July 22, 2026 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
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Taxes. You are? No, I'm here to president. All right. And what is your name that's want to work? I apologize. Sometimes it's easier to write it on a piece of paper. I know. Appreciate it. Morning. Okay. And that's the only item. That's the only item. This gonna be two minutes and they're gonna do and and they're gonna, okay. There's a few of them up there. I don't know because So the will you don't, you can't, I can't. If you can't do that. Decide not within the first five and she'll that information you. Yeah. Well, pictures to show. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Good morning. Good morning. I now call the March 3rd, 2026 San Diego County Board of Supervisors regular meeting, fire protection district meeting and sanitation district meeting To order, we'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the land we call home. There are communities in the San Diego region that face unjust conditions and circumstances related to the environments in which they live. The travel nations of the San Diego region are an example of one community that has historically faced such injustices. We acknowledge the harmony that existed between the land, nature, and its original people who have since endured displacement, persecution, and systemic oppression. We pay our respect to the unseated territory in homeland to the 18 tribal nations in our region, the most in any county in the United States. From four cultural groups, the Kumeyaay Deo, the Eno, the Eno, and the kaa. We aspire to learn from indigenous traditional knowledge and experiences in undoing the injustices of the past. Andrew, please call the role for today's session. Thank you. Chair Lawson Reamer, supervisor Anderson. Here. Supervisor Desmond. Here. Chair Prote. Here. Vice Chair Montgomery. Seth. Here. Chair Lawson Reamer here. Thank you. We now proceed with the proclamation. The first proclamation will be given by myself and supervisor Desmond, honoring Susan Brazo. Oh, sorry. Apologies. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We now have Father Nen who would deliver the invocation and Chanel Hawkin, who will lead us in the pledge of leading,
Loving and creator God. You created each one of us with dignity. We come together this morning recognizing that you call each of us to respect the human dignity in each person. To live a radical inclusion that embody your tenderness and love. For all of us, we ask that you guide us that our actions, listening, planning, and decisions today be grounded in this radical love to love our neighbors as ourselves, so that we come to realize that the fears and hopes, the struggles and the victories of our neighbors, our own. We love one another because we belong to each other. We pray that our listening and learning, our speaking and sharing, and the decisions we make, take into account the most vulnerable among us. We pray for all families in our country, in our county who suffer from the lack of resources to fear of being separated and for the families who already live in separation. We pray for strength and leadership so that as your beloved community, we work together to care for them to restore dignity to each person, to each resident in our county. We bless them as we bless ourselves always in your holy name, who always accompany us and call us to the fullness of who we are, to live with dignity and flourishing, and to protect those who are most vulnerable among us. Amen.
Please place your right hand over your heart. Ready begin. 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. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So now we proceed with the proclamation. The first proclamation is from myself and supervisor Desmond, honoring Susan Brazo. Accepting the proclamation will be Susan Brazo.
Good morning. So I'm very happy and also a little bit sad to stand here with Supervisor Desmond and to celebrate to someone who has given 25 years of service to this county. Susan Brazo, our director of human resources for more than a decade. As director, Susan has helped guide this county through growth, change, and challenge. Always calm, thoughtful, and prepared. Human resources can become complex work. It requires fairness, discretion, and patience. Susan brought all of that and more. She built trust, she strengthened relationships. She made sure our workforce had the support and needed to serve the people of this county well. And she did it with professionalism, integrity, and kindness in positions like these, you are never really off the clock. I'd like to thank Susan and her family, especially her parents in Michigan and her daughter who's away in college for their patience and grace. When Susan stepped away from family time, whether on vacation or a weekend visit to answer our many calls in emails. Susan, your leadership has made a lasting mark on this organization. We are better because of you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your steadiness and thank you for the care you brought to this role every single day.
Thank you ma'am. Chair. Appreciate it. So Susan, she has faithfully and diligently served the county of San Diego for more than two decades. Beginning her distinguished career in 2002 as a labor relations specialist. And through her de dedication and expertise, she advanced numerous leadership roles. And her commitment was to excellence in the, in the evidence of a progression to senior labor relations officer and labor relations manager, where she provided invaluable guidance and fostered collaborative relationships that strengthened our workforce here at the county. She continued the commitment to her excellent leadership, was promoted to Deputy director of human resources in 2011, and then by 2014 she took over the Duke department. So she was the director of human resources and she's held that distinction for over a decade. She championed the ma the modernization of the employee engagement survey, transforming it into a powerful tool that informs pro programs designed to help strengthen workforce wellbeing and foster a culture of listening and for and, and responsiveness across the border and across the entire enterprise.
Her leadership extended beyond the traditional bar boundaries. She woven the board's priorities, but also because this is a big word, the Neurodivergent excellence program. I'm gonna have to look that up. And the veterans and the workforce into the fabric of this organization, ensuring that every employee, I'm sure that felt valued and supported in this, in in their unique contributions. And as the senior labor relations officer and labor relations manager, Susan Advanced strategic initiatives, but also created an environment where inclusion, respect and opportunity became the hallmarks of the county's commitment to its people and their advancement. She, she championed talent development initiatives, ensuring employees had the opportunities to grow and to thrive and continue the success of the organization leaving a legacy of empowerment and professional excellence. As you see the smile, it's there all the time, she's got a great smile and a great attitude and she really kind of brings up the, the spirit of, of collaboration and cooperation while still getting, still getting a hard job done. So we really, we're gonna miss you in your, in your beautiful smile. So whereas the county of San Diego is committed to recognizing and honoring those individuals, and particularly Susan Baraso here today, be it proclaimed by the chair Tara Lawson Reamer and all the members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on this third day of March, 2026, that we commend Susan Braso for her outstanding service, leadership, and commitment to the residents of San Diego County and to hereby declare today to be Susan Brazo Day throughout San Diego County.
Welcome. Come on over here. Thank you so much. I am so honored. I am a person of few words, so I simply wanna say thank you, chair Supervisor Desmond, supervisor Anderson, chair pro, him my boss, Ebony Andrew of Monica, supervisor Imy, vice Chair Montgomery. Thank you so much. Thank you. The second proclamation will be given, given by Supervisor Desmond honoring the Oceanside Historical Society. Accepting the proclamation will be Christie Hawthorne.
All right. All the way from Oceanside, California that's part of Northern California. You didn't know it's where I live. But good morning everyone and and I'm honored today to recognize Christy Hawthorne. She's the director of the Oceanside Historical Society, along with her dedicated volunteers who passionately championed the community's heritage, preserving stories, artifacts, landmarks, and define their, their coastal community. So thank you for making the trip down. It wasn't too bad down the five this morning, but Well, it was a little tricky. But anyway, as most of you know, hopefully Oceanside is renowned for its iconic pier dating back to the 18 hundreds. Rich military ties to the Marine Corps base, just North Camp Pendleton, a vibrant surf culture celebrated at the California Surf Museum as an Oceanside and the historic mission. San Louis Ray, it's a dynamic art scene, has a dynamic art scene anchored by the Oceanside Museum of Art.
So there's a lot of culture, a lot of activity in up in Oceanside. So the historical society also preserves and supports historic sites like the Heritage Park and Museum, and so future generations can experience the local history firsthand. Before stepping into her role as director at Christie Hawthorn, she dedicated more than 20 years as president of the Oceanside Historical Society. And that's a legacy that she built in celebration of Women's History Month. We're especially grateful for Christie's heart vision and tireless energy and keeping this historic town shining bright and honoring its unique history. She's inspired many amazing community events of, of volunteers, historians and partners who generously share their time and talents to the brief history of, of life in Oceanside Oceanside's on the map because of leaders like Kristy Christie and we're lucky, so lucky to have you there. Unfortunately, a lot of cars pass on that five and heading to San Diego and they could just pull off into Oceanside and enjoy everything right there.
But, but anyway, but her, the society's unwavering dedication to the diverse stories strengthens the community spirit deepens the belonging, preserves priceless history and fuels oceanside, cultural and economic viability. I'm proud to have supported their impactful service through our county's grant programs and whereas the county of San Diego we're proud to recognize and honor organizations and people that exemplify the highest ideals of public service. And the Oceanside Historical Society is one such worthy organization. So therefore be aai by all members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on this third day of March, 2026 that we commend the Oceanside Historical Society for their outstanding service, leadership, and commitment to the citizens of San Diego County and do hereby declare today along with Susan Brazo Day to be the Oceanside Historical Society Day throughout San Diego. Thank you Christie, and your, it's an honor very well deserved.
So thank you so much. Alright. Yeah, you wanna speak? Who's speaking? Did you wanna speak, say a few words? I just want, I just wanna thank Supervisor Desmond for, for this honor and for the county board of supervisors. You know, the Oceanside Historical Society is a very modest nonprofit, but we've done a lot, we've published three histories in, in about this history of Oceanside in, in our 40 year period. I wanna introduce our president, Shelly Haw, our board member and social media director, Rebecca Kemp. Again, we do a lot with a little, I love Oceanside and we have a very culturally diverse population and we try to include everyone. Our history dates back to the mission includes Camp Pendleton and includes so many people of all walks of life. Oceanside truly is where life is worth living. I, before I close, I wanna thank Supervisor Desmond for his support in, in allocating grant monies to us for the, the, the County Board of Supervisors in total to approving those grant funds because a little non-profit such as ours, we really need that public support and those grant money. So thank you for your time and attention and thank you Supervisor Desmond. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Good morning everyone. It's such an honor to be here today as we recognize Cox Charities an organization that is committed to strengthening our community. This organization is built on a long standing tradition of service and philanthropy supported directly by Cox employees who give generously and consistently year after year. Their mission is centered around strengthening the communities they serve through investments in education, youth development, social services, and local nonprofits that help families thrive. Each year. Cox Charities provides grants, scholarships and partnerships that directly support students, educators, and community organizations. Their support of STEM initiatives after school programs and youth enrichment opportunities build pathways for young people to succeed. And their scholarships help open doors for local students who dream big but may face barriers to higher education. And for countless nonprofits providing essential services like literacy programs and family support services, Cox Charities has been a steadfast partner.
It reflects a company culture where giving back isn't an afterthought, but it's a shared value. Today I'm happy to recognize this extraordinary commitment and celebrate the meaningful change that Cox Charities and Cox employees create throughout our communities. I've seen this for firsthand and been a witness for seven years as an elected official and even before that as a staffer. So I personally want to thank you all for what you do for our community. And with that, I will read the last line of the proclamation, be it proclaimed by Chair Lawson Reamer and all members of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors on this third day of March, 2026 that we commend the Cox Charities for their outstanding service, leadership and commitment to San Diego County and do hereby declare this day to be Cox Charities Day throughout San Diego County. Congratulations.
Thank you so much, supervisor Step and thank you to all the county supervisors that I've gotten to know over the years. I know you guys work hard each and every day and I'm just so excited to be here for such a positive event. My name's Chanel Hawkin. I'm the market vice president here in San Diego for Cox. And on behalf of the entire Cox family, a lot of our Cox Charities board members are actually here today. I'm so honored to accept this proclamation. It's I think one of the most favorite days of my work here at Cox for the past 10 years. It's not just a recognition about one event, but a culmination of all of our employees time, treasure, and talent that they've given over the past 30 years. And today we have four really special nonprofits here. We have the David's Harp Foundation, we have Feeding San Diego, we have Junior Achievement of San Diego County and Shelter to Soldier and they're here today to celebrate with us. But what they don't know is that they will each be receiving a $100,000 grant from the Cox Charities Foundation. I'm getting teary eyed.
So thank you so much to these organizations. So like I said, this doesn't happen without our employees. They give to the Cox Charities Foundation and so thank you for all the work that you guys do. I accept this and present this on behalf of the employees and all the impacts that we've been able to make in San Diego County. So thank you.
Good morning everyone. It is my distinct honor to recognize the American Heart Association for its extraordinary leadership in the fight against cardiac arrest and heart disease For more than a decade, the county of San Diego has advanced heart health through prevention, education, and community blood pressure screenings. We know early intervention saves lives and we're proud to partner with organizations that share that commitment. At the same time, we must acknowledge persistent health inequities in San Diego County. In my district, historically underserved communities including communities of color, low-income families, immigrants, seniors, and individuals experiencing homelessness, face barriers to preventive care, culturally responsive services and lifesaving trainings. When emergency happen, emergencies happen. These gaps can mean the difference between life and death. And nowhere is that commitment more urgent than in our response to heart health. An unexpected crisis that can strike anyone anywhere at any time. Cardiac arrest remains one of the leading causes of death in our nation each year, more than 350,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests occur in the United States, and survival rates remain far too low.
Nearly 70% happen at home where a loved one is often the first and most critical link in the chain of survival. Immediate CPR can double or triple a person's chance of survival. Yet too often bystanders hesitate fewer than half of cardiac arrest victims receive CPR and even fewer benefit from an automated external defibrillator Defi de defibrillator, known as a ED. This affects adults and children alike. Over 23,000 children experience out of hospital cardiac arrest every year. We must also confront disparities. Women are less likely than men to receive CPR before responders arrive. Awareness, education and community engagement can help close those gaps and save lives. Awareness, education and community engagement can help close these gaps and save these lives. Heart disease remains the number one killer of women in our country responsible for one in five female deaths each year and claiming more lives than all cancers combined.
Yet, awareness still lags. Many women do not realize it is their greatest health risk and symptoms often present differently than they do in men. That gap in recognition can delay cost and delay care and cost lives. When we talk about prevention CPR training and rapid response, we're also talking about protecting mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. That is why the American Heart Associations go red for women movement, which continues to elevate awareness and empower women to take charge of their heart. Health is so important. Another movement that deserves recognition is the American Heart Association's bold goal to double survival from out of hospital cardiac arrest by 2030 through its Nation of Lifesavers initiative. By expanding CPR and EAED training, increasing public access to defibrillators and strengthening cardiac emergency response plans in our schools, workplaces and public spaces, they are empowering everyday people to become lifesavers. With that said, I am proud to formally recognize the American Heart Association. So therefore now be it proclaimed through Chair Tara Loss Remer and all the members of the Board of Supervisors on this third day of March, 2026, that we commend the American Heart Association for their outstanding service, leadership and steadfast commitment to protecting and advancing the human rights of the residents of San Diego County. And do hereby declare this day to be American Heart Association Month through San Diego County.
Thank you Supervisor Gary and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors for this honor. My name is Emily Miller and I'm the Community Impact Director for the American Heart Association. The Heart Association devoted to changing the future to a world of healthier lives for all envisions communities where people don't wait for help, they become it. So in the face of a cardiac emergency, anyone anywhere is prepared and empowered to become a vital link in the chain of survival and provides CPR. The goal is called the Nation of Lifesavers. At the very core of this initiative is a transformative idea in every cardiac emergency. And the real first responder is not always a uniform professional, but an everyday bystander. Cardiac arrest can strike anywhere at the gym in the grocery store at a child's soccer game. However, bystanders only intervene about 40% of the time, often do the uncertainty or lack of training.
Nine out of every 10 people who experience cardiac outside the hospital's eye in part because you do not receive immediate CPR more than half of the time. We want people to know that you do not need medical credentials to save a life. What's required is knowledge, courage, and the readiness to act and familiarizing yourself with CPR can save a life. CPR is a civic duty. You don't need medical training to learn CPR. You need knowledge, courage, and the willingness to act hero. Heroism is not limited to uniform, it's everyday people stepping up for others. Thank you again for this honor and for helping spread the awareness about CPR.
We can come on this side too. Good morning. Thank you all for being here today. As we recognize the annual observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan here in San Diego County, Ramadan is a sacred time of fasting prayer, reflection in spiritual renewal observed by millions of Muslims around the world. It is a month that calls individuals to look inward, to strengthen their faith and to recommit themselves to the values of compassion, service, generosity and peace. Throughout this month, families and communities gather in prayer, share meals at Sunset, extend charity to those in need and deepen their sense of gratitude. These practices not only nurture spiritual growth, but they remind us of our shared humanity and responsibility to care for one another.
As we observe the Holy Month Ramadan, we honor the rich traditions that strengthen our community and invite greater appreciation of faith in all its expressions. For these reasons, I'm proud to recognize the annual observance of the Holy Month of Ramadan. With this proclamation, I will now read the last paragraph, be it proclaimed by the members of the Board of Supervisors this third day of March, 2026 that we do hear, I declare February 17th to March 19th, 2026 to be annual observance of Ramadan month throughout San Diego County. Be patient with this Ramadan UBA rock. I hope you butter. Thank you. I I still have a lot of practice. May this month bring you peace, blessings and joy. Thank you. And and I have this wonderful proclamation but I think that you're gonna say a few words, please be upon you Rahim, in the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful at the beginning.
I would like to thank all of you, thank Supervisor Anderson and of course thank my community members who joined today. It's a great pleasure to be with you. To celebrate Ramadan and to represent my Muslim community in San Diego and also the Islamic Center of San Diego East County. We as Muslims observe Ramadan as a time of fasting, prayers, reflection, charity and community. And Ramadan, as you may know, is not only about fasting from food and drinks, it is actually about purifying hearts, connecting more with God and strength in our faith. And also to become a better person spiritually, mentally, and socially. So God bless you all and I will say what Supervisor said. Ramadan, Mubarak, BLIS Ramadan to all of you. And thanks again. It's an honor to be here. And one more time, I would like to thank Supervisor Anderson for his invitation and celebrating Ramadan with us. Ramadan. Mubarak.
We're gonna want us to go up there, but before we do I in my office, we, we take pride in giving credit where it's due and with my good fortune, a former employee of mine, Ibrahim, if you'd come over here, come on, stand over here. This was his idea five years ago and we've done it and it's his legacy to my AGA office for as long as I'm in office, we'll continue to do it. Thank you for that. Thank you for your leadership. I'm still mourning the loss of you, but I'm so grateful that our city attorney hired you 'cause she's got quality staff now, so for sure. Thank you. Let's, I'll go up there and do a quick photo.
Okay, thank you all. Before we begin, I'll take a moment to address house rules. Public aid engagement is a cornerstone of transparent and accountable government and these board of supervisors meetings are a primary venue. While all San Agans can make their voices heard, the county is committed to a work environment free from unlawful discrimination and harassment including sexual, racial, religious, age, disability, and any other forms of discrimination or harassment. Under the board's rules, speakers may not use loud shouting, threatening impertinent, slanders, profane or abusive language to any members of the board, staff or general public. Additionally, all remarks and questions must remain on topic during the duration of your speaking time and must be addressed to the board and not to county staff. Any speaker who engages in comments that break these rules will be issued a warning. After one warning, you'll be asked to leave the chambers for the remainder of the meeting. Finally, speakers threatening violence may be reported to law enforcement and removed from the meeting. This is a space for community engagement, deliberation and progress, not harassment, violence and hate.
Okay, we now proceed with non agenda public comment. This is an opportunity for the public to address the board on subject matters within the board's jurisdiction but not an item on the meeting's agenda. Today the only tax action meeting we take is a referral to the CAO under the board's rules. Speakers may speak once per meeting for non agenda public comment either today or tomorrow, but not at both sessions. And you can select which to address at your convenience. We have five speakers and phone and five speakers in person. And the first five speakers in person have been randomly selected. The remainder of non agenda public comment will be heard at the close of the session. Additionally, in accordance with board rules for any discussion item with 10 or more speakers, individuals have one minute to share their opinion according to Rule four. A members of the public that are non-English speaking and need interpretation assistance receive twice allotted time.
And a final reminder. According to the board's rules of procedure, audience members shall not whistle collapse sto feet or do anything that disrupts the proceedings. If you disrupt the meeting, you'll be given one warning. And after that one warning, if you disrupt the meeting again, you'll be directed to leave the chamber. For the remainder of the meeting, Andrew, please call the speakers. Thank you Chair Lawson Reer. We have 17 request to speak. A matter's not listed on the agenda. Seven individuals in person and 10 requesting to speak by phone. For those that requested to speak by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers and we'll now randomly select the first five speakers in person. All the remaining speakers will be heard at the conclusion of today's session. As your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it's your turn to speak at the podium. You will have two minutes to address the Board Board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I'd like to invite for the first three randomly selected individuals, Ricky Robinson, Harita Javier and Jennifer Rosden. And they'll be followed by allegedly Audra and Natalie. Roger, I've called your name. Please come forward. Okay. Afternoon.
Good morning. Hi, I am Pita Javier, the guy you supported for his election re-election. And yeah, read this. Just read it. City council President Sean Vera, the guy you supported for his election reelection. What's the Yeah, Madam. Madame. Yeah. Oh, what else? Just, just read it please. Right now is, has memory warning. So please understand this is from Councilor Rivera. Dear Settle, thank you for reaching out to my office regarding your continued concerns over air quality in your neighborhood and the be up here next to your residence. We've reached out to the cities called in Forest Enforcement Department and the country's air pollution control district who found no violations of either air quality standards or city code. I understand you are interested in pursuing policy changes. Thank you. Next speaker please. May I Caesar we will hear you in the afternoon. You weren't part of the first five that were randomly selected. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Sorry.
Ricky Robinson for not agenda. This grandfather belongs to Malia and Z. Take a good look. The most dangerous man in San Diego County is standing right here. That's right. Me Clutch your pearls. Call the deputies, hide the furniture, hide your children because all that is happening here is a man speaking in San Diego. The danger isn't violence, it's daylight. No arrest, no handcuffs, no police involvement, no violent scene, no emergency. Just a grandfather asking for his grandchildren back. A caregiver, a conservator, a trustee, RFA, approved or not, they're still family And family belongs together and somehow that earns restraining orders not because of danger, because corruption is being exposed because the truth hurts because ego does not like resistance. The problem is isn't me, the problem is the light. The problem is that people are watching and people are not looking away. Say their names.
Malalia and Zaya, these girls belong home. Thank you. And this is also I, I have a team and lawyers and advocates and journalists. We are now work working on the federal Review. This will be in federal court hopefully by 2027. But we want Malica and Zaya home. These are our children. They have been traumatized by child welfare here in San Diego. My family has been traumatized, tortured. I am a target here. I used to want to die here in San Diego. Not anymore. Anyway, I wonder if I can get a picture taken with the board. Is it possible?
I'm just asking next speaker please. Hi, my name's Jennifer Royston. Stop the child trafficking. Wake up. Our taxpayers are funding for these pedophiles to live lavishly on the pain and suffering of our children. The county of San Diego Child and Welfare Services is directly responsible for our human trafficking problem. We have social workers that are lying, providing absolutely no evidence to remove these children. They're causing detrimental damage that cannot be reversed. You guys are the one overmedicating our children and not providing them for what, what they need. And that is their family. They were happy before you took them. You are here to help strengthen and unify. You're not here to take our children. Make your lies up.
This is the baby you stole from me. And I'll not stop fighting. I will not stop yelling. I will make sure to make you famous when I die because you guys send your your gang stalkers to stalk us. Harass us to make false reports against us in order to keep our children from us. I will still come back and make sure that you will serve justice. Know that we are working with the new government and that government does have no tolerance for what you guys have been doing for many, many years. I would like the respect for you to look at us when we're up here speaking. 'cause what we're saying matters. It is our children and every low income family out there should care about what is happening because this will be you. They take your children, they parent alienate him. You have these judges like Judge Ero, judge Morales who sit there and and violate the color of law in order to profit on these incentives to remove our children. It's unacceptable. Next speaker, please.
Ma'am. Ma'am, your time is ma'am, your time is owe up. If thank you, just a reminder, please constrain your time and your remarks to the time allotted. If people are disruptive, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave you the chambers. Ma'am, this is officially your first warning. If you receive a second warning, you'll be instructed to leave the chambers from the remainder of the meeting. Wow. It's interesting. It should be affecting everybody like this woman over here, the things that go on with children and it doesn't seem to bother any of you. None of you. And it's really sad. So I'm gonna ask you to put your money where your mouth is that if you do care about children and then being trafficked, sexually abused and mentally abused, all of the things that have been happening, not only in our county like with Malalia and Zaya and Waylon and many other children that you guys have abducted.
There's a march here at Waterfront Park on March 7th. I've given you guys all one of the flyers. So if you do care about children, I'm asking you to show up and march with us. It will be at 10:00 AM We're gonna be marching around downtown. You guys wanna say that you care about children being trafficked, right? Do we not have an item today talking about that and sexual exploitation? So if we're gonna do that, then show up for this. Yeah. Prove to us that you guys care about the children, especially in San Diego, let alone the rest of the world. I don't understand how this woman can be. That's how it affects people who actually have a soul. It breaks your heart. You can't just sit up there on a dais acting stone cold because it shows that you guys don't have God in your heart. You sit up here, you pledge allegiance right to United States of America, one nation under God. I don't know what God you guys are under except for the one that rules this world, which would be Satan. And if you guys do care, then you will show up this Saturday at 10:00 AM at Waterfront Park and march around downtown with us if you care about children, Jim, please show up. Thank you. Natalie Regie.
Good morning supervisors. My name is Natalie Rech. I am a parent in district three. I'm here today because after making peaceful public comment at a Del Mar school board meeting, raising concerns about the mistreatment of my child, I was subjected to a campaign of harassment and retaliation county JPA insurance Defense attorneys proceeded to file multiple restraining orders. They moved the hearings to Judge Whitney who used national security language to publicly label me a domestic terrorist. Public funds were used to subpoena my landlord requesting personal documents that are irrelevant to school matters. Soon I was receiving false notices to quit up until December, I maintained a long-term employment. I supported my child and always paid rent on time. Despite this purported landlord doing business under an unregistered, fictitious name, filed an unlawful detainer. Mandatory forms were signed under penalty of perjury by attorney Howard f Burns.
I filed a notice of removal to federal court two days later, however, the clerk entered a default despite removal notice of bankruptcy filings and emergency applications to stay and vacate, the sheriff executed the clerk's wrist writ that same day. All of my childs and my belongings were removed from our four bedroom home. We remain homeless. To this day when I contacted nonprofits, I was told to sleep in the car with my minor child. Given the homeless crisis crisis in San Diego, I respectfully request an investigation into court procedural safeguards and sheriff protocols when jurisdiction and bankruptcy is actively disputed. There is a hearing downtown March 13th, 1100 Union Street Department 2 0 1 at 9:00 AM addressing these issues. And I welcome transparency and oversight and I I I welcome the opportunity to help in any way I can. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now hear from the individuals that requested to speak by phone again in accordance with the board's rules will be hearing from the first five callers. The remaining callers will be heard at the conclusion of today's session. When it is your turn to speak, you'll be unmuted and you'll hear a recording that will tell you to begin your comments. We will start with our first caller
All about, do you remember when I said that we let ice self include on January 13th and January 28th? Or were you not listening? Anyway, I did and it brought down the HS along with it and all the good stuff. It does well. I think that CW CFWB, the Child and Family Wellbeing Department is also about self implode. Hopefully you will listen better this time and publicly we're reform the CFWB process. First publicly Arabella McCormick lied about and neglected by the system murdered and are having abused kids taken away by the system Evelyn Lopez. Kids taken away by the system, the one 50 or more polinsky sent her abuse cases along with the other abuse cases, people and animals. And now there's Delilah who was starved to death at three months in 2021 by her unfit adoptive parents. The county created a safety plan but the only actual visit was at one month. A travel welfare plan without monitoring is not much of a plan. Does the board and county take care of its own and ignore all harm to others? Its their policies. Cause after action more county neglect. The county is ruining the lives of too many kids and families. The AJ is investigating the county's juvenile justice system. Also, I hear you are about to send kids in foster care illegally to the Dominican Republic. Congratulations Toky Evelyn and family and supporter
Hello, my name is Jayden Marshall. Back in November of 2024, my brother and I purchased a property in Ramona, California. Soon after a mechanic moved in down the street from us. And since then they have clogged up a portion of the, a street between 10th Street and 11th Street in Ramona, California. And it's, it's hurt my tenant's business and he's lost business because larger trucks can't access our back parking lot. And he's also stopped getting some of his mail because the, I believe the street is too congested for them to access the mailboxes. And at best the street is a single lane road. There are dumpsters in the middle of the road. There are extension cords coming from the building out across the street. There's engines blocking the sidewalks. If the board could look into this and maybe provide some sort of solution for us, that would be great. I believe that no overnight parking would be a great idea in that area, but that's just me. Any solution would be greatly appreciated. And we've went to highway patrol and they have been very helpful but it just persists. This issue keeps persisting and it would require us to watch them 24 7 to monitor them for highway patrol to truly be able to be effective. And when they do come out, it works for about three days and the problem continues to get worse. So the property address is 1 0 9 10th Street in Ramona, California. It's sitting on the corner of 10th and a street.
Barbara Gordon. As a public health advocate, I was so thrilled to see American Heart Association recognized today. This is an important organization. As mentioned, we all need to take our heart health seriously as high blood pressure is the most common underlying condition identified. We know from research that smoking is the major cause of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. Most people with high blood pressure known as hypertension, don't know they have it because no symptoms or warning signs as it is earned. The nickname of Silence Killer as a Harvard Research you published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology found that people who smoke marijuana face a higher risk of dying, of complications of high blood pressure more than marijuana non-users. High blood pressure is preventable. Exercise healthy diet, no smoking of any kind, marijuana or tobacco are the keys to keeping blood pressure under control. Understanding the risk of tobacco and marijuana use and cardiovascular health is essential. Again, I'm so thrilled that this organization was recognized for keeping our hearts healthy. I think by fostering more tobacco and marijuana prevention messages from the county would work towards a healthier, safer community. Thank you for letting me speak.
Good morning board of supervisors. My name is Terry Ann Skelly. I am a county planning group member, a parent and a public health educator. Last week KPBS interviewed Rady Children's Hospital pediatrician, Dr. Natalie Lobb regarding the increase of 600 adolescents to its emergency room in 2025. Because they needed treatment of some kind for their cannabis use. She said that and I I quote, prior to 2020 we were only seeing a handful of adolescents a year, maybe 20 or 30. Cannabis production or rather cannabis products are far more potent today than what previous generations were exposed to. End quote PBS interviewed Dr. Lobb in response to the new research published in the Journal of American Medical Association regarding cannabis use with increased risk for serious mental health conditions. The strongest associations the study found was for psychotic and bipolar disorders where the risk was about doubled.
And importantly, teens reported on their cannabis use about one or two years before their mental health diagnosis. Again, Dr Lab is quoted, we see the public health crisis emerging in children and young adolescents with early initiation of cannabis use. I think we as residents of San Diego County, need to ask ourselves what this early use marijuana means for long term wellbeing of our youngest residents and the many who care for them and take responsibility for reducing visibility and promotions that come with selling marijuana here in our county. Thank you for hearing my concerns this morning.
Hi Consuelo here. Good morning to all. There's so much happening in our county and around the world right now. What we're witnessing is not random, it's not random chaos, it's order out of chaos. Week after week, year after year, I have brought attention to how global agendas are being imposed on everyday people agendas. Like the United Nations frameworks for the 21st century and the so-called New World Order that centralizes power and strips individual freedom. Almost everything in modern life is imposed from government. Downward taxes, regulations, mandates the vast majority of people are not truly free to money and to the systems controlled by those in power. And I wanna remind everyone here, especially those working in any government agency, that government moves slowly by design years and decades are required to implement policies once they are written. And during those years of implementation, distractions multiply while people are watching headlines. The real changes are happening quietly away from the notice. But this normalization of the unthinkable has come at a terrible cost. Our most vulnerable, the elderly, the children have been abused, exploited and trafficked. And here in our own community there have been heartbreaking tragedies involving innocent children like Arabella McCormick whose death revealed failures in the systems meant to protect her and others whose suffering was preventable.
Thank you again Cheryl. That concludes the request for non agenda public communication this morning. All the remaining speakers will be heard at the conclusion of today's session. Okay, thank you. The next item on our agenda is the approval of the minutes and statements and proceedings for the general legislative session of February 10th and February 11th, 2026 and minutes for concurrent special district meeting of the San Diego County Fire Protection District. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? So moved. Second. Okay. Move motion by supervisor Desmond. Second by chair Pro Tem Agiri please vote chair Laima. That motion passes unanimously with all supervisors being present and voting. Aye. Okay great. Thank you so much. We now proceed with the formation of the consent agenda. This is items one through 12 and fire protection item one. All items in the consent agenda are routine and will be acted upon with one motion.
Individuals can comment on the consent agenda after the supervisors pull any items they would like to pull for discussion. Would any of my colleagues like to pull any items for discussion? Have any comments on any items on the consent agenda? And Andrew, please go ahead. I know there was an item that was pulled. Item one has been pulled. So the consent agenda today is item two through 12. Thank you. Chair Lawson. Raymond, just to confirm for the record, item one has been withdrawn to request of the sheriff. Okay, thank you. Vice chair Montgomery Steps. Lisa, excuse me. No need to pull any items. I will move the consent agenda. Okay. Thank you very much. Chair Prote. Maggi. No need to pull. I'll second supervisor Anderson, nothing to pull. The only comment I have is I wanna register a no vote on item 11. So you'd like to bifurcate and measure vote?
Well you can or or I can just register the no vote. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. I'll just make a a quick comment item number six. I think this item uplifts the importance of continued focus on expanding our work on protecting consumers and fighting to protect people in our economy who are getting taken advantage of by shady businesses and continuing to expand that effort. I think we need more of that, more aggressive enforcement, more aggressive actions kind of across the board on just protecting fairness in our, in our local San Diego economy and enforcing those kind against really unfair, deceptive, shady business practices that take advantage of seniors, young people, renters really all of us. So I think we just gotta, I'm, I'm glad we're gonna continue expanding this with the county and I think we should just continue looking for every opportunity to expand this fight and to build up our capacity to do this work that's so desperately needed for the people of San Diego.
So that was my comment on item six and we will go to public con. Thank you Chair Lawson Reamer. Before we begin public comment, I would like to note for the record that agenda item number eight seeks approval to amend the compensation ordinance to change the salary schedule for the Chief financial officer classification pursuant to government code section 5 4 9 5 3 prior to taking final action. The legislative body shall orally report a summary of the recommendation for final action on the salaries, salary schedules, or compensation paid in the form of fringe benefits of local agency executives. The proposed salary will range from $250,224 to $395,678 and 40 cents and will become effective April 3rd, 2026. We have 12 requests to speak on items on the consent agenda for and person in eight requesting to speak by phone as a reminder. Item one has been withdrawn. Any individuals that requested to speak on the remaining items on the consent agenda by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium. You will have two minutes to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. Also, when speaking, please identify which item or items on the consent agenda you are speaking about. I'd like to invite forward the individuals in person allegedly Audra Caesar, Javier, Jennifer Rosden, and Ricky Robinson. I've called your name. Please come forward.
Good morning Cesar and Purita, community Advocacy District nine under Hello Rivera leadership item number one please. Let's also look at selective competitive procurement or bidding. Name it or contract please. Number two. No it must be regionwide. Please God help. Number 11. Yes foremost for the sake of health, public safety and public welfare, recommend two. Ma'am. Chair
That loose code rule 10 permit and 11 exemptions of 20 industrial and manufacturing businesses. I think loose department CHIP is here. All the stop are representing the four departments. Please, please God help. Number 12, we receive the communication a declaration. I hope it fits this item. Mama, you declared that people are sick and dying in the forefront border, Tijuana River Valley pollution. What have we done? What have we done? Councilor Vivian Moreno made this presentation. This crisis began 1993 and the city as one of the four fronts did nothing. Not any single centa was budgeted for Tylenol, for biscuit or even for clean water or clean food. Thank you. God help. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Speaking of babies, Tara, do you have a bun in the oven or is it a food baby? I don't know. Either way, be careful 'cause the county might come after it. It's interesting to see what you guys do and you think is routine as far as human trafficking goes and sexual exploitation. Who's on this council? Like you know, people like Elizabeth over here, her, her staff for CFWB. Right. Child and family Wellbeing. It's interesting. And also, you know the district attorney people that are engaged in actually human trafficking. Jim, that's why it's kind of funny 'cause it's like what are you gonna do with this money, traffic, more kids. How much money do you think you could possibly get for human trafficking? It's kind of like the topic right now. So I feel like you could really go and just suck the people, you know, just their blood money right out of 'em to traffic more kids.
'cause it's like me when I got beat up here, you guys, you know right out in the hallway by a sheriff who's interesting and then I'm like, I'm gonna go to the sheriff and see if they'll help. Will there be justice even from you guys? And then you go to county council, right? And it's like, what are you talking about? Oh my gosh. Women getting beaten up at the board of supervisors, children being trafficked. Oh my gosh, this stuff doesn't happen. We don't engage in that. Which will be interesting to see if you show up Jim on Saturday because you guys sit here and you bring up items like this and we have people come to you that have had their children ripped from their arms and you guys just say, just do what the agency says and they'll give you your kids back. It's interesting. That'd be funny if it actually works that way, but it doesn't. So any money that you guys get is going to be used for misuse. And that's what you guys do with Title four funding. It's a misuse of public funds that needs to be pulled back. Next speaker please.
Jennifer Royston. I am here to speak about the child trafficking that's happening in our system. I encourage you, if you are participating, please find your money a better way. Why? Because our government is changing. We have a government that is in line with God, they are disgusted by the human trafficking that is happening in our system and know all the bombs that are going around our world right now. That's our president. Sniping, sniping, snipping, snipping. And if you think that he's not on his way to snip, snip, snip, every one of you child traffickers that are participating in the trafficking of our children with these lying social workers that provide absolutely no evidence in order to steal these children, these ball list judges like Alexander Ro and Alejandro Morales who don't care about your civil rights, the rights that people died for. And if you are a Christian and you are a Catholic and you believe in God, this is your fight.
Because if you believe for one second that God is gonna say, oh, it's okay, you let them slaughter my greatest gift to this world and that's our children, you are wrong. He's not only a loving God, he is a vengeful God. And the destruction of children matter. The slaughter of their minds matter. Our children are under attack. They're taking our children and they're using them against us. America. Wake up and understand that you, if you're working, you are funding these f*****g pedophiles. You are giving them nice cars, nice homes, and you should be turning to them and being like, huh, why am I working my ass off for you to sit there and and get everything that you want. Next speaker, please.
Okay, Ricky Robinson for agenda three. I really don't have a speech together. I just wanna tell Malika and Zaya, I love you dearly. I missed you. I haven't seen you since August and they don't want to let me see you till I'm like 70. You're trafficking my granddaughters here. They should have been home a year and a half ago. But let's see, I believe we've done the math. You've made millions off this family alone. But we want Melia and Zaya home child and family wellbeing, CWS the most lion, corrupt social workers. Do you know what's great about it? The paper trail. They lie on paper. We're doing the investigation. They don't want to give me reports. I've already put, you know, in for reports they objected. They don't want the evidence, but that's okay. My son will give it to me. But lies on top of lies. On top of lies. I've never seen such lying. Social workers. This is sick. Sick and I'm exposing it. As long as I'm breathing, I'm exposing it. Restraining orders are not malalia and zaya. I love you. I'll see you again someday. You will be coming home. Well, I'll hear from the individuals that requested to speak by phone. When it's your turn to speak, you'll be unmuted and you'll hear a recording that will tell you to begin your comments. We'll start with our first caller
Call id. We just had a huge conversation at Sandag about how ous it's law enforcement harm is providing data to ice. The data is not shared in this way and is otherwise totally secured. The cloud is easily hacked as well. IBM on the other hand, provides servers which are more secure. Check it out. Three. Human trafficking. You know all about trafficking. Don't shut. The county already has a multi-agency San Diego Human Trafficking task force that combined sex trafficking, child exploitation, a collaborative effort involving federal, state, and local law enforcement, including the F-B-I-H-S-I and the DA Office. A major object objection to this is that the amendment has only two street people, victims and no children. Two out of 20. I would expect lots of business, corporate political argument about the abuse. Not much from
Hi. Good morning, supervisors. I'm speaking to item number four. As you consider ratifying the 2026 consolidated fire code and wildland urban interface code. I appreciate the emphasis on defensible space sprinklers and home hardening. Those seem like good ideas, but I also would ask that we think about one of the most preventable ignition sources in high fire risk areas, which is smoking. Discarded cigarettes remain unknown cause of vegetation fires, especially in dry wind prone conditions like we experience in unincorporated San Diego County as access to high potency marijuana products has expanded. We're also seeing more outdoor smoking in rural and wildland adjacent areas. In communities where response times are longer and many residents are older or medically vulnerable, a single preventable spark can have devastating consequences. If we are strengthening water tank requirements and defensible space enforcement. I hope the county will also examine whether smoking restrictions and public education in high fire severity zones are strong enough, especially during red flag conditions. Wildfire resilience isn't only about how we build homes, it's also about reducing avoidable ignition risks. Thank you for your leadership on fire prevention and community safety.
Street three Okay, three. First, it's a shame that we live in a world where child trafficking is even placed casually in a consent calendar. The fact that this is routine enough to be procedural should disturb every person in this room. And listening in child trafficking is not a distant issue. It's a massive issue. And for those of you who are just looking up to this reality, understand this, it is worse than what you are being told. Children are not commodities, they're not statistics, they are not line items. So when this board treats matters connected to exploitation as routine paperwork, it sends a message and the message is detachment.
Item six, supervisor Tara Laws reamer mentioned shady businesses. I'd like to talk about a major shady operation and that is the way this county board conducts itself when decisions are made that the public barely understands when consent items move with little discussion. When policies increase financial pressure on families while expanding government control, that is not transparency, that is not service that is shady as f**k. It is governance that operates in the shadows. And Tara, since you raised the issue of shady, let's talk directly, but you were silly. Cut off a disabled resident who prepares and researches his remarks, that is not fair. Fairness, that that is shady control. When public comment is managed in a way that feels dismissive and selective, people notice, you appear very confident about extending terms and expanding your time on this seat. If that happens, I actually welcome it because I will be here to, for as long as you hold this position, I will continue to call you up. I will continue to remind this county how you conduct your
Good morning Board of supervisors. My name is Becky Rap and I'd like to speak to item three first, addressing human trafficking and the sexually sexual exploitation of children. And it should be the utmost priority, but you cannot address human trafficking without also addressing drug addiction and drug trafficking. These crises are deeply interconnected. Traffickers frequently use drugs as a tool of control, creating dependency, exploiting addiction, and trapping victims in cycles that are incredibly difficult to break free from. At the same time, drug trafficking networks and human trafficking operations often overlap feeding off the same vulnerable populations. As you consider establishing this critical child advisory council, I urge you to ensure that substance use, prevention, addiction, treatment, access, and drug trafficking be fully integrated into this framework. Youth involved and child welfare or the juvenile justice system run away in homeless youth and individuals struggling, struggling with addiction, face disproportionate risk. If we focus only on one side of the equation without confronting the drug pipelines that fuel this evil cycle, we will fail. I support creating the advisory council, but true prevention requires a whole system response. Law enforcement prosecution, health services, behavioral health and survivor, survivor support working together to address both human trafficking and the drug trade that so often fuels it. If we're serious about protecting children and helping survivors heal and thrive, we must address both crises at the same time. Thank you.
Hey, it's truth. Item two, no to a $2 tax on registration where the state demands innocent people's fingerprints in order to pay for a fingerprint system for criminals. No conflict there. Item three, are you saying it took 15 years to create bylaws for the trafficking and exploitation of children Advisory Council In the biggest human trafficking hub in the country, this board and summer has failed hard at protecting children in Bri, Logan, and National City. Not to mention CPS. Item four. Nobody who owns a house supports these expensive demands from the county, including expecting homeowners to provide their own water for fires. The state will allow to burn just like in the Palisades and El Sedna while the county promotes battery energy storage. Fire facility five note over 1 million tax dollars to racist lab Aspire that claims that different ethnicities are born unhealthy. Talk about racist eugenics.
Item six. If Tara supports this, then I do not because there's more fraud perpetrated by the county than there is in private business. That's a fact. Item seven, note to any building per grand jury that gives joke names to the reports full of loopholes and devoid of facts. And I made a $99 million race to the sheriffs because this board pushed countless officers out of state. Thanks to the destructive lockdown policies and cloud shot demands, I denying a $3 million race to the probation officers. Maybe because the state keeps letting out violent sexual predators out of prison early as part of the destructive new scum agenda. Item 10 NCTD. Not having a conflict of interest is a joke. And the school boards are as badly conflicted as the transit agencies. Item 11, note of wasting 165,000 of Force Union grifter demands of an unrealistic 25 minimum $25 minimum wage for private events already paying these public land. These hypocrites can't even manage labor standards at local restaurants using illegal slave labor, let alone at parks. This is nothing but a kickback to the campaign funders of the progressives. People are gonna stop putting on a Vincent County Parks that'll go just as well as paid parking at Balboa Park. And why was item one withdrawn was a $13.9 million contract with the United Healthcare Services. Be withdrawn 'cause the progressives were filled with
Gambler. Heard me. You know the sheriff had called me regarding the restraining order, also recognized I could find election fraud organized within eight hours. Hell, Sean Bram could go ahead and do it the same amount of time. He knows exactly where it is. He knows how to go in and find it. Why don't you look? Why are you more persistent in trying to throw me in jail? Get me in some kind of program where you could take away my rights using the SB what, 34 or something like that instead of just looking hell, why do you guys go ahead and pretend that you care about equality or even our environment when you refuse to adopt Julian Brown's technology?
Is it because Congress is going ahead and paid two universities to build a lesser version of that? I mean, right now we could have been generating money from our landfills that could pay for half of the crap that you're trying to do. But instead of that you trying to taking it from the people, why is it that you protect these trial trial traffickers? Are they registering people falsely to get you guys elected? I'm pretty sure of it. I'm a matter of fact almost guaranteed of that. That is why that you guys are so persistent in protecting the NVRA subsection seven and eight, right Damien? You know, you cannot protect that law forever. And especially if you're going after me trying to throw me in jail, I have right to it. If you want me to go through court, I'll go ahead and do that. But I really, really don't want to. I want you to do the right thing. I want you to do that investigation. I want Sean Braun to be honest with me when he said he can't do anything until he is the boss. Now he is. I'm hoping he was honest with me. If not,
Good morning Vora supervisors. Ann Riddle. I came to speak to 1 3, 5, 10 and 11, but I understand one has been pulled. Be very curious to know why. I had some concerns that this was won a single source contract and that it's a contract with the same people as we've had. And there's been some legal concerns there. I'm especially concerned about number three. This is where consent really lets us down. We needed an opportunity to discuss this under a discussion item. This is serious and important matter and the optics for this county, the county residents watching the decisions you make about children colors, how we feel about you and your capacity to make good policy that protects children. And to wash it away by putting it on consent seems really unfortunate. And even when it comes back, it's going to come back again under consent. That seems extraordinarily unwise in these times.
I'm concerned, as was mentioned previously, that you're leaving out some of the important work and that's the role of drug trafficking in its relationship to child trafficking. They are interwoven and I noticed excluded from this advisory group is any prevention work. You have several robust community-based alcohol, tobacco, marijuana prevention groups here in our county and they should be included. They are well aware of what it takes to protect children. They lead in this county in protecting children, particularly from the predatory issues, policies, approaches, advertising, promotions that come from these industries. We need their voice because these industries do target children and we need the voice of those who tried to prevent this from happening. Let's take a new look at this. This is an opportunity. It's been in the making for a while.
Chair Lawson Reemer. That motion passes unanimously noting for the record that supervisor Desmond registered a no vote on item 11. The motion the remaining items passed unanimously with all supervisors being present and voting. Aye. Okay, thank you all very much. We now move on to the discussion item 13 through 17 and fire protection district two. Due to some of the longer presentations we need to reorder the agenda for today. So we're gonna hear the items in the following order. Item 17 then Item 16, item 13 and fire protection two, taking concurrently. Item 14 and then item 15 again 1716. 13 FP two item 1415. So we now move on to discussion item 17, exploring reform to county medical services. This is an item that I introduced along with my colleague, vice Chair Montgomery Step. This item comes out of the work that we've been doing on the Safety net subcommittee.
So to Supervisor Desmond's ongoing request that committees report back here. We are reporting back. So let me just say a couple opening remarks to, to kind of give some context to this item, which I obviously think is quite important because of HR one, we all know that hundreds of thousands of low income San Diegans are at risk of losing their health insurance next year. The work that we've been doing in the safety net committee has done a pretty deep dive on those numbers and numbers of individuals at risk, why they're at risk, how they're at risk, and what the parameters of those risks are as in terms of the threats it poses to our broader healthcare system. So when we do know that we have to do something to address this pretty significant shortfall, we know that when people lose coverage, they do not just stop getting sick.
What actually happens is they skip their checkups, they don't get their their prescriptions, they delay their care, their condition then worsens and they inevitably end up in the emergency room, which is the most expensive place in our entire hospital system to receive care. It's not only the worst outcome for patients, which I think is obvious, if you have skipped preventative care and you end up in an emergency, it also is extremely expensive. I think any of us who have been to an emergency room know firsthand what it looks like when it's all hands on deck. When it, the hospitals are prepared to respond to an emergency life threatening condition, it is a very, very expensive way of providing care. So we know that those costs to our ERs will continue to increase in part because there will be more and more individuals accessing those emergency rooms when they're not able to receive preventative care.
We in our in a in America, you don't leave people on the sidewalk to die. Thankfully there's a lot of things about our healthcare system that are horrifying in terms of people's inability to access the care that they need and deserve. But at the very least we do know that people don't just get left to die on the sidewalk when they show up in an er, which is what happens in many other countries. So what happens in in reality is not that people disappear, it's that these hospitals are forced to absorb millions of dollars in a providing uncompensated care. And this means that everybody pays that cost. It's not only that the uninsured residents that I was just mentioning are getting sicker and are ending up in the ERs and dying. It also means that emergency rooms are crowded. Hospitals have to figure out how to balance their books somewhere and are facing service cuts.
And ultimately this means our entire hospital system is under enormous strain from the cuts very concretely. How, how do hospitals manage this? In part by increasing insurance costs for those of us who have insurance and are lucky enough to have insurance and in part by cutting services for everybody because there's really no other way for the hospitals to continue operating as institutions if they're not cutting services somewhere. So that means for everybody in our entire hospital care system, waits get longer, it becomes harder to see doctors, it becomes harder to see specialists. Even if you have health insurance, your health insurance, the quality of that insurance, your ability to actually access care will go down. So this is a great concern. I have been really focused along with Vice Chair Montgomery step of doing every week, everything we can to protect the residents of San Diego, not just those who are losing insurance, but everyone, all 3.3 million of us from the, the very severe impacts coming our way in terms of access to quality healthcare in San Diego County.
We do, you know, we have to acknowledge that previously, you know, decades ago there was a program, this county medical services program that was fairly active as the program of last resort in San Diego County for those who didn't have health insurance. But it, it really has become pretty much defunct. I think we had one person for a while, then five, then maybe 14, then like 11. It really just not a program that was active at all. And the reason for that was that when President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, this did two things. It expanded Medicaid, it also created opportunities for people to get private insurance through covered California. And so it, the kind of combination of expansion of cover covered California and expansion of Medicaid really eliminated the need for county medical services in any kind of real way because people's healthcare was being provided primarily through their employer. Secondarily through covered California and thirdly through Medicaid to the, for those who who did qualify, which there were quite significantly more people.
So in any case, to just continue putting this in context and why this, we brought this forward with urgency today, the rolling back of Medicaid, which is, is going to along with, by the way, the reduction in the ability of hospitals and providers to access provider payments, which is an sort of a more complicated way that hospitals have historically received reimbursements for care. But the, the pressures they're receiving on both ends of fewer patients qualifying for reimbursed Medicaid and the reduction of any kind of state, basically state payments that would then allow the hospitals to cover operating costs has, is going to starting January one, but a very, very, very significant strain on our entire hospital system. So again, just kind of to wrap back around to how this impacts the county under California state law counties, all counties, not just San Diego County, all counties are the healthcare safety net provider of last resort.
That is not an option, that is not something we can think about. That's actually our legal mandate. But under unlike other large counties, we do not run a public hospital system. So we as a county rely on community clinics and hospitals to carry that responsibility with us and the way that we fulfilled that route obligation historically when it, when we had folks and large number of folks that were uninsured was through the county medical services program. So that's what this kind of, that is the context of this item today is to really begin to lay the groundwork and prepare for the pretty significant strain that's coming to our hospital systems and the, the to, to kind of dig in and make a plan. So we're not blindsided on the 1st of January. And I will turn the floor over to my colleague Vice Chair Montgomery. Thank you so much.
Chair Lawson Reamer, thank you for your partnership on this board letter and I I just want to clarify a couple things. I'll be brief. There have been and will continue to be many board actions to respond to harmful federal proposals that threaten healthcare and food access for San Diegos. I think this is something I've heard from Ms. Di that we majority of us are concerned about. In November of last year, I did bring forward an item to the board to help residents who will temporarily, temporarily lose Medi-Cal and CalFresh coverage due to paperwork errors and eligibility changes that are listed in in HR one. And so this, this item is, is distinct from the safety net bridge program which is meant to to help serve residents who temporarily lose that, that coverage and then get them reconnected with services but provide them sort of a bridge.
In the meantime, county medical services, as you have heard, it's a state mandated service that provides healthcare coverage for low income adults who don't qualify for Medi-Cal and can't afford private insurance. Some of this is repetitive but I'm gonna repeat it because it can be a little bit nuanced and complicated. After the Affordable Care Act expanded Medi-Cal eligibility, many previously uninsured attendee agans were able to gain coverage that way. As a result, CMS enrollment decreased program was reduced to state required minimum and so that was a positive development. We are seeing a clawback on all of those things. So it is our responsibility to be prepared for, for what may come. So wanna just note about our current San Diego County Medical Services. It is one of the most restrictive programs of its kind in California. San Diego County residents must have significantly lower income to qualify for CMS services than than other residents in other California counties.
And at the same time, low income participants must agree to a lien being placed on their property, a needlessly, needlessly restrictive condition than no other county in the state imposes. So these provisions are the remnants of sort of a different era here at the county. And so I think we're looking to see how we can change those things and make this programming more accessible to people who may, may need these services. So I appreciate the partnership again. And that concludes my comments. Happy to move the item but if you prefer to after public comment that's fine. No, go ahead. That's great. Thank you. We have a motion by Vice Chair Montgomery Step. I'll second that the item and we'll go to public comment. Thank you Chair Lawson Raymer. We have 16 to request to speak on this item 10 in person and six requesting to speak by phone.
Also note for the record that we received one eCom in support for any individuals that requested to speak on item 17 by phone. Please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium because there are 10 or more speakers on this item, you'll have one minute to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I'll call you in groups of three. So I'll ask you to please listen for your name. I'd like to invite for the first three individuals, Samantha Schwimmer, allegedly Audra and Lindsey Wade, I've called your name. Please come forward.
Good morning. My name is Samantha Schwimmer. I'm here on behalf of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network and the San Diego Health Table. I thank Chair Lawson Reamer and Vice Chair Montgomery Step for bringing forward this item and starting the conversation about much needed reforms to our county medical services program. Our county is experiencing a healthcare crisis with over 300,000 residents at risk for losing Medi-Cal due to new federal work requirements and 75,000 San Agans at risk for losing Medi-Cal because of their immigration status. San Diegos are having to delay preventative and primary care and lapse in taking their prescribed medications. This increases the likelihood for serious life-threatening illnesses which put a larger strain on our county resources and make our communities less safe. We are asking the board to update the eligibility requirements, modify the age minimum to 19, eliminate the citizenship or legal permanent resident requirement. And thank you. Thank you.
As the next speaker's coming forward, I'll invite three additional speakers, Caesar Javier, Clint Carney, and Pamela Ison. I've called your name. Please come forward and stand on the arrows. Thank you. You guys are good. I love how you can say these things with a straight face and really, you know, try and get people to believe your b******t. That you don't lead people to die. You don't before you rob their organs, their money, take their home, things like that, right? And preventative care. And you're gonna protect all 3.3 million of us. Oh my gosh, that is so exciting. I think that what is more exciting is these funds being cut. Fantastic. Because what you guys use that for is children to go mutilate their bodies. That's one thing Medicare and Medicaid is used in the hospitals to deal with foster children that they hide sexual abuse of, right? Elizabeth and Rady Rady's does that. They're really good at damaging children. But yeah, I think this is fantastic because like what you guys also do with that is that you think that there is, you're gonna help heart health when why don't you guys stop vaccinating people with bio weapons. Paloma, see you next Tuesday. Next speaker please.
Oh Chair Lawson Reer, vice Chair, Montgomery Step and members of the board of supervisors. Good morning. I'm Lindsey Wade, senior vice president at the Hospital Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties. We represent every hospital and health system across the two county region. We are here today in strong support of this item to evaluate reforms to county medical services. By initiating this evaluation now, San Diego County is stepping forward as a statewide leader in proactively strengthening its safety net infrastructure. This moment builds on years, honestly decades of advocacy and partnership to ensure the county fulfills its statutory responsibility as the provider of last resort. We appreciate the board's willingness to take this step. This item is fundamentally about protecting patients. A significant wave of health coverage losses is approaching and we must act now to protect the stability of our healthcare system. Our emergency departments continue to experience record high volume and additional coverage, losses and gaps in outpatient access will only intensify this pressure affecting timely care for all patients. We commend you for your forward thinking and stand ready to collaborate. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank speaker please. Hello supervisors. My name is Clint Carney. I am resident of District three. I'm with survivors of Torture International, also a part of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Co Consortium and the the San Diego Health Table of the California Pan Ethnic Network. I appreciate you bringing this item forward and considering expanding the eligibility of who can participate in this program, even if it's a loan program, other options are always important to bring forward. It's important to know that the Refugee resettlement program is a loan program. So refugees are vetted many times before they come to the United States, but before they get on the plane to come here, they have to sign a promissory note to pay back the expenses of being resettled in the United States. So that's an important factor to to consider when discussing who you're allowing into the program. Asylum seekers are not undocumented. They have alien registration numbers, they have asylum applications, they have court dates. They are known in the system. So thank you for your for consider. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Good morning, honorable members of the board. My name is Pam Ison and I'm speaking on behalf of Sharp Healthcare standing in strong support of this item. Thank you Chairwoman Lawson Reamer and Supervisor Montgomery step for bringing this forward and making it a priority. Sharp is proud to serve more than 1 million county residents each year. That's nearly a third of our residents and we see firsthand how critical the healthcare safety net is for our communities. At a time when emergency departments are already experiencing record high volumes, we fear that coverage losses will only intensify the pressure and affect timely care for everyone. So at the core this item is about protecting patients and Sharp healthcare strongly supports this proactive effort and stands ready to be a partner in strengthening the county's healthcare safety net. Thank you so much. Thank you. As the next speaker is coming forward, I'd like to invite three additional speakers. Casey Shirk, Caesar and Purita District nine Caesar. Just a Caesar. Just a moment please. I'm gonna call three additional speakers. Casey Shirk, Monica Montano and Jennifer Rosden Cesar please come. You can speak at the podium.
Cesar, come on up please. She aging. We attended the Aging and Independent Advisory Board. We also attended this health environmental quality. We also attended this I-S-S-S-S-S-S, public Authority and All advisory board and we volunteered to be a member. Did you receive our application Ma'am? Ma'am? Step ma'am. Rainier. Sir Desmond, our advice is approved the root cost so that this medical expenses would be a little bit affordable for the less particularly the victims. 10,000 victims as calculated by A PCD Tijuana River pollution. Do you think it's only 10,000 Ma? No. What about the dead? God help we work together? Yes. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Hello everyone. Good morning. My name is Casey. I am a proud SCIU local 2 2 1 member and I have been a human services specialist for the last two years. Right now we are preparing for the impact of the big beautiful Bill. I'm a very proud resident of district one and I can tell you that the good people of my community are already struggling, struggling fighting, poverty and the ongoing ICE raids. People have three basic needs to ensure survival. That is food, shelter and healthcare. The big beautiful bill attacks all three whether it is directly or indirectly, but it is healthcare and housing costs that put my neighbors out on the streets. My community should not have to continue to choose between health and housing. Additionally, this has created more barriers for my clients to receive Medi-Cal as caseload increases for self-sufficiency services causing longer wait times.
That's going to continue to be an issue. No one should be without healthcare. Vote yes on item 17. Thank you. Thank you. As the next speaker's coming forward, I'd like to invite the final speaker in person, Dr. Chris Toski. Good morning honorable members of the board. My name is Monica and I am here on behalf of Scripps Health. For more than a century, Scripps has been dedicated to serving the health and wellness needs of San Diego County. We appreciate the thoughtful revisions being considered to improve county medical services program including eligibility standards and modernization of enrollment processes. Efforts to eliminate CMS lien requirements and the expanded virtual application option. The proactive measures you are considering are crucial to protecting healthcare access to our most vulnerable patients. Today healthcare providers are facing significant challenges. HR one will cut Medicaid funding by $1 trillion over the next decade by imposing stricter eligibility requirements, work mandate and frequent redeterminations on the people we serve. We appreciate these efforts to enhance access and modernize systems to better serve our community. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please. Hello, my name is Jennifer Royston. My father came from Columbia. My mother came from Mexico. They did it the right way. They came here legally, not illegally. Our hospitals are over flooded because we are paying for people that shouldn't be here. And it's not being inhumane. You go back, you do it the right way and our medical facilities won't be suffering the way that they are. All this immigration, ice b******t. Bottom line. Bottom line. You come here. Legally every country has walls and America should too. Why? Because our cities wouldn't have gotten ravaged like they did when all you guys let all those people through our border. Now if you wanna stay in our country, you do it legally. That's all we're asking legally. Next speaker please.
Chair Lawson Reer, vice chair Montgomery Step. Thank you for allowing me to speak. You're spot on. I am Dr. Chris Toki. I'm a practicing emergency physician in San Diego County and I'm experiencing what you're talking about firsthand. As you know, as an academic medical center, we have the honor of being part of the safety net for the entire county. Not only that, we have the honor of training new physicians doing research and taking care of our most complex patients. And I know from firsthand that a disproportionate number of them now face significant barriers to care coverage and care and come to us for help. And I don't know if you've been in an emergency department lately, but you are right. It is bursting at the seams. We have sustained record high demand. We have patients waiting days, not hours, days for inpatient beds. So I ask you that you help strengthen our county medical service function in this unique healthcare landscape and help our most disadvantaged, vulnerable citizens. And that in turn will help all of us. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now hear from the individuals that requested to speak by phone. When it is their turn to speak, you'll be unmuted and you'll hear a recording that will tell you to begin your comments. We will start with our first caller
Muffling. I don't even know what happening. I have no idea. Keep muffling. Anyway, so I have a few recommendations for recommendation two, one, find doctors or other medical people who are willing to work at this rate or accept vouchers for future payment. Two, make sure that the legal immigrants are covered under the laws of their country of origin, not ours. Three, use use of less expensive natural treatments which might take place of big pharma treatments. They're generally less expensive. Have fewer side effects.
Come follow here. Okay, so another lens. Let's call it what it is. It's not healthcare. It's sick care. A system that profits from chronic illness is not designed to eliminate illness. A patient heals is revenue lost. When the pharmaceutical dependency becomes a primary solution offered struggling residents, people start to question the incentives behind it. A population heavily medicated is easier to manage than a population truly restored to strength and independence. Tara, you said in America we don't leave people on the sidewalks to die. That sounds compassionate but the reality is, in this county there's a different story. Lady. Every year, hundreds of unhoused residents die on our streets every year. Families very loved ones who cycle through the system that never truly restored them. If this item were truly about health, we would be talking about prevention, root causes, nutrition, environment, trauma recovery. Not just
Good morning, my name is Becky Raf and I appreciate this item. And agree that the county has both a legal and moral obligation to serve as the provider of last resort. That responsibility is very important. However, this staff report does not address a growing strain on our healthcare system. According to recent data highlighted by Rady Children's Hospital San Diego, marijuana exposures among children, particularly from edible products, have quadrupled in recent years. Many of these cases require emergency department treatment and in some instances hospitalization significantly overloading our eds. Our pediatric emergency systems are already under pressure. And if we are anticipating additional coverage losses and increased uncompensated care, we must also account for the preventable drivers of those who come to the hospitals, children and young adults suffering from marijuana poisoning. This program must include a full assessment and a detailed look into hospitals impacted by marijuana misuse. Thank you.
Hey it's truth. Well the crying allegations against the federal government, this item is really about the related state actions, which means the new scum agenda struck again There's cuts to Medi-Cal because the state and this board allowed illegal aliens to overwhelm the health system for five years straight. It's called consequences, eligibility standards. Tighten transits to the feds now requiring able-bodied people to at least try to get a job. This item is a late agenda item because it's more fearmongering. In order to justify this county later creating a government controlled socialist hospital system, ask Canadian who wait for months just for an appointment, how well that works out. They come here for their surgery. The county currently can't even keep up with their own hospital bills. How would expanded coverage results in paid bills this time is so everyone's eligible via revisions to the standards. AKA free for all with branding, renaming of the program, AK straight propaganda with an evaluation of fiscal impact only to be ignored later. Which Union Grifter wrote this hot garbage. How much is the kickback this time? I'd like to know, get a job, do something real with your life
I got a question after you guys steal the next election, you know with the unions and all that stuff, are you gonna reverse some of your bridges that you're doing? Because federal government wants accountability. Meaning we've donated money to these programs, we haven't seen anything, especially for the people that actually live here. I mean you're giving a lot away to brand new immigrants that you went ahead and fast tracked above everyone else. Therefore you need to give them, you know, supplies and make sure that they get integrated into our system as quick as possible. You did a good job by the way, in moving people and keeping the people that speak English here and to providing them schools so that they could integrate a lot better. I'll give you that. So my question is, are you going to keep that whole $10,000 program where you could, where these people get paid $10,000 for moving a kid away from their family into another family or is that still gonna be added on? Plus you get all
Chair loss. Lawson Reer, that concludes public comment on this item. Okay, thank you all very much. We have a request to speak by my colleague, supervisor Anderson. Thank you ma'am. Chair I, I'm not sure who to address these questions to as I went through this. And I agree with the premise. We know that emergency rooms carry a terrible burden and our resources are short. But when I looked the ad hoc subcommittee, did it have any meeting agendas or minutes or any notes to share with anybody and what you discussed and how you discussed it? And let me put it into criteria so that when you answer it, acute care hospitals are not located in the unincorporated. However, we have community health centers that do acute care and in the language we exclude them. I'd like to see why we would exclude 'em and why we wouldn't include 'em. And perhaps you could address how these recommendations were developed because I'm not, again, I didn't see any minutes or agendas or lists of people who you spoke with or how you developed these recommendations.
I'll just, let me just answer the question about acute care and that based on these recommendations, I think, I think if I understand what you're, what you're getting at around that is that you wanna make sure that members of the incorporated communities are receiving every level of care that they can and that no one is left out of this process as we explore how to expand our CMS services and CMS services, from my understanding, covers the very population that you're talking about. And so I think that, so for that concern is what I'm hearing that this recommendation is, is certainly all in encompassing. So the second thing I'll say, and I I think the chair can comment on this more, but there this conversation, we really we're steeped in a consultant that we had come and present to us that we we're trying to get to this board meeting.
But based on her schedule, we want to have her come and present to the entire board because she is decades long, has decades long experience in arenas at every level of government. And so we are still working on that and getting her before the full board but still think that this, we can do those in conjunction with doing the back additional background work that we need to do before we take any real action on any reforms. And so that is something that we requested of her and that really was the crux of the conversation around CMS within that, that subcommittee meeting. So that that's, that's coming forward, moving forward. And my hope is that it's sooner than later. Yeah, lemme just add to that. I I agree. I we, we both really wanted to have JC Cooper here today who is really the driver, the consultant that the county has hired to sort of help us analyze, you know, what are the impacts that we're looking at on our healthcare system.
And she came, she did like a really in-depth presentation about our inv our vulnerabilities. And that was the kind of the call to action for us to, to move this in an urgent way. She wasn't able to be here today. She has a meeting, but I did ask her if she could come as soon as possible. So she's looking at hopefully being able to come to our next board meeting. And I would love to just kind of put out there that I do think this is a conversation that our whole board should be involved in. It's really important, and this is sort of like a, a question to, to my colleagues if she's not able to make it to our next board meeting, would folks be interested in having some kind of special session to, to kind of hear what she, her analysis and how what she's seeing on our community that, 'cause it's been a scheduling issue.
So Okay. I'm getting a yes from Supervisor Anderson. Okay. That's great to hear. I was, we've been, I've been reluctant to try to schedule a special session 'cause I wasn't sure if folks would be able to attend, but if that's something people are interested in, would definitely love to do that. And I kind of bring everyone into this conversation as we go along. So I think that that's really important. And to answer your question, I think one of the things, and again we'll get more of this when she's able to come, but I think to your concern Supervisor Anderson about, you know, the folks in the rural, rural part of San Diego County, the data that we saw from GC Cooper is that you're right that actually a a large, that you're, the people in your district are gonna be like very severely impacted. And so we anticipate that this work will, will pretty significantly address exactly that population.
And to be honest, folks in your district, in supervisor Montgomery Steps district and supervisor, a GEARY'S district are sort of really front and center. Just to add on to Supervisor Geary coming out of the conversations, I think there's been a, a concern raised about the vulnerability of the hospital system specifically in your district and the potential for a hospital to potentially have to close if we don't do something pretty dramatic to, to kind of backstop what's happening. So again, this is like a countywide issue. Your district's pretty significantly impacted, this is supervisor Gary's and Vice Chair Montgomery Step and it would be great to, to have a broader conversation. We didn't wanna wait. I think the, the kind of urgency was we need to get moving because it's gonna take quite a while to, to like have these consultations and have these conversations to, to try to figure out what we can do about re changing our, the way that we operate with CMS.
But that does that, my preference, I like I would say would've had to have JC Cooper here today, but we didn't wanna wait on this like really time sensitive item for her to be able to come. So I think my commitment to you would be if you all can make yourselves available for assess or session, hopefully we can either get here at, at an, at the next meeting and we can have this kind of robust conversation and if not we I would love to schedule a special session with her in a follow up. So I I I didn't know you were working with JC Cooper otherwise I would've Googled to find out more about, is it an individual or a company? It's a person. You should Google her Actually no, I'm You could, she's amazing. I'm happy so, but yeah, what did you solicit any kind of community input in this process without minutes, without agendas?
There's no way to see the work that's being done and I would make a, may I finish please? Let me just say, may I finish? Wait, hold on, hold on. Vice chair. One second. I think I have the mic Vice chair. Thank you. So one of the things that you might want to consider moving forward is when we had our subcommittee meeting, we did it in this room, we recorded it, it's on the county website. Anybody can see it, anybody can go back. We didn't take public comment because it wasn't a full board meeting. However, the public could always email us, call us, send letters to us. A lot of the recommendations of the people we spoke to came from the public. And then of course we, you know, the public had that and you had this process nowhere in the work that you've done, I can go back and feel reassured that the 550,000 people that live in the unincorporated are being covered.
And when I read this and look, I agree with your where you're going. I'm not against what you're doing, I just want make sure that when we're working with these vulnerable populations that we're really thoughtful and we get it right the first time. But when I looked at this, we're only talking about hospitals. And part of the problem with the unincorporated is if you live in Petro and your average household income's $42,000 and you have an issue and you're not addressing the clinic that's near them, they're gonna be an emergency room call coming into the city in an ambulance. And so we're the people that need it most should be at the forefront. And if we're using JC Cooper who may be city driven and never been to RO and doesn't understand the demographics other than on paper we've excluded people like neighborhood healthcare or San Yed healthcare, some of these groups that service these areas should have been a seat at the table.
Well I think it would be, sorry, I'll, I'll let my colleague go. Well I just think it'd be important to clarify, I'm almost finished that we are. Okay madam I'm almost finished. Last year our county medical services provided services for approximately 40 medically in diligent people for over $970,000. And only two individuals were enrolled at any given time. I'm, I think part of our issue is also looking at what are we doing and how effective we are at it. When you think in terms of almost a million dollars being spent and there's only two people in it at any given time, I, I think that this is a much bigger broader issue. That's why I welcome your invitation to hear it because I have a lot of questions and if you had published on the web or had a meeting here, I could actually see the public input.
Many of those questions would be answered and I wouldn't need a special meeting because they would've been addressed. 'cause I could do the research on my own by simply making sure that you asked the correct questions. I am sure you asked incredibly intelligent questions, but we all have different districts, we have different PE constituents and I just want to make sure that we're reaching every district to the full extent. Okay. So with that I'm eager to hear what you both have to say. No, I just think there might be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this board letter is. You're talking about a table on which we've gotten input this board letter is to create the table. We are directing the CAO to start convening and have those consultations because we do need to have those broad consultations. We haven't at all done the work to figure out like what are the reforms we need to CMS, this is to get the work moving and the ball rolling.
So I thought it was written pretty clearly that this is to direct the CO to begin those consultations. To say it again, it's to direct the CO to but totally agree. We have to talk to the whole community in a really broad way. That is the work that needs to start. And instead of us as a subcommittee, like going off and doing it on our own, we actually came to the board and said, hey, we actually think this is something that the whole board should know about. There should be transparency around it. We're not gonna just go me and Monica like cook a whole cake on how we're gonna revise our entire medical system in San Diego County. That's why we're here with this board letter to say, hey, it came to our attention through the sort of initial chi tire kicking of our subcommittee.
That putting together that table and that consultative process to really rethink the way CMS works is like a really critical thing that we have to do. Instead of us just going and doing it, let's bring it to the board. Let's make sure we have a board endorsed process that the CAO can direct in a way that's transparent. So again, I think, like I said, I think there might be a misunderstanding on like what this board letter is like that is what the, the board letter is to begin that consultative process because we didn't feel that it was appropriate as a subcommittee to kind of do all that work without coming back to the board and making sure everyone knew what we, what like the kind of the crisis we're in. So we could then get like broad board direction for the CO to engage in this work.
So I don't know if the vice chair has anything to answer, just, just want to say I continue to look forward to the board to input, which is why the letter is here and if there's anything that's blacking, we are legislators and it's kind of what we do on a d to if there's something or someone that is not included currently in looking at the reforms and opening up that table and those conversations to ensure that everyone is represented, then I think that we can look at the board letter maybe a minute if you're so inclined to support it. That's why it's here. So there's nothing being done in a subcommittee that would prohibit the five people here who are elected to represent all the 3.3 billion from doing their job here on the diocese. And then having that translated into the policy to finish up in recommendation three.
You talk about acute care hospitals, that's exclusive. I mean what you've done is you've narrowed what we're talking about to what you presented and that excludes any of the acute care that's actually in the unincorporated. So I'm, I'm asking for a friendly amendment to change that from acute care hospitals to community acute care community health centers to, so I don't, let me, let me, let me open the item just to look at it while you're giving me the amendment so I can see exactly what you're proposing. So that way as staff is moving forward, you haven't ruled out stuff before we ever started and see the issue. I have, I agree with everything you're saying, but it's our bias to rule things out because we're not thinking from all five districts. We're thinking from the districts. So we most frequently are in our own. Can you, and so tell me again what your proposed amendment is?
So right now it says acute care hospitals. I'd like for it to say acute care community health centers. Many of the health centers in the unincorporated are acute care, but they're being excluded from the process. And I, I'm happily would be supportive of that. My problem is I can't, I don't know how we got to where we are and maybe this would've been better described as just a, a joint authored board letter, not an ad hoc subcommittee result. Because when you say ad hoc subcommittee, I'm thinking there's gonna be agendas, meetings, community input notes to share in how you know, and it and it is clearly laid out how you got to the recommendations in in and who played a role in developing those recommendations. You have these recommendations by the way. I totally agree, but I just wanna make sure we're not making this so narrow that we've excluded the unincorporated before we even start.
And since this is just a process where staff's gonna come back, why would you care if it's narrowly defined? I I Unless you have a predictive outcome, I recommendation. But I just want to, I just want to reiterate what you said is that you said that we should have been less transparent about what happened in the subcommittee and not brought this forward as a subcommittee item when this is what we discussed in the subcommittee and we wanted to bring it to the board. So that's that that that that for me, I'm fine with including clinics sqhc to be a part of the conversation. I think they're already county contracted, but a part of the conversation. But that's why we, that's why I think it's important to bring it to the board so that we can hear that feedback doesn't have to be an insult in accusations that folks are not being transparent.
It just be an amendment that's all supervisor. I don't mean it to be that way. I'm sorry you took it that way. That's not my intention. But there's nothing here. And when I read this, you know, I just want to point out to y'all that you excluded the unincorporated in the verbiage and I'm glad that I knew if I brought it to your attention you'd be open to it. 'cause you're always very reasonable and you have a great approach towards this. I would, I would just say what your recommendation that, that the clinics do not, do not do acute care. So that's probably another reason why but, but I'm okay with them being at the table for sure. The, the, i I mean how about, I'm just kind of thinking about this. First of all, you're saying we excluded the rural areas. This is not true.
But for your greater peace of mind, if you, you would like to make that abundantly clear, we can certainly add, you know, with primary emphasis on acute care hostels and ensuring representation cross county in representation, including the rural parts of our county. I mean if, if that is, if you feel so insecure that this is written in a way that's gonna like exclude the rural areas, we can certainly say that because that's obviously an intent. But if that is, if you need that for your own insurance, if you wanna say something with pri you know, we can say we can add a clause. This is primary to acute care hospitals and ensuring input countywide impact from all districts, including our rural communities. I'm fine to include that. Ma'am Chair you waived our board policy A 72 in presenting this forward. That's our safety check. You have no minutes, you have no agenda, you have no notes.
I'm sure that you're very thorough 'cause you are a thorough person and you did a great job and I'm sure 'cause everything you do is quality. But there is nothing for the public or for me to see on how you determine this. And then when I look and you've excluded acute care in the unincorporated hospitals do provide it, but some of the clinics do too. And when you've left me no choice, if you had a more transparent process, but Joel, sorry, supervisor Anderson, I'm offering to accept an amendment. What amendment would you like to make? May I please finish? If you had had hearings that you could, that the people you talked to when they give testimony to your subcommittee, if it was public, if it was on the website, then I could go back and be reassured. I mean I have no idea who you even spoke to other than JC Cooper and, and you don't even know who she is.
So that's a little bit of an issue. But go ahead. Well the reason why I don't know who she is, is we didn't learn who you spoke with. 'cause there's no minutes, no agendas, no notes, nothing public. Actually that's not true. It is a public record, like extremely public that we as a county approved a contract with JC Cooper to consult with our county on this entire process of how to transform our medical system. So maybe you weren't paying attention to that meeting, but that is not a secret. Okay. I I'm losing ground here. You've agreed to an amendment well now I don't know. I said I just offered you one, but now you're being rude. Oh my God. What would you like to do here? I would love to be able to have broad board support to support our provider system so it doesn't collapse.
We both offered to hear an amendment and you've just con continued to insinuate that somehow my, myself and the vice chair have hid from you a contract that we have with JC Cooper that you all approved and are no, and are well aware of. If you're not well aware of, then you're staff In brief, you, we approve a lot of contracts. I never heard anything that JC presented. All of the things that JC presented could have been posted on our website for public view. So we all know and we only contracted with one person, but where, who were the community input? Who represented everybody at the table? Were all the hospitals there? I think they are because they're all here. But what about the clinics? What about the other folks? Look, I'm not, I'm saying, I I'm looking for is that we don't, in our recommendation predetermine where we're headed when we're still in fact finding mode and I think you brought it to the board of five so that we could help participate in the final decision.
So I'm asking that we don't make it exclusive, we make it inclusive and allow those clinics, I'm just gonna pick two off the top of my head. Neighborhood healthcare, San Ysidro Healthcare, both participate heavily in the unincorporated, I'm sure there are additional people, but I don't have everybody memorized and I know that there are more, but I just don't know 'em all off the top of my head. So you guys, I understand, I'm trying to get to an amendment I offered chair. So can I suggest something? Could you repeat? Could you repeat the amendment that you're offering? Yeah. I'll give you two options. Two choices. How's that? You can choose. Option one is simple. Right now it says with primary emphasis on acute care hospitals, we could cross out the word hospitals and say providers. Perfect. That is inclusive. The other option would be, I'm good. Okay, I'm good. Is that okay with the right issue? That that is, that is fine. And I appreciate the, the addition.
Could someone from our team from HSSA take could take a moment. Apologies to put you on the spot. I do think it's important since apparently people are not paying attention to the important work that we as a county are doing to prepare for what's coming with HR one and the gaps that we're looking at with CMS. If someone could come up and talk a little bit about the consultant we've hired to advise our committee and JC Cooper's qualifications and the work she's doing, although this has been voted on by the board and is well known or should be well known by anyone who's paying attention chair, I have the assistant chief administrative officer, Caroline Smith here and she can speak to
Of that. Thank you. Certainly. Thank you so much for the question. Chair Lawson Reamer JC Cooper is a consultant that county staff engaged to assist with the kind of the broader planning for HR one. She is largely recognized as an, as a national expert. She's had experience in both the state administration as the head of the Medi-Cal work for the state. She's also had national experience with previous administrations running the 1115 waiver program for the federal government. Additionally, she had started her work with counties and in the beginning, early on in her career she worked for Kern County. So really kind of understands firsthand what our work looks like as, as we do have that kind of frontline county effort. So over the course of her career, she has provided a tremendous amount of expertise and firsthand knowledge and so we are in, we feel incredibly fortunate that she has been able to help inform our staff on a number of fronts in HR one including this 17,000 mandate. Okay, thank you. And can you just for the refresh, the recollection of the award, like when was she retained?
Certainly, I have to go back to the contract signature date, but it was either the end of December or beginning of January. Okay. And is this like a big secret or was this public information? It's, it's certainly not a secret. The contract is a, a public document on our contracting website. It is not a a, a super large contract amount. It is typically done under the authority that we work with and staff when we engage our expert professionals to assist us. Thank you. Any other questions from anybody? Fabulous. Super does or Desmond? Yeah, I, you know, I think, I do think this is very important and necessary for our residents and I, I think what's kind of complicating the issue is this, the ad hoc committees are new and this, and I appreciate the support and or I guess the report coming to, to the board with, with your findings.
Although waiving the policy a 72, I would've liked to seen staff's input on the feasibility of some of these items before they were part of the recommendations and, and because of that I'm not gonna support it today. I'd like to see staff's input first on, on these items. So I guess I'm, what I'm asking is if for before ad hoc committees come back to the board that they at least run it through staff. So I'm, I think it's more of a, this is new and maybe it's pro the process needs to be refined or whatever the case, but I appreciate coming back to us, but I would've liked to seen it go through staff first. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any other further comments or questions on this item?
Supervisor Chair Pro? Just a quick comment. I I, I can see and understand the urgency of this item and it's in its name exploring reforms to County Medical Services. That's all we're doing. That's all we would be proposing today. I, i i for one, have the district with the highest poverty levels and the people that will be most vulnerable to your point chair about the hospital or or a hospital potentially closing their doors. Like that's something that, that I'm very well aware of in the district that we're being impacted by many other dynamics in addition to what HR one is bringing. So I understand the urgency and I'm happy to support the item. Thank you very much. Appreciate the, the statement of support. So lemme just summarize, I think we have a motion on the floor in a second with the, the a small amendment that we both were happy to take in order to kind of have broad support, support for the item moving forward and I do appreciate the interest of this board in all of us kind of getting on the same page of of the, of what we were briefed on as a subcommittee from the analysis that came our way from JC Cooper regarding the threats facing our region.
And we're gonna do what we can, hopefully she can come to our next meeting but if not we will, I will, my team will certainly be in touch with your team and hope to everyone's cooperation to be able to schedule a special session if she's not able to come to our next meeting. So I think that with that we can go ahead and call the vote chair Lawson Remer. That motion passes with Supervisor Desmond Voting Mule, all other supervisors being present and voting. Aye. Okay. Thank you all very much. So we will now move on. Hold on to our next item. We're gonna go to item 16 if the team I think has a 10 minute presentation.
Good morning chair laws reamer and members of the board. In December we presented an update on the countywide food contract with Cisco, which serves the sheriff's detention facilities in the Edge, more skilled nursing center food contract supports board policy B 75, which aims to strengthen our regional food system in partnership with the San Diego Food System Alliance. Positioning our county to be a national leader in food justice and sustainability will require a focused effort over time as there are local market factors that impact both the cost and availability of food items that meet our six value categories in the program, which you will hear more about in our staff presentation today. We're back at your board's direction to discuss three follow up areas related to the food contract. And to do that I will turn it over to Garrett Cooper, assistant Director of Agriculture Weights and Measures and Brenda Miller, assistant Director of purchasing and contracting. Thank you Brian. In December the board gave us three main directions. First, continue to strength, continue strengthening our outreach and technical assistance for local producers. Second, take a deeper look at the barriers that make local procurement challenging. And third, develop ambitious but realistic goals across the six B 75 value categories. That guidance really set the path for what we've been working on over the last few months.
Since then, we've continued meeting with the Farm Bureau local food hubs and the University of California Cooperative Extension to build stronger support system for producers. We've been sharing resources, improving our website to make information easier to access and offering one-on-one support through Ed Gus support training and education for procurement or step program. This is so smaller, farmers can more easily navigate county contracting. We've also brought Cisco into the conversation earlier, especially when it comes to connecting with local producers of products we buy frequently like eggs, bread, and vegetables. These early conversations make a big difference in building relationships and identifying real opportunities to bring all of this together. We're launching Sprout supporting producers through resources, opportunities, United partnerships and technical assistance. Sprout gives us a clear structure for how we engage with producers, how we train and support them, and how we connect them with opportunities. It includes everything from produce safety training and grant writing workshops to online guides and regular updates about funding and contracting opportunities. And Cisco is an active partner here. They'll even be joining the Food Justice Community Action Plan workshop later this month.
Before we go deeper into procurement, I want to take a moment and talk about the agricultural landscape in San Diego County because it really shapes what's possible. Our region has more than 4,000 farms, more small farms than any county in the country, about 830 growth fruit or vegetables and around 300 raised animals. But producers here face steep land and water costs and many rely on higher value specialty crops to make ends meat such as nursery commodities. Out of roughly 200,000 acres of agricultural land, only about 13% or 27,000 acres is used to grow edible crops and only a portion of that or around 5,000 acres is made up of crops typically used in institutional food service. The other 22,000 acres is made up of specialty crops such as avocados and or foods not really used in institutional menus such as lemons farms, growing foods that can be used for institutional menus are small, often just a few acres and many sell directly to consumers rather than through large distributors.
Even with these challenges, many growers we've spoken with are excited about working with the county. The interest is definitely there. What we're working on now is creating the infrastructure partnerships and pathways that make participation realistic for them. The Cisco contract helps us do that with about 12 million in annual spending, including 1.6 million for produce. We have a real opportunity to focus on products we already buy in high volume and that are already being grown locally. With that, I'll turn it over to Brenda, who will walk through what we've done and what we're doing to address procurement barriers and the goals that we have established for this program. Thank you Garrett. Since December, the county and Cisco have been working together to understand what makes it hard for local farms to sell to the county and how to address these challenges. Our goal is simple, keep county dollars in the region, support sustainable farming and help local producers who want to work with the county.
By choosing local and organic products, we can support B 75 priorities while also strengthening our local economy or for focusing on the following barriers. County contracts require insurance, food safety certifications, and a steady supply of products. Many small farms are not set up to meet the demands of large government contracts. Some farms prefer to stay, prefer to stay focused on direct sales specialty markets, and may not be interested in selling through distributors. After meeting with the Farm Bureau, we shifted from broad outreach to a more targeted approach. As a result, we identified growers who already meet key requirements for volume, food safety and operations. We created a focus list of strong candidates for onboarding. Cisco recently onboarded a San Diego egg supplier and helped reduce a major barrier by lowering the insurance requirement from 2 million to 500,000, making it possible for this small local farm to participate in the Cisco contract.
Beyond getting new suppliers onboarded, we've also been removing barriers related to buying organic products and improving how our operations work together. DPC updated the Cisco contract so we can now buy produce directly from Fresh Point Cisco Specialty Produce Company. Cisco agreed to waive certain fees to make this possible. This change allows our food programs to purchase more organic produce without increasing costs. It supports Edge More's 50% organic goal. With similar commitments from the sheriff's food programs, we've reduced other unnecessary barriers as well. For example, Cisco lowered insurance requirements and clarified packaging standards. For example, a kosher two slide bread. The top ordered item from the sheriff's program has packaging requirements that are essential to protect product integrity. Cisco is actively seeking a qualified regional supplier that could meet these requirements. We're also improving logistics so growers can better connect with Cisco and fresh point distribution channels.
We're enhancing labeling and product visibility so organic options are easier to find in order. Sheriff's Office and Edge More are coordinating their menus more strategically and sharing purchasing needs earlier in the year. This helps producers under understand demand before making planting decisions. Together these changes reduce remaining barriers and create more stable predictable opportunities for local growers. These first three charts show our expected progress and we continue to address barriers, support, stakeholder engagement and technical assistance. The blue dotted line identifies the national average for similar programs. The orange line is where we are now and the green line shows our work to exceed this average over the next five years. The greatest opportunities for immediate impact given our actions described earlier are in the organic and regenerative local sourcing and nutritional co-benefit categories. Organic and regenerative farming improves soil health which boosts nutrient density and reduces overall emissions.
Expanding access, access to organic produce through continuing to onboard vendors like Fresh Point will assist in meeting this goal. Local sourcing supports community economies and can lower carbon intensity to meet this goal will work with Cisco to continue to improve completeness of data on where local, where items are grown, produced or manufactured, while continuing to identify and onboard local suppliers to support our institutional food needs. Nutritional co benefits supports health and wellbeing and is strengthened by local sourcing since shorter supply chains preserve freshness and reduce transportation emissions. All of this report highlights the countywide Cisco contract. The sheriff's office is also partnering with other vendors such as a local dairy to promote progress in the local sourcing value category.
These last three categories, equity informed sourcing ensures historically marginalized farmers and suppliers have access to markets reinforcing social sustainability and complementing regenerative practices. Elevated labor standards promote fair wages and safe conditions aligning with equity goals and and it includes Office of Labor's standards, quarterly reviews against the wage theft dashboard. Low carbon intensity is achieved through reductions in animal products purchased and overall supported through regenerative farming and local sourcing. Progress in the value categories will require balancing budget considerations with operational needs. If any value category isn't moving towards our goal, we reassess the system, analyze the data to find the root causes and quickly apply corrective actions to get performance back on track. To put it simply in five years will leap the way exceed the national average of programs similar to the county in all six value categories. Cisco is committed to helping county meet B 75 goals and is taking steps beyond their contract requirements.
Cisco will review all new products for B 75 alignment and track how many values aligned suppliers they bring on. They will collect B 75 data from vendors who supply the county's top purchased items. Share a report on San Diego based suppliers supporting their contracts and provide quarterly updates. Join quarterly meetings with the Farm Bureau to keep partnership strong. Share monthly fresh press updates that will let Edge Moore and Sheriff's Office know which value lines products are available and provide an annual summary of incentives, training and resource they offer to help bring value line suppliers into their system. County staff will report back to the board this December when with an update on progress under the county wide food contract with Cisco. This update will cover progress toward established commitments, implementation of the Sprout initiative and actions taken to support local and values aligned businesses. Subject to your question, this concludes our presentation.
I'll now go to P*****k comment. Thank you Chair Lawson Reamer. We have 10 requests to speak on this item, four in person and six requesting to speak by phone. Also note for the record that we received six E comments, five in support, and one in opposition. For any individuals that requested to speak on item 16 by phone, please dial in at the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium because there are 10 or more speakers on the side and you'll have one minute to address the board. I'd like to invite forward allegedly Audra Cesar, Javier Chandra Richards, and Jennifer Royden. I've called your name. Please come forward.
You guys are so good just sitting here straight face, acting like you care about people and what we eat. Right, but let's not worry about the toxic things in the food. It's okay as long as we can just kill people very quickly and give it to people like the kids in the Polinsky center and stuff, right? Because we really care about them. It's obvious by how the place has been shut down, right? And reducing animal products. See, this is interesting. This is like a United Nations agenda, right? We gotta get people to quit eating meat. That's why we 3D print it and stuff like that so we don't have cow farts getting in the way. But yeah, I mean this is really just terrifying to think about you guys controlling all the food in the county and making sure all of the farms and stuff get in bed with you guys so that you guys can shut 'em down. It's, you guys are, it's like a calm mini up here. You guys are good. And Tara, I think I misspoke. It's a clump of cells, not a above the oven. Six speaker please.
We are here to help to work together. We expect food for less Ralph and Sprout to give us a lecture on what price? All this, you know Consular Rivera, district nine, city of San Diego. Oh, he was trying to possibly make discounts of this food. When you say food, clean food, are we trying to procure clean food? Are we trying to stick on one contractor? Why? I request you to attend the water authority. This is one issue. We need water and it's only last month when water was connected to our neighboring, sober and tribal, which are producing also her products, which is good. Thank you. Thank you. Time is up. Thank you. Next speaker for you.
Good morning. My name is Chandra Richards. I'm the area county director director for uc, cooperative Extension in San Diego and Imperial Counties. I would like to express our strong support for the local food procurement program and highlight the longstanding part ship between the county of San Diego and uc, cooperative extension. For decades we've worked side by side to strengthen regional agriculture, expand nutritional education, support small and emerging farmers in advanced climate smart and community-based solutions. This program is a natural extension of that shared work. It deepens our collective commitment to a food system that is sustainable, equitable, and rooted in local producers. We appreciate the county's efforts to reduce barriers for growers, expand training and create clear pathways for local farms to participate in procurement. These efforts directly amplify the impact of uc, cooperative extension on the ground and support for historically underserved producers. Cooperative Extension is proud to continue the partnership and stands ready to collaborate even more closely. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Final call for Jennifer Rosden and I'll hear from those that requested to speak by phone. We'll start with our first caller.
I know about plans and commitments, but this is a progress report. You should focus on what has actually happened. Date. I question whether the team actually interviewed the recipients of the Cisco contracts or just kept to their county offices and Cisco's Cisco BUS that had actively engaged over 1200 local producers, about a third of them to identify alternatives to items in its catalog. And the whole two supplies have shown strong interest. It's a start. The county needs to look beyond Cisco. Maybe former county consortium of local growers. IT does have candidates for using purchasing CAN is pursuing direct.
Consuelo. So keep the money of the county and the county. We should be investing in our local farmers, but I know better. This is the way of having government get their dirty hands on independent local farmers production processes. They'd be required to abide by what government demands of them independence. Outdoor penalized for not abiding. I'd highly advise our local farmers to use their discernment and working with anything pertaining to government. In the end they'll be calling the shots in everything you plant, harvest and sell. Making deals with these deceitful devils. It may seem lucrative and stable, but it's time to step back and remember that the shady business of government has the goal to be in total control of everyone and everyone reliant on them. Food is essential and once they have total control of it, it's over. Wake up San Diego. Wake up humanity.
Hey it's truth it it's the county systemic status quo for Cisco. A Texas based company expected to adhere to a California delusional goal of racist equity, anything for a buck, but there's no such thing as values aligned Purchases voted on by people with zero values. Hence the focus on upping wages for the progressive union campaign. Funders does reach out to Farm Bureau mean just pretend to reach them just like the last item. Is this an untransparent sole source monopoly contract? Just like the JC Cooper backroom deal. 'cause Tara's known for backroom deals instead of reimagining requirements. Why don't you start serving some healthy food for Edge more where you house sexually violent predators within the city of Santee Boundary is a food system initiative related to the San Diego Food Systems Alliance who've received over $10,000 for staff and musicians. The San Diego Food Hub seems to have no website and no address. That's Tara style, transparency and effect. I also do not approve of Tara's disrespectful and childish behavior Today was more disgusting than the food Cisco is likely trucking in on big GHG emitting commercial trucks to county hypocrites.
I do find the finding the fact that the union really did not really wanted term limits and now that they got someone like you Tara, they wanna reverse that. You know, thank God they're not registering people to vote and voting for them, right? That's according to you. Not according to the heritage studies that have been done. And basically that's where most of the fraud is coming from. But we don't need to look at that. I mean, as long as you're willing to go ahead and turn your back on, you know the American people, you could get promoted into becoming the registrar, right Sean? If you turn your back on the what you did, you know the people that you worked under, Dave Longsdale, Mark Bradley, that taught us these wonderful lessons and you ignore all that and just follow exactly what Michael V wanted. And during a time that we were being sued over, you know, vote by mouth, you decided to basically get rid of me and put me on hold for six years, then file a refill.
Thank you. And chair Losman, that concludes public comment on this item. Okay, thank you so much, supervisor Anderson. Thank Thank you ma'am. Chair. I just had a a a couple good questions. So is county staff working through Cisco and Cisco is how? What's the relationship between our staff and Cisco? So I best understand it and I don't know who best to answer that. The county staff is collaborating with Cisco to help onboard our local suppliers, but it is a Cisco contract. We're working very closely with them. Have many local food producers been hired in the system thus far? The recent producer that we onboarded is our local local egg supplier. Okay. And then are we using any local food brokers? You know, for a lot of these folks they're just not big enough. But the food brokers, you know, they may take 10 farmers and combine them so they can meet bigger contracts.
So through the chairs supervisor, we certainly are looking at different food aggregators and food brokers that could be incorporated and onboarded into the Cisco contract. Currently one that is a big focus is the food hub and then there's also several different other aggregators. Dickinson Ranch. Yes, sa, CCI Farms, Jr Organics who actually collect commodities from all sorts of different farms throughout the region. Yes, CCHI Family Farms in D four is one of the ones that's on my radar also. Premier Produce in, well Siri Produce. I'm butchering their names even though it's vegetables, I'm butchering it. So I, I just wanna make sure that we're connecting with all the right people in the community and they're, you know, one's in D three, one's in D one. I'd be proud to call 'em all D two but none of 'em are. So thank you for your hard work.
Okay, thank you so much Vice Chairman Montgomery Step. Thank you. And I know that is a always a concern that we're bringing in as many local providers as possible and that sometimes it requires a little bit more than we normally do. So thank you for addressing that in our discussion in December and for bringing back this comprehensive progress report. I do appreciate the establishment, the clear five year performance commitment and I look forward to continuing to monitor progress for all of the six value categories. Also want to thank Cisco for working to comply with county's B 75 sustainability framework to strengthen data tracking and reporting. And that level of transparency and accountability really is essential for making meaningful progress. I recognize that it was difficult to overcome some of the barriers to local procurement of fresh produce. We've been talking about that for a while, a while.
But I do commend purchasing and contracting for amending the contracts with Cisco to allow direct purchasing from local producers, which cuts down some of those barriers. So we, we definitely want a food system to not only nourish our residents but also strengthen our small food producers as well as the local economy. So thank you for keeping all of those things in mind and keeping us updated and for all of your hard work, I know that the recommendation is just for us to receive the report. I'm happy to move that if needed. Thank you so much. We have a motion on the floor. Just wanna say, I also appreciate the benchmarks. I think this has been really iterative and when we started this we weren't even sure what was possible and I think the data from this initial report shows that especially in certain kind of parts of our county, there's certain departments who are doing amazing and others are doing less amazing in terms of reaching.
It's true, some are really doing amazing and some are definitely not. So that's helpful to kind of note that there's, you know, a lot that can be done that this is really doable, which was kind of the question from the outset. And then I think like having those kinds of benchmarks and like a framework towards how we move towards this, this not being optional fundamentally as we move forward and just, I think it's very thoughtful. So thank you for moving us in the right direction. And I do wanna just thank our county departments that have really kind of been thoughtful about how to, how to, how to, how to source local, how to buy from our rural communities here in San Diego County. How to kind of take into account these big important issues in, in how they do purchasing for our food contracts. Thanks.
I do have a second. Yes. Okay. Supervisor Desmond. Great. Any further comments from anyone? Just a quick comment chair. I wanna thank staff for all your work around this and I would actually say I do appreciate the benchmarks, but I would encourage us to be even more ambitious so that we can set the national standard. I really appreciate the launch of Sprout and the technical assistance efforts. I think that's important so that we can have equity in, you know, our providers. So I, I totally and thoroughly understand like the logistical challenges of expanding and becoming more ambitious, but I wanna encourage us to do so. So thank you chair.
Okay, thank you all very much. Just kind of like looking forward the rest of the day. We've got, oh, we have to vote so much consensus. Okay, we have a motion on floor on a second chair. That motion passes E and unanim unanimously with all supervisors being present and voting on. Okay, I'm glad we all agree. That's great. Fantastic. Okay, so moving forward, looking at the rest of the day, we're gonna be taking lunch then item 15 after lunch and then item 13 and FP two and then item 14. So this is for our staff, our our county team. Okay, a little bit afternoon, we'll be back here at one o'clock. Thanks Mor does in recess until 1:00 PM. Yes. Check, check. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's really hot. Why is that doing that? Check. One, two, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So that's not really doing anything is it? Check once. One, two.
That's not good. Check one, check one, two, check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Doesn't seem to be doing anything. Interesting. Check, check. Why is that? Check, check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check, check. Interesting check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. One, two, check, check, check. One, two, check, check, check, check. One, two, check, check, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Check, check, check. One, two, check. One, two, check, check. One, two, check, check. 1, 2, 1, 2, check,
Check, check, check. One, two, check, check, check. One, two, check, check. One, two, check, check, check. One, two, check. One, two, check, check. One, two, turn off. Check, check. One, two, kind of going through. Check, check right now. Check, check back. We are checking the level. Testing, testing. Does sound bit of head? Yep, plenty. Head room there. Yep. Yeah, it sounds a little quiet but, but that's the case. You can turn it up. Okay. Should I turn it up? Yeah, if you try it. Okay. Maybe about there. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, so you, you know what it most of the time, check, check, check, check, check, check. One, two, check, check. One, two, check, check, check. One, two, check check one, two.
Okay. I don't care you guys, if they're ready, the team's ready. Are they ready? Okay, then we'll go to, okay. Okay, reconvening back in session. We now move to item number 15 and this is centralizing county space management to avoid unnecessary leasing costs and capture ongoing taxpayer savings. We'll start with public comment.
Thank you Chair Lawson Reamer. We have nine requests to speak on this item. Three in person and six requesting to speak by phone. Also note for the record that we received two e comments in support for any individuals that requested to speak on item 15 by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium. You will have two minutes to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I'd like to invite forward allegedly Audra, please are Javier and Jennifer Rosden. If I called your name, please come forward.
So this is interesting because you guys act like you really care about taxpayer savings or something that I could recommend as far as taxpayer savings that would really help out our communities, which would be to stop the title four funding that's coming in for foster care and taking and ripping families apart. It's billions of dollars that actually comes from social security that goes into destroying families, tormenting children, and doing all of the things that you guys engage in here in the county. So I feel like if you really want to save us some money, those are things that you could look at. And when you guys sit here and say that you wanna save us money and not tax us, you guys are the entity. Like you wanna stop these corporations from coming after the people. You're a corporation that goes after the people and it's sad because you do it and you virtue signal like you're, you're doing something that's beneficial to us.
But as we can see with the choices that you guys have made by even just having San Diego be a sanctuary for all things evil, like you know, ripping babies apart limb by limb, having children cut off their, you know, breasts or genitalia so that they can pretend to be some other sex when that will never happen. When you guys sit here and you encourage all of the illegal aliens to come in and now Cara Ice is doing and so there's funding being cut because of choices that you guys make. So when you sit here and say that you actually wanna save us money, I'm wondering how that really like, do you guys really believe that you're doing that? It's weird because you're not and it's very sad to see and we waste a lot of people's money with all of the choices you guys make.
Next speaker please. C Purita, district nine, city of San Diego, district four of the county ma tip, remember this, footnote seven. You know that you don't know, oh I'm sorry. Councilor Foster declared that since and she doesn't know how to resolve it. They ignore it. This is in connection with this governance trying to save cost. We are thankful for this item truly because we could use that money plus the reserve as declared by honorable Desmond or we can now assist support the victims of Tijuana River Valley. Let's not cover it. Let's discuss it altogether. We have been praying that some, somehow as I volunteer, I would like with my shoulder dig up or with our bucket, get those sewed into the truck and bring it to the treatment plant. That is the action. When did we do that? My god, my God. We are not competing with you. You're also intelligent. But please allow us to work together with you. Come Madam Maguire, let's go there tomorrow, own tomorrow, tonight we'll bring our bucket and shovel and plastic bags and buckets and punks. We are here willing to work because we believe in you because people elected you. I do not know who this electors or the voters or my God, my God, I hope it's not rigged like the one that was rigged this garbage fee Ma step our city rigged the boats if only to have the single family homeowners to pay garbage fee. It's wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Final call for Jennifer Rosden. We'll now hear from those that requested to speak by phone. We will start with our first caller.
Okay, this, this is really funny item. It makes sense. We already, we always inspected that the candy does not always have a consistent countywide process to evaluate what their existing space could be the need before entering into a new multiyear lease. Because lease decisions are so often driven by the needs a k, a personal need of individual departments. So this would mandate that you can terminate the lease early and combine departments in one building and for the separate departments if you can do it without early termination penalty. A good aspect of this is that it would also save on maintenance lighting, kitchens and facilities for separate offices and so on. Good luck on finding a landlord who actually agrees to such early termination without the imposition of termination fees, negotiation would probably produce better results. But you aren't too good at that, are you? And the policy should mention the agreement toward a reduced fee. Great start though. Maybe you can use excess pennies on the Tijuana River Valley stuff, but really, you know, I mean this is a classic example of post posturing and wasting our time and your time and I mean, you know, there are so many more important things in the county to work on, like babies being torn from their families.
Hey Consuelo here. I agree there are so many more important things, but this is government. Okay, so I believe this item is about countywide process to evaluate whether existing space could meet a need before entering into multi-year leases. Okay? Yeah, truth be told, I'm not exactly sure what the objective or the goals are of this item are, but here's what I do know. Anything in the county or in any local government agency that centralizes manages or consolidates anything, almost always comes to a cost to the people, more control for the government, more restrictions, more penalties, taxes, fees, mandates, all justified as efficiency or streaming and yep, I've spoken about this before and I guess it bears repeating. Centralization may sound neat on paper, but in reality it concentrates power and concentrated power rarely works in favor of the people. It's another way the system keeps people dependent, distracted and with less say over their lives.
Okay, so I get it on the surface it sounds boring, space management. But again, when government uses processes like this, it's rarely about space, it's about control. It's about who decides what is allowed, who benefits, and who pays. And once the system is in place, it's very hard to reverse. So I'll say it plainly, I don't know all the details of this item, but based on history and experience centralizing anything under your management does not benefit us. It benefits you and the people will, yeah, I guess, yep, that's pretty much all it. I encourage this more.
Hey, it's truth. For what reason were the order of items rearranged again after lunch? This switch through again. Lacks transparency, Tara, the county of San Diego is preparing for a difficult fiscal year largely caused by significant county overspending and mismanagement inflation. Particularly as the county's upcoming budget cycle approaches and BS decisions must be made. Maintaining public trust requires demonstrating that every reasonable efficiency, consolidation and cost saving opportunity is pursued before any service reductions are considered, but somehow not reducing kickbacks to the union campaign funders. So Tara and Monica are interested in consolidation, a merge of facilities to smash together. Employees may be defunding law enforcement while they're there. The county managers a $59 million real estate footprint with 70 active leases almost as bad as BlackRock. Forcing workers to keep teleworking six years after the fake pandemic is outrageous. Now we know it was to consolidate 15 departments and an entire office building pushing 800 employees relocated from the health services complex, avoiding the need to construct another office building.
The alleged savings were achieved not by cutting services, oh no, but by saving money on real estate, creating new work patterns that don't necessarily work. But where are the savings on employees? Isn't this the entity who wanted to hire 18,000 more behavioral health cogs? Where's the savings in that? What about adding a hospital system to somehow cover everyone but that country residence? What about stop investing in county land monopoly of 99,000 acres as part of the multi-species conservation plan? County consolidation of control has become standard practice rather than a one-time outcome. By aligning leasing decisions with the current patterns and needs of the board of dictators rather than reality, the county can capture ongoing taxpayer dollars to fraudulently waste and abuse while pretending to maintain operations on the services the public expects but doesn't know are gonna be defunded. Why don't you supervisors leave this space permanently? Let's save another million dollars just in staffer slaves and then another million on you
You guys have been spending $150 million on buildings that you don't need. Interesting. What for times just like this when you need to go ahead and you know, bridge the payments to the NGOs until the next election, right? I mean I suspect as soon as you guys go ahead and until the next selection, none of this stuff really matters and you can just keep on going back to your full plan, right? I mean you don't really have to check them. I mean, I'm told you exactly where they are and you're choosing to basically prosecute me because I pointed it out, I pointed it out when I was working at the registrar of voters. Heaven forbid I do that, right? I should be thrown in jail for something being insubordinate to the people. Apparently I should have just known that we should allow NGO of unions and whoever, whoever wants to go ahead and steal people's ballots through the registration process, buy a a a a walking list and then fill it out for the people's names and you can go ahead and take whoever's doesn't vote name hell. You could take it from another state. It's not like that. They really care. The numbers are all that matters. And that way they could go ahead and make up lives and convince you that this is what the people wanted, right? It's not like anyone that actually cares about, you know, our elections. I've been yelling about it for how many years and no one still gives the right rats ass about it. So good luck.
You just have what, another year before you could go full blast again and maybe two and then you could just flat out ignore us and actually throw us in jail when you want to at any given time. I mean, that's what I heard that my congresswoman say she was gonna go after all the people that are spreading misinformation. That's awesome.
Thank you. And Cheryl Reer, that concludes public comment on this item. Okay, thanks so much. I appreciate the, the partnership with my colleague in, in bringing this forward. I just will say a couple remarks and then I hand it over to her just to remind everyone of the context, which I think we keep beating, beating the same drum. So this is not news, but we obviously have a difficult budget year with federal and state cuts putting pressure on the county and we as a board have committed to leaving no stone unturned in our strategy to do everything we can to serve the people of San Diego County. And we're really looking hard for all the efficiencies we can before, you know, cutting any kind of services. So this item is important because these office spaces and leases are a major ongoing reoccurring costs and they're spread across departments, which means they're easy to overlook and these long-term lease decisions lock in taxpayers for years.
We know after having done this inventory that there's more than 70 active county leases. That's almost 60 million in annual LEA leasing costs, extending many years into the future. So what this does is the sport action requires coordinated countywide review. It raises the standard from siloed decisions to looking enterprise wide and ensure based decisions reflects how the county operates today. Kind of looking at the whole picture holistically. And then it also ensures that when we do sign leases, that we allow early termination when landlords agree and when we're not using the space. So just to kind of uplift a particular example, the county operations center was recently consolidated. It required pretty significant coordinated planning across departments and this avoided roughly $150 million in capital costs. So it's again, I think in a lot of ways it's a pretty modest proposal, but I think that's a big part of our work is just being thoughtful and careful every single day and chip away and trying to save money where we can without cutting anyone's services.
So with that, I'll turn it over to the vice chair. Thank you so much, chair. I'll be very brief and just thank you and county staff for bringing these items forward in partnership. Through the work of the sustainable fiscal planning subcommittee, we are committed to finding smart and effective ways to cut costs for our taxpayers. And if this item does pass today, we'll establish a clear processes to, to assess space utilization before the county enters into new leasing commitments. And so I won't repeat what you have said. I will go ahead and move the item and ask our colleagues for, for their support. Thank you so much. Thank you. Happy to second. Any comments, questions? Okay. Seeing none. Oh, supervisor Anderson. Oh,
Okay, looks like our team is ready. So now we're moving on to discussion item 13, fire protection item two. This is fiscal year 20 25, 20 26, second quarter operational plan, status report and budget adjustments. And this is a big lift every couple months for the county team, so really appreciate the work and you know, I, I know that this is what you are doing, what we've asked you to do, which is to try to leave no stone unturned and looking for efficiencies and I think a lot of that's reflected here in this quarterly adjustment. So with that, I'll turn over to the team. Okay, thank you and good afternoon chair and members of the board. Today's item updates the board on economic conditions and the county finances as of the second quarter of this fiscal year. Today we plan to update you on economic conditions in the region, the county's mid-year budget performance, our current financial landscape, and looking ahead as we develop the budget for the coming year.
Looking first at the regional economy, this chart shows three key interest rates that affect everyday life, mortgage rates, treasury yields, and the fed funds rate. These numbers influence how much it costs to borrow money for homes, cars, credit cards, and other loans. The green line at the top shows trends in mortgage rates. The average mortgage rate in the last year is about 6.5%. Just recently rates fell below 6% for San Diego where homes are already expensive, the higher cost of borrowing adds to the cost of buying a house impacting the housing market. Next, the orange line shows treasury rates. Treasury rates have gone up over the last five years, which affects mortgage pricing and municipal borrowing costs. More recently, the current level of treasury rates indicates uncertainty related to inflation and broader world events. The darker blue line at the bottom indicates the federal fund's effective rate.
This rate tracks with the federal open market committee's target range for federal funds at 3.5 to 3.75%, which the feds held steady at their last meeting in January. Acknowledging continued yet slower expansion through 2025 and continued monitoring of inflation. These steady trends and rates impact local housing and mortgage rates continued to impact housing affordability and dampen construction activity. Consumers and small businesses continue to experience comparatively higher loan costs, which adds pressure on affordability and economic growth. Now let's talk about inflation and what it means for the region. Inflation has come down from the high seen in 2022, but it's still above the federal reserve's 2% target, which is intended to indicate stable and manageable economic growth. Right now, both the US and San Diego inflation is trending downward below 3%. Still inflation here in San Diego has been higher than the nation and businesses continue to feel the pinch from higher costs, which can slow hiring and expansion.
Housing is also affected by inflation. Higher prices and interest rates make buying and building homes more expensive. As inflation continues, consumers are watching their budgets more closely, looking for deals, cutting back on extras and relying more on credit cards. Looking ahead, prices may be stabilizing, but they're still high until inflation gets closer to the fed's target expect continued cautious spending and slower growth. Looking now at sales tax, this chart shows growth has flattened after several strong years. For San Diego County sales tax revenue growth is still positive coming in at 1.2% last fiscal year, 1.6% this year and 2.9% projected for the coming year. A gradual improvement compared to the big jump seen during the post pandemic rebound. Current growth is much more modest. This region is performing better than the state, which saw a small decline last year and has seen slower projected growth while sales tax revenues are stable and growing slightly.
Recent trends and the inflationary environment mean expectations should remain conservative. Local consumers are important contributors to county funding, not only through sales tax but also through the housing market. Next, we'll look at the region's housing with a quick snapshot as of January of this year. First is seen in the top section here, prices remain strong. The median price for a detached single family home is a little over $1 million. Continuing the upward trend in the region we saw throughout 2025. Second, as the bottom chart shows sales activity has softened, the region is down roughly 7% year over year, which suggests real estate market demand is cooling. Compared to last January, local housing prices are holding firm despite slower sales, which points to ongoing affordability challenges, and a housing market that remains competitive with assessed value staying high and continued increases anticipated in consumer prices. Property tax revenue should remain stable and are expected to still grow modestly of the total $2 billion.
General purpose revenue, property taxes, and property tax in lieu of vehicle license fee make up about 80%. The main driver of this revenue is growth and assessed property value. As property values rise, so does the county's discretionary revenue to fund critical programs and services for the community. This slide shows the trend in locally assessed secured property values from 2015 16 through the projection for 20 26, 27, we've seen steady growth from about $428 billion in 20 15 16 to over $750 billion today. At the bottom of the chart, you'll see the rate of growth from the prior year showing how much taxable property value has grown compared to the previous year. Growth rates are affected mainly by rising home prices, new construction and overall market demand. Economic conditions, inflation and supply constraints also play a role. We monitor these trends closely because they're the primary factor behind property tax revenue and that revenue supports the programs and services the community relies upon. Revenue and other projections are a key part of our quarterly financial results, which I'll turn to next.
This slide includes an update on the county's general fund performance through the second quarter of the fiscal year accounting for expenditure and revenue variances. The projected general fund operating results stand at $10.2 million, which represents 0.1% of the total general fund budget. This narrow margin underscores the importance of continued fiscal discipline moving forward. Looking at the major contributors to fund balance in the chart on the right general purpose, revenue or GPR is the largest positive driver contributing a net of approximately $32 million. Overall quarter two reflects a much stronger GPR outlook driven by assessed valuation growth, solid tax performance, and update updated data. The biggest driver from our first quarter update to the board includes projections related to redevelopment successor agency revenue up $10.8 million and property tax revenue up 8 million. Sales and use taxes also bring in additional $4.2 million and motor vehicle in lieu revenue brings in $3.2 million.
Groups, including land use and environment health and human services and finance and general government are also contributing modest positive variances to the county's mid-year performance. Public safety continues to exert pressure with a negative impact of about $28 million, which largely offsets efficiencies elsewhere. PSGs negative projected fund balance is primarily driven by budgetary pressures in the sheriff's office. This is unchanged from first quarter. The main drivers of this negative include salary adjustments made in their salaries and benefit budget higher than anticipated medical contracts and increased costs necessary to house a growing average daily jail population, which is attributable to Prop 36 implementation. Additionally, revenues are anticipated to come in lower than budgeted due to lower costs that would have been funded by these funding sources. The Sheriff's Office continues to work with the county team, including the Public Safety Group, executive office, the Office of Planning in my office to Mon Monitor the situation and work together, develop to develop mitigation.
Next, we look to the funds outside of the general fund. This slide shows how the county's other funds are doing halfway through the fiscal year. These funds cover things like roads, libraries, airports, and special districts overall. As highlighted here, we expect other county funds to finish the year with a positive balance of about $24 million combined, which is less than 1% of their total budget. The chart on the right shows the main contributors to that fund balance. With special revenue funds being the largest, the road and library funds are the biggest contributors in that area. Many mainly attributable to lower than budgeted project costs and higher intergovernmental and property tax revenue. Special districts also show savings mainly due to lower than anticipated costs for the sanitation district. Internal service funds and enterprise funds for airport operations add smaller amounts, capital projects and other funds make up the rest.
In short, these funds are stable and performing well. They help keep essential services running, like maintaining roads, supporting libraries, and managing infrastructure while staying within budget. Next, we'll switch gears a bit to look at the use of fund balance in the current year, specifically unlocked reserves. Today's item before the board includes two recommendations regarding the use of unlocked reserves. These proposals were developed based on prior board direction and also guidance from the ad hoc subcommittee on sustainable fiscal planning and together total $56.2 million in two areas. The first recommendation, 17 totals $8.75 million and is based on board direction related to the Tijuana River Valley response, including a Saturn Boulevard pipe extension, expanding the air purifier program administered by the air pollution control district and two health studies. Recommendation 19 includes strategic time critical investments totaling $47.4 million in various areas. Detailed in Appendix D to the board letter in the areas of housing for rental assistance and affordable housing development, vulnerable populations supporting domestic violence shelters, senior nutrition and hunger relief sustainability for habitat conservation and development compliance through the multiple species conservation plan and infrastructure, including critical facility maintenance and technology upgrades.
Appendix D of the board letter includes the proposed amount of funding for each of these areas. In bold with italicized language that indicates the nature of the expenditure for each identified area to provide general direction to staff. Staff will return to the board as needed with details on implementation and authority to operationalize programs within these areas. These recommendations should leave a balance of unlock reserves available in the current year. A total of $95.4 million of unlock reserves is available for this fiscal year, 25% of the total amount of 381.6 million based on the updated administrative code. This slide summarizes the activity to date. In December, the board approved $14.2 million for one-time lump sum payments to employees as provided for in county compensation ordinance. Today's recommendations include $8.75 million for Tijuana River Valley and $47.4 million to respond to the needs of our communities, providing housing, supporting vulnerable populations, environmental sustainability, and ensuring that the county's infrastructure continues to support operations safely and effectively.
If approved by the board today, $25 million of unlocked reserves would remain this year for future needs consistent with administrative code limits. Let's turn now to a look ahead. In summary, the economy shows mixed signals with short-term challenges in federal and state revenues. County general purpose revenue is growing, but so are county expenditures. We continue to monitor expenditure and revenue growth to ensure ongoing balance. The recommended budget will continue to prioritize mandated programs and will involve some very difficult decisions. We'll also have to take a look at service levels of mandated programs and effectiveness of discretionary programs. Ongoing updates will be provided to the board. Ultimately, the goal is to align operational priorities, community needs, and county priorities with the resources that are available to the county, state and federal budgets have a direct and significant impact on county resources. We recognize that it is not feasible to resolve all challenges at once.
Large and complex issues such as the impacts of HR one will require a phased and deliberate approach to ensure thoughtful and sustainable solutions. Stabilization funding will be prioritized with gradual measured investments in key areas over time. This approach allows us to maintain operational stability while addressing critical needs over time. It's important to note that the county only appropriates funds based on available resources. Our goal is to be the best possible stewards of public funds directing resources to programs that serve the region while operating within available resources. Our decisions are guided by fiscal responsibility and the resources we have at hand. We'll leverage all available resources to meet our objectives. This includes general purpose revenue program specific revenue available fund balances reserved and unlock reserves in accordance with the board's framework and where appropriate debt financing to promote intergenerational equity, spreading the cost of long-lived capital assets over the generations who will benefit from their use.
The county is committed to advancing equity and addressing disparities that have impacted our communities. We know county resources simply aren't enough to meet every need and the board's prioritization will be critical with this context. Let's look at the request for one-time funding of various county and community needs based on our five year planning. At the last board meeting, based on the discussion of the allocation of the shipment dollars, the chief administrative officer agreed to return today with a report on the current one-time funding request. As noted earlier, today's report projects a $10 million net general fund operating results, which would add to the general fund balance At first glance, that may appear to create new opportunities for investment. However, it is important to view this within the broader fiscal landscape. Historically, the county relied on fund balance as a one-time resource to support one-time operational costs like categories listed on this slide.
That approach worked when our operational footprint was smaller, but in recent years, the county has intentionally expanded services, establishing new offices, increasing staffing and adding programs to meet community needs. These were deliberate choices, but they also created ongoing obligations leaving thinner margins for departments and less capacity to generate yearend balances. With that context, the categories listed on this slide are core to the county's programs. They're essential to maintaining operations, absorbing rising costs and meeting commitments that have already been made either to the community or to our employees. These are things like supporting affordable housing, updates to information technology, data centers, mitigating environmental impacts, and reducing greenhouse gases. The storm ward program, maintaining county infrastructure, replacing the Vista Detention Facility, including a behavioral health wellness campus and funding the labor agreements that have been approved and incorporated into the county's compensation ordinance. The reality is that we will not be able to pay for all of these items listed on this slide within the county's current revenue.
In fact, it would be prudent to program available one-time capacity, including projected fund balance to strengthen the county's support of the existing cost structure, protecting core services, supporting our workforce, and avoiding future reductions that could result from initiating efforts that are not sustainable. Given the magnitude of the request before US prioritization will be necessary. Not all requests can be supported with existing resources. Current dollars would be more wisely used on current obligations and requests. The county team will continue pursuing funding opportunities and leveraging all funding sources with consideration of the dynamic federal and state landscape for large capital investments. With a multi gener, multi-generational useful life, we will continue evaluating appropriate long-term financing strategies to support generational equity and spread the costs out amongst all who will benefit from the facility. These strategies may include general fund supported financing, public private partnerships, or general obligation bonds. As we move forward in the current budget process, the county team will continue to refine these requests, scaling them to align with available revenue and seeking board and community input to ensure we effectively prioritize the county's cost structure, managing projected needs in the short and long term to ensure continued support of our region and our communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide a midyear update on county finances subject to your questions. This concludes the staff presentation. If any of my colleagues have any just sort of initial questions, if not, we're gonna go to public comment before we have board discussion. Okay, thanks. No questions. Go ahead. Thank you. Chair Lawson Reamer. We have 39 requests to speak on this item, 23 in person and 16 requesting to speak by phone. Also note for the record that we received 58 e-commerce 55 in support and one neutral for any individuals that requested to speak on item 13 and fire protection districts. Item two by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium because there are 10 or more speakers on this item, you'll have one minute to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I will be calling you in groups of three, so I'll ask you to please listen for your name. I'd like to invite forward the first three individuals, Corina, Pugh, Alana, Martinson, and Melinda Foray. I've called your name. Please come forward.
Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Carina Pugh. My pronouns are she her and I'm speaking in support of this item. On behalf of the San Diego BT Community Center and the San Diego LGBTQIA plus regional table, we are grateful that within this item, $3.2 million from the reserves has been allocated to sustain LGBTQIA plus adult housing. Last year our table advocated in support of a similar allocation in the budget cycle and with significant community support, we secured an allocation to fund these programs through June of this year. Last year, over 800 residents of the county signed a petition supporting the funding of LGBTQIA plus housing, and this year we have already had over 200 folks sign a similar petition. In support of this funding, the broader San Diego community is ready to see our elected officials invest in community center programs that provide critical services to our most vulnerable populations in a cost effective and efficient manner preventing homelessness and protecting their dignity. Programs like these are investments in public safety and public health and San Diego cannot afford to disinvest in programs that keep our community safe and housed. Please support this item and its allocations to LGBTQ plus house.
Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Alana Martinson. I'm here on behalf of serving seniors a San Diego based nonprofit that serves over 1.5 million meals to low income older adults annually. We are in support of this item, particularly the usage of unlocked reserves for senior nutrition, free home delivered meals and in-person meals for older adults are preventative care. The value goes beyond nutrition. I've spoken to seniors at our congregate meal sites who shared that they came for the meals and stayed for the conversation. I've watched our home delivered meal drivers check in on their clients with the care of a loved one. Nutrition keeps seniors healthy, happy, and housed. Thank you for your time. Thank you. As the next speaker's coming forward, I'll invite three additional speakers, Gloria Cruz Cardenas, Brock Cave, and Stephanie Roach. I've called your name. Please come forward. Good afternoon, board of supervisors. My name is Melinda Forte and I'm the president and CEO of serving seniors.
First, I do wanted to thank all of you for being amazing advocates and champions for older adults. We are here to share our strong support of the use of unlocked reserves to continue providing essential services. These programs meet the most, the most basic needs, food and housing, and they keep older adults, healthy, independent and housed. The majority of the seniors we serve are living off of less than $10 a day after paying rent. That means they need to choose between food, transportation and other basic needs. I want to specifically highlight the importance of funding for senior nutrition. For most participants in our nutrition program, the meals they receive are not just extra. They may be only the only food that they have that day. This investment prevents homelessness and protects health. Please consider this and thank you for your leadership consideration. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Hello, supervisors. My name is Gloria Cruz Cardena. I'm the Chief Impact Officer at the San Diego GBT Community Center and a member of the San Diego LGBTQIA a plus regional table. Thank you for including the 3.2 million towards the LGBTQI plus housing through these housing programs. It cost the county approximately $775 per service visit to help keep someone outta homelessness, which is less than 2%. The average 42,000 it cost to support someone already experiencing homelessness. This program saves the county thousands of dollars while supporting people who need the services The most. LGBTQIA plus community members are more likely to become homeless and once homeless MO more likely to endure discrimination that extends their homelessness. Our LGBTQIA a plus affirming programs provide this trauma informed culturally competent services they need, which is rooted in the decades of service to our community. I urge you to vote yes on this item and protect the critical housing our community and deserves. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Brock Cavitt. My pronouns are he, him and on behalf of San Diego Pride and the San Diego L-G-B-T-Q-I-A regional table, I support this item including the $3.2 million allocation to LGBT adult housing from any vulnerable populations including LGBT folks who are at higher risk of experiencing homelessness. These contracts are vital to providing wraparound services to ensure our community is able to remain in stable permanent housing as we see cuts to essential services from our federal government and critical resources for queer and trans folks. Targeted San Diego needs to continue to prioritize funding that has proven successful in supporting our most vulnerable community members. Thank you for your past and current investment in these contracts, in this funding and for your time this afternoon. I hope you consider to fully fund these services moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. As the next speakers coming forward on by three additional speakers, Gus Hernandez, Gilbert Vera and Jen Berry.
Good afternoon. My name is Stephanie Roach. I'm a proud SEIU local 2 2 1 member and been a dedicated county employee for the last seven years. I currently work at the probation department at the Hall of Justice downtown where our reception is the backbone of our operations. I've been in their shoes and I know the impact they can make. They're often the first line of contact for our clients and our partners. Some clients have never even been through the court process. If they or a victim need to get in contact with an officer for services, they call us. When calls are missed, it could lead to an injustice and anxiety in the community caused by staffing shortage barrier across the county. Staffing levels and vacancies remain a real concern when line staff experiences these shortages. Employees feel the operational strain even when adjustments are made. When funding shifts happen, we wanna make sure that workers that are already stretched thin are not asked to do even more with less. I wanna thank the board for bringing this item forward and thank you for consideration as you vote yes for this item. Thank you. Next speaker.
Good afternoon, supervisors. My name is Gus Hernandez. My pronouns are he, him, and I'm here to ask you to support this item, which includes a 3.2 million allocation to fund innovative adult housing services. I support the allocations under this item, which will benefit all San Diegans including marginalized and underserved communities. Innovative adult housing services have been immensely successful in providing stable housing and wraparound services to vulnerable populations, including LGBTQIA plus individuals across San Diego County. These services are provided by providers who with lived experience, who can provide culturally competent care and wraparound services. Clients serve through these contracts, gain access to direct housing services, and are brought into a wraparound service model in which they are able to access services for a broad scope of needs including behavioral health services. Thank you for your support and please vote to pass this item to ensure this allocation for our community. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.
Good afternoon, chair and supervisors. My name is Gil Vera. I'm the director of the Housing Justice Collaborative at Legal Aid Society San Diego and I'm here to support the unlocking of the county reserve funds. Legal Aid administers the Tenant Legal Services program as a partnership with the county of San Diego. We provide low income San Diegos with free legal help, case management and emergency rental assistance with the, with the aims of preventing homelessness in 2025. About 90% of the households who were served avoided homelessness when their cases were closed with about 81% remaining in their homes. Free legal services are life-changing, practical and fiscally smart. Just as preventative healthcare can avoid costly ER visits, eviction prevention avoids a high cost, the high public cost of homelessness. A single chronically homeless person can cost the government up to $50,000 a year while the TLS average about $1,400 per household who receive legal services, case management and rental assistance. Currently the 40% cut we received in 2026 is proportionately impacts districts one, two, and five. Can I ask you to support this? Thank you. Thank you. As the next speaker is coming forward, I'll invite three additional speakers, Carol McBurney, Joanne fca, and allegedly Audra.
Good afternoon supervisors. My name is Jen Berry and I'm the managing attorney of the supplemental security Income Team at Legal Aid Society of San Diego. We represent, represent adults applying for SSI or SSDI who are referred through county general relief or mental health clubhouses. We also assist children with disabilities through direct screenings. Our team handles every stage of the process, initial applications, appeals hearings, and federal court review When necessary, most of our clients are already dealing with homelessness, serious mental health conditions or long-term medical issues. Without legal help, many simply cannot go through this process alone. When someone is approved for SSI or SSDI, it often means the difference between chronic instability and a path toward housing, medical care, and based basic financial security. These benefits are not just monthly income, they're often the key that unlocks housing vouchers, access to ongoing medical treatment and long-term stability. That ripple effect is what makes this work so impactful. I ask you today to fully fund our SSI program.
Thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon. I'm Carol McBurney, a deputy director at Legal Aid Society of San Diego. We support the funding of the supplemental security income program and tenant legal services program as a fiscally responsible choice. With recent changes to federal and state funding, county funding for disability related legal services and housing legal services is now more important than ever for San Diego County's city suburban and rural community members. County funding for supplemental security income. Legal services for disabled children and adults returns the benefit to this community multiple times over. First by ensuring that some of the most vulnerable disabled members of our community have the resources to stay housed and off our streets. Second, by connecting them with mental health and medical services. And third, by bringing millions of dollars of federal social security funding into our local San Diego community annually. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.
Good afternoon. My name is Joanne Francisco. I'm the CEO of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego. We provide free legal services to lower income San Diegos in the areas of law, most fundamental to their wellbeing, including tenant legal services and SSI. Despite the demand for these services exceeding our current capacity funding for these services is being cut almost in half, which will have catastrophic consequences. L-A-S-S-D does more than just help people resolve a legal issue. We provide wraparound services that address the root causes of poverty so that people can thrive. I've personally seen these services save a client's life. I don't mean indirectly. I mean a client called us in crisis, we went out, intervened and saved a life that otherwise would have ended that day. Our services help people achieve housing stability, financial security and safety. They're extraordinarily successful and efficient. In addition, they save taxpayers money for every $1 invested in legal aid, so the social return on investment is $7. Funding these services is morally and fiscally responsible governing. Thank you.
Thank you. As the next speaker is coming forward, I'll invite three additional speakers, Cesar, Javier, Casey Shirk, and Jennifer Royden. I've called your name. Please come forward, Jennifer's not here. It is interesting to see when people show up for the budget because money whores always wanna come in and get any kind of money you can get, but anybody that actually wants to help the community gets, you know, kind of pushed out from doing that. And it's interesting to see how much money that you guys spend and looking at the world around us and how much better it could be if you guys actually really cared about humanity and not just exploiting people or having 'em check a certain box and excluding them if they don't completely agree with everything that you guys support, which is completely demonic, but it is just showing where our world is at and how money is the root of all evil. I mean, children get exploited on a day, like that's where all the money comes from with all of these people in power that people want to go against. But it's like when it comes down to really like standing in the gap for our future, nobody wants to do that, but you'll come here and you know, get on the knee and beg for money for to destroy our community even further. Good job. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Cita District four county, district nine city. My God, my God. Teach us, help us to work together. Anna. Unacceptable. We do not know what to do. I remember my engineering. It says per CPM we can do many things at the same time for the sake of time saving lives, work on the priorities. My fellow citizens, God help us. Victims of Tijuana River Valley pollution, Maguire, this should be priority. At the same time provide housing for our homeless victims of is it ignorance or you are neglect? I'm sorry. God, help us. Thank you. Thank you. I'll call three additional speakers, Natasha Salgado, Alexis Martin and Jessica Vargas. I've called your name. Please come forward.
Good afternoon, chair and supervisors. My name is Natasha Salgado and I serve as Vice President of Programs and strategic initiatives with City Heights Community Development Corporation. I'm here in support of item 13, including the use of unlocked reserves to renew eviction prevention services through the coordinated eviction prevention system. From an implementation perspective, eviction prevention is one of the most effective upstream strategies to prevent homelessness before it occurs. Continued funding allows us to intervene early, stabilizing families facing medical hardships, job disruption, or sudden financial crisis before displacement turns into homelessness. We regularly work with hardworking families who are one unexpected expense away from losing their housing when we are able to step in early with rental assistance, case management and landlord coordination, families remain stably housed and avoid the long-term trauma and instability of displacement. Renewing these services protects housing stability and reduces strain on an emergency and shelter services. I respectfully urge your approval on item 13. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please.
Good afternoon. My name's Alexis and I'm here in support of item 13, unlocking the reserves to continue eviction prevention services through eps. I'm a former EPS case manager. I worked with families facing medical emergencies, disability delays, sudden income loss through rental assistance and landlord coordination. We were able to prevent eviction stabilized household before crises escalated into homelessness. Many clients have shared with us that this program restored hope during some of the most difficult moments of their lives. This investment keeps families housed and it strengthens our community. And I respectfully to urge you to app your approval of item 13. Thank you. Thank you. As the next speaker is coming forward, I'll invite three additional speakers, Antonio ao, Jacob Duarte, and max ti. Good afternoon. My name is Jessica and I am with City Height Community Development Corporation. As a former eviction prevention case manager, I have assisted individuals who've experienced shame, fear, and stigma after receiving an eviction notice. Through these programs, many have received rental assistance and were connected to long-term support to stabilize their income. Today those families remain housed and with the necessary tools to thrive. Eviction is more than a forced move. It's a destabilizing event, a forced efforts to reduce the stigma, keeps families together and prevents homelessness before it starts. Eviction prevention programs are a critical, proactive necessity to keep family stably housed, preventing the severe lasting impacts of homelessness, financial ruin, and ability to secure future housing. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Antonio Aga and I'm with City Height Community Development Corporation. I'm here in support of item 13, unlocking the reserve to continue eviction prevention services through safe. As C-H-C-D-C. We supported a participant who experienced a serious medical emergency and was facing eviction while trying to recover through rental assistance, food resources, and direct coordination with her landlord. She and her family were able to remain housed during a very vulnerable time. Eviction prevention protects families before crisis becomes homelessness. I respectfully urge you to approve item 13. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next speaker please. I'm Jacob Duarte, community organizing and Power building specialist at the LGBT Center and member of the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A regional table. You're gonna hear a lot of people today asking you to spend money. I'm here to tell you the opposite and asking you to save it. 775 people, $775 to keep someone housed for 42,000 once they're on the street for L-G-B-T-Q-I-A. People who face higher rates of homelessness and discrimination that makes it last longer. This 3.2 million isn't a cost, it's a 98% savings built on decades of trust with people who have failed everywhere else. Protect what works. I urge a unanimous vote on item 13 and yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. As the next speakers coming forward, I'll invite the remaining speakers in person. Thank you. Good evening. Good afternoon. Lemme call. Lemme call the additional speakers.
Sure, go ahead. Dan Aya, AYA Manga and Nala Aveo. Thank you so much. Sorry about that. My name is Max. I'm the executive director founder at the North County LGBQ Resource Center in District five Oceanside and beyond. And I'm also part of the regional LGBT table. We are in support of this proposal and this is why in addition to the well-known disparities the LGBT people have experienced in our region such as poverty, homelessness, and discriminatory policies. In the last year alone, we have dealt with a wave of false and violent narrative. They are targeting our LGBT people with trans folks in particular. Even further, we have served people they're afraid to come forward to even seek help and now they're afraid to claim to make claims against the landlord. Landlord. Those they have been kicked outta the family for just for just being who they are. So thank you for your leadership in seeking solution for the people that struggle the most in our region. And I truly believe in this, that healthy and thriving region is measured by the way we support and uplift women in our old diverse community. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon. My name's a manga convener and organizer at the Center Policy Initiatives. I'm the convener for the Community Budget Alliance. The federal administration is guiding programs and services that provide food, healthcare, and housing assistance. The most basic billing blocks of our survival. These cards attacks our youth, our seniors, and our working class who depend on them every day. The county must not only counter our federal attacks on our safety net, but also ensure we do not return to the status quo. Instead, we must prioritize people centered budgets that invest in community wellbeing. So everyone has the support they need to thrive, not policies that prioritize criminalization and corporate interest are therefore argue you to respectfully support this motion. Thank you.
Thank you. And next speaker. Good afternoon. My name is Nyla Pronoun SheHer and I'm here on behalf of Trans Family Support Services as well as the San Diego L-G-B-T-Q-I-A regional table. We are grateful that the budget ask for L-G-B-T-Q-I-A housing is being included through the Unlocked reserves. These programs provide critical L-G-B-T-Q-I-A affirming housing support to community members who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. They are proven effective programs that help people remain stably housed and prevent the trauma and high public cost of homelessness before it happens. These services are working, they are needed and they save lives. Today we are respectfully today we respectfully ask for four votes. Yes. To ensure these contracts continue without interruption. Thank you for your leadership and your consideration. Thank you. A final call for Casey Shirk and Jennifer Rosden not seeing any movement in the chamber. We'll now hear from those that requested to speak by phone. When it is your turn to speak, you'll be unmuted and you'll hear a recording that will tell you to begin your comments. We'll begin with our first caller.
All above the funds are fiscally very uncertain, maybe more clawback too, both federal and state. By the way, it's good to keep some in reserves and these funds are only projected. The recommendations look good except for 18 to 20. Number 18, the proposed pipeline in the TJ River Valley would be expensive to maintain and above ground, concrete or hard plastic lining would be bitter. We do not need more health studies and we should look at better things than air purifiers. Which work as long as you stay indoors. How about handheld pollution? Monitors to zero in and find out where the crap is coming from. We need to get this solved. Number 19. I'm sure that we can do mapping of unincorporated areas most vulnerable infrastructure here for less than two point.
Ue. Okay, so depleting the reserves for a bunch of estimates. Got it. How about bypass the reserves and just donate from your teller your salary. Tara, help the helpless alphabet army, the they. Then you know it's real pride. Real pride is not relying on government for anything. If you truly care about the budget, then give up your salary. You care about community, right? Let's see. You give up your money while still fighting for the people as you convinced yourselves you're doing, you won't. You're in that chair because it's lucrative. The only change you look forward to is your bank account going up and climbing that political ladder. You love the position of power, don't you? You make to close to 300,000 being in that chair. Who knows how much more from outside interest hard times call for sacrifice. You'll be fine with a hundred k Tara. Donate the rest. Help reduce the struggle on the ones dependent on government. Any same leader would any same leader should
Hey, it's truth. Under progressive fraud, waste and abuse of tax hours for six years running the budget has increased again by $13 million. Tolling a record, 8.6 billion Unlock reserves translates to stolen savings on scams such as A PCD and Manuel is $4 million. Air purifier grift, government owned stack of packs, two and a half million for a temporary pipe at Saturn Boulevard to increase Mexican sewage flows. 'cause that's what Mineral always does. 2.2 million in sewage studies because mineral is just like Nora Vargas and 14.2 million in union campaign funder kickback bonuses no to 112,000 DS salaries and benefits 'cause it will not go to desperately needed staff. Thereby continuing the county's animal neglect and cruelty at the shelters. Note to the political organization known as Legal Aid Society, who only help people that are so poor, they're practically already homeless for as many tax dollars as they receive, they should service everyone not to trans family and Distis Resource Center Mafia have both done nothing but harm children only as the fire engines, ambulances, equipment and livestock, emergency shelter and trailers. Back to basics in the fraud.
Hi. And I'm the Vice President of Impact at SBCS. I'm humbled to be here today to say thank you for ensuring funding for Casa Mariposa, the region's largest domestic violence shelter. We know how strained the county's budget is and we are grateful that you have found a way to help us keep the shelter open. Casa Mariposa exists in large part because courageous public leaders chose to stand with survivors and we are profoundly grateful with this funding. You are helping us to serve one of San Diego's most vulnerable populations and ensure that those suffering from the horrors of domestic violence have a safe place to seek shelter services and stability. When we opened Casa Mariosa in 2024, we almost doubled the number of beds available in the region and we were nearly full on day one. This is a clear demonstration of the needs of victims and families seeking shelter. Casa Mariposa is open 24 hours a day and provides trauma-informed care and support to victims. We have served nearly 350 families in the short time the shelter has been open and look forward to serving.
Good afternoon chair. Members of the board, Dan Silver Endangered Habitats League. We wish to lend our support to recommendation 19 in the board letter shown in Appendix D. Under sustainability, this would make available $2 million in otherwise unspent monies for the MSCP, which is much needed. This will support recreation, biodiversity and permit streamlining. Thank you.
I got a question for you guys. We spend so much money to keep L-G-B-T-Q-A-P-Z-D, whatever group of people off the streets, what are the numbers and why are we investing so much money in that? I mean, seriously, do we have a number of how many people are in that group that are, are homeless or is this just a speaking point to, for that actually means nothing because there must be a problem for you guys to constantly be throwing money at it. So you must know a number, but I can't find anything anywhere. Is that much like you saying you're gonna go ahead and look into the voter fraud? Exactly what I said and not really do it. Are these just speaking points like, hey, we go ahead and support young black inventors, but you know, we pay Congress to go ahead and rebuild his machinery so that we can give it to the private sector when all he wants to do is recycle plastic. Much like you guys.
Hi, my name is Tiffany Curry and I'm speaking on behalf of Outdoor Outreach, a San Diego based nonprofit connecting youth to the outdoors and reducing barriers to access. I'm also honored to speak on behalf of the Tijuana River Coalition. Many of the youth we serve in communities directly impacted by the pollution are in the Tijuana River Valley. And we've seen firsthand how this ongoing crisis limits access to safe, healthy outdoor spaces and affects families wellbeing. Thank you to the board for your vote last month approving these related critical items. We are deeply grateful for your commitment to communities disproportionately impacted by this crisis. We especially appreciate the funding for the air purifier program, the Saturn Boulevard Hotspot and Health studies to assess long-term impacts. These investments address urgent air quality needs, infrastructure improvements in community health. And I look forward to the day children can enjoy this region's beauty play at their local beach without fear and catch their first wave with joy. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And Chair Lawson Reer. That concludes public comment on this item. Okay, thank you so much. Vice Chairman Montgomery Step. Thank you so much for the presentation. I I'm gonna focus on two areas that I think are worthy of highlight. As always, the entire presentation's very thorough, but I'll just focus on a couple of things. One is the public safety group's substantial negative variance. I know Joni indicated that we're still, we're working on that right sizing that. But I would like to note that according to the report, every business group is projected to in the year is a positive operating balance except for the public safety group, which is currently showing the $28.2 million negative general fund balance. Significant amount deserves focus and attention. A question as far as just our general budgeting principles go as related to government finance, what are the implications of the department having a a negative fund balance?
So with regard to the negative fund balance it, and I'll just speak to generalities, although we both apply to, to what's happening in public safety group right now is negative unbalance can be resulted either exceeding your appropriations, which is spending beyond which you've been authorized to spend or under realizing revenues. And so in the case where you're under realizing revenue because the the county has to stay balanced, we would have to find a way in order to backfill those revenue as needed, whether it's on a one-time basis or if it's finding an ongoing, well in this instance, it would be finding a one-time source of money to end the year. In the case of exceeding appropriations. Usually what we do here as a county team is we look to see how we might be able to help a department to spend within its authority. And in the case that doesn't happen.
There is a section of state government code that does note that department heads are responsible for any amount that is spent in excessive of appropriations. Okay. And thank you for that. So it, it's important to address, it could have additional potential impacts of the general fund's ability to respond to additional emergencies, create pressure to pull from one time reserve, increased likelihood of service cuts elsewhere. So I know that you all are working on that, but I do want to acknowledge also that the implementation of Prop 36, which increased the average daily jail population between 300 and 500 individuals, is really having a major impact on the budget. And that trend does underscore the importance of alternatives to incarceration such as diversion programs, restorative justice, rehabilitation, and reentry support. We, I believe that, I won't go into it too far, but I believe that reducing the jail population pressures is not only a matter of policy and public health, but also critical to supporting, stabilizing the fiscal outlook of the public safety group.
So with that, I want to go into the, the next area, which is the, the recommendations from the, the, the ad hoc subcommittee. I want to thank the CAO and the entire staff for your supporting your, your, your work in supporting these, these initiatives and investments in shallow rent subsidy, tenant legal services, L-G-B-T-Q, housing Sport, affordable Housing Development, community Violence Intervention efforts, the extending the county senior nutrition program, and then Hunger Relief grants. So these are meaningful investments that strengthen housing stability, expand tenant protection, support community safety programming, and ensure that seniors and families have access to nutrition and basic needs. Very grateful to see these priorities reflected in this quarter's funding actions. And I do believe that this will, this is certainly an investment in our community that that helps our budgetary process because if people move from these services that in the event they're no longer provided, then it's an additional burden on the county's budget that we won't have that funding.
So I want to thank our community partners for doing this work, for being here today. And I, my hope is that we remain attentive to both sides of this report. Those, those fiscal risk risks that we are facing with the public safety groups and then meaningful community investments enabled through our unlocked reserve. So with that, I, I know that we need a motion. There's a very, very long recommendation and thank goodness so far right now. Andrew does not have to read it. I don't have any changes right now. And so I'll move the recommendation as it currently reads in the void letter. Thank you. Thank you very long. Thank you. Reflecting lots of work by the Team Supervisor investment. Thank you Madam Chair. Appreciate it. And thanks for the presentation. I'm happy to see that we can make some great investments in this item, particularly $6 million for county fire, new fire engines and other vehicles for public safety.
However, I'm concerned with a couple of the recommendations on the process in which they were brought forward. It's no secret, I'm not a fan of spending reserves. Recommendation 19 is is very concerning for me. And so I'm gonna ask at the end if we can bifurcate item 1919, the recommendation is asking the board to approve spending $47 million of unlocked reserves that are mostly going to ongoing programs. And this is one time dollars on one time money is on ongoing programs. Is is not a formula for success. While I'm supportive of many of the efforts this money would go towards, what happens when this money runs out and is there no, there's no replacement mechanism. And these, like I said, these are one time monies and once we spend reserves that money's gone. It's never gonna be replaced. So if these programs are a priority, we should fund them in the regular budget cycle, not through our emergency reserves.
And quite frankly, today we are playing a, a shell game with $47 million so that it requires only three votes because it's technically a transfer and not new spending. Well, it is new spending. These 47 million are from the people's reserves. The item describes it as operational savings, but the fiscal impact makes it clear that this money is coming from unlocked reserves. I believe it's ridiculous that today within this item that it takes four votes to approve $112,000 for animal services. But for the 47 million it only requires three votes. So for recomme, also for recommendation 17, I'm supportive of spending the reserve dollars onetime costs on the associated Saturn Boulevard pipe extension and the air purifiers that we already had. I think we had that at last meeting. I don't know why it's there again, but, oh, well the only thing is I, I'm not supportive of the two and a quarter million dollars for the health studies. We know what's causing the issue in Tijuana River. It's the sewage coming across the border. So I'm, I'm not in favor of that. That's the third bullet on item 17. But I would like to ask the make of the motion if it's okay for bifurcating item 19, vote voting separately on that. Beth, thank you very much.
Okay. We don't have a second yet. Don't a second yet. Oh, okay. Let's just let the, I mean, I don't necessarily have an issue with it, but, okay. So the motion on the floor will, the maker of the motion will allow bifurcation of the item. So turning over the floor to super or chair pro. Thank you chair. So I just wanna quickly say that as we navigate these challenges, it is all the more reason to lean into actions that provide upstream protections, while also enhancing the long-term fiscal health of the county. We as a county have to prioritize budget decisions that address the needs of vulnerable individuals and families proactively, rather than waiting to intervene after issues. Worsen doing so ensures more efficient use of limited public funds and aligns with the expectations communities have for government to help protect the dignity of people and help meet their basic needs.
Since I ran, I have been very clear about the importance of leveraging unlocked reserves to protect South Bay residents from the harms of Trump's hr one, the so-called big beautiful bill, as well as protecting people from the harms of the ongoing Tijuana river pollution crisis. And for too long, district one residents have been left behind by their county government with their economic opportunity and wellbeing. Neglected or outright ignored. Not anymore. I am incredibly pleased to see many projects included in the proposed budget adjustments today that deliver on the promises I made to the people of district one, that they will no longer be left behind. Some of these proposals can that, that can be funded by unlock reserves include the over $9 million and million dollars in rental subsidies and tenant legal support, helping keep roofs over the heads of v vulnerable families and individuals, and protecting them from the horrible social and health related consequences of eviction and homelessness.
2.8 million in food assistance to protect working families, their children and seniors from experiencing the harms of malnutrition. A $5 million grant to assist the partnership for the advancement of new Americans with the development of an immigrant and refugee support center along with affordable housing unit and one and a half million in funding to support the needs of domestic violence victims. All of these investments support critical efforts that protect our neighbors from the harms and senseless funding cuts advanced by Trump's hr one In regard to the pollution crisis, we know the pipe extension at Saturn Boulevard, the hotspot as it's known, as well as the expansions to the air purifier program at A PCD represent vital efforts to protect public health. Regarding the $4 million expansion for air purifier distribution, we have to remember that this program is a frontline response for residents being actively harmed by air pollution from the Tijuana River.
We know that's not a permanent solution, but directing these resources to these affected zip codes will help the families that so desperately need protection. And last but not least, I'd like to take a moment to thank Mayor Gloria for his partnership and shared commitment to supporting survivors of domestic violence in our region. The city of San Diego. Support in helping fund Casa Mariosa, a critical domestic viol violence shelter in district one demonstrates what is possible when jurisdictions work together with a common group. That concludes my remarks. Thank you. Chair C Roger Anderson, please. I have a few questions and with item number 17 in the health study, can anybody explain the, I understand the purpose of the health state, but what are we gonna do with it once we get the determination from it? Us helping you? I'd be happy to, I, I, I think supervisor or Jerry has volunteered continu.
We continued to wait for a state of emergency declaration from our current president, which he has not yet declared. We know that that's what we need so that we can immediately exempt bidding and procurement processes and permitting processes so that we can actually address the main source of pollution, which is the river itself. Administrator Elden was here. He celebrated the advancements that have been made, but none of that goes to tackle the main source of pollution. Now, that's one thing. Secondly, the, the epi study will tell us exactly what is making it into people's bodies. So anybody that says that this is useless information doesn't understand the basics of medicine, we need to know exactly what's happening in people's bodies. We need to know how urgent that we know it's urgent. But if you don't know if your body's breathing in carcinogenics on a daily basis and to what degree it's like flying blind without any information.
So the ultimate goal is to remove the main source of pollution to us. And for that we need the assistance from our state and federal administration's excess call. Thank you very much for that. I'd like to point out three things. One, the tour of your district was very helpful to me. Two, that couldn't have been a slower softball pitch to help you get your voice heard. So don't be angry at me that I gave you a four. Oh, I'm, because I took the tour. I'm, I'm, I'm not angry. I'm just very passionate about this because I I know you are. When, when people say that, that it's senseless or useless information, I, no, they're not living in the district and breathing alongside me on a daily basis besides pathogens. I, I took the tour, I know that, but it didn't come out. And I wanted to give you that opportunity to share your thoughts.
And I would like to say that the study's prob probably one of the most important things we could do, only because this is the second president who hasn't done anything about it. We had four years of nothing done prior. So perhaps with more signs, more data, we, we will have more success with it. I, I have a couple questions for staff. So we talked about HR one and we talked about how HR one is cutting off funding for these programs. Do we have any numbers of how much money has been cut and which programs are being affected today or before June?
On a broad scale, I'll just say that I know that when we are monitoring the impacts of HR one that largely we see that it will be phased in. And to speak to more details, I'd like to call forward the county's Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Amy Thompson. Thank you supervisor for the question. So what Joan says is exactly right. We do anticipate, we're planning right now as part of the budget for a significant impact for administration funding for CalFresh and rolling out into subsequent years. We would expect to also see potential funding impacts for CalFresh benefits. We are seeing impacts likely to the recipients of our Safety Net program starting this year. But the funding doesn't necessarily come directly to us, but recipients will start to see impacts this year. So do we have programs that have lost funding or will lose funding before this June?
We do have, not necessarily tied directly to HR one, but we have certainly some programs within public health that have lost funding are CalFresh Healthy Living Program, which funded services within public health services. Aging and Independent Services is experiencing reductions. I think we have some, I'm looking at Dr. Hernandez 'cause she might step in that some immunization funding that is being reduced and certainly other public health services grants from the CDC that have been targeted and have temporary restraining orders in place that we are monitoring very carefully there. So when I look at, say that the tenant legal services where we're giving $3 million, has that been hit by HR one?
So Tenant Legal services right now is a county funded. Our, our portion is funded using general purpose revenue. That was a program that was funded with one time funding under the American Rescue Plan Act. And so as those funds have been spent, we had reductions there to align with available county funds. Will that fund run to zero before our budget process? No, the reduction though is in place currently this year. It went from about $3 million annually to one and a half million dollars annually. That reduction did occur in fiscal year 25, 26. The affordable housing development, we have 5 million going to that. How is that hr, I mean, is that affected by HR one?
I I think with a lot of the programs that are listed on, on Attachment D as candidates for Unlocked Reserve are envisioned to help the same population that that would be impacted from all of the safety net ramifications of the changes to federal funding and, and the additional administrative hurdles and enrollment processes that could make it more difficult to keep people connected to care, if that makes sense. Right. We have a, in June we open up our budget process. Correct. And we have $5 million. So with that $5 million, are we out of money or are we, are we doing the budget before the budget process supervisor? Because that $5 million, will it be spent before June? If, if I may, I had asked Amy to come up just, just to speak to where we saw federal funding impacts in our county programs. And now I feel like the, the line of questions has moved.
By the way, I'm not, I have no idea that's the answer. I'm Amy asked, answered the last question. I'm not trying to put her on the spot. I'm not trying to, okay. So I just wanted to, Amy, you do a lovely job and talked a little bit about the Thank you, Amy, a little bit about the, let me tell you what I'm going through. Sure, sure. We're going through Schedule D and I'm looking at this stuff and much of it is in our usual budget process. We're three months away from the usual budget process. I thought the purpose of this exercise was, and I'm very open to it and I agreed to it, was to look at HR one cuts that are impacting us in backfilling those cuts. But this is far exceeding any cuts or anything. And my district, my constituents are very smart people.
They're gonna say, we're creating slush funds, they're gonna roll over to the next year's budget and we're actually paying games with our budget by asking for money that's not necessary or needed in the moment. And avoiding the very open public process of doing the budget. So, you know, I I, I don't like that we're doing this in this fashion. If I find it not transparent whatsoever when we look at doing things that are projecting programs out two years in advance, that's what the budget process is for. The other thing is when we start talking to 'em about giving money to specific organizations instead of creating pots of money that people can apply for, then we're picking winners and losers. And I'm just wondering, in the City Heights community development, I'm sure they do incredible work, but I don't ever recall them ever doing work in district two.
And yet we're talking about $3.6 million for rental assistance there. But I don't see anywhere in here that District two has rental assistance whatsoever. Or the urban link of San Diego County. I'm sure they do incredible work with rental assistance. But again, in a budget process in three months, we would be able to do all these things under the light of day, with minutes, with open meetings, with community input, no, nothing behind closed doors, everything in the light of day. And I'd feel very comfortable supporting all of it with that type of scrutiny because we would be measuring all the needs, but giving people money far in excess of what they can spend in three months creates a slush fund that would allow us to do budget changes because they have too much money here and not enough money there. And sometimes they have some the natural and we need that process.
But this isn't on the natural. This is not organic. This is cooking, the cooking it, cooking the process. And none of these programs are bad programs. I love all of them. I've supported 'em in the past. I just can't support how we're doing it because I don't know who gave input. I don't know what the outreach was. And when you name specific organ organizations that don't service the entire county, it looks like there's a thumb on the scale when I know none of my colleagues do that. But I can, I don't wanna be part of a process that isn't transparent and gives the notion that our thumb is on the scale for only some groups and some individuals, when I know everybody on this board in their heart wants to help everybody in the county. So I'd be happy if we want to go through, it'd be a lot, much longer meeting, but if we went through a presentation of how we got to these numbers in depth, I would gladly support it if that made sense.
But if we wait three months, we can actually do that. And it's called the budget. And then it's an open, open public process that everybody gets to participate in and that the criteria used to select this. Can anybody share what the criteria was of why we prioritized these over anything else? I mean, how, how is that criteria determined and who got to choose it? So I will share a little bit about the background behind how this recommendation came to be. And it started with September, in September of 2025, when, when, when county staff was directed to when the reserve policy was revised and county staff was then directed to come back to the board in January with a proposed framework on how to spend that amount of funding that was made available with the revision of the board policy. That amount of money was called the unlocked reserve.
And while when we started to provide briefings to the board offices, and specifically when we made a presentation to the ad hoc subcommittee on sustainable fiscal planning, we realized that we missed a mark we what we were putting together. So when it comes to what the, the purpose of the unlocked reserves, I'll note that there are four items in the admin code that note what the unlocked reserves are for. One of them is direct response to a decline in federal funding. The next one is in recessionary environments. And then we also have another one that is for the CAO to bring forward any time critical items in the process of any budget actions. And then finally to help replenish any general fund minimum reserve requirements. So those are the four things that, that are requirements for anything to be involved in the unlocked reserve. And so with this preliminary work that staff had done in January, we continued to do the work upon direction from the board that was given on January 28th on at that board meeting, the board had directed the CAO to continue the work of putting together a framework for the unlock reserve and to work under the advice and guidance of the ad hoc committee for sustainable fiscal planning.
And so following that direction from January 28th, that is what we did. I will also share that prior to that meeting on January 28th, we did have a budget workshop and we did hear from the community on many things that would, that would be effective in helping to bolster the support that's needed in response to the, in to the volatility that we're seeing on the federal landscape. And so that is, that's some context on how, how we moved forward with putting together recommendation 19. When you met with the ad hoc committee, were there any minutes or agenda or any public display of any presentations that somebody from district two could see or track or follow? We did not, and I would defer to counsel on what I can share in terms of Brown ACT rules, but I am certainly happy just to speak in concept or principle of, of what, what happens here or or in a separate supervisor briefing. I don't think there's any, no, we answer your question. No. Okay. It it is in the board letter. It, this is a public meeting, so, okay.
I'm not comfortable supporting this moving forward, although I love all the programs. If we wanna have a more depth and presentation so that I understand why we're choosing what we're choosing and it doesn't just look like we're creating slush funds because all this money's gonna roll over, none of it's gonna be spent and we're, and if we were a year away from the budget, but we're three months from the budget, all this can be determined in the budget with the most public scrutiny. Nobody in my district could complain. I did something behind closed doors that I hid information from 'em. Nobody can complain about any of that. I picked winners and losers by naming specific organizations instead of pots of money that people can apply for. Everyone's gonna understand with the highest and best belief that this is the best policy that the five of us could come up with.
And I, I, I politely urge that in the future that that subcommittees or or ad hoc committees conduct their business in public with recordings, with minutes and with notices so that everybody in the public can track what we're doing and how we're doing it. I know that's not the goal. I mean, I know that your hearts are in the right place. I know that you're trying to fix this. Y'all ran for office 'cause you wanted to improve your community. And I believe that to my core, but I don't see how this is in the best interest of all of our districts and all our constituents. If nobody believes that it was an open and fair process and that we weren't able to demonstrate how we came to the decision. But you know, you know, my beef is, I'm the only one that lives in the unincorporated.
So I'm always thinking how does this impact the unincorporated? And when I look at all this, too much of it doesn't impact the unincorporated at all. And we all have unincorporated residents in our districts and in my, and in my particular instance, they are some of the, the, the poverty written, written communities of my district and they need us to champion them more than folks that can afford other things. So having tenant legal services is important. Having rental assistance is supporting. And of course I've always supported affordable housing development, but I, unless we can approach this with more detail, I, I cannot find my way to support item 19. And so I'm glad what bifurcated that. Thank you. Thank you. If I may just ask Joan to speak to the ordinance requirement for setting amounts based on the 25 26 threshold versus 26 27. Just as a point of clarification. Sure. And then also in response to some of your comments, supervisor, I realize I should have shared that a lot of these items that are in this matrix are contemplated to be put to use this year. So much of it is for extension of existing programs that currently are funded with one time sources.
So, so there is that, and I should have mentioned that to Ebony's point, based on the ordinance at the time that it was adopted, it noted that whatever amount became available, which at the time was about $381 million, there's additional guardrails within the ordinance where 25% of that can be spent in any given fiscal year. So that total was about 95 million we're by the, OR based on the ordinance, we're we're bound to $95 million of the unlock reserve per year. No more. Certainly less is fine, but no more. I I appreciate that additional comment, but that's why I asked is this money gonna be spent before our normal budget process? And if, and if these dollar amounts matched the reduction that we've received, I would absolutely support it. But they far exceed that amount. And look, I'm guilty. We had $300,000 available and I immediately jumped on it for, for the shell rent.
And I want to thank you all except for the chair who supported it. Jokingly, jokingly. I know you in your heart you supported it. But see I didn't know at the time that you were working on 2.7 million coming forward today. So, but we're not gonna spend that 2.7 million and we're bypassing that budget process and I really wanna see us go through the budget process. I don't think this should be a race to, to spend the reserves and if we spend less of fewer of the reserves, I plan to support 17, which is spending some of the unlock reserves, but I believe it warrants it. This looks like we're just taking from the reserves to create slush fund for the budget. And when I voted in 2009, I believe I voted on an $86 billion California budget and I believe last year was in excess of 322 billion, almost four times the amount in 15 years.
And yet nothing's fixed Once we go down this road, that money just fritters through our fingers, not because we don't have good intentions, it's just the nature of the beast. And I want to make doggone sure these fundamental things are funded and that nobody in South Bay is choking and poison and that we have the reserves that the next fire that we don't look like LA where people haven't rebuilt in a year. Madam Chair, thank you and thank you to my colleagues for being so thoughtful, allowing me to speak for so long. Thank you. And I am appreciative that it, it feels like you share my enthusiasm for transparency around budget. So look forward to working with you further on that as we move forward. So thank you so much. Just a couple things I wanna uplift in this that I thought was really helpful.
I, I noticed recommendations two and three which is this is about $9 million in county fire investments, new fire trucks, ambulance water tenders and a fire training tower. So that I thought was great. The recommendation 18 and that's about $9 million for the tackling the Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis and this includes supporting the infrastructure at Saturn Boulevard and the long-term health studies that have been defended with such great passion and the additional air purifiers to mitigate some of the immediate impacts in our community. So I appreciate that and the leadership of the share pro tem in championing those initiatives.
I also just wanted to, you know, uplift some of the core needs of our community that are being addressed here. Needs that were unfunded or underfunded in the last budget cycle. This includes 18 million in housing investments including tenant legal services and affordable housing and senior homelessness prevention, $6 million for supporting vulnerable populations and other I think critical investments at this moment. So again, I think this was, I think this is hard to do, there's just such huge demands on our resources at this time. I think it's thoughtful, I think it targets the right kind of core issues where I really see people in our community hurting where we really need to be making investments. And I'll be happy to, to second the motion acknowledging the bifurcation and appreciate that, you know, we don't all have to agree all the time, but it's good to find the places that we can agree and be able to work together on the, on the areas where we do have consensus.
So I, I just also want, again thank the team. I think this was a, the huge work and zooming way out. So this is an incredibly small margin that we're operating on and I know when we were in sort of the COVID years with the ARPA funds, it was like a very different environment where there was just so much funds coming from the federal government and we're in the really opposite situation right now where we're just facing all these cuts and all these demands. So I, I just wanna, you know, acknowledge the hard work. And the other kind of piece that I do wanna uplift is that I do see some departments working really hard to contain costs and that's really difficult to do and some of our departments are coming in, you know, within what's projected in terms of matching expenditures and revenues and really appreciate the work of those departments of programs.
Definitely I'm concerned about where we have like massive expenditures that are outpacing revenues and we're seeing real shortfalls which sort of strains our county systems as a whole. And so I, I think that we kind of need to think big picture strategy around that. And then the last thing I'll just note is I do, you know, we obviously are in a budget process and I am, you know, continuing to encourage everyone to participate. We had evening budget hearings for the kind of early in the budget process for the first time ever. That was one of the things I had committed to do as chair is to have those budget hearings much earlier in the budget process which we did a number of months ago so that communities could have a voice much earlier before the budget was completely cooked. And I think that was incredibly helpful.
I hope that if people are concerned about specific kinds of services and programs they're seeing impacts on their communities, you're reaching out as well to your supervisor as this budget process is is put together. And I know Joan and Ebony are planning and have been frankly getting a lot of input from board offices as this, as this budget process moves forward. So looking forward to that as well and I think that's gonna be a really hard moment to figure out how we meet all of these needs. It's not gonna be an easy budget, it's gonna be a really difficult budget but I am hopeful that with this kind of a lot of the, the input that we're getting early on the front end around the budget, that we'll be able to target the most important and most critical needs for San Diego County. So again, thank you. We, there's a motion and a second and any additional comments from any of my colleagues?
I just want to register a note. Oh I'm sorry. I was gonna ask for the appropriate motion, the bifurcation. Oh I did, I said that I said there was a motion and a second with I with 19 bifurcated so that people could vote no on that and we could have space for consensus where there is and space for disagreement where there is as well. Thank you. And real quick, I just wanted to note 'cause it's the way I voted on it last time. I think it's the new item 17 that has the three bullets with the one about the studies. The third bullet just register a nova. I opposed that third bullet. Sorry, just I wanna, I wanna look at this again. Yeah, 17, the third bullet. That's the study that I don't like on the Tijuana thing. Give me, gimme a second. Yeah, I know the numbers got changed on this item 17. The third would bullet, I'll just register a no vote and not ask for a bifurcation on that one. On that third bullet. Is this a seven is I just want, I'm trying to find out just to looking if this is a three vote or a four vote item. This that was the question. I'm trying to answer
Three vote. That's a three vote. Okay, thank you. Okay. Yeah so we have an, so there's a motion on the floor, we're bifurcating it, we're gonna vote first on everything except 19 and then we're gonna vote on 19 and supervisor Desmond is vote is registering a no vote? A no vote on the 2.5 for the studies in item in the new item 17 and the current motion that's on the floor. Everyone follow? Okay, please vote. Chair Lawson Reer that motion passes unanimously with all supervisors being present and voting. Aye with the note that supervisor Desmond voting no and recommendation 17 on the third dot point. Okay, fantastic. And now we'll turn to item 19, recommendation 19 and Tara Remer recommendation 19 passes with supervisors Anderson and supervisor Desmond voting no, all the all other supervisors being present and voting. Aye. Okay, thank you all so much. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for those who came. Okay, we're gonna give the chamber a moment to clear and then we'll go to item 14. Okay, thank you all and thank you for your endurance sitting, staying up here. We, we sit up here all day so I'll turn the to the team for the scene assessment. Thanks.
Thank you Chair Lawson Ray members of the board modern and well-maintained infrastructure is key to delivering our services to the public and providing safe and efficient workplaces for county employees. The county's CNA capital investment plan is reviewed and revised annually to ensure alignment with your board's initiatives, community priorities and the county's program needs due to the ongoing financial challenges you just heard about, including rising program costs and limited revenues fiscal year 26, 27, or year one of the CINA focuses on projects that are funded by program specific revenue along with those necessary for health, safety and legal mandates. Projects that preserve or replace critical infrastructure are also included for your consideration. The recommendations before your board today will enable the team to move forward with short and long-term activities to align project timelines with anticipated funding. Sources to present the overview today are Marco MedEd, director of General Services and Jason Hemmons, director of Parks and Recreation. Thank you Brian. This year DGS continued to expand the capital planning, transparency and accessibility through a collaborative one county approach. Joining several county partner outreach events throughout the region. Over following winter staff engage with about 2,500 attendees, giving the public opportunities to engage directly with county subject matter experts. Learn about the capital plan and how to be part of the process. In addition to in-person engagement events, we're enhancing our website to provide more opportunities to engage digitally.
The scene being presented today recommends $82 million to be considered for inclusion in the operational plan. Pending identification and availability of funding, county's anticipated capital funding need across the five year planning horizon is approximately a billion dollars. County's current portfolio contains 79 previously funded projects which are in pre-construction, construction or completion with appropriations of nearly $800 million. Now we'll provide a project overview This coming year typical decisions need to be made. The year one CA recommendation has been reduced to nine projects totaling $82 million of which 65 million of general fund is needed. These projects include critical needs, maintenance of existing county assets, sustainability enhancements and behavioral health and public safety improvements across the region as a multi-year planning document. Looking at other parts of the cina ongoing close review and alignment with the criticality of the county's asset needs will be necessary.
Next, we'll provide information about projects that have been previously approved in CINA and are now in active state of pre-construction, construction or completion. Our project management division is developing 15 projects for future construction, including the planning of our new behavioral health campus libraries, fire stations, and the modernization of the Vista Detention Center. This detention modernization project includes two phases estimated at $950 million. Phase one includes facility updates to meet current capacity with comprehensive support functions like reentry and mental health program spaces. Phase two includes expansion of the facility to support future capacity needs and the addition of medical and reentry services. Funding for each phase will be identified and requested in future years, including years outside the five year planning window of the current cina. This priority project requires significant funding and is the largest anticipated project on the CINA for the foreseeable future. With this in mind public safety group is leading a cross-functional team including my team, finance staff and the sheriff to review all funding options and structures. As noted earlier today in the second quarter economic update, this modernization project as well as the full portfolio of Cena projects cannot be funded without bringing new funding options to the table, which may include partnerships with external organizations or private entities and the use of general obligation bonds.
There are four projects currently under construction valued at $230 million. Projects include the CASA DEA library that will complete this summer in July. The county animal shelter in Santee, which is wrapping up in October this week. On Thursday we'll get started on the new acute psychiatric hospital within the EDMORE skilled nursing facility. In the last year we completed four large capital projects valued at $270 million. In May of 25 we cut the ribbon on the public health lab at the county operations center. The new lab features state-of-the-art testing and REGIONWIDE interface. In November we completed the replacement of numerous building systems past their useful life at the Hall of Justice. The East County Crisis Stabilization Unit will wrap up this month providing a walk-in facility that offers a general approach to intervention and stabilization for those suffering from behavioral health or mental health crisis. And last July we completed the COC consolidation clearing 145,000 square feet on campus to make space for public health while avoiding $150 million in new construction.
Maintenance of existing infrastructure remains a top priority for the county. We need to take care of what we own while the CENA prioritizes new construction and significant upgrades. A separate planning document. The major maintenance ILE implementation plan or MMIP for short focuses on operational continuity of long-term infrastructure and critical maintenance of assets and equipment. The MMIP is a two year forecast developed concurrently with Cena MMIP projects generally cover building renovations, sustainability and electrification efforts, new mechanical and electrical equipment, roof replacements, repair of structural systems or equipment such as new place structures of county parks. We complete hundreds of major maintenance projects each year. Some recent examples include renovation of the substance use, residential treatment services or certs facility in national city, A unit softening at East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility and the installation of LED lights and fixtures at the COC chambers. This year we've identified $82 million of need to cover the critical MMIP requests in the coming year or of 26, 27 or year one.
And I'll turn it over to Jason. Thank you Marco. Per team manages 56 capital projects that are in various phases of pre-construction construction or have recently been completed. Currently we have 35 projects with 87 million in funding in pre-construction including a comprehensive trail and restoration project at Dictionary Hill and Spring Valley sewer and electrical upgrades that fell a Cedar Park and a new staging area in Bonzo. There are 12 parks projects valued at a hundred million dollars in active construction projects include the restoration of the West Basin at Linda Lake Park, a new park in San Luis Ray River Park and a new outdoor classroom at Los Penasquitos Preserve. This fiscal year we completed nine projects valued at 2020 $9 million including a new park in Fallbrook, resurfacing of a fully accessible baseball field at Santo Park in partnership with the Miracle League and San Diego Padres and a baseball team.
Playground at Lakeside Ball Fields furthering efforts to improve and increase recreation opportunities for communities across the county. Now I'll turn it back over to Brian. Thank you Jason and Marco. The recommendations before your board today are to approve the Cena is drafted and refer it to the Chief administrative officer for funding and implementation of individual projects. Today's action does not approve funding for projects. Final funding recommendations and associated actions will occur through the budget process As the county team has indicated in the second quarter economic update, the funding requests for year one projects are being considered as the county team develops the fiscal year 26 27 operational plan with consideration of all the other one-time priorities of the county. We'll continue to evaluate funding options and other diversified funding strategies for next year and the rest of the years of the CINA and we will return to the board as needed should further funding become available.
This completes the staff presentation. Thank you so much. I Angela's got a public comment. Thank you. Vice Chair Montgomery Sub we have 18 requests to speak on this item, eight in person and 10 requesting to speak by phone. Also note for the record that we received six E comments, five in support and one neutral. For any individuals that requested to speak on item 14 by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium because there are 10 and more speakers on the side, you'll have one minute to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I'll call you in groups of three.
So I'll ask you to please listen for your name. I'd like to invite for the first three individuals, Alicia Morrison, commander Chris Lawrence and Christina cl Alicia Morrison. For the record, I do support this item but I do have a question and some comments. So one county does not necessarily mean one size fits all. Each community is unique in its own way with different needs and within those communities some needs rank higher in priority. For example, the Tijuana River at the Saturn Boulevard hot hotspot. After experiencing it myself, I understand the urgency for sustainable infrastructure solution, but there is also a need for a solution at the source of the pollution. I have a question about the MMIP public safety group, the Marine court's air Station, Miramar Firearms. Isn't this a federal jurisdiction so I'm not understanding why this would be something that would be the county would deal with or is there an MOU between the county and the feds on that and there needs to be greater transparency and community engagement. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please. Good afternoon, chair Lawson Reasoner and members of the board. My name is Chris Lawrence and I'm a commander assigned to the Sheriff's Detention Services Bureau. I'm here on behalf of Sheriff Martinez, who represent respectfully sends her regards and wants to ensure her words are expressed to the board and the community as it relates to her strong support for the Vista com detention facility or VDF as part of the SINA plan. A new modern VDF is a project that has been long advocated for, carefully studied and undeniably needed. This project has centered on more than just new physical building. It's been about safety, dignity, modernization, and better outcomes. The current BDF is built for a different era of incarceration and is at end of life. It was also built with short term stays in mind, a reality that no longer exists after the realignment brought about by AB 1 0 9.
Today we understand far more about mental health, medical care, reentry planning and the importance of humane conditions for both staff and those in custody. Modern facility allows us to align infrastructure with best practices which will improve outcomes, expand programming space, and ensure appropriate clinical and rehabilitative services can be delivered effectively. On behalf of the sheriff, I want to thank our community city leaders and this board who understand that this is not just a county project. Thank you. Regional responsibility. Thank you. This next speaker is coming forward. I'd like to invite three additional speakers, allegedly, Audra, Caesar, Javier, Jennifer Rosden. Good afternoon supervisors. My name is Christina Klon and I'm speaking to as a nurse and nurse leader who is practiced within Vista Detention Facility and is in support of this item. Correctional healthcare has evolved significantly. The individuals entering our custody present with advanced chronic diseases, behavioral health needs, substance use disorders, and the higher overall medical acuity.
Our current infrastructure was designed for a different era in healthcare delivery. We must evolve the infrastructure from a nursing perspective. Purpose built, purpose-built medical space with intentional design, enhances patient safety, protects confidentiality and stabilizes work performance. Intentionally designed medical space could reduce emergency room send-outs by strengthening our ability to quietly and sa quickly and safely assess, stabilize and monitor patients. Strategic medical adjacency design allows for fast escalation of care, closer monitoring and of medically fragile individuals and and approve interdisciplinary disc disciplinary coordination. I'm in support of monetization of staff. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Please wish we lived in a world where people actually cared about our community and that you guys actually spent the money that people work really hard for on things that are actually gonna benefit them instead of benefiting your pockets, which we can see when with that last item and how you guys wanna bring things forward.
No, we only need three votes. Oh, it's gonna pass anyway. Even if Joel and Jim say no, it's a bunch of shenanigans that you guys, you know, engage in. I mean you, you literally put people through hell and then you're like, we have a place for you. If you have a behavioral health issue that we created now we're gonna medicate you. It's like it's pretty alarming to wake up to what the rural world is really doing and the people that are supposed to be representing people and actually making their lives better and they don't give a s**t they exploit and they gaslight and virtue signal like you guys are really doing something good and it's like all you have to do is go and talk to the people in the community. But you guys sit up on a dayas so you're too high to be able to do that.
Next speaker, please, Cesar Javier. And I'll invite the remaining speakers in person. Michael Beck and Michael O. Dean Cita, district nine, city of San Diego, district four of the county as a priest. Thank you for your confession. My response to you guys, you go back to your home, your working places and read a hundred times your plan, your comp, capital punishment, oh capital impact projects. God will forgive you. Just continue reading and reading and hopefully do not be loyal to a group or party. Let's be loyal to our constitution. Ma Ma State I think and Ma Aguire. I thought you are spearheading so. So the issue of life and death for San Diego District one, Tijuana River Pollution. My God, let's put our resources there. Let's put our trust. Thank you. God help us. Help us. Thank you. Big speaker for you.
Hello, my name is Mike O. Dean. I'm the president of the Deputy Sheriff's Association. I'm just here in support of item 14. Clearly I'm in reiterating what everybody already said. The Vista Detention Facility is far up, exceeded its lifespan and it's overdue for replacement and improvement on behalf of the sheriff. Deputies and nurses, mental health professionals and technicians, people that work in the building every single day for decades are being exposed to mold, poor ventilation, outdated safety technology, and the building needs to be repaired. I understand people don't wanna fund jails, but it's an essential item that we need to do that and fix it. So on behalf of the DSA and all 2,400 deputies, we strongly support the Vista Detentions Modernation Project in improving the conditions for all of our county employees and our incarcerated population. Thank you. Thank you. Final call from Michael Beck. We'll now hear from the individuals that requested to speak by phone and we will start with our first caller.
Good afternoon, my name is Becky Rappin. I appreciate this item as improving infrastructure is not optional. Roads, drainage schools, school sightings, emergency access and public safety facilities must come before policy expansions. As the recent board at a recent board meeting discuss discussing the socially equitable cannabis program, the president of the Bonzo School District and the chair of the Bonzo Community Planning Group raised serious concerns. She spoke about unresolved school site approvals, inadequate roads and basic infrastructure gaps in her community. These are not minor issues. They directly affect children's safety and quality of life. Yet despite those concerns, the cannabis program is moving forward and the infrastructure in that community is not. How can we justify expanding operations in areas where critical infrastructure has not been addressed? Increased traffic, public safety demands and enforcement needs all rely on adequate roads and facilities. If we acknowledge in the capital improvement,
It's true. The scene has a planning tool potentially spend tax dollars on needs. How does that work when the county's overspent for six years on once rating the reserves for union bonuses, removing any chance of having money for future projects. It's basic science, right manola that you need studies to understand it's basic math. You have a negative budget. The dilapidated Vista Detention Facility is yet another victim of county neglect resulting in countless lawsuits which forced this board to finally act the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility. You guys better start focusing on the child abuse allegations that are building defund political gains like bonuses and invest in things that actually benefit working families, police and fire stations, storm infrastructure, roads, silos, reservoirs, dams, et cetera with special attention and neglected Spring Valley, the county, the county animal shelter in Santee won't even serve Santee residents staff can't even say if they could fit two horse trailers in for back country residents in an emergency. The best part of this item was the term one county approach because repeatedly today we've heard the back country push to the side and county considerations. It's almost like the county's being run by San Diego Coastal Elite dictators
Good afternoon. I am LVO Norwood, although I've been a member of the Valley Center Community Planning Group for 16 today I'm speaking as resident of Valley Center. I'm very much in favor of the county planning and development of an intergenerational center in Valley Center, but the community has spoken many times very loudly on location. Butterfield Ranch is a beautiful location of a national park. When local advocates for this park we, we did. So when local ab, when locals advocated for this park, we did so with the intention of it stay natural. The community has said we want to keep that, keep it that way for long and rich equestrian heritage, the community has also voiced their opinion on Star to be left to be an equestrian center, the honor of that heritage. That being said, Doy Center is grateful for the opportunity. I am requesting that the county look at other locations in the community for an IDC. Thank you very much and have a day.
Good afternoon chair and members Dan Silver Endangered Habitats League. Also on behalf of Michael Beck who had to leave the chamber. We are grateful for the projections that show renewed funding for the MSCP. However, we'd like to note that those monies were frequently as high as $10 million in the past and need to raise the question of whether 7 million is realistic given land prices and given the pending North County plan. So for this reason, we would urge you if feasible, if possible, to to increase these projections to $10 million annually. Thank you very much, but appreciate what you've done. Have a good day.
I'm just still shocked the fact that your lawyer decided to take a pay cut to work for our county. I wonder why. Is it the same reason why the judge got appointed to like one of the first cases she had on the restraining order you gave me because I called you guys a c**t? I have no idea, but it just seems really, really strange to me. But you know, f**k it. Who cares about our elections, right? Who cares on the fact, I mean obviously you care about who elects you. That's where all the money goes, right? Your union people to the point that Joel is calling you out, which is surprising is all hell because he is trying to save you. So listen to what he says. You gotta pretend if, if you don't wanna get in trouble, just pretend you care. You, you listen to the people, that's all you have to do. You know the check box. Stop trying to skip that check box because you're gonna get in major trouble for skipping that check box. That's what Joel is trying to tell you. He's a professional in this kind of s**t.
My name is Andrea Gibson. I serve on the Ramona Community Planning Group as well as the parks and recreation chair. And I'm calling in today because of the fact that the CNA from fiscal year 25 to 30 allocated $3.5 million fiscal year 27 28 to the Ramona Intergenerational community campus in rec area. For decades, the community has been asking the county to assist with building a skate park and it was disheartening to see that now that $3.5 million has been pushed to fiscal year 28 29, that money is only at this point in time slotted for design, environmental analysis and preliminary construction activities. I would ask that this project not be continued to be pushed down the road. Thank you.
Thank you. And Chair Lawson Remer. That concludes public comment on this item. Okay. Supervisor Montgomery step, thank you so much for the presentation and your work CINA and to the members of the public thank you for calling in and coming in to speak to us, to the deputies. Thank you. That was awesome and impressive. The one under one minute comments there. Thanks Brian Albright, appreciate you hearing me during our briefing and working with probation staff to rethink our LLRP structure and less restrictive placement and to move whatever we're doing from the youth detention facility. That it certainly was not the, in the black letter law or the spirit of the law, which it, the whole purpose was to kind of have a radical thought process around reintegrating our young people back into society after they have been institutionalized. And what we currently, what we were working on is having an NLRP right outside of the detention facility.
So I was never going to support that and I'm, and I'm thank you for, for hearing me on that because it's very important to me that we one, follow the law. One because it's the law and two, because there's really a lot of intention behind that law in really changing the lives of our young people who have been housed in detention facilities. So I understand we're looking at other locations, I'll just drop another nugget for our, not not our Athena folks, but our service folks that I also think that we should be partnering and that probation should not be facilitating over those LRPs. That also was not the intent. And so, but that's a later conversation. Well I do look forward to working with community-based organizations and having community staff running those under the guidelines of the LRP and why they were established so that our young people can have access to trauma informed care educational programming and rehabilita rehabilitative rehabilitative support to reenter, reenter the community.
So there are quite a few district four projects on here I'm very proud of, of a lot of the work the county has done in district four and across the region so far. But I just wanted to put that extra emphasis on the, the LRP. So thank you so much and I will move the item if needed. Thank you supervisor Desmond. Well first of all, thank you for all your work on this. I know this is a juggling act and trying to prioritize projects throughout the whole region and I think this is a good mix for all five districts. So thank you. Thank you very much. I do wanna bring up the Vista Detention facility. Obviously this is a massive, massive need and an investment and you know, there we've heard from the sheriff that there's gonna be a strong focus on reentry services once somebody's let out of the jail trying to get them out into services or housing or things like that.
But I, I wanna stress again that we, we as one of the nurses came forward here that we need, we need mental health facilities within the jail. I mean, because unfortunately that's the number one place where people get mental health treatment and it's cold turkeys. So I would like to see designed within the jail some type of, of mental health facility. It's not just jail cells, maybe it's a, you know, a ward or something like that that helps people that have mental health, that need mental health treatment and maybe working with the nurses and other people that actually provide that services elsewhere. You know, those services elsewhere that this can get incorporated into a modular or something like that at the jail. Because that seems to be our biggest impediment right now is, is taking in allele people and, and they're not getting, I mean it was stated this jail was built for a different purpose many, many years ago. It was just the house criminals, not the house people had mental health issues. So I'd like to see that as an emphasis in the, in the new jail coming forward. And I want to ensure that it remains a priority and this is where one time money should be spent, not an ongoing program. So I would just like to put that in there because this is gonna take one my one time money, but it's gonna, it's gonna be a structure that's gonna last for many, many years. So thank you very much. So for the motion,
Okay, thank you very much. We have a motion and second, any additional comments? Okay, seeing none, please vote. Chair Lawson Reer, that motion passes unanimously of all supervisors being present and voting. Aye. Okay. Thank you again to the team. Okay, we now move on to non-ag agenda, public comment. Andrew, can you please call the remaining individuals?
Thank you Chair Lawson Reamer. We have seven remaining requests to speak. A matter is not listed on the agenda. Two in individuals, in person and five requesting to speak by phone. For those that requested to speak by phone, please dial into the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you. We'll begin with the in-person speakers as your name is called. Please come forward and stand on the arrows until it is your turn to speak at the podium. You will have two minutes to address the board and I'll ask you to begin by stating your name for the audio record. I'd like to invite forward Cesar Javier Cesar, district nine, city of San Diego, district four, county of San Diego Junior, and the senior political jurisdiction. We have still time and we have 10 fingers. Intelligences, very basic. God help us. Divine intervention is what we need. Let's work together
Physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, psychologically. This is all about action. Now let's not wait for tomorrow. Let's think now and do something navigating the right azimo. We heard you don't you have soul, don't you have heart? Come on, mothers, fathers. We say this because we are all our twilight years and we went through this and we are hurt because of that ceramics business, which is not supposed to be next door. Can you not read that Madam Maggi as victim of this pollution, Tijuana River, valley pollution, air, water, land. Costa, can we? No, but can we not reverse our rather than say, oh alright, let's go the moral justification, moral direction. Can we not do that? We are elders, we are teachers, you and us and learners. Have we not learned? We are planning for more years to come. What is a home when no one is there? Let's focus on the priority. Save the lives, kill them, care for them. God, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Your time is up. We're now here from the individuals that requested to speak by phone. We'll start with our first caller.
Hey, it's truth I hear there's a new taxpayer funded cult being created called the P-A-L-O-M-A fellowship. I believe that stands for Propaganda Agitation and Leftist Opportunism for Manuel Advancement. And their mascot is a female dog. Not sure if there's been a decision between Dasha or manela, I assume the one who's in love with herself, but it's a training program probably to learn how to avoid paying property taxes, creating the S-A-U-I-B-W-A socialist Grif Dominion of tomorrow. All expenses paid by legal residents because Manela never funds anything herself. Of course, be advised that I'm gonna keep auditing this program. Notice does everyone remember when former county council number 100 David Smith tried to stop me from reading Helen's email about temper tantrum Tara's backroom deals on the co o seat. She wanted the vicious political Paul Worley to get from the voice of San Diego. Article entitled Ex Top County Bureaucrat.
The county also pressured media outlets not to publish the email. Helen Robbins Barr confirmed that she emailed former county council number 80 Claudia Silva to flag concerning moose by Tara Loss reer and argued the message shouldn't be protected. It was not attorney-client privilege because I was not seeking legal advice. I was reporting an inappropriate and unethical activity that could also have potential brown act and legal ramifications to the improper deal proposed by the supervisor Robins Meyer wrote. And much like Tara Manela has also been very exclusive in who Tara picked for her. Is it true that a union force manela to use amplify campaigns corrupt Dan Rotten Strike as your political consultant, the husband of racist union puppet Bridget Browning who cut a deal on Midway Rising, almost as rotten as the Primacy Group and Larry Reamer? Tara, do you know he used to use Sherry's eight five eight phone number in La Jolla for his consulting business. My suggestion, Tara, is to quit working with the Center on Policy Initiatives to extend the supervisor term limits that hypocrite Democrats and their campaign funders, SEIU once supported in 2010 to trick voters into getting rid of the full Republican board that people didn't have a problem with at the time. The corrupt progressives love their reign of terror they never wanted to end. Isn't that right?
I do love all the shady s**t you guys do, but you know, I also recognize majority of it is legal. You guys, you have one point of separation to allow you to get away with it and you don't audit so you don't really have to check anything. Matter of fact, you get all the bonuses you get, apparently you love them kissing your ass because you have that position of power. But the second you guys go ahead and say anything negative or you know, let's just go with Nora Vargas choosing Ebony over Cindy Chavez, then the mud gets run, right? I'm really curious on what they have on you guys or are you just that weak? I'm just really, really curious because how hard would it be to find out and look at a heat map on the registration cards that equaled out the ballot and who they came from.
How hard would it be just to take a look at that? How hard would it be to find out that 109 of them probably came from one registration drive? You know what I'm talking about Nick Shirley's report. Why don't we go in and take a look at how these people are voting. You know, we could track it down to a person filling out the registration cards, hundreds of them, thousands of them, but you know, that's why you listen to them and not the people, right? Our vote is only worth one because we're unwilling to cheat but theirs for whatever f*****g reason, they love getting it's crammed on their ass and so therefore they deserve what? A hundred votes each. So what's the deal? You go, you ha, you like child trafficking, you're allowed to vote what? A thousand times. I mean these are the people checking out the registration cards, committing that crime that you're protecting. I'm just curious on why. Why are you so persistent in check and not looking at that?
Okay, thank you. The Building maintenance is aware. Thank you. We now turn to public comment for closed session matters. Do you have anyone requesting to speak? Thank you. Chair Lawson Reamer. Item 18 on today's general legislative session. And item one on the sanitation district's agenda or closed session matters. The closed session agenda includes six matters. We'll note that item A on the regular closed session agenda being withdrawn and the individuals that requested to speak on the closed session matters must provide comments related to the matters listed on the closed session items. Otherwise, your comments will be considered off topic. We have eight requests to speak, three in person and five requesting to speak by phone. Any individuals that requested to speak on the closed session matters by phone. Please dial in to the conference line using the instructions that were provided to you will begin with our in person speakers victim by forward allegedly addresses are Javier and Jennifer Rosden. If she's here, she's not, there's a serious gas leak in here right now. Like I feel extremely lightheaded just and it was coming up from that vent over there and you're just saying that we're aware, but it's like this is very like pungent that we're even just still sitting in here, but whatever, we toxify people anyway and that's part of the reason s**t, I was,
No, but that's like, that's really bad because just sitting, I feel like you guys are trying to poison me. I mean as long as I'm the one that dies, it's cool. I mean, just reasons like this. I don't feel like you guys are equipped to do anything in close session. I actually had my phone I was gonna bring to whatever, you know, when you guys are engaged in things like torturing children and county council sits here and will allow the social workers to enter fraud into reports and lie about families so that they get ripped apart and then they can come in and terminate parent's rights and, and, and county council sits here and defends that. It's like, I can't even think straight, but it's like this is the world we live in. It's full of toxic everything and, and you guys don't care. You just we're aware of it. That's what's so sad is that you're aware of the things that are happening to Zaya and Malalia Robinson and it falls upon deaf ears. It's just like Arabella, McCormick and Delilah, like why did they have to die? Because nobody wants to do their job because it's more about getting money and filling your pocket than actually making sure that children don't suffer. F*****g a
Okay. Oh good. Okay. Thanks Andrew. Yeah, there, I saw there were three cases that were starting out or, or potential and we can kind of guess what they're about. I mean the, I can't, so many weird things. I mean, you know, it's kind of getting easy to guess what they might be about. But what I'm focused on is the case about that project in North County. I think we're into Santa Fe where the, there weren't enough exit roads in case of fire and they authorized the huge development anyway and now they're suing. But even a fire captain testified that there weren't sufficient access roads. In fact, I think there was only one big access road. So that's a case that you should but out of as quick as you can. Otherwise it's a total waste of money. And then, you know, they're all those child abuse cases, the, the ags getting close, you know, with his investigating the juvenile justice system. So, you know, it's really a matter of time before he catches on the whole scheme, the whole county scheme. But, you know, 150 odd linsky cases and I dunno how many others there are. You know, it's something that you need to solve right now. You need to stop this called abuse.
Okay. Okay. All right. I guess I'm just going to, let's see. Litigation. Yeah, it's just, I guess I'll just say this is the sad part of these meetings because somebody's getting screwed, you know what I'm saying? Literally and, and it's just, it's just a sad thing. I had something written for this, but I don't even know where I, I can't find it. Yeah, so just more of our money being spent on lawyers and that's really unfortunate. So I don't know, do you have anything else you wanna say? Pablo? It's my time. Can Pablo identify as Consuelo? Just kidding. Okay, that's all. Have a great rest of the day, Audra. Bye.
Hey, it's truth case A and F or initiated litigation. Tara, we know that's UU lawsuit lover, but what happened to case A that the evidence fall through Case B is Vera Scott versus La Mesa, spring Valley School District the same day. Their conflict of interest codes were updated just this morning. How weird is that? I believe this case is about the Spring Valley Ukrainian Church blaming the school district for the flooding coming from a culvert above them during 2024 and 2026. KC is Simon on forest retreat versus the county, a Buddhist organization in Valley Center with 10 years. They applied for a permit but allegedly didn't hear from the county for two years. Then they faced an inspection and the county allegedly said they'll never approve of the land use due to the earths. That there are fire risk, lack, structural integrity, and are an environmental hazard.
That sounds like religious discrimination to me to mon see that as a minor use. But the county is insisting it's a major use permit in 2024. The county then accused him is illegally discharging gray water. That sounds like retaliation to me. Then sdg e cut power to the property claiming an immediate hazard to life from property claiming they couldn't restore power without county permission. Isn't that amazing? K is the crooks Sierra club versus the county. Funny, when friends fight, friends Grifters fight Grifters. I guess your sister communists struggle to see who gets to control the land in the end. And Casey's anticipated litigation. That's Tara, Monica and Manu, even Joel, but especially Tara. You actually got really good advice today about the right type of box checking. I concur, but I support you continuing the backroom deals. If it means you'll go to prison, whatever gets you there faster, we're all waiting with anticipation on who will drop off this board next, freeze the charm, you know? And also, wow, is sewage coming through the board torture chambers. Manuel, did you bring that in with you? Well, as long as it stays out of Imperial Beach, maybe we can look the other way. Maybe we'll just study it. You know what I mean? Have a good day. You finding people.
Curiosity. How much money have you guys spent on trying to silence me? I know I was an a*****e and I I I own to that calling you names. That was terrible calling your office. That was terrible. Do I think I should be thrown in jail for that? No, but you're gonna go ahead and spend how much money and you fired like all the lawyers, right? Including Heidi, which basically said that I should have been a litigator. I chose the wrong profession. Cynthia has gone. Is Aaron gone? Did you guys fire her? What about Natalia? Did you fire that one too? I mean, is that the golden parachute? Because you guys know you f****d up. I have not once gone after you legally, but you've done everything in your power to silence me when the only thing I'm asking is just take a look at the registration cards that acquired a ballot coming to the same location.
If it's one person filling them all out, how hard is it to go ahead and do that? I mean, ask the lawyer that beat Trump. I mean, he took a pay cut to go ahead and defend this. I, I would like to know his explanation on that. I mean, because in the NVRA data, when I go ahead and say something specific like that, you guys are supposed to look it up, not file a restraining order, not try to throw me in jail, not try to ruin my entire f*****g life because I said there's a problem with the vote by mail system. While I was working there, I did the poll worker allocation ballot order balance, the budget state, the county documented millions of dollars. And because I said anyone could fill out a registration card to gain access to another person's ballot, you thought thought, hey, get rid of this f*****g guy. That's what you guys did, right? I couldn't talk to any of you guys. Why? Because the county fired me and then you gave me a restraining order preventing me from max as, except for catching Tara on phone, on camera saying that she would look into that.
Thank you. And Chair Lawson Remer. That concludes public comment on the items and the consent on the closed session agenda. Thank you. I think I need to turn it over to county counsel for a comment on the record. Thank you Chair. For the record, I just need to address a matter concerning the attorney-client privilege. A statement was made just now referenced by a public commenter that appears in a document that constitutes confidential, a confidential communication between legal counsel and the county that was made for the purpose of seeking and providing legal advice. And that document is protected by the attorney-client privilege to the extent the commenter was referencing or quoting from a privileged communication. I'm formally asserting the attorney-client privilege on behalf of the county and nothing in this statement or assertion is intended to limit public comment generally, but we are obligated to preserve the privileged communications and not engage in any discussion of privilege and protected legal advice in an open meeting.
Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. We now proceed with our adjournments in memory. Today's adjournment memory is presented by Vice Chair Montgomery, step in memory of Jesse Jackson. Thank you Chair. I would like to adjourn today's meeting in memory of a beloved civil rights leader and lifelong champion for justice whose life was marked by service, courage, and an unwavering commitment to equality and human dignity. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Reverend Jesse Jackson was born on October 8th, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina. He rose to become one of the most influential civil rights leaders of the 20th and 21st century. A protege of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reverend Jesse Jackson worked closely with him during the Civil rights movement. After Dr. King's assassination, Reverend Jackson carried forward that leg legacy of nonviolent protests, economic justice, and voting rights advocacy for decades to follow. In 1971, Reverend Jackson founded Operation Push, which stood for People United to save humanity.
This initiative was committed to advancing economic opportunities and corporate accountability for all races. He later established the Rainbow Coalition of 1984, building a broad multiracial movement focused on social justice, workers' rights, and political inclusion. Through these efforts, he helped expand opportunities for communities long excluded from political and economic power. Reverend Jackson also launched nationally competitive presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988. Notably, his 1988 campaign built a powerful coalition that reshaped American politics and elevated issues of fairness, opportunity, and representation on the national stage. Throughout his life, Reverend Jackson was also a global humanitarian and advocate for peace. Engaging in diplomatic efforts that secured the release of American hostages abroad and brought international attention to human rights cases causes. Reverend Jackson lived out a faith rooted injustice and service. His ministry extended beyond the pulpit and led into the streets, the ballot box, and the world's media.
He consistently called on the nation to live up to its highest ideals and to widen the circle of opportunity. Reverend Jack Jackson married Jacqueline Brown in 1962, and together they raised five children. His life reflected a deep commitment to building a better future for his family and future generations. Reverend Jesse Jackson leaves behind a lasting impact on the Civil Rights Movement. And communities across this nation. His voice, his vision, and his courage helped bend the arc of his history toward justice. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones, and to all who were inspired by his extraordinary life of service. Thank you. Thank you for that. That was beautiful. Okay, we with that, the board is gonna proceed into closed session. We'll take about a 10 minute break. We'll be there at four o'clock. We'll be in recess until tomorrow, Wednesday, March 4th at 9:00 AM for a land use legislative session. Thanks. The board will now recess into closed session to consider those matters listed under item 18 and sanitation district item one and today's session agenda. If there are any reportable actions that be reported out during the land use session, this meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, March 4th, 2026.
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