- [Woman] Good morning, everyone.
Before we get started,
I just want to remind you
that face coverings are
required at all times
while in the County building.
And please keep your face coverings on
when you approach the microphone,
covering your nose and mouth.
Thank you.
- [Man] I'm in, can you hear me?
- I will now call the August 4th, 2020
regular meeting of the Board
of Supervisors to order.
Will the clerk please call the roll?
- Supervisor Leopold?
- Here.
- Friend?
- Here.
- Coonerty?
- Here.
- McPherson?
- Here.
- Chairman Caput?
- Here.
We'll have a moment of
silence, and prayer,
and then we'll follow with
the Pledge of Allegiance.
Please join me
- [All] I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America,
and to the Republic, for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
Well, Mr. Palacios, do we
have any late additions
or changes?
- Yes, on the regular
agenda item number 12,
there's additional materials.
There's a revised packet page,
a revised memo packet pages
69, 73, 75, 76 and 77.
There's also a revised attachment F
there's an updated polygon map,
on packet page 117.
On the consent agenda, item
24, there's a correction.
The item should read except in
file the 2021 revised County
revised budget document be considered
during budget hearings in August
schedule a public hearing
on August 18, 2020
beginning at 1:30 PM or thereafter
to consider amendments
to the unified fee schedule
and take related actions
as recommended by the County
Administrative Officer.
There's additional materials
and a revised memo.
Packet pages 651 and 654 attachment C,
there's notice of the unified
fee schedule public hearing
replacement packet page 672
and attachment D revised
budget hearing schedule,
which is packet page 672 also.
Thank you, that concludes the corrections.
- Okay, thank you.
Do any board members wish
to pull any consent items
to the regular agenda?
I don't hear any.
Public comment.
- Sheriff, if I could just say something
at the beginning of public comment,
it is hard in these days of COVID
to gather together,
but I wanted to share a
proclamation honoring Dave King
and proclaiming Dave King Day.
Whereas Dave King, a native
of Del Nortek, Colorado
was born on June 16th, 1951.
And at 18 years old,
moved to Santa Cruz where
he became the beloved father
of twin daughters, Brianna and Sean King
and proud grandfather of Niko, Dior,
King, Graffina, and Giana Sophia King.
And whereas Dave was a star
varsity basketball player
at Blackford High School
and was offered a scholarship to UCLA,
but his first love was surfing.
And after attending West Valley
Junior College in Saratoga,
he followed his dream
to move to Santa Cruz.
And whereas Dave was the
king of heart and soul
who shone like a magnificent beacon,
statuesque, tan, deep voice,
deep blue eyes, white
curls, and a soul patch.
And he was the
quintessential California boy
dedicated to his community, friends
and everyone he met on his travels.
And whereas Dave was a man who
was larger than life itself,
beloved by an army of surfers,
volleyball players, paddle boarders,
so full of goodwill that his love
and life would truly fill
any space that he was in.
And in addition,
he was an ambassador, a true
waterman, a graceful surfer,
a pioneer paddle boarding,
who himself became a monster paddler
and a commanding presence
on any sporting field.
And whereas David was a mainstay
in Ride a Wave Foundation
since its inception in 1988.
And believe that those in the program
were the kind of people he
wanted to surround himself with.
And then he was meant to help others surf
and enjoy their lives in healthy ways.
And the Ride a Wave kids loved him
and they would light up
when he strolled across
the beach towards them,
and whereas David dedicated
his life to others,
but no one took the place of his daughters
that he loved madly.
And he always said
that there were never
words powerful enough
to describe the love that
they had for each other.
And whereas on July 3rd, 2020,
David passed away just
before five in the morning
in the comfort of his home,
surrounded by his loved ones,
beautiful flowers, and
a paddle in his hand
after all it was the dawn
patroller's favorite time of day.
Now, therefore I, John Leopold,
Santa Cruz First District Supervisor
hereby proclaim June
16th at David King Day
in Santa Cruz County and urge all citizens
to join in the annual
celebration of his life
to honor, love, and remember
the loss of a gentle giant
of a man who was always more comfortable
serving his community than
shining in the spotlight
at his own paddle out,
which will happen on August 8th, 2020
at Cal's Beach in Santa Cruz.
We have a couple of representatives
to acknowledge this incredible human being
and a real loss to our community.
I'm gonna bring you the proclamation,
I'd take your hand, but I can't do that.
- Alright, thank you, John.
Hi everyone.
My name is Boots McGee.
Very good friend of Dave King.
I'm very proud and equally sad
that I'm here to present at
Santa Cruz City proclamation
for my longtime friend, Dave King.
The list of common
interests we've all shared
with Dave is as deep as the ocean
and is much taller than his height.
In fact, I've always looked up to him
and I know he's never
looked down on anyone.
His place in the community
filled so many important needs
to young and old, inspiration,
engaging, and fitness was what he exuded.
It's no wonder he's loved and missed.
For a decade I was the
official photographer
for the right Away Foundation
established by Danny Cortazzo.
Ride a wave allows kids and adults
with a variety of physical
and mental challenges
to not only experience the beach
and nearshore waters, but
also the ultimate surfing.
What I photographed
was not just the kids having
the best day of their lives,
but I also focused
on the parents watching
their child's experience.
What many of us have
done for half a century.
There were dozens of times
where I'd view my pics on the computer
and tears would well up.
Invariably David would be
in the very best frames.
A big man at six seven,
he also had a voice that bellowed
and reverberated gently in your ears.
You always knew he was within earshot.
Here he'd be helping a
two foot six inch child
with unimaginable challenges
into or out of a kayak
or carrying a little
girl with burn injuries
through the Rambo Relay Bays
with the mom cheering her on.
Dave was all that and more.
He's been quite generous
with not only just his time
but he's been known to assist with funds
as he did with my family right
after the Katrina Hurricane.
A year ago, February, a
famed photo journalist
contacted me about a project he created.
He asked me to assemble a
group of ocean enthusiasts
for a senior athlete photo essay.
My very first phone call was to David.
Turns out a picture of Dave
was chosen for the gallery
at the Ringling museum in Florida.
I'm extremely proud to appear
in that photograph also.
One month after the shoot, he
suffered his first strokes.
I have to tell you, there
are many of us in the lineup,
men and women who speak of him often,
and at times in total disbelief,
that someone like David King has left us.
There's a local saying live like Jay,
today my shout out is
be the benevolent king.
Thank you.
- [John] Thank you.
- I want to say rest in peace, Dave,
I want to thank John Leopold
for doing this today.
I want to thank Angela Chestnut
for helping me write the proclamation.
And I just want to thank
you all here today.
And once again, my good friend,
Dave King, rest in peace.
- Thank you.
- Good morning, thank you.
My deepest condolences
to David King's family.
First of all, I wanted to start
out asking the supervisors.
What are the larger issues
facing Santa Cruz County?
What are the larger issues
facing Santa Cruz County?
Crime, homelessness, that was evidenced
with the Camp Ross and as
we've had local conversations,
relocating the homeless youth
to the Seventh Day Adventist
Camp down in Soquel,
which is where I live.
Illegal drug use is a very large issue
for our county to be
considering, mental health.
All these things really go together
and they're very large issues
that we should all be very
carefully considering.
And we should be placing our time,
attention and resources
toward these big issues.
So given that the county has these issues
that need to be addressed,
why is the board taking time
to criminalize non-criminals?
I'm here to ask you to vote no
on item 10 on the agenda today,
I think you all know item 10
would criminalize non-criminals
by fining people who do not
comply with the health orders.
I don't understand why spend your time
and the county's precious resources,
even considering this
and the people of this
county deserve better.
We pay our taxes on time.
We raise our children, I have children,
we go to work, we have businesses.
There are lots of local
businesses, struggling,
Supervisor Friend, Nicole
Duke is in your district.
She has Hot Yoga in Aptos.
There's a GoFundMe
account for her right now
for her business.
We all deserve better.
I don't understand why we're wanting
to criminalize the non-criminal.
Our governor is releasing convicts.
If mask worked, put the
mask on the convicts,
keep them in prison.
There's no reason.
There's no reason to punish the people.
Okay, everybody's doing the best they can.
There's no need to criminalize this,
vote no on item 10 on the agenda.
And I want to go one step further.
And until our county is fully open again,
you guys need to seriously
consider forgoing your pay.
And I think Gail Newel needs to also,
(audience applauding)
people are losing their
jobs and businesses, okay?
And so either donate that your salary
to these GoFundMe accounts
or forgo your salary.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- My name is David Hara.
I live in Santa Cruz County.
Now here are some questions
while I await the end
of the COVID-19 episode.
Why do we wear masks in the hope
that it will prevent
the spread of COVID-19
when there are no peer
reviewed double blind studies
to prove they are effective?
Yes masks stop spittle.
But the overall probability
of that spittle containing
COVID-19 is less than 0.5%.
Why did Anthony Fauci and
the World Health Organization
and the Center for Disease Control
initially say not to wear masks?
Why do we wear masks
when they are known to be
detrimental to our health?
And if not worn correctly are
more likely to make us sick,
as reported by surgeon general,
Jerome Adams on March 31st of this year.
Why do doctors lose their jobs
or lose their medical licenses
and/or received death threats
after telling their stories about how
in their medical practice,
their use of HCQ plus the Z-Pak
plus zinc are 96% effective
in overcoming the COVID-19 disease
as reported by Dr. Simone Gold
and Dr. Harvey Rich and others
in the mainstream media.
Why does Dr. Fauci prefer the
therapeutic drug Remdesivir
made by Gilead Sciences,
which cost about $2,340
for a five day course
and is only 60% effective
as reported by CNN on
June 29th of this year.
How much money has Governor
Newsom promised to send
to Santa Cruz County?
So Gail Newel would keep us
on lockdown due to more cases
of COVID-19?
The fact of the aforesaid why
did the Rockefeller Foundation
publish it in 2010,
the scenario for futures of technology
and international development,
that foretells almost exactly
what has unfolded under the
current COVID-19 situation,
including the accidental
release of COVID-19
from the Wuhan lab, wearing face masks,
social distancing, quarantine, lockdowns,
and business closures.
The fact that the aforesaid article
was published 10 years ago
proves that the current COVID-19 episode
was planned 10 years ago and
is now being carried out.
The residents of Santa
Cruz County are waking up
to these questions
along with the residents
all across United States
and the voters of Santa Cruz
County will not vote for you
if you continue to acquiesce
to all such fraudulent COVID-19.
And we will not vote for you
if you order a mandatory
mask for all of them.
- [Greg] Thank you.
Thank you.
- Good morning, supervisors.
I got some good news for you today.
We can declare victory over corona 19!
On July 27th, 2020 in Washington DC,
doctors announced at a press conference
that they now have a successful
treatment for COVID-19
that is almost 100% effective.
One doctor presented her case
studies of over 350 patients
with COVID-19 that she treated
with hydroxychloroquine
plus zinc, plus zithromax.
She had no deaths, all
her patients recovered.
The doctor said, quote,
"64 studies worldwide prove
hydroxychloroquine is effective.
There is no need to continue the lockdown,
social distancing and use of masks.
There is no need to wait for a vaccine,
nobody needs to die," unquote.
The day after the
doctor's press conference,
the propaganda attack dogs of big pharma
and the drug companies were
unleashed on the doctors.
Their press conference on
social media was taken down
by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube,
and their webpage was also removed.
The doctors have been slandered,
defamed, and attacked
as conspiracy theorists
for curing their patients
and telling the truth.
One doctor was fired from her job
at the hospital she worked at.
The evidence is staring us in the face
that our medical system, government,
mainstream media and
social media platforms
have been taken over by
those who put their profits
before we, the people.
We are now at a critical juncture
in the human experience
where our entire society
and way of life is being
attacked, destroyed,
and replaced for ulterior
motives and goals.
The present pandemic is
one method of using fear,
ignorance, and confusion
to manipulate people
into doing things to themselves
and each other that would
have been unthinkable
only a year, a half a year earlier.
We were caught off guard
when this alleged world
pandemic was brought forth
on the global stage by ignorance and fear.
But now we have sufficient sound data
from many diverse sources that
will give us the opportunity
to see what is really going on, thank you.
- [Greg] Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- My name is Dave Willis.
I just wanted to say,
thanks a lot for you all saving my life.
I mean, it's like, I personally
might not want to be here,
but you made it possible for
me to be here by the decisions
that you made when you
made your health decisions.
I mean, all of you like
the lady doctor, you all,
you gave your best judgment
and you let us know what to do,
take safety measures.
So I wanted to come and
say, thanks a whole lot
for saving all of our lives.
Even though the people who come,
who complain, you saved
them, also, you saved us all.
Thanks a lot.
I know it's not your fault
that this pandemic is here.
They started in Washington.
People talking about you all cut your pay.
I be thinking that too,
as far as legislators,
why are they still getting paid,
and they doing a terrible job!
People went crisis and
they going on vacation.
They call it a recess,
it's a month long paid.
Why do we still pay them?
They need not to be paid.
They're not suffering like we are.
So my view, I say,
I think of you all in my heart
and in my head and my
thoughts, you all our heroes,
all these medical who made
the decisions, you're heroes,
you're not doing nothing wrong.
You're saving us all, I can't hardly talk.
I'm trying to say something.
And I hope you get the
message when they told us
that you all had decided
for us to wear a mask.
I was like, huh, that's not gonna work.
But I just started doing it anyway.
We Americans, that's what we do.
We fight, we stand up.
I feel like it's my
obligation, I'm in the war.
I'm in the battle.
And I'm proud about, I'm doing my part.
What you say do I'm still alive.
'Cause I do stay in.
Driving me crazy, yeah, whatever.
But I'm doing my part to win this fight.
And I want to say thanks to you all
because I'm telling you,
you did the right thing
and I'm knowing I hold no ill
will toward none of you all.
I think you're great, good
people, you're leaders,
you all deserve parades for this title,
that title all like I said, thanks a lot.
You've saved us all.
I don't know what to say.
Thanks.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you.
Just a reminder if you're gonna speak
on item number 10 about masks right now,
then you will not be
able to speak on the item
when it comes up.
This the time for if you can't stay
and you want to make your
point about item number 10,
which is the mask ordinance.
You could do that now,
but you can't speak
twice on the same topic.
Go ahead, thank you, I'm sorry.
- Good morning, my name's Olivia Martinez.
I'm the region two director
for SEIE local 521.
We are the largest bargaining unit
for the County of Santa Cruz.
We represent approximately 1,500 members.
And I'm here to say
that we are very angry.
We are beyond furious
with how the furloughs
with how the elimination of positions
has been handled by the County.
30 of our members will be losing their job
potentially during the pandemic.
Many of these workers are people of color,
the majority and women that
will be losing their jobs.
Many of them have been
here for over 20 years
and did not expect to lose
their job during a pandemic.
We are concerned.
We are also very angry with
the Sheriff's department
for not abiding by labor rules
and not giving us the
sufficient information
and notice that they were
gonna be contracting out
food services and
eliminating nine positions,
the majority of them people of color
and women in those positions,
we are angry with the communication
that department directors
have done to our members.
They have not done proper communication,
it's being chaotic,
at some points there has
not been any communications.
We are angry that they have
stopped the contact tracing
in South County.
That is huge where the
majority of our cases are there
and where the majority
are people of color.
So we will be back on the 18th.
And what we're asking the board
is to please review the budget carefully
because we don't feel that these layoffs
and this furloughs have been equitable.
Like Carlos has been wanting
them to be equitable.
It would be nice for Carlos
to see me as I'm speaking,
but you're not, right, so it
seems like you don't care.
It would be respectful of you to see me
as I'm speaking about
this, I am the largest,
we are the largest union
and you are not seeing
me when I'm speaking.
So it's really disrespectful.
So I thank you for listening to me,
but we will be back.
And I hope you take our matter serious
about how these furloughs,
how the elimination of these decisions
have been communicating to our members.
It has been unprofessional
and it has been inhumane to treat workers
who are the essential
and the heart and soul
of this community in this way.
So thank you.
(audience applauding)
- All right, so I would just
like to start by saying,
my name is Benton Scott Freedom.
I run the Soquel Creek restoration project
in the Soquel Hills.
And I am doing that for
the last five years,
prior to that I worked
in Western medicine,
healthcare, and I can not second,
what that man said
prior about thanking you
and your guys' health
laws for keeping me safe.
That is absolute hogwash.
Anybody knows anything about health
knows that health does not come
from these stupid little clown fare
we wear on our face.
Health is internal, health is intrinsic,
to people who get their sunshine,
to people who live healthy lives,
who go to sleep at the right time,
who practice holistic health,
those are the people who don't get ill.
I actually haven't been
ill in over 10 years now
because I've been adhering
to holistic health
and making sure my vitamin D is adequate
so that I don't get sick
when everyone else does.
And again, what that guy said earlier
about how you guys are
all giving great advice
to keep us all safe.
I haven't seen any good advice come
from any healthcare professional
and the mainstream media,
from any government official.
I haven't heard anyone
talk about vitamin D.
African Americans and people of color
are being affected by
this disproportionately.
Just like they're being effected
by all health ills disproportionately,
because they don't any
longer live at the equator
and they don't get the sunshine
required for their body
to make the adequate levels of vitamin D
to keep them healthy.
And so instead of
disseminating that information
to our people of color,
to our neighborhoods
that actually do need that information
because of the massive disparity of time
that they would need to spend
compared to us fair-skinned people
to keep the same level of
health it's not being had.
All that we're doing is arguing
over these stupid mandates.
People like me are trying to find out
in what way does your guys'
little fear-based ordinance
trump the Constitution?
How does it trump The Bill of Rights,
- [Woman] Preach it, preach it!
- Like freedom of speech is something
that millions of Americans
have fought and died for.
And you guys are taking that away
because you guys are scared of germs.
I'm in the healthcare professional.
And I would like to tell you
that one fifth of all common
colds are the coronavirus.
And so if you guys think
that we're ever gonna
eliminate the coronavirus,
you guys are beyond nuts.
It's never going away.
Only thing that we can
do is raise our health
so that we can get over this
and get to a place of herd
immunity like Sweden is at now.
And so I just wanted to really say
that everything you guys are doing
makes me as an American,
incredibly shamed,
ashamed to be an American,
because this is not the
country that we live in.
Our founding fathers did not say,
"Give me safety or give me death."
They said, "Give me
freedom or give me death."
And that's what we need
is our freedoms back.
Personal responsibility is not dead.
If you want to live in a bubble
and never go out, never experienced germs,
pretend that you don't
have your own germs, do it,
but that's nothing to do with me.
It has nothing to do with my mom,
has nothing to do with my deaf aunt,
who hasn't been able to
communicate with a single person,
throughout this entire epidemic,
because she reads lips.
So this is actually muting her.
And so I just wanted
to say to all you guys,
look you dead in your eye.
I am ashamed of each and every one of you
to the extent to which you
contribute to this unlawful.
- [Greg] Okay, thank you.
(audience applauding)
- The timer stops beeping.
- Thank you.
- Excuse me.
- That's it.
- [Woman] Excuse me, excuse me,
you're done, excuse me.
- Thank you.
Your time is up, your time is up.
- Thank you.
- [Benton] Leave the
building and that's it?
So now I'm leaving the building
and I don't want to wear your stupid mask.
- [Woman] Excuse me, Chair Caput,
before we continue Chair Caput.
- [Greg] Yes.
- [Woman] We're having
a little technical issue
and the meeting is not streaming live.
IT will need to shut down and restart,
which will take just a couple minutes.
- [Greg] We'll let it go
for a few more speakers,
and then we'll.
- [Woman] It's not
streaming on the internet
so no one can see this right now,
unless we shut down and restart.
- [Greg] Okay, you're
talking about the mask?
- [Woman] No, I'm talking about.
- [John] She's asking for like
a five or 10 minute recess.
- [Woman] Yes, could we have
like a five minute recess
for a technical issue
to fix a technical issue?
- [Greg] We need a recess now?
Okay, five minutes, okay.
We'll have a five minute recess.
Thanks for the wait.
- Chairman supervisors,
especially the people,
people on the other side
of this podium I think,
should be wearing mask because
I think it's outrageous.
And this whole thing is to
take down the United States.
It was the founder, Maurice Strong,
a billionaire at the real
conference set forth agenda 21,
which you fully endorsed.
He suggested in "West Magazine,"
I encourage you to look it up,
that he formed a secret society
to pull down a Western industrial states.
That's exactly his word.
There's a Dr. Charles Leiber
from Harvard who helped
build the Wuhan society.
There's a 19 page affidavit
by an undercover FBI person.
He was arrested along
with military members
and members of the communist party.
That's not put out by our
so called local newspapers
"The Sentinel," or anybody else.
We also have Bruce McPherson.
Who's received tens of
thousands of dollars
from the red Chinese.
We find that WHO, World
Health Organization
is run by a wife of a Chinese
Communist Party person.
We have at the same
time, all the authority,
according to Mr. Palacios over here,
it goes to a person
that's being secretly paid
by a secret billionaire
by the foundation.
And here's Mr. Palacios standing
right next to Susan True
on the Community Foundation.
I believe he's involved
in the illegal conspiracy.
He put out a document
saying that Margaret
Lopez had everything to do
with what's going on here in this county.
And of course, when I drive by La Sud,
which is everything in the county,
she had Black Lives Matter.
Both those founders admit
that they're trained
activists and train Marxists,
and you know it.
Bruce McPherson, Zach Friend,
most of his former employers now
are registered lobbyists
for the Chinese Communist Party.
We find the kill a cop of violent,
not just the protesters,
but those that are
trained in the violence,
the people responsible,
according to a magazine
dedicated their interest in it,
it says the group is indivisible
Revolutionary Communist Party,
the Communist Party of
the USA Color of Change
in California Forward.
While it was our great Leon
Koneta a communist collaborator.
with the red Chinese, Hugh Delacey
whose plaque is right up
there on the courthouse steps
dedicated to this communist
that belong to four
different spiring, perlo,
ware, shorge, silver master,
but California Forward
Bruce McPherson's in it,
Fred Keeley's in it, this whole county
is designed to be taken down
and the co-chairman of it.
There's Lenny Mendonka
advocates getting rid
of 80% of the local governments.
And that's what you've been up to.
- [Greg] Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Hello, my name is Keith Dalton.
I've been working in the trades painting
and carpentry work for at least
35 years, I'm 54 years old.
There's a lot of carcinogenics
that I work around by
the State of California
known to be known to cause cancer.
The mask is very hard to
work under, I can't breathe.
What I am trying to breathe is oxygen,
whatever amount I can.
I don't believe by wearing the mask
I am going to live longer.
I do not believe in the mask
and I won't support it.
(coughs) Excuse me.
I have been informed
about the facts from OSHA
about the safe and unsafe usage
of this or any other particle mask
and the dangers and complications
of the usage of this mask.
This is a novelty doesn't
make any sense to me.
I say, get your knee off my face.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Hello guys, my name is Laura Bezich.
I'm a resident of Capitola
for the last five years.
Previously I lived in five
states, including Virginia,
where I was born, New Hampshire,
where I grew up in New York,
Massachusetts and Utah.
I graduated from Syracuse University
with a bachelor's degree
in business and design
before I moved to Santa Cruz
to launch my startup company,
a utility patented new consumer product.
I've been an active
participant in Santa Cruz Works
a member at the IDF fab labs,
a participant in the big Santa
Cruz pitch night tech raising
and the Monterey Bay startup challenge
of which I was a finalist.
This mask mandate will effectively
turn me into a criminal.
- [John] You have to wear your mask,
you have to wear your mask.
- Because I refuse to comply
with an unconstitutional law
that does not make sense.
That is not justifiable.
That is full of contradictions
and holes that destroys my uniqueness,
my individuality, my humanity,
and symbolizes censorship and silence.
This is about not about
our health and safety,
but about giving up our
power and sovereignty
and ushering in a new form of Marxism.
And before you jumped to the conclusion
that I must be a right wing Republican,
because I brought up collectivist agenda
I accompanied a democratic
political operative
to Utah boyfriend of mine
on a mission to challenge
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
At this point, I do not
identify with any party.
I am registered as no party.
I identify as a free
American and an entrepreneur.
This mandate is an outrage
and insult to the founding
principles of our country.
- [John] You need to wear your mask.
- Which protect the
rights of the individual
and the minority from the
passions of the majority.
You will have to force me into a jail,
maybe a concentration camp.
It's more likely in the
plan before I will--
- [Man] Chair, we cannot have people
in the building without,
can you turn off the sound please?
- [Greg] Thank you.
- [Laura] Now's the time to stand up
- Chair.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- [Man] Chair, Chair Caput?
Chair Caput?
- [Greg] Yeah.
- [Man] We cannot continue
to have these protests
in the meeting.
It's not safe our staff.
So if we continue to have
people removing their masks,
I'm going to request
that you clear the room.
So if you could announce that,
that we will clear the room unless people.
If people continue to do these protests,
we're the only government
that's continuing to have open meetings
and we can not do them
if people are not gonna wear their mask.
- Okay, okay, yes.
Remember, there's a lot of people
that don't want to go into a room
where people are not worrying about risks.
So we have to understand
that there's people
that find that offensive really,
that nobody's respecting their health.
Okay, thank you.
- People have different opinions
based upon the sources of
information, don't they?
The real existential threats
to life on the planet
are the nuclear threat, the
possibility of nuclear war,
the nuclear arms industry,
the environmental collapse and devastation
and the ecosystems that
support life on earth.
And I heard and also
that we don't really have a
democracy we're told we do,
but with these authoritarian,
somebody used the phrase,
tiptoed totalitarian,
step by step we're driven into compliance.
I have a couple of questions
and I've been on this
planet quite a while.
Would the government or
corporations ever lie to us?
Is there a history of that?
Another question, is the
bio engineered Coronavirus
purposefully propagated
in order to further facilitate
the global military 5G
deployment worldwide
on Earth and in space.
Because as we are here,
satellites, 5G satellites are going up.
A missile was just
launched by the military
from Vandenberg Air
Force Base this morning.
And there's a quote here
from the film "5G Apocalypse
Extinction Event,"
"It's important to understand
what the 5G is doing
and what they say it's doing.
We're told on the IEEE
beam forming document
that this technology cooks your eyes
like eggs in World War II.
We all need to understand
these are military weapons.
These are assault frequencies.
If you know nothing more than that,
that's what you need to know.
It's microwave radiation
warfare, that's what it is."
And a 4G Verizon cell
tower just went up at Ocean
and Water in the medium soon to be 5G.
This is the real serious thread
that the county needs to
be opposing this roll out,
the Board of Supervisors.
That's the most serious
threat in my understanding,
thank you.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Good morning, my name's Gary Scofield.
I've been living in the
County now for 40 years.
On the mask issue.
By the way, the virus,
the alleged virus is one
billionth of a meter in size.
And so in order for the mask to work,
it'd have to be so tightly woven
that we wouldn't be able to breathe.
So it's really a sham.
In terms of the death
potential in Santa Cruz County,
with four deaths and 275 citizens,
we have a 0.00014% chance
of dying from COVID
0.0014 in the state of California.
If you use the numbers of
the alleged 9,224 deaths,
we have a 0.0023% chance of dying.
So in terms of Santa Cruz County,
it's a nonevent at
0.0014, it's a non event
it's not happening,
but let me talk about some of
the financial considerations.
California has approximately 500,000 cases
and the case, by the
way, let's define a case.
A case is a positive test.
It's not, has nothing to do with disease.
Most of the cases are asymptomatic,
but we get Newsom is
getting $5,000 per case
with 500,000 cases, we're
going to get $2.5 billion.
Santa Cruz County has 1,115 alleged cases.
Remember the PCR test,
it has a 50% false positive
at 5,000 per case,
the County will get $5.6 million.
Santa Cruz County in 2009
had a $10 billion GDP.
So let's assume that
that's still in effect
$10 billion GDP for the
county of Santa Cruz.
So, so I'm wondering,
we're gonna get $5.3 million
from Mr. Newsom in terms
of the COVID per case,
but we're losing possibly
250 to $500 million
in lost revenue from
shutting down the economy.
And I wanna ask you guys,
is, does that make sense?
Does that make sense from you?
You guys are our representatives,
you control the budget,
you control the events that
happened in the county.
Does that make sense
to you to lose anywhere
from 250 to $575 million
in return for $5 million from Newsom?
Does that make any sense?
So I'm wondering why it is
that you're closing down our economy
based on this virus, alleged virus.
And by the way, no one in the
world has ever identified,
purified and sequence the virus.
No one in the world has done that.
Dr. Young has offered a $5 million reward
for anybody who can prove an example
of a virus has been fully sequenced,
purified, and identified.
The virus is a theoretical construct,
it's a theoretical construct.
So well, I'll leave it at that.
Thank you so much.
(audience applauding)
- [Greg] Okay, after this,
we'll go to two minutes.
Is that okay?
What's going on?
- Good morning, my name is Ellie Black.
And last time I was here,
I brought up the fact that
it's completely reprehensible
that half the people who attend
these meetings in the room
in the hall outside half
the people are so terrified
that they think that the
other people around them
could possibly kill them.
That's how terrified they are.
For those of you who were
here last at the last meeting.
I remember there were a
couple of altercations
that took place out front,
where the sheriffs had to get
involved and separate people.
Okay, the other half of
the people are not afraid.
We're hugging each
other, we're not afraid.
It's that because we're uneducated
and haven't done our research?
No, it's not.
So I requested that our
elected representatives
and unelected representatives
as the case may be,
set up a public health
forum for the citizens
of this county to learn
some of the reasons
why some of us are not afraid
and offer an opportunity
for the public to understand
more about what's going on,
to my knowledge that
has not been addressed
or even considered.
So that forces us to do it ourselves.
So at this time,
I would like to extend
the invitation to each
and every one of the supervisors
and also Dr. Gail Newel
to attend a health forum,
that will be a public event
with questions and answers
and several different people
from across the health
practitioner spectrum
from our county to get into this
in a way that the public can understand
and stop acting in fear
that maybe is not warranted,
or perhaps it will go the other direction.
And those of us who have
been hugging each other
and not getting sick, many
of my friends are over 60,
nobody has gotten sick in the
entire time since February,
that this has been going on,
maybe we will learn something different
and learn to be afraid.
That could be the case,
but either way, I'd like
to extend that invitation.
We do not have a date set yet
emails will be going
out with the invitation,
but I'd like to publicly invite you now.
And I hope you will attend.
And I certainly hope
Gail Newel will attend
because we need her expertise on this.
Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
- Good morning, my name
is James Ewing Whitman.
I appreciate that we
can all still stand here
and speak publicly,
and that this is recorded and televised.
I also appreciate that
there has been some lenience
with those who have, are not
obeying the most simple rules.
I'm not here to talk about the masks,
do a lot of research and a lot of study.
I've been very blessed to live
in this county since 1995.
Last Monday, I found
myself doing some research
and homework, and I was parked
right in front of Twin Lakes
and unknown to me, there
was some kind of kids camp.
And so I witnessed at least 25 individuals
or pairs of parents bring
their small children
to the beach and witnessed
another human being,
pointing a gun at these kids.
And just seeing these kids just go down
like what's going on.
I can't believe what's going on.
Now I'm not gonna take the time
to go into the detail about
how that affects you
psychologically and physically,
but it's really quite tremendous.
And it's really sad to see
that it is being suggested
that children be taught in such a way
that is so unnatural.
I mean, what has changed so
much in the past six months
that seems so different
to how I was brought up
and I'm gonna focus on, you
know, pointing a gun at another.
So there's just a lot of stuff going on
and I'll be speaking later,
but I'm very happy about the
lenient here about some people
who are not respecting other
people's ability to speak
by what they're choosing to do.
So hopefully I'll be able to
speak on number 10, thank you.
Thank you.
- Hello, my name is Shirley Johnson.
I'm a wildlife biologist
and I've had lots of
courses like microbiology.
And I also have a dental hygiene degree
and I've taught school in this district
for a number of years.
My parents both go back to
the Revolutionary War of 1776,
and I'm a patriot.
This plandemic is taking
away our freedoms.
Keeping the China virus out with a mask
is like trying to keep a mosquito out
with a cyclone fence, it's
ridiculous scientifically.
It's a total joke.
Mask are for control of the people,
government control of the people.
This political shut down
is just a total farce
taking away our freedoms.
And I want to say that
talking about shut down
of the state of California, this state,
if it was a country
would be the fifth
largest economic country
in the entire world.
And it's all a political scam.
I haven't been able to swim,
but one out of the last five months,
because they keep closing down things.
I'm gonna try the cold ocean today.
Hope I don't get washed out to sea.
I've been in this county
for over 50 years,
and this is just unheard of.
I really think you guys
should look into this
idea of charging people
if they aren't wearing mask.
It's just out the window craziness.
Thank you.
- Fascism!
(audience applauding)
- Good morning I'm Jay Rosella Myers
and I am also a resident
of the first district and have
been incredibly supportive
of the Board of Supervisors
on many occasions
about different issues,
and I'm hoping that you can
hear what we all have to say.
There's a lot of really great
information within this group.
A lot of people have been
looking into this for some time
and I will leave you a copy with the clerk
of a article that appeared
in "Wise Traditions"
for the month of July, "Is
Coronavirus Contagious?"
Written by Sally Felon Morel.
And she actually has a
really good analysis.
And she's a pretty famous person
who wrote a nourishment
cookbook and health fanatic,
but also I have copies of
the Unruh Civil Rights Act
that I want you to look over
because there's things that appeal
to our civil rights and
the county health ordinance
that I've highlighted things.
I moved to Santa Cruz County
because I used to live in LA County
where I felt like I
lived in a police state.
I lived close to USC,
where I went to university
and the helicopters,
the flying helicopters,
looking for criminals every
night were flying overhead,
shining lights into our windows.
And I felt like I lived in a police state.
I moved to Santa Cruz County
'cause I felt like there
was justice for all here
for the diversity and the
love of this community
and the wonderful aspects
of enjoying this incredible environment
that was in middle 70s.
And I cannot believe
what's going on right now.
I so appreciate that you're
trying to do the best for us.
Please continue.
- Thank you.
- Cope Britain, Mattson
Britain architects.
Good morning. I'm here today
representing a retired school teacher,
but not just that retired school teacher,
but this whole community,
that are looking for
work or looking for jobs
and are looking for an
economy that can keep working.
I was told by the county and repeatedly
and insistently that
this applicant had to pay
for a application to determine
whether they needed a soils report or not.
Well, guess what?
They had already submitted a soils report
and had already been accepted.
And guess what?
In the state of California,
every new house needs a soils report.
Why in the world would the county insist
that they needed to pay
to determine whether
they needed one or not?
This has cost them tens
of thousands of dollars.
It has cost them months
and months of time.
It's shameful.
(audience applauding)
- Hi, I'm here to speak
about homelessness.
I'm homeless right now.
It wasn't planned for,
it's not really something I chose.
Right now they're doing
creating a tent kind of area
where we can live down on the green.
And I think that it's great
that we have support like showers and food
and that sort of thing.
Everybody is homeless for,
there's a variety of reasons
why people are homeless,
but we sometimes seem to get
lumped into the same category.
I heard a lot of people's comment
on how dirty homeless people are.
And before I became homeless,
I was also when I saw trash
lying around, I got depressed.
Now that I've been homeless,
I know it's not so easy to be clean.
It's not easy to stay clean
that people will seem to
harass homeless a lot.
If you drop something,
we drop trash.
I just want to say that it's not easy.
It's not easy to stay clean.
It's not easy to hold all
your belongings together.
And when you see camps of people
with trash around that sort of thing,
those people are actually
trying to stay clean.
But to someone who has a
home has access to water,
has access to all those things.
It just looks dirty to them.
So a homeless person there,
they might be trying
really hard to stay clean.
So since people who've never
been homeless, don't know that,
I just wanted to express
that, to say that to people.
The tents that they're
putting up right now
and the food and the
showers are really helpful.
And we're grateful for that.
But I think a lot of people are worried
about being clustered in.
They're worried about the virus
since everyone's kind of closer now.
People were more spread out on the green
and the fence that they're putting up.
I really, I don't like it.
I don't like the fact that
they're putting up a fence
around the whole green
area, limiting our area.
It looks like they're just
trying to corral people
into one area and that
looks like they don't care.
I felt safe doing anything
when I was out on the green.
- [Greg] Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you very much.
(audience applauding)
- Hello, thank you for your patience.
I just wanted to let you know
about the OSHA requirements
and the OSHA standards because
you guys may be interested
in that as well,
as far as the respiratory protection goes.
So the OSHA standard 29 CFR1910.134,
paragraph D2III of the
respiratory protection standard
considers any atmosphere with
an oxygen level below 19.5%
to be oxygen deficient
and immediately dangerous
to life and health.
And that happens when
you are behind a mask
in less than five seconds.
Human beings must breathe
oxygen to survive,
and they begin to suffer
adverse health effects
when the oxygen level
of their breathing air
drops below 19.5% the air is
considered oxygen deficient.
Workers that are engaged
in any form of exertion
can rapidly become symptomatic
as their tissues fail to
obtain the oxygen necessary
to function properly.
The increased breathing rates,
accelerated heartbeat, impaired thinking,
or coordination can occur more quickly
in an oxygen deficient environment,
which also includes bicycle riding
and things like that in public.
This can be devastating
to a worker if it occurs
while the worker
is performing potentially
dangerous activity
this also leads to tachycardia,
impaired attention
thinking and coordination,
even in people who are resting.
The rule making record
of the respiratory protection
standard clearly justifies
adopting the requirement
that air breathed by employees
must have an oxygen
content of at least 19.5.
And that does not happen
when your face is covered
with a mask,
a lesser concentration of oxygen
in the employees' breathing air.
Is my time up?
Okay, thank you.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
that takes us to.
- [Woman] Chair, we have two web comments.
- Oh that's right I'm sorry.
- The first comment is
from Mark Mesite Miller.
I urge support for this item
being legislative item 9280
in regards to public
works award of contract
for the rail trail segment.
I urge support for this item.
Completing these two
segments of the rail trail
will connect some of the
densest part of the county
together with a car-free
safe multi-use trail,
transforming the way folks
young and old move around.
Completing the rail trail
will improve social equality,
environmental sustainability,
and economic vibrancy sooner is better.
Thank you, Mark 37 year
resident of the county.
The second item is from George Savala.
This is in regards to the care act fund
for rental assistance
and utility assistance.
COPA strongly supports the directive
to provide $1 million
for rental assistance.
My name is George Savala,
a volunteer COPA,
a leader with Holy Cross Catholic Parish.
I am commenting on behalf
of hundreds of families
within our institutions
that do not have technology access
to be able to participate in
the public comment process.
I am joined by families
from Live Oak and Soquel,
along with other leaders from
St. Stephen's, Temple Beth El,
Resurrection Catholic Parish,
Parish St. John's and
Calvary Episcopal Church.
We have heard stories firsthand
from these families about
the financial impact
they have endured during the pandemic.
Many are in debt and owe rent money
to their landlords friends and
our financial institutions.
Others have exhausted their savings,
all are concerned for rent they owe,
or will owe for the month
of August and September.
The city of Santa Cruz
was recently accepted.
I'm sorry.
The city of Santa Cruz was
recently accepting applications
for an emergency rent assistance
program for city residents,
but many residents living
in an unincorporated area
like Live Oak and Emerald Bay
Apartments, do not qualify.
Some families have left the
area and others barely working.
The majority have shared that
they have only worked three
to four days a week with less
than eight hours per day.
Hotels, restaurants and other employees
are not in full operations.
and many households have been affected
by this drastic loss of income.
We are in support of this item
to assist families during
the COVID-19 pandemic.
We would also like to see
the County of Santa Cruz
create ordinance to allow county residents
12 months after the local
emergency has lifted
to pay back the rent they owe.
Thank you and we look
forward to working with you
on these issues.
Hold on one second.
Some other ones came in,
but they aren't public, so that's it.
Thank you.
- Is there anybody downstairs?
Okay, we'll go,
do board members have any comments
or additional direction for
items on the consent agenda?
Yes.
- Thank you, chair.
That just a couple items
that I want to comment on.
First on item number 22.
- I want to thank the probation department
and the auditor controller
treasurer tax collector
office about the discharge
of these fines and fees and penalties
for these young juvenile offenders.
We want people to turn their lives around.
We have to give them the
ability to be able to do that.
And if the kids have shown their success
at being rehabilitated,
we shouldn't saddle them
with large amounts of fines.
And so this is a good step forward.
On item number 29,
I want to thank the mobile and
manufactured home commission
for their work.
These bylaw changes help
them hold special meetings
when we fall into times like this,
that commission is a very
hardworking commission
and has worked very hard
to make sure that they can
continue to meet the needs
of mobile and manufactured home residents
in Santa Cruz County during this pandemic.
On item number 44,
I wanna thank public
works for moving forward
on putting out this RFQ
for segments, 10 and 11
of the rail trail.
This is exciting public infrastructure
that we're moving forward on.
And I'm hopeful that
we will continue to be
on a constant and steady march
to build this rail trail
throughout our county
and so we can all enjoy
this amazing infrastructure.
I also want to thank public
works on item number 46,
which is the emergency repair
on Soquel San Jose Road.
That's a key thorough
way for so many people.
The last item I just want
to talk about is item 30.
The COVID-19 pandemic has
affected us all in countless
and profound ways.
The necessary shelter in place
order helped us save live,
but it also placed those living
in already unaffordable areas
at even greater risk of losing
their housing stability.
Our board moved quickly
to establish a rent eviction moratorium
that was adopted by the
state judicial council,
but it never made rent go away,
instead it created an even greater debt
that will be difficult
for many to overcome.
The state has provided
our county with funds,
from the Cares Act to
meet the immediate needs
of the pandemic.
We know that the best way
to eliminate homelessness
is to help people avoid becoming homeless
in the first place.
We must prioritize support
for the most vulnerable
and those at risk of losing their housing
with funds designed
to meet their basic
housing and utility needs.
I urge the support of my colleagues
to support my request
for committing at least a million dollars
of our Care Act funds to
supplement our other funding
for housing support.
Working now will help prevent
a greater homelessness crisis
down the road.
We must do all we can
to help working families
of our community stay housed in our county
during this COVID 19 pandemic
and continuing thereafter.
I hope you'll join me.
And that's all.
- Okay, thank you, Supervisor Friend.
- [Zach] Thank you chair.
First. I just need to announce
that I need to recuse myself
actually from item 44 of the rail item.
I do have a personal
material financial conflict
because my home is within 500 feet
of the rail corridor.
So I'll need to recuse on item 44.
I would also like to thank
staff on items 42 and 43,
which deal with library upgrades
in the second district item
42 deals with La Selva Beach
and the money that was
raised from the friends
of La Selva Beach
which has done such an amazing job,
but extra thanks really to
Damon for his project management
on these projects
and especially the Aptos Library project.
I appreciate that we are
back on a schedule here
and I just wanted to thank him
for all of his staff work to ensure
that we're on that schedule
for incorporating the Aptos History Museum
and just in general,
for his feedback that he's been receiving
from the community
and trying to incorporate everything in.
We are doing a lot of stuff
even during the pandemic.
And I think that the libraries
will be an important place
virtual or otherwise for people to use
in the coming few years.
So just an extra thanks to staff on that.
And lastly, I appreciate the
work that public works did
on item 48 in regards to Cox Road,
as we continue to build
out of the storm damages
and to actually have that
come in under budget,
nothing wrong with that,
but the community out there is thankful
for the continued work that
happens on storm damage.
I know that it's a tough road right now
in the construction world,
but I appreciate public works' diligence
on building ourselves out
of the storm damage repair.
Thank you, chair.
- Supervisor Coonerty?
- [Ryan] Thank you, Mr. Chair,
just a couple of comments to make
first on item number 30,
I'm very supportive of
the rental assistance.
We have a long way to go as
we navigate this pandemic
and hopefully this takes
some of the pressure off
of working families
that are struggling to get by right now,
as through the, the limits
on different on work
and may have fallen behind
on rent and utilities.
Hopefully this is a
lifeline going forward.
On item number 31 Supervisor Friend
and I brought forward a
letter to condemn the proposal
to exclude undocumented
people from the census.
Not only is it unconstitutional
and a blatant political move
to reduce representation in urban areas
and blue states.
It's also just a continuing
racism by this president
to have people be less than
even though the Constitution is very clear
that it's residents of this
country that get counted.
And then finally, an item number
37, the smart path report.
I want to appreciate the
staff's efforts to find housing
for the people who are vulnerable
and experiencing homelessness
in our community,
especially prioritizing
families with children
so that we can reduce the trauma
and give those kids an opportunity
to have stability and safety.
The numbers are still far too low,
and the challenge we need to
start thinking outside the box
and providing more case management,
more housing navigation,
and looking at other options
because we're getting too
few people into housing
in this county.
And so we'll look at that in
item number eight coming up,
but I appreciate the efforts
that have been made with smart path
to prioritize families in our community.
Thank you.
- Supervisor McPherson?
- [Bruce] Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.
I do want to comment
on a couple of things,
some of which already have been addressed.
On item number 30 of
the Cares Act funding.
I want to thank Supervisor Leopold
for bringing this forward.
We certainly need to do
what we can to help renters.
We don't want to have
them become homelessness
who can't pay their rent now
for some reasons beyond their control,
but I also want to make sure,
and I know that a Supervisor
Leopold and the rest of us
who support this action just to ensure
there's equity built in,
how would we distribute the funds?
I think a program of work
of how we're going to implement this,
how we might implement it and
how it will be administered,
who would determine the
qualifies for support
and how much support can they get.
And I'd like to also have
a better understanding
of how this program fits
into the larger strategy
of how we're allocating
our Cares Act funding,
some of which has already been allocated
or is going to be.
So there's a fully supportive of it.
I just would like to have more details
on how we're going to implement it
and to assure equity for those areas.
And it reaches each of our districts
throughout Santa Cruz County.
And I'm sure that Supervisor Leopold,
I know, and the rest of
us feel the same way,
but I just would like to,
I think the public will certainly
want to have some outlook
of how we're going to
administer this in more detail.
On item number 37,
I noticed that the average,
(coughs) excuse me,
number of days from contact referral,
then referral to securing
housing is more than a year.
And that's a glaring
problem in my estimation.
And I know the lack of
appropriate housing supply
is a major factor.
We don't have much housing
here in the county,
but some questions I'd
like to have answered.
Are there any anticipated
program adjustments
to improve the outcomes based on the data
that we've had now that
we've collected over a year
for that period of time,
do we ever look outside
of Santa Cruz County
to see when making
these housing referrals?
We have a lot of people
who commute and so forth.
I just wanted to get
a better sense of that
and having more dedicated,
affordable housing
is I believe is we all believe is critical
to reducing homelessness.
And if there's any outreach going on
to the property owners
whose rentals will be empty this fall
due to the UCSC staying online
in an effort to get more
of those property owners
to take a Section 8 vouchers.
Those are some of the questions
that I have again about
implementation of these programs,
I think is important.
And also I'd like to thank public works
as they continue their ongoing efforts
to make transportation road repairs.
Item number 45 to Bear Creek road,
a major, major arterial
from Santa Cruz County
over to Santa Clara County,
that many thousands use every day.
I appreciate their emergency work on that.
And all the work that
public works has been doing
to continue their road improvement program
that dates back to the 2016-17 storms.
And that's it, Mr. Chair, thank you.
- Caput, if you don't mind.
I just wanted to add a comment
to Supervisor McPherson's questions
and support Supervisor McPherson
and the rest of the board.
I've been working with county staff.
I believe that during the
budget hearings next week,
when we talk about the Cares Act
that there will be, the program
details will be available.
It'll probably be using some
of the other organizations
that are helping out with
rent assistance right now,
such as the Community Action Board
and Families in Transition,
but we'll have all that
information available
when we discuss this next week.
- [Bruce] Thank you.
- Vote on this, make a motion?
- Well, I'd be prepared to
move the consent agenda.
- [Ryan] Second.
- Was that Supervisor
Coonerty who second it.
- Yes.
- Okay, thank you.
I'll do the roll call vote.
Supervisor Leopold.
- Aye.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson?
- Aye.
Chair Caput?
- Aye.
Now we'll move on to the regular agenda.
Starting with item number seven.
- Public hearing to
consider proposed easement
by condemnation
APN 041-081-18
041-0811904-10820
041-081-21
to support the Valencia Road
2017 storm damage repair project
and adopt resolution of the the fifth
authorizing the County council
to institute eminent domain
proceeding to obtain possession
of the required real property interests
as outlined in the
memorandum of the deputy CAO.
Okay, thank you.
Hi, how are you?
- [Kimberly] Good, how are you?
- Good morning chair, board members.
I'm Travis Carey director
of capital projects,
and it was my pleasure to
provide a brief introduction
this morning before the actual item.
I want to introduce Kimberly Fendley.
She's our new chief real property agent
in the capital project division.
She's managing the real property section
In the Department of Public Works.
We're very excited to have her on board
Kimberly started in January of this year,
has already accomplished so much for us.
It's just really great
to have her on board.
She does have a law degree
and a very diverse background
in all kinds of real estate matters.
So it's very exciting to have her here.
Most recently, she was
a facilities manager
for the state of Alaska.
So those skills are
really valuable for us.
Kimberly's responsibilities
include managing the real
property section in public works,
leasing and property management
services county-wide.
She also does the road abandonments
and surplus land sales
and rights agreements to
support capital projects,
construction projects for us
providing excellent support there as well.
And also a lot of special
projects these days,
currently writing agreements
and doing negotiations
for the CAO, HSD, and
economic development projects,
and most importantly,
property acquisition.
So we do a lot of property
acquisition through public works.
A lot of those are for easements
to support emergency road repairs,
and sometimes those do
require condemnation.
And that's the topic
in front of you today,
so that I'll turn it over to Kimberly.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Good afternoon, chair
and members of the board.
My name is Kimberly Finley.
I'm the chief real property agent
with the Department of Public Works.
I appear before you today to request
that the board conduct a public hearing
on the proposed easement by condemnation
across real property,
located at Valencia Road
post mile 0.34.
And to request that the
board adopt a resolution
of necessity authorizing County Council
to institute the eminent
domain proceedings
to obtain possession of the
required real property interests
to provide brief, but relevant background,
public works is requesting
a resolution of necessity
to proceed with the eminent domain process
to obtain rights to 2,204 square feet
of permanent roadway easement
and 1,993 square feet of
temporary construction easement,
which easement runs across
four contiguous parcels
of land, all owned by
one. Mr. Dayne Pefferle.
substantial time and county resources
have been expended to attempt
to contact Mr. Pefferle
and offer just compensation
for the taking of these required permanent
and temporary easement rights.
The real property section has attempted
to reach Mr. Pefferle utilizing
available county resources,
internet search, the white pages
and via comprehensive background check
performed by County Council.
Public works has attempted numerous times
to contact Mr. Pefferle via
certified mail, telephone,
and physical site visit.
A condemnation notice
providing notification
of this public hearing was
sent to Mr. Pefferle's last
two known addresses via certified
mail on June 15th, 2020.
Both of these letters
have since been returned undeliverable.
To date the Department of Public Works
has received no response of communication
from Mr. Pefferle.
It is imperative that the
county move forward at this time
with acquiring the rural
property easement rights
over Mr. Pefferle's land.
As the associated Valencia Road
storm damage repair project
is at risk of losing vital project funds
if we do not pursue this
action expeditiously.
The Valencia Road storm
damage repair project
has been allocated $600,000
in Federal Highway Administration funds,
which funds our risk of lapsing
if this project is not
right of way certified
by September 2020.
This right of way
certification is dependent
on the county obtaining rights
to the proposed easement.
The Valencia storm damage repair project
will restore the road damage caused
by the 2016-2017 storm event.
The current damage consists
of an approximately 60 foot slip out,
which encroaches approximately
10 feet into the road
resulting in the complete
closure of one lane.
Any further damage to this road
would threaten the one remaining lane.
Valencia Road at post mile
0.34 is a major collector road
with a significant number
of average daily trips.
And it is a vital transportation link
for this area of the county.
This road must be repaired.
Based on the aforementioned,
I now request that the board
conduct a public hearing
on their proposed easement by condemnation
across real property, located
at Valencia post mile 0.34,
APNs 04108118,
04108119,
04108120,
and 04108121.
And adopt a resolution of necessity
authorizing County Council
to institute eminent domain proceedings
to obtain possession
of the required real property interests.
Thank you and I'm available
for any questions.
- Very welcome.
Do we have any board members
who have questions on the items?
I don't hear any.
So each person will open it up
to the public on item number seven.
- I think you you want to say
you want to open the public hearing?
- Oh yeah.
I'll now open the public
hearing on the item
and each person, anybody want to speak?
We have one.
Okay, you have three minutes, sir.
- [Man] Is that the item
to actual lady just spoke?
- Yes.
- Yeah.
- I used to live in the area,
but I can't picture
just which part of the Valencia Road it is
could she mentioned some
cross streets or intersection?
- [Greg] We have an answer.
- [Kimberly] It's located
at post mile 0.34,
and there is an exhibit A
attached to today's agenda item
that describes the location.
- Anybody downstairs wants to speak.
- [Woman] No one in the community room.
- No web comments?
That concludes public hearing
for item number seven.
Bring it back to the board.
- I'll move the recommended action.
- [Zach] And I'll second.
And Chair I'll just make a brief comment,
up for the board on this.
(Zach murmuring indistinctly)
- Okay and Mr. Friend though,
I was there's a little problem
with your microphone, maybe.
No, it was okay.
Maybe it's our problem here.
Okay.
So there a motion and a second?
- Yeah, I made the first
and Supervisor Friend
made the second.
- That's correct, I'm sorry.
And the clerk conduct the roll call.
- Supervisor Leopold.
- Aye.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson?
- Aye.
- And Chairman Caput?
- Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
That takes us to item number eight,
consider report on COVID-19 public health,
emergency shelter and care response,
and update on focus
strategies, action planning,
consider and approve Santa Cruz County,
six months of work plan
for homeless response,
adopt resolution authorizing
emergency solutions.
Grant a CV grant
in the amount not to exceed $1,967,600
and direct staff to return no
later than November 17th, 2020
with an updated report
and take related actions
as outlined in the memorandum
of the County Administrative officer.
Alright, how you doing?
- [Elissa] Good morning everyone.
Can you guys here me okay?
- Is your mic on?
- Yeah.
- [Elissa] Okay better,
good morning everyone,
Elissa Benson assistant
County Administrative Officer,
and I'm presenting today with Randy Morris
and he's gonna kick us off.
- Good morning board members, Chair Caput,
and public listening.
I'm Randy Morris.
I'm the director of the
Human Services Department.
And I'm sitting here with Elissa Benson,
actually wearing two hats.
The first one is the
human services department
is responsible to provide mass care
and shelter during a disaster.
And as I've had an opportunity
to present to this board
in public before that
is the work we're doing
in the shelter operation
to help those experiencing
homelessness and vulnerability.
And we'll be speaking to
some of our work again.
But second is,
this is sort of the
beginning of the transition
of the office from Elissa's leadership
and the County Administrative Office
to my department Human Services,
as the County Administrator
asked of your board
and your board approved we'll
be starting a new office
in Human Services.
So Elissa and I and our staff
have been working together
and sort of share this
report as the beginning
of this transition.
So I am going to share a
little bit at the beginning
of the presentation,
Elissa is going to kind
of go through the middle
of the presentation
and I'll close this out
and please ask us questions
anywhere along the way.
This is a lot of information
and we'll pause between
each of our presentations
in case you have questions.
What brings us in front
of your board today
is really two items.
One is there's been a number of requests
of your board over the last many months
for us to come back to you,
us being both the work we're
doing in Human Services
and the homeless office
in Elissa's operation.
So we're here to kind
of share those updates.
And second is we do need
to ask for your board
to take action on a grant,
which Elisa will speak to in more detail.
The specific agenda I'm
gonna be giving an update
on our work and COVID and
the shelter and care branch,
a lot of services we've
been providing as an update,
which is some of the
requests your board had of us
to come back to you and
talk about where we are.
Then Elissa is going
to talk about a number
of activities happening
with our consultant group
Focus Strategies and a
lot of work activity,
and some updates on both
the six month work plan,
as well as a three-year action plan
that's under development.
And then Elisa's presentation,
will finish with an update
on the grant opportunity
that I mentioned earlier,
and then I'll close us out
with summarizing what
the recommendations are
that we're asking of your
board and any questions.
So I would like to start
by just sort of explaining
to the public, if those don't know,
the health office has been
holding a lot of press briefings
and a lot of presentations
to the board about under a pandemic,
the public health office
initiates a number
of very formal activities,
including an incident command center
to sort of figure out how
to manage this pandemic.
And as an extension of that,
the Human Service Office
has opened up an incident
command center as well.
And we do all of our work in partnership
with the Health Office
to make sure we can do
what we can as the shelter operation
to help reduce the spread of COVID.
So we actually have a
formal incident action plan,
and I actually want to
just remind the board
and/or share with the public,
what those objectives are that
sort of ground the work we do
in our shelter work.
So there are three,
one is we are to provide shelter and care.
Sometimes it's both to
the highest risk groups
in our community,
which is predominantly
those experiencing homelessness and more.
Second is to ensure that
our shelter capacity
is 24/7 so that we can ensure
their social distancing
in those shelters to comply
with the shelter in place order,
because that's much harder to do
when you are somebody in
shelter or are homeless.
And then last to do all we can
with the resources, we have
to increase our outreach
during the pandemic to those
experiencing homelessness
so that we can sort of
be in touch with them
and see how we can help if possible.
So this is a report back
on some of the activities
and an update on some of
our work in the shelter
and care doc.
And I'll end with some of the things
that we're looking at moving forward.
Before I begin,
I do wanna take a moment to comment
that this is a presentation
from two Santa Cruz
County government offices,
but we do our work in
partnership with cities,
with volunteers, with
disaster service workers
and others from county government
and a number of nonprofit organizations.
So this we have the
pleasure of presenting kind
of the work we're doing,
but we includes a village
of lots of people.
So, summary on some of the work
we're doing in the shelter
and care operation.
First is we actually, at this point,
have six shelter in place programs.
Again, all of this is to
help beat the spread COVID,
I'm just gonna name that three of them
are actually sort of
brick and mortar space
where we've been able to
expand shelter opportunities
so that the shelters, which
I'll speak about next,
have opportunities to
provide social distancing.
And those are the Vet's
Hall in Watsonville,
the Vet's Hall in Santa
Cruz and the Armory.
Fourth is, and one of the
public comments earlier today
mentioned this, the
transition age use trailers
at the Seventh Day Adventist's Area,
which Supervisor Leopold's
office has been working on
with neighbors.
And then we have two areas that were sort
of unmanaged encampments
that we brought in services
to help and that's Coral Street,
and more recently the Bench Lands.
And I recognize there was a public comment
from somebody earlier today who's there.
So those six programs are
efforts we've stood up.
There's a lot of services
and resources predominantly
paid for by FEMA,
with food and a host of other activities
to try to help make sure people are safe
and COVID is not spreading
in those communities.
Next is we do have, as your board knows,
and the public likely knows
there are a number of
shelters in the community,
but prior to COVID majority
and perhaps all were not 24/7.
So we really took two actions forward
When COVID hit as part of our work,
and that was first to make sure
that these shelters could be 24/7.
So people who were
there sleeping overnight
could stay so that they
could shelter in place
the entire time.
Second, which links to the first,
we made sure there was
enough capacity elsewhere
in the community so that people
could be socially distanced,
which means there needed to be
fewer people in the shelters.
And then there was also a whole host
of other services brought
in place food and more.
I do wanna take an opportunity,
just recognize the good
work that's being done.
I'm sharing that this is being done
within the Human Services Operation,
but this particular
work was work being done
under Elissa's staff Tatiana,
who did the lion's share of work
with all the shelter network
was incredible amount of work.
So thank you Tatiana for your work there.
And then last,
this has been getting a
lot of statewide press,
the project room key program,
not only federal money,
but some state match money
to make it more affordable
for local jurisdictions,
to be able to stand up
hotels and lease hotel sites,
to be able to provide
isolation quarantine services
for people who lack shelter.
This was predominantly people
experiencing homelessness,
but also more recently people
who are in overcrowded housing,
where they won't be able to safely shelter
without spreading COVID in their home.
There has been four hotels
that have been stood up,
three in Santa Cruz
and one in Watsonville.
And we are in process of
standing up a fifth and a sixth.
The fifth that's just up is in Santa Cruz
and the sixth is in Watsonville.
And the one in Watsonville
that we anticipate will be
stood up later this week,
if not early next week
adds a hundred beds.
So lot of work being done.
The next status update is
care coordination services.
I think this sort of coincidentally links
to comments made by Supervisor Coonerty
and McPherson on a different item,
which is the Human Services
Department smart path program,
which this preexisted before COVID.
And that is, you know, what can we do
when we are helping people
who are experiencing homelessness
or in shelter to make sure
that we're not just providing care there,
but we're trying to connect them
to the very limited
affordable housing market.
And that often takes a lot
of support and wrap around
and case management.
So it was also brought in
care coordination services,
which simply put,
was doing a review of those
who are getting the services we provided
and finding out if they're enrolled in
and if not, referring
them to eligible services.
And then I'll speak in a
minute about the beginnings
of piloting of some
case management services
to help supplement that.
The last item I want to
share about status update.
I feel like I need to thread a needle here
because I recognize as county employees
and a lot of public comments
that were made about the
privilege we have of having jobs
and income to recognize
that the work of our staff is
getting quite overwhelming.
We have our regular day jobs.
All of the work I just listed is a job
on top of the regular day job.
And this has been going
on for months on end.
Staffing challenges manifest in two forms.
One is hiring extra help staff,
which has really helped with the economy
and people losing jobs to
bring them into the system,
to be able to provide the
services and in the shelters
and in the leased hotels.
But the other is the infrastructure.
And that is,
we're very strained
with managing this work
and everything I listed here.
So everything we have to do
to lift up the Bench Lands
program behind this building
and these extra shelters,
there's a tremendous amount
of administrative work
and contracts and getting people on board.
And so we have a number
of staffing challenges
that we're working on to
try to get ahead of this
so we can keep the work going ongoing.
So I want to end with a
moving forward comment
about our shelter and care work.
This first one is just such
a difficult issue to manage,
which is we are pretty
good as a government system
of planning, but how do you plan
when there is so much
uncertain in front of us?
We do not know what's gonna
happen with the pandemic.
I think the last time or two ago,
when we were in front of the board,
there was a request for us
to look at demobilization
and what to do now that
the spread has plateaued
and how are we gonna kind of
help move beyond pandemic?
And now we're in a second surge.
The funding is very, very unclear.
Most of the funding, we have
is state and federal funding
and if that funding dries up,
how do we continue these services?
How do we manage expectations?
How do we talk to the community
when that funding goes away, et cetera.
The next moving forward,
we are in the middle of,
and I wanna give Elissa
and her team the credit
for all the work they've been
doing the last month or two
to try to lift this up
before the transition happens
to my office to get a case
management program going,
we do not know, and we will only know
when we can get some more staff in place
to go help people who
are in these shelters
and in these hotels to see how,
and in what we can do to help them
so that they are not just sitting there.
But if there is an
opportunity to move them
to other housing arrangements,
more permanent housing that we do so.
So we are close to being able to pilot
a case management program,
and we hope to be able to expand that
and scale that over time,
especially if this pandemic continues.
So that's in process.
And the last is what I mentioned earlier.
We are looking at a number of scenarios
about how to increase our infrastructure,
to be able to deal
with what could be many,
many more months of this,
given the strain we're dealing with.
'Cause we can't sustain where we are.
And that includes we have
not made any decisions,
but we did just wanna share
publicly and with your board,
the possibility of funding seem stable
to actually have an RFP
with some vendor contracts
to help support some
of the work we're doing
so we don't continue to do it in house.
So this is a summary of the activities.
And I'm gonna pause there
to see if you have any questions.
Otherwise we'll have a chance
to have questions at the end
'cause I'm going to be
turning it over to Elissa
who's gonna talk about our
work with focus strategies.
- Just a quick question chair,
how many people are currently housed
in our additional housing sites
and how many more will be
when we get those additional two hotels.
- I can answer the last one.
And then the see if Elissa
wants to answer the first one.
They had two additional hotels
add approximately 130 beds,
about a hundred in Watsonville,
which actually calibrates a little bit
because the spread is
deeper in Watsonville.
That was intentional.
And then Elissa, do you have
the number I can give the.
- I'm gonna give you round figures.
I would say in our
shelter in place programs.
So not the isolation quarantine
with the extension of the
program at the Bench Lands,
we have about 300 additional capacity.
So that's not talking
about existing shelter.
That's the new capacity.
And then with the IQV sites,
I wanna say it's another 300,
including the new beds as well,
but I can double check that,
but that's that's top of mind for me.
So about 600, it's a significant increase.
- Considering how many
of our people experiencing homelessness
are sheltered in the
last point in time count,
I think it was less than 20%.
- That's correct.
- So this is a big step
up for sheltering options
than we had before.
- Yes it is.
- I appreciate all the
work that went into it.
- Thank you, well, thank
you for that handoff, Randy,
I do want to just take one moment
to express my gratitude and appreciation
for the entire shelter and care doc team.
As Randy mentioned, it is
HSD staff, HSA staff, CAO,
the EOC, we have active
city representation,
community partners,
including Housing Matters,
Salvation Army, CAB, Downtown Street Team
Encompass Downtown Outreach workers
and the nearly 200 extra
health disaster service workers
that we've employed in this system.
This is why we're able to do this work.
And it's, I feel so grateful
for everyone's partnership
and collaboration on this.
In terms of my part of the presentation.
I just want to orient the
board to the three items
I will be covering today.
The first two are really around
our focus strategies update
per the board's request in June.
The first item there is
our six month work plan
for our homeless response system,
and that is for your
consideration and approval.
And then the second focus strategies item
is some further refinements to our process
to effectively reboot
our three-year action planning process.
We want to give you an update
as our effort to streamline
that even further.
And then the third item I will be covering
is to briefly cover our
recommendation for the board
to adopt a resolution
for the receipt of an emergency
solutions grant COVID,
so it's a special grant
and that's typically a
very administerial item,
but there's some interesting aspects of it
we wanna highlight today.
I'm predominantly gonna
focus on the work plan
'cause that is where really
the meat of moving forward is.
So at our mid-June meeting
the board accepted our
staff recommendation
to develop a six month work plan
for our homeless response system.
So aside from that, just
being good practice,
this really stemmed from
our project advisory group
for the project that recognized
that the delay of our three
year action planning phase
due to COVID was leaving
us with a significant gap
as a system.
And they wanted us to find a way
to formalize the level of integration
and collaboration that
we were experiencing
in the shelter and care DOC
and develop that shared practice together.
So really we're focusing on integration
and maintaining our COVID response focus
and really looking towards results.
So where did the content come from?
We worked with focused strategies
and it really is a combination
of our COVID response activities
and then those actions we've identified
as part of focus strategies
to improve our homeless response system.
Focus strategies looked at
our incident action plans
to really understand what we
were planning on the ground,
as well as our four
interim recommendations
and turn those recommendations
and where our work groups had ended
into actionable steps moving forward.
As you can see in the slide,
the format of the work plan
is starting to parallel the format used
in our operational plan for the county
and really we're doing that
so we can hone in on specific next steps
and those are gonna be filled
out by our assigned leads,
measurable outputs and impacts,
and then focus strategies
is gonna continue
to provide us some ongoing
technical assistance
for many of the strategies
and objectives along with tracking
and evaluation of our
process and our results.
Like all work plans, we
expect this to evolve
as we get into the thick of it
And then move to the next slide.
So really let's take a minute
to talk a bit about content
at a fairly high level.
So this slide shows the six
and I want to stress prioritized goals.
This was an important
piece of the feedback
in developing this work plan.
We wanted to make sure we were really
at the top focusing on our activities
that are directly impacting the experience
of people who are homeless.
Within that, you'll
see in these six goals,
there are strategies and
then linked activities.
These activities range
from very specific items
like establish the
shelter in place program
at the Bench Lands
or acquire a hotel using
project home key funds.
Then they also move
to sort of broader system
improvement activities
like evaluate our local
rapid rehousing programs
and look to expand the funding of that.
'Cause those are the things
that really get people
from homelessness into housing.
We anticipate that the
work plan's articulation
of high level goals will
be in close alignment
with those that are proposed
in the three-year action plan
that you will be seeing
later in the summer.
Next slide please.
Next I'm gonna move to a quick update
on our three-year action plan development.
Just for the viewing public,
this has been a goal as the final output
of our focus strategies assessment,
and then where do we go from here?
And really that through your action plan
is to provide the framework
for community efforts
across all jurisdictions
for the next three years
in addressing homelessness,
to align those efforts
and really provide that overarching goals,
strategies, and priorities
to drive us forward.
We are now gonna build on our lessons
from COVID-19 and sustain that work.
It's also our time to start pivoting
from our immediate response
to longer term solutions
and strategies to end homelessness.
So quickly, we did have another check in
with our project advisory board.
As we in June had
envisioned doing a webinar
and a series of early input
sessions from the public
to drive the drafting of the plan.
And when we checked back in
with the project advisory committee,
given the surge in cases
and just how everyone's
focus is on that response,
they suggested we continue
to streamline that process.
So we're not gonna be doing an webinars
and digital input feedback sessions early.
Instead, they've recommended
that we go ahead,
work on that draft plan,
so there's a document
for people to respond to.
So we will be working with
the project advisory board
and key stakeholders in August
to develop that draft plan,
present that as a draft to
the board in mid-September,
and then engage in some
real focused engaged,
I will say, online
virtual feedback sessions
and an open comment period
through the end of September,
we'll then take the first
few weeks of October
to finalize that plan
and bring it to the board October 20th.
Next slide.
So this last item, as I
mentioned, is really a request.
It's an simple action request
for the board to adopt a resolution,
to accept receipt of our ESG-CV grant
and authorize staffed
exec to execute agreement.
This is something we typically
handle as a consent item,
but this is unique in a couple ways.
And we just wanted to highlight that.
The funding for this particular program
is just under a million dollars.
And it is funding that is really,
it's comes from Cares Act
funding that flowed from HUD,
the Housing and Urban
Development Department
at the federal level to the state,
to then our local continuums of care,
here known as the Homeless
Action Partnership,
and more funding from
that source is expected
to come to our community.
This program itself is our first foray
into building a specific case management,
housing navigation, and
flex funding program
for our shelters.
And it advances the focus
strategy recommendation
on addressing housing focus shelters
and moving people from shelter
into permanent housing.
The focus of this pilot
will be on three of our
COVID related programs.
As we all know, we eventually
will have to end those
and we want to bring
real housing solutions
to our clients are in those programs now.
We don't want to be exiting
people to other shelters
or back on the street.
So we see this as a very critical time
for us to really step into
this idea of case management
and housing navigation.
So with that,
I'm open to any questions
on the topics I've covered,
but I'll also pass it to Randy.
- [Randy] And my topic is to close out,
summarize what the
recommendations are to your board,
but I'll pause to see
if there's any comments
or questions before I do?
- [John] Chair, I just
have some questions.
- [Greg] Any board comments first,
and then we'll open up public.
- Thank you for the presentation.
I just want to say that
I've had the experience
of working with Ms. Benson and the staff
on the establishment of the
temporary housing program
in Soquel, I know how hard people work
to make sure that we have good programs
and I've seen it up close
in terms of it working well.
And I have great appreciation.
I'm really glad to see us moving forward
with a more detailed plan.
There's some small things
here in terms of language.
And then there's big things
in terms of language.
For instance, there's an item
that talks about a rent moratorium.
And although there are many people
who want us to have a rent moratorium,
we have really have an
eviction moratorium.
The bigger issue is it's
hard to figure out exactly
what we might see in six months.
The information is in there,
but I think we would be serving
the public's interests well
by creating documents
that were easy to read
because there's a lot
of infrastructure building
a lot of strategies
and objectives and strategies
and how it fits into the three year plan
and all these different pieces.
But it's very hard to ascertain exactly
where we're going,
how we're getting there.
And I think we need to work on clarity.
So I just want to encourage this
because we know that there's
a lot of public interest
in these issues.
We are doing some good
work to house 600 people
in a relatively short period of time
to think about the case
management program,
to think about how we can ensure
that the limited amount
of housing is available
is being directed towards
the people most vulnerable.
These are all really critical pieces,
but it's hard to wade through that
with the way that the
documents are set up.
So I just want to encourage that
and hope that we could see
something in the near future
that would be helpful
for people to understand
what the county is doing.
Thank you.
- So Chair Caput, I do
have a closing slide
that summarizes the recommendations
before opening it up
to the public comment.
And if now's the time,
unless there's other questions,
I'll just close this out.
Okay, so this may or may not relate
to Supervisor Leopold's comment.
We are asking that the board
memo that was submitted
be accepted and filed,
and specifically that we be directed
to return by November 17th.
And that could be the
point in time or before
where we come back with a
more public facing document
and recognition.
There is a lot of talk in there
about infrastructure stuff
for us, that's important,
but to have something more
public facing makes sense.
So we could do that at
November 17th or prior,
whatever your pleasure.
The second is asking
your board to consider
and approve what Elissa
listed in her quick summary,
which is in the attachment
with the recognition
of Supervisor Leopold's request
to come back with something
sort of more simplified
and viewable to the public,
but as is to accept what's been submitted.
And the last is the formal asked
to adopt the emergency solutions grant,
the coronavirus grant resolution
for up to, you know, just shy
of the 2 million as listed.
And that does allow us to
put programming in place
that has actually been referenced earlier
to get some case
management services going.
So those are the three
formal recommendations
we are asking of your board,
and then we turn it to you
for questions, comments,
or public comment.
Thank you.
- Mr. Chair?
Supervisor McPherson
had a couple questions
that we could before the public.
First of all, I want to thank
the Human Services Department,
Health Services, Economic
Opportunity Office.
This is a much more than
we could have anticipated
and more complicated,
but I think that it's especially important
how we address more efficient
and effective governance
system that we have.
Just basically, I'm really pleased
about the expansion of
the mental health services
and case management and housing navigation
that's included in this.
And I'm anxious to see
how that's gonna be,
how we can make that grow,
and be more stable and
address more people.
A couple of questions that I
had, maybe I can ask all three,
and then if you might have
an answer to it together,
the report mentions the
request for proposal process
for the shelter management.
And there's a lot of challenges in that.
Should we be proactively
looking outside of our county?
Are we gonna be able to find
you said we can find a provider
inside Santa Cruz County,
that's one.
The report identifies
the ongoing encampment
in the Bench Lands and our
efforts to improve its structure.
But I think the plan
that you were gonna
come back October 20th,
what's our plan after October,
and maybe you will address it then,
and when is it slated to
close on the Bench Lands?
So that's number two.
And then number three,
there's a lot of concern about fire danger
in the Pogonip area post
by these encampments
while it's in this city's jurisdiction
to enforce laws against setting fires
and other harmful activity.
What is the status of our
efforts to offer options
to those folks who are living up there,
but need shelter in place
as a result of COVID-19?
Is there anything immediate
or will that be all
I'm sure it's gonna be all
part of the overall plan,
but is there anything immediate
because that's a huge concern
we've experienced some fires
already in California,
especially right now,
down in Southern California.
So those are the three
questions that I have.
And I don't know if you
might be able to give me
some general answers.
I'm sure more specific answers
will be coming in October.
- Supervisor McPherson, we
both wrote the same notes
and just whispered to each other,
Randy Morris Human Services,
I'll start to answer number one,
and then I'll turn it over to Elissa
to kind of fill in some more.
Yes, there was a reference
to a potential RFP
to help get a vendor in place
to help us with some of
our shelter services.
I just want to start by acknowledging
kind of the complexity of that.
The FEMA funding is on 30 day cycles.
I think a nonprofit vendor
would be a tough ask
to kind of take on something
much like we're taking on
right now to take on providing services.
The funding stream is so unclear.
That said, community based organizations
are really struggling right now.
And we're all being very nimble.
And we do have a infrastructure strain.
There's only so many county employees
and we have regular work to do
that's not getting done
that we need to get done.
So I would just say
it's referenced in there
to offer a full disclosure to the board,
what we're thinking about.
We have made no final decisions,
of course, an RFP and a
contract would have to come back
to your board,
but we're trying to thread a needle
of the staffing challenges we have,
the FEMA money that's here now,
and just how to best balance,
how we sort of spread the work.
That's very real, very
complex and getting deeper.
So that's the answer to that question.
No final answers.
And we would welcome any direction
from your board, or thoughts on it.
And, you know, whenever
I'll turn it over to Elissa,
who's been working more
closely with the Bench Lands
and then the other encampment area
in Santa Cruz city limits, complex issues.
- Sure, Supervisor McPherson.
So in terms of the ongoing,
the question around Bench Lands
and our shelter in place program
that we just started there,
the expectation is we would be
running that through October.
But as we approach, you
know, winter weather,
that it can't be at that site,
it's just, it is literally
in the flood plain
and not a reasonable place
to be sheltering folks.
So quite frankly,
our shelter and care docs
started yesterday talking
about just as we've opened it.
We have to put a team together
to work with the city of Santa Cruz,
assuming we have continued
ability to fund something
as to where we will move it
when weather no longer
allows it to be at that site.
So we absolutely understand that it,
we just as quickly as kicking it off,
we have to think about where
we will move from that site
assuming we are able to continue
it depending on funding.
So we will initiate that promptly
and have a little strike team
that starts thinking about that
and working with the city on options.
In terms of the fire danger in the Pogonip
and encampments in that area,
as you referenced Supervisor McPherson,
really the decision around
the balance of leaving folks
in place versus addressing fire danger
is up to the city.
That said, if they ask for our help,
we will be happy to provide it,
I do need to be realistic though,
about the capacity of our existing shelter
and our expanded shelter system
to absorb a lot more people.
I would say today, if I
checked our capacity numbers,
we may have between North
and South County shelters.
I want to say 20 to 35 beds.
That's what we have available right now.
And we have long lists and those are
in the shelter in place programs,
that's not including
our isolation quarantine
as obviously that is reserved for folks
who have been COVID exposed,
and need isolation and
quarantine facilities.
But the reality of the matter
is we, depending on the numbers of folks
who might be asked to leave the Pogonip,
we have a limited number of beds
that we could make available to them.
- [Bruce] Very good thank
you, understandable too.
- Should we go out for public comment?
- We'll now open it up.
Okay, you have three minutes.
Thank you.
- Hey, do I have three
minutes or two minutes?
It just started clicking at two?
- [Greg] Oh yeah.
- Okay.
- Thanks.
- My name is Serge Gagno,
I know some of you guys,
I want to really appreciate everybody
who you included done,
gone into the shelter and care
services for the homeless.
There are a lot of new programs
that we've been able
to do with the funding,
and we've been able to do a
lot of low barrier programs
that you can see from the shelters
that Elissa was talking about,
that there are participants
who have never been chosen
to be in any program that
we've had in our county.
They have not been at HMIS
and they have not gotten
services anywhere,
but we've changed our service model
to be more accommodating to people,
to get more people into the services,
which move them more to housing,
really want to appreciate the work
on the case management as well.
And trying to add that in
and applying for some
more funding for that,
but also understanding
that there have to be more
housing options for people.
We also have to be looking
at other kinds of programs,
whether that's a mid-Pen,
where they did the program
up towards Dominican,
that we need more big projects
to actually house some people.
I also want to appreciate
the managed encampment
at the Bench Lends that just started up.
And we realized you guys
have been talking about it.
That it's just a three
month thing right now.
It's just till end of October,
trying to find another
site for that trying
to keep for COVID not
having people spread out
across the county and across
the city having effect
on a lot of people.
But right now the people
who have chosen not to
be in the Bench Lands
are getting scattered today and tomorrow.
So there's still as we,
the CDC has recommended
not clearing encampments
that still happens in the city.
So I would ask, and I would ask
the Board of Supervisors to,
as we try to do our HSD DOC
supporting the homeless,
also trying to support our cities
to work with us
as opposed to challenging the homeless,
because the homeless that choose to be
in our programs are
treated in certain ways
in our jurisdictions.
And that is part of our issue
of how we get them
engaged in our programs.
So thanks for everything
you guys are doing.
- Hi, this is Jay Rosella Myers again,
and 20 years ago, I
served on the Santa Cruz
civil grand jury for an entire year.
And this was a major problem
that we looked into of homelessness.
And I realized that it makes it
even a special issue right now
of trying to create a safe environment
under these challenging
circumstances today with COVID
and trying to create a safe place
that creates more immunity.
And I have always wondered,
especially right now,
as businesses are going
out in Santa Cruz County,
there are some pretty large businesses
that have left the county
like Sears, like Toys R Us.
And these are huge vacant spaces
that are laying empty, you know,
and I wonder if that's anything
that it's ever been looked into in terms
of providing a safe
shelter or environment,
and can some of this
money that's allocated
for this set of circumstances,
be actually utilized to work out deals
with those commercial properties.
You know, for some benefit of those people
who are not able to lease those spaces,
it seems like that might
be a helpful solution.
And if something like
that could be focused on
and pulled together.
Anyway, I don't know if
that's ever been considered,
but I've thought about it a lot
ever since I was on the grand jury.
And that was an issue way back when,
even more important today.
Anyway, thank you.
- [Greg] Okay thank you.
- Marilyn Garrett.
I always think of this bumper sticker.
It'll be a great day when the schools
and everything else, social services,
would have have all the money they need.
And the Air Force has to have a bake sale
to buy a bomber.
Food not Bombs is an appropriate title
for a group that has over
I think a thousand groups
across the globe.
Keith McHenry was a founder of it,
he lives here in Santa Cruz.
I heard him interviewed on
a KPFA flashpoints program.
I think it would be helpful
to meet some of the real
stakeholders in this,
the homeless and the people
who are actually feeding the homeless
to have him on the agenda
to do a presentation here.
He described when I heard him interviewed
about the Bench Lands as
like an internment camp,
the way it's fenced in
and you know, people.
And I also have this
flyer, I'll give you again,
that relates to this.
And Supervisor Leopold, you mentioned,
this is probably only to serving
approximately 20% of homeless.
So woefully inadequate,
however hard you try,
you don't have a different structure
of a system to actually provide for people
and it's gonna not really help.
So this says feeling sad and
depressed, are you anxious,
worried about the future,
feeling isolated and alone.
You might be suffering from capitalism.
Symptoms may include.
And as I re-read these,
I thought this is really accentuated
during these last few months,
symptoms may include homelessness,
unemployment, poverty,
hunger, feelings of hopelessness,
fear, apathy, boredom,
cultural decay, loss of identity,
loss of free speech,
incarceration, suicidal,
or revolutionary thoughts, death.
We have a system problem
here called capitalism,
and it's only gotten worse.
And I'd like to see you advocate
for having the budget changed
so that the military budget is very low
and we get the money
from the military budget
for real needs in our
community, thank you.
- Thanks Marilyn.
- Hi my name is James Ewing Whitman.
There's very few things that
I'm actually sure of in life,
but I know
that before this coronavirus
even was spoken about
I spoke in a city of Santa
Cruz Council several times
that we are all homeless
and that has to do with
the weapons technologies
that most people greatly ignore.
Our home is our castle, it's safety,
security, its privacy.
That's largely not being discussed
and it's not being looked into.
So I do think it's great
that we're coming up to live
with all these emergency procedures
to deal with the homeless,
but these procedures and ways
to deal with the homeless
and all of us who are homeless
have been decided much
long ago much longer.
FEMA has plans for us.
And it's my understanding,
and I could be wrong that on March 23rd,
the President of the United States,
President Trump stepped
down and put FEMA in charge.
But yet our media isn't discussing
that we no longer have a president.
So I'm just concerned and I'm speaking.
And I'm glad that we can all
still talk to each other.
Thank you.
- Thank you.
- I'd like to say one thing
I meant to say earlier,
the library public library is closed
and to help homelessness,
why is that closed
when so many other things are open?
So many other things to open,
but the public library is closed.
I understand that the concerns
about the current virus,
but other places are open.
Why can the public library be accessible?
Even if it was fewer people coming in,
I really feel like you should reopen that.
It would give people of low income
or homeless people access
to looking for jobs,
a safe place to be off the street,
a safe place to think.
So it's really invaluable for people
who have low income and who are homeless.
We can look for jobs,
we can be safe, and we can think there,
but it's closed when so
many other things are open.
So please consider opening the
library, the public library.
And I also think language matters.
And to me, that sounded
incredibly bureaucratic.
What was talked about of the motivation
is just to get homeless
people off the streets
and out of the way and clean it up,
we're people we're human beings.
So I don't don't think that is realistic.
People will react to
it, trust is an issue.
I have a trust issue.
I was falsely diagnosed
with five different mental disorders,
I think the doctor
actually upped the disorder
every time I told him I
didn't have one at Telecare.
I think every single time
I tried to convince him, I
didn't have a mental disorder.
He added another one for the chart.
So that's a problem.
That's a white collar crime
that's medical misdiagnosis
I knew I didn't have one,
but I was diagnosed with one.
So trust is an issue.
What's the motivation
of people getting help,
getting homeless people off the street.
Is it to help them or is
it just to clean them up?
Because then it's not even realistic.
We are human beings.
The sound of having some empty place,
like a Target or any of those buildings
used for an encampment
sounds really great.
I mean, there's a lot of people
who out there are homeless.
So the sheer numbers that
is, it has to be realistic.
It can't be a small space,
but yeah, I think language matters.
If the motivation is
simply to clean people up
and to get people out of the
way and shove people aside
is just not realistic,
but if it is to help people, that's good.
But we can tell what the motivation
of somebody coming up to you is,
is this person simply trying
to force their will on you,
or are they actually trying to help you?
So the motivation and
language does matter.
- Thank you.
(audience applauding)
I don't believe there's
anybody downstairs,
any other comments?
- [Clerk] I don't believe
there's anybody downstairs,
but we do have one web comment.
This is from Becky Steinbrenner,
dear Board of Supervisors.
I understand that the county plans
to purchase multiple hotels,
to provide permanent housing
for people experiencing homelessness.
I assume the county is hoping
to be awarded the funds
to do this from Governor
Newsom's project home key.
These funds must be
spent within six months.
While I approve of providing
effective shelter for homeless.
I worry that when project home key
and other COVID-19 emergency
revenues disappear,
county taxpayers will be left
with the financial burden
of maintaining the hotels
and expensive programs
while state and federal
reports projecting a 45% rise
in homeless population due
to the economic problems
of the COVID-19 shutdowns.
We cannot take an unsuitable
level of debt burden
for the county without some
plan of how we can pay for it.
I also feel the county has continued
to ignore using county owned property
at Crestview and Freedom
Boulevard in Watsonville
as permanent location for
trailers donated by the state
and federal government
for COVID-19 shelter.
That could be kept on as
a permanent housing site
with more than 12 trailers
the county received.
The site had nearly 100 trailers
installed for shelter
after the '89 earthquake
and should be used now
rather than the county fairgrounds
and the Seventh Day Adventist's camp,
because it's on the
transportation corridor
and is adjacent to medical
and behavioral health services.
Please reconsider this plan.
Will the six month strategy
development be a public process?
It needs to be.
Thank you, sincerely, Becky Steinbrenner.
- Okay, thank you.
That concludes a public
comment on item number.
- [Ryan] Mr. Chair, oh sorry,
I'm a couple before we,
before we take a motion.
- Correct, and bring it back
to the board for comments.
- [Ryan] Thank you, this is Ryan Coonerty.
I wanna thank Ms. Benson and
Mr. Morris for their work.
They both in working with the board
and the community and the cities,
but also in maintaining a safe environment
for people experiencing homelessness.
During this pandemic, the
numbers speak for themselves.
We could have had much
higher numbers spread
throughout the homeless community,
as well as the broader community,
but their and their staff's efforts
to quickly intercede have
made a big difference.
And I appreciate their efforts
going forward to manage it.
And we are, as was mentioned,
I think in Ms. Benson's
statement, you know,
we're both trying to respond to a crisis
and also build a lasting
more effective system
going into the future and
to do both those things
at the same time
while managing all the
various responsibilities
is very difficult.
I just want to put in I'm
supportive of the direction
we're heading and the elements
that we're moving forward today.
I do want to state that, you know,
when we look at the case management,
hopefully with a very
strong housing navigation
and diversion component built in.
Supervisor McPherson mentioned,
I think it's gonna be really important
to build the expectations of outcomes
and to getting people
into housing much sooner
than one year.
And to figure out strategies,
to get people into housing sooner
and faster will be essential
so that it's actually
in the contract and we're
building both a culture
and a policy approach going forward.
That is, that serves the
people who are in need.
So as we pursue this CARES Act money
for needed case management,
I hope that we're using that
as an opportunity to build management
and expectations in going forward.
- Thank you.
Any other comments from board members?
- [Ryan] I'll move the
recommended actions, Coonerty.
- [Bruce] Second.
(all laughing)
- Chair, I would just add that,
I hope we can get these more
easy to understand documents
way before November 17th.
I think that's very important,
but I think that's going on.
- I want to thank you also.
Thank you very much.
The tremendous help to the community,
and we all appreciate everything.
Will the clerk please
conduct the roll call?
- Supervisor Leopold?
- Aye.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson.
- Aye.
- Chairman Caput?
- Aye.
The motion passes unanimously.
And if we can take maybe
what a 12 minute break
and we'll come back right
around 22 minutes to 12.
Thank you.
We'll go to item number nine,
considered resolution
issuing emergency regulation.
Number 2020-01 to temporarily suspend.
(crowd murmuring)
- [Woman] Is your microphone on?
I don't think your microphone's on.
Oh it is on.
- I got it on.
- Okay.
- I'm Probably not.
- [Woman] It's so much
harder with the masks.
- Maybe so.
- Project.
- Okay that's all.
Okay.
Resolution 2020-01
temporarily suspend single use bag charges
in the unincorporated
area of Santa Cruz County,
as outlined in the memorandum
of the County administrative officer,
we'll have a report on that
and hopefully the other the cities
in the county are gonna
hopefully follow this also.
Thank you.
- Good morning, Chair Caput
and the rest of the board.
My name is Kasey Kolassa
I'm with public works,
the recycling and solid
waste services manager.
The proposed resolution
is to temporarily suspend
the county mandate
for businesses to charge customers
for bags during the emergency.
The purpose of this resolution
is to protect the health
and safety of consumers and retail workers
during the COVID-19 pandemic
while reducing disproportionate impacts
of bag charges to low income shoppers,
the change would affect
all retail businesses
in the unincorporated areas of the county,
but not in the four local cities,
unless they take similar action.
As an emergency resolution,
this measure would be
effective immediately
upon approval by the board.
And the suspension would be in effect
until lifted by the board.
Existing requirements
for types of bags allowed
would remain unchanged by this resolution.
Businesses would still have
the option to charge for bags
if they choose, but would no
longer be required to do so.
Businesses in the
community will be notified
by mail, press releases,
the county website
and social media.
And this is in line with
the Cal OSHA guidance
for infection prevention in stores.
Meant to protect the workers
by not having them handle
customers reusable bags.
And it also helps the elderly and disabled
who would not be required
to bag their own groceries.
- Okay, thanks a lot.
And do we have any questions
from board members?
- Just for clarity sake,
this was people would,
grocers would be the
ones who get to choose
whether they charge or not, not us?
- Correct, there's nothing
to prevent a grocer
from charging for a bag
or any other store.
- Right.
- And my question would be what cities
in the county are also
gonna suspend the bug.
- [Kasey] I'm not aware of what
the other cities are doing,
but I imagine they would
do something similar
- Okay and any other supervisor questions?
We'll open it up, public
hearing each person
anybody want to speak on the item?
I have a couple, thank you.
We'll give you three minutes okay.
- And I just have to say,
I've heard so many complaints
by the retail operations
about having to charge for bags.
And it's been so unclear
about whether or not
it's safe to bring our own bags,
bag the things ourselves
it's like all over the map in terms of,
but I just heard a report
that plastic bags were used
for a while by many of
the retail grocery stores,
especially in town that
they said they were safer.
But in the report,
I actually heard
that the plastic bags
hold the germs, and virus,
and bacteria and stuff three days longer
than the paper bags.
And so it's like,
I wish there was some clarity
about which thing was actually safer.
Like it staff, for instance,
we have the bags that they give us
when we spend over a
certain amount of money
and they refuse to take those now
in terms of recycling them.
And so it's just very unclear
about what's the right
way to go at this point.
And it would be nice to
actually have some information
about what way is actually
the safest, you know?
And so it's my understanding
that you're gonna just
leave it up to the retailers
at this point,
or is there gonna be a
resolution about that they can
do the no charge thing.
'Cause I know it's such a pain for them
to charge for the stuff.
So anyway, a couple of questions.
- [Greg] Thank you.
- Hi my name is James Ewing Whitman.
I think this is a question
of safety and economy.
I believe the gentleman who
first spoke on this item
was for public works
recycling or something.
The example that we can't
bring in our own reusable bags
and reuse them as kind of another question
of how our freedoms are being removed.
You know, I'm very fortunate
that one of my favorite restaurants
in the county is still open,
but I know that when I go and eat there
rather than use a container
and pile on as much salsa as I want,
I've walked out of there
and realized that I grabbed
26 little things of salsa
and that stuff really
largely doesn't get recycled.
And so there's a lot of
bigger issues going on
in our society right now
than these petty things
of whether the county is gonna decide
to force businesses, to
charge or not charge for bags.
That's all I have to say
right now, thank you.
- Thank you, so that's a good comment.
Sure, hi Marilyn.
- So I was looking at
a note that I had here
from listening to news a year ago
and it said $180 billion had been put
into new plastic production.
So there's this thing about
single use plastic bag
is a drop in the bucket
and we've seen, I mean,
it's just like we're
inundated with plastic
with all of this.
And what was the figure?
My friend did you just cite them?
I think she said she heard on the news,
there's now more masks in the ocean
from all this than plastic bottles.
So this is a huge problem.
We know plastic doesn't decompose.
It's totally toxic.
And it just is astounding how we're told,
oh here's this terrible, terrible problem.
And here's the solution,
you know, plastic bags,
toxic disinfectant, smothered all over.
And I heard some of the
disinfectant products
have actually been recalled
because they had, was it
methanol something so toxic
would alcohol that it
could destroy your organs.
So what is really healthy
here and what isn't
and viruses are natural to nature.
They circulate all over the globe.
They penetrate this.
There's something really the
matter with this picture,
but certain businesses
are really doing well.
You know, Apple, the computer business,
the sanitizer business,
the plastic business,
the billionaires are getting wealthier.
So I do think this should be repealed.
I like to see plastic like prohibited
and bring our own cloth bags
when we go grocery shopping,
like we'd been asked to do so often.
Thank you.
- Right, yeah.
Any other comments?
- [Clerk] Yes, we've got six web comments.
The first web comment
is from a Milan Lewis.
I am opposed to this ordinance
to suspend the prohibition
on single use plastic bags
in retail establishments.
Plastic bags are a huge
source of plastic pollution
and death of marine animals
in the waters bordering,
Santa Cruz County.
Customers can easily accommodate
restrictions on the use of reusable bags
in stores to prevent
coronavirus transmission.
Trader Joe has set up tables
outside the store entrance
to allow customers to
bring their groceries
from the store in a cart
and load their groceries
into their own reusable bags.
As senior citizens,
my wife and I find this easy
to use and no inconvenience.
We much prefer to avoid
adding to ocean pollution
from plastic bags.
The second comment is from Catherine O'Day
Good morning supervisors.
I am Catherine O'Day executive
director of Save our Shores.
As you know, Save our Shores has advocated
for smart policies related
to ocean plastic pollution
for more than a decade.
And with your leadership,
we have made considerable progress.
Therefore, we would be remiss
if we did not express concern
about the proposed resolution
issuing emergency
regulation number 2020-01
to temporarily suspend
single use bag charges.
Before preparing my comments,
I researched the
California government code
cited by the county
Department of Public Works,
namely code 8634,
to try to understand why
the DPW feels justified
in proposing the resolution.
My conclusion is that DPW
may have taken an overly
broad interpretation
of the code.
Change Labs Solutions,
a national organization
based in Oakland, California
advises equitable law and
policies to ensure healthy living
for all published a paper
in May of this year,
assessing the authority
of local governing bodies
to order under the regulation necessary
to provide the protection of life
during COVID-19 health emergency.
Change Labs Solutions'
multidisciplinary team of lawyers,
planners, and policy analysis agrees
that this California code does not indeed
grant local governing
bodies authority to enact
and enforce laws to
address health emergencies.
But with the caveat that
those laws do not conflict
with state law.
Suspending the single use bag charge
would clearly conflict with
the statewide plastic ban.
Hence the logical conclusion is that
passing the proposed resolution
would cause the statewide
ban on single use plastics
to become the governing
regulation in our county.
Therefore thereby rendering
the resolution moot
of passing this regulation
would trigger the state law.
You would not accomplish
the stated objective
of providing relief to those
enduring economic hardships
due to the coronavirus.
Instead, all that would be accomplished
is the loss of our county's reputation
as an environmental leader.
Most residents of our county
readily embraced our local bag ban
and we're proud that our
community was among the first
in the state to take action
to address plastic bag litter
and its impact on the health,
even the very life of our
Monterey Bay wildlife.
We strongly urge you to
oppose the resolution
and maintain integrity
of our own county's regulatory process,
and the authenticity of our
environmental leadership.
Thank you.
Oh there's more. (laughs)
This one is from Ken Davenport.
It is a very small but welcome gesture
by administrative officer.
Next one is by Gail Marie McNulty.
While we must protect people
and local businesses that are suffering
as a result of the economic downturn,
reversing our weakening hard
won environmental protections,
like our county's plastic bag
ban is not the right plan.
Now the state's temporary suspension
of the bag ban has been allowed to expire,
the state mandate of
minimum 10 cent bag charge
stands as a baseline of
environmental protection.
The county would be wise
to follow the city of Santa Cruz's lead
in upholding the 25 cent bag charge
while amending the original
ordinance to include a list
of hardship exemptions
that would ensure those
who need to receive bags
free of charge may do so
without allowing our county
to needlessly slide backward in a way
that negates our community's
commitment to defend our Bay
and our children's shared future
on this threatened planet.
We know that those with
underlining health issues
are more vulnerable to the
worst outcomes with COVID-19.
However, we don't know
yet the health effects
are potential heightened
vulnerability being created
by the credit card's worth of plastic
all humans are estimated to be eating,
drinking, and breathing each week.
We've all seen images of
how the plastic pandemic
is devastating our marine life.
Locally, the increase in takeout food
combined with massive increase in traffic
to our beaches has already
led to a huge increase
in the amount of bags and other
trash barraging our beaches
and other public places.
Unfortunately, much of this garbage has,
and will make its way
into our precious Bay.
Meanwhile, the plastic
industry has been hard at work
spreading falsehoods about
the safety of plastic,
which has been proven
to be more of a vector
for the virus than organic materials.
They are using the opportunity
to increase production
further harming many low
income communities of color.
The communities that generations
of environmental racism
has left vulnerable,
enabling disposal lifestyles
harms the communities where
the plastic is produced
and the places where most
of the garbage accumulates.
In both these cases,
the hardest hit people
tend to be the poor,
not white leaders living
in relatively safety.
Leaders, living in relatively safety
must understand how
their choices echo beyond
the privileged communities
in which they vote.
This was from Becky Steinbrenner,
dear Board of Supervisors.
Thank you for removing
the added cost to patrons
who may not be allowed
to bring their own reusable
shopping bags into the store.
The rules are very confusing about this
and seems to change nearly daily.
However, what is clear is
that even though society
is in an economic crisis,
brought about by the COVID-19 shut downs,
people still want and need
to care for the environment.
I have watched in dismay
as single use plastic bags
have returned to the stores
and also along the roadsides
and parking lots where they are discarded
or blow out of the garbage trucks.
If the county feels it is necessary
to allow single use bags
to proliferate again,
by banning the use of
reusable shopping bags,
please also ban the use
of single plastic bags
and only allow paper bags to
be handed out in all stores
for customer's purchases.
The amount of plastic has
increased going into landfill
has skyrocketed due to
increased online shopping
and take out food containers.
Please support the environment
even during this crisis.
Thank you, Becky Steinbrenner.
And the last comment is
from Jean Brocklebank.
As elders, age 75 and 71,
we find no problem with
bagging our own groceries.
I believe, no, okay.
I'm sorry I thought I read this
one already, but I haven't.
We take reusable bags to Trader
Joe's or Shopper's Corner
or Live Oak Super.
We keep them on our shoulders
just like they were a purse.
We choose our groceries
telling you the cashier
that we do not need
bags, paper or plastic.
They are always very happy to hear this.
They put the items back
into the shopping bag.
After scanning,
they put the items back
into the shopping cart.
After scanning them,
we take our carts outside
and fill our personal reusable bags.
Trader Joe's even provide
sanitized tables as a service.
We simply use the sidewalk at shopper's
and the same with Live Oak Super.
Everyone is masked, this
saves paper plastic,
and the cost of providing
bags for customers.
This works easily, and it is safe
for the staff, as well as the public.
We are distressed at the huge,
additional amount of waste
we see in the environment
during this pandemic.
So much more plastic,
including masks is floating
around spilling out
of garbage bins.
We do not support the
emergency resolution.
We would support the county clarification.
That says if it's is,
we would support a county clarification
that says it is advisable
for those who drive to buy
large quantities of groceries
to have empty cardboard boxes
or reusable bags in their cars
for the purpose of easily
bagging their own groceries
from the shopping cart.
The health of humans is
interactively connected
to the health of the environment.
Let's not trash one while
providing for the other.
That's it, thank you.
- Thank you.
Okay.
Supervisor McPherson, I see your hand up.
- You finished the public comment,
but we all are clearly
aware of the adverse impacts
that plastic bags have our environment,
but however, I support suspending this fee
until reusable bags are uniformly allowed
by retailers in the county.
Right now that's not the case
as some grocery stores
are permitting them again
and some are not,
but I would, there might be
more discussion from the board,
but I have a proposed
motion when it comes to that
with some additional direction,
but there may be other board members
who would like to speak first.
- Chair.
- Okay yes.
- I appreciate the work
of our public works staff
to think about ways to address problems
that are presenting through
the COVID-19 pandemic.
I don't support the current proposal.
I think that the idea that
it's gonna be reducing costs
is questionable in part
because A, the retailer gets to choose,
B because the state
plastic bag requirements
are still in place.
We heard testimony from
your staff this year
that said that when we looked
at what were the incentive
to get people to change their behavior,
10 cents wasn't enough, it was 25 cents.
And so I believe that that
the risk of transmission
of this virus is low off
these kinds of objects
that it's reasonable to think
that someone can bag their own groceries.
And we know,
and we've detailed and we
have supported the impact
that plastic bags have in our environment.
So I can't support this at this time.
- Any other comments from board members.
- Mr. Chair, again,
Supervisor McPherson in my discussions
with our health officer, Dr. Gail Newel,
she does not believe that
re usable bags pose a risk
from a disease perspective either.
I know that single use bags pose the risk
to the environment and her premise,
and my premise is to stay
away from single use bags.
But I think we need some
uniformity in the implementation
of that policy.
And that's what I would
make a recommended motion.
But I don't know if there's
any other board members
that would like to speak this.
- Okay, well, I'll just
make my own comment.
You know, years ago I
used to think plastic was,
you know, it was okay, it breaks down.
It does break down, but it breaks down
to a, I call it a plastic mush.
It ends up in the water,
these little micro fibers and all that,
and there's so much of it
that it's everywhere now.
And it's in the water.
And I was reading,
it said our clothes after
you wash your clothes.
So the only real solution is
gonna be the manufacturers.
If they can come up with something
that I guess we call bio-degradable,
that will replace plastic,
but that's something we
need to really look at.
And this what I call the mush from plastic
that ends up in the water,
does that ever break down even further?
I mean, it's breaking down
and gets smaller and smaller.
Does it ever just break down?
- It'll be consumed,
I mean it gets such out
of the microscopic level
that it gets consumed by the food chain.
And during that process,
it breaks down even farther
to a point where, you know,
it's molecular constituents,
but it's whether that can be metabolized
and broken down even farther
is I'm not an expert on that.
- Sure.
And I know, you know,
we're in the pandemic and I realize
that we need to do something.
The one alternative that we do.
And I think a lot of people do
is we don't take a bag at all.
We put it back into the shopping cart,
go to the car and take it out of the cart
and put it in the bags
that we have in the car
and I have talked to some grocery managers
and some people do bring in reusable bags
that are very, very dirty
and they don't like that.
They don't also don't
like charging the 25 cents
or whatever it is.
So I'm in favor of the motion
and it's a temporary motion right?
- [Kasey] That's correct it's temporary.
- Okay, go ahead, Bruce.
- Mr. Chair.
Yeah, so I'd like to move
the recommended actions
with additional direction
for county communication
regarding the fee suspension,
to include a county
preference for retailers
to allow reusable bags
and request they'd clearly
state their protocols
for use by their customers.
I think we need some uniformity in this
and we'd love to see the cities
and everyone else come along
with us in this as well.
So that's my recommended action
and motion with the additional direction.
- Like kind of an amendment, right?
- [Bruce] Yeah.
Just kind of have some
direct communication
about the fee suspension.
So we include a preference for retailers
to allow reusable bags
and quickly restate their protocols
for the use by their customers.
- Okay.
I can second that, right?
Yes, I can.
I'll second that.
And then the one other question I have,
we need to get the
information out to the public
about, you know,
I know we've cut down a lot
on the small plastic bags,
but the plastic bags
that people are using
to put their garbage in,
and when garbage comes around once a week,
they take the big, you know,
black Hefty bags and put
those in the garbage.
We need to come up with an alternative.
And I guess there are what's
called green bags or something.
Do we know where they sell all those
and how people can buy those
instead of the plastic,
the big plastic bags that
people put garbage in.
- Right, there are
compostable plastic bags,
but they were reserving
their use for like food waste
food scraps so that they can be collected,
used to collect food waste, you know,
cleanly and would break down
in a commercial compost facility.
Those, I don't know if
they're widely available
to people at retail stores,
but the other type of plastic bags,
you know, you don't have to use them
in your trash cart.
They're a preference
for keeping the residue
from sticking to the carts
or from the containers
you have in your house.
- [Greg] Right, the garbage
can go right into the,
you know, big can,
the garbage container.
- That's correct.
- Right, but it's a lot easier,
especially for, you know,
a lot of people to just take the bag out
of your home, garbage can,
and then put it straight
into the garbage can
that goes out to the weekly.
Do we have any names on those,
the ones that break down?
- I would have to look that
up and get back to you.
- Okay, well, I would
add that we look it up
and we also put that on our website,
or we get the information
out to the public.
'Cause I'd like to know,
I'd like to go out and buy something.
So I cut down more on the use of plastic.
We can't burn it either.
'Cause then that's bad
for the atmosphere, right.
Plastics just good.
There's not a whole lot of
things we can do with it.
Okay we have a motion.
And a second.
- Chair I would just like
say I appreciate efforts
by my colleagues
to try to craft something that would work.
I unfortunately will not be
able to support the motion.
I think we all agree that plastics are bad
for the environment.
We've taken that action consistently here.
And I appreciate the
comment from my colleague
that has validated my conversations also
with health professionals,
about the risk of transmission.
At the early stage of this pandemic,
we were worried about issues like this.
Now we know, and so we need,
I think policies like ours,
help move retailers
back into using science
to make the decisions
about what kind of bagging,
rather than removing costs,
maybe in order to get them
to do the right thing.
So I can't support this.
I think it's a slide backwards
and I hope it is not picked
up by the other cities.
- [Greg] Okay any other comments?
- [Ryan] This is Supervisor Coonerty.
So I'm reluctantly supporting the motion.
I agree plastics are a horrible thing.
And I look forward to
reinstating this fee.
I think the challenge is
you have retail workers,
and I know this from my
family's own experience,
and also just from being out or about
is you have retail workers trying
to navigate a very complex environment
with a lot of conflicting information.
And if, as we can see from our next item,
we already have people who are
making relatively low wages,
being forced to confront
people who have different,
you know, who are unwilling to participate
and are stressed and are, you know,
are challenging different ordinances.
And it's one more thing
when people bring a bag
and they don't want it,
they want you to bag it.
Or there's not a place to bag it outside.
And then, but the retail
worker doesn't want to take it.
And it's a very difficult
situation right now.
And so just to try to provide clarity
for people in terms of the rule,
I would have support of our health officer
wants to send out a letter saying
that it's absolutely safe
for people to reuse bags.
I think that would help a lot,
but it's been a lot of,
we haven't had a formal
statement from the CDC
or other groups and retail
workers are stressed.
And so trying to give people a sense
of let the business owners in consultation
with their worker's trying
to figure out a situation
that works until where the
state of emergency has lifted.
I'll support it, but I
look forward to the day
when this pandemic is behind us.
And when we can get back to try
to getting plastic out of our lives.
- You wanted to say something?
- Yes.
- Chair the public comment.
- We've already closed public comment.
- Public comment has ended.
- I know but how short
can you make your comment?
(man murmuring softly)
- Sir you have to have your mask on,
- You need to wear the mask.
- You have to wear your mask
- [Man] I've been to the
farmers' market a couple times
organization this bags
technology is here, the bags are here,
there isn't any strength to it.
Just wanted to add that.
And by the way as I understand that,
plastic sometimes takes
10,000 years to break down.
- Thank you.
- Okay. We have a motion
by Supervisor McPherson,
the second by myself, the
clerk, please call the roll.
- Supervisor Leopold.
- No.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson?
- Aye.
- And Chair Caput?
- Aye.
The motion passes four to one.
And now we go to item number 10.
Remember,
- Chair?
- Item number 10 earlier.
- Chair Caput, Chair Caput,
You may want to consider holding
this over til after lunch.
It's up to you, you know, it's up to you,
but there's we have
closed session as well.
- Right.
- So it's up to you.
What you would like to
do, if can finish it.
- How long do you think it'll be?
We did have most everybody
spoke on this earlier.
Alright.
Let's we'll we'll have to come back
a little bit before 1:30 then, right.
Or 1:30
- No, it'd be after 1:30.
- After 1:30.
- You can try and get through it, but I'm-
- Okay we'll do that.
We're gonna now go to closed session.
Do we have anything to
report on the closed session?
- No, no.
- Nothing to report out of closed session.
And I know, you know,
- [Woman] A lot of us
came here to speak at 10,
we had 10 people want to comment.
And that isn't right.
- And you know a lot of
people spoke this morning
on the same item you can't.
Yeah you can't speak twice on the item.
- [Man] We're not speaking
twice on the item.
Anyway we're gonna break for lunch.
- We have closed session.
- I mean for closed session.
Thank you.
To visit by appointment
within a property zone
for timber production and special youth
in the Eureka Canyon Area.
Assessor's parcel number 106291-16
under a less than three acre
timber conversion exemption
and confirms the project is exempt
from the requirements
of the California
Environmental Quality Act
as outlined in the memorandum
of the planning direction.
And we'll go ahead and start with a report
and then we'll open it up, okay, go ahead.
- Good morning.
I'm Elizabeth Kramblet,
the project planner
for the proposed project.
The matter before the board
is a De Novo public hearing
regarding application number 181556
a proposal to operate a business
that would allow clients
to spread cremated remains
at selected trees and
to visit by appointment
within a property zone timber production
and special use in the Eureka Canyon area.
- [Man] Excuse me,
we don't have the audio
going on the teams.
- [John] We're out of practice.
- [Greg] Okay.
- [Man] Okay.
- Should I repeat?
Okay good, before I begin,
I would like to make a
correction to attachment A
in your packet for the notice of exemption
under section E for categorical exemption,
I would like to add a class four exemption
for minor alterations to land for grading
that is associated with the improvements
and for the ashes that are mixed
with local soil prior to being
spread around selected trees.
Additionally, as mentioned
to your board this morning,
additional materials were submitted
as late correspondence for this project.
The material is an updated map of polygons
and replaces the draft map of polygons.
Okay this is an overview of the site
that illustrates the general location
of the proposed parcel or the parcel
within the county.
The subject parcel is
approximately 84 acres in size
with approximately 76 acres
zoned timber production
and eight acres zoned special use,
which is located in the
southeast corner of the parcel.
The applicant has revised
the project proposal
since the time it was acted
upon by the zoning administrator
and the planning commission.
Prior to the jurisdictional hearing
in a letter to the board
dated June 9th, 2020
Better Place Forests
indicated it would be willing
to modify the project proposal
to reduce the area used
for the memorial forest on
the TP portion of the parcel.
The modified proposal now limits the use
to an approximately three acre area
and includes a request
for less than three acre
conversion exemption.
And what this does is
essentially converts timber land
to a non timber use.
And in this case then
timber or trees will remain
on the site.
This is an overall site
plan that shows the location
of the proposed improvements
and conversion areas
that will be located in the
southwest portion of the site.
And this slide shows a more
closely the conversion area
where the proposed
improvements will take place.
And it will be approximately
8,625 square feet,
all which occur in the
southwest portion of the parcel.
The improvements include
driveway access improvements,
a parking area for 15 spaces,
including one accessible space
and a new 495 square foot
non-habitable building
that will have a restroom and storage.
And that is in the red is
the non-habitable structure.
In addition, the conversion area
will include selected
areas where the spreading
of cremated remains will occur
within defined areas or polygons.
This slide shows the
updated map of polygons
and shows the actual
location of the polygons
that are grouped in the southwest portion
of the parcel.
Conversion areas that contain
disconnected polygons,
such as this one are typical
for uses for organized camps
and counting the area within the polygons
is an accepted practice,
additional areas where
clients may select trees
and spread cremated remains would be
in the southeast portion of the parcel.
So in special use,
which is approximately eight acres,
the site would be open
two to five days per week,
depending on the season
by appointment only during daylight hours
with supervised visits.
The applicant proposes to
maintain the native forest
through periodic timber harvesting
to enhance timber stance
towards an old growth type ecosystem.
This use has never been
previously considered
by the county.
As part of a consultation,
staff determined that the
use is sufficiently similar
to the land use category,
organized camps and facilities
for outdoor recreational,
educational, religious activities.
However, the planning commission disagreed
with that determination.
Staff's rationale was based on
the following consideration.
In addition to the
purposes of organized camps
and conference centers as listed
in Santa Cruz County code section 13-10692
chapter 10 of the general plan for parks,
recreation, and public facilities,
objective 7.9 for organized
camps and conference centers,
states and objective to
quote "Allow for a full range
of educational, religious,
and recreational facilities
operated by organized groups
to utilize varied scenic
and natural settings
of the county's rural
and mountain areas while
providing proper management
and protection of local
natural resources," unquote.
Staff believed proposed use was consistent
with these purposes and objectives
because it involves a supervised program
that provides spiritual, social,
and recreational elements to visitors
in a controlled setting
with minimal impacts
to neighboring properties
while preserving scenic amenities.
In addition to the question
about whether the use
could be considered an organized camp,
opponents and planning
commissioners questioned
the proposed uses compatibility
with the timber production district.
In response to this opposition,
Better Place Forests
modified their proposal,
which reduced the area
for the memorial forest
to the less than three
acre conversion exemption
on the TP portion of the site.
This project could
potentially be consistent
with the purposes of the
timber production district
as outlined in Santa Cruz
County code section 13-10371A
because the applicant has indicated
in their updated project statement
the intention to utilize active
forest management methods
that include periodic
timber harvesting to restore
and enhance timber stance
towards an old growth type ecosystem.
This will be accomplished by
filing a timber harvest plan
during the next eligible window
and actively maintaining the
existing timber infrastructure
such as skid roads and landings
by utilizing them in
their network of trails.
When non-temporary uses are
proposed in the TP district,
there are special findings
that are required to demonstrate
that the proposed use will be compatible
with timber production.
These special findings have been revised
to reflect the modified proposal,
which would be adopted
if the board determines
to approve the proposed application.
Considering the modified proposal,
which reduces the area of memorial forest
on the 76 acre timber
production portion of the site,
to less than three acres,
approximately 73 acres of the TP portion
of the parcel would be available
for inclusion in a timber harvest plan.
According to the project forester,
the size and location of
the proposed converted areas
depicted on the updated map of polygons
would not impact the viability
of future timber harvest
operations on the property.
In addition to these issues,
they're have been questions
about whether the proposed
use should be classified
as a cemetery.
Included in your packet as
attachment I were definitions
and examples of cemeteries in state health
and safety code law, section 7003
cemeteries as defined by
section 7003 are not allowed
in the TP or SU districts
only in the public facilities
district within the county.
There is another section
of law section 7116,
that addresses when scattering of cremains
is not considered to be
associated with a cemetery.
A letter from the
applicant's legal consultant,
Tonya Marsh with McNeely
Law dated August 2nd, 2020
makes the case that the
proposed use is not a cemetery.
The interpretation to
be made by your board
relates to whether the proposed scattering
of cremated remains of
more than one person
as proposed by the applicant
results in areas not
distinguishable to the public.
As these factors relate
to whether the use could
be considered a cemetery.
In response to comments from
members of the community
and the board, staff has added
and amended the recommended
conditions of approval
submitted as attachment D in your packet.
The applicant has indicated
it supports the added
and amended conditions.
Questions remain as to the
nature and compatibility
of the use, whether it
is a cemetery or not,
and whether the proposed
location and level of operation
is appropriate, even if allowed
on TP and SU properties.
Staff has prepared
alternate sets of findings,
one for denial and another
for approval of the project.
Furthermore, in
consideration of public input
and of board discussion,
it may be appropriate to
impose additional conditions
that further limit the extent
of activities on the site
should the board decide
to approve the use.
If the board determines that
the proposed use is a cemetery
that is not permitted within
the timber production district,
or if the board otherwise determines
that findings for
approval can not be made,
take action to adopt the attached findings
for denial of the application
found in attachment B.
If the board determines
to prove the application
either as currently
proposed by the applicant
or as may be modified by the board,
determine the project is exempt
from further environmental review
under the California
Environmental Quality Act
and direct staff to file
a notice of exemption
found in attachment A
with the addition of a
class four exemption.
If the board determines
that the use qualifies
as a less than three acre
timber conversion exemption,
and the use is appropriate
for the proposed location
and take action to
improve application 181556
with the attached findings for approval
found in attachment C
and subject to conditions
of approval found in attachment D
and pursuant to additional materials
in the revised memo to the board
and the updated map of
polygons dated July 28th, 2020,
and potentially with additional conditions
of approval regarding acreage,
number of polygons or
trees or other metrics
to further limit the extent of operations.
This concludes staff's presentation.
- Chair I have a question or two.
- Yeah, okay.
- Thank you for the presentation.
I know there's a lot of the space given
in the board letter about cemeteries,
but it seems as though the state bureau
has already weighed in on that
and we can make a different finding,
but we've already gotten something
from the state, correct?
- [Elizabeth] Yes, correct.
- The other question I had
is if someone were to
purchase this property
and want to build a house on it,
what would be the process
for them being able
to build a house on this property,
if they wanted to build
it in the TP portion?
- The code does allow
people to build a house
on the property.
They do not, you're not
required to harvest the timber,
but they can build a
house on it with a permit.
- [John] So they could
come in with something
that was less than three acres.
- Yes.
- Okay.
Thank you.
- Are you finished with your report?
- Yes.
- Okay.
Thank you.
How many there are already
memorials out there.
How many memorials are out there?
There were actually placed,
were cremated remains were scattered
or buried up to this point?
- On the subject site.
- Uh-huh.
- They have not been
operating on the site.
So there are none that we know, unless-
- [Greg] But my understanding is-
- They have another operation
and point in Mendocino area.
They do have one other site.
I think it's point the exact
location is escaping me,
but Better Place Forest has one site
where they are actually in operation,
but it's in Mendocino it's north of us.
They're not doing,
they have not spread any cremated remains
at this site that we're talking about.
Is that the question.
- At some sites
that one site does have
some scattered remains also?
- [Elizabeth] Outside of the county, yes,
but not within the county.
- Right.
Do we know how many?
- [Elizabeth] They have one
other site and they can,
the applicant can actually
discuss that in further detail.
- Yeah I guess what I'm getting at is,
are there any trees that
have plaques on them now?
It says the subject-
- Not on the subject site, no,
not on the site that we're
talking about off Buzz
or Lagoon Road, no.
The subject parcel does
not have any remains
or plaques or anything on it, no.
Not from the applicant.
- Any other questions from board members?
Okay, I will now open
up the public hearing.
First we'll hear from the applicant
who will have a total of 10 minutes
to present evidence as to the
merits of the application.
Next after that, we'll
hear from the parties
opposing the application,
which will have 10 minutes
to present evidence
to why the board should not
approve the application.
And at the end of the comments,
will have, the applicant can respond to
and have five minutes,
and then the other public will
have, be able to speak also.
Okay, so if we could hear
now from the applicant,
thank you, thank you good to see you.
- Would it be possible to
request slightly more time.
So our forester can add
some detailed comments
on the feasibility of
forestry on the site,
possibly 12 or 15 minutes?
- [Greg] What we're talking about.
- Is it possible to
add two to five minutes
to the time to speak?
- [Greg] You mean you have five minutes
and somebody else five minutes
- If I could have seven
and he could have seven.
- [Greg] As long as it's
a total of 10 it's fine.
- Sorry.
- Okay.
So you want to go on to
tell five minute timer now?
- Would it be possible to have seven
and seven just to extend it a bit or?
- [Greg] Okay, okay, when you're done,
we'll stop the timer and
let the next person walk up.
- Okay, thank you.
Thank you Chair Caput
and members of the board.
My name is Sandy Gibson.
I'm the co founder and CEO
of Better Place Forests.
I know it was a very challenging
time for Santa Cruz County
and for all of you as
leaders of this community.
And I especially appreciate
your time and attention today
in hearing this issue,
I would like to offer brief remarks
about Better Place
Forests and this project.
And then we'll invite Justin Kaufman,
a certified forester at North
Coast Resource Management
to share his professional
expertise on the project.
Our goal is to open a memorial forest
that provides a beautiful
final resting place
for the ashes of loved
ones in this community,
allows sustainable harvesting of timber
and creates jobs and economic opportunity
for Santa Cruz residents.
We're grateful for the
two years of planning time
and effort the county staff have put in
and we are very pleased to report
the robust planning process
has generated a revised project
that squarely fits within
allowed zoning uses
and the allowed less than
three acre conversion.
I would like to address a
few important issues today.
First, our project's compatibility
with the requirements of the
timber production zone district
and especially use zone different
second to confirm the Better Place Forest
does not operate cemeteries in California.
And third, what we at Better
Place Forests aim to provide
to the Santa Cruz community.
For compatibility we have worked closely
with the county planning staff
to ensure our project fits
within the definition of organized camps
and facilities for outdoor recreational,
educational, and religious activities.
A use is allowed in the
TP and SU districts.
As staff has noted
organized camps are defined
by SC County code section 1310.700.c
as a site having
facilities for the purpose
of conducting a supervised program,
which provides educational, spiritual,
social, or recreational elements.
And the purpose of the organized camp
and conference center
is among other things
to foster commercial use of the scenic
and recreational values of
the county in the timber zone
and SU zone.
Our memorial forest fits
squarely within this use,
we host a supervised program.
Our staff supervise guest visits
and elements of those visits
are spiritual, social,
and recreational.
Santa Cruz County has
approved many other projects
in the timber zone,
including the Mount Madonna Center,
the Pima Oso Ling retreat center,
Camp Campbell, and the
Insight Retreat Center.
When concerns were raised
around our project.
The ultimate question
was if spreading ashes,
if spreading ashes in the timber zone
could potentially create a conflict
with future timber production,
California law state law is clear
that ashes do not receive
any special protections
after they've been returned to a family.
So their presence in the timber zone
would not create a legal conflict.
However, we understand the concern
and the importance of sustainable timber
in Santa Cruz and have update
our project application
to perform spreadings only
in the less than three
acre conversion area.
So no ashes would be spread
in an active timber zone
if this finding were found.
With our updated project plan,
100% of the TP zone on the property
would be available for timber harvest.
All timber infrastructure
would be maintained,
and it is our understanding
that Cal Fire would require
any unharvested trees,
so any tree on the property
that could not be harvested
would have to be included
in the conversion area.
So to the extent that any
stakeholders are concerned,
that areas in between polygons
would not be harvestable,
the Cal Fire conversion process
will confirm the viability
of proposed harvest areas.
And only those areas where harvest
is possible would be, where
harvest is not possible,
would be included.
As a result by limiting
spreading activities
and memorial trees for less
than three acre conversion area
in the SU portion of the property
we are accepting the plan
that was initially proposed
by the Farm Bureau of Santa
Cruz County, Redwood Empire,
Big Creek Lumber, and the
California Forestry Association.
This limits our activities to less than 4%
of the original TP zone on the property.
And the question of if
multiple polygons are allowed,
I would like to point out
that on May 19th, 2020
Cal Fire approved a less
than three acre conversion
in Santa Cruz County
with 13 exemption areas.
So there is a precedent of
multiple exemption areas.
Second, I would like to address the fact
that we are not a cemetery
State of California regulates burials
and spreadings of ashes through
its health and safety code.
We just heard about seven
health and safety code 7003
health and safety code 7116,
clearly states, "cremated remains
or hydrolyzed human remains,
may be scattered in areas
where no local prohibition exists
provided that the cremated remains
or hydrolyzed human remains
are not distinguished
for the public are not in a container.
And the person who has
control over disposition
of the cremated remains has
obtained written permission
of the property owner."
The key issue here as
defined by the Cemetery
and funeral Bureau upon an investigation
of our site in Mendocino was
that we do not bury ashes
in containers, which
would constitute a burial.
We spread ashes therefore 7116 applies,
and we are not a cemetery.
Further the scattering of cremated remains
of more than one person
in one location pursuant to this section
shall not create a cemetery
pursuant to section 003.
So this is very clear.
Once a body has been cremated
and the ashes have been
returned to a family,
commercial spreading of ashes is regulated
by the CFPs licensing of
cremated remains disposers
who spread ashes on private land
with permission of the landowner.
Pursuant to the health and safety code,
Better Place Forest
has operated our forest
in Mendocino, California, since 2017,
hundreds of spreadings have occurred
and all spreadings are handled
by licensed cremated remains disposers,
and it is not a cemetery.
The Cemetery and Funeral
Bureau has visited our site
in Mendocino and investigators
our spreading practices
and the use of memorial markers in detail
and determined that that
site is not a cemetery.
It is important to note
that part of the reason
for health and safety code 7116
is that families have been spreading ashes
throughout California for generations,
quite likely all throughout
Santa Cruz County,
including in the timber zone and SU zone
HS 7116 exempts those places
where those ashes were spread
from being classified as cemeteries,
because redefining a cemetery today
would likely create hundreds,
if not thousands of defacto cemeteries
within Santa Cruz County.
Better Place Forest will
create economic opportunity
in Santa Cruz County.
And we will work to be a partner
of the Santa Cruz community.
We will bring more than 70
forestry contractor jobs
to the property as part
of the restoration efforts
and development efforts
we'll contribute the tax benefits
of being in the timber
zone back to the community,
by contributing those same funds
towards fire mitigation in the area.
And we have committed to
updating all the roads
and infrastructure to the site
to make sure that it will be available
and maintained with increased safety
and security for everyone
who lives in that community.
Our staff love living
here and the families
who choose Better Place Forests
are part of the Santa Cruz community
families have made
reservations for this property.
All of those are full presale agreements
with all funds being
refunded to those families
should this project not move forward.
But these are families that know this
and wanted this project to be possible.
They believe in this
because they really wanna be
a part of Santa Cruz forever.
And we hope that we
can make that possible.
With that said, I would like
to bring Justin Kaufman forward
to speak about the forestry
practices on the property.
Thank you very much for your time.
- Thank you, Sandy.
My name is Justin Kaufman.
I'm a Forester with NCRM,
contractor with Better Place Forests
been working in forestry since 2002,
beginning as a student and a logger,
but also come from a family
with a history of ranching and logging.
I've been with NCRM for
almost 10 years now,
a certified arborist for five years,
and a registered professional
forester for four,
worked on numerous Cal Fire
projects over that time,
permitting timber harvest plans,
NTMPs exemptions and so on.
And also our firm has been involved
in a number of projects in the area,
including the San Jacinto project
with Save the Redwoods League
that our restoration of Wonder Lake Park
with PG&E and various restoration
and public access trails projects
with Mid-Peninsula open space districts,
San Mateo RCD, and city of Saratoga.
I've been working with
Better Place Forests
for over four years,
two years on the Santa
Cruz project specifically.
I'm confident that BPF is committed
to working with the county to ensure
that the majority of this property
can remain viable for timber production.
BPF is definitely fully aware
that timber management is a necessity
not only to promote forest health,
but to do their part
in increasing the
community fire resiliency.
Their planning will allow the forest
to be feasibly harvested using
the existing infrastructure
from the 2014 harvest.
I've reviewed the old PHP,
explored the property
and have been involved
in their planning process
from the beginning
to make sure that we're
still able to harvest timber
on the parcel.
With that, the proposal
that was in front of you
was obviously developed
with timber harvest in mind.
We plan on leaving all of
the existing infrastructure
and the three less than
three acre conversion areas
have intentionally avoided
harvest infrastructure.
And between those polygons
we've left sufficient space
to be able to harvest trees in between.
So the areas in between those polygons
are not functionally converted.
And with logging
around some of those
converted memorial areas,
there are many methods
that are commonly used
to avoid sensitive features.
You know, certain sensitive things
that would normally be
avoided in a logging project
would be a sensitive plant population,
a threatened or endangered
species, cultural resources,
utilities, structures,
other property improvements.
So using these same
methods that people use
to avoid these types of features to use
to avoid our memorials,
we could use directional felling
and things like heel
booms and feller bunchers
that lift the lugs to be harvested away
and not drag it across the ground.
And then we won't be
disturbing any memorial areas.
And for a future commercial harvest,
obviously BPF would have to
get a THP through Cal Fire.
And that would include all the measures
that we would use to avoid any
sensitive things on the site,
including our memorial areas.
So in closing,
the proposed improvements
should not have an impact
on logging.
The infrastructure will remain,
we've intentionally avoided areas
that would potentially, you know,
block off this existing
harvest infrastructure.
And just another note
about the multiple
conversion area polygons
as Sandy noted it has
been done in the past,
both in the state and in Santa Cruz County
and preliminary
conversations with Cal Fire
didn't allude to any
issues with our proposal.
With that, I'd be more than
happy to answer any questions.
- Thank you.
All right, next we'll hear
from the party opposed
to the application, you'll
have a total of 10 minutes
you break it up with two people
or whatever as long as
it's a total of 10 minutes.
Okay.
- [David] Just a point of clarification
before I get started.
So if we have a 10 minute,
if I have 10 minutes total,
I can defer some of that,
if I don't use the 10 minutes,
is that correct chair?
- If you wanted to speak
like for six minutes
and the next person has four minutes.
- Okay.
- Total of 10.
- All right, I'll probably
take advantage of that.
Alright, thank you very much.
Good afternoon Chairman
members of the board.
My name is David Van Lineup.
I'm a registered professional forester.
I've been working in Santa Cruz mountains
for about 27 years.
and I'm here to speak with you
today to try and address some
of the issues that we have
with this project overall.
We continue to strongly believe
that the proposed spreading
of cremains and designated memorial trees
raises numerous legal questions
and has some potential
irreversible impacts
on the landscape.
The proposed use is
more akin to a cemetery
in terms of its actual function
and the actual function that goes on.
If you read in the
state's legal definitions
of cemetery businesses,
you will find a lot of
critical overlapping points
with the function of what
Better Place Forests does
is as a cemetery.
And you will,
if you read the definition
then the mission statements
of many of the camps
and schools and places
that they've mentioned,
you don't find much overlap
with what Better Place Forest does.
These places do not sell memorial trees.
They do not spread the
cremated remains of people
on the ground contractually.
And there's a broad difference.
And I believe that staff
outlined some of the vagaries
and I guess, lack of
specificity in the law very well
for your board to try and discern
and have that discussion
amongst yourselves.
But I think the function of
what they're actually doing
is important for the board to understand
more than what they call
it, or don't call it.
Staff identified the permanent nature
of the remains that will exist on site,
after those remains have been spread.
And that's irrespective
of monuments or trees
or anything else.
And contractually speaking, you know,
those families have forever places.
Those families are there,
and they have an emotional
tether to that land
and things that go along with them
along with that land
are important to them.
And we just don't see
that there's a good overlap
between timber harvesting,
regardless of how you may or may not do it
and cremated remains and memorial trees
and designated places.
To get to Supervisor Caput's question.
I think that what the question
you were wondering about
is not whether they've scattered,
but whether how many
contracts have been sold.
And I believe that we've been told
or heard that there were
several hundred contracts
that have been sold on
the property already.
So they have several
hundred potential clients
that they're trying to serve
with this three acre exemption.
And that is I think one
of the reasons for this,
the spread out nature of
the three acre exemptions.
If you were as a landowner,
trying to minimize your
impact on your ability
to harvest timber and reduce the footprint
of your building or your
three acre conversion area,
you wouldn't spread it
out over about 15 acres.
You wouldn't complicate the harvest
of those interstitial spaces with polygons
of preserved areas and
looking at their polygon map,
and I haven't reviewed
the new polygon map,
so I don't know how different
the new polygon map is.
The conversion exemption
is designed to allow a
landowner a non-timber use,
a small, minor non-timber
use of their property.
And it should not inhibit the growing
and harvesting in between.
So if you tight line those polygons
and you draw a line
around the outside edge,
you get a footprint of about 14 acres,
and there may be some opportunity
to do something in between,
but there's also streams, lakes,
there's a little pond in there,
areas that by forest practice rules,
you can't fall trees into or against,
and you will have to exclude those areas
and you will not be able to
operate in between those areas
if you have polygons on both sides.
So there's certainly more than three acres
with this current map,
that will be a profoundly
impacted and defacto converted
by the way these polygons are shaped.
The 15 acre footprint was our quick sort
of overall footprint of the
area that could be affected,
but it gives an idea that
there's more than three acres.
And the exemption process is designed
to not require a landowner
to go through a timber
land conversion process,
which is a very long drawn out permit,
like a timber harvest plan
to allow them their use of
three acres for a house,
a barn or something else.
It's not designed to allow a landowner
to systematically go through
and pick out spots on their property
to extract the highest value out of.
That's not the intent of
the exemption process.
And the exemption that they offered up
in their explanation was done on the city
of Santa Cruz lands around Newell,
around Newell Creek, the
Loch Lomond reservoir,
and was done for infrastructure reasons.
They had no choice,
but to isolate several
areas for construction
of new pipeline,
it was separated by a dam and
the reservoir on two sides,
couldn't logically be connected.
So certainly apples and oranges.
The process is designed to be flexible
and allow people to utilize
it, to achieve a goal.
But the intended purpose
of a less than three
acre conversion exemption
is not to allow someone to
go through systematically,
pick out the highest value
part of their property
and circle it and do something with it.
Now, in this case, they're
not going to do anything
but scatter, but often
and in other places,
those processes have been abused
where people go through their property
and they pick out the biggest trees
and they circle them and they exempt them.
And then they cut them.
And I don't believe that Cal
Fire has been a very forgiving
of that use of the exemption.
Regardless of the conversion permit,
if this board chooses to move forward
with this permit in
some way, shape or form,
whether it's three acres in some format
or some other format
that the board chooses the
involvement with the bureau
of the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau
on the specifics of this
project would be important.
Ms. Cramblett indicated
that there had been some communication
with the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.
If she's referring to the letter
that was provided by the applicant in 2018
or anything that the applicant
has forwarded or put forth,
it would be incumbent on this board
to involve the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau
on the very specific nature of the things
that are specifically
being asked to be done
on this project,
and should not rely on something from 2018
on another piece of
property with another zoning
and with a whole possibly
different set of scenarios.
So if the board moves forward,
I think that that would be a
lie is a reasonable thing to do
is to have staff consult
with the Cemetery and
Funeral Bureau directly
about the specifics of
what's being proposed
on the ground.
General plan clarification,
I would also ask that the
general plan be amended.
That staff be directed
to construct amendments
to the general plan
that show that this use
for commercial businesses
and commercial scattering
is not compatible on TPZ.
Again, irrespective of the decision
that's made in this particular situation,
I would ask that that clarification,
that clarity be given to staff
and potential businesses going forward.
And I think that's what I have to say.
I'm happy to answer any
questions and go ahead
and stop the time, thank you very much.
Are there any questions.
- You have somebody else coming to speak?
- [David] Yes thank you.
- How much time do they have?
- Supervisor Caput is this minute
in addition to the three minutes,
I'm going to take a later
because if it's one or the other,
I prefer to use my three minutes later.
- [John] Give him the full four minutes,
give him the full four, yeah.
Take the full four.
- Okay thank you.
Before I begin
(man murmuring softly)
He was up there earlier.
- If he was up there earlier.
- That's right, you mentioned that.
Supervisor Caput, Supervisor Leopold
and the three supervisors
who aren't in attendance
under these difficult circumstances.
I'm Bob Berlage representing
Big Creek Lumber Company.
This is my 47th year in the
forest products industry.
The last 37 of which were
working for Big Creek Lumber.
I think it's fair and very
important for your board
to look at the common sense
aspects of this proposal.
For an entire year,
the applicant has claimed somewhat vaguely
in their application
with planning department,
that they intended to harvest timber
without any details.
During that same year on social media,
to anyone and everyone,
presumably their potential
clients also claiming
that they were never
going to cut their trees.
One of those things is true and one isn't,
they can't both be true.
And consequently, if you think
about what they're proposing,
the only thing that makes any sense
is that they're never
going to cut their trees.
If you refer to the map on page 117,
it's attachment 12 F.
And look at that polygon,
despite what their forester says,
our company has hundreds
of years of experience
on the ground, owners, registered
professional foresters,
and woods operators,
nobody's ever going to get a
permit inside those polygons
to cut timber.
There are methods to cut trees,
to try and get them where you want.
It's an inexact science.
I did that job for 21 years
and I got pretty good at it.
And frankly, a lot better
than what I do now,
standing up in front of
you, logging was scary,
standing up in front of you
is a different kind of scary,
but it's preposterous to think
anybody would go in there
and log between those polygons.
You've got trees that are 150
feet tall, things go wrong.
Trees go over backwards.
I don't know a single
timber feller in 47 years
that didn't lose their trees sideways.
They're going to skid logs in there
in between those polygons
and four out of the five former landings
where logs will be dragged
are inside that polygon footprint.
We agree with Mr. Van
Lineup that the actual area
and it would constitute a no harvest area
is the outside perimeter of that ground.
That's 15 acres on that property
that will never ever get logged.
If you did file a permit,
Better Place Forest customers
would scream bloody murder
that you're about to
defile the sacred remains
of their loved ones.
Nobody is gonna do that.
The reality of their footprint
is more like 27 acres
if you move far enough
away from that polygon set
to ensure to yourself
that you weren't going to
interfere with the sacred remains
of loved ones, and happy
to answer any questions.
But the problem here is
that they're asking you
to bail them out of really
poor business decisions.
That's not the county's job
and our company doesn't want
to be a collateral damage
in a decision
to do something they
shouldn't be doing on TP land.
- Thank you.
- Chair, chair Caput?
- Yes, sir.
- [Man] I just wanted to ask
for the clerk to clarify,
to make sure that both parties
got the same amount of time.
I would, I would like to
confirm that for the record,
because there was a little
back and forth on that
and it wasn't clear.
- No, the Big Creek got
an extra four minutes.
- [Man] Big Creek got
an extra four minutes?
- Correct, this last, the
last speaker got an extra,
well actually an extra three
minutes and three seconds.
- [Man] Okay, I would recommend
that that three minutes
and two seconds be added on
to the applicant's
ability to speak so that-
- Absolutely, I thought
it was a total of 10,
but they still have three minutes.
- No I think the issue
is that when Mr. Berlage spoke,
he was using in the last
minute of the appellants time.
And then he did his three minutes
that he was gonna give
his public testimony.
So I think that's why there's
a three minute difference.
And I'm not sure for the
purposes of our council,
whether that qualifies,
Mr. Berlage is not gonna
come up again and testify.
- [Man] So at this point,
I would just ask the
applicant to register that
and let us know whether they
have any problem with that,
so that we eliminate any issues
for purposes of the record.
- [Greg] Okay if you want to speak,
you have about three minutes right.
- Or you could just say, you understand,
- We understand.
- It's up to you.
- I think you better come up
to the microphone and say it.
- [Sandy] We understand and accept
What supervisor Leopold is recommending.
- [Greg] Okay.
Well, actually, you'll
be coming up next anyway.
(board laughing)
So the applicant has five minutes now
to respond to anything
that may have been brought up
or whatever you want to say.
- Supervisors, Chair Caput,
my name is Nundee Chabra
and I'm legal counsel
and public affairs advisor
at Better Place Forest.
And I'll do the rebuttal
on behalf of the company.
I'll just address a few
issues that were raised.
First as to the company's
status, proposed status
as a cemetery,
as you know, the Cemetery
and Funeral Bureau
has spoken to the issue.
I just want to read a couple
lines from that letter,
"The Cemetery and Funeral Bureau
has concluded its investigation
into the complaint,
filed against a Better Place Forest
as an unlicensed cemetery.
Upon review of the
complaint and applicable."
- [Clerk] Excuse me for just a moment.
Can you please cover your nose?
- Sure.
- Thank you.
- Sorry.
"Upon the review of the complaint
and applicable documentation collected,
there is insufficient evidence
to support a violation of
the Bureau's laws, rules,
or regulations governing the operation
of a cemetery in the state of California.
We are closing our file on this matter
with no further action."
Secondly, the fact that what BPF is doing
is special or unique does not
mean that it is not allowed.
Staff has worked hard to assess
whether the proposed use is allowed
within existing land uses.
And the ZA, zoning
administrator had arrived
at a use organized camps and facilities
that was appropriate.
In terms of conversations with customers,
it is true that BPF initially
did not intend to harvest
the entire property.
However, upon hearing the concerns
and requests of stakeholders
in the community,
BPF agreed to do so
as part of an effort to make concessions
and listen to those in
the community around it.
In terms of the fact
that BPF has arrangements
with customers, contracts with customers,
that should have no impact
on the decision before the board today.
There are agreements, it is true,
that are presales, where
refunds are possible,
if the project is not approved.
Again, that bears no relation
to the land use issue
and application issues before
the board in our opinion.
With respect to conversion areas,
I will defer to Justin
Kaufman in a moment,
they have been specifically
drawn to enable harvest,
to preserve infrastructure
and to comply with local regulations.
There is precedent for conversion areas,
in the past Better Place Forest
has looked to that precedent
and has engaged with
Cal Fire for feedback,
as well as professional
foresters who are expert,
and we will continue to do so.
We will continue to seek the
best expertise we can find,
and seek the counsel of Cal
Fire and the regulators.
With that, I will turn it over to Justin
for any additional comments.
- I just wanted to touch briefly
on the feasibility of timber harvest
in between the proposed
conversion polygons.
I agree that yes, fallers
definitely do have issues.
Trees get away from people.
It's not an exact science,
there's no one can dispute that.
One thing I would like to add though,
is that there are lots of sensitive areas
that can be within a timber harvest
that would potentially be
violations of Cal Fire,
the Cal Fire forest practice rules.
And it's just a little bit of a risk
that, you know, what's
your acceptable level level
of risk on this.
If you're working next to a cultural site
or something like that,
your faller is gonna
take extra precautions
to not hit that site, both, you know,
for the ethical reasons of
not wanting to destroy it.
And also for the reasons
of not wanting to get
a violation of the law.
So yes, you know,
harvest in between these polygons
may be increasingly difficult,
but in no way is impossible.
You know, you can do many different things
with rigging and different
types of equipment
in between these sensitive areas.
That definitely make it
possible to remove the timber
for a commercial purpose.
- Thank you.
Now are there any members of the public
who wish to address
the board of this side.
- Doesn't He get five minutes?
Oh, they don't okay.
Sorry, I apologize.
- According to this, no, right.
- Yeah.
- So members of the public
wish to address the board,
keep your coverage to the
matter of the application.
Thank you.
- Hello supervisors, thank you.
My name is John Clark.
I'm actually a local land owner up there,
and I've been following this process
since close after it started.
So just a couple of comments
that I have about this
is that to me as watching
this from the outside,
it looks a lot more like the act I know
that just said that they are
not considering the activities
as cemetery,
but it looks a lot more like
the activities of a cemetery,
especially given the volumes
that these guys are talking
about, trying to sell.
It's not just gonna be a couple of areas
where they dispose of
the cremated remains,
but in the hundreds and
possibly even thousands,
there's a lot of money involved in that
according to you know, what
they're charging there.
So the thing that really
disturbs me about this
is that as a land owner,
I have my land value at stake here
'cause of the public starts
to see this as a burial ground
or a cemetery.
And say, for example, I
want to go sell my property,
and they find out about this,
'cause now I have to disclose this
within my real estate disclosures.
It could potentially devalue my property
and surrounding properties around there.
So the question that I have is like,
what's my recourse as
a landowner, excuse me.
I'm trying to deal with the mask here.
What's my recourse as a
landowner, if that were to happen.
I don't think I'm going to have very much
because it'd be very difficult
for me to go after them legally,
'cause they're backed
very well financially,
especially if they sell this amount of,
you know, sites of cremation
remain sites there.
So my opinion on this is that
it's closer to a cemetery.
I would personally like
to see it be regulated
as a cemetery.
Maybe it's a new
classification that's created,
but some kind of regulation and
accountability on their part
so that they can't get
away with doing something
that causes harm to others.
And then they can make all the profit
and they can just take
off whenever they're done
doing whatever they want
to do with their land.
So the question I have
is what's the recourse
for any kind of negative land value,
the factors I just brought up,
I think this is gonna be
seen as a burial ground.
One of the other items I was thinking is
that there's been no discussion
about some kind of a bond
for the purpose of protecting
surrounding land owners
or issues that might
come up for this thing.
And then what's the
liability of the county
and state for cleanup,
if they say decide to abandon
the property or sell it,
leaving all this on on site,
is that gonna cause a
problem in the future?
And then the other thing
that comes up for me
is this is really at the bottom line,
it's a real estate company.
So they're selling,
they're buying property to monetize it
and it's private land,
it's not a preservation.
And I'm curious about how
this land is being protected,
'cause I hear a lot of stuff
about how the land is being protected
and what really as a landowner,
what I would like to see,
even though I don't
necessarily like the idea
of having a burial ground close by
regardless of what they call it,
I would like to see it be rezoned,
re-subdivided and rezoned as
a public facilities district
and have some kind of regulation,
at least some kind of regulations.
So it's not just free for
them to make up their mind
as to how they're gonna do it.
Because everybody's surrounding it
like I say, has a liability stake in this.
So anyways, my time's almost up.
So that's my piece,
thank you for listening.
- [Greg] Thank you.
- Good afternoon, My name is Arnett Young.
I'm the first vice president
of the Farm Bureau.
And I'm here to discuss about
the Better Place Forestry
or Better Place memorial site.
The reason I'm up here
today is two reasons.
One, we do see it as a cemetery.
It is the internment of,
and that's using their language
internment of loved ones,
concentrated in one site.
So it is being operated as a cemetery,
therefore it should be
regulated as a cemetery.
Second portion is talking
about the polygons.
This is a timber harvest zone
and it's specifically set
up and set aside for that.
And there is that three acre
limitation for development.
However, it's not, I don't
think it was ever intended
to be able to circle in trees,
which is the production
zone for timber harvest
circle and then keep them for eternity
and taking it out of production.
So those are really our two concerns
and we'd like the board to address this.
Really, that's all I have to say.
And if there's any questions.
Nope, thank you.
- Okay.
Good afternoon.
- Yeah good afternoon,
I live just down the street,
Dub Lane up in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
And thank you for opening
this up to the public.
My husband and I own nine acres
and it's beautiful area there.
I just wanted to point
out a couple of things.
If you take a look at
the social media sites
and platforms that a Better Place Forest
utilizes specifically
for customer reviews,
they define themselves as
funeral services and cemeteries.
So I don't know if you know that,
in addition, if you look at their website,
they describe themselves
with words like tombstones,
cemetery, final resting place,
and you kind of have to
in this business model,
otherwise you're not gonna get someone
to spend five to $18,000 for a tree
just to say a prayer or
learn about the redwoods.
It all mixes, right?
So I'm here because I'm
concerned about a few things.
I'm concerned about someone coming
and lighting a memorial candle
and leaving it unattended.
I'm concerned about fire.
I'm concerned about someone
driving up Eureka Canyon Road,
which is in some areas it's only one lane.
We've had so many instances
where people don't respect the road.
They don't know how to drive it.
They're from out of town
and just, we had two people
just die a couple of months ago
that's just not good for the community.
There's no wifi service up there.
So if there is an emergency,
they'll have to go knock
on the door of a neighbor.
If it's not gated, it's
just, I'm concerned.
Fire, the traffic, the potential traffic.
I'm sorry, my mask keeps
going down and I'm nervous.
I've never spoken before
a board before so sorry.
- [John] You're doing fine.
- Thanks, I just have concerns.
I think it's a really
sweet plan, honestly,
to have someone like that,
but I think it should
be in a proper cemetery.
And I know there's a code for that PF.
This is a timber land
that it just doesn't seem to mesh with me
and I'm concerned.
So I probably was not articulate enough,
but thank you for listening to me.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
- Hi, good afternoon.
I hope I can read this without my glasses.
I'm just here, my name
is Cynthia Getchman.
I'm here as a concerned citizen
and I live on Eureka Canyon Road,
also in the Buzzard Lagoon area.
And I do understand that this company
I've done a little bit of research
and that they, I guess they've
sold all these 500 plots
to their customers
in Santa Cruz County on this plot
without having a business license.
I thought you had to
have a business license
in order to sell like you don't?
So I could sell anything
with anywhere here
and not have a business license.
- [John] We don't have business licenses
in the County of Santa Cruz.
- Okay, or permits or anything.
I can just sell anything.
Okay, so anyway, so, you know,
I can appreciate their
information and their statistics
on the environmental
impact and the logging
and everything else in the county.
But what I didn't hear at all actually
was a traffic impact, a
traffic study on Eureka,
on Highland, on Buzzard,
which I don't know if you
guys have been up there
to their plot
where a notice of proposed
development sign was placed,
which nobody can see.
I have pictures of it.
If you'd like to see those
later, it's about a half mile in,
on a dirt fire road,
which is Buzzard Lagoon.
Nobody can see it from the main road.
And it's a two lane, one lane road
that like she said is you
can't even commute on it.
So it's very dangerous.
And I don't see how they're
gonna get 500 plus people
in and out of there on a dirt road,
especially in the winter time.
It's designed that road is
only designed for hiking,
biking, and a fire road by Cal Fire.
So I'm not sure what their plan is,
but as you know, as a landowner
and a parent up there,
I'm really concerned about this.
Thank you.
- [Greg] Thank you.
- Thank you for allowing
us to speak today here.
I'm kind of piggybacking on that note.
We are probably the closest
neighbors to this property.
And we only learned about this
project about six months ago,
because we happen to be walking
our dog on that dirt road.
We were not sent, and I don't
believe any of our neighbors
were sent any notices.
No one knew about this project.
And it's a very significant project.
In fact, it's kind of a
legacy land use model,
which is gonna have social consequences
for many, many years.
So that's one of the things
I was concerned about.
Another one is with the increasing numbers
of clients and families. (laughing)
Thank you.
- Okay thanks.
- With the increasing numbers of clients
and families that are gonna be serviced
over time with this model.
I don't really quite understand
why we don't have to have
a CEQA for this project,
some sort of initial study,
at least for the environment,
the traffic and everything,
especially since now, it's I assume
it's a discretionary project
since it's now in front of
the Board of Supervisors,
and it is a novel land use.
It hasn't been done before.
So we don't know what the
effects of having the cremains
in that amount in a
certain concentrated area,
it might be on the
environment and so forth.
There's a pH involved in
soils and all this stuff.
That might be a,
I don't know if there's
studies on this or not,
but that's another concern.
The other one other people
have talked about, of course,
with the traffic and safety
and the county services,
we have very, very little access to fire.
And the sheriff sometimes
it takes about 30 minutes
for them to get there, sometimes an hour.
And how are Better Place
Forest gonna be enforcing
their visitors in this
area and trespassing.
And, you know, I'm just as a neighbor,
as one of the closest neighbors there.
I have a lot of concerns about
people coming up consistently
and having this grow
and grow and be a bigger
and bigger project over time
with without much initial study
or anything like that through CEQA
or, you know, so anyway,
thank you much for your time.
- You're welcome, very welcome.
Anyone else here in the
chambers, anyone downstairs,
- [Woman] No on here to speak.
- Oh, do you want to speak, sir?
Come on, go ahead.
- Hi, my name is John Swift
and I would like to say
that I am a licensed real estate agent,
land use planner and was an
appraiser for quite some time.
And I have developed
a couple of properties
around cemeteries.
Now this property is not a cemetery
as defined by the state law.
It's been demonstrated
time and time again,
that this is very different.
The spreading of ashes is done
throughout the state
throughout the county.
There is no regulation about
the spreading of ashes,
but I do want to say in the
role of a real estate agent
and past appraiser that I have never seen
that type of use resulting the devaluation
of adjacent property.
I developed the property on Capitola Road,
right adjacent to,
I believe it's called
the Holy Cross Cemetery.
We'd had no one, they considered
it desirable open space use
by the most part.
So I never had anybody express that
that was a devaluation.
In terms of maintaining the property
more than even a single family residence.
These people are commercially motivated
to maintain this property,
to keep it looking good,
in essence, to keep the fire hazard down,
they have rules to say that
you cannot have open flames
or a candle.
So different than a house that
may have a fire, a bonfire,
a fire pit.
These are reasons why this
use is probably less impactful
than a single family dwelling with an ADU,
with a junior ADU, with a hobby
space and everything else.
In terms of traffic that someone mentioned
that there would be 500 people there.
There's not 500 people
there at any one time.
The conditions are very clear.
The limitation is 30 people at one time,
and it's extremely unlikely
that that number will be
reached most of the time.
I mean, during the winter time,
there will be virtually
no visitations occurring
when the weather is bad and
the roads are problematic,
they have agreed to maintain the road
as specified in the conditions.
CEQA was reviewed as a
categorical exemption level three
and level four rather,
as small landscape type
facilities and small structures.
So that's a very common CEQA evaluation
of a project of this nature.
Is it possible for the CEO of the company
to respond to some of the
concerns and issues raised?
I think there's some misunderstandings
that would be what I
think we all would benefit
from some clarification.
Is that a protocol for?
Yes, okay, thank you.
- Thank you.
I just want to take one
moment to address the question
of again, our status.
We're very clearly not a
cemetery in California.
And in terms of advertising
and social media sites,
Better Place Forest is very clear.
We are regulated by the states
by the state of California,
that we can not refer to
ourselves as a cemetery
or providing cemetery services.
The reason we are regulated that way
is specifically because
we are not a cemetery.
We are an open space.
We create conservation memorial forests
and in those forests only
spreading is allowed.
Any reference to funeral services
is specific to the cremated
remains disposer licenses
that our staff have
when they provide the cremated
remains disposition work.
In terms of the ongoing care
and maintenance of our forests.
Each of our forests,
we work with local land trust
to put conservation easements on
and to work with the local community
to protect those forests.
We also create a separate endowment fund.
So the forest will have
access to those funds.
So it's very important to note
that this is stewarded land.
We are committing to active
timber harvest on the property
because that is important
to this community.
And while initially some
of our early marketing
may have said,
and an architect who was
involved with the project
said that timber would not be allowed,
in this project that is different.
We've specifically updated
all of our customer contracts
to be clear that commercial
timber will be required
on this property for its
ongoing care and maintenance,
and as part of the longterm
viability for this forest.
So this is something that while initially
we did not intend to do,
when we heard it was a
concern of the community,
we committed to it,
same as the less than
three acre conversion.
When we heard that it was a
concern to the timber industry
of this community,
that they didn't want a precedent
of ashes being spread
on active timber land,
we said, we hear you, we understand,
and we will only spread
ashes within converted areas
specifically because
we want to demonstrate
that we want to work with this community.
We want to create good
jobs in this community.
And we want to give the
families of this community
who want to spend forever
here, the chance to do so.
So I thank you again,
for all your consideration
on this project.
It's been a long two years
of work working with staff,
addressing all of these issues,
but I just want to reiterate,
we are very clearly not a cemetery.
And the specific program we have suggested
of only spreading in converted areas
is specifically to address
the concerns of timber.
So there would not be a precedent
of ashes being spread
in active timber areas,
this sets that precedent
so that it is clear
that our operations are
limited to that area.
Thank you very much.
- Thank you.
- Chair Caput?
- Yeah?
- Chair Caput?
I would recommend that
you ask the opponents,
whether they would like
equal time to come up
and respond to those questions
because we departed from
our normal procedure
in allowing that to happen.
- Thank you, I'll be brief.
We understand that there's a very,
there's a thin line of whether
or not legally as state
law currently exists,
whether or not a Better Place Forest
is a conservation area
or a cemetery or spreading forest.
So two things that I would just
like to conclude with that,
first look at the use,
the law, I don't believe,
I believe staff did a very good job
of outlining some of the inconsistencies
and lack of specificity in the law.
And I think the board should
really have that discussion
and decide whether they
believe this has to do
with memorial services and funeral,
not funeral, cemetery business,
or not, and make that decision.
And if you choose to go forward,
then please get a specific opinion
from the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau.
The letter that they are offering
certainly applies to their
Mendocino forest on TPZ
and is not in any way, shape or form
directly related to what's
being proposed here today.
So I would ask that there's no harm
and probably only benefit that can come
from establishing from the state
that they're in fact operating
within the confines of the law.
They'll make the county feel much better
about what they're doing
if you choose to go forward with this.
And also we'll give the
county some guidelines
on making sure that
there's a proper endowment
for the property, proper
longterm care, I mean,
I'm sure that a Better Place Forest
has great designs and great visions,
but sometimes those don't work out.
It's a business.
And if they decide that they're
done with this property,
I think that's why cemeteries
formal cemeteries have endowments.
That's why they have
longterm care programs.
That's why those things exist.
That's why the States
involved in regulation
of those entities.
And I think that was my concluding point.
So thank you very much.
- Thank you.
Okay any web comments?
- Yes we have two web comments.
Thank you.
The first one is from Becky Steinbrenner,
dear Board of Supervisors.
I am not confident that I am success.
Please include my comment below
for your consideration of the matter.
Please deny application 181556
because it would allow
us cemetery with markers
to be established as a
prohibited use on land zone
for timber preserve bending the rules now
to allow a cemetery on this land
would effectively forever
prohibit timber harvest
at the site due to the
issue of human remains
known to exist on the land.
Although the applicant assists
the proposed cemetery site
would only be available by appointment,
there is no possible insurance
that families of loved ones
whose remains would be
located and marked at the site
would not take liberty to
visit the site night or day
and possibly leave candles or
incense burning on the site.
This increases the fire risk
to the rural property owners nearby
as well as the Soquel
State Demonstration Forest
and Forest of Nisene Marks.
Application 181556
constitutes a commercial use
prohibitive for the parcel
zone timber preserve.
Please deny the application.
And the second one is
from Robert Singleton,
please provide I'm sorry,
please approve the project proposed
by Better Place Forest.
Not only is the project a
unique commercial offering,
but it is a spiritual vision
that allows for people
to remember their lost loved ones
in a very special and personal way.
Beyond the inherent
merits of the proposal,
Better Place Forest has gone above
and beyond what is required of them
and have made a continuous
and persistent effort
to work with other community partners
and the existing timber harvest.
Their project conforms to
the limit exemption zone
and will have virtually no impact
on the other timber
harvesting stakeholders.
They will however work to
maintain the forest safely
and actively reduce wildfire risk.
This project is also
explicitly not a cemetery
as recognized by California law
and any association
between these specific uses
is misleading and perhaps disingenuous.
Lastly, the project will bring
jobs to Santa Cruz County
and not just low paying
service and agricultural jobs,
but career opportunities in
environmental stewardship
and forest management.
Overall, the project is very much in line
with the values of Santa Cruz County
and our business community.
Better Place Forest is
a collaborative partner
and we are excited to have
them as a local company.
Please approve this project.
- Chair I have some additional
questions if that's okay.
- [Greg] Supervisor Leopold.
- You know, one of the things,
when I first became aware of this,
as it went to the planning commission
after the planning
commission made its decision.
And when we took this up at our board,
the big concern that I heard
was about working lands
that TP zone land should be
used for timber production.
And that it was important
that we not give up the limited amount
of space that we have for
TP for some other use.
And so when I heard that
this proposal was coming in,
that it was using
that had scaled back its proposal
to only use a limited
portion of the TP land,
and basically do
everything on this SU land.
I thought that that was a good idea.
The concern was raised about
whether it's, this is actually
harvestable land, right?
I won't pretend like I know.
I've heard from those
that I know in forestry
or heard from another person
forester, differing opinions.
I understand that that
Rich Samson from Cal Fire
has been involved in some
of these discussions.
And so I asked him to be on the call today
so he could answer the
questions about its viability.
And I think Rich is still on the line here
on the Teams call
and Rich, I'm not sure
if you've had a chance
to take a look at this project
or know about a project,
but this idea of the polygons
and harvesting around the polygons.
Is that something that's done?
Is it possible?
Have you looked at this?
- [Rich] This is Rich Samson.
Can you hear me okay?
So we've seen the polygon map.
We've seen similar maps
on similar projects.
Is it feasible?
It's been done in the past.
The property is timber land
it had a timber harvest plan
on it in 2014, I believe.
And so it would be slated
for where it'd be eligible
for another timber harvest
in about another seven years.
So it is viable timber land.
It's not the best timber land
in the County I would admit,
but it is timber land
that could have harvest
into the future.
As to whether it's feasible
to have a commercial harvest
in those, in between the polygons.
I would say it is feasible,
but I would have to see
the actual application
in front of us.
As I've mentioned to staff
and to the proponent,
I would actually have to see
the actual permit application
for conversion before I can answer that.
- This conversion application
would have to go to Cal Fire
before anything could
actually happen on this site.
Is that correct?
- [Rich] Yeah, the way
I normally works in,
well, the way it works
in Santa Cruz County
is we would need county planning,
there's a County planning rep
that signs conversion permits
before it's sent over to
Cal Fire for our review.
So the county would
have to approve it first
and then we would review it.
And if everything is in place
and it met the rules for the full form
and it was accurate,
well, then we would be able to approve it.
- Okay, I appreciate that.
I appreciate you being available.
He and I haven't talked before,
but I understand there
was conversation with him.
So I wanted to make sure he was available.
So I'm gonna ask a question.
I don't know whether you
would know the answer of,
but there is a similar type.
This business has a business
in Mendocino County.
And has there been,
are you aware of any issues
that Cal Fire has been involved
with with that property?
- [Rich] When this came
up about six months ago,
I asked my counterpart up there
and he was not even aware
that there was a property like that
or that use was occurring.
But on the other hand,
my understanding is that
property is not zoned TPZ.
So I don't know what
that property looks like.
It may or may not be
timber land for all I know.
- Well Rich, I appreciate the
work that you do every day.
Thanks for helping at
least me answer question.
I'm not sure if my colleagues
will have any questions for you.
You know, the question
of whether this is can be working lands
has been the thing that
has been driving me
in terms of my analysis of this project,
because I respect the fact
that we've had lots of battles over timber
here in Santa Cruz County,
that we've come to a place
that we have what I call a truce,
that there is clear where
it happened and not happen.
There's a clear set of rules.
To me this project is better
than what could happen
at that site.
If someone were able to come
and say, I like this spot,
I want to be a homeowner there.
They could create that
three acre exemption
and never have to file
a timber harvest plan.
Whereas this one,
we are actually getting someone
to file a timber harvest plan,
and we may disagree about
how much they will get
and whether that will be effective,
but that's a lot better than
what we would get otherwise.
This new thing about the cemetery
it's new, this use is slightly unusual,
but the question from people
about whether it's a cemetery
and whether it should be
regulated like a cemetery,
because cemeteries have rules,
I can just tell you from my
experience in my district,
even a state regulated cemetery
and have lots of problems.
And if you look to the cemetery
in the village of Soquel,
that's where people from
the Civil War are buried,
we had to do a lot of work
to put that in the hands of someone
who would do better care of it,
then what happened because the person
who ran that cemetery spent the endowment
and then caused lots of problems.
And we've now have it
in the hands of folks
who are better managing that property
and allowing people to
bury their loved ones.
And in that case, they're
burying actual bodies.
There is a crematorium on the site,
but most of them are actual burials.
This seems very different to me.
If I were to have cremated
remains of a family member,
and that person wanted to
be spread out on somewhere
that they loved, whether
it be trees, the ocean,
their favorite ball field, or
something that does happen.
The impact to the environment
I think is fairly minimal.
The amount of ashes would
have to be so extraordinary
to create some kind of
environmental hazard.
I don't think that that's
a reasonable question.
I've been convinced by
the letter I read about
from the state agency about
whether it's a cemetery or not,
that it's not a cemetery.
I don't think that we
need to re-litigate that
I do think that the further
concern, so the neighbors,
that there is a real hard limit
on the number of visitors,
the number of cars,
the fact that you can't have any candles
or things that are lighted,
those are conditions of this project.
I would caution to those
who say you should,
we should rezone this as
public facilities land,
because that carries with it
a whole bunch of other things.
One, just to give you
an idea of the range is
if you're zoned PF or public facilities,
you have a by right option
to create a homeless shelter there.
Just one example.
So PF is not some panacea
it's another level of issues.
I do want to ask a
question to the proponents
about the questions of staffing,
you know the concerns that
people are gonna come here
and do things and not
be able to follow rules.
Can someone answer me
the question of staffing?
- The forest is staffed full time,
as well as we've added in wifi to the site
powered by solar,
so there's always access
for emergency information
and emergency issues.
Visitation is by appointment only.
So the gate is locked except
for during appointments.
And we do have security
cameras on the site as well.
So we are, this is from the standpoint
of Better Place Forest versus
not a Better Place Forest.
This site is far more secure,
has staffing full time
to report any issues.
Of course, in terms of
issues like traffic,
we have agreed to traffic limitations,
and there's a full fire ban on the site.
And again, customers
can only be on the site
and their families can only be on the site
when staff are present.
So it is fully staffed to ensure
that all these safety issues are there.
- And on the question of
the maintenance of the road,
what's your understanding of
what your responsibility is
for that road?
- We are committed to make sure
that road is fully is
accessible at all times.
And if there are any
issues with that road,
we will have to fix them.
- [John] Does that mean
changing it to something
more than the condition it's in now?
- It's just making sure it
maintains a high condition
is always drivable.
So it's gonna be more
accessible for fire services
than it would be today,
because we will commit to
always maintaining that road.
- All right, thank you.
I think that when you have a,
for lack of a better term,
a novel use as this,
which is something that
I'm not sure anybody
in the room had thought of five years ago,
maybe he did,
but most of us didn't
think of spreading ashes
five years ago on land,
as a business opportunity.
It is hard that our code can capture all
the ways in which people
imagine to use land.
When I first heard about this as a camp,
I questioned whether that was
the appropriate designation
given what was being done here.
But as I looked at it,
I couldn't find a better way to look
there wasn't another box that it fit in
that made sense to me.
I do think that going forward
that if, should we approve this,
I think there's two things
that would be useful.
One is that we probably do
want some general plan language
to not allow this in the future.
So we don't have to have
this conflict in the future.
And two is to think about if this
is gonna go on in other land,
does there need to be appropriate setbacks
or other conditions that are there
because now that it's in our sphere,
should there be things that we look at?
I don't know if that should be,
but I think that it would be useful for us
to start thinking about this.
So we're not caught unaware in the future.
I would be prepared to move
the conditions of approval
as outlined in attachment,
just to make sure I get
the right one attachment C
findings for approval,
that I would add an additional condition
to direct the staff to draft language
to refer general plan designation,
to not allow this kind
of use in the future.
And also request that the
staff report back to us,
if there are additional language
that we should add to the
code about this kind of use
in other zoned areas,
- [Zach] I will second.
This is Supervisor Friend.
I have some additional thoughts on this.
I appreciate Supervisor
Leopold's comments.
Actually I appreciate what
everybody came up to say,
because it really has
helped inform the discussion
and decision making process.
I think I want to expand on
and see whether Supervisor
Leopold may be willing
to do this.
I'd like to expand a
little bit upon the motion,
because I think that what
we need is actually clarity
of where cremated remains
can go in general.
Right now the code is silent on it.
And I think that what we could do
on the second part of the motion,
if you're amenable is
actually direct staff
to come back with the zoning locations
that it would be acceptable on
because then that would at
least in this new sphere,
settle that component.
On the first element though,
to be specific to how I
interpreted your motion.
What I think the board has been saying
both when we took jurisdiction
and now under the current
comments we're making right now
TPZ is land that has had pretty
significant fights over it.
There should be settled.
The board is not interested,
I'm not interested.
And I think that we need
to make it very clear
in an update so that this
level of interpretation
can't occur moving forward.
This is not a criticism of
planning staff at all right now,
there isn't clarity in the code.
And so one can look at a novel use
and say, well, it's not
expressly prohibited
and therefore it's permitted,
or you could actually make
a different conclusion.
But I think that the board needs
to make a more formal statement
that timber zone is for timber harvesting.
I mean, that's what it's for
other commercial activities
are not the kind of activities,
irrespective of what it is,
whether it's this activity or
a different kind of activity,
we need to be a pretty restrictive
of what other commercial activities.
So I would be supportive of a
general plan of an amendment
that comes forward that really does limit
what's possible on TPZ land.
But the second part of it if
Supervisor Leopold's amenable,
is I think that we need
to actually come back
with zoning information
of where cremated remains can actually go.
And then the second component
of that is the parameters
within those zones of
what would be acceptable.
- I'm comfortable with
that as an amendment
- Chairman Caput, this
is Supervisor McPherson.
I'm glad to see that we're
making some additions
by supervisors Leopold and Friend.
I do want to thank our
planning department commission
for all its work.
And the applicant for
downsizing his proposal.
Seldom do we have a staff
recommendation for denial
or for approval at the same time,
but this is a complicated issue.
I'm concerned about the
precedent setting nature of this.
And I think that we can address those
with the amendments that
have been mentioned,
or the motion and amendments
that have been mentioned.
I think the Better Place
Forest's would agree
that the marketing got in front
of this approval process,
but I do appreciate their
downsizing the appraisal,
and attempt to make this a better fit.
First on some of the
concerns that were mentioned,
and was responded to in kind
by some of the supervisors,
the number of cars they're limited to 15,
the number of people,
guests at any time to 30 per day,
visitation by appointment only
no amplified music, that's another issue.
I think those folks in
the mountains would have,
do appreciate, and it says
no candles or open flames.
And I guess that gets down
to just the bare match stick itself.
So I hope that's very clear as well.
One thing I just don't have a good sense
of how many scatterings are anticipated
in a three acre area.
How many could be there?
I don't know, is it a
hundred, I'm not sure.
I think some of the, the residents
in the area would like to know that,
I'm concerned about it too,
but with the motion and the
recommended amendments to it,
I would be supportive,
inclined to support this today.
I do understand there were real concerns
of timber harvesting, this county has some
of strictest harvesting rules.
And it took the supervisors
years and years to get us there.
So I want to make sure
this is not a precedent setting nature
of justification's that we're saying,
and in order to allow this use,
but I do wanna say that I
think with the stipulations
that have been put into place
and the amendments that
have been mentioned,
I could be supportive of this project.
- [Ryan] This is Supervisor Coonerty.
I wanted to see if the applicants,
there are two pieces that I
heard that I want to make sure
I confirm, and then that
I heard those correctly
and that they could be added as conditions
if they're considered
friendly to the motion.
The first is that the Better Place Forest
disclosing our contracts with customers,
that the forest will be harvested.
And I thought I heard them say that,
but if they come back up to the microphone
and confirm that?
- I want to confirm that
our contract was updated,
and again, this is a presale agreement
to reserve a tree for the future.
So the final agreement is,
would only be after a permit is issued
and it becomes a complete sale.
We have already updated contracts
to reflect that this is a working site
in working forest land.
And as a result, people know
that there will be active timber
that is part of maintaining
and stewarding this
property in the future.
Sustainable harvest is necessary
to maintain this forest in the future,
but the individual
trees that are protected
in the conversion areas
would not be timber land.
So the rest of it would
be available for timber.
- [Ryan] So that would be consent
just to confirm that would be consistent
if we had a condition requiring that,
that be consistent with
what your intention
and practice already is.
- Yes, there's already
a condition Supervisor
that we would have to
submit a timber harvest plan
on the property specifically for that.
So that I think it's,
we mentioned seven years from now,
the property would be available for timber
and that we would perform
commercial timber.
- [Ryan] And then, yeah, that
was my question for staff.
The wording, I believe is
a timber management plan.
And then people have said harvesting plan.
And if someone on staff
could explain the difference
between the two
and if there was a requirement
that they submit it within two years.
- Timber management plan
is actually a requirement
in the general plan.
So that is why that has
been included in there.
So the general plan when
these types of uses are
for organized camps are approved.
They have to file a
timber management plan,
as well as I can't recall exact,
there was a second a condition
that was added as well.
Timber harvest plan,
I believe is a much more detailed plan
and Rich Samson could
probably expand on that,
but it typically requires
a lot more detail
about specific trees.
And I think what is gonna be harvested
versus a timber management
can really plan,
can really be catered to the specific use
and the county local jurisdictions
can actually decide what
it's gonna look like.
- [Ryan] Okay, and then
is Rich still with us?
- [Rich] Yes, I'm still here.
- [Ryan] So then I guess the question
for you is that first question,
and the second one is you mentioned
it's eligible in seven years.
When's the soonest they could submit
a timber harvesting plan before
that, within that timeframe.
- [Rich] Let me clarify one thing,
there's two things that
you mentioned earlier,
the timber management plan
is basically a plan on how
you will manage that harvest.
A timber harvest plan
is a specific document
that Cal Fire regulates
it's a permit to harvest.
So one is as a whole process of it,
including the county helping to review it
during the approval process,
that would be the timber harvest plan.
And the other one is basically just a plan
that has no regulatory
authority to be followed.
It's just, this is the plan
that they would want to follow.
So as far as when's the
soonest a timber harvest plan
could be submitted,
it is 10 years following
completion of the previous harvest.
The last plan was 2014 permit.
I believe it was at least
2016 before they completed
and I'd have to check my records.
So 2026 would be the earliest
you could put a permit,
a timber harvest permit on that property.
- [Ryan] And in general,
do people submit a couple years in advance
or do they, is it,
you won't take a submission until 2026?
- [Rich] Generally we
won't look at the permit
until it's approved, I
mean until it's eligible.
There are sometimes when there's
a well on large properties
where there's some units
that were harvested fairly
close to the 10 years,
we'll allow the permit to come through,
but put a condition that they can't enter
that until after the 10 years is up
but more routinely the standard practice
in this county is that
it's at least 15 years
before somebody enters a
property again after harvest.
- [Ryan] Okay.
So let me ask County Counsel,
if we put a condition on
there that required submission
of a timber harvesting plan by 2026,
would that be consistent with,
would that be an appropriate condition
to add to this project?
- Yes Supervisor it would
be an appropriate condition
to add to the project.
I would ask two things.
First of all, I would,
in a moment ask if the
applicant would consent
to that condition and come to the mic
and let us know whether they
consent to that condition
as part of the approval process,
I would also want to clear
up any kind of confusion
with regards to the existing
conditions of approval,
because item four B indicates
that they're to submit
a forest management plan
and item four C indicates
that they are to submit
a timber management plan.
And I want to make sure
that staff is not indicating
that they have to have a
forest management plan,
a timber management plan,
and then a separate
timber harvesting plan.
I think there's a little
confusion around that
and that we should clear it
up for the record of possible.
- And there's also D right,
which is they have to enter
into a binding contract
about that timber harvest plan.
- [Elizabeth] That is
actually the other condition
that I can recall that's
in the general plan.
So that's why we included that.
- Yeah I meant that's the conditions
of approval here today.
- Yes and I would say the
timber management plan
and forest management plan
are really one in the same.
So it was probably by mistake
that both were listed.
I would say we could do
one of them would do away
with one of them.
- Okay, so can we confirm for the record
that there is no condition
of approval currently in here
that's meant to be concerning
the timber harvesting plan?
- [Elizabeth] There is not right now, no.
- Okay, so if the board wanted to add that
it would be a fresh condition.
- Yes.
- Okay.
So, so if the applicant
could come let us know
whether they agree to that condition,
that would be helpful.
- Let me ask.
- Yes we accept that condition.
Timber harvest plan submitted by 2026.
Is that it?
- [Man] Yes, that's what I understood.
The friendly amendment that
was being proposed to be.
And so now it would go back to the board.
- What I'm getting at now
with the changes that are being proposed,
We've opened this process up.
We need to hear from opposition.
- No.
- Why not?
- That's not the way it works.
- Because this is just
a friendly amendment
at this point that
public hearing is closed.
This is a friendly amendment
that has been passed on
as regarding the motion.
And so now you're in motion territory.
So there's no more,
there's no more back and
forth on presentation.
This is Supervisor Coonerty's request
to add an additional
condition of approval,
which any of the board members could do
as part of approving or
denying this project.
- Okay so what we're gonna vote on though,
is it won't be final.
- Well, right now,
what needs to happen is
that the maker of the motion
Supervisor Friend, needs to determine
whether or not he is amenable
to Supervisor Coonerty's
added condition of approval
that the applicant has agreed to.
And then he needs to see
if Supervisor Leopold
as his second agrees to
that friendly amendment.
And if so, then you
would call for the vote.
- All right, now this requires 4/5,
four out of five vote.
- No, 3/5 vote.
- 3/5.
- 3/5 vote.
- All right.
- I will just say that I'm
comfortable with the amendment.
- [Zach] And as the seconder counselor,
is actually Supervisor Leopold,
that made the motion and
Supervisor Friend made the second.
And I'm also comfortable with the second.
Thank you for your
guidance on that Mr. Heath.
- [Ryan] And just, I'm sorry.
This is a Supervisor Coonerty.
The line I couldn't tell
whether Supervisor Leopold
said he was comfortable or uncomfortable,
which makes a difference obviously.
- I agreed to the amendment.
- Okay thank you.
- Read it exactly what we
have before us right now.
(John laughing)
I'm sorry to put you on that
'cause I'm not exactly sure.
- Well, you want me to try?
So I made the motion to use the conditions
of approval and the findings
that are here for approval
that are in attachment a,
that we are gonna ask for
a general plan language
to make sure that this
can happen again in TPZ.
We are gonna ask staff to come up with
where the spreading of cremated remains
could happen in Santa Cruz.
And whether there needs
to be any additional
regulation around that
and that the Better Place
Forests will be required
to submit a timber harvest
plan by 2026 to Cal Fire.
And then the other condition of approval
is they they've got to do it
and have all the pieces together.
- So basically what a yes
vote or this is saying
that they could go ahead?
- Correct.
- And a no vote means no.
- Correct.
Currently the way the rules that we have,
it's a no, but we're changing it to a yes.
- No, that's not accurate.
- It's up to your boards to determine
whether the use is appropriate,
it's not a yes or no
answer across the board.
You get to decide that
here in this hearing today,
the last thing I will point out
is that Supervisor Coonerty
had one additional request,
which is that the language
regarding the timber harvesting
be placed in the contracts.
And I believe that was
part of the motion as well,
Supervisor Leopold?
- Correct.
- And how many acres are
we talking about here?
- How many acres in
the TP zoned districts?
- How many acres are affected by this?
- [Elizabeth] So they are
applying the modification
of the proposal was to
restrict the memorial forest,
where they would put the cremated remains
in a less than three
acre conversion permit.
So it would be less than three acres
and they are distinct they're
in specific polygon areas.
The map of polygons was
submitted to your board
to illustrate where they plan
to have the memorial trees.
And it's the addition
of all the polygon areas
in addition to the improvements
like the non-habitable structure,
the other roadway improvements
total less than three acres total,
it's the sum total of all that area
is less than three acres.
The site itself is an 84 acre site.
However about eight acres is special use.
So that leaves about 76 acres of TP zone.
So if you recall, this site
has two zone districts on it.
Most of it is TP 76 acres is zoned TP.
So minus the three acres,
about three acres for
the conversion exemption,
73 acres would be left for timber harvest.
- Okay.
We have no more questions.
We can't open it up anymore.
So I have to call for the public hearing
is now closed to bring
a book to the board,
I guess we'll need a motion and a second.
- So the motion has been made by myself
and then Supervisor Friend
has, has seconded the motion,
There's been some with
some friendly amendments.
And I believe we're ready to vote.
- I think we have to.
- Okay.
I'll call the roll.
- Supervisor, ready?
- County Counsel?
We're ready to vote right?
- Absolutely.
- No more comment.
- No more comments.
- No more comment.
- Supervisor Leopold
- Aye
- Friend.
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson
- Aye.
- Chairman Caput?
- No.
So the motion passes four to one.
Okay.
- One more item, I think.
Or two more items.
- We have two more.
Anybody that spoke on item
number 10 earlier this morning,
you will not be able to speak on it again.
And let me go back to item number 10.
Consider adoption of an urgency ordinance,
adding chapter 7.109 to
the Santa Cruz County code
to provide remedies for violation
of public health orders as
outlined in the memorandum
of County Administrative Officer.
And that's better known as masks
and do we need a stuff,
are we're gonna have a report on it?
- [Man] Yes I was going to
ask if our County Counsel
could describe the ordinance to the board.
- Sure.
- Thank you.
- Sure, this is an ordinance designed
to put a new tool in our tool basket.
Right now, violation of
public health officer orders
are classified as misdemeanors,
which lead to large penalties,
such as six months in
jail and $1,000 fines.
What we were looking for is something
that is broader in scope
that gives us an ability
to speak with people,
to publicly educate folks
and ask them to comply voluntarily
before giving them something
akin to a traffic ticket
if they refuse to comply.
We believe that it's
better for law enforcement
and for our existing county staff,
our administrative staff like planning,
code enforcement folks,
environmental health,
to be able to have this
as an enforcement tool.
Of course, nobody wants to issue tickets.
What we want to do is we want
to obtain voluntary compliance
by educating people and asking
them for their cooperation.
But if folks aren't willing
to go there with us,
we have to have some kind of an ability
to have an enforcement mechanism.
This would allow law
enforcement to write a ticket
that would be handled in traffic court,
like any other violation
of the county code,
or it would allow designated staff
to issue administrative penalty citations
that would also be subject to appeal.
And I'm happy to answer any
other questions you may have.
- Okay.
So even if somebody doesn't
like to wear a mask,
actually this is better for them anyway.
I mean, with the current way we are,
they would have to go before a judge.
And what we're saying now
is you have something
like a parking ticket
that you have to take care of.
- [Jason] That's a great
way of explaining it, yes.
- Anyway, does anybody
here are the chambers
like to speak on item number 10?
Go ahead.
- Chair excuse me,
are we doing two minutes or three minutes?
- Could you do it in two minutes?
(laughs) go ahead.
(man murmuring softly)
- Was that from what I read,
the first citation was
100, then it was 200,
then it was 500.
But when you go through the system
as a traffic situation,
basically the penalty triples.
But I don't know if that's
what's really important here.
What is really going on
with wearing these masks
when there's been so much information
that this is just a hoax
and it doesn't do anything except to say
that I am gonna blindly follow rules
that are basically based on a nonsense.
Now I'm not saying that there
isn't a pandemic going on.
You know, when there's
400 bio weapons labs
in the United States alone,
there's thousands of bio
weapons all available
but there's lots of
different ways to cause harm.
So by one, not actually
introducing to the public,
what actually, I believe I read
about what was going on about here,
as far as the penalties and
then providing information,
what that actually means.
I don't know what kind of
service is really being offered.
It seems like there are
many other issues going on
that are just getting swept under the rug.
And I wish I had more time
to go into detail about that
and I will at another time.
So once again,
I'm glad that we are able
to stand up here and speak.
And I appreciate that.
'Cause I don't know
any other jurisdictions
in the county where you can do that.
So that's enough, thank you.
- Okay, you're welcome.
Thank you.
- Hi, good afternoon.
My name is Drew Lewis.
I'd like to encourage the board to vote no
on a new health officer order of item 10.
I respectfully request that
you vote no on this new order.
The health officer, the
request for the new ordinance
with severe penalties is based on evidence
that I believe comes from fraudulent
and contrived data.
I would addressed evidence for crowding
and contrived data for
profit and monetary gain.
The false positive tests for COVID-19
average around 50%,
according to many studies,
false recording of people being positive
because COVID-19 tests commonly use
was said by its creator,
Nobel winner, Carrie Mullis
quote "Must not be used
to diagnose an infectious
disease" unquote.
There are monetary incentives to hospitals
to falsely record positive tests
and death certificates for financial gain,
$13,000 for every death
certificate with COVID-19 on it.
They get 39,000 for every
patient who dies on a ventilator
who has COVID-19 on
their death certificate.
They also get 150,000 to 300,000
for each COVID-19 patient
who dies in a hospital.
According to the
"Washington Examiner" quote,
"The CDC director
acknowledges hospitals
have a monetary incentive
to over count coronavirus deaths."
Other countries oppose lockdowns,
masks and social distancing,
Sweden and Netherlands
have officially declared
that the science does not
support a lockdown, masks,
and social distancing,
and they will not force these useless
and extreme measures on their people.
There's clear evidence of fraud
and contrived fear are being
used to manipulate us all
for the profit and personal gain.
I think that the health
director said that anyway,
there's a tsunami of
workers and their families
who will soon become
homeless and destitute
as a result of supporting these
lies and fraud for profit.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- Hi.
- So I've been waiting in these
chambers three hours today
to speak to this.
Could I please have three minutes?
I've been waiting for three
hours in this chamber today
to speak to this issue.
Could I please have three minutes
as everybody in oral communications did?
- [Greg] Yeah.
- Thank you very much,
Bruce Tanner.
So we're now being asked to accept
that this pandemic is going to go on
into the indefinite future
based on what the public media,
the commercial media are saying,
which seems to be what's
driving all of the policy
in this county and in this state.
And this is not based on the science,
although you claim repeatedly that it is,
all of the science
shows that the new cases
which we're being assured are rocketing up
are based on these very scientific tests,
but they're not.
These tests have been conceded
by the federal agencies actually
to be inconclusive and have
a lot of false positives.
So also if we have all
of these extra cases,
the more cases there are,
the less fatal this supposed pandemic is,
and we are approaching
some kind of herd immunity
as the human immune system has done
throughout our history of
hundreds of thousands of years
on this planet.
Nonetheless, now we want to have new laws
to extract revenue from
the people of this county,
based on their not complying
with these specious orders,
the masks do not have
any scientific studies
that show that they stop transmission.
In fact, it's very questionable
as to whether they do at all.
They don't have anything that proves that.
And there are many scientific studies
that prove that wearing these
masks is bad for human health
and damages the immune system,
but we're not following that.
So I just like to remind you
that in passing these ordinances,
you are acting under color of law.
And you're passing an ordinance,
which is void in advance
of it's being passed
because it violates the
constitutional rights
of the people of this county.
And you're violating
your own oaths of office.
And the officers who are
gonna be asked to enforce this
are violating their own office as well
in enforcing a law,
supposed law that's
passed under color of law.
And I hope that the public
of this county understands
that these laws are illegitimate
and the county does not
have the jurisdiction
to extract the revenue
of people of this county
for obeying submitting to these laws,
which are not based on any solid practice
and violate our right to
behave as we would prefer.
(audience applauding)
- Yeah, hi, my name is Rich Buckingham.
I like to point out
that while this COVID-19
virus is infectious.
It's not very deadly
and as such, I don't see an argument
for shutting things down and having masks.
I like to point out that, for example,
if you get a vaccination
or you have cancer,
your immune system may or
may not develop antibodies,
which are detected by this test,
which it doesn't tell you
whether you're sick or not.
It tells you whether it tells doctors,
whether you have antibodies
and it just doesn't indicate disease.
And now, as far as masks goes,
when you have a mask on you're
breathing in excess CO2,
and you're not getting enough oxygen.
And CO2 is good for plants,
however, it's not good for humans.
So it's a waste product.
And some people will tell you
that the results of wearing
masks are more dangerous
than COVID-19.
And finally, if there's a second wave
of this so-called virus,
it might be the result
of people getting sick
from carbon dioxide poisoning and hypoxia,
which is lack of oxygen.
Thank you.
- [Greg] Thank you, thank you.
Hi Marilyn.
- Hi, it's a shame we didn't
get to speak this morning.
There were more people who were here
would have taken about 15 minutes.
Anyway, I was in this
room in 2011 and 2012,
when there would say another
type of urgency ordinance pass.
An ordinance was extended.
And I think some of the comments
of the health officer then
Dr. Nancom is relevant here.
This was about health risks
associated with smart meters
and a ordinance the county
had to prevent installation.
She states, "There's no scientific data
to determine a safe
level of radio frequency,
microwave radiation."
Then she says,
"The question for a government agency
is that given the evidence of
existing and potential harm,
should we err on the side of safety
and take the precautionary
avoidance measure"
this case from microwave radiation,
that's known the two unique features
of exposure are universal exposure
and involuntary exposure
due to this already ubiquitous saturation,
of infrastructure in Santa Cruz County.
Government agencies for protecting
public health and safety.
And should me much more vigilant
about involuntary environmental exposure
because governmental agencies
are the only defense
against this involuntary exposure
to the microwave radiation.
Now in this case, and this ordinance,
unfortunately, to stop PG&E
and their agency Wellington
was not in force.
And today we have more and more radiation
and infrastructure and damage.
Masks are unhealthy.
Vaccines that are leading
to mandatory vaccines next.
The Supreme Court decision,
I forget what year it was,
said, "Vaccines are inherently unsafe,"
and this is to dictate
harm on the community.
Instead of protecting the community
is not what government agencies should do.
Now we also know there are chemicals
found in baby's umbilical
cords, industrial chemicals,
by the hundreds.
Trace contact tracing.
We know those chemicals come from industry
to protect children.
That's what should be banned.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
(audience applauding)
- Hi, this is Ellie again.
So here we are.
And I feel like I'm on
the crazy train still.
Still here we are.
We're talking about
potentially fining people
in a community where we're looking
at many people are now on public aid,
including myself for the
first time in their lives.
And we're talking about fining people.
Are we crazy?
Hello? Hello?
Think about this for a second.
Meanwhile, how many people
in this room are aware
that in Europe, tens
of thousands of people
have been marching against mask mandates,
tens of thousands of people,
what you got like we have like what,
a couple hundred people in Santa Cruz
who have been talking about this openly?
Talking tens of thousands of people.
Have you seen the pictures entire streets?
It looked to me like half a
mile filled with people okay.
So this is not just a couple
of keep Santa Cruz weird people
who are talking about this.
This is a lot of people
all over the planet.
These are doctors who
are saying these things.
So to even consider, to even consider,
oh, we're gonna fine you for something
that is being protested around the world
with very real considerations
being brought to the forefront
by medical professionals is insane
to have politicians making
this type of decision
on a health topic is nuts.
Okay, we need to get our jobs back.
We need to actually build our economy
so we can actually afford
to pay these fines.
So please vote no on this.
It's nuts.
Do something that actually
helps the community
figure out how we can get back to work,
how we get our kids back in school.
So we can actually get back
to work and build the economy,
get our community gardens open,
actually make sure we have food security
in the coming months.
Thank you.
- You're welcome.
(audience applauding)
Is there anyone down
in the community room?
- [Woman] No, we have no
one in the community room.
- Any web comments?
- So chair, we do have web comments.
We have 12 emails,
but of those emails, it's
a total of six people.
Four of them are against this ordinance
and two are for it.
There's not saying anything
that hasn't already
been said in this room.
I can just give you that information
or I can read them into
the record for you.
It's they will be attached to the minutes.
It's up to you.
- Okay.
- [Marilyn] Please read the emails.
- [Man] Can you speak louder?
Can you speak louder please.
- Chair?
- Can I make a comment?
- No.
- No.
- Chair it's up to you.
The clerk has offered you a recommendation
that there are, it sounds like 12 emails
that could be read into
the record right now,
or in the interest of time,
you could accept the representation
that the clerk has made,
that there are four against the ordinance
and two that are in
favor of the ordinance.
And those emails will be
attached to the minutes
and will be attached to the
record of these proceedings.
You can choose a chair to
accept that if you'd like.
- Yes.
- Yes, you would like me to read them,
or yes, we're good with the description.
- Yeah go ahead.
- Read them.
- I mean you're gonna read all of them?
- If you want me to read them,
I would read all of them.
Otherwise we can just
go off the description
I just gave you.
- Are you gonna summarize them?
- She's summarizing them as
that four against two are for.
So she's suggesting that that
she'll put them in the record.
She doesn't need to read them
unless you want her to read them.
- The four that are against is everything
that has already been said.
And the two that are for
is pretty much everything
that has already been said.
- All right go ahead.
- You would like me to read all of them?
Some of these are very long and
people sent multiple emails.
- Well you only get one shot at this.
- I know, so I'm gonna
set the timer on myself.
So if you'll be bear with me,
it will take a little bit of time.
The first one is from Adam Novak.
I think this is a good idea.
An infraction is the
right level of severity
to use here.
Although it would be good to
income index the fine somehow
one of the public comments complained
that this was a criminalization
criminalizing non-criminals
there is no such thing as criminals,
and non-criminals just people doing
what they think they need to do.
And government declaring
various things to be crimes.
Or in this case infractions.
He goes on to say,
one of the other commentators
did have a point though,
how are we going to
make mask ordinance work
for deaf people who need to read lips?
There could be an exemption
for when you are trying to
communicate with such a person,
but you can't tell a deaf
person just by looking at them.
And it doesn't seem right for them to have
to notify everyone that they want to talk.
The next comment is from Satayo Ryan,
I am deeply troubled that you
are considering this action
to codify additional fines for violations
of public health orders,
which currently would relate
to the wearing of face
coverings and social distancing,
as well as authorizing
additional enforcers.
I am not attending the meeting today
because I am unable to wear a face mask
due to my inability to breathe.
You do not provide adequate opportunity
for those who have medical
exemptions to share in public.
Why are you not allowing the public
to phone in their comments
during the meeting?
She goes on to say,
I take no issue with
following public health orders
when such orders are legitimate
and backed by scientific evidence.
In the case of the current face covering
and social distancing
orders, this is not the case.
I have sent abundant scientific evidence
to the board of supervisors and Dr. Newel
proving the ineffectiveness of face masks.
One of these emails is
included in the agenda packet.
I've also questioned the legitimacy
of continuing the current local emergency,
asked for documentation justification
and received no reply.
She continues the University of Minnesota
Center for Infectious
Disease Research and Policy
published in an article by Dr. Brosseau
and Dr. Sietsema experts
on respiratory infection
and infectious diseases.
They state that "In sum given, I'm sorry,
in sum, given the information
about their performance
as source control and real world settings,
along with extremely low
efficiency of cloth mask,
as filters and their poor fit,
there is no evidence to
support their use by the public
or health care workers to
control emission of particles
from the wearer."
They further state,
"We do not recommend
requiring the general public,
who do not have any symptoms
of COVID-19 like illness
to routinely where a
cloth or surgical masks."
She sent in three more
emails that I won't read.
The next one is by Gail Marie McNulty,
sad to see racism and
selfishness being expressed
so openly at this morning's meeting,
it's easy for those who are
able to shelter in place
and choose how seriously or not seriously,
they take their own safety.
It's heartless for these same people
to put those who are
less fortunate at risk,
and to pretend that those
who are safe now have
somehow earned the safety
and the privilege that allows them
to put others at risk
is to stay blind to the injustice
that has lived in this
county since white supremacy,
slave and conquest funding,
the propaganda being so
widely spread in this country,
is just that.
Our future safety, wellbeing
and democratic freedom
depend on dismantling false truths
and electing leaders who have the courage
to take bold positions and
defend truth, equality,
and justice.
While we demilitarize our police
and begin a restorative justice process
to ensure less brutality and more safety
and equity giving up measures designed
to protect our most vulnerable citizens
from a potentially deadly pandemic
is not the place to start.
Next one is from Ken Davenport.
I generally agree with
compliances to health mandate.
However, this proposal is too broad.
What is a code enforcement officer?
Are they police?
Do they carry guns or wear a uniform?
Are they driving around neighborhoods
looking for family barbecues?
While all the protests
related to Black Lives Matter
is going to further alienate government
from the people they serve.
The public wants to know the details
of how you plan to
administer this proposal.
The next one,
there is no name given,
your decision today will determine
if you are listening to your voters,
ticketing people for not wearing a mask
goes against people's rights to choose.
Cloth mask is no more
than a pollution shield.
Blocking viral particles
require medical grade PPE.
Wearing a mask at a desk is 100% different
than wearing a mask while exercising.
While neither are
effective at protecting you
from viral particles,
your decision to ticket, for example,
a runner for not wearing a mask
while they are attempting to stay healthy
is a huge abuse of elected positions.
No mask listen to your
constituents, no mask mandate.
We are watching and we'll vote accordingly
in November elections.
Next one is from Becky Steinbrenner.
Dear Board of Supervisors,
please do not pass this punitive ordinance
that would cause a chilling impact,
the personal and medical freedoms
guaranteed by the Constitution
to the general public.
Those with medical exemptions
to wearing a face mask would be harassed
by law enforcement for simply
taking care of their health.
I have personally experienced this problem
in your board chambers multiple times
when I had a note from a physician
recommending that I use a face shield,
not a mask due to health risk,
your board muted at me
when I did not wear a mask
and the sheriff deputy
cleared the chambers
when I wore my facial
shield, instead of a mask,
I presented my physician note to him,
but he rejected it.
This morning when I
attempted to participate
from home on item number five,
public comment, my comments were not read.
How can you in good conscious
adopt a punitive measure that
would fine people like myself
for not wearing face masks,
even though it is potentially
harmful to our health?
Please do not adopt any ordinance
that would fine anyone
for not following the health
and safety guidelines
issued by Governor Newsom.
These rules change daily
and the public has no
way to be kept appraised
of the whims that are not supported
by solid peer reviewed science.
Who would be your enforcers, the sheriff,
or a person in the community
who wants to make my life miserable
and call the county hotline to report me
and others with medical exemptions.
Can you really justify spending
more precious taxpayer money
to hire extra enforcers
who as we saw initially
with the overzealous
sheriff deputies hired
to enforce shelter in place orders
just really did not understand the intent
of the order and caused a lot of fear
and anger in the community.
And that's all of them.
- [Marilyn] Becky Steinbrenner sent one in
and I didn't hear it.
- I just read it, Marilyn.
- [Marilyn] It's hard to hear you.
- That's all.
- Okay, thank you.
Bring it back to the board for comments.
Any comments?
Yes?
- Chair.
In dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic,
we've had to ask people
to do lots of things
that they're not used to doing
because we're trying to spread the this,
we're trying to slow
the spread of this virus
in our community, which has had an impact.
That impact is real.
There are over a thousand people
who've contracted this virus.
There are hundreds of people
who have ended up in the hospital
and unfortunately, there's
four people who've died.
This new ordinance actually
is just another way
of doing something that's
already been in place,
which is, it was already a misdemeanor
not to wear your mask.
There wasn't the method in which
that had to be enforced
wasn't as effective
as this method.
And so I'm gonna be
supporting this ordinance.
I also want to point
out that you can't pick
and choose when to listen
to public health leaders.
If you stand in front of us
and say that the public health
leader was right in 2011,
but somehow the public health leader
in 2020 is not that's,
you don't get to pick
and choose, you know,
we're following the advice.
We did follow the advice actually
from the health officer in 2011.
And we are following the advice
of our health officer in 2020.
So I would move the recommended actions.
- Okay we have a motion.
Do we have a second or any other comments?
- Second Coonerty.
- Thank you I'll do the roll call.
Supervisor Leopold?
- Aye.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Sorry, aye.
- Supervisor McPherson?
- [Bruce] Aye.
- Chair Caput?
- Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
And that takes a to item number 11.
And this is what is consider
the final appointment
of Emily Balli.
To the first 5 commission
as an at large representative
for a term to expire April 1st, 2023.
- I move approval.
- We have a motion.
- [Zach] Second.
- We have a second, did you get that?
- I'll call the roll.
Was that Supervisor Friend who seconded?
- Yes.
- I think so.
I believe so.
- We'll see if there's
anybody from the public
who wants to say anything.
- Public?
- Seeing none.
- Any comments from the public?
We'll take it to a vote, thank you.
- Supervisor Leopold?
- Aye.
- Friend?
- Aye.
- Coonerty?
- Aye.
- McPherson?
- Aye.
- Chairman Caput?
- Aye.
Passes unanimously.
And that concludes today's agenda.
What we'll do is we will
have a special meeting,
revised budget hearing
starting August 10th
through the 13th, 2020 at 9:00 a.m.
and August 18th 2020 at 1:30 p.m.
Regular meeting August 18th at 9:00 a.m.
Thank you.
