Good morning. Welcome to the
October 24, Board of Supervisors meeting. Before we start, I kind of couple announcements.
One is that, as probably most of you know, this may be a long meeting, and to, and
deference to my peers and to all who are attending, we will break around noon for lunch for
half an hour. I'm sorry. We'll break for lunch and then we'll reconvene at 130 for
afternoon sessions, so for those who are here to attend that part of it just to let you know what's
happening in regards to that. Secondly, in our moment of silence, or silent prayer
meditation, we'd like to recognize one of our kind of employees who passed away, substance abuse
counselor 2, Denise Humphrey. She started with the county in 1992, returned about seven years ago
to the Family Ties program. She was passionate about working with individuals in recovery.
She completed her bachelor's degree, and transferred to the the whole person care unit and
the outreach team. She will be missed by obviously her peers, by those other workers in the
county and certainly for those who she worked with in the community. Tonight, there's a
candlelight vigil at the 6 p.m. at the Recovery House in French camp, so a moment of silence
and for those who remember Denise and her family and her co-workers and friends.
Thank you. Sam, we'll have a pledge of allegiance, surprise a patty with your mind ladies.
Thank you, please join.
A pledge of allegiance to a new act of allegiance to the Republic of France, our nation, as a little
liberty and justice for all.
Thank you. Earl Conflase. Supervisor Villapudua. Supervisor Miller. Here. Supervisor Patty. Yes.
Supervisor Elliott. There. Chair Win. Here. Thank you. Now we'll have recognition and
presentations. First one is the National Caregiver Appreciation Month for Samuacene County.
We now have the proclamation of November 2017 as National Caregiver Appreciation Month in Samuacene County.
We will invite Manuel Mendoza of the Department of Aging and Samuacene Public Health
Educator and Healing Simotion Board Member, Daniel Kim, who will accept the proclamation on
behalf of Healing Simotion amongst other staff there here. The board is presenting a proclamation
whereas November is proclaimed National Caregiver Appreciation Month. Healing Simotion and the
Samuacene County Department of Aging will present the 10th Annual Intercephari Caregiver Conference
on November 4, 2017 to recognize the valuable contributions paid and unpaid caregivers make
to the continuum of health care and whereas one in five adults are currently caring for a loved one
over the age of 65 and as baby boomers continue to age the need for caregivers increases
and whereas according to the Stanford University Study Caregiver Syndrome, caregivers have a
lower physical well-being, higher stress levels, higher rates of chronic illness, a greater risk for
depression, social isolation and financial losses as compared to others who do not serve in this
capacity and whereas there is a need for flexibility to support working caregivers who find
themselves between caring for an elderly parent and caring for their immediate family and whereas
caregivers deserve a special day of self-care, recognition and retooling to continue the vital role
they play in our county. Now therefore be it resolved that the Samuacene County Board of Supervisors
is hereby proclaim November 4, 2017 as caregiver appreciation day in Samuacene County and
encourages all citizens to honor the selfless service and the importance of caregivers throughout
Samuacene County presented this 24th day of October 2017.
Good morning. Thank you for this proclamation from the Board of Supervisors. Our founding
director of Healing's Emotion Mary Nicholson is unable to join us today because she is
out doing what she has always dedicated her time and energy for this organization which is to advocate
for patients who are suffering from stroke, brain attack and other head injuries or trauma
and their prevention by working on the team that is examining the designations of our area hospitals
for their ability and capacity to handle stroke cases. Through our persistence for more than 10 years we
are lucky to have actually four designated stroke centers in the county without having to go more than 50
miles to the next designated stroke center to get the best care for this kind of emergency. As you
know, time is free and we need to recognize the signs get treatment quickly and improve your recovery.
If Mary were here today, she would remind everyone that she herself is a stroke survivor for
over 10 years ago. The more relevant today's proclamation is the fact that just before that happened,
she was a caregiver to her husband who suffered from pancreatic cancer until his passing.
Who knows if her aneurysm was a culmination of her stress from caring for her health husband?
Well also maintaining her business in media adjusting to a new life in central California as a newlywed
but through her own experience as well as with caregivers who supported her through her own recovery from stroke
Mary recognize that all caregivers those who are taking care of family members with chronic disease conditions
those dealing with siblings or elderly parents with dementia Alzheimer's or other mental conditions
and those helping friends and families with physical disabilities and need of assistance to get through daily life
are also in need of advocacy through healing's emotion. We on the board of healing's
emotion recognize our caregivers as valuable individuals who need time, resources and support
to keep them going. They may be paid or unpaid but they are human and they work and the work that they
do take a takes a toll on their body and spirit. That's why healing's emotion is celebrating our
caregivers in the month of November and on Saturday November 4th at the Robert J. Cobra
of Agricultural Center we are having our tent annual in our safaris caregivers conference. It is free
for all pre-registered caregivers will have vendors, educators, speakers and more at this all-day event.
It is put together in partnership with the Department of Aging who recognizes the need for this kind of event
and support for our caregivers. They also support healing's emotions classes through our county
split specifically through the caregivers for the caregivers, the caring for me to program,
where they have a chance to learn and experience with others in a safe and relaxed group setting.
This inner safari is a huge expansion of this effort where our caregivers will be fed and pampered
for free throughout the day. We'll have a special pampered room where they can get massages and get other information.
It has been a great event for the last 10 years and we hope everyone can take advantage of it.
And thank you to the Board of Supervisors and the County for recognizing our valuable
caregivers. I would like to have the members behind me introduce themselves
who are the Board of Directors for the healing's emotional or a planning committee for the safari.
So, here's Jan. Board member.
Failure will compare a board member.
Lift a ball of volunteer for the caregiver event.
Anyone goes on a social worker for the Family Care Givers Support Program?
I'm a volunteer and was formerly a caregiver.
Please, vigil. Agent and community services supporting the caregiver.
Well, first of all, I want to thank all of you for what you do.
Having the opportunity to be in a caregiver, you have at one time, I understand exactly what you've
gone through and what you're doing and to have been doing. The other part of it and recognizing the
stroke issue. When recognize our AMS director Dan Birch because he's been working with our seven
hospitals and regards to getting stroke centers and each and every one of them. And he said we have four,
but I think the plan is to have all seven by July 1, so that will be a benefit in your right
time as of the essence. I think probably and it was mentioned in the proclamation that, you know,
caregivers are going to be desperately needed even more so in the future.
There are a number of persons my age, for example, who are going to need that kind of assistance.
And I can only thank you because I see it as something that's done
not out of duty or responsibility, but out of compassion and out of doing it because they love those
that they take care of. And so I want to recognize all of you and all those caregivers in this county
because you do a tremendous job and without you, I don't know what we would do.
So with that, if you go all step over, there's somebody's got a camera, so we'll get a picture of all
you with the proclamation.
Next, we have the proclamation of October 24, 2017, as World Polio Day in San Joaquin County.
Here to accept the proclamation is Anne Johnston, former Stockton Mayor and current president of
Rotary Club of Stockton. The proclamation being presented by the board today reads a story. Whereas
Rotary International founded on February 23, 1905 in Chicago, Illinois is a world's first
and one of the largest non-profits service organizations. And where is there over 1.2 million
rotary club members comprised of professional and business leaders in over 35,000 clubs
in 200 countries and geographic areas? And where is the Rotary motto, service above self,
inspires members to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards and promote
goodwill and peace in the world. And where is Rotary in 1985 launched Polio Plus and spearheaded the
global Polio eradication initiative, which today includes the World Health Organization,
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
to immunize the children of the world against Polio. And whereas Polio cases have dropped by 99.9
percent since 1988, and the world stands on the threshold of eradicating the disease. And whereas
to date, Rotary has contributed more than 1.7 billion in countless volunteer hours to the protection
of more than 2 billion children in 122 countries. And whereas Rotary is currently working to raise
an additional 150 million, if realized, will be tripled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
for a total of up to 450 million over the next three years. And whereas these efforts are providing
much needed operational support, medical personnel, laboratory equipment, and educational materials for
health workers and parents. And whereas in addition, Rotary has played a major role in decisions
by donor governments to contribute more than 8 billion to the effort. And whereas whereas there are
over 547 Rotary Club members in more than 13 clubs throughout Samlakeen County, sponsoring service
projects to address such critical issues as poverty, health, hunger, illiteracy, and the environment
and their local communities and abroad. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Samlakeen County
Board of Supervisors does hear by proclaim the day of October 24th, 2017, as World Polio Day in Samlakeen
County. And encourages all citizens to join Rotary International in the fight for a Polio
Feet Free World. Presented this 24th day of October 2017.
All right. Thank you so much. I hear representing the Rotary
clubs of Stockton and Samlakeen County. I have with me Bob Melrose, Monsters, Solamani,
and Ray Call, and probably a bunch of Rotarians out in the audience as well because Rotarians are
throughout the city and the county doing good work because Rotarians are people of action. Today is
World Polio Day and why is that important? Because we are this close to eradicating polio
on the face of this globe, this close 99.9 percent eradicated because of the efforts of Rotary
and other major organizations and funders. Just to give you a quick brief history, the first
outbreak of polio was in 1894. Can you believe that with 18 deaths and 132 people paralyzed?
The next major outbreak was in 1916 with 2000 deaths in New York City. 6,000 people were affected
in the United States. So it was huge at that time. But the very worst outbreak of polio was in 1952
when there were almost 58,000 cases of polio that were here. And some of you I'm sure we
Remember what was like growing up in an era before everybody was immunized, where you were afraid, children were afraid to go out and go into swimming pools. Parents were fearful of having children out into crowds, where the iron long became the way of taking care of a polio victim that was paralyzed.
Well, in 1955, Jonas soft developed the vaccine that has made a huge difference in the world. In 1985, rotary launched this major, major international health initiative in 1985 in a polio plus.
And it's the largest global health initiative ever launched and it was led and begun by rotary. And rotary international and all the rotary clubs as the, as the, as a proclamation indicated, there's 1.2 million rotarians in this world, something like 35,000 clubs throughout the world.
And rotarians are out there actually giving vaccine to children throughout the world. In 1988, there were 350,000 cases of polio. It was estimated that there were 1,000 new cases every day in a 125 countries that was in 1988. Can you imagine what that would be like if it were today.
So, rotary international, rotarians in this whole world worked very hard and have worked for over 30 years to eliminate polio. All kinds of events take place to raise money for the vaccine because every year 400 million children worldwide are vaccinated against polio 400 million children.
We don't hear about polio in this country very much until rotarians come and tell you about it and say, look, the rest of the world out there, there's polio still existing and until we eliminate it completely, it's not gone.
So, altogether 2.5 billion children have been vaccinated in this world through the efforts of rotary and other major funders. If you look at this month's rotarian magazine, you see a very familiar face, Bill Gates, who's one of the major funders of our polio plus initiative, gives matches money 2 for 1 every dollar this given through rotary, they match their foundation matches twice over.
Along with Pakistan, Canada, you name it every possible country in the world contributes to this eradication of polio.
So, it's an important global initiative and that's why we celebrate World Polio Day.
Let's see, this year, when I say we're this close, I should say in 2016, there were something like 37 cases of polio worldwide, this year so far, there have been 11 cases and we're already in the end of October.
Six have been in Afghanistan, five in Pakistan, none in Nigeria. Those are the three countries that still have polio present in them. Why does this matter? People say, well, that's just a very few cases of polio, but the fact is polio is only a plain flight away.
In this international world, all one has to do with their infected, is get on a plane and come to another country and it spreads.
A country is not declared polio free until they've been three years without any cases of polio.
So, we're hopeful. Again, we're hopeful that we're going to be able to eradicate this major major disease that affects so many people.
So, that's why it's important to celebrate World Polio Day, to continue to contribute to rotary activities and polio plus and remember that again, polio, which we believe has been eradicated in this country, is again, just that plain flight away from any country in the world.
So, we're working very hard as Rotarians to eliminate this scourge and you'll see photos of Rotarians going to country's many of these men have been out in other foreign countries, giving the polio vaccine to children throughout the world.
That's what Rotarians do because we're people of action. We see problems. We look at them. We try and solve them and we take action.
And that's why we're here today. We want to thank you for this proclamation for recognizing World Polio Day and realizing our responsibility as both Rotarians and as leaders in this world to eradicate this particular disease that affects could affect right now so many thousands of people.
Thank you so much.
Well, first of all, as you can tell, Anne is a great representative of Rotary, and she certainly has a passion for polio plus.
As a fellow Rotarian, I agree with you. I know there's been a tremendous effort by Rotarians and Rotary club throughout the world to eradicate it and we are close, so that's certainly a progress hopefully that we can eradicate with the next three years.
So, thank you. And with that, surprise Patty, would you have comment?
And I failed to mention, supervisor Patty is also a Rotarian.
Sheriff is also a Rotarian. If there are other Rotarians in the audience, stand up please. Come on. Here's another member of our club here.
Another Rotarian. Another Rotarian. Another Rotarian.
Thank you. There's Adam. We're all over. We surround you.
Thank you, Chairman. I was just going to remind down to say how proud I am to be Rotarian and to be part of this contribution to how impacting this around the world.
We're going to change its families, the changes of lives, and it changes children's future.
So, I'm a very proud Rotarian, and you guys named all the Rotarians here, I was going to pull off a few, but just really honored to be part of Rotary.
And thank you guys for all being presidents and serving Rotary as diligently and dedicated as you are.
Thank you.
And thank you for bringing this proclamation to the Board of Supervisors because a supervisor Patty, it's become something public and that's important.
So we're going to go that over here. Okay.
Thank you.
Okay. Moving on to the minutes.
Measure the Board.
I can motion to approve minutes.
Back in.
Please catch your vote.
Dr. Five Zero.
Vice Chairman of Equita, appointments, board and commissions.
Thank you, Chairman.
We have four positions to the Workforce Development Board.
First position.
Community-based organization, education and training for clients with barriers for representative Miss Anita Maldenado.
Second position.
Adult education and literacy representatives. Miss Carol Hirotata.
The third position. Wagner.
Kaiser EDD program representative.
Miss Lorraine Perry.
In the last position.
Counciling County Prohibition representative.
Miss Stephanie James.
Make a motion. We approve all of the pointed.
Second.
Dr. Five Zero.
We move on to public comment.
I have two requests here.
Bill was your item on government on consent item two.
Is that the one you're referring to?
No.
Yeah.
No.
Item number two.
Okay.
Got it.
Mayor, the cannabis issue.
But the general, you're talking about consent calendar.
Okay.
Discussion.
Right.
Oh, got it.
Okay. Got it.
Okay.
That's what I need to know. Thank you.
And then.
District newer.
This is on consent item.
Five is that correct?
Got it.
Okay.
So any other public comments that those are already agendaized?
Yes.
Okay.
All right.
The others.
All right.
Okay.
Seeing no one on public comment will move on to consent calendar.
It has be pulled one.
Any other items for the board.
Item number eight, please.
Any other?
Any.
Pull item six.
Item 10.
Okay.
Seeing no other request.
All right.
Item number one.
This one.
Okay.
Item number one.
Madam.
Kathleen.
Hello.
What is the provided?
Um.
Stockton.
Municipal Airport.
Is not San Francisco.
It's stocked in.
Why would you want to do it?
Free go further.
Let me just.
That's the discussion item one.
By the way, I think Mark, you're going to pull that item.
Yes.
As far as discussion item number one, which is from the airport.
The authorization approval of name change for the stock metropolitan airport.
We're asking that that item county council and the airport directors asking that that item be continued.
Based on some correspondence that was received late yesterday.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
That's it.
Item number six.
Chicago.
Board.
The Department of Water Resources provided us a grant in 2014 to handle two major concepts.
One developed emergency plans for review maintain agencies and.
Develop flood fight maps,
The same agencies.
In addition, the also funded.
Us to work with the five cities of the Delta that's low die stocked in later.
Mentica and Tracy and Mountain House.
To revise their emergency plans in order to respond to flooding.
And that was about 1.6 million dollars.
We're down to the point where.
We had to either terminate the activities.
Or as for an extension.
And because of the work that we did do the Department of Resources is offering a one year extension.
The other reason why.
This amendment is required to to extend is that.
They're allowing us to take some cost savings.
We had in planning and flood fight mapping and put it down into training and exercises.
Those two both require.
An amendment and so this will this with amendment will do will provide us.
A one year extension and move approximately $161,000 in to the training and exercises.
And this is round one and they do a series of them up coming will be around two in the Delta.
Region in addition.
We are working on a state with called statewide.
It includes the unincorporated area and the cities of Esquan and Ripon.
Outside of the Delta boundaries.
We have two consecutive.
Countywide to be prepared for flooding.
Judy, did you have a comment?
Good morning, Board. Good morning, chair.
My comment was actually related to this subject matter.
I had it on five, but I'll speak to six.
And it's related to the flood preparedness element.
Once again, Chris Newdeck, with Kelsen Signic and Newdeck, we're civil engineers here in town.
Also a member of your water advisory committee.
I'm speaking on behalf of the flood preparedness for this up and coming flood season.
I was before you several weeks ago to speak about the likely threat of additional floods coming this season with the high
Reservoir condition in the likely rain events.
Mike just referred.
Michael, this referred to round two funds.
The county has been notified of the award, which is another $3.8 million coming to Sam King County.
For emergency response.
Unfortunately, do the Orville situation in the states inability to move things along as quickly as we would
like to see this award came late in the season.
And we were somewhat frustrated given that about 800,000 of that.
He ever take almost of the county's award was to come to the local reclamation districts in the form of emergency flood
flood materials.
And that comes in the form of a container.
Metal container.
Like you'd see, shipping container.
Fill the Sandbag's Visc Queen.
First, what we call first strike, first event.
You know, when the flood first starts to kind of get the operation undergoing.
Because the monies are late, the county doesn't have the funds within.
It's a coffers to actually get that program started before the flood season.
The state understood that was a condition.
And actually, if agreed, once the notice of the award was received, that enemies can start
prespending for a fight at their willing to prespend.
I know this is not an action item.
I'm encouraging the board to look and consider prespending to purchase those containers and flood
fight materials prior to the flood's commencing in January.
It's about $750,000.
We anticipate, based on what we're seeing that the contract should flow by the end of the year,
to write on that bubble as far as what we may end up seeing from the standpoint of cashflow.
I understand how difficult it is to pull three cards a million dollars out of the general fund.
The fund this.
But I just recommend that it be some consideration towards this.
Because absent this, we wait till next year.
We miss another flood event without having that pre-preparedness.
First strike material.
But thank you for your opportunity to speak.
Thank you.
County Council, in regards to their requests, is that taking a separate agenda item to be noticed?
Or is it part of this to get right and where item five?
I believe that would take a separate agenda item.
So we can put it on the agenda for the next meeting.
Okay.
And I'm sure Mr. Cocker will work up a board letter to address that.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
Thank you.
Mr. Cocker.
And it regards to flood prevention.
And I sat through two presentations of the Central Valley Flood Protection Plan.
And I guess my concern is that, you know, far of a lot of resources, which is responsible for that particular plan.
And making sure that, you know, the communities within the state are protected from possible floods.
But they never talk about the issue of storage in regards to managing our rivers, or especially a macolomy, which we had some breaches on.
Certainly a potential on the Saladin.
And so I guess the question is, do they actually talk about the potential, not just of flood prevention by virtue of levees and.
And canals and other drainage conveyances.
But they ever consider that.
By virtue of increasing storage allows us a greater opportunity to manage the flows, which then obviously affect the stress on the levees, etc.
I'm aware that there is a couple reservoirs are being considered.
As down in the lower, I mean, the upper end of the semiconductor river up in the pine flat area, militant lake area.
And in the other one, I believe is one of the PG&E sites.
I believe is on the macolomy.
The biggest thing right now that a lot of resources in California, OES is doing is launched at a two-prong effort.
One is that the state OES will be requiring all the dam operators to revise their emergency plans and have the state review those.
To make sure they're adequate, at least to address problems with their current reservoirs.
The other big major impact will be departing water resources.
It will be launching inspections and reviews of the safety factors of the of the dams.
And especially spillways due to the orville.
So that's the short term goal of the state.
At least for the the reservoirs that are supervised and suspected by the state inspectors.
However, the long-term storage plan, that's only two, I'm aware of that there is a couple out there.
But it's not a major effort right now.
It's is getting on top of the reservoirs that they have to make sure they're safe enough.
Well, as they concerned that some of the your commissioners, what are, why do your water commissioners is that.
Even though we have our, our conference calls now reset up for this year with all the dam operators and all the local jurisdictions that are affected by that.
That are affected by them.
Is there is a hint of secrecy of these dam operators exposing some weaknesses in spillways and their structures.
So I think the one thing that this new requirement by the state is going to try to resolve that.
Even the emergency responders like us, they're tend to be very, very secret of not sharing of threat.
So that's one thing I think this conference call is going to be doing this year.
There's allow us to have a voice with there would be on the line to challenge the type of concerns.
Thank you.
Thank you Chairman.
Quick question on the storage containers and the preparedness that's been, Chris had mentioned.
And that we're discussing what exactly is inside the containers and what's the, what's the utilization that we want to consider bringing it.
It's covering the expenses in advance.
Okay, there's actually four aspects about that, the dollar figure one is we have seven containers already.
And because of the potential threats of this year, we're not going to put those back into our storage facility.
We're going to keep them deployed out there.
They also were drawn down.
So one thing that the funding will do is to to bring us back out to the level standard that they are fully re-equipped.
What, what these things do is they have enough material in there to do a flood fight for about a mile with a levy.
The viscreen, the heavy plastic, the sandbags, the hard hats, the shovels and such hammers, etc.
So that'll bring our seven back up to stockpile.
The other thing is there's only one piece of equipment that can move these.
It's a piece of equipment called side lifters.
It's a truck to actually takes the container.
It's a shipping container and put it on the back of the truck and deliver it.
What we want to do is convert them to roll off so that you can take any type of truck that can take a roll off container like a garbage truck and deliver them faster.
The other aspect would be to just buy a lot more sandbags and viscreen and stuff to have it as a feeder to the levy agencies as they draw down.
So what this grant will do is in addition to those, there's 48 levy agencies that participated in this first round.
What the DWRs can actually do, they normally require them to have these resources, but because they deployed all theirs and depleted and don't have enough money,
we'll have them to restock because of the amount of money they put out to spread fight.
What resources offering to buy each one of them, a storage container that has fully stocked with the DWR recommended supply.
So again, it's hard hacks, shovels, viscreen, the wire to hold down the viscreen, the stakes they use, the drive into the ground, the whole the viscreen down.
So it's about a one mile flood fight opportunity.
The disadvantage right now is that even though water resources has a major storage facility, just down the street, the in the Weber,
it could take up to three or four hours to get water resources down here to open up.
And the bad thing about it is that when you draw resources out of the state center, you have to buy that same amount of resources and restock their facility.
It almost cost twice as much then for forgetting it.
They'd rather just write a check.
So this is the tradeoff is while resources will actually buy them the container and place it on site.
And then that way every year they just can restock the few supplies they draw out of there.
You'd mentioned sandbagging.
Is that material in included inside those trailers?
The only thing that they would have to be required to get is the sand.
So that's one reason why when we proclaim, we can actually buy on behalf of jurisdictions.
So this year we were helping get sand out there.
They would fill the sandbags and we would charge them for the sand.
So the only thing that they won't have is just the sand.
And the crews like the conservation court actually help lay the sandbags.
But this will give them all the resources they need for one mile flood flight.
Thank you very much.
See you guys early.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Continuing on that discussion there, these additional containers that you're talking about that DWR wants to provide.
Is that a separate grant process that included in any way in this grant that we're looking at today?
No, this is what we're looking at today is the first round.
And we actually met with a lot of resources yesterday on the second round.
We thought that grant was going to be active back in March and April.
But because they got into their own flood flight, they delayed.
So what they're doing is they're now targeting the 14th December for me to be able to bring you word to you.
They thought it was going to be the fifth.
But they decided with their legal that they needed a couple weeks.
But because they already have allocated the money to us, we know how much we're going to get.
They know what the materials are because they did fund a couple other counties the same opportunity.
And that actually had worked where one particular recommendation district bought five or six through the state grants.
And then passed through those resources out to the field and in soft reimbursement.
So it is a proven process.
It's just right now that the award is delayed.
But they know we're going into a flood situation.
And they want to have tried to get those resources out there.
So that's the offer they're making is the grantee can go ahead and spend now.
And then request reimbursement without jeopardizing the award.
Okay. So what you're describing then is the same thing that Mr. New deck was talking about.
Correct.
Thank you.
Anything else?
Thank you.
Item number eight.
Thank you.
I just wanted to pull this for a second.
Is a really exciting new public private partnership that the county's participating in.
And then I know that the director John Mendelssohn is here.
I wanted to give him an opportunity to make a few comments if he wanted to.
But this is this has been in the works for about a year.
And we are very fortunate in Samokin County to have.
Private members of our community that are willing to step up in such a significant way.
To address some of the issues that that are present in our in our county.
So great thanks to everyone involved in Mr. Mendelssohn.
Do you want to make a few comments?
Thank you.
Thank you supervisor. I appreciate that.
And thank you to the rest of the board and to the chair of this opportunity as well.
In 2016 Samokin County and City of Stockton officials along with homeless service providers.
Took a trip to New York to investigate a program that houses the homeless and reduces criminal recidivism.
This vote today is the direct result of that trip as is ready to work,
which was for and to take the best lessons from New York and put them into practice here.
It took many people to get to this point.
And I wish I had time to thank them all, but I'm going to thank a few of them anyway.
Particularly Sheriff Steve Moore.
District Attorney Tory Verber Salazar.
Public defender Miriam Lael.
Probation Chief Stephanie James.
Judge Richard Lavianos.
Supervisor Kathy Miller.
Chair Chuck Win.
County staff and the Sheriff's personnel who worked on this lease.
The many homeless service providers who work on the front lines every day, including my father.
And of course, the ready to work board.
Anthony Barcat and Dia Spannos Berberian are here today.
And I'd like to thank them. I also want to thank William Treza.
David Richwin and Rupert Hall.
They really deserve special recognition today because they have the vision for this program.
And they decided to put their own resources on the line to make it happen.
Thanks to these people and many others.
We already have partnerships to provide our clients with skills and work certifications.
Mental health care, physical health care, permanent housing links, and other services.
And with your approval of this lease today, we'll also be able to offer transitional housing, which is a cornerstone of the program.
Support is one of the reasons that we're confident going forward. We're also assured by the results of the
program that we seek to emulate. More than 78% of its participants retain their employment six months after graduation,
and for every $1 spent on that program, taxpayers save $3.60 in emergency services.
While ready to work, we'll fill a gap in our local response to homelessness.
This project alone will not completely solve the issue of housing insecurity in San Joaquin County.
That will take a universal approach, one that strengthens our existing institutions, instead of weakening them.
So I hope that we all remember the organizations and people who've worked hard on this issue for many years,
without them the problem we face would be even more dire today.
That said, my board and I are eager to play our part, and with your vote, we're ready to get to work.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Just make a brief comment. Certainly all those individuals you mentioned.
I know there's a lot of others are critical in regards to justice, but I do have to mention that Sheriff Moore has been
really actively pursuing not only allowing the portion of the jail, which is no longer used,
and then of course the future as we as he has fought for funds to build a new meeting security facility.
As other barracks open up, then we can expand the program, even more participants.
Hopefully as it grows, we're able to, as John says, to say the taxpayer money considering that in homeless world,
the two most expensive places to house the homeless, and unfortunately they are there, are the jails.
And for emergency care, the emergency rooms and hospitals.
So by virtue of this, hopefully we can reduce that that cost and certainly provide a better life for those who participate.
So I don't think the Sheriff on is a vision, which we'll continue.
Okay, I have a number, yeah, surprise, Patty.
Thank you, Chairman.
John had a quick follow up on that.
What's the anticipated number of people you guys are prepared to bring into the housing and
I know there's wraparound sources, there's a multitude, maybe you can give some brief overview.
It's phenomenal what you guys have brought to the county in this opportunity.
I'd also want to thank the families that have been involved.
You know, Spanish, Barquette, Filiose, you've got Barquettes.
You've got Deon Barbarians, Hall, Richmond, and all of them have stepped up and more.
Really applaud all of them and your efforts to get this far.
Just give us a little overview, perhaps on what this is going to look like in the coming year or two.
Sure, well, we envision populating in phases growing organically.
We foresee an initial capacity of 45 beds to be open.
Of course, that'll partially depend upon the various funding sources that ultimately we're able to put together.
But that's our vision.
Hopefully, by the end of next year, we'll be fully up to 45 people.
We hope to graduate those individuals.
Before they reach 12 months in the program.
And when we get on our feet and really get rolling, we hope that that turnover will be even greater,
so that we can reach more and more people as we get further and further along.
I think it's not standing public and private partnership.
I want to applaud everybody in your organization that you're representing in the sheriff and the partnership.
I see it's a one year lease for a dollar.
At year two, we bring that to a dollar 50.
I think we might be able to find the change.
If it comes to be for the board, thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any questions?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, following up on that question about the initial intent for 45 people.
I see that the actual capacity is 138 in those three barracks.
So is that part of the long range plan to initially expand to be able to provide services to 138 people as well?
The capacity that you see on those barracks is under the current configuration as a correctional facility.
The way it is now there are these individual pods in the barracks, sort of like pony walls.
And those are set up two with two bunks per I believe.
Sure, please correct me if I'm misrepresenting any of this.
We envision a one person per pod to try to give them a little bit greater sense of privacy and ownership in their space and in the program.
Some of the pods we envision not utilizing initially because we're going to need common space that may need to be reconfigured.
Depending upon the success of the program and the buy-in we get from other partners and other units of government.
We're hoping to increase our capacity beyond 45 to 90.
We've had conversations that suggest we would be able to expand beyond that given the proper resource environment.
And so we're hopeful to do that that is part of the long range plan.
Thank you.
Yes?
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
I'm going to introduce myself.
That's what come behalf of the Human Resources Department.
The reason I call our full this item is simply I appreciate one of the colleagues and staff that have been doing the hospital.
There's been a number of changes over the past two years, three years.
But what I would like to know about this particular change.
How well that function regards to the CEO and the vision to the CEO as far as the operational hospital.
And what do you envision as being the positive outcome in regards to this particular change?
Chairman Wayne, you happy to address that here.
Thank you.
This is a direct report to me or the CEO of the San Joaquin General Hospital Chief Operating Officer.
We'll have duties for the operations of the Ancillary Support Team, a key integrator with the relationship with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Doing additional development activities on campus site.
We will have a number of projects over the next several years.
Where we do have the large project underway of the replacement facility of the 1932 tower.
But we have a number of other smaller projects that will require close integration with external vendors and contractors.
And also within our internal teams here as well.
I think the biggest change I see here we've been operating as a.
We had a retirement of the deputy senior deputy director in March of 2016.
I've been operating with a very capable interim chief operating officer on a contract basis.
I think the benefit clearly is by finding someone that is county employed will have a stronger buy-in longer term commitment to the facility to the project to the duties of the role.
And I think it's a, again, much the way that I took over as an interim basis.
And then we came CEO here.
I think the commitment is greater.
And I think they'll continue to be on going member of our community.
I think it would be that the third thing that we were the last thing would be important to help people to find somebody that would be on going part of our community.
All right. I appreciate that. Any questions?
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Okay. That ends the consent items pleasure of the board.
I'll make a motion to approve the consent items as submitted.
Second.
Thank you.
Dr. Five Zero.
Okay. Moving on to discussion items. We've already pulled item number one item number two.
Good morning, Chairman members of the board.
I'd want to convene the County Administrator.
And I have Connie Hart here who will be working our PowerPoint and who has done a lot of the work.
Once you start seeing a number of the grant programs we have applied for as a result of the funding mechanism for the position before you today.
We are recommending today for the board to approve the jobs specifications for the new position of program administrator of homeless initiatives within the County Administrator's office.
To give you a little background in regards to how we came to today.
The homeless task force was officially created in February of 2016 and the first annual report came before this board of supervisors in November of 16.
One key aspect of the November report was the recommendation that the board considered the creation of a new leadership position to provide oversight of the homeless task force as it transitions to the continuum of care model.
Other key recommendations of the task force was the establishment of the strategic priorities on homelessness, which this board adopted back in February of this year of 2017.
During the final budget hearings, your board directed the County Administrator to work with the human resources with human resources to develop job specifications better before you today.
But also as part of that conversation back in June.
This board has always been very diligent in one of its strategic priorities of having a structurally balanced budget.
It was extremely important as part of that conversation to look at other resources in order to fund this position.
And as you'll see today that there are some in-kind contributions along with the in-kind contributions that are going as part of the ready to work lease that you just approved today.
There will be some in-kind that the County facilities general services did a lot of work in regards to coordinating that lease and that there are some in-kind in regards to that effort also.
So I want to make sure that the board also knows even though we're trying to find grant funds for the facility, but also this position.
There are some in-kind obligations that I am recommending as a result of the funding for this position.
Working in collaboration with the homeless task force led by supervisor Miller, the County Administrators office and other stakeholders.
Worked with human resources and developed the jobs specifications and salary recommendations for the new position, which will initially reside in the County Administrators office.
And that's important also because we may see as this goes forward that this may be more relevant to our housing authority.
As you heard as part of last Tuesday's discussion with the city of Lodi, there's some very good collaborative efforts going on when it comes to permanent housing and as Mr Ragdale mentioned, you know.
Head, unfortunately, they changed the guidelines often and they're the ones that typically are well aware of it before a number of us.
Some in regards to address those issues especially among our homeless population.
So we may see in the future or it could end up being that it may be more relevant within our healthcare services department who do provide a lot of the wrap around related services to our homeless population.
This position will oversee a more re-robust re-energized continuum of care.
The formation of the countywide plan for homeless prevention and housing strategies reporting on the effectiveness of existing programs and initiatives.
Working in collaboration with the continuum of care to solidify and advance the momentum of our housing task force.
That is definitely extremely important to this community that momentum that has been shared both by the public agencies but also are nonprofits and also are private parties as you're seeing in the ready to work.
We've had a number of folks come to the table in order to address this issue in our community.
Within the continuum of care framework, we're recommending the development within this job class policy regarding homelessness activities throughout our communities.
The effectiveness along with the evaluation of the programs.
This sport has always been good whether it's in our community correction, partnership, whether it's in first five whether it's just the programs that we provide as a county.
The effectiveness and our effective monitoring are those programs because if it's not working, why would we continue to do the same process.
Also develop and provide training enhance our use of available technology and make data-driven decisions as it relates to homelessness in San Joaquin County.
This is extremely important because as we have seen, just getting together on the numbers and how to respond to our various cities to assist us in funding this position.
We Mr. Mendelson was extremely helpful in providing us that information of the most recent count, but yet we have also been informed as part of this process.
There are technical assistance with our with the HUD program that we could be asking a number of additional questions as a result of that head count.
And also as part of that provide a centralized data system that provides some of that insight so that we can respond at a greater level of detail when we apply for grants.
And respond to the various constituency of our communities that are these people really coming from the communities and where they're currently residing.
I think that's a real critical one that we'd really like to get some verification on.
Next slide shows the project of salary and benefits costs of the new position through fiscal year 2021.
It's roughly six hundred and twenty six thousand and five dollars.
I thought it was extremely important to provide a funding plan and I believe I mentioned that during our final budget hearings in June, to have a three-year funding plan in place for the position to give it time necessary to measure its successes.
All overhead costs, as I mentioned earlier, will be borne by the county as in-kind contributions at approximately 50,000 annually.
This slide outlines the various potential funding sources the county has identified and applied for this far.
A lot of that work has been done by Ms. Hart, a deputy administrative officer in my office.
And how the participation of our four largest cities stopped in mode I, Tracy and Manteca are critical to the success of this effort.
As you can see, several of the funding sources have been identified.
One in particular, in fact, it's going to happen tomorrow, both supervisor Miller and Ms. Hart will be before our executive board of our CCP.
And we are asking for roughly one year's salary of the position tomorrow as part of that discussion.
We were held to the same accountability as any other participant that applies for funds as part of that.
We had to fill out our application address what the goals are and what other funding sources.
And as you can see, we are showing reflecting that.
That's the second line item on the table at 167,856 in it is specified as one time.
Moving forward, the county administrator is committed to continue seeking out and applying for available resources for funding.
As you can see, the various list of items, the one item for the 129,000.
Our community development department is the lead agency in assisting our office and trying to apply for those funds.
So we have learned a lot also as an organization and what opportunities are out there.
We are requesting that the four largest cities stopped in mode I, Manteca and Tracy to make a commitment based upon the percentage of the homeless population that reside in each country.
The homeless population that reside in each one of their cities as a result of the most recent homeless count in April of 2017.
The requested funding from the cities is intended to provide funding for the backfill, any shortfall that we may experience.
You'll notice the low end of the range is estimated based upon the county's success and obtaining funding from the already identified grant funds.
The high end of the range is estimated based upon if the county is unsuccessful in obtaining funding from the already identified sources.
Clearly as additional sources of funding are obtained, the necessary financial contributions from the cities will decrease.
Our next steps for a long request as a result of this board's actions,
stopped and has received a formal request along with low dye as a result of last Tuesday nights,
meeting which I really appreciated the mayor and the council's openness and consideration of it and this board and our chair going forward with that request.
We will put forward formal request to the cities of Manteca and Tracy addressing their participating in the funding of this position.
Conversations will continue with those four cities regarding the opportunity to partner with the county.
All important tasks of tackling the issues of homelessness.
Right now, the money that the county receives does not just does not identify homelessness.
A lot of the new money that we're getting as you know, Director Dietrich, but before this board, a no place like home grant.
Home our homeless population is identified there in our human services department.
We receive very limited money when it comes to housing, especially permanent housing.
It's very much about transitional housing.
So as a county beyond some of the new dollars we have received most recently.
We do not receive on a routine basis or even historically a lot of funds that are directed just to homelessness.
That's why this board, you have often heard about us trying to expand our count even with our veterans for our homeless vouchers.
That has been something until just the last few years.
We have really become very serious about to make sure our numbers are accurate, especially among our veterans population.
The county will continue to seek out the apply for available funding and the ongoing cost of the current position we're bringing before you.
We plan to only recruit until such time that we have 12 months of full funding achieved.
In the meantime, we are continuing to take advantage of the technical assistance grant that our county was awarded to develop objectives in milestones for our homeless.
For both a 12 month 24 and 36 month period.
This concludes my presentation this morning.
Chair and board members, and I am happy along with Ms. Hart.
Can I respond to any questions you may have.
Any questions?
No, Mr. Minnes.
Thank you, Chairman Wynn.
I do not oppose the concept of a homeless services coordinator.
I am here today to speak in opposition to the proposed action and in opposition to the underlying draft job description it represents.
When a homeless task force proposed the idea of some type of homeless services coordinator,
it did not necessarily recommend that the position be a county employee.
But the task force recommended was that the task force should evolve into the existing continuum of care and a position be created to support that effort.
By federal rule, a continuum of care is supposed to be a community-wide entity that plans and improves the system of care for people experiencing homelessness.
The current job description would turn the existing continuum of care into an extension of the county administrator's office,
not the independent body the federal statute says it's supposed to be.
The draft job description related to today's proposed actions based on a false premise.
That premise is was that the joint meeting between this board and the low-dicity council was that the existing continuum of care has been a,
an, quote, failure, unquote.
By extension, the project's funded through the continuum of care dollars over the years have been branded as failures.
None of those conclusions are based on fact.
Over more than 20 years, the COC and the projects have brought into the county the maximum amount of funds available through the national allocation process.
In the past five years, that's been close to 23 million dollars.
The only year there was a reduction was when HUD decided it knew better than local communities what projects should be funded.
And that happened to communities across the nation.
The following year, when the COC made clear that hundreds of thousands of more dollars were threatened.
Unfortunately, there was no action by sandwiching county or any of the cities to prevent that potential loss.
COC projects have consistently met and exceeded goals and objectives set by both the projects themselves and by the federal government.
Those include including the numbers of homeless assisted numbers of homeless who have obtained and maintained permanent housing and numbers of homeless who've increased their incomes.
If the board is concerned about the increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness or the length of time people remain homeless.
Or similar performance measures, it should be concerned about the performance of programs not receiving COC funds.
COC funded projects have actually exceeded all federal expectations.
They have real impact on homelessness and housing county.
The scope description should be revised and informed with federal rules.
And to build upon the success of the existing continuum of care, rather than radically altering a continuum that's brought millions of dollars to
the Silicon County each year and house thousands of homeless households.
Along with, I just want to pass along the letter and memo that I sent to the board and county administrator.
And as evidence of what projects have done, the last three annual performance reports from the primary permanent support of housing project.
Thank you.
I think it's important to note that everyone has tremendous respect for the work that's been done in the past.
But that.
I think there's a general sense by most of the residents in San Joaquin County that we can.
And we need to do more and sometimes that requires some different strategies.
I want to confirm with our CAO that this job description has been developed in partnership with our technical assistance folks at HUD to ensure that it does conform with federal requirements.
Supervisor Miller, we have forwarded the job description to our representative.
I did not ask her that question, but I definitely will.
I don't know if Miss Hart has we forwarded it early on in the process.
Did we receive any feedback?
Yes, we did receive quite a bit of positive feedback.
They noted that the job description uses words such as coordinates and administrators and supports and facilitates rather than dreads.
And I believe that that was exactly what they were looking for.
Thank you.
And I want to make sure it's understood that this is also not a criticism of county staff that has been working with the continuum of care.
Nor any of the agencies that ever see funding through the continuum of care.
It's really our attempt to take our efforts to the next level.
And so it is certainly our intention to continue working very closely with HUD.
The feedback that I've received personally from HUD has been that this is exactly what they do want to see going forward for the future of continuums of care.
And so I don't in any way think that that this is done today.
I really appreciate all of the staff work that's gone into this.
Especially in terms of looking for the funding.
It is a the highest priority for this boards to maintain a structurally balanced budget.
I appreciate the fact that we're going to continue working and keep the conversations going to secure this.
Secure this grant funding before we begin recruitment so that there's some certainty not only for us, but also for any individual that might be interested in this position.
I think that's critical to attracting someone with the experience level that will truly understand and and take this effort.
I don't know why to to a higher level for all of us.
We've been really careful to use words like re energizing re rebuilding, re strengthening, supporting as opposed to eliminating or or removing or directing those kind of things.
I think one of the things we've learned.
Over the last few years of the task force is how important this county wide collaboration is and that we don't want to see this collaboration in this momentum.
Backslide and having an individual that is going to be responsible for making sure that that happens.
I think certainly the members of the task force agree that it's an important position.
I appreciate all the comments I know there will be more to moving this forward, but I appreciate the board.
Taking a look at this today and authorizing our staff to move forward in such a thoughtful financially sustainable way.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman.
I guess for the homeless committee that was organized in conjunction to the county like this or chair and and supervisor Miller.
Were there any outside agencies that would equally serve what this position would offer or what what was your guys findings through that committee that you put together.
But you know in the says days as hiring somebody versus maybe another agency that could utilize and do the same types of tasks.
The task force didn't make as I recall specific recommendations about the position.
It was the recommendation was that the county move forward with developing.
A coordinator position and it was really left open ended to the county to decide that and I think that's behind.
Administrator Nino's comments that for now.
We want to provide as much support as possible and so the position is being created within county administrator's office and I think there was board feedback that.
I think it's located support for that location initially, but I don't think anybody's ruling out in the future that perhaps.
This position will migrate to one of the provider organizations could be housing, if it could be any of them.
And I think I can't speak for everyone, but from my position, I think that will be part of what's developed through the county-wide strategic plan on homelessness, developing the 12, 24, and 36 months objectives.
And would really happen through the continuum of care with that continued collaborative effort.
Okay, thank you. And as a follow-up, the conclusion was that we would be best served hiring somebody versus an agency that's already perhaps in place.
So supervisor Patty, I would so value if somebody would step up and take on this leadership role.
When I brought this question up, our two board members chair, when in supervisor Miller, I brought this up more than once on our technical assistance.
And it was very much directed at this point with their familiar with our community that they saw an extreme importance that my office was taking the lead and that we were taking the homeless task force strategic priorities.
So it is really looked very positively so far from HUD in our conference calls.
But I have yet to receive any nonprofit or any other agency reach out to me.
I have had a conversation at least a few times in Mr. Ragsdale's presence because I think one of the board strategies is a housing first model.
They are doing some very creative things in our housing authority. So that's probably the one I have focused on more so or in health care services.
But nobody has approached me and said, you know, Monica, I really think the community would be better served that it come from my area because I've got to tell you.
I would be bringing that before this for today. I really would.
There's I have no ownership relative to this position and as you know, we have become more educated more informed of the things that we are doing good but also the things that we can enhance.
And possibly the opportunities we could have as a result of it just not just being county centric but also having our cities at the table.
And also the things that we can prove upon upon the limited meetings we have had in our existing continuum of care.
As supervisor Miller said, it's very much about enhancing what we are already doing and also becoming more informed so we could capitalize on the additional resources that we may not even be aware of.
And looking at the job description, there is a lot of benchmarks and objectives for the person that would be taking that position. Do we have any firm commitments from the potential partnerships that we have with our nearby cities?
None of our cities have committed so far.
And where are we supposed to.
What comes first? Are we getting commitments from them? Are we hiring and proceeding without a commitment?
I will come back to this board. So that's why we have other funding sources on the table.
So as I mentioned tomorrow, supervisor Miller and Miss Hart appear before the Executive Committee of the CCP.
So if say we're able to achieve between that and some of our other grants our first year then we would go out to recruit.
But if we do not get those commitments from the city, I would come back to this board and ask the question.
If this is something, do we want to refocus this position? Do we want to focus more on housing and some of the things we're already doing as part of no place like home and those kinds of things?
Because I think there's some opportunities and possibly reshifting our priorities in that regard.
I don't want to go into it and any great detail because of course I haven't had a lot of time to spend with director B. Trick and others in that regard.
But I do think there's some opportunities that we would re-evaluate the approach as a result of the city's not participating.
Okay, so to be decided.
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
I think there's some real opportunities with our grant funds supervisor Patty.
I remain an optimist and very hopeful.
I love that about you.
I would just say I think one of the things I agree with both of the sub-resum delvering.
One of the things that I know is in discussion regarding this particular position is that if you look at what's we have done and the comment was made to do more.
It isn't necessarily do more, it's to use the resources we currently have more effectively and efficiently because there's a lot going on.
The other part of it is, and again, I would agree with super-resum delvering.
It isn't the intent that this position were to begin with the county.
If you would always stay with the county, however, I would also offer that when you look at the overall makeup of the programs and certainly the discussion.
It's certainly the task force that you've had.
A major component or county agencies, whether it be, you know, the sheriff's department, for example, with the right to work program, whether it be our public health, behavior health, our hospital.
And so, you know, the district attorney's office, the public defender's office, the spirit court, I mean it goes on and on and on.
And these are all agencies that obviously work collaboratively within the county government system.
So I think, at least initially, what I see, or at least what I got from our meetings was that there's not particularly to work collectively from agencies who normally work together anyway.
However, having said that, once this is up and running and whether we have the funding in place and how we get that.
But, you know, there's nothing, I have no problem. I don't think anybody else in this board has a problem of moving that to some other organization.
You know, as long as they have the funding stream and wherewith all to accomplish the same goals.
I would add one more component, which I think the county has an advantage to some extent over other agencies, although they knew, I know they do lobby.
Is that I know supervisor Miller and myself, when we've been back to Washington, you see, with with height and other better agencies.
We work very hard to provide funding for the continuum of care and other programs that would assist the homeless.
So my point is, is that, yes, I would agree with Ms. Nina, if someone was to step up and divide that position to take over.
Well, at this point, I think it's, it's in the infancy stages, I think we need to start slow.
Gather momentum. At some point in time, there would be decision-made to move it to their agencies if they want to raise their hand.
Is that what you're doing, John Regan?
But anyway, that, but my point is, is that I think this is just the first step.
I don't think it's the end, but it's certainly a start, and I think that's the goal of the task force.
John, do you want to make a comment? Seven microphones so we can get it on date.
No, come up and speak.
Chair, if I could just piggyback real quickly on your comments before John gets started.
While I appreciate that down the road, this, this may migrate somewhere else, I do want to stress that over the last couple of years.
One of the key components that has led to the success of the task force and the continued participation, very robust participation in that task force, has been because the county stepped up as a convener.
And that's been a really critical role for the county to help break down those silos to get everybody there month after month to facilitate those conversations.
So I'm very supportive of this position being with the county, certainly initially, but perhaps permanently because we are the only entity that has that completely county-wide multiple perspective in terms of supportive services and housing, all the different, all the different services that are needed to address this problem.
So it has been a critical component for the county to convene, John.
Thank you and thank you for the opportunity. I'm sorry that I didn't fill out a card ahead of time.
I think there might be at least one other person in the audience who is hoping to say something to this particular item.
First of all, I want to thank Supervisor Miller, Chair Wynn and Administrator Monica Nino for their work to get to this point today.
I think we're all on the same page when it comes to finding ways and recognizing that it's important that we improve how our community addresses the problems of homelessness and housing and security.
The fact that you're having this conversation today, I think speaks volumes about how seriously you all have taken this issue and how serious it is to the community and I think that deserves a lot of recognition from the public.
That said, I do have concerns about how this position will be structured and implemented.
I hope is that San Joaquin County gets the best results for its investment.
I just hope that we're taking advantage of the knowledge and strengths that already exist within our local system.
And I just wanted to point out a couple things that occurred to me while I was here.
First of all that the continuum of care does have a centralized data system, the homeless management information system.
It's the basis for our point in time count, for our housing inventory counts, our annual performance reports.
It's admitted to the consolidated plans, it's the basis for the continuum of care, grant applications, and more, and it's being used by efforts like whole person care.
And I also want to note that when it comes to those continuum of care, housing grant applications, that the max level of available funding for permanent housing has been returned to this community given the constraints placed upon the community by housing and urban development.
And I just also want to point out that I'm a commissioner of the housing authority, and I appreciate all the partnership that the county is taking to work with executive director Peter Ragsdale.
He's done amazing things for the authority and is really moving this community forward when it comes to the issue of affordable housing, but the housing authority does not do housing first.
Housing authority does affordable housing for those who are in poverty, various levels of poverty.
Well, housing first is specifically about those who are chronically homeless.
So again, I just want to thank you, regardless of your decision today.
I want to thank you for all you've done the past two years to address homelessness.
Your supports already made a difference in how we talk about this issue locally.
And I look forward to working with you and the homeless administrator to help solve it.
So thanks again for your opportunity.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the reasons for recommendation and portion to staff report, it talks about the San Joaquin County homelessness task force sunsetting early 2018.
And then the activities being transitioned to the San Joaquin County continuum of care is that still the overall plan.
Yes, supervisor.
Okay, so then if the homelessness task force activities are being transitioned into the continuum of care, then is it also the intent that this position would be transition over into the department that managers the continuum of care.
No supervisor, it would remain in the county administrator's office and then this position would take on some of those duties that currently take place in our community development department that address continuum of care.
Okay.
Well, in another part of the staff report now, it talks about and we've already discussed the somewhat where the position will not reside in the administrators office long term.
But would be transferred to another county department or outside agency.
So how does that square with what you just said?
It's consistent.
And so that's why as this board approved those priorities, this is primarily to not lose that momentum that the homeless task force has.
And so as you all know, my office does a number of things that are assigned to us as a result of various initiatives that this board directs towards my office.
So this is primarily us trying to continue that, but do it as part of our continuum of care process.
And so that currently as I mentioned, a big portion of that takes place out of our community development department.
I will sit down with that director and we'll figure out what roles will continue with the continuum of care.
What portion will stay is continue to reside in community development.
But as I said, I have no ownership of all I want to do is see success on behalf of this board's initiative in seriousness about homelessness within our communities.
And also provide it to wherever it will be delivered the most effectively and efficiently to our citizens.
Okay, so it sounds like all options are still on the table on very much.
We're just doing this then to get the ball rolling and provide for some type of centralized oversight and coordination of the other.
And leadership and also funding.
Yes, that's going to be my next question.
Now in the funding plan portion here, there is only one of those line items that say one time with.
Well, there are two that say I'm going, but of the top four, there's only one that talks about one time with potential for a series of grants. Why are we precluded from having a series of grants in the other three?
So page two, or I assume you're on page two of the word letter. Yes, so we're talking about the hood planning grant is one time.
P funding request is one time. No place like home technical assistance is one time. Why are we precluded from applying multiple times to those sources?
That is a possibility. At this point though, they refer to them only as one time. So no place like home, that's a very new initiative.
So 25,000 in the 150,000, that's a brand new grant. Okay, so all of them potentially could be a series of grants.
I remain hopeful. Right, okay. All right, great. I think we should continue looking at all of those and we should consider nothing at one time.
I have to give you my opinion.
Supervisor Lee, it's just very important for me to make sure I'm very transparent to both this board and also the public because they do a good example is even with our own CCP.
That is very specified as one time. I more than likely would not go back to the CCP unless there was an opportunity to go back. I really take it very seriously when it says one time.
So that's why I'm trying as I said, my goal is given within the priorities within what we have to accomplish out of my office.
We will continue to seek other resources just because in some instances when it does say one time they really do mean one time.
Okay, so in some cases then these actually would be we would be precluded from.
I do I right now with CCP. I take that very seriously as it will be in only one time.
Okay.
And then that brings us into the participation by the cities as well.
So as you said none of the cities have currently committed to contributing anything.
Correct.
Are we making any progress in that direction?
We will continue to reach out.
I very much valued the dialogue that happened in this chambers last Tuesday evening.
And from both the mayor and the city council and our chair and our board.
And so we will also do a formal request to both Mantic and Tracy also.
We did I believe it might have been chair when who asked you know we would appreciate hearing either way of the direction what the pleasure of the council is.
And I would think we would have that also from the city of Stockton.
Great. Okay.
I'd like to just follow up a little bit on what we discussed that night when we were talking about the funding for this position.
And I think it was somewhat misconstrued.
I was told indirectly not directly from he ever made this statement.
That the county considered that the homelessness problem was a city problem not a county problem.
I just want to clarify I don't think any of us said that that night.
I was here for the entire time.
I don't believe I heard that and I believe this board taking a leadership role in adopting the homeless task force strategies.
And then me following up with each one of our city manager and as I believe the mayor of Lodi mentioned.
The city of Stockton adopted the strategies but none of the other cities have.
I think this board and along with supervisor Miller being a direct convener of that group.
This board has shown a lot of leadership when it comes to homelessness and I've appreciated that because as you guys have directed me to go find some sustainable funding mechanism.
I took it very seriously.
So I don't believe I recall hearing anything in that regard supervisor Lia.
Great. I just wanted to get that out and get it on the record again just so that there is no misconception here.
Of course we consider it to be a county wide problem.
I believe the context in which we were discussing that however came to the came from the discussion about funding for this particular position.
And whether or not cities should be exempted from participating in funding this position.
And I know I made a comment at that point that it's in many of the homeless people in the county actually are physically in the cities.
So therefore the cities can't logically take the stance that they should be exempted from participating in the funding of the position that is going to coordinate all of those efforts.
That's just a common sense thing.
If the cities will benefit then they should help contribute.
And I think that what has been proposed is a is a logical approach to that just based it on the percentage of homeless that are actually in each city.
But by no means were we suggesting that we thought that it was purely a problem for the cities and not for the counties and as you can see just by looking at that table of where the funds are coming from.
The county is coordinating all of those efforts to provide that funding.
So I think the county is clearly taking a leadership role in this entire effort.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you any other other comments from the board.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, but we don't need to clap.
Thank you.
All right. Okay, this formally opened the public comment. Anyone wishing to speak on the item. I have Brenda is it best guys.
Good morning chair board members. My name is Brenda Vasquez and I'm on the board for stocking to nine cares and we go out monthly and in our last outreach that we had we actually got three people off the streets.
We're going to rehab and when we actually got thrown home with the help of Dennis butner.
So we would actually love to step up and help.
You know, if you guys are willing to reach out to us or let us reach out to you on Facebook.
Tom Paddy I'm friends with him Miguel as well.
So we're open we're open we're out there we have outreach coming up on the 29th and I was actually here on the meeting that we've had the city and the county together.
For the homelessness and I don't understand why the city has not stepped up and put their funds in together or say hey let's do something for the homeless.
So I hope that they will do something.
I will be at the next city council meeting to address that as well.
And then my other only comment that I have is with the barracks opening up at the county jail at the honor farm is will the homeless have free reign to move and come and go as they need for hospital.
Or you know I know they'll have transport to the hospitals needed but if they need to go somewhere will they have to check out will you know what will the process be.
So that's my only comments but we are available to the and we are nonprofit with the 501 C3.
Thank you.
Anyone else.
Hey see you no one close the public comment.
Okay.
I would move approval of the item to authorize the chair to sign the new exempt class specification for program administrator homeless initiatives.
Introducing way of reading of an ordinance to many ordinance code of Sam looking county by adding program administrator homeless initiatives to the list of classes that are exempt from merit system coverage.
Discussion vote.
The doctor five zero.
Thank you.
Item number three except county council report on use of development agreements in cannabis industry Mr. Miles.
More supervisors last time.
We were here discussing cannabis and tax and sun setting ordinances.
Request was made that we bring you a report on the use of development agreements within the context that they have been used by some places to regulate commercial cannabis.
Development agreements are a land use development tool that was authorized by the legislature in the late 70s.
It's significant that in the adoption of that tool the legislature pointed out a very specific reasons for it.
One was that they found that there was a lack of certainty in the approval of development projects which can result in waste of resources.
And that the comprehensive planning that should result from use of development agreements would make maximum efficient utilization of resources.
They also stated that through this tool that the use of development agreement would provide assurances to the developer that the project would go through in accordance with the existing policies.
And finally they provided that one of the barriers to development agreement or to development was the lack of infrastructure and so provided a mechanism within development agreements.
That developers could front the infrastructure costs and then be assured through a mechanism of recovering their costs over time.
And a perfect example of this is out in Mountain House when we have extensive development agreements in the Mountain House area.
When the original developer came through all of the services, the roads, everything was oversized much larger than what was needed for what was being built at that time.
But there is through the development agreements, a requirement that every new developers that comes in to build homes or to build commercial facilities pays into a fund that pays back that original developer for those costs of infrastructure.
The development agreement required to be consistent with the general plan to, again, reinforcing that this is really a land use development tool.
There adopted by the legislative by the board of supervisors by ordinance.
Typically that would they come to the planning commission first and then to the board of supervisors.
Secondly for adoption. And because they're discretionary action, they are subject to environmental review.
So even in those instances where development agreements are being used for cannabis regulation in each instance, that development agreement is subject to environmental review.
And that could range anywhere from a mitigated negative declaration to a full blown EIR based on the size of the project and the potential environmental impacts.
The big focus for development agreements is that they're designed to address uncertainty in the approval process.
I think that's really kind of fitting as we talk about how cannabis rolls out in the state and how it rolls out in the county.
Because as we look around, you look around the other states that have legalized cannabis for recreational purposes as well as medical purposes.
There have been constant changes from the legislature each year to their programs and their statutes that govern that.
We've seen here that just since November of last year, legislature has already approved additional statutes, changing the landscape of cannabis.
And so there is a great deal of uncertainty in the approval process, or in the cannabis realm.
For that instance, or for that reason, I can clearly see why a person who was interested in pursuing a cannabis business or cannabis business says would want to have a development agreement.
But it's for those exact same reasons that as an advisor to the county, I would recommend that the county look long and hard at the use of development agreement for these purposes.
Because what a development agreement does is it locks in place the existing rules and regulations that govern that enterprise.
So when we bring back the regulations that will govern cannabis and the county, assuming that those are adopted by the Board of Supervisors, then somebody comes along and say, well, I'd like a development agreement because I'm going to do this large project.
When you enter into that development agreement, that prevents the county from making significant changes to those rules and regulations to such to the extent that it would prevent that developer from achieving the goals that they were trying to achieve the development agreement.
It really vests those development rights or that project at the time that the development agreement.
Is entered into. There are some mandatory elements from this list of mandatory elements. I think that
you will see that this is really focused on not development of a commercial enterprise, but really
development of land use. For instance, the development agreements are required to address the duration
of the agreement. Some agreements I've seen for cannabis have been ten year agreements. Others
I've seen have been one year agreement. They're supposed to address the density or intensity
of the use of the property, maximum height and size of proposed buildings, and provisions
for reservations for dedications of land and public purposes. Also, there are discretionary elements
that would be included, for instance, out in Mountain House, there are discretionary elements
in the development title or in the development agreements that address design review committees
and things of that nature. So there is some ability for the county to include other discretionary
items within that development agreement. The main question that I think was being raised by the board
was as an alternative to taxes in order to raise revenue. These are raised for regulatory purposes
and to provide programs and licenses. Taxes under state law are used to raise revenue.
The California Constitution Article 13C governs that ability to charge fees, and generally,
what it says is that you can charge fees that are reasonable and necessary to provide the program.
But there's a differentiation between fees that you can charge because those fees don't require
a vote of the public and taxes which are used to generate revenues which would be beyond the cost
of providing the program which do require a vote of the public. Some of the places that are using
development agreements, the city of Desert Hot Springs, Coachella, Colusa and West Sacramento are
all using development agreements. In my discussions and exploration of this, I was talking with a
county south of us yesterday, that's the first county I'm aware of that's planning to use development
agreements. They're planning to do so at this time just because they think the timing is not great
to put a tax on the ballot for them. Most of these ones that you see here, Colusa is not a
model that I would recommend. It's very site-specific. It's not as thorough a development agreement
as I think would be appropriate. Desert Hot Springs, on the other hand, has a very comprehensive
development agreement. One thing to bear in mind is that although in these development agreements,
they often call out fees, I believe Desert Hot Springs has a law enforcement fee as well as perhaps
a public benefit fee. Most of these municipalities have also adopted taxes. So they're limiting the use
of the development agreement to collect fees to address the off or to offset the impacts from the
programs and using the taxes to generate revenue that then they use for other their other
programs as they see fit. As I said in the fluid environment of commercial cannabis, you can imagine
why an applicant would desire to have that development agreement that provides that certainty
that their project is going to go forward for the duration or the term that's spelled out in the
development agreement. But for those same reasons, it's going to be a detriment to the county.
It does provide the ability to impose, as I said, those fees and mitigate some of the impacts
from the programs. What I've alluded to on the county's concern is that development agreements are
relatively inflexible. Compared to ordinances or regulations, which you can come and introduce, we've
modify an ordinance. You've seen the introduction of and way of rating of one ordinance this morning.
There'll be others as we go forward this morning. And it's relatively simple to modify ordinances
as things change. But when you get the development agreement in place and it vests those rights,
those development rights, those are very hard to change. And so one of the things that's required
is for the county to be able to anticipate all of the impacts that are going to result from
this development so that you can address them in a development agreement. And I don't believe at this
time that the knowledge base is there. For us to anticipate what all of those impacts are going to
be. There's an inadequate baseline that exists from the other states that we're pre-licensed or pre-legalization
to the impacts that exist now. And that creates a difficulty for us to anticipate accurately
anticipate what those impacts will be. We might overshoot it, we might undershoot it, we might not address
those impacts, certain impacts at all. But once that development agreements in place, we have limited
ability to go back and modify it. That concludes my report on the use of development agreements to
regulate commercial cannabis. It has not my recommendation because of the concerns that I've
addressed that while it's an appropriate tool to use to regulate land use and even to regulate the
the development of enterprises for commercial cannabis, I have concerns about using it as a tool for
generating revenue. We have to answer any questions. I see a result.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just following up on your last statement there about how it is very difficult
to change one of these agreements once it is made. What does it take to modify a development agreement?
Well, essentially, a development agreement is a contract that's been codified through
ordinance. If you're going to modify the development agreement in such a way that it would impact
the developers' ability to achieve what they were, what their goal was, the development agreement,
you're going to have to have their agreement. Otherwise, you're inviting them all soon.
Okay. I would think that would make it very difficult to change a development agreement. I would think so.
Okay. So, I'd have to concur with your recommendation here. I mean, we just really don't know what the
situation is going to be. All of the entire cannabis market is relatively undeveloped.
We don't have base lines to base and adequate recommendation on. As you say in your conclusion,
this whole concept remains an untested vehicle. So, I agree completely. This doesn't seem to be the
way to go. Thank you.
Supervisor Miller. Thank you. I have a question. Can development agreements have
be drawn with instead of a finite term to where they would expire at the point in time that tax
measure was passed. Or they would be subordinated to to the passage of of an ordinance in a
tax measure. As far as a term, development of the term, I think there is some flexibility of
the term. But exactly how that's crafted, we need to look into that further. Okay. Thank you. I agree.
I don't think this is the preferred method. I think it's doable, but I don't think it's. I don't think
anytime you're making law by individual agreements, you're always open to charges of lack of transparency,
lack of fairness. Somebody's getting a better deal than somebody else. So, I agree that this is
probably not the preferred method for moving forward. Although it is doable and I know other
counties are doing it, but I don't think it's the preferred method. Thank you.
It was a petty.
Thank you, Chairman. As a quick follow-up, some of the municipalities that you mentioned are doing
development agreements, and you, and also mentioned in your comments that some development
agreements are one year long and perhaps longer of the ten years I think you had indicated.
Are they any of the municipalities that are using development agreements, but I'm wondering if we had
an annual development agreement that was renewable, providing the person was meeting the guidelines and
the profile of the development agreement versus, you know, somebody that was also challenging it,
well, then at the end of that year, that development agreement wouldn't wouldn't allow them to continue.
There is the requirement under statute for an annual review of the development agreement and of the
performance or compliance therewith. So you wouldn't have to limit it to a one year period, but
on the annual review, you could go through that determination. If you found out, found that the
the developer was not in compliance with the agreement or not in compliance with the ordinance,
then actions could be taken to dismantle the development agreement.
Okay, and in lieu of a tax, these municipalities are using a development agreement.
Most of them have actually adopted taxes or they're in the process of adopting taxes,
so they're not using it as a revenue generation. They are, they are addressing fees through it,
but I believe that there are some significant hurdles to using it in lieu of a tax measure.
But there are one or two. I think that you could have, for example, I think you mentioned one,
didn't feel it was a good time to initiate a tax. Right, but they haven't started issuing those
development agreements yet, but that's what they'll be utilizing. It is, but I'll just say that
there are significant hurdles that are presented by using development agreements
to raise revenue. I believe you, I'm not doubting that from home. No, no, and I would prefer to
give my legal advice on that outside of public hearing. Okay, and you mentioned in your closing
there of your presentation that the impacts would be hard to estimate at this point, and I would suggest
that any time, if we failed to have any type of tax, if we were to utilize a development agreement,
it would just reflect what we would consider in lieu of taxes, I think a development agreement would
kind of fill the void or fill that gap. That would get to be determined, and we don't know what we're
going to do tax as it relates to a tax, but I would think there's a pathway to a success that's
being utilized somewhere. Was there only four municipalities that you'd post that up that are using
development agreements or are there others in the state? There are four that I'm aware of, and then
the one county that I'm aware of that is looking at that as a vehicle. Okay. I think that's it for now. Thank you.
Vice Chair and Ville Putin. Thank you, Chair. I'm sorry for miles, because the license would be
made such a compliance with state law as far as, you know, it's a state agreement that would be county.
So, development agreements or the license, development agreements? So, yes, development agreements would
have to be subject to and in compliance with state law. And they do recognize that that that's
state law changes. But, and are to be interpreted in such a way that that if there's a conflict
that to the extent possible, the development developers still able to achieve their the intended
results, but they do have to be interpreted consistent with state law. Yes. Okay. Thank you.
A couple of quick questions. Obviously, the development agreement you say that some of those entities
are also doing attacks is that correct. That's correct. Okay. But, if you compare the potential revenue
for it.
Through the taxes or the fees, and with a development agreement that may be in place, one of the cities that you mentioned, what percentage of what a tax or a fee generates does a development agreement also generate?
You have any idea?
I don't have a comparison between the fees that are generated from the development agreement and what a tax might generate.
Well, I would, you know, based on my experience, I would suspect that it's probably less, because it is, like you say, it's set for a period of years, so there's not any growth, I guess you could finish later in there.
But the other question is, is it one of the debated, one of the debates that it is being raised in the real-ter market, among real-ter, is as weather or not,
if a property is being sold in an area, whether that be an area of residential or industrial or whatever commercial,
that there are, are cannabis activities that are occurring in that area, not necessarily next door, but in that area,
and kind of along the lines of Megan's law, which is very general in regards to real estate sales.
Megan's law, by the way, is sexual predators.
So the question is, is in a development agreement, would the county be able to include in that, that the developer upon marketing their property or their lots or whatever it happens to be?
They would also have to disclose that that development is obviously entitled to certain fees or certainly the availability of certain cannabis activities,
whether it be the cultivation or the dispensing or the manufacturing or the testing or whatever, would that be appropriate or allowed in a development agreement to acquire?
They would be required in a development agreement.
So that would be possible if we included that in there, or would it be a matter of, as an ordinance, it's adopted as an ordinance, so it's a public record,
and then it's also recorded by the clerk, the county clerk, and it goes along with those properties that are subject to the development.
So those who are looking to buy it in that particular development would be aware of the potential of some type of that type of activity occurring somewhere within the development itself.
Certainly even next door, at some point, possibly.
There's an inherently a concern in regards to affordable housing and developments as regards to how they're viewed by either current residents or future residents.
I guess my concern in regards to even exploring this is it would seem that in light of your comments as far as the.
Nobody knows this this whole issue is so entested and you can't even look to other states or entities because different states have similar regulations about the same.
And it would seem to me that you know that we would be better served to wait and see what's happening in other entities.
You mentioned one county that's considering it they haven't done it.
Maybe they'll do it, but you know I have a real concern about being a pioneer in this area because it is you said the changes are almost daily even the.
Final draft of the say water control board regards the use of water and and other things is is amazing compared to the demands.
Requirements on agriculture farmers is opposed on on cannabis.
Business owners so and that's concern and and again I I'm a little bit concerned about this development agreement because.
Seems like we're going to do anything we have to do to generate the money is supposedly to either control or offset the cost.
I I can give you steady after steady of incidents where.
Somebody want to control something and they didn't it went way beyond what it was originally before it was all illicit real legal.
So having said that.
I will open up the public we have some speakers adjacent.
This is not a Tory.
Morning members of the board county council.
I have county administrator.
My name is Jason the sub a Tory.
I own a couple of retail hydroponic stores both in low die and in Calvary County.
So I represent myself and also a permitted cultivator in an adjacent county.
So I decide myself I represent a white spectrum of permitted cannabis operators.
That being said there's a lot of operators that would like to do business here in San Joaquin.
Whether they reside here and have to move to adjacent counties to capture revenue to be able to do legitimate business with much rather stay in their home area.
We do see potentially development agreement that was raised by supervisor patty at the last meeting as a potential to to operate here in the county.
Another the supervisor you've spent a couple of years working on the wine ordinance.
You know which took a long time to get past about two years.
Which is now seen as an exemplary model of legislation for the state of California.
Something that the rest of the state can look at to as a model of success.
I feel this is an opportunity to do the same thing in the cannabis industry.
With contrary to what a supervisor when is said it might be a good opportunity to pioneer this and see this as an opportunity.
Maybe to use a development agreement as a supervisor patty as a disseg way this into an ordinance.
It's my understanding for my attorneys that there's a lot more flexibility in the development agreement that's being proposed.
The operators can come in with a current development agreement which is basically a contract between the operators and the county.
Great in partnership.
Which a lot of operators are very open and willing to do and maintain a certain level of transparency and also be flexible to any future legislation or ordinance that is passed.
There's also I'd like to say that in permanent operations around the state there's zero impact.
Further share local share of supportment as far as having to deal with any instances of theft or crime on site.
Obviously we have a black market that needs to be dealt with and I'm assuming in hoping that California and local legislation will help take care of that in the next couple years so permitted legitimate operators can do business and access in a successful way and pardon continue to pay their taxes and pay for fees.
Thank you.
Anyone else? Yes.
Are you state your name?
Hi.
Normally I'm an advocate for this kind of a stuff but I don't like your plan.
It is too primitive.
Don't like it because like supervisor Miller says there's room for each individual contract and subject to inequality.
Okay.
So no, I don't like it.
And maybe if we had a different plan maybe if we had something else to base it on but it sounds like we're all beginning.
So we don't need to take a chance.
We should just be cautious.
You know city stock and has the marijuana thing going.
We'll see how there's goes.
Maybe we could lend some from them.
So thank you folks.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Yes.
Step up.
State your name please.
I thought I had my card in but my name is Howard Seligman.
I just want to make a few brief comments on the issue of the development agreement.
I don't concur with the position of the county council in which basically using a development agreement locked to in.
There are provisions.
I could be inserted into a development agreement which should do some of the following.
Which Mr. the county council has already recognized.
The developer would have to comply with all state law.
There's nothing to prevent a provision being added that the developer in a development agreement would also have to comply with local law.
You could build that into your ordinance and compel as part of the development agreement that the successful applicant would be required to comply with any changes that occur in either state law or county law.
Effecting the ability to transact a cannabis business.
So consequently I'm of the initial position that by establishing the proper wording you could require changes in the development agreement to coincide with not only state law as it is modified from time to time.
But also your county ordinance which is ultimately adopted by this board.
In addition there's the possibility within the development agreement of suggesting that the term of the development agreement coincide from a sunset provision with the approval by voters for any tax that relates to the cannabis.
These and revenue and once that occurs then the development agreement can be essentially dropped and replaced by the tax.
I would also indicate that as noted in the county council's letters that he's talked about a range of fees and revenues that he has talked about.
In terms of what would be required on the part of the successful applicant that same range of fees could be established in the development agreement which would then authorize the board from time to time to modify those fees within that particular range.
Thank you.
Anyone else?
Good morning. My name is Katie Podin and I'm going to turn you with seal and law firm.
Our firm specializes in regulatory compliance, corporate governance and transactions for the cannabis industry.
I'm here with Jason disalvatory who spoke previously and Howard.
I wanted to speak about the development agreements because our firm has entered into many development agreements with municipalities and I was happy to hear county council mentioned as a hot springs as an example of one was a positive one.
Because our firm worked with the city of desert hot springs in order to draft the template for the development agreement that they use with all of their licensees.
I would like to first reiterate what Howard said in terms of a sunset clause and what supervisor Patty was asking about is that you can absolutely have a sunset clause for these fees.
For example, the city of green fields exactly that they call that a municipal search charge and it's sunset when the tax goes when the electorate boats on the tax measure.
I would also like to address some of the benefits of the county that they'll see from development agreements.
I think it's a good thing because it provides benchmarks and timelines more specific than a conditional use permit would provide a licensee.
It will encourage the developer to develop on time with the right funding.
It also encourages completion of the projects.
This is no different than developing resorts, hotels, car dealerships, all which have which municipalities use development agreements center into.
I also would like to talk about the shorter term timeline.
You can absolutely enter into a yearly contract if you renewed annually.
You can even have it sunset wouldn't ordinance comes into place and then issue a conditional use permit for the licensee.
It does not have to lock the county in for 10 years and it can absolutely be subject to local and state law.
You wouldn't do it any other way.
And, you know, for concerns of the uncertainty with state law.
First of all, we really haven't seen any state roll back their marijuana laws after they came online.
And secondly, if there's a certain if there is uncertainty then I recommend to not open it up to the free market but then limit development agreements for a first phase in a limited number of licensees or developers.
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have my experience with development agreements.
Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone else?
Just a side note.
I read the study that was.
A draft in August of this year. Talked about US marijuana compliance scores. Colorado, an endless
various compliance activities, medical dispensaries, etc. But I'll just go to the bottom. Overall,
the average score by state. Colorado was 80 compliance, 82.9. Illinois was 97% Nevada was 81.2. And
then Washington state was 77.3. California was 74.4. So, doesn't necessarily show a great job by
California at regards to compliance to particular controlled substances in regards to the
license dispensaries. Okay. Mr. Baudjou. Yes. First,
there's a large budget, some of the firm bureau here in Stockton. I figure to get up once in that way. I
have to get up every time and we can just start in the beginning. Our policy and our policy has
been on this issue to continue a van on cannabis production until January 2023. Period. That's what we've
been saying. That's what we're going. Anything that moves us to speed up that process is something that
we have concerns on. We really appreciated the county council's report. In the words caution, in terms of
granting a right with limited amount of fees that are more likely not going to cover the costs of
the programs that you're going to entail if you do move into this production and no guarantee that you
ever will. So what you're doing is granting a right for people to go ahead and produce in this county
and it's you're not going to be a limit in the future. And if there are unintended consequences and
they're going to be unintended consequences, you the county are the ones that just signed up for that by
moving in this direction. And you're the ones that are going to have to figure out other
sources of revenue. We look specifically, again, with the sheriff's department impacts on rural
crime impacts on that rural crime department and in every place else in that there's law enforcement so
important to us. We look at our ag commissioners office and we kind of, that one can get to brush it off
into the side. The ag commissioners office is going to see significant impacts if this county ever moves
down that path of commercial cannabis production. So we have some real issues with that, some real
concerns, again, granting a right in with liability that you're going to entail a path of
unintended unintended consequences. I don't think this is the right course of action for San
County. Thanks, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. It was really kind of interesting
where we're talking about development agreements and we're talking about next on the agenda we'll be
talking about potential taxes. And we don't have an ordinance. We don't even know what we're doing if
we're just looking at an outline and a structure and a stand. There's things that have been spoken
and concerns and rightly so. And there's concerns on this board. We take this very seriously as we've
indicated in the past. And I don't even know if we're going to have a marijuana ordinance. I don't know
what we're going to allow. But if we're going to allow something, we do need to have in place some sort of mechanism
to recover funding expenses, taxes, fees, whatever it is because there are going to be expenses
whether we have an ordinance or not. So the discussion of this development agreement and the ensuing
discussion of the taxes is it's so much premature because we don't have an ordinance that we've voted on.
There's still is a ban in San Joaquin. There's still maybe a ban in San Joaquin. But if this board comes together
in any cohesive manner and votes to allow at any level, any type of cannabis business, then we do need to
have a few structure in place. So a development agreement or any of the tax discussions would
happen only if the county approves and ordinance allowing cannabis cultivation, business sale,
anything of that nature. So I would like to make a motion in regards to the development agreement
and borrowing any other conversation from the board. My motion, my motion would be that
in lieu of a tax and a such time that a tax is in place, a development agreement be crafted for boards
consideration to regulate any future cannabis related businesses. I think we had some couple of good points
brought up the development agreements seem to be flexible enough. So I think perhaps in the crafting
of one for the boards consideration and in lieu of a tax that may or may not ever happen, at least we
have in place a development agreement that be utilized if cannabis is ever in place which may or may not
happen. Clarification from the county council, at least the recommendation was to do a
justice sector report. That was my recommendation was accepted before. Okay. So therefore,
modifying it is acceptable this time. The board's direction. It's the board wants us to
explore developing or to explore the development agreement that will certainly take that.
I will do that. Okay. All right. Thank you. I would ask for, would you restate your motion
because I want to make sure that I captured what? Sure. Basically, I said in lieu of a tax and at
such time that a tax is in place, a development agreement be crafted for boards consideration to regulate
any future cannabis related businesses.
So essentially it's coming back to the board. I will figure the motion in.
Motion in a second. Please cast your vote.
Motion to be the three to two.
Okay. We started motion. We're a sixth and report. And then we're in motion to make motion to that.
That regard or clarification. I would move to accept council's report.
Okay. Motion second. All second. Motion in a second. Please cast your vote.
Doptify zero. Thank you.
All right. Moving to.
Item number four.
Wait reading the ordinance.
I'm ending the summer. So I can count a code of ordinance title on the sunset provision.
Good morning supervisors.
Wait. I was reading for eye contact there.
We're going on my screen, but that's okay. Go ahead.
So we narrowed that pretty county council. You'd be glad to know. I do not have a power point for you this
morning. That's always good news. As stated in the board letter, we recommend that you introduce
and we've reading of the proposed amendment to code of ordinance title four. Division 10,
chapter one, commercial cannabis activity section four,
dash one, zero, zero, one, one, the sunset provision. The proposed amendment would ensure that the
ban on commercial cannabis activity in the unincorporated county, the unincorporated areas of
singing county remains in place unless and until there is a comprehensive commercial cannabis ordinance
and that a revenue source for the regulations and ordinance is in place.
You'll remember the board included the sunset provision and chapter one in order to ensure that
staff was moving forward with a commercial cannabis cultivation ordinance in a timely manner and I
considering the timing of the state's licenses, just specifically the sunset provision was put in place
so that we were moving forward to be in line with the state's issuance of commercial cannabis
activity licenses which was set for January 11, 2018. This state is on track to do that.
There will be emergency regulations but they will be licenses pursuant to emergency regulations but
they will be licenses and I want to assure the board that despite today's proposed amendment to
remove the sunset provision staff and specifically a working group made up of department heads in
key staff in the county is working toward both a commercial cannabis ordinance as well as a
personal cannabis cultivation set of regulations or ordinance. The proposed removal of the sunset
provision will provide the working group and potentially a contractor that is currently out to bid
sufficient time to adopt a comprehensive ordinance structure that's funded through fees and ideally
local tax and that has full cost recovery efficient implementation and effective swift enforcement.
It takes time to develop that we are ensuring that we're working on work flows and that that
implementation when and if there is a tax pass or revenue sources pass is able to be implemented
effectively and efficiently. So following today's introduction and we were a reading we asked that the
amendment be agendized for adoption on November 7, 2017 which is the next regular meeting.
Any questions?
Zero as a rule?
Not really question. I just think that this is necessary to do. I've stated publicly that I do
think we need to develop a comprehensive commercial cannabis ordinance and we do need to pass
a tax measure to ensure that we have the funds to mitigate the impacts of this new industry in our state
but I believe really strongly that it needs to be done in a really
thorough, thoughtful, comprehensive way that is transparent to the public and fair to everyone concern
and that we address as many of the issues upfront as we possibly can and to do that. I believe it's
really important that we keep the ban in place until such time as we can do that. So I'm very supportive of this.
Do I have it?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So just to capitalize what you said, this amendment actually ensures that
the ban on commercial cannabis activity remains in place unless the board comes back and takes
some specific action to change that.
Yes, supervisor. I would make one clarification and that is that it is the title for ban which
used to be referred to as the cultivation ban was expanded in May of 2017 to include all commercial
cannabis activities. This is separate from the title nine, dispensary ban which will come
before your board for adoption. Also on November 7, pending the outcome at the planning commission
on November 2. So this is specifically the title for.
Okay, now, I'll tell me that again. So this one includes all commercial cannabis activity, right?
Whether it's medical or not. This particular title for was originally focused on cultivation.
It was then expanded to include commercial cannabis activity. However, the dispensary ban exists
separately and that's in title nine. That was how it originally moved forward was.
It exists in development title as a type of business operation in the county. So we are, that was also,
a sense of provision was also included in the title nine dispensary ban. A sense of provision was
included in the title for cultivation ban. Both of which were expanded in May of 2017. Today,
we are introducing and weaving reading for the title for cultivation ban, which was expanded
to be more extensive. And then on November 7, in parallel, we will bring forward the adoption also
of title nine dispensary ban. Okay, so this amendment then ensures that the ban on all
commercial activity, commercial cannabis activity, except for medical dispensaries remains in place.
Correct. And as the best we can do with this today. We have to do them separately. We have
initiated and it has been agendized for the planning commission to be heard on November 2, 2017.
The first step in removing the sunset provision from the title nine dispensary ban.
Okay, thank you for that clarification. And I think that's exactly what we need to do. We need to keep
the ban in place and require the board to come back and specifically address the change
rather than having it automatically sunset. Any other comments?
There's the board. I move that we adopt the staff recommendations as written.
Thank you, supervisors. Thank you.
Okay, I don't number five. If you're there's in way of reading ordinance imposing a tax on commercial
cannabis businesses. Mr. Chairman, before we get started with that.
I anticipate that this may take longer than half hour to get through.
I don't know if you want to break early and come back before and then do this after the lunch break.
It's certainly at the board pleasure, but just anticipating that this is likely to take longer than half an hour.
All right, there we'll take.
There are quite a number of people in the audience.
All right, I'll take your advice.
We will.
Go ahead.
If you're interested in hearing getting the public comments, then I suggest we just proceed.
Okay.
All right, let's go ahead and start it.
We may adjourn in the middle of it and reconvene.
We'll try to get the public comments in before we break for lunch and then come back to the boards.
Session or decision after that.
Okay.
Let's.
Good morning, supervisors.
This is the introduction and wave reading of an ordinance amending the Sen.
I should have realized it wasn't mine.
Introduction and wave reading of an ordinance adding the Sen.
Accounting code of ordinance chapter four to title three imposing attacks on commercial cannabis businesses.
Recommended that the board of supervisors introduce and wave reading of an ordinance adding chapter four of title three to impose a county general tax on commercial cannabis businesses in the unincorporated area of Sen.
Accounting as of July 1, 2018 and set November 7, 2017 as the date and time to adopt the ordinance adding chapter four of title three.
The requirements for today's action because this is adding attacks and tax has to be voted on by the public.
And then it comes back a second time for the board to adopt the ordinance and then the ordinance becomes effective within 30 days.
Because this is attacks and because it has to be voted on by the public at the first meeting, which is today, there's the introduction and wave reading and this is the opportunity for the board to make any changes that you wish to make to the ordinance that's before you.
The it owner requires a majority vote to introduce and wave reading.
Depending on the action of the board on the amendments that are made to the ordinance today it.
Our recommendation is for a general tax to move forward.
When it comes back to the board on November 7, would require a four fist vote from the board to to call the election and place this on the ballot.
At that time the board is not approving or adopting the tax, they're not adopting the tax, they're they're approving placing it on the ballot.
If the board believes today that a general tax is not the way to go forward and that a special tax is preferred.
There is language that we can modify in the ordinance that's before you that would allow a special tax to go forward.
The difference on the special taxes that when it goes to the public for the vote.
There's a higher threshold that however to get it to the public for a vote.
A special tax home and requires a majority of the board to place it on the ballot.
So with that said.
The board in in previous discussions of the board is indicated that it was the desire.
In forming the tax that we would tax all of the license types.
And that there would be some flexibility within the tax.
So we have looked at an included language that provides for an annual adjustment according to the consumer price index.
We've also drafted language that allows for additional authority of the board to increase the tax within the specified range.
Let me explain that.
The range generally for the tax that we've looked at is 3.5% to 15%.
We're recommending that the tax be introduced the first year at lower range.
But by providing the additional authority for the board.
That means that the second year if the revenue that was generated is insufficient to meet the county's needs.
But then by resolution of the board you can adjust that tax rate within that 3.5 to 15% range to ensure that the revenue is sufficient to meet the county's needs.
We've looked at the taxes and we've included them with separate methodology.
The cultivation tax and you may recall this from the report that we brought to you from our consultant H.D.L.
There was a recommendation that for cultivation tax to be based on the square footage of the license this issue.
That provides certainty to the county about the amount of revenue that will be generated by a license.
If I'd certainty to the applicant because they know a front exactly what it is that they're going to have to pay as far as a tax.
We made certain assumptions going into this valuation and because of that, this was one of the difficult areas.
So based on the report from H.D.L.L. and their discussions, they indicated that it takes about 10 square feet to produce a pound of flower.
And in discussions and looking at the industry, the wholesale value presently is about 20,000 dollars per pound.
Now, we used that and we used it modeled on the 3.5% and came up with a square footage rate of 28 dollars per pound.
around our $28 per square foot as an entry rate.
Colorado uses a similar methodology, but they adjust the value that wholesale value quarterly,
California under the new laws that were adopted this year, also are looking at adjusting
their rates quarterly.
However, I believe that because of the flexibility that's built into the ordinance, the board
of supervisors, if you adopt this rate, you can always go below the rate.
You don't have to go back to the voters for approval of that, so even at a $3.5 percent
rate, if the market fell out and the price decreased dramatically.
The next year, you can say, well, we want to reduce the $3.5 to $1.5 for $1.75 or whatever,
so you have that ability to do that without having, including a mechanism that adjust that
wholesale value for pound.
These are some of the rates that we looked at as a comparison for what you'll see in other
places, Monterey is a $25 a square foot with a CPI modifier, so no amount has a varying rate,
but it's up to $38 per square foot, full lingo is $25 per square foot, and the city of Medesto
has a straight percentage, which is a model that the county can go to, a percentage of revenue,
as opposed to a square footage, and stop them, of course, is just a percentage of gross receipts.
We're all of the non-cultivation licenses.
We applied the same rate range at 3.5 percent to 15 percent, and we're recommending that the
initial rate would be set at 3.5 percent.
When we modeled this tax ordinance, we made certain assumptions, I've already spoken to the assumptions
that go to cultivation, but we also had some assumptions so that we could make some projection
to the board about the amount of revenue that it taxed like this would generate.
As we've spoken about previously, the state did a survey, 2016, and in that survey there were
249 or so responses that said, I would like to have some more of a license,
cannabis, commercial cannabis license, in San Joaquin County.
We looked at those rates, then, and they're broken out by cultivators, retail,
manufacturer, distributors, and testing labs, and because of the discussion of the board,
to not open the floodgate, but to have a small controlled number, we've used 10 percent of those
249 applicants to model the tax on. At 10 percent, we're looking at 13 cultivators,
various sizes, two retail, two manufacturers, two distributors, and testing labs, and that is straight,
just 10 percent from the numbers that were reported on the state survey.
The revenue estimates for cultivation at, for those 13 licenses,
interaged approximately $4.2 million per year, and the non-cultivation license at 3.5 percent
produces about $650,000 per year. That non-cultivation figure was based on the revenue that was indicated
by our consultants, HDL. Because we didn't want you to look at the revenue and isolation.
As part of our working group, I ask that all of the members of our working group put together in a
worst case scenario. As was discussed earlier this morning, we don't have a fully fleshed out
regulation in place for how this industry is going to go forward. I asked a department to prepare a
worst case scenario that includes both their fees, so that the costs that they would seek to recover
from the business from the industry, as well as what they see as impacts that may or may not be addressed
by fees. These are the figures that we came up with, and so you've got about $7.98 million dollars
that are included there. Some of that is going to be recoverable fees. Looking at what other counties
have estimated for their program costs, they have estimated somewhere between 3.1 and 3.5 million
dollars for program costs. That would represent about between 30 and 40 percent of these estimated
expenses would bring you out about 3.1 million dollars. I think that's probably a good rule of
some to use going forward. As we go further with the regulations and development, we will come back
to the board with a more developed fee schedule than for the board to adopt.
As I said earlier, a general tax requires a four-fits board approval to call for that election
and requires a simple majority vote of the electorate. The benefit of the general tax is that there are
no limitations placed on how you spend the money. As you heard this morning with the need for
in the community for homelessness housing under a general tax, you could use revenue for homeless housing.
You could use revenue for the airport, you could use revenue for any number of social organizations to
benefit their projects that they do. It falls into the general fund and so there are no limitations
on how you use that money. However, if the board is unable to support a general tax, then the
alternative would be a special tax. Special tax requires a simple majority for board approval.
So on the seventh, when we come back, if it's a special tax, it only requires three of you to
move that forward to the ballot. However, once it's on the ballot, it requires a two-thirds majority vote
of the electorate. You are limited by the language and the ordinance on what you spend that money on
and as a special tax, you're required to call out how you're going to spend that money.
We looked at how the state has proceeded with their tax measure. One of the things that the state said was,
We're going to get paid back first. Everything, you know, we're going to scrape off the top to make sure that the state's coffers are made whole from this program first.
And I think that that's a proper model to use whether you go forward with a general tax or whether you go forward with a special tax, that the county shouldn't be out any revenue for having this program go forward.
So we have included in the special tax language to recover for the regulation and enforcement of the prosecution of both legal and illegal cannabis operations.
And consistent with the comments that we've heard from the board and consistent with the people that have appeared before the board.
We have included other categories where those funds could be spent for use programs early education, early childhood education to K-12 programs, behavioral health, drug addiction, drug abuse, education programs, and also public health programs.
That would include not not only the public health department, but also programs at the hospital that falls within that public health environment.
The language that we've provided you'll see before you, special tax allocations, it's to expand on cannabis enforcement, including but not limited to licensing regulation, enforcement, and administration of licensed cannabis businesses, and the investigation, abatement, eradication, and prosecution, and illegal cannabis activities.
Early childhood development in K-12 programs, drug abuse prevention and treatment programs and public health programs.
If the board desires to make changes in that, the requirement under state law when we're introducing an ordinance like this is that the board cannot adopt an ordinance that's had changes made at the introduction way reading for seven days.
By bringing it back on the seventh, we have plenty of time, but now is the time to make the changes to the ordinance in today's meeting.
And then we can go forward and bring that modified ordinance forward on the seventh.
If the changes are made on the seventh, that will simply delay the process. We'll have to go through the noticing process again.
In addition with the special tax allocation, we have included language that for the board to establish an advisory committee to make recommendations on the allocation of those expenditures.
So we did not include specific percentages for those categories, because I believe that if you're going to go with.
My goal in drafting this is to provide maximum flexibility for the county to meet the county's needs.
So if you're going to go with a special tax as opposed to a general tax.
I would advise against having carved in place those percentages because in year one the amount that you may need to spend on law enforcement.
Maybe significantly different from what you need in year five.
And so I think that you need some latitude there.
And so I have not included percentages for those those different cost buckets if you will.
Although certainly the board can do that and in some cases municipalities and counties do include specifics of how those dollars will be spent.
In the alternative though, we have included in the ordinance language for the board to establish that advisory committee to make the annual recommendations for the expenditure of those funds.
The staff's recommendation is introducing way of reading of an ordinance imposing a general tax on commercial candidates activities in the end incorporated county.
We request that you set November 7, 2017 at 9 a.m. or approval of that general tax.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Any questions?
I will take the opportunity for public comment.
So.
I have.
I would supplement.
The board my.
My comment's going to be very limited.
If you're going to give the voters the opportunity to make that decision.
And considering the make up of this present board.
The only way that I can go forward is for a special tax.
I don't think that there is any possibility of the voters having a say in the with this board in the event that you require a general tax.
Can you put in.
I just like to make a few comments about the.
Excuse me, the tax and fees that were quoted.
For my experience and and from what I've gathered with clients.
I numerous cultivators.
Who are my clients in the industry.
And the price of cannabis right now for indoor grows is approximately 1,400 to 1,600 a pound 1,800 max.
And keep in mind that we'll only get lower as more cultivators are licensed in this industry.
Additionally mixed light has always been lower for the price.
It's approximately 1,200 to 1,400 to 1,400 to 1,400 per pound.
And as you would imagine outdoors even lower.
So I recommend you keep that in consideration when deciding upon the taxes for cultivators.
I have not seen a municipality with a tax rate higher than 25 dollars per square foot.
I think if the board decides to do higher than 25 dollars per square foot.
That you will be pricing yourself out of the market.
There is plenty of municipalities surrounding San Joaquin County that are issuing cultivation licenses.
And I don't want to see San Joaquin County miss out on a possible tax revenue because they.
That also leads me to my next point that I recommend a percentage of the revenue rather than a square foot tax per square foot.
The reason being is that because the state has highly regulated the growing standards for cultivators.
There is going to be a high failure rate.
It's better to receive the tax revenue from something that will actually come into fruition rather than a harvest that totally fails and have a.
Cultivator who will have to stop all operations.
That means that I just wanted to provide you an additional as of new municipalities around San Joaquin County that have tax rates.
San Joaquin County 10% Santa Cruz 7 to 10% Mancino is 2.5 up to 10%
Manorosa is 2% or 5 dollars per square foot.
It's at the licensees decision or discretion.
Oakland is 5% Sacramento 4% and Salinas is 15 dollars per square foot up to 25 dollars per square foot maximum.
And one last point on the fees I would hope that when county council comes back with the fees that are going to be charged to the licensees that we have it further break down because as county council mentioned,
they need to be commiserate with the services that the county provides.
Thank you.
Good morning, Chairman when supervisors.
I'm a dollar executive director for family resource and referral center and I've served on the San Joaquin.
First five San Joaquin children and families commission since 2009.
My comments today are made with the care and concern of the residents of our county that I share with all of you.
This is a very nuanced and challenging conversation which requires a great deal of courage.
There are issues and there will be issues if San Joaquin County legalizes cannabis.
However, the reality is there are issues right now facing families and children.
Cannabis is here and we have to deal with it now.
The only thing we achieve with a continued ban is to ensure that we'll have to deal with those issues with no additional resources to mitigate them effectively.
With legalization occurring in Washington in Colorado state.
Since 2012, the road is well paved and the initial lessons are well learned.
By studying those and applying our regional lens, we can move thoughtfully to engage this market.
A ban will not protect our community because a ban hasn't protected our community.
Thoughtful study like our county is done to date and engagement is the best way to move us forward.
Engaging legal cannabis enterprise gives us the ability to protect our community by reducing the illegal market.
And regulating those businesses allows us to control where they exist and how they'll impact our lives.
The sheriff is reported to the sport that he will see increased costs whether or not we think lies.
Maintaining a ban limits our resources to make any impact on illegal activity that's already in our neighborhoods across the county and in closer proximity to our children and youth than we want.
Studies indicate that there's an impact to the fetus and also an impact to a young person's brain developing brain through their early 20s.
Taxing cannabis allows the creation and implementation of comprehensive prevention programs including education campaigns that cannon will decrease under age usage.
We can say this with confidence because California has been a movement leader in smoking cessation by funding a combination of efforts that have worked including among other tools mass media and tysmoking advertisements.
School education programs and smoke free policies.
The combination of these efforts in California has reduced adult and under age smoking rates by 50% since 1989.
This comprehensive effort demonstrates how education engagement can work far more effectively than just say no.
California's rates have been reduced four times faster than other places in the U.S.
Just in wrapping up as someone who's worked to improve lives of children and families for two and a half decades in this county.
If you would have told me I would stand before the sport and advocate for cannabis enterprise ten years ago, I would have left.
Cannabis is a reality that we must deal with as effectively as possible.
The lack of positive impact from prohibition through the years on cannabis versus the positive impact education and support has had on cannabis.
Demonstrated through examples like smoking cessation moves me to encourage the board to legalize.
Regulate and tax cannabis and to dedication dedicated portion of that revenue to children and youth prevention programs.
Thank you for your time.
Maggie Park.
Good morning board.
Maggie Park from public health and also first live commissioner.
I'm here again to ask that you keep the children a salmon king in mind if there's to be any revenue generated by the cannabis industry.
As a local pediatrician, I worked for many years at salmon king general hospital and community medical centers.
I've taken care of many beautiful children and many beautiful but troubled children.
Children with behavioral issues, developmental delays, academic difficulties, mental health disorders.
I've written many prescriptions for medications for ADHD.
And on many occasions those drugs have worked wonders.
But sometimes making a diagnosis such as ADHD is not enough and medications are not enough and the child continues to struggle.
And I've wondered what's the diagnosis here? What am I missing? What has happened to this child?
In many of these situations the child is being raised by a grandmother or perhaps a foster mother.
I can't tell you how many times a grandmother has asked me.
Do you think my grandson is like this because his mother smoked pot when she was pregnant?
Honestly, many grandmothers have asked me this about a struggling child.
And over the years I've come to believe that they're right.
I have no test that I can do on a child to prove it.
But we do have plenty of research that links intrauterine marijuana exposure to low birth weight, signs and symptoms of ADHD, psychotropic problems, and poor academic achievement.
THC has an affinity for fat, so it loves to get stored in the brain and by the way that's also why it loves to hang out in breast milk.
And through some complex biochemical mechanisms it changes neural connections in the brain.
The evidence for these effects on the brain is even stronger when it comes to studies on an adolescence.
We can take images of their brains and see where cannabis goes and see the loss of neurons in those regions over time.
1. Yet, when I asked my teenage patients privately about drug use, I'd often hear them say, no, I don't use drugs, I just use pot.
Or, I smoke pop, but it's not like I smoke cigarettes. They know tobacco is bad for them, but somehow they don't know what marijuana can do. They don't know about the risks.
With different parts of our country moving towards the legalization of cannabis, the American Academy of Pediatrics felt compelled to release this statement.
Efforts to decriminalize marijuana should take place in conjunction with efforts to prevent marijuana use and promote early treatment of adolescents with marijuana use problems.
I once said to a kid, hey, you say marijuana is not a big deal, so why don't you just stop? And he said he needed it to deal with stress.
We need to help kids like him deal with their stress, somehow to get to the root of their stress, and maybe even prevent the same kind of stressors from affecting other kids.
Because it's not just about marijuana or drugs, we have kids who are homeless, hungry, abused, depressed, getting bullied at school, dropping out of school, getting themselves in jail.
There's a lot of issues we need to tackle, but we have a lot of dedicated people right here in San Joaquin.
In fact, right here in this room, who dream of tackling them, and we're ready to do some good things for our kids if there's an opportunity.
Thank you.
Who's there Rodriguez?
Thanks, thank you.
Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity.
I am Jane Stein campus assistant superintendent for educational services at the San Joaquin County Office of Education,
and I'm here on behalf of our superintendent James Missileamus.
As an educational entity, San Joaquin County Office of Education is not endorsed the legalization of marijuana or any of its related industries.
But my purpose here today is to ask that should you decide to legalize,
we encourage you to heavily tax this industry.
As we've already shown, taxing this industry will create an essential funding stream to provide the necessary prevention education
and child-centered initiatives, such as the work being done by the Children's Alliance.
What we know for sure is that prevention education initiatives work as evidenced by the following examples and K reference this earlier.
But in 1982, I graduated from a high school here in Stockton, California.
And I remember that there was a smoking session section just outside the cafeteria where the students and the teachers could smoke together.
You clearly don't see that anymore.
Why?
Because in 1988, one of the earliest prevention education initiatives funded through taxation began.
Photers in California increased the tobacco tax by 25 cents and two-thirds of that funding was allocated to local education agency for tobacco use prevention.
In 1991, the first year data was collected and at that time, 27% of students reported consistent tobacco use by 2014 that number has been cut in half.
In fact, we use prevention education.
In fact, prevention education has decreased the rate statewide. California is one of two states with the two lowest rates of smoking among adults.
In the late 1990s, family life and sex education began in schools.
Since then, teen pregnancy rates have declined dramatically by 65.3%.
And abortion rates have declined by 16.3%.
Since 1992, all public schools are required to teach HIV-AIDS education at least once in middle and once in high school.
The most recent statistics show that between 2008 and 2014, new HIV-AIDS infections between bisexual men 13 to 24 years old decreased by 18%.
In 1997, represented the peak rate for adolescent drinking 65% of adolescents reported drinking at least once a day.
In 2000, alcohol prevention education efforts in public education increased dramatically and the rates have slowly declined.
48% decline in daily use by 8th graders, 30% decline by 10th graders and 15% decline by 12th graders.
We still have a long way to go in all of these areas, but clearly prevention education works.
Therefore, if you decide to jump into this ocean, please help us help you.
Don't build us a dinghy or even a fishing boat.
Use your ability to tax this industry to build us a cargo ship so that the local education agencies and our partners, such as children's alliance, can give the kids in our county the support that they need.
Thank you.
Raymond Aguilar.
Good morning, Board of Supervisors.
My name is Raymond Aguilar.
I'm a youth movement builder and leader in the community.
Today, I'm here to talk to you about the impact of cannabis and the communities of color and some of the county.
People of color are no more likely to use drugs, but they are yet two and a half to five times more likely to be arrested.
These disparities have sincere and long-lasting consequences.
Once charged with marijuana offenses, people can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment.
The nice student loans, the nice public housing and the nice public assistance.
The impact of this has been to plunge children and families into poverty, exposing them to greater trauma.
And now we're looking to legalize the very substance that is unfortunately impacted people.
As a young mentor, I see this every day in my community walking down the streets.
I see a lot of homelessness.
We talked about homelessness.
Many of these people that are out of homelessness are suffering because they have to go in any charges.
Marijuana charges.
So now they cannot get employment. They cannot get loans.
They are suffering from the same issues that we're now trying to pass.
And if we do pass this, we ask that you get some of the tax money into help to invest back into the community, primarily those of color.
We have a lot of children and other suffering that have no parents there because they are in the criminal system.
But yet we're now legalizing this.
So to help back in our community, I would ask that you guys to please also invest in the reentry.
I didn't see anything on the reentry when I looked up there.
I didn't say the money would be used to help people to reentry back into society at the reanimcarsary.
So how can we now give to the reentry folks to rehabilitate them and also give to the educators,
so that way they can be more trauma-informed and dealing with those people of color.
Again, thank you very much for your time.
Thank you.
Victoria.
Good afternoon.
Chair Win and supervisors.
My name is Victoria Brenn and I'm the public information officer and director of community outreach from anti-beunified school district.
I'm here on behalf of the superintendent, Jason Messer of MUSD and I'll read his statement next.
I'm here today to stand with others in our encouragement of supporting and focusing on the needed educational components relative to cannabis.
I do not believe that the legalization of cannabis will change the impact of its use and or abuse on our students or our community.
But I do believe the ability to regulate tax and educate will change our ability to mitigate the impact of cannabis use and abuse that already exists.
The education community wants and needs to be a strong partner in whatever decisions this body makes about the cannabis industry in San Joaquin County.
About a year ago, I was at one of our high schools and I visited a government in any con class.
The students were broken into small groups and they had to create a political party, then research that party and lobby for or against one of the current propositions.
By far, the most popular proposition was Proposition 64.
Students were lobbying for the passage of the proposition.
They had very good reasons for their support, which in part centers around the regulation of cannabis and the age restrictions which were included in the proposition.
What was apparent to me was the lack of understanding these students had relative to the impact of use or abuse on their persons.
I asked each group a simple question, which is the easiest of these to get cigarettes, alcohol or pot cannabis.
100% responded that pot cannabis was the easiest to get.
I believe that must do with the fact that unlike cigarettes or alcohol, we have not educated society or our students enough on the negative effects of cannabis on the developing brain.
According to new data from the substance abuse and mental health services administration, well over 70% of our youth ages 12 to 17 indicate they received no great risks from smoking pot once a month.
Education is needed to help our students understand that smoking weed can impact their brain development.
A growing number of studies show that regular marijuana usage changes the structure of the teen brain.
One study from Duke University in 2014 showed an 8.8 loss in IQ between those who use marijuana and those who did not.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have educational models that work in reducing use and impacting the effects of use on students and the community.
We need to look no further than our successes with tobacco and the greater than 50% reduction reported by students by the year 2000.
Education campaigns work and any legalized cannabis activity in San Joaquin County needs to include and provide the needed revenue to ensure these effective campaigns are brought to our students.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chairwin and supervisors.
First, I'd like to take a quick moment to thank Miss Nena and Miss Merrill for meeting with us and that we appreciate their time and that they've met with the members of the San Joaquin Children's Alliance.
The cannabis policy project has obviously been an enormous undertaking and we appreciate that they have a commitment to engage the community and present their options to this board.
With that, the San Joaquin Children's Alliance has been advocating for increased local investment and prevention before this board for almost two years.
We have come again to urge that if the board legalizes any cannabis enterprise in San Joaquin County, then they should direct 50% of this new tax revenue towards children in youth prevention programming.
If you are here today in support and I'd like to acknowledge that most of our people had to leave.
If you're here today in support, I'd like to give them the opportunity for those who sat through the three hours.
Would you please stand?
I'd like to also let you know that just in four or five days we had an online signature campaign to support that statement and we had well over 125 signatures gathered in just those four few days.
Thank you for standing.
When the Alliance first took up this effort we put forward the idea of a set aside of a portion of revenue growth in the general budget each year.
We heard back from staff and supervisors alike that the county budget was still recovering from recession and that money was needed to restore budgets.
Responding appropriately to this information we set back.
We asked for the children in youth task force and began an analysis of all potential revenue streams that give you utilized for prevention.
Next week, you'll hear a summary of all that work from the children's in youth task force.
If cannabis enterprises allowed in San Joaquin County, this will be a new revenue in the county.
There will be expenses and the county must cover its expenses, but it is imperative that from the beginning we remember that this is new revenue and prevention programming works.
Aside from the obvious compassion we feel for children and our collective desire to see all children thrive, there is a positive fiscal impact when we invest in children and families to prevent future problems.
The long term physical and mental health impacts from such an event of child abuse neglect alone.
Could have a lifetime impact on our hospitals, law enforcement, judicial and social services.
It's estimated that the immediate and long-term economic impact of child abuse neglect costs this nation as much as $250 million a day.
Here in San Joaquin County, three children died this summer from child abuse.
And we will now spend local dollars to try and potentially incarcerate those responsible at a rate much higher than it would have cost to provide those programs to stabilize those families.
There are many people both here in this room and around this county doing impactful outcome driven work.
And with increased investment, we can help more children and youth thrive, which is only to the benefit of everyone in our county.
Thank you.
Is that true, Bob?
Good morning, Chairman Wind.
Members of the board.
Thank you for the opportunity to be heard.
I'm Dr. Bond and attorney, born raise and practicing out of stock in California and for over a year.
My firm is in focus exclusively on cannabis policy reform advocacy and representation of industry members transitioning into the state's commercial structure.
I'm here this morning.
I'd like to strongly encourage the boards of placement onto the ballot of attacks on commercial cannabis businesses, but also as land uses that would contribute to that tax revenue stream.
The allowance that makes like greenhouse indoor cultivation and nurseries in the agricultural zones of the county.
The potential benefits of a commercial cannabis tax are clear.
However, the projected volume of potential licensees is extremely narrow and I would caution a board.
That placing a heavy tax burden on a limited number and arbitrarily limited number.
Of prospective licensees is not a solution to address this revenue problem that you are facing.
With the county's decision to move forward with the regulation of commercial cannabis businesses, it is critical that you take an objective and open-minded approach to zoning for development of these business operations.
With the vast agricultural land available for cultivation, Sam King County, it would serve a detriment to property owners, prospective businesses, as well as the community at large for that land to go unutilize in this sense.
The number of commercial cannabis businesses that may be established in any jurisdiction is limited initially by the availability of the objectively viable real estate.
The volume of industrial zone land in the county is miniscule when compared to that which is zonedag.
Accordingly, the potential benefit to the community stemming from commercial cannabis regulation and taxation would be stifled if businesses were relegated exclusively to the industrial zones.
Similarly, to truly provide safe access for consumers, utilizing the available albeit limited commercial property within this jurisdiction.
For storefront dispensaries is another prudent step that can be taken to increase revenue and thus the benefit to the community.
Limited cannabis cultivation to indoor and mixed-light structures will minimize if not eliminate the impact of surrounding properties.
Primitive fencing, onsite security, odor control systems, surveillance camera systems, and both regular and random inspections by authorities are just a few examples of means to accomplish a safe and responsibly administered regulatory atmosphere.
The security personnel and infrastructure provided at these locations will serve to make the communities in which they operate safer.
Although there have been a few vocal constituents from the agricultural community who advocate for an outright ban on commercial cannabis regulation, there are in fact many traditional agricultural constituents who are interested in potential of the cannabis industry for their own businesses, for their families and for their employees.
Indeed, collaboration between cannabis industry members and traditional agricultural operators is ongoing and creating a synergy that is unprecedented and unique here in California, the largest cannabis economy in the world.
I appreciate your open-mindedness and thoughtful consideration on this important issue.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Jason Discivatory.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay, anyone else?
Okay.
All right.
Seeing no one and considering the time and I'm sure my fellow board members are anxious.
I will adjourn the meeting and reconvene at one o'clock.
Thank you.
We've had public comment.
So any comments from the board?
Mr. Chairman, there is one thing that I would like to clarify.
I forgot to bring this up in my earlier presentation.
The question has been posed on a couple of occasions and discussion has incurred about whether or not the vote for the tax can be held in the unincorporated only or whether to county.
Who are the voters who get the vote on the question?
We have looked at this.
If the county had a CSA for law enforcement, for example, that was in the unincorporated area only, then you could limit the vote to that CSA boundary.
We don't have any vehicle like that.
And in the absence of a vehicle like that, where you're tying the tax to a specific benefit like that, it's our conclusion that it's the county white.
That being said, if the direction of the board is to prepare an ordinance that is for the and have the vote and the unincorporated county only, we will certainly carry out the vote of the vote.
But the will of the board.
But we think that there are that it's challengeable to do so.
All right.
Well, you're right.
That question has been asked.
And I think probably because county residents feel that we represent them.
They're for anything that is getting.
We would do they would affect their land land use.
Should be limited to their vote and not to cities that really have no direct impact.
In regards to that, and I understand I know it's super acknowledge talked about the county white effect, but.
Irrespective of of maybe the general law and I is me, it's just an an act of fairness.
We will allow county residents in the on a corporate area to weigh in on something that will directly affect their neighborhoods, their communities.
Even the industrial areas are centered because it's all on a corporate that we're talking about.
We're not talking about and you know, and I those side of cities have done their fair share.
Especially city stock in this as far as enacting their ordinances as to what they believe is appropriate and we don't impact them.
Certainly as to what they can or can't do.
So anyway just seems like that would be the the most fair approach to it in spite of as you mentioned on other issues, the.
Financial for for a challenge.
And I and I know which challenge and and I know why, but the reality is from a strictly a representative standpoint.
I think the county residents should weigh in and we said that.
Supervisor Elliott.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
One additional question on the the latter portion of your your briefing County Council.
You listed the different departments and the cost that they would incur and so the 40% of those might be recoverable by fees and the rest of it would have to be recovered by taxes.
My question is are these same costs also incurred if we keep our ban in place.
Or have we done a question to ask.
What are the costs if the ban remains.
We know that there there will be costs that will be imposed we in in our discussion of those we refer to those as the indirect costs.
I believe that there will be indirect costs that are imposed and I believe that it represents some portion of that $8 million list.
From the enforcement of the of the illegal operations enforcement eradication investigation and prosecution the for instance the district attorneys number was 1.2 million.
I assume that some portion of that is for prosecution of illegal activity now I could be wrong.
Here she comes so she can she can answer that specifically about how that number is divided.
But but yes some portion of that $8 million I believe gets imposed on the county whether or not we have cannabis program.
Do you remind me phrasing that question for me.
Supervisor question was was whether or not some portion of that $8 million is imposed on the county even if we don't have the program and I pointed your example out as you had identified $1.2 million in costs.
And I was making the assumption that some part of that was for prosecution of illegal activity not just for the regulatory but that you would be able to answer that better.
Yeah it would definitely be the division between the regulatory and the criminal.
We already have a system in place through the Metro division that's a joint partnership of multi agencies with the county that attacks most of our criminal element we need to continually expand on that as well.
But this team would be tackling marijuana driven criminal activity and regulatory assisting code and environmental and organizations like that.
So it would be a hybrid agency if you will.
Okay so so then there would be some costs that we would that we would have.
Even if we kept the man in place but it would be smaller than the cost that if we.
The loud commercial can of the activity.
That affair.
Assessment.
I I generally I would say that that's probably a true statement yes.
The difference would be that if you don't have if you maintain the ban then you don't have a revenue source to address those indirect costs.
And so while it may be less than the eight million you don't you're you're tapping into the general fund the existing general fund in order to address that instead of having a secondary revenue source that can be applied to those indirect costs.
Okay and then I'm also not sure just to what degree.
These costs represent cost that we're already paying anyway if some of these costs have to do with.
Cost that are associated with enforcing our ban or cost that we incur because the ban is in place.
I think we're already paying a portion of those costs.
It's really hard to get a good assessment here of just what additional costs.
Would be incurred if we were to allow all of these commercial activities.
I believe that these members from the department represent what they think.
The cost imposed on the county will be to address an environment where you have regulated cannabis both addressing the illegal.
As well as the regulated side for instance I I'm guessing and represented is here from that ag commissioner but that in in the absence of the county.
Having a cannabis program should the county maintain it to ban the ag commissioner still going to see some impact because you have activity at least in the city of Stockton.
They're going to be involved in some measures so they're going to have some of those costs but that'll be they will have a fee component.
Where they will be able to capture.
Some of that alternatively and and I know that there's representative here from the sheriff's office.
How they've broken out there 2 million whether that's applied to the regulatory side or to the illegal side.
They can answer that question better as well but the.
Certainly there is some cost that the county is already feeling or indirect cost of the county is already addressing the question is.
Presently that's being met from the general fund.
And if you have a licensed program and a tax that goes along with that then you can replace those general fund dollars.
With the cannabis tax dollars.
So you can address it to that level or if your or if it's or if these numbers are additive.
Then you're increasing the amount of enforcement that you have available above and beyond which what is presently contributed by the general fund.
Okay, I'd like to hear at least from a couple of representative departments here.
So so the question really is to what degree will cost be increased if we keep the ban in place.
Good afternoon board, come on back, we assistant commissioner.
The numbers which are provided by the by the commissioners are based upon.
If there is any ordinance based on what activities will be required to do.
So it includes the staff which we have to hire just for cannabis enforcement.
We call cost ID cost those kind of an indirect cost, which is the administration cost.
If the ban stays in place, Commissioner is still required by law to have enforcement activities in city of Stockton, which can include any inspections of scales or any percent use enforcement.
So these numbers the 400 and.
I believe the basic cost was around 430, but there was a one time cost for the vehicles, which was 50 2000 and some ID cost ID cost.
Those numbers are only if we do not have the ban and we go forward with a cannabis ordinance.
Okay, so the 483,400 dollars is the additional cost.
If we go ahead with enforcement of a program of allowing commercial cannabis activity that is correct.
Okay, and then we're all we're already paying costs, but those are already covered by our existing budget.
Existing budgets covers some of the cost and based upon what the new regulations from California Department of Food and Ag brings.
We will have some peace structure in place.
So let's say for example for nursery inspections if we if there is an approved nursery within city of Stockton, we will be still required to have some enforcement over that nursery.
And that could be recovered through the fees which are in place at that time.
Okay, so we already have fees.
The new regulatory package, which CDFA is working on, will have some fees built into it. But that
will not cover 100% of the cost in, you know, so let's say, for example, right now, if board says
there will be ban placed on the ordinance and CDFA move forward with the regulations and new businesses
are in place in the city limits, we will be still required to go out into inspections. Those of any of
the costs associated with those activities could be recovered through fees, through the fee structure,
which is going to be in place in those regulations, but it might not be 100%. So there will be some
general fund dollars, which will be spending. Okay, thank you. Before we leave,
we leave just a quick question. It's okay. I'm probably most familiar with the environmental health department
in regards to their cost for their cost recovery fees. In other words, if they go out and do
an inspection or things like that, they can bill the party for time, spend, etc. So you talk about
fees, which I'm assuming, if you're talking about the status by the state or you're talking about a set fee,
if you do a nursery inspection, there's there's X number of dollars that's allowed to be charged at
correct. That is correctly for any nursery inspections we do. There is a set number of dollars per acre
recharge. Okay. Is there any consideration or allowance to charge for time spent? Because some may be larger,
more complicated, and more violations that have to be documented, etc. So, you know, one, I don't know
with the yet, but this is say arbitrarily that one takes an hour, but another similar size nursery takes
three hours. It seemed like that your department would be able to recover the additional cost
for the employee who went out in the inspection. Is that allowed? Not based on the current
regulations now. Okay. All right. That's what I need to know. Thank you.
Okay. So where's the party? Pardon me. You kind of quick to leave the podium. Another question?
And I don't have the hot seeds so quick, you know. So, as a quick follow-up to Chairman Wins,
and you said not under the current regulatory fees. Is that set by the county or is that set by the state?
That's set by the state. We have our contracts with California Department of Food and Act
for all military inspections, and they have just strictly acres it's not paid by the hours.
It's set amount of dollars per acre recharge. Okay. And you did factor that into the estimation of
what you expenses you believe you're occurring? So, with the with the new cannabis regulations,
the fee structure we are looking at does not address that party yet. So we don't know what's going
to happen. We have looked at what would be the licensing fee for each nursery location because there
is a licensing fee for acreage and then there is an actual license fee. So we are not sure at this point
how many dollars will be coming down from the state to us? Now we don't have that in our calculations.
Okay. And would you department be exempt? If we kept a ban in place, it's talked about that the
revenue allocation from the taxes that the state collects with cannabis would be frozen out.
If a ban remained in place, would that affect your funding stream or did you indicate that that is not
there would be separate? Based on what we are looking at if if ban stays in place, it's not going
to impact anything which state is doing. So along with the we use the example of nursery licensing,
but let's look at pesticide use enforcement. So most of our money for pesticide use enforcement
comes out of the milk tax which is a amount of pesticide sold in the county and some other
factors. So that will not be impacted at all because it's independent of what happens within the county
borders. But if there is no ban, of course our activities are going to be increased. So let's say
for nursery license, we were recovering 50% of the cost and we were using other 50% out of the
general fund. If we have more nursery now, we are tapping more into general fund.
I hope I explained it.
Okay. Yeah, well I just, as we know, LA was talking to you. So I just jumped in real quick and now I'm all
up. So but I know the ad commissioner office goes out and does inspections based upon complaints,
violations, pesticide use, things like that. And I keep going back environmental health because
I know they do a lot of similar things regards to the environment and use for chemicals and things like that.
So if the, if your office goes out and does an investigation of alleged use of pesticides or some other,
hazardous material, do then do you get to charge for your investigating time through cost recovery?
No, supervisor when the time spent any time either is investigative work or inspection work for
pesticide use enforcement is paid through the time reported to California Department of pesticide
regulation and pays through male fees. It is not direct recovery now. So we report our hours
to the Department of pesticide regulation. They have part of money, which is based upon your activities in
the county. But it's not like specifically, they will tell you that if you spend this many hours,
you will get this many dollars. No, it's based on what kind of products are being used in the county
sales of products, any enforcement activities we do, population of the county,
use reporting, there's, there's set factors on which that funding is based. So usually in my
experience, we recover around 75 to 80% cost for pesticide use enforcement.
Okay, for your department. Let me ask a quick question, as far as
Carrafiren. So what if you got a complaint that that was being used on a crop of cannabis? What
would be the procedure would you turn that over environmental health or would you handle that with your
department? So if the complaints come to us, because it's a unregistered illegal use of a product,
there will be investigation and based on upon that there will be seizure of the product because that
product cannot be released into the marketplace. And we will issue violations and it's yet to be
seen that what kind of enforcement activities will take because if it was in normal agricultural areas,
we will take an enforcement action against the individual. Okay, and if you do take action,
I assume that does I go through district attorney's office? No, that is administrative hearing. So it stays
within the department. There is a hearing officer who's an outside party, we hire and it's an administrative
hearing in our office, which takes place and they can appeal to the state director based on the outcomes.
So if you're department finds with your violation and they can find the individuals that correct?
Okay, and that find many orders that go. It could be up to $5,000 per violation. And who's the
recipient of that $5,000? So in some respects, you would get at least a return on time spent for
your investigation, at least a portion of it I'm assuming. You can say that. All right, well I'm just
looking for any revenues that would be generated based upon your activities because I will guarantee
that they will increase no matter what this board does. That is correct. And we are more worried about
activities under California Department of Food and Egg versus DPR, which is Department of
Health Side Regulation because DPR has better funding sources for any pesticide use enforcement versus
California Department of Food and Egg who will be looking at trace and tracking and nursery inspections
and any other enforcement activities we have to do on that. And I'm not sure what kind of cost recovery
will have for that. Does your DPR employees have any kind of protective gear when they go out and do these
inspections? Not for regular inspections we do because they have set safety guidance that they are required to
use. They don't enter the area where the pesticide is already applied and if there is any investigative samples
we take we make sure that they are waiting until restricted entry interval which is called REI is expired.
So we don't like to expose our employees to any of those pesticides. Try to stay out.
Well again I'm sure you have policy procedures in place. My concern is that you know and I
actually got a list of various chemicals that have been determined in cannabis grows etc.
And in some some would argue that some of these chemicals would require
individuals just going into inspect or to retrieve a sample that they have protective gear.
And my concern is that again I'm not trying to change the policy today but at least I'd like to
find out where you are because I wouldn't want our employees going in thinking it's just a normal type
pesticide violation when in fact they are using some of these more dangerous or has materials
with environmental health I'm sure deal with. So this my question is regards to employee protection.
So supervisor Vin based on the discussions with other counties who already have cannabis program in place.
Yellow County is a prime example. We had discussions with them and they are making sure their employees
are fully equipped with personal protective equipment entering each location and they change every
timeline they go from grow to grow. So they are varying full-faced respirators, coveralls, gloves,
glass protective glasses. So they have to be equipped and we are kind of concerned. The reason is because
some of our employees in weeps and measures department. They are required to have a commercial license for
our weight truck. So what we have heard is that this product could be absorbed to skin. So if they are
in those locations and they have to be compliant with DMV regulations to stay drunk free there is a
concern there that if they go to those locations what kind of results will get. Okay well at least you're
on top of it. Thank you. Hey, supervisor Noah.
I'm just going to weigh in on the tax. I appreciate the very thoughtful report from county council's office
and I have been out this long enough to know that staff always does their job and advocates forcefully
for the maximum amount of flexibility and the maximum amount of control over any dollars coming in and
I understand that completely and I appreciate them doing a fine job of that. However, I do believe
that if we are going to go to the voters on tax, I think our resident should weigh in on what their priorities
are for the use of their tax dollars and I agree with much of the language that county council proposed
in terms of enforcement, criminal justice system, public health prevention, education, K through 12.
I agree with all those but before we can actually move forward with a special tax, it's a high hurdle
and although most of these cannabis taxes are passing with a very comfortable, very comfortable margin,
I would want to make sure that whatever language we're putting into our special tax reflects
the will of our residents in Samokin County and therefore would have the best possible chance of passage
because there is a cost involved with doing this. So I don't support a general tax. I do support
a special tax. I feel very strongly it is the most fair and transparent way to collect these fees
but I do I would like before this comes back to us and we have to prove any specifics and what I'm talking
about is just off the top of my head what I'd like to see in a special tax is that there's
a 10 year true up every 10 years of this tax and within those 10 year periods there would be a guaranteed
public a third of the money would be spent on enforcement, criminal justice system and that the other two thirds
would be divided between the education, children, services, public health and I lump those together
because I think there's actually a tremendous amount of what public health would be doing would actually
overlap with educational efforts. So it would give us the flexibility that especially in the early years
if we need more money for enforcement we could do that but then we would have to true it up over 10 years.
So by the end of 10 years we'd have an accounting our overs are advisory.
Committee could come before the board and say, yes, we looked at how the money was spent, voters were told it
be spend on these categories, and yes, we're here to tell you that their tax dollars were indeed spent in these areas.
For me, that would give us the flexibility we need. However, that being said, I would defer to a poll of the residents of
the South American County, if there is a very high priority that I'm not thinking of as being appropriate for this kind of
tax, I believe really strongly that the taxes collected from this industry should be spent on mitigating the impacts of this industry,
as opposed to being spent on other things no matter how worthy they are, how important.
We talked about housing for affordable housing, homelessness efforts, but there's also a lot of other things that county budgets can be stressed over in the
future that perhaps would not be supported by the residents of our counties such as an unfunded pension liabilities,
or there's a whole host of things that impact our general fund that I think the voters might not want these tax dollars spent on.
So I'm very supportive of a special tax, I think it's the right way to go, but before we approve the specifics, I would very much like to.
I don't think it's very expensive, I would very much like to see the results of a poll of our residents cross all the, all the supervisor districts to see if we're missing any priorities that our residents might have.
Thank you Chairman, I should add a question for county council, when you were pretty up the breakdown of expenses,
was the anticipated expenses to scale of what the anticipated allowances would be.
In other words, if we if we doubled or tripled the number of grows and dispensary or you do the retail or where the allowances would those expenses proportionally go up as well.
I don't know that they go up proportionally using using the 10% number that we used.
It is not a large number, so if you increase those numbers say it instead of 13 cultivators, you increase it, double it to 26 cultivators, that does that mean that you necessarily have to double staff, I don't think so.
I think there's probably some efficiencies of scale that that go along with it.
However, if you go from 10% to 50% does your staff increase absolutely, but where it, how much it increases, I don't think that we can say right now because we don't have that full ordinance developed.
So everything is basically an estimation based on what we think the impact would be letting even if it weren't relevant and related to the exact number of what we are would be allowing it if we allow any number.
Yes, it is.
And to supervisor Elliott's point that, you know, these are going to be some expenses that were automatically occurring, but again we don't know it's just the estimate at this point.
That's great, okay.
Thank you.
My concern is we talked about revenues in the $4 million range that correct, plus fees on top of that.
Of $4 to $5 million, yes, so let's be generous to say five and a half million.
As provided by the different kind of departments and again, obviously these are just estimates.
But we're looking at a point three million, so already we're in the hole, as far as making county government.
Not subsidizing through the general fund, the activities of cannabis administration, enforcement, etc.
If that were the case, I guess my question is if we only authorize, you know, a third, and I'm assuming when you talk about a third of the money that would be generated.
We're going to go to enforcement.
I'm assuming we're talking about the departments that are listed here, is that who we're funding or for just the sheriff's office and district attorney.
Media development may be code enforcement, those types of things, or is it all the departments including healthcare services.
I'm not.
I don't feel like we have firm enough numbers on any of this in terms of.
I mean, we're talking about in terms of the revenue lowest amount moving forward, but on the expenses.
The departments were asked to give their worst case basis, so the numbers we're looking at are the most modest amount of revenue that could possibly be generated.
And the expenses, the highest amount of expenses that could possibly be generated, so I don't feel like this is.
Is firm enough in terms of what direction we're actually going to go.
And I think a lot of those questions will have to be answered through the or development of the ordinance itself.
Today we're just looking at the attacks.
I'm.
I feel and and I'm not wanting to put a percentage in today, as I said, I think we need to I think we need to pull our residents and we need to look at what.
What resources they feel what impacts should be mitigated from these tax dollars and then I think we need to.
Very carefully crunch these numbers and look at.
We need to do we need to how much business do we need to cover the least amount of costs because we heard.
Well, yes, we're going to have some costs.
Even if the ban stays in place.
We don't have that quantified. We don't know exactly what it's going to be if the band stays in place.
Nor were our departments asked so if we only.
License 10% or this amount.
What was your cost we then they weren't asked that they were asked.
Given regulating cannabis throughout the county.
What do you foresee could potentially be the added cost to your department.
We did we did ask it based on the assumptions of the 10% numbers.
We did ask them to develop their costs based on that 10% number.
We didn't ask them to develop it.
Worst case opened the gates.
What I meant by worst case was worst case not not having the fully developed regulations.
And so you know.
Not knowing are we are we talking about development agreements because there's a certain level of work that goes into development agreements.
Are we talking about use permits.
What's required to go through that.
What will be required in the licensing process.
What what applications will have to be in.
So so having a blank canvas on to some of those questions was the worst case scenario.
Assume the most expensive thing.
But the parameters of the numbers of permits were those that that I had laid out in the same ones we used to base the tax on.
So but again we we don't know what where the sweet spot is in terms of economies of scale in terms of increasing the revenue but not increasing the cost.
So I understand where you're getting at in the sense that just the county would eat up all the revenue and enforcement.
I honestly believe that if that's the case then then that's why we have a range.
In the tax is we then clearly can demonstrate a nexus that the tax has to be increased because we aren't recovering cause but I think that if we only dedicate all of the money to.
Downstream immediate impacts and none of this money is directed toward education and prevention.
We do the residents of this county a disservice and I I believe that moving to a special tax where a portion of that money is dedicated.
I think it's the right thing to do again I would like to hear from our residents but if it's not the pleasure of the board to do that.
I still feel very strongly that a percentage of of this revenues we dedicated to prevention we're never really going to make a difference on this and reduce the number of young people.
Experimenting and using this product we're never going to get our arms around under age use if we don't invest.
In education and prevention so I I do agree with we've heard from you know the offices of education superintendents of schools.
Whole host of child advocates and and I believe that that they're accurate and I do think we need to invest in that and if then it turns out we need more money for the other stuff for the enforcement the inspections and all that then I think that.
Well and that's as we'll have to be increased.
What are my concerns as you know when we started this discussion.
First it was all about the grants.
If we didn't if we didn't impose you know if we didn't obviously repeal our ban and you know embrace cannabis cultivation etc.
We wouldn't get money from state that was that was the first argument.
And then we found that you know and if we didn't do it before January 1st we would be out.
In other words we'd be locked out forever well that's not the case so that was the first argument.
And the next argument was well you know we're going to occur a lot of costs.
So whether we in act an ordinance or not and by virtue of that.
We're going to need some money because we're going to spend other general fund.
And so we need to to allow all these things to happen so we can charge fees and tax and etc.
So that's going to offset the loss to some extent.
Okay I get that.
So that's that's the second part.
Now we're to stage where well that was fine but now we want to do a whole bunch of other things based upon the presentations made here.
Now I have nothing against these programs.
I busy programs they do a great job etc.
So if I would me, however if the purpose of going through this ordinance is to generate money and then redistribute that money and then
and then dip into our general fund to cover the the excess is that this ordinance is going to require.
I think we've got a long ways for where we started and that's my concern because obviously it's going to incur more cost no matter what we do.
And I would argue just from a standpoint because this board has been very judicious in regards to its revenues and expenditures.
And I guess you know we've done some good things as far as our contingency reserve as far as our paying down our our pension liability.
And you know and if the answer to we're not going to generate enough money based upon you know what our experiences which nobody knows.
We're just going to add more facilities and we just open the gates it just seems to me like this is an ever in in saga there's no there's no stopping we just continue to roll out more and more.
Based upon the needs which nobody knows and so we're all anticipating to to somehow read this tremendous windfall of revenue and I don't know if anybody else is read articles from.
from Colorado or Washington State et cetera, but.
That was all about the schools and and you read letter after letter and and the Denver Post et cetera and they're not getting any money so something's wrong with the system.
And when we go from we can't get any grant money to we need to cover our costs to now it's in nothing derogatory, but now it's all about the children.
And other programs et cetera I'm thinking you know we've lost our way this thing keeps moving down the road and I don't I don't see any end in sight my point is is that.
If if this ordinance and I and I understand we already talk about that we talk about the control which is the argument well if we control it then the elicis going to go away.
You can read article I I'm going to call a verse I was in a meeting in in in in.
Folsom on Friday with nine counties mountain counties and northern California counties every one of those counties going nuts.
Over the the explosion of marijuana and all the problems associated with I mean nuts.
And that that includes Calabers was 12 me and you and it goes all the way up there and some of them are actually going to file.
A state of emergency with the governor because they can't control what they have and and their small counties and you can only imagine what's going to happen here by point is is that.
Nobody knows I mean I don't predict the future but I got no from past experience was happening but nobody here in this county and all counties are different.
The idea what's going to happen yet we're already making plans well if that doesn't work we're going to expand it or amend it or revise it or whatever and my point is is that I think that we're moving too fast.
We keep changing the rules and and frankly if we're going to if if this board which they can do what they want obviously three votes.
If they move forward and and by virtue of that that we adopt the cannabis ordinance and we do a special tax and that passes fine I mean that that's the will the people however I think the priority of the.
Before we spend one penny outside of what we generate revenue, it has to go for county operations first, including public health.
Because we talk about the mental and disabled, we talk about the homeless, we talk about a whole host of things.
And the programs that certainly surprised Miller you've done have been tremendous, regards to address and have to take it a problem.
But what's the solution every time we get together, we need more housing, or we need more shelter.
Or we need more of this, we need more of that, which costs money.
So my point is, and I'm not taking size or preferences, but I think first and foremost on a special tax, is that the county gets paid first.
If there's anything left over, you can give you depth, any percentage of what you want to go.
And I certainly agree with you on education, I think that can do a great thing.
Certainly child care and protection, obviously, is very important.
But I think the county comes first because we're the ones that if we don't pay it through that, we're paying it through the general fund.
If we're going to do that, let's just go through the general fund and pay out these programs directly.
Rather than going through this gymnastics of getting the revenue, and then, you know, and only partially doing it, and then sending it this way.
It just seems to me, it's a challenge, and it never changes.
So that's my frustration is, is every time we meet, there's a new wrinkle, and we never settle on one thing.
Once it finds out that there's this kind of bump in the road, we go another direction.
So in my opinion, I think the board is just, is focusing, I'll be honest with you on money.
And I think any time you focus solely on money, and I now don't expect to get to the growers in here that I know there are some here.
But I think that's the wrong, the wrong motivation for what we do, and I think more importantly, we need to do it as a board.
And certainly, as supervisor, we need to look and see what our constituents want to see, as far as that.
But again, I think we're just kind of all over the map, and we're changing directions every time we meet.
So that's who you guys are all here.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we never did hear from one of the people who came up to ask my question about 30 minutes ago, which was, which had to do with what would the cost be,
Yeah, if we keep the bandit place.
But capital 100, some King County Sheriff's Office, yes, the, what we've put together was to create a team or enforcement of the regulation.
And that's what we anticipate, because we're, in doing that, so, and as we've seen, you need to create safety for the other collaborative people involved in this.
As they did in Colorado, they created a group that worked together with fire and all the other agencies to go out on these things, because there are safety issues, not just only chemical issues or other issues.
But also law enforcement issues, we're dealing with it. So we had had that group working as the plan of what we created for to work as the new enforcement of the regulation.
Will we still have to do the elicit grows, yes, we will. That's still going to continue.
Either way, the disc goes, we will still be forced to that.
Currently, we are forcing to receive some funding to domestic, countless eradication suppression programs.
Over the last three years, we're going back three, three budgets, we received $75,000.
That helped support some of the activities that the net share was reduced to $60,000.
It's in last year's budget, it was $30,000.
We have applied for it again. We do not know what will be coming.
There's a lot of stuff going on in federal government and how what funding we will receive, but we have applied for it.
We hope to get least 50 or $60,000 more. That's what we put in for.
And that is basically man hours for investigation conducting elicit matter one grows in the county.
So that's the plan. The share stops we put together trying to anticipate what it would cost us for the regulation.
Use safeguard the citizens community to safeguard the other employees in the county.
They're going out into these areas in search and conducting investigations and inspections.
Okay, so I take it from that, that this figure of $2 million that you have here.
That's if we come up with a new ordinance that allows commercial combat cannabis activity.
That's what the cost would be. And if we kept the ban in place, the costs, although there would be some, would be much smaller.
Yes.
Okay.
All right, yes.
All right. Okay. Thank you.
And I have to, I have to, I have to get some comments as well if I may continue.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Questions?
I'm sorry.
Let go ahead.
Then I'll come in.
$2 million.
If you have 13 growers, you know, but if we backed up and looked at several weeks back when I made a proposal for county council to prepare an ordinance at a, you know, industrial location, self-contained, isolated.
How would you be spending $2 million regulating it, monitoring it and forcing, I just, you know, $2 million, incredibly large amount of money.
And that's, and that's a creation of, putting together a team with a supervisor that is strictly, and they're finding a area that they can work out of together in a group, providing the vehicles that they would need to do that.
The equipment necessary for that, and then working with the other with the other agencies.
Now, in the first part of the regulatory, we're anticipating the first part will be a lot.
It will be a lot busier, a lot more activity going on.
We're conducting more investigations as to the realities of this working with the other agencies that are involved in this.
As it breaks down down the year, if it now becomes less complex, then that can, that can also be in the news for us.
Because these are going to show, he lists itself will be picking up a list of investigations from those, as far as how, you know, if it's not transported to proper way or if it doesn't, maybe they're receiving product from the wrong area.
We're trying to anticipate this, as many costs it might come to, even though it's a regularly regulated grow, that their kids still be a list of stuff coming into it.
So they're going to be investigating that aspect of it too.
Was creating the supervisor in the five, five positions, what we're anticipating right now.
Now, if that, if that position is not needed as much, they will focus on and move with up with the unit that we already currently have to assist in all the illicit rows and investigations on those.
So within short order, if I'm understanding correctly, let's say, you know, respectful operators in a contained environment, then you take the same staff shifted to all the illicit activity.
For instance, you guys, you know, we put a, before the urgency order, then you know, 500 acres, which turned into a double homicide, and you know, you guys have got an incredible amount of expenditures on that illicit activity.
Yes, we do. And I'm, I'm planning we did a list of further boards saying we did go out and eradicate that grow. And that was a 500 acre plan that they had out there for the hemp grow.
They developed 26.7 acres. We eradicated that two weeks ago with that. We do have the man powers up, but we'll do a presentation to be questioning on that.
You know, November 7th, they're in the board meeting on that, but just roughly, we had over 1,000 man hours. We in public works, the sheriff's office and other people had assisted in that.
Just alone on that. So it was very extensive on that.
Right there.
And did that include the marijuana plants that were inside of the cornfield?
That did not. That was not eradicated at a whole separate deal. We can have prior to that.
And that's the one I'm referring to is a double homicide if we have to believe the newspaper.
So how many out of man hours were spent on that investigation and that eradication?
I don't have the exact figure on it, but I know I had nine agents out there and probably out there for seven hours.
Oh, multiply that. But then you had the other investigation going on. That is including investigative part for our investigation.
The homicide detectives that are investigating many, many hours and trying to get to the bottom of that whole situation.
Okay. Thank you. I just want to quick follow up on that.
I'm going to say.
Okay. Okay. So thank you very much. I'm just going to comment now.
All right.
But to me, just listening to the, the course of the conversations today.
It just doesn't make any sense to keep pursuing a tax on this assuming that we're going to allow commercial cannabis business and then we're going to tax it high enough.
So that we can not only recover our costs, but also have additional money left over to give to these other endeavors that all of them are certainly worthwhile and
that we have the money to do them.
But we also heard earlier today from someone who said, well, if you've got to keep your taxes low otherwise, you'll just encourage more illegal activity.
So then you defeat the purpose there.
So, so we've already, we've got somebody are going to keep the taxes low.
So that's going to limit the amount of revenue you take in.
On the other hand, we hear make the taxes high so that we can encourage payment of all of these additional taxes to allow us to spend this money on education for children, et cetera.
And then we also have the competing concepts here or basic principles, basically, as laid out by the county council,
saying that from the state level, they're operating from the basic principle that they are going to recover all the money that they need to pay all their costs first before they ever give anything to the local level.
Well, and then I just remind you of my comments that I heard from the one of the guys representing the state of Washington at that conference I went to earlier in the summer.
Who said that in Washington anyway, only 2% of the money that the state takes in ever gets down to the local level.
So there's almost nothing that gets down to the local level from the state level.
If you extrapolate from that as to what would happen at the county level, well, if we're going to keep the taxes low enough so that people will pay them, then they're probably not going to be enough.
So that when we pay all of the costs that the county incurs, that there will be anything significant left over to pay for these other programs that people want to want to have to pay for all of the education and all of that.
And then we heard from all of the from more than one speaker talking about the.
The bad effects of marijuana on our youth.
We know that it affects the their their brain development the way they act.
It possibly affects people before they're even born we heard that today as well.
The school districts testified that we're already seeing an increase of marijuana use in the schools and and that it it increases difficulties for our youth there.
So all of these things just don't follow really logical course.
We also heard from these same groups that we're talking about well we want to take a certain percentage and and spend it for the youth we also heard from them basically.
Preface all of their statements by all of these bad things that happen to our youth if they use marijuana and then they said if we legalize commercial cannabis activities.
And we need to allocate a portion to education well that may be a good statement, but then when you look at what do we think is really going to be to allocate to this education.
We just don't seem to be creating a a logical progression of activities here.
Based on all of that and based on what supervisor Patty just mentioned I mean we had a youth killed just the other day in what was supposed to be a hemp field but we suspected probably wasn't.
And the reason he was killed was because he was out there trying to steal marijuana.
And legalizing that that hemp field or that marijuana field probably wouldn't have prevented him from going out there and trying to steal it.
So you know a lot of these arguments just don't don't pass the common sense test I think our best course of action remains.
Keeper van in place observe what happens in other counties then we can come back and revisit it after we've had a chance to study just what's going on elsewhere.
Let them be the test case.
And then we can take the best from their programs if there are any any good results and avoid the things that don't work.
My recommendation keep the band in place observe what happens and then we can come back and revisit it.
Thanks.
Have a band.
Yes.
Thank you.
I just want to respond real briefly to some of the comments that have been made here in terms of.
But somehow this conversation has changed over the past weeks and that we're talking about now wanting money for a lot of other programs that might be nice but maybe.
Our extras.
Actually the very first time and every time we have discussed this we have had representatives from throughout the county from community based organizations and from education.
And why who have been here and many of our own.
In fact, all of our own department heads who came in here and testified that because of our state.
Legalizing recreational use of cannabis.
We already were feeling significant impacts in this county and that those impacts were going to increase.
And there was from the very beginning of major focus on our kids.
And how do we mitigate the impacts of this new industry in our state?
Not because of what we've done here in San Joaquin County, we have had a band.
But what's happened statewide and everyone said that our district attorney spoke eloquently about the fact that.
We're already taking on a significant cost because of this and it's going to get worse.
The sheriff said that we're going to be additional impact almost every single department head in the whole county stood up here and said.
Whether you leave the banner you don't, there's going to be increased costs.
The main difference.
There will be no additional revenue. We did not change the or mislead anyone in terms of feeling
pressure to have a decision made by the end of this year. Initially, the state did say, if you
did not have this worked out in your county by the end of the year, you were locked out. Now, the state
changed that. That wasn't any of us that changed that conversation. That was the state. And we have
also said from the very beginning, that we did not anticipate a huge amount of money coming from
the state. Every one of us said quite cynically that if the history was any indication, the state
would skim off as much as they possibly could, and there would be very little left for local jurisdictions
to deal with the impact of this industry. And that was why a majority of this board felt that
it was important to levy a local tax and to make every effort to capture through fees every possible
cost that our county would incur and to levy a tax that would be high enough to make up the
difference for the county and address all the impacts and try to mitigate as best we can. And one of
those mitigations was to take a look at our kids and to invest in the same kind of smart programming that the
tobacco tax invested in to for the benefit of our kids. So I don't feel like this conversation
has changed radically. On any given day, we have a little bit more information. We've had more
analysis from staff. We've had some different community members come up in front of us, but I don't
think it's radically different. And I share your concern with how are we going to do this. I don't
have all the answers. I don't think anybody does and I don't think any county does. But I don't think
we can simply pretend or say, well, we're going to not participate in what the rest of the state of
California is doing. I don't think that's in the best interest of our residents. And so from my
standpoint to be responsible, I think we do need a tax. I don't think it's going to be a general tax. I don't think I
agree with one of our speakers earlier. There's clearly not four votes on the board to move forward
with that. I personally think a special tax is best. I would like a little more certainty for the
voters. But if that is not the will of this board, then I also have faith that a citizen's advisory board
would be able to make strong recommendations based on the current environment that the county found
ourselves in any year to help us navigate through those percentages. My concern is to get the
special tax passed. I don't know, but I think it would be easier to pass for the voters to have a higher
level of certain de-esque where their tax dollars are going. But I think a poll would tell us that. So I don't
think we've had a radical shift in this conversation. I still think we're back to where we originally were.
Do we continue a ban and we just opt out and hope that everything that's going on around us doesn't
impact us and whatever impacts are there. We're going to have to pay for out of our own general fund in
out of our own resources or do we move forward with a strong enforceable ordinance to regulate this new
industry and do we impose a tax to provide resources for us to do that. I still believe that the
option number two is a better option for the residents in San Joaquin County.
Let me just make it pretty quick. You're absolutely correct to raise a bell or however, let me just give you
me from my perspective. Yes, there are presentations made when we first had our merit on session on
this particular issue and there were individuals who came forward to spoke about particular things. But the main focus was
whether or not we were going to be able to get grant funds. That was the premise of our discussion here amongst the board.
I also know that and obviously importantly, you've also had discussions with other groups, etc.
I know that this has been something that you've been very familiar with. I understand that I'm just talking
from my perspective in regards to the discussions that have taken place on this dias have been
from the grant issue to all the other issues we're progressing. So you're right from your perspective,
you're on target because you've been dealing with those from my perspective. I've been dealing with the other issues on this side.
Yes. Thank you so very much. I pardon the eruption. I just wanted to give you a little background too
from our perspective as a district attorney's office and it part ways into our partnership with
law enforcement. We don't really have the luxury of debating this issue because we start January 2nd with
the residential gross six, six gross per house. So for us, the commercial side of it to be honest is
as supervisor Patty was pointing out is a little bit easier because I can just walk into a commercial
not just walking, but I can go into a commercial looking for environmental, looking for any
other code enforcement or criminal behavior. But for me to get into a residence it's a fourth amendment
issue protected by the great constitution of the United States of America, which requires a search warrant
problem across the deal. So that investigation into the residents would cost me, I would estimate three
to four times would it will take me to cost the investigator commercial. So when you think about the
totality of the residents in this community, we have 730,000 people. I'm not sure how many homes
we have, but say we have 100,000 residents, maybe 200,000 residents. Each one of those houses potentially
could grow more than six plants which require criminal investigation, a code investigation, a civil
investigation, civil remedies, nuisance neighbor, mulling wick-cell motion, and the criminal prosecution.
So it's going to be one of the most expensive tracks and that's not on the table because it's
automatically occurs. We can't ban that. And so that occurs. So we're already in it. We're already
only in it and we don't have any choice because that's what the, you know, that's the long we have to
enforce it and that's what the people wanted. So when you're looking at the totality of the cost,
we're still going to have those, some of those costs, not all of them, but some that we proposed
with if you kept the ban in place because I still have to have the tools and the resources
there's surveillance, the intelligence gathering, the evidence-based information in order for me to
get into that resonance with the search warrant and Charmin, you know that better than anybody you've
done a million search warns. What the level is, that's the more expensive investigation. The looking
to legal operators to see if they're with encode isn't that expensive because we'll be able to
detect that pretty quick. I'm not saying there's not cost, but it's not as labor intensive as getting
into the residents. So we start January 2nd whether or not we have a ban or not. The other thing
I wanted to point out is we lose about two to three people each year. Unfortunately to homicides related
to cannabis, the illegal growth cannabis. That's with the ban in place. So you could argue to the
contrary, we don't know what will happen when the ban, if the ban is lifted, we don't know what will happen,
but we know that each year we lose one to three people on a homicide related driven on the pursuit
of illegal cannabis or stealing the cannabis. So we know that it too has consequences by having the
ban in place. So I just wanted to point that out because I think there's a couple different tracks here
that people need to understand. The heavy cost, the heavy lifting is in this residential
and the commercial, it'll be costly, but it won't even compare if people really take this six plant and run
with it and start doing 36, 166 and so forth. And that contaminates neighborhoods, contaminates
our water, our soil, our air, that activates code, environmental, public health, BA, Sheriff, all of us,
we'll have to work collaboratively to look at remedies whether it be administratively,
severely, criminally, or all of the above. Thank you. Just for clarification,
I don't think the board, at least I'm not saying that we expect the dis-turners office to
do search residents. I understand there's going to be, there's going to be abuses, there's going to be
violations, there's going to be, I mean, I just read a letter last week and this is, this is parallel to a letter
I read in Colorado and Denver. Where students are coming to school, this is from a teacher in
Calvers County, where students are coming to school and they wreak of marijuana in their clothes
and the school buys them new clothes so they can at least go through the day without being ostracized or
berated by their fellow students. So I think there's, there's obviously maybe indicators and
and I know you've been a prosecutor for a number of years and you know not only the search warrant
criteria but certainly what's worth prosecuting, et cetera. My concern is from the things I've seen
and I haven't even talked environmental hell yet, but the problem is is it, you know, these are
lists of gross and unfortunately from what I've read around the country and even in California is once
Calvers County, I'll take that as an example. Once they adopted an ordinance to allow
growing within the county itself, the illegal gross grew exponentially. I mean, it didn't go down
the argument as well if you make it controlled and they go away, not true. As long as you can buy a legal
cannabis at a substantially less cost than you can from a regulated facility, it's going to happen and in my
concern and I, I am just just concerned about your staff is anybody else and I hope that as I know you do
that you will probably prioritize those cases as always and use the limited resource you have to have
the biggest impact on this issue or other issues whether it be involving a homicide or otherwise.
And I know, I know it kept on 100 as just as committed to make sure that this county is safe. So it's not that
I'm opposed to what you're doing. I congratulate you especially recently in some of the success you've had. I understand
the hours it takes to develop a case, I get that. However, I'm hoping that the collaboratively with
our county departments, we can put together some semblance of an eradication team in addition to
Sheriff's Department to make, if nothing else and I know this is a mountain to climb is to make it known that
Sanwiching County is not the one county you want to grow in illegally because there's so many other places that that are
understaffed and overwhelmed and so why come here because we're willing to commit both the Sheriff, the Attorney's Office,
Environmental Health, whatever to commit whatever we do. So again, I just want to thank you for what you've been doing.
I think you've been doing a great job and I look forward on January 2nd to you continue to do just as good a job.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. First, I like to acknowledge every single person from
Supervisor Elliott and Chairman, you know, Supervisor Poole on Supervisor Miller. You know, we all have, you know,
a valid points, incredible concerns and we're looking at this and we're really back to day one where we're
debating the merits of going forward or not with allowing something. And that is the absolute truth of
it. We haven't changed. We still have a ban in place. We have not lifted that ban and and what that
ordinance looks like will is yet to be determined and I will, you know, reaffirm that the entire
premise that I proposed was to go forward in a controlled secure environment. The Gintland,
the Gini gets out of the bottle such as in Calavera where you have literally hundreds or in humble where
you have thousands of growers. It's difficult to try to regulate, contain, monitor, and see what
who's doing good practices are bad practices, especially if you're illegal. That's why, you know,
if we go forward as an ordinance, it is going to be done in that controlled secure environment or
I'm not going to become full with it either. I'm not willing to open up for hundreds of growers in
San Joaquin County. So, you know, I wanted to set the table with that because, you know, the entire
idea that I proposed was secure environment contained and, and, you know, from there, if we can generate
some revenue to offset certainly the expenditures that are going to be coming in and imposed on us,
if we can take in some revenue and have a program on messaging to youth, if we can impose a 25 year
age minimum, which we now know the science would, it has determined that's when the brain is fully
developed, less risk of addiction, less, and it mitigates the brain damages that happens if you're an
adolescent using marijuana. So, all of the risks, you know, there are very, I don't know that there
are any rewards in, in, in, in, in having an ordinance that allows a medicinal marijuana, but what it
does allows us to do is set the table to be present, to discuss, to message, to have a community
impact, to help offset what is here. It is here, flat out. Marijuana is available to every seventh
greater than once every high school senior has been exposed to it, been around it, and they're told by
their drug dealer how natural it is, how the Indians used to do it, how it's, you know, it's legal everywhere,
and we need to be, we need to be engaged in the process of messaging and creating the,
I think the structure that we would allow it in our county. So, you know, I appreciate everybody's
voice voice in, in the opinion on this, and we are divided board. No doubt we're not speaking in complete.
You inform about the issue, but what that ordinance looks like we don't know. I know today we're talking about a tax, which I guess we need to get back to that conversation.
Have a motion on that tax and then we'll proceed and decide on November 7th what this all shapes up to look like.
But we have not automatically lifted an ordinance. We don't even have an ordinance to consider that I would approve or anybody else.
So I just want to take us back as temperature and put into perspective that I just like you have the same concerns.
We all are deeply rooted and involved in our communities and represent our districts.
And whatever we do is going to be done with careful consideration in light of the fact that there is risk and exposure existing and unfolding daily.
And what we can do and how we do it may differ. But ultimately, let's see what the ordinance looks like if we're going to get behind an ordinance.
But in the meantime, I guess we need to go forward at some point with this tax discussion.
Yes, yes.
Say something in regard to the county budget.
I really encourage this board to go cautiously forward, relative to not recovering, essentially taking the advice of council.
And not at least recovering, not necessarily taking the general tax, if that's what the board doesn't choose to do.
But not recovering the county's costs first and foremost because this is a tax property tax is what covers our law enforcement, our DA, our sheriff's department.
That's not growing. It grew this current year to the tune of a little over six percent.
That is not going to recover the costs, not considering the cost allocated as a result of not opening the floodgates, but doing it in a very cautiously manner.
The introduction of cannabis to our unincorporated area and not recovering the county's costs.
I really think that that will have a detrimental impact to our county budget.
And I believe we will experience those impacts immediately.
Thank you.
Vice Chairman Delapuba.
Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman.
This is going to say, I understand where everyone's coming from or my fellow board members.
I agree with all the good points.
But what I'm, you know, it's like, too, rather patty just said, it's here.
It's not going anywhere.
And what I want to do is control it and regulate it.
And I want our county to do that.
If we were to sit back and keep the, you know, keep keep marijuana out of the county.
It's still going to happen.
Cities have it.
In January, second, everyone's going to have six plants.
All right, kids are going to be able to access to it.
We have to get our hands around right now and get a control of it.
We have to legalize it, control it.
As far as general fund dollars, though, I think we should, you know, right now is just an
industrial zone.
We're not probably collecting the revenue for it.
We might, we probably need to make it green houses in the eggs zone, because I can work
tax revenue.
It's, there's no right answer.
You know, we all want to do the right thing.
But I think, I agree.
I think it's a bit similar.
We do special tax often two things like the best option for our county.
That's, you know, everybody's spoken real well about it.
And I support everyone.
But I think the special tax and often two is best for the county.
Give us a lit.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Okay, just a couple of points here.
Based on some recent comments, there was a comment to the fact that somehow we are going
counter to the will of the rest of the state.
And that is just simply not true.
Not every county in the state is moving forward full speed ahead or even cautiously with implementing
authorization of legalized commercial cannabis activity.
There are some states who are continuing to, or some counties who are continuing to ban it.
I propose that we be one of those.
So we are not alone in that process if we continue to do that.
And we're talking about what's going to be best for our children.
And we're saying that we need to legalize it, control it and tax it and use that money to educate our children.
Why don't we just avoid those problems from the get go and do our best to educate our children not to engage in it and not provide the environment,
which makes it that much easier for them to come and contact with it.
Of course, it's going to be there. It's here now. It already is.
We all know all those things. That doesn't mean that we're going to be better off, or that our kids are going to be better off,
or that our farmers are going to be better off.
If somehow we make it legal to have commercial cannabis activity.
And in terms of looking at our budget and protecting our balanced budget, of course, we need to make sure we have a balanced budget.
But again, I don't think the best way to do that is to go full speed ahead with, with opening the flood gates for cannabis activity.
And then trying to recover it from there.
I think we're better off just to keep our van in place observe as the, I've tried to make that point several times.
They observe what's going on in other counties.
And then we can make our decision based on what has worked best in other places.
Whether the ban that we have on commercial activity outside the cities is going to be the best course of action or not.
We'll know better in a couple of years.
So why don't we just watch?
We don't have to hurry into this thing.
And meanwhile, I think our kids will be better off if we, if we attempt to do our best to educate them to the dangers of marijuana.
Without making it easier for them to obtain it.
I think we should watch deeper ban in place revisit it in a couple of years.
Thank you.
It was more.
Thank you.
I'd like to make a motion that.
Counting staff prepares.
A special tax.
And the language as it's been presented here today.
Before it comes back to us on November 7th.
To introduce in way that.
That in the meantime we get some input from.
A specialist in sales tax measures.
And perhaps do a county polls so that.
Council can come back to us on the seventh.
And let us know if if this language that was presented today is the best.
Language for us with the highest chance of passage.
So I would.
Make that motion that staff come back on November 7th at 9 a.m.
As a date in time to wave reading of a special tax.
Which would then be adopted on November 14th.
Well second that motion.
Just quick question.
We need to talk about a poll.
What's specifically are you are you looking for as far as is input.
I would whatever input and.
A specialist on a sales tax and a pollster can help can work with county council to craft questions.
If if this kind of general language will pass.
And it's recommended to us that this would be the best special tax to go forward with.
I just like that backed up with.
A county why to our residents.
If if they would support this kind of language.
I want that but if if the residents say no we want it you know with a certain percentage for different things.
I think we should know that before we go forward in terms of.
Because when we wave the reading it has to be specific enough that that's what's going to go on the ballot.
So I'd like to just delay that to the seventh so that council can say to us.
We've done completely done our due diligence on a special tax very specifically on a special tax.
This is our recommendation.
Scott the best chance of passing and we think this is the best thing for for the county.
I think for for probably.
Clara the yes the outcome.
It would be beneficial to have one of the choices opposed.
Tax.
If you want to really know how many would actually support it if you talking about.
It percentage or whatever whatever it would be.
That would automatically be because that will be the first.
That'll be the question that goes on the ballot shall.
The county of San Joaquin impose a caps on or cannabis.
blah blah blah.
So yes.
And then it would again if you would support it would just supported if it was written like this.
Would you support it would be more likely less likely.
You know to support it if this language was in they have.
They're ways of digging in and teasing out.
You know would people support it and if so.
What specifically would they support I would I would feel better putting.
Going to the expense and the time and the energy involved and putting about measure.
I would feel better if if we had that information and I think it would strengthen.
County Council and our CIO's recommendation.
So the question because we've had surveys in the past and once you get past the first question,
depend on the answer you can't go any farther.
So if for example, the first question do you or do not support the special tax.
If you say no is that going to deny you from because that's face it if if there's if it is.
If it is adopted by this board, then would you allow those who even oppose it to at least have some input as to what they would like to see if it does go on the board on the agenda or the ballot.
Well the way that I've seen the polls done is.
It's not really a yes or no answer.
I mean you can do polls however you want.
If you want to get the result that you want, you can write them a certain way to get that.
But if you what you really after in a poll is genuine information, they can be constructed to give you that.
So for example if the first question is.
If the how likely would you be to support.
Attacks on commercial medical medical commercial cannabis in zamakin county.
I'm what likely very likely.
I'm what unlikely very unlikely and then you can go further if the tax included.
Specific funds for law enforcement and then it could itemize those things.
Would you be more likely.
You know less likely same thing if if it included.
Prevention and education for young people drug abuse prevention.
Would you be more likely?
Would you be less likely not at all or very you know they can they can they can write it in such a way that.
If people are just adamant no I don't support any I don't want any part of this that would come through in their answers.
But if there are.
Specific things that could be added to it that would increase their likelihood.
Of supporting it then that information can be teased out as well.
All right.
You're right and I've done polls recently that.
And almost predict the outcome.
So I would want I would definitely want the poll written to actually get the information that that county council.
Beals is necessary to craft the best language.
No no preconceived.
Okay answers.
Also for a quick question.
Just for clarity we're voting on attacks for an ordinance we do not have in place yet.
So if are we planning on voting on that ordinance.
Number seven.
The motion that's pending is to basically move the to not take action to introduce in a way reading today.
But on the seventh to bring back a special tax to introduce in a way reading and then to take the final action on that on November 14th.
And between now and November 7th.
For county council to sharpens pencil and get some expert advice from some some tax people and a pollster.
Together information about what is the best language to include or to introduce and wait reading on the seventh.
I'm just hand and if we do not if we do not approve an ordinance.
Let's say this whole thing just doesn't we just can't come to terms for what an ordinance would look like.
Then it's almost a mute point the tax would never go to the ballot correct.
Correct. I mean if the board can't come to grips on on an ordinance to move forward and it doesn't go to the ballot.
Okay. So this is just if we went to the ballot if we come up with an ordinance this we go to the ballot. So this is the framework of what we would operate under that's correct.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay. Doctor three or two. Thank you.
All right. We have our afternoon session, which is late.
Where's community element.
Okay. It's carried out.
We'll do these hopefully rather smartly and quickly.
And then we'll have.
We have to get to press patty into La Puga out of here.
Okay.
You're on.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Members of the Board. John Fenderberg will be making it to the presentations.
Thank you. Well, abbreviate his presentations. Correct.
And the meet, and we're both available for any questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Kerry. Thank you, Chairman. When? And supervisors. This first project is a six year time discussion.
So I'm in time extension request for previously approved major subdivision application number.
PAE0300368 in a specific, specific plan one area of mountain house.
The project areas located in the proposed mountain house business park at the northwest corner of a mountain house parkway
and or state 205. Application requests. Over the past decade, many developers were not recording maps and investing in infrastructure improvements due to the weak economy and housing crisis.
And because of this low down, the applicant submitted a six year time extension request to allow for additional time to record the map.
Pursuant to development title section 9-8181.4 and extension of the expiration of an approved major subdivision application may be granted by the review authority for the period not to see six years.
If the time extension request is approved for this major subdivision application, the new expiration date will be November 22, 2023.
It's recommended that the board of supervisors approve the negative declaration for the six year time extension request for major subdivision application number.
PAE0300368 and approve the six year time extension for the previous approved major subdivision application with the previous approved findings and approved approved conditions are approval.
Thank you, Chair. When? This concludes to ask presentation.
Any questions?
Okay. Any other questions?
I speak on this issue.
If not, pleasure to board. Move to approve.
Thank you.
Second.
Okay.
Capture vote.
Okay, Dr. 5. Zero. Very good.
Number two.
Again, this second project, before your board, Chairman Wayne Supervisors, is another six-year
time-to-year time-to-year time extension request, previously approved major subdivision application
number, say that three times.
PA-050143 in the specific point-three area of mountain house.
The projectaries located in the southern portion of neighborhoods A and B. Let's see if I can
do this faster. Pursuant to developmental section 9-A1.4, again, an extension of an
approved major subdivision application may be granted by the review authority for a period
not to exceed six years. If the time extension request is approved for this application, the
new expiration date will be November 22, 2023. It is recommended that the board of supervisors
approve the ninth declaration for the six-year time extension request for major subdivision
application number, PA-050143 in approved of six-year time extension request for the pre-seal
approved major subdivision application with the pre-seal approved findings in the pre-seal
approved conditions that were approved. Thank you, Chairman Wayne. That concludes the task presentation.
Okay, an approved presentation. Thank you. Any questions at all? That's for both of your district
supervisor. Any comments? Did we have any, oh no, no, I don't have any. Okay. For the, yeah.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be very brief. Okay. Okay. Okay. Can three, four, one, four,
Brookside Road and Stockton. I'm here to represent the applicant. We'll consider the matter
submitted to the board. Look forward to your deliberations and a positive decision following staff
recommendation. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Questions concerns? Seeing none?
Pleasure to board. Make a motion approved. Staff recommendations. Okay.
Two motions. One, two, one, second. Thank you. Okay.
Dr. Five Zero. Thank you. Very well done. Thank you, Chair.
Sir, I also provide you. Thank you. Can all the presentations be that quick?
I think we can probably, you guys have to be out of here by four.
All right, so we'll go into closed session real quick.
We've got two supervisors have to catch a plane.
What we've got?
No problem.
Mr. Miles?
Board of meeting closed session on the items listed on the agenda.
There's no announcement expected coming out of closed session.
All right, we'll be back.
We need to go.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
And members of the board.
I am Jerry Becker, the county's Information Systems Director.
And with me today is Moond de Dubrov, our red star voters and David Nguage, the Assistant Director in ISD.
It's our pleasure today to provide you an overview of the Information Systems Division and its responsibilities.
Information Systems Division is comprised of six budget units, combined budget for these six units,
this fiscal year is approximately $33 million.
We have 125 talented staff along with the number of temporary employees and consultant partners responsible for the delivery of service to the county.
As you can see by this slide, we have a number of responsibilities including several technology disciplines,
as well as responsibility for homeland security granted administration and the red star of voters function.
For the next 25 minutes, I will be providing an overview of our responsibilities and services,
and then concluding with a brief demonstration of a newly completed solution we are very proud of.
So I'd like to start with an overview of the red star voters office.
Our mission is to conduct fair, accurate and secure elections, facilitate voter participation, and serve the public with integrity.
RLV's budget in this fiscal year is roughly $4 million.
We have 16 full-time staff and a number of temporary staff.
In during an election year, which this fiscal year is, we will also hire roughly $2,500 individuals who will be needed to support the election process.
At a high level, there are four core services delivered by the ROV team.
Three of these core services center around the election and election process.
And the non-election services related to government transparency, that is the statement of economic interest management material.
The most recent election cycle was a busy one for our ROV team.
During the 2016 election cycle, ROV assisted over 50,000 individuals registered vote.
Assisted over 300 candidates filed for office and removed nearly 4,000 voters from the role due to their moving out of the county passing away, etc.
Mr. Chairman, in addition to the responsibilities for the 2018 election, the ROV team has initiated a number of projects this fiscal year.
It supports the board's strategic goal of promoting good governance.
These projects include implementation of vote by mail drop boxes in each of our seven cities to make the voting process more convenient for voters.
We also have efforts underway to update the ROV website to improve service and leverage the county's new website technologies.
We also have other efforts that we intend to implement this year to improve support for both voters and candidates.
Mr. Chairman, I'd like to now transition to the technology side of ISD and provide the board an overview of the information systems function.
ISD's mission in summary is to provide technology solutions that improve the way county services are delivered to the public.
ISD's technology team is comprised of 98 talented individuals, 70 of our team members are located here in the county administration building, and 20, 60 members are co-located with our customers at nine locations throughout the county.
The ISD team supports both business operations and public safety organizations for our most critical services.
The ISD team provides service seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
The ISD team delivers a full range of technology services that include the development and delivery of standards and policies for technology and security.
The project management cloud services and computing capabilities, website development.
We deliver communication services, including management and support of the public safety radio system, telephones for all of our employees, mobile computing device support, infrastructure management and security services.
So as you can see, the ISD team provides a wide variety of technology services to the county.
ISD is structured into seven functional areas depicted on this slide.
The department is structured in this fashion to facilitate both operational efficiency and depth of knowledge.
This ensures that there is more than one person in ISD who is well versed in every system and technology we support.
I'd like to take a moment now to highlight a few of these teams.
I will start with the application support and development team.
This team is responsible for the county's core systems, everything from payroll, to property tax, to the county's many law and justice systems.
Our infrastructure and communications team manages the county's two primary data centers as well as a disaster recovery site that was just recently implemented by our county.
The infrastructure team manages a very large amount of computing power on behalf of the county, both in our data centers and via cloud services like those procured from Google.
We also are managing an exceptionally large amount of data storage for the county.
The county currently manages 1.6 petabytes of storage.
The term petabyte might not be familiar to the public, but the public is likely familiar with terms like megabytes and gigabytes.
So to put it in perspective, 1.6 petabytes is the equivalent of 1.6 million gigabytes.
So we are managing a tremendous amount of storage for the county and our storage is doubling about every four years in size.
Our communications team also manages 16 radio tower sites located both within the county and two outside the county on mountaintops.
These tower sites are the foundation of the entire region's public safety radio system.
If you're a local government entity in San Joaquin County, you in some ways shape a form or using a portion of the county's public safety radio system.
The team also manages the data and voice networks that connects all of the county's facilities and is responsible for the telephone system used by our employees every day.
Our customer service team is our frontline of support and is often the face of ISD to our customers.
So far in 2017, ISD has received and resolved over 10,000 work orders on behalf of our customers.
In this slide, you can see our top three categories of calls that we received for assistance.
Application support communications support and hardware.
Application support is roughly 1% this year.
That's to be expected in that we're returning loose a lot of new innovation to the county and so those new systems result in additional calls.
We're up about 1% on our communications support calls and we're down 3% on our hardware calls.
Again, I believe that that decreases reflective of the quality and reliability of the equipment that we're delivering to county employees for their day-to-day use.
So I'd like to do now to just take a few minutes to talk about the major projects we have underway in ISD on behalf of the county.
ISD has over 30 technology, 30 technology projects currently being developed and implemented.
These projects have a total cost of roughly $60 million.
As you can see, every project in ISD is reviewed to ensure its support of the board strategic priorities.
We have several projects underway that support the board strategic priority of promoting the governance and increasing operational capabilities.
These projects include the modernization of the counties or the assessors property tax system,
implementation of a new clinical and administrative system for semiconductor general hospital and efforts to increase the security surrounding.
Our most sensitive data. We are also working to expand our new phone system to four new county departments, which will be over a thousand additional employees.
And we are delivering over 600 new desktop computers this year to county staff.
Under the board priority of ensuring fiscal responsibility, we are working closely with the county administrator and auditor controller
to improve the county's financial reporting tools and to strengthen the county's financial controls.
To promote economic development, we are following the county administrator's lead, and we are working with our office and with the county administrator directly to expand the capabilities of the county's economic development website.
Lastly, we have several projects underway that will meet the board's direction to improve public safety and enhance the county's overall criminal justice system.
Projects such as the implementation of a new jail management system, modernization of our county interface to the Department of Justice.
And our partnership will share of more and is deemed to implement a new computerative dispatch and records management system to name but a few of the projects we have in this area.
In addition, we are in the midst of building two new radio towers, one in Clements and one in the city of Tracy.
We are implementing new technologies that will ensure the continued operation of our public safety radio system used by first responders during a disaster, even if we lose several radio towers at the same time.
Mr. Chairman, these are just a few of the projects that we have underway on behalf of the county that are targeting improved service to our citizens.
Mr. Chairman, and members of the board, I hope that I have conveyed the tremendous level of innovation underway in silicon county.
The level of innovation our county is fostering is truly impressive.
I am pleased to say that this is not only my opinion.
So in the county, it was recently recognized by the Center for Digital Government as one of the top 10 counties in the United States for its innovative use of technology.
This national award evaluates counties on numerous factors, factors that include innovation, transparency, citizen focus, and alignment of technology investments with the county's strategic priorities.
I am very proud of our counties achievement in this area. It is no small thing to win this award.
In addition, I am very pleased to announce that just last week, San Joaquin County was also recognized by the Association of California County Information Systems Directors as one of the top counties in California in the category of innovation and collaboration.
This award was for one of our projects, the innovative care of adolescent needs, otherwise known as the ICANN project.
This project came out of our Google Innovation Lab effort, which was led by Miss Nino, our county administrator, and I am proud to say that it was done in partnership with Stephanie James, our chief probation officer and Mike Miller, our human services director,
who came up with this innovative idea. It was their innovation, their creative thoughts that really allow us to transform the way that we are providing service to our at risk youth in this county.
So I would like to do now Mr. Chairman, ask Jim Brown, or project leader on this effort, if he could step up and provide us just a very quick demonstration of this application.
All right.
Good afternoon, Board.
We are trying to keep this brief.
So as Jerry had mentioned, this project came out of Google Innovation Lab, where we basically hatched a couple times ten thinking to come up with some ideas and how to deal with foster youth at risk youth.
Two concepts came about, one was that it was a need for a collaboration environment or data documents and information on a particular youth in the county.
Could be shared in a common place and used by the county workers and in other family members.
I also had a need for basically within the same environment, how to create what we call as our matching engine to try to find a home for a particular youth based on data that we pulled into the system.
So it was a, it was a big reach as far as what we could use for building an application and we are ready now to deploy and we feel like we have done a fairly good job with this.
Today, I just wanted to show you what the county worker would see when they go into the application.
As you can see, this is what they would refer to as our dashboard.
There are several tools that's available on this dashboard for the county worker to use whether it be from HSA at CPS or probation officer in the juvenile upon placement unit.
And the work would come in, we will see announcements for the day they have their calendar below that.
The youth is assigned to this particular worker and then also they have an area where they have resource families that have been approved by the state to provide a home for a foster youth.
There's a number of tools that are evident within this application to provide support for the worker.
Cover the ones on the main part of the page. They also have a place to put documentation, not a lot in there right now relevant to this, this is more of our test environment.
But this is where the information would be stored on a particular youth.
A number of the workers both from BHS from actually your office of education.
HSA and probation would often go out and try to look for the same data on a particular youth.
Maybe it was the use of education records in what not.
One of them would go out and they would find the information that the others or other workers would follow the same process, whether it by fax and email or phone calls.
A lot of times they would like to wait for the information. In this way if there's a person that actually is looking for the information, they can get the information loaded in here one time then everybody has it.
We also have tools in here as we are building to provide performance indicators.
Statistics in other information, maybe monthly reports on what is going on with placements of youth, how many youth are in the system, a waiting placement in a home and in other actions.
So it's a very graphical based reporting tool.
We also have simple features with the tools of that part of the collaboration environment.
They can certainly use the same tool to provide emails to schedule meetings, to perform what they call a child family team meeting.
And the tool is actually planned to be used so that if the youth has a laptop or a PC in the house, they can actually get a log on and participate in the meetings.
They can have a say as to where they would want to be placed.
The families themselves and the resource families would all have log in and landing pages in this application to be able to share the same information with the teams and discuss options and placements.
So these are all parts of the tools that have been built into the system for that purpose.
So to get other information besides documents, we basically had to create data extracts from existing state and county systems to bring information on a common youth.
So we'll pick up a youth here.
And as you can see, on a mock youth here we have.
We have a lot of information from a personal probation perspective where they may be placed in a history of placements.
Child welfare, a support team with sisters brothers possibly could be aunts, uncles, guardian would be present here all under these same tabs.
It's a very quick aggregation of information at the fingertips of any worker.
Where this would often take in days to basically assemble the same information and looking through different systems.
We also carry forward similar information.
We have licensed resource families.
As you can see, this information here is actually extracted from the state's county, our child welfare system to show that what that RFA was licensed to provide.
We have pages in here for RFA management where basically in the county now in HSA.
The process uses.
Might take.
Excuse me.
Might take hours and hours for them to assemble a match of a youth to a home.
They have to go through several binders and multiple Excel spreadsheets to find the parameters that might be reflecting in a proper match.
We have basically given them the controls and this to be able to manage that application,
and then to submit it and follow through with the state and get licensed and then follow up in a management context.
And then the last thing I want to show you today is basically the accumulation of the data that we pull up pulled together.
We want to come in and do a match on a particular youth.
This thing that would have taken hours before, and we can pull up on a particular youth, go to Elizabeth.
And with Elizabeth we just want to put you to the button try to find a home for placement.
You can see rather quickly we have found that the resource family here in Stockton has a set of parameters that are actually a good match as you can see the highlights depicted.
Based on the parameters that we have entered both for the youth and for the family that has been licensed.
And so really quickly we can see who is the best candidate for the youth to be placed with.
We provide other placement possibilities so that the social worker themselves can look through or the provision officer.
And actually determined by looking at these factors probably what's in the best interest of the youth for this placement and then make the final determination.
So that's the quick spin through our application today.
I hope you found it interesting.
Thank you Jim.
So Mr. Chairman, I'd like to close by saying how proud I am of the ISD and ROV teams.
It is really a privilege to work alongside them every day.
We recognize an ISD that is our good fortune to work in a county where the board, the CIO, and our department heads foster an encouraged thoughtful innovation.
And in a county where every day we get the opportunity to do good and meaningful work for the community we serve.
So Mr. Chairman, a member of the board that concludes my presentation.
My staff and I are available to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
No questions.
I just wanted to congratulate you on the awards you received here.
The top 10 digital counties in the top 10 in the country.
Yes.
That's pretty impressive.
And then the California Innovation Award.
Very great.
And then this latest demonstration of that technology.
Very impressive on all of that.
So thanks for an excellent presentation.
Thank you.
And thanks for the great work you do for the county.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman.
Thank you.
Thank you Chair.
No comment also.
Just wanted to congratulate you also.
You do an excellent job.
You and your staff.
And a key of the good work.
Great job.
Thank you.
Thank you Chairman.
I'm going to start off by saying I'm a contrarian.
I don't believe in such a thing as accidents.
I believe that things happen as a direct result of action.
Or in action.
And what how you're your team functions the things that you do on a daily basis.
The threats you protect us from to keep this county running.
The level of excellence, which is reflected by a recent award.
And many more accolades.
I'm certain.
You've a massive phenomenal team.
You've an example of great leadership.
And fantastic accomplishments on behalf of the county.
There's people that we serve and I just want to compliment and thank everybody.
Your entire team that's a mass and those that are not able to be here.
That it does you work in keeping the county running.
Pass on a big level of gratitude and recognition for all that they do.
Fantastic job.
Very well done.
I will.
Thank you.
This project is really exciting.
I know how much time goes into.
The phone calls and trying to track people down to make these placements which are difficult at best.
So I can see where this.
Program is just going to increase the productivity and the success rate tremendously.
So I can I can see why it's an award winning program.
And I can only guess at how pleased your.
Probation in.
Human services agency partners are to to have this kind of a new resource and tool for them.
I think we'll really.
Really benefit a lot of young people in Soundworking County.
Thank you.
Oh, degree.
I would.
I would echo all the comments already.
Obviously nothing happens by accident.
It's your leadership and your staff.
I do have a kind of a question.
And I I would probably deferred.
Supervisor Miller.
But.
You know homelessness is an issue.
And I know one of the things that they're dealing with a variety of organizations is.
Isn't that sort of keeping track of of their activities, their locations.
You know possibly.
You know, outside of the shelter and of criminalizing and then maybe into a job,
et cetera.
And I don't know.
And I, but I would be interested to see if maybe that particular program could be applied.
Because was.
So many organizations deal with the homeless. It would be nice to be able to pull something up when you have somebody in front of you and kind of find out where they've been, where they're doing and what their needs are.
I mean, I don't want to give in too much private information, but just the general information that would be available would be certainly beneficial for those organizations that have contact.
The other thing is, is I, I, I, I, I almost got Ralph, I, it just got my office, he's up there quite frequently kind of just things that I, that I break or whatever.
So I appreciate that. The other part of it is, do you have any any oversight over autonomous vehicles?
No, I don't Mr. Chairman. Okay. Just a question.
It, it is the way of the future and and I would expect probably talk to Mr. Biology.
But there are opportunities in regards to the future and transportation, which, which are, for like a better term, technologically driven.
And I would certainly think that at some point in time, your, your department, your staff may be involved in, and somehow introducing those to the county,
because there, there are opportunities, which was certainly reduced our fleet or need for, for the, because we currently have and provide better flexibility and lower costs, et cetera.
So anyway, just, just a question.
So Mr. Chairman, I, I will share that we are in discussions with two of the large telephone utilities, the wireless utilities to discuss with them.
How we may be able to partner to bring 5G and faster technologies to our region.
And the 5G technologies you know is critical to the autonomous vehicles being able to function.
So from that perspective, from an infrastructure perspective, I guess I should change my answer and say in some ways, we are working with support of the county administrator on,
looking at how we might be able to foster investments in our community by those large entities to, to accelerate the implementation of 5G and faster technologies.
Well, it's good to know. I, I would, I would say this that one of the things that I see on the various committees that I serve on, especially with the council governments.
With the port of stock and certainly with their data center that hopefully will be up at some time.
But but I would say the, you know, technology is, is certainly critical to the, the improvement or the advancement of this county, especially when we talk about recruiting technology industries into this county, especially.
And I know the partnership has been working on this for years, but in regards to the Silicon Valley.
And it would seem that at some point in time that people would realize that a large percentage of the workforce that's in the Silicon Valley lives in Silicon County.
And therefore the question arises is why aren't they here, because for a variety reason is it cheaper land and I know the Silicon Valley is challenged because they're running out of land.
So for expansion, et cetera. So anyway, I appreciate, you know, certainly the award you receive certainly recognition for the county.
And hopefully, you know, with the various departments and agencies that we interface with both with the cities and certainly that partnership and others.
But you can continue to provide leadership early ideas for some of those programs, because I think that's important to continue to.
To prove our economy, frankly, so anyway, thanks to you and and in your staff and all you do certainly enjoy the productivity that I get my office and and again, it makes my job a lot easier.
So any questions.
Okay.
I was.
It's worth that.
Thank you, Chairman. It's one more follow up. I would really appreciate that.
I know there's a myriad of things you guys do on daily basis, but appreciate you coming in and just highlighting some very important things that you do.
And we're always on the purview of what you have going on, we appreciate and recognize it whether it be at the hospital or in different areas.
I know you do a lot of things, but thank you for today's presentation was a very informative.
Thank you.
All right.
Okay. Now we have HR.
Go.
Chairman, I'm going to announce an advance and to HR department.
I will be watching this presentation later on, but we just go get ready for a flight from behalf of the county for Lafco.
So don't think for a moment that we're not going to be catching your presentation, but it will be remotely.
So forgive us for leaving now.
Thank you.
And have a pleasant flight.
And send me a test.
Excuse me on this presentation.
Just the hour.
I'll have it down.
Okay.
I'll do that.
Thank you.
Chairman, I'm members of the board, county staff.
It's my pleasure as the director of human resources.
Ted Swift to present the human resources overview for the fiscal year 1617.
Also, joining me here is Amy Burke, who's formal title is our staff development coordinator.
But we have come to call her our chief engagement officer these days for reasons that will become more clear as we go through the presentation.
So starting with the human resources overview, going to put a bit of emphasis on the human part of human resources in terms of identifying some of our staff and what their functions are
and the work that they perform for county government.
But we have introduction and background.
I think most of you know, Sam McKin County is the largest employer in the county.
In 2016, 17 was supported approximately 7,000 employees within the county with the team of 48 full-time staff members.
Our department HR currently partners with every county department in many of the functions that those departments carry out in providing services to citizens.
I have been the HR director since May of 2014 and our deputy director Kathy Harris has been in her position since April of 2007.
Human resources vision statement.
Sam McKin County HR works to be a resource to all prospective employees and current employees to ensure a safe, efficient, compliant and collaborative employment opportunity.
The goal of HR is to partner with every department to support the overall mission of Sam McKin County.
So what does that mean? What are the things that we do?
Our key functions are acquisition, finding the right people for the jobs.
Retention, providing jobs satisfaction and growth opportunities so they were able to retain employees.
And also support when obstacles arise is their disciplines.
Are there medical issues? Are there leaves of absence?
We're not employees require our support and for us to facilitate them being absent from the workplace in order to take care of their needs.
So we have identified in terms of the employment function but we would call the employment life cycle.
It begins with the recruitment process.
Moose to onboarding which is sort of a new buzzword for new employee orientation.
Once those employees are onboarded and brought in and advised to make aware of our culture, et cetera.
They'll move on to the development phase.
Their performance will be evaluated.
They'll have the ability to take leaves.
They can transfer between departments in the county.
They could be the subject of employee relations either in a union or a non union environment.
And ultimately they'll be separated and will be assisting them in that.
So life function as well, particularly in Nevada, it results in their retirement from employment through our county retirement system.
HR is divided into nine work groups.
I've just described them very briefly because the rest of the presentation frankly is broken down in each of these nine groups and explanation of what they do and who performs that work.
So recruitment and selection is a very important function of ours.
We perform that function centrally here in this building as well as we have a physical on-site presence at Sam King General Hospital.
I'll talk about a little bit more in detail.
That's the only satellite office that we have.
We also perform functions in classification and compensation.
Benefits, Equal Employment Opportunity, Labor Relations, Risk Management, the Civil Service Commission,
Position Control and our SJC Engage Program.
Starting with recruitment and selection.
Our team is led by Jennifer Goodman, Rachel Levetsky and Roman Plateau.
They are the three principal analysts to see identified under the people's section of this slide.
They are supported by ten analysts and four support staff.
They really serve as HR business partners to the department staff to meet their needs in terms of HR, hiring, discipline, benefits issues.
They're supporting those departments.
They're really the gateway for our departments into HR and a lot of the other specialized functions that HR performs.
They advise county managers and leaders on issues relating to staff.
Ensure compliance with regard to employment law, county policy, the MOUs, civil service rules.
We, in HR, we have lots of rules.
We're sort of the enforcers in the county in terms of making certain the various county departments.
Do their hiring and process their employees in ways that are always consistent with the law.
And in that work we work obviously very closely with county council to make certain that we're taking the best path possible.
We also support the county administrators office and individual departments during the annual budget process determining classifications for new employees.
Other functions as well as taking a hard look at what the requests are from those departments for additional staff.
A few statistics.
You can see that we've hired 729 employees in fiscal year 1617.
We've performed 19 recruitment of exempt staff and engages in significant outreach, perform the county's drug testing function.
And conducted recruitment and outreach plans for all county employment opportunities as well as facility pre-employment screening, including drug physical background and community outreach.
And I mentioned our presence at the hospital portion of our team is stationed the recruitment team is stationed at the hospital.
And I would like to recognize their achievement.
The team that San Joaquin General Hospital has been successful in reducing the nursing vacancy rate down to less than 5% at the hospital.
It's at its lowest point in years and I'm very proud of the accomplishment the recruitment team at the hospital has facilitated the higher of 134 nurses in the past fiscal year up 34% from the prior year.
So we are doing a good job of delivering nurses at the hospital.
Obviously, I would be remiss if I did not note the board support for our negotiations with CNA, which I'm sure in part led to improving our ability to recruit.
But it is a team effort and we have to take advantage of all of those opportunities to recruit employees.
In terms of recruitment activity, here's just a quick slide in terms of some of the information that's available.
We have recruits are up at 500 and 8 applications are down at 21,000.
I think that's a reflection of our labor market, which is a little tighter than it has been historically.
And so we're doing more recruitment, so actually hiring fewer and we're seeing fewer applications filed in those recruitment.
We did have the opportunity to hire 792 employees in the last fiscal year.
And as I pointed out to you in a memorandum a few months ago, while we hired about 800 employees, we also had about 600 employees leave us.
So we had a net gain of 200 employees in that fiscal year.
That's actually a very good number for us.
We've begun to chip away at the number of vacancies that are now down to 674.
Innovations and initiatives in the recruitment area.
You've already heard today some of the fruits of the Google Innovation Project that we all participated in.
It is well in the human resources department.
And one of the items we focus on was our civil service rule revisions, which are underway currently.
They've been drafted, cleared by county council and where in the process of negotiating them with SCIU.
We hope that they will provide substantial relief in terms of the time limits and the other constraints we have in terms of recruiting employees.
Really move us into the 21st century and allow us to recruit with a lot more efficiency.
Pre-employment background program.
We've already done the pre-employment drug testing program where you have a pre-employment background program and development.
Also the physical evaluation program that we have for new hires is also being changed significantly.
These are issues where legal changes over time have been pretty rapid and we need to make sure that our programs are legally compliant.
Also the branding function the SJC jobs are trying to capitalize on our SJC engaged program and our presence in the community.
Our social media presence, we are currently participating in LinkedIn as well as careers in government
and careers in government really provides us a pathway into having a Facebook and Twitter presence
and we're currently strategizing to increase our exposure on Facebook and Twitter through
our own Facebook and Twitter pages that we're developing in-house. In terms of community
outreach, we have a community outreach component to all of the recruitment that we do and we try
to stay in sync with the EEO objectives of the county. Also with regard to technology recruiting and testing,
we've undergone several updates in the Job Apps program that we utilize to online recruit as well as providing
mobile friendly viewing of the job application process for candidates, pursuing online testing.
That's one of the largest draws of resources that we have in terms of staging large testing sessions
and proctoring the exams, dealing with the scoring, et cetera. Online testing would be a huge leap forward
and we are moving forward in that area as well. Some of the additional technology we're working with
to increase the searchability of the database that we have material file by the applicants,
resiming uplating and uploading in text communications with applicants.
The next slide is about the Civil Service Commission, by virtue of the fact that I'm the HR Director,
I serve as the Secretary to the Civil Service Commission. The Commission is five member body appointed by this board.
The board has adopted the original rules of this Commission back in 1964. They've been amended a number of times since.
We are trying to amend them again currently. The Civil Service system has charged with maintaining the merit system
to assure that only a person's ability to do the job can be considered in making decisions regarding the hiring and promotion of employees.
That is our guiding principle in terms of enforcing the merit system.
And some of the functions you can see, we also provide logistical and clerical support to the Commission.
And some of their activities during the last fiscal year include the extensions of eligible list.
Our eligible list do normally expire. However, under certain circumstances they can be extended.
They also granted rule of the list recruitment in nine cases.
16 selective recruitment, which involve kind of a narrowing of the specifications for a classification to meet the departments specific need.
Amending class specs adopting them as well as 10 classification studies to determine if employees in fact are properly classified based on the work that they're performing.
Position control led by Josie Freeman, our position control coordinator, just two position control technicians and one support staff.
This position, this team within human resources is tasked with ensuring consistency between the hiring and termination of employees in the county budget was 7,000 employees.
Keeping track of all of them making certain that they all have a budget allocation that they're charged against.
And obviously processing thousands of personnel actions that go along each year you can see from the brief statistical snapshot here, 83 hundred personnel actions.
17 hundred staff increases a large number of coal on equity increases as well as keeping track on employee service and providing the service awards for the program that of course we presented here before the board.
The next team I'd like to talk about is employee benefits that team is led by Tammy Matusko.
Tammy is the employee benefits manager. She's supported by one management analyst three, one personnel analyst, one office assistant specialist and two senior office assistants.
Managing the county's health programs including medical dental and vision plans for actors and retirees and their eligible dependents.
This includes the administration of the county's self-insured plans, which is I'm sure you can understand where basically.
Operating what amounts to a health insurance program and a dental insurance program within the county on a self-insured basis as well as I'll get to in a few minutes our workers compensation program.
The functions of this group are to ensure compliance with all health related requirements and mandates and oversee the counties deferred compensation programs.
Some of the highlights through 1617 involved 17,000 benefit events obviously much of that is a function of the open enrollment process and we have been engaged in a complete and thorough evaluation of all existing vendor contracts and have begun the process of requiring requests for proposals from those contracts that have been in place for a number of years.
Just a couple of short factual slides in the benefits area.
Medical plan options selected by our active employees you can see 59% of them have selected Kaiser.
That's a fully insured product all we do for Kaiser's pay a premium.
And 27% of our employees that's a total of the remaining employees are enrolled in some version of our self-insured plan.
I was actually surprised to discover the 14% of our employees actually opt out of our insurance coverage.
That's a pretty significant number actually.
The next slide tells the same story but it's with respect to retirees as you can see the retirees are even more heavily associated with Kaiser and that 21% are in our self-insured county managed care plans and 12% in health net.
That health net group, principally, involves employees who are retirees rather who do not live in the region and aren't able to utilize some of the other plans that we have that are available.
The Equal Employment Office team is led by John Backeye, he's the program manager. He's supported by one analyst and one office specialist.
This team provides services countywide through the primary programs of investigation consultation in support workforce compliance training.
Supporting EEO advisory committee and advisory support or excuse me administrative support to other county departments.
You can see the very significant number of compliance trainings, 97 and all.
That involves significantly discrimination and harassment prevention for managers and supervisors.
We've incorporated the new legal obligations that we have in terms of abusive conduct workplace bullying and those have been included in the trainings that you see identified above.
The county or the Equal Employment Office also hosted last year's annual diversity luncheon, which was attended by 360 county employees.
I'm proud to say we are about to on Thursday host the 20th annual annual diversity luncheon supported by human resources.
We have sold out. We have over 400 employees and guests who are going to be joining us and we're very excited about that event celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Risk management.
Slide by Tanya Moreno, Tanya is the safety and risk manager. She's supported by one safety officer, one disability management coordinator, two risk analysts and three support staff.
Risk management includes our safety and disability management programs.
You can see in terms of employee education must like much like the EEO office risk provides significant training to employees.
In a variety of different areas workplace violence, driving heat stress training risk management functions close to 2,500 employees receive training from that group this past year.
And just as an example I mentioned earlier about our self-insured products that we offered to our employees is insurance. We're also self-insured for workers compensation.
This is a graph which depicts our workers compensation claims from 2019 to present.
And you can see that it's really a very steady number. We haven't seen a significant increase in those over time.
If you look at the total payments, however, 1617 is what appears to be an abnormally low number, however, I'm advised that the costs that we've incurred in the first quarter of 1718 have been a little above a regular quarter.
So we see some evening out of that expense, and we'll certainly keep an eye on that number as the year goes by.
Labor Relations, it's led by James Rivera, Principal Employee Relations analyst, James Porter by an employee relations analyst, three and one office assistant specialist.
This group achieves the county's fiscal objectives through the collective bargaining process.
Promote professional relations with employee organizations, ensure compliance with negotiated MOUs and ensure consistent due process in the handling of employee discipline.
You can see in this past year we successfully negotiated nine MOUs and handled, of course, the grievances and complaints filed with the various departments.
The next slide is really captures where we are at this moment in terms of our memorandum of understanding with various bargaining units.
Units who have a current MOU are on the left, they represent 89 percent of our employees currently being under contract.
The group on the groups on the right represent those who are with an expired MOU and they represent 11 percent of our employment employees.
I would also like to take note of during the last fiscal year.
We also experienced a strike with SCIU and protractive negotiations resulting in resulting in a collective bargaining agreement.
I'm going to thank the board for your support during that period.
And I also want to note that we would appear that we have done that without really damaging our relationship with the union and its members.
We have a very low total of current pending grievances and complaints.
We have not seen much of a reaction to the agreement.
The agreement was ultimately ratified by I believe 85 or 90 percent of the employees involved.
So we thought that was quite a successful negotiation.
Now to discuss the SJC engaged program going to turn the presentation over to Annie Burke.
Hello happy to be before you again. Again, I'm Annie Burke and in February it'll be two years for me with Sam Waking County.
It's my first job in a government organization.
So I've been doing a lot of learning, but I'm just really happy to have this position.
It's been a thrill for me because I believe out of the 770 employees that HR support.
I probably have the best, most fun position within the county.
Having said that, I'm learning that government work sometimes is thankless work.
So between homicide investigation and landfill operators, zookeepers, there's a lot going on.
But an opportunity that we have to use a word that was used earlier.
We are the pioneers with SJC engaged.
This is a program that is not being done in government anywhere in our nation from what I understand.
And it's something that's been missing, that's getting us a lot of attention and traction.
So to remind you, SJC engaged is a program that's trying to take us from just being the largest employer to being the best employer in the area.
And what that means is in our slogan of greatness grows here.
It's reflecting our people are growing here. Employees are growing here. They're growing professionally.
And they're growing personally.
So I found it quite genius that my position blends all of our training opportunities and paths to promotion and professional development.
But it also includes our wellness initiatives in the beginning of a top-notch best in breed wellness program.
To kind of show you some general categories of what we're working on.
We've been very busy.
We actually just officially launched this program to employees at the end of August.
So we've been in their minds and in their conversations for about two months.
And we've already seen great results from kind of the things behind the scenes that we were working on.
So to capture some of those initiatives, we launched our Employee website.
Hopefully you've all had a chance to see that.
It's www. SJC engaged.com.
And this site is very innovative and that it is a hub for our employees and their families that purely highlights the good things available to them.
There are resources to our online course catalog where we've expanded all of our training opportunities.
They can sort by different topics.
There's also resources there in terms of healthy eating and blogs.
There's resources for the media about what a great employer the county is.
All kinds of great things happening on our website.
Regarding wellness offerings, which is a key component of my initiative.
We have some very.
Noteworthy things that we're going to be doing differently than other counties, which is we are utilizing our internal public health group.
So we're taking advantage of the resources we have just among our staff.
With that next week we'll be launching a program for pre-diabetic employees where they will have the support of the public health department.
To have a support for a year to change their status from being pre-diabetic to not being pre-diabetic.
So cool things like that we also have weight watchers on site and we're expanding that.
And other things that will directly target the wellness opportunities our employees have, which we then know will impact our culture will impact our health savings.
And I'm sure you know that lots of research shows that's an important initiative for us.
Another component I'm focused on is the exposure of our employee assistance program.
It's a great benefit available to our employees 24 hours a day.
7 days a week, and to their families. And with that, we found that not all of the employees were aware of it and were utilizing it. So we're doing a great job of seeing an increase of that resource. Again, when you think of the work that county employees are doing and how taxing that can be, it's important that they have kind of a non-biased third party person to reach out to for additional support when they, you know, can't need those needs through HR directly.
We also have a unique situation with our AAP that we discovered, which is they have a ton of courses there willing to provide free of charge to our employees. So whereas we have our typical compliance courses, sexual harassment and a like, we now have courses that just benefit the individual.
So coping with depression during the holidays or other things that are wellness related, we're now not paying for but have been able to offer to our employees through our AAP. So that's very exciting.
Because of you and your support, we were able to launch the perks program through perks that work.
Again, we just launched at the end of August, not even two months. We've seen 16 over 1,600 employees sign up and participate in over $50,000 saved.
Just anecdotally, the popular deal. We had a Microsoft office package flying off the shelves. It's typically $300.
County employees were able to get that for $9.95. Great deals on there, people of the buzz is happening and we're really seeing a return on that support. So thank you for that.
Part of the greatness growth here is allowing for leadership development and at different levels. So a fortunate aspect of my job is I'm able to work directly with departments and tailor leadership programs to their needs.
Examples of BWe've had two leadership development programs successful at department of child support services for entry-level employees.
We're in the process of launching an executive development level program at public works.
And we are strategizing with our hospital to potentially take 100 leaders through a customized manager leadership program that will last them in year.
So training opportunities. We have new courses as I mentioned. We have higher frequency. We're at listening to our employees. Some of them don't like to park downtown for training.
So we're highlighting beautiful buildings like the Ag Center. We're utilizing our nice classrooms out at the parks. So we're having higher frequency more locations more topics. Again, showing them that they can tailor their growth.
In terms of community partnerships, this plays in a big way. We're now able to go to the community and say we're able to offer discounts to our employees.
Would you like to partner with the county? Would you like us to highlight your business and offer them a discount?
In addition to that, we have a focus on partnering with schools and universities. So we're expanding our internship program.
We're participating in career fairs and turn fairs and seeing great results and interest from local students.
And then also in terms of community partnerships which segues to the next component is we're seeing great results with local events and people wanting the county employees to participate in their events.
As an example, most recently we had our hockey night.
That was a lot of fun. We had employees writing the Zamboni.
Supervisor Elliott had the pleasure of dropping a hockey puck on the ice.
Great time. Great turnout from employees. And that's really how you begin to change the culture.
And so we're seeing a lot of excitement and joy throughout employees and their families and seeing the support that we were hoping for.
With that again, it's a pleasure to be on this task.
We are doing our best to make sure that people know that they can grow here in the county personally, professionally, and that human resources above all wants them to hear the word resource.
And that's really what we're striving for.
And I'll give it back to Ted for questions.
Thank you, Amy. Well, it's my privilege to lead this group of professionals in providing human resources services for the entire county.
I want to thank the board for your support that I've had during my time here.
And ask if you have any questions.
I got a couple. All right.
In your life cycle, in regards to hiring employees and going through the other way of separation.
And just what they just touched upon at regards to your leadership programs.
It would seem to me that maybe it's just assumed.
But it would seem that although not all employees would be interested, but some employees would be interested in promotion or, you know, development into different classifications, maybe in different departments.
So I guess one of the things that I would envision and obviously Amy's touched upon is the development of employees at whatever level to give them opportunities to grow to find other ways to.
In enhanced their interest in their commitment to the county, et cetera, because you do talk about retention, which sometimes.
Employees just get tired of the same old same home, and they decide to go somewhere else when we certainly have a broad range of opportunities through the variety of departments that currently exist.
So just just a comment.
If I just ask Amy to respond in terms of where we are with our training program in our catalog.
And I can't do that, but I really want to tell you about something cool happening on our website, because I agree with you.
Some people get burned out in the same role for a long time, and they might not realize the opportunity to their employer provides.
They don't know about all the different departments, how many opportunities are within the county.
And I view that as part of our part of our role, we said we, you know, we recruit people, but my job is kind of to re-recruit them and make sure they know that the opportunities will always be here.
But we're going to be able to do that through our website is just highlight what's happening at different departments.
Not everybody knows that the zoo is included in county or what weights and measures even means.
So just explaining and really highlighting us as one united employer.
I think we'll broaden people's perspectives to growth opportunity.
And even these presentations coming before the board of what different departments do, maybe having an opportunity for general employees to understand what the employer can offer.
And with training and the catalog, we are paying attention to making sure that the opportunities and promotions were preparing people for that.
That they have the skills to re-apply to interview, you know those kinds of things, and that there are two paths to promotion.
Okay.
I find in my own life, I have about a three year attention span.
Fortunately, this job every day is a new adventure, so I don't get bored.
The other, in regards to the number of positive drug tests.
What's happening to those employees that are identified as positive?
Well, they aren't employees, they're candidates.
They don't become our employees.
And we have had a small number of positive drug tests, both in the random drug testing,
the sun primarily at public works, because of the heavy equipment machinery involved.
But you can see that the drug testing, you get really more of the no-shows,
are also really weak to say to them a positive test.
But no those folks are never higher.
Okay.
That's good to hear.
On the 674 vacancies, does that include the hospital?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you have any idea how many vacancies you're at the hospital itself?
No.
But I'm going to look to my staff.
Well, that's okay.
I attended a conference yesterday, which was health care in the county.
And one of the issues that we're working on is trying to identify vacancies,
which I at least in some of the material provided.
They had talked to HR directors in most health care facilities, hospitals, etc.
And they had a listing of a variety of positions.
Obviously, nursing was about 380 vacancies currently.
I should say that higher is per year.
And so I was just curious as far as the hospital, because I think it's important that we,
with this particular group, we're working with the educational institutions,
the state and health colleagues to develop curriculum that would allow our residents
to get these degrees and certificates and be higher here locally as opposed to having
to go outside as you mentioned recruitment.
And so I would hope that, you know, as this particular group evolves that we're able to,
obviously, utilize the hospital as part of the participants,
including all the seven hospitals.
And anyway, it's an interesting group, because we had education, for example,
that the President of Delta College, Matthew, was there and, in fact,
a self-inherent and the CEO of Lodine Memorial, or kind of the executive board of this.
So it's an opportunity really to look into what's happening.
We all talked about studies that say we need nurses, but there's nothing specific or definitive to be local,
and this is what we're working on.
Well, I'm happy to say that HR was represented at that conference.
That's a very valuable conference.
We've been there over the years on a number of occasions.
And it's really a, it's a good resource in our community.
Well, I'll be honest with you.
I think the real value of that particular group is, I think,
are close to 45 or 50 participants.
As I see it, it is probably a pilot and regards to future hiring and other professions,
because one of the things that I find in my travels is that, you know,
we're short and a lot of areas, skill workers, you know,
large percentage of our construction skill workers are working the Bay Area.
And yet we have programs here that even in our high schools,
that they're small numbers that are teaching our youth in high school and getting certificates
of medical assistant, construction trades, welding, things like that.
And I think we really need to expand that.
But what I envision is, as you started your presentation,
as the county being the largest employer.
And then you mentioned also internships.
It would seem to me that we ought to be able to work with, with our,
especially our high schools, maybe even middle schools,
but certainly in high schools and as, as a government day tomorrow,
and to expose them to the opportunities at an early age,
because let's face it whether they end up in that particular field or not.
If we can capture them and motivate them while they're in high school in the freshman year
to go through high school and stay in school, because they have a vision.
I want to be an architect from the eighth grade, obviously, I'm not one.
But by point is, is it kind of motive in me through at least first two and a half years of high school.
So my point is, I think we, as an employer, have a great opportunity,
especially with the variety of jobs that are available in disciplines.
So it would seem like we would be a major contributor in regards to these particular programs
of training, or youth, and getting them.
And that's face it through internships, especially maybe hiring them is counting employees,
that would be my goal.
Well, super easy on it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Follow along those lines.
What kind of internship program do we have in addition to our youth and government?
Specifically for high school.
Okay.
Well, in terms of the internship program, the formal program that we've said is your council
and really formula, formulated, and then advertised local universities.
It's geared towards college students that are typically juniors and seniors,
and they're unpaid internships.
So we've found a lot of these are credit bearing internships that they need to graduate,
but also that's when they've kind of identified a key focus,
and so they're going to benefit the most from exposure to those jobs.
And we have seen a lot of excitement around that.
With high school students, something that we're trying to move towards is there.
Most high schools have their own career days.
And I don't know that we've been that engaged or active in those in the past.
So working to build relationships with our local high schools,
that when they go to do those things they invite us and include us.
But in terms of internships as it currently stands,
we haven't been focused on the high school level,
but rather the junior and senior level of our local universities.
Okay.
I think that's wonderful that we're doing that.
But also I think we could reach out to some of the high schools as well.
I know over in Tracy, they have a higher me first program.
I'm sure John Solis has perhaps talked to you about that.
But one of the things that goes on there is that they recruit local businesses
to provide some internship opportunities for high school students,
particularly the juniors and seniors there.
So if they can get an idea of just what opportunities are available right there near home,
so that when they've completed their education,
if they did happen to go out of county or out of state to get it,
they'll have a better idea of what they can come back to.
So I think we could make some money investing in a little bit of time to look at what might be available for internships for high school as well.
Also, any idea of what percentage of participation there is on our county portal there
and the Indian gauge application.
I know there are a variety of programs on there.
Yes.
So will we have our course attendance?
So we have some in increase because of our frequency,
we're training more folks.
In terms of the engagement on the actual website,
there's a ton of data in terms of clicks per page,
clicks per link, how long they hover,
there's stuff I'm still learning.
But I'm actually looking forward to returning to the board with an extensive kind of depiction of the true results that we're seeing.
So again, we're about two months after promotion here.
The best metrics that we have are attendance at the events we're putting on the discount site being used.
But in terms of the traffic through the website,
we're still building momentum.
In fact, I see these badges as I walk around downtown and I ask,
hey, have you heard about in the gauge yet?
And I'm still getting about a 50-50 yes or no.
So we're really in the promotion stage.
But a little further along, I'm really looking forward to.
We're going back with some true data and results of the actual engagement.
Great. Well, I think it's important that we have programs like that for our county employees.
Because people are looking for opportunities to advance and prove their performance, move on into other things,
and just have opportunities to look at benefits offered by the county that they can enjoy in their free time.
Like that hockey night. That was a real, there was a lot of fun to drop that puck.
Thank you for coming.
At any rate, keep up the good work.
Thank you.
One of the things that, and I appreciate your enthusiasm, Amy.
But, you know, one of the things that I, I guess, view the county as, and I guess another,
endeavors that I've been involved in, but that's, despite of our size, I still see county as a team.
I'm not talking about, you know, a department, I'm talking about all departments collectively,
because what I've found, it's certainly through these presentations, you know, from the departments,
is that you oftentimes, as, as obviously, HR does, you serve a lot of departments,
and, and I would like to see as continue to work together, collaborate, get to know one another,
certainly work, I guess, cooperatively, or collaboratively, to make each department better,
by the assistance of another department than they have some ideas.
I always appreciate Jerry's, Jerry Becker's ideas when we talk about certain things.
So, again, I appreciate all the information provided, and I hope we can continue, especially with this engaged program,
and another programs that are available, that, that we really maximize the talent that we have,
and this county government, because, you know, let's face it, we have great staff in all levels,
and I would like to see whatever we can do to not only assist them to improve as obviously you're providing,
but certainly, when I work for the state, for example,
there were some bridging positions for lack of better term.
Where, for example, the, the clerical secretary of staff could go into an analyst position,
and, and one of my, uh, secretaries at the time, became a department head, you know, eventually.
So, she went, the whole route, my, my point is, is that, obviously, we have young individuals,
maybe new to the county, whatever, not age, but just by their tenure,
and I would like to see us continue to develop them and give them the opportunities to really grow and share and participate.
And, I think you're doing that, so I appreciate all your efforts.
With that, I appreciate, thanks all your staff, and certainly all that you do.
And, I always appreciate these, because I learned a lot more after you've made a presentation.
Thank you.
Okay.
So, without, I think we're, well, and, because I've got to meet in it for.
I think we made it.
Other words, we've got some comments.
So, anyway, we'll, uh, adjourn until November 7th at 9 a.m.
For adjourn.