The meeting to order.
>> good morning, colleagues, staff,
members of the public, it is 9:02 a.m.
on august 25, 2026.
we are calling this regular meeting of
the san mateo county board of
supervisors to order.
we'll start with having the clerk of
the board provide information on how
the public can parts pay in this
meeting.
>> members of public, the
instructions to participate in today's
meeting can be found on the published
agenda.
these instructions provide information
on how to submit written comments and
is how to participate via zoom.
live interpretation of this entire
meeting already provided in spanish.
to access live interpretation
services, click the interpretation
globe icon, select the spanish
language.
select the three dot menu, select
interpretation, select spanish and
click done.
I'll ask victor hernandez to provide
these instructions in spanish.
>> thank you very much, kim.
good morning, president corzo,
honorable supervisors, mr. Callagy,
mr. Mates, mr. Nibbelin, victor
hernandez, spanish interpreter.
( interpreting in spanish ).
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you, kim and victor.
with that, we will move on.
sorry, let me find my agenda here.
too many tabs open, here we go, thank
you for those instructions.
we'll now move on to the pledge of
allegiance.
please join me in the pledge.
>> I pledge allegiance to the flag of
the united states of america and to
the republic for which it stands one
nation under god, indivisible, with
liberty and justice for all.
>> we'll now take it over to kim for
a roll call, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> here.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> here.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> here.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> here.
>> president corzo?
>> here.
>> all present.
>> we'll move on to honoring the life
of and board member remarks.
do any of my colleagues have comments
or any honoring the life of remarks?
>> through the chair, I have two honoring
the life of, so this morning
we would like to honor the life and
memory of eugenia vallencourt,
beloved mother of donna vallencourt
whose life was marked with
services and love.
she passed away peacefully on sunday
august 16 surrounding by her loving
family.
board in santa rosa in 1925, she
celebrated 100 year birthday just 8
months ago, a milestone that reflects
not only the length of her life but
the fullness.
eugenia also was an employee of the
county, she began her county service
in the dp of general services and
later joined the san mateo county
sheriff's office where she served as
lead payroll personnel specialist
until her retirement in 1995.
by every account, she was the beloved
by deputies, by staff and by many
people whose paths crossed hers.
again, I know that her daughters, two
daughters followed her into the county
work, donna and val also worked --
built their careers of service here in
san mateo county here as well, so we
want to lift up the memory of eugenia
and her family.
also I wanted to honor the life of
frank abramo, today we honor
remarkable life of frank who was a
world war ii navy veteran and in the
veteran's community who passed away on
august 12 surrounded by his family.
his 102 years were marked by service,
dedication, resilience and deep love
of family.
frank served the united states navy
during world war ii spending three
years in the pacific theatre.
more of his work, he worked for the
stanford linear accelerator
center here and he believed for the
adopt department of defense, he found
joy in community and activity, he was
a longtime member of the san
mateo elks lodge and an avid golfer
who continued playing until his 90's
showing his determination and
enjoyment of life.
may frank abramo be remembered with
appreciation for his service,
admiration, for his long life and deep
love for his family and friends.
thank you.
>> thank you.
seeing no others, I would like to
adjust a small comment to supervisor
gauthier's honoring the life of
comments for frank and just add that
frank was a city of san mateo resident
and in addition to his military
service, he also dedicated his career
to scientific and technological
advancement through his work with the
department of defense and stanford
linear accelerator center, we honor
his contributions to science and
innovation, we are immensely grateful
for the lasting legacy he leaves
behind.
I'll now read our county's land
acknowledgment.
this is not our county's land
acknowledgment, I'll now read a
different land acknowledgment, we
honor and affirm the rights of the
coleman and other indigenous peoples
who call the unscreened territories of
the san francisco bay a area their
traditional homeland, we honor the
ancestors, elders and rel tiers of
indigenous people and their enduring
contributions to san mateo county and
commit to continued healing, inclusion
and partnership.
we honor people of the african
diaspora recognizing the profound
impact of enslavement and systemic
injustice as well as our
enduring contributions, resilience and
leadership in shaping our communities.
we honor immigrants, past and present
whose cultures, experiences and
contributions have enriched our
communities and continue to strengthen
our shared society.
with that, we will now move on to
public comment.
this is the portion of the agenda that
is set aside for members of the public
to comment on matters that are within
the subject matter jurisdiction of the
board of supervisors but that are not
on the agenda for today's meeting
for matters that are listed on the
consent agenda and for matters that
are set for closed session.
we'll be keeping public comment to
would the minutes.
if a speaker goes over time, I will
give them a single warning and then
I'll ask the clerk to cut the mic.
this is to ensure equity of voice for
all of our public commenters.
thank you, with that, we will begin
public comment.
>> we have peeved written comments
which were submitted and provided to
the president and board members as
well as on the public board site.
for those wanting to speak on items
1-20, please wait until the item is called.
we will start with leopold and then
dan.
>> good morning, I have a family of
five kids and I have small land here
in the county of san mateo and I
wanted some help from you guys to
update some of the regulations for
septic that I want to put on my land.
I don't know all the details but my
architect, dan, knows everything and
can explain to you what I need.
>> dan?
>> hi, good morning, first I would
like to thank supervisor ray for
talking with me, it was very helpful.
my name is dan, a licensed architect
and I landed here from europe and I
opened my company in san mateo.
I've designed projects in bay area,
california, united states and overseas.
over the last 44 years, I have
cooperated with many planning,
building and elected officials and
helped create, update and corrected
various regulations.
I have become the private
practitioner on the other side of the
fence that I see how regulations apply
to people working -- designing things
based on their existing regulations.
and I want to bring to your attention
that I have identified a regulation
that does not make sense today.
we need more housing and we have -- we
are blocking housing in san mateo
county for no reasonable reasons.
I discovered the problem by
chance, currently working in san mateo
county, santa cruz county and santa
clara county, I realized that modern
septic systems have been specifically
and especially designed for smaller
lots and for specific problems at
various lots.
and such systems do make sense, they
are functioning, they are clean and
they are reliable.
there are hundreds of them in san
mateo county and -- sorry, in santa
clara county and santa cruz county and
in other bay area counties.
>> I'm sorry, sir, that's your time.
>> that's fine, I have some envelopes
that I can give to the supervisors.
>> please give them to the clerk and
you can always follow up with us via
e-mail.
>> this is a problem we need to solve.
>> madam president, maybe I'll give
the speaker my card and we can speak
about his regulatory concerns.
>> okay, thank you.
>> thank you.
>> next we have henry gardner and then
lahara.
>> good morning, all, my name is --
>> can you please adjust the mic. So
people on zoom can hear you.
>> my name is lah ark -- lahara.
[inaudible]
>> my name is joanne kim, a rising
senior at kama high school.
>> my name is veronica and I'm also a
rising senior at carl mont high school.
>> my name is zara, a senior at carmel
high school and a senior for skop the
scandals.
>> henry gardner, a recent graduate of
burlingame high school, a summer
intern with stop the scandals.
I want to start by focusing on a
number, 13.4 million.
it's the amount our county is paid out
in lawsuits related to alleged sheriff
misconduct in just the last five
years along with another 48 million in
pending claims.
this comes at a time when the county
has been a publicized struggle over
vehicle licensing fees, money which is
reinvested back into our community.
this money impacts our education, our
opportunity and our lives.
we demand responsible stewardship from
our county.
we ask them to showcase this
stewardship by appointing an ongoing
inspector general overseeing the
sheriff's office.
>> hello, I'm anishka, I'm a student
at carl mont high school, the board of
supervisors own independent civilian
advisory committee recommended that
last summer the board appoint an
inspector general, they would build a
relationship between the sheriff's
office and the community, they would
provide a safety valve with disasters
happening with the last sheriff, it is
a crucial step towards an improved
relationship between the sheriff's
office and the community especially
after the recent scandals, the
inspector general is a path forward.
>> I'm going to need you to wrap up in
ten seconds.
>> so, we are here to present a
position where we have garnered over
550 signatures from members of the
community as well as over 20
organizations including the naacp, so
we will be presenting those to the
board of supervisors today.
thank you for your time.
>> thank you.
>> and lastly from chambers, we
have jim lawrence.
>> good morning.
president corzo and members of the
board, I want to remind you to reflect
on not only what these young people
have said today but who is saying it.
they are students, they spent hair
summer doing things that normally
students don't do, instead they get
involved with their community.
the research, the issues, they
attended meetings, they talked to
residents and gathered signatures,
they built the community support and
today they came before you, our
elected leaders, with that message.
now, I spent many years in public
service like all of you.
I can tell you what I experienced
today is exactly what we want from our
young people, they became informed,
they chose to participate, to speak up
and believe in -- and I believe their
voices matter.
and to our interns, thank you, you
showed courage, you showed leadership
and regardless of what happens today,
you demonstrated something very
important, democracy works best when
people show up.
thank you.
>> alright, now we're going fo go to
zoom for comments.
please raise your hand at this time.
alright, we're going to start with
natallia and then I'll
make a final call.
please begin.
natalia?
is your hand raised online?
last call.
alright, that concludes public comment.
>> okay.
thank you.
with that, we will now -- I keep
misplacing my agenda here.
okay, with that, I want to thank
everyone who shared a public comment.
we will now move on to take action to
set the agenda and approve the consent
agenda.
now bear with me, this one's
complicated, so, I would like to
suggest we move items 9 and 17
together, so consider item 17 during
the discussion for item number 9 as
both items involve horizon.
item 17 is a resolution authorizing a
ground lease for real property located
at 826 mahler road in burlingame.
I believe supervisor speier would like
item number 29 to be moved from
consent to regular agenda and I
propose we move that to the end of the
regular agenda.
and I know health has requested that we
pull item -- pull and defer item 32 to
a later meeting.
can I get a motion to approve this
agenda?
to set this agenda and approve the
consent agenda.
>> I have one other item that I don't
want to move but draw attention to,
that's item 24 which is an agreement
with a company that has had the
contract since 2006.
it's become an evergreen contract and
I think as we look to the ways in
which we'll be tightening our belts,
we need to look at these contracts
which historically are just renewed
decade after decade, so I wanted to
draw attention to that, with that, I
will move the changes you've requested.
>> thank you.
roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> okay, thank you.
with that, we will now move on to item
number 1, and I will hand it over to
supervisor speier and county executive
callagy to present a resolution to
kitty lopez.
>> thank you, madam president, it's a great
honor today to celebrate one of the
great advocates in san mateo county.
a great advocate for the vulnerable, a
life truly dedicated to raising up
those in need.
I have had the pleasure of working
with kitty lopez both at samaritan
house and also on the board of first 5.
I think that she has truly been
remarkable in how she has led her
career on behalf of county residents.
kitty, you have a moral compass that
has never wavered.
you are a true humanitarian and
paraphrasing vice-president humphrey,
you have cared for those at the dawn
of their lives and those living in
the shadows of their lives, the sick,
the needy and the handicapped and we
will forever be indebted to you for
the service you've provided in our
county.
>> madam president, can I add a few
words?
>> of course.
>> I've known kitty for over 25 years
now and certainly got to know her
wonderful husband, jeff, also,
who was a professor of mine up at
notre dame, kitty's life has been
about service, she was an incredible
director at samaritan house, reaching
beyond what john kelly and others
before her accomplished and she really
se a path for herself in in serving
members of this county for years to
come.
when she came to the first 5, it was
the good fortune of the county to
get somebody of this quality, somebody
who's difficult to say no to at
times but has the best interest of the
community at heart whose carrying on
this job with very serious work but
did it with a sense of humor and as a
great leader bringing others along and
lifting up others under her guidance.
it has been nothing short of a
pleasure working with kitty all these
years and as you head into noted
retirement but what are you calling it?
>> preferment.
>> there you go.
that's a sense of humor I'm talking
about.
I would ask you to reflect on all
the lives you impacted and all the
people you served in this county
throughout these years.
that is an incredible legacy that will
be established for years and years to
come, so thank you so much for all you
have done for this county.
>> thank you.
>> sorry, just one second.
you will have the last word, kitty, I
promise.
I just wanted to share a few words as
well.
I got to serve on the first 5
commission with you, kitty, for about
three -- no, two years, two years, I
believe, and during that time, it was
such a pleasure to work with you and
one of my favorite
things about being on that
commission was really knowing it was
one of the few commissions that I did
not have to worry about at all because
that commission was run and led by you
in your very capable hands and not
only did I not have to worry but I had
such faith in your leadership and in
your equity focus and the shared
leadership that you had, the amazing
team, the trust that you built,
the shared decision-making, the
community focus, the true focus on
kids, on community, on families that
was evident in every single decision
that was made, the transparency, it
really just was like the example of
how to make really good decisions for
kids for our littlest ones in a way
that I think is a true model to other
organizations, so thank you for doing
that.
thank you for creating that model, for
leaving it in very capable hands and I
know you're going to enjoy your
preferment and you won't be too far
and I'm just grateful for the work
that you have done and, yeah, thank
you so much.
I don't know if any of my colleagues
want to share.
kitty will have the last word.
>> sure, I want to say to kitty, you
know, thank you for leading with
heart, for taking care of those who
are most vulnerable who needed that
support.
I will miss you, well, I don't --
hopefully you'll be going to progress
because you were my dance partner.
but you know, I just want to say
congratulations on preferment, I love
that idea to be able to do what you
prefer, all along, I think you've done
what you've preferred because you've
been taking care of individuals this
whole time.
congratulations on reaching this
milestone, I hope to see you at next
progress.
>> kitty, I want to thank you for your
service.
I think about the staff, the
development, michelle blackly who I
knew for a long time through star
vista, I think you've always had a
collaborative approach and really
working with the boards, I served on
the board very, very briefly but I saw
how you've conducted yourself and your
preferment is well deserved, so thank
you, madam chair.
>> please go ahead, kitty.
>> first of all, thank you, supervisor
corzo and supervisor speier and fellow
supervisors, mike callagy, yes, it's
kind of freaky to know that both mike
and supervisor speier have known me so
long, 25 years, if you combine my work
at samaritan house and first 5.
it has been an honor.
I wasn't going to get e-mail, but
that's hard for me to not do.
but it's been an honor to serve in
this county in the two primary
prolepses I've had at samaritan house
working with folks in need and then at
first 5.
and the through line in that, that was
very purposeful, running samaritan
house and building that organization
to be a primary safety net provider
but I always wanted to find out how
can we -- of course it's great to have
our non-profit partners but I want to
find out how can we do things
differently for our young children and
their families to help them grow and
thrive without necessarily needing
services.
it's hard to do in today's world
because everybody needs money and
support and not everybody has it.
but I learned that all the research
says you have to start when children
are young and I still believe that and
the research still shows that.
I learned all of this from my father
who was an immigrant to this country
many, many years ago from mexico,
studied medicine at usc and built a
family practice in los angeles, he was
a family doctor for over 40 years on
hollywood boulevard.
and yes, there were stories, I might
have to kill you if I told you, but
everybody knew hill and he knew
everybody and he delivered everybody's
babies and helped folks, aging parents
and all the ages in between.
and he believed in what could be
possible and how could we all do it
together.
and that's sort of my motto, I love
that word possibility and how can we
build possibility for our kids and
families, particularly for those who
are farthest from it.
that's our role and I hope that that
work continues.
thank you so very much for this honor.
[applause].
>> we have a resolution.
>> do we want to vote real quick?
did we vote on it yet, public comment?
>> that's true.
>> okay, sorry.
>> let's take public comment and then
we can vote.
>> alright, I do not have speaker
cards from chambers.
if you would like to make a comment on
item 1, please raise your hand on zoom
at this time.
alright, I do have one hand raised for
natalia.
if you can please unmute.
>> hello.
>> can you hear me?
>> yes, we can hear you.
>> hi, I'm not sure if I'm speaking on
the right time slot, I was trying to
connect before and something
happened.
>> natallia, this is for item 1.
>> I think you might be wanting to be
speak on a different item, this is a
presentation to congratulate kitty
lopez on her retirement.
>> when can I speak about horizon?
>> that will be at a later time?
>> it will be item 9.
>> we do not have a guaranteed time.
>> okay, thanks.
>> final call for item 1, we do have
michelle, please unmute and begin.
>> good morning, board of supervisors,
and kitty, this is michelle, we're so
looking forward to celebrating you in
a couple of events this week and you're
an amazing leader and a beautiful
human, so hope to see you all soon and
enjoy your preferment.
>> alright, that concludes public
comment.
>> thank you, is there a motion to
approve this proclamation?
>> so moved.
>> thank you, second?
>> second.
>> roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes unanimously.
>> come on up, kitty, we'd like to
give you your proclamation.
( taking photograph ).
>> okay.
with that, we will move on to item
number 2, presentation of a
proclamation honoring international
overdose awareness day, and I'll be
passing it to supervisor ray mueller.
>> thank you, president corzo.
I want to start by thanking one of my
summer interns, mia burko who worked
on this proclamation.
august 31 is recognized as
international overdose awareness day.
we stand families who are still
grieving them and to acknowledge the
crisis that reached every community,
we need to talk about this openly.
I want to recognize healing overdose
prevention and education hope,
pacifica organization founded by runda
and clarence davis whose annual walk
is this saturday august 29, I want to
invite you to join hope's walk and
resource fair at 10 a.m. At 399 rena
delmar pacifica, it's so moving, there
are so many families present there
with pictures of those they've lost.
hope has been able to install
lifesaving narcan dispensers.
this weekend we'll be donating more
boxes of narcan to hope.
easier access to narcan reduces
overdose rates and saves life.
we believe providing narcan in public
spaces recognizes substance use
disorder as a public health issues.
the county team at behavioral health,
I want to thank them for treatment
prevention.
ronnie brown is on the forefront of
this fight.
before transitioning into community
health planning, dr. Brown spent 27
years as a correctional dentist in the
main detention facility where the
specialized clinic became a clinic
for institutional settings and it was
there she saw the impact of this
problem.
dr. Brown?
>> thank you so much for that
introduction.
my name is dr. Ronnie brown, I work in
behavioral health recovery service as
senior community health planner
overseeing overdose education and
response and I also serve as the chair
of the overdose prevention coalition.
august 31 is international overdose
awareness day where the global
community comes together to honor, to
remember, to advocate for those lives
who have been lost from an overdose.
this year's theme is 25 years on still
needed, marking 25 years since its
inception in 2001, but that tagline
still challenges us to ask this
question why is this day still needed.
this day is still needed buzz overdose
death rates remain high in the united
states.
according to provisional data from the
centers of disease control, in 2025,
there were 69 thousand 973 americans
who lost their lives from a drug
overdose.
now this tragedy is not just a
national tragedy, we see it here in
san mateo county.
according to the california overdose
surveillance dashboard in 2024, there
were 54 individuals who died from an
opioid involved overdose.
the majority of sourdoughs do involve
synthetic opioids, specifically
fentanyl.
this day is still needed because
overdoses are a preventable cause of
death.
now, an overdose is when a drug or a
combination of drugs exceeds the
brain's ability to regulate body
temperature, heart rate, consciousness
and breathing.
and in an overdose, breathing slows
down or stops.
and then the count down between
survival and death begins, one minute,
two minutes, three minutes, there's
mental confusion, four minutes, five
minutes, six minutes, brain cells
begin to die, 7 minutes, 8 minutes, 9
minutes, there's ir referable brain
damage.
after ten minutes, brain death can
occur.
it's what happened in those precious
moments that makes the decision and
determination between survival and
death.
first a bystander needs to be able to
recognize the signs of an opioid
overdose, acronym blue, b, breathing slows
down our stop, l stands for lips
turning blue, u stands for
unconsciousness, e stands for eyes
that become constricted.
the by standard to administer narcan,
a lifesaving method.
the bystander needs the stay within
the individual, perform cpr if trained
to do so and if it's indicated and way
for medical personnel to arrive.
narcan is a preventable cause of death.
this day is still needed because
stigma related barriers decrease
individual's access for
receiving the treatment they need.
in 2024, according to the national
survey on drug use and health, only
one out of every five americans 12
years and older who needed substance
use treatment received substance use
treatment.
the adults surveyed in the study cited
worry as the reason why they didn't
seek treatment, worry about what
people would think, worry about what
people would say, it's reducing stigma,
providing compassionate care,
meeting people where they're at,
encouraging people with substance use
disorders to get treatment what they
need and reduce the substance use
overdoses.
this work needs to be done.
in 2024, the board held a special
session and they had bhrs to have stop
measures.
we have done that in collaboration
with the overdose prevention coalition.
we have distributed 3223 boxes in the
lock zone out into the community.
every box represents potential.
every box represents hope that a life
can be saved but, board, there's more
work for us to do, we need your help
to identify spaces and places in your
district to expand a lock zone
distribution efforts.
in cosigning, I -- closing, I do want
to share with you the tagline for this
year's theme, it says even though this
day is still needed, it doesn't have
to be forever.
let's strive on not making this
forever.
I appreciate the time.
thank you.
[applause].
>> with that, I will go ahead and move
the proclamation forward.
>> second.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> we haven't taken public comment and
I wanted to say something briefly.
did you want to say something as well?
>> go ahead, supervisor speier?
>> I want to thank dr. Brown.
she was kind enough to come and do a a
brown bag lunch for our interns, they
were very impressed and your message
about bystander engagement is so
important as we deal with this crisis,
so thank you.
>> thank you.
I just wanted to briefly say that I
got the opportunity to see dr. Brown
in action one day.
I'm forgetting the name of the
organization and the walk, but
supervisor mueller was there and
pacifica.
it was -- what was it called?
hope.
hope had a walk and it was very moving.
there was a walk to honor people who
had overdosed and it was family
members and even strangers carrying
the pictures of folks that had
overdosed but there was a training
that dr. Brown did at this community
event and the training was excellent,
so much so that like a member of my
team and I sat down and actually
listened to the majority of the
training and learned so much and so if
anyone here ever gets the opportunity
to take one of these training, please
do so, it is so worth it and I wanted
to share as well that I personally do
carry in a lock zone in my car, our
team carries in the lock zone in our
tabling and office hours box and I
know that our county had the intention
of having a distribution box in front
of the courthouse and that didn't work
out for some reason but I would like
to share the idea that why don't we
just put like a sign up there and put
the box in front of this building and
we can put a sign over there and
can know that we have one
here and they can walk over and get
one and let's make that more
accessible.
I also think we can put some at other
sites, but we can do that, you know,
if there are places that aren't
willing to have the box, we can still
get -- overcome those barriers.
so, thank you.
and did anyone else want to make
comments?
supervisor gauthier?
>> I want to say, dr. Brown, thank you
for your presentation.
I would love to have you come to
district 4 and meet with some of our
non-profits.
I know that there are families that
are streamlining right -- dealing
right now in the hospital trying to
recover from a drug overdose, keeping
them in mind.
I appreciate you coming here, we need
to understand more and educate our
community members more often, so I
will be reaching out to our office to
schedule some training.
>> okay, public comment, please, or
did you want to say something?
public comment, please.
>> I do not have speaker cards from
chambers, we'll go to zoom for
item 2.
I do have one hand raised, it's final
call for item number 2.
we'll go ahead and start with isabel,
please unmute and begin.
>> good morning, board of supervisors,
I want to say that today's
proclamation recognizing august 31 as
international overdose awareness day
is an important reminder of the lives
impacted by overdose and the work
being done to prevent future loss.
just a special acknowledgment to
ronnie brown and the san mateo county
overdose prevention coalition for
their dedication through strong
partnerships and education and
outreach.
expanded access to lifelong lock zone,
ronnie and her partners continue to
make a meaningful difference
throughout san mateo county, thank you
so much, it's such a great honor.
>> thank you.
and that concludes public comment.
>> thank you, roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> and president corzo?
>> yes, as I vote, I'm thinking about the
many friends I have lost to overdose.
>> motion passes unanimous.
>> with that, we have a proclamation
to present.
>> we'll now present the proclamation.
( presenting proclamation ).
>> okay, moving on to presentation of
a proclamation designating august 26
as women's equality day.
supervisor gauthier?
>> thank you, chair.
and I just want to recognize from this
dais, there are three women sitting
here so we should all take an
opportunity to sponsor, I have words
on this item, I know supervisor
speier, this was your item that you
brought forward to the county sometime
ago.
so, today we recognize women equality
day, commemorating the certification
of the 19th amendment and 1920 which
recognized women's constitutional
right to vote.
the 19th amendment was a landmark
achievement with a fight for equality
did not end with women gaining the
right to vote.
many women, particularly women of
color continued to fight significant
barriers to voting and civic
participation for decades.
women's equality day is a reminder
that representation matters, when
women are able to participate fully in
our democracy and serve in leadership,
our communities benefit from a
broader range of experience and
perspectives.
as elected officials, we have the
responsibility to ensure that women and
girls across san mateo county have
opportunities to participate, lead and
have their voices heard in the
decisions that affect their families
and communities.
equality also means addressing the
barriers that continue to affect women
including economic opportunities,
access to education, affordable child
care, housing stability and
opportunities for leadership.
we should especially encourage women
and girls to see themselves as future
leaders.
whether in government, business,
education, public service or their
communities, women's equality day is
both a celebration of how far we've
come and a reminder that our work
toward full equality continues.
we can honor this -- the women who
fought for the rights we have today
by continuing to create opportunities
for every woman and girl to
participate, lead and thrive.
I'm going to ask my colleagues if you
would like to have words.
>> thank you, and thank you,
supervisor gauthier, for bringing this
resolution to our attention.
today is the day in 1920 when women
actually got the right to vote but I'm
not going to talk about the past, I'm
going to talk about the future and I'm
going to put this on to show that
equal rights amendment has not passed
and we need to think about future.
it is 24 words, it has been introduced
in the congress of the united states
every single session and we have still
not passed it.
there are 165 countries around the
world that have embraced the equal
rights amendment in their
constitutions, that's 85% of the
united nations members, only 10% of
the countries have not.
and the united states is one of them.
it's a shameful recognition that we
have not found the will to pass this
amendment and put it into our
constitution.
so, I wish the young women who were
here earlier could have been here for
this so they recognize this is the
challenge for them and for all of us
as we move forward.
>> thank you.
I want to thank you as well for
bringing this forward.
I think about the reality that young
women today have seen the stripping of
some of the rights that women have
fought so hard for in past generations
and I'm just filled with the emotion
that -- that the fight is not over,
right, that we'll see the pendulum
swing back, that we will get that
passed, we will.
I think we see especially in
california, more women in the
assembly, in the senate than ever
before and the nation will follow in
due time and we'll get there.
so, while I am filled with a little
bit of sorrow, I'm filled with great
hope and the rights that women fought
for in the past, we will solidify and
build upon like we always have.
I also want to take a moment to share
kind of a dream of mine that I have
and I'll give san francisco a quick
shout-out in this moment.
you know, I think about the right to
vote and how some of the
vulnerabilities of the immigrant
community is due to the fact that they
do not have a right to vote.
they don't have that political power
and san francisco does allow
undocumented people to vote in school
board elections where their children
are in schools and I think that's
admirable and that gives them a step
into a political process where they
have a lot of stake, they have a lot
of stake in the game, so I want to
kind of throw that idea out there as a
dream for this county.
and with that, I'll end my comments
here, but yeah, just kind of like
feeling this moment of -- there' --
there's a lot of weight right now
and as we're half way through this
current presidential term, I just -- I
have a lot of hope for when this
presidential term is over and what we
can really get done when we get to
start a new chapter.
thank you.
supervisor mueller?
>> I want to thank my colleagues for
bringing this item.
I vote for it today thinking of my
daughter, thank you.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> great, I just really want to thank
our commission on the stat of women,
you have done such a -- let's give
them a round of applause.
[applause].
just such an amazing job.
we really have extraordinary and
competent leadership and I think this
commission has made since I've been on
this board an indelible mark in terms
of not only women's lives but
children's lives and residents' lives
in general, it's been a high
functioning commission that has been
engaged and it's great to see.
I want to recognize supervisor
gauthier, supervisor corzo and
supervisor speier for your leadership
and supervisor gauthier being a
sponsor of this says a lot.
I know you're involved and engaged,
you were on the east palo alto city
council, but I'm happy to be a
part of this celebration, I applaud
each of your efforts in term of your
leadership positions in the county.
>> thank you.
>> public comment, please.
>> the commission's going to --
>> I forgot about that part, please,
we welcome your comments.
>> I want to say I just thank
everyone for your comments.
I often say when you know better, you
do better.
in the united states, we know bet and
her we have refused to have equal
rights.
I would like to invite my sisters in
the equality fight who are showing up
today in white to show unity in this
work to the dais to give your remarks.
>> thank you.
good morning, honorable supervisors,
county executives and staff.
my name is anne gerard, the president
of the commission on the status of
women and I'm joined by vice-president
lasanadra gutter.
we bring hope and we want to thank you
for all the support you have given us,
for the initiatives we continue to
advocate for but we are working
together to improve the lives of women
and families in the county.
but most recently, your efforts to
personally meet with stakeholders
about child care, the allocation of
measure k funds for the baby bonus,
the investment of 10 million dollars
and the one stop navigation portal,
the trishare pilot program and the
ongoing work to reduce the pay equity
gap which currently is 4% in the
county.
we have work to do there and on the
era.
but we're here today together with our
commission members and supporters to
celebrate the 19th amendment to the
u.s. Constitution which granted women
the right to vote.
but there's a really important part of
that history that needs to be
acknowledged.
>> good morning, board and the
executive team, so my name's lasandra
gutter and I do feel like my comments
have been said already but I feel
they're important so I'm going to say
them again.
as we recognize women's equality
day, the ratification of the 19th
amendment and the women who fought
courageously for the right to vote, we
must also remember that native
american, black, asian, latina and
immigrant women were among those left
behind.
discrimination and jim crow laws were
very active during that period in our
history, silencing many voices, voting
is having a voice.
so, today I wonder how many women
sitting in chambers would have been
afforded the opportunity to vote to
use her voice?
well, the commission on the status of
women is hosting an event today at the
burlingame community center from 4:30
to 6:00.
we're in collaboration with kqed and
we will be presenting a panel on
affordability in san mateo county
giving real-life examples of how
voting can impact communities for the
better.
this is in keeping with the
commission's focus on economic
empowerment of women and we hope that
the board and everyone in the room
gets the opportunity to come today or
I know we're going to have it
streamed, to watch it because ut's
going to be important and it's going to
be fun because we're all going to be
there, so thank you so much.
>> thank you, lasandra.
I think you've got the message that
we're talking about voting and we hope
everyone exercises their right this
year and every year but we want to
inspire you, we have a video that we
have produced with supervisor
gauthier's can-do attitude and her
staff, bridgett berry, I'm not sure
she's here, bridgett, you could stand
up.
[applause].
bridgett shared her talents with us,
so we'll let it roll.
( playing video ).
>> I feel like I can make a difference.
>> all votes matter.
>> my voice deserves to be heard and
will shape the future.
>> I wasn't born with this right, I
chose to become an american and voting
is one way to honor that choice.
>> voting is the foundation of our
democracy.
>> because it's the cornerstone of
democracy.
>> every vote matters, what may seem
one vote if in hundreds of millions is
inconsequential, together they make a
huge difference.
>> my daughter's daughter's daughter is
inheriting this.
>> I feel it's particularly important
for me to be a voice for immigrants
especially since so many of us don't
have the right to vote.
>> just because I matter.
>> in a time where there is so much
[inaudible]
>> when I think of voting, I think of
the word matter.
matter means you take up space and I
proudly take up space to share my
voice and to vote.
>> my parents and grandparents use
their vote to make a better life for
me.
I want to use my vote to make a better
life for my children and grandchildren.
>> added to others, it makes the
decision not only for our country and
our state but for local issues as well
and reflecting on my community.
>> democracy is not a spectator
sport.
( video complete ).
[applause].
>> it gets me every time.
I don't know about you.
so, I would like to invite our
commission to come up and celebrate
the day with all of you.
>> yes, why don't you come up, but we
will take public comment and then
vote, but you can come up, go ahead,
so we're ready, let's take public
comment.
>> we're taking public comment on item
3, the proclamation for women's
equality tai.
I do not have speaker cards for
chambers, if you would like to make a
comment online, please raise your hand
at had this time.
seeing no hands raised, there's no
public comment for item number 3.
>> okay, thank you.
is there a motion to approve?
>> I move approval
of the proclamation.
>> okay, motion and second, roll call
vote.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes unanimously.
>> okay.
( presenting proclamation ).
>> okay, with that, we will move on
to item number 4, presentation of a
proclamation designating september
2026 as suicide prevention month, and
supervisor canepa is the sponsor for
this one.
>> alright, thank you very much, madam
chair.
san mateo county joins communities
across california and the nation in
recognizing suicide prevention month
in september, national suicide
prevention work, september 6-12 and
world suicide prevention day on
september 10.
this observance reinforce as critical
message, suicide is preventable and
every member of our community can play
a role in offering hope, connection
and support.
in 2025, 65 san mateo county residents
died by suicide.
during that same year, the 988 suicide
and crisis lifeline operated locally
by the felton institute's
peninsula suicide prevention
received 9212 calls, 1073 chats and
1735 text messages from people seeking
support.
this year's theme, the weight we
carry recognizes that many people,
particularly men and boy of diverse
sexual orientations and gender
identities may carry invisible burdens
such as emotional pain, stress, grief,
isolation and social expectations.
consistent with the state governor's
executive order and 31-25 and the
board's 2024 resolution recognizing
loneliness as a public health crisis,
this observance calls on our community
to reduce stigma, strengthen belonging
and social connection and ensure that
no one carries these burdens alone.
I want to recognize the partners
contributing to the suicide prevention
work, I would like to thank my
colleagues on the board who have in
different ways contributed to suicide
prevention in our county, the felton
institute peninsula suicide
prevention team, taylor, walter,
frankie and 24 crisis counselors, and
our speakers today at san mateo county
health, joining us to make a brief
presentation include san mateo county
health public health, policy and
planning director, dr. Tamara jones
and community health planner, sylvia
tang, thank you for joining us today.
>> welcome.
>> good morning, president corzo,
honorable supervisors, county
executives, county staff and our
community, I'm tamara jones, the
director of public health policy and
rabin and I'm honored to be here today
to celebrate and thank you for the
opportunity to recognize suicide
prevention month and reaffirm the
county's commitment to preventing
suicide.
since 2004, behavioral health and
recovery services has advanced suicide
prevention through the mental health
services act funding.
we want to recognize and thank bhrs
for that leadership and this slide
highlights a very small snippet of the
wonderful and many contributions over
the past two decades.
as suicide prevention transitions to
public health policy and planning
under the behavioral health services
act, we hope to build on that
foundation.
our work includes dedicated suicide
prevention coordination, strategic
planning and a focus on upstream
prevention and policy, during this
transition, our commitment to suicide
prevention month and suicide
prevention year-round remains
steadfast.
so, I'm joined today by the county
suicide prevention coordinator and
mitt myth tee co-chair, sylvia tang
who will continue.
>> good morning, suicide prevention
month is to honor people affected by
suicide, support those who are
grieving and inspire collective action.
the colors, purple and teal, represent
suicide preparedness and health.
suicide can be prevented, suicide
affects all of us and talking openly
and safely about suicide can save
lives.
so we want to reduce the shame and
increase connection so we can lighten
the weight that someone may be
carrying and encourage them to seek
support.
throughout september, the suicide
prevention committee, local cities and
community artists will offer free
in-person and virtual events, the
updated information will be on our
website.
beyond september, we invite community
participation in our suicide
prevention committee for the county
which provides guidance and oversight
for suicide prevention throughout the
county.
every resident can help prevent
suicide and we can to that by three
key ways, one is learning the
warning signs, two is knowing how to
start a supportive conversation
and three, connecting someone to
support.
key areas of support are local
resources including the 988 suicide
and crisis lifeline, alternatives to
suicide peer support which is
available for adults and youth and
suicide law support group.
we have great educational training and
presentations by our partners as well
and one key thing if you can't
remember, anything I say is if you
know anyone who is in emotional
distress or thinking about suicide,
please call 988, it could be for
yourself or it could be for your loved
one.
and so I would like to -- we've
invited michael to share a brief
reflection of why this year's theme
for suicide prevention is important to
him and I'm hoping the video will
work.
>> hello, my name is michael
coutts, I'm a san mateo county
resident, a marine corps veteran,
current navy reservist, an legislate
rising's union apprentice as well as a
mental health advocate, I serener five
years as an infantry man including two
deployments, and service members,
first responders, veterans, I know
there can be this unspoken and
sometimes spoken expectation to carry
a lot and to carry it quietly.
that's why this year's suicide
prevention month theme, the weight we
carry, supporting men and boys' mental
health resonates with me.
strength isn't just about pushing
through as hard or fast as we can,
it's also about knowing whether to
speak up, to check in on someone and
to ask for support.
this year, I'm honored to be a part of
the upcoming event mission follows you
home, veteran and first responder
mental health forum on september 10.
I hope you'll be there to join us as
we have an important conversation
about mental health, connection and
supporting those who serve.
thank you.
>> big round of applause for michael,
thank you, michael.
[applause].
and to close, we invite the san mateo
county community to take action this
september to support our community
especially men and boys who may be
less likely to ask for help.
three key actions to emphasize, first,
learning the warning signs including
withdrawal, recklessness, major mood
changes or talking about wanting to
die.
second, please share the suicide
prevention events and resources
especially 988.
third, learn how to talk about suicide
in a safe, compassionate and
supportive way.
normalize conversations about stress,
grief and loneliness and show that
reaching out is a sign of strength.
and finally please consider joining
our suicide prevention committee
coalition.
thank you, supervisor canepa,
president corzo, and to member of the
board of supervisors for your support
and doing the suicide prevention work
in different ways and helping -- and
to everyone in our community for
building hope, connection and
belonging, together we can help ensure
that no one has to carry this weight
alone.
thank you.
>> thank you so much.
did you want to share more comments,
supervisor canepa?
>> no
>> any comments from my colleagues?
okay.
>> move the item.
>> I just wanted to briefly say, you
know, this topic hits close to home
for me and sometimes it's a little
overwhelming but I recently met with a
small group of women who talked to me
about being a part of their child's
high school dlac committee and how
they really wanted mental health and
suicide prevention training in spanish
and I talked to them about how I had
gotten trained by nami to do a mental
health training to freshmen and how I
had done one and I didn't realize that
like parents want to know this
information and I told them about
income ami and I don't know the if our
county does that.
we probable do, but -- probably do,
if you need volunteers, I'm sure I
could be trained myself or I could
probably help like find people but it
just made me really happy to know that
even immigrants parents who don't
speak english like really want this
knowledge to help their kids and it
gives me hope that we have families
that want to break cycles and there's
a thirst for knowledge, thank you for
being part of the solution and for
spreading all this good information
and, yeah, I'm also grateful for the
training that will happen on the 10th.
I know in my district in foster city,
we had an officer take his life I
think a year or two ago at precinct
and it was a really difficult tragedy
for folks there, so it's very much
needed.
so, thank you.
with that, I think we can move on to
public comment.
>> okay, we'll be taking public
comment on item number 4, do you have
two speaker cards from chambers, I'll
start with walter ing and taylor coutts.
>> good morning, my name is walter
ing, the community engagement
supervisor with peninsula suicide
prevention, for over 60 years,
our diverse team of 24 counselors have
stood on the front lioness of crisis
intervention here in san mateo county,
we proudly answer local calls for the
98 crisis lifeline providing
compassionate support for those
experiencing mental health crisis.
beyond the phone line and we deploy
vital educational training, we provide
[inaudible] to schools, to county
agencies, to non-profits community
organizations throughout san mateo
county, bringing awarded of that
information for that, but we extend
our greatest grat taout to the suicide
prevention committee as being a
continued partner in helping create
awareness about information about 988,
but also for the leadership of
everyone here presenting to this board
because you guys all take a certain
step towards that section of creating
that awareness but also informing your
own constituents of that information
as well, so as we look ahead, we are
immensely thankful for your continued
support and we look forward to expand
culturally responsive training both in
different languages but also providing
interpretation and providing services
throughout the county creating that
awareness as well.
I have encountered a lot of
individuals at tabling who have asked
us about those magnets that are in
spanish, they asked us if we do
presentations in spanish, we don't at
this time but I think in
collaboration, we can do something
with interpreters to provide that
support and/or finding volunteers who
might provide that support as well.
again, 988 is a free confidential
service available for all residents
regardless of immigration status,
regardless of what language you speak,
support can be found through that
resource, it is available 24 hours 7
day asing week and it gives people
services that they need at any time.
don't wait, call 988.
>> thank you.
we'll do taylor coutts.
>> good morning, I'm a very proud
wife, I'm glad you got to meet my
partner in crime, I'm his significant
partner, taylor, and I'm honored to
see this, our team is small but mighty,
over 96% of our staff have lived
experience with mental illness,
suicide and suicide loss.
so, this work is our heart's work.
I'm proud to be here today alongside
sylvia and our amazing county partners
recognize september as suicide
prevention month.
theses more than a proclamation, it is
a community commitment here in san
mateo county ensuring people know they
are not alone and help is available.
peninsula suicide prevention is
humbled to support our community
across the continuum of care like
walter mentioned, prevention,
intervention and post mention, walking
alongside folks and uplifting them
through their hardest moments,
supporting folks after loss, and
ensuring folks are connected to one
another and services so we can prevent
crisis from happening.
suicide is often an area of stigma,
struggling to find meaning and hope
and connection when things feel heavy
is one of the most yun verse sal human
experiences, this september we
invite everyone to help create a
community where service conversations
are met with compassion and connection
and hope without judgment.
and we thank you all for your
continued support and partnership
with our work in this cause, this work
cannot be done in isolation and
together we can remind san mateo
county that help is available and hope
is possible and worth it and no one
has to carry this weight alone.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and we'll go to zoom.
speaking on item number 4, this is
going to be a final call for item 4.
alright, we have four hands raised.
natallia, please unmute and begin.
>> hello.
>> as we approach suicide prevention
month and overdose awareness day, I
would like to stress how critical it
is to select a quality well vetted
provider of mental health and
addiction treatment services.
with that, I urge this board to
immediately withdraw our county's
endorsement and matching grant for
horizon recovery services.
in my city, they manage facility, as
it has egregious operating history.
>> natallia I'm going to please sd you
to speak to this item only and reserve
your comment for horizon when that is
the actual item.
>> I wasn't able to speak in public
comment and you're not letting me
speak now?
>> if you are going to speak to
suicide prevention month, you can
speak.
>> it is, like mental health and
addiction treatment services.
>> if you want to speak to suicide
prevention month, please continue your
comment, if not, we will move on to
the next public commenter.
>> okay, can you restart my time?
okay, so yeah, it's critical to vet
providers of mental health and
addiction treatment services and I'm
urging this board to immediately
withdraw our county's endorsement and
matching grant to recover -- to
horizon recovery services
>> let's move on to the next
speaker, please.
thank you.
>> we'll go to laticia and lagia,
please unmute and begin.
>> good morning, my name is leticia, I
serve on the behavioral health
commission.
I've also been a part of the suicide
prevention committee and I just wanted
to lend my voice in appreciation and
support, really I could have possibly
spoken for even the overdose a-- the
previous proclamations, it just really
as a san mateo resident and engaged
community member, it just makes me
very proud to know that as taylor just
shared, just really display the
commitment that we have as a county to
care for our most vulnerable and there
is a lot of education.
I know there's certainly resources
that I'm most proud of, you know, as I
sit on the behavioral health
commission, we are often seeing really
witnessing firsthand and as advocates
here in the community, it really just
gives us immense -- yeah, just really
pride in that what we see is a lot of
collaboration, the community partners,
there's unity, and it really does take
that as was shared previously, each
individual, each of us can make a
difference as we are aware of the
loneliness epidemic, it is real
nationally and these are the types of
ways in which celebrating
proclamations as these, the training,
education and coming together as a
community partner I think just really
makes difference, so thank you.
>> thank you.
we'll go ahead and go to lagia and
then isabella.
please unmute.
>> good morning, supervisors,
president corzo, staff and the public.
my name is ligia, I use she/her
pronoun, I'm the executive director of
independence of individuals with
disabilities and I'm speaking as board
trustee for the san mateo union high
school district.
I wanted to -- I've been a member of
the suicide prevention commission as
well.
I want to say thank you to the board
for having this recognition.
this committee is so important for our
county, for information, education and
awareness.
we have a significant population of
folks within our disabled community
that have a lot of anxiety,
depression, a lot of mental health
needs related to losing their
benefits, related to even just being
isolated and losing their in-home care
right now is a critical time for our
community in being present and in
being seen and just having the
services that they need to feel
connected.
as a person with a disability, it's --
I can speak to my own lived experience
of not having enough care and how it
relates to your mental health.
it's very scary and it is extremely
lonely and isolating, so I just want
to say thank you to the board again
and to the committee for including
folks with disabilities within this
topic and then also to not forget that
our community is also unseen and
vulnerable, so thank you very much and
I'm grateful.
>> thank you, we'll conclude with
isabel, please unmute and begin.
>> I wanted to start by thanking the
board of supervisors by recognizing
september as suicide prevention month
and for continuing to bring attention
to such an important work through san
mateo county.
also especially acknowledgment to
sylvia tang for bringing awareness,
education, resources and just hope to
our community.
and to sylvia for her continued
dedication and hard work in bringing
people and partners together many
support of suicide prevention, so
thank you.
>> alright, thank you, that concludes
public comment.
>> okay.
thank you so much for bringing this
forward, supervisor canepa.
and I would love to hear a motion.
>> I'll move the item.
>> second.
>> we have a motion and a second,
roll call vote.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> aye.
okay, we will now present the
proclamation.
( presenting proclamation ).
>> thank you, with that, we'll move
on to item number 5, presentation on
the impacts of an ongoing deficit for
caltrain, and supervisor can --
canepa is the sponsor.
>> first of all, let me thank our
executive director, michelle bouchard
and casey who we'll be hearing
later from.
today caltrain carries a total of
three freeway lanes worth of people
during peak periods on highway 101
where traffic is already at 93% of
pre-pandemic levels at rush hour.
although caltrain is one of the
peninsula's greatest transportation
assets is approaching a serious fiscal
cliff that could have major
consequences for san mateo county
residents.
the concern is especially striking
because caltrain is succeeding,
ridership is growing, customer
satisfaction is strong and the new
electrified system is providing
faster, cleaner and more reliable
service.
we also know that caltrain is a key
driver of economic activity for
cities and businesses throughout san
mateo county.
with businesses with commercial
properties located near stations.
yet without a stable long term source
of funding, caltrain could face an
annual operating deficit of
approximately 75 million dollars and
potentially significant service
reductions in the coming years.
the consequences could be dramatic,
the elimination of weekend services,
trains running only once an hour,
station closures, earlier service
endings and fewer transportation
options for families, workers,
students and seniors.
that would mean more cars on highway
101, more traffic and more pollution.
it would also undermine the tremendous
public investment already made to
modernize and electrify this critical
rail system.
as a caltrain board member, I believe
maintaining a strong transit system is
an investment in our environment,
economy and quality of life.
with that, I would like to welcome
michelle bouchard and casey to say a
few words.
>> thank you so much for your service
on the caltrain board.
president corzo, supervisors, I'm here
to basically introduce casey who's
going to be heavy lifting on this
presentation, I did want to emphasize
a few things that the supervisor
mentioned in his introduction of this
item.
we are close to two years after having
launched electrification.
and I think by all accounts, really
the investment that was made in the
railroad really has transformed the
service.
this year, we were just announced
apta's outstanding transportation
agency and that's amongst all of the
transit agencies in the united states
and it really does bear out the
benefit and the transformational
quality of electrification.
we also have been named fastest
growing transit agency in the united
states and that's as a result of
having trip times that are much
shorter, having a world class
environment on board the train and all
of the other associated benefits that
electrification has brought.
as you emphasized, supervisor, the
benefits do not just accrue
to our riders, they accrue to all of the
stations where property values are
enhanced and they also accrue to folks
who are using 101 and 280 was we are
taking three lanes of traffic.
we are unfortunately at an inflection
point and casey's going to present
some slides, we have been talking to
the caltrain board about for the last
several months and have been
preparing for what is an unfortunate
as we call it fiscal cliff for the
last few years, and casey's going tell
you all of the steps we've taken to
put ourselves in the best possible
situation in terms of lowering co-s
and increasing efficiencies and we do
hope that there will be an opportunity
for us to receive additional funding
towards the end of the year and casey
will talk about what we will continue
to do to make ourselves a better
railroad but also we'll describe some
of the unfortunate consequences that
we're facing.
with that, I will introduce
caltrain's chief of staff, casey
fransin, chief of staff.
>> I'll jump into the conversation
hopefully.
you guys know the organization well so
I'm not going to go into that, when
we've done information about the
corridor, we have 82 favorability
rating, if you ride the system, it's
better and we're putting out a real
world class system.
and caltrain is something that's part
of everybody's -- not everybody's but
for millions of people, it's part of
their daily existence, they take it to
go to school, to work, to special
events.
it's part of their fabric of their day
and as it's been mentioned, it's not
just a daily part of people's lives,
we have these big regional benefit
from removing traffic to making a
stronger economy, serving almost 40%
of the bay area population and cleaner
air when we think about the future
generations and what our goals are, we
have a system that's 100% renewable
electric.
and this slide talks about some of
those benefits, we're not trying to
not think just from our perspective,
what are we doing for our
communities and the region, higher
property values, contributing to the
higher tax base so people are able to
invest those resources in other
activities as well.
we have lots of major initiatives
along the corridor that's highlighted
on the left side, I wanted to call out
one smaller one, when we think about
doing all these projects, how do we do
them more cost effective with
innovation, we're using technology
that helped us in one of the crosses,
we had three vehicles a week turning
on to the tracks in that location, we
worked with the local city, with the
technology providers to make sure they
can enhance the audio whether you go
across the tracks and invested
hundreds of thousands of dollars, not
millions, with these cost effective
tools and the items that you have up
there, we've had 0 cars on the tracks
since then, that's over a year and a
half since we put that in place and
we're rolling that out throughout the
corridor to make it an even safer
corridor.
and everybody's talked about it, the
three legged stool and what people
want for their services, it's faster,
more frequent, a better service and
the fourth one which is a bonus is
it's a great reliable system, 95%, you
can time or schedule your day, your
weekend around a service that's going
to show up whether you need it to be
there.
as we've talked about with growing
ridership, we have a lot of different
numberers to cut this and show how
much growth that we've had, but we see
it not just on the people using it to
get to and from work but we have the
highest weekend ridership ever in the
system so it's a 200% increase of
what it was even pre-pandemic and we're
also seeing people taking it to
different events, sorting events,
concerts, it's a service with a system
we have that you can use it for lots
of different activities, we have a dollar
youth fare and they're bringing their
parents on board to use it as well.
our ridership has diversified, we have
a system that works for everybody's
schedules, and again, every single
city is seeing this increase because
we've expanded what our service
increases are for everybody.
we know that our partnerships with
cities are really critical, they have
the ability to help shape how
communities interact with each of our
stations so we put a special focus on
our relationship with them and we've
heard from cities too that they know
-- they do some of these activities
not just because it benefits the
railroad, it benefits their community
and how it brags with their downtown
and the other local businesses we have
there so we're leaning into this
partnership and going into each of the
cities along the corridor and
highlighting the lovely amenities and
things that happen in these
communities, making it a win, win for
these cities as well as there caltrain.
so, shifting gears,
those are a lot of the
positive points but we have to be
realistic about what we're facing as
well.
this shows the dramatic increase in
ridership we've seen, in 2020, we had
2% of the ridership we had, we have
this great trend that's occurring but
it's not quite what it was in 2018,
2019.
fares are a big piece of the puzzle
for us, we withdrew to have 70% of our
budget covered from fares, that was
bringing in 100 million dollars, today
it's closer to 40 million dollars.
this is still nation leading for a
transit system, most systems don't
bring in and cover that much with
fares but it's certainly not what it
was before.
and we get to that bigger number for a
couple of different reasons.
commute patterns have changed, people
are not going into the office five
days a week, we see a high water
mark of three day as week.
ridership is growing but not as much
as it was before, costs have risen
with inflation and we to have another
50 plus miles of new infrastructure we
have in place that we have to
maintain with our new electrified
system that we didn't have before.
again, this is what it looks like over
time and we know we really need to
manage this carefully.
so what we're doing is looking
internally first, what are we doing to
be a well run organization that's
looking everywhere for cost
containment strategy, strategic
hiring freezes, a comprehensive
cost reduction efficiency program.
we held our operating contractor to
previous year levels which looks like
a cut then.
we have crew inefficiencies recouping
costs from electricity, we're
sending back 40% of our electricity
to the grid and 20% of it is what
goes there, we weren't getting paid
for that until recently with help of
some of our elected officials.
we appreciate that support.
we also have looked at the past mtc
recently did a study showing over the
past five years, caltrain saved
roughly 70 million dollars on cost
containment strategies, this month the
federal government, the triannual
review is an audit of our system, they
found no findings, that means we're
doing business to the best of our
ability and being transparent and
doing it well.
but we need to look on the other side
as well.
how can we monetize all of the assets
we have so we're making sure we're
bringing in revenue from different
sources, on this slide, it shows of a
variety of the elements from the short
term items of these special events,
parking, advertising, to the onuses
that are longer term of leasing out,
fiber optic cable, these are
things we need to look at in the long
run to make sure we have strong
financial future for caltrain.
so as michelle said, we have
been talking to our board for many,
many months about this and what it
looks like, in june, our board adopted
a framework for what we need to look
at and this is giving us two paths, if
in november there is a successful
outcome, we will be able to continue
the level of service that we have been
providing and the quality that we know
that provides the region.
if it does not and there isn't another
external source of funding, we will
have to prepare and look at what those
cuts could look like and being
transparent about what that could mean.
so we've presented to the caltrain
board these options, again, today, the
service frequency we have but what we
have been talking about is hourly
service going back to that, no weekend
service, early shutdowns, no special
events and station closures.
this is not something we do lightly
because we know especially for rail
systems, this doesn't help nus the
long run, it will start the downward
spiral when we have less riders and
less revenue.
and then the last slide here is that
we are calling this an inflection
point, we certainly are not taking
this issue lightly and we're going
around to the different cities and to
the board of supervisors to make sure
we're here to answer your questions,
to know what we're thinking about and
being prepared for what comes ahead.
with that, we're happy to answer any
questions you may have.
>> thank you so much, supervisor
mueller?
>> I do have a question,
the special event training for the
giantess are very popular.
they're also very full.
and I've always wondered why it was
threatened that you would be canceling
trains that were full?
why is that?
>> yeah.
I think that it's really with a gap as
big as the one we're looking at, no
one small piece is going to do it.
you have to look at all of the
different kind of levels of where
we're going to have to pull the
trigger for that.
I think we will also have a more
detailed analysis if we need to come
back in january of what does the
detail look behind these major kind of
elements we're talking about.
I don't know, michelle, if you want to
add anything on to it.
>> that logic doesn't really carry
for me, the giants day trains which
happen throughout the season are full
trains, yet the public is being
threatened with those special event
trains being cancelled.
I don't understand the logic if
they're full and they're actually --
some of the fullest trains caltrain
has.
>> they're also the most expensive
type of trains to put out on the
service because we're operating all of
it at overtime.
>> can you get closer to the mic.,
please.
>> we're operating all at overtime.
>> why would you be operating at
overtime if you were canceling trains
that weren't full?
>> because it wouldn't be part of the
regular service.
every train that we operate beyond
what is planned for, so, if we have to
go to hourly service, that is what we
will be building out with the crews, so
anything else that is added on top of
that would be at overtime.
>> why wouldn't you be scheduling --
if you're canceling, if you're doing
service reductions and you're getting
rid of trains that presumably aren't
full and paying for theses, why
wouldn't you add into regular service
the trains that you're calling special
event now which are full and producing
revenue?
>> to be clear, when you talk about
that logic, we won't be operating
express trains either anymore because
we are obligated to provide coverage --
>> that's not answering my question.
I wasn't talking about express trains.
>> but those are also the most crowded
trains, I wanted to draw a parallel,
we have to basically strip the service
down to the most efficient service
possible.
we don't make money on any of the
service.
>> I'm still lost, so you're saying
that you would be canceling your
most high demand trains?
>> yes, because we have to provide the
most efficient service.
it's high demand, it's also the
highest cost and the fares are higher
than the ones we're getting on those
trains.
>> we can revisit this.
>> we're happy to sit down with you
and share the numbers.
>> okay, thank you for spading to
those questions.
I have a couple myself as well.
so, I have a few questions and I kind
of want to speak in laymen's terms for
folks that are new to transit.
one of the examples that I like to
share with folks especially that are
not from the bay area that are like
why is our transit in jeopardy, like,
I don't get it, right.
so, folks that come from other parts
of the country or the world for
example, it's very foreign to them
that our public transit systems are
fare-based, that they're funded by
fares and that's why we find ourselves
in these -- in this situation where we
are at fiscal cliffs.
that's like the most basic way I can
explain it to people because in other
areas where transit is very reliable
and like much more frequent services,
it's usually more like community
funded or government funded, like, has
different funding sources.
do you feel like that's part of the
core issue here?
>> yeah, absolutely.
the subsidies we get today compared to
many other places are dramatically
different.
>> okay.
and so because our systems are mostly
fare-based and funded by fares, we
face a reality that after the pandemic
with so many people working from home,
we have not been able to get back to
pre-pandemic ridership, correct?
>> correct.
>> okay.
>> yes.
>> okay, so now basically all of the
bay area transit operators are in
these fiscally dire situations and
even as you were saying, the most --
the -- I forget what term you were
saying, like the most -- yeah, the
highest in demand trains which are the
most expensive including express which
kind of blows my mind would be --
would no longer be available to people
because they're just more expensive to
operate.
so, can you give me an example of like
-- let's say an hourly that stops at
every stop versus an express, what's
the difference in the cost to operate
those for example?
>> yeah, so, when you cost it out, you
have to cost it out as a complete
system.
so, the most expensive type of service
to operate is in the peak period
because you're operating a lot of
trains all at once, so we're not
able to use the crews as efficiently
as if we're operating trains once an
hour or respectively, so --
repetitively.
it's difficult to do that on a train
by train passes because we have to take
the entire system cost into account.
but the fact is you're probably using
the peak period crews to probably only
operate two trains but you're still
paying them 8 hours versus if you're
operating a steady amount of trains
throughout the day so no peaking, and
that way believe it or not, the crews
can be used more efficiently, you just
can't provide the type of service that
would be express or would be peaked
service.
>> okay, and then like for special
events, like, I mean, that changes
every season, right, and you don't
really likely like -- what does that
communication look like for the giants
games or the warriors games, like how
-- how much notice do you get on those
schedules?
>> sure, so we do it on a year by year
basis.
this year initially because we were
operating the half hourly service, we
didn't anticipate providing any
additional service but then once we
found that a lot more people were
riding the train, then we added
service, so we added service, I think
it was at the beginning of the season
this season but we were able to handle
the loads without extra service last
year because of the half hourly
service, so it all depends.
right now we find ourselves in
positions where we are providing more
rides to a all sorts of different
types of events on the peninsula, so
as an example, we have partnerships
with the sharks and bay fc, for
those games, we don't require extra
trains because of the loads.
>> okay, thank you.
supervisor canepa, did you have
questions?
>> yes, I do.
>> go ahead.
>> michelle, thank you for the
presentation.
you know, I have seen -- I take
highway 1 quite frequently, I take it
a lot, I have seen traffic pick up
quite a bit.
can you speak to -- I think a lot of
-- my work has been sort of focused in
this area, I sat on mtc, caltrain and
samtrans, so we understand it's not
just a caltrain issue, when you look
at the merits of the problem, it's a
ridership issue, there are a lot of
things, it's not just here in san
mateo county, we're talking
about muni.
I think you may want to correct me,
the estimated cost in terms of transit
and not having the dollars they need
is beyond 350 million dollars.
so, my question to you is we know that
in the bay area, 90% of people,
they're not taking public transit,
they're driving to work, some are, I'm
not saying not everyone, the majority
of the drivers, they drive their
vehicles, I lie more on a practical
level, what I'm concerned about, and
maybe it's in my self-interest,
sometimes you speak from that point of
view is if we don't have caltrain
operating especially in santa clara,
san francisco, in san mateo counties,
all of those people have to go
somewhere and that somewhere is our
freeways, so what we take for granted
now and then maybe you could talk
about what ridership is, that's a real
concern for me.
the other is based from a business
perspective, right, so we look at
employers, right, a lot of our
employers in san mateo county,
genentech, you know, you look at meta,
west of 101, there are a lot of people
who rely on this service as well, so,
to me, when I look at your structural
deficit, while I have a tremendous
amount of empathy on serving on
caltrain, I worry about our highways,
especially 101, being flooded with
cars.
can you speak to that, have
you dod modeling, have you looked into
the impact of if caltrain were to spot
and you were having a hard time
answering supervisor mueller's
question, let me answer it for you a
little bit.
one of the issues I think and we've
talked about this and maybe you can
sort of add a little bit of
flavor to what he asked, we talked
about the frequency, the ability to
get trains going at a rhythm, a sort
of mode.
if it comes to express and if it comes
to these giants games, that's not even
on the table because if we do not
receive the dollars for transit, you
won't -- you're not going to have
transit, you're going to have to shut
down stations and my issue, supervisor
mueller, with staff is we've been
painting this picture and they're
working towards that, everything is
great.
no, not everything -- everything is
not great.
if this doesn't work out, caltrain and
I know staff has gone through
different models, very responsible,
caltrain could potentially close.
as a board member, I firmly -- I know
it's hard to believe, but I firmly
believe it can happen.
you will have service that will even
if you take the service right now,
michelle, and we dwindle it all the
way down, it's a problem -- you don't
have the revenue, you don't have the
ridership and to me, that's a problem.
I wasn't trying to be hard on you,
michelle.
I know you've taken this position of
being balanced and providing
alternatives as a responsible ceo, but
the general public, they have no idea
what's going to happen until we don't
have that 75 million dollars and that
75 million dollars is 75 million
dollars over 10 years which is 750
million dollars and I know people,
they love -- I love caltrain, it's my
favorite transit system, don't tell
april chan, I'll get in trouble, but
I love the clean trains, I love
how fast they move throughout the
system.
it would be a shame if it's not
funded.
so, I appreciate that and I'll give it
back to the chair.
>> thank you, supervisor mueller?
>> yes, so I'm going to be very care
ful not to talk about what's happening
in november because I don't think
that's appropriate in this setting or
the money that might come from it, may
or may not.
but what I do want to say to you all
is I think that as I look at this and
the question that I think caltrain has
to grapple with in these presentations
they're giving and what they're
messaging to the public is that there
is no recognition that instead of
canceling peak time service when the
freeways would be full, if it wasn't
there, or the giants service which is
full, whether or not caltrain if it
put this, this option would move to
an hourly service instead of abon
demand service and reallocated staff
when there weren't people riding the
train that much to the peak hours and
when the people ride to the giants
game, that is the fundamental thing
that most taxpayers when they looked
at what was being presented them at
this time thinks that seems hollow.
why isn't caltrain talking about
reduction of service during non-peak
hours and that's something that hasn't
been addressed and I think has to be
grappled with.
>> supervisor, we'll be happy to
include messaging with respect to that
because obviously it's not clear.
a train does not cost the same as it
does in the off peak as it does in the
peak period and there's no period
during the day that we cover 100% of
our costs.
even with enhanced ridership, so I
can't take an off peak train, push it
into the peak period to provide more
capacity there because it will cost
much more than it's costing if I'm
operating it during the day.
>> but that's not what I'm asking you
to do.
I'm asking you to consider is
canceling the off peak train and
taking the staff hours that you say
are so expensive and reallocating them
to the peak period so you can keep the
peak period going.
I'm not asking you to add trains to
peak, I'm asking you to reallocate
staff time because you say it's so
expensive to run the peak cars because
of staff time so, there must be some
cost savings by canceling non-peak
empty trains and that's not being
accounted for in the discussion with
the public.
>> supervisor, I'll take your comment
as feedback.
>> thank you.
>> so, can I just ask a question here.
supervisor mueller and supervisor
canepa are on the caltrain
board.
supervisor speier?
>> so, only supervisor
canepa is on the caltrain board, do we
normally have one?
we've always only had one?
interesting, okay.
okay, just was wondering.
supervisor speier, did you want the
make a comment?
>> yes, first of all, thank you for
the presentation.
I think you know my great love of
caltrain, the money we go for the baby
bullet, the money we got for
electrification, I'm a big fan.
I am not a big fan of the warfare
going on between caltrain and
samtrans, we spend so much time trying
to deal with a reality that exists
that samtrans has the right to manage
the two agencies as long as it wants
based on an mou but there is constant
efforts to undermine that and I know
you're in a rock and a hard place
because you have a
jpb that is trying to rest the power
from samtrans but at some point,
we're all public employees, we all
have to work together and I think it
undermines your efforts to want to get
more financing when there's all this
quibbling going on constantly and I
find that half the time I feel I'm on
the caltrain board only because the
issues that samtrans is dealing with
are all about governance so I'm
happening that as part of all of this,
we're going to find a way for everyone
to work together.
and for the representatives from santa
clara and san francisco that feel they
want to be in charge when it was
samtrans that purchased the right of
way, samtrans that has kept
it alive, I think we should make that
very clear and while your job is to
make everyone happy on the caltrain
board, part of it is getting some
adult representation that is going to
stop the power grab that goes on that
is not productive.
>> I'm going to jump in here and just
say that as one of our county's
representatives on the county
transportation authority, I'm a little
confused about some of what is being
discussed here and I think maybe we
should at the county transportation
authority which does have a purview
over -- and provides funding to all of
the transportation operators in our
county have a discussion there about
all of the things that are being
discussed here and try to kind of
level set.
I don't know that we should continue
to do that here and now but I do
appreciate that we have brought
information here to the public on what
caltrain is facing, some of the future
decision points, also some of the
amazing improvements to the caltrain
system and I had no idea for example
that there are now like private trains
that people can take to -- not private
trains, private cars, did I get that
wrong, private cars that people can
can take to the giants game?
>> no, but as part of our -- as
looking into other funding sources,
you could buy a charter train and rent
it for that, but we today provide
service to many different things, yeah.
>> okay, yeah.
okay, so why don't we wrap this up, go
ahead, supervisor canepa?
>> first of all, let me just thank
you, michelle and casey.
I want so say this, I have four months
left but it's been an honor and a
privilege to serve on the caltrain
board.
yeah, we represent different counties
but I think through our body of work
and through your leadership, michelle
and casey, we've shown how to get
things done on a regional level,
whether it's diridon, whether it's
what's going on, on 4th street in san
francisco, whether it's looking at
various fare strategies, we have a
very hardworking staff.
we've done a lot, but as you know, my
experience, 18 years through various
boards, this board will soon feel it
and I'll soon feel it in my position.
when resources aren't there, that's
when it gets extraordinarily
challenging and so when you talk about
75 million dollars and you talk about
what the operating budget is, then you
talk about capital, you can try to
reduce service as much as you can, you
could try to identify efficiencies.
I have seen so many slides at
caltrain about this.
it's 75 million dollars, you can't --
you just can't do it, you need the
revenue.
and if you do cut services, spiral is
clearly this, when service is cut,
what happens?
you're not going to have the trains,
you're not going to have the people to
service.
there what happens is the fares are
then reduced so you compound a problem
by not having it, by having other
issues because you don't have
ridership.
and so I'm proud of what we've done,
yeah, the issues on governance, of
course, we've had some conversations,
michelle, right, about it.
we've talked about it but I think what
we've done is we've talked about it in
a respectful way with our colleagues
to figure things out and things are
tracking and make no mistake about it.
where caltrain resides is where
samtrans resides, where shared service
resides in saf and the provision and
division of staff members, they sit in
a beautiful building has was just
built or just occupied by caltrain a
couple of months ago, so I'm proud of
what we've done at samtrans, I'm proud
of what we're doing on caltrain and
this is not easy what you're embarking
on.
I'm glad you started with us first and
then move on to other cities but we do
have a problem and it does need to be
solved, so thank you, madam chair.
>> okay, thank you.
I believe this was a presentation
only, so we do need to take public
comment but no action is required.
thank you for the presentation.
we'll begin public comment now.
>> alright, I to not have speaker
cards for chambers.
we'll be going to zoom for item number
5, if you would like to speak, raise
your hand at this time.
we have call in user, if you can
identify yourself and please unmute to
begin.
>> hello, my name is gord and I hate
--
>> okay, we're going to go to the next
speaker.
>> that concludes public comment.
>> okay, moving on to the next item.
item number -- give me one second.
that's what I get for looking ahead on
the agenda.
>> item 8.
>> item 8, okay.
so, yes, item number 6 and 7 are set
for a specified time, so we'll be
moving on to item number 8 which I'll
be handing over to lee pullen to speak
on in-home support services, so please
go ahead.
>> thank you, good morning, president
corzo, members of the board and mr.
callagy, nibbelin and mates, aging and
disability services division of county
health, before we begin our very short
presentation here, congratulations on
women's equality day, beautiful and
moving.
we are here on just a procedural
matter that's required by calpers
which provides retirement benefits for
ihss public authority staff and nicole
mckay who's our former employee --
labor and employer manager with human
resources has been helping us with
some of these negotiations, so just a
little bit of context for members the
public.
in-home support services, ihss, is a
medi-cal program that provides in-home
care support for people of any age who
are experiencing disabilities or
functional limitations and need the
help at home so they can avoid
institutional care.
the there is an adjunct
agency, public authority, the public
authority serves to support ihss
clients and care providers by
maintaining a registry for folks who
may need to find a care provider
to administer health care benefits
to our care providers and to act as
the employer of record when we get to
the negotiation period for wages.
again, this is a procedural matter
that calpers is requiring for us to
present to you rather than it be on
consent if you're wondering why and
I'm going to turn it over the nicole
who's been doing all the lifting on
this.
>> thank you, good morning.
>> welcome.
>> as lee said, we're asking you to
give consideration to an additional
procedural requirement and this is
required by calpers who provides the
retirement benefits to our 19 public
authority employees.
no benefits change by this action.
if it seems familiar, it is.
we were here before you in january
with basically the exact same
presentation.
at that time, the it was because
calpers required us to have you adopt
the that you intended to make this
change.
at this point we're asking that you
sign is paperwork to actually
make the change.
this only changes who provides the
monetary benefits should there be a
pre-retirement death.
previously this group had those
provided through calpers in 2021, this
group moved over to social security
and this pre-retirement benefit now
moves to that side.
so, should there be did -- this has
nothing to do with their actual
retirement benefits, this is only that
pre-retirement death benefit.
once they moved into social security,
calpers began this process.
we are now five years later, hopefully
at this point with your approval
finishing this process.
at this point I'll take any questions.
>> thank you so much.
any questions from the board?
okay.
hearing no questions, I'll just say
thank you so much for bringing this
back to us.
we know this is an important program
and folks receiving these services and
the support from your department
definitely need it, so I appreciate
this coming before us.
we will move on to public comment.
>> taking public comment on item
number 8, I do not have speaker cards
from chambers.
if you would like to speak on zoom,
raise your hand at this time.
seeing no hands, no public comment.
>> is there a motion to approve this
item?
>> thank you, roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes unanimously.
>> okay, thank you.
we will now --
>> thank you.
>> we will move on to item number 9
which is a resolution to authorize
county funding and agreements for
horizon recovery services, proposed
recovery center in burlingame, we will
also be taking item number 17, there
is a presentation by county executive
callagy and then we will be welcoming
both dr. Jei africa and alicio from
horizon.
>> thank you, president corzo and
members of the board.
I'll make this very quick and just go
through the background very quickly
also as you'll all remember, the site
of bay shore and mahler was the former
station run by samaritan house, we had
potential acquisition discussions
april 7, 2026 followed by the board
approval, the county purchased a
building on june 12, 2026 and then a
framework has been developed for
transfer approved by the board of
supervisors on july 2.
so, there's two issues here, the first
one and I'll have dr. Africa elaborate
on that if you desire is the
matching funds of the county of the
10%, when horizon recently went to the
department of health care services for
this grant, they were going for 20
million dollars and the match would
have been 2 million dollars of the
opiate settlement which was approved
by the board.
they ended up receiving 25 million, so
the grant we're asking for that to be
approved for another 500 thousand
dollars for that machining 10% of 2.5
million and again that would come out
of the opioid settlement fund.
in regards to 17, the outline of the
transaction, county would enter into a
ground lease with horizon to grant
immediate site control to horizon
for the portion of the mahler property
they would retain two building on the
parking area on the site for it
programs yet to be determined and
the lease would continue with the
county as we pursue the legal
subdivision of the land, ideally we
would complete that by 2027 and in that
way with this ground lease, horizon
could immediately commence
construction of a suitable new
facility on their portion during the
lease term, still be working out the
lease amount but whatever it was, it
would be applied to the purchase price
of 2.74 million for that portion of
the land.
the property would be restricted for
use as a rehabilitation facility for
up to 30 years and the reason we're
here before you today is because
horizon must demonstrate site control
to state of california for that
facility to be deemed feasible and for the
grant dollars to transfer to the
mahler site and certainly what we're
asking is for an intention to
demonstrate the board of supervisor's
approval of the horizon site control
and then the 10% match for the bishop
grant, a couple of areas we're
working through with horizon still is
-- I didn't have time to finish this
and present it to the board is the
easement on the property the exact
lease terms, indemnification clauses,
insurance issues and transfer taxes
and we'll be working in the near
future to do that, that's why I'm
asking by resolution to approve the
ground lease in form of a purchase and
sale agreement and delegate to me the
authority to modify and amend both
transaction documents as necessary and
effectuate the intent of the
transaction and to increase that
contribution to horizon by the 500
thousand to fully comport with the 10%
match of 25 million dollars by
contributing 2.5 million.
happy to answer any questions, dr.
africa is here and certainly horizon
is here to answer any questions you
may have.
>> okay, any questions from the board?
dr. Jei africa, would you like to say
anything, alicio is also here from
horizon.
>> this is an important opportunity
for us because we know there is a
critical need for these kinds of
programs in our community and so it
was the first issue of the new amount
is more of a timing issues, when we
applied, horizon was costing it out
and we didn't have the full amount.
in the final award which came months
after we submitted the application was
25 million, so basically it's the
adjustment.
the last portion is designating
-- allow our chief and her designee
to do all the negotiations as part of
this process.
so, thank you.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> hello, my name is alici ork, I
serve as the chief of operations.
I wanted to thank the board of
supervisors for their collaboration and
partnership to see this project
through for the needed services for
your community.
also with working with the executive
leadership has been an honor to work
in a process has in good faith and has
been nothing but gracious for the work
that has been put into our project.
I also wanted to thank the behavioral
health department for san mateo county
and the collaboration to see this
project come to light.
we did receive from the department of
health care services preliminary
designation to be able to relocate
into burlingame.
this is exciting news, we're excited
to be able to see this project move
forward and we'll be able to answer
any questions you might have regarding
the two items.
>> thank you so much.
with that, hearing no questions from
my colleagues, why don't we go ahead
and move on to public comment.
>> alright, I'll be taking public
comment on item 9 and 17, I do not
have speaker cards from chambers,
we'll be going to zoom, raise your
hand at this time.
final call for item 9 and 17, I have
natallia, please unmute and begin.
>> good morning, supervisors, I am
asking you today to immediately
withdraw our county's endorsement and
marcher grant to horizon recovery
services.
they operate a facility in san
mateo and that facility has an
egregious operating history.
since opening in 2019, this
facility has been suspended two times
for severe violations of the health
care code and the explicit
falsification records.
horizon has repeatedly jeopardized the
lives and health of our most
vulnerable residents and the county
has repeatedly lost services for an
extended period of time due to lengthy
suspicions and licensed revocation
proceedings.
allowing this organization to receiver
county back violates san mateo's
policies of ethical procurement.
horizon should be disqualified from
receiving public contracts.
please contact the grant agency and
formally notify that the information
provided by supervisor corzo, jei
africa regarding horizon's reliability
was misleading.
by continuing to back horizon fully
aware of the status, this board is
exposing our county to severe legal
liability which we cannot afford in
this time of budget deficit.
protect our residents, safeguard our
taxpayers and shield our county from
liability.
I ask that you rescind the
endorsement, cancel the grant,
petition the state to take care of
bhrs infrastructure grant and deny any
future contracts to horizon recovery
services, thank you.
>> thank you, that concludes public
comment.
>> okay, bringing it back to our
board for a motion.
>> I move approval of this item.
>> thank you, is there a second?
>> okay, second by supervisor speier.
>> I want to clarify that's both the
items, thank you.
>> I have one question.
we have addressed the concerns of
natallia as well, her concerns have
been addressed and we're not
overlooking anything.
>> I would defer to dr. Africa with
respect to that.
>> yes, just a reminder that the state
provides the licensing, so anything
that -- any provider that we work with
has to be licensed by the state and
the state certifies them so, we have
worked closely with horizon and
continue to work with them in ensuring
that none of the previous things have
happened and we have a staff that
monitors and audits all the things
that are concerning to us on a regular
basis.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> is it accurate they're on
probationary status presently?
>> right now they are because -- how
long are they on probationary we don't
know, so when they issue -- after a
disciplinary action, they go visit the
site in san mateo, they did announced
visit and all the things that they
were looking at, they sort of passed
with great colors, but they still need
to be on probation because I think
there's a length of time they have to
remain in that state.
so but they did visit this year.
>> I also served as the chief
compliance officer for two years with
the organization, so we have one year
left on the probationary period.
like major health care institutions
like hospitals, these situations do
happen, the state provides additional
watchful mon oring, we've been meeting
all those standards when they come to
visit with zero deficiency.
we make sure we assume responsibility
and provide the standard of care for
our clients.
>> alright.
what I want to know and it's a
question for county counsel, so what
happens worst case scenario you do --
you fail to fail forward and you have
another deficiency during your
probationary standard and the license
is revoked?
>> we would be able to address that
depending on what the deficiency is, I
can't speak exactly what would come
about but we are very watchful in
monitoring those item they're
specifically looking for to audit
ourselves, audit consistently on a
weekly basis.
our executive team is performing
current audits, we have our director
of operations during spot check
audits, we have an associate director
of compliance overseeing the
compliance manager that works at that
facility so it's constantly being
monitored.
we host a tuesday call with executive
leadership that I take part in to
monitor those audits and make sure
we're honoring the requirement from
the state.
we would be continuing on with
building out the project depending on
the state.
>> supervisor mueller, it's a good
question and one we've
contemplated also.
the fact that the state has awarded
horizon a 25 million dollar contract,
with the changes they've made, the
site is restricted for 30 years so if
they failed at some point in time, or
the state disallowed them to continue
or they for some reason went out of
business, it would still have -- that
site would still have to be used for
rehabilitation purposes and we would
then go look for another provider.
>> alright.
so, but there's no -- we're not left
in a position where there's any
enrichment to the provider.
>> I don't believe that would be the
case.
they would be in violation of the
terms of the grant for operating the
site and as county executive was
indicating, we would have remedies to
exercise.
>> so, I just want to jump in here
real quick and say that, you know, I
would challenge -- and I don't know,
dr. Jei, if you can speak to the norm
for this kind of licensing, this kind
of treatment and how often -- like
what's the norm for when issues arise
in this kind of treatment facility?
>> president corzo, I really respect
your line of questioning but you
jumped into my line of questioning.
>> you can pause for one
second, okay, I'm the chair of this
meeting now, when you're chair, you
can do it your way.
>> the chair exercises the right to
interpret another supervisor?
>> I'm going to finish my thought,
okay, thank you.
so, would you mind answering that
question real quick, please.
>> I'm not sort of familiar but these
are really difficult services
obviously, people are in need, so I
don't know the data, but do you know
any sort of data, how often these
things happen?
but again the state has a rigorous
compliance plan so, the mere fact they
awarded horizon meant that they had
faith that this organization can
provide the services.
it doesn't count the fact there were
some issues as few years ago and from
what we have seen that they have
addressed it, the state came
unannounced a few months ago and
chased no issues, so they still will
need to be on probation for a while
until that other year but that is a
normal practice that when your license
is suspended, you have time to recover
and address the issue and there's
usually some time length to do that,
they came to visit, my hope is they
probably will come again until that
next year, if they've proven they've
addressed the issue, it will go
forward.
>> and just to kind of like take your
point home a little bit more, horizon
delivers a lot of programming
in the entire bay area and this one
site had some issues but in the grand
scope of all of their programs and
services, the state still finds them
to be a really high quality service
provider, gave them a 25 million
dollar grant to run this program in
our county and they are on track to
get off of probation and continue to
provide high quality services.
supervisor mueller?
>> so, first I want to say it's
unfortunate that the president felt
the need to interject --
>> can you please just continue your
questions, let's just move on, okay.
>> no, I'm not going to.
as a point of order --
>> let's have a show then, go
ahead.
>> as a point of order when one
supervisor is addressing and in the
middle of a line of questioning, it's
not important that no supervisor
exercises power to that supervisor to
try to shape the discussion.
I really think we need as a board to
go ahead and recognize that decorum.
that being said, what I want to go
ahead and I'm not trying to argue
against this, I'm trying to make sure
we have the mechanism in place should
this contract -- I know you're on
probationary status, should somehow
your license be revoked that we have
the mechanism in place to make sure
the county is in good position to go
ahead and claw back any grant monies
or any funding that has already been
granted to the grantee, so do we have
any clawback provisions for any of
the funding we are providing this
project?
>> just in candor and I would have to
defer to anybody else that has any
information, I don't think the state
has the ability to claw has back, the
money is going to be used to move the
grant forward and there isn't any
mechanism for that.
>> and, supervisor, I think that money
would go towards the building of the
building, whoever came in subsequently
and purchased that building would then
take over that operation.
so, it would still be a good
investment if they -- if that other
provider came in and took over the
building.
>> okay.
>> you won't pass, supervisor speier?
>> just for a point of clarification,
when were you put on probation?
>> the current probation was two years
ago, I done have the exact time?
>> two years ago, you were put on
probation because there was a death at
the facility, is that correct?
>> the original occurrence was back in
2021.
and then there was a review of
information, during that time we were
trying to build our compliance
department out where there was a
deficiency found.
>> during this period of time when you
applied for the grant, the state was
aware of the fact that you were on
probation?
>> they were aware, yes.
>> as part of the application?
>> yes, dhcs was aware.
>> and they were confident in giving
you a 25 million dollar grant.
>> yes.
>> now, my question to you, county
executive, if in fact they were to
fail, they would still be the owner of
that property which would mean that
they would be able to receive rent
from a subsequent provider of that
service at that location for up to 30
years, correct?
>> I would defer to the county
attorney, I'm not that particular with
the terms of the proposed lease.
I know his office has been working on
that.
>> thank you, I think I'm going to ask
my colleague, mr. Fox, who was
involved in the drafting of the lease
and some of the other related
documents to speak to the specific
mechanisms at play here.
>> the ground lease as presently
drafted does provide they would have
site control and they would be
obligated to comply with the deed
restrictions and the terms of the
ground lease during the term of the
ground lease so it was being operated
as a rehab facility as described by
the state grant.
so, you are correct they would have
essentially landlord position if they
exercised the purchase option and they
would receive the income stream from a
tenant who would lease it and operate
it consistent with the state grant,
that's what's contemplated.
>> so, if they chose to charge an
exorbitant rent and we needed to make
sure we provided those services in the
county, we in the end would be picking
up the tab?
>> I am not an expert in how the
funding for rehabilitation services
would work under such a circumstance.
I believe that it would go to an rfp --
>> no, of course, but in the end, the
county would be paying for the
services rendered there and --
>> it would not be obligated to fund a
tenant who was using that particular
facility.
so, for example, if horizon decided to
charge an exorbitant rent, the county
would not be obligated to issue an rfp
to a replacement provider that sought
to use that particular site.
that's the downward pressure on horizon
charging exorbitant rent at that site.
there's no obligation on our part to
cite the facility there.
>> do we have the ability then to
require that if they were in a
position where they became the
landlord of a tenant who was providing
these similar services, that the rent
would have to be consistent with the
rental rate at that point in time, is
that a provision that could be put
into the agreement?
>> I think we could explore that.
I think that we have to explore a
little bit more to determine if the
state would take the facility back
because it's their grant money and
they're required to operate for 30
years at least.
so, we can explore the way the grant
is written.
additionally, we could also explore
putting in a sale provision of the
land if in fact their license is
revoked and they're unable to operate
that they would sell the property
within 90 days, we could explore that
also.
there's various things we can explore
to ensure we address your comfort
level with this.
>> alright, thank you.
>> so, I do believe we have a motion
and a second.
maybe -- but before we do a roll call
vote, I want to say for a second that,
you know, going back to when this
first came to our board, the first
vote that we took on this for the 2
million dollars that was on consent,
I want to publicly apologize for how
this board and for how our community
has treated horizon.
these are difficult services to
provide.
we talked earlier today about overdose
and drug treatment and we were very
celebratory and empathetic and then we
have a discussion about actually
providing services and the difficulty
of that and the tone is different and
that's not lost on me.
so, I just want to apologize for that.
roll call vote.
>> I would like to comment.
>> okay, go ahead.
>> so, again, we have to talk about
decorum.
first off, I think in going ahead and
talking about what safeguards are
within a contract should there be a
default is not to undermine the
services that are being provided and
that was not the intent of myself, I'm
sure that was mot intent of supervisor
speier.
to indicate that because we are
talking about what is contained in the
contract and the issue of default is
somehow a negative disparagement is
not accurate and we want -- obviously
we need these programs, they're very
important.
we're just simply trying to make sure
we protect those valuable dollars in
the event there is a default so we
continue to provide those services to
those who need them and so I don't
think there's the need for us to go
ahead and set up that sort of
political dialogue in the passing of
this, and I think for the dough core
rum and for this board to get along, I
think we should avoid that.
>> okay.
what I will say is that I have
attempted several times to pass a
governance handbook for this board and
I have attempted to have a discussion
about that and for some reason, we as
a board have been unable to do that.
I would gladly do that but that is not
what we are here to do right now.
I was speaking for myself when I made
my comments right now and I said what
I said.
let's do roll call, please.
>> through the chair, can I say
something because I brought it up and
I wanted clarity, we had somebody
bringing up some accusations that I
felt that we needed to just address
before moving on and I think we've
cone that, to have a better
understanding of what you're bringing
and what you're providing so it's not
cloudy going into this final decision,
so thank you for your presentation,
thank you for the clarity.
I think the community deserved that as
well.
>> and that's totally fair.
thank you.
supervisor speier?
>> I would hope that when we speak, we
don't speak on behalf of the board if
the board has not made it clear that
there's an apology that is appropriate.
secondly, I hope we've learned a
lesson from this whole experience that
putting a 2 million dollar grant on
consent is not advisable, that it
should be on the regular agenda so
that it can be properly vetted by the
entire board moving forward.
>> supervisor gauthier, I apologize, I
didn't mention you in my comment.
>> no problem.
>> it was inadvertent.
>> roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes unanimously for item
9 and 17.
>> we will move on to item number 9
and that is -- one second here.
>> I think we're on 10.
>> item 10 is an a resolution
authorizing an agreement with baker
places and adult crisis residential
services and we have dr. Africa here
to present this item.
>> again, thank you again for having
me here, but really the item for
consideration is a three year
agreement with baker places in an
amount of 8 million 316 thousand 934
to provide crisis residential servies
to our county residents.
if you remember last november, redwood
house closed, decreased the number of
adult residential beds we have, we
currently have 13 through our
partnership with serenity house, we
obviously want to continue to have
more adult residential treatment beds
and baker place through an rfp
understood the philosophy that we
wanted.
our hope is that as redwood house 2.0
will be rebuilt, we will find an
alternative or temporary so we can
have for of these beds.
the goal again is to be more
[inaudible] redwood house only focused
on mental health, now with sb43, we
want to be able to address people who
have mental health and substance use
conditions.
the staffing will be 24/7, they're
really looking at providing beds for
about 16 severely mentally ill over 18
year-olds and hopefully again baker
places will be able to look for a
location for us and provide the
temporary services as we build
redwood house 2.0.
is I'm happy to answer any questions.
>> thank you, any questions from the
board?
>> yes.
>> supervisor speier?
>> madam president, I have one
concern, we are basically giving this
entity the power to find a location,
sign an agreement and provide services
without knowing where the location is
and I don't want us to be in another
situation where there's not
transparency, where the community is
not aware and where we have given
carte blanche authority to an entity
without having the understanding that
they have done the due diligence with
the community and with the local city,
so I would like to see the agreement
amended to reflect that.
>> we definitely learned from the
lesson before and part of the contract
stipulation would be through the -- to
be clear about what baker places will
need in partnership with us and the
community to ensure the issues that
were brought up before don't happen
again.
we are also in the stipulation being
very clear kind of like a fee for
service model, what are the things
we're going to pay baker places for
versus just a blan ke sort of
contract, so we're being very, very
clear the kind of deliverables in this
process, but they would not engage
with us obviously if there is no
contract to kind of work to --
together.
>> I don't think that answers my
question.
does the agreement have a provision
where there would be a public airing
of the location with the community to
assess the appropriateness of the
location?
>> sorry if I wasn't very clear.
we are going to put nit the
stipulation that community processes,
communication, there will be a plan
that will be shared across the county
about what baker places will be doing
and looking at for the location, so
yes, we will put that there.
>> so, if they're going sign a
contract with a third party for the
property before that's even known it
sounds like based on way this is
drafted.
>> we are looking around, they are
the experts finding a place that meets
the criteria for a crisis residential
treatment facility but we can put --
and maybe I can work with our county
counsel to ensure that, but they will
not even engage in this process
without a contract.
we can be very clear about expectation
of that contract including a community
process, engaging the community, you
know, scouting the location, so we can
be very clear about that.
>> I have a question after you're done.
>> so, are you done with your
questions, supervisor speier?
okay.
supervisor canepa has a question.
I have some questions as well.
supervisor canepa?
>> great, I think that's a very fair
point.
we've had issues sometimes in
communities when it's come to land
use, right, especially around what we
just heard earlier.
so I would like to understand, I think
-- what's the plan, so my concern is
-- and I know you're going to go back
to staff and work with it, we want to
push and move these projects forward
into communities.
one of the things I would suggest and
I think I've talked to the county
executive about this is when we go
into communities and cities, you know,
we should really engage with the
council, the city council, city
council should pass a resolution
saying, look, we're in support of
where this is, once we get buy-in a
the council level, they're going to be
doing the community report.
what ends up happening is we put these
facilities in communities that are
not in unincorporated land and we find
ourselves sort of like jello.
I mean, because we're putting these
facilities and there isn't any sort
of input from the community.
the reason I say that, it protects the
county because the county now can say
with these different facilities, look,
we've gone to the city executive,
we've gone to the city council, we've
gotten buy-in.
I mean, what I'm concerned about, dr.
jei, is that what we're currently
doing right now needs to change.
we have all this money through the
state, through the pass seaming of is
it measure --
>> bhsa.
>> prop 1, we have this influx of
money, but we're not -- we're really
not doing that sort of outreach.
I don't want to relive the mahler site
again, it's complicating and confusing
and I think it's the best government
practice to say to the city, we've
identified this site, do you support
it.
that's just public policy 101 and it
would save us a lot of problems as we
move in with all this prop 1 must be.
thank you.
>> so, I have a different opinion here.
I don't think that it is -- it is or
should be our decision to influence
where these sites are located.
it shouldn't be political, it should
be about what is best for the people
receiving these services and providers
know how to make those decisions, not
politicians.
it shouldn't become a spectacle in a
public forum in this way, it becomes
really ugly.
so, I do think there should be some
kind of community engagement but I
don't think that -- I don't think it
should be like a requirement written into a
contract that -- I just get concerned
if we write it into this contract,
then we have to write it into every
single contract and that delays and
creates more and more hurdles and it's
completely contradictory to the
intention of proposition 1 and it
creates local practice that is in
complete opposition to the very
existence of prop 1 and what the
voters intended when they passed that.
what happened with horizon in san
mateo is obviously not ideal either.
it is election season.
it was election season.
it's still election season in that
district right now.
guess what, the two people at the
center of that are on the ballot for
election right now.
I think it's a very bad idea for us to
tread water in that direction, I think
it's dangerous place to go.
I think maybe we can have a more
thoughtful discussion about this
as a board but I would ask our
board now -- we can talk more about
it, I don't think this this should go
into this contract right now but we
should -- I think we talked about
having a public process for how we as
a county purchase property in
incorporated areas, like let's have
that discussion and I would ask county
executive callagy to bring that back
as an agendized item for us to have a
formal ask using and creating a
process that we then share with our
city partners and that extends to our
vendors and properties that they
purchase but we should not do it now
in this contract at random.
so, I would propose that and just
wondering how my colleagues feel about
that.
>> so, it's clear as mud to me, dr.
jei, the process by which you're
indicating there will be a
stipulation, so I'm struggling with
this.
we're boeing to -- going to stipulate
with them in the contract, that
they're going to go and do community
outreach process but to what end?
>> so I think what I'm hearing is the
concern for example what happened at
horizon that we didn't engage the
community, we didn't engage the city
council, we didn't tell them in
advance, so one of the things we're
going to do which is part of the
community planning process when we are
building facilities that are needed, we
tell people about the services, we
answer their questions.
we give them an overview of what's the
process-- what's the process in place
to keep people safe, we're going to
work closely with baker places to do
that.
one of the things we'd like to do in
their action to look for a location,
we would just do that in the beginning
as well, so not wait in the last
moment but really in this process,
already partner with the entities that
are in that district or in the city.
>> dr. Africa, what happens if during
that process the community concerns
that might be raised or the city
council concerns or the city planning
concerns come back with substantive
issues that affect with good reason
the placement of the facility?
>> like any other place that we have,
we try to really mitigate their
concerns.
so I also want to just make sure that
what we're trying to do is just find a
temporary location for -- as we
rebuild the redwood house which is
already a crisis residential in
redwood city.
that's the ultimate goal is that that
is to be another crisis residential.
right now we would be trying to engage
to find a location temporarily so we
increase the beds from serenity house
which is 13 to another 12, so when we
are scouting for the location, we
would engage with the community and
the city council to say this is what
we're trying to do.
now, there are certain stipulations
for these residential facilities or
these facilities that we're building
that we are allowed to do with -- I
don't know how I would say like not
necessarily input but state
regulations that allow us to build
these facilities because of the state
funding for example, similar to the
bishop grant.
>> the only avenue left to the board
would be to try to mitigate whatever
concerns were raised by the
stakeholders through that community
process, there would be no ability
for the board or the county to
indicate to the applicant that they
cannot proceed that the location?
>> I'm going to ask county counsel,
john, if he can a address that.
my fear is every location will not be
suitable for any treatment facility
because of the what is happening, so
we want to really partner as best as
we can to answer the community's
concerns, that really is my fear, but
maybe john can answer.
>> before we hand it over to county
counsel nibbelin, county executive
callagy would like to share some
thoughts.
>> I think if I may interject here
and just set the record straight.
for every single property we purchase,
we go to the city manager and to the
city council.
I would say that with the exception of
the last purchase in foster city where
we didn't go to the city council but
the city manager was made aware and
presumably the city council was aware.
typically we sit down with the
councilmembers and try to educate them.
this is a process that has always gone
on and has always been utilized but to
the point that you're trying to
make, this has become so politically
charged in every community that it's
easier for councils to say no and not
here and I've heard is same thing
many, many times, these services are
warranted, great services but not just
here, wrong location.
so, that is what we're up against and
these are vital services we're
required to provide.
it will have to be at the end, which
I'm happen appoint to work with the
board on this, this board has veto
right and it has to be approved by
this board no matter what the property
is and hopefully this board would put
you in a difficult situation as it did
in millbrae and other areas but the
board voted to move forward with
that project in those areas, so I
think that certainly that could be
done in this instance too, that
whatever the location is that there
needs to be board approval for it to
move forward.
but I just wanted again to rei rate
that we have always talked to the
city's prior -- in fact, many cases
before even this board knew that we
were looking at those locations
because we wanted their input before
we came to the board and hen we polled
the board and determined if there was
support, that's the way it's always
worked but obviously we need to modify
it.
what we're doing now is simply not
working.
>> and I thank you for that, county
executive callagy, just to finish what
I was indicating was -- and with my
question, then, I don't think the
board needs to self-impose on itself
the inability to go ahead and exercise
that discretion.
it's not like burlingame was cheering
when we put the facility in burlingame.
I had many outreaches from folks who
were unhappy it went in burlingame who
I'm still interacting with on the fact
that horizon is in burlingame but the
decision made the decision that was
the more appropriate place for the
facility and the facility as of today
is going forward.
so I don't think -- I think the board
can make the decision appropriately
where to go ahead and place facilities.
so, I would like to see the board
retain discretion.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> great, thank you very much.
the challenge here and I don't think
this is in your area is really the
planning aspect of it.
mike, what I would encourage staff to
do is to really work, the la quinta
was very challenging.
I think we're finding ourselves in a
position where we're always behind the
8 ball, we need to work with our
planning directors at the city level
to identify with our real estate
division what are the locations they
think makes sense and if we get out
ahead of that and we work and
understand what they've identified, I
think that will alleviate a lot of our
issues.
you know, I think land use -- I'm very
-- maybe it's very old school, if you
are coming to build something in san
mateo, my main goal is to see what we
can do to have the conversations,
bring people together, say to them in
honest conversations, say we worked
with our planning staff, here's sites
we've identified, we should be able
to through deliberation and discourse,
the city council should be able to
say, hey, we have the best information
beside us, our planning staff has
identified plan alternative a, b or c,
but by doing that, it gets us to a
better outcome and it would alleviate
a lot of the issues that are before us.
I'm not convinced, mike, I'm not
convinced that every city is going to
say no.
I'm not convinced that every city
council's going to say no.
what I am convinced is that if we're
able to bring them along early, then
we would avoid the issues we had with
la quinta and mahler, so I hear
everyone's comments but what we're
doing now and you recognize it and
you're closing, it's not working, it's
tension, it's looking -- we're looking
disjointed.
we need to find
better processes and I'm glad you've
addressed that we can do better in that
area, I think it's needed.
>> and if I can respond, supervisor,
going back to la quinta, we did
expensive outreach, we had more
meetings than anywhere else, we
had sit-downs with the city council,
we had city council meetings and yet
that still fell apart, yet the board
voted to move forward with that 3-2
and that was the board's desire to
move forward with that.
so, the problem being and we've heard
that before is like let's help you
find a different spot.
those buildings aren't for sale, it's
not a good buy for the county and
we're looking at trying to get the
best buy for the county, there's no
government zoning area in any city
plan that I'm aware of that designates
an area for government to be in.
so, these are all the challenges when
we're trying to find a place to move,
we're trying to find a location that
suits our needs.
I'm trying to work with the city as
best we can but the interests are
not always congruent and that's where
we find ourselves often trying to work
through that incongruency.
>> and I agree with you, I think the
la quinta was somewhat different,
we did the outreach after the site was
already celebrities, what I'm
suggesting -- selected, what I'm
suggesting is to work with the
planning department initially to
identify sites, not to have a site put
on a city and then say, hey, here you
have to deal with it.
no, what we want to do is get out
ahead of it, work with the planning
staff right away, I identified
a site on el camino real, the
city planner, they support that.
to me, that would be the best approach
to get out ahead of it, so thank you.
>> thank you.
so, --
>> I have a question.
>> I want to make a comment real quick
and I'll hand it over to you.
so, I would like to add to further
county executive callagy's point that
often the areas that many cities and
at times residents would point to as
being appropriate for some of these
sites are least appropriate for the
residents and future patients of these
sites and sometimes they're
commercial, sometimes they're closest
to the highest risk areas where it's
the worst place for these residents to
be.
often they are historically redlined
communities and I won't even get into
the like racial implications of that
but I do think that we shouldn't
ignore that context and that context is
still very present today and we
shouldn't be blind to it.
it's still very present and if we're
not going to be real about that, then
-- I'll just stop there, but yeah, I
know supervisor speier has a comment
to make but I would like to vote on
this item and then we will be
convening to closed session.
we will have lunch and then we'll come
back, so supervisor speier?
>> so, as I look at this contract, on
page 12, it says contractor in
collaboration with bhrs will lease or
buy an appropriate facility in central
location in san mateo county.
prior to opening, a contractor and
contractor will do a walkthrough and a
contractor will have written approval
from the county.
I'm not prepared to vote in favor of
this because I don't think it has
language that reflects what we've been
talking about.
I either would like to see us post own
this and change the language or I'm
indicating that I will be a no vote.
>> okay.
supervisor canepa?
>> when is -- through the clerk, when
is our next board meeting?
>> september 15.
>> what I would do and I don't know if
I can support it today, I understand
that there's a funding component.
what I would ask is we continue this
item to the next meeting so that
something can be brought back to us
from staff that sort of addresses
board members' concerns.
I'm willing to support a continuance
on this item.
>> okay.
>> I make the motion to continue the
item.
>> okay, let's take public comment and
then we will do a roll call vote.
>> okay, I do not have speaker cards
for item number 10.
if you would like to make a comment
online, please raise your hand at this
time.
final call for item number 10.
I do have one hand raised.
leticia, please begin.
>> given the fact it's a temporary
location, again, so apologies, so I
serve on the behavioral health
commission and I just am in full
support of not delaying and I feel
very -- not delaying this matter
further.
I feel that just thinking about a
quote that comes to mind is that often
the price of inaction is far greater
than the cost of making a mistake.
however, I will not say that this is a
mistake given the discussions we have
been having.
I don't see that the risk is high with
respect to what dr. Africa has -- how
he has responded to the concerns of
the board and I am in full support of
certainly just as a community member,
and as an advocate for mental health
services of which more and more we are
learning that there really isn't
sufficient funding for the increase in
need of mental health service,
substance use services in our nation
and certainly in our local community
so again I would caution that, you
know, the delay and my support is to
move forward as a community member, as
a mental health advocate and as a
member as I sit before you serving the
board of supervisors on the behavioral
health commission, thank you.
>> and that concludes public comment.
>> thank you, I would like to make a
substitute motion to approve the item as
presented.
is there a second?
okay, roll call vote.
>> on the first motion.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> and president corzo?
>> no.
>> motion passes to continue this
item.
>> okay, we will now move on to closed
session and we will reconvene after
closed session.
thank you.
>> the time is 12:07 p.m..
( meeting adjourned to closed session).
>> the time is 1:01, madam president, we
can call the meeting back to order with
all supervisors present.
>> it is 1:01 p.m., we are going
squeeze in item 11 before we start our
study session which is item number 6,
let's take a quick vote to amend the
agenda.
and we have something to report out
of closed session.
>> in addition to amend the order of
the agenda, I wanted to report out on
a unanimous 5-0 vote, the board
pursuant to 54947.1 of california
government code approved the
initiation of three items of
litigation, the action of the defendants,
the respondents, the particular forum and
other particulars shall once were
disclosed upon any earnings upon inquiry
unless to do so would jeopardize the
agency's parties and would jeopardize
its ability to negotiate existing
settlement.
>> thank you so much.
I would like to -- I motion to amend
the agenda to move item number 11
before item number 6.
there's a second by supervisor canepa,
roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> and president corzo?
>> yes.
>> considering the lateness of the
day, I would like to move 19 to
consent even though we've already
taken up the consent agenda, can we move
that back to consent, I originally
lifted it from consent to
regular.
>> I'm sorry, the question?
>> we have an item that's on the
regular agenda.
I would like to make a motion.
>> okay.
>> second.
>> to accept the report.
>> okay, roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> with that, we have moved item
number 19 -- we already approved the
consent, I believe we have just
approved item number 19 with this vote.
and we will now hear item number 11
and it will be quick, so that we can
move quickly on to our study session.
thank you, director hodges.
>> yes.
good afternoon, president corzo,
honorable board members, mr. Callagy,
mr. Nibbelin, mr. Eli, I'm ray hodges,
the department of house, and I'm
pleased to be joined by doh, the
affordable housing fund is the flagship
program by providing capital
subsidy to affordable housing
throughout the county through a
rigorous competitive process.
the fund of competition were launched
back in 2019 with boomerang funds and
your board has directed a source of
resources, arpa and cares act dollars
and some other resources.
the affordable housing fund is also
the means by which our department
disburses other state and local funds
we compete with whenever possible.
so, across our first 13 rounds, san
mateo county has supported 72
affordable housing developments with a
total of 5122 affordable homes.
3142 are complete and occupied by low
income families, seniors, public
employees, veterans, farm workers,
persons with disabilities and
formerly unhoused persons with
families.
790 are under construction with
another 1190 are in predevelopment, we
know those projects have commitments
from us but we know our cities are
shaping additional projects earlier in
predevelopment right now.
and this speaks to one of the primary
goals of the fund which is helping the
county's 21 jurisdictions preserve
affordable homes and thereby helping
them make meaningful progress towards
rhna housing production targets in the
state.
given the amount of funding we have
available to administer versus the
demand we see in the competition every
year, our team strives to stretch the
county dollars as far as possible to
maximize the number of affordable
homes we can support in the 21
jurisdictions.
you can see here the county is
invested a total of 364 million
dollars in those 5100 affordable homes
but that investment allowed us to
access 3.2 billion dollars in private
financing and subsidy from state,
federal government and fill
philanthropy to produce and preserve
affordable homes but to provide jobs
and construction in the property
management, supportive services,
financial services and more.
right now to date, every dollar of
measure k proceeds invested in the
fund is leveraged $16 of other
resources.
so, in round 14, we had just over 29
million dollars available to allocate,
19 million dollars in new measure a
funds, 12 million dollars returned to
the county through changes to
previously awarded projects, 5 until
mental health services, and 100
thousand dollars in county impact fees.
we received ten applications
requesting 70 million dollars,
one did not meet threshold
requirements but what you have before
you today in a moment here is the
recommendations of doh staff and our
housing and community development
committee which held a public hearing
on these projects last month.
the 9 applications that met threshold
were located in 9 communities across
the county shown on the map, the 6
highest scoring projects recommended for
funding are located in the city's in
bold on this list.
there we go.
south san francisco, half moon bay,
san carlos, redwood city,
unincorporated north fair oaks and the
town of portola valley.
three projects were not awarded to an
award because of lower scores and
limiting the subsidy, they are all
good projects and we suspect they'll
approach us for support in the future.
so, staff and the housing and
community development committee
recommend awards to six projects, they
sum to 459 affordable homes in five
new construction rental projects and
one first time ownership project.
these six requested a total of over 37
million in capital financing through
staff's underwriting and scoring, we
recommended smaller awards to two of
the projects but were confident they
can still move into construction with
that award.
none of the 9 projects requested the
available mhsa funding so we are
awarding over 24 million dollars today
and will put that remaining image out
through a more focused over
-the-counter supplemental nofa.
critical goals of the funds is to
provide affordable homes for
populations essential to your board's
priorities, in this round, these six
projects will provide a minimum of 24
units of supportive housing for
people supporting homelessness, 76
homes with persons with an
intellectual or development
disability, 39 homes for senior farm
workers, 24 for county and other
public employees and 193 units for
families who need two and three
bedroom homes.
and I'll turn here to rocio for quick
details for projects.
>> thank you, ray.
>> welcome.
>> I'm going to talk now about 555
kelly, this is located in the heart of
half moon bay close to health clinic,
pharmacy, grocery stores, public
transit and agricultural employment.
it will have 40 senior farm worker
units and at least two of these units
will be assigned for senior farm
workers experiencing homelessness.
the property will have a community
resource center that will provide
services for the entire farm worker
community.
it has secured significant city and
state funding including 13.3 million
dollars award from the farmer program
and 2.76 million from the infill
infrastructure grant and a city
commitment for 3.1 million dollars, 1.4
million comes from arpa a award to the
city.
the project requested 7.3 million
dollars and their recommendation is
measure k award of 6.5 million.
this recommendation is conditioned on
the project working with the county
secure operating subsidy and
applying for 9% tax credits in
early 2027.
staff and hcd, housing and community
development committee are also aware
of a local initiative on the november
ballot that will overturn the city's
council approval of the project if
passed.
should the ballot initiative be
successful, the housing with the
developer and the city to discuss
appropriate next steps that the moment.
>> I'm sorry to interrupt you, I
thought we could do this item really
quickly before the study session but
can you just tell me how much more
time you think you need?
>> [inaudible]
>> I'm sorry, we could also just move
it back to after but the study
session's probably going to take like
two hours.
>> madam chair --
>> this is very important.
>> madam chair --
>> you're doing a great job, rocio.
>> we have the items, we reviewed
them.
I know we've been pretty diligent on the
package.
I appreciate staff moving forward in
an expeditious matter, I'm ready to
vote the item now and I'm willing to
make the motion.
>> if you have questions, I'm happy to
answer them.
>> I motion.
>> there's a motion, a second.
>> we do need to do public comment.
wait, did you want to --
>> I just wanted to just -- just
because walnut street was covered by
the daily journal, we've had extensive
discussions with the city council
here, midpen and resolved those issues
with satisfaction to the council,
now that's on the record, thank you.
>> okay.
thank you so much, rocio, I think this
is your first time presenting.
you've done really well.
>> thank you.
>> let's do public comment.
>> alright, we're doing public comment
on item 11, I do have one speaker card
from chambers is holden wiseman still
here?
alright.
>> president corzo, members of the
board of supervisors, thank you very
much, all I want to do is be brief and
say thank you for your consideration
of our project in portola valley,
those units are a first for us,
building on a church property so
that's a unique property we're very
happy to put forward in front of you
today and receive funding from that.
I'll pick up director hodge's invitation
to come back at a lower date on other
projects we'll have in the county and
really appreciate your consideration
today.
thank you.
>> alright, thank you.
we'll go to zoom for public comment on
item number 11, if you would like to
make a comment, raise your hand at
this time, final call.
we do have one hand raised and that
anne, please unmute and begin.
>> thank you.
I just wanted to say that the project
at 555 kelly, it is my understanding
that it has to go to voters and I
don't know if that will or will not be
approved, I have no idea, but I am
still requesting that cypress point
and moss beach be designated for
senior housing and there are already
places for farm workers at that site.
this is something that will be
completed within a year and people
could be moving in at that time
instead of having to wait and find out
whether or not this will be approved
so I just wanted to put that out
there.
also there are still safety problems
with cypress point.
there is no sidewalk for children to
walk on to school, there is the dirt,
it is just a dirt path with one side
is a ravine, the other side is
highway 1, with the lack of funds come
frg the vehicle license fees, that may
never get taken care of and this is a
great risk for families with children.
so, it is a much better site for
seniors and I please ask that you
consider that at this time.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and that concludes public comment for
item number 11.
>> thank you, supervisor mueller?
>> yes, colleagues, with respect to
the 555 kelly project in half moon
bay, while it is true the project is
currently facing a referendum, it was
passed by the city council and the
current time, state of california, it
is threatening litigation to the city
of half moon bay for not complying.
I think we should move forward to
empower the city of half moon bay to
become in compliance with the housing
element should the referendum fail or
should the referendum pass, not pass,
and it fails -- sorry, referendums --
the referendum needs pass for it to go
forward.
if it fails, and the project isn't
going forward, we still need to put
the city of half moon bay in the
proper positioning to negotiate with
the state of california over that
potential lawsuit, so either way, it's
very important that this funding move
forward today.
>> I see a lot of my -- does anyone
else want the make a comment.
we have a motion and a second I
believe, roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes unanimously.
>> now we will begin item number 6,
our long awaited juvenile justice
study session, with that, I will hand
it over to supervisor speier for
welcome and purpose of the study
session.
>> thank you, madam president.
this is as one writer said the
historic study session and one that is
very important and one that I think
we're going to learn a lot from.
at the outset, I just want to say the
good news is that juvenile detainees
have declined over the years.
today we have 40 detainees at the youth
service center down from several
hundred a decade ago.
we're going to hear today from
probation chief john keene and from
the district attorney's office, the
private defender's office and a judge
and from community partners providing
services to the youth.
and we will hear from the jjdpc chair
joanna as well, I have made two
visits to hillcrest, the most recent
last night, where I sat with 6 or 7
detainees, some under 18, some over.
it was an enjoyable gathering and I
learned a great deal.
I think there's improvements that can
be made but I also think that the
conditions there have improved.
these are the words of the detainees,
and that the food has improved and
these are the words of the detainees,
so there's some good news here, there's
some need to improve news and we look
forward to hearing from all of you.
>> thank you, supervisor speier.
I will start by reiterating my lived
experience and my actual first points
of contact with our juvenile justice
system growing up in this community.
and that is through my experience
being the younger sister of my brother
that passed away when I was 16.
I was I think under 10 when he was a
teen and he was incarcerated in our
juvenile hall when it was called
hillcrest and was located at 21 tower
road and this was at a time where our
county was charging families for
their youth being in detention and our
family was very low income and I
remember calling into a board of
supervisors meeting during covid and
making a comment via zoom and then I
joined this board and I remember
having a conversation with former
supervisor slocum where he mentioned
remembering, hearing a public speaker
refer to a time where families were
charged for their family member being
incarcerated and I remember him
feeling like -- he took that a little
bit personally and that made me feel
some empathy because I can understand
now being in this role how we answer
for a system where decisions were made
decades prior that we had no role in
but we are now in these seats making
decisions about that same system and
we have to deal with the impacts of
decisions made years prior.
and it's a great responsibility and I
have since have supported other family
members in going through the same
system and it is through this lens
that I bring a lot of care and
compassion for our young people and I
have also seen and gone back to the
ysc, the youth services center with a
cousin of mine who was incarcerated
when she was invited to come back and
speak to incarcerated youth from her
lived experience having graduated from
san jose state, from having become a
mother and changed her life around,
having positive healthy relations as
a consult, positive, healthy
relationships with staff who do
workout programs with youth, now
adults and have positive
relationships, right.
positive friendships.
so, this system at times has caused
harm but that's not all that it's done.
a lot of youth have been rehabilitated,
a lot of improvements have
been made and I think that it is our
duty to kind of honor all of it and
respect all of it and my intention
with this study session is that we all
see each other, that we center the
youth and that we kind of hit a reset
button and start rowing in the same
direction in that we value each other's
work, we respect each other's work
and we stop fighting each other
because all that it does is waste our
energy and it doesn't serve the youth.
so, that is my purpose for this study
session and I'm grateful that we're
all here and I hope that you share
that purpose with me.
with that, I would like to welcome
chief keene to share the state of
juvenile justice system in our county.
welcome, chief keene.
>> I was willing to cede my time to
the previous presentation if you
needed those two hours but I figure we
need to move forward with this.
thank you for the opportunity to be
here with you today, honorable board
of supervisors, mr. Callagy, mr.
nibbelin, mr. Eli, our public, our
department, system partners who are
here, our cbo's who are here to
support this conversation today.
so I'm very happy for the opportunity
to really have a broad conversation
about the state of the system, the
state of where we are but also to
level set and hopefully to reset some
of the narratives and information
that's been put out into the ether
which has a detriment impact itself.
the words we use matter.
words have meaning.
when adults intentionally mislead or
misrepresent information, it hurts
rehabilitation.
it doesn't help it.
while a much smaller population exists
at the hall today, they have much more
significant challenges that can be
much more difficult to serve.
many of you heard me say that
rehabilitation presumes that people
were already in a good place when we
met them.
the for some reason they fell off and
we reached down and picked them up and
dust them off and they're good go.
the reality is the vast majority of the
young people and the young adults in
the system that we work with didn't
start in a good place.
they're starting in a place with deficits
that exist that require almost
ablation, building pathways that
didn't exist before, so as we think
about that, young people need those
who choose to do this work and choose
to be in the system to have a
positive transparent behavior pattern.
my goal today is to provide you with
factual information about the role of
function, administration, regulation
of and operation of the probation
department, specifically at the youth
services center.
policies, regulations, statutes are
the foundation for which we operate,
not ideology.
we implement the law as it is, not how
others would wish for it to be or how
others would hope for it to be.
this is overseen by our juvenile
institution as well as our housing
services.
this aids youth to transition back
into the community.
our vision statement here is that we're
going to help make youth have more
positive and life-changing choices
when they return to the community,
that's our vision statement.
that's our hope for every single young
person who walks in our door
regardless of how they got there.
all the policies and rules are in
place that has contributed for them
being in our space and hopefully to a
pro social mindset and mindset on life
which comes with a rehabilitation of
success.
there are two separate groups at the
facility right now, those that are in
our prep program, the secondary
group that's in our soarr, prep
program are going to be there for a
minimum of 60 days, some of them have
had dispositions, some of them are
there because of probation violations
and our older population which is
our soarr population, this is as
response to senate bill 823 of youth
that would have otherwise went to
state facilities back to local
counties, it required for the
probation department and the county to
develop programs that mirrored or
similar to those at the state system.
this was a difficult lift and one
did not ask for, the way juvenile
hall was built and established
chased to be turned on its head's ends.
we are driving a car and changing
tires at the same time and looking out
for potholes along the way.
the population over the last two years
have been consistent, you will see
there's been slight spikes this year
in our overall numbers, the numbers
themselves have been consistent on
average all the way through.
so our population which is our older
population, initially when we first
built program back when senate bill
823 passed, the thought is we might
get five or six youth that would be in
this category being supported.
the reason we thought that is because
we were low users of djj, it has been
always to keep young people here at
home, to send folks to djj and
not to overly place things removing
them from home.
we have always tried to find ways to
support youth here.
this board and prior iterations of the
board have been supportive of that
process, however it serve as detriment
when our funding streams were putting
together.
unlike many other counties who had
long historical trends of sending
people to djj, our money that we
received as a result of that was
impacted by that.
we received a lot less than
surrounding counties around us.
so, one of the main things that's
important today, to talk about a
system as it stands, how we were put
together, what our goals are and the
way in which we do our business.
detention reform really started in the
late 90's, the goal was to look at
large numbers of youth that were
inside facilities and understanding
it was a good chance a large
percentage of those young people did
not need to be in custodial settings
to receive services.
san mateo county like many of the
other bay counties started to look at
what could they do differently to
provide a level of support to
young people.
this started in this county around
2005, the county put together
stakeholder meetings and groups and
looked at who could provide the best
level of services for young people at
the same time building a new system
that would really be more focused on
putting more young people at home and
less people in detention where
possible.
on the screen you see several of the
things that are hallmarks of san mateo
county's focus on only having young
people in detention as a last resort.
you will see the building of the ysc,
you mentioned the old juvenile hall at
tower road, that was an antiquated
system and building that had been in
place for a long time.
this looked at how can we put together
services that are not only best for
young people but helped their
families, the concept of youth
services building is around bringing
things together under one roof so
you're not sending families all over
the state and county to receive
support.
that was the first step in that
process.
the juvenile hall turns 20 this year
in september, so it is a well lived
building that's been around for a
while.
at the time it was one of the newer
models of what people had hoped for
detention in terms of the changes.
this county also had an assessment
center process where it evaluated
young people to determine who needed
to be in the facility and who didn't.
I'm proud of the fact when I came in
2013, we focused on creating diversion
programs.
myself, educator, police chiefs and
other folks in the community spent a
week in georgetown to learn how to
build a diversion program that was
going to be multisystemic and
multifunctional both outside of the
system as well as in, as we created a
cohort of divisions, many of which
still today we are fortunate to fund a
deputy probation officer who works
out of the city of san mateo
who provides diversion service outside in
the community.
also diversion is now offered in
school settings, there was changes in
discipline practices which also helped
to reduce the number of young
people in the facility.
we married the emission criteria
overtime.
in the past when young people would
make it to the hall for a variety of
low level offences and sometimes
parents who decided they want to
teach their young person a lesson and
drop them off for a weekend, we became
strict in the criteria in turnover who
could come into facility.
focusing on those offenses that really
were issues of public safety.
and I have to say also too that this
particular cause has oftentimes caused
challenges between us and some of our
local police department friends
because they are frustrated by the
fact we don't take more young people
in, that we are very focused on only
taking in the young people that
we are statutorily mandated to so it
does create fiction, my superintendent
takes calls trying to negotiate how
they can drop more people off and
lastly we talked about the utilization
of state funds for preventative
activities, this county has
always invested tens of millions of
dollars in prevention.
in many of your districts, you will
find local programs at school based
levels or community levels that are
funded that are focused that young
people don't become part of the system.
you'll hear me today to refer to a lot
of online materials you can look up,
we have comprehensive reporters in the
juvenile coordinating council report,
those will outline the utilization of
tens of millions of dollars focused in
community settings and its schools and
others to focus on ensuring that young
people do not come into the system
unnecessarily.
and if you wouldn't mind, give me a
second, I want to play this video, in
terms of how the process works and
coming into the facility.
( playing video ).
>> what is the book, admission and
classification process at the ysc, the
san mateo county probation department
has a legal and standardized process
for receiving youth into the juvenile
facility.
the admittance of youth into the
facility is conducted in a respectful,
humane, trauma-sensitive and
culturally cognizant manner.
to start, the arresting agency is
responsible for transporting the minor
to the youth services center and
provides the booking staff with the
necessary arrest documents.
this documentation is essential for
smooth transfer process and ensures
compliance with legal requirements.
prior to admitting the youth,
institution staff reviews the
admissions paperwork and determine if
the youth should be admitted.
youth under the age of 12 years will
not be accepted into custody unless
there are allegations of murder or
certain sexual assaults.
upon admission, youth are read their
miranda rights, admission staff
inventories to youth's personal
belongings and issues with basic
clothing, bedding, hygiene items and
offer food upon arrival.
parents or guardians are informed via
phone, they are allowed two calls
within admittance unless physically
impossible.
housing classifications are determined
by age, maturity, sophistication,
emotional stability, program needs,
public safety considerations,
medical/mental health conversations,
gender and gender identity of the
youth.
factors such as compatibility with
other youth, size, non-association
orders, protective custody orders
and gang affiliation may also
influence housing assignments.
( video complete ).
>> I think it's important to emphasize
that there's an actual legal process
by which how we take young people in,
so it's not this kind of willie nilly
approach, I heard people say probation
incarcerates kids, that's not our
function, we don't go to the street
and scoop kids off the street.
there has to be probable cause for
police departments to bring young
people into the facility.
what you have in front of you and I
know it's small print so I would
quickly say it really outlines the
legal requirements for certain
populations that have to be admitted
into the hall so those individual
situations that involve welfare and
institutions code section 707b which
are considered serious and violent
felonies, those have to be taken into
the facility but the police department
on the street still have a mandate of
having to make sure we have sufficient
probable cause to bring beam into the
space.
we have our age restrictions, 12
year-olds are -- we do not want to
have in our space, it has to be
specific situations.
those warrants often times are run
away warrant from other counties, we
are mandated by law that if there is a
run away warrant that's out there, we
have to find a space for that young
person, so that's one of the reason.
14 years or older who can be taken
into custody, the use of a firearm,
the commission of a felony, there's a
laundry list of those offenses that
fall under 707b.
the current census of the population
we currently have now, everyone in our
facility now has at least one felony
in addition to whatever additional
misdemeanor charges they have.
all the felonies are consistent with
the state require, people both in and
under that, there may be young people
who have additional misdemeanor
charges on top of the felonies but a
a person is not going to be booked
into our facility on a misdemeanor
unless it involves serious violence or
injury.
if you look at our two yearbook
information in front of you, we have
focused on really ensuring that the
young people we can get home, we send
home back to their families, we have
other alternatives like electronic
monitoring of home, home detention
where they're able to stay in their
families and stay in those spaces.
if you look at the total number of
population compared to the number of
bookings we have per year, you can see
once again we keep smaller numbers of
young people that make their way into
our space.
now the next part of this presentation
is really one where it's important to
once again level set the environment
at the facility.
it's not to villainize young people,
it's not to try to attempt to moderate
the staff and say they're doing work
that others couldn't do or that
somehow it affords them special
treatment, it is to make it an
affirmative statement about what
exactly is versus what folks say is
not.
this environmental data is focused on
some important issues, one, we look
and see the staff injuries over the
last five years, the attacks directly
at staff over the last five years,
youth on youth attacks, contraband
incidents and our computer use
violations, we'll talk about that because
there's been a lot of conversation
around us removing people's access to
computers for no good reason, so the
things I point out here is that when
you see some of these attacks, these
are targeted directly towards our
staff.
these are things where young people
have unfortunately been courage --
encouraged to say the people there are
bad people or they don't have to
listen to them, if they have something
to say to you, they don't like, we'll
take care of it.
and those type of commentary has
helped to create an environment which
is less safe for our employees.
I have never presented this
information to the board before.
we work with it and keep it
moving because that's our task our
incredible staff has taken on.
the reality is that when it's
referenced in a way to suggest that
either we are bad people and
potentially trying to hurt children or
don't care about the kids we work
with, our folks come and work in
incredibly difficult situations and
the last point I'll make about this is
that if you look at the number of our
population recently compared to what
it was five years prior to covid where
we were arching over the 100, 120
youth, we averaged the same number of
attacks and injuries to employees
when we had four times, four times the
number of young people in our facility.
and this is data that is workers comp
data that is easily attainable for the
board, we have to keep those by state
mandate.
contraband.
these are some of the items we found
in our facility as we do searches.
I have a binder that staff full of
copies, instruments, sharpening
screws, sharpened nails, shards of
glass, marijuana, vape pens and
medication that's been cheated to
utilize to provide to other youth in
the facility.
so, when we talk about creating an
environment that is rehabilitative and
safe, these are some of the realities
of what that looks like.
so, once again, when there is this
impression that we're only serving low
level youth that are -- don't need to
be in the facility and they're there
because of some evil intention of the
detention department or law
enforcement, the facts don't measure
up.
there's also ban lot of conversation
that somehow we work without any
regulation and that no one's in
control of us and we don't have any
support from the state to provide
structure, guidelines, training or any
of that to our staff.
the reality is our staff when they
start their careers, they take almost
300 hours of training to initiate,
additional hours within the
facility and mandated training hours
that have to be done every single
year.
we also have state regulatory
oversight.
the board of state and community
corrections is california's
independent agency overseeing adult
and overall systems, they provide
inspection in public safety grants,
that is who we have to answer to, to
ensure our facility can run.
we also have support from advisory
committees like the oycr and they
have professionally trained
inspectors, when issues arise, they
work with counties to make sure
corrective action plans are created.
title 15 encompasses everything from
staffing, program and abuse,
allegations, food standards, education
standards and medical standards just
to say a few as well as title 24 which
is the building standards which
outline everything in the facility in
terms of how it's put together.
everything for how thick the bed can
be, how far off the floor it can be,
ada concerns, the way the building was
built initially was built this this
way under funding that was responsible
for it.
in the 13 years I've been your chief
probation officer, we have failed
inspections zero times.
we have had correction actions zero
times.
we have certainly had our experiences
during that time where the state has
said, we'd like to see you do this
better or we have advice on how you
could do wetter training or we have
advice on how you can write your
policies different so they can be clear
>> when we're here, we have never
failed an inspection.
cop pis of these inspects, ten years
worth can be found on the website for
people who want to go read.
>> chief, I'm going to give you a
time check.
we're going to give you ten more
minutes.
>> I'll just say respectfully in
protest, people who have taken shots
for me have had far more time than
that.
>> that's true, I'm going to give
you more time.
>> thank you, ma'am, I appreciate it.
thank you.
next is the conversation around prea,
I'll speed up here a little bit.
there's a lot of conversation why
we're not compliant with prea.
prea is the focus on eradicating
prison and detainee rape of all times
and institutions around the country.
the department of justice has a very
distinct set of categories in which
they determine whether you are
compliant with the goals of prea and
the legislation associated thereto.
in front of you, you have what are the
general themes that encompass the
entire legislation itself.
most notably at the top is zero
tolerance policy for abuse of any kind
along with additional issues around
training, medical, reporting and
investigation to say a few.
the reality is that the probation
department has been and is
substantially aligned with the federal
standards of prea, all the theme that
is are in prea are covered by our
current department prea policy.
you can find this prea policy on our
website, it is the prison rape elimination
act tab and under that, you can tab it
and hate our policy, it has
instructions for parents who want to
reach out to express concerns, we have
an additional interactive launch item
for services for individuals and
employees who may need support in this
area and it also shows at the end of
the day, we are abiding by all the
regulations that title 15 has.
in my research around this because
it's been a concerning issue
concerning a lot of the allegations
that have surrounded our county and
our area, what I found was startling
which is no one in the state of
california is in compliance with
prea.
compliance requires two primary
additional issues which is one, an
auditor who comes in and provides
auditing of your policies and
standards, that's one we don't have,
so when I say we're not in compliance,
it's not that I don't care about
keeping people safe, as I started off,
words matter.
we're not in compliance because we
don't have auditors.
a quick check of the auditor page on
there for auditor search, there is not
a certified auditor within 200 miles
of san mateo county.
I searched.
the only two that are listed on the
website are two folks whose audits --
the auditor certificates had expired
three years ago, the only current
auditors that exist are in la county
that I could find at this point.
the second part for state
certification is what's called a
governor certification where the state
has to certify that it is going to
100% certify that every area that
complied and will follow the rules of
prea.
we haven't done that and we haven't
done that since this stated in 2014 in
terms of compliance checks.
what exists is what's called an
insurance declaration.
it simply says we're going to do our
best to try to make sure most people
in the state have the elements of prea
in their functioning.
however, a strict letter of the law,
unless you have everything, you have
nothing.
our meals and diet, we have partners
who will talk about the diet and
meals, the individuals who do the
work, we're pleased to work the
sheriff's office and correctional in
relation to this, they are supported by
dietitians, health professionals and
individualized for each youth's needs,
they're aligned with usda standards
for meals and we have 30 plus youth
in the facility, our staff or their
staff are managing over 80 separate
diets for young people.
that includes everything from medical needs,
religious concerns as well as calorie
intake.
youth services center is almost 20
years old, it is a lived in building
but these pictures are taken within
the last recent months and it is not
necessarily a space where I would say
it's death trap or horrible place for
people to be.
we recognize the importance of
bringing arts into our space, in
collaboration with the sheriff's
activity league and working with our
youth, they have painted murals
throughout the facility that this have
participated in to do certain things.
the arts commission has been a great
partner in this and I thank
supervisor canepa who made that
connection between us and them.
we've been able to do that work and
have positive outcomes and create
unique opportunities for young people
in this space.
what you see in front of you is
another space that the young people
participate in which is a multisensory
de-escalation room, they need a quiet
space to go to.
this was a thing where everybody
participated, even myself did participate
in that space because we wanted
young people to see that we valued
them and cared about their long term
goals.
here's our community mural outside
which once again is a demonstration of
our commitment to the arts because we
recognize art is an important part of
rehabilitation.
the it was really about providing the
young people with something as an
inspiration to help focus them on the
time that's to come because we really
stressed to them that you are not your
current environment, your current
situation, there's more positive
things to come.
we do family nights, we have
graduation activities and we're proud
of the activities of our school
programs and the work they have done,
the young people that have graduated
from high school with us, the young
people that have graduated high school
with us, it is a -- college with us,
we have movies, we have everything we
do to provide alternatives and we do
include additional food on top of what
is provided by correctional health in
those activities.
often time there's concern about
programs in our space.
we have a robust program system.
honestly there's not enough hours in
the day for all the programs that
are here.
this board has been generous over the
years your support of programming in
our space, just a few months ago, you
approved a historic amount of
programming for the institutions.
and that program -- those programs
are also both internal programs and as
well as programs that are out in the
community.
these are just some of the programs
that most recently you approved.
high light core, we heard from a young
man yesterday who specifically called
out core as a program that was
important to him, that was teaching
him how to engage in positive
relationships and connecting with
people and supervisor corzo, that was
your brain child, thank you for that.
and this are just reminders with other
contracts you also recently provided
to provide services in our space.
technology, we have done our best over
the years to try to provide technology
opportunities for young people and it
is morphed over the years, when I
first started in 2013, we had a
couple of computers facing the wall
and that was it and the early stages
of our project change which I'll talk
about, we had kids westbound off one
or two desk top monitors.
we have committed to providing
opportunities for young people, there
are desk tops that every young person
whether it's in school has access to.
we work closely with the school
department, they have their own it
department, we have ours, they work in
collaboration to do that work, there
are desk tops accessible for them to
utilize, the laptops are for the young
people in college, they have their
individualized laptops to help them do
the work they're doing.
we are proud of our orijin tablets,
that gives them educational
opportunities but they also have the
ability to make phone calls and
video calls to their families from
this tablet.
one of the most interesting things
last night we discovered, the young
people were disappointed that the
movies don't roll around fast enough,
they don't have access to r-rated
movies, they were frustrated they
were watching the same movies over
again but the tablets have created a
new way for the young people to look
at things as well as get additional
certifications, education, as well as
therapeutic opportunities around drug
and alcohol consideration.
we've upgraded our wi-fi access
points throughout the facility to
provide a better stability who have
access to these systems.
they love their games so we commit to
purchasing play station and x-box
games for youth to be able to utilize.
a lot of that, the systems themselves
were donated by outside people,
we've helped support and
maintain those to acquiring additional
services and coming soon, we're going
to have our vr equipment, our provider
will be providing additional support
with virtual reality to help with the
teaching of skills for cte, they're
going to do a lot of incredible things
through a virtual space.
this is just some of orijin's
education and communication
technology, we see all of the
different things youth have been
accessing in the last 12 month period.
during that time, we've made over 46
thousand calls from the tablet space,
19 thousand of those calls have been
connected and on average the calluses
are going about 15 minutes a piece.
here are some of the learning
materials that are inside orijin and
some great opportunities for young
people the gain additional support on
top of all of the services you have
graciously approved.
the technology -- the ysc is a 20 year
old build, we have worked to upgrade
that material.
we use a senso program which monitors
our computer use.
it allows us to know when our young
people have violated our computer use
policy, they've gone to a prohibited
site that are sexual or violent in
nature, they have contacted victims
that they have victimized, they are
gang banging on social media, other
things that are prohibited
activities.
they find ways around our system all
the time, we have had to reboot and
reassess and figure out other ways to
assess that.
supporting a safe environment, we've
instituted body cams in our stashing,
that body cam program, we're having
some technology issues, it's getting
warm on our staff's chest while
they're wearing them, we're having
those batteries expense so we don't
have workers comp issues with that
and they'll be redeploy that.
we've upgraded our live scan machine
which is our fingerprinting machine,
we added a mobile version of that,
sometimes it can be difficult and
challenging for young people having
negative experiences at entry so, we
can go to them and it makes that part
of it a little safer and less
stressful for when they're getting
checked in.
we have contraband pictures that are
shown, we've come across more activities
and more things so we've needed
access to that.
and also the body scab, body scan, I
want to talk to you quickly because
it's an important addition to our
space.
we recognize that searching youth,
strip searching youth is something
people are not in favor of, however,
the law allows for it in very specific
circumstances, we only do it in those
specific circumstances.
we have written materials that show
when we do it.
our preferred way of doing things is
to utilize the body scanner, it's a
less invasive process, the machine is
more evasive than physically getting
nude because it goes very much in
terms of knowing what you have if on
your person, but it's safer way to do
things, less intrusive way for young
people and we should understand the
public's concern about what was being
characterized as an illegal strip
search, it is not, it is a strip
search folks didn't care for but we
had a valid reason for doing so, it
was a health and safety reason that
would have impacted the entire
facility.
additional upgrades to wi-fi, upgrades
to our cctv, this is an important part
of -- for us as we try to have an
environment that is safe and is void
of any type of illegal sexual activity
or negative behavior so we have
upgraded our systems to ensure that
not only can we keep recordings but
it's backed fup we lose power and we
have access to things for long term.
lastly we've put in under the door
cameras which are important and I
should say back to the cameras,
they're not in personal spaces,
they're not in the showers, they're
not the restrooms or not in places to
in any way negatively impact young
people and invade their policy.
they're in public spaces but they're
outside of buildings where any time
you move in our facility, we can see
you, so the reason why those cameras
exist are to support that.
lastly under the door cameras are
important because some of our young
people have covered their doors so we
can't see what's going on inside.
when we have to go inside, they have
jimmy rigged the floors where our
staff have slipped and fallen trying
to go in.
this is important to allow us
opportunity to see what's happening in
the rooms for safety reasons.
project change is one of the programs
we are most proud of.
it is an award winning program, san
mateo county is the model, the very
first one for this type of educational
programs and college spaces around the
state.
in 2013, I utilized my own funds to
help support the creation of the this
program.
along with the work our project change
partners worked for, they were
instrumental in really working with us
and not losing faith early on, so we
had really good incremental growth to
where we are today where we have
multiple young people that are
graduating college, getting multiple
degrees while they're in custody
with us and going on to hopefully four
year colleges.
we also have a cte program that we are
proud of.
this new program is california a-g
approved in terms of the credits, so
those 15 credits are young people need
to consider college here in
california, it's focused on
getting mastery training in college,
so stem related careers, trades
careers, culinary, engineering, design
and transportation, these are
important for our young people who may
not all be focused on this idea of
going to college.
where's probation's data?
another comment that we don't have any
data, where's our data at.
our data can be found in several
websites across the net.
our probation department website has a
a data dashboard that has our
information, our local action plan is
there, our local action plan is the
plan that helps determine how we
utilize services, how the money is
spent and how we demonstrate our value
system as a county in terms of what
our investments are in and/or
evaluations of our contract to
providers, so these evaluations are
done by an outside entity, a third
party entity who helps support us in
those annual reports.
as I mentioned earlier, the bscc,
there's juvenile hall population date
that that's based on offense level and
adjudication as well as those reports
I mentioned earlier that we have done
in terms of our inspection.
two probation officers in california,
we have a public facing dashboard there
that has all access to all of our
information.
the office of youth and community
restoration, ofcr, has information
about our treatment facility and the
program thereto, we have to submit an
annual plan to utilize and
operationalize the funds that come
from it and san mateo county open data
is where you can find information
about our budgets, how we spend our
money and things of that nature.
lastly in the space to come, we have a
few things on the horizon, one, we're
going to be working collaboratively with
john fong at child welfare to create a
program where we can assist them with
housing funds and funds that they can
utilize that help support those next
steps when they leave.
that program is going to be working
through the guaranteed income program
they run so we're going to find a way
to operationalize money transfer
between the two if necessary to ensure
those young people who are qualified
for it will get access to it.
secondly, we hope to work with the
board as well as procurement to look
at potentially some type of modified
procurement process for some the
services we need at the facility.
that process is difficult and causes a
lot of consternation with the
population with the community and is
creating tension and stress in terms
of how we operationalize court orders
to I think there's a need for us to
look at that.
also I'm proud to say that we
acknowledge that we could do better
with our prea phone system, so I'm in
decisions with jn fong to see if we
can utilize an outside service for the
800 number, it is monitored by our
staff and we think we can did do
better with that.
we will be working to see if have 24
hour services so we're trying to see
if there's legal ways we can
operationalize it through that process.
lastly, we are going to be doing a 20
year acknowledgment of the building
itself, the beginning of the opening
of the juvenile hall, what I'm going
to propose to do because a lot of what
has been said in the public is because
the public has not had a chance to see
our hall.
because of the way things are done,
it's just difficult for people to
randomly come and show up and be
walked around.
so I'm proposing that we do an open
house that is commensurate with the 20
year opening of the facility.
that way we can invite the public to
come in and see the facility, go
through the process, go through those
things so they can see themselves.
the reality is I know no young person
wants to be in the facility.
we don't kid ourselves into thinking
that's the case, but I'm proud of the
work we do, the way we do it and how
we approach trying to be thought
partners and advocates for youth as
we are.
our advocacy looks different from
others but we are advocates
nonetheless.
I will cede the rest of my time.
I have one last slide I hope to get
back to later, I can cede my time.
we are fortunate to have partners
here today that help us do the work
and we have some of our partner from
correctional health and behavioral
health, I'm not sure who wants to go
first.
dr. Africa is going to come up and
present.
>> thank you, chief keene, and I'll
just briefly say that I love the idea
of an open house and one of my
favorite murals wasn't pictured, it's
one with a lot of humming birds and
it's one of the newest ones and it's
beautiful.
so, I welcome dr. Africa and then I
think we have michael and hector and
derga next.
>> good afternoon, again, board of
supervisor, I'm here with my
colleague, mike who, is the director
of health services, we'll take a few
minutes to talk about behavioral
health services at the ysc and also
correctional health services.
so, before I go, I want to just
acknowledge that picture that you see
there is the adjacent land of the
phoenix garden which I will be talking
about in a little bit.
we have been really grateful to have
the opportunity to provide support to
young people.
I will talk about the mental health
services, substance use services, in
terms of our clients, as chief keene
said, the clients over the years have
decreased.
the young people in custody, so you
can see on the top left, we're about
2018 to 2019, we were seeing
unduplicated about over 300 youth and
now we're probably seeing half of that.
we have 9 staff that provide a variety
of services for youth who are in
custody.
we have therapists, we have case
managers, we have psychologists,
psychiatrists just in case they need
medication support and also peer and
is family partners who have lived
experience navigating the system.
in the bottom part, I wanted to give
you a sense of how engaged we are with
the young people, so in the data, we
divided it into three sections.
one, we called it the general
population, so we don't know how long
the young people will be there but we
average about 29 days of service, if they
leave earlier, we won't have that much
time.
in terms of community based services,
when a young person leaves the ysc, we
still are able to provide community
based services to them because
sometimes they need additional support
as they transition back to the
community.
and in the third kinds of supports
that we have is we connect a therapist
individually case by case with a youth
in custody, also when they leave, so
chief keene talked about the soarr
program, in our engagement with that
young person until about 25 is up to
about one year.
so, again, our efforts is to engage
them, continue working with them so
that they continue to succeed being in
the community or exceed in their
rehabilitation.
so, again, our services are anchored
in trauma or trauma informed and
culturally responsive services, not
just in terms of language but really
understanding the cultures and the
environment that our young people have
grown up with.
we use evidence based practices,
cognitive behavioral therapy helps
change people's perceptions and their
thinking.
behavioral therapy giving them a sense
of self-regulation.
many of these people have a lot of
trauma and have a lot of chaos in
their lives, so we try very hard.
while we are working with them to try
to give them sort of a sense of skills
and opportunity to think about the
things that they have experienced.
our work needs to be coordinated with
many efforts, you see our colleagues
from probation but also our community
partners.
I have to say once a probation staff
refers entry to behavioral health is a
referral from our custody or probation
staff, so once our po's refer a young
person, we do an intake, we do a
screening, we try to understand
what their perspective is, what their
experience is, what their need is and
based from that, we spend time kind of
linking them to ss services.
we provide individual therapy, group
therapy, family therapy, we invite
their parents or their caregivers to
participate in some of the sessions
because we know their caregivers are
also part of their recovery.
we do a lot of care coordination, we
provide 24/7 crisis support.
we -- when it's needed, we provide
medication management and then also in
certain cases when it's needed, we do
psychological assessments, you know,
if they need higher level of service,
if we try to understand their thinking
or their personality, we do cognitive
testing or personality destining in
augmentation through the therapy they
receive.
last one, the phoenix garden is the
six acre land adjacent to ysc, instead
of seeing that as being connected to
nature, we use it as an opportunity to
provide healing and connection with
the community with young people who
are attached to the ysc to kind of be
around nature and talk to other
folks, other community members so as
part of their entry to community and
I'll just say that's one of the
features that one of our people love.
many of them are not connected to
nature.
many of them don't understand food
production or bee keeping or
horticulture and hopefully that can
change or impact their lives, not
focusing on their crime or being in
custody but out in the community and
again one of the things we are working
that's new due to calaim is real will
you a much stronger relationship in
helping young people in custody and
then when they go out as they
transition back to the community, they
link them to appropriate services.
so, we are also doing that in the
adult side at mcguire and the jail,
we're trying to do that more in
probation, so again, we really operate
in partnership with chief keene and
his staff and are grateful to provide
these services for young people to
heal and continued on to their
recovery.
now I'm going to turn it over to mike
to talk about medical services.
>> welcome.
>> good afternoon, president corzo,
board of supervisors, community
members, my name cease mick del
rosario, the director for mental --
medical health services.
medical care start from the time the
youth enters our facility, we address
whatever medical conditions or health
care needs they have and initial
screening is done as soon as they come
in.
our partners in probation will do an
initial screening and then our
registered nurses will do a complete
medical screening as soon as possible.
during that time, acute and chronic
illnesses are identified, we look at
for any communicable diseases, if they
have substance abuse history, you
know, we want to make sure those are a
I dressed early on and we do an
initial mental health assessment, we
do 96 hours of coming into our
facility, health and screening, that
will include doing vital signs,
pregnancy testing and visual and
hearing sense.
the probation staff, I just want to
highlight, really placed an important
role in early identification of a
patient's mental health condition,
they will alert if they see any
abnormal conditions.
all youth are seen by our nurse
practitioner for a wellness exam
within one week of arrival.
our calls are conducted daily by
registered nurses for any medical
requests the youth might request.
if any after hours support is needed,
we utilize the san mateo medical
center for consultation but for any
medical condition, our nurse
practitioners will address any acute
or chronic conditions.
specialty care services are offered
for all our youth, if they require
more specialized services, we utilize
the san mateo medical center specialty
clinics for any in-person visits or
telehealth consultations, and if they
need any surrounding hospitals, the if
they need those services, we will
refer them to those places.
if a youth comes in and they need to
have their braces managed, an
orthodontic referral will also be made.
our optometrist services, we will
refer them to san mateo medical
center, once we have the prescription
for the eyeglasses, they will
purchase eyeglasses for the youth.
we also offer laboratory and radiology
services.
we do pregnancy testing early on,
universal testing is offered to all
our youth which we screen for
chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis.
when our youth are seen from the
providers, they are ordered routine
blood work.
when we do chest x-rays or imaging,
those are done at our san mateo
medical care facilities.
dental services are offered to all our
youth, as soon as they come in, they
are scheduled to see a dentist within
30 days.
if they happen to stay six months,
they are automatically scheduled for a
a follow-up exam in 6 months.
routine dental care provided routine
dental care, if they need a root
canal, we'd provide that as well.
for those like a wisdom tooth, we have
an oral surgeon that can come in to
our facility, they will take care of
those type of complicated extractions.
for more urgent visitors, we will
defer them to our county partner and
is county health for dental services.
as our overall goal of providing
comprehensive health care to our youth,
we provide a lot of health edge kaix,
we will do topics like drugs and
alcohol, contraception, dental health,
health care, any other topics the
youth finds interesting or wants to
know more ab.
annual flu vaccinations are offered,
usually around the fall season right
before the flu season starts, we offer
flu vaccines to all our kids.
immunize ize -- immunizations, our
team will look at patient records and
identify if they're missing any
immunizations, if they're behind on any of
their shots, our team will provide
that as well.
our dietitian will be on-site to
manage any special dietary needs, if
they require medical diets, we
can have a dietitian that can consult
with them, lose weight, gain weight,
we have a specialized program for that.
and discharge planning is important to
us to make sure we can transition the
youth into the community so we provide
the discharge medications upon 30 days
of medication upon release and provide
them with the prescription or we call
into the pharmacy to make sure they
never run out of meads until they get
a chance to go to their doctors after
release.
that's part of the health we provided
to them will be provided to the
community.
thank you.
>> thank you, we have I believe folks
from nutrition and our dietitian up
next and as well as our sheriff's
office.
>> good afternoon, board members and
the public.
>> we also have a lieutenant as well,
I don't know who wants to start here.
go ahead, however you want to do it.
>> good afternoon, captain ben hand
with the sheriff's office, I'm the
facility commander --
>> captain?
>> I'm the facility commander for the
maple street correctional center where
we are have our food services through
the sheriff's office, I'm going allow
-- this is durga namburu and this is
hector soto to share how [inaudible]
and denise chu is here from
[inaudible]
>> and is that a lieutenant behind you
as well.
I knew there was a lieutenant
somewhere.
>> greetings.
>> go ahead, durga,.
>> good afternoon, everyone.
so, we're going to cover --
>> and also after this, we're going to
do a time check, I know we have a
judge waiting and I would love if
someone can connect with her and make
sure -- my gosh, I'm sorry, okay, you
see, you're smart, that's why you're
the judge, okay.
>> okay.
we're going to cover all food services
for youth center and what youth are
served each day.
and we control food safety and our
services are just evolved.
coming to our operations and daily
delivery for the meals.
san mateo county service office for
the nutrition services provide meals
for ysc to contract with probation
department.
meals are planned and prepared through
food service operations, all the meals
are transported to the ysc with all
the food safety procedures.
I'm sorry.
it's going too fast I believe, yeah.
meals are delivered to appropriate
housing units for all three meal
services, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
our focus is to consistently deliver
safe and nutritious, balanced and
appealing meals to a timely manner.
our staff understands serving the
youth in a secure setting requires a
high level of responsibility and
attention to detail.
the sheriff's office recently secured
purchasing contracts with established
food service vendors who provides all
the school nutrition programs
requirements that includes u.s. Foods
and sysco.
we regularly check quality of meals
and our meals always do the final
checkers before it gets to the youth.
[inaudible] will share more detailers
on other topics what we perform.
thank you.
>> good afternoon, everybody.
nutritional requirements, they are
developed to youth in our care.
there's applicable title 15 requirements,
the standards and lunch and breakfast
meal program guidelines.
we use these to make sure meals are
provides and nutritionally appropriate.
we manage our meals and support
adequate daily nutrition and caloric
intake.
they are updated as recently as june,
2026.
they are based on seasoned food
availability, nutrition, youth
feedback and operational needs.
our menus, meals and snacks.
the maple street correctional center
provides food services to ysc and
probation staff 7 days a week, 365
days a year.
we prepare and provide breakfast,
lunch and dinner trays for youth and
staff.
we currently serve about 27 youth on a
daily average, some of whom receiver
double trays, this comes to
approximately 332 trays per day.
we operate on a four week cycle menu
for the youth.
we provide special diets required and
approved by correctional health
services dietitian.
meal are developed and maintained
in accordance with applicable
compliance requirements and dietitian
guide dabs.
all meals are prepared to meet the
nutritional dietary needs of the youth
while maintainers required food
service standards.
in addition to required dealings,
youth receive three snacks each day.
snacks provide an additional
opportunity to support daily
nutritional and calorie needs.
snack offerings are incorporated into
the overall plan.
>> I'm a dietitian with correctional
health services, I've been with the
county the for many years, I serve the
youth, I've been there hillcrest so
I'm proud of the food services program.
I believe there's always room for
improvement.
from my perspective, my job is to do
nutrition assessments, I calculate the
person's needs and compare it to
intake and the food offered for them.
what I do is identify problems, I look
at the ideologies and then I look at
the data to support that and provide a
service to make sure the food or the
diet order is mainly according to what
the kid can tolerate, the youth can
tolerate.
sorry.
currently we have 26 youth in our
care, 23 are on the diet list, 19 of
those 23 are on double trays and 15 of
those 19 ask for extra eggs, some of
them have wanted up to 12.
the nutrition requirements for this
age group at the highest level is
about 2800 to 3 thousand calories,
currently they're provided probably
about 6500 calories a day and
probably 24 ounces of protein.
as a dietitian, I framework my
assessments around a problem ideology
and signs and symptoms.
I feel with this particular group,
teens in general, young adults have
strong preferences about food and also
we have a domain that we use to
categorize a problem.
and one of them is knowledge and
beliefs and attitudes about food.
so, in the contributing factor are
their age and what they have looked up
on the internet.
they're protein-driven, so based on
how many calories we give them, they
have gained weight but it's not that
great, it's because they have -- they
tend to gravitate to the proteins.
they think the food service department
has been doing the best they can.
they have been going over and above,
they don't ever complain about any of
the double trays.
they also get snacks in addition.
I don't have the diet list, without
the names, so you could see how vast
this is.
I think the issue could be the
delivery, maybe those kind of changes
but I'm not involved with that but I
know they're doing the best they can.
that's all I have.
any questions?
>> thank you, supervisors.
>> okay, wait, one second.
they won't brag about theses but they
make the best cookies ever, so my
team's going to hand out some of their
cookies, whoever wanted left
overcooked, grab it now or they're
going to be gone.
go ahead, share the cookies.
>> thank you, supervisor.
>> and some of us had lunch that they
prepared and that the youth eat as
well and I enjoyed it personally.
I think most of us had the lunch.
>> can I say one thing to you?
>> yes.
>> back when I was looking at the
report, the 23-24, I want to point out
that the school lunch program is very,
very strict with their nutrition
requirements and for protein, it's
only two ounces per meal for that
group for high school kids.
two ounces, picture a mcdonalds
hamburger with the two ounces of
grain, add to it one cup of vegetable
and part of that was the restrictions.
>> through the chair, can I just say
that I recently had an opportunity to
tour the facility and I saw firsthand
the great work that you are doing over
there, that is a huge kitchen, you're
preparing many meals throughout the
day and, again, we had food today that
you prepared and I just appreciate
everything you do.
it gave me a better insight as to
what's being provided to everyone
within the system.
so, again, thank you for your work.
>> thank you.
>> go ahead, supervisor speier?
>> leave it to food to get our attention,
right.
I will tell you that in my visit last
night, food came up and they had some
complimentary words, they said the
food is a lot better now than it used
to be.
kudos to you for that.
they do want more salt and pepper and
spice and I know the school lunch
program doesn't allow that, and I
don't know if the dietitian can help
us with that, I think the blandness
bothers them a little bit, if we can
somehow slip them some patsies of salt
and pepper, that might be nice.
>> thank you.
>> I would just like to state that a couple
of months ago, we had a sorbet of
how the food has been going on, and
I'm happy to say we have a copy of it,
how the food has been improved.
we have worked tirelessly to reinvent,
not make some different reinvent the
wheel, how can we use the spices to
generate the flavors and I think so
far for these comments, we are proud
we have and we are committed and
willing to, anything we can do for it,
food is my passion and I love to do
it, so it doesn't matter to me who is
the end, but food is important to us
so, we're committed to doing that and
if we hear anything to be changing,
we're happy to do it.
hopefully we can get the program we
had in inglewood where the kids were
preparing the food, as a food service
worker, I would love to go back and
reinvent that, for me, it was very
important, very successful and
satisfying for me, if we can bring
that again, I will do it on my day off
or whenever it has to be, there's no
issue at all.
>> if they're anything like my
teenager, they will think they can
cook better than you so I'm sure
you're open to the challenge.
>> I love the challenge.
>> thank you so much.
I lost my -- is this mine, okay, thank
you.
okay.
we will now move on to -- of course,
why don't we pause far second, chief
keene, I think you had one last slide
you wanted to wrap up.
>> [inaudible]
>> did we have any questions for the
bulk of -- no, no questions for chief
keene yet, we'll wait until the end.
okay, perfect.
I would now like to welcome deputy
district attorney nadia hanh.
and I want to acknowledge that our
district attorney steve wag staff is
here as well.
welcome, nadia.
>> I can't believe I have to follow
fresh baked cookies.
my name is nadia hanh, I'm with the
da's office, thank you to the
supervisors for the invitation to
speak with you about the da's role in
the juvenile justice system.
the purpose of the juvenile justice
system as whole is to provide for the
protection and safety of the public
and each minor under the jurisdiction
of the juvenile court and to preserve
and strengthen the minor's family ties
whenever possible.
that's codified in welfare and
institution code, code 202, it goes on
to lay out the sort of guiding
principles that the da's office uses
in all of our deliberations.
agencies charged with enforcing and
administering juvenile law are
mandated to weigh the following
consideration, safety and protection
of the public, the importance of
redressing injuries to victims and
the best interest of the minor who
is the subject of the juvenile court
matter.
the juvenile division serves a
number of different functions, we're
involved in the actual court process
from the filing of a case through
disposition but the one that's most
relevant to today's study session is
probably the review and charging of
cases, so that will be my focus today.
it's the prosecutor's decision to file
a petition that initiates the court
process.
chief keene did touch on this and I
think it's important to understand
that just because an offense is
committed in the community by a minor
does not mean that that case is going
to end up in juvenile court.
there are a number of levels of review
that occur before a case reaches my
office.
the first starts with the law enforcement
agency who took the case.
the agency has several options for
what to do next.
they can determine whether any further
action is needed and it's frequently
the case the youth's school, family,
community can provide adequate support
and guidance for that youth and the
case needs to go no further.
they can refer the minor through
services through a communities based
organization on a voluntary basis,
chief keene did talk about the
diversion programs that our law
enforcement agencies and schools have
created that are in-house programs but
if none of these options are deemed
appropriate, then the case will go on
to the next level of review which is
being forwarded to the probation
didn't.
once there, a deputy probation officer
is assigned and does essentially a
similar analysis, they are also
authorized to decide that no further
action is needed under the
circumstances, they can refer the
family to another agency or community
based organization for services and
then they can a offer informal
supervision to the minor and the
family for up to a period of six
months where is the family can receive
services on a voluntary basis and the
case will be oozed afterwards without
going to court.
the fourth option is to refer the
court to the da's office for review.
if the case is referred to the da's
office, regardless of what the offense
is, the assigned prosecutor will also
review for filing suitability.
the assigned da can decide no further
action is needed, they can refer the
case back to the probation department
for informal supervision or file a
ward ship petition to initiate the
court process.
and I had an asterisk under the
probation column because there are
some categories of offenses that
mandate a referral to the da's office
although this doesn't mean they are
mandated to be filed.
those include the 707b offenses we
heard about earlier that I won't
repeat.
those are serious and violent felonies.
it also includes possession of a gun
or deadly weapon on school grounds,
assault of a school employee with a
deadly weapon, victim restitution that
exceeds 5 thousand dollars or if
there's a prior ward ship.
on average, the juvenile division
reviews 550 cases per year and files
petitions in 360 of those cases and
that's based on data from the years
2021 through 2025.
this information is offered to
illustrate that prosecutors exercise
of discretion is done carefully and on
a case by case basis and that the
receipt of a petition or a case does
not mean that filing will be automatic.
those are my prepared comments for
today.
I thank you again for the opportunity
to speak with you and if you have any
questions, I'm happy to answer them.
>> thank you, nadia.
any questions from the board?
supervisor speier?
>> thank you, so about 60% of the
cases that are referred to you
actually are then processed through,
sounds like, based on those numbers.
of those offenses, the 707's that are
automatically brought to your
attention, not all of those will be
processed through a court procedure?
>> yes.
and I can give you an example of a
time that a case might come to us, the
report having been taken and labeled
as a 707b offense, but then we later
determine that it not only doesn't
need to be filed as such but that
maybe there is some kind of diversion
or informal probation that would be
appropriate and I would say the most
common would be what's called an
estes robbery, where a shoplifting
is elevated because there's some sort
of a use of force or threat against
the loss prevention officer or the
store employee.
those while technically that can be
counted as a robbery or could be
charged as a robbery, our office by
policy looks at whether a weapon was
used, whether there wass significant
injury to the victim, the case that
has come in as a robbery, we may end
up filing as a petty theft or not
referring to all and deferring it to
diversion.
>> thank you.
okay.
we will now move on to the private
defender's office, we have mr. Rayes,
thank you.
>> good afternoon, president, members
of the board, mr. Callagy, mr.
nibbelin, members of the public,
my name is ron rayes, I'm the --
>> I'm going to ask you to speak
into the mic.
>> is this better?
>> yes.
>> I'm the assistant chief of the
juvenile branch with the private
defender program, I have been a
defender for 23 years and I have the
privilege and in the last 7 years
to be heading the juvenile file
officer, I serve on the executive
board with the california youth
offender's entry which supports over
1600 youth defenders throughout the
state by providing training, amicus
briefs as well as legislative
advocacy where I have co-led several
state youth justice buildings.
I'm also proud to share that cydc
chose san mateo county to hold their
annual roundtable training and it will
be held in october and I appreciate
your time for allowing me to do the
this presentation.
I want to start by sharing a little
bit about our youth offenders, we have
10 youth offenders in our office, they
handle cases in different levels,
they start with the firsts level and
the more serious level are the
transfer cases, we have -- we handle
mid level cases where our serious
felonies are listed in the welfare
institution code, 707b, I'm not going
to go through what these are, they've
been covered by the chief's
presentation, also our attorneys
handle the third tier of cases which
consist of low level felonies and
misdemeanors.
one of the things that we thrive is
the training of our attorneys handling
juvenile law cases is a very
technical area of the law, so we
require all of our attorneys to
complete minimum 15 hours mcle each
year, of that, there has to be 8 hours
of juvenile law specific training.
we offer in-house between 10-12 hours
of mcle juvenile training and also
collaborate with an organization
like cydc to collectively have about
24 hours we offer to our attorneys at
no cost to them.
and in addition to the training, we
make sure that our attorneys have the
support they need to do the best job
possible, that's through the
support services we provide, it starts
with our panel of private
investigators, we have our holistic
and mitigation specialists, we have a
panel of social workers, we work with
experts and we work with client
advocates as well.
and I added this slide here to just
give you a highlight of how we are
involved in the life of a case.
it starts on the very left, it starts
the minute the youth literally at
times are at the scene when they are
arrested, we get a call in order to
provide them with their miranda -- to
provide a miranda consultation and
discuss with them their miranda rights.
then it moves when a youth is booked
at ysc, we start working through our
holistic and mitigation specialist to
work on ways in order to release that
youth at that detention hearing and
the first green box there, that's --
of course our courtroom advocacy which
consists of rigorous litigation
strategies, we investigate the
allegation and the petition, filing
motions, setting contested hearings
and also using experts to support our
litigations strategies.
and last but not least, it's also our
work under the secure treatment
facility as the chief mentioned with
the closure of djj, it's changed the
way we handle post disposition
representation and there's a lot of
effort we have been putting into that
since the closure of djj.
I want to share a date point on each
of these areas that I shared with
you and I'm going to start the first
area, I'm going to share with you
about our miranda hotline, we have
attorneys on-call 7 day as week, 24
hours as day, last year we received
2048 calls from law enforcement
agencies, we conducted 244
consultation with youth that had been
arrested and then of the youth that we
spoke to, 98% of them elected to
assert their right to remain silent.
and a breakdown of the youth we worked
with in this area, 65% of them were 16
and 17 years old and then 35% of them
were under 15 and under.
the next area that we're very proud
of, we have done a lot of work on is
through our mitigation and holistic
specialist, lindsay paige is here with
me today, she started the services back
in 2024 on a contract basis and we are
very grateful to our chief defender
for agreeing with us to switch
realizing the importance of this work
to switch that -- this work into full
time position so lindsay is with us
now full time, that started in march
of this year.
what lindsay does on a day in and day
out, she meets with youth soon after
they are booked at juvenile hall, she
starts working with them, connects
with the family and any of their
support people.
she requests their school records and
starts working on a safety plan.
our goal always to have met with the
youth within 24 hours of them coming
into ysc and oftentimes she sees them
within a few hours of their detention.
last year, in the last fiscal year,
lindsay created 56 safety plans in
which she connected the youth to ten
different community based
organizations, so the youth when upon
their release are receiving services.
she also developed 60 detailed fully
structured release plan that had
school work, extra curricular
activities with contingencies if the
youth is released on emp.
she also at times worked with the
youth to ensure they are reenrolled
upon their release, they are
reenrolled into their school of origin.
we also referred 21 youth to the youth
education law project at stanford
which they provide the youth with
representation at discipline hearings,
iep's as well as direct representation
and education law type of cases.
and to give you a highlight of the
result of lindsay's work, we had
141 detentions that were referred to
our office last year, she -- we
referred to her 82 of those detentions
and she worked -- based on her work,
64 of these youth were released as a
result of her work and that's a result
we're very proud of.
another data I would like to share
with you is a lot of the work our
attorneys have been doing which is the
area of transfers.
and in 2016 and briefly to give you
history here, in 2016, prop 57 wiz
passed in which ended the ability to
try children as adults in adult courts
and that practice at the time was
known as direct file, since the
passage of prop 57, every youth that
is facing a transfer must have an
evident hearing before a juvenile
judge and only the judge can transfer
it to adult court.
since the passage of prop 57, we
represented 7 individuals in which
they were facing transfer petitions
and none of those 7 were transferred
to adult court.
we did have two cases in which we
called retrospective transfers.
retrospective transfer is for an
individual whose cases originated in
adult court, due to changes of the
law, they came back to the juvenile
court, one of the cases was after prop
57 passed and part of the global
disposition of that case, it went back
to adult court in that case, the
second retrospective transfer, it
concluded weeks ago, in that case
after a lengthy transfer hearing, the
transfer petition was denied and it
remained in juvenile court, that's a
data point we're proud to share with
you this afternoon.
the next area I want to focus on for
today's presentation is our post
disposition advocacy and our work with
youth are committed to the secure
track.
as the chief has mentioned, that law
responsibility have fallen on the
county since the closure of djj and
also with that, with the sb823,
there's a lot of responsibility that
we were tasked with.
as a result of that, we worked with
our youth add voluntary kayos, each
youth who are committed to secure
track is assigned a compliant added
voluntary kate.
the client advocates work with them on
the creation of individual
rehabilitation plan, not only with the
youth but also with the defender.
they meet with the youth at least once
a month in order to track their
progress as they're making their
rehabilitation progress towards their
rehabilitation plan, they attend
mbt's, court reviews and coordinate
with the different providers and they
also assist their providers in less
restrictive programs as they
transition from a secure facility into
the community.
and to share a date point on the work
we have been doing in this space, in
2026, there were ten youth that were
in secure track, nine of them were
eligible for the six months review
that's mandated from welfare and
institution code 875, as a result of
the work of our advocates and the
advocates of our defenders, those
youth we were able to save them 55
months off of their total time
commitment.
and with that, I'm happy to answer any
questions and thank you for your time.
>> thank you.
any questions?
okay, I have a question.
>> yes?
>> so, I'm interested in the miranda
consultation work that you mentioned.
I'm going to ask a brief question
and we can talk about the rest
off-line because we have a lot of
folks here.
we'll just talk about it off-line, but
I'm interested in how that works
especially with like our incorporated
areas where we still have our school
resource officers.
I heard in my district specifically
that these miranda consultations
interfere with them having
relationships with the young people
but to me, I feel like they're really
important but I'm trying to tease out
what's the -- I don't know, it's good
-- like, if having a relationship with
the young person leads to them
incriminating themselves and going to
jail, let's ere on the side of caution
and make sure they're not doing that.
>> absolutely.
our job is to advise the youth of
their miranda rights, what it means
and what the consequences of given
incriminating statement and how it
plays out in the legal system if they
were to give any statement that is
incriminating.
they ultimately make that decision, we
don't make that decision for them.
so, that's why we ask only
specifically trained attorneys or
juvenile defenders are the ones who
handle those calls because they
understand the adolescent brain
development, they understand that most
youths do not know what miranda rights
are and how they would play out if
they were to be -- to work to give a
statement.
another thing we also focus on, we
address the fact that given a
statement and whether you're going to
be detained or not are two
separate things and that should not be
parts of the equation if they're
making their decisions whether they're
going to be giving a statement or not.
>> thank you.
>> and as far as the mechanics of how
it works, I'm more than happy to share
with you that information.
>> thank you, we'll talk more about
that off-line.
any other comments?
okay.
we will now move on -- thank you so
much, ron, we'll move on and I would
like to welcome presiding judge susan
jakubowski, welcome, and thank you for
your patience.
>> alright.
president corzo and members of the
board of supervisors, mr. Callagy,
mr. Nibbelin, thank you for
allowing me to be here this afternoon
and to address you.
my name is susan and I'm currently
assigned as the presiding judge of the
juvenile court, this is my second time
up at juvenile court, I was a judge up
at the juvenile court from 2018
through 2021 and I really value this
work, I enjoy it so when the chance
came to go back, I asked to go.
I took over as presiding judge in late
may of this year.
we also have a second judge up at
juvenile court, just amara lee, she
started in may and has worked for me
these past few months.
I'm here to talk to you about
the role of the juvenile court judge
and how justice partners work together
in the juvenile justice system.
in the past few months, the juvenile
court justices have been meeting
with community stakeholders and
community organizations to learn
more about them and to visit their
facility.
one of the reasons we've been doing
this is judge lee is new to juvenile
court, many things have changed so I
feel it is helpful for both of us to
gather as much information as possible
as the programs and individuals who
are working with us in the juvenile
justice system.
in san mateo, there are two juvenile
court judges, both of us preside over
juvenile justice matters and
dependency cases and handle all the
hearings in the case including
pretrial conferences, trials and
dispositions, we also are responsible
for conducting periodic reviews of
cases as provided for in the welfare
and institutions code and sometimes if
we just need -- if we just think a
youth needs some additional monitoring
and we just want to make sure that --
how they're doing and to make sure
they're getting the services that they
need.
in addition to our court work, judge
lee and I also attends events
involving our youth in the youth
services center as well as the
community.
we have attended independent living
graduation, at the youth services
center and we asked to be on the list
for events at the youth services
center if they're doing presentations
so if we have time, we can go over and
be there with them and see what
they're doing.
as a juvenile court judge, I work
regularly with many different
holders and organizations in the
juvenile justice arena, these include
probation, the district attorney's
office, the private defender program,
the human services agency of san
mateo, county counsel, behavioral
health and recovery services, court
appointed special advocates, the
juvenile justice and delinquency
prevention commission, fresh lifelines
for work and live in peace.
each of these stakeholders and
organizations has a different role
working with young people who become
involved in juvenile justice in the
county.
the model we currently use in juvenile
matters is one of collaboration
involving these stakeholders and
organizations, many of us meet
regularly to discuss poll kissinger
procedures and programs to see what
issues need to be addressed and to
improve how services are provided to
the youth and their families.
my main priorities are that the youth
receive the services necessary for the
rehabilitation and development while
they are in the juvenile justice
system.
it is also important that the youth
and those that provide services to
them as well as the community remain
safe during this process.
although each of the stakeholders may
have different responsibilities in the
process, my goal is to continue to
have everyone work together as much as
we can to reach a resolution so that
we continue to focus on the goal of
rehabilitation of our youth so they
will succeed as future adult members
of our community.
and I'm happy to take any questions if
anyone has any.
>> thank you.
supervisor mueller?
>> thank you, judge, I wanted to ask
when I was going through the san mateo
county juvenile justice and
delinquency comprising's operating
policies, it says appointments is done
by yourself in conjunction with the
presiding judge.
>> right.
>> then later on in section 4, it says
that the county executive's offices
and administrative staff provide
support to the juvenile justice
commission.
who is the entity that reviews the
report and determines whether or not
the report that's being done on
inspections is in compliance with
standard practices?
is there anybody that makes sure
they're following the rules or doing
the inspection right?
>> well, somebody, no?
okay.
I will cede to ms. Rasmussen so she
can address that.
I know the court -- the presiding
judge of juvenile court reviews
applications for commissioners and
makes a recommendation, I think they
are then confirmed eventually by the
board.
I do know that they are provided under
the law to be able to go in and do the
inspections.
obviously I review those reports and
information and if there's some
concern, we can address it.
but I will also let ms. Rasmussen
speak in more detail to that.
>> what I'm trying to understand is
when I look at the reports and I have
gone back and looked at the last
reports, under section 4, it says --
excuse me, under section 2a, it says
there should be not less than 7, no
more than 15 commissioners and we have
10 right now.
later it makes it very clear that no
one commissioner can speak for the
body as you would expect.
when I look at the reports, in 2025, only
3 of the commissioners did the
inspection and only two signed it,
pretty close to one person speaking
for the body.
in 2025, only 4 did the inspection
which is still less than a quorum of
members of that board.
so I'm wondering, is that adequate or
is that -- how are supposed to take
that as a body or as a county?
>> I will allow ms. Rasmussen to speak
from that, from attending the
meetings, what I'm aware of is that
they have commissioners that sign up
to do the inspections.
I believe then they present all of the
data and information from those
inspections to one another and so the
onuses as I understand it, they have
these commissioners would sign up to
do the inspections and then those are
probably -- they conduct the
inspections and I believe they sign
off on them but I think the -- and she
can get into more specifics about
this, then I believe they share that
information with -- at the jjdpc meetings
and with the rest of the
commission, and I will say I
was not up in the juvenile court in
2025 and 2024, I haven't been there
since 2021 was my last year there, and
I am also newly the presiding judge up
there as of may of this year so, from
what I remember, and that's what I'm
going back to, that's my understanding
of how things work but I would leave
it to ms. Rasmussen to provide you
more detail as to those questions.
>> I appreciate that.
>> thank you, I'm just going to jump
in.
judge, I just want to -- before we
invite chair rasmussen up, if you
would allow me to let -- I have done a
bunch of research on this because I'm
the liaison to this commission now, so
I know mr. Callagy has some
information and we have deputy county
counsel, judith, that has some
information, we've been looking into it
so there's like state law which
chair rasmussen serves on a state body
and has that perspective.
we discovered that we have a local
ordinance and we will get to that and
I will give chair rasmussen more time
during the jjdpc presentation section
if that's okay with you.
>> yes.
>> okay, perfect, thank you so much.
and I totally -- you're not even full
three months into the new role, so
thank you so much for your
presentation.
>> thank you.
>> I have a question.
>> supervisor speier?
>> thank you, judge, for your present
at.
I -- presentation, I don't know if
you have read the civil grand jury
report of july 2025.
it's entitled vacant, valuable and
vulnerable, reimagining san mateo
county's youth services counties, have
you had a chance?
>> I have not.
>> maybe after you read it, we can
have a conversation because there's
some really I think valid questions
that are being ray raised as to how we
can provide services to this
population, maybe in a less
constrained fashion or differently
than we are, so I would encourage that
conversation once you've had a chance
to read it, thank you.
>> yes, happy to.
>> supervisor canepa also has a
question.
>> I don't have a question, but I want
to thank you, judge, as well as judge
lee, I think we've had an incredible
representation from the court, your
ability to leave and then come back
speaks volumes.
I think it takes a very special person
or special people and I think what the
court has demonstrated over a period
of time is really fair but being
compassionate and really making sure
that we understand people's stories
and what we can do.
these are -- to be quite frank with
you, these are young people and
everyone deserves a chance, especially
at a young age, but I'm delighted, I'm
excited that you're back and whatever
I can do as board member, I just want
to support you and your efforts,
please tell judge lee who I sit on the
library board with that you guys are
doing an incredible job.
we really do enjoy working with the
both of you.
I'm glad you came back.
>> and one thing I did want to say and
I look forward to reading the grand
jury report about the facilities.
I think that as chief can keene
mentioned and I think we all are of
the opinion that there's always
situations that we can improve things.
facilities, working on getting youth
connected earlier with services,
working on getting services for the
youth and their families in a quicker
way and in a broader way and I think
certainly there are things that can be
done to improve the facilities and
that's what I think we all want and
that's one of the reasons that many of
us work together klab rat I beverly to
find ways to make things less like a
facility for the youth and more a
system where they can work on the
rehabilitation, they can focus on
their education.
they can do a lot of fun things.
one of the things I like to stress a
lot of times is they've done things
that are very serious sometimes but
they're still kids and they need a
chance to be kids and I think we all
really -- the justice partners and the
stakeholders all have that same goal
in mind, that we work with them in an
environment that will address their
issues, allow them to be kids and help
them to get to a better place at the
end of the day.
so I'm open to all of that, thank you.
>> thank you, judge.
mr. Callagy, would you like to answer
supervisor mueller's question or
should we invite deputy county -- or
county attorney nibbelin, go ahead.
>> I was going defer to my colleague,
chief deputy judith holliber, who I
think can address that issue, maybe a
couple of other things.
>> good afternoon, supervisors.
so, the body, the jjdpc body is a
little complicated beasts hybrid body,
so it's combined statutorily mandated
body under 225 with code 2225 which
is the jjc component, juvenile
justice, and then the dpc component is
an advisory commission to the board
and they're combined which is why you
have the appointments that are made by
the judge and then also ratified by
the board.
but the inspections that are done of
the facilities and the reports on
those inspections are specifically in
the code as an obligation of the jjc,
the statutory body that reports to the
court.
so, while the reports go to the board
and there are recommendations in them,
it's the court that oversees that
process of inspecting and receiving
the reports.
>> and I just wanted to add that from
my understanding, judith, and you can
correct me, the san mateo county board
of supervisors back in 1974-ish --
>> somewhere around there, maybe 66 --
>> 76, passed -- 66, passed an order
combining the two bodies and created
the commission as we know it now.
>> and that is in our ordinance code
and that is the prerogative of the board
that is provided for in the code.
some counties have combined them, some
counties have not.
there are other options for the dpc
portion of that body.
some have stand alone jjc's.
>> yes, that is absolutely correct.
the jjc has somewhat of a limited
effect in the board at one point in
time decided to expand that and adopt
the jjdpc the welfare code 223 and
combine them.
that which I think took on even a
larger role after that, but the duties
assigned to 225 are somewhat limited
as I understand it.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yeah so, that's kind of what I was
getting to in my questions is under
225, really the obligation is to do
the inspections.
>> correct.
>> so, if less than -- I mean, in
2024, only two people did the
inspection out of the entire
commission.
in 2025, less than half of the
commissioners did the inspection, so
to the extent, how is that the
commission satisfying 225 and what
weight should we be giving the
commission's findings if it could be
swayed with such a small amount of the
commissioners?
>> I'm not sure that the code requires
that all the commissioners do the
inspections.
it's the commission's duty to conduct
them, that's the purview of the
commission and the court overseeing
the commission.
and the code does provide for how many
members on the commission, but I
haven't seen neigh says that
absolutely every single commissioner
has to participate in the inspections,
it might be that the -- I think and
this I will defer to ms. Rasmussen, I
think the way they do it is select
people to conduct the actual
inspections and they bring the
information back to the commission as
a whole to do the report, but I'm not
positive about that part especially
because that's a part I don't advise on
really.
>> okay, and I would suggest to the
commission in a circumstance like this
where we are weighing all the
information coming to us to see a
report that's only signed by two
commissioners and only treated the
inspection doesn't satisfy the
obligations of 225.
>> okay.
thank you.
>> thank you.
>> and so I'm going to take some
privilege here and invite chair
rasmussen to present on the jjdpc and
to our partners from fly and live in
peace, we're going to have you go
last, thank you for your patience.
chair rasmussen, please go ahead.
>> thank you so much, kim, am I
pressing the white button?
okay.
thank you so much for having us here
again today and for pushing through
and getting this study session going.
if you can look around, I'm pretty
privileged to work with some pretty
amazing partners who work tirelessly
to ensure that our young people are
not only safe but they
receive services and their lives are
improved.
since I was here in december, I'm not
going spend too much time going back
over the items that we already shared.
I'll just provide a brief overview
which I think answers some of
supervisor mueller's questions.
and it also includes the ordinance
that was referenced by supervisor
corzo.
so, legal authority of the joint
commission, so the juvenile justice
and delinquency prevention act of 1974
established national standards for how
youth in custody were to be tried and
it also supports local efforts at
prevention.
and then san mateo county in 1966
passed ordinance number 1769 which
established the delinquency prevention
commission, the welfare and
institutions code that was spoken of
earlier requires that every county
have a jjc, juvenile justice
commission, and it authorizes the
board to create and maintain a
delinquency prevention commission and
the county's responsible for paying
stipends and expenses and our
commissioner appointments are just as
we spoke about, they go through the
courts first and then they come to you
after that.
and the same members serve on both
commissions.
so, who serves on the jjdpc?
so, we have individuals with lived
experience, we have educators, we have
elected officials, community leaders,
advocates, youth, last year we had
five youth commissioners which I was
very proud of.
we have painters.
I, myself, come from a family of four
generations of law enforcement, my
family served san francisco and san
mateo county for over 100 years and
public safety is our legacy.
I also had a child 20 years ago who
went through the juvenile justice
system and I was one of those parents
who received that bill when my
daughter was sent to cya, it was $86 a
day and that was in 2022 which was
considerable for a police officer
family.
so, we all bring a unique
perspective to the table in this work
and I think that our diversity matters.
we share one common responsibility and
that is to look independently at how
our systems are serving young people
and where we can do better.
so, getting into our mandates and
responsibilities, sofa silt
inspections, so supervisor mueller, we
conduct about 20 facility inspections
a year.
the youth services center and secure
track inspection takes about four days.
there are very few members of the
commission who can take off four days
of work, four days of school, we can
only do it during the weekday, during
certain business hours, that is a
commitment that is a big facility and
so we have difficulty finding people
who can clear those schedules for that
many number of days to participate.
each year we encourage people to sign
up but we also are mindful that people
may not have that availability and
they're going to sign up for an
inspection that would only require
them to take off one day of work, that
might be for the canyon oaks facility or
receiving hope.
we also have youth who have
transportation issues and so maybe
we'll give them the responsibility of
doing one of the reports.
they don't require going out to the
facility where you're doing research
after what's happening at kafrn glen
wood, so we do put the sign-ups out
and people do sign up.
we're aware of the time commit: we
prepare the report, we distribute the
report, it goes before the full
commission and we discuss it and the
full commission votes to approve it.
it then goes to the state of
california and we provide it to the
board basically as courtesy because
you provide the budget for these
facilities and if there's liability
involved, it falls on us, the
taxpayers, the board here so I'm
hoping I answered the question okay.
okay.
alright.
so, besides facility inspections, we
work with bscc and oycr to ensure
compliance with all the things we
heard about earlier.
we conduct educational evaluations of
the programming that's being offered
in the hall and in secure track.
we inquire into the administration of
juvenile court law.
we make policy recommendation for
system improvements and then on the
delinquency prevention side, we're
responsible for coordinating
delinquency prevention efforts
throughout the county.
we build partnerships with schools
and organizations that work to prevent
entry into the juvenile justice system
in the first place.
we do a lot of community entrainment
and outreach, commissioner blanco's
been instrumental in making
partnerships with our school districts
and our superintendents and we go
and give presentations there, we give
presentations to civic groups and we
create resource and guide books for
parents and families and study the
root causes of juvenile delinquency
and recidivism in hopes of improving
public safety in san mateo county.
when we came in december, I think we
said we had ten minutes, I think we
went over an hour which was really
amazing, so we highlighted some of the
issues that probation has
consistently said they're not in their
purview to fik.
for example, the chief as much as he
might want to provide adequate food or
food that tastes good, that is really
correctional health and dietitian,
everybody has their own space, right,
so there were issues that we
elevated, many of which working with
probation year after year that they
said, we need help with, procurement
is one.
for instance, we had some -- when I
say we, I mean collectively,
that's how we work.
we had some shelving that was on order,
about five years ago, and that
shelving went through the procurement
process but by the time it got
approved, I think it was earlier this
year, the company had gone out of
business so we have to start all over
again, then they said the weight at
dpw could be up to would years before
they could get it installed so being
able to have some sort of expedited
procurement process for our juvenile
facilities would be very helpful not
only for probation to be able to take
care of the facility in the way in
which they want to but it would also
eliminate these issues with the
carpets and the painting and the
things we mentioned to you in december.
I wanted to touch base on the dental
care.
I appreciated the very thorough and
comprehensive reports that were
presented here.
there are -- there were in this last
inspection cycle long waits for dental
care, I even had one youth who had a
court order and waited 8 months with a
court order to get dental care.
there are issues within the system
that we need to elevate.
that's our responsibility to do so.
the limited prea compliance, that from
our perspective was that there was no
information available on the website
as far as no policy but the actual
numbers, the prea numbers, let's say
the sheriff department has on their
website.
lack of confidential reporting options.
I was happy to hear the chief
mentioned they were looking at an
outside number.
I did look to see after our meeting
two weeks ago what the reporting
options were available online,
supervisor corzo mentioned those, and
it's a pdf form, so not all youth have
access to computers in the hall,
mainly it's just college students, so
to be able to access the pdf, print
the pdf, fill out the pdf and e-mail
it back to probation is cumbersome for
juveniles when you may not have that
access.
your parents may be able to, I have
messages on my phone from parents
would say they don't want to go
through normal channels because they
feel their child may be retaliated
against.
having alternative ways that don't
involve going through probation would
be helpful.
we currently house females with males
which has its own issues.
we don't have enough females which is
a fortunate position to be in but it
is difficult to house them together.
so, we have one on the secure track
unit, sometimes we'll have three, four
on the other housing units.
okay.
and then most recently there's been
discussion about difficulty in
accessing funding for our secure track
youth.
I know the state has provided I
believe close to 12 million dollars
for this prop lacing and -- population
and there are steps that must be
taken to access that funding that's
something we're interested in learning
more about and wanting to see what
barriers can be removed so that money
can be used for the youth and their
individual rehabilitation plans.
staffing levelers are always something
that we bring up and I know that mr.
wade and I would communicate each
week, we would communicate and I know
they are really trying to hire new
folks.
they even changed the shift schedules
to include 312's and 410's to sort of
-- because everybody's vying for the
same people.
so, I think that they're working
towards that.
we are seeing a growing number of
youth who are experiencing housing
instability, so if a youth stays in
custody until their 18th birthday and
their probation is terminated and they
don't have anywhere to go, we're
finding out where do we place them,
we're currently working with samaritan
house to see how we can build a
partnership there so we can keep those
kids off the street.
so I'll go into now the issues in the
communities.
so, there's a lack of robust reentry
services and support.
meaning that when my daughter went
through the system, we have what we
call wrap around services and it was a
wrap around program that really did
just that, it wrapped around the
family, whatever that looked like, to
provide them with the intensive
services they needed to succeed.
right now we have contracted services
that are very limited at a recent
meet, we talked about this and the
first month could be as little as four
hours and that four hours is not
really robust reentry services so
that's something we're looking to
improve.
also transportation into the youth
services center, samtrans eliminated
the bus route there and the commission
lobbied samtrans to consider their
decision but they said that the
neighborhood was located in an
affluent area and that was a factor
to why the service was can you and so
we have not been able to restore any
public transportation up there which
is critical because that's where youth
check in with probation, that's where we
have code, both dependency and
delinquency court.
there are a lot of services being
provided, visiting, things like that,
challenging accessing services once
they're out of the community and the
basic lack of support.
all of these issues are connected, if
we look at the community issues, all
of those are interconnected and if we
want young people to succeed when they
leave custody, it's very important
that these things are in place when
they walk out the door.
facility and maintenance, getting back
to our procurement process and mentioning
the delays we had with the carpet
and flooring, much of the damage to
the carpets has resulted in the change
of the food services that were
transferred during the pandemic over
to the county jail and they're
heated up, there's ovens and
refrigerators on the housing unit, you
can see the extensive food stains and
whatnot and near the tables where
the youth eat.
so I think -- and the facility is
coming up on 20 years, and I think
having an open house is a fantastic
idea.
but it is a state of the art facility.
that track, what we have in the
center, there is a beautiful facility and
our goal as commission when we raise
these issues about the maintenance and
things that need to be done, we want
to keep it that way.
we never want to get back to the place
we were at 21 tower road, so it
requires maintenance and it is hard to
believe it's already been 20 years
but it has, and so just like in our
own homes, you know, we need to keep
care of things.
so, okay, so we've talked about the
carpets and flooring, the lack of
personal storage, general housekeeping
and maintenance.
one thing I learned in july when we
went for our most recent inspection,
commissioner paten and I, I learned we
do not have a housekeeping contract in
place for the juveniles or some of the
youth are the ones who perform all the
housekeeping which is fine but it kind
of also expands why we don't have --
things aren't deep cleaned and I don't
know how they ever been trained to
clean, you know, my children have
chores at home but cleaning a facility
of that size I think is worthy of a
contract, just to ensure we're doing a
deep clean.
I know there is a contract in place
for the administrative offices and
the lobbies and things like that, and
I believe I spoke with mr. Wade and
ms. Ramirez during the inspection to
see about ways that we can expand that
contract to include some deep cleaning
there.
commission challenges, some challenges
we faced is with our annual inspection
report, we send them over to the board
each year as courtesy for the reasons
I explained and we very seldom get
feedback.
we were really happy in december when
we gott feedback and we were invited
by supervisor canepa who was our
liaison for probably more than a
decade, yeah, so, okay, and then
inclusion.
sometimes we find out after the fact
really important decisions have been
made or there's discussions happening
or planning and we don't know about it
and here we are, this board of
volunteers, unpaid volunteers, who
dedicate their time and expertise to
benefit the youth so we'd like a seat
at the table.
commissioner stipends and
commissions also covered in welfare
and institution 231, those have not
been provided as long as I have been
on the commission.
there is a code that states that
commissioners will receive a stipend
for attending meetings and their
expenses will be covered but we've
never received that.
in other counties, they've give than
money to help commissioners in
transportation, that was something we
brought to the board maybe three years
ago and at that time, I believe the
president was mr. Slocum, he said
that's not?
>> the county was interested in doing
but it is in the welfare and
institutions code as a mandate.
yes?
so, and that is for the delinquency
prevention.
communication gaps and coordination
and information sharing, commission
funding, our commission doesn't have a
budget, you heard back in december how
much we self-fund and buy things on
our own during the pandemic, we were
using my own zoom account to conduct
meetings.
access to information.
it is a challenge to obtain
information and data to carry out our
oversight responsibilities.
accomplishments.
we have a handbook, how to help your
child after an arrest and that sits
in the lobby of the juvenile hall,
private defender's office, and we
are in the process of updating that
now and we found someone who's willing
to donate their services in tongva,
we will have it in three separate
languages.
we did the elevate voting rights
program.
there was supervisor speier that
offered to get the 12 laptops.
I want to be clear that the laptops we
provide youth and the chief and I had
a conversation about this, our kids
who have been released from the
facility do not have any technology
and are enrolled in college and wish
to continue.
we provide them with laptops.
>> I'm going to ask you to finish out
your presentation.
I don't want to address a specific
board member, I want us to get through
to the end here and we'll have board
questions and keep it moving.
>> the laptop initiative is -- okay,
suited for success and then the peer
program, the commission raised 680
thousand dollars for the peer point
program which we can't administer
programs so we put fly in touch with
those funders and they handle that
contract.
we are recognized as statewide
leaders, I founded the california
juvenile justice collaborative, I sit
on the advisory group for sacramento
for policy and legislative
subcommittee and commissioner blanco
sit on the oycr.
we do policy reform, educational
pansies is one that we've been working
with the county office of education.
superintendent marco
chavez, we discovered we weren't in
compliance with educational transition
plan.
what that means is any youth who's
incarcerated over 30 days is required
to have a plan on how they're going
to get into school, enroll, what's
going to happen, we are act timely
working on that, they've worked on an
mou with probation.
protecting youth confidentiality, I
spoke on that earlier.
the strip searches, I just wanted to
make one clarification, I do have a
report in my hand that was sent to me
by the office of youth and community
restoration who investigated that
incident and found the allegations to
be substantiated so I have a copy of
that report for clarity.
visiting, after the youth bill of
rights was passed, we went in and
talked with then presiding judge susan
about sibling visiting, we got that
put through, we reduced the wait time
for eyeglasses by elevating the issue,
it used to take up to a year to get a
pair of eyeglasses and now the wait
time is about 30 days.
and the youth have pillows, okay.
so, some of our delinquency prevention
work, that's what I'm going to show
you this video , in january, we held
our prevention and youth voices
conference, I saw supervisor mueller
there, he took the time, thank you so
much for being there, that meant a
lot, we didn't gate chance to talk, I
appreciate you being there.
but we created a video of the day that
shows just the level of collaboration
and work that went into this event and
I think I will go ahead and share that
now.
( playing video ).
>> chair rasmussen, do you know how
much longer this is?
>> [inaudible].
>> we've been going through two and a
half hours now and we have a lot of
items to go through.
>> so, this video for those who are
interested is available on our
website, so it was a huge event.
we raised over 30 thousand dollars,
commissioner blanco, to put that
together, it was sponsored by project
change and the community colleges so
we're proud of that work and we'll be
sending you an invitation for a year
coming up.
when we were there in july for the
inspection, it was noted that under
the title 15 nutritional guidelines,
it showed that we were not in
compliance with menus and that the
nutritional values had not been
established and I understand through
talking with them today, that the lady
who's responsible for developing those
menus and for signing off they meet
the nutritional values has been out on
a medical.
I wanted to mention that.
that is the extent of my presentation
today.
>> okay, do we have questions from the
board?
>> supervisor mueller?
>> I do have a question.
so, you mentioned that it takes a
course of four days for all of the
commissioners to do all of the
inspections or just four day fords for
the juvenile hall.
>> yes, for the juvenile hall, they
are on one campus but they are on two
distinct facilities.
>> how long does it take to do all the
inspections for all the facilities?
>> we start the process in july and we
wrap up by the end of the year.
>> and about how many commissioners
are doing each of the inspections?
>> well, commissioners, we ask they
sign up for at least two and our
numbers are lower than sometimes --
then sometimes we need them to sign up
for three.
>> for each of the facilities in the
county then, are there somewhere
between three and four commissioners
-- let me ask you this, is there any
facility in the county that there's a
majority of the commission to put the
inspection together?
>> no.
and most of the time, that isn't
something that the facility would like
for us to show up with ten people I.
doesn't really take that to do the
inspection.
we try and rotate and give everybody
an opportunity to serve on whatever
inspection team they want to, but to
show up -- I know even for graduation
events, probation has requested
no more than three, so it's just a
matter of how things work that way,
but no, we share the work.
that's how we do it.
and then everybody weighs in,
everybody votes to approve.
>> alright, so earlier you said that
people couldn't get the four days off
to juvenile hall and additionally
to that, it's your belief that the
facility doesn't want more than four
people?
>> well, I think we should ask --
that's just in my experience.
the most we've ever had on the team is
four but I think the best person to
ask is the chief on how many -- if
he'd like all ten of us to come, I
don't know that we could achieve that,
but we could ask him.
>> chief, do you have a problem with
all ten going?
thank you.
okay, I'm going to go ahead, I do want
to try to figure this out because it's
for two years in a row, it's been a
very small number of people who did
the inspects and like I said in that
one year, three did it and only
two signed.
I'm not sure ms. Woke didn't sign that
year?
>> she left the commission by the time
the report was issued and she had
already left the commission.
she had termed out.
>> thank you.
>> this year we had three,
commissioner bocanegra, [inaudible], and
commissioner paten.
>> so, only three did the inspection
the this year?
>> for one we just did in july.
>> okay, thank you.
>> you're welcome.
>> okay, any other questions?
okay, I have several.
okay.
I'm going to start -- you know, I
think we heard you reference a lot of
state laws and make a lot of
statements about how our county is out
of compliance with funding the
commission and specifically making
statements and you are the chair of
this commission, so I want to address
like what it looks like to the public
when the chair of a commission makes
statements that the county is out of
compliance and not providing --
creating the appearance that we are
not refunding a commission for
essentially incurring expenses that
were never approved and not refunding
that to a chair or a commission, so
let me be more clear.
specifically for our welfare
institution code 231, you shared that
this county does not provide that
funding and so I would like county
attorney nibbelin and maybe deputy
county attorney holliber to kind of
give us some perspective on that,
are we violating welfare institution
code 231 by not providing --
>> stipends.
>> stipends to these commissioners?
>> no, I don't think we are.
section 231 of the welfare
institutions code does provide that
members of the jjc are entitled to
have expenses that are necessary and
reasonable reimbursed.
when claims for reimbursement are made.
and it also states that in the
alternative, a county could provide
for a stipend but there's no
requirement that there be a stipend,
so it's really a question of whether
or not we receive proper claims for
reimbursement for necessary expenses.
>> okay.
and so I want to address this because
this creates a distraction from
serving the young people, it creates
this claim that our county is doing
wrong by the commissioners and is
violating the law and thus creates
this kind of this insinuation that we
are violating the rights of young
people and that is something that I
would hope wouldn't repeatedly happen
but I think it's something that --
it's something that has repeatedly
happened.
and then --
>> it is our understanding --
>> I'm not done, I'm sorry, one second.
the other thing -- and I'll give you
a chance to respond.
the other thing I wanted to bring
attention to, the statement that you
made about the fact that the
commission has incurred a lot of
expenses, that some commissioners have
incurred a lot of expenses that the
county has not reimbursed
commissioners for.
the county does not reimburse
commissioners for expenses that were
never approved beforehand by the
county and they don't even do that for
staff.
>> I never made that claim, supervisor.
>> I'm pretty sure we all heard you
say that, so go ahead and you can
respond now but we've
never -- we have asked for the county
support in providing money for awards
for outgoing commissioners such as
commissioner susan swope who is our
longest servicing commissioner of all
time, but we don't submit for expenses
and it was our understanding, we had a
whole project that went into this back
in -- three years ago about the
welfare and institutions code and it
was our understanding and through my
work on the statewide commissions that
other countess do receive that $25
stipend per meeting up to two meetings
which I think is outlined in the
welfare and institutions code, but
remember, we're community volunteers
so we're not attorneys.
and so we -- that was our
interpretation, so much so we brought
it to the board in the past to try and
resolve it.
>> okay, well, if you're not an
attorney, you should not speak as if
you are directly quoting law as if you
know exactly what the law says.
>> I believe it says that.
>> I believe that's the responsibility
as a chair of a commission that
represents this county to not create
the false illusion that that's what
you're claiming as the truth.
I'm going to pass it over to
commissioner -- I mean, supervisor
canepa?
>> thank you so much.
I've had the honor to serve with the
commission for ten years.
I worked -- I think we worked really
well together, right, john.
we have, and I think the good thing is
what I have seen over the ten years is
it's a good, healthy
tension, sometimes you do certain
things and it may not be status quo
but what we're able to do -- and chief
keene, I think you can attest to this,
he does listen, right.
>> he does.
>> and if you look at the things,
I think one of the things I was
thinking about chief keene, I showed
supervisor gauthier this, was sb90, we
were able to work with the commission,
with the department, we had 12.4
million dollars and we worked
collaboratively and collect I beverly
beverly -- collectively to solve it
so there is this built in tension, you
have to recognize that but I look at
the progress we've made, it's been
great.
now I do want to say this and I have
to -- I'm not trying to come to
ms. Rasmussen's defense, but I think
you really care.
I mean, you ran out of your pocket,
she didn't seek reimbursement, I think
there was a member of the board who
said we should reimburse, so I think
the record has to reflect that.
I have no issue with you, joanne, I
have no issue with the members.
I think your hearts are in the right
place.
you care for these kids, you shouldn't
be faulted for that.
you should not with faulted for that,
and as we move forward and I think
being the longest standing member of
the board here, it works out in a
strange way having this commission,
while you guys can be a little bit
troublesome at times in a good way, I
think you guys bringing these issues
forward makes the hall stronger and it
makes them -- the kids feel someone
they can talk to as advocates and I
think it's important, it's a part of
the process, it's messy, but I think
it's important and so I'm glad we're
having this study session and you've
got to -- you have to have faith and I
have seen it over the period of ten
years, you haven't got everything, the
commission hasn't got everything
they've wanted.
that's not a bad thing but
there has been progress and I do think
that this commission is really
important, you have done some valuable
work.
plaid dam chair?
>> thank you so much, supervisor, we
appreciate all the years we've worked
together, thank you for those comments.
>> supervisor speier and then mueller.
>> I think there are a lot of
wonderful people very committed to
these kids on the comprising and --
commission and within the probation
department.
I can't begin to tell you how
impressed I was.
I'm still unclear about this this
reimbursement issue.
if in fact they file a claim for
meetings or for what else, travel
expense, I mean, what is it they can
file for, and if -- this is in the
law, so other commissions don't have
that benefit, but if it's in the law
and they file a claim, they will be
reimbursed?
>> if it is for expenses that are
deemed necessary and appropriate for
the operation of the commission, the
answer to that, yeah, I think,
supervisor, would be yes, but we do
have processes in the county for the
means by which people make claims for
work that they do that is necessary
and related to their employment for
example, and similarly for work has
you might do as commissioner.
so, we would assess I think the claims
and work with the controller on the
claims if we got them along similar
lioness but that's a process we would
be looking at.
I'm not aware we've gotten claims that
have been denied.
>> I think the best thing for you to
do is have a conversation with the
controller to find out what tends to
be acceptable if I believe that the
commissioners have claims that aren't
reimbursed in and the welfare
institutions code provides for it.
>> thank you very much.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yeah, I appreciate your comments,
supervisor canepa and supervisor
speier and ms. Rasmussen, I'm not
finding fault with you, what I'm
struggling with, I think the process
is messy but I don't think it
should continue the way it has.
I think it needs cleaning up.
this has spilled over into these
chambers multiple times and today we
have spent an inordinate amount of
time on it and because of the way it's
been presented process wise, they're
not entirely clear to me.
I would respectfully indicate to the
commission, you need to get more
people engaged in those inspections
and have more voices than yourself
presenting them, ms. Rasmussen, you
are a wonderful advocate, but there
needs to be -- and I need to see other
commissioners in the writing of that
report.
as you have seen today, there are many
people who have come forward who have
presented a lot of information and
when I look at your report and I see
over two reporters your signature of
those two reports are about 40% of the
signatures, you can see where my
camber on the weight of what's being
presented of this this could be from
one point of view and you want to add
more points of view to that to provide
weight to it.
I think it's -- I frankly think 225
requires more with respect to the
inspection of duty and how it's being
carried out, at least in good faith
with how 225 was written.
so, I really want to go ahead and talk
to -- I don't know, and that's the
other thing I have issue right now
with, I don't really understand would
who the entity is that has oversight
of how the commission conducts itself
with respect to --
>> we provide our reports to bscc.
>> okay, well, I would like to figure
out with county counsel how we can
work with you to clarify that process
to make your life and our life easier.
>> they've always -- craig
thompson is our representative, he's
been helpful and he always gives us
good feedback that our reports are
helpful and they conduct biannual,
every two years, and he's commented
our reports are very helpful to him.
>> I want to also be very clear, what is
clear to me is our professionals
within are doing a tremendous job in
difficult situations.
the numbers, the change, when I look
at the change, what happened in 2021
after realignment in terms of
incidents, how that affected our
professionals at the hall, realignment
had major impact.
I was looking at that chart trying to
figure out what it was and that's
exactly when realignment happened, the
level of offender you have seen and
the challenges you have seen has
changed significantly, so I think we
values to provide some empathy in that
circumstance and I think process will
help us really sort of instead of
having what really feels like a
yelling match happening here, they're
getting yelled at and trying to
respond, if we provide more process to
it, perhaps we can provide more
clarity on what needs to be addressed
in a way where we're not trying to
pull needles out of the hay stack.
thank you though, all, if for the
presentations today.
they were incredibly helpful and
trying to figure out what comes next
on that process perspective.
>> thank you, supervisor gauthier?
>> I want to thank you for your
report but I do just have some
questions going back to the december
presentation.
my memory serves me correctly, there
was 70 thousand dollars that was spent
that you weren't reimbursed for.
there's procurement question too, so
there's a way that the facility does
procurement, so you should have
approval before you go out and
purchase things, is that not the way
things would be set up?
>> I never saw reimbursement, it was
never my intention.
I just happened to mention it to day
vid and he was blown away by the
number.
david elevated that.
I was -- it waser supervisor canepa, I
was not looking for any reimbursement
whatsoever.
>> I'm trying to figure out the
procurement process for the youth that
were in the facility.
is it anybody that can go purchase
something on your own or should you go
through the facility and have a
procurement process.
if somebody needs shoes, shouldn't
that go through the facilities, they're
able to purchase shoes before
someone just purchases shoes and says
the facility isn't doing their job?
>> I think we're talking about a
bigger issue.
so, we're talking -- there were times
when eyeglasses were taking a long
time and I would go to costco and get
the prescription fill sod the kids
could have glasses for school, that
happened mull multiple times but for
the vast majority of incidents and
expenses are when they are out of the
facility, there's small number of kids
in the facility.
this is when they're out on the
street, mom's having trouble paying
for rent, maybe utilities are
getting shut off, they don't have a
clipper card or trance oration to get
to school, they don't have school
clothes so I just took it upon myself,
not in my capacity as a commissioner
but as human being that recognized a
fundamental need that I filled.
>> I understand, but I think it was
presented differently or that's the
way I understood it, it wasn't
presented that these youth were
outside of facility, it felt like they
were in the facility and they were not
receiving the items that they needed.
that's what we were trying to get to
the bottom of.
it's very different if you come in and
say these young people are already
home and I'm helping them, again in
december, it felt like they were in
the facilities and not getting shoes and
any other things they were getting in
the facility.
>> I appreciate for that feedback, I
appreciate that, I'm not used to
giving these presentations.
>> so, I do want to -- in putting
together this study session, we put a
lot of thought into making sure that
there would be a lot of different
perspectives about the entire system,
we have typically heard from one side
and I do want to acknowledge that
supervisor canepa was a liaison to the
jjdpc for many, many years and when I
took it over, I did so with the
intention of working more closely with
the commission, I'll be honest, you
may hear a sense of frustration coming
from me and I'll be upfront about
it, it is there and I won't pretend
it's not.
part of that has been something that I
think supervisor mueller without us
ever speaking about this has picked up
on and that is that there is a real
tension when it comes to this
commission and frankly the leadership
of this commission
and the tension and not a single
person interacting with
this commission, and I would take the
liberty of saying almost all community
partners and county departments feel
when trying to collaborate with this
commission.
I have been personally to several of
the meetings and when I have attended
and tried to -- as a supervisor, come
to this commission and tried to work
with this commission have felt like I
am being interrogated, have seen other
community partners be anxious about
speaking with the commission because
of that same treatment and in trying
to support this commission, we sent
out a survey about two weeks ago and
this survey was I would say very
open-ended, where do you need more
training, where do you need support,
do you understand the mission of your
commission, do you understand -- like,
do you need like -- you know, what are
areas you want to explore more, what
are things you need.
we haven't gotten a single response
back and my understanding is that it
has been -- there have been meetings
potentially in violation of the brown
act happening to discuss this survey
and to have one single response from
the entire commission instead of
commissioners engaging in just a
genuine feedback process and working
with the board and that's problematic.
it really is.
I want this commission to work
collaboratively and to serve young
people in true partnership with every
other community partner.
I think it's possible.
I want us to get there.
and I was hoping that during this
presentation, that we could put some
of the digs aside but I believe they
still have come up and it makes me
feel a little defensive and I think
that's what has come up.
>> supervisor, if I could address the
survey.
we met as a juvenile justice
commission which is not -- doesn't
have to comply with the brown act to
decide how --
>> but there is no juvenile justice
commission, there's a jjdpc,.
>> we're two separate bodies with
two separate mandates but we also hold
separate meetings as a jjc and we have
done that and we hold closed sessions,
some jjc's only meet in private so we
did not violate the brown act but this
was -- the survey came as joint
commission survey, so we needed to
look at what that was going to look
like because it was an evaluation of
-- it wasn't specific about which
mandates and responsibilities it was
seeking information for, so it's on
our agenda for tonight because we can
-- now that the jjc has decided this
needs to be a delinquency
prevention survey, we can only discuss
it in public under delinquency
prevention and it's on tonight's
agenda, so we try very hard to comply
with the rules.
and I apologize if my words come
across as digs.
to me, they are truth and to me, I
speak them, I bring them here because
I'm concerned.
>> madam president, can we move on.
>> yes, let's move on.
>> we now will welcome fly and live in
peace and then I think chief keene
wants to close us out.
so I don't have names for -- yeah, we
have public comment as well.
welcome, sorry.
>> no, I'm good.
alright.
hi, I am melissa pulling and I'm the
managing director of innovation at fly
or fresh lifelines for youth, on a
personal note, I'm going to make this
the fastest version of what fly does in
history, fly, if you will, we
do a lot in san mateo county and have
for many years and we'll do an
overview in this presentation.
aim born and raised in san mateo
county and honored and privileged to
have done this work for as long as I
have.
okay.
fresh lifelines for youth or fly is a
non-profit and has been operating --
it started in 2000 down the road.
this is to disrupt the pipeline to
prison and advance justice in
california and beyond.
this is what we do every day, these
are our young people, this is what
we're in the pursuit of excellence for.
we are in five counties across the bay,
I'm speaking specifically about san
mateo county.
this is a rudimentary school to prison
pipeline, you can see in san mateo
county, we have six different
programs that are meant to be offer
ramps of this pipeline.
the first three are specifically
prevention programs, we want young
people to interact with us here to
never enter the system at all.
this is where we serve a large
majority of our young people and the
leadership programs, the last three
entry reps are all programs and run
as interventions when young people
have come across with the pipeline.
we served over 750 young people last
year alone in this county
specifically, there's some outcomes
we're proud of.
not because of fly necessarily but
because of the young people and the
work that shows the work they've put
in, these are assessments to show
reduction of need, a lack of new
charges, recidivism, increase in their
educational goals and building their
social and emotional skills.
I'll just put this slide up briefly,
just to show we partner across the
entire county.
we are everywhere as you can see,
there's a long list of partners, we
partner with most schools, most
continuation schools and
traditional high schools to offer
programming, college campuses,
juvenile hall and the jails across the
entire county.
we are in a lot of places.
okay.
I'm going to start not at the
beginning but at the reentry program
because there's been discussion of
that.
pride does become a program for our
young people levering the institution.
they have spent time in juvenile hall,
the age range from 12-18, anybody that
spent my time there has access to our
programing and they receive a
professional coach to work with them
and develop plans based on what
their needs are and what their goals
are and they meet with professional
coaches to have their needs met.
it was mentioned a certain number of
hours and time spent with them.
we have minimum requirements that are
deliverables for our staff, if a young
person needs more time than that, had
that they cannot have that, I have
never said that.
we do individualized coach management
and we give the time with their coach
in order to get whatever they need
from the program, that's entering into
school or basic needs support or post
secondary, we meet them where they are
and focus on individual case
management.
they have access to a career pathways
navigator, that is there for
educational support and exposure to
different career paths so they have
access to the professional coach and
that person.
okay, we also have our reps program,
this is for young people in custody in
the sytf unit, they are also given a
professional coach that does one on
one in custody case management.
that is pivot for fly, we've never
done in custody coaching before, sytf
never existed before.
the coaches work with the young people
on building their social, emotional
skills, they receive workshops once a
week towards professional development
and life skillets and cockering from
other staff members and we have other
professionals come in and talk to them
about what their industries are like
and they can interview them and ask
them questions, this program has
been built within the last several
years and has expanded their
services with the recent contract and
we also can serve 707 offenses that
are not in the security treatment
facility as well.
we're going to have the capacity to do
that and to both programs with this
new contract, we're adding a credible
messaging mentoring component.
we're adding on this additional level
of programming and we're excited to
build that out this year, we're about
six years in, we're excited to start
matching young people and dinging this
intervention to really support the
most vulnerable young people, the
highest need.
our law program, that is where young
people are in the school sites, we
facilitate a 12 week curriculum, ron
mentioned that most people don't know
what the miranda rights are and we
hope hundreds of people around the
country know, what young people's
rights are, the laws and how young
people can be advocates themselves for
the changes they want to see in their
community, that's what that program
does, it's our largest touch
program, we serve the most young
people.
peer point is a diversion program,
this is offered at schools and through
police departments, that is meant to
offer alternative suspension or
arrests, it's true diversion in the
sense that young people instead of
being suspended, they will do
restorative circles with their peers,
foes can you on accountability,
healing and approach, that's men to
divert from the system in the schools,
that's primarily our focus right now,
police departments have been trickier,
we're open to it, but we're focusing
on the school prevention aspect of
things.
I will mention that the a former
commission on the jjdpc did find this
opportunity for us and really
developed it and we were entrusted to
provide the programming and have done
so, that funding is no longer
there, we have found ways to scale it
through the dedication partnerships
and just the commitment of the fly
team itself.
and last lay is our leadership program
which is 26 young people that work
with a coacher throughout the school
year, they build their leadership
skills and learn on world issues,
they receive one on one coaching, we
have a fun retreat as well.
that is all I have, I'll leave you
with some youth quotes, I promised
that was fast as I could do it.
>> that was really fast and I want to
appreciate it, I appreciate your team,
I was like who are those people.
I saw some of them in the pictures.
>> I had a question about something
that I saw but I'm -- did you have any
questions?
do my colleagues have questions?
one of your programs -- I can't
remember, I was going to say if you
need help connecting with any police
departments, every supervisor here has
connections to polices departments and
we would love -- well, I'll speak for
myself, I'll take what I heard earlier
today to heart, yeah.
>> especially if they don't have their
own diversion, it is a great
opportunity for us, we're doing that.
if anybody knows any credible
messenger mentors, people that would
like to give back to the community, find
us.
>> okay.
>> thank you so much.
supervisor gauthier?
>> through the
chair, I want to say I appreciate
fly, all the work that you do, I
want to give a huge shout-out to
thurmond wade who is representing you
in all spaces all the time ensuring
that you are being represented, so
just appreciate you and I
attended a few of the events and I
know the work you're doing and the
impact you're having on young people
on their lives, they're graduating
from college similar to live in peace
and they're doing so much better in
their lives so thank you for being at
the table.
I'm looking forward to live in peaches
presentation as well, I appreciate
your work.
>> thank you.
>> I know what I was going to say
earlier.
I wanted to say thank you, like, when
we hear things like our youth don't
get services, this is a service that
our youth get that probation has a
contract with that is amazing and is
worthy of respect and is worthy of
celebration, so thank you and, you
know, culturally, like, competent
services are -- they're not always
there and when they are, they're
extremely valuable and that lived
experience is gold to these young
people.
thank you, supervisor mueller?
>> I saw you like about to click.
okay.
thank you.
thank you so much.
>> thank you.
>> I think we have live in peace up
next.
welcome.
>> hello.
thank you, guys, I know -- I probably
won't be that quick, that was
impressive, but I'm dr. Sterns lagwood
from live in peace, I live and
breathe east palo alto, menlo park and
redwood city, eugene jackson is down
there, I'm going to be the speaker.
live in peace, our mission is just to
help young people reclaim the vision
for their future, we do that by
removing barriers giving access, by
pushing people forward to be their
best personal self.
I think our secret sauce, we're
similar to fly in some ways, our
secret size is our staff.
that's the next -- our staff are from
east palo alto, from menlo park and from
redwood city, born and raised, I'm the
newest member and I'm from 1987, so
I've put some work in myself so,, we
are previously incarcerated, we are
college edge skates, we are social
workers, we are -- we represent our
community and we know the kids before we
go in, we know their families, we know
them while they're in and we know when
they get out.
I think we are famously a wrap around
service in ways that only people that
live -- it's personal for us.
>> it's personal when you don't make
it because you're our neighbor, you're
our god son, you're our friend, so
we're committed to this and we love
working with the juvenile hall.
just some quick things.
we are -- we focus on young people
that have no been served by other
communities, by other organizations.
live in peace comes out of rest in
peace, we realize that our young
people knew how to celebrate death and
knew what to do when kids got out,
their friends got out of prison, but
they didn't know thousand live -- how
to live in peace, so everything we do
is based out of the concept that
alive and free is baseline and we know
how to get you there, we know how to
give you good information, good advice
and we'll walk with you until you
figure it out yourself.
we have long term over 40 years
experience, we're deeply rooted but I
think the other thing is we were
designed to intersect with systems so
we know what we do as a non-profit, we
get in the little crevices, we knee a
school cannot do all that or juvenile
hall, but we intersect as a community
where they cannot do it so that's why
we believe in a partnership between
non-profits and systems are legally
important and I will say I don't know
anybody that's doing it better than
them right now.
these are our programs and I'll
highlight a few of them, all are based
on young people that historically do
not make -- swag is something that
mike callagy and live in peace and a
couple of others from east palo alto
came up with connie back there, but to
date, we have 99% graduation rate of
high-schoolers and these are young
people that are justice involved, they
are reentry, they are suspended and
we're incredibly proud of that and
that's the kids coming in and out of
juvenile hall, that's why we work well
with mill crest and with san mateo
county of education, we have a gap
year, we have trades, so if you're not
ready -- if -- trades is not just
being ready to not go to college, hell,
you have a good opportunity to make a
lot of money and so we have a pretty
robust trades program.
we have a college and career program
where we do almost a million dollars
of scholarships every year and we have
an 88% graduation rate and 14% is the
national average of this demographic,
so, I would like to take all the
credit but it's our secret sauce that
does the work and we're proud of it.
we also just for who we are, we
started a bike shop and our kids
started getting -- intersecting with
the polices because of bikes, we would
start a bike shop, the kids would
bring the facebook bikes there, we
would get them a different bike but
then it became -- it was great,
facebook loved us too for that, but
also we now train young people how to
work on bikes and we serve the whole
community and we have kids that are
now college and they are working at
their colleges on bikes, so we have a
lot of things we do.
we'll go to the next one.
our tag line is when you see yourself
in the future, you make decisions to
get there.
that's a lot of what we're doing is
we're helping young people see
themselves for their beauty and their
power and it doesn't matter where you
are, if you're in juvenile hall, you're
in juvenile hall, if you're out,
you're out.
every single young person -- nobody
removed going to juvenile hall or jail
for life, it's a process after
decision after decision and so if we
can intersect these decisions and
intersect the person -- I was just at
csm today, one of the kids that's out,
he came, he's like, hey, miss, you see
me as a college student, I'm like,
hey, boy, I see you.
where I last saw him was in juvenile
hall but he's trance sighing to see
himself as college students, we know
that's so important, we wrap around
students, we provide financial services,
we provide pretty much anything that
they need.
okay, so we're also in the hall, we
are there five days as week with six
staff, eugene is there, he's the big
dog, and I think he brings in the live
in peace spirit where we're just
constantly working to serve the system
that is -- it really has the challenge
of keeping kids safe, keeping the
community safe, helping rehab young
people and so what we do in juvenile
hall is we life coach, we work on the
individual plans.
we do aod, alcohol and drug with
mindfulness, we do workforce
development so they're ready when they
get out.
they have skills, interviews capacity,
the most exciting thing we're doing is
we brought in a construction team
where our young people are learning to
three days a week, they are planning
and building projects and they're
learning how to use all the tools,
they have all the different
certificates and then we're also doing
the support to drive young people
where they need to be for the young
people that are on their way out.
so we're driving kids to college, and
we're helping with all that so,, I
don't know the you know, there is a
young person in sonoma state right now
that also comes home on the
weekend, that's a big deal.
I don't know who else is doing that
and the partnership going on with
project change, with project rebounds,
those are not easy to do, it's hard to
get all these organizations to talk
together and to move a student that is
also incarcerated to have a college
experience, that is not easy and
that takes a lot of work and a lot of
bending, so we're super excited about that
and we have a reentry diviner --
everything we do includes young people
out of being incarcerated, life
coaching, college support, job
support, everything we're doing.
so, the other thing is we do have a
federal grant that is -- we've been
able to hire 25 young people that were
incarcerated this year, so we have 25
students that have jobs that were
incarcerated at juvenile hall, we also
have -- we're training them to be
leaders and so I think overall, what
we are seeing is all the -- we're not
the only ones, we partner whoever we
can partner with.
it is coming in the direction from the
juvenile hall, I'm sure there are
things we can fix.
in honesty, I'm so proud and so
hopeful for the work that we're doing
and it's like I said, it's personal,
it's our neighbors, it's our frenz,
and -- friends, and I wouldn't be up
here talking about something has was
disrespectful to my neighbor, I
feel sure and strong about our work
and about the system that we're
working with.
do you have any questions?
>> thank you so much, any questions?
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> thank you.
I sat on the board for years so I know
firsthand the young people, the lives
you're really impacting and how you're
changing east palo alto and the bike
program and the bike courses that you
do, just you're really giving back to
the community as a whole and I want to
thank you for live in peace through
the swag person because it has made a
difference for many young people.
>> if I can through the chair,
supervisor gauthier, you hit the nail
on the head.
this is an incredible organization and
heather and eugene are the real deal,
they're helping kids every day, it was
our pleasure to partner with you and
continue to partner with you.
>> thank you, I wanted to say you
mentioned project rebound, as a
family member of a lot of people that
were formerly incarcerated, I did my
college internship with project
rebound, so I got to reconnect with
jason bell that has run that
program for many years at sf state,
and it's true, those relationships
take intention to build and to
maintain and thank you for all has you
do.
I remember when I heard about live in
peace, I said I want that in san mateo
in my district, so thank you so much.
anyone else?
no?
okay, thank you so much.
and with that, I think we'll hand it
over to chief keene to wrap us up and
yeah, I don't know what time we're
going to end today because we still
have a lot to go to.
>> I want to go quickly, I know we have
public comment and I want to get to
that.
I want to -- and once again, if you can
go to the last page with concerns.
I want to say once again how much I
appreciate the opportunity to have
these discussions today.
I think they were very well and
important and needed.
and I certainly want to support
something that supervisor canepa said.
I've been your chief for 13 years,
during that time, I have had a mason
relationship with iterations of the
jjdpc.
it has had different leadership during
those times and we've not always seen
eye to eye, and as you said, I think
really wisely, supervisor, it's been a
healthy intention and I think that's
tension has helped us make some huge
strides in certain areas and has
created an opportunity for learning
on both ends, but I think the key
issue I have is the leadership of the
past work collaborative and I want to
be clear to distinguish from the
commission as a whole because I think
that's really important.
our community folks volunteer their
time and energy to learn to become
subject matter experts in areas that
most of them did not go to school for,
most of them did not have those
experiences so I really believe that
that work is genuinely important to
improve the system but also hold the
system accountable.
I think where the concern lies is that
the current leadership is not
presenting opportunities I think for
the most part for there to be earnest
collaboration, the amount of
misinformation over the last six
month, 8 months, a year has been
problematic and troubling, I think we
heard interesting comments today about
resolving concerns and things that are
really important to the
commission, to the chair who spoke for
the commission, and I noticed this
commentary about confidentiality and
them not being an attorney or it she
not being an attorney, that struck me
as odd.
the picture you see in front of you is
an inappropriate unauthorized photo
taken from inside my facility.
when you guys received your
presentation in december, it was full
of photos that were taken inside of my
facility that were not authorized.
the reason why I bring that up is I
think it's microcosm of what we've
been experiencing.
this kind of blatant disregard for
true collaboration and partnership.
it's more, I know best, I want to do
what I want to do, it's created a
negative environment in our facility,
it has created a relationship where I
think we don't have faith that the
things that I think you are going to
direct as we move forward can really
be achieved because I think sometimes
unspoken intentions of folks that are
in the positions of leadership.
this picture was on social media, this
picture has been on their website for
their business, this picture has been
utilized to try to solicit funds on
behalf of different things and for me,
if a person will disregard the
confidentiality of our children
because when you look at this photo,
our senses are so small that I have
five wonderful, beautiful children and I
can tell you how they walk, their
images, their profiles, if I'm a
parent sitting at home and I see a
picture of my child, I will feel a
certain way about that.
as we move forward with this
relationship, we can do so in a
way where true intentions will lead
the conversations.
if the goal is to say that no youth
should be in dust u custody regardless
of what they've done or the people
they victimized or the state of the
vicks afterwards, then let's just say
that so we can work in this place of
honesty.
the goal is to provide opportunities
for young people and provide
rehabilitation, let's do that and put
aside personal focus.
the young people need adults who are
going to meet and work -- and I think
one of the juvenile judges said it
best, the adults need to get over
themselves and figure out a way to
work and the probation department is
here to work, we're here to implement
the things you need and we're here to
listen to concerns but my hope is that
something like this is not indicative
of the future.
thank you for the opportunity and
certainly after public comment, if you
have any other questions, I would be
happy to answer.
>> thank you.
any comments or questions from the
board?
supervisor speier?
>> thank you.
let me just say to everyone how
valuable your input has been today and
how important this study session has
been.
I was stunned by the civil grand jury
report that showed there was a 40%
increase in a cost per youth from
23-24 of 423 thousand dollars per
youth to 586 thousand dollars per
youth in our youth service center.
I'm also very concerned about the
service cliff and the fact that like
with foster children, they age out at
18 and we realize they weren't ready
to be out at 18 and I think we need to
look at taking some part of the rest
of that facility and create a program
where these young people can
transition to a different setting but
have some of the resources we saw from
a number of the partners like fly and
live in peace.
I'm also concerned about the youth
attacks on staff that have gone up 40%
which speaks to a violence within the
center there that is concerning and,
chief, maybe we should have another
conversation about that at a different
time.
I'm delighted to see that the prea
number will be -- 800 number will be
available soon, I think that's very
important.
I think we've got to find a way to
procure some of the items these young
people need to be able to jog for
instance around that beautiful track
and right now I think the
process is too long for that.
so, equipment for them to exercise
with, athletic ware, they made that
very clear and those are things that
could make a huge difference for them.
if we can come up with some different
kind of procurement for some of those
items, I think that would be very
helpful in terms of their development.
and the talk about food was over the
top.
I think the food is better than was
represented.
it's not great, but they even said
that it's improved substantially.
the extent to which we can create
culinary job training for some of
these young people, I think that's a
great potential job for them in the
future, and I
don't know if we can turn that
facility into something that can be
made into a learning environment for
them, but it appears that there is new
money available and this report speaks
to the fact that santa clara county
and la county have developed these
specialized programs for what they're
clinging emerging adults and received
financing or incentives for these
counties.
I hope we can look that the as well as
we move forward, but madam president,
thank you for convening this.
I think it was really important to do
and I look forward to working closely
with those who work on behalf of our
young people who need us and we need
to be able to provide for them in
hopes of a better future.
>> thank you, supervisor mueller?
>> thank you, colleagues.
thank you to everyone who presented
again, what I would like to suggest
our board consider doing is to offer
resources to sponsor an informal best
practices assessment for the jjdpc's
interaction with the county youth
services center.
I would like to offer the board that
we should consider fund finding a
subject matter expert to see the
current practices and goals against
statewide best practices and
regional best practices so we can make
recommendations and provide the
support needed and that would take in
dialogue from everyone.
I think having that assessment is
going to help us empower the jjdpc,
the acronym, and our county
departments and I would love to be
able to get that report back and
understand what that facilitator is
telling us.
>> any other comments?
supervisor canepa?
supervisor gauthier?
>> no, I want to say again, thank you for
all those who stayed and walked uss
through this study session, it was
very important.
at the end of the day, I would like to
figure out how photos are taken in the
facility and I hope we don't have
unauthorized photos that are taken in
the facility.
I hope that doesn't happen in the
future and we can come to a better
agreement and work better together to
help our youth.
at the end of the day, it is about the
youth and getting them on track so
they can be successful when they leave
there and reenter and come back to
our neighborhoods.
>> thank you, I want to recognize,
thank you, chief keene, for your
comments.
I think you summarized it pretty well.
one of the things I would like to see
and maybe through the county
executive, we've had a pretty
productive meeting with various
stakeholders.
I think we had representative from the
court, we've had the jjdpc, might I
suggest is looking at the feasibility
of maybe having an annual meeting or
quarterly meeting to bring people
together with different perspectives
so there could be future
collaboration, and so I think as we
move forward, we have a lot of smart
people.
obviously different skill sets, some
similar, if we could form an ad hoc,
whatever it is, maybe it's something
you do, chief keene, where we're
exchanging activities and everyone
in the circle is aware of what
everyone is doing, I think I want to
thank supervisor speier, supervisor
corzo, for bringing this forward.
I do think it's a good first step.
I do think there's
opportunities for deeper collaboration.
>> thank you, yeah.
so, I want to share with the board
that, yeah, I've been working
internally with the jjdpc and with
county leadership, the survey has been
a part of that, wanting to the hear
from every single commissioner on the
jjdpc about areas they want more
training in, more support and they want
to explore areas, they want more data
and information and also hearing from
partners what about would work better
for them and kind of relooking at how
we can reset.
I will say having worked with many
commissions, the jjdpc does things in
a way that's different from any
other commission, so kind of reworking
that to have it be more on par and
just kind of make it a less tense
space, I think we can get there.
I want to get there.
I think it's totally possible.
I hope this study session, you know,
as we opened with the intentions and
the purpose, I hope this helped
diffuse some of the tension, we've
gotten it out there, there's been a
lot of information shared.
this must be our longest study session
of the year and it does deserve that,
our young people matter and they're
important and it's not just about the
youth in the ysc, it's also about the
many youth in our community receiving
diversion support and mentorship and
preventative services and yeah, we all
care about them and if there are
improvements to be
made, we should all be working
together to make them.
and I think, yeah, we've all learned a
lot.
so, thank you.
did you want to share something,
supervisor mueller?
>> yeah, that's fine.
>> it sounds like the county's already
embarking on trying to facilitate it,
so I will go ahead and withdraw that
at this time but should the -- so,
president or corzo, you should know as
liaison, if you want to come forward
and ask us for a subject matter
facilitator to provide us with best
practices has we can provide as
recommendations, I would be supportive
of that but I can go and withdraw that
in the meeting at this time.
>> thank you, I will say if there is
like a neutral community partner that
is interested in kind of being a
mediator, I'm open to that, I don't
want to pay like a facilitator like a
ton of money when we can pay a
community partner.
>> so to be clear, what I'm looking
for is I really think it would be
important to go ahead and look at
other jurisdictions in the operation
of their jjdpc to see how it may
differ from ours to try to go ahead
and figure out what the tension point
is originating from.
and so a subject matter expert who
went and looked at those other ones
and looked at ours, we would have
discrete recommendation.
that being said, it sounds like you
guys have stated a process but should
you reach a point that you want to come back
and ask us for that and people wanted
to see that, I would be open to it.
>> absolutely, thank you, I think we
can expand that scope and potentially
bring that back to the board.
it's almost 5:00, y'all, I'm running
out of steam here.
with that, let's move -- supervisor
canepa?
>> madam chair, I'm going to
ask you and I hate to do this, I don't
think I've done it once on the board,
if we could take my measure k item.
>> yes, but after public comment.
>> public comment, please.
>> we have 8 speaker cards from
chambers for item number 6, we'll
start with kathy and then [inaudible]
and barbara taylor.
can we first have kathy.
>> my name is kathy barrett, I
live in san carlos, I'm a parent and a
grandparent and I believe every child
deserves to be treated with dignity.
last year, I participated in a
december drive for hygiene products
for the kids living in the youth
services center.
the last time I spoke about conditions
in the youth services center, I
focused on the amnesty of having
enough good food to eat.
I believe those comments were heard.
this time I would like to talk about
some relatively simple steps to treat
these kids with dignity.
since we went to rehabilitate every
young resident of youth services center
and treat them as if they matter
which they do, steps like replacing
worn out carpet and installing
personal storage units would be a
goaded start.
they need a place to store their
clothes, hygiene pugs -- products and
school supplies.
I was glad to hear you talk about the
procurement process because I hope
that the board and the county
executive can help probation secure
items like these which would help make
this space more livable.
thank you.
>> thank you, it looks like beth had
to leave, next we'll do barbara and then
daria.
is barbara taylor here?
okay.
daria?
>> my name is daria, a resident of
east palo alto, the director of youth
justice california policy and capacity
building at the national center for
youth law.
thank you for dedicating this time to
learn and uplift the needs of youth
who are touched by the juvenile
justice system in san mateo county.
it is well documented through research
that any amount of system contact is
harmful to youth and the further a
young person goes into the system from
arrests all the way to one day in
detention not only can have lasting,
traumatic impact, it can drive
recidivism and undermines public
safety.
I would like to note today that we
heard from some amazing community
partners as well as leadership from
probation and other system partners
who are all incredibly dedicated and
really it's showing that want the best
for our young people of our community.
notably what was absent was hearing
from young people.
and so I really encourage the board at
whatever point be possible to hear
darkly from young people.
I know there were visits to juvenile
hall but hearing from young people in
the community of what their needs are
and what they see for their future.
the other thing to lift up is also
kids who enter the system often are
understood and talked about as this
siloed entity as these kids or those
kids and these are our kids, it's the
same group of kids and there are kids
impacted by housing issues, impacted
by issues of mental health, issues
with our education system, so neigh is
touching those issues really should be
understood as intersecting with how
young people are entering up in our
system.
I would also like to offer that the
national center for youth law is here
to support the county and
strengthening and uplifting good work
that is being done here supporting
implementation of new justice law and
is providing technical assistance.
thank you so much and I look forward
to working with all of you.
>> next we'll have nancy goodman and
then we'll have rebecca keeler.
>> after.
>> I'm nancy goodman from redwood city.
thank you for sponsoring had and thank
you for all your work and the good
outcome of this was hearing from a lot
of different stakeholders.
I wanted to ask the board, I think
it's an opportunity for you to help
with something supervisor speier
referred to, we have a lot of unused
space we're spending money on, camp
[inaudible] has 30 beds and set up
like a warm, cozy group home with
a nice kitchen and it could be
repurposed fairly quickly for
something that would be used for
substance abuse or supportive housing
for transitional youth.
the youth service center has about
35-40 kids but has 180 beds, we
have the bond debt, the court is
paying a section of it, theses a bond
debt that could be repurposed without
having to go to the voters, it's whatever
they call the general purpose bond,
the voters didn't say it has to be
used for this purpose.
the good thinkers here in the county
could figure out how we can use some
of that space, rebuild it and renovate
it a little and separate it off, we
need substance abuse and mental health
treatment for these kids to keep them
out of the system and we need
supportive housing so thank you again
so much and I agree with everyone who
said let's just all work together on
this.
I'm just a member of the community
that wants to help these kids.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and then rebecca and after we'll have
maria.
>> thank you so much, board.
I brought notes but I think I'm going
to trash them.
I'm going to go back to some of them.
first of all, today, I hope is the
beginning of conversation, what you
said, supervisor canepa, I think
instead of this kind of format, I'm
hoping that we can speak individually
where we can have conversation back
and forth.
I think that would be really helpful.
I always say all of these kids in the
hall will come home to our community
all of this them, and how do we want
that to look?
and that's -- I'm a co-founder of in
our care, san mateo county, and we
founded simply because we saw that
issues that kept coming up in the hall
that we kept hearing about at the
inspection reports, we kept hearing
about year after year after year and
we thought, well, if we can raise
community awareness, if we can talk
with you folks all, maybe we can help
to make some of these things happen,
that's where we came from.
I want to say that when problems come
up very often in the hall, we either
go to the chief keene or to the
probation department about them and
it's always not their purview.
sometimes very often we get pointed
back to you folks so our ask today is
the things that are within your
purview, will you please work with us
in the community, with probation, with
jjdpc, with the community partners and
try to address some of these things
that keep getting brought up over and
over again and also when we have one
to two minute to speak, very often we
don't get to say the thank you I want
to say today, thank you tonight, it
does seem like the middle of the night
right now.
we just bring up our concerns and so
please don't take that as an offense,
anybody, it's because it's the
way we can get those concerns heard.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and then next is maria.
is she still here?
no?
okay.
then melissa wilson.
>> hi, good afternoon, thank you for
taking the time for this.
I would like to address data sharing.
probation requires its community
providers to collect outcome data and
those programs report six month post
program outcomes including new law
violations, however there's very
little publicly available data in
probation's own performance and
outcomes, the formal supervised
probation, probation reports new
violations while youth are under
supervision but does not report
comparable outcomes after probation
ends.
marin county has published any
adjudications of two years of juvenile
case closure for the general
population after probation ended.
why can't san mateo provide comparable
post probation outcome data?
as the chief noted today, the data
they collect is provided to state
funders and regulators, however these
reports are in many different
locations and require high level
content knowledge to read.
I ask the board to request that
probation make meaningful outcome data
available to the public.
I also just want to thank the board
for spending time today and listening
to all the various very complicated
issues that make up the juvenile
justice system and I was touched
noelia by you sharing your personal
history with us.
I thought that that really framed the
issues that are present there the
youth in our system.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and we'll go to zoom now for item 6
for public comment.
raise your hand at this time, it's a
final call.
alright, we have five hands raised at
this time.
please unmute and begin.
liz?
>> thank you so much, council, for
scheduling this study session.
I think everyone here cares about our
youth and we want to ensure that
they're all ready to succeed when they
get out.
I want to emphasize that these
children are innocent until they are
proven guilty and about half the kids
in custody at any given time of course
it varies, they have not had their cases
decided by a judge.
I want to bring attention to several
other things including the housing
assignment risks where youth of all
genders and disparate ages basically
sometimes end up being housed together
which raise serious safety concerns.
furthermore, there is -- I wanted to
make sure there's a way for the youth
to make a complaint in compliance with
the prea, outside of probation
department, so that we can address
concerns about prior staff members
that were arrested.
there of course have been enough said
about the food service and I think
improvement, we are very grateful
for.
and finally as the prior speaker said,
we want to be more transparent about
the youth's involvement in the legal
system as much as the ratio of the
youth being held before and after
their cases have been adjudicated,
whether or not they're being detained
for a misdemeanor or felony
and the length of their stay and
strong reentry support which we are
grateful for the work that's being
done by many different organizations.
I'm a voter and I'm paying attention
and I'm a member of the public who
deeply cares about all the children in
our care.
thank you.
>> thank you.
we have four more speakers.
paul, please unmute and begin.
>> good afternoon, everyone, sorry I
could not be there in person, you've
been to two doctors office, san mateo
and sutter and that was the first
sometime in a board of supervisor
meeting.
I want to say thank you to all of the
supervisors for this opportunity to
speak and for bringing this historic
study session to fruition.
I am just floored by the unity in this
room and across the county that has
presented itself today and I want to
say thank you to all of you who I have
worked with, big props.
secondly, I would like to say every
idea that was presented by the
supervisors, I agree with 100%.
if I have said or done something in
the work that I do that has offended
someone, I would like to reset.
when we started this, supervisor
canepa, chief keene, reimagine
juvenile hall, about six years ago and
look where we're at today.
still pushing, shining the light for
the same purpose which is community
safety.
I live in redwood city, I'm going to
to be mere for the rest of my life,
this is the second largest arrest
population in the county.
I want to make sure those kids are
going to be friendly to me and my
family when they get back just like you
all and I want to continue to work
with everybody and I want to say thank
you for allowing me to be a part of
this historic study session.
reset, god bless.
>> thank you, and we have alexis lewis
and then edgar, alexis, please unmute
and begin.
>> good afternoon, president, and
board of supervisors, thank you for
scheduling this session.
I live in san mateo and like all of
you, I care about all of our children.
today I just want to ask for greater
transparency regarding youth
involvement in our juvenile justice
system.
I want to thank the probation
department for push publishing data on
its website.
the department states as a certified
evidence based organization, it is
committed to data driven policies,
transparency and that data page will
continue to be updated quarterly with
additional information the future,
that is a positive first step, the
information used to be more accessible
and meaningful to the general public.
for someone who doesn't work in the
field, terminology and acronyms
subchaser djj, fpp and wrap around can
be difficult to understand, the public
should not need specialized knowledge
to interpret children that are in our
county's care.
we also need more information why
youth are being detained and what
happened to them afterwards,
transparency isn't about putting
numbers on a web page, it is about
presenting information in a way the
public can understand and use it to
keep our systems accountable.
our youth, their families and the
people of san mateo county deserve
that level of transparency.
thank you.
>> thank you.
and next we have edgar, please unmute
and begin.
>> my name is edgar, I'm a policy
associate with the center for youth
law.
I want to start off by thanking supervisor
corzo and everyone else who made this
study session happen, it's been a long
day for y'all, I could only imagine
and all the information, testimonials,
thou, ideas, questions that were
shared and offered today are super
frontier getting this right.
the california youth authority was in
place for almost 100 years or a little
bit over 100 years and it took a while
for it to get to the place it was,
these type of conversations are really
important.
I want to give a special shout out to
fly, the folks navigating the system,
its's frontier have those credible
messengers, those opportunities for
education and employment.
it's clear a lot of the community
system stakeholders want -- we want to
get the system right but I think for
us, for this body, it's important to
just look outside of the jjdpc,
there's opportunities in different
spaces such as the sb823 subcommittee
that focuses on the justice
realignment block grant that are
dollar specific for people who are
going to be there for long periods of
time, there's the comprehensive
multiagency juvenile justice
plan put together by the jcc, it's
either a five year, ten year depending
on the county, those are to engage
manfully and reach community members and
bring young people to the table to
share their experiences, parents to
the table to share their experience
and find solutions that not just look
for the moment but to the future,
right.
I think that's the most important
thing we do,
things are changing, the ability to
apply the resources from the county in
meaningful way, specifically in
housing as we know as one of the
biggest crisis will be key and
critical.
thank you for the time.
>> alright, thank you, next we have
epa [inaudible], please unmute and
begin.
>> hi, sorry, my name is lourdes, east
palo alto community member, I'm a
participatory defense organizer with
silicon valley debug and I want to say
thank you for having this study
session today.
it was very informative and I'm glad
that we can come together as a
community and a county to move forward
and work on behalf of the children,
our youth here in our county.
I have a nephew who has
been affected by the criminal justice
system in san mateo county, he is
going through one of the programs in
live in peace right now, so shout-out
to them and the wonderful work they
do.
thanks, everyone.
>> madam president, we did have one
additional hand raised.
>> let's take it, please.
>> beverly, please unmute and begin.
>> beverly, your hand's raised.
>> thank you very much.
I'm beverly gerard and I'm a member of
the county board of education and I
want to thank the board of supervisors
for having this study session today.
it has really been an eye opener and
full of information that I think will
be very, very useful to the county
board and how we address our students.
the current community schools are
under the jurisdiction of the county
board of education and so we create
the policies, the curriculum, we
approve and we also approve the
budget.
and I think it was invaluable to see
what is happening before our students
come to us as well as some of the
opportunities that are available once
they leave us so, thank you again for
all this valuable information.
it's much appreciated.
thank you.
>> alright, thank you.
that
concludes public comment.
>> thank you so much, because this was
a study session, we do not have to
take an action.
we are now moving on to -- go ahead
and make your motion.
>> I have someone who's 91 years old
who's been here since 9 a.m. And
that's perla, many of you know, I
think this is the first time I have
done this, I ask the board to take my
measure k item which is item 17 and
that's a motion.
>> so you would like to move item 17
before item 12?
>> I would like to hear it right now.
>> yes.
>> yes, before item 12.
is there a second?
>> which number because item 17 was
heard with item 9.
>> it wasn't 17.
>> it's item 17, measure k.
>> it's not item 17.
>> you mean the discretionary, number
20?
>> excuse me, number 20.
>> you would like to move item number
20 before item number 12.
>> and that's my motion.
>> and there's a second.
>> okay.
roll call vote.
>> supervisor speier is absent.
supervisor mueller is absent.
supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> thank you for the correction, we
have about 20 speakers, but I don't
think I'm going to ask --
>> you better not.
>> I'm going to ask all the speakers
virtually and we have county staff here,
I think we're going to bypass them and
what I would like to do is I would
like to move the item, so I would like
to move the adoption of the
resolution of one-time grant of
district discretionary measure k funds
not to exceed 75 thousand dollars to
the city of daly city.
>> second.
>> public comment?
>> public comment, please.
>> alright, I have five speaker cards
from chambers, brett turner and then
liano ramos.
>> I think we're fine, yeah.
>> hello, supervisors, thank you for
all you do over this long day.
this is an easy one for me to speak
to, it's not my normal intent subject
matter I bring before you.
today we're celebrating daly city in
saying I go to a lot of shows, a lot
of musical sow shows, I have produced
a lot of shows and have been
involved with summer of love, I have
witnessed a lot of shows around the
bay area.
this particular shows brings the
community of daly city together in a
fashion I haven't previously witnessed,
the feel good nature if you haven't been
to it is something to really witness.
everybody comes together, the location
works, the people all get together,
the low riders are there, it's a very
cool and very --
>> thank you, mr. Turner.
>> I wanted to mention, we appreciate
any attention you give, thank you.
>> thank you, again, there's a
motion on the table.
you know, speakers can choose to speak
if they want to, if they don't want
to, they don't have to, correct, madam
clerk?
yes.
>> yes.
>> alright, do any of the remaining
speaker cards like to talk?
>> we'll go to virtual.
>> alright, we do have two hands
raised for virtual, april and then
dan, three hands, final call for item
number 20.
okay, april vargas, please unmute and
begin.
>> hi, I'll be brief, my name's april
vargas, I'm with a volunteer group
called resistance task force, we had
the great pleasure to have a booth at
last year's top of the hill festival.
I sent the board members an e-mail
with detailers but we had so many
people, we were doing non-partisan
voter registration and voter
information, we had so many people
come up with questions.
I didn't get my ballot, what should I
do, where's a goaded place for me to
hand in my ballot because I don't want
to put it in the mailbox and a lot of
other discussions about registering to
vote, whether you're 18 years old, so
not only is this as previously
speakers have said a great way for the
community to come together, it also is
a really important way for people in
the community to learn about civic
engagement, get information about
community services that are available
and feel that other people in the
county want to learn about daly city
and be part of the greater community,
so I urge you to pass this request for
the 75 thousand dollars so this very
excellent --
>> thank you, april.
>> celebration can come forward, thank
you.
>> thank you.
>> alright.
we do have dan, please unmute and
begin.
>> first of all, I would like to
correct it, I'm using dan's laptop,
ipad and I can't change it, this is
theresa, daly city, I just wanted to
just kind of reiterate what people
have said, respectfully asking the
board to consider the top of the hill
event.
it is spectacular, we hope to have --
we mad 20, 30 thousand people, I'm
guessing maybe 50 thousand, so please
consider it, we thank you for your
consideration and hope to see you
there.
thank you.
>> thank you, theresa.
>> thank you.
>> that was our last speaker I think.
>> that is our last speaker.
>> we have a motion and a second.
I want to say something real quick.
I'm going to say it.
I believe this is the third year that
you've had this measure k item and I
believe the rules for measure k are
that we're only supposed to do
one-time for measure k funds and so I
think that we -- in light of the
situation that we're in with vlf
funding, we need to be more careful
about that and make sure we're
communicating to our organizations
and to our cities and to everyone that
they are probably not going to be able
to rely on this funding going
forward and also the rules for measure
k are tech flick that it's supposed to
be one-time only and if by some
miracle we are able to figure out our
in lieu vlf situation, we either need
to update our measure k rules to allow
for it to not be one-time so I will be
voting for it today but I do
think that we should be following the
rules of measure k, so roll call vote,
please.
>> supervisor speier is absent.
supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier?
>> yes.
>> supervisor canepa
>> yes.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> okay, we are now moving --
>> congrats, we are moving on to item
number 12 can which I believe is a
public hearing.
I don't remember which one but you are
going to tell us, thank you.
>> thanks, good afternoon, president
corzo and supervisors, executive
staff, item number 12 is consideration
of an amendment to our local coastal
program, policy 1.23 which establishes
an annual limit on the number of new
residential units that may be
permitted within the mid coast urban
area to 40 unit per year with limited
exceptions for affordable housing
units.
as the supervisors know, our local
coastal program, our lcp is part of
the county general plan that regulates
development in the coastal zone and
has specific provisions for the mid
coast urban area which extends north
from the city of half moon bay to and
including the community of montera, with
regard to the growth limit, the lcp had a
a limit of 125 units per year, in
2006, the county proposed reducing
that to 75 units, that was not
acceptable to the coastal commission
and we negotiated what is currently in
place, a limit of 40 units per year.
the reason those limits are in place
is due to concerns regarding this
efficiency of infrastructure,
particularly roadways, wastewater
systems and the 40% equates to a
1% growth rate which is similar to the
city of half moon bay.
this growth limit will remain in
effect until such a time that a
comprehensive transportation
management plan is certified by the
coastal commission, stormwater and
sewage facilities are improved.
>> is a hearing required on this?
>> yes.
>> it is, okay.
>> I will go as quickly as I can, so,
as I noted, there's exception to the
40 unit limit for affordable housing
where we're allowed to exceed the 40
unit limit only for affordable housing
projects but that comes out of
subsequent years so, over the three
year period, we can't approve more
than 120 units.
the key issue here is we exceeded this
limit in 2025 when we approved the
cypress point affordable housing
project.
as a result, the county is not limited
to issuing permits for 18 residential
units until 2028.
we've had to stop accepting building
applications and we've been working
hard to come up with a solution
acceptable to the community.
so, another consideration of course is
our housing almost.
there's a policy in housing element,
we were required to have by the state
to address the quota which is a
concern statewide to the housing and
community development department.
per policy 11.6, should we reach the
cap, we are required to within one
calendar year pursue an amendment to
that cap to increase it by 50%.
okay, another key issue to keep in
mind is that we have averaged about 30
units per year over the past six
years so, by being limited to 18 units
this year, there will be a pent up
demand for additional units that will
cascade into future years.
so, the options available to the
[inaudible] fall into two buckets, the
first is we can propose to increase a
cap, that's going to require coastal
commission approval and detailed
consideration of all the bulleted
items on this slide.
another alternative is to maintain the
cap and change the method of averaging.
we are pursuing the latter, it's clear
from our work with the community that
many do not support an increase in the
cap due to concerns about
infrastructure, so our proposed
solution keeps the cap but allows us
to take advantage of unused credits
from prior years.
this approach was endorsed by the
planning commission in may where the
community council had some significant
concerns about it in response to their
concerns, we convened a community
meeting where we presented
alternatives and I will share that
here.
we had five alternatives, do nothing,
change the method looking forward, two
options of that, and then the option e
is the one that staff is recommending,
use the unused permits from past years
dating back to 2013 when this cap
was established and then was
to only go back ten years.
as you can see on the right, we had a
large majority of participants support
the looking back approach with the
majority supporting looking back to
2013.
this is the data from the night we
convened the community meeting.
we took a live poll but we kept it
open for another few days and here
are the results from july 4, no
significant change, still a large
majority in favor of what staff is
proposing.
so here's the text of the amendment
that we are asking for your approval
of and the main part is number 2.
the portion in blue below is what
we're proposing where the annual
average number of permits issued from
january 2013 which is the year that
the growth limit was adopted through
and including the year of building
permit issue does not exceed 40 units
per year.
in other words we keep the cap but
look backwards to the underutilized
units that shown on the table to the
right.
you can see in 2025 where we exceeded
the cap, what we're doing is we're
averaging out the amount that we
exceeded and that's shown in the light
blue to the left, that's taken out of
the orange portion which the orange
represents units that were not
permitted.
we didn't have that many applications,
so that's the recommendation.
the coastal commission reviewed an
approval of this amendment would be
required, that serves as the
functional equivalent of ceqa, we're
asking you to adopt a rec resolution
directing staffer to submit this local
coastal amendment to the coastal
commission.
>> I move we open the public hearing.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> and president corzo?
>> aye.
>> motion passes to open the hearing.
>> let's move on to public comment.
>> alright, I do not have any public
comment.
we do have one hand raised online.
anne, if you can please unmute.
and begin.
anne, can you unmute.
>> sorry, am I on now?
>> thank you, sorry, I was speaking to
myself.
>> the planning department and the
board of supervisors were aware the
approval of cypress point, moss beach
would use all the 40 per year building
permits per year.
during the approval process,
supervisor mueller requested that the
county be funding additional
infrastructure because the area in
moss beach really has none, so I'm
just concerned that this cypress point
has really caused a lot of problems
for the area and I think a lot of this
was probably preventable had the
approval not be given when it was.
however, right now, if you look at
safety, children walking to school and
pedestrians, the only way that they
can get to pharaoh mount view is to
walk on a dirt a path next to a ravine
and highway 1, that is not safe for
anybody, there are almost no
sidewalks in a lot of montera which is
their route to school and for this
reason and the fact there regaling --
there's not even a single traffic
light in town, I'm requesting again
that you pleat support housing for
seniors at this location where their
needs can be met in a centralized way
and it won't burden the surrounding
areas or put at risk the lives of
children or people when trying to get
to school.
two, if they try to cross highway 1 to
get to the bus stop and there's no safe
crossing and there's no funding with
the vehicle license fee now being
taken a away, there's going to be no
funding that the county can even
provide.
so, I'm just requesting again that you
consider designating this as senior
housing so that these other issues can
be addressed in the future.
thank you for your consideration.
>> thank you.
that concludes public comment.
>> thank you.
any comments from my colleagues?
>> move we close the public hearing.
>> thank you.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes to close the public
hearing.
>> is there a motion to adopt the item?
>> moved.
>> second.
>> we did extensive outreach, it's
conditionally supported under the
[inaudible] council, I think we're
in good shape.
>> thank you.
roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> the motion passes.
>> we are moving on to our second
public hearing, take it away, mr. Monowitz?
>> thank you, item 13 is a five lot
subdivision on cordilleras way that
requires approval of a general plan
map amendment, major subdivision
grading permit, tree removal permit
and associated mitigated negative
declaration.
so, the main reason this item
is before the board, the major
subdivision grading permits, tree
removal permit and mitigated negative
declaration would normally go to
the planning commission, they
recommended your board approve it
along with the general plan amendment.
here's the location of the site in
emerald lake hills on the south side
of cordilleras road.
this shows the general plan
designations, the lighter yellow is
the currently low density and the
brighter yellow is currently low to
medium density and I wanted to show
this slide to show that the proposed
general plan amendment request is not
unusual for this neighborhood.
here' an aerial view of this site.
you can see it's bisected by the sfpuc
right-of-way, there are two separate
apn's but one legal parcel.
here's the view of the site on
cordilleras is the site in the
picture on the left, on the right with
the white fence, the picture on the
right, it's on the left side.
here again is a view of the site, on
the right with the white fence, the
existing driveway will be moved a
little bit further east.
here we have the site plan for the
subdivision.
it's five lots, they are all greater
than 12 thousand square feet.
the driveway, you can see in the
middle of the lot serves all five
lots, there will be two oak trees that
will be removed and will need to be
replaced.
the blue -- hatch blue at the bottom
of the screen is the detention basins
for the stormwater and what's
highlighted in yellow is a five lot
strip that is required by public works
to be dedicated towards cordilleras
road improvements or a future sidewalk.
the project complies with all relevant
plans and regulations.
and the department circulated a
negative declaration, we received
comments, some from the department of
toxic substances control who wanted to
make sure the soil was clean, we've
attached a condition of approval that
requires soil testing and then some
comments from neighbors who were
concerned about construction impacts,
those concerns are addressed by the
conditions of approval particularly
condition 7 through 17.
the planning commission considered
this and recommended approval with a
5-0 vote.
so we're recommending that the board
approve the general plan amendment,
subdivision grading permit and
protected tree removal permit,
adopting the required findings
certifying the negative declaration
and to amend the general plan use map.
that concludes my presentation, I'm
happy to answer questions.
>> is there a motion to open the
public hearing?
>> so moved.
>> thank you.
roll call.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes to open the public
comment.
>> public comment, please.
>> I do not have speaker cards in
chambers.
if you would like to raise your hand
on zoom, please raise them now.
there is no public comment.
>> is there a motion to close the
public hearing?
>> so moved.
>> roll call.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> it passes.
>> is there a motion to approve?
>> I'll move that we approve the
resolution.
>> wait, there are actually three items
to approve for this one, correct?
>> that's correct.
>> if you could put up the slide.
>> c, d and e is the proposed general
plan amendment.
the resolution adopting the mitigated
neg dec for the various actions and
the resolution to amend the county
general plan land use maps.
>> can they be approved in one motion.
>> one motion for all three.
>> yes.
>> I move we move the general plan
amendment, adopt the mitigated
negative dec, adopt the motion to
amend the general plan.
>> it was the general plan amendment,
grading permit and a perked tree
removal permit, all of those things
were part of item c.
>> and second?
>> second.
>> roll call, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is
absent.
>> supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion to approve c, d and e.
>> thank you.
>> great.
moving on to item number 14.
welcome.
>> good evening.
>> I'm sorry too.
>> we're all sorry, right.
good evening, board members, --
>> director tory newman, you're up.
>> president corzo, I'm here today to
present on an introduction of an
ordinance to introduce a speed
limit at a school zone in a portion of
bay road, this is a stand alone item,
this is similar to previous actions
with redwood city and atherton.
because the campus spans redwood city
and unincorporated designations, this
will have encroachment
permits which will create a uniform
zone across city and county boundaries.
the area where this focuses on is bay
road between sixth and haven, shown
here in red, current speed limit
within the zone is 30 miles per hour.
and the proposed --
>> sorry, I need to reenable our
interpreter.
>> okay.
okay, go ahead.
>> okay, there we go.
the proposed speed limit in front of
the school will remain 30 miles per
hour, however during school zone,
we'll be presenting signs for 15 miles
per hour while children are present.
this clicker has gotten a workout
today.
are there any questions?
>> supervisor speier?
>> tory, I think I reacher tout --
reacher reached out to you, I want to
be as fast as we can in reducing the
speed limits.
we took action two years ago I believe
and we're now still in the process.
so, we have it looks like by spring of
27, we're going to have all of the
schools within the unincorporated
areas, have them evaluated and the
speeds reduced.
>> that is correct, we started the
school limit school zone study, we
needed the engineering and traffic
studies to complete the school speed
limit study, one had to precede the
other, that's what delayed the initial
9-12 month period for the initial
school traffic study.
>> you're going to back with us
with this completed within the next
six months?
>> that is correct, yes.
>> thank you.
>> thank you, tory.
public comment?
>> yes, public comment on item number
14, I do not have speaker cards from
chambers.
if you would like to speak on this
item, raise your hand at this time.
alright, seeing none, we have no
public comment.
>> is there a motion?
>> so moved.
>> second?
>> okay, supervisor canepa with a
second.
roll call.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> thank you.
>> okay, thank you.
moving on to item number 15.
michael wentworth, director of -- no,
it's different, tsd.
>> correct, thank you.
good evening, president corzo,
honorable members the board, mr.
callagy, mr. Anybody lynne.
due to the hour, I will be very brief.
I'm endeavoring to be faster than
everybody else, there are two salient
points I want to draw for you, you've seen
this before five other times, mr.
callagy, and I thought we wanted to
come before you and give you an
overview of where we are.
with the original five items, we
approved 85 million dollars of
licensing fund for the county.
it helps us move, this item takes us
to 93.5 million.
this is a good thing you all get to
see this now.
so, the whole point of having this
awareness for you is so you can
exercise your oversight.
the second point I wanted to dau you
to is the -- there is recently a
passage of sb122 which is the digital
product tax, that adds a tax to --
sales tax to all the software we will
purchase which used to not be taxed so
that will -- based on the current
budget of the county, that will bring
another 5 million dollars in taxes to
to our departments.
of course we'll get some of that back
because that's how taxes work, but
ultimately we will see about 2 million
dollars that will pay more than we
ever had to before for all of our
software, that's something we need to
be careful about.
my teams are astute on negotiating for
the best prices, that's what we do and
we have the help and support of the
county executive's office, the county
procurement department as well as the
controller's office and I really want
to thank my team internally, they do a
heck of a job.
with that, I'm happy to take questions.
>> thank you, any questions?
>> motion to adopt the resolution.
>> thank you, is there a second?
>> second.
>> okay, before we go to public
comment, I have an important question
for you, do you prefer director or
chief information officer.
>> I'm talking to tech colleagues, the
ceo, that's how we all talk to each
other, director from just here.
>> okay, public comment, please.
>> public comment on item 15, we have
no speaker cards in chambers.
if you would like to make a comment
online, raise your hand at this time.
>> seeing no hands raised, we have no
public comment.
>> thank you, is there a motion?
did we take a motion?
okay, roll call.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> thank you.
next is item 16, interim urgency
ordinance.
and I will invite supervisor mueller
to introduce this first reading.
>> it only requires one reading.
>> one reading.
>> and I think we've covered it in our
last meeting, I'm just going to go
ahead and introduce the item and say
let's vote.
I'll make a motion to move the
ordinance.
>> okay.
public comment?
>> alright, public comment on item
number 16, I do not have speaker cards
in chambers.
going online for public comment, if
you would like to make a comment at
this time, please raise your hand.
seeing no hands raised, no public
comment.
>> if I might, madam
president, notwithstanding the hour, I
want to say a couple of things, as
noted, the this ordinance, the way the
government code works, the findings
that the board is making goes into
effect immediately and it will impose
a moratorium on the siting permitting
developing, operating of detention
facilities and correctional facility as
defined in the urgency ordinance.
the board will have to if the board
seeks to extend this matter which will
-- this ordinance which can only be in
effect for 45 days without extending
will have to come back for a noticed
public hearing within that 45 day
speeder, we'll be back to you within
45 days for that purpose.
the ordinance itself, the urgency
ordinance can be extended for a total
of up to two years in increments which
we can talk some more about at a
later date.
>> okay.
thank you.
roll call vote, please.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> aye.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> okay, thank you.
>> I want to say thank you to county
counsel's office for their quick work
on that.
>> thank you, john.
moving on to item number 18, and that
is a resolution with the san francisco
public health foundation for the pride
center.
>> thank you, madam chair, members of
the board, I know it's been a long
day, I'll go quickly on this, really
no fault of its own, the pride center
of san mateo county finds itself in
dire straits financially and may be
going out of business the end of this
month, lost their home when samaritan
house went under --
>> not samaritan house.
>> I'm sorry, star vista.
>> samaritan house is in great shape,
when star vista went under and they lost
their ability to bill because they
didn't have a home for clinicians to
charge people from which is required.
they also had their funding from
bhrs reduced from 800 thousand down to
100 thousand.
so, with this grant of 350 thousand
dollars, it's our hope that it will
start to rebuild, they're going to get
their 50 c-3 status, build a board,
start billing as we try to get them
into one of the locations on mahler
and burbling fwaim so they have a home
and then start the board fundraising
to become self-sufficient, so this is
-- what we see is a temporary measure
to keep them alive and operational in
the county while they rebuild.
happy to answer any questions you may
have.
>> thank you.
I don't think we have any questions.
I'm really grateful to -- I'm sorry,
I'm so tired, I'm just like -- to
linda and tanya for working on behalf
of the county executive's office, to,
you know, help us develop a plan,
gather all the information and to fran
-- frankie and everyone at the pride
center, yeah, I'm glad we can do this
and I -- do we have a motion already?
I'll motion to approve this item.
is there a second?
>> second.
>> thank you.
public comment?
>> public comment on item number 18, I
do not have speaker cards in chambers.
we will be going online, this is going
to be a final call.
right now I have four hands raised,
we'll start with tatum, please
unmute and begin.
>> sorry, my speech isn't too good,
I'm a resident of san mateo county
speaking in support of this item.
I'm a resident and member of the
community, I appreciate your efforts
as well as the county executive as
well as frankie and the commission to
support the lgbtqia+ community here.
it needs -- means as lot by their
actions especially trying to find
space and I want to point out that per
the san mateo county health office and
epidemiology evaluation and wellness,
they had completed a survey in 2022 or
23, I know it is dated but there are
needs by the community in some of
these statistics that are pretty
alarming, it is the community that had
reported the highest mental or
emotional problems, highest reported
that they experienced symptoms of
depression lasting two plus years and
thoughts taking one's own life.
if
-- in the past year, and the youth had
suicide ideation as compared to
non-lgbtqia+ in our community.
they also had the highest substance
abuse compared to non-lgbtqi+, so
obviously these statistics underlie
the importance of this measure, I
appreciate again you as a board coming
together to support the team, they've
done a lot of great work especially
as the county executive mentioned, they
haven't had space and I really
appreciate the county making this a
priority to give them a space, thank
you for your verses and thank you for
listening in this marathon meeting.
>> thank you, and next we have vanessa
and then frankie, vanessa, please
unmute and begin.
can you please unmute.
>> can you all hear me?
>> yes.
>> good evening,
I'm vanessa, thank you for supporting
the pride center, it has always been
something than just a physical space,
it provides a space where lbgtq people
can find community, resorts, support
and a ascensive belonging.
in the county's own health data show
that is lgbtq residents are
experiencing high rates of depression
and suicidal ideation and that makes
competent spaces in own community
incredibly important.
this funding will help
provide them a sustainable location
for the future, please support item 18
and continue investing in the lgbtq
community here in san mateo county,
thank you.
>> alright, thank you, then next we
have frankie, please unmute and begin.
>> hello, everyone, this is frankie,
I'm the director with the san mateo
county pride center and I wanted to
thank the county of san mateo for your
considering providing the funding
for the pride center, so we can
continue supporting thousands of
lgbtq+ individuals every year with our
clinical services, peer support
groups, training, community building
events and connecting people to
essential resources.
especially thanking you for continuing
to power through your very, very long
day.
we have experience and influx of
requests of housing and food support
and there has been a significant
increase in bully, hate crimes,
isolation and suicidal ideation
amongst our community.
this funding will allow us to keep our
doors open to continue supporting our
community that are -- to continue
supporting our community that
desperately relies on our services.
we greatly appreciate the county's
support for not just center but the
lgbtq+ community as a whole.
thank you very much.
your support and your continued
support is very appreciated.
>> thank you.
and then lastly we have san mateo
pride, please unmute and begin.
>> yes, hello, all.
good afternoon, my name's alex simon
gold, the assistant director for the
san mateo county pride center.
I just would like to thank the board
and the county for your significant
support of our center and for the
lgbtq plus community.
this grant you're providing to the
pride center is crucial to helping us
stabilize and get back on our feet.
they will also give us a chance to
reprint our roots and secure our
home.
this will mep increase access to
services for so many in our community.
to many, the programs and support
provided by the pride center are
necessary and lifesaving.
as other speakers have already shared,
we know that lgbtq+ adults if san
mateo county face higher economic and
housing instability, worse access to
care and higher rates anxiety,
depression and suicide.
the pride center exists to address
these needs of the most vulnerable and
marginalized among us.
so, thank you for helping to ensure
that our county remains a high,
inclusive and affirming community for
all.
thank you.
>> thank you.
that concludes public comment.
>> thank you.
I would like to motion to approve this
item.
is there a second?
>> second.
>> thank you, roll call vote.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
>> yes.
>> president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> thank you, moving on to item
number 19, it's a quarterly report on
procurement.
>> I make a motion.
>> we made a motion to approve
earlier.
>> that was moved.
>> we're on the last item, number 29.
>> amazing.
district attorney wagstaff is here to
present item number 29.
>> madam president, I moved there from
consent to the regular agenda and I'm
offering my apologies to the district
attorney for having done that, but I
think it's an important issue and I
was concerned that the $6 fee doesn't
cover it and you're underwriting 200
to 300 thousand dollars a year, I
think this issue is growing and I
would like to see us increase the
fee, so tell us what you're doing.
>> I will, first of all, no apology
called for this, it may have
been one of the productive days
sitting out in the audience, phone
never rang, nobody came in and set up
a meeting so I feel very productive,
we should do this more often.
but president corzo and members the
board, mr. Callagy mr, nibbelin, thank
you.
what I really want to do today is tell
you what we are doing with brevity, to
that extent, I really do want to turn
it over and introduce to you mary
louise christians, she is a deputy
district attorney with the district's
attorney's office, she's an
outstanding prosecutor who has taken
this assignment on in the course of
the last year plus.
she is the one who prepared the report
that you have before you and can
address that point.
I will say that she is the one who has
been in discussions with our clerk
assessor about whether or not there
should be an increase for -- to meet
their needs, on that line, at this
point, may I turn it over with your
permission to ms. Christianson.
>> yes, welcome.
>> thank you very much.
good evening, everyone.
my name is mary louise christianson,
I'm a deputy district attorney with
the da's office.
I am currently working in the real
estate fraud unit, I'm the sole
prosecutor in that unit, that unit
consists of myself and our
investigator, john column.
I also prosecute insurance fraud and
contracting cases, contractors would
contract without proper licensing.
the real estate fraud unit has been
busy this year, we currently have
three cases in court.
we just recently obtained a conviction
for our case that we had which
included five felony convictions, for
someone who was filing or proportion
to inherit a home from somebody who he
did not know, he consequently filed
false documents with the coroner's
office and tried to sell this home in daly
city two times to two different real
estate companies, but ultimately he
was not successful in those efforts
but we were able to prosecute him and
he is set for sentencing next month,
and then also we've launched this year
the real estate fraud notification
program which is a program that we had
been working on and that we came -- my
colleague came in front of the board I
think over a year ago now asking for
an increase in that recording fee to
$6 so we could implement that program.
so, that program has now been
implemented and whenever a deed is
recorded in san mateo county, the
homeowner is alerted of that recording
with a letter, a notification, a
courtesy letter they are sent to make
them aware of that recording and on
that letter, we do the tell them if
you're aware of this recording, great,
no further action needs to be done,
but the you're not aware of this
recording, please contact the da's
office because there could be possible
fraud happening.
so, that program launched in april, we
have consequently sent out I think
almost I think 20 thousand letters so
far and we've had -- we haven't had
any cases so far but we've had a
couple of investigations that have
been started as a result of that.
I'm happy to answer any other
questions the board may have?
>> any other questions?
>> on the 20 thousand letters, you
know, jeffrey who's an assessor in los
angeles county, they do what's an
e-mail notification because there's
fraud that takes place.
I don't know if there's enabling state
legislation, but when you say letters,
you're talking about e-mails, correct?
>> they're physical letters that are
mailed in the mail, the u.s. Postage.
>> okay, great.
we should probably -- I support this,
we should probably talk online just
because the issue with the letter
sometimes is by the time they get it,
right, there may be some issues
and maybe leveraging e-mail or other
technologies could get to them faster.
>> supervisor speier?
>> so, why don't we raise the fee so
that we're not subsidizing this?
it's a great service to the public.
>> so, yes, I do also want to say that
the jjdpc could not start their
meeting until we finish this zoom and
I want us to have a thoughtful
conversation, so yes, please answer
and --
>> there's a couple of questions that
you have opposed, supervisor, in
terms, number one, in terms of raising
the fee, we're talking, we've had two
meetings with the county attorney's
office and with mr. Azari of the clerk
assessor's office and of course to
continue those conversations next year
about that very point.
they are preparing to bring back to us
a memo explaining what exactly are
their costs, so then we can intel
generally -- because our option
available is we can request of the
board to the increase to be one of 7,
8, 9 or 10.
the fee that I have stated and the
one I've always had, I don't want to
ask for an increase except for what
our costs are.
>> I don't want to impose on the
taxpayers money that we could use for
other purposes in these difficult
times, so it's a conversation that's
ongoing.
I suspect we will be coming back to
you to ask for that, but we want to
do it when we have data.
everything's data driven and we will
do so.
>> I move adoption.
>> thank you, public comment?
>> alright, public comment on item 29,
if you would like to make a public
comment online, raise your hand at
this time.
we have no speaker cards from
chambers.
no public comment.
>> thank you, roll call vote.
>> supervisor speier?
>> aye.
>> supervisor mueller?
>> yes.
>> supervisor gauthier is absent.
supervisor canepa?
and president corzo?
>> yes.
>> motion passes.
>> thank you, we are now adjourned at