Good morning. We'll call this meeting to order the Butte County Board of Supervisors this October 28, 2025.
I will have Supervisor Connolly lead us in the pledge.
Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
It is our custom here at the Board of Supervisors at the beginning of every
meeting to offer a moment of silence, so if you would join me in that.
Okay, thank you.
With that, we will go through a few housekeeping items. There are agendas printed on blue paper
on that back small table, if you'd like to follow along. Also, if you'd like to comment
on anything on the agenda, we welcome public comment here. We allow three minutes for
public comment per person. Please fill out one of those yellow cards if you'd like
to comment. Indicate on that card if you want to speak on a certain agenda item.
They all have numbers. You can put that number down or if there we have a time
when there's just general public comment you can put down general public
comment and we will call you to the podium but please bring those up to
Melissa. Melissa Kitz, there she is. Don't be shy, just bring them up to
her.
With that, I'm going to read a quick paragraph in regards to rules of decorum here at the
Board of Supervisors meeting.
The Board of Supervisors welcomes the public to its meetings and encourages and appreciates
public engagement.
The Board of Supervisors expects members of the public to act in a courteous, civil
and respectful manner and not make personal, impertinent, slanderous or profane remarks
to any member of the board, staff or general public.
The Board of Supervisors will not tolerate loud, threatening, personal or abusive language
or disorderly conduct, which disturbs, disrupts or otherwise impedes the orderly conduct of the board meetings.
Violations of these rules of decorum will result in the meeting being recessed for a period of time.
With that, when you do have public comment, there's a series of lights on the podium.
Green means you have time left.
Yellow means you have 30 seconds left.
And when the red button goes on and the alarm goes off, we would ask you to stop.
Thank you very much.
With that, we'll move on to Item 2.1, Corrections, Changes to the Agenda.
I have one item of note, and that is item 4.3. That's the appointment to assessment appeals board.
One of the applications was inadvertently left off of the attachments.
So that is now available on the back table, and it's on your days. Other than that, we are ready to proceed.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Item 2.2 is announcement of recusal. So is there any board member that wants to recuse themselves or anything on the agenda?
Okay, seeing none, we will move on to the Consent Agenda.
Does any Board of Supervisor want to remove anything from the Consent Agenda?
Seeing none, is there any public comment on the Consent Agenda?
Yes, we received an email comment from John Stonebreaker for Item 3.1G,
and I have one card from John Stonebreaker for 3.8A.
Good morning, John.
Good morning, Chair.
I'd prefer to just send emails on the consented items, but I do want to say that
item 3.8A, the contract with truly or probably should not be on the consent
agenda. It's quite nuanced. So earlier this year our sheriff gave a deep and
profound presentation on navigating the fine line between federal directives
and state law. And here again we need to navigate between the Silla and
of understaffing and the risks of so-called AI.
So due to the deletion of positions within the sheriff's office
and the struggles to restaff, the remaining deputies are required
to do more work, and it is reasonable to augment their capacity
with machine learning tools.
So, for example, the transcription of body camera audio
video is busy work for the deputies and the sort of thing that a computer can do well.
But the sort of natural language processing that this requires has privacy implications
that are not being fully acknowledged in the staff report.
So understanding each deputies' accent and what is a road name and parts of speech
and all of these things, that for this algorithm to work well, it needs to continue to learn.
And even though the raster scan scope of work says that the contractor will not retain county data
beyond the scope necessary to perform this contract, it is challenging to do so
when this contractor is using open AI models.
So, given the situation that the sheriff's office is currently in, and certainly the patrol module and the investigations model, which the sheriff has chosen, will cover some of the shortages in the office.
But the county really needs to set better policy about the risks of so-called AI and the implications and the long-term consequences of having all of this data being uploaded to the cloud.
It's the same thing with the fraud cameras we understand are necessary for certain investigations, but sending all of that data to a third party creates this dragnet.
and it is very difficult from a computer programmer's perspective to ensure that citizens' privacy rights are being respected.
Thank you, John. Are there other cards for public comment?
I have no further cards.
Okay, we'll close public comment. Wishes of the board on the consent agenda?
Move approval consent.
Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second?
Second.
Okay, we have a motion second. All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Okay, that passes. We have one resolution recognizing November as National Adoption Awareness Month.
If I could have Tiffany Rowe, Director of Employment and Social Services come to the podium.
And I'll read this today. Tiffany, it's very short, so that's why I'm going to read it, okay?
No big words.
No big words that I can't pronounce.
This is a resolution recognized in November 2025 as Adoption Awareness Month.
Whereas Butte County recognizes that all children deserve a home that provides them with support, security, kindness and love.
And whereas in Butte County there are currently 344 children and youth in foster care.
And whereas from January 1st, 2025 to October 31st, 2025, there were 40 adoptions finalized for Butte County children in foster care.
During November 2025, an additional 11 adoptions will be finalized bringing the total to 51 adoptions in 2025.
And whereas November has been designated as National Adoption Awareness Month and is declared
so by the Presidential Proclamation each year, and now, therefore, let it be resolved that
the Butte County Board of Supervisors hereby proclaims November 2025 as Adoption Awareness
Month in Butte County, recognizing that every child deserves a permanent and loving family
and encourages all citizens to consider adoption during the month of November and throughout
the year.
This is passed and adopted by the Butte County Board of Supervisors this 28th day of October
2025 by the following vote.
All five voted for this.
So would you like to say a few words?
Thank you, Chair Kemosly, members of the board.
Observing November as National Adoption Awareness Month encourages others to learn
about adoption.
It highlights the importance of helping youth build positive relationships and promotes
family, community, and cultural connections that provide a sense of belonging and long-term
stability.
I'm incredibly proud of the staff that work for Butte County Adoptions, and thank you
for the support.
You're welcome.
We're very proud of the staff also that handles the adoptions and all of our staff.
With that, I think we have kind of a new idea that will have the recipient come
up here and take a picture with all of us.
do you guys like that sure I'm the boss okay come on up Tiffany Christy is that
okay I mean children are always yeah sure my little outline keep me on track
Okay, next is item 4.1, we're moving on to the regular agenda now.
Now, first is board member and committee reports.
Who would like to begin?
Go ahead.
Supervisor Ritter.
Since our last meeting, attended our first five executive committee meeting, our Passages
Advisory Council meeting, our Butte County Department of Behavioral Health advisory meeting,
and I'll just put out that we're still looking for youth advisory board members.
They can be up to the age of 26, and there's up to two positions for that.
that. Attended our NACO West meeting. I remotely attended our senior leadership event that
was held in Reading that our Director Rowe was one of the presenters and represented
county beautifully and it was just a fantastic event.
Attended an online training from the
California Association of Local Behavioral Health Boards and Commissions, attended the
ribbon cutting of the new e-center, which is based in U of the City but serves this
region. I met with one of our contractors regarding a fire contract, attended our monthly continuum
of care meeting, the NAACP meeting, our monthly rural local master plan on aging advisory
committee meeting, Butte County Air Quality and BCAG was a panelist for our League of
Women Voters Fall Forum.
Tonight, I'll be attending a training that's put on by our desk department for foster
families and there are some incredible free trainings that are available to the community
and you don't have to be a current foster parent to attend them so I encourage people
to check that out.
This Thursday the Howard Slater Navigation Center is having its opening so for any of
you who are in Chico that would be a great thing to attend.
On the 5th, we'll be having our local government committee meeting at 11 in Chico, and remember
to vote on the 4th.
Okay.
So, yeah.
Thank you.
Supervisor Connelly, are you ready?
Sure.
Okay.
Attended Butte County Farm Bureau Awards event last night.
I had a meeting with a sheriff and code enforcement about code enforcement enforcement, how's that?
I did miss the Pluramo drainage master plan, but I understand it went very well with a lot
of public input.
Attended the Wine.GSA meeting.
I attended the Orville Citizens Advisory Commission along with Supervisor Kimmelchew,
we're using the science instead.
Study by Robert Bateman and Matt Mentech, we did a pretty complete argument about putting
public safety at the Warville Dam as a priority over water delivery, and I think it seemed
to be well received by Carlin Nemeth, the head of DWR, and at least they said they would
listen to our argument and our facts, so we'll see going forward. It's a complicated
issue by they're going to rely on climate forecast and they want to shrink
the ability to prevent flooding and times that they predict drier annual
precipitation but we're urging caution because if you make a mistake that'll
put us in a deeper flood than we would have been before and that's a
simplification of it. I've got to give Matt Mentech and Robert Bateman a lot of credit
for the work they do. And I'd like to again say that Supervisor Kimos, who is very supportive
and gave a pretty good argument for our case. Thank you for that. And a really good argument
actually. Tended BCAG and air quality. And of course I had the usual 10 or so constituent
issues ranging from trash or neighbor complaints and so forth and that's what I have for today.
Thank you.
And I just wanted to add to that is that on our next Lake Orville Citizens Advisory Commission
meeting on the agenda will be relicensing.
So anybody who wants to speak on that, it's a good commission and Supervisor Connolly
has been a big part of that. So with that, Supervisor Durfee, you've been doing anything?
A couple things here and there. Okay.
This morning I chaired our investment pool oversight
committee meeting downstairs. I met with our local chapter of CAL FIRE 2881. I met with my
Butte County Housing Authority appointee, which was a great meeting, and I continued to learn
more and more about the Butte County Housing Authority and things I like and things I maybe
don't care for, but that's why we meet.
I met with my planning commissioner and BCAG and then again, like the rest of us, you
know, we have people come into the office, spoke with a couple of meetings with folks
and like Supervisor Ritter said, make sure everybody votes, vote, vote, vote, only
vote once.
Vote.
Early and often.
Thank you.
Supervisor Teeter.
Supervisor Conley and I attended an ad hoc meeting last night on co-enforcement issues.
Sheriff was there.
Kind of a huge challenge of people that are living in non-compliant housing situations
and the effect upon neighbors.
I wish we had the magic wand to fix the issue, but going forward or working with staff and
trying to come up with some solutions.
All right.
I attended many of the same meetings that many of my colleagues did.
Also, there was a grand opening of the college farm store and facility there for conferences.
It was a really nice event.
We did get money from the state of California to build that building.
I'm glad we did because I don't think there's much money coming from the state of California
for much anymore.
So if you get a chance, go out to the college farm.
It's a great facility.
Like you said, there's a farm store out there.
Many of the commodities that are produced on the college farm are available for sale.
with that I will end my comments and we will move on to public comment and we're
going to allow 15 minutes for public comment and if there's more than 15
minutes we will do it at the end of the meeting so we will go till 25 till if
that makes sense and so who do we have well first we receive an email comment
from Diane and Drice and I have four cards starting with Julie Three followed by Diane and Drice.
Morning, Ms. Three.
Morning, County Board of Supervisors. You actually received eight e-mails from comments from me as well.
New pre-print Moderna found impurities in the honors of lipids.
Butte County administered 130,505 doses of Moderna including 144 little children under six injected with this poison.
Julie Three here to advocate for the vaccine injury being one of them.
91% of Moderna mRNA shot recipients develop cardiovascular side effects.
I pull the VAERS data for you people.
The most administered Moderna lot that my retinas detached, 042L20A, 48 people are dead.
17 ways mRNA shots may cause cancer, COVID-19 vaccines cause more American deaths than World
War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined, that's just four of the eight I sent.
You're also withholding really important and honest information about healing modalities.
So the spike protein problem, I'm with a company called
Medicinal's Nine trying out their spike protein detox protocols.
When I met with Todd Kimmelstreet, thank you very much for meeting with me, sir.
COVID-19 injections, harms and damages. This is a huge report, a peer reviewed study.
153 citations. I'm just going to read the first sentence.
Far from benign, these vaccines have unleashed profound harm, disrupting nearly every system
of the human body and contributing to unprecedented levels of morbidity and mortality. From auto
immune diseases and cardiovascular catastrophes to pregnancy complications and aggressive cancers,
the pattern of systemic toxicity cannot be dismissed as coincidental. Urgent scrutiny
and accountability are needed. This board is complicit in so much harm and damage from these
vaccines. My 45th public comment before you guys in four years. I'm now just going to read
from 2 Thessalonians 8-12. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus
will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroyed by the splendor of his coming.
The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will
use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie and
all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because
they refuse to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them
a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie, and so that all will be condemned
who have not believed the truth, that have delighted and wickedness. This is a battle
of good versus evil, pro-God versus no-God. We're on the side of pro-God, me and Diana.
You're all on the side of no-God. You need to get right with this. You need to think
about this. When I leave here today, you need to pull these shots off the market
and start being honest with your people.
Thank you for your comments.
I think we'll say that.
Ms. Dries?
Up next, Diana Dries, followed by Rory Summers.
Good morning, Ms. Dries.
When the Board of Supervisors promoted the COVID-19 shot as safe and effective, you failed to tell the public, like the Alliance of Indigenous Nations International Tribunal Court did.
COVID-19 injections contain heavy metal contaminants and self-assembly nanotechnology has been
found in the vaccinated and the unvaccinated through shedding. They also found countless
tiny sharp metal objects and stainless steel fragments in the vials. The most serious
concern about the C-19 injections is the hydrogel polymers that self-assemble and self-spread
created by nanotechnologies. These nanotechnologies are called lipid nanoparticles,
which include polyethylene glycol and SM-102. The growth of nanotechnology hydrogel
polymers begin with activity from quantum dots, which blink and change color. Quantum
dots, nano and micro robots, are nanoscale technology that can transmit information in
act as biosensors. This activity is often followed by the aggregation of quantum dots
that then break open and create ribbon-like filaments. These filaments are hydrogel polymers
and invade the body by growing continuously, even after death. Later, the hydrogel transforms
the blood into sheets of polymer plastic and forms clots. The blood clot of C19 vaccinated
person shows remnants of blood fused with yellow, rubbery, plastic-like hydrogel substances.
Polyethylene glycol is well-known choice for making bioplastics, which translates to harm
in patients with significant amounts of hydrogel in their blood. All symptoms, called long COVID,
which include brain fog, fatigue, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, and accelerated aging,
are correlated with these blood findings.
Humans are being transformed into transhumans without their consent.
Hydrogel is an extremely versatile substance
that can mimic any cell in the body, including the brain,
but it doesn't just mimic cells, it replaces them.
The growth of hydrogel sheets in human blood
results in the reduction of natural blood cells.
This change in the body is nothing less than transhumanism,
and affected people are unwittingly being transformed without their consent.
The tribunal hereby concludes that these heavy metal, polyethylene,
poisons, toxins, nanotechnology, and biosensors are deliberate experiments
on mankind and attempt to fuse synthetic control mechanisms
into humans done without our consent,
which has killed countless, they say 17 million, and named others.
The mass application of COVID-19 injections to attempt to fuse mankind with technology is an experiment of pure evil.
C-19 injections are an aggregation of poisons and nanotechnologies that cause a broad range of diseases, DNA devastations, and deaths.
The tribunal finds that the COVID-19 injections are biological and technological weapons and mass destruction.
See and assist the deadly shots and choose to inform the public.
Thank you very much.
Don't thank. Do. Work. Act.
All right. Up next, Rory Summers, followed by John Stonebreaker.
Hi. Miss Summers.
Hi.
Good to see you.
I would like some photographs passed out, please.
Oh, sure.
There's five sets.
There you go.
All right.
Hi. My name is Ray Summers. I live in the county. I'm at railroad avenue in Palermo.
I live directly across homeless encampment. That was just the homeless people were evicted
in August of this year. They were there approximately for about six to eight years.
We have lived there since 1998 and I have ten children and in my older children I had seven.
They all grew up.
I adopted in 2019 three boys and those three boys have been unable to play over there
because the homeless people have lived over there.
Well, this year in August, they did remove all of the trailers and RVs,
but when they did that, they left all the garbage.
And the garbage has needles, the garbage has feces,
the garbage has a refrigerator that still has a door on it.
It has actually, a couple of weeks ago, a gentleman actually died out there of an overdose.
There has been numerous problems out there, and yes, I have called the county.
Yes, I have followed the directions of what I've been told to do.
I have, I actually, a couple of years ago I was told it was the railroad property.
I chased that lead down.
I called the railroad county railroad company back east I contacted them and
they said I'm sorry that we are responsible for a hundred feet on both
sides of the railroad tracks and they did their due diligence and they did clean
that then I was told it was the city I went to the city and they said no it's
not then I was told it was the county that was a couple years ago it took
them years to get the homeless people out of there like I said it was August of
this year then I took pictures I went to Facebook then I went to the news
yesterday I was on the news today I'm here I this is directly across the
street from my house it goes to football fields or more from either way
of my house. Something, I am pleading with you. Something has to be done. This is an endangerment.
This is a health hazard. A child could go across the street and get hurt. I have a 13-year-old
son that could get hurt over there. There are other children. This is four blocks from
a school. I've been told that the county does not have the funds to clean this up.
please thank you who told me that Chris from the county code enforcement thank
you thank you for your comment do you want to make a comment yeah this was taken
on by a citizens group headed by a lady called Noreen Wheeler and yeah it's
actually it does belong to the county so a couple things is do we want this
land. I mean it's like excess land that we probably should look into to see if I
get a couple head nods here that we give it to a private owner or sell it at
auction or whatever we got to do because I don't see any need for it.
And then the next thing is I think that we could prioritize a cleanup here, get a couple
of head nods to that. I mean, it's factually really, really bad with those needles and everything
there that follow up. And then lastly, I think we ought to look and see who did the initial
cleanup and left the bags of trash and why that happened.
And I understand the frustration
that I could do. I just wish you'd have called me. I would help you immediately.
Sorry, I went this way. So do I have, let's get rid of the land if we don't need it. Can we prioritize the cleanup and find out why it wasn't finished in the first place?
And why don't we look at using the funds that we have available through each of the district offices.
Yeah, we need my funds. I'll give you that.
Thank you for coming, Ms. Summers, we'll hope we can get results for you.
Sorry, sorry I had to go this way.
Thank you.
Anybody else?
Yes, I have two more cards, one from John Stonebreaker, followed by the cameraman.
We're going to take these two and then we're going to move on from public comment.
Hi, John.
Hello.
So I had a note with the interaction with a Cal Fire Inspector last week that began
with a courtesy call and a voicemail which perplexingly said that Inspector
Foss was going to be on my property and hoped I would be home, but when I called
back it was clear that we were talking about my vacant timberland property
where I still brashly attempt to grow timber. Inspector was gracious enough
to actually meet me on the site and looked around and said, oh, you've
clearly done a lot of work. This looks good. This looks great. This is okay
for now, but keep an eye on it. And when we got to the property corner where I said
that this cedar thicket beyond here is not my responsibility, the inspector said that
what was on her tablet seemed more authoritative than the actual stake in the ground. And I've
had this sort of interaction with other county employees in the field before. One is that
GPS is not particularly accurate in heavily forested areas or in canyons. And also
that the county boundary layer, it can be off by 100 feet or more.
So when somebody in the field is trying to determine whose property they're on, they're
frequently wrong, and county employees need to understand this and policy needs to be
set, especially now that what you might find on the Internet is less authoritative than
it has ever been as a large language model gibberish is taking over.
Or we really need to understand that there is factual ground truth, and then there is
increasingly dubious information coming online.
So additionally, the inspector advised me to look at recent PBS weathered documentary inside
the LA Firestorms, which was much better grounded than what we're hearing here.
They focused on not trying to prevent wildfires, but on trying to prevent urban conflagrations
and the necessity of hardening structures themselves, clearing vegetation within five
feet, limiting proximity of outbuildings within 30 feet where the radiant heat could
cause a problem, and didn't really focus on removing vegetation 30 feet or farther
from structures.
And again, with what just came before, the county is spending quite a lot of money doing these abatements where there's not a whole lot of risk spend efficiency.
And the county really needs to be using these dollars to abate legitimate hazards rather than this Sisyphian vegetation removal that the county's limited dollars could be much better spent, especially as state dollars are dwindling.
Thank you, John.
All right. Our last card is from the cameraman.
Good morning, Duke County Board of Supervisors.
To one of our previous speakers there, if you would have called and said they were growing some marijuana plants,
I bet you would have taken two years to get that dealt with.
But anyways, today's topic to do justice as no one is above the law nor beneath its protection as somebody's model is around here.
A few weeks ago that individual, you know, we all do it, it's not the worst crime in
the world, but I saw Mr. Ramsey operating a motor vehicle while on his cell phone that
wasn't hands-free, so just a little reminder next time, hey, if you want to start your
call and put it on your lap, then start driving, that's okay, but it's got to be
hands-free.
Another matter, a few cases back, I know I mentioned this before, the Larry Holland matter,
the gentleman who owned the 25 Great Danes that mauled a woman to death in Feather Falls
last year.
It looks like the court case is pretty much going to go away and be done with.
Not for the woman getting mauled to death, but because the dogs were unleashed, didn't
have their tags, you know, the basic county ordinance code.
So I guess he filed some motions paid some fines and fees and it's okay now
Not so much for the family miss Corbin, but at least for mr.
Holland he can work on you know being financially stable and taking care of I guess the more animals
He seems to like to keep another matter this past week. I
Saw a gentleman get sentenced in the Butte County Courthouse
for a couple years probation, some time in jail. Another gentleman as one of our public
defenders puts it, you're a black kid in Butte County. And what does that mean, ladies
and gentlemen? Well, he's not more than likely going to get a fair trial. Some may disagree,
some may agree, but the reality is that 2% of actual black people that get picked
to do jury selection actually end up getting on the jury. So I can feel his pain when
And he's up against an alcoholic schizophrenic calling him nigger six ways from Sunday and
beating him up with a beer bottle or whatever it was, Jack Daniels in his hand with his
dad in tow, but he dared to fight back.
He is the aggressor when he is the victim.
So I guess if you're a certain shade of melanin and you're favorable, if you fight
back, you're going to be prosecuted.
So I'd like to give a thank you for Tyler for you know getting that conviction from the DA's office
You know, you know the guy did do five days in jail
When he was initially arrested, but you know as he said that's not justice the guy's eyes can't work
Well, this guy can't work
He's gonna lose a job that he's coming up all because he was basically called the n-word and had the gall to defend himself and
I'll just leave it at that and with anyways with a few times
I have remained just wanting to say happy Halloween, have a good weekend, and I will see you at the next meeting next month.
Okay, we'll close public comment for now. If there's more, we will do it at the end of the meeting.
We'll move on to item 4.3, appointment to the Butte County Assessment Appeals Board, Melissa Kitts.
I'll let you explain this.
Okay. Good morning, Chair Kimmel-Shu, members of the board, Melissa Kitts, assistant clerk of the board.
The assessment appeal board's function is to resolve disagreements between the county assessor and the taxpayer over values of local assessed property.
And the board consists of three regular board members and as many alternate members as needed.
So we've received another unexpected vacancy and have a vacant board member seat.
We've received applications from three qualified candidates, including Justin Hancock, who
is just appointed as an alternate member back in September, Scott Nolan, and Ariel Hernandez.
Each member has indicated that if not appointed to the regular board member seat, they are
interested in serving as an alternate for the board.
Staff is requesting the board appoint a regular board member to serve the remainder
of vacant and an expired term and a 0.1 or more alternate members to serve a
three-year term if needed. Thank You Melissa. Any questions comments from board
members? I'd like to make a motion. Let me get public comment just in case there
is some. There probably won't be. I was going to put you on here. Okay.
Any public
comment? Okay we'll close public comment. I wish us to the board. I'd like to put Mr.
Dr. Justin Hancock as a regular member and the two that applied is alternates.
Okay.
We have a motion.
Is there a second?
Second.
Okay.
I just got a question.
Can we have multiple alternates?
Yes.
Okay.
Perfect.
I mean, it's hard to get somebody to do this job, so I figure if we got two, we'd
better put them on.
I know.
I get it.
I just wasn't sure what we were allowed to have multiple alternates.
And I just want to state, I did have a question regarding, you know, I think
Pardon me, regarding individuals who have previously been with the department and whether
it appears to the public whether they're getting a fair appeal if we have former employees
that are sitting on there.
And there was nothing in our policies or procedures or anything that states a person
has to be, you know, not working for the department for a year or anything like that.
And so, but I just, I want to make sure that from a public perspective that it is noted
that one of the applicants is a former employee of the department and, you know, there could
be the perception that they have the same, the interest of the department ahead of the
interest of the public.
And so.
It would be something maybe that you would want to maybe bring back to look at like
right now, if you retire from the county, you have to be off a certain amount of time
unless we deem that there is an emergency situation. We could always see if we wanted to add a
policy to that.
I don't know if I was going to say that.
Just for clarification, there is a rule that they have to be separated from the county
for three years before applying.
For three years.
There you go.
Okay.
Perfect.
All right.
Good comments.
And do we know?
We have a motion.
Okay.
Is there a public comment?
I asked for public comment.
no public comment. We have a motion to second. All those in favor? Opposed? Okay, we have one more
appointment to the Reclamation District 833, Melissa. Yes, in Reclamation District 833,
there was no petition calling for an election. No nominations were received and the number
of qualified candidates filing didn't exceed the number of trustees to be elected. So,
Pursuant to California Water Codes section 50742, the board may now appoint any qualified
person and Reclamation District 833 has requested the board appoint Jerry Davis and Ralph Wilderson
to serve a four-year term in lieu of election. Okay, any questions, comments from board members?
Is there a public comment? Okay, we'll close public comment. Wishes of the board?
move approval staff recommendation. Second. All those in favor? All right, closed. All right,
we're going to move on to item 4.5 and I'm going to have Josh Pack, Director of Public Works,
come forward. This is an approval of the 2026 Public Works Infrastructure Master Plan
and authorization to advertise projects. Before you get started, I know there's folks in the
audience that want to speak to the 5-mile basin issue, that will be a timed item right
at 10 o'clock.
So go ahead.
Yeah.
Good morning.
I'm here today to present the annual update for the Butte County Public Works Infrastructure
Master Plan as soon as the presentation comes on the screen.
And as soon as you're there, we can move on to the next slide.
Nice photo in the paper for Sites Resvore. I saw someone standing in the back, which might be tall.
Appreciate that. There's no way to know. So, today's presentation is similar to previous years.
We'll talk about the revenue sources to drive the plan. Some of the recent projects we've completed
as part of the multi-year plan as well as the upcoming projects. We'll talk about some of the funding challenges
to drive a project of this size, some of the efforts we've taken to address those,
and then finally, that all kind of plays out in our pavement condition, and we'll talk about
the historical trends of our pavement and the continuing trends based on
the anticipated funding levels in future years. Next slide.
So in total, it's about $107 million. I want to highlight this was a point of confusion
last year. This is for projects that are likely to be constructed and have funding for
construction for in the next several years.
So that doesn't include projects in specific plans or general plans.
We have several projects that are in application stage for grants.
Those aren't included until those funding is solidified and we have a delivery schedule.
This is a living document.
It's updated annually.
So as projects come on board, come online, they'll be introduced into the program almost
in real time for project delivery.
As you can see with the funding sources broken down by a percentage, the vast majority of
the program is driven by disaster recovery, whether it's the community development block
grant, FEMA, emergency relief.
Our focus over the last several years and has continued to be over the next several
years would be disaster recovery for communities impacted by recent fires and floods.
We also received funding from the Neal Road landfill and the Highway Bridge program,
which is an annual program meant to address bridges that are structurally deficient. Next slide.
So this most current year was about $43 million. That's a pretty busy year for us.
Some of the key projects include the first phase of the CDBG program. The first project to be
completed was Ofer Road. That was in partnership with the City of Oroville. The county took
the lead on that and delivered the project on behalf of the city. We're nearly complete
with the work on Honey Run in Centerville. I believe the first the first lift of the
The asphalt actually went in yesterday. The asphalt should be largely done by the end of
the week, and then the next couple of weeks will be shoulder backing and then striping and
other related features. So that work will be largely done in the next week or two.
And we're getting a lot of great comments with the work up on Honey Run and Center.
Fantastic. Thank you. Another part of work is the North Complex. We completed considerable
work on Oral Quincy Highway. This is a milestone for our department because over the
last six, seven years, we've been delivering almost entirely focused on disaster recovery.
This project, while it doesn't signify the end of the recovery, that may never occur.
As far as the disaster funding that we receive, this is the last project related to North
Complex.
So we do have a earmark funding for Lumpkin Road.
We'll continue to be working on that.
But by and large, this program will no longer reflect projects related to disaster
in the months afterwards.
So, that's a milestone for our department.
We have other milestones we're approaching in the next several years.
And then the landfill, the module 5E, that's to expand the landfill's footprint to continue
to provide cost-effective services for solid waste disposal.
Next slide.
The upcoming year is going to be really busy, highlighted by Phase 2 of the campfire work.
That's going to be primarily focused in McGillia and the upper ridge communities.
We also have a project on portions of Concow Road.
as Supervisor Connolly is unfortunately all too familiar.
We continue to have challenges with oral-quency highway.
The work for the third slide in the last 15 years or so will take place next year.
That's part of the 2023 winter storm damage.
One thing that's come on board just in the last several months is we've partnered with PG&E.
Traditionally after they do undergrounding, they do the pavement work.
It tends to be a little clunky and also doing a bunch of pavement work
and then going in next year in Magalia and driving all over that work is going to exacerbate
and lead to the quick deterioration of that work.
So instead of that, they've provided a fee to us, and we're in turn are going to go perform
the work on their behalf on roads in Magalia and Upper Ridge that aren't in the CDBG program.
So by that work, we should be hitting most, if not all, of the roads in Magalia and
the Upper Ridge through that work.
It will look similar but there will be different projects similar but somewhat equal.
We continue over the last 10 years.
We have been working on projects in South Oroville to extend bicycle pedestrian facilities
connecting schools and other facilities.
We continue to work towards providing connectivity from Oroville limits through South Oroville
to eventually to Palermo.
We have a project out at the landfill to put a liner on the new landfill module
And then we have several bridge projects, including maintenance and one new bridge at Central House
Road just east of Highway 70.
Next slide.
So a lot of projects in the future.
We have one left over from the CDBG work.
That'll be Lake Ridge Circle.
That's scheduled for 2027.
We do have several slides navigating through the long winding process that's known as FEMA approval.
Two that I want to highlight are Upper Skyway and Dark Canyon.
They've been, they're both our priority of ours.
We're continuing to aggressively push FEMA to try to expedite the approval of these.
If we do get approval, we could move these forward to 2026, but right now, based on their
timelines, we're thinking this is more of a 2027 than a 2026 schedule.
Lumpkin Road, that was approved through congressionally directed spending, otherwise
known as earmarks.
That's about $4 million.
We're scheduled to do the first phase in 2027 on the middle portion of Lumpkin
is the current target from the bridge to the fire station.
We also have a number of safe bridge projects, road safety projects, landfill projects.
New ones will come on board annually.
There's annual grants that we're successful with, and as we do future iterations, new
projects will come on board.
Next slide, please.
So in total $107 million, as you can see by this table, it is very top-heavy.
90% of the program is scheduled to deliver in the next two years, and this belies
is a good news, bad news scenario. The good news, as I mentioned previously, is our department
for the better part of a decade has been trying to navigate the difficult world of disaster
recovery. With the project schedule in the next two years, we anticipate being largely
through that process, which is a tremendous achievement with all of the challenges we
face. I'm very proud of the work our department has done to support the community in these
endeavors. The bad news is there are no other similar funding sources coming behind
it to take its place. So our program, assuming Knock on Wood, No More Disasters, is going
to be a shadow of its former self. It's just going to be a smaller, more modest program
compared to what we've seen over the last five, especially after the campfire in North
Complex Fire. Next slide, please. So that's driven. And one of the reasons for that
is the revenue. Only about 5% of the overall revenue that makes up the program comes
from our road fund and other more flexible funding sources.
We use that funding almost primarily for day-to-day activities.
We do use our road fund as a local funding match for federal grants, and that's where
most of it comes in.
But most of it just does our day-to-day activities, paying employees, buying materials,
new equipment, new trucks, things like that.
One of the challenges we face, and I've shared this with the board in the last
year or two is as we move away from trying to make an effort to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions and reduce the sale of fossil fuels, that has an impact on our department because
we rely entirely on the sale of fossil fuels.
These are non-compatible goals and missions.
This is not a board issue, this is not a city or local issue, this is a state issue.
As long as California and the state legislature doesn't address the long-term systemic
funding challenges of relying on the sale of fossil fuels, our department is going to continue
to struggle to meet the expectations. With that in mind, nearly 85% of the funding in the program
comes from grants and not all of the grants align with our core expectations. Public health,
public safety, core maintenance, a lot of grants don't fit in those little boxes. A lot are for
new projects, improvements, bicycle and pedestrians. Some do. We have some safety
projects and some bridge maintenance projects, but there's a lot of projects in the program
that if we had unfettered funding, we would probably prioritize in a different manner.
Next slide, please.
On the expenditure side, we continue to see ongoing challenges that stress our resources.
There's a lot of fire and flood activity that never gets reported, never gets qualifies
for disaster funding.
So this year alone, work on Jordan Hill Road, Mozilla Valley Road was in the many,
many hundreds of thousands of dollars that never qualified for disaster funding.
A lot of the work in the months after Parkfire doesn't qualify, may qualify, we're still
pursuing that.
But that's a reality of, you know, every year when we have more fires and floods they
have impacts and a lot of that doesn't register to the level of federal or state reimbursement
and we have to rely on our limited resources to address those needs.
Liability is continuing to be an issue.
I'll have a slide in the next slide that'll provide more insight into that, and I'll talk
more about that.
We continue to see our day-to-day cost of doing business, not only in-house, but in the construction
world far outpace the price of inflation.
We have grant matching requirements even when we do receive grants for disaster recovery.
Those come with local matches anywhere from six and a quarter to 25 percent.
And then our great friends at the state love to create new rules that make our
jobs harder and don't necessarily provide commensurate value in our day-to-day operations.
So this whole kind of kit and caboodle of everything going on, the short story is it's
harder to do the job today than it was in the past.
Next slide.
So I talked about liability insurance and I've taken a broader perspective on this working
with CSAC and RCRC and I've had conversations with Prism, our insurance provider on this.
This is a systemic issue unique to California, and I won't get into the details of that,
but the impact or liability insurance, much like the California Fair Plan and the lack
of fire insurance, is driving prices upwards for local agencies, not only cities and counties,
but special districts, school districts, fire districts, et cetera.
This slide shows our cost over the last 10 or 11 years.
Back in 2015-16, our costs were about $46,000.
dollars this year, they're nearly 3.2 million dollars. That's not a typo. When you look
at a percentage of the overall road funding we receive, nearly 20 percent of our funding
we receive today goes into liability. So for every five dollars we get, one dollar immediately
leaves and goes to pay for liability. And the challenge that and the slippery slope
is the more we spend in insurance, the less we have to invest in road and road infrastructure
that creates the sort of liability that we're trying to avoid. So again, continuing
Between challenges, this is, again, not a local issue.
This is a systemic issue at the California level that needs to be addressed macroscopically
by the state through a multi-agency effort.
Next slide, please.
All of this has an impact on our operations, and so this most recent operating budget
saw the elimination of our annual pavement preservation program.
We created that in 2021 to try and invest in long-term maintenance.
The reality is with all of the challenges and stressors we could no longer reliably redirect funding to that because of our core services.
We would not be able to fund some of our other core services.
So that doesn't mean we're not going to pay.
We've got a lot of paving going on the next couple of years.
It's just in areas that were impacted by disasters.
A lot of the county hasn't been and that's a challenge.
This year we deferred several million dollars in much needed vehicle and equipment replacement that doesn't necessarily have an impact today or tomorrow.
But in the years to come, if this trend continues, equipment exceeds its useful life.
We have to spend more to invest to maintain it.
It becomes dilapidated.
It becomes less reliable.
It, again, has that same impact.
We've had several projects that had sizable contributions on grants.
We had a rubberized chip seal grant that was – we were paying about 80 cents on
the dollar.
Obviously, in the situation we were in, that didn't make a lot of sense.
And so we've had to discontinue several grants of that nature where we had sizable
county contributions.
That said, we continue to aggressively push, whether it's through grants, kind of working
on the lobbying side to address some long-term systemic insurance reform, advocating on the
legislative side to continue to press the state on looking for alternatives for transportation
funding, and we'll continue to do that in advocacy of the community, the board, and
the county.
Next slide, please.
So, with all that in mind, all of these trends have an impact on our pavement.
We've been tracking our pavement condition over the last 30 years.
We score our pavement on what's called a pavement condition index or PCI, 0 to 100, the higher
the score, the better the pavement.
In 1995, the first year we scored it, it scored at a 76, right at the border of good
and fair.
Today, it's at 51.
That's down from the end of last year.
That's the lowest in our recorded history over the last 30, 40 years.
And so trending in a wrong direction.
Next slide.
We can also, we have computer software that tracks and monitors our long-term pavement
based on the investments we make.
As you can see, the short-term investments in the campfire footprint will largely keep
our pavement condition statewide stable.
Once that funding runs out and we're left on more of a triage level, we anticipate
that to continue downwards.
Next slide.
So with all that good news, today I'm asking the board to approve the plan,
but also approve, authorize the department to advertise the projects in the plan.
And before we wrap it up and ask questions, first of all, a couple of things.
I want to thank our staff who work a lot of time and effort to prepare this.
This didn't exist before I came here.
And the reason I wanted to present this, and I appreciate the board's support of this,
is because when you're faced with limited resources and having to make so many difficult decisions,
and we talk, and you talk with members of the public each and every day,
who care tremendously about their communities and where they live.
And we care too, but the reality is we have to worry about all the communities.
And we have a very difficult job of trying to basically take, you know,
very limited resources and trying to spread it as far as we can.
And that's why this is such an important cornerstone of the work we do,
is because we have to make difficult decisions that says yes to some people and no to a
lot of other people.
So that's why we want to bring this to the board annually.
You have an opportunity to weigh in.
If we are making decisions that are inconsistent with your vision and mission, this is an
opportunity to shift direction by doing it annually.
Usually these projects take years to deliver.
And so, again, this is the opportunity for you to, if you have different opinions,
different guidance, this is the opportunity.
And certainly you have other opportunities, but this is a great opportunity to shift
course and direction.
But that's why we do it.
is we don't have enough resources
and this is our best attempt to make the resources work
for the best of our ability for the board,
for the county, and for our community.
And so with that in mind,
that ends my not-so-brief presentation
and I'm happy to answer any questions the board has.
Wow, thanks for all that good news.
Yeah. Appreciate that.
Questions, comments from board members?
I have a few.
I really appreciate the dark canyons in there
because that's a recreation venue
you that hasn't been able to be accessed for several years.
Lumpkin Road is the issue that exists probably if the timber industry was up and vibrant like
it was.
We would have the revenue to take care of that road.
I wonder if they'd be interested in the SPR or somebody might be interested in helping
us out.
I know the answer, but we could ask, right?
And then Oro Quincy Road is a factory that's miss-built by the federal government, and we're
up there fixing all the slides, right?
I mean, we can't hold them accountable for doing things wrong, I guess.
And South Warville, I want to point out you can build a whole school and not provide sidewalks.
Not even right in front of your property.
It seems like that's something we ought to talk to the state government about.
I mean, or add a four million dollar gym and then we're scrambling to provide safe access to that gym because
They're not required to put the sidewalk out in front of it and the state issue on electric cars and tax
And I mean they they're heavy. They cause road damage, especially the big trucks will they ought to be taxed by the mile
I mean, they don't buy fossil fuels. It's killing us
And last, are all counties in this situation? Do you think you're in association? Is it statewide
that most counties are in this same situation? If there's an exception, maybe we ought to look
at it.
Specific to just running out of money.
The address?
Yeah. Chair, Supervisor Connolly, this is a systemic issue. The more rural counties are
disproportionately affected, you know, cities and counties are different. Cities have less
resources, they tend to have better, more stable funding sources.
Counties, especially rural, small, middle-sized, a number of counties have self-help transportation
tax measures.
Those are predominantly urban and urbanized areas.
They're in a little bit better shape, but by and large, the average payment condition
statewide is about a 61, 62.
That's not a good score.
All of the counties on the lower half were in the bottom 15%, but there's lots
lots of counties, Calusa County, Tualami County, Mariposa County that are way worse than us.
And the commonality is they're all rural with limited resources. A lot of them, like Trinity
and Modoc, are disproportionate federal land. They receive little revenue. There used to
be revenue sources that have largely gone away. And so we're all in the same boat.
Plumas County, Sierra County are reverting their paved roads to gravel because they
just can't fund the maintenance of that. And so we're not there yet. We're a
long ways away from there. You'll hear from our department in future years if we ever have
to make those sort of decisions, but yeah, this is not a butte County only issue.
Sounds like an RC, RC issue.
Well, I have a question. You said that 85% of the funding is state and federal, and
then you said 5% is from our...
The road fund from our road fund. What is the what makes up the last? It's the landfill
So the Neil road makes up the remaining 10%
and then I mean, I think you know the question is if every county is facing us
I feel like we're facing us not just in in this department in every department, you know, we look at
Prevention services or public health services, right? We are dependent upon prop 10 tobacco sales
to fund prevention services for our zero to five and so we do a great job with
public health telling people stop smoking but then we get less money so do we
tell people to keep smoking so that we get more money it's you know we talk
about it with a board meeting yeah start smoking we need more services for
our young people but we talk about it with vehicle miles traveled you know at
BCAG in air quality as well. So I mean, I don't know what the solution is here because these are
decisions that are being made at the state and federal level. And so, yeah, it seems like we're
kind of in a catch-22 and having to pick what's going to be the least disastrous thing to let go
for another year. That shouldn't be how we're doing our planning. That said, I did really
appreciate the infrastructure master plan because it's calling out all of the sometimes
deferred maintenance, sometimes things that have fallen into disrepair because of our
disasters that we face. I did see that there is an insurance town hall tonight by Commissioner
Laura's office. It's a virtual town hall specifically related to fire and then there is a flood insurance
town hall on the 30th that is taking place with the California Department of Insurance
and Assemblymember Greg Wallace's office. So I hope that we're attending those. I hope
that we're advocating. I know we have a meeting with our legislators, you know, coming up.
on what kind of policies we want to see moving forward, but it just seems bigger than the county level.
Thank you for those comments. Anyone else?
I don't know if you mentioned this, but in District 4, they're all very pleased and happy about the new bridge on Ordferry Road, so that is a great addition.
Oh, sorry. I don't know who's not, but that's fine. I mean, it's a great improvement over
what it was there, and I know it took a long time. Was that $15 million to do that roughly?
I think it turned out more than that. And the last counter was in the $18 million range.
I think $18 million for that. So it was sort of needed for many, many years.
So we're happy that that got completed.
Okay. Any public comment? This is just for information, correct?
We don't have to approve this
No, actually the action the board to approve the plan and authorize the department
I have a public comment. Yes. I have one card from John Stone break
No, actually I was going to
commend director pack on yet another lucid presentation and for
Negotiating with our dear friends at PG&E to add additional
that were not approved for funding by our federal four letter agencies.
I do like seeing the infrastructure master plan to show the work that the county might be able to afford to do over the next couple of years
and emphasize that the dollars are very limited, both in the discussion here and in the write-up.
It was made clear that these are state constraints on the county's ability to maintain its roadway
mileage.
I think Miguel Idem is slightly beyond the scope of this, and hopefully our friends in
D.C. will find a way to replenish the dollars that were withdrawn and allow PID to broaden
the crest of the dam as well as the base of the dam and if that were to happen then possibly we
can work on that. Some number of years in the future I don't know if that is within the scope of
this current master plan but we would love to see that in the future. Again, the problems with
the funding and maintaining paved roads is very expensive and yes I support all of the efforts
to continue to lobby with our legislators to find another way to bring funding to prevent
the worsening of the pavement that leads to additional costs down the road, and this is
not something that Butte County can solve on its own.
It's unfortunate that we have been put in this situation, and I would point out again
that with the federal government's inability to pass a budget and the manifesto to continue to withhold funds from states and local jurisdictions,
it's going to become increasingly difficult to get state dollars to come to the county.
So I acknowledge the difficulty of this problem.
And again, I want to commend Director Pack and his staff
for the work they're doing in trying
to make the best of very difficult situation.
OK, other public comment?
Other comments.
OK, thank you very much.
I do agree with Supervisor Ritter.
This is a great program or a great informational thing
that you do for us each year.
I hope it continues.
And for those of you that don't know, Director Pack will be leaving Butte County.
Congratulations.
He became the new CAO of Calusa County.
And you'll be with us till the end of – almost to the end of November.
Is that correct?
Yeah, you're stuck with me for another month.
Well, thank you for your service.
And one of our big projects is up next.
And you can remain in the chair.
And we're going to go on to our timed item.
I'm going to move staff recommendation.
Thank you.
Second.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I've got a little overtop.
No, that's right.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Opposed?
Okay.
Thank you.
I do have a request.
Yes.
Since public comment brought up McGillian dam and it's lacking a reference in our master
plan.
Yeah.
If I could get a head nod that that could be added or if it needs to come back
to the meeting, that at least McGillian dams widening, since we did the letter, it should
be in the master plan, not just referenced in the upper ridge plan.
So, thank you for that.
Yeah, with that simple, that's a pretty clear direction.
We actually have several projects that are unfunded, like Lumpkin Road, Future Phases.
My recommendation would be just put a slide with a document talking about that project
and how it's unfunded and we're pursuing it, it's more of a placeholder than anything
else.
happy to do that. Thanks. Okay, fantastic. Yeah, we're hoping for four lanes on top of that dam
someday. Maybe not. A passing lane? Let's not get too excited. Okay, enough. This fits in the plan,
that's good. Okay, just wanted to make sure. That's right.
Okay, with that, we will move on
to items 5.1. And this is an update on the five mile basin stream action for flood emergency
project and direction for the long-term project strategies.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Good morning again Chair Kimmelchew and members of the board,
Josh Pack, your director of Public Works. We heard today present the results of the
short-term project, the safe project, and then some of the next steps and really a discussion
on where the board wants to go moving forward with a long-term solution. Next slide, please.
So, some good news. I'm sure you're all aware. The work has been completed for the SAFE project.
The project was a targeted and surgical treatment to address vegetation issues,
channel development and sediment gravel removal, all to help improve the flow through the basin,
redirect flows away from Big Chico Creek, which was receiving a disproportionate amount
of the impact, and then redistributed in a manner that improves overall protection.
I've got several pictures that I'll show you a little bit later on, but again, one
of the key things as well is levy repairs to a damaged levy near the Big Chico Creek
diversion structure.
Next slide, please.
So the work was done under our job order contracting program.
Again, the board appreciate the board's support for that program.
You actually just approved the most recent iteration.
This was done under that program by Knife River Construction out of Chico.
The work was done a lot more quickly than we anticipated.
We had built in some delays from potential permit authority or maybe some interactions
out in the field that we weren't anticipating, none of that occurred.
City was great to work with as far as getting us access to the basin, which we were able
to get in quickly, perform that work, remove the vegetation, and then we're able to do
– there was less actual gravel and sediment that we anticipated based on our
original projection.
So, from tip to tail, the work took about one week to complete.
The costs were considerably less than $500,000.
We're still going through the last of the worksheets, but current estimates are on the
$135,000 to $150,000 range, which is considerably less.
And then I know this has been important to me, and I joke about it in my potential incarceration,
but we did get all of our permits.
The last permit came in on the second or third day of construction.
More seriously though, having those permits in place, and we'll talk about that,
that helps keep the relationship strong moving forward to a long-term solution.
So the next slide.
So the next several slides are going to show some of the pictures, the dots, the stars
or the general locations where the pictures were taken or where they're viewing.
Next slide, please.
So slide one is looking upstream at the pedestrian bridge.
You can see the considerable vegetation removal.
I think there's enough resolution in the picture too.
You can see the sediment and the gravel.
We basically created channels within the basin and we used on-site surveyors to actually – we
targeted slopes to maintain stream velocities to help carry and transport water through the basin.
You can even see we worked with the city of Chico on the left of that picture. There's a mat
there. There was a little bit of damage from some of our equipment getting into there.
Chico asked for some repairs, which we were able to do successfully. And that was a portion
of Biddlewell Park that really helped expedite the work. We had free and unfettered access
us to that site, we were able to stage equipment, get in very quickly, and we had several access
points along the channel that made work.
We're able to expedite that.
Next slide, please.
So the next pictures are in the middle of the channel.
Again, you can see the gravel, sediment, and vegetation work that's been done.
Again, there's three essential veins, little fingers that kind of relief, and it's
designed in a manner that as flows increase, one or more start getting service.
so one comes into service and then as flows go up in the second and then the third, it's
a metered and thoughtful way to handle that water. Next slide. The third picture is the
repairs to the levee. You can see the large boulders and cobbled that's been placed just
on the upstream side of the levee. That's just on the other side of the view would
be the big Chico Creek diversion structure. You can also see again the vegetation removal,
a very clear path for water to travel.
Next slide.
So just in the last week or two, I did receive some preliminary data quantifying that through
our storm water models.
The pre-model before the project suggested that the structure was sufficient to protect
the city and the surrounding environment from a 44-year storm, which kind of plays with
what we saw last winter, because we saw a larger storm, larger time-duration storm
that approached a 5 to 10 year intensity, and then we had a very short burst storm
that approached near a 50 year storm.
We saw under both of those situations, water get precariously close to overtopping.
So that data, that model kind of corroborates that.
Under the new modified version, this provides 130 year level protection.
So we've essentially tripled the storm duration that should provide protection
for the city and the surrounding community.
So, again, targeted solutions, significant benefit for the city and the surrounding communities.
Next slide, please.
So with that in mind, in recognizing that without ongoing maintenance of the work that we've done,
we're falling into the same patterns that decisions that were made in the 90s and early 2000s
and beyond that have had.
We need to continue to stay on top of this.
And so I'm currently working with our consultants to develop a multi-year agreement to monitor
the work.
This would include making recommendations in the middle of the season if there's any
short-term work that needs to get done, utilizing data from available stream gauges, both upstream,
downstream, and at the location.
The goal behind that is to – models are predictors.
They're not perfect.
And so we want to take real-time data and look at it compared to our model and make
sure that the model is accurately predicting what's happening.
It gives us more confidence, even more confidence that the work was done sufficiently and
and aligned with real-world situations.
Each spring, they would come in,
make recommendations on maintenance for that summer.
It could be vegetation debris removal.
It could be some sediment and gravel
as it's kind of redistributed itself.
And then they would help us work
with the regulatory partners to get the necessary permits
because we did so much work this year.
The hope that is in the next several years,
those permits are much smaller.
It's much more routine and straightforward.
And we complete that work each summer
before the ongoing winner. And the work is to have this contract in place for several
years until either the long-term solution finds its way to completion or the threat
of the post-part-fire situation kind of finds its way through, which would be in the next
several years. Next slide, please.
So there's a lot of thanks to go around, and I don't want to spend too much time,
but certainly want to recognize the support and the direction of the board. Most all
of you have been engaged on this. Very clear support. The recommendations have been appropriate,
thoughtful, considerate, and this project doesn't get done without your support. So I appreciate
each and one of your engagements on this and the direction you've given, which has given
me confidence to move forward successfully. On the federal and state side, our legislators
and their staff have been incredibly helpful in connecting us with our regulatory agencies.
I think in several situations they help kind of get us over a couple of humps in the successful
permitting that may not have happened without their involvement.
So appreciative of their efforts.
The construction and design engineer, Knife River, NCE, were the designers.
They helped the day-to-day work with this, including working with stakeholders, et cetera.
Public work staff, most notably our assistant director, Scott Hightower, who facilitated
the job contract for this and helped oversee the construction inspection and construction
management, him and his team, the PIO disseminating information, very helpful getting timely information
out, Chico City Council who adopted a resolution supporting the work, kind of putting a unified
front towards this effort and as well as their staff who were helpful in navigating the
necessary steps and also kind of alleviating some of their fears and concerns.
The regulatory agencies, and yes, we like to take pot shots at the regulatory agencies.
Many times it's deserved.
In this case, they really stepped up.
They were proactive in their engagement, they were helpful, they were thoughtful.
It wasn't always perfect, but in the end we got where we needed to go and they were helpful in that process.
So I want to thank the Army Corps, Water Board, Fish and Wildlife, all those partners who were part of this.
And hopefully that relationship continues down the road.
And then last but certainly not least, stakeholders, public. A lot of folks frustrated, concerned.
We've heard their voices. It's been frustrating.
I know they've been frustrated, wanted to see more timely action, not knowing the steps
on how to get this done, but appreciate their diligence and their involvement.
Next slide.
With that behind us, not behind us, but with that largely, at least for this season, taking
care of, this is our opportunity to shift focus and get clear, hopefully clear direction
from the board on what you want to see in the long term.
We have waited to start on a long-term project until to focus our efforts on this.
We made it just in the nick of time. I still think that was a great idea.
The process that we've gone through this winter or this last summer has been very helpful at directing what the potential next steps would be.
And I know there's been some discussion of restoring the basin to its original 1965 condition.
That being very well still be the solution.
But the reality is the conditions and the situation that were in place when the 1965
solution was built may not be the right solution for 2025.
The work that we could do in the channel 60 years ago is very different than what we're
allowed to do now.
And the thought is, and this would be my recommendation if the county moves forward
as the agency moving this forward, is that the first thing we do is a feasibility
study to look at the options and have the board weigh in on what the preferred option
is moving forward. Again, it could be the 65 option. I think I'm cautiously optimistic
that there are other options that not only provide the commensurate level of flood protection
but do so in a manner that are environmentally responsible, operational, and maintenance, reduce
our level of effort, reduce our ongoing liability, and improve our ability to
see success in the years and decades to come. So your successors and my successors
aren't left, you know, complaining about the work that we did 20, 30, 40 years ago.
Next slide.
So a little bit of background on this and is, you know, back 60 years ago when this was
completed, the county was named the local maintaining agency.
It made sense at the time, you know, we were the alpha dog, however you want to refer
to it, and we took that responsibility.
But over time, Chico is annexed and grown and grown and grown, and today roughly
90% of the parcels that benefit from the work reside within the City of Chico city limits.
In the early days, from 1965 to 1979, the city and county had an ongoing maintenance agreement
where we shared that responsibility of maintaining the channel.
The county would actually reimburse the city for any work performed through county
service area 24.
After the passage of Prop 1 in 1978, the city terminated that agreement.
So, the last 45 years, the city has had expectations on how that's been administered and has really
not had any responsibility, authority, or kind of, you know, or a broader role after that
termination of that agreement.
LAFGO, also in its most recent municipal service review, through the review of this
county service area and several others that have largely been annexed into the city,
they made a recommendation that the city should maintain full maintenance responsibility
of this infrastructure and highlight that and we'll recognize that we've heard
several comments over the last years of my interactions with the board on this
topic. Next slide. So with that in mind that's why I'm here today. I am looking
for direction on the boards which direction the board would want to go.
There are certainly more options than three. I've kind of put three as a
starting point starting from the least involvement from the county going to
the most involvement with the county. Option one would be we've triaged the site, we're
good, we think the city should take it, and I'll talk more about each of these in the
coming slides. Let's work with the city to see if they'll transfer that. Option two is
more of a partnership. It's like, okay, we're both partners in this, let's move this forward.
One agency more likely the county would still be the lead, but we'd have more of
a partnership. There's precedence to this, and I'm going to talk about that as part
of option two. Then option three would kind of be a status quo, at least in
in the short term, the county would continue to take the lead.
There's benefits with that, there's some drawbacks,
and we'll talk more about that in each of the slides,
each of the next three slides.
Next slide.
Show option one, again, is the one we say,
it's your problem Chico, you deal with it.
This recognizes that five mile,
again, the MS Municipal Service Review
has that as a recommendation.
It's primarily within the city.
The city currently doesn't really contribute
to maintenance or operations,
and it's aligned with LAFCO's recommendation.
That said, through correspondence we received
with the city, it's extremely likely
that they will oppose this.
That will likely create a long drawn out process
to determine that with no guarantee of success
that the county will ultimately
advocate its responsibility here.
This will likely result in significant delays
to the project, likely, if not months,
likely years to the project as we navigate that.
Next slide.
And really quick, if you're looking to me for a recommendation, my recommendations are probably option three and option two. Those are my two, but certainly could go in any direction that the board would like to go.
Option two is more of a collaborative agreement. Again, recognizing the same parameters we talked about, but it would bring the city on as a partner through other means and manners and role that the county would wish to see.
We could have shared expectations.
We'd be a partner.
I still think the county would probably take the lead on the project.
But, you know, whether it's outside role funding or all decisions the board can make,
and there is precedent for this.
Back in 2022, the city approached the county about its storm drain master plan.
As part of that program, there was a percentage of property that was outside of the city's boundaries.
It, I don't want to say demanded, but it asked for the city, the county, to make a contribution for our fair share contribution for the portion outside of the simulimits and the board approved that to the tune of about $134,000 for the city's storm drain master plan.
This approach could potentially adopt that same philosophy saying, hey, we shared for years, you share for this.
Again, this is an increased role.
My understanding, that would be the city would not support this, so we would be facing a lot of the same challenges to get some sort of agreement in place.
Especially, I'm assuming, with funding obligations asking the city contribute might be take some time.
And again, with an unclear impact on project delivery.
Next slide.
So option three is more of the status quo.
The county would continue to deliver the project.
we would take the lead. We'd move forward. This is certainly the quickest path to project
completion. The county would carry the burden of the project delivery, the liability, the project
costs. That said, those could be mitigated. I know the board has expressed an interest
in funding this. It's been my recommendation if we can't get some sort of funding like state or
federal grant funding that we go through the special district process through a Proposition
2018 election that would involve the city of Chico as again most of the residents live there if
successful that could not only fund this work but future work to come and that would solve the
funding piece of that in perpetuity. I think that certainly leaves open the door to the board
once the project is complete to look at a scenario to transfer the operations of this and
this is more akin to like leaving it in a turnkey status like it's done it's completed
we can have that conversation.
And that can mean transferring it to the city.
It could be developing some sort of shared maintenance agreement.
One option that I've brought several times is to create a broader joint powers authority,
much like the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency,
incorporating both the city and unincorporated portions of Norchico
to address systemic flooding challenges, levy issues.
That would take a lot of years.
That would be a years or decade thing.
But in the long run, that could be the long-term solution
because SABUFCA has been very successful at leveraging their resources and revenue to
deliver much needed projects for portions of Butte and Sutter County. Next slide.
So this is a scenario for a project delivery. This is probably a little optimistic, assuming no
issues or challenges, but I wanted to give you a kind of a timeline of how things could play
out if the board decides to move forward with option three. So again, my recommendation
is to begin with the alternatives analysis that could begin at the end of this year
early 2026, anticipate that taking, you know, the better part of a year, returning back to the
board in the fall. We would have that discussion on what your preferred option is. And then if
the board says whatever option we want to move forward, we could then move forward with parallel
efforts for a Prop 218 election and a design effort. And, you know, the issue with doing a
Prop 218 sooner is without knowing what the actual solution is, we're kind of shooting in
the dark a little bit. And we could underfund the project, which could delay it. I don't
think there's a lot gained. Also, with a Prop 218, you generally have to know the design
and the long-term construction and maintenance strategy, and that may not be known until
after the alternatives analysis is done. And so that would take about 18 months. That's
a huge Prop 218 election. We can't lick envelopes fast enough and count them here
on the die over here. That's about over 15,000 property owners that could be included.
We could also continue with a parallel effort at the same time to design and get the
project ready for construction, construct the project in 2028 and then have those discussions
after the end of the project to look about a long-term solution for the maintenance of
this and then more systemic maintenance of flood infrastructure throughout the north
part of Chico, including the city.
So again, this is one option.
If the board's looking at options one or two, I would guess you add some years
to that.
So next slide.
So again, today we're excited and my hope is for my successor when they come in, they have very clear direction.
This has been one of the most challenging, rewarding, but fraughtful projects I've worked on.
I'd love to have my successor have a little clear runway and clear direction and I'm hoping for that.
And with that in mind, happy to answer any questions the board has.
Questions, board members?
Well, I'm the only one, I don't have a dog in a fight except on Lafko.
I think the CSA should bear the cost of this, and I think the CSA probably should be expanded
to downstream people that are positively impacted, so they'd be voting on something
that would give them the Cadillac ultimate solution.
And I also don't believe that GICO should be left out of it.
I mean, I can remember when a car lot was going to be built in the county and they went way
out of their way to go out and annex it.
Well, this is right in your city limits.
I think fair is fair.
I mean, as far as the county residents bearing any of the burden of the cost, that shouldn't
happen.
It should be the people that are impacted by it.
And if the people don't want to vote to have the Cadillac solution, then so be it too, that's my opinion.
Other points of view?
I have a question regarding...
The options that are presented because it seems like there could potentially be additional
options where if we were to move towards, you know, having a JPA, but we do a formal agreement
with the city to partner on the project while pursuing the transfer of the site and operations
so that we're doing the work while we are working towards that annexation into the city of Chico.
So it doesn't seem mutually exclusive to me.
I think you got a good point.
In other words, we're going to get this project done.
We're going to give this completed project at the end.
You like a 321 option.
Sum of three, sum of two, and then ultimately end at one.
Yeah, and I mean, which I think is the right way to do it. Yeah, I think right
I mean we looked it took a lot of time and a lot of effort and thank you Director
Pack for finally establishing whose responsibility this was that was seemed
to be the biggest issue we couldn't get past initially but it is it is our
service area. And so we cannot just not provide the service. And so we have a good solution
for this year. But again, we also know that the second year after the fire has the most
potential for some disastrous outcome. So we'll know where we stand a little bit better
after this winter and spring. And I think if during that period of time where we're providing
our ongoing maintenance and we are getting reports from consultants on the best method
forward while pursuing the folks who are the most impacted, having-
You're not against the CSA paying their way.
I am not. Not at all.
Yeah, my preferred alternative is to move as quickly as we possibly can to return the
area back to the 1965 level, whether we can do that or not is a whole other issue.
Well, the super budget goes to jail.
Right, that's true.
And I don't know if it's the chairman of the board that goes to jail.
I don't know how I'm going to deal with that.
I'll make that motion.
Yeah, okay.
But most of the CSA is in Supervisor Ritters, a district, however the downstream folks that I deal with who have had some issues, especially this last year with a levy break, are very concerned.
And so it would be great if we could expand the CSA. I don't know how, if that's an alternative or not, that's something I guess we'd have to go through Lafko.
But I think expediency is very important. And the quicker we can move on this, great.
I think the city has been a good partner so far. I'm sure that they would want to work with us in the future,
but that is something down the line. I think it's our responsibility at this point in time.
And I think we should move forward as quickly as we can with all the permitting and get it back to 1965 levels.
I don't know, after the fire I picked up a lot more constituents in Chico that are obviously
near the five mile dam and they might not like my comment, but as things change and
cities expand, I just feel it's absolutely not in the rest of the county's best interest
to keep being the lead for some kind of project, you know, imagine it's a road that was county
maintained in the city annexed. Well, they took probably that road. I see this flood protection
as that as well. And as Director Pack said, it's like 90% of properties that are benefiting
from Five Mile are now in the city of Chico. So I think that the city of Chico needs to do
What they seem to really like to do is annex properties that make them money, but in this case, it's a property that protects a lot of people and protects a lot of valuable assets.
If it fails, sure, the county will get blamed because we're the lead agency, but the end result is going to be a loss of City of Chico property.
So, you know, take it for what it's worth. We just talked about roads and we don't have the funding for our roads, so we'll just hope everyone buys trophy trucks.
In this case, everyone should build their house on stilts.
I mean, I'm being sarcastic and my dream would be to move towards number one, and I know we have a city representative that's here.
Two, sorry, apologies for missing the second one.
But, you know, it's really, it's infrastructure within the city of Chico, and I don't mean to be the bad guy, but...
Well, I agree with you, but I just don't think I could get the third vote, so...
That's all right. At least we we set our peace bill. I like the actually you all have good ideas
And I do kind of like the three-two-one option really ultimately however getting it back to the 60s is
It's like buying a 1968 Cadillac and a 2025 Cadillac there's going to be things that have changed
There is things that have changed since the 60s
And I just think getting it back to that level
My predecessor in 20 years from now will be still having this conversation because we'll still have to talk about it.
I think I agree the quickest route is the best route, so let's continue to piggyback off what you have accomplished already in just that short amount of time,
which in the couple of months since we talked about this last, I mean, to go from a 44-year storm to a 130-year storm is outstanding.
I never thought that the numbers would be that, and I was really excited to see that.
So, I think we should start on three while working with two and then ultimately get it
back to the city or get it to the city where it belongs which is within the city.
Two assume or three assumes that we are not doing two or one.
I want to do a little portion of each.
So, well, so we can do a portion of each with option two and option one and if ultimately
the goal is that we are handing something to the city that is in a good
place and safe then that is not necessarily the county completing the
long-term project. I'm in agreement that whatever the solution was in 1965 I
mean we have different we have different maintaining agencies we have
different laws in terms of environmental and fish and wildlife like
everything has changed so I think we need to have this assessment and
consultants come in and say this is the plan now right this might have been the
plan in 1965 this is the plan now right to get the sediment out or to relocate
the sediment or whatever needs to happen open different channels and this
is where we start and that the county start there with the goal of
transferring this to the city of Chico but ultimately we're not taking on option number
three because it's going to be transferred to a different jurisdiction for the on the ongoing.
Okay yeah I think I think that talking about the transfer is great but the main thing is we
need to protect our citizens and we need to get the work done and I think we get the work
done first and then figure out the transfer later. So that's my opinion. Any public comment?
Yes, we have two cards starting with Tom Van Overbeck followed by Les Herringer.
All right.
Council Member Van Overbeck, good to see you this morning and I will allow you
more than three minutes just out of professional courtesy if you need it and go ahead and turn
your turn on that yeah yeah that's right thank you thank you well having been
on your side of the podium I will try to keep my comments to three minutes so
good morning so I am but first thing I want to comment on something Supervisor
Teeter said so I'm not here representing the city I'm here
My views are consistent with what most people in the city and the council believe, but I'm here representing myself, so don't infer that I'm representing the city.
So I'm going to Chico City Council. I represent district number five, I'm sorry, number six, and the five mile flood protection zone is in my district.
So I found out about this about two years ago, a retired View County flight control guy took me out there and I became really alarmed.
I think we would all agree that our number one priority is protecting the safety of our citizens.
And if something, we've all in View County become too familiar with fire, but I think we would all agree that after fire this is the next biggest danger that we face.
if something really bad is going to happen is because that system fails.
I want to thank Director Pack for the work that was done this summer.
That was a great first step and you really pushed hard to get that done.
I'm concerned that you're leaving and I hope your predecessor has a similar enthusiasm
for the project.
So just a little bit of history.
I'm old enough to remember the flood of 1955 and there were seven feet of water
in the city. I lived in Modesto at the time, and we had a vineyard that was halfway between
the Stanislaus and the Twalamy rivers. We were eight miles from each river, and our
house flooded. The rivers joined. Basement flooded. There was about a foot of water,
so it wasn't a catastrophic thing. But I can remember that, and I also remember.
I think
That flood control structure was finished in 1965 because in 1960, the State of California
passed Proposition 1, which was a state water project.
So that's how Orville Dam got built, Bullard's Bar Dam, and a number of secondary projects,
including the five-mile flood control structure.
So it was designed to accommodate a 100-year flood event, according to the Army Corps
of engineers, which they defined as 16,000 cubic feet per second.
So hold that number in your head.
That levy has almost – the water's almost gone over the top twice.
Once was in 96, 97 in that winter.
It was right on New Year's Day.
And the measuring devices broke.
They estimate there was 24,000 cubic feet of water that moved through the whole system,
and the water was right at the top. So designed for 16 with 3 feet of free board
at 24,000 it was right at the top of the levee to the levees go like this or the
channels shape like this. So in February of this year of this year we had a
10,000 cubic foot per second flow and the water almost went over the top.
So what that implies is that 60% of the capacity of the system has been displaced by debris.
So this has all been compounded by the park fire, of course,
because you don't have the vegetation to hold down, to impede the flow of the water.
The runoff comes down faster.
So the peak flows are higher for a given amount of precipitation,
And they're estimated to be about twice as high.
So right now it's estimated that there's
100,000 cubic yards of material between the diversion
at the dam and the weir, which is about a half or two
thirds of a mile downstream.
So to give you an idea how much 100,000 cubic yards is,
if you took a strip a hundred feet wide and a half a mile long you'd have ten
feet of material. So that's how much stuff's in there and and because that
stuff is in there water can't be in there because it's displaced by the
rubble. So it defies common sense that there's some clever magical system
that's going to restore the flow to its specification without removing that
material.
We are playing Russian roulette with this situation.
It's not a question of when, or if, it's a question of when we get the next big event.
And so I would urge the supervisors to move quickly, as you've all talked about.
If you want to have a conversation with the city about who has responsibility and when
that responsibility transfers, I think we should have that responsibility, but it's very important
that we not delay this a couple of years, particularly because we're going to have
big debris flows this year if we have anything like normal rainfall because of the fire,
which is going to compound the whole situation.
And I'll be happy to take any questions.
You're probably going to ask the question I was going to ask.
Well, no, probably not.
So based on what you're saying, it sounds like the city of Chico would like to have input into this process.
Sure.
So that pushes us towards option two as well.
You know, start that conversation, but in the meantime, we need to move forward getting
the permitting.
Absolutely.
I don't think there's anyone here saying we don't want to move forward.
It's the difference between some of us saying we want to move forward simultaneous with that
left-co process and the creation of a CSA. Well, there needs to be a funding mechanism in the CSA,
it's obviously, you know, at the top of it. Yeah, okay. Well, there we go.
Absolutely. Yeah, and if we need to go to an election to the CSA, I would hope that the
city of Chico would be shoulder to shoulder with us in promoting that the
approval of that 218 election yeah I can't commit to that but I don't know
why we wouldn't okay I would certainly support it correct so I mean it's just
gonna be an education project I mean that's a big election for a CSA a big
election and we'd have to do a lot of education as to why people need to
fund this. And I'm sure you'll be right next to us with that.
Absolutely. Okay. Any other questions?
I just wanted to make a point. So, as I'm sure you probably know, based on where you
live, flood insurance is approximately $2,000 a year, depending upon your property and
where you live, you know, what you're needing to insure. It takes 30 days for flood insurance
to kick in and so everyone who I talk to who I know lives next to the channel or
downstream a five mile I have been encouraging to get flood insurance and
flood insurance is considerably more expensive than Prop 218 election would
be, you know, finding or whatever fees from folks. So I think that it's a much better deal
for this to be funded by the people who benefit than it is to have to independently go out
for every household to get flood insurance because that's not realistic.
Well, it's more than just the people in the, around the park. I mean, it's downtown
town and all those neighborhoods. Yeah. Yeah.
I'd like to point out that's how Sabufka operated. We went out and educated
people that it was much cheaper to do pay for prevention than it is to get the
flood insurance and to react to a flood. So I think you could pass it.
I'd like to point out that Councilor Dale Bennett is here. I don't know
whether you want to say something on this deal. Okay. You sure?
You sure? Vice Mayor, do you want to say something?
Oh, here we go.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for your comments.
Thank you for being here this morning.
Yeah, you bet.
Put you on the high seat.
I didn't hand in a card, but it's
hard to sit that long and jump up and walk.
Especially at our age, huh?
At our age, yes.
Actually, I'm much older than you.
All I have to say is I'm very happy.
I'm very encouraged that the conversation went so well.
We recognize we have a problem, a severe problem, which has not manifested as yet, but it's possible.
It could happen one of these days, very soon, tomorrow, or this winter.
So I'm just here to support you and your decisions and your evaluation of what the City of Chico is looking to you to provide.
I'm encouraged, I'm happy, and I'm going to say thank you.
That's all I have.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Anybody else?
Yeah, we got public comment, right?
Okay, we'll continue public comment.
Okay.
We have one more card from Les Haringer.
Les Haringer, the famous Les Haringer.
How are you, Les?
Hey, Todd, I'm doing great.
Thank you very much, Supervisor Kimmelchew
and the other supervisors.
I do appreciate your work on this.
It means a lot to us.
And Supervisor Connolly, you do have a dog in this fight.
We're downstream from the city of Chico M&T Ranch.
We have miles of levee on Big Chico Creek and Lindo Channel.
And last February, we had water coming over our levee
and through our levees out there.
And we have to maintain our levees privately.
They're privately maintained levees.
We have to get a permit.
I mean, it's a 10-year process.
By the time you get the permit,
And then you have to mitigate, you know, for loss of, you know, a sheared off levee.
We have big trees that grow along our levees out there.
And you look at some of those trees, and the roots are half-exposed.
I mean, they're huge oak trees, probably 150, 200 years old.
And they fall in, they take half our levee with them.
And this last winter, we had huge problems in February out there.
We had the sandbag.
I mean, we patrol our levees day and night out there, you know, when we have big storms like that.
And it's the appropriate thing to do.
We really need this project.
Let's go back to, you know, the 60s and do the project and then figure out, you know, who's responsible.
And, you know, I would think there was some liability issues involved here for doing nothing.
For, you know, allowing it to get this far.
North Star Engineering, as City Councilman said, there's over 100,000 tons of gravel that have accreted into that.
flood area there the five mile basin. So what that does when we have high water
it does not allow the water to get into lindow channel or mud creek it forces it
all down Big Chico Creek and I was told that we were eight inches from water
going over that flood control structure at Big Chico Creek and that would
to put all that water right down the middle of Chico and Director Pack can probably remember
this if he went up there and watched them work.
When they were doing the work up there in a month ago, you know, there were some thunderstorms
in the upper basin and that big Chico Creek ran brown for about two weeks.
What that means is it was carrying a lot of sediment and it was just a few thunderstorms
up there and it's because of the burn scar and we're going to be faced with that for
I don't know how many years but we're faced with it now and I just can't, I'm the kind
of guy, I farm, I get stuff done, I just, talking about this and putting band-aids
on it just does not get it with me. We have big problems out there with our levees. What
I would like to know is,
you know, this five mile basin, it diverts water into Lindo and
Mud Creek.
Do you know how much water should go into Mud Creek and how much should go
into Lindo? We want it to go into Mud Creek because it takes it all the way around
and really puts it back in the river at the river.
That's kind of where Mud Creek Daylights.
That's what we want.
Lindo Channel, when Lindo and Big Chico Creek meet,
which is on M&T Ranch, I mean, it's a river out there.
We just have so many problems out there with our levees,
and we get no help at all.
We maintain them ourselves.
We patrol them.
We sandbag them.
We have to have you wrap it up.
I'm sorry, Todd.
Sorry, last thing.
That's okay. I get kind of stirred up about this because we have miles of levy on Big
Chico Creek and I mean it's a huge problem for us and we pay big taxes, okay? We're
and I think to ask, well, Troy was here. There he is back there. I think we're in the top
five in Butte County as far as paying taxes. You know, we deserve some consideration here.
Thank you for your comments, sir.
Thank you, Todd, for hearing me out. I really do appreciate it.
We appreciate you being here and making public comment.
Thank you.
And thank you for your help with the Department of Water Resources and your connections there.
It's helped, though.
All right.
Thank you.
John, do you have a dog in this fight?
Fairly.
Well,
you can turn on your microphone, John.
Thank you.
It's really sensitive.
Yeah, I do want to say that the long-term solution is probably not to use county general
fund dollars on this.
I agree that something needs to be done sooner rather than later.
I really want to say thanks for all the work that has been done here.
Going back to Robin McCollum's interventions and then the Department of Port Polk Works
being willing to work with him and find this solution which turned out to be well under budget
to significantly ameliorate the risks here in this upcoming wet season.
And I do want to follow up on my predecessor here that it's not just the increased flows
crews in Big Chico Creek that we will be seeing this year due to park fire, denudation of
the slopes, but also that additional sedimentation is going to occur within the basin.
So however many tons have been deposited in each of the previous 60 years, it's going
to be significantly more in the upcoming winter, and therefore it is necessary to
make progress as quickly as possible.
So I think I would support working on a feasibility study immediately to look
if there really is a channelization option that would divert water, say,
through Sycamore into Sacramento River rather than trying to remove 100,000 tons
out of the basin in all of the possible environmental effects.
I do also want to say that the city of Chico, through their stormwater districts,
has imposed costs on, for example, people looking to develop in the El Monte area
before the annexation. And given the imposition that they were going to make on those taxpayers,
it's certainly reasonable for the City of Chico to contribute to this project. But I
agree that CSA 24 is more likely to be the best funding mechanism. And since we did come
in well under budget, we probably have the money somewhere to pay for at least a feasibility
study. And I agree that in the long term, if we can handle or something turnkey
to the city. It would be better for their public works department to be maintained as the long
run rather than county public works because we are already stretched too thin here and I agree with
District 5 supervisor that this is not a county issue in the long term. We just want to have
things resolved to a safe and stable state as quickly as possible and then wash our hands.
Thank you, John. Any other public comment? Anyone else out there want to talk?
We'll close public comment.
What direction does this board want to go?
Supervisor Ritter, you want me to take a shot at a motion and see if you – sure.
So –
Do we need a motion or is this just a direction?
It is –
Yeah.
So, I'm thinking obviously take the lead on the project so we can get to that quickest
path of completion at this point by the alternative analysis and looking into the
Prop 218 election for CSA 24 while at the same time, you know, recognize the city of
Chico is our partner in this and continuing that conversation with them for the increased
role that I think they need to be a part of, looking to the end game of getting this back
to the city because it's city jurisdiction.
I would agree with that.
I would love to see, you know, folks like the Big Chico Creek Watershed Alliance or
the stream watchers and folks who also have some investment in this be part of that longer
term conversation.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Other comments?
Yeah.
I know option one is not going to fly with this crowd.
But I think we need to be at least, you mentioned partner and then you mentioned turning it
over I'd be totally for your motion if you'd amend it that if we're taking the
lead when it's done we're going to push hard for the city to take it over from
the county oh I think that's I just want to make that clear 100% all right yeah
that's the end game right the end game is well you said partner in there that's
It's not fair to give them that old 65 Cadillac without, you know, completely refurbishing
it.
It could be worth a lot of money.
Okay.
That's true.
Then we'll hand it over.
If I may interject for a second.
I'm hearing a couple different things and I had an idea that Popnitz, the risk of
saying idea in the middle of deliberations, but there could be a parallel effort that
could, without going down the path one, kind of set it up, potentially approaching the
city to enter into an MOU, kind of outlining the expectations over time. So, like, we're
going to deliver the project. We're going to go after CSA 24. The expectation is that
after we're done, we're going to look for scenarios that ultimately cede the responsibility.
Not necessarily fully binding, but have something that kind of sets the goalpost
now and then allows us to move forward without kind of dropping. If there's some
concerns it kind of sets the line the same saying ultimately this isn't ours
but we're going to work forward at that done and doing that through an MOU with
the city might be a solution my apologies for dropping so you know if to add that
as direction I'm good with that I'm good but that's fine yeah absolutely okay
we're not going to we're not going to move in second and have a motion no
direction to you so it's the other the other piece that I just want to
put in here, because it was kind of a big disappointment when we did not get the federal
set aside for five miles.
So I would like to make sure that from the county, you know, from this board that there
is a commitment to continue to keep that as a priority item with our representative
on the congressional level and that if you know in the MOU perhaps the the city of
Chico could also be lobbying our Congress person that we would like that
particular earmark. I think you know yes that's great idea but you know we have
cohasit and erode, I mean, oh, it's fewer people.
I'd rather see the priority come back as a separate discussion, so people could know that's
on our agenda and come and speak before I say yes to what you said.
just to give them an opportunity? Sure, but as you just pointed out it is a lot
more people and a lot more properties that are acted so. But it's not on our
agenda to talk about district priorities. Well, it is a district
priority that we're discussing. That's a little different I think. I mean I
think it's incumbent on us to figure out a way to fund this without our
So my question is to you, Director Pat, how do we begin the 218 process?
Us or is that a LAFCO?
Yeah, so that involves both.
So we carry the water for that for the most part, and then LAFCO ultimately approves any annexation or extension.
But we can start that process.
If I want to reiterate and clarify the direction to make sure that my successor knows what he or she is doing,
is moving forward with the project, with the county taking the lead. I think
there's some great questions that are here that we could vet later on. Right now
we do have sufficient funds to move this through the preliminary design stage,
even a potential Prop 218 election stage. So we're okay for now, especially
with the low costs that this project came in, it came in at $135,000 to
$150,000. So we move forward with that. At the same time, if the board's
I work in concert with the city on developing an MOU to outline the long-term expectations
for this, kind of the three-to-one scenario.
And then as far as the prop 2018 election, I think, again, my recommendation would be
to wait until we have a preferred alternative because that gives us guidance and clarity.
But then once that does, we'll have to form that out.
And I don't want to get out over my skis too much, but the timing kind of gets us
in the November of 2026 timeframe.
frame, you know, maybe there's an opportunity there to leverage the ballot there.
I'd have to have a conversation with Director Dan Lee, but, you know, either way, that's
going to be an effort that's beyond our staff level.
It's not a 20 person.
But that, I mean, I agree like we would look at CSA 24 and the properties that benefit
from that and develop the boundary based on that.
And one of the value pieces of this is there's so many parcels in there that
But the actual assessments, we're not talking like many hundreds or thousands of dollars.
We're talking about a pretty modest assessment that could potentially not only provide long-term
flood protection, the ability to leverage funding to deliver some of these other issues
including what Mr. Herringer talked about, and then ultimately the insurance piece where
folks in the Sabufka district have seen considerable savings far outstripping the annual assessments
they get charged.
So these are all things that we can deal with down the road.
but I think barring any other feedback, I've got pretty clear direction on the next steps for this.
All right. Any other comments? Okay. Thank you. Great discussion. It is a little after 11.
We're going to break till 11.15 and we're really close to the Williamson Act discussion.
I know there's some of you here that would like to talk about that. So we will break
and we will reconvene at 11.15. Thank you, Director Pack. Appreciate it very much.
Okay, we're going to reconvene. If I could have Director Danielek come up.
We're moving on to our next timed item that was supposed to be at 10.30,
but now we will take it on. And then after that we have two items
before we get to the Williamson Act discussion. So we will get there. I apologize for this
taking a little longer than we had some good discussion. Okay, with that, item 5.2, this
is a public hearing for the Maidu Mountain Lion Housing Development General Plan Amendment
and rezone. Right. How about it guys?
Thank you.
With me today is Roland Hickl, who is the project planner on this project.
This is a project that we have worked collaboratively with Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority
to help them be able to bring a project to completion that has a lot of various grant
funding involved in it.
And so with that, I will have Roland walk you through the project itself.
Thank you.
Chair Kimmelchew, members of the board.
So before you this morning, we have three applications for the Pose Maidu
Mountain Lion Housing Development.
It's a 22-unit single-family and duplex development located in East
Orville.
Next slide.
So the General Plan Amendment would change the land use designation from
medium-density residential to plan unit development.
The rezone would change the zoning from medium-density residential to plan development, and then there's also a tentative parcel map application.
The Planning Commission had reviewed this project back on September 25th and recommended with a 5-0 vote to approve the project and find the project exempt from an environmental review.
This project site is located is a 7.76 acre property located at 4001 Hilldale Avenue.
It's immediately north of Mountain View Drive in East Orville and within the
city's spear of influence. The site is level. It has is developed with a single
family residence in an existing detached shop. It has a native oak, vegetation, and grassland
site. Property is currently zone MDR. The property is surrounded by existing single
family residences to the southeast and west. Meadly to the north is the Gold Country Casino.
And then the site is served by the South Feather Water and Power, and then Lake Orville
Public Utility District provides public sewer to the site.
So development is going to be undertaken in two phases.
The first phase is 12 single-family homes on 4.5 acres.
The second phase will be five duplex units over 2.8 acres.
And then the total density is 2.8 units per acre, which is less than half of what
would be allowed under the medium density residential zone.
Existing residents will be demolished,
and then the existing shop will remain on site.
Next slide.
And so these images are what the homes would
look like on the property.
There are two different kinds of single-family homes
on the property.
There's a two-bedroom, two-unit, or two-bath.
And there's a three-bedroom, two-bath unit.
The duplex units are two-bedroom, one-bath.
at each will have a garage, there'll be sufficient off-street parking, roof mounted solar and
then the single family homes will have fencing and their own individual yards. Next slide.
So the roads are three new roads that provide access to the property. You know, way to Kim
Court. These will be constructed to a 40-foot wide travel lay, curbs and gutters and a six-foot
But why sidewalk?
Hipping them, lane would be built to the same standard,
but without sidewalks, these are going
to be gated access roads gated at Hilldale Avenue
and then gated also at the casino
where it goes through to there.
So these road standards do meet the city's and the county's
road standards, the typical development.
There's going to be an on-site stormwater retention
Pond also constructed at the site. Next slide. So we are seeking or we are
recommending the project be exempt from CEQA under section 15183 and this is to
streamline the environmental review process for projects that are
consistent with the uses and the zoning and the general plan for which a
environmental impact was perfectly prepared and certified for the
project back in 2023 when the general plan was adopted. These units are similar
to the styles that we would find in that area and then the density is similar as
well. We did not find any additional environmental impacts on the site. That
would be significant. And that concludes my report. If there's any other
questions, I'm happy to answer those. I'd like to let everybody know I've
work for Northern Circle in years past. I haven't done it in the last decade or so.
But they're very professional. They build a good quality home above requirements.
And I'm fully supportive of this project. There's a need.
And I commend the tribe for stepping up to provide housing.
Other questions, comments, and board members?
I just had a question. I didn't see it in the report. You said it was a blue oak area.
And I didn't see, I'm guessing, since you're asking to wave Sequa, they're not, they're
leaving the oaks.
There are going to be some blue oaks that would be removed from the site. They are
replanting. So whatever would remain is there. They would protect those trees and
and then they will be replanting something like 47 oak trees on site.
Did I miss where it said how many were being removed?
We don't have that number at this time.
And a lot of them have already been removed for the development.
So, Supervisor Ritter, part of the conversation is surrounding the CEQA exemption.
And to be very clear, the environmental that was done that this is tearing off of is the
previous environmental that considered those type of impacts on a more global expanse
in the general plan from the land use density assignments in the land use categories.
The exemption that is being used is specific to the fact that the density in land use
is in compliance with the previously approved document.
The reason that this is coming forward in this entitlement is because they want to have
community ownership of the property, but the layout of it and the density of it is the
same as would have been considered under that general plan EIR.
So because it is exempt from CEQA, we don't go to those next levels of environmental
all review. Thank you. Other questions, comments, any public comment on this item?
Yes, I have one card from Mike Nelson.
Good morning.
Good morning Chair Kimmel
Shoe and Board of Supervisors. My name is Mike Nelson. I'm the agent for the
applicant for Berry Creek and Northern Circle Indian Housing Authority who
members are here in our audience this morning and I just wanted to say we
We really appreciate how the county handled this.
In case you don't hear this often,
your staff did a fantastic job.
We really appreciate how they process the project.
They did it in a timely fashion
and we're getting this done in time
to go to construction in spring 2026.
Project is fully funded and ready to go
as soon as we get through the building permit process.
So just wanted to say thank you
and appreciate your staff's work.
Well, that's great to hear.
Thank you very much.
we we appreciate our staff as well okay any more public comment no further
comment close public comment wishes the board make a motion to approve second
okay we have a motion this would adopt the resolution and author is
Chair to sign. The second is adopt the ordinance and authorize chair to sign. Is that correct? Okay.
All those in favor? Aye. Oppose? Passes. Thank you very much. All right, we're going to have
Director of Water Resources and Conservation, Kami Loser, come up and this is item 4.6 and
I could read it, but I'm going to have you explain what this is all about. It's a little
complicated. It's not. Okay, good.
It's still morning, right? Good morning, Chair
Kimmelchew, members of the board, Camie Loser, your director of water and
resource conservation. Today's item includes the initiation of the process
to amend an existing agreement between Butte County and the California
Department of Water Resources, or DWR, for the delivery of PG&E's non-
Cal Water in Oroville, an approval of a resolution for a California Environmental Quality Act or
CEQA notice of exemption. Point of clarification, non-project water is water that is other than
state water project table A water. And under article 55 of the county's state water project
contract, the county is authorized to convey non-project water through state facilities with
DWR approval. So, just as some more background, Cal Water Orville purchases
about 3,000 acre feet of water per year from PG&E. Historically, that water was
conveyed through the myosin canal system to Lime Saddle Powerhouse and back
into Lake Orville. Then Cal Water Treatment Plant picked it up in the
Powers Canal. However, after the 2018 campfire destroyed large portions of the
biasing canal, as you know, making that route unusable.
So in 2019, to maintain the delivery, the county and DWR executed a temporary emergency
amendment to the agreement allowing the diversion and measurement from the upper biasing canal.
So it was diverted off the west branch into the upper biasing, measured and dumped back
into the west branch, and then ultimately into Lake Orville for delivery.
And that amendment was also extended to 2027.
So the currently proposed change is instead of diverting the water from the rest branch
into the upper myosin, PG&E would like to just leave the water in the river.
And in order to do this, Butte County needs to amend submit a request to DWR to amend
the agreement.
Again, the proposed amendment would allow non-project water to be kept in the west branch, flowing
past the myosin head dam into Lake Oroville and using an existing stream gauge to measure
the water for reporting.
This change simplifies operations, eliminates the use of the upper myosin and ensures
continued water deliveries to Cal water and ultimately the city of Oroville.
In addition, processing the amendment must also comply with CEQA, and because the amendment
does not change the amount of water conveyed or introduced new construction or facilities
that qualifies as a categorical exemption under CEQA, section 15301, existing facilities.
Included in your packet is a resolution for notice of exemption that once signed will
be filed with both the county clerk and the state clearinghouse.
Today's requested action is adopt the resolution of proving the CEQA notice of exemption and
authorize the chair to sign and authorize me, the director of water and resource conservation,
to sign and submit a letter to DWR requesting the amendment through our agreement that would
modify the point of diversion and measurement and extend the contract for another 10 years
to December of 2037. Easy peasy.
Are there any impacts on the area surrounding the upper
myocene? No, it only travels for about 1,000 feet down the myocene and is diverted back
in.
Thank you the river. They were just using the my scene for bookkeeping. Yeah, this simplifies
it. Drop it in the river. Okay any other comments from board members? Okay any public comment on
this item? All right, post public comment. Move staff recommendation. Oh second there.
There's a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you Cammie for that good explanation.
All right, we're going to move on to item 7, excuse me, 4.7, the Williamson Act Direct
Charge.
And I'm going to turn it over to Chief Administrative Officer Andy Pickett for an explanation.
Yes, thank you.
And with me today is Alyssa Douglas, the County Assessor, and Kevin Taggart, Deputy
CAO, and who's also the County's Budget Director.
In a previous board meeting, the Assessor gave a presentation on the Williamson
Act and the AB 1265 Direct Charge Program. She explained in that presentation that this
year's taxes are somewhat of an anomaly, that were in addition to the reassessment
of values, we also had a new GSA fees that were included in there, and also a one-time
spike in the state mandated capitalization rates. So both of these things are expected
to decrease next year, meaning that we anticipate that Williams and Act landowners will see
a decrease in their tax bills next year.
So after the assessor gave the presentation, the board directed staff to return and report
on the fiscal impacts that would be of ending the AB 1265 program.
And that's what we're doing here today.
So I'm going to use a real life example to illustrate the points that I'll be
making.
So, would you go to the next slide, please?
I'm going to use an example of a ranch that is rangeland, a little over 500 acres.
So if we look at this property, the Prop 13 tax associated with this is just a little
over $5,000.
And now, just as a reminder, the property tax is the single biggest source of general
fund for the county.
The county doesn't get all of that that is shown in the blue column, but it does get
a portion of it.
And that portion is used almost exclusively for public safety and for library.
Now, when an ag property owner places a property in the Williamson Act, they agree to keep
the property in ag and open space instead of developing it for non-ag uses.
Next slide, please.
In exchange for doing that, the property owner gets a significant reduction in their property
tax.
In our example, the owner goes from paying a little over $5,000 in property taxes to
paying a little over $1,400 in property taxes.
Now let's remember that this is the county's major funding source for local programs.
And when the state passed the Williams and Act, they knew that this was the case.
So, at the beginning of the Williamson Act, the state, they provided the county the amount
of money that would be roughly equal to what funding we would have lost because of this
program.
In that sense, we were held harmless.
It was a win-win situation for us at the time.
But about 15 years ago, the state decided to stop this backfill and the state knew
at that time that this would create serious budget issues for counties to do this.
So they created a method to fix this thing that they had just broken.
And that method they created would help counties maintain their budgets, were also allowing
properties to continue to benefit from the Williamson Act.
And that fix that they did was the AB 1265 program.
The property owner gets to benefit from substantially lower property taxes and then the property
owner sends a small amount of their savings directly to the county in order to essentially
backfill the state's portion of what they were doing.
That's really what this came down to be.
So it allowed the properties to stay in the Williamson Act and the counties to continue to provide the services that they were using without funding.
Next slide, please.
In our real life example, when you add the AB 1265 direct charge, the property tax now
becomes a little under $1800.
The difference between the orange and the green is what we're discussing today, that
the difference in this instance is $362 for this property.
From the county's perspective, $362 may not seem like much, but when you take that small
increase between the two and you look at all of the properties in the Williamson Act throughout
the county, that adds up to $700,000.
And when you look at that $700,000, you think of our context of we have a billion-dollar
budget, the first take is that it may not seem like a lot, but we have to keep
a couple of things in mind. First of all, of that billion-plus dollar budget that we have,
80% of that is restricted funding. That means that you have no discretion over that money.
That could not be used to backfill the $700,000. The rest of that money, that 20%,
includes a number of things, but mostly we can call that the general fund.
And this is the fund that we used to pay for sheriff, fire, criminal prosecution, probation, and libraries.
Now, as a reminder, that fund, that general fund, this was the fund that was in such bad shape
that for so many years we had to keep making reductions to these programs
that last year the voters agreed by 68% to tax themselves to restore these services that we had been reducing over the years.
That was Measure H, and that produced $44 million.
That money from Measure H, every cent from that has been budgeted towards these programs
that I just mentioned.
In the Sheriff's Office, we've been able to add correctional deputies to be able to
open the jail.
We restored deputy sheriff positions to restore our patrols, also to restore the designated
area deputy programs in the fire department.
We brought staffing up to industry standards.
We had been running below industry standards for many years.
We've been able to reopen our winter fire stations,
set aside funding to repair and replace our old dilapidated fire stations.
In the DA's office with this money,
we've been able to restore the criminal prosecution that we have cut over the years.
Likewise, in probation, we've restored the probation officers
so they can have case flows that they can pay attention to the individuals.
In the library we added positions back so we could reopen the libraries to historical
levels.
Now in addition to restoring these positions, we were able to take the salaries and make
them bring them to a competitive level.
Last week the sheriff was here getting a presentation and he touched on this subject.
He touched on adding the positions, but also on making the salaries competitive because
he said that having the positions is nothing if you can't fill them.
Vacancies do us no good.
So the retooling of public safety and libraries has accounted for every measure, every penny
of measure H currently and going forward.
So what I'm saying is that there's no leftover funding at this point.
It's been programmed.
So if we were to take the $700,000 and reduce revenue by that amount, we would have to because we have a balanced budget, we would have to reduce our expenditures alike amount in order to maintain balance.
So in order to give you a sense of what that would look like by department where this would come from, here is what it would look like by department.
In the sheriff's office, that would mean reducing four-and-a-half sheriff's deputy positions,
essentially the designated area deputy program.
Or in the probation department, that would be seven-and-a-half probation officers,
meaning we would go back to banked caseloads in many instances.
In the DA's office, it would be a reduction of four criminal prosecutors.
Or in the fire department, it would mean the closure of three winter fire stations.
or in the library it would mean 21% reduction in staffing, which translates to scaling back
the number of days that the library is open to the public. So for these reasons staff recommends
keeping the AB 1265 program as is presently constituted and today we're here looking
for direction from your board. That concludes my report.
Okay, comments, questions, comments
from board members?
I don't even think measure H, you know, that portion of the general fund should even be
a consideration because we made a commitment to the voters when we said what measure H
was going to be for, and while we did not do, you know, a specific tax that required, you know, more than 50% of the vote or 65% of the vote, we had it.
So we need to keep, we need to keep our agreement with our constituents.
Andy, you'd mentioned that this AB 1265 tax is in the bills right now that have been submitted
and will be paid in December and April, correct?
It's built in already.
It's already been built.
What we're talking about is for next year, correct?
And years to come.
Correct.
Okay.
Okay, and you mentioned that you believe that the tax will be lower next year.
Can you explain that again?
I will defer to the assessor on the explanation of the technical aspects of this.
Okay.
Why is it higher?
Okay, so we have a statutory rate that has to be applied each year when we come up with
the valuations. Now, there's a formula when you're doing income capitalization. We call
it IRV. What is it? It's income divided by rate equals your value, okay? So the rate
State is what we can't control because the state is giving us that.
So since 1998, that rate has resulted in higher valuations, okay?
It came from the years of 2021 to 2023.
That rate yielded the greatest values since this has been recorded, the yield rates, okay?
Well, in 2024, there was a little bit of a reprieve.
The rates were adjusted by the state, resulting in a lower value.
This year, again, for 2025, the values went down again.
There's no way to predict where that rate is going to take us, but everybody should have seen a reduction this year on their tax bill for that reason.
And you expect that to be, again, the same. You don't know, for 26.
No idea.
So, it inched, it was three-quarters of a percent was the change, but now we're back
to where rates were in 2017-2018.
So, it's considerably lower.
Yeah.
Thank you.
And in addition to that, the GSA fees have been adjusted going forward.
Correct.
Well, wind-up was ahead of the curve, but now we have to readjust, but yeah.
I just want to point that out.
There were some issues though also with the GSA fees and so were those already adjusted
like back for the people who were overcharged?
Do we know the status of that?
I don't think that we have that information right now.
Well, I think Director Loser, do you want to tackle that question?
Yeah.
Can we retroactively?
Before I butcher it.
Well, let's hear you butcher it first.
Okay.
Hello again.
Some of the fees for...
This one's sensitive.
Some of the fees were fixed in the original or the initial assessment for the Vina Groundwater
Sustainability Agency. In the other, for Wyandotte Creek and for, I'll say, most of the parcels
within Vina, it wasn't adjusted because it was a matter of cents, less than $2, but
a majority was $0.05, so it wasn't adjusted. In Vina, they've adopted a new fee, and so
it's been fixed. And then in Wyandotte Creek, they did a different method for assessing
the values, and so it was corrected that way.
Yeah, but what we're really talking about today is the Williamson Act, the 10 percent.
And is it right, 10% or whatever, it was just called the AB 1265 charge.
Yeah, it's the difference between if you recall the visual of the two columns on the right,
that little portion, the 362 in the example that I had up on the screen.
Okay.
I'm going to have a public comment, but I've also asked Andy Pickett if we could
move this down the road to another meeting to discuss further. This is not time sensitive
because it will not affect the this year's bills that we got. It will be next year's
tax bills. And the reason I'm asking it to be delayed is because I got several emails
and text for people that could not be here today to discuss that.
Sorry, can I interrupt you?
Yeah.
So the only thing I ask is, as we move it down the road or whatever, at budgetary time,
when the budget comes forward, moving forward just to have that conversation within the budget team
as far as the discussion of, as far as that amount, you know, is this a year or does it
look like this? Is it even possible? Because we don't know what measure age or which,
again, I agree with Supervisor Ritter, but we don't know what the funding sources are
going to look like five years from now, four years from now. It might be great
and it might not be great. We can't project that moving forward. So I think a yearly
evaluation of it is at least the fairest thing we could do moving forward minimum.
So that's just my request.
Again, it's just direction.
Supervisor Ritter, did you have a comment?
When you say move it down the road, are you suggesting that we bring this back to the
board again?
Yes.
I don't know that I am supportive of that.
But basically, if we were giving directions today, my direction would be we don't have
dollars to make this up, and so it would need to be part of the budget process, and that's
the next time this should be discussed is when we're talking about the budget.
This provides two thirds of the backfill that we need, and I am not willing to undo
any of the decisions that we made regarding law enforcement and the jail
and probation and the library so you know this could be a discussion during
budgetary time but I don't I don't foresee myself changing my mind unless some
other funding source becomes available that could backfill this. I was just
doing it to allow the public comment for the people that are most affected
by this. That's that's only reason I did it. So with that we will open it up for
public comment now. Public comment on this item. Yes I received one email comment
from the Farm Bureau and I have two cards starting with Ryan Shore followed by
Joan Stonebreaker. Mr. Shore still here there he is. Hidden in the back. I know
all of you but for those of you in the room that don't know me my name is
Ryan Shaw, a farmer here in Butte County.
And so I thought it was important to come to talk about a few things with this Williamson
Act.
And in particular, I was appreciative of Alyssa's comments on the no ability to predict really
what the future will bring in terms of revenue.
And I learned from Blake Bailey, prior to his retirement from the assessor's office
that there are different pots of money where the state reimburses these tax dollars
back to the county.
And the state cut different deals with different counties, right?
So, Glen County gets different per capita money back than what Butte County does.
I think it's important to remember in the context, different than Sutter, different
than Yuba, even though we pay maybe the same rate, it comes back to the counties at a different
level.
I think, again, that's important to remember in this conversation.
But I want to encourage the Board of Supervisors and to Tammy's comments, earlier, Supervisors'
comments about Measure H and the sales tax, we as farmers are paying double
the sales tax now to the county right from nearly one cent to two cents a double the tax increase for the county so we buy a
Combine for example a sales tax portion for just the county
Went from ten thousand to twenty thousand dollars this year
Just on a combine we pay mill taxes for fertilizer of course all the then puts irrigation supplies and so forth and since
2015's high in bute County ag production in terms of real dollars inflation adjusted real dollars
Butte County has suffered a $433 million hit over the last nine years in the value,
the farm gate value of their ag products.
Obviously, they have increasing regulatory burdens that drive up costs
and also drive up tax increases.
In the last couple of years, from 22 to 24, some Williams and Ike properties
in Butte County have seen a 50% increase in the property tax bills.
And to go back to the example that was presented, when we look at the $5,000 bill on 500 acres
that assumes roughly, I think it's about a $1,000 assessment per acre, which is relatively
low when we think about our orchards or some of the other range of land that might have
traded hands and been reassessed since then, that's a pretty low number.
So there are properties that will face a really significant hit out there.
We look about Prop 13, it was passed a number of years ago before I was born
even, but that's been whittled away over time. And so Prop 13 had some carve-outs a number
of years ago on the propositions, and I forget what number that was, excuse me, but they
made a carve-out for family farms. What really what that did is it eliminated a lot of family
farms from those protections. So if your land is in a corporation or a trust or a
partnership or a joint venture, and now they'll see any number of other vehicles
bills for your farm business or asset protection or family estate planning and so forth, those
then became subject to further reassessments.
So we have a lot more land that's now subject to reassessments and increasing property values.
So I think there's a couple of things that are really important to remember here.
But the big takeaway is that agriculture has paid a lot for the promises made to this
county to protect law enforcement.
We pay those same sales taxes, double, again, to the county.
And I don't think it's fair to rob Peter to pay Paul, really.
In other words, we made that commitment to keep public safety.
We do our fair share.
This is Mr. Herring to talk about how we do public safety with our levees that benefit all of us.
We think about flood protection, where we have open space.
That's part of the Waves Act to protect that with grazing lands.
So we have water infiltration into our soils and grazing lands
to reduce fuel loads and fire breaks from that urban-rural interface.
So I think we can't forget those benefits of Williamson Act land towards the county's
goals and ambitions, right?
And so I think it's a good idea to revisit this, especially in terms of economic impact
to farmers and their commitment to the county's safety.
So thank you for the time, and I appreciate you venturing down this path.
For your comments.
Thank you.
Next?
John Stonebreaker.
Yes.
Well,
John.
Hello.
I just wanted to bring back in today's conversation some things that didn't get mentioned.
One is that the 10% direct charge is direct to the county, whereas the overall assessment
is approximately, for unincorporated island, approximately one-third of the county and
the majority of schools with some going to rec districts and other special agencies.
So that dollars that are being paid by the farmland owners are going directly
to the county and then we're giving that all of that away.
Additionally, when the assessor was talking about the rate that's set by the state,
so if you're looking at the present value of an asset that's generating income over time,
so if you're generating 2% in the market and you're receiving $100,000 income from your ag land,
well, you'd say that's a $5 million net present value that's generating $100,000 a year,
whereas if rates go to 5% in 2026, which is plausible,
then it could be that you have a $2 million asset in the sense of this is generating only
essentially the same $100,000, but if the money was elsewhere,
then there would be a different way to receive that same money, accrual.
So the assessor is right that as the federal government continues to
increase inflation and increase interest rates accordingly, that it is likely that the weight set by the state will decrease.
I just wanted to clarify that. So, again, we can't foresee exactly what that number will be.
But I anticipate that even without the abolishment of the AB 1265 charge, that the charges in the next tax cycle will not be what they were
in this tax cycle, they will be closer to what they were in 2022.
Thank you, John. Any other public comment? Okay, we'll close the public comment.
Wishes of the Board to move this to a different time. What's the, what's the preference?
Stated one.
I know you said, you did good.
Well, I had calls from Calamans Association and they're not present today.
I would like to hear from them, too.
So what do you suggest?
Wouldn't it be a good time to move this, too?
Well, there's a couple of options that I think have been mentioned.
One is for blending this into the budget process
and having that addressed at that time,
what it would mean in that particular budget
to have the $700,000 reduction.
That would be one option.
Another option is just literally to go a year out
and let the new tax cycle happen and see where we are at the time.
And we can address how it developed over that time.
Those are the couple of options that I've heard from the days.
I think too.
Well, A, the people that they should have a voice heard and not, you know,
sometimes if it comes out on a Thursday, right, people have schedules and I get that.
But also, you know, if it is going to adjust, I want to know what that adjustment is going to look like.
We talked about what that what is that going to look like and I'm sure that the farmers want to know that as well
I mean, that's important right? It's their money
But again, also I want to urge that we do approaches at budget time. So
my recommendation would be to
move this to I do want to see the numbers but move this to more appropriate time for like the budget so we can actually
See what it looks like with everything on paper
So I'll go that route if we move to that time that is moving it to a point where I
I think if we notify Calamants and they have that opportunity to come forward, Farm Bureau,
I know we got a letter from their...
Thank you for the discussion. Thank you for the public comments. We're going to move on
Item 4.8 now, Katie Simmons, Deputy Administrative Officer, and this is a resolution approving
an additional allocation of funding for the community development block grant disaster
recovery.
Multi-family housing projects.
A lot of words.
Wow.
Yes.
Almost as much as the one on the my scene, but go ahead.
Good morning Chair Kamoshu, members of the board, Katie Simmons, Deputy CAO, as you know
and as was mentioned this morning, county staff are implementing a number of projects
using Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Funding as a result of the 2018 campfire.
On June 24th of this year, the board authorized staff to qualify two more projects for any
additional CDBGDR funds should they come available to the county.
One of those projects was the Humboldt Senior Housing Project which proposes
to construct 80 cottage-style single-family housing units for older adults in the city
of Chico.
Because of a prior commitment of funds from the county, the state was able to relatively
quickly re-qualify this project and allocate an additional 36,735,000 for construction.
To accept this additional allocation and move forward with the project, staff recommends
the Board approve amending the master standard agreement for the multifamily housing
program from $118 million to not to exceed $155 million. This amendment will allow the
county to execute a development agreement with the Humboldt Senior Housing Project for construction.
I'm available for any questions you may have as well as members of the development team today.
Thank you.
Okay, any questions, comments from board members?
Good news.
What's the size of the units or average size of the unit?
I would have to invite members of the development team up to answer that question.
Thanks for sitting through this whole meeting.
Oh, it was wonderful.
Actually, it was very enjoyable and very insightful.
I don't think you're telling the truth.
I'm going to come back next time, too, actually.
I think I'm sitting on this.
Your notes is drawing right there, I mean.
So good morning, everyone.
I'm Cynthia Alvarez.
I'm the Chief Executive Officer
and President for Christian Church Homes
an affordable housing developer and operator.
We've been around for over 60 years and have been actually in the county with one property,
one community for almost 20 years now.
We just recently completed a community of 60 senior units in Reading just a couple months
ago.
So really exciting times for us.
And the size of all of the homes are going to be one-bedrooms, all for our seniors.
The average household income of the folks we house is around $17,400 a year.
The average rent of the folks that we house is, their portion is around, is slightly less
than $400 a month.
I was looking for the square footage.
It's just shy of six hundred square feet.
Other questions?
Okay.
So I just, yes, please have the 37 million microphone and my friend, thank you.
I just want to bring up, I think it's great.
Thank you.
So now I'm going to say what I don't think is great.
Yes, what they cost.
37 million divided by the 80 units and divided by the square foot, that's $770 a square foot.
That's a lot.
Yes.
So that's my disappointment even though I totally see the need for housing.
I think for the area, you know, somewhere in the Bay Area is probably above that, you
know, but as you move to Butte County, I mean, I don't think people in paradise are going
to be rebuilding or in the Parkfire footprint at 770 square foot.
So I just want to point out that's a crap load of money.
So it always is.
And I appreciate that.
So we're bringing infrastructure into the area,
into this particular location,
and we are building these 80 homes
over four acres as well.
We really wanted to make sure
that folks that didn't feel crowded in.
But I appreciate the feedback.
Okay, thank you.
All right, any other public comment?
Public comment on this.
None? Okay, we'll close the public comment.
Which is important?
Solution and authorized chair to sign.
Okay, so you're second.
I'll second it.
All those in favor?
Aye.
Post?
Okay.
Abstention.
Okay.
All right.
Passes.
Thank you for being here, sitting through the whole meeting.
See you next time.
We're almost done.
Next is item 4.09, update on budget, legislative, and other current issues by the chief administrative
officer.
How about it?
Thank you.
We know that the federal government shutdown continues and that I think that we're all aware of the impact that's had on SNAP benefits.
So I've asked Director Rowe to come up and speak a little bit about this, particularly on the resources that may be available for those who are impacted.
Good morning Chair Kimmelchew, members of the board, your Director of Employment and
Social Services Tiffany Rowe.
As you may be aware, the CalFresh program through the state is on pause and hold for
November due to the federal government shutdown.
What that means for us locally is over 42,000 Butte County residents will not receive
their November benefits.
That equates to approximately over $8 million that is not coming into our community beginning
on November 1st.
So a couple of things that we're working on internally.
Our department is hosting a food drive to support and our local food banks.
We're encouraging the community and any of our partners to work collaboratively as
they can with the Community Action Agency and the North State Food Bank.
We're alerting the public to the Center for Healthy Communities.
They distribute a weekly food assistance flyer that is available.
There are currently daily food delivery options available within the community in all facets
of Butte County, so City of Chico, City of Oroville, Gridley, Paradise.
We are being made aware that there will be additional food resource time and distribution
accordingly in the month of November.
I don't have those dates and locations as of yet, but we're encouraging the public
and the community to really look toward the North State Food Bank.
They are a local resource.
As you can imagine, 42,000 individuals and $8 million, our local food bank likely will
not be able to absorb that unmet need.
And so this will take place November 1.
That's correct.
Our only hope at this point in time is that they reach an agreement for November 1.
That is correct.
Okay.
Thank you.
And then secondly, obviously people should be encouraged to donate toward their local food bank.
Yes.
As they see fit, we're really well versed in this community of taking care of each other,
especially during times of disasters.
This is and will be a time of disaster.
It will.
Yes, it will.
Unfortunately.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for that news.
On the state level, the legislature is scheduled to reconvene on January 5th, so we don't have
any legislative updates right now.
Great.
They're out.
I like it when they're out.
Nothing happens.
On the state's budget front, the current year receipts are a little bit higher than
would be anticipated, about 12 percent higher than projected.
I don't know how much we can draw from that because it's still very, very early,
but it's a nice line to start the trend.
And that concludes my report.
All right.
With that, is there any public comment on that report?
If you see none, we'll close public comment.
Any further board or any further comments, public comments from anyone?
Okay.
We'll close public comment on that.
And we will turn it over to our County Council, Brad Stevens, to read us into closed session.
Item 6.1, Public Employee Employment, Appointment, Recruitment, Performance Evaluations, including goals pursuant to Government Code section 54957.
All department heads listed.
6.2, Workers' Compensation Liability Claims pursuant to Government Code section 54956.951, claim involving Mitchell Graves.
and we do not expect any announcements at a closed session.
Thank you. All right, this meeting is adjourned.
You're not allowed.