There we go.
Okay, we will convene our Board of Supervisors meeting. Today is December 5th, 2017.
It's nine o'clock, and please note that all supervisors are present. And the Pledge of Allegiance, and Dennis Lampson will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.
United
States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Okay.
We'll move on to item number three, oral communication.
General public comment.
This portion of the meeting is an opportunity for members of the public to address the
Board of Supervisors on subjects relating to county business.
No action can be taken on matters not listed on the agenda.
Each member of the public who wishes to address the board shall be allotted three minutes
and no more than three individuals shall address the same subject.
Time permitting at the discretion of the chair, time allotted may be increased or decreased
depending on the number of speakers and available time.
So is there anyone here with oral communication?
Okay, that's interesting. Very interesting. Okay. I think once. Okay. Moving on to department announcements. Are there any department announcements? This can't be. Okay.
Nicole Williamson, Health and Human Services Director, and I have quite a few, so I think nobody else raised their hand.
Okay, first I want to tell you about the holiday food program update.
We are accepting applications through Friday, and they are available at HHS, Tribal TANF,
Behavioral Health, and Embare Valley at the Sheriff's Department.
On this side of the slope, we're going to be doing the distribution on the 20th, and
we are working to coordinate the distribution in Embare Valley, but it will be around
the same time.
We're still taking donations for food or gifts.
The giving trees are still up, and so if anyone would like to get a tag off the giving tree
and buy a gift for a child directly, you can still do that.
And next, I would like to introduce our new first five executive director, Hannah Morizoko.
Hi.
She comes to us from Lake Tahoe and she was working for Live Violence Free, who, you
know, provides services in Alpine County.
I'm very grateful to be here, and it's, I've only been on the job for about three
weeks now a little less and finally got the wheels turning and things happening
and I'm excited to be supporting the community. So nice to meet you all. Yeah
nice to meet you and I saw your email regarding the website so that was
interesting information. Yeah we have a brand new website that was one of the
things I wanted to do kind of give us a facelift so you're welcome to check
it out. It's first5alpine.com and you'll notice there's a new look
there and some added resources and things as well.
Well, thank you, Hannah.
Yeah, you're welcome.
And last but not least, I have Dennis Lampson
who's going to give you all an update
about environmental health.
Good.
Dennis Lampson, environmental health.
Three things I want to just update the board.
First of all, if you've been out to Carson River Resort,
you may have noticed oil orders do not drink posted
on all the cabins in the store
In November, the owner collected a water sample out there, came back positive for both
coliform and fecal coliform.
Fecal coliform indicates that we have either animal or human species in the water,
and so we conducted a thorough sanitary survey last week with their
certified operator Tony Galvez.
Did not find any problems, believed it was a sampling problem.
re-sampled last week, and I'm back negative, so that boil order will be in that out there.
I had questions that somebody's called. That's what happened.
Tony will be doing all the sampling out there. They're certified operator.
Secondly, switching to sewage disposal. Our LAMP, the county, is required to submit a local area management plan to the regional board.
board. This will replace our MOU with the county. I think they talked about this earlier.
And we submitted that for review to the regional board to Lohanton. In December last year,
we got comments back last month in November. And I have a meeting with Rob Tucker, their
staff person, in two weeks. And we will be making the final changes on that, working
out those last conditions in the length and that will come back to the county
for supervisors in January for approval. The lamp will be our new management plan
that will discuss how the health department of the county will be
issuing permits and conducting the on-site sewage disposal system. So you'll hear
more about that. Thirdly, our public water system evaluation. Every year in the
summer we are audited by the State Water Resources Control Board, Division of
Drinking Water. They send a team of five people out to audit our program and this
year we they have eight directives for us to complete. Last year we had 20.
It's
using, which is a little more rigorous and unless you're in compliance with all of these
items, you receive this.
The county has not met the objectives.
So anyway, I've gone through that with them.
I don't believe there's any of the eight items on there that we will not be able to
complete.
They've asked for a response letter in December, and I will be submitting that if the county
intends to hold it.
I've overseen this program for 25 years and I can tell you I'm not concerned with it.
I believe that the counties probably are water programs in better shape now than it was in
91 when I took over that program and it's a change in how they're doing their evaluations.
It used to be under the California Department of Public Health two years ago switched
over to the State Water Resources Control Board and that evaluation process has changed
changed its format a little bit.
So anyway, that will be addressed this month.
This is one of these unfunded mandatory programs
that we have.
We're required to implement this drinking water program,
our regulated facilities, want the county to be doing this.
Some of the counties have given it back to the state.
Alpine County has consistently, we've kept the program
And that's been at really the direction of both the board and our water system owners and operators out there
So I don't see a problem
With that if anything does come up, I'll get come back to the board and report to you
Thank you for the updates. Yeah
Appreciate it questions
Um in in other jurisdictions I've seen
I mean, annually, the water suppliers have to publish analysis of how good or how bad
their water is.
I think it's an EPA regulation or something like that.
We don't do that here.
Is that because of the size of the system?
AR required to file an annual report.
It's called a Drink Report on V-R-I-N-C dot C-A dot GOV.
You can go out there.
Anybody can go out and look at that.
that. All of our water systems do that annually. I bring them into the office. They complete
that. It's about a 15-page report and it describes the entire water system. We'll also discuss
whether there's been any enforcement actions or violations or where they haven't met
water quality standards. That's all that goes into that report. But it is a public
report. It's on the web.
Thank you. If I may, at our last law on regional water quality control board meeting they did
discuss notice of violations and the report, the full report from that meeting in November is at the
library. The question
I have is looks like February 1st is going to be rather busy. Of the eight,
four of them are going to be due that day. Are they a lot of them or it seems like they're
related to me, but I guess I'm a layman looking at this.
They're not that related?
Some of those have already been completed.
And there shouldn't be a problem competing with that.
A lot of this is they've increased the state reporting,
the mandate for reporting.
That's kind of the bulk of this.
There's other things like inventory items,
updating the inventory.
I was telling Nicole on the way down here.
We do this constantly.
It was on the report last year.
This year they came out and they found two water systems that were listed as surface water
systems.
And I said, no, one was sand flats on a hand pump, a well.
I said, no, these are groundwater sources.
Well, the county's got to change that.
Well, of course we're going to change it.
We'll go in and make the changes in the state database.
Well, we're going to list it as a directive.
How I'd ever got on there.
I have no idea.
happened either in the database or somebody in Sacramento but we get hit
with a violation on there so this is kind of the stuff we're dealing with. Thank
you. Is that it? Okay. Great. Did you want to? Or it was Rita. Okay. I got confused
in what hand was raised before. Good
morning. A couple of announcements from
the library. First, next week we're going to start cookies in Cider. They're
They're not just cookies, they're fresh home baked cookies from the friends of the library
and spiced, not spiced, spiced cider, and that'll be from December 13th through the 29th during
our open hours.
So come on down and partake of that activity.
And on the 9th, which is this Saturday, we're going to have the Alpine Sandbox back
again.
Melissa Green, who's our volunteer, is going to be teaching anything iMac, iPad, iPhone
related.
And it's not structured, so if you have any general questions or friends that are going
to be getting one of these devices or thinking about it, bring them along.
And that's from 9 to 11 in the library.
Along those lines, the friends of the library asked me to start putting
out the word that they are looking for new members.
We have fantastic officers and members and they have been doing so for well
over a decade and they feel like they need some new life.
And they are interested, if anyone is interested, you can contact me, Paula Pennington, Barbara Howard.
And what they're looking for is people to attend monthly meetings.
And it's very low-key.
First Saturday of the month, sometimes if there's something else going on, the meetings are skipped.
But basically you're planning events and projects and looking for people to help take on a little bit more of the workload.
The pay is horrible, but the personal rewards are fantastic, so please let us know.
And I wanted to mention too, and I think Supervisor Woodrow is going to talk about a little bit more,
but the Bear Valley Post Office is threatening to close the 27th of this month,
and I don't know how I can explain it clearly.
I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but that would have a devastating impact
on library services for one but all county services not to mention residents
who live in Bear Valley and businesses and businesses yes everyone
associated with that just to think about driving to Arnold you know 25 miles
one way and treacherous roads on dry pavement not to mention in winter
conditions you know and the costs involved in that too we would have to
paying staff time to go check the mail you know the implications are far
reaching so I'm hoping that we come up with another solution to closing that
library I mean closing that post office and
One more thing I wanted to bring to your attention is that net neutrality, once again, is on the
forefront. We dodged this bullet a couple years back during the Obama administration who fortunately
supported net neutrality. Once again, it's threatened to be reversed. And I know that this can be somewhat
of a complicated topic, it seems like there's a lot of confusion around it.
But basically, if net neutrality is reversed, it's going to mean that we're going to get maybe the same
but probably less service for more money, and our choices are going to decrease.
And kind of a good analogy of that would be if Liberty Energy came to us and said,
Well, you're going to get power.
You might get the same, you might get a little bit less,
but your rates are going to go up.
And by the way, you're going to have to choose.
Do you want to run your oven, your refrigerator,
or your stove, or do you want to run all three?
Or would you like to use the vacuum?
Two.
You know, and you're going to have to choose
what you're going to want to do when you get the power.
And that's kind of how net neutrality will change
if it is reversed.
And another far-reaching implication of that would be the companies that make these decisions can also influence what kinds of products we use.
Like if you want to use Amazon, if you want to go to Netflix, if you want to do Facebook, there's going to be different packages, different prices, and things set for that.
And to go back to the Liberty Energy analogy, it would be akin to saying,
OK, you can use your stove, but we're going to make it really easy for you to use LG products.
You can use Whirlpool, but it may have little glitches here and there,
and it'll make it so that you're going to have to end up using LG anyway.
And I don't know if this explanation or analogy is helping or not,
But we're going to have some information on our Facebook page.
And I would encourage everyone to do some research because it will affect every single one of us if it is reversed.
And I'm happy to talk with all of you or anyone in the public if you have questions.
So I would encourage you to again do that research and write Senator McClintock and ask him to please Congressman.
I always get that.
So it should be Senator instead of Congressman.
Is this a federal issue?
It is a federal issue.
So please write your representative.
Congressman McClintock, let him know that you want to keep the internet neutral.
Thanks.
Thank you.
We have to break off from that right now and go to a 915 item.
8.1, 915, continued update and presentation by the U.S. Forest Service Representatives regarding issues affecting Alpine County.
Is there anybody here from the Forest Service? I didn't think so. I was looking around.
Okay, so we will go back to Department announcements. Are there any other Department announcements?
announcements. Okay, hearing none, we will move on to board member announcements or reports.
So, David.
Thank you. The 28th of November to the 1st of December, I attended CSAC. Supervisor Jardine
had asked me to talk to some of the other representatives there about the Lands Pass
program for cattle fishing wildlife. And all of the representatives I talked to there
from rural counties we're very surprised they do nothing about it so I'll be
taking that up tomorrow morning at RCRC as well.
Primary value for me in going to
CSAC is the networking. Many of the workshops and so on like that I think
we most of us know a lot of that stuff but the networking is very helpful and
they also have one workshop called County Roundtable where any county that
has a unique program or something they're very proud of can stand up for
three minutes and give a quick description of it, and later on there's a roundtable session
that people who are interested in that particular topic can meet with that person and discuss
it and learn more.
I found that helpful as well.
There was a panel with correspondence from political in the Los Angeles Times on politics.
It was very obvious that they were urban-based.
I raised the question of what could they tell us about the prospects for the Forest
Resiliency Act, which is important to forested counties all over the nation, and they'd never
heard of it, which was surprising, but that's the way it is.
For the fun run, the good news is that Alpine had the highest participation rate of any
county.
That's as far as I'm going to go with that.
On Saturday, I passed through the Magical March Leibow Christmas Fair and this afternoon I have the Board of Equalization
and in the evening the Outland Biomass Committee at Turtle Rock Park, Devin Snyder of the University of Nevada, Reno
will be giving a presentation on Pinyon Juniper. Most of our county is covered with mixed conifer forest
but there's a large part of it on the eastern side of the county that has
been in June for her and we've been ignoring that. Tomorrow I have RCRC and
Sacramento in the morning and then I hope to make it to the SNC reception in
McCollumee Hill in the afternoon evening. 13th of December, two turkeys.
One is the county Potluck and then supervising our gene probably,
Jardine and I will probably have another one in the evening at the Carson Water
your sub-conservancy district.
So Tahoe PUD, I did get a list of labs from the
State Water Resources Control Board that can do the required analysis and I've
given that information to Gavin Feiger of the Alpine Watershed Group and Richard
Harvey as well. So it looks like that they will be able to, there are some
labs in California that can do this work.
And then the last thing I have is
Senate Bill 5, $4 billion parks and water bond issue.
We discussed briefly at last meeting.
We'll be on the June 18, 2018 ballot,
but the $8 billion California water infrastructure
and watershed conservation bond initiative
is still in the signature gathering phase,
and so it may make the November 2018 ballot,
but it's unlikely to make the June ballot.
And that's all I have.
Thank you. Ron.
I also attended the CSAC convention. It was really quite an amazing event to have actually in Sacramento where I think we should have it every year.
I also asked every supervisor about the lands pass bill and did not know one other supervisor that knew of it.
It was an eye-opener for all of them.
And then I took advantage of being down there to actually go to the CSAC class on Friday
as well, which is really a great class, and I'll talk to you more offline about that.
And later today we have the ABC meeting, we have our Board of Equalization meeting,
and I also will be in McCallamy Hill tomorrow and the next day as well.
So I'm going to drop it right there.
Okay, thank you. Donald.
Just a few quick things.
I wanted to offer special thanks and recognition
for the Christmas boughs around Markleville.
Again, put up by Gary and Barbara Howard, Paula Pennington, Jim Dunn,
Jeannie Lear, Judy Farmsworth, Jerry and Jeanine Sprout.
They did a remarkable job. They've been doing it for over 20 years
and it's all volunteer and they saw it down in Amateur County
in one small town many years ago and thought, gee, it's just a wonderful thing.
The magical Christmas fairy that was just wonderful this last weekend, and also the
pancake breakfast put on by our volunteer fire department, it was just over the top.
I attended most of that, of course, I had my town hall meeting that morning at nine
o'clock, well attended, and thank you, Tom, for donuts.
He may have been.
It was very interesting.
Also the magical Christmas fair was the sponsors,
Mary Ross and the Chamber of Commerce,
the Search and Rescue and the Committee.
I wanted to recognize our Community Development Department
for doing the temporary repairs to the old schoolhouse up the museum.
the flagpole. We had major water leaks inside and they did a great repair right
after they put up the Christmas lights on the courthouse lawn. And I want to
especially recognize community development department and the
contractor for moving forward on the repairs to the county road up to the
Markleville PUD treatment ponds here.
It's major damage was done this last spring due to flooding,
and they just did a wonderful job.
I also would like to thank and recognize
Caltrans for being so forthcoming regarding
texting of highway road conditions,
be it R2 road closed accidents.
And that's been dispersed so far to emergency personnel
within Alpine County and we'll see how far that goes. I also wanted to mention
that the Carson Water Subconservacy District is having a water summit. I
know it may not seem important but it is both in California and Nevada. This is
at the governor's office in Nevada but a portion of the report will be
discussing issues that came up before the Lahontan Regional Water Quality
control board and the California water plan as sustainable flows. There was a
significant report given before the Lahontan Water Board last month. I would
like to mention that tonight I'm supposed to go to the Snowshoe Thompson
Ski and Snowshoe celebration that's going to be held in February but meeting
setup meeting is tonight in Genoa. But fortunately the historical
society has been gracious enough to fill in for me. I wanted to mention also, and
it's great to see Mr. Hilton here, that at our next South Tahoe Pewdy contract
commission meeting in February they'll be talking about giving a tour of the
treatment facility in Diamond Valley that is open to the public and will
be advertised.
The Historic Tourism Committee will be meeting on the 14th of this month
at 3 o'clock in this room or the next room over, depending on how many people show up.
And I've been working with the county clerk, Teola, regarding Department of Motor Vehicles
providing satellite services to Alpine County. They used to come up from Southlake Tahoe
In DMV, you can take your drive test, register vehicles one day a month in this very room.
I know they've been doing it since the early 60s up until about three years ago.
They quit doing it because of budget cuts.
DMV is sending folks up from, employees up from Sacramento to meet with Teola and
see what services we can provide.
This will happen in January.
There's no date set yet.
but just a very preliminary meeting and along those lines just yesterday DMV is
working with California well AAA and they provide DMV services in Carson City
at their office so they provide California DMV services in Carson City
you can register your new vehicle or transfer sales like that that's it for
Thank you.
Kathy.
Wow, I know I've been busy, but maybe not as busy as Mr. Dardee.
Okay.
This afternoon we have the Board of Equalization meeting and tomorrow I will be attending the Child Abuse Prevention Council meeting.
On the 8th I will be attending the historical records commission meeting and on the 12th
I have a school board meeting in the evening and the 13th unfortunately I will not be able
to attend the holiday potluck due to other commitments and I know that that's going
to be a lot of fun and I regret missing it this year.
Also, I wanted to mention that December the 14th at 6 o'clock at our Diamond Valley School
will be, they're calling it, join us for the hot holiday spectacular.
There will be singing, dancing, and much, much more.
That's on December the 14th, sounds like a Christmas affair that you don't want to
miss.
And I also wanted to mention on behalf of the school, they're calling it local
control accountability plan parent advisory committee they're looking for
new members and to become a member you must be a parent or guardian of a
student enrolled in Albuquerque school including the early learning center
preschool or infrared program so if anyone is interested in participating
on the PAT program please contact the district office at 694-2230 and that's
Okay, since our last meeting, I also attended the California State Association of Counties,
which is CSEC annual conference down in Sacramento last week and also attended their Board of
Directors meeting on Thursday, the 30th, and we have Board of Equalization this afternoon.
tomorrow, the Bear Valley community.
Business members are meeting with the United States Postal Service in a meeting in Bear Valley
regarding their closure notice for our post office, which they had notified us that they
are, the first time we've been notified was on the 25th of November regarding a closure
of our post office on the 27th of December. So we'll be addressing a letter that will
be going out to them on that, but we're also meeting with them tomorrow.
Next week on the 8th, I have Mountain Valley, I'm sorry on the 13th, I have Mountain Valley
EMS meeting down in Copperopolis followed by the Calaveras County Tree Mortality Task Force
core group meeting and so that's why I will not be able to be at the potluck
And then also on the 16th we have our winter sports history night in Bear Valley.
And that's always a lot of fun bringing up all the old sports history information
and acknowledging people that participate in sports.
So I will leave it at that.
And we have a 930 item, 9.1 presentation by California Department of Fish and Wildlife Unit,
Wildlife Biologist Shelly Blair and Ecological Reserve
and Land Acquisition Coordinator Julie Horenstein regarding the Lands Pass Program,
which now includes Hope Valley and possible discussion.
Yes, and this is under your name.
Yes, so back on November 7th, I believe, we received notice about the land passes, and that just does impact Tope Valley.
A lot of you had questions, so we asked for them to come and give a presentation and explain the land passes and answer any of your questions.
Okay, so if you can please step up to the podium. We have a microphone there.
So this meeting is being recorded online, so people have to be able to hear you.
That's why you have to speak into the microphone.
Thank you.
My name is Julie Hornstein.
I want to thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today.
I work in the lands program of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
in the statewide headquarters in Sacramento.
The lands program briefly, one thing we do is develop regulation change proposals that
are required based on changes due to fishing game code that are passed by the state legislature.
And we prepare those proposals for the Fishing Game Commission because they are the ones
that have the authority to make regulation changes for public uses on Department of
and wildlife lands.
And then I also work with the regional staff
to implement changes that result from the new regulations.
So the
land's passes are related to the funding situation
for managing department lands.
The department manages around the state 247
wildlife areas and ecological reserves
that are about a total of 967,000 acres.
We have little or no general fund money on a given year to manage these lands.
So this isn't paid for by regular taxes.
The largest source of funding by far are sources of funding that are contributed by hunting and fishing,
like hunting and fishing licenses, the federal fees, the federal excise taxes on hunting
and fishing equipment, which come back to the state in large in grants.
And then I wanted to mention that most of our funding sources are declining.
For instance, there are a smaller number of hunters.
Things of programs that used to give us more funds have declined.
For instance, with environmental license plates and endangered species tax check off as there
have been more and more different personalized license plates and more and more tax check
off categories, we receive a smaller and smaller share of those.
So our funding sources are declining,
and this has been true, this has been going
on, you know, for at least 20 years or more.
So one of the responses by the legislature to this decline in the department, in our funds to manage department lands and conduct other work is to require the department to collect more in user fees.
And they did this through passing legislation that either directly became part of the Fish
and Game Code and required us to collect more from user fees.
They also required a strategic vision be developed for the department in 2012, which was higher
in agencies combined with constituent group representatives and academics that wrote the
strategic vision that among other things said we needed to develop and implement equitable
funding mechanisms by which, you know, saying we can't completely depend on hundreds and
anglers because many other types of recreationists use our properties, use the Department of
Fish and Wildlife Properties.
Particularly key is a bill that passed in 2012
that became Fish and Game Code section 1245.
It's specifically called for expanding the Lands Pass
program.
So the commission and the department
are instructed in that Fish and Game Code.
I'm
sorry, there's a misprint, it's Fish and Game Code 1745.
I apologize for that.
It's not 12 or 14.
So we were instructed to expand the Lands Pass Program
to wherever it's practical and cost effective.
And practical is a bit of a relative term
because the Department of Fish and Wildlife Lands
aren't really set up the way state parks are
with a very defined entrance space
and staff at the front entrance and throughout the parking area to provide
passes, with the exception being our larger staffed waterfowl areas during
waterfowl season. So we have many access points.
It's now the state rules
that we don't sell, passes on our properties, we don't take any cash for anything on our
properties.
So the bar of what is considered practical on Department of Fish and Wildlife Lands
is fairly low.
But we focused on in working with our regional offices to identify all the,
and we were
for people involved that wanted to include all 247 properties.
We considered visitor use, areas that have special attributes that are special, either
wildlife viewing or wildflower viewing or scenery attributes, and that have amenities, like
at least a parking lot that we can offer, although we typically do not have developed
up amenities that state parks provide and one thing about visitor use is it
feeds into the cost of efficiency requirement. We have to generate enough
income to make it worth the cost of putting up and maintaining signs and
more so. So Hope Valley was considered to fit that criteria and then so in
in putting together the regulation proposal for these changes to the land's passes that would expand the program
and there were other regulation changes as well.
The Fishing Game Commission was ready to submit the proposed regulation changes for public review
and that's when they sent the letter that's shown on there to all 58 counties
and all those counties Fishing Game or Fishing Wildlife Advisory Commissions.
And the mailing included the public notice that explains a summary of the changes in
the package and where to find the background, all the background information, how to participate
in the public comment period.
And I just want to mention that the public comment period, because of the way the
Fishing Game Commission deals with its regulatory responsibilities.
The public comment periods are at least twice as long as that required by law.
It's required in the Administrative Procedures Act to have a 45-day public comment period,
but the Commission sees these packages over a course of three meetings and they accept
comments from the very first meeting where they decide to put something to public
notice until they vote on adoption. So that's a minimum usually of 90 days. In this case,
it was from May 6th to August 25th.
And I also included a mailing list that the Commission
uses that, as you can see, includes Alpine County.
So I just included this slide of
basic use requirements of plus exemptions for the Lands Pass Program. Each visitor who's 16 years
or older must carry a valid CDFW Lands Pass or their valid California hunting or fishing license
while they're on a Lands Pass property. And in the proposal there's a total of 42 Lands Pass
properties. I mean in the adopted regulations there are 42 lands past
properties. The there's and they span by the way in 25 they're about 23 25
counties something like that. There are 20 counties that have new lands past
properties. School and organized youth groups are
exempt. Volunteers are exempt while they're volunteering on the property
which is sort of the same for us. If I go to a lands past property and I'm
not working, I have to get a lands pass.
And the lands passes are good on any lands pass property.
So even though we ask, and I'll explain about that more,
even though we ask during the purchase process,
where do you plan to use it, that's actually
an optional question.
And a person could use a lands pass
on any of the lands pass properties.
So this is what they look like.
Although this year's, which is almost over,
the lands passes that are printed out.
If you buy them in person, they're blue, but I think I've heard next year they're going
to be orange.
It looks sort of like a fishing or hunting license.
If you print it out at home, it looks like it's sort of broken in half on the page.
It's actually a full 8.5 by 11 sheet.
And then daily pass customers who choose to purchase by phone rather than getting
a paper to print out or hand a paper, they receive a transaction number over the phone
that they can use in lieu of carrying the pass.
A couple of differences, daily lands passes are valid only for the date that you choose
when you buy the lands pass, kind of like a snow park pass, and they can be given
to another person.
So if a group of people are going out, one person can buy all the lands passes that
the group needs. An annual lands pass requires, it's a little bit more like buying a hunting
or fishing license, it requires a customer profile set up to purchase it, giving some
identification information and address and so forth. And that's so that if you lose
it or it's destroyed, they can replace it.
And it's valid from the purchase date
through December 31st of that year. So, 2018 annual passes are already available for sale,
and they'd be good from January 1st through December 31st. They're only good for the person
named on the pass, and they can be replaced, as I mentioned, and there's a fee for providing a
So how lands passes are purchased is you can buy them online and self-print them at that URL.
And we have the signs that are going to be posted.
You'll see later, have that information.
And also we have other publicity information that includes all the necessary web page links.
There's more detail.
I would say that our online program.
Purchasing, frankly, isn't the most user-friendly in the world. It's partially a problem of using
a sort of off-the-shelf service product that's geared more towards the sale of funding and
fishing licenses. But we've improved it, and we will continue to improve it, for the
land's passes. And in the frequently asked questions for the land's passes, we have
a more detailed instructions on how to purchase them. And there's also a customer service
phone number. If you want to purchase them by phone, it's an 800 number. And then in-person
sales locations are basically wherever hunting and fishing licenses are sold. And there's
a lot of locations in the Tahoe area. And my understanding is the Markleyville General
Store sells them as well. It's best to purchase them in advance. They can be purchased on
a smart phone, but Hope Valley, for example, doesn't have this good cell or Wi-Fi coverage.
So we generally advise people to purchase in advance. And this year and next year the
daily pass is $4.32, and the annual pass this year was $24.33, and the next year it's
going up a little to $25.10. And the fee and how the fee changes over time is actually
set in statute by the legislature.
So one common question is where does the money go?
In the Lands Pass Program was originally established as part of the Native Species Conservation
and Enhancement Act of 1988.
And one thing that that act did was it set up this special account and that money from
When the lands passes goes into this dedicated account, and it's for the use of conservation,
recreation, operational activities on department lands.
To the extent that we can identify where passes are used, no less than 35 percent is
to go back to those properties.
And now that we're asking, where are you going to use the passes?
We're finding we're getting like 97% of the people answer the question, which surprised me, but they do.
And we include – we mentioned in the – when you buy the pass that it helps us direct money to that property.
So, you know, in the last six weeks that we've had this new system online, 97% have provided
the information.
So there's also been questions about how this is going to be enforced.
There are no changes planned on how CDFW properties are patrolled by our law enforcement staff.
You know, frankly, this is somewhat of an honor system.
All department staff, including the law enforcement staff, are focusing first and foremost on informing
the public, especially during the first year law enforcement chief and assistant chief
have sort of emphasized to me that, you know, they don't expect to be writing citations,
They expect to be informing the public about this, and we've created some little handout
cards that have kind of how to get more information about the lands passes and how to buy lands
passes that we can give to anyone who's interested to hand out.
Our staff, volunteers, local businesses, law enforcement, and let's see.
I would say the wardens have said to me, you know, if we see someone one day and
And we tell them, you know, okay in the future you should have a lands pass and we see them
the next day and they don't have a lands pass, they might write a citation.
And it's an infraction and the violation is, I think, a minimum of $50 to remember,
frankly, if it's $150 or $250 is the upper limit for an infraction.
It's not really spelled out in the regulations, but the higher-ups in law enforcement have
said they are okay with having daily passes saved on a smartphone.
So if you want to download it on your smartphone and carry it that way, it will be okay.
Just wanted to show you what the signs look like.
A few of our regions wanted brown and white signs.
If you wanted green and white signs, this region wanted brown and white signs.
And so it does a couple things.
It explains the basic requirements and it clearly identifies the Department of Fish
and Wildlife because we know people have confusion about what properties are actually
Department of Fish and Wildlife properties.
It has the information on how to purchase.
And we also keep a sort of blank area on – we made them sort of a blank area
so that individual property managers that they have property-specific information they
want to attach to the sign, they can.
And then we have some smaller pedestrian trail signs.
Now,
I work more at a statewide level, but I can talk a little bit about Hope Valley
and Shelley Blair can probably answer more questions about Hope Valley.
But I just, for anyone, if there's anyone in the room who isn't familiar with it,
there's Southlake Tahoe,
Berkeleyville, down here, and this is in pink.
In the pink lines is the Hope Valley Wildlife Area.
And the area I'm going to focus on next is sort of the southernmost part,
the southern half of the large main unit, the Hope Valley unit.
We had a little bit of a bottleneck in the sign production,
so Shelly has enough signs to get started, but she will eventually have more.
But she told me her initial priorities were basically where Highway 89 and Highway 88 meet.
to have lands past signs where people park, and one case where people pull out and walk
onto the property to fish, and then further up that are hiking further north on the property.
There's a really nice way to walk down to Willow Creek and a really pretty, more closed
enforced riparian area.
So that is pretty much all I have. Thank you very much again for
letting me talk and I will try to answer questions and if I can't I will write them down and
get back to you.
Well,
I have a comment right off the bat here, sorry. So regarding the letter that was apparently
sent to us, and I believe you that it was, but it just says to all interested in
infected parties. It doesn't say Board of Supervisors. And that's the same comment I
heard from when we were at the California State Association of Counties annual meeting
down in Sacramento was that these letters didn't go to the Board of Supervisors. They went
to the Fish and Game Commissions of the counties, maybe.
They went to both. Yeah, they were going to both.
Okay, so did it specifically say Board of Supervisors on our letter because?
On the address.
Yes.
On the address.
Okay, but it didn't, okay.
So I think it just needs to be, maybe you need to revise how you send these out to be more
specific and more clear because it was truly, none of us knew about it and many other supervisors
that I talked to this last week didn't know anything about it prior to this coming
down.
So I just think there was a gap in your communications.
Okay, so I will talk with the commission about whether they can do a mail merge.
They send that same letter out to, besides all the counties and the county fishing wildlife
supervisory commissions, they also send out to hundreds of other interested parties
like every Audubon chapter and Sierra Club chapter and hunting organizations.
Organizations and so so their mailing list is really long. It's really easy to get on their mailing list by the way
Yeah, but I think this falls on your organization. I mean come on. This is
2017 you should be able to mail merge
Right. That's what I mean. I used their
I used their mailing list, but I
We mail merged our letters, of course we were when we were sending it. We were sending fewer letters
But that's true. We sent out. I did send out. We sent out hundreds of letters
Okay, well, I hope you're listening to me. I'm talking about corrections in the future, right? Okay
I don't care how you did it. Obviously it didn't get to us. I'm talking about the future. Yes
I in the future. I will okay
I didn't send the ones that were sent in May 2016 that was sent by the Commission
But I will make sure that they know that
They're letters to you because it's there. It's really their regulations. I propose I prepare the package for them
But they do all the outreach and they hold the hearings and adopt or not adopt regulations.
So I can talk to them because, yes, I will use mail merge and I did use mail merge.
Just for my public outreach when we were going to implement these, but they should definitely
– the commission should definitely – I hear you.
Well, no, they have to.
Yeah.
They have to.
That's what I'm telling you.
They have to get the information out to us correctly.
It doesn't matter who's using what mail merge or who's involved in what, it has to get to
the proper organizations and the Board of Supervisors need to know in all counties, okay?
That's all I have, but I appreciate your presentation.
If I may, I have a few further questions.
In Hope Valley, there are restrooms that are currently maintained, I understand,
by Sorenson's Resort and others.
Is this funding mechanism going to be used to fund the maintenance of those
restrooms in the parking area and the signage there?
Shelly, because she's the funds do are going to help with that.
You do have some mitigation funds left over. However, we have to submit
invoices for those funds. So there's some money left over to help with the
maintenance but but we do plan on using some of these funds as well. And I
understand the day-to-day dumping garbage and all that and picking up
litter and things. In addition at Pickett's Junction in Hope Valley there's
a cross-country ski center there that they use certainly parts of this area
will folks who go cross-country skiing in Hope Valley need a permit now? Yes
they will need a permit. So we'll have to figure out a way to make sure that they
have that information when they arrive or they are able to get that permit if
they're using our properties. In addition, a lot of folks access US Forest Service
lands off of Highway 89 in Hope Valley to get, and they have to cross Cal
and wildlife lands on your road. They're simply crossing either through a meadow or actually
on an existing road that is now gated. Will they also have to get a permit?
Can I answer this because I get asked this question for other properties as well about
access to people who are passing through kind of situations. And I would say the
situation with the passing through. I mean the regulations don't and the statutes don't
go into that level of detail about if this situation then X. I would say that people
are going, I expect that people will treat it the way they treat requirements of where
to park and how long to park in many situations or speed limits or whatever. You know what
the rule is, and people make decisions about, you know, if they know they're only going
to be there for 30 minutes, they're sort of deciding, am I going to participate or am
I not going to participate.
But it's not something we can really, you know, are likely to focus on policing.
I just have a couple more quick questions.
Regarding the consumer profile, the annual land's passed,
is that only for California residents or can Nevada residents apply for that?
Oh, Nevada residents, yes, Nevada residents can. They can obtain them.
There are locations in Nevada that sell California hunting
and fishing licenses, and they can go online.
Anybody anywhere can go on to our website and buy them.
I just want to mention about people across country skiers.
The point of really, I will tell you that the legislation was drafted
by the hunting community that became 1745
because it's sort of been a thorn in their side that enters an angler's pay
through their licenses and their fees to maintain these properties and so they
want other types of users to participate which they have
Local point. Especially as our lands are used more and more and more by other types of recreation.
A follow-up question. In the pickets area, Hope Valley area, a lot of seniors use that area.
I mean, that's an inexpensive way to recreate hiking up the old highway. A lot of handicapped folks use that area.
They don't necessarily go there fishing, but to enjoy Hope Valley, and they will be required.
A lot of those folks are on fixed incomes, so is there a way that they could be fit into
a waiver of some type?
Yes.
What they can do, the department has about half a dozen different reduced fee or free
fishing license programs for things like low-income seniors and disabled
veterans I think are free, recovering service members. There is low-income
Native Americans. There's like half a dozen of them. And there's a web page
on the department website or you can just call the license and revenue
branch and ask about or probably any of the the fishing game offices and
and ask about the low income fishing licenses.
And that fishing license works just as well
in place of a lands pass as a full price fishing license.
So the point is for when people have a fishing license
or hunting license, they've already contributed.
And in addition, just west of this area,
the main property in Hope Valley,
there are some other parts of the Hope Valley
wildlife area that is used for dispersed camping and they will have to have a
permit as I understand it.
Okay just yeah
it appears they may not know where the
bound is. Yeah I think if a law enforcement officer found them on
department land and the land's pass would be sort of the lesser problem but
But that would be a, yeah, that is more of a, I'll let Shelley speak to that, but that
to me sounds like more of a boundary defining issue.
And lastly, you brought up the topic of funding mechanisms.
I know I serve on the Carson Waters of Conservancy District.
And they've approached Cal Fish and Wildlife regarding dispersing red lake water and
here in Lakewater for a consumptive use downstream in Nevada. They would sell it to those folks.
Cal Fish and Wildlife, the representatives they have talked with said they would oppose
it because the money generated would go into the state general fund. Is that accurate and
could that be used for environmental purposes in O'Fallee?
I would have to talk to the fisheries staff that you spoke with because I'm not familiar.
I just work on the department lands, so I'm not aware of either our water branch or fisheries
branches probably involved with that.
One thing I would say that this income does do, and it's not gazillions of dollars.
There's an economic analysis in that package that's available.
They're documents online that I think I provided information about that you can see the economic
analysis for the Lands Pass program.
But I think what we're hoping to do with it is to, you're right, it goes into a very
dedicated account and we hope to use it to leverage federal grants or other types of
partnership projects sort of to get more bang for the buck.
I do have to say at red light in particular if you don't drain it to a certain extent
there's an algae bloom and it, I'll leave it at that.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
David?
David, we have more questions.
More questions.
Oh, yes.
This is a hot topic.
Oh, it is.
It is important here.
Very.
First of all, I'd like to second Supervisor Woodrow's comments about notice.
As I mentioned earlier, none of the supervisors I talked to at CSAC had any knowledge of this
whatsoever.
So letters may have gone out, but they were not received and read, and so this is the
first time we've heard of it.
Supervisor Argyrain bought up the point of people passing through these areas to the
Forest Service land.
If somebody's driving through on the highway, I presume they don't need a permit, is
What if they run an old forest service or county road?
Do they need a permit for that?
I think if it's not on department, I think if they're driving through and it's not on department,
and they're not, and they're driving on a road that doesn't, you know, belong to the department,
I think the intent is for people who are recreating on department land to have a lands pass.
So if instead of driving along that road, somebody is walking along the road or in the winter time skiing along that road, are they exempt as well?
If they're on the department, if they're on within the department's property, then they are expected to have a lands pass.
If they're on a forest service, a road that belongs to the forest service with a county or another private or a private landowner, anyone besides the Department of Fish and Wildlife, they are not expected to have a lands pass.
Okay, probably too late to complain, but you know, I know the department wants to use this
money for good causes, but there is a debt the department owes to most counties in the
payment and lieu of taxes.
Wouldn't that be a better place to put the money and pay that money, pay that back first
before taking on something else?
Well, this pot of money is dedicated in statute to the native species conservation and enhancement
account.
So that's what it has to go for.
And I think that I can't really speak with a lot of knowledge about the NLEU fee situation
except that I think it's been a problem that the state created this sort of
created this situation through statute and has never allocated funds to the
department to pay in lieu fees. But then presumably with this money that you're
going to raise from these passes you could do the maintenance work you needed
to do previously being paid from other parts of your budget and that would
free up money to reimburse us for the pilt fees that have not been paid?
It's not a lot.
It's only $152,000 statewide is the projected revenue and that's actually, and then most
of that goes, a lot of it goes to actually the cost, the first five years of the program.
So statewide the projection is $53,000 a year for augmenting management of department lands.
It's not very much.
Is this program worth it then?
Okay. It was passed by the legislature.
That's not a recommendation.
I think one thing it does do, there are a couple things it does, I try to tell myself
or the silver lining, the department has been told multiple times we need to collect more
in user fee.
At the same time, the department has also been told that we need to find more stable
funding sources and not have money coming in so many tiny unstable plots.
It's hard for our directors to go to the legislature and ask for more funding when we haven't done
what they've already told us to do, which is to increase user fees.
I can show you multiple places in statutes and in that report where that's called
for.
So, I mean, they're considering that we're very late to the game to do this.
So, I think it might support our cause with the legislature to bring in more funding.
And the other thing was this program is like 28 years old.
It's been accumulating.
It's an account you can see in the state budget.
And it's never been spent.
And it's not because we haven't asked for money out of it.
And it's been accumulating money.
Again, not a lot.
It was only on six properties.
There wasn't a lot of publicity, but certain properties collect quite a bit of money.
And this is the first year we've been allocated funds because they had to cut some loose for
us to buy all the signs.
So I think that that's established a precedent that we will be able to access these funds
finally for on-the-ground property, on-the-ground projects, which we have never been able
to do before.
So that's the solar lining.
So does it pay for itself?
Well, it's not necessarily just the actual dollar amount it brings in, and it might,
who knows, it might exceed my expectations, but it has hopefully some other value as well.
I'm skeptical it'll work, but that's my opinion, but that's all I have.
Okay, Ron.
Oh, if I may.
Oh.
I'd just like to follow up on what David just said, and I hate to spring this on you
I see John Bresnan sitting in the back might be somewhat familiar with this.
This is the Hope Valley report done in 1988, which I participated in, and in the back is
a balance sheet of lost taxes, and they do mention Pilt.
So that was a part of the sales pitch to the county that, you know, the county was
supposed to be reimbursed to a certain degree.
I won't say a lot, 100% because there are other lands that went private.
You'll have this report later today.
Thank you, Don. Ron.
Another part of that that he wasn't talking about as well in that report is that some of the funds
set aside for us to make up for the property tax loss
don't make any money for us right now in this current market.
No one expected zero interest rates.
So it's really been a hurt to the county.
The first thing I have to do is complain about not notice.
This was amazing that no one knew about this.
It's amazing that the public wasn't aware of it.
Very few people had some insight to this.
And whether your attempt to get us noticed to us was honorable, I'm glad it was.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen.
And weren't you suspicious if no one made a public comment from our side about this?
because at that time you would have assumed that somebody would have commented on it.
But we did receive public comments.
Not from Alpine County, but from other counties.
There's 20 counties that have new properties, and we did hear from some of them.
But not from us.
So obviously we didn't have the notice because we would have responded
because you could tell for the ire on the board that we are not happy with this at all.
This is actually really quite a stab in the back with the trust that we have with these
agencies.
You don't pay us the pilt, you tell us something is going to happen, then it surprises us.
This is going to be woefully inadequate for these signages.
You're not talking about the people coming from Scott Lake, you're not talking about
the people coming from the Bouton Bouton bike trail that comes onto this area as
well.
There's been people for over 20 years that have actually been clearing that road
in the spring with their brooms so they can ride it all summer.
How are you going to charge them or do that?
Are you going to pull away law enforcement from the poaching to do this, to go get a $50 ticket?
It's ridiculous.
The amount of signs that you have marked on this map won't even come close to the knowledge.
And even if you're out in the middle of the meadow, you will not know where you are.
There is no way you will know if you're on your property or the Forest Service property.
And if you're in the wintertime and it's going to cover up the signs that you're going to put out of your 100 feet,
I assume that's what you're going to need to do.
We're going to be on top of those signs.
We're not going to know where we're at.
And it looks like you're going to expand this to the Hope Valley southern area.
That's going to come in the future. Is that not part of this now?
Yeah, it would be on all units of Hope Valley.
And I understand that it is not very practical.
Well, it's almost impossible to say it's close to practical.
But, you know, it is impressing me.
So, I've seen some sales figures for the – we updated – really updated the sales interface
on online for the Lands Pass program, and so I've been getting reports of how many
are being sold and it's impressing me actually, and it might exceed what we – I mean,
I mean, I thought the estimates in the proposal were kind of rosy myself, but it may exceed
them.
People are being pretty good about it.
I would say the reactions that we see online about this are everything from,
you know,
this should have happened a long time ago because everyone should be supporting Department
Lands to, you know, explicative, explicative, I'm never going to visit a Department property
again.
Can we couch this just the Hope Valley part?
I'm really not concerned about the other lands passes and the other 20 counties concerned
about this one.
Are you getting money from this lands pass?
This hasn't started to be, we haven't required it until January 1st.
So let's talk about us then, okay?
I'm sure the state has some very good programs that you've faced this on.
Most of those places have one way in, one way out.
This is not that way.
This has been free and open land for people to drive through.
Even when it was private property, there was a ability to travel through this property.
Historically long before this Hope Valley transfer happened.
And a lot of us that were here at that time, that was more to protect it from the power line and from the potential ski area.
That was going to go from the entire north side of the valley.
There's a lot of problems with this, and this is any way we can get this back to a public
hearing.
I would like to see this, maybe even with legal injunction, that we wait and make this go back
for a year for us to have a public hearing on this, because I don't think this has been
fetted out from the public, and the public is not aware of it.
We have businesses that are in the room today that are going to be affected by this,
and they didn't know about it until two weeks ago, a month ago at the most.
This is a winter program.
This is not just something that's going to be tomorrow.
It's going to be from now on.
And I think we're being damaged unfairly in our county
because of this, and the lack of notice that happened,
I'm sure you sent it out, but we did not get it.
We would have noticed this.
We would have talked about this, I'm sure, beforehand.
And you could talk to anybody in this county about this.
This is a surprise.
I've only met one person that knew about this
before I told them about it.
And I wish we could find some way to put this on pause
and let the public comment on it and see if we can actually make this perhaps even go away.
Thank you.
And then I also wanted to ask, so you're going to have law enforcement people wandering around
trying to enforce this in all of these areas?
Law enforcement will be the same that it's always been, I think,
to the extent that law enforcement is present on Hope Valley,
that is the extent they will continue to be on Hope Valley.
law enforcement right correct okay so they can ask someone that they encounter do
you have a lands pass and they don't then they can you know explain to them that
they need a lands pass and give them explain to them how to obtain them and
it's it's there is not a big enforce there's not much of an enforcement
component frankly and a lot of our properties do have very few of our
properties have single points of in-entrance and exits. We have this
issue where there's many trails that come on from other lands onto our
properties and that was pointed out. Okay. Well I'm sorry that that was a
surprise that you did not hear sooner. I just think it was poorly
executed this whole thing, and I agree with Ron. It would sure be nice to set the pause
button on this because it's just not fair.
I'm sure.
Yes.
I just want to say too that I have to concur with all my colleagues here this morning.
We did not know about this, and I feel like we're being forced into something that we
weren't aware of. We have not had time to discuss it. We have not had any public
comment on this. I'm very skeptical if this program is going to even work and I
really feel like we mentioned the Pilt program. I really feel that the
Department of Fish and Wildlife should do diligence and reimburse the counties
which they have not done so in many many years. There's people I'm going to
refer to my own people, the Native American community,
that utilizes all of Alpine County.
And a lot of elders go into Hope Valley
to collect native plants for municipal purposes.
Now, this is going to be kind of, it's unknown to them now.
They're not going to understand what we're trying to do.
This is too restrictive.
And I'm sorry that this is coming before us and I hope this can't be set in stone because
I think it does need to come back to our county and we need to discuss it a lot further.
Yes.
We can photograph the picture for the daily pass on our smartphone.
Are you going to allow the annual pass to be on our smartphone?
Annual pass is, that's a good question.
I have not I would have to ask about that. It's you know it when you buy it. It looks like I'm having our fish fishing license
Okay, and then if someone goes out fishing at Pickett's Junction, and they invited their girlfriend over to watch them fish
She would have to have a pass then right?
Right
Yeah, this is this is crazy
And then I don't know if you're aware but we are aware and some of them on the border aware that there's some actually
see some native relics on these parcels that some of the natives do go visit. We've
actually had a vandalism case that's been pending. I don't know if it's been settled
yet at the federal case. How is that going to affect this? I mean, those people need
to go see where their history and their family was, and you're going to charge them?
Interesting, because it's come up at another property. And I think I was thinking we
You have a tribal liaison at the department, and I would like to get in touch with you,
are you the major contact on tribal issues?
Oh, I'm the representative of the Hongalalti community, and I basically speak for the
Washoe Tribal community.
And again, this should have been a public comment period for everybody involved.
And you know,
this information today is just, it's very upsetting.
No one knew about it.
Nobody is going to understand the ins and outs of this and what is right and wrong anymore.
And I just hope it's not going to have to be set in stone, and we can't do anything about it.
Okay, do we have any other comments?
Okay, so the recommended action on this is just presentation and possible discussion.
Oh, yes, Alyssa.
Or I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Nicole Williamson, Health and Human Services Director.
I just want to comment that I appreciate, along the same lines as both what Supervisor
as Ereco and Supervisor Jardine said.
I'm glad to hear that there may be discounted
or free passes for elderly or disabled or Native Americans,
but there's a whole group of people.
I do believe that if you receive cash aid,
and correct me if I'm wrong,
that you can get a fishing license free of charge.
No?
Okay, so now we have a whole group of people
who may not get a free fishing license,
who are living below the poverty level,
and we are restricting public lands for their access.
And I just have to say that that just creates another barrier.
And my other question is for you,
do if their individual passes,
does that mean one family can't purchase a pass
and like both parents will have to have a $25 pass
to take their children to Hope Valley for a year?
They can either buy,
so let's see.
About the free passes.
I have a copy of, well I have a copy of the fishing game code which I think has the information
about land passes or I can look it up in the regulations as far as, I mean not land passes,
the reduced fee fishing licenses and who they apply to, but if someone has a reduced
fee license they don't need a land pass and their, the cost is about $7.50 per year
for a whole year if it's the reduced fee one and they can go on the land's
property as much as they want and then the the other question you had okay so
the the if they want an annual lands pass to go on is as much as they want as
a family, it would be $25.10 for each family member who is 16 or older who does not have
a hunting or fishing license.
It depends if the value of that property is worth that and also a day pass for adults
is $4.32. That could be an $8.64 trip.
Okay. Again, this is creating a barrier to low-income
people to accessing public land. And I also just want to comment that I'm a little taken
aback that the department has a tribal liaison and did not do a tribal consultation with
the Washoe Tribe because I work a lot with California Department of Social Services.
They have a tribal liaison.
I have personally arranged for the tribal liaison to consult with the tribe.
So I just want to express that.
That's a little concerning because I do believe that was an order from the governor.
That's a good point.
Thank you, Nicole.
There was another hand over here.
Yes, Rita.
A
little county librarian, but I'm actually speaking as a private citizen.
I have a question.
My husband runs a trail organization.
They do work on trails, and I noticed some of the trails may be in the area where there is a fee.
Is it going to be expected that the people who come and help on the trails, the volunteers, are going to volunteer?
I think it says that here.
The volunteers, while they're volunteering, are not required to have a lands pass.
Landspasses are for quote-unquote visitors and visitors are defined in the regulations
As people who are who are on the property to recreate so
People who are there to do work on the property either on a volunteer or as part of their job
They're not really categorized as visitors
So they're not required to have a lands pass when they're doing work on the property
okay any other comments yes we have one more here Jim morning
board Jim Holdridge
resident Woodford's question for the presenter we have an annual alpine
Aspen festival event we had approximately a thousand people participating in that
this last fall so is that a thousand people that are gonna be responsible for
day passes? Thank you. Right, did you hear that question?
I'm sorry about that.
Is it
a group event held on the wildlife area?
It might help if I explain it. Most of the
center of Aspen Festival starts at Pickett's Junction or at Blue Lakes
Road parking. However some of the trips, in fact the trip I went on, I
guided, was on I believe will be on the Red Lake heritage where the Red
corral is, so that will not be included in this, this time, but in the future maybe what
Breville Corral is, but several of those other hikes may actually encroach on some of these
areas.
So, there are a number of, so, yes, so if it's group events, participants are expected
to have passes, and the way other groups are dealing with this is either in their
publicity for their event, they're saying, you know, be sure to get your lands passed
in advance, you know, and here are the ways to do it.
Yeah, that's going to be encouraging.
Or I myself am a member of the Native Plant Society and when we go to county parks for
plant hikes that have a $5 parking lot fee, it says in the publicity, bring $5 for parking.
I bring $5 for parking.
That you can pay them.
Yes, but you can call the 800, it's pretty quick to call the 800 number.
The other thing is that group leaders do sometimes, the other thing is they can buy,
a group leader can buy enough passes for the entire group.
And then they get people to RSVP, if they're a group that wants RSVPs, they ask people,
They try to get an idea of how many passes they need and buy passes for the group
So they can buy a pass without a name on it because they can transfer right right, so if they think let's say
They get 30 RSVPs that people want to go on this hike and they get 30
Passes and probably a couple people won't show up at the last minute, but a couple people
Will show up at the last minute and it works out
pretty well any warden who came across just happened to come across that group
would be ecstatic at that level of effort you know I don't think they would
spend their time you know checking all 30 people's lands passes so and at least
that's the way it's been expressed to me by law enforcement stuff our local
question okay well so yeah groups well it's a yes groups are expected for
instance we right now have thousands of people they're going on sandhill crane
tours at our Woodbridge ecological reserve and they're expected to have
lands passes and now the last month we've sold you know 600 wood passes at
Woodbridge so if I may I think the bottom line is that for a county
community that relies on tourism this is going to deter a lot of people away from
our communities when they know that they have to purchase a land pass just to
enjoy a day out or
You know, just enjoy the scenery that we have available in this county. It's going to hurt us.
If I may suggest we agendize this for a future meeting, bring all these elements together so we can comment to the appropriate agency as a follow-up.
Thank you. That's what I was writing here to talk about. So I think that's a good point that we agendize this and talk about it some more.
Or as you can tell, we are not happy, and really not happy.
So can I make a suggestion that we include the Fish and Game Commission and also Director
level staff in the department?
Well, in Alpine County, or are you talking about in California Fish and World Life?
I mean in the department, like for instance, if the department is going to be represented
presented at another meeting?
Your department.
Yes, my department.
That's what I didn't understand.
But I think this is also a matter.
The Department of Fish and Game cannot change these regulations.
We don't change regulations.
We don't promulgate regulations.
We work on regulation packages at the direction
of the Fish and Game Commission.
The California Department of Fish and Game Commission,
it's important that they, it's critical.
Okay, so we'll talk to our Senator and Assemblyman.
on that. Thank you very much.
Okay, that took a long time, so we've got one more.
Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, you may. Yeah, no, I think we should. Why not? Let's take an
hour to do this. John Brisbane Sorenson's in Hope Valley Resorts. Yes. We don't have a
long history, obviously. But a very short history in terms of how this was
rolled out, very, very improperly done. So I will have a discussion with the state secretary
of the state of the natural resources on Wednesday to see if they can put a stay on this.
Thank you very much. There was another hand? No? Okay. Well, on that note, it's been an
hour. We will move on to our 9.45 item. It's 10.30. So 9.2 presentation by California
Department of Fish and Wildlife,
Wildlife Biologist, Shelly Blair regarding deer herds in Alpine County.
I also want to thank you for the opportunity to present this,
and I will scream through this presentation as quickly as possible
since we're running a little behind.
Yeah, I am Shelly Blair.
I'm the unit wildlife biologist for El Dorado County and Alpine counties.
I am tasked with all the wildlife management issues in those two counties,
as well as the land manager of all the lands and the wildlife areas and ecological
reserves that we own in those two counties. And so it's it's a lot of stuff to do.
And today I've been asked to present about your deer herd in this area and
I'm going to give you an overview of that herd and hopefully interest you.
So I'm just going to go over her description, how we measure population
parameters. What are the reasons for the population decline? Because I've had that
question asked quite a bit. I'm sure a lot of you have that in the back of your
mind and what you can do about it potentially. So our herd description, the
Carson River deer herd, is composed of primarily mule deer that also included a
black-tailed deer and hybrids of both. So the black-tailed deer are mostly
closer to the El Dorado County line, but they do crossover. Obviously deer
don't look at boundaries, and they can hybridize between the two.
But mostly the majority of the deer herd here are male deer.
So in the big scheme of things, all these colors are different deer herds that California
manages, and obviously the Carson deer herd is here in Alpine County.
This is the range map.
So right here is Tahoe.
This section that's striated is their winter range, and you can see that the Nevada-California
line is there, so most of their winter range is in Nevada, and then there's summer ranges
over here in California, and it also shows some fawning areas and migration pathways
that they tend to take.
So the seasonal range for this deer herd, the interesting thing about the deer herd
is historically is distributed across Alpine County,
El Dorado County, Mono County, and Douglas Counties.
And with that, you notice that we share
this deer herd with Nevada.
And the Nevada Department of Wildlife
and the California Department of Wildlife,
we manage deer.
And sometimes we manage deer a little bit differently.
However, we do have a very unique cooperative relationship
with the Nevada Department of Wildlife
and we meet annually to discuss
what our tag allocations will be
based on each other's surveys. The area used by this population is approximately 1370 square
miles. Based on a coloring study that we did in 2012, we colored 30 individuals in the summer range
and watched their movements. Their summer range included 321 square miles, and their winter range
included 722 square miles. Again, a large portion of their winter range is in Nevada,
and 15 out of those 30 deer that migrated did go into Nevada.
So that was one of the questions we had during this callering study is whether or not that is true.
And yes, it is, in fact, true.
And this map down here shows this blue outline is the winter range for those color deer.
This kind of pinkish red is the summer range, and these areas where there's pink is fawning areas.
So there's a lot of misconceptions about resident deer versus migratory deer.
Migration is a life history strategy that occurs in deer and encompasses a behavioral continuum from resident to migrant influenced by changing ecological conditions.
So why do deer migrate?
And typically it's because animals with high quality seasonal home ranges are not likely to migrate because migration takes a lot of energy.
So if they're getting what they require, they may not migrate.
And so they are considered resident deer, and animals with less desirable quality of
resources or none available due to the ecological conditions are migratory, and usually this
happens when there's high snow levels.
And since we haven't had the snowpack levels, we are seeing some behavioral changes with
migratory deer.
Sometimes, some years they don't migrate, some of them don't, some of them do no
matter what, so it's interesting to find that out.
Of the 30 individuals collared in 2012 study, 10 of them remain resident deer, which means
they did not move very far.
So these are just some maps of our study.
And I know it looks like little dots on a map.
So if you want a copy of the presentation, but this just kind of is an overview of,
this one is our migration in 2012 from the deer we collared in 2012.
And so you kind of see what their patterns were.
And also note that a lot of them are crossing major highways
and crossing them quite a bit.
So that's another thing I'll discuss later.
This is the migratory movement in 2013.
And most of the resident deer were near Indian Creek Reservoir.
They didn't move very far in that area.
And then this is 2014, the deer we had collared there, and again you can see right here, these
guys here didn't move very far, if at all.
So I wanted to go over what your deer hunt zone looks like.
This zone is considered X8.
These X zones are restricted deer hunt zones.
We have general tags, which is our D zones, but this in particular is an X zone.
It's a kind of a premier deer hunting spot and hunters, they acquire preference points
to increase their chance of getting drawn for this area.
It's highly sought out these ex-zones because it's mule deer, larger deer, and so that's
why they're their premier deer hunt zones.
Our rifle season for this area, for the zone, is three weeks long.
It starts at the end of September, it goes to mid-October and our archery season is mid-August to mid-September with a little bit of a break in between the two.
So something interesting to consider is measuring population parameters.
And there's been a lot of variable data sampling techniques over the years.
Aerial surveys have been done by California and Nevada to do numbers and composition counts.
And composition counts are just basically determining male versus female and how many
fawns per doe.
And so some of the different techniques are line transects, which it's a parallel system
where a helicopter or a plane goes systematically spaced across an area.
And then you count based on that.
And then those numbers are put into models to get population numbers.
There's quadrant sampling, which is randomly selecting big polygons and then really
intensely going through those polygons with a helicopter and counting.
And then there's Direct Search, which is what INDAO does, where they go where they know the
deer is and count them and comp them.
And there's also been a period of time where there's been no aerial surveys in some of
these time periods because we were grounded due to a helicopter crash.
So we had to re-up our helicopter surveys.
So as you can see, there's a lot of variety in how these population parameters are measured.
And I'll go into that a little more in a minute.
The other thing we do is kill vary estimates using harvest data.
And this is not a very great technique as well.
It's subject to hunter success and also reporting rates by those hunters.
And also the accuracy of those reporting locations.
So it's highly biased and inaccurate.
There's a correction factor of unreported considered and what happens is the kill vary is again another population model where we stick those parameters into a model and it punches out population numbers.
Deer hunters are now required to report each year. In the past it's been an optional and they're required even to report no take or they're fined.
And this is very new.
I think it was just last year that they were actually
going to be fine for it.
And it has increased our reporting rates
from about 35% to almost 89%.
So consequences do help with the reporting rate.
And we are grateful for this because this gives us
really great information about the herds and the harvest
data.
So it's important that the hunters do report.
This is a fairly new technique that we're using.
It's population and density estimates
using fecal DNA. So basically what we do is we establish transects. We run these
transects and collect fecal pellets and these pellets are run for DNA so we can
mark an individual animal and sex that animal and then we do kind of a mark
recapture modeling technique. 2017 was a second year of the fecal DNA data
collected from our exomes and we are still waiting results on that but
But we're very positive about how we can utilize this particular technique.
And what we're hoping is all these techniques will just booster the accuracy of the population
models.
And this method is really good when you can't fly helicopters to see deer.
So this is kind of an option for those areas as well.
So, this is an interesting graph about the population trend since 1990, and you can see
that there's been kind of a steady decline of the deer herds.
These numbers do reflect the variability of sampling techniques, and you have to also
understand that there are advantages and disadvantages to all of those techniques.
And one of the major disadvantages is that, you know, the bias of the observer in the
helicopter.
So you're not having the same person observing every year, you know, you have different conditions, weather conditions when you're flying the helicopter.
So it's, when you look at these numbers, you have to look at them from that perspective, but there's a lot of variable in the numbers.
But we can see, we do, we are able to see trends, so that's really important to know what's going on.
And so you'll notice on this graph there's kind of a peak here in population and it decreases a little peak.
So the question is why do we have those peaks and falls.
And so the causes for population fluctuations, again, is the noise in the system, the variable sampling.
And then in 1991 and 92 there's a drop in population.
This could be because of the devastating winter for the North State and deer herds that happened all over the deer herds
That those particular years and then again, it may be to explain the 2016 spike
There was mild winners over a five-year drought. So we see more fawn survival
So here is the million dollar question, why don't we see deer in the numbers like we did 30 or 40 years ago, right?
So I'm hoping to answer that a little bit
So in 30, a while ago, 30, 40 years ago,
there was habitat utopia.
Logging in fires created ideal habitat for deer.
When you have really thick forested areas,
you're missing out on the shrubs
and the stuff that the deer browse on,
so there's not as good quality food.
So a long time ago, the landscape looked very different.
Now we suppress the fires,
so you're not, and also we're having larger, hotter fires.
So it's devastating instead of having, you know, controlled burns, which would...
We really help out a lot of wildlife species. We have these massive fires happening because
of the way we're managing the lands. Land management has changed over the years. Reforestation with
plantations. We're selecting harvests, herbicides to promote tree growth and kill deer food.
That has some effects on why we're not seeing the numbers we did way back when. Also predator
removal helped create artificially high deer populations. So, you know, more and more hunting
is being restricted. For instance, we don't hunt mountain lions anymore and bears can
no longer be pursued with dogs. And so, less people are hunting and means a lot more predators.
And the rest of the story of the declining numbers is urban sprawl.
This right here is a picture of Job's Peak area.
This is looking into the Carson Valley.
And I know most of you know that a lot of that area has been developed in the last few years, like a lot.
And that is prime habitat for deer wintering grounds.
So we are currently in the process of working with the Nevada Land Trust to
secure the Job's Peak Ranch area on the California side because there was a
developer that did own that and no longer does and so we're trying to protect
that for a deer, critical deer wintering. Also when you have urban
sprawl you have deer coming into areas and eating vegetation from people's
yards and then you have this conflict where they're getting stuck in hammocks and their
heads are getting in these cages and their deer antlers are getting caught up in Christmas
lights so we have that going on too, some of these deer.
And then they also just hang around and can create problems for the urban areas as well.
Disease is another factor of the deer decline.
Really important to consider that you do not feed the deer, it's illegal, first of all.
Second of all, it congregates deer unnaturally.
Deer are very resilient and able to adapt to their surroundings,
so some people like during the drought felt like they needed to help the wildlife out
and leave out water and various other things.
We highly recommend not doing that.
It does congregate animals and potentially spread disease.
So these are just some of the diseases that are potentially common to deer and
Yeah, so we and we're actually going to
increase our chronic waste and disease
Surveillance in especially in the x-zones our wildlife veterinarian has some concerns of it. It is not in California yet
But we do need to do surveillance for it because there are animals that could potentially be shedding the virus and not
So we are going to start a bolstered surveillance program for that.
The vehicle collisions are a huge problem for deer.
And there's more superhighways being built in rural areas.
So you want people to come up and enjoy the outdoors and the wildlife.
And roads are being built to get those people there.
And unfortunately, that is not a good thing for the wildlife at times.
So that's another issue of the deer decline.
And then poaching is actually a pretty big deal.
I have another study going on in the El Dorado County,
and we've had four of our color deer poached,
which indicates to us that there's quite a large poaching issue going on.
And unfortunately, Fish and Wildlife has very few law enforcement officers,
and they can't be at all places at all time.
And you guys are very fortunate to have an amazing warden working in your county
who is very aggressively and actively looking for these people that are
grossly taking these animals illegally. And then our predators the culprit. So
mountain lions, I mentioned before, they are no longer hunted. Recreational
hunting ended in 1972 for them. They were especially protected by passing a
117 in 1990 and the depredation permit is the only avenue that allows take of
mountain lions and we are seeing an increase in mountain lion conflict with
humans especially in El Dorado County because there's a lot more hobby farmers
and people obviously but we we think that their population is definitely
increasing and that is going to have a huge impact on deer since that is their
main source of food.
And then bears, again, no longer can hunt with dogs.
And the tag quotas aren't filled anymore, so we're seeing a population increase there.
We're seeing bears moving further down in elevations, probably because there's more
bears and they have to be dispersing, which causes conflict with people.
And several studies have shown that bears may be influencing deer population numbers
by stealing mountain lion kills.
And this was proven in a Minnesino study that was done.
And also just in my own knowledge and observations with another study that I have going on that we typically see a mountain lion kill and a bear will come.
And once the bear comes to scavenge on that kill, the mountain lion will leave and not come back to it.
So it needs to kill another deer.
So we think that this is having more of an impact than we realized.
So this is a video I'm not going to show because we don't have time.
It's just a deer or a bear stealing mountain lion kill.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about hunting the X-Zone.
So the top line is the tag quota over the years, what we've determined to be the tag quota.
And the interesting thing about this graph is that, so the reported is the purple number,
the reported number of harvest.
And then we do kind of an estimate of how many people we think are not reporting.
And so that is the estimate in orange.
And as you can see that even though the tag numbers are high,
this actual harvest is pretty steady throughout the X8 zone.
And then the Carson River Apprentice Either Sex Hunt,
which is basically a junior hunt.
These are the results from that hunt from your county.
And the top line, the blue is the tag quotas.
There's only 10 animals at first that were allowed to get tags, and that it's up to 15.
And as you can see, the take is very, very minimal.
We have like four deer, and the green is the bucks, the red is the does.
Very minimal take, one to two deer each year.
And in 2015, the Board of Supervisors voted to eliminate their apprentice J7 hunt.
I just wanted to mention that there's probably more roadkill deer killed than from this apprentice
hunt.
And the hunt, and Julie mentioned this before, but the hunting license revenue that we gained
from these people being able to do this benefits the lands currently.
That's how we get money to do our lands program.
And the other thing to consider is impacts from all outdoor recreation because it contributes
it's to the need for these deer to become highly adaptive.
So a lot of recreation is happening.
I've seen an increase just in the short time
that I've been in this county.
So hikers, backpackers, fishermen,
they're going to remote areas.
These deer are being dispersed.
They don't wanna be around people.
And so that has an impact on their behaviors.
So that may be why you're not seeing as many deer
because they're not frequenting in the same areas
because there's people now in those areas.
And this is just from the INDAL's website, just kind of a graph showing all these different
factors affecting the meal-deer decline and you can see there's a lot of different things
that are contributing.
And so what can you do?
Be an advocate, be involved with county general plan updates, land use changes, zoning
changes, open space and deer corridors are important, commenting on forest plans
and projects.
Working with road departments to decrease vehicle, deer collisions is really important.
It's kind of a wave of the future that's happening within our department.
We're working very closely with Caltrans.
Caltrans is getting biologists on their staff to really address this issue of wildlife corridors
and wildlife underpasses and overpasses.
And it's something that we could potentially pursue here in Alpine County working with Caltrans.
And then continue to support conservation easements and land acquisitions for critical deer winter range.
And that is my presentation.
Thank you.
Are there any questions?
Okay, Ron.
I'm trying to find your graph here of the deer herds up and down.
The population?
Yes, the population.
Page 147 of our package.
Prior to 1990, though, I would suspect the numbers were more closer to 10,000 at least
because of the way we had to stop when the deer herd went by when we were driving.
It wasn't like we dodged them. You had to stop. There was too many.
From that perspective, from that number to come down,
and then you're quoting logging as an event that's causing the decrease here,
We haven't had logging in here significantly 60 years, maybe last time there was a significant
log in.
Yeah, a long time, so that can't be used for our logging in fires.
And the fires that we've had have not been really affected a lot of the habitat except
for maybe one fire that was about 20,000 acres on the north shore of the Carson River
West East for the Carson River. So these aren't reasons that are affecting our herd
here. Our herd is being affected by either the density of the population in the winter
range, the vehicle kills, and the sustained take rate. We are not changing any of those
factors yet. The population has gone down and I'm curious why that doesn't go down.
We can't control the take rate from the cars. We can avoid them as best we can.
We can ask Caltrans to actually count them which we talked about in another meeting that they're not counting them
Which would be very helpful for you to know if that was a buck or a deer a doe that got killed and how?
And then of course that doesn't count the deer they got hit on the road and then died a hundred yards in
Which is probably more than actually are killed and slaughtered right on the highway
So I was curious of why these numbers keep coming that this is sustainable
It's not it's been going down continually even more so than your numbers reflect here
It's going down throughout the entire western states.
Dear populations, human populations are increasing, and so all these factors that I'm expressing
is happening throughout the landscape all over the western states.
I know you're focused on Alpine County, but this is something that's happening everywhere
in all of the herds, especially the migratory herds.
So, and you mentioned, you know, populations being huge a long time ago.
This landscape could no way support populations that high anymore.
The carrying capacity is much lower today than it was way back when there were less people,
less roads, less urban sprawl.
I have to bring you back to Alpine County.
We haven't grown.
It's not us.
It can't be us.
But Nevada has.
Right.
But again, a lot of it.
No, as you said in here, 50% actually are transferring into Nevada, so 50% aren't.
So how is the other 50% being mitigated so low?
Well, 50% of the collared deer that we had in our study, which is a small proportion.
Which we discussed.
I have pictures of 10% of your collared deer.
I just really find that amazing that I can take, individually can take 10% of your collared
deer pictures.
It's not enough of a test, in my opinion.
When we talk about this it has to be an honest answer here. In Alpine County the
turd has gone down. We haven't had the factors the other counties have. The
wasting diseases speculation and it hasn't really gotten to here yet. We have
a few of the other diseases that really haven't been huge numbers either here
in this county. Yet we have this population drop and we haven't lost
habitat in this area at all. And if 50% of the herd is leaving and 50%
staying, how come the 50% that's staying doesn't sustain those numbers and we
haven't lost habitat area in our county at all? Well you have to admit that the
county has changed though, the amount of people visiting it, the amount of roads
that are coming in and again we can't separate Alpine County portion of
the herd, the herd we have to look at as a whole and there's been a lot of
changes in this herd in the Nevada side and so again we can't focus on it just as
this portion because they don't know boundaries. You and I discuss this that
the northern part of this deer herd is being affected by the population in
Nevada. The southern part of the herd is not being affected. But there's no
northern, I don't understand what you mean, you mean just their winter range?
The northern part of Alpine County, the herd that goes from that part and
and tries to get to the pine nuts,
has much more of a problem getting through the Carson Valley
than it did 40 years ago, clearly.
The rest of the herd has not had any impacts.
There's not been a new road built in this county
in, again, 60 years perhaps as well.
The harvesting of the logging hasn't happened in 60 years,
so I'm trying to get you to understand
that the rest of the county is not affected by this.
We do have outside factors,
but if you're saying only 50% of this herd
is actually leaving to be affected by that,
what's happening to the other 50%
And why is that in decline to at least probably 10% of its historical number?
Well honestly, we really don't know. I mean, we don't know. Like I said, our ability to get
science to figure out these questions that you have is very limited. We're trying and we're
improving, I have to say, in acquiring the proper science to understand what is happening with
Be safe.
This isn't the only heard. So, yeah, my answer is I don't, I do not know. I know that all these things that I mentioned today are factors that do affect them. How much that affects them, I don't know.
I mean, we would have to call our predators along with that, do fawn recruitment, and all of these studies takes a lot of money and a lot of resources to do.
So the bottom line on my comment is, we've changed everything but the take rate.
We still take the same take rate but the population is dropping.
Would it make sense that we stop the take rate or slow the take rate down?
You mean for hunting?
The take rate is changing.
We have decreased it over time based on the population numbers.
Let me get to that.
The tag quotas used to be at the highest, it was 400 tags were issued down to 200 tags
or less, and we're only taking about 30 deer, an average of 30 deer out of the county.
I guarantee you there's way more deer getting killed by cars, and at least those deer that
being harvested are being utilized for food for families.
Yeah, I'm not going to argue that the people are
being taken the deer are eating them.
I'm glad that that's happening instead of taking trophy deers.
I just discuss when people take it for a trophy.
But the opportunity for it, it's only 30 deer.
It is still a 30 deer.
That 30 deer could actually reproduce how many more deer
in two more years.
It's just amazing to me that that concept doesn't
get past the fish.
It's not just you, it's the whole agency that thinks
that that should state a name and I think the number should drop with the
reflecting of the population drop.
Okay, thank you Ron. David? Just a question,
can you make a stab at what percentage the population, the Deerhurst
population, is now compared to say the 1950s before development started in the
Carson Valley on the Nevada side? I would have to go back and look at
those numbers as far back as the 1950s.
So I can definitely get that for you.
We have some information.
But again, those population numbers
are based on sampling techniques that have disadvantages.
Oh, no, I realize that's why I said, take a stab at.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, I do know it was before my time,
but I believe in the 1950s and 1960s,
there were thousands of hunters here
during the hunting season, and that probably had an effect.
I
just have to say that back in the 60s and 50s the ranches were sagebrush and
Pudill Road was basically ranches.
I have a question. Plenty of hunters too. So the
map that you have here is the Carson River Deer Range map. What is west of
that on the western side of our county on the other side of the hill? What
What is the name of that range?
That would be the, I think you're talking about the Grizzly Flat Herd, which is off
of 88.
Is that what you're talking about?
Well, 88 and four, you know, the rest of Alpine County.
Right.
So I was just wondering what the name of that range was.
There's a Grizzly Flat Herd that frequents that area.
And then also the Railroad Flat Herd.
Well, that's closer to, yeah, okay.
All right.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Not there?
No.
Well, thank you very much for your presentation.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you for allowing me to come.
Thank you, Shelley.
So guess what?
We've taken so long today, and we have a local transportation meeting that's scheduled
for 11 a.m.
So we're going to have to leave this meeting and open the local transportation meeting.
Did you want to take a quick break or just move right into that?
Yeah. Why don't we take a short break?
Okay. And then we'll reserve after that.
And
so we will move back to consent agenda.
So that's item number six.
These matters are expected to be routine and non-controversial and are usually approved
by a single majority vote without discussion.
Items can be removed from the consent agenda to be discussed and considered separately.
Prior to approval of the consent agenda, the chair will announce that comments or
questions will be taken from members of the public, staff, or the board on consent
agenda items when the comment does not necessitate the item being removed for separate
action.
I just wanted to point out that 6.1 and 6.2 minutes will be continued
and also 6.11 will be continued to the next meeting.
So are there any items that anybody wishes to discuss?
Yes, Brian?
Item 6.12, the successful candidate for the position is Cameron Docky in
the back.
Can you spell its last name?
E-O-P-K-E
Okay,
that's the information that we needed, yes?
I would like to pull 6.6, 6.8, and 6.11,
which is continuing.
Well, we're continuing it because of your corrections, I guess.
Okay.
I would vote the remainder.
Second?
Okay, we have a motion to remove, to approve the remainder
and that would be excluding 6.1, 6.2, 6.6, 6.8, and 6.11.
Madam Chair, just a comment on 6.10.
Yeah, 6.10.
Okay, sorry.
Sorry.
This is the item in regards to the Luka Businesses Bureau, and I just wanted to make a comment
that at the CSAC meeting and the government finance, they had a spokesperson there talking about this.
And it was suggested that this be headed up by your community development departments
and their GIS planning staff, that's the information that they need and would be the department
to gather that.
So I'll let you know that and also that the state of California is the only state
that is offering some type of reimbursement for counties coming forward and voluntarily
doing this.
So that's something that we'd want to apply for also.
So we're not calling 6.10, correct?
Correct, it's just additional information.
Yeah, the Board Chair signed and after that meeting it was suggested that we done through community.
Okay, any other comments on the motion?
Okay, all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Okay, we'll move back to 6.6.
Request approval to extend Friday, December 22nd, 2017,
half-day holiday to a full-day holiday for county staff,
CAO and finance director.
So, David, you pulled this.
Yes. I think my comment is that with 15 paid days a year, that it's excessive to throw
in another one, another half day. It certainly doesn't happen in the private industry.
They
could take it off on their own, Nickel, but it seems to me excessive.
Flipside, I have to agree our work pretty hard expresses
our...
But you're talking about the future, right?
I mean because we this is just a couple of weeks away. Okay, we
have a motion. Is there a second?
We have a second
Okay, any other discussion on this?
All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Thank you.
So the motion passes with four ayes and one no.
Okay, the next item to be pulled is
6.8 request approval of out-of-state travel for behavioral health services
director Alyssa Norris and behavioral health services clinical coordinator
Gail St. Lawrence to attend the National Council for Behavioral Health
Conference in Washington DC April 23rd through 25th 2018. Your comment. Yeah I'm
concerned about our state travel.
People across the country, for a small country like Alpine, seems to be excessive.
There are webinars, there's conferences in California on this material.
We don't send ourselves to NACO for similar reasons.
The $7,000 also looks expensive to me. I mean, to a number of conferences.
Last month I went to a conference in Guadalajara, Mexico for the entire mining industry of Mexico.
12,000 people attending and the total bill for my wife and I was about $2,500.
It just, to me, I know the behavioral health services does have a better budget than some of the other departments,
but they are able to do their work without traveling across the country, so I think it's excessive.
I want to make a comment about that.
But so the difference between us going to a NACO and them going to something that relates
with exactly what they're doing is kind of a little bit different.
I mean, this is their job.
So I guess I support it.
Okay.
The other department heads don't go across the country.
Okay.
Point taken.
Yes.
Rita.
I think the comment that I want to make is if we if I could travel and I do have
opportunities now and then out of state for the association for rural and small
libraries association they have a conference I think last year was Tennessee
I couldn't go because there was a staffing I had funding to go it was
would have been funded through the state and I would have been in the same
predicament now as Alyssa and I just want to say as a small rural department
head I think it's important to get to other areas even outside of California
to get that chance the information and the new ideas and just the one-on-one
in-person networking that that we get at something like that that we can bring
back to Alabama I think is valuable. Thank you for your comments Rita. Okay Carol I just kind of wanted to answer this also that
But it's just kind of unfortunate that it's in Washington, DC.
If it was in Washington State or Nevada State,
it might not be such a large price tag.
But the benefit that comes from this
and being able to bring back to the county
on a more global scale rather than just county to county
really opens up some avenues and things
that we may not have originally addressed before.
I'm sure there's a lot to be learned back in Washington DC.
So we have a motion.
Is there a second?
I will send it.
We have a motion and a second.
Any other discussion on this?
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
Aye.
So we have four ayes and one no.
Motion passes.
6.11 were continuing that one.
Alright, moving on here. Okay, 9.3.
Request amendment to budget 119.
Buildings and grounds to increase the expenditure in line item 119-56800-484.
MPUD rode from $150,000 to $187,000 with additional funding of $1,640 from the General Fund Contingency
and increased revenue in the line item number 119-31115-000 FEMA OES, contribution to $162,000
an increased revenue in line item number 119-33101-000 miscellaneous revenue to $14,080 and authorize
the finance department to make the appropriate budget adjustments requires a 4-fifth vote.
We needed a decoder ring for this one.
We kind of have the same comment in the agenda review, the agenda title is going to take longer
and there's probably the explanation.
So the simple explanation here is that we budgeted $150,000 initially for this project
based on very preliminary estimates that were done prior to the budget,
the final budget, which was what in September.
So we didn't have full, fully developed plans at that time.
We now have fully developed plans.
We actually have a construction contract that's been awarded under the authority of the CAO and myself.
So we know what the actual construction cost is.
So we know that it exceeds the budget that we put together for the final budget back in September.
So we need to increase the expenditure lines.
We're also going to get more revenue coming back in
because between FEMA and Cal OES, they cover all by six and a quarter percent of the eligible
costs, so the revenues will go up as well. The revenues, it's a little bit confusing
because it's divided into two different line items. One is FEMA OES and the other is miscellaneous.
That miscellaneous bit has to do with costs that aren't eligible through FEMA and Cal
and we asked, those are direct payments that will come from the Markleville Public Utility
District for some conduits that they wanted to have placed in the project that FEMA said
we can't fund those. That's not disaster recovery. That's an extra thing. So that's
really what this is. So the only thing I'll add is that the construction work started
yesterday. They anticipate being complete the Friday before Christmas if the weather
whole it looks like the long-range forecast it doesn't look like there's
anything major there so hopefully it all goes well and that project gets wrapped
up right before Christmas.
Board members? Approval? I have a question. Well we have a
motion so can we get a second? I'll second. Okay, thank you. Question? The
question is for Carol or Grace, stepping up already. How much is our number and
our general fund has gone up for a definite spending and if you put it on
the contingency fund, how much has that gone down since this is out and on?
Greg, Liz, DCAO, as outlined, it's $1,640 out of our general fund convincing.
So that would bring us to $17,640 out of that to date.
$640.
Out of $300,000?
No, that's what has been spent at $300,000.
So the contingency fund?
282, 360, my math right quick enough.
I'm going to ask every time.
No problem.
Thank you very much.
I've started on my whiteboard in my office.
Well, that's what you need.
Okay.
All right.
So we have a motion and a second on that.
Are there any other questions?
Okay.
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Okay, we'll move on to 9.4.
Request adoption of a resolution to amend resolution number 2010-48,
regarding permit fees for home occupations and residential short-term rentals.
Community Development Director.
Brian Peters, Community Development Director.
So that resolution, 2010-48, the fee resolution that was last adopted by the Board for all
the development processing fees and deposits that are made to community development.
With the new zoning ordinance changes that were approved last month, we have now a new
process for the short-term rentals, and then we modify the process for home occupations.
So, all we're doing here is recommending modifications to the fee schedule.
And what we're proposing here is since we've boiled the home occupations down to one category
that the fees for that be $100, that's a flat fee for an over-the-counter permit.
No other fees with regard to home occupations would be changed.
And for the residential short-term rental registrations, we're recommending that we
We charged no fee through all of 2018, and then starting in January of 2019, we would
have a fee.
We would come back to the board at some point, probably in the fall of 2018, based on our
history, and say, okay, it takes this much time to process the registration, so here's
what we would recommend the fee would be going forward, but at this point, we're
recommending that we not impose a fee so that we can make it easier for people that
a group to decide to come forward and register their unit.
So the $150 that wouldn't be it?
No, it would be zero, and then it would be some.
It's a registration over the counter, so I'm anticipating that in 2019
that fee's going to be relatively low.
I can't tell you what would be at this point.
Okay.
What's the resolution?
Second.
Here we have motion to second.
Any other questions on that?
All those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Okay, we're moving on to item 9.5.
And that is request approval of letter opposing closure of Bear Valley Post Office, and that's Supervisor District 4.
Yeah, so I guess all of you have heard that we, or that I announced earlier that we were notified in Bear Valley on the 25th of November,
first notification, by the way, that our post office would no longer be located in Bear Valley
that we would have to go to Arnold, which is 30 miles away and can take a long time in
inclement weather to get there. And that's one way.
So, of course, we have to leap into
action here and see what we can do to change this. And business members and residents
is having calling the person who signed this letter, who was working on the Sacramento
District. She's the marketing manager in the Sacramento District who wrote us this letter
and also knew on the job. Regarding this, and we're hopefully having a meeting on Wednesday
tomorrow with some of those staff members that are supposed to come up to Bear Valley
because there's been so much outrage about this announcement.
But we've also contacted Congressman Plintock's office
and talked to him about this, and he's working on it
and wants to get a letter from us as soon as possible,
just asking for his help.
So I've put together a letter here.
And I don't know, should I read it?
Because it wasn't included in the, OK.
Okay. So it's, uh, Dear Congressman McClintock, the Alpine County Board of Supervisors is asking
for your assistance in keeping the Bear Valley Post Office open. The community of Bear Valley
was notified by letter last week in our Post Office boxes from Brenda Pope, Marketing
Manager, Sacramento District, for the United States Postal Services, stating that the
last day of delivery of the mail to the PO boxes at the Bear Valley Contract Postal
Unit is December 27, 2017. This post office has been located in Bear Valley for at least
50 years. The letter states that beginning December 27, 2017, we will retrieve our mail
from the Arnold Post Office in the town of Arnold, which is 30 miles away. The one-way
trip can take 30 minutes in clear weather conditions and up to 60 minutes during the
inclement weather. This drive will be between 1-hour and 2-hour round trip. This is unacceptable.
We are located in the high elevation mountainous rural area. This round trip drive can be very
dangerous during winter conditions, putting our residents and businesses at risk navigating
the icy, the snowy icy mountain roads. This post office closure is a tremendous hardship
on our residents of working families, businesses, seasonal workers without transportation and
county services. All the businesses and residents in town rely on daily mail service. Being a
year-round recreational-based economy, the businesses such as the Bear Valley Ski Resort, Bear Valley
Cross Country, the Bear Valley Lodge, Bear Valley Vacation Rennels and Lake Alpine Lodge,
which have thousands of guests each year, depend on daily mail service to send information
brochures take reservations and deposits for lodging and purchasing of ski packages. The
Alpine County Community Services also rely on daily mail delivery such as the Bear Valley
Sheriff's Office, the Bear Valley Fire Department and EMS, the Bear Valley Health and Behavioral
Health Departments and the Bear Valley Library. The Alpine County Board of Supervisors thanks
in advance for your consideration and would appreciate any help that you can provide us
in this matter. And the same letter would be sent to the United States Postal Service
District Manager in Sacramento. The closing statement has just changed slightly and it
just says the Alpine County Motor Supervisor strongly requests that you work with the
Bear Valley community to immediately reverse this decision. We thank you for your consideration
and look forward for your reply.
So those are the letters here regarding the post office.
And I'm sure I'd like to move for approval.
Second.
So we have a motion to approve. In a second, any other comments?
Madam Chair, yes.
To say that I do sympathize with you and the residents of Bear Valley because this was something that happened to my community recently and I can't complain because
12 miles round trip is no more compared to some 60 miles away, or 60 minutes, so I will not
complain.
But I do support this.
Thank you.
I'm Ron.
I have a couple of questions.
One is, is there any other mail service between Bear Valley and Arnold to the other?
Oh, there is one that's 18 miles away, or it's 19 miles away, and that's Camp Connell,
but they have a waiting list for their post office boxes.
They don't have room for us.
But the post office delivers to that spot, so they're only 18 miles short of yours.
Yes, but they're also a contract postal unit as opposed to the main branch in Arnold.
So it's kind of a little different situation. We're a contract postal unit also.
Well, this happened up at Kirkwood.
Yes, I remember.
It was devastating.
In fact, I pulled my mail out of there in Kirkwood because of that.
And then the other thing is on the end of the first paragraph,
I think you might want to change this line. Maybe I don't read it correctly.
This drive time will be between a one hour round and a two hour round trip.
So I think some grammar changes on the map.
No. One hour round trip, right. You're correct.
So it's just something I noticed.
Other than that, I would like to help you as much as possible with this
and would be supporting this letter. I hope it does well for you.
I do too.
Thank you.
Okay, so all those in favor say aye.
Aye.
All those opposed?
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate it.
So we'll move on to Item 10,
Administrative Announcements.
No announcements.
Okay.
Gregless, ACL.
As you'll be discussing,
I do want to formally come forward
and say that I have attended my
And as a week from Friday, I will be no longer an Outline County employee.
I do appreciate the opportunity to spend the floor to be by the board and the staff here in Outline County.
Thank you, great.
So I just trained you to come up with a number as a guide here.
Have a good trip.
You'll see my name in a couple months.
Okay.
Okay, so we have adjourned, number 11 is we would adjourn to other meetings and we have
adjourned to the local transportation commission already and we will be adjourning at 1.30
to the Board of Equalization Meeting.
So we're moving on to item 12, closed session, 12.1, Public Employee Appointment, 54957,
title, assistant CAO to budget and finance, CAO and finance director in 12.2 closed session
conference of legal counsel. Existing litigation pursuant to section 54956.9, Dort v. County
of Alpine case 2, 17-CV-01799-KJM-AC, deputy CAO to personnel and risk management.
And just to let you know, we've had a lot of problems with the encoder today, and so I'm waiting for actually a cellar to pause it, but it should not pick up anything, because I'm going to shut up all the mics and our mid-amp is off.
You guys can go in the back.
Just first, we're going into battle.
Be patient.
Better safe than sorry.
Yes, yes, yes.
Oh, oh.
Oh, my gosh, it's crazy.
What's the difference?
Oh, my gosh, it's crazy.
What's the difference?
Oh, my gosh, it's crazy.
Registration, our plates don't come up, our addresses don't come up, and I'm really worried about the lady there, because she doesn't want to use the phone.
I think this is getting through.
Oh.
Yes, that's exactly what I did.
She did?
Oh, sorry, that's my mistake.
Oh,
yes.
Yeah.
Not right now.
Yes.
Okay. So we're coming back out of closed session.
And for 12.1, information was given.
And direction was given.
and on 12.2 information was given.
So we'll go to item 13, adjournment, the
board will adjourn to the next regular meeting on Tuesday, December 19, 2017
at 9 a.m. at Alpine County Government Center, 99 Water Street,
Markinsville, California. Thank you very much.