Recording in progress.

Good morning, everyone.

I'd like to call the meeting, uh special meeting of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to order.

This is Tuesday, April 14th.

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

Supervisor Marquez present supervisor TAM.

Present.

Supervisor Miley.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Supervisor Fortunato Baz present.

President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much, and thank you to Supervisor Miley participating remotely.

Our first item up for the agenda is public comment on closed session items.

We'll now take speakers in person and online for public comment on closed session items.

I will note that the main portion of our meeting today is early budget work session.

We will have presentations throughout the day, and we will have public comment on those items at the end of our presentations.

But for now, public comment on closed session items.

Will the clerk please call speakers?

Chair Halbert, there are no public speakers for closed session items.

Okay, very good.

Then we will proceed.

I note that we often would recess into closed session in the beginning of our meeting.

We're not going to do that today.

We will be taking a break and having closed session later in the meeting.

But for now, we're going to proceed with our early budget work session.

This is an item that we do every year.

It's one of the hallmarks of our budget season.

I'm going to now turn the meeting over to our chief administration officer, CAO Susan Moranishi to kick us off for today's early budget work session.

Susan.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Members of the board.

As you indicated, today is your board's annual budget work session, a key milestone in development of a balanced fiscal year 26-27 budget.

Today you will hear from elected and appointed department heads who will each present an overview of their respective agency and departments, focusing on goals and key accomplishments, mandated and discretionary services, key investments in programs and services, and an overview of the preliminary maintenance of effort budget based on policies and guidelines adopted by your board.

The preliminary MOE budget provides an early view of some of the changes expected next fiscal year due to salary and benefit adjustments, increased operating expenses and support costs, and decreases in revenue due to limited growth and or funding cuts.

Some key issues and considerations for you to consider with regard to the preliminary maintenance of effort budget.

Measure W funds are not included as they will be in this in a separate fund and will be incorporated into the proposed budget.

We also are benefiting from one-time retirement savings resulting from your board's prepayment of pension liabilities.

There are increasing workers' compensation costs in addition to rising litigation risks and costs, and there are adjustments to county council's budget structure and charges to general fund departments.

There are also issues that require further review and analysis as we develop the proposed budget, including mandated and discretionary services, which are identified by all departments but not quantified by all.

We are continuing our position review to better align funding with billed positions and we'll be reviewing salary savings.

We will also be looking at program-wide revenues, particularly related to public safety, where those revenues are budgeted at the program level, not included in the departmental budgets.

And there are a few other maintenance of effort issues and adjustments, including caseload and workload considerations.

The work session today is an opportunity for your board to learn more about each of the department's operations, funding challenges, and pending factors.

Given our reliance on federal and state funding, concerns about looming policy changes and funding cuts at the federal and state level are front and center and largely unknown.

We will now set the context and provide background for today's hearing with a very brief update on state and federal issues, an overview of the MOE guidelines, next steps, and the budget calendar, as well as major pending factors.

And I'm going to ask Rasley Tadeo to present that to your board.

You've each received a binder that was just compiled minutes ago that includes copies of the presentations that will be presented and were prepared by each of the departments.

There's also a working agenda that identifies the schedule and list of presentations.

Thank you and good morning.

I'll be providing a brief overview before we proceed with the maintenance of effort budget presentations from agencies and departments.

So first turning to the state.

There are some constraints, as much of any additional revenue is constitutionally required to go towards school funding under Prop 98 and building the state's reserves.

The state is also nearing the GAN limit, which restricts spending growth even when revenues increase.

The LAO has advised waiting for updated data in May in the May revised before making significant budget decisions.

At the federal level, we still don't know the full impact of policy changes.

Federal changes will significantly reduce the federal government's share of administrative costs.

And in starting in October 2027, states may be required to share in-benefit costs based on error rates.

We could also see new administrative functions, potentially more frequent eligibility redeterminations, and increased staffing needs.

Essentially, we may be asked to do more work with less federal support.

For Medi-Cal proposals for work requirements and six-month re-verification processes would likely reduce enrollment.

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

New pressures would compound existing structural challenges.

Now turning to our own budget, the board's adopted maintenance of effort policy guide submissions that represent year-over-year baseline changes.

Key aspects of the MOE policy are outlined on the slide to include known salary and benefit changes as well as operational and internal service fund adjustments, a 4% cost of living adjustment for eligible CBO contracts, adjustments for approved mid-year by mid-year adjustments by the board, as well as alignment with the board's adopted vision 2036.

Here we have a timeline of our budget process.

So we kick off the budget process in January.

In February, we review both our internal service fund and our non-internal fund budgets.

We also review CBO contract information.

In March, we also begin to review budget narratives related to the budget submissions.

In April, we have our early budget work session.

In April and May, we continue to have our budget work group meetings.

We review other special budgets.

In May, we after we have identified the budget gap, we review department reductions, and then in late May, the proposed budget is presented to the board, and in June we have budget hearings and final budget adoption.

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

The one-time strategies reflected in the blue section of this TAC bar represents the structural deficit we face developing the county's budget every year with operational costs always outpacing revenue growth.

Looking at the current year specifically, you'll recall that we closed a 105.7 million dollar funding gap with 61 million in one-time strategies and 45 million of ongoing strategies.

Every effort is made to pursue ongoing strategies as they address the structural funding gap while one-time strategies become the starting part of the funding gap for the following fiscal year.

As a reminder, the county's budget is highly reliant on state and federal aid.

As you can see, two-thirds of our financing in the general fund is reliant on state and federal aid.

After today's work session, we'll continue analysis of program expenditure and revenue projections, as well as analyze the non-program side of the equation.

We'll review positions and vacancy factors.

We'll analyze the governor's May revision.

We will submit the balance proposed budget to the board of supervisors, have budget hearings, and adopt the final budget by June 30th.

Here we have a long list of pending factors to consider that may impact the developing budget and future years.

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

We know that our pending litigation and settlements are also impacting our insurance costs in addition to overall hardening of the insurance market.

We have the prospect of potential federal and state audit disallowances, notably with FEMA.

And as we've discussed, we have unfunded capital needs, some of which have been in litigation related.

The implementation of state programs and policy changes like Prop One will also be revisiting the implementation of Measure W as well as other board initiatives.

And we'll be hearing later from the assessor about the potential impact of the increased volume of assessment appeals.

As we've seen, global finances and the impact of climate disasters have the potential to do significant economic harm.

And lastly, the potential of an economic downturn is always a concern given our heavy reliance on state and federal funding.

Here's a look at the schedule for today.

We'll be starting with health care, followed by public assistance.

We'll hear from general government before the break and turn to public protection and end with the remainder of the general government departments.

That concludes our overview.

Thank you very much.

I note we started a few minutes late, and you got us right back on time.

Thank you very much.

Any questions of the CAO's report before we go into our next budget presentation?

Seeing none.

I do have Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Thank you.

Just to clarify on page 11, total financing 4.2 million.

So is this the general fund versus all funds?

I'm sorry, 4.2 billion.

That is the general fund.

Okay, thank you.

I do believe that during this budget process, just like we did last year, it would be helpful to get an accounting of the trusts and reserve funds to you know get an overview from the auditor like we did last year in terms of that breakdown, what's restricted, what we might be able to use and under what circumstances.

We'll do that.

Thank you.

And lastly, um I wanted to appreciate our county administrator and her team noting that this particular year the budget uh that's going to be proposed to us will be delivered two weeks earlier than usual.

So thank you.

I know that requires a lot of work.

I also want to point out that in some years we have um fiscal uncertainty, an economic downturn, everyone knows things are tight.

This year is a little bit different in that we have an administration change.

We have I heard it a few times.

We don't know the full effects of what that's going to look like.

We we just don't know.

And that to me is scarier than a time when we have an economic downturn.

We just not knowing is more difficult.

I also appreciate the pending factors that were called out.

Those indeed are could be X factors.

We don't know.

Uh that's what makes budgeting a difficult task.

But um, we're on top of it as we always are.

Again, two weeks early, that's right.

And um, so I appreciate that.

With that said, we have a long list of presentations, and we have a nice timeline set out by our CAO's office.

So we have a game card here that will take us through the end of the day by staying on track.

We're gonna call healthcare.

Anika, you're up.

You have 30 minutes allotted.

Take as much as you need.

We have to wait a second.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, but through the chair to our administration and President Halbert, if we can allow some time to get the screen back up and the presentation back up.

Thank you.

Let's reconvene the open session.

Will the clerk please call the role to establish quorum?

Supervisor Marquez.

Excuse Supervisor Chan.

Present.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Cortinata Bass.

Present.

President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Very good.

We'll now proceed with the health care services presentation.

We'll welcome our health care services director, our permanent health care services director, Anika Chalk.

Welcome.

Thank you, Supervisor.

Uh, good morning, supervisors and county administrator and members of the public.

Anika Chowdhury with Alameda County Health.

And I'm pleased to be here to present our agency's preliminary MOE effort budget for the fiscal year 26-27.

And before I begin, I'd like to take just a moment to thank finance and program teams, both across our agency as well as the CAO's office.

You know, as you all know, we're in a collective moment of significant change with a lot at stake for the communities that we serve.

And I really appreciate the ongoing efforts of our leadership and the entire team.

This proposed budget maintains our commitment to core agency-wide priorities, which center on health equity and seek to ensure a robust health care safety net, support resilient communities, promote collaboration with providers and partners, and leverage strengths across our four departments to better serve our staff and Alameda County residents.

This slide presents a summary of our whole budget, and before I go into details, just want to note as the county administrator did that this does not include Measure W.

Our agency is also continuing to administer a small amount of ARPA funds through the end of this calendar year.

That's also not included.

So our total appropriation for the next fiscal year is approximately 1.369 billion dollars, which is an increase of 1.97%, or 26.39 million from the current year's approved budget.

Our total revenue is just over 1.166 billion dollars, which is an increase of approximately 1.55%, or 17.8 million from the current year.

And this results in a total net counting costs increase of 8.58 million, which is a 4.4 increase over last year.

In terms of FTEs, our count for full-time equivalent staff is 1,902.39, which is down by 1% or 21 FTEs compared to the current fiscal year.

This slide details our 8.58 million requested additional net county cost, which would result in a total NCC of approximately 203 million dollars for our budget, representing 14.8% of our overall MOE.

The most significant drivers of increased cost in our MOE budget are cost of living adjustments for our staff and community-based organizations and internal service funds, all of which are represented in the first three lines of this table, as well as the loss of one-time measure A revenue that were used as part of budget development for the current fiscal year.

Following your board's adopted budget policy, we maximize known and projected ongoing revenue to support increased cost of maintaining existing services to cover as much of the operational increases as possible.

That's reflected in the 7.9 in revenue adjustments.

Here we are seeing the distribution of the total appropriation across the four departments in our agency.

You can see that well over half of the budgeted appropriation is in the behavioral health department, represented here in purple at $815.8 million, or roughly 60%.

ACBHD holds responsibility for Medical Specialty Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Services, and CBO contracts account for 65% of the department's appropriation.

The next largest appropriation is in the Office of the Agency Director, depicted in blue, representing close to one quarter of the budget at $333 million.

The significant portion of the OAD budget is composed of housing and homelessness services, which accounts for nearly 80 million dollars and has steadily grown over the past six years.

The Office of the Agency Director also houses our medical financing team, where AC Health budgets about $60 million in intergovernmental transfers to support safety net hospitals.

The public health department shown in red is at $172 million, and public health holds the largest number of grants in our agency as it heavily leverages state and federal funding to deliver essential services that serve all 1.7 million residents of our county.

The environmental health department rounds us out with 47.88 million or about 3.5% of the total budget.

Moving on to total appropriation by major object.

Here we see that the largest percent of our MOE budget is allocated in discretionary services and supplies, here seen in the goldish orange at 919.33 million, or 62% of the total budget.

I'll note that within this category, more than 86% of the funding is allocated for community-based organizations, and I'll cover that in a little bit more detail later.

Salaries and employee benefits shown in blue represent just over $375 million or 25% of our costs, and other charges denoted in purple represent about 9.25% of our appropriation and include a number of expenditures that support local hospitals, including 60 million more than 60 million in IGTs to support the drawdown of additional federal funds for Alameda Health System, St.

Rose Hospital, as well as UCSF Ven Yoff Children's.

This other charges area also includes about 45 million dollars for Alameda Health Services Health PAC contract and another $5 million for contracted services at the juvenile justice center.

Non-discretionary services and supplies shown in gray represent about 3.8% of our costs, and these are to cover internal services funds for services that are provided to us by other county agencies.

And lastly, in other financing uses, this is less than 1% of our MOE budget, and it covers operating transfers in and out, such as what Measure A might cover for other departments.

State aid, which is shown in red, is the largest proportion, representing nearly half of the PI at $521.9 million dollars.

And within this category, the largest sources of state funding include the Mental Health Services Act as well as 1991 and 2011 realignment.

The second largest revenue source comes from charges for services that we provide.

So this is in the bluish gray and at representing about 28%.

And within this category, nearly 75% of the revenue comes from MediCal, billing specifically for serious mental illness and substance use disorder services through behavioral health at about 241 million dollars.

It also includes revenue that we receive for Medical services that we provide under the CalAIM initiative.

The remaining charges within this category are fee for our fees that environmental health collects, Vector Control, and the EMS agency.

Federal aid in the darker purple constitutes 143.22 million or 20 or 12% of our revenues, and this includes a variety of programs and grants, including Ryan White, HIV services, healthcare for the homeless and HUD funding, the Women Infant and Children Program and Public Health, as well as a number of other grants.

All other sources shown in pink represents about 103 million dollars of revenues, and these sources include Tobacco Mass Resettle Fund, donation for master settlement funds, excuse me, donations for intergovernmental transfers, fines, forfeits, and penalties, and a number of smaller grants.

We show measure A revenue that comes to our agency.

This is the non-Alameda Health System portion.

25% of it comes to our agency at $52.16 million.

And our revenues for this year also include nearly $13 million in pediatric measure C revenues.

Thank you.

So the next few slides describe how we work and the difference that we make in our community.

So our agency envisions healthy and fulfilling lives for all county residents, and our mission is rooted in values of health equity, quality high quality services, and community partnership.

The image on the right depicts major areas of our work, and we aim to coordinate across our departments and programs to deliver services for the whole person and whole community.

Essential services provided across the agency span a range of community needs for people of all ages, from all backgrounds and from the beginning to the end of life.

This slide highlights key agency-wide priorities which are nested within the county's Vision 2036 and help us to advance multiple 10X goals.

Advancing health equity remains our North Star, and now more than ever, we're focused on supporting a robust and stable health care safety net.

Driven by major systems change, including HR1 and state funding cuts, our teams are collaborating across systems to minimize adverse impacts on residents and providers.

We currently have several major community planning processes underway, including the first three-year Behavioral Health Services Act plan, which will replace the MHSA plan starting in July, and this requires a comprehensive look at all county behavioral health services, even those that are funded outside of BHSA.

And this plan is now out for public comment as well as a draft is with review with the state for review.

We also anticipate an updated home together 2030 plan to be finalized this fall, which will include updated data and analyses and continue to guide strategic investments to reduce homelessness and support us with programming measure W dollars.

And as you all know, the EMS team is working on another system redesign and while ensuring system stability during this transitional period.

We also anticipate that our public health department will start a new cycle for the community health improvement plan, which is a countywide plan that incorporates feedback from various partners as well as community members.

Under the agency wide infrastructure and workforce circle priority areas, these refer to our ongoing work to better align and coordinate cross-departmental work and to ensure that our staff are fully supported.

And finally, community preparedness and resilience includes a variety of partnerships and programs to help support the residents of our county to be ready for any immediate or long-term emergencies.

This is a little bit of a busy slide that I won't read all of it, but it showcases just a few examples of the direct impact that our agency has on the lives of Alameda County residents.

So just to highlight a few things, the housing and homelessness system served more than 25,000 unhoused individuals this past year, and we've increased a system wide rate, we've decreased system wide rates of return to homelessness from 16% to 13%.

So this is some indication that some of the strategies we're leveraging are working.

I'll also note that the behavioral health department led the state in successfully implementing care court through thoughtful interagency coordination and supported 280 individual petitions for treatment.

The environmental health department supported hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents with keeping our air, land, and water clean.

And through our county's opioid settlement funds, we launched nearly $2 million in community-driven innovative programs.

And through a variety of other programs, we continue to improve health outcomes for children, youth, and older adults with complex health needs, as well as meeting our requirements for managing communicable and chronic disease programs.

Moving on to key investments that we are glad to be able to include in our 26-27 preliminary budget.

124.75 million dollars to continue countywide coordination of housing and homelessness services, and this includes investments that about 6.1 million from other county departments such as probation and social services agency.

And I'll note here again that this does not include Measure W.

85.3 million to support the Health PAC program, which serves low-income people who are not eligible for Medicaid and provides critical infrastructure support for our safety net providers.

That network includes the Alameda Health System as well as community clinics.

We also include 69 67.9 million dollars across a variety of programs in the public health department to support foundational capabilities like disease surveillance, organizational competencies, and community partnership.

Key behavioral health investments include 44, 35.7 million dollars toward the $50 million forensic behavioral health plan as well as additional funding of 44.8 million dollars to implement care courts, which also includes partnership with the housing and homelessness department to administer behavioral health bridge housing.

As I noted earlier, behavioral health is widely recognized as one of the most successful care programs in the state.

We've also included $35.83 million to continue environmental protection across Alameda County, and this includes modernization of information systems and critical facility upgrades for the environmental health department.

17.11 million dollars is included for the initial implementation of the EPIC electronic health record, and this will support Alameda County Behavioral Health Public Health as well as the Sheriff's Office.

Just moving down the line, we've got 12.96 million for Measure C pediatric funds to support a range of strategies to support children, youth, and their families, 9.4 million for vector control programs, which are aimed at preventing the spread of vector borne disease, and these are services that we provide across the county.

7.49 million represents the effort that it will take to renew and maintain our public health accreditation, which is a process, it's a national accreditation that our department achieved a few years ago.

And to keep it going, we have to document and assess the delivery on an ongoing basis of essential public health services and core functions.

Lastly, we include $6.2 million to continue implementation of Cal AIM, which funds innovative programs in housing, chronic disease medicine, chronic disease management and food as medicine, and $7.49 million to support the community health improvement plan's implementation.

Oh, I apologize, that's $5.46.

So these next two slides, we offer a window into the wide range of mandatory and discretionary services that we provide across the agency.

While each of our departments carries regulatory obligations and service mandates, it's important to note that many of our discretionary services are also critical, as we often layer and leverage mandatory and discretionary to meet the community's whole needs.

We estimate that our appropriations for mandated services total nearly $868 million or more than half of our budget, and include about $154 million in net county cost support.

So on this, I'll just I want to highlight a couple of big things as you'll see.

The mandates are spread across the departments, but behavioral health has things like the Behavioral Health Services Act, various litigation agreements that we have, care court on the Medi-Cal side.

They represent the EPD APSDT services as well as services for special mental health and substance use and subacute mental health services.

Environmental health includes things like vector control, land use and septic food, water, recreational safety, clean water programs, and then the remainder are a combination of public health programs that are you know, a large one is maternal child and family health services as well as communicable disease control and EMS services, which are not in public health but separate.

And then the other big one that I will point out is the indigent care mandate.

So this one is critically important as we head into the HR1 landscape because in California the section 17,000 of the welfare and institutions code makes indigent care a responsibility of counties.

So if the state is not able to come up with resources to support people who are losing coverage through HR1, that's a direct cost shift to counties.

On the discretionary side, we track an appropriation of more than 302 million with an estimated NCC support of 19.5 million.

And on this one, I just want to note a couple of programs that certainly don't feel discretionary, specifically all of our housing and homelessness work is technically on this side of the house.

Critical infrastructure investments like the EPIC implementation or the social health information exchange.

All of the work that we do with the 18 school districts across the county, that's all included on this side.

So to support accountability, we deploy several strategies for efficiency, productivity, and revenue enhancement.

Our agency aggressively leverages resources where possible.

So we estimate that for every 16 cents of county general fund included in our proposed MOE budget, the agency generates an additional 84 cents of revenue.

This includes drawing down matching federal and state dollars wherever possible, aligning strengths and resources across our departments, and collaborating with partners to increase coordination and reduce duplication.

We collect, analyze, and use data to improve our programs and measure our impacts using the results-based accountability framework, and we work to continuously improve our contracting to ensure procurements are consistent with GSA rules, new state laws, and efficient contracting processes where possible.

And lastly, we focused on continued quality improvement, remaining mindful of the need to align internally and externally so that we can better serve our communities.

So next I'll go into a detailed slide of the contracts that are held across our agency because a key pillar of our work is that we don't do it alone.

So more than half of our budget or 58% comprises contracts through community-based organizations.

For FY2627, our budget includes 408 contracts with 197 unduplicated CBOs totaling just over 794 million dollars.

Of this amount, I'll note that approximately just under 139 million dollars is in contracts with our close safety net partner, Alameda Health System, and we've uh delineated some of the specific contracts within that larger amount.

So I'll conclude my presentation with a review of pending external factors.

As you all know, HR1 and state medical changes are really driving significant changes to health care access, affordability coverage, financing programs, and ultimately the services that we're able to provide.

HR1 in particular is punting costs to the state, which we're worried will get punted to the county.

The transition of the Mental Health Services Act to the Behavioral Health Services Act, which becomes effective on July 1 is also a significant pain point for us right now because Prop One narrows the populations that can be served under what we were able to serve under MHSA and it really narrows the services toward people who have the most acute needs and changes how counties can spend their money.

ACBHD has had to issue nearly 53 million dollars in program reductions that will have impacts across the system.

Additionally, proposed changes to the Medical Mobile Crisis Benefit and the Governor's January budget could lead to significant cost shift to counties, and this is because this is a benefit.

So that the State Department of Healthcare Services provides state general funds to support counties with implementation.

The state wants to move it to an optional benefit for the counties, which would mean that the counties would have to pay for the full share of the nonfederal cost.

And we have a pretty robust 24-7 mobile crisis benefit that serves more than 5,000 response to more than 5,000 crisis episodes per year.

Public health funding remains threatened as federal cuts and changes to agencies like the CDC, FDA, USDA, and EPA continue to undermine our work in infectious disease surveillance, environmental protection, HIV programs, emergency preparedness and food safety.

And although this is currently blocked by federal court order, the federal administration has attempted to claw back roughly $16 million in grants at the public health department, which support critical staff and data systems and our emergency operations plans.

And of course, we're closely tracking homelessness funding where the state's seventh round of the HAP funding is planned to be cut by 50% compared to current numbers.

And we're also closely monitoring federal proposals to CAP HUD funding and the ways that it can be used to support permanent supportive housing.

Lastly, I'll just note that there's a range of other ways that the federal government can affect our county programs, and that comes through various rules and regulations.

So we closely monitor any proposed rulemaking or identifying things that can impact our county, and we bring those through the PAL committee.

Thank you.

I'm happy to take questions.

And I have one more plug for the agency, which is that we recently launched a brand new website, and so that address is here.

Uh we've combined uh several dozen websites that lived across our agency and have kind of put them under one umbrella so you can get information for each of the departments.

There's a wonderful search function that we didn't have before, and so um our hope is that it'll really make it easier for um our community members to find the services and information that they're looking for.

Uh it is also fully ADA compliant and um uh it has a little translate button at the top.

Very good.

Um any questions before we move to the next presentation.

I'll recognize our health committee members.

Lena Tan first and Supervisor Miley, if you have any questions, just raise your hand.

Go for it, Miss uh Supervisor Tan.

Um thank you, President Halbert, and thank you for this presentation.

I um especially like the amount, the accomplishments, especially on some of the non-mon mandated programs like housing and homelessness, where you're already spending 124 million of the department's funds, in addition to the 80 percent that were earmarking with measure W.

I I just had a couple of questions given uh some of the comments that were made yesterday about health pack.

So uh and also um trying to get a better understanding of our uh support for AHS, the hospital system.

So you know, page two, you had in the footnote 60.3 million dollar for hospital finance, and then on page five, you had 138.4757 million that included Saint Rose, AHS, and children's hospital.

So does the sixty million dollars on page two, is that just for St.

Rose?

No.

So the St.

Rose IGT right now is about um eight million dollars a year that the county is supporting.

Um there's a smaller amount that goes to um the uh to children's hospital, uh, and then the vast majority of that amount is to support Alameda Health System.

Okay, so the um the portion that goes to children's hospital, that's different than measure C, right?

That's the ITT for children's hospital.

Yeah, there's a there's a uh program that um allows for uh hospitals uh non-public hospitals uh to be able to draw down funding, and so that is is reflected here in it separate than the pediatric measure C.

Okay.

And then um uh on page 10, uh this is the part about health pack.

You mentioned that uh we are we provide about 70 million dollars for an agent care, especially for those um that have unsatisfactory immigration status, and that is going to go up to 85.32 million under your um proposed budget.

Uh so the um the number you're referencing is the 70 million that we talked about at the health committee yesterday.

Uh that is a uh component of this 85 million.

This 85 represents the budget for the whole uh the whole program, so it also includes any COLA amounts that we would uh give for this year, as well as the cost of staff uh and on our team.

Um, but that 70 million that we shared yesterday is uh the base amount of contracts that go out through that.

So about half of that goes to Alameda Health System because they provide primary and specialty care, and then half of it goes to the uh FQHCs that are a part of uh CHCN.

Okay, so uh part of the health pack funding uh goes to um Almeida Health Systems, of which uh you showed 32.25 million going to the FQs.

And so between Health PAC and our hospital finance, how much support are we giving Alameda Health Systems?

Um so I won't speak to the uh IGT portion just yet because I I'd rather that I give you accurate numbers uh that our team can put together.

But in terms of contracts with AHS, which include the health pack contracts, uh that is uh 138.72 million.

138.72 million, okay and the IGT would be separate from that.

Okay.

This is helpful.

Appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Marquez.

Supervisor Miley, your hand is up and the floor is yours.

Oh, thank you thank you, President Albert.

I'm at a little disadvantaged because I don't have the PowerPoint in front of me.

So I just want to ask the agency director.

What was the entire revenue for the agency?

The full revenue is at 1.166 billion.

Supervisor Miley, we're having a little trouble hearing if you could just speak up or into the mic would be helpful.

1.16 billion.

1.1, okay.

Okay.

And then about 2,000 employees.

And about you said 408 contracts.

How many CBOs is that?

Um 197 unduplicated CBOs.

Okay.

So yeah, I want to thank the agency.

I think your uh presentation was very thorough.

Um I have one one deficiency I'm going to bring to your attention in a minute, but I think your agency uh the presentation was very thorough.

I want to thank you, your staff, uh the CBOs, uh county staff for all the work you you do in order to provide safety net services for the uh undeserved uh populations in Alameda County.

It's a tremendous lift, and you know, we value and we put our money uh what in terms of what we value, and clearly over a billion dollars is going there, and it takes a lot of people to make this work.

And your agency is facing a number of challenges of which you've pointed out, as well as other challenges which out, which I'm not gonna raise at the moment, but there's some major major challenges, and I just want to thank you, everyone, the staff, uh county employees, the CBOs for just all working together to help us uh do what we need to do in order to ensure people have a quality of life.

Now, the one thing that's missing in your presentation, I believe is you demonstrate the value of the C beyond the dollars, but did you point out the value of the agency in terms of the economic benefit the agency provides to Alameda County?

Um you know, not the county itself as a governmental entity, but the county holistically in terms of jobs of the spin-off effect, because I think you said for every dollar or something you raised, about eight, is it uh another eight, eighty-four dollars is raised some when what was it that you said, Anika?

Every excuse me, uh for every sixteen cents in general fund, we generate eighty-six cents in uh federal funding.

Yes, that's excellent.

For every 16 cents, you generate another 80-some cents in terms in funding.

So if you would, you know, I've been a broken record on this.

If you could some kind of way quantify even if possible, you know, to what degree the agency produces economic vitality for you know the the county uh as a as a whole because I think obviously uh you know people can be healthy if they aren't housed, people can't be healthy if they aren't employed, people can't be healthy if they feel uh they're living in you know fear and danger of um you know uh safety.

Uh all that's important, but obviously if we have resilient uh society and and health the health care agency is helping to reduce uh to produce a resilient society, I think that demonstrates health as well.

So if there's some kind of way of of quantifying that, that would be very uh important.

And I know I've raised that in the past, and I just want to keep raising it.

So but otherwise, great presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you, President Howard.

Um, thank you to our director of AC Health for a great presentation.

Just make a couple notes.

Um the achievement list is long.

I would encourage we expand on that list.

Um, in November uh under the public protection committee, we received great updates with respect to the coordination with our sheriff's department and behavioral health.

We have two years of zero suicides, that is a big deal.

We're also meeting the benchmarks under the consent decree.

We're improving health care, mental health, substance abuse support, also for our young people at JJC.

So just all around really excited about the systems working together, collaborating and strengthening those partnerships.

Um with respect to care court, was that an unfunded mandate?

And since then that has been a local investment that we've put in to leverage different funding.

The only other funding that I'm aware of of that came not necessarily for Care Court, but we received bridge housing funding, which we've leveraged to support Care Court.

So that was the other state, but largely an unfunded mandate.

Okay.

And then do we have a total of the unfunded mandates, like a look back the last two to three years?

I think that's going to be key as we continue to advocate to the governor and state legislators that we need support to fill the gaps and the impacts from HR1.

And then the last thing I will advocate for is thank you for the update with respect to Prop One, but strongly gonna echo the comments I've made in the past.

I feel strongly we need to have a bridge a transitional plan.

So hopefully we can um work on that together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fortunatabash.

Thank you, Director Chowdhury.

Um I echo my colleagues.

Uh very good presentation, excellent presentation, and thank you so much to you and your team for the important work you do for our community.

Um I have a few questions.

You alluded to the impacts of HR1, Prop One, and we've been talking about this uh on the board as well as the committees.

What are your what's your current thinking about how we can address those impacts and you know where can we look for funding to provide bridge funding, and as you said just yesterday, also look at not only how we bridge that gap, but how we create more sustainability.

Um thank you for that super uh question, supervisor.

So um, in terms of just the big picture of cuts that we know, so it's 53 million dollars for behavioral health uh that we've had to issue because the the revenue just isn't there.

Um with the HR1 side, it's a little bit more difficult to know what the impacts will be because requirements have not hit yet.

Um we also don't know what the state is going to do with the May rebuys.

There's a lot of chatter at the state that um and interest in the state uh coming up with a bigger solution for uh uh the people with unsatisfactory immigration status, and so we'll kind of need to put all of that together to understand what that full number is.

Um, but in terms of what we've been doing across our agency is looking at um places where uh so that 53 million in uh Prop One cuts included about 11 and a half million that were cuts to our agency.

Um so kind of thinking through like do we have other revenue sources to absorb some of those?

What can we do without?

Um, and then there's 38 million on community impacts.

Um, so our teams are kind of working to see what's leverageable where.

Um, and then in our uh you know, and we're working with the county administrator's office to identify additional strategies that either come from us or uh would be a part of Measure W.

So in the March presentation for Measure W, we did um include a placeholder of I think it was 18 to 20 million for um both Prop One and uh uh HR1 impacts, and so it's a matter of figuring out um what's possible and uh you know the other big thing that I mentioned yesterday at health committee was that um we're really cognizant because the resources that are available to us are either one-time or time limited.

Um, and as we've kind of seen play out in the ARPA space, it's hard to uh remember that bridge is bridge.

Um and so as we go through this, we really want to be cognizant and have some processes in place so that um our provider communities as well as our programs know that there are either a time for an off-ramp, so if something needs to close, it can be done responsibly if something uh if there's other strategies that they need to find to make it sustainable in the long run, that that's what we'll be aiming for.

Thank you.

And in terms of um, you know, these these cuts that we're anticipating, how much of that is incorporated into the MOE?

To the extent that um the cuts are reflected in um the BHSA budget, that is a part of our MOE budget, so those are not here.

Um, and any bridge plans, et cetera, are not contemplated in this MOE.

And in terms of the anticipated HR one cuts, we still don't know exactly what that will be, so those reductions are not included in the MOE.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Those reductions nor any recommendations to augment anything are included here.

So this is just what it uh takes for us to provide the services as of right now.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

And then similarly for homelessness, you mentioned the state HAP funding might be reduced by 50%, and the federal HUD funding, I think could be a reduction of 30 to 60 million.

Are those reductions included in the maintenance of effort?

Those reductions are not included here.

So HAP 7 funding, I think we wouldn't necessarily receive until another year or two from now.

That HAP 7 is a part of this year's governor's budget.

But the the issue is is that uh you know, we we program uh that funding, and so uh any reductions to it mean reductions to services down the line.

Um the FUD uh sorry, the HUD cuts are um also not included here because um HUD has not formally uh issued any of those yet.

There's also a couple of uh court cases at play, and so things are um status quo for right now.

However, we have had issues with some providers getting delayed payments because the the state that the feds are HUD is being slow to issue those, but that 30 to 60 million dollar gap that you mentioned is something that we do anticipate, you know, over the next couple of years that that is where HUD wants to go, and that's where once they can clear the courts that they will be issuing those.

And ultimately that'll mean a big difference for um we invest, I think more than 60% of our HUD funding in permanent supportive housing.

Um, and so uh, you know, we've brought to your board before at a work session the general concept of uh backfilling some of that with Measure W.

Um, but again, then that would reduce uh what's available for us to expand services otherwise.

Thank you.

And last question, um you described the discretionary revenue that's in the overall budget.

Do you have a sense of how much of that discretionary revenue is tied to matching funds that we need to make sure we set aside for those matches?

Do you mean the discretionary services?

Or do I yeah, that might be one place to look.

So is that appropriation on page 12 the discretionary appropriation of 302 million?

Um is some of that tied to matching funds, so that we would not be able to reprogram it if we wanted to.

So for example, uh Calim uh here, that is something that we draw down match for uh because CalEM is is funded uh half by state county and half by uh federal funds.

Um other ones could be uh so the healthcare for the homeless program is not highlighted here, but that is rolled up under housing and homelessness services, and that receives a large HERSA grant.

Um so there are uh components in here that are either received from external sources or we use to leverage to draw down.

Um and just one other component that I'll mention is that our agency is um has a very uh well-established uh medical administrative activities uh program, which is something very um on the back end where we document the work that we do on behalf of medical communities as well as uninsured, um, and there's a state and federal program that allows some reimbursement for that.

So all of the work that we do, whether it's discretionary or mandated, um, does help us draw down additional support.

Um, so it's if to the extent that those would go, that would have an impact.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll go back to Supervisor Marquez, just itching to add on.

Yeah, sorry.

Um are we so it's really important to me that we maximize every opportunity we draw down every dollar we can take advantage of.

So can you point to are there any areas that were lacking where we need to step it up with respect to Cal AIM, EPIC, just anything in general?

I know a lot of things are in works, but is there anything that has not been covered here that we need to invest in to ensure that we could draw down those dollars?

Uh yeah, I think that actually the the EPIC implementation is a a great component of that.

So, you know, we've had a um uh we switched billing systems for behavioral health a couple of years ago, and that's been really uh problematic due to a whole host of factors.

Um we're using all of the lessons learned from that to make sure that we are investing in EPIC and planning for that revenue generation at the outset um so that you know we can minimize the pain of transitioning to another service.

Um, but in terms of billing and claiming, I think that our teams are really sophisticated and do a great job of uh leveraging from wherever we can, whether it's federal grants, state opportunities or Medicaid funding or you know, IGTs.

Yeah, and then I'll just make a comment.

Um, you said housing and homelessness, even though it's painful, it is on the discretionary side.

So I'm just gonna echo my comments I made in July regarding measure W.

I want my colleagues to hear it and everyone paying attention.

We really need to work in partnership with every city in this county, as well as ourselves representing unincorporated county, but we have to do a better job in housing people with respect to land use decisions and zoning, tenant protections.

If every city, if we were all doing our part, those numbers would significantly drop because we would be keeping people housed and preventing displacement.

So I think that needs to be part of the conversation.

We can't always look at the county to resolve this issue.

We have to be proactive and prevent it from happening, and that's the responsibility of our city partners.

Thank you.

Indeed, it's eye-opening to me that that is a discretionary activity and not mandated with all of the documented um discussion we've had about homelessness, and it's discretionary.

Uh my questions are um not surprisingly, uh, page four, behavioral health department, eight hundred and fifteen million dollars, sixty percent of our budget.

Is that more or less than last year?

Uh I have that number for you, supervisors.

Uh it's relatively the same.

Same question for Alameda County Health Office of the Agency Director, Public Health Department, Environmental Health Department.

We can take it offline.

I just it's helpful for me to know yeah, the the change versus year ago.

Are we spending more or less on behavioral health, more or less on the public health department?

Same thing for things like very important, very important.

For example, federal aid, 143.

Is that more or less than last year?

State aid, 521, more or less than last year.

Not for right now because um we've had a lot of really good questions, but we have a continuation in our budget cycle.

It's helpful for me to know that change versus year ago.

I go to CARES Court, and that's on page 10.

Cost us 40 45 million dollars, and we were reimbursed.

I think I heard you say 1.1 million dollars or something like that.

We received uh 1.1 million to start the program at in uh uh last year.

Um however, that 44 represents um both bridge housing as well as uh uh you know resources that we put into it.

Um, but I wouldn't I if you're interested in understanding how much we get reimbursed for it, we can work with behavioral health to detail that um because we do generate revenue for work that we do.

Okay, it would be helpful for me to know the all-in cost and revenue of that program.

And then I note that we have the FTEs listed here.

I don't know that it's meant for us to understand sort of a cost per FTE because there are more than just salaries and benefits in these costs.

Is that right?

It's just a gauge as to how many people are faced up against these activities.

Okay.

All right.

Very good.

With that said, um, wonderful presentation.

Appreciate you.

And um seeing no other questions, we'll move on to the next um presentation, which is public assistance social services agency listed at 1045.

It is not 1045, shockingly.

But Miss Ford, the floor is yours at 10, 11 16.

Did you want me to try to make some of that time up?

We're just keeping track.

All right, thank you.

Um, good morning, President Halbert, members of the Board of Supervisors, County Administrator and Staff, and community partners and stakeholders.

I am Andrea Ford, agency director for social services.

It is my pleasure to present to you the social services agencies fiscal year 2627 preliminary maintenance of effort budget.

First, I extend my appreciation to SSA's agency, executive team, and administrative staff for their work ensuring the submission of our MOE budget.

I also want to recognize the many staff across our offices and the departments of adult and aging services, children and family services, and workforce and benefits administration whose collective efforts help us serve about half a million Alameda County residents on any given day.

Their commitment is a heart of our work, and I thank them for their ongoing flexibility, commitment, and continued support and partnership.

In today's presentation, I will cover SSA's priorities as they relate to Vision 2036, our fiscal year 2024-25 accomplishments, a brief overview of our mandated and discretionary services, a review of caseload data, a review of SSA's financial summary, and pending factors with a focus on impacts that may affect our agency service delivery due to federal, state, and local changes.

At Alameda County Social Services Agency, we believe dignity, stability, and care should be within reach for everyone at every stage of life.

We serve as a safety net when people need it and a way forward towards stability.

Whether someone is putting food on the table, navigating a crisis, accessing vital services, or planning their next step, we show up with compassion, respect, and steady partnerships.

Our mission is to provide essential support, helping individuals, families, and communities meet basic needs in times of challenge and move forward with stability, dignity, and purpose.

Our vision is that a community where stability is within reach.

Dignity is upheld for all, and opportunities help every person shape their future with confidence and care.

Across our programs, we serve our community with dignity, compassion, integrity, shared purpose, and accountability.

We are committed to building a stronger, more connected Alameda County in pursuit of Vision 2036's goal to eliminate poverty and hunger.

Across our services from child safety to employment support to caring for older adults to supporting veterans and people living with disabilities, we create pathways for greater stability, connection, and opportunity.

Throughout 2024 and 2025, our agency achieved a range of accomplishments across every department, strengthening food security, expanding health care access, stabilizing housing, and supporting economic mobility for thousands of Alameda County residents.

While we won't cover every achievement in today's presentation, I'll highlight several key impacts that reflect the breadth and depth of our work, either as an agency or in partnership with community-based organizations.

Our agency staff approved about 1,600 CalWorks temporary housing assistance requests and 269 permanent housing assistance requests, providing critical support for CalWorks families in crisis.

Temporary housing assistance covers up to 16 days of shelter, while permanent housing assistance helps families obtain or keep housing through support for deposits, last month's rent or rent arrears.

In total, the temporary housing assistance program spent almost $2 million, securing 24,000 hotel nights, while permanent housing assistance dedicated $600,000 to covering past-do rent, security deposits, and other costs of finding or maintaining housing.

In partnership with community providers, 185,000 prepared meals were delivered, 6.6 million pounds of food was distributed, ensuring 187,000 residents across Alameda County had access to nutritious meals during periods of high need.

Through the Path 2 initiative, we partnered with County ITD to launch an innovative platform that automatically matches daily jail booking and release data with Medicail records, allowing staff to generate pre-release applications in advance.

This streamlined process led to 155 applications submitted and 126 approvals, ensuring individuals re-entering the community have timely access to health care.

We return nearly $7 million to the community through free tax preparation services, helping households maximize refunds and keep more of their earned income.

The workforce development board secured a transformative $993,000 investment, expanding employment opportunities for residents with disabilities and strengthening inclusive workforce pathways.

And we completed a full agency rebrand and finalized the 2025-2030 strategic plan, establishing a clear modernized identity and a unified roadmap for service delivery in the years ahead.

On the next slide, we'll walk through key data points to give your board and the community a clearer picture of our caseloads and the impact of our services.

An update and upgrade from previous presentations is that this data is now publicly available on SSA's website via a new interactive online data dashboard that will be updated on a monthly basis.

As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and data-driven decision making, we're excited to share our new interactive online data dashboard, now publicly available on the SSA website.

This dashboard provides month-to-month data across our major safety net programs.

On this slide, I'll give a brief demonstration so you can see how the dashboard works.

Users can select any month from the panel on the left, choose a program, and the entire display updates instantly.

The filter summary box at the bottom helps track what's currently selected as you navigate.

Let's begin with MediCal.

For March 2026, approximately 397,000 individuals were enrolled, representing a 9.2% year-over-year decrease to March 2025.

This decline is visible in the month over month trend line at the bottom, where some months show sharper dips than others.

About a quarter of Medi-Cal recipients are children, and over 36% of enrolled individuals speak a primary language other than English, underscoring the continued need for culturally and linguistically responsive service delivery.

Geographically, enrollment is distributed across the county, with the highest concentrations in Oakland, Hayward, and Fremont.

Hovering over the map, you can see how demographics shift when we look at specific cities or zip codes.

Moving to CalFresh.

In March 2026, roughly 168,000 individuals were enrolled, a 6% year-over-year decrease from March 2025.

Over fiscal year 24 to 25, ACSSA distributed more than 400 million dollars in CalFresh benefits, generating nearly $730 million in economic impact across 700 plus stores and farmers markets.

Compared to Medi-Cal, a higher share of CalFresh participants speak English as a primary language, largely due to CalFresh's more limited eligibility for certain immigrant groups.

Children make up about a quarter of the caseload, while the program also serves a higher proportion of seniors compared to Medi-Cal.

Enrollment is distributed fairly evenly across supervisorial districts, and users can drill down by zip code to see each area's share of overall enrollment and related demographics.

Next is general assistance.

GA serves a smaller but critically important caseload.

At about 9,000 individuals in March 2026, this remained relatively stable, showing only a 2.3% decrease from the prior year.

Because GA serves adults without dependent children, two-thirds of participants are men, and English is the primary language for the vast majority of recipients.

Recipients are concentrated primarily in districts four and five, accounting for about two-thirds of all enrollees.

In March alone, SSA issued $3.1 million in GA benefits.

For eligible clients, our SSI advocacy program provides hands-on support to help individuals apply for and secure SSI.

The program delivers strong financial benefits by helping clients move from county-funded GA to federally funded SSI, reducing local costs while significantly increasing clients' monthly income.

Now let's look at in-home supportive services.

IHSS continues to be the one program showing steady growth with approximately 33,500 recipients in March 2026, a 6.3% increase from the prior year.

Next, let's take a look at CalWorks.

For March 2026, approximately 22,800 individuals were enrolled across about 9,500 cases, with cases generally representing households receiving assistance.

In that month alone, SSA distributed $8.7 million in CalWorks benefits.

One of the most noteworthy insights is the age distribution.

Children make up roughly three quarters of all CalWorks recipients.

And this is reflected in the financial data.

Of the total amount issued in March, about $6.4 million went directly to children, highlighting CalWorks role as a core safety net program for low-income families.

Finally, let's take a look at children and family services.

CFS caseloads continue to decline overall between about 4 and 5 percent.

Placement numbers follow similar trends, with overall placements decreasing and placements for older youth, 18 to 20, dropping by about 10%.

Roughly half of all CFS cases involve children placed out of the home, while the other half receive family maintenance or other non-placement services.

The dashboard allows users to view placements by age group, 0 to 17 and 18 to 20, to see how trends differ between younger children and non-minor dependents.

For older youth, many placements fall into settings designed to support independence, including supervised independent living placements, SILP, and transitional housing programs, THP.

These programs provide structured supportive environments that help young adults build the skills they need as they transition into adulthood.

As we return to the presentation, it's important to connect these data trends to the broader impact of our work.

Across our major safety net programs, the Social Services Agency serves one in three Alameda County residents, issuing more than 460 million dollars in client benefits each year for a stronger safety net for all.

All right.

Now I'll return to the budget and look at what these trends mean for our financial needs and priorities.

The slide before you outlines four key investments included in the fiscal year 2627 preliminary MOE and the staffing that supports their operations.

We'll start with Adult Protective Services.

Preliminary MOE investment for 20627 is 27.1 million dollars.

Adult Protective Services is an under-resourced growing program that supports 46 positions currently, focused on responding to referrals, conducting investigations, and ensuring timely protection for vulnerable adults.

Next, we have general assistance.

The preliminary MOE investment is $37 million.

GA is a state-mandated 100% county funded and administered program.

The 1,271 positions shown represent the entire workforce and benefits administration staffing complement.

Because WBA staff serve all eligibility and benefits programs, including but not limited to GA, the staffing total appears large when displayed under a single program.

This reflects the shared staffing infrastructure required to operate GA alongside other major programs.

It includes 153 positions dedicated to managing a large and growing caseload and quality assurance functions.

And the last program listed here as a key investment is CalFresh.

This is the first time it has appeared under MOE key investments.

The preliminary MOE investment is 11 million dollars, which includes 26.2 million CalFresh administrative costs, up from 16 million last year due to HR1 implementation.

This will be an increase in funding sharing ratio of 15% to 25% is the effective October of 2026.

The investment supports 676 positions responsible for eligibility determinations, customer service, and meeting state and federal compliance requirements.

And just to give you a sense of the increased administrative funding ratios, the federal government has reduced its res its contribution to the program from 50% to 25% effective October 1st.

The state share is 35%.

Currently, it will increase the 52.5% effective October 1st, which is the federal fiscal year.

And the county funding ratio will increase from 15% to 22.5% in October on October 1st, 2026.

The next slide provides an overview of the broad range of mandated and discretionary services that SSA delivers across our three major operating departments.

Each department, adult and aging services, children and family services, and workforce and benefits administration carries significant mandated responsibilities required by federal and state law.

Alongside those mandated programs, each department also delivers discretionary services that address local community needs and strengthen our overall service continuum.

This district this distribution also illustrates the breadth and complexity of our work, ranging from protective services and family support to benefits eligibility, employment services, and community-based assistance.

Although we are largely a direct services agency, many of the services delivered to SSA's clients are in partnership with community-based organizations.

For fiscal year 26-27, the agency has budgeted $1301.58 million dollars for $218 contracts with community-based organizations.

In the Department of Workforce and Benefits Administration, it accounts for the largest share with $60.21 million in contracted services, supporting areas such as employment programs, emergency services, refugee support and benefits assistance.

Children and family services includes $49.79 or almost $50 million in contracted services.

Adulting receives $16 million in CBO support, covering area agency on aging programs and a range of aging related services.

Agency administration includes $5.58 million in workforce innovation and opportunity act related contracts and other administrative program supports.

The total number of CBO contracts decreased slightly from 227 last year to 218 this year.

Total CBO funding also declined from 141 million to 132 million.

The largest year over year decrease occurs in WBA, primarily due to the transition of emergency shelter and housing assistance contracts to the Alameda County Health Department.

Additionally, several multi-year contracts were already fully encumbered in prior years, reducing the need for additional funding this year.

In agency administration and finance, fewer workforce development board funds were available to issue new RFPs, contributing to a decline of 1.6 million dollars in that particular department.

When we look at financial summary, this year's total appropriation is 1.1 billion dollars, an increase of $13.5 million from last year.

Revenue is $1.02 billion, an increase of $7.5 million.

A major area of concern is revenues.

Budget assumes SSA receives the 1991 and 2011 realignment base amounts.

However, base funding is dependent on economic performance, statewide sales tax, and vehicle license fee receipts.

Realignment funding accounts for over 272.5 million dollars in agency revenue, which is approximately 26.7% of our agency's budget.

Currently, we are seeing flat to negative growth in realignment revenues, and we're closely watching this revenue source.

If these trends continue, our reliance on the county general fund to maintain current program levels will increase.

Looking at our total revenue by source, SSI SSA's 1.02 billion dollar budget includes 427.38 million dollars in federal aid, reflected in the dark green slice of the donut, representing the largest category of agency funding.

Federal aid provides funds for most of SSA's major programs, including Older Americans Act, IHSS, and adult aging services.

CalWorks, CalFresh and Medical Eligibility, CalFresh Employment and Training, Child Welfare Administration, Title IVe Adoptions and Foster Care Assistance, and KENGAP.

Medi Cal allocations are reflected in the budget as half federal and half state.

The federal funds pass through the state to counties.

State aid, which is reflected in the light green slice of the donut at 29% or $300.47 million, is the second largest category and for most part cover a state share of the same programs those federal revenues cover.

Our agency also receives 1991 realignment revenue at 14% of the budget and 2011 realignment revenue, which is 13% of the budget, which are often considered state revenue and amount to a total of 272.48 million dollars.

Combining the state and realignment revenue makes 50%, 56% of the budget or $573 million.

Other revenues contribute about 2%, which is 16.66 million of all revenue, and come from a number of sources, the largest being SSI collection and the G8 program.

IHSS provider premium contributions for health care, birth certificate fees, and guardianship fees.

The majority of our GA recoupements come from SSI, $4.2 million in 2018-2019, $5.6 million in 2020, $3 million in fiscal year 2022 and 2023, $4.4 million in fiscal year 2324, and we're projecting a four projecting $4 million in fiscal year 2425, and we're projecting $3.23 million in fiscal year 2526 and $4 million for 2627.

We can't do the work getting our GA clients from the SSI without the assistance of our community-based organizations, currently homeless action center, and Bay Area Legal Aid.

The next slide looks at appropriations by department.

Another way to look at our budget is by looking at its departments.

This slide displays costs in the operating departments that are responsible for delivering each of our programs as well as agency administration and finance, which supports the administrative functions of SSA.

The largest department in the agency is workforce and benefits administration at $419 million.

It includes over $1,271 employees and disperses nearly $154 million in CalWorks, general assistance and refugee cash assistance benefits to clients.

Second is adult and aging services, representing a quarter of the agency at $272 million and employing over $363 staff.

Adult Aging Services disperses over $200 million in client IHS benefits.

However, the state only bills us for an IHSS maintenance maintenance of effort, so the total cost appears smaller.

Then we have children and family services.

It's a third in size, costing about $267.15 million dollars.

CFS includes $498 employees and disperses about $103.7 million in foster care and adoptions benefits for children.

Agency administration and finance department includes staff within government and community relations, finance and human resources, and is the smallest at $141 million or 13% of our budget, employing a total of about $322 staff.

Next, we'll look at appropriation by major object.

Client benefits represent the largest category of expenditures at $42% or $466.72 million of the budget.

Note the agency does not issue CalFresh and Medical benefits.

Those go directly to the client without the benefit of payment being processed by the county.

Next largest is the cost of the agency's staff, excuse me, which is 34% of the budget or $373 million.

The third largest category of expenditures is discretionary services and supplies at $18% or $198 million of the budget.

This includes $131.5 million in CBO contracts.

Interdepartmental transfers include service provided by other agencies that are more discretionary in nature.

An example includes County Council, representation in child welfare cases, district attorney special investigation unit services and welfare fraud cases, programs developed in partnership by SSA and Behavioral Health Care Services under both the Title IVE and the CalWorks program.

All other includes various types of costs that don't fit neatly into any other buckets.

Some of the larger examples are transportation, computer equipment, and various meldings to our client population.

Security in our various SSA buildings.

And we also have smaller categories of expenditures.

Internal service funds at 5.6%, which is the cost to include buildings, central information technology support, and risk management payments.

Overall, we're budgeting a $5.9 million increase in net county costs driven by higher staffing costs, negotiated salary increases, increases in cost of health care and county retirement contribution, IHSS cost increases that are outpacing our federal and state program revenue reimbursement.

ISF or internal service funds include a $4.00 rise in building and maintenance expenses, a $1.2 million increase in information technology cost, and $1.2 million increase in risk management charges.

Our agency rely heavily on county journal funds to cover these growing costs, ensuring we can sustain essential services despite rising expenses and limited increases in federal and state reimbursements.

Final slide is our pending factors.

At the federal level, HR1 introduces major eligibility and administrative changes that will significantly increase county workload.

At the same time, CalFresh benefits are not increasing even as need continues to rise.

And the federal share of administrative funding is being reduced, shifting more costs to counties.

Restrictions on immigrant eligibility will move many individuals to more limited services, increasing unmet need at the local level.

At the state level, ongoing economic uncertainty raises the risk of mid-year budget adjustments.

There's also a possibility the state may not fully absorb the impacts of HR1, leaving counties responsible for more of the cost.

Slower revenue growth limits the state's ability to backfield increased demand and administrative burden.

More households will turn to county services.

At the same time, rising cost of living are already driving increased demand.

This puts additional strain on staffing and system capacity.

Finally, we expect growing demand for support services and immigrant communities.

This includes navigation help, legal referrals, crisis response, and broader safety net supports as eligibility tightens and enforcement increases.

Who at the end of those pending factors?

I will take any questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

I'd like to commend you on the interactive uh website.

That looks amazing.

Thank you.

And I appreciate also having the data cut in all the different ways that you did that.

I'll uh start with questions with Supervisor Fortunato Bass, followed by Supervisor Tam, the members of our Social Services Committee.

Thank you, Chair Halbert, and uh thank you, Director Ford, for the presentation and the dashboard tutorial was uh very very helpful.

Uh your staff has been great working with my staff who've been trying to understand the impacts around CalFresh in particular, so it's definitely a resource that we've been using.

So I'm glad you share that uh with the public.

Um you ran through the very uh significant impacts on CalFresh, for example, Medi-Cal, work requirements, eligibility, re-verification, et cetera.

Um, can you talk through how we are staffed up for this and how many vacancies we have in benefits administration and how we can really focus on filling those positions so that we can try to meet the need?

Okay, as mentioned on which slide it is, um we have 1,271 staff that are dedicated to workforce and benefits administration.

Which is it apart?

The department responsible for um administrating Medi-Cal and CalFresh and CalWorks and Journal Assistance benefits.

Um currently that department's vacancy rate is 20.19 percent.

We continuously um hire eligibility workers while at the same time losing them to promotions.

Um we have a class that's starting in May of this year of about 48 individuals, and we will continue to staff up to meet the demands of HR1, some of which don't go into effect until next year.

So I think we are poised to implement HR one with the staffing that we have, and then we will continue to hire.

Okay, thank you.

And is the staff for workforce uh the workforce investment board and the team that will be helping to ensure that folks are able to meet either work requirements or the community service needs?

Um, is that separate staff from the benefits administration and how are we doing in terms of that set of staff?

It's the same staff.

So workforce development board is a small department within social services.

While they will be a key partner in helping to meet those work requirement mandates, they are not the staff that will be responsible for ensuring clients are meeting work requirements.

That would be workforce and benefits administration, and that would be the eligibility staff and our welfare to work employment services staff.

Um, they will work with our community-based organizations in one of our recent presentations to the Social Services Committee.

Um, we mentioned that we are signing up with Alameda County Community Food Bank to assist with providing community slots to help meet work requirements, and that would take on a lot of that demand.

Okay, thank you.

And um in social services, we have reviewed adult protective services as well as child welfare.

Um those are also important programs to staff up.

Do you happen to know what the vacancy rates are there?

And is there any anything more the board can do to help support staffing up in those departments?

The vacancy rate for children and family services is currently 21.51%.

Again, take into account that we're losing staff to retirements and to promotions or just leaving the county in general.

But that is the current vacancy rate.

And for adult and aging services, the current vacancy rate is 4.68%.

As I mentioned a few minutes ago.

And I do have a request in for um temporary assistance of Measure W funds to help support that particular program.

Okay, and will we hear more about that when we have the measure W Essential Services Work Session?

I will work at night.

Administrator's office.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Supervisor Marquez.

But I'll go.

Okay.

I'm sorry, I said I would go to Supervisor TAM next and then Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you, President Halbert.

And thank you for the presentation.

As my colleague said, it was very helpful to look at how we can get a lot of this information through the dashboard.

But some of the things that come to mind in terms of questions, I'm not quite sure I can easily just grab it from the dashboard.

So maybe you can show me how we can kind of like distill some of that information.

I am looking at slide you said 11 or 13.

13.

And it's the major components of net county cost change.

Okay, I'm sorry.

Um now that I'm there, can you ask the question again, please?

So uh the only negative is 26.8 million, the net increase in other program revenues.

Is that considered a shortfall that you're going to be experiencing because of some of these changes that you talked about in response to Supervisor Coach and Autobas?

Yes, I'll be very honest with you.

Um, that is a category that we're still still working to itemize on what that means, but I'll make sure that your board gets um a very detailed response of what that 26.8 million entails.

Okay.

In terms of like the proportion between uh what you showed in revenues from the state and and the federal government, are you expecting uh a decline or is that still an uncertainty?

It's still in the uncertainty category.

Um we should know more between the May revise and the state budget adoption.

Okay.

Uh the then the other question I had uh pertain, and this is the part I'm not quite sure how to distill out of the dashboard.

So a lot of the programs that we have for immigrants and refugees are in the workforce and benefit administration, and then uh that's kind of like lumped together under the 60.21 million on page eight of the number of um CBO contracts that we have, the 218 CBO contracts.

Do you uh are is there a way to distill what portion of those contracts are related to providing um support for immigrant and refugees?

There is a way, it's not on the interactive dashboard.

Okay, I did share that information in a previous meeting.

Um I can't put my fingers on that, but there is a way, and it has been done.

We have a total amount that's been um allocated to immigrant population from 2017 to current, and we use that base year of 2017 because that's when um the initial um immigrant research was done under the late supervisor of IA.

Um, but we can get that information for you pretty easily.

Okay, uh my recollection from our work sessions on measure W is we had allocated what 400 um and 60 or 70,000 for um support for immigrant and refugees in your office.

Is that correct?

Oh, you're speaking about um the project positions um that will be responsible for the interim office of immigrant and refugee assistance.

Yes, it was under 500,000 for two project positions.

Okay, and and that is uh incorporated under the 60 point two million, or is that just CBO contracts?

The 60 point.

That's your CBO contracts as previously mentioned.

Um, this budget does not include measure w funds.

Right.

I I appreciate that.

Okay.

But we but we don't have duplication, right?

There isn't existing uh support for those two programs that are funded by Measure W currently.

There's no duplication.

Okay.

Uh in terms of looking at um the the one question I had it was the list of mandated services.

You had um under discretionary services, the child abuse prevention council is discretionary.

Um but we also have CBOs that help us with child abuse prevention.

Is is that also considered discretionary or is that mandatory?

It's considered discretionary.

Um that's the program in which your board uh presented a proclamation at last board.

Yeah, so it's it's discretionary.

We do a lot of work in partnership with the district attorney's office as well, in addition to those CBOs.

Do you do we have a sense of how much we spend on that program?

I don't have a sense today, but I will be more than happy to get that information to the full board.

Okay, that's appreciate it.

Thank you.

I'm also excited about the dashboard and the fact that it's current at to March, so great work to you and your team.

Appreciate that, and thank you for flagging um that uh adult protective services APS is under resource.

We do know that seniors are fastest growing population, so as much support that we can give to that population is going to be critical.

Um thank you for flagging the work with respect to our immigrant and refugee community members.

Can you speak to those two interim positions that we did approve?

What the status is of those?

Um so I think when um I last gave an update, we were waiting for the management analysts and senior management analyst lists to be promulgated.

Those exams have been given on the list haven't promulgated.

There were interviews, I think uh last well, maybe a week and a half ago for the senior MA position, which is the first position that your board approves.

And I will ask our policy director for the status.

Oh, so uh so we actually issued uh out of class recruitment um within the department, and we'll I'll be interviewing tomorrow.

Great, thank you so much.

And then um thank you to my colleagues, they've asked a lot of the questions I was curious about, but specifically to the vacancy rates under um the different divisions.

Is that information given periodically at social services committee like status updates?

So actually it's not given periodically, but interestingly enough, I have a schedule for a social services committee meeting this year.

Um, I think it's um gonna be in July.

And then within that presentation, can we also highlight all the touch points what we're doing in partnership?

I know there's a partnership with CSU East Bay, UC Berkeley, just what are we doing to um provide internship opportunities and a pipeline for employment?

And then with CalWorks, do we have a program to um identify if there's any individuals that would want to be eligibility workers?

We don't currently have a program, but what I have on my computer in my office is a proposal um to look at how we can create a pipeline and bring on eligibility workers.

Um I think more recently eligibility is seen as an entry-level position into workforce and benefits administration, so um newly hired staff don't really remain in that position like they used to.

Um we've had um career eligibility workers, but now um you know the lifespan of an eligibility work is probably three years, which leaves us recruiting um quite often to fill those vacancies.

Um of course we couldn't prepare for the implementation of HR one.

Um had we been able to be able to prepare for that, we would probably be better staffed um now, but we'll meet those mandates.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear the discussion around vacancy rates and uh employee retention.

Alameda County is a great place to work, and we need to get the word out.

We are getting the word out, we're recruiting good people, and we're making it easier to hire them, and we want to keep them longer.

Um, I just want to point out and thank my colleagues for the questions asked already.

But again, on slide seven, the discretionary services, veterans service office, child abuse, respite for foster families, transitional shelter, emergency food, housing, shelters.

These are all discretionary activities that we provide.

And we do our best, but they are not funded very well, and they're not mandated.

Very eye-opening.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Supervisor Miley has his hand raised, and we will go to him now for questions.

Supervisor Miley.

Thank you.

Uh thank you, Chair Halbert.

Am I can you hear me well?

Uh speak up a little bit if you could, Supervisor Miley.

We can hear you, but just barely.

Okay, yeah.

I'm sorry.

This computer needs to be uh need to get a new computer.

But anyway, let me see.

I want to thank the agency director.

Uh I'm very, very uh, and all the questions I might have asked have already been asked by my uh colleagues, particularly uh the vacancies was very concerned about that and the ability of the agency uh to provide the necessary services uh required, but I'm very pleased that uh over 460 million dollars is going back to deserving uh clients in terms of benefits.

I think that's really um just very very excellent.

And then the number of CBOs, CBO contracts, 218 CBO contracts.

How many CBOs does that represent?

1301 some 218 contracts and gosh, I know I mentioned it, I don't see it here now.

Um I'll I thought I mentioned it in this presentation.

I'm not seeing it right now, but I will make sure you get that information, supervisor.

Yeah, that's yeah, I didn't think I didn't think you mentioned the number of actual CBOs.

I know you mentioned the number of CBO contracts, but once again, I just really value our social services agency and our Alameda County Health for uh that you do working with uh our clients and providing safety net services and in having the CBOs.

You know, I just can't impress upon that enough.

The CBO contracts and our community-based organizations that uh we partner with to ensure that we're able to uh provide these safety net services.

They are truly, truly, truly uh I don't want to begin without them, we would certainly be lost.

So I'm always focused on the you know number of contracts, number of CBOs.

I know the colas are there for the CBOs, so I just think that's really really um, you know, I just can't say enough there.

And then I do appreciate the fact that the social services agency and uh Alameda County Health are basically two billion dollars of the county's budget to be in plus dollars of the county budget, and I do find that very significant and extremely important.

Um I want to point out the fact that I know you have vacancies, but I don't want to just not uh recognize the 2300 employees that you that you have.

Uh you know, the social services agency, you and your staff working with our CBOs are just really um important to the county and to uh uh the the general public.

The the the one last thing I just want to point out, uh Director Ford is you know I served on the Social Services Committee for 24 years, and you know I'm now on the health committee.

Uh I've only been on the health committee, I think for a year, year and a half, I don't know.

Time goes by.

It's been it's been a little over a year.

It's um Charlie Ather, as Supervisor Cornado Bazz took our seat.

Okay.

So, you know, despite the fact that I'm on the health committee, I just want you to know my heart is still with social services.

Thank you.

I left my heart with social services.

Don't forget that.

Thank you for your presentation.

And I want you to know, I was waiting for that comment.

So thank you.

Um, so many thanks to the board to the county administrator for your support.

Um, and I look forward to the work ahead to balance the budget.

Thank you, Supervisor Miley.

With that said, we'll move to our next uh presentation.

Child support services scheduled for 1115, currently starting at 1202.

Welcome.

Thank you.

All right.

I guess it's officially afternoon.

Good afternoon, President Halbert, to members of the Board of Supervisors to the County Administrator Marineeshi.

Um, and many thanks to her staff for their support and guidance throughout this process.

And I also want to give greetings to the members of the community and thank uh the executive level team at the Department of Child Support Services for their work and preparing for the preliminary MLE budget this afternoon.

This afternoon I'll share with you a little bit about who we are and what we do, our alignment with Vision 2036, try to share about our impact, um, our financial summary and looking at the child support landscape.

Our vision is that all parents are fully engaged in supporting the well-being of their children.

Children are at the center of child support, and that is our primary focus.

All right.

Um ensuring responsible parenting, family self-sufficiency, and children's well-being.

Um, our commitment is truly to the stability of children and families as the essence of what we're striving for.

We do that by focusing on our core mandated functions, which is locating parents, establishing parentage, and establishing and modifying and really enforcing support obligations and ensuring that we have compliance with collections.

Our operational principles focus on family focused, being a partner with families to eliminate barriers, ensuring that we have a dynamic workforce of highly skilled and engaged staff in innovation, embracing innovation, um, and collaborating with partners, which is absolutely essential.

But to actually get the work done, we recognize that operational excellence presenting our highest level of performance is necessary to ensure all children that we serve receive the resources that they deserve.

We are clearly aligned with supporting the vision 2036 and the 10X goals.

We know that in order to have safe and lovable communities, we strengthen, we do that by strengthening participation and engagement with vulnerable communities.

We know that virtual first and providing services and a virtual means allows for us to uh enhance a healthy environment and ensuring that we're using resources responsibly.

We also are encouraged by ensuring that there's a res uh prosperous and vibrant economy by making sure that the things that we do is building relationships so that parents can maintain self-sufficiency, and the heart of it is ensuring that every child receives reliable and consistent support, which will build a thriving and resilient population.

We are moving forward together.

We are we are pleased that we get to partner with the uh County of Alameda as one of its departments, and we know that forward together we are empowered, strong, and prepared.

So let's talk about who we are and who we serve.

We serve 25,754 children and their families.

This reflects the broad and diverse needs of the community, and that we are reaching out through all aspects of the entire um Alameda County um area.

We know that every every child that we are serving deserves the support that we are uh trying to achieve and accomplish for them.

We support families in a lot of different means in the all of the ways that they come.

In 2025, we um serve 4,362 families that are on current assistance, current aid of CalWorks.

We um are the majority of our caseload is on is 14,063 um families that were formally aided.

They transitioned from aid um to um being able to try to sustain, and then we have 7,329 um people members of our case load that have never received assistance.

And then we have 7,329 members of our caseload that have never received assistance.

I think this just underscores that we are a safety net program that are helping low-income and families that are transitioning or are facing poverty.

We would like to highlight our accomplishments with the federal performance measures.

Even in these downward economic times, we are able to deliver current child support to over 61% of our families.

We have collected over 78 million dollars in child support.

And this year 94% of those funds went directly to families.

Almost 74 million dollars went directly to families.

We want to highlight this because this was an increase, a 6% increase from last year.

Last year we distributed directly to families 88% of the funds collected, and with the passage of the state legislation of pass through to uh of the funds directly to families that were formally assisted.

This has resulted in this increase.

So that these funds are directly going to children that need food and uh shelter and clothing for their basic needs.

Our financial summary for 2627 reflects that we uh will have 35 million one hundred and thirty-four thousand six hundred and one dollars in our appropriate appropriations as well as our revenue.

We want to highlight that there are no that there's no county costs due to state and federal funding, um, and our um budgeting staffing levels are remaining the same.

The major components of our net county costs, uh which I'll state again is zero.

Um, there is a slight increase in internal service funds adjustments.

There was a slight decrease in other costs, but all of these are uh offset by our federal and state funds, and the result is um that Alameda County Child Support Services maintains a net county cost of zero.

If you look at um how our funds are distributed, we're we are at different department other um agencies in Alameda County, um, but our of our 35 million dollars, 80 percent goes towards salaries and benefits that takes care of our staff, their colas, um, all of those things to ensure that we have the workforce that's necessary to do this level of work.

17% of our funds go to internal service funds, um, which is about almost six million dollars, and we have a very, very small um discretionary services of three percent, which supports the mandatory operational um needs that's essential to um operating and having the child support program function.

Our revenue comes primarily from federal and state aid.

66% of our funds come from federal aid, and 29% comes from state aid.

Um we have a small five percent of funding that is from incentive dollars, um which is a very small percentage of our budget.

So looking at the child support landscape, uh we recognize that um there are um potential budget impacts.

Uh the um though we are not experiencing a direct hit from HR1, we do um have to address caseload declines.

Um this is a national issue as well as a statewide issue.

Um, and based on our funding and our uh funding methodology, there's an allocation of funds based off of our caseloads.

Um, in response to the caseload decline, there is a bill currently before the legislature.

Um it is AB 1643 that's trying to move forward and enhanced enrollment bill that would allow for all child support orders, um those cases to be automatically enrolled in the child support program, of course, with an opt-out feature for those who would not want it, but we believe that it would improve compliance and allow us to actually uh serve many more children in our county as well as in our state that are in need of support services.

But we believe that it would improve compliance and allow us to actually serve many more children in our county as well as in our state that are in need of support services.

We recognize that we still can uh in uh face challenges there with some of the laws that were previously passed.

I believe that there were final previous discussions about the FEM final rule and Senate Bill 343, which changed the way in which we establish child support orders focusing on earning capacity, and so the uh additional work, the additional man, you know, day-to-day work that's required is not funded, and so we recognize that that is um another um shift in the program that we have to be able to address.

The um we believe uh strongly in having accessibility and having virtual options with a virtual lobby, um, really wanting to ensure that um we recognize that the families that we serve need to be able to access us in a lot of different ways.

Um we are really working to improve our efficiencies as well as our innovation.

Um reaching out to fathers is really critical and part of one of our partnerships in terms of our work with First Five, the Fathers Corps, as well as with the Paranatal Fathers Group.

Um we have other community partnerships.

We're very uh appreciative of our partnership with uh probation with the core program.

Um and we also do some fun things like in Hayward, we go every year out to support their um back to school backpack giveaway.

And so we know that we cannot do this work alone, that this work of making sure that child support remains as a safety net for families that are marginal or in need of resources, um, we need to do that in community with others.

So I want to thank you for your time this afternoon, and I welcome any questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

Any questions from colleagues?

Supervisor Marquez.

Great presentation.

Congratulations.

Um thank you for the uh increased investment in our children in our county.

Just wanting to have a better understanding accessibility access is really important to me.

So can you speak to what are your thoughts in terms of having satellite offices, just making sure that your services are more accessible to North and Southern Alameda County?

Yes.

Um that will require me to still learning.

I'm still learning as the acting director, so I recognize that that is of of critical importance.

Um, and also recognizing that many of our um the generation that we're serving today, they are not necessarily brick and mortar um types of customers.

They want something really quick and easy that they can access, and so we want to welcome that opportunity to engage in those discussions about satellites and also trying to make sure that we're really being mindful of the folks that actually are having children today.

They want an app or um you know, something really quick that they can quickly uh lean into, which is why we're really emphasizing our virtual lobby, but we recognize that we still have other customers that would need that as well.

So I appreciate that, Supervisor Marquez.

Any other questions, Supervisor Tam?

Thank you, President Halbert.

Just to follow up on that comment.

Um did you or are you working with ITD to um provide those kind of uh digital type services in this era?

We do have a relationship with ITD as they um provide our IT services, and so we're really appreciative for how they're thinking about helping us think of other innovative ways to do this level of work.

Um, and so we are continuing the conversations definitely.

We need a specific plan in terms of some things that we can actually um do and launch wide, but our virtual lobby has shown to be quite successful.

Is that included in your budget?

Um it's part of how our costs are covered already, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Fortunato Best.

Thanks so much for the presentation.

Um I just want to ask some basic questions to make us sure I understand uh the important work that your department is doing.

So, in terms of the caseloads uh addressing caseload declines, is that a result of less funding in order to manage the caseload?

Or are there actually less families needing support around child support collections?

So there's we don't believe that it's actually less families that need those services, um, but we recognize that um you know there's a the caseload is a na the caseload decline is a national issue in terms of how people approach um uh welfare services, um, aided um and it's aided service nationally, and also just trying to because there's a decline in that regard in terms of um uh I shouldn't say necessarily decline, but we've nationally they've seen a decline in welfare, not so much in our own county.

Um, but for our specific county, it is really trying to get folks to understand that they don't have to be on aid, that there are families that we're probably not reaching, which is why we're really trying to beef up our outreach and our visibility because we receive the referrals from social service that that we're supposed to receive.

We need to also beef up ensuring that other people that are low income or at or facing poverty recognize that this is a resource that's available to them.

Okay, thank you.

And um, I do appreciate the information in terms of how we support families and the federal performance measures.

Thank you for including that data.

Um, on the graph to the left of it, the green section in terms of families that are never aided.

Could you speak a little bit more to um what the what's going on with that particular band of families?

Yes, so those are those are families that never receive public benefits, but they realize that they need uh a system to ensure that they receive the support on a regular and consistent basis.

And so they're we um coin them as never aided, um, but they are anyone is eligible to receive child support services.

They do not have to be a recipient or former recipient of the CowWorks program to be able to receive those services.

Um, and so that's really trying to ensure that we're serving those families that um are at any level, but generally those are folks that are um marginal, marginal in terms of their resources that have that they have available to them.

Thank you.

Again, thank you for the presentation.

Um, Supervisor Martha, any questions.

Uh yes, I want to um think here.

I want to thank the interim director for doing such a great job with the first budget presentation.

Uh I really appreciate the fact that uh you know, knowing the history of this department, you used to be part of the district attorney's office.

Um we appreciate and value the fact that uh you continue to stay on top of things, uh no net county costs.

I think that's really great.

And you know, uh, one of the things I'm constantly uh encouraged by and supportive of is the reaching out to fathers, the fatherhood initiative, the father core, working with our formerly incarcerated uh fathers as well.

So thank you for keeping up that good work.

Uh and thank you once again, you and your staff and your and the folks who work with you for continuing to provide these services and to be getting more money back uh in the hands of um the families.

That's really really great.

Thank you again for the presentation.

You do very important work, and you do it very well.

Thank you.

We're moving now to the general services agency presentation.

Good morning, supervisors.

Kimberly Gasway, Director of General Services Agency.

So the General Services Agency continues to provide critical logistical operational and infrastructure support to all county departments, and this is in alignment with the Board of Supervisors Vision 2036 and to next goals, including strategies for safety and security, ensuring infrastructure meets the highest standards of safety and security and maintenance and preservation strategy, optimizing the life cycle of existing infrastructure through ongoing maintenance and preservation.

Next slide, please.

GSA's mission, vision, and values.

Our mission is to provide Alameda County with quality support through organizational innovation, responsiveness and efficiency in service delivery.

Our vision is to be valued as a world-class provider of support services, and our values are to support county departments through productive relationships and lead by example with equity and integrity.

Next slide.

We performing a safety assessment of all county facilities in alignment with your strategies of the TNEX goals.

We're performing maintenance and preservation of facility projects identified in our facilities condition assessments to protect the county's capital investments.

We are developing an EV charging station infrastructure strategy, expanding installation of level two and DC fast chargers across the county.

We're developing a fleet electrification transition plan for all vehicles tracked in the county's fleet management system.

Thriving and resilient population.

We're advancing the county sustainability goals by partnering with energy services companies to deliver energy efficiency improvements and utility cost saving projects by installing solar power, electric vehicle charging station, energy storage systems, and emergency generators at county facilities.

We're completing a streamlined post-2026 climate action plan for government services and operational update that will be presented to your board that reflects agency priorities and supports full implementation of the key plan strategies.

Prosperous and vibrant economy.

We continue enhancements of the small local and emerging business program and outreach efforts to increase participation of small local vendors in procurements, implementing the e-procurement solution with OpenGov to streamline bid submission and evaluations.

Employment for all.

We're implementing a building trade apprenticeship program for staff in county in our building department program with the building trades unions right now.

So we will be bringing that forward with your staff.

We're increasing county resident apprentices and disadvantaged workers employed on construction jobs.

Increased training and technical support for local contracts contractors on county construction contracts and establishing policies for assembly bill 520 to combat wage theft, the law for janitors, security guards, and in-home health care workers.

Next slide.

GSA support services include the following divisions and units.

Our building maintenance department provides full maintenance, landscaping, and janitorial services for the county's 5.6 million square foot of 120 owned county buildings.

Our capital programs division manages the capital improvements and county owned facilities building and new renovations and all our projects.

Our procurement department procures goods and services countywide and manages programs to increase opportunities for small local and emerging businesses.

Our strategic facilities capital planning unit manages countywide facility planning and utilization of real estate assets.

They also manage the 38 leased properties and with uh 900,000 square feet.

Our logistics services division manages the county's fleet in our department mail service delivery, property and salvage and county parking facilities, and our Office of Sustainability oversees the implementation and reporting of the county's climate action plan for government services.

Next slide.

Most of our mandated services, we have the federal mandates, which includes compliance with the Energy Policy Act, the National Pollution Discharge and Elimination System, Energy Conservation Requirements, American Disabilities Act through projects that we do in our buildings, state mandated services include hazardous waste management, California Climate Crisis Act, Climate Pollution Reduction Act, Advanced Clean Fleets, CCR Title 13, and County mandated services in our procurement policies with preferences for small local merging businesses and environmentally preferable purchasing requirements.

We have a green building ordinance adopted by your board and the climate action plan for government services.

Next slide.

So these aren't direct services, but we have county utilities or over 20.6 million dollars.

Our security guard services are $5 million.

The American Disabilities Act was transitioned to the building maintenance department's $2.5 million.

These are projects where we do for renovations in our county owned buildings.

Security investments is uh assessments is one and a half million dollars.

It's a three-year contract to look at every building to improve security and safety for county employees and the public who enters our facilities.

Our veterans buildings is one and a half million dollars.

Hazardous materials projects, so we any project we do, we have to evaluate for hazardous materials, and that's over a million dollars.

A big project is the eight procurement software, that's $921,000 as a three-year contract to effectuate that initiative.

Contract or technical assistance program with Mary Weather and Williams recently presented at our PCPC procurement and contracting committee, that's 335,000.

The project stabilization and community benefit agreement with the building trade unions, 280,000.

Excuse me.

Pardon me.

Parking management services 55,000, and our shuttle services is 1.8,000.

Next slide.

We are look um monitoring federal and state budget impacts that includes the federal inflation reduction act.

We have received grant funding for our solar projects.

At the same time, the state has cut budgets reductions in clean energy investments.

Thank you, sir.

Tariffs.

We do are looking closely in our construction management firms at impacts of the tariffs on construction lead times for the products for those projects.

Our building maintenance operations, any impacts to them on mostly the supplies that we purchase and any goods that the procurement department purchases, we do know there will be increased costs.

The largest item that we're most concerned about at the at this moment, or budget impact is the Iran conflict.

We have added a significant cost increase to our motor vehicles department for fuel.

We know these increases are going to impact all county departments who drive the county fleet.

We're concerned about procurements for our vendors and all of our construction projects.

This is not uh we estimate this dot to be to be significant.

For productivity and revenue enhancement strategies, we continue for several years now to develop and promote and implement hybrid workspace environment for improved space utilization in county facilities.

We pursue grant funding vigorously through state of California Energy Commission grant programs to facilitate the installation of electrical infrastructure and more than 100 EV charging ports throughout the county.

Our accomplishments under accessible and integrated infrastructure.

We have awarded uh 23 million progressive design build contract for the American African American Wellness Center, which is in design, 210 million energy service contracts to two energy services construction firms, three design build contracts for over 120 million for facility needs priority program up on the Fairmont Campus and two use facilities.

We've completed an elevator monetization construction at the Renee Davidson Courthouse.

We've received two grants for $7.6 million from the California Energy Commission for electric vehicle charging station.

Under the Prosperous and Vibrant Economy, we've updated the green building ordinance approved by your board to support the build environment in alignment with your climate action plan.

We completed the sale of the with the city of Oakland of former Raiders headquarters in Alameda, reducing our surplus property.

We've advanced disposition for the Castor Valley property to the fire department in support of their fire station project.

We've created a vehicle purchasing panel to oversee the vehicle purchasing policy climate action plan and to evaluate all underutilized vehicles when we review new and replacement vehicle requests from departments.

We've consolidated our electric vehicle services contracts, enhancing telematics functionality, reducing reducing the number of contracts and the overall management of that system.

We've reallocated this is significant to me, over 135 vehicles that were underutilized by county departments, were transitioned to the motor pool, reducing uh new vehicle purchases.

Thriving and resist resilient population.

We advanced the planning and delivery strategy for a new fire department and sheriff emergency communications joint dispatch center in Dublin.

We're delivering a lease.

We delivered a lease development and disposition agreement with a housing developer on Broadway for approximately $196 unit affordable housing project on 430 Broadway.

We achieved 40% apprenticeship hours performed by disadvantaged residents on all our construction projects that are subject to the project labor agreements, and we achieved 40% local resident participation on construction projects also as part of those agreements.

Next slide.

Some of our divisions are general funds, some are internal service funds.

So our appropriations for the general fund this year is $27.1 million, an increase of $1.15 million or $4.4%.

The revenues increased $544,000 to $13.7 million, $4.1%.

Our net counting cost increased $66,000 to $13.4 million or $4.7%.

Our positions and general fund did not change.4 for non-management for a total of $85.43 positions.

Next slide.

So the appropriations are $206 million.

The revenues internal service funds by state mandate is full cost recovery, so revenues will equal expenses of $13.2%.

The most significant increase of that $24 million is the building maintenance department.

We increased structures and main maintenance of structures and improvement because of the aging infrastructure.

And so that was $11 million.

Our utilities are running relatively flat at $20 million.

Salaries and employee benefits did increase 8%, mostly due to COLAS, but there was also an addition of 14 positions in building maintenance departments with six of those to support Santa Rita jail and eight county wide.

Motor vehicles increased 3.7 million and 3.5 million of that was a fuel increase.

So we submitted a budget of a 75% increase for fuel.

We know right now we're looking at uh probably actuals at about 50%.

However, we are not sure what is going to happen with the rent contra conflict, and so we are in contract around conflict, and so we did submit that large increase.

Next slide.

It's 1.4 million dollar increase.

There was a decreased cost related to parking lot management of $600,000, and decreased cost related to council county council charges for a restructuring of that budget, $300,000.

Increased revenue from countywide overhead reimbursement $800,000, and a decreased revenue from parking fees and property salvage of $100,000.

So the net county cost changes $600,000.

Our general fund appropriations by department, these are the different divisions or units within the general fund for GSA.

So administration is our staff, that's our HR finance executive team, etc.

$8.7 million to stay in the boot.

You know, they're in different departments, sorry.

$8.7 million, $2% of our budget.

Purchasing is $9.2 million, $34% of the budget.

Property and salvage is $1.3 million or 5% of the budget.

Unallocated space.

So these are buildings that are vacant, $1.5 million or underutilized, $1.5 million or 5% of the budget.

Our veterans building $1.6 million or 6% of the budget, and parking is $4.9 million or 18% of the budget.

General fund by appropriations.

We have salaries and employee benefits of $14.5 million.

Discretionary services is $4.4 million or $15%.

10.3 million is our ISF fund charges, 35%.

Next slide.

Our general fund total revenue is use of property money and property $1.8 million, fines and forfeitures and penalties, $100,000.

Other revenues is $15%, $2.1 million, and charges for current services $9.7 million or $71%.

Next slide, please.

Internal service funds.

As you can see, our building maintenance department is the largest GSA operational budget at $182.7 million or $87.88% of our ISF fund appropriations with motor vehicles being 12% at 12 23.8 million dollars.

Next slide.

Salaries, these are the appropriations by category.

Salaries and employee benefits for the internal service funds is $65.5 million, with $61.7 million of that being for uh building maintenance and $3.8 for motor vehicles.

Our discretionary services and supplies, $109.2 million.

The building maintenance is $97.6 million of that.

Direct services are $93 million, 95% of the discretionary services and supplies, and that includes $43.3 million.

I'm sorry, for discretionary services and supplies, lease leases.

Let me say that again.

The building maintenance department is 97.6 million.

The direct services is 93 million, 95% of the discretionary services, including 43 million in leases and utilities of 20 million.

County owned building janitorial preventive and corrective maintenance is 29 million.

The motor vehicles department, 11.6 million, 8 million is fuel, 2.3 million is for parts and equipment, and 600,000 is rental of vehicles.

That we pay primarily to the GSA General Fund Departments.

The building maintenance department was $13.4 million of that.

$5.4 million is depreciation charges primarily for our fleet that we are charged depreciation and charges back to county departments.

And there is a loss on the sale of vehicles of $200,000.

Next slide.

So other financing sources, $2.9 million includes BMD space chargeback of $100.

Um use of money.

I'm sorry, use of money and property $185.6 million is 90% of the budget.

$14.8 million of that is for motor vehicle use chargebacks.

Other revenues, $18 million or 9% of our budget is $8.9 million is for uh project management fees, in order department service orders, work orders in county buildings, some stop waste revenue we receive for managing our waste projects, and $1.4 million for non-county space chargebacks.

$2.9 million is other financing sources, and this is uh real property lease, tenant improvement projects, departments transfer the funds to us in advance from prior years.

That's our budget, and now happy to take questions.

Thank you for the presentation.

I also appreciate the slide that shows change versus a year ago.

Very good.

Um questions that I have are around unused facilities.

How much does it cost us to keep Glendyer Jail?

The zone building, others.

So yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Supervisor.

So the Glendire Jail is the largest of our underutilized facilities, which at $1.2 million, and it's primarily for the utilities for that facility.

Consistently costing us over a million dollars a year.

Correct.

The arena center or zone building is, and we are let me back up on Glendire Jail.

We are working right now to segregate the utilities.

The building is physically connected to the Wiley Manual Courthouse.

So we are in order to dispose of that.

We have to look at how we segregate uh the utilities.

There's a central plan that they share.

We also have to look where the buildings are connected and our relationship with the court.

We have a joint occupancy agreements with them.

The sheriff does do inmate transport into that facility.

So they bring the uh the inmates from Santa Rita Jail to the courthouse, but they come into the Glen Gyre Jail building.

So that whole uh process will have to be changed.

Um there the arena center building is costing us 446,000 a year.

And right now we have tried to auction that building.

We've for uh sale, we've tried to put we put it on the market for lease disposition if people wanted parts of it, the whole with no no bidders for either of those processes.

Right now we have an RFP and we're negotiating with a contractor.

Um they are a development contractor who specializes in finding strategies for dispositions of buildings.

So we'll be bringing that to your board for the highest and best use and how we can move forward.

I note that um we're working with a group called Procure America to help us evaluate our energy costs that could lead to savings.

I know it's not gonna make or break our entire budget, but what is the status of that?

So we have we have finished uh negotiating that contract, and that's coming to your board for approval shortly.

And so that contract, what they do is um sort of like task orders so they can look at our waste management services, utility services, phone bills, etc.

And they do a full um audit, if you will, of all those costs, your agreements, your rates, and make recommendations.

So that is coming to your board shortly.

Wonderful, thank you.

The with regard to one of the projects advanced the planning and delivery strategy for a new Alameda County Fire Department and Alameda County Sheriff's Office Emergency Communications joint dispatch center in Dublin.

So this is different than the training facility that's under construction.

This is a separate project meant to consolidate dispatch.

What's the status of that project and when are we going to break ground and finish it?

Do we know?

I can't tell you when we're going to break ground, but we have um an operational plan that we have completed with fire and the sheriff's department.

We have just finished a full review.

We've the properties identified.

This is part of the capital plan, not our operational, but I just I'll give you a couple of highlights.

We have finished the stormwater evaluation and the geotech for that particular site, and now we're updating our budget cost plan estimate to present to fire.

It will also require um a lease agreement with fire, if you will, for their occupancy of a county-owned building.

I guess my question really should be do you have do you have the resources on your team and in this budget to help you get that project done in a timely efficient way, or do we need to augment your budget somehow to make that project um speed up?

Or do you have what you need?

That's um we do have what we need for that project.

I think what we're more concerned about is our facility conditions project.

We're in conversations with the county administrator as your board.

Uh, we are super uh extremely grateful for the investment you've put into the maintenance and pro preservation of our infrastructure, it's a historical levels right now, but as we continue to receive that funding in the capital plan as we move that forward, we will be looking for additional positions.

All right.

Um lastly, I'll just say that uh managing all of our facilities is no easy task.

Keeping up with the annual maintenance of them is no easy task.

Keeping up with aged facilities is no easy task.

Not for today, but I think I would like to see something in the near future.

How many millions or billions of dollars do we need to bring all of our facilities up?

Whether that's buy new facilities, tear down facilities, build new facilities to set us up for the next 50 or 100 years because kind of word on the street is it might be over a billion dollars.

So part of the presentation with the capital plan.

So we are working on it.

Thank you for all you do.

Great presentation.

I'll turn to Supervisor Marquez for any questions.

Then questions.

Yes, and then Miley and then Tam and then Fortinato Bath.

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

Sorry if I missed it.

Did you say when we're going to get the CAP presentation?

It will come to you as part of the proposed budget.

Okay.

So we're looking at mid-May or late May.

Late May.

Late May.

Okay.

And then thank you for flagging the work around community benefits agreement.

We get great updates at contract and procurement committee meeting.

And I'm just want to emphasize the importance of trying to put as many people from our county to work.

That's going to be critical.

And thank you to President Halbert.

It's a longer discussion, but I'm also very concerned about our significant inventory of buildings, lease.

I just think we need to do an analysis of what we truly need.

And we we need more modernization here.

I'll just put it that way.

We were struggling in this building.

And I know you know that.

So I'm just looking forward to the CIP presentation to see how we can continue to address these unmines.

But thank you for the good work you and your team are doing.

Nate, take it away.

Okay, thank you.

So I'm gonna echo basically what Supervisor Marquez and President Halbert said.

But before I do that, uh Kimberly, I just want to thank you for the work that you and your your staff, all the work that you guys do, because without you doing what you do, we couldn't do what we do.

You know, maintaining the offices, having the infrastructure, dealing with the vehicles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I don't want that to be to be missed, at least uh by by the comments I make.

Uh but you do know, as uh my colleagues have pointed out, very concerned about county-owned facilities that are being either underutilized or not utilized at all, and the cost of maintaining and carrying those facilities and the need for getting county employees out of lease space and into county-owned space.

You know, that continues to be a concern of mine, getting folks out of uh lease base into county-owned space.

So it mirrors some of the stuff you heard from President Halbert and Supervisor Marquez.

And then in addition, Supervisor Marquez, I want to thank the uh uh agency for the work it's done around procurement and contracting uh to ensure uh that um the small local merchant businesses are receiving uh shares of county uh opportunities as well as workforce uh uh opportunities uh with uh labor.

So I just want that to continue, and I know this isn't uh on you, it's still uh somewhere maybe with the county uh council uh that disparity study, so we can take a look at that and see if there are any possibilities of increasing opportunities for uh minority businesses, women-owned businesses, and others in our county.

And then finally, I just want to acknowledge and thank you because I don't want this to be understated as well, the need for um projects of which they they do, but I just want to state this to continue to come in on time according to specification and within budget.

Hopefully you've heard me, but I don't know because I'm virtual.

Thank you.

Great job, Supervisor Manley.

Thank you very much, Supervisor Tam.

Um, thank you.

My colleagues had asked most of my questions, so I really appreciate um your work on 430 Broadway.

That building is underutilized, but it's now moving into housing.

Um just two questions.

One is related, you said that um you're expecting that the cost of fuel go up 75%, and and that's how you're including in the motor vehicle budget item.

Well, we really don't know how much it's gonna go up.

We know it is already uh turning at 50 percent, and as this uh conflict continues, you know, it's anybody's guess.

So we submitted a 75% increase for fuel to in the motor vehicles budget, and we do charge actuals, so if we don't use that fuel, that money does not get spent.

Okay.

So I I noticed that in the past uh when we moved toward like electrification, like the EV stations, it was because we received a grant from the California Energy Commission.

When when we try to move away from fossil fuels, like what's happening with the Iran conflict, are we dependent on those grants or do we proactively look at electrification opportunities?

So we did an initiative and did an entire assessment of the electrification of the fleet because there is a stand state mandate by 2035.

We're required to have no fossil fuel vehicles.

So we are working on that.

And in order to do that, um, we looked at how many charging stations we need, how many vehicles we currently have that are not electric and and in every category, whether sedans, trucks, etc.

So we have a full plan for um moving that forward.

We do actively pursue grants where we can and when they come online, but um we have a stack state mandate to electrify the fleet, whether there are grants or not.

Thank you.

So we are still moving forward with that plan, irrespective of what's happening with the federal government and the state.

That's correct.

When departments come to us uh with the we look every year at all of their current vehicle needs, and this new panel will also look at underutilized vehicles.

We sent that out to all departments to turn in their vehicles that we can surplus.

So before we replace a vehicle, we look at alternative fuel options as the next purchase rather than replacing a gasoline vehicle uh with another one.

So, yes, that is part of our evaluation all at every budget and then all through the year.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fort Senator Bass.

Thank you so much for the presentation and all of your work.

Um, I was I am interested in hearing a little bit more about the climate action plan, which was partly discussed already.

Um, and I guess specifically with the current plan for government services and operations through the end of this year.

Is there um another planning process that the staff is undertaking for the future?

And what do you see as some of the challenges in terms of meeting our carbon nutrient goal carbon neutral goals?

I presume that less federal funding for climate-friendly uh purchases is probably the biggest challenge.

Ironically, the state has reduced um funding for energy efficiency projects more than the federal government right now.

I mean, the federal government has done reductions, but it hasn't impacted local governments for us for like our solar projects.

We were very concerned that that would be taken away, but it continued to be funded.

Um, as far as the climate action plan for governments, we do update it regularly.

This last time it was only for three years.

We wanted to get some short-term rents.

Typically, it's a five-year plan, and we start that uh planning process with the the community.

There's a lot of outreach is presented to your board, but the uh status of where we are right now will be brought forward to your board at a work session, so you can hear how we've done the biggest um greenhouse.

I will say people hear me talk about telework all the time, but the biggest greenhouse gas impact.

I mean, is telecom as commuting is where we contribute the most to greenhouse gas.

So uh the more that we can find alternative work strategies, the more we'll be able to reduce that impact we are having on the climate and save our public transit system.

Correct.

Thank you.

Yeah, additional comments, Supervisor Marcus.

Yeah, so thank you all for bringing up um sustainability and environmental issues.

Um don't want to get into discussion, but just flag that we really need to get ahead of sea level arise.

It's something that with HASPA um having the uh port here, it's just something that I think we need to get ahead of, and I know that there is state legislation, just want to make sure hopefully we get that on a work session item soon.

We do also uh GSA facilitates the preparation of the hazard mitigation plan with all the county departments, and so right now we are um looking at the next update.

However, the federal government is changing what that update needs to include.

So we're a little bit in limbo on that, but we'll be moving that forward and include sea level rise.

Thank you.

A lot of um moving parts in your department.

Thank you for the presentation.

With that, we're gonna move on to the public works agency.

I do don't I'd be remiss if I did not thank my staff for their work on this, the budget, as well as the county administrator and her staff.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move on now to the public works uh presentation.

This will be the last presentation before break.

I note this was originally scheduled for 1155, it's now 1257.

Do we have the director of public works online?

I see him there.

Daniel, this floor is yours.

Take it away.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Uh I'm very pleased to present the 2026-27 uh public works uh budget.

I will be very going through this fast so that we can catch up with the the loss times.

Let's see.

There you go.

My presentation will include uh a series of uh items uh from accomplishment all the way to challenges that we currently are facing and the agency.

Uh the uh our vision and mission statement remain the same.

Uh the agency's focus remained in some of its mission and preserving uh the public investment in infrastructure, as well as providing safe and connected integrated uh infrastructure to the community with the highest level of service provided.

Uh our mission is the same.

Uh once again being recognized leader in innovation service delivery and employee excellence.

As you uh the previous slide showed, uh, we are an accredited agency by uh by the uh American Public Works Association, an honor that is uh bestowed to uh very few uh public works organizations.

So clearly we are uh living our vision.

Uh we have uh basically uh almost all of our services are mandated services, uh with the exception of a couple of discretionary services uh which are very important, like the school crossing guard program, uh, and we have an annual speed radar survey that is used by the CHP and others to ensure that uh enforcement is done uh appropriately.

Our uh agencies activities, all of them are fully aligned with Vision 2036, and uh we have uh core uh goal of accessibility and mobility that is really supporting all of our uh infrastructure just for information.

Uh every every uh movement and uh uh in this country and throughout the world begins in local roads, 94 plus percent of all activities.

So uh that's the work that we do underlies every effort that the county and others are undertaking by actually providing uh a sustainable well-maintained infrastructure for the community.

Uh some of the accomplishment uh uh uh like always, uh you know, pictures are a thousand words.

I'm gonna be using a lot of photos and some stats to show you uh what the agency's accomplishment has been.

Uh starting out uh our maintenance and operation group uh has done about 22.7 miles of roadway rehab, about one 1.3, uh 1,352 tons of uh pavement repair work, uh 526 potholes were repaired, 689 foot fit of guardrail has been installed or repaired, and about almost 15,000 curb miles were swept.

So these pictures that you're seeing are actual pictures of staff at work.

Uh our uh maintenance and operation.

Oops, excuse me.

Our maintenance and operation folks uh, of course, maintain over 500 miles of channels and creeks.

Uh as the picture shows you, there's a lot of erosions and washouts that happen on a regular basis.

So uh they do a lot of uh channel maintenance, uh picking up a lot of debris and uh garbage from our uh flood control channels, uh both providing sustainable uh and clean water activities while at the same time uh ensuring that our channels provide the intended services that they're supposed to.

And and obviously, one of the key elements of our uh operation is pump station operations.

Uh we have uh 25 pump stations that are basically operating 24-7 uh with 90 pump units uh in total, and we do replace uh upgrade and maintain these facilities to ensure that flooding is not an issue for the community.

Uh another key element that we do is uh a community uh engagement and services that uh we we try to provide.

Uh for example, as you can see in the pictures, but we remove dead trees and shrubs, uh uh minimizing uh potential conflict with vehicles, but also fire hazards and visibility for drivers.

Uh we we rely on Civic Corp, which is uh an organization that we contract with that brings in uh young men and women that are uh either you know having uh a little challenges in their life.

We would bring them in and providing them work opportunities uh and also providing them uh uh means of learning about work ethics and various other activities while providing the maintenance activity that we need.

Another element that we are very proud of is our engagement with the community.

As you can see, we have introduced clean water sustainability effort to fourth graders and third graders.

There was a competition among all the schools in Castro Valley, San Lorenzo, and Sinnol districts, several of them, and for the great competition.

Learning about clean water and various items, and it's called actually literally litter Hertz is uh the theme.

And and uh we're very proud of that effort uh handled through our clean water program.

Uh we do clean creek up uh clean uh clean up cleanup efforts as you can see in San Lorenzo.

Uh we engage with the Sunol community, uh cleaning up uh uh the creeks out there and also planting native trees uh along the way.

Our building department issued almost uh 9,000 permits, as you can see the breakdown.

Uh, one of the things that we're very proud of is now all permits are now issued through our permit portals online, and a lot of folks are appreciating the convenience and uh the ease by which this uh this work is being done and is saving them a lot of uh trips to our building in order to get a permit.

A lot of these folks are doing it remotely.

Uh despite that, we do have a one-stop center in our building where people can come in and work with various uh departments as well as our own group to secure permits if they need to need to interact with us in person, and a few residents do so.

Uh our of course key investment areas are capital improvement projects.

We've completed 11 capital improvement transportation projects uh worth about 42 million dollars, and about 13 flood control projects uh valued at 18 million dollars.

And and this project, as you can see a before and after here in Fremont, uh along Washington Creek, uh a lot of washouts protecting you know adjacent properties while at the same time minimizing the amount of silt and debris that gets to the bay.

Uh another one is uh uh along uh in Fremont and uh Laguna Creek.

Uh this project is uh to establish a hundred year flood protection uh system.

Uh this has been an ongoing project.

Uh, we think we are in a second or third year of this project right now, and it will probably take us another one more year to complete it all the way to the bay.

And this one will provide uh uh a complete 100 year flood protection in this area.

Another project that we are very proud of is uh a unique project where we're using our flood control channel maintenance road as a trail and recreational facility.

As you can see, we're putting one right here in Oakland from Hegemberger all the way to 15th.

Uh the phase one has been done all the way from Hegenberger to Empire.

And as you can see from the pictures, we're putting artwork, we're putting a lot of uh facilities like bike racks, uh, and and and allow this both pedestrian as well as bicycle facility along the creek.

Uh, we're doing phase one all the way to, like I said, to Empire.

Unfortunately, there's a railroad crossing at that location that uh UP is uh telling us we cannot continue without making some major investment under their uh facility.

So uh unless we get additional funding, that would be a challenge to continue with what phase one B.

This one is just uh to highlight.

Oops, I think um system is a little sensitive.

I apologize.

Uh this is uh uh an interesting project that received both a national and uh regional award uh for environmental and sustainability working with the college there.

We restored this facility uh and now it's gonna become an asset for the for the college itself where they're gonna be teaching people hands-on uh environmental science work along this redesigned uh flood control system.

And and as you can see from the pictures, the awards, and I I received the award at the APWA national event, uh very proud moment for our agency.

And in our road design and engineering transportation group, as you can see, uh we have uh 18.2 miles of roadway that have been you know resurfaced, overlays, slurry sealed, or put in asphalt rubber system that actually preserves a lot of our assets.

This is about a 10 to 11 million dollars investment every year.

Uh and and as I said, this is one of the largest investments that the public has made in transportation, and where 94% of the population begins the journey to go to work or recreate or anywhere else.

So we mean we ensure that these uh pavements are maintained very well.

And and at the same time, uh, you know, sometimes we do such a good job, people can't stop driving too fast, I guess.

Uh so we uh put in a lot of neighborhood traffic calming program that's driven by the community.

We get a petition that we receive from the community and get their approval, and we put in speed humps, uh driver feedback signs, and various other treatments that actually will uh help drivers to slow down as well as provide visibility to pedestrians and other uh users of uh the public road.

Here's another program that is very important to the community.

This is a collaboration with the property owners and ourselves, where we go out there and fix uh damaged sidewalks, uh, where we provide some subsidy to the uh adjacent property owners uh to make sure that there's no tripping hazards and various other injuries that could come out of these kind of uh broken sidewalks.

Uh and then here's the project, D Street, as you can see the before and after, where we put in a fairly uh uh you know long sidewalk as well as bike facilities, a class two bike lane, and and hopefully the community will be enjoying this for a long time to come.

Uh and here's another one right next to uh Castro Valley High School, a before and after picture that will show you the uh elements uh of what we can do and make the area both both visually as well as structurally attractive to the adjacent community.

In this case, a lot of you know high school students utilize this uh uh this system uh on a daily basis.

And here's one more that I like to share uh just uh a collaborative uh effort with the Howard Acre area.

This is just to show you that sometimes the projects take multiple steps and multiple years to deliver.

In this case, as you can see, we started somewhere in 2022 with Hesperian and Royal Avenue and went on into 24.

That we delivered sunset West Sunset phase one as well as garden, and now we are uh delivering Western set phase phase two, as well as uh moving on uh to bring in the other elements in this area.

And hopefully by the time we're done, uh this area will have a very robust sidewalk system that will allow people to safely walk uh along the sidewalk rather than on the roadway that currently they're doing.

So the 26-27 initiative remains about the same.

Our business is uh basically, like I said, the same business model that providing transportation and flood control infrastructures, advancing safe route to school, uh and enhancing road and flood control maintenance uh programs to ensure we preserve our assets and adapting new and integrated technologies so that we can keep up with current technology uh going on right now, such as you know, driverless cars, uh various uh uh you know advanced traffic systems.

The financial summary, our appropriation for this year is about 403.9 million dollars, with the corresponding revenue of 402.3 million uh and a net cost of 1.7 million.

However, the difference between 25-26, as you can see, the net cost that we are asking is about 64,000 or 65,000, 1,000, not millions, 64.8 million.

RFTEs remain about the same appropriation by program.

Uh as you can see, the the road fund as well as the flood control program represent about 94% of our uh appropriation by major program with a very small, about you know, six percent remaining uh in county service areas, county bridges, and some general fund activities.

Appropriation by major objects.

Similarly, uh the salaries and benefits as well as services and supply represent about 94% of the expenditures, uh service and supplies uh basically constituting all the construction costs and the design costs that we do in infrastructure provision.

Uh the other is the ISF costs and operating transfers, capital equipment uh represent about six percent of the remaining expense.

Revenue by source fund balance transfer basically is our strategic approach to save enough money so that we can continue to deliver capital projects because since we cannot do them on a year by year revenue source, we have to save up some money in order to do so.

That's a balanced transfer.

The remaining, as you can see, we have uh federal aid, which is about 39 million dollars without grants and various efforts that we do, and we have major B allocations, about 11 million, property tax about 55.2, that is the assessment associated with flood control.

Uh uh the RMRA as well as gas tax.

Uh, you can call all those road funds represent the remaining amount of money that we have by source.

Now we do face challenges, uh, and some of the challenges are as you all know.

We we are tempted to assess uh increase on assessment uh for flood control to zone two and four and nine.

Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful.

However, these zones continue to face financial challenges, and uh we will continue to probably retry that effort again after educating the community about the various efforts by the flood control district.

Uh, we do have some unfunded mandates, usually tied to some of the uh regulatory effort that comes, such as you know, the zero trash total maximum daily load, which is uh costing a lot of money putting in these trash captured devices.

Uh, these are some of them in a multi-million dollar construction costs to a few hundred thousand uh each.

So that's one of the challenges, but we do have to do them because they are mandated service mandated programs that we have to do failure to do so results in a lot more uh penalties.

And obviously, there's a zero emission vehicle fleet mandate.

Uh that one is uh a challenge because uh the industry is not really ready in producing heavy trucks and various uh construction type of machinery uh that are of zero emission or electric.

So uh that mandate is uh you know, we're still trying to work with some air resources board in the federal government to see if we can get some kind of relief.

But uh if not, it was going to become a very big challenge because basically we don't even we can't even find the the machineries to purchase at this time.

Uh so other challenges remain environmental permitting process is increasingly becoming cumbersome, time consuming, thus uh creating challenges in project delivery.

Uh finally, the staff and recruitment uh we continue to face accelerated uh turnover through retirements and and other means.

So even though it's kind of we're seeing some uh improvements in the job markets right now, uh, we still are having some critical shortages and some uh staffing areas.

With that, uh be I think happy to answer any question you may have.

Thank you, Daniel.

I'll go to my colleague supervisor for Bass.

Thank you, Director.

Uh that was a very comprehensive um presentation.

And certainly there's a lot of good work happening to maintain uh the infrastructure safety, especially in the unincorporated areas.

Um I really appreciate the challenges that you posed with those particular challenges.

Um are the balance transfers enough to meet the need in terms of the required work ahead.

And then secondly, um could you talk through what the balance transfers are year by year?

Is there sort of a set formula or is that part of what the board approves each year when we adopt our budget?

So it's basically what you're adapting through your budget makes uh makes up our budget.

Then what we do after that is we establish it as a project delivery, and uh as I said, capital projects usually take us you know a series of years to deliver.

So we set that money aside by project that will cumulatively become the balanced transfer uh in terms of uh the budget.

So we set it aside as a as if it's a revenue source, but it really is a built-up of a built building up some of those revenues over time.

Uh in terms of uh is that adequate to do the work?

Uh well, there is a certain restriction, like I said, like even though we have a balanced transfer that captures most of the activities that we have, uh some zones like I spend some zones like zone two or zone four, uh, are they can't spend money outside of their zone.

The revenue capacity is limited to within their zone.

So even though I have uh some funds available, for example, in zone uh six, I can't use the money to to build in zone two.

So uh that challenge uh uh in some zones, the challenge is minimal because we have adequate funding to cover the cost.

But in these other zones, it's gonna be tough to uh uh to accommodate without additional resources.

And I think we've been very successful in securing federal grants and various grants from FEMA and others uh that kind of made it uh through the years, and and people have have kind of taken that for granted and uh find it challenging when we went out there to ask for uh increasing the assessment uh this last time.

Thank you.

Very good.

Uh Supervisor Marquez followed by Tam.

Um Thank you, Director Waldenband for your presentation.

Um was there coordination?

Sorry, the volume is really loud.

Um was there coordination with the city of Hayward specifically to the work um in Hayward Acres as well as D Street, which I didn't realize that part of D was Fairview.

I thought that was still Hayward, so that was very informative.

Um, but was there coordination with the city of Hayward?

Yes, we work with the city on just about every project that got uh become adjacent to the jurisdiction.

Uh so uh the as I mean the Hayward Acres one, as I said, it's been an ongoing one since about tw you know uh 2022.

And I don't know if you're familiar, for example, when we did uh uh Hesperian Boulevard, we actually incorporated a city element, the city project through an agreement so that we could actually build it under our contract.

So we always work with the city uh on various projects.

In that area as well.

Yes.

Uh we've been we'll be working.

Mission Boulevard is coming up right now.

We just uh received bids and we will be awarding that project.

So uh, you know, I think uh uh part of it could be part of the success, but it is gonna be a few uh challenges just to put you all on notices.

We are doing an excess of about a hundred plus million dollars of worth of work between mission uh boulevard, uh the welling uh uh and uh uh Meekland Avenue, all those things, uh unfortunately it it's it's uh going to be happening somewhat concurrently.

So there's gonna be a lot of construction going on, but by the time we're done, I think that that incorporated area will receive an excess of a hundred million dollars of investment into the infrastructure.

That's great.

Yeah, thank you for the visuals, the um infrastructure with respect to streets, sidewalks, it's it's extremely noticeable.

So thank you for that, and congratulations on the award with the um Aloney Creek restoration.

And you said staffing is a challenge.

Do you know your current vacancy rate?

Uh right now, overall vacancy rate, I would say we're about 25%.

Okay.

Uh how however uh I always operate the overall one gives you know just the mathematical number, but to me, the effect of vacancy rate from a very critical point of view is about eight to ten percent.

So uh we're working with downtown HR as well as our own HR teams to accelerate recruitment and we're participating on innovative recruitment strategies.

So uh I'm hopeful that we will uh move forward and fill some key positions in the near future.

Okay, thank you for that.

And then just last comment.

Um as we uh respond to the regional mitigation plan with respect to sea level rise.

I think it is gonna be really important to have flood control as part of those conversations.

It's critical that we maintain all of our critical infrastructure.

So hopefully your team could join those conversations as well with GSA.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Supervisor Tim.

Um I also want to echo my appreciation for the very uh comprehensive presentation and especially um the work that you did out in the Hayward Acres neighborhood, because I received uh a lot of good feedback on that and the coordination uh that you're doing right now, for example, with the city of San Leandro on flood control, because the city of San Leandro still needs to secure funding, but we are trying to make use of the federal funding.

Um the issues that uh I um I'm I'm gonna raise has more to do with what we've been experiencing in the unincorporated area.

I know Supervisor Miley has the bulk of the unincorporated area, but every time we present a budget at the unincorporated services committee, there's there's community groups that feel that our balance transfer and our uh basically the revenues that we get from other sources are are are somehow considered surpluses.

How do we explain to them that there are restrictions, for example, like the zone two and how you can use certain fund control projects and and how they're not necessarily surpluses that are available for mental health care example uh programs in the unincorporated area?

Yeah, I think uh very excellent question.

I think uh number one public works agency, for example, when it comes to the transportation, a hundred percent of what we do in transportation is in the unincorporated area.

We do not do anything outside of unincorporated area.

And for flood control, uh you know, other than zone two and some portion of four, the rest of them are cities and other areas.

But so we I will say, you know, we represent in terms of municipal services.

I think we represent, you know, a significant portion of what's being done.

But and and the good news is that like I said, we're investing right now nearly a hundred million dollars in the unincorporated area within a very, you know, San Lorenzo, Hayward Acres and these areas.

Uh and and that money, a hundred million dollars is not budgeted in one shot.

We don't have that revenue in just one shot.

So we have to build it up, that fund balance in order to deliver these projects.

And obviously, we also get federal funds to actually do some of these projects, and federal funds come with uh a lot of restrictions and limitations.

So uh so I think uh one of the things we probably need to do in educating the unincorporated community where these kind of issues are being raised is that there is a uh you know, there's uh every fund has a color of money.

These color of money cannot be mixed legally speaking.

So whatever is assigned in transportation from gas tax cannot be used for uh social services or any other fund be legally restricted, statutorily restricted language.

So uh so I think we can explain them uh it probably takes a little effort for people to fully appreciate it, but uh the other thing we need to do more so is that that incorporated area gets a substantial amount of investment in infrastructure.

Uh uh I would even venture to say probably I don't know of any other city that invests that this degree of investment uh in transportation systems uh as we do in the unincorporated area.

Do you think we should separate out, for example, the infrastructure funding, the public works funding from some of the other um funding sources?

Because I mean we don't do a return to source, and it's clear that the unincorporated area can't generate sufficient um property tax or uh other transit tax revenues to to support the operations there.

I think I think it's already uh separated, uh maybe Susan could explain that better, but I don't think the budget, the county budget mixes any of these things.

I mean uh we like you like I showed him our budget, we basically get an additional uh sixty-four thousand dollars is what I'm asking in general fund and and a total of maybe about 1.6 million dollars.

That's the only uh money that can actually be uh potentially mixed up with uh any other county activities.

So uh but anything we can do, maybe we can work with the CAO's office and see what we can do to kind of clearly highlight these are distinct funding sources that do not that cannot be used, or at least this a predetermined use of fund has been established statutorily.

Supervisor Tam, I think you know, we can re-emphasize the restricted funds that they're clearly legally restricted, and you know, ironically, the pushback about the funds being carried over as fund balance and going back into that fund that actually validates that those funds are staying within the appropriate funds in these in this case road and flood as opposed to falling into the general fund balance.

Okay, thank you.

Yes, thank you for the presentation.

Daniel, um kudos on the road improvement projects, especially the one as mentioned at Hayward Acres.

I think that's absolutely amazing.

Um you mentioned the railroad crossing and needing additional funding before we can make some more improvements.

Are you aware of the um countywide railroad crossing project?

I think there's 25 throughout the county sponsor.

It's an ACTC project, and we will be upgrading again around 25 railroad crossings throughout the county, and it may be a good opportunity for us to dovetail with that project.

Are you is that on your radar screen?

Well, and not only is it, we're participating in what is I think two of those 25, I think, are in the unincorporated areas.

So we we're working with ACTC uh on that project.

Okay, very good.

Um, with regard another thing that you guys do very well, although it's a never um ending task is illegal dumping.

How much do you spend each year on the legal dumping?

How many times are you called out to go clean up illegal dumping?

Uh I don't have that exact number right in front of me, but I can tell you that's one of the areas I was going to include it in one of the challenge statements in my budget presentation because uh you know these last uh several months we have seen an in a substantially increased number of uh illegal dumping as well as uh uh requests for homeless encampment uh addressing homeless encampment in our flood control channels, especially in East County and uh uh South County.

And uh it is it is one of those things that we have to do because we want to eliminate these broken you know windows kind of uh syndrome that we have to pick up these illegal dumpings very fast, but it distracts and takes away staff's effort in any other areas.

So uh, but I can I can provide you detailed uh you know graphics.

We opportunity track those things by by area by bound and all that stuff.

I can provide that number to you.

Uh I think before and after photos with costs would be helpful.

Okay.

With regard to the overlay program, um miles and miles of uh pavement uh improved each year.

I would like maybe not today, but in the future, get ahead of the schedule that you have so that we might know in advance which parts of which roads you plan to uh accomplish.

Uh, same with the potholes.

I I noted 500 and some potholes fixed, but um it would be helpful for us to and our constituents to know when their roads are scheduled to be uh improved, uh overlay improvements, and when potholes are intended to be fixed would be helpful.

And then Daniel, lastly, I would like to say that um every year your department works with us in the Sunol bulky waste cleanup.

I want to give big kudos to you and your team for doing an outstanding job, especially most recently this past weekend.

And um please pass that along to Derek and his team doing great work uh for our community, and it's much appreciated.

So thank you.

With that said, we have um completed public works.

It's now 1:30.

We're going to uh recess for a break.

We intend to come back at well, we're scheduled for an hour break.

We do have closed session to discuss during that time frame, so I think we'll take an hour break.

We're going to now recess into close session for a break.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'd like to call our meeting back to order.

We're going to reconvene from closed session.

Will the clerk please call the role to establish quorum?

Supervisor Marquez.

Excuse Supervisor Cham, present.

Supervisor Miley.

Excuse Supervisor Fortunatabas.

Present.

President Halbert.

Present.

Level Quorum.

Very good.

Thank you all.

We now will proceed with our meeting.

Our next uh presentation will be from the community development agency, Miss Sandy Rivera.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

Um, it's my pleasure to present the community development agency's proposed uh maintenance of effort budget for uh 2627.

And um before I get started, I'd like to thank um your board for supporting CDA's projects and programs, as well as uh thank our administration and finance teams as well as our department heads for putting together this budget that uh is proposed for your review.

So I'd like to start with a few slides uh that note some of our accomplishments over the last year.

And as you know, CDA has a variety of departments, and uh, this is just a snippet of of the accomplishments that we have uh done over the last year, so it's not exhaustive in any way.

So, next slide, please.

So, our mission is to enhance the quality of life of our residents and plan for the future well-being of the county's diverse community, and we accomplish this through uh the variety of ways through the programs uh in each of our departments.

Next slide.

So some of our mandated, uh it's a little small font here, but anyways, some of our mandated programs uh include uh prepare and update and implement the county's general plan, issue and enforce required land use permits, enforce California food and agricultural codes and California business and professions codes, as well as administer the measure A1 affordable housing general obligation bond program, and we also provide case management and environmental investigation of lead exposed children.

Next slide.

Also a small font, but some of our discretionary uh services include enforcing zoning, neighborhood preservation, uh junk vehicle, medical and adult use cannabis dispensaries, as well as tobacco retailing and other ordinances.

We also provide case management to lead poison children, education outreach to medical providers and families to increase blood lead screening.

We also manage unincorporated counties housing programs.

We carry out local economic and civic development activities, including supporting the unincorporated area small businesses.

We also help open space land managers minimize fire risk through the vatement of noxious weeds and other pests.

Next slide, please.

So starting with our planning department, uh last year we were awarded a Calfire grant, and this supports unincorporated county urban forest plan project.

And the project which uh began this year supports equity in climate adaptation, and it's one of the environmental justice action items.

Uh the department also continues to expand and enhance its online presence with a permit portal for the unincorporated county, and that's in partnership with the public works agency and and other departments, such as fire and environmental health.

So the modifications include, and I think you heard this also from Daniel's presentation, but uh for planning permits, we've migrated all our permits onto the portal now, and applicants can track permit progress, and the public can also submit complaints to code enforcement.

And there's also a convenient mapping tool that allows the public to locate and view all permits as well as co-enforcement complaints.

Uh let's see.

Um, our general plan has many different components to it, and it's always being updated, and a safety element is an important part of the general plan.

And so uh the update that we had this time addresses recent state legislation and it's scheduled for the board planning meeting in May for your consideration for adoption.

And as you know, code enforcement division is in our planning department, and the photos in the bottom show enforcement of the neighborhood preservation ordinance in the unincorporated East County, and uh they had 1700, just over 1700 cases that were processed last year, and that includes enforcement of junk vehicle zoning ordinance and numerous other programs that they have.

Next slide, please.

So HCD, it's the department that you've seen the most of uh in these past few years as the housing crisis has made their services critical.

And much of HCD's work uh in is in housing for production, preservation, and protection.

But they also administer a variety of other community development programs, and we have a couple of the programs noted here.

You see upper right hand corner, housing programs delivered by the uh Eden Council for Hope and Opportunity, and that includes fair housing counseling, tenant landlord counseling, and dispute resolution, and this helps prevent uh displacement of low-income renters.

Lower left-hand corner is part of HD's community development programs through the four Cs.

Uh, they have a project that supports family child care providers by improving the readiness and business sustainability while strengthening the stability of child care, local child care.

So we are getting affordable housing projects online throughout the county on a continual basis, and so we note two uh multifamily rental projects on this slide.

Upper left hand is the Crescent Grove Apartments in Castro Valley, and that opened in May 2025, and that has 72 new apartments that serves low-income households, and 18 of those apartments are restricted to formerly home homeless households.

Lower right hand, we have family uh Fremont Family Apartments that's located on Fremont Boulevard, and that also opened in May 2025, and uh it's a new affordable housing project with 54 units and 13 units are reserved for chronically homeless households.

And it's a new affordable housing project with 54 units and 13 units are reserved for chronically homeless households.

And so there's many other developments, but not pictured here.

I'd like to note that there are several other affordable rental housing development projects that are either in pre-development or in construction that's happening throughout the county.

This fiscal year, that's about 22 projects throughout the county, and that would be totaling about 1700 units.

Next slide, please.

Our healthy homes department, that's our former lead poisoning prevention program.

Still the main focus of what they do, but they do have other programs that protect families and promote healthy housing.

So through a contract with the state, the department also provides case management services to lead exposed children, and that they ensure that children receive the support they need.

And they have five public health nurses and three outreach workers in that program.

They also support and facilitate minor home repair for low-income households as well as seniors.

And they repair hazardous conditions and enable them to stay safely in their homes.

So the top right photo you see accessibility and building repair work done.

On the bottom left is more of the classic things they do.

The photo highlights remediation of a five-unit property in Cheryland.

So they stabilize that site from lead and repainted five separate units.

On the bottom right, you see it's one of their community outreach activity events where they promote how the hazards of lead poisoning and that they can a parent should have their lead their children tested for lead.

I'd also like to note that we hired consultants to analyze the feasibility and options of an increase in the county service area assessment.

Uh and that amount is $10 per assessed parcel, as well as the expansion of jurisdictional boundaries of the Joint Powers Authority.

And so the analysis is complete, and we'll coordinate with the CAO to schedule a presentation of that analysis to your board.

Next slide, please.

And they play an important role in supporting development of small businesses as well as buddy entrepreneurs.

And this builds wealth in the unincorporated county.

So on the top left photo, um, it's our light parade.

Uh our participants at Chabot Elementary School are there.

And uh this light parade takes place every year in November in Castro Valley, and the attendance is upwards uh towards 15,000 people.

So it's quite a draw, regional draw for the unincorporated area.

And so uh on on the right there, you've seen a lot of updates from us for a while for the historic Lorenzo Theater.

And this phase of the repairs that we're in now includes the remaining interior fire rehabilitation and the mural and facade restoration.

So uh we expect the theater reconstruction to be completed at the end of this year, so we're pretty excited about that.

So prepare for a grand uh opening there.

But uh on the on the lower left corner, we have a facade improvement program uh where unincorporated businesses can receive grants for design and construction of building improvements.

And then we have also uh Sunole downtown revitalization plan, and the plan lays the groundwork to revitalize through revitalization through urban design, and so we have wayfinding signs that were recently designed, and they'll be installed this year to support community identity.

Next slide, please.

Uh, for agricultural weights and measures, um, as you heard in the proclamation last month, uh the weights and measures to do all sorts of things.

They inspect scales and devices throughout the county, and in this photo on the upper left, the department tests uh vehicle tank meters at the Oakland Airport, and they ensure that devices accurately report the amount of fuel delivery.

So the department also manages the county's pollinator and apiary protection program, and it includes regulation of bee management, honey production, and pollinator protection.

And so we've registered about 80 uh apiaries, and that consists of about 4200 uh colonies.

So one of the other essential things they do uh is the pest detection program, and they survey the county for invasive pests and uh which could be destructive to the agriculture industry.

And so the component of the that program is the pest detection uh of the pest detection program is the dog team, and uh we're one of 14 counties in the state selected to be in that program.

So this is a photo of Draco at the UPS facility in Fremont.

There is another dog team member tank.

Uh we'll we'll get a photo of them next year.

Uh and together they found 392 pests uh in parcels this this year.

Um in the uh bottom right, it shows our high risk pest exclusion program team working with state and federal partners.

And this was uh confiscation for uh illegal rose plants uh in Fremont.

Next slide, please.

And so our final slide with respect to the highlights of uh accomplishments in our agency is the University of California Cooperative Extension, sort of an adjunct to the ag department partnership program, and it's run uh through the UC extension, and we're of course happy to have them as part of the team.

They deliver a range of locally relevant programs focusing on farm, environment, nutrition, urban agriculture, and horticulture.

And so here you see uh Cal Fresh Healthy Living Program.

It is a SNAP uh ed program, so unfortunately uh that will not be continuing, but uh that's um they had uh done partnerships with uh Oakland Unified School District uh to put in these stencils in in 20 of the schools.

Uh among the other programs, we have the Master Gardeners programs, a popular program with over 200 volunteers.

Top right, you see the 4-H club members, uh, and it's a small animal field day event out in uh Hagman Ranch in Livermore.

And the bottom right, you see um uh participants proudly displaying their certificates of the expanded food and nutrition education program.

Next slide, please.

So uh in this slide, it highlights where we're focusing on major investments for fiscal year 26-27.

And uh, of course, there are additional investments such as measure measure W Tier 1.

That's uh that's one-time funding, so that's not part of the measure of the memorandance of effort budget.

Sorry.

Uh, and so our um largest investment uh continues to be our housing and community development, and that is 43.1 million with 32 FTEs.

Another key investment is just over 12 million, and that supports healthy housing programs, and then uh that's followed by our development review code enforcement general plan maintenance for that incorporated area, and that's 11.6 million with 31 FTEs.

We have nearly 11 million that supports our agricultural weights and measures programs with 47 FTEs, and finally at 3.7 million.

Uh, we have that invested in economic and civic development programs with six FTEs.

Next slide, please.

So uh with that uh we're diving into the financial uh budget slides, and our first slide is uh appropriations by department, very similar to the previous slide.

Uh and we have total appropriations of 82 million, uh nearly 82 million.

And the chart shows a typical pattern for CDA, where the largest uh percentage of the pie is uh by far uh uh at 46 percent at for HCD.

And these funds are almost entirely federal pass-through and state funds, uh typically come from an array of programs that are fairly constant, like uh CDBG, home and hoppua programs, and more recently the P PLHA or permit local housing allocation.

The Healthy Homes Department has 15% of the share of the appropriations.

Uh that comes mostly from their lead testing and abatement and training capacity building programs.

Uh, that's followed by the planning department uh and agricultural weights and measures, both at 13 percent, and uh their share of appropriations is largely salary and employee benefits since they provide more direct services.

Next slide, please.

Uh total appropriations, same as previous slide.

Um this slide we're showing them by major object.

You see the discretionary service and supplies uh is by far the the biggest component next to salaries and employees benefits at 38 percent, and that 54 percent goes to discretionary services and supplies again that's dominated by a few departments, um particularly HCD, and it's sort of programs I mentioned before: the home, CDBG, permit local housing uh allocation.

So contracts make up 80 percent uh of the discretionary services and supplies, and the other departments contribute uh to a lesser extent to that percentage.

Planning department has consultants they use for general plan maintenance, ECD has contractors for civic events, signage programs, of course, dealings with the Lorenzo Theater and Healthy Homes has contracts for testing and abatement of lead hazards.

Next slide, please.

So total revenues predicted at 62.6 million.

So when you look at the revenue by source, you can see that federal and state make up the largest share at 42% and 22% respectively, and we have a range of other sources that come from CDA.

And we have a range of other sources that come from CDA.

So CDA has a variety of funding streams reflected by our diverse array of departments.

Next slide, please.

So this slide is where we have all the key items previously noted, summarized.

As you can see, the change in appropriations from fiscal year 2526 is a net increase of 563,628 or an increase of seven-tenths of a percent.

And it's primarily attributed to HCD's increase in home and CDBG funding.

For revenue increase is 152,681 or two tenths of a percent.

And that again is attributed to the increase in home and CDB funding, but as well as an increase in HUD grants at healthy homes.

So these revenue increases are offset by a decrease in state permanent local housing allocation.

So CDA's maintenance of effort requests for additional net county costs is an increase of 2.2%.

So this increase is primarily due to program and cost pressures that outpace the growth in at Healthy Homes.

So we're looking at a steady MOE budget and with small adjustments, no major changes.

Next slide, please.

So this is a quick reference slide, measure A1 general obligation bond for the general obligation bond.

It supports affordable housing and it's not included as part of the MOE.

But I just wanted to note that 98% has been committed to the housing programs, such as affordable rental housing development and down payment assistance programs.

So we administer the program and the projects are paid directly to measure through directly from measure A1.

So the health committee recently approved a proposed allocation of the accrued interest of 43.5 million to move forward to the board.

Just wanted to note that Measure A funding is decreasing, and there's only a small pocket left for the innovation program and the acquisition opportunity for the most part.

Of course, as the as the uh funds are winding down, we're continuing to analyze possible funding options.

As you know, there are a number of potential affordable housing ballot measures that have not advanced.

Next slide, please.

So uh CDA programs, CDA programs uh aligned with vision 2036 and operating principles.

So the next couple of slides showed uh an extract of CDA programs for 2627.

I'll just leave this here for your reference uh in the interest of time.

Uh, and uh we'll go to the our last slide, potential impacts.

Um at the federal level, we hear from our contacts at HUD that there are some potential threats to funding due to the shifting priorities and budget cuts.

So we're watching risks tied to state and federal funding, but uh we did receive an increase uh this year for uh the CDBG and home funds, a minor uh increase.

Uh so at this point uh we're not looking at any cuts, but we uh continue to continue to monitor the situation, and uh of course we need funding stability to it to maintain the service that we provide.

And uh next slide, please.

So with that, uh I'll I'll close and of course reiterate the appreciation for your board support of our programs and also uh thank the CDA team for uh the work they do uh to improve the quality of life for our residents and businesses.

So thanks for your time.

There are any questions, happy take them.

Thank you for that presentation.

Um comments or questions from my colleagues, Supervisor Fortunata Bass.

Thank you for the presentation.

That is quite um a diversity of uh programs and projects that you reported on.

I think I just have one question for now.

Um, obviously, with measure one almost spent down, and the citizens initiative not moving forward for this current fund uh this current election cycle.

I am curious to hear any thoughts that you have about how we can make sure that we do have funding for affordable housing.

Um, and I do serve on A BAG together with uh Supervisor Miley, so we're also tracking the future uh BAFA initiative, which would be a regional housing measure.

Um, but in terms of potential local affordable housing funding, any ideas or thoughts?

That that is uh a complicated question.

We are exploring that.

I think we've also explored it with the health committee and social social services committee.

Um it was a disappointment that the citizen initiative did not uh move forward.

Uh we are keeping busy, of course, because the uh through the home together program or plan uh measure W funds uh do have uh some commitments there.

So uh in the meantime, uh we have that as um activity that we're bringing units online all the time uh through that uh process as well.

We and we still have Measure A1 projects that are still in the in the pipeline.

So um it it it's expected to I guess wind down by 2032, but uh we'll still be exploring, continuing to explore.

Supervisor Marquez.

Thank you for the great work and presentation.

Um can you quantify for us how much money are we investing?

I know there's some pictures of like facade improvements for small businesses.

So for the facade improvement program, uh it's in the hundreds of thousands.

When I see all these other agencies, there are quite quite larger levels.

But uh so for uh programs in in our ECD.

Is it just facade improvement?

Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah, I'm just looking at how we could um kind of similar to the presentation we received from public works, the investments we're making in our infrastructure.

I think it's important in terms of economic activity, blighted space, empty buildings, just like what more can we do to activate those spaces.

So for um facade improvement, let's see.

Uh we have that at a hundred.

Oh, actually, our architects are at that's at 25,000 right now for architects.

Uh but there are uh also grants that they receive, and so those additional grants.

Um we have that at um that's bill work consulting business at another 10,000.

So okay.

And is that about um is that in line with what we've done previous years or it's actually uh reduced.

Uh there's been less participation of late.

Okay.

Okay.

So yeah, any um efforts we could make uh do towards promoting those opportunities, I think would be ideal.

Um and then with respect to measure A1, congratulations.

That's incredible work.

I think we need to promote more of that information to the public in terms of how many units have come online and how many affordable um projects we're actually preserving as well, and the down down payment assistance.

The list just goes on and on.

So I'm also disappointed that we're not moving forward with the citizens initiative, but hopefully through health committee we could continue to explore not likely this year, but the next opportunity because what I'm looking at is how can we leverage measure W dollars to also expand those opportunities?

I think that is going to be key.

Um we've proven that we could be trusted with those dollars and we're getting more people housed, and we still have a shortfall.

So just wanted to flag that.

But thank you for the good work.

Okay.

Thank you.

I also want to say thank you for the work that you've done to indeed do the FACAD improvements and the uh local outreach to businesses in the unincorporated community.

Appreciate that.

Is that it?

Um I I had some questions.

Um thank you for the presentation.

Uh and you already answered the question about uh what's going to happen with A1 and the GO bond successor.

Um I know you and I have talked about the B ordinance.

So what is the status of the updates or changes to that ordinance at the moment?

Uh our our ag weights and measures, well, our ag department has been working with um uh it'd be the sheriff's office in terms of their uh animal keeping uh with regard to that ordinance.

So uh it's in progress, but uh it is uh one that we've embarked on through your office.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um the the next question is uh you know, over the years we've talked about uh braiding funding for some of the different tenant and landlord type programs, whether it's tenant protection, whether it's healthy home or you know, home compliance and inspections.

Uh can you kind of refresh my memory on where that funding is right now and how we plan on uh continuing those programs and where the sources are of those program funding sources?

So uh there's a um I guess there's a variety of tenant protection uh programs that are uh well ordinances first.

We need to do the ordinances first, and we have starts the the community process for that.

The two that the board did uh approve uh is just cause and the mediation.

Uh and so uh we have funded the mediation uh, but we're also looking uh to extend that um through measure W, that's part of the unincorporated area ask.

And um as it relates to just cause, there's no funding required, but there's uh monitoring and we'll get notified should um someone have complaints.

So there's no real cost to that uh at this point for just cause, but moving forward for um the pilot proactive uh rental inspection, that's also part of the measure W request and uh rental registry as well.

So when we um did the piloting for the rental uh inspection, my recollection was we we had allocated 600,000, but it came from uh some was it leftover ARPA monies or from the for the pilot uh initially it was uh a proactive pilot uh for rental inspection.

Uh that changed to complaint base.

Okay, so uh our our recent reports are are showing that staff can handle the the a more complaint based format, but if we're gonna have this pilot with uh uh proactive rental inspection will require funding.

So in total, so you're gonna be looking to measure W to fund these, not the general fund for mediation for mental inspection, and for the rental registry.

How much are you expecting to need for all those programs?

Um in terms of just off top top of my head, um, it it depends if it's annual, so annual uh it'll it'll be about one point one point five, I believe, uh, for for those programs.

I'll I'll check too.

Has the um while you're checking, has the mediation program been effective in terms of um addressing some of the unlawful detainers or the eviction issues?

We did we did have uh success with the mediation program.

We're also thinking that uh more people need to know about it in order for them to access the program.

I think it was more of a uh uh a handful or a dozen or so that that uh took uh the program uh use the program, but uh otherwise uh we need to do more outreach with that.

Okay.

When the time comes, obviously, uh I'd like to get a sense of like how many single family homes are included in that because uh you know the mediation program covers more than just multifamily, which is uh a program that I thought was our way of trying to address some of the needs in the single family home residents.

Uh I'll recognize Supervisor Marquez for other comments.

Thank you, President Howard.

Sorry, um thank you, Supervisor TAM, for your comments with respect to tenant protections.

Just want to flag along with the comments I made earlier when AC Health was presenting, um, encouraged us to work with our city partners on affordable housing, tenant protections, preserving housing, but we need to take our own advice here as well.

So thank you for flagging the rental registry inspection.

Want to add um proud of the work we've done around just cause and the mediation work, but also want to add fair chance to that list.

Just want to make sure we don't lose sight of that.

And do you have a sense when we'll be getting updates?

I believe uh preliminary update was given at unincorporated services committee.

So that preliminary that was given at the unincorporated services with uh the proposed schedule.

So the community and stakeholder uh meetings will be taking place in the next two months, at least for at least two of the ordinances, and and so uh we can give your office an update uh just directly.

Okay, because the other members have heard great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Do we have Supervisor Miley with us?

Supervisor Miley, any questions?

If not, thank you for the presentation.

We'll move on to the next item, which is information and technology department presentation.

Nobody asked me to do that.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, board of supervisors.

Ram Grumurti, interim chief information officer presenting the FY27 MOE budget for the information technology department.

I will start with a brief overview of who we are.

We'll cover the financial numbers and then I will share with you the focus areas for the upcoming year.

Our vision is to secure digital government accessible anytime, anywhere.

Our mission is to partner with county agencies to support the delivery of services through secure, effective, and innovative technology solutions.

All of our services are discretionary, though we support our departments in carrying out their mandated services.

Can you move the slide, please?

Next slide.

Thank you.

We would like to be the one stop shop for all things technology.

We offer a wide range of services, starting with cybersecurity to cloud services to application development.

We offer services for digital transformation, technology procurement, and offer departments solutions for any time, anywhere, and on any device needs.02.

Nearly half our budget is due to salaries and benefits to provide technical services to departments.

The next big share at 44% is our discretionary services for software licenses, hardware maintenance, and application development.

Here we look at the total appropriation by program.

83% of our budget is ITD main, followed by 12% with radio services, and the remaining 5% is telephony.

The system serves 34 agencies in Alameda County.

The Crims Budget is a general fund and has a budget of 4.31 million for FY27.

The increase of 7K is due to COLA and ISF.

Here we see the key investment for FI27.

Radio upgrade would be the biggest investment at 8.23 million.

Cybersecurity will continue to get investment, and as you go down the list, you will see investment in modernization, cloud migration, and operationalizing digital accessibility.

Next, we talk about the FY27 goals.

Innovation is another area of focus, and we do it in partnership with our agencies and departments.

In 2024, the board adopted the Gen AI policy, and last year we developed guidelines for employees on the best practices for using AI.

This upcoming year, we look into strategically and responsibly integrating AI into our solutions.

Areas where it can reduce manual work, bring efficiency, and deliver business value.

We plan to partner with leaders like Microsoft Amazon to educate our staff on the capabilities of this emerging technologies.

We hire talented candidates and invest in their professional growth.

We celebrate success and have fun events like employee appreciation barbecue on the rooftop of our beautiful building.

We love connecting to our communities through ITD cash program and donation activities.

In a couple of weeks, we have the Earth Day event coming up where we plan in cleaning up Lake Merit.

Every year we update our strategic plan, and the beginning of the year we establish the CIO goals.

This year, the theme is embrace our culture, lead through transition.

Knowing that our CIO and assistance AEO were going to retire in March, we wanted to lean in, lean on our culture as we go through the transition.

ITD is an ISF department, and we are dependent on department revenue for budget.

Impact on their budget impacts us.

Any cuts to our funding will limit our ability to provide cybersecurity support putting the county at risk.

Likewise, it will limit our ability to provide technology services to for departments and agencies to improve efficiencies and customer service.

Initiatives that support hybrid workplace and virtual first would be delayed or eliminated.

I want to finish with our accomplishments for FY25.

Through the investment we made in the cybersecurity program in FY25, we have a solid foundation and have better visibility to our threat landscape.

We promoted 33 staff internally and maintained a 4% turnover rate, half the national average.

And as you know, we won the second consecutive number one national ranking in 2025 Chile County survey for large counties competing with LA County, Seattle, King County, Miami Data, et cetera.

And yes, we have applied again this year.

And with that, I'll be happy to take questions.

Supervisor Tam.

Um Thank you, President Halbert, and thank you for this presentation.

It's your first one here before us.

And obviously, um I like and highlighted the work that you did with cybersecurity.

I just need uh kind of a refresher.

So we uh have basically 19 departments today that are giving their budget updates.

Which ones uh do you not provide direct IT services?

Is it I thought it was the library, the sheriff, and the fire department, they have their own IT system.

Is that correct?

It's a combination.

So do you want me to take the only share?

I can answer.

So the sheriff's office has their own IT staff.

It's more desktop support and kind of uh ancillary stuff, but the network is managed by ITD.

So they provide our network services, they also provide services through our crimson, which is the criminal database that he presented on earlier.

So there they are a majority of our support.

So there are many agencies we provide 100% all technology services.

And there are departments where we do a combination.

As the sheriff touched on, we provide services for network and cybersecurity, while they have their own IS team for doing endpoint support for help desk and things like that.

The only department that we do not provide support is the fire department.

How about the library?

Library in a again in a limited capacity of the network, and um we partner with them on other areas.

Uh but they have their own IS team to take care of their endpoints, their servers, and all their IS needs, application support and things like that.

But we partner with them, and we've been working with them on looking at the relationship and see if there's opportunity to integrate further.

Okay.

Uh I I know at one time uh Tim had talked about wanting to try to get everyone more centralized, but I also see the challenges in trying to do that with each of the specific department needs.

Uh, how do you reconcile some of that?

Um, it is correct.

Um, our focus is still the same.

We we prefer that we provide technology support for all agencies in the county.

Uh integrating every department is unique, but having said that, there are certain services that are common to everybody.

A laptop that you use, laptop they buy is still the same.

The commodity services, like you know, they the operating system and some of the applications, they're all the same.

So there is definitely opportunity to integrate and bring synergy in those areas, while there are areas where, for example, the department specific application, it may make sense for say library to maintain themselves and likewise the sheriff.

Uh and likewise the sheriff.

But for other technologies that's common, whether it's library or AC Health or social services, it those common we call commodity services.

It makes I think um sense to integrate them and bring under one central umbrella.

And you have staff assigned to those departments that specialize in the softwares for those departments like the SAW systems and the other um systems that other departments that we currently support, we have staff.

For departments that we don't, uh, we have to work with them on how the staff for their requests.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you for the presentation and for all that you do.

When I think of IT and all of the things that are in this presentation, and two additional things that I think about AI and the ability to use tools like that and work from home because that's the thing now.

How do we currently view those two areas?

What do we currently do activity-wise and cost-wise?

And are we positioned with this budget well for in the future?

Because it's moving very fast, especially the AI side.

Or is that just something we can pick up and roll with?

Sure.

Uh, let me address the work from home remote.

Um, we have been having we have the technologies even prior to COVID.

So when COVID happened, we were actually well positioned compared to some of the other public entities.

Uh we were able to quickly pivot from primarily working 100% on-prem to almost 100% remote.

Uh, that's because we had tools like Teams, Microsoft teams in place at the time.

Um, we have since then expanded.

Uh we recommended to departments to move away from desktop to laptops, so it gives them the flexibility to work from home or another office um or another site.

So a lot of departments have adopted our our recommendation and they are in well positioned now to adapt to it.

Um so have the technology of audio video.

We still have some work to do in modernizing our conference rooms so they are more hybrid slash remote ready.

So some more work to be done there.

The AA space is evolving.

Um we have invested a lot, not only protect uh the endpoints, but at every layer since then.

The network, the connectivity, um, all the software.

There's still um more investment need to be done because that space, as you said, is it's changing so fast.

What we know today is not going to be valid two days from now.

This new technology coming up.

So we need to continue to invest in that space.

But to answer your broad question, we are well positioned now to support our employees if they um choose to work remote.

And this budget will allow us to do that.

That is correct.

Excellent.

Thank you.

No other questions for me.

Any other questions seeing none?

Um, we'll move on to the next presentation.

I see the assessor is next.

And the assessor is here.

Of course, I'm here.

What else would I be?

We're thinking about 15 minutes.

Yeah.

I was gonna, I was thinking 45, but you got 15.

Welcome.

Sheriff stole my nameplate, by the way.

Thanks.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It's always great to see you.

Y'all smiling faces.

Smile because I got some bad news for y'all.

Let's hear it.

You always do that.

I always bring bad news, right?

Um, all right.

So three years ago, I came in here and I said we're beginning to see a change in the real estate economy.

We're being to see a change in values of buildings in Alameda County.

Well, the sky fell this last year.

We're seeing dramatic reductions in value.

All right.

Couple of things I want to bring to your attention before I go into my budget about what's happening this coming year and what's happened this last year.

Four issues assessment appeals and dispute, assessment appeal increases, legal appeals, and the reduction in the assessment role.

Except some cities harder than others.

As of today, we have a hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars of assessed value in dispute.

If all the values were refunded, it would be 1.29 billion.

Here's the appeals by city.

When I first got here as assessor, we had about 2,000 appeals a year.

2024, we saw over 5,500.

2025, we're still counting.

We're currently at 5,500.

We'll probably end up at 6,500.

Next year, we're projecting 7,500 appeals.

This is the highest number of appeals we've had since 2011 during the Great Recession.

During that time, most of the appeals were residential houses, significantly smaller in value than today's appeals, which are a lot of commercial properties.

What does that mean when we triple the appeal count?

It means a whole lot more work for the team.

Claims for refunds and legal appeals have increased dramatically as well.

The assessment role.

As of today, we're at 2.2%.

We are hoping we'll get to two and a half, which is the lowest amount of increase we've had since I've been assessor in the last eight years.

We will also see cities.

I'm saying two and a half countywide.

Tomorrow, I'm gonna be meeting with all the finance directors of every city and special district.

Some of the cities will see zero percent increase.

Some are gonna be fortunate, they'll see about three and a half to four percent.

The economy, the change in value is dramatically different for each city in Alameda County.

All right.

So it's not public until you have this meeting with the finance directors.

What the impacts are I'm gonna email it to them tonight.

Okay.

Uh, but if you want to talk about it, we can make it public right now.

I don't have a problem with that.

We're gonna release it anyways tonight.

We we give to the finance directors first.

Okay, just so they have a chance to look at it before our meeting so that they we can ask us questions about what we're seeing.

You left us an annual report.

I haven't looked at it yet.

The annual reports from last year.

Got it.

Okay.

So those are all the numbers from last year.

Right.

Tomorrow we're giving projections to the cities.

What we think is gonna happen in the next two months as we finalize the assessment role.

Um the 5,500 appeals that you have, are they all commercial?

Not all of them, a good number of them.

Um I should have broken it down for you.

I can send you a breakdown later.

Because I think last time when you presented, you said uh the commercial portfolio was uh around three percent of the entire property values of the county.

It sounds about right.

But the appeals are gonna be more than three percent of it's more than 10% of the total appeal count.

Okay, and and so far over here, the highest is from the city of Fremont at 46.

Tesla.

Tesla's 46 billion dollars.

No, no, there's they're the biggest appeal of everyone.

The value.

The value.

So Tesla is one percent of Alameda County's property tax role.

And they're currently an appeal from 2018 through 2025.

A reduction in a excuse me.

So the biggest effect in a large reduction is the Oakland Unified School District, because they are the largest entity that gets the largest percentage.

Oakland.

Can I um you're chatting right now, Supervisor Tim?

Um when you brought this up last year.

I'm pretty sure I raised what are we doing to advocate for this issue with our state legislators in terms of you called out Tesla.

We've been in appeals with them since 2008.

There's no statute 2018.

So what happens in a lot of these appeals are when they file, we ask for more information.

So a company, I'll use company A, I won't use a specific name.

They'll send us what type of equipment they have in their factory, let's say.

We'll tax them based on what they tell us they have.

And then when they get the tax bill, they'll say, oh, we made a mistake.

And so a lot of companies do that, right?

They say they made a mistake, so they're entitled to file an appeal.

An appeal typically is heard within two years unless they decide to waive that two year statute.

They waive that in large part because it takes them a lot more time to get us the information that we need to evaluate their appeal.

Once we get everything that we think we need, we start talking to them and seeing if we can either we agree, we disagree, or we negotiate a dollar amount, depending on what we have before us.

All right.

Um a lot of the increase is cola increases.

Um we see some areas going up and some areas going down.

I don't know if you guys care enough to go into the detail.

We are one of the smaller departments in the county, and thus the total dollar amount is stinking lower than other departments.

Um revenues gone down, costs have gone up.

I told you I'd be quick.

Any other questions?

Um just one quick question.

So you the 1.29 billion dollars is the uh worst case scenario for potential refunds.

What has your success rate been in terms of the appeal hearings?

We we we are fairly successful.

Um I will always tell everyone we're not perfect, but we try and get it right.

Um I expect that we win more than we lose.

Are you saying it's 50-50?

No, it's much better than that.

So if you have any questions, comments, whether the folks are uh just a quick question.

Given the growing number of appeals, um has your staff been growing in relation to all the same.

Um we plan to move more bodies to different areas.

Um, and we hope to be able to add more to our appeals team.

We will need to we will need to add more to our appeals team.

Uh like I said last year, I will come back at some point.

I'm sure I'm gonna need more resources in the future.

So as 7500 appeals comes in, it takes time for us to work those appeals.

So we actually don't see them until about a year later.

So they go to the clerk of the board, clerk of the board inputs them, enters them, we get the final appeals for the year about a year later.

Then we start working with them.

So at that time, if I feel we need more resources, I will be back.

You don't have to worry about that part.

I'm not shy about asking or demanding.

They like that.

We know you're not shy.

Thank you for the presentation.

See no other questions, we'll move on to the next presentation.

After that, I think we are not even close to back on time.

Anyway, Sheriff.

It's me.

It's you.

All right, well, there we go with the uh presentation.

Thank you for putting that up.

Good afternoon, uh, President Hobbart and members of the board.

Before I begin, I just want to give a huge thanks to the team that put this together.

It's a lot of work, uh, especially with the amount of money that uh we are afforded by our wonderful CAO.

Um, you know, we're talking about roughly 680 million.

This presentation to consolidate it into the time frame that you've offered uh is very direct, succinct, and um please if you have any questions, go ahead and interrupt at any point in time.

I want to point to the fact that I have a name placard here, unlike uh the assessor.

328.

Are you timing me?

Put it up, put it up so I can see it.

Give me three minutes.

All right, so with that, we're gonna start start with our maintenance of effort.

Um here's our mission statement.

Look at all these wonderful people that we have working for us.

Uh the Sheriff's Office mission is committed to building stronger and safer communities, continuing to build trust through increased accountability and transparency, and working collaboratively with our community to provide equitable, unbiased, and legitimate policing practices, while fostering an environment of respect, compassion, and professionalism.

These are our core values.

You'll see that they are respect, service, trust, and community, all very strong words that we live and values that are employed when we carry out our mission statement.

These are my duties.

Uh, these are my obligations, preserving the peace, arresting all persons who attempt or commit public offenses, be authority uh to keep the county jail, serve all process and notices in the manner prescribed prescribed by law.

Duties of the sheriff, unfortunately, are not all roses and sunshine.

It's difficult work, um, difficult decisions that have to be made.

Um, but as your elected sheriff, I do that in the best to my ability.

Here's a financial summary of our maintenance of effort for fiscal year 27.

It includes appropriations of 678 million and anticipated revenue of 149 million, which brings our net county costs to 529 million, an increase of 2.96%.

Uh we had an increase of two non-management full-time employees, uh, those being two senior latent fingerprint examiners that are assigned to our central identification bureau.

And that was back in July that your board or our board approved that.

Uh these are our major components of net county cost change.

Uh, it'll show reflect a 9 million decrease in salaries and benefits due to the decreased cost in retirement.

Uh we have a 4.5 million increase in discretionary services and supplies, which sets our budget at a level to hopefully cover all of our contractual obligations.

And that's our for our medical provider, uh, Dublin Fire, who's extremely expensive.

We need to talk about this, and our food services uh contract.

Uh, there's a 1.8 million dollar reduction in our budget to move funding allocated for county council over to county council's budget.

We are um we're pretty uh tough to defend, so we need extra help.

We can see here that the main driver in our net county costs is the increase of our ISFs of 19.1 million, and that's largely attributed to increases in building maintenance and radio services due to increases in overhead costs and replacing of all of our radios.

Uh we have an increase in interfund transfers of 2.2 million, which is mostly attributed to trial court security to ensure our IFT reimbursement keeps pace with our colas and maintain our trial court security budget at a net uh at a zero net county cost.

Overall change to revenue is about 2.4 million uh reduction, mainly due to the significant decrease in the U.S.

marshal population.

I think we're down to 19 as of today.

And that's at our jail.

We'll move on to the graph.

Here's some pretty colors.

Uh graph here shows our appropriations by major division detentions and corrections, of course, is where most of our money is uh allocated running uh the third largest jail in California and the fifth largest in jail in the nation, costs a lot of money.

And we have a number of large contracts that are required to run our daily operations.

And if you can just picture the jail as a small city, because it really is operated as a small city.

DNC and law enforcement services include the majority of our mandated functions and accounts for 81% of our total appropriation.

And this is our appropriation by major object.

Majority of our appropriation is salary and employee benefits, uh, 70% of our total appropriation.

And you know, our people are our greatest asset, so they deserve all the money they can get.

About 14% of our budget is allocated for discretionary services and supplies, which includes funding for food and medical services at Santa Rita jail.

Also includes funding for our CAD RMS system for dispatch, as well as our contractual pathology services.

I think our DA will agree that they're extremely expensive.

And uh our contract with Axon for body worn cameras and tasers.

Our ISFs are now 16% of our budget.

Thank you, GSA and ITD.

Our intra fund transfers uh is 46.6 million, which are credits from other county sources for services we provide, such as our law enforcement contracts with other county departments and trial court security.

Our capital equipment uh budget, I'm not gonna even mention.

Next slide.

It's minimal.

Here's our revenue by source.

Uh more than half of our revenue, roughly 60% comes from charges for services.

This includes roughly 65 million in revenue from our law enforcement contracts.

30% comes from tax revenue from the county service area, which pays for services in unincorporated Alameda County.

Roughly 6% of our revenue comes from government aid, which includes funding from our federal and state grants, as well as the state apportionment for booking.

Uh remaining percentage includes motor vehicle fees that we collect from DMV, as well as other revenue from trust funds included in our budget, which pays for our Cal ID and staff within our Central Identification Bureau.

All right, so we've got four major divisions within our agency detention and corrections, law enforcement services, management services, and countywide services.

Within each division, you can see a list of mandated services.

This accounts for 75% for total budget, which is offset by 88.4 million with revenue.

Each major division, there's also a great number of discretionary services that our agency performs as well.

When you are trying to run a law enforcement agency in a different way and different manner, uh we have discretionary services that uh we onboard, which is re-entry services and support, our vocational program, regional training center, special operations group, and crime lab.

It also includes our law enforcement service contracts, contracts, which is significant as a source of revenue for our agency, which is our services at the Oakland Airport, AC Transit, Dublin Police Services, and our law enforcement contracts we have with a few of our county partners, including social services, health care services, and the recorder's office.

566.4 million or 25% of our total budget is used to perform these discretionary services with offsetting revenue of 60.7 or 60.7 million.

Here's some of our partners.

We have great relationships with them.

They do great work.

Although we have a limited budget, we continue to build partnership with these CBOs, and we continue to provide annual COLA increases as directed by your board.

Each year, we continue to assess personnel functions to make sure that we're making the most the most of our staff and making sure that they are assigned appropriately.

Recruitment and retention is also critical for our agency.

I'm sure you have a number of you have seen a few of our commercials, and our increased presence at community events.

Uh, that's been extremely helpful.

Um last year we attended 136 career fairs, 92 community events, and 66 college visits.

Our regional training center launched its first pre-academy last September to provide individuals wanting to join the agency with the opportunity to work out and get an idea of what it what's going to be expected of them if they join the academy.

In keeping with the county's vision of fiscal stewardship, we ensure that all of our contracts for services have full cost recovery, and we continue to seek out grant funding.

But of course, that comes to our challenges with federal grant funding.

Examples are like our emergency management performance grant, uh, state homeland security grant, urban area security initiative grant, and our port security grant.

These grants are critical to maintain and support our operations at the Crime Lab, Office of Emergency Services, as well as our traffic enforcement and wellness initiatives and re-entry services.

There's a lot of annual maintenance costs as well as projects and contracts for services such as our AC Alert Mass Notification System.

These systems and software have annual costs to maintain these platforms, and it's critical that these are still and we have continuity of operations and find funding for these operations.

It's also important that to note that we are not the only one impacted by federal government when we have grants, and we are the ones that manage those grants.

Cities are impacted because we are they are sub-recipients of these grants that we are awarded.

Along the lines of federal funding, we also have significant impacts of the jail.

We've decided to let our contract with Justice Benefits, with whom we have contract with contracted with with many years to manage our SCAP application.

We have let go of that contract.

We are not going to pursue that contract anymore.

This has been a great source of funding for us for over the years because it's allowed for us to buy some, you know, uh failing equipment at the jail, such as kettles and boilers and all that other good stuff that is very antiquated in our jail right now.

It's an old jail, very expensive to maintain.

Let's see.

In addition, we have seen a massive drop in our U.S.

marshal population at the jail.

Our revenue for this fiscal year was based on an average daily federal population of 260.

As I mentioned earlier, it is down to 16, or I'm sorry, 19.

Uh, that's a significant drop in revenue from 16 million to about 1.2 million.

All right, good news.

Accomplishments.

Uh, California advancing and innovating uh Medical or Cal AIM is a huge milestone for us this year.

This involved coordination from several county agencies, including behavioral health, social services, probation, and ITD, as well as major medical providers such as Alameda Alliance, Kaiser, and Alameda Health System.

This process started back in 2022.

I'm glad to report that we have a go live date of July 1st of this year.

I also want to point out something that typically doesn't get that much attention, which are the numbers of lives.

We actually do save Santa Rita jail.

In 2024, staff at Santa Rita saved 250 incarcerated individuals from life-threatening situations.

In 2025, this number increased to 336.

Improving the quality of life at Santa Rita Jail has been one of our top priorities.

Some of those improvements include putting Narcan throughout the jail so it's accessible by anyone who may need it, implementing Guardian RFID to improve general observation logs and monitoring out-of-cell time and introducing medical risk bans.

We've also amended policies and work with Wellpath, our behavioral health staff in several community-based organizations to strengthen services and enhance conditions at the jail.

More good news.

We've expanded our vocational program, which now includes freedom braiders, part uh job skills part therapy program where incarcerated women learn to braid hair while also documenting their feelings in journals.

This program teaches both job skills and emotional strategies in hopes that they will lead to employment once they are released.

We're now on the ninth cohort of our Layuna vocational program, which just started last week.

This program provides incarcerated individuals with training and certificates to obtain employment in construction and earn a livable wage once they're out of custody.

Since the first court cohort in 2024, 133 individuals have successfully completed this program, and another 33 have actually joined the laborers group, local 304, which now provides job opportunities through referrals from the union, thereby increasing our efforts to reduce recidivism.

Also shown here are a few of our cadets.

This is another opportunity for our young individuals to work for a law enforcement agency and potentially build a pathway for them to become sworn peace officers.

In alignment with our county vision accessible infrastructure, here are some accomplishments from the jail, the ongoing SRJ modernization modernization project with outdoor recreation, uh, the Guardian RFID and improved camera systems, which provide enhanced safety and rehab space, uh, include expanding uh recreation areas.

We've done ADA improvements, upgraded uh the digital systems, uh, confidential interview spaces and development of the Michael Foley Operations Center.

And it's named after Michael Foley.

Michael Foley was a deputy who was uh tragically struck and killed by a bus a number of years ago in the back parking lot of Santa Rita jail.

So we have named it after him to honor him.

Uh moving on with the accomplishments, we have our other infrastructure enhancements, including continuing to build our real-time information center and drone is a first responder program.

It's taken us about three years to develop.

Um we've recently installed two uh DFR docking stations on the roof of our Eden Township substation with two drones.

We are actively working on deploying additional stations at two other locations with the goal of eventually providing coverage to about 90% of our jurisdiction.

Just to provide a few stats from our DFR program this January or since January of this year, we've responded to 142 calls for service, located 81 subjects, cleared 17 calls without having to physically respond and send patrol units, and 63% of the time we're the first ones on site, as far as that uh DFR program.

We're currently working with GSA to install a new heating system at the animal shelter to make sure we provide safe and suitable environments for our animals.

Right now, the heating system is currently running off of a boiler.

Also, over the past year, we've had fewer infrastructure uh improvements at the courts, but recently redoing the floor at the Renee C.

Davidson courthouse and installing new gun lockers.

For accomplishments in alignment with the Crime Free County, our Alameda County Narcotics Task Force continue to do great work keeping our community safe by pulling guns and drugs off the street, seizing money used to conduct illegal activity.

We recently had a huge break.

If you saw it in the news in a cold case from 1993, our detectives from a cold case unit made two arrests after reopening the 1993 homicide of Zachary Jackson, who was found shot to death inside his home in unincorporated Hayward.

At the time the investigation lacked strong leads, tools available were limited.

Years later, new information renewed interest in the case, and additional evidence was uncovered by the cold case unit, which prompted detectives to reinvestigate this case.

Working in partnership with numerous law enforcement agencies across multiple states, uh, as well as the DA's office, cold case detectives developed new leads and located cooperative witnesses.

Investigation revealed that at the time of the murder, Mr.

Jackson shared custody of two young children with one of the suspects.

Jackson was seeking expanded custody, and detectives believe that the suspect and her then boyfriend met with Jackson at his home under false pretenses and subsequently murdered him.

The efforts of our cold case unit culminated in detectives traveling to multiple states to interview multiple witnesses and apprehend the suspects.

As a result, both suspects were arrested and charged with murder.

This is just one example to highlight some of the exemplary investigative work from our cold case unit.

We've expanded our axon agreement.

It now includes Axon Standards, which is a new platform that helps agencies maintain professionalism and accountability in cases of high risk, officer-involved shooting or other events, such as use of force situations or internal and internal affairs investigations.

It also allows smoother workflows and more organized reports and reduces redundancies with not having to repeat the same information.

I also want to highlight our air support unit, which consists of a helicopter, two fixed-wing aircrafts, and a number of unmanned aerial systems.

This unit provides critical services and suspect apprehension through use of cameras installed on the aircraft to provide increased oversight.

They're also used in searching for missing persons and are extremely valuable assets during vehicle pursuits to mitigate risks related to high speed risks or high speed chases.

Basically, it allows our patrol units to back off, and the air units will follow until the subjects can be safely apprehended after they stop.

To demonstrate the usefulness and valuable invaluable successes from our Arctic Real Time Information Center and drone first responder unit.

Here's a one-minute video shows uh how this unit was used to rescue a handicapped individual from a burning vehicle.

Fire my car's on fire.

My car's on fire.

Okay.

Handicapped.

We don't know where to park.

No, there's neighbors.

Yes, there's neighbors right here trying to help us.

The car is on fire.

Hang on to that insight.

Yes, he's handicapped.

We can respond to some of these fires, these structure fires or a car fire, like we did recently, and help those firefighters find out where those hotspots are with our thermal cameras and help evacuate surrounding areas.

And with that wide view that we can get from the air, we can see some of those other hidden dangers that we have.

Additionally, with search and rescue, we can go and look for people faster.

We can cover more ground with the drones and find those missing or runaway juveniles.

We can get a real wide view of the area and help bring people home safer.

In this particular situation, we were able to send up one of the two drones that is stationed on top of the substation or patrol station and respond to the car fire quicker and provide AC fire with an aerial view so they could see where the hotspots were and allows them to uh safely rescue the individual.

Without this technology, the situation could have ended up much differently.

And now I'm gonna highlight uh a few goals, going as fast as I can.

We've recently been making huge progress with purchasing the Epic platform along with Alameda County Health.

This software will enable health data exchange and improve accessibility, visibility, and management of electronic medical records.

This will greatly improve communication between us and the hospitals when we send our incarcerated individuals out to Alameda Health System or John George when they need treatment outside of our facility.

Our Launa apprenticeship program at the jail continues to operate on a second chance re-entry grant.

Our goal is to expand this program and continue to reduce recidivism.

It's our hope that the grant funds used to fund this program will remain available to make this an attainable goal and continue to build the bridge of reintegration back into the community.

Sheriff's Office continues to offer a variety of other re-entry services and resources at the jails, such as high school equivalency and college courses.

There's 12 new programs, which we recently added, including the Juilliard Music Project, uh, which is a nine-week program that teaches incarcerated individuals how to compose music using creative art.

We also have a Eramark Into Work program, which offers certification and food service and uh culinary arts.

These programs and many other programs prepare our Santa Rita residents for employment and sustainability outside of SRJ.

And we are continuously working on filling all of our vacancies.

The numbers we bring into each academy are promising with the number of them successfully completing the program.

Our recruitment team is very productive in encouraging individuals to come to work for our agency, and we keep we hope to keep these numbers up.

One challenge is that people don't know how to drive anymore.

There's too much Uber Lyft and DoorDash.

So driving is a challenge.

Another goal is uh having entered into a new agreement with uh Axon.

Uh, we would like to expand our officer safety plan with them, offers new features, including use of force reporting software.

Um, it will streamline how we report and track patterns of use of force, be able to make sure that we are keeping our folks accountable and providing training where necessary.

Our current contract expires in April of 2027.

I want to stress the importance of taking advantage of Axon's uh 2026 pricing.

The cost increase for the new contract will go from 14 million over five years to 37.7 million over five years.

If we let this pricing expire, we will then be looking at a 40.7 million dollar contract, costing the county an additional three million, no pressure, CAO.

Our preferences to move forward with the new contract this calendar year as the pricing will increase in January of 2027.

Next, we have the continued development of our real-time information center.

It uses technological advancements and modernized policing methods to assist patrol units and increase officer safety.

The system utilizes high-speed computers as capable that are capable of reading large quantities of video and analyzing data from our automated license plate readers.

We can then pass this critical information along to our responding units to assist in formulating tactical responses to maximize potential for safe uh suspect apprehension.

We will be making a full presentation to your board next Tuesday on the 21st on our uh agreements for our ALPR system, which are critical to our Arctic and DFR program.

And as you saw from the video that we just showed, there are many benefits to having an air support unit.

Uh so we would like to find or we would like to continue the operations of this unit through uh funding of our specialized units.

The functions that our specialized um operation unit perform are highly critical in keeping our community safe.

They're also utilized throughout the county.

I also want to make sure make sure that we mentioned that uh we are changing out our duty weapon, our firearms from a six-hour P226 and P229 to a Smith and Wesson Military and Police 2.0 firearm, otherwise known as the MP.

We've experienced a number of issues with our six hour.

And um, you know, before we have any that they've definitely had some issues with uh accidental discharges, and we want to make sure that we are maintaining a very safe operation at our range as well as throughout any uh building that um law enforcement enters.

So we are um we're looking to the Smith and Weston MMP.

Let's see.

Last but not least, our pending capital projects.

We're continuing to work with GSA on the expansion of our Evoc, which is our emergency vehicle operations course training pad.

It's post-mandated training requirement.

This pro this expansion would allow us to administer the training required to perform driving maneuvers on the track extension, would avoid having to drive on public roadways.

We're quoted at 4.5 million for construction on this project back in 2023.

I'm sure the cost is substantially more by now.

Uh there's simply not enough funding within our budget to move this project forward.

Post is a device that we need to expand the EVOC training pad before post requirements are amended, uh, which would then render us unable to conduct this training for our existing emergency vehicle operations course.

We've been told for years the expansion of our current EVOC track is necessary to continue to meet post-training requirements.

Once Post Institutes new changes, and we found that we are out of compliance, we'll no longer be able to provide the training.

So we're still working towards our goal of a new uh Eden Township substation, our patrol station is very old and falling apart.

Our current substation uh built in 1953.

Uh it has exceeded its life expectancy and no longer meets the needs of our current staffing levels.

Uh ETS must engage with the community, and the new substation should be the center of that effort.

Current substation is in disrepair, and the only true solution is to find another facility that meets our needs, or just build a new one.

Last goal, which I'm very excited about, is the lease for a new East County government building in Pleasanton.

Kimberly, this is all about you.

We will be relocating relocating staff currently working at Lakeside and Three Park Place in Dublin to the new building, so we can we can be one unified agency again and increase efficiencies by having everyone centrally located and have the necessary communication to do our day-to-day jobs.

And then I think we're getting close to the end.

Inlightment with county vision of safe and liverable livable communities and thriving and resilient population.

Uh we have our community events here, Autumn Festival, uh, badges and buckets, which supports Special Olympics, the We Run Oakland 5K Marathon supports organizations like Sistus Touch, which provides resources, education and support for children and families.

There's our Cherry Land Extravaganza we just had.

We have deputies on ice, uh Dublin St.

Patrick's Day along with the annual parade, and last but not least, our national night out.

Always super fun.

Come on out if you haven't been.

Community policing is something we really enjoy.

Um, you know, it's been challenging procuring some of the items we normally bring to these events.

Thank you, auditor.

It is important to create that or to mention that positive reference between law enforcement and the community, and it's extremely gratifying to see the big smiles on the kids' faces when they see us and we have toys and everything to give them.

Uh it's an amazing feeling.

So I believe that is it.

Um I just want to, you know, before I wrap up, I just want to remind the board of the importance that uh your budgetary decision makes and how it impacts safety and the way that we provide services in our community.

Um I'll have um happily answer any questions that you have.

Thank you for the presentation.

We'll go to questions from Supervisor Marquez first.

Thank you, President Howard.

Um thank you to the sheriff and her team.

Um, for those of you that don't know, I am the chair of public protection committee in this county, so we work closely with the sheriff.

I think she's tired of seeing me, tired of me calling and texting.

I think I see you almost every day.

So just thank you for the tremendous work.

I will uh note for the public.

If you have time, I think it's really important that you watch our presentation to public protection committee back in November, where we had really um exciting updates, many of the statistics you shared today.

Um, so a couple of things I want to flag.

Um, in terms of the re-entry programs, I Luna, Freedom Breeders, Eramark, Juilliard, the list goes on and on.

Um, what you've brought to Santa Rita jail.

What's the total cost of those to sustain those programs?

Ooh.

Um, I don't have that cost offhand.

It's a few hundred thousand though.

Um, please get that um to us soon to the full board, please.

And then you mentioned the scab programming, we're no longer accepting that funding.

How much was that?

It was 1.2 average annually.

Annually, 1.2.

And did we return what we had or we're just not renewing it?

We're not renewing.

We're not renewing it.

Okay, got it.

And then um, can you uh spend a little bit more time elaborating on your spending a significant amount of money and advertisement?

I see commercials here on the radio.

I think we've um renewed a couple contracts, but how is that paying off in terms of being able to recruit and hire people from our community?

Yeah, uh if you remember the slide where it showed some pictures of our staff, those are kids from our community.

And so we hire cadets when they're young and they get exposed to our work, and then they and then we bring them on as law enforcement, or we bring them on as civilians in maybe the crime lab or whatever position that they're looking or interested in.

Um, you know, with the amount of investment that we've done in the recruiting aspect, we've gone from average of 10 people per academy.

We run three academies a year to between 35 and 45 now.

So it's been it's been great.

And the fact that we've been a part of these community events in our unincorporated and just cities throughout the county, we've been able to draw from our community to onboard them as our swarm personnel.

Um I know obviously you're an elected sheriff and you ran on reform.

Can you kind of speak to how the culture shift, what what's changed under your tenure?

Oh gosh, how much time do we have?

Three minutes, okay.

So I mean, a lot of it is really um being accessible to our community.

Oh, I'm sorry, that's just on to me.

Accessibility is important, and um that's that's something that I've tried to devote time to, and then make sure that my staff are devoting time to, and and you see them out there in the community.

Accountability is also one thing.

Um we have levels of accountability now that we didn't have before.

And uh I've mentioned it in in certain arenas where you know, when it comes to internal affairs investigations, whether they're external or internal complaints, I don't have a say.

Nobody in my command staff has a say whether an investigation moves forward.

That investigation moves forward regardless, and they just tell me uh what investigation is occurring.

So they're completely autonomous.

Uh, there's no there's no interference uh from command staff whether something moves forward or how it moves forward.

That's a big big change.

Also, we historically have not disciplined or held supervisors to account, and that has been happening.

You know, I've had all the way up to the rank of captain held accountable for disciplinary um or violations of conduct or whatever it might be.

So that kind of sets the tone as far as we're doing our job, we do it the right way.

If you don't, there are repercussions behind it.

And how long is it?

How long is probation for a new hire adapted?

For sworn, for sworn it's 18 months.

Okay.

And then um, obviously, there's clear guidelines as to whether or not someone passes or is uh released.

Yeah, I mean, we definitely have released, and I mean, to be honest, I we just released one today.

So and then um with respect to the federal funding impacts.

Do you know yet which programs would be cut?

Do you have a sense of for which um which grants?

I don't I don't know specifically.

We we haven't had anything cut yet.

Um, monitoring.

Okay.

Um do you know what your current vacancy rate is?

We're about 20 percent.

Okay, what was it last year?

Do you recall?

It was it was over 25.

Okay, so it is going down.

Okay.

Thank you.

Those are all my questions and comments for now.

Supervisor Miley, you online ready to ask any questions.

Yes, sir.

The floor is yours, sir.

Well, thank you.

First of all, I'm gonna thank the sheriff for fantastic presentation.

Very comprehensive, very thorough, very informative.

I too share your concerns about the Eden Township substation, as well as the uh course for uh driving.

I'm very eager to get those projects underway and completed.

So I want to stand with you on that, making sure GSA, the county administrator, know of the seriousness of getting that accomplished.

Furthermore, the need for the tools that you your staff, the men and women of the sheriff's department need in order to carry out their jobs safely, is important to me as well.

So the firearms and other tools, the drums, everything that you're talking about in order to provide public safety.

I'm 110% in support of your responsibilities extend beyond the borders of Alameda County.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Is it 13 counties 16 counties across the state when it comes to mutual aid support?

16 counties.

So that even makes it more important that when you're called upon for mutual assistance, that your people can have the tools, the resources, the confidence to go out and do the job.

I'm extremely delighted about the recruitment efforts.

I've seen recruitment um let's say mushroom and improve over time.

I do believe, sheriff, you're perfect you're fulfilling 21st century policing.

Is that correct or incorrect?

Yes, that that's our goal.

Yeah, 21st century policing came out of President Obama, that administration, it's cutting edge, it's best practices, and I think you're fulfilling that.

So I just want to make sure you know that public safety, there's no second guessing public safety.

We all rely on public safety.

I've seen the the need for public safety since I've been an elected official, even before I was elected official.

It's just important that there continues to be professionalism, transparency, and confidence and trust on the part of the public, so that you you and your men and women can do their jobs.

So thank you.

And I think the constituents I represent, thank you as well.

Thank you, Supervisor Miley.

I'll go to Supervisor Fortunato Bass and then Supervisor Tam.

Thank you, Sheriff, for the presentation and for your work.

Um I believe there was a presentation at public protection on Santa Rita jail, but can I heard very quickly um you say what the current jail population is?

Can you say what that is again?

So our jail population is roughly 1290.

And uh our capacity is about 3400.

Okay.

And I think last year you might have said that um you were using overtime to staff the jail.

I'm curious if that's still the case or if you have enough staff to not use as much overtime.

No, we're still staffing through mandatory overtime.

It's reduced significantly than what it once was.

Um so that's that's good news.

So we're getting better.

Okay.

And just so I heard um the numbers correctly, you're running three academies now with 35 to 40 recruits.

Yes.

Okay.

That's a high number.

And how many typically graduate and go on to become deputies?

We have uh, you know, with this pre academy, it'll be good to see um how that percentage either reduces as far as a failure rate, but um, you know, we're at right really about like 86 to 90 percent that graduate.

Okay, that's uh quite high.

And the 20% vacancy, how many deputies or staff is that?

It's uh it's it's definitely a higher number.

It's probably a good 15%, if not 18 okay of that 20.

And and what's the hard number?

Is that a hundred deputies?

Uh positions that are vacant or it's it's still a little over a hundred.

Okay, thank you.

Um the um major components of net counting cost change, the additional 15 million over last year.

Could you go through that information again?

Um, I think you said for discretionary services and supplies, a lot of that is food at the jail.

Like what are the major components of the increase year over year?

Okay, I'm sorry, I missed the first part of that question.

Sorry, I was turning.

Um the additional 15 million in net county costs you went over, what some of the major components are.

I think you said for Santa Rita, it's food.

Um could you just go over some of the higher the higher increases?

I mean, uh a lot of the the services are just expensive.

I mean, medical is extremely expensive.

Um we're going out to RFP for a new medical provider or a medical provider, period.

I mean, I don't want to, you know, jump the gun here.

But um, I mean, let's see, let me go back to my uh major areas which incact the 15 million for net county cost.

Um let's see.

I think that um, you know, we have uh county council as being one of our impacts, you know, adding a county council um attorney to our team because we have a number of contracts they need to be reviewed.

There's a number of you know, things that we were very demanding, and I know Clay Christensen can speak to that.

Um, that we are very much always on top of him as far as his review of some of the things that we're doing.

Um, I mean, just keeping up with uh the fact that we have a reduction in our jail population related to federal inmates, that's been significant.

I mean, we used to have roughly 450, and then we went down to 260, and now we're down to 19.

So those are all impacts that we are uh trying to work through.

Thank you.

Supervisor Tan.

Um thank you, President Howard, and thank you for the presentation.

I think my colleagues asked most of the questions.

Mine has more to do with like overall uh your budget is that is associated with detention and correction, or the jail is about 57.1%, and you have um 1,878 um FTEs, of which you said you have a 20% vacancy, so uh roughly um you yeah, about 376 people that are are that are positions that are vacant.

Um is in terms of proportionality, is the number of um FTEs also around 57% that's associated with the jail, or is it less and because that's the reason you need the overtime you're saying?

Yes, I uh I believe that we have about 60% of our staff that are assigned to the jail.

And I I gotta correct myself, I was stating vacant consent decree deputies at the 100 figure, we're actually over 200 vacancies for sworn.

Okay.

Yeah, and so that accounts for most of that 20 percent.

But um for consent decree, why for vacant positions related to sworn, we track those separately, and so we're we're still about a hundred down from consent decree, meaning consent decreed obligations for sworn personnel.

So that's the part I'm I'm not quite understanding you um the consent decree is based on the capacity of the jail, right?

No.

No, it's not.

It's it's dependent on services provided and the amount of people that it's gonna require to provide those services, additional services that we were not providing before, or we were not just providing very well.

So uh how many FTEs do you currently have at the jail?

Let's see.

Yeah, Simone, you have that number offhand?

A little under 800.

Under 800.

Under 800?

Yeah, just under 800.

And um, this is a serve a population of 1290.

Yes.

Uh for all the various services at not just one officers, right?

Correct.

Okay.

Uh, and then what is the consent decree amount?

As far as total staffing.

So it doesn't have a total number required, it just told it it specifies how many more that we had to hire.

So the additional was 252 sworn, and gosh, I want to say it was over 70 or means.

Can you stop playing with my gray phone?

I'm sorry.

I asked for her to stop playing with my microphone.

I'm just joking.

You can play with my microphone.

Is Cher helping you?

Yeah, yeah, no, we're doing a little sidebar.

Okay.

But did that answer your question as far as like it it asked the consent decree specifically asked for us to hire 252 more sworn positions?

Over the 800 you currently have.

Over not the current number of 800, but over the numbers that we had when we signed into the consent decree, which is in 2022.

Okay.

Those numbers I don't have for you, but I can I can get those for you.

Supervisor, we phase those in with your board's approval over three years.

So they're now incorporated in the base budget that's being presented as part of the maintenance of effort.

The consent degree positions that were agreed upon were phased in over three years.

Okay, so they're in our in your proposed maintenance of effort budget.

Correct, which is the $678 million dollars.

The the question was more along the lines of if you're um you're not meeting the consent decree uh staffing levels, and you're still using overtime, that means you are still short staff more than just a consent decree amounts.

I mean, I don't know if I want to be specific to short staff specific to consent decree.

I mean, we're just short staffed, but they're also, you know, we are talking about doing another staffing assessment to see if whether we still need those positions.

And I remember early on when we had this conversation about the number of positions that were required through the consent decree.

I said that we were going to reassess it to see if we actually need those numbers, and if we can reduce it, then we will.

Okay.

So there's there's another staffing study that was very likely coming.

Okay.

Thank you again for the presentation.

I'll echo uh comments made by my colleagues.

Indeed, public safety always number one importance.

Um question I have is you mentioned some things that you would like to do.

I wasn't sure if they were all fully funded with this budget.

Does this budget provide you the tools and resources you need to do your job successfully?

The uh significant contract that we are um hoping to move forward with because of the cost savings that we would have to move forward with it is the extension of our axon contract, which would out add more services, um, which is our dash cams, um, you know, uh it'll have cameras inside the passenger cabinet of our vehicles so that if there's any complaints that come through with anything that maybe somebody says something happened in the passenger car of a patrol um or passenger area patrol car, at least we would have some video footage to lean on um to either you know affirm or see what happened really.

Um but there's a number of things that are a part of it, you know.

We we are looking at um the taser 10, which has a better you know capacity as far as being able to utilize a a more safer way to be able to detain individuals.

Um I mean, there's there's a number of things that uh we would like to move forward with with respect to AI and then having conversations with the DA on on how we move forward with AI in the justice system and utilizing that for our reports and whatnot, but I mean we have to take advantage of that now because then we will pay if we if we wait till 2027, uh we'll pay more.

So that is not included in our MOE uh for this fiscal year, but it it's definitely something that we're working with the CAU's office on.

I also want to commend you on the programs that you uh mentioned uh earlier.

I know that your re-entry program, your partnership with Layuna is amazing.

I've seen it in action, and thank you for doing that.

Um I also have a question about and it just came up the other day in conversation.

Are we prepared?

I know we've had at least one active duty um recommitted to active military duty, call back into action.

I think that affects their baseline pay.

There's a process by which we can have a budgetary item to help alleviate that.

Is that accounted for in this budget?

What if more and more and more?

And I don't know how many might be, but maybe you know, or maybe we don't know how many might be reactivated and do we have a budget for that?

That that would be uh overtime budget that we would have to I mean, and we have an established overtime budget that we generally go over.

Um, but that would be covered through overtime because you never know like when they're gonna come back, and we can't you know fill their position if it's to filled with the person even though they're on active duty.

Okay.

Um probably be something we may have to discuss.

Hopefully not, but maybe.

Um with regard to overtime, I forget if it was asked and answered already, but I've heard that in the past as many as 50 hours, 50 percent of the hours at the jail in a week of all the hours that are work by all the people times the number of hours that are there.

50 percent of them may be overtime hours.

Is that about right still?

Yeah, used to be um well, it's not quite there anymore, but it used to be 60 percent, like 60 percent of the staff at the jail were there on an overtime basis.

Okay, so it's gone down, yes.

At least a little bit.

All right.

Um, thank you very much again for the report and the presentation.

No other questions for me, and we will then proceed to the next presentation by our district attorney.

Starting at 4 15.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Um to the entire board for having the opportunity to present this to you today.

Again, this is protect and power restore, supporting survivors across Alameda County for our 26-27 fiscal year.

To go over quickly, our mission statement is to ethically prosecute those who commit crimes, uphold the rights of victims, and provide them with compassion, support, and protect the communities that we serve.

Also collaborate with justice and community partners and foster policies that prioritize public safety and restore public trust and reinforce innovative programs that provide opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration and to enhance the lives of the residents of Alameda County.

This mission is broader than just prosecution alone and requires more than courtroom staffing.

Of course, we have uh victim witness advocates, support staff, partnership infrastructure, and stable systems.

The district attorney's office represents the people of the state of California ethically, professionally, and with integrity in criminal, civil, and juvenile matters, and the DA's office will always pursue the truth, demonstrate commitment to fair and equitable justice for all, and ensure that victims of crime are treated with respect, dignity, and empathy.

And I want to talk a little bit about that because I think that how people experience the system is really important.

We need to make sure that our victims and survivors feel supported, and also that the public trust our decisions.

So we're going to talk about the role of the district attorney, specifically as defined by Constitution, California law, and case law, and the mandates that shape what we do, what the office must do, how quickly quickly we must do those things, and what staffing and support systems are needed.

And before budget numbers, it's important to understand the baseline reality.

So the work that is required, the work that is broad, and the work that's becoming more complex and resource.

Our more resources are required.

So I want to go over our legal mandates.

California government code section 26500 says that the district attorney is the public prosecutor, except as otherwise provided by law, and that the public prosecutor shall attend the courts and within his or her discretion, initiate and conduct on behalf of the people all of public offenses.

And also talk about the California Victims' Bill of Rights.

California Constitution declares that the people of the state of California fined and declare all of the following.

The rights of victims of crime and their families and criminal prosecutions are a subject of grave statewide concern.

The enactment of comprehensive provisions and laws ensuring a bill of rights for victims of crime, including safeguards in the criminal justice system, fully protecting those rights and ensuring that crime victims are treated with respect, dignity, is a matter of high public importance.

The rights of victims pervade the criminal justice system.

The rights of victims also include broader shared collective rights that are held in common with all of the people of the state of California, and that are enforceable through the enactment of laws and through good faith efforts and actions of California electeds, appointed, and public employed officials.

Victims of crime have a collectively shared right to expect that persons convicted of committing criminal acts are sufficiently punished in both the manner and the length of the sentences imposed by the court of the state of California, and victims of crime are entitled to finality in their criminal cases.

This speaks to what Marcy's, if you guys have heard of Marcy's Law, it is also in the California Constitution.

Marcy's law was passed in 2008 as proposition nine, expanding victims' rights.

Major areas of mandated work.

We have misdemeanor felony prosecution, grand jury matters, require court appearances in criminal cases, mental health proceedings, victim witness trauma reduction and support, as well as consumer environmental and worker protection enforcement.

So we have additional mandates.

Law requires DA's offices to pursue into 25600, be the public prosecutor, 26501, criminal proceedings, criminal court appearances and grand jury advice, 26502, indictments and informations.

We have the authority to draft and file the formal documents required to officially charge a person with a crime.

26521, defensive suits, prosecution of actions, to defend the state or county and lawsuits, and to initiate legal actions to recover debts, fines, and forfeitures.

26530 mental health proceedings representing the county and mental health proceedings, and 26540 prohibited activities were prohibited from defending criminal defendants.

So our mandated services again are services that are required, and those mandated services are that the district attorney's office is required by law to do.

Those duties are established by state law and must be carried out regardless of budget pressure.

So we have new laws that have increased our resource demand.

And I should say that the increase in the resource demand requires us to train staff differently, to have sound supervision, to require more staff, to have consistent decision making folks who can make consistent decisions and operational support.

Now the new laws are race blind charging that requires updates to our native case management system, the recruitment, training, and deployment of additional staff.

Again, that is an unfunded mandate, data mandates, also add statistical data reporting and installation maintenance of record keeping systems for reporting to the attorney general, state reporting, expands hate crime reporting obligations, including the Department of Justice Review of Agency Policies, materials, recurring submission deadlines, and public posting requirements, diversion, weakens the prosecutorial discretion by shifting diversion decisions from the DA to the court, increasing diversion volume and extending eligibility to some serious and violent cases, resentencing laws and racial justice act, retroactively broadening resentencing opportunities, dramatically expanding, expanding the resentencing related claims and adding substantial litigation workload, and then also health care clinic protection laws, mandating additional review, interagency coordination, victim response, and reporting in cases involving threats of violence at abortion clinics.

Talk a little bit about our branches.

We have Renee C.

Davidson, which of course is connected to this building by way of tunnel, consumer environmental and worker protection, which is out by the Oakland Airport, East County Hall of Justice, which is right next to the Santa Rita Jail, Juvenile Justice System Center, which is on 150th in San Leandro, Fremont Hall of Justice in Fremont, our victim or victim witness assistance program is all throughout each of the courthouses.

Our Family Justice Center is on 27th in Oakland between Broadway and Telegraph, and Wiley Manual Courthouse is right next to the Oakland Police Department.

And just to kind of highlight the Family Justice Center is kind of a hybrid.

It is something that the DA is ultimately responsible for.

We make sure that community-based organizations are situated in the Family Justice Center so that victims of crime can go to this one place to get services.

And looking at the organization at a glance, this slide shows the breadth of our office.

The office is not one-dimensional and it's complex.

Public service agency responding to harm in many forms.

This includes that Alameda County Family Justice Center, Certified Trauma Recovery Center, our restitution division, victim witness assistance program, victims of crime assistance, increased resources for family burials, increased access to medical and mental health, mental health unit, our cares navigation center, collaborative courts, elder and adult adult unit, we have a sexual assault and child sexual assault unit, domestic violence and stocking unit, human exploitation and trafficking unit, hate crime unit, special prosecution unit, community engagement and legislation division, DNA coal hit unit, worker protection, labor trafficking, real estate fraud, environmental protection, consumer protection, and insurance fraud.

Services the DA offers and provides based upon local priorities, available funding, and community needs.

I want to be very specific, our victim witness advocates who I can't even imagine doing our job without them.

About 80% of them are grant funded.

So we don't get much money from the county to provide that service to victims.

That's an in port because I think you know, the way grants are kind of disappearing.

We just lost a grant for our trauma recovery center, or finding ways to refund that.

There are some fears that I think our office has that if the funding dries up for our victim witness advocate program, that we won't be able to provide those services to victims of crime.

These programs are important, valuable, and contribute to public safety.

Discretionary services are not required by statute, but are often underfunded and rely on grant dollars alone.

So our discretionary services that are meeting critical needs are again the Family Justice Center.

The demand is rising as nonprofit partners close statewide.

Our CARES Navigation Center maintaining services as a one-time state funding ends, and then trauma recovery center growing trauma needs and shrinking grant opportunities.

But as we see the money drying up, we see less demand for the space in that in that family justice center as well.

Trauma needs are rising and grant funding is ending, and the need is growing at the same time that the funding base is becoming less predictable.

So our increasing service utilization.

Alameda County Family Justice Center had $12,243 client visits, nearly three dozen family justice center partner organizations, 24 to 25.

We also had with our victim witness assistance division, 16,873 clients served, 2425, an 8% increase in more than $2 million Cal VCB awarded to survivors in 2025.

Our CARES Navigation Center, significant increase in referrals since the first quarter of 2025, and our trauma recovery center, more than 670 individuals served, thousands of counseling appointments provided, 24 and 25.

So we have increasing needs, our staffing.

We have attorneys and prosecutors, more attorneys to handle increased hearings, resentencing matters, race blind charging, diversion litigation, and complex motions.

We have more of an administrative need, more administrative and support staff to carry out required redaction, case routing, documentation and records work, more training needs, resources to ensure proper implementation of new legal requirements accurately and consistently, and our data and technology needs have expanded quite a bit.

Technology upgrades to support case tracking, redaction, reporting and compliance workflows, as well as data, more data and compliance capacity to meet state reporting and record keeping mandates.

And one of the biggest things that was a bit of a surprise to me over the last year is the cost of expert witnesses.

As you all know, we have to use the pathologist in every murder case that we try.

And I know that the county had a period of time where they didn't have a pathologist, and we were contracting out to pathologists.

The contract between the sheriff and the pathologist was steady.

For us, every time we have a murder, we have to bring in a pathologist from wherever they are, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Miami, fly them in from the time that they leave their home to come here and testify and back, they're on the clock.

So each murder that we try, we caught it cost us about 10,000.

It has been up to 30,000 to try a case just with the pathologist cost.

But we also have juvenile hearings that require expert witnesses, diversion hearings, and mental health hearings that require expert witnesses and toxicologists as well.

So looking at our financial summary, of course, there I mean the biggest thing that is blaring, I think, is the approved budget for 2526, 112 and now 116 change of 3.85%.

Our revenue has gone up slightly, 3.6 or 06%.

The net net county cost is about 4.06%.

We've not gone up in management, FTEs much, and then non-management, we've actually gone down.

So looking at our appropriation by department, district attorney grants is a little over 12 million, realignment money is 1.25.

That has been stable.

District Attorney operations 97, a little over 97 million, welfare fraud, 1.5 million, Family Justice Center, 3.77 million, and the grand jury, 751,000.