Morning, everyone.

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

Today's Tuesday, June 16th.

Will the clerk please call role to establish our quorum?

Supervisor Marquez, excused Supervisor Tim.

Present.

Supervisor Miley, excused Supervisor Fortunato Bas.

President Hubbard?

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

Would you all please rise if you can and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

Pledge of Legians to the United States of America.

As Board of Supervisor remarks, anybody have any remarks to share?

The community?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the next item, which is public comment on closed session items.

Anybody in the room or online wishing to speak on closed session items?

I'll ask the clerk to see.

Do we have anybody?

There are no public comments.

We have no comments on closed session items.

We will now recess into closed session and we will come out later and finish the rest of our meeting.

We're now in recess.

Good afternoon, everyone.

I would like to reconvene from our closed session, and I'll ask the clerk to please call the role to re-establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez.

Present.

Supervisor Tim.

Present.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunatabas.

President Hubbard?

Present.

We have quorum.

County Council, do we have anything to report out from closed session?

No, Mr.

President.

We have no reportable action taken in closed session this morning.

Thank you very much.

We will proceed with our 1 p.m.

set matters, noting that it is past 1 p.m.

We are running behind.

We have a lot of work to do today.

And if you'll bear with me, please, I have quite a bit to read about this proclamation and commendation that I'm going to present.

And I'm going to be recognizing Phil Long of Longevity Wines, who comes from my district.

And I will read a little bit about him and also about Juneteenth.

Today we proudly recognize Juneteenth National Independence Day, a day that commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas finally learned of their freedom more than two years after the emancipation proclamation was issued.

Juneteenth is both a celebration of freedom and an opportunity to reflect on our nation's history and the ongoing pursuit of equality, opportunity, and justice.

For more than 160 years, black Americans have made extraordinary contributions to every aspect of American life, including business, education, science, government, agriculture, the arts, and civic leadership.

Here in Alameda County, Black residents have played a vital role in shaping our communities.

From the great migration through today, black leaders, entrepreneurs, advocates, educators, artists, and public servants have helped build the vibrant and diverse country county we know today.

Juneteenth is also a time to recognize those who continue that legacy of leadership, innovation, and community impact.

Today, I would like to honor Phil Long, whose accomplishments exemplify entrepreneurship, perseverance, and service.

As the owner and winemaker of longevity wines, Phil Long has helped elevate the reputation of Livermore Valley Wine Country while building a successful family-owned business rooted in hospitality, community, and excellence.

His leadership extends well beyond winemaking.

Since 2020, Phil has served as president of the Association of African American Vintners, helping increase diversity and opportunity within the wine industry while supporting the next generation of black winemakers and entrepreneurs.

Through leadership, mentorship, and advocacy, Phil has helped create pathways for others to succeed in an industry where African Americans have historically been underrepresented.

His work demonstrates how leadership can create opportunities, not only for individuals, but for entire communities.

I would also like to take a moment to highlight a special exhibition currently here on display at the Alameda County Administration Building, presented by the Alameda County Arts Commission.

The exhibition inspiring inspiration and improvisation echoes of Gee's Bend Quilters.

Features 25 quilts created by members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland.

The Guild is dedicated to preserving and continuing the rich traditions of African American quilting through creativity, education, and community engagement.

Their work celebrates an important cultural legacy while showcasing the talent, artistry, and stories of Black communities.

The exhibition is located on the fifth floor next to the board chambers and will remain on display through July 30th.

I encourage everyone to take the opportunity to visit and experience this remarkable collection.

As we celebrate Juneteenth, we honor the resilience, achievements, and contributions of Black Americans throughout history.

We also recognize individuals and organizations such as Phil Long and the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, whose work continues to enrich our communities, persevere culture, inspire future generations, and strengthen Alameda County.

Congratulations, Phil, and thank you for your leadership, your vision, and your commitment to building stronger communities.

And thank you all and happy Juneteenth, everyone.

Let's go in order of district.

District 2 can go next.

Thank you, President Howbert.

Welcome everyone.

We apologize for the delay, but so glad that all of you are here with us.

I'm going to say this right, the motivator spooner.

Our board is proud to recognize Juneteenth, National Independence Day in Alameda County, and to honor a leader whose work has helped bring this day to the forefront of our county government.

Comarlo Marlowe, the motivator spooner is a Bay Area author, motivational speaker, labor leader, and community advocate.

He has been a powerful voice in our labor community through his work with Teamsters Local 70 and the Alameda County Labor Council.

Through his leadership and grassroots organizing, Comarlo was instrumental in making Juneteenth an officially recognized paid holiday for Alameda County.

Let's clap that up.

Thank you for your advocacy and efforts and just happy to have your family here, your children, as well as representatives from Teamsters Local 70.

Congratulations and thank you.

After we acknowledge everyone, we'll have you come up individually to receive your accommodation.

But congratulations and thank you for everything you do on behalf of our community.

Supervisor Tam.

Oh Miley.

Comments?

Well, on Juneteenth, I definitely would like to state that on June to recognize Juneteenth.

On June 30th, we Supervisor Marquez and I chair the uh ad hoc committee on reparations.

So on June 30th at 1 30, said item 1 30 on June 30th.

Um our Juneteenth acknowledgement is that the Reparations Commission will be presenting uh their report and findings and recommendations to the board supervisors.

It's uh it's a real big deal, so we'd encourage everyone to come out on June 30th here to the board chambers at 1 30 uh to hear their recommendations to provide comment because they've spent more than a year working on this and have held many many listening sessions, so it'll be a um a tremendous day and a significant accomplishment of the board will accept of the recommendations of that day, and then we'll be preparing for our uh next steps relative to operationalizing um hopefully all of the recommendations, but many of the recommendations over the course of time in the near future.

So that's my Juneteenth acknowledgement.

Thank you, Supervisor Miley, Supervisor Fortunata Bass.

Thank you.

Um it's an honor for myself and my office to join the full board of supervisors in recognizing Juneteenth National Day of Independence and commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

Uh, we all know through the ongoing work that we are doing, including through the Reparations Commission, that true freedom and liberation is still a goal that we have to fight for.

Um, I am really happy to honor Berkeley Juneteenth Festival.

Um, I hope some of you have already participated in the festival, and if not, you can do so this Sunday.

The Berkeley Juneteenth Festival was founded in 1986 through the vision, dedication, and leadership of community members who sought to promote community pride, celebrate African American culture, and bring together South Berkeley residents and businesses.

In 1987, the first Juneteenth, Berkeley Street Festival was successfully held, establishing a tradition that has continued to enrich the community for nearly 40 years.

And I do want to make sure that all of you know that you are very welcome to join us this Sunday, June 21st, from 11 to 7 in Berkeley at Adeline and Alcatraz.

It is an opportunity to experience culture and celebrate diversity with music, food, vendors, information.

My uh staff is going to be out there tabling and engaging folks.

Um, and it's also an opportunity to do uh what the board has uh described in the commendation and proclamation that we are issuing today.

Uh, we do want to make sure that not only do we recognize uh Juneteenth, but that we also continue to engage in education, dialogue, community service, and cultural observance to continue working towards a more just and inclusive society.

And um, a representative from Berkeley Juneteenth is on Zoom when it's enough it's appropriate to hear from our honorees, and that will be board member Duane Desjua, who's the political liaison for the Berkeley Juneteenth celebration and festival.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Fortunatess.

Um, now we'll hear from uh our recipients.

Is Phil Long online?

I'd like to recognize Phil Long.

Welcome, Phil.

Okay, how about now?

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, yes.

Welcome.

Thank you, Mr.

Hubbard.

How are you?

Um I just I just want to thank everyone for um their consideration and uh helping celebrate this um upcoming Juneteenth.

It's obviously a special day um for all of us for all the African American communities and for as it should be all communities.

You know what it signifies is a great step in our freedom and as an African American winemaker here in the Livermore Valley, you know we're very um we only make up we are up to one percent of the entire industry.

And that is double because we were only at a half a percent for a very long time.

But I don't want to take all the time I just want to say thank you.

I really appreciate the um uh the consideration and look forward to seeing you all soon Phil I'll make sure I get you this commendation um maybe we'll meet at your winery some afternoon let's do that I I look forward to it I'm actually in Maryland right now but uh what when I'm there we should we should definitely meet I love that thank you supervisor Marquez let's invite Marlo Spooner up to come say a few words.

And you're gonna explain the motivator okay would I be able to ask for a recess um we're having some technical issues with the um sound system so because of technical difficulties do you want us to pause or take a recess?

I recess with you we'll take a recess for a few minutes to resolve our technical difficulties.

I make sure you're heard welcome back everyone welcome back we're going to reconvene from close uh recess and I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll to reestablish our quorum supervisor Marquez present supervisor Tam excused supervisor Miley Supervisor Fortunates President Hubbard present we have a quorum we will now invite again Marlo Spooner to come say a few words about his recognition of Juneteenth.

All right thank you appreciate it um can you guys hear me all right great um I won't go into great detail about how uh the idea came up but I stopped there long enough to say my father was born in Texas in 1929 and I had a conversation with him back in 2020 uh about the holiday and uh he told me about his father his grandfather how you know they were alive but when things happened and how the holiday wasn't as celebrated as much now as it was then and uh he was 82 at the time and I told him I'm gonna try to see if perhaps I can you know do something small a small gesture for him and and you know in the community and uh he passed away in uh last year October on his 86th birthday but he was here long enough to see that you know the county had came together and uh decided to uh you know put this forth so he was happy to to hear about it um but I do want to if it's okay for me to do some thank thank you because um I want to I do want to thank the county for recognizing me, but not only me um I want to thank you guys who recognize the community because though I came forth with the idea um I needed a community support.

And so I think the community deserve uh, you know, a thank you for for bagging the idea um as well as our community leaders uh when it comes to to you all, um the the the our uh labor unions and uh the community-based organizations because everybody when they heard the idea said that this is one that we want to support um collectively.

Um, I do want to uh thank uh uh supervisor Miley.

I know that he uh co-sponsored it, if I remember correctly, with um with my friend who I came to in 2020, uh the late great supervisor Richard Valle uh with the idea.

And what he said to me was, this is Richard Vaya.

He said, Um, Marlowe, this is a great idea, but you're gonna have to get the community support behind you.

You gotta do some ground work, dude.

And that's that was his work, dude.

And so that's what I done.

And so um, once again, I don't want to take up a lot of time.

I do want to thank you all, and I want the layman and woman that's out there thinking about getting involved in the community who don't participate civic in its civic duties.

I would say that you, if you're watching this today, that you can have your voice heard and you can and incite uh change in our community.

Um, and Alameda County, I want to thank you guys as we are trailbladers, right?

I believe we're the second county in uh the country, maybe if I remember correctly, to do that.

So uh thank you guys.

I'm gonna thank my family, and I appreciate it.

Okay, our next item is item on.

Oh, we have online, yes, Berkeley folks.

Yes, I believe uh Dwayne DeJois from uh the Berkeley Juneteenth Celebration Festival is online.

And thanks so much for your patience, hello.

You may begin your conversation.

We can hear you.

Oh, okay, great.

Supervisor Mickey, thank you very, very much for the your uh your kind words about the festival.

On behalf of the board, the entire board, I am proud and pleased to accept the recognition this proclamation represents.

We appreciate the broad support the board has given to the Berkeley Juneteenth celebration festival over the years, and we look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming festival where you'll see the rich cultural variety of the South Berkeley community enjoys on full display this year again as Supervisor Nikki mentioned June 21st, 11 to 7 p.m.

Everything you could imagine that's wonderful about South Berkeley will be on display there.

We hope that to see you there.

Understanding that you guys have a lot of work to do, I'll move on, but thank you very much for this recognition.

Good day.

Thank you.

That concludes item 65.

Item 66, the Supervisor Miley proclaiming May 19th, 2026 as Alameda County Casa Day.

Supervisor Miley.

Thank you, President Halbert.

So I have a proclamation signed by all of the supervisors.

And it reads as follows.

Court appointed special advocates.

CASA of Alameda County is a public private organization dedicated to recruiting, training, and supporting volunteers who advocate for children, youth, and young adults in the foster care system who have experienced abuse or neglect.

Casa volunteers are appointed by the Alameda County Superior Court, juvenile justice.

Excuse me, the juvenile division judges, to provide consistent one-on-one advocacy, ensuring that each child's voice is heard in their interests and needs, are represented in court and in the community.

Whereas youth and foster care often face significant challenges, including trauma, instability, and disruptions in relationships, living environments, and education.

They also benefit greatly from the support of a caring, committed adult advocate.

Alameda County CASA works to improve outcomes for young people by helping them achieve safe, stable, and permanent homes while supporting their overall well-being.

Alameda Casa conducts community-wide efforts to raise awareness, critical resources, and financial contributions to expand advocacy services for youth in need.

Thereby multiplying support for children served by CASA.

So the Board of Supervisors of this state is hereby proclaimed this was back in May.

May 19th is Alameda County Casa Day.

It encourages all of our residents and everyone to remember the great work admission of CASA through volunteerism, advocacy, and philanthropy in our county.

And I think accepting the proclamation will be Jenny Ring.

I think Jenny.

I'm the current executive director of Alameda County Court appointed special advocates.

And I'd first like to say, as a 22-year employee of Alameda County, both for the district attorney's office and now with Alameda County Health, I appreciate the support of the Board of Supervisors for all the employees of Alameda County, its constituents, families, and in particular the children and youth in our juvenile dependency and justice systems, who now are provided with advocates for the time that they're in care.

And next year, 2027 will be CASA's 40th anniversary in this county.

Again, acknowledging the support of the governments who have supported all of the work of our local volunteers and also the employees of the county.

Thank you very much for the proclamation, Supervisor Miley, and we are very excited to receive this today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll come down and take a photo with you, and you can receive the proclamation.

Do we have any public comment on item sixty-five or sixty-six?

There are no public comments.

Then we have concluded item 66.

Thank you very much.

The next item is a general administration item, item sixty-seven, a human resource services asking us to approve some recommendations basically conducting a public hearing.

I will invite our department head of human resources.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Supervisors.

Margarita Zamora Human Resource Services Director.

I'm sorry.

Um, do we need to make a motion to open this?

I'll make a motion that we would vote in the public hearing.

I'll second.

Yes.

So we need to vote.

Supervisor Marquez.

Hi.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Mylan.

Supervisor Fortunatas.

Hi.

President Hubert.

And I appreciate our court keeping us.

You know, on right.

You're doing the right thing.

Because it's over there distracted.

She's on our JOV.

Thank you so much.

Before I begin, I do want to thank my HRS staff who contributed to this report, including Sam G, who's the HRS Human Resource Services Division Manager, Amy Ho, Labor Relations Analyst, and Connie Arana, who's our business analyst.

There we go.

Next slide.

I will be providing a brief overview of Assembly Bill 2561.

We will be looking at our workforce, some barriers to our recruitment efficiencies that we have implemented in our progress in filling our vacancies.

We'll also review our vacancy data by bargaining unit, some recruitment opportunities, and then we'll turn it over to our employee organizations who may be present who may want to speak with your board.

Next slide.

So as a background, Assembly Bill 2561 created a new obligation for public agencies to publicly address the status of their vacancies.

The basis of this new requirement was a determination that vacancies in local government pose a problem in the public sector, placing a heavier workload on staff, resulting overtime, and potentially impact public service delivery.

Some key provisions of the bill, it requires public agencies to present the status of their budgeted full-time vacancies each fiscal year before your board adopts the final budget.

The presentation must also address recruitment and retention efforts and discuss changes that can improve hiring.

The counties recognize employee organizations also have an opportunity to present to your board.

And there's an also a requirement to the employee organizations have an ability to request additional specific information when vacancy data of the full-time positions meet or exceed 20%.

What is our workforce?

Next slide, please.

So I'm very proud uh that the County of Alameda workforce is reflective of the community we serve.

It really demonstrates, I believe, our ongoing commitment to the equity and hiring.

Interesting in reviewing prior years' demographic data.

So for example, if we're looking at the graph above, uh 25% of our population in Alameda County, our county of Alameda employees are at 25%, and our population is 29.

For our Asian community, it's 34%, our employee rate is 25%.

For our Hispanic Latino community is 22%, our employees are at 21%, our uh black African American in the community are 11%, our employee population is 23%, two or more races of six, and our six percent in our county population is five percent.

Native Hawaiian other Pacific Islanders at 1%, same as our employees, and American Indian and Alaska Native are less than 1% both.

Next slide.

As of May 1st, 2026, we have a total of 7,205 full-time positions and classifications represented by our 10 employee organizations through 20 separate county MOUs.

Each MOU covers between one to nine bargaining units, totaling 41 distinct bargaining units in our county, County of Alameda.

We also have an additional 480 full-time budget positions that are not represented by an employee organization for a total of 7,685 represented and unrepresented full-time budgeted positions.

A note that the total count does exclude less than full-time positions, our services as needed needed, our TAP, retired and nuitants, election workers.

So looking at barriers in the county's hiring process, next slide.

We continue to identify opportunities to improve the county's recruitment and appointment processes.

And these include needed updates to the county charter, administrative code, our civil service rules.

These specific actions that the county continues to explore, we believe will help our overall recruitment and retention.

We also need to evaluate and expand the and maximize the use of automated systems, using automated platforms and take advantage again, automated progresses to update our internal recruitment and our even our promotional processes.

This will allow our job seekers to find jobs that they may qualify.

So we're looking at these areas as opportunities to continue to fill those critical vacancies throughout the county.

We also need to continue to invest in marketing the county as an employer of choice.

It cannot be a one and done.

We need to continue this effort.

Next slide.

HRS in partnership with our county agency department heads and our HR leadership throughout the county.

We implemented 47 changes that were part of the recruitment enhancement project, 13 individual initiatives.

It's taken us three years, but the results are overwhelmingly positive.

Most significant and impactful include those that are highlighted in blue, initiative number one, which is the reengineering the recruitment and selection process.

Number three, increase more promotional opportunities to employees.

Number six, improved recruitment planning and shortening the application process.

Number nine, establishing an employee referral incentive program, which is incredibly popular.

Number 11, make changes to the county charter, administrative code, and the civil service commission practice.

And number 13, we expanded the and implement and expanded the county the recruitment marketing and advertising.

Other 2025 highlights, we completed 262 exams.

We had over 5.2 million page views on our job posting compared to 3.5 million in 2024.

We participated in nine job fairs, previously eight the prior year.

We received 21,948 employment applications, a 28.3 increase over 2024, and we reduced the number of the average number of days from application deadline to creating an eligibility list to 53.36 days.

Previously it was 56.44 days.

Receiving the application, reviewing the application, conducting the exam, tallying up the results, submitting it to the Civil Service Commission for their approval and creation of eligibility lists.

And our vacancies.

Where are we?

As of May 1st, compared to last year, we had a 1% increase.

It is an increase, improvement, not increase.

It's an improvement.

Improvement is great, 1%, but we'll take it.

We went from 20% to 19%.

We're working hard to fill those critical positions.

We're working hard to fill many of the counties' full-time budgeted positions.

Next and our vacancy data by bargaining unit.

Again, only full-time budgeted positions are included in this data.

This slide lists six of our MOUs and their bargaining units.

The vacancy rates range between 0% for the ACMIA Sheriff Sworn Unit 028 division commander with no vacancies to 29%, the ACMIA Sheriff's Non-Sworn with nine vacancies in Unit 029, the non-sworn sheriff's department managers and supervisors.

The bold UC Unit R51 is the District Attorney Inspectors.

They are at 26% vacancy rate, where 37 filled positions, 13 vacant for a total of 50 full-time positions.

Unit R5 2, which is the DA inspector supervisors, four filled, one vacant, 20% vacancy, unit R515 with ACMIA General Governments, the management analysts, administrative specialists, supervising clerks of 926, full filled positions, 227 unfilled for a vacancy factor of 20%.

Unit R44 is public works management, 14 filled, 5 vacant, 26% vacancy.

Unit R 48, 14 filled, 5 vacant at 26%.

R48 is public defender investigators, unit 029, 9 sworn sheriff's department.

Again, these are the sheriff managers and supervisors.

Next slide.

In this group, we have 10 MOUs representing 13 separate bargaining units.

These show a vacancy rate of 3%, local 21 public defender chapter unit 069, which is a public defender attorneys with three vacant positions.

And each of the bold units, unit 064 is the welfare fraud investigators, unit 013 is a deputy sheriffs, unit 077 is public works civil engineers and unit 016 is a public works engineers, which includes environmental compliance specialists, associated environmental compliance specialists and assistant environmental compliance specialists.

Next slide.

For SCIU, unit 005 is our social workers.

Unit 008 is our mental health specialists, LVNs, licensed vocational nurses, lab assistants, and unit 010 is our clerical unit.

Teamsters is unit 072, that's our deputy probation officer three, and unit 018 is our physicians and dentists.

We continue to look for opportunities to expand our recruitment.

So right now, in addition to continuing to implement the efficiencies discussed earlier, at the top of our list is marketing the county as an employer of choice.

We increased our visibility on social media on job fairs.

This past April, we held our second county only uh job fair.

It was attended by 500 individuals, job seekers, a 35% increase from our first countywide job fair.

We had double the number of concurrence sessions on interviewing, resume writing, uh navigating the civil service, and others with the most popular still meet the recruiter, where our recruiters met with individual staff.

We had more than six individuals, our recruiters giving feedback to job seekers on whether it's on their resume, on how to apply for a county job, how to present themselves in interviews.

We are also preparing to launch this the 10th cohort of our MPO program, which is a partnership with Cal State East Bay, incredibly popular with our employees seeking to enhance their higher education.

We're also offering our employee leadership training programs that bolster our own employee development, and we continue to provide hiring incentives for hard to recruit classifications for Swan Sheriff and forensic behavioral health who work in the jail.

And of course, we have an employee referral incentive program, which has been incredibly successful in hiring 73 employees in hard to recruit classifications.

Thank you so much for this update.

Since the law went to went into effect.

I know that your office has gone through branding and messaging, and I love the consistent branding of our locally grown talent that works for the county.

I think it's three specific individuals, Dr.

Moss, someone from the sheriff's department.

I don't know the other individual, but I think that's been very successful in terms of consistency with branding and the logo and the image.

So if you could speak to that a little bit, and then I have a couple other comments.

So it was a complete overhaul of our website and the marketing with that.

So while budgets are always tight, we try to maximize using social media.

So whether it's LinkedIn or Instagram, we're trying to put the word out there about who we are as a commun as an employer serving our community and making sure again focusing part of the the marketing that we've done is working with each agency department head so that we can really uh focus on them as the department, but still under the county umbrella.

We are one employer, whether you're with the sheriff, whether you're with AC Health, we're one employer and the jobs that are out there that we promote is we are one county where we want to, and we are the employer of choice.

Okay, and then I'm sorry if I missed this, but for the SCAU slide bargaining unit zero zero five with the 25% vacancy rate, what um specific position is that?

005.

Those are our social workers, that's a social worker unit.

Okay, so when we get this presentation next year, is it possible to include?

I want to do a look back on all the positions that have a vacancy rate of 20% or higher to look back to see how long those positions have been vacant, and what specific targeting are we doing to bring those numbers down?

Okay, thank you.

Supervisor Marley.

Thank you, President Hubbard.

Yeah, Supervisor Marquez, I was right on target with some of the stuff I wanted to ask.

So under Assembly Bill 2561, we're required to do this annually.

And this is our second time.

Okay, so I I uh you know, I assume this is um, you know, if the state legislature says it's important, I guess it's important.

Um not everything they ask us to do is important, but this might be so one item is to reduce I think the vacancy rate to under 20%.

Is that a goal or is that just an opportunity for employee marketing units to speak?

I need to understand, is that a goal we're trying to achieve?

Because I think Supervisor Marquez kind of raised a similar question.

I have are we trying to get vacancies under or at 20% or lower?

Is that a goal and the metrics we're trying to achieve?

There's actually no goal in the legislature.

No, I'm not talking about the legislature, talking about us.

Do we need to say that we want to achieve a vacancy rate of 20% or lower as a metrics?

I think that's a policy decision that I would leave to your board and the CAO.

Um my focus is strictly what are we required to provide under the legislation, and the 20% factor, the legislation says that the employee organizations have an opportunity to require uh specific information related to the classifications that are in that bargaining unit that reach the 20% threshold.

It's just a trigger for the employee organizations.

If there's a 20% trigger, but I kind of believe the state legislature and all their infinite wisdom, if they chose 20%, I think maybe the board needs to take this up and um say we want to have a metrics to track, like Supervisor Marquez was saying to track what progress we're making to get to 20% or below with all of our classifications relative to vacancies.

I you know, um, maybe that's more of a discussion we have we need to have, if not today in the future, because I think uh, you know, I kind of feel the same way she feels.

Um we need to see what kind of progress we're making, and if that 20% threshold isn't something we care about because it's some arbitrary number that was thrown out there, then maybe we should achieve.

I mean, maybe we should establish the number that we want to uh have as a metrics.

It's definitely a policy decision.

Okay.

So when you talk about marketing the county as an employer of choice, is it more than just marketing?

Because we can go out and tell people we're the employer of choice, but they might not believe it.

Well, so what do we do?

Why do we measure that that we're an employer of choice?

Well, I think, and I believe, and I just think, I believe, we really are a great employer.

Really?

Yes.

We our benefits are great.

And for the public to not know that we are an amazing employer and not apply for our positions, I think it's the a disuse or it's we're not taking advantage of who we are.

Okay.

All right.

I hope all of our bargaining units feel that way when we when they talk to us that we're doing things to indicate that we're an employer of choice, that we have specific um uh indices that we're that show we're an employee of choice.

Um, because I don't know if uh some of those employees I've heard from morale might be an issue.

Um I'm just gonna say it remote work might be an issue.

Um, I know some employees at their facilities, they have workout facilities.

Other employees at the facilities don't add that.

We we don't offer gym memberships.

I'm just throwing stuff out here.

Um, so I don't know if everybody would consider us an employer of choice.

Obviously, I think we have a pretty good benefit package and salaries, I think, but I think there might be other enhancements that we can be looking at.

I think we're doing a really good job in offering uh voluntary benefits.

An employee can has a cornucopia of options that they can choose during their annual open enrollment, whether it's you know pet insurance or their own individual writing their their wills and you know, attorney uh uh insurance.

We have what about child care?

We used to have child care, we used to offer that.

Do we offer that any more than as a benefit?

We actually still have that.

Um that is something that you know as the generations change, there's uh different needs.

So it's all based on who you are as an employer, where you are as an employee.

Do we ever take a survey of our employer of our employees?

You asked them, what would you consider the top 10 incentives for wanting to work in Alameda County?

Well, funny you should say, because we are looking at a survey.

We have wellness under HRS now, and that's one of the items that we'll be rolling out for our county.

We'd be very curious to know from our employees here in the county.

What would you consider the top five to 10 items that you'd like to see in place, you know?

Yeah, and I know remote work is one of those things.

Uh child care is probably another.

Um, I'm just throwing stuff out there.

Um, yeah.

Then, and then it just gets to the vacancy rate.

I know you championed the fact that we went from 20% to 19%, which is one percent improvement.

But once again, I just think we should have a metrics um to kind of measure whether or not we're improving or not.

Yeah, um, and in like and yeah, we just need to decide what that might be.

Um, so we're just not throwing a report out here uh now that we're really having to do this report annually.

Um, and then I think once again, maybe in some of the classifications, uh, the bargaining units, we might not be as concerned about the 20%, but in others we might be we might be more concerned about wanting to target.

I think survivor Marquez spoke to that.

So I just want to um co-sign uh that particular piece of what she was saying.

Then um the final thing is we have central HR, but we have some agencies and departments that their own HR unit, and there's cohesion in efficiencies, operational efficiencies, and the ability to hire.

So we have some departments that are decentralized that includes General Services Agency, the auditor, Public Works agency, IT and Social Services.

So those five agencies, they do their own recruitment, their exams.

We still promulgate uh and submit the eligibility, work with the Civil Service Commission to promote the eligibility list.

We each department manages the recruitment process based on their own operational need.

HRS doesn't dictate how they manage.

We think there's an opportunity for efficiencies in each of those departments, and that's going to be part of the second phase of our recruitment enhancement project.

Okay, good.

Because I know I've gotten feedback from some agencies and/or departments that they feel, you know, the hiring is um I don't want to say barriers, but it's it's too cumbersome and too too lengthy.

And we do want to make sure we follow everything we need to do, but it's there's just too many um impediments to getting people on board, and obviously, once we get them here, we want to keep them here.

Okay.

And then post if their name is on their and eligibility list, then have the interview process also be timely, because we don't want eligible candidates to be on an eligibility list for months and months and months and nothing happens without communication.

So those are some of the internal processes that we're looking at, whether it's centrally a central agency or with a department.

My last question, and sorry to belabor this, but of a county the size of Alameda County, about 1.7 million people, roughly 10,000 employees, although for this study we're looking at the full time.

Um are there best practices that kind of mirror, you know, that we would mirror with other counties in the country?

The answer is yes.

Okay.

So not necessarily the country, but we look at California.

Um we look at what are, like you say, the best the best practices of each section, each phase of the recruitment and the selection process.

What's worked with other agencies, what programs they're using, what's their marketing, if any.

So we do look at that and glean the best of what is out there.

So one quick follow-up.

Sorry.

So with these best practices, do they also have like a central HR decentralized, or do they have just one central what's the what's the answer to that?

They're decentralized or centralized.

They're both.

Some are decentralized with a central HR, some are 100% centralized.

Okay.

So, and just because you're 100% centralized or decentralized doesn't mean that you can't glean the best practice from those organizations.

Okay, all right.

So I just want you to know, I feel you're doing a great job.

So keep up the good work, but make it even better next year.

HRS is trying to have an amazing team, and they've done an amazing job.

Supervisor Tan, and then fortunately, thank you, President Halbert.

And thank you very much for this presentation.

Uh clearly it shows that uh remember we had retained a consultant to look at strategically planning our recruitment and retention efforts, and a lot of this I think is showing up in the results.

And um based on the recruitment that HR conducted for some major department heads when we had over 300 plus applicants.

I think we are an employer of choice here.

So, but needless to say, some of the uh classifications, and I think it's because of the way uh the law has us presenting it, you know, like when you have four out of nine people in a department, that's a 44% vacancy, which seems kind of um difficult to put your arms around when you're comparing it against, for example, some of the areas where uh we are in need of, I think, more customized uh recruitment.

For example, um, the social welfare and child welfare workers in particular, and trying to find ways to uh to optimize that recruitment.

I think it's going to be important.

Um I think prospectively, what I wanted to find out is, you know, when we saw the budget presentation and we saw the economic impacts, we saw a lot of uh layoffs that are happening among the tech sector, among some of the other employers of choice.

Uh how do you think that's gonna affect the county?

Are they just totally different types of skill sets in terms of like potential um pool of uh applicants, employees?

It it depends, uh honestly, because if the private sector is laying off, we we could take advantage of that as an employer and take advantage of that in the sense of we conduct an exam, we have greater applicants for whatever position.

Um, the challenge is you may have applicants that are way overqualified for the position.

And are they going to accept a position that maybe it wasn't their choice?

But maybe in what we think they will find their calling.

Maybe they do want to be a sheriff recruit or a child welfare worker, because there's great opportunity for promotion in the county of Alamie.

It's just not you know a one and done.

You you move up in an organization.

So I think um what's happening statewide with budget cuts and potential layoffs in the private sector, as a private as a as a county or public employer, we sometimes have a greater applicant pool and have I said we we reap a little bit of the benefit from that.

Um so I now when they start cutting in our county budget, then we have to balance those needs.

But certainly I think it would help the heart to recruit classifications.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fort Sonabas.

Thank you so much for this report.

Um I certainly concur with my colleague in terms of uh looking back further around the highlights as well as really honing in on those vacancies where we have 20% or more uh positions vacant and hearing more about how long they were vacant and what strategies we can uh focus on.

Uh just two quick questions.

In terms of the five agencies that do their own recruitment, can you name who they are again?

It's the auditor, General Services Agency, Information Technology, Public Works Agency, and Social Services Agency.

Thank you.

Um and I'm also curious what type of hiring incentives we currently offer, since that was called out as something we can potentially explore.

So we have our sheriff hiring incentive that uh I think it was put in place about five years ago, five years ago, that provides financial incentives for recruits to deputy sheriffs who are hired uh, and then based on their length of service, they receive an allotment at specific target dates.

And uh Alamedic Health, uh AC Health also created a similar hiring incentive for the forensic behavioral health classifications, those behavioral health classifications that work in the jail.

And separately, we have your board approved and employee recruitment and employee referral incentive program.

Uh, and that's been been very successful in having employees refer their friends, their family, whomever individuals that their neighbor to apply for county jobs.

This is a mandated activity.

Sacramento leaders make us do this.

We also have a job to do, which is staff appropriately, hire good people, train them well, keep them happy, retrain, retain them, to the best of our abilities.

Does this help you do that?

I mean, it's good information, I guess, but one size fits all to Supervisor Miley's point, 20%.

Does every county at all times strive to get 20%?

Sometimes it's impossible.

Sometimes we should be closer to zero percent vacant.

But it's I guess it's a benchmark.

But um, so we complied with the state law.

That's fine.

What I think is more important is the discussion that we have around being the employer of choice, doing the things that we do.

I'm glad my colleagues asked about things like hiring bonuses, things like that.

Uh we do a great job, we can always do better.

And um I would say with regard to the discussions that we have with our employee unions, they're generally pretty good.

Not always, but for the most part, very good.

And that's because you and your team do a good job working with them.

Um I would love to see all of our positions filled to the best of our abilities.

I will say that one area, but metrics.

If you can measure it, you can maximize it.

And one area that I think I consistently hear is from the time a employee, a potential employee is identified as that's the person we want to hire to the time we allow them to start.

It takes a long time.

So I don't know how we can shorten that, but I would like to at least know on average, and what is the shortest and the longest time it takes from offer to acceptance, knowing that every situation is different, and maybe it's even more than that, it's once a vacancy is made.

How long does it take to fill?

Because um, because it's important, and and every job that goes vacant means other people have to do more work often.

So um, you know, the comment about 300 applicants for a position, I think sometimes that's because we get applicants that have no way near, they shouldn't even be applying.

They found it on LinkedIn and they just clicked on something, so we get a bunch of applicants that very quickly screen out.

I'm more interested in how many highly qualified people we get for the applicants for the applications that are open.

So anyway, um I'll re end by saying the people in our organization are the most important asset that we have.

We can't do it without them.

The best people we can find will make our county the best it can be.

So thank you for what you do all day, but not only you, your team, and apparently the teams and all five of the agencies that do their own recruiting.

Um it's that's thank them all for me.

That's it.

Do we have we don't have to do anything other than receive the information?

Do we have to vote on receiving the you also need to determine if some of the labor representatives want to speak?

Do we have anybody from the labor organizations who would like to come on up here, sir, come on up and give a informational report to be presented.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

Uh it's good to see you all.

Uh, my name is Peter Serrano.

I am the deputy sheriff's association president of Alameda County.

I represent currently uh just under a thousand uh sworn uh deputies and sergeants.

Uh our goal is to be over a thousand, it'd be great, but uh right now we're struggling.

Uh I am going to say at least for the most part, our recruitment is amazing.

They are leaps and bounds above what I expected them to do.

Uh, they have presentations that are out there.

They're quick and easy to look at.

They understand uh social media uh better than I could ever do, and that's what we're looking for.

Uh, we're looking for those looks, we're looking to attract candidates.

Uh unfortunately, uh, when you look at the entire county, it looks like our pool of viable candidates might be decreasing.

So we may have tapped into just about everything.

So, what does that look like to us?

Well, maybe we have to start thinking outside the box and start going into lower Southern California, outside of California.

Things like that are very, very, they have to stay in first and foremost.

Right now, our deputies are still working a tremendous amount of overtime.

That is mandatory.

It's unhealthy.

We all agree.

I don't think anyone disagrees with that.

But they're doing a great job.

They're doing their job, they're doing their part.

So there be as a result, they're missing family events, postponing vacations, and they're shouldering these workloads.

I think I saw on the report it indicated 27% shortage for our deputies, which is very significant.

Once our staffing stays below operational needs, uh public safety suppers, response times increase, uh proactive enforcement decreases, training opportunities with delayed uh specialized assignments, they get eliminated uh or left vacant, and our workforce we're doing everything with that small pool of people.

So we're stretching them very thin.

We are competing right now uh in a challenging labor market.

What I'm seeing is neighboring agencies are uh all going to the same events that we go to, and they're trying to step in front, throw out a document that says here.

We'll give you a document.

This tells you that the pre-conditional offer or whatever they want to call it.

Um, but they're trying to get ahead of that.

Uh what ends up happening is it just extends our our time.

Um, we end up weeding those people out, and we end up they get a person that's not a viable candidate uh as a result.

So we end up winning in the end.

If we could shorten the process, that'd be great, but without skipping any of the procedural steps or eliminating things that would keep us from getting a viable candidate.

Uh I also too was interested in uh when I hear that there's companies laying off in the private sector, I would love to tap into that.

That's uh it's a great point because uh you see Google and a lot of the dot com companies laying off, and we should tap into that.

There's a lot of people who came to us as a result of a career change.

Uh I didn't always I wasn't raised as a cop, uh I worked in the private sector as well, and it was somebody who had an interaction with me that got me to this stage, so that's definitely a uh thing we want to keep doing.

Uh additionally, uh what we would like to see also is we'd like the county to have or re-implement some of the programs they some had before.

Uh I'm not positive if we had that before, but uh at one juncture, tuition reimbursement, those things that that we can do overall for the whole county to incentivize people to stay and grow from within.

Um military leave bank of sorts to help those who are shipped away when their lead banks run out, so they're not uh left without pay, and that could go hold true for the entire county because we have over 7,000 employees.

I'm sure a lot of them are in the military, and we support that.

And uh as a result of the rise of medical costs, um, they're only gonna go up and up.

So we should have as a county or at least offer some version of uh a medical trust that we can pay into as an option uh if that's not already there, and those are things that we can put on a flyer and keep it real simple and get those candidates.

Those are truly the benefits that I think will help recruitment and uh retention.

Uh and then last, I just want to say thank you all for letting us uh speak or letting me speak on behalf of my employees.

I do appreciate the time, and uh I'll be for here for any other questions if you need.

Would you um reduce some of those to an email and send it to us so we can keep record of them?

Oh, absolutely, I would appreciate that and thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Um Margarita, another question I have.

Thank you.

Any other any questions?

No?

Okay, thank you.

Without requiring a work study session or an agendized item on a say monthly basis.

Would you be able to share with us at least for the most impacted departments?

What our rates are monthly, what our vacancy rates are.

Vacancy rates by department.

Just the most impacted ones.

I'll just we'll just take DSA for as an example.

27%, and you know, maybe it goes up or down, up or down.

DSA and probation are probably the only two because they have classifications that are specific that don't cross.

Deputy Sheriffs are only in the sheriff department.

Could we maybe have a committee report to public protections on a monthly basis on the vacancy of those two departments?

Would that be possible?

Does it take a lot of work and effort to know what our vacancy rate is each month?

We can run a report uh and provide that information to the departments.

That's absolutely no problem.

Okay, I would appreciate knowing whether it's through the committee or send it to me in an email monthly, what our rate vacancy rates are.

We have to be careful because I'm my data is again specific to the requirements under the legislation, to have to do different things for if you're looking at overall vacancy.

So I would have to defer to so if you want specific information related to our classifications and vacancy rates, we can provide that.

The sheriff's office can't.

We do our recruiting, we keep our stats, so I can get you that information.

That's better to go to the department as opposed to the central agency.

They would have their information.

Sheriff and okay, very good.

Uh sheriff, and then for who would do that for probation.

Each department has the ability to run their vacancy data.

Okay, thank you.

Again, if you can measure it, you can maximize it and we can take a look at it.

Not asking for a lot of work, but I want to keep it top of mind.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, and thank you.

Any other department?

Any other department that wants to volunteer to send that uh would be good.

Oh, any other labor groups here to present?

I don't see any.

And Pete, you look different out of uniform.

I didn't recognize you back there.

So okay.

Very good.

Thank you for being here and doing your job.

With that, um, item 67 is concluded.

We don't need to do anything else.

You need to close the public hearing.

It's a public hearing.

Miley motions to close and tam seconds.

Any public comment on that?

See none.

Roll call vote, please.

Any questions?

Supervisor Marquez.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunatabas.

President Hopper.

I vote yes.

The next item is item 68.

Supervisor, you need to take public comment on that item.

I asked for public comment.

I heard that there was none, and so we moved on.

Perfect.

Is that right?

Okay.

All right.

Item 68 is a similar report from your fire chief with your board sitting as the board of directors of the Alameda County Fire Department.

It is also a public hearing.

Anyone wish to comment on that?

Seeing none, we'll take a roll call vote to open the public hearing.

Supervisor Marcos.

Hi.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor uh Miley.

Supervisor Fortunatabas.

Aye.

President Hopper.

I vote yes.

The public hearing is now open, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna go to Margarita first or Chief.

He's here.

You're gonna do it by yourself.

Chief, the floor is yours.

Thank you, President Albert.

Members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

I'm Willie McDonald, the Alameda County Fire Chief.

Be doing a presentation to comply with AB 2561 government code section 3502.

Provide status of Alameda County Fire Department vacancies.

Oh, okay.

Okay, that's right.

Thank you.

Um this presentation will include um uh recruitment efficiencies, our vacancy progress, uh vacancy data by bargaining unit, and I just didn't you need to say to the board that we've included all the information of all of our vacancies in the department.

Um that may make it a little more confusing, but I'll try to clarify as we go along.

Uh then I'll talk about opportunities.

Um, there is an opportunity for the union to provide some comments.

Um, don't think that there'll be any, but uh there is an opportunity.

Uh next slide, please.

So, in terms of a recruitment uh efficiencies, next slide.

Um, we have uh about an average of 85 calendar days from the application deadline to creating the eligibility list.

We have definitely benefited from the enhancements that have been implemented by HRS in terms of recruitment activities, enhancements that have been done, and uh they have uh greatly produced uh greater numbers of applicants to our organization.

Um in the last uh in 2025, we had uh these recruitments that I've identified our engineers.

Um that's an internal promotional uh only process.

Uh we had 15 applications that were received.

Uh we didn't that's a one-signed, we don't uh do uh engineer uh recruitments every year, it's uh every other year activity as well as our fire captains generally speaking, and so there's no uh data to compare with from 2024, but we had 15 applicants uh in 2025.

Uh most of those, um I think 14 of them were actually promoted uh to engineer.

Um our firefighter recruit paramedic and firefighter recruit uh EMT are uh two separate recruitments, but we do them concurrently.

Uh and so we saw uh an increase in the number of applications received uh in 2025 over 2024.

Um fire code compliance officer.

Uh it was uh we did a continuous recruitment after benefiting from some of the activities of our uh central HRS uh in terms of recruitment activities as well as uh internal folks uh going out to uh recruitment fairs and doing social media outreach.

Um, so we ultimately ended up with 47 uh code compliance officer uh applications, and uh we are completely full in that position.

Um we also did uh fire dispatch trainee recruitments uh during the year.

It was also continuous recruitment.

Um we were able to hire off of that list to um hire uh five dispatchers in 2024, five additional dispatchers in 2025.

We just added six dispatchers to the department uh in May of 2026.

So I believe that we are full uh in that category.

Uh and then a fire captain's promotional uh process only.

We saw an increase of 33 percent uh applicants from the previous year.

And again, I do want to say that um our fire captain's promotional opportunities are generally every other year, the even years as opposed to engineer, but we do on occasion we run an off-cycle test, and we did that in 2025.

Next slide, please.

But in terms of vacancy progress, um, next slide.

Um and again, I just wanted to mention board, this includes um all of our positions.

Uh so um we uh have uh 521 fully budget, excuse me, budgeted full-time positions on the department.

Um we have uh 67 vacancies that includes uh uh that includes budgeted and um not funded unfunded positions, um, our full-time positions filled again, it includes all of our positions, 454 on the department.

Um so our percent vacancies is down by uh 4% or 13% this year, uh 17% last year.

Next spot, next slide, please.

Um I do want to uh as I just mentioned and I continue to mention, um, we provided uh additional information here that um was not required.

And so uh in terms of uh fully budgeted positions uh I'm sorry, um by bargaining unit, we have three bargaining units within the department, uh local 55A, local 55B, and local 55C.

Uh the information that's provided on this chart uh includes uh full-time uh unfunded positions.

So of the vacancies that are identified, we have 55 vacant uh represented positions on the department.

42 42 of them are unfunded.

So that's more information than we should have included.

Um in terms of uh the actual totals, we have uh fire captains and 55A, and that includes fire captains, fire engineers, firefighters, and code fire code compliance officers.

We have actually have as of May 1st, 2026, five captain vacancies and 11 fire engineer vacancies.

Uh we actually have um uh 17 more firefighters than we're authorized to have.

Um so our vacancy rate uh in local 55A is actually four percent.

55B.

Um we have uh 12 battalion chiefs that are funded.

Uh they're all full those positions.

We have two deputy fire marshals that are filled in the in the department, and we have two vacancies and uh local 55C, as I mentioned, uh we just uh filled up all of our positions.

We have no vacancies, but on May 1st, we had uh five vacancies.

Next slide, please.

Uh in terms of opportunities, next slide, um we uh uh also want to be uh seen as the employer of choice.

We do lots of uh activities within our department to uh make it a great place to work and a great place to uh uh to be a part of.

Um we are also included on all the countywide enhanced recruitment marketing campaigns.

Uh we uh provide uh recruitment ads, we do broadcast and digital media advertising, uh we do targeted uh digital targeting, uh banner ads, streaming TV, uh streaming audio, Google ads, social platforms, local radio.

Uh we were included in um billboards along I-580 and I-880.

Uh we have exterior and interior building signage that we uh provide for recruiting opportunities, magnetic signs on some of our vehicles, and we enhanced uh we have an enhanced presence at job fairs uh across the county.

Uh we also have, I'm sorry, that's fine.

We also have uh community partnerships with uh California Joint Apprenticeship Committee and uh with uh Los Facitas and with uh Shabo Community College.

Next slide.

That's all the information.

Um uh happy to answer any questions that they may have.

Thank you.

Uh Chief.

Supervisor Fortunately Bass and then Supervisor Tam.

Thank you.

Umgratulations on the reduction in the vacancy rates from year to year.

I am curious how you prioritize staffing, especially for firefighters when you're not fully staffed.

And the second part of the question, because I sit on the wildfire coalition of governments is how are we doing in terms of any vacancies related to the hand crew or others who help to prevent wildfires?

So uh recruitments when we have vacancies.

Actually, we we uh do a recruitment for firefighter every year of Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Um we um utilize outreach, we do um community outreach programs where we uh go out and meet with the community, we go to career fairs, uh, we take advantage as I say of all the activities that our central HR uh puts together in terms of outreaching folks.

Um we uh have our employees uh do recruiting for us.

Um we think that that's a really good resource.

Folks uh that are happy about where they're working.

Uh and we uh do a lot of social media advertising as well as um advertising on uh TV, streaming videos uh and other types of outreach.

Okay, I think my question was more focused on uh with the current vacancy rate.

Oh yes, and not having uh not being fully staffed, which of course is not unusual.

Um does that mean that there's a you know additional overtime, or sort of how do you adjust when there are vacancies and you're not fully staffed?

I'm sorry, I didn't understand that way.

Okay, yes, we do um utilize quite a bit of overtime.

Um we um did uh though add some additional positions to the department uh I think two fiscal years ago where we added uh relief personnel um positions on each of our shifts to be able to fill some of those vacancies.

So we have uh we have a pool of uh overtime that we use to fill the vacancies, but we also have relief personnel that that we can try to close that gap.

Thank you.

And does that impact um any staffing issues?

For example, um, you know, wildfire prevention or any other types of issues.

And I'm sorry, I meant I failed to mention our crew, our fuel mitigation crew.

Um we do uh a lot of recruiting, a lot of outreach for that as well.

We also use our uh current members uh to do recruiting for the fuel mitigation crew.

We reach out to our reserve pool as uh potential applicants to uh the fuel mitigation crew.

We are currently full.

I think we have 18 technicians uh and we're full, and uh we are uh continuing to do uh recruitment and outreach activities.

So the second part of that question, I'm sorry.

I'm good, thank you.

Supervisor Tam, any questions or comments?

Um thank you.

I appreciate that presentation in terms of your vacancy rate.

Obviously, bringing it down to like 12% with local 55A and 55C is really commendable.

How does that compare to other um fire departments like Berkeley, Alameda, which has their own, and Award?

Uh I think our vacancy rate is lower than most.

Um I think that we have uh good, uh I think where we are seen as the employer choice.

I think that we have great opportunities for our folks to do outreach, and um we spend a lot of time in the communities.

I think uh other fire departments have uh higher vacancy rates than we do.

So, usually public safety has a much more rigorous hiring protocol in practice.

You you recruit people, they go through an academy, then they graduate, then they they get placed.

Um and I know it's it's difficult, for example, you can't just go to a fair and just hand somebody a conditional offer, right?

So, do you um at what stage do you do the actual background check?

Is it before you hire or is it before they get to the academy?

Um we do the background checks um after we've uh issued a conditional offer of employment, after you issue the conditional offer and contingent on the background checks, okay.

And the psych evaluation goes.

Psych evaluation and uh medical.

Okay, so I mean, in light of the the rigor that you have to go through, having a very low vacancy rate is is a good thing for you.

Yes, thank you.

Supervisor Miley, any yeah, thanks, Chief.

So um as a dependent special district, so you do your own recruiting.

You don't use HR.

Actually, we are a partner with HR.

Um they do a significant amount of work for us in terms of recruitment.

Oh, the entire process, we partner with our internal unit.

Okay, and then um will you be recruiting at the Alameda County Fair?

Uh we use that as an opportunity recruit, yes.

We have uh, I mean to ask HR that too.

We got it at the fair, the county fair.

I'm not sure.

You're not sure.

Okay, yeah.

And it I think the sheriff, you're out of the county fair recruiting.

Okay.

Okay.

So I thought, okay.

Um, and then the the big job fair.

Um, I can't remember if if HR is doing another job fair.

Big job fair.

Were you at the last one?

Um we we did.

You were there.

You were there?

Yes.

Okay.

And are you planning to do another large job there?

Just one or uh, excuse me, Chief.

Uh so Marguerite Desamora, director of HRS.

We're so right now it's on an annual basis.

We're hoping to do it twice a year.

We've had, like I mentioned earlier, it's out 500.

Yes, it was overwhelmingly successful.

Okay, right.

How many do you out of the job fair?

How many folks?

I think you mentioned this.

How many were actually hired, or do you know?

I don't have that data.

Okay, all right, okay.

Just want to check so you're at okay.

Those are my questions.

Okay, thanks, Chief.

No other questions.

Great job.

Thank you very much, as always.

Is there any public comment on this item?

There are no public comments.

So motion to close the public hearing.

And no presentations from labor.

Uh I don't see anybody from anybody from labor online or in the room.

See none.

Thank you.

We're moving to item 60.

No, I'll move to close the public hearing.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez.

Hi, Supervisor Tam.

Hi.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Portman on the bus.

Hi.

Cousin Hubert.

I vote yes.

All right.

Well, let's see.

We have before us next.

We have to get a minute.

Yeah.

Your consent calendar.

Um, before you vote on your consent calendar, I want to read a correction into the record on item 71.

The amount of the it's a public work site, and the amount of the contract should be 178,800.

Um, it's a hundred dollars more than what's listed on the agenda, and that's a correction to read into the record before you take an action.

Thank you.

We'll actually take public comment on items that are on the agenda, except for those listed as set matters, which we just concluded.

Is there any public comment on items on today's agenda?

Either in the room or on line.

We have one in person, but I think he left.

Simeu Raimi for item two, he's gone.

There are no more public comments.

Thank you.

Are we moving consent or then?

Well, we just had public comment.

The next is approval of minutes.

Make a motion.

No, I have an edit.

I'm not sure if you have this.

You want to make a motion with the edit?

Yeah, I'll I'll move to adopt the minutes and our board agenda from Tuesday, June 2nd and Thursday, June 4th.

I just have one minor edit, and I think I could just read it into the record.

Under for the meeting on June 4th, under call to order.

If we could just capture that, I did ask in those opening comments if we could adjourn the meeting in memory of former council member Pat Gagoskos, which I see is accurately captured in the adjournment, but just want to make sure it's noticeed that I made the request in the beginning, just in case people just read that section.

Thank you.

Motion's been made to accept and approve minutes with an amendment.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Well, let's see.

Roll call vote then.

Supervisor Marquez.

Wait, should we do public comment?

We did public comment on all the items.

On that okay, sorry.

Um aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Porter not a boss.

Aye.

Um President Hobbart.

I vote yes.

The next item is consent calendar items 69 through 78.

Are there any things to pull or comment on?

Or is there a motion?

I'll move to I'll move past consent calendar.

I'll second.

Motion's been made to accept the consent calendar and approve it by Supervisor Tam, seconded by Supervisor Marquez.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marcos.

Aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Hi.

Supervisor Porter on a box.

Aye.

Cousin Hubbard?

I vote yes.

And just to clarify, that's with the correction to item 71.

Correct.

Ready for the mass motion.

When you're ready, Supervisor Tam.

Um Okay.

Thank you, President Halbert.

I will move items two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

Twelve should not be included.

There was a request to pull it out of the motion.

Twelve is not included.

I have a question on 39.

40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50.

I have comments on 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59.

Questions on 57.

60 61, 62, 63, and 64.

And just uh for the record, item 34 was pulled by the department and will be brought back at a future date.

And item 16 was also pulled.

Item 16 was pulled out of the motion, right?

For discussion.

Mass motion was made.

Supervisor Marcus, did you second it?

Um no, but I'm happy to okay.

Motion's made and seconded.

Um I just have a question.

I'll start with the question that I have on number four.

And this is a social services question.

And I'll apologize.

I didn't take great notes on who has questions on what, so we'll just go down the list, the best of our ability.

And it's not so much a question about the item itself, but this is a continuing of a contract that's been in place.

So they've been doing it since 2023, I think.

Um yes, thank you for the question, Supervisor Albert, Andrea Ford agency director for social services, and the answer is yes.

So we have a four-year contract that we're just extending.

Do we ever go out to bid and see if anybody else wants to do these services or is capable of doing these services or is there a reason we just re-up?

Because I see a lot of re-ups.

Yeah, I can't answer any affirmative if we've gone out for bid, but I can find out for you for sure.

Okay.

Question about social services agency.

Do you do your own procurement for these contracts?

Or do you rely on a central we primarily work with general services agency?

You work closely with general service agency.

Okay.

Well, um is there a reason we didn't.

Oh, you don't know yet if we went out to bed.

You can go offline with that, I guess.

I I'll just I'll just say that I have no problem with University of California, Davis, providing work skills and professional development training.

I just as a matter of just good practice feel that contracts that keep getting renewed over and over and over again might not benefit from current market conditions or current best practices or current market rates, things like that.

So I trust that you're happy with this contract, and that that's why we're extending it.

Um to answer your your last question, the answer is yes.

On the first question, the social services agency is very vigilant in procuring contracts.

We don't typically roll over and over and over without formally procuring them.

So you think maybe you did go out to bid?

I think so, but I'll confirm if you do we know, does GSA know?

Did we go out to bid for this?

Oh, okay.

We'll take it offline.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Supervisor Tam, I think you had the next question, but I wasn't sure.

Right.

My question was on item 39.

I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah.

You're in the 50s, right?

Okay, now okay.

Um so item 39 uh is something we have to adopt under um SB 707 in terms of uh the resolutions with technology disruption.

Uh has there been any formal feedback that we we got on on this public on this policy and uh primarily um like ongoing like first for example today we we had a technological glitch, we had to stop and then uh the pol or the law allows us to resume after an hour.

But I'm just trying to understand in terms of like some people who might have some disabilities that are online and how do we uh make sure that that gets um communicated well.

I let me speak to what the law requires and uh let staff talk about the process, but the law requires us to make efforts to correct or address the technology disruption issue for at least an hour.

If we are able to fix the problem, then we are uh we and we should resume the meeting as quickly thereafter as we can.

So today we were able to fairly quickly address the issue and and go back live with your your board meetings.

And so if if we are having a disruption that is extended period of time or just a disruption at all.

Your board has the right under statute and under your policy to recess to closed session, and so that was an option to us.

The technology disruption today happened after we had already completed the majority of closed session, but I believe we have other items to return for.

Um but as to how we engage with the public, I'll leave that to um staff to describe for you.

It is noticed on the website and we can update to make sure that it's clear for anyone who has uh disabilities uh the accessibility um portion of it so um we can make it more clear on the website um okay i i guess it's it's sort of a circular situation like if you're online and there was a technical problem and you had to cease does the person online know that your technical issue will be resolved at some point yes it is put up on the screen and uh when you go onto our website we put a note that says if there's a disruption this is our policy so that they know to keep checking that um you know SB 707 requires us to continue to work on the technology uh for up to an hour so it will be noticed ahead of time um and the information will be on the website ongoing okay well that's I guess it's hopeful that that technology issue doesn't affect our ability to notice people online okay I guess it may if the computers are all down and you can't even go online you could maybe put something on the website but even if that's so it it technology has its great benefits but it has its risks I think and once in a while if the technology goes out then that's a risk.

I I view it that way but I'm glad we have these policies in place and I'm even more glad that somebody can keep track of them for us and keep us apprised of all of these rules and regulations.

Thank you.

Any other questions on that item supervisor Marquez I think you're next uh up for questions.

Just wanted to make a few comments um this is the public defender's board letter with respect to um uh work with consultant on um belonging justice equity diversity and inclusion it's a professional service agreement and just wanted to note for the public's reference that the public protection committee uh received a presentation on the Racial Justice Act back on Thursday October 26 2023 and my office is in conversation with the public defender to bring an update back later this year so just wanted to note that thank you yes the presentation was heard at public protection committee on Thursday of October 26 that doesn't seem right it was not 23 more than likely um well let me verify the year it seems rather early it might have been 24 so I'll verify the year.

Thank you.

Any other questions on your items just a comment on that I think there's a question on item 57 um 57 yes 57 um is with respect to well path and I just wanted to clarify for the public's knowledge sheriff that this contract is not extending the length of time with well path it is solely hiring additional positions to address reentry population and cal aim and um us going live with that feature if you could just elaborate a little bit yeah that is correct it's basically to support our CalAM initiative as well as our MAP program or medication assisted treatment program.

And that's really just to focus on just discharge services for reentry for those who are leaving custody.

And just wanted to let the public know that I did uh take a tour of Santa Rita jail specifically to um learn more about the MAP program, my team and I visited the jail on March 19th of this year 2026.

Thank you.

Does anybody else have any other questions or comments on the items mass motion supervisor?

Yes.

Thank you.

Just one more follow-up regarding number 39, the technology direct disruption policy.

Um I didn't notice in the packet where it might be posted.

Will this be posted somewhere where it's accessible to the public as well as members of the board?

Yes, it will be noticed in the policy section.

So we will we will post the policy.

Will it be posted online?

It'll be posted on our website visible for um everyone to say the post.

Okay, the CAO website.

Thank you.

The comment I made earlier, it was correct, October 26, 2023.

That seemed rather early, but we just verified on the agenda.

Thank you for asking.

Any other questions on items on the mass motion?

Seeing none, I'll ask for a roll call vote.

Supervisor Marquez.

Aye.

Supervisor Tam.

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunatabas.

President Halbert.

I vote yes.

We have a few items pulled out.

We'd like to take them up.

Next item is item 12 is a recommendation from Alameda County Health requesting authorization to make budget adjustments related to Measure C pediatric care safety net funds.

Yes, I pull this item because I'd like the agency director to speak to some questions and maybe make some additional comments as appropriate.

So relative to uh measure C and the rollover of 11,522,500.

The rollovers rolling over to the next fiscal year.

Comment.

Yes.

Uh Anika Chowder, uh Director for Alameda County Health.

Um, so this board letter is uh, as you'll recall, I believe in October or November of 2025, your board approved a three-year spend plan for measure C pediatric uh amount.

This was 20% of the 20% uh uh uh delegated to the uh health account, and so this is administered by our agency.

Um so for the first year we had about 16.96 million uh budgeted, and we've been able to expend a little over five million.

And so we're requesting to roll over uh the remainder so that uh it can be in the 2627 budget.

Um and this is largely because we need to uh finish up some RFPs uh and we're also doing some hiring for some of the um the rollover amounts.

So okay, so it's not as though the findings are not needed.

Internally, your agency just hasn't been able to get the money out the door.

And then 2627, you're gonna get like another 13 million.

Uh for 2627, we do have 13 million planned.

Yes.

Are you gonna do you think you'll be able to get that money out the door?

Uh that is our our plan and intent.

Okay.

Uh and then with the the pediatric portion.

Uh we the county gets through measure C.

20% of the 20%.

So the other 20%, which is 15%, I guess.

Oh, the 20%.

Goes to children's hospital.

Okay.

So what's the status of that?

Uh, because I think uh the I think the board provided some kind of guidance on how we'd like to see those resources used.

And I don't know if there's um consensus around the use of those resources.

Uh, yes.

So for uh the uh portion that goes to Ben Yaff Children's Hospital of Oakland, uh 75% is intended to go to trauma services and uh related services for the hospital, and your board uh instructed that five percent also go toward training and education and and staff uh staffing needs.

Um so I do recall that uh children's hospital has come by uh the health committee earlier in the fall, and they presented some of uh their uh their plans for uh spending the money.

Um in terms of how the county tracks the expenditures is through the look back committee, which is the measure AC and W committee.

And so we haven't completed the full uh first fiscal year of 2526, and so uh we anticipate that uh uh Ben Yaf Children's Hospital will be back at that committee to provide an update on how they've been spending their portion of the pediatric account, anticipate that to happen in the fall.

Okay, so that will be reported in the fall.

Um, and that's a look back, right?

Yes, that committee just looks back where um all organizations that receive funding from those three measures uh come and share uh with the committee members how they've spent that money in the past fiscal year.

So if there's a controversy around how the funding should be utilized, um, when would be when would it be appropriate for the board to weigh in?

That would be if that if that's a look back, can we uh be more uh have a more prospective look at this?

Um give guidance for the future.

I believe that in the initial board letter or the revised board letter that went for um the the second time around for the allocation.

I'd like to call a meeting back to order.

Apologies to everyone, patients appreciated.

Thank you to our technical team for getting us back online.

We were in the middle of a dialogue, and I think Anika, you were giving an answer.

Well, that's a roll call, yeah.

Good idea.

Supervisor Marquez, excuse Supervisor Tim.

Present.

Supervisor Miley, Supervisor Fortunat.

President Hubbard, present.

We have a quorum.

Let's proceed.

All right, so we were talking about the pediatric portion of measure C, the portion that's not the county's 20%.

Uh, where we are, and uh, we can um have more direction on the use of those funds if they are being utilized the way we'd like them to be utilized.

Yeah, um, I can't speak to the direction of the fund supervisor, but I believe that in the um board letter where your board approved the funding, uh, there is language that says that children's hospital would come back to the board as requested to provide information and updates.

Okay.

So I'd like to see if uh if the board could get an update at a work session.

General, generally we have a work session once a month.

So I don't know if we're gonna have one in August because of other recess, but uh let'd like to see if the county administrator and the president could get this schedule for board work session.

Could this be something that goes to the health committee?

Oh uh, it's gone to the health committee.

I need the full board to kind of weigh in and understand this.

So if we can come to a work session, hopefully by the fall at the latest, it'd be helpful.

Oh, yeah, that's budget.

Sure.

Either next month or in the fall.

So just to clarify, your question about whether the spending of this money is being done in accordance with our desires.

Has gone to health committee or not.

It has okay.

And then is there when this would come to our board?

The committee would be able to weigh in.

Like it seems to me it would be something the committee would be bringing to the full board.

The committee can weigh in as well as I think labor will weigh in in children's hospital.

Clearly we'll be speaking.

Okay, in terms of how they have been utilizing their portion of the pediatric funds, and whether or not um labor finds that to be, you know, palpable, uh, and then whether or not we want to make any uh changes or direction.

I know and obviously we can't do it at the work session, but we could take it up and and give direction and bring them back here.

Thank you.

Just to clarify, uh, in our board letter uh when we gave direction at that time, we also put in some language about um the adequacy of staffing uh as part of that discussion.

And so I think when we had the health committee, um that was an issue that got presented, and we're trying to understand whether it got resolved.

Understood.

Another item was pulled out.

Do you want to take all three?

How many items were pulled out of a mass motion?

Two?

You want to take the other one up and then we'll vote on both at the same time.

The next item is item 16, also from AC Health, requesting that your board approve the Behavioral Health Services Act three-year integrated plan.

So I pull this because uh behavioral health obviously is one of our, if not, it's it's probably our largest um funded uh department in the county in the healthcare services agency, and they're now presenting their three-year plan.

And I just didn't think it it should go through on consent or or in a mass motion, that the uh agency director, and maybe even the uh department director uh might have comments to present, and then board members and the public might have questions and comments.

Yeah, thank you, supervisor.

Um I do have uh ACBH uh deputy director Vanessa Baker on, as well as Tracy Hazleton, who is the division director for the BHSA program.

Um, and so we'll ask them to join.

And while they're joining, I I'll just give a high-level overview.

Um, I think as we've shared with uh the health committee as well as the board at various intervals um this particular year as we transition to 26-27 is uh a big transition for uh MHSA to uh BHSA and uh as we've done with MHSA, it's a three-year plan.

However, uh with the BHSA, one of the um main requirements is that uh any funding that goes through the behavior health department outside of BHSA funding as well is also to be included in the plan.

Um, and so what uh Vanessa and Tracy have a few slides that they can go over just to kind of walk through the plan and the process and how we got here uh and talk a little bit about next steps, um and then we're happy to take any questions, and I will share it.

Has been uh reviewed both by the behavioral health advisory board as well as the health committee and was forwarded by the health committee for your full board.

Take it away, Vanessa.

Thank you, Anika, and I will share a uh slide deck.

Let me go ahead and pull that up.

Don't want to cause any more technical difficulties.

Okay, let's see.

All right.

Tracy, can you give me a thing?

There we go.

I see it.

Okay, excellent.

So this is a brief slide deck just to orient your board to the three-year integrated plan.

Of course, this is a new plan, a new process through the Behavioral Health Services Act.

And I will share the first set of slides and then transition to Tracy.

Sorry.

Slide two.

So just to again orient the board, just highlighting some differences.

So this board and the community community is likely familiar with the Mental Health Services Act plan.

Of course, on the left hand side, this included the funding specific to Mental Health Services Act funding.

There was a lot of flexibility in terms of how the plan was written, and then of course the different components CSS, PEI, WET, WORKESS EDUCATION Training, for example, and the three-year program and expenditure plan, again, really highlighting it focused only on the Mental Health Services Act funding.

And of course, the report included data and engagement of stakeholders, and the goal was to improve local outcomes.

So shifting to the Behavioral Health Services Act integrated plan, there are some significant differences.

So the focus is a county behavioral health system strategy.

So rather than being focused really on the Mental Health Services Act piece, it's really the overall system.

So looking at the totality.

Now this is a really key piece.

Bullet number two, there is a standardized template.

This template is not one that we can modify.

The behavioral health services and supports, the FSP component or full service partnership component, and of course the housing interventions component.

And then a key piece, and I'll tell you a little bit more about this later in this brief presentation, are the focus on the statewide behavioral health goals.

And then importantly, moving to bullet number three, the budget is now inclusive of all of our funding.

So that rather than just MHSA funding, we are required to really be transparent and accountable to all of our funding and how that interacts with the integrated plan.

So of course, that includes just the broader system, what we are doing as a county as a whole.

And of course, this is this applies to all counties.

And then the data collection is standardized.

And the goal of this is to strengthen engagement.

Arguably, we do a really robust stakeholder engagement process, but the state really would like to see an increase in that.

Again, for those of you who haven't yet had a chance to take a look at the integrated plan, these are the sections.

It does look different from the prior Mental Health Services Act plan.

It is a little shorter, it is still several hundreds of pages, but again, the template, the plan is organized from the state.

There is not uh as much flexibility or there's limited flexibility in terms of how we can present this plan.

So you'll see these different categories: general information, overview, the behavioral health goals, of course, the community planning process, the comment period, public hearing, which are still built into the process, our behavioral health care continuum capacity, then our the funding workforce strategy, a focus on uh the specific detail to the budget and prudent reserve, and then of course the approval and compliance.

So those are the different parts of the plan that you will see when you review this plan, or hopefully approve it today.

And to tell you a little bit more about, of course, a really critical part of our Behavioral Health Services Act planning is our community planning process.

So this is a very extensive process, again, taking place uh for this integrated plan, the first of its kind, January 1st, 2025 through May 15th of 2025.

And you will see again on the left, the bullets, just give you a summary of what that planning process looked like.

Over 600 surveys collected, over 30 or 35 listening sessions, and the number of participants, 24 stakeholder groups with five diverse viewpoints.

This is very critical that we receive a variety of viewpoints for our plan.

And then, of course, the community feedback that we were able to integrate into the planning.

And then to the right, you will see essentially the categories in the upper chart system need rankings.

So rank number one, access, coordination, and navigation to both our mental health and substance use services.

That was really seen as the highest priority.

And then coming in a close second crisis services.

So you will really see there's a great focus on access, whether accessing regular or non-crisis services, and then crisis, and then housing, and then working its way down.

And then for population need rankings, you will see that the number one priority was the needs of children, youth, and transitional age youth, then followed by adults and older adults, and then disability, etc.

etc.

So this is really important, not only for us to track this, but also, of course, for your board to see just to have an in-depth understanding of what information we're receiving through this community planning process.

And of course, this is a snapshot.

Then again, I mentioned this earlier.

And so there are six required priority goals, and then one additional goal that a behavioral health, a county behavioral health may select.

So there are 14 total, and then the starred uh priority goals that you see here on the left, access to care.

Of course, that's a goal for improvement.

So we want to see that go up.

And then to the right in the orange section, what we want to see a reduction in overdoses, which is the priority goal that our county selected, followed by untreated behavioral health conditions, institutionalization, homelessness, justice involvement, and removal of children from the home.

So again, the focus, these are behavioral health goals, and then our responsibility is to identify the metrics that can help us speak to our impact around these goals.

So this is a really key piece in terms of what we are communicating and the metrics that we're we're able to provide to the state.

So next, and I will just briefly touch on the different components.

Again, housing interventions.

So this is the first time within this Behavioral Health Services Act and the new integrated plan where there is the specific inclusion of a component at 30% funding for housing interventions.

So you'll see that this really focuses on supportive services, so subsidies, uh family housing, and looking at opportunities to provide actual housing services directly.

So to the right, the bullets you will see, for example, operating subsidies.

Uh, there is an anticipated number of individuals to be served at a little over 900, moving down to bullet three rental subsidies.

So again, the focus is on really providing that rental and operating services to individuals so that they can benefit from them.

And then further, you will see just uh detail on the different housing services that are a focus of the BHSA funding specific for that housing component at 30% of the budget.

Next, I'll share a little bit about the full service partnership component.

So again, full service partnership is an evidence-based practice.

Uh it's the highest level of outpatient services for individuals with serious mental health challenges.

It's a whatever it takes model, follows an assertive community treatment.

For those of you who are familiar with this, it's just again a very, very successful evidence-based practice, and it is at 35% of the Behavioral health Services act funding.

So that is that component, and we do have, you'll see here our programming, the number of uh FSPs at 10, the ACT model, three in the forensic act model, and then further you'll see the different types of services that that we have.

And of course, all of this I'm sharing with you because this is reflected in the integrated plan.

And then finally, to close out my portion, just to highlight the third and final component, but arguably the most complex and robust just in terms of how we've managed that within our county is the behavioral health services and supports.

So this is the really the all other component.

And this is where I talked about the limited flexibility or the shift in flexibility.

So this particular component under MHSA really it ended up being uh many components kind of moving into this one component of BHSS at 35%.

And you'll see on the left, this component includes early intervention, outreach and engagement, workforce education training, capital facilities, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's really a large number of the programs that we were supporting under MHSA have now had to shift into this component, and then further within this component, as has been shared many times.

There are further uh isolated elements.

So a 51% of this component must be used for intervention for early intervention, and then 51% of the early intervention must be used for uh individuals 25 years of age or younger.

So again, these the bullets on the right just provide more detailed information, but again, you will see a lot more information in the integrated plan.

And now I will pass the mic to Tracy and I will still drive the PowerPoint.

Thank you, Vanessa, and good afternoon, supervisors.

So I'm just going to go over a little bit around and again high-level information around our public comment period, as well as some information around our budget and our timeline process and some resources.

So on this slide, this is information around public comment.

We put out the integrated plan for 30 days, uh, and we do quite a bit of outreach in the community around the integrated plan being released.

Uh, that public comment period was between March 19th and April 20th.

When we had our behavioral health advisory board public hearing, we had 103 public comments overall.

Uh, and then also a number of those public comments did come through the behavioral health advisory uh committee or meeting, which was very exciting to see the public so engaged in this new process.

That advisory board meeting was held on April 20th.

Uh, we also offered public comment cards and public comment information in our threshold languages, as you can see here: English, Chinese, Farsi, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

And then below the way the state is requiring us to capture our public comments.

They require us to capture uh stakeholder groups.

And so here you have the structured way that the state would like us to capture stakeholder groups.

And you can see the top um stakeholders that commented were individuals that lived in one of the most uh of the five populous cities in Alameda County.

They were families of people with lived experience, they were community-based organizations, providers of mental health services, eligible adults and older adults.

It's kind of where the break is right there.

And then we also have to capture the type of public comment.

So, as you can see here, our top four areas of the type of public comment were around school-based mental health, crisis services, housing, and early intervention.

In the integrated plan, there is information about all of the public comments that's listed.

Uh, next slide.

So this will be, I have two slides on just high-level budget information.

There is much more information in the integrated plan itself.

But for the community, it's important to highlight the comparison between the budget in 2526 under MHSA and the breakdown of the components and how we are spending our dollars.

And then moving towards 2627 under BHSA, there is a reduced budget based on a reduced allocation from the state.

And so this is again to highlight how that those dollars are being spent per the components of the behavioral health services and supports component, BHSS, that's the discretionary component, our housing intervention component, as well as our FSP component.

Something that is also has been a topic when we have been presenting is around our carryover or unexpended dollars that are moving from 2526 into 2627.

So in this slide, what we are just highlighting is that of, for example, under the BHSS category, we have a budget of 80 million of that 80 million, 36.65 is carryover, and then the other portion is revenue from the state.

Similarly, for the FSP portion down below in dark purple, there we have a budget of 51.9 million.

Of that 51.9 to make up that entire budget, we are using 8.5 million in carryover from MHSA moving into BHSA.

Also, just as a highlight, this budget of 164.47 does not include our 14 million dollars that we do have in prudent reserve.

Prudent reserve is like our savings account, I would say.

But it remains there in terms of uh in times of um economic um instability, and we need to get approval from DHCS to use it.

So, uh so we have not added, also I want to highlight to the prudent reserve in quite a while.

We have been putting out as much of the funding as possible into the community because there once we put money in the prudent reserve, we know that it is difficult to pull it out or utilize it.

Next slide.

So again, in just talking about the um theme of our carryover or unspent dollars, the area where we are spending the majority of our unspent funding is in the BHSS component, behavioral health services and supports.

And what I want to just highlight here for you is we have to submit in the integrated plan.

This is a three-year integrated plan, a three-year balanced budget.

And in order to do that, we needed to spread our carryover across the three years of the integrated plan.

And as you can see, as we move through the next three years, we will be using less and less of the carryover.

So our goal is when we get to our next three-year plan starting in 2930.

The hope is that our budget and our revenue from the state are fairly aligned, and we will not be having these um this carryover or these um unspent, unspent dollars.

But this is how the dollars the carryover is helping us uh continue our balanced budget in this component over the next three years.

And you can just see on the right here, there are some information about what we are spending our funding on large items in the BHSS component.

As an example, the Alameda County Health Epic or electronic health Records implementation, as well as our African American Wellness Hub, and um early intervention provider System Support, some bridge funding there or capacity building funding for early intervention providers.

Okay, next slide.

We are building out, we have information on our county website as well as we have information on the BHSA website.

Once the plan is approved, it will be posted here.

This is where we are also posting information from the state on updates around BHSA as well as all things around the behavioral health transformation that the state is promoting.

And so we had an external website like this under MHSA, and so we will continue it under BHSA for an easy way for the community to identify and find information and resources.

Next slide.

So this has been our timeline throughout the year, as you can see over in the left.

We started out in January through May of stakeholder engagement.

We then, with approval from the county administrator's office, we did submit a draft plan to the Department of Health Care Services on March 31st.

That was approved by DHCS.

We went forward with our public hearing.

We then went and presented at the health committee.

We are here now on June 16th, and we are hoping then to submit our final and approved plan to DHCS by June 30th to meet the new regulatory requirements around BHSA.

And then there is a new under BHSA, there is a new opportunity to update your plan during the year, and that is called an intermittent update.

Not just the BHSA funding stream.

That those dollars are not in our budget right now.

And so we will be back in the fall to submit an intermittent update.

So we will have an updated budget for the board for your board to be able to see, and we will go through the entire process again of community engagement, a hearing at our behavioral health advisory board, 30-day public comment, uh a presentation at the health committee, and then we will we will present here, or will be on the agenda here to be approved, and that will be back in the fall.

Next slide.

Next slide, and that is the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna I want to thank um Tracy and Vanessa for such a thorough presentation.

You know, it's unfortunate we had to wait until you know five o'clock on Tuesday, because this is really important.

Um the total three year amount is how much?

Is it 200?

Yeah.

Yes, yeah.

Um it will change.

Um so that that is what's in for next year, and then we will also, in addition to an intermittent update to add the measure w dollars, we will come back and do an annual update for um 27-28.

And so depending on the revenue from the state, that budget of 164 may go up or down a little bit, but that's about the range.

Okay.

Um and then the the measure w monies will have to be um um part of the the budget, but we're not uh we're not penalized or anything like that for having those dollars go towards prevention.

My understanding is no, it's not a penalization, it's just that uh the requirement is that BHSA dollars cannot go toward prevention, but those are local general fund dollars, so we're uh we just need to account for them in your plan.

Yeah, you show it.

Okay, and and I know and looking at that slide that's up here, uh, I think everyone can see that um in the past we were able to put dollars into prevention, but in the future, there's no dollars uh in the behavior health services act uh for prevention, and that's why you know we as the board uh unfortunately we've had measure W funds, we've had to allocate funding to help bridge that, and then we're gonna be looking at how we're going to help um ensure uh a transition uh so that we can continue to have prevention uh services here in the county because we know without prevention services there's gonna be uh consequences uh the result of uh prevention uh services and dollars not being available.

So I think that that's important to point out, and then I always get confused.

What's what's the distinction between prevention and early individual intervention?

Is there a definition that we follow?

Vanessa, Tracy?

A distinction between prevention and early intervention.

So prevention is the most upstream.

It is really addressing individuals who do not um have any signs or symptoms of whatever you are trying to prevent.

So if you're trying to prevent mental health issues, they're not, or substance use disorder issues.

So um youth are not for for SUD, youth are not using any substances at the time, or for mental health.

Let's say youth are not exhibiting or adults, individuals are not exhibiting signs or symptoms of a mental health issue.

Um, and then early intervention, you and so also under prevention, you're really trying to um promote protective factors for those individuals and reduce risk factors.

And for early intervention, you are um trying to intervene early for individuals who are already showing signs and symptoms of whatever that issue is.

So in for us, it would be individuals that are showing signs and symptoms of a mental health um issue or a mental health disorder or a substance use disorder, and wanting to intervene early to prevent um the issue from becoming severe and disabling.

And at the same time, then the state under BHSA is really pushing.

Um there is more of a definition of what they want to see in an early intervention program, um, and they are really pushing for um billing or medica billing under your um early intervention and all treatment programs.

And with go ahead, go ahead.

I was just gonna say with those two definitions, we're we're locked into those definitions.

There's no, or is there wiggle room?

Um there is no wiggle room in the BHSA policy manual.

It explicitly says that um prevention is not um funded fundable and that those those types of services have been aligned or realigned to the um State Department of Public Health.

Okay, and actually 4% has come off the top of BHSA to go towards population-based prevention services.

Okay, and then one other one other thing, um uh Tracy or Vanessa or Nika, the uh if next year and then the following year the board decides to use uh measure W monies around behavior health, uh we'll we'll just have to once again account for that in the plan.

We once again we're not penalized or anything like that.

No, no, we're not penalized, it's just a matter of anything that is in our budget that is in the behavioral health budget, we must account for there is no penalty for that, at least not as of right now in terms of the information that that we have from the state.

Okay, and do you know, and this is my last question.

Sorry to prolong this.

Do you know if after three years if the if the state has received feedback from counties emphasis on counties plural, um, is there a possibility that there could be some adjustments made with this, you know, um the HSS, or would that require once again the voters to make those adjustments?

Are we locked in?

I think it it depends on what components we wanna change.

So there's certain things like the I I believe the the um components that it can be spent on that was a part of the proposition.

And so that if it's locked in at the proposition level, then it requires going back to the ballot.

Um, but then there's a lot that is implementation via legislation.

And so to the extent that legislature uh is interested, I know that they have been hearing from all of the behavioral health directors as well as the health directors that um this isn't necessarily playing out as advertised at the local level.

Right.

Um, and you know, especially on the prevention side, I just uh Tracy mentioned that uh, you know, some of the prevention funding, so 4% off the top of uh BHSA is going through the State Department of Public Health.

Um and they're going to implement a statewide prevention program, which is estimated at a little over 100 million dollars per year.

Um, and that's statewide, right?

So they're trying to put forward uh those strategies.

I think they're gonna focus a lot on suicide prevention, you know, but they're gonna be limited and not as expansive as a lot of the work we've done locally.

Okay, because I'm just hoping that there's enough pushback that wherever we have flexibility, we can do that um without you know um violating the um the proposition.

Okay, thanks.

So I have some questions.

I don't know this almost feels like a good work study session.

Um could you go back to the slides that talk about housing?

Can we make the screen bigger?

Okay, double tap.

Double tap.

Rental subsidies 545, that's countywide.

Yes, so what you're saying, go ahead.

Sorry, Vanessa.

No, please.

I was just gonna caveat one thing is that this is uh housing funded strictly by BHSA funding.

So that's 545 countywide.

Um, but one of the key things here is that these are limited to people with serious mental illness.

So we have a variety of other subsidies that, as you know, the HH department uh helps to um administer.

And that goes through a different department, those other programs, those other subsidies.

So if I recall correctly, Vanessa, you can correct me, but a lot of the housing services that are provided through BHSA are administered through H and H so Behavior Health provides provides the funding and the eligibility requirements and then H and H uh helps to administer them correct can we get a breakout of each of these where in the county they're going to by district uh we might be able to do that on the back end in terms of client served uh yeah I'd just like to know how many come from the tri-valley and how many come from Fremont District one.

Sure.

The next slide I think it was or maybe the slide before that talked about community outreach community meetings and things like that surveys listening sessions stakeholder groups very good I would love I would like me and my staff to either help promote these or attend and observe these which ones and what dates did these occur in the Tri Valley or Fremont we can provide that information Tracy do you have that readily available or we circle back yeah I don't have it ready let readily available but we can circle back and we are starting to plan now to start this cycle again we will be um hosting these types of events starting in um probably August so we definitely welcome your and your staff's um engagement that would be very exciting thank you yeah as much lead time as you can give us it can get into our newsletters and things like that.

Yes thank you we will we will get back to you right away thank you that's it appreciate it is this uh an item that we're ready to make a motion on at this point or do we have other questions comments supervisor miley you want to make a motion sure if I can move item 12 and item 16 did you have any questions on 16 or did we already talk about that's that's what we just talked about.

Miley makes a motion on 12 and 16 Fortunato Bass seconded sorry she beats you roll call vote please supervisor marquez aye supervisor TAM aye supervisor Miley aye supervisor fortunato bass halber i vote yes thank you we have ordinances you have three ordinances the first one is item 31 it's a second reading of salary ordinance amendments an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2025 2026 county of alameda salary ordinance mr president i will move to wave the full second reading and adopt the salary ordinance amendments as listed in 31a roll and i moment two and moment three I'll second motion's been made by supervisor uh tam and seconded by supervisor fortunato bass roll call vote please supervisor marquez aye supervisor cam aye supervisor miley aye supervisor fortunata bass aye cousin hopper aye item 32 is also second reading of salary ordinance amendment an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2025 2026 county of alameda salary ordinance i will move to weigh the full second reading and adopt the salary ordinance amendment to update article one section one-one as described in 32 a and b all second motions been made by supervisor temp second by supervisor fortunato bass roll call vote please supervisor marquez aye supervisor to him aye supervisor miley aye supervisor fortunately cousin hubber aye is the first reading first reading the salary ordinance amendment related to legal assistant and attorney assistant classifications an ordinance amending certain provisions of the 2025 2026 county of alameda salary Ordinance.

Mr.

President, I will move to wave to a full first reading and introduce the salary Ordinance amendment.

Jareen State article 3, Section 3-21, as described in item 33 I'll second.

Motion's been made by Supervisor TAM, seconded by Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez.

Aye.

Supervisor TAM?

Aye.

Supervisor Miley.

Aye.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Aye.

President Hopper.

Aye.

I think that concludes your regular agenda.

Regular agenda.

We have public comment on items not on today's agenda.

Do we have any public comment in the room or online?

Items not on the agenda.

Seeing none, I would like to make mention of and adjourn this meeting in.

Well, before we recess to close session, I'm going to lost a member of our team, former member of our team, Darlene Smith.

Darlene was a trailblazing leader and a dedicated public servant whose career with Alameda County spanned nearly four decades.

Darlene's career embodied the very best of public service.

She began with the county in 1962 as a clerk, too, and steadily advanced through the clerical, technical, and administrative ranks, earning each promotion through her talent, determination, and commitment to excellence.

In 1986, she was appointed director of the General Services Agency, becoming only the second person to lead that agency following its creation.

She was the first woman in California to serve as a director of a county general services agency.

Throughout her distinguished career, Darlene broke barriers, opened doors for future generations of women in government leadership, and helped shape the county's operations through her vision, professionalism, and dedication.

Her legacy lives on not only in the organization she helped build, but also in the example she set for all who followed.

In recognition of her extraordinary contributions to Alameda County and the people it serves, I ask that today's meeting be adjourned in memory of Darling Smith.

We will recess into closed session when we come back to close out our meeting.

We will do so in her honor.

We're in recess.

Present.

Supervisor Miley?

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

Present.

President Hubbard?

Present.

County Council, anything to report on from closed session?

Uh no, President Hubbard.

The your board took no reportable action in closed session.

Very good.

Would you please um indulge me in a moment of silence for Darlene Smith?

Thank you very much.

Seeing that all items before us have been completed, we are now adjourned.