The county of Monterey, let the record show that supervisor Daniels Church and ask you our present with Lopez and Lejo to be arriving shortly.
Do we have any additions or corrections to our closed session this morning? No additions or corrections.
All right, we have closed session items number 1, A through C, is there any public comment on our closed session this morning?
We'll close public comment on our closed session items.
We'll recess into close session.
We'll be back here at 10 30 AM for the remainder of the meeting.
Thank you.
for Tuesday, March 17th, 2026, let the record show that all supervisors are present.
We'll go ahead and start and ask for an announcement of our Spanish interpreter by Diego Celes,
who's with us remotely.
Well, good morning. My name is Diego Celes, and I'm an interpreter
in Spanish for the reunion of today. If you're planning to do a public comment,
and they need to serve the interprete for favor,
ablar, lenta, and sufficientemente fuerte
para que yo les cuche, favora ser una pausa
al final de cabración para asegurarse
de que tengo la oportunidad de interpretarle.
Muchas gracias.
Great, thank you.
And then next up we have our pledge of allegiance.
And I'm going to ask also him and his
from the back of the room, our director of
Monarch County Health Department to lead us
in the pledge of allegiance today.
Thanks.
The lady tends to the fire at the United States of America, and to the Republic, or from
which it stands, one nation under the law of indivisible with liberty and justice to
the law.
Thank you, Alfa.
All right.
Are there any additions or corrections to our agenda this morning?
There are none.
All right.
We're going to move right along to our ceremonial resolutions.
We have items.
Number two, three.
We've got a lot today, two through 11.
I'm happy to entertain any public comment on our ceremonial resolutions this morning.
Seeing no one in the audience, I see one hand raised Margot Thomas, and this would be comments
on the ceremonial resolutions.
Do we lose your hand Margot?
We've got you unmuted for a public comment on the ceremonial resolutions.
Margot Thomas,
all right, we're not hearing any audio here.
Do one more time for a call?
Okay, yep.
We're not hearing any audio.
Okay, we'll have IT double check on our side
to make sure we're good.
But I don't see neither hands raised, so we will go
bring it back to the board for motion.
Right, we're motion from Alejo second from Daniels.
This is for items two through 11, all in favor.
Any opposed?
Right, passes unanimously.
We have a couple presentations this morning.
I'm starting with Kate Daniels to adopt a resolution pre-climbing March 20, 26, the Civil
Grand Jury Awareness Month.
Who is here from the Civil Grand Jury?
Everyone, come on up.
This is her breakfast.
Is this on?
Oh, fabulous.
Wow.
Look at all our civic volunteers doing such important work.
Thank you all so much.
Come on up and join me on both sides.
It's great to have you here this morning.
Thank you so much for your service. This is amazing.
No wait for you all to come on up.
And let's see. We do have a resolution here,
which is civil grand jury awareness month.
And would you mind holding this?
As we present this to all of you.
Today, we recognize civil grand jury awareness month
and take this moment to acknowledge the important work
of the Monterey County Civil Grand Jury.
The Civil Grand Jury plays a unique and vital role
in local government.
Each year, a group of volunteer residents
from across the county dedicate
significant time and effort to serve as an...
Independent Watchdog Over Local Government. Their responsibility is to examine how public agencies operate, review, how tax payer dollars are spent, and help ensure that government is functioning effectively and transparently.
These jurors, who you see up here, committed many hours each week to an entire year, conducting interviews, reviewing documents, visiting facilities, and ultimately producing detailed reports.
that offer findings and recommendations for improvement.
Over the years, the Monterey County Civil Grand jury has examined a wide range of issues
affecting our community.
These reports have reviewed topics such as road conditions, the safety of the warps in Monterey,
cannabis tax revenue, the fentanyl crisis in our youth, noise at the Monterey airport,
public bus transit systems, and more.
Their work often highlights opportunities to improve efficiency, accountability, and coordination
across public agencies.
What makes this process especially valuable is that these investigations are conducted
by community members who are serving solely in the public interest.
Their findings help inform elected, improve government operations, and increase transparency
for the residents we serve.
Each year, the civil grand jury releases its final report summarizing its investigations and recommendations.
These reports are typically issued in June and agencies that are the subject of the findings are required to formally respond to those recommendations.
I want to take a moment to thank the members of current and past civil grandjuries for their dedication to our important civic responsibility.
serving on the civil grand jury requires a tremendous amount of commitment, time, energy, thoughtful
analysis, and our county benefits greatly from all your work.
We look forward to reviewing this year's reports when they're released in June, and we
appreciate the ongoing effort these volunteers make to strengthen transparency, accountability,
and good governance throughout Monterey County.
Thank you all so much for your service to our community.
And I believe you have some words to share with us as well.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Supervisor Daniels.
On behalf of the Civil Grangers current and past,
we'd like to thank you so much for this recognition.
The moderate chapter of the California Grangers Association
would also like to thank you.
On behalf of these two groups, we thank you and in turn, we would like to thank the Board
of Supervisors for your outstanding work in Monterey County.
We are all working together to make Monterey County grow and thrive and be a wonderful community.
We would like to thank, in addition, Judge Hulsie, Sandra Antavaro's County Council Susan
Blitch, Juan Ramirez, and District Attorney Janine Pachione.
This civil grand jury could not complete our important work without the support of this entire team.
So thank you so much for this honor.
We appreciate it.
Let's get a photograph if we can of all of you and your resolution.
All
right. Good morning, everyone. I'm up next. As we all know, Monterey County is a very
culturally and ethnically racially diverse county that we all call home. And it's always
important to take a moment to recognize some of the organizations that have been pioneers
leaders and leaders in celebrating that diversity of our community.
Today, I want to call up Mars, a local mora, the president of the community of Filipino community of the
Selina Valley and his board members. Let's give them a round of applause, everybody.
Today,
today, we are
recognizing the 90th anniversary of the organization of the Filipino community of the Selina Valley and the
of their 2026 and 207 officers.
I joined their celebration last month.
A very good event at the community of Filipino community hall.
But today we also wanted to take time to recognize them here
in front of our community and in front of the full board of supervisors
and present them this resolution.
The resolution reads in part,
the Filipino community of Selena's Valley was established in 1936.
Just think about that.
That was during the Dust Bowl era, right?
challenging times in the nation over the period in our nation's history, during an era of
significant hardship and discrimination, serving as a vital sanctuary and unified voice for Filipino
migrant workers who are the backbone of the Selena's Valley's agricultural industry.
And for nine decades, the Filipino community, Selena's Valley, has remained a steadfast
beacon of cultural heritage, resilience and civic engagement, providing a home away from home
for generations of Filipino Americans through its historic Filipino community hall at 250
Gaia Sabu in Salinas. The Filipino pioneers of this valley, including the legendary
monongs, a plated transformative role in the American labor movement, notably through the Filipino
labor union at historic 1934. Let us try here in the Salinas Valley, peaving the wave for
fair labor practices and civil rights for all farm workers across the nation. The Salinas Valley
of penal community, demonstrated profound patriotism and courage, particularly during the 1942
activation of the first Filipino Infantry Regiment at the Selena's World Dealgrounds,
where thousands of residents enter the call to serve our nation during World War II.
So, today the 90th anniversary and installation of officers marks a new chapter of leadership
and is showing that the legacy of advocacy, education, and community service established
In 1936, continue to thrive for future generations.
So therefore on behalf of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and all the residents,
we hereby recognize and congratulate the Philippine community of the Selenus Valley on the
occasion of its 90th anniversary and the 2026-27 installation officers and honors the organizations
for its longstanding and invaluable contributions to the cultural richness, economic vitality
and social fabric of the city of Selenus and the county of Monterey.
With that, we want to pass the microphone to President Martin Rokomora to hear some more words.
Thank you, Supervisor Lejo.
First of all, I want to thank the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and
Supervisor Lejo and Supervisor Lopez coming.
And even Supervisor asks you, you guys all come to the Filipino community.
It means a very much a lot to us.
As for me, I am one of the younger generations and I grew up at the
Filipino community, not knowing that ever become the president of the Filipino community and for
our community to let me carry on the torch that started back in 1936 is a great honor. I want to
really give a shout out to Susan Remus. She is the president of our Filipino community.
I mean,
I'll have California almost.
So, 95 years.
95 years.
They're celebrating 95 years.
So, there were before, yes, and there were before the Filipino community.
And she is a current president, and she's also on my board.
So, I really, you know, there's several presidents that are on my board.
From different organizations like the Slinus-Sobus-Sister City.
We have Halle Martinez.
And, uh, representative of Monterey County Filipino Community.
We have jet, okay, and I'm also a board member over there.
She, her husband was a president of the Filipino Community of Monterey, okay.
And we have also the Filipino American Nurses Association, Letti Crimes.
So our organization is together with a lot of organizations,
so I'm also on one more shout out to everybody on the board of the Asian Cultural
experience as you know we have our annual Asian fair and I know Supervisor Alejo comes
and use these speaks so I believe we're celebrating our 18th year so if anybody can
make it please come it's the last Saturday every year of April so it's from 11 to 4 but thank
you everyone and we're very honored to get this resolution. Thank you. Thank you very much and on behalf
the board.
Supervisors, we want to thank you for all your leadership, all the different organizations. We are so proud of you and thank you for making Monterey County richer and stronger for all the good work you do. So with that, I want to present this proclamation on behalf of the Board of Supervisors.
There you go. Thank you very much.
All right, thank you very much.
Thank you.
All right, congratulations again to all of our new,
and in newly installed officers, thanks for being with us today.
All right, I have the honor today of presenting a resolution to the American Association of University Women,
And I'm going to, for a Monterey County, I should clarify, and I have with me today Sharon
Sebert, the AAUW Monterey County Public Policy Director, it's my pleasure to recognize
the American Association of University Women Monterey County Branch for its critical work
advancing pay equity and expanding opportunities for women and girls in our community.
For more than a century, A.A.U.W. has worked nationally to promote gender equality through research, education, and advocacy.
Our local Monterey County branch has been a part of that legacy since its founding 98 years ago.
The branch has awarded more than 210 scholarships to women pursuing higher education, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college.
This year alone they awarded 12 scholarships of $2,500 each.
A-A-U-W Monterey County encourages a rising generation of young women to pursue careers in high demand fields like science and technology.
Their tech-truck program sends local eighth grade girls to a week-long STEM camp where they explore robotics, environmental sciences, and engineering.
And the organization also supports civic engagement, voter registration, and advocates for policies that
advance equity and education in the workforce.
This work is so important.
I often think about my own grandmother who worked as a clerk secretary for the County of
Contra Costa and think about how proud she would be of what I've been able to accomplish.
It's very different from what she had opportunities for.
So thank you for the work that allowed me to have those opportunities.
On behalf of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and all of our residents, we thank the AAUW
and Monterey County Branch for decades of leadership, of generosity, and a dedication to empowering
and uplifting women and girls in our community.
And thank you to Sharon Seabart, our AAUW Monterey County Public Policy Director, who is here
to accept the recognition.
And I think you have a couple of comments as well.
Yeah.
Hold it for you.
Thank you so much.
So our organization started in Monterey County in 1927, but AAUW nationally started in 1881, so we're over 140 years old, working on equity for girls and women.
Sadly, in the last two years, women have backslid in terms of their equality in earnings.
The reason we're here today is on March 26th, we are celebrating Equal Pay Day.
That means that Caucasian men worked all of 2025, Caucasian women had to work until March
26th to earn the same amount that the men earned in 2025.
That's even worse for Latino, Native Americans and other ethnic minorities, some of which
have to work until November of this year to earn what others had earned in just 2025.
So I'm honored.
Thank you so much for you honoring us, the Board of Supervisors and Supervisor ASCUE.
And frankly, we have just given cookies to supervisors, ASCUE, and Daniels that are
only three quarters of a cookie because there's a quarter missing for what they wouldn't
have earned.
The others three supervisors have full cookies because they're all men, so we hope with
With our work that we will continue to espouse advocacy for women in pay equity, throughout
AAUW Monterey County, AAUW California of which I am the co-president, E-Lact, and all of AAUW
throughout the country, we are a national organization.
Thank you.
So I'm glad you're here, but please join.
Did you know the word?
She's a president.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
All
right, we have one more resolution this morning
before we get on to our business,
the rest of the business of the day.
And I have, as Nadia here, from the Civil Rights Office,
I don't see Nadia.
Okay, well, I have,
I have a resolution honoring a neurodiversity celebration we care in Monterey County.
Let's make a few comments about it.
I think it is important that we, are you here to represent?
Oh, come on up, okay, perfect.
I was like, I,
and this is our ERG group that's with us here from the county.
Thank you so much.
Well, then I'm going to pass this to you.
Okay.
Thank you.
There's the whole team.
So I'm honored to thank you for jumping up.
I'm honored to present this resolution today,
recognizing the third week of March
is neurodiversity celebration
we care in Monterey County.
Neurological conditions like autism,
ADHD, dyslexia, and other cognitive differences
are all part of the spectrum of human diversity.
When we recognize and support,
these differences, we strengthen our workplaces,
our schools, and our communities.
The county has created a neurodiversity
in the workplace employee resource group and provides training across the county to help other
employees better understand and support the spectrum of differences that we all bring into our work.
Monarch County Behavioral Health and its community partners, residents of all ages,
from childrens and seniors, can access prevention, mental health and other services throughout the
county. Our work is strengthened by the efforts of many community partners,
including Special Kids Connect, Monterey County,
South Bad, Central Coast Regional Center,
Artabilities, and many others who are working
to ensure that our neurodivergent, family members and friends
and neighbors, and all of their families
have the support that they need so that we can all succeed
and bring value to the work that we do.
I want to thank Nadia Valarde from the County Civil Rights
Office and our ERG team who's here with us today
for the work that your office says to help advocate
in ensure that county policies are inclusive of everyone that the county serves.
On behalf of the Board of Supervisors and the residents of Monterey County, we're proud
to recognize neurodiversity celebration week and affirm our commitment to building a community
where every individual is valued for the gifts, the talents, the unique differences that we all
bring into our work and our community.
And I think given some of the national news that was just pushed out this last week,
I think it's even more important than ever that we make it clear that we all have strengths
that we bring and that it's important that we recognize and value and claim those strengths
in our work and in our families and in our community. So thank you so much especially for being here
this week. It means a lot to me and my family and my neighbors and the community that I represent.
So I'm going to pass it over for a few comments, but thank you again for being here.
Thank you Supervisor Eski. Good morning, Chair and members of the board.
I am here on behalf of the Neurodiversity and the Workplace Employee Resource Group.
Thank you to the Board of Supervisors for your leadership and for adopting this resolution.
Your support helps advance understanding, inclusion, and practices that ensure Neurodiversity
and individuals feel valued and supported in our workplace and throughout our community.
Your divergent, divergent reflects the natural diversity of how people think, learn, and experience the world.
Your diversity week is an opportunity to celebrate this differences.
Foster acceptance and promote greater understandings of inclusion.
And...
For...
Of neurodivergent individuals in our schools, workplaces, and communities. The neurodivercity in the workplace employee resource group is committed to help build a equitable, sorry, systems prioritized safety, dignity, inclusive workplaces for all employees and residents.
Naturally, this year's theme is from awareness to action, making organizational changes happen.
Neuro-diversity campaign encourages workplaces to focus on neuro-inclusion as strength,
particularly looking at how different cognitive profiles are toism, ADHD, dyslexia,
contribute to success. Public institutions like the county play an important role in setting
the standard for inclusion and creating workplaces where everyone has the opportunity to succeed.
Our ERG works to promote understanding of neurodiversity, reduces stigma, and supports workplace
cultures where neurodivergent individuals are recognized and empowered by research shows that
organizations that foster in your inclusion, workplace experience, higher employee retention,
stronger engagement, and increases productivity and more collaborative teams.
You know, divergent individuals also bring unique strings such as high level analytical skills,
attention to details, creativity, and innovation.
We look forward to contributing our work to advance inclusive practices that support
You know divergent employees and benefit the entire workplace, we encourage all residents and
employees to help build a community rooted in understanding, compassion, equity for everyone.
The ERG will have an informational table outside.
The board chamber until 1 o'clock for anyone interested in learning more.
Thank you everyone.
Thank you so much.
I was so good.
Thank you all for being here.
That was really nice to start the day with some celebrations.
Next step, we have item number 12 and 13,
which are appointments.
Is there any public comment on our appointments?
Seeing them, we'll bring it back to the board.
We have a motion from LA, I was second,
was that second, Kate, a second from Daniels.
And I just had one correction on the appointments.
The number 12, my understanding of the governance for Senator Water District is that this
would be a Board of Supervisors appointment, not a district appointment based on the
governance.
So if we could just have that corrected for the agenda, that would be helpful.
And for future items that come forward, I think the one last week was also listed as a district
specific appointment.
So if we could just watch for correcting those.
But with that, all in favor of the appointment?
I, any opposition?
Nope.
All right.
Approved unanimously.
We're moving on to our consent calendar today.
Is there any public comment on the consent agenda this morning?
I'm seeing no hands raised on line.
I know I'm approaching the dius here.
We'll bring it back to the board.
Happy to entertain a motion or comments.
Anyone go consent?
All right.
We have a motion from church, a second from Lopas,
any comments, anyone else?
No, all in favor of the consent agenda this morning.
I, any opposed?
None.
All right, then we're moving right on to general public comments.
This is for that opportunity for individuals
to comment on matters that are not on today's agenda,
but are within the jurisdiction of this Board of Supervisors.
And we will open it for public comment.
I'm going to start with the thing of the arch that we were talking about a few weeks ago.
I don't understand how we're going to try to build something.
In an area that is so overrun, the infrastructure is just horrible, the streets, the sidewalks,
the lights, the work and night.
There's no striping on the road. I mean, I don't get it. I don't understand how we can even bring, how you even vote on something like that, guys.
Spend money on something. I mean you guys don't even live there. Only think he is your drive through there.
You need to take a drive through there. Pick up Mr. Barretta. He's district two super.
I'm, he's the, I guess the city representative there. Pick him up or you can pick you guys up. Take a drive down the east side.
Come to get really east the leanest. So you can see what it really looks like. Honestly, I'll think you guys even know anybody down there.
Seriously, and then no, Mr. Alejo. I mean, your county roads are horrible. You haven't fixed that either.
Go down old stage. Go down all those roads back there. He's pronged and everything that they're ugly.
But we spend money on things we don't even need. Come on, guys. Dear job. Please, dear job.
Take a drive down there, coming to meet some of the people.
I'll tell you what, I'm going to have a multi-way on media next, but I'm going to invite all you guys.
You can see how our meetings really run when you can actually engage with the public
and they can actually ask you questions and you can honestly answer them.
Give me a favor, man. When someone calls you pick up the phone, when someone asks you or
sends you an email answer it, please, you get paid to do that.
Do your job, guys. I bless you guys have a good day.
So, good morning, I'm Eloise Jim, and I have to echo what Mr. Garara said about having really priorities such as the arch when there are people who are homeless in silliness.
And specifically in November, I came here to talk about one person named Mike, who's been living in the Victory Mission for 22 years.
He's a senior, he's a very mild-mannered citizen who's parents served in the Air Force, and he languishes his days at the Steinbeck Library and the El Gabelon Library.
And Roxanne came down when I mentioned it to Supervisor Olejo, she took the information and I just saw her outside, she did not contact him.
I talked to him on Saturday. He hasn't received any kind of communication from any of you.
You don't do your job.
You care about things like the arch, which will glorify your position as a supervisor.
You don't care about the people and it's really a shame that you pat yourself on the back
for being so good and so diligent and earning all your big dollars.
You don't earn your big dollars and the example of Mike with Roxanne and Supervisor Lejo, you should have followed up with it.
I said it in November, you should have followed up with Roxanne, you didn't. You're too busy with all your other things that is glorifying you, not about the people.
We'll keep moving through comments here.
Thanks.
I wasn't.
I thought she was in front of me.
But I'm going to go first.
Let me put my speech.
Okay.
Good morning supervisors.
My name is Daniel Munoz.
First I wanted to acknowledge that the LA Jorge project that was canceled and I'm glad
that it was the community spoke and it was the right decision.
But let's not try to rewrite history here, Louise.
Okay.
This wasn't just a small loud group of critics.
That's BS.
A large portion of Salinas residents thought that project was stupid and out of touch and the reality
is, it shouldn't have for taking a recall effort to get you to cancel the stupid arch.
Elected officials are supposed to listen before it reaches that point, not after.
And that's exactly why your recall was and still is necessary, Luis.
Now what happened next is just as concerning.
After the arch was dropped, you focused to expanding the soccer fields, backed by a $1.5 million donation from Bruce Taylor, and another $500,000 in federal support.
So here's the question, if those relationships exist, if that money can be brought in, then why not bring it to fix our roads?
You know, the ones your billionaire buddy Bruce destroys for free, why not address the thousands of residents struggling with homelessness in Salinas.
We're talking about millions of dollars being spent on something Salinas doesn't need.
And finally, as you prepare to vote on this upcoming county transfer tax loaves, I have a feeling that your donors might want you to vote no.
So I'm guessing that you will. Thank you for your time.
Good morning, gosh two minutes, boy, I got some complicated points to make here.
Peter Quick, licensed professional geologist, I live near River Road.
A few weeks ago, I learned that illegal trail construction activity within Toro Park had recently
been reported to the county.
I'm here today to report that I have also recently witnessed new construction of bike trails
and ongoing expansion and alteration of existing trails in multiple locations within Toro
Park.
To give just one recent example, on Saturday, February 21st, I encountered four individuals
with tools working on a major new trail that has been carved into the river fire burn
scar.
The trail is being established in one of the most remote and until recently pristine sections
of the Toro backcountry, an area that never contained any trails.
The trail is a mile and a half long, with extraordinarily steep and actively eroding sections.
This trail has been constructed to directly connect to preexisting trails on both ends, effectively
inviting anyone stumbling upon it to try to use it.
This follows an established pattern of rogue trail builders treating public land as if
it's their private property, drastically altering Toro Park for their benefit at the expense
of other user groups, creating inexorable facts on the ground, environmental damage, and public
safety hazards that need to be seen to be believed.
In fact, illegal construction of this particular trail actually began back in the spring
of 2021, less than a year after the river firehead completely denuded the area.
I first photo-documented the activity, GPS to the trail, confiscated tools, and reported
it to the county in the summer of 2021, and was under the impression that the county was
going to use the information to take action to stop the activity.
On the contrary, I have watched the trail gradually become a monstrosity of facts on the ground,
as bikers pouring to experience the thrills of what has evidently become known as a
new technical bike trail with mega earthen banks, jumps and braids carved into raw, steeply
sloping land.
So, do I need to stop here?
I wanted to make the point that I have been threatened and I'm really reluctant to report this
because I've been threatened with bodily harm, harassed, and we would just ask if you have
a written statement, if you can share that with the clerk, and we can make sure it gets
distributed to all the supervisors.
Friday, one or two has comments beyond two minutes.
We do welcome those being sent to the clerk of the board so that they're distributed to all
and on record at COB at countyofmonare.gov.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Karen Cameron, concerned Selena's resident, where Selena says 40% of the county
population, 50% of the unhoused population.
I was only one of three people present at the environmental justice meeting for the Monterey County
Planning Commission on March 11th, only because I've received an email.
It was not posted on the website due to a technical glitch.
Since no one knew about it, they need to be aware that March 11th through May 11th is a public
comment period.
Please, I encourage everyone to get educated about the 283 page document, the
environmental element justice plan environmental justice element plan there's definitely a lack of local input they gave a survey in the county apparently through the planning commission that's now closed no one
I know of got that survey several commissioners also commented they didn't receive it so a question that it seems to be deadline driven by California mandates that I probably don't agree with dollars driven and not community.
Well, it's best interest.
When I review the document, I understand that it's based on a 75% or more disadvantage.
Well, that's fine for economics, but that also correlates with the environment.
So that means things like poverty, for instance, where they need affordable housing,
but they're facing toxic waste clean up.
They're facing pesticide overdone and flooding in the area and so forth.
So it doesn't make logical planning sense.
Specific
We're in this document list as 100 on the pesticides. So fully accumulated, top soils been added, it's a known
flood zone. Just look at it, even when it's not affecting my neighborhood, I see them canoeing down the streets there.
So what are they thinking, putting a project there, except somebody got a deal? Carmel Valley, where 25% of the projects go. There were clear objections to that because of the potential
of adding that many people into the area, the wildfire, the flood hazards, how do they get out of
those roads? I got a long list of other things that I subjected to you and I encourage the public
to get educated and involved. Thank you.
I don't have much to say. Wendy, I think you're pretty cool.
Thank you. You know, you work with what you can, what you got. The system is a navy corrupt,
you know, Glenn, nice Christmas trees, big fan. I just wanted to say, at least my first
time coming here, when I checked in at the door, they took my water bottle. It's hot today.
We got to sit here, just like you have to sit here. I noticed some of you were drinking,
well, we're all, you know, sweat in a way, sweat in a way, sweat in, you know. So, I don't know.
I don't know how many things they say about nothing. I just came to listen and that came into
my mind as I'm thirsty, and I'm probably one of the youngest people here. I could just imagine
how thirsty everyone else is. Just a little bit of a disconnect between the politician and
the community. It's just a simple little. Maybe I think I've read that story in the Bible. I don't
know as a parable or something about water and supervisors or whatever the Pharisees. So anyway,
overall I think I have to say this county is not doing a great job. I think the farmers
I've been running right here forever, John Steinbeck,
and dubious battle of the same shit still going on today.
Yeah, but anyway, I don't want to get
all political because, you know, if you don't know,
you won't know, but you can look me out.
And I'm not, I'm nobody, but you can, you know,
you know what I'm about.
So yeah, just, I'll be around, try harder, you know?
Your tax, paid by your taxes anyway.
Thank you, sir.
Any other public comment in the chambers today?
All right.
We'll go online.
There's a couple of hands raised.
We're going to start with Margot Thomas.
We're going to try again, Margot.
Let's hope we get better audio this time.
Thank you for your patience.
Okay.
We're still not getting audio.
We're going to try something for Margot.
Let's go on to Serma Runway.
Do we have audio for...
Nope, that's muted.
Okay.
We're going to do a little technical work here.
So, as for Melkin, do we have audio for you?
We're going to move some folks over to panelists
to try to figure this out.
The other can you show the panelist names again?
All right, Margot, we're going to try you again.
OK, we are not getting audio.
We do need to address this.
I know we've got a lot of folks on for public comment
on other items as well.
They can hear each other on Zoom.
We just can't.
You guys can hear each other on Zoom.
And we just can't hear you here in the chambers.
Why don't we take a five minute break.
We're going to work on solving this real quick.
It is 11, 16.
We're going to reconvene 11, 20.
And get our IT folks to see if we can solve this.
All right, bear with us.
We'll be back in about four and a half minutes.
All right, we're back.
We're going to try this again.
Thank you all for your patience.
We're going to go back to finish our public comment.
And Vali, I'll just need to get some help identifying who we have up next.
This is for our public comment, non-agenda items.
Margot Thomas.
Hi, good morning.
Can you hear me now?
We can hear you.
Thank you so much for coming.
Yay, it's okay.
Thank you.
It should I start? Yes, please. We have two minutes on the clock for you. Thank you. Perfect. Okay. So I want to begin by acknowledging the important work that you are doing on a broader community and social justice issues, because I do think those issues matter deeply.
And I'm just here to share a live local perspective. It's also important piece of the larger picture. So again, my name is Margot Thomas. I'm a carmel native.
I'm a homeowner in the Carmel Highlands where I've responsibly operated a small vacation rental for about 15 years.
Under the current ordinance, many homeowners in the Highlands and Big Sur are facing the reality of spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars
to reconfigure our four plans to accommodate home stays and upgrading our septic systems that have never had any issues.
In my case, my system is operated for 15 years without one failure or environmental problem.
At the same time, the proposed requirement that hosts live on site raises important questions about environmental logic.
Vacation rental guests are typically not full-time occupants throughout hiking, sightseeing, and exploring the coast during the day.
A full-time resident living on site would likely create more consistent daily septic usage than occasional short-term visitors.
In other words, the policy intended to reduce environmental impact may actually increase the load on septic systems in the Highlands and Big Sur.
I also wanted to emphasize that many of us who host share the goal of maintaining character
in our neighborhoods.
The county already has tools in place to address bad actors through enforcement.
Those tools should be used when necessary rather than imposing sweeping restrictions on
responsible operators.
We do want to be solutions oriented and work with the county.
One practical path forward is to allow pre-existing operators to continue through a ministerial
process, this would be a clear administrative approval, not discretionary one, reducing time
costs and unnecessary for our uncertainty for both homeowners and county staff. This approaches
a win when it preserves reliable TOT revenue protects responsible operators and reduces administrative
burden and stress on the county resources allow and staff. I'm almost out of time. I just want
to recommend, yes, please just ran father us in. And can I end with that? I just want to grant
the people who have been operating for 50 years.
Thank you.
All right.
Next up, we have, um, a Sir Malcolm.
Yes.
Good morning, everybody.
Um, I live in, uh, Cape Gannels,
district and I live a couple of blocks away from the,
fire that happened on Casanova last week.
And I just wanted to thank everybody that responded all
our first responders that came so quickly and helped out,
as well as on Kate's staff and Kate for making this a priority and the
high it that took them in immediately and I mean this is this was a significant event that
featured the very reasons why we have to maintain housing to code and I don't think the
reason for the fire starting happened, but that unit was county owned or county managed and
the people that were living there were all low income seniors, a lot of them had mobility issues,
had site problems, and so the response was great and quick, but I'm hoping that these people
don't fall through the cracks and that the event itself is analyzed and taken into consideration
to look at other mutants that are similar to this and make sure that they're safe and
planned for these events. I mean, I think that it would even be smart to do
fire drills. But in general, I just wanted to thank everybody that was involved. I personally
witnessed a lot of it participated a slide amount and the other thing I wanted to mention is
these people had pets and luckily the height let them take their pets with them but we need to
start paying more attention to people who have pets and consider those pets part of their families,
especially when we're talking about seniors. Thank you.
Thank you for your comments and
Next up, we have Tharma Runway.
We've run you on.
Your time's up here.
Thanks.
Perfect.
Thanks.
So first, I'd like to thank the Board of Supervisors for giving us the opportunity to speak.
I know I complain quite a bit.
I'm mad, but not mad at you guys.
I actually really appreciate you guys.
So.
What I wanted to bring up was the county's emergency responses, you know, especially to chemical impacts.
I've been talking to other chemically impact communities and we've all experienced different disasters, whether it's a refinery fire, a file lab fire, a chain derailment or a battery fire.
We've all experienced different disasters, but we all got a similar response, which was a lack of response and denial of contaminants being in the plumes and in the pollutants getting around our communities.
So, you know, it was on a local state and federal level. We were failed. And a lot of these people, you know, their disasters happened a couple years ago.
They're dying from cancer, you know, they've lost, that's, they've lost loved ones.
It's been really sad having to talk to these different people just hearing how much they've been failed.
And then they were failed by the legal system.
So I guess what I want to say is, I'm hoping that the county could come up with a way where the community could be involved in emergency planning, you know, like,
But if the new warehouse, they're building a giant Amazon warehouse and salinas, what
if that caught fire, what's going to be the response, what can we do, and how can we
learn from the failure of the battery fire, is there better testing that we could be doing
should we be hiring different people?
There was a trendy realm, less than a mile from my house that's still 200 to 2000 gallons
of diesel.
I never got notified, even though I'm on the notifications for emergencies.
So, you know, what can we do to respond better?
Thank you.
All for your comments.
I don't see any of our hands raised.
We're going to close public comment and move on to item 16, which is our first item
on this morning's agenda to receive a preliminary analysis from response to board referral
2026.010, taking the potential special real estate transfer tax on ultra high value
single-family residential property transactions and unincorporated Monterey County.
We'll pass the floor to Michael B10.
Thank you, Board.
Michael Beaton, Assistant County Administrative Officer.
Today we bring to your board a preliminary analysis of board referral number 2026-01,
submitted by supervisors, supervisors, Daniels, regarding a special real estate transfer
tax for the benefit of working force housing and the missing middle income earners.
We
were asking the board to receive a preliminary analysis for a potential special transfer
tax on ultra high value property transactions in the unacorporated area and provide direction
on the next steps the board would like us to pursue.
Listed on the slide or a few of the options that the board has at the result of this referral.
This referral request that I can make to explore a special real estate transfer tax on ultra
high-value single-family homes sales in excess of $10 million. The funds generated from this
transfer tax would be used to support housing initiatives in the areas of proximity to the
sale of support to support workforce housing, missing middle housing, and potentially first-time
home buyers in our community. In addition, through this potential growth in housing, it would help
support the county's regional housing needs,
allocation and position the county in a comprehensive
advantage for potential future grants.
In order to enact this special transfer tax for the
purposes identified in the referral, a ballot measure
would be required for the public.
Due to the specific nature of the requested uses of
the funds, a special transfer tax would be required.
A special transfer tax requires a two-thirds voter approval,
We must have certain requirements in order to make it a special tax, such as defining a rate threshold and restrict the use of funds for a specific purpose.
We are anticipating that the timeframe in order to do about measure would be about 46 months, preparation time.
This chart does a little bit of a comparison of comparable jurisdictions, all the way from the city of Los Angeles down to the city of Santa Cruz.
some of their rate structures that they do have.
We try to do a little bit of a comparison,
trying to identify those rates
that those jurisdictions have imposed
for values of greater than $10 million
and some of their higher rate.
As you can see on the chart here, the rates range anywhere from 2.5%, all will be up to a 5.5% in the city county of San Francisco.
With a city of Santa Cruz having a 2% on any value of property sold higher than $4.5 million.
The chart, the farthest column to the right, just identifies what those jurisdictions are utilizing that revenue source for, and as you can see,
do identify some for general fund, general programs, but quite a few of those jurisdictions
do specifically housing and housing expansion.
So, we try to see what this would look like
for our jurisdiction if the county were to look at the total number of single-family residences
in the unincorporated area of Monterey County that were sold greater than 10 years. So, what this
identifies is for the last three calendar years. What is the total number of transactions that
actually met that criteria? On average, we average about 10 sales a year of those single family
dwellings with a value of greater than 10 million. The total sales volume for each individual year
going back to three calendar years averages about a hundred and seventy five million dollars in total.
So if you look at the historical of the transactions and you work to apply a potential transaction
tax to those properties, we threw together a chart that just on a high level, what would
it look like if we did a 1% transaction tax, all the way down to a 5% transaction tax,
based on those average home sales, more of a what if scenario.
So on the scenario that we did here, if the community or the voters approved a transaction
tax of a 1% for anything greater than $10 million, we estimate that it would generate about $1.7 million annually.
On the other spectrum, if we did a 5% transaction tax, it would generate approximately $8.7 million annually.
So in the referral, it does specifically identify that the request would be for
exploring to do a ballot measure that would help with that revenue for the workforce and missing
middle housing investment strategy. Some of the options but not all the options that were
potentially identified that this funding could be utilized for would be down payment for some
home buyer programs for that population helping with infrastructure improvements to support
development of housing element sites. Preservation of existing affordable housing stock throughout
community, development of incentives, including feed deferrals, interest rate buy downs,
permit, streamlining, helping with utility upgrades to unlock zoning capacity, such as
water, sewer, expansion, and acquisition and rehabilitation of at risk rental housing to preserve
long-term affordability. These are just some of the options of potential usage for the
potential revenue stream identified.
So we would need to do some due diligence requirements.
Prior to any ballot measure consideration.
We would obviously need to work with our multiple department agencies,
County Council's assessor Recorder's office,
Housing Community Development,
Elections Department regarding potentially doing a ballot measure.
As you can imagine, the diligence that we would be required
We anticipate would take us about a month to do an initial assessment and return back to the board in April with a better
and overall comprehensive analysis of potential moving forward with a ballot measure.
So as far as he identified, the ballot measure will take, we estimate about 46 months.
We believe if we initiate now, we would be able to make the November ballot for this potential initiative to be placed on the November ballot.
Some of the areas that we would need to look at is obviously the Department on the
administrative considerations, competing departmental priorities that we do have with the
existing departments, the time considerations, and prioritizing this belt measure versus
other county operations.
The belt measure preparation, the development of a proposed tax
structure would also involve some legal review that we would need to do, some community involvement
that we would need to understand community stakeholders and the impact of the potential
real estate market if this were to be implemented in our community.
So, some of the important factors for our board to consider is due to the potential volatility, the revenue stream, if the housing market does have an impact change.
For example, if the housing market for properties above $10 million softens and the total number of those sales decreases, the revenue stream would obviously have some impacts to that.
Also on the flip side, if the number of properties were to sell more above $10 million, the revenue potentially could increase.
We also have market dynamics that we would have to be cognizant of by adding a potential tax on top of the sales price of a property.
What would that actually do to the market?
Would that make the value of the properties decrease?
with that cause some concern for people into the market to buy a ultra-walthy residents.
We also have some legal considerations because this is a special tax.
It does require a two-thirds of the majority of voters.
We also open this up for potential for legal challenges related to the tax structure and the
the development of procedures related to the implementation and collection of the tax,
how would that actually work? Those would need to be worked out.
As well as we would probably also need to see with the polling and public engagement,
you know, the real estate groups out there,
the
palletability of voters, whether a two thirds ballot on certain levels of tax,
there be a 1% or a 5% or somewhere in the middle there, what would be acceptable or palatable
for voters in our community.
So with that, with the Board's consideration, some of the next steps
for us to consider as we prepare, depending on what the Board would like to do, we would obviously
need to do some feasibility and policy analysis work. We would need to work on the potential
tax structure and ballot options, working with County Council on the additional departments.
We would need to do some fiscal and economic modeling.
We would need to reach out and develop a community and stakeholder engagement campaign.
Potentially pick up some consultants to help us out with that polling.
And ultimately bring it back for the Board's review and approval to be put on the
ballot for November election.
With that said, that is the report back for the referral.
and we are asking your boards consideration to provide direction on one of the following options
that we have on the screen today.
Great. Thank you for the confidence of report. I'll bring it to Supervisor Daniels as it is
her referral. Thank you chair ask you and thank you Michael for your presentation.
There was one correction I just want to make because it wasn't my intention for the referral
on it might have just been the way it was stated.
It's on page eight, top one, down payment
and first time home buyers program.
That's something that could be available to anyone
in the county.
It wouldn't be restricted.
So I wrote some remarks here just to get super clear.
I don't normally use written remarks,
but I'm going to today.
It is my hope that after today's discussion,
my colleagues on the Board of Supervisors
will join me in moving this initiative forward.
I do want to take some time to describe the need for this proposal.
Some additional thoughts that I've had since submitting this referral.
And the concerns about this proposal that some of my constituents have expressed.
But before I begin, I want to express to my colleagues that we all know our communities intimately.
I try my best to learn from you about your districts and to advocate as a supervisor for what is best for your communities.
I truly hope that you will hear me out as I share a few brief comments about why this proposal is so important to me and to district five.
On the need for this proposal, I want to be very clear about the specific housing challenge I am trying to solve.
While housing affordability is a county-wide issue, there is a unique challenge on the Monari Peninsula and along the District 5 coastline.
Overlapping factors, including the beauty of our region, which attracts visitors from all over the world, have produced a strong demand for second homes and retirement properties.
This has created two separate housing markets, one tier of global buyers of second homes and luxury properties and a second market of our local workforce.
Mark it once sets the home prices and market two struggles to survive. I believe that without intentional action, the Monterey Peninsula is unlikely to ever see the production of housing that is affordable to the community again.
It is simple if left to market forces alone, developers will never produce units affordable to teachers, nurses, hospitality workers or public employees.
How does this impact all of us?
In addition to agriculture and education, Monterey County has a robust tourism economy.
And the county's general fund benefits from that economy.
If we do not address the Monterey Peninsula's housing shortage, we will reach a point where our success
undermines the workforce needed to sustain that economy. As our workforce is priced out,
communities become longer and more expensive. At a certain point, businesses will experience
staffing shortages that may result in shorter operating hours and reduced service levels.
For some businesses, this is already happening.
This will ultimately affect the visitor experience, and as my colleagues on the Seab
Monterey Board will tell you, upholding the reputation of our region is of utmost importance
in this industry.
As I have said, we are in a unique position.
With our housing element, hopefully on the brink of adoption, we have an opportunity to successfully
implement missing middle housing as required in our housing element.
Missing middle housing, as I've hopefully explained well, will never be
penciled out if left solely to the market and private developers.
As part of our housing element responsibilities, we are also required to affirmatively
further fair housing. The high cost of coastal areas where ultra high value home
bills are concentrated also corresponds to the job centers of our local tourism economy.
Yet our workforce is increasingly priced out of living there.
By encouraging housing to be built where the jobs are, we will meet a key requirement
of the sixth cycle housing element.
To be sure I've heard from a handful of you who are concerned that this proposal could
lackfire and ultimately lead to lower property tax revenues for the county if ultra high
value transaction volume decreases. In your letters and calls you have methodically walked
me through the revenues that from your perspective far exceed those generated by transfer
tax. Some of you have suggested alternate approaches, including rely on philanthropy
to help fill the gap and spur the development of housing where we need it. Please know
that I have been engaged in the philanthropy sector for years.
For good reason, philanthropy has focused primarily on our on-house residents and our most
vulnerable populations.
Another option raised has been applying a transfer tax across all home sales.
Using this approach, a modest half percent transfer tax would yield approximately $1.2 million,
And a 1% transfer tax would generate roughly $2.000,000,000,000,000 from all homes sales in Monoray County,
unincorporated Monoray County.
By contrast, the proposed 3% transfer tax applied to 10 transactions in a single year would generate
5.2 million dollars for the local housing fund.
Similarly, some have suggested increasing TOT to build a local housing fund.
A 1% increase in TOT, however, would similarly yield a significantly smaller amount compared to this proposal.
That said, as part of the next steps in this process, additional analysis will be required, and I'll be sure to share all your comments with county staff.
In conclusion, this proposed policy is one necessary step toward building housing that's affordable to our workforce and to our full-time residents.
I am very concerned about the future successes of our local economy and the county depends on some form of public intervention.
It has become increasing and clear to me that luxury homes, second homes and vacation homes dominate the market and drive up prices.
Because of this reality, missing middle housing has become completely infeasible without a mechanism such as this.
I look forward to my colleagues' thoughts and questions and to feedback from the public.
Thank you very much.
All right. Any questions from the board?
As we can open it up to public comment.
All right. Let's go ahead and open this up to public comment.
If you're with us in the chambers, if you could approach the front of the room, have a seat on the front row so that we are able to move everyone through public comment.
I will just do a quick time check. It is about 1146 and we do have a number of folks online as well. So we'll go ahead and get started.
If you are able to do your comments in less than two minutes, that would be appreciated.
If you can convey them information, and again, we've also always are available to receive public comment
because this will continue to be discussed to COB at countyofmoneray.gov so we can ensure that all comments are on the record.
Go ahead. Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you. I'll say I don't want to be a community. I really don't. I agree we need to tax.
But I don't think this is the way to do it. The reason why I'm saying this is because you're going to start with
Uncorporated, uncorporated, Monterey County, then you're going to come around and get the regular people too.
So I don't believe in that. Sorry. That's just your overtaxing the people.
I don't believe in that at all.
So if you're going to get money from somewhere else, try the federal government.
Those are the agencies you can use.
I mean, you guys are all in challenging up here. You guys all can find money somewhere.
You guys don't have to do it when you need to do it.
to build arches and stuff and other things we don't need.
You guys find money to put it somewhere, me personally put on the ballot and let the people
decide, I agree but I think once you start taxing the millionaires, you're going to start
taxing the regular people and you're not going to stop and that's all this starts.
If you get away with that, you're going to start getting away with everything else and I don't see anybody
overseeing it. Who's going to oversee all this money coming in? How do we know what the dollar
month's going to be. Are you going to have a public entity helping you take care of this?
Because I see a lot of money go through here and I see a lot of money come in and things
not getting done. You guys are not doing anything. I'm going to tell you why I had a conversation
you want to talk about housing. I had two farm workers I saw here to represent it as
that were from the UFW. I had the last meeting here. I had a conversation with them. I asked
And what have you done for Selena's formwork or housing in the last 60 years, nothing?
What do you tell me?
We build stuff in Hollister.
We build stuff in King City.
I say, what about Selena's?
I say, you're exploiting all this, you know, this labor.
These people that work hard, you're exploiting their labor.
You're not doing anything for them.
Put on the ballot.
That's what I say.
Well, you have W of the step up.
Congratulations guys.
Have a good day.
Good afternoon, Supervisors. I applaud your efforts to bring this initiative thus far.
My name is Jennifer Kiper and I'm the Senior Vice President with a bank and I'm a former chair of the Monterey Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.
And I want to speak not from the efforts that the chamber started as a direct result of the middle missing middle housing problem.
All of the issues outlined in the call for public comment were certainly back to the table by business owners, but I want to speak personally.
I returned to the Monterey Peninsula after 20 years away. It was born and raised in Pacific Grove.
And I was brought here to work as a senior vice president in banking and the only reason that I was able to afford to live here is because I have a family friend who was willing to rent to me at below market.
So I have a second job teaching Pilates and I save all of my money, but I just don't see a way for me to ever afford to buy a house here and I'm never not working and serving, I serve on many boards and I hear this all the time from my peers and it meant so much to me to be able to raise my daughter here.
The vibrancy of our community is one that I think is worth considering protecting.
We have a very special opportunity to look at an initiative that could provide some really compelling
opportunity for people who are just like me who want to contribute and who don't qualify for
federal subsidies or or the grace of philanthropists. I encourage you to send this to the ballot.
Thank you for the voters. Thank you.
I'm Cameron. I'll be brief. I applaud your efforts to bring this because my understanding of attacks
the few in their select purchase of exclusive real estate. In my opinion, if they're going to buy
it, they're going to buy it at any price. And why should we not benefit from that? Recently,
I visited Amsterdam where they have the world's highest tourist-doxy-musi attacks. People are going to
go there and no matter what price they put on it quite frankly. And I believe there's a certain
I'll mention that in Monterey County as well.
I think every one of us has been impacted recently.
One of my family members is in a position to have to be searching and possibly put out
of housing.
I think everybody in the room has been impacted in one way or another.
And if you just Google what AI is saying is the market value, it's a alarming anywhere.
So please do something serious about it.
Thank you for your time.
I'm saying I can go for it.
All right, that's good.
Senior advisor with Monterrey Economic Partnership, Matt Wetham,
Hello, Supervisors.
And you might have seen our correspondence and
BEP supports supervisor Daniels, efforts to initiate
the study of potential transfer tax on high value homes
in Monterrey County that would generate revenue to help
increase the production and preservation of housing
for our residents.
We share Supervisor Daniels goals for serving the missing
middle, residents earning 80 and 120 percent of the median area income, but this is just one
component of the county's regional housing needs of over 3,000 new homes. The county has
historically not performed well at achieving its goals for very low and low income residents.
The county should consider expanding the spending plan from any major revenue measure,
perhaps financing for affordable housing that is reserved for very low and low and
families who also work in a tourism and service industry near where these high-value homes are being sold.
We strongly recommend that the county take the steps necessary to determine feasibility for this unique opportunity as outlined in the staff's report.
The county's thorough analysis and community engagement will be able to determine this design of a ballot measure that has a strongest potential
to be approved by voters. Based on our experience voters typically want to invest scarce tax dollars
to address housing for our most vulnerable populations such as seniors on fixed incomes,
very low-income workers struggling to pay high rents and those at risk of homelessness.
Voters also want to expand opportunities for local workforce to find housing in our community
and to help them achieve home ownership wherever possible. Additionally, the county should evaluate
lowering the proposed threshold of 10 million to 5 million or other levels that would increase
the size of the revenue measure and achieve significantly more impact. Finally, the county should
also study the best accountability provisions in other similar measures such as an oversight
committee and annual reports. Thank you for your leadership.
Good morning, modern county board of
supervisors. Thank you for considering this important item and thank you to the staff for your
hard work in examining this and bringing it back for a report on such a prompt basis.
On behalf of the Monterey County Association of Realtors and over 1,300 real estate professionals
serving Monterey County and its residents, we appreciate that Supervisor Daniels is prioritizing
Missing Middle Housing.
Resources exist for low and very low income housing and can serve those populations and
those resources absolutely, we need more of them, that's absolutely clear, but there are
with any resources serving the missing middle and so this is addressing a key gap in our
counties housing.
That said, we have concerns of staff, can you hear me okay?
We appreciate that staff bring up the concerns about market impacts and I'll get back
to that in a minute and we also appreciate staff acknowledging the significant burden on staff
time that implementing such a program which should have.
These should all be part of the conversation as we continue to explore this idea further.
Studies of transfer taxes in general show a 6% to 8% decline in transactions for every 1% increase in transfer tax.
So, revenues should be expected to decline more sharply if you were to increase the rates even higher than proposed.
Economic conditions in years to come are uncertain inflation may worsen and prices may rise to the point where the threshold that seems high today may not be seen so high in a few more years.
So to that end, it's important that we consider those possible futures and consider indexing the fund to a percentage of the median home price rather than a fixed number.
Our housing crisis is not forever. We should be able to resolve our housing problems, or at least mitigate
them significantly. If this advances, it should have a sunset date built into it. If the housing
crisis persists, voters can re-approved this at a later date. I look forward to continuing this
conversation, and we'd very much like to be part of the community stakeholder meetings. Thank you.
Morning, everybody. I'm Jeff Morgan, the president of Chesapeise. First of all, supervisor,
down so I want to applaud you for your moral courage, this affects your district greatly,
but we're really talking about 10 households out of 150,000 a Monterey County.
And in its groups of households where the prices are very inolastic, I think people
they're buying 10 million dollar homes, usually have the cash to be able to afford it.
I know there are taxes that go along with it. Like many things, it has to be focused.
and we work with both workforce and affordable housing at low and extreme low, and while I absolutely
want to see more funding in the extreme low and low income, I appreciate that you can't be all
things to all people. In this case, what's being proposed is something that will have a lot of impact
and frankly in an area where there are going to be serious structural issues if we don't have places
first time for first entry-level first responders, for medical professionals, for teachers,
we're certainly exploring rental housing in addition to for sale housing for the workforce.
And so I support Kate Daniels' study. Thank you.
So, good afternoon supervisors. So, I wanted to comment about this tax for the extremely rich
people and for the missing middle income level, well, recently I heard on the news that
the MVUSG is building on foot, not on foot road, on garden road, workforce housing, but they
for the moderate, above moderate income. Now myself who worked for over 10 years at MPUSD
and needed a place to live, that just isn't going to help. So, you know, you're not really
doing anything about the gap between the rich and the poor with this tax. You're going to be providing
high-income people. Yes, you will be providing moderate, above moderate, which is
$200,000 a year. That isn't the people like substitute teachers who, you know, when
I was working at MPEUSD, I was making what the McDonald's person is making today, $20
an hour with no benefits. So, you know, that's not going to be helping workforce housing
or a lot of people that actually work in the industry, hospitality, teaching, and so on.
Good morning, supervisors. My name is Chris Burr, President of ULAC and Salinas Council 25,
a civil rights organization that has spent many decades advocating for dignity, opportunity,
and fairness for working families. The housing crisis of Monterey County is not just an economic
issue, it is a civil rights issue. When teachers cannot afford to live where they teach,
when nurses cannot afford to live where they heal, when farm workers, construction workers,
and service workers are pushed hours away from from the communities they sustain something
is fundamentally broken housing is a foundation of stability. It determines whether families
can stay together, whether children can remain in the same schools and whether workers can live
in the communities they serve. Right now, too many way, too many families are being pushed out
monitoring county. While some of the most expensive luxury homes in the nation continue to sell
for tens of millions of dollars. A transfer tax on properties valued over 10 million is not
radical. It is responsible. It asks those benefiting from extra ordinary wealth in this region
to help invest in the stability of the community that makes that wealth possible. From a civil rights
perspective.
Housing is about fairness. It is about ensuring that opportunity is not reserved only for the wealthy
view, while the working majority is forced out. Creating a workforce and middle, missing middle
housing fund is a step towards restoring balance and protecting the future of our communities. If we truly
believe in opportunity, dignity and equity, then we must act. I urge you to support this proposal. Thank you.
I Peter Zalai, candidate for mayor of Salinas.
So I recently went to a housing and land use committee meeting in Salinas and they were
getting a report on the city's progress towards housing and in the three lower categories
in the very low, low and moderate categories there was zero progress.
And in Harkin back to my own experience, my family moved to Salinas in 1972.
My father was in E7 and the Army had served for 20 years, and my mother did not work.
And so the three of us bought a home in 1972, and a North Salinas neighborhood.
They like houses in Toro Park, but they couldn't afford that, but there was a new community
in Salinas.
And a lot of their friends had moved there when they retired from the military.
The house that they bought cost $27,500, and they were able to scrape together the $3,000
down payment.
We would not be able to afford that house today.
The market value of that house, where my mom still is, she's aging in place, is about $650,000.
And so I applaud this initiative.
I think it is a worthy idea that should advance.
I think the next step is a feasibility study, is that correct to understand.
So I'm fully in support of this initiative.
Good afternoon.
We're the supervisor.
Do we struggle?
What is for building health communities?
neighborhood organizer with the, uh, uh, the Sintario's Prosperos, uh, thriving neighborhoods.
And as some of you may know, we've been on the campaign around rent stabilization.
So this discussion is really exciting because it does contribute to the idea of stabilizing our local economy
as you know and don't need to repeat just how just the degrees of wealth and the inequity in our community.
You know, you know how it is, we've studied it and here we are moving on this piece, it's exciting.
And I say this, I say this has a representative, you know, working for the community I currently live in,
and speaking of prices, like my parents bought their home on the 700 block of town street for $11,000 in 1968.
You know, and, wow, we were able, growing up, we were able to experience that blue-colored
dream because there were over 15 factories here in the valley that we were able to, where
a lot of farm workers, such as my father, came as a brazzetto, graduated to.
And we had that experience, we were able to experience that blue-colored dream.
And so, this feels like a good strong message and fully in support of it.
Thank you.
Well, good afternoon, Supervisors.
Thank you, Kate.
I do support this initiative as a appointee to the Housing Advisory Committee.
When I ask, every meet, we talk, we talk, we talk, we talk, we talk, we talk, I'm like,
what can we do to get more housing, what can we need more money?
We need more money.
So this is one avenue, and I could also speak as an educator and a small business owner.
Our teachers do need a place to live.
I don't think people understand that dire straights were in with their education.
Only 17% of all students that slings in high school district are proficient in math.
We need good teachers.
We need good teachers here.
If we don't do something for housing, we're going to keep losing good teachers and the
school's on replace the teachers with computers. That's not working. So we need the housing.
So I do applaud this. I think you need to study. And that would find more ways to get money for housing.
Thank you.
Hello, my name is Daniel Muñoz. I just want to give big credit to Daniels for what you're doing.
And this is in Europe, probably affecting people in your area, probably more than everybody here.
So I know you're going to make a lot of enemies doing this or at least maybe what 10th, right?
Okay.
So, I applaud you for that. The takes don'ts to do that. So, shout out to you for doing that. But I do agree with this gentleman. He said, we should be maybe 5. Instead of 10 million. So, we can get more money right in the pool. Just an idea, but I do agree with what you're doing. I think we need to go. And we need to find more ways to get money from the ultra rich like this. This is just, I think, a start of it. And, and I applaud you for doing that. And I hope that the board votes to, yes, you know. So, we can do that.
can go forward with it and maybe have it in the November ballot.
That's just all I have to say about it.
Thank you for your guys.
Have a good day.
Morning Board.
Chair.
My name is Brian Shields.
I feel to wrap with Carpenters Local 646.
Thanks for the time listening to me speak.
In general, we're supportive of creating opportunities through construction, obviously.
But on the back end, we need to make sure that the provisions that are in place for the construction to happen.
bolster people living here being able to stay here at health care market that's fragile
as well. As prevailing which work goes out, there's a lot of things that can happen that
both help the health care system at this point in time as well as give somebody more secure
position in being able to stay in a company working in an area that they live. Our members
are continuing to get pushed out further and further and further and further and further making
can use the San Francisco in order to do the work that they have, and so creating opportunities
here in the local economy would be tremendous.
On top of that, like I said, our members are being pushed out.
We are part of that missing middle, and unless you create a whole bunch of wealth, or you
drop down into a lower bracket, any kind of subsistence or ability to buy, purchase rent,
even is doendling.
So thank you.
All right.
Is there anyone else in chambers for public comment?
Please approach.
All right.
Seeing no one, we're going to move online.
We do have a handful of hands raised.
So I'll just remind everyone that we have two minutes for public comment.
And we, if you're able to make your comments and less than that, that's great.
But we appreciate you being able to weigh in on this issue today.
We're going to start with Esther Melkin and then go to Colleen Ingram.
Good morning.
Good afternoon, everybody.
I created Monterey County Wrenters United almost a decade ago, not ever even realizing how bad things would get.
I live in Kay Daniels district in the city of Monterey in what is supposedly the most affordable neighborhood pretty much on the peninsula.
And I'm going to tell you about a couple of my neighbors stories that I have had.
And I can go on but in two minutes there's no even in two hours I couldn't give you all the examples that have come across my path.
For me to listen to these situations that something like this, a creative way to address what we need, which is to build housing.
And the only, the only conversation that really goes around about housing is build more.
Well, we're not going to be able to build more quick wolf. And this is a way that we can start addressing that.
This is a way that the needs of the many should outweigh the handful of people that it will affect.
So let me tell you about a story of a couple, a young couple that were living here, working.
They got pregnant, unexpectedly had twins.
When they came home from the hospital, they could only bring one of the babies home because they had to be in the NICU.
They were premature.
They were living in a studio apartment, when they brought home the second baby.
They were given an eviction notice because there were too many people that were going to be living in that unit.
That unit was owned by a previously elected official on the City Council of Monterey.
We have seniors here.
I have a neighbor across the street.
I had to put down her pets because after 45 years living in a house,
she couldn't find anything and left the area.
We have an elected official that had to leave her position on the school board because she could not find a rental and we also have multiple city count city positions like engineers and police department
staff that cannot we have had open positions for years that we cannot hire.
Next up we have Colleen Ingram followed by Liam McLaughlin.
Yes, thank you for taking my call. I live in Pacific Grove and I'm here to support the proposed transfer tax on the ultra luxury homes
because this is about people who want to make communities work.
In Pacific Grove, we're watching our communities slowly.
News, the very people we depend on, our school enrollment keeps dropping, which means less funding for teachers and fewer resources for our kids.
We've been hearing about the numbers, but, you know, this is about real people.
When my long-time doctor retired three years ago, I couldn't find an in-network replacement to see me without a six-month wait.
I was fortunate enough to have the financial support to go out of network, but that choice shouldn't be a luxury.
Many of my neighbors don't have that option.
This transfer tax addresses some of the funding of fundamental issues that we have for people
who serve our community, and they should be able to live here.
We're talking about a small number of ultra-electric sales each year, but that impact could
really be transformative for our communities.
Other California cities that were noted in the agenda item, like Los Angeles, Santa Monica,
San Jose, they've all used similar taxes, and they've done it in different ways, but it's really generating results for their housing and helping people.
Imagine what this could do for our cities in Monterey County.
Teachers can actually afford to live where they teach, so our schools could be stronger or kids could benefit.
Healthcare workers who don't have to choose between serving our community and having their own place to call home.
Nurses, firefighters, and other essential workers who can build their lives here instead of
committing hours just to a foregrant, and we've heard the stories here.
I also would like to see it be applied to something less than 10 million, but a 10 million
dollar home is just asking for contribution for the people that live here and function.
It seems very reasonable.
Thank you.
All right, Liam, we've got you up next.
Followed by Megan.
Logan, you hear me?
We can.
Thank you.
So, my name is Liam McLaughlin,
and I'm the political and community
organizer with SC-521,
the Union that represents city
and county workers across California.
And I'm giving talent on behalf of
the event carry on.
She to make a few two up as you work schedule.
Even as work with Monterey,
county behavior health for over 20 years.
She serves SC-521's chair.
of the committee on political education and on her unions accounting chapter board.
So, event has lived in Monterey to understand how high-hausing cost of effective community,
specifically she says, when poor and working class people are priced out, the community loses
essential workers, like farm workers, caregivers, cleaners, restaurant staff, retail employees,
meanwhile, stable housing. Improves children's education, health, and emotional
well being an affordable home to reduce homelessness.
Many, however, many long-time residents
are being priced out, not because they failed,
but because the housing market is favoring wealthier
newcomers and investors.
And for the workforce, including county workers,
pricing people out increases commute times, traffic,
and adds to stress at work.
So while I see that you have an official abortion process
and should this make it on the ballot,
we'll go through that at that time.
Housing affordability is a key part of our unions' values.
We strongly support efforts to tackle the affordable of the crisis head-on in Monterey County and in the Peninsula in particular and then finally
Just quick word and solidarity with the trades SGA would love to see a countywide PLA to go along with this and any other efforts to build affordable housing
So thank you so much for your work on this
Supervisor Daniels and everyone and we support the concept. Thanks
Thank you Liam next up. We have Megan will then follow the Christine wing
Megan, we've got you up next, but you'll have to unmute in order to comment.
That's for Megan Willden.
Okay.
Yeah, if I got it.
Thank you so much, supervisors.
I am a fourth generation resident of Monterey, California, who cannot afford to buy
a home in my hometown where I grew up.
For four generations, my family has been active in the local community.
My great grandfather came to Monterey from San Juan,
the Tista as a young man, raised his family
and spent the rest of his life here serving the community,
including as a tutor, mayor, postmaster general,
leader with the local chamber, small business owner,
and more his son, Jack Dordy,
continued his legacy of active community leadership
and betterment, together with partners,
they turned the historic Monos,
Adobe into a leading hotel in Monterey,
the Casa Monos, his daughter, Kathy Wilde,
and my mother also made her life long home here in Monterey as a county super social.
Worker, she was instrumental in working with people with AIDS and cases of both child and elder abuse.
After retiring, she co-founded the fund for homeless women raising awareness in several million dollars
that jump started gathering for women, the Casa de No Trebleyne, Schumann Harthouse shelters, and more.
After a career in non-profit leadership on East Coast, I returned to my beloved hometown to give back,
but so much has changed over the years
that I cannot afford to live here independently anymore.
Much like, let's see,
moderate-stiverse history and quality of life
is deteriorating due to the influx of second,
third and fourth homeowners on the ultra-rich.
Much like the sea urchins are creating deserts
on the ocean floor and destroying kelp forest,
part-time homeowners are displacing
local residents and will create a lifeless community desert of mostly empty houses.
Who will care about our home? Thank you so much for proposing this ordinance.
Thank you, Megan. Next, we have Christine Wing, followed by Anna, I'm Mayor Anna Velasquez.
Hi. Good afternoon, Chair ask you. The members of the Board of Supervisors. My name is Christine Wingy.
I am the CEO of Milton Wheel of the Monterey Peninsula and a lifelong resident of Monterey County,
who has watched our community change dramatically over the decades.
As the CEO of Mealson Wheels, I see the human cost of our housing crisis every single day.
Many of the senior we serve are hanging on by its red in homes they've lived in for decades.
They are on fixed incomes facing rising property taxes, escalating utility costs, and
deferred maintenance they can no longer afford.
These are not people living in luxury.
They are teachers, creates people, nurses, and service workers who built this community and
who now struggle to age in place and remain part of it.
When these seniors are forced to leave the ripple effects are devastating, they lose not
just their homes, but their social networks, their proximity to healthcare providers, and
the community ties that keep them healthy and engaged.
And when they leave, we lose the very fabric of what makes the Monarchy Peninsula a real community
rather than a collection of vacation properties and investment portfolios.
But the crisis extends well beyond our senior population.
The caregivers and staff who deliver meals, the drivers, the volunteers,
many of them face their own housing struggles.
We have seen dedicated employees leave the peninsula entirely
because they simply cannot afford to live here anymore.
This is the missing middle in action.
Hardworking people who are in too much to qualify for subsidized housing
but far too little to compete in a market dominated by multi-million dollar homesales.
I urge the board to move forward with this proposal.
Thank you, Supervisor Daniels for continuing to support all of us here in district five.
And thank you all for your time and your service to our community.
All right, Mayor of Alaska's and then P.K. Defemba.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, thank you.
Yes, sorry.
Yeah, as a mayor, I hear every week from residents who are struggling with the cost of housing.
These are teachers, first responders, young families, and long-term community members.
And this reality is simple. Housing costs are outpacing incomes, and it's affecting the stability
and character of all of our communities. And many of the people who serve our communities,
you know, as we hear, can no longer afford to live to live in them. And this leads to
longer commutes work for shortages and increased pressure in our infrastructure.
If we want thriving balance communities, we also need housing options for all income
levels, not just the very high end.
So this proposal focuses on our highest intersections and these policies intentionally
narrow.
And it applies only two home sales above the 10 million families.
That means it does not impact typical homeowners or working families.
instead it asks those benefiting from extraordinary real estate values to contribute modestly
to addressing a shared regional challenge. One of the biggest barriers to solving the housing
crisis is lack of reliable funding. So this approach could generate millions annually that
stayed local and are dedicated specifically to housing solutions. That funding can support our first
time home buyers are workforce housing and infrastructure needed to actually build the homes.
When housing becomes an affordable and risk losing the very people who make our communities function,
investing in the missing middle housing and work for housing helps retain our local talent
and support our small businesses and preserves community diversity.
So it's not just a housing issue.
It's an economic and quality of life issue. High housing costs are one of the defining challenges facing our communities currently. And this proposal represents a targeted thoughtful approach to generating local solutions. As a mayor, I support moving this forward so we can fully evaluate its potential to help the people who need it the most. Thank you.
Thank you. Next up, we have PK different by.
Good afternoon, supervisors. Thanks for the opportunity to speak on this issue.
And first, I just want to commend all of you for discussing this.
You're the first public body that I'm aware of that is discussing the possibility of adding a dedicated funding stream to missing middle housing.
And that's something that is extremely needed.
and let me tell you why. I've now been superintendent for 12 years and every year we've hired
between 80 and 100 teachers that represents approximately 20% of our teaching force and people
leave primarily because of the high cost of living on the peninsula specifically citing
housing as one of the biggest reasons why they're seeking employment elsewhere and so you
see the impact of new to the profession teachers at that rate coming into our system as a tremendous
impact on the quality of education that we're able to provide for our students. And so we along
with you have been working on trying to solve this and we did purchase a 64 unit apartment complex
and we targeted this exact population between 80% and 120% of AMI and for those 64 units
we had over 200 applications. So that gives you the sense of the need that's out there
and really the desperation that so many of our employees are of when it comes to finding reliable
housing. So I know that no one ordinance will solve all our problems. I know there's not a silver bullet
But we can make a difference and this proposal is one tangible step forward.
I commend you for taking it up and I urge that you pass this and move it on to the next phase.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, P.K.
That is the final hand race.
I'm going to close public comment and bring it back to the board for some discussion.
We'll go to Supervisor Church.
Oh, see, I had some notes here, and I've scrubbed a lot on quite a bit, so I'm going
to try to make sense going forth by a lot of great comments from the public and the
presentation, and I appreciate Supervisor Daniels bringing this forward.
I'm generally supportive of it.
I want a little clarification on a few other points.
One of them, I know we're talking about me being bringing something back in about a month,
so I'm directing my comments in that direction of more information.
And I am supportive of the idea of looking at this
from $5 million dollars and I think that's important.
I think whether you've got $5 million
for a home or $10 million for a home,
it's not quite the same as shop
and for trying to find a home for $7 and create $100,000.
There's obviously resources available for folks
that are doing that, that isn't at the entry level.
So, I would like to be interested in seeing what those numbers would affect and how that would look county-wide as the 10 homes that we're looking at are all right now on the peninsula, essentially.
We'd also be interested in seeing some sort of a staggered amount here at percentage, maybe that goes from 1 to 5% as the home gets more affordable.
we've started one percent of five, maybe go out of five percent at 10.
These are just options just to look at, so we have more information available.
One thing I'm not against, I just want some little looking for clarification and it might
be whether we can make it a little more expansive.
I know the proposal is to spend the money in the jurisdiction where this is, but we're
to look in something that needs two-thirds vote countywide.
And realistically, that means you need to offer something countywide.
So I would, you know, like to explore that, of course, if we're going to $5 million on
a home, that might very well solve that problem as well.
I don't know that's some of the clarifications, but need out of it.
And I know we're talking about the missing middle and workforce housing, and that is, as
I've made many comments up here over the last few years.
There's something that's really, really short on, but there are never as enough resources for a low-income
folks, as well. And I realize that it's going to take two thirds if this past, we're never really going
to be able to bring it back to change it again. So I would like to make this as expansive as possible,
get under consideration, if it's not asking for too much and what we're doing, and what we're trying to achieve,
that it would include a broader range of housing possibilities.
And so those are basic, well, not all the basic parameters.
And to hear, I guess one, the other things in here too,
would be potentially having an inflation peg
or index somehow, because again,
it's have to kind of go back to a vote.
And I don't know, 50 years from now,
but this is still in the books.
I have a little $5 million home might be entry level for all I know.
So I'd like to like to see us try to address anything that might be a future issue down the line.
Let me see other points on here.
There was a comment that came up and I think it was a very good comment about the study showing that
But with these transfer taxes that there is a reduction in sales and my only question on
that is that just looking at these ultra expensive homes or that looking at the full
market because obviously if you have a 5% transfer tax on a $1 million home, that's next
to $50,000, it could chase somebody out, if you got $10 million, you have a 5% as $500,000
but a person with that kind of money probably is not going to have the same problem.
So what I would suggest doing is maybe looking at these comparable jurisdictions that we
have identified on here and going through and maybe contacting them getting some information
what kind of problems they've had, have they had a decline by having this, be some of them
a rather low, 1.8 million still is a nice home but Santa Cruz is way lower than everybody
I also airmue bills only at a million and wristbands at a million, that's just way too low in my opinion.
But you know, I'd be nice to know how those impact ways out in each of those.
I wouldn't like to have it, so that is specifically state's residential zoning onto here.
I think that would avoid anything coming in to Ag, for example, as well as commercial.
I mean, I know of one piece of property in my district that has a restaurant and several
couple of three homes onto it.
Well, technically if that sells, that could be over five million or however much it might
be.
I have no idea.
That is the type of a situation, a real estate transaction that we're trying to involve
in here.
I think holding it to residential zoning would be important.
And finally, my last comment is, just would like on the possible options here that we're
looking at of down payments, housing projects.
If we were able to roughly flesh out exactly how that money could be possibly spent, how
many people it might be helping, I think that would be useful and determining where we have
to go from here on that.
And that's all my comments.
thank you.
I concur with much of what a supervisor church just put out there. I think the questions
around we keep talking about home so that clear delineation with Ag and I think we're all making
assumptions based on how we read certain texts so just making sure that that's clear the other
piece around making sure we peg it to something because I agree 10 million today seems like a big amount
but 20, 30 years from now if we're not going to put a sunset on it, we need to have that
line to know where that is because someday that could be an average home last night.
I got an email from a resident of district five and she said, you know, the average home
cost in my neighborhood, it's 2 million. I look it up and it's actually now over 3 million.
I was like, all right, that's getting close to the number we may be talking about tomorrow at five,
right? And that was an average home. It was not a splendid mansion on the coast. It was a basic home
that was originally, I think, sold for $300,000 back in the day
looking at the information available on Zillow.
So again, those housing price points,
I think we have to be realistic around
and be able to peg that to something
if we don't intend to revisit it,
would be really important to me.
Happy to have this study continue to look at it
to better assess sort of where community is knowing
that we've got to get to two thirds.
Any ability to do a survey to understand where folks are
in that process as we did with measure A, A,
and look at priorities for community around these questions
and where the housing will be built,
where the dollars will be invested,
what community can and can't support,
I would be supportive of, but that's where I'm sitting at the moment.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation, Michael. Just questions in terms of process. I think your slideshays that it would take 40, 60 months to prepare something to go on in November ballot. So, what would be that drop dead line to be able to put something, giving the elections office enough time to, and the county council's office to do its analysis and have it on the ballot with plenty of time to take it to the board.
great questions supervisor and to answer you honestly is I don't know. We would definitely need
to work with our election department maybe I can confer over to Sue. I'll take that question
and similar to what we did with measure AA. The deadline is going to be we have to have something
in place before the end of June and then that will only give us a couple months to finalize some
the work which includes work that County Council would be doing behind the scenes.
So in terms of a decision from this board, we need to make sure we have the resolution
in place before they end up doing so we would be bringing this back to you fairly quickly.
When we push, push measure AA forward, the decision was made in May and we fast-tracked
it and we're able to bring a resolution to your board by doing the same timeline that
we're working with here.
Great.
Thanks for that, because it brings up another issue that we brought up last year, the budget,
we're having a budget workshop next month, an April. We had talked about a TOT,
tag increasing the TOT. We didn't do it last year, because we went with the sales tax,
which became measure A. You let us more time to work with stakeholders on that.
Are we envision bringing that? Because it would be two ballot measures for November.
We'll have several items for discussion to your board.
We have the budget workshop at the beginning of April, we're actually finalizing different options
for your board to consider similar to what we did last year.
And then if we are directed by the board to pursue that, you would have two measures going
at the same time.
And then Mr. Bean, going to the polling, your slide also mentioned doing polling to kind
to engage where voters might be on this, maybe even on a TOT issue, how much would polling cost
and do we have enough time before June decision?
At least two gauge where voters are on these issues.
The reason I bring that up, because I sit on the Monterey Salinas Transit Board, they recently
did polling, I think it was at least over $100,000 if I'm not mistaken, and they were
agency where voters would be on an extension of measure key, which is only a 1-8 sales tax
extension. They also contemplated an additional 1-8 sales tax increase. They had done
polling in 2024 compared to 26. And the polling because of all the affordability issues,
what voters are feeling, the favorability for that was a little lower this time around than it
as a 2024, which kind of caused the executive director
to recommend holding off this year on that.
And we're the board pivoted to re-look at that in 2028 instead.
So that's why some of these issues, it's important to see
where the voters are.
Obviously, the proposal by some of the violence
is very different than when it sales tax,
because knowing where voters will get it,
who's going to pay a TOT tax,
who's going to pay a wealth tax on a luxury home,
It's very different than when a sales tax being paid by your average resident of our county.
So just because the issue of polling over the cost and when would that have to be done to be useful in making a decision and do it?
Or maybe our CA once out of this.
Yes.
I'll take that one as well.
As you know, with Measure A, we moved fairly quickly.
We asked the question through polling agency by about mid May and then had about
a week to gather some data very quickly and then brought it to the budget hearings.
I believe it was right before the budget hearings for discussion, which was at the end of May.
This actually allows us a little bit more time to do a little bit more of the due diligence.
And our hope is that if the board asks us to move forward with this, we will return to you
with those agreements for the polling and for some of the educational support that would
compare a little but also give you some of that data that's been requested by board members
in terms of where the impact would be made and some of these other items that were identified
by board members. So we are actually, I hate to say is what we're fast tracking even though we do
For the six weeks, just know we did it on a shorter time frame the last.
Okay, I'll just be supportive of getting that information coming back and making the most informed decision.
This seems like I think what's instructive is seeing what other counties have done on this and they've had it in place for many years.
So I would like to get that information before we can find on the decision, but I think all those pieces, including the polling is important for us to make the most informed decision before putting the measure on the November ballot.
Thank you.
I just want to start by
thanking the,
I'm thinking, super,
the Daniels for bringing this forward.
It's a problem.
It's an existential crisis.
What we're experiencing in district five in district four,
where workforce is being,
that serves district five is being pushed out
farther and farther away from where jobs are.
Families that have lived here,
I grew up and went to school with Jennifer,
who spoke earlier.
And to be able to come back or stay in this community where we're working in really good
jobs, I'm not able to have a chance at making, having secure a stable housing without
the, you know, having someone who's going to, you know, provide that for you is, means
that we don't have teachers who are willing to stay in this community.
It means that it's harder and harder to find janitors and firefighters and all of these
essential jobs that we need in order to be a healthy thriving community, I think the stories
were really, really compelling. And so to all of those who spoke today, thank you for sharing
your story and sometimes they are very personal.
I think we could go on and on about the reasons
why this is necessary and needed, but I would like to just reiterate support for what's before
us today to continue with a feasibility study that will allow us to then move forward and
place this on about it for the voters to decide in November. A couple of things that I didn't
see on the notes that I wanted to just mention. There was some discussion about an oversight committee,
So, I think that's generally something that we've done with talks measures.
I'm comfortable with that if that's a direction that allows us to get to 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 2, 3 support.
I also think that the requests that Inbet made in their letter around considering a baseline
that goes down to $5 million with tiered rates starting at that amount would be something
that would be worth looking at, I think I'm comfortable with the discussion about indexing
to medium house price. If we're starting at a lower amount of say $5 million, I think that
would be something that would make sense. Of course, I think this was very clear in my reading
that this is residential only, so we would not be including our commercial or agricultural
properties. I think I read something in here somewhere about, you know, some other exemptions that would make sense and allow for families who maybe purchase the home many years ago to be able to keep that home in their family things like that. I think are important and reasonable and
the other thing I would hope that we can add and this would for me fall under potential uses of revenue and page eight,
acquisition and rehabilitation of at-risk rental housing to preserve long-term affordability.
And I think that just clarification that that would include things such as land trusts
or properties.
We've seen that work incredibly well with CSU Monterey Bay professors who would otherwise
not be able to own or have stable housing, be able to purchase land trusted properties
with reasonable rates of appreciation,
but provides stable, safe, stable housing for their families.
And I think that's really, for me, what we're talking about,
it's this right that all people should have to
safe, stable housing, that isn't going to be
pulled out from underneath you, and I'll just share,
I personally grew up and lived in 15 different homes
before I was, I think, 12 years old, and the trauma that comes
with that kind of constantly having to pack everything up and move and early it was because
of the military, but later it was because in the rental market you don't always have
that security of having your home be available over time and it makes it hard for kids to
change schools, it makes it hard for families to build roots.
And I just have what I've seen with CSUNB properties that are for sale for our local workforce. It allows for the families to have stability while parents are working here.
So I couldn't be more supportive. I know how much work you've done to take a lot into the community and to build this, to put together a package that can generally be supported.
by all those in our community and we have to look at what we're doing differently because what
we're doing now is not working for families, for retirees, for people who are at the core
of keeping this community functioning and this is one step of many that I believe need to be
back to Daniels, to make a motion or additional comments, just a couple additional comments.
I want to thank everybody who made public comment and if you didn't get a chance to see
the letters, there were some wonderful letters including from Montage Health and from
P.K. Diffenbau who we did get to hear from the Monarch Peninsula Unified School District.
But in response to some of the comments from my colleagues and from the public, one of
had lots of meetings and lots of conversations and I'm wearing more of my political hat trying
to understand how we'll get this across the finish line and how we get this across the
finish line would be to have everybody on board working with us, not to have specific entities
like, for example, the realtor is working against us. Everybody sees the need and so we're trying
to frame this in a way that brings everybody along and helps us get this across the finish line.
And so, know that when we selected $10 million as a threshold, that was strategic, because
we can make a significant amount of revenue and create this fund with that and not upset
a much larger group of people.
That said, you know, that $10 million is about a thousand percent of the average home price
in Monterey County.
So yes, if you wanted to index it and not say it's $10 million, but it's $1,000, you know,
then it would move with the actual price of the home in regards to sun setting,
which was brought up, you know, this is intrinsically tied to our housing element,
rena, goals, and the affirmatively furthering fair housing policy in the housing element.
So, yes, if there was some research that was able to be done, that said, you know, we just
to digress a little bit.
The state of California in identifying these numbers, took a look at the population and
took a look at housing growth and showed the discrepancy and then allocated all the different
jurisdictions, the numbers that was the discrepancy.
So, we in Monterey County would be in a much stronger place if we met those goals.
And so, yes, if folks wanted to look at what would the amount be that we would need to generate in revenues to be able to tackle our housing crisis and sunset after that date, I would be fine with that because if we haven't meant it, the voters could also then agree vote to re-up the transfer tax.
So anyway, those are all things that are open, but I just wanted to articulate that they were well thought out and and strategic in terms of getting us to this place.
I also want to talk really quick about the need for folks who said that they would have liked to see a lower, to address more problems than just the missing middle that I have recommended.
we address. And that's of course for development. There's a list of everything that's on page 8 that talks about down payment and first time home by our programs infrastructure improvements to start. If you look at that, I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying anything other than a firm or really furthering fair housing, right?
Like we have this obligation and that's what I'd like to tie to the budget to the ballot language if we can.
But I want to give an example for those who suggest that we should focus not just on missing
middle but on low and low low. In in Pebble Beach we we have the more place town homes and
they were opened up in 2019 by the Pebble Beach Company and it was a condition of development
to build employee housing and they use the federal
Lowe Lowe and Moderate. And Lowe Lowe and Moderate, or Lowe Lowe Lowe, you got it. And very low and low income. There were
seven units that were very low. There were seven units that were low income and there were ten units
that were moderate. They had no problem filling the ten units that were moderate with their workforce,
but they did struggle to fill the very low and the low income with their employees because their
employees made too much money, and so in turn they opened it up to college kids, working part
time and other part time employees. So it's really targeting a specific need in the community
on the Monterey Peninsula.
And that's not to say that any development that we have in Monterey
County has, we have an inclusionary housing ordinance. We will continue to build homes at all
levels with with our inclusionary housing ordinance. So let's see, um, was there anything else
I wanted to comment on? It is only single family residential homes. I'm not proposing commercial
homes and I'm not proposing agricultural property that is essentially commercial. I do want
say that I've done a lot of research on the studies that suggest that there may be a reduction
in in in in home sales. The studies I have seen refer to commercial properties. And so I
think we want to be really clear about about what we look into. We're looking to see if we
see any trends in in in growth in home sales, a slowing of home sales based on these trends for
taxes in single family homes. In other jurisdictions that have been
citing, there's commercial properties, there's apartment buildings,
and so we really want to keep our research to what this measure
is going to address. And that is single family homes and of the
threshold that I suggested, but I think you should come back with the
threshold that my colleagues are asking for as well just to see what
it says. So I know everyone's hungry. I'm appreciative of the
we're moving forward, I will pull up the staff report to be able to be very clear about my motion which is to
accept the analysis that we received today and this page says provide direction as appropriate.
Okay, I don't have the staff report in front of me, but what I would like for you to do is to return as soon as possible.
answering the questions that my board colleagues have identified and provide next steps in
moving us forward toward placing this item on the ballot in November. Thank you.
Thank you.
And I think on page 12, there's a list of items if we can pull that up on the screen again.
page 2 or page 12.
We up. Yep. All right. So just to be clear and then according to Supervisor Daniels,
the some additional information about the questions that have been raised broadly by the board today.
All right. Let's move forward with all in favor.
Hi. Any opposed?
All right. All right. You need an enormous support. Thank you.
We will recess for lunch. But before we do that, I wanted to make a note that item number
Item number 17, which is to conduct an interview of our board
supervisor's referral matrix, will be postponed till next week.
So when we come back after lunch at 1, let's make this 145,
I guess we'll do 130, we're going to start with item 18,
which is our presentation on the most 300 cleanup site.
Back at 130, thank you.
If we could have our Spanish interpreter announced services again,
before we get started.
Diego, are you with us still online?
How many to switch over from the channel?
The Spanish Channel to the English Channel to make an announcement for us.
Good afternoon, my name is Diego Salis and I am the Interpreter of Spanish Lingles
We're going to start our afternoon agenda. We have item number 18 is to receive a presentation of the
on the Moss 300 site cleanup at the Moss Landing Battery Energy Storage Facility.
We have a number of different agencies who are with us today and we appreciate all of
the coordination and work.
I just want to say, before we start, I'll say Scanlan, who's our director of emergency
management, who's really been at the forefront of keeping the county-apprised of cleanup
efforts and response efforts and making sure that we continue to receive updates from all
of the associated partners at the state and federal level.
The county itself we don't have that direct responsibility, but it has been important for us
to be able to monitor and hold accountability on this as we move forward.
So, Kelsey, thank you for all of the work that you've done over the past year, and I will
pass the floor to you.
Thank you so much.
Good afternoon, Chairwoman, ask you and members of the Board County Administrative Officer
DeLarosa, County Council and members of the public.
We are here to provide a status update on the Moss 300 recovery efforts with a focus on health impacts and data assessments.
Before beginning today's update, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the Moss Landing community.
Over the past year, residents, local organizations and regional partners have demonstrated steady resolve and engagement under challenging and unprecedented circumstances.
That continued participation has played an important role in our efforts and it remains essential as a work move forward.
Today's agenda reflects a meaningful point in that process, in addition to operational updates
the board will hear technical assessments from state subject matter experts and perspectives
from community-based groups.
Take in together these presentations provide a more complete picture of ongoing concerns and
considerations for next steps.
Since January 2025, the county's goals have been consistent.
Protect Public Safety and Health, be good stewards of the environment and be transparent in our coordination across all levels of government in the community.
Before you receive a presentation from the County of Monterey Environmental Health Bureau, I will provide a brief update from the U.S. EPA regarding battery and debris removal progress.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency continues to lead federal oversight of
battery and debris removal operations at the Mont Slinding site.
Battery removal work continues.
Two-thirds of the intact battery modules have been de-energized for recycling so far.
That is approximately 23,847 out of an estimated 35,772 intact battery modules.
Approximately 23,232 modules have been de-energized and transported off-site for cycling.
No flare-ups have occurred during battery removal thus far.
With the onset of windy or seasonal weather and with the completion of phase 1 building
stabilization work, Vistra has applied tackifier to the ash foot from the perimeter of the
damper.
Tackifier is a sticky coating that is used to prevent dust from moving.
Removal of the intact battery modules for de-energization and recycling is expected to be finished within the next two to three months.
A new industrial elevator was built for crews to access batteries on the second floor of the building.
Once crews finished de-energizing the accessible intact battery modules, made possible through phase one of the building demolition and stabilization work,
cruise will begin phase two of building demolition.
Extraction and disposal of the remaining battery modules and battery debris will begin once the
second phase of the building demolition starts. U.S. EPA estimates the second phase of demolition
will begin in mid-2026 and will address the heavy heavily burned sections of the building
down to its foundation and treatment and disposal of the severely burned and damaged batteries
or battery material that cannot be recycled. Excuse me.
Battery Work Associated with Phase 2 demolition is expected to continue into the fall and possibly the winter based on current projections.
Approximately 200,000 gallons of firefighting water used in January 2025, collected by the storm water collection system on site,
was sampled and recently disposed of at the Clean Harbour's Seaport facility in San Jose, California.
The water has been stored in a separate tank onsite, and then tested and determined to be
non-hazardous before being transported for proper disposal.
U.S. EPA also noted in here that Vistra under U.S. EPA's oversight will be required to
forms.
Revealing of the fire debris for waste characterization purposes, as part of the selection process of appropriate waste management facilities for final debris disposal.
U.S. EPA expects the fire debris sampling will be performed in mid-2026, when the second phase of building demolition occurs, which will target the east side, which is the side that is severely damaged, and waste characterised waste characterisation debris sampling results will be made publicly available.
And so with that, I will hand it over to Nikki Feller at the Monterey County or from the Monterey
County Environmental Health Bureau for an update after which there will be a presentation from
the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and then after which we will allow
for opportunity of the estuary monitoring of battery emissions and residues aka Ember to provide
a 10 minute update, and then the never again mass landing group will have a seven minute window
to also present to the board. Before we begin with the environmental health bureau, is there a
preference as to whether or not you would prefer questions in between presentations or at the end?
Well, what's the end? Okay, great. And so with that, Nikki Feller.
Thank you, Kelsey.
Great update.
Good afternoon, Board.
Nikki Fowler with Environmental Health.
Today, I will briefly summarize the Environmental Health Bureau's role in coordination
and community sampling following the Moss Landing Battery Fire.
A focus specifically on what the county did, how we worked with our state partners
and how data was collected and shared.
Following this overview, our state partners will provide technical context,
regarding risk assessment methodology and summarise the findings contained in the preliminary
PEA report equipment prepared by Vistras Consultant.
Monary County operates a local hazardous materials program under state law.
Our routine responsibilities include enforcing hazardous materials and hazardous waste
regulations, conducting compliance inspections, and overseeing hazardous materials business
plans.
These programs exist to prevent releases, reduce environmental risk, and protect public health.
In the case of the Moss Landing Battery Fire, our role expanded beyond routine oversight and required sustained coordination with state and federal technical agencies.
When the fire occurred, environmental health supported EOC Emergency Operations Interactivation and focused on immediate public health protection.
I want to briefly acknowledge our state partners who are joining us virtually today and will be available as presenters and panelists.
From the Department of Toxic Substances Control, we have Dr. Wei Ying Ying and Dr. Michael Garland,
both staff toxicologists supporting the risk assessment, from the Regional Water Quality
Control Board, Mr. Greg Bishop, and Mr. Nick Samarim. We're also joined by Karen Rivellis,
and Dr. Rima Woods, from the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment,
and finally, by Mr. Russ Bartlett, from the California Department of Public Health,
Environmental Investigations Branch. They'll be available to provide
technical expertise and respond to questions following the presentations.
This response has required sustained coordination across multiple state, federal, and regional
partners.
I'd like to take a moment, through these multi-agency coordination groups, these agencies work
together to review environmental data, evaluate sampling plans, and support public health communication.
The team also evaluated potential exposure pathways, including air, soil, and water, to inform
response actions. It's important to note that the U.S. EPA has authority over response and
recovery activities at the battery facility or battery site itself, while our state partners
have focused on evaluating potential off-site environmental and public health impacts.
Their technical expertise has been essential to supporting Monterey County and the
Moss Landing community.
With this coordination established, County directed Vistra to develop
and implement a community sampling plan to evaluate potential off-site impacts from the fire.
Sampling media included soil, surface water, sediment, and pore water.
Sampling locations were selected based on multiple criteria, including preliminary DTSC
sampling, reports of visible ashore debris, proximity to sensitive receptors such as schools
and parks, and areas representative of elevated community surface wipe results.
State partners reviewed the work plans for completeness, and field activities were witnessed
by county and DTSC staff to ensure conformance with the approved plan.
Phase I, soil sampling was designed to be sufficiently comprehensive to support development of the human health risk assessment.
Phase II sampling expanded into surface water, sediment, and pore water to support the ecological risk assessment component.
Iwate Potential Migration Pathways. Phase 1 soil sampling was conducted between May 8th and June 20th of last year. At 27 locations, resulting in 108 samples, phase 2 sampling occurred in September of last year. Results from both phases were shared with state partners for technical review, and the reports have been made publicly available.
Throughout this process, the county served as an information hub.
We compiled and shared quality-assured, quality-controlled supported sampling data with state partners
through the multi-agency coordination group for technical review and supported evaluation of
sampling plans and reports. Agency reviewed results were posted publicly on the incident website,
where available we also included state agency analysis alongside published results.
County also worked to develop a GIS dashboard to visualize sampling locations and detections
relative screening levels to enhance transparency for decision makers and the community.
Throughout the response, the multi-agency coordination group welcomes supporting data from
a variety of sources, including academic research, non-governmental organizations, community
groups, and citizen scientists.
These types of screening data can be very helpful in identifying areas that may warrant additional
investigation and can form the selection of sampling locations.
examples include surface-wipe samples or field XRF screening. However, for the purposes of
developing a formal human health or ecological risk assessment, the analysis must rely on samples collected
and analyzed under established laboratory QAQC quality shared quality controlled protocols.
We appreciate the efforts of the community and academic partners who contributed information
to help inform this response.
I'd also like to take the opportunity to note that the
Number study data was not shared with the county prior to its public release in November
of 25.
Therefore, since it wasn't available, it wasn't available during development of the community
sampling plan.
However, following its publication at the end of last year, we did share the share the study
with state agency partners and in accordance with county direction, Vister's consultant
has acknowledged and referenced the study within the P.E.A. report equivalent for completeness
consistent with incorporating publicly available information. And as you've heard, the
Amber team will have an opportunity to present their findings a little bit later in the agenda.
A preliminary environmental assessment equivalent report was prepared by Vistras Consultant
based on the department of toxic substances controls 2015 P.E.A. guidance manual. The report
Compliance or Compiles rather scientifically valid sampling data related to the fire and includes both human health and ecological risk assessments.
A draft of the PEA equivalent was received from the consultant on February 27th, just three weeks ago, and shared with state partners on March 2nd for completeness review.
The PEA Equivalent Report is currently undergoing agency review.
State agencies typically provide written comments within two to three weeks.
The consultant then clarifies the report to address those comments, which can take
another few weeks.
Additional iterations may occur until DTSC determines the report is complete.
Once finalized, the county will publish the report on the incident website on readymonarycounty.gov.
So at this time, I will turn the presentation over to Mr. Wei Ying Ying of DTSC to provide a brief overview of risk assessment methodology and summarize the draft findings in the PEA report.
OK, Wei Ying, please unmute yourself and take it away.
Thank you, Nicky. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Wei Yingjiao and I am a toxicologist from DTSC. I'm also a certified toxicologist by the American board of toxicology.
It is my pleasure to have this opportunity and give you a brief introduction about the work we did at the Monterey County and share with you about our considerations.
I also trait this as a chance to hear your feedbacks to better support the community and my
mission as a state scientist in DTSC. I will cover the topic on Human House.
A colleague, Dr. Garland, will cover ecological risk assessment. Next slide please.
After the fire incident, the state formed an interagency work group that combines expert going back.
Thank you. That combines expertise from different state departments.
At DGSC and specifically for me, the goal is to review the documents such as sampling plan and available data to determine if the environmental media, specifically soil and water, contain chemicals potentially released from the fire and at a level that may cause health concerns to off-site residents in particular children from chronic exposure.
I understand that there is concern of existing health symptoms and whether they are related
to acute exposures, shortly or even during the fire, but this risk assessment and the
collective soil and water sampling are more from a prospective angle, meaning they were
collected several months after the fire, so they are used to help evaluate clinical
residues remaining in the environment and whether the levels may cause any health risks even
after long-term exposures for one year or longer from now on.
Besides soil and water, air is also monitored to assess potential
equation risks, which is supported by other state agencies. Next slide.
People talking about how we assess risks for the site. I want to give you a brief
introduction about what is risk and the general risk assessment process.
Risk is the combination of hazards and exposure.
Using the figure here as an illustration, a shark is considered as a hazard,
while someone swimming in the same area of ocean is considered as an exposure.
The more sharks there are, the longer this person swims in the ocean,
He has a higher risk, more likely, to be attacked by a shark.
So, to sum up, risk occurs when both hadards and exposure happening at the same time,
and it is a measure of likelihood,
how likely you may be attacked it, not clinical diagnosis,
whether you're existing bleeding is from a shark attack.
correspondingly, the risk assessment process is to quantify both Heather and exposure and then
combine the information to characterize risk. Next slide.
Heather identification is the first step
of risk assessment. It identifies chemicals with potential health concern using the previous analogy.
It tells whether it is a sharp or a clonfish.
At DTSC, we consider different health effects to identify hazards of chemicals,
including both cancer and non-cancer effects.
This table here gives you some examples for chemicals that might be released from the fire.
Some of them, such as dioxins, may cause both cancer and non-cancer health effects.
While from other, some others such as Lissim, we only have scientific evidence for non-cancer
policy facts.
Next slide, please.
Those response assessments is the second step.
It is often conducted in the lab and uses lab animals to assess the possibility and severity
of House-effect in response to different exposure levels, using the previous analogy and a
shock is more likely to cause harm than a baby shock. And those response assessment is to find out
severity of the hazard and change of that severity over change of exposure. While using the
lab data to evaluate different health effects for a chemical, at DTSC we consider the most sensitive
health effects, and the most sensitive human subpopulations to assure protectiveness,
to facilitate this process and streamline with assessments at different times.
DTSC and US EPA have summarized existing databases and published
cancer and lung cancer toxicity values for over 800 chemicals, which are available in DTSC
HHR8 Note 10. The Note 10 is a living thought.
Or ask to keep it updated on a timely basis. Next slide.
So now you understand the hazard.
The third step is exposure assessment, which is to measure or estimate how much are open and how long a person may be in contact with hazard.
At DTSC, we consider all three possible exposure routes.
Inculation, thermal contact, and injection.
Next slide.
The figure here illustrates the conceptual fight model for the fight.
For chemicals, potentially released from the fire
and migrated to the surrounding areas,
a person can get exposure through
in correlation such as breathing air containing the suspended soil particles, thermal contact,
such as touching surfaces with chemical deposition, or oral injection such as putting 30
hands in mouth. Next,
this fire incidents could impact different people,
residents, workers, visitors, etc. To assure protectiveness of all humans, potentially near the
We used child residents as the default exposure receptor to FS health risks because children are expected to have greater longer exposure and are in general more susceptible to chemicals.
In addition, we also employ different exposure assumptions to assure protectiveness.
For instance, we consider that exposure has started early in life such as from the third
trimester of pregnancy when a human is more vulnerable.
And we also assumed residential exposure for 24 hours per day, seven days per week for a total of 26 years.
Next, please,
the fourth and the last step summarizes collective toxicity and exposure information
to characterize the risk, which is then used to inform risk management decisions, including
weather, there is potentially any health concern if we should refine the process by collecting
more samples or if we should advise a risk manager whether there is likely immediate or substantial
risk that requires quick actions. After this brief overview, I have two technical messages
for you. One is that risk assessment is purely a sign-space process. It is supposed to provide
the risk managers' health protective values that they can consider together with other factors,
such as technical challenges to make decisions. Second, risk assessment is often conducted
using a tiered approach by starting with the most health protective assumptions. By doing so,
we are hoping to provide a more streamlined process, minimize the likelihood of underestimating the
meeting critical timeline and saving money and resources. At the DTSC, we are dedicated for this
mission and have developed plenty of information and resources for this purpose. We applied both
of these two principles when supporting the Monterey County for this fire incident. Next.
One example is
use of the risk-based screening levels that we developed and published at the HHHRA-803.
Publication of these values gave everyone the same access to review our conclusions.
The conservative assumptions deriving those conclusions and then you can provide comments and feedbacks.
For this site, we use our more health protective exposure scenario, the residents to assess
the sample soil and water.
We know that no one is drinking water from the applesauve, but we use this approach to
assure protective deaths.
We also consider both cancer and lung cancer healthy facts.
There are also additional screening levels available at federal level from US EPA, but for
The same compound when both federal and state values are available, the California values are used as they are more stringent than the federal ones.
Next, please.
The fire incident's property.
Arial for a site which also has historical operations. In addition, some of the chemicals of concern, such as metals, are also naturally occurring.
To address this uncertainties and data gaps, we did not rely on just one piece of evidence, but used a multiple line of evidence approach and considered available information, holistically to support our risk assessment.
This data are listed here, including AirModel, AirModel in Reveals, from USPPA, distance of a sample location to the file,
collocated samples and co-occurrence of chemicals, and parallel analysis of the same samples by two different laboratories.
Next, please,
here I am showing you one example, how we use data as a whole.
Among all the fanhood locations, at one location, SB-090, we found Cobalt and Magnus concentrations
about our residential swing level.
Click with
Cobalt at 25, which is about our swinging level of 23mg per kilogram.
Manganese was measured at 2700 milligram per kilogram, which is about the 1800 screen level.
To be noted, exceeding those screening levels does not mean there is risk.
It only means that it alerts us that closer examinations of the values are needed.
Those screening levels are based on a proven staying exactly at that location 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
This exceedance was not seen in duplicate measurements, was not seen in the collocated sample.
The exceeding values are the same order of magnitude as our conservative swing level,
and considering those conservative assumptions used to derive those swing levels.
We concluded that this level is not expected to cause human health risks to residents.
Next,
another request we got from the county is for our opinions of the lab data from the consultants.
At a few locations, the consultants collect the soft samples, split the samples into two portions.
One portion is sent to the lab selected by the consultants, and the other half is sent to a county selected lab.
The specific question is whether the analytical data between the two labs generated comparable
results. We did a suite of statistical analysis to support this request. All this analysis
had been shared with the country, and we also used publicly available tools to make sure the
same results can be reproduced. The figure here are one of the tests we did, which plotted data
from the two labs to see whether they correlate with each other.
The dash line here represents a one-to-one line, meaning the concentration from the two labs
are exactly the same. The red lines here represent the actual correlation lines for the target
metals. What I want to show you here is that the two lines are close to each other, meaning the
Next,
one additional thing we supported the county together with our sister agency OEHA is to develop the air action level for maintenance.
This is supposed to be 24 hour readings of maintenance in air and help the county take necessary actions when seeing accidents.
The figure here listed the initial selected action level of 0.5 microgram of manganese per cubic meter of air,
together with a few published toxicity criteria values.
As you can see in this comparison ruler here, the selected action level,
their point five is comparable to those published
organic activity thresholds. We selected this chronic value
to compare with 24 hour measurements because
acute thresholds.
Higher than chronic threshold, so we use this lower value to assure health protectiveness.
Also, this is our initial selection. After collecting more monitoring data, we will have more information
about the manganese level in air, especially background levels in this area, which will help us further
evaluate our recommendations. Next,
so a summary of my presentation, we evaluated the sampling data collected
by the consultants and concur with the conclusion that human health risks are not expected
from chronic exposure to the sample soil and surface water, and the risks were assessed based on
conservative toxicity and exposure of functions. Now I will pass a stage to my colleague, Dr.
Garland, who will give you a presentation on ecological risk assessment.
Thank you, Dr. Jane. I'm Michael Garland. I'm also a toxicologist in DTSC's human ecological
risk office. I'm in the ecological risk assessment unit and today we'll be talking about the
virtual risk assessment portion of the PE report.
Next slide, please.
So I just want to start with an overview of the
moss-linding area.
You can see the moss-linding power plant
for an LPP outlined in a yellow circle here.
And we're centered over the mouth of the ocoron slew.
And the slew is a very dynamic habitat.
As a slew, there's a lot of shallow marshy areas being by the coast is influenced by the
tides, and by the same token is an estuary being influenced by the mixing of both fresh
water and salt water.
And so when you have these interfacing environmental factors that are interacting, you get really
dynamic environments, you get a lot of diverse habitat, including species that are highly adapted,
Some species are pretty robust to environmental stress, and these cases sometimes they're pretty sensitive.
This is a very important conservation at research area.
There is state and federal areas for conservation of this place, and it's a very unique area in California, and we want to make sure it's protected.
And along the similar lines, looking at the complexity of this lens itself to a complex factors and it comes to ecological risk assessment.
Next slide, please.
So what is ecological risk assessment?
It is essentially a process that allows us
to evaluate the likelihood of adverse effects
to biological communities due to a hazardous chemical release.
As Dr. Jean said, this is a science-based
and step-wise process that follows federal and state guidance.
That means we like to be data driven
and we like to do things sequentially
to minimize the chance that something is overlooked.
This process assesses the potential long-term
adverse effects, and terrestrial and aquatic environments.
And the reason be or interested in the long-term effects is because this process ultimately is going to inform if a
site cleanup or other type of remediation is needed and of so to what extent.
Next slide, please.
So my role as an ecological risk assessor is to conduct
technical reviews and provide input on biological resource or wildlife concerns that potential
hazardous release sites. Much of my work centers around reviewing work plans and reports
prepared by responsible parties, or their consultants, I ensure that federal and state
standards are met for data quality and risk assessment requirements, and I help risk
managers make informed decisions regarding potential need for cleanup. Next slide please.
And so today I'm going to be talking about the preliminary endangerment assessment
equivalent report, which I'll just refer to as GA report, and so in our overall remedial process
for cleanup, the PE represents the very first step for determining further investigation is needed,
and if there's been a release of a hazardous substance, that could potentially present
an unacceptable risk to human health for the environment. So the PE report was prepared by
interface on behalf of Vistra, and included an ecological screening level evaluation.
This is equivalent to what we would call a screening level ecological risk assessment.
This evaluation was based on phase one sampling, which was terrestrial upwind.
And phase 2 sampling, which is from the quadratic march habitat. Phase 2 sampling was where I primarily provided my input on the work plans, whereas phase 1 was primarily intended for human health, but was also considered for ecological screening as well.
So in case you're wondering why we call it a P.A. Fowlwind, that is essentially because
terrifies calls the report something else, or our guidance is very general and needs
to be able to address many different sites that we investigate, and this is a pretty unique
site. And so as long as we have terrifies the equivalent standards of our P.A. guidance,
then that's fine to do that.
So it's just called APA equipment.
Next slide, please.
And so the PEA report is in draft status.
And what that means, it's still under regulatory review.
And results in conclusions may change depending on the regulatory feedback and
revisions that take place.
And so I'm going to provide in this presentation.
Is the background information leading up to the report.
And I'm going to provide an overview of the risk assessment that's presented
and reports first draft as a currently stance. Next slide, please.
So the reason why we felt
as necessary conduct in ecological risk assessment was based on observations that indicated
potential impact of the battery fire. First, there is some modeling of the plume from the fire,
which indicated that there could be some chemical deposition into habitat areas.
The Monterey
And as I understand it, this is based on the visual observation of decreased numbers of aquatic insects.
And additionally, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife had reported potential fire debris following the fire at Hester Marsh.
Next slide, please.
So I want to talk a bit more about the potential fire debris that Fish and Wildlife had seen because this generates an interest into whether Hester Marsh,
conservation and restoration area was potentially impacted by the fire. So
Fish and Wildlife staff noted that they estimated there were hundreds of these debris
fragments that the observant or water areas in January and February that year of the fire.
They were about six inches in diameter. They were these char flaky objects.
They're origin and composition remains unknown to the vis-à-vis knowledge.
These pieces were not collected or analyzed in the lab.
So, so they can potentially,
these could be from the battery fire,
but ultimately I can't see 100% for sure that these are.
But since they could be from the fire,
we're still interested in whether these had an impact
on the environment.
And I will note that TerraFaze and their follow-up visits
for field reconnaissance did not observe
of these fragments in the field.
and CDFW had presumed that these fragments were dissolved during rainfall.
Next slide please.
So I just want to provide an overview of the timeline.
The events that I just discussed happened within the first couple months of the year shortly after the battery fire.
Phase one and phase two sampling occurred during the middle to a third quarter of a year.
And the months in between, there is a series of brainstorms.
This potentially impacted the dissolution of potential contaminants
and the transport of any debris or contaminants in the stormwater runoff.
And so the phase one and phase two sampling are just kind of snapshots in time
of when those samples took place. They don't tell us if there was previous contamination.
But by the same time, this is telling us whether there's any long-term residual contamination
in these areas if there was a transport of these chemicals away or a dissolution of them.
Next slide, please.
So I'm just going to provide a brief overview on this slide of the process that was done
for the ecological screening level evaluation.
I'll get into more details on these and the subsequent slides, but what I want to point
is that the first element risk assessment parameters and the second element sample collection,
the majority of this was done during the sampling and work plans and reports.
The risk characterization is really what the PEA brings. It integrates all the information
from the Sampling events and additional content.
Text of the site. And this is used to screen for risk and interpret the data. And so, this is our opportunity
as regulators to review all this information more holistically, make sure that it all makes sense and that follows our process
according to state and federal guidance. Next slide, please.
So this is the hazard identification part of our
defining of risk assessment parameters, the chemicals of interest. So we were interested in
metals. These are the same metals that were discussed by Dr. J. J. They are metals that are components
of the batteries that were the head combusted in the fire.
And we additionally considered polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons or pHs and dioxins and theorems. These two chemical classes are
combustion products. They're formed when organic material catches on fire.
But what else is notable about these chemical classes is that they are found in the environment
at a background level. So when taking samples of environmental areas, there's going to be
some noise. And so we want to be able to find a signal in that noise.
A signal that indicates any kind of ability to attribute contamination to the battery
fire. And so we look for a chemical fingerprint of these chemicals if interested if
they're elevated and that levels that could potentially cause adverse effects in wildlife.
Then that's some evidence that this is a tributal to the battery fire. Next slide, please.
So, next time I'm going to talk about the habitat and exposure media that we considered for this risk assessment.
So, the phase one sampling, this is done in upland terrestrial habitat and this lip primarily at soil, the first top three inches of soil,
and the phase two sampling, which I was primarily involved in reviewing, involved surface water sampling, sediment sampling, and pore water.
Pour water is the water that's trapped between sediment grains, and this is really a supplement to the sediment sampling sediment has an ability to really bind metals.
And if you analyze it in the lab, it'll tell you how much metal is in the sediment.
But I won't tell you how much of that metal is bioavailable, how much can dissolve and get absorbed by wildlife that ingest it.
And so, the pore water can give us an idea of how much metal in a sediment can dissolve,
can be taken up by wildlife.
It's really more of a supplemental to screening sediment.
Next slide, please.
So next, I'm going to talk about the selection of ecological screening levels.
It's regulators.
We want to see a hierarchy of sources that are prioritized by quality and availability
for the chemicals.
each sampled medium, so soil, surface water, and sediment, there's a going to have their
own screening values.
And the selection of e-screening values need to be conservative.
So we're looking for a pretty stringent screening values. We assume that the most sensitive
representative wildlife species is evaluated. Remember I previously said that this is habitat
where you have some pretty resilient species, and you have sensitive ones. So to do this screen,
if we can try to make sure we're protecting the most sensitive wildlife species,
it's more likely that more species overall are going to be protected it.
So these screens rely on conservative exposure assumptions. Next slide, please.
So there are a lot of considerations when Teraphase went to sample in the field.
As I previously said, this is a really dynamic environment.
You have title action.
I talked a little bit about sediment chemistry, which can be complicated in these
marshy areas.
There's often elevated amounts of metals and other chemicals.
There's natural background variation that can impact what you actually find when you go
on the sample, whether it is contamination from the battery fire or not.
There are the weather impacts, debris may have been visible from move around by rain, stormwater runoff would be expected to flow from areas that are higher, to areas that are lower.
And so this would influence where tariff phase did their sampling to try to find locations that are most likely going to have residual contamination.
And finally, in addition to potential contamination from the battery fire, there are a lot
Motion, they can come from the watershed and flow down into the basin of El Korn's slew. There is atmospheric
deposition. Tempacles can come from a short distance, such as from traffic. There's even long distance,
potential for deposition. This is even from different continents. There's a lot of different ways,
chemicals can end up in an environment. And of course, there's human activities.
The areas of the face to
sampling. These were not owned by Vistra. They did not have control over whether there were
people there, what activities took place. Maybe people were trespassing. We don't know if
they were, there were bonfires that could impact whether we observe combustion products.
So there's a lot of uncertainty. And again, I just want to highlight that we're looking for that chemical
fingerprint that can really guide us to see if any contamination is attributable to that fire.
next slide please.
So here's a map again, a velcroon slew. The ruin area is the
visceral property. The purple magenta outline is the, where the plume of smoke was
modeled to have deposited chemicals potentially. And the green squares are the areas
that were sampled and the phase two sampling event. And so three areas of
Mr. Marsh, where California Department of Professional Wildlife had observed the potential
fire debris, those areas were sampled by terrifies, terrifies sampled at the M.A.O.A. or
the mosquito district observation area, due to that potential decline in aquatic insect life.
And there was an additional property that was sampled in North of Mosleinian power plant
And this is within that model deposition plume and that was to get an idea of whether or not chemicals from that plume had settled in habitat areas north of the power plant.
Next slide please.
And so here's some images from the phase two sampling that took place in September of last year on the left is this sediment sampling on the right is surface water sampling.
So the three or four samples were collected at each location, I believe it was four samples
of both sediment and surface water were collected at each Hester Marsh area, I believe three
samples were collected at the ski to observation area, and the site north of the most
finding power plant, one sample of sediment and surface water was collected, and these samples
were analyzed from metals, pHs, and the dioxins, and pherants.
Next slide, please.
And so, terriface also sampled pore water, they were successful in sampling at
Hester areas one and two, and the samples were analyzed from metals.
The other pore water collections at the other sampling areas were unsuccessful, and this
is because that the sediment was not very permeable if you can imagine in that part
to and you have the sediment brains.
If these are really tiny, there's not going to be a ton of pore water there, you're going
be more likely to get some clogging of the probe screens you can see on the figure on the
right.
I was a picture from the field showing how this clay sediment was clogging their steel probe
that they used in sample for pore water.
It made multiple, multiple attempts, but they were unable to do so.
But we did get pore water for analysis and history areas wanted to.
Next slide, please.
So, how are the sampling data used?
So, in a screening level risk assessment,
the highest sample concentration
is compared to its respective screening level in each medium.
If that sample concentration exceeded the screening level,
it indicates the potential of a ecological risk.
It does not mean that potential risk is unacceptable
or related to the battery fire that requires further assessment
that's going to be done through a line of evidence evaluation
such as the comparison to regional background values or that can be some additional risk
refinements that represent a more realistic exposure scenario rather than just a
seeing that an organism stems all of its time, the most contaminated spot, maybe
assume that it wanders an area that takes more of an average concentration of consideration.
And so there's a time to refinements that can be made if there's an exceedance.
Next slide, please.
So, luckily, in the draft report, the screening evaluation results are pretty simple for me to present here.
They found Nicol and the mosquito observation area in sediment was exceeding its screening level by three times.
And so, this is where that further evaluation lines of evidence.
Assessment comes in. They compare this concentration to the regional background and found that it was within regional background.
And so that indicated that this is not likely contamination or from the battery fire.
They also did not find any chemicals exceeding their screening levels in any of the other evaluated media.
and so what this means is that there doesn't appear to be any widespread contamination from the
battery-fire in these areas that were sampled. Next slide please.
So the conclusions of the
draft report which again or under our review indicate that the data do not potentially do not
show any potentially unacceptable risk to the environment and no further ecological risk assessment is needed.
And looking at those, of course, it's good news to see a report that says there is no potentially an acceptable risk.
But it's important that we make sure that this risk assessment is done right and we diligently review this.
So it is possible the results conclusions may change pending regulatory review.
And I won't be able to render a final opinion on this inclusion until that process is completed.
And I know the community is looking for answers on this, as soon as they can get them.
We appreciate your patience and we're working diligently to get this reviewed.
And I appreciate your time and I conclude my presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
And so without we're going to have two additional presentations.
The first is from the Estuary Monitoring of Battery Emissions and Residues.
Also known as Ember, and Dr. Kirsten Wassen, a research coordinator at the Elcorn's
Blue National Estuary Research Reserve and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at
UCSC and she is our first presenter. Kirsten? Excuse me, Dr. Wassen.
Oh, um, you might need to pass through the
microphone.
Maybe, Dr. the microphone. If we could have, I'm tech team, turn the microphone on.
Do I have control here? Oh, I have control. Let's try that again.
I'm in control. Try that test.
Fantastic. Okay. Very good. Thanks.
Okay. Next slide, please.
So this presentation is on behalf of Ember, which is the cute nickname we came up with
for scientists from the Elkorn-Slow Reserve Foundation,
Moss Landing Relabs, Marine Pollution Studies Lab,
Bonnery Bay Aquarium, and the Ammootsan Land Trust. Next slide.
I'm going to tell you the key message of this talk right at the front and then return to it at the end.
To detect ecological impacts of this battery fire appropriate sampling is and was essential.
This includes sampling soil surfaces immediately after the fire to detect the ash layer.
This means sampling with high spatial coverage and sampling diverse organisms for a long time to track bio accumulation.
Next slide. So we're broken into teams. The sediment and geospatial team focused on metals on the soil surface. Next slide.
And this team is headed up by Dr. Ivano Ayelo. Next slide. In November of last year, we published our findings in scientific reports and article that's in the 99th percentile of viewed articles in this journal.
While the paper was only published in November as of February 2025, we have been sharing all of our data publicly on a public repository where they were downloaded more than 100 times, so they've been available to the county and others since February.
Next slide.
We were able to make robust, before versus after fire comparisons, because at the Elecorn
SLU reserve, we are a hub for monitoring and at our Hestermarge Restoration site, we used
the handheld X-ray fluorescence analyzer just to know what the swells were like at our
Restoration site in 2023, that ended up being really useful, because then immediately after
fire we could go to these same spots and resample them with the same instrument. Next slide.
I note about this fire debris that was mentioned. That is not our focus. The data in our paper
actually ignored these debris because they were so concentrated the data are from the soil surface.
But yes, we found hundreds of people.
Through CDFW. And when we held our instrument over them, they were pure cathode battery metals. Those samples, we collected the GPS units, put them in plastic bags in a freezer where they are available for anyone to analyze and we have made that clear too.
Next slide.
But what I want to tell you about is not those pieces of debris, but rather the surface of the soils at Hester Marsh.
With our instrument, we were able to detect an ash layer that was very thin, but very concentrated.
The fallout layer from the plume of the battery fire.
For example, maximum nickel concentrations were 10 times the baseline in the first two weeks after the fire.
In contrast, if you take an EPA 1-inch course sample, you get more than 10 times dilution factor from that.
So with these new catastrophes, we may need different methods.
Next slide.
So this fallout layer was a very patchy and very short-lived phenomenon.
What this graph shows on the y-axis are nickel concentrations.
On the x-axis is time.
You can see the red bar, even if you're in the back of the room,
that shows when the battery fire occurred.
And the first sample data to the left of that
our collections at the restoration site before the fire.
Then within days after the fire, when we were out there again,
you can see that the magnitude of those nickel concentrations
increased enormously, but was hugely variable.
Some values were low, some were extremely high.
It was a patchy layer.
A week later, that would still the case.
But then, we started having heavy rains that are shown
with a dotted blue line that's cumulative precipitation.
And you can see that the levels started dropping pretty quickly.
Next slide.
So taking a few deep cores are not well suited
to detecting a thin patchy layer of battery metals
on the soil surface.
And the cores collected that you just heard about
that were taken in September by terriface
were taken far too late to detect this fallout layer.
And Ember has put in writing a lengthy revolt
to numerous aspects of that terriface report.
Next slide.
So the surface layer of metals
was clearly from a battery source.
What this graph shows is nickel on the y-axis
and cobalt on the x-axis.
The orange points are the samples taken
in the first week after the fire.
They are in a two to one ratio exactly the ratio in which nickel to cobalt are found in battery cathodes.
The points in blue were the ones we collected in 2023. You can see they're not correlated.
You've got high nickel in one place. I cobalt in another and they're way lower.
So this is a really clear smoking gun of battery metal deposition on our wetland.
Next slide.
The structure of the metals on the soil surface was manganese cobalt a nickel aggregated
together.
Next slide.
Very much resembling if you Google purchasing lithium ion cathode material, that is what
you find.
Next slide.
So to summarize the geospatial portion, we found highly concentrated metals on
corn slew marshes in a thin patchy fallout layer. We have indication of a battery source with
a proportions of metals and a particle morphology matching batteries, but this was rapidly redistributed.
Rain and tides quickly reduced these surface concentrations as the metals from the fallout layer
were redistributed downstream in the asteroid system. They did not disappear. Next slide.
which brings us to our biode team.
So, the biode team's purpose is to track potential bioaccumulation of those metals in the
estuary. Next slide. We are scientists from Maslanding Relabs, myself at the reserve, and the
Amamutes and Native stewards tribal members committed to taking care of their ancestral lands. Next slide.
Together, we collected target species of plants, algae, mollusks, crustaceans, and fish,
and these are the tribal members doing dissections in the labs.
Next slide.
We were able to rapidly mobilize after the fire, because we'd been planning a tribal reserve
monitoring event within a week of the fire, and we'd just switch to-
To sample when we realized no one else was doing so. Next slide. And we continue to sample each of those little diamond shaped marks are sampling periods in the subsequent year, where we collected those organisms.
Just to give you a flavor of the kind of data we've generated, I'm going to show you some examples from two sites from the first three months from two taxonomic groups. Next slide.
So here, for example, are the three battery metals shown, the concentrations shown for the first three months for the Bay muscle, next slide, and we have data for other mollusks, next slide, as well as crustaceans, next slide.
In February and in March, we found a highly significant correlation between nickel and
cobalt in those organisms we were sampling.
This is consistent with a common shared source that could be the battery metals or it could
be something else.
Next.
To put this in temporal context for muscles and only for muscles, we have good baseline data for
medical concentrations as a part of the muscle watch program earlier years, decades of data
are shown in green and are values from the first three months after the fire are shown in
blue so they fall within the range that has been observed in the estuary over the past decades.
Next slide. So to summarize for Biota, the results from those first three months show correlated,
nickel and cobalt concentrations in slew animals, which may suggest a battery metal source.
The metal concentrations in muscles are within the range of what's been measured from
elk run slew in the past, but no conclusions about ecological impacts of the battery fire should be drawn
from these initial data because bioaccumulation can be a slow process and we must analyze data
from many species, sites, and dates to understand potential impacts. We're advocating a more
conservative mindset here. Next slide.
So to summarize what I have told you, battery
metals were deposited in adjacent L-Corn-Sliu wetlands as a thin patchy concentrated
layer that dispersed within weeks. Washington stream may be partly blowing away. Thus,
sampling with deep cores or little spatial coverage or in later months cannot detect the contamination that occurred.
Secondly, bioaccumulation can occur slowly and unevenly across species and sites.
So until many dates, sites, and species have been analyzed, conclusions cannot be drawn.
claims of the absence of ecological impacts are premature at best and misleading at worst.
Supervisors, I hope these data and perspectives assist you and the county staff in the evaluation of the battery fire impacts.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Watson.
Next, we will
have Ed Mitchell, the lead investigator for the Nevergen Moss Landing, representative
to the podium to present for an amount not to see seven minutes.
Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.
The NAML presentation is about delusion of truth.
How the EPA, DTSC and CPU have failed us.
And we're talking about not just at the site.
We're talking about during the fire, what were people getting a dose with, for example,
The DTSC or Menvard did not come to the prundail area when you could see the cloud on the ground.
Furthermore, the winds took the things pollution downrange.
For over a year, this community has lived in the shadow of the largest battery fire in history.
We've seen 10,000 tons of nickel manganese cobalt and other pollutants flowing in the plume over our schools,
foreign business homes.
Since that fire DTA, CNEPA, have told you the environment is safe, because their data points
fall below general health thresholds.
But a measurement is only as good as a method used.
Plus, if you don't want to find something and you don't look for it, you won't find
it.
So, we are here to prove that the testing will help to then campaign a mathematical, mathematical
delusion and avoidance designed to protect corporate liability rather than public health.
We've done that by cross-reversing their flood reports with hard-science data from Dr. Ayelo,
the blue shirt, Justice League, Dr. Smith, and we, some UCSC, and our own scientifically
validate.
Example 1. The 3-inch lie, DTSC and EPA conducted sampling by digging or through terror phase. Digging 3 inches into the ground. On paper looks thorough and reality is the shell game.
Established chemical and atmospheric sign tells us when an aerosol plume settles at deposits, a micro layer of ash, just as you see in a moment ago. This toxic dust is in a way from .012 micrograms or meaning parts per billion and it settles on the top of the soil.
Well, servers no deeper than 5 millimeters.
By sampling three inches deep, the EPT and DTSC
mixed the thin toxic layer with over two and a half inches
of clean pre-existing earth.
The significant, that's significantly diluted
the fire signature.
Dr. ILO's research retardative talk, top surface layer,
found heavy metal concentrations 100 to 1,000 times higher
than the EPA and DTSC results.
Namal scientific data testing data matches ILO's.
and EPA and DTS Investor consultants tell you that the levels do not endanger our community.
They are ignoring the concentrated poisons sitting on the very services where our children
play and our crops grow.
Example two, during the first 48 hours of the fire in January 16, 2025, when the plume was
at its most concentration, the EPA's automatic modern equipment failed, surprise, surprise.
And they did not provide a good data even when they were working because they replaced
the distances that favored the plant, not the people.
Example 3, the EPA looked for, quote, general particulates at 2.5 parts per million and
above.
They didn't look for the aerosols emanating from the fire nor for the NMC signature found in
the battery fire.
Private testing conducted by NAML, in coordination with biomexin environmental ink, found
extraordinary high levels of vaporized nickel manganese and cobalt on the exterior dex
petties and walkways of the homes miles away from the fire.
This does not come from the quote legacy PG&E operations as claimed by teraphase.
It matches the chemical profile of visters burning batteries and mirrored Dr. Ielo's
data in the ratios of metals. Stuff went down range. The EPA's failure test for these metals
in the immediate aftermath was not an oversight.
It was a choice to remain blind.
If NAMOL had not tested you and the public
was still be replying, relying upon the misrepresentation,
that the government instruments had not detected measurable levels
of harmful pollutants, supervisors.
Please recognize the foxes are guarding the henhouse.
The EPA cleanup plan relies almost exclusively
on data provided by vistas to consultants.
They're paid to work for vista.
Temp, Terrapays, and CTEH. As we have documented in our Citizen Commission proposal that we sent to you,
Terrapays has a history in Philadelphia and Southern California of using,
quote, reclassifications to minimize monitoring. Meanwhile, CTEH is a firm,
often nicknamed, by environmental lawyers, as check the evidence hidden.
Because of their history, a finding no risk and major disaster sites, example four.
Neither the EPA nor DTSC tested for dioxin inference.
When you burn massive amounts of plastic casing, electrolytes, and wiring, you create
some of the most carcinogenic substances known to man.
Working with the Blusher Justice League, we have found alarming increases in our region, dioxin
inference and secondary chemicals.
Unfortunately, and deliberately, the government agencies did not test it for dioxin levels.
Because if they find it in the 700-foot-long black fire residue pile or outside their
property, then the cleanup becomes a billion dollar liability.
They aren't seeking answers, they're seeking an exit strategy, example five.
California PUC is responsible for safe utility operation and investigating the root cause
of the fire and why the suppression system failed.
However, they have not released information about what caused the fire?
Where was the ignition source? Where was the ignition location? And what was the timeline for
and flow of the thermal runaway from Rack to Rack in the building?
Sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure we've got the slides following along with you.
I'm going to clear for on the correct slide.
No, don't worry about it. Just go back to number one.
Okay, so to make sure we're on the slide. Okay.
I'm fine. She and I are working fine.
Example, so the PUC hasn't supplied any of that data to you or to the public.
So while federal and CDC's avoid looking for deadly pollutants and except dilution measurements
by visters, quote, experts, your constituents and neighbors are suffering with recurring
nose bleeds, alternate tates, migraine skin.
That your county's own health survey showed. Therefore, after 15 months, a misinformation and an avoidance
memo has nine requests for you to board. One, allow no best facility to restart until a
root cause analysis is completed and made public by the CPUC. Two, execute the thorough technical
analysis and quality assurance for you, recommended by your own hired toxicologist. The cornerstone
earth group in three, no related in April, 30th, release a formal county finding that the
metal ratios found by San Jose, San Jose State University, matched the mass 3300 batteries.
Four, demand that the EPA immediately sampled the black fire residue, not just for having
metals, but also for a bestest, dioxin, theorems, and PFA's, and report the findings
no longer than June 30th.
Five, require state-funded study of the top five millimeters of the soil and water collection
on's sediments within 10 miles of the plant.
Six demand DTSC performed proper answer testing of L-Carm's slew sediment for dioxins and
feurins.
Seven, formerly requested state funded health teams be deployed to interview tri-county residents
regarding health impacts.
Eight demand vis-ra-fund a health register by impacting by impacted residents administered
by the county.
and nine, create the Community Best Ordnance Commission under Monterey County Code 19.020.045 with a citizens advisory team to participate in drafting the county ordinance.
Namel is a one agency several weeks ago, we've already submitted or recommended ordinance
warnings.
Supervisors, you are the community's last line of defense. The bottom line is this.
Yes, there has been cleanup. And yes, there has been cover-up.
The issue here is that it looks like it's
and deaths are suffering with it. For example, I'm looking pretty good today, but my
nose I have chowler acne. It's caused from burning eye, I'm fear ons, and if you'd
see me a month ago, you think I was a drunk, because I looked like Rudolph the
rain door, rain deer. This stuff is affecting people, and Madam Chair, thank you for
including community groups to share their thousands of hours of research and what they've
came across.
Your leadership increases political public trust in the board of supervisors.
Anything else from our team here?
No, nothing further from us.
Thank you.
Well, I'll just start by saying thank you to all of our presenters, I hope everyone's still
with us because we are going to bring it back to the board.
For comments or questions, we'll start with questions from the board and then we can take it out
to public.
I have a lot of questions if you comments, but I can wait or we can do it whatever you want to do.
Okay, well let's open it up to public then and that way we can have our questions be based on what we hear from the public.
I've got our notes and we can add to those.
So we'll start with public comment of those in the room and if you wouldn't mind approaching the front of the room so that we can make sure we.
We don't miss anyone and roll through folks and then we have folks who are online as well.
So if you're online for public comment on the side of them, you can raise your hand
now so that we can be sure to account for everyone.
And I do have a hand of a handful of comment cards here.
So if you put your name on a card now would be the time to stand up and come on up.
But we can also, we'll make sure that we don't miss any one.
So if you say your name, I'll make sure we don't miss you.
Thank you.
Cameron, concerns to witness resident, never again, lost landing.
We're dealing with the world's largest energy battery energy storage system failure here and it's
going to take a long time to figure out the effects.
And yet at the same time, as I noted earlier, you're including this area of muscle ending
alcohol and slew in your affordable housing plan, trying to put a project there.
It's my understanding, perhaps I'm wrong, but please check out the environmental justice
element. I don't understand why an area that went from the corporate
population of 204 to 31. Now you want to repopulate it with something like
this, I just don't understand. There is a public comment, time available,
March 11th through May 11th for Monterey County Environmental Justice. Everyone, please
check it out. There's also a public comment period until May 11th that CDPR
It has a proposal too.
They currently have 4, they want 10, yet they're conveniently leaving out salinas salad bowl of the world.
So, one more example about how we really have insufficient data about the environment across the board.
The EPA calls us the cleanest city in the state. They've come in dead samples there.
But I've seen pesticide pollution burden maps that differ and show up to 100% accumulation.
So, please study the data.
I'm appalled by what the differences are between DTSC, EPA, they're lagging in their time.
Obviously, they came late.
I agree with what the scientists said earlier about doing the sampling on the layer versus the deep.
It's just, you're not thinking of the people in these decisions.
And as I outlined earlier, the county plan also details many other areas that are of environmental concern
because you're targeting those that are 75% disadvantaged,
which means those that have the most pollution,
which means also low-income people,
people of color are the ones in that area.
So we're perpetuating the system that pollutes them,
So please take a look at that and I appreciate your time.
And all you do.
Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.
I'm Cheryl Davidson, District 2.
And I want to thank you for working on these ordinances.
I know you're just starting on that to help protect our community and I think that it's
important because other of these things are going to want to go in and it's a target
because of the way Maslandian is built.
I wanted to tell you why a lot of us continue to go to these meetings.
They're not exciting.
We are busy, but we are here because we got hurt by this.
A lot of us got sick, I was in the health group, and we found others that we're suffering
too within days when we were told it was safe to go out, and it wasn't nosebleeds, skin
rashes, respiratory problems, metallic taste, we're still having this, a lot of us.
Some people gave up their homes and moved away.
They were in retirement age, and they weren't ready to do that.
And they gave everything up because they got so sick.
And we need to speak for them as well.
And our community banded together within that first week,
now I'm all dead.
And we got 150 people to do ghost wipes.
30 miles away, we were still showing some of these things.
Amber's been doing stuff.
Never again's been doing stuff.
I ask you guys to look at this data, evaluate it, ask.
How far away from the site?
were these things taken. We know the plume dropped, and it was over three miles out from these
things. You can see it on our Ghostbite sample. Tarts, I know that there's a lot of people here
on the board that care deeply for our area and our community and there are people here and experts
utilize them, have them talk to who you're using in the county. I know you've been doing stuff,
but please, these things are going to open up. We have another building just like the one that
on fire. Thank you.
I'm going to use my time wisely. Thank you all for your patience.
There is no irony that self-funded science provides its own desired results. Outside of
impacts to health and wildlife, it is critical to highlight the amount of financial
dearest and stress this emergency situation with mass-learning battery fire and its contaminants
both known and unknown created for my family and others. It is clear that this, on Monterey
county knew that there was eminent risk and safety contingency plans and her quest for
their of was not honored.
And after repeat incidents, ultimately resulted in the forced displacement, financial
disparity, and health risks for many residents.
When you're told that monitoring county cannot be held accountable for this severe oversight
with our taxes that funded is inevitable disaster.
Therefore, do you agree that impacted residents merit tax relief, refund, and or clean
It is clear from the insurmountable evidence that there is a tragic lack of appropriate and time-sensitive
testing.
Where do we go from here?
How do we get our homes back?
How do we get our safety back?
How do we preserve Monterey Bay?
Elcorn slew?
Our marine sanctuary?
World agriculture?
Our commercial fishing?
And further contamination, contaminant, contaminant, contamination of this
eminent catastrophe that these batteries at storage facilities have proven to be.
Right now we have Orca's offshore.
and they will be impacted by a cumulative toxin and what about families such
And I want you to know that myself, my family, has been impacted. Both myself and my eight-year-old daughter have had unusually
quagling blood, which is something that can be caused by cobalt. And my daughter here has an extremely
slow growth rate that I'm looking at babies at our twice or eight. Our same age is her twice
her size, have her age and her size. That my pediatrician and I'm monitoring this, because
co-pultons cause calcium to leach from your body. These are real for us. We are impacted,
and we want our homes back. I just wanted to include, I have samples from my boat here from
the side that faces the towers and the side that doesn't, and tarps that I put on last year
when I was, had to be relocated this time last year. And you can see there's a clear difference
from the wind facing side and the not facing side. And this is just from when we left.
Corral Beter from Coralitis. My husband and I were driving back from Salinas to our home in
Coralitis, the night that the fire was very visible.
We went home that night to watch Felix Cortez
announced what had happened, and I was horrified and very concerned. I actually had a different
presentation for you today until I got to watch all of the statistics and our science from the
Department of toxic substances. Because within a few days I had contacted my friend who had
worked for the she's an analyst for the Department of Defense and asked her, what kind of outcomes
can you expect from some kind of fire like this? Because as most of you know, we had the burn pets
in Quate and Afghanistan. I'll tell you a quick rundown. The soldiers were reporting very serious health
problems after being exposed to the toxic air and the leftovers from the burn pits. However,
our government, blessed our little heart, had buried a lot of the debris and never had really
accurately tested the air that they had been breathing, especially the bulldozer
drivers who were picking soil up that was theoretically uncontaminated to start
filling in the burn pits. Finally, some of these mainly bulldozer drivers went to the
Department of Defense and had been at Walter Reed and complained and said we have been
affected by these toxic, and the soil, and it had become aromatic.
The Department of Defense's first response was kind of like we were today.
Nothing to see here, nothing really happened.
There were just maybe a few little particles in the air.
It took a lot of work to go through and do what we've asked for today, a very comprehensive
test, to know what we actually were exposed to.
Good afternoon, Becky Steinburn,
I'm a resident of Santa Cruz County.
I want to first of all, thank you for making this
at a set time so that people could be here.
I am quite shocked by what the DTS see
is telling us to believe.
And I want to thank the scientists
from Mosslanding Marine Lab
and the citizen scientists from never again Mosslanding
for really bringing the truth to light.
It was a polling to me to hear the D.S.
DTSC signed to say there was no evidence of potential existing contamination.
When we have Dr. ALO study, the very well and scientifically documents that, I want to
say that, who is left out of this risk health risk assessment is the emergency responders.
I didn't see them mentioned at all, and they certainly need to be included.
I also feel that it is unacceptable that slide four does not even mention cobalt as a hazardous
material when it is a known carcinogen and a genetic toxin.
It is mentioned in the soil sampling, but it is not mentioned in any air sampling.
That's what is affecting, has affected, and will continue to affect the public health.
I want to say that I spoke with Dr. Wang from the Desert Research Institute who is a specialist on air quality heat.
The equipment that the EPA used and he was appalled that they couldn't figure out how to calibrate it because that's exactly what that equipment is supposed to be used for.
And he also let me know that inside of the Moss Landing Marine Lab, they found heavy metal residue on the surfaces, even though the doors and windows were closed.
So, sending people home 24 hours after this disaster and telling them to close their doors and windows was ludicrous and full hearty.
I want to say finally that the problem a diagram is shown for the environmental impacts is appalling and unacceptable because it goes out over the bay, not inland.
As Dr. Ailes studies in the Never Again Moss Landing Studies show, that's where the toxins went.
Thank you. Do not accept these. Do not accept these horrible reports.
Depend on your local scientists for truth. Thank you.
Hello, galisner, Moss Landing.
I just wanted to make a quick point that it's a legal point, but it's cumulative offenses are primarily addressing criminal law.
They often arise in cases where a person or business has a history of repeated criminal behavior, leading to more severe charges and penalties.
Legal practitioners may use this concept to argue for harsh or sentencing based on a pattern of behavior.
And I say that because I wanted to mention that both Vistra and Tesla, but mainly Vistra has very large fines and criminal violations for environmental laws.
And I just like to have the board at least take that into consideration while you're determining things that you're determining.
Thank you.
Hi there, my name is Emily Francis Cohanna.
Are we ready?
Okay, great.
I'm actually not feeling well.
So I'm going to try to keep it all together as I speak today.
I appreciate the time that everybody's put together these reports on all sides.
I appreciate the attention of this matter from the Board of Supervisors.
I know that I've told you all in past meetings that I actually have a bachelor's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University.
And one of the things that I got to learn about during that time was about the formation of the EPA and love canal as a first major case.
And how excited I was that people were putting together this agency to help protect the
public.
And unfortunately, since this fire happened, I have talked to numerous people from East
Palestine, Ohio and victims of other chemical disasters where the EPA has come in and
in adequate sampling and the results that they are finding for these other chemical disasters
is that everything's fine and meanwhile people in East Palacino, Ohio are dying left and
right of cancer after the trained enrollment and chemical disaster. So it's very frustrating.
There's a lot of distress not only among myself but also the rest of the community especially
when the EPA and the first announced minutes again, sorry, I'm not feeling well today, that
they, in the first press conference for this fire, they came and they had the gall to say that
everything blew up in the fire that there's no debris, it all burned. You can see it, it's on YouTube.
And then they said, there's a plume, and the plume stayed over the Mossland and campus. Now, these are
in Congress statements. The first denotes that there's no clue because it all burned.
I have more to say, and more to say, these reports are really frustrating. And I will note too,
that it's frustrating that the Ember study was not included, especially when we heard from our
county members saying that the results from the Moss Landing Marine Lab study would be presented to
in relationship to what was happening with the EPA results.
And by the way, Dr. I. L.O. called
NAMOL, the NAMOL leadership, and said,
our results match the fingerprint of your results exactly.
So the presentations from everybody besides
Ember and NAMOL today are very frustrating. Thank you.
Okay,
seeing no one else in chambers for comment today. We're going to move on line. We do have a number of hands raised. So we will
thermon run away and then Michelle Clarie.
So the IAMAAC plume model was wildly inaccurate. Any agency that's using that to dictate their sampling plan is either corrupt or ignorant.
And I don't believe any of the people that spoke today are stupid, so that kind of just leaves one option.
So the air monitoring, also, you can see the smoke.
You could clearly see the smoke moving very far away from it miles.
In fact, in the emergency reports, they stated that the smoke was blowing into Santa Cruz and San Benito County.
So the emergency reports as the county put together, state that.
So, the DTSC, my question for you is that you put up the XRF data that was parts per million,
is that per centimeter squared or kilogram, can you define those units of measure?
You also didn't take a soil sample from site 1 because you didn't visually see any debris,
but a lot of this was nanoparticles. Can you kind of describe what you were looking for when
you're looking for these very small particles and why you didn't see it and how easy it is to see
nanoparticle or a lithium-ion. You also say there's pH data, lab results. I can't find those.
Where do I find the pH lab results? The air monitoring data. This has to do more with the EPA,
so Cal EPA wants to comment. The monitors weren't operating properly. If you look at the data,
any of the sites that were offsite were operating, so that was site 6 through 9. I reached out to the
The EPA line said that it was on the website.
It's not.
And when I reached out to the EPA, they told me they
don't have the data for the sites, 6 through 9.
I mean, how are they publishing these summaries
if they don't have the data?
And I could provide that response from the EPA
to the Board of Supervisors that they
want it lasting the HF standard that
was used was for occupational level for eight hours.
is that appropriate for my new born baby to be exposed to that's being exposed 24 hours?
I want to know, you know, why was that eight-hour occupational HF used instead of something more appropriate?
Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Michelle Clarie and then Beverly.
You guys first? We can. Thank you.
Okay, perfect. Thanks, you guys, for this update and yes, I agree. One,
at 130 was perfect, so I really appreciate it. Again, like the community said, it's very different
data. You have to go from your local marine scientists. They have all the data.
Every hearing that these other ones didn't have the data, you can't even go. You have to
you have to dismiss it. That everything's okay even though there's, you know, hundreds of thousands
of metal like samples that they're seeing that it's higher than it's ever been, but
oh, not dangerous, but I guarantee you if you had a house right there and somebody was
trying to get a permit or they had a well there and they go, this is unacceptable amounts
of stuff.
You can't live here.
You can't have water.
You can't drink this, but it's okay when they're doing a study, throw it out, don't accept
it.
It's not.
You have heard too many of us say the health things that we're having here.
Again, there is that plume that showed over the water, I had to relocate self-locate because we were right under the plume when the fire was going on in Royal Oaks.
And we went all the way to Hollister, then it was all over the place there, and sitting in pockets and people are breathing in that smoke.
You know, again, no studies on what's happened to moles and animals that have just been dying everywhere,
or our livestock that we know that are becoming still born at birth
that we didn't have problems with up in the hills behind us in areas
not by the water. This whole thing of EPA even coming out and saying
there's no nothing to worry about here. When all the health surveys and
everything is showing differently, I just blows my mind and I love seeing it
because when these others just come up with their other information, it just makes
some look very unprofessional.
So again, we can't take this.
You need to continue with more studies.
Thank you.
All right, we have our next badly.
Good afternoon. Thank you for all of your work. My name is Beverly Desho. I'm with Electric Vehicle Association and we are an educational nonprofit and we have been doing electric vehicle and renewable energy, education events. I personally have been involved for 19 years. So I have some understanding about batteries. I just want to say that it will never happen.
again, because that configuration that was shown in the never again at the end of their presentation,
that configuration inside batteries stacked on top of each other, and they were nickel
manganese cobalt, that chemistry is not used.
LFP, the lithium iron phosphate is now being used, it's much safer and is being scaled
the world wide because of it for storage.
I would like to clear up some incidences that were reported as being fires.
The September 21st and February 22nd incidences that occurred were not fires.
They were overheating incidences from water from the thermal.
They were not thermal runaway.
They were from the water being sprayed on the batteries that caused some smoke.
And they were immediately handled, also the September 22nd event that happened, there was a fire in the Tesla PG&E batteries, but they were immediately contained as they were designed to do.
All other incidences that have occurred have been immediately contained or they were being done illegally and illegally stored in some cases.
And,
I have so much to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not there, the manufacturers are, as I said, are scaling up.
The sodium batteries that are a bit safer are not available really at scale yet.
They will have major tariffs on them, so they will be unaffordable.
The solid state batteries were a few years out and they will be a game changer because what causes the fire will not be there in the solid state batteries.
Thank you. Thank you. I'll just say for anyone who wants to make sure you have comment on record with us.
We do encourage and appreciate written comments submitted to the board that they go into our
permanent record and they give us and our whole team a chance to review and think about what's in front of us.
But those can be emailed to the full board of supervisors by emailing to COB at
county of Monterey dot GOV. So we always encourage if you've got more to say or we run out of time or even in
Vance of meetings, it's always helpful for us. Okay, but having said that, we're going to move on to Zoom user and then the phone number
ending in 902.
Hello, get up. Can you guys hear me? We can't. We've got you. Thanks. Okay, perfect. Get after another one. I'm going to read to the board and everyone here that is on.
today's meeting a report from the WECC that was released on December of 2025 and it goes like this.
January 16, 2025, fire. The Moss Landing Phase 1 BESS consists of three arrays.
Dallas 1, Dallas 2, Dallas 3. On Thursday, January 16, at 1100 hours, Viter began conducting
a capacity test on Dallas 1, and Dallas 2, the test was part of a routine performance validation
for the phase 1 system. At 1440, eight hours on Thursday, January 16, a fire alarm was triggered in
the phase 1 building on Dallas 1. This was the first sign of potential thermal runway event.
The fire was confirmed by the plan system operator and emergency services were notified.
After 1006, the fire department arrived at the initiated the incident command system.
At 1648 hours due to the worsening conditions inside the phase 1 building, the fire department ordered the activation of exhaust fans to ventilate the structure and clear the smoke from the building.
The decision to deactivate the overhead sprinklers was also made since they were proving ineffective
in suppressing the fire.
at 17.52 through 18.
Rapidly deteriorated flames broke through the roof of the face one building. So it's coming from the WECC that
Vistra was doing capacity test on Dallas one in Dallas two. And since I mean like this was not
Just close.
All right.
Thank you.
We're going next to November ending in 902 and then to Spencer Brant.
Good afternoon.
This is Nina Bating.
Thank you for scheduling the hearing first this afternoon.
EPA is not here.
It has responsibility yet.
It's not here.
DTSC.
I'm reminded of the situation that the CME Valley residents and the people in Los Angeles are experiencing
as a result of DTSC's work at San Francisco and a field laboratory and the rescinding
of the cleanup agreement, leaving residents in that community stranded with medical bills
and with children that are sick and families that are sick from contaminated well water
and exposures on the ground from radioactivity as well as contamination of the gone into
their water system.
We join a long list of communities like that who have been contaminated by well-connected political interests and abandoned.
I want to echo Becky Stein-Bunner's statements don't accept these agencies in Vista Contract reports.
When they talk about chronic what about acute?
The chemicals of interest I didn't hear any mention of hydrogen chloride.
I'm alarmed at the false statements in the improper sampling of the soil.
This is not quote quality assured information.
It is not quote science-based.
And yet they stand, there's state, state, state,
phase, saying sampling months later, is adequate.
Why was the debris not collected by CDFW or the county?
It was clearly visible.
And the county was capable of collecting it.
The established protocols were geared
to find no problem and no results.
And I want to appreciate
mass-landing marine laboratory and amber partners
and never again mass-landing in their experts
that actually adhere to scientific methods and analysis.
The industry admits that battery faults can't be detected, so one of your callers that
talked about thermal runaway not being a problem is false, and I provided information
of the state and the county regarding potential radioactive contamination on site and in
the harbor from a PG&E unpermitted nuclear reactor years ago that was going to endanger when
And they were doing demolition for this site, and no one has still done any investigation
or returned any call to me, and yet that is complicating the situation as well if it existed.
Thank you.
Incidentally, when incident over a overheating was reported by fire officials as a fire.
This is an alarming situation, the public is still being left single and listening to agencies
that have a track record of not protecting the public.
Thank you.
We are at a time.
Thank you.
Thanks, thank you.
Hi, trimmer makeup.
We're going next to Spencer Brandt,
and then Leslie Austin.
Hello, chair.
Reed asks you and members of the Board of Supervisors.
Thank you very much for hosting the presentations today.
My name is Spencer Brandt,
and I'm here on behalf of Central Coast Community Energy,
the public agency that procures energy for 1.2 million central coast residents.
Our employees live and work in this community
and we are proud to call Mallory County our home.
3CE is committed to delivering a 100% clean, renewable energy and its our responsibility to ensure that we have reliable and affordable power for the communities that we serve.
Energy storage allows us to store clean energy when solar is abundant during the day and deliver it back to the grid with demand peaks in the evening,
which is also when prices rise and when the grid would otherwise rely much more heavily on fossil fuels.
Energy storage, technology, and facility construction has evolved fairly significantly since
legacy projects like Vista's Moss Landing were built.
It is because of this that battery failure rates have dropped by 98% since 2018, even
as global deployment of energy storage has expanded by more than 25,000%.
Modern projects are constructed outdoors and enclosed containerized systems designed to stop thermal
run away, and the industry has moved away from the NMC technology in favor of what's
the American phosphate.
3CE, along with the county of Monterey, supported Senator John Lairv's clean air safety act.
On our last year, this strengthens battery, safety, and requires new storage facilities to meet national fire protection standards and undergo coordination and inspection from local fire authorities.
In communities that we have seen that have adopted bands as some of suggested on energy storage projects. Developers are utilizing the state's California energy commission, permitting pathways, shifting approvals away from the local level into the state level.
as a locally controlled public agency,
we recognize the value of local decision-making
and energy policy and encourage the board
to continue an evidence-based discussion.
Thank you.
It supports appropriate oversight of energy storage.
Thank you.
All right, and if I can just ask those
who have continued to speak,
just to help me watch the clock.
I don't like interrupting you when you're speaking,
but I do want to make sure we continue to hear from everyone.
All right, without we're going to go next to Leslie Austin
and then Brian Roder.
Madam Chair, members of the Board, good afternoon. My name is Leslie Austin.
I live in Aromas, about 11 miles from Auslanding and I work in Clean Energy Policy. But I'm
speaking today as a neighbor and as someone who supports Veterans Storage and the renewable energy
transition. The environmental and health impacts this community has lived with are real and
people living with them deserve answers. I'm here because I think
Monterey County stumbled onto something important, and I think it
deserves to be part of the rules that govern what gets built next in
California. Here's what I heard. I heard Dr. Washington say that
terrified scores were taken far too late to detect the fallout layer. I
heard Dr. Garland say the conclusions of the draft report may change
and a fundamental opinion cannot be rendered until the review is complete. I heard battery
metals entered Elkorn's slew. They didn't disappear. They were redistributed. And we don't yet
know whether what entered Elkorn's slew caused lasting harm to this ecosystem. California is about
to build many more of these critical facilities. But Monterey County learned about the gap between
contamination and when formal sampling begins about what community science can see that regulatory
science sometimes can't. That knowledge belongs in the rules. The county didn't ask for
this lesson, but it has it, and I'd ask this board to make sure it doesn't stay here. I'd ask
three things of the board. Ensure that future projects are held in high standards that protect
the environment and the community require that developers contractually own the responsibility
of something goes wrong in operations in maintenance and in cleanup and formally tell the
legislature and the state fire marshal what you learned here on the record so the people
currently writing the next round of standards for California have the benefit of what
Monterey County lived through. This is the moment to make sure that lesson counts. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go next to Brian Roder and then David Prina.
Thank you to the board and to this community for being here again. Thank you for
scheduling us at 130 and allowing it to happen at that time. I don't know the previous speaker
but I absolutely second what she just said. It was very thoughtful. We've heard from people all
over the world asking what's going to be done. You folks on the front line of doing something
not just for our community but for communities around the world. I spoke just this morning to a
government, who's at Mateson Verde, and they want to put in a large facility there.
A couple of points.
One of the speakers said that there will never be another one of these because it was
in the building.
Otae Mateson, down in San Diego, like 2024, proved that long.
That community used over 2 million gallons of water to keep the fire from spreading from
a single container to the adjoining containers.
I don't believe that we have that type of water available at this site even though we're
looking obviously at single containers going forward if there's to be additional installation.
The woman also spoke about Tesla's as Emily has put down the past, we're talking about
30,000 Tesla's.
There is a fundamental difference between Tesla's and industrial scale batteries.
Finally, I'd like to ask you to review our slide deck.
It wasn't advancing, I'd like to ask each of the board members to take a look at that.
There's a lot of very important information in there.
We have great concerns with the contractors hired by Guestra calling the shots upon which the EPA and DTSSC are relying.
We also have a proposal.
Thank you for that for a citizens commission to work with government staff on the creation of the ordinance. I hope it's clear after today that the knowledge in this community among citizens about what happened and how it happened is enormous.
And we should be involved in that process. Thank you again for your time today.
Okay, thank you. And next up we have David Prina.
Hi, thank you. My name is David Prina. I'm a resident of Prumdale, and I'm right now
I'm looking at the stacks from my house. I just wanted to thank you everybody for the presentation
on the study results. I'm sure with time we'll get closer to the truth and I hope we can figure
out exactly what everyone needs. I'm calling mostly because I wanted to say that I support
battery deployment as a way to get to a zero carbon future and a zero pollution future. I think it's
a luge technology, but we have to get it right and batteries are going to be incredibly important
because as an alternative to fossil fuels, they're really indispensable. As you know, fossil fuels
as the alternative spew deadly pollutants every day just to operate, just switching them on.
So batteries really are a way to transition the country from high pollution to
solution. But I do also support increased safety ordinances. As well as things are engineered,
failures definitely will happen. We can't control everything from the quality of product
up to their operation. I would just hope that any ordinances that we have will ensure that things
when they do fail fail safe and not in a catastrophic way. And if they do smell fail, they fail
they fail small and not in a huge way.
And I would also hope that any ordinance that you do consider will ensure that emergency services
really do have the tools that are matched to the battery chemistry and the engineering of any particular
battery facility.
So, thank you so much.
Thank you.
There are no more hands raised.
So, I'm going to close public comment.
We have one more in the audience.
We'll get our last.
Oh, I'm sorry.
We already spoke that we don't speak again, but thank you.
I just want to say we don't.
We don't.
to talk about.
Thank you very much.
I'm sorry.
We're going to move on to the board discussion now.
Thank you.
And I do just as we work really hard to maintain decorum in the chambers amongst ourselves.
And with the audience, we have processes for public comment.
And it is hard to interrupt people when they're talking.
But we want to make sure everyone has time and that we follow our process.
So thank you all for being here.
Thank you everyone for your public comment.
We're going to bring it back to the board for questions
and discussion and I'll start with Supervisor Charge.
Thank you.
I want to thank everybody who's done a presentation today
from the county officials to the state that we're going
to ask for the TTSC member.
I know there's this is a situation
that is, to this magnitude is not happened before, so there's a lot of, so a lot that
everyone is, as learning news, we go through this process out of that and, and, and on
I understand from, from the DTSC, you know, we have some of the top environmental scientists
of sure in, in the state here, and you want to move cautiously. I know we also have some
of the top marine scientists in the world over and most landing. And, the difference
the presentations are rather stark, at least as I see it here and as the conclusions come down to
there. But I guess I first question really starts off with the DTSC here and I know I think
was May 8 is when you're saying phase 1 started on the testing but I did not hear any mention
the testing was done January 24th when the DTSC went out and the conducted soil screening
collected soil and surface water samples for a lab analysis. On the January 31st that
was reported back and I believe that that point there was some initial surface
screenings of ash and debris that detected elevated levels of metals which would
reported. And then on February 2012, there was more details presented. And that was included
the subsequent soil samples, which I believe, and maybe you can tell me how deep you
dig into the ground. But I believe it was going down six inches, eight inches.
Exactly what? And I believe that was reported back then, as not elevated levels, which would make sense.
But I did not hear that that was particular, particular information presented. And I wonder why, and if you could give me some information on why that was not presented.
And it's actually how you conducted, how deep you had conducted those soil tests. And why you would go down so deep when it was just a week after the event.
And there had been no rain until after the 24th.
Thank you.
Thank you, Super Visitor, to for that question.
I could just, because you're really more left for the GTSC.
Absolutely.
I'm kind of trying to triage questions to make sure
that we get it to the right agency based on your questions.
But absolutely, I will go ahead and turn it over to DTSC to respond.
This is the way to white.
So I'll try to take a stab at it.
So we were asked, first of all, it took me a month to just give a presentation on a P.E.A.
on the draft.
And that's where we were developed for presentations for.
So to our correct that DTSC, what I would collect is some water samples, and using nature
up, collect is some soil samples roughly a week after the fire incident.
Originally, those extra samples came back high, but we also took the analytical using a lab.
And what's got the analytical, that same location is show that they were much lower results.
I have to ask your question.
We don't know who this is.
My name is Duane Way from DTSC.
You did not do a presentation earlier.
I don't know why you're on now, but I guess that's fine.
You're with DTSC.
You didn't explain to me how deep you went to the ground,
which was my question.
I'm trying to understand how deep the testing was, but I also asked why those results were presented
along with the rest here today.
Those are initial results which would have been highly significant, at least to my view,
and it's a lot more significant than those down on May 8th.
So, Shane,
do you want to discuss why your file is not included in the presentation?
Yes, please.
So, this is Wei Ying and I'm from DTSC and I'm a toxicologist.
So, my role for this file is to understand the chemicals remaining at the site.
long-term health effects from long-term exfoliators.
So for those soil samples, they were collected from zero to six inch,
they're two, they're 0.5 feet below ground surface.
So that's how the soil samples were collected.
And we use that to represent the concentrations
of a resident may contact for four long time and 26 years specifically.
Okay, so you don't have an answer for my question about the January 24 testing, as I'm
much saying correct?
I did not review that data, but as what I mentioned is those data may not be appropriate for
chronic risk assessments as what is also noted in the paper. You will see a quick decline
of the concentrations because of the natural dilution process such as the rainfall.
All right. I understand that a week after is not going to give the chronic assessment,
but it's very significant environmental and health information for the community and for the
was tested then. But I understand you're actually going to be giving me that information today.
Because that's not something that you had studied or presented. I would hope that maybe
the DTSC can at some point give us information on this. Because that seems to be a real critical part
and from what I can read from what moderate county has up on its website.
Just the one sentence that there is for this actually seems to align a great deal with
Invers information so it would be helpful to know it's kind of I don't know I'm just
just shocked frankly that if we don't have that information here it seems to be
Could you give me, I don't know, this is either for Amber Ms. Watson or anybody in the state, but where's reference to the die-off on the mosquitoes that happen shortly after, have we determined exactly what caused that die-off? Anybody?
Ms. Lawson Shaker had no. So, and I'm assuming this, unless you have something to offer on that, the state probably doesn't know either.
I did find it really interesting that when the reference was made to this flakey substances that were found which have never been found prior to the fire or since then that none of those were ever really picked up.
It was, I know when the January 24th testing was done that was prevalent in a lot of places.
And so you had that information from those early studies.
It wasn't there when it comes around by May.
I don't believe.
So it would be interesting to know if there ever was any study
as that was done on that as well.
And the reference to it is kind of, as I say,
it's interesting, but that it was there.
But nothing was ever done to attest that,
because that would be some high concentrations as well.
So, I mean, I'm trying to move on, and I'll try to move on to something I hope that can answer
in terms more of chronic, but that would be actually the question that Mr. Steinburner
raised about the cobalt.
I noticed that there was cobalt testing that was done in, well, cobalt is not nearly as
carcinogenic as nickel.
It's probably carcinogenic to humans, so I understand it.
I do not see it.
It wasn't listed in the step one hazard identification.
was there a reason it wasn't put inside there and that was on the health presentation.
I think we're just drawing.
Bye.
So this is me again for your, so make sure I understand you are questioning about whether we
conferred, kind of for a potential, kind of for a strong co-balk.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I just didn't see it mentioned, so I just was curious, was just admitted from that
page or if you, you know, did consider it.
Yes, we did consider it.
Cobalt has both cancer and non-Center house effects.
And we consider both when and evaluating the soil
concentrations and water.
All right, thank you.
And since we don't have a lot of information on this,
see this initial testing, I can get a couple other questions
here to do.
And one, I'm going to, one's going to be for environmental one's going to be for health and I'll let whoever is here for our health department to stay to Amber answer that.
But I know the DTSC is saying that there is no chronic concerns.
I wonder if we have, you know, can speak with any, um, at the same kind of clarity, if we're
talking about compromised individuals.
I remember a week after the fire was here.
There was a gentleman who, who, who tested, gave testimony here and he spoke about, he said
an asthma issues.
He said he had gone to the hospital twice because of the fire and, um, so I wonder, might
be looking at chronically at that just at any kind of health aspect with how this may affect
normal healthy people. I'm wondering about those with the immune compromised other kind
of health conditions, would that have any difference upon them?
I appreciate that question. So when we conduct the health risk assessment from chronic
exposures, we did consider the most sensitive sample population within the whole human population.
So to your question, yes, we did consider that, but that's what I want to say is this is
based on chronic exposure. So it's based on the concentrations what we found after the fire in the soil.
With regarding potential health effects due to exposure,
shortly during or shortly after the fire unfortunately,
we don't have the data for that assessment.
So we don't have the soil data and work.
Okay, sure the data must be somewhere from the January 24 test, but thank you for that.
My last question here, then, and hopefully, maybe, Amber and the State can both answer this,
but it would seem as, you know, as what would happen in the weeks and the months after that,
the real concerns with this are a potential concentrations into the sediment along the Elkorn slew,
which would be much because of a title action and another environmental actions would be much
different than it would be probably into the an air-open fields away from the slew.
So my question would be if did we know if the materials that excuse me if the metals accumulated
in the sediments at levels that could possibly move through the food chain and I would
that is a possibility of
our land DTSC Egoriske.
So based on the screen and results that were presented
and the draft PEA report, there are not at concentrations
that could result in the accumulation that would result
in adverse effects, but this is something
that we are looking into as part of our review.
I appreciate the question.
Thank you.
Yeah, and again, to clarify a cumulative approach
where you look at a six inch core makes sense if you're looking at a factor that has an effected
in an area for decades. Like if you were asking the question, how has the power plant affected
sediment concentrations in the soil or human health over the past 25 years, you know, then
you want to look at a six inch core, maybe what we're looking at is a one-time deposition event
a fallout layer that's just one to three millimeter thick we measured. So it makes no sense to
space assessments on six inches.
In terms of, yes, the concentrations are certainly high enough
to pose a possible concern for the biotic life downstream.
We were focused on measuring Hester Marsh
because we're restoration scientists at this wetlands.
So that was our geographic focus.
The concentrations, that's about a meter to two meters above,
mean lower low water above the low watermark,
where we were measuring these high concentrations
after the rains that moved downstream, potentially, into the estuary, those metals could be bio-accumulated
if they became bio-available and could cause problems in the organisms.
I just, we haven't seen anything alarming yet in the initial biological results we've analyzed,
but I would urge you to take a conservative, cautious approach where one looks at many species
collected over many dates, bio-accumulation up the food web can take a long time,
and reach no conclusions until there have been such thorough bio-cumulation studies.
All right, thank you for that.
And I think all the information we've seen here today is going to be really helpful as the county develops an ordinance going forward.
And I know the key.
You have to see more about that.
Thank you, Supervisor Church.
I just wanted to give the Regional Water Board an opportunity to provide a brief update on the updated sampling work plan that they're pursuing with Vistra.
And we have Greg Bishop on the line.
Good afternoon.
As Nicky Planner.
Not I'm Greg Bishop with the Citragost Waterboard.
And I believe you can hear me.
I'm sorry just to do a double check.
We can hear you.
All right.
Thank you.
I saw some weird messaging on mine.
I'm Greg Bishop with the Citragost Waterboard.
I'm a hydrogeologist.
And I manage the section that includes our site cleanup program that pursues investigation.
And clean up sites throughout our area including the Monterey area.
In addition to the work you've been hearing about for the human and ecological risk assessment,
we've directed some investigations of Vistra.
Three of them, in fact, three separate orders we issued to Vistra.
One was just a profile of some stored stormwater in what was called Pond 3,
to give us a better sense of the contaminant of concern,
and that's something that has been satisfied and completed many months back.
And two other orders are still underway.
One is assessing groundwater at the area.
There's a gravelier sandy area, just adjacent to the building that barn, Mosslining 300,
where news coverage showed it flooded during the fire.
So fire water was applied via sprinklers and so forth and ran off into the sandy area.
And
So that water would just infiltrate straight in. We're concerned about those groundwater impacts. If it might be moving toward the harbor only 400 feet away and perhaps even upwelling into that eventually.
We don't think that would have occurred by now, and we have some challenges getting in there now that we can solve those with the battery still there and safety issues going and drilling and so forth.
that is moving forward though.
The other one that I think is more of your question about
would there be accumulation in the sediments in the slew, for example,
and we're interested in other water bodies like the harbor and so forth too.
We've issued a third order that to a certain extent overlaps with the
investigation scope for the risk assessment you've been hearing about,
but it's broader than scope.
It covers a brighter range of analyze.
We want to see all the metals.
There were electronics in the fire tube, two substantials, and not just the batteries, for example.
We want to see all the directions and theorems and the PHs reported not just those with toxicity data.
And we have other analysts we're interested in too.
We're concerned about where all of the aerial deposition occurred.
One of the map you saw earlier showed really just a map footprint, which is much smaller than the footprint where all the debris like ash and so forth.
might have fallen, so we're interested in that, we're interested in where those sediments ran
off too, so we're they got deposited, and then where with all the heavy rains did that go,
did it go to El Cornflue, did it go to some other water body, is it left on on the surface,
you know, midway transport, at some point, it's not getting directly out of your question about
measurements of my accumulation, but it is getting answer to a question about
And more broadly, I think, of do we expect an accumulation of impacts in those water bodies?
And so, our orders are focused on, again, assessing where it all fell from aerial deposition,
where it transported through stormwater, runoff and so forth.
And where it is in the various water bodies in the area.
It has, that information would inform a couple of different decisions for us down the road.
Knowing that full assessment gives us insight to whether it can, does it, does something need to be done about it?
And also judging the feasibility of can something be done about it.
There's different balances of those are delicate ecosystems versus,
I'm going in and stirring up the impacts that may be there.
There's some practical things to consider.
Do those impacts eventually reach the hardware,
just say through transport through this loose, for example.
The hardware gets stretched regularly or periodically anyway.
And if we see those impacts showing to the hardware,
eventually that is implications for how all the materials handle and so forth.
So, there are other investigations we're pushing.
It's very much focused on, I'm kind of the watershed scale.
Look at things where it all fell, where it's winding up,
and we expect to plan for Vista now on that,
or revise plan without one already that we ask for refinements on in about two months.
Great, thank you.
Does that all affect?
No questions on mine.
I think all I want to share is I really appreciate the continuing engagement
from community. Leslie Austin's letter. I read everything folks and then I don't sleep well.
So, I mean, I stay up really late at night reading everybody's input and all the reports
that come in and I want to thank Leslie for her letter last night and it came in late to me.
She texted me, let me know. It was on its way. I found a lot in that, which was truth in that.
We're talking past each other a lot and how things were conducted at the initial outset
that we're all conflicted over, how to proceed, given that we don't have matching
data sets. I just agree with that piece so much and it sounds like in the questions we're
asking about methodologies and approaches and data sets. I don't know that we're ever going
to come to a point where we're agreeing on how, but as we continue to try to work towards that
together knowing that there's so many different approaches on agencies, we're hearing waterboards
and DTSC of County EPA. I just appreciate everybody's continuing engagement because that's how we
to a point where we can agree on what to disagree on and match data sets to the extent that
we can and try to move forward with the best science possible on all this will inform the
process that we've committed to as a board which is to develop a future ordinance. And these
lessons, these blind spots, and also these places where perhaps we're not talking about anymore
because we had agreement will help inform that process. So I want to thank everybody for continuing
do engage in this as emotional as it can be, and especially heart-felt from so many.
To give us input, give us thoughts, even your frustration, it matters. And I would appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you, Minister.
Thank you. So I think this question is for environmental health and the county, but I would, you know, welcome the response from
member or anyone else. I am trying to understand very clearly whether the DTSC,
Ember, and environmental health are asking the same questions and looking for the same things.
Thank you, Supervisor Daniels for your question. I will do my best to explain and then I would
like to turn it over to DTSC to correct me if I've mistreated anything. But ultimately the community
sampling plan that the county directed was designed to evaluate risk not to fully
delineate the extent or mass of deposition that occurred. And that's my
understanding of really what the San Jose State University and
Burst Studies are looking at. So ultimately there are, you know, pretty distinct
differences between timing, sampling methodology, analytical techniques that have
produce different data rather than contradicting data sets?
So I won't ask the next question in the form of the question.
I'll just say it to cut to the point.
Is it they could both be right then?
Is that accurate?
That's my understanding, yes.
OK.
So then moving from that point, I would like to see work
concluded that answers the question, whether the contamination
and that was documented in the Ember study is going to cause lasting harm to the Elporn
SLU ecosystem.
Is there work that we can direct to ensure that it gets done?
Thank you for that question, Supervisor Daniels, and if I may, Mike Garland, with DTSC
Are you able to respond to that?
I'm just to clarify your question.
Are you suggesting work that's collaborative in nature with the Ember group using those data for risk assessment purposes?
Could you clarify please?
I think a good first step would be if you could respond in writing to Ember's point that was raised
that the sampling design that you utilized wasn't capable of detecting what Amber found.
Is that something that DTSC could do is to formally respond in writing to that point that was raised?
On matters of interagency or interagency communications, I defer to a project management on accomplishing that,
from a technical standpoint. I have no problem providing my technical input on any of the results
that were discussed in presentations today. That would be great. I think that would be so helpful
to the county to have that response. And then another takeaway that the Amber presentation
provided at the end, I think it was the last slide, was that bioaccumulation can occur slowly
and unevenly. I'm curious if we, as a county, can require
vistra to fund independent biological monitoring for the
Elkorn slew with oversight by one of the institutions like
Embarry or Maslanding Marine Labs versus vistra's contractor.
I think it would be very beneficial to have this ongoing
research and I think the community would be more trusting if it came
from one of the well-renowned entities
that we have right here in Monterey County.
I don't know who can answer that question.
I guess I'll wait, it could be direction.
If my colleagues can curve, I have another question,
I'll just move on then.
Thank you.
Okay, another question I had because it came up,
oh yes, please, first chance.
I just wanted to say, I thought that was a great question
you asked about, like, can it both be right?
And I think that's exactly it is.
We were using different methods.
were all learning here. We've never faced a battery fire. And yeah, I don't think there's
really a contradiction in results. There were, it was a contradiction in methods and approaches.
and I think, you know, the way you say it.
We synthesize that all, so I don't think it needs to be an either or approach what I would encourage
the county in their report and the state in their report is just to synthesize all the findings.
And one could even use different data sets for different scenarios like for the human health.
We have the concentrations we measured, not with a lab instrument, which isn't as accurate, but
we have the, I mean, not with a field instrument. We have the lab concentrations from the ICPMS of what
those concentrations in the surface are, run the health scenarios on that, run the, you know,
so you have a conservative and the not conservative health scenario. Why not use all the data
that are out there? Why not synthesize them all? Why not use them all? I don't think they're
contradictory. We just need to compile them.
Thank you, Dr. Watson. That's super helpful. A couple of just questions that came out of the
public comment. I'm curious if we have an update as to what's happening. I think it's
that's the other indoor facility that's on site.
Have we gotten any feedback from Vista in terms of their future plans for that indoor facility?
Yes.
Vista, the most 100 is the other.
It's a smaller indoor facility, but a couple weeks ago, Vista did say they will be not,
they'll be dismantling that and won't be going back online.
Great.
That is good news.
And then last question would be, is there an update on the creation of the ordinance?
We did hear from the public a desire for a citizen's commission that's engaged in this process.
I know I have seen some emails go across my inbox in terms of public meetings and outreach and
supervisor church.
Maybe you have an update.
There are from one I don't want to speak for Mr. Spencer entirely, but I know there's plans to
have some up to 20 meetings around and the first one is tomorrow night.
the Perindale Grange at 530, and I believe there are others planned, but I could let Craig
have that.
Great.
So the only thing outstanding in terms of my questions that was answered is, if there's
a way for us to direct this trust to fund the biological monitoring for the Alcorn Sly
that's ongoing, that would be super helpful versus, and have it be one of the entities
that is local and not associated with Fistra, that would be amazing.
We can send a formal request in writing either from the county administrators office or from
the board if you'd have a preference.
Okay, I'll let my colleagues decide, but I think that that would be a nice thing to do for
the community and for the ongoing understanding and protection of the Alcorn Slough.
Thank you for the presentation and for everybody who gave a participating in the presentation
on Zoom and here in the chamber and I certainly want to recognize all our Monterey County residents
and even those from our neighboring county for coming and participating and providing this
the input and I think as we all know this has been an ongoing concern and I think it's important for
our neighbors to be able to have their concerns adequately addressed by the science and by our policies
and our future policies that are coming as we are seeking to implement an ordinance and I think this
has really shown us that there's a lot to learn about this technology and I think also
learned a lot about how to best protect our communities, our neighborhoods, our homes,
and our beautiful coastline in our wildlife as well. All those are important to be able to protect
as we learn from the research that was being presented here today. I think it's also important to
And I'm glad to hear the Moss 100 won't be, I think that's something we've been insisting on that that technology not be continued to be used here in our county because of the disaster that we already saw and the great risk that we know that's associated with it.
And I think the industry itself has moved away from that technology altogether.
Also, I think it's important to come back with the ordinance that we're in process of doing to best
pride the local voice and the local input into an ordinance rather than defaulting to the California Energy Commission to make those decisions.
I think it's smarter when we have a say and have an ordinance and a policy that has been crafted with input from the community and I know that is coming back to us soon.
Also, what's already been said, some of the legislation that has been done, I think it's critical that the ordinance also moved to the safest technology.
But I think there's some of the folks commented as well.
We know that this technology is likely here to stay in California just because of the California environmental goals to reduce carbon emissions and its heavily investments in renewable energy.
all across the state and even trying to face out for a musing or selling new gas-powered vehicles
come 2035, I think there's a...
This technology is likely going to be here because it's needed to be able to store that renewable energy on those off-periods for use for the community.
But there's a mean that we can't insist that this be the safest technology that we have in our communities.
I know there's a lot of concerns in other parts of the state with this. And it's for good reason because of what they see happen here in another communities in southern California as well.
But I think I just wanted to mention that because there is that recognition that there's the legislature as invested in goals and has even expedited some of these projects and other parts of California.
I think we're going to continue to see that, but it doesn't mean that we can insist on having the safest technologies and policies here for Monari County.
Thank you.
Great. Thank you.
Again, I'll reiterate my appreciation to our presenters to the public and to our team that has been so diligent about ensuring that we're following up and keeping this issue of priority and not letting it slide away.
I had a couple of notes here,
the questions that my colleagues ask, I think, I think it's,
I'll just say it is frustrating to feel like we can't get the information that we want to need for our community, the safety and health concerns.
I hear us being told, we've looked at everything, and it's fine, and I also hear that we continue to have questions that are not answered.
And so thank you to Reset Church for continuing to ask those questions and to our partners that's a state and federal spaces.
If there's a different format or different way that we should sit down together and ask these questions to try to get to the answers that I know our public deserves to have.
Let us know how we can do that because we continue to have questions that are unanswered.
Having said all of that, I will also say that the comments from a supervisor Daniels
about the need for ongoing long-term testing and assessment.
And I think our very fair questions for us to be putting out there in terms of, you know,
by a accumulation over time, what that means for both the Asturias, as well as public
health.
I think those are questions that deserve to have additional study for the one-year mark,
The five, you know, a long, over time because we do know that there was a lot of material
that was burned, and it doesn't just disappear.
I have, I just have a hard time, like it's like, we live in this ecosystem of, you know,
things, the rain, it evaporates from a puddle, but it didn't disappear.
It went back out and it will come back to us in some form.
So I think that there is a need to have that kind of funding for a long-term study, so I support the request that Supervisor Daniels just made.
I appreciate that we have work happening on the ordinance, and there is a town hall meeting coming up.
So folks will have the first opportunity to put feedback into that.
The other issue that it's not directly related to the cleanup, but that I would like to find a way and space for us to engage in is what type of CPC on going oversight looks like for these facilities, knowing that we will, the cross the state, there are, we rely on battery storage and we will continue to rely on battery storage to meet California's energy needs.
Knowing that, I think we've posed a number of questions to the CPC about what does
both initial, initial approval look like, and what does ongoing regulatory oversight look like,
so making sure that that oversight is occurring in the ways that it needs to be.
I think is one one thing that is priority for me.
I think
that summarizes my high-level thoughts here, but I will just sort of leave the question
and maybe ask our team if there is a different type of mechanism that we can collectively
set and talk to our state and federal partners, whoever has the authority to answer the
questions sitting down with us, I know that that would mean.
So, I'll leave that as a question as we move forward as well. Okay, we'll bring it back to the board any final comments or additional questions. I'm not seeing any additional questions. So at this point, we are, you know, it was receiving a report, a receiving a number of reports, and then providing direction to staff. So I heard a couple pieces of direction. One of them being to investigate what level of ongoing financial status,
part we can have to request a third party investigator for ongoing, and you were specific
to the ask jury, I would actually say for a broader perspective of ongoing public health
monitoring. Is there support for, I'll just look for general support for that?
If there's a, I mean, absolutely, no non-sport. I think the reason that I selected what I did in
question was because it picks up where the research that was done by Amber leaves off.
But if there's if there's a way to to to to ask for that.
Absolutely.
And I guess the part of that question is also to our to DTSC.
Like what level of ongoing research in study, are you planning on doing, or is it a one year
where we're done, will you be continuing to to monitor and in what way?
and over a what period of time,
and that that is a question for DTSC if you're still with us.
Okay, well we can maybe get some information there. That would be great. Yeah.
Thank you, Supervisor. These are great questions and I have an intention of going back and listening
to the transcripts of this and taking Supervisor Church's questions and summarizing those for DTSC
as well as your Supervisor Daniels and yours now so we can have DTSC address those so that
maybe one of those other forums that you're mentioning of how we can communicate this highly
technical information back to you in a timely manner.
Thank you.
Okay, so I thought nods from Church and Daniels, are we, are we feeling comfortable with
that?
So I'm just wondering what we're asking for, we're saying to, we're asking Vistra to
on the additional community-based science,
but to what extent for how much time
is our dollar amounter, we just keep in that open and vague?
I think we're asking our staff to take a look
at what the needs would be.
To look at options, right?
So to bring it back at our next update,
I mean, I just...
Okay.
So just so I can reiterate my understanding.
So the direction is for staff to work with our state partners
to explore a long-term strategy or plan for ongoing sampling that could potentially be funded
by Vistra to a third party.
Sorry.
So I'll just reiterate, because it's not to work with the State Park partners.
This was very interesting what we heard today from Ember in particular.
And so what it has led me to want is some type of independent biological monitoring for the
LCORN SLU and have some oversight by one of these local entities.
And so that's, you know, it's, make the polluters pay.
I'd like to see if Vistra would fund this ongoing effort.
And this is in reference to what was stated in the Amber Report about bioaccumulation.
I believe it was the last page.
Bioaccumulation can curse slowly and unevenly across sites and species.
So until many date sites and species have been analyzed for metals,
conclusions cannot be drawn.
Okay. So the direction to staff or the proposed recommendation to staff is to
after a letter on behalf of the county to vis-ra requesting that they fund additional sampling
and studies for a neutral third party.
Yeah, I think what we've got oversight from the community.
Yes, this is our intention.
The county hopes to the county requests ongoing, just like I had said, ongoing biological
monitoring for the Alcorn SLU and begin the negotiation with them to fund that ongoing
monitoring.
Excellent.
Thank you.
That would be great. Thank you.
Then the second question would be around what is the PNDTSC's plan for ongoing population health monitoring.
So there were two questions and then we're going to follow up on the questions that, right, that this is a researcher chat.
I don't think we need to get a, I'm not planning to go.
Good discussion. There's been a lot of questions made. I appreciate that you'll go back and look at the transcript to bring back.
The only actual direction is the beginning of the first letter.
On can you see a letterhead or board letterhead?
I think it will be additional discussion as well. I mean, looking at who what entity could compel them.
You know, I think that's an additional follow-up we need to do.
Right.
Unless there's more discussion on the dias, I'm going to say thank you to everybody.
Thank you to our community again for remaining engaged and sharing your experiences with us
so that we can do our best to hold accountability of all those.
And I'll just also find it in wrapping up a acknowledge.
We've experienced something that was unprecedented with the fire.
Also, we know that there's ongoing need for battery storage, and so finding the right path for how we address what happened,
how we learn from that, and then make the right steps moving forward, I think, is sort of the balancing act that we're walking here.
But really appreciate the support from everyone today.
Thank you.
All right.
With that, it is for 15.
We have a couple additional items.
I'm going to move on to item number 19, which is to receive an update from the County Department of Health,
social services and the Tivotad on the county's outreach education, marketing, and
medical application assistance efforts to mitigate impacts from state and federal policy
changes on Metacall. We have a group of folks from our health department and social services
and the Tivotad here to present.
Good afternoon. My colleagues get in the box here.
I'm El Seki Menis and it is my pleasure to introduce this item to your board.
I'm really excited that we are here back today after having several discussions with you at the end of last calendar year to really show how your investment has really helped to support our community based organizations and their efforts in engaging our community residents and getting them to understand the changes that we're going to be impacted because of state budget and HR1 and encouraging them to apply not only for medical but for other benefits so I'm really excited to have with us.
here today. We sent a lot of who is our public health program manager one. And Annette Gallegos,
who is an assistant deputy director. I hope I got your title correctly at social services. And
your PowerPoint should be on the screen there. Do you see it?
So with that, I'll hand it over to them.
Thank you.
Okay.
There we go.
Good afternoon. Chair root ask you, members of the board. I just want
say thank you for your support on this really critical effort that we've been engaged in for
the last few months and really appreciate the opportunity to provide a brief update on our
outreach and enrollment work. What's conducting a response to the changes to medical that we've
recently saw which started at the beginning of this year. I do want to just start off by talking a
about the goal that we focused on for this effort. And again, as I mentioned, as many of you
know, there were significant changes to medical that took effect January 1st. And because
of those changes, our goal was to increase awareness and support eligible residents to enroll
into medical before the end of the year. Particularly, we wanted to focus on reaching residents
who often face barriers to accessing care,
which includes individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status,
and make sure that they had the information
that's important needed to apply for medical.
And we really focused on three core strategies.
First was training and support making sure community partners
had the information and tools they needed
to help residents apply.
Second, community outreach and education working with trusted
organizations to reach residents with their at and lastly, a media strategy to help disseminate
information about medical changes and where residents could access support.
And with that, I just want to give you all a brief.
Now, the 250,000 that the board allocated back in October was used to support this effort. Again,
first, we focused on training support with facilitated two very successful trainings to help
partners understand the recent state and federal medical policy changes and how to assist
residents with completing medical applications. In total, we had 53 participants and our first
training 37 attended the second, and we, you know, it was about 12,500 that was used to support that effort, that piece of the allocation.
Second, we invested in community outreach and education.
And again, through a contract with the community foundation, a monetary county, we were able to fund eight CBOs to conduct outreach education and direct medical application assistance.
And again, we were really focused on reaching individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status
who we know face additional barriers to accessing care and resources.
Again, this portion represented about $177,500 dollars of the board's allocation.
And the third was used to support a media strategy to help raise awareness about upcoming policy changes
and connect residents to application assistance,
this include developing and sharing
bilingual messaging through various media channels.
And this portion of the allocation totaled 60,000.
I also just want to take a moment.
Many who are in the audience today, just recognize
the key partners who really helped this effort.
And through this, again, through a partnership
with the community foundation
on every county we were able to fund several community
based organizations to conduct outreach
in providing medical enrollment assistance.
And again, these organizations include Center for Community Advocacy,
Ventures, Catholic Charities, Action Council,
BHC, Monterey County, Mojadis and Action, Watsonville Law Center,
Centro BNational, Bada Desarroyo and Dichina Wajacanyo,
Bajada Valley Prevention, and Student Assistance.
And again, these organizations, this group of organizations,
played a key and critical role in reaching residents
directly and providing them with the much needed support for medical enrollment.
And we also partnered with TMD Creative to help develop an implement a bilingual media and
communication strategies to make sure residents were aware of upcoming medical changes
and new where to go for help.
And finally, I just want to take a moment to really express my deep gratitude for our partnership
with Department of Social Services, the Dividate Hospital, the Health Department, staff, and many
others who helped coordinate and really support this effort over the last few months. This
was truly, truly a team effort and so many individuals and so many different groups came
together collectively to really address this need that we identified in our community.
I want
to get into a little bit of the data. It was one of the things we wanted to do. I was really
to track our efforts so that it would inform next steps.
And so I really just want to briefly highlight some of the
outreach data that we were able to collect.
And overall, medical outreach activities took place at roughly
a hundred and twenty eight unique locations across the county.
These efforts took place in a variety of settings where
residents are already came together already gathered
including community events, resource fairs, food distributions,
clinics, schools, community centers, libraries, and CBO offices.
The map on the screen shows the number of outreach efforts per 1,000 residents by zip code,
and helps us really see where our efforts took place throughout the county.
As you'll notice, darker shading in parts of Northmine County, which reflects the presence
of organizations like PVPSA, CCA, Watsonville Law Center, which have offices in that region
and conducted a number of outreach activities there.
And at the same time, we also saw significant outreach activities
in South County, the Peninsula and throughout Salinas,
reflecting the broader network of community partners who
helped each do help reach residents across the county.
I also want to just share a little bit additional data
outreach data.
And one thing I do want to know is that these are numbers
that were self-reported by our community partners,
as far as CBO partners.
And also just to note that interactions don't necessarily
represent unique individuals.
So, in many cases, what we saw was that one individual had several interactions with CBO staff and received different types of support.
So, for example, you might have had one individual who went to like an outreach event and connected with CBO staff and then maybe followed up with a one-on-one appointment with staff for a medical application assistance.
And then maybe then was referred to another partner organization for additional services, say for legal aid or rather support.
That said, between October and February, partners collectively reported roughly 45,000 directing interactions with community members.
And we also saw, as the slide shows, a number of group events, roughly about 530 group events.
And which again occurred, such settings as schools, resource fairs, libraries.
We also saw a number of one-on-one interactions, roughly about 5,000, one-on-one interactions.
And more than partners also reported more than 2,000 direct messages and phone calls with
residents seeking information and support.
And again, the majority of these efforts focused on medical application supports.
I think the one thing I do want to highlight is that we did see partners report over a 10,000
instances of application assistance, including roughly 79 individual medical application support,
which is quite important in the number we want to really uplift, and that included
submitting paper in electronic applications through benefits count.
And lastly, the legal assistance was also another important factor in all of this.
We had, as the slide shows, over 575 direct supports, 280 referrals for legal aid, and
at last count, roughly 165 legal risk assessments, again supporting individuals with
specifically supporting them with medical application.
I also want to just take a moment to highlight some of the activities overall outreach efforts
the last year, and through their efforts they reached over 23,000 community members across
multiple areas of the county, including at our local airshow, cyclobias, county fairs,
immigration, and employment events, schools, church groups, and community clinics.
Again, these activities took place across the county, including South County, North County,
East Alina, on the peninsula, and this included two dedicated outreach workers who
attended community events throughout the year.
In addition to outreach and activity that has also provided medical applications for
with DSS staff located on site and activities in January of last year, 2025, to help connect patients directly to DSS services.
And in addition to outreach partners also focused on community education.
And partners reported facilitating roughly 57 medical education workshops reaching over 2,700 community members
with majority of the workshops, sorry, 270 committee members, with majority of the workshops
conduct in Spanish and Mistakele, and partners also shared over 2,700 medical education
and messages through a variety of channels including Dordid or Outreach, foam banking, social
media, and local media interviews.
In addition, five organizations hosted medical related information on the website, South Presidents,
access reliable information and application support.
And this includes a lot of the additional supports, but just to mention here that our
community partners also helped address other social determinants of health.
And this includes referrals to support, included referrals and supports related to programs
like CalKids, Health Services, Employment Resources, Adult Education, CalFresh, CalWorks,
and emergency assistance among others.
These connections also extended to areas such as financial assistance.
So again, these efforts highlight how this campaign not only focus on medical enrollment, but also help connect community members to broader resources that support long-term health and with them to pass it over to Annette.
It really took us multiple meetings, and I also want to thank all of the different departments that really came together to put all of the information together, which included messaging through what's up.
application, which and direct messaging, there are over 450, what's up, posts, and over 700
direct messages related to the medical changes. And in addition to that, we also had county
messaging. So the Monterey County Communication Team had 5.3 million impressions in our messaging,
which included traditional media ads and billboards that the timid ad had in-kind supported
us.
So we had billboards on off the end of you got to see them, but there was a relief throughout
our county.
And so I just want to say thank you to all for that collaborative effort.
As I mentioned, we did contract with TMD that we utilized for our campaign.
that started in, at the end of October, and ended in December, really targeting medical outreach
in both English and Spanish, and the impressions that they provided were 4.8 million,
or over 4.8 million, which was over the goal of 4 million. 73% were traditional media and 27% digital,
But the vast majority, 81% was Spanish.
This really did result in an increase in applications which I'll go over in a bit.
So the cost per impression really was $12.44.
And you can see the examples of where they look like, which was really targeted to be the same,
like the billboards and our flyers and social media
all had the same messaging.
And we also provided the medical training in November,
really to prepare our community partners.
And that was in really our department of social service,
outreach staff and analyst and health department
to provide to our community-based partners.
So that everyone understood what were the changes,
what kind of messaging we were all
the same page and providing application support, and so that did include the 53 community
help workers, and then we had another one in February really focusing on the support for
now shifting on to ongoing renewals and documentation required.
So, applications submitted, so at the Department of Social Services, you can see that
our application numbers were declining prior to our campaign and did increase.
And this is a comparison from last year to this year in our numbers.
So we did have 2,000 over 2,000 applications,
which included all different types of applications online, male or in-person.
So we had a 13% increase in November and comparison to last year.
And in the month of December, we saw a 20% increase.
our visits. So our visits are difficult to say because I think you heard we sent this
a, you know, each customer could come in and see a CBO at different times.
That happens also in our office. They might come in because I need to under, I want to
submit my application or I need to come in because I need to understand what I need to
provide. I got a letter. I don't understand. So there are multiple office visits that
in our office and and really in the month of December is where we saw the big jump in applications
which we also know we are a seasonal county that we see an increase but as you can see from
last year to this year in the month of December it was a significant increase.
So ongoing medical outreach
efforts so at the Department of Social Services we do have our MC choice outreach staff which is a small
unit that provides individual.
Residents with assistance with submitting applications. And we provide information and training for
community partners with application assistance. And that is really through our social services
medical allocation that is our normal process. And right now, we have a unit of really
four individuals at any given time. We have two to three out in the community. And I will let
and then they go over health.
And yeah, thanks a lot.
So within the Health Department under the Office of Equity,
we do have our core program,
which does a lot of medical outreach and enrollment support.
And we'll continue to support residents ongoing.
We're looking at probably somewhere around 60 to 80
residents per month that we would continue
to help support with application assistance.
We are currently funded through a state call CRG grant, which will be sunsetting in May and we're
looking at transitioning over to becoming a medical CW provider seeking reimbursement for
those services, as well as mom reimbursement to cover staff time for that work.
And then lastly, with the pivot add hospital, as I talked a little bit about their outreach
efforts.
They'll continue to do those outreach efforts as coming year, as well as support and
understood patients entering their facilities and continue to support them and refer
them to appropriate resources like DSS staff that's there at the hospital.
And I think with that, we're going to turn it back to Elsa for staff recommendations.
Yeah, thank you.
So I hope that the data presented to you today by my colleagues really shows how a $250,000
investment by your board really helped to reaffirm our trusted community-based organizations
and their trained community health workers and inviting the community to see them as trusted
resources that really resulted in 46,000 interactions with our community members.
10,000 medical application assistance events with
7,500 of those being with new individuals who had not been on
medical previously, and over 5 million impressions just with
your dollars, which were complemented by other in-kind services.
So what's our recommendation? I think we need to continue to support
our community-based organizations and the community with
understanding medical, understanding the changes, making sure that
know if they are in that population that has to do the redetermination every six months.
And continue to look for funding sources. I can't speak to Central California Alliance for Health,
which our colleague is in the back over there, Gabriela Chavez from CCAHS Salinas office.
They've been a true partner. They're the ones who help convene and conduct the trainings hosted
them at their site, and have now just released a new medical member outreach and retention program,
which they are holding a webinar tomorrow.
I believe that will provide funds for outreach, education, and renewal assistance, hopefully
really geared towards our trusted community-based organizations that have this infrastructure
built.
They will be funded for up to 12 months.
And even though it's a competitive process, they're eligible up to 25,000 for outreach
education and then up to 250,000 per organization for renewal assistance. I believe applications
are due March 27th and awards will be announced later in April. So that is one immediate
funding source that is available for the community. And then collectively the county
departments through its health department submitted a budget augmentation for your consideration
for next fiscal year of $750,000 to continue to invest in this infrastructure that we've created
that has proven over just a very short period of time to really create the results that we wanted,
which is to get the word about the changes out, encourage individuals to enroll from medical
link them to legal services as needed and use mass media, paid media, et cetera, to just get the
take any questions that your board may have.
All right, I don't see anyone making eye contact with me, so we're going to open it up
for public comment, and it looks like we've got some folks who've been patiently waiting
to comment on that.
I think one question, sorry.
Okay.
Well, we'll go to the supervisor church first and then to public.
The presentation and all the great work on the outreach on this.
When I was looking, I look at the map and it's very, it's great work all the way around the county.
The northern part of my district, there's a lot of CBO activity in the Barrow region,
but I noticed something that the perennial area, when I look at the map.
It was the one that was the lightest and I was just, it was that because we don't have to
people out there. So I'm just trying to understand why that
discrepancy between the very northern and more of the
central part. Yeah. So what we were collecting was where
people were being served. So it doesn't necessarily mean. Yeah.
So folks could be going to say CCA's office in
Castroville. Or, you know, so that's that's what we're tracking.
That's what now. Okay.
All right. Well, I'll
open it up to public comment now. Thank you.
Good afternoon,
Thank you for always finding ways to support our community.
Adriana with Watsonville Law Center Executive Director.
We were legal aid providing services to families.
We saw an average of 30 to 40 individuals a month from Monterey County.
Who we talked to them about the risk and risk assessments regarding eligibility.
Our average client income is 24,000 a year.
And the family size is three and the individuals that we were talking to were pregnant individuals
who were talking about either not enrolling or what was the risks of dropping medical.
So as you can see that's a population that is really high risk to stop any benefits and stop it
any medical care due to their status immigration status as well as due to just the fear of
the misinformation that exists, investments like these four CBOs or four organizations
like myself are critical because we are on the ground and we are the ones providing and building
the trust with the community. The reason why they can come to our office and ask us is because
we can keep their information completely confidential and protect it under attorney client privilege.
And then we can do a full assessment on their entire situation, not just the enrollment of medical,
but their entire situation of applying for also immigration status and their current family and
current situation. We also advise many of our clients not to stop medical care because they also
are afraid of anything that is happening so we were also working with them to continue to seek medical
care and continue to seek other social services that exist from the county because healthy county
a healthy resident, it makes a county a successful and healthy and if imagine the majority of our clients are agricultural workers.
So these are already vulnerable populations, so thank you for your investment and I hope that you can continue to invest. This is just the start.
This is not the ending and I'm hoping that you can continue to support.
Hello, my name is Juan Gomez on the Director of Programs and Organizing at the Center for Community Advocacyly.
Mostly known as CCA.
Our mission is to identify, cultivate and recognize leadership from farm workers and low-income families to expand opportunities into their lives.
Thank you first of all for selecting CCA as part of the Medical Outreach Campaign.
During the Outreach Campaign, all CCA staff and 13 promotorists, community health workers worked to provide information of changes to medical scheduling appointments, making referrals and completing new and re-enrollment applications.
CCA leaders are trusted community leaders with nearly 40 years of combined experience and community engagement.
People we reach through tabling outside grocery stores, high-foot traffic areas, churches, community centers, schools and other locations.
During the campaign, CCA was able to reach 16,976 residents, provided 100,574 referrals to other services and completed 587 applications.
We are looking to continue future collaborative work with you all.
And then we have two of our community health workers that are going to be sharing some of your experiences with you.
Hello, good afternoon. My name is Joseph Liniis, I'm a community manager with CCA.
And I'm the head of the community.
My name is Alegria, I share the results of our research on the description of this medical prescription for CCA.
Alineasio enfrentamos grande retos como la desconfianza el clima por
El documento de identificación de las personas, el poco interés que le daban a la fecha límite para aplicar a médical completo.
¿Cuál momento? Diego, ¿are you able to translate for us?
Diego?
Ya, testing, can you please repeat the introduction?
Yes, can you make that announcement, please, so that it's communicated.
Por favor, puede hablar en oraciones, para el disparo de oración claramente, para que ya le pueda traducir.
Bueno, a estar desde mi nombre de ellos, el iniz, las promotora comunitaria con el Centro de Abogacía de la Comunidad, mejor conocido como SISI.
Me llena de alegría compartirles resultados de nuestra reciente jornada de inscripciones a médical por parte de SISI.
Enfiliados a la historia de los resultados de los
nuestros nombres de los
que se han encontrado.
Al inicio enfrentamos grandes retos como la
desconfianza, el glima político y la falta de
documentos de identificación.
La definición de la
primera vez en las instituciones
incluyen de Poledical Amdins,
cuando fueron los otros dos que
indicó ferrados políticos.
La falta de documentos de identificación
de las personas.
El poco interés que le daban a la fecha límite para aplicar para medicar completo.
El desaliento de no calificar por el límite de ingresos.
de una vez que no quiere, no quiere hacer un proceso de inconglinidad.
O simplemente la falta de información?
O simplemente la combina.
Ya que muchas personas ignoraban que es médical.
Si muchas personas buscaban apoyo específico para renovar su cobertura.
Y a que se les dificulta llenado de documentos y mencionan que en la oficina principal?
Siempre hay mucha gente y por teléfono es muy difícil que contestan los trabajadores.
Sin embargo, logramos transformar esa incentía incertidumbre en seguridad.
Gracias a que estuvimos presentes en el corazón de nuestra comunidad.
Comparimiento directamente con cada familia, en una ubicación accesible y de confianza.
Lo más gratificante ha sido ver a las personas regresar con su tarjeta en mano.
con los rostros llenos de felicidad y de tranquilidad.
Agradezco el gran trabajo que realizaron por parte de médical.
Dando nos acceso directo a una línea para si h dovidos.
Para apoyar a las personas, fue fundamental este trabajo.
En order, para que el impacto ha sido total,
que las personas aún siguen buscando para que les ayuden el proceso.
Lo cual demuestra la confianza que hemos construido.
Este éxito nos confirma nuestra conexión humana.
más poderosa para generar bienestar.
Seguamos adelante para eliminar barreras y asegurando que nadie que de afuera.
Les que moven a jejo a eliminar berries,
Buenas tardes. Buenas tardes. Bienvenidos de la Junta de Superlizores, mi nombre es Beatriz Garza, promotora de Salud, decisiones.
Aguera, turno un borro de supervices, manes de atriz Garza, promotora de CCS.
Y en los últimos meses, colaboré como promotora de médical, por medio de mi organización.
Durante esta actividad, tuve la oportunidad de brindar asistencia a personas y familias.
En el proceso de llenar sus aplicaciones del médico.
ayudándoles a entender los requisitos, completar formularios y cómo acceder a los servicios
de salud.
Helping me toadestender requirements to field de aplicaciones
en toadestencia, help parameters.
Y otras necesidades de manera más fácil, personal y de confianza.
y en el niz, en el niz, en una morentimeterraza,
de la realidad, la realidad, la realidad principalmente,
en la Farmers Market y dole el tree en Salinas.
La cual me permitió ayudar a quienes se enfrentaban barreras como el idioma,
falta de transporte, falta de información,
actual o dificultad.
Disalomitó, presentar información en
a morácter o web,
incluyen el lenguaje
y por favor, la importación
es bueno.
Alta de información actual o dificultad
es para navegar el sistema.
Por la actual información,
o dificultad es navegar
entre el sistema.
A sí mismo,
me fue posible escuchar muchas
historias.
Desde quien nunca había inaduado una aplicación
otros compró problemas de enfermedades crónicas severas
unos más que por medio lo acudían al doctor
Somos que dijeron a haber sido recibido un diagnóstico de cáncer.
Gracias a trabajar con junto de todos que nos participamos en esta campaña.
¿Los grámos a apoyar a un gran número de personas?
¿Pueden seguir recibiendo la atención médica que en tantos necesitan?
consideran que el material del
público es un tema de
mucha gente.
Agradezco su atención y continúa
apoyo y compromiso a este tipo
de esfuerzos comunitarios.
Gracias.
Entonces, si me van a estar presentado en el mundo,
vamos a ver cómo vamos a ver cómo estamos en Chimbers.
Thank you for being here.
Buenas tardes, mi nombre es Adriana Santana,
trabajadora comunitaria con mujeres de Naxión.
Gracias, no me ameneme, Adriana Santana,
a community work with mujeres de Naxión.
Mientras me he trazado información sobre los cambios de médical.
¿Cuál a los guionic formaciones de médical changes?
y confusión en las familias.
Lo que confirma de muestra la necesidad de informar,
traer información con nada a nuestra comunidad.
También tuvimos la oportunidad.
de ayudar a muchas personas a llenar sus solicitudes.
Gracias a la confianza que hemos establecido.
La comunidad confía en las trabajadoras comunitarias.
Personas que antes no aplicaban por miedo y falta de información.
Ahora lograron llenar su aplicación y tener su seguro médico.
La divulgación comunitaria es clave.
porque no sólo informa, sino que también genera confianza y apoyo.
Por eso es importante seguir invirtiendo en este trabajo.
¿Dás de razón es importante que he investido en este trabajo?
Ya que fortalece el acceso a la salud y el bienestar de nuestra comunidad.
Sin strengthens a health access en health,
a our community.
Thank you.
Buenas tardes.
Mi nombre es Alejandra Ruiz,
y yo en esta zona de Miami, Alejandra Ruiz.
Y honestamente no venía preparada para dar un comentario público.
Solo me quería dar mi comentarles mi experiencia al trabajar con la comunidad.
Yo como trabajadora comunitaria con mujeres en acción, he visto las barreras que muchas veces tienen la comunidad.
Y acá muchas veces las personas no aplican a servicios.
Porque tienen miedo muchas veces porque no los atienen de en su propio idioma.
Un militar es de acuerdo, o sea, o sea, por lo que es importante continuar invirtiendo en el trabajo
comunitario, porque la comunidad se siente más cómoda, haciendo preguntas y recibiendo apoyo de personas de su propio comunidad.
porque coben feeling en su怎麼辦,
sin tenerchas de información que está en el mundo.
Y es un sería todo, muchas gracias.
En ese lugar, visas.
Ya, no sé.
y bienvenidos,
acá es vos de Nlines y Films.
Te larna.
Negas,
entra al Nacional dasoja,
creo que no se improvise,
el extremismo del lugar.
No.
Está vendencia.
para ser el mundo nacional para
desalición de Nlines y華quello,
la gente que es
un
este tipo de work, porque estamos able a superar la institución de la comunidad
con el lenguaje de superar este tipo de work.
Y creo que es una de las asesas, y también es una de las asesas.
Es decir, esta es una muy buena work que está con Sivio y la parte de la parte de la
Entonces, madame,
para que nos hechos de resolver
los Estados Unidos y
de todos los 끄� Kyungta y
y fuera en general.
Gracias.
Muchas gracias.
Muchas gracias,
siempre para los comentarios.
Estamos en inform隱los que
sí, se van a dar con un
tiempo.
Estamos haciendo una información
para toda parte de la
pretendera.
Si.
fue el tema de la業
de la Meua. Pero
No hay orde
a la mejora. No
hay gente que
de este canal, y las de lasมาakers de los gobiernes como aerosas cosas
en el canal de laasta.
Esto es tan trábol, que ya está en el canal deова.
Y claro, tres casos de la�as edición de la calle del canal al
policial.
Y ahora, voy a decir qué era la financiación que es
a los cosas de los que en el canal de la calle.
Funding to medical, while increasing funding to war, like I heard 1.6 billion dollars a day is costing for the war in Iran.
I think we have a topsy-turvy economic system we should have funding for everybody for housing, medical care, etc.
I have a copy of Franklin G. Roseville's bill of economic rights during World War II time.
And it's what we should be having the right to a youthful and renewable job in the industry
your shops or farms or mines of an Asian, the right turn enough to provide adequate food
and clothing and recreation.
The right of every family to a decent home and what you're discussing today, the right
to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
I, that's just quoting the major part of it.
I do upon your effort to support the community.
We do need funding to be going to the places that benefit the community, not to war of the community.
We are at a time and home on the pool.
Thank you.
Thank you for your comments.
Um, we do appreciate them.
And we'll go next to Norma and then to Francesca.
Buenas tardes.
Supervisores.
Good afternoon.
Supervisors.
Norma.
It's a trauma.
Comunitaria de salud.
My name is Norma.
And I'm a community health worker.
I see.
Here in the.
Manoreca.
I've heard directly.
How many.
Where are the changes?
Until next time.
I will be able to do this for you.
Thank you.
Gracias a la divulgación de información mediante el boca boca y los folletos.
Muchas personas pudieron renovar sus beneficios.
For more of many people who are able to renew their membership, pay the necessary changes
and be prepared to these adjustments.
making visits to a social worker, making visits to a social worker.
They have the chance to apply, where I want to do it before the online date.
to guarantee that all the residents
have access to the information
that they need to provide for their health.
This voluntary work is necessary to make sure
that all the people get access to health.
I thank you for your support and the health access
to our community.
Thank you.
Put on this, Francesca.
Hola, buenas tardes.
Ah, good afternoon.
And so Francis Carrosalis from BHC
were working on
the community.
where we are created a link with our community.
Which community has a great trust towards me.
We helped him to have access to the medical application.
I think all of those have been able to bring all those benefits to the community.
I thank you so much and I extend to you all the blessings that the community has.
porque usted ha apostado.
Porque usted ha peído que está todo ese apoyo,
porque si ya tengo éxito en todo ese apoyo,
ahora nos dice que se formó la supo.
Entonces, que ahora convolutifica.
Vamos a hacer el trabajo.
Vamos a usar la única
identificación de edificaciones.
Gracias.
Vamos a ver qué vamos a hacer esto.
Vamos a hacer una pregunta.
En este caso, vamos a hacer una pregunta.
Pero también, vamos a hacer una pregunta.
Vamos a hacer una pregunta.
Gracias.
First of all, thank you for the presentation.
And thank you for all our community partners.
The Health Department, Natividad, the Social Department,
Social Services.
We appreciate all the hard work that went into this.
The numbers look very strong.
In terms of the context, the legal assistance,
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and we did it very fast, so,
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pregnancy services medical,
not the full scope medical.
So, am I right about that?
If there's any other piece that I'm using when it comes to the undocumented and the changes that are being made because it speaks to the point that this wasn't only an end of the year thing, but we're going to need eligibility workers in your department, social services, or maybe health.
To continue to assist people overcome these bureaucratic barriers, artificial barriers that were created to continue to be medical eligible.
Thank you so much, Supervisor Lejo, Chair root ask you, yes, we are in the midst of multiple complications, both coming from requirements passed down by the state and actions taken at the state and also from the federal HR1.
So, not only are the changes in the undocumented group receiving medical with the freeze and
but those 18 and under are still eligible and even new persons 18 and under are still eligible
for medical.
But those above if you currently aren't enrolled do not have the option to enroll.
If your enrollment is dropped and your discontinued, you don't then have the option as you
indicated to re-enroll, but then are just eligible for emergency medical services.
In addition, the federal government has changed some of the definitions of what a legal
citizen is, which has also created additional restrictions.
And the increased administrative burdens of reassessments twice a year, and the work requirements
are really hitting the population that was part of the ACA expansion, so it's not all of those
enrolled in medical, but really targeted on those, those that were became eligible as a part
of the Affordable Care Act. We are tracking our statistics monthly. A net is one of the
persons who always looks at those statistics and passes those onto me, so a net do you have some
additional comment? I think ongoing support is really needed. I was mentioning that
cases no matter what. We have renewals that have to be done and so we are seeing
discontinuances of individuals now and it could be, you know, 1200 in a month,
from 800 to 1200 in a month. So it is imperative that we assist those to renew their
medical annually. We still do have the 90 day if you get come off of medical to provide your
verification, which comes back to, you know, multiple visits, right, with community, with the
health department, with the Tivada, with us, and other community workers, because they don't
understand everything they need to provide. It is a complicated process that not everyone understands.
So, is there late or incomplete? Can you re-enroll? Well, you don't, well, you're renewing again.
So, we do have a 90-day period where you can complete your renewal even after discontinuence,
but after that, you cannot.
So you're not reapplying, you're renewing your case again
within that timeframe.
So is that 90 day window,
which makes me feel more comfortable?
And part of that is there's currently 90 days
of retroactive payments for medical services,
and that will be changing and dropping.
21, 130 days ran.
Yes, correct.
And could you go back, last question,
just as prior to the current year comparison chart?
Could you explain that?
There's ultimately all the context are good, but how many, the question is, how many people
do we actually get enrolled by the end of the year is the question I'm getting to?
How well did we do in terms of just getting people enrolled to meet that deadline of December
31st?
So specifically for unsatisfactory immigration status.
We had 38,000 previously on and we are a little, we were a little under the 38,000 by the
end of the year.
Again, it's because of discontinuences where people not renewing, not because of the application.
So even though we're increasing with application numbers, our renewals are going down.
So it's almost, it was almost a wash.
And how about just overall, how well did we do just on medical applications, undocumented and everyone else?
It pretty much is, I mean, our applications definitely increased to a significant amount.
I mean, we were constantly working on trying to get that information
to everybody about where we were at with the application.
Again, that's the same thing overall.
Our number for medical recipients is now starting to show a slight decrease
because of the renal from December to now.
It is slowly decreasing.
I think there's two additional data points we want to talk about.
So while we were seeing an increase in medical applications year over
year starting in October through December, during that same period of time, we continue to
see a decrease in CalFresh applications.
And so we're really pointing out that this focus on really getting out into the community and talking about the importance of medical and staying enrolled and getting that application in was actually quite effective in reversing a trend that we had been seeing continue throughout most of the last year.
One of the other things that we're seeing with discontinuances in medical is we're still dealing with the effects of the unwinding of the waivers that we're in place during the pandemic.
So while the pandemic actually ended a while ago, we're still in the phase of those that were
be able to maintain their coverage throughout the pandemic without a reassessment and without
an income verification and all of the other ways that we verify eligibility for medical.
That's all coming through now and we are actually reassessing many of those cases and many of
those are being discontinued. So it's really hard to know to break down the discontinuances between
that category and then those that are discontinuing because of fear.
Well, I just want to end by saying that our county associations can be fighting, making a budget
ask hopefully we can be successful in getting some significant funding for departments like yours,
for programs like these and our community partners continue to help with the eligibility case
work and outreach because it's going to be so critical for the rest of the year. As we saw the
are troubling and we got to be able to counter that. Thank you. Thank you.
I'll just, without comments or questions, my colleagues, let's say thank you to everyone
who jumped into action so quickly to make sure that we pushed information out into our community
when it was necessary and needed and what an incredible, I had no doubt that the outcomes would
prove benefit. I think it's important to acknowledge and for our board to acknowledge that not only
does this benefit those individuals who are able to continue receiving health care personally,
but it continues to keep medical dollars flowing into our health care system, county-wide.
Those dollars are critical to maintaining the health care system that everybody relies on.
So it's not just those who are applying for medical that this benefits, it's literally
the entirety of our health care system, our doctors, our hospitals, our specialists, we need
those dollars to be able to pay for everybody's care. So thank you for for understanding that
so quickly and taking action so quickly. It was of course it worked. It worked. So I'm hopeful that
we can continue this type of outreach. It's complicated when you're applying, when the rules are
changing, and then they're changing again, and then you have questions about how does this affect my legal status or my family is safety.
I think it's incredibly important that we as the county continue to recognize that yes, we do eligibility work,
but that eligibility funding from the state doesn't provide the outreach work that also has to happen.
And so without the outreach work, we're not going to meet people where they're at, and our system as a whole is going to lose critical health care dollars.
So I know there's, I understand there's going to be a request for additional dollars through our budget process that leaves us without funding for outreach between now and let's say July.
So I was hoping that this presentation would include an interim amount of request dollars, but in the absence of that.
I think it's really our community outreach partners who've been trained and to the degree that there's capacity to continue doing that outreach work.
We appreciate you. We rely on you so much.
And my last request is when this does come back to us for additional funding and there are additional trainings.
It would be lovely if we could include our board of supervisors, policy staff and outreach staff. We're out in the community all the time.
We have people contacting our offices all the time, and if my team is able to help expand the
reach and take the knowledge and training that you've made available to our partners, we definitely
want to be able to provide that support and assistance, even better than we already do.
So I don't, again, we would like to be a part of that. But I will wrap this up and say thank you.
And we look forward to, I could say for myself, I look forward to the request for dollars as we work through the budget.
I think this is really important work.
Thank you.
All right.
Can we move on without direction?
And item 20 is referral.
Yes, and this was a referral that came in from supervisors Glenn Church and Chris Lopez. This is related to the renaming of the County of Monterey Agricultural Commissioners office.
It was received at the end of February and the purpose of the referral is to rename the Agricultural Commissioners office in Salinas to the County of Monterey Richard Nutter.
agricultural resource center in honor of Richard Nutter,
a Monterey County's longest serving.
I commissioner, he served from 1971 to 1998,
and first contributions to agricultural, including his work
on the California Organic Food Act,
Farmorker Safety Laws, Pesticide Regulations,
and Agricultural Trade, and Oversight.
And with that, turn it over, do.
which is a readup. Just open it up to public comment on item 20. The readout
seeing no public comment will close up a comment and bring it back to the CEO
for a comment. We got a question.
Just on the referral for our supervisors at church and Lopez, is it to just
name the building or the office itself? Okay. Okay, just well the location there.
Great, got it. The location there because it was named that one time for about 15
years. And then it was pulled off around 2013 because he was still alive. So we're just putting
it back now that Mr. Nudger's death.
There's a distinction between those two. So the one you're explaining it seems to be a little
easier to accomplish there, right?
Okay, so with that just a few comments, I'm not going to be very long. I just want to thank
everybody that's involved in supporting the Casa Nova folks that were displaced as a result
So the fire, we have quite a few departments involved from the county side, but this is an incident
that's being managed by the housing authority of Monterey County and the city of Monterey.
But we are providing support in terms of guidance of next steps for these individuals.
And our hope is that they will soon be back into permanent housing.
But there's quite a few things that need to be done at the site in Casanova and we are here
support as able. That's all I have today. Right, thank you. Then we'll go to board comments.
Would you like to start over? We're brief in just a few days. They were completing the
trifecta with Newcastle of Esperanza opening at Stores in King City. A welcome addition is a
research to community. Those experiencing homelessness and with that, I'll be brief and keep us moving.
I'll be brief too, just I already mentioned it, but tomorrow at the Prindale Grain's 537, the best ordinance update for community updates and input.
And then next week, Thursday, March 26th, 537, having my town hall around Creek Bridge, for the Creek Bridge Center, Sereniria, Sereniria there at Elver at Elver as High School at the Community Room.
I would just want to say, have you seen Patrick's Day?
I see Susan, our County Council is wearing green.
Supered to church, anybody else?
Oh, yeah, all right, clerk, have you seen Patrick's Day, everybody?
To all our Irish American County residents say, we celebrate with you.
I just wanted to say, report just last week, most of the last week I was in San Bernardino
County.
I want to receive an executive committee and our regional meetings to kind of highlight the
good work being done in that county.
So it was an honor to join my colleagues down there, including Sue Reiser, Jesse Edmund that is with that, that's all I got to report. Thanks.
All right, thank you.
And I'll just briefly say that we're having another open house in our district for office to coincide with an open house at the military and veterans affairs office on Thursday the 19th.
And that will run from about 10 to two. We'll have folks from Calvette and the VA president to help folk any of our military or veteran families.
I'm excited for benefits. We'll also have information and I'll have my staff available for anyone that wants to stop by and say hello. We'd love to see you.
All right. With that, we can go to our readout from close session. There's no reportable action.
All right. And with there are no adjournments and memories, so we will adjourn and we'll see everyone back here.
At our next meeting. Thank you.