Good morning, everyone.

I'd like to call to order our Tuesday, October 7th regularly scheduled meeting of the Board of Supervisors for Alameda County.

And um I'll ask everyone to please rise if you can and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Will the clerk please call the role to call establish our quorum?

Supervisor Marquez present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

Our next item is uh supervisors' remarks.

Any anybody wish to make remarks?

I have one, and that is um to welcome um we have um some guests today who would like to make a few comments that which I'll handle under remarks.

Um this is Davita Scott and her team from Raising Leaders.

And if you would please um indulge me and have a brief presentation by Miss Scott.

Thank you.

Good morning, you guys.

I just wanted to thank Supervisor Halbert for supporting 25 families for our Thanksgiving drive, and Supervisor Marquez for supporting eighty fl families for our Thanksgiving drive.

When I came last time, I let you guys know that we recruited eight hundred and five students this recruitment season for our workshop series.

Tomorrow's our orientation, and we have 372 confirmed.

They've provided their email and signed up.

Um we've already had a hundred and fifty-nine students that have submitted their intakes, and that gives us a eighty percent uh benchmark for students that have completed their intake for our class of two hundred.

And so I just want to thank my team because they work very hard, and that's why we have the success that we have, and thank you for you guys for all your support, and we're excited to give you guys more updates later on.

And we wanted to take a picture with Supervisor Halbert and Supervisor Marquez.

Yes.

So we have Miss Nicole Perez, she oversees our SBA two three unit and will firm roots, and she oversees all of our partnerships with our works sites.

We have Miss Cassandra, Miss Maria, and Miss Natalie.

They oversee all of our students, they oversee the caseload, and they're the teachers that work one-on-one with our students for our workshops, and Nicole runs the workshops with me.

So they do really well, and they're all for their former raising leaders, and now they're our teachers.

Nicole and Cassandra cleared their teaching credential this year, and Maria and Natalie are in their last class to clear their credentials, so congratulations, you guys.

Thank you.

I let's give them a round of applause.

I love you guys.

I know you have busy days, so we're gonna take a picture real quick and then get you out.

Okay.

Do we have any other remarks?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item public comment on closed session items.

If we have any speakers in person or online, let's take closed session item speakers at this time.

There are no public comments.

If that's the case, then we will now take up approval of minutes for the regular meeting September 9th and September 23rd.

Mr.

Chair, I will move approval of the minutes.

I'll second.

Motion has been made by Supervisor Tam, second by Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez, excused.

Supervisor Tim.

Aye.

Supervisor Myrley, excuse Supervisor Fournato Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

Our next item is closed session, which we will recess into closed session and return when we're done.

Thank you.

We're recessed.

Recording in progress.

Okay, everyone.

We're going to reconvene from closed session.

And I'll do that by asking the clerk to please call the roll to establish quorum.

Supervisor Marquez present.

Supervisor Tan present.

Supervisor Miley, excused.

Supervisor Fortnite, present.

President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

County Council, is there anything that we should be reporting out from close session?

Yes.

Today in closed session, the board, authorized the County of Alameda to join as um join on to an amicus brief in the matter of San Francisco AIDS Foundation v.

Trump, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit case number two five-four nine eight eight in support of the plaintiffs.

And in the matter of Planned Parenthood v Kennedy, United States, Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, case numbers two five-1698 and two five-1755 on a vote of five oh the court.

In support of the plaintiff's planned parenthood, in that case, and so both of those votes were at a five-o by the board.

And that was on an unanimous vote of the board of Supervisors.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um, we're going to proceed with the 1 o'clock set matters, and I'm going to ask that we uh consider item 58, 59, 60, and 62, before taking a brief break and coming back for 61.

Uh, and then we'll do the uh set regular items uh after that.

So with that said, I'm uh pleased to uh proclaim October 25th as domestic violence awareness month.

And we have some special guests with us today.

We're going to be presenting these proclamations to the Tri-Valley Haven Organization and the Save Organization.

And we're going to hear brief words from one of their key partners in combating domestic violence.

That is our district attorney, Miss Ursula Jones-Dixon.

October is domestic violence awareness month, and it's a time to recognize the courage of survivors, the tireless work of advocates who support them.

Domestic violence includes physical, sexual, psychological abuse.

It is a serious issue that affects thousands of families in Alameda County each year.

In fact, we see about 6,000 domestic violence-related calls to 911 each year.

Under the leadership of our district attorney's office, the Alameda County Family Justice Center was created in 2005 to provide survivors with safe, accessible, and comprehensive services.

Local organizations like Tri-Valley Haven and Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments, SAVE or SAVE, also play a critical role in offering shelter, counseling, and advocacy for those in need.

Ending domestic violence is a team effort.

It takes all of us.

We encourage everyone in Alameda County to learn the signs to support survivors to stand together to build safer, healthier communities.

If you see something, report something.

I note that we have speaking on behalf of Save, is indeed our District Attorney Ursula Jones Dixon, and then for Save is Miss Lee.

So why don't we do this?

And welcome to the podium, Miss Ursula Jones Dixon and also Chloe Lee, to come up and receive these Ursula Jones Dixon, our district attorney first.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

First and foremost, we have several people from the district attorney's office who are here in support of today.

This is a special day, because as you know, all of you should know by now, victims' voices are extremely important to me.

So we have ADA Kevin Akuma as you stand for me.

Sorry, my back's out, so I'm not moving as fast as I used to.

DDA Elaine Ma, DDA Ashley Carval.

We have from the Family Justice Center, Carla Elias Flores, the Executive Director, Roxana Vasquez, and Vanessa Campizano.

I thought I saw Kelly Sage here, and these are folks from our victim witness division.

Raven Mesa, Myra Canales.

Happy birthday, by the way.

And Ariana Salinas.

As well as Erica Chavez.

And of course, Austin Bruckner Carrillo.

So we come out in force today because it's really important.

Y'all feel free to have a seat, sorry.

Really important for us to talk today about domestic violence and the awareness of this plague in our society.

I first want to thank President Halbert and members of the board, as well as any community partners who are here.

And also thank you once again for recognizing October as Domestic violence awareness Month here in Alameda County and for reaffirming your ongoing commitment to ending violence in our homes as well as our communities at large.

I'm Ursula Jones Dixon, and I have the honor of serving you as district attorney.

On behalf of our office, I'm deeply grateful for this proclamation and for your partnership in protecting victims, supporting survivors, and demanding accountability for those who cause harm in our community.

I've seen firsthand both at this job and my old job as a judge, serving in courts handling minors through countless survivors, what domestic violence does to a person's sense of safety and self.

It not only bruises body, but it bruises soul.

And the Alameda County District Attorney's Office understands the importance of ensuring that every survivor in Alameda County is heard, empowered, and supported.

Domestic violence remains one of the most persistent public safety and public health challenges that we face in our county, and according to our victim witness division, between October 1st, 2024 and September 30, 2025, our office served 1,684 new victims and 483 continuing victims of domestic violence, a total of 2167 individuals who turn to us for support, protection, and justice.

The Family Justice Center also served 10,052 DV survivors in 2025 to date.

Behind each number is a life disrupted.

There's a narrative, it's a story.

A parent finding the courage to leave, a child learning that home can be safe again, and a survivor deciding that silence no longer defines them.

When I took this position, I made clear that holding violent offenders accountable is not optional.

It's our duty, and we're better training our team to improve community trust, strengthen cases, and ensure survivors never feel abandoned during the criminal process.

Every decision we make must reflect the truth that justice and survivor support are not opposites.

They're inseparable.

And in fact, we know we can't do this work alone.

I want to acknowledge our extraordinary partners, the Alameda County Family Justice Center, Tri-Valley Haven, Safe Alternatives to Violent Environments, and members of the Alameda County Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team, as well as all the shelters, advocates, and community-based organizations that walk beside victims when the system feels overwhelming.

And together we are, in fact, building not just cases but a safety net, one that combines law enforcement, health care, education, and compassion, as well as community-based organizations.

The DA's office is currently working with family justice partners and organizations like the California Family Justice Center Network to strengthen our Family Justice Center and to bring in new partner organizations.

We are using our advocates and our victim witness advocate division to accompany a safety plan, relocate, and access compensation for victims of domestic violence.

We have an advocacy gun violence restraining order grant, and we've stood shoulder to shoulder with law enforcement, nonprofits, and survivors at the statewide advocacy days, ensured Alameda County's inclusion in the AB 1134 gun violence restraining order pilot, and fought back against devastating cuts, securing new funding to protect victims.

We invite you to our 23rd Annual Day of Remembrance.

That is going to be on October 24th, 2025 at 10:30, just outside the County Administration Building.

I ask you to join us as we encourage and lift up victims of domestic violence in our county.

We encourage everyone to stand in solidarity with our survivors and wear some shade of purple.

Our presence sends a message.

Survivors aren't alone and justice will not rest.

We know that domestic violence is not inevitable.

It is preventable, but it takes a community.

It takes the vigilance of community, accountability, compassion for us to protect our families and save lives.

So together we're building a county where safety is a right, not a privilege.

I want to thank you again for just seeing victims of domestic violence, realizing that again, each story is an individual's life, and that uh without the community, they don't survive this.

It takes all of us, having been in a dependency courtroom for 10 years.

I watched firsthand what domestic violence can do to children and help to very much make sure that we were ushering children through that process.

So I ask you today to remember those who have been victims of domestic violence, to speak on their behalf, to stand in the gap for them, and thank you again for your time.

Thank you.

Let's give a round of applause to our district attorney.

Chow Li from the Save Organization, SAVE, SAFE Alternatives to Violent Environments.

Welcome.

Thank you.

On Behave for Safe, I want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for all the supervisors that is here today for presenting this proclamation and your continued commitment to raising awareness about domestic violence in our community.

Your support reminds survivors that they are not alone, and it reinforce the message that our community stands together and will be stronger, and we can fight against abuse.

Domestic violence is not a private issue, it is a community issue.

The numbers are sobering here in California.

35% of women and 31% of men will experience domestic violence with stalking in their lifetime.

And these numbers, behind these numbers, are our neighbors, our friends, our family members, and their life are forever changed.

So as SAFE, our mission is to provide safety, resources, and support for survivors, regardless of their race, age, immigration status.

So we can work towards a future that is free from abuse, and we cannot do this work alone.

It requires strong partnership, awareness, and leadership.

And today, your advocacy is an example in their leadership in action.

And this proclamation is not just words on the paper, it is a public acknowledgement that domestic violence exists, and it impact all of us.

As a survivor of domestic violence, I want to thank all of you for standing with us.

And thank you for presenting this proclamation.

Thank you for being here.

I'll ask the clerk if we have any public speakers, either in person or online on this topic only.

Yes.

Seeing none.

Let's all go down and we do.

I'm sorry, President Haber, we do have one online.

Okay, very good.

Ah, Christine.

Please, welcome.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Go ahead.

Oh, thank you.

Good afternoon, President David Hubbard and the distinguished members of the Board of Supervisors.

My name is Christine Dillman, and I'm the executive director of Tri-Villy Haven, serving survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and homelessness throughout the Tri-Valley for nearly 50 years.

Thanks to our district attorney, Ursula Jones Dixon, for her important remarks and her advocacy, and see for their remarks and their partnership.

As we recognize Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I want to begin by expressing my deep gratitude to this board, and especially to Supervisor Hubbard, and all the boards of supervisors for your steadfast leadership and support of survivors and their families.

We operate the only confidential domestic violent shelter in the TriVilly Heaven holds a unique and stability for those escaping abuse.

Thanks to your support, I'm thrilled to share that Tri Valley Haven has received the building permit from the City of Livermore and sign the construction contract for our new domestic violent shelter.

Families in crisis will find safety, hope, and healing within its walls.

On behalf of every survivor whose likely child who will sleep safely for the first time, and every advocate who works tirelessly to end violence, thank you.

Your investment in Tri-Villy Haven and in survivors brings dignity, safety, and future to our community.

Together, we are building more than a shelter.

We are building a haven and a future where every individual can live free from violence.

Thank you so much for this proclamation.

Thank you, Christine.

We're gonna now come down and um yeah, let's give a round of applause to Tri Valley Haven.

I know this is a big issue that he thinks is very important.

I wanted to give him an opportunity if he wanted to speak.

Well, I'll be presenting shortly, but I just want to thank the incredible work of our district attorney's office and all the uh victim advocates and organizations in Alameda County.

Um and uh we've done a lot of work this past year to um help support um the work of our district attorneys and victim advocates in California.

Um, and I think this recognition is so important.

So thank you, President Hopper.

Thank you, supervisors, and thank you to our district attorney as well.

Very well said.

Our next item is item fifty nine.

Proclaiming October 2025 as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Today marks the twenty-second annual Cybersecurity Awareness Month, first established by the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance.

This year's theme is staying safe in an AI world, and it reflects how artificial intelligence reshapes our digital security landscape.

This October, we focus on four key practices that every county employee can use to strengthen cybersecurity at work and at home.

As we expand virtual access to services under our virtual first approach, we must stay vigilant.

Throughout October, the information technology department will share tips and tricks, host live events with industry experts, and roll out the first of four quarterly cybersecurity training courses.

This one is titled Gen AI: Intelligent and Dangerous.

Together, these initiatives will give our employees the tools they need to recognize and defend against ever evolving cyber threats such as AI generated fishing, malware, and social engineering.

Therefore, the County of Alameda proclaims October twenty twenty-five as Cybersecurity Awareness Month, urging all employees to adopt practices that match the theme staying safe in an AI world.

Do we have somebody from the IT department here?

There's uh I was looking for you, Tim.

Tim DeFui, our department head for information technology.

Welcome.

So thank you, uh, President Halbert, and thank you to the board of supervisors for this proclamation.

Uh as we step into Cybersecurity Awareness Month, I can't help but reflect on how quickly things have changed in the world of cybersecurity.

Uh, the threat we face today look very different than they did just a few years ago.

But what stands out to me even more is the progress we've made together and the strong direction we're heading here in Alameda County.

Our virtual first approach, making services more accessible online, and the shift to hyper hybrid work reminds us that cyber security is a shared responsibility.

I'm proud that Alameda County continues to invest in our people, giving employees practical tools, hosting events with industry experts, and rolling out new no before courses, as you said, Gen AI intelligent and dangerous, so that we can all be better prepared in this AI driven world.

So thank you again uh for the recognition and the support uh in our cyber security awareness month.

Thank you, Mr.

DePuy.

Any public speakers?

If not, we're going to bring there no speakers.

Let's bring this down to you and take a photo.

Okay, our next item is Supervisor Miley commending Blake Hudson for Huntsman for his outstanding leadership.

I didn't even get to finish, Blake, for your outstanding leadership, dedicated service, and contributions to our county.

Supervisor Miley, the floor is yours.

Well, thank you.

So, yes, a real pleasure to present this commendation to uh Blake, known him for many years, and he's a fine upstanding gentleman.

And you know, this this is to honor you, we're not here to roast you, but you know, we can we can go down that road too if you'd like us to.

But anyway, whereas the Alameda County Board of Supervisors wishes to recognize uh Blake Huntsman for nearly three decades of dedicated public service in Alameda County, and whereas Mr.

Huntsman began his career with Alameda County in nineteen ninety-six as a lead risk assessor in the community development agency, serving with distinction until two thousand five, where he applied his expertise to safeguard the health and safety of employees and the public while demonstrating fairness, professionalism, and commitment to service that would define his later career.

Following his accounting service, Mr.

Huntsman went on to serve for more than 20 years as a respected labor partner and the principal representative for the Northern California Public Sector Region Local Ten Twenty One of the Service Employees International Union, CTW, the largest employees organization representing over forty, seven hundred non-management county employees.

Throughout his tenure, Mr.

Huntsman demonstrated extraordinary leadership, balancing the needs of employees with the operational fiscal responsibilities of the county and consistently advancing solutions grounded in fairness, equity, and mutual respect.

And whereas Mr.

Huntsman's deep knowledge of labor relations and public service has made him a trusted partner.

Working collaboratively with county leadership to address challenges, resolve issues, and navigate policy decisions with clarity and foresight.

And whereas Mr.

Huntsman's ability to unite diverse perspectives, even during challenging times, foster a culture of constructive, constructive, and I repeat that emphasis, constructive problem solving that improve the workplace for employees while enhancing the quality of service provided to Alameda County residents.

And whereas Mr.

Huntsman's professionalism, integrity, and solution oriented approach set a standard of excellence that will continue to guide future collaborations through the county and its employee organizations.

So I want everybody to hear that, that we'll continue to guide future collaborations between the county and its employee organizations.

So everybody be mindful of that.

Health and fulfillment in all future endeavors.

So Mr.

L let's see if um if he has anything to say for himself before we before we roast him.

Or he invite others to roast.

Blake, the floor is yours.

Thank you, uh President Halbert and uh board and administration.

I can't even I'm so fooled.

Nate, we go back a long ways and Susan and even uh long before uh the board, Nikki and community service, and uh I just want to thank you for being incredible partners.

I've been uh fortunate, you know, uh many folks who advocate for working people don't have very good partnerships.

I have um many colleagues who work in areas where it's just a hostile situation, you know, everything's a fight, even to say good morning, you know.

So I've been uh I've been tremendously blessed with uh great partnership with incredible member leaders.

And uh incredible.

Come on now, give give give them a post number.

Um incredible uh leaders, uh department heads, and uh many many of you guys are here, you know, and uh HR and labor relations going back to uh Naomi, you know, uh and uh you all know me not to be for a lack of words, you know.

Uh but I'm I'm so full in this moment, it's it's very difficult to articulate just how grateful I am for this partnership, and I know it will be continue.

There was some some challenge, you know.

Some of my members like, wait a minute, because I know we're going into bargaining, and they expected me to go in with them, but I assure them that they're in great hands, you know, with uh the leadership from uh the county administrators and the board and Peter, you know, our fearless leader, um the director of Regent C, Peter Maziac.

Um I actually um would say about retirement.

If I would have known it felt this good, I would have probably done it before.

You know, it's been I my official day last day was Friday, and I tell you, I haven't had a weekend this good in a long time.

Don't give them any idea.

I know I might come back just so I can do it again in a couple of months.

Uh but I just want to thank everyone.

It's uh it's difficult too to uh be loved on in this way, you know, and acknowledged.

And I really really appreciate it.

Um and where I'm retired, you know, I'm I'm still a resident of Alameda County and the city of Oakland, so you know, I'll be fairly close.

All right.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Blake.

Any public speakers?

Anyone want to roast Blake?

There are no speakers.

There are speakers?

No speakers.

Okay.

There'll be a plenty of time to roast Blake.

But do we not have uh something to give?

Come on back up, I think Okay, for our next item, we are honored to have our state legislative update on current priorities, recent accomplishments, and opportunities for collaboration with Alameda County from our honorable Senator Jesse Aragorn.

I was very grateful that Alamina County sponsored a number of my bills, and I appreciate the support.

I want to particularly start with an update.

One of the sponsored bills that we work together to advance Senate Bill 617, which would amend the State Warren Act to require that, as part of that notice, that there's information around services that are available through local workforce development boards if employees are laid off, as well as information around uh CalFresh benefits.

Um that bill was signed by Governor Newsom last week.

And I want to thank the Alameda County Workforce Investment Board for its support, its technical assistance and coming to Sacramento to speak in support of that important legislation.

So as a first year member, I had the honor of chairing two standing committees in the California State Senate.

The only member to chair two standing committees, two committees of importance to our county, the Senate Committee on Public Safety and the Senate Committee on Human Services.

In addition, I had the honor of serving in eight standing committees on a wide range of issues from housing, transportation, energy, public safety, all issues that are important to our constituents in Alameda County.

We face many challenges.

One of the first issues that we dealt with was the catastrophic wildfires that impacted Southern California.

To the Trump administration, $12 billion budget deficit, ice rates throughout California.

But despite that, I'm happy to report that we have been able to advance many important pieces of legislation and important budget investments that are important to Alamuna County.

So I'm happy to briefly go over some of those today.

So specifically on how we have worked to support Alamina County.

The county has an important partnership with the state, with California providing nearly two billion to Alamina County for a wide range of services, especially in health care and public safety.

And while this year was challenging, we as we work to overcome a $12 billion budget deficit.

New sources of funding have become available to support our mutual goals.

One area of focus since the pandemic is housing and homelessness.

The most recent point in time count shows that unsheltered homelessness in the county is on the decline.

And I think that's a really a testament to the collective work that cities and counties have done and our nonprofit providers in serving people experiencing homelessness in our county and working to prevent homelessness in our county.

This can be attributed to major investments in housing programs such as the State Home Keep Program, which has provided 231 million dollars in funds to support over a thousand units of supportive housing and over 10 million in the homeless housing assistance and prevention funds that have been instrumental in providing rapid rehousing and homeless services.

With the passage of proposition one last year, Alameda Health System received $77 million to expand its behavioral health care services, providing more beds for inpatient medical detox and psychiatric care.

And despite initial plans uh to bounce the state budget by cutting food assistance, we worked to not only reject this proposal but to increase funding for CalFood, an essential program that supports our local food banks and supports nutrition assistance in California.

Next slide, please.

We all know that this administration's uh immigration policies are having not only an impact on our state's economy, but our dividing families and California is home to the largest immigrant population of the nation with over one in four residents being foreign-born and almost half of children having at least one immigrant parent.

While immigration is an essential part of California's prosperity, the actions of the federal administration, including a recent arrest at an Alamina County courthouse, is actively disrupting and harming our communities.

In support of our immigrant communities, I was proud to have co-authored several resolutions that passed through the state legislature.

One, Senate Joint Resolution 9, which denounced the Trump administration's immigration rates in California.

And Senate Joint Resolution 8, which calls on the United States Congress to renew the immigration provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929 or the Registry Act, which would provide a legal pathway for those immigrants who are living in the United States.

Until we have comprehensive immigration reform, we have to provide a clear path for people to become legal citizens of this country and not with mass people, you know, snatching people off the streets, putting them in unmarked vans, putting them in detention facilities, deporting them to other countries.

That's not who we are as a county.

That's not who we are as a state, that's not who we are as a country.

I'm proud that the first bill that passed the legislature and the governor signed was Senate Bill 81.

I want to thank Alameda County for its support of that bill.

This would require that hospitals and health facilities in California create non-public areas that cannot be accessed by immigration enforcement without a valid judicial warrant, as well as protecting the immigration status as part of patients' medical records.

Sadly, we have seen increased presence of immigration officials coming to hospitals and coming to clinics and health facilities throughout the state of California.

And this has created a chilling effect even here in Alameda County.

Talking to La Clinica and some of our community-based health providers, people are deciding to not seek care because they're afraid that just by showing up to uh to their doctor's appointment that they may be arrested or they may be separated from their families.

That's unacceptable, and healthcare should be accessible to everyone in our state regardless of their immigration status.

In addition, um we took immediate action after the um uh Trump presidency to pass 50 million dollars in funding, 25 million to our attorney general Rob Bonta to allow our attorney general to take legal action against executive orders and actions by this administration and Congress, which harm California.

And since then, there have been over 30 lawsuits that have been filed by the state of California, which have unfrozen billions of dollars of funding that the Trump administration tried to illegally take away from California.

Keep in mind that California is the largest tax-paying state in the United States.

These are funds for health care, nutrition assistance, education.

Um, in addition to opposing the Trump administration's efforts to um undo birthright citizenship, um, as well as attacks on our higher education systems, attacks on our immigrant communities, attacks on health care services, and we will continue to take a strong stand against these illegal actions by the Trump administration.

And 25 million dollars also, as part of that initial A package that we passed in January, went to help support nonprofit legal providers like um those in Alameda County that are providing legal representation for people facing deportation, and we're committed to increase that investment, just as I know the county has uh provided critical funding as well.

Next slide, please.

On public safety, an issue obviously very important to all of us.

I was honored to chair the Senate standing committee on public safety.

And when I ran for the state senate, the issues of crime and public safety were one of the most important issues that our constituents had expressed and really wanted to see a real focus by their by their state representatives.

Um, and so several things have happened this year.

Uh last year, the voters of California passed proposition 36, including here in Alameda County.

And so we worked to allocate 100 million dollars of funding, 50 million for behavioral health, and 50 million for court costs, pretrial and public defender services.

We know that that's not enough.

That's an initial investment, and we look forward to working with counties, including Alameda County, to increase this investment in the coming years to make sure that we are implementing this law and implementing it effectively, because uh the proponents of this law promised California voters that this would ensure that those who have significant substance use disorder issues or behavioral health issues, that they would be able to access treatment.

But there was no funding as we know, committed in that proposition to help fund its implementation.

So that put the responsibility on us and puts the responsibility on you to try to find a way to implement this mandate.

And I want to express my commitment in working in partnership with our district attorney and our county agencies and county board of supervisors and making sure we implement this right in Alameda County.

Um, want to touch on a few pieces of legislation that I was very uh proud to help uh author or co-author Senate Bill 524, which is on the governor's desk, would uh require that uh law enforcement agencies that use artificial intelligence to develop police reports, that we have certain requirements around disclosure around the use of our artificial intelligence.

This is increasingly becoming common in law enforcement agencies throughout California because of significant staffing shortages.

And while this is an important tool, we want to make sure that there's clear transparency, that there's an audit trail, to make sure that these important legal documents that are used and prosecutorial decisions or judicial decisions, that there's it's very clear about the use of AI in those reports.

Senate Bill 627 called the No Secret Police Act would prohibit law enforcement agencies from concealing their identity with face coverings during official law enforcement operations.

The governor signed this bill a few weeks ago, was very proud to co-author this bill.

And Senate Bill 704, which would require that the sale of firearm barrels, the separate sale of firearm barrels go through go through a specific process through licensed firearm dealers.

Commonly the guns that are being confiscated on our streets are ghost guns.

And I know that many cities and the state have taken steps to try to regulate the sale of ghost guns, but what we are seeing are criminals who are purchasing gun barrels separately as as part of their efforts to manufacture ghost guns.

If you don't have a gun barrel, you can't actually be able to use a gun.

And so gun barrels are not regulated separately like other firearm sales, and the SB 704, which is on the governor's desk, would ensure that the sale of gun barrels undergo similar requirements.

I want to lift up the important support that the California Hydro Patrol has provided.

I want to thank Governor Newsom for his continued commitment to deploy resources here in Oakland and in Alameda County to help supplement the work that's being done to address hotspots where organized crime has occurred.

I want to lift up the work that's been done on the Hagenburger corridor in particular, the work that's being done in other parts of Oakland, and we're committed to continue that investment, working in partnership with local police as well as our county sheriffs to keep Alameda County safe.

We can go to the next slide, please.

Just briefly on health and human services.

At the beginning of the year, before HR1, the Senate Human Services Committee held an informational hearing about around the state of hunger in California.

And a lot's been done over the past several years through working to increase eligibility for Calfresh benefits, working to expand uh resources for people that are in our prisons, for college students, for other people that are food insecure.

But we know that despite those investments, that many, many people are going to suffer because of the passage of HR1, which will make deep cuts to our supplemental nutritional assistance program and specifically CalFresh, which is its program here in California.

We are assessing the impacts of HR one.

I have been in conversation with Alameda County agencies around how this particularly will impact not just health care access but nutrition assistance in Alameda County.

And we will will be working over the next few months to work in partnership with counties and state agencies to develop a plan for how we can continue to maintain these essential benefits that are critical to the well-being of Californians, including those in Alameda County.

I talked a little bit about Senate Bill 617.

Senate Bill 792 made important changes to state law to increase eligibility for state-funded child care programs, including increase changing the income thresholds that more families would be eligible to up to 85% of the area median income.

And we took a strong stand through the passage of Senate joint resolution, a bipartisan uh piece of legislation to call on Congress to prevent these cuts to SNAP.

And we're committed to continue to advocate to reverse these devastating cuts that are going to impact the health and well-being of so many people in our state.

We can go to the next slide, please.

On transportation, I just want to uh acknowledge a few things that we were able to advance this year.

Um I led a budget asked for $2 billion of funding for transit agencies throughout the state of California, recognizing that the Bay Area and Los Angeles are facing significant budget challenges.

And fortunately, we're able to get a commitment in the budget act for $750 million just for our Bay Area Transit operators.

And we're working with the administration to finalize the details of that loan, which will provide a one or two-year bridge for BART for MUNY for AC Transit and our major transit operators in the Bay Area, while we're working hopefully next year to advance a regional measure to provide ongoing funding.

Senate Bill 63, that measure that I talked about, um, I was a proud joint author of that.

It's on the governor's desk.

This would allow the Bay Area to take up a regional sales tax measure to fund transit operations for BART, MUNY, AC Transit, Caltrain, VTA, and even our smaller operators in the bear.

And I want to lift up the work of Supervisor Miley, who's Alameda County's representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and your support of this critical work.

We're hoping the governor will sign this bill.

He has just a few more days to sign, hundreds and hundreds of bills.

But we're hopeful that this bill will become law next year and that we can work to put this measure before the voters to save transit while we're working to increase our investment long-term in transit and transit infrastructure in California.

And in addition, as part of the state's efforts to extend the CAP and trade program, now we call it CAP and Invest Program, we were able to increase the state's investment in public transportation as well as in affordable housing.

One billion of those CAP and invest funds will be used to support high speed rail.

And in addition, there's ongoing funding for a variety of transit programs, part of CAP and Invest.

In June, the governor had proposed to zero out these programs.

And so the legislature worked hard over the last several months to not just maintain funding but to increase funding for transit, which is essential, not just to meet our climate goals, but to help support the state's economy.

Go to the next slide, please.

As I touched upon at the beginning of my comments, the devastating wildfires in Southern California were our principal focus in the first couple months of the legislative session.

We took immediate action to provide immediate relief to Southern California, $2.5 billion to help clean up and rebuild LA communities that are impacted.

But I think what the LA fire showed is that urban wildfire risk is now a new reality, and that fire season is year-round.

And I want to lift up the work of Supervisor Bass as Alameda County's representative on the East Bay Co wildfire coalition of governments, regional partnership, recognize that we have to work together as a region to address wildfire risk.

I'm proud to say that not only through the state budget but through the state cap and invest program, billions of dollars of funding is being committed for vegetation management, fuel reduction, wildfire prevention and mitigation strategies, and I am working actively to make sure that Alameda County gets its fair share of those funds because we know the risks that people face in the East Bay Hills are significant.

We go to the next slide, please.

And lastly, on what are my top priorities?

Affordable housing, housing production, and homelessness.

This was a really important year in the state capital around housing affordability.

Not only did the legislature and the governor sign landmark legislation to exempt multifamily housing projects from CECOR review, but in addition, uh we advanced several important pieces of legislation to streamline the process of building homes, to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, and we're able to secure significant funding to build and preserve affordable housing in California.

A few bills up here, SB9 was the first bill introduced, which uh works to ensure that local governments have to conform with state standards around accessory dwelling units.

SB 49 and SB 76 are bills that work to change state law to ensure more conformity with state housing element law and state state housing housing law to make sure we get homes built now.

As I talked about earlier, Prop one, this is an incredible opportunity for us to build um mental health treatment beds and permanent supportive housing to address behavior health crisis on our streets as well as the affordable housing crisis that impacts so many communities in Alamuna County.

And so that of that $6.4 billion, we are working to fund projects now.

Um and I want to lift up their $21 million was actually allocated for the development of treatment facility in Oakland, which is set to open in the spring of 2027.

In addition, we worked uh through the state budget process to restore funding for the HAP program, as as many of you know, the governor proposed to provide no funding, no flexible funding to help address homelessness needs in California.

And so while we did not get the 1 billion dollars, we got 500 million dollars, and we're and we're working to get those funds out the door next year.

While we're working to continue that ongoing investment, because we know that these dollars are absolutely critical to helping create housing opportunities to helping provide supportive services, which are essential to addressing unsheltered homelessness, and it's been why Alameda County has been effective in reducing unsheltered homelessness.

In addition, we were able to uh restore critical funding for a variety of housing programs, including the multifamily housing program at 125 million dollars, the low-income housing tax credit program at 500 million dollars, and the affordable housing sustainable community program as part of cap and invest at 800 million dollars.

We increased our investment in the affordable housing and sustainable communities program as part of our action on cap and invest.

And we're working to get a 10 billion dollar housing bond on the California ballot next year to provide ongoing funding for affordable housing.

That's a lot.

It's been a busy year.

Um I thank you for this opportunity to to update you on the critical work that we've done this past year, working in partnership with you and with county staff.

Welcome your ideas, not just on legislation, but on budget priorities, as we're working to develop our legislative package for next year.

And thank you for the honor of representing you in the California State Senate.

This is some information on where to contact me for members of the public.

Thank you.

Senator, thank you.

That was a great update.

Um, when is the deadline for the governor to sign bills?

Uh, is actually uh October 13th.

Coming up, okay.

So we're every day we're checking the governor's web deck to see if he's signed our bills.

So congratulations on two committee chairmanships, unheard of.

Great job.

Thank you.

And one thing that I would commend you on is I know you never forgot where you came from, local government, fellow mayor at the time.

We served together as mayors, and you take that into Sacramento in the state legislature, unlike some people that didn't make their way through the city local government, or some that did, but forgot maybe you embody local government.

So thank you for representing us.

Uh I'll open up to my colleagues to say a few words, uh, recognize Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Thank you so much, Senator Erguin.

Um, incredible work for a freshman.

Uh it's hard to call you a freshman senator because you've done so much.

Um, but just really appreciate how uh in alignment your priorities are with ours here in the county and looking forward to continuing to work together.

Housing, homelessness, wildfire, public safety, these are all things that are so important to us.

Um I may want to lift up one particular issue.

I was really interested to hear about the session that you did on food security and may want to connect with your staff to learn more.

Uh, you may know that we are looking at the safety net portion of Measure W, the 20% that we're setting aside.

Um, we did already allocate as a board a few million dollars to support food security.

Um, I believe that um we can partner with the food bank as well as a host of food justice organizations across the entire county to really strengthen that food safety net system, building off of what we did during COVID, um, and really create something that's lasting.

And so I hope that we'll be able to turn our attention to that opportunity.

And the September Act for All meeting had a number of um nonprofit providers as well as our county staff, um, share some of that information.

So there's some information we can share with your office as well.

But I hope to continue the conversation around health care, food security, mental health prevention, all of those impacts of HR1.

Thank you.

Supervisor Miley.

Sure.

Thanks, um, Senator for the disinformation.

The two things I'm gonna hit on.

Public safety corridor.

Yes, the space public safety corridor.

We need to move ahead with that.

You know, we've had conversations about it.

No, I've talked to you with your staff.

Yes.

There are a lot of us who are very interested in that, because you know, the issue around public safety doesn't just stop in Oakland.

It's the entire Bay Area, San Francisco, uh San Jose, you know, Contra Casa County.

So your assistance in pulling together that corridor, I think would be very much appreciated.

And then also legal dumping.

Don't forget our efforts, because you know, legal dumping, it um, you know, it's basically um the broken window theory.

People dump trash and garbage and the other, brings down the quality of life, and it uh, you know, it helps to um provide an environment that's conducive to uh criminality.

So anything anything you can do to help us with that, uh, be at your service.

Thank you.

If I may, President Howard.

Um Supervisor Miley, I think we're working on a date, hopefully next month for uh for I guess our reconvening of the East Bay Public Safety Corps.

I want to thank you for your leadership and Supervisor Bass as well when she was on the um Oakland City Council.

Um so I'm gonna talk to Mayor Lee and we'll work on finding a time and I think this initiative and wanna thank the the sheriff for being part of it is trying to bring all of our law enforcement agencies as well as public safety departments together um throughout Alameda County, even in Contra Costa County to talk around around the issues around crime and public safety, which we know are multifaceted.

It's not just around how we prevent crime and and hold people accountable, but it's also how do we prevent these um these public safety challenges from happening through investments um through violence prevention through um you know helping create safer, healthier communities.

So look forward to to working with you on that and um as well as advancing the work that you've done at the state level around addressing illegal dumping through bringing our committees together for an informational hearing, looking at other legislative strategies, working to try to get the governor to make this a priority.

Supervisor Tam.

Thank you, President Halbert, and thank you, Senator, for a very uh comprehensive report on your freshman year and uh our office obviously appreciates for working very closely with you on a number of issues, including um through the PAL committee's uh SB 617.

One of the things that uh I know we've been on panels together over the impacts of HR one, and um when do you think we will finalize uh the information in terms of understanding how much the state can mitigate so we can plan better at the county?

Um my expectations when we come back in January 5th that that will be one of the first things that we'll be working on.

Um many of us were hoping that we could um advance some of that work before we uh before we adjourn this year's legislative session, then Prop 50 happened and um a lot of other um uh uh sort of legislative priorities took precedence, but um, the administration is doing a lot of work around looking at impacts, thinking developing strategies, implementation strategies, budget strategies.

Um, our budget staff in the Senate are also doing a lot of work in this area, and I expect uh beginning of the year is when we're really gonna dive deeply into this.

Um my expectation is we're probably gonna have to make adjustments because we passed the balanced budget, but now it's gonna be imbalanced.

Um, and I uh spoke with uh Director Ford and with some of the other county staff around how um this will impact um not just sort of the nutrition assistance work but the health care services that Alameda County provides and ask for some specific numbers in terms of numbers of people impacted, the budgetary impacts to Alameda County, having those specific details is very important for me as I go back to Sacramento and to really advocate for the for the resources and collaborations that's needed.

So we'll definitely be in touch and uh this is gonna definitely be a partnership between state and county as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you.

Good to see you.

I just have to say publicly, I'm so proud of you.

Happy Hispanic Latinx Heritage Month.

Um, not just because of your ethnic background, but you embody the spirit of what it means to fight for our most vulnerable population.

So thank you for your leadership.

And I'm thinking back to the first time I ever learned about you was decades ago on KPFA.

I think you were a student at UC Berkeley, you probably don't even remember that interview, but it was a long time ago, and just really uh proud of the work you're doing.

Thank you for representing our values here in Alameda County.

Um, and since you're asking for feedback, definitely concur with my colleagues.

Um any work that you could do to protect the safety net, specifically Medicaid, um, our safety net services.

I appreciate all the work you're doing around housing.

Thank you for elevating Prop One.

That's probably my biggest pet peeve from the state is all these unfunded mandates that has to stop.

We are hemorrhaging here at the county.

So I just hope that we can partner as the chair of public protection.

Would love to be reinvited to your meetings and engage and just to focus on you know public safety means something different to every person, but I hope that we could just focus public safety should be every person in our county feeling safe and that they belong.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator, for joining us.

You're the last up before a quick lunch break.

Okay.

Perfect timing.

And uh thank you for being here with that.

I am going to say that we're going to recess for 15 minutes till 225, at which time we will readjourn to finish our items.

Recording in progress.

We're going to read re um convene our meeting for October 7th by asking the clerk to call the roll to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquis present.

Supervisor Chan.

Present.

Supervisor Miley, excused Supervisor Fortnite.

President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Very good.

Thank you all.

Our next item is the information item also listed as a set matter for the social services agency to make a presentation on the California State Auditor Report 2024-108, Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services, and the status of the assessment center.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, board members, President Halbert andrea Ford, Agency Director for Social Services.

I'm just going to introduce the topic and a letter dated April 21st, 24th, 2024, and revised on April 26, 2024.

Senator Dr.

Aisha Wahab, 10th District, and Assemblymember Liz Ortega, District 20 requested that the joint legislative audit committee approve an audit of the Department of Children and Family Services within the Alameda County Social Services Agency concerning foster youth.

There were three broad categories that the approved audit focused on.

Number one, evaluate the county's process for cross-collaboration as required by assembly bill 2083, children's system of care.

Number two, evaluate the department's approach to ensuring the health and safety of falser youth placed in transitional centers.

And finally, determine whether the department has a sufficient number of trained staff to address its foster child and complaint investigation workload.

With that, I would like to introduce Michelle Love, Assistant Agency Director for the Department of Children and Family Services.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Next slide.

So this afternoon, I'll be going over how we got to the audit.

Andrea just covered a portion of it, and I'll add to that.

The improvements that were being made prior to the audit.

Some of this work had already begun.

And our recommendations and mitigation of the concerns presented.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Thank you.

So we had a grand jury report on timeliness of child abuse investigations in 2022 and 2023.

And it brought up concerns about timeliness of investigations, the number of emergency response staff that were able to respond.

Miley, who was present at that time in September 2023.

He requested a review of the department by the California Department of Social Services to audit the coordination of service.

And then we had a review conducted by CDSS that was completed in 2024.

The request by State Senator Dr.

Wahab on April 24, 2024 to the joint legislative audit committee, led to this current audit.

That audit was approved by the joint legislative audit committee on May 14th.

And the audit by the California State Auditors began March 12, 2025 and concluded on September 9th, 2025.

So the recommendations with regard to emergency response.

So before I get to the recommendation, I want to let your board know the things that we were doing prior to this audit to address the concerns regarding vacancies and the timeliness of investigations.

In 2021, we offered staff overtime to complete their backlog investigations.

Anything they were working on, they could bring to their supervisor and request overtime to complete.

In 2022, we added additional staff to our after hours program.

In May 2022, we offered overtime was offered to seven staff to complete investigations.

We recognized that our staffing was starting to have a shift, and we offered this as an opportunity for staff to complete open investigations.

We were also given money by the state of California as part of their ERU enhancement funds, and we utilized our funds as a retention tool for child welfare workers that were in the emergency response program.

The dollar varied from $1,000 to $5,000, depending on your length of time in the emergency response program.

The funds were intended as an annual enhancement as long as we had funds.

In June 2022, we asked for volunteers for staff to go to the ERU program to address 10-day referrals.

In October 22, we involuntarily transferred seven staff to the emergency response program.

I will note that that involuntary transfer led to the resignation of five staff who did not want to work in the emergency response program.

In the spring of 2023, we had our child and family team facilitators that are supervisors begun assisting us in closing referrals.

They closed over 400 referrals that had been completed by staff who had resigned from the agency and left their cases open.

In June 2023, we had the grand jury report.

And then in November 23, we began short-term ERU rotations.

Given that our first involuntary transfer didn't go well, it was intended to be a year.

We began three-month rotations from staff that were in programs that had not been as impacted by staffing.

That went on for a year.

From June through December of 2024, we had two facilitators and one of our child welfare coaches reassigned to assist with referral closures.

In October 2024, we proposed to labor a close it out pilot.

That pilot was intended to allow staff a few hours every day to close the things that were open before they went out in the field to begin new investigations.

We also hired two TAP child welfare supervisors to support referral closures.

One of them was a former child welfare supervisor, and one had resigned from the agency a number of years ago.

In January 25, we began using our case assistance program to support ERU task, setting up their narrative.

So all they had to do was input information, re-adding their contact notes and getting them in the right places, making phone calls if needed.

So anything that was like a hanging chad on a case, we were allowing our case assistant program to help with that.

In May through June of 2025, that pilot was completed and labor agreed that that could become a program.

It's now called dedicated time.

Would that assist with closing of cases?

The program was not as successful as we had thought.

We were actually getting more bandwidth from staff that were just assigned in other places in the department.

So the impact of staffing efforts on number of ERU caseloads.

I think it's important to note that in 2019-2020, just prior to the pandemic, our average vacancy rate was 17 to 19%.

That we were able to make up every year through our regular hiring process.

We'd have a number of staff that would resign, and then we'd have one or two classes of new child welfare workers that were able to assist us.

Our vacancy rates began to climb in the year after the pandemic, and we think for a number of reasons.

We have a pretty diverse staff, and a number of them actually participated in the great resignation and chose another field that they could practice their work.

Child welfare, we are first responders, and there weren't a lot of waivers to how we do our current work.

So in that first year of doing child welfare, when we were early on in the pandemic, we didn't have vaccines.

We still had to continue to send staff out to the home to interview people just like normal days.

I once had a worker come back and tell me she was surprised there were so many kids in the home when she went there.

And she was like, Why are you all here?

And the little ones like, well, I got COVID.

And so that was the kind of thing our staff were experiencing during that time.

The other thing is we bring on, we hire our interns.

It's a motivational tool for us.

People come in, they intern with our county, and then we try to bring them on as staff.

During COVID, most universities pulled their interns out of the field.

They didn't feel it was safe for them to be out in the field practicing with COVID being so uncertain.

Because of that, most of the people we hired in those first two years, 21-22 and the beginning of 22-23, actually, their first work as a child welfare worker or their first experience out in the field was when they started with our agency.

As a result, we lost two tire entire classes.

That we have not been able to catch up for the loss of 24 people so suddenly.

Illustrates how our cases, we had a steady growing cases of referrals that were open, with the height of them reaching July-ish of 2024 with 3,900 cases open in the ERU program.

We have brought that number down to 1,540.

And that is about 600 over where we were before the pandemic started.

So in terms of workers having caseloads that they need to follow up on without doing their investigations, that number is dwindling.

So to the audit recommendations.

The first one is to ensure that it timely initiates and completes investigations of all immediate and non-immediate referrals.

The department should, by January 2026, ensure that all supervisors review and approve investigation reports in a timely manner to ensure that they agree with the disposition.

Periodically review the status of all referrals to determine the number of days to initiate and complete investigations, and work with staff to identify impediments to initiating and completing investigations within the required time.

Develop a strategy to address all identified impediments to ensure that it reduces the number of days for initiating and completing investigations to complete within the required time frame.

The required time frame for completing an emergency response investigation is 30 days.

So these are the things we have done so far.

We continue the use of ongoing efforts support staff in the emergency response program.

Child welfare workers are, as I said, using dedicated time to input contact notes and complete notifications to referrals.

We have two former supervisors who are supporting the closures of up to 30 referrals a week.

And our case assistance program is setting up investigation narratives for all 10-day referrals based on information input.

And that is important because to set up investigation narrative takes about an hour per case.

Starting in September of 2025, we retained, retrained all of our emergency response supervisors on referral closure procedures, reviewing pending closures within two weeks of submission, and making referrals modifications in CWS CMS, that's our case management system, when supervisors are unable to close the referral upon review.

The supervisor reads something and they want a worker to go back out, ask for more information.

They can mark it as modified and it lets everyone know that this case is under review.

It's at the beginning of the closure process.

Starting this month in October 2025, supervisors will follow up with child welfare workers at individual supervision to ensure timeliness of the completed modifications.

We instructed ERU supervisors that they must use safe measures during their supervision with their staff at least once per month.

Safe measures is a database that overlays our case management system, but it allows them to see the number of referrals that are open and where they are in the process.

We've also shifted to an entirely electronic INTA process for emergency response for our day and swing shifts.

As of October, supervisors are notified via email instead of a referral by paper for 10-day assignments, which will enable more streamlined electronic tracking of referral timeliness.

Develop more strategies to address impediments.

We have a diverse ideas work group with our child welfare workers in the emergency response program where we get to hear from them ideas that we believe are barriers to process, retention, and things that they are finding a problem in their work.

We'll continue to utilize existing strategies.

This dedicated time, we're closing about 200 referrals a month.

So that's helping, as well as the CAP assisting in the investigation narratives.

Audit recommendation two.

To ensure that it has sufficient staff to provide timely investigations of child abuse and neglect referrals and the timely provision of foster care services.

The department should do the following by October 2026.

Survey all staff to identify impediments to retention and recruitment of staff, and develop an action plan to address the identified impediments.

Hire more staff in the CWW 1 classification.

That's our bachelor's level position.

Up to 50% of the total child welfare workers in the department's ER unit as CDSS allows, and make its shadowing process mandatory for new employees to review time, supervisors, spin training new staff.

So we've begun the process of evaluating or surveying our staff.

We've previously done exit surveys to see why people are leaving.

Predominantly the concern is workload and stress.

This new survey is part of the National Partnership for Child Safety.

And it includes an intent to remain domain.

Our staff, it looks at your connectedness, connectedness to work, how well you feel your supervisor is able to engage with you, you have the opportunity to ask questions, all these are barriers.

It also looks at psychological safety.

How safe do you feel at work?

We plan to use these existing interviews and exit surveys for staff when they resign or move to another program, and expand the virtual suggestion box to be available to all area you field.

We'll be doing focus groups also to see any information we can also gain to meet this measure.

Hire more Child Welfare Worker One classifications.

This recruitment will open again in January 2026, and we have the space for five to seven more staff before we hit the 50% threshold that's allowed by CDSS for staff in emergency response.

Make the job shadowing process mandatory.

So throughout 2025, we have currently seasoned child welfare workers that have identified themselves as willing to take new CWWs into the field for shadowing.

They actually hang a sign on their desk.

I'm available to shadow.

We anticipate this is gonna require labor agreement to make it mandatory.

The thing that is upcoming for this process is starting in October 2025.

Current and former CWWs signed up for the case assistance program will assist with referrals, will provide new child welfare workers with shadowing opportunities.

So we'll be looking for some of those staff that are volunteering to assist with case closures to assist with taking staff out into the field.

Recommendations three and four.

This is regarding documenting referrals and services.

To ensure that foster youth receive all necessary services within the prescribed or agreed-upon timeframes, the department should create and implement policies and processes that include the following by October 2026.

Documenting the service referral dates for all services, services in this instance, they're referring to anything we give a kid, medical dental therapy, anything a child needs.

Documenting all service provision, including the dates when a service was provided to a foster youth through an interagency partner or contractor, reviewing and documenting at least monthly during their visits with youth whether youth receive services according to the agreed-upon time frames, and documenting all efforts to collaborate with interagency partners to ensure timely service delivery, including efforts to obtain documentation of needed services, time frames, and delivered services.

So, a couple of things we've done that we think will assist with this, is we've modified our court report template, run the process, should be completed by November 1st, 2025, that easily calls out for the child welfare worker when they're doing their court reports, things like was the IEP requested and what date?

Was the regional center information requested and what date?

It also is very clear.

Children need two dentals in 12 months, one medical.

We also will improve the monitoring of our documentation.

Supervisors won't be signing court reports until they've reviewed the last six months' contact notes.

And we'll do random selection of cases to make sure the contact notes are current.

And then we'll implement some strategies to support documentation, including dedicated time for contact note entry, creating resources for staff, such as a contact note template and home visit checklist.

We anticipate those things will be completed by December 1st, 2025.

Audit recommendation number four.

To ensure that it has the necessary documentation to identify all services that partner agencies provide to youth and to ensure the timeliness of those services, the department should propose a change to the MOU to provide for information sharing.

This information should include the types of services that youth are scheduled to receive, the dates that youth were referred for services, and when the services were provided to ensure timely and coordinated level of services.

So they are referring to our AB 2083 MOU that is primarily consists of probation, behavioral health, child welfare, the regional center, and the Office of Education.

I've begun discussions with that group.

Thank you.

I've begun discussions with that group that of the need to update the MOU.

The MOU, as written by law, was intended as a collaboration tool so that all these partners are constantly talking about youth.

It is not previously in the templates or directions from state, included a direction to put time frames in or measures of how do you get things that you need.

We'll be adding that.

We'll also be seeking an independent MOU with the regional center of the East Bay.

Recommendations five and six, improve family finding effort and sibling engagement.

To ensure the department's child welfare workers consistently and accurately identify, locate, and notify all possible relatives of a youth within 30 days of the use removal from a caretaker, the department should develop policies and procedures for such practices by October 2026.

So we have trained all child welfare workers and clerical staff on the relative notification and statement of parentage processes in September 2025, and we actually implemented the relative notification process September 29th.

To ensure that foster youth fully benefit from their family network, the department should by October 2026 include provisions for continued engagement with siblings and sibling relationship development and maintenance in its five-year system improvement plan for 2024 through 2029.

So we have developed the strategy, the outcome measures, and we anticipate presenting this to the board November 18th, 2025.

I think it's important to note on this measure.

Alameda County does a really phenomenal job of making sure siblings are placed with each other.

So the cohort of people they are talking about is about 30%.

69% of all kids that come in, we place them with their siblings.

It's the 30 percent.

And the question really is our level of documentation.

I think things happen in court and people stop including it in their court reports because all the stakeholders know why a child may not be visiting with their sibling.

We have to go back to putting that information in the court report.

So if any of those partners aren't there, everyone is aware of what it is we're doing with our case management.

Recommendations seven and eight regarding our transitional shelter care facility policies and procedures.

To ensure that it provides a safe space for foster children and youth in the new transitional shelter, the department should by October 2026 develop policies and processes for tracking and minimizing overstays at its transitional shelter.

The policies and processes should include a biannual review that analyzes trends and outcomes and strategies the department uses to minimize overstays, including a determination of the effectiveness and the appropriateness of each strategy.

So primarily they are concerned that we are doing a lot of things and there isn't a written procedure for them.

So they want, we've already built upon the existing process to track and minimize overstays, which include a monthly report that's submitted to community care licensing, and we receive a monthly intake log and graphic report that includes intake and demographic data to identify trends, which are discussed at our AC monthly operations meeting along with individual care and safety plans.

But we will improve our documentation by creating a written protocols for all procedures at the transitional shelter care facility, explore placements with relatives and nerfoms as a first option, starting the process before the youth actually arrives at the facility whenever process, and completing emergency resource family approval placement within 72 hours, provide a quarterly summary of intake and overstay data to both the steering committee and the assessment center board, which is comprised of myself, Andrea, and Division Director Mia Buckner Ford.

We anticipate the completion of all written protocols to be December 1st, 2025.

Audit recommendation number eight.

To ensure that it identifies and corrects any past deficiencies before it reopens the new transitional shelter, the department should by October 2026 collaborate with its transitional shelter care contractors and implement policies and processes for the quarterly evaluation of transitional center performance, such as reviewing compliance with its operating standards, facility standards, and standards of reporting critical incidents.

The policies and processes should include the documentation of corrective plans.

The department should also implement procedures procedures for tracking trends and critical incidents at the new facility to ensure that it can identify any deficiencies it identifies.

So for your board to know, critical incident forms are completed 24 hours after any critical incident currently.

They're looking for us to look at twice a year.

Really, are there trends?

Is it the time of year?

Is it the group of kids we have in the placement?

So our plan so far, we have built upon existing performance monitoring practices, including the monthly report from the contractor.

Contractor is accredited by the joint commission and evaluated annually, and the annual report is provided to the administrator and division director for the shelter.

We have semi-annual evaluations by the community care licensing that include pre- and post discussions of performance.

The shelter management team meets twice a day for debrief meetings to discuss the care of all children.

And the shelter care management team holds critical incident debrief meetings for all serious critical and unusual incidents that occur at the facility.

So a quarterly evaluation.

So we anticipate by the end of this month, we'll create an internal system to monitor compliance with facility standards and to track report trends and critical incidents.

Create a system to track late critical incidents and runaway reports, create a cheat sheet for incident reporting timelines, refresh training on reporting requirements for contracted partners, administrators, and the facility manager.

We will resume our health and safety facility meetings once the new facility is licensed.

Share reports with the AC steering committee on a quarterly basis, and share reports on trends and strategies with the AC board, which most importantly includes the agency director.

Recommendations 9 and 10 were for tracking staff training and timeliness of contracted service provision.

To ensure that the department staff receive the required core and continuing training in a timely manner, the department should do the following by October 2026.

Develop and document a process to track child welfare workers and supervisors' progress and completing all required continued training and report regularly to the department management team the training completion records for all staff.

The training should include creating periodic reminders for child welfare workers and supervisors to complete their annual continued training, establish processes to hold child welfare workers and supervisors accountable for completing their core training and annual continuing training.

For example, the process should include completion of training requirements and staff performance appraisals.

So the developing the process so far we've had agency-wide training and consulting team that's our TACT.

We've asked them to produce quarterly reports for our management team where people are with completing their training.

TACT will provide training on how to capture hours for internal training.

Supervisors can provide training that counts towards those hours.

Program managers and child welfare supervisors will review training status for all direct reports and document training discussions and action plans and supervision using the conference memo.

Staff not meeting incremental quarterly progress goals for two quarters in a row will receive an oral warning.

Cumulative training hours will be documented in the performance evaluation.

The final uh audit recommendation to ensure that it can monitor the timely provision of services, the department should by October 2026 make sure that all contracts include the RBA measures, resource-based accountability, such as timeliness, performance metrics for service provision.

So we anticipate the completion of this measure by July 2026.

All of our contracts have RBA measures, but there isn't a measure that speaks to the timeliness for when service should be provided.

And so that will be completed as contracts are renewed in the next fiscal year.

So before I take your questions, I do want to give a big thanks to my executive team and my senior managers who have had a huge uplift to complete the seven-month audit and answer all the questions of the auditors, and more importantly, come up with a plan that will allow us to respond to the audit report in a timely fashion.

Questions?

So I note that this department reports up through social services.

I wonder if our committee chair or vice chair have any thoughts about questions.

I'll go first to supervisor, then to provide force and other past.

Thank you, President Halbert, and I um appreciate the presentation and the work that went into being responsive to the audit report, but I have to say right off the bat that the fact that we have this audit report and the findings that they make are very disturbing.

They're very distressing because it basically says that we're not doing a good job in protecting the 300,000 children that are in our county, and that we need to take corrective measures.

Some of the critical issues that they've identified, I think in your presentation, you came up with several um ways in which we could address them, like the failure to secure timely placements for youth, especially those with complex needs.

You talked about adding a component in the system improvement plan with sibling connections, and that you'll be bringing that forward, and then the lack of documentation and placements, assessments, and services, which is another critical issue.

Um through an electronic intake process and trying to make sure that there's documentations along the way, and then you talked about trying to address the high job vacancy rates, and obviously they lead to barriers in our ability to place uh our youth, and you mentioned that uh stress and workload was one of the or were the major issues identified in the exit interviews, and you're starting a program which you're trying to assess on the intent to remain, and so these are programs that that got started, and the part that it's still not clear is that I'm and I'm hoping that that will be the case through the documentation.

There's a lack of evidence that the children are receiving services or support, especially the mental health care services.

So, what I'm trying to ascertain is how are you creating benchmarks along the way, and how, and if you miss those benchmarks, basically measuring success, what are the consequences with that, and what do you think the board can do operationally to help you meet those benchmarks?

Okay, so let me offer a couple clarifying facts that the report in how it's written doesn't truly speak to.

So when they were reviewing the court reports and contact notes for whether or not children were receiving mental health services, they could see children receive mental health health services.

What they couldn't see was when we did the referral.

There is no measure of compliance from the state of California that mental health services need to be given in a time frame.

But what they wanted to see in our contact notes was what day did you refer them?

They were very clear that kids were going to therapy, but they wanted to know how many days they went to therapy and how often.

So what they were really asking for is a clarification of when we are seeking services for children, how long it takes for them to get services, and how often are they going with regard to mental health.

And it would be very easy to take that away.

I think that was the language in the report is somewhat inflammatory, which I think that's stylistic and it was intentional and we had several discussions about it.

What they wanted for us, and they actually considered the documentation and administrative correction.

They want our staff to document every time they're reaching out for a collateral.

Our staff have been primarily focused on documenting every time they see a child.

So it's clear that they are getting therapy.

It's in court reports, and if we're not providing that, we face uh sanctions from the court, a lack of reasonable efforts if kids aren't getting that.

And those are very rarely found in the department.

But we couldn't say, I requested therapy for supervisor TAM on this date.

They could see that Supervisor TAM got therapy, what they were looking for, but when did you ask for it, even though that isn't a requirement for when you should get it?

Because they want to be able to ensure that when we request it, we get it timely.

Same with Regional Center, it's very difficult to get information back from the regional center.

So there was a frustration for them that they couldn't tell when we asked for documents because the documents weren't there.

Regional center, they are understaffed as well, and that's always the reason why you can't get anything.

So the documentation is really document the work you are doing so people can see it.

It isn't requested for the first time because we are absolutely getting therapy and mental health needs for all of our children that need it.

Um my partners with behavioral health about the need for those services to be timely, that our children our children shouldn't be on waiting lists for services, and they've acknowledged that, and they've begun training for their access partners, and that's the portal where we get mental health services, we go through access.

So, in terms of um, I don't know if I'm fully answering your question, but I did want to want to make sure people don't leave today thinking that our children are getting the mental health services they need because that's important to me, it's important to all the staff that are doing the work to ensure that this happens.

I do believe that with the supervisors reviewing their contact notes and randomly pulling cases to make sure they're in there, that can occur.

What may be necessary down the road is assistance if our other county partners aren't able to get services as we should, and I believe that's possible, and we will likely if support is available to assist in getting a regional center to the table to provide adequate services to our youth.

Did that answer your question?

I don't know if it did.

Yeah, basically, you're you're suggesting that uh we bring some of our other interagency partners uh to this discussion, and so that's the part that but that's only if we if they can't fix it themselves.

I don't want people to think I'm throwing my behavior health partners under the bus because we do try to work and address the needs for all children in this county, and I think they do an immeasurable job doing that, but they are um they are training their staff to be better.

Okay, I understand this, but part of the recommendations uh looks at trying to get consistent discipline, accountability across all the touch points within the child welfare system, whether it's the staff, the supervisors, the community-based organizations, the interagency partners, like the regional center, and I'm just trying to grapple with how can the department achieve this.

So the department, can you hear me?

The department can only deal with our own system, but what we have to document is that we're making efforts with the other things.

We have no control over behavioral health or regional center, we will work in partnership through our 2083 MOU and in regular meetings for timely services, but the child welfare system for what for what the county is responsible for is really the department, and it's our child welfare staff.

It isn't the whole behavior health is behavior health, and we're asked.

What I'm trying to say is that what the auditors really impressed upon me multiple times is our documentation just was poor.

Our staff aren't putting everything in their contact notes, and that's what they're looking to see.

And so to get to my question of based on your improvement plans to try to address this issue about the documentation, how can we make sure that we have sufficient oversight and monitoring to ensure that the benchmarks and the successes are being met?

Thank you for clarifying.

I appreciate that.

And frankly, since I took over chair of the Social Service Committee from Supervisor Miley, I think that's the mandated reports, have been coming to the Social Services Committee, but I think the board, because this is basically an audit of the county wide system, should be apprised, and I would defer to some of my colleagues in terms of the best way to make sure we all collectively get that information and ask questions from our various perspectives.

The one thing that obviously is very difficult for managers is culture change.

What do you think?

Because that's what the auditor point out.

What do you think that means in terms of culture change and what steps do you think can be taken to address it?

And I'll give you an example, but I don't know if this will work.

I know that in the different uh units that you have, you have different bargaining units that represent each of the classes.

In the district attorney's office, for example, if they don't um want like an attorney to spend like more than three years, for example, dealing with traffic kids, sex trafficking kids, because it it gets to your psyche and to give them a way to uh go rotate through a system that would allow them to get a better uh holistic view of their job.

Is that something that's possible, or what kind of cultural change would you suggest?

I think one of the cultural changes, um, I had floor meetings with staff last week, and what supervisors pointed out is their fear of labor when holding staff accountable, that they think that things will be pulled back, and when they try to discipline staff for not doing what they're supposed to, we can't um uphold it.

SCIU was actually present at one of my meetings, and together we're like, no, we do want you to be accountable, and we'll stand behind you.

I think it's harder for our program managers holding supervisors accountable, the supervisors union strongly defends their members, and sometimes that interferes with the ability to hold someone accountable.

Um we give conference members, then we have to take them back because they don't like them, and so the measures that we have available to us to hold people accountable.

Um so your support and dealing not just at the worker level, but at the management level with being able to hold staff accountable in their work.

Um, one of the things we've explored as an agency that I'm sure Miss our director will want to pursue is longer probation time for staff.

Right now, it's six months a year, maybe more appropriate for child welfare worker twos.

We think so.

I would love to rotate child welfare workers.

My recent experience says that there are some that are just afraid and would leave instead of rotating.

Whenever we bring in new staff, we try to offer as many transfer opportunities as possible so that staff are mixing in different places throughout the agency.

With regard to culture change, I know the auditor mentioned culture change, but we have a very recent study of our staff to say they do feel psychologically safe, and they are connected to their workplace.

So there's a balance.

Okay.

The last question I had is over the vacancy rate.

I see that from 2023 to 2024, and then to 2024 to 2025, there's there's actually been a slight decrease in the vacancy rate.

And I'm hoping that trend will continue.

But when I look at the other jurisdictions, like Contra Costa had an increase in their vacancy rate between these those two years, and San Francisco did too.

But Santa Clara County did not.

What are these other counties like Santa Clara doing differently than what we're doing in terms of maintaining employees and controlling the vacancy rate, the net vacancy rate, obviously?

Um Santa Clara is a unique county.

They have a very worker-driven um county.

Santa Clara also just experienced a lot of high-profile incidents, and so there has been an interest in bringing staff on.

I know this summer they brought in a class of about 42 child welfare workers.

I think we're a contract cycle behind.

Normally our salary is commisurate with other Bay Area counties, and I don't know what happened.

I think we're a year or two behind, and I think somebody we may have taken a while with getting our contract done, but because of that, we're cycle behind.

So our staff, everyone does about the same job, child welfare, child welfare, but everybody in the Bay Area is hiring, and our staff make about 30,000 less than other uh counties.

Uh Santa Clara is one of the counties that for emergency response, they actually offer a nine percent differential for everyone in that classification, four percent for everyone else throughout the department.

So there, although I don't believe money solves all problems, I do believe it may be enticing people to other places.

Do you think those incentives are things that we could consider um in the future?

Um I think it would be great if we could.

I try not to speak about how the board spends this money, but I think it would be great.

I think the board, what I tell my staff is the board has been committed to supporting us and hiring staff.

You did it with the retention dollars.

Um we're supportive of our ERU enhancement dollars.

I think when we've asked, you've supported us in our request.

Um I do hope that in this next contract cycle we're close to what other counties are making, though.

Okay, I mean I obviously uh I would like recommendations on incentives that will work in a specific department, um, because we need to do something to reverse the trend, but we also uh need to put specific um benchmarks in place as well.

All right, thank you.

Supervisor Fortune and the best, thank you, uh Chair Tim, and thank you for going very deep in the recommendations.

Um, you know, firstly, the findings from the audit um are just really unacceptable.

You know, we have to do better, and I think one of the things that's really important when something like this comes to our attention is that the department, the agency, and the board take responsibility and accountability and really put forward a plan of action that the general public and those who rely on these services understand and can feel confident in.

So, you know, just knowing that this agency is responsible for protecting the 300,000 children across our county, preventing abuse, providing services to those in foster care, you know, it's one of the most important services that our county provides.

And I think I want to figure out how not only through your leadership as head of this department, also through our SSA heads leadership and for us as a board, our county administrator, how can we all really step up and hold ourselves accountable to doing better and have a very clear plan of action that we can communicate with the general public, communicate with those young people with those families who are participating in our foster care system so that they know we are incredibly committed to doing better and will do better.

Um I wanted to ask you know, so we're we're seeing these um action steps for the first time, so obviously we need a we may need a little bit of time to digest them, but in terms of um again, like how are we tracking benchmarks?

There's potentially interests in having this information come to the full board on a month on a monthly basis.

What type of benchmarks or metrics could we potentially use?

Is it statewide averages?

Is it incrementally getting better each month and hitting a certain point in terms of our response and completion of investigations?

Do you have a sense yet what it could look like to know month by month that we're making progress?

So I think at the first presentation, we could present some options of how it would be best.

Some of these measures, we absolutely have data and we can compare ourselves statewide through our uh safe measure system.

Some there is no statewide measure, it's the auditor's measure.

Timeliness is one of those, except for the medical and dental.

So I can give some options, and then I'd like to hear from you what filled best for you.

I'd like a little time to think about it, but I can send something in the next week so that before the next presentation, um, that I'm secure that this is going to give you the information you want.

I do think the investigation closures, the timeliness to response should be included as a regular part of what we present, along with our timeliness for immediate investigations.

Um, at a minimum, and um then we can go from there.

And I do want to say what I explained to my um all of my staff last week is that we are public stewards.

And every day we are very aware of the trust the public holds in us, not just in how we spend our money, because I use that a lot when we talk about spending money.

We're public stewards of the public stress, but also how we respond to the community and the care and support of children and families.

And so um, I agree with you, and I think our staff are committed.

I think in the report response, we tried to take accountability that we accept the findings of the audit report, and we were willing to work to address any deficiencies that have been stated.

Um, I believe my team who's here with me, uh, they all agree with that as well.

So I think we can start with those first few measures and then um kind of drill down before the next presentation, what things might be helpful or it doesn't seem helpful since we haven't done it before.

It may take a while to make sure you're getting what you want.

Thank you.

Um, and I certainly recognize Miss Love that you've been a public servant here at the county for some time, and that the work that you and your team do, especially those in the emergency response unit, is some of the most difficult work, very traumatic work, and that also requires that you have the support that you need.

And so I want us to also balance out figuring, you know, sort of take into account what it what we need for our employees who do this challenging work to be successful.

I have another question, which is about the partners that we have.

So in reading the audit, there were 38 contracts with our departments, only seven of them had various timelines and performance metrics.

And I know in the recommendations you just shared with us, there's a goal of October of next year, I believe, to update all of that.

How are you approaching working with all of those partners to create the change that's needed?

So my staff person who handles our RBA measures and responsible for them and our continuous quality improvement.

She will assist us in developing a reasonable time measure.

And then it'll be part of their new contract for the coming year.

We will alert all of them, all of my staff meet with contractors at least quarterly.

So it'll be conversations in the next 12 months that they can expect timeliness measures as we work so that they're not just getting them next year and they start, but they can work towards that goal in the next 12 months.

Thank you.

Chair Tam mentioned culture, which was mentioned in the report, also leadership and communications.

I think there's two more things I want to touch on.

One is in terms of culture, are new hires brought on in terms of cohorts so that there's a set of peers that are onboarding together, able to support each other, learn together, develop together.

So in the past, we have done two courts and hiring cohorts.

We typically do a graduating, master's level cohort in July and in January.

We've recently moved to continuous hiring.

So we do staff do do training together.

Um this last class we just brought on because I didn't want to wait for the next training opportunity.

So there are at least five to seven people that they are with as part of their cohort.

We tried last summer bringing them in before they went to training, so they could kind of meet people, fill the lay of the land, and that actually worked really well.

Right now we have staff that are waiting for their training in November and they're being supervised in the unit.

So they're shadowing other staff, they're getting to know people, and that seems to have been successful in the past.

So we want to build on that.

Thank you.

And again, in terms of creating a supportive culture for really challenging work, I'm also interested in hearing ideas about how that can be supported.

I don't know if it's also mentorships with annuitants who've done this work that could be supporting folks or peer learning, or I'm sure there's associations or sort of cross-agency with other counties, perhaps where there's opportunities.

But I I do recognize that this is hard work.

That's probably why it's been so hard to recruit and retain, especially as folks have retired and I want to figure out how we can support your department in not only recruiting really, you know, committed staff, but also retaining folks and making sure folks have the support they need, as I I mentioned earlier.

Lastly, I do think taking accountability for this audit again is really important.

Um, you know, taking what you shared with us today and creating an action plan and then communication, communication internally within the department and also externally.

And so if you have initial thoughts about how we do that communications externally, I'd like to hear them, but I do feel like you know this has been in the news that's been really serious and we have to let people know in the general public what we are doing.

So I agree with you.

I think at every stage that we report out to the state there should be a press release that goes out with what our progress is, what has been implemented and where we are.

I think it's important.

I think in the last couple years we've been hind the ball and responding to press timely which creates an atmosphere of thinking we are hiding something even when we are not and so um I agree that we should be active and ready to go with um press releases in terms of the work we are doing um to share with the community.

Thank you.

Before we go to our next speaker I would like to just make a brief announcement which is um you may know we have scheduled a special meeting at 3 30 it was meant to be a separate meeting from this meeting hopefully this meeting would have been concluded by 3 30 but it's not so I'm just going to announce that the 3 30 special meeting is slightly delayed okay with that said supervisor Miley former chair of social services thoughts comments questions well I just want to um co-sign all the thorough questions and observations that um supervisor Tam and Bass have made I mean uh gone into some very um surgical um examination of the departments depart uh departments responses to the audit uh I you know I do think that it's going to be important and I appreciate the fact that you know we've kind of seen a kind of a history of how we got here steps that have been taken and then response to the audit I do think it's important that the audit to place you know because I for one and I've kind of mentioned this before I think the board should be targeting certain county departments for performance audits on an annual basis.

So maybe every year there's at least one or two departments that are being audited uh for performance and uh this clearly shows that the uh child and family services you know warranted uh this type of uh audit because I see it as a performance audit quite frankly um and I do think the the deficiencies I mean there have been there's a lot that's laid out in terms of the audit uh recommendations and I appreciate the you know the benchmarks and how we're gonna uh track if we're making progress um I I did get the sense I think from Supervisor Tam's questioning that you know in order to fulfill uh the audit um recommendations we're gonna need the staffing in order to fulfill the audit recommendations we're gonna need the staffing uh because we can have the best of recommendations but without the staffing it's not gonna get us anywhere.

I agree with you yeah so you know I just would like to encourage the um the department the agency um to work with the respective uh three uh bargaining units that have um a role to play in our ability to provide quality service.

Do you see how we can collectively, and I think Supervisor Tan was hitting on this, you know, provide whatever incentives and you pointed out too, might be additional incentives, um policies, protocols, things that we can do so that we can meet um the a recommendations that have been outlined here.

I'm assuming these recommendations, they came from your staff, but they come from all three of the bargaining units.

Yeah, it's the whole department.

The whole department.

Yeah, because I look at things kind of like as a a team, you know.

If we're a team and everybody's got a role to play on the team, and if we want to, you know, win the game, win the championship, you know, et cetera.

Uh it takes everybody, you know, doing their role and performing to the best of their ability.

And I do feel that, you know, no nobody wants to feel feel that we are falling short of our responsibility in child welfare.

Um, I do know it's it's a challenging job, but that's the thing.

If it's a challenging job, how can we make it so people want to do this job?

Um, and know that they've they've got the support of the board, their their counterparts, there's you know, their supervisors, their managers that uh, etc.

Um, because we're only as good as you know whoever's doing the work.

We're not doing the work.

But if the work's not getting done, we collectively are going to be responsible for not getting done.

So I, for one, want to see how we can collectively, because you've got a lot here, how we can collectively ensure that we can get it done.

And if there's something here that people disagree with, or if they feel there's omissions and modifications, um, we we need to know about that.

Um, because you know, I often say that you know, best thinking necessarily is come from one or two people, it comes from all of us collectively.

That plan of what we could do came from a team of 30, 30.

So it's throughout the department and included my program managers, my division directors, my clerical managers, and all my analysts.

So I didn't create that by myself.

I uh I said this is something we all have to do.

Okay, so what are we gonna do?

And they put their best thoughts into how are we going to address what this audit is said.

Okay, and um, and they stand behind this, they all some of them showed up and they're a lot on the line, right?

I think they stand with this department and the work that they do every day, and I think they all are looking for an opportunity to address um the deficiencies, okay.

Thanks.

Because you know, once again, looking, I'm trying to take a different tact in some of my colleagues.

Um looking at as a team, uh, we want to look good.

You know, we Alameda County, we want to look good.

Uh and we and so in order to do good, we all collectively have to, you know, do our jobs and do them uh do them well and uh professionally.

Um I can't do your job, you can't do their job, but collectively we can all make the job work, and we can all um make the team work, and we can all make Alameda County, you know, be uh at the forefront, be on the cutting edge, be doing the best practices, not necessarily you know lagging behind and being under the scrutiny of the of the state.

So once again, I I think you did say this, Michelle.

You appreciate the you know the audit.

You did say that, right?

You appreciate the fact that we that this audit has taken place and that we've had to respond to it.

What I would say is if there are deficiencies we have, we need to address them.

That's how we serve the community.

Audit is hard to it's harder, and our an audit is hard when someone who doesn't understand the work takes four weeks to try to learn it and then does their best job to tell you how well you're doing, right?

But they pointed out some things that we weren't doing well that we need to do better.

So we appreciate um those being put in our face so that we can address them.

And are you saying the folks who did the audit?

Because I think I heard that with one of the questions for First Stammer's.

Are you saying that they kind of miss the boat here?

I don't think they missed the boat, but I think sometimes how you frame questions may not have elicited always our best answer.

And they weren't sure.

So we spent a lot of time going back and forth to make sure they fully understood things.

For example, we explained several times.

Line staff can't supervise other staff.

Shadowing has worked really well in their agency, but they're all professionals, they're all the same level.

So it's okay to give feedback.

My child welfare staff can't give feedback to another child welfare staff about what they're doing wrong.

They're representative that has to come from someone above them.

And so little nuances like that in the work.

That's all I'm saying.

Well, you just want to point it out how we're all collectively, we're all collectively interested in doing better.

Wants to be in the newspaper.

Yeah, right.

So I challenge you, I challenge the three bargaining units, I challenge the staff, I challenge all of us to do better and uh to achieve the recommendations that are laid out here.

Once again, we can't do it for you, but we can ask and we can demand and we can you know encourage and support that they get done.

Once again, if if it's an issue of uh staffing, then we need to figure out how we're gonna address that so you can retain the staff you need to do the job and do it well.

The department will be happy.

Yeah, staff will be happy to find here that you support them in their work.

So that's all I want to say at the moment.

Uh thank you, Supervisor.

President uh Halbert.

Very good.

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you, President Howard.

Um, I appreciate all the comments from my colleagues.

Um, this report was released, I think exactly two weeks ago.

So I'm conflicted in my views because on one hand, I'm really um pleased that we're taking this so seriously that we actually have a full presentation today, something for us to digest, but at the same time, um, it's still a lot to process.

So I'm just gonna start off the bat while it's top of mind what I want to see moving forward.

I do feel like this is our collective responsibility.

I'm not here to point the finger at anyone.

Um, I've done uh unannounced home visits as a probate court investigator.

It is not the same, but it's similar in the sense that I can relate to the stress of showing up to someone's house.

You have no idea if there's weapons in the home, animals, the list goes on and on.

So I can um relate to the uncertainty and the high level of stress, it never ends.

Um, just like this job, you cannot punch out, you take this home with you all day, every day you carry it.

Um, but with that said, we absolutely have to do better.

And um, we've been having a lot of discussions about committee work and you know where things land.

This is um a number one priority for me personally that I want to see updates come to the full board, a standing meeting every month until I see significant progress, then we can revisit maybe it's bimonthly, maybe it's quarterly.

But at this juncture, um, I want to see updates every month.

I'm not gonna tell you I trust your expertise to come back and tell us the framework of those updates, but I absolutely want to see them on a monthly basis.

I also want to see any contract for vendors come back to the board.

You had talked about you have a year to uh to do the results based accountability, so any contracts moving forward, I want them to come back to the full board with the presentation where we actually it's on the agenda with the PowerPoint with the board letter that's clear who well where when, so everyone has all the same information.

There could be a brief five tenant um presentation for us to ask questions, but we need to get ahead of this.

So I want to use the full board meetings for those additional touch points.

And um, I heard we're lacking in terms of infrastructure.

I agree.

So we absolutely need to have a PIO hard stop.

I don't understand why a county this large doesn't have one.

I think at one point the department had it, it's just not consistent.

So we all need to take responsibility and make that decision.

Um, it also needs to be all hands on deck.

I love that you've been engaging with executive leadership and your team and our labor partners, but everyone is playing a role in the situation, and we have to be willing to come to the table with hard truths and solution base, a mindset we've got to figure out how we're gonna course correct.

Um I have lots of questions, so if you could just be brief as possible because I know we've already covered a lot, but in the presentation, it was mentioned that CDSS completed their audit in July of 2024.

What were their findings?

Was it similar to this audit or what's documentation?

I think their concern was primarily around the assessment center.

Um, some things like we weren't documenting stays at the assessment center as a placement, we've corrected that.

Um, they were concerned about mental health services.

Their audit was fully electronic, and so they didn't look at court reports or anything else.

This audit actually looked at court reports.

And those findings were presented to social services?

They were presented to the social services committee, yes.

Okay, and then with respect to the court reports, are those standard templates?

Does every child welfare worker have to fill out specific fields?

So they are specific to the type of hearing, and so that's what we've created drop-downs, and so now we just have to have the drop downs added to the current template.

Okay, and then help me understand why we're waiting till January for the recruitment.

Oh, sorry.

Why are we waiting till January for the recruitment?

The list we just exhausted the list.

I don't have a good answer because I am only waiting um for January for the child welfare worker one.

It doesn't mean the child welfare worker two recruitment has stopped.

That one is ongoing, it's continuous.

Okay, but the one uh when was the last time we recruited for one?

We just brought in some ones September 15th.

Okay.

Um, and then I was a little bit confused on the case assistance.

Is that still in place?

It is still in place.

Okay.

And then I'm also confused because I'm hearing a lot about closing the cases, closing the cases, and quite frankly, I don't give a damn about closing the case.

I want to make sure our young people are getting the care that they deserve.

If that, you know, they need ongoing mental health or count, whatever that need is.

So that's what I'm struggling with.

So can I give you the measure why the closing referrals matters?

Yeah.

So for emergency response, when they go out and do an investigation, they need to come back and close it.

The liability exists for the county for open cases because if something happens, the case is still assigned to us.

Okay.

So if a child is injured, they're gonna be like, Well, you have the case.

Okay, closing cases is important for us.

We have to get those closed so that our liability in theory ends with that disposition of cases.

It also lessens the work staff are doing.

So if they're not still going out on old cases, they can focus on their new cases.

I got a 10 day, I can go out instead of oh, I didn't close the case from three months ago.

We need to measure the span of things they're responsible for so they can focus on going out timely with referrals for 10 days.

They aren't doing that for immediate.

But what I'm also hearing is there's a huge emphasis, and I hear you on the liability part, but I'm also hearing they're not getting the behavioral health therapy that they need.

So to me, that is a problem.

I think we need to take that up with AC Health in terms of additional staffing to meet the needs of this population.

They should absolutely be a priority and not be on a wait list.

So that's something that impacts a different department.

In terms of the regional center, are your uh workers reaching out worker to worker, or is it supervisor to supervisor to get the IPP?

They reach out worker to worker.

Um that's the problem.

I think we just need to have a structure.

It needs to be management to management, like 48-hour turnaround.

That's not acceptable to be waiting for someone who could be on leave, be out in the field.

And so when I say supervisors do contact, we need the MOU with regional center, regional center is part of our AB 2083 MIU, but I've called for things and not gotten very far myself.

So that's definitely something we need to work on.

Um, so when would be the next update?

I think that depends on when you guys say it's okay to come back.

Yeah, you said once a month.

Um, so I would the next work session in the month of November.

Okay, thank you.

And I just want to correct for this state audit in 2024.

They only audited, was it 69 cases?

Yeah, this was 90.

Yeah, it was a very small sample that they audited and not so much it wasn't as robust as what the legislative committee just did.

Um, for your next uh update, this was a great presentation, but if you could just add a little bit more context, so all of us have the background information.

I really appreciated the timeline and starting with the ground jury.

But if you could just kind of fill in some of those blanks so we all have the same information.

Sure thing.

Thank you.

And then I'll also add we do have um an executive program coordinator who also um acts as a PIO, and we have a contract with a communications group right now that we're working on, like building out our um communications piece with the agency.

Thank you for the thorough report, and I want to commend my colleagues for weighing in.

I share many of those comments, but let me be very clear and very blunt.

We have failed our children.

That is undeniable and it's inexcusable.

Period, full stop.

I think we may explain it.

Lack of staffing, lack of resources, lots of reasons why, but it's undeniable and it's inexcusable.

We have to get better as a team, and we've talked about this.

The buck stops with us.

I feel personally responsible.

Audits like this, I think, I believe, I hope, uncover things that maybe we didn't know before, that they'll help us guide us to do better.

We have to do better.

But ultimately, in the end, as I said, the buck stops with our board, and I think we have our attention here.

Every one of us, this is one of the it's got to be one of the top three, four, five things on our minds as county supervisors, period.

Foster youth, some of the most vulnerable of our community.

I don't know.

Um, so I'd like to summarize a couple of the thoughts that I've had.

One, I'm not sure we can do one a great start.

I see a lot of great recommendations.

The team of 30 that put this together have done a lot of work.

I would recommend that we implement the low-hanging fruit yesterday.

Don't wait.

Um, I'm not sure we can do it all by ourselves.

I'm I'm wondering if we have contractors, experts, consultants that can search out best in class practices.

The audits one thing, but we already know other counties are doing things differently than we are.

Should we be apprised of all of those?

I would recommend that we uh we've talked about it.

Hire and train ASAP.

If we can hire somebody between now and January, let's do it.

I know that we will.

I would like to see that us come back very quickly with what would be a management report with the key metrics you design it.

I think we spitballed a couple of them uh here.

You designed the management report that will give us the metrics that if we're deficient now, we can see month by month by month us getting better.

I would like to see us, as was mentioned, have this on an agenda, a work study session or a special meeting every month for this full board in between.

Meet with this social services team.

That's great.

Every month, this board should be reviewing key metrics and progress towards getting better.

I would like to see that for the first however long it takes, maybe quarterly, maybe annually after that.

But I'm going to challenge us to take the time to do this every month.

I don't, I mean, I think all my colleagues have asked questions, you've answered them.

Um this is a good solid presentation.

I just have to say that uh, and I am optimistic that we will as a team get better, and if that means more resources, so help us help you, resources, tools, whatever it takes.

We need to know, and we're we're with you, we're on the same team.

So um with that said, we'll go to public comment after we hear one more round from our wise elder, Supervisor Miley.

Go ahead.

Well, I don't want to be uh contrary, uh, but I also don't want to set expectations beyond what we can achieve.

So I mean, are you when you say monthly?

For what duration monthly are we talking about?

Maybe until we feel comfortable that we are having the metrics developed that we are enough to if we don't have anything to report on, then maybe we don't need to meet.

But I I want to see, I just until we see the progress, would be my guess.

And if and if we don't do it every month uh because for good reason, then we don't.

Uh I relax that we don't need to meet if there's nothing to meet on, but I would think that we should be seeing progress.

I just wanted to flush that out because both you and supervisor on the social services monthly to the full board, and I just don't, you know, those are high expectations for the agency and department to pull this together monthly.

It doesn't imminate the importance of this, but I just don't want to set up set them up for failure either.

Why don't we say at the discretion of the social services committee?

Let them you want to um make the recommendation.

Yes, I can certainly do that.

Um, but um the presentation included a timeline and certain months and dates in which things were going to get done.

I think at the very least, we should just give that opportunity and get a timeline at the next update and just help us understand where is a good check-in point for you.

It may not be every month, but it may be every other month, for example.

Okay, let's not get mixed up in too many semantics.

Okay.

Every on a as expedited as needed, as directed by social services, whether it's every month or every other month, or once a quarter.

So I want to thank Supervisor Tam for that clarification and also remind you all that everything, um, the recommendations came from the state, not from the staff.

The staff, the staff response was to the recommendations, but I want to say everything must be done by October 2026.

This is October 2025.

We have one year to do everything in that PowerPoint presentation and to sustain it.

So whether we come every month, it'll be every month for the next 12 months.

Or it'll be every two months.

But just know that the expectation is that I'll love it to be taken care of by October 2026.

Let's exceed that goal.

How's that?

I say it's sustained beyond that, so yeah.

Uh, seeing no other comments.

We do a public comment on this.

Is there anybody in uh the audience first and then online?

Jane Kramer.

Thank you, Michelle.

Yeah.

I know something about this.

I did an internship in a prison for kids.

I worked as a worker in a county child services program.

I worked as a worker, volunteer, and backup in a CBO for runaways.

Now that report that you have in front of you is on target as far as what needs to be done.

The question is, will it be done?

Training is essential, and training means that workers from the bottom up collectively have a sense of professional competence and identity.

Access to resources in the community, it's absolutely essential.

They have to be immediately available, and workers need to know how to network for them.

Or it doesn't work.

For instance, a kid shows up at a CBO for runaways, he's in a prison for kids.

He ran away.

He went A-WOL.

This complaint.

No reason why.

It takes two days to solve the problem.

Okay.

What I'm saying is training and know-how and resources in a place to put the kid that night is essential.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

There are no more speakers.

Okay, very good.

With that, we'll move to the next portion of our presentation.

The Social Services Agency Assessment Center.

This is a presentation by our general services agency, Miss Kimberly Gassaway.

Kimberly Gasway, Director of General Services Agency.

This is a capital project update on the SSA Assessment Center.

Next.

So the property, when we met with SSA to look at their requirements for a new assessment center as they were moving out of the Hayward facility, and the requirements that they would like was a rural residential location without public transportation or retail access, but central to county services and preferably in the unincorporated area.

This was essential for a number of reasons.

Multiple sites were toured, and uh this site was one of the um sites with the most interest, and the state uh licensing also came out and visited the property, and uh thought this would be a good site.

There are two main houses on the site.

There's the front house you can see on the far right.

There's a middle house right behind it, and then the far back you see a horse barn, and there's a small orchard in the back.

So let me say the property was uh originally built.

Oops, I'm going the wrong way.

What's happening here?

There we go.

The property was originally built in 1959, but both of the uh front and backhouse were renovated.

So when we started to um operationalize the site, a GSA uh building maintenance department came in with some small construction contracts and also BMD staff performed some work themselves.

They did some refurbishing, including interiors of the front and the middle houses with flooring and new lighting.

They installed a sidewalk, a deck, and an ADA ramp.

The third bullet is a repeat.

The deck um connects the two houses.

They installed card reader systems, the front and the middle houses.

They installed a rear fence to the property.

The former fence was insufficient.

They repaired the vehicle gate at the main entry.

They installed trash collections.

They upgraded some utilities, including plumbing and electrical in both the houses.

And then we learned that additional electrical upgrades are now required for PWA public works and the fire inspections, which I'll talk more about.

So both properties need to be permitted for the occupancy.

It's a change in use.

So California building code requires the occupancy permit to a classification of an R4.

They were required to install smoke detectors and fire alarm systems, which they have installed, but the permitting is still pending.

And we just learned from the fire inspection that there's additional electrical work that needs to be done.

Most of it I reviewed the inspection report, and most of it is relatively straightforward in order for us to occupy.

And we learned that the front house, they had in it permits and inspections when they remodel, but they never finalized.

So that's why there's some additional work we need to do to get that final permit.

The middle house was renovated, it was originally garage converted.

It also requires a change in occupancy to a permit R4.

It is currently permitted as a garage, and we learned that the renovations were not permitted on the second house conversion, but the renovations that were done by the seller.

We knew that uh pretty uh early on, and we immediately recommended that that be demolished for safety reasons.

The barns often don't have hard walls or foundation, but we just thought for the safety of the youth, it would be better to bring that down.

The driveway is always presented a little bit of an issue.

I know some of you have visited this site, it's fairly narrow, and for full construction, it may be a bit of a challenge.

And especially as we look at where office building is going to be because we have learned as part of this effort that we will likely need to provide an independent structures for the offices.

And so, in order to do that, we may have to deal with the driveway in some ways.

We're looking at whether or not putting the offices in front because originally they were going to put the offices in the back where the barn is, but that may create additional issues with the road.

So we're considering putting the office in the front.

What we did with the front house, because of the issues with the second house, what we did is immediately bifurcated the front house to get that permitted quickly and licensed by the state so it could be occupied on a faster timeline, and kids could be start being residing in the home.

So what happened is an architect came in, prepared the stamp drawings for the change of occupancy is required by public works.

As I mentioned, they did install the fire life safety system, and they just received the reports, the inspections from public works and fire on 917 and 10.3 with additional requirements.

I already mentioned I've read through them.

The first four items have to be addressed in order for occupancy, and they're mostly straightforward, like in your bathroom where you have you know little buttons on your plug outlet that it'll pop out, it's electrical load, things like that, doorknobs have to be a certain standard, so it's not significant.

There is a state form that has to be submitted to the fire department before they finalize their inspections, and then both public works and fire will perform, excuse me, their final inspections, and then public works issues change of occupancy, and the state is then asked to license the site.

We're anticipating six months to complete this effort.

The second house, as I mentioned, was not permitted the renovations.

So we're working right now with SSA.

There's a couple things we're talking about to triage the situation, which is whether or not we um because of the timelines involved, get the front.

We're working to get the front house license, and whether or not we're actually put offices in the second house while we discuss, you know, this the future structure for an office space.

And that way we they can fully operationalize with their staff on site.

There's also some additional constraints related to security guards some things we uh recently learned um around their they need a armory where they lock weapons they don't carry weapons around so we're just getting down to the little bitty details and we want the director of SSA andrea Ford and I are now meeting monthly with our staff more often if necessary so we get fully every little detail we just learned that um what we learned a little bit ago things like linens can't be stored in the house with the kids so we have to make sure so we're down to the little minutia items so that whatever we're constructing we're fully informed.

The architect has given us a proposal to do the full construction scope and cost estimating necessary for permitting and occupancy so we can bring that to the board andrea and I talked to staff about pulling that back a little bit so they can give us options about where office spaces will go and how we want to move this forward so it we don't think it'll be a big um timeline the same architect will stay through the whole portion but we want to be able to make good cost effective decisions.

Then the construction contract is procured once we have the full scope and the cost estimates comes to your board and then later after construction happened it is the responsibility of the contractor to get all of the inspections and the uh permit for occupancy and again it has to be um licensed by the state that middle house if we use it as a residential it requires state licensing we learned if it we turn that into offices that does not require state licensing so again looking at triaging estimated timeline um for the conversion is 18 to 24 months so um we're again we're hoping to shorten that and look at an interim plan and then a longer term construction plan that's the report thank you questions supervisor miley yes um thanks for this update so I do understand our desire to relocate the assessment center from where it was and I do recognize um the fact that we thought this property would be suitable and ideal roughly when did we make the decision to relocate December 2023 okay so it's approaching two years.

So in six months the main house it's estimated in six months the main house will be suitable for that's correct.

And at the main house in six months that's like maybe March of next year.

What type of services will be provided at the main house in six months I know that the occupancy is for six kids to be on site it'll be like our other assessment center we'll have um staff there for the milieu we'll also have advocates from Missy side by side to provide services for RU.

Okay.

And then with the timeline 18 months.

24 months, that's two years.

I'm trying to understand what are we gonna do there?

Cause it says, including residential space, staffing, guard office, parking.

So is that all of all of what we're that's the full scope of the property?

So that will be a renovation of the middle house, whether it's offices or it's gonna the original idea is to put an additional four children there and then build a separate office space because I've learned that the staff cannot be in the buildings, their offices cannot be where the kids are living.

So um, so it's an offices, another four uh a facility fully permitted for another four kids.

It already has bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, but it's not permitted, and then uh do something about the driveway and parking.

So that's the full scope, but we can start occupancy before that.

Okay.

So what was the original cost?

1.9 million.

1.9 million, and what's the cost that we're anticipating now?

So we're waiting for the architect to come in.

Um I have a rough order of magnitude, I hesitate to say it, but it's it's less than 10 million.

So probably eight.

Yeah.

So new road, new subsequent system, an office building.

So while we're waiting for this full build out, we'll be able to use this facility for six kids, right?

That's my understanding right now.

I think there's ongoing conversations with the state about it.

So the interim plan will have to be to use the middle for some offices.

Why we build out the remainder of the property, but I know conversations are happening with the state to make that happen.

So it so the original cost is about two million, it could go upwards of 10 million to do all this.

That's correct.

Um, and at the moment, I've been I'm kind of reading between the lines.

We don't necessarily know if the state's gonna permit in six months, say that again.

The construction will be uh all the permitting will be ready on the front house.

State licensing is not within our control.

Yeah, so I'm saying that we don't know if that's gonna thank you for that correction.

Actualized.

So actually the state has been waiting for us to finish the redesign on the property.

We finished our prop our program statement and it was approved last year.

So what we've been waiting for is the fire certification for them to allow us to be fully licensed.

So I think that's the piece we're waiting on.

The construction raises an interesting um conversation for the state because we have to demonstrate to them that we can keep children safe in a fully uh a site that's under construction.

That's under construction, and we're having that conversation Thursday.

But the state, we've done what we need to do, so they understand we're just waiting for the building to be ready for us to um occupy.

And we need to do the the construction, not just because we're gonna have uh four more uh kids to be there, but for all these other things, parking staff, security, etc.

So we had envisioned this site when we looked at it is an occupancy up to 10, which would allow sibling groups or a parenting mother to be in a separate facility than the other youth.

Um we've always needed office space, some spaces just required because that uh second home was permitted as a garage, it has to go through all that permitting to be for us to convert it to a residential, no, a business license, the business, and that is it's not retrofit.

I mean, there's more work than we realize, so I think um in our subcommittee of the steering committee, we've been trying to come up with some plan A, plan B, plan C, uh, to utilize the space we have, limiting the cost that we're expending, um, so that we can move in as quickly as possible.

Yeah, because I mean, needless to say, I'm disappointed.

Needless to say.

Uh, you know, I've been out to the site, you know that I've toured the site.

Um, and I just would have thought this would have been operational by now.

Um, and it's I just uh hate to I don't want to try to I'm trying to breathe and be be calm, but it it it's just frustrating that between social services, GSA, FIRE, public works, everybody didn't anticipate environmental health.

Everybody didn't anticipate what we needed to do on the site before we decided to take the site with our eyes wide open.

So now that we're here, we're trying to figure this out so we can move forward utilizing the site on an interim basis, and then hopefully making the site suitable uh in as it was envisioned.

But I do know that the driveway is you know extremely narrow.

I mean, like I've been out there.

You know, I I don't want to I don't want to fuss, I don't want to get angry, but I'm just what you know, I'm just extremely disappointed.

Uh extremely disappointed.

So let it be said at that, but not just because the site's not open, but it's gonna cost us a lot more money too.

Um, and I guess the option of abandoning it and looking somewhere else, that's not even part of the conversation at this point.

So that really is our other options.

Andrea, when she saw the cost, she's like, Well, how much is another property?

Okay.

So we are continuing to explore.

I mean, the board requested that these youth not go to a business site, which is what we have before, right?

Um, and so Andrea, when she saw the cost of potentially nine million, our plan B.

We have like three plans.

Okay.

Plan B is to look for another facility within three to five miles of that facility.

Um that maybe doesn't need the work, and it's a learning experience.

I think we generally move into business properties.

Moving into a home is turned into something that none of us could have anticipated the conversion from a residential to a business, and once you buy things with county dollars, you have to meet different standards than we had considered.

So now we know a lot more, so we can find another property in the same area.

Andrea said that's a better option than continuing to spend more money.

So that is an option that you're that you're pondering.

Okay, but at the beginning of this, so nobody, because once again, this isn't my I'm a policymaker, I know a few things about a few things of a jack of all trades, but an ace and only A said a couple things, and I'm not an ace at this.

So we just didn't anticipate that we needed environmental health, fire, public works, uh, supervisor.

We do know we do know that that's at the beginning.

Because this, I mean, this is in the unincorporated area, and if we it's not in the city, we are the government.

So the county we do get permit through public works and and fire for all of our county projects.

So that's not unknown.

So every capital project GSA does, that does happen.

So that was known.

What happened here?

Trying to, you know how I like to tread lightly.

But um, when this prop property was acquired, it was acquired from a family trust.

What we did not know is that the second house renovations were not permitted.

Should we have known that?

We should have known that.

So that is our thank you.

We absolutely should have known that.

All on that sword, okay.

I will that's all you need to tell me.

I've told my staff I'm gonna take it for this one, take it for the team.

That is our standard protocol when we acquire property is part of our due diligence.

So the fact that we didn't know that is a problem.

And because it wasn't permitted, that's requiring additional.

I would like to say that um Daniel from Public Works, there was another issue where we were having some disagreement, our architect, his staff, and Andrea and I sat here with them.

We appreciate this corner because we collaborate regularly, department heads, and he intervened and was able to get us over a big hump.

And it feels like, um, they're doing their job, fire and public works, but every time I get a new report, I feel like there's a new list.

So I want to talk to staff about that.

You know, are we getting all the information?

Not piecemeal.

So making sure that's happening.

And when did you become interim director?

GSA.

Um, I know it was in a in an April month.

I don't know.

Is this under your watch?

Do we start this?

Yeah, it absolutely was.

Okay, all right.

Come on, so I'll take that.

Come on, yeah, Kimberly.

Now, and what is also disturbing me is the septic piece.

We didn't know because we were gonna have more folks out there.

We didn't know the septic could handle the tanks at the site, and one is fine.

It's the second one back by the the garage.

What I think happened is they started that remodel with the parents who then passed away, the kids inherited.

We bought as a quick claim as is, and so the full all due diligence GSA normally doesn't does did not happen.

And I'm embarrassed to say that, but that's the fact that's how we at least you're being honest and transparent to thank you.

Did our realtor not help us out with any of this?

Don't we use a broker or realtor to help us find?

No, it's our real estate department, okay.

Yes, and they do have a due diligence listing, and so it was I think.

Well, I hear the reasons they're giving, I'm not finding them fully acceptable.

Some of I know there was some pressure about getting out of the Hayward site.

There was threat of um threats around that property.

But anyway, we're here, and so I take full responsibility.

They've heard it already from me.

So I'm sorry, not did we answer the question that Nate raised, which is should we just abandon this and go for another property?

I actually don't think that's the right direction, and I'll share for this reason.

The location of the property is right.

Once this is done, it is gonna be a nice.

Uh and it's also the sheriff will be this um responding law enforcement.

When they're talking about another property, there was another site, three miles.

What we were talking about is making the garage an office and buying that other property as another residential, so they're close to monitor the kids, so they have some kids on this one, some kids on this one, and therefore the renovations may be less.

The biggest issue we're dealing with is that second um the garage conversion.

And so we had that conversation.

That property that was just up for sale, and staff are looking to see if there's another in that same vicinity close by.

Um, so that that is happening.

We we are actually probably gonna have four different options to discuss.

Okay, your your eyes are on this.

Oh, yeah.

At this point, both.

Okay, all right.

We have the very good.

Uh Supervisor Mark, yes.

Uh, thank you for the updates.

Couple clarifying questions in the um state audit report and mention that um we um vacated the former assessment site in Hayward in July of 2024.

But in the report, it also says that the license was expired.

I wasn't aware of that, so did we just not renew it?

Because we knew we were gonna vacate that site.

We couldn't renew it.

They had told us that was the last extension we would get at that site.

And what was the frequency of the renewal?

Um they have been three months.

We have been getting them every three to six months because they wanted us um to move.

So, pre-gonna ask this question from counsel.me, I'm not if you're not able to answer this, but uh pre-the threat litigation, it was already being asked by the state for us to we had to do the whole line, not move.

They wanted us to start the whole licensing process over.

We were an extension on the original and the state um requirements had changed, okay.

And so they wanted us under the new requirements, which are a little stronger than the previous ones.

The previous ones were created just for Alexander.

So just like a timing issue just happened.

Yeah, okay.

And then we have the other stuff.

So it thank you for that clarity.

And um, couple questions.

Since we don't have an assessment center, what have we been doing for two years?

Um, and secondly, I'm really concerned about.

I've been to the property, that barn is massive, it's beautiful.

I think it's a very nice therapeutic space if we didn't have all these issues.

So I'm just gonna flag, I'm really concerned about number one.

If we're gonna stay there, the barn should absolutely be demolished before anyone moves on site.

And in terms of construction, I don't know if we could just transport an ADU, like like whatever creative things we need to do, but I do not think kids should be on site during construction.

Absolutely not.

All of that is under consideration.

All of that is under consideration.

ADU, I think that's what Camberly talked about whether something should be in the front or the back.

So all of that is part of.

Yeah, we're looking at uh whether a modular brought in quickly, those prefab um the cost consideration.

So all of that's being locked down.

And then can I ask if you're suggesting six months permit green light?

What's the the take from the state?

Is that a two-week process to get license from them, a month?

Like, do we have a uh an i uh a proposed timeline on their licensor?

Once we have a certification, I think it's fairly quickly.

It's less than yeah, at this point they're like, can we come out and see it?

So they're waiting for us.

Any other questions?

Just let me clarify if we are not having kids on site until all the yeah.

Okay.

Like there's talk about the front house and getting the permit, but there's still stuff in the back that has to be done.

Thank you for the presentation.

Do we have any finishing comments?

Go ahead.

Um, no, there was another question from Supervisor Marquez.

Um, we just wanted to round it out in the show.

So we've been making um active efforts to get youth and um relatives home for visits until we can find a placement for them.

Um, but there have been occasions where youth are in our visitation area at 1111 Jackson overnight.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you for sharing that.

Any other questions, comments?

Thank you for the presentation.

Supervisor Ford Notabass, go ahead.

I just have a question for my colleagues, uh, which is uh when we are going to come back to the board with this item.

I was just looking at our board schedule.

If we want to use a work session, we only have two more scheduled this year, October 21st and November 25th.

And then we have our series of board meetings.

Um, after this month, the next we just have three board meetings in um between November and December.

So I was just curious.

Um, for ourselves as well as for the public if we have a sense of when to bring this back.

And I don't know, Chair Tam of Social Services, if you have a preference.

Uh are you talking about um the assessment center, or are you talking about?

I'm talking about the response to the audit.

Uh my understanding is that's gonna come to the social service committee with the timeline, and then we will um elevate that to the full board on a recommendation on check-in points.

And yeah, the assessment center progress can also come to the social service committee.

I'm just gonna respectfully ask though that we have at least one status update before the end of the calendar year to this full board.

I it's a lot of back and forth, but we we have to track this, and and I don't expect you to resolve all the issues.

I just want a status update.

That's all I want.

Where are we at with the recommendations?

So I think I think what I said is um the next work session in November, we would be able to.

Yeah, and I think what I just heard Supervisor Fortunately, I say is November 25th.

Scheduled work session right now on November 25th.

Yeah, okay.

Oh yes, I don't want to uh sound like a heretic or something.

But um, you know, the health committee meets twice a month, and the only reason social service committee only met once a month was because my schedule now Supervisor Tamman and Mark, um, might be able to hold social services meetings twice a month, and that would get us more because it seems like it's a lot of stuff we're asking social services to handle.

I think we could streamline by just one group update and work session.

Right, we're all here rather than a committee twice.

I'm just not gonna know that maybe because it just seems like they got a lot coming at them, and I know we got a lot coming at us collectively, and maybe that committee could meet twice a month, and that might help us out, but I'm you know like I said I just work here so I'm just throwing it out.

I think the desire is for all of us to see the information and so it doesn't happen at a committee meeting.

That that's fine.

Um the only comment I had about what Supervisor Miley said is that for some reason you also gave me a lot of your external appointments so that also made my schedule impacted you didn't expect that did you Nate all right again thank you for the presentation do we have any public comment on this item no okay there are no public comments so uh with that we have exceed we have uh finished our one o'clock set matters it's time for the mass motion uh let's do the consent calendar first then is there a motion to approve our consent calendar this I'll move our cons I'll second calendar item by Marquez second by Tim items where are you uh 6365 supervisor marquez aye supervisor Tim Supervisor Miley Supervisor Fournado Bass I present how we haven't had public comment yet on the regular calendar um members of the public who are here to make comment either online or in person for the regular scheduled meeting now finally are able to do so as the clerk will call in person speakers first and then online in person we have Simeo Ramey speaking on item seven eight and twenty three we have buffalo speaking on soul journey yes sir speaking on item seven eight and twenty three and Davida speaking on item 18 and 20.

Good afternoon out of the county no good even out and county I didn't bring my lunch or dinner anyway this is a very good topic what's going on well I just told you I'm saying a lot of crime going on is because foster children didn't get proper attention the parents didn't care about me all you care about the children for the check.

Didn't care about the health and well being disability.

So when he turned 18 it throwing the streets that's not love.

I was one I was child abuse child too okay I understand what's going on my grandfather my grandma children my father took care of me my mother left me she didn't know because she came up in a broken house and she was child abused it has to stop it's real disabled or savory.

We got to understand this.

We have to take care of people from ground up from birth to the grave is still alive you're still being body and people not caring about it and you can have to have so they get a change by going to them.

That's why we just wrong why you almost have a sudden you take care of the whole scenario the whole my mother's so scared mom I love you you'll have to be forget that you did I'm not gonna I'm I haven't converted I'm not that way how it hoped we need to help so you gotta get these people to adopt children take care of them like they should own children.

We should come out of school and give it for your night.

Don't go to the corner on 14 Broadway and say, well, Rob Shield's y'all now.

It's wrong.

The home is not here.

Sad.

And you have no one to turn to say I'm saying the same way.

We got a million disability.

And we have to have to address this now.

Housing.

Health, education welfare, the Constitution Back.

We'll be not all right, Donald Trump.

America first, where about us?

What about the senior citizenship homeless?

Yeah.

No, we got more seniors and see my home than people in society.

A 78-year lady in Florida, she's home.

She offered two dollars and two cents a day.

Thank you for your I appreciate you.

Thank you for being asked.

Thank you.

Um let's see.

While Mr.

Miley was in charge, we had two minutes to talk about everything.

Um I got to say I'm afraid the Almighty that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart be acceptable in that site, and that at no time do I devolve into a drone, time meeting drone.

Uh I was gonna applaud y'all for items seven, eight, and twenty-three.

And you have my condolences on giving United Health Care 6 604.

You got my condolences on that.

Now, about this stuff they the drone went on about, obviously they was caught short.

Yeah, you need to have meat once a month.

And if they had talked to a contractor worth they salt, they'd find out that 18 months of 1.4 million dollars mean you could knock them buildings down and put a four-story up there.

1.4 and 18 months to transfer a garage.

Nah, I was a handyman.

I know contractors.

Do you know pork?

Do you know pork barrel?

Yeah, well, 18-24 months on that property there.

There's some pig fat involved.

Oh, yeah, Supervisor Marquez.

I have to commend you for your long attention span.

We got through that solar sip solar through that drone, and you still remember the points you had questions on.

Yeah, we all got a lot of work to do, but it basically is about checking ourselves and not continuing the wrongdoings of our predecessors.

That's what I came to y'all about.

The truth is a light, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

And that was a wreck you just had for the last hour.

Yes, there's apologies made for it, but there was a wreck.

Next speaker.

Davita.

John Lindsay, you have two minutes.

Go ahead, please.

Uh thank you and good afternoon, supervisors.

Um I wanted to raise a question about item number thirty nine, um, on your regular agenda, which um deals with uh measure w funding.

And it's it's certainly helpful to um see, you know, this move forward, but there's you know, this is for sixty-four million dollars of spending, about half of which is on non-homelessness critical needs projects.

Um those projects are described uh very briefly without identifying who is responsible for carrying them out.

Um has staff coming back to you on October 21st to present a plan for more spending.

It's not that's not it's not really clear what that will entail.

And it seems to kind of front end the non-housing expenditures more than I would have expected with an 80% to 20% split um as the board decided in its policy.

So I'm I'm hoping that um one of you might uh uh single this and just it just to ask those questions to get some more information and whether in fact the the apportionment of these 64 million dollars is front-ending that 20% for critical needs, which of course is important, but it makes me wonder what is happening with the the homelessness funds.

I understand that HHS is having difficulty getting permission in order to hire uh permanent staff that are needed in order to move forward the projects uh the home together projects to implement uh those measure w funds.

Thanks so much.

Take care, there are no more speakers.

Very good.

Thank you.

Um for that.

We'll now go to the mass motion.

Is there a motion?

Mr.

Chair, I will move items two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jump to twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.

May I just interrupt?

I'm sorry, I forgot to announce that we're also going to continue item 17 to a future date.

Item 17 is continued, item 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28.

Is it 26 or 27?

26 should be in the motion.

Okay, it was marked off 26 is included, 27, 28, 29 has been pulled, item 30, 31, 32, jumping to 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, and 57.

There are questions on 37, 39, and 51.

Very good.

Any other questions?

Uh, is there a second to that motion?

I'll second.

Okay, very good.

Um, were there any recusals?

11 is a refusal.

We'll take that up separately.

Very good.

So then um question on 37.

Thank you.

Uh, President Halbert.

So 37 is the results-based accountability software contract.

Um, I do believe this is really important given that we want to have accountability and results in the work that we do.

Um, yeah, we just uh went through the foster child care audit in the Department of Children and Family Services only had seven of 38 contracts uh that had benchmarks and timelines recorded.

So my question is by extending this contract, which I support, how will we uh work across all of our departments to ensure that there is indeed um results-based accountability built into more and more of our contracts?

Thank you, Supervisor.

Um this is uh um coming from ITD.

Uh we support the IT systems for social services.

This is a the rec as you said, the recounts of the results-based accountability package that is used for tracking performance of contracts both in social services and in health care.

Um, would you like to discuss how it's being used?

So Clear Impact, Andrea Ford, Agency Director for Social Services.

Clear Impact is a report card system.

It doesn't prevent us having a results based accountability framework for all of our for all of our contracts.

But it does not like set the standard for RBA metrics or anything.

So for um in social services, workforce and benefits administration department, which is the largest department in social services.

They are 100% RBA metrics.

We you heard from Michelle, we're gonna work to get children and family services up to that standard.

And we endeavor to have every contract where possible, and social services have RBA metrics as quickly as possible.

Thank you for that clarification.

So in other departments like workforce, which you mentioned, they do have results-based accountability, but they may not yet be using the software.

That's correct.

And we have I think social services implemented results-based accountability in 2014.

Um so we've been operating under that framework for 10 years or so.

Okay.

Um Director Ford, I had an opportunity to look at the reports for the three immigrant rights coalitions that SSA is uh contracting with, and it was very helpful to see those metrics, which I think they they either um pulled the data from uh the software or they sent us the raw data, and it was very helpful.

So I do hope that more and more of the contracts will use that software so that there is some uniformity to how we collect the information.

I mean, you have my commitment that that will be the case.

Thank you.

Very good.

Next item with questions 39.

Thank you.

Um the first question is to our county administrator.

Um, so noting that for the essential services fund, there is a allocation to capital to capital, and 27 million is allocated to capital, including affordable housing on county-owned land or properties.

I just wanted to get confirmation that we will look at other sources of funding before we use measure W so that it's a last resort, and we can really maximize that for homeless services and essential services.

Yes, uh Supervisor Bass, as we had um stated uh at the work session, measure uh W will be um based on best practices in our own financial management policies to the extent possible, will be the last dollar used.

You had specifically inquired about uh any remaining measure A1 uh housing bond funds, including the accrued interest, and um yes, the the that will be used first on a house affordable housing projects to the extent allowable under our bond documents.

So we would certainly look to that source of funding, which is more restricted first, and that is our general policy to look at the most restrictive funding first.

Thank you.

Um, and I asked this question last week at the work session.

We heard it again from a public comment.

Is there additional information that can be shared regarding the other um capital uh investments, including an incorporated investments uh for displacement prevention or critical county infrastructure?

Is there any additional information to be shared?

Kimberly Gasway, GSA director, and so uh some of these items will be coming to your board shortly in the next couple of work sessions as well as uh formal items to your board for approval.

So um some are still real estate negotiations, so I'm not able to speak openly yet about them, but they will be coming forward.

Um, as far as the critical infrastructure, we are on other facilities.

We are looking at safety net sites where there's significant deferred maintenance and the initial investment we're asking for is to get them shovel ready.

So this is soft costs related to that.

So those are SSA sites, healthcare sites.

Thank you.

And so in a nutshell, these allocations will come to the board for the actual funding allocation.

Thank you.

Your board will still have to take action to appropriate the measure W funds.

Thank you for that clarification.

Uh just two more things.

Um, as a reminder, um, I discussed my interest in supporting food security with some additional allocations.

I just wanted to draw the board's attention again to the September Act for All meeting, where we had a proposal from several CBOs, and we also had a presentation from AC Health.

Um, there is a proposal from the Food Bank and a set of organizations for a project uh that would support countywide procurement, maximizing CalFresh benefits and supporting CBOs that are part of uh the countywide food system, and so I do hope my colleagues will take a look at that leading up to the work session on the 21st, which I hope to join uh for a portion virtually as I'll be traveling.

Um, and then lastly, I do appreciate the allocation of 2.5 million dollars towards immigrant and refugee services as we discussed at the August Act for All meeting.

Myself and Supervisor Marquez, do you plan to bring forward a board letter requesting an allocation for this board's consideration this month?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next item with questions is 51.

51 is an ordinance, it's just a comment that I had.

I wanted to uh take the opportunity to thank our public works department for making the Royal and West Sunset Boulevard a required four-way stop.

Um the constituents in that area have been asking for this safety measure for a while, and they're very thrilled to see this become a reality.

So thank you.

The public works.

Very good.

Any other questions or comments on the masked motion?

If not, we've had a motion made seconded.

The clerk please call the roll.

Supervisor Marquez, aye, supervisor Tan, aye, Supervisor Miley, aye.

Supervisor Fortnite, aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

The mask passes.

Let's go to item 11, for which I think Supervisor Fortunatter Bass would have.

Yes, for item number 11.

I want to announce that I will be recusing myself because um item 11A 9 relates to the West Oakland Health Center, also known as Baywell Health, and I received a campaign contribution from their CEO Robert Phillips and the amount of $5,000 on February 11th, 2025.

Very good.

Uh noting that Supervisor Fortunately Bass has recused herself and left the room.

Is there a motion to approve item 11?

I will move item 11.

I'll second.

Motion's been made by Supervisor TAM, seconded by Supervisor Marquez to approve item 11.

The clerk please call the roll.

Supervisor Marquez, aye.

Supervisor Tan, aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Aye.

Supervisor Fortnite has recused herself from speaking and voting on the item and left the room.

President Halbert.

Aye.

Ordinance is uh item 33 is second reading of salary ordinance amendments.

The title of the first ordinance is an ordinance approving the June 22nd, 2025 through July 1st, 2028 memorandum of understanding with the Deputy Sheriff's Association.

The title of the second ordinance is an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2024 to 2025 County of Alameda salary ordinance.

Mr.

Chair, I will move to waive the full second reading and adopt the ordinance approving the June 22nd, 2025 through July 1st, 2028 MOU between the county and DSA, and on the second ordinance, I will move to waive the full second reading and adopt the salary ordinance amendments to update the salaries for the cost of locations represented by DSA.

Motion has been made by Supervisor Tam, seconded by Supervisor Miley.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Supervisor Marquez, aye.

Supervisor Tan, aye, Supervisor Miley, aye.

Supervisor Fortnite Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

Item 34 is the first reading of ordinance amendments related to the August 2024 through August 2028.

MOU between the County and ACMIA District Attorney Inspectors Units and other related adjustments.

The title of the first ordinance is an ordinance approving the August 6, 2024 through August 26, 2028.

Memorandum of understanding with the Alameda County Management Employees Association Units R5 1 and R5 2.

The title of the second ordinance is an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2024 to 2025 County of Alameda salary ordinance.

Mr.

Chair, I will move to waive the full first reading and introduce the ordinance approving the August 6, 2024 through August 26, 2028 MOU between the county and ACMIA.

And on the second ordinance, I will move to waive the full first reading and introduce the salary ordinance amendments to update the salaries for the classifications represented by ACMIA.

Is there a second to that motion?

Motion's been made by Supervisor Tam, seconded by Supervisor Miley.

The clerk please call the roll.

Supervisor Marquez, aye.

Supervisor Tan, aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fournette Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

Item 35 is the first reading of salary ordinance amendments amending the existing MOU between the County and Acting General Government Unit as well as other related salary adjustments.

The title of the first ordinance, an ordinance amending the June 25, 2023 through July 3rd, 2027 Memorandum of Understanding between the Alameda County Management Employees Association, General Government Unit, and the County of Alameda.

The title of the second ordinance is an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2024 to 2025 County of Alameda Salary Ordinance.

Mr.

Chair, I will move to waive the full first reading and introduce the ordinance amending the June 25, 2023 through July 3rd, 27 MOU between the County and ACMEA and also on the second ordinance to move to waive the full first reading and introduce the salary ordinance amendments.

I'll second that motion.

Supervisor Marquez.

Aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley?

Aye.

Supervisor Fortnite Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

Your last ordinance is the first reading of an ordinance amending traffic regulations in the unincorporated area.

An ordinance amending chapter one relating to traffic regulations, county highways of Title VI relating to vehicles and traffic of the Alameda County Public Works ACPW traffic code.

Mr.

President, I will move to wave the full first reading and introduce the ordinance amending chapter one related to traffic regulations in the unincorporated area.

Motion has been made by Supervisor TAM, seconded by Supervisor Miley.

Would the clerk please call the roll?

Supervisor Marquez.

Aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Aye.

Supervisor Fournette Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

Aye.

With that, we have uh completed the regular items.

We do have public comment on items not on today's agenda, but before that, I'll recognize Supervisor Miley.

Before we adjourn, I'd like to see if we can adjourn in the memory of uh Dr.

J.

Alfred uh Smith, senior.

I could speak to that when you're ready for the ready.

Do we have any public comment on items not on today's agenda?

Please call it.

There are no more speakers.

Okay, then public comments have been uh concluded.

Uh Supervisor Miley, please uh walk us through.

We will adjourn in the honor of somebody important.

Let's go.

Yes, I'd like to adjourn today's meeting in memory of the Reverend Dr.

G.

Alfred Smith.

Senior.

You know, he was the um pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church in uh Deep East Oakland in District 4.

Um, and he passed away at the age of 94.

I'm gonna uh paraphrase some of the information from uh the uh article on him in the uh post, Oakland Post.

So Ge Alfred Smith was born May 19th, 1931 in Kansas City, Missouri.

He was raised by his um mother, Amy Gates Smith, and his grandmother, uh Martha Henry.

Uh he obtained his uh early education in Kansas City and graduated in 1948 from R.

T.

Coles High School that same year he was licensed to preach, and in 1951, he was ordained as he was ordained at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church in Kansas City, where he served uh as assistant pastor for um three years.

Um Pastor Smith also um received a bachelor's of science uh and uh in elementary school education in 1952, a bachelor's of divinity in 1959, a master's of theology in church and community in 1966, a master's in American Church History in 1972, and a doctor of ministry in 1975.

In 1977, Dr.

Smith was elected senior pastor of Alan Temple Baptist Church.

He was elected president of the Progressive Baptist State Convention of California in 1979, and the president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in 1986.

Dr.

Smith joined the teaching faculty of the American Baptist Seminary of the West of the West as a professor of Christian ministry in 1992.

Dr.

Smith uh did not set out to make himself uh famous, however, he became a renowned celebrated pastor, preacher, professor, prophet, author, and theologian.

He has been honored as one of the top black preachers of America, earned and received countless awards, and was the recipient of uh hundreds of honors and uh uh acknowledgments.

Um, you know, he survived by five uh offspring.

Um, at one point he actually served on the Oakland School Board uh and he also uh you know had the um experience working in the schools because at one point uh in his life's journey uh he was a principal at a school.

It's mentioned in uh the tribute to him in the post.

Uh services will be held at Alan Temple Church uh this Thursday, October 9th.

Um reprose will be from 2 to 5, followed by an evening of uh worship and witness, and then Friday the 10th, although there'll be a celebration of his life at 11 o'clock.

So Dr.

Um G.

Alfred Smith, you know, he was a pillar in the in the community uh Oakland and in Oakland was um, I mean, we're good to have him as one of those outstanding clergy, and as was pointed out, he wasn't such he wasn't just a leader here, was a leader nationally.

So uh uh in 94, he had a life well lived in Wilbensity.

Thank you very much.

Supervisor Miley.

That we will adjourn our meeting, noting that we have another meeting at scheduled for 3 30 but delayed, which we will begin shortly.