To call the meeting to order, and uh I will ask uh councilmember Davis to leave us in the Pledge of Allegiance, and if you have any cover, please remove it and stand.

Oh, it's ordered my pledge leads.

Which is the flag of the United States of America, to the Republic, she says one.

Okay, can we have roll call?

Councilmember Devini.

Here.

Councilmember Davis.

Present.

Council Member Phoebig.

Yeah.

Councilmember Mota.

Present.

Councilmember Thomas.

Here.

Vice Chair Malker.

Present.

Chair Moore.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Okay, next item on the agenda is public comment.

So this is uh an area where any item that is not on the agenda.

Um, you can fill out a speaker card, uh, but you come up to the podium, speak.

Um, we'll have three minutes for your public comment.

Um, and we'll go in the room, and then we have folks online.

Um, they raise their hand, we'll call on them so we'll rotate back and forth.

So if uh there's a folks in the room, I don't have any speaker cards.

You have speaker cards.

Okay.

Um, test test, all right.

Good evening.

I just wanted to introduce myself.

My name is Aaron Pantilio.

I'm the new division chief for Alameda County, and I'm assigned to this area with the unincorporated area, so I'll be attending these meetings.

Glad to be here.

Thank you.

Saljon Sivron.

Hello, my name is Saljan.

Uh, my partner Kristen and I moved to Castro Valley six years ago looking for a convenient and safe place to raise a family.

Uh, we bought a house on uh Salem Road between Somerset Avenue and Mabel Avenue.

Uh we now have two kids, uh ages five and one and a half.

Uh we've really enjoyed putting the kids in the stroller and walking to the library or coffee shop uh or grocery store.

Um yet it's after what happened to uh to us, we're not sure we want to actually stay in the unincorporated area where pedestrian safety comes uh as a far secondary to vehicles on April 13th.

I leashed up our dog and went uh for a walk shortly after 7 a.m.

for a routine walk.

Uh and nothing was routine after stepping out that door.

We walked from our house on Salem Road west on Maple Avenue and came to the intersection at Redwood Road across from Castro Valley High.

Uh the plan was to walk west on Mabel Road right by the high school uh to Santa Maria and then come up east on uh Somerset Avenue and back home.

It was well after sunrise, zero period had already started uh at the high school, and there were a couple of kids uh students still trickling into the school.

Ahead of me, I saw a student cross uh Redwood Road in the crosswalk from Mabel Avenue.

Uh my dog and I arrived at the red light, pushed the crosswalk button and waited for the signal to change.

And uh we, you know, as we as we uh got to the middle of the road, we were in the crosswalk.

Uh I could see a truck that's was coming into my periphery, turning left from Maple Avenue onto Redwood Road.

I had to look on in horror as my dog went, was struck by the truck.

Uh she had a six-foot leash.

That was regulation.

She was only a couple feet in front of me.

She was about three feet in front of me.

Uh the truck was going so fast that you know, my dog went under, Maple went under both tires, uh, right in front of my eyes.

The weight of the vehicle snapped her neck or snapped her spine.

She wasn't a tiny dog.

She weighed 48 pounds, and she was pretty easy to see.

In a few short minutes, our seven year old dog that grew up with my kids, was gone.

We were less than a thousand feet in front of our house, caring carrying the lifeless body of our family dog was one of the hardest things I had to do.

But enduring survivors' guilt is a dull ache that is slowed fade.

I'm fortunate that I was not under that truck that morning.

And I'm immensely grateful that I was not walking my kids in the stroller.

I'm also grateful that a student wasn't struck.

Well, the driver of the truck was grossly negligent.

Alameda County is also complicit in this in this tragedy and bears responsibility.

And the days after the death, I kept asking myself why this intersection and crossing signal was designed so poorly.

The unprotected left onto the road puts the responsibility on the driver to look for pedestrians in the crosswalk.

And clearly that fails.

There are better approaches to ensure public safety even when someone drives recklessly.

A protected left, for example, would prevent would decouple pedestrian crossings at left turns is one option.

Speed bumps is another.

Excuse me, that's your time.

Okay.

Thank you.

Livia Thomas.

My name is Livia Thomas.

My wife Sandy and I live on Salem Road across the street from Saljon's family.

Everybody knows each other in our neighborhood.

Many of us are daily walkers like Saljian, with and without dogs.

Needless to say, we were devastated by Maple's untimely death.

If grateful Saljan and his kids were not the victims.

Unfortunately, Maple, their beloved dog, is not considered to be a pedestrian by law.

According to California Office of Traffic Safety, our OTS, California's pedestrian fatality rate is almost 25% higher than the national average.

No state has more pedestrian deaths on its roadways than California.

The following improvements made at Redwood Road and Mabel Avenue were all reactive rather than quote thinking two steps ahead like the OTS instructs us to do on their website.

The first improvement installed traffic light in Mabel Avenue Redwood Road after a student was hit by a car in the crosswalk.

Fortunately, that student wasn't seriously injured or killed like the young girl on Crow Canyon Road.

Two, placed LED speed alert on Somerset Avenue to slow drivers for a few weeks only after CHP and Castor Valley USD were informed in person and emailed by me of high school students racing down Mabel Salem Road in Somerset when leaving school and speeding through lights.

I supplied photos and license plate numbers.

Third improvement installed no right turn signs on Maple Avenue on both sides of Redwood Road at the beginning of the following school year.

Four painted keep clear messages in that same intersection where Maple was killed.

After talking with our neighbors, here are solutions we ask you to consider.

Decouple the left turn signal and the crosswalk signal at Maple Avenue, Redwood Road.

Two, post Redwood Road as a school zone at 25 miles per hour.

Three, paint bright yellow diagonal lines in the crosswalk.

Four, add flashing lights to the crosswalk.

Five, add a safety crossing guard.

Six, lower the speed limit east of Redwood Road on Somerset Sable and Salem and Mabel to 15 miles per hour rather than 25.

Six, I think.

Visible police presence before and after school on varying days.

Install a knot-through street sign on Maple Avenue and Somerset Avenue.

Install speed bumps on Somerset Avenue and Maple Avenue and monitor a change traffic light rhythms before and after school to smooth out traffic flow at Maple Avenue, Redwood Road, and at Somerset Avenue, Redwood Road.

Thank you for prioritizing public safety.

Daniel Jackowitz.

One second before you speak.

Can you get the closed caption on the screen so that what I don't hear where I could read?

So just trying to raise that up a little bit so I don't break my neck here.

Ah, there you go.

Well, good evening, everybody.

My name is Daniel Jackwitz, and I just wanted to come to introduce myself.

I know some of you here in the room, but for those who don't know me, I've been a resident here in Castor Valley for over 20 years.

I've also worked here for almost two decades as a public uh safety officer working for the California Highway Patrol and serving in this community, not only in patrol capacity, but as well as uh a public information officer working in our school programs and community programs throughout festivals, fairs, the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, and other things uh involving the community, has really been the highlight of my career.

Uh I was a former Rotarian uh board board member here in Castor Valley, served on that board for a year.

I'm currently a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District, advising them on their operations.

I'm a youth soccer coach and a football coach, the next level football program.

I served on the Castor Valley Elementary Parent and Teachers Association board alongside my beautiful wife Rosie for four years, and we were able to do a lot of great things for CVE.

It truly is the place to be, and we help support teachers.

We raised a lot of money for them and for after school programs and field trips and building community around CVE.

I have three children in Castor Valley schools, and they're wonderful.

They participate in sports programs as well as after school programs.

Castor Valley is a truly a wonderful place to raise children and work, and I'm proud of its accomplishments.

In recent years, though, I've grown concerned with issues affecting our students, our teachers, and our community.

The lack of access to clean drinking water at schools, my daughters come home every day, and they say that the filters are on red, that they haven't been replaced.

My kids tell me that there's constant uh bullying and fighting that goes on in the schools, and it goes on unchecked and often not reported to staff, and that staff does not seem interested.

Functional restrooms at our facilities ranging from elementary schools to the high school, toilet paper, access to restrooms, oftentimes access to restrooms is restricted because they're worried about some issues that might occur because they don't have staff to monitor it.

The lack of tennis courts at our middle schools that were taken away at Canyon School and not replaced.

How can we feed our high school program if we can't teach our kids at middle school and develop their talents?

Tennis courts are important.

Ongoing fights again, as I stated, an increase uh in that, and we need to do a better job at supporting um safety around our schools.

The talk around safety, the collaboration with our public safety partners like the Sheriff's Department, the CHP, and we really need to ensure that we have proper working cameras and transparency when it comes to issues involving schools, making sure our parents know and they are involved in the process.

These are just some of the many issues, and I realize there are many things that need to be done.

Uh, I realize now more than ever, as a father, parent of three kids in the district, uh public safety partner and a coach.

I need to continue to step up my efforts, and that's why I'm proud tonight to serve uh here in the community, but also to announce that I'm running for candidate in Castor Valley Unified School District, uh representing trustee area three, which is East Castro Valley.

So I just want to say thank you for the time and uh be safe.

Darryl Ray.

Good evening.

My name's Daryl Ray.

I'm a 40-year resident of Castor Valley, and I'm also on the steering team of Eden Area Indivisible.

Um I'm here tonight uh to talk about um and ask, well, to bring up the issue of uh sidewalk safety in Castor Valley.

And um, as you know, there are often people protesting at the corner, peace corner of Castor Valley Boulevard and Redwood Road.

Um so I've had a chance to observe the sidewalks in that area for uh quite some time now.

And um, over almost a year ago, uh a shopper uh fell, uh tripped over uh a piece of a sidewalk, um, which is actually at uh 3483 Castor Valley Boulevard, and um hit the ground and she had bags of groceries, and we helped her up.

Um, but this was not the last time.

Um I've seen numerous people trip, um often nothing really serious, but this last week we had one of our uh demonstrators uh trip and fall and cut her uh elbows, and we had to uh call the um the paramedics to uh make sure she was okay.

So um I have called the public works department in Alameda on two occasions now.

Um I should have done it more often, I think, but it turns out that nothing has been done from uh August of last year when I first called it in.

So I'm just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Um I think this is maybe I hope it's not uh indicative of what's going on with the public works department.

Um I did go online today and saw that it the my first um uh referral was um considered to be not part of their responsibility, but I never heard back from them.

So uh I have called again and um I'm it's been too soon to give them a chance to respond, but I wanted to alert you to this.

I will come back later at another meeting and let you know how it's coming out.

But um I think it's something you should be aware of.

So thank you very much for your time.

I have no other speakers for public comment, uh, do we have anybody online?

Uh are there any other speakers in the room on any item that is not on this agenda?

Okay, I'm gonna close public comment and move on to approval of the minutes from uh let's see here from the April the 20th.

I move we approve the uh minutes.

I second that motion.

We have a first and a second.

Do we have any discussion?

I have a little bit of discussion on it.

I think it's two abbreviated to accept in my regard.

Um, it barely covers the speakers that were even here.

Um it was a very long meeting, and the uh the minutes are less than a page and a half.

Is this all the amends?

This is complete.

Yes.

Oh okay.

Thank you.

Any other discussion on the item?

Uh Chair, the the structure of our minutes is clearly something that we're gonna have to work out.

Um, and we have two extremes.

One of them is is this the the the summary motion that we have here um uh versus a complete transcript uh or what we occasionally have on our land use meetings, which is uh somewhat narrative, and I'm actually leaning more towards these summaries because I I heard a uh supervisor recently quote reading the Castor Valley Mac minutes and making a very important decision, and I know that the minutes did not catch the full flavor of our discussion because they were not summary, which would have forced that supervisor to perhaps listen to the meeting.

Um so I I know this is something that has come up our last two meetings, and at some point I don't know how we're gonna uh determine this.

We're either just gonna continue to not approve minutes or we're gonna agree to some type of a format.

Okay.

Well, we have a first and a second.

Uh, the other discussion on the minutes, and then if not, then let's have roll call.

Councilmember Devini.

All right.

Council member Davis.

Hi.

Council member Phoebig.

Hi.

Council member Mota?

Aye, council member Thomas.

I vice chair Mulkrew, no, Chair Moore.

No, a minute.

Oh.

So.

Okay.

Yeah.

Minutes approved.

For 420.

Okay.

Uh, the next item on the agenda is a presentation from uh Jen Pabs from the Harvard Patrol.

Hi, good evening.

Thank you for welcoming me back.

Um, I know last time I gave a monthly update when I was supposed to give the annual review.

So I appreciate you having some patience and letting me uh present what CHP has done in the community for the entire year so that you get the full picture.

So that's our cover page.

Moving on to the next page is our statistics.

I wanted to go over uh the statistics.

I compared them from 2024 to 2025 here.

As you can see, some of the numbers are down and some of the numbers are up when it comes to the number of citations that we issued is slightly down, and some of the crashes have slightly increased.

Our area is considered a training area, so we have a lot of new officers on field training, and with that, it takes a uh officer as who is a field training officer and pairs them with the trainee.

So we may not necessarily have as many units out on the road sometimes because we've received a lot of trainees, which has helped our office become fully staffed.

So it took a little bit of time to train the new officers, but once they are all off of their field training, our office will be fully staffed.

And I think it's one of the only ones in the state of California.

So we are fortunate to have uh a fully staffed office.

However, uh 2025 was a period of time where we had to take some of the field training officers off the road as individual officers to train the new officers.

Let's see.

When it comes to DUIRS, that is very important to us.

I know my stats last month or two months ago, Chuck was concerned, but here's for the total, and this is within the unincorporated area, not including 580, which is where a lot of DUI drivers are stopped.

I wanted to emphasize the importance of our patrolling efforts within the Castor Valley community within the unincorporated roadways.

Let's see.

Our last maximum enforcement period was on April 28th, 2026, and we issued 514 speeding citations, and we had over 800 contacts within a 24-hour period in our area, and that is from the Santa Clara County line up to the Oakland city limits and on 580 up to Eden Canyon.

Our office again led the state in enforcement contacts, and I know I say this a lot, and it may just sound like nothing to you guys, but it's a very big deal because our office is extremely proactive.

Our goal is to reduce the number of traffic related crashes due to speeding vehicles or distracted driving.

Our emphasis this uh maximum enforcement period was on speed, but if we did observe other violations, those drivers were contacted as well.

Uh us leading the state in enforcement contacts has led to a decrease in our traffic fatalities as well as other vehicle accidents.

One of our main concerns that was brought up today in the general comment was our vehicle versus pedestrian crashes.

That is a major concern of ours due to the fact that we've had an increase in vehicle versus pedestrian related crashes.

However, most of those pedestrians have been outside of crosswalks.

Well, I do know that the former speaker was within it inside of a crosswalk.

I'll get to that uh in a later slide.

One of our main issues has been trying to figure out how to prevent people from jaywalking across the street and being struck by vehicles.

Uh we did have an increase in 2025 from 2024.

We had one more uh vehicle versus pedestrian fatal traffic crash, crashes, and so our goal in 2025, excuse me, 2026 is to reduce that number.

Uh we're working on contacting the unhoused individuals who may be jaywalking across the street and offering them resources and trying to help them and give them and teach them about the dangers of crossing the road and impeding traffic.

It's difficult for us to enforce that law, because by the time we get to that location, the pedestrians already cross the roadway typically.

So our goal is to reduce that number by our in-view patrol and just being more present, having our officers out on the beat driving around and trying to make sure that people are obeying the law while driving, but also being good pedestrians and not impeding traffic.

Next slide.

Some more proactive enforcement that we've been conducting is partnering with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, Hayward Police Department, and the San Leandro Police Department for the regional side show enforcement task force.

Since its inception, about two years ago, this task force has been tremendous in preventing side shows in the unincorporated areas as well as the other areas that we patrol in major side show event takeovers.

I, if you guys can all remember a few years back when those side shows were impacting people's lives, they were taking over intersections and just causing havoc.

On the nights that reset is out working, they have stopped any major side shows from occurring within our area, and they've done a tremendous amount of proactive patrol.

Not only are they working on preventing side shows from occurring, but they're arresting DUI drivers.

There's a ton of gun recoveries, as well as taking people who have warrants to jail and locating people who have committed felonies and misdemeanors.

So it's not just a reactive patrol those nights, it's very proactive.

So it's beneficial to the community all around.

I think the words are covering my other part, but underneath that is our community-oriented police services team, which I'm a part of.

And one of the enforcement operations that we've been working on is contacting unhoused individuals who are trespassing on state property.

Since we've been out proactively contacting these people, we've kind of gone through, we've developed a process which has worked very well in our area.

And as a matter of fact, our strategy is being implemented within other CHP offices throughout Golden Gate Division, and they're pushing it out to the entire state of California.

Our goal is to contact these people and offer them resources and get them the help that they need, find out what is going on.

And we've partnered with the or the Alameda County District Attorney's Office set up a CARES program, and that has been instrumental in allowing us to provide these resources immediately.

We can contact them when we're out patrolling, and they'll have a representative from the CARES program come pick up the individual.

And if that individual is suffering from a mental health issue, drug addiction, they need food, water, clothing.

The representative will come pick them up and take them to the navigation center, and that night they are taken care of and they're in a bed.

And then the program also works with them to work on any charges that they have pending or if they have some warrants that need to be taken care of.

But we're trying to get these people the resources that they need to make sure that they're safe.

Our job as the highway patrol is to protect people.

And if they're out on the freeway, it's very dangerous because a car could run off the roadway but and run them over, and we wouldn't even know who they are because they are a lot of them are transient and they don't have identification on them.

And then also inside of these encampments, it's very dangerous for these people.

There's a lot of crimes that are committed, and a lot of them don't even know who these people are.

They go by nicknames and things like that.

So by us contacting these people consistently, we're able to identify them, get to know them.

And so in case a crime does occur, we're able to solve them more easily by having the resource or by having our database available to contact them.

And through our encampment enforcement, or excuse me, our encampment efforts, we've worked with the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

We go out because a lot of times we'll be walking through county jurisdiction as well as state property.

So we're able to work together to contact these people and offer them resources immediately.

Next slide.

All right, pedestrian safety.

It's a huge topic of ours.

We we discuss it quite frequently, and I'm very sorry about your loss.

It uh is very very sad.

So I'm glad that you got up and spoke about it because it just re-emphasizes how important it is for drivers to be aware of their surroundings as well, including pedestrians, and there's a lot of crosswalks in Castor Valley, and I think that some drivers just do not realize when they need to yield, and so our goal of what we can do is go out and enforce the law.

Um working with public works is something that I do quarterly.

I report back to them.

Um, we've had a lot of pedestrian pedestrian safety enforcement operations that are sponsored by NHSA.

And through one of our pedestrian enforcement operations, we spoke about the intersection of Redwood and Modesto.

And I do know that public works has been looking into improving that intersection, adding lights, and I know it's right in the area of Mabel as well.

So recently on May 7th, we had a pedestrian enforcement operation, and this one was in memory of Lana Carlos, who unfortunately was tragically killed a couple years ago on Crow Canyon.

We've done this operate, we did this operation last year on the anniversary of her passing, and that was our goal again this year.

However, weather did not permit that enforcement, so it got pushed out to May 7th.

And within that uh two-hour period, we issued 42 citations for drivers not yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalk.

And this operation, there's an officer who is in plain clothes crossing the street, and if a vehicle does not yield to them in the crosswalk, another marked officer or an officer in a uniform and a marked patrol vehicle will make the enforcement contact.

Um, so that is alarming that within a two-hour period, 42 citations were issued.

Uh, it is our goal to be out there.

Um, one of my roles is to take traffic complaints, and we have an ongoing log of hot areas, I guess you could call it of um where we have problems.

So I'm gonna add Redwood in Mabel onto our list to have our special enforcement unit patrol the area, particularly for that pedestrian-related uh safety.

So we are proactively working, uh, it's just it's really hard.

There's only a few police officers and a lot of a lot of drivers out there.

All right, so last month I just wanted to touch on was our distracted driving month.

We again led the state and enforcement contacts on April 28th by issuing the most citations in our area for distracted driving.

It's alarming due to the fact that there's just still people out there who would rather do a whole bunch of other stuff than drive.

So our goal is to make sure that we are making contact with these people prior to them getting into a traffic crash.

Let's see.

Next slide, traffic complaints.

So here's a list of the traffic complaints that I have currently up and running.

Like I said, I'm gonna add the Redwood at Mabel to our list, but these intersections here or streets or school zones are where our special enforcement units go out to patrol during particular times.

So we also have our senior volunteers who are uh driving around in a marked patrol car, but it says out of service.

Our senior volunteers, they really enjoy their position.

They go out to the different school zones and talk to the crossing guards and kind of they're the eyes out there and report back to me what they observe so that we can send a CHP officer out there to patrol.

Sometimes we get traffic complaints and they're not exactly what the person reports.

So we usually we'll have an officer go out there, but the senior volunteers also go out to verify the information.

Sometimes it's not quite as crazy as somebody reports, and other times it's like, I don't know how we didn't get 10 more calls out here because it's so wild.

So our senior volunteers definitely do help us out.

I wanted to talk about Almond Road at Chris just Christianson Lane.

Uh I continually get this report or this call of a traffic complaint out there.

We are working on it.

Um I know that there's a preschool out there, and that is a huge concern having little kids cross the street.

We're continuing to work on it.

So if you want to continue to call our office, please do.

The, you know, we need as much information as possible, but we are um sending officers out there.

And as always, if you do have a new complaint that I don't know of, um, email us at 345 reckless driving at chp.ca.gov or call our office during normal business hours at the 510 489-1500.

You can talk to the watch officer and he'll add the information to the traffic complaint log, and sometimes an officer will give you a call back.

All right.

Some upcoming education events that we have is our start smart class on May 28th at 6 o'clock p.m.

at our CHP Hayward office.

That's on Whipple Road.

If you know of 18 driver between the ages of 15 and 21 that needs a little bit more education on being safe out on the streets, you can have them call our office to reserve a spot.

It's free of charge.

I added this little loading thing.

It's not actually loading, it's just me trying to be funny.

Um, our new office is still loading.

Um, we are supposed to move in at the end of August.

And I'm sure just because I said it right now, that's going to get pushed out to September.

Um currently there's an issue with the generator.

I'm not sure what's going on.

I've given up.

But once we get in there, we're gonna have a huge party and welcome the community.

So you can come see this new office that's taken forever to build.

But with the combination of the two offices, um, I hope now that you can see that our goal is to provide the best level of safety and service to the Castor Valley area.

Just because the Castor Valley office was closed and merged back together with the Hayward area does not mean that we have forgotten about the community.

We know how important it is for us to be out patrolling, and our goal is to make sure that everyone is safe.

All right, this last slide here.

Um, so on the March 16th meeting, there was some concerns that came up with the bicycle crashes.

We do have, I know one of the ways that we were trying to figure out how to prevent bicycle crashes.

We do education booths and outreach.

And I just wanted to bring that to the attention.

Um, I know that e-bikes are a huge concern, and that's our goal right now is to get education out there.

So we have been providing that to people when we do our education booths at different events, like when we're at the rodeo parade, we're out there discussing the safety if we see people or they have quite genuine questions about bicycle safety.

That's when we provide the information.

Um, statistics for patrol hours.

I know you asked about those.

Tim, you asked, right, about statistics.

Um, the last meeting.

There's no way that I could pull those hours for you.

It would literally be me sitting down counting, like hand counting, and it's just it would take me weeks to get any information.

So I apologize, but we can't provide that specific type of statistic.

Um, and then one of the other questions that came up was the loose animal calls.

Um, I know I think it was a cow that was out on Crow Canyon, I believe.

I confirmed our Golden Gate Communication Center does have a livestock book and it's listed with all the cattle ranchers in the area.

So if there is a call, a dispatcher call of a loose animal, the dispatcher will go through that livestock book and attempt to contact people.

As we know, animals kind of roam.

So it may not necessarily be that person's animal who is contacted, um, but the dispatcher puts a good faith effort into contacting somebody in the area to get that animal uh back into its property or figure out exactly who that owner is to have them come pick up the animal.

And then I just wanted I put some information on e-bikes.

I know that we're working on a presentation on e-bike safety, but e-bikes are now off-highway electric motorcycles, and there's a ton of information about them.

So if you're curious whether or not you need a helmet, uh please read up on it before you allow your child to go out and ride on an e-bike.

And that is all that I have.

Thank you.

Um what I want to do is I want to open this up for public comment and uh public comment, give you an opportunity, come and speak on this item.

You have three minutes to speak, and we'll ask uh Officer Paps to come back up after the council comment and after the public comment and try to get some of your comments addressed if you have any.

So um I am gonna open it up and we'll do three minutes in the room and we'll do three minutes online and then back to the room again.

So do we have any comments on this item in the room for public comment?

I have no speakers for this item.

Do you have any speakers online?

I have one speaker online.

Okay.

Michael, you're on the line.

You have three minutes.

Hi, good evening, Castor Valley.

This is Michael from Cherry Land from the Eden Area Mac and uh affiliates.

I just want to um give uh Officer Paps a lot of kudos from all of our areas in the general Eden area.

And um happy to see that things are going forward with a lot of the um law enforcement that's going on, especially with these um, you know, controlling the the bikes, especially.

Uh that there's some movement, I think going through with some legislation to the speed that a bike's gonna be able to uh produce in the near future, which I think would be a real good uh boon to uh pedestrian safety because there's some misunderstanding, I think, as to whether you can ride your bike on a sidewalk or a street still, even though they're supposed to follow the same uh rules as a regular car, I suppose.

Anyway, just wanted to um thank you for your presentation and just generally speaking, in terms of the uh traffic situations are going to be occurring not only in the Castor Valley area but also in our in our uh Eden area down here in Cherryland in Ashland.

Um just being aware that there is going to be a closure of the Meekland Bridge while it's replaced, and that's gonna impact our entire area as far as uh you know, just uh the ability to get through the area.

So it's gonna put a lot of stress on our major uh crossover streets, which are state uh controlled, uh, which means to me that it'll be pushing the uh traffic issues back up into Castro Valley as well along Castor Valley Boulevard and Maddox, all those.

Um I did attend a walk about um last Saturday on the corner of Grove and uh Foothill, um sort of looking at the possibilities of changing the maybe the speed limit, the number of lanes, the uh traffic calming effects that might be implemented uh going forward in the near future to uh just decrease the speed on foothill because it's just basically an extension of 580 as it comes off the freeway, they just keep going the same speed.

So um just uh making everybody aware that as you come through our different communities, just be aware that um there's still some very major traffic issues.

Uh and I really do appreciate the work in terms of uh distracted driving, trying to keep us all aware of everybody else's safety.

The only way that we can do this really is to appeal to the pedestrians and the motors to take care of each other.

Anyway, just really appreciative.

And I'm sorry if I'm repeating some things.

I'm just wondering if Officer Pepsi, you had make the similar uh presentation at the last Mac meeting um in uh in Cherry Land.

Anyway, thank you very much for your work and uh everybody be safe.

Thank you, Michael.

Uh, yes, if you wanna reach out to me, I can provide a presentation to Cherryland, just like this one.

Um let's uh we have any other speakers online.

No.

Do we have any speakers in the room on this item?

Okay, I'm gonna close public comment and go to the council for comment.

And I'll start with uh Councilmember Devini.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Uh, thanks, Officer Paps.

Great uh presentation as always, and I'm gonna only uh hone in on one item, and that's the livestock uh book.

Um, and volunteer to help review that book and see if you need more ranchers.

I know I'm not on the book, and I'm a rancher out there, and I think an important part of that book would also be local emergency contacts to help.

Uh I think I mentioned to you that I've been contacted at like three in the morning on two different occasions, only because the neighbors had pulled over.

It wasn't my livestock, by the way.

It was actually a couple of miles down.

They said, hey, call this guy, he's got a trailer.

So I I think to to round out that effort, it might be nice if they actually had some local residents with stock trailers and the ability to help uh uh get an animal off the road.

I do know if you're able to coordinate that with your uh neighbors, I can provide that information to our dispatch center and they can update the livestock book.

So if so you're my contact, I'll be your contact.

Whatever you got for me, send it and I will send it their way, just so that it's more efficient for everybody.

Great.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Councilman Romoto.

Um, I want to say condolences um about your dog.

Um that is very tragic, and um the the pedestrian, you know, um crosswalks and are getting worse.

I see them.

Um you stated that on April 13th.

Um your incident occurred on April 15th.

I witnessed someone getting hit in the crosswalk, and they were in the middle of the crosswalk as I was approaching coming um down Will Beam, and they were barreling down No Bridge Avenue, gonna make a left on Will Beam and hit the poor guy um right in front of me.

And so I didn't want to stay to see what was gonna happen, but it was very tragic, and they're not stopping, they're just continuing the same speed, and it is a huge issue.

The reason why I don't let my kids walk to school at all is because I'm afraid for their life.

Um so there's also the street that is under construction right now that leads to what is that summer set?

Somerset, right?

That's so I find myself driving behind pedestrians because there's nowhere for them to walk in the morning at eight o'clock in the morning.

There's all of the construction going on, and there's no one out there saying, stop, wait, don't walk.

So the kids are just walking in the street literally in the morning and I'm falling behind them.

So that's a real huge risk.

And if I was a parent, I would be very concerned with that, um, because we don't want our kids to get hurt.

So I'm always cautious and I'm always like, hey, you just I will wait.

I will let my kids be late for school just because I don't want any kids to get hurt.

Um I think the traffic complaints um that you listed.

Um, Officer Pep, thank you for your presentation.

This was very informative, and I'm really glad that um we're able to see the traffic complaints, but also um those type of incidents that I kind of explained and he explained.

I don't know if you get calls or you track those in incidents that um because this is an annual review, right?

So this is an annual review.

Um I come quite frequently, so yeah, yeah.

Uh usually I like to report monthly just kind of because it's a real time of what's going on, but this is an annual or okay, okay.

Um I would I just mentioned that because I would think the list would be a little a little bit longer than these what's it used to be, but yeah, once we've gone out there and patrolled the area, it's we close them out.

Um and the officers remember those locations and they'll return back.

But these are just the open complaints that we're still working at this time.

At this time.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then I'm glad that you listed the um the e-bikes or what are the the um electric bikes.

All the kids are driving them to school now.

So um you mentioned um prevention and education.

Have you been out to the high school or even kind of given Mr.

Fortinberry any information on like what they should kind of tell the kids to be mindful of, or so we're working on getting a presentation together to give to the students.

I do know that it's a process where we can't just show up and say, everybody listen to us.

So right now our education and outreach is at community events, um, but it is our goal to get inside the classrooms or at least at assemblies to talk about bicycle safety.

So we're working on that.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Councilmember February.

Thanks for the great presentation.

Thank you.

I was just you know, as I drive around and kind of reflect back about your presentations and things like that, and we talk a lot about bicycles and e-bikes and that sort of thing.

I I noticed that there's so many kids on these things, and the ages are so very young.

You know, I see, you know, kids that I'm like, she or he has no, you know, this little tiny child has no business on the scooter or the C-bike or you know, especially downtown Caps Valley Boulevard and Redwood Road, there's so much traffic.

Um I'm surprised there's not been a lot more instances, you know, and and people who or kids who've gotten hurt or or worse.

Is there any way that we're gonna be able to maybe control that or as you mentioned, um, council member moda, maybe more education or or is there a plan or or I'm just curious.

Yeah, just curious.

It definitely starts with education.

We don't want to go out there and just start stopping all these children and things like that, unless obviously something that's extremely dangerous or unfortunately if they're involved in a traffic crash, that's kind of where the education becomes very real.

Um, but our goal is education before enforcement, but sometimes those go hand in hand.

So we're working on it.

Um and then just even when we're out and about, I do know that we have somebody else here who's not in uniform, but they're very good at communicating with the public and just kind of giving friendly reminders as to why it's important to wear your helmet, obey the rules of the road, and make sure that you're following the laws.

Okay, great, thank you.

Gosh Robert Davis.

Thank you, and um, along with everyone else, great report.

Thank you.

Of course, we would never criticize you because we still have to get out of the parking lot.

So um is it's been previously mentioned about um e-bikes and the confusion of e-bikes because you hear we recognize in the e-moto is something without pedals.

Yes, and that is not an e-bike.

No, there's different levels, yeah.

And then there's like two levels of e-bikes.

One that is legal to be in my understanding is legal to be in the bike lane, and that's for any bike that has a maximum speed of what 20 miles per hour, I believe.

It's 20.

I don't even want to quote it because I always I look it up to make sure, yes.

And then there are the other type that is higher powered and and are just for adults.

They should know children should be using, but um so yeah, there's definitely challenges, and I really appreciate the efforts that uh both you and the sheriffs are doing in regards to uh dealing with the traffic.

Being a professional traffic engineer, I understand a lot of the challenges you have, and you can't be every place at every time, and um that you're allocating your resources wisely.

So uh thank you again for for the effort that you put forth in our community.

Thank you, sir.

Councilmember Thomas.

Thank you, Chair, and uh always great to see you, officer.

Thank you for all your work.

I know I was the Bronx one who brought up uh e-bikes last time.

Um, you know, I pick up my daughter from high school and I drop her off on a hire and uh sender.

There's this kid every day, runs the light, flies through the light, he thinks it's funny, but it is not funny, it's going to get somebody in trouble.

One of the parents or probably one of us, you know, he's just gonna fly, somebody's gonna run into him.

That's higher and uh higher and redwood, uh no, uh center street right there, right there.

Uh um school time, probably around 8:20 a.m.

And then today when I was picking up my daughter, uh probably around what is what time was it?

3 15.

Two kids on the same bike, electric bike in front of uh in front of uh bunch of cars showing off.

I mean, I know there's no law out there, but running the light is that can you get them on running the lights or is that okay?

Yeah, okay.

So I just want to be make sure that from there I'm gonna go to education.

And I know you guys can't get into schools, they're banned to see our SROs, you know, and uh, you know, the sheriffs can't get into schools if they have to call them in.

That's why I remember my oldest daughter.

I mean when she went to school, SROs make the call and say, you know what?

I need a backup, you know.

They he knows what is going on in the school, and then you guys all work as a team, and you know, get the solution for you.

Sometimes you can't control everything, you need a team to uh work together.

So I also believe that SROs need to be back, and that's one of my points, and I'm glad that Dan is running for a school board as a safety uh representing safety.

I'll be well appreciated.

Um so uh the third thing, I'm gonna Daniel is here, public works, the beacon lights.

Every crosswalk in Castro Valley should have the uh the beacon beacon lights.

Um the last thing I want to say is uh the Proctor Road.

Uh the Proctor School.

Um I got a couple of calls regarding, you know, I guess I guess they're uh serving food or something, and they're blocking up traffic.

Yeah.

And a couple of parents told me, yeah, you know what's I don't know what's going on, but uh something needs to be looked at.

It's in the afternoon.

Yeah, we have it's like every other Tuesday.

So we're working on it, but it's infrequent, so we can only go out there when it's occurring.

But yeah, we're paying attention to it.

Uh you were there once, but I guess it's still happening.

Yeah, you know, it's still happening.

And that's all I have.

Thank you for your work.

Thank you, sir.

Vice Chair Wolverine.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you, Officer Pabs.

You spend a lot of time with us and it's appreciated.

I do.

Um, it makes a difference.

I like you guys.

Thank you.

We like you too.

Okay.

Um, and we're I am very, very grateful for what uh Hobby Patrol does in our community.

Uh you're a part of, and that matters.

Um, so thank you.

Thank you, sir.

And um I live in the neighborhood of Almond Christensen by the parent nursery school.

Um and I'm really grateful that you're having that intersection monitored.

I also want to say that Christianson itself, especially in the commute evening hours is a speedway.

So if there's a chance to have a patrol come by their early evening time, that would be perfect.

Sorry.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, thank you for being here.

Um, really appreciate all the time you spend with us.

And uh you're invited every single month.

And um uh this is a couple of quick questions.

Um I really enjoy the report here, um the statistics.

And is there another report that would show the location of the traffic violations so we can get an idea uh where we should not be speeding?

And then um, and then um, yeah, just things like that would be very give away everything.

Um, no, I seriously um it's so we can put asked for more enforcement and in those kind of areas, and I'm sure you guys do it.

But um, uh public works is here.

One of the cool things that they just recently purchased, or I'm not sure if there was a grant how they obtained them, but was radar trailers, and the radar trailers are going to be able to read the speed limits of vehicles passing through, and they're sharing that information with us to give us more information regarding when traffic complaints are happening and when cars are speeding the most and the high volume of calls or cars in that location.

Okay, um, and do you guys divide up the Castro Valley area and districts or sections to where an officer is usually assigned to a district or an area?

Yeah, they have beats.

Yeah.

Okay.

How many officers do you think are assigned to Castro Valley?

Uh this afternoon, we have 10, 20, 30, 40.

We have six in the Castro Valley area this afternoon, not to mention the other units who are out, like the special enforcement units.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um public works uh has these um speed limit counters and different areas that say slow down.

And um, those those um have a tracker inside of them.

And are they sharing that information with you?

And if not, could we look at getting that information shared to you?

Yes, they are sharing it with us.

Yeah, we're sharing it with you.

Can we get that on this report, or maybe we get I could ask public works to come in and give us that report?

I'm sure I'm not all deferred to public works.

Yeah, I I don't know if that information's really.

I'm just wondering since you guys have it.

Um it would be nice to be able to um see um the areas of the community that you're unable to capture or catch that and what's going on because um I think they you guys have two radar trailers, just one right now, so um and then um we had the sheriff's department in um last month, and they talked about cameras.

Um are you guys tied into that network where you have access to license plate readers and things like that uh help?

It's called flock cameras.

Yeah, I wasn't sure what you were gonna say, sorry.

Uh yes, we have access to flock, um, that is a huge tool that we use to apprehend people driving felony vehicles, stolen vehicles, and assist us in solving crimes.

One of the major issues that we had uh the past couple years was uh freeway shootings.

A lot of people would go up onto the freeway to commit a crime, and there was not very many witnesses, but with flock cameras, uh, we're we have successfully solved a lot of those freeway shootings and reports of highway violence.

So they have been very instrumental in helping us solve crimes that previously would go unsolved.

Um on the e-bike or electric bike or motobike or they've been I even see this thing in Castro Valley where it's one wheel and the guy rides that thing like 40 miles an hour.

What is that?

Dangerous uh definitely dangerous, and I'm just wondering, I mean, he passes me.

Yeah.

Well, he should be obeying the speed laws.

What is that?

Is that a bike?

You know, I don't even know what.

Do you know what it's how do you well?

Yeah, but it's the it's a motorized.

You know, what kind of rules that this is gonna fall under?

And then um, is there any I you thought of down the road going back in the old days?

We, you know, as a kid, we used to go to the fire station and get a license plate for your bicycle.

Um, how about uh license and these uh e-bikes so that um uh when there is a violation, you know who the owner of that bike either is or was.

Yeah.

Is that some that it might be down the road or we'll check?

That's way above my pay grade.

Um I'm not sure if DMV has anything in the works or exactly what legislation has.

Yeah, I'm sure DMVs can handle it anyway.

So I would um just wondered if there's a way to um kind of identify uh the owner of the bikes.

And I know that in some of these school districts, they have an area where the e-bikes come in and they lock them up, and they do come and inspect them because you have to be a certain age to ride the ones that are faster.

Yeah, and the school is pretty good about managing that.

That's good to hear.

I didn't know about that.

And I don't think I've heard of it in the Castro Valley School District, but I would um suggest we learn from other districts.

Um, because they are becoming more popular.

Um anyway, thank you very much.

That's all of my questions.

Um we'd love to see you back in uh uh another month.

All right, I think my partner will be here next month just to give a small update, and then I should be back in July.

Okay, and then um, and you're always welcome to come in in your um public comment section.

Thank you, sir.

So anyway, thank you very much.

We enjoyed the presentation.

Thank you.

Have a good meeting.

Okay, the next item uh on the agenda is an item that was on the um the April 20th um agenda, and we ran long and we continued the item.

And um I believe Brienne, you're gonna do the presentation.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hold on.

Really tall, so let me figure this out.

Okay, great.

Um, thank you guys for having me.

Members of the public, those online, members of the Mac, appreciate the time to be here.

I recognize a lot of you, but for those I don't know, am I not talking loud enough?

I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice a little bit.

Okay, is this better?

Yeah, okay.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

Um, my name is Brianne Gala, and I've worked for 15 years at the intersection of community development, uh public policy and real estate development.

Uh more than a decade of that here in Alameda County's unincorporated communities.

Um I'm here under contract today with the Board of Supervisors through Supervisor Miley's office to present my research and recommendations uh for an office of unincorporated communities.

Uh community members have been calling for different solutions to the issues I'll talk about today.

Um, so I do just want to take a minute to acknowledge all the folks who gave a lot of time and leadership and effort um to bringing us to this moment.

Um the report here is again the first step.

So I really hope it can also be in dialogue with you all at the end um as we work towards structuring a vision for this office.

Can you hear me better?

Sorry, okay.

Uh before I jump in, I just want to be clear about my role here.

I'm not coming to you with a predetermined answer.

What I'm presenting today reflects what I heard from dozens and dozens of interviews, uh, many, many Mac meetings I observed, uh engagement with community-based organizations, and from other counties across the state.

Um my job was really to listen to synthesize and reflect back what the data is telling us.

Uh the recommendations really follow from that and not the other way around.

And in that same spirit, uh, I hope you'll set aside what you may have heard about this project and engage today with fresh eyes.

I think the research speaks for itself.

Uh next slide.

Sorry, thank you, Tisa.

Okay.

Um, I'll cover four sections sections today.

Uh, my research, findings, recommendations, and a path forward.

This is an action item.

So I just want to uh note that for those in the public as well.

Next slide, please.

Uh okay, next slide.

We'll try to speed us up.

Okay, so the central framing question uh for this project was really um can Alameda County strengthen how it governs and manages its unincorporated communities to meet the needs of the moment?

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

Unlike our neighboring cities, there is no unified structure to really hold that vision to drive coordination or really ensure that outcomes are met.

We don't have a city manager type of function within the unincorporated communities.

Of course, we know Alameda County fills that role, but its systems were never designed to function like a city.

And so again, today I'm gonna lay out my recommendations for addressing this issue.

Next slide.

Next slide.

Here are the kind of four big buckets of research I undertook.

First, I undertook a large organizational scan looking at neighborhood and district specific plans, the Vision 2036 framework, the environmental justice element, the Baker Tilly report.

There were many plans and documents to review.

I also interviewed, and you'll see this in the next slide, over 40 different county agency and staff across varying levels of leadership and folks who work more on the ground.

Participated in a lot of community meetings in the fall where there was a lot of budget priority setting, and then again interviewed four different counties across the state and spent time with them learning about their models.

Next slide, please.

There's a lot on this slide.

It was more just to give a sense of all the different agencies and departments that were interviewed as part of this project.

It included special districts like Hard, the Reach Ashley and Youth Center, our larger countywide agencies like the Social Services Agency, as well as our municipal serving agencies and departments like the Sheriff's Office, the fire department, all of the departments within the community development agency, all the different board offices.

So there was a lot that really went into this project and really trying to hear from staff what the root cause of the problem was.

Next slide.

Okay, I want to start a bit first with just looking across the state.

Also, really just want to start this part by saying we are not the only county dealing with issues facing how county government manages and oversees the unincorporated communities.

I really tried to focus on picking counties that had a similar blend of urban and rural unincorporated areas, which is pretty unique to our county, and a lot of unincorporated communities are, of course, in agricultural areas in the Central Valley.

So really focused again, my energies here on Marin, Sacramento, LA, and Contracosta, which is not on this chart.

So Alameda County's urban unincorporated communities, we have 150,000 people.

It's about 8% of our total population.

If you look at Marin, you see actually a much higher percentage, even though of course the county is much smaller, and then LA with a million people living in its unincorporated areas, but kind of a similar percentage, 10% compared to Alameda County's 8%.

One thing I want to note about Marin and LA is that both of these counties have really added capacity to their executive branch.

Marin hired people within its executive branch, its version, its CAO's office, that really serve as a liaison between the unincorporated communities and residents in the county, different county agencies and departments, and really are working on addressing interdepartmental challenges.

LA created a policy alignment branch that really houses its unincorporated communities coordination unit.

And so both of these counties really took a similar strategy, trying to add capacity at the executive level to really drive more alignment, to really support interagency collaboration, to really serve as kind of the dotted line between these communities and this really large county bureaucracy.

Sacramento, kind of the outlier, a third of people living in Sacramento County live in the unincorporated areas.

And they really went about it this by trying to merge and kind of create a mega agency layer that really tried to coordinate all of the municipal serving functions and try to break down silos.

Again, silos was a common theme.

A lot of different these really big agencies need someone that's kind of rallying everybody and trying to drive folks forward.

The structure again varies, but all these counties have taken pretty intentional steps towards improving how they manage oversee and invest in their unincorporated communities.

And the number one theme that emerged across these interviews was the importance of creating structures to drive and improve interagency collaboration.

Next slide.

This is of course our big county bureaucracy.

And as we can see, you know, the county serves so many functions beyond the municipal serving functions that we experience here in the unincorporated communities.

But I just wanted to note the kind of big red boxes are the five municipal serving agencies, with four of them reporting directly to the board of supervisors, and one of them being overseen by an elected official, the sheriff's office.

And again, you see a dotted line to the county administrator, but no kind of coordination function across the agencies that provide municipal services for our residents.

Next slide, please.

Next slide.

We can skip this one.

Next slide.

Sorry.

Thank you, Disa.

Thank you.

Okay.

So my findings, my research produced five key findings.

Again, they all point to the same root cause.

Then no one is in charge of the whole picture in the unincorporated communities.

Their first finding, what I'm calling fragmented governance.

Again, no single entity responsible for setting vision, coordinating departments, or ensuring accountability.

Several of our interviewees, quite a few of them, noted that the district offices of the board offices often play this role.

But that often things have to kind of become mini emergencies before the board offices step in, and that that isn't really an efficient form of governance and government.

The second is that there's pretty significant coordination challenges across different agencies and departments when we're talking about complex issues.

So complex issues like flooding out in Sinnul or development review and permitting or enforcing certain ordinances that require two, three, four, five, six different agencies or departments, often stall without a designated lead.

And the collaboration that does happen tends to be ad hoc.

It tends to be more driven by the personality of that staff person volunteering to play that role.

It isn't built into the structure of how the county operates.

The third finding is really about communication and the communication breakdown that residents experience regularly and that many staff members talked about.

There is no centralized communication system for the unincorporated communities.

So residents experience communication from the board offices, all the different departments, all the different agencies, and it comes at them from many different angles and can be confusing, and it's often hard to navigate these really big bureaucracies within the county.

Next slide, please.

The research also identified broader operational issues that reinforce these coordination challenges.

Staff often are operating in a reactive system that rewards kind of staying in their department or agencies lane rather than taking a step back and thinking about problems that really require cross-agency kind of problem solving and collaboration to really get the outcomes we need for our community.

Another common thing brought up is that departments are often assigned new responsibilities without matching staffing or implementation resources.

This often creates a gap and quite a lot of frustration for folks on the ground, right?

Who expect a new policy to come with maybe new staff or resources, but the same agency is doing the same doing more work with the same amount of resources, and that leads to a lot of, I think, frustration on the ground and also frustration at the staff level as well.

Next slide.

I just want to go through an order an example that I know you all have talked about quite a lot here, which is sidewalk vending.

And I think hopefully this will make it concrete.

And I'm not here to like litigate about sidewalk vending, but it was raised as one of the most common issues raised by staff across the county during our interviews.

As we know, this is an important issue to the community, and Alameda County adopted a sidewalk vending ordinance.

It required coordination across code enforcement, environmental health, the sheriff's office, and public works.

Each of those sits within a different county agency.

And here's what happened, right?

We know that code enforcement only had a certain set of legal authority to give tickets to vendors, so that limited their effectiveness.

Environmental health can confiscate unsafe food, but didn't have the court, you know, the capacity with regards to staffing and towing equipment and all of that.

The sheriff's office can enforce nuisance laws, but they also felt pretty limited on the enforcement front, and public works, you know, is responsible for vending in the public right away.

So you have all these different agencies, all these different authorities' capabilities, legal jurisdiction, and no one's job who it was to really pull it into a cohesive plan.

And we know that code enforcement, I don't see it here, but code enforcement's been doing their best to play that coordinating role, trying to align agencies, trying to improve outcomes, but it's not exactly their mandate to play that role, and that's kind of what this office is designed to solve.

There are issues that require coordination among so many different parts of county government, and the office would, you know, be able to step in to try to play that role.

And that's what we'll talk about more.

And again, this isn't a failure of any one department.

Um, it's what you have, like what happens when you adopt policies that require this coordination without it being designed into the structure, and no one's whose job it is to own that coordination.

Um, and I'm just using this example, but there were dozens of these examples that came up in the interviews.

We could change out the names of the agencies or change out the issue, but um staff and the community really pointed at certain issues as being really painful, and those issues tended to be not the agency's bread and butter work, but the issues that required a lot of coordination across different parts of the bureaucracy.

Next slide, please.

So again, many, yeah, the challenges here are not caused by a single department and our single agency.

They stem from the structural gaps in governance and coordination and alignment.

And that was really what I took into the design phase in my recommendations.

Next slide.

Next slide.

I think I'll skip ahead a little.

Okay, we can skip the slide.

Sorry.

Okay, so now my recommendations.

Um, the first, my first recommendation is to establish the Office of Unincorporated Communities as a three-year pilot.

Um, this would keep us focused on a limited set of high impact initiatives.

My goal is that we have very clear objectives with measurable outcomes.

Um, again, we want to avoid creating bureaucracy that doesn't produce results.

Um, so we approached this as something to test, to model, to learn from.

Uh, both Marin and LA counties talked about that, having one model for five years and making tweaks to it in the last few years, right?

Trying to build a culture of learning and adaptation into uh how we respond in our unincorporated areas.

Uh second slide.

Let's see, next slide.

Is that my second recommendation?

Yeah, okay.

There's a lot of text here, so I'll just give a high-level overview.

Um, this is about the scope of work for the office.

That's I think been a critical thing on people's mind.

Um, so the office would have five core functions.

Um, first, um, the office would maintain a countywide view, would again really represent the unincorporated communities at internal tables.

Right now, there isn't anybody representing the unincorporated communities when the county is deliberating certain things related to the budget, policy making, cities often send folks to those meetings.

No one's representing the unincorporated communities.

We love our supervisors, and they do their best, but right now a lot of conversations happen, and somebody often a lot of advocates or folks from the MAC have to be, you know, alerting the county like don't forget about the unincorporated communities, like we deserve our fair share in these conversations as well.

So serving a role of um coordinating and again sitting at these tables on behalf of the unincorporated communities would help to identify gaps, flag misalignments, and locate state and federal resources to bring back to the community.

The second big function would be to focus again on just a couple of uh strategic cross-agency initiatives.

So focusing on time limited efforts to resolve known coordination challenges.

Um, the two that have come up in discussions again across the community, but also within the county, have been supporting the development or the continued support for the Baker Tilly recommendations around development review and permitting reform and supporting the implementation of the environmental justice element.

And these are both kind of big county projects that have been adopted by the, you know, adopted, well, the EJ element adopted by the board, endorsed by the board, that really require the engagement of numerous county agencies in order to realize the vision of those documents.

The third is to implement a communication hub, communications hub.

Right now, again, no central point of entry for residents in the unincorporated communities.

You often, you know, some of us know who to call, or we end up calling the district office, the board offices, but the office would create a one-stop uh resource, a clear front door to county government for residents in the unincorporated area.

The fourth would be to support the MACs.

Right now, the MACs and the community advisory council and SINUL are kind of managed by different board offices.

So the idea would be that the office could help to play a liaison role between the MACs, help to support the meetings, um, onboarding a recruitment as needed, and so forth.

Um, and the final item is around the budget.

The office would help to support getting making sure that community priorities are lifted up in the countywide budget process and work to like build that transparency that people have been calling for in the community.

So again, I think these five functions speak pretty directly to the core structural gaps that the research identified.

Next slide, please.

Um, the office can only work, of course, if it has, and this is the thing that came up a lot, the right has real authority.

Um, and so I just want to be clear about what that means and does it mean.

Um, that office is not designed to take over what departments or agencies do, they're still the subject matter expertise, experts, they still are responsible for operations of their day-to-day work.

The board off the board of supervisors will still have their district offices that engage with the community and are a place you can call, but what's missing again is somebody or an agency, an office that's responsible for how it all adds up.

And that's what this office would be designed to provide.

And so to do that effectively, uh, the office would need the board of supervisors to again grant it some grant it convening authority to bring together agencies around shared priorities, to set timelines, to track commitments on cross-cutting issues, and a clear accountability role with the with the person who heads this office reporting to the board, being able to go to our supervisors if we aren't reaching our goals, if outcomes aren't being met, right?

Like kind of um somebody who's flagging when there are challenges that need additional resources and support.

Um yeah, okay, we can go to the next slide.

So I think on many people's mind is where would this be?

What would this office look like?

The third recommendation is um to embed the office within the county administrator's office.

Um, the CAO's office is the county's cross, you know, cross-agency coordinating body at this point.

It is, you know, responsible for the budget development and executive decision making.

So having the office be located there would allow us to leverage an existing agency.

So we wouldn't be again creating more bureaucracy, we'd be leveraging existing administrative infrastructure that's already present in the county, which would help to reduce startup time and cost.

Next slide, please.

So for those who are interested, and there's a lot on this slide, but it's a ranking slide of all the different options that were considered for where the office of unincorporated communities could be placed.

Um, the main three models again evaluated were placing this again in the county administrators' office, which is my recommendation, creating an independent office, which some of the other Macs really gravitated towards, uh, or placing this within the community development agency.

Um, the community development agency wouldn't solve the core cross agency problem, right?

With the off this office needs to have the ability to bring together all the different agencies and really drive implementation and operations more effectively and efficiently.

So the CAO's office and an independent office, sorry, um, really didn't score well in terms of how long it would take to set up the cost, kind of the time and complexity it would take to set up a whole new kind of agency within the county.

So the CAO's office really placed highest in terms of authority, feasibility, and financial sustainability.

That said, I recognize, and I know folks from the CIO's office are here tonight, that there would still need to be an investment in ensuring that the CAO's office could really build the infrastructure for this office and hold this kind of work.

So there's a foundation to build on there.

My oh, next slide, sorry, thank you.

My fourth recommendation is a lean three-person team, a director that would serve as a director or like a deputy county administrator that would manage the cross agency relationships and liaison with the board, a project manager that would oversee the interdepartmental initiative, support the communications hub, and an administrator or an analyst position.

That again would support the other the rest of the implement.

Yeah, the rest of the office.

For the sake of time, let's go forward.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, so a concern raised repeatedly in interviews.

Won't this just add more bureaucracy?

And I really want to address this directly and also to flip the question.

This office is three people, it's embedded in an existing agency with a three-year pilot and a built-in evaluation before the board decides anything.

That's really the proposal on the table today.

But I'd like to ask this group to consider the cost of the status quo.

The current system isn't free, it's just billing us in ways that don't show up on a budget line.

Staff time that's absorbed by all the gaps, all the mini crises, constituent concerns that just keep escalating, reactive crisis management instead of proactive coordination.

And as we know, deferred problems get more expensive as they the longer they sit.

So the question isn't really bureaucracy versus no bureaucracy.

It's whether we want to keep paying for a system that both community members and staff agree is not working, or invest in a lean fix that will support, add more support and coordination.

This is not a panacea, it's not going to solve all the problems.

But the goal again is not to grow our government's three positions, but really the goal is to make our existing government function more coherently for communities that are really reliant on county services.

A member of your council uh recently told me the county should just be focused on implementing the policies we already have on the books.

And I agreed.

This is an effort to shore up gaps in our existing county systems so we can better implement our existing programs and services.

Next slide, I think.

Oh, the next slide.

That was the summary.

We can leave it up there if there's a lot of people wanting to reference later.

Okay, wait, go to the next slide, Tisa.

Um, so I guess just in kind of in closing, and I'll go over the timeline.

You know, again, if implemented effectively, this approach should lead to clear pathways to county services, um, complex issues that require someone to help support problem solving to drive coordination, would have a designated lead, county policies would be implemented more consistently across agencies and departments, and the unincorporated communities would have another voice in countywide planning and decisions.

Next slide, please.

Next slide, thank you.

Um so here's the recommended timeline.

This is sort of, yeah, here's the timeline.

We're in this first phase.

This is the last MAC meeting.

I've been to SINOL Fairview in Eden area.

Next, the next kind of big public process is to go to the two board committees.

Um, and then if approved to move forward, uh, that would lead to a of an approximately one year operations planning period where we would focus more on getting clear about the budget, hiring positions, do more community engagement, further refine the work plan and scope of work, um, with uh the phase three being really the launch of the pilot, the three year pilot.

So that's the timeline.

Um, if you go forward, Tisa.

Oh, wait, I I know I think Tona wants me to go to the next slide.

Yes.

Okay, I'm gonna read the action item slide, and then I think we could go to the public comment and questions.

Um, so again, I mentioned this earlier, but this is an action item, and so I'm seeking the max comments, of course, um input from the community.

This again is still the first phase, so it's an iterative process.

I've heard from many folks, the other max, like right.

I've been it, it's I really want to be in dialogue with you all.

Um, but this is an action item.

So we uh the MAC will take a formal vote at the end.

The three um options are the first is to recommend that the Board of Supervisors approve the office of unincorporated communities as proposed and advance to the phase two planning.

The second would be to vote to recommend um that the board move ahead, but with you know, with amendments that I will note, and the third is to vote um not to support this.

Um so with that, I just want to say thank you for your time and for all of you who contributed a lot to this project.

I see a lot of the department and agency heads here actually who gave me um a lot of time and ideas and energy.

So uh thank you and thanks to the community for um helping drive this process forward too.

Thank you.

Okay, what we're gonna do here tonight is um we're gonna have council question, and we'll go to public comment, and then uh we'll come back to the council for council comments.

So um uh just out of curiosity, how many speakers do we have on this item?

Two online, two, none online, okay.

So we'll go ahead and go with three minutes uh for everyone.

Um, unless all of 750 of them pop up because we're gonna be out of here by nine o'clock.

Okay, um let's go ahead and start with uh council member um Davis.

Yeah, questions?

Yep, questions right now.

Yeah, we'll come back to comments at later.

Uh thank you for the presentation.

Um I'm struggling with this immensely, and this is based on 40 years of public sector experience.

Uh looking at the organizational chart of the four highlighted departments, none of them answer to the county administrator.

They all go to the board of supervisors.

We're putting a position in the county administrator's office.

What's going to give that person any more power over having um facilitating things than what we have right now?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

Um I think it is a question that I've talked about with the county administrator's office, also, who I think at times feel there is a limitation to their um like their oversight of these agencies as well.

Um, but right now that it, you know, as Supervisor Miley said, the CAO's office is really our quarterback within the county.

They play, they're meant to play this role of coordinating, they work on the budget, they set high-level policy.

Um, so they are the closest thing we have, I think, to uh an executive structure that would be able to help guide and drive this.

Um it's it's that's working within the existing system.

I mean, that's why we considered and looked at an uh uh like an independent agency that would report directly to the board and be in in dialogue with the board.

Um, but I think the the cost and time of sort of standing that up felt really, really significant, um, given the current fiscal funding climate and otherwise.

So I think this strategy is the uh most impactful and realistic strategy given the current role that the CIO plays.

The CIO does play is the like is the executive decision-making branch within the county.

So they sit up there with the the board of supervisors and support um higher level planning and implementation.

I can understand the support and that sort of thing, but I don't understand how they have do they have direct authority over the department head, the the county administrator.

Does it not take three board of supervisors to get rid of uh to terminate a department head?

Yeah.

So the county administrator has nothing to do with that.

And firing lens, yes.

So whatever the county administrator does, uh well, technically the county administrator answers to the board as well, but uh again, it would take three supervisors to terminate that individual as well.

Correct?

Correct.

I mean, as you look at the org chart, you see that the agencies are like this with the county administrators sitting with the board of supervisors.

So while the agency directors might not have while the CAO might not have the hiring and firing authority, they do again serve as a coordinating executive level function within the county bureaucracy.

If we want to just talk about hiring and firing, it's a specific, you know, um.

Well, we we can go on from that.

Um, one of the challenges we've experienced here in uh on this Mac is that we've been made clear that we're a an advisory body, and that most of the uh department uh county agencies are self-funded, and therefore uh if we make a recommendation, they can take it or leave it.

They don't there's no financial impact to them.

There, the board of supervisors has no control over their budget other than approving the budget, I assume.

So, again, I I do not see a clear line between how this is gonna make it easier for a member of the public to see a project through when we know that we have several board members who probably have never even been to Castro Valley.

Yeah.

Or do they have unincorporated areas within their community?

So there's you know, no skin off their nose if if um we don't get what we would prefer to have.

Right.

I'm thinking trying to think of the right way to answer this question or statement.

Um but I I think one what's the right way to say this?

Um yeah, I mean the C the we and right now we have three supervisors, because if we're including the rural communities, we have of course district one overseeing the broader unincorporated communities.

87% is within Nate Miley's district.

Right.

The bulk of it being supervisor miley's, and I think that's a major reason why he has funding this effort to try to resolve, I think, long-standing challenges um facing these communities.

So yeah, the board, I mean, the advisory nature of this of the MAC, I know has been a challenge here, and I think that this this office would provide again uh more capacity around the coordination and around the operations.

So this person who would head this office would again report to the unincorporated services committee of the board, would report to Nate and Supervisor Tam more often with issues that are coming up at the community level.

You guys do that now and and like lift up those issues from the community, and it would provide another opportunity for the unincorporated communities to have a direct line to the board to raise up issues that you guys might feel are not getting resolved that like maybe we do have this issue that's happening between XYZ agencies that we've been frustrated about for years.

Where like what is like what's the root cause?

How do we get the board to be more focused on issues of facing the unincorporated communities?

Because to your point, maybe some of the supervisors haven't been out here, and that's part of what's needed is raising more awareness and more connection for the unincorporated communities with the broader board.

Um and within again the CAO's office.

I will stop my comments at this point, and uh okay, uh questions.

Uh Councilmember Thomas.

See, my challenge is my question.

A new business comes to Cash Valley, right?

I've seen numerous times that they just drop the application and just leave because the process takes too long.

It's not us, it's just the county agencies don't talk to each other.

So my question is: you know, you see all these uh agencies here from planning department to court enforcement to public works.

Are they going to have one rep in this office to make this process like city of Pleasanton?

They could get the business permit like in a week.

City of uh Livermore, same stuff, everything is under one roof.

So they're a city, right?

Is that going to happen here?

Is that process going to get, you know, happen in a week if this hop is at if it's always happens.

I mean, that is a good question.

And that is why the one of the priority projects was around development and permitting review.

I think one of the primary, maybe the first recommendation in the Baker Tilly report was you the county needs to have these weekly coordination meetings like you see in Fremont and Pleasanton, where all the agencies sit at the table and you troubleshoot.

You look at complicated real estate projects or complicated business development projects, and you identify who's doing what.

And those I those meetings, from my understanding and interviews, have fallen apart in the unincorporated community.

They don't happen.

So people feel again like the business owner is walking from place to place getting bounced around.

I know there's been new technology adopted to try to improve this following the Baker Tilly recommendations, right?

Like a joint software that the different agencies would use.

Um and some of it is to build this capacity where people, so the software and the technology might be part of the solution, but part of it is also to sit in the room.

And again, for issues that require more discussion, you're like hammering it out together and getting back to the developer or getting back to the business owner.

So that is what one of the main reasons why I know a few of the supervisors were interested in making sure that the kind of baker tilly recommendations were really implemented well because they hinder investment and people get frustrated and they leave, and you hear those stories, and I heard those stories a lot during the process.

So my hope is that by adding the coordination capacity, there would be somebody there trying to be like get everybody at the table, right?

Like corral everybody and again drive better outcomes for the businesses and community members here.

Is that going to happen?

Like all the members of this, all the agencies, are they going to be in the office to make a decision like the cities or uh that that's a I cannot say that right now.

That's probably more for the phase two planning around how the operations really look.

Um, this was more the this meeting is more to bless the concept um that something like that is needed.

Uh, will there be an office?

Where will everyone sit?

Like those things are beyond the scope of this, but that is the like the vision of this is that we would have more of that kind of operations capacity, um, and someone to call on when it's not happening, like if there is an agency that stops showing up to those coordination meetings, what's going on?

Why, you know, I had an interview uh with the fire department where they were met talking about a situation where it was like he had to pull over on the side of the highway because it's like there was a development that like the you know, the applications a bit, you know, it's like how did it get to be this way where you have all the different board offices involved, public works, all these different folks trying to resolve issues that probably could have been resolved if there were those kind of coordination meetings, more capacity in that space.

So, um as my pre um my co-counsel Davies said yes um earlier that uh, you know, as advisory council, I feel that we don't feel respected.

We live here, we live here, all of us live here.

We don't feel respected by the board of supervisors and some of the decisions get turned.

When this office comes through, the decisions are they going to be overturned or you know, it are they going to are us is a mask Mac going to be respected more.

I do not know that I don't know if that's in this really in the scope of maybe what I looked at.

I will say that uh the Mac, I I really think that this office and the person who leads it should be engaging with the Mac members regularly, should be at the monthly meetings, right?

On on all the communities.

Again, to take back what we're hearing in the public comment in the beginning, what we're hearing from you all, and kind of connect the dots with different folks in the county.

Um, and so I uh I think there's a liaison role that could really help to bolster the communication.

So something, so down the road when the board takes a vote, they've already heard from you guys.

Like they've heard from somebody along the way before it's kind of too late, and they make a vote, maybe that's not in line with the community's vision.

Um, and sometimes I think that I think that was part of what was missing, what's been missing in the process.

Um, uh that's all I have.

Councilmember Devaney, you have any questions for the app or not applicant, consultant.

Uh thank you, Chair and uh Brienne.

Uh yes, I have uh a couple of questions.

I have a lot more comments, so I'm gonna try to weed out my comments uh and just get straight to the questions.

Uh, this has been a long time in coming.

Uh, and what I mean by that is the county has been engaging in a naval uh uh you know, looking exercise for many, many years.

I mean, it's sort of way back in Eli, uh, so on and so forth.

As the consultant, um do you see a difference between the three Macs and their or the four and and and their needs?

Of course, yes.

Okay.

Do you want me to like extrapolate on that?

Or maybe let me editorialize for just a second and and then get your response to it.

Um, as I said, this is this is constantly taking place, this analysis of how do we govern the unincorporated areas?

Uh, from Eli initiatives one and two and to the MACs and the formation of new Macs.

Uh, and so when I asked the question is, do you see a difference in the Mac?

The latest iteration of this and the precursor to this meeting was our big Mac meeting, which was a budget meeting that wasn't a budget meeting at all.

And um, and I felt that that was again part of this genesis and and analysis.

And I really felt that that effort was really driven by the Eden area.

Um the presentation uh uh that was given was even had speakers uh from two organizations, SLAM and my Eden Voice, as community members that were presenting to us.

So I felt that that was the genesis.

And so getting back to my question of do you see the differences of the Macs?

Um, the Cash Rally Mac, I don't know if you're aware of it, has been around since 1981.

Uh we're over a hundred year little township here, if you will, with some of our our businesses and our and our organizations.

Um what are the age of the other Macs?

Do you have an idea of that?

The Eden Mac, Fairview Mac?

So, I think Fairview was next.

I think Fairview is next.

Oh, sorry, speaking to the microphone.

Thank you.

Sorry, I moved it away because I was like breathing on it and yeah, sorry.

Um do you remember the age, Ashley?

I I want to say that Eden Mac is what, five years old?

Uh yeah, I think the Eden Mac's first meeting was maybe February or March of 2020.

Okay.

And then Fairview Mac was either the year before, two years before that.

Yeah.

I don't know about Sennol.

No, I don't know about Cinnole either.

Cinnol's also has a little bit of a longer history.

All right.

So I I'm a grandfather, and there's several grandfathers on this board, and the Cast Rally Mac is the grandfather of the Macs.

So now to my with that with that long introduction, um, what is your expectation on the different needs uh of the Macs and how it relates to this?

Sure.

I one of the things that was on my mind was selecting projects that really span the unincorporated communities, right?

So for instance, let's take the business permit development permitting review work or um the implementation of some of our existing plans and policies, like sidewalk vending or right, some of these ones.

These are really issues that were brought up in all the communities.

Um, well, maybe not sidewalk vending in CINAHL, but you get my point.

Development permitting and review was brought up in Synol.

It was brought up in Crosser Valley, right?

It's been brought up in the Eden area and Fairview.

Um, and so part that was part of my thinking was that we would pick issues that were really cross-cutting so that the effort around coordination would really benefit all the communities.

Um, of course, this is subject for debate and input, right?

Maybe there are certain issues that really only impact Castor Valley, right?

We heard a lot today about pedestrian safety issues.

We hear about those in some of the other communities.

So we uh right now I tried to pick issues that again would really benefit by adding this capacity would benefit everybody rather than just supporting one part of the unincorporated community.

But as we know, the demographics are different, the environmental issues are different, the economic development issues are different.

So I I think again, the pilot is up for design, like we're in the design phase now, and that would be part of the planning for the next stage.

And yeah, I did look a lot at the demographics.

I mean, the demographics of all the communities have have dramatically changed, especially Castor Valley over the last decade.

Um, and um the issues can be very different.

The social issues in the unincorporated in the Eden area are much more dramatic.

The environmental issues out in Sinnou were dramatic.

So again, the issues might be different, but a lot of the core problems were the same.

And so the design is meant to react to the core problem, which is again the design, the structural issues that you you know mentioned have been a long time coming.

Yeah, that's a that's a great point that there are definitely differences in the communities and the nature of my question was more the differences of the max.

Oh, and okay, the next.

No, no, no, you did a fine job.

You did a fine job.

Um so uh you you mentioned part of this uh thing is that it gives you the convening authority, and so I would raise the same question that I think member Davis was kind of honing in on.

You have the convening authority to to pull together various departments, but you don't have for let's just take sidewalk uh vending uh without discussing the the the merits of that.

Um, you perhaps with the convening authority, you could have brought the three departments, environmental health, uh code enforcement and the sheriff's office together sooner.

But would you be in a stronger and a better position than this Mac in asking that convened group that they really start enforcing it, that they actually start doing it, because again, they're not gonna have any reporting responsibility to you.

So, how how are you gonna be more effective than us as a board in in trying to effectuate change uh, you know, as it relates to the uh enforcement of the sidewalk vending?

Yeah, I mean, my understanding is that a lot of you work, are busy, right?

And so this advisory capacity also has in a sense its limitations, whereas this would be three full-time positions that would try to hold that space, would be in more direct communication with supervisor Miley, with Supervisor Tam, with Supervisor Howard, about critical issues.

I think sometimes, you know, you guys are giving input and like hoping it gets implemented, right?

And so this would be a way to say, okay, great, tomorrow morning, who's who's gonna take the charge on this and who's gonna assign responsibility if someone's not living up to their commitments, who's gonna alert the supervisors, right?

Who's gonna kind of again not wait for another month and another Mac meeting in a month to keep raising the same issue, but try to raise the flags earlier and kind of add more of that support along the way?

So I see it in a way as an operations, it's an operational role in terms of trying to add more capacity to how the county operates in these communities in those gaps in those spaces between the agencies and departments where things often fall down.

In a in a similar vein, uh, and again, all of the agencies are direct reports to the uh board of supervisors.

Are you aware of any counties that have in essence a CEO with direct authority over all the departments hiring and firing and and administration of their duties or a city manager type?

Are you aware of any counties that that function with a a strong central executive position?

Clearly, we don't have that here because the report to a five-member board.

Are there any other counties with a different uh structure?

Yes, there that that is one of I think the core sort of differences between the CAO structure and the CEO structure.

And there are counties in our region, Marin being one of them.

I'm there might be one or two more who've actually gone through the process of changing from being a CAO county to a CEO county, and part of that is in a way to decouple like the city manager that the manager function the operations and manager function from the the like the political policy adoption sort of work that the board does.

And what we find ourselves in here is the county playing its role as the county, setting higher level regional policy for the county and trying to play our local government as well.

So we're trying to again without without changing Alameda County into a CEO county we're a CAO county.

Um, this is my best attempt to address the challenges given the current structure and design of our county when you you came up with five points of your scope of work number three was the communications hub um essentially is is is that very similar to our community liaison position that we have right now which position are you do you mean like out of the I'm I'm specifically talking about your scope of work you have communication hub as item number three centralized entry point for residents and businesses to negative navigate county services programs and government agencies so it kind of sounds like a uh just as a very simplify it almost a help desk uh and isn't that a function of the of of our community liaisons right now and you're by community liaisons you mean like the folks who sit in the board offices who like do constituent work I'm talking about district four because this this by the way I agree okay yeah yeah sorry I understand your question now um yeah right now the board offices play that constituent liaison role um right now we have we don't have a website we don't have even basic structures like a uh a centralized um portal for information for residents in the unincorporated communities and many staff also referenced almost recreating the wheel every time I'm coming up with a new policy or I need to do community engagement in the unincorporated communities is like okay I guess I'll start down my old list of community groups I'll try to get on the Mac agendas right there isn't a way that the county the agencies really not a structured way that they push information out to community members and that community members can go to really access without going to like Alameda County Health's website and CDA's website right you find yourself kind of lost within all the different county agencies trying to understand which programs are specific to the unincorporated communities or not so this would be an attempt to centralize all of that for starting first with like with a website and some basic structures I think those are those are great ideals and and and good ideas.

I don't know that they have to come under the auspices of a new uh office though uh we do have a community liaison function it works well perhaps it needs to be beefed up maybe there should be a second person involved in that perhaps more of a of a of a computer uh oriented thing but um this whole initiative let's call it like it is is a D4 initiative it really is 87% of the unincorporated I understand I'm not disrespecting Sonol or or or any of the other spots or the portion of Eden uh MAC that is not to D4 but this is a D4 issue.

And so your fourth function here is to administer uh the MACs um why would we be better having the head of this department administering the MACs rather than uh D4's chief of staff it seems like that's a perfect connection because that's our audience we really have an audience of one at the end of the day.

Why would this office be better that is reporting potentially through the the CAO office rather than a direct report to uh D4 supervisor.

I think one of the the issues raised is that the uh since SNOL and maybe there will be an East County MAC soon will both be managed under D1 and the other three Macs are managed under D4 that it could help to streamline the recruitment the agenda setting kind of the coordination right maybe even bringing together all the different MACs around shared issues so that there could again I think be more uh streamlining and standardizing and capacity um provided to how uh again the Macs are coordinated and supported um but I my assumption is that Tona who I know is on the call um Tona and others from D4 would very much still be present if in this kind of in this work right because they're so critical to um governing and overseeing the unincorporated communities.

Yeah, I'm just I'm I'm just not I mean if we need a additional staff and if we need additional focus, I'm just not sure why it's not uh directly reporting to the to the chief of staff at D4, because again, this is this is a D4 initiative 87% of the unincorporated residents.

Uh so this this is our our our baby here.

Um, and again, like this is an action item.

So if you'd like to propose a change on that front, okay, that I think that's that's part of like what I'm here to get input on as well is is things that don't sit well with folks in the community.

Fantastic.

Uh, your fifth uh scope of work is uh engagement in the budget process, and I and I and I'm gonna it doesn't say it here, but I can see two necessary items within the budget process.

First of all, there has been a lot of talk, particularly by my aid and voice of us not getting our fair share.

I think that analysis lacked sophistication, but I I think that it's very worthy to have a representative um in D4, making for making sure that we are getting our fair share of of uh budgetary items within the county.

Furthermore, I think it'd be really advantageous if we had greater outreach for getting grants uh from the state, from the feds, from uh MTC, from ABAG, from all these uh other other agencies.

So I'm gonna lump those two together.

Um Brienne when I when I looked at the type of three person team that you have, um, I don't see any finance type.

It seems like you need a bean counter, and I can refer to that because I used to be a CPA.

So it seems like you need a finance type.

Um talking about budgets with words and not numbers is not helpful.

Uh it's a lot of talk that goes around and around, but it doesn't delve into the into the spreadsheets and the analysis and stuff like that.

So if this if this uh office were to be uh convened, I would recommend that you definitely consider uh a strong budget person um again to assure all of the communities that we're getting the best we can, the our fair share, if you will, um, and and we're gonna have a budget uh uh talk after this.

Um and then also uh uh focused uh outreach on on uh on getting grants.

The last one that I have, and I don't I'm hesitant to even ask this question.

I really like uh Nate Miley.

And so the question that I have is is he trying to break up with us?

No.

Okay, thank you.

I mean, I guess I can't speak for him, but no, that is not the point.

I think really Supervisor Marley is trying to address my sense is that he's really trying to address issues that again have been really frustrating for people.

You mentioned Eli.

I think this, you know, when I was talking to him last, this was like, oh, I'm this the first talk of an office came up during Eli.

Whether we call it an office or we call it something else, the idea being that these are structural changes that have been around to your point for 15 plus years that people have been calling for in different ways.

And again, right now we're starting to debate the smaller things about how it could be designed, but the kind of main point of today is to leave with an action from the CV Mac around whether this has the blessing to move into that next stage of further iteration, a further refinement, a further engagement with you all.

Uh, thank you, Brienne and uh chair.

That uh concludes my uh questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for your presentation.

This is very helpful.

Um I'm relatively new to the council, but so I'm trying to understand um both um the intent and how this would work in practice.

So I'm trying to clarify and get a level of understanding here.

So um can you clarify the role of the consultant?

Beyond yeah, well, your role or whoever's in your chair, like just beyond this report, like what would be your role?

Uh-huh.

Just so I understand like positions and all of that.

Yeah, sure.

Okay, I'll I should have maybe said that up front when I said I was on contract with the board.

So I'm on a six-month contract with the board right now, um, that uh is yeah, it is ending soon.

Um, and there's consideration for what that looks like through the end of this year.

I think we're trying to again get a sense of is the board of supervisors going to approve this, and how are we so so I think this early like phase one phase two may be governed uh by a consultant and and kind of um someone helping to shape the design and operations and planning um by phase three?

If it was to stand up as its own office, those positions would be located within the county, right?

These would be county staff members.

Um, but part of the work of the phase two period would be to work with HR on all those details around county hiring and unions and funding and benefits, right?

All the things that go into hiring.

So the the consultant phase is really just for this early stage period.

Okay.

Yeah, that's what I was wanting to know if it would be the same firm or individuals doing the actual implementation of the plan um next phase, as you mentioned.

So that is not my understanding.

Okay.

Um I suppose, sorry, I speak of that person or person, whatever could go and apply for the job, right?

But the idea being that again, we're creating this structure within the county as opposed to a consultant from the outside who wouldn't have the authority to really convene and and like implement the office.

Um, so the the consultant is really to guide this early stage work.

Okay.

Um, in looking at this um the recommendations and the phases, you know, scope of authority, all of that.

It it I think similar to what folks were talking about is very high level, right?

We're we're all we're all trying to understand granular detail on like how is this gonna happen?

What if right, we don't have certain authority for certain things, recommendations, we're already, you know, not being heard at points.

And so given that we went through the exercise, attended the Big Mac, we had our concerns and like how we would want the information presented back to us so that we can get more detail.

I think this is great because you put everything together that we discussed, and it was it's um, it's listed, but I think um a little more detail as it relates to, you know, the overview of options and ranking, like those details, and then also the what was the other one that he was describing?

Um the scope of work, yeah, those four basic or five like job descriptions, right?

Like you have one sentence that describes the sure whole body of work and to be we don't really know like what that entails, and I'm new, so I really need to like understand what I'm proving.

This is this is a lot of work, right?

Right.

I um so the slides should have been, I'm not sure.

They were at the last snack meeting, but when I came here last month to present, but it got continued.

But there is like a I don't know, 40 or 50 page report that I wrote that accompanies the slide deck.

It should be online, I don't know if you have copy.

They have it.

So you have the full, you should have the full report.

Um it goes integrator detail.

I know I already took half an hour to get through this.

Um, but that that gives more clarity around let's let's say things like what are the measurable outcomes if we're gonna have a pilot, what are the specific kinds of outcomes we want to see in the implementation so that we know we've been effective.

Again, don't want to create the bureaucracy without having like those that level of clarity.

Um the I am in the middle of drafting a more detailed implementation study that would have more concrete details around the budget position descriptions and so forth.

Um and then just to add to that, maybe more specifics around Castro Valley concerns incorporated into the proposal.

I think that's where um a lot of us want to see it reflected in the findings or the recommendations like Cashta Valley specific, since we're um one of the largest unincorporated areas, and we don't, you know, want to be treated as just regular, you know, community broadly.

I want to kind of make sure that our voices are heard and our community has a understanding of what we're gonna do to move forward.

Um that's helpful, thank you.

I will work on that.

And then my other thing, you know, based on the pilot evaluation, wanted to to understand specific success criteria that would be determined where this pilot continues, expands, or sunsets after three years.

Like what is the final, and maybe it's in your 50 page or what I know about it.

And I'm I'm sorry, I thought I'm actually not standing up here with the copy of that.

But there are there are the specific measures, let's say um, like number of like issues resolved that were identified.

Like, right, so it has some of these like really specific criteria because we don't want to just be like we went to we had some meetings, right?

So it has a specific set of measurable outcomes that are listed in the report um around kind of uh funding raise to the point about fundraising, bringing in additional funding, issues resolved, um, you know, the website and how much like usage it gets over time, how you know a lot of that kind of work like did it get done?

Did it get done on time in budget, right?

So um the outcomes um provide more context about that in the report.

Um, and that would be something that again, like it's hard to write really specific measurable outcomes when like we're not really sure we're going.

We're trying to still work on the like early stage blessing and design and structure, so it was a bit of a dance, but the appendix should be in there.

Okay, um I think that's all the question I have.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Councilman Ruffibert.

Thanks for a great presentation.

Appreciate that.

I was wondering, um, I kind of looked up and got just a brief overview of other counties and their successes.

Could you explain that to me in case uh I wasn't seeing enough or the, you know, like um how did how did the other counties do as far as what were they oh like Los Angeles?

Marin and LA and Los Angeles.

Uh-huh.

How did they pan out?

Sure.

And I also wonder is Natalie on the call, Tisa.

Did she come in?

Well, it's okay.

She's she led a lot of that work, but I can um do my best.

Uh, so just to give an example, like LA and to the point of like creating a pilot and creating a culture of learning.

LA originally started with more of a city hall type of model.

Let's have a city hall type of feature for the unincorporated communities.

Um, eventually they moved into they kind of did an evaluation and felt like that wasn't necessarily working.

So they moved again to this structure where they have a policy implementation, they call it policy implementation and alignment branch within their chief executive's office, and that is where they were try to add capacity to driving some of these bigger issues, right?

Like, let's say in LA, was they brought up things like wildlife, like the wildfire response, right?

Things that require so many different people at the table to respond.

And so they again focused on a lot of that interagency coordination, but they did do this iteration where like they tried something and learned and realized that their biggest issues, kind of similar to ours, are really around the interagency um collaboration and trying to drive everybody together towards better implementation in Marin.

Um, they started first with a position, one position within their CIO's office, a deputy county administrator trying to navigate between their urban areas and their rural areas, trying to again play this kind of coordination role, and found that the issues were quite different and distinct between the areas.

So they split the position, they created a second position.

So they tried to drive more specialization for the urban areas and the rural areas.

Um, and I my understanding from those interviews is all of them have felt like it's added quite a lot of capacity.

Um, and again, by placing it in the executive's office and close to the board of supervisors, there's been um more representation and more accountability for the unincorporated areas.

Um so the report talks more about the different um the different counties and their outcomes specifically, um, and kind of changes that they've made over time.

Okay.

Did some of them have um problems?

Did they not succeed at what they were doing?

Is there something we could learn?

Uh Marin maybe had some problems.

Yeah, it's a good question.

I can um I think it's probably better that I get back to you with something more specific about that.

No problem.

Um, I do think that there were problems, which is why they have not problems, but there were structural things that needed to keep adapting, which is why the models evolved with time.

Um and again, it's there are really big lessons learned here.

The one being around interagency collaboration, but one of the biggest things that they all said is like, don't do this unless you have the full buy-in of your board of supervisors, because if not, it's just a person pushed aside in an agency without a lot of authority or without the ability to really convene to support bolstering and supporting like what the Macs want, right?

Like you need to really have the board's support.

And I think during periods where there was less board support, it it can be more challenging for this office to be effective.

Yeah.

So am I understanding this?

This is um an office that has no decision making authority, and it's more of a coordinating, it's a coordination role type of situation.

Yes.

Okay.

And in your your thought process, do you think this office would help slow or speed up permit processes, projects, and the responsiveness is of those things coming and going?

Would it speed it up or slow it down?

Do you have any feeling for that?

Yes, I think that the idea here is that it would add support to speed up or improve implementation of things like development review and permitting.

Um, but they they have no authority.

They just can go make recommendations or coordinate the people or try to get them together, but there's no decision making or authority.

Right.

The authority is really derived from their ability to engage with the board of supervisors in a way, have the blessing of the board to really drive uh these agencies to be more accountable and more effective.

Um, so ideally there is an improvement in the implementation, right?

Because part of it right now is sometimes people are frustrated and we don't there isn't anybody working to address it, right?

There's not somebody who's like the chief problem solver for the unincorporated communities being like, what is the problem?

And the supervisor Marley does a wonderful job, and I know you know he really tries to play this role and has also a lot of other responsibilities and things, and so is often pulled in many directions, right?

So part of it is is there somebody who could play that role kind of consistently day in and day out?

Um I was gonna say one more thing.

Um, okay, it'll come to me.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

It's been I've been talking about it.

And then just the thought has the county looked at improving the current systems and situations that they got going on to become more effective.

So instead of creating a whole new office.

My sense is that there is a lot of count different county projects going on to try to improve on some of these friends.

Oh, I know what I was gonna say.

Can I just write down really fast?

Hold on, I'm so sorry.

Good job.

Okay, sorry.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

I have to write it before it slips my brain.

Um, can I just go back really quick?

One thing I was gonna say that that I think has been really um like interest, I guess worth mentioning, and I think I mentioned it in the other Macs, and I wish I would have said it now, is um we did I looked at a little bit at staffing, and one of the things that's interesting about let's say code enforcement, since we talked about sidewalk vending, code enforcement issues are often I often see Ed here at this Mac meeting.

Um code enforcement has almost the same level of staff as it did 10 years ago.

And in the meantime, we've passed, I don't know, cannabis policies, tobacco retail licensing, smoke-free housing, sidewalk vending.

Probably missing two more.

Right.

There's been a whole set of new policies adopted, often with the same level of kind of staffing and capacity, and that leads to a lot of community frustration and coordinate like frustration, right?

Because, and so I think this would be also adding some of that kind of support to be like, okay, what what like what is going on here?

Are we thinking before we just adopt new policies?

Are we also thinking strategically about the budget implications in this in the um what the implementation of this is really means for so it could be effective for the community?

Um, so again, maybe uh not the most like yeah, isn't the boss of all these agencies anymore, right?

The board is still gonna do the hiring and firing and supervision of the agency directors, but it would add that kind of capacity of someone thinking strategically about how it all fits.

Sorry, and now you had another question that I didn't write down.

So can you um did we talk about improving the current system?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there were yeah, there were quite a lot.

I mean, I'm struggling to recall right now, but there is a lot of different efforts underway.

I know I see Sandy here.

I know they've been going through a big communication strategy to um kind of improve the community development agencies, website and materials and outreach, right?

And I can call on people I know within the county here and be like you're working on this.

But for instance, healthy schools and communities, Sabrina's here, right?

There's different efforts, I think, for different agencies within the county to have uh liaison to the unincorporated communities trying to think about how does the county provide better services in these communities.

Um, but that yeah, so there's a lot the community I think the county is doing a great job at trying to improve, and I think part of the issue here is that some of these issues are just not on anybody's to like work plan, like they're issues that are nobody's job is it to like coordinate everybody and ensure and drive this like bus forward.

And so it's not so much that there isn't continual learning and evaluation and improvement in the county.

Um, I think if anything, people feel overall really satisfied with the county's uh services and supports, it's just again there's these kind of chronic problems that have existed for a long time that people are quite frustrated about, and I think one of them that came up a lot tonight was around permitting and investment.

Okay, great.

That's it.

Thank that's it, Chair.

Uh Vice Chair Morgram.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um Brianne, um, so much work has gone into this.

I mean, it's it's evident that there's been a lot of work put in and it's good work, and I think the report is is really well done.

Um, so thank you for that.

Uh I'm gonna ask a couple of really strange questions because I believe that this whole issue begins and ends with organizational culture.

Um, your framing slide.

Um, it says, unlike incorporated cities and unincorporated communities have no city manager, no unified structure responsible for vision coordination or accountability.

Alameda County fills that role, but its systems were not designed for it.

Um, Alameda County was chartered in 1853, and it's had unincorporated communities for 172 years or 173 years.

Why do you think we've come this far and we don't have accountability structures and structures in place that provide vision and coordination for the unincorporated services?

That is a hard question.

Um, so okay, well, so what's my opinion on the kind of the broader history of this?

Um, well, one thing that I think was really on my mind, having worked in these communities also the last 10 plus years, is also just like the a lot of these communities have become significantly more dense over time, right?

Like maybe, yeah, you're right.

The unincorporated communities have been around for a really long time, and in a lot of that history, they've been rural areas, and with time, the the needs of these communities have changed.

Of course, we have a history of redlining and disinvestment and highways, and right a lot of history there around, um, and I think Supervisor Miley's done a good job of saying like I'm not going to allow Stanley Andrew or Hayward to just like take little sections of unincorporated communities for them that they want, right?

And saying, like that kind of history and practice has not served our communities well.

Um, and so I I know that that's been something that's um also really impacted the communities and in which communities have in certain parts, you know, remained unincorporated.

Um, so I I'm not sure I'm answering your question very well, but um, I do know I do feel like the needs of the community have have changed and grown, right?

We now now we have 160,000 commun, you know, people living in our communities, and I'm sure in 18, whatever number you said, 1860, um the the population and needs were were significantly different.

And so I think part of it is uh as an opportunity to respond um after the pandemic, after these years, as housing the housing crisis has grown significantly as we have fires, right?

Like we have all these other issues, and I think they're requiring um a different level of attention, is my sense.

But it again, that was kind of a organizational cultural question.

Is why why has this need been ignored?

That's a good question.

I should um okay, thank you.

And uh after all the interviews and discussions and evaluations you've had with the departments in the county regarding this project, how would you describe the current collective organizational culture?

Sure.

I one of the things on my mind was really that the parts of the county operate in what I would call maybe a like under a regulatory framework.

Did we issue a permit on time?

Did I put out the notice on time?

Like, I don't want to say checking the boxes because it sounds derogatory, but more like uh check, check, check going down the list, as opposed to I think having a culture of more did all of that work change people's lives in this community.

Did more businesses open?

Did more affordable housing get built?

Uh are there more parks?

Like who is sitting there holding the outcomes oriented like vision?

I guess that's what I meant by vision too.

Who's holding that vision for did the work result in tangible outcomes for community members?

And I think sometimes people are like, Well, I did my share, like I'm in my lane, this is my agency's role, and the stay in your lane culture was really really big.

And and actually like since the interviews were off, um, what do you say offline confidential?

Yeah.

Um, once Pete once staff got started, they've said that themselves.

Like many, many, many, when I say many, I mean 35 people at least within the county said we have a culture where everyone just wants stays in their lane, and we're afraid to step out of our lane, we're afraid to bring things up.

That's not that doesn't lead to great, I think creative problem solving for some of these issues again that require it.

Not all issues do, but for some, we really require that, and there isn't a culture of that in the county.

Not a lot of that culture, sorry, sounds harsh, but yeah, thank you.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Um, and you kind of let lead into this question for me.

Um data that that quantifies the problem.

Um, you know, if you've done it in previous presentations, I'm sorry if I missed it, but you know, how many complaints have there been about the permitting process?

How many complaints have there been about I've called and I don't get a call back?

You know, what's what what is the data that's driving this recommendation?

Yeah.

I think I could work on integrating that more into the into the report.

So you have it.

I have some of it and have looked at some of it.

It's very hard to consolidate that data across many different parts of the county and how it's reported and the time frames, right?

A lot of that.

Um, and so in many ways, yes, this project was more qualitative than it was quantitative at this phase.

Um, but I can uh I can add that as a note because it's it would be useful.

Yeah, it's hard to it's hard to judge a solution to a problem if we don't know the size of the problem.

Right.

That's all.

Um curious question.

Since uh sidewalk vending was used as an example, why was not county health included as one of the five agencies?

Did I not?

Yeah, I was focused, I guess, on.

Yeah, that's true.

I was thinking about the main implementation being on environmental health, code enforcement public works in the sheriff's office, but of course they have a role to play, of course, economic development does in terms of how do we engage with folks who need to be, you know, permitted and supported through that process or connected to workforce opportunities.

So I think there's a role for even more agencies than the one I mentioned, um, which again I think just further highlights the need for who's holding it all and who's convening.

Um, thank you.

Thank you.

Um your central finding.

Um it is paired with a question, you know, how can we design an office of unincorporated communities to address these findings?

Um so we go from a finding to how can we design an office?

Um that kind of leads me to think that the Office of Unincorporated Communities was a foregone conclusion and we're trying to fit it to the problem.

Um to me, a better question would be how can we design a solution that provides the highest level of service at the lowest uh least cost to the taxpayer?

But here we're we're looking right at jumping to the Office of Unincorporated Services.

Is that really what this is about?

Are we just looking to to optimize a foregone conclusion or or are we working on something that uh we have a chance to change here?

Right.

No, I mean, yes, I could have structured the question better.

Um I think really, and I said this up front, but I approached the interviews and the research from a very open lens, asking really again trying to get at what is really the root cause when you're saying that like go further, go further.

Like, what is really um what's really happening behind the scenes when people when all these different agencies and departments are trying to coordinate to implement, and so um I again feel like the research really pointed to this.

We could call, like I said earlier, we could call it something else.

We could call it a we you know, but I I think the the main thing is how do we add this capacity within the county?

It could be we doesn't even need to be called office, it could be these three positions within the CIO, within the executive branch.

It's basically the point being more that there is this problem, and this is the problem was in one way the research was easy.

I've been telling people because so many people within the county and within the community had the same frustrations.

They they they pointed at the same structural gaps in the the bureaucracy in the bureaucratic operations.

Um so in some way the report kind of wrote itself in that sense because of um, I think how to some people's point, how prevalent these issues have been for a while.

Well, it's kind of what council member Phoebe mentioned, you know, what what other alternatives have been looked at compared to or in addition to the off an office of whatever, you know, a whatever of whatever.

Um that's just the thought.

Um my last question.

Everybody's happy, I'm sure.

Um Office of Unincorporated Services is going to help the MAC by creating the agenda by um making it making better hires and appointments, um interfacing with different departments.

My question is, did district staff or D4 staff suggest that um working with the MACs is not um something that they enjoy or should be doing or belongs in another place?

Um this I would not say not enjoyed or whatever, but I think that this again, the streamlining and the standardization of the of the different Macs, especially if we get a fifth Mac in the county, um, was raised.

Um I don't know, Toner Ashley, if if you want to weigh in, but I do think that it was more about again approving having just more capacity again to support the recruitment to support the alignment to serve as the liaison role after today's meeting, going tomorrow morning, driving a lot of that follow-up work that's needed.

Um so no, it was it was not the like whoever said breaking up or whatever.

It wasn't that.

I think it was more how do we add more capacity?

Again, how do we have a standardized process for all the Macs?

Let me ask it a different way.

Um what problem does it solve?

Hmm, that's a good problem.

Um I think one of the problems raised was also just the, I mean, this this does involve a lot of time and staff capacity to manage all the different Macs for the district four.

So I think it's not so much a like lack of interest in doing the job, but that it is a really time intensive set of work for them.

So this could add again more staff support to doing that.

We're not decreasing the amount of time, we're just shifting it to another group.

And maybe freeing up their time to do other kinds of work that you know that might be supportive of these communities as well, right?

So it's it's a it's a capacity ad.

But seems like one of the things that's uh I'm hearing is uh an under threat of perhaps wanting the Macs to continue to be managed by the district offices.

So I we could see what the community says, and of course, you can add a formal amendment as we go forward.

Um, but I did note that already.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you.

Oh, Mr.

Chair, thank you.

Thank you.

Um I have a few questions here.

Um, for clarity, um, you're not an applicant, you're a consultant, correct?

Right.

You know, so you're yeah, so you were hired to do some research, right?

Correct.

Who hired you?

Uh Supervisor Miley's office.

Okay, our supervisor.

Okay.

And was there an RFP done on that?

Um, what is your background?

Are you a um a person that um has a background in developing uh these type of organizations or how do I you're making a recommendation here?

So I'm trying to understand.

Am I what's your background?

Are you an expert at this or what?

Yeah, oh sure, I can start.

Um I believe exactly know the whole county contracting process that went into my selection.

I I believe that there were other bids pursued and other folks considered um as part of it being an open process.

Um and I have, yeah, uh I'm I'm not necessarily uh expert in creating an office of unincorporated communities, but I have spent um again the last 15 years a lot of them in this community these communities um working on public policy issues, uh working on affordable housing development, um running pretty large scale community development programs, um, running in is one example being um uh overseeing the counties like three million dollar contract in the for with the ARPA response dollars in the unincorporated area.

So I have worked really at the intersection of county and community for a while, um, and have uh, so I think part of I don't I can't speak for the supervisor and Tona for the selection of me as the applicant, but I will say that I think my experience working with a lot of community-based organizations, no um working on the ground, doing a lot of community engagement, and then working pretty closely with a lot of county agencies is so have you recommended one of these before to another community?

Uh no.

Okay.

I could say one thing about that, which is that I have worked in midwestern cities on unincorporated issues as well.

These are not um I'm looking through this, and I'm a very results-oriented minded person.

There's no cost in here.

So are you asking me to buy a cart?

I don't know how much it costs.

Yeah, the um the implementation study that I mentioned earlier is uh will come out as part of the next phase of the process.

Um the main cost associated with this is the cost of the three positions, but again, where those positions are located, or if the county decides to create a new office, like an independent office, the costs are too are really really variable.

So the costs were not uh put in this phase of the report.

So, this is a department that we don't know what it's gonna cost, and we don't know if it's gonna deliver results because it's a pilot program.

And have you ever seen a pilot program that's ever been in the government that's ever been canceled?

Are you asking?

Like a department or an initiative that's been termed out.

Is that what you're doing?

Yeah, I mean, you know, when you start something, usually um there are some measurable goals, and you say this is successful or it isn't successful.

If you uh I I am a little skeptical when we start something in government and it takes our tax dollars, whether it's gonna be eliminated if it's not successful, or is it just smoothed over because somebody answered some phones and took care of some messages, and there was no real strong measurable results.

Uh so I when I look at a presentation on something, I look at it and I say, okay, um, how am I gonna measure the success of it?

What is it gonna cost me?

You know, and I don't see in your presentation anything about cost.

And so I'm gonna I'm gonna say to the supervisors, yeah, I think we should do this program.

I don't know how much it's gonna cost, though.

You figure it out.

Um, so I would be a little concerned about that.

Um when you looked at the Macs and you talked to all of them, how are they different?

Um, if I could take one step back, I would say that there's a whole set of policies and programs that are regularly approved here that folks don't know the full cost of, right?

Like when you endorse, I don't know, I'll just go back to sidewalk betting since we can talk about it.

You know, that's it that comes with a cost around staffing and implementation and maybe also fines collected, right?

So, like, but regularly the Macs do take votes more on things that are in line with what they support and what they think are needed.

Um, and the board is where and in sort of the operations planning period is where we consider things more like what is the cost.

Um, as I mentioned, the report does have the measurable outcomes listed in terms of uh concrete deliverables that the office could uh would focus on over the three-year pilot period.

Um, and that is again why I'm I mean, my recommendation is to the board, and I'll say this to the board that this be a pilot.

Um there of course have been plenty of county programs that have started and ended as funding comes and goes over the many decades.

So I'm not um it's it's not uh it wouldn't be the first time that a pilot has uh been tested within the county infrastructure before.

I can't think of the last time anything came before the Mac here and we told the county to hire somebody, and or hire a group.

So that's the difference in what we're looking at here.

Yeah.

Um but it like I want to get back to a couple of questions.

Um when you visited with the different Macs.

Oh, yeah, what's different?

Tell me the the difference between the Castro Valley area, because I'm really concerned.

My focus is Castro Valley.

Not Eaton, not Fairview.

Not that I don't care about them, I like them all, but my focus is Castro Valley and what goes on in those other communities is their deal.

So I get concerned when I look at the differences in the community, and I was wondering since this is um something.

If you could tell me what you learned, it's difference in the communities that's making this recommendation.

What I learned since like as part of this process, sure.

Um, and you asked about the Macs specifically.

I as I sort of alluded to earlier, there were significant differences in sort of some of the social and economic needs across the community, the environmental needs and the demographics are you know different across these communities.

Um, and again, and I think you're all well aware of this and move through all these communities all the time.

So, you know, there were definitely more issues, let's say, around affordable housing or tenant protection issues that are often brought up more in the Eden area.

I think a really big shared issue is something we talked about today around pedestrian safety, traffic safety, a lot of stuff brought up about infrastructure that really spanned all the communities.

So again, there were these issues that were maybe more specific or more dramatic in certain communities, like flooding or fires out in Sinnol, right, that might differ across the areas.

Uh, but some of the issues were really cross-cutting as well.

Um, and those related, I think, specifically to housing and infrastructure issues.

Um, and in terms of the MACs, um, I think some of you, I I know Dan, you said you listened to some of the Macs.

The MACs also, the other Macs did vote already on their different stances.

So, you know, the information, um, yeah, is received differently.

These are very different communities, and part of it is to try to design a solution that part of what I took seriously was trying to design a solution and pick issues that were cross-cutting to all the different areas, like everybody wants development permitting review, business permitting investment to flow into these communities, right?

So trying to again pick things, or everyone's concerned about the environment.

There were certain things that are very much pressing for folks, and so I tried to select again those issues that would have the most impact for the most for all of the communities.

Yeah, I I just look at um the the broad diversity and economics, homeownership versus rental versus uh agricultural land versus uh urban land, and um there's such a difference in, I mean, um the MAC and Sonol might be a little bit closer to here from a standpoint they have agricultural land, they have a little downtown, very small, but they do have a downtown.

Um they have a lot of I would say chamber of commerce type events and things like that in Sunol.

Um, you know, uh Castro Valley, if you look at a difference, a lighted parade, a uh rodeo parade, a chamber of commerce, car shows, um it goes on and on, and it's more like a city than it is really an unincorporated area, and I think it's largely because of the 20 or better years of a Mac and the age of it.

So I'm a little concerned when your report is pretty general, and I could almost take this report and make it from any city that you know what I mean.

Um, and I'm trying to figure out how does how do you see the MAX as being different?

I mean, how are communities different because if this is an organization of three people that you're talking about, and we have such a diverse community, how are you gonna represent what's going on in the AG area and how are you gonna represent what's going on in Cash Valley?

Um, are you gonna be focused on the areas that have the greatest needs for some of those things you talked about?

Sure.

So I think part of the operations planning is to look at how are we balancing equity with impact, how are you balancing the rural areas and the ag areas with the uh with the urban areas, right?

Because the issues are different.

Um, and so part again, part of the design was to consider issues that were the most impactful for the most people living in the unincorporated area.

What I will say is that this pilot period, um, and to the point of like these areas are big, they're so different.

Part of the goal with the design was that this is a more internal facing position in the beginning, right?

Like that during this pilot period, it would be again focused more on improving operations within the county so that like we all benefit in the unincorporated community, as opposed to it's not again like being out here doing constituent affairs.

It could, it will involve engaging with you all, but it's less of a um, it's it's it's more about again solving some of this internal capacity and coordination issues.

So I think that also gets away from oh, we're castor about like we care about this issue because that issue should benefit from greater support, from greater oversight, from more connections between county decision making and the community.

Um, and so I yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Okay, um I have a lot more questions, but we could be here all night with them.

Uh uh, let's go ahead and go to public comment, and um uh public comment will go between three minutes in the room and online, and um we'll hopefully try to get back to some of the comment answers, but it won't be a debate between the comments of the um presenter.

So um you want to go ahead and get started?

Tara, Tara Clancy.

Good evening.

My name is Tara Clancy.

I am a sorry, I'm a little shorter.

I'll just hold it.

My name is Terek.

I'm a resident of Castro Valley, and I am here to support the development of an agency of unincorporated communities.

I'm part of a resident group working with my aid invoice, and from our experience over the past few years, I believe we really could benefit from a contact person or office that residents could go directly to.

My neighbors and I have had good experiences with our district officials, but even with the help of my aid invoice, many residents have found the process of getting things done difficult and long.

It would be nice to have one place or person to contact versus going office to office, and at minimum a place to start like a website.

We also could use some kind of coordination and oversight.

One thing we need help with is getting and staying on agendas.

This is something that we've struggled with, not so much at the max, but there are many councils, and for example, we've been working with an ordinance that was supposed to take only six months and has now been delayed for over two years, mainly based on agenda scheduling.

This is concerning, but the reasons why it is delayed is even more concerning.

Some oversight and communication would help with these problems, but also some conversations don't need a big official meeting and could be dealt with at a smaller level and individuals.

There are many reasons that this could help residents, but in general, I think it's a good plan and a good start.

Thank you.

Ann Carboni.

Good evening, council members.

Um you did an amazing job with your questions tonight because you've really hit a lot of the really important points about this.

Um I really really don't know what to say.

Melding all the unincorporated areas together is not a good idea.

We've worked so hard and diligently in our district four.

I think that each area has different needs.

Three people is just gonna make this even pile up even worse.

I can't even imagine what this could look like.

Three people can't even support what we're trying to do here in our own community, and now you're gonna try to push them all together.

I think it's not a really a good idea at all.

Um, I think another layer of government here is absolutely just not the right thing to do.

Um, what I do think though that we do need is we need department communication, we need better communication.

There are there are needs here.

We're not these these points that were addressed are real, but I don't think this is a solution on how we're gonna get there.

Um, we do need to figure out how to get more accountability for what we asked for in our advisory level from these departments.

We need more accountability there, but the bigger thing that we're missing is advocacy, the unincorporated area and a whole is missing advocacy.

We have nothing.

Um, you know, as you've seen what uh our past uh Congressman Swalwell doled out dollars to every area, even though that and there was no one here to support um asking for the unincorporated area to get any of those dollars.

It was given to all the local cities.

There's a lot of things that are wrong here.

Um I just think we're pointing them in the wrong direction.

I'm not, you know, not trying to um criticize what was presented.

I just think someone was given a uh a job description and they were they worked through the details, but you guys addressed them all.

Um council member uh Davinny, you you you hit so many nails on the head.

I don't even know how we can even pull the board up anymore.

Um but anyways, that's what I have to say, and I think it's a mistake, and I don't think that you guys should support it.

Juliana Weiser Leon.

Hello, council members.

Also, a short person, so let me uh try to do this better.

Uh my name is Juliana Wise Leon.

I work at Eden United Church of Christ in Cherryland.

I'm also uh a Castor Valley parent of a middle schooler, pray for me, and an elementary elementary student.

Um so I spend all of my time in the unincorporated communities.

Um, and I wanted I want to bring sort of the community-based organization perspective.

Uh, the work we do at Eden Church.

We run a pretty large food pantry uh that we have for the past 15, 16 years.

Uh, and we serve a lot of community members.

I was I was so um uh I was encouraged by you were saying the difference in the communities because we we see a lot of community members from Ashland from Cherryland, um, from Hayward Acres, and we also see a lot of community members from from Castro Valley.

And I think, you know, there's this sense of Castro Valley residents don't need things, they don't need food.

And we see something different.

We see we have the data, we have the zip codes of a lot of our community members that are needing food.

And one of the things that we think about is you know, we could give food out forever.

We could we could pass out food forever, and that will not end poverty.

What are the things the system um the system solutions for our community to eliminate poverty in our community?

So we're working a lot on that, and we think, you know, financial empowerment.

There's a lot of community members that are unbanked, uh, and that have never even heard about building your credit.

And those are stories that we hear of the food pantry.

Uh there's a workforce development issue for community members that might be new to the country, and you know, they don't know how to get started and getting a job.

And so we are thinking of food as a gateway to all of these different needs to support our community members to get out of poverty for our communities to thrive.

And in order to do that, we need all these programs.

Uh we need financial empowerment, we need all we need so many things, and we go to the county, all the county agencies.

I often think I'm the squeaky wheel, they hear from me all the time, and you'll see some of their smiles because they've heard from me so many times.

Because I'm saying we need this, we need this, we need this.

And I'm really glad to do that.

We're really glad to do that.

That's our purpose, is to serve.

And that's not sustainable for CBOs.

We're one of the churches, one of the faith communities that do that.

It's not sustainable for CBOs to be thinking about all of the needs, and I think in that, you know, what the one of the reasons why we support um this uh idea is because it offers support sort of at that level too.

Uh there's the the community impact, but it's also the CBO coordination effort that could really be supportive for us.

And so I ask you, support that.

Thank you very much.

Caller, you're on the line.

You have three minutes, Kelly.

I um hear a little bit of organizational and cultural amnesia when uh everyone's insisting that everything is great with the county um uh political uh the county offices that are serving the unincorporated right now, the D4, and uh you forget why is D4 asking for this new office and uh and three more staffers.

Well, the D4 supervisor, Nate Miley, he's spoken often repeatedly, I've heard him say this, of his staff being overloaded and underfunded when providing unincorporated services.

So the uh there must be a problem, you guys are overloading them.

So um uh then uh I don't know you remember Mac members, you're you're on this board forever, so uh some of them.

So uh you you stood up and you demanded two supervisors for the unincorporated area when you went all get went and gave speeches during the redistricting uh uh debates.

Um and at that time you weren't talking about D4 and D1, were you?

You were talking about D4 with 78% of the population, and uh you were talking you want you wanted D3 that would have the other 18% of the residents, right?

Isn't that what happened?

So um why isn't why aren't you sending off some uh having the staffers at D3 do the uh carry the the burden?

Uh you forget about D3 um quite a bit.

Uh but you know they can they can be uh, you know, you can have their staffers uh do their share of the work.

Um and oftentimes when we talk about the you know the the not a non-cooperation or non- uh non-coordination, there's a deliberate effort often to not coordinate with neighboring jurisdictions, not just within the county.

Um, like for example, when uh the county went and stole a hiking and biking trail and then shut it down.

Uh, that was actually in the city of Fremont.

Count the county paid lip service to that, uh to coordination, and then when it came time came to vote, you forgot to to uh coordinate with the city, just went over and kind of you know trespassed and stole their land and stole their their uh uh right of way.

Um and then the the budget data.

Um, you know, you talk about budget data and you're looking for for specific budget data that uh uh quantifies what share of the county budget is being allocated to the unincorporated area.

Well, when you when you look at these uh uh you know presentations and all these slides and charts and graphs, uh last year they came in with all these specifics about how much money was going into the unincorporated area, and the numbers were so laughable, so indefensible, and so ludicrous.

They were uh, you know, things like 50% of the money was going into public works agency uh of uh Alameda County uh was being spent in the in the unincorporated area.

Nobody believed that stuff.

So now you're not gonna get any of those specific numbers.

Just uh watch carefully when you get these budget reports.

See if you can figure out what's going into the unincorporated area.

You're never gonna figure it out.

Thanks.

No more speakers for this item.

We have any speakers in the room that would like to speak on this item.

If not, I am gonna close the public portion and go to the council for comments.

And um I want to start with uh council member Davini.

Uh thank you, Chair.

Uh Brianne, beautiful presentation.

I don't have a question for you.

Uh, very scholarly, in-depth.

You stood up here for an hour and answered all of our questions.

I'm I'm very impressed uh uh with the with with your your body of work here.

Uh furthermore, I think there's very loudable goals in this effort.

Um I like the fact that uh uh identifying uh the ability to have budget analysis, making sure that within county budgets uh unincorporated uh areas are getting their fair share.

I like the idea of having uh a focus on uh budget sustainability.

What I mean by that is getting funds from outside agencies, state, federal, uh MGC, ABAG, and what have you.

Um so I I think those are those are fantastic.

I love the idea of uh the I think it's a laudable goal to have uh improved communications uh with it within the departments.

Uh I like the fact that that it has a convening authority to pull together meetings.

Um sidewalk vending is a great example.

They pulled together a meeting, and they did convene.

Perhaps it would have had happened a little bit sooner uh had we had this office, but but but the function is there.

Um there's some I'm I don't think that this I think this this again this uh a few uh ways to uh obtain these goals without necessarily creating an office, and I think it's more needed in other areas of unincorporated Alameda County than Castor Valley.

Uh there's a few real deal killers for me.

Administering the MACs, I really like the fact that our chief of staff uh or should say Nate Miley's chief of staff is administering the MAX.

I think she does a really good job.

I'd like it even better if she gave us the paperwork before the meetings, but that's an ongoing battle.

Um I I really like from a communications hub.

I like your idea of a web page.

I think it should be expanded, but I think our community liaison here in the room does it does a good job, and I think we probably need more bodies to help with that, but I don't think it should come out of district four.

Um we don't always get what we want, clearly.

Um, I see the director of public works here, Mr.

Woldesenbeck, and and we had a little issue on the on on bike lanes and parking, and we didn't get what we wanted.

This office wouldn't have got us what we wanted.

He had the subject matter expertise.

What we did get was a lot of respect.

He came back before this body on three different occasions and slogged through the process.

And and again, we are not always going to get what we want, but I think that we function.

So at the end of the day, I don't think I can support this initiative for uh the Castor Valley area.

I think that we would be weakened um by this process, and and I think our outcomes would be worse.

However, I do see the need of all these laudable goals that you have in somehow addressing those.

I think that the answer to that is getting more D for staff.

I don't know how you talk the other four supervisors into that, um, but I think that that's truly the the need uh in this county is uh is more focused.

And that concludes my comments, Council Ramoto.

Thank you.

Um Didto to what he described.

I your presentation was great.

Thank you so much for what you're up there for an hour answering every question.

So really true, truly appreciate your diligence and um your attempt to answer every question in its entirety.

Um I think the bottom line is um, you know, what are we trying to solve?

What's the problem we're trying to solve?

I think that was um a message that everyone expressed.

Um, and there's a clear indication that the county lacks um centralized um coordination, accountability, and the consistence um governance for unincorporated communities from what I, you know, from my hearing also the reports.

Um my main concern is how does it help Castro Valley potentially?

That's my position, and that's my lens.

Um, potentially, you know, better permitting, you know, um sidewalk vending, uh clear communication, possibly stronger MAC integration, and more coordinated services.

Um, what's still unclear for me is you know, the real authority cost, enforcement power, um measurable outcomes and long-term sustainability.

I think those are things that are still unclear to me.

And um, I think whether we're creating a centralized coordination coordinating office, um that will materially improve outcomes or simply add another administrative layer.

I think we need to really look at where things need to be improved today.

Um I heard um comments about the interviews and how some of the individuals expressed um the consensus of staying your lane, you know, those type of comments, and a lot of people said the same thing.

And something that um council member Mulgrew mentioned is that how do we evaluate those behaviors that have to change, right?

If that is what they have normally done, now they need to be more in a collective environment.

Was there questions around these type of, you know, the sidewalk bending example that you put together?

Those are four different agencies that would possibly have to work together.

What is that framework look like?

Did they comment about do they want to not stay in, you know, they're positioned to stay in their lane and do what they need to do.

So I just wanted to kind of understand more of that as well.

But um overall, I think at this point I would not be able to um vote favorably um on this.

So I think that's my comments.

Thank you.

Councilmember Fieber.

Thank you.

Again, great presentation.

I I echo both the council people here that have just spoken.

Thank you.

Rather than take up a lot of time, I just rather say that, you know, I I hope I would support not voting for this.

Um and I would hope that maybe we could look at creating systems within the county that would be more effective than what they're doing now.

That's it.

Thanks, Chair.

Councilmember Davis.

Uh thank you.

First question to staff.

Did we receive all the correspondence on this item that uh has sent in?

I recall that Gary Howard sent a letter in opposition and requested that that be circulated to the Mac.

I I don't think I got it.

I don't know if Tona did.

She's online.

Okay.

Well, I I know for a fact that he's submitted something, but that's what um uh several of my fellow council members have alluded to is that we need to change the culture of the county from acting independently within each agency to uh working together in a more cohesive manner to get away from embracing the philosophy yes we can instead of no, this is the way we've always done it, and we're gonna continue to do it this way.

Um and I don't see how this position or this office is going to change that in in any way.

We need to have real a real discussion as to what are we as a county agency or each of us as a county agency, and how we can make it easier for the public to live and work and do within our community.

And I'll leave um, leave my comments to that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

I just excellent presentation.

You know, you took your time listen to us, but um I'm not clear about the benefit of this uh office for Castro Valley, specifically Castro Valley.

And um I don't know if they'll this will make it easier for people with the new business permit uh dealing with the county agencies because that is not our issue.

The issue the people face is there's no communication between agencies, so if you go to a city, it's much easier.

Um, our county agencies that we deal in unincorporated areas, they don't communicate with each other, and people have a hard time going through these offices.

I don't know this office is gonna add a burden, one more extra step.

Um, and I don't know if that's the right thing to do.

Um, yeah, I want to choose all the issues that you mentioned, is there, but I don't know if this is the answer to add an office.

Um we should come up with a better solution.

So I'm just gonna um say I can't support this right now.

Thank you.

Well, sure.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

And again, thank you, Brian, uh, for all the good work and great report.

Um I don't believe you can fix a broken bureaucracy by adding more bureaucracy and however many people it is um inserting a layer between the people that are responsible for solving a problem and the customer in my mind is bureaucracy.

Um I also have difficulty asking uh citizens to pay for a problem that resides entirely within the bureaucracy that is supposed to serve them.

Um I most importantly, I don't think the project was undertaken to justify not not to justify.

I don't believe the project was undertaken to find the optimal solution to a decades-old problem, an optimal and enduring solution.

I I think it was um to find a good solution, and the good is often the enemy of the best, and the people in Castor Valley deserve the best.

Um I agree with councilmember Davis, the the the culture is the key, and um my lightly educated experience is that the county culture is incredibly silo-driven, um, averse to accountability, uh, penalizes initiative and rewards, avoidance of responsibility.

Not everybody, not all departments, but that's it.

And I the only way, the only way to work with that is to bust the silos.

And I would love to see the county look at um creating units, and I'm not saying this is the best solution, but create a units, um, formed of members from planning staff, public works, environmental health, code enforcement, um, ECD, fire, um, and have them be in units that face the customers as they come to us, residence, commercial, public facility, something that gets out of um, you know, that this is my department, this is how we do things, and this is the way you need to approach us to get things done.

No, um, bring us your needs.

We recognize who you are, we will structure and adapt to accommodate that.

Um, and I I really I'm not again that's I'm not saying that's the right solution, but it is I believe something that could be looked at, should be looked at to deal with what's been described as as the culture.

Um I really don't see the the success success measures as presented as as being um full-on measures of accountability, things like a sentence creating a centralized inventory of plans and initiatives, uh, regular reports to the board of supervisors, the numbers of initiatives convened, agencies uh demonstrating shared ownership, um, number of cross-departmental communications.

The the problem I have with those is none of them have any lens to the customer, to the client.

Those are all internally driven measures that don't look at the world with the customer lens.

And you know, what what I want as a client or a customer of Alameda County is you know, can you solve my problem?

Can you solve it in a time frame and under the conditions that I'll be happy with?

Um you measure that, you know.

Did it take too long?

Did the problem get solved?

Um I would hope that we would have some baseline research uh that would get us going, so we have something to measure as we go down the road.

So I think this is an elegant solution to a problem.

I don't think this is the best solution for the problems that that were discussed and and are described.

And uh um I would say that I can't support it, and that if it does go to the board of supervisors with the recommendation that Castro Valley be excluded from participation, thank you.

Um yeah, you know, I find myself often uh looking uh I have skin in the game here.

I live in Castro Valley, and I want Castro Valley to be the focus of attention.

Not these other areas that are not important to our community, but Castro Valley is where I live, and that's where I focus my attention and my energy.

We have meetings with Supervisor Miley on a regular basis.

I have a scheduled meeting with him with uh my vice chair once a month.

So the comment here about communication, and um, uh it's an inaccurate comment.

Um the communication to Supervisor Miley is excellent, and uh he has a big ear and he listens.

Uh, there's one thing that I would suggest is maybe give him another staff person in the office to handle some of these issues.

Matter of fact, I could solve you this real quick with a whole lot less money.

Give Nate another staff person of the office and give uh Supervisor Tam another staff person in her office.

Those are the two big unincorporated areas and handle this comments from the community that come in or help the community that needs it.

Public works.

If we need public works here, they're here on a regular basis.

The um head of public works shows up, our fire department shows up, we have the police department shows up, we have a sheriff's department, the CHP.

Whatever Castro Valley needs, Castro Valley gets.

Now, do we get our way all the time?

No.

Do we get overridden on some things?

I don't think this and an incorporated office would change that.

There, you know, there's you need three supervisors that want to vote your way.

That don't happen all the time.

So I don't find um I think it's a great report.

It was a whole lot of a lot of work in it.

Um, what I say it's a great report, it's a report that was agenda-driven to create a department, and um it is if you were in some of the other areas, not in Castro Valley, where we've been oh, 25 years or better as a Mac, and have very good communications with the different departments, we don't need it.

And uh so I I'm sitting here saying I can't support it.

Um, so anyway, um any other council comments.

Okay, I want to close the comment portion and uh uh look for a motion.

This is an action item.

I'll make the motion to recommend to the board of supervisors not to approve the proposed office of unincorporated communities.

Second, we have a second, uh, first of a second.

Do we have any discussion on this item?

Chair, excuse me, chair.

Can I add an addendum to that uh that motion and that uh furthermore that the uh chair of the Castor Valley Mac appoint uh a representative to attend uh unincorporated services uh meeting uh to convey our our message uh in person to the board of supervisors?

Um, let's stick to the uh motion that we have right now and we can discuss that.

Uh okay.

Um right now um we have a first and a second.

Let's have a roll call.

Council member Devini.

Aye.

Councilmember Davis.

Aye.

Council member Phoebig.

Aye.

Council member Moda.

Aye.

Council Member Thomas.

Aye.

Vice chair Mulgrew.

Aye.

Chair Moore.

Aye.

Motion passed.

Thank you.

Chairman.

Okay.

Um, Chair, can we can you take up my motion right now, please?

Yes.

I'd I'd like to make a motion that uh the chair of the Castor Valley Mac, uh, at his discretion, uh, designates uh uh representative of the Cast Valley MAC to speak in front of the unincorporated services subcommittee of the board of supervisors on this issue.

Okay, um, I'll second that, assuming that okay.

Well, let's go ahead and vote on that.

That individual, I mean, the the chair also has the opportunity to appoint someone else to in his stead if he doesn't isn't able to make it.

That was my intent.

Okay, um I'm gonna ask for some clarification because this is not an agenda item.

This is uh it is an agenda item, but the um going to the unincorporated services is not an agenda item.

So um would you reach out to um staff and find out if we can move forward with that motion?

We'll take a two-minute recess.

Would you find out?

Thank you.

We're back in session and uh we have a motion.

I'm sorry.

Councilmember Devini here, council member Davis, present.

Councilmember Phoebe, yeah, council member Mota.

Here council member Thomas, present vice chair Mulgrew, present chairmore, yes, sir.

We have a quorum.

We don't have to say the pledge of allegiance again, do we?

Okay, good.

Um okay uh we had a motion before the um the quick break here and um um uh before the I have a vote on the motion.

I asked for public comment on this motion because it is an action item, and uh so do we have anybody in the room that wants to comment on this particular item because it's not on the agenda and Dan, would you read the motion again so that um uh yes, my uh motion is that the chair at his discretion appoints a member of the Castor Valley MAC to represent the MAC's position on the unincorporated services uh department in front of the unincorporated services committee?

On this particular item, correct okay.

Any discussion?

anybody in the community here that would like to speak on this item?

Do you have anybody online that wants to speak on this item?

Okay, public portions closed, and uh we have a first and a second, and um we'll have a vote.

Um any conversation amongst the group?

Okay, roll call.

Council member Davini, aye, council member Davis, aye, council member feebig, aye council member mota, aye, council member Thomas, aye, vice chair Mulgrew, aye, Chair Moore, aye, motion passed.

Thank you.

Okay, let's move on to the next item, and that's the unincorporated services area budget as an informational item, and so there will be no action taken on it other than uh feedback.

So um when you present what we'll do is we'll go right to the uh public comment, and then we'll go to the Mac comment, and we're done.

Okay, okay.

Sure.

Good evening, council members.

Um apologies, you do have uh quite a lengthy presentation in front of you.

So I'll I'll try to do the um abbreviated version, if you will.

I know uh many of the council members are quite seasoned and probably very familiar with this information.

Please feel free.

Um, if this is newer content for you, please feel free to interrupt, um, ask any questions.

At the two previous Mac meetings uh that I presented at with department heads and staff.

Um we did during the unincorporated area highlights uh do an overview of content that was presented to the Board of Supervisors in April during their early budget work sessions.

You can see that in uh the copy of your slides.

That is content that is from the department presentations.

Um so we'll perhaps what I'll do is skip over that content.

I'll say that most of virtually all of the information in this presentation has already been presented publicly.

Some of it is a little bit outdated.

We tried to stick to the same template for all the Macs.

So again, I'll try to go through this quite quickly.

So in terms of the economic context, we always like to do a little bit of macroeconomics because it impacts our formulation and projection of the county budget.

This slide is already a little bit dated.

The Fed did hold interest rates unchanged for a third straight meeting.

The point that we're really trying to make here is the both the state and at the local level were highly reliant on the tech industry, and the landscape is changing such that there have been waves of layoffs in the tech industry.

Most recently, and the logo is not on here, but Cisco was in the news last week for doing another wave of layoffs.

They're laying off close to 4,000 workers, a little bit less than 5% of their workforce.

But it's a similar trend in that they are shifting investments towards AI and away from personnel.

The next slide is this pressure environment for counties that we like to stress for the board.

There are a number of things that you can see here that are both financial and policy issues that we're dealing with with the development of the budget, not only for the next fiscal year, but also in the next couple of years, really, that could be potentially significant in light of changing federal policy.

So the next couple of slides are state and federal updates.

The state budget update slide is also already a little bit dated.

Data for April that the state has put out is very similar to March.

Generally speaking, general fund cash receipts have been coming in above forecast, but the state has its own budget challenges that it's dealing with, and so we're not necessarily seeing the benefit of that surplus, if you will, at the local level.

We always like to look at the legislative analysts, analysis of what the administration is putting out.

Typically, they temper some of the messaging that is coming from the administration.

They are cautioning some of the information that has come out in the May revise.

Unfortunately, most of it is not favorable for counties.

Most of the the advocacy that was done on behalf of counties did not result in any real benefits.

And the LAO is underscoring some of that by pointing out that the state has a significant structural deficit, particularly in the out years.

They may have been able to balance the budget over the next two years, but they're relying on borrowing and drawing down on the reserves.

At the federal level, the main message really is that the effects of federal policy change are yet to be fully understood.

There are some impacts that are contemplated with respect to SNAP or food stamps in the social services budget.

MediCal is really the significant piece here that could really impact the budget for the next for the foreseeable future.

We really don't know how it's going to impact us at the local level.

We don't know how the state is going to contend with the federal changes.

Really, what we're anticipating is a substantial workload increase tied to redeterminations for those benefit programs.

I think some of you are very familiar with this content.

So essentially the county fiscal dilemma is that there's an increased demand for safety net services when the economy worsens.

So this is challenging.

The county's revenue raising authority is limited by Prop 13, Prop 218, and ERAF or the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund.

I'll talk a little bit more about that later.

We've had a progressive loss of control over local spending over time.

And most of the services that we provide countywide are mandated by the state or federal government.

Those mandates have increased, and we don't always get reimbursements or sometimes the reimbursements are delayed.

So we've had successive rounds of transfers of response responsibility from the state to the local level, often with inadequate funding.

The next slide goes over some core differences between cities and counties.

Counties lack broad powers of self-government that cities enjoy.

The cities generally have more broad revenue generating authority.

And the legislative control of our counties is more comprehensive because we are a subdivision of the state.

So the county, as you know, serves a dual role to administer both services that are mandated at the state and federal level.

But any of these are safety net services and work best when delivered on a regional basis.

And then we provide municipal services to the unincorporated areas.

And the county's power to make and enforce ordinances and regulations is limited to the unincorporated areas.

Just quickly to do an overview of the current year budget.

The county's budget, all funds is 6.1 billion.

In the general fund, it's 4.3 billion.

Supports a workforce of nearly 10,500 FTEs.

The pie chart that follows again makes the point that the county's budget is highly reliant on state and federal aid.

So if we're looking at the general fund, state and federal aid is nearly two-thirds of our financing.

And then here's a look at the dollar bill.

The county's discretionary revenue is about 31% of the general fund, and of that, over three-quarters of it is property tax based.

The county receives only 15 cents for every property tax dollar collected in the county.

You can see the other taxing entities there.

And then the portion that used to go to redevelopment is being redistributed to the other entities over time.

So the first 90 million that the county received in redevelopment went to tier one projects that benefited projects exclusively in the unincorporated area.

So this is what I was alluding to earlier in terms of content from the departments.

There are department heads and staff here who can answer any specific questions you have about the services they provide.

This is, you know, what I like to talk about is the sort of the more visible piece of county government.

The front-facing work that these departments provide really puts a face to what the county delivers in the unincorporated areas.

I think the general populace may be less, maybe not so much folks in the unincorporated areas, but other city residents in the county are less familiar with county services because the countywide services are not as visible.

Generally serves a subsection of the population that's eligible for benefits or interfacing with the criminal justice system.

So you can see here content from the community development agency, public works, the sheriff's office, FIRE, and the library.

So this next slide on measure W is a summary of recommendations that staff have made to the board for two-year investment.

This is the essential county service fund portion of Measure W, the county's general sales tax.

This the split that the board has contemplated at this point is for 80% to go to homelessness and housing, and 20% to go to essential county services.

So what I'm highlighting in the next couple of slides are recommended expenditures that are specifically to benefit the unincorporated area.

The board hasn't taken action on these recommendations yet.

They are taking taking up the discussion again at their meeting, their special meeting tomorrow.

And then this on a percentage basis is a breakdown of what has been proposed for the essential county service fund investments.

So 36% of the investment the programmatic investments have been proposed to benefit the unincorporated area for capital and major maintenance.

Over 70% is proposed for the unincorporated area.

So in the aggregate, you can see 30% is proposed for the unincorporated area over the next two years.

Moving on to the maintenance of effort budget, the board has a maintenance of effort policy to develop the budget.

This essentially means a funding level that's needed by agencies and departments to continue existing programs, staffing and service levels.

Moving on to the next slide.

This is a summary of the net cost change by program.

So in the 2627 maintenance of effort, we're seeing an increase of 76.4 million or 8%.

This is just on the program side.

This slide breaks down the components of the salary and benefit adjustments.

What's notable here is that we are showing net retirement savings of 93 million.

So this is unusual.

We don't normally have this savings built into our salary and benefit adjustments.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a future slide.

The next slide is a more detailed list of some of the drivers on the program side of the equation.

And then the next chart is essentially the same thing, but on the other side of the equation, what we refer to as the non-program side, so capital and major maintenance, contingency and reserves, which is primarily a set aside that we have to estimate the impact of pending labor negotiations.

Our debt service is declining by a little bit by eight, roughly eight million, and then non-program expenses and revenues.

So all of that totaling on the non-program side for an increase of $15 million or about one and a half percent.

This again is a little bit more detail in what's happening on the non-program side of the equation.

Some of these are one-time investments that are going away.

So for example, the decrease of 75 million in general liability reserves, that's something that we did in the current year budget, tied to the increase in claim activity and settlements.

This year, what is driving the cost up a little bit is on the workers' comp side, also tied to an increase in claim activity and complexity.

So if we put the two sides of the equation together, you can see that results in a funding gap of 91.4 million.

So that's what we are in the process of trying to close before we present a balanced proposed budget to the board next Thursday.

This is a slide that summarizes the county's ERAF losses by year ever since ERAF was implemented in fiscal year 9293.

So over time we've shifted over 12 billion dollars to the state.

What's interesting to note here is the amount that we're estimated to shift to the state in the fall, this 760 million is actually higher than what we have projected to keep locally.

So this shift, the state implemented in 9293 to backfill its cut to the schools.

And this is a look at the funding gaps that we've had to close since ERAF was implemented.

The stack bar on the right shows the 91.4 million dollar funding gap that we have to close for the developing year.

Had it not been for the net retirement savings that you saw in the previous slide, our funding gap would have been 184 million.

So we've essentially closed half of it with the net retirement savings, and are in the process of working with agencies and departments to close the rest of it before next Thursday.

So this is a summary of the recommended budget balancing approach.

As I said, the county minister's office is working closely with agency and agencies and departments to review all of these things that are listed here to come up with strategies to close our prioritize closing our structural funding gap.

And then as always, we have a long list of pending factors that could impact the development of the budget, not the least of which is things that are unknown at the state and federal level.

I won't read through all of these.

I think the one newer thing that hasn't been on here in recent presentations is the special election costs.

So often we have unanticipated elections that we can't plan for ahead of time.

Often those costs are not fully reimbursed, especially if we have to administer an election on the state or federal level.

And we cannot recover costs for those all the time.

And then looking ahead, we always have to keep in mind some long-term obligations, maintaining the county's credit rating.

We're one of a handful of counties in the state that has uh the triple-triple the highest possible credit ratings from the from the three major agencies.

Um we have to develop the capital improvement plan and are planning on presenting that in conjunction with the proposed budget.

We have over a billion of unfunded capital costs over the next five years.

So it's important that the board keep in mind, you know, maintaining our infrastructure so that we have the facilities to ensure that we can continue to provide these services.

Um moving on to the next slide.

So this is just a summary of the next steps in the process.

We're gonna continue to review and analyze the impact of the governors, may revise, update our revenue projections, take a look at cost containment and reduction strategies with the departments.

Um, you know, we we always try and uh ensure that we're working in presentations to other stakeholders like labor and community partners.

Um Supervisor Miley's office was primarily behind us doing a roadshow with uh with all of the Macs this year to try and increase our our budget transparency and hopefully get feedback along the way as well.

Um we do have a representative of the unincorporated areas on the budget work group that was in attendance at our meeting this afternoon.

Um so you know, I think the the other thing that we have planned to try and integrate into the budget documents moving forward are you know continued improvements to the unincorporated special budget that we have in the budget documents.

Um so here's a look at the rest of the budget development timeline.

Um the proposed budget uh is scheduled to be presented to the board.

Sorry, there's a little bit of a line break issue there on uh next Thursday, May 28th.

That's scheduled for noon.

And then budget hearings will be formally opened on June 18th, um, and likely continue to the week of June 22nd.

I'll pause there if there are any questions.

Thank you.

Um I want to go to the council for comments.

Uh yeah, we'll start down here with uh Councilmember Davis.

No comments.

Thank you, very good report.

Councilmember Thomas.

Just a quick question.

Um, you talk about governors uh revised budget a couple of times.

Is there a major changes in May or uh uh their revenue projections are are better.

Um there so this isn't the it's it's the governor's version of uh revision from his January proposal.

The legislature still needs to take it up and take action by June 15th.

Um so the the revenue projections are a little bit better.

Um if I think specifically about benefits to counties, the realignment revenue projections that benefit uh health and welfare as well as public safety, have gotten a little bit better.

Um, but you know, balance that with the ongoing and historic concern that we never got enough to begin with for the responsibilities that the state shifted.

So really the main message I think is that counties really didn't get anything near what they had advocated for, unfortunately.

Um, and uh not only are we bracing for the impact of federal policy changes in 2627, um, but we're anticipating it's just gonna get worse in 27-28 when we really know uh what the local impacts are gonna look like.

Got it.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

And thank excellent presentation.

Thank you.

Um Melanie, thank you very much.

This is right up my alley.

I wish you were first on our agenda.

Uh to the dismay of my fellow board members, I would have at least a half hour worth of questions for you.

And thank you for all the department heads and other power players that are that are uh in the room.

Uh that's fantastic.

I I do get to get at least one question in though.

Uh, and on page 27, the graph that you have there, there's a general feeling.

Uh, you certainly hear with uh the the fiscal analysis that my Eden voice puts together that they're losing hundreds of millions of dollars.

I'm convinced that we're getting shortchange too.

I think everybody in unincorporated alameda county thinks we're getting shortchanged um so with that being my bias um does this graph suggest that we're not getting short change and in fact we're getting more than our fair share and i'm going to the at least on one metrics not not not across the entire budget but at least on the uh uh measure w uh funds it it uh um you have three different uh pie charts here the the center one i believe being the total with 82 million and it it shows uh unincorporated getting 30 percent of that that's more than our fair share isn't it uh you know i i don't know that i would editorialize what would constitute the unincorporated area's fair share with respect to measure w because it is a general tax um really technically completely at the discretion of the board um you know when it was approved by the voters i think there was a general understanding that there was an intent to uh for the influx of new tax revenue to support um our homelessness and housing issues um but you know this issue was litigated and it is a general tax and so you know what I'll say is that I think the board is really trying to take into account its responsibility that's unique to the unincorporated areas and uh staff has made recommendations to try and address some of the issues that have um or at least be responsive to some of the issues that have been raised um there's no there's no matching of of where the uh measure w funds are collected to where they're expended is that true uh no there is no that's you're you are correct that we we don't do return to source in in general no okay um all right that that that concludes my my one question come back please we'll get into more detail council remoto great presentation i have no comment thank you councilmore feeble great presentation no comment vice chairmore thank you mr chair and thank you so much for the wonderful presentation and i probably have half as many questions as dan um do have one though on slide number 26 the last bullet in the left hand box um cb a unincorporated area manager just curious as to what that is who that is what the thank you sandy our downtown plan you have a keen eye uh Sandy Rira community development agency director so uh it is in small font so great great job Bill uh so the CDA we we threw that uh on our list for unincorporated area because we we've heard from folks that that that's been uh it's a topic of discussion you uh had that um item today but it was somewhat of a placeholder until the board made their decision at the same time uh we had that as uh a note because what we're hearing from the community is that uh communication is needed more outreach is needed in terms of being for the community to be able to hear uh what's going on in the unincorporated area so there was multiple reasons why we put that on but it is uh waiting for board direction one person it's just one person it's not not three thank you that's it Mr.

Chair thank you uh you know um I just have a couple of questions um and I just a comment um on here it says on the same page 26 in the green square it says Castro Valley Library.

Does that mean that uh the Castro Valley uh old library is gonna get redone?

If the board finally approves, if it approves the the requests for unincorporated area, and it seems like we're getting a positive response, at least from the board discussion, the old Cash valley Library will be fully funded to for its rehabilitation.

Okay.

You know, I look around the room here and I see fire and I see public works, the CDA.

I don't is somebody from health here?

Library.

Is somebody from health here?

Wow.

What's the health budget?

It's about 1.1 billion.

That seems to be one of the bigger budgets.

It is one of the larger we have three major program areas that are over a billion dollars.

Health is the largest.

Seems like we get the same respect here for health as we do for the sidewalk vending and not implementing the health program there.

Um disappointed that the health department couldn't be here to answer any questions.

Are they online?

Oh, dog on it.

What to say about that, but um, you know, I look through this budget, and um it's not unlike all of us at home.

You know, we got to tighten our belt a little bit.

When I look at 91 million dollars, um, and I tell Supervisor Miley this often, is government is the problem because when you get re-before you build a house and you spend a hundred thousand dollars before you put a shovel in the ground, something's wrong with that formula.

When you can go to other communities and put a shovel in the ground for about a third of that cost, so somewhere along the line, we need to start looking at, you know, and I know that a lot of this is state related with mandates that are put on us, but at the end of the deal, we elect those folks.

And um, you know, when you know I opened up a bottle water plant in Texas, and I paid $35 for my business license, and I paid $100 for my inspection.

I was in business in a day and a half.

Something's wrong.

And all I gotta say is when we look at this and um uh 91 million dollar deficit is what we're looking at.

Maybe it's time we wake up and say some of these things we just can't afford, or we're gonna have to re-engineer.

We sat here today and listened for two and a half hours on creating a department that's gonna cost us if we would have done it, would have been a couple hundred thousand, three hundred thousand dollars, maybe more than that because in the county, you know, with the wages in this area here, and is is getting proposed.

I mean that in my opinion, that should have never made it this far.

If we have a 91,000, 91 million dollar deficit we're looking at.

So anyway, that's my comments on it.

Very good presentation.

Thank you very much for enlightening me because uh now I got something to cry about.

Um anyway.

Um any other comments from the council on this, just a quick question.

Um, I was confused about the food hub.

What is it and uh is it in Castro Valley?

You're gonna put the improvement or uh, I think.

Oh, short ones again.

Hi, Eileen Dalton, CDA.

Uh, the food hub is the facility, it's the old animal shelter site, uh, right up here in Castro Valley that is currently being re-positioned to be active again, and it needs some work.

Yep, awesome.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

And I just want to say that all of you guys are our department heads, and we certainly don't need an unincorporated services with the service that we get from this group.

So we're counting on you to continue to look out for us.

Cash of Valley's first.

Okay.

One just one question, Mr.

Chair.

Would it be possible to come back after the budget is finalized?

Sure.

Happy to come back.

That'd be okay.

Great.

Thank you.

Can we get that first on the agenda for that night?

Yeah.

Right.

No.

Yes.

No.

Okay.

Let's see.

That is, I'm going to close that item.

Oh, wait a minute.

I got a public comment.

I I know nobody's probably up at 10 o'clock, but give it a shot.

Kelly, we're on item eight.

You have three minutes.

Thank you.

Yeah, when you talk look at the title of this item, it was uh I was uh you know uh misled, but I guess nobody else, nobody I was the only one looking at the title is unincorporated uh area budget update.

So I thought that was uh budget update as pertaining the unincorporated area, but this kind of kind of seems like it's countywide.

If you talk look at any of these department heads that are sitting in the room and ask them what part of the budget is going into the unincorporated area, they don't know because their accounting is not set up that way.

When you talk about that 1.1 billion dollars of uh health services, uh that's not going into that's uh some of it might go.

What part of that is going into the unincorporated area area?

No one knows the county the uh the uh the accountants are not set up that way.

Um so uh you know the the whole the whole uh concept of unincorporated area budget is not there.

There is no unincorporated area budget, and when when they when they kind of pull one together and dream one up, it's kind of uh what do you call it conceptual?

It's uh it's it's conceptual or what is it pro forma?

Is that that's how the accountants talk, right?

They pro forma that means they can uh put whatever they want on the paper and it doesn't really count, and that's what uh the unincorporated area budget is.

Um no one knows what it is, it doesn't exist, it's pro forma, thank you.

Do we have any uh speaker cards for anybody in the room?

Is there anybody in the room that would like to comment on this item before I close it?

Do we have anybody else online?

No, no additional online speakers.

We have nobody else online, okay.

I am gonna go ahead and close it.

Close this item, and um uh chair's reports.

Um, I currently do not have any.

Um the staff have any.

The council have any, yes.

I just have one quick one.

I'd like to shout out to hopefully it was code enforcement and the environmental health.

I uh at the rodeo parade, I did not see one illegal vendor, and I think that's the first time I uh that has been the case since I've been going to the events in the in Cash Row Valley.

So good job.

Thank you.

Okay, uh I have a comment.

Are we doing comments?

Can we do comments?

Okay.

So um I just wanted to follow up on a January 20th um comment.

Um that we asked staff about for the um, uh what was it called?

The bus bench policy.

We were talking about that, the garbage can replacement.

Um, and then I think there was another comment about the Mac involvement in public work projects.

There was a comment about that, but I when they're not listed on the agenda or to comment or approve the minutes, it's hard to follow them because then you're going back to try to figure things out.

So I um want to get those addressed, the status of those if we can on the next um agenda, and then also see if we can have a clearer record of outstanding staff responses and statuses going forward.

Okay.

Maybe you'd just give me a note on it.

Okay, okay, and we're good on it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other comments?

Okay.

Meeting adjourned.