Good afternoon and welcome to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Personnel Administration and Legislation Committee meeting for Monday, June the 15th, 2026.

May I have roll call, please?

The Supervisor Portana Boss.

Supervisor TAM.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

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We will start with the federal legislative update from CJ Lake.

Good afternoon.

You've got Emily Baket de Silva here and John Assini is also here, but I don't think he's been elevated to presenter, so he cannot unmute.

But I'll go ahead and um kick it off.

The Senate is in session this week, but the House is out, and they'll be out until June 22nd.

Um last week, I know we've talked about this in PAL, but um House Republicans did end up passing the 70 billion reconciliation package funding for ICE and CBP.

Um and basically it's uh three years through the end of President Trump's term.

Um the bill cleared the House on a party line vote 214 to 212 after the Senate passed it on June 5th.

Um President Trump did sign the bill into law last Wednesday, you know.

This ends the months long standoff um over immigration enforcement funding.

Um Republicans have now started to shift their attention to a possible third reconciliation package.

Um, but honestly, Republican leadership hasn't coalesced around specific proposals to include.

And I think we've talked about this with just such narrow majorities and really a limited legislative calendar, the chances of moving another reconciliation package are pretty slim.

Um, you know, one of the things we've talked about too is appropriations and of course this was the funding for ICE and CBP that was really FY26 funding.

Um, and that's what kind of led to the uh shutdown of DHS for for such a long time.

I know we mentioned this last week as well, but you know, the house has been passing appropriations bills out of committee in a pretty partisan fashion.

Um it's usually the Senate that uh starts usually later than the than the House.

And last year, all the bills they passed out of committee were bipartisan.

Uh last week when we talked to you guys, um, I still remember John saying that um, you know, there had been some delays for markups uh the week prior, and um there was an attempt to mark up six bills last week.

That ended up being delayed as well, and it's simply because Republicans and Democrats on the Senate side cannot reach an agreement on a top-line number in order to move forward.

So it just shows kind of the problems that we are going to have uh trying to uh wrap up or even start FY27.

So I just wanted to make that note.

Um another issue we've been talking about is uh the FISA extension.

That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Um, and Congress did fail to extend Section 702 uh last week after members deadlocked over President Trump's appointment of the head the federal housing finance agency director, Bill Poulty.

Um he had nominated him to be acting director of the um national intelligence.

And so the house voted on a short-term extension, but the measure failed, uh, with most Democrats and 18 Republicans voting against it.

The Senate also tried to pass a short-term extension through uh unanimous consent, but that effort failed as well.

So while existing FISA court certifications allow much of the program can to continue operating through next March.

Members and industry groups have raised concerns that prolonged uncertainty over the authority could complicate future intelligence collection efforts.

So communications providers have also questioned whether they'll be protected from liability during the Section 702 lapse.

Uh following the failed votes in both chambers, President Trump announced his intention to nominate Jay Clayton as DI.

And while the nomination is welcomed by members in both parties, it remains unclear whether whether it will be enough to break the impasse.

I believe Senate Intel is holding uh a hearing on his nomination, I believe this Wednesday.

So it could go to the floor as early as Friday, although they'd have to have an agreement from kind of all senators uh in order to move that quickly.

So, you know, we'll just see how how fast they can do it.

Um moving on, I know we've talked a good bit about the 21st century Road to Housing Act.

Um, the Senate is expected to vote this week on an updated version of the bill.

Um we still have not seen what is in it.

So it's unclear if House leadership or the White House supports the Senate's latest version of the housing reform package.

But um, what we have heard in just press reports is that it retains much of the House past framework, including provisions aimed at limiting purchases of single family homes by large institutional investors, while reincorporating several Senate housing priorities that were omitted from the House bill.

Again, we're hearing it could come to the Senate floor this week, but we just haven't seen um specific details.

And it sounds like the House has not seen uh bill text yet either.

Um I can turn it over to you, John, um to talk just a little bit about the um Iran deal as well.

Yeah, happy to do that.

Uh, I'm just going to take a quick step back to the reconciliation 2.0/reconciliation 3.0 conversation.

Um, the legislative calendar's lack of days over the next couple months is going to be really what's going to slow down that.

There are several provisions or several pieces of legislation that need to be reauthorized by Congress that are not going to be seeing floor time, including the farm bill most likely, the service transportation bill.

There's WIOR reauthorization that's out there floating that would likely need to be included in any sort of um CR.

So the lack of time that both the House and the Senate have, while they're both in DC over the next couple months is really going to be a limiting factor in pulling together another large reconciliation package.

Um the president's pushes during the reconciliation 2.0 uh fight over the ballroom and the DOJ uh government weaponization fund is also really poisoned the well on trying to pull together another legislative package where Republicans can really agree on in their slim majority.

A lot of senators and house members are concerned that the White House would not allow for an easy package to get some clear wins before the midterm elections.

So engaging another reconciliation bill without any really clear policy goals is just really something they're not willing to take on with the very limited floor time that they have outside of this as well, was of course the 1.5 trillion dollar uh defense request that the president made.

Um, 1.15 trillion dollars of that is from the discretionary accounts from the defense appropriations bill, which is having some difficulty in the Senate causing this appropriations process uh muck-up that uh Emily alluded to.

Um so there's a lot of things that are kind of moving that are all preventing uh a reconciliation 3.0 package.

This, of course, is part and parcel with the Iran deal, um, which uh I'm sure that you heard, but President Trump announced on Sunday that the United States and Iran reached a framework agreement to end the war or allow for a 60-day ceasefire, um, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and extend the ceasefire that is held since April.

Um, this is really being seen more as a table of contents than a formal MOU because it has not yet been formally agreed to.

Um, so we'll see what they come up with or what they agreed to uh on Friday today in an interview um uh with President, not an interview in and during the bilateral agreement conversation with President Macron of France, uh President Trump said that uh the framework agreement would be released on Friday, which is of course after the markets close and before the weekend.

Under the framework, which has been described only in the press, um, two sides will use a 60-day ceasefire period to negotiate a broader and more comprehensive agreement with the future of Iran's nuclear program to be addressed in the upcoming talks.

President Trump uh maintained that Iran cannot be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon, um, but several developments are expected to follow the signing, including opening of the strait for mine removal and an end to the sporadic attacks and the breaks in the ceasefire between the two countries.

Um I think it's safe to say that a lot of uncertainty remains on whether or not this framework agreement can hold.

Uh, Iran has made an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanon, a condition of the deal.

But Israel Israeli officials have said that they intend to keep troops in southern Lebanon definitely, and the fighting there has continued.

Um Capitol Hill, Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Thune and Senator Graham have signaled that any final nuclear agreement would be subject to congressional review and a vote.

Uh, it's notable because this is what some this is something that uh the President Obama was able to avoid with the signing of the JCPOA, because it wasn't a formal treaty, it was a bilateral agreement.

So uh it's we'll see how it plays in Capitol Hill and of course how it'll play into funding conversations on the defense department, um, as many of the stockpiles uh that the United States used in the war against Iran have been largely depleted.

Uh, but happy to take any questions on those items or other items that um maybe on your mind.

Thank you very much for that update.

Both of you um supervisor fortune out of asked questions, comments.

I appreciate the update.

Um, I don't have any questions at this time.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Uh, I just have a couple clarifying questions.

So when um you talk about the passage of the 70 billion dollar reconciliation for ICE and CBP.

Um that was you said 214 to 212 was the House vote along party lines.

Was uh this did not include the member from Congressional District 14, right?

The Eric Swalwell seat.

That's correct.

It's still vacant.

Okay.

So it could have been 214 to 213, had that seat been filled.

Um, but I guess that's a very close situation.

And then in terms of um, I I guess we keep hearing that there's been an agreement in place off and on uh in reaching resolution on the Iran war, but at what point uh will Congress have to deal with the fact that the president may need more funding for the war.

If things don't go the way he wants, especially since the agreement is basically an outline and a table of contents.

Um, I'm happy to take a first stab at that answer.

I think that the likelihood that hostilities resume in the same way that they did in April are pretty low.

Um, and Trump does not really seem interested in escalating.

Tehran doesn't really seem interested in escalating beyond the hostilities that took place uh in the first couple of months of the war.

Um it's just a matter of trying to find that appropriate off ramp to formally settle hostilities between the United States and Iran.

The conversation about the funding question is already a live one because Defense Department racked up a pretty significant bill in those first few months.

And then how they are going to replenish the munitions and some of the aircraft that were used during those hostilities.

In terms of continuing the war, there really isn't a conversation about that at this time.

It doesn't really seem like that we're going to be sending ground troops in any anytime soon or resuming a bombing campaign, similar to what we saw a couple of months ago.

So I don't, I'm not sure if the funding conversation would be necessarily similar to what we saw in Iraq with an OCO account, which is a separate pot of money that was used for the war.

I think it's more just about how we're going to replenish what was expended during the first couple of months.

Emily, I'm not sure if you're hearing anything different on the appropriation side.

Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things, one of the one of the reasons President Trump and the admin was pushing a third reconciliation bill was for additional funding for the Defense Department to deal with this.

Um, you know, we do have, you know, we did move troops over to the Middle East.

Uh, you know, um, so at some point, I think they're probably will seek um additional funding, but my sense is it could just come through uh either the regular appropriations process or if they need to put some additional funding like a supplemental, um, I think you know, we'll cross that bridge.

But at this time, the admin, you know, hasn't hasn't said there is an urgent need yet, but you know, that that's that request could come, but um I don't think Congress has received that yet.

Yeah, so just to put a little bit of a detail on that.

When the administration requests additional funding, they do that typically through the Office of Management and Budget with a formal request detailing what is needed to fill certain funding gaps, and that document has not been transmitted either from DOD or from OMB.

Okay.

Essentially, it could be through what I'm hearing a normal course of operations to fund the former Department of Defense, now the Department of War, in terms of um replenishing whatever needs are um associated with this conflict.

It could, I mean, until we hear otherwise, I guess, you know, to John's, until we see a supplemental or a request from the administration.

Um, Congress has no reason to act outside of outside of the normal FY27 parameters.

Thank you.

This is very helpful.

Appreciate both responses.

Um, do we have any public comments on our federal legislative update?

There are no comments on the federal legislative update.

Thank you, Emily and John.

Um, let's go to our state legislative update from Fullman Strategies.

Good afternoon, Supervisors Amy Costa with Fullman Strategies.

We have a big day here in Sacramento today, June 15th marks the constitutional deadline for the legislature to pass a budget bill for budget year 26-27.

In the absence of that, they don't get paid.

Um, and so already the Senate uh budget committee met earlier today.

The assembly budget committee meet is meeting as we speak, and both houses are scheduled to go uh to the floors to vote on what's considered the legislative budget package, uh, which is an AB 109, which is the main budget bill.

Uh, of course, this doesn't reflect the final budget deal.

Um, we expect uh legislative leadership to work and negotiate with a governor uh in the coming weeks um to reach a final deal prior to the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

Um last week we sent you our notes on the legislative budget deal after Assembly and senate leaders announced it.

Um I would note a couple of things that are interesting.

The legislative budget does include the three revenue sources proposed by the administration during the May revise.

That is a cap on net operating loss for corporations, extension of a federally compliant managed care organization tax.

And then lastly, a sales tax on digital software sales.

In addition to these revenue sources, the legislative plan actually assumes $15 billion higher in revenues than what the administration had proposed at May revise in fiscal year 25-26.

The legislative plan delays many of the administration's proposed cuts in health and human services, and it pushes many of those until 2027.

In part, we think this is attributable to the fact that revenues are coming in above projection compared to the May revise.

And there's a lot of hopes for significant initial public offerings in the tech and AI sector, as we recently saw with the SpaceX IPO.

The legislative plan still does include a structural deficit of $9.7 billion, but out in fiscal year 2930.

But of course, should revenues not perform better, it would compound the issues that they face in 27-28 with some of the delays.

As I noted, we gave you a full summary on Friday, and we'll include that again in our PAL notes for today.

Also this week, uh the county's sponsored measure SB 1400, will be heard in assembly local government this Wednesday at 1 30 p.m.

So we will represent the county there.

But so far, no major concerns from the chair for committee staff on the measure.

As I noted in our budget recap, California state income tax revenues per May came in slightly stronger than what was projected in the governor's May revise estimate.

It came in about 949 million above.

And this is largely due to some strong gains in personal income tax withholding.

However, we should note that much of that was offset by some unexpected high tax refunds that came through in April.

And the legislature and the LAO, I think remain a lot more optimistic than the administration did, at least at May revise about some of these projections.

And the legislature's plan, they note that the LAO had projected almost $7 billion more in 25-26.

And as I noted, the legislature enacted $5 billion versus the $7 billion.

So today is also not only the constitutional deadline, but it's another important tax day with estimated tax payment deadline for high-income Californians.

As we noted, obviously, you know, there's a lot happening geopolitically that could impact the stock market, but people are still hoping there may be some other initial public offerings that could help.

Another interesting deadline that's coming up, June is a busy month for us, is that the legislature has until June 25th to place or remove measures from the November third ballot.

Sometimes they will negotiate these and we'll see something else come out of this process.

So in our um in our PAL notes, we will send an update on the measures that are already placed on the November ballot, as well as some that are pending that could be placed on the ballot.

But certainly seems like it could be a pretty busy ballot, depending on how that's dispensed with.

With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for that update.

Supervisor, questions or comments.

Thank you, Amy.

There is a lot of great information in your memo.

Maybe just a couple clarifying questions.

So the memo says that the legislative plan on the budget proposes a constitutional amendment that would require voter approval to increase the amount that can be placed in the rainy day fund.

Is that a measure going to the ballot this November?

I think supervisor.

Yeah, they uh they uh I think the idea is it would go in November, and I would say this is has to do with the mini proposition two, which has the state's rainy day fund, and there's always been a question about there's a minimum, but I think what they'd like to do is make sure that they can go above that minimum and put more in the reserve.

And the legislature's talked about this a couple times over the years.

Um, and so they're putting it forward again for voter consideration.

It's a constitutional amendment, so it would require voter approval.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then on the revenue side, um, I guess this is good news to see that the package also provides um for a policy framework next year for the fair share for big corporations, um, so that those corporations who have employees enrolled in taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal versus uh employer-sponsored health coverage could be paying their fair share.

So that's good.

Um I'm sure you're already looking into this, but just want to ask for the record the 250 million dollars for our public hospital system.

What's um what's the process for figuring out that allocation?

Yeah, we were very lucky in that we had two great things come out of this package, which is the help for public hospitals as you referenced supervisor as well as funding for indigent care.

Umfortunately, we don't have many of the trailer bills in print quite yet, um, which would get into those details about how those funds would be allocated.

Um, they're simply right now the only bills in print are actually the budget bill and principle AB 109 and the revenue measures that you've mentioned.

Um, and it's why actually some of them went into print quite late.

Um, the assembly is not going to have their floor session until about 7 p.m.

Um, but we do expect to see some of the details in the trailer bills come into print in the coming days as they begin their negotiations with the administration.

Okay.

Um, as I understand it, there have been various percentages based on population or based on need.

I don't know where Alameda County and AHS fits within that spectrum, but I do know that there may be some hospital systems where they were able to pass revenue measures somewhere maybe they didn't, and I don't know how many other hospital systems are facing uh deficits or reductions in force like ours is, but I do hope that we'll be able to get as much as possible from that allocation.

Um then it looks like there's also good news on the health front in terms of um supporting uh the PPS reimbursements, uh which will help our clinics.

I know we were looking at that during our budget deliberation so far, so that looks like good news.

Um, and also good news in terms of rejecting the proposal that mobile crisis is a county optional benefit.

So that seems like good news for our CAT team and others.

Okay, those are all the questions I have this uh at this moment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um just uh some background on the distressed hospital um funding.

Um Alameda County will actually St.

Rose received, I think 17 million dollars in distressed hospital loans, which there's some expectation that that loan would be forgiven through the distressed hospital process, but um most of the funding that was earmarked for distressed hospitals are usually the ones in the Central Valley, not so much in the urban areas where there's a cluster of hospitals.

Usually, if there's only one hospital in the rules setting, um, they're often um more in need in terms of qualifying for those funding.

Um I did have a follow-up question on what you were talking about with respect to the rainy day fund.

So we had or the state had 15 billion dollars higher in revenues than have been projected in the May revise, um, and you had mentioned in prior briefings that uh they had a statutory requirement to uh earmar or move some of that into their rainy day fund.

Do we know how much that uh excess got moved in to the rainy day fund and how much is still part of the budget?

Hold on, just one moment here, and I will give you because uh the state actually has several different reserve funds.

Um they have um what we call the SFEU, which is the uh state fund for economic uncertainty.

That's often what is used for disasters.

Uh, and then we also have um the budget stabilization act as well as you noted.

Um let me just look here really quick.

So in the legislative plan, they are proposing uh 4.5 billion in the special fund for economic uncertainties, 15.1 billion in the rainy day fund, 9.5 billion uh for proposition 98.

So that would be for K-14.

Um, and then um one of the things that they did that they've done in recent years, and I think this is why they want the constitutional amendment, is they put 7.4 billion aside uh in anticipation of 2728 costs.

Um, and so um you can see they have a total reserve package of about 36 and a half billion dollars.

Um, and I think the idea with the constitutional amendment is that 7.4 could then go into the budget stabilization act versus at right now how they have it as a set aside.

Okay.

Um the other uh question I had, we we had a briefing at the Alameda Alliance for Health on Friday with respect to at least the medical uh funding uh for qualified non-citizens because of HR1 and the transitioning to a more restrictive uh scope for Medi-Cal starting in July of next year.

And then I understand that the assembly basically didn't make changes to that, but the Senate rejected it and they wanted to make sure um we were able to maintain full scope Medical coverage for qualified immigrants uh prospectively.

Do you know where that ended up converging?

Yeah, so they actually yeah, as I say they they delayed a lot of the proposed cuts for the um individuals with unsatisfactory immigration status.

They delayed the proposed monthly premiums for UIS population until 2027.

Um they delayed the elimination of dental benefits for that same population, um, they also um delayed uh they um changed the uh medical asset test, and then lastly, they are maintaining full scoop medical for asylums and others who are no longer eligible for federal funding again through 2627, um, and they're trying to work beyond that.

Um, and so uh, you know, as I noted, a lot of what they did was really delay some of these cuts until next year.

So I guess in some ways we kind of had a we're getting a if they if it sticks in the final plan, a little bit of a reprieve for the year.

Um, and I think it will all be very contingent upon you know how revenues do in the next year.

Okay, that's helpful.

That's I think that's good news.

Um, the last question I had related to the food banks.

I know there was $33 million dollars that was allocated to all the food banks statewide, and I know both the assembly and the Senate were looking at almost doubling that amount.

And uh where did that end up landing in terms of funding for the food banks?

Yeah, they did a lot actually uh in the food nutritional space.

Um, they ended up approving $100 million for emergency food banks for Cal food.

They also ended up providing, which this is really great, you know, county admin for CalFresh eligibility.

They ended up providing $185 million above what the governor proposed.

And they also included money.

I know we have liked the diaper service.

They included $16.5 million for diaper banks as well.

Okay.

And then we will know whether this gets adopted today.

Yeah, the legislative plan will be adopted today, probably this evening, and then they'll begin if they haven't already, their negotiations with the administration.

And we should know by the last week of June.

And so we'll know 72 hours prior to July 1.

What's in the final deal?

Okay.

This is helpful.

I'm just trying to um uh reconcile that timeline with our budget process and our budget hearings, which will open on Thursday this week.

And it sounds like we may not have complete information yet at that point.

Okay.

Appreciate it very much.

Uh, do we have any public comments on our state legislative update?

Yes, we do.

Okay.

Hear me screen.

All right.

Kelly Abreu.

All right, thank you.

Um I hope you can hear me.

Um, yeah.

The yeah, uh one of the most uh popular topics of discussion, all these meetings in your board of supervisors is uh SB 1193.

And just this morning, the San Francisco Chronicle did a lengthy, lengthy study of uh this um Alameda County Board of Supervisors discretionary spending under the headline.

Uh, let's see what was the headline.

Alameda supervisors give millions to connected nonprofits each year.

Uh the state may intervene.

So that's a state legislative uh possibility there.

Now, this bill um talks about that a lot, but the chronicle dug deep into the um you know the the uh rewards fund, the fiscal management reward funds, whatever, and it found that um this the supervisor how it was giving three million dollars, which was six hundred thousand dollars a year, if you average it out over his entire term of office, um, six hundred thousand dollars a year to these uh particular nonprofits, and um the supervisor Miley uh during his seven years in that were measured by the chronicle um was giving 120,000 dollars a year.

120,000 versus 600,000, that's a factor of five difference where one supervisor gives five times more out of that fund than the other supervisor.

It was quite striking if you if you for you for the accountants among you.

And um, you know, as as we get this, there are other, you know, irregularities.

For example, the chronicle is only looking at fiscal management rewards.

Um what's happening, for example, with the community development agency?

Did you know that there was another 150,000 last week or two weeks ago that got fed into there to run a political consulting contract to overturn Measure D, but that was kind of hidden.

The chronicle wouldn't have been able to pick it up, wouldn't the public doesn't detect these things because discretionary funds are buried or they're obscured behind a smokescreen of weird accounting.

Thank you.

There are no other speakers on the state legislative update.

Thank you for those comments.

Okay, at this point, we will move to the administration side of PAL.

Uh the report on the language access um request that we the Supervisor Marquez and I had put together back in December.

Um so we'll turn it over to one of you.

Well, good afternoon, Supervisor Tem and Supervisor Fortunalo Bass, staff and community members.

It is a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon.

As you may know, my name is Anisa Basoko Villarrial.

I'm an assistant deputy county administrator, and in my role, I focus on equity, language access, countywide ADA compliance and special projects.

Today I will focus on Alameda County's commitment to equitable language access for all residents, regardless of immigration status or language spoken as requested by you, Supervisor TAM and Supervisor Marquez and the board to present utilization before the end of this fiscal year.

In the next slides, I will review utilization and next steps on how to continue to improve awareness of language access services.

I will first give an overview of language access options, review the current updated agenda language.

We will look at current data utilization, discuss how SB 707 influences how we implement language interpretation and translation requirements, and finally discuss next steps.

Moving over to language access options.

This slide is an illustration of what is currently available on our website as guidance for anyone seeking assistance with access to our programs.

Language access is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through our main contractor global.

We also have over a thousand county bilingual designated employees that receive biweekly pay that can be recalled upon to assist with real-time interpretation.

The public has access to automated translation during our meetings, and this feature does require extra steps to upload documents into Google Translate.

The community also has the option of requesting a live interpreter for a board of supervisors regular meeting or any board of supervisor committee meetings by contacting our clerk of the board as listed here.

And finally, the board of supervisors website can be translated in Spanish, Tagalog, and Chinese by utilizing the translate icon.

In March 2023, your board approved a three-year contract with global language solutions to provide multilingual telephone interpretation services for all county departments.

This contract was extended by two years and is in effect through 2028.

In April 2024, your board also authorized a master contract to provide in-place interpretation and document translation services to be utilized by all county departments and community-based organizations or CBOs.

With contracts within the county, there are eight interpretation contractors, and it is in effect through April 30th of 2027.

As the board has established, Alameda County is committed to providing meaningful access to all individuals requesting services.

All clients have the right to receive services in their preferred language.

Also, as required by your board, all departments are required to provide translation and interpretation immediately to customers with a threshold language in their primary language.

A threshold language is defined as a language spoken by 5% or more of the population serviced within Alameda County.

This consists of Spanish and Cantonese.

This slide serves as a notice that the County of Alameda complies with all state and federal laws and does not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, age, or sex.

Departments such as the Alameda County Social Services Agency must meet the legal obligation of language access requirements to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Dai Mali Alta Torre Bilingual Services Act and other federal and state laws.

Moving on to agenda language.

As you may know, the board of Supervisor agendas have a document attached that includes instructions as to how to view an automated translated transcript in multiple languages by utilizing worldly.

An individual can select their preferred language from the drop-down menu.

In addition, we have been working with the county ITD to explore options that allow for real-time transcripts utilizing Zoom and Teams.

We have done a soft launch of this feature, and more information will be forthcoming.

Also, if a community member prefers a live interpreter, they may contact the clerk of the board 72 hours in advance of any meeting by emailing or calling.

This information has been translated in 10 different languages, and these languages were originally selected based on our threshold languages and a point in time data pool.

The languages include Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Hindi, Khmer, Korean, Punjabi, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

This slide is a screenshot of the global contract dashboard.

I'm sharing it as an illustration of how staff can easily access interpreter services.

If a community member enters our offices and requires an interpreter, our staff can request interpretation by telephone, by video, or by scheduling a call ahead of time.

Staff can also request on-site interpretation by filling out a form with the specifics of their request.

In addition, documents can easily be translated by uploading the document and making a request for translation.

Within the next month, we will be scheduling a training for county employees on how to utilize the service.

We intend the training to be a refresher for staff that are already using the service and as an intro for staff that are either new or not familiar with this service.

Training information will be forthcoming.

Alameda County, as mentioned earlier, employs over a thousand bilingual certified employees that are certified in 23 different languages.

The graph illustrates the breakdown by department.

You will note that the Social Services Agency has 399 individuals, and Alameda County Health has 271 and are the two departments that employees are most certified bilingual employees.

The table on the right lists the top 10 languages that employees are certified in.

The top three languages that bilingual employees are certified in are in Spanish at 646, Cantonese at 99, and Vietnamese with 55 employees.

We also have approximately 100 employees that are certified in multilanguages, such as both Cantonese and Mandarin, though not listed here.

This list is an unduplicated number of certified employees.

This slide illustrates countywide utilization of global services from June 2025 to May 2026.

During this time frame, over 100 languages were utilized for a total of 2,360 725 minutes, and for a total of 175,477 calls.

The table on the right indicates the top 20 languages that were most utilized during this time frame, with Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin being the top three most utilized languages.

This slide illustrates usage broken down by month.

You will note that audio is the most used method.

With video and scheduled meetings listed as assignments are used very minimally.

Average connect times for audio is 11 seconds and 12 seconds for videos.

Moving on to SB 707, language interpretation and translation requirements.

As you may recall, I recently presented at a work session regarding SB 707.

As mentioned, there are new language interpretation and translation requirements as of July 1, 2026 as listed on this slide.

The county must designate areas within the board chamber for individuals providing and receiving interpretation services.

If requested, we must facilitate connections to outside interpretation services and support the use of personal devices such as phones or headsets.

In addition, we must activate automatic captioning function, including in the two-way audiovisual platforms such as Zooms and Teams.

And you may have noticed we did a soft launch of the captioning function for testing purposes.

We will comply as of July 1.

To close, here are a few of our next steps.

As indicated earlier, while we have over a thousand employees that are certified bilingual, we do not have the capacity nor ability to cover all languages that have been requested.

We will comply with and are implementing the changes required by SB 707 as previously presented to the Board of Supervisors.

We encourage you to support the Board of Supervisors Agenda Number 39 that is before your board for approval tomorrow.

We are in the process of creating a public service announcement that will be translated into multiple languages on how to participate in board meetings.

And finally, we will share media information to non-traditional news outlets.

Unless there are any questions from the board, this concludes my presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation.

Supervisor Porto Navas questions or comments.

It's very useful information.

I appreciate it.

Two questions.

So first is a clarification.

The average connect time on page 12.

I assume this is the time it takes to connect to an interpreter.

Yes.

Okay.

And so that may be somebody uh waiting on the phone or uh in an office, whatnot.

Okay.

Um that's interesting to see.

So 10 uh 10 minutes for most, and then a little bit longer for a few.

Um, and then the other question is pretty straightforward.

Um, at least 10 minutes on it's 11 seconds.

Oh, seconds.

Okay, that's much better then.

The 10 minutes that you were seeing on page 12, that's the length of the call.

So that's uh that the column is a little bit misleading.

So the average length of the call for Spanish calls is 10 minutes, they're connected for 10 minutes.

Um, whereas on the subsequent slide, it calls it the same thing, but that's 11 seconds to connect to the interpreter.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense.

Thank you for the distinction.

Okay, so.

That's great that the time to connect with interpreter is just a matter of seconds, and then the connect time is um based on whatever services people are seeking.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Um, this is really handy.

Is there someplace on the administration the CAO's website that this can live?

I'd like to be able to potentially share it with people who are interested.

Absolutely, we'll be posted, I believe, right after this meeting.

And we can add it to the AC Speaks website, and the dashboard is is updated in real time.

So if we pulled this same information, like right now, it would probably look a little bit different.

But um, we could talk about what point in time each month we would want to put dashboard snapshots up there.

Um, but it yeah, it just evolves, you know, by the day.

Thank you for those questions.

Um, just some observations and also some questions.

So when we put forth the memo, um we felt this was important because almost half, like 47 percent of the residents in the county speak a language other than English at home.

And um you know it while asians comply comprise the larger group because there's about my staff was looking at the data it's about 307,813 persons that speak an Asian language or 19.66% of the residents it's it's a disparate it's it's not a little bit like Spanish where there's like maybe a nuances or dialogues I think Chinese Tagala Vietnamese and Korean are distinctly different even though they're part of the Asian diaspora and um the number of people that speak Spanish at home is about 16.54% or 258,906.

And maybe this is something you can help me understand better.

The Spanish language uh irrespective of whether it's from Spain Mexico or or other Latin countries um is it pretty uh consistently similar they're not as distinct as speaking a different Asian language like Korean or Cantonese okay you are correct in in that Spanish it's very similar dialect it's there's variations of dialect but it's it's not as distinct as an it's not as distinct like Castilian Spanish is not as different as Mexican or okay um so when when I looked at the county's um website uh like if you are speaking you know Cantonese or Spanish or how do we uh make sure that like the navigation to different parts of the website um are in threshold languages we'll pull up um so we have translated and and Amy is going to pull it up now so that you can we have translated it in 10 different languages so that someone who is seeking translation services would be able to read it in their language oh she's pulling it up now so this is our main webpage translate buttons on the top right yeah this is our main web page and um if you go to the translate button on the top you can choose your language here and it will automatically translate the page um and then uh so that that that's for the web page in general and then if you come to the board meetings down here um and if someone's looking to participate in the board meeting they can sorry the mouse is not very responsive um they can choose a uh a limited more limited number of languages but these are our threshold languages in the county to translate this page um that gives participation instructions and then if they're wanting to participate in a board meeting specifically um they would after translating the page they could navigate here to the uh teleconferencing guidelines and we have this second page that has the instructions to participate in the um in the meeting or to request interpretation services in 10 different languages okay uh so I I I know when we um talked about it earlier, particularly in social service uh a lot of the, you know, like Calfresh uh redeterminations that a lot of the flyers are in other languages, right?

But when you go on the website, the links are in English.

So how do you make let them know that you know they can go to something that is in their language in social service example.

In social services it does also have the ability to translate a website in the threshold languages.

Is that for all the departments too or is it just social service and ACLs?

We believe most all of them have them now we would have to confirm that.

Okay.

Can we pull up like public works' website and see like if there's going to be closures and there's she has pulled up social services social services and there's a language tab here that has the threshold languages for the the county.

English simplified is the Chinese.

So we can click on it and it will it actually um alters the reading level of of the web page.

Oh so it doesn't have Chinese then we can check in with them about I this is a pretty fresh website so they could certainly be adding more languages um over time.

And then you're interested in public works.

So it doesn't seem like Public Works has that that's visible.

But certainly it's a feature that ITD can assist departments with adding to their websites for sure.

Okay so that's the plan to make sure all the departments have that capability.

Yeah we are going through an accessibility um process with all of the departments countywide um the first priority was making them accessible for um people with disabilities and but part of that does uh entail looking at it for other types of accessibility as well okay um that's good to know I I know that um some of the community groups had also uh been very interested in this are there public speakers on this item yes there are Julia Dell Julia you may unmute thank you I just want to thank supervisor tam and her team for leadership on uh language access in this issue and appreciate the presentation um and seeing the dashboard and metrics I had a couple questions um I think uh just wondering if the languages I notice it's Google Translate um you know we are a health care service organizations we've always found that oftentimes we've had to modify um because Google Translate isn't accurate in terms of effectiveness so wondering what the process is for review um secondly wondering if there's a plan for if there's an assessment from residents so in terms of benchmarking um really great to see that there's you know um tracking on sort of language compliance how many have received and are able to access through the phone but I guess I'm wondering if um there's an ability then actually to see if the residents actually successfully accessed the programs or the departments um the different uh you know benefit systems so I think that would be important to utilize as a benchmark so you're not just doing language compliance but also language equity uh so uh those are my quick comments but would love to see and um again and and partner if there's ways that the community can help support in this process.

Next we'll go to Kelly.

Thank you um yeah I thought that was very perceptive of the supervisor who asked about the website for the Alameda County Public Works Agency about their translation ability now that speaks to the the the uh dispare not disparity the uh balkanization the Tower of Babel of the websites where uh people think there's a county website and there ain't no county website it's actually several different websites and each agent some agencies very deliberately and very carefully and with very very serious intent they choose to operate a different website with their own IT or their own uh separate infrastructure so that's that's why you're you're never gonna in fact they have their own logos the county doesn't actually if you go to the internet county is not one thing the county is like 10 different things so uh this is the the challenge of the of it's uh it's not a it's not a a bug it's a feature this is how the county wants to operate and then when it comes to the language uh translation things we just heard the 47 percent of the of the county employees speak a different language at home and and so on but we know that uh if people some some of you may know that the county is something like 9,000 employees and we just saw on one of these slides that's something like 1,000 of them are uh certified for language so that makes makes you wonder two possibilities here logically you know one would be that only a small number of them choose to go to work and choose to exercise those language skills and the other most of them the vast majority of county employees are not using their language skills at work formally the because it's only one thousand only 11% not 47% or whatever it is are using it.

And then the other possibility would be that very few county employees live in Alameda County so they don't have these fantastic language skills of various languages that Alameda County residents have.

Thank you there are no other comments.

Thank you um would Anisa or Amy like to respond to some of the comments we received or get some corrections into the record yes if I could um correct uh into the record uh in terms of languages spoken yes there are over a thousand certified uh county employees in different languages but uh county employees only speak uh 23 different languages but if as you noted in the presentation over a hundred different languages were utilized uh or requested over the last year um the 47% I believe supervisor 10 was a number that you put out but it was 40 per 47 percent of the population speaking different language uh not employees I just wanted to clarify that piece and and how about the um some of the comments about um Google translate and modifications and also um looking at ways in which uh we can build in more equity in terms of responses uh from the department using our language tools yes supervisor um in terms of google translate uh we utilize that for if someone would like to upload a document such as the Board of Supervisors agenda they someone could upload that document and have it translated but in terms of actual documentation for any programs or services we utilize our contractors uh to translate those documents um so uh we do not use google translate for those in particular uh and then I also noted that they requested benchmarking and the ability to uh how you know clients are successfully accessing programs um we hear you know that uh recommendation uh in terms of the the actual data that we receive, it's specific to uh requesting interpreter services.

So uh we would have to rely on departments on whether or not um the client has received the programmer services in terms of that data.

Thank you.

And my understanding is that all of the departments except for maybe the library services rely on the county's uh ITD department for creation of their um uh their platforms on their website.

Is that correct?

There might be one other department that also, yeah.

Um, yes, and um I I know that the you know works with those departments to build out the websites to their specifications, um, but certainly we could talk about what the consistency needs to be across all departments so that uh as residents go from one department to the other, they're looking in the same place for translation services and things like that.

So that's certainly something we can add to our our list.

Is there a way uh uh I can't remember if that's the case.

If we go on the county's website, like ACGov, um can we go to all the departments within the county?

Yes, you can.

Okay.

There is the list of all county departments with along with their websites and links attached.

Okay, thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

So hearing no other public comments on this item, I will go to public comments on items that are not on today's agenda.

There are no comments on non-agendized items.

Thank you.

Thank you everyone for your presentation.

Um hearing nothing going on besides the budget today in Sacramento.

This meeting's adjourned.

Thank you.