Good evening, everybody.

Welcome to the April 7th Fair Review Mac meeting.

First item, Pledge of Allegiance.

Ms.

Philbin, will you lead us in that?

Thank you.

And can we get a member roll call, please?

Council Councilmember Farmer, excused Councilmember Higgins.

Councilmember Philbin here.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Chair England.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

We'll move on to opening public comments.

You have three minutes to speak on anything not on the agenda tonight.

If you wish to speak, please turn in a card over here to Ashley.

First speaker is Officer Popst.

Can you guys hear me okay?

All right.

Do I need to get closer or a little bit?

All right.

Yes, my command presence.

All right.

Well, it's nice to see you all.

I hope you're enjoying this beautiful weather and say staying safe out there.

In March, we were pretty proactive in the Fairview area.

We issued 35 traffic citations.

There were five non-injury crashes and three injury crashes.

We had one DUI arrest.

There were no stolen vehicles recovered in the community, but uh the sheriff's office also reports on those stats as well.

So we didn't have any.

Uh, I just wanted to point out that Officer Barcini has a trainee right now, so he's a field training officer.

So he is showing the trainee, the community of Fairview and explaining him the importance of community policing.

However, he can't spend as much time in Fairview due to the fact that he has to uh show the trainee the different areas of the entire community that we patrol.

Let's see, today is uh Golden Gate Division's distract distracted driving enforcement day.

So hopefully you didn't see us or get stopped by us today.

Um but maybe you did see us out on patrol, and there's a lot of us out there, so that's what we're doing.

We're focusing on distracted driving when it comes to cell phones, eating, doing your makeup.

Uh, there's a plethora of things that people do while driving, and we want you to focus on driving so that you don't get into a vehicle crash.

Uh can ongoing enforcement that we have.

We went out to 2nd Street.

Um, we're patrolling that area more often.

And I've also sent our senior volunteers through the area to report back to us if uh Officer Barceni is busy at the time or the beat unit is busy as well.

And as always, D Street and Fairview at Oaks, the main thoroughfares through Fairview.

We're continuing to monitor.

Upcoming events, April 28th and 29th.

We have the first uh maximum enforcement period for our entire department, and that focus is going to be on speed.

So this is your warning.

You shouldn't speed at all, but definitely not on that day.

Um, and on April 20th, we have 12 new CHP officers reporting to our office, and that will mean that we are uh fully staffed, which I don't know when the last time our office was fully staffed, but we're a training office and we're able to accommodate having more trainees in our uh area.

So that's good news for everyone throughout our community that we patrol because that means that eventually there'll be more officers out on the streets.

Um April 14th at 6 o'clock p.m.

We are hosting a start smart class at CHP Hayward.

If you know a youth that needs to attend or would like to attend, contact our office during normal business hours.

And April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, where we need to refocus on and take responsibility for our choices while out on the road.

As always, I'm taking traffic complaints at 345 reckless driving at chp.ca.gov or call our office during business hours at 510 489-1500.

Thank you.

Have a great meeting.

Can't talk to me.

Next speaker is Matt Turner.

Good evening, everybody.

Uh, I'm here to talk about the um districting process going on in Oraloma, which affects everyone in Fairview, uh, as well as folks in Castro Valley, Ashland, Cheryland, San Lorenzo, Hayward Acres, Hayward, and San Leandro.

It's about 150,000 people that were asking to participate.

The best ways to do that are to visit you mapit.com, Y-O-U-M-A-P-I-T.com and visit Oraloma's website at Oraloma.org.

They have a fancy new long name, but that's too hard to get across in the microphone.

Anyway, the process there is to for the first time in the 115 year history of the Oraloma Sanitary District move to buy district rather than at-large elections.

So this will uh this same steady service as always um but the electoral districts will be divided so that there's a better chance that somebody from where you live uh has a shot at being in person rather than having 60% of the district being um represented by 20% of the people.

So we will uh endeavor to to roll that out over the next month uh the first round of drafts has already been submitted at as of April 1st it was no no joke uh and the next uh drafts are uh from here on can be submitted up until May 1st uh next April 14th next Tuesday the Oraloma board will be uh reviewing this first round of drafts doing some live editing and workshopping so if anybody wants to tune in and see how these tools are used I strongly recommend they do so I'll also be at farmers markets in San Leandro Hayward and Castro Valley um over the coming month uh and I'll have library hours to help people uh who want to um learn how to use the tool at umapit.com anyway thank you for your time next speaker is Rita Duncan thank you good evening I uh want to ditto what Matt said I didn't know he was coming but our next meeting excuse me um will be April 14th at Tuesday for the redistricting and and I'd like to invite all of you to come and I this is a time for you know our customers and our ratepayers should really get involved and and making making sure that they are a representative represent it and um again my um Matt said that you can go and you map it and you have an opportunity to design your own map um see what um fair fairview looks like with their community and um to make sure that the lines are drawn in a way that you feel comfortable so I just invite all of you to come and you can also go on Auraloma website and there's a link to go and you can find about all the information and I have it here I don't know how you guys um share information with the other uh fairview community but I did print this out so it has all of the future meetings thank you for the time uh blast in person is peter rosen uh um kelly go ahead all right thank you for um giving me the time um yeah as as uh you you go through this meeting and and you look at um you know all these um the slides and flow charts and uh org charts and all these things um a lot of these things are are uh some of these things are based everyone thinks that they know um how the county works or how it's structured and it turns out that uh hardly anybody does actually know because nobody actually looks at the org chart that they put on the county website um and if you if you actually understood how how that works um you'd uh see how complicated it is and why it is that uh people can't figure out the you know how to get their services or what's going on or who who does what all this stuff because it's it's complicated and it's designed to be that way it's very confusing um and so it's very easy to fall into automatic assumptions that are just wrong uh fictional um so let's uh you know kind of look at uh you know all these department heads um they all report in to the board of supervisors they don't uh it looks like they report in to the county administrator but they don't that's kind of um kind of an advisory or budget role but um then you say okay well the the county minister controls our budget and then you'd be wrong because um a lot of these department heads and the county doesn't actually a lot of the money it it spends it doesn't or makes it doesn't actually make its own money like it gets money from you know the state or the federal government or um and for example if uh when roads get uh built or repaved or whatever um a lot of times that's coming from uh the state and that money goes

But um then you say, okay, well, the the county minister controls our budget, and then you'd be wrong because a lot of these department heads and the county doesn't actually a lot of the money it it spends, it doesn't or makes it doesn't actually make its own money, like it gets money from you know the state or the federal government, or um, and for example, if uh when roads get uh built or repaved or whatever, um a lot of times that's coming from uh the state, and that money goes to a certain a certain department, and they can spend the so they have their own funding source, and it's not from the county, it's from the state.

And same with like let's say health services or whatever.

There's a lot of uh outside uh funding sources that uh these are that they're tapping, and that's what that's how it works.

So that means that uh the funding isn't really controlled by inside the county, it's kind of controlled by how good of a job are they doing and going out and getting the funding they need from all the funding sources that are out there, and then a lot of them are not in the and not inside the county.

So uh when you when you hear phrases like the executive authority of the uh county administrator's office, um the it it sounds that sounds like a uh fictional phrase.

That that sounds like um uh something that doesn't exist.

Um and you you know when you when you look at at all the all the the the structures and things that you want the your county how you want your county to be organized, um you know you can you can have those uh opinions and ideas, but um you should really try to figure out how are they organized right now?

And it's really complicated.

Thanks.

Last in person speakers, Keith Barrows.

Hello.

Um I came up here to uh to beat a dead horse from a grunt's point of view uh regarding the uh oral lumber mapping issue.

It's a it's it's a great thing.

I I really encourage everybody to participate.

I went to the last uh meeting and looked at and have looked on the site and seen some of the maps that were drawn, and um what got my attention right away was that I saw that uh my community, San Lorenzo on two of the different proposal maps was literally cut in half.

Um if you don't want your community to be cut in half for somebody's political purposes or whatever the agenda happens to be, I suggest you take a look at it and give your input and let's make some maps that uh really are are fair to everyone.

That's all I gotta say.

Mike Justice Mike, please unmute Mike Justice.

Okay.

Mike, you show muted online.

Do we have any other public speakers?

Mike going once, twice.

Sorry, next time.

All right, we'll go ahead and close public comment.

Next item on business, March third meeting minutes.

Do we have any comments from the public?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?

I move we approve the minutes as submitted.

I second we get a vote, please.

Um you ask for um conversation.

You ask for discussion.

Any discussion?

Seeing none, take a roll call vote, please.

Uh council member farmer, excuse council member Higgins.

Councilmember Feldman.

Aye.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Hi.

Chair Englin.

I thank you.

Motion passes.

Moving to the regular calendar.

Item number one, Alameda County Sheriff's Office, use of crime technology.

It is an informational item from Sergeant Cully.

Is he joining us online?

Sergeant Cully will be joining us online.

It looks like there is just an issue signing on, so he's doing that now.

So if we can just give him just a couple of minutes, and he will be on.

Okay.

Chair, do you want to take maybe a five-minute break?

Just so the room doesn't have to be quiet.

You bet.

Take five minutes.

Great.

Welcome back.

Can we get another roll call?

Councilmember Farmer, excuse.

Councilmember Higgins.

Councilmember Philbin here.

Councilmember Rhodes.

Here.

Chair Englin.

Sure.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

And we've also got Sergeant Cully now online.

Are you prepared?

Yes, I am.

Thank you.

Great.

The floor is yours.

Fantastic.

I appreciate the uh time.

Unfortunately, I cannot be there in person.

I'm actually at a uh real-time crime center conference with the sheriff in Nashville right now, but this uh meeting was uh important enough that we still wanted to um provide some information and make sure everybody was informed uh about what we do and kind of what's coming up at the board of supervisors here uh in in a couple of weeks.

So we put together a little presentation um certainly we'll be available to answer some questions at the end, and uh hopefully everybody will leave here feeling a little bit more um informed as to what the sheriff's office has going on technology wise, and um I'm hoping that you will make your own opinions and voice those opinions to the board.

Um so uh go ahead and uh next slide.

A little bit of uh introduction.

Um I am currently the supervisor of our real-time information center.

Uh, what is that?

Well, it's a technology-based um investigative unit that deals with information in well, real time um and disseminating that.

I'm gonna show you some of the things that we use um within the real-time crime center.

I've been with the sheriff's office for uh just over 20 years, worked a variety of uh assignments, um, but this current assignment I've been in for about three years, and and I've really kind of uh built this from the ground up.

Uh, we haven't shared a lot of information with the public.

Um, we've just kind of put everything together.

It's taken a long time to obtain some of these software platforms and um equipment.

Fairview is is very familiar with with Flock LPR cameras.

That's one of the things we're gonna be talking about.

That's kind of the the main thing we're gonna be talking about tonight.

Uh, but nonetheless, uh now that we've got this built, wanted to uh kind of share this with everybody.

So we're going around the county um to the unincorporated jurisdictions and and going to all of the different meetings, uh community meetings, HOA meetings, and sharing this information.

So Arctic is what we refer to it as.

It's dedicated to enhancing public safety through security uh throughout Alameda County and primarily um disseminating timely information to first responders, so not just law enforcement, but fire paramedics uh and our outside agency partners.

We've really developed some relationships with the highway patrol, Hayward Police, San Leandro, on some of our other neighboring jurisdictions within the county.

Next slide.

So you may have seen uh specifically license plate readers in the news lately.

Uh this has been a point of contention, um, and there's been a lot of misinformation that has been disseminated.

Unfortunately, at the last board meeting, one of the board of supervisors heard uh quite a few people that are not from the unincorporated area come to the board meeting and provide uh a bunch of well factless baseless information that was false.

Uh and it was enough to sway them to pull the item for further discussion.

Um the sheriff's office utilizes technology to support proactive policing um and crime prevention, and it helps us respond to incidents, and I'm gonna show you uh really how we use that.

Uh but most importantly, the sheriff herself, um, very committed to transparency, uh, accountability and and community collaboration.

So your questions, your input is very important to how we steer the ship, how we police this jurisdiction.

Um we try to to use technology and every tool possible to to make your uh or our jurisdiction uh safe together.

Next slide.

So a couple of years ago, uh the sheriff said, Hey, we want you to create a real-time information center.

I said, I don't know what exactly that is.

Um we don't have any in the county.

In fact, we didn't have any in the Bay Area for being the technology leader.

Uh so I Googled what that was, it gave me this futuristic image, still didn't quite explain exactly what it was.

Um, I had to actually do quite a bit of traveling up and down the state, visiting other locations that had already had these real-time information centers or real-time crime centers in place, and learned a lot.

Um, and I found out that we were actually way behind the times.

Um, and we had a uh a lot to do.

Next slide.

So we started small, um, and you'll you'll see how we have grown substantially and added quite a bit of technology to this unincorporated uh area, uh, especially in the Castro Valley Fairview um locations.

So it started with two small desks, myself and one crime analyst and a TV.

Next slide.

And uh we've now built out quite a sophisticated center.

Um there is quite a bit of technology that is software-based, uh, that I you know you can't really see from a picture.

Um, but we have acquired and procured quite uh a variety of investigative tools to really help us um leverage some of the the cameras, the existing cameras, the infrastructure, um, but also some uh some new additions.

Drones um are not new to the sheriff's office, but the way that we're using a drone first responder program is new, um, along with some new situational cameras that uh we've placed strategically in Castro Valley.

Uh believe we have a little video that kind of shows some stuff.

Go ahead, next slide.

And you can hit playing, we're gonna get to get next slide.

So our real-time information center is comprised of uh three key pieces of software and equipment, along with uh obviously professional staff.

Uh it doesn't matter how much technology we get if we don't have people behind the computers operating this information, vetting this information, and then relaying it.

Um it really has no use.

The first part is the automated license plate readers.

Um I know over the years, Fairview has had these long actually before the sheriff's office has had these.

Um, and you've certainly seen the benefits.

Um we've utilized the those license plate readers to uh solve a significant amount of crime.

I really truly believe that uh Fairview, not just because of the way it's situated, but has also seen a reduction in crime just because the the cameras themselves prevent crime.

Um, part of my job is to debrief uh you know criminal elements, and we we've had individuals that have said we stay away from the Fairview area because we know they have cameras.

Um since then, the sheriff's office has acquired nearly a hundred of these license plate reader cameras, strategically put them all throughout the the jurisdiction.

And the good thing is is that Fairview's cameras um we we share.

And so the cameras that were existing within the Fairview neighborhood actually feed into our real-time information center and want a vehicle that's stolen carjacking involved in robbery, you name it a missing person, rolls through the Fairview neighborhood, and it hits on one of your HOA cameras.

Um, we get that alert.

The second part is uh flock safety's pan tilt zoom cameras, which are also known as Condor cameras.

Um, I have the ability to control those cameras within the real-time information center.

Uh, we have those strategically positioned throughout Castro Valley, mostly at our high crime areas uh along main thoroughfares.

And then our drone first responder program.

When we get a call for service, um, we're able to launch a drone and get it overhead and provide information to the responding deputies long before their arrival.

Uh, we'll kind of go into each one of these uh in more detail.

Next slide.

Uh at the beginning, we did not have any staff, so we move some deputies um and myself from other units to create this, and then we also have a crime analyst and a sheriff technician that currently uh now work in the unit.

So there's uh four of us.

Continue.

Next slide.

Uh we're in the process of procuring a senior crime analyst position through the county through human resources.

I believe uh we're going to begin interviews for that position in the next few weeks.

Um, and that will that that position will also help us with investigative support and be uh an individual working within the real-time information center.

Next slide.

Uh, before we go into each piece of technology, it's important to know that uh every police agency in Alameda County has adopted flock safety automated license plate readers.

We are actively sharing with all of those agencies.

More importantly, we do not share with the federal government.

We do not share our license plate reading technology with immigration or ice, and we do not share our license plate data with any agencies outside of California.

The sheriff's office owns the data, it belongs to us.

Uh, so we can control who we share with.

Uh, but the network of cameras, uh, all the way from from Berkeley all the way down to um Fremont and out to to Livermore really has provided a safety net for this county.

Uh, we have seen auto theft decrease by half.

In 2022, there was over a thousand stolen vehicles just in the unincorporated area.

Um, as uh we've implemented this technology, we're taking less than 200 stolen vehicle reports a year.

Um, quite a significant impact uh these cameras, and it's because of the sharing with these outside agencies.

As we get a stolen vehicle, if we do get one, it's uh put into the stolen vehicle system, and we can see it traveling through all of these jurisdictions because we're sharing cameras.

Uh, we're able to work together and apprehend these people and return people stolen property much faster.

Next slide.

This is all done through uh several software platforms, but the the main one is called Flock OS.

This is where all of our license plate reader data, all of our flock pan-tilt zoom cameras, and all of our drones all are fed into one panel of glass, one screen.

It's extremely intuitive.

Uh, all of these systems integrate together.

So the county is invested heavily into all of these systems because they all talk to each other.

Uh, if we were to lose any one of these systems, if the board of supervisors does not vote to approve our license plate reader cameras here on the 21st, that's going to be a big piece of the pie that's going to be missing.

Next slide.

Prior to any deputy or investigator or any employee for that matter, utilizing the flock system, they must accept and agree that they will not use this tool for immigration enforcement.

We will not use this tool for any sort of reproductive care enforcement or gender affirming enforcement.

Any use of that is not only against state law, but is also against department policy.

And those individuals would be held uh likely criminally uh liable.

Next slide.

Again, then the next pop-up that deputies get when they go to use this system specifically says that this is prohibited for immigration enforcement, enforcement of reproduction, gender affirming health care, harassment, intimidation, or any use that is not for law enforcement purposes and could harm a protected class.

We don't use this against anybody for sex religious, any sort of uh race or personal use.

This is for law enforcement uh use only.

Next slide.

The cameras on the right, you've probably seen them.

That's what they look like.

Um, they are in public places.

These are places where everybody has a right to be, and anybody could film or take pictures of anything they wanted.

Um, there is no expectation of privacy.

Um, as you drive past these cameras, it is recording the image, but no one's watching that.

I'm not sitting in my office watching you drive down to safe way to get groceries.

Uh, what's happening is if a stolen vehicle or a wanted vehicle or uh an amber alert with a kidnapping uh or or a missing person drives past this camera, we get an alert.

And the alert is what you see on the left.

It gives us a picture of the car and a location.

Why this is better than what we used to do is now instead of trying to find a needle in a haystack, it gives us a very specific area to look for.

Uh that car in the picture is a black Lexus.

If I described a black Lexus to you, um, without seeing a picture, there could be a number of varieties uh of black Lexuses, different years, models, makes uh rims, bumper stickers, uh window tint damage, you name it.

However, with this system, we get a picture of the car, and we know exactly what we're looking for.

This mitigates any um mistaken identity or us stopping the wrong car.

Next slide.

The sheriff's office, as I mentioned, is committed to transparency.

So we have uh posted you can scan that QR code if you so wish.

It will take you to our transparency portal where we post all of our automated license plate reader data, as well as we'll get into the drone first responder, but there's a drone first responder dashboard that shows all of our flights and statistics as well.

There is nothing that is top secret about any of this.

Obviously, some of the information is uh related to investigations and the law enforcement sensitive, but there is nothing top secret about these these cameras, they're not hidden, they're not covert, we're not collecting data on any anybody.

Um, these are pictures of vehicles in public.

Next slide.

Unless anybody needs that to scan, we can always go back to it.

These are the uh flock candor, uh sorry, condor cameras.

You'll see them on the uh left.

It uh is just a small pan-tilt zoom white camera.

These are essentially traffic cameras.

Uh, these are uh the second component of the real-time crime center, and these give us a live view of different locations.

They have quite uh good zoom feature.

And when we get a 911 call, we'll be able to use these cameras to zoom in and see what's going on.

Be able to provide the deputies with accurate information as to what really is is occurring, what uh if anybody has any weapons, if anybody is in uh uh you know being hurt, and we can release relay that information before they are arrive.

That way they make better decisions.

Uh, the use of these cameras uh significantly reduces our use of force.

Um instead of showing up blindly on scene.

The the deputies have uh the ability to pre-plan and uh really use tools and tactics to our advantage to make sure that uh people are safe.

Next slide.

The third part is the drone first responder.

The sheriff's office has had drones for nearly 20 years, but the way we're deploying them is quite differently now.

Um, we still have our traditional drones that are in the back of the patrol vehicles, and generally are um being deployed on situations that have already occurred, such as a suspect running from us after you know running from uh a vehicle, they jump out of the car and take off running, then the deputy would arrive on scene and deploy the drone.

What this program is doing is we're launching drones.

Um, we're in the process of building three locations.

We have one up and running on the Eden Township substation in San Leandro.

We currently have two drones.

We're gonna have two more down in the Cherry Land area, and then we're actively working with uh East Bay Regional Parks and Alameda County Fire Department to put two drones in the Castro Valley area.

Uh, these drones, unlike the ones that are launched by the deputies out of their patrol cars.

Uh, we're actually flying these from desktop computers within the real-time crime center, and this is before deputies ever make it on scene.

We're launching a drone and getting overhead.

Next slide.

How do we do that?

Well, we've acquired uh uh software uh called prepared 911.

Prepared 911 taps in to the live 911 calls.

And as those calls are coming in, before the dispatcher has even sent a deputy to that call, I'm launching the drone and I'm sending it to the emergency location.

We're getting overhead sometimes between 30 to 60 seconds from the time of call.

That is huge when we're talking about providing real time information to responding officers, the fire department, paramedics to really assess the situation.

And it's uh certainly improved in the apprehension just since January.

We've uh apprehended, I believe, 77 people uh based on uh the use of the drone.

Next slide.

Um generally we're hearing that 911 call within three seconds or so, the operator determines whether or not we should be launching.

We launch, it takes about another three seconds to launch.

The drone travels approximately 51 miles an hour.

Uh within San Leandro, we're we're uh about 35, 36 seconds uh at any point.

Once we get the other two locations up, our response time should be uh about 35 seconds within any location within our our jurisdiction, uh, with the exception of Eden Canyon and Palomaris Hills, where we're not responding uh out that far at this point.

Uh the camera itself on the drone is incredible and has the ability to zoom in uh from a substantial distance away.

So we're able to technically see uh what's happening long before the drone actually makes it on scene.

Next slide.

Uh these are just what they look like.

Um, instead of showing these photos, why don't I show you some videos?

Uh next slide.

So these are actually on the rooftop of the Eden Township substation.

We have two uh different types of drones.

These locations are uh going to be exactly the same as the one in Castro Valley and the one in Cherry Land.

And keep in mind I'm flying these like a video game from a desktop computer.

I believe there's a video on the right.

So these drones are not autonomous, they're not flying around by themselves.

Uh, there are operator pilots like myself that are um flying these drones.

Uh but as we're listening to the 911 calls coming in live, uh, let's say you know we had a uh residential burglary in Castro Valley.

In theory, then we would be launching the drone immediately.

Uh the crime analyst would be looking at license plate readers in the area, and then we would be also uh attempting to leverage any sort of uh pancelt zoom footage that we might have from any of our situational cameras.

Next slide.

When the drone's flying around, this is uh view of uh Castro Valley area that there's the the drone is not looking down at your backyard.

Uh I don't care what you're doing at your house.

We are uh angled up at the horizon.

Uh, and until we get in the area or we're actually focusing on where the call for service is, that's when we utilize the camera and start uh zooming in.

So we certainly are mindful of people's privacy.

Uh we're not using this drone to be intrusive or look in places that uh we have no business looking.

Next slide.

This is our transparency portal portion for the drone first responder.

So that same link that you scan the QR code, this will take you there.

Uh this shows what type of call we were responding to, uh, the date and time, and then obviously the path that the drone flew.

Uh, we've had some people want to know why there was a drone over their house.

And I had to explain that uh well, we were looking a half a mile away at people stealing a car, and I didn't want to fly the drone directly over where the car thieves were because then they would look up and see the drone.

So sometimes we're hovering over uh people's homes, but uh we we're not looking at their residence, we're looking a great distance uh away.

This is a great uh portal for people to come in and see exactly what we were up to, where we were.

Yet again, the use of the drone.

This is not top secret.

We have nothing to hide.

Um, this is a public safety tool.

Next slide.

The integrations I was talking about earlier with the license plate reader.

I am this screen is our um drone screen for lack of a better term.

Um, and on that drone screen, because this integrates, anytime we have a stolen vehicle or any sort of license plate reader hit on our flock cameras, they pop up on the drone uh screen.

What's great about that is I have the ability to then click on that hit and uh automatically launch a drone to where the license plate reader hit is.

It also will project the distance uh for the vehicle to be traveling to the next camera, and I can send the drone that uh direction as well.

We've been very successful in utilizing these two things together, the license plate readers and the drones in order to locate stolen vehicles.

Stolen vehicles are not just joy writing anymore.

They're using stolen vehicles to commit other crimes like robberies, shootings, autoburglaries, you name it.

The faster we get these license plate reader hits, we get a drone over there, and then we get patrol resources there.

We're able to mitigate other crimes and really prevent people from being victimized before it ever happens.

Our auto theft has gone way down, but also, you know, we're not getting as many hits as we used to.

And working at Santa Rita jail and debriefing a lot of these uh these criminals that they're telling us that they stay out of our jurisdiction because they know we have this technology.

Next slide.

As I discussed, all of these things are fully integrated.

So not only are we uh utilizing the drones, the cameras, the pan tilt zoom, they integrate with our computer aided dispatch um, as well as our body war and cameras.

We can view live video from the the deputies.

Um, and then the the 911 calls we can hear.

There's all of this is an ecosystem that works together.

You remove any one of these pieces, and it's detrimental to the functionality of the system.

Next slide.

Uh, these are the statistics for the drone, just for from January.

Um we've responded to 137 calls.

This actually was from Friday.

We've actually gone to I think 149 calls as of today now.

Our average response time, just because we don't have the Castro Valley location up yet.

Um, we're looking at about two months or so for that location to be up and running.

But our average response time without uh the other locations is just over a minute, minute and a half.

It takes us about a minute and a half to uh to go from ETS to Eden Township station all the way down to um A Street.

Unfortunately, because of the San Leandro Hill, we cannot fly the drone up over the San Leandro Hill from ETS into Castro Valley quite yet.

So that's why Castro Valley is going to get its own location.

But the proof is in the pudding.

Um we've been able to clear 16 calls without even having to use patrol resources.

Uh the drones on scene uh 64% of the time, and we've located 77 people uh with the use of the drone.

So very, very useful tool.

I look forward to Castro Valley's drone um location coming online soon.

Next slide.

Uh we have two additional parts that are really important.

And uh we're gonna be pushing this out more.

This is new.

Um, but we want residents that have their own um security systems to register those security systems with uh with us.

Um not asking for access to any residential cameras.

All this is is telling us that you have cameras and providing us with a uh a good contact name and phone number so uh that we can reach out if we need to.

And frequently deputies will respond to neighborhoods um in the middle of the night for calls for service, and uh sometimes we'll knock on doors, uh, but at three in the morning, most people aren't answering the doors.

Uh, what this does is this allows our investigators and detectives to follow up uh the following day, and instead of trying to spend hours finding phone numbers for people or good contact information just to find out that the cameras don't work or they're of no value.

Instead, this uh gives them a direct ability to register or I'm sorry, pull up the registry of cameras and then immediately contact somebody uh and see if they're willing to share.

This is all voluntary.

Um, but we would inform them, you know, for instance, we had an auto burglary in your neighborhood last night.

And we believe your cameras may have captured some valuable information.

Would you be willing to share those with the sheriff's office?

Um, so we're trying to partner with the community to integrate.

Um, you'll see on the next slide, business cameras.

Uh, but we certainly want to create a registry of of personally owned uh security cameras uh in the event we need to follow up.

Next slide.

This is the uh for local businesses.

And this is integrating cameras um into our real-time information center.

So uh hopefully we'll be getting some Castro Valley businesses on online here soon.

Um this allows the businesses to pick and choose out of their systems what cameras they want to share.

Uh it does not give the sheriff's office a free reign of of people's uh personal camera systems.

Uh for instance, uh say Safeway.

Um, if they wanted to share their exterior cameras with us, they would be able to do so and select those streams.

Uh it does not allow the sheriff's office to go back in time, uh, move any of the cameras around.

We can't look at recordings.

But what this does do is allow us to look at a live view of the cameras that the businesses choose to share with us.

And so what this does is it expands our network um and really adds to our ability to provide the deputies who are responding to these calls with valuable information as you know what's going on, what we can see.

Next slide.

So why am I talking about this?

Um the the board of supervisors uh I think is it's misinformed.

I'm going to be providing uh a much more detailed presentation to them.

But um it was somewhat concerning at the last board meeting to see no one from the unincorporated area of Alameda County show up uh to speak on on behalf, either pro or against uh any of this technology, um, as specifically the licensed plate readers.

And as residents of this county, I believe your voice is important, and you should in some way, shape, or form, whether it's email the board of supervisors, whether it's um call them, or whether it's showing up and and utilizing the the ability to uh have public comment.

Um, your input is important because the people that came to that meeting and spoke against Flock, none of them live in the unincorporated area.

Uh most of them are from uh the North Oakland, Berkeley area.

Um, and I believe that they are misinformed.

And so recently, the city of Richmond um, I point this out because they went through the same thing.

Their city council uh paused the flock camera use, meaning that the police department could not use them for three months while they debated this.

And during that three-month period, the Richmond saw auto theft increase by nearly 30% and apprehensions of auto theft suspects decrease by almost 70%.

Um I can tell you these cameras work.

We need them.

Uh, we need to continue this.

Uh, but most importantly, we need the people that live in this jurisdiction.

We need them to speak up and tell the board what they want.

Because without your voices, it's just me up there uh speaking.

And when you have a line of 40 paid protesters and people who don't live in this jurisdiction and don't have a vested interest in this jurisdiction, uh steering the ship as far as what sort of technology and policing occurs in the unincorporated area.

Um, we're at serious jeopardy of of potentially losing this.

So I have a handout.

I'm gonna uh send that email if I haven't already um to pass out.

It has contact information for the board of supervisors.

The sheriff's office is not telling you what you should think.

Uh I want you to form your own opinion.

Um, but your voice needs to be heard.

And it's important that I think you're you're informed with the correct information.

So uh next slide.

I'm certainly uh open and available to uh answering uh any questions that you may have.

Um I can tell you that uh recently uh we've been working with Flock.

The sheriff herself has sat down with the CEO of the company.

Uh we voiced our concerns about some of the things that were brought up.

Uh all of those concerns were addressed.

There are currently no security issues, no vulnerabilities, and they have um shown us kind of the the behind the curtain of of how things work, and the sheriff is is very confident in this tool, as am I.

We would not bring something that we didn't think was in the best interest of the community uh forward.

So uh I think uh open it up for questions.

Uh if any of you have them, I've got a couple of case studies um that I would like to um talk about if we have time, but I want to be respectful of the time of the meeting.

Thank you, Sergeant Coley.

Um we'll start off with public comments tonight.

Do we have any speaker cards?

Borrows.

Not renewing this technology.

What could possibly go wrong?

Um to me, it's an absolute no-brainer uh with the our general population, our criminal proposal uh population growing uh for us to pull the plug on this uh again with all the other jurisdictions around us uh having this technology, we would now become the Mecca for car for car thefts, uh, etc.

Um it doesn't make any good sense.

Um I did have a question, by the way, um sir.

Um I don't yeah, I'm I'm gonna be out of the country when this when this takes place, but I plan I plan on sending uh and sending an email, and if I can possibly be up at 1 a.m.

Uh in in Europe when this happens, I'm gonna call in as well.

Um my question is uh what were these these uh the paid uh protesters, et cetera, these people that showed up in opposition to this.

Uh what what was their argument?

Uh I assume it's privacy or something like that, but uh to me this is uh a no-brainer.

Anyway, that's my question.

Yeah, thank you.

Do you want me to address those questions or wait till the end?

How does it what is your format?

We can address them if the members ask those questions, just not the public.

Next speaker is Mimi Dean Good evening, everybody.

Um so I like the idea of using all the technology we have available to us to keep our community safe and help um, you know, law enforcement also stay stay safe and have and have the latest information at their fingertips.

Um I just have a few questions.

You said that you only have three staff, so I'm just wondering how this operates 24-7 if there's only three people.

Um I I have to be honest, I didn't like the comment paid protesters.

I do have to say that because people aren't probably paid, they're probably just protesters.

Um one thing that I find curious um is that the cameras aren't being used for people that run the red lights.

And I know in my community of San Lorenzo, when we're at the intersection of Paseo Grande and Hesperian, five cars will run through a red light.

Okay.

And I just think that this technology could be used for that.

And I'm kind of curious, because I did look it up.

I'm kind of curious why we're not doing that also.

Um, it just seems like public safety is a real big issue and a real concern.

I know that, like in Hayward, I know it's not unincorporated, but in Hayward, we've had some um people get hit by cars and killed um in the loop.

And um, I I don't, you know, I just think things like this happen in unincorporated too.

People get hit by cars, and it would be great if we had a way to see who's doing these things, who's running red lights, who's harassing bicyclists.

Um, you know, I'm just all for if we're gonna have the technology, let's use it all the way.

And I think that this stuff is great.

I do have a question about drones, because I live in San Lorenzo and I do live by the Hayward Executive Airport.

And how do you get around being able to use the drones by the airport?

Because I know there's um air traffic restrictions.

So I know I asked a lot of questions, and um hopefully you can answer some of them.

Thank you.

Rita Duncan.

Thank you.

I enjoyed your presentation, uh, Sergeant Cully.

I wish um the technology was available last night when some young people flipped the Tesla in front of my house, and I'm sure you got the 911 call.

Um I'm totally in support of um using this technology, but I have some questions that you can probably answer.

Um when did you start your your your data baseline?

Because I do have the QR code, and I'm gonna look at it.

And what if the um incidents are they sorted by categories on that?

And then where are the cameras?

And I know you reference Castro Valley a lot, but I live in Fairview, and that's where I'm concerned.

And um are you um using the technology for human trafficking?

And I guess my last question is around the um cost.

Um for the communities, and then I guess the other one I have is can people hijack the drones?

You said it's trans, it's transparent.

When I say hijack, can they you know some hijackers can um do a lot of crazy things with technology?

So those are my questions.

Thank you.

Peter Rosen.

Hi.

Uh thanks, Sergeant Colley.

There's a lot of good information here.

Uh I have a whole bunch of questions about drones, but I'm gonna actually email those to you because they're kind of specific.

But um, I do have a question about if you're growing, is there a projected growth and um resource allocation that you anticipate three to five years if this keeps growing exponentially?

For instance, are you gonna now need a staff of 10 or 12 down the line?

Are you only doing one person right now?

Or I mean that was one thing.

And I have one comment that kind of hit me as a sore bug, just to let you know, this is a thing that happens with the county all the time, especially with the sheriff's department.

That is not a San Leandro Hill, that is Castro Valley.

Um, that if you're referring to Fairmont Terrace and Fairmont Ridge, that is not San Leandro.

So I just want to put that correction out there.

There are no more speakers.

None online.

Great.

Thanks.

Go ahead and close public comment and go to our member comments and questions.

Let's start off with member Higgins.

After pushing the button, yeah.

So uh gee Todd, uh you're on the board at our local fire protection district.

It'd be cool if we had the sheriff get a couple of drone garages on our two stations.

Um I'll just kind of throw that out there as on my notes.

Um I'm I'm just I'm I'm all ears now.

So thanks.

Hey, I have quite a list, so I don't know if we should end up emailing questions and getting responses.

But for instance, did I hear Fairview mentioned does Fairview have drones assigned to it as well?

Is my first question?

And you can answer me.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Um so currently, no, Fairview and Castro Valley would be covered by the same drones, and uh that is a work in progress.

So we're actively working with East Bay Regional Parks and the Alameda County Fire Department to uh put drone locations uh to cover those areas.

Um there's infrastructure security and some uh permitting and mouse that needed to take place before we could roll that out.

So we're actively working on that right now.

Um hoping by the end of summertime we will have drones that will be able to cover Fairview.

Okay, so so I did not hear that the Castro Valley drones would also be used in Fairview.

I did not know.

They would be, yes, yes, the Castro Valley drones will be used in Fairview.

Yes, they will be.

Okay, so what might happen by the end of the summer is that we might have it um drones that are um specifically for Fairview.

The the drones in Castro Valley and Fairview will be together.

So they the call volume doesn't support um drones specifically just in Fairview.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

I was just trying to clarify what I heard.

But the drones in Castro Valley will cover Fairview as well.

So it'll be a combination of both.

Okay.

Um also interested to know what other large metropolitan areas within the US, not all of them, but can you can you tell me some other areas that have programs like this, like New York, Boston, you know, besides California?

Absolutely.

Uh let me list the ones that I've just been to personally.

Uh San Francisco, Vacaville, Elk Grove, uh, Orange County, Chula Vista, Hollywood, um, San Diego.

I have been to several outside of California, uh, Cobb County, Georgia, uh, Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas, uh Phoenix, Arizona.

Yes.

Uh but to answer your questions.

I haven't been there for that purpose.

But yeah, San Francisco PD, we're actively working with them.

The City of Oakland and Berkeley are both in the process of trying to acquire the same programs.

Berkeley's uh vote goes at the beginning of June, I believe.

San Francisco has been very successful with these programs.

And to note, all of these jurisdictions also use Flock automated license plate reader cameras as well.

Okay.

And that wasn't the next question is the plate readers.

Can they be used for traffic control, speed, that kind of thing?

Yeah, that was a good question.

I appreciate that question.

Unfortunately, those are two different technologies.

Number one, uh and number two, state law prevents us from utilizing uh speed cameras right now.

So what you've seen though um is that there was a pilot program occurring.

Uh the city of Oakland was one of those, which is why you uh everyone's probably seen this in the news, um, where the the traffic cameras um that take a shot of your your car and send you a ticket in the mail.

Um, that is a pilot program that Oakland was selected for.

So as of right now, uh the flock cameras don't have that ability.

They're their entire goal is to take pictures of license plates and cars and then uh match them up with the Amber Alert system or stolen vehicle system.

So we could not, even if we wanted to, we couldn't use those cameras for that.

Okay, and you were mentioning that the information on private cameras is voluntary.

So if you have, can you go to a judge and get whatever that's called in the true true crime drama um subpoena that um forces people to give you what their cameras see?

So just to be clear, when we're talking about the residential cameras, we're only asking you to register your cameras, not share them.

The ones that we're looking to share are the business cameras.

Um and to answer the question, any time that we, as law enforcement, any law enforcement officer uh in the nation believes that a camera system contains evidence.

Uh if it um is not voluntarily shared, we would have the ability to obtain a search warrant that would be signed by a judge and and we would be able to view that.

But that we have to show probable cause, meaning a reason that we believe that there's something on those cameras.

We we don't do that very often.

Um that is yes.

Yeah, no, that's that's good.

Um so you're are you gonna are you looking to grow staff?

So as you grow your operation.

This was a question from a speaker.

Um, how are you gonna be operating with such a small staff 24-7?

Yeah, so another good question, um, and probably something I should have clarified is right now the real-time information center is not a 24-7 operation.

So we're operating about five days a week um for about 10 hours during the day.

And we are staffing that based on statistical data that shows the busiest times uh for for our deputies and and where we can best utilize our our resource.

Obviously, uh staffing is always a challenge and um certainly is uh is not cheap.

Um, and so we're trying to leverage technology and and our resources, the our staff um in the time of where they're gonna be used the most.

So, you know, we likely are not staffing the art ticket at four in the morning where our call volume is extremely low.

Right.

Um the the future plans are are not to be 24 hours um at this point in time.

Okay.

Um the next question is just a yes no.

Um, I assume that when you're running drones near airports, you're observing whatever the the laws are about distance and all of that, right?

Yes, I would love to go into detail if you'd like.

No, you don't need to.

Yes, no.

I just that seems like an obvious one, but I wanted to throw it out since it was asked.

Yes.

Um let's see.

Oh, is there a problem with um people who are big in technology, hijacking the drones?

Is that a thing?

There um I I'm very involved in this space.

Uh, and I'm part of a national uh drone first responder working group.

I have yet to hear uh of that happening.

There are always nefarious characters with technology who are trying to uh do things, and we have some programs that uh I'm not really at liberty to share great detail with that help us prevent the security of the drones um as well as mitigate other um bad actor drones.

Um so we're we're actively we're definitely on top of that.

Um I'm not aware of that ever happening, but uh we we are yeah, we're concerned about it just like everyone else's and keep an eye on it.

uh of that happening there are always nefarious characters with technology who are trying to uh do things and we have some programs that uh I'm not really at liberty to share great detail with that help us prevent the security of the drones um as well as mitigate other um bad actor drones um so we're we're actively we're definitely on top of that um I'm not aware of that ever happening but uh we we are yeah we're concerned about it just like everyone else's and keep an eye on it all right um thank you back to you by Sherwitz thank you very much for the presentation um it was really interesting I um first I want to make sure that we're gonna have an opportunity for our presenter to respond to the public comment questions Todd is what's the protocol for that some of them were right I just want to make sure that we'll have a moment to do that at some point we're the only ones that can uh get answers to the questions then I'll ask I'll ask the questions okay yeah um all right so um we already asked the 24 hour okay uh what about um being used for red lights is that a possibility yeah unfortunately that the those cameras are not traffic cameras um and we're not part of the the state um the beta test of of traffic violation cameras that they've rolled out the city of Oakland is the only uh jurisdiction in the Bay Area that was selected uh by the governor for that so as of right now not only could we not do it uh legally um we also that technology is completely different from the technology used for these cameras so I guess two separate two separate pieces of technology uh I know if it becomes available and it becomes uh state law we we certainly would look into utilizing that along with the highway patrol for um traffic enforcement because we do agree that traffic is certainly a a public safety issue thank you uh so then the other question from Rita was um when did you start the database and how is it sorted yeah I I would need some follow-up which uh we have is she talking about the transparency portal or when she says database what will I guess I need a little more information.

I don't think that can be sorry uh it's I I guess I'll say click the transparency portal and take a look um and you have my contact information and if there's any follow-up questions certainly the public can can email me um or give me a call and I like I said nothing that we're doing is uh uh secret we're fully transparent we want to partner with the community so I would be more than happy to answer any questions that uh come up.

Oh I think she was just referring to the um slide that you had the statistics on um where you there was like a 137 total calls responded to yeah so that's the drone that is the drone first responder data and that is actually updated live um so if I was to launch the drone right now that website would update within a couple of seconds so that shows all of our deployments um and you know where we've been there's two parts to that that transparency page one is the statistical page and the other one shows the actual flights themselves.

Okay so Rita can follow up directly with any follow up yeah I mean to answer that question we've been uh the drone program has been live for us since November of last year so we've been we've started tracking things since November.

The particular stats I just gave you were from January uh to now thank you and then is there also an opportunity for us to figure out where the cameras are online.

So another good question um we're trying to balance the the need for transparency um which is very important uh but also not divulging too much information where it compromises the system if we gave the exact location of every camera um the we've already seen uh and and debriefed criminal elements that uh have figured out a way to maneuver through uh the unincorporated area up into the Verview without you know uh hitting on any of these cameras so although they are in public places they're in free view we're not uh particularly disclosing the exact location of every camera because we don't want the criminals to figure out exactly where they are and find a way around them the good thing about Fairviews network uh and the HOA there is they've put uh quite uh you know it's one way in one way out for the most part there's one main road and and the network of cameras that uh you guys have installed it's a fantastic deployment it really makes it almost impossible to navigate uh through the area without hitting on on those uh the rest of our unincorporated jurisdiction is is um not so comprehensive if you will um and so we don't want to disclose that great um the next question that Rita had that I actually had as well which is um your uh the types of crimes that you're pursuing you spoke to um carjacking um theft um very interested to know if um you are also deploying these um various technologies to help with human trafficking assaults missing persons um and just a follow up to that um in this program where you're uh collaborating with some of the neighborhood cameras um is that a tool that you could also use in pursuit of some of these other uh crimes against children and women yeah absolutely uh I mean this this technology is public safety

Um very interested to know if um you are also deploying these um various technologies to help with human trafficking, assault, missing persons.

Um, and just a follow-up to that um in this program where you're uh collaborating with some of the neighborhood cameras.

Um is that a tool that you could also use in pursuit of some of these other uh crimes against children and women.

Yeah, absolutely.

Uh I mean, this technology is public safety.

It is not just law enforcement.

Um we use these cameras.

Uh in particular, we received a call about an individual who had some um pornographic related images on his cell phone of children.

Uh we were able to arrest that individual.

Um, however, unfortunately, that is um available offense, and that individual was able to make bail and was released from custody.

Uh this occurred in Castro Valley.

The special victims unit was able to do some additional research on uh the victims within that cell phone and actually able to identify who those children were.

Uh at that point, we were able to get a felony warrant for this individual.

Um, however, he was no longer at home.

We use the license plate readers to flag his vehicle within an hour and 26 minutes.

We had that individual in custody after his car drove past a license plate reader uh down in Hayward, and uh we found his car in a motel.

Um we have found missing persons.

We have absolutely used it for uh pimping and pandering and human trafficking related uh cases.

We have solved two homicides in uh Castro Valley that uh would not have likely been solved without these license plate readers.

Um when we talk about the drone technology, uh we had a female in a house robe wandering around our jurisdiction.

We were also working two armed robberies at the time and did not have any deputies available to respond.

We flew the drone over there, we found her and I followed her with the drone for about 10 minutes as she wandered through a neighborhood long uh and far away from where the initial call was.

Uh at that point, I had another pilot take over.

I jumped in a patrol car, went out there and contacted her.

Um she was a dementia patient that had wandered away from her house, and the San Leandro police department was actually at her home taking the report from her husband.

We were able to bring her back home within 30 minutes uh before the report was even taken.

So you know, we have I I could talk about I I have 20 different case studies uh involving robberies, carjackings, uh rape, uh missing persons, you name it.

Uh these cameras are utilized for that.

We also um were able to respond to structure fires.

Um, the gas explosion down on the welling uh where the house blew up, um, with grass fires up in Fairview and and uh uh on the Fairmont Ridge and in the East Bay Parks uh gives us uh a great idea of the rate of spread.

Are there any structures threatened?

So um, Sergeant Collie.

That's those are great examples, and I really am heartened to hear that that's happening.

Um there's a question from um Peter on um the growth, projected growth.

And I just want to add to that question, which is um wanting to get a sense from you, maybe curtly just because we're um running out of time, but want to understand what's on the horizon in terms of technology.

Yeah, so technology is ever evolving.

Um it's very hard to say three to five years uh where we will be and what we will need, uh, especially with the exponential growth uh uh and introduction of AI and all of these other things that uh are occurring right now.

I will say that the combination of privately owned cameras um and the deployment that we've put forth is fairly comprehensive.

Um and I believe that uh likely there will be minimal growth.

In fact, I would assume that technology would probably get better and improve and and hopefully we would need uh less equipment than than more in the future.

Um, as far as staffing-wise, um, you know, always more is better, but uh with the amount of staff that we have now, um fairly comfortable that we can provide a very adequate level of service um to our community uh majority of the time.

Um likely on unable to provide 24 hour service just because of the lack of call volume.

But um, yeah, I don't see projected needs, but that's a very hard question with technology right now and how it's evolving.

Thank you.

I hope I captured the questions.

I have a few questions of my own.

One is um I'd like to hear, just for the record.

Um, I know you mentioned why you were here.

You're coming to inform the public on um the types of technology that are being used, but you also mentioned that this um item had been before the Board of Supervisors recently, and that there was um folks speaking um against and some for.

Um I want to have uh a better understanding of whether or not there was an action item being presented at the Board of Supervisors meeting, um, and um whether or not that's related to um bringing information to the community here.

Yeah, good question.

No, there's no action item in particular.

Um, one of the supervisors pulled the item for uh further discussion.

And so uh at that time they uh I think they wanted more information, and uh we plan to provide uh extremely comprehensive presentation uh to the board on the on the 21st.

Um yeah, and then I'm just representing Chris fellow council member Chris Higgins, um, who forgot to ask about the flock cameras on D Street, which um there used to be two.

Uh and um according to Chris, one of them has disappeared.

So wanted to both the statement and maybe a question there.

Yeah, so one of the unfortunate side effects is a lot of the um misinformation that's been put out by the news media, I I think has created um some individuals um to vandalize some of our equipment.

And so um, although it has been sporadic and few and far between, um, we did arrest some individuals for for cutting the cables on one of the cameras.

The D Street camera has been vandalized.

And so we're in the process of moving that to uh different location um in the Fairview area uh that will be just as effective, but hopefully uh will not be vandalized.

Thank you.

I really appreciate your answers and then I've got several for you.

First, a comment recently I saw a drone was deployed on a high speed chase and it seemed to cut way down on the impacts that we could have seen because the drone followed them until the I think it was sheriff and maybe CHP as well, um, that caught them without a lot of damages or loss of life.

So that was kind of neat to see with the drones.

And hearing those statistics from a thousand down to 200 and seeing the ping pongs in Emoryville and the other numbers that you mentioned really seems to be pretty straightforward on the impact of it.

If Alameda County were to reduce or cut out the flock contract, how much impact would that have with the areas around us and which other areas have it besides us?

Yes, so very good questions.

Um, first and foremost, every single city in the county of Alameda has flock cameras.

Um we would be the only ones without it, which is why I feel that is so for lack of a better term, unfair to the residents.

Um the residents of Fairview and unincorporated Alameda County don't deserve any less than every other city in Alameda County.

Um these cameras are extremely effective.

Uh I truly believe this is aside from the laptop computer and the radio, uh, these flock cameras have been the most instrumental and impactful piece of technology that we've implemented in my 20-year career.

Uh, it would literally leave this heart of the bay, center of Alameda County as a black hole for crime.

And um, I would be very surprised if our crime statistics did not significantly increase if the board did not approve this and turn these cameras off.

Uh, we would see what the city of Richmond saw during that three uh month pause.

So um I'm very worried uh about uh what might happen um and what actually happens after that.

Um you had a uh what was the first part of your question?

I'm sorry.

I think you really covered it, the impact if we lost it.

So we'd be the only ones without it.

Okay, thank you.

Next question.

Um just to clarify, you said the the sheriff's office does not report flock data to the federal or ice departments, correct?

That's correct.

Our none of that information is shared with the federal government.

They cannot see our data.

That is our data.

We don't, we do not cooperate with ICE.

Um we don't share any of our law enforcement data.

We can't legally buy by state law, but uh by policy as well, we do not do that.

That's the sheriff's commitment.

And was that the brunt of the messaging from the people that were opposed to it at the meeting?

That's correct.

A majority, uh, and and I certainly don't want to summarize everybody from uh the public that made comments, uh, but I would say a large majority, but over 85% was concerned that the sheriff's office was going to share information with uh federal immigration officers.

Thanks for clarifying.

And my last question is high-level impact.

Can these be deployed in school emergency needs and also with the firework ordinance floating around right now and the supervisors?

Can the technology also work in conjunction?

So we're working with the schools.

Those are early conversations.

Um, if you will remember uh recently the schools voted to remove the school resource officers from the schools.

Um that's been a challenge for us.

Uh other jurisdictions have been able to integrate school cameras for use when there's a call for service.

So if, you know, worst case scenario, we had an active shooter at one of the schools, we would be able to tap into those cameras at that time and direct officers directly to where the threat was, um, hopefully saving uh lives.

Currently, we do not have that capability.

Uh however, that is um certainly once we've secured the votes from the board and renewed this technology.

Um that's going to be one of the first things that we're going to go have some more conversations with the school.

Um I believe that's very important.

Uh second part of your question was fireworks.

Fireworks, yes.

So we looked at using the the drones.

Um, and although I believe that would be a great way to pinpoint illegal fireworks.

Um, and then direct deputies there.

You know, we do have some concerns.

We these drones are aircraft.

Um, they have lithium batteries.

Uh, they're certainly susceptible to um explosions.

And when we have a drone over a residential area, especially one that's composed of hills and flammable um grasses and trees.

We're we're just as concerned about the fireworks, but also a drone being hit by a firework and falling out of the air and starting a fire.

So we're trying to balance the ability for firework with utilizing the technology responsibly.

Um, and I'm not sure at this point that utilizing the drone is is the best way to go about that.

So I know we're we have some other things in the works um related to fireworks that the sheriff's office is actively trying to achieve.

Um, and those may uh, you know, we're also subject to flying no more than 400 feet above the ground because of manned aircraft.

And so that you know poses a challenge when we talk about fireworks.

Uh puts the drone kind of right in the crosshairs of of aerial fireworks.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other comments from our committee?

Well, thank you very much, Sergeant Coley.

Appreciate the information.

I appreciate your guys' time.

Thank you so much, everybody.

All right, we'll close out item one, moving to item number two.

They are looking for to report recommendations on findings and recommendations for establishing an office of unincorporated communities, including structure, authority, and role in improving coordination and outcomes.

This is an action item for us.

As a reminder, our committee recommends to the Board of Supervisors.

And we have a presentation from Brianne Gialla.

Yeah, Gala.

Thank you.

So thank you for coming.

Okay.

Let me know if I'm not talking loud enough.

Uh hold on.

This is a long presentation, so let me get set up.

Um, thank you.

Thank you, members of the public and those online and members of the Mac.

Um, I'm really grateful to be here today.

Um, I know some of you, but not all of you, so I'll just give a bit of introduction about myself before jumping in.

Uh, my name is Brianne, and I've spent um uh over 15 years working at the intersection of community development and public policy and more than a decade of that working here in Alameda County's unincorporated communities.

Um, I'm here under contract with Alameda County um with the board of supervisors to present my research and recommendations for um an office of unincorporated communities.

Um Office of Unincorporated Communities or an Office of Unincorporated Services.

Um, I think this idea has been raised by many community members going back 15 years to the Eden Area Livability Initiative.

Um, so I do just want to pause and acknowledge uh everybody who's contributed to this movement and this thinking over the years.

The report here is really, I think the first step towards laying out a solid structure and vision for what this office could look like.

And before I go further, and I know I'm still on the first slide, I want to be clear also about my role.

I'm not coming here with a predetermined answer.

What I'm presenting today reflects what I heard from residents, many CBOs I worked with over the years, reviewing Mac meetings over the last few months, and from over 40 interviews I've done with staff and leaders across the county.

And my job was really to listen to synthesize and reflect back what the data showed.

My recommendations really flow from the data, not the other way around.

Next slide.

And if you don't, if you're in the public, yeah, I think the public has copies.

I'll be covering four sections today, my research findings, recommendations, and the path forward.

Next slide.

So the objective for this project was really to research again and recommend a design for the Office of Unincorporated Communities.

Next slide.

Residents in Alameda County's unincorporated communities have no single point of accountability in their government.

Unlike our neighboring cities, there's no city manager, no unified structure responsible for holding this vision, this coordination and accountability.

Alameda County, of course, as we know fills that role.

But its systems were never designed to function like a city.

And this mismatch is really the problem that this work is trying to solve for.

And so next slide, sorry.

Next slide.

Thanks.

So to answer that question, I structured my research in four ways.

The first was doing a kind of a deep organizational scan.

So looking at existing county plans and policies.

Again, I interviewed over 40 staff and directors across numerous county agencies and departments.

I think I saw many of you here in the fall.

I attended and participated in the budget input process that Claudia Albano was running in the fall.

So that was also a great chance to hear a lot about community priorities.

What kind of was top of mind for folks moving into this year.

And then we interviewed, I interviewed a set of folks across LA, Sacramento, Marin, and Contra Costa counties.

I think this was really important for folks to understand what's going on around California.

And so I'll talk more about that actually in the next slide.

Oh, wait.

So, well, here's just another a little bit more of a snapshot of all the different folks I interviewed.

So, in addition to special districts like Hard or like the Reach Ashley and Youth Center, I also interviewed folks across all the different CDA departments like planning, code enforcement, economic development, housing, the different uh district offices, fire department, sheriff's office.

Yeah, you can see.

It was, it was a it was uh a lot of interviews.

Um, but it was really, I think, important to this work.

Um next slide.

Okay, so just to give you, I think, like a bigger picture view of what's going on across the state.

Um, here's really how Alameda County compares.

And the report has, of course, a lot more detail that I don't have time to talk about today, but I um really looked into counties that had a blend of urban and rural unincorporated communities, and that we're also grappling with kind of complex issues around economic development, housing, environmental issues.

Um, and so as you can see, Alameda County has 8% of our population living in the unincorporated communities, so around 150,000 people.

Um, we have our advisory councils.

Here we are, um, but no dedicated kind of coordinating or oversight function.

If we look nearby at Moran County, we see um, of course, a much smaller county, but we also see a county that has quite a much higher, I mean a higher percentage of folks living in its in its unincorporated areas.

Um, and what they've done is um created two positions within their chief executive office, one for the rural area, one for their urban area.

These um positions are kind of management level positions that really focus and play a liaison role between the communities and um kind of the bigger county bureaucracy.

Um if we look at LA, of course, LA has is a huge county, um, over a million people live in its unincorporated communities.

Um, but it does have like a similar percentage, right?

Like 10%, we're at 8% here.

Um, and they pursued a model kind of similar to Marin.

They added capacity within their executive office.

Um, it is called a policy alignment uh policy implementation and alignment branch.

And within that, they have um an unincorporated uh kind of office that again serves as a liaison, tries to drive alignment across different county agencies.

And Sacramento is probably the outlier here.

Of course, the outlier in that a third of the county's population lives in the unincorporated area, but they also um merged their municipal serving agencies into like a mega agency to try to break down silos, drive more coordination, drive more alignment.

Um I uh the structure I would say, you know, of course, it varies across all these counties.

Um, but I think one, all of these counties have really taken intentional steps um to improve how they manage oversee and invest in their unincorporated communities.

Um and probably the biggest theme that emerged from the interviews with them is that uh I guess like the importance of creating structures to really improve and drive interagency uh collaboration.

Um, they really viewed stronger collaboration as necessary to um serving residents in their unincorporated areas effectively and efficiently.

Um next slide.

So I I think one of our public comments from kind of early in the meeting mentioned the org chart for the county.

Uh so you know, I'm not gonna talk about the county org chart, except I did highlight, you know, as you could see, and as we all know, like the scope of what the county does is just significant.

Um and the red boxes here um really highlight our meet our kind of municipal serving agencies, or that's what I'll refer to them through this presentation.

Um, and these are the agencies that are most uh directly responsible for serving the unincorporated community.

And as you can see, four of them, of course, uh report more directly up to the board.

When then we have the sheriff's office, which you know has its own elected official, and you see kind of the different dotted lines in different directions.

Um, and it's it's it's quite complex, and there isn't really a again a formal mechanism for driving coordination across these different agencies.

Um next slide, please.

Okay, I talked a bit about this.

Um, but you know, we we have these five, I'm calling them the five municipal serving agencies.

Of course, agencies like the community development agency have within them planning and code enforcement and healthy housing and housing community development and economic development, right?

So there some of them are are quite significant and play uh a really significant role in service delivery in these communities.

Um next slide, please.

Oh, next slide too.

So I'm gonna move on to my findings.

Um, my I think I tried, it was hard to distill all this into five key findings, but I'll try.

Um I think all the findings really point to like the same root cause that there isn't anybody holding um the whole picture or like taking a look at like the whole system.

Um so the first finding it was really about fragmented governance.

Um again, lack of a uh uh an organization or like a structure within the county that sets vision that coordinates agencies and departments and ensures accountability.

Um several interviewees noted that diff district offices often have to get involved in like uh in kind of a reactive way.

Things become kind of like mini emergencies, and they have to step in to try to like fix things, and that when if we take a step back, like that isn't really good government, it's not efficient, it's not very effective.

Um, when these those issues could have been addressed earlier in the process.

Um then my second um finding was really again about coordination challenges.

Um there are whole sets of really complex issues that cross department lines.

So we could think of development and permitting review, flooding, ordinance enforcement, um, that often install without a dedicated coordination, like a coordinating lead.

Um and coordination that does occur is often kind of ad hoc.

It's not systematized, it can be very personality driven by that person in the agency stepping up to play that role.

Um the third finding was about um communication and kind of what's seen as often a communication breakdown.

This is probably the one thing that was raised without any prompting from me most often in the interviews that you know, departments um each have their own ways of engaging with the community.

It can be very patchwork.

If you're on the community side, you get newsletters and emails and things from district offices and different agencies.

And it's it's a complex bureaucracy to navigate from the community side.

Next slide, please.

So my last two um kind of major findings.

Um the first one is about organizational culture, and I think this gets at something deeper than just how departments work together.

Um, so right now, many uh Alameda County agencies operate kind of more like regulatory organizations than like as a local government.

And by this I mean regulatory organizations often focus a lot on compliance, right?

Like, did the department get out their permit?

Uh, did they send the notice?

Like check, check, check, like checking boxes.

Um, did we follow, and then success is then measured by did we follow the right steps?

Did we issue the permit?

Did we, you know?

And um, I think ideally a local government would be accountable for uh accountable for community outcomes would measure success differently, right?

Like, did the neighborhood get safer?

Did the permitting process result in more businesses opening or more housing being built?

Like, did the flooding problem get resolved for the long term, like not a band-aid fix?

Like somebody is actually responsible for the end result and not just like for their lane that they're in or their piece of the pie um or their piece of the process, rather.

Um, and so that's kind of the gap.

I want to also just say that like staff in my experience are very, very committed here, but they're operating in a system that rewards kind of like staying in your lane and not necessarily owning like the bigger picture and outcome.

Then my last finding um is really um, I think uh what's the best way to describe this one?

More that like oftentimes policymaking occurs over here.

There's kind of a disconnect between policymaking and budgeting that needs additional attention.

So a lot of um folks across the county raise this like departments are often assigned new responsibilities, uh ordinances get passed, policies get passed, but there isn't any additional funding associated with that.

And so then when it's not implemented well, people in the community are very frustrated, and it the cycle, like the circle goes on.

I think a good example of this that I can remember off the top of my head is that like you know, code enforcement, I think has the same staffing level as when I started working here 10 years ago.

But in that time, it's been smoke-free housing, cannabis, um, tobacco retail licensing, see if I can remember them all.

Uh, sidewalk vending, right?

Like the list goes on, but the staffing level stays the same.

And so we can be like that drives kind of community challenges, right?

Because people get frustrated on the ground and staff are like, I, you know, we're trying our best.

And so to just want to raise that is something that came up quite a lot as well.

Um, next slide.

Let's see where I'm at.

Oh, I just wanted to give an example.

Um, and maybe this is a kind of contentious example to bring up sidewalk vending.

I know this is on a lot of people's minds across the unincorporated area right now, but that also felt like a great reason to bring it up.

Um, so I mean, sidewalk vending, of course, is an issue impacting quality of life, businesses, the whole community is very interested in this.

Um, and Alameda County adopted a sidewalk vending ordinance.

Um, and it require coordinated action of across, you know, code enforcement, environmental health, the sheriff's office, public works, um, and each of those kind of departments or each of those sits in a different agency within the county.

And uh, I don't want to litigate sidewalk vending here, but like from the range of interviews I did, what kind of seem to be happening is like code enforcement has the legal authority to give tickets to vendors, uh, but that's all.

Environmental health can confiscate unsafe food, but they don't have the capacity to like staff that and tow and store all the equipment they they they confiscate.

Um public works is you know, really limited to the public right-away.

The sheriff's office can enforce nuisance laws, but are like limited on other fronts, right?

So it's like this kind of uh you have all these different agencies, different authorities, different capacities, and no one who's kind of playing that role, like pulling it all together into a coherent implementation plan.

Um, and you know, I usually see Ed here from Code Enforcement, but like I know code enforcement has been trying to play that role, right?

But like they do a million other things, and playing the role is not necessarily their mandate to play the coordination role.

So um, I think it's not a failure of any one department, but it's more like what happens when you uh adopt a policy that really requires cross-agency coordination, and then it's really no one's job to own that coordination.

Um I just want to kind of highlight that as in a kind of a concrete real example of something that sounds like coordination, this kind of nebulous concept, but they actually plays out on the ground in like very real ways.

Um next slide.

Um, so again, my central finding, yes, that many of the challenges facing unincorporated residents are not caused by individual departments or agencies.

They again stem from these structural gaps in governance, coordination, and alignment across the county.

And so, how do we design an office to address that?

Um was really again what I'm gonna present on next.

Next slide.

Um, my recommendations.

Why don't I skip this slide for the sake of everyone's night?

Thank you.

Okay.

So my um first recommendation based on all of that, and I know I zipped through it, so I'm happy to talk more later in the QA.

Um, is to uh establish the office as a three-year pilot.

Um I'm recommending that we focus on a limited set of high impact initiatives with clear objectives, clear performance measures.

Um, and I want to avoid like creating bureaucracy that doesn't produce results.

I think we should approach this as something that we test, we model, we learn from, and we make adjustments.

And really, LA Marin, I would say all the other counties we've we interviewed, um, did have made significant changes to their models, right?

Like that's part of being trying to be flexible and like adjusting as we go.

So launching as a three-year pilot is my first recommendation.

Um, next slide, please.

Uh oh gosh, this has a lot of text.

So I'm glad you have it in front of you.

Um the scope of work.

So this office would have five core functions.

Um, first would be representing the unincorporated communities at internal tables within the county.

Um, the office would maintain a countywide kind of or unincorporated view of like major initiatives, plans, investments, and policies affecting the unincorporated communities, and then would represent our communities at internal county tables, the way that cities do when it comes to advocating for measure W funding, or before it was ARPA funding, or right.

There's always things going on that all the cities send folks, and I feel like oftentimes in the unincorporated area, you're like, don't forget us.

Um, so it'd be again playing a representation role on behalf of the unincorporated communities to identify these gaps, to like flag um and bring things again like two groups like the MAC and get input and represent back at the county.

Um the second function would focus on strategic cross-agency initiatives.

Um, as we talked about earlier with like flooding and sidewalk vending and development permitting, right?

You could list a lot of these.

My proposal given the three-year pilot would be to focus on one of them, which would be to um focus on development review and permitting reform.

This is one of the most consistent pain points raised by residents, developers, businesses.

Um, and it would mean convening agency directors, you know, really focusing on some of these kind of challenging points that need more coordination, establishing timelines and benchmarks and working towards a more unified permitting system across planning, building, environmental health, and fire.

Um, but you know, the pilot period, there could be a different pilot project.

But the idea being that we would focus on some of the coordination required around some of these more like complex problems that have been really sticky here for a while.

Third would be to focus on the communications hub.

Uh again, again, we talked about this, but there is, you know, it would be to create a centralized point of entry for navigating county services.

You would know who to call.

And if you, you know, you wouldn't get bounced around, you know, it'd keep out, it would it would create a one-stop resource, a website, a hub that would bring together um county government to the residents of the unincorporated communities.

Um, sorry.

Um the fourth one would be to administer and administer the municipal and citizen advisory councils instead of the board offices right now, district three, district four manages three of um the MACs and district one manages this the SINOL CAC.

Um, and so part of the idea here would be to streamline that to streamline the kind of management, training, recruiting, and process.

Um, and again, with the office playing that liaison role, I think that would also help to clarify and make sure information is kind of flowing in in all the right directions.

Um, and finally, um the office could focus on engagement in the budget process.

Um like I said when I saw many of you in the fall, that was kind of a pilot run at the at an unincorporated budget input process.

And again, how is community input from the unincorporated communities really being integrated in that process?

The budget, this office would ideally focus on trying to play that liaison role.

So together these five functions address the, well, I think address the core structural gaps, representation, coordination, accountability, communication, budget, you know, budget input, and one kind of focused lean office.

Yes, okay, I'll keep going.

And then I can answer more questions.

Next slide, please.

Okay, so the office could only work if it has, of course, like real authority.

And I want to kind of be clear about what that means and what it doesn't mean.

This office is not designed to take over what departments do or what the board district offices do.

They'll still manage a lot of the constituent affairs work.

The departments will still do what they do best.

Public works will still maintain infrastructure, right?

Environmental health will still do their thing, code and right, like everyone will still do kind of their bread and butter work.

Um, but what's missing right now and what this office will provide is somebody that's responsible for kind of tracking how it all adds up.

Um, and to do that effectively to kind of drive this kind of accountability, to convene all these agencies.

The office must have board granted convening authority.

Um, and so I think you guys know this is an action item.

It will go before the board later.

Um, but ideally, this really needs um a greater level of authority that would be granted to it by the board of supervisors.

Um without that authority, I think there's a real risk that this office adds another layer without kind of resolving the underlying problems.

Um I want to kind of emphasize that point a bit because uh I'm not for creating another layer of bureaucracy more than anybody else if it doesn't, you know, have the tools it needs to really be effective.

So I think this is an important one to kind of mull over.

Um next slide.

Um, my next recommendation, and I think building on that is really to embed the office within the county administrator's office, again, with this board granted authority.

Um this placement would connect the budget the office to budget development and executive decision making, and it would integrate kind of the office within an existing administrative structure.

Um, if we go to the next slide, okay.

The next slide has a lot going on on it, but really it is a is like a my attempt to make it clear kind of how I ranked and thought about the different options about where the office could live within the county structure.

So um, and it's kind of in order from my top priority, my top vote to the bottom.

Um, so of course, there I'll go from the bottom up.

The status quo would be like we don't do anything, right?

It's so scores low on authority and impact.

Um, placing the office within the community development agency, you know, has of course some clear benefits.

I mean, a lot of the like local service departments are housed within the community development agency, um, but it doesn't uh address, I think what is one of the core issues, which is that there's an interagency issue, and by putting it in CDA, it wouldn't have the authority to really convene all the agencies together.

Um, an independent office, like a new agency or office within that the like separate from anything else, um, has some real benefits, of course, like clear authority because the board would create this new office, right?

Like a very clear charge, but would cost quite a lot of money, would probably take a lot of time to get going.

Um, so I think it scored poorly in that sense, whereas uh the county administrator's office, you know, has a lot of that.

It has a kind of like staffing positions from an HR lens, right?

I have there's an office, like there's a lot of kind of basic infrastructure that could be leveraged, and of course, the CAO's office plays uh is part of the executive county leadership at this point, and so it would elevate the office in a way like uh above the other agencies in a way that I think is really important for the goals of this project.

Um, my next slide, please.

Uh okay, the next slide is the recommended staffing structure.

This will I think need a lot more detail as it goes forward, but I did just want to highlight, I think a concern that I heard from folks in the community, which is like it's gonna be like this huge agency with some, it's gonna need so much, it's gonna cost so much.

And so the recommended staffing structure is actually quite lean.

It would be a three-person team to start for this pilot period, um, a director that would manage more of the cross-agency relationships, be the liaison to the board, um, really represent the unincorporated communities, try to raise more state and federal resources.

Um, the project manager um would oversee the interdepartmental strategic initiatives, um, get the communications hub going.

Um, and then there would be like an analyst administrator type of position that would support the MACs um and help build out the communications hub and like support the overall functioning of the office.

Um next slide, please.

A common concern raised repeatedly in the interviews is like, won't this just add more bureaucracy?

Um and um my answer is no, and here's why.

Um, this office is embedded, it isn't standalone.

So again, agencies and departments will continue delivering their programs.

Um, but the office adds coordination capacity to solve the chronic structural problems that fall between agencies, or the long-standing need for a communication strategy, or for better coordination between the Macs and the counties in the county.

Um, it uses existing infrastructure rather than building something new.

Um next slide.

Maybe I'll put this slide up actually at the end.

So when we're talking, we have this in front of us.

So why don't I go forward here?

Um how this could improve everyday experiences with the county.

If until implemented effectively, residents will have clearer pathways to county services, no more getting bounced between departments, complex issues like flooding, permitting, illegal dumping, right?

All the things we'll have a designated lead.

Um, county policies will be implemented more consistently.

That was a common thing cited.

Um and unincorporated, uh, the unincorporated communities will have a greater voice in countywide planning and decision making.

Um so if we go to the next slide or the next one, sorry.

Um so just to kind of wrap up, we're in the phase one period right now.

Um I am this is my first Mac meeting.

I will go to all three MAC meetings and the CINAHL Citizen Advisory Council this month.

Um, and then it will proceed to um the transportation and planning committee and the unincorporated services committee of the board before the full board vote.

Um if all moves forward, you know, I'm sure there will be changes and modifications, right?

And that's what I'm hoping to hear from you all today.

Um then there would be a phase two planning, right?

In that this would really focus on refining these functions, um, planning the staffing more and really trying to build more of this capacity and structure within the CAO's office, refining the yeah, the staffing model, the budget kind of so there would be operations planning period, and then um the phase three, pending that that goes well, um, would launch um in fiscal year 28, so like July of 2027.

Um, and that's like with everything marching and moving forward, um, and um subject to change as things go, but um, that's kind of what I am putting forward right now as a plan.

Uh let me see.

And I think, yep, thank you.

Um, so with that, I know it's a lot was a lot of content to go through.

I also put an appendix of slides I uh you know, we could use for the question and answer.

So hopefully folks had got access to those as well and have access to the report.

But I would um really grateful again to be here.

Um sorry if I was talking fast.

It was like I know I know we were tight on time after the last item.

So um, so yeah, thank you for having me.

Thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

I'm gonna start off with public comment.

Just reminder, you got three minutes.

You cannot get responses to your questions, but if you prompt good questions for us too, that's doesn't hurt.

So public comment.

Do we have any speakers?

Yes.

First up is Peter Rosen.

I want to start off by saying I think this is incredible.

Uh Claudia would be very proud of you.

She should be proud of you after many of us were deeply involved in the Eli process that this is the kind of things that we were looking for, not only recommendations, but identification of resources.

When I saw this draft, I was like, holy crap.

Because I was not expecting this.

I was very dubious.

I was very worried that this would be another layer.

I was worried that this was gonna undercut all the Macs.

I was worried it was one more layer as has been identified, but it's not the case.

And I want to one of the things that was on the recommendation one page, put success should be evaluated against measurable improvements.

And that's how I think every county staff and every department should be that should be in bold letters as they enter and exit the doors.

That's I think it's the um so here's my comments and questions.

Um where is the office going to be for this?

Were people not only staff but live, participate in the unincorporated area?

Um I want to say this is more proactive and not reactive, so I really appreciate it.

I love that you did data driving on it, and then that's going to shape your solutions, which I think is great.

I'm concerned about the MACs and community representation.

I just want to make sure that that there is a voice that this is not a parallel path to go around, which is what I've think some other people were considering.

So I want to make sure that if there's a decision that the Macs are firm about, and some people don't like that solution, that they don't see this as a way of going around it.

Um data and resources.

One of the things that would be really, really amazing is if you were able to do more of an accounting version of find out how data was spent and dedicated from the county budget to the unincorporated area, not rough ideas.

And when this came before when we did the data budgeting thing through the unincorporated services meeting, the public works director proceeded to talk about grant money, which is a whole separate tranche, and that should not be included as it.

It needs to be set as a separate line item.

I want we we need to have dedicated money and resources and people in the county budget.

And that's part of what this advocacy would would happen from.

And um more than just a voice for the community, actual transparency and accountability is something that we have all desired for years.

And I want to thank you for doing this.

So thanks.

I've been told that I missed an important slide.

I'm supposed to say.

So if you could just put this back up.

Okay.

This I think is the action item part.

Sorry.

Um should I read it, Ashley?

Like the whole thing.

Okay, got it.

Consultant.

Okay, hi.

And seeking the max comment and input on the recommendation to create an office of unincorporated communities and move to the next phase of planning and development.

This is an action item enabling the MAC to uh vote to recommend the Board of Supervisors approve the proposed Office of Unincorporated Communities in advance to phase two planning, or B or two, vote to recommend the Board of Supervisors approve the proposed office in advance to phase two planning with amendments.

Um, or three vote uh that the Board of Supervisors do not approve the proposed Office of Unincorporated Communities.

Um that's all.

Okay.

Okay, back to QA, I think.

But next speaker is Chuck Meadows.

Anything else?

Sure.

My name is Chuck Meadows.

And first I wanted to start off by echoing Peter's comments that it's a very well done and I think it exceeded expectations for the initial pass.

So I wanted to commend you on that.

I think it's very important that in order for this proposed body to actually accomplish something, it needs to be independent.

If it's embedded inside another organization, uh, there's a couple I can think of personally, where that director, manager, whatever will basically smother that that body.

And it will just get buried in that committee, so to speak, and never actually progress upward.

So, what I propose to get around that type of bottleneck would be the following.

Not only is it independent, but it goes and has regularly scheduled meetings with the board of supervisors, where after seeking input from the MAX, it presents a plan of action.

And the Board of Supervisors then gives it the authority to move forward on that plan of action, including specific tasks.

Therefore, when this person turns to an agency head and says, I'm asking you to commit resources to accomplish a report, pull this, do that, whatever.

It's with the full authority of the board behind them and not just some person that the agency head can simply ignore.

You stole my thunder when you brought up the street vendor because I thought that was a classic example of a situation where everyone was going crossways against each other and nothing was getting accomplished.

And there's a number of people here that were advocating for a solution.

I can't tell you how frustrated many of them were trying to get around these siloed solutions where you got bounced from agency to agency before you could accomplish anything.

And I think that entire process took how many years, Keith, to get an actual ordinance approved.

Do you recall?

I mean, it was years before we finally got any type of ordinance.

Yeah, it was unbelievable how long it took.

The other thing that I would like to see this um body be able to do is have some means of reviewing the agency head's performance independent of the county administrator.

Because the county administrator, and I don't know the person personally, so this is all secondhand, of course.

But it seems like there's been a perpetuation of certain patterns that have been simply allowed because they haven't been challenged, or the agency had hasn't been replaced, or the managers haven't been replaced, and it becomes a tacit approval that the status quo is acceptable.

And I think at the max, I've been to many of the MAC meetings, not just this Mac, but other Mac meetings, where the public has communicated consistent, persistent frustration with the responsiveness, or I should say the lack thereof of some of these agencies and no means of resolving it.

So I'm hoping this body can address that as well.

Thank you for a good job.

Next speaker is Mimi Dean.

Okay, I'd like to say that I echo Peter and Chuck.

And Chuck, I couldn't have said it better.

Um, I am going to talk about a specific issue on Bachman Road that I've been trying to deal with for five years.

There's sidewalks that are parked on both perpendicular and parallel, and the kids from Bohanna Middle School have to walk in the road.

And I've been trying to get those sidewalks attention and get them fixed, and nothing's happened five years, right?

And we all know what department that is.

And I wrote this down on my list.

How would we get current agencies and their department heads to be able to answer to this new office and be held accountable?

Accountability is so important.

We need to make sure the jobs are getting done.

You're told to do a job.

You can't go not doing your job.

You got to do it.

So I think that this is an amazing plan.

Really great work you've done.

And um, the unincorporated communities, we deserve better.

We deserve representation.

We deserve coordination, we deserve transparency and accountability.

Um, today I was reading something very um strange, SB 1193 by uh Wahhab.

Um, that's getting looked at.

Um, and that's all about transparency and accountability with discretionary funds.

So thinking that we can't afford this, we can afford this.

And we can afford this in a big way.

When I see a million dollars of discretionary funds being handed over by one of our supervisors, that just seems crazy to me.

So I don't think money is really an issue here, and we deserve, we deserve representation, right?

So you know, I'm gonna talk about another thing that has been in my life recently.

Um, the commercial property in front of me is covered in lead paint.

So I they were gonna paint.

So I called up and said, hey, to the county, hey, what do I do about this building's gonna paint?

And they have lead paint.

And they were like, oh, we only handle residences.

There's no county agency that deals with lead paint except for Cal OSHA, and that's only to protect the workers.

So the fact that somebody could spray their building and take all the lead paint off and get it all over my yard, my organic yard.

And there's nobody that I can reach out to is crazy.

Now, if I lived in Hayward or Oakland, I somebody would come and deal with this, but we deserve the same kinds of services that all of the cities have, don't we?

We pay big taxes, right?

The county, everybody in the county gets to vote on our taxes, right?

And unincorporated.

We deserve representation, we deserve accountability, we deserve transparency, we deserve to have people that care about us and serve us and do their damn jobs.

Thank you.

Rita Duncan.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Great presentation.

Um, Chuck, you knocked it out of the park.

One of the things that I wrote down is, you know, authority.

How would this individual have the authority to influence these agencies, particularly when I personally have had experience with individuals who've been in their jobs for 20 and 30 years, and you can't get them to move from their thought process.

And so if this person does not have the power to make decisions and to influence some of these heads of these departments, they will be just a figurehead.

And I think that they should be have an independent office, a little bit stronger than an office, but you know, someone that they should be structured in a way that they they have the power and authority to make decisions and to influence these department heads.

My other um comment is around perhaps the individual or individuals living in the unincorporated community.

I find that it it it's really bothered by many individuals who live outside our community and who are uh making decisions about you know our our our unincorporated community.

I'm I know it's important that we have the person that has this skills and qualifications, but um that would be something that I would recommend.

And then my other question is I guess maybe phase two would be discussing or developing what are the skills and qualifications that this uh individuals or these individuals will will need.

So great job.

And I'm very impressed.

I did not expect so much.

So thank you.

Matt Turner.

So I will say again, I don't think it uh can be repeated often enough.

This was an amazing uh presentation.

Um I think a lot of us were skeptical who've been at this for a long time.

And you know, we've been uh Charlie Brown running at the football that Lucy's holding uh many, many times.

Uh and this was fantastic.

That this really says what needs to be said.

Um but I will also say we've had uh the Baker Tilly report.

Um the county has spent millions of dollars on uh trainings for results-based accountability, and certainly when I was a staffer, we attended those meetings and uh and individual trainings, and uh since then since the 1970s, um, you know, uh there are fantastic documents that we have gathering dust, many of them not even digitized, that you know, gather on the shelves in the planning department from the specific plan for areas of environmental significance that called for uh mapping every one of our every mile of all of our creeks um and and protecting uh you know view corridors and and you know tree ordinances and so many things where there were uh really great ideas uh that the county backed uh to try and you know to in all that is to say that the county has repeatedly recognized that there are these problems, but being able to come up with a way to address them uh is something that it's very structural.

The Baker Tilly report brings this up, but I think uh Brianne's report is unique in that it it kind of takes a uh you know a more 30,000-foot view approach of what are the major systemic problems and and how do we coordinate these things and and uh and and figure out a way to break the silos and and get some level of accountability.

So you know, uh I will run at that football again.

I'm gonna be hopeful.

Uh and and I I um you know, I I have hope that this will uh turn into something.

And uh whether it does or not, um, I think many of the points that were brought up in this report are exhibit A for why communities should incorporate or be annexed.

Thank you.

Keith Burrows.

This has been a while coming, man.

That would that was uh I don't think I ever told anybody what it what a great presentation it was at any forum.

I'm I'm not accustomed to paying compliments.

Um I also want to thank uh also thank the um all the previous speakers for doing a great job of reading the cue cards that I wrote out for you.

Um this goes and you know, and this this idea goes way back to you know, way back to Eli Phase One.

Um this is this was brewing around um and I uh at the time I fought against it um because it was it was premature.

This had to happen first.

Anyway, um I'm I'm I'm extremely pleased that it is before you and um I certainly would recommend um moving this forward with uh um some of the amendments that you've been hearing here at this meeting.

All right, thanks again.

Brenda Clark.

Yes, good evening.

I just first of all I want to thank Brianne for an excellent um report.

I wanted to echo some of the things that Mimi uh and Rita said, but here's my frustration.

It seems to me that it should be what we've talked about for many, many years, and what we've needed is who do you call for what?

Brochure from the county agencies.

Most of you know that we've gone through a lot of soil importation debacles.

We had a restaurant that opened up in our neighborhood uh with um uh a multitude of cars and disturbing the neighborhood.

It wasn't the sheriff came, then we had to call uh public works and they weren't open.

It's a weekend, and then and then uh uh of course code enforcement.

It ended up being an environmental health issue, and that was shut down.

Thank you.

But if we had a checklist, if you're having a problem with XYZ, call this agency and tell that agency in front of that brochure that they are responsible for that rather than finger pointing to somebody else.

The soil importation thing up here was a G Oak.

It was the public works, and then it was code enforcement, and then it was uh then it all went to West County Board of Zoning Adjustments, and code enforcement ignored what they said to do, and it's just crazy.

If we had an accurate um job description of each agency with phone numbers and people and personnel to call, sometimes we call and the person answering doesn't know what we're talking about.

That would be so helpful.

I think we're gonna get there, but I think it has to start with educating the public on who to call for what.

Thank you.

Charles.

Hi, Charles.

Um I want to uh I wanted to appreciate what I've heard in particular regarding uh what Brenda just said on the central, what I'm calling the central hub, which is who do you contact when about what?

If you have a central hub, if you have one phone number, and this is something I've heard for years and years and years from uh Spanish speakers, Chinese speakers, you name it.

They just need to have one centralized number that can parse out where all these problems need to go, which leads us to the uh the Office of Unincorporated uh services, I almost called it, sorry.

What I'm concerned about, and I've heard it from Rita and Mimi, is the accountability, the authority.

How does that work?

And um what exactly can this office do within the framework of the county, or should it be absolutely independent?

That problem I would love to see solved by having unlimited funds, but I don't see where they're coming from, nor do I see how they would have any authority.

So my thought is it is probably going to be uh within the county auspices.

However, uh whatever we think, we've heard great amendment ideas.

I would absolutely go for option number one to approve this.

Number two to accept it with amendments.

But this is something that people have been calling for a long, long time.

Thank you for your work.

We have no more speakers.

Thank you for your input.

You're already back at the podium.

We'll start with Member Fulman this round.

Questions, comments.

I'm gonna take a bye.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm gonna take a bye this time.

Member Higgins.

Thank you, Brienne.

Holy mackerel.

I know.

I as I was looking at some of the folks that I've worked with over the decades.

I was thinking, boy, there's a lot of gray hair there.

And I even had hair.

You know, going back to Eli What?

I think that's the first time I I met you was during the Eli One process.

Mike just moved closer.

I'm probably never gonna learn.

You just yeah, put it around my neck.

Uh any case.

Um yeah, I'm looking at you know the the highlights, um the the independence of the the office is is is really a critical uh point.

Uh Chuck um brought up the uh the need for some means of addressing weaknesses in the way the county operates, you know.

That's we we gotta learn from our mistakes.

Uh one example, and and uh some other people have brought that up.

The the um the soil import ordinance was brought up because crazy stuff was happening and just massive amounts of soil were being imported, and as and I was so happy when that ordinance passed because there was a provision in there that they would follow up on how well it was gonna work.

Well the the follow-up um drew some conclusions that I I weren't supported by facts.

Um and now I find that attitude spread to the federal government, but that's I should I should stay in my lane.

Uh um okay.

So it's independent uh was it Chuck or or Peter that brought up the point about uh on upon recommendations of the Macs uh you know things go to the board of supervisors and then get approved.

Okay.

Was that some of Keith's uh uh cue cards?

Yeah, okay.

Uh and you know, um and maybe Brienne, you could come up with an answer because no one has ever given me an answer on why the Fairview Mac was omitted from any input on the Baker Tilly report.

Not the person to answer that, I'm sorry.

Oh sorry about that.

On the Baker Tilly.

The the all the Macs and the the CAC uh were uh interviewed and participated in this process, and somebody made a decision that they wouldn't include the Fairview Mac.

And nobody can tell me who made that decision.

I'll look into it.

I've just, you know, if if you're walking around, you may maybe just ask and come back and tell us.

But um that's kind of uh symptomatic of what happens in the county.

So we you know that shouldn't happen.

Okay, and and that's that's all I'm gonna say on this.

Uh uh the folks are out here or uh they got better minds than I do.

So I'll pass it on.

Good voice she works.

Thank you so much for the presentation as um the coordinated public comment shared.

Um it is um it was really um wonderfully presented and well put together.

Um I have some of the similar questions.

Um but I'm gonna start with just um for myself.

Can you give more detail about the scope of authority?

You said that the office must have, and it says BOS granted convening authority to bring agencies together on shared priorities.

Can you give me, can you say more about that and help me understand what that really means?

Sure.

Um, so let's see.

I think the authority question in some ways was the one that kept me up the most throughout this.

Um, so I'll first say that the identifying the issues and like identifying what the scope of work of should be for the office in some way almost like wrote itself, if you would believe it or not, but the interviews for those sections, like across county staff, across leaders, like people really identified the same issues, like county staff in some ways are just as frustrated as people of the community about some of these things.

So that part in a way, like wrote itself, like identifying the coordination issues, the accountability issues.

Um, but the scope of work is I mean, the scope of authority um and really where it should be within the county bureaucracy is was particularly tricky.

Um I I think oftentimes when I raised the issue earlier about issues become elevated to the board level, it's often like the the supervisor or their chief of staff or constituent affairs person have to intervene using kind of their authority to get the agency folks to all like collaborate and work on things, right?

And and so the what I think what I was really aiming for was how can we kind of grant that authority, that authority to convene to really drive some of that change to drive folks to the table, um, to to then have and then be able, yeah.

So I was going for that.

Like, how can we, and and I think that really requires the adoption um the the board to really get on board with handing over that kind of kind of committing authority to the office.

Um and part of it is like it's not a like the office isn't a panacea, like it's not gonna solve all of the problems in the unincorporated community.

So I am like very excited about seeing this come to this point, and also want to acknowledge that whether it's a standalone office or embedded in the CAOs, like they this issue of authority and holding folks accountable is going to be um, I think an issue, like a bit of a chalk challenge.

Um, one of my hopes though is that with that direct line more to the board of supervisors that problem points don't circle so long here.

So that way, because I hear people here being like, we've had this issue for years, like every Mac meeting I've listened to, been to at all of them, it's like we've been raising the same problem.

Like, why isn't the board right?

And I'm kind of hoping that by having this more direct line between the supervisors and this office, uh, that at least we'll be like drawing attention and trying to marshal kind of more public more eyes on some of the critical things in these communities.

Um yeah, and one of the things that we we talked about with county council at one point was kind of um like us having a standing referral.

So the office to the office to the unincorporated services committee.

So kind of having a regular kind of agenda item on all the every month's board committee meeting, whereas like this office is kind of raising major issues, right?

Like raising it to both of Supervisor Tam and Supervisor Miley and kind of holding again by holding the bigger picture, you're able to kind of like keep some of those things top of mind for them because as we know, they turn the next day and have all the other things they do, all the other committees they sit on and like all the other work they do for the county.

So um I'm not sure if the answer satisfies, but I I think um authority is something I'm like paying close attention to as we move into the oper, like if and when we move ahead into the planning for how to get this off the ground.

It's a journey, and I wasn't a part of the baker tilly and those earlier conversations, but my understanding of the evolution, and it sounds like you have a good understanding of this, but that this journey um has um where we're at now in the journey is I think there's a lot of frustration of not being able to push um the board on some of these issues, as we've all outlined.

And um as it's written right now, there's not enough teeth to I think I think that's what I'm hearing from folks is that it it may not suggest there's enough teeth to actually elevate to the next level to be able to push.

Um, and so I'm just stirring around in my head.

Um, and so I'm just stirring around in my head, if we went with number two and there were some amendments, there might be a suggestion that we could make that would give a bit more authority to that group.

So just throwing that out there.

Um the other question I had was around um this body's board or this um body's like role and how community input would take place.

Um I know it's an evolution, but uh, you know, how would this Mac board interface with um any decision making or be able to give input and really how is the community gonna see anything different kind of in their day-to-day lives?

Is there, you know, I imagine there's gonna be like a website that's gonna be created is and there's like an office that somebody can walk in with a little brochure.

Like, what are the how are the ways in which the community is going to interface with this that would be different?

Okay, so let me try to take those in two parts.

I'll take the second part first.

Um as proposed currently, the the website is probably the most external facing recommendation, in the sense that, like, yeah, like we talked about communication is pretty patchwork at this point.

Um, but a lot of the other projects as proposed currently are really about trying to uh address internal issues within the county.

And that that was a kind of a big point, like that lots of people I interviewed, and like when we interviewed the other counties, we kind of talked about how much was this like we're not trying to replace the constituent affairs folks.

We're not trying to take the civic engagement component of the Macs away.

We're really trying to drive more alignment, streamlining communication between all these agencies that continue to have kind of breakdowns and not knowing whose responsibility, like certain projects, right?

Just like keep falling.

Um, so that hopefully that answers that part.

I at this point I don't see this, and that's why I named it the Office of Unincorporated Communities too, as opposed to services, like the services work, the programming work, the constituent work will continue to live, at least at this point in the pilot period, like in its current spot in the current places it currently lives right now.

Um, but this would really be more again about like trying to make the county more efficient.

So that's hopefully it impacts people's lives because you don't experience these kind of like circular, like you're getting tossed around issues aren't getting resolved.

Um, but you might not see it in the sense of like now there's a brand new like office here on the corner.

And I think deciding where the office should be and where the staff will sit and all those things is something for the next phase of planning for this work, like the staffing, the planning.

I think somebody brought up like what what's going to be in their job descriptions.

Like I see that as a lot of the next phase of work.

I think now it's like I'm trying to get more like are we all on are all the Macs like are we on the same page about this being like this this problems being the core sets of problems and the office being like a way to at least add some capacity again, not a panacea, but some capacity to addressing those problems.

Um I forgot your first question, sorry.

Uh it's just about Mac integration.

Yeah.

Um, I don't I see this, I still see the Macs in my, I mean, again, this is not like my baby, like uh, but in what I proposed, it would be um that the Macs would continue to be the main source of kind of formal community input.

Um, and that the office would work really closely and bring a lot of like the main ideas through all the Macs, kind of what I'm doing now, but in a more formal and kind of regular way.

Um and I I know when I had one interview I remember that stands out because the person the person within the county was amongst the more resistant people to the idea, and they were like, well, why can't the Macs just go and like play this liaison role?

And I think like most people sitting on the Macs have, I mean, they're their own lives, and like it's not a full-time job to be on the Mac, right?

I mean, you're here, you have your monthly meetings, you're trying to get talk to your neighbors, get community input, and like do the best you can to inform the board on like what's going on here.

Um, but this requires like each of these issues, flooding, development review, illegal dumping, sidewalk vending.

But then whatever the issue is that each require quite a lot of time and investment from a staff person to really try to um address the outstanding problems.

So I see the Macs very much as critical like collaborators in this process um with this office.

And like I think it's a bit about scaffolding more structures.

And I see this as another part of that scaffolding so that absent incorporation, uh, at least there's more representation for these communities.

Um adding teeth, like I'd welcome other people's thoughts on the best way to add more authority or teeth to the office, because I've done what I can to consider how within the current kind of system, and the closest I could get is either a standalone office or the CAO's office close to the board of supervisors where you have you do what you can to like kind of leverage their authority to drive change.

Is there is there will like with the board of supervisors around this?

I mean, I'm just trying to gauge like are they more like yes, let's find a solution for this or more I don't I won't say I was trying.

Yes, and I'm not like sure that's what my place to present on.

Um, but I will say that um Supervisor Miley's office um approach like when I was moved back into this country to the county again, um uh approached me with this.

You know, they've been like, of course, the ones holding the Eli space and a lot of the different collaboratives in the unincorporated communities and have the biggest chunk of unincorporated population.

So we worked together to get like my contract underway.

And so I think there's a good amount of support coming out of um his office.

Um, and I have talked with all the I've talked with district three as well extensively.

So I um my sense, this is just like, yeah, my sense is that uh there is uh an awareness and acknowledgement and um that yeah, that these problems have been here and that it's time to like yeah, to work on them in a more concrete way.

But um that is part of this process.

I think they are all waiting to see what comes out of these four advisory council meetings, um, and then we'll take up the issue uh next month.

So my last question is just about like measurable outcomes.

Um, is there within the the three-year um pilot?

Um, is um and I'm sorry if that's outlined.

I didn't read all of it.

It was like 40 pages.

Um, but I was interested in getting a sense like particularly around this idea of accountability, like at the other end of three years.

Um, what is there kind of a way that we could look back and say, like, oh yeah, we're we were able to streamline some of the agencies to service or be uh more accessible for the community in X, Y, Z ways.

Um, is that is that thinking in here that I missed?

Yeah.

Um, and I I was trying to keep the presentation a bit lighter because there was a lot, but on in the report on page, let's see, 3839, to really the last couple pages.

Um, I I laid out that what is the beginning of the performance measures.

I think there needs to be, of course, greater thinking as we decide on what strategic projects, you know, should the office work on.

Um, but I can give you a sense of some of them if that's helpful.

Um let's take interdepartmental coordination.

The key question is um does the office improve how agencies work together on complex cross-cutting issues?

And then the measures would be um number of interdepartmental initiatives formally convenient convened by the office with participation from multiple municipal serving agencies, number of issues resolved through the office's coordination process without informal escalation to the board offices, thereby reducing interdepartmental disputes or implementation breakdowns.

Um, if we skip to like communications, you know, the establishment of the centralized website, the number of coordinated cross-departmental communications that relate to unincorporated services, projects, or policy changes.

Um we were talking about with the budget process would be um adding some questions, let's say, around improvements in resident awareness of available county services.

So you could think of this office helping with those kind of surveys, which we don't really have a sense of now.

They kind of feel ad hoc, or maybe if economic development or housing is doing a particular project, they might survey folks, but there isn't anybody kind of regularly taking the temperature of and serving um residents across the unincorporated area.

So I try to give a uh a kind of high-level view of what kind of like performance measures we could consider.

Um yeah, there's there's a there's ones for each of the scope of work sections in here.

Um but I'm with everybody who expressed uh I think support for really wanting clear, targeted, measurable outcomes.

Three years is tight.

At first I wanted to push for five, but I five years because I think it's hard to move things within the county in three years, but I think that's also what makes this makes it important to keep it tight and like clear, and also to if that means keeping a tighter kind of scope of work and mission, it's more important that we see the tangible outcomes than saying it's gonna solve like all the problems.

So um thank you.

Just one last question.

How are we gonna pay for this?

Is there some discussion around that?

There's been some early discussions, some different board offices uh kind of trying to identify different sources of funds, right?

Right now, I think one of the ones that was suggested to me most recently was let's put this into measure W.

Um, as we many of you know, everyone is trying to carve out everything for measure W, especially in light of all the federal funding cuts underway.

Um, so I think there are some I ideas out there, but that would be part of the phase two planning.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you.

I'll cover mine, then we'll come back to you again.

Okay.

All right.

You can see the excitement in this room.

And we know all the leaders that are in this room that it's coming from.

It's not a bunch of kids off the street.

You know, these are people that have spent years working on this type of stuff.

So great to see.

I guess Keith got them all excited for you.

Um, even member Higgins turned on his microphone, and that was a big moment.

It's also a huge task.

So getting the right people to do this job without turning and burning through them, finding the people.

I can see some of them I'm looking at, but there's there's a wide pool.

But people that will actually be effective at this job, it's gonna be a tough challenge uphill.

You know, I'd be surprised if there was any um opposition to it, but as we thought think about amendments too, you know, some that stood out to me was independent office.

I think that's big.

I loved having its own budget line instead of begging for grants to go past the three years.

Um getting the board of supervisors to approve the plans in advance is gonna be a huge difference.

And maybe one suggestion I didn't see in there is if there's regular reporting back to the board on here's what we committed to, here's what you approved, six months later, nothing's happened.

Here's why.

I think those regular reports would probably be a lot of the impact in here that would make things happen.

So they're seeing the sheet of here's everything you committed on, what's the status?

Nothing's changed.

You know, okay.

I I served on a bond measure program and the reporting we saw on there, you knew exactly where every dollar was, what was moving, where the stops were, what fell through, you know, contractors, cost, whatever.

But I think regular reporting would be huge for there, and that would probably be one thing I would recommend as an amendment if we did that.

And the one thing I didn't see on there either was what's your role during this three years?

Are you still gonna be attached to this program?

Or do you hand it off and move on?

Uh okay, let me go through our different questions.

Um none of those really were questions, all of them were comments except for your role.

Okay, okay, okay.

Are you here with the whole program?

The regular reporting because I do think in somebody else referenced the budget earlier, like having a better sense of what funding goes in and out of the unincorporated area.

I think is part of the there's a bigger push going on in the unincorporated area, right?

Like last month, the CAO's office was at the unincorporated services committee.

I think they're gonna come to all the Macs.

Um, and so I think there is an opportunity there to ask for more of that.

Like, what did you say you're spending?

What did you spend?

Like what you know, same on the plans, programs, policy side.

So I really appreciate that point and did try to address that in here.

Um in terms of my role, that is uh uh to be decided.

I am on a six-month contract right now with the county to see this uh work through, and I'll leave it at that.

I'm as many of you know, and I work I worked with lots of folks in this room before, um, really interested in seeing this work through.

So I'll yeah.

I appreciate that.

And that would probably be one of my amendments too, is proposing we keep you on during the three-year period.

Um and then a couple of questions.

Um actually that was one of them.

The other one is with the push to incorporate in Castor Valley right now.

That's a big portion of the county.

What changes would you foresee happening if that did go through?

I do not feel comfortable answering that right now, I think.

But I would like to say, I know actually, Supervisor Miley raised this with me last week.

I think this or two weeks ago, this agenda was already kind of up and out for this month of meetings.

Um, you know, because that would take half the population with it, like if Castor Valley incorporated, right?

So the 150,000 would would dramatically shrink.

Um, do I think some of these core issues still exist?

Would we need to think about the staffing levels or um some of the coordination functions looking different?

Yes, but uh do I think that uh the rest of the communities still need this kind of support and this kind of coordination and leadership and representation?

100%.

So um well, would it need to be a three-person team?

Like maybe some of those things would change, but I think the core problems and the core scope of work uh I see being the same.

Again, I didn't formally write about that in here, but that's would be um for the next phase.

If if I was to amend this, I could I could add that's part of what I'm here for too is to like decide on what changes we're gonna make here before presenting it to the board.

So um adding content about what modifications could be made if Castor Valley incorporates in how many years?

If if if it goes through, when would it be?

I mean, it was it's still a ways away, right?

So um it's a big if.

Um yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

I know member Fulman had a follow-up.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you for your report.

Um, I too think that it's important that the office be independent because if it's part of the county administrator's office, then it's a duty tacked onto somebody else's job and it ceases to be their focus if something else is going on.

Um don't forget clerical support.

I noticed you didn't have that.

So if the the office shrinks, probably the the clerical position stays and something else goes away.

Um what what does authority really mean?

Um I think that this office provides the focus for the unincorporated areas to present to the board of supervisors.

What's been happening is that even when the Macs come together, you have people from every Mac going and presenting.

You don't have a focus presenter, and I think that's what we need.

Having said that, when you talk about increasing the authority, I will the how the housing element, okay.

Every single Mac and the planning department opposed that housing authority, and yet the board of supervisors passed it.

So what is giving this office authority really mean?

Does it mean that when they go before them and they have this this they are speaking for all of the MACs and all of the unincorporated areas that the Board of Supervisors will actually listen to what they have to say and will make decisions based on those recommendations?

If they begin to be seen as somebody with clout, somebody that is listened to, then when they go out to these agencies, there's your authority, right?

That's where it comes from.

It comes from somebody higher up making decisions based on this office mattering.

I I'm not sure how to say it.

So I I support making that an amendment that says that this office is independent and not just folded in with some other office where these responsibilities kind of get lost in the shuffle.

Um so yeah, I guess I don't have a question so much as I I support what you say, and I have an opinion kind of on maybe how to take it forward.

Could I um add one thing you to what you said?

Um I I know I said the biggest takeaway from the interviews across the other counties in California was to create the structures for more interagency interdepartmental collaboration.

Um probably the the second thing was like leadership from your board of supervisors is critical.

If not, it just the risk of like the sidelining problem of like being in your corner and being sidelined is is significant.

And I think um, in my opinion, it's not it wouldn't be worth moving forward if there wasn't strong support from the board as opposed to like something that barely gets over the finish line, because I think that level of ownership of being able to grant this person office, you know, an office um uh that level of leadership while recognizing that like this person isn't gonna be an elected official, right?

And the board is still the board, and that's like important to preserve that.

Um, but important that they're like, yeah, respected and taken seriously.

So I am.

I mean, I think that that's key.

That's where the authority comes from, is they're taken seriously.

And that's why, I mean, in a way, it sounded weird as a board board granted authority, like convening authority because or you know, it sounds wonky, but it is authority that's kind of passed on and by the act of creating this office.

Um okay, yes, and the amendment.

Yes.

Uh I don't think I have another question.

Thank you for letting me chat.

So I think we're near our action item time.

Again, it's recommending it to the board of supervisors.

I don't hear any opposition.

Is that fair to say?

So if we talk about amendments, I mean we've got option one voted as is.

Option two is voted with amendments.

Yeah, again, a couple that I thought of were the independence, the board of supervisors approval process, having its own budget line.

Um regular board of supervisor project updates, and keeping Brianne on during the pilot period.

You laugh, but I'm serious.

Um I would like to move.

I would like to move that we recommend that this go forward under number two with the amendments that you just listed.

I didn't write them down, but it's independents, regular um quarterly or or whatever the regular should I say quarterly, monthly reports to the board of supervisors, regular.

What does that mean?

I think regular may be clear, it's monthly or quarterly.

Once year.

Sorry.

Um we could say at least quarterly.

Yeah, minimum of minimum of quarterly um status report meetings to the board.

What was the other one you said?

With its own budget with its own budget line item for this group.

And to hire high, oh, hire to hire the the um the coordinator, the administrator, or somebody who actually lives in the unincorporated um community of Alameda County, and that we recommend that um we're um you know how I am on names.

Tell me your name quickly.

Keep Brienne Brianne as the um staff coordinator.

Uh second that any further discussion?

None.

Roll call vote, please.

Council member farmer, excuse council member Higgins.

Aye, council member Philbin.

Aye.

Councilmember Rhodes, Chair Englin.

I motion passes.

Thank you very much.

Great job.

Appreciate it.

I know we're pushing nine o'clock.

I'll make mine quick.

Chair's report.

Um, update on the fireworks ordinance.

I'm doing this under my chair section, just to let you know that the roadshow is completed.

Next steps is going to the board of supervisors.

I think there were two dates in April, so that is moving forward.

Um, I caught something too that Miss Paps from CHP pointed out earlier.

She said they have their speed enforcement April 28th and 29th.

And for those that didn't catch it, they also have 20 new officers starting the week before.

So there's double reason to watch that one.

Um, in fairview, you guys will be seeing the weed abatement notices coming out very shortly.

So please keep that in mind and be safe for all of us.

Yeah, I won't throw Don Castro under the bus, but there's three feet of weeds growing over my back fence right now.

Um, so we'll follow up on that one separately.

Other council um, sorry, and we had nothing to report on the subcommittee reports, so other council members.

Nothing.

Ms.

Philbin.

Uh yes, my monthly reminder to put Sunday, November the 8th on your calendar as our annual veterans event up at Lone Tree Cemetery.

Sunday, we're back to Sunday, okay?

Sunday, November the 8th at one o'clock, about one to two.

There'll be light refreshments, there'll be lots of great speeches, not lots, but one or two.

Um the C cadets will be there.

If you want to donate a wreath, even though this is veterans and not memorial day, you're welcome to do that as an independent.

But um, daughters of the American Revolution who sponsors this event will be donating a wreath for placement.

And are you gonna have a singer again this year?

Yeah, we are.

I'll get in touch with him.

Yeah, he's done.

Okay, that's it.

And just to add one more thing before staff announcements, I think there was a request recently to hear from the Hard CAC committee and an update on park and loo as well.

So over to you.

Oh, you know what I should do is give you a quick update on sidewalks on 2nd Street.

Yeah, a big challenge.

I've noticed that they have blocked several access avenues from the street to people's backyards, not putting in a driveway access to their backyards, even though there's obviously big gates there leading.

And my big fight with them to save my driveway has succeeded.

So hey, we're working.

Thank you.

Uh, just a follow-up.

Uh, the request that you made, Todd, was not for the Hard CAC Citizens Advisory Committee to come.

It was for an update from Hard, not the committee.

So just to clarify.

Um, also the parking loofies.

I've talked to the planning director.

He said they are not ready for a presentation, but funds are going out.

So nothing else from staff.

Thank you.

And with that, we are adjourned at 8 56.

Have a good night.