Welcome everyone.

I'd like to call to order our Tuesday, March tenth special meeting of the Board of Supervisors.

We will start with roll call.

Supervisor Tam present.

Supervisor Miley is excused.

Supervisor Parson Abbas present.

And President Halbert.

We have a quorum.

If you're in person would like to speak on an item, please fill out a speaker card.

If you're online, raise your hand when the time is right.

As this is a special meeting, when we have open session items, there will be public comment afforded at each of those for each of those items.

So for now, is there anybody who would like to make a comment on closed session items?

Either in the room first and then online.

Through the chair, we do have two speakers with their hand in Zoom.

If I can provide the instructions for providing public comment first.

When called to speak, please unmute your microphone and state your name.

If you are calling in, please dial star nine to raise your hand to speak.

When you're called to speak, the host will enable you to speak.

If you decide not to speak, please notify myself, the clerk when you're when you are called, when your call is unmuted.

Or you may be simply um, or you may simply hang up and dial back into the meeting.

As a reminder, you may always just observe the meeting without participating by clicking on the view now link on the county's website page at acgov.org.

When you are called, you will have two minutes to speak.

Please limit your remarks to the time allocated.

Public comment will generally alternate between in-person and online speakers as determined by the president of the board and subject to overall time limits.

Thank you.

We do have two speakers online.

Bell Shane Man.

Bel Sheenman, if you would like to speak on today's uh closed session, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

I actually want to speak on the um on the open session, so I will lower my hand.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Kelly A, if you wish to speak to closed session, may you unmute yourself.

Thank you.

I'm speaking on a uh one of the items, uh threat to it's uh uh to the public's right of access to public facilities and public services.

Now there are two threats actually that your board is sponsoring.

Um, as as many um people know um who've read history, um the the enemy within the threat within is oftentimes the most dangerous threat.

And Alameda County is no exception to this rule.

Um Alameda County sponsored a shutdown of a public hiking and biking trail that had been there for 150 years, um in uh just outside uh uh straddling the Fremont border.

So Alameda County went to shut down not only its uh jurisdiction over over the road or uh over the uh trail, uh, but also the city's public right of way for hiking and biking and walking and driving on a public road.

Um, this is really really be uh beyond the pale.

And uh also Alameda County is uh thinking about shutting down a 35 million dollar brand new.

It opened in 2024, and uh that very same year in 2024, Alameda County announced plans to um give away the public parking lot at Dublin BART station that Alameda County owns and operates.

Uh that uh they want to give that to a private party uh because public parking at BART, which is what it was supposed to be built for.

There's no demand, apparently.

And now you want to get take away this public service and you want to put it out for rent so it would become a private service, a private parking lot.

Um, if you needed a private parking lot, why don't you have them build it?

And they why why did you use taxpayer money to build a useless parking garage?

A white elephant.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

That was our last speaker.

No more speakers.

With that, we will recess into closed session.

Thank you.

All right, everyone, we're going to reconvene from our close session discussion.

We'll start with roll call.

Supervisor Marquez, present Supervisor Tam, present Supervisor Miley, Supervisor Fartonado Boss, excuse, and President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

County Council, anything to report out from closed session.

The board did not take reportable actions today.

Thank you very much.

Our first.

I'm sorry.

I do need to correct that.

We did.

I'm sorry.

Um, the board authorized the board authorized the county council to sign on to um amicus briefs that are likely to be filed in coordination with or by public rights project relating to the matter of MIOT, the Trump case number 26-5050, pinning in the DC circuit court, and also to sign on to other um PRP briefs that raise the same um position as the PRP will be taking in the MIAT case.

Thank you.

Oh, and that vote that vote was five zero.

Would you close those doors?

And if we have to keep one open, open up that one.

Thank you very much, County Council.

Our next item up is our open session item number one, a federal state and county budget finance update.

Uh thank you, Mr.

President.

Members of the board.

Um, today we want to provide another uh presentation on overall county budget as well as the potential impacts of state and federal actions to date.

So we're going to give you an overview of the economic conditions, which obviously have also changed significantly recently, our current outlook, and really in our ongoing effort to provide um updates as well as the financing framework, um, knowing that we are entering our budget development um season.

So it really is about um the structure of the county, how counties are financed and our current status.

Um, as you know, our budget is currently balanced.

We we do have a structural um deficit that we attempt to chip away at um every year.

We're in the process of building our fiscal 26-27 maintenance of effort budget that will be presented to your board um next month, but there is significant uncertainty, uh particularly in the health care and safety net financing areas, and we are mindful that that's going to take some um thoughtful and deliberative um planning.

So today, um, the economic context as well as um our budget overview is going to be presented uh jointly by uh Rasley Tadeo and Amy Schregel.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

We only have 89 slides today.

Oh, it'll be quick.

Um, so we are building this budget during a period of significant volatility economically, politically, and that uncertainty frames everything that you'll hear today.

So looking at um Alameda County's real estate market, which remains an important local economic indicator according to the state association of realtors.

In January, the median price in the county was 1.12 million, which is a 5% decrease from December, and it's down 2.6% from a year ago.

January home sales are down nearly 40% compared to December and up about 2% from a year ago.

Um, so the rate of unsold inventory is up 115% compared to December and down 13% compared to a year ago.

Median time on the market was 17 days for the month of January, which is down 10.5% from the previous month as the same year prior and is the same as the year prior.

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

Foreclosure filings are up 32% year over year in January 2026, marking the 11th straight month of foreclosure activity rising, though overall levels remain well below historic peaks.

The Federal Reserve Board is scheduled to meet next week.

Um, the central bank left entrant rates unchanged in the previous meeting in January.

The February jobs report saw a loss of 92,000 jobs, which is which is a significant shift from the 126,000 gained in January.

Previously, economist economists had expected 60,000 jobs gained in February.

The unemployment rate is 4.4%, which is largely stayed the same from January.

And just in this last week and a half, crude oil cases have been extremely volatile.

We're seeing both four-year highs as well as a recent 10% decrease.

The Federal Reserve has warned of the elevated valuation growth in the tech industry related to AI and automation, which could result in losses or a market crash if sheriffs continue to slow economic growth.

Amazon has confirmed plans to cut 16,000 jobs globally in 2026.

Over 750 of those jobs are local.

UPS, which is winding down its partnership with Amazon announced plans to get 30,000 jobs after eliminating 48,000 jobs in 2025.

UPS has also plans to further deploy automation.

For 21.8 million, announced it will be cutting roughly 150 East Bay jobs, moving resources away from human support and total revenue generating sales and AI development.

Last year, workday eliminated 617 Bay Area jobs in April 2025.

Oakland-based FinTech Company Block is cutting 4,000 of its 10,000 employees, and other notable cutbacks in the tech industry this year include Google, Meta, and Pinterest.

So layered on top of that is federal instability.

So at the federal level, there is considerable instability.

The Department of Homeland Security remains unfunded amid another government shutdown.

Major legislation is stalled due to partisan gridlock.

The farm bill, which includes SNAP, known in California as CalFresh, continues to move through Congress, but its final form remains uncertain.

And every attempt to roll back the changes included in HR1 were rejected in that House Agriculture Committee.

There are also ongoing federal debates regarding Medi-Cal eligibility, work requirements, and the administrative rules.

And for counties, this federal uncertainty translates to risk for us.

We are the local service delivery system, and when federal policy changes eligibility funding formulas or administrative requirements, we have to absorb those operational impacts.

This is particularly true in health and human services.

Now we're going to turn to the state.

One of the largest drivers of state spending continues to be Medi-Cal.

Medi-Cal spending is projected to reach approximately 222 billion dollars in 2067, which is roughly 49 billion coming from the state general fund, which is about 20% of total general fund spending.

The LAO has advised waiting for updated data in the May revise before making any significant budget decisions, which means for counties, state revenues may be improving modestly, but our flexibility is limited and health care costs continue to rise.

Specifically related to SNAP or CalFresh, the federal changes are going to significantly reduce the federal government's share of administrative costs.

Statewide counties could see more than 160 million dollars annually in additional administrative responsibility.

And currently 1991 realignment revenues support CalFresh administration, but that funding source is not growing at a pace that matches projected workload increases.

Additionally, beginning in October 2027, states may be required to share in benefit costs based on error rates.

We're also anticipating additional administrative functions, potentially we know frequent more frequent eligibility redeterminations and increased staffing needs.

We're going to be asked to do more work with less federal support.

The implications are even more significant for Medi-Cal proposals.

The HR1 bill includes work requirements and six-month re-verification processes.

These changes will reduce enrollments.

And when eligibility, when individuals lose coverage, they delay care, they rely more heavily on emergency departments, and uncompensated care costs increase.

And hospitals and our clinics will face the financial strain.

And when these when hospitals and clinics face the straight that strain, the impacts ripple outward and affect our EMS system and the broader health care system.

The projected cumulative impacts between 2025 and 2032 include potential non-renewal of key payment programs, reductions in state directed payments, federal matching rate reductions, and eligibility changes.

It's important to note that these projections do not include our public health system's historical 1.7 billion dollar structural deficit.

New pressures would compound our existing structural challenges.

And behavioral health services are also at risk if coverage declines.

Reduced medical eligibility means reduced access to mental health and substance use treatment services.

And it's not simply a fiscal issue, it's also a service delivery issue affecting our most vulnerable residents.

This slide is a snapshot from the California Public Hospitals Association.

And it shows the existing structural deficit in our public health care system and the reductions from all of these different policy decisions that we're going to be facing in the coming years.

So when you go out to 2032, you can see that it is an insurmountable challenge.

So now turning to our own budget, our process is continuous and disciplined.

So we kick up the process in December and begin discussions on our internal service fund programs.

Then departments begin to work on their budgets and their narratives in January and February.

We hold work sessions and stakeholder meetings throughout spring, and then the proposed budget comes forward in May with adoption occurring in June.

It's okay.

General fund appropriations total 4.3 billion, which is an increase of 300 million from the fiscal year 24-25 approved budget.

The budget supports a workforce of nearly 10, uh 500 full-time equivalent positions, which is an increase of almost 10 FTEs from the prior year.

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

One-time strategies reflected in the blue sections of the stack bars essentially represent the structural deficit we face in developing the county budget every year, with operational costs always outpacing revenue growth.

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

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

The budget monitoring process supports accountability related to spending and regular comprehensive monitoring of the budget.

Also allows for the evaluation of service level provision, progress towards goals and expectations and the examination of trends and other deviations that may impact future operations.

The second quarter projections suggest savings and the aggregate due to a combination of projected underspending driven by high vacancy rates, offset by underrealization of program revenues.

So, for example, in programs like social services, if you're not incurring the expense, you don't draw down on the revenue.

To the degree that we have concerns with particular program revenues, we're also continuing to review funds and trusts, encumbrances, and other strategies to help offset projected costs and weak revenue projections.

The credit rating agencies have reaffirmed the county's current triple A rating, citing our prudent fiscal management policies and practices, consistent budgetary performance.

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

Other significant long-term liabilities include over 800 million and unfunded capital and major maintenance needs.

So listed here are some pending factors, and I'll just mention a few that we continue to monitor.

So new ballot initiatives, especially one that could result in billions of in lost in property tax dollars.

The county's labor negotiations and workforce challenges can also significantly impact our long-term outlook as well as rising insurance and health benefit costs.

We know that our pending litigation and settlements are also impacting our insurance costs in addition to overall hardening of the insurance market, global finances, geopolitical turmoil, and the impact of climate disasters have the potential to do significant economic harm.

More extreme weather can weaken economic growth and impact the cost of food, energy, and insurance.

The potential of an economic downturn is always a concern for counties, as these periods are often this when services are needed most, yet are also typically times when we see a decrease in revenue to support those services.

So to understand our constraints, it's important to remember how counties are structured.

This is a snapshot of the 58 counties in California.

And as you can see, only 10 California counties have over a million residents.

So we are in the minority of counties.

We administer state and federal programs locally, which means we have limited discretion.

Most of our funding comes from state and federal sources and is restricted to specific purposes.

Property tax is our largest flexible revenue source, but is capped by Prop 13 at 1% of assessed value.

Most local taxes require voter approval and bonds require two-thirds approval.

These are regulated under Prop 218 and Prop 26.

And in summary, our revenue authority is very limited, unlike a city that has a lot more flexibility on how they can raise revenue.

This is a snapshot of some of our mandated versus discretionary services.

And in the mandated column are things that are outlined in the state constitution as requirements for counties.

And in the discretionary column, you'll see that those things aren't actually discretionary.

They're just not mandated in the constitution.

Just a quick recap of realignment in California.

We have gone through two major programmatic shifts, but realigning of services and clients began as early as the 1950s with deinstitutionalization and mass closure of mental hospitals.

The two major programmatic shifts that we refer to as realignment impact the administration and funding of health and human services programs between state, the state and the counties.

Both were in reaction to serious statewide budget shortfalls.

The 1991 and 2011 realignments shifted the responsibility and the share of costs for certain social services, health, mental health, and public safety programs to counties in exchange for dedicated revenue sources and some flexibility to sign to design programs to meet community needs.

Since 1993-94, Alameda County has experienced approximately 2.6 billion dollars in ERAF related losses, which was the educational revenue augmentation fund that was implemented after proposition 13.

This snapshot can show us that while the funding structures evolved, those structures are make counties vulnerable to increasing caseloads without increasing revenue.

And this is another dive into realignment.

As so we administer programs on behalf of the state, the goal is to improve improve service delivery, but it comes at great risk for the county because our program caseloads will grow and the cost is shifted to us without increasing revenue.

A lot of this started with proposition 13, and the county had relied on property tax as a stable source of revenue.

And after proposition 13, um, that revenue source declined, and our ability to increase revenue in that way was also severely impacted.

The state couldn't sustain ongoing funding to support counties who were facing reductions in vehicle license fee and property taxes.

And at that time, the the administration the state administration put together a task force.

They'd looked at all sorts of different things that they could do and came up with realignment, realigning programs and health and human services, with the state assuming entitlement programs, federal entitlement programs, and the county getting the discretionary programs and being provided some of the state tax base.

This is what shifted during 1991 realignment, really focused on the share of cost prior to implementation of 91 realignment and then afterwards.

So as you can see here in health and social services programs, there were many programs where, like IHSS, for example, the state was paying 97% of the program and we were paying three.

And after realignment, it became 6535.

So there were most programs saw a big shift to county responsibility versus state state financial responsibility.

This is a snapshot of the declining revenue in 1991, social services realignment specifically.

And if you if you pull it out till now, it's pretty stable at that much lower rate.

So we we learned some lessons in 1991 realignment.

We got some flexibility, and we were promised revenue growth over time, but that growth did not keep up with the demand for the services.

This is a snapshot of our ERAF losses.

You see this in the budget.

But cumulatively, our losses have totaled 11.5 billion dollars since FY 9293.

And these are the budget gaps we've had to balance during that same time period.

2011 realignment was specific to public safety, but it also includes health and social service realignment programs that were realigned.

And on the on the public safety side, this was really spurred on by lawsuits against the state regarding prison overcrowding and budget restrictions.

And the timing worked out for the state because there was an expiring tax measure, and they decided they could extend that tax measure with the voters by bringing forward this 2011 realignment.

And it helped to address a 26.6 billion dollar budget gap at the state.

And it was a constitutional amendment to extend the expiring tax to cover these programs with the promise of more flexibility and accountability locally and to solve the prison overcrowding.

You can see here at the time, these are the programs that were realigned to counties and became county county responsibilities funded through the 2011 local revenue fund.

And you can see the funding over the first few years of the program stayed pretty steady.

And while we do monitor the growth, it is not kept up with the demand for services.

This slide is a little bit hard to read, but it it illustrates how complicated these are and the types of programs that got shifted.

And just a refresher on the pressures facing counties.

We have financial pressures caused by policy pressures, and we are at the epicenter of those needing to figure out how to balance all of them.

Last time your board asked for a review of sales tax measures.

So across California, counties increasingly have turned to local sales tax measures to stabilize funding for health care and safety net services.

And you can see here how it's split up.

In Alameda County, our countywide tax rate is 10.25%, but we have several cities with higher tax rates because they have put their own measures before the voters.

So there are six additional sales tax measures that are paid countywide in Alameda County.

But there are only three that are administered by Alameda County.

So we have three concurrent sales tax measures.

It says A here, but on the ballot it was measure AA.

Um C and W.

Measure A slash AA was extended by 15 years and now goes through 2034.

75% of those funds raised go to support Alameda Health System, and 25% is allocated by your board to support essential health care services.

Measure C was passed in 2020 and runs through 2041 in support of child care and children's health.

And measure W is also passed in 2020.

There's a 10-year tax being collected into 2031 to support essential county services.

We as a county have had a lot of success in securing support from voters for critical safety net services, but now cities and special districts are turning to that same tool, which will have an impact on our ability to use it in the future.

So this is a snapshot of the cities in our county that have additional tax measures.

Um they are uh all of them except for Emoryville are at 10.75%.

And looking uh looking at this year, Santa Clara passed uh sales tax to support their safety net.

Um, and it takes effect uh next month.

Los Angeles has put a half cent sales tax on their um June ballot to offset reductions uh in federal health care spending in our own county and other four Bay Area counties.

Um there is a transportation sales tax um on the ballot, and Contra Costa County has added an additional um sales tax increase for five years to support their general funding, but the conversation is uh to offset um impacts due to federal legislation.

So for um for uh for Alameda County, should the transportation sales tax pass, we would be looking um at a sales tax rate of 10.75 percent, and most of the cities with additional tax in our county would be looking at a rate of 11.25%.

And these increases do require um a waiver from the state to allow the sales tax to um to go above the the minimum threshold that they've set.

Uh oh, yeah, sorry, to go above the maximum that they've set, which is the um yes, and I believe there are a few counties with uh bills in the state legislature this year.

Looking for clarifying questions or comments from my colleagues, Supervisor Miley, then Supervisor Tam, after which we'll go to public comment.

Yes, I want to thank the county administrator's office for just constantly uh educating us in using it as a teachable moment because we can't say it enough.

Some of the things that we constantly hear about the budget and the county and the county's role and this, that and the other, because um, you know, I know Supervisor Tam and I are constantly getting pressured in the unaccorporate area.

Why can't we do this?

Why can't we do that?

Why is it there more resources?

And we're constantly saying, well, counties are different than cities, and um it's really really challenging and uh the counties making steps.

I know since I've been a supervisor to be more uh responsible on uh with his um municipal obligations, um recognizing that there's only uh so much we can do, and we're constantly trying to do better.

Um, and then keeping in mind that once again in the corporate area is we're city to be the fourth largest city in the county, and it would have a lot more uh authority as a city if it were city, um fourth largest city uh to uh raise taxes and do other things that would provide revenue.

So I just really appreciate that that continues to be outlined.

And then, you know, I'm like a uh broken record on this.

Um because it's just it just needs to be said, you know, with with realignment.

You can see how the county over time, because we're arms of the state, we have certain responsibilities, but over time counties have suffered, and all this has been negotiated.

I know Supervisor Carson is here on the heading of the budget committee with the county administrator that are involved in a lot of these negotiations, some of it was even before I got here.

But the point is, you know, these realignments have really uh hurt the county uh over time, not just this county, but all counties, uh, because the state has mandated more responsibilities.

They've renegotiated the revenue that counties would receive as a result of having to do these mandated responsibilities.

In some cases, they give us mandated responsibilities and they don't even provide the funding.

I know on Saturday when I had the three uh DAs from Contra Costa County, San Francisco and Alamini County speaking, they all talked about the fact that one of their big wishes is that the state wouldn't uh produce more mandates without without additional revenue because they're always constantly producing and passing, you know, miscellaneous legislation that nobody you know really cares about, or at least not the vast majority of constituents.

Um I don't think the three three day DAs remind me stay staying that because um I wholeheartedly agree.

And that's why you know sometimes people wonder what Supervisor Molly always get all upset with the state.

Why does he think they go up there and they lose their minds?

You know, they the air p pollutes their thinking.

Because a lot of the folks in Sacramento come from local jurisdictions, but they get up in Sacramento and they lose their freaking minds.

And then over the course of time, you know, things happen in the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties, two thousand, two thousand ten, two thousand, and and there's no institutional memory, and they just constantly realign, take away at more responsibility, and then they leave it up to us to figure to figure this stuff out.

And you ask me, why do I get all excited about it?

Because it it annoys me.

It really annoys me, the the folks in Sacramento.

So you saw the stuff around realign realignment.

I really appreciate Amy pointing all that out.

91, 2011, et cetera.

Because that realignment has definitely hurt us over hurt us over time.

And you know, money's more money's property tax money, most of it goes to the schools, and the schools can't even figure stuff out.

They want more money.

So I've always been a local elected official in the city and with the county, and I always try to understand my responsibilities.

But I really do think, you know, this whole thing about taxes in the state has got to be figured out.

Otherwise, it's just gonna con continue to be a cycle of trying to address these problems, and um, and us trying to figure out how to address them.

Because like you know, Amy even pointed out, we got more tax measures coming on, cities have got sales taxes.

It used to be when I got on the board of supervisors, we did measure A because we thought measure A would help stabilize Alamune Health Systems.

It wasn't Alameda Health System at the time, it's Alamini Medical Center, but it's the same of the same entity.

Uh they've just expanded and taken on more responsibility.

But we thought measure A would help.

We and then I led the effort to get measure a reauthorized, we thought it would help, and we're still facing problems.

Not because you know, the folks at the hospital did anything wrong, or we did anything wrong, but because of the the needs and demands and this, that and the other, and some of the policies that come out of Sacramento and dare say Washington DC.

So I'm on a rant, I'm gonna shut up, Mr.

President, but thanks for letting me just vent a little bit.

I know I need therapy.

Um tell us how you really feel, Supervisor Miley.

Okay, Supervisor Tam.

Thank you, President Halbert.

And since I serve on a couple of committees with Supervisor Miley, I appreciate his rant and I I share it, but I don't go to that same level.

Um so the the county, as you pointed out, is very fortunate because our taxpayers pass measure A, Measure C, and Measure W, and they all have deadlines, they all have sunsets, and we have to show that uh we're putting these funds to good use, but it's because of these roll downs on effects with like proposition one with HR one that we're having to um rely on these funds and like Contra Costa County, as you mentioned, is trying to look for a five-year uh.625% sales tax measure in order to deal with HR one.

So the question I'm trying to formulate is there's kind of a limit to how much we can um move forward with sales tax and reliance and sales tax, because the cities within the county already are at the 10.75 percent, which is ostensibly the highest in the state.

So what kind of um flexibility does the county have when the cities are at that level of of sales tax?

Like if you're going to potentially 11.25% if the transit tax passes, then what kind of opportunity does that leave the county if we were looking for additional measures?

Um so we we've we've already exceeded what is allowable.

So um my understanding is there isn't a limit to the amount of waivers that you can get to increase your sales tax, but um I think we would caution whether there is appetite to increase, you know, past 11 and a quarter percent if the transit tax passes.

But I think we would caution whether there is appetite to increase, you know, past 11 and a quarter percent if the transit tax passes.

So I think those are those are factors that I know we we think about where it's it is probably not a well we can go to to increase the overall percentage, but we do need to think down the line if if um you know there are community conversations or conversations with board members about um reauthorizing some of these measures in in the future and um like we've been talking about being able to show uh what they've done and how important they are, but the likelihood that we could you know get a voter of a voter approval to increase beyond where it could be um seems seems unlikely, but you never know.

So one and a half percent of it is the measure A C and W.

And if these other taxes pass, uh you're saying it would hamper our ability to reauthorize some of these taxes.

Um I don't necessarily think that I mean that's a that's a question of you know, a question for for someone to ask and ask the public about their appetite to reauthorize these.

It wouldn't increase the sales tax.

It would keep it steady.

But I think if we were to ask for additional beyond that, you know, that's where we could run into run in into a challenge.

I I think back to when measure BB passed, right?

That was a very strategic conversation about um making it uh a one, a one cent, a full cent.

Um and it it failed the first time because the the education and um in you know inclusion of certain communities just didn't really happen in a in a robust way.

The lesson was learned, but at the time they had they had those conversations early enough that they had time to you know to go back out and reauthorize.

So I mean the you know part of those conversations that can happen amongst your board, and a lot of that part of those conversations, you know, needs to needs to happen out outside of outside of the board.

Thank you.

I think the point is that there are, I mean, there are limit limitations, including legal limitations.

So those that's a hurdle we're gonna have to um get over as well.

And then I think the appetite of the voters, and you know, we've been fortunate that the sales tax revenue that we're receiving um here in the county has remained relatively stable and has actually you know continued to grow over the time that we've had these you know measures.

I think at some time with the economy and other factors, we you know need to just be mindful that that you know revenue source may not continue to um stabilize or increase and may actually decline.

Thank you, President Howard.

Um, just thank you to the staff in the CAO's office.

I was the one asked specifically about the tax measures, and this is extremely comprehensive.

Um this is probably one of the best presentations I've ever seen.

This is a lot of information in the way that you've illustrated it with graphics, the color is just amazing, and I'm just happy we have it.

So thank you for that.

Um just a couple clarifying questions.

Uh, with respects to with respect to slides 16 and 17.

Um, you indicate in your presentation that it includes all funding sources.

I just want to uh verify that also includes the CIP.

Or is it just our operating budgets?

Uh this is just the operating budget.

It is just operating?

Correct.

Do we know what the CIP budget is?

Um that's just currently in development, um, but we can follow up with you.

Okay, if we could add that to the next presentation, just so we know exactly what CIP is as well as our um operating budget.

And then um I know the answer, but also just want to be able to give uh the public as much education as possible with respect to the measures.

These are countywide, that's correct.

It's not specific to unincorporate.

Is that correct?

The three measures.

Yep.

Okay, want to make sure.

And then I know I've heard this in the past, but I'm sorry if I missed it, but I don't see it illustrated.

Um, is it true that 60% of our budget is state and federal funding?

Correct.

Six years.

At least 60%.

At least at least 60%.

Okay.

And then um echo the comments made by um my colleague Supervisor Miley with respect to the frustration of ongoing unfunded mandates.

So just we have to continue to make that a priority in Pell, any type of legislation.

We have to make sure with CSAC, just all the advocacy groups that we possibly can.

And I think starting every conversation with this framing, your timeline and the um the realignment that impacts what we've lost here in this county because of state decisions is truly, truly disconnected.

So just thank you for the great work.

Thank you for the presentation and all of this great information.

I echo my colleagues' frustration with the state, and um some of this is also pressures from the federal government, not only from HR1, but ongoing.

And we are talking about this at PAL, our Monday committee meeting, and we'll continue to talk about it.

You know, we need to put the pressure on the state legislature and the governor as well as look at ballot measures to make up the revenue that we are losing and to uh be able to carry out the safety net services we provide.

So I wanted to highlight a couple things.

One is that the California Association of Public Hospitals is supporting and putting forward a request statewide for 500 million dollars.

And I think it would be important for us to consider supporting that as well.

And I can bring that forward to PAL as soon as we have a bit more information.

Um, in addition, um AB 1790 is a measure uh that would ensure that wealthy corporations pay their fair share, and that could bring about three billion dollars in new revenue to the general fund.

That's also part of SCIE's unrighteous California campaign.

That's another measure that we could consider supporting.

Um, I'll likely bring that one forward to PAL.

Um, and then we all know that HR1 is basically shifting uh the responsibility of providing uh safety net services like Medicare and Medicaid by uh creating massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

So the other thing we could do here at the state with enough political will, which we could help create is ensure that we restore that cut and uh create more income taxes on the wealthy based on the huge tax breaks they're getting from the federal level.

And then, of course, regarding health care, there's a longer term solution of single payer.

Um, in terms of ballot measures, I think many of us see that uh the billionaire's tax is out there collecting signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Uh that is specifically designed as a wealth tax to help fund the um cuts and services that HR1 is creating.

Um that is um something that I will be bringing to PAL in the coming week or two, and then of course, there's the ongoing um challenges like Prop 13, which was in the presentation.

Unfortunately, voters um failed to pass that by a very slim margin in 2020, but hopefully that will come back because that's really a structural fix that I think could really help everyone, not only um health care, but also schools in particular.

And then I do want us to consider while there are some restrictions, what potential local taxes we can uh take up and what we might need from the state in order to do that.

I know there's a lot of competing measures.

Oakland has a measure in June, there'll probably be more in November, um, but I think it's incumbent upon us to really look at every possible measure to raise revenue.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll share concerns um raised about um where we are globally and locally.

Um questions and concerns that I have are that we continue to see unfunded mandates by our state legislature.

They continue to add them.

It continues to exacerbate our ability to um provide services, and that along with certain laws that tie our hands and make it difficult to do our job, uh, both combined, uh, make this a very difficult time.

I would like to ask that when we do hear budget hearings from our departments that this year for the first time ever, maybe not the first time ever, I think they've been referenced, but I would like an exhaustive list of unfunded mandates by department that um at least whether we can identify the amount of cost shifted to us or cost to provide the mandate, or at least an anecdotal discussion of unfunded mandates.

I think we will find that if Sacramento funded our mandates, we would not be in the position that we're in.

And so I would like to specifically ask for that with regard to our capability to press into additional um funding mechanisms and or to support them.

A question that I have, um, and I just I don't know the answer, that's why I ask.

What is our ability to poll our community county to make an informed decision on whether to support a tax that's proposed or to propose our own countywide tax?

And it's because I I just didn't live through measure C's that was approved before I was on the council.

So how do we do that here as a county?

Are we able to utilize funds to poll our community before we support a statewide tax or put our own countywide tax on the ballot?

So I I'd have to go back and double check um specifically, but what I can say definitively is that um when we are exploring putting something on the ballot, we have the ability to use county resources as part of our um our research um in that process.

And so we could um we can participate, but this is for our own activity as a at your board's direction, you know, it's our we're looking at developing we can do spend some money on polling, but once your board takes an action, then we can't spend any more um county money once you spent take an action to actually put something on the ballot, we can't spend any more county money.

I have not looked at um your ability to spend county funds, um analyzing uh with polling on somebody else's measure.

And I would want to go back and look at that to determine whether or not you could spend um county money on that type of campaign companion activity.

It it you may not be able to be, but I would need to go back and look at that specific difference.

Not so much campaigning, but just to know uh the sentiment.

Any polling is would be this considered political activity.

So I I would need to double check that.

Supervisor I want to weigh in.

Yeah, I just want to say too, if we do a poll on a measure that the county wants to put on, the one caveat to keep in mind, the results of that poll will be public.

Sure.

So a lot of times that's why we let somebody else do the polling, because it's a private thing.

Interesting.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Um and then we'll go to public comment.

Thank you.

Um, if we could build this slide out for our next presentation, um I lost my train of thought.

What do I wanted to say about it?

Oh, um, can we put the projections on what each measure is projected to bring in annually?

I know that it fluctuates, but again, we've got to promote people need a shop, buy everything you can, possibly in this county, but just want to know what the projections are so we know in terms of um whether or not we're meeting those targets or not.

So the annual annual revenue projections for each measure, yeah.

Thank you.

I'll just dovetail on that.

Yesterday we had a report from the Alameda County Transportation Commission that we all sit on.

They receive a countywide tax B, B B, and they reported um a reduction in collections of about two percent, noting that um that was versus their budgeted amount, I guess.

I don't know, but the point being that um uh the question is sales tax soft this year, from what we can tell already or not.

Do we know?

I haven't seen that yet.

I haven't looked at the auditors' most recent updates.

I mean, I think you know, we're watching it carefully, and there's also a difference between you know, this is locally collected sales tax that we're able to keep here by CITUS, right?

There are other sales taxes that we um rely on.

There's a public safety sales tax that's a statewide sales tax that's allocated on a little different basis, and so I I do think we've seen some downward trends in that particular source.

So that's something we're you know, always monitoring and are taking a deeper dive now as we prepare the budget.

Before we would contemplate putting our own tax or supporting another tax, we might want to understand where sales are, where the economy is, and be mindful of not pushing us into uh deep hole.

Supervisor Miley, you had some last minute comments before we go to public comments.

Yeah, all this talk about taxes.

I just want to just reemphasize because Amy was kind of re uh talking about it when she was responding to Supervisor Tam.

Um I think fundamentally the system's broken when it comes to taxes because you've got the schools, you've got special districts, you got cities, you got the county, you got the state, uh saying the feds, but at least if we talk in the state, I think it's fundamentally broken.

And if we're constantly looking at more and more, and how can we come up with a different tax, this that and the other?

I mean, it's a race to the bottom as far as I'm concerned.

There's some jurisdictions like in the other corporate area, they generally don't support taxes.

They'll support a few here and there, but generally they won't.

I live in Oakland.

Oakland unfortunately supports any tax.

Um, because I can't, I'll say I don't always see, I mean, I spent a lot of meaning on our taxes, but I don't see the return on all the taxes I'm paying.

So it's different jurisdictions are different.

I just think if we're constantly looking at tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, how can we come with another tax?

This and the other, I think it's a race to the bottom, and there's unintended consequences associated with that.

I think we need to look at reform.

Um, and that's just my humble opinion.

Can I just um add to that?

We've been focused on sales tax, which we had to rely on to fill a lot of gaps.

But I would agree.

I think we need to still remember that you know, property taxes.

We're collecting property taxes here.

We've shifted 11 and a half billion dollars of local property taxes to the state.

We only keep 15 cents of every property tax dollar.

So I think that's the kind of reform that needs to be looked at hand in hand, um, as opposed to just continuing to raise the bar and collect property taxes or start implementing parcel taxes.

I mean, what's really fundamentally wrong is the property tax system.

Not to belabor the topics, but I believe the community is more supportive when they think they see value return, uh, when they see um uh proper use of budgets.

That's why we spend a lot of time on budgeting, proper management of the funds that are within our control, and if they do see value, and if they do see the need, we have a generous community.

If they don't, not so much.

With that said, public comment.

If members of the public are online, raise your hand if you're in the room.

Uh you filled out a speaker slip.

I asked the clerk to please call three in room first, and then three online.

Thank you, President Halbert.

We do have two speakers that have signed up in person.

Samuel Ramy and Buffalo Soldier, and we have one hand raised in Zoom.

Buffalo and Simeon, you may approach the podium for item number one.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Dobbin McCoy.

We're talking about taxation down representation.

This is what's wrong.

You're right.

Then I'll position it up.

They can't tell you because they're a problem.

They're not solving the problem, they're passing it on.

I've been passed on for 35 years in the city.

35 years I've been living in the home since 89 earthquake.

Yes, clarity.

All of us have been there for 35 years since the earthquake.

They get the money and they do what they want to do.

See your citizens will be built out there, neighbor base.

They took the money, it's been rebuilt, redeveloped three uh um hotels.

Whereas drugs, okay.

But if we've seen, but what about the people themselves?

We've got seniors, you got insignia citizens homes, you got Navy people's homes.

You bring out people in this country, they're not the problem.

The problem is before you got here, and no one wants to address this problem.

All this money comes for homes, but they don't house it.

Not even across the whole country.

It's wrong.

People walking on the eye.

You're taking their houses, they shouldn't have to pay taxes.

You shouldn't be homeless.

Our floor is out of line.

If I think about the popular thing, about the people.

We the people need to step up and find out what's going on.

We have 58 billion, 8 billion dollars.

Y'all don't even know about it.

It's for housing the men disabled, biting all the way.

They're not going to touch you.

I'm about to where you're gonna go.

I'm coming to the house.

I have to do.

Thank you for your comments.

Greetings, uh friends, enemies, and political operatives.

Just for the dare gum record, I want to see.

That was in the 60s.

There were women trying to keep me out of the class on our bodies and ourselves.

I said, I love women.

Why can't I study bodies?

Then we got the International Women's Day.

Now we got to all that stuff.

So thinking about all that stuff from women's day all the way to what we're doing now.

I want you all to remember that for a limited time only, you had a sheriff and a district attorney who was about it.

Now the coal cats who have kept use of local normally terminal to a standstill, funded her recall.

Right now, we got Barbara Lee Dragon.

You know, for a while you guys were talking so many millions, I was just gobsmacked.

I didn't know what to say.

We just but now I just seen it in the paper, and I see an item two a 53 million dollars come in.

Let's see if this time the Oak Null Naval Air Station is able to be completed as planned.

I'm tired of seeing people might wobbling around the streets Oakland while fat Ukrainians is getting 50 grand and housing in the buildings that were set out for us.

Let's see if the county can coordinate with the city so that senior housing can be built at Oak Null Naval Air Station.

They get them lots all graded, and they're talking about affordable housing.

Hey, affordable housing don't mean doodly squat.

Affordable housing means 106,000 minimum.

We're talking about low income.

We're talking about the 70% of the homeless in this county who are from here.

Yeah, the issue is how many Ukrainians in low-income housing and how many girl children have disappeared off the streets of Alameda County in the last four years.

When do we get a report on that?

Thank you for your comments.

Next speaker.

President Halbert, the person that had their hand up, um, lowered their hand.

That was our last speaker.

Very good.

We'll move on to the next item, which is an update on board initiatives.

I'll note it's 2.15.

We have another meeting starting at 3:30.

We have two I and two II or two A and two B, however, you want to look at it.

The first one is Measure W ascension essential services update.

Uh thank you, um, Mr.

President, members of the board.

So we now want to shift our attention to one of the tax measures that we just um discussed, and I also want to acknowledge um my staff for their extraordinary work that they put into continuing to update our budget and financial updates as well as the measure W report.

So today we're gonna provide an overview of Measure W just to provide some background.

We're gonna talk about the um expenditure plan review, the needs assessment.

We're gonna make some recommendations regarding an expenditure plan going forward uh for your board's direction.

So Measure W, just to give you a little bit of history.

Um in November 2020, uh, the board placed measure W on the ballot as a 10-year half cent sales tax measure for general revenue purposes.

It passed with just barely over 50% of the vote.

The ballot language specified that the revenue would provide essential county services, including housing and services for those experiencing homelessness, mental health services, job training, social safety net programs, and other general fund services.

The measure was projected to generate about 150 million dollars annually with annual audits and citizen oversight.

Tax collection, as you may recall, began in July of 2021, but funds were held in escrow due to litigation, and it was not until April of 2025 that the courts upheld the measure and the funds became available for allocation.

So I think that's important background as we move forward to allocate and spend some of those voter approved funds.

In terms of timeline, I'm going to just walk through the timeline because it's a long one, but I think shows your board's deliberative implement steps to implement the voters' desire with regard to measure W.

So in December of 2024, the board designated close to $395 million for homelessness and housing services contingent upon the release of Measure W.

So this was prior to the release of those funds, recognizing the urgency of our housing and homelessness crisis.

In June of 2025, as part of the 25-26 budget process, your board provided early direction by allocating $6.5 million of funds, four and a half for food procurement, meal delivery and recovery efforts, and two million for the Social Services Agency and Area Agency on Aging Providers, demonstrating your board's commitment to addressing immediate food security and older adult needs.

In July of 2025, your board adopted an allocation framework for Measure W.

This established guiding principles aligned with Vision 2036, oversight expectations, a designation between one-time and ongoing funding, a prudent reserve strategy, and creation of two program funds, an important step in the governance of Measure W.

Shortly thereafter, at the end of July, your board reaffirmed the prior allocations and continued the 15 million nonprofit affordable housing stabilization fund, reinforcing your commitment to housing stability and the nonprofit partners serving vulnerable residents.

In September of 2025, the board approved a one-year expenditure plan for fiscal year 25-26, authorizing capital and immediate need investments, directing development of a five-year plan in early 2026, initiating an expedited procurement process, and setting the expectation that staff would return with additional investment proposal proposals.

In October of 2025, your board allocated $3.6 million for legal assistance and support services for immigrant and refugee communities.

These funds were drawn from the Essential County Services Fund and responded to urgent community needs in a rapidly evolving federal policy environment.

And later in October, your board approved an additional almost $11 million in supplemental allocations for interim coordination for immigrant and refugee services, senior service coalition meals, food bank support, and services targeted to the intellectual and developmental disabilities community.

These investments addressed immediate service gaps while maintaining alignment with Measure W's voter-approved intent.

The board, as I indicated, had previously established guiding principles for Measure W aligned with Vision 2036, emphasizing equity, prevention, long-term structural improvements, and transparency.

Today's proposal that we will present to you builds on this framework and sets the stage for a longer-term investment strategy.

If you look at the summary of what the board has approved overall with regard to Measure W one-time and ongoing allocations, you see that you've approved allocations for affordable housing development on county-owned properties, housing displacement prevention in unincorporated areas, critical county infrastructure investments, and safety net service facility pre-development costs.

Additionally, almost 40 million dollars in one-time capital investments were approved to address immediate known needs and strengthen the county's infrastructure.

These decisions reflect your board's early action to address urgent gaps while broader planning continued.

So you can see on the chart that the total amount that your board allocated, which included one-time money, which had been collected to date but held in escrow, as well as ongoing funding with an estimated annual collection rate of 170 million dollars, a total of 1.83 billion dollars, of which 1.4 billion was allocated to support the Home Together Fund and an additional 258 million for an essential service county services fund with 170 million dollar prudent reserve.

With that, I'm gonna turn it over to the interim AC Health Director to provide a brief overview of that first line, which is the Home Together Fund, and then we'll spend more time on the Essential Services County Fund, Essential Services Fund, the needs assessment, and our recommendations going forward.

Thank you, Susan.

So as Susan noted, the focus of today's discussion is really on the essential services fund, but we wanted to talk a little bit about the Home Together Fund.

So on this chart here, on the left, you have each major service category for the home together plan with you know examples of programs that are under there.

And then on the right, the planned expenditures over the next seven to eight years with overall totals noted at the end in blue.

The highlight here is that our team has done significant modeling and planning to stretch the 1.4 billion dollars designated by your board to address homelessness beyond the revenue collection of the measure.

So the measure revenue collection technically ends in fiscal year 3031, which would be year five in this plan.

So what you'll see here in uh the year one column, for example, this is fiscal year 2526, that's where we are right now.

There are some investments that are ramping up.

Um sorry.

And then when we go to uh so in year one and year two, we have significant uh ramping up of investments across the various programs in the home together plan.

And then in years three to seven, uh we plan to essentially uh stabilize and maintain those investments.

Um and then for year eight, what you're seeing is a subsidy reserve because one of the uh you know, the significant investments that we're making would be rental assistance and shallow subsidies as a part of prevention.

This is something our our system does not have right now.

Um, and then of course, people who are in permanent supportive housing.

So the idea is for us to uh should the measure not be renewed, um, have a reserve built up that would allow us to maintain those subsidies for at least another two years, um, and then potentially also you know figure out a tapering plan.

So anything that's not those uh rental assistance, the permanent supportive housing or the prevention subsidies would essentially be uh ramped down.

So in total, uh we would be looking at 155 million dollars for prevention over the next seven years, 149.3 million in access and coordination.

This is things like street health, housing access points.

Um this is also the bucket where uh should we need to backfill state and federal cuts, that's where that would come from, uh coordinated entry workforce, et cetera.

Um, and then the largest bucket by far is a little over $1 billion for housing and shelter.

Um, so $246 million for shelter and $770 million for permanent supportive housing.

And then we've got some uh indirect and admin costs uh related to our staffing and infrastructure in the department, and then uh for a total of $1.393 billion.

So transitioning uh back to the essential services fund, this slide shows investment priorities that your board approved last year.

Um and these align with prior allocations approved by your board, including food procurement and senior services with additional areas to be recommended after further development.

Sorry, Amy, I'm behind you in my clicking.

Um, and then this summary slide, uh, which pulls together where the Measure WESF fund stands today and what remains available in future years.

So this slide separates what has already been allocated from what remains available and is just and it also distinguishes between one-time and ongoing funding.

So looking at the left-hand column is the FY2526 allocations.

We have three primary categories of action to date.

One-time capital investments at $39.35 million.

These are durable infrastructure investments approved by the board to strengthen county facilities and service delivery systems.

They're one-time in nature and do not create ongoing obligations.

Then there's one-time immediate known needs at $34.07 million.

These were allocated made to address urgent uh clearly identified needs once measure W funds were released from ESCRO.

And these investments responded to immediate service gaps and operations pressures.

Again, these are one-time dollars.

Measure W future investments at $14.78 million.

This reflects funds that have been designated but not yet fully programmed, providing flexibility for strategic investment decisions.

So the total FY2526 allocations are uh amount to approximately $88.2 million, and that reflects the board's deliberate effort to address urgent needs while preserving capacity for longer term planning.

So availability for future years is on the right side, uh, where you see the breakdown between one-time and ongoing funding capacity moving forward.

So 14.78 million in one-time funding remains available, and 170 million dollars in ongoing funding is projected over the remaining lifetime of the measure.

So this slide shows a summary of the immediate known needs, the 34.0107 million one-time uh funding.

Uh and these one-time allocations uh sort of span service stabilization, including senior services, immigrant and refugee supports, medical outreach and retention, LGBTQIA, lie heat, behavioral health prevention, and supportive services, as well as a number of uh supplemental food security programs and uh immediate known needs on the right, which was spent uh I think the board had initially planned to spend about 25 million of the essential services fund and needed to expend another 6.07 million from the uh carryover, which left the five-year plan with the 14.78 million carryover that you saw in the previous slide.

I'll turn it to Amy.

Okay, so we um uh after the uh last year's actions in the fall, we undertook a comprehensive needs assessment review of multiple needs assessments, including all of these, but this is not an exhaustive list.

And across all of these assessments, the story is pretty consistent.

Um housing instability is the central driver of vulnerability in our county.

Nearly half of all renters are cost burdened.

That's approximately nine, and approximately 9400 residents are unhoused, and housing instability directly affects health outcomes, educational attainment, and economic mobility.

Could you go back to the slide just before this?

Is it different than in our list?

Needs assessment review.

That is different than that.

I just think it might be out of order.

I don't know.

That's the one that I have, but we didn't show that, did we?

Or did we just go over?

Okay.

Correct.

Thank you.

Um so uh the other theme was economic insecurity.

So 9.5% of our residents, roughly 160,000 people live below the federal poverty level, but up to 60% of our residents are below self-sufficiency, and the most impacted populations are seniors and single mothers.

There are also racial and geographic inequities.

Black residents are significantly overrepresented, overrepresented in poverty and homelessness, and poverty is geographically concentrated in Oakland and the Eden area.

And um, these needs assessments identify structural racism as a root cause across these sectors.

And um, the fourth finding across all of them was family and behavioral health is strained.

Um, youth mental health needs are rising, child care shorters shortages limit workforce participation and food insecurity is increasing county wide.

The key takeaway we found is that Alameda County's overall prosperity masks deep structural inequities and progress requires integrated equity center strategy, equity-centered strategies, particularly around housing stability, economic mobility, behavioral health, and early childhood supports.

And so progress requires integrated equity uh equity-centered strategies, um, and those four things I just uh mentioned.

I really want to underscore some important context here, though.

All of those needs assessments did not uh take into account federal changes related to HR1.

All of the data collection was done prior to HR1.

So everything reflects a pre-reduction baseline.

The assessments spanned planning cycles from 2022 to 2027, and they assume uh continue like consistent federal and state support, which we know is not the case now.

And so current conditions are already more strained than than contemplated in the needs assessments.

We now know we face significant reductions in Medicaid, SNAP, state directed payments, and hospital financing mechanisms.

These estimates likely represent a conservative estimate of the need, and the federal reductions under HR1 will also material material impact housing, nutrition, health coverage, workforce supports, and the structural pressures identified here will not improve.

They will only intensify.

And the landscape is more uncertain now than it was when these assessments were conducted.

Particularly, our health care safety net is very fragile.

And the uncertainty is one of the reasons why our recommendation going forward is a two-year strategy rather than committing to a full five-year allocation plan at this time.

So I'll talk just a little bit about how the healthcare safety net landscape is pretty grim.

And I think many of you have heard some of this in previous presentations, but uh with HR1 and state budget changes, um, we can uh our residents can see significant coverage losses in Medi-Cal.

So the state's partial enrollment freeze and our new and the new federal work requirements, um, these are all going to be phased in over the next couple of years.

Um, but in a worst case scenario, they push up to 150,000 Alameda County residence office MediCal.

Uh, for context, our overall Medi-Cal enrollment is a little over 400,000.

So it's a significant reduction.

Um, and we are putting a lot of effort to make sure that people are able to retain their Medi-Cal.

Um, as Amy mentioned, the governor's 26-27 budget does not include or address any HR1 impacts, although we did hear yesterday at the PAL committee that CSAC is expected to uh put forward its proposal uh in the next couple of weeks.

And so that CSAC proposal should incorporate what the public hospitals ask might be, what the county health executives ask might be, with the welfare directors, etc.

But these uh significant coverage losses essentially mean a system-wide strain.

So health pack, uh, this is one of our underfunded, unfunded mandates that the county has, which is to provide indigent care.

Um, and our health pack program has really declined in uh participation with all of the Medi-Cal enrollments over the last decade.

Um, but prior to the Affordable Care Act, the health pack program had uh about 90,000 participants in it.

Um, with all of the expansions with the ACA as well as expansions with the state, that number went down to less than 3,000.

So uh what we could expect with the rising health care cost increases, et cetera, is that you know, as people lose Medi-Cal and fall back into health pack, um, we could see an increase of as much as three times two our health pack uh budgets.

Alameda Health System, as you're all well aware, has an estimated impact of 40 to 70 million dollars in 2027, growing to 70 to 120 million in 2028, and this is largely because of um access to supplemental payments that they're gonna lose.

Uh the FQHC network also estimates an impact of 27 million in 2026, growing to 40 million in the following year.

And then just yesterday at the health committee and throughout the past year, you've heard about the Prop 1 transition from the Mental Health Services Act to the Behavioral Health Services Act, which means about 53 million dollars in cuts to county and CBO programs.

So this slide is just us trying to kind of depict that in a little bit of a visual.

Um, so in the blue, you've got all of the HR one and unknown state budget impacts over the next several years, uh, laying out the FQHC's and Alameda Health System.

But then also, you know, unknowns for us right now are the numeric impact on health pack or the decreased revenue that's going to come both for our departments within the agency as well as for um other CBOs in the community who build Medi-Cal.

Uh in purple, you see the PrEP 1 reduction.

And then lastly, I'll note that you know there's another big space of uncertainty with federal grants.

So our agency alone has over 100 million dollars in federal grants, and um we're accounting for you know some HUD plans here within our Measure W Home Together Fund.

There could also be reductions to HIV, um, and in the public health department, which makes up the large component of that other 60 million that's noted here.

Um we've kind of been in a whiplash over the last year where grants will be canceled, then they're not canceled, and there's a lawsuit, then there's you know, so there's a lot for us to consider too as we move forward.

So moving moving into our essential county services fund expenditure plan.

Just as a reminder, we have our Measure W guiding principles as directed by your board, they align with vision 2036.

And today's proposal builds on this framework and does set the stage for longer term investment strategy.

So to align with Measure W guiding principles, we are proposing a two-year spending strategy at $34 million annually in the following four categories stabilize the safety net, meet basic needs countywide, housing stability, tenant protections and capacity building, and one-time capital and major maintenance.

This framework balances immediate stabilization with prevention and infrastructure investment.

And we're proposing $35 million per year allocation for years one and two.

This allows us to respond to uncertainty while preserving flexibility for years three through five, given all of the unknown needs and impacts of both federal and state policy.

Based on our Measure W guiding principles, and we got to a total of 209.4 million dollars cumulative over the life of the measure.

Obviously, that's more resources than we have.

And so from this, you know, putting everything on the table.

We uh came up with proposed expenditure categories and um and some dollar amounts tied to them.

So in the category of stabilize the safety net, uh, we're proposing 20 million dollars a year, meet basic needs countywide, $7 million a year, housing stability capacity building, $7 million a year, and that totals our $34 million of projected revenue.

Our uh the other part of this proposal is to allocate the one-time carryover to capital and major maintenance as a one-time expenditure.

So, in the category of stabilize the safety net, um, some of these would be time-limited bridge funding, um, but uh the 20 million could look like supporting health pack network, prop one mitigation, medical retention, and health promotion, um, targeted supports to the LGBTQ community, and part of this is to would be to help um develop what that bridge look looks like for some of these um, whether it's bridged to additional resources or bridge to ramping down services, um, so that we can uh address uh the issue of not creating unstable long-term commitments without identifying revenue.

Uh in meet basic needs countywide.

This would be a core ongoing commitments like food security and older adult staffing and supports.

These are our core safety net functions with immediate impacts on our vulnerable vulnerable residents.

And then housing stability, tenant protections and capacity building, um, seven million.

Oh, there's a typo here, seven million dollars a year.

We would be looking at prevention for strategies around rental assistance, legal aid, fair housing mediation, or proactive rental inspection programs, um, interim transitional housing and potential flexible dollars for land trust or rehabbing housing um housing opportunities.

And this uh responds directly to what the needs assessments identified as housing instability being the main driver of need in our community, and then one-time capital and major maintenance.

This would be for safety net facility major maintenance and um priority infrastructure projects of the county.

And these are durable investments, they reduce our long-term risk and improve our ability to deliver services to residents.

So our recommendation to you today is to authorize development of a two year Measure W Essential Services Fund Expenditure Plan.

Given our federal uncertainty, our state budget volatility and the broader economic risk.

That is how we came up with this recommendation.

We will also uh return in April with detailed budget allocations aligned with the four categories, a list of potential RFPs to be issued for two-year contracts, an implementation timeline, and a list of existing contracts that may be able to be augmented.

At the start of year two, so 2027 fiscal year, we would return to begin planning for a three-year expenditure strategy covering years three through five.

Our hope is that we have more clarity at that point about what these impacts look like for Alameda County, and we can plan with more concrete numbers.

The phased approach balances urgency with fiscal prudence, and measure W represents a commitment made to voters to strengthen our essential county services.

We can see that the needs are clear, the inequities are documented, but our fiscal environment is uncertain.

So our goal is to deploy these funds in a way that stabilizes our systems, prevents avoidable harms, advances equity, and preserves flexibility in a volatile environment.

So we look forward to your direction and questions.

I'd like to take public comment first.

Members of the public in person.

And let's count them up and members online.

Raise your hand and let's count those as well.

We're gonna close it off, perhaps, depending on how many we have.

How many in person?

Currently, I have about 15 in person speakers and about 12 in counting with their hands raised in Zoom.

Okay, we'll wait a minute for those to raise their hands, and then um we'll allow one minute of public comment for each person, and the 15 that we have in person and give it a minute.

Are people still raising their hands online?

Yeah, tell me when they're about done.

If we get more than a certain number, we'll drop it to 30 seconds per person.

But I'll make that assessment.

Donna, can we give in person a minute and online 30 seconds, or does it have to be the same amount?

Okay.

When are we going to talk about going?

We can't go to just in person anymore, can you see President Halbert?

We have 19 in Zoom with their hand raised.

I'm not sure if that will, of course, will go up or not.

We're gonna cut it off at that 19, no more.

We're gonna cut off at 15, no more.

We're gonna allow one minute each.

First three in person, next three online.

Okay, and we'll call the first three speakers in person.

Once you hear your name, please approach the podium.

Salam and tease to mispronounce your name.

You may approach the podium.

You have one minute each.

Yeah, thank you for having me this opportunity.

My name is Urbai Hakos.

I have been uh working with the Alamida Count System as a medical interpreter for Tigrina Marik and Arabi for 29 years.

Our organization names community health and wellness.

We serve all the people, but mainly focusing in Eritrea and Ethiopian results in the East to be.

I myself started on supporting program for the elderly seniors in April 2017.

Over the years, I have been expanded, providing weekly food countries.

Thank you for your time is up.

Thank you.

Your time is finished.

Thank you for your one-minute comment.

Thank you so much.

Next speaker in person.

Good afternoon.

Um just to what Mr.

Ogbai said.

My name is Salam.

I just want to add to some of the population that we serve our seniors.

Uh a lot of them experience housing insecurity and food insecurity.

And our community has been pulling things together.

Uh, a lot of there is a stigma within the immigrant, especially the communities that we serve, they're not really connected to resources.

There is the language barrier, uh, culturally not responsible services.

So we really hope the board also considers those uh marginalized communities.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, board of supervisor.

My name is Tistach Desadig.

I'm the prevention and early intervention program manager at Parsons for Trauma Recovery.

Uh, the prevention and early intervention program has been a mental health lifeline for immigrants for many years whom uh who have survived war, persecution, displacement, and other severe trauma.

This experience leap deep uh psychological wound, yet stigma, language barrier, and lack of access often prevent people from seeking help.

Um, the prevention early intervention program address this gap directly, it provide culture responsive community-based care before mental health conditions were done.

This early support build trust, reduce stigma, and gives people a safe space to heal.

I have seen firsthand how this program helped individual regain stability, build supportive communities, and start on paths to recovery.

Uh, in African proverb, we say a tree is easier to paint while it's still young.

Uh PI prevents crisis before they happen, saving religious lives, but also future cost of emergency care, hospitalization, and law enforcement.

Uh, the prop one, as you all know, it will leave uh many people behind because of the uh the policy.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

We're moving to our Zoom users.

Three speakers will take Kimberly, Bill Sheenman, and Vicky starting with Kimberly.

You may unmute yourself and begin your one-minute comments.

Kimberly.

Yeah, thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Kimberly Victorio, and I work for the Eat and Power Collective.

Uh, the measure W identified the unincorporated county as a priority, but the funding decision uh made in September didn't follow through on that commitment.

Um, and uh I want to remind as the main form of local government for the unincorporated communities.

The county has a very unique municipal responsibility to the residents of this community.

Uh it's very distinct to the obligation that it has to the cities.

So the community deserves investment as well as focused strategy and a vision for its local from its local government.

Our ask is that you allocate a minimum of 35% of the essential services fund to the unincorporated county.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kimberly.

Bill Sheenman.

Bill.

Hi, thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

I urge the county to consider using Measure W funds to sustain community-defined evidence practices that are being impacted by proposition one.

Programs like Cultura EBM Star have spent more than 15 years building trust with immigrant families who face enormous barriers to accessing traditional mental health services.

Tabersio Vasquez Health Center is the community health provider serving Union City, Newark, and Fremont as a federally qualified health center.

TVHC cannot simply convert these programs into specialty mental health services or build them as medical treatment.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to Vicky.

Um the este beneficio.

La comida, but then necessitamos emergencia, con those coloursando.

Um gracias.

Gracias.

Moving to our in-person speakers.

Lee Lavon Gibson, Jet Lou, and Simeon Remy.

Brittany, do we not have the translation service in this room like we have in the chambers?

Okay.

Good afternoon.

My name is Levon Gibson, family services administrator for the city of Fremont, aging and family services division.

Across Alameda County, older adults are experiencing an erosion of services they rely on to stay healthy and connected.

As the previous presentation indicated, HR1 changes within our behavioral system to due to Prop One and funding decisions made by the county on the county level all contribute to the discline in services.

And the programming is a lifeline that connects older adults to our loved ones, housing supports, food access, crisis, and response line.

Providers on the ground who touch the community need to be involved.

Providers need to be involved in this process.

Good afternoon, uh supervisors.

My name is Jet Liu, deputy director from the Mental Health Association for Chinese communities, MHCC.

I urge the boredom of members ensure the major W continues to support the provincial service provided by communities basic organization like MHCC.

Recently, an Asian woman broke down at a police station after years of abuse and a housing instability.

She spoke new English and had been living in her car.

Our team helped her assess temporary shelter and connect to her to submit housing.

So when she signed her needs, she said, I finally have home.

Because our recent uh federal account uh funding cutting cuts, MHC staff had been reduced from 70% to just 13.

And our one eye operators have take a 50 pay cut.

Our Chinese language one current currently handles more than three thousand calls, tax and uh chairs.

So please support our services.

Thank you.

My name is Simul.

We have the funds, we don't have the brain.

We all human beings.

What we think we better next, man.

We all equal.

So no one should be left out inside, especially seniors, vets disabled.

They are all on the low income housing.

There's no such thing as affordable.

Food has to be creative.

Low income houses go for senior citizens and veterans, not disabled, disabled people welfare.

They can't afford paper.

It's not a stupid king.

How is that?

We ready?

I'm ready to be a senior system.

I got the money right now.

Donald Trump said he's not gonna mess with you.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving back to our Zoom users, we'll take the the next three, followed by Zoom user, community community development in Sarah Kim, starting with our Zoom user, Zoom.

You may unmute yourself and begin your one-minute comments.

Zoom, if you are under the username, Zoom, you may begin.

This means you may begin.

Hi, my name is Celestia de Jesus, and I'm community leader in Resident Ala Vera County.

And a preacher for commitment to investment, Mr.

W.

Fund in the Shell County service.

Especially in our corporate communities like Ashland Cheryl in San Lorenzo.

This community had long faces disparities and investment in access to the service.

Many families are just struggled with food insecurity.

Seniors need great support and families caring for loved ones with disabilities, often face barriers to access to the health they needed.

Major W represent an important opportunity to stretch the cephillate net for the almost vulnerable residents and investment in service, the support health stables communities.

We're just definitely asked to oversize a measure w continue to prioritize the unique meet on unincorporated communities and ensure the investment rich families.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to community development.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Anna Raskiza.

I work for resources for community development.

The burden of overcrowded housing falls disproportionately on our environmental justice communities who face these conditions at nearly double the rate one would expect given their population size and have the shortest life expectancy in the county.

Measure W identified the unincorporated county as a priority, but the funding decisions made in September did not follow through on that commitment.

We're asking today that you allocate a minimum of 35% of the essential services fund to the unincorporated county.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving to Sarah Kim, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, my name is Sarah Kim, and I work as a program manager with crisis support services of Alameda County.

When a youth experience a suicide attempt, it doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It ripples through our schools.

Following the recent tragic suicides in the eastern Alameda County, Orca has been on the front lines.

We aren't just seeing individuals.

We're providing consultation to school staff to minimize the risk of suicide contagion.

Over the last quarter, we've noticed increase in complex and multi-stress cases where schools feel overwhelmed.

Orca acts as an essential bridge between the classroom and the clinical care.

We work with families to weigh the financial, legal, and health risks of emergency interventions, often finding ways to stabilize the child without a traumatic police response.

I am here on behalf of our clients.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving back to our in-person speakers, starting with Wendy Peterson, Janice Roberts, and Kim Olson.

Please approach the podium.

Good afternoon, thank you.

I'm Wendy Peterson with the Senior Services Coalition of Alameda County.

I appreciate that the needs assessment we just heard identifies seniors as one of the populations disproportionately impacted by the changes that are uh happening in our county this right now.

Um seniors also have unique needs that require unique service delivery designed to keep them stable.

The aging services safety net does that.

It's essential that in the two-year plan, uh funding is included for senior for service capacity to address the unique needs of a growing and very vulnerable older adult population in our county, and that includes extending the one-year two million dollar backfill baseline funding beyond the end of this fiscal year.

Otherwise, we're going to see those really significant 30, 40 percent cuts to the aging services safety net as of July.

Um, it also includes augmenting that so that we can absorb some of the impacts of the Prop one cuts.

And um my time is up, thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Janice Roberts, Mercy Brownbag.

First of all, I'd like to thank you for the support you have given us from Measure W right now.

Those dollars are already being put to good use.

We have, after executing your food recovery contract last week, we have collected over 3,000 pounds of recovered food across the county already from our first four vendor partners.

That food is 3,000 pounds that won't go to the landfills that will go to seniors who are in need and hungry.

I would urge you to continue to support food insecurity for seniors with your Measure W funds.

We are a last resort for many seniors who are trying desperately to stay in their homes and fed.

Thank you for your consideration.

Kim Olsen, SOS Meals on Wheels.

Since July 1st to date, we have served 349,000 meals.

Our original triple A contract before any of the Measure W supplementations or backfill only allowed for 49,000 meals for the entire fiscal year, which means that if we continued at that rate, we would be out of funding in 45 days.

Thanks to Measure W, we were able to maintain our level of service.

We didn't have to move any seniors on to a wait list.

And we've been able to answer the renewed calls for our services.

Our client intakes were up 8% over the last two quarters since the same two quarters the year before.

Additionally, with the food security dollars that we received, we are now supplementing our daily meals for our most food insecure clients with our AMP meals, which are five additional meals that go out each week.

Just yesterday, 145 seniors all over the county received one of these packs, and we're amplifying it very quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to our next three Zoom speakers, Fiani Johnson, Preet, and Yulania, starting with Fiona.

Fiona Johnson, you may begin.

Hello.

Yes, we can hear you.

You may begin.

Oh, okay.

Hi.

I am Fianni Johnson from the R Mina Roth Foundation.

And I'm here today to support.

I'm here.

I serve on the um two committees for home together, uh, people with lived experience and system impacted committees.

And our committees uh support their proposal because it ensures funding reaches the people who too often fall through the cracks, those who are in house, system impacted, and live in on the margins of stability.

But I'm also here to lift up what the Food Bank has made clear as well.

Their proposal of food access for older adults must remain a priority in the Measure W Essential Services Five Year Plan.

So for many seniors in Alameda County, meal programs are not a convenient, they are a lifeline.

They keep people nourished, connected, and able to remain in their homes while living on fixed income in one of the most extensive regions in the country.

Thank you for your comments, Bianni.

Moving to Preet.

Preet, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hello.

Yes, we can hear you.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Preet Gore Saberwal.

I'm a clinical community program director at the Hume Center in their South Asian program, which is a prevention early intervention program focused on the South Asian community.

This community is often seen as wealthy, educated, and self-sufficient, but the stereotype masks the real challenges many face, including poverty, housing instability, mental health stigma, and lack of access to care.

The model minority myth leads to underinvestment in programs focused on this community.

Given their framework of Measure W on housing supports, homelessness in the South Asian communities often looks different.

Many people are not on the streets but couch surfing, moving between relative homes, or living on in overcrowded conditions.

These situations can sometimes involve exploitation in exchange for housing.

As a member of the prevention collaborative, we urge you to prioritize mental health prevention program recommendations for immigrant refugee and indigenous communities as a part of the Measure W funding.

Let's focus on prevention first rather than fall back on fail first approaches.

These are essential services for our communities.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to Yulania, you may unmute and begin your comments.

In the unincorporated communities, community-based organizations are asked to provide essential services, run food distributions, and support families.

Yet many of us do not have the funding to sustain this work.

In many ways, CBOs are the safety net for the unincorporated communities.

When residents need help, they come to us.

Measure W clearly identified the unincorporated county as a priority.

But unless that prioritization is accompanied by a clear number or a formula, our communities will continue to be overlooked as they have been for many years.

We respectfully urge you to ensure that the Essential Services Fund includes a meaningful multi-year allocation for the unincorporated communities so that our organizations serving unincorporated residents have the resources to do the work you are asking of us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to in-person speakers, Sangita, Elaine, and Caitlin Chan.

You may approach the podium.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Sangeeta, UELP Program Manager at Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, also known as SERI, and a member of Prevention Matter Collaborative.

Seri works with communities who are survivors of war, genocide, tortures, and other life-altering dramas.

Our communities are facing mental health funding crisis due to the cut of Prop One.

The ULP prevention programs which have supported our communities for nearly two decades are among the hardest hit.

Furthermore, the community served by ULP are the most affected by immigration enforcement and housing instability as well.

By supporting prevention services, we are able to support our unserved communities in ensuring that they maintain stable housing and access to wraparound services to improve their quality of living.

We are a board of supervisors to ensure that ULP programs are continued for our communities that are informed by years of development influenced by cultures, histories, and experience of communities we work with.

This is an urgent crisis that need your immediate attention.

Why do we why wait to trade while we have all the power to prevent it all together?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, uh supervisors.

My name is Ilim Pen and founder and ICE Director of Mental Health Association for Chinese communities.

Because the federal funding cups today, our organization is facing a zero financial crisis and really needed supports.

I want to share one example of why prevention matters.

A young woman experienced a severe mental episode right away from home and wind industry in the confusing state.

During that time, he was uh several uh assault.

Her parents caught our woman by checking everything on the sharing family credit card.

Um, we uh deadly located the FEMA library.

Uh Crest has a bond team more with the family allocated her and connect her with the emergency mental health chairman apples to uh slice.

It was able to return home safety rather than come continue to live in the street.

Uh Judith Kanti to have these life savings service.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon.

Uh, my name is Caitlin Chan.

I am the executive director at Legal Assistance for Seniors.

Um, thank you so much for the two million backfill to the uh triple A contracts, uh similar to SOS Meals on Wheels.

We have been able to maintain capacity, um, but it is not clear from what was shared today whether under this plan these critical services would be supported to maintain much less increased capacity to meet the needs of the growing older adult population.

I know supervisors Miley, Fortunata Bass, and Sam heard a great deal yesterday at the joint uh health and social services committee about the growing needs of the older adult population in Alameda County, how unique and complex those needs are.

Um, and I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and concern around those needs.

Uh, we would really appreciate more time to and more specificity to understand what is in this plan and be able to respond to it more effectively.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to our Zoom users, we'll go with Milo Florencia, Reverend Dr.

Marvin Lance and Jessica Montes.

Milo, Florencia, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hello, my name is Milo Florencia.

I'm a clinical intern with Orca at Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, and I'm a resident of District 5.

I've had the opportunity to see the impact that these mental health services have in our community and prioritizing Measure W funds for programs like Orca means supporting life affirming care for young people in our community who are struggling with suicidal thoughts.

Words can't fully describe the impact of hearing a youth say that they went an entire week without a suicidal thought, something that they had experienced every day for years.

One client who finished our program shared an invaluable lesson they learned with us.

They said nothing lasts forever.

That shift in perspective is crucial for young people in our community to get the opportunity to see better days.

That's where our work lies.

I'm here today to ask that Measure W funds prioritize programs like Orca so youth in Alameda County can keep accessing this support.

Thank you.

Reverend Dr.

Marvin Lance, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Reverend Dr.

Marvin Lance Weiser, and I have communities to help create spaces of health and belonging.

Wait, go to Pastor WhatsApp.

We were experiencing some technical difficulties.

Are you in a clear area?

And we'll start to restart your time.

We're unable to understand you.

Can you hear me now?

We can hear you.

Okay, great.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Reverend Dr.

Marvin Lance Weiser, and I have the distinct joy of partnering with Eden United Church of Christ and the residents of our urban unincorporated communities to help create spaces of empowerment and belonging.

When voters passed Measure W, they clearly identified the urban unincorporated communities as a priority.

Yet the funding decisions made last fall fell short of that commitment.

For residents in these communities, the county is their local government.

Unlike cities with their own municipal structures, our neighbors rely directly on the county for leadership, services, as well as investment.

That responsibility calls for a clear strategy and meaningful substantial investment in places that have historically received far less than their share.

For that reason, we respectfully urge the board to allocate at least 35% of the essential services fund to the urban unincorporated county, ensuring that Measure W fulfills the promise made to these communities.

Thank you for your leadership and consideration.

Jessica Montes, you may unmute and begin your comments.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, supervisors and staff.

My name is Jessica Montes, government affairs officer with Alameda County Community Food Bank.

And the food bank is incredibly grateful for your recent investments in food and food security.

And today we're advocating in support of and as a member of the senior services coalition to ensure that you also continue investing in the basic needs and well-being of our older adults and senior population.

As always, we are here to, we're open and hoping to continue working together with your offices to not just advocate but to learn from each other and learn of the community's uh the community's needs.

Thank you so much for your leadership.

Thank you.

Moving to our in-person speakers, Yuri Sean, Lara Calvert, and Pisa Finitz.

Sorry for mispronounce your name.

Pisa.

Please approach the podium if you heard your name.

Good afternoon, Board of Supervisor.

My name is PSA Finneth, program director at MARU, formerly KC C E B, and representative of the Prevention MATA collaborative.

I'm here today again to address the concern of Prop One poses to our county mental health safety nets.

As Prof1 shifts state's mandate towards lock facilities and chronic homelessness, our local UELP programs are being pushed to the brink of a funding clift.

For 20 years, these programs have been the no-wrong door for over 56,000 indigenous immigrants and refugees communities annually, preventing the crisis of Prop 1 seeks to treat after the fact.

We cannot wait for families to become homeless or hospitalized to act.

I urge the Board of Supervisors to prioritize the sustainability of UELP prevention programs by utilizing Measure W and other available Alameda County funds to bridge the gap as MHSA transitions.

Prevention is the most cost-effective tool we have to reduce the burdens of our jails, ER, and even suicide.

Please protect our community-based organization that holds our vulnerable communities together.

Do not let Prop One dismantle the prevention infrastructure we spent decades building.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

Those of you who know me know that I try to approach things in a very collaborative manner.

That I believe that all of us here are looking for the best answers for our entire community.

Clearly, the staff spent a lot of time and effort on these very good presentations that have been presented to you guys today.

This meeting was scheduled as a special meeting that popped up last Friday.

The agenda wasn't posted until after 10 a.m.

yesterday.

No materials were handed out about this until this item opened today.

Others are clearly much more smart, smarter than I am.

I don't have thoughtful, meaningful public input to give you other than this process is obscuring it is obscuring what should be happening.

This is not uh open public way to handle and get meaningful conversations with the community about these important tax funds that are being used in our community.

And I urge you, I urge you to do better.

We can do this in a better way.

If you heard your name, please approach the podium.

I called Laura and Yuri.

I'm not sure the last person's name.

My name's Laura Calvert.

I'm with Spectrum Community Services.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Yeri Sean.

I'm with Waru, also known as Korean Community Center of the East Bay.

And first, um, thank you, Board of Supervisors, for your commitment to allocating Measure W, funding for essential services, backfilling the budget to support aging programs, and allocating funding for senior meals.

Baru continues to support senior service coalition's recommendations.

And I'm also here to bring attention to emergency prepared meals distribution program RFP under Social Service Agency, which is a program you generously approved funding for last October.

The RFP indicates that the notice of intent will be issued on February 13th, and with the program to start on April 1st.

Yet we have not received a formal letter or notification or updates about the process.

Delay is catastrophic because it's been more than seven months since our low-income seniors received their last meal.

We're getting calls after paying rent and utilities.

We have seniors who are left with $20 to cover the entire month.

And this is a matter of survival for them.

So we urge the county to take action immediately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go to Cindy Zoom, Alberto Perez, and then Edith Contreras.

Cynities, Zoom, you may unmute and begin your comments.

Hi, my name is Cindy Liu.

I serve as the Board of Secretary for the Mental Health Association for Chinese community.

We provide prevention service to help people before crisis arise.

We offer culture and industrial service to our seniors, immigrants, families, and other variable residents.

We have a staff cut due to the funding, lack of funding.

And without the new funding, this vital prevention service could disappear, leaving many residents with nowhere to turn into their languages.

We respectfully ask that major W support to keep our service available before crisis become tragedy.

Thanks for your time and the leadership and your commitment to the mental health needs of our Armida County.

Thank you.

Alberto Perez, you may begin.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Alberto Perez.

I work for La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland.

I'm also part of the Prevention Matters Collaborative.

And I wanted to share that by the time that Measure W was the signed and passed.

We did not know of the devastating impacts of Proposition One in our prevention and early intervention programs.

And since much of the funds lost by our programs in the next fiscal year are actually redirected to similar programs and services as Meshow W will address.

I really want to encourage you all to take a closer look on the proposition on the Mesh W and try to close some of the gaps that will be left by proposition one and this very essential programs that we provide.

We are the ones who actually help connect many of those individuals to the services that Measure W will core.

So I think we're very essential, and I hope we can find a way to continue our programs.

Hi, good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Edith, and I work for the Eden Power Collective.

The burden of overcrowded housing falls heavily and disproportionately on our environmental justice communities who face these conditions at nearly double the rate one would expect given population size and have the shortest life expectancy in the country.

Over half of our residents live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty.

Measure W identified the unincorporated county as a priority, but the funding decisions made in September did not follow through on that commitment.

We're asking you to allocate a minimum of 35% of the essential services fund to the unincorporated county and fulfill the promise that this county made to its most um underserved residents.

Thank you.

Patrick Iser.

Patrick, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Patrick.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Patrick Eiser, Executive Director of the Alameda County Deputy Sheriff's Activities League, D Sal.

Major W identify the urban unincorporated areas of Alameda County as a priority with the funding decisions made last September September did not fully reflect that commitment.

Each year, DSAL serves north of 4,000 youth and community members through free recreation, fitness, and mentorship programs.

These activities are not extras.

They are proven health and public safety strategies.

When young people have safe places to go, structured programs and positive adult mentors, communities become healthier and safer.

ESAL's annual budget has been stripped down to approximately 1 million dollars with roughly 80% supported through our partnership with the sheriff's office.

However, that funding does not fully cover the scope of this prevention work.

We respectfully ask the board to allocate a minimum of 35% of the Measure W Essential Services Fund to urban unincorporated areas.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you for your comments.

Moving to Angelica Canchola.

Angelica.

Angelica, you may unmute and begin your comments.

Angelica Canciola.

Okay.

Emily McPartland.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Emily McPartland, and I'm with the Homeless Action Center, which provides benefit advocacy to unhoused and dissipated disabled residents across Alameda County.

I just wanted to highlight that helping residents access SSI, SSDI, and Medi-Cal is a critical stabilization service.

When people obtain income and health coverage, they are far more likely to maintain maintain housing and avoid deeper involvement in crisis systems.

As the county defines essential services, especially safety net and housing stability, we encourage the board to include benefits and advocacy and legal services that connect residents to the federal benefits that they are entitled to.

Thank you so much for your services and this presentation.

Thank you for your comments.

And Laura.

You are unmuted, you may begin.

Laura, if you are speaking, we cannot hear you.

Okay.

Trying Angelico again, Angelica Canchola, you may unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Angelica or Angelica.

Angelica.

Okay.

And one more can one more time for Laura.

You may unmute yourself and begin your comments, Laura.

Okay.

Through the chair, that was the 19 speakers last year.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

We'll bring it back for board uh comments and um we're looking for direction here.

I'll note that it's um 328.

We're going to be delaying our 330 meeting until we're done with this.

We may have to stop, start, and restart, I guess.

I'm not sure, but um I'll bring it back to our board for comments.

Anyone care to ask additional questions, Supervisor Miley?

Sure, I'll I'm sure that's gonna be others.

I'll jump out here, you know.

So yeah, I appreciate the you know this the work of the staff on this, but I I think this is just um it's a work session, it's just a jumping off point at the moment.

And I you know, I do appreciate um what Laura Calvert said, you know, folks, you know, we didn't see this either until now.

So it's it's news to all of us, so I just kind of see it as an opportunity for discussion and give further uh clarity.

Um so I knew you know, I'm gonna be all over the place.

So I think folks in the unincorporated area asking for 35% of the central services fund, and if you're asking for 35 cent 35 percent of the central services fund over the course of um the years, if if we've allocated 258 million, that would be 90 million going to the unincorporated area.

Um I don't know where people are getting that that 35 percent from because even if it's if we if we use that incorporated area and we base it on the population, which we use for COVID funding from the CARES Act and ARPA, we use it based on population, and corporate area is about um 10% or so of the population of the county, about 160 uh thousand people, 150,000 people out of 1.6, 1.7 million.

So even if we pay some population, that's only about 10%.

So I'm not sure where this 35% figures coming from.

So to me, that's I that needs to be explained, and hopefully that'll be explained to Supervisor Um Tam and I, since we represent most of the incorporate area, you know, Supervisor Halbert represents some of it, but I need to understand that 35% since it just seems way out of uh proportion.

Even if we had an equity lens to it based on the need, seniors in the corporate area and uh uh African Americans and um Hispanics, uh, I still don't know if the equity lens would bring it up to 35%.

So uh sometimes people ask for more than they um they need, or they um are requesting uh just to kind of put out a figure to negotiate around.

So once again, the 35% I just find really um uh problematic.

I think it's more associated with 10%, and maybe it maybe we need to um adjust it uh further based on uh an equity lens, but uh 35, 10 percent, up to 35 percent.

35% just seems to be out of proportion.

So that's just the first uh reaction.

Now let me just um see.

As I was looking at this and I asked the staff a few questions, hopefully I won't miss anything, but if I do miss something, hopefully the president of the board would give me the freedom to come back.

But um the needs from the county, 209 million dollars was the need that central services need uh that was identified.

Uh and that was prior to HR1, I believe.

Um that's 209 million per year.

Total over the length of the remaining.

Total over the remaining length of the measure.

Oh, well, why don't we just fund it all?

Because we got 258 million in a central services, that would still leave us with about 40 million.

Can you speak into the mic?

I'm just asking questions at the moment.

Somebody speaking to the mic.

If it's 209 over the course of the entire time, why don't we just allocate 209 of the 258 and call it a day?

Because the available resources are 170 million dollars.

Plus the 14 million dollar carryover.

Some has already been committed.

Okay.

You but you folks need to do the arithmetic for me.

Because then even if some has been committed.

If we've got 209 and we take I can pull up that chart.

Yeah, and if we take 209 and deduct it from whatever yeah, the non-committed, what does that leave us?

So that's that's a question.

Um the 34 million annually.

I was also concerned.

Why don't why are we putting money into housing stability, tenant protection, capacity building, maybe capacity building on the corporate area is different than housing.

Why don't we put all the housing under the um home together bucket?

Why don't we just move that and put it under the home together bucket?

This uh Sandy can speak to that.

These are requests that came through CDA.

And some requests we have worked internally to move into the home together bucket already.

I'd move it all anything dealing with housing, I'd move to the home together bucket just because with housing, we're looking at production, um, preservation, and uh protection.

Uh um Sandy Rivera community development agency director.

Uh uh, yes, you are correct.

And that we have looked at some of these, and if they can go into the home together uh bucket, uh they have you've been moving them around with regard to some of this, though uh the unincorporated area um just uh as if it was a city would have its budgeting for particular services, so not necessarily countywide services would cover unincorporated, and so we we just did a carve out for unincorporated to make sure that it was covered for this type of service.

So, what kind of money are we talking about then?

Of that 34 million annually, what would be the carve out for the unincorporated area for the oh if of the 30 the staff is recommending 34 million dollars per year for two years.

So if the carve out for the unincorporated area of the 34 million, what amount is that?

I think we're about 20 percent.

20 percent so the unincorporated area folks called in and they said 35 percent.

So the carve out of 34 million would be about 2020 for the unincorporated area of the the two years that we were talking about in this presentation.

Okay, I'm just trying to if is that is that correct?

So of the 34 would be carved out, and that's about six million, seven million a seven about seven million, seven million carve out of the thirty-four million for the unincorporated area.

Okay, and so that's closer to the 35 what they're requesting, but it's above the 10 percent that I was mentioning, so that could be a fair a fair figure.

Okay, uh I just want to interrupt I I remember when we talked about this along when we first started talking about MW.

Uh a number that stuck out in my head because I know Oakland was coming and asking, I think it was 58% of the need.

Now, I guess that was on a homeless need or somehow a need, not that they have 58% of the population, but they have 50%, 58% of the need.

And I asked what was the percentage need for other areas like Fremont, like the Tri-Balley.

Did we at that time identify a percentage of need for unincorporated?

Because I think that's the number that we're kind of looking for.

Well, I think what Oakland was looking for was 50% of the home together bucket.

I'm not even dealing with home together bucket.

I was looking at the central services bucket, and that's what the folks who are calling in, they were saying they won 35% of the central services bucket allocated to the trying to figure that out.

Yeah.

And so I'm just trying to get a sense.

Yeah, so I'm not looking at the home together bucket.

The percentage could be more, including the capital, which uh had not I had not uh calculated that one.

Okay, so um president, if I'm I'm still got the floor.

So what the staff is saying of the 34 million that they're allocating for the unincorporated, I mean for the central services bucket annually, seven percent, excuse me, 20% would go to the incorporate area plus an additional amount would go to the incorporate area for capital.

Okay, whatever that additional minute um amount would be.

Why don't you speak to Mike?

16 16 million is specifically identified for an incorporated area of the 39 million that's already been set aside by your board for one-time capital investments.

Okay, so that gets us even closer to maybe the 35.

All right.

So I think that incorporated area.

Supervisor Miley also um proposed uh in the critical county infrastructure capital, almost every project proposed is in that incorporated area.

Um aside from maybe some maintenance needs at safety net facilities.

Okay, all right.

All right, so not to be repetitive.

So 34 million annually, 20% on incorporate area, plus an additional amount for capital, and the capital uh critical capital calls for the cash value library, the food hub, livermore sewer, Synol rehabilitation, and Lorenzo Theater.

Those are all the capital needs in corporate area.

Okay, uh so that's the additional capital amount above and beyond the 20%, which would be 7 million uh for per year for two years.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out those are not all the capital needs, those are the ones that have been prioritized as the most critical.

Okay, thank you for emphasizing that.

Okay, so that um so it's still so that's why you have housing stability and tenant protections under uh the recommended prioritization, because uh all that's pretty much for the unincorporated area.

Okay, they're shaking their head, yes.

Okay, so that answers that question.

Okay, let me see.

Um then I'm also concerned about the prop one one situation in AHS.

Now I know we're not looking to solve all of AHS out of measure W, but I'm concerned about that.

I don't um and I'm also concerned about Prop one.

I think that we might need to look at a one-time additional allocation for the first two years to help us deal with Prop One and uh HS because I think those are extraordinary circumstances.

So I'm just you know once again, I'm just throwing this out, just Nate Miley talking that I think we need to take into consideration and maybe put more money aside to address Prop 1 and to address the mental health prevention and to address uh AHS.

Um recognizing that um I'm not expecting measure W to address all of that, but I do think we need to take that under a further uh consideration because from my arithmetic.

Um if we do two years of measure W at 34 million, that's 68 million.

We've spent we've allocated 88 million, that's 156 million.

Central services, that's all I'm talking about.

If you deduct 156 from 258 million in a central services, the overall amount, that leaves us 102 million.

So we have 102 million that we would be use utilizing for the balance of the next three years of measure W.

But also we have the prudent reserve, which is 107 million, which is 272 million.

So my suggestion would be that some of that be allocated to help us address the Prop One as well as the HS uh shortfalls over the next two fiscal years.

So I'm just but once again, I'm not saying all of it, but some of it.

Supervisor Miley, I I just need to interrupt because on page 27, under stabilize the safety net, the time limited bridge funding.

Uh staff is proposing 20 million dollars a year in the first two years, which acts as the Prop One mitigation bridge and also health pack funding and medical retention and health promotions.

So that is already built in to the 34 million.

Yeah, but I'm just wondering if that's good.

If it's if it's not enough to deal with that bridge, because they can't come up with other resources, then I'm just offering up that we might want to enhance um the prop one as well as the LB Health Systems um allocation out of measure W potentially, maybe that 20 million will be enough based on other uh funding sources and other savings that we might be able to come up come up with for the um Prop 1 AHS, but it might not be.

And if we lock ourselves into a formula, then the staff will say, well, we you know, this is all you've the board has set aside to deal with this, and I think we need we might need more flexibility.

That's kind of what I'm raising at the moment, but okay.

I'm just raising it.

I appreciate that.

I didn't mean to interrupt, and I I finally figured out where the 35% came from.

Okay.

So if you look at page 25 and you added all the uh projects associated with the unincorporated areas, the 38.68 million, the critical county infrastructure, and some of the food security funding out of the total 209 million dollars, you get close to like 33, 34 percent.

Okay, thank you.

And I know that gets back to my other question.

If we were to fund the 209 out of the remaining balance of the central services, what uh what would that look like?

I think Amy was gonna hit me a number on that, I think.

I thought and then um the only other thing I think I want to mention, appreciate the president giving me the ability to speak so long, is um I know with the set with the central services, there are no opportunities to leverage any money, or is there?

Because I know like with measure A1, we were able to leverage uh funds to deal with uh some of the needs with A1.

Um are there any leveraging opportunities?

It's general purpose revenue.

So I mean there it can certainly be used to leverage to the extent there's availability of other resources, and and I do think that's something you should be mindful of as you think about how you're gonna fund some of these things.

You know, you have a principle of using your most restrictive funds first, and that's for a reason that you're saving your most discretionary funds um as the last dollar because you can you have more flexibility and you can they can be used to leverage.

Okay, because I think that should be an important factor.

If we can do any leveraging, uh we might not want to um allocate funds without the consideration of where can we leverage those dollars to get uh more paying for our buck.

It is one of your guiding principles that and it's something that staff has been cognizant of uh in what they bring forward.

Okay, yeah, all right.

Well, those are my comments for now.

I know I was all over the place, might not have made a lot of sense, but did Amy, were you able to figure out if we if we were to fund the 209, what would that so the available funding is the 14.8 one time and 170 million ongoing, which is the five years of 34 million, and the difference between that it's almost 185 million and the 209 is about 25 million, 24.6 million is the gap.

It's a gap, okay.

24, you said 24.6 is the gap, yeah.

Okay, all right.

So if you were to add if you you know, all the available funds that your board has not yet committed is the one time 14.78 and the ongoing 170, which is five years at 34 million a year, the difference between that and the 209 is 24.6 million.

And Susan, did that include the approved reserve?

No, okay.

So we saw that's not bad.

Okay.

All right.

Those are some of my just throwing stuff out here.

Can I I just want to pause?

Supervisor um Tim.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Um just going um on what Supervisor Miley was saying on page 25.

When you look at the federal and state policy and budget impacts, 105.13 million out of the 209 million.

That also includes um the Prop One mitigation.

And so it's trying to understand how these things are characterized.

So I'm not like double counting them between uh the different categories.

Yeah, thank you for that question, supervisors.

So in terms of um this 20 million dollars, you know, that's a uh a bit of a placeholder number.

And part of the reason that it's there is because we know that um the health pack providers, so uh the health pack network includes Alameda Health System and uh the FQHCs at this time.

Uh we've also over the years heard support from the board to adding providers to that mix.

Um, but those are providers who are going to in this next fiscal year lose funding because of HR one, and they're also going to be losing medical revenue.

Um the Prop One mitigation, but the the full health pack, um, you know, we have some estimates of let's say like it's a 17 million dollar bridge, for example, right, for one or two years until we do think that there's going to be some sort of state mitigation happening.

Um, so trying to leave some some room for that on the Prop One side.

Um, we've been going back and forth, and as we shared at health committee yesterday, you know, we've got some of that 53 million we're planning to mitigate with home together fund, some of it with Measure C, some of it with with Measure A, we'll be able to do um, but very small amounts.

Um, but overall, there's still a large chunk of that.

So it was to put that in here because we need to have additional conversations about what exactly uh is the amount of that mitigation bridge.

Um, you know, and I think that in talking with the provider community, like you hear the whole need, and yes, it's very important.

Um, and there's just not enough resources, so we have to figure out some priorities prioritization.

So there may be some overlap between health pack providers and Prop One mitigation, for example.

There are some clinics who also get prevention funding.

Um, but you know, we'd we'd be interested uh as we have additional conversations with the behavioral health uh both our team as well as the community, as well as um our H team and and others and and the supervisors to see what we can do with it.

Okay, um I I know we've discussed at least in the unincorporated committee, some of these projects, like for example, the Wilma Chan Family Resource Center that also provides mental health care, which is coming out of measure W, but not out of potentially Prop one offsets, and so at this point, all the recommendation that's before us is just a 34 million dollar per year for this coming year, and then I'm sorry, two years, two years, but 34 million a year.

Uh so that's 68 million dollars.

And you're asking um to go out for an RFP to meet these categories.

So that would be the next step in terms of reporting back.

I mean, what we're bringing forward to the board, you know, for your discussion and feedback is a general framework.

You know, our intent is to come back after we get direction from your board again next month with more specifics in terms of you know, more specificity around this.

I mean, this really is a broad framework, and I think a lot of this work was looking at sort of the entire universe of what are some of the needs that could be met um through measure W, knowing that they're not there isn't enough Measure W funding to address all these needs, and we really should be looking at other revenue sources, some of them more directly related to some of these programs and services, and I think that's what the um health director has stated that there's other health care related funds that have been looked at as potential offsets, and I think it's gonna require cobbling together a multiple multiple sources to address it.

I appreciate that very much.

I'm just trying to understand, like in terms of timing, because as Supervisor Miley said, um, we we just saw some of the sort of the strategic thinking and allocations for the first time with input that you've been getting, but we also talk at the health committee about the CPAG potentially um having uh a deeper dive with the ad hoc committee in terms of the requests that we are receiving and the potential 15,000 people that are affected.

So would we um wait until after that process informs um this this next two years allocation?

So we have um that that planning is ongoing, and so I'll just share that you know the this plan was uh based on information that we had as of last week.

So should things change for that, then you know we would bring that back for you in April as a um evolving recommendation.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fort Center Bass and then Marquez.

I have a few questions myself.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

I appreciate all of this um analysis and thinking.

Um, I also wanted to appreciate um everyone, many of them who are in this room who spoke yesterday at the health committee regarding the Prop One cuts.

I do think that those impacts are going to be very um deeply felt and will appreciate us really being careful, uh careful, thoughtful, and strategic about how we can mitigate them.

Um I do have a few questions here.

Um, you know, similar to my colleagues, I am interested in figuring out what bridge funding we could put towards the Prop One cuts, how we can mitigate the Medi-Cal cuts as well.

Um, and this might be a little bit redundant, but I do want to understand whether we have yet um an amount uh that uh a dollar amount in bridge funding for uh the Prop One cuts that we have identified.

I know a number has been put out by uh the behavioral health collaborative, but has the staff been able to analyze what that amount could be?

We're we're still working on that.

Okay.

Um, and then similarly, I am also interested in making sure we address the medical cuts.

Part of that is certainly Alameda Health System.

Um, so I do want to make sure we pay attention to that.

And then um, one question we had set aside, I thought, some funding for the UELP work.

Um, I believe it was four million dollars from the Essential Services Fund.

Where are we at in terms of preserving those programs?

Um, so the UELP programs, uh, some of them are able to uh have joined the uh early intervention cohort that behavioral health has.

Um, and so some of them are on the pathway to billing, then there are others who are still in the prevention bit.

So we're trying to figure out um what that number is.

Um, Dr.

Treble is here.

I can ask her to share more details with you.

Um, but in terms of the um the four million dollars, it's my understanding that that hasn't been fully programmed yet.

That was allocated in the last round.

And it's because there's a lot to go back and forth and think through priorities.

Okay.

Um I appreciate hearing that, and obviously, we're still hearing from a lot of the same providers about the needs.

So that's another important issue I'll be paying attention to.

Um, I do want to lift up that um at one of our Alameda County Together for All meetings, uh, our ACT meeting in September, we did hear specifically about reproductive health care from a couple organizations, access reproductive justice and the Dream Youth Clinic.

Um, I know the state is considering an allocation to planned parenthood.

Um, however, there are still some smaller organizations that have critical services like health line support and clinical services, um, and reach very specific populations, including folks who might be at risk of human trafficking.

So that work I think is really important.

Um reproductive health care wasn't explicitly mentioned.

I know some of these groups also kind of overlap and do gender affirming care.

So I wanted to lift that up because I think it is an area that definitely is impacted.

Um, I don't know if staff has any thoughts on that particular body of work.

I don't have anything immediate.

Um, I can check in with our public health team on how closely they're tracking that.

I am aware that the state's gonna be making some investments.

Okay.

Um, and just a couple more questions.

Um I definitely appreciate the list that was in the packet about some of the um tenant protections supporting the rental registry and that some of that pilot work in the unincorporated areas was not specifically in the presentation.

Will that be included?

I saw the proactive rental inspections.

Yeah, it's in the blue screen.

Right, I know.

Um, I understand that.

I'm just saying that in the specific list.

Oh, I see.

It is there.

Sorry, I missed it.

Um I missed that.

I saw the proactive rental inspection, but I missed over that.

So that's good to see.

Um would that also be for just a two-year allocation?

Proposed pilot as we've been discussing it as three and a half year proposed pilot, but at this point uh it is going to be limited to Ash and Cherryland and Hayward Acres.

And we still are uh through the spring and summer, we'll be doing the stakeholder meetings and bringing drafts to your board as well and to the other committees for consideration.

So we're anticipating that uh it would be toward the end of the calendar year that the board can consider it for adoption.

Uh and so that would be part of this two-year estimate.

Great.

That is really good to hear.

Um, and then finally, last fall, staff recommended 39 million and one-time capital investments for affordable housing on county owned property as well as critical county infrastructure.

Um, has that funding been allocated and which departments so this is Kimberly Gasway Director of General Services Agency.

The capital allocation includes the $18 million affordable housing for the Broadway project that was already approved by your board, and the remainder are for critical infrastructure.

Um, the last five million is for safety net.

This is to do the um preliminary work necessary to do infrastructure upgrades at safety net facilities around the county, and the remainder items are for the unincorporated areas deferred to Sandy.

Um for the nine nine million, uh you should uh we'll be expecting to put out an RFP later this uh summer.

Uh with regard to that, we're gonna start community meetings with regard to the site that's in the unincorporated area, um, largely uh working with Eden Mack.

So we'll have that.

And then the uh other areas we have for Lorenzo Theater, uh, and then uh that's starting the we had appraisals completed, and so um we expect to be the back to the board um to authorize those negotiations um in in the coming months, and then uh we also have for the food hub.

We're preparing the architecture, the RFQ for the architectural work for the food hub that's on the Fairmont campus, as well as uh RFQ for architectural services for the old Castro Valley Library.

So that would be uh at least for in terms of the sewer.

There's we're uh we've done design work on that, but it we're also doing uh improvements for the Martinelli Center this time.

That's part of the six point one, yeah.

I do want to point out to your board that those costs that um Sandy was discussing, and also the ones that I talked about on the um county infrastructure safety net sites, those are just preliminary uh devo pre-development work.

It is not construction costs.

Thank you, and then the additional 14 million would be added to this amount.

Is that correct?

That's the proposal okay.

So that's yeah, there's 14 million and one.

Which we're proposing be added as one time to the capital.

I think initially it was a larger amount that was reduced because of some of the more urgent allocations that your board made.

So we already allocated about 3 million, and this proposal has a one-time allocation of 14 million on top of that.

So I just wanted to make sure that was that was clear.

Correct.

Can I just ask the staff though?

The 14 is a reduced amount, correct?

It's less than had originally been anticipated based on the fire board direction.

Correct.

So the amounts were split up between time periods and uh the immediate one time and then for the five.

Excuse me, two year.

And the capital request over the five year period is actually 30 million dollars.

And um, so what we are proposing only addresses less than half of that.

Okay.

Thank you for helping to clarify that.

Um I will just wrap up by saying that we're certainly going to do um as much advocacy as we can, especially at the state level.

So hopefully there will be some uh relief from the state budget, although that obviously won't be until later in the year.

Um I am really concerned that there's more pressing need around health care and possibly around food security.

So I'm not sure that the allocation over the next two years is quite enough to meet the need.

So I do want to make sure that we dig into understanding the need, understanding other funding sources, and potentially looking at um the prudent reserve or other parts of uh this whole framework.

Um, but I appreciate the staff doing all of the work to put this forward.

Thank you.

Supervisor Marquez uh thank you, board president, and thank you to staff for this analysis.

Um fully understand that this is a special meeting.

So it is a lot of information to process as we are receiving it, but um, it is vital information.

Everything's it's like the perfect storm, right?

Everything's coming to a head in terms of Prop One, HR one, um, our issues with um being able to fully fund our healthcare system as well.

Um, so generally I'm in support of the direction we're going, just want to call out a couple items.

I also want to see additional bridge funding with respect to Prop One.

Um, I made comments at the V Linson hearing um, the analysis that was done in terms of what are the impacts if these services are going to be shut down for patients.

We need to do that same type of analysis with respect to Prop one.

Um, so I think we need to learn more, but definitely open to um supporting additional funding with um the transitional period.

Also gonna flag out the way I understood the presentation is the funding we've done for immigrant refugee services, the legal defense, the rapid response.

I don't see that as one time that is ongoing, as well as the funding we did for seniors, um, tackling food insecurity.

Thank you, Supervisor Fortana Bass for uplifting gender affirming care and reproductive rights.

Um, and I'm just gonna flag too, I would prefer the housing stuff move over to the home together uh 80% funding.

We could like parse it out so it's specific to what investments are going into unincorporated and not county wide, but I think the central services truly needs to just be focused on protecting the safety net.

And thank you for showing the assessment.

And one of my biggest frustrations, and I've said this on the record, so I'll say it again, is last February, it took us six years to pass just cause protections.

That is unacceptable.

It's a waste of time, energy, and resources.

And what this needs assessment illustrates is this board is part of the problem.

We need to do a better job at the three Ps, the protect um affordable housing, preserve, and produce.

We haven't been doing that.

A lot of cities are ahead of us, and we need to be leaders in that space because it's the same individual that's impacted by behavior health, mental health, substance abuse, the justice system, it goes on and on.

If someone is not safely housed, then we have these additional issues, concerns, and at the end of the day, there are responsibility to provide the safety net to our residents countywide.

So just thank you for lifting that.

Also flag that behavioral health during that time sent us a letter about the impacts for health and mental health if someone is not safely housed.

So we need to take a more serious look and be more aggressive.

Also want to flag, I didn't see any mention of fair chance housing.

We had an update at public protection a couple weeks ago.

That also needs to be a priority in this discussion.

So I think at this point, with all of our feedback, all of the comments from the public, and also we're only hearing from a portion of the public.

Many people are barely reading this information, barely have access to it online.

So I think it's a lot to process, a lot to take into consideration, but I might like to see what staff's recommendations are.

If we put this out a couple weeks, give the public more time to weigh in.

But I don't think right now we can finalize this.

I mean, we're all just getting this information.

Um I think we need more time, but I think those are all my comments for now.

I'm just double checking my notes.

Um, and oh, yes, the reserves.

This is the crisis.

We've just illustrated how the federal government is gutting our safety net.

So at what more needs to happen before we decide to look at the reserves?

Thank you.

So I also want to thank staff for putting this together a lot of work.

And I've seen us come time and time and time again with wonderful PowerPoint slides with great graphics and boxes and words on a page, and we're doing a lot of planning.

Planning and planning and planning.

But the people on the ground, and I heard an elderly adult hasn't had a meal for seven months, and I don't quite understand that.

I'm gonna try to follow up, but that some program ran out seven months ago, and we have to um understand that.

And if you need to come to us sooner with uh stop gap so that people don't interrupt service, then please do.

I love the planning, but it doesn't, it has to get on the ground.

I want to um echo what Lara said, and I'm wondering, and here's the thing we have special meetings.

Special meetings are announced the day before, 24 hours notice.

That's the way we do it, but can we do better by knowing that the final agenda will come out a day before, but that we can maybe forecast in advance so that people know more precisely what they should expect to see.

They might see the final agenda come out 24 hours in advance, but we'll know hey, a month from now it these are the things that are going to be on that work study session.

I don't know.

I just put it to staff to see if we can cascade or forecast or broadcast uh in a better way, you know, so that the right people can be looking at the right agenda because I I agree um for the public to see it 24 hours, or maybe we need to just change our practice and not have a 24 hour special meeting, but instead have longer period of time.

I don't know, but I I see I said I see the problem.

I also agree there's a lot on here, and you know, I don't know if we can finalize it today, but then I'm also hearing from staff if we don't give direction, if we don't finalize it, then it won't hit the ground.

So, you know, that's that's uh uh uh a quandary that we're in.

Above all of that, at a very high level, we should recognize that everyone in California, all 58 counties are in a similar situation with regard to Prop One and with regard to HR1.

We're the only county that I know of that has half a million dollars saved up in uh measure W that we collected over a number of years, 700 million actually, a total of over the next few years, 1.8 billion dollars.

We're the only one.

So we as a county have to be way better off than every other county out there, and yet it doesn't quite feel that way.

It doesn't quite feel that we're out there in a much better situation than everybody else, and that's because there will never ever ever be enough money.

It will always find more ways to spend money.

We always will have more needs.

What we have to do, I think is truly really prioritize those that are the least among us to receive funding, but it will always uh unless we do things like in questions I have are when we talk about a rental subsidy, what is the cost to serve a tenant that needs a rental subsidy?

What are the guardrails around how long that will be?

And that we have an expectation that we're not going to subsidize somebody's rent for ever and ever and ever.

We're not going to subsidize somebody's rent for 50% of the rent or 80% of the rent, unless they're truly like severely um uh uh uh uh challenged.

But do we have these guardrails around protecting a reasonable cost to serve for a reasonable amount of time because while we have them under our care and subsidies that we're working to improve their capabilities, get them up and out of homelessness and into the workforce in a sustainable way.

I I'm not seeing that, or can we see more of a dashboard that talks about how many people we're serving, what's the cost to serve them, and um are we um truly helping them, or are we training people to be um uh dependent on county services?

That's a big question I have.

Yeah, thanks for that, supervisor.

I mean, I I think you're aware that a lot goes into an individual's need for different services, whether it's homelessness services or health or social services.

It it could be a combination of factors that goes into that.

And so, in terms of subsidies, you know, there's different amounts depending on what the person's situation is.

So, like you said, someone who's severely disabled or leveraging other types of uh general assistance, for example, right?

Or they might get social security income.

Uh, that goes into it.

There are going to be subsidies that we're providing uh those shallow subsidies that you see in the prevention space, those are for, you know, maybe someone needs to have uh just a little bit of an extra bump to help them make their rent.

Um, as we roll those programs out, we do intend to have those results-based accountability metrics in the contracts as we do for our other contracts that the county does.

Um, we're working on dashboards uh because I uh, you know, both to demonstrate how we're doing with measure W spending, but also, you know, you've asked us before in terms of who are we serving and um how how are we demonstrating what's happening?

So those are under development.

Um I think for the homelessness system, I will say that you know that system essentially touches about 25,000 people a year.

Um, and that's that's a big number, and that number has continued to increase.

We support more than 6,000 people with permanent supportive housing, and those are people who are in such high need um that they will likely need that level of support for just an ongoing time, right?

So, as we with the measure W opportunity, we've got an opportunity to expand our services to be able to get people off the coordinated entry list, get them into housing and services, um, and it's also like a bigger infrastructure build for our team to actually get there so we don't have the dashboards at the ready.

So I would like to see that our results-based accounting uh also migrate into outcomes-based contracts, so that our contracts are outcome-based.

We will pay you for an outcome, not for a service, because if our services simply give out meals, okay, then they'll find ways to give out more meals, or are we giving out a meal to somebody that we can actually help?

And that's not meant to be Lara, that's not spectrum.

Because I know I think of spectrum as not just handing up meals, you guys are so much more than a meal.

But um as long as we have the board support for that supervisor, because that has a lot of other implications.

Well, then if we want to have a whole session on outcomes based, then I'll be supportive of that because if we don't have an outcome based, a positive outcome, we're going to continue to perpetuate a system and keep having to feed a system that doesn't get better.

I am I also want to make sure that, and I I we have our own meetings one-on-one throughout the month, every month uh my team meets, and we continue to find a system where we are basically contract managers, oftentimes our people manage contracts for CBOs, and I need to continue to see improvement on them working well together, handoff coordination in between, and that um they actually do their job.

Understood.

The best way possible.

We can put as much money as we will money in isn't the only option.

It's not just about how much money we spend, it's about how we hold our system accountable, how we provide for required outcomes, how we evaluate the people doing the work on the ground.

It's not always only about the money.

We should be head and shoulders above every other county in the state, having something nobody else has to the tune of seven, eight hundred million dollars, and ongoingly for the next 10 years, we should be killing it.

Anyway, understood.

I love what we're doing.

I just want to see us continue to do it better and better and better.

Given the lateness of the hour.

Um, I know that we have another item to take up.

We're already an hour past where we're supposed to be.

Um is there any other direction needed?

You want to come back?

You you're gonna now further develop this out into action plans.

Is that it?

You need to do that.

So that was what we were recognizing.

Because I'm hearing that that we come back to.

We're not so sure that everyone is on board with everything.

So that's really the direction we're seeking from the board.

I mean, we were coming back today for a general framework, and then we're you know, we're proposing that we come back next month.

So we're looking as we develop next year's budget.

We're also proposing a two-year plan.

So I think you know, to the extent we can at least make some headway and narrow it as opposed to coming back with okay, the same presentation in your feedback.

So I don't know if the board, you know, I think the staff has identified major buckets, stabilizing safety net, meeting basic needs countywide, housing stability capacity building, were the three kind of majority.

Come back in April with this further baked out, given that.

Well, I guess that's what I'm asking.

I mean, can we get concurrence from the board on any of this, or do you want us to go back to the drawing?

So from what I recall um time funding allocation, it was a similar practice, yeah.

I'm comfortable moving forward, uh, except when we talk about the housing stability and capacity building, trying to move um some of those needs into the home together so that we can leave the seven million to deal with some of these issues that are forthcoming, whether it's bridging prop one, whether it's looking at uh shouldering things going on with Alameda Health Systems through HR1 and trying to move as many health care oriented um needs into the health care allocations that the county already has.

We can work with the CDA director on that.

Yeah, I would support what Supervisor Jam said because I think Supervisor Marquez said if we move the housing uh allocation piece, it pretty much all of it's for the unincorporated area, just move that over to the uh home together, but it's earmarked for the unincorporated area, but then use um additional essential services for I mean because we got a lot of health needs.

We got you got the clinics, we've got um prop one, we've got the hospital.

I mean, so I I and I think Supervisor mentioned it, and so I support what so this framework is good, except for moving housing stuff over.

The housing stability capacity building bucket would be funded through the home together measure W allocations, which would then, based on what we have suggested here, free up that seven million, if you will, and we would have two major ongoing buckets safety net and basic needs.

But what I would say, I think some kind of way we need to have more um information around how we're gonna address the health piece, I think.

Yeah, I think I think that's what we're concerned about.

I think with the ongoing uh augmentations, I think we need to know which contracts are gonna be augmented because I think I heard a couple of supervisors mentioned ongoing augmentations that it wasn't one time some of the seniors and some of your urgent needs you're saying should be included as part of the ongoing.

But I think if we're able to at least get direction from the board to identify the major buckets in terms of spending, we can flush that out a little bit more and come back with more um specificity.

So I just you know want to be clear it would be safety net.

It um the essential county services fund would focus on stabilizing the safety net and countywide basic needs, those two buckets and addressing the feedback that we got from the board about some of the other issues that were important, whether it was health care, whether it was some of the initial urgent needs that might be need to be ongoing, um, unincorporated services.

Take three.

Okay.

How about now?

There we go.

Um, so I definitely don't want to delay things because I know the community needs this money, but I'm just um this is a lot to process, and this is only scratching the surface based off public comment.

The public hasn't even had a chance to review this information.

So I think it's a good first step and attempt, but I don't think we're done.

I don't think we've we know we're not done, and that's why we know we need to come back and want to keep it moving.

So, or you know, goal was to come back next month with more specificity, but again, um, you know, bringing it back to the case.

But I also want to be clear, like the slide that said the one-time funding immigrant refugee services, the senior, we need to be clear on when that funding ends, because if it's within the next two years, and obviously that's a conversation we need to start having now.

We can't wait till the date we're we're up against contracts ending.

So that's I'm saying we still need more.

But when do they end?

I don't know if they're 18 months, three months, when what we can bring that back as part of the report back.

And because the need exceeds what we have, when are we going to have the conversation about even if it's five million, seven million touching some type of reserve, whether it's the prudent or another?

Um this is the time to have that conversation.

This is the first time in my adult life that the federal government has gutted our safety net.

So I don't know what else we're waiting for other than the pandemic.

So I think this is just the start of the conversation.

I I don't I well I felt the same way until it was described to me, and it was by the late Will Machan who said, Well, I said it's raining.

Well, we've always had money, and we've always had a reserve, and it was described to me as when an earthquake flattens our buildings, that's when we use reserves, and we're not in that situation.

Reserves are there, at least the the way the county has always operated.

I don't disagree with the safety net is being flattened.

Okay.

Um, it's been flattened before.

I'm not saying I disagree, I'm just saying what what our board agreed policies have been is that that reserve is protected until things like what was described.

And I don't again, I'm not arguing, I'm just saying that that's a I understand why Susan isn't going there with reserves.

That's a conversation we probably need to have as a board.

So yeah.

Um when we have our discussions monthly, and or when you come to health, I would recommend and hope that this is an agendized item for every health committee meeting.

What's an update on this?

What have we done lately?

And for every conversation that we have, I want to, and my staff has it's going to be around these items because they it's hundreds of millions of dollars.

And the details behind each of these, I haven't seen, you know, um 58% going to Oakland and X percent going to Fremont and X percent going to the Tribe Valley.

I want to make sure that it's being spent equitably because we have people that have needs in other parts of the county besides North County.

We have needs in the Tribe Valley, we have needs in Fremont.

And so I'm gonna be asking questions around this framework, how it was responds to my district for both the home together and everything.

Yeah, understand.

Thank you.

So uh, President Halbert, if I could also weigh in on this framework.

Yeah.

Um, so just briefly, I'm supportive of the general direction that we just discussed.

I will just reiterate that I do think for health care and behavioral health care.

There is just so much that's uh at stake, and so much that is being uh stripped away.

So I do want to make sure that we are really thoughtful about what's needed in terms of bridge funding for the next two years, and that is where I would be supportive of potentially reaching into our reserves, whether it's the prudent reserve or another reserve.

Um, I am also very concerned about food security, just knowing that the need has not gone down and the funding has not increased.

So those are just a few of the things I really want us to pay attention to.

Thank you.

With that said, so we'll plan to bring it back in April.

And I, you know, I think all the issues you know you raise are consistent with the fine the financial and budget update in terms of the limitations, the competing priorities.

Um, and I think we need to look and reserves, and we need to look across all of the funding sources and make some strategic decisions about which resources to you setting priorities, which resources we should use to be able to maximize those resources and make the most of leveraging opportunities as well.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that what's the date of the uh April work study session?

It's currently scheduled for 23rd or something.

Right now in um April, you have a work session, which is the early budget work session where we would present the program maintenance of effort budget.

So we'd have to schedule another time to come back.

Is that the one where all the departments come in?

Correct.

Yeah, and that's currently scheduled for April 14th.

So staff and in my office and departments are busy working on developing their maintenance of effort um budgets.

Do we have a follow-up to this work study session scheduled yet?

Not yet.

Not in April.

So we need to schedule a channel.

Okay.

So when we do have a date, let's make sure you know everybody knows.

The agenda may come out the day before, but we'll all know.

Sure.

Uh maybe at the health committee meeting or our next board meeting, we can make remarks on when that will be.

Yeah, we'll work on a schedule and understand that there'll be potentially additional meetings or additional work sessions scheduled.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, on to item two II, Department of Children and Family Services status update on findings of the state auditors report to the joint committee on legislative audits.

Um, but I don't know.

Let me ask the Cheryl, is there another Zoom link for the other meeting?

The same Zoom link.

Just because we're got a lot of people switching over, we're gonna head off to another item.

We're gonna just recess for five minutes.

All right, let's um reconvene to our open session.

I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Supervisor Marquez, Supervisor Tam, present Supervisor Miley, Supervisor Personado Boss, President Halburn.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

I note the lateness of the hour, and that said, some have suggested that maybe we continue this item, but I don't think we want to do that.

This is super important.

We're going to hear this item.

I also note we're an hour and eight minutes past the time that we have a separate special meeting that was scheduled, a bit of a last minute scheduling, but uh also a very important item.

So we will um get it all done by proceeding through the rest of this agenda and then opening our 330 special meeting when we get to that point in time.

That said, we now have a social services agency presentation, department of children and family services status update number six on the findings of the state auditors report.

I'll now turn the meeting over for presentation.

Michelle Love, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

This afternoon we'll be reviewing the 2024 108 audit report timeline, providing information about the California Department of Social Services on site visit.

We'll be um partnering with our system partners from Alameda County's behavioral health department.

We will be providing a follow-up from Senator Dr.

Wahhab's February 27th task force meeting, going over our hiring and recruitment efforts, addressing department highlights and opportunities, progress on addressing all recommendations, and looking at some DCFS legislative opportunities.

So the California Department of Social Services on site visit purpose of it will be to review the operations of the Department of Children and Family Services.

One focus group with Chat Welfare Supervisors from multiple programs.

Dr.

Karen Tribble, James Wagner, and Alicia Hodges.

Thank you, President Halbert and to the board and county leaders.

And I'm pleased just to have been invited to participate.

Our goal, we will be very brief, is as a system partner when the audit and before came up, we thought it was our responsibility to be a support and collaborate.

So there's some updates that we like to share from the outside system component, but certainly we will be deferring to our agency partners and social services.

Before I begin, you will hear a few updates.

Again, we just have a few brief slides.

One to respect the time given the tremendous amount of important feedback and information you've gotten today.

But we want to acknowledge that at the end of the day, there is an existing interagency MOU.

And so there are many different partners.

AC Health, Behavior Health is represented, social services, obviously taking the lead.

Our county office of education is involved, probation is involved.

So you have many different leaders and team members at the table regarding some of this work.

There is an MOU, you'll hear about that in progress.

I want to acknowledge that there's some leadership conversations that have been happening that may allow us to be more stretchy as a county to be support to this population, as well as data sharing, and there's some additional developments that we'd like to share with you.

Next slide, please.

So this is just a visual image of the structure.

AB 2083 was passed in 2018, and it essentially required every county to develop a structure, uh, an interagency leadership structure.

What Alameda County does have is a strong commitment and history to partnership.

So that has been uh fantastic an asset for the county.

So that partnership essentially is why I'm here speaking because there's many different individuals that are really trying to come together to be of support.

Um, as you can see on the outside, essentially, the children's quote system of care.

This was essentially helped to be solidified through uh AB 2083.

And so in that work, there was a joint commitment to develop an MOU, which was one of the required elements of it.

The good thing again is that LU County have the basis by which to develop an MOU, and that is in place and was developed a few years ago.

Um, locally, you will see again the intersections of the agencies that I that I mentioned, and so those themes that you see in the circle is the what the goal is of the interagency work, high level and more strategic.

And I think it has been spoken about earlier this evening in even at many different levels.

We're speaking, we're gonna be um talking more about outcomes and what we're looking for as a system.

Uh, next slide.

This is simply a very uh simplified version of the hard work that's happening on the ground.

You'll see um at the bottom essentially because the the leaders and the true work really happens by some operational leaders, but an interagency coordinating council was was uh established locally, and again, that is spearheaded and led by those agencies that I mentioned, and that is all the obviously as part of AB uh 2034 uh excuse me, 2083, and an interagency leadership team had to also be established.

And so those partners have to be in coordination and in partnership and actually have to look systemically on improving the system.

So the governance is around the ICC.

Um, I'm representing um AC Health or uh for behavior health at the table, as well as uh social services, obviously uh school district, county uh school district, probation, and others are at the table there.

And the interagency lead team really look at the systematic problems, any barriers or issues that are happening in foster youth, and their goal is to work through that.

Yes.

Is this the same group that Supervisor Steele used to convene?

I don't believe so.

It's through the uh AB 2083, so it's fairly new within the last few years.

Sounds like the same.

Yeah, pardon me.

Similar partners to the interagency children's policy council.

That was a big um thing for supervisors still.

But this is different.

Legislative by the state.

Yes.

But was that safe serving the same function?

No.

What is slightly different, and I want to make sure I'm correct, is that it is uh moves from policy to actually operational changes.

So literally, there have if there is policy, it's around how the agencies work together, how it's impacting the community, what the outcomes look like, and how if there's anything important that needs to happen on the ground, service delivery.

So that's really the primary function of this, and it is established by the state.

And can I add Dr.

Tribble, please?

Um, for the interagency coordinating council, that was convened as a result of the joint meeting in September of 2023 when um former assembly member Deion Arener was here with that group.

We then formed the um interagency coordinating council as the net as a body overseeing the work of the ILT, which is the group that Michelle Love sits on with her peers.

That's right.

So again, in this structure, as you can see, then the on-the-ground coordination really really happens and is informed by the governance of the ICC, but again, the work that actually happens to change and forward.

Uh next slide, please.

Um very briefly, what we wanted to illustrate is this is behavior health data.

What we did was we correlated based on what we were hearing from social services to then track back to the actual youth that are being served.

So what we found is we're serving about um 960 individuals, as you can see the breakdown, and that represents nearly 96% of some of the youth that are coming in and out of foster care.

So this identification from behavioral health was our strategy to help actually in real time get in and support them preemptively.

Uh, even if the individuals who were doing well or they were stable or not, we thought that was very important.

Um, we often are asked how many youth are high need, and I'll I'll defer to our partners to speak to that.

There is a group that actually looks at um those that are highest need who are really at risk, who have gone through multiple systems, maybe quote highest cost, uh, but just needs a better strategy process.

And of that, that's a very small amount, but it still does touch the individuals.

And as you can see, most of who behavior health and social services are being are served, are represented by youth between the ages of uh, as you can see, 13 through 17.

So again, that is some of the intersections, as we know with JJC and other um uh school-based measures.

This is who we're talking about.

And if you look at next slide, we also through the partnership again, we were able to co-um even further extract.

I believe uh President talked about in in your uh particular districts.

So we did slice that information to show in terms of where people are being serviced and supported.

And what is important to note is you can see there's 32 percent of our shared clients that are out of county, and that's because the legislation AB uh 1051 shifted the responsibility.

So it we went full circle, but essentially it said now the funding and support needs to follow the youth, whether or not in the oversight and the accountability, whether or not they move out of county.

And so concretely, again, I won't speak for our social services partners, but we had to develop many different contracts without county, and thankfully your board has approved many of those specialty services or funding or placement opportunities for our social services partners.

So that's pretty fairly high, but it means there's a commitment to looking internal and external.

What's also important that we're hearing from our partners is it's not just a lack of availability.

There is a goal, obviously around family reunification.

So if there is kinship care opportunities and they don't live because the cost of living or other factors in Alameda, our social services partner, and we still will work jointly to provide some support.

Um but as you can see, a majority of those individuals are centralized in North County, Central, South, and East across the boards.

And as you can see, in terms of the breakdown, and this has been referenced in different uh era uh derivations.

Um African Americans don't make up a majority in Alaman County, as you can see, they make up uh nearly uh a large percentage of those individuals that are again touching both of our systems, as you can see, the highest proportion.

Next slide.

Um, that um there are a lot of strategies that we've developed, and so we want to speak a little bit about that.

We've actually changed some processes to allow for greater access to our social services partners to see if we can't support this work on their behalf.

Hello, uh Supervisors James Wagner, Deputy Director of Clinical Operations with Behavioral Health.

So uh child welfare probation and behavioral health have formed a high needs committee.

This is the group of youth that have a lot of needs and can take uh quite a few resources to stabilize.

Uh it's usually five youth or less, and we work together to stabilize those youth and put them in the right placement.

Um such uh things as general wellness, trauma-related support, community resources designed to stabilize and ensure their ongoing wellness.

Um over the past three years since 2022 when Cal Aim went into effect.

Uh ACBH has offered entry into our child services through both our access unit, which is the entry portal.

It's like when you call Kaiser and you have to deal with the customer service person first.

Our department has that, but you can also get a youth into services in our department through schools.

Um you can also uh get it through any of our community-based networks.

Uh, that information has been shared with child welfare, and uh there is an understanding how to make those referrals and into our system.

Next slide, but lots of easy access into our system now.

So there's also been an emphasis on coordinated care and timely access strategies, uh, statewide referral pathways, streamlining referrals, improve service access, and strengthening coordination between our three departments and across the state.

There's also a shared assessment tool now.

Uh, it is through a platform called Objective Arts, which behavioral health had an existing contract with that, and those assessments are now easily shared with child welfare and our other partners.

Um ACBH uh is in the process of hiring a behavioral health liaison role who will help uh coordinate and move youth through the system.

That's a new uh position for us, and then there's data infrastructure uh with shared referral tracking system that's currently under develop for monitoring timely access, identifying service gaps, support data information improvements, and monitor referrals.

In 2022, I think most of you know uh CalAM uh went into effect.

CalAM are administrative changes to Medi-Cal to make it more uh efficient and easy for the consumer to use.

That happened in the child uh system in 2022, which is partly why we were able to open our system up through so many referral portals that we didn't have before.

Under Cal AIM, youth under 21 involved in the child welfare or justice system are eligible for specialty mental health services, which are the services through the behavioral health department, and there is no longer medical necessity eligibility for youth under 21, and there is no wrong door now for youth to get into services.

Next slide.

And lastly, important to understand about the behavioral health department in our system that we have 150 different contracts with 84 community-based organizations.

Uh, providers are located through throughout Alameda County and across California to support county placements, community clinics, school-based programs, and out-of-county placements when necessary.

And again, school-based programs, 180 school campuses across 12 Alameda County school districts.

So we've long been embedded in Alameda County school systems, but now these foster youth can directly be admitted through the school that they are attending.

Okay, and that is the end of our presentation.

Next slide, please.

So a follow-up to Senator Dr.

Wahab's task force meeting on the 27th.

There were some outstanding questions, and we wanted to make sure you all had that information as well.

So there is a backlog of open referrals.

There is currently 1497 open referrals.

The backlog peaked at uh just under 4,000.

It was actually closer to 309, actually, it was 300, 3,997, and March 24, and we've reduced that number by approximately 57% through active effort.

The oldest referral has been open since 2021.

It's pending closure by a supervisor.

Um we were also asked about our emergency response daily staffing averages, and those are the people that are on the board.

We have a physical board that reflects the number of staff that are available at any given time to go out for an immediate referral.

Um that daily capacity has fluctuated between 10 and 14 workers across our um morning and our swing shifts.

Um after hours, we have a consistent number of eight staff.

Uh December 2025, there was actually 19.7.

I'm sorry, my parent has clicked at the wrong point.

19.7 was our average in December.

January was 15.6, and February it's down to 11.3.

We have learned that bachelor's level child welfare workers are showing higher retention in our ongoing case management programs.

Next slide, please.

So for uh accountability mechanisms, we are actually in a meet and confer with our supervisors union that began on January 12, 2026.

Um supervisors are able to accompany staff on home visits.

And our goal for this meet and confer is to standardize how we are providing oversight into cases.

MOUs and external partnerships.

Our family finding contract is soon to launch.

Um expected on April 1st, 2026.

And Dr.

Tribble discussed the MOU with our system partners.

Next slide, please.

Documentation, court report, and quality of notes.

Templates were developed to include service referral dates, monthly child visits, mental health, service tracking, and interagency collaboration.

That was completed November of 2024.

Supervisors were trained on the new template and a revised contact note strategy, and that was completed November 6, 2025.

And an investigation narrative setup process was developed to assist child welfare staff.

So instead of them spending the 45 minutes to an hour it takes to develop the actual narrative, those are being developed in the system for them by other staff.

Next slide, please.

I'm sorry, I was out of order on my slides.

Job fair.

So recruitment efforts for bachelors and masters child welfare workers.

Our next career fair that we'll be attending will be at UC Berkeley on March 17th.

Alameda County Social Services Annual Fair Chance Job Fair is April 24th, and the County of Alameda Job Fair is also on April 24th, 2026.

Next slide.

So just a couple of highlights for you all.

April 22nd, we will be celebrating our reunification breakfast.

We do that to celebrate the families who have recent reunified with their children.

May is foster care month, and we will be having our caregiver appreciation dinner on May 15th.

For collaboration, there was recently last Thursday, a retreat between the interagency leadership team and the interagency coordinating council.

Next slide, please.

So our progress on addressing timelines.

Timely supervisor review and approval of emergency response.

That really is pending the meet and confer with PACE, and we're hoping that concludes in April this year.

Recommendation two, review the status of referrals and identify impediments to timely referral investigations and completions.

We expect that to go through the entire audit period.

Develop strategies to address impediments to timeliness and referrals and investigation completion.

We have work with staff, and we are starting to roll out some of the things they've identified that may impede cases being referrals being assigned and then being completed.

Number four, survey staff to identify impediments to retention and recruitment.

This will be an ongoing process for us.

The next survey will be this summer.

Right now we're in the middle of focus groups for staff.

Next slide, please.

Recommendation number five: hire additional bachelor's child welfare workers for the emergency response program.

Hiring for the entire department will continue throughout the year.

Recommendation number six, make shadowing mandatory for new employees.

This has been completed.

Recommendation number seven, ensure documentation of timely services for foster youth.

This has been completed.

Recommendation number eight, update the children and youth system of care, MOU to provide for additional data sharing.

This is in progress.

Recommendation number nine, identify locate and notify all relatives within 30 days of removal.

This has been completed.

Next slide, please.

Update our system improvement plan to include provisions for sibling engaged engagement when siblings aren't placed together.

Your board approved this last December, so this has been completed.

Recommendation number 11 develop policies and procedures to track and minimize transitional shelter care facility overstays.

The policies have been developed, so that's completed.

The center is not open, so there's some ongoing work there.

Number 12 is to implement the policies and procedures to ensure quality evaluation of the transitional shelter care facility.

That's ongoing while we wait for the actual assessment center to open.

Next slide.

Number 13, develop and document a process to track core and continuing training.

That process has been developed.

We are two quarters into monitoring how our staff are doing with their training.

Recommendation number 14.

Establish a process to hold supervisors and workers accountable for completing hours.

Right now, we are using ongoing coaching and developing for supervisors and workers, and we will be looking at whether or not we develop a complementary policy to go along with it.

And finally, ensure all contracts include results-based accountability measures for timeliness.

We're expecting that to be actually completed this Friday, the last of the signatures we're expecting to come through.

Next slide.

So the Department of Children and Family Services, legislative opportunities.

So while all this is going on, there are some things to consider for legislative opportunities for us to pursue for the improvement of our system as a whole.

One of them is to explore the alignment with the federal one child one placement philosophy that is beginning to roll out.

This will require expanding specialized placement capacity and treatment resources for youth with complex needs by building a continuum that prevents unnecessary placement changes and supports youth in the least restrictive, most stable environment possible.

We can ensure that young people experience continuity, stabilize more effectively effectively, and exit the system with stronger long-term outcomes.

And finally, AB 14 1846.

As you go throughout the process, relatives lose preference, and this re-establishes that the court can give them preference for placement throughout the entire timeline of the case.

Questions.

Senator Dr.

Warhab's task force meetings.

We have been attending.

How are those going?

We've had one, we've had two to date.

How helpful are they?

Do they help you do your job?

No, they are.

I think it's important that we're transparent with the community and the work we're doing.

But it's a lot of presentations that we're preparing for.

How can we help you do your job better?

I I don't know how that we appreciate coming to the Social Services Committee and getting ongoing feedback and presenting to the full board to answer your questions.

I think that's been helpful.

Some of the guidance we've gotten from Supervisor TAM and Supervisor Fortin Alabama Ballas have been helpful as we move through this work.

And the Social Services Committee.

Continuum of care reform.

Yeah, I think I were discussing this last week.

The foster care children's bill of rights.

I think sometimes it gets can there is a problem with our high needs youth with a lot of complex care.

Um and when we built the continuum of care reform several years ago, it didn't really have a continuum.

So we struggle in Alameda County with finding placements for our highest needs youth.

Um the state has not moved on that placement shouldn't be able to say no to youth.

So sometimes we have youth and uh an S Tier and needing that highest level of care, but they have the opportunity to say no.

And so that's the child does the provider to say no.

And so when you look at the overstays that are mentioned in this audit, those overstays were direct result of no one in the state being well willing to take a youth for placement.

So the responsibility lays within the county and the department, but the state has been unwilling to address the fact that every provider can say no to our most challenging use.

Do you have the um enable are you enabled to suggest changes to state law?

We we have, yes.

Um Alameda County level or at an associate trade association level or how do you so AB 1846 literally came from our department?

It was something we thought would improve things.

Did it pass?

Um I think it's in process.

I think it's been it's got like an author, CWDA is supporting it.

I don't think they voted on it yet.

Was there a law that enabled the current condition, which is you can say no?

Did the law allow that?

That's the continuum of care that I'll be.

That's the continuum of care reform.

Okay, yeah.

And so we have tried as recently as last year to try to move that legislation some.

There isn't a lot of there isn't a groundwheel support from the state to move that law.

I would assume that if there's a task force that has state level people on it, that they would be receptive to these kinds of suggested uh laws.

Are there any other laws that tie your hands or prevent you and provide a barrier to you and your team to actually doing your job?

I'd say that's most significant.

I think that's the overlap Andrea was referencing with the foster care bill.

I'd like to find areas where we can agree to agree on and make progress on them.

It sounds like AB 1846 may be one of them.

It's unfortunate that we have this continuum of care reform um situation, and um it's disheartening that it hasn't been fixed before.

That's not your fault.

That's the fault of our state legislature.

Um, any other questions or comments seeing none?

Okay.

Um thank you for the presentation.

I really appreciate the collaboration and partnership with behavior health partners as well.

It's very important that we're looking at the whole person, the whole child.

So appreciate that um coordination.

This is um progress in the right directions.

I want to just acknowledge everyone's hard work on that.

And as I said in the past, this is our collective responsibility to get this right.

And thank you to President Halbert for flagging um some of the limitations that are um not our fault, but point back to the state legislators that want to point the finger at us, but they've created some of these issues as well.

Um, the other uh item I wanted to make sure we flag for the public, because I know you did a good job last time, but I didn't see it in this presentation.

Is a dashboard, and I tried looking for it.

So, yeah, I am actually because I brought Jennifer to talk about the dashboard, and we actually have it linked.

So we've made some adjustments to the dashboards.

I mean, can you tell us how to access it?

Like where is it at the end of the day?

Slide 14, and then we can direct you from there.

Yeah, thank you.

We can go to it.

And I apologize that your copy didn't have actually the dashboard so that you can reference that.

Okay.

I'm not sure that page was left off.

Oh, yeah.

Got it.

Okay.

So here is that slide.

While the dashboard, thank you, supervisors.

I'm gonna share a little bit about the updates that we've made to the dashboard.

One of the questions that came up in that last task force meeting was around the data sources that are used to populate the dashboard.

And so we added some additional clarification on the introductory page of the dashboard itself to clarify that most of the data that's on the dashboard is actually powered by data that's housed in our case management system, which is CWS CMS, and it's extracted via a number of different tools or sources, which are all labeled in a methodology kind of note on each individual dashboard chart.

But the introductory section is now updated to include like to clearly spell out that we're either relying on data from Safe Measures, which is those reports are developed by Evident Change.

We internally develop reports as well, extracting the data from CWS CMS using business objects.

And then there are data reports that are available on the University of California Berkeley website, the California Child Welfare Indicators Project.

And so some of the metrics come from there.

And then of course, our our human resources data around staffing comes from internal human resources data, but most of the metrics are actually coming from our child welfare system data.

Data is refreshed monthly for most of the metrics.

So you know, the the introductory page is is now updated.

And if you scroll down and we click on, I don't know if you want to actually look at the dashboard, but not the charts probably haven't been updated since they were last presented here.

But there are three main sections of a dashboard charts.

One is related to our child welfare referral investigations.

And so next to if you click on the plus sign next to that P on the Alameda County child welfare referral investigations.

Yeah, thank you.

We have five metrics that are related to emergency response.

One is just the overall number of open referral investigations.

And then we have metrics related to timely investigation in this initiation basically, and then timely referral closure, and those are broken out by both immediate response referrals and then 10-day referrals.

Now, if you can click on the plus sign and for any of them, and it will show it should show data going back to 2019.

It looks like here in this view right now, it's only going back the last a little bit of a shorter period of time, but you have the ability, there's a slider bar somewhere to look at a longer period of time so that you can compare the data going back to the period of time of the audit of the audit period.

And then the second uh there we go, you can see one of the other ones is popping up correctly.

And then the second category of and we've above each set of charts are the audit recommendations that they loosely correspond to so that you can read the audit recommendation uh and as it corresponds to the data metrics that we're including here.

The second category of charts are related to our staffing.

So we have both the vacancy rate as well as the number of vacancies in response to a previous request from your board to add in the both the number and the percentage.

And then the final category of uh charts that are on this dashboard right now are related to our our subset of our open cases as opposed to the open referrals that are addressed previously.

This is specifically for children in foster care related to a number of different well-being measures.

So what percentage of children in foster care are placed with all or some of their siblings, and then the percentage of children with a current medical and dental examination.

So these are the metrics, and and we're gonna continue to add additional charts or can continue to add additional charts as needed.

This is great.

This is really comprehensive, really appreciate.

I just have two more quick questions.

I don't know who can answer it best, but if you could just speak to, I heard you say there's gonna be another survey with staff, um, the child welfare workers, and then some focus groups.

So if you could just kind of summarize for us, what are the touch points to make sure we're also hearing from our workforce that's directly involved and engaged with this work in terms of how we can improve our systems?

And um, the next question is what's the next update?

Is it to Social Services Committee?

And do we have a date?

So the survey we'll be doing will be done every year.

We have some metrics from our first survey last year.

So we'll begin to compare how we're doing.

Are we improving in terms of creating a culture of safety, which has been directly linked to retention of staff?

We are hearing from staff at both the overview presentations we're giving them about the data, because we are interested in hearing what they think of it.

And in individual focus, we're having focus groups with staff in a smaller setting.

Sometimes people feel more comfortable.

Our next report to the Social Services Committee is at the end of this month.

I believe it's the 23rd.

It will be the fourth Monday in April.

Fourth Monday.

And then that is also the 23rd is also when I'll be uploading the information into the auditor's computer system.

So that report will give you the Social Services Committee a full report of what we've uploaded.

Can that report be sent to all of us on the board?

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

I will send it to the full board.

Just note that there will be some information redacted if it's confidential.

Any other questions, comments, supervisor for us?

Thank you for the presentation.

I do want to acknowledge that, you know, we were hearing about this in our social services committee, and that was very recent.

And then the board, um, the staff has been very responsive to my request for information, whether it's been on the dashboard or some of the recommendations.

So thank you.

Even this presentation was slightly updated from social services with the integration of behavioral health.

So thank you for all of that.

It really helps to show more of the systems of care and um the issues that came up at the last meeting in terms of the quality of the care, the status of the children.

How do we know, in addition to sort of um uh timing issues that the children are actually doing well?

So I appreciate the information that you've shown so far.

Um there might be a couple recommendations where I think we can get more information about the positive impact the work is having in addition to the timeline.

So, for example, recommendation seven, documentation of timely services taking place.

Um, you know, how are we tracking sort of the quality of those services and how children are doing?

Similarly, recommendation nine, locating relatives within the 30-day period.

You know, are we also keeping track of whether children are placed with relatives, for example?

And then uh recommendation number 10, the updated SIP.

I know it's in progress in terms of the action plan.

Um, how do we know that siblings are being uh reunited?

So I don't know if you can speak to that now.

I can speak to one of them right now.

Okay, great.

And maybe uh as we have these updates, we can also kind of pull out more of the qualitative information in addition to the data and get a little bit more about you know the impact, the positive impact in terms of placing children and reuniting them with families.

So I would say the quality of the documentation.

One of the reasons why we didn't leave the um the contact information just in contact notes, and we put it in the court reports is one that we have more system partners involved in reviewing it.

But we're no longer just asking workers to say, did they go to therapy?

We're asking how many times did they go to therapy?

If in the course of the workers' home visit, they're asking questions.

How is therapy going for you?

So it's a little above what is required by the state, but it gives us some information as well as the judge and the child's attorney and the parent attorney know how the youth feel about the services they're being given.

So we've kind of um stretched out the qualitative information that uh we would normally include about services a youth is receiving.

Um, some of the other ones we can look at.

I mean, the data is on the dashboard right now about siblings being placed together.

And we can look at um do we add like kids placed with relatives and things like that?

All that data we have and we can bring back and we'll definitely have it included in our presentation at the end of the month for you all to have as well.

So just for clarification, because that's still quantitative.

When you mentioned qualitative supervisor, can you say more about uh is it the storytelling behind the children being placed or the siblings being placed together?

Just more examples.

Yes, um, it is some it is the storytelling, and maybe it's additional data in terms of number of siblings placed together or we reunited with their family members, or you know, to the issue that you were explaining, high needs children being placed sooner, you know, and not having providers say no.

So the latter may be more difficult in terms of high needs children being placed.

The sibling information is absolutely on the dashboard currently.

Um, all or some of the siblings placed together in terms of placement with relatives, that is not on the dashboard, but that is information that could be included.

Um, in terms of the qualitative, how siblings feel about being placed together, I don't know where we would draw that down in terms of stories.

Um I'll have my senior management talk about if there's some way that we can bring that information back to you.

I'm looking at them, they're like, Yeah, we can come up with something to present it, our next um presentation for you.

I appreciate that if that's possible.

I mean, ultimately, you know, we know our goals are about protecting children, supporting families, maintaining trust.

So anything that helps to supplement the data, which is great.

The dashboard is terrific and it's been improving in a relatively short amount of time.

Um, but anything to supplement that, I think, so we know that the children um and the quality of service that they're getting is where we want it to be.

Thank you.

I also want to uh echo my appreciation uh for the presentations that you've made at the Social Services Committee and being responsive to some of the suggestions we made as far as like improving um the dashboard, looking at the history, making sure that uh we find a way to communicate our progress on the recommendations.

I know that um former assembly member Dion Erner, as you know, was at our last social services committee meeting, and she wanted to understand better the efforts with the collaboration with the outside uh external agencies that work on um children's welfare.

And I I know that um director Ford had talked about an upcoming meeting, and so maybe there were some opportunities to communicate uh some of these activities through that collaborative because um making sure that we document timely service is certainly one of the recommendations, and we have a way, but I was finding that we got so much into the weeds into the recommendation and the audit that I think um former assembly member Dion Aaron are kind of like maybe lost track of how we can communicate uh project that qualitative um positioning that we we talk about about the outcomes of the agency, how well we're doing, how children are doing in general, because you will always get um outliers as with any type of service, but we want to communicate overall uh the welfare of the children in our county, and if we can do that through that collaborative effort or or are ways in which it's it's not so dashboardy, uh that might be more helpful.

Yeah, um, former assembly assembly member um Aaron or comments um is what prompted us to invite behavioral health to start help telling the story about what's happening in in both of our systems because they are they are at the table with us in the children's um coordinating council.

We also have first five.

I don't think Dr.

Triple mentioned them, but they're at the table with us as well.

Um, and the behavioral health collaborative, I think at the last social services committee meeting, um, we didn't have a replacement for Matthew, and at the last one we had the last meeting we had, Nergio's was there, and she let us know she wouldn't be permanent, but they will be sending a permanent person um to the future meetings.

So we will have more information to share uh moving forward, and at the um retreat that Michelle mentioned on slide 18, department highlights and opportunities.

We were talking about the next iteration of AB 2083 MOU and really going beyond the mandates, um, just doing more than what the law says we should be doing.

So I think you'll be you'll start hearing more about what we're doing collaboratively countywide.

I appreciate that.

And I know the effort that you uh undertook just recently in terms of trying to work with the consulate to reunite some immigrant children um with the Mexican consulate, that's something that I think was helpful.

That's something that I think was helpful.

Um but in terms of like the providers, uh, do we have a high percentage or relative to others that say no to high needs kids?

Um yeah, I think um when you deal with commercially sexually exploited children, it's a difficult population to work with.

That is difficult for people.

The state has implemented like a harm reduction model, understanding that these behaviors will happen with people that have been traumatized to encourage providers to say yes to them, but it's a matter of um there just aren't as many as there were several years ago.

I mean, the number of treatment facilities or what we used to call group homes has gone from around 5,000 to probably like under 2,000.

So just the population, there aren't that many, and there aren't that many in Alameda County.

We have been lucky with the ones in Alamina County and our we have some good partners in Contra Costa County that only take our kids.

So um we've done a good job trying to keep kids close when we can.

Um, but there's always a need.

So Michelle, briefly, can you um say what SCRTP stands for?

Because you did use the acronym, but I don't know if everyone knows what an SDRT is.

Yeah, so that is short-term residential treatment facility.

It's the highest level of care um that children use.

So I'd like to see if there's any public comment on this item.

Raise your hand or if you're in person, fill out a speaker slip card.

Do we have any?

Yes, President Harbor, we do have a total of six in-person speaker slips.

I'm not showing any current hands raised in Zoom for this current item.

If I can call the names for those in speakers, just call all six and come on up and noting that I'm two hours after another meeting.

You can be as brief or as up to two minutes as you want.

Two minutes, okay.

You call them all six.

Okay.

Tony Puentes, Nathan Hansford, Christian pause or Paz, David Padilla, Padia, Drew Scott, and Iman.

Please approach the podium.

Please state your name for the record before you begin your comments.

Thank you.

This was for the ground three.

Was that everybody?

Apologies.

Okay.

I'm happy to speak on both.

Okay.

Thank you.

This is No, I only signed up for the next.

Is there anybody online?

No.