of the because we have a lot of members in the public um of from the public here for other items i'd like to rearrange the agenda i'd like to begin with the regular calendar and around the noon time frame i expect we will uh at an appropriate point break for closed session um which will double as a lunch break with that said um then seeing no objections from my colleagues if we could move to the first regular calendar item the general administration portion the community development agency and alameda health presentation i will note that public comment will be taken uh at each item this is a work study session where we take public comment at each item after the staff presentation if you wish to speak on this item in person fell speakers again please if you're online um be ready to raise your hand after the community development agency and alameda county health staff have made their presentation at that time we'll count the speaker cards and decide the number of minutes for each speaker so with that said is there a brief staff report from CDA and health uh President Howard I would just note that this item is on your work session agenda as because your board continued it uh from your last uh work session and discussion with regard to measure w so I'll turn it over to the community development agency director good morning supervisor uh Sandy Rivera community development agency director uh this item as um county administrative had noted is continued from the July 30th uh 2025 meeting on the discussion on measure w and uh it was continuing to provide staff some time to review the qualifying criteria which was in question and this item is about creating a one-time 15 million emergency stabilization designation fund um with measure w uh for with the home together fund and that's to support affordable housing developers and so this um is to assist local nonprofit affordable housing providers uh and they continue to face severe financial strain from pandemic related losses uh significantly increasing their operating costs uh such as um the rising insurance and utility costs so the criteria that was discussed at the July 30th meeting uh has been verified and that includes uh that the applicants must actively own and operate 400 or more units of affordable housing uh they have uh and have minimum existing portfolio of about 50 units of permanent supportive housing located in alameda county they also must have a nonprofit headquartered in alameda county and have at least 50 percent of their total portfolio located in alameda county and the applicants must have suffered demonstrated and unrecoverable losses within their Alameda County affordable housing units and they have to provide documentation for that we still would have to go through an RFP process or procurement process for this and uh we will be reporting back to the board on the results of this including um you know what the future contracts and mid-year budget adjustments would be in order to provide this funding and uh also the recipients of the funding will agree to participate in future development of permit supportive housing and that would be dedicated to folks experiencing homelessness that's all I have and happy to take questions.

Now it's time for questions from members of the board I recognize Supervisor Miley yes thank you Mr President um I wanted to find out um if a public sector entity for instance BART were to um be working with nonprofit uh developers on um affordable housing projects at their stations and they were to um combine um all their efforts and it met the criteria would they be able to apply for stabilization funding you know as BART they would still have to meet the other parts of the criteria so even if it was uh if we do note that it's nonprofit is uh for the criteria for this stabilization fund.

So what I'm saying is if BART were to um combine as nonprofit developers and they meet the threshold of over 400.

But no individual developer would meet that threshold, but they could meet the threshold collectively through BART would that be?

Yes, and still be with the nonprofit developer.

That would be acceptable.

Acceptable okay.

So I'll ask my colleagues to raise their hand if they have questions.

So I have a question about headquartered in Alameda County.

If there's a provider that's headquartered in another county, but with a large number of Alameda County residents, why would we not want to include them in this?

Just because they're headquartered in another county, but or maybe there aren't any, so it might not matter.

We're looking to support the the base of our partners here.

Or at least half of their properties in Alameda County.

Okay.

So it's a way of stabilizing our ecosystem in Alameda County.

Because we know that there are they may be headquartered in another county, but their people live in Alameda County.

It's the people that are voters for our constituents, it's the people that live in our county, not the headquarters.

And I just I don't know if it even exists, but I wonder if there's a large number of constituents that may be overlooked simply because the provider is headquartered somewhere else.

We say or so it's headquartered or 50%.

Oh or ah, I get that.

Why do we pick 400?

It seems like, and I get it, um, it's nice to pick the providers that provide a large number of units, but if somebody is serviced by a provider that isn't 400 units big, then would they be overlooked?

They're still a constituent, they're still in the same, like why isn't it the based on the need of the individual person?

Because somebody that's very much in need will be excluded simply because they live in a unit that's not operated by a large provider, is what it feels like to me.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Uh that's a that's a very good point.

The 400 units were uh to allow you know the larger providers, of course, uh that in Alameda County that had um it provides more stable stabilization for the larger providers in Alameda County.

Uh I will say though, what we also have uh included as part of the criteria is that if uh the funds are not used fully uh through this process, we'll come back to the board with um you know adjustment to those requirements.

Okay, I mean I get that it's a numbers game.

Those large providers are we're able to go to fewer number of people with a large number of units that can help stabilize.

I just feel sorry for the family that is in great need, but happens to live in a unit supported by a provider that is not a large provider.

And this this uh action that we're asking uh today wouldn't preclude that we wouldn't be able to do that.

Uh of course, there's more discussions with Measure W with related to um you know the Essential Services Fund and such.

Okay, well, nothing's perfect.

This again allows us to stabilize a large number of units quickly.

So any other questions or comments, or is there a motion?

Public comment on this, and then we'll have a motion.

So we'll have a motion by Marquez when this is done, and instead we'll go to public comment.

How many slips do we have in person and how many um hands raised?

So for the members of the public participating remotely, um would be the time to raise your hand for this item.

Just for this item, this is good as so everyone knows.

I'll say it again, it's item one under general admission under the regular calendar.

If you're in the room, please fill out a speaker slip.

I'll look for the count of, and then I'll ask for the clerk to count how many we have online with their hands raised.

Can he just speak in and fill out?

We have four speakers online.

Four online and five in person.

Very good.

Let's make note of the four online.

Those will be the speakers for this item.

Uh those would be the only speakers for this item online.

And the five in person would be great.

So let's start in person three and then three online back and forth.

Chris.

Vivian.

Angelina.

I thought it was.

Okay.

Okay.

And thank you.

Here you go.

Why don't you use this microphone?

There you go.

Just talk right into the microphone.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um, thank you, Supervisor.

Um good morning, Mr.

Chair and Supervisors.

Um, Chris Aglesius, CEO of the Unity Council.

I'm glad to be here uh with you this morning.

Um, honestly, I just want to give a big shout out to your team from the community development agency from HCD, uh, who we've been working with on this measure for uh many many months.

Um I think the pandemic uh really took its toll on a lot of us uh uh affordable housing developers and um even though this is a significant amount of money, um I don't think it's really gonna make any of us whole.

Uh we got through the pandemic, we were we everybody stepped up and started doing things that we never thought we would be doing around food, trying to keep people housed, um trying to keep people safe as far as security and stuff like that.

So this does this is a great opportunity to um help stabilize us because as I said, many of us did take a beating, and I just want to give a shout out to um again your team, the leadership of your team, uh the city um county administrator, and all the folks who have continued to move this to where we're at today.

So we just want to acknowledge everybody and say thanks again.

Good morning, everyone, and hopefully we'll give you time back today, which is exciting because there's a lot of folks that want to talk.

I'm Vivian Wan, I'm the CEO of Abode.

And uh like Chris, really want to echo my thank you for we've been working on this actually for over a year.

Looking back, and that's it's a lot of us don't want to look back because during the pandemic it was such such a horrible time for us all.

And we as a community lifted up, I think eight different shelters, both COVID, but shelter in place shelters and isolation quarantine shelters.

We made changes on a dime to help our supportive housing communities stay safe.

We increase our cleaning protocols, all of this while people were losing their jobs and unable to pay rent, and all the eviction moratoriums went into place.

So I am just saying that when we say we took a hit, affordable housing developers have no margins.

We're not, we're not for-profits, we don't actually increase the rent and have enough savings to to help us save for the times, having those prudent reserves, which you all care deeply about.

We don't get to have those in affordable housing developments.

This is actually going to help us shore up, but it's not going to make any of us whole.

So we thank you tremendously for your support in this.

We we hope that you move it forward because we want to build more supportive housing for the people who need it in our communities.

And you're right, President, that it's uh it's not perfect, you know, not perfect for any of us, and it'll help us get us there, which which I'm incredibly grateful for.

So thank you so much.

Hello, Angelina Cornejo with East Bay Housing Organizations, and we want to uh we're here to support the 15 million stabilization fund.

First of all, thank you so much, HCD supervisors.

Um, I just want to underline what this fund will do.

It will help preserve our communities here in Alameda County by stabilizing our affordable housing providers and residents of the affordable housing.

It will integrate our mission-driven, long-standing permanent supportive housing providers into the continuum of care, supporting uh the Home Together plan.

And not only will it prevent the displacement of current residents, which are largely low-income and seniors, it will help equip mission-driven permanent supportive housing providers to scale up to meet the moment of our homelessness crisis.

These are mission-driven organizations that anchor our communities affordable and permanent supportive housing availability, and uh it will help uh make sure that they are able to build more permanent supportive housing and you know help help the homelessness crisis here.

The 15 million stabilization fund will ensure that existing um housing remains well maintained, that residents are not displaced, and that providers can continue to stored and preserve deeply affordable homes.

So we urge you to support this today.

Thank you.

I'm believing on the line.

I think I think we're gonna move to the next three online speakers.

We have three in person, then we go three online.

You'll wait till your name is called, if you could.

She'll be calling names soon.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you.

We have two minutes to speak.

Hi, my name is Ainsley Sanidad, and I'm a senior program associate at the Northern California Office of the Enterprise Community Partners and National Affordable Housing Nonprofit.

NFI strongly supports establishing the $15 million emergency stabilization fund that will be critical for stabilizing affordable housing providers countywide.

We're currently at risk of not being able to continue serving the county's most vulnerable communities.

The proposed cuts from the federal government's homelessness funds and growing national efforts to criminalize homelessness.

We must prioritize these local funds.

This fund will relieve financial pressures of affordable housing providers at the as they face rising insurance costs, post-pandemic rental rares and operating costs increases, and ultimately it will ensure that existing properties are sustained and prevent the displacement communities that would have nowhere else to go if their affordable housing was lost.

So ultimately, we urge the board of supervisors to serve the communities once in need and approve the emergency stabilization fund.

Thank you.

Can everybody hear me okay?

Yes, we can.

Thank you.

My name is Vasco Yorgoth, and I'm a project developer speaking on behalf of Eden Housing.

We urge the board to support item one and create a 15 million dollar uh emergency stabilization fund for nonprofit organizations.

Eden and many of our pure organizations have faced a substantial loss of rent revenue due to eviction moratoria.

This loss of revenue in combination with inflationary pressures and costs hit our smaller properties particularly hard.

Affordable housing developers cannot raise the rents to make up for this lost income, and we believe this fund will help to free a portion of the losses we've experienced and help us stabilize and maintain our communities.

We encourage the board to move forward with this fund.

Thank you.

Miss Shelley, you're on the line.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Hello, good morning.

I was fighting with the mute button.

Um good morning, Chair Halbert, supervisors and staff.

My name is Miss Shelley Gonzalez, and I am here as a community advocate.

I support the proposed $15 million emergency stabilization designation under Measure W.

It is indeed urgently needed to help nonprofit housing providers who continue to face severe financial strain from pandemic era losses, rising insurance premiums, and escalating utility costs, as was already stated.

But the current criteria is slightly concerning, requiring nonprofits to already operate more than 400 units, exclude many smaller community-based organizations.

These groups may not meet the threshold but serve deeply vulnerable residents.

I urge the board to design a pathway for these providers to access stabilization funds as well.

I did hear that this is nothing's perfect, and this is sounding like a work in progress.

We also recall that the chair stated: hey, if you bring me something that works, I will support it.

100%.

Well, 100% lived experience.

It is ready, available, and already not only intersectional with education, housing, and health, but also serving on CLC committees.

I also want to acknowledge that the new requirement that recipients must participate in the future development of permanent supportive housing.

This is an important commitment, and it must include lived experience leadership in the planning and oversight.

So again, many of us already served on our serving in multiple spaces, including continual care committees, and we are accessible and we're ready to join you in shaping this work.

Finally, on tenant protection, stabilization must also safeguard residents and higher energy burdens, evictions.

I mean, there are multiple reasons why we become unhoused.

Federal programs like Lightheat certainly provide limited relief, and to stay housed, you must have your BGE paid.

So local solutions are needed to ensure homes remain not only preserved but livable and affordable.

Measure W is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Let's invest inclusively, transparently, and with lived experience at the table.

Thank you so much.

Sophia in person and Zach.

Reverend Sophia DeWitt, Chief Program Officer at East Bay Housing Organizations.

I'm here to support the 15 million dollar stabilization fund for nonprofit affordable housing providers that will help to give them some ballast and support.

After years of losing rental income and having increased costs during the pandemic, these organizations are a critical part of our affordable housing ecosystem and landscape, and making sure that they are strong and able to continue providing housing, make sure that their residents, many of whom are seniors and elders, people with disabilities, are not displaced, and helps them continue to meet the housing challenges and the challenges we have dealing with unsheltered homelessness in our community.

So I just urge you to support this today, and uh I want to thank county staff and supervisor staff for the hard work you have put into this item over the many months of its uh creation.

So we look forward to you supporting this today.

And again, thank you so much.

Zach, then Sharon Lai.

Okay.

Good morning, supervisors.

Uh, my name is Sharon Lyme with eBaltsey.

Uh, just really want to start by thanking our county staff's hard work for bringing this item forward and for this board's past uh support uh throughout the last three hearings, uh indicating your support for the stabilization fund.

Don't worry, they're here to support not to speak.

We're trying to keep this pretty streamlined here.

Uh, you know, we want to just start by acknowledging that the $15 million stabilization fund out of the $1.8 billion that you're expected to collect is may sound small, and we know that you have a heavy responsibility to steward this fund.

And we want to make clear that as eBalty, we are very much in support of additional flex dollars being uh allocated to support smaller um nonprofit affordable housing operators as well.

We see a need in that.

Um, as part of my public comment today, we've actually re uh issued a letter of support and uh request for this funding that hopefully has been passed out to you.

Just really want to thank uh all of our nonprofit uh affordable housing uh coalition members standing strong together to note that you know, across our five organizations, we operate over 180 multifamily properties across the county.

That's thousands and thousands of Alameda County residents.

Um, also want to thank uh strongly our uh 20 uh additional sign-on supporters, including mayors of various cities across your county and significant uh local uh nonprofits that invest in the uh the quality of life for our Alameda County residents, including Lisc and Transform and United Way.

Um this is also in addition to the 350 signatures from our residents in Alameda County that we submitted in July in support of this 15 million dollar fund uh request.

And of course, last but not least, our 50 residents, mostly senior and other folks with disability that's in this room as well as in the overflow room today, you know, exercising their agency because they understand the critical need of this funding means that it will keep them stably housed, which is homelessness prevention.

So we ask of you today to please uh expeditiously approve this.

We thank everyone here for their support and for their understanding uh to know that we are here to see Alameda succeed.

Thank you for your time.

We have four speakers and two as well as Lotus Capital Management as the predominant developer of it with Main Street Capital, we are the underwriters of what is known as the Oakland Promise.

I choose to challenge compliance against this board and indict this board and Landera v.

the United States, James Huntman via the United States, Los Pez v.

Smith, Valdez title via the United States, sixth killer v the United States, Oakland v.

Simon Property, TW, TKW Inc.

V the US, Tennessee Valley v the United States, Michigan v the EPA, AKV or AKV, Oregon, Voices of the Wetland via the Water Resource Board, Sonoma Power V the US, Chicago Title v the USC, Hanley v.

the U.S.

States, Payne v.

Tennessee, based on racketeering negligence.

And view of the tri-regional application, I'm asking for a Sunshine Act requestment against all assets of county interagencies, including homosexual relationships, partner relationship, personal and professional finances related to municipal infrastructure and balancing.

This includes applications of what is wondered at a half a million uh half a billion dollars between a um trade association affiliated with the county, known as Menunskin and Chenenskin, and the courts and asking for it to be open based on nonprofit view.

Thank you.

I wish to validate the indictment.

Now go to the board chambers.

We cannot hear the speaker.

Okay.

Good morning.

And my name is Elena Torres and I'm a mother and tenant Alameda County facing housing stability.

Last year I reach out to this board, to you guys to help for help avoiding becoming homeless.

I send letters.

I said Obago found me.

I even asking for if there were any discretionary funds that could help that could kid me.

And my children and my children house it.

I never receive any response, nor even an acknowledgement.

And today I'm here watching a 15 million emergency stabilization proposal move forward, but it's only for large affordable housing developers who own 400 units or more.

I want to ask clearly, where is the emergency stabilization for tenants, for families, for people who actually living in these units?

If measure W dollars are truly about homelessness, prevention, then tenant stability must be treated as a priority, not an after doubt.

Because when tenant fall, the system fall.

The public should not be expected to subdize landlords while renters are being evicted, displaced it or ignore it when asking for help.

I'm not against uh supporting nonprofit housing providers, but the stabilizing stabilizing larros without established stabilizing stabilizing MEM renters is not a full solution.

It's a half measure.

If we can find 15 million for developers, then when we can also found a rental registry that attracts ownership, conditions and accountability, proactive rental inspections.

This board has an opportunity to frame measure uh W.

Thank you.

My name is Lindsay, and I am a lifelong resident of the unincorporated area of Alameda County, and I urge caution in the acceptance of this fund.

Everyone agrees that affordable housing needs to be built in Alameda County, but nobody seems to know what affordable means.

What's affordable for you is likely by no means affordable for me.

Affordable affordability needs to start in at the deepest levels and work up rather than start somewhere in the middle, out of reach for the people who need it most.

The president, the presence of nonprofit developers does not guarantee a community-minded development.

We still have a list of complaints coming from tenants and buildings made and managed by nonprofits.

I think this money would be better spent on rent assistance for tenants or a legal assistant fund for tenants as well.

It would be a step in the right direction.

By no means should landlords be considered for this.

We need a way to account for whose hands this money is going to in order for us to truly know it is helping the people it was supposed to help.

Thank you for your time.

Next speaker is going to be Sandy Frost.

Hey good morning supervisors.

I need to express um some surprise I guess and a little discontent about the 15 million dollars going to affordable housing developers.

Since I'm a tenant of a property in South Hayward.

And there are better solutions and so um being part of my invoice we represent the constituents of unincorporated Alameda County and we had really hoped that all of the money from measure W was going to go to people to immediate needs and not to I guess a financial hurt that happened during the pandemic when all of us suffered.

But I appreciate you giving us the time to speak um and that's all thank you.

That was the last speaker.

Very good I note uh that a motion's already been made by Supervisor Marquez and uh I'll second the motion okay so second by Supervisor Tam however Supervisor Miley would like to make some comments before we take a vote sure um maybe the uh the staff on Sandy Rivera could respond to uh the issue around the uh funds for rental assistance and also our at least our plans in the unincorporated area for funding to go to small developers.

We we have had some we have programs at least in terms of small developers uh with regard to our some innovative funds that we have for measure a one but as it relates to unincorporated area uh we are uh of course you'll hear this you'll hear this presentation uh later in the agenda but but we're looking to create a uh a strategic plan for the unincorporated area that would include uh the emergency rental assistance uh that some of the the speakers had noted as well as as other programs for small developers so that uh you'll hear some of that through the tenant protections as well I think all those items will all mesh together but uh that is part of the program that we're thinking of somebody pulled the alarm I guess we better go so is that a no that's just another no so uh supervisor miley recognize you now um yes so I think that at least responds to the concern about uh no because we've uh created a flex uh pool for uh funding too for um um assistance to uh uh tenants okay so um and you know, I I agree with uh President Howard.

We don't we shouldn't make um um perfectly the enemy of the good.

Um we need to provide the these resources for these um uh housing developers, affordable housing developers uh measure W funds.

Uh we will utilize it.

We'll utilize it uh to try to address as many of uh the uh the safety net concerns uh relative to not just the homeless but other safety net concerns to the best of our ability.

You know, it's uh disconcerting, it's just it's disconcerting for uh folks to try to uh be um what's the word competitive or to uh undermine the efforts of one part of our community to get support from another part of the community.

So I just want to say uh this 15 million is well worth it.

I apologize quite frankly uh for the board taking uh so long to act on this, um, but it is today.

I do think we'll be acting on it.

Uh, the one of the one of the question I want to just ask the agency director uh once the board approves this, uh there'll be an RFP process.

How quickly do you anticipate these funds can be out the door?

We are uh ready to go with an RFP process.

So uh what procurement two three months?

Well, if you can even shorten it, that would be great.

We will work to do that.

Yeah, if you know if you need anything from the board to expedite that, please let us know.

And then is there a threshold on how much uh nonprofit developer can ask for or apply for?

They'll have to uh show how what losses they have, but we haven't established uh the criteria at least in terms of what that level will be yet.

Okay, well uh yet so you're thinking about establishing a threshold.

Uh we we certainly uh could look at establishing a threshold.

Okay, because I'm not arguing for one, I just wanted to ask the question about about that.

And then will there be a report back to us on how the money was expended?

The contracts will have to go to your board for approval.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Uh Supervisor Banner, Fortunately.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Um, I just wanted to say that I'm very supportive of this item.

I was ready to pass it back in July.

And our in order to address the housing affordability crisis and the homelessness crisis, we need a robust ecosystem of partners, and I want to thank all the affordable housing developers who have been providing permanent permanent supportive housing and helping to be part of the solution.

Um, so just wanted to register out loud my support for this item.

And for those who recently spoke um from the unincorporated area, when we get to the measure W discussion, I do hope that we will uh discuss things like a rental registry, which I'm supportive of, in addition to uh the discussion around tenant protections.

I'm also supportive of uh the ordinance that would put that into place so that we can make sure we prevent homelessness and support our renters as well.

Thank you.

Very good.

Supervisor Tam, then Marquez.

Um thank you, President Halbert.

Uh I had met with uh several of the affordable housing providers um last year, and they showed me their financials in terms of justifying uh the amounts, but I see this as an effort for capacity building to help stabilize them so they can create more permanent supportive housing.

But at the same time, I want to echo something that uh Supervisor Miley had said.

Uh back on September 9th, we did pass a hundred and fifteen million dollar contract with a boat for the flexible housing subsidy to braid the different uh funding sources that would include uh rental subsidies, and that would help a lot of the um the tenants that are in the unincorporated area because this will uh provide more of an efficient and streamlined one shop, one-stop shop.

So I wanted to make sure that uh we note that because that was a very unusual undertaking for Alameda County to be able to uh provide this flexible pool for future needs.

Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you, President Haber.

I just want to thank the community for your ability to mobilize and organize for well over a year.

We've been um aware of this issue, and I really appreciate the collaboration with the multiple affordable housing developers.

Um it's essential that we preserve these properties for the people that are currently housed.

Um it is a cycle of life.

We're not all going to live here forever.

So at some point, those units are going to go to other people that are on the wait list.

So it's really important that we preserve this.

Just want to echo to the community.

We heard your comments loud and clear.

And you if you stick around for the entire day, you will see that we are doing our best to address all of the concerns that were raised.

This is just one piece of the equation, but it is a vital one.

So I'm happy to um move the item and we've got that.

A motion's been made and seconded.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Supervisor Marquez.

Aye, supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Aye.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Aye.

President Howard.

Aye.

Okay, that completes uh that item under general administration.

We now move to the work study board of supervisors work session.

These are open session items.

Public comment will be taken at each of them.

The first one is a board operations, and this is proposed responses to the 2024 25 grand jury report.

We'll ask for a staff report followed by public comment.

And I see recognizing Mr.

Tim Dupuy from our registrar voters providing the staff report update on this grand jury report.

President Havert, members of the board, um, this is your annual response to last year's grand jury uh final report.

And as you know, we had attached uh two draft responses for you.

Uh one is on behalf of the Board of Supervisors responding to the findings and recommendations that you were asked to respond to related to the registrar of voters office, and the lengthier document is a draft response that was uh prepared by the um registrar of voters.

So your board has I hope had an opportunity to review them.

Uh we are before you today to get your uh input and feedback, which we will incorporate in a proposed final response that will be brought forward to your board at your October 7th meeting for formal approval and adoption and then transmitted to the presiding judge and the grand jury.

Um, as you note, the registrar of voters is available remotely.

Um, the deputy uh registrar of voters, Cynthia Cornejo is here and can step up to the table to respond to any questions that your board uh may have.

Very good.

Do we also have a report from Tim Dupuy?

We can certainly ask or is he just online for well?

He's online for questions, but he can address the response, the lengthier responses are those that the registrar of voters was directed to respond to.

Shall we go to public comment unless there are any burning questions at this point?

I see none.

Let's go to public comment on this item.

The proposed responses to the grand jury report.

How many speaker slips do we have filled out uh in person or how many hands raised online?

We have three speakers online.

Very good.

We'll um close the period for announcing public comment and ask for those online to be called.

Two minutes each.

Mindy, you're on the line.

Okay, hi.

Yes, hello.

I I want to respond to uh what Mr.

Dupuy has said that is not needed uh to test all the tabulators during the LA testing, LA testing in his document.

This is wrong, and the grand jury is correct, and we have to hold the the grand jury report accountable.

Every piece of equipment needs to be tested.

You can't ever allow one piece of equipment to speak for all equipment, and we know this from technological standpoint is not possible, and so therefore, you know, this is absolutely necessary before the November for special election, but we have some very important things on the ballot that uh, and we need to ensure that the board of Supervisors, you know, that you intervene on this and make sure what we hold Tim Depuy accountable as long as he's still the head of the ROV until he leaves.

And you know, and we should make sure that at the LA testing, absolutely, every single every single tabulators to be tested.

This is not a question of, well, it takes a lot of time or one shows all.

No, time is needed.

Elections have to be honest.

They have to be in the hands of the population that they see that they're being uh uh protected, that everything is transparent and everything is clear.

So I'm calling on the board of supervisors to enforce this with Tim Depuy and a poll the grand jury report on this.

This is Mindy Patrick.

I am candidate for mayor of Oakland in 2026.

Thank you.

That's all I had to say.

You're on the line, you have two minutes to speak.

Hi, uh Don Guerrero Fremont.

Um I'm also on Jackie, we'll go with John.

Okay, go ahead.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh I'd like to also uh address the logic and actually uh logic and accuracy test.

Mr.

Dupuy in his document quoted the wrong regulation.

The regulation uh 2027 pertains to those on demand ballot printers that are in the uh poll centers.

That's what he's talking about.

That's what that particular uh regulation refers to.

The logic and accuracy test is for the tabulators, which is governed by a whole different uh regulation.

And in that regulation, it says that Mr.

Depuis has to announce the date, time and place of of the testing of the equipment as specified in election code 15,000.

Go to the election code 15,000.

Election code 15,000 says that every single tabulator has to be tested.

Uh I believe it's around uh at least no later than seven days before the election.

So Mr.

Depuis is mistaken, and he uh doubled down on that and several other parts of his document.

He is quoting the wrong regulation.

Thank you.

You want me to start now?

Jackie, yes, go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

Um, uh, on top of that, uh, with my uh two other colleagues from Itaca, I wanted to just also reiterate um the L and A testing.

Yeah, Mr.

Dupuy is correct in his response.

It is a show, it is a show for the grand jury that they did.

It was not any testing whatsoever.

And actually, they didn't start actually reporting and posting when they are going to be quote unquote really testing the tabulators until we pushed for it.

So then they finally started letting people know when that's gonna happen.

Um, but again, it should be a full test, and not only that, but uh the ballots that are marked should be created by somebody other than uh the the staff.

So uh the our LNA testing needs some great improvements.

Um also uh the question there was a response on here that uh observers are not able to ask uh questions, and the grand jury is correct.

We're not able to ask questions.

When we're standing there and we're observing, we should be able to, and the law says that we are allowed to ask questions.

We're not allowed to talk, we're not allowed to say one thing, and the people that they send aren't even allowed to talk to us or answer our questions.

So it's very militant and um very unfriendly.

So the grand jury's report is correct, it needs uh lots of improvement.

We're looking forward to the future of fresh, fresh blood getting in there and changing the culture.

Um, also, we we want to state the um the one percent manual tally uh during the observation um that we were given no explanation of the hand count process.

Um that is correct.

There's no explanations whatsoever.

Not only that, they're not even uh manning the tables properly.

So there's a lot of processes, and everything the grand jury says in this report is accurate.

So I'm very concerned that the fibs that are coming back, the uh and the lies through omission.

It's been an ongoing process.

So again, we're looking forward to the change.

Please do a deep dive into the grand jury and believe the grand jury.

Thank you.

In person, Zach.

The right of counsel 5USC 290163 CFR is a vote win right be the United States.

I'm against my Fifth Amendment.

I, as the agent of the state swear in as Patrick Xavier, Alden Anderson, and I'm in the impeachment agent from organization of the Anderson.

As the agent of the state and the federal indictment agent, I am also the agent of identified and barefacts for the United States.

Challenge the view to the vote, the view of the right to counsel and the right to interpellate exchange used and district compared to superior.

A thumbprint has not been identified in every county and state application and state supreme court against the United States.

This same application has been wondered to wearable webcams, village, township, municipalities, there to city and county based on interjurisdictional application for that of law enforcement.

As the agent of the state, Jesser via the United States is identified in view of roll call to the view of the electioner or vote as the application in the view of the right to counsel, in view of negligence of the United States and this board and the tri-regional application of the state.

I have submitted myself for what is known as the democratic remote of the country of France, and I'm wondering that the 68% of the vote that chose to nominate me as president and prime minister, is a current day-to-day application in the view of asylum at that application and the review of the state and view of duality of location, deputy NATO commander is my proper title, and I move against the view to the federal grand jury indictment.

Thank you.

First of all, I want to I want to thank whoever or whatever entity filed the complaint with the grand jury.

At this point, you are every voting citizen of Alameda County's hero.

So thank you.

Furthermore, I'd like to speak about Mr.

Depuis as an administrator.

You know, we could get lost in the muddy waters of what the responsibilities of the Secretary of State is to oversee the functions of our Alameda County ROV.

But the bottom line is this.

The Board of Supervisors is responsible for our ROV director because he is an appointed position.

And I would really hope that in the future, um, you take extremely seriously splitting again those jobs.

We don't Alameda County citizens should never see a director of IT slash ROV director.

That's number one.

Number two, we I absolutely agree with Jackie.

We need to see some fresh blood in this ROV.

President Halbert, you will remember our 25-minute one-on-one conversation prior to the midterm election in 2022 when I brought you documents proving that the Alameda ROV was in violation of federal code, IRS code with its labor laws.

There were balls put into play that did correct that, but the ROV as in its administration, Mr.

Dupuy was not responsible enough to make sure that the county was within code.

I want to see a separate ROV director in the future.

Thank you.

We have one last speaker.

Okay, very good.

With that said, I'll um ask members of the board if they would like to weigh in or comment on this item.

Again, it's information only.

Um I'll ask uh Mr.

Dupuis online if he wants to make any comments in response.

I would like to proceed that though.

Uh I realize that people called Mr.

Dupuis out by name, and I want to make it clear.

We as elected officials are open for criticism.

Our staff, though, work for us.

They're doing the best job they can.

If you have a problem with that, direct them to us, as you have, but I would ask people to leave personal comments about our staff aside.

Um, that said, Mr.

Dupuis, would you care to comment?

Uh so there were a number of comments made about the public logic and accuracy testing response in the grand jury report.

Um I just want to call out that there are uh from a logistics standpoint, there is a public logic and accuracy test, which is a demonstration which we work with the grand jury on large elections to administer as part of the election code.

It's a one-time event in which we work with the public to sh to demonstrate what we're doing in terms of testing all of our equipment, but we show a sampling of uh the equipment uh for the purposes of demonstrating what the logic and accuracy test is.

There were some comments made that we need to test all of the equipment.

Uh and uh my response is that we absolutely do, and we've made that process available to the public as well.

It's published on our website when we uh we uh go through that process and all equipment goes through a logic and accuracy test uh before it's put into play for an election.

So I just wanted to address uh those uh few public comments that were made about the uh logic and accuracy test comments.

Thank you.

I I'd like to um also remind everyone and ask you a question, Mr.

Dupuis, about the elections commission that we've put in place.

I believe each of us having an appointment to that commission as well as other um entities again, maybe not every entity.

I wish we could include more, maybe we should include more.

I don't know, but that group has met, and um I just would would like for you to describe the changes or the I guess improvements or I mean we're always getting better.

And I know in my conversations with you, you explain that um you keep an open mind to recommendations, even from the grand jury's report, but from members of the public and from that commission.

Um, are we getting better?

Do we commit to continuous improvement?

Um, and uh will we take to heed the comments and recommendations from that commission and from members of the public who are able to participate in those meetings for continuous improvement.

So the um election commission has been in place for over a year now, and uh we've worked very closely.

ROV has worked very closely with uh the election commission, and uh several of the uh items that they've brought up uh we have uh put in place, and as you said, there's always room to continue to improve.

Uh in terms of this grand jury report, uh, it's a mix of things that we uh disagree with, partially agree with, and do agree with, and uh we will be putting into play uh for the June election uh several of the recommendations that the grand jury here has made.

Um for example, um, in the logic and accuracy testing, they've asked to randomly select one of our scanners for the public logic and accuracy test.

They actually asked for three, but logistically we're going to be implementing a random selection of one, and that's called out in here.

So there's there's an improvement towards what the grand jury has asked for.

They've asked for uh some changes to our website.

We're going to be putting some of those in place as well.

So to your point, Supervisor Howbert, um, absolutely we're open to uh those suggestions, and uh we just need to look at it through a lens of uh the the processes that we have to put in place and to see that it's logistically something that we can actually implement.

Uh but we're absolutely open to um these these observations and looking to continue to improve.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Dupuis.

And I do want to thank the members of the public that are very knowledgeable and experienced in these topics and bring ideas to us, as Mr.

Dupuis said, he has an open mind.

We have an open mind, and I'll just say we've continued to hear the requests and comments about our structure and how we have departments that are consolidated into one place.

Um we as a board will continue to monitor and observe that and we'll be making um we will manage accordingly.

That's up to our board to do.

With that said, um, no other uh public comments.

I've asked my questions.

I recognize Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Next.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Um, in relation to the board's draft responses to the grand jury report, um I do concur with the sentence that the board supports the ROV to responsibly achieve greater transparency and increase reporting, as well as the sentence that says the board supports increasing the frequency of updates during the tabulation period.

Um I do have a couple questions.

I think these would be directed to our registrar.

Um how can we potentially achieve some of these goals?

Technology is mentioned, as well as evolving election laws.

I'm wondering if our registrar could speak to how we can move forward with those intentions.

Are you specifically talking about uh the frequency of the tally update or um or the speed at which we certify?

Um, um sure.

The the frequency of updates during the tabulation period as well as it's also it's related increasing uh reporting.

Okay.

Um so certainly uh in terms of uh our ability to certify an election, uh our current staffing, our resources, and so on.

Uh the the items that the our board has your board has approved uh for improved efficiencies, things like uh we installed a couple years ago a million-dollar uh high-speed sorter for the in processing of increased uh vote by mail since we now see our uh we're we're seeing predominantly vote by mail voting.

Uh we so there's a technology that's been put in place by your board's approval, an investment that's been made and in uh uh increased equipment that has helped in our efficiency.

So uh there are room, there is room for efficiency to be introduced through technology.

Uh certainly we would welcome more space and and more people, but I want the board to know that we've we've never had an issue in which the certification was at risk.

We've always been in a position to certify our elections, and we we look back at least 30 years, and we've never had an issue uh with certifying our elections on time within the legally mandated time period, which is 30 days uh from the election date.

So the issue really is can we um uh update our unofficial tallies more frequently?

And the the board uh probably is aware that the election code doesn't uh stipulate how often we need to update those tallies.

We have erred towards uh updating our tallies when we have uh a meaningful amount of tally to produce that would show a difference to the public in in the races.

If the direction is to update more frequently, say every day, uh we could do that today given what we have.

The updates just may not be uh meaningful.

For example, back in November, uh we updated our website.

Uh the no the Thursday after the Tuesday uh uh election day, and the update was very small.

It was only 2,000 votes.

Uh, and there was were some comments that we were exceedingly slow.

The next day we posted 90,000 votes.

It's the nature of the workflow uh that uh dictates how much we would update our tallies each day.

So uh I guess it's a long answer to say that uh more equipment, more space, uh we may be able to uh more frequently update our tallies and and give more meaningful uh tally updates uh you know again more frequently.

Um but if the public demand were for us to update daily today, we could do it.

It just may not be uh what the public's looking for.

The the tallies would be uh would vary from very uh very small to something meaningful.

Um, but again, I it's a long answer to say, but we've never been at risk of certifying the election.

So it's a matter of um how much do we want to invest in uh having those earlier tallies uh perhaps uh help to be meaningful uh in seeing what the outcomes of uh some of the significant races are.

Thank you.

Uh just two more questions.

I do think that the draft responses uh from both the board and the registrar are very clear and informative.

Um is there a place where the ballot processing and reporting protocol is accessible?

I think part of this is also just making very clear, like these draft responses make clear what the processes are that the registrar follows.

Um perhaps I can hand that over to Cynthia Cornejo, who I believe is in the room, uh and she can tell you a little bit about what we plan to do in terms of making some improvements to our website and uh having some more of this information available to the public.

Great.

Actually, before Cynthia Cynthia, you speak, um, I'll just ask my last question and then I'll be done.

I'm also wondering if there's a place where the cost schedule specifically for cities is public.

I know there's uh cost information about the cost per um per voter for different types of election, but if there's information regarding the cities, that might be helpful to also make public.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In terms of what updates or enhancements that we're going to do regarding um making public our processes and um more explanation as to what procedures are, we're developing now a toolkit that we will publish online that will have important dates, some explanations on observation and processes for observing.

We'll also provide contact information, outreach information, and that'll be posted on our website.

And we're working on the finalization of that now.

And then also within each observation area, we're also implementing some type of signage that will provide the observers a clear summary of what they're watching.

As it is now, we provide procedures at each site, observation site.

But we thought it would be best to put a sign or some way to be able to make it more apparent of what's going on.

Also, in terms of providing more accessibility to someone who can answer questions.

So we have election attendants now who are chaperoning our observers around.

We also make available any manager, including myself or Tim, for anyone that has questions.

So just making us more accessible and available to the public.

Also, in terms of your question regarding costs, we do publish on our website election costs per voter based on the number of registered voters.

Also, what we provide is detailed information in terms of their billing as well, with supplies services that is included within their billing structure.

If anyone should call or want information regarding the structure, we also provide that as well in detail.

Any other questions?

Okay, Tamarquez.

She asked me first, but you picked the green button first.

So you're next.

Thank you, President Halbert.

I think Supervisor Fortunato Bass covered a lot of the questions I had in terms of the board's response.

Because clearly what we're hearing is more is not necessarily better.

We won't necessarily increase the efficiencies.

We can under the existing staffing provide the frequency that maybe the public won't want, but it may not be not all that meaningful.

So the question I had is we obviously share the cost when it comes to the elections, whether it's the upcoming election on proposition 50, whether it's the city elections.

So far, have any city been in arrears in terms of their payment to the county for the election costs?

Sophia, can you answer that for us?

Sure.

We do have at times where cities will ask for more detail to be provided to them in terms of their direct billing, and we do provide that, and at times there may be more discussions on the billing itself that we provide.

There have been times where cities are late in providing the payment, but we are actively collecting the payment and making sure that they, if they have any questions or need more information, that we provide that definitely.

Okay, so when we buy a new piece of equipment or we uh adjust staffing based on uh the election needs, uh do we typically have um a way in which the cities know ahead of time uh what that likely cost might be, and so they can budget accordingly.

So I'll answer that, Cynthia.

So uh in our uh billing uh we have a a charge uh per voter in which that we collect uh and we retain um in a fund for buying future equipment.

Uh so that, and we we've kept that fee uh uh the same since we implemented it.

Uh Cynthia, but what is the uh the price per voter that we add?

85 cents per voter.

Right.

And that's been in place for about I'm gonna say 10 years maybe.

Um so every election in which we have uh local races, that 85 cents per voter is added to the cost, and it it creates a reserve fund uh to allow us to purchase uh uh equipment that we need uh to enhance the existing system and ultimately at some point we'll have to replace the system that we currently have with an entirely new system.

Um and that reserve fund would be used uh for that as well.

Do we have any idea whether the 85 cents per voter that we've had over the last 10 years will be sufficient in terms of our equipment needs in the future or technological needs?

Uh uh I believe that it's something that we're going to have to take a look at uh because it has been in place and and has been held at that 85 cents for so long.

Uh and and the cost of equipment does continue to rise.

So it is something that we're going to have to take a look at uh for the future for future elections to see if uh there needs to be an adjustment.

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Marquez.

Um thank you so much for the response both from the county as well as your own, Mr.

Dupree.

I think um this is a very critical role that you have, and I know you're doing your best to um always improve it, and we did see significant changes this last cycle.

So thank you for your leadership in that.

Um I wanted to clarify with respect to proposition 50.

Is it true that the state legislators are going to be fully funding that election?

Uh so we um Cynthia, maybe you can talk about the that we've just received uh uh what we we gave the state a projection of what we thought the county costs were going to be, and I believe Cynthia, that we've just received uh uh that uh as a wire transfer, correct?

That is correct.

We have we received it yesterday.

That's good to hear.

And then just since we're on the topic of special elections and we've had our share in the last few years.

Um other than proposition 50, what is there's one more special election in this county.

Um can you speak to that?

Uh Cynthia, could you speak to it?

Um on the same date as the special statewide, we have the Washington Township health care district uh measure um on the ballot as well.

And that would include the tri-cities as well as South Hayward.

Correct.

Okay, thank you so much.

Very good.

Seeing no other questions, I note that this is the response to the grand jury report will be coming to us for formal adoption on October seventh, uh, a week from today.

This is a great preview.

Uh thank you uh Miss Cornejo and Mr.

Dupuy for being here.

Uh we will um take this matter up again for approval next week.

With that said, we're moving on now to the next item, a budget and finance update item two.

There's item two I and I.

The first one is a federal, state, and county budget and financial forecast.

Ms.

Muranishi, is this you?

Yes, it is.

So we do have um three updates for your board.

We're actually gonna start with um an o budget overview as well as an updated five-year financial forecast that will be presented um by Melanie Atendito, and that will be followed by an update on federal and state budget and policy that will be presented by Amy Schrago.

Thank you, Susan.

Thank you.

No.

Okay, thank you.

Well, we're getting the debt queued up here.

Um we do try to uh present uh an updated budget as well as five-year forecasts to your board every quarter or so.

Um, sometimes we don't get the chance to present it at your work sessions.

Uh, depending on time, I'm gonna move.

I'm gonna try to move relatively quickly through this as a number of the slides should look fairly familiar, so I apologize to the members of the public who aren't as familiar.

Um, just to start with some quick facts on the county.

Uh the county of Alameda is the seventh most populous in the state of California.

We have a population of roughly 1.6 million, which includes 14 incorporated cities as well as our unincorporated communities.

Um, the latest census data suggests the median household income is roughly 126,000.

This is as of 2023, and the unemployment rate in the county is 5.1% as of August 2025.

That's the seasonally unadjusted number.

That compares to the state's 5.5% and the nation's 4.3% for the same time period.

Um, I should note that California's unemployment rate remains the second highest in the nation behind only Washington DC.

Moving on to uh economic context, since our discretionary revenue is largely property tax based, we keep a close eye on indicators in the local real estate market.

Um missing uh before I move on to that.

Sorry, that the uh the central bank has, sorry, you can go back to that previous.

The central bank has shifted its focus from inflation to jobs.

Um, we have shown a similar slide in previous forecasts with uh a number of private companies in the county as well as in the region that have been in the headlines with respect to layoffs.

What I'm showing here is the concentration in the tech sector for what we've seen so far in 2025.

Um, and so we've continued to see slowing job growth and ongoing cutbacks in the tech sector, most notably as you can see here, um layoffs in some of our major tech companies in the region, such as Meta Platforms, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Intel, and Cruz.

And now moving on to the real estate market.

Uh, the August numbers posted last week, and according to the state association of realtors, median price in the county is at 1.27 million, which is a one and a half percent increase over the previous month, but down slightly from a year ago.

Home sales are down about 10% compared to last month and down 5% from a year ago.

The rate of unsold inventory is up about 8% compared to July and is also up by roughly the same percentage compared to a year ago.

And median time on the market in the county was 16 days for the month of August, unchanged from the previous month, up a little more than 14% compared to a year prior, while the state's median time on the market for the same time period was 31 days.

So again, overall low inventory continues to keep prices high and out of reach for many buyers trying to enter the market.

The housing and economic forecasts released by the state association of realtors predicted that a more favorable interest rate environment would eventually entice more buyers and sellers to enter the market.

Moving on to county financing.

As I've done before, I think it's important to note the difference between cities and counties.

Cities in general enjoy more autonomy and revenue generating capabilities, while counties operate under a different set of rules and have a distinct role in the state's governance.

So the county essentially serves a dual role.

It administers to the entire county, state, federal, and local programs that are required by law.

We call these our mandated services.

And the county also provides city type or municipal services to the unincorporated areas.

Moving on to the county's fiscal dilemma, um, the fiscal dilemma is essentially that we anticipate being faced with a significant increase in the demand for safety net services when the economy worsens.

And the county's ability to raise revenue to match the demand and costs is severely limited by Prop 13, Prop 218, and the education Revenue Augmentation Fund or ERAF, which I'll talk a little bit more about in the next two slides.

So this shows the impact of the state's ERAF shift, which began in fiscal year 92 93 when the state cut funding for schools and shifted local property tax dollars from local jurisdictions to backfill the state's cut.

The estimated ERAF shift in the current fiscal year is 723 million, which would bring the total cumulative shift from the county to 11.5 billion.

So that means that's 11.5 billion in property tax revenue that has not come to the county during this time period.

The next chart shows the annual funding gaps that the county has experienced after EREF was implemented.

The maintenance of effort funding gap for the current fiscal year that we closed was 105.7 million.

So since ERAF began, the county has closed funding shortfalls totaling 2.6 billion.

If we take a look at our property tax dollar, you can see that nearly well, I'll go over this a little bit later, but nearly 90% of the county's discretionary revenue is property tax based.

The county only receives 15 cents of every property tax dollar collected.

So in terms of discretionary revenues, it's roughly 31% of the general fund.

Moving on to an overview of our current year budget.

$5.1 billion in major governmental funds, which includes capital and special revenue funds.

And if we include internal service funds as well as special funds and districts, a total of 6.1 billion, all funds.

The next series of slides focuses on the general fund.

As you can see, salaries and benefits are the largest expense at over 1.7 billion or nearly 40 percent of general fund expenses.

Discretionary services and supplies, what you see in the green there includes operational expenses, as well as over 1 billion in CBO contracts, which are detailed by program in the following slide.

So as I mentioned, we have over a billion dollars in general fund appropriations to support community-based organization contracts.

The current fiscal year budget includes support for 275 CBOs, 12 million dollars in general government, 650 million for health care, an additional 135 for the Alameda Health System, 140 million for public assistance, and 65 million for public protection.

The county's three largest program areas of health, public protection, and public assistance are all budgeted at over 1 billion dollars.

General government programs are roughly 7% of the general funds, so together, all four programs make up over 90% of budgeted appropriations.

State and federal revenue, including over 200 million in Medicaid charges for services, means that nearly two-thirds of general fund revenue come from state and federal sources.

Again, you can see here that the vast majority of the county's revenue, nearly 70%, is program revenue, which funds our mandated programs.

And as you recall seeing on the slide with the property tax dollar, discretionary revenue is only about 31% of the general fund.

If we take a look at discretionary revenue by source, you can see that the majority of our discretionary revenue is property tax-based.

Both the blue and the green sections of the pie chart here reflect property tax-based revenue.

This slide shows the use of discretionary revenue by program.

Like other non-hospital counties, Alameda County uses a relatively large proportion of discretionary revenue for public safety compared to our other major programs, health and public assistance, which leverage significant amounts of state and federal revenue.

Sorry, you can move on to the next slide.

So in terms of budget monitoring, every quarter, the county administrator's office sends out a request to agencies and departments to submit quarterly projections as part of our budget monitoring efforts.

This process supports accountability related to spending and regular comprehensive monitoring of the budget also allows for the evaluation of service level provision, progress towards goals and expectations, and an examination of trends and other deviations that may impact future operations.

Today happens to be the end of the first quarter, so we'll be sending out a call to departments shortly to submit their first quarter projections.

But based on a preliminary review and under conservative assumptions, we anticipate that first quarter projections will suggest savings due to a combination of projected underspending driven by high vacancy rates offset by an underrealization of program revenues.

Moving on to the five-year forecast, those of you familiar will know that our model assumes continued economic growth, no new unfunded programs, and no other major changes to existing labor agreements.

Major drivers include the cost of labor, operating costs, outpacing revenue as we always see, as well as IHSS inflation.

Risks include the prospect of recession as well as the impact of interest rates on the national and global economies.

This slide shows a combination of one-time and ongoing budget balancing strategies we've used to close the funding gap over the years.

As you can see, the reliance on one-time strategies every year reflected in the blue sections of the stock bar show the structural deficit we face, developing the county budget with operational costs always outpacing revenue growth.

For the current fiscal year, you'll recall we closed a 105.7 million dollar funding gap with 60.6 million of one-time strategies and 45.1 million of ongoing.

As we've seen in previous forecasts, if we assume a base case scenario, we see the projected funding gaps grow over the five-year horizon.

This model assumes no corrective measures are taken to address the funding gaps, and so you see it growing significantly in the out years.

And in terms of long-term obligations, all three major credit rating agencies reaffirm the county's triple A ratings, citing our prudent financial management policies and practices, consistent budgetary performance and strong stable management team.

This triple crown designation is shared by only two other counties in the state.

Our other significant long-term liabilities include over 800 million in unfunded capital and major maintenance needs, as well as the county's pension liability, with a SERA's most recent actuarial valuation showing a one and a half billion dollar unfunded actuarial accrued liability, with the county being the largest participating employer.

At the end of June of this year, your board approved a transfer of 400 million to ASERA to continue to reduce our portion of the UAAL.

And that is in addition to prior action your board has taken to reduce our unfunded liability.

Listed here are a number of pending factors.

I won't go through all of them, but this is a short list of factors that we continuously monitor.

Amy Schregel will be talking a little bit more about the state and federal budget.

I'll highlight here that pending litigation and settlements are increasing in complexity and volume.

And then at the macroeconomic level, of course, global finances and climate change, as well as the threat of a downturn, are always a concern for counties as these periods are often when services are needed most.

Yet these are typically times when we see a decrease in revenue to support these services.

And finally, all of our budget development, not only during the budget season proper, but throughout the year as your board adjusts the budget, are guided by your board's adopted vision 2036, the core operating principles, 10x goals, with commitments to community services and priorities.

Thank you for the presentation.

Very helpful.

Before we go to public comment, I'll ask for any clarifying questions.

I'll recognize Supervisor Miley.

Thank you, President Albert.

I have a few questions to ask Melanie or the County Administrator.

So, first of all, I don't know if Amy's going to cover this, but with the pending government shutdown at the federal level, will Amy be speaking to that?

Okay, so I'll wait for Amy on that.

Okay.

Then one of your slides, Melanie, you mentioned mandates have continued to increase reimbursements suspended or delayed in programs realigned and inadequate ongoing funding.

Could you speak more to that?

Because I just think that's really, really, really important.

Yes, thank you for the question, Supervisor Miley.

So that is essentially a reference to what we've seen over the course of time, really stretching over decades now, with the state shifting responsibility to the county, often when it has its own budget crisis.

So we've seen a series of uh what we've more recently been calling realignments, um, starting with the shift of the responsibility over the medically indigent many, many years ago.

Um moving on to programs that were realigned in 1991 as well as 2011.

And our concern is that as that responsibility continues to shift from the state to the local level, uh the state is often not providing adequate funding to cover the cost of the county picking up that responsibility.

Uh yes, and I know uh former Supervisor Carson was very much on top of this as a representative on CSAC and and uh NACO.

And I know the county administrators is still here, but I think uh President Howard are you a representative now?

And are you on top of this?

Because that's very serious.

Super important.

Um, unfortunately, as we all know, Alameda County lost its seat at the executive committee of CSAC last year.

We're gonna hopefully regain that this year.

I'm working very hard to do that.

I imagine discussions occur there.

Um but indeed CSAC is a very important part of our lobbying effort at Sacramento, and indeed you're hitting on a very important point.

Both of you are.

Um, we're a subset of the state, and when the state provides additional unfunded mandates, it's an extreme pressure on county services.

You're absolutely right, okay.

Yeah, so I just think that really needs to be.

I mean, I just learned that as a county supervisor, being here in school on that, and I just really think we need to uh be very, very, very mindful of that.

Then uh one of your other slides, uh, the county's portion of the dollar.

Um, redevelopment has dissolved many, many years ago.

I didn't support the desolution of redevelopment, but it's gone.

So, why is there still 15 cent going towards redevelopment?

Uh my understanding is that we still reflect that portion of the property tax dollar because the process of unwinding um takes time, and so what's what's actually happening is that that portion of the property tax dollars getting redistributed to the other taxing entities, but it is still tracked separately as as the agencies unwind.

Okay.

Now, Supervisor Lena Tam and I serve on the Unincorporated Services Committee, and we are very much dialed into the needs of the unincorporated area.

Um, we don't have in the county, we don't return, it's not return to source because a lot of the revenue uh is generated either in Fremont, uh associated with Silicon Valley, the Tri-Valley as well.

Uh our revenue goes towards the need and to provide safety net services.

So I recall um there was a slide not here, but in the budget, um, overall budget presentation in terms of the amount of um revenue that we expend in Oakland.

And I thought I recall something like 400 million or more was being expended in Oakland with CBO contracts, 400 million, I don't know how many um uh staff in the level of services, but 400 million is a healthy chunk change uh for CBOs.

I think Supervisor Tam and I are equally interested in knowing what is the level of expenditure by CVOs in the unincorporated area.

Do you know that?

Uh Supervisor, I don't know that figure offhand.

I think it's it's a figure that we're gonna continue to research with a lot of our CBO contracts going out for procurement under the assumption that the services are to be countywide.

It's something that's challenging to track, but it's certainly something that we'll continue to work with agencies and departments so that we can identify with better precision the actual investment in the unincorporated communities in particular.

Yeah, because I, you know, I think I've seen a lot of progress over the years in terms of resources being allocated in the corporate area.

But you know, we're getting a lot of attention.

My invoice we did uh a fair share, justice coalition type uh budgeted and presentation, and people are trying to understand what level of resources we are expending in the incorporate area, and then you know I don't want to speak with Supervisor Tam.

Uh and I'm speaking of the urban and corporate area as opposed to the uh rural and the corporate area, which is supervisor halbert.

But um, we're very sensitive to uh responding to those needs, those questions and that level of transparency, because we if we aren't spending what we need to be spending, we need to know that.

But if we are, we need to make sure the public is aware of the revenue on the resources that we're putting into the incorporate area, both by those agencies and departments that have direct responsibility as well as social services and health care, what they're doing in that accorporate area as well as the CBOs we contract because I've seen a lot of um progress over time, but you know, it's what what have you done for me lately?

And so I just think we're very sensitive, and we need to begin to indicate that in our presentations because as you pointed out, counties are different than cities, but because we have municipal responsibility, and we have to have a corporate area with about 150,000, 160,000 people, both urban and rural.

Um, I think we need to carve that out and indicate that when we have these these updates.

Uh so if you would consider doing that, that would be very much appreciated, appreciate it.

Um I think that's all my questions for now because I'm I'll wait for Amy to make her presentation, so thank you.

Supervisor Fort Santa Bass.

Thank you.

I have uh two questions.

First, looking at the discretionary revenue spending uh debt service at 19.68%.

Has that been trending at around that level previously?

I'm just curious if there's any significant changes in terms of that percentage.

I'll defer to the county administrator if she has more to say, but my understanding is that it's been trending downwards.

I think it's been pretty consistent because as you know, the county has not really issued any additional debt.

You know, our largest debt is the debt that we've been carrying is general fund contribution to support the rebuild of the acute tower at the Wilmachan um AHS campus.

So that is our you know largest debt.

Um the debt we've issued most recent recently has been general obligation bond debt, which is of course covered by um taxpayers, right?

Okay, thank you.

Um, and then looking at pages 26 and 27, um, it's very notable that over, you know, since 2017, um, the budget shortfall that the county has had to close has been under 100 million until this current fiscal year and the projected budget gaps are trending well over 100 million.

So, my question is um given that counties are pretty constrained compared to cities in terms of generating new revenue, whether um at CSAC or other tables with counties, there's advocacy around revenue generation, whether it's pushing on the state to generate more revenue that will flow to the counties or potentially allowing the counties to have more ability to generate revenue.

Thank you.

Supervisor Marquez and then Tam.

Um, thank you, President Halbert.

Thank you for this presentation.

It is always extremely comprehensive.

So I appreciate the updates.

Um, just a couple requests um for future updates.

If we could please do, I know we have every intention to do this quarterly, but that doesn't always happen.

But if we could please just do a look back, maybe from the last two uh report outs what the unemployment rate was previously because I recall last time, I believe it was under 5%.

But if we could just be tracking that would be helpful.

And then with respect to the major drivers, I forgot what slide it was, but I know IHSS was mentioned as well as we know many, many other unfunded mandates.

So it'd be helpful to know what we're doing in terms of our advocacy with CSAC and PAL efforts if there's any state legislation, but basically, what are we doing to ensure these unfunded mandates are minimized, or what are we doing to identify additional funding from the state?

I think it'd be very helpful to be tracking that.

And then if we could also in the future add, I want us to be very uh clear and focused on we're in a unique position, although we have many cuts from the uh federal government, we are in a unique place in the sense that we have measure C and measure W, but that funding is not in perpetuity.

So I think it's really important that we keep that top of mind when we're discussing our budget.

So just more information around when they sunset, what's the balance, if we could also include that?

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Tim.

Thank you, President Halbert, and I appreciate uh the overview.

I'm going to augment some of my comments uh on what Supervisor Miley talked about, because Melanie, you had also presented to the unincorporated services committee meeting.

Um Supervisor Miley was talking about the 400 million dollars that was going to Oakland.

Are they uh CBO contracts that are based in Oakland that provide services countywide, or are they services that are going to Oakland?

That number is contracts of CBOs that are located in Oakland, they could be um many of them countywide services.

Most of our contracts are not regionally based.

We have a few that are, you know, zone-based to serve certain regions, but most of them are countywide services.

Okay, so basically, even if uh the 400 million dollars worth of contracts, this of the 275 CBO contractors, they're based in Oakland, but they would provide services in the unincorporated area.

Like I I presume there's a number of CBOs that come to mind.

Um, but when we look at the the breakdown, because I I know it's it's really hard to tease out um people's addresses in terms when they come to Highland Hospital, for example, whether they come from San Lorenzo or Hayward Acres or versus Oakland.

But when we um and I'm not quite sure if it's fruitful to do that, but it is something that I think uh the unincorporated services community feels like they need to understand that they're getting their fair share of the services.

So if we can somehow find a way to um identify the services that they get, not just the CBO contracts, because I know we provide CBDG funding, we provide a number of special districts, whether it's the library and the fire service.

The question I had is like on public protection, it's a 1.1 million dollar uh piece of the pie, which is also similar to um the other with respect to public assistance, but how much of that is really the jail?

Because uh the sheriff's office is basically providing public protection for the unincorporated area solely.

Do you do we know that proportion?

Uh we we do, we uh I don't have the figure offhand, supervisor, but so as a program area, you said a public protection in total is over a billion dollars.

My understanding is that the jail budget is roughly 500 million.

There's also a separate budget that's highlighted in the budget documents uh with respect to the value of law enforcement services, which does focus on the provision of services in the unincorporated.

So I can get we can get that figure back support.

Okay, that would be helpful.

Um, and I I think we talked about it uh going forward.

Uh um Supervisor Miley and I are going to find a way to make sure that there's um like a good two-way communication line with the unincorporated services area because it it seems like the way we present the budget um is appropriate for the board, but it may not be something that is understandable to uh some of the community members, like when they talk about the actual versus budgeted amounts and you know what funding is available and where does that funding go?

So thank you so much.

Yes, thank you for the report.

Um on this exact topic, I know it is uh difficult to tease out as Supervisor Tim mentioned.

Um, but you know, each individual contract, uh, some of them are broken out by service area.

Um the CBOs that receive these contracts uh know where they're spending their time and resources.

Uh I it's very subjective, but but we can be um maybe getting to that.

I don't know if there's a better way to code um our contracts, but it is a topic of discussion.

Even in in my own district, and Supervisor Miley pointed out, I think you know, just as a swag figure, um the the Tri-Valley and Fremont areas generate twenty-seven percent of the tax base, but probably take up 10% or less of our service is because it's not return to service, and that's fine.

That's the way it's supposed to be.

Um, but yet the fair share of what services are needed need to be provided, and that's what my staff is um constantly working on.

What is our fair share and is it being applied appropriately?

I think we we we try to get at it the best, but we can always do better.

And so to the extent we can have a better visibility to where the money's actually spent, or we have more conversations with our staff uh in social services and the health department and CDA to make sure that um that coverage is there.

Uh it's gonna continuously be um that's that's that's what we do.

Um I would like to though focus uh and say thank you to our staff for for working with us on that.

$800 million capital um uh capital cost, I guess we'll talk about that later, but at some point we have to talk about how will we raise the money to do that?

Are we gonna go for a bond?

Are we going to find another way for it?

And the 1.5 billion of a SARA unfunded, uh, I know that that's all a SERA, we're the biggest part of that.

Do we know how much of that 1.5 is it 80%, 90% uh for the county or more?

Um, but more importantly, what is that as a percentage of total liability?

And I think that I've heard in the past that maybe you know, you don't have to be a hundred percent funded, but 80% is a good benchmark because of the the way in which people the state um accounts for things or the way in which a SERA might account for things.

What is our percentage of unfunded liability that just Alameda County is responsible for?

And then my follow-up question to that do we have an off-the-books reserve to cover that or do we just every year make a contribution to try to reduce that or stay within that fair range?

I'm looking at super CEO.

I mean, on the um pension, your you know, your board, you know, had the foresight to set aside a pension liability reduction fund um some years ago, which has you know been very beneficial.

So we did make additional contributions in order to bring down our unfunded liability.

So the funded level of our pension fund, you know, is now um over 80, probably closer to 90.

We'll get that in the next valuation report.

But Alameda County has always paid its annual required contribution, and you know, we have covered our um OPEB liabilities, unlike many other um jurisdictions.

And in addition, I think the board has been um very surgical about looking forward to the unfunded liability, knowing that that is growing.

So I feel that that's an area that you know we have managed well in partnership um with a SERA, and because your board has adopted policies to set aside um some of those funds and continue to you know build that um reserve similar to what you've done with some of your other um reserves, so that we are looking ahead and having some sustainable progress as opposed to doing you know one time and and then having a growing liability on the other side.

Do we want to talk about the 800 million capital or I think we'll talk about that as part of your capital improvement plan that you're absolutely right?

You know, we still have over 800 million um in unfunded um costs related to our uh infrastructure needs.

Um but you're despite the fact that your board has also you know taken a bold action to set aside a long-term capital improvement fund.

The reason I mention it is um, and we can never predict the downturn, but you know, um maybe one is coming, nobody knows, but the best time for public agencies to spend money on capital infrastructure, people's jobs, the hard brick and mortar assets that we need is in a downturn.

They're not people aren't working because the private sector's depressed, the economy's down.

That's the best time for I think our agency to jump in and hire.

And I think you'll see that as we talk about the capital improvement plan, also as we talk about measure W, because it also makes sense to invest one-time resources into infrastructure investment, which are also one-time good point.

With regard to uh, and I note a lot of our budget is made up of state funds, which may be at risk given that the federal government may cut funds to the state, and our budget is made up a lot of federal grants given directly to us, again coming from the federal government.

So we're very vulnerable, all states are, all counties are almost a double whammy.

If it doesn't get to the state, it doesn't get to us.

If it doesn't come from the county federal government to us directly, we could lose twice.

Are we keeping track of and have we had any major grants um not come in as budgeted?

Um, and and I guess um will we continue to how will we continue to monitor that?

If it happens, will you come tell us right away?

What how do we how will we handle that if it happens and has it happened yet, and how will we handle it if it does in the future?

So I think we'll hear a little bit more in the next update around state and federal, but your board, you know, may be aware that recently you've approved a couple of actions where departments have had to refund um some grant funds, you know, for different reasons and you know, relatively small amounts, but you know, we actually we see a trend for sure.

And you know, we know that at the federal level, um, agencies, you know, like FEMA who still owe us a lot of money, um, you know, we're we're subject to a lot of um those activities at the federal level.

And so we're you know, we are monitoring um grants.

Um, we there are other restrictions that are now placed on grants, which make it, you know, more difficult um for us to um automatically access some of that funding.

So there's a whole array of things that are going to put at risk some of our funding.

Then um anecdotally, how much have we had to refund so far?

Roughly, on your last sport agenda, it was a little over two million dollars.

That wasn't a re it was a refund, but we had drawn down everything we possibly could, even though we didn't have um the expenditures.

That's why it got refunded.

Okay, let's just keep tabs on it, and as uh we just monitor that's a risk.

Um that's it for me.

Let's do that and then we'll take public comments.

Yeah, so uh good afternoon.

Um this is uh overview of where we are at the state uh state legislative and budget update and a federal legislative and budget update.

Um in addition to looking forward to next year, um, what we can expect from the state budget as well as well as uh the pending uh federal government shutdown.

It's not.

There's nothing up.

So I'll just get started.

So uh at the state level, the legislative session um ended.

The governor has until um uh 11 59 p.m.

on October 12th to sign our veto bills.

And um there were a couple, there were a few things happening at the end of session um that are supportive of counties in the work that we do.

Okay.

Um let's see.

I don't think it's working.

Okay, um you can um so uh at the end of session we um there were some uh elections funding set aside for full upfront funding of the November special election, which is uh important, and um the funds won't be uh clawed back.

Any excess funds will roll over to future election expenses.

Um there is a HAP round seven that was authorized um for housing and homeless, but it will if that's not until September 2026, and it's significantly less than previous rounds of HAP.

And as part of the housing and homelessness deal, there were CEQA reforms that the governor required in order to move forward some of the housing resources on the um food security and cow fresh front, there is money set aside in the state budget for implementation.

Um it's not very much as you can see, 40 million dollars statewide for um the um ABOD work rule and 20 million statewide for emergency food banks, specifically to support um undocumented residents who would lose access to other uh resources and then uh money for counties for the um to address the cow fresh error rate, which is what counties would be uh punished for in the in HR1.

Um, uh so at the end of the session there were quite a few bills that the county had support positions on and only one opposed position, three of our supported bills, one of which is a sponsored bill, have been signed into law already.

Our sponsored bill, SB 617 was signed over the weekend, and um uh Senator Aragin will be issuing a press statement about that um shortly.

That came from our social services agency, so uh we're happy about that.

Um then our for next year's state budget.

Um, the departments at the state have already been issued their budget policy letter that gives them guidance about any changes that they want to submit, those things needed to be submitted at the beginning of this month, and then next uh in November, the LAO will release their revenue update so that the budget development process can start in earnest.

Um, very uncertain about what the revenues will look like, especially given the our economic health and the impacts of HR1.

And now shifting to Washington, um today is the deadline for government funding.

Um there doesn't seem to be any resolution.

Uh the House nearly passed a short short-term continuing resolution, but this Senate has failed to pass any of the options presented to them.

They are going to vote again today on a couple of options, but it they don't have the they don't seem to have the votes to be able to get that done today.

So it is very likely that tomorrow the federal government will shut down.

And the House is not scheduled to return until October 7th.

So it is looking very likely that there will be a federal shutdown tomorrow.

This is just a little background on what is out there.

This does directly impact local governments.

Federal funding for our safety net programs is destabilized by this when the departments run out of resources and they can't send resources to the states to pay for programs.

On Wednesday, September 24th, the Office of Management and Budget distributed a memo to all of the federal agencies detailing how the administration plans to handle a shutdown.

It has a drastic permanent reduction in the federal workforce, is one of the strategies, and it goes along with the Trump administration's overall strategy to drastically reduce the federal workforce as a whole.

And the memo is really designed to put pressure on the Senate Democrats to vote for what the House passed, so as not to reduce the federal workforce more.

The House passed CR would take them through November 21st.

So it is not a full federal budget.

It would be another continuing resolution.

Tomorrow, when the shutdown does happen, there are immediate federal operations impacts.

But employees and national security and law enforcement and other critical workforce like air traffic control and TSA continue to are continue to require to show up for work, although their pay is furloughed, they would not be paid until a spending bill is passed.

And then all of the hundreds of thousands of other federal workers would be furloughed.

So it there's impacts all the way across, but there you will see we would see a lot of uh lag times in processing of all sorts of things, including passports and places like that.

Social Security and Medicare are considered essential programs, so those payments continue to be made for those programs.

And in addition, a shutdown freezes any new federal contracting or grants.

And so it has implications for businesses and other governments.

Some but not all of the agencies have published their contingency plans about what they'll be doing when a shutdown occurs.

You've seen this before.

HR1 passed on July 4th of this year, and it includes quite a number of impacts that are enormous to us in California alone.

It is projected that we could see 3.4 million Californians lose access to Medi-Cal with significant impacts to covered California and other federal funding resources that aren't just related to Medi-Cal impacts from both HR1 and the state budget changes.

As you can see, it's staggered out across the next several years.

And there are this is a compounding impacts of both HR1 and the choices that have been made at the state.

And most specifically from the state perspective, we are have these compounded effects to Medi-Cal of both the work requirements, and then in addition, we have enrollment changes from the state.

So we could be looking at 183,000 Alameda County residents that would have some sort of Medi-Cal impact.

But it is unclear as to how or if waivers will be approved in the future.

And then as part of HR1, there are no new provider taxes that are allowed, which is how we pay for a lot of our system here, and still a lot of unknowns about how the provisions will be implemented here.

And we do await a lot of guidance still on how to implement the pieces of HR1, both from the feds and from the state.

This is a summary slide, and it takes information from all sorts of players in our system.

We know from the Alliance that they have already seen declining enrollment and it's they are projecting that it will continue to decline.

We know that Health Pack could see increased to cost increase in cost as people lose access to Medi-Cal.

And then Alameda Health System, our Safety Net Hospital provider projects anywhere from five to 15 million dollars loss in next year, 40 to 70 million in the following year, and 70 to 120 million uh in 2028.

So this is very significant to a health system that is you know a critical safety net in our community, and then our community health center network, our clinics have loss projections.

Um, you know, 27 million next year growing to 40 million after that.

So as you can see, the impacts of the these federal changes are immense in our system.

And then on top of that, we're dealing with other changes, Prop One changes affecting behavioral health services and the changes to county to for the county for CalFresh cost sharing um and other shifts that are happening from uh state and federal to the county.

This is a summary slide that uh Social Services Agency provided last week at their committee meeting.

It um shows the policy changes and their effective dates that it's anticipated that these calfresh changes will affect um quite a bit of people, but specifically 13,000 people could lose benefits if they're not able to meet the work requirements, and 9,000 more would be subject to time limits, and all of our CalFresh enrollees will be impacted because of the thrifty food plan, which sets the rate of the benefits received, and that amount will not be updated until October 1st, 2027.

And when it is updated, it's required by HR1 to be cost neutral, so we're not going to see additional purchasing power for our CalFresh clients.

And on top of all of this, uh the administrative cost sharing for this program is going to change.

Um, and uh it will increase by about 8.8 million dollars.

Um, and we are very specifically losing 1.6 million dollars from the elimination of SNAP education funding.

That goes to that those are contracts that go out to CBOs for the work that they they do on SNAP education.

And with all of these, there are many parts of this that we do not have guidance for from the federal or the state government.

So these are projections, and it's going to, as some of them are saying we won't have guidance, you know, maybe for a year.

So it's very hard to know the exact impacts of these without that guidance.

This is just in more specific detail what that previous table was.

And our other pending factors as it relates to our uh social services agency.

Is we're waiting, we're waiting for um more information.

Um the federal interpretation of welfare reform rules could shift even more costs locally, um, and even within the budget process that's happening in Congress, the House has proposed even more cuts to health and human services.

Um and other programs, including HIV AIDS and public health programs.

Uh, we have a lot of outstanding questions about how the ABOB rules are going to be uh implemented.

Um we need to we need to locally and with the state think through how we continue to serve um non-citizens who become who become ineligible.

Um in addition, you know, we are still like I keep repeating, waiting for a lot of guidance on how we are supposed to implement both the state and federal changes.

Um, but as you can see, there is a lot of unknowns, there are there's a lot of work our departments have done to try to figure out as best they can what we need to be planning for.

They are actively planning and preparing.

They are advocating for additional resources for our county, even up to the last minute in the state's budget, trying to make sure there was money for implementation of some of these HR1 changes.

Um, and uh the today's update was really just an effort to keep you fully informed and give you as much as information as we know, and to help guide us as we you know look towards but the budget development process for next year.

And as always, we'll continue to track these things and update you as we get more information.

Um, and certainly we'll be keeping you updated as things progress at the federal federal level today.

Yeah, thank you for the report.

I get out of that that um we are well prepared but have a lot of unknowns.

So that's the best place that we can be is that we're on top of things and we'll continue to get more information.

I know I have questions from my colleagues before we go to Can I just Supervisor Howard?

Just make a mention, and I mean I think you're absolutely right.

There you know, are potentially devastating impacts.

There's also so many unknowns, and and so much of this is also phased in over time.

So I think we shouldn't be overreacting either.

And I think we should be you know trusting that our professionals and the departments are you know working hard in terms of both advocacy as well as preparation, as Amy stated.

I do want to um let you know that um James Jackson, the CEO of AHS, is available along with his team if there are questions.

I think Matt Wooder from the Alliance for Health is also here in the event there are questions.

And of course, our social services and and AC health directors are both present as well.

If the board wanted additional information, and certainly if you have questions.

I'll go to Supervisor Marquez.

Uh thank you, President Howbert.

Uh, this is a lot to digest and process, but I really appreciate um the overview, especially anticipating some of my comments on the other item with respect to state legislation.

So thank you for tracking that here.

This is really good to see the work that we're doing and what we're advocating for.

Um, just wanted to flag a couple other items.

I think what would be helpful too is knowing the deck demographics of our community, similar to the other presentation in terms of our community profile.

We talk about how large your county is, the size of population.

Really curious about the ethnic profile as we know one in three residents are foreign-born.

So just want to continue to echo the efforts and how important it is for us to have dedicated um staff in the future an office of immigrant and refugee affairs to truly be responsive to those needs.

So just wanted to note that.

Yes, and I know both our health and social services departments have plans to bring that to their respective committees.

So we continue to update, and those are ongoing conversations that we have as staff is what's coming, how do we incorporate this into our conversations and reports out on some of some of the other things that we're working on?

And in some of these, like as it pertains to Calfresh and Andrea can speak more to this.

Some of these impacts are right now.

So like the Thrifty Food Plan, that went goes into effect tomorrow.

So that benefit level will be locked in tomorrow.

Um the loss of funding for SNAP education that goes into effect tomorrow.

Um but then other things within the SNAP cuts are next year, October 2026, October 2027.

Um, so we know some of those things, um, but then we don't have the guidance about how they'll be implemented yet.

So it's hard to make specific projections.

Thank you, Amy.

Andrea Ford, agency director for social services, and thank you for your question.

Supervisor Marquez.

The other um change that'll be implemented within the next five or six months would be ABOT work requirements.

Um, currently slated for January for the waiver to end January 31st, 2026.

But what is unknown is if the federal government will pull a trigger to implement prior to that.

Um, and then what are we doing with respect to the federal shutdown?

What did we do the last time this happened?

What was the county's response?

There's not necessarily a direct impact on our operations.

So I, you know, there wasn't anything specific we did other than obviously we're monitoring and tracking it to the extent that it you know could impact some of our our funding, but it wouldn't necessarily you know impact the county's day-to-day operation.

Um, and then I did want to clarify, I believe we have a scheduled meeting with Alameda Health System.

I think we're tentatively looking at a date in November.

Is that correct?

How we scheduled that meeting with Alameda Health System in November.

There's a joint meeting that I understand has been scheduled for November.

Okay.

Um so I would love to hear since they're here from uh Alameda Alliance and from Alameda Health System, just high-level overview.

Uh, what are they most concerned about?

I would say in the immediate future in the next six to 12 months.

Um, it's important that we're all briefed on all of the factors that we need to take into consideration as we're gonna continue to deliberate over next steps with measure W.

So I just want to be um aware of what they're seeing.

So if they could please provide an overview of overview to us, that would be helpful.

Cheryl, is James Jackson able to respond?

Yes.

Good afternoon, James Jackson here, CEO of the Alameda Health System and um supervisors.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to share some information today.

Um, Supervisor Marquez to your specific question.

We have a presentation that we put together, and one of my colleagues, Mr.

John Minot Schwartz, is with me, and I've asked John if he would at a high level really walk through the elements that we seek, the ramifications, the issues that we expect we will encounter as a result of HR1.

And so with your indulgence, I would ask John to quickly share those slides.

So John, if you're um on and available, if you would proceed, that'd be great.

Hello, this is John Minutch Schwartz.

Sorry, I was just promoted to panelists.

Shall I go ahead?

Yes, please.

Thank you for the opportunity to present.

I think that a lot of the high-level takeaways were shown in uh something previous, but I will go through it quickly.

This is the AHS impact from HR1, the big bill.

As you know, HR1 is a massive reduction to Medicaid spending at a level that uh is really unprecedented in modern history, uh, with major uh impact increases to uninsured population.

You've been walked through uh the many, many different things it does, but to narrow it down, AHS is focusing primarily on its impacts via work requirements, reducing Medicaid enrollment and therefore medical revenue.

The direct cuts to supplemental programs, which starts calendar year 2028, our short-term impacts are more via indirect impacts from the state budget, such as potential increases uh to undocumented coverage uh that are already starting to be felt.

Uh as the background, you've probably seen this uh Alameda Health System is, of course, highly dependent on Medi-Cal, far more than most uh health systems, 60% combining the different kinds of Medi-Cal.

And within Medi-Cal, we receive a number of what we call supplemental revenues of many different kinds, and this doesn't even include measure A, uh, that make it more possible to have that payer mix, that amount of Medi-Cal, and not be losing uh untenable amounts of money over time.

I'm gonna uh move forward quickly here.

Um, the work requirements, of course.

Uh you've seen the vast potential impacts of this, and our estimates are aligned here.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimated a range of 2.3 to 3.5 million Californians losing coverage.

And of course, the more people lose Medi-Cal, the less money we can receive for the Medi-Cal services we can provide.

Some people may delay care, uh, some people are likely to get care, and it just becomes uncompensated care.

And of course, we know that the majority of people who lose coverage due to HR1 would be in fact meeting the requirements, uh, but the procedural requirements to prove that they are working or studying would be uh what keeps them from keeping their coverage.

But how that translates to impact on AHS remains uncertain, which is why you saw the big error bars in our uh projected AHS impact.

A big question over the next 12 months will be uh what does the work requirement implementation look like as California implements it and as that trickles down to the county implementation?

But if you suppose that we lost 5% of Medi-Cal revenue, that would be 30 million right off the bat.

15% less would be 90 million, and that's before other uh policy changes.

Uh the next big thing, this was mentioned as not kicking in until January 2028, but it is uh very significant, is the state-directed payment cap.

Uh the state-directed payments are a general category of supplemental payment for which our types are known as the enhanced payment program and the quality incentive program.

They were a major part of the budget, uh our budget for FY25 26.

Uh the reduction to the standards for the amounts uh means that it could be something like a 20 million dollar cut in 2028, but that would compound 40, 60, and potentially much more, depending on where we bought them out sometime in the 2030s.

So this layers on to the work requirements impacts, which are themselves major.

Not so much because of work requirements or the changes from the big bill that take effect 2027, but because of provider fee, also known as hospital quality assurance fee, and MCO tax, because those affect the state general fund, and therefore the state would probably be looking of starting July 1st uh to potential budget cuts that would affect Medical and to some extent AHS, even before work requirements kick in.

So we really see three phases.

You saw these red numbers in the previous summary slide that in 2026 you have passed through of some level of the state impact to AHS.

In 2027, you see the work requirements kick in and some other things.

And in 2028, the work requirements have the supplemental cuts layered onto them.

This comes at a time uh these likely cuts come at a time when AHS expenses have grown significantly in recent years.

Uh and in the current projection, even before big bill impacts, we were seeing our net negative balance with the county worsening, which is not a good position to be in when you're trying to uh weather cuts.

So AHS is looking for all opportunities to be resilient internally to those cuts as well as the uh advocacy we are engaged in.

We have been educating and communicating with all stakeholders on this, uh trying to find all options.

We've been communicating this out, but we are also part of the advocacy uh on local, state, and federal levels uh working with partners on this to protect this essential safety net funding by whatever means are available at different levels, and we have been empowering employees to speak out if they so choose.

That is the very high-level version of my presentation.

I'm uh happy to take questions.

I hope this helps.

Any questions from recognize first Marquez, then Tam and Violet?

I just want to thank um John and the entire team from Alameda Health System for uh being prepared to share this information today.

I know the slides will be forwarded to us later, but really appreciate this overview, especially the visual on page 12.

That was really clear.

And I will also add when I was mentioning in the previous presentation, tracking all our local measures.

I failed to mention measure A, which is so uh critical for healthcare system.

So thank you for flagging that.

And I really appreciate your willingness to also hear ideas from us as well as the community.

So thank you.

Supervisor Tam.

Um, thank you, President Halbert.

Uh, just following up on Supervisor Marquez's uh comments and questions.

The I I really appreciate um having this presentation here because while I serve on the Alliance Board and the Health Committee and chair the social service committee, and we've had a deep dive.

I think it's important for the entire board to understand um some of these impacts in light of how we plan to strategically use the funds for the essential county services under Measure W.

But on HS estimated impact of five to fifteen million dollars next year, and then looking at 40 to 70 in 2027 and 70 to 120 in 2028.

Um you said that you've basically seen a worsening of the uh net negative balance, uh, probably around the time when we we had um uh participated with the acquisition or affiliation with St.

Rose going forward.

Um, if we don't see the mitigation of these impacts from the state, um, what would be the worst case scenario for AHS?

Um thank you for that question, Supervisor Tam.

Um, part of our planning, we are doing um internal visioning of how we can change our cost structure and really make sure that we're optimizing all of our resources.

And we do anticipate that with our projections, we will be nearing, if not exceeding, the current net negative balance.

And so um we have initiated conversations with the county administrator, Susan Marinici in her office about the state of the current uh the net negative balance and what might be done to make adjustments to the net negative balance to allow us sufficient um bandwidth capacity to weather the storm that we see coming.

Um I guess to the county administrator.

If you were making those adjustments as um James Jackson talked about to the net negative balance, uh, how will that I mean basically where would the funds come from?

That's the that's clearly the question.

I mean, it's it's county general funds, you know, with the line of credit, but we're just initiating that conversation, and that will involve um the auditor as well as my office, and we will you know bring be bringing that back to your board.

Thank you.

Supervisor Miley.

Yeah, thanks, President Halbert.

Uh, first of all, James looking pretty sharp there.

You're a gentleman.

Okay, um, and yes, I know um you guys keep us you know informed, uh, my office around these matters, and like Supervisor Tam said, appreciate you sharing all this with the full board.

So they're very knowledgeable.

And that's one reason why with the medical impacts and the fact that the impacts are going to be rolling out over the course of the next three years or so, uh, and then we don't know what's gonna happen after the Trump administration, uh whether things will get better or worse.

Uh the point is, uh, you know, it's one reason why structurally I was arguing that potentially we need a blue ribbon committee that's just looking at medical impacts, short-term, long-term, and uh the the um uh the possible options we have before us.

And the supervisor Tam pointed out, you know, she's on the alliance, she's on social services, she's on the health committee.

I really think um if we had a blue ribbon, I would really like for her to be on that blue ribbon and potentially chair it.

That's my uh opinion.

Now, I know I've also talked with you, and you know I'm not um shy in saying this.

I you know, I've been here and I do and I know understand how the net negative balance came about, and I do know if we ease the payments uh that Alameda Health System has to provide to the county, uh, we would have to um take into consideration how we're gonna uh cover that and over what period of time.

But I have said in order to try to help Alameda Health System with everything you have, you know, that you're gonna have to confront.

I'm supportive of us having that exploration and coming up with some appropriate uh options.

I've said that to you, and now I'm saying it publicly, so that the supervisors here and county administrator here as well as the auditor hears it as well.

Um, so because I think we're all um intricately linked here.

Uh Alameda Health Systems, the Alliance, uh, the county, etc.

So it's really important that you know we have to be able to uh maneuver during these challenging times.

Um, you know, we'll get through this.

You know, I was on the city council when we had 175 homicides in Oakland.

Um we had to deal with budget crisis when I was back there.

Um since I've been on the board, we've had some challenges, both budgetary-wise, we've all gone through COVID, et cetera.

We did, you know, and I gotta believe everything we had to go through is preparing for the preparing us for this administration now in terms of what is putting before us, and we'll get through this as well.

But we're not going to get through it if we aren't looking to be flexible and strategic and using our best um uh thinking.

I have a lot of confidence in you, the county administrator, her team.

Um, you know, she's been in it for a while, we pay her a good salary.

She earns it.

Um, she's put together a good team.

I like the fact that she's got Lori Cox back here.

She got Amy, former Supervisor Carson's chief of staff, you know, among others on her team.

So I'm looking for all of you, along with Anika and uh Andrew Ford to uh help us figure this out, and Matt too.

But um, I I do think we we will get through this.

It'll be challenging, but we'll get through this.

Furthermore, we have to also keep in mind because Alameda County has been successful.

You know, I let the effort to get measure A approved.

I let the effort to get it reauthorized.

I was involved with Measure W.

I've been involved with a lot of these um uh measures, in some cases leading them.

We'll get through this, but we have to also be mindful.

We can do a good job, but we don't want to have the state penalize us for doing a good job.

So we have to be very cognizant of how we you know shake and bake.

I like to use sports terms, so how we shake and bake uh as we get as we move through this, you know, this challenging situation.

So those are some of my uh comments relative to Alameda Health Systems um uh uh presentation at this moment.

And when the president gives me a chance, I'm gonna go back to uh Amy's presentation as well.

So thank you.

If I may, um Supervisor Miley, I just one always grateful for your support and your perception.

You are acutely aware of the challenges that we face, but I I really would I would just say stronger together.

And you're exactly right, we can get through this, but we'll have to do it together.

Um, AHS is the beneficiary of extraordinary support from the Board of Supervisors from Alameda Health and the Alameda Alliance.

And so I'm confident that as if we continue to work together as we have in the past, we will make we will get through this.

Thank you for saying that.

Very good.

Let's take up all questions on this uh for Amy's presentation.

If we have any other questions on the we are still on the item two, sub bullet one.

We also haven't had public comment yet.

We also have closed session, and maybe we'll get to the last items on our agenda.

So um, we'll go first to Supervisor Fortunato Bass, and um then to other questions about Ms.

Schrago's presentation of federal and state updates.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Uh thank you, um Mr.

Jackson.

Thank you also to Matt Woodruff.

Um, if there's any questions um for our um FQHCs, our clinics, I know that Tony from the um consortium is also on Zoom, so just wanted to share that because there's a lot of interest in this discussion from our health care service providers, and I've had a chance to talk with them directly, so don't need to um take up time here.

I wanted to uh shift gears and ask about um CalFresh and specifically um what the projected cut for CalFresh would be annually because I am hearing from the food bank an estimate of 70 million dollars.

Uh, would like to hear what our staff is estimating that cut will be as well as when the work requirements will begin.

So is that um Amy in your presentation?

Oh, that's Andrea question.

Okay.

I know we also have Matt here from the Alliance and uh the consortium here.

Uh, let's answer that question and then continue on with other presentations under this item.

Thank you.

I'll attempt to answer the questions.

I'm Andrea Ford, agency director for social services.

Um, in reference to the 70 million dollar cut that the food bank presented about, what what does that apply to?

Uh I believe I heard that that's the projected annual cut to Cal to the CalFresh program, 70 million.

State Way.

No, is that not correct?

Um we haven't seen any local numbers like that.

And so I'm not sure.

I'm sure there's some calculation that they did, but I don't I'm not trying to clarify it, and then we have the measure W discussion.

We'll bring it up again.

Okay, thank you.

And any other question was about ABOT implementation.

Yes.

Timing of that.

Um, so currently on the waiver expires January 31st, 2026, but what is unknown is if the federal government will pull that trigger and we will have to implement before February 1st.

So that could happen.

You think of tomorrow, November, December, or February, depending on how the federal government responds.

Thank you.

Okay, I note that we have a guest from the alliance.

Matt, would you care to present any um do you have a PowerPoint or commentary?

I do not have a PowerPoint, but I will address some of the questions that were brought up.

I did present a PowerPoint at Health Committee.

So my first comment would be I want to address the county administrator's comment because it was it was it was very apropos for the moment.

Um the state has told the health plans across in California that they are not gonna issue guidance on any of these changes that are coming out until six months before.

So even though we are planning for things that are coming much farther in the future in 20, you know, 26, 27, 28, and even 29.

The state has said that they're not gonna issue guidance, at least to health plans till six months beforehand.

So comment about that we have to start preparing, but we can't overreact is is very very true.

Um I believe, Supermarket has your question was uh what is where the things are happening right now that we have to start talking about.

So I'll break it off into just a couple items and obviously open up to any questions.

Is that one the um the TRI, so the amount of money that providers are paid right now, that money is being held because the federal government has not ruled on whether or not California can extend our um provider tax payments to the provider community.

So right now providers are being paid a little bit less than they had uh envisioned being paid for this year, because the federal government has not ruled on whether or not our current uh process is um legal or not, and essentially they need to rule on that.

Once they rule on that, then the money that's being held to the state could be released.

Um, but that's not gonna be released until um there's a ruling.

So uh I would say right now providers are are actually being paid a little bit less than that than they were hoping uh based on that there's no ruling yet.

So that'd be the first my first comment.

I think my second comment would be on the undocumented population that there's the freeze coming in January, and with that freeze, um, you know, our goal really is to try to get as many people signed up, and we have to then make sure that they keep their coverage and that they don't lose their coverage because once they're off, they're basically going to be off the program.

So those would be the the two things that I would say are going to be hitting um first.

There's also some a slide that Amy had presented about uh projected losses.

So the alliance is projecting to lose about 30,000 members this year.

Um that's based off of state projections about some of the changes that are coming uh to different programs and losing 30,000 members right now.

We're projecting to lose about 22 million dollars.

So our pro forma for this fiscal year is we're gonna lose about 22 million.

So I'll stop there because of those are the most immediate ones.

There obviously are a lot more changes coming, but those are the immediate ones I believe you had asked about.

Oh yeah, thanks, Matt.

So you you know, you made your presentation at the health committee last week.

Um, Supervisor Tam and myself.

And um, and I know we heard uh okay, let me structurally uh you've explained how there are many tables and many conversations taking place around uh medical uh and how it would be good to consolidate all of this under one cable.

Um, structurally, I suggested a blue-ribbon approach to this because you know, in my mind, the all together committee is focused on immigrants, and the health committee has jurisdiction over everything else, and then social services has jurisdiction over Medi-Cal and uh enrollment and things of that nature.

Uh, and as I've explained, Supervisor Tam serves on all three of those uh entities.

I really think there needs to be uh a surgical focused on Medi-Cal, because it'll be significant, it'll be a crisis, uh, and it's gonna roll out over time.

Now, once again, the board's gotta make this decision, and I'm not advocating that the board create more committees.

But right now, uh it's disjointed because we can't have uh you, our social services staff, our health care staff, uh the Alameda um uh health systems, the federal qualified clinics, other stakeholders, uh roots, et cetera, just going helder skelter uh trying to respond to all this stuff as opposed to one coordinated table and one coordinated effort.

That's being led by uh the county supervisors.

Um, so I'm I'm really pushing that point hard.

Now, doesn't mean the board's gonna go down that road, but I know you also offered up that you'd be willing to pay for a facilitator, right?

Don't shake your head, say yes or no.

Yes, yes.

Okay, yeah, because people can't see you.

You're shaking your head, I see you, but others need to hear you.

So, uh, because I know I told Susan you'd be willing, Susan Marinici, you're willing to pay for a facilitator.

So I think if the board were to put together a blue ribbon uh task force that was solely focused on Medi-Cal and how we're gonna address that both in the short term and the long term, and looking at options and approaches because it affects so many uh entities uh would be an appropriate thing, and the line should pay for a facilitator to help us kind of um advance that process.

So, yes, the alliance did offer a facilitator along with um you know a number of other items, you know, legal advice, data.

We have a lot of data, social services has a lot of data, Alameda County Health has a lot of data, so between the three of us, I think we have the majority of the data that would be needed.

Um, I do agree with you that there's been a lot of meetings uh because everybody and rightly so is very concerned about what's happening to Medi-Cal and to the population and the members and their patients that are that are going to be affected over time.

So I do agree with you that there should be a um, much like during COVID, and I think we talked about this in health committees where Alameda County Health and Anika brought kind of everybody together, and there was one coordinated effort uh under COVID where we all came together and we all had different parts and and parts that we played.

I do think that does need to happen.

So I I will echo that comment in regards to that the more we can come together and the more we can have uh uh that leadership that the much like the county play during COVID, that would be amazing.

Yeah, because I'm not um I really think we have a better opportunity of addressing this effectively, efficiently, and looking at the options before us.

If if the the best thinking is put forth through one table with all the appropriate stakeholders there, uh that's coordinated by at least um two supervisors, and I'm not volunteering to be on the on the blue ribbon if the board goes down that road, because I I have enough responsibility, but I do think Supervisor Tam would be appropriate to do that.

Um because I think this will this is very, very uh serious.

So and because I've been through a few of these in the past, like COVID, I'm just kind of putting out a potential approach to this, uh, because it's not as though the board and our staff haven't been working on this stuff, haven't been thinking about this stuff.

Some people might not be aware of what we've been doing and what we've been thinking about, but a lot of us have been involved with a lot of conversations around trying to address this.

Once again, doing it through a lot of different tables doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And if we want to do our best thinking and best job, we really need to get focused and concentrated.

So I'm hoping uh the board uh makes a decision uh to concentrate our efforts and really align the responsibilities uh and the jurisdictional um authority of our respective committees, and if we need to create a blue ribbon that we decide to do that because of this Medi-Cal situation that's now confronting us, and I think the slides from Amy, the conversations from you, conversations from James all indicate why this is extremely important.

Thank you, um Supervisor Miley.

Uh I'll recognize Supervisor Tam.

And I also have to ask, is there somebody from the consortium from is there another presenter besides Mr.

Jackson and Matt.

Do we have another online waiting in the wings?

Okay.

With that supervisor Tam then Marquez.

Thank you President Halbert and Supervisor Miley for that very persuasive need to have that coordinated effort.

I'm happy to be um helping to coordinate that effort I think our county social service department and Alameda County Health Department are taking the lead at the county level and they also sit on the board of the Alliance.

There's representation from Alameda County Health, there's representation from social service, there's representation from the consortium the Alameda Health Consortium that represents the clinics and James and I also serve on the Alliance board.

So if there's some way and since Matt is graciously helping to bring in a facilitator if one is necessary to coordinate it this effort our our challenge obviously is things are changing kind of rapidly and we're getting information that um like you know the the medical enrollment freezes those numbers um are estimated but they keep changing.

So we want to make sure that we uh get that information out to as many people that can help mitigate and act on it as soon as possible so that is I think something that is going to be important for our board to have regular updates on this issue and you know I'm happy to help coordinate that effort if necessary.

Thank you.

In regards to the changes um in terms of budget and policy that are impacting our residents and healthcare access um I do want to think about what some of the immediate impacts will be and how we mitigate them and so I think last time we had our board meeting I mentioned that my office like many of yours has been in conversation with a lot of our healthcare service providers and um partly at their request we convened a meeting last Thursday which our staff was able to attend as well from health as well as from social services and that was an initial discussion to look at the immediate changes in front of us including the changes that will happen on January 1st um when you know many many people will be impacted including undocumented folks not that they are the only ones who will be impacted but there is a real impact over the next three months that we can mitigate and we heard last week at social services how um there's a number of CBOs that our staff is working with to do the outreach and by coming together last Thursday I think it was productive in terms of hearing um at one table the data that we can potentially be coordinating the outreach strategies et cetera and uh what came out of that meeting is an interest in making sure that um at that table which is time sensitive in terms of reenrollment uh all chiefs of staff of the five offices be present and so I just had an opportunity to um confirm with our county council how that could potentially happen and we'll be sending out an invitation to everyone so I wanted to mention that there are some things that I believe we have to do sooner versus later because of timeline and figure out what those structures are with our professional staff.

And you know, I definitely appreciate the comment the comment about not duplicating, not having too many tables, and I believe that we need to coordinate uh what's urgent um how we all participate in things uh that really rely more um digging into things that might be sensitive in terms of data privacy um and really require much more of a working meeting versus the format of our meetings.

In addition to that, I thought it was helpful when we had a joint meeting of Act for All together with our health committee some months ago to begin looking at what these impacts will be.

So I think there's some existing structures that we can look at.

And I want to be mindful of creating new structures and the time it would create.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions before we go to public comment?

Supervisor Marquez.

I'll make my comments brief since I already spoke.

I'm just want to flag um and just publicly thank Alameda Health System for really stepping up and affiliating with St.

Rose Hospital.

Had they not done that, that hospital would probably be closed by now.

So in light of what's occurring on the federal administration, I'm just really proud of this county that we are providing safety net services to our entire community.

It is a domino effect.

If one hospital closes specifically a safety net hospital in our community, that directly impacts other hospitals, the wait time and emergency room.

So I'm committed to problem solving with you.

So I'm looking forward to the meeting in November, looking at expanding that credit line.

I know that's not an easy ask, but it wouldn't be asked if it was absolutely necessary.

So you have my commitment to work in collaboration with all of you to figure that out.

In addition, I really appreciate the updates, and I'm I'm hearing a lot of comments about next steps, and I just want to stress for me personally, it's about protecting our most vulnerable residents that are being hit on multiple fronts.

So I'm open to any suggestion that advances that work, but I think it's very important as we're talking about different ways to facilitate those meetings.

Um the one purpose that the Act Committee has done very well is provided a reliable space for the community to weigh in, and we have to ensure that we're always hearing the voice of our community members.

So I look forward to seeing a proposal of what next steps looks like.

Um I'm open to uh adjusting my position, but bottom line is we need a solid plan and we need to be clear on how all stakeholders are going to be at the table and how we're gonna allow opportunity for our community members to weigh in as well.

Thank you.

Before we go to public comment, are there any other board comments?

I see Anika raising her hand.

Would you like to weigh in?

Or thank you, supervisor.

I just wanted to um share with you that uh, you know, part of what we in the back end are trying to balance is that there are a number of standing meetings that are more operational in nature that our various agencies and entities and CBOs have together.

Um, and we're also trying to balance um, you know, being able to bring to the board in a way that um both honors the urgency of the situation and gives us time to do the pre-planning and thinking through different strategies and and different components.

So um happy to work with our our partners to uh bring some stuff back.

I think there's there's ways to um balance all of those things and keep everyone apprised.

Thank you for that.

Let's go to public comment.

How many speaker slips?

And if anybody would like to make comment from online, raise your hand.

This is for item two, sub bullet one, budget finance updates.

How many speaker slips in person?

We have two in person.

And how many hands raised online?

We have five online and one speaker in chambers.

Okay, very good.

With that said, um, let's um take those hands raised and public speaker slip cards submitted and uh give everybody two minutes.

Carla, are you on the line?

You have two minutes to speak.

Hi, can you guys hear me?

Hello, can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, my name is Carlos Archuletta, and I'm a resident of the unincorporated area.

And one of the first things I wanted to do was correct one of the things that Lena Tam had said when she had talked about, you know, the um budget in the unincorporated area.

It's so transparent.

There's literally a campaign going on from her constituents for my invoice because the campaign is not transparent in any way whatsoever.

And that we need um uh real representation and real transparency on our budget.

So one, I don't think she would be a good leader of that blue card thing you're talking about, because she's literally misleading us right now.

Now the second thing that I want to talk about, which is way more important, it's what we in the unincorporated area, the black and brown people, um we call the death loop.

See in the unincorporate area, if you're a poor black and brown person, you don't get to see a doctor, especially if you go to Tuberscule Vasquez.

What they do is they tell you you have to wait a month or two to see a nurse.

And then after waiting a month or two, they say, oh my god, this is bad.

You need to go to the emergency room.

And then when you go to the emergency room, the emergency room says, um, we're simply here to just stop the bleeding.

You need to schedule this with your doctor.

This is bad.

Until you have things like cancer, and cancer is so bad that you need a liver transplant like my father.

And so we call that the death loop.

So while you guys pat each other on the back and you guys act like you care about refugees or immigrants when really all you guys are doing is virtue signaling to use misdirection to not cover what's going on in your backyard.

If you are poor, you don't get medical treatment.

You get the emergency room.

So why are we spending these billions of dollars paying these organizations that only allow you to see a nurse and just give it to the emergency room because that's where we're all going anyways.

And if you truly care about black or brown people, like you love to play the card 24-7, verify that.

Verify that Bertil Vasquez literally has an actual doctor at the facility because what they'll do is they'll claim it's a doctor, but it's a nurse practitioner.

And the same thing, that nurse practitioner will say, Oh my goodness, you need to go to a doctor.

You need to go to the emergency room.

So again, these these big scare tactics that you use, Trump's gonna do this.

Trump ain't got nothing on us.

Because you guys are already doing it.

You're already allowing it to happen.

So thank you so much.

I love that you're concerned, and I can't wait for you to call this out.

Remember, if you're black and brown, you don't get to see a doctor, you get to see a nurse.

Thank you guys.

Hello.

Alison Monroe here.

Um I'm listening to what the previous speaker said.

We need a safety net.

We have some kind of safety net.

It's full of holes.

I'm afraid it's gonna get even more full of holes.

Uh regarding the budget, I would like to hear about these budget discussions.

Members of the public would more than 24 hours in advance.

It's always a special meeting.

So we hear that it might be a meeting, but we don't know it for sure and don't know the agenda till 24 hours before.

Also, if you want feedback on these very lucid and interesting presentations by the CAO, would you please post them on the website?

As far as I know, they are not posted yet.

So nobody in the audience has read these things yet.

Um thank you very much and good luck.

You have two minutes.

Hi, my name is Tony Panetta.

I'm the chief impact officer for the Alameda Health Consortium.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have, but I did want to echo points made by our colleagues at Alameda Health System, the alliance and raised by interim Director Chowdry about the projected loss of Medi-Cal coverage for our most vulnerable community, and to reiterate that the projected loss of coverage begins in January and then increases each month as people run into their redetermination date and then potentially lose insurance.

So we see that happening first with individuals who have certain immigration statuses beginning in January, and then we see a compounding effect in January of 2027 when the federal community engagement documentation requirements begin.

And then it gets further exacerbated when these six-month redeterminations kick in because you essentially have to do the same thing twice for the same individuals who are subject to community engagement requirements.

So I do appreciate the opportunity that we will show up at any meeting to coordinate across the county.

We appreciate the opportunity to be in conversation with both Alameda County Health Social Services Agency for implementation of ongoing projects as well as coordination across our network for an urgent Medi-Cal renewal initiative to support individuals for enrolling in Medi-Cal because we understand that for the county and for our patients and for our health centers.

It is more cost-effective to ensure people maintain their insurance coverage than to have to pay the cost of uncompensated care, which you heard about directly from our colleagues at Alameda Health System.

Our clinics face the same situation of an increase in uninsured individuals equals an increase in uncompensated care.

Thank you for your commitment to addressing this today.

Mercy Brown Bag today feeds 10,000 plus acutely low-income Alameda County seniors.

We are one of the CBOs the county supports.

In response to the HR1 presentation, I'd like to say we get 10% of our budget from Snap Ed, which goes away October 1, 2025, tomorrow.

These monies support our partnership with Meals on Wheels, which provides shelf stable groceries to 600 seniors twice a month that are acutely low income.

It also provides nutrition education across our network also to acutely low-income seniors.

I'd like to share very real and immediate impact to our county and this vulnerable population.

So thank you for your attention and your focus.

I appreciate that.

In person, we have Zach, Jane, and Warren.

Please line up to speak.

So let's begin again.

Assembly Bill 2566 Nazarene.

Chapter 762 statuses 2016.

Conjunction with Senate Bill 997 Laura, which identifies our length of our term agreement between our bond holdings and inner county versus interstate appellases based on the view of the two-year treasury note.

Assembly bill two one-seven headly visa v more.

This is the compliant of procedure that justifies it as original offering against the county and against the state.

Validating the indictment.

And compliance, so it's amend sections of 8205, 8206, 8213, and 8213.5.

I will wish challenge uh government section code eighty-two eleven and eighty-two twenty-three by increasing the phase that means you be charged for notorial acts.

Notorial acts will be seen as food.

This is where it says Gerardo Romero's.

This holds that the Gen Tech, which is awarded view of a Nobel.

Uh view of the House and the Senate, but blatantly malice and intentionally taken away by inter-state actors, interstate agencies, and interagency applications.

I wish to file against this in this county as blatant gross and malice negligence.

Federally classified application, please refer to it as known as the Beeler Report.

This application is S059125, applicating an indemnity of clause of negligence against the state and James Huntsman via the United States.

Exactly two minutes are I understand that.

So would you please I will in one minute?

As a Clean Energy Act to the CBO indicating blatant gross mouse negligence in the BART ACC bond holdings and I'll augment a requestment to airport bonds via Cardosa.

And I wish to validate that as grilled malice and intentional negligence on behalf of that estate actors.

Okay, thank you.

Any other public comments?

We have Jane and a warren.

Yes.

Okay, so you've written here you want to allocate support uh to nonprofit affordable housing developers who own or operate affordable housing in the county and incurred a pandemic-related revenue loss.

That's an opportunity if those places are habitable in terms of um environment.

You might begin then to house those persons in those accommodations along with alternative medicine.

It's cheaper, in the short run, it's cheaper.

In the long run.

It doesn't cost you anything because the individual takes responsibility for his own long-term help.

It will take open straight forward discussion with conventional medical providers.

But I think it's worth the effort.

Thank you.

Hello, President Halbert and members of the board.

I am Warren Cushman with Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward.

These are tough times.

These are very difficult choices.

You are all good people.

You all care about your consumers and constituencies.

What we need are short-term and long-term plans to deal with all of these different challenges that we're facing.

Obviously, we're facing challenges from Washington, from Sacramento, and we have things to fix here at home.

I am confident that you will come together and that you will provide the fixes that are necessary in health and in budget, and that we will see improvements, although they be incremental.

And I know that you you each have a commitment to do as little harm as possible, and that's the order of the day right now.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, now go to the board chambers.

Leo.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

Um regarding the annual county budget.

Uh my even voice and members of our fair share committee had sent follow-up questions to the CAO offices earlier this month, and we look forward to hearing their response.

We echo Supervisor Miley's comments for more specificity for the unincorporated area residents.

We welcome the additional information shared by the CEO's office at the last unincorporated services meeting.

Our members are supporting the pilot budget input process this fall, and we support an Office of Unincorporated Affairs to better understand our investments and civic engagement.

Our members are looking forward to meeting with all of our respective municipal county agencies and their specific unincorporated budgets and the county's investments of the unincorporated area.

Thank you.

That was our last speaker.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, Supervisor Miley.

On this item before we move on.

Do you have any comments on this item?

Yeah, before if that if that's okay.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Because I hate to sound like a broken record and keep having this.

I don't know if she can hear me, but she might have some thoughts on this because I do think I appreciate uh Supervisor Fortnite Obas uh wanting to move ahead with pulling together some type of entity, but once again, I just see once again another another table, another effort around Medi-Cal.

And I think this requires um I think the the board needs to need to authorize a structural approach to this so that everybody's on the same page as opposed to one person or a couple of people going off in various uh directions.

Uh we've heard uh from all of the entities uh today what why the Medi Cal um uh what's coming down the pike um starting you know in January and then uh it into the foreseeable future is going to be uh a crisis and and have uh so many impacts.

So I just think uh the board needs to decide what we're going to do as opposed to just allowing you know things to go help to skelter.

And that's how I think of it.

It's going help to shelter.

I think the health committee has some responsibility.

I think social uh social services committee has some responsibility and uh probably we all together uh at and it's ad hoc, mind you, has some responsibility, but we've got a lot of entities uh that are looking at us relative to the Medi Cal uh piece, and I just don't think uh we should let it stand without giving some structural guidance and direction around this as opposed to once again um and I like I do appreciate Supervisor Bass wanting to take lead on this, but once I I just kind of feel that is probably not the most appropriate uh way to um to pursue this just based on my limited experience as an elected official uh both at the city level and at the county level.

Um emphasis on limited experience.

Um I really do think uh and I'm not doing saying this because Supervisor Dan is so wonderful.

Um, just saying it because since she serves on all these bodies, I just really think uh have giving her the direction working with our staff would probably be the way I would uh propose this to come up with uh an IGAN and approach.

But once again, I I put it out here.

You can shoot me down, you can decide not to deal with it, whatever, but I just need to speak my mind relative to this, because I think it's that vitally important.

Uh sorry, I'm stepping back in from having stepped out.

I'm not sure what what agendized item we're talking about.

We're still on item two, uh Roman small eye.

Okay, it's a uh closing remark on a budget and financial forecast item.

Okay.

Including the update, I think on the um federal and state budget impacts.

Yeah.

Sure.

We we have plenty of time for board member comments.

Public comments over, staff reports are over, it's now back to us for deliberations.

I'm just trying to keep on task with the um agendized item.

Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, okay, that's better.

Um so I think there's been a lot of back and forth.

So I'm just gonna respectfully ask that uh the CAO along with uh executive leadership and department heads, they heard all the feedback today.

We know what's at stake.

So I'm hoping that next step is uh proposal being presented to us in terms of how to how do we streamline these efforts, where decisions are going to be housed, at what committee level?

Is it a new process?

So as I mentioned earlier, I am open to any suggestion, but I need to see a plan to actually comment and weigh in on right now.

We're just giving feedback, but I haven't seen a specific plan on how we advance this work.

So I'm hoping that that will be provided soon.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think um at times like this it's important to rely on our professional staff to give us a recommendation.

I'll ask that that would come back maybe at our next meeting uh next Tuesday, uh if not shortly thereafter.

Um we've all sort of chimed in, our staff is listening.

My comments um I think I've made before, I'll reiterate again that um that I I believe in fewer bigger better committees um that are streamlined with very clear authority on the topics at hand for each of them.

Uh in some cases, they may overlap.

Um so adding an extra committee uh is what generally um uh not be something that I would think is uh the most productive, although if if the staff believes that indeed we need a focus on specifically Medi-Cal and we need to have a blue ribbon committee for it, I I would be open to that.

I would first look to see if we could have topics folded into committees that are already existing, um, would be my uh uh a preference.

Um I know that we're not big fans of joint committee meetings either, um, but that may be more preferable than an extra committee.

But again, I leave it to um our county council and our professional staff to bring us a recommendation.

As Supervisor Marquez said it's easier to um react to something that we see on paper from our staff uh as opposed to not.

If that's okay.

Okay, that's what I'm thinking.

Not today.

Well no, we should say, well, you don't seem to like uh our joint meetings because of the way we might do them.

So you'll weigh in on that and if you can find a way to make that happen.

Um we always listen to our county council.

Well, we we always hear our county council.

Yeah, so with that said, we have um come to the conclusion of item two sub bullet one.

Um I note that uh now is uh I've been asked to adjourn recess into closed session, where we will be probably for the next um uh half an hour to an hour.

Um it's a good chance for people to grab lunch if they want.

We'll be back here sometime around between 2 and 2 30, um, depending on how long closed session takes.

And we'll take a lunch break during that time and then bless you, Supervisor Miley.

Yes, Mr.

President.

Um you know more than I do because you're the president of the board, but can we possibly take up measure w before we go to closed session?

Since people have been waiting, is that possible?

No, it's listed at the end of our agenda, and we I mean, every anything's possible, but my preference would be to have our closed session discussion and uh let people have a break for lunch.

The measure w is at the end of the meeting.

I recognize somebody asked people to come here at 10 in the morning.

I think that was a mistake.

I'm not sure who did that, but I understand.

So with that, we're going to recess and we'll come back at um between 2 and 2 30.

I'll ask the clerk to call the roll to uh reestablish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez, present.

Supervisor Tan.

Present Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Say present.

President Halbert.

Present.

Uh County Council, anything to report out from our closed session?

The board did not take reportable actions in closed session.

Very good.

Our next item is item uh number two, sub bullet two, a capital improvement plan for the fiscal years 2026 to 2030.

An overview by our GSA Director, Miss Kimberly Gasway.

Uh and Supervisor Howard, just by way of introduction, your board did adopt the five-year uh capital improvement plan um earlier, uh, and we had promised to come back to provide the board with an overview of the five-year plan as well as our unfunded uh capital needs.

So I'm gonna turn it over to the GSA director and her staff.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, um, supervisors and county administrators.

So today with me, um, that's the wrong slide.

So today, uh Palin Chen will be doing the presentation.

She's uh working with our finance department.

She will be presenting not only GSA projects but public works projects are involved, measure X fire stations, as well as CDA tier one projects.

So I'd defer to payment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kimberly.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

Again, my name is Palin Chen, and I'm glad to be with you today to discuss the highlights of the five-year capital improvement plan.

I'm gonna ask Cheryl to advance slides for me.

In the slides ahead, I'll walk you through the five-year capital plan, review the funding status, and provide a preview of the work that we intend to do over the course of the next year.

Next slide, please.

As you know, the CIP is the five-year plan for how the county will go about preserving and enhancing its facilities and infrastructure, and outlines how the county intends to pay for it.

As Susan said, the board approved the fiscal 26 to 30 CIP on September 9th.

CIP documents are typically presented on a five or 10 year timeframe because these projects are complex and take a long time to design and construct.

The first year of the plan is the most important because it aligns with the upcoming year's budget, and it's a soon to be reality.

Fiscal years 27 to 30 of the plan are placeholder estimates and meant to serve as a blueprint for the future.

Next slide, please.

Before we dive into the numbers, I just want to provide a refresher on how our CIP is structured.

There are essentially three departments that have capital projects, as Kimberly mentioned, GSA projects, PWA projects, and then tier one projects.

Under each of those headings, there are different categories of projects as you see in this list before you.

Next slide, please.

Next, I'd like to provide the board some context at how we arrived at these cost estimates.

We take the following into consideration when we produce our cost estimates.

And as you all know, as the economy continues to shift and policies change, this obviously affects the construction market.

Next slide, please.

Here's a snapshot of the five-year plan cost estimates by department by year.

GSA has the largest portfolio of roughly 1.896 million, with PWA at just over 1 billion and tier one project at 23 million.

That brings a total cost estimate to nearly 3 billion.

So this next slide layers in the sources of funding into the financial picture.

The total cost project cost estimates over the five-year plan, as I said, are nearly $3 billion.

And we've identified, or the board has identified $2.15 billion in the CIP, of which $976 million is the special capital construction fund established by the board on August 1st, 2023, leaving a funding gap of roughly $824 million.

Next slide, please.

Here we have a visual representation of the table just on the previous slide.

The donut chart on the left shows the breakdown of the cost estimates by department.

You can see that GSA projects make up 64% of the total.

On the right-hand side, the donut chart shows a breakdown of the revenue that we've identified.

And just a note that Rodin flood is exclusive to PWA projects only.

Next slide, please.

Despite the headway we've made with the long-range capital financing plan, this bar chart illustrates that over time the funding gap continues to grow as the identified revenue continues to shrink.

And given the number and age of assets in the county's portfolio, there will be an ongoing need to invest in major maintenance and infrastructure.

So now I'd like to highlight the cost estimates that fall under each department, starting with GSA.

This donut chart shows GSA's portfolio by category.

GSA's total cost estimate again in the five years is approximately 1.9 billion with a funding gap of 711 million in the five-year period.

Next slide.

Category one has approximately 44 million in the in the five-year plan and is comprised of large projects like the Fire Training Center and African American Wellness Hub.

Just a note that some of these projects began in prior fiscal years, so their total costs are not illustrated or included as part of this $44 million in this five year plan.

It also includes a smaller subset of miscellaneous capital projects like the JJC housing unit safety barriers, a Camp Sweeney fence replacement project, and an underground storage tank removal project at Wiley Manual.

Category two focuses on the capital projects associated at our largest county facility, the Santa Rita Jail, and our five-year plan addresses the following areas: ADA, network infrastructure, health programs and services, critical operations, and the kitchen remodel.

Next slide, please.

In 2018, GSA completed a facility conditions assessment on the county's portfolio of buildings.

This portfolio has been divided into the following major sections.

Facility needs priority one projects for health care facilities and juvenile justice facilities, countywide solar and energy savings projects, which include the veterans buildings, and major maintenance, which addresses deferred maintenance countywide ADA projects and environmental remediation projects.

Thank you.

GSA's last category of work is a pipeline of potential projects that could come forward to your board in the future.

So these are future projects.

So some of them include the law enforcement substation replacement project as well as a joint sheriff and fire dispatch facility.

Okay, now moving on to public works, which mainly focuses on road and flood projects.

The total cost estimate in the five-year plan is approximately what just over a billion dollars in project costs.

And while there is a projected funding gap in the five-year plan, since these projects have a long lead time, PWA leverages their funding and plans accordingly so that typically all of their funding is in place before the project actually begins.

So they plan to close their funding gap here.

For CDA, finally a reminder that as a result of the state dissolution of redevelopment authorities in 2012, the board adopted policies and identified priority projects in the unincorporated areas of the county, which were called tier one projects.

The slide highlights a few of the remaining tier one projects and their cost estimates.

And as we are nearing the end of this presentation, the slide is just a repeat of slide seven, which shows the overall funding picture for the CIP.

Um, just provided as a summary to recap the various departments we just went through.

So in conclusion, while we have some exciting projects to consider ahead, we also need to remember some pending factors.

Again, I want to reiterate the large unfunded costs associated with the facility conditions assessment and point out that these large numbers do not include seismic renovation costs.

Additionally, should the economy take a turn for the worst, the funds that we're expecting in the long-term financing plan may come in lower than expected, and we'll have to find another source to fill that gap.

And then lastly, future projects are in the development stage, as I mentioned earlier, with cost estimates and funding sources still to be identified.

This slide summarizes the special capital construction fund.

When the board approved the long-range capital financing plan on August 1st, 2023, it created the special capital construction fund estimated to be approximately 938 million over 10 years.

Since its inception, the board has approved 572 million in capital projects to be funded from this fund, leaving a balance of roughly 366 million.

However, deferred maintenance, as you know, uh continues to grow and is um just a reality of having um owning large office buildings.

Um the fiscal 26 to 30 unfunded gap is 824 million, comprised of 711 million for GSA and 113 for PWA.

And with that, um, in closing, we will continue to provide the board quarterly updates on capital, and we're here to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you.

I can't see down the line.

Any questions?

I have a question around.

I have a question around the identified revenues.

So could you go back to that slide that showed the identified revenues?

I think it was slide.

Eight, maybe.

So special capital construction fund.

That's money that we have identified throughout the years as being capital construction funds.

This is the funding report established and provided some policies around setting aside the fundage of construction and funds in the years put into that long-term capital fund.

23.

So you know we made on patients for a couple of years.

The estimates in terms of what's going to be available over the 10-year horizon, you know, assumes that the board will compete in the medicine on the how much do we put away each year?

Or is it change?

It fluctuates that there's an up to percentage, and I let me just not verify the 976 is what we have already, or what we identify.

Hope to get to, oh okay.

So we we haven't even gotten there.

So a lot can change.

And then um can you guys speak into the mic?

Yeah, oh yeah, and I have to press the button.

Okay.

So do we have a comprehensive list of all the things that truly need to be done?

I know we talked about some of the big ones, but as an just as an example.

The parking lot across the street, circular parking lot that I keep hearing is quite old.

Is that in here?

We do have a facility assessment for Alco Park.

So as Palin had mentioned, the future projects are not part of your funding gap at the well, some of the facility is one of the issues are so that 200 on FCA for um future projects that are not funded yet.

That project, that facility is included.

The biggest issue is when we go in, we've done an assessment, but the minute we go in, we find additional unforeseen conditions.

So we were anticipating on the Fairmont campus of spending close to a hundred million dollars, but we're now approaching 200 million.

So in addition to escalations, unforeseen conditions, the market um supply chain, the cost just keeps going up.

So the more you push this off, the worse it gets.

But I do have a price estimate for every nearly every facility in our portfolio.

And I did ask staff for our next briefing to talk to you about the government center.

While these aren't, I'm trying to think they aren't the government center would be the admin building.

You know, the air conditioner went out the other day.

It's it's breaking down the Madison Building, Alco Park, uh Lakeside Building.

They're often not seen as important because it's not where safety net services are, but this is our core of our government function.

And if we don't do something, so I've asked them to put together a comprehensive review for me to bring forward on that part of the portfolio.

We are also prioritizing.

So when we did prioritizing, because the the number was so big and the resources limited.

So we prioritize Fairmont, which is healthcare and juvenile justice, and we have a set of criteria.

Then we prioritize Santa Rita where we have people living in a facility that's aging.

And uh now we're and then we prioritize veterans buildings, and now we need to look at safety net facilities as well as uh courthouses and government.

So we're trying to do it over time because it's a financial problem.

It's also a staffing resource, you know, being able to deliver anyway.

I hope that I more than answered here.

The one of the slides showed flood abatement, I guess six hundred and eighty million dollars for flood control.

And I think the public work structure is online, so um he could be elevated.

We could ask Daniel to raise his hand.

Good afternoon.

So far though, what was the question again?

Yes, for flood control projects, I think it was listed as 600 and something million dollars.

I'm trying to find that slide.

Slide 15.

Okay.

Yes, so uh I believe this is a cost estimate of a five-year period for all the 13 zones, uh the 10 zones within uh the flood control district.

So it is not just for our incorporated.

I want to emphasize that and and uh as you know, some of our flood control projects uh we have to build up the capacity to build these things.

So we have projects that are in the 50 60 million dollar range, and and uh if we anticipate still rise, we're expecting some projects to be costing us uh and uh and uh up to a hundred million dollars each uh if we were to do some massive projects.

So these are not only uh assigned to a specific project, but these are projected out over five years that if we were to do all the projects that we need to do, that's that would be the uh estimated cost.

And that's not just the unincorporated Alameda County jurisdictions.

That's our responsibility in all of the flood jurisdictions, whether it's in an incorporated city or not.

Yes, out of out of the uh the 10 jurisdiction, the 10 zones uh only one zone primarily isn't in the incorporated area, so some of the larger zones and like Auckland zone 12, zone five and six and uh Fremont area, Newark, those also have a lot of uh you know, levy work that we need to do.

Alameda Creek is one of the largest projects right now.

We are undertaking at a rate at about uh sixty million dollars that we got some funding from uh the state.

So that these these numbers are showing you the entire flood control district, which means the entire county.

Minus zone seven, of course, six hundred and eighty-one million.

It's a lot for flood control.

Okay.

And that uh the source of funds for that is they're all they're all grant monies or uh their assessments that each uh zone has its own assessment and uh taxes that we collect.

Okay.

Very good.

I'm done with my questions.

Supervisor Miley, then Marquez.

Okay, thanks for the um overview.

Because I know the longer we take to do these projects, it's not like they get less expensive.

The cost just continues uh to go up.

Um, we know that.

Um we also know that it's it's been challenging at times to get voter approved uh measures to provide additional uh resources for infrastructure.

This was good when we got like the money for fire stations uh measure um uh X.

The um, and then we used ARPA funding um as appropriate CARES Act funding whenever you know as appropriate to try to fill in some of our capital needs.

Uh I think even we did we set aside some of measure W potentially for capital, yeah, portion of that even for capital.

I was trying to put some money towards capital.

So the the one the one um issue uh and you might be reading my mind is because I kind of harp on this.

We have a lot of vacant uh property, uh and then we also have a lot of uh uh property that we are leasing.

So what would happen if we were to get out of you know practically all of our lease property, get staff into our uh own property, and then the property uh we don't want to keep we were to turn that around because there's an opportunity, uh cost associated with holding on to that property, and then I know in the past I've talked to the county administrator even about ultramaneral opportunities so we can have revenue strain, like we did with the surplus property out in East County.

Uh, we're able to generate a revenue stream.

So what what are the I mean, none of that's kind of here?

Is can we kind of get some sense of this?

Thank you for your question, supervisor.

So, what we did this year in the back of the capital plan, I believe you all got a binder.

It is online.

We have now listed out all the county's surplus or excess properties, not just for GSA but includes CDA, uh fire department, so we can uh and it explains you know what the property is, a description of the current situation that we're working with the board on to deal with that surplus.

It's not an exact one-to-one.

When you talk about leases, we are we do have a strategy for leases, but um, to come out of them, but it's 90 million dollars.

So will it save money over time?

It will, but how we come up with 90 million dollars when we have this bigger problem is a conversation.

We're gonna have an additional um meetings with the department has there is a plan and a path forward, but we need to figure out the funding.

The um other question you asked me, we did just sell, for instance, Harbor Bay in Alameda, and um when we did that to the city of Oakland, that 11 million went into the fund, the special capital fund to help solve the problem.

So we have the arena center, we know it has uh significantly depreciated from the time we purchase it.

That's only going to continue, as you know.

We've the market makes it challenging to dispose of that property.

But um, so we're bringing a consultant on board to help us with some ideas.

We've heard some interesting things here lately about where the market in that community is going, and so um there may be some opportunities there.

So we um I could go on down the whole list, but the list is in the back of the capital plan.

Anybody can see it, it's online on our website.

So, yeah.

So the thing is we just have to be in the private sector, they can move fast.

Right.

So we we have to get that, you know, because when the market was good, right?

We get for some reason or reasons plural, we weren't able to dispose of the property and move.

Um so we have to be able to be nimble so we can take advantage of, you know, when the market is is good, and then in addition, you know, this is for the board to hear too.

I mean, if we say we're gonna move staff into property that we own, we have to move staff into property that we own.

That's not a decision staff gets to make.

The board gets to decide if, for instance, healthcare is going to be in leased or gonna be in own county uh property, if the DA is going to be in lease or gonna be in own county.

Um, I'm just kind of using it as an example.

So that's a board decision.

And the longer we delay and don't make those decisions, that also costs us money.

Um, then the other thing is uh we just have to become more entrepreneurial and opportunistic, so that where we see places where we can have a revenue stream that we can put into capital, we need to be um entertaining that as uh expeditiously as as possible.

Um, you know, for instance, the lakeside property, uh, I know the sheriff wants to get out of that.

I think the public defenders over there now, GSA you're over there.

Um, you know, that's prime real estate there.

Um we could be doing something else with that and moving staff into some other property that we own as opposed to holding on to that prime real estate on the lake.

Um so those are just some comments uh that I continue to make.

So there are initiatives to continue reducing the uh lakeside occupancy.

So I know uh probation, we're working right now to move them to Edgewater.

That was a swing space.

Um trying to think there was there was another department, the sheriff is part of the larger plan that helps reduce leases for other departments for them to shift their operations east.

So there are some um real estate master planning going on, and uh we will be happy to bring more of that to your board.

Okay, supervisor mode goes.

Um thank you, President Howard, and thank you, Director Gasway and team for this presentation.

We've been waiting for this for a long time.

Um, just really appreciate the updates.

Um, just want to ask some clarification clarifying questions with respect to the outstanding reimbursement from FEMA.

Did we state earlier what that value is and what's that number and where will those funds go once we receive it?

Is it CIP or general fund?

So I don't know that I know the exact dollar amount.

I have seen an email, so that is uh related to the hotels, and that was about a shelter operation.

So we can certainly get that to you, but those funds um were already expended, so to pay the county back.

So we come back as reimbursement, and my understanding that the disallowance was in the range of 35 to 40 million dollars.

35 to 40.

Thank you for that clarification.

And then can you repeat?

There is a comment that the uh CIP does not include seismic.

And you mentioned one more, was it HVAC?

I wasn't clear in what you said.

So I just want to clarify that um when we do a major capital project, we have to, if it's a small tenant improvement, um, then we uh don't have to do a seismic retrofit.

If we go in and do major constructions in an existing building, we have to bring it to current code.

So why maybe grandfathered in right now to the code at the time the construction was done, it has to be retrofit.

And we have retrofitted Peralta Oaks, the 13th Street building.

Um in the past, uh, the Highland Hospital project was a uh seismic project.

When we talk about facility conditions assessment, there may have been some statements about potentially, but it was generally you need to do a seismic assessment.

Part of our problem, and we've heard this from some um agent outside agencies or in some of our buildings, they want us to upgrade our projects to current code.

But the fact is we would have, you know, we have to look at equity about our entire portfolio.

We have an aging infrastructure that was out of code at the time it was built.

If we looked at building all bringing all buildings to current code, it would be these numbers would just be blown.

So when we talk about facility cost assessments, it's not seismic retrofits, and we just want everyone to be clear about that.

But if we go in and do major, then we're gonna be required to do seismic retrofits, okay.

And then can I just ask for clarification?

Even though we're under consent decree, Santa Rita jail is considered a category two and not a one.

So a couple of years ago, I think it was two years ago.

So Santa Rita used to be blended in with everything else.

So when you see category one, you couldn't really see that.

So there was a decision to pull it out, it's make it its own category.

So the projects may be active, they may be in planning.

So it's a little bit off from the other.

Normally, cycle is an active project, a future project, right, or a facility project.

But now all of Santa Rita is in one category.

It's on independent.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Um, uh so I'm gonna ask moving forward because I know we got a lot of comments from the public in terms of um limited time to weigh in on these significant capital investments.

Um, we've already made many decisions in the last six months, but do you feel moving forward that we'll be able to be briefed, whether it's in a work session or an informational item before we make significant investments moving forward?

Yes, so um, I know we've had that conversation.

I've been talking with the team about it.

So we could before there are some projects already in the queue for board the next couple board meetings, but following that, we can come and do staff reports on specific topics, or if we know something's coming in the next 30, 60 days, we could come and do a staff report at a board meeting.

Um, and I guess they have done that years ago.

We also um want to come regularly work sessions.

As you see, it was a struggle for us to get on this agenda because the community issues and the other healthcare social issues are really important, and we understand, but if we don't, we have to have the time to talk to you.

So, so yeah, so I I hope moving forward we could find um time in our regular agendas to have these regular touch points.

I'm just gonna make some comments on expecting a response, but I appreciate what you said about our building portfolio.

I'm also curious in the highest and best use how we could offload our leases and get people back into the buildings we own, so reduce our ongoing costs.

Um can I make one clarification?

There isn't getting people out of leases into an existing owned building.

That is not likely feasible.

I just want to make sure I don't give you false expectations.

Could it be in some instances though?

I know not in all, but I mean we could not renew a lease, right?

Let's we'll bring that back, but and I'll share with you why that is.

But it's the problem is the majority of the leases um that we're looking at are in East County, so we're not gonna bring East County service operations to maybe when we have that discussion, we could have a map on where the buildings are at, so we have a better understanding than I know you've shared with me the fact that our buildings have so much deferred maintenance, the cost is cost-prohibited to bring it up to code.

So I guess we need to have that cost benefit analysis is what I'm getting at.

Um, just really quick.

While we have our public works director, what are we doing to address um SB 272, which is um sea level rise adaptation?

Um, I'm not sure if that's being discussed on other committees, but I haven't heard anything, and I think we really need to protect um our critical infrastructure.

So if you have any comments on that.

So, yeah, sale rise.

Uh, just to clarify, number one, uh, I think that is more of uh uh land use decisions uh by different jurisdictions that have coastal areas uh uh you know abutting the the bay or uh the ocean.

So uh we don't consider that to be part of the responsibility of the flood control district because flood control district just manages primarily the uh the river rein type of flooding.

However, one of the fundamental issues that we have is that most of our channels discharge into the bay, and if there are any kind of sea level rise, the functioning element of the flood control infrastructure will be compromised.

So, because of that, we actually have been very active uh with various communities uh providing cities and other jurisdictions, technical assistance and watershed studies, uh, you know, hydrologic studies, and we have been uh uh pretty much uh active members in providing technical assistance.

Uh, however, I would like to emphasize that uh sometimes people confuse the flood control district's role with the sea level rise issue.

The sea level rise issue is not uh within the purview of the flood control district, other than in us managing our uh various uh discharge points at the Bay Area at the bay point to make sure that the the backwater is not affecting the way the system operates.

So uh yes, we uh we've been active.

We've in fact had a meeting on uh on C level rise recently, hosted by I think by CDA or GSA, I forgot.

Uh, but we we will continue to be active and and it's going to be uh an essential element that we all need to pay attention to because it's going to affect quite a few uh jurisdictions along the shoreline.

Thank you.

I hope we'll continue to be in close coordination um with our surrounding cities to strengthen those efforts, and then lastly, just hope that we're also tracking um measure B and Measure B B funding from Alameda CTC to ensure that we could bring some of our costs down with road improvements.

Thank you.

Supervisor Tim or Bass.

Fortunately, any questions?

Um, just a couple quick questions.

Uh I I appreciate um the listing on the priority projects at Santa Rita Jail, the category two projects.

Um, so we're projecting or we we plan on spending 557 million dollars in the next five years.

This is um slide 12 of the ones that um have come to the board.

Um, because I I know that the critical operations and deferred maintenance and the kitchen remodel came to the board for um contract approvals.

Uh, what proportion of the 557 have already been contracted?

Under contract or committed appropriations.

I just want to make sure I'm gonna do that.

Well, I assume that so the ages are committed.

So the ADA project is under contract.

That's a litigation project, it should be finishing up shortly.

The network infrastructure, that's under contract safety enhancements.

We're terminating the contract and gonna um put that back out to bid um enhance outdoor rec is out to contract the treatment pod space is being done the critical ops is just your board uh just awarded that contract and the kitchen remodel so majority of them I will tell you there's master planning to continue to comply with babu because we did a small amount of treatment space and staff space um as a test to see that be in the pods but they're doing additional master planning to comply with the litigation so there will be more projects okay above the 557 million that's correct so uh in terms of the amount when I looked at the um the unfunded projects the category two for Santa Rosa jail is 133 million is is that the projects you're talking about that's included in that 133 that's correct and it's currently unfunded that's correct so when we say unfunded so the amount of the long range capital plan that has been appropriated versus no funds have been appropriated for that yet so when she showed you the balance of the long range fund over the next 10 years so the very last slide I believe it is so you have 366 million left to appropriate now remember all the money's not in the bank yet and you have to stay the course if you do there's 366 potentially more dollars million but you have an unfunded um plan of 824 million including those future Santa Rita projects which are likely needed to comply with consent decree okay so uh what I'm trying to understand is uh the unfunded projects the 824 thousand you included basically some of the consent decree projects in that category so none of those have been approved by the board right now we have consultants out there who are doing master planning and we're working with the monitors behavioral health and the sheriff's department um to master plan the facility for all the mental health uh requirements at the site and so there are additional projects that will be coming forward okay I I'm trying to figure out uh getting to Supervisor Marquez's point about um having touch points with the community because it like for example when we talked about some of the deferred maintenance project and even the kitchen remodel we had uh community members come and they they kind of didn't remember that we had made some appropriations and that these and all those were already approved that's right so moving forward how do we get them engaged in some of like the the baboo um the consent decree so we have a steering committee coming up with the sheriff um to go with our consultants on the master plan i have that um set in the next uh couple weeks on my calendar um and we'll be reviewing it and we can certainly bring it to your board to see what that is so I'll talk to the sheriff Sanchez if she's not here today but we can do a briefing we did a briefing probably a year ago or two I don't remember but we can um we can do a briefing on what's happening um I will defer to supervisor marques and she chairs the public protection committee is the public protection committee the appropriate place perhaps to have that briefing I'm vetting sure I think that'd be great thank you okay um my last question had more to do with overall when I look at the funding gap um the 824 million and uh right now it's like uh thirty-eight percent of the total is not um it's not funded it's basically the gap um have we uh what point do we consider um uh floating some capital bonds taking advantage of our triple A rating uh to fund some of these projects oh defer to the county minister oh okay you know that's something that we could look at you know at this point we have a plan to at least start building up you know the fund obviously there's a cost to that because we need to then plan ahead to pay back the debt so I I think that's you know something that needs to be evaluated I mean in some ways this is a pay as you go plan I mean we update on a regular basis not just the five year plan but GSA is making adjustments you know all of the time so it is our you know best estimate it wouldn't preclude us um from issuing debt but again that's something we need to consider because that's another liability that we're taking on and we have to pay the you've got to pay it back at some point yeah I appreciate that and uh I'm I'm just looking at the timing in terms of the bond rates our our bond rating because clearly when we look at um trying to rely on you know a sale of a property going back into the capital fund that's like a once in a blue moon type uh funding source so I'm just trying to see if there's some way to anticipate it and and I know you've done a great job in terms of prioritizing which ones should come online first and how to fund those um but if like if we have to complete certain projects uh and we we need the funding we should probably consider some options as well beyond a hoping a prior that we might sell a building when the market's good value of the vacant assets are not significant so I'll just leave it at that okay supervisor for side of asking any questions uh yes thank you um thanks for this presentation when was the facilities conditions assessment done and is that available online for us to see it isn't uh it was done in 2018 it is not online it's we the files are pretty complex and and large we do have all of those documents I will share I've shared with certain board members in one on one that at this point I'm starting to feel like it we've done a lot of work um we've um some with the regular major maintenance some with the project funding that you all provided and it's time to redo those assessments because they assumed we would start in 2018 start committing dollars immediately and to show the improvements but because you don't the situation gets worse so it is it is time for us to redo some of the supervisor was asking me about the Alcalk I looked at the report it's about currently escalated about 18 20 million dollars worth of work for major maintenance but we have the report show every single system every unit every air conditioner part every handrail so there is an um executive summary so we can make those available thank you and then um I appreciated the questions that have already been asked in terms of Santa Rita jail because it is such a significant project I think it would be helpful to have information that breaks down um the total improvements that are needed um what's been approved by the board uh what's unfunded which you just uh clarified for us what's in contract it's so complicated um it would be great to see all of that in one place so we don't have to search different board meetings or committee meetings to find it and then also having a breakdown for the critical operations um that recently came in front of the board absolutely we'll um we're taking notes and we'll uh thank you I appreciate that and I know this was um already covered but I I would appreciate um having this come back to the board in terms of the policy for the special capital construction fund.

So I know that's five percent.

I believe that goes into that fund every year, and I've got five percent of discretionary revenue.

Five percent of discretionary revenue, okay that that would be that goes in as part of our budget development each year.

Okay, is it sometimes a percentage of prior year savings as well, depending on there is that's also another component, and when we created the fund, we also um put in a single fund a number number of other uh funds that have been set aside already for capital.

So we really accumulated everything into one fund, but on an ongoing basis, the two things are um 50% of year-end fund balance as well as the five percent of discretionary revenue, and then again that's done on an annual basis um as we develop the budget, and that's highlighted in our proposed budget.

Thank you.

Do you happen to know what we put into that this current fiscal year?

Let me go back just and verify it, but it it is yeah, part of our was part of our budget development and highlighted in the letter.

Thank you.

Uh additional questions, Supervisor Miley.

And sorry to prolong this because I know it's four o'clock already.

But um, is the social services uh building out on enterprise?

Is that included in one of the categories?

I'm glad you asked.

That's one of the unfunded facility conditions work now.

I will tell you that we do get each year a small amount of general fund allocation in our in the plan, and so we have done some work at that site, fixed roofs, done some windows, some fencing, but to do a comprehensive um strike.

What uh what helps us a lot when we have big chunks is to do a strike on the building and get everything done, so but instead we're kind of piecemealing.

Okay, because that building and I know the the um township uh substation.

I think those are two buildings I continue to ask about.

And I know uh if we go out for bonds for some of these projects, I know.

Like when we did the um the hospital highland, and when we did um the juvenile um facility, you know, we had a funding uh source that we could debt service, you know, the emerald fund and others who could debt service on those.

So I would just caution us if we go out for that, we just need to identify a fund to debt service, and then um, has the staff considered any P3s above private partnerships?

Because we did that with the Gale Steel self-sufficiency building.

If we considered anything like that for some of these projects, that's a com we have looked at P3s supervisor and um in the past, and we can continue to look at that.

We are also um so it's a complicated answer that I'm certain in one of our work sessions to talk through as we look at the larger planning.

We are also going out for any grants, federal IRA funds.

I mean, we're looking for any opportunities, but uh uh P3.

Um we have researched that.

I know they did the government centers, probably the best opportunity.

If we're gonna look at that, they did it in Long Beach.

Um, but when we look at the different facilities, I think that's the one set of buildings because we had in the past looked at a new government center.

I mean, these buildings right here, it's kind of a balance in 2018.

When we did the facility assessments, we also brought in a real estate uh consultant for master planning so that both these documents could inform decisions, and it was clear that we needed a new these buildings right here.

We need new buildings, we need new Alpha Park, we need a new admin building, right?

The challenge is in the meantime, the buildings continue to deteriorate.

So it's like okay, we're throwing money into old buildings that we know we need to replace, and it takes with a P3 five, 10 years to replace, and we haven't even started on that.

So, and right at the time those documents were done, COVID hit, so we got deferred.

You know, when we say how long it's taken us, that pushed us out three years.

I left GSA for a minute.

No, okay.

Sorry, well.

Jump to it.

All right, sir.

Thank you.

Now I have a final question, which is uh, did we uh issue an RFP for a building out in East County 200,000 square feet?

What's the store this of that uh status of that?

So right now we have um, excuse me in the numbers.

It is one of the unfunded projects.

We're looking at uh the tenant improvements are about 35, 38 million dollars to do the space we're looking at coming out of leased facilities and then if you want to acquire the building it's another close to 50 million.

So I do need to speak to those department heads um I'm sorry it's not in the unfunded number it's an additional 90 million so it is in the capital plan but you'll see it as to be determined but that unfunded number does not include that 90 million dollars.

I mean if we're going to look to purchase a building from somebody they can't be waiting around years and years.

I understand so if we find something we'll be able to buy it right away or will we pay a premium to have them wait for us how would that work it's unfunded office buildings are going down in value right now in the market so if they have another buyer and they're ready to do that I mean I don't want to hold somebody the big question is whether or not we lease with a purchase option and then we can come in staggered and I think we've negotiated some terms which I need to come a close session and share with you.

Okay versus buy it outright so all right that's fair um I struggle with and supervisor Miley I know struggles with this in that we bought an office building intended to move into it didn't move into it still have it sitting there I note that we struggle even with the Coliseum site that is for sale but it looks to be perhaps reorganized this Oakland city owns the other half that's another big piece of land that we could issue a public private partnership and put an admin building on top of or put an uh affordable housing unit on top of um that's just another asset that we should be looking to maximize its value so indeed um what what I got out of this is we have a lot of projects to be done very complicated very complicated funding sources um and it's a long range plan it's like never be done as soon as you're done with five years the next five years start um and at some point you know if we have to be looking at a large bond to get it a large chunk done something that we might have to start looking for.

I know we've been talking about that since the day I got elected but at least it's been out there so with that said I'll I'll ask if there's public comment on this item anybody in the room or hands raised we have one speaker online.

One speaker online no speaker slips one speaker in the room one online collary you're on the line you have two minutes to speak.

Greetings supervisors this is John Lindsay Poland of American Friend Service Committee I appreciated the questions that um various supervisors asked about the capital improvement projects um I wanted to note that the uh critical uh projects in Santa Rita jail which cost 245 million dollars and in the documents that are posted online as well as the document that was presented to the board a couple months ago there's less than a page of description of what these projects entail um their timelines what critical needs they meet how much each of them would cost you know what would be the alternatives if any one of the six pieces of that or seven pieces of that were not done and so I hope that um when Ms Gessaway comes back with more information and that it includes more details about that.

You know, including how the plan for the jail accounts for the highly reduced jail population, which is less than half of it was what it was 10 years ago.

Um, finally, uh, well I again, I really appreciate this hearing and the information and the questions.

Um, you know, I'm one of the few people who do look at the CIP documents online, and um, there was no associated uh document that was posted with this.

So it was totally unclear both when this item would come up, but also what exactly you know would be presented.

So just I know that other items around the voters the register of our voters.

This was posted in advance.

There are other things that are posted in advance.

So it's just an appeal to please post things in advance so that people who are paying attention can really be informed about what it is you're get you're talking about and um be able to respond accordingly.

Thanks so much.

Be well.

I was wondered at the deviation to our applied living.

We do not understand two inch by 14 by 16 ply board, 28 of them is a 14 by 14, and ask that to self-sufficiency.

When that is fifth wheeling, that's alternative storage modeling based on application to nuclear spent fuel.

If that's my depreciation or credit card self-use, I don't understand my day-to-day management, and we would uh apply to housing arrangements, registry models indicates that we do not have a term of insurance agreement based on the application of the two-year versus the five-year bond, and an implication of duality.

If I do not understand my data, my BARP bond, my bus bond, and my bicycle does not my expenditure.

Any dividend ETF means I have a set application to revenue, you call it a restaurant owning.

When that is wondered to the view of the fire to the application, we have a systematic applications to the housing arrangements based in the interstate application.

One of the things that this board took into court was a thing in six killer to the Lodera.

Lodera is actually my business called Lotus Capital Management.

Lotus Capital Management is using SF Davis, 90 feet, the same parking garage that is diagonal to you, and developing it with an octagon, and say the hospital uh airplane and the Claire Lake uh zoo using a boat and it being a casino.

I do not appreciate you guys representing me that via developmental standards to economic impact statements.

That is property casualty wonderment and via housing used as blatant gross mouths and intentional negligence of view of bankruptcy.

The same 90 million was asked to the view of smelling natural gas, use two uh uh solar panels, park and ruck department, and say put a police phone and what is known as the green button is you smell natural gas and say that you're worried about it as a concerned citizen.

When this question is wondered, that with a what you call a outhouse and said I don't understand my homeless version.

Is not modeled in tri-regional master planning.

Thank you.

There are no additional speakers.

Thank uh fire chief for being here.

I know he got all dressed up and came down here and didn't have to say a word, but we saw your project up here.

90 million dollars fire station.

Uh well, whatever it is, a total of 90 million dollars for measure x.

So why don't we just thank our public for voting yes on measure X?

Yes, thank you.

Okay.

With that, we're gonna move on to the main event for today.

Item three is the main event.

There's item three one and item three, two.

Item three one, Miss Derek can barely contain herself.

It's tenant protections in the unincorporated area.

And we'll have a staff report and public comment.

Thank you, Supervisor President Hobart.

Uh this is uh tenant protections for the unincorporated area uh for this item.

It has a long and complex history, but uh we will provide a brief presentation.

That'll be Michelle Starrett, our housing director, uh, will give the presentation so we can get your board up to date on all the activity that's been going on with the tenant protections, and we look for your guidance on how we may move forward on these tenant protections.

There we go.

Thank you so much for taking the time to hear this item.

Um I'm Michelle Sterren.

I'm the housing director for Alameda County, and uh we represent the unincorporated county with our city jurisdictional hat, as well as the countywide programs that we also run throughout the county.

Quite a few of those as well.

Um, so let's see.

So just very quickly, we're gonna the PowerPoint is short.

There's a detailed um white paper that we have provided, and I know we've just provided it to you just now.

Um, I'll reference several areas where you can do some background research.

Um we don't want to spend a huge amount of time in this presentation, and this has been talked about quite a bit over the years.

Um, mostly we're trying to bring Supervisor uh Fortunata Bass up to speed since she has not heard these presentations, but many of you have heard them many many times.

Um, so we're gonna talk about the original recommendations from the steering committee.

We're gonna talk about what we have accomplished thus far.

Um, we're gonna skip over the review of the research, that is this paper, um, and then where we are at with our current recommendations and what it would take to do next steps.

So we've had quite a bit of different board direction.

Um, starting as far back as 2018, we were asked to investigate new tenant protections for the unincorporated areas, and we started on that work by getting a grant and establishing a steering committee.

And um, and then in 2022, uh the challenge grant represent uh recommendations came to all of the different MACs.

They went to uh the unincorporated services committee, the transportation and planning committee, and a joint health and social services committee.

Um, also after that, we also funded many ARPA funded programs.

Uh, that's not a bullet on this list, but you'll see them in a few minutes.

But a lot of that was meant to support both the rental property owners and the tenants who were struggling with it with the eviction moratorium and the pandemic and the aftermath of all of that.

We have a uh adopted two ordinances in early uh 2025, and then when the board adopted the housing element, there was also additional need for tenant protections identified in that.

This is a timeline, so you can see here um much of what I've just talked about.

The challenge grant met with 19 different community organizations in 19 different meetings, including the Rental Housing Association and uh East Bay Housing Realtors Association.

So we had a real uh broad ranging group of folks that we met with, um, or they met with.

Um, we brought and and you can see just the timing of everything.

I just said all of that, so I'll just keep going.

So this white paper before you has a lot of really important things that you might want to focus on.

Starting on page um 10 is some of the information from the Metropolitan Transportation Uh Commission and their requirements around protections and the money that is possibly at stake if we don't have at least two ordinances.

We do have one ordinance, which is just cause.

So we'll need to find a way to meet that second requirement.

Um, on page 14, we discuss enforcement and the fact that the state, while they have laws, does not pay for enforcement and does not um uh and does in uh allow city attorneys and county councils to enforce these kinds of laws, but as we know, and Donna has said there aren't funds or resources or staff that have the capacity to actually do those enforcements, and then on page 16 of this ordinance, we start a city-by-city review of the various um tenant protections that exist throughout Alameda County.

The original recommendations are very similar to what we're gonna propose again, but a proactive rental inspection program and rental registry was the number one ordinance and the number one requested support for tenants.

Fair chance has had a first reading.

A rent stabilization ordinance was also on their list along with a rent board, anti-harassment ordinance, and then the rental mediation program and a rent review board, and then, of course, the strengthening of tenant and landlord programs.

So since then we have done the mediation ordinance.

We adopted that last December.

We've had four full mediations.

And that's that's pretty good.

The contract runs through the end of December.

It's ARPA funded, and so that contract will end at the end of December.

It's no cost to both the landlords and the tenants.

It is required if a tenant asks for it, and we are doing outreach and engagement with the community through our contracts with my Eden Voice and the Rental Housing Provider Resource Center to make sure everyone's aware that this service exists.

And then we also adopted just cause.

This is the ordinance that meets one of the MTC protection requirements.

There have been 156 unlawful detainer cases in the unincorporated county since we adopted this, but we've only received 50 notices, eviction notices.

So we're not sure if that's because we haven't done enough outreach to ensure that the court knows that they can't evict someone unless there is a notice filed with us, or if there are just a hundred households that were not covered by our just cause ordinance.

Because as you know, single-family homes and properties where you have lived there for less than a year, or properties that are less than 15 years old are not covered.

And then these are the important programs that we did stand up.

We have the rental housing provider resource center, we have tenant outreach and education.

We did uh get the mobile home rental registry in place, and then we have been doing legal aid, and all of this was ARPA funded, and all of this ends at the end of December.

So our current recommendations and are fairly similar but a little nuanced and different.

We're asking for a proactive rental inspection pilot program, three and a half years in Ashland Cherryland and Hayward Acres.

Those are the most low-income communities in the unincorporated county.

There are also homes that are over 50 years old and there are significant repair needs.

Um, in order to identify the people and know where those units are and how to reach the landlords, we're proposing that we amend the business license tax ordinance to create a rental registration system.

We've been working with uh Elvia and Hank on how to make that happen, and we think we have a plan.

We also have a grant to do anti-harassment ordinance, and we're hoping to roll that up with a rent review board as well, as well as anti-retaliation language.

Um, and so that work has started.

Our fair chance uh ordinance still exists in its same format that was passed by the board in its first reading in December of 2022.

I believe that that lawsuit has reached a conclusion, and there's recommendations that can be made to recommendations that can be made to move that forward.

Um, and go ahead.

When you say that the fair chance exists in the form that it was in when it was passed by the board, it came back to the board and it was not passed by the board then.

So I just want to be clear, it's not the current status of it isn't that it was passed by the board.

On second reading, it was not passed by the board.

Okay.

There is still a great desire for a rent stabilization ordinance.

Um I would recommend that our first step would be a rent review program to get something started.

It wouldn't necessarily change uh, it would continue to enforce AB 1482, which is a state law, but a rent review program would allow tenants who had concerns or complaints to go before a body that was appointed by this board to actually have their issue heard.

I have recommended that we use the housing and community development advisory committee, which all of you have appointed seats on, and that meets every other month.

However, we could meet more often if the case was needed.

And then essentially establishing an emergency rental assistance program is one of the key things that we know our community really needs.

Both our rental housing providers and our tenants desperately need some resources to help fill back owed rent.

Why additional?

I talked a little bit about enforcement.

I also talked about the MTC, and so I'm gonna just jump quickly to this slide.

This slide shows all of the cities in Alameda County by descending order of the number of renter households and what those median renter household incomes are.

We would be the fifth uh largest with 19 to 20,000 renter households, and our incomes are um closer to Berkeley's income level on median.

Um, and you can see where there are a lot of programs with protections and where there aren't.

And as we come down this list, you can see there are fewer and fewer renter households, and there are higher and higher income levels.

As a tenant has um higher income, they are more able to actually um afford their rent, not get in trouble with their landlord, and identify uh the resources that they need to either move and or fight something that is um illegal.

Um and what we see in the unincorporated county, which has a great amount of poverty, is that our tenants don't have those resources, it's not moving.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, so as far as implementation, oh no, I'm we're I'm way back.

Sorry.

Yeah, there we go.

Next steps.

Um we would want to finalize some of these ordinances, bring them to the Unincorporated Services Committee, fair chance, proactive rental inspection, the business license ordinance amendments are pretty much ready to go.

And what we're looking for today is direction and um preferences, priority, you want to go one by one on which preference and which priority you're looking for.

I'm a little confused.

Just taking, you know, what your comments are.

Before we go to public comment, any questions or comments from my colleagues?

Supervisor Marquez.

Um, thank you.

We've been waiting for this for a long time.

When we pass, just cause there was a request to take this item up, at least the overview and give some feedback in July before we go on recess, fully acknowledging that did not happen because we were deep into the measure W discussion.

So all very important policy decisions.

Um, but I I really appreciate all of the information.

Um I did wish I had a little bit more time to digest.

I'm aware of some of this stuff, but seeing it in its totality, um, I feel that they're all important.

I don't know how realistic it is for us to get to all of them within a year.

Um, so I'm curious, you know, what my colleagues are gonna say because I want to move on what we have consensus.

Um, I've been a very strong advocate about we need to continue to emphasize the three Ps.

Um, the chart that you have on uh slide 12 is what I was referencing on the measure W.

You know, that's our next discussion, and people are really adamant about keeping our community members housed, preserving affordable housing, but we can't do that alone.

As you mentioned, we're only um the fifth component of this large equation.

So if we're really gonna address the need to keep people housed, we need every city in this county to do their part.

This is the evidence, not all are, and I will say again, not everyone has to do the same thing, but you have to do something.

You cannot sit on the sidelines anymore.

But we also have to demonstrate with leadership, we're gonna walk the talk and not just tell others what to do.

We have to do it ourselves.

Um, so you have my full support.

I will say just my initial gut reaction um is fair chance.

We it it ties in uh RHA work, cares first, jails last.

We want it, I'm glad to hear it publicly.

Our population has gone down by 50% at Santa Rita jail.

We could be doing more with Prop One with housing, but a major barrier in getting our justice involved community members' house are the restrictions around fair chance.

So if we could focus on that, I think um all our communities would be safer if we could um provide housing jobs, just wraparound services so people can live a full uh life.

So I would say out of all of them that's a priority for me is the fair chance, but I I support all of the recommendations.

I'm sorry, fair chance is not listed here, but um Oakland, Berkeley, is there anyone else that has it?

So just those two.

Okay, can I ask why?

Sorry, I maybe I confused that.

Why isn't fair chance listed?

Um I think we just didn't have enough space.

It probably came off the other side of this print.

Um, but fair chance should be one of these on there.

Okay, I mean in terms of didn't you have a slide like the seven priorities?

Oh no, it's up on the priority.

Okay, like got it.

What I think we can accomplish quickly, fair chance is like number two.

Yes, okay, glad to hear that.

Okay, so I absolutely want to uh focus on that.

Also want to be very clear on direction.

I think things get delayed with they have to be vetted at all these committees multiple times.

We've been talking about this since 2018.

So let's come up with the plan.

I want to respect the max, but at the same time, these meetings are public meetings.

We've got to figure out a way to streamline this process because often what happens, comments are made at those committees, changes are made, and we do this back and forth thing, and then just ends up being delay after delay.

And um we've got to make sure we're we're um being responsive and addressing these ordinances in a timely manner.

It's unacceptable to be still having the same conversation seven years later.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fortunatabas.

Questions, comments?

Yes, thank you, President Halbert.

Um, in terms of the slide with the next steps, I'll just pick up um on fair chance.

Um, I co-sponsored this legislation in Oakland in 2020, and I also am very interested in moving this forward.

Um, is it possible for our county council to share what the status is of litigation on this topic?

So I believe it came up one of the prior times that it came before your board, but there was a case that was pending the case that did invalidate certain provisions of a fair chance, something that's very similar to a fair chance ordinance in another jurisdiction.

Um there were subsequent proceedings in that case on the issue of if you severed um that particular provision that was determined to be unconstitutional from the rest of the ordinance um or whether it was severable, and so whether the ordinance stood that decision on the severability issue was just decided on August 22nd.

So I think that it probably is timely for us to go back and have conversations with the department regarding the impact of that decision and what changes maybe need may need to be made um or not made to the ordinance so that we don't run a file of um of legal issues, but but it is my belief that the litigation in the yim matter um is final now.

But like I said, the most recent activity in the case was August 22nd of this year.

Thank you very much.

As I said earlier, I support the uh rental inspection and registration pilot and future rental registry.

Last time this came before the board, we had some discussion about whether the business license tax was the best way to move forward with this.

I'm just curious to hear a little bit more about that because I thought that was still an outstanding question and work was being done to determine the best way to move that forward.

Um we've identified that the current business license tax system is a legacy system that you know is fairly old.

And if that system is updated to a cloud-based system, which we've had several conversations with our treasurer tax collector about, uh there'd be there would be an ability to marry it to a rental registry and use the business license tax system to bring the data in, and then the rental registration system could you know be maintained by HDL, an organization that is actually would be running the registration system and getting uh entities registered.

So the workload of managing the rental registration would happen with the contractor who uh owns and operates the the business license who who also runs the business license tax system.

Um we did a lot of legwork to try and figure out what maybe the best rental registration online systems were, and you know, I think a standalone rental registration ordinance uh which would allow us to go to any rental registration system might be better, but it might not.

And this system seems to sort of dovetail with existing business practices in the in the unincorporated county, and we could streamline and strengthen the existing ordinance, cleaning up some things that need to be cleaned up.

And um currently Hank has uh copies of the edits that we were proposing.

It would also be an opportunity to make sure all businesses in the county are registered.

Yes, thank you.

And then finally, um I do support number five emergency rental assistance.

I am wondering if you can speak to um how this would potentially be different or augment AC housing secure, which we just um had on our board agenda last uh last week.

So the annual amount that we give to AC Housing Secure is about 1.8 million dollars, of which between five, 300 and 500,000 is spent on emergency financial assistance, depending on their staffing levels, quite honestly, because they pay for staff with the rest of the money.

And so if they have a vacancy, they can spend a little bit more on an annual basis.

Um the amount of money it would take to actually fully fund, you know, a right to counsel in our county is about 18 million a year based on estimates from 2021.

So costs have gone up.

Um the number of eviction cases that are happening countywide, uh, you know, it's the white paper actually outlines it.

I think it's um 2,000 cases per attorney working.

It's just an outrageous amount of um, there's just no way to represent everybody.

So they get a very baseline level, and we're serving about 10 to 15 percent, and everyone's extremely low income.

Um, as far as how another emergency rental assistance program, it would be targeted to the unincorporated county, and it would increase what's available because right now, obviously, that 400,000 a year doesn't go very far.

Um, but we'd probably be able to stabilize more households than we're able to stabilize right now.

And again, this is not a long-term rental assistance that would keep someone housed for several years.

This is really intended to be just keeping people from becoming um, you know, in dire straits.

Um, we just to be really clear, we desperately need operating assistance in more section eight, but we're not gonna get it, not in this but federal climate.

Um, we're we we don't have enough funding to assist all of the low-income people who need help, housing help.

And there's lots of folks that are couch surfing, are living with friends, are living in their cars, who may or may not be considered you know actually homeless by the HUD definition, but are certainly at the verge of becoming homeless if they're not considered homeless.

Thank you so much, and thank you also for this report.

I appreciate getting this level of information.

Thank you.

Supervisor Miley, then uh Tam.

Okay, thank you.

Uh President Halbert.

Um, you have a few uh few questions, comments as well.

Since I've kind of lived this for quite a long time, um, you know, when I look at tenant protections, I'm looking at it in the context of equity and balancing the equity, because I don't want to do something that's so fundamentally extreme that it hurts ma and pa, small landlords, many of whom are rental property providers, many of whom are minorities, API, Hispanic, African American, etc., seniors and retirees, so you know, so that's the lands I look at this from.

I'm gonna protect tenants, but I don't want to hurt um small ma and pop um rental providers.

So going down this list, you know.

I've you know, I'm fundamentally it's supportive adopting a proactive rental inspection.

I think that's why you have it up here as a pilot program, uh, because staff briefs briefs me on these matters quite often since then this affects everything here affects the unincorporated area, doesn't affect uh cities, and I'm not gonna support anything that I think would hurt um small rental providers.

Uh we've been in the issue around amending the business license tax.

I know Michelle knows I want to see that done.

I want to see that advanced.

I want to see the adoption of an anti-harassment protection ordinance of the the fair chance.

I want to see us revisit that.

It did pass, and I mean it did pass on the first reading, but the second reading it didn't pass because of the legal uh challenges.

So if those legal challenges have been um resolved, then I'm supportive of a fair chance because I supported the first reading.

Um, I know in my conversations with John Jones and Margaret O'Lead, they have informed me that they think our fair chance ordinance could now stand uh legal scrutiny, and I thought they were gonna talk to county county council about that.

So if they haven't, I hopefully county council will be talking with them.

So um so I think fair chance uh is something hopefully we can move forward on as long as there's no legal impediments, rent state stabilization or rent review program.

I think the rent review program would probably be the optimal approach at this point in time as opposed to uh stabilization.

I want to also go back with mediation.

We are hoping mediation would prevent unlawful detainers, but we don't have enough information on that just yet.

There haven't been enough cases at this point, um, but we're also trying to increase outreach and engagement, which is another one of the things that's yes, really key.

So uh with outreach engagement and also with rent stabilization, because I support both of those other funding that's running out because it's ARPA funding.

So I don't know if you can answer this, Michelle of Sandy.

Are we contemplating any of the unincorporated funding for measure W going towards um outreach um emergency rent assistance and the pilot program?

That was in our request, yes.

Okay, so so we would cover all those through Measure W allocations for the unincorporated area.

Okay, yeah, um, okay.

Which is really would be really uh be fantastic.

Um and then let's see here.

On this list of the recommendations, the seven, we've already done, you know, like I said, just cause, uh, gets us to um what we need to do with uh MTC.

So if we uh move ahead with any of these up here, if we moved ahead with anti-harassment, we would hit the second protection and we would then be clear.

Okay, that's what we're doing.

Or if we funded um emergency rental assistance, or if we funded um outreach and engagement and education.

So at $300,000 a year investment, either of those programs uh would also hit a protection requirement.

Okay, great.

And then your slide, I think it's slide nine.

The rental housing provider resource center, tenant outreach and protection, mobile home rent registry, and legal aid.

Can you talk a little bit about a little bit more about uh our track record with each of those four?

Yeah, so uh Derek Barnes was here earlier.

I think he's had to leave, but um he's done a pretty good job of setting up uh a system that includes uh includes support at the courthouse and uh is there to help small landlords.

He connects them with uh free legal assistance that is available through, who is it available through?

I can't remember who it's available through, but small landlords can access uh free legal assistance through that organization.

Um and then our tenant outreach and education program is uh led by my Eden Voice, and they uh they've been doing a lot of the training with AC Housing Secure on knowing your rights and making sure that uh there's a lot of counseling.

Uh they're also stepping into a case management role, and that's sort of what the rent board would sort of help with because they're identifying uh issues in which there isn't a resolution, but if we had a rent board, those things could be lifted up to a public hearing.

And what about the mobile home rent registry and legal?

Now, how about mobile home rent registry, which is working working well?

Um the landlords are registering once a year and telling us if there's turnovers and telling us who lives there.

That was needed because we didn't know who was in each of these parks, and we didn't know how to reach them.

Uh there's no mailing addresses, and you can't walk on site unless you are invited on site.

And so if we don't know who lives there and we can't reach out to them, we were unable to have communications with them.

But now we have those lists, and that's been really helpful.

And legal aid.

Uh, legal aid has been through uh AC Housing Secure.

It was an expansion for unincorporated specific services, and it expanded the kind of help that you know other cities have like Pleasanton and Oakland have separate contracts with AC with uh Central Legal or one of the other five agencies, and it just expands the amount and numbers that can be served in that jurisdiction.

So we were able to get some additional help in the unincorporated county.

And are we contemplating any measure W money going towards that?

Um all of these programs are something that we requested funding for.

Okay.

Um, and then with the mobile home, I know we're looking because that's separate from tenant protections, but we're looking at a uh a closure uh ordinance, uh planning, your shop are really looking closely at a closure ordinance, a local closure ordinance.

There's state requirements already, but we're looking to put something in place locally.

It would close some of the loopholes that the state has.

Um, one of the key things is a one-for-one replacement that is there both because of state mobile home park law, but also because of the homeless crisis and the laws that they've passed since uh the housing crisis began.

Um, one of the things that we're also asking is that um the tenants be given first right of refusal in order to purchase the park using the land trust, the Eden Land Trust, or one of the other types of organizations that wants to step in and um own and operate a park, and that way the tenants would have um some control over their futures.

Uh but but that's you know, that's additionally something to be considered in that ordinance.

And right now that's still uh at the planning commission stage.

Yeah, the planning commissioner uh chair uh won't hear it until that portion is taken out the first right of refusal so until that's taken out the planning commission will won't be taking it up yeah I I think uh just to clarify the planning commission has it agendized for October 20th and uh they're using this time they were originally scheduled for October 6th but they're they're using this time to take a field trip uh with the planning commissioners and it'll be heard at their October 20th hearing okay because I think whether it's in or whether it's out ultimately it's got to get through the planning commission so the board can take it up and we can decide what we want to do.

If they don't hear it because I'm not gonna uh you know kind of um for foreshadow my position on that because it's still at the planning commission so Buck stops here to answer your question Miley knows that we can do anything that's legal thank you.

But it's got to get through the planning commission first so that's why I was curious when she said he was holding it up it's kind of they got to make a decision.

Okay.

Um and then let me see there's one other question.

So with the mediation ordinance that we passed it also called for counseling right because we said if a tenant needs counseling who who's providing that service with the mediation I'm gonna look to my staff center for community services is doing the mediation and the counseling both okay and they're helping the tenant again it's an know your right situation you know where and when they can push for their uh you know what they're legally allowed to ask for okay and I and it's really going to be good for us to keep this mediation moving along because I know at the MTC level the area housing finance authority level of which you know I serve on both of those bodies you know we're looking at um approaches and I did mention mediation and people asked how that's going but I said we have we don't have enough data at the moment to give you a response on that because you know my position my hope is that with mediation mandatory mediation that's going to help resolve some of these issues because voluntary mediation we've had that in place forever and we know that doesn't work.

Right we'll we'll track that and get you data when we have it okay thanks.

Supervisor Tim and then I have a list of questions.

Thank you President Halbert I think Supervisor Miley asked and commented on many of the issues that I also wanted to touch on but let me um ask this one specifically so um one of the three Ps that Supervisor Marquez and um and all of your documentation is mentioned is the preservation and we know that 90% of the unlawful detainers is related to the inability to pay rent and you talked about an emergency rental assistance program as one of the top priorities which I support and I also support um the work as we voted on trying to use some of the measure W the 390 million dollars earmarked for the home together plan to provide a flexible pool which includes administering a rental assistance program.

Do we know how much of that could be used for rental assistance uh because I know it's it's countywide it's um the 150 million dollar flex pool over the next five years was awarded to a boat and it it specifically talks about like potential shallow subsidies to prevent people from getting evicted do we have an idea of how much we're talking about yeah uh Jonathan Russell director for Alameda County Health Housing and homelessness services um so the flex pool is it is rental subsidies the vast majority of those will be deep rental subsidies, specifically for housing uh people that are currently experiencing home assist to exit homelessness.

So it's very much uh adding uh up to uh I think by the third second to third year, we'll have 1,600 uh or more people in total um that we would hope to have in the in the program at any given time.

But that's new people exiting homelessness into into housing as opposed to prevention or uh eviction protection assistance for for people currently housed.

Um serving people that are currently in housing would fall under one of our other home together fund categories, the prevention category, uh, which does have uh funds set aside to provide some emergency rental assistance specifically to folks that are most highly prioritized, not just for um eviction defense or legal services, but that if not for this falling into homelessness, homelessness prevention.

So there is some overlap there in that category, but the flexible housing subsidy pool is really designed to provide permanent supportive housing subsidies for people that are currently experiencing homelessness to leave and then stay housed.

Uh, I appreciate that.

It's just that uh we have to look at both sides, obviously.

Yeah, because it's easier to prevent somebody from getting homeless than rather than giving deep subsidies to somebody that's already homeless and trying to get them into housing.

Um, so one of the um recommendations that came from Ebrah from Derek Barnes that you mentioned is to look at providing about 25 million dollars or 20 to 25 million dollars to help about 6500 households annually uh to basically address some of the financial hardships that come with the need for the rent subsidies.

Do you um have a sense whether that would be covered under measure W in the home together plan?

I'd have to look at their data in terms of specifically who they're referencing.

We did go through a process in 2023 of developing a countywide homelessness prevention framework that is specifically focused on looking deeply at the research and our local data on who's most at risk of homelessness of the large amount of people that are uh extremely low income and behind on rent or what have you.

Um, and so that is it is a specific subset of that population that we've run data on that have all those highest evidence markers of of at risk of homelessness.

And so we do intend to set aside funding uh for that.

We have a fraction right now of what we would need to prevent the four 4,700 people on average that fall into homelessness each year.

Um, but the work would really be focusing on those that we have the best evidence that they very likely will to provide that emergency assistance.

So I'd be happy to look at their data.

I think there could be some overlap, but again, as Michelle and I talk often, the level of need uh that goes even just slightly upstream, by which we mean folks that have tons of valid needs, um, are low on income.

You know, that that stream goes very high.

And so right now we have enough money to really focus on the just the front door, um, and even still that will take about 15 to 20 million a year that we've set aside to prevent uh inflow for potentially a thousand people.

Okay, um, I think that would be helpful just in terms of communicating um how we're addressing some of these needs with the Measure W funding, uh, because we we also have the the other part, which is the central county services, which we're still trying to sort through in terms of the other supportive housing needs uh that come with like health care and food security.

So that would be helpful.

Thank you.

It might be helpful to think about it from the perspective of uh a city level service rather than a county-wide safety net service.

Um, there are many cities in the Bay Area that provide emergency rental assistance um programs that are coming, you know, from a different source than what the county health system would be providing.

I appreciate that, but we're we're focused on the unincorporated area with this discussion.

And so that's why I wanted to understand specifically what was uh possible funding-wise for the unincorporated areas, because you're talking about uh doing a pilot rental inspection and registration program only for the the more low-income parts of the unincorporated, like Ashland and you know, Cherry Land, and not include San Lorenzo and Castle Valley, which is the bulk of the unincorporated area.

Well, if there was appetite to do more, I think we could do more.

It sounds like we don't have the funding, we may have the appetite.

That's true.

Um you mentioned Derek Barnes.

I think he was here earlier.

Lena mentioned him.

I don't know if he's online.

Can we check and see?

I'd like to see if he would want to respond to question or comment that Supervisor Tam made, andor to weigh in on the presentation you made, if there are any thoughts that he had support for.

If he's online to raise his hand would be helpful.

Maybe not.

Um I have questions.

So, well, first of all, I just want to say we should this is a topic that I think some of us agree on points, certain points, some of us maybe not.

We should be always seeking to find common ground where we do agree, in my opinion.

But a couple of of thoughts, it's just you know, a sort of an economic law, as you increase costs, increase regulations, uh, increase regul uh regulations or um other fees, um, if you increase just the friction of doing business, which is providing affordable housing, then by nature you're going to reduce the housing stock, you're going to reduce investment in housing, you're gonna reduce the quality of housing people, aren't going to invest in in improvements in in the property.

Eventually, properties will fall into disrepair and we'll be issuing violations for inhabitability.

We see that in every community that increases costs and regulation versus those that don't.

Um, so if we want to talk about the cost of housing, how expensive it is, then we can't talk about uh the way we increase those costs.

Um, for mediations, why only four?

Do we have any idea?

How much did we pay for contracts to have mediators online ready to mediate?

To have outreach for organizations to go spread the word about mediations?

It's an on-call service, so we pay on a per mediation basis.

It's not a okay.

How many do we pay for each mediation?

I'll have to talk to staff about that.

I don't know exactly.

So it's an on-call contract, but we don't know what the on-call amount is.

I'm sure they do.

I think one of them will shoot me an email in moments.

With regard to fair chance, and I understand, so this is when uh predominantly somebody who, for example, is formally incarcerated.

Yes.

And it's hard for them to rent because nobody wants to rent to them.

How many of our nonprofit housing developers?

Many of them were here just this morning, wanting 15 million dollars.

How many of them proactively accept formally incarcerated?

Allow them to they ask the question, the question's answered, formally incarcerated doesn't affect their chance to rent, and therefore a proportion of their tenants are formally incarcerated.

Do they are they all required to accept formally incarcerated?

They can't be required because we don't have an ordinance according to county council conversations with me.

We just offer them 15 million dollars.

We could not put it in their regulatory agreement.

So we have to try.

Could we not have negotiated that you would as a as a requirement of receiving this money from us at our discretion, not owed to them?

Could we have asked them to house formally incarcerated?

I'm not prepared to answer.

Well, my guess is that some way we should have been able to find a way.

If if we really want formally incarcerated to be housed, we should do everything we can in our in our capabilities to work with those partners of ours.

They're all good people, don't get me wrong, but if not if they are not housing formally incarcerated, then we shouldn't talk about making everybody do that if they're not even our partners, let alone the having fair chance affect small mom and pops when it won't even affect the people that we give extra money to.

A proactive rental inspection will simply add additional costs in my opinion.

I'm not opposed to making it really clear that if you live in an uninhabitable unit, that you should have the way of a process for making a complaint.

A year, two years, I think is even too long, but helping somebody get on their feet or helping somebody with a catastrophic cost that happens once, not over and over again, that is a temporary, not an ongoing is something I can support.

I support, as I mentioned, fair chance in units that we have influence over, not for mom and pops that we or other um fair market housing providers that we require a fair chance on if we're not subsidizing them or uh funding them in some needs.

Let's look at what we have influence over first.

I I support shared housing.

If there are uh situations where we can um help people find roommates or help families be more efficient with their housing costs, I support that.

I support family reunifications, even if that requires relocation.

I recognize that the more we subsidize building, for example, building million dollar doors means we can only serve few service fewer people with the resources that we have.

So that's where I'm coming from.

We do have common ground in um in a lot of those things, but I think you know, getting to three is important, but getting um starting where we have common ground is is where we'll we'll find um the biggest bang for our buck.

So um uh none no more comments for me.

I'll see before we go to public comment though.

Uh a second comment from Supervisor Miley.

Yes.

I agree with your position around more regulation.

But what I've been trying to get the staff to do is when we look at more regulation, not putting the cost of regulation onto the rental housing provider, but we're gonna absorb that cost uh through sources of funds that we have available to us.

Um so by us absorbing that cost, if we think the regulation is a fair regulation and it helps to protect tenants, keep people housed, but it's not putting an added burden of cost on the rental housing provider.

Then I think you know the equities in my mind are balanced.

So that's what we've been trying to look at.

And then the other thing, do we know if the governor signed that legislation that if there's a um government shutdown and people are not receiving their paychecks, that there'll be a moratorium on rent and um a moratorium on evictions?

No, I don't know.

Okay.

Okay, thank you for clarifying.

But um, I I believe that thus far many of the requirements are meant to be passed on to the tenant, and oh boy, they just get right passed on to the rent.

So I agree with you.

If we pay for it, well, then we have less money to help people with rental subsidies.

So it's a balance of that.

Money is finite.

The comment was made about okay.

Well, when I'm done.

Sure.

I appreciate that.

You made the comment that we have a mobile home registry, or we're looking to do that.

But you also said if you're invited in to the mobile home, if one tenant in that mobile home invites you in, you could have a town hall meeting in the mobile home.

But I have to imagine they're all registered to vote.

So can we not just go to the registrar voters and find people that live there and re outreach to them?

Do we have that's a way that we could cover the cost as opposed to passing costs on?

It's just a thought, a registry.

We paid for the registry.

They didn't that didn't get passed on to the owners or the tenants.

We paid for the registry.

Yeah.

With ARPA funds.

And how much did it cost?

About a hundred thousand dollars.

Okay.

Let's uh go to the speaker online.

It's Derek Barnes.

Okay.

You can is he raising his hand or is he promoted to speaker?

There we go.

President Halbert, can you hear me?

We can.

Have you been listening?

And did you hear Rena Tam's questions, comments?

I think I did.

Um, Supervisor Tam, would you restate your question or any other supervisor who has a question about the um the program or any of the data that we've shared.

Yes, you had uh cited in your um note that you think you need about 20 to 25 million to serve 8,500 households, and I was trying to understand whether or not um those rental subsidies were part of you know the the home together or some aspect of the home together plan with measure W.

And uh Jonathan was saying that he was going to work with your office to um kind of determine where that data is coming from and how to compare it in terms of the number of households served.

Got it.

Yeah, we just I think we just looked at the the number of eviction uh filings and and extrapolated from there, knowing that the vast majority of them were for non-payment of rent.

Uh, and then we looked at data that suggested, you know, how much how much a household or an individual might be behind.

Um that number was coming in somewhere between a thousand and three thousand dollars, depending on the length of time that the household was behind, and then we just sort of used a you know a countywide number to kind of come up with, you know, what 20 to 25 million dollars um, you know, could provide in terms of assistance in households, and that's how we came up with the 6500.

Now that doesn't take into consideration um certainly the administrative cost, you know, an organization or provider obviously would have to administer um the emergency rental assistance program, but I think uh what is good is that through the ERAP program during COVID, a lot of that provider network and infrastructure has already been established, but of course there would need to be some administration or administrative cost associated with that 20 to 25 million dollars.

I hope that makes sense, right?

And um, you're talking about countywide, right?

Not just the unincorporated areas.

That is that is correct, uh, Supervisor Tam.

This was this this was to um address the need across the county.

Okay, because Michelle mentioned that obviously cities like Oakland have their own allocations from the state, whether it's the HAP program or otherwise, and uh and uh obviously they also have their access to rental subsidies.

So we're we're just trying to understand um you know what portion is something we can uh help out with in the unincorporated area.

Understood, and um certainly we can work with uh Jonathan and his team to kind of come out to come up with the the jurisdictions or the municipalities that have their own funding because there are several as mentioned, I think mentioned earlier, and look at you know, are those sustainable sources of funding?

I know that some cities do have private sources of of ERAP funding, so we can take a look at that to kind of come up with what the real number might look like for a countywide program or specifically for um the unincorporated area.

The other point you mentioned was the cross program database system, yes, uh, and and trying to unify the database because we are talking about the rent registry tied to a pretty outdated business license tax ordinance, and you said that uh there are examples where other jurisdictions like San Francisco use one system.

Can you explain how that works given some of the uh legal restrictions on access to some of those database, whether it's the business license tax database or the assessors database?

Yeah, let me let me separate those those two things.

And I just want to shout out Michelle Starrett and Supervisor Miley for really pushing pushing the the alternative to establishing a stand-up rent registry where we deduce that a lot of the information contained in the business license tax data or the business license database, with the addition of some additional pieces of information could serve to be could serve to be a rental database.

There's also um third-party services too that I've talked to Michelle about that can assist in pulling in additional um third-party data to make the the information more comprehensive to kind of really give a good snapshot of what's happening in the county.

So this is all sort of technology uh driven.

And um, you know, I just want to thank Michelle and uh Supervisor Miley for really leading the charge and pushing the buttons with Hank and figuring out how to make this work with the available systems.

Um, it sounds like with some upgrades uh and some you know some focus there, we we may be able to come up or stand up a rental uh database for the county.

As it relates to the um the cross county database and let's call that the sort of a client database, and this is specifically for um uh tracking uh services provided under Measure W.

I think most of you know that I also serve on a few nonprofits uh in San Francisco, home rise and home bridge uh more specifically.

And so over the years, San Francisco, we kept um just beating our heads up against the wall because a lot of the providers, and these are large organizations through the city are helping clients, but we had no visibility in terms of what services some of our sister uh organizations may be providing to the same or similar set of clients.

And so what San Francisco uh finally um enacted, and I think the uh the current HCD head over there, uh, two years ago implemented uh what they're calling the one system, um, and that has been a game changer, I think, for a lot of the providers who are more recently getting connected into that system that the city is using to collect uh client data.

Um, the initial pushbacks or the the things the barriers were largely around HIPAA and privacy and things of that nature, um, but the the city has found a way to link the data together so that it is anonymized and so that individuals who have access to it or organizations who have who need access to certain um parts of the data uh can now get it without sort of any you know breaching any additional confidentiality around the client.

But what that allows the city of San Francisco to do uh is to determine uh what clients are getting which services, and quite frankly, you know, how the money is being spent, and are are is the city delivering the impact uh promised uh by the dollars that it's spending on certain services.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Doug.

Were there any other programs or thoughts that you wanted to chime in on from Michelle's presentation?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, President Halbert.

So I would say that, you know, um I I really appreciate the conversation.

I mean, I think everybody on the dias knows that um, especially in the unincorporated area, most of those small, most of the housing providers are small owner operators, as Supervisor Miley um, you know, stated earlier.

And so we really have to, you know, have a balance of making sure that we're protecting households and renters, but at the same time making sure that we do no harm for the housing provider stakeholders.

And so one of the things I wanted to leave you with as you're thinking about the priorities is that we recently did a survey, and about 35% of our smaller owner operators suggested that they wanted to exit the business within 24 months.

That is alarming, and I think we all should pay attention to that and figure out like how we can get ahead of that to kind of keep those smaller owner operators in business.

And I think the other piece of information that came out of the mid-year survey was about 27% of our owner operators said that they had uh vacant units or unoccupied units.

And these may be our older properties that need repairs or ongoing maintenance.

And I think that's a huge opportunity for us to kind of bring uh units back into the market that would be low cost and certainly be deeply affordable given the legacy owners that operate them.

Um we've talked about the business license uh tax and we we are business license database, which I think um is off to a great start with using um uh information from Hank's system, and then I think proactive inspections.

I think that's that's fine, but we should model that after areas that have successful programs or our cities that have them where they have a combination of self-inspections, um, both you know, tenant and owner self-inspections, third-party inspections, and recurring random inspections, which keeps everybody on the up and up.

Um, and then I think a you know, with all of that, we absolutely need to have repair assistance uh or some sort of loan program or grant program because many of the small rental owner operators don't have reserves, don't have savings, and they don't have access to the capital and financing to cover those repair and maintenance emergencies, and we think that's a critical component to marry up.

And I think we've talked about the emergency rental assistance program, which is so critical.

Um, and then last to talk about fair chance makes a lot of sense uh with sensible provisions that protect renter communities and the owners with support services and education.

My family back east was very involved back in the day when was when it was called when they were called halfway houses, now they're called transitional houses, and it's really important to really take, you know, consider support services and education as people are transitioning, being incarcerated and back into the real world.

And like I would say, you know, I've said before, most of our small owner operators, especially those of color, have have historically made those come those kind of accommodations for those who needed a second chance anyway.

And finally, I would say like I think that what we've learned um through the county contract for the housing provider resource center, and and thank you to Michelle and her team for being good partners and thank you, supervisors for having the leadership and the foresight to know that this was something that was desperately needed because these outreach services um are so critical because people don't have information, they don't have access to the kind of support, and I think um contracts like this actually get the information to to where it's needed most, and through that program too, we've also helped uh many renters.

I think we get about 50 to 70 renter contacts each month, and we provide services and support to them as well and direct them to other organizations that can help them even more deeply.

So those are my comments.

You know, I know that was a lot, but if there are any other questions, let me know.

No, I appreciate it.

Not seeing any other questions.

Um more question from Supervisor Fortana Bass.

Uh for Mr.

Barnes or uh no for Michelle.

Derek, thank you much, Michelle.

You're on with the thank you.

Thank you.

Um I uh am wondering, Michelle, if you could speak to the programs that HCD has run in the past to support landlords.

I believe there was a small grant program during the eviction moratorium, and there was also a foreclosure prevention program.

I'm curious to hear what the experience has been of HCD when we have had those programs.

Yeah, and and actually we had a rental uh repair program for a long time too.

So we had something called rental rehabilitation, and that lasted for about 15 years and uh was well regarded.

Those funds dried up though, so we don't have that anymore.

Um during the pandemic, we stood up a foreclosure prevention program.

Um we also stood up small grants for landlords, which went 100% used.

Um, and we also stood up a new emergency rental assistance uh rental repair assistance program that uh the healthy homes department ran, and that was to help landlords with the kinds of repairs.

Um, one of the number one things we heard at Unincorporated services committee when we were talking about tenant protections, landlords would say, but I'm not getting rent, so how can I make that repair?

So we put almost two and a half million dollars into that program, and I think in the end we had maybe four repairs.

So the landlords didn't um utilize that program to the extent that we hoped they would, uh and we moved it over into emergency rental assistance and used it all up to help landlords with back-owned rent, which you know served sort of the same purpose in the sense that they could then use that money to make the repairs themselves.

Um, but in any case, uh we did utilize all of the money that went out to landlords, and it either was for the foreclosure prevention program, small grants, um, or in the end, we beefed up the emergency rental assistance program.

I think we spent $7.5 million on emergency rental assistance uh with an original budget of five million.

We bumped it up in order to cover more people.

Any other questions?

No, thank you for that.

Um, I do want to note that there's uh a lot of competing interest for the home together fund as well as the essential services fund, and I would want us to look very carefully at making sure that we are preventing homelessness, keeping people housed, etc.

Uh, and also making sure that tenants can stay in their homes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

One last question, Michelle.

You mentioned the programs, I think it's on page 13.

You mentioned MTC.

I know Supervisor Miley's on MTC.

I just want clarification.

Are those required for counties to have?

Are they suggested or highly recommended or where is it in the list of requirements?

So this is what's the cost of not doing them, I guess.

Yeah, so this presentation really only covers the protection section.

There's production, protection, and preservation, the three Ps.

Um, we have one protection ordinance, which is just cause, and anti-harassment would meet um one of the one of the two requirements.

So would additional outreach and legal aid or emergency rental assistance or rent stabilization.

Any of those would meet the second one.

Um, when you say requirement, it's a requirement, it's not voluntary.

It's a requirement in order to continue to get your OBAG funding, which is transportation funding, which I think is around 10 million dollars a year, as well as some uh as well as some funding that comes into the planning department at a variable level.

This last year it was a little over a million.

I think there was some question as to how is that truly required?

I hear from some yes, I hear from some no.

Is I guess it's a county council or some legal or our representative on MTC.

It would be nice to me that it wasn't a requirement.

They were tying our dollars to it.

Do you know, Supervisor Milo?

Again, Michelle's right to tie our dollars to it, but if we don't want those dollars, then I think there's things we can do to allow us to get those dollars.

Again, just clarifying if it's required.

I at some point it was, then I think it was pushed back maybe it wouldn't be required.

And so it's a matter of just clarifying that.

So it our position is on the record today.

This is required by MTC to get our transportation dollars.

To get, yeah, that and some planning grants.

And some planning grants.

Okay, thank you.

That's why we'll go to public comment now.

People in the room um can fill out a speaker slip.

I'll ask the clerk to uh count the speaker slips.

If you're online, we'll give you a couple of minutes to raise your hand before we um limit that.

I'll ask the clerk to take a minute to count.

Speaker slips and hands raised.

If you would like to comment only on this item, which is item three sub bullet one.

Okay.

How many comments?

How many cars do we have and how many hands for this item do we have raised?

We have 15 in person and one online.

Okay.

Let's keep the 15 and the one online, and we'll have hear them all for um.

I mean, it's kind of in between.

I think we typically with 15 would allow still two minutes.

So let's allow two minutes.

I know it's gonna run late, but it's not like we have a hundred and fifty speakers, so two minutes for each.

Marty Guy Downing, Tara Clancy, Lindsay Wright.

To be clear, we've we've no more in-person speaker slips, no more hands raised.

Thank you.

Tara, we're gonna make one.

Marty Guy Downing.

Okay, and then why don't we call three in a row?

Sure.

So again, Marty Guy Downing, Tara Clancy, and Lindsay Wright.

Come on, line up next to you more.

All right.

Good evening.

Uh mobile home parks provide a unique form of deeply affordable housing to many low and moderate income families and seniors who would otherwise be unhoused.

Vacancies in the parks are rare because equivalent housing does not exist elsewhere.

This makes the preservation of our existing parks an essential part of providing housing that is affordable to residents at all income levels.

At a time when multiple parks are being rapidly purchased by corporations and the future of our parks is uncertain.

The possibility for resident or nonprofit park ownership is an unmatched and future-minded option to consider.

State programs are available to help fund the preservation of affordable at-risk housing.

However, these funds generally do not cover the full cost of a conversion to resident ownership.

Local funds are often used to fill that gap in financing.

To this end, we would like to ask for $4 million to be set aside from measure W to create a fund to acquire community owned land, which would help stabilize the cost of living and reduce the need for more stabilized housing in the future.

Additionally, we would like to see $300,000 set aside for potential litigations, which have been happening more and more often lately.

This would reduce the future stress on residents and the county should the need arise.

Thank you.

300,000 is what we're estimating based on what each one technically costs.

My name is Lindsay, and I've lived in a mobile home park in Ashland for 26 years.

Today I'm speaking for the 18 mobile home parks in the unincorporated area, and I'm asking that some funding be set aside to support mobile home parks and community-owned land.

Mobile home parks offer unique opportunity for homeownership at a deeply affordable rate and are one of the only forms of naturally occurring unsubsidized housing available.

In many cases, for people on a fixed income, it is the last chance for independence before moving in with family or becoming homeless.

These parks futures remain uncertain with corporate investors coming in from other parts of the state and country to profit off of our residents.

Funding could be set aside to support these parks.

If two to three million dollars per park was set aside to create a gap fund for community owned land, it would go to covering what other nonprofit organizations like Rock USA in supporting residents and creating resident-owned communities on community owned land.

Parks owned by their residents tend to enjoy even deeper affordability, as on average they only raise their rent between 0.5 and 2% a year.

Another way funding could be used is to support mobile home parks would be setting up money for a legal fund.

$300,000 would be ideal.

There are large corporate investors all over the state, dragging their residents through wave after wave of appeals and arbitration.

It costs the people fighting these investors $20,000 every time they have to go through another round of arbitration.

And that could easily happen here.

If we cannot afford to fight for our rights, we lose them automatically.

If parks are healthy and well supported, they thrive and can offer more people in need a safe, truly affordable place to live.

In closing, I'd like to ask you to set money aside to fund home ownership in mobile home parks with community owned land and a fund for legal assistance to prevent increasing homelessness.

Thank you for your time.

Caller, go ahead.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, go ahead.

I want to talk about why it's important for the unincorporated area to have tenant protections.

See, we don't have a city council like everybody else.

So our governing boards are like associations, for example, like the San Lorenzo Homeowners Association, where to this day it says people of color cannot live in the San Lorenzo village.

And that's not the only area in this community that's like that.

San Lorenzo itself was a red line town.

Not the same, that's not the only spot.

So for Nate Miley to sit here and pretend like, hey, we can't affect grandma and grandpa, we need to protect them.

Well, unfortunately, grandma and grandpa are the ones that that um enacted these policy and laws and benefited from these white supremacy laws.

So his whole your entire protection thing shouldn't be for them.

You shouldn't care one bit.

What you should be doing is trying to take care of the overwhelming majority of black, brown, and poor white folks that are living in the unincorporated area.

Because this is what we're talking about, and see what's gonna end up happening is Lena's gonna vote no, Nate's gonna abstain on anything, and we never get tenant protections.

And then you guys will talk about well, the state's already there.

Well, you know what's going on because of that right now?

You have mainly the immigrant community who you guys love to virtue signal about living in up uh upside-down shipping containers where raw sewage is leaking on them, and if they complain about it to their landlords, their landlords will either threaten it uh uh turn them into ice or a victim altogether, and again, because we don't have tenant protections.

See, we've done this for years, so we know exactly what's gonna happen.

We understand the entire process.

Nate's gonna blame it on single family homes, and this is why he can't do that.

When in reality, it's all racist people, and if they really that bothered, if they were to sell their homes, they're gonna make a couple million dollars off that.

Versus the people that are begging for tenant rights, they just don't want raw sewage dripping onto their kids' bedroom.

And again, we've advocated that this for years.

We've sacrificed all kinds of protections, we sacrificed all kinds of rights, and what happens every single time is that our city council is the board of supervisors, and we know Mr.

Halliburton or whatever his name is, he's never gonna vote for tenant protections.

Nate's gonna abstain and uh supervisor Chan and Vi, they were actually our champions, but now they're gone.

And unfortunately, it looks like Nikki and Alisa, you guys aren't even aware of what's going on.

Well, you guys are supposed to be our champ.

Hello.

Um, I was within your mission statement to enrich the lives of Alameda County residents through visionary policies and accessible responsive and effective services.

With that being said, I stand before you again.

With a plea for basic support, Astenas continue we continue facing eviction and hardships in silence.

While millions are distributed, uh, without their voices, emergency funds must include tenants stabilization too.

15 millions can go to housing developers.

15 million can go to act can go to to actual and future and future tenants programs.

Approving 24 million for these programs ensure both size recipe.

We need a rental registry, proactive inspections and emergency rental assistance.

What that is available and enforceable.

This is this investments in straining housing community and reduce evictions.

This board has a chance totally to fully form tenant potentials and ensure stability and all its meaning to everyone.

Thank you.

Kristen Hackett and Greg Slaughter.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors.

My name is Kristen Hackett.

I'm a community organizer with my Eden Voice.

So I wanted to share some updates from the summer.

So we knocked on over 120 doors, new doors, doors we hadn't knocked on before across six different buildings in Ashland and Cash Roe Valley.

And we were IDing as we went, sort of ongoing disrepair and neglect, harassment by management, and eviction threats that are used to intimidate tenants into exercise not exercising their rights to repairs.

We also identified emerging issues.

For example, in three buildings, tenants that don't speak English or speak English as a second language are paying as much as $300 extra every month for garbage and water, even though their leases those fees are supposed to be included.

In trying to address these issues, tenants struggle to navigate an incomplete, underfunded, and disjointed landscape of tenant protections and programs that often leave tenants with half a solution that leaves them teetering on the edge of eviction and homelessness.

For example, one tenant was caught trying to use the mediation program to address to address severe plumbing problems.

They were directed to code enforcement by the mediator, then directed to the building department by code enforcement, and then told by the building department that nobody could intervene until they got through the mediation program.

They are still in limbo right now without clear clarity on what to do.

So we appreciate the steps that the board has already made, but much more is needed.

And one of the things we're advocating for that you invest in is a rent board that can create cohesion and coordination across these programs, help reduce barriers for tenants and using the programs, and can create a venue where tenants can come and share their concerns or experiences safely and without the fear of retaliation.

And also that could create a clearer channel for you guys as well, right?

Because you would probably get a report back from the rent board.

So you would know more clearly about what's going on with tenants in the unincorporated area.

You know, we also heard earlier, we've talked to heard a lot about rental assistance today, and I think earlier in the morning somebody mentioned a hundred and fifty million dollar flex fund somewhere.

I think it was supervisor TM.

This is something we haven't heard before, and I would we would really like an update on what that was referring to, in part because so we also are encountering many tenants in need of rental assistance who are facing eviction and homelessness right now and are not able to find it anywhere, right?

And so are effectively being pushed into homelessness right now.

So thank you for your time today.

I appreciate it.

Carlos Vasquez, Alberto Barra, and Willow Brecken.

Valerie Bachelor, Avery Arbo, and Leo Ascomodo, Ascomada.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisors and Staff.

This is Leo from My Eden Voice.

For the record, there was a contingent of 20 residents, not MEB with us today from District three and District 4.

Fruitvale and East Oakland that stayed with us for six hours who had to leave this meeting in support of our tenant protections, and your adjournment has silenced their voices today.

This format doesn't sound so equitable to me.

Just wanted to note that our members of My Eden Voice have testified and they will testify about the critical need to invest and to fully fund tenant protections to prevent homelessness.

All of our members are informed by countless dialogue, and they continue to be in dialogue with Eden renters and who themselves are in fear of losing their own housing.

Lena just previously has gone through a second round eviction.

Last week we sent an addendum letter of eight key initiatives that fully fund tenant protections in the Eden area.

Without investing in a working rent registry, a rent board, and rental inspections, proactive rental inspections, a lot of the implementation and enforcement that you put on paper is impossible and will fall short of keeping families housed.

We additionally need housing counseling as part of these programs.

Our current staff currently spends 25 hours per tenant in navigating one issue, which we'd spend in total all 75 to 100 hours with case management.

We are not equipped to be individual case managers, and we're not planning to pursue this as a program.

We urgently need the county to provide accessible housing counselors, facing housing security needs in all our proposed programs.

Today we hope the board gives guidance to fully fund tenant protection programs, long time overdue need for 60,000 renters in the unincorporated area.

Thank you.

Miguel de Leon, Teresa Salazar, Luis Desmarche, Warren Cushman, and the last speaker will be Gladys Faldez.

Good evening, supervisors and good evening.

Hello, my name is Miguel de Leon.

I live in Ashland, unincorporated area of Eden.

I'm a volunteer with Maiden Voice.

I'm here to speak out regarding Measure W, regarding proactive rental inspections so we can help people who are truly experiencing injustice.

We've knocked on doors and seen the reality where such inspections are needed, and more frequently, since there are many problems in the Eden area.

In this case, we have the problem of harassment.

When people feel harassed, they are being evicted without just cause.

They're afraid of retaliation.

And they don't dare speak out.

Some people are simply paying for the repairs themselves, and that's not fair.

This inspection format, it's really necessary.

We need a proactive county with this inspection program.

We need to prevent evictions and provide housing counselors.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, President Halbert.

My name is Warren Cushman from Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward.

First, I want to say that tenants in the unincorporated area, especially those who are suffering, are very proud of our champions.

And we consider both Supervisor Marquez and Supervisor Fortunata Bas as champions.

We want to thank them very much for their leadership.

This is a question of what how do you see this process?

How do you see all of these policies?

I've heard the word balance, but frankly, these are tenant protections to help the most struggling among us, people who are homeless, people who have issues, people who are struggling just to survive.

So the word is not balance.

The word is compassion.

We need to have compassion on these tenants.

We need to support these tenants with as many of the menu of options that we've heard today.

We want to go as deep and as strongly as possible on this menu of options.

Because we do care.

We care about the tenants that are out there, and we want to do the right thing for them.

And that's what the tenants are going to be asking of you, supervisors.

Thank you and have a good day.

Gladys?

Okay.

Okay.

Good day.

My name is Gladys.

I live in Cherryland.

I have lived in this community my whole life and now get to work with my unincorporated community through my Eden Voice.

I've already visited two buildings in the unincorporated area out of the 19,000 rental units that exist.

And one tenant I visited exclaimed to me and my colleague, please, please just come set up a table and give folks the information they need to know.

At the second building, similarly, they are excited that we are visiting, offering to rally up their neighbors, to participate in any community meeting we can host.

They want to know the resources we can offer and also make known to them.

Folks are excited.

Folks are building trust, but through the process of building our connections, we realize how much they are unaware or historically their attempts of alleviating stress or working through issues and fighting for their rights has been unsuccessful.

County needs to support and help the tenants who want it, and we are seeing that.

The county needs to expand on tenant outreach and education efforts.

Thank you.

That was a lost speaker.

Thank you, everyone, for your comments and apologies for the late hour and trying to get this into our discussion because this is a very important topic for all of us, particularly Supervisor Miley and I represent the unincorporated areas.

Are there any closing comments from you, Supervisor Miley?

I don't know, but I would just um goes on what you said.

Apologies for this taking so long, but I'm glad we finally had the update.

Okay, seeing no more uh discussion on this item.

We are now moving on to the main event of the day.

Three item three sub bullet two measure w implementation.

Here we have a 1.8 billion dollar measure W.

Four or five years in, six years let to go, something like that, right?

Looking at my staff over here.

Um we've had a lot of discussion about it so far.

This is another step in the process.

Um, I'll ask for a brief staff report followed by public comment, followed by deliberation.

If we could do that, um, who from staff will be presenting.

And is this action?

Direction, intervention, direction, direction and information coming or hard action coming at a different point.

Um, is this going to be presented by Ms.

Shrago?

Right, I'm gonna make just some introductory um comments, but we're here again today to provide you with an overview of uh Measure W implementation.

As you know, your board had a couple of meetings and made some significant uh decisions uh last month today.

We want to provide a little more information as promised on the essential county services fund component, and we also are gonna receive an update from AC Health about the implementation to date on the home together portion of uh funding that was allocated for that.

Our goal is to really show how the proposed allocations will advance the measure w guiding principles adopted by your board in July, while at the same time meeting urgent needs and positioning the county for long-term equitable investments.

We're gonna walk through some background funding priorities and requested actions for your board's consideration today.

Um, the team that helped develop this included the AC Health Director, the Social Services Agency Director, Community Development Agency Director, and GSA director under the leadership and with coordination by uh Amy Schregel and other members of my staff.

So I'm going to turn it over to Amy to walk through the presentation.

So here's the outline of what we're uh gonna talk about today.

Um I think the the second and third bullet are uh are out of order.

So we'll get a little background of where we are um as of now, and then hear from uh AC Health and then our proposed um allocation framework and our requested action.

So as we all know, Measure W is approved in November 2020, a 10-year half cent sales tax.

It generates roughly a hundred and fifty million dollars annually based on the ballot language for essential county services.

Collection began in July 2021, but the funds were held in escrow due to litigation.

And uh in April 2025, the courts upheld um the legality of measure W, and we could now access the resources.

Just a reminder of what our ballot language says.

So on December 17th of 2024, the board designated 394.5 million in one-time funding for homelessness and housing services contingent upon the release of Measure W funds.

Then for the 25-26 budget, the board provided budget budget direction for 6.5 million dollars of Measure W, four and a half dedicated to food procurement, meal delivery, and food recovery programs, and two million directed to support um triple A providers with social with the Social Services agency.

On July 22nd of this year, the board adopted guiding principles to ensure Measure W resources were deployed with uh equity, accountability, and transparency.

Directed that both one-time accrued revenues and ongoing revenues be clearly designated for their uses, and approved creation of a prudent reserve to safeguard against future economic downturns, as well as authorizing the establishment of two program funds, ensuring there was clarity between allocations for housing and homelessness and essential county services.

And then the following week on July 30th, the board reaffirmed those previous actions and underscored your commitment to stable and account and accountable Measure W framework.

At the July 30th meeting, you also continued the funding for the nonprofit affordable housing stabilization fund that you heard today.

Oops, what did they do?

Just as a reminder, these are the guiding principles for Measure W, and they advance Vision 2036.

These guiding principles including advancing racial and economic equity, ensuring sustainable sustainability, aligning aligning with our regional priorities, and maintaining flexibility to respond to evolving needs.

And this is more in-depth our Measure W guiding principles that are aligned with Vision 2036.

And as you'll hear today, both from what Anika and Jonathan are going to present and our proposal for the Essential Services Fund, it's all based on this framework.