you. Just one final appeal to the board will be to set the issue of use of safe and sane in No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that cause fires. But in terms of just the sale of safe and sane for the nonprofits, the Oshano Community Services District Board of Directors sent us a letter requesting for that, you know, requesting that exemption. And so I would appeal to the Board and request that we might just make an exemption for sale for one year to give them some time to transition. I don't see no lights turning on. Well, my, maybe I made a mistake by leaving mine on. But, oh, dolly noted. I it. I'll go back to the idea that I get the challenge this poses. I'm happy to help in any way I can to, to, with alternative fundraising. And let's, let's, again, given the public safety and the consistency issues, I think that alternative is the way that I'd approach. All right, so that's your advocacy. Seeing where the majority of the board is, I'm going to just make a statement regarding the pickle that this puts me in personally as somebody who advocated for new tools in the toolbox to cite people using illegal fireworks. And the community of Oceano, who as one of the public commenters mentioned, will, we're going to try to do some outreach to let them know that we've ramped up the fines. But if somebody now goes and uses a sparkler, they're going to be committing a misdemeanor. In Oceano, when there's been a long tradition of legally using a sparkler. And I'm not in favor of citing a family who's using sparklers on the 4th of July with $1,000 fine. So for that reason, I will not be supportive of adopting this social host ordinance today. Although I think that it's absolutely needed to support fireworks enforcement, illegal fireworks enforcement throughout the county. And if I could just follow on appreciating your advocacy supervisor, Paul Ding, and I agree that lightness barkler for the first time since the county wide ordinance goes into effects is yes, not worthy of $ a thousand dollar fine, but I will trust to the discretion of enforcement of the Public safety professionals to make sure that that kind of egregious overreach is Avoided as necessary with that. I'll move approval of item number two as presented. I just want to add one thing that also with that $1,000 fine, there's the possibility of six months in jail, I believe, too, as a misdemeanor. So think about that. I think once again, another example of a larger government that is telling people that if you light a spark Sparkler you get to go to jail for six months. And I'm going to add that under discussion and under protest I'll add the or I'll make the request of the motion maker. I think you'll find the request reasonable that since we are going to do this enforcement as a county we should really do a good job at educating the community as to what is coming. So the second part of my motion, what I'm requesting the motion maker add is that we would direct staff to prepare and implement a comprehensive communication plan to promote the county's new social host ordinance and the enhanced fireworks enforcement strategy ahead of the 4th of July holiday. The communication plan should be coordinated with the county public information officer, Cal Fire and the Sheriff's Office and should include at minimum a press release and social media strategy that clearly explains how the new ordinance works, including the responsibilities of hosts and the penalties for violations and utilizes temporary signage at key points of entry, specifically in the community of Oceano and perhaps Cayucas. I know that was a concern for you, Supervisor, to inform residents and visitors that increased enforcement will be in effect during the holiday period with fines of 1,000 per violation. And I'm happy to add that direction to the motion. I hope the second concurres. Under discussion, I would only note that to Supervisor Pashong's point, the penalties that he references are maximums. They are not intent and every other incorporated community under the service of county fire has subject to the same and we haven't heard egregious reports of egregious over reach on enforcement. So I think we can deal with this and I think your point about educating community is absolutely spot on The second is certainly amenable to that alteration. Thank you, much appreciated. Okay, I think we're all called please. Supervisor Gibson? Yes. Supervisor Marano? Yes ma'am. Supervisor Pashong? No. Supervisor Paul Dean? No. And Chef Varsen or Teesleg? Yes. Okay, that was a tough one. We go back to item 17 I just have some questions on 17 wonderful. Okay. Let's item 17. Mr. Diadotti. Okay Or somebody Oh outstanding. They'll get two of us great So this is in regards to regards to the pipeline, the Nusselman Pipeline break. And I think this is the sixth is correct. Is this the one to wash out? So this item is for a hazard mitigation study to identify more other areas where there may be potential risk for flooding. And is this on a specific location? No, it's the whole reach that is in the floodplain and runs along the Salinas. So this will just be... So this will, the whole length of this, it'll incorporate all of that. Because we've had this issue with the Davis property and the Nassimino, you know, the shifting sands, let's call it. Yes, so this is a result. So this study will hope to identify areas and prevent future occurrences of damage to that. Of what happened there, I got you. And this is like the first step in six steps, is that correct? Yeah, so this will be an initial study. It will identify areas where we have the potential for that failure, then alternatives for addressing and mitigating that risk, and then we'll pick a preferred option and then potentially do design for that option. And those options, the steps will come back to this board. Correct. Okay, that's all I needed to appreciate your time. Okay, so do we have a motion to approve? I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Supervisor Pashong? Yes. Sir Personartis Leg? Yes. Supervisor Gibson? Yes. Supervisor Pauline? Yes. Supervisor Marino? Yes, ma'am. Okay. We are now moving on to item 23. And this is the presentation of the Community Foundation of the San Luis Visible County Richard J. Wyric Leadership Scholarship Awards to local students. I'd like to call to the podium the Community Foundation, Lila Duforina and Emily Jagger. Please. Good morning, Chairperson and members of the Board of Supervisors. Thank you for allowing us the time today. It's always a privilege to be here. And I'm especially honored to share a few words about the Community Foundation and the Spirit of Collaboration that brings us here together. At the Foundation, our mission is simple, but powerful, to inspire philanthropy and serve as a catalyst and connector for community impact. For over 27 years, we've worked across sectors to make lasting investments in the people and the places of our region. We steward the generosity of donors who believe in the power of community and we turn that belief into impact through grants, scholarships, and partnerships. This translates to a crisis hotline at TEMA, to a welcome home basket for a family that is moving into an apartment for the first time after leaving Echo and being homeless for over a year, and many more. We also recognize this is a complex time to be doing this work. Public agencies are navigating executive orders, budget constraints, and political crosswinds, and programs that once enjoyed broad support are now being questioned or dismantled. That's exactly why our role as a community foundation matters more than ever. We are uniquely positioned to bridge divides, not just political or ideological divides, but sector divides. We can act as neutral conveners, bringing together private philanthropy, public agencies, local nonprofits, and community members around shared goals. We're not a political entity, but we're deeply rooted in public life. We have the trust of donors, the respect of nonprofits, and the ability work in partnership with government agencies like yours. In a moment when many systems feel siloed and strained, we can be the connective tissue, bringing together private dollars, public priorities, and shared values to invest in the future we all want to see. Today is a perfect example of that. The Wyric Leadership Award doesn't just honor academic success. It recognizes courage, service, and potential. It uplifts students who are already making a difference in their schools, families, and communities, and it helps pave the way for what's ahead. We're so proud to partner with you in celebrating these nine remarkable young leaders. Many of them are the first in their families to pursue higher education. Some have overcome extraordinary challenges. All of them embody the hope and resilience our county needs. Before I pass the mic, I want to thank the many volunteers, donors, staff, board members and committee members that make our scholarship program possible. Their commitment ensures that every student who applies is seen, heard and supported. Now I'm pleased to turn things over to my colleague who leads the program with heart and purpose every day. Emily Jagger, our scholarship manager, followed by Kay Miller, our scholarship committee member. They'll introduce you to the students we're celebrating today and more about the impact of the program. Thank you again for your leadership and for sharing this moment with us. As we look ahead, we invite you, our county leaders, to work with us as partners in solving the challenges that lie before us. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lila. Good morning, everyone. As Lila said, the Wyrick Leadership Ceremony is one of the most meaningful events we host here at your chambers, but also that the Community Foundation gets to host. After months of anticipation, it's truly special to see our students here today with their supporters. We're also happy with what we've learned about them, what they bring to their communities and their schools. They have impressed us so much, and that's why they're here today. A heartfelt thank you again to the County Board of Supervisors for pausing your important work to help us honor these nine outstanding young leaders. Some of them might be in your seats one day. This program is made possible by more than a hundred dedicated volunteers who read and score student applications. Alumni evaluators even joined from as far away as Alaska this year. Each year more than a thousand volunteer hours go into selecting our programs recipients. Thank you to our scholarship committee, Lauren Alvarado, Celia Buley, Pat Hose Good Martin, Stacey Mico, Kay Miller, Rick Moss, Paul Padroni and and Bern Stingson. And to our incredible staff here today, Lila Duf Arena, Michelle Freeze, Emily Narvison, and Audrey Hauser, who helped make this event possible. Established in 2006, through a generous request from Richard J. Wyric, who's up on the screen, this award supports exceptional young leaders. One student from each county high school is selected to represent their school through a rigorous review and interview process. They have done a lot of work to be here today. I'll tell you what, but this is nothing for them. They are the hardest workers you'll ever meet. So now, and 19th year, this scholarship has awarded more than $700,000 to more than 280 students. This year's award is $4,000. And I think you'll agree that we are continuing Mr. Wyrix powerful legacy of uplifting our county's top young leaders. So beyond this award, the Community Foundation offers nearly 50 scholarships annually in fields like healthcare, STEM, agriculture, the arts, and more ranging from $500 to $23,000. Since 1998, the Foundation has awarded over $4 million to 1600 individuals. And now I'm delighted to introduce Kay Miller, who is our former scholarship committee chair, and she's a retired educator and a veteran scholarship evaluator, who will present this year's recipients and give you a chance to hear from them directly, our favorite part. And today, I'm sure you'll agree the future is bright. Thank you so much. Thank you. Miss Miller Miller. Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Kay Miller. It's my honor to introduce the 2025 WIRAC Leadership Award recipients. I've served on the Community Foundation Scholarship Committee for over 15 years, including several years previously as a chair. Every year we really look forward to presenting these inspiring young leaders from around the county to the Board of Supervisors. I believe the supervisors also look forward to this uplifting meeting because it's often a welcome break from your usual business. So here's how things will work this morning. We're going to meet our scholarship recipients by Supervisorial District. Supervisors I will ask you to join me here for the student or students in your district. I'll invite each student to come up one at a time. I'll share a little bit about their incredible accomplishments and we all wonder when do you have time to sleep and I'll ask each one of them a question that very briefly tells about a special project or activity where their leadership skills really shine. The supervisors will present the students with a medal and certificate, we'll have our photographer snap a quick photo. At the conclusion of the presentations we'll be offering some light refreshments out in the lobby to celebrate further. But we do ask that the students stay in the chamber afterwards for a group photo, and then you can join your supporters in the lobby. We'll be starting with District 3 this morning because we have a couple of students who need to rush back to school and awards presentations. The order will be district 3, 4, 5, then followed by districts 1 and 2. So it is now my honor to introduce the 2025 leadership, Wyric Leadership Award recipients. Celebrating these students is always the highlight of our work. So let's meet these amazing leaders. District 3 Supervisor Don Ortiz Leg, Eleana Garcia, San Luis Obispo High School. Would you join us up here please, Eleana? We can go right there to there. Would the family, friends, teachers, administrators that are supporting Leana also please stand? We want to recognize your role in the success of these students, giving them support, encouragement, and opportunities to grow. Cheers, thanks so much. Thank you. Applause. Leana's major is going to be special education and she has committed to San Diego State University. During our interviews we ask students to identify three qualities in themselves that demonstrate leaderships. Allianna's response, love, drive, grit. For the past two years, Allianna has served as an appointee to the superintendent's common ground task force, which meets monthly to address problems and solutions. She's president and founder of the Slow High School chapter of the Best Buddies Club, which plans social events at school and in the community to allow slow highs, neurodiverse population have special social experiences with their peers. She was elected as an associated student body officer in 10th, 11th and 12th grades. She served as a representative on the student senate for four years. She played volleyball for four years and also designed a new team uniform. Outside of school, Eliana created a fundraiser benefiting jacks helping hand and was called cash for checks. For carols, excuse me, cash for carols. Students could buy a holiday carol and the ASB would sing to the recipient. She has also worked 10 to 20 hours a week during her high school career in customer service and as a nanny. Eliana comes from a family of public servants and has a genuine passion for making things accessible to everyone. In her essay, Eliana described her journey overcoming a learning disability, proclaiming, quote, there is no can't in my world. Her volleyball coach called Eliyana's resilient and a leader to the core. So Eliyana, have a question for you. Yes. In your application, you told us how you led the planning for what became the most inclusive and best attended prom in school history. I love this. How did you and your fellow ASB students accomplish that and what did you learn from that? Yes, so last year I was one of the three junior class officers and with that being we are tasked with planning prom and that can seem daunting, although it may seem like a very fun and frivolous event. There's a lot that goes behind it, trust me, I did it. So one of the biggest issues that I saw was our venue. It was at the Freemonts, a beautiful venue, but at the same time, it's hard for students who are in wheelchairs or have disabilities to try and get in. It's also slanted, so kids fall, and it's just not the best environment for that. With that, I took it upon myself to find a new venue, and we are so very grateful for Cavali Estates. They have a beautiful lavender farm, but with others a beautiful bar. With that, I took it upon myself to find a new venue and we are so very grateful for Cavalier States. They have a beautiful lavender farm, but with others a beautiful barn and they built us a custom dance farm. We were able to make that accessible to every single student on campus and they were able to attend that. With that, I also wanted to make sure that it was equitable and people regardless of their socioeconomic status would be able to attend. But that being said, I did a free reduced prom ticket program where you can apply through your counselor. You. regardless of their socioeconomic status would be able to attend. With that being said, I did a free-reduced prom ticket program where you can apply through your counselor. You would speak to them and through that, you could either get a reduced ticket, so it would be $30 or you could get it completely free. But then with that, I did see that we don't have any resources for students who need a tuxedo, who need a dress. They want to look their best, you want to feel your best, because not everyone's going to get that chance. So with that, I took it upon myself, and I made like a thrift style event because you know, that's what we all like to do. And while we reached out to the community and the community was so very like giving, I'd want to say, we got a huge amount of tuxedos and prom dresses and these weren't just like, you know, your sheen quality. They were from like men's warehouse. They were from like Sherry Hill prom dresses They were beautiful pieces. We got everything from dresses to tuxedos shoes to earrings Everything that you would need to feel your best and we hosted an event and students came and were able to shop around and get whatever they'd like And And so with that, we also had a busing system, so you just need to get to school and the buses would take you to the event location and back. So through that, I truly do believe that we can make a difference and that was one of the biggest things that allowed people to attend and make it accessible for everyone. Thank you so much. That's very impressive. You like come over here. Okay? Okay. And we'll have a photo for you. Stand together, please. All right. Over here. Thanks, my friend. And we'll have a photo for you. Stand together, please. All right. All right. Over here. Thanks, my friend. And we'll have a photo for you. Stand together, please. All right. Over here. Thanks, over here. Big smile. Three, two, one. One, one. Three. One. Thank you so much. Now we'll see Sophia Lagotuda, Mission College Prep High School. Would Sophia's family, friends, teachers, administrators, please stand to be recognized and bravo to you too. Thank you. Sophia's major is psychology. She'll be working toward a career as a mental health worker, and she has committed to UC Merced. Congratulations. Sophia's qualities are a leader. She's a good listener, be a good judge of people, and a good communicator. Her school activities include very active in the school drama department. She was co-president of the Waffle Club. She was track and field participant, and a huge volunteer at many school activities guiding other volunteers working at concession stands, and all sorts of things. Outside of school, Sophia was a volunteer at Echo Homeless Shelters, board member of the Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. She's a participant in AIM Youth Mental Health, which works to bridge the gap between research and access to care for use struggling with mental health. And she uses her bilingual skills to help non-fluent English speakers seeking mental health services. So passionate. Sophia has a real passion for helping people connect with mental health services, regardless of their financial or language barriers. She plans to bring what she's learned in slow to Mercedes where she will attend college. So Sophia, can you tell us how you learned about eighth-AIM youth mental health, why you became involved, and what you've learned from it? AIM youth mental health and TCAMH actually work organizations that stem from the same place. AIM started off during COVID when they realized that research was not keeping up with what youth needed and they wanted to get it done. So they did. They put on symposiums, they reached out to different high schools and got people in those high schools to make surveys to reach out to their own community. And I knew that that is what I needed to do. I needed to be there on the ground, helping other students like me get access to mental health resources that feel unreachable at times. And from AM, STEM, the other organization, CCMH, which not only wanted the research to come about, but also wanted children to have access to the mental health resources. They wanted people to know where to find them and have students themselves be able to reach out no matter what their economical status was, no matter if they were first generation, no matter what struggles they were facing to be able to reach out to a mental health professional no matter what. And as someone who have seen so many people struggle with being unable to reach mental health resources, as someone who has seen people struggle to talk to somebody or even realize that they have feelings not is valid, I wanted to be there. I wanted to be a part of something so big and so helpful to people like me. And I did. I showed up to every meeting, even when it was I was unable to drive myself there. With this I helped fund and make this nonprofit functional in a way as a youth member of the board. I talked to my school and made surveys happen. I was able to reach out to other first generations like me and talk to adults like yourself and helping with CCMH and aim. Thank you so much. A quick photo. We have to record all these wonderful moments in the last of your senior year. Thank you. District 4, Supervisor Jimmy Pauling. Sydney Mendoza, Napomo High School. Sydney's family, friends, teachers, teachers, congratulations. Sydney's major will be visual and performing arts. She is a theater right here, all to herself. She's had several great options for school choices and tell us now, Sydney, what have you decided? I've decided on Cal Poly slow. Cal Poly. Thank you. Sydney's quality of a leader, responsibility, accountability, and building trust through influence and encouragement. Her freshman in sophomore years, she was on the Water Polo and dive teams. She's had a tenacious commitment to theater production, both at school and community theaters for many years. From her freshman through senior years, Sydney was in nine coastal youth theater productions. In ninth grade, she was an actor in Mary Mouse, which was the first production after COVID, and then in Troll Queen. She was in two productions, her sophomore year, and three, her junior year, as an actor, singer, and dancer. This year, she was an actor, singer, dancer in both Mary Poppins and Mean Girls. Outside of school, Sydney has participated in summer junior lifeguard programs before her freshman in sophomore years. In 10th grade, she participated in Central Coast Kids Got Talent, congratulations, and has taken summer acting film classes. She does community service because she loves to be a part of quote everybody pitching in. Sydney's curiosity and respect for our environment motivated her FFA project of researching the importance of beekeeping and she became a beekeeper of her own hive. Sydney's leadership approach was guided by her own mentors and reflects her belief in kindness, cost, nothing. She models respect, sets an example of giving back and supports others. Sydney, you shared with us that you mentored your friend's younger sister and encouraged her in opera. Can you tell us what prompted you to do that and what you learned from it? Well, my best friend across the street, I've known her since middle school, and we've stayed friends since. So when I found that her younger sister also took an interest in the arts, I was like, I need to help this girl as much as humanly possible. So I told her about the Coastal Performing Arts Foundation, which is the organization that I do theater with. I told her, we're putting on Mary Poppins. Right now we're doing Little Mermaid. You should come see it. You should see if it's for you. I think you'd be great at it. So she and her family came and saw it. They loved it. And then I helped her pick a song, a monologue, and I helped coach her for performing the monologue. And I drove her to her audition for Mary Poppins. We both got in. She got one of the bankers in Mary Poppins and I got the mother in Mary Poppins. So it was really nice to be able to drive her to every rehearsal and I got to get to know her so much better and we got really close and it was really It's awesome seeing so I saw so much of myself in her and just the joy of being able to foster that for somebody else. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Right here. All right, right here. It's three, two, one. One, one. Three, two, one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very Emma Reesner, Central Coast New Tech High School. Emily's family's friends, supporters, please stand. Emma's major will be animal science and she's already been accepted to Cal Poly. Her qualities of a leader, listening skills, oral communication and empathy. In 9th through 11th grades, Emma was on the varsity swim team and a member of an off season swim club. In 11th grade, she earned her lifeguard certification. From 9 through 12, she was involved in eight different community and high school productions as an actor, crew member, tech crew, set design builder, and director. She is the founder and president of the book club, which brought together students and teachers who share a love of reading. She's a teen mental health and wellness ambassador as part of a capsule program. Outside activities, she's Emma has been a 4-H member since she was young, which gave her an interest in both animals and leadership. Since seventh grade, she was four times elected as vice president of her 4-H Cinco-Compagnia's group. She's mentored many younger 4-H members. She's led multiple clubs over several years, a hiking club, a camping club, and arts and crafts club, and developed age-appropriate projects for them. Emma cherishes her community service as a meaningful way to give back. Her teacher said, quote, Emma's life and choices center around community, as demonstrated by the dozens of ways she has chosen to bring people together. Emma was quick to say in her interview that she loves her local community and wants to give back. If she sees a need, she makes things happen. Emma's a dedicated young woman academically in her activities and in helping others. She devoted herself to both theater productions and for age. Emma, in your essay, you told us that one of the most valuable leadership roles you held was directing a one act play. Can you tell us what this experience taught you? Hi. So directing the one act play was a great experience for me, and it taught me that you really need to communicate with your people. You need to understand what they're doing, what they need, and just you got to really be friends with them. You have to understand where they're coming from, what they wanna do, what they're good at, and then working with them to really foster that, and understand what they need and helping them with that. Thank you so much. 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. Banyan Winsle, Arora Grande High School. Banyan's family, grand features, administrator, supporters, stand. Thank you. Banyan's major will be political science with an interest in pursuing law. His school choices UC Irvine or UC Santa Cruz have you made a choice yet? I have. I'm committee to UC Irvine for political science. Congratulations. Vanyans qualities of a leader bringing up others, public speaking skills, work ethic. The school activities include ASB President, his senior year, Varsity Volleyball, A.G. High School Beach Volleyball, the Hangout Club. He worked to create inclusive spaces for all students. He's been a link crew member and leadership class. Outside of school, Banyan has been involved with aim youth mental health. Speaking on teen men's mental health issues, he's been an amp-surf volunteer helping to make surfing accessible to all and building amputees confidence in their abilities. Banyan wants to help others and to make the world a better place. By being an advocate for teen men's mental health, he wants to bring awareness to men's mental health in general, which he feels is an issue that's been overlooked. Banyan's enthusiasm for making an impact at his school and beyond shown through in his interview. His experience of running for school president several times and finally succeeding his senior year gave insight into his passion and determination for leadership. A recurring sentiment in his interview was his desire to uplift others to success. Question, what is the Hangout Club at AGI and what inspired you to get involved? Well the Hangout Club is a club where we work with students with disabilities to not only make the school more accessible, but also put on amazing events such as inclusion, basketball, and inclusion track where we even had some of the schools here come and participate at our own school and we traveled to Nippomo High School to compete in basketball as well. I decided to start this club because going into my junior year I woke up one day with extreme reigning in my left ear and as time went on I also noticed that around loud noises I would have seizure-like events and then doing so I realized how things weren't as accessible for me and then I started looking around and saying well this is an accessible for these students. These students can't be doing this. These students can't do this, not because they don't want to, but because they physically or mentally cannot. So doing so I wanted to create a space where everybody and not only a row around a high school, but my community felt that they can participate and do something that they love, which is why I am just so proud of the Hangout Club and what we've been able to do these last few years. Thank you so much. Thank you. District 5, supervisor Heather Moreno. Nathan Robachati from a taskatera high school is unfortunately not here with us today, but I'm going to read you all about his wonderful accomplishments. Nathan had a calculus final this morning, so couldn't really make it. So Nathan's major is neuroscience and he's hoping to become a physician. a physician. He applied to Harvard and Berkeley and a lot of others and we don't really know yet where he's going, but he's got some great choices. Nathan's quality of a leader are ability to really listen to others, have a clear vision of goals and know when to delegate. His school activities included ASB President, his senior year, class president, tennis team, captain and junior senior in years, Friday night live for four years. He was vice president and president, supporting awareness of substance abuse and mental health issues. He was a boy state delegate, superintendent's advisory council member, honor society president two years, and California scholarship federation president for two years. These kids are all just amazing. Outside of school, he worked throughout high school, including in a hardware store, landscaping, and babysitting. He was a slow county representative on the California Youth Council. He organized various charity events, including the dog walk with a local veterinarian surgeon as a speaker that raised a thousand dollars for Woods Humane Society. His greatest achievement was his four-year daily commitment as a caregiver for his grandmother with Alzheimer's, and he learned compassion and patience. Because of her illness, he has researched into cognitive disorders, inspired him to pursue a career as a physician. And he does community service because he's learned the importance of showing up for others and he's learned responsibility and resilience. So I'm sorry we're not here to meet him, but great job. If I may, just one time I say it, for somebody who can't be here, He's got a lot on his plate. Yes. So as his district five supervisor, congratulations, and wish we could have met him. Yes, we do wish we could have met him, but all these kids. District one, supervisor John Pishong. Brandon, Win, Paso Robles High School. Oops, I messed up? Oh, should I do Kiana? First? No, okay, do you want me to do Kiana? Okay, Kiana, we're gonna see Kiana. Sorry, Gannis. Tampleton High School, and did Kiana's fans and family all that okay great. Keanu's major will be medicine, particularly regenerative medicines and science. UC San Diego she's committed and she will be a member of the division one track team at UC San Diego. Keanu's qualities of a leader be optimistic optimistic, see the good in people, empower people to make the most of their talents and welcome different viewpoints and opportunities to learn. She was ASB 9-12th grade class rep in the 9th, class president 10th, class VP 11th, and class president in 12th. She was Pepp Righ Co-Commissioner for two years, 9 through 12th track and field. She was a junior Olympian, all-American in the 800 meter, congratulations. 9 through 11th, she was cross country runner and team manager, 10 through 12 waffle stompers, hiking club. She was 11th and 12th, always on trend fashion club. We like that. And she was active in society of women's engineers, fashion language, no excuse me, foreign language club, wing men and Friday night life. Outside of school, Keane, 10th through 12, was a youth board member of must charities. She's a volunteer for Echo Shelters, Coats for Kids, Slow Food Bank, One Cool Earth, and Boys and Girls Club. She's a volunteer coach for Templeton Run Club Summer Track Camps. Keanu does community service because she enjoys the genuine personal connection she makes while volunteering. Her high school counselor says Keani is inclusive, kindhearted, and serves as an outstanding role model for her peers. She possesses adaptability, intelligence, and commitment. She builds others up to support their growth. The light she brings to our campus is undeniable. Question for Keani. You mentioned in your interview that Jordan Hassei has been a role model for you. What have you learned from her? Thank you. So if you guys are unaware, Jordan Hassei is a local legend in the track and field community. She correct me if I'm wrong. I have to look at my dad for this, but had the second all-time American marathon women's record. She ran at Oregon with the ducks, went to a couple Olympic trials, and now is a runner for Team Nike. She settling down is currently pregnant about to have her baby, which is super exciting. Congratulations to her. I had the opportunity to first meet Jordan when I was about seven years old at a local 5K in Pizmo Beach. I remember my dad was telling me all about her local legend, all of her accomplishments and successes. And I was able to get a quick picture with her run the race and later in life when I was in high school and started to run track more competitively I got in touch with one of her coaches. His name is Brian Quigley he is a local form coach in the area and he worked with her along with me at the same time. I was able to work with her, and I saw the dedication and commitment she put into all of her work out, all of her training, and it inspired me and showed me that, yes, running is a sport, and yes, there are many accomplishments that come with it. But in order to be successful, you need to have passion and grit and love for what you do. And I think that applies to everything in life. She was so close to making Olympic trials or Olympic finals. And to see her come back after injuries, after personal life challenges has been varying, inspiring and has shown me how much commitment and love can go into a sport, and a passion, and everything else in life. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank podium. I should have looked at the photos. Pastor Robles High School, Brandon. Brandon's friends and family have stood, okay. So Brandon is going to major in cognitive science with a goal of earning a master's and UC San Diego is your decision for school. Congratulations. Branden's qualities of a leader ability to read the room figure out where people are coming from have a good vision of your goal and use the right tone of voice to communicate effectively and fearlessly. His school activities include ASB active three years as class president and then ASB president this year. He's a co-founder and leader of Ghanas grow always and never stop. A student mentoring and tutoring club. He's an interact club member and he's on the Superintendent's Advisory Committee two years one year as a leader. Outside of school, Brandon volunteers with must charities, which is a local non-profit that is mostly in the wine industry, to create public gifting opportunities. Brandon was on the Youth Board Commission, where teens identify needs within the non-profits that they work with. He's Boys and Girls Club, Echo Homeless Shelter Volunteer, and El Camino Scholars. Is that part of people's self-help housing? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Brandon does community service because he is a first generation English language learner student. He learned from his family the importance of pushing people up. He believes that volunteers are more authentic in helping others than those who are employed to do it. Brandon, you shared that a good leader pushes people up. You were co-founder of a Mentor Tutoring Program for students called Gannis. Please share why you created this group and what you learned from it. Well, thank you for the question, thank you. So Ghanas, we only founded it in my junior year. I wish I did it way sooner, but the only reason why we opened it is because at Paso Ramos High School, I feel like education for me has always been something important. And there I see that a lot of students' academics are slowly dropping, and they don't have any peer-to-peer tutoring there. And in Paso-Robots, we do have non-profits there. However, they state that they will help out high schoolers and that they welcome high schoolers. But from my time working at all of those places, I've never seen a single high schooler in there. They only they mainly focus on elementary and middle school. And I love those people so very dearly, however, they do not know the how to teach high schoolers what they're currently learning they're kind of lost at that point. So we started God us just to be a peer-to-peer tutoring club. Just to help people out. And now I think we're actually working to turn it into a class at Pazor was high school and a nonprofit. We're filling out the 501.4. Oh, congratulations. We're trying, we're trying. Yeah. But from Ghanas, I've learned that a lot of kids, they don't have that type of education or that type of opportunity for education and our thought process is we can only help you if you want to be helped. We can't offer you a mentorship, we can't offer you a mentor if you don't want to learn, you know. So first step is actually theirs to take and that's do you want to learn and do you want to be better. That's our mentality in Ghana and I think right now we've helped over 50 students in this semester. One of our students, he used to be my childhood friend and I for totally forgot about him because we separated our ways but he was my first mentor and he really taught me that everybody has a second shot at redemption at anything because he kind of lost his way and we brought him back. Wow, thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Emily's family and friends stand. Thank you and supporter. Thank you. APPLAUSE Uh-oh. Emily's major will be Environmental Science or Ecology. Her school choices may be UC Davis or Cal Poly. Have you decided? I decided on Cal Poly. Oh, yay. Emily's qualities of a leader welcoming strong commitment to a cause and emotionally aware of other people. Her school activities include 9-12 soccer, team captain, varsity track and field, 9-12 environmental club, 10-12 bike club, co-president of the Food Saul Club. I had to look that up. That's indoor football played on a hard court. Is that that what that is? That's fun. And she has five varsity letters. Outside of school, Emily works at Kelly's Candies, Candy Store. She's a sterile-bay kindness club volunteer. She works with Moro Bay little guards, junior life guards for kids five to nine to learn about the ocean. She's a save our seas volunteer and Emily is first generation to college and her family as well. It gives her a sense of belonging to do community service and she appreciates the shared problem solving. She sees it as quote passing culture from one generation to the next. Emily says she is strong willed and and stands up for her opinions, which she says can be both a strength and a weakness. Emily, besides a strong commitment to athletics, wow, five varsity letters, you also seem very committed to environmental science. What do you see as the most important issue facing our environment today? I think the most important issue is probably ignorance from something law, which comes because it's our instinct as humans. We're supposed to be on the top. We feel like we need to be the best always, but that's, it takes a lot to realize that that doesn't always have to be the case. The case is we should be working together to create something that becomes the best. We should be working together to create something that helps lift other people up too, other organisms, other plants, so they can be their best instead of just focusing on us. So I think being able to first learn about what is going on in our environment and that within so many years like many species could be extinct because we decide that one isn't important enough for us to save it in our lab. So I think really just being able to recognize that and then move forward from it and grow from it, but also spreading the word. So I guess just being educated enough. And thank you. And take it from us. That's a very dancing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Why don't you stay up here for a minute. We're going to call everybody else back up. This concludes our WIric Leadership Scholarship Award presentation for 2025. I hope this ceremony leaves you all feeling like we do when we do this work full of great hope for the future. Let's give our honorees one more round of applause. Thank you again supervisors, all the volunteers and staff at the community foundation and everyone who came out to support these amazing young leaders. Students please come up now and stay in the chamber for some group photos. Everyone else, we invite you to join us in the lobby for some light refreshments. Thank you very much. Yeah, we're gonna take a break and let's have some photos up here and we'll be back at 10.35. Is that? Is that? Yeah. That's it. I agree with you. Bruce is out there too. 35. you you you I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. I'm going to go in. Let's see. Here it comes. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Sure. We'll just start. you You I'm looking We're going to bring it back to the board. And before we open public comment for items not on the agenda, I just want to note that that class of scholarship winners is probably the most soulful, heartful class. And if you think about the fact that when they became freshmen, we were really in the midst of COVID. And they were really heartwarming. So I just wanted to recognize that. All right, so we will open public comment for items not on the agenda. We'll start with Carolyn Krueger, followed by Lars Jorgensen, please. Good morning supervisors. Carolyn Krueger from Moorabay. And as people of influence charged with the public good, I thought I would take this opportunity to just bring up an issue about education, which seems appropriate for today. I don't know if you're aware of the Assembly Bill 715, which will affect education in our state, county, and all of our districts. Educators, parents, students, and community groups spent months organizing against AB 1468. A harmful bill intended to target ethnic studies teachers and criminalize BIPOC-led ethnic studies curricula. After seeing AB 1468 lose support across the state, Rick Chavez-Zibur and Don Addis gutted and amended a previous bill to create a last minute policy that would align with Trump's right wing attacks on public schools. This is bad policymaking and bad policy. AB 715 threatens the trust and collaboration at the heart of our schools. It creates vague rules that open the door to anonymous complaints and state investigations, placing teachers under constant scrutiny for addressing real world issues in ethnic studies, history, literature, and social science. It sends a chilling message to educators, teaching hard truths about race, identity, or injustice could cost you your job. This isn't about protecting students, it's about silencing educators, and narrowing what our children are allowed to learn. Parents and teachers alike should see this for what it is, censorship disguised as protection. It burdens the districts with new red tape and undermines local decision making, instead of funding or supporting school districts. It creates a climate of fear, not safety, for educators, students, and families alike. I urge everyone to call your representatives and demand they fund ethnic studies rather than censor it. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Jorgensen? I'm not sure. I have you at General Public Common, but you also have something on the agenda item for CASA. But go ahead, please. What I just want to speak to is just about CASA and what I think it means to our, not only our community, but our children. OK. And to all of you, thank you for your service and thank you for your leadership. And Don, happy birthday to you. Thank you. So my name is Lars Georgensen. And I'm here today to speak on behalf of some of the most vulnerable members of our community, the teens in foster care who rely on the mentorship and support of CASA. When I was 11 years old, I lost my father and at that age I was overwhelmed with grief, confusion, uncertainty. But I was fortunate one, because I had people that came into my life as mentors that stood beside me and stepped in when I needed guidance the most. And they offered me consistency, compassion, and direction. And without them, I truly don't know where I'd be today. Their presence made all the difference. And that's why I feel so strongly about what's at stake. With the recent decision to cut the annual funding and cost as mentor program, funding that for many years has supported children in the foster care right here in San Los Obispo County. And these young people have experienced instability and hardship. They've been separated from their own families by no fault of their own, and it placed into the foster care system to ensure their safety and well-being during a time of profound transition and uncertainty in their lives, and they need stable caring adults. Mentors who will stand by them, advocate for them, and help them navigate the complex path towards adulthood. And that's what Kasa provides. And the results are undeniable. Children in Kasa, with a Kasa mentor, are more likely to graduate high school at 10 college, avoid homelessness, and build healthier and more sustainable lives. They also are more likely to express hope in their future. And that hope is priceless. When we take that support away, especially as these children approach adulthood and age out of the system, they are not just, we are not just cutting a program, but we are cutting off lifelines and risk, homelessness, unemployment, long-term instability, rises dramatically when these children don't have someone consistent in their corner. We can't, we can also, also we cannot ignore the bigger picture. Investing in CASA and these children is not just a moral imperative, but it's a smart investment in the future of our community. And when we support the vulnerable youth and build a stronger independent lives, we reduce the strain on social services, improve public safety, and strengthen the fabric of our community. Thank you. They're proposed. We have time. I'm sorry. Thank you, sir. Okay. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your consideration. And again, your service. God bless you all. Appreciate it. OK. We'll follow that by Gary Kirkland and then Susan Knowles. Gary, yep. Thank you, Gary Kirkland from Patasca D'Aro. My mom taught me that if you can't say something nice, don't say anything. She had a sign on the wall of her trailer that said, from day to day, make sure the words you say are sweet because you'll never know which ones you may have to eat. Okay. For almost 12 years now, I've been trying to raise the level of discourse at public meetings where people do not use false reasoning to attack others. Last week, or two weeks or whenever it was, we saw a shameful display of ad homonym attacks on Mike Brown. He wasn't here to defend himself and the level of discourse clumbeted. Several members of the board said things that were at home in an attack such as being hateful or divisive. I also understand that several in the Democratic Party sent emails to you as well on the board attacking him personally and lowering the level of discourse in our county. Someone told me today that the video of that maybe is not on the website. It's not there and I don't blame them. It was a shameful display. We need to raise the level of discourse so that people feel comfortable coming and talking and not being attacked. It's one thing, if it's called ad rim. Ad rim means attack the issue. Ad hominem means attack the person. Ad hominem attacks are false reasoning and we should not do them. If you look on the back of your yellow slip that I I filled out, it caused for civility. And last week, we saw quite a bit of instability. Therefore, I urge... back of your yellow slip that I filled out, it calls for civility. And last week, we saw quite a bit of instability. Therefore, I urge you, all people, to raise the level of discourse, do not new personal attacks on anyone, ever. Thank you. Thank you. Susan Nose, you know, and followed by David Yo. My name is Susan Nose. I'm a tasker or high grad. I'm a poly grad. I'm a the centimarguerita resident, and I am a volunteer. I want to talk about how much volunteer is bringing to our community. I first ran into United Policyholders after the 1994 Highway 41 fire. They came and taught us how to effectively make an insurance claim. Later, they asked me to write a chapter in a book about taxes because that's what I do. And I volunteered and did that. It gave me a lot of satisfaction. Later, about 15 years ago, my Cal Poly professor asked me to volunteer for Vita and review tax returns, which I did. I was still working full time, so I only did a couple of Saturdays at a time. Later, about two years later, when I retired, they asked me to be a site supervisor, which I did. They asked me, and I did. And that's part of the key to getting volunteers is to ask. We moved the site to O'Shiano from San Luis to O'Shiano. And we've operated there for about 10 years in O'Shiano. The grant that funds that is through United Way in Santa Maria, but it funds Cal Poly, it funds Oceano, and it funds down Hancock. More than half of those tax returns are done here in our county because we have volunteers who step up. We have over 900 volunteers volunteer hours bringing $2.2 million back to our community. And it's a great sense of satisfaction to be a volunteer, but you have to ask. And I was again asked to volunteer in 24, 25 as an AmeriCorps volunteer. AmeriCorps has been defunded by $400 million, $15,000 volunteers, and they're the people who show up when FEMA comes to your community. FEMA shows up after hurricanes, floods, fires, and they bring expertise. So I want to ask you to acknowledge how much we have brought to our community as volunteers for VITA, for AmeriCorps, and I'm a VISTA volunteer. I increase capacity. I am out there creating how-tos and creating new programs to do income tax preparation and financial education for our community. And if you don't ask, you don't get. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Mr. Yo, next. Hello again. David Yo from Moral Bay. John F. Kennedy was quoted as saying, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I'm sorry. The people of Palestine spent a lot of years from 1948 after the NAPA, and they pleaded with the governments of the world, please allow us to be a state and to be recognized through the world. The United States took many opportunities to veto that their opportunities. After what 70 years of being abused by the Israeli genocidal forces, came a point when their peaceful revolution became a bit violent. What happened was they kind of decided to take some war criminal, war prisoners, war prisoners to capture some war prisoners. It turned into a fiasco. There is a thing called the Hannibal Direct directive, which Israel administered on that day. And Israel probably killed more Israelis than the Palestinians did than Hamas did. It is a matter of preventing hostages from being taken so that they cannot be used as a bartering tool. It is devastating to think that there are those who believe that there were rapes and beheadings and strange things. If you look at the photos from that particular day, October 7th, you will see that there are bombed cars and houses, how must it not have the ability to create those devastating effects? That was done by Israeli helicopters and tanks. There were more people murdered that day by the, than there were by the Palestinians. I hope we can get over that and stop focusing on that. I hope that when you speak to the people that you have in your, that you discussed with, your conmen Carbohol and a similarly person at us, John Laird, whomever, that you help to recognize the people of this community that are peaceful and willing to that come to you for help and not to be turned away. Thank you. And I thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I have a civil Jacobs on this, but I think that you're going to, you have a thing on budget. So our budget, real budget discussion comes this afternoon, but we have a kind of a budget item coming up. So I think I'll put you in with that group in regards to your public comment. So we'll save that one. And if you further public comment on items not on the agenda, seeing none, I'll close public comment. Item number 25, a hearing to consider adoption of a resolution of necessity for the acquisition of real property interest required for chimney rock road bridge over Franklin Creek project and pass the robos by a fourth and vote. Thank you. Okay, public works. Cheer time. Good morning, members of the board. I'm John Waddell, Deputy Director of Public Works. I here to introduce our Public Works right away agent Valerie Moore to present on the resolution and necessity, resolution and necessity hearing. And this item is critical for the full reopening of Chimney Rock Road, which was damaged in the 2020 storms and has resulted in limited access to the areas beyond this location for the last more than two years. Go ahead, Valerie. Good morning. As John mentioned, I'm here today on behalf of Public Works to present to the board for consideration a resolution of necessity for the Chimney Rock Road Bridge over Franklin Creek Project. The Chimney Rock Road Bridge over Franklin Creek Project is located northwest of Pass on Chimney Rock Road at Milepost 12.425. The winter storms of January and March 2023 led to a complete failure of Chimney Rock Road at Franklin Creek when the culverted earthen berm roadway was destroyed, stranding residents in the lakeside communities of running deer ranch, Cal Shasta, and tri-counties. County Public Works installed a temporary one-lane bridge as an emergency opening. The county leases the temporary bridge at a cost of $22,000 a month. The temporary bridge is restricted capacity, which limits commerce and fire access into the area. Public Works is planning to construct a permanent bridge 175 feet long and 30 feet wide to accommodate two 10 foot wide travel lanes, three foot wide shoulders and barriers. Construction is planned for spring of 2026. To construct the project, the county requires one temporary construction easement and three permanent easements from three separate property owners to realign the bridge approach and to maintain the public roadway bridge and adjacent slopes. The county has a signed purchase agreement for the permanent easement shown in blue. And the county is in negotiations for the permanent easement shown in teal and the temporary construction easement shown in pink This hearing pertains to the permanent easement shown in yellow which is approximately 0.39 acres The subject parcel From which the permanent easement is needed consists of four parcels totaling 112 acres and is zoned rural lands. The needed permanent easement is approximately 0.39 acres of which 0.16 acres is in the creek and deemed unusable. Ownership of the property consists of 13 individuals. The work works has on April 11, 2025 made an offer of just compensation to the vested property owners for purchase of the permanent easement and to monetarily compensate for the emergency access and use of private property for the temporary measures that provided access for stranded residents and commerce. Public Works called and spoke with the living property owners about the project and the needed easement, all of whom stated they support the project. However, several of the vested owners are deceased, creating a cloud on title. Without the signatures of all the vested owners, the county is unable to acquire the needed real property interest for the project. To start construction in May 2026 public works needs to advertise in October of this year due to the cloud on title a resolution of necessity is needed to obtain possession of the property in time to construct in 2026. The timeline and the eminent domain process have been explained to the property owners who have said they understand the need for the eminent domain process due to the cloud on title. During the eminent domain process, the owners may withdraw the just compensation amount on deposit with the straight state treasurer. Today's resolution of necessity hearing process will include receiving staff comments, taking testimony from property owners and considering all the evidence in determining whether the real property interests are necessary for the public project, confirming that the statutory offer has been made to the property owner and adopting the resolution of necessity which requires a for-fist vote. And its necessity hearing process is the first step in the two-part process to exercise eminent domain. Its supports or determines the necessity of the property for processing an action in superior court. The necessity criteria are, does the public interest and necessity require the proposed project, is the project compatible with the greatest public good and least private injury, is the property to be acquired necessary for the project and has an offer as required under the government code been made to the owner. These are the key findings that must be made and are included in the resolution of necessity. In summary, the key findings are the public interest in necessity require the proposed project and the acquisition of the real property interests. The planned project is most compatible with the greatest public good and least private injury. The proposed use will not unnecessarily interfere or impair any public use. The compensation offer required under government code has been made to the property owner. No further environmental review is required and this action is not prohibited under California law. It is recommended that the board open and conduct a hearing on the adoption of the resolution of necessity, adopt a resolution of necessity authorizing the chairperson to execute all necessary documents and authorize the director of public works to complete the actions necessary to close the transaction. Questions? Yeah, so thank you for bringing this forward, because this is obviously where it two years. And but I first off wanted to thank you all of you for that had a hand in getting a temporary bridge in. That is a big deal. And I was just on it last week, so it's still standard and still doing a good job. A couple quick questions. Today we will hear if there's any property owners, but you've had discussions with the property owners, correct? I mean, you are dealing with the current property owners. I'm dealing with the property owners who are listed on title who are not deceased, Yes. Not deceased. I appreciate the clarification there. That's a good thing that we're talking to living people. For those of you who didn't hear that, it's super-resistant. If you're getting in touch with the ones that aren't living, please let us know and we'll deal with that bridge at that time. So okay, I appreciate you working on this. I'm not sure if you can touch with the ones that aren't living. Please let us know and we'll deal with that bridge at that time. So, okay, I appreciate you working on this. I'm supportive of this because we've got to get this done. It was, you know, we had a number of people, I think, over 200 folks that were stuck on the other side of that bridge. And there's no way out of that area. I had to take a boat across Lake to get to that town hall meeting. So, I appreciate all you're doing on this. Okay. Any further questions? Seeing none we're going to open public comment. I don't have any public comment slips on this item any public comment speakers. Seeing none I'll close public comment and I will bring it back to the board. Second. I make a motion to a stats recommendation. Wave. And second by supervisor Gibson. Three second, dude. Yeah, good. Ready for roll call. Supervisor Pashong. Yes. Supervisor Gibson. Yes. Supervisor Paulty. Yes. Supervisor Marino. Yes, ma'am. And Chef Person, Oathees Lake. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Move on to item number 26. And we'll ask the clerk to introduce the item. Number 26, the middle of the fiscal year 2024-25, third quarter financial status report, request your approved various financial actions, which one or more actions require four-fifth votes. Okay, very good. So we have the administrative office and auditor controller treasure tax collector office coming forth. Orch is the admin. We're ready when you are. Good morning, and troopers are would dislike and border supervisors. All in on the corner administrative analyst was accounting administrative office. Before I begin this presentation, I would like to verbally amend item number 11 under this agenda item to correct the budget adjustment request for fund center 100. Board of supervisors. To correct the budget adjustment from $124,610 to $125, $610. $145 that was? Yes. $145,610. Yes. It's off by $1,000. So it's, oh, okay. It is correct from $124,000 to $125,000. Oh, I see. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Correct the staff report and related attachments were provided to the clerk of the board. Moment forward. Today I will be presenting fiscal year 2425 circuit board of financial status report. And then I will hand it over to Jim Hamilton, our editor-controlled treasure tax collector, was a debt report. Circuit board responds from January 1st through March 31st. The report is exception only, meaning no mention is made over for center if it is as then was expected parameters. We have four new issues to report in the short quarter. Other issues you'll see here have been reported on on a first and second quarters. Is there a way? It was the slides supposed to move forward from this? No. Oh, OK. It's a really long intro. Thank you. We have several multiple issues that have been apparent in prior quarters. They do not appear in this quarter. As we were previously resolved by actions taking positive board connected to those issues. Set touch report goes into greater detail on those issues. But I will speak to some generally and touch on some significant changes compared to prior quarters. Big picture, we are on track to finish this year with what we anticipated in upcoming budget presentations that we will present to you today. Moving forward, the stable compares revenue and expenditure patterns through the end of the third quarter of this year compared to the same quarter of the last year for both governmental funds and general fund. Governmental fund revenue for the third quarter of this year was 3% higher. From relative to construction projects result in increased drawdown of a bond and public facilities fees. For was probation and public safety communication center buildings. Calame reimbursement revisions and increase our permanent reimbursement at the end of the expenditure period approaches. Governmental funds expenditure were on par with prior year. General fund revenue for the circular quarter of this year on part with prior year. But expenditure were 4% lower. This is primarily due to mid-year budgeting appropriation for multiple years of energy program activity for planning and building. Lower county expenditure on cal fire related to billing delays. And overall salary and benefits savings as the CEDA was a hiring chills and departments holding certain positions vacant was in the portion recommendations, deserved reductions as part of the fiscal year 25th, 26th recommended budget. Moving into notable issues. Planning in billing is currently expecting 3 $3.3 million trophy in revenue. This is mainly due to continued drop in burning income, along with slower revenue related to energy program. So the department is managing their shortfalls through salary and other savings, but is no net cost was a general fund. Our second group is public protection. The SHIRP office is currently expecting to be 2.7 million over budget. This is mainly due to un-budgeted costs for salary and benefits, including overtime and negotiated salary and benefits, as well as drop in expected revenue. The revenue shortfall is too mostly tied to vacant positions that are offset by some sort of revenue. Some projects come in underpatch it, volatile and renewable reimbursements, and a depleted realignment trust. For context, this is an improvement from a second quarter, once the office was projecting to have 4.3 million or shortfall. As for the last quarter, quarter provision is projected to be over its budgeted level or general fund support due to a revenue shortfall, infines, and recording fees. From Health and Human Services Group, behavioral health is projected to be over its budgeted level of services and supplies. Mainly as a result of over just related to plants and services, primarily due to increased placement costs, increased psychiatric hospital rates, and un-budgeted contracts. Social services and administration is projected to be over its budgeted service in supplies levels, primarily due to mid-year state negotiated salary and benefits increases, and un-budgeted security and training and expenditures. Both departments, ameticanings, this revenue shortfall, was expenditure savings, was though additional impact to general fund. Veteran services is projected to be overseer budgeted general fund support, due to combination of salary and benefits over expenditure and shortfall for the subvention revenue. Moving into community services, similar to the last quarter, both community parks and regional parks, I seen lower revenues and expected. Community parks is facing shortfall due to delayed completion of the Kekikas Madras Hall. Fewer park they use fees and unexpected winter storm damage costs. box is also seen a drop the and the and the and the and the and the and the salary in benefits. Next group is support to county department service group. Human resources previously reported on the unbudgeted 1.2 million increased for the insurance premium. And this quarter, it had a new issue of a shortfall of charges for services to multiple departments. The department is working with admin and other services and charge departments to investigate any corrections that may be needed to mitigate impacts to the general fund. Human resource liability is related for the purpose of an update on a previously reported issue. In our final group, physical administrative services, word of supervisors projected to be the over-zero budgeted level of general fund support, due to un-budged negotiated salary and benefits, increased and expenses for employees for tearing. This slide shows positions allocation changes through the third quarter. I did want to clarify, the net change you see there for each quarter is only the net change that happened with its set specific quarter. There is not net change in total positions allocated this fiscal year. There is increased in expenses associated with the net changes, but most of the expenses are offset by some source of revenue. It is estimated that those position changes have an increased budgetary impact of two million annually ongoing. It is also estimated those position changes have an increased channel fund support impact of 90,000 for the fiscal year 2525 of 2425, 581,000 for fiscal year 2526, and 741,000 annually ongoing. This is the summary of the recommendation included in the step report. That concludes this portion of the presentation before we move into the annual debt report presented by Mr. Hamilton and represented this from the departments on hand to answer any questions you may have. Okay. Do we have any question supervisors at this time? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning and happy birthdays. Welcome. Jim Hamilton County Auditor Controller, Treasurer Tax Collector, Public Administrator. Thank you sir. It's almost going to let Zach do this this year. Happy to have you. Thank you. So as you are all probably familiar with by now each year the auditor controller brings a debt status update to the board. This is pursuant to the debt management policy. Historically we had done this by way of a letter but the last few years been giving you a live presentation, so you can have a chance to ask questions and a little more information for the public. So, as for the agenda, this is typical. We'll give you a current debt status. A little bit of discussion about our bond rating. You might remember there was a change this year. I emailed you all that we can talk about that a bit, and then a municipal market update. So we'll get into that. So here's a screen that shows the current status of debt that is general fund backed. You can see on the left where there's a big drop-off when the pension obligation bonds pay off. I think everyone's kind of familiar with that every year. We get a little bit closer. I want to share a little bit for Matt and Supervisor Moreno, who I've not seen this presentation before, a little bit about the repayment resources for the general fund back that you can see quite a few issuances listed there in the lower right. However, just a few of them are actually paid for by the general fund. I'll kind of go through them top to bottom. The pension obligation bonds, those have a general fund component. We collect the debt service by way of a charge across salary and benefits of every department as you probably are aware many county salaries and benefits are collected through fees or through grants. So a portion of that is collected for intergovernmental and users of services, but there's certainly a general fund component there. The Paso Courthouse fees, that's the next one that's entirely funded by courthouse fines that are dedicated for facilities. The Vineyard Drive interchange is developer fee paid. The new government center is a combination of general fund and public facilities fees. And the dairy creek that's completely paid by golf. They've been able to make that payment every year. Airport pays for their terminal loan. Animal Services facilities, there's a bit of general fund in there, but the participating cities that share the use of that facility pay for a significant portion of that. One of our new erasions is the Public Safety Communication Center probation. That is general fund in public facility space. And then the Carrikes Vets Hall, which is coming into completion pretty soon, that will be likely a bit of General Fund, but also significant reservation fees for use of the facilities. We'll pay for that debt. And then finally, the Oceano drainage, that's the intersection that was flooding for years and years. That's been fixed now, and that's a general fund paid debt as well. Also up in the upper right, you can see pretty small font there. The percentage of general fund backed debt service to the general funds budget and administrative office holds a performance measure of keeping that below 5% of the budget. And as you can see, we're well under that. And when the pension obligation bonds pay off, drops even further. Any questions on general fund debt? Jump in at any point in time. Enterprise fund debt. So this is debt that's non-general fund, supported largely by the beneficiaries, the users of these infrastructure assets. I'll point out, you know, the large ones that stand out is a nossuminal pipeline. Haven't had a chance to talk with John, did I already about this yet, but we're kind of watching that one. It becomes callable in September, so there might be a refunding opportunity for that, which would be be good although as we get to the market update rates are getting a little less less economical now for refundings but we're watching that. And then of course the Lososos wastewater those are paid for with user fees. That's the other large portion there's a couple issuances down there below. It is notable we have got very favorable rates on those in a 2% range from the state water and then also the assessment bond portion. So that is the enterprise debt. This next slide just shows debt service that was made this last fiscal year, principal and interest payments all made as scheduled unsurprisingly. And then this next slide, just a cover sheet of the five year CIP that you guys see every March, that tends to drive a lot of our debt issuance planning, just looking back a couple years ago, the 2223 CIP, out of that we financed Cahill Kusvets, co-located dispatch, actually public safety. I think we've got a new name for that now, public safety communications and the probation office buildings. Those are completing soon. Cahillicus vets hall I'm told this fall, the Public Safety Communications Center in November of this year and probation early next calendar year. And then going to 2425 CIP, that involved quite a few facilities and we were actually directed to convene the DAC. And there are no plans to issue any debt out of that. However, the NAPOMO substation move forward with no debt financing completely out of pocket. and then looking at this year's CIP, still revis think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. to bring you guys a fully vetted sort of a plan on financing that aligns with the debt management policy. So, I mentioned the debt advisory committee. They, it was pretty quiet with the debt advisory committee. They did meet on the Losos Habitat Conference of Ration and evaluated an internal loan that's backed by fees from developers out there. And then I think ultimately became alone from contingencies. And then a few DAC meetings involving public works in their bridge program, coincidentally, part of that was the item you just looked at. So always meeting on the highway bridge programs, because we're needing to upfront fund those programs before before we get reimbursements so we tend to do that with internal funds. On to the county bond rating. This slide shows where our current rating is with Fitch and standard and Pours. There are two of the three major firms out there Moody's. This is another one. These are the two that we contract with to evaluate and do an annual surveillance on our bond rating for purchasers of our bonds that are out there that want to see what our rating is at. I'll get into this a little bit, but Fitch changed their reporting model, not for just us for all agencies, and it resulted in a downgrade of one notch. So I'll get a little bit more into that. This specifically is a slide on Fitch's rating model. And on the right there, I'm showing you what areas of their model are under the county control and which aren't. And just cut to the chase here, the bolded item down there, the population size of the county, was something that they added to their formula. Outside of the county's control, but we all know our population's pretty stable. I mean, when I was looking at the data for that, it like hasn't changed it, you know, 280, like constantly. And they look at that as a factor in an agency's ability to support debt. And that one little factor was enough to drop us down a notch. Not uncommon, it was happening across the state. We've got some notes here just as far as looking top to bottom there, the financial profile, the 35% weight. They do rank this county at the highest level. That's really the area that's under the board and management's control. So we maintain the highest level for that factor. Long-term liability birding, burden were at a mid-range. They don't like pensions. Any agency that has any, which is just about everybody, they just kind of back you off a little bit on the score for that. But they do note that we have our repayment plan on the pension, so that's viewed favorably, but they always not. It back up a little bit for that. And then, lastly, the demographic and economic strength, that 44% at the bottom, which we have, you know, no real direct control over the population trend brought us down to their weakest level. I will add that standard and pores also updated their rating criteria, but it resulted in no change to us. They tend to be more kind of subjective and qualitative with their ratings, so that they can look at an agency and not quite just crank it through the formula. So standard pours tends to be really the one the market looks at more and they're the agency when we do have a direct issuance that we bring in to do the rating calls with and directly apply a rating to our debt issuance. So standard pours were still at the highest level with them. Moving on, I won't read this to you, but just for the record municipal market update, it's been pretty wild lately, as you probably are familiar with what's happening in the equity market, municipal bonds and treasuries, which are really the proxy for what it costs us to borrow have been in kind of some turmoil too. On this next slide, okay, the glass is everybody. What this shows, and this was prepared with the help of our financial advisor, they're always tracking this stuff and we talked about kind of, how do I show you what's been going on with the market and I'll kind of walk you Through this presentation a little bit on the left hand side you can see the cumulative change in Up in the blue that's the MMD which is sort of a proxy for bond issuers So that's municipal bonds which are tax exempt, you know What issuers are having to pay, what buyers are receiving for those at five year, ten year, or thirty year. And then down below is kind of another proxy is US treasuries which are taxable. So those, those, the rates are a little higher on those, a purchaser, that's going to say, well, you got to help cover my taxes a bit. So the blue range is really where we live as an issuer. And I just thought I'd track here and discuss a little bit about if you look at the 10 year MMD, which is in the middle. So that's the one that most closely ties to us as an issuer because we tend to re-attempt to refinance things in 10 years. So for whatever it's worth, that's the one. I'll walk you guys across. And again, cut to the chaser. At the end of this period, not a big change, they only went up eight basis points, which is the .08 in the rate we're paying. But just for a little color on kind of what's happening in the market, from the administration's actions. On Liberation Day, can you see that? That was the day that the baseline 10% tariffs was announced. The market, the stock market dropped. And when that tends to happen, folks look for a safe harbor. Where can I put my funds that's safe? And so things became favorable for us as issuers. The green there shows that the liberation day occurred, rates improved for us as issuers. But then when the 50% tariffs were threatened on China, there became worries about inflation. And when there's worries about inflation, bond yields need to go up. People want to want to a bigger return on their bond yields. And then as you can see, moving left to right, all these different actions caused things to kind of whips out. There was a pause on April 10th on the tariffs, though the markets think, oh, maybe the tariff thing isn't really going to happen. Maybe we don't have to worry about inflation so much. And then in April 11th the China battling kind of happened where we were raising them to 145 percent tariffs and then China was going to retaliate. So all this back and forth back and forth at the end of the day, we are today at 3.32 where prior to all this we were at 3.21. So yes, lots of whip saws and when we're looking at something like Nasi Mento refunding, you cannot try to time this stuff. At the end of the day, we're always issuing at about what inflation is, which is pretty good for the constituents, pretty good for an agency trying to finance infrastructure over time. So I don't know if this is interesting to anybody, but I know John Diadotti was recruiting people, but hey, look at what we do in our office, okay? So I just want to get that out there. All those wire ricks that come work for us. So any questions on that? It's supervisor Prasham. Yeah, I just, yeah, this is fascinating to you, because then when the Chinese American tariff talk started, everything went back up, right? So I mean, it's, you expect, I would expect it's going to whiplash around for the most of the summer, is my, is that what you're hearing you're talking about? I mean, to the degree anyone's trying to say summer or beyond the only certainty anyone has is uncertainty. So, and the market does not like that. But again, with municipal, as a municipal issue, California is favored anyone who, you know, in terms of buying debt, our bond rating is still good, so we're always paying low. But yeah, it's kind of chaotic. I think it knows how long. And certainty is the word of the day. Exactly right. Thank you. Sure. Yes, it's super resume. Yeah. Just an advocate curiosity with Nasi and looking at refunding that. What, and obviously no crystal ball, but what is the potential of that refunding and what could we see and how that impacts? So before all this happened, our financial advisor was approaching us saying, hey, it looks like you could have a 7% of par savings and now they're backing off that. So what we look for whenever we do a refinancing is 5% of net present value savings. In other words, refinancing that thing's going to save 5% of the par will go down to three. I still think we'll be in that range of around five, hopefully better, but that's kind of, before all this, it was an expectation of maybe seven. Okay, thank you. Is this the end of your slide or go? I got one more. Okay, go ahead and then I'll ask questions. Okay, sure. So this I've shown in prior meetings, just to show, just to kind of zoom out a little bit and look at the big picture. This is that slide shows bond issuances that we have had along with the 10% average. So that 10% average tends to be around 3%. In 2020, when we issued bonds for the animal services facility, boy, I was taking all the credit in the world. Look at that low, low rate. It's all the luck of the timing. And then when we turned around and issued the bonds for the Cuyahcus vets, co-located and probation, we were like right at the top there. So I'll always, you know, within two and a half to four, and then you can see on the right, that's kind of where we are now. So, and this is, by the way, a 20-year rating for a 20-year index of a lower rated agency than ours. So we'd probably be in the threes or forests. So. Interesting. Yeah. Thank you very much. I had a question back on the Fitz rating system. That was in regards to the population being the negative. So it says demographics. They must have also looked at our average ages as well. Did you know if that gets higher or higher? I have not heard that age in particular gets looked at, but that is a factor, and I can look into that some more and get back to that. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. I think it's the thought that as an aging population kind of. Well, yeah. And when you look at our inability to grow, It goes back to my issue with the second home conundrum that we have. And it's hard to grow when you have lots of second home sitting there empty. So it's just a thought. I think it also demonstrates as we try to work through this budget thing right now, just some of the challenges that we do have in regards to expanding our revenue. And so I'd just like to look at those deeper and how those that are rating us are judging us and why that's all tied together. So thank you. Well, got me curious about that now, so I'll... Any other comments? It's still okay. How about any public comment? Miss Jacobs, you have a... Are you still here? I'm sorry, maybe she's gonna come back in the afternoon then. Okay, so with that, I will close public comment and bring it back to the board. Mr. Reiser Gibson. Thank you, Madam Chair. As always, appreciate the debt review has came to be a thing. And I think that's very useful for the board, especially as we head into the budget later today and next month. Definitely appreciate all the work that staff does to get this together. Within the staff report, I always makes me smile to see there are a number of actions we are taking to accept gifts to various county Efforts and I want to thank those who are generous in their Contributions to getting things done and with that I'll move staff's recommendations second And seconded by supervisor Moreno. Any supervisor Pauling comments? No comments other than I always appreciate the thoroughness of the report helpful looking forward to the bigger budget discussions later today. It's very strong. I'll just say good luck. Great. Great, yeah, and thank you both to Edmond and to to you Mr. Yeah. Great. And thank you both to Admin and to you, Mr. Hamilton. OK. Roll call, please. Supervisor Gibson. Yes. Supervisor Marno. Yes, ma'am. Supervisor Fashon. Yes. Supervisor Paul Dean. Yes. And to our personalties, like. Yes. And Chair's prerogative to just add on that that we just approved. I want to say thank you to all the folks who give donations to places like the library, the animal shelter. I even saw for pools. There was a number of contributions that came in and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. With that, we are now going to move into closed session and as council for time, estimate. Sure, so the board will be meeting in close session on items one, four, five, six, and seven through 17. And I just bet it'll take about 45 minutes. Okay, I will open this for public comment on close session, any public comment on close session, seeing none, I'll close it, and will adjourn the meeting to closed session and we'll reconvene at 130. Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon. Okay. Good afternoon. Um. Okay. Good afternoon. Okay, mm-hmm, Good afternoon. Welcome back to the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. We will start with item 28. Chair, if I can report up. Oh, yes, I'm sorry, sir. Please. Court up. Board met and closed session. Took no reportable action. Thank you. Appreciate that. Good afternoon chair members of the board. I'm John Modell, deputy director of public works. Back again with another public works item. With me is Garrett McLevaney, our supervising engineer for our storm recovery team. He's been in this role for most of the last two years. Him and his team have done an excellent job completing repairs, coordinating with residents, and dealing with new storm challenges. Each winner all while also working with FEMA and other federal agencies to recover our costs. So Garrett has a lot to cover today on these topics, so I will turn it over to him. Thank you. That's your side. Let's pick the back button on your screen. Why are you three in this? Oh, they're not on there. You have to see them down. Yeah. They're not on there. You have to see them down. Hi, as John said, I'm Garrett McLevaney, Supervisor Engineer, Department of Public Works. I oversee the storm recovery team, proved by your board in May of 2023. Today we're presenting an update on the storm recovery work that's taken place over the last year as a result of multiple 2023 storms. Spending years since my last presentation here, so I wanted to start with showing some before and after photos of some of the projects. At the top here is Pine Noles Drive above the County Library in Cambria and the photos below are a row Grande Wazen Road in an area damaged by the Wazen River. Both of these example roads, one urban and one rural are completely open. This one is a larger site on Chimmy Rock Road at my Alpost 6.592 east of the temporary bridge location on Chimmy Rock. A Colbert failure was discovered here when a 15 foot deep hole opened up on the shoulder and in a threatening the entire road repairs were completed last summer. After the 2023 storms, the rainfall data showed twice the average rainfall we typically receive. The county has continued to receive above average rainfall over the subsequent two years. In 2024, concentrated rainstorms triggered a third federal disaster in less than two years. This reinforces the need to be vigilant in storm protection repairs mitigation of existing damage and sites around the county. 2025 rainfall was also well above average compared to the 23, 23, 24 storm years essentially matching that of 2024. With fewer concentrated storm events, public works only opened the storm center for one day this year compared to last year's three openings in February 2024. This year the impact was substantially less with less calls for service and no disaster declaration. Even with a disaster declaration last year as we noted last May we did not have any long-term impacts. The same can be said of this year, despite the record elevated rainfall amounts. This allowed us to concentrate on protecting existing storm sites and did not result in operational interruptions. To move back to the 2023 storm repair update since last May, when I was in front of your board notes and highlights are With one exception roads are back open and as I mentioned earlier There are no operational inter there were no operational interruptions So we saw road staff continue routine maintenance as well as helping to repair numerous 2023 storm damage sites Overall more than 90% of the sites have been repaired or cleaned up. Work is expected to continue into late 2027 to complete all remaining sites. The exception is Chiquetti Road, the water crossing replacement which is slated for construction in 2028. Planning and execution of larger remaining sites is in progress in ongoing. In regarding FEMA processing, our submittal applications, progress is happening, albeit slowly. As discussed in the recent bridge and pavement update, we expect to have cash flow loan needs for the major bridge projects as advanced construction loans. Our overview of the process and progress is again broken down into the following categories which will be covered in the next several slides. Our FEMA and FHWA claims process recap, new and additional highlights of completed work since May 2024, the current status of outstanding work and the review of the finance plan. When we talk about the claims process, we'll be referring to a FEMA workflow phases according to their policy guide. All projects are out of phase one found to meet generally, the general eligibility requirements. Most of our projects are in phase four, the final review phase. This is the step prior to obligation, which is our end goal. This is an overview of where the damage site is sit within the claims process. As you can see, the majority of sites, 95% are either in that last phase or obligated. This past December's report. Phase 4, the final review, an eligible costs are up from $24 million to $59 million as a delta of 34 million and up to 816 sites from 714 sites at Delta of 102 sites in December and similarly phase five sites and obligated costs are up from $236,000 to about $2,282,000 with seven sites in December and an additional 13 now, which is 20 sites. Additional highlight is last week we received additional checks adding up to $140,000. To speak of the status of outstanding work, I'll speak to the following. The updates and milestones, the major bridge sites, the longer range remaining sites, work through the fiscal year and our work towards obligations and reimbursements. Since our last report on storm recovery, we've repaired 21 FEMA sites and two FHW sites in those six winter months. Reembursements are up and we've continued to coordinate with our FEMA counterparts and work with our congressional reps to advocate for the county. We've finished consolidating individual sites into larger projects, which help to ensure maximum reimbursement. Moving on to the bridge sites, we have Jimmy Rock Road at myalpos 12.425. There were three phases in this project. Phase one was our emergency opening just after the January 2023 storm. It has been in phase five of the FEMA process in September. Phase two is what you see in the picture to the right. Temporary bridge construction and costs which is complete and continuing to provide access. This is in phase three while we continue to validate costs with FEMA. The phase three of the project is the permanent bridge replacement which has been discussed in the bridge and pavement update. It has been in phase four since November, and we continue to coordinate with FEMA for processing. Public Works is anticipating to go to a bid for this phase three of the project in fall of 2026. Creston Bridge, it's an FHWA, CalTrans administered project, which is similar to our federal bridge projects. This consists of a phase one of an emergency opening and temporary stabilization and it is currently open and providing access. Phase two is the permanent bridge replacement and the programming cost is upcoming and construction is anticipated in 2027. The Walson Townsland Bridge failure has been program has program funds for permanent bridge replacement within the HBEP program the highway bridge program through a CalTrans and FHWA. The construction here is anticipated in 2027. We still have one road that cannot be reopened under emergency repairs to Kenny Road at the failed low water crossing. The crossing is a significant barrier to fish passage and within the 100 year floodplain, a permanent repair needs to address these conditions. And because of these conditions, we've applied again for a fish and wildlife grant to expedite permitting. This includes a letter of support from Senator John Laird and we're proceeding with the design and permitting with construction anticipated to start by 2028. Our longer range remaining sites. The next four slides are examples of these, the several smaller sites concentrated on individual roads with additional coordination required for permitting right of way, coordination formal bidding etc Torrey Road has several of these longer range sites Bringing the three sites someone rode together into a simple project helps consolidate repeated soft costs and streamline construction permitting and bidding We're currently coordinating with state parks the Corps of Engineers, California Fish and Wildlife, and other agencies to move this project forward. Santa Rosa Road has similar permitting and coordination elements over nine sites on the road, which will be combined into two to three individual projects for streamlining. in. See, Canyon. which will be combined into two to three individual projects for streamlining. Sea Canyon along with perfume Canyon on the next slide also run into extensive permitting requirements as well as other logistical elements such as detouring, traffic control, and site repair specifics pertaining to the road geometry and the adjacent creek. There are two large sites on the C-Canian and there are three remaining large sites on perfume-ocanian road. We hope to streamline permitting and construction by combining these two roads into one permitting project due to the proximity to one another. To highlight the work through the fiscal year 2025-26, this table is in the staff report and we have multiple sites in different phases of the project shown in this column. As they progress through these phases, they will move through the chart. And as we progress through these, we are showing our anticipated timeline for all these sites to move through the project development phases. So you can see expected to complete construction authorization by fall of 2027. This map shows an overview of the extent of damage and showing the expense of the county that it covered. As we mentioned last May, we had completed 141 FEMA or FHWA sites. Now we've completed 226. With 81 remaining, only roughly 50 of these site locations are comparatively standard fixes with lower permitting and coordination requirements. These are expected to be completed in the next year. The remaining approximately 30 sites are the longer range projects that fall into non-standard repair category with permitting right away another coordination elements that I just mentioned like Santa Rosa Creek Road. Our ability to complete the standard repair sites and our reimbursement progress progress over the last year could not have been achieved without the work of the entire storm recovery team, road staff, our finance team, our contracts team, design and construction, our admin team, and the purchasing team in central services. Here's an overview of our damage with showing our category A and B projects which are in final review and phase four with FEMA. The timeline for these to process fully is still up in the air with FEMA personnel changeover, which is continue to delay the reimbursement progress. We are continuing to work with our FEMA counterparts to ensure the full maximum reimbursement we are eligible for. The CATC and EO-slash PR projects include the larger bridge projects and the longer range projects discussed earlier. In December, these sites for comparison were 157 in Category C and 46 in EOPR. We have continued to track costs and completions for the different Category sites with an updated total damage cost of $68.5 million. Our finance plan, as shown here, showing the first four lines still in line with our original finance plan. This plan originally estimated total recovery cost of 55 million. The large bridge projects have caused our estimate to increase to over 68 million shown at the bottom. We are currently still projecting the county local match, not to exceed 12 million overall, which is the first two rows due to pursuing pre-approval costs for the large projects. This is allowed as to identify all revenue sources. This includes the need for advanced construction cash loans that we have discussed for the large bridge projects. Now we need to continue working with FEMA to process the reimbursements. This slide shows a 68.5 million broken down into our fiscal year forecast with the cumulative close out cost of $34.5 million through this fiscal year. And here we're illustrating the $16 million capital project cost for chimney rock and Creston in the form of short term construction loans needed for this upcoming fiscal year. All the cumulative project totals are $68.5 million. And as I mentioned, we've spent about $34.5 million to date, half of the total estimate, and it will cost will increase with the upcoming larger range capital projects. So to sum up our financial plan, FEMA has over 34.5 million in cost pending final review, which the county's already incurred. Most of which has been in this phase for over 68 months. Our forecasted costs through the fiscal year 2526 show the need for 14.5 million construction loans. This will supplement the $8 million of remaining storm loan funding to cover general cash flow needs for other repairs. Tumany Rock, Creston, and Chiquetti may seek board approval loans at Construction Contract Award, and Public Works will come to your board for cash loans as needed at award. Today, we have three recommendations, receive and file the report, authorize a budget adjustment to accept storm reimbursements, receive through this fiscal year to repair this storm loan, authorize a budget adjustment to allocate $4 million of the approved storm loans. Thank you. Thank you. Supervisor Pauling. Thank you, Chair. I really appreciate the hard work by Public Works to maintain all of our infrastructure in the wake of those storms. My question relates to no secret that Tuketi road crossing. You know, that was a road that went down in January 2023. It's been a couple years and now based on your presentation today, we're talking about start of construction in 2028. The staff report, I think mentions 2627. Anyhow, we talked about this ad nauseam at a meeting just a couple of ago, so I'm not going to rehash it. I guess my question is one of the things that we I asked at that last meeting was whether you could inquire with CalTrans to see if the Harris or Wazna Bridge road construction project could include cost reimbursement for a temporary bridge at Chiquetti. And I'm wondering if you have an update on that. We have requested determination from CalChans, but we've not heard back. So you provided a preliminary estimate on what that would cost, and that would be related to the Wazna Road Bridge project, as part of that federal aid bridge project to provide a detour on Cachetti. And just back to the timing estimates of Kachete, at our update two weeks ago, we anticipate assuming we get through the permitting and process that Kachete and Wasner Road could both be ready for construction in 2027. And then based on the board discussion two weeks ago and the desire to push Wasner Road first with a temporary bridge on Cachetti You know staff for us had 2728. I mean it really depends on on timing and you know if we can do the temporary bridge But it's in that range 27 or 28 Okay, and you've got as much staff Dedicated to this project as possible as much as we can can. Okay. Thank you so much. Appreciate the report. Any other questions? Go ahead, Supervisor Marino. It looks like we got another $140,000 back from FEMA since the staff report based on your PowerPoint. So does that mean we feel like things are loosening up or is that a fluke or should we take anything from that? I would like to be optimistic and say yes it's a sign but it's hard to say because the slowdown with the new administration coming in to Washington, and change over of directors at that level. It's just impossible to say, but we do have all of these projects queued up, like I said, for over six to eight months with $34 million, and they just kind of get to them when they get to them. And it's in this last phase called Environmental and historic preservation and I think that maybe the hold up for all essentially is staffing and Review process there. Okay. Thank you supervisor Prashan. I just wanted to point out that they're still This is over 20 years now. FEMA still still paying off Katrina, and some of the damage there. So I'm not that optimistic that it's taken them 20 years and they haven't paid off that storm, but hopefully we can push them a little bit harder with our lobbyists to be able to get some funding into these definitely three needed projects that we've talked about today. Yes, and we are talking to our congressional representatives, staff, when we were in DC with supervisors, Perino, and Lague, we met with Bonetta and Carbohol's offices, and we'll continue to talk to them, as well as for Chimney Rock, working with Blue Mountain Minerals, for them to talk to the congressional representative for their headquarters, which is TomClendon in the Sonora area and as soon as we get chimney rock done You can move all that staff to two other locations so they can they can speed it up All right Preston's 2026 so Well, I will just note that Appreciate your efforts, concerns, obviously, in regards to the 35 million hanging out there. And just the permitting process. I mean, these were storms. This is storm damage. This should be waived of any permitting process other than safety things. And so that's always something that I think we should be pushing on further and harder. So with that I'll open it up to public comment on this item. I don't see any slips or anything okay. Close public comment, bring it back to the board. Supervisor Prashong. Make motion to staff's recommendation. Second. Okay, for a second and we'll take roll call please. Supervisorasang. Yes. Supervisor Marino. Yes ma'am. Supervisor Gibson. Yes. Supervisor Paul Dean. Yes. And Chairperson or Tees Lake. Yes. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen. All right. We're going to move on to our final item of the day, I believe, item 29. And please, clerk, introduction of the county's fiscal year 2025, 26 recommended budget, including special districts. Thank you very much. Okay. Madam Chair, I'm going to start us out today. Oh, you want to turn it over to Lisa? Okay, please. I'll start up while she's getting herself situated. CAO Pantes, please. Okay. So Madam Chair, members of the board and our county leadership team and our community. I have a brief comment, a few comments to make and then we'll let Lisa guide us through the presentation. First, this effort has truly been a deliberative and collaborative process with our county leadership team putting hundreds of hours in over the past eight months into this balanced budget recommendation. It has been inspiring for me to guide the leadership team through a new process that was collaborative, intentional, strategic, and focused our outcome on how to prioritize the board's highest priorities while minimizing the impacts of our reductions to the community reserve. A few very important takeaways to listen to as Lisa goes through the recommended budget. Overall, revenues are not keeping pace with inflation and our expenses of delivering services. We have large state and federal cuts coming our way. We need to rebalance our own programs and service costs in alignment with our revenues before we begin to deal with external threats to our revenues. Our county leadership prioritized reductions, submitted additional expansion requests, and prepared this balanced recommended budget. This recommended budget closes a $38 million deficit in our revenue. And even with our normal annual revenue growth and after our reductions, most county departments overall budgets still increased in size from last year's adopted budget. General fund support to many departments shifted some staffing and programs in order to cover other essential programs and increased expenses. There are many important programs and services in this reduction that will impact our community. We have used a very long and thoughtful approach to balancing the county's budget this year, but we're not out of the woods. Unknown state and federal reductions are looming and may have a drastic effect on our important programs and services. At this time, we don't know which programs and services may be impacted. But we will continue to work together to minimize the community impacts, ensure our programs are effective and build strong partnerships that support our community and our county. So with that I'll turn it over to Lisa and kick it off. Thank you. Thank you Lisa, how county administrative office. Here to introduce the Fiscal Year 2526 recommended budget. I'm going to go over the county overall recommended budget and then I will hand it over at the end to Katie Franco in our public works department to present the special districts budget and both of those budgets are available on our administrative what county website. So looking at today's actions we're introducing the fiscal year 2526 recommended budget, including special districts. requesting the board's schedule of public hearing to begin Monday, June 9th in the Board of Supervisors' Chambers at 9 o'clock AM, as well as ordering the publication of the required legal notices for public hearing. Process check-in, we typically provide this slide with budget updates. At this point, I always say budget development is really an 18-month process. We started back really at the end of last fiscal year to start looking at fiscal year 2526. Where we are now is shown in that little yellow circle. Departments have submitted their budgets. We worked with all departments, county leadership to ultimately prepare the recommended budget before you today, and then we'll have the budget hearings on June 9th. So moving into the overall approach for Fiscal Year 2526, the recommended budget as CAO Matt Ponte has described. Really is a result of nine months of coordination between county departments, the administrative office, as well as board direction and priority setting. We will discuss in a few slides that this year was unique in overall approach with the needed reductions needed and overall coordination by county wide management. And although this year was full of hard choices, the fiscal year 2526 recommended budget before you today, we believe represents our collective resolve to really emerge operationally stronger and more fiscally resilient with focused reductions, strategic investments, and renewed alignment with board priorities. And it really lays the groundwork for long-term financial health as well as positions us well to navigate future uncertainties with confidence. And before we begin, on behalf of the administrative office, I do want to thank we have multiple all county departments here in the audience today. And I want to thank all of the county departments. At this point, there's hundreds of county staff that touch the overall budget development process. And it really was a collaborative effort this year, and I really appreciate all county staff that make this possible. Looking at the overall budget approach, we have shown this slide in prior updates, but this is really just to indicate that the budget really isn't done in a vacuum. We have multiple things that enter into the overall budget and ultimately make the 20th or the recommended budget starting there and the the teal or the big kind of threes, the board priorities, the budget balancing strategies and approaches and the budget goals and policies. But then we also look at all federal and state laws, advisory boards and commissions, community input, staff input, various master plans, local laws, various state mandates, and county departmental or county wide strategic plan. And I do want to note that the county once, once again, awarded just last month we are notified that we awarded the government finance officers association, so GFOA, distinguished president presentation for our current 2425 budget. And we believe that our, what's before you in the recommended recommended budget also meets those guidelines for that budgeting best practices. Looking as we head into fiscal year 2526 the budget focus back on February 4th your board identified the priorities shown here with the ongoing priorities, the top priority of public safety, then fiscal stability, meet legal mandates, meet desk service requirements, and then looking specifically at this upcoming fiscal year, the first and second tier, first tier being homelessness, mental health, housing, and economic development, second tier being resiliency, including emergency preparedness and infrastructure recovery and water water and then organizational effectiveness. And I'll quickly go over this slide because we have presented it in prior updates and something that our CAO just mentioned. and key drivers impacting the overall budget as we look not only in the current upcoming budget year, but out years, our revenue growth, simply just isn't keeping pace with overall inflation and cost increases. Secondly our cost of providing services and it is increasing while programs continue expand to meet various community needs and at the same time our state and federal funding to carry out various mandated programs has not kept pace with these rising cost and Thirdly, we must pay competitive wages and benefits in order to recruit and retain talent needed to ultimately provide those county services And as we looked to but developed the budget back when we started back in November presenting the forecast, we look at multiple scenarios for this upcoming fiscal year, but also a multi-year scenarios. The scenario here before you was based on one of those scenarios showing a 4.3% expenditure growth in all of our expenditures. And ultimately what that indicated is there potentially is a $67 million deficit in $28.29 if we weren't going to course correct in the current budget year. So based on all of the various factors that I just discussed, we based on the county administrative officers guidance, we looked at an alternative approach to dealing with the deficit this year, namely the new financial balancing and resilience initiative, really to build a budget that avoids continuing and escalating budget gaps on the out years, build budget resiliency, provide competitive compensation to workforce, as well as expand for programs and services to the community in alignment with board priorities. And I won't again go into detail because this is a slide we presented in the past here, but important to note that throughout this eight, nine months, we really have, did a big deep dive into our overall programs. We have over 700 programs and activities that the county carries out. Working with very all of the county departments, we did a critical examination of all of those programs identified which of those activities were mandated versus discretionary. Where was the funding coming from what we were required to fund? We looked at all of the different allocated funding sources for those activities. Also department submitted reductionsubmitted reduction list is part of the budget submittal with instruction to focus on discretionary services or activities and deriving from the overall program activity inventories that they had conducted in the early fall. And then, ultimately, worked with countywide budget teams were assembled led by Department executives, County departments, heads, and really did a comprehensive review of all of those reductions and programs looked at the impacts of the reductions as well as, I didn't, or looked at all of the budget augmentation request, which are added resources to departments. And highlighting some of the considerations that our county leadership looked at. We looked at overall operations, looking at impacts to customers and the organization. We looked at the overall, how it aligns with the overall county organization, looking at various county priorities, alignment with various strategic and master plans. We looked at overall budget resource allocation, short and long-term implications, recognizing the stewardship of public funds, how sustainable the recommendations were unstable, and then looked at various laws, policies, and priorities. And specifically, as we looked at this upcoming year, is the board priorities and prior direction, and then looked at the various community dynamics. So moving into the overall factors, impacting the 2526 budget from a numbers perspective, I'm going to provide a brief overview of the specific revenue and expenditure changes, impacting the overall budget as we look to the next fiscal year. High level green triangles indicate where there is growth. Red indicates where there's a decline, but I will indicate, while we are still seeing some increases in overall revenue, it's not growing at a historic pace, so it's slower growth rate than we've historically seen. Again, meaning it's not keeping up with some of our expenditures needed. So looking at our overall governmental funds operating budget, we are seeing a 7.6% or $61 million increase in revenue. General fund operating revenue is increasing by 5.3% or 36.8 million. Our non-departmental revenue and that's really the board's discretionary general fund revenue. That's primarily property tax, sales tax, our transient occupancy tax or hotel bed tax. That is increasing by 3.5%, which is just over 10 million. And I'll show in a few slides that that rate is historically lower than we've seen in the last 10 years. Looking at our property tax revenue, specifically, so both the bottom four slides or revenue sources roll up into that non-departmental revenue. So property tax, we're seeing a 5% increase to the budget, but a 4% roll growth. So our current year budget, our role closed, and then our assessor's office is estimating a 4% growth in the next upcoming years as well as potentially out years and that's a slower growth than we've seen historically. our transient occupancy tax revenue is increasing by 500,000 from budget, which is a 3% increase. Sales tax is declining by 3% or 500,000. And then unitary tax, which is a 3% increase. Sales tax is declining by 3% or 500,000. And then unitary tax, which is our primarily PG&E Diablo Canyon, its property tax on utilities, is decreasing by about 1.5 million or 36% and that's primarily driven by the depreciation schedule of Diablo. So specific to discretionary revenue, this is showing non-departmental revenue. Again, it's property tax, sales tax, TOT, a few other non-departmental revenue cannabis tax is in here as well. This shows the rate of growth compared to the prior year. So as shown in the far right bullet point, we're seeing a 3.5% increase in our non-departmental revenue, which is declined from historicals. I will indicate in 22, 23 that spike there is the related to the amount of funding we saw through COVID and ARPA funded And that's why that is increasing and then the 15 16 and 16 7 is really coming out of the great recession And Then looking at specific factors impacting the budget it outlined in the staff report as well as we've previously presented to the board, there are several factors impacting the budget, summarized on this slide. I won't go into too much detail, but in addition to the various revenues I've indicated on the prior few slides, we're still seeing constrained revenue over expenditures outpacing revenue From not only a non-departmental revenue or discretionary revenue, but also the various Realignment revenue we receive a lot of that is sales tax driven in our sales tax Statewide as well as throughout the county. We're seeing that Flatten out we just had a call yesterday with our sales tax consultant, and they indicated that fourth quarter of the last, the most recent fourth quarter is a decline about 1.7% from the prior year of fourth quarter. So we are seeing some changes in how consumers are spending, as well as how sales tax is allocated to different counties. We also as part of that is Prop 172 funding, which is our public safety realignment and that is sales tax driven. And so we are seeing that while there's still growth, it's growing in a lower slower rate than historical. Included also that was impacting the budget last year as part of the budget balancing strategies. We balanced the budget with 8.4 million of short-term strategies. So that ultimately became a minimal gap as we looked to build the budget for 25-26. Looking at the salary and benefit side, salary and benefits, budgeted increasing from a general fund, salary and benefit of $18 million or 4.5% higher than the $24.25 adopted, as well as workers comp is due to the current needed funding for our workers' compensation fund. There's a 2.6 million increase built into the budget. On the positive light, we are building the budget includes a 2.5 million decrease in our pension obligation bond rate, and that is the rate that we charge all salaries, a percentage to pay back pension obligation bonds. Looking at the non-salary side, our liability insurance continues to need additional funding just because of the market conditions currently for liability we're seeing that across the state. That was a 3.9 million increase. Automation and building replacement, we're seeing needed investments there. Building depreciation, there's a 1.2 million increase going to our building depreciation designation for future building and that's calculated based on auditors depreciation schedule, as well as last year we did, but balance the budget with a reduction of one time money that we did not set aside into our automation fund of 850,000. So the current budget does build that back in. The county also has is undergoing a new enterprise resource planning. System and as part of that, we will need to increase cost in order for the licensing fees. We currently think about 20 years now as our current system and just because of the nature of where we need to go we are needing to increase the overall cost of that and then capital and maintenance expenditures and is increasing by 1.5 million and that's for various projects, primarily some security projects that were outlined in the security plan. And then not on this slide, but I do want to acknowledge, you know, as we develop the county's 2526 budget, we're mindful of several issues that state and federal levels that are likely to have impacts on our county. The recommended 2526 county budget and the county general fund budget includes 35% of funding we see from the state. So anything that happens at the state does impact county operations and county budgets. And as most of you are aware, the governor released his May revision to the budget last week. And we're while we're still reviewing that was overall impacts. We're still coordinating with CSAC but just had a call last yesterday with our CSAC Health and Human Services group and a lot of impacts anticipated there which are not built in and will won't be until we have more information. But at this point what we do know is you know there's no funding identified for local homeless in the suburbs as well as no funding to implement Prop 36 as well as a lot of changes happening with medical as we impact in counties and will impact our IHSS services potentially. And then on the federal side, county also general fund receives another 15% from federal funding. And so we are currently reviewing potential impacts there as we get information. And then always like to show also impacts to county budget is departmental needs and capacity. So looking at what departments indicated are ongoing either staffing resource needs or any other resource needs in order to continue carrying out various services at the time department submitted budgets. We received 33 budget augmentation request and these are requests for additional resources of those 5.5 million was a request for general fund support in a position request of over 23 full time equivalent FTE. Ultimately what ended up in the recommended budget there are 16 bars that are being recommended with a total general fund support added of $429,000 and a 10.25 FTE impact. That's not necessarily an increase in overall positions because some of those positions were set to expire because they were limited term and the some of the recommended requests are just extending those limited term positions because there's identified other funding sources. So taking all of that into account, how we actually balance the budget. Status quo budget gap back in, no, no, my friend, when we said the February status quo budget gap was presented and that was how departments submitted their request at that time we calculate a 15.3 million general fund budget gap. However, that only included salary and benefits being paid as of November of 2024. And it didn't account for any of those increases that went into effect post-November, as well as any anticipated increases as we look to 2526. If we build in those anticipated increases as well as known increases, that group, The budget gap grew to $35.8 million as part of the overall budget development, a few actions that increase that gap. There's 99,000 increased due to the budget augmentation request and various other augmentations. We also as part of that contingencies status quo, BudgetGap only calculated the contingency level of 4.75 because that's how we built the budget last year. But in order to align with board policy, we increase the contingency to 5% for the board's target and that increase the gap by 1.5 million. And then ultimately how we balance the budget as part of our overall traditional review, our department reviews, all the department's submitters make sure everything included in department's submitters is truly status quo as well as if we identify any errors or if there's any change in information in that we know at the time and that decreased general fund need by 3.8 million and then ultimately as part of the financial rebalancing 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 impacts of the overall recommended budget numbers and then go into specifics for the overall service group, specifically the impacts of the financial rebalancing and resilience initiative. And I want to just note that while the slides for the financial rebalancing and resiliency initiative do focus on primarily what was reduced, just note this our overall budget has a lot of activities that we carry out every year, and we will provide more context into what's included in the budget during the hearing. Fund structure, I did want to just highlight, because a lot of times the budget we're throwing out numbers, and when we speak about the overall budget numbers, there's typically three budgets we talk about. We talk about our general fund budget and that shown there in green, light green and that total general fund budget being recommended is 810.6 million, increasing by 7% from a total budget perspective, then the governmental funds budget. And that's what we typically talk to the board and present on quarterly reports, is our governmental funds budget because that's where the board has the most discretion. The general fund is obviously the where the board has the most discretion, but including all of the core governmental funds shown in dark green, that total budget is 950 million increasing by 9%. And then governmental funds budget press proprietary funds, which is including enterprise or internal service funds, as well as the board governs special districts. And that only includes the special revenue funds of the board governs special districts, rolls up into our all funds budget. And the 2526 recommended number% and we have a new funds of the board govern special districts rolls up into our all funds budget and the 2526 recommended number for all funds budget is 1.1 billion increasing by about 9%. So as I said, traditionally when we present the budget, we discuss the budget numbers and the governmental funds budget terms shown here is financing by governmental funds budget. So looking at the amount of funding we receive from state and federal funding sources, we receive majority of our funding from state and federal funding sources 42 percent followed by our local taxes, property tax sales tax, TOT of 31 percent. Then the licenses permits fines and charges for services, typically what we categorize as our overall county fees adds another just over 6% than various other financing sources and then our fund balance or reserves of savings from the prior year as well as any money we're pulling out from our reserve accounts, totaling 9% and then our interest earnings at 1%. And then looking at where the funding goes, so this shows the expenditures by service group of our governmental funds budget. As you saw on the prior slide, majority of our funding comes from state and federal sources, really to carry out health and human services as well as some public protection activities. Health and human services is the largest service group at 38% all by public protection at 27%. Then there in is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community community that is a community communityers, is 7% of our overall budget, financing is 6%, and that's really funding that's going out of the general fund to various services or funding that's coming in. It's really where the, what makes up are from a revenue standpoint, our discretionary, non-departmental revenue. Then community services makes up 3% overall budget, fiscal and administrative, 4% in capital and maintenance 1%. Looking at staffing countywide, looking at positions and FTE, these are the numbers here FTE, so full-time equivalent positions. Looking at the 2425 adopted, and this table shows the service group FTE, so the positions allocated to each service group and the 2425 adopted, then what is being recommended, and then that net change for each service group. The recommended budget does include 168 less full time equivalent positions than the prior 2425 adopted and that includes full permanent and limited term. And then the pie chart there to the right does just show where the FTE is allocated by various service groups. Looking at the financing uses by service group in a slightly different way compared to that prior pie chart. This is showing the financing uses by service groups, so the total budget by service group for the governmental funds budget for the various service groups. The light or the gray is showing the 24, 25 adopted budget and the blue is showing the 25, 26 recommended budget for all fund centers. And we'll go specifically into these groups, but as you can see, majority of the overall service groups are increasing from an overall budget standpoint. Then looking at the general fund by service Group, this shows the light gray is the 2425 adopted for General Fund Support and then the 2526 recommended General Fund Support by Service Group. And this is again for the Governmental Fund's budget. As shown, majority of departments are increasing. there is a decrease in land-based health and human services and a small and decrease in community services, which we will go through. And then we typically show this slide to the board and the public. It's the general fund allocation by department. So general fund is the amount of discretionary funding that goes to each of these departments. Looking at the top 10 departments, look for the 25, 26 fiscal year and they're organized in that way and then including all other departments. Again, the light gray shows how the current year adopted. The blue is showing the recommended general fund allocation for each of those service groups, or each of those departments. So the next part of the presentation, I'll review each service group again at a high level and we'll go more into detail as we head into the budget hearing on June 9th. But each slide for service group is showing up there in the dark blue. That's the service group name and then it lists which departments exist in that service group. The overall high level chart of the budget for that service group and then the chart to the right is showing the 24 25 adopted budget from a total expenditure standpoint at that top dark blue line and then the light blue line is showing of the total budget how much is funded with general fund or discretionary funding and then how it has changed. So looking at our land-based budget, again land-based includes those budgets that provide programs and services focused on the management of the built environment. The budget is seeing a decrease of $1.8 million and a overall decrease of general funds support by 1.4 and staffing decrease of 13 full-time equivalent positions. Overall, the recommended budget due to the financial rebalancing and resiliency initiative does include number of reductions to land-based service departments, primarily through expenditure grids with throwing impacts on services. Most significantly, planning and building is recommended to have the majority of the reductions reductions with this fund center of 1.6 million of reductions and 10.5 positions. However, the department has indicated it's anticipated that these reductions will have minimal impacts based on current workload and department implemented efficiencies. And then looking at augmentations to this service group, there are a number of augmentations being recommended as part of the budget. Funding for Off Highway Vehicle Funds is being recommended to fund the replacement and repair of fencing at the coastal dunes campground in our V Park. There's also a reorganization from the planning and building department being recommended as well as the deletion of two limited term positions due to the workload associated with the oblo canyon, decommissioning efforts and the reduced workload associated with this. And then lastly, public works recommending three positions being added, one for the Water Quality Lab Division and two project or program managers for the facility planning division. Moving into the next service group, Public Protection. Those public protection departments includes those budgets that provide public safety, law enforcement, criminal justice administration, emergency preparedness, and a Fender Rehabilitation Services for the government for the government for the government budget has a recommended $26.5 million increase in overall budget and a 22.4 million general fund increase with a decrease of 20.5 positions. So at a high level some impacts related to public protection related to financial rebalancing and resiliency initiative. District attorney includes a reduction of about 370,000 and that's due to the elimination of three positions as well as various office supply spending, including the elimination of an economic crime technician position with the Bad Check program, administrative assistant position, as well as a victim's witness advocate position. There's also a reduction by about 46,000 of general fund to health agency animal services due to the removal of the elimination of one animal control officer position, but no impacts are anticipated as this position has been vacant for quite some time. And then on the probation department, seeing recommending a reduction of about 657,000 due to including, some of that includes revenue offsets and expenditure cuts such as staffing reductions as well as scaled back service and supplies. Then moving into more departments, public waste management includes a reduction of about 165,000 reducing services like rate analysis for weight haulers, anti-litering efforts and, and mutt-mute dispenser programs, as well looking at the sheriff recommending a 2.7 million general fund support from the department request, reducing 13 full-time equivalent positions, including reductions in the cannabis compliance team, school resource officer program, the narcotic unit, and vehicle theft task force, as well as six positions of correctional deputies. And then did want to note, there are some fund centers in this service group that are not being recommended to take any reductions as part of what was submitted, including emergency services, county fire, court ops, grand jury. Primarily emergency services is not being recommended due to various updates and county wide area plans needed as well as operational training. And at this point, no reductions are being recommended for county fire due to the current risk of future emergencies as well as the acknowledgement of ongoing service demands as well as resources identified or resource needs identified in the strategic plan. Then looking at additional resources being added through the budget, county fire, there is a recommended position, an IT position being added on our information technology PAL, however, it's supporting county fire for IT needs outlined in that county fire strategic plan, as well as Sheriff's Office is, there's funding from a grant to fund for automated license plate readers. Then moving into the Health and Human Services Group, which includes those budgets that provide programs and services related to health and welfare. The Health and Human Services Group for governmental funds has a recommended 10.3 million increase in overall budget and a 9.1 million decrease in general fund support. Do you want to note of that 9.1 million decrease in general fund support? 3.6 million is due to offset or bringing in revenue in behavioral health as as well as 1.5 million last year showed up as General Fund in Public Health Department. However, it was ARPA-related funding and that ARPA funding is no longer available. So those expenses are going away in that general fund than what the appearance of General Fund also is reduced. And then this service group is also the net change of total positions is 105.5. Overall health and human services include several adjustments aimed in aligning resources with operational leads while maintaining core services. the health and human services departments made thoughtful budget adjustments while emphasis. resources with operational leads while maintaining core services. The overall the health and human services departments made thoughtful budget adjustments while emphasizing preserving access to mandated services, improving efficiencies, as well as leveraging alternative funding to minimize disruptions in service delivery. Looking at our fund center 106, which is contributions to other agencies, the budget includes 1.2 million of general fund support reduction to various community grant programs by eliminating the discretionary grant program to various nonprofits while maintaining all of the preventative health funding included in that grant program. Behavioral health side, there's a 10.4 million recommended general fund reduction, which is partially offset by an increase of 3.6 million of revenue, as well as adjustments aligned with CalA model. And while the recommended budget includes a reduction of 28.75 positions that apartment prioritize maintaining client access through strategic staffing changes, program consolidations, and realignment of roles to boost efficiencies. And do want to note while the recommended budget that went to print did include a recommendation to to reduce Martha's place and close Martha's Place Assessment Center. We are currently working with our health agency to bring back an alternative plan and we'll bring that back during the budget hearing in order and currently underway to refine the program cost and revenue opportunities to bring back a revised proposal with the hearing. Then looking at our public health department, the public health department includes a general fund support reduction of 4.6 million, adjusting clinic operations and staffing while redirecting services to higher utilization locations, and includes a reduction of 35.75 positions, moving to our social services department on the administration side includes a reduction of 6.2 million of general fund largely by eliminating 23.5 positions in reducing contracts and discretionary programs. Then with still in social services, but a separate fund center foster care and adoptions includes 780,000 of general fund support reduction due to expenditure reductions as well as a revenue decrease. And that includes reductions of some contracts and some other services supporting children in home-based care. Looking at homeless services in affordable housing with is also in our social services department includes the reduction of 161,000 of general funds support, reducing two positions due to redirecting funding back to our public health department to, due to restoring funding to public health, that those positions will be reduced as part of the budget. And then there are some other fund centers including child support services, emergency medical services, is General Assistance cow works, and vet services, where there's no recommended reductions. Then looking at the additions to the Health and Human Services budgets, the budget includes recommending seven augmentations for this service group of that 2.25 FTE are being recommended to be added to the public guardian division of health agency to support mandated requirements. The recommended budget also includes shifting funding from single case agreement contracts to a pool of services for crisis residential treatment facilities with the goal to increase efficiency and improve service outcomes. And then lastly, the budget includes the extension of three limited term positions for the homeless and affordable housing division due to offsetting revenue. Then looking at our community services service group and those includes those budgets that provide programs and services of general benefit to residents and visitors, the service group for governmental funds has a recommended 388,000 of decreased expenditures as well as a 254,000 decrease in general funds for and for Reduct for position reductions And while most departments within this service group maintain their existing general fund support with no reductions, there are some reductions in that includes library. There is a 235,000 reduction general fund contribution in library exists outside the general fund and that's reducing majority of the general fund that's allocated out to the libraries as well as reduction of general fund support to our fund center 222 which is parks in recreation or community park side and reducing the remaining amount that's allocated of general fund to our golf courses and that is also a fund center that exists outside the general fund and will no longer receive any general fund allocation. And then the fund centers airports, fishing game parks and rec regional park and wildlife and grazing currently don't receive any general fund supports so no reductions are being recommended. Then looking at our fiscal and administrative service group those include budgets that support the governance of the county as an organization. There is a increase in budgeted expenditures of 1.5 million. General fund support is being recommended to increase 1.7 million. Shown here is a summary of those fund centers that are being reduced. Overall, the group focused on shifting resources and adjusting staffing levels in ways to preserve essential functions while recognizing some operational impacts may occur in the short term. And moving on to support to county departments and those include those budgets that provide supportive services to county departments. Service group for the governmental funds budget has a recommended 2.3 million increase in overall budget and a general fund support of 568,000 decrease. And overall, this service group includes general fund reductions in select departments focused on streamlining operations, reprioritizing resources to maintain essential services, and the overall approach prioritized maintaining internal support functions and minimizing impact on departmental services through a mix of staffing adjustments, strategic funding shifts and operational efficiencies. And this service group does include also a budget augmentation request and this is the addition of one position of risk manager in our human resources office to support the risk management and insurance program. Then our financing service group includes those budgets that it doesn't include any county departments. It just includes those budgets that collects the revenue and also sets aside financing resources to fund expenditures that are not connected to any specific department. This is also our non-departmental revenue shows which is why this chart there on the right looks a little weird because general fund is that is revenue into the general fund. And overall the budget in this group is growing 21.4 million with a general fund support increase the 7.1. This is slightly skewed only because this is also where the amount that we are moving from the 26 million dollar for moving from the rainy day COVID and solar plant mitigation funds out into the tax reduction reserve shows up. So it's slightly skewing those numbers. And there are no reductions made as part of the rebalancing. And then finally our capital and maintenance service group. This is for governmental funds budget and only showing the government general fund support. So budget increasing by 933,000 with general fund support increasing by 2.7 million. And no reductions are made as part of the rebalancing with this service group either. And that concludes the part of the presentation. And I'll pause prior there and I'll hand it over to Katie Franco. Back to us. Okay. Right. Madam Chair, we have a second part of the presentation. Okay. Oh, I see. Oh, yes, that's right. I barely heard Jalissa, sorry. It's going to get more exciting now. It's going to get more exciting? You see, you did a great job, though. Yeah, that was like 65 slides. That was incredible. I've never stayed awake for 65. That I would go fast. Thank you. You set a record. Yeah. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is Katie Franco. I'm the finance department administrator for public works. Our department is responsible for the development of special district budget. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present today. This budget is completely separate from the general budget that at least it is presented on. Special District Services includes 12 distinct services listed in order of the amount of budget allocated to each service. Whole cell water includes the Lopez water project, the Nassimino water project, County Service Area 12, Avala Beach, and the State Water Project. That's why it's listed first. It's a lot of budget dollars. These services are delivered across 41 separate funds. This list encompasses all the services we currently provide and have also been included in the proposed budget to continue these services next year. Our special districts are located in all corners of the county and represented by these supervisor districts. This slide depicts a geographical location of the service recipients and ratepayers. There are some areas that provide more than one service such as County Service Area 1 Nipomo, listed under District 4. The CSA provides wastewater, drainage, and lighting services in some areas. Similarly, some areas have more than one supervisor, or example, flood control zone nine, which provides flood control for the slow creek, appears in Districts 2, 3, 4, and 5. Countywide special districts that just let control zones general and state water project are listed under all five districts. And I may refer to county service areas as CSEs just that way. This side reflects the budget development process so it from Lisa. We follow, this is what we followed before the special district budget is presented to this board for adoption. The first bubble at the top is when we kick off the budget development process. For our more complex budgets, this begins as early as November. Our finance staff coordinates with public work operation staff for budget requests and development. In the second bubble, after the budget is drafted, we present the proposed budget to an advisory body to the board for the funds that have one. Almost half, 16 out of the 41 funds included in this budget are presented to an advisory or regional committee. These groups can make suggestions or coordinate changes to county staff before the budget is finalized to this board. The third bubble is where all the dollars and projects for the next fiscal year are finalized and compiled into our budget book for presentation to your board. This brings us to where we are today. The fourth highlighted bubble is the budget introduction. This is the point where special districts joins with the General Budget Timeline for adoption, with budget hearings in June and final budget approval after that. This slide represents the overall special district's expenditure budget by type. The total expenditure budget is 73.4 million. This is about a $3.5 million increase from last year's proposed budget. The largest piece of the pie is payments for professional services at 39%. This figure includes payments to outside vendors and contracts with other agencies. The debt obligations make up 20% of the overall budget, mainly allocated to the Nossimina Water Project and Lopez Dam and Water Treatment Plan debt payments. Staff, labor totals 22%, which funds about 59 full-time employees. projects comes in at 8%, which includes funding for the Troll Valley Access Road repair. There is 5% in other charges with remaining expenses budgeted towards increase of reserves or transfers out to other special districts. This side represents the overall special districts funding sources balanced with expenditures at $73.4 million. As you can see, the majority of special districts revenue comes from charges for services at 71 percent. This revenue includes water sales and wastewater service charges among other activities. Property taxes brings in about 14 percent of total revenue. Similar to the general fund, special districts gets a small portion of the 1% of assessed valuation tax that is collected for San Luis Obispo County. 9% of the funding comes from existing reserves or projected fund balance available. With less than significant funding coming from 6% of other financing sources and interest earnings. This slide summarizes how this board has oversight over our special districts throughout the fiscal year. The board approves the annual budget and any made-year changes to the adopted budget through budget adjustments. Your board also approves the award of contracts that exceed the power of the purchasing agent in addition to the proposition to 18 process that I will go over in the next slide. This slide is a very condensed and summarized slide of the proposition to 18 process, which is also known as the right to vote on taxes act. Raid increases are initiated locally by a shortfall in revenue, typically caused by inflation, labor cost increases, maintenance of a healthy reserve balance, and the development of projects required to continue service levels. This is what kicks off our 218 process. Once the need to generate additional revenue is identified, staff will develop a rate study as justification for the increased rate. Fees must be reasonable and proportional to the benefit received and fees cannot exceed the cost of service. An essential part of the 218 process is the proper noticing of the public. Once a new rate is calculated, staff will bring an introduction item to the board to set the public hearing, which must be a minimum of 45 days after the introduction. Written notice must be emailed to customers impacted and must include details about the date, time, and location of the hearing. It must also include details about the rate increase, public meetings planned and most importantly, instructions on how to protest the increase. At least 45 days later, the public hearing is held here in the board chambers at a regularly scheduled board meeting. The clerk of the board will manage the votes or protest against the increase. If the protest is successful, rates cannot increase and staff would have to re-evaluate a reduction in service levels that would match the resources available. Alternatively, if no protest exists, the rate would go into effect according to the ordinance and as a result. The approved rates would either be reflected on the property tax bill or in the billings to residential water customers. There are currently two county service areas that are proceeding with proposed rate increases for wastewater. County Service Area 7A, Oak Shores and County Service Area 18, San Locibisco Country Club. The hearing date has been set for June 18th. June 17th, I'm sorry. Public outreach for CSA 7a has been done through the Homeowners Association of But Oak Shores and Public Work Staff will be holding a public meeting this evening at 6th for CSA 18 at the Los Rancho Elementary School. Our known rate increases on the horizon for our department include County Service Area 10A, Coyucus Residential Water, flood control zone 118 at the Oro Grande, levee to support flood control efforts. And finally, flood control zone 18, which funds the operation of a flood pump at the Cambria Village. Our department plans to develop these for your consideration in the next fiscal year. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Water. 23 storm damage sites. The Troll Valley Access Road repair at 4.9 million, and the Selena Stan Access Road repair at 4 million. Water resources is and will be busy with data collection programs, do you sell planning efforts, updating the master water report, continuing the Selena Stan feasibility study and dialing in the zone 118 permit requirements. Water utilities is working on the flood hazard mitigation grant for the relocation of the Nostimento water pipeline, and both water and wastewater utilities are continuing their work on the delivery of ARPA projects. That concludes my presentation. Staff is available for questions of Cavey. Okay, well thank you very much for the presentations. Are there any questions from the board at this time? Professor Paul Dink. Thank you, Madam Chair. Really appreciate the presentation on special districts. It's one of the things that I know that the board hadn't done in the past and I'm glad to see this basically $70 million budget brought and presented in this way so it's open and transparent to the public. One question I had relates to the professional services. I think there's a pie chart that showed that our expenditures are about 28.5 million, 39%. I just want to make sure that we're applying our typical auditing practices to those expenditures. Yes, we follow the same county standards that other departments would follow. Okay, and then we, as a board generally, always vote on those contracts just like any other budget matter. Correct. Okay, thank you. Just wanted to verify that. Those are all my questions for now. Good point. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for your work in the admin office and really appreciate. I'm going to open public comment right away because we have lots of public comment to go through. So let's start here with the civil Jacobs followed by Quentin Smith. So we'll just kind of move through these and take your public comment now. So is civil Jacobs here not seeing Quentin? Are you here? Please sir, come forward and then we'll go to Steve Kinion afterwards. Thank you. Hi, greeting boards and supervisors. My name is Quentin Smith and I'm here today to discuss the growing grounds and nursery of San Luis Obispo under Transitions Mental Health Association. I am currently the assistant manager at the growing grounds and nursery and I understand the county as considering eliminating our funding. This is being considered after 41 years of operation as a social enterprise in the city of San Luis Obispo provided needed employment therapeutic activity and social needs for members of our community who are diagnosed with intensive and persistent mental illness. I have been privileged to help manage the growing grounds over the past two years. Before that I worked eight years as an intensive case manager under the FSB or full service partnership program, and I've been working in human service systems I was 16 years old. And working with clients and FSB, I learned that a lot of opportunities are needed in order for a person to really meet their mental health recovery goals and become independent functioning members of our community and of their community. That was the identified objective. However, one consistent challenge I came across was supporting clients in attempting to obtain employment in order to be able to independently function in their lives. The client may not be ready to work, or client may be ready to work, but cannot obtain a position due to the gaps in their resume, which usually is directly related to mental health challenges in their past or history. For these individuals, the clearest path and most accessible path to further employment opportunities was participating at the growing grounds nursery for employment. Employment ties into housing. Even low-income housing needs individuals to first have a consistent income at a specific minimum threshold, which could still be high in this county. Employment tie into housing helps combat the current issues of homelessness in our city and our county. Employment ties into purposes for an individual, which in turn helps reduce negative symptoms of mental health, thus reducing the need for emergency crisis services. Most importantly, employment can lead to a greater community engagement and enrichment across the board, which supports the entire community as a whole. Due to my position at the Growing Grounds Nursery, I am fully aware of the immense amount of county referrals our program and the need for the existence of our program. The Growing Grounds Nursery Program Services up to 80 or more individuals a year with a consistent ongoing wait list of 30 plus individuals just waiting for their opportunity. A question I want to ask you before I end here today is, where will all these people go if there is not an opportunity for employment, if there's not an opportunity to safely gain the skills and confidence to return or start work, if there is no opportunity to train and fill the gaps within their resumes, as the answer back to the hospitals, both emergency and psychiatric, back to the cyclicals crisis services. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay. See, yes, Steve Kingan followed by Wendy Lewis. Good day to the board. I'm Steve Kingan. I came in for to make a case for growing grounds and and the help that it's provided me personally. I've been working there for about seven years. When I started, I was dealing with some major issues. I was living out in my car homeless, naturally collecting social security, disability. Since I've started working there, I am no longer receiving government aid in the form of Social Security disability. I'm now off Medicaid and now have the private insurance provided by my employer. So I'm just here as proof that this program has provided at very less to me significant advancements and help me get off needing assistance from the government. And just wanted to share that with everyone. Thank you for your time. Thank you Steve. Appreciate that. When not supposed to clap but I know you want to so I'm not gonna Oh yeah, and then I'm after Wendy will have um stuff in Wilk please. Go ahead, Wendy. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to all of you. We want to thank you from El Camino Homeless Organization for the many years of support as we have provided life-changing resources throughout our community. We're also here today with our partners, Capapslow and Forty Prado and Five Cities Homeless Coalition. The three agencies came together to look at kind of unprecedented financial future that some of us are facing with funding cuts and different changes in different funding that's coming into the systems. And so we looked at the past 10 years of service and what our continuum came together to really have positive strides forward. One example would be just from 2015 to 2020-24, we've dramatically been able to work altogether and get people back into the stability of housing. In 2015, the system helped 206 individuals into stable housing. In 2024, it helped 1,378. So you can see the dramatic change over these years, including increasing in shelter beds, supportive services, that's been the key as well. Echo alone in that timeframe grew from one shelter with 40 beds providing overnight opportunity to now two shelters, 130 beds, 24 hours of services, and comprehensive resources, including case management, financial literacy, workforce development, and many other wraparound resources. So we're here today just to look to you for hopes that there is somewhere, some help with sustaining funding and sustaining all the work that we've done. I always like to end with stories of the people that were helping and of two today. One is a gentleman who I always have him in mind when I talk about the seniors that we help. Unfortunately, seniors are one of the fastest growing populations as well as families with children. And he was the champion behind our organization going to the city of Ataskadero and asking to go from overnight shelter to 24 hours. He was a veteran, had a health crisis, ended up in his motorized scooter and ad echo. And because of his needs for 24 hours, we worked with the city and became a 24 hour program in a taskadero. We also recently had an update from one of the mothers that we helped. And we have a partner in our work that's a great sponsor. And we found out that she is thriving. Her and her daughter came to us about five years ago with nowhere else to turn. And she was instantly wanting to get employed, get help. She started an entry-level position. And I just recently found out she is at a management level position in a local company that partners with Echo as well. So just thank you for everything and just I know there's a lot of big decisions to make foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his foe. I'm a resident of San Luis of his's place. My business partner and I are occupational therapists in private practice who were asked 15 years ago by Dr. Alpducotter, General and Child P. D. Trishin and Laura Otrando, Public Health Nurse, to help serve foster and at-risk children referred to us by Martha's Place, a role we still play today. We've observed the tremendous positive impact that Martha's Place clinicians and staff have made in the lives of foster children, their families and caregivers. It serves as a first stop for families in great need of support and links them to vital resources as well as directly providing them with trauma-informed medical and psychological services. Our clinic will not suffer if these children are no longer referred to us. However, the community will suffer greatly if these children and families no longer have Martha's places specialized direct medical and psychological services and the focused guidance through the county's myriad and sometimes disparate resources that it provides. Some of these children came to Martha's place after being exposed to drugs prenatally or homeless or abandoned, lived in drug endangered environments, exposed to domestic violence, were removed from their birth families and some have experienced multiple forms of physical and emotional abuse. Martha's places role in supporting these children through its medical and psychological health services and its visibility in the community should not be underestimated. I know you face difficult budgetary choices, but ask that you consider the needs of this population as Martha's Place serves foster children in a way that's unique in our county. Thank you very much. Thank you. Rudy Bachman filed by Amy Salis. Good afternoon stepping into that role filling the big shoes of Gil Stork. I also speak on behalf of the cost of board. Obviously here to request a restatement or reinstatement of funding even at some level. Anything above zero would be a pre-shoot. I'm here to speak as a new chairement of funding, even at some level, anything above zero would be appreciated. Before joining cost aboard several years ago, I served as a cost of a young man who I met on a 16th birthday, June 11, 2014, across the street here for a regular scheduled status hearing. This is a time when most 16-year-olds are thinking about driver's license and what they're gonna do for the summer. But unfortunately, he was here in court, not because of his actions, but because of family circumstances that resulted in abuse and neglect. I advocated for him for two years until he was emancipated from the state of California and then we entered into a mentor into the mentor program. The continuation in the mentor relationship changed his life and using his words you would not have learned how to put gas in his car. Optane is driver's license, graduated from high school and go on to transition and lead a productive and healthy life and adulthood. After 10 years, we're still in contact and we talk often. He escaped the grim statistics that face so many foster youth of homelessness, substance abuse, trafficking, mental illness and so on. You and I both know that the investment now by reinstating funding of the Kent Casa Mentor Program will save future county dollars, as well as our community hundreds of thousands of dollars going forward. As we are all aware, there's many vital nonprofits here that are asking for reconsideration causes here also. I'm also here for those that can't advocate for themselves as what costs is about. I'm here for those foster youth that receive the benefit of a mentor. I humbly request that you reconsider and reinstate funding for the cost of mentor programs. With this investment, we're able to continue our program and change the lives of abused and neglected, foster youth, and in doing so, we'll save not only the county, the greater future dollars, as well as change the trajectory of a young person's life for the rest of their life. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rockman. Amy Salis followed by Greg Haskin. Thank you, Madam Chair and Supervisors. I'm Amy Salas from Passa Robles. I'm speaking today in support of continued funding of the Passa Robles family planning clinic at 805 Fourth Street. You were given packets earlier with a sign letter by 375 constituents. It's now up to 398. I've been checking the petition. The clinic provides vital, timely and consistent services to men, women, and teens in our community. Other provider options in the North County would only be able to offer services sporadically. Several doctors have signed our letter, including the Medical Director of Women's Health at Community Health Centers. The staff at PRF PC are bilingual, which streamlines communication for patients. I think we can all agree that front end care is much more cost effective for treatment of medical conditions. Do you know about the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association? I just learned that as a Title X subgrantee, PRFC is a member and entitled to free consultation and support from the above organization. Also because the clinic doesn't have a certified coder or biller, the clinic could actually be generating additional income for the county. Services that could be built for aren't, and as a result, potential revenue is being left on the table. The opening page of the Health Agency for San Luis Bispo County states, quote, the Public Health Department is a division within the Health Agency that promotes and protects the health of our San Luis County community. Reproductive rights in public health are interconnected. We have a growing population which depends on PRFC and severing this line to medical care should be a last resort. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Greg followed by Cindy Nugin. Thank you, Board. Greg Haskin representing COLAB. First, I wanted to point out a glaring omission to the budget process. The amount of aspirin and coffee that it's going to take for you folks to get through this process is going to be enormous and it should have its own category in the budget. But actually I'm just here to thank you all for undertaking both board and staff for undertaking this very detailed budget process. We know it's a kind of a new thing. It's not going to be easy. In many cases, this could be very painful. But we believe in the end. It's going to be easy. In many cases, this is going to be very painful. But we believe in the end. It's going to be much more accountable and a much healthier budget process for the county in the long run. So thank you for the amount of work that you're going to be putting in over the next month or so. We know, again, as I said, it will be very painful. It's going to be a lot of pain, a lot of pain from the people that we're seeing in the audience today and people you're going to be seeing during the hearing process. But it's a heavy dose of reality. It's being done in a very professional way and we thank you for your efforts. Thank you. Cindy, coming. And then, Shakyabh Brailly. Good afternoon members of the board. My name is Cindy Noon and I'm an advocate supervisor at San Luis Obispo Court appointed special advocates. I'm here today because the foster youth reserve in this CUNY need every advocate they can get to speak on their behalf. For the past 12 years, the 80,000 per year mentor funding has helped ensure that teens in foster care have access to consistent caring adults who stand by them. When almost everything else in their world is uncertain or unstable. These are not just relationships that are nice to have. For many of our youth, a mentor is the only stable adult in their life. Someone who shows up not because they're paid too, but because they care. When a teen has a mentor, they're more likely to stay in school, less likely to enter the criminal justice system and more likely to believe they can build a future that looks different from their past. What message are we sending them when we cut funding to one of the few things proven to support that kind of transformation? The county website reports homelessness and mental health are the top two of four priorities of fiscal year 25 to 26 established by this board. There's ample statistical and anecdotal evidence to prove that foster youth with cost mentors have lower rates of homelessness and better mental health. This is coming from a population whose risk of homelessness and mental health challenges are significantly higher than the non foster population. Aren't pro-active and preventative measures the most successful way to combat these negative outcomes? Without this funding, we will face major challenges in continuing to provide specialized training, supervision and structure that makes mentorship safe, accountable, and effective. We will lose opportunities to provide young adults with access to experiences that most people take completely for granted. We are not asking for extras, we are fighting to preserve a lifeline. This budget proposal seems to eliminate all community-based organization grants despite rising overall spending and social services and foster care programs. Please consider the impact that we'll have on our youth. Social services and foster care are vital, but social workers see see the youth on theireloads once a month sometimes less. Cases see their court appointed youth on a weekly basis. More than that, our youth are acutely aware that causes are unpaid volunteers present because they want to be there and care, not because they are paid to do so. Please restore the mentor funding. The young people in foster care are facing incredible challenges they did not create and are not responsible for. We have an obligation. Thank you. Thank you. She kind of, I don't think I said your name right. I was okay. It happened all the time. I bet. Please let us know how to say it. It's Shikaina Brawley. Shikaina Brawley. Okay, followed by Wendy Wint. Like go ahead, please. Hello, I'm Shikaina Brawley. I'm a senior at Pass Roubles High School, and I'm here to speak on behalf of Kasa. I'm a former foster youth. I was actually adopted last year. I wrote an essay on a positive impact in my life, and I chose to write about my cosworker, Kirstie, so I'm gonna be reading my essay to you. Dear Kirstie, throughout my high school career you've been with me every step of the way. You've been there for me in every situation I encountered. Whether I needed advice or good laugh, I always knew where I could turn to. You. From the moment I first met you, I knew you were going to be someone I cherished in my life. Someone I could look up to and encourage me to do things I had never even dreamed of achieving. Growing up, I never had a supportive family, whether we could talk about things and felt close with one another. Over time, you became that person for me. You became my family and one of my closest friends. At first glance, I wasn't quite sure how we would mesh with each other, but over time, if I would have known what I knew now, I would have known that you are someone wonderful that just came into my life. Christy, you're someone I admire so much, not only for your hard work, but also for how deeply you feel for others and how you view the world. I think that if everyone saw life, how you did the world would in some sense become a better place. I never thought I'd be so happy to... I never thought I'd be so happy as to have someone like you in my life. Someone who tells me not what I need to hear instead of what I want to. Someone who understands me and what I've gone through. Someone who is constantly doing whatever she can to ensure I have a bright future ahead of me. Someone who puts in the extra mile just to see me smile. I'm beyond thankful for all the kindness, love, compassion and support you've shown me throughout the time we spent together. I'm so grateful that you've been with me for every large milestone in my life. Whether that would be getting my driver's license, my first boyfriend, my first heartbreak, all the way to getting adopted and starting my senior year and getting accepted into college. I can't wait for you to see how far I go in life and thank you so much for all the support you've shown me. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Wendy went followed by Kirstie Czecharrow Vak. Good afternoon. My name is Wendy went to executive director first five slow county. As you know, it's the responsibility of first five here and across California to shine a spotlight on the needs and potential of children prenatal to five in their families. For over 25 years, first five has been a proud partner with the county, investing in many services benefitting this population, including home visiting, children's oral health, breastfeeding, support, and Martha's place. I commend and appreciate the Board of Supervisors and county staff for doing the difficult work during these difficult times towards financial rebalancing and resilience. And I feel compelled to voice concern over the magnitude and scale of proposed cuts, reductions, and eliminations in program areas that support our youngest children and their families. Specific examples called out within the staff report include a family planning clinic and pass robles, four women and children's clinics, staff positions within the maternal child adolescent health division, youth focused wraparound contracts, services affecting support for children in home-based care, and Martha's Place Children's Assessment Center. I wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors earlier this month with a specific plea regarding Martha's Place. I'm encouraged to read on page 12 of the staff report that quote the community administrative office is coordinating with the health agency to further refine program costs and revenue opportunities to offset the proposed reductions. We will be very interested to learn learn more specific details on this plan. As you know, Martha's Place is a flagship program, a public-private initiative widely recognized for its effectiveness, providing an integrated, co-located hub with supports in the medical, behavioral, and patient navigation arenas to serve our counties most vulnerable, trauma-affected children under the age of six. I realize that many of the programs at risk, including Martha's Place, are identified as discretionary and or disproportionately rely on the general fund, and as such are budgetarily vulnerable. However, I contend that many of them have developed and remain as critical elements of the county's core mission to serve the community with pride, enhancing its economic, environmental, and social quality of life. That's a quote from your mission statement. I'm sure you know. As articulated in my letter to you all earlier this month, first five stands ready to continue our partnership with the county and other child serving organizations and families themselves to keep children on our shared top priority list, even in the face of fiscal and policy challenges at the local, state and federal level. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Kirsty, Cherkoroyan, and followed by Jana Nichols. Thank you. I'm Kirsty. She kind of just introduced me. Oh. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. I am the cost of volunteer. And when I'm not a cost of volunteer, I'm a CEO of a tech company. So I understand how budgets work and how hard all of this is. And the things that stood out for me when you were talking about the budget are things like strategic investments, infrastructure costs, critical considerations. I get that. And what we're talking about with the funding for CASA is an infrastructure cost of human beings. These kids, they deserve a chance. They deserve to have one of me stand next to them, walking with them, getting them into college. She kind of didn't tell you that she's the first person in her family to go to a four year school. She's amazing. My life is amazing because of her. We need to make sure that we as a community continue to make these things happen, to give the resources, so that people like me can step away from our everyday jobs, and spend time with amazing kids like this. Every one of us should have this opportunity. When I moved to Pasarubles from the Bay Area, I had already been involved with two other CUSA organizations. None of them, honestly, none of them, do what this organization does. I have never, as a CUSA volunteer, the resources that this cost of provided me. Everything from people who work there that could help me out when I had hard questions to what are the resources available to just providing us with fun things to be able to do together. Someone donated tickets for us to go see Taylor Swift. Can you imagine the response I got from that amazing young woman when I told her we were going to go see Taylor Swift? That's what this community brings. So I hope you will reconsider. I know this is hard, but just know that we are changing the lives of the infrastructure of this community. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Jana followed by Michael Kaplan. Good afternoon board. Jana Nichols with the Five Cities Homeless Coalition. I appreciate the work that you are doing. I appreciate the work of county staff and all of those that will be impacted by some of the decisions you're being faced with. As Wendy Lewis mentioned, we are here together, five cities homeless coalition, a community homeless organization and community action partnerships and loads of bizzbo to talk about the impacts of homeless services in the next funding round. It is not a surprise to you that we, our services are a priority one, tier one, priority for you. And as I reviewed the budget, particularly on page 335, I was concerned not about the, necessarily the recommendations of general fund, but the omission of the impacts that we are facing at the state level and roughly a 50% reduction in funding for homeless services here in the county. And I simply wanna make you aware of that challenge. The other thing I'll note is that there are significant outcomes and achievements being made. The staff report did not have the ability to indicate those because of the timing of when that information was pulled. But I do want you to be aware that significant progress is being made. This year, with the last point in time count, we finally saw the bend of the curve downward. It comes as a result of the work that we have done. We have seen a 60% increase in rental rates in the last 10 years, and despite that we are making progress, we have made significant investments, and we are unfortunately the last stop of help and resort. So as we see the funding challenges coming before us, we also know that we are going to have significant increases in requests for our services. I would like to point out in particular, the results that we have had being reported by our new HMIS, our homeless management information system, without that system and your investment, we did not have that time, have that information previously, and I think it's incredible and important. We are changing, we are looking at new funding streams, we are tightening our belt, we are not coasting into this by any means, we are trying to pivot with you, but the situation is quite dire and I want to bring that to your attention and let you know that we have collectively a thousand people on our waiting list for our shelter programs. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Michael Kaplan, followed by Jack Leahy. Good afternoon, I'm Michael Kaplan. I'm the Community Engagement Director at Transition and Spinal Health Association. I want to thank the board for this opportunity to speak. And Madam Chair, it's an honor to share this birthday with you. No singing, though, I need my time. For those of you with long memories, you may recall that the growing grounds on Orkut Road was not always a nursery. It began as a farm that grew, let us for local restaurants. who led us for local restaurants. And over time, that industry became much too competitive. And we knew we needed to do something different to survive as a social enterprise. And about 16 years ago, we turned the ship and became a nursery that provides drought-resistant plants to land scapers in the community at large, and our business became stronger and we relied on the county for less funding. And I bring this up to demonstrate that growing grounds is a flexible program that has reinvented itself more than once, and that includes seeking new partners and revenue streams as evidenced by our recent successful collaboration with the Behavioral Health Treatment Court. And what I'd like to impress upon you is we're not requesting businesses usual. We're not asking for another year of funding so that in May of 2026, I can ask you again for the exact same thing. We're asking for another year and during which we will turn the ship again as we seek a more sustainable future. We will outreach to new partners and we will streamline operations and we'll change the very nature of the business itself as necessary. What we won't change is the extraordinary service that we provide for our clients every year. Now, Proposition 1 is already prompting TEMA to adapt many of our programs for the future, but in most cases, we have until July 1st of next year. Growing grounds on the other hand is an imminent danger. And we won't change. I'm sorry. If you haul the program like the nursery, it would take far more than we're requesting to start it up again. As both a freelancer and in my current position, I've been writing grants for the growing grounds nursery for over 20 years. I've helped keep this program going much as you have and I'm asking you to be my partner for one more round. We don't make this request slightly and we won't shirk from the responsibility of making this remarkable program flourish for another 40 years. So thank you very much. Happy birthday, Michael. Thank you very much. Thank you for the great message. Jack, followed by Yassinia. It's Gavaria. Good afternoon, supervisors. Thank you for your time. Thank you for making homelessness. Continued priority, especially in really tough budget times. It's hard to keep those priorities tax, so I really appreciate that. As Jana Nichols and Wendy Lewis said, we're looking ahead to 25, 26, and we're here to highlight some of the anticipated funding reductions that we're looking at in homeless services. The way we're looking at it is not just a budget issue, but it's a public health community stability systems issue that we're facing right now. We have made a lot of strides as both Janna and Wendy have highlighted over the past 10 years. two items that come to note is, you know, 10 years ago we had four staff people between the three agencies dedicated to housing. Now we have 34 between the three agencies. Our outcomes to housing has well over doubled. Our outreach has tripled. Our shelter capacity has doubled in the past 10 years. As Janet highlighted, one of the most important things is that our point in time count is stabilizing and dipping down. So our arc is moving down. And it's showing that what we're doing works, and if we take a step back now now it would almost certainly lead to a rise in homelessness. But as was highlighted we're facing roughly $6.8 million funding cliff going into this year. This is state and federal programs on setting so without local investment we'll be forced to reduce or eliminate programs among others street outreach, rapid rehousing, homeless prevention. Potentially shelter beds. We can't afford to dismantle parts of this system. We can't remove outreach, case management, or prevention without the entire system backing up. Outreach without shelter leads dead ends. Shelter without case management leaves people stuck. Housing programs without prevention means more people are falling in. So sharing what's at stake with this is an individual we work with Brian in 2021. He had been on sheltered for over a decade. What did nothing to do with services. Slowly with support and encouragement, he began to accept help. Eventually opened up about his military service which he never disclosed. He was on the street for 10 years. Finally, he opened up. We were able to connect him with resources, but he never entered a shelter. This was a street to housing success. And now he's housed with his daughter and his dog. And this is what happens when we are able to connect all these resources. So we respectfully ask that the county use funds to help us bridge this shortfall in funding and provide sustained support for homeless services. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Leahy from Capslow. So Yassini, it follows by Rita Kessaviri. Good afternoon, supervisors. How is everyone doing? Tough. Lots of tough decisions to be made. And while the budget is definitely one of them, I think we have to recognize that one of the biggest challenges for San Luis Obismo County is health care access, especially for our neighbors and friends in the northern portion of the county. As a resident of Pasarobles as well as the founder of Mojitas Ex-Yoon, I am extremely concerned about possibly losing out on a clinic that proudly serves in North County and also serves those rural areas that are oftentimes with limited access to resources such as San Miguel, California Valley, Shandon, and other areas in those pockets. So what is that stake for those that may not be aware? We are looking at the cutting of North County services in regards to family planning, answer screenings, bilingual and culturally supportive services to the Latino community, and a trusted local provider for over 20 years. At the end of the day, I know that there has to be tough decisions being made, but as the daughter of a mother who survived breast cancer, we know that healthcare access is probably one of the biggest challenges. I know know many of you here from constituents and they will often times share how long it takes to get services. Please consider that. Please consider North County that already seems to be a desert on most resources. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And my last slip is for Rita Casavere. Any other public comments please come forward. Hello, board. What a tough decision ahead for all of you. I don't envy any of your seats this afternoon. But with great power comes great responsibility. I come here today representing Diversity Coalition, I am the Executive Director, or Mission Revolves Around Building a Coalition that seeks a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community through advocacy and education. And I can say that our Coalition is here today from the first five TMA homeless coalition casa so many nonprofits that make services more accessible and inclusive to our community that is already a very under resource and underfunded. So I'm with them and the requests and please that they have shared here at the podium. But although I support all of these worthy causes, I really like to donate my remaining time to advocate for the Paso Robles family planning clinic. In page 32 of the report called the fabric of Slow County, understanding the diversity and contributions of our immigrant community, a report that was partially funded by the County Board, Diversity, Coalition, and other agencies. It is mentioned that over half, 53% of Spanish speaker residents survey in 2023, delay seeking healthcare services. The barriers are many, including cost, language, and others. The Paso Robles family planning clinic offers much needed healthcare services like breast cancer, and cervical cancer screenings to STI, testings, and treatments, HIV prevention, access to health, health education, and more. Those services are provided by bilingual staff. And I think this is something that the immigration task force would really be hopefully advocating for. So that is why I'm providing my time to advocate for the specific asked to provide funding to this clinic in Paso. We are here about cuts of the federal government at this day level as well around reproductive services. So a cuts at the county level would really be life or death situations for a lot of people that just don't have access to any other services. So please, I advocate for that cost. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. Seeing no further public comment, I'll close public comment and bring it back to the board, but we will take a five minute break right now and then gather for our deliberation. Please, and get things going on regards to the budget discussion. Thank you everybody for your public comment, coming in and sharing all this pertinent information in our decision making. So shall we start board on conversation, supervisor Paul Ding? Oh, thank you, Chair. I just had a couple questions for staff following up to some of the issues raised by the public during public comment. One of them relates to the Pasarobla's family planning clinic and I know that we had corresponded, I had asked a few questions of staff before on this. I just to make sure that I have the facts straight. So what I'm told is the closure of the family planning programs, reproductive health clinic, and PASO, will result in a total expenditure reduction of 1.2 million, including 732,800 revenue reduction and about 474,000 general fund reduction. This closure reduces six full-time equivalents, including a one full-time equivalent supervising public health nurse, two full-time equivalent public health aids, and two full-time equivalent administrative assistance, one full-time equivalent nurse practitioner, plus about 63,000 in temporary health. Staff staffing has been a challenge for the program, which resulted in the closure of the clinic when there wasn't a nurse available and resources are not redirected to this program as reproductive health is not a public health core service. The CHC offers women's clinics in Templeton and slow, additionally for the communities in North County there are three CHC general clinics, additional alternate locations for those impacted by this closure include Planned Parenthood and the Center, Capslow and the City of San Jose-Bispo. And then we've received some conflicting reports. One is that the number of patients per year is 600 to 700. And another is that it's over a thousand. Anyhow, I just wanna verify that that is in fact the current information we're working with. And then if there's any additional information we should have before us. All deferred to Sarah Hader, our analyst for health agency, but I believe that you have that all correct? Yes, that is the current information we have. We have received some updated numbers that we are working with for the amount of clients served, and I'm getting to that right now. Okay, that would be helpful. The current working number is about 1,300 patients annually. 1,300 annually. and our overall strategy here is to essentially work with CHC as another provider to absorb the folks that would lose service through this clinic. Is that the current approach? Correct. This gives them an opportunity to either expand or enhance their current offerings of services as those are offered elsewhere in the county through their services. So this clinic was unique to North County. It was the only reproductive health count, a health clinic run by the county and it was specific to the North County location. And throughout the rest of the county there is the community health center and other services available for those reproductive health. So are we assuming because there are other services available, the transition of clients that currently go here will occur naturally and go elsewhere or are we trying to facilitate communication and coordination? Do we have analysis that gets a little bit more in depth? Yeah. If you don't mind, I'd like to interrupt for a second. And Nick, could you, Nick Drew's could come forward and discuss this, because I think it's really good to have everybody have the same conversation at the same time. And a few weeks back, Nick and I had the chance to sit with the CHC staff in regards to this very issue. And we came to some conclusions on what could possibly be. So this kind of new information for staff as well. So if you don't mind, Mr. Jews. Yeah, I'm happy to comment. My name is Nick Jews. I'm the director for the County of San Luis Obispo Health Agency. I think when we looked at our opportunities for reduction, we looked primarily at two different places. One, where the county was not obligated to perform a service, but two, where the service could be picked up by another entity at little impact to the community. The idea when the county stopped operating the General Hospital in 2003, we had a number of clinics that were operated around the county. The county stopped operating this clinic and transferred them over to the community health centers. The one exception is the one in Passa Robiles, which we've continued to operate. The CHC has had interest over the years to pick that one up and for various reasons, we haven't moved in that direction. However, this is a good time that we could do that. They have not provided some of the services that we currently provide in part because we were providing them. However, we've spoken with them. We plan to give them a tour of our facility and they may even be interested in taking over the exact operations of what we are currently doing. We're working with them on that. We've also reached out to other entities, as we're mentioned. And there is interest among several of them to move up into the pass orables area as well at the moment that's still interest but that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to fill the gaps through other ways. So we're optimistic that the services will be continue to be provided. Yeah, and I just, you know, I think for me that that was really important. You know, it's great to have something at rest rest of the county, but you have to have something right there. It has to be close by. And what we've learned in the conversation was that CHC had wanted to take this over 10 years ago, but the county said no. And so they are interested in our patients. It helps them help us. And so this is a kind of an example of when we kind of dig a little bit deeper that we can find some collaboration with needs and abilities to be able to help each other. So I think as we get closer in these next couple of weeks we'll have some definitive who's going to help and take over. And we had we talked about the type of clients, the type of services, the materials that we have, the equipment, etc. That's all of interest. And so we want to continue to make sure that there are those services for the patients up there in regards to the particularly on this health clinic. So I wanted to address that one to get that off the list to start because that's a really important one in regards to women's anybody's health. So, is that help? I appreciate that. And that dovetails exactly with my concern, obviously. I think any kind of confirmation from CHC that we can get in writing even, that they have the capacity, that they have the willingness to support, will certainly help me in making a final decision on this when we get there during our budget hearings. The next one I had on my list relates to WIC, our WIC program clinics, and I know that's a social services one, so I don't have enough. No, actually that's public health. That's public health. Oh, that is right. OK. It's on its face when we see, for example, that we'll be shutting down, or it's proposed to shut down the Nepomoclinic. That was very concerning to me. Then based on conversations with staff, I learned that it was mostly a virtual operation there. And there's kind of a consolidation plan that be developed in order to make things more efficient without service level cuts to our clients. So if you could just talk a little bit about that, I want to you know make sure that everybody here understands and those watching from home understands what we're actually contemplating in terms of service level cuts to WIC. Certainly so it's a of those office locations, but the services will still be available for those utilizing the services. You know, we've had conversations about potential options for mobile type service provision in those specific areas that changes are occurring in, as well as telehealth type appointments available for those services. Some services are required to be in person still so that would result in some of these clients having to go to other WIC centers for the time being until some of those operations have been worked out. But that is a continued discussion at this time. Do we have any idea of how many folks would be impacted? For example, if they're currently going to NEPOMO, they're going to now need to travel to slow. Yes. We have about just under 400 families that have been utilizing the NEPOMO weight clinic. And that's in person? It would be yes, being in person. And the displacement is to slow. Supervisor Kipsen had a displacement of those 400 families is from NEPOMO to slow. There will still be a white clinic and Grover Beach. Grover Beach, I think Grover. So it will remain in locations would be a task, Giderro, Cian Lewis, a best bow in Grover Beach. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification, supervisor. And then my last question relates at this time, at least to Martha's place. I know that there was a plan. I just want a little bit more detail on what that plan is. I can comment on that a few years. I'm interested. Yes, that's true. We're planning on funding the program for another year with the intention of figuring out a plan that can support the operation more permanently and with less government funds. That could be through a variety of sources. We've talked with some partners about perhaps even increasing rates or creating a wraparound service that could cover more than just the cost of the billing. We're planning to bring in individuals from the community who might be able to help through philanthropic giving to the facility as well, which I think would be wonderful. And we also look for operational improvement. So, for instance, we've done an analysis of our footprint in the real estate. And we think that there is some areas for improvement there. We also think that there might be some areas for improvement in terms of front desk staff, or there might be areas for improvement in terms of how we're actually providing services with the clinicians and whether we could be more effective by bringing one in on one day or another and on another day. So we think that there's operational improvements but we also think that by bringing in a collaborative sort of group to think about what's important for the community, what's important for the program to be sustainable. That with one more year we'll be able to provide a presentation to the board with how we can make sure that this program continues to do what does and continues to serve, who it serves, as well as it currently does, and perhaps with just less general fund associated with it. Thank you. Those are my questions. I want to add on to that. You know, I think for those in the audience that when they hear that somehow these cuts, particularly in your department, Nick, came from just having to look at how much things cost. That's not exactly accurate in that the public health, overall Department of Health Agency, which is behavioral and public health, had a deep audit from the firm of KPMG. And so when that audit happened, we were able to be able to, at this point in time, which hasn't been released yet, been able to look at really defined amounts of inputs and outputs, and yes, we're talking people's lives, but as many, how many people showed up for appointments, how many people didn't take, how many hours were we have employees there, how many, you know, what is the overhead, how many times are people in the office, things like that that really help us now be able to go back to the community and say, this is what we know know now that we didn't know, and now how can we continue this service but do it in a way that's going to be affordable and sustainable and so that's our goal here so they I really you know that that took a lot that that that this isn't like an easy like just look at the book and you know make some cross lines out this was a very deep dive to to bring the kind of data forth so I want to make sure people understand that. Thank you very much. Supervisor Gibson. Thank you, Madam Chair. If I could, while we got Mr. Nick here. Well, let's talk your lady after me. It's late in the afternoon here. I just wanted to clarify something. I heard you say something about coming back in a year. I want to confirm though that the process we're going through right now keeps Martha's place open as a physical location providing the same services in the coming fiscal year that we may seek refinements to it. And we will, if we can identify efficiencies and increases of effectiveness, great, but it remains as a physical location and in a year we may have another increment of improvement at our present to us at this point. That is exactly correct. Okay, thank you. We are asking for one more year and with that year I think we can do a lot. Okay, yeah well the conversation continues as I think most people in this room know Martha's Place is an extraordinarily important program that this county should be proud of and we can make it better that's great it in my mind it has to stay it is that important and that that consequential to the lives of the children and the families. Thank you for the thanks. Thanks. Let me if I might Madam Chair offer a little bit of commentary here. You know we were talking about the specifics but let let me maybe put a little bit of a frame to it. This is the 19th budget that I have considered, and I want to just offer you a couple of observations. One of them is I cannot overstate the complexity of the document and the process that we have in front of us. And so my thanks to staff, the complexity of how we finance a roughly billion dollar a year enterprise government enterprise here is extraordinary. And so the comments I'm going to offer are by necessity somewhat of a summary. And I don't have any more particularly if you'd like to. I think I have a seat chair. You're welcome. You don't have to listen to my lecture standing up. Sitting down is fine. This one is a cut budget. We've seen cut budgets before. But I will say that this budget comes to us with an exceptional and an unprecedented amount of analysis as to what changes we are making to our spending plan. And I think our CAO and staff who have undertaken that. With that observation, I would also say that that analysis is not done. There was reference to KPMG looking deeply at the health department. We need to do a health agency. We need to do that in every department, essentially, starting with the biggest ones to really identify both efficiencies, effectiveness, and how we benchmark against the standard of practice here. What I do notice about this budget that is also unprecedented is that as a cut budget, the cuts are falling hugely on our health and human services programs. And that concerns me, particularly because this board has set some priorities that speak directly as to health and to health and human services, the addressing of homelessness, the provision of mental health and substance use disorder treatments. And so I appreciate supervisor Paulnings detailed inquiry as regards both Martha's place and the passer-o'-rolls clinic that understanding that we are to take these, if we are to take these cuts, as is recommended here, I think we have to look very carefully about the impacts of those cuts. And so I appreciate the opportunity to get into the details here. I think a third aspect that's been seen today is the question of our support of our nonprofit partners who have done outstanding work for a very, very long time. I'm afraid that change is upon us and thus change is upon our nonprofit partners too. But I hope my colleagues would entertain a consideration as we move from the introduction today to the formal consideration and adoption of the budget starting on June 9th. I think we need to have, see how we might craft some amount of a transition period for certain nonprofits. I have an idea and maybe after if you would allow me to just offer a little bit more of my framing here, I'd like to discuss with my colleagues some details or at least some parameters of what we might do there. Again, in looking at adapting to the situation we're in, I've come to understand and looking at this budget in particularly the that we are constrained by this county's approach to budgeting, which has been the approach for long before I, before I ever took office. And that is this attention to looking at what we call the status quo budget. That is sitting this year, and as we look at next year's, next fiscal years, we project that we're going to keep doing the same thing. And we got caught in the bind that's not going to relent any time soon of the revenues going up not as fast as the expenses going up. But let me re-emphasize the fact that the revenues are going up. And this how showed that in a slide. And in an effort to truly properly balance the efforts of this county, I'd like to offer a thought to the board, not so much in a means of considering what we might change about the recommended budget in front of us. I think the changes that I sort of expect between now and when we adopt are going to be rather more at the margins. But I'd like to get this idea on the table as we consider future years because this problem, probably face this year, is very likely to be with us next year and I wouldn't be surprised if it's in somewhat like the same magnitude. Let me go back to the question of the increasing revenues. If you look on page 34 of the budget book, which is this lovely doorstop sized honka paper that actually does exist in print, on page 34, it points out that our general fund support in which exists monies that we have the most discretion to direct to what we want to do according to our priorities. We're expecting $22.7 million of increased general fund support. And again, not exactly precisely true, but that is the place where discretionary spending exists. Out of the $22.7 million that is increased expected next year, the Sheriff's Office gets $11.7 million of that the public the top three agencies in our public protection Functional group the sheriff the fire and DA get 20.7 million of that 22 22 20.4 of that 2.7 they get 90% of the increase all over the county and the other members of the public protection group, all worthy projects, let me, all worthy programs, get the, essentially the entirety of the increase. That leaves 20 or 30 other lines of effort within this county to rebalance around zero. That is that if any program or department in this county gets an increase, some other department gets a decrease. And again, our health agency, a couple of programs, behavioral health and public health within our health agency programs have taken $10 million decrease in general fund support. What I'm concerned about is the trend of that. That if that to me is a consequence of our adoption of a status quo where we look at increased costs next year and talk about cutting less here than we cut there. That trend concerns me that as we go into the future, we're going to start losing the ability to provide other services to the county, parks, libraries, health care, above and beyond the bare minimum. These kinds of things that I believe are important. In fact, in some instances, essential to our counties are In fact, in some instances, essential to our counties are In some instances, essential to our counties are in the expected buyer county residents. It is going to start affecting also the internal Departments to this organizations that are absolutely Necessary to make this organization work. We for a long time been asking more and more of the staff that does the accounting and the reporting and all the advising, the legal advising and all those things that support. There is a basic overhead to running a county organization. And I absolutely understand and support the idea that public safety is a top tier priority of this board as it should be for every board. But that doesn't necessarily translate in my mind to the idea that all the increased revenue goes into that part of our operations. So I want to just offer that to my colleagues as a means of a foreconsideration as to an extent as we work out the details of this fiscal year. But more importantly, as we take on the challenges of next fiscal year, and I know we're going to have a, we're going to be starting the budget process all too soon. And a few months we'll be starting the budget process of the 2627 budget fiscal year. And I think we need to have that in mind as a change in the paradigm of how we look at allocating the resources of this county. With that said, to the question of transition to our nonprofit partners, there was something like, I can't remember, there was a $2 million or $4 million cut to the contributions to community-based organizations. I get why that was done. That was pure general fund support in an effort to attend to a major deficit in the budget. But I'd like to see if colleagues would consider some form, some allocation of resources to transition the most crucial, the most basic human needs kind of non-profit partner programs, things that deal with food and deal with folks being able to live an independent life. I don't know exactly how to frame this, but what I was thinking is that I'd like to reconsider the complete cut to our nonprofit partners. And as we look for appropriate scale, you know, might we be able to find a million dollars in a billion dollar budget to transition this? I would offer to my colleagues the thought up to a million dollars. I would offer my colleagues the thought that since this is essentially a one time thing that our reserves, which are not touched in balancing the structural part of this budget, would and should in my mind be a place where we could look to ease into the new more challenging reality that we have ahead of us. So I'd like to offer that and see if we could provide staff some direction to work up a transition plan that we could consider when we get to budget hearings in June. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Supervisor Gibson. Supervisor Paul Deng. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with a lot of what you said. I'll get to that here in a second. First, I want to thank staff for the hard work on this. And our chief administrative officer, Matt Pantes, not an easy task to come in and need, identify the need to cut $35 to $40 million from the budget and then develop a plan to do so. That is something we've got to do. We've got to close that gap, period. So I also want to thank the administrative office, the department heads and staff at large for all the work that you've done to prepare what is a balanced budget for us. We've got, it's the right thing to do to balance the budget and it's a state obligation to balance the budget. Compounding this particular budget year, we've got the increased uncertainty at the federal and state level. That's certainly another challenge and we need to be mindful of that as we make fiscally responsible decisions. Looking at the proposed budget, I do have some concerns with some of the things that Supervisor Gibson mentioned. As it relates to some of the particular cuts that were identified to our departments and services we provide as well as to our nonprofit service providers through the community-based organization grant program. So because you kind of outlined a couple of things you provide there, I'm gonna just jump directly to those and see if there's alignment here with the board. I guess before I do that, I'll mention that I do support our board priorities. Public safety being the top priority on our ongoing priority list, fiscal stability, meeting legal mandates, meeting debt service requirements, and then the first tier homelessness, mental health, housing and economic development, and the second tier emergency preparedness and infrastructure recovery, water resiliency, organizational effectiveness. I think that the budget that's been presented is in line with those board priorities. Now going to this idea of a transition period for our nonprofit service providers and those that rely on funding from the county, I do I do think that giving more notice and time for our key partners, many of whom are here today, is important. And so I would be supportive of essentially reauthorizing that grant program for this fiscal year. And if we needed to tap our reserves in order to do that, I think that that would be justified. I know that based on the last presentation we received from our administrative office on the status of reserves we were 6% over our 20% threshold. So if we needed to make sure that that whole CBO program was fully funded and I think about a million dollars, a million plus, I would be supportive of that. Another idea there is that because of the compounding effects of program cuts to our services, especially in the human and health and human services arena and nonprofit service providers that work in that space. We're looking at based on a document that I was reading, you know, four million on one hand just to many of those contract service providers that provide services of the county on the contract side. And then there's the million plus on the community-based organization grant program. So at some point here, there needs to million plus on the community-based organization grant program. So at some point here, there needs to be crossover in the ability of organizations that are being impacted on the service cut side and their ability to maybe even compete or apply for our community-based organization grant program. And I would like to see that program, if we authorized, at least for a transition period, focused in. And I think you mentioned that those most in need supervisors, so whether it's if foster youth would be an example or our homeless services programs, I could go down the list of all the programs that we provide for children and families, etc. I guess my point there though would be or my question to the board would be if we wanted to give direction to staff to increase the eligibility requirements around that program to target more specific needs in the community. And then, so I would call that the just taking notes, Supervisor Gibson, the transition period for nonprofits conversation. The second thing that you said that resonated with me was this paradigm shift as it relates to policy around future revenues. You did indicate how this budget allocates future revenue growth in a way you could argue disproportionately, but to public protection and public safety, I think that's important. When we look at future revenue growth in out years, I think that we could, as a board, consider a policy that would earmark a percentage of that revenue to other programs that align with our board priorities. For example, we heard from five cities, homeless coalition, and Capslow, and Echo about the need to fill the, I think it was stated about a $7 million budget gap in the homeless services continuum. We could as a board direct staff to give us options as to what kind of, if there would be a way to create a policy that could really kind of focus in on our core needs with future revenue growth moving forward. And with that, I'll just be interested in hearing what the board has to say. I have lots to say, but I'm going to say one thing about that is that don't make the mistake that homeless services for the on-house is not public safety. That is public safety expenditure. So investing in those on the street is also something that is impacts the public safety teams. So when we help continue keep the infrastructure going, we're actually benefiting the public safety team as well. So I'll stop there and Mr. Prishong has had his light on. Supervisor Prishong. Thank you. First off, I do agree that it is probably the most complex budget. I've seen in the years that I've served here. And I appreciate all of the hard work. I had some quick questions and then I thought if we could, and this is I guess to Lisa. You had mentioned that the state and federal budget, state and federal money coming to our county is somewhere between 35 and 42% of the overall budget. Is that right figure or wrong figure? That's the general fund budget. Yeah, 35% of our general fund is state funding and then 15% of the general fund is federal. Is federal? Okay. Additional if you look at like governmental funds or all funds, but that's specific to general. That's the breakdown. Okay, so obviously the federal government is dealing with their budget or what do they call it? That one big beautiful bill. And so, but we're dealing with the May Revise, which we actually have numbers there. And I know that the governor was really upset with the counties just recently about the waste of money, as he called it, on homeless programs. He was pretty upset about that. But I'm looking at the state of California, a accountability website, which does, and we're the only county on the central coast that actually spent the, it appears that our money did the job, which means our service providers did the job. So if I could just say, un sheltered, we're down 30.8%, which has to be not only on the central coast, but within the entire state. That's pretty good. So do we know, having looked at the May revise, if there's going to be continued money, or is it going to be based on, because I've heard that he's basically kind of cutting it all off, but the fact is we delivered on the promises of that money. And so I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on if there's anything there. So what I understand is there's no funding in the state's upcoming budget for homeless services. So even though our service providers did a good job, we're getting lumped in with everybody else. Okay, next is IHSS. What is the, because I remember it was probably five or six years ago that the governor at the time was going to stop IHS payments. And the counties were going to be having to take them over. Is there any discussion on that in this current May revise? There's potential, my understanding is there's potential impacts to IHSS. But at this point, still working with sales and services of what that looks like and what that ultimately is. Is there a possibility that we have to pick up a bigger chunk of that? We're theoretically always picking up a bigger chunk as caseload grows and our realignment isn't keeping up with the caseload. That's in home supportive services for those of you that are listening at home. So I appreciate those are my questions. I appreciate the time. Yeah. I think that on the IHSS, I got communication from a constituent that there's the proposed cap on the number of hours and for providers, which is really critical for people who work and then don't have a place to put their disabled individual or their family members, I should say. So, that's good. Supervisor Moreno. Thank you, Chair. Just to put a little context to my colleague at the other end of the diaspora, me, some of the comments, the HHS being the biggest cut that we've had to make and while that's true, they are also the biggest expense. So that's not surprising. So just to kind of put that into context. With regards to public safety, we don't have a bunch of outside sources of funding. There's occasionally grant funding that's often, occasionally for personnel, often for equipment. So, general fund is what funds public safety, sheriff, fire, all of that. So, that would be natural that most of their funding and discretionary funds goes to public safety. The idea of earmarking a percentage to homelessness or anything else, I'm not particularly in favor of that. I think that ends up being just kind of like the status co-budget, like here we are with this amount and we're not necessarily looking at metrics or anything else. We're just saying this is the amount every single year that goes to this without assessing, you know, is the need greater or less than, I really couldn't do that. I know that this has been a very difficult time for our county, for everyone. Our partners, for staff, appreciate you, as whole my colleagues have said, appreciate you so much for what you've been doing these last eight, nine months here. As we move through this, we've had to make some very difficult choices. Choices that, quite frankly, none of us have wanted to make. I want to acknowledge the real concern and the heartbreak. I've read the letters and the emails, and I know that each one of those represents someone who deeply cares about San Luis Obispo County. You want to make it better, more compassionate, a better place to live, and that matters. This though has to be balanced with our ability to pay the bills, and we cannot ignore the structural imbalance that we've been experiencing for years. And if we want to serve the public not just in the 25, 26 fiscal year, but five years, 10 years, 20 years out, we must be willing to make hard decisions now. It doesn't mean that we don't value services and programs like Casa, like growing grounds. Martha's place, any of the homelessness, all of that, we do. These are services that touch people's lives that help people have better lives. And I really feel the weight of what is being asked. I do get that. But we also have to remember that these decisions are not being made lightly and they're not being made in a vacuum. They're being made by highly engaged staff who are on the ground. They see the day-to-day realities of the services being provided and the financial challenges that we face. We also need to acknowledge that in many cases, services are not disappearing. They are being restructured, relocated, or being reassigned in ways that reflect where we can be most effective. It's not about abandoning good causes, but it's about ensuring that our county remains fiscally sound so that we can continue to meet our critical needs. And the truth is our county doesn't have the resources to fund every good cause. We just don't. There's no end to the need that we would be asked to fill. And the more we try to do, I think a little here, a little there, and saying yes to everyone, the less we become effective at delivering core services that government must provide. And so I know that this moment requires courage, it requires clarity, and it's hard, but I think writing the ship and getting ourselves on a fiscally sound path will be well worth it. However, this comes about, I want to thank all of you for being engaged. I want to think our nonprofit partners for my colleagues. And again, for staff for the work that you've done. It's hard, but we'll get through this and I think we'll come through it much better. Thank you. OK, I would like to make a few comments if I, that's OK with you guys. Sure. OK. Birthday girl. Yeah, so first off, this is called a restructure Rebalancing Budget. And as is noted, it's different than before. And I just really want to thank CAO Met Pantes and his team, Lisa, and all the administrative analysts that they've just worked tirelessly. And the each department has given and given and given and really dug deep as far as literally looking in the every drawer of what they have and what they do and who does it impact and how many of them does it take and all of that. So there's a really a very heroic effort here to get to get our county as stated on the right track so that we can make choices, that we want to help foster children, that we want to help make sure that we have the services that are necessary for the underserved communities on top of the things for our regular taxpayers, for parks, etc. So I think that that's the overall goal. And with the backdrop of the state and the federal, it's pretty important that we did this at this point in time. However, I will also note that I think that some of the programs that's been public spoke about today, there's a thing, you know, where you invest to not have to spend more later. And I think that there's a really good case to be made for certain things that we can let people fall through the cracks that will actually cost us more long-term. So it's fortunate that we have the ability to be able to figure out a little bit of an extension here as we work through this first year, but also really sending the message about that creative thinking, about how to, how we're all going to have to tighten the belt, how we're all going to have to start to work to a little bit harder on things and maybe not have certain things, but go with the most critical important things. I really wish that the lady here that was from the, who was wonderful, the, the Casa for the young woman who spoke was here because she's a business woman. And the one thing that I want to really remind the audience, I think our audience of staff understand this, but that message I want to give is that, you know, when you look at why the revenues haven't expanded, yes, they've expanded some, but when you look at certain aspects of our budget, you know, we have the lowest TOT, probably in the state, for a county that has seven and a half million visitors. We have not raised taxes, sales tax in this county, lowest in the county, lowest probably in the state. We continue to have other impacts of our visitors serving here, love the hospitality business, the hospitality businesses in my family, certainly not trying to bag on them, but there's things that we have not done as far as a county that has increasingly more impacts and really have to think about those things because in a business when things get up, your prices go up. We haven't been able to do that. And so I think that's really important for people to note. I'm not suggesting that we do that right now. But what I am suggesting is that when we go out and we start building more houses and we start doing more things for commercial interests and trying to make things work here, I don't want people to come in here and complain to us about the fact that we have to build new neighborhoods for working people so we can get industry into this because they can't afford to come here because of the cost of living here. And so these are the, this is the balance that we're trying to strike, and we need people to be out there. We need to make sure the Diablo Canyon is relicenced for 20 more years. Everybody needs to be rowing in that direction, that unitary tax that was missing here is because we don't have a 20-year horizon for Diablo Canyon. That's nothing we can do. That's up to our legislators. Our legislators need to hear from you. These are the things when you look at the big picture that we need to be, again, understanding and roaring. It's not just us with a bag of money. It's a whole big picture of all of us trying to work and generate that income. So I just wanted to make that point in regards to what it's going to take to help us continue doing the things that we do, including supporting our partners on all of these things. I am completely in support of the money getting taken out to help with the nonprofits, to get us this bridge time, to start working together, to have a Martha's Place group come together and talk about the data that we have now about what's going on there and how we can continue to make that most important investment continue to exist. I also wanted to note that I think lobbying on the IHSS is going to be important for us. We want to make sure that on the homeless piece, the homeless piece is really critical. So as was highlighted in this accountability report, which some counties love it, some counties hate it, but for us, we really like it right now because it shows that we had a 30% reduction in our homeless and that's a pretty significant number. But what it doesn't say is that in the last handful of years we've invested, there has been, not just us, but with our partners over $20 million in investment on infrastructure to actually have a bed to put people. That $20 million, we can't lose that investment. So the 70 beds we have in South County, the 120 beds that we have up in North County, plus more coming here. We have our welcome home project beginning to happen. We have things going on with cap slow. We've invested in so much, and that's why I think it's gonna be really important for us to find a bigger gap chunk for them and to talk about that carve out for a portion of the future funds. I understand regarding the public agencies, again, regarding to that, you know, the public safety doesn't have ways to get more money, but I would argue that supporting the homeless divisions our partners out there who are on the street, that is a form of public safety. So I'll just, you know, throw that out there now and we can move on and get some stuff going so I can go have a birthday dinner. No. Hey. I'm not selfish. Whatever, whatever the motivation, let's use it. I like it. Madam Chair,. Yes please. I'm very the conversation here and get to maybe some specific directions of staff. First of all I completely endorse your last comment about public safety and homeless services being hand in hand and an aspect of it. There's a lot that this county does that is as we say for the health health safety and welfare of our community and and the homeless services is absolutely part of that. Let me just respond to a couple comments from my colleagues here. Supervisor Pashong, yes indeed, that may revise head hours caps on IHSS. That's not necessarily a good thing for a program that works well in this county. Not sure exactly where the lobbying is going on this, but the big pieces that did draw the governor's attention was that because CSAC responded, our California State Association of counties responded. There is no ongoing funding for homelessness and there is no funding to account for the increased county costs of Proposition 36 implementation. CSAC is pedal to the metal on both of those things. We are hopeful that the legislature sees it differently than the governor and I hope we're hopeful that they can persuade the governor. included in the homelessness is a suggestion. We're working to get the suggestion of a pilot project that would fund some number of counties of different sizes. Our, given our success might be a good candidate for this, where we're looking at having a five-year guaranteed stream of funding to the county to address homelessness, accountability against specific metrics and making progress. All of that bundled up with strong agreements between the county and its constituent cities as to who does what. That's the model we're trying to get in at the state level. And it is the number one priority of CSAC. To Supervisor Moreno, you're absolutely right that the public safety departments are the biggest consumer of general fund as a proportion. That's absolutely correct. That top 10 chart always has the sheriff's office over on the far left. What I maybe did not articulate is clearly as I wanted to, is that I understand that's going to be the case, that's just the nature of this. What I'm talking about going forward in the budget is about as revenues grow, how do do we distribute revenues within all the different things that the county does? Yes. Well, as revenues grow, how do we distribute revenues within all the different things that the county does? Yes, public safety is an ongoing top priority, but it is certainly not a matter of cutting general fund support, but having a balanced view of what it means to have that as our top ongoing priority. We're now, you know, again, our budget approach is in a status quo and a cut. And while the health agency is a bigger department than our public protection, the numbers show that the health agency, the health and human services sector took disproportionately large share of the position reductions relative to its size. So again, that goes back to my thought that we need to rethink just our philosophy of how we approach a budget. I think that would be helpful in getting the many things that counties do. We're here at introduction. I think it's appropriate to give staff some direction as we head toward the supplemental document, which I understand is June 3 and the budget hearings on June 9. Martha's Place sounds like it's on track, so the direction there would be to have a clear description of what the adaptation that keeps Martha's Place open as a physical location looks like when we get to budget hearings. On the matter, the pass aer clinic, the supervisor, Pauling spoke to documenting the impacts and getting assurances, and I would like written assurances, that other providers can pick up the slack. And it's not just the general population, do we have services for Spanish speaking residents? what does it look like for transportation? Are we talking about getting people to places where they can get? Again, to properly document that we can pick up, others can pick up those services if we're going to make that cut. And then final direction is for staff to work on a transition plan. I would put it at the amount in my mind is something less than a million dollar, a top doubt at a million dollars. My suggestion would be to first look at our reserves as the source of funding that because our departments have already been subject to huge cuts. My further thought would be that the bar for receiving transition money, which is a one year transition plan, million dollar max total reserves as the source high bar for which organizations get that with a clear sense that this money is part of their transition to a time when county funding is not likely, is not expected. So we put it that way. My colleagues are okay on a straw vote with that, I would add that direction to a motion that I'll make to accept staff's recommendation, which involves scheduling the hearing. Supervisor Paul Ding. Do you want to turn it into a motion? Yeah. I'm going to move staff's recommendation. We're going to move staff's recommendation with the direction that's been delivered. Second, under discussion. I have some modifying thoughts. Excellent. Just trying to move it forward here. Yeah, so a couple of just global comments. First, I completely support the direction of your motion. Thank you for articulating that plan. Second, you know, Mr. Resembrano, I know you mentioned this moment requires courage and clarity. I think it also requires compassion in terms of how we approach this. And I want to hit just a couple points on that note. The first is we're not just talking about if we make this transition in this way for our nonprofits, maintain the status quotes about giving our nonprofits time to adjust, consolidate or pivot. Well, we continue to deliver critical services. And I think that's important. Supervisor Ortiz Legg mentioned how, if we're not careful here, the impact to our community, to our hospitals, to our jails, to our streets, because we put people in crisis, those who are relying on our service could be greater than we contemplated. I think that's really important that we value, we weigh that in this particular value judgment question. Specifically to the criteria of this transition program and knowing that the goal of fiscal responsibility is really important here. I would offer that we could add some criteria, for example, a historic dependence on county services, knowing that a loss would significantly impact operations to the nonprofit of reduction in staff. There's a closure risk or program elimination, demonstration of compounded cuts that the organization is simultaneously facing some level of reduction in state or federal funding and they should provide evidence of current or anticipated budget shortfalls, essential services at risk. programs that serve high priority or vulnerable populations. And those services aren't in duplication of county services. Another could be no administrative waste. We want to make sure that we're investing in nonprofits that don't have a lot of overhead. And so, you know, just conceptual criteria could be at least 85% of the requested funds is used for direct service delivery that will yield more transparency and accountability. So we'll just offer that not those specific criteria, but whatever staff develops could help focus that particular program in that way. Happy to add those kinds of thoughts to the motion. Okay. I have more to add to. I had had conversation with CAO regarding this homeless situation. So the one nonprofits is one thing, the three homeless providers is another. And while we have a bigger gap there to fill, what I, and I appreciate, you know, hey, that's great. If we can become one of the folks that the governor would even take a look at, or this, you know, however things gonna work out the legislature, you know, regarding the overall funding of the homeless sector, then I think that's great. But in the meantime, what I would suggest is another chunk of change out of our reserves to offer up as a match. And that match would be sent out to our city partners and to other philanthropy groups, foundations, etc. to help us do some kind of gap funding because these guys are going to drop off the list right now in July, something like that. So, I mean, they're starting to really look at closing a lot of things and that is a direct impact. And again, $20 million of investment with beds, with infrastructure that have shown success. Wendy Lewis from Echo gave us those successes. Jack gave us successes from Capslow. I know of the successes in my own area with the Five Cities Homeless Coalition and the continual work of getting people back on their feet into some housing, into jobs, et cetera. So I would like to add into it. And we can have the CAO weigh in and the administration weigh in, but something as a seat, a pot of two and a half million to seed to help say to the cities we're serious about this. We think this is a joint responsibility to make sure that we don't have to shut doors and close beds and I would see what they can come up with themselves. Could I offer a thought about that? Yes, sure. I mean, I'm, I'm, I think that's, I think that's certainly consistent with our priorities on homelessness. What I wonder is whether we, and I'm not sure in your comments exactly what your vision for actually dispersing this is, but if we could mobilize this without specific disbursement as a possibility pending finding out what happens at the state level. And, you know, obviously require any such disbursement to come back to the board. I think that I would be how shall we put it let's be open to seeing what that looks like, how that might work and where- That's kind of what I was saying, Yeah, you're- I'm glad you highlighted that, because that is important. How it gets dispersed, how that would all come out. Right, because it's fine. Because to me, it's just, it would be important to have that disbursement be consistent with a plan that we have. Right, right. And it's a really good point. I think that one of the things that we've learned with having our HMIS data now, that we kind of can see exactly where monies are spent, where results are happening and things like that. So I think it's as far as direction. Well, it's direction. It's not authorizing it at this time. Right. We're looking for a proposal with an analysis of what the consequences of that might be where that money might come from how it might work what the actual size of it might be. Mind if I weigh in? Of course. Okay. So on this particular topic, I love the optimism on, you know, the state actually creating this funding source and and let less push like hell for it, right? Continue to do that. I think that the homeless services continuum, both the nonprofit providers and our homeless services division have demonstrated that there is a $7 million gap this fiscal year. That's happening. Now, maybe the direction to staff could be to verify that that is in fact the case based on the staff recommendation and I would appreciate that if they could look into that and confirm or deny that. Now as it relates to what happens after this $7 million gap and the next fiscal year we're not like some counties like Sonoma County they passed, I believe it was a 1% sales tax measure that generated a local revenue source for homeless services, mental health, affordable housing. We don't have that local revenue source and we can continue to advocate at the state level for it and we will. But in the absence of that, we're looking at a projection right now that does not sustain funding for our service providers, which means they will have to shut down some of their operations, which means more homeless individuals on the streets. And so, I do think that it is incumbent upon us in the context of this budget discussion, knowing what we know today, to help provide, again, a gap funding mechanism that will get us to that next, you know, a year from now. And maybe it isn't funding the full 7 million. Maybe there is a philanthropic match out there or other partners, cities, et cetera, can participate. So I would love to see a start that conversation with putting that earnest money forward. The other piece ties back to that earmarking conversation about future revenues. And I don't think that, you know, I get supervisor Morano's argument that we don't want to earmark future revenues without an idea of what the needs are at that time. But I know that other counties do utilize that as a policy mechanism. They may say, 10% goes to parks every year, and then you backfill parks and deferred maintenance or whatever. So they're thinking about that future revenue in relation to our board priorities and talking about what might actually be a continuous year over year sustainable source of funding for our homeless services providers, that's a top priority. I think is something that we should continue to contemplate and would love to see what staff thinks about that and if they would say you know that is an option but you might want to only earmark 2% or something because we need flexibility for other departments etc. So I would add just that if or I would ask supervisor, if you could maybe add a little clarifying direction to staff in accordance with the comments I made. So my thought supervisor Paul Ding is I understand that this idea of looking at growth and saying a certain and making board policy that a certain percent goes here and everywhere, apparently has been a success by some measurement elsewhere in the county, elsewhere in the state in another county. To me, that's a conversation for the next fiscal year budget. And so I would propose to put that off until the fall when we start that maybe gather some Experience if that's I know it apparently Santa Barbara County where that has was proposed by a widely a wide spectrum of Political thought on their board at that time I'm open to considering it, but again, we've got this budget to deal with. We've just dropped two, we dropped three small projects, two manageable projects and two huge projects on this for this year. And so that's where I would devote our attention. But with some general direction. With general direction that as we look at our next year year's budget balancing strategies as we update those as we start the process for fiscal year 2627 we consider that idea is What a part of it. What about the conceptual 2.5 million gap funding for that continuum for the homeless again again. I'm open to that again making no commitment at this point that I would authorize 2.5 as opposed to vote for 2.5 as opposed to some other number. Where's it come from? What's the impact? What's the program? I think it's clear to the administration that what we're talking about here now at this point and can take it from here in regards to our interests. Or is it? I'm chair. I have complete clarity, maybe a stretch, but I did take good notes. I think my favorite part was when Supervisor Gibson used the word rebalance, which I've been trying to get him to use for eight months. We got it on time. My terms. I used it on my terms. Oh, that sounds like that makes sense. What else is known? Yeah, I think we have some conceptual, highly conceptual direction that we can go back and work and then bring back to your board. Okay. The next available time. Yeah. Okay. Can I ask a question? Yes. The two for the 2.5 is that something your board would like to see during the hearing or is that something that comes after? I think we needed it the hearing. Supervisor Gibson, I do. I mean, we got to consider. I would like to see it mobilized at the budget hearing. Yeah. To be dispersed under separate board action, If indeed we authorize it at the hearing. I think that direction is understood. I would also say that there are, as you alluded to, a lot of other factors with state timing of state cuts, federal cuts. We have a KPMG analysis moving on to the next couple of departments. And so some of those things are important factors in addition to the HMIS data to pull together for an allocation. And I think it makes an important statement that we're committed to our priority of homelessness. The state should be having giving us an ongoing stream of funding. Hopefully we don't need, it's a a little bit like the advance construction authorization we do for bridges. We, although this money is not expected to be respent, we are showing our commitment to continuing our good progress on homeless addressing the issue of homeless here if we have this money. Again, I wanna emphasize for the third or fourth time, not ready to cast a vote in a budget hearing yet until I see it and not ready to make specific disbursements until I see it. Supervisor Murrano. Yes. We have been supporting staff for the last eight months, we will be at least four and a half with doing this rebalancing process. And now I'm hearing numbers thrown around a million and another two and a half. Maybe seven. Let's see what we do. We're talking to you from 10 to 20%. I'm getting the feeling that my colleagues are open to kind of blowing out 10 to 20% of what we've worked so hard on. And Supervisor Pauline, you did say we've got to close that gap period. But taking, you know, 5% of that back or 10% of the back or 20% of the back is not closing the gap. I understand the things that you're talking about. But we're starting to talk some big numbers. And I think this is, we're not going to say we're completely blowing this up, but it's a big chunk. We're talking about it. I think the 7 million. Correct. Yeah.'m talking about strategic use of one-time funds, not unwinding funding cuts, essentially structural cuts. When we look at our reserves, as I mentioned earlier, being 6% over the 20% threshold, then the question then becomes, what can we do in the context of the surplus of reserves? Is this the right moment to tap that? And we could argue that all day, based on uncertainty. Are we going to see FEMA reimbursements? Are we going to see more federal funding cuts and be back here talking about, oh, we got to cut another 10 million. So I do want to just caveat that. So I'm talking about dipping into reserves because we have a surplus. And beyond that, there are SB 1090 categories. I tend to reference those often in our meetings. One of them is the affordable housing fund. Now it's labeled that, but it can be repurposed. There's 2.5 million in that available for future projects. And since I've been elected, going back to January of 2023, I've asked our CAOs, what is the plan for that money that was intended generally for economic development, but which was earmarked by prior boards for specific things, safety, affordable housing, infrastructure roads, because to me, just the money sitting in an account, it operates as a general reserve, but it is in addition to our general reserves. And at some point, the intent of SB 1090 was that we spend that money to stimulate the economy, or grow certain economic development objectives. And I think housing, and there's a nexus to homelessness, we talked about its relationship to public safety. But in the context of providing shelter to the homeless in our community and sustaining the facilities that we've already constructed and that are currently operated operating. It's a worthwhile one time investment to carry that forward. Acknowledging that your concerns are valid as it relates to unwinding the important and strategic nature of the cuts proposed for us today. Supervisor Pichon. Oh, yeah, just my thoughts. I don't believe future revenue should be your mark. I think the world is changing pretty quickly. Obviously, if you look at the state government two years ago, homelessness was everything. Now homelessness is not a priority of the state government in 2025, 26 budget. Public safety is not a priority of the state government in 25, 26 either because of their lack of funding for proposition 36, which 75% of the people in the state of California supported. So I will tell you that I think I agree with Supervisor Moreno that we really need to make sure that we stick with where we are. I do think, you know, if we're going to do some bridge funding, you know, let's have that debate at the meeting. But once we start to expand it, I think we're going to get ourselves into a lot of trouble. We're in this budget really needs to be, I mean, if you look at it, they've spent a lot of time on it. They've really deep, deep dive on a lot of different things. And there's some tough decisions we're going to have to make. And those decisions are going to hurt. But I think that if we stick to it, stick with the budget, I think we can get through this. And we can, with future revenue, we can figure out at that time what to do with it. Okay, thank you. So certainly, it's hard to sit here and talk about the fact that we have invested 2 million in the five cities homeless coalition cabins, 3 million in Barca, 200,000 reproved Cooperative Care in process, another 2 million, 1.5 million in Tascadero, 13 million in Paso. These are all came from other sources. And so in some ways, that infrastructure, because it's here and because it's doing work with these individuals, it's our responsibility. But I will say that it is hard to sit here and look out and see parks and see other departments that have had shortcuts and had to not get more, not be able to thrive with this one time fund. It's one of those situations that are really tough. I will note though that again, let's not be too careless in regards to our investment of what we already have and let that investment go to the wayside. So I'm very hopeful that the continual efforts of KPMG in our departments as well as other things will bring forth revenues. we are in a moment where we have no idea what's around the corner. And I am glad that I'm not talking about getting real crazy with reserves, believe me, because I don't trust anything that's happening at the federal level or at the state level, or even with mother nature at any moment. So we definitely need to have those reserves very strongly in place. What we're talking about here is something to make sure that we don't completely fall apart in many ways and areas that are really important. So with that, I guess that we have a- We've got a motion on staff's recommendation plus direction. Martha's place, Paso-Robles Clinic transition for nonprofits and an amount for supporting homeless services. I think we can call it. Let's call it. Supervisor Gibson? Yes. Supervisor Paul Dean? Yes. Supervisor Pashong? Yes. Supervisor Moreno? Yes, with my comments for the record please. And Chairperson Ortiz Le. Yes. Madam Chair, I'd like to offer a motion to go to 515. Okay. That sounds good. Thank you. I knew I could get that one passed. Okay, so we got to 515 the last item on the agenda is board member comments or Reports or anything like that so Supervisor lights on yep, yes, ma'am Madam chair the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management at the end of April open the 11th Open a comment period on the 11th Proposal for offshore oil and gas leasing. The current administration has made clear that they seek to open offshore oil and gas production off of California. The comment period runs to July 16th. Our state senator Laird has issued a very strongly worded letter opposing the issuance of oil and gas production leases off California. I'd like to make a motion that we agenda is on June 3rd, a letter from this county. Similarly, objecting to oil and gas production offshore California to be submitted to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management before the June 16th deadline. So we're right, sir Prashan. I don't support this. This is a false flag and there just there's just everybody's having fun. So I understand that our state senator believes this is very important, but I, sorry, Mr. Laird, I don't think this is going to happen. I'm going to second it. I think just sending a letter saying that generally, you know, we have measure A, the voters had passed way back when opposing offshore oil development or at least requiring local control for any onshore infrastructure. Supporting that, I'm not a proponent of offshore oil off of our coast. So I think sending a letter is consistent with our current county policies and the will of the voters. Will of the voters for sure. I think it's a red herring myself. I don't think that there's a new oil company that's even going to want to think about doing it, but I will support your effort there. Thank you. Okay. All right. Do you send you an emotion? Yeah, I think we're good. Call in favor. Aye. Aye. Two and no's, three, aye's. Go ahead. Supervisor Pauling. I have nothing. Thank you. Okay. Nope. Well, I have a ton of stuff. Yes. Hi. Two and those three, hi. Go ahead. Supervisor Pauling. I have nothing, thank you. Okay, nope, me. Well, I have a ton of stuff. Sorry. Funny you think the cannabis won first. Okay, I'll do the cannabis one. This is really uncomfortable, but I do think it's important for the industry to stay at 6%. I'll second that. Okay, it's a hold to bring back cannabis to hold at 6% tax, supposed to go up to 8%. Okay, so we got three yeses. 313. Yes, June 3rd, please Okay, and then um I'm my my staff is sending to your staff the information that their our community choice aggregator a 3CE has Two spots community representatives. If you don't mind asking people in your districts to want to support or be on that community advisory group for three C E that will be coming towards your way. And then lastly, I just want to say that I had a great time hosting the supervisors from the Latino caucus of California counties. They absolutely loved San Luis Obispo County. They were on Oshano dunes working it out on their bikes. I know Shano dunes. They were at Diablo Canyon, nuclear power plant. Had a wonderful tour. We had a lot of fun. And I just want to say thank you to everybody who helped it host us. And I think that's it for today. Can we get real quick? Can we get real quick another voice for to directs? I think it's Jim staff to come back on June 3rd regarding Stay of the cannabis tax order. Okay. Yes. Voice would. Yeah. Hi. Thanks. And I have one, a quick one that I remembered. Just wanted to invite members of the community to attend our annual WeHeart Auroio Grande event. It's at Heritage Square Park on May 31st at 9 a.m. there at the gazebo and we'll be doing a bunch of cleanup in AG. So we'd welcome you to join. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Good. I was it. Two things. Thank you to I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if that's the case. I'm sorry if you're already on. I think currently we don't have a representative. Right. I would second that and just thank you for your willingness to serve. Happy to serve. I don't know who's on now. I'm sorry if you're already on. I think currently we don't have a representative. Right, okay, it's a vacancy. I would second that and just thank you for your willingness to serve. Happy to serve well. Very much so. I met with Delaci and she's forcing me to do it. Excellent. And then go to the just to confirm this is an employment is to bring for staff to bring that back as an employment. Yes, and bring it back. Make sure when you do bring that back, you bring back confirmation of the HSOC appointment. And then I believe we have a swap on the IWMA. We're all. Yes, and bring it back make sure when you do bring that back you bring back confirmation of the H sock appointment And then I believe we have a swap on the IWMA where I'll go to alternate and supervisor Marano has indicated that she's willing to serve as the primary Wow, that's awesome. She should get an award Thank you, you also get your word. Thank you. Okay We're adjourned. Thank you.