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Good afternoon, everyone.

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

Today is Monday, June 22nd.

This is a special meeting, which is a continuation of our previous budget hearings.

And I'll start the meeting by asking the clerk for roll call to establish our quorum.

Supervisor Marquez present.

Supervisor Tam, excuse.

Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortunato Bass.

President Halbert.

Present.

We have a quorum.

Thank you very much.

I will note that Supervisor Tam is online listening today, more as a member of the public.

She is with us in spirit, but cannot participate because she is remote and her remote location was not agendized.

And that's uh one of the rules that we have as elected leaders.

But she is listening in, and she will take uh everything under consideration.

With that said, the next item before us is public comment on closed session items.

And I'll ask, I don't think we need to adjourn to closed session today, so we won't be going into closed session, but there is uh that item.

Is there anybody wishing to make public comment on closed session items?

There seems to be one person with their hand online.

Veronica P.

You may unmute.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

I hope everyone is well and had a great weekend.

Uh my name is Ronica Palacios.

I am the vice president for the Alameda Health Systems chapter, and I am calling in support of, I believe, is agenda item three for Alamedo Health Systems.

Okay.

We'll call on you again when we're on the item.

Thank you.

I apologize.

Thank you.

With that said, we're going to then proceed.

Uh nothing to go into closed session, therefore, no need to report out on closed session.

I will say that we have a hearing.

Um item one is a series of hearings and deliberations on the county administrators' recommended proposed budget and all other proposed final budget adjustments.

Our first one will be a hearing on introductory remarks and an overview.

I'm assuming this is our county administrator's office.

County administrator, the floor is yours.

Thank you, President Halbert, members of the board.

Uh, this is the second day of your fiscal year 2026-27 budget hearings, deliberations and adoption.

Today we will provide an overview in more detail regarding the major components of the 6.7 billion dollar proposed budget before you, as well as presentations on each of the major program areas.

At the conclusion of the presentation and public comments today, we will introduce final budget adjustments and other issues for your board's consideration during your deliberations, and then we will close budget hearings.

We will subsequently recess and continue continue this meeting to Tuesday at 1 30 p.m.

for your board's deliberation on the proposed budget with final adoption scheduled for this Thursday at 4 p.m.

The overview that we will present today is multifaceted and complex and will include presentations by Melanie Atendito, Amy Schrego, and Rasley Tadeo.

The auditor controller will also present an overview of the annual comprehensive uh financial report.

Um, your board has binders that have copies of the presentations.

There are also copies in the back of the room.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Millennium.

Thank you.

So as always, we'll start with the economic outlook and then I'll transition to Amy Schrago for our state and federal updates.

With respect to the economic outlook, we presented this slide to your board last week, but to recap and set the economic context, the technology sector trends remain mixed with continued investment in AI alongside workforce reductions reflecting productivity gains but ongoing labor market disruption.

Economic uncertainty persists due to federal policy changes, market volatility, concerns about federal debt, and the potential for renewed inflationary pressures.

We're seeing some concerns, continued concerns over K-shaped economic growth with higher income households benefiting from asset appreciation while many lower and middle income residents continue to face affordability challenges and labor market pressures.

With respect to federal immigration policies and demographic trends, there are lower birth rates and housing constraints, which are affecting our labor for labor labor force participation and contributing to slower economic growth in California.

California, as you know, has one of the highest economic uh sorry, one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.

The unemployment rate in the state remains elevated, approximately 5%, which is above the national average of 4.3%.

While the county fares somewhat better at 4.1%, though East Bay employment growth continues to lag, regional trends.

Cost pressures remain significant, particularly in labor, healthcare, construction, and contracted services, despite moderating inflation.

And all of these conditions underscore the need for continued fiscal discipline to sustain the county's core services while maintaining long-term financial stability.

Okay, thank you.

So just to recap what we reviewed with you last week in regards to the state budget.

This budget represents a balancing act.

The state has prioritized fiscal stability stabilization and revenue growth while delaying some of the most severe cuts.

And as you can see on the top part of the slide, there are 36.5 billion dollars in total reserves included in this budget to build up the a strong fiscal cushion.

There is five billion dollars in additional ongoing revenue generated by extending the managed care organization tax, the MCO tax, implementing permanent corporate tax credit caps, and expanding the sales tax to pre-written digital software.

And uh thirdly, for us, there is 900 million dollars for HCAP round seven up from 500 million that was um included in the governor's uh original proposal.

And um, there continues to be a 9.7 billion dollar uh structural deficit for the state.

While the current year is balanced, the state projects the structural gap looking forward into FY 2930, and that's primarily attributed to rising federally federally mandated HR1 costs.

And um looking at the bottom half of the slide, uh we do have some breathing room as it relates to the proposed cuts, including Medi-Cal reductions, which have been delayed until July 1st, 2027.

And the legislature's budget plan includes approximately $835 million in the main fiscal year to address HR1 impacts, which includes 125 million for emergency only alternative to indigent care for those who use full scope medical eligibility due to HR1 work requirements, 250 million dollars to support public hospitals in California facing increased uncompensated care and fiscal pressures, and 459 million dollars for county eligibility for Medical and CalFresh to help Californians maintain access to these programs.

And for counties, we did have a major victory in that this legislature completely rejected the proposal to shift in home supportive services growth costs on to counties, which is the savings for us.

And there was an investment of 50 million dollars in one-time funding for Prop 36 programming.

And on the federal side, we are operating under a one-year federal budget plan.

Currently, Congress is looking at two additional spending bills for FY27 related to the National Defense Authorization Act.

And currently the Congress is still on a standoff over FISA reauthorization.

They don't seem to be making any progress on that.

And they are the House is back in session tomorrow, and the Senate is in session, but they don't have a very full docket as they lead up to the July 4th recess.

Moving on to the five-year forecast.

As with previous forecasts, there are some built-in assumptions in this model.

It assumes slowing economic growth, no new unfunded programs, and no other major changes to our existing labor agreements.

Major drivers include labor costs, operating costs, outpacing revenue, and IHSS inflation.

And risks include the prospect of a recession as well as the impact of high interest rates on the national and global economies.

If we assume a base case scenario, we see the projected funding gaps grow over the five-year horizon.

Again, this model assumes no corrective measures are taken to address the funding gaps.

But I'll note that this is the base case for projected costs, which means any other pending factors, for example, the impacts of state or federal policy changes or budget changes, or an economic downturn as previously noted, can worsen this long-term outlook.

Before we get into an overview of what's included in the proposed budget, we want to keep the pressure environment that we're all operating under out in front.

And we have incorporated the feedback we received from your board last week, adding some legislative pressures as well as the efficiency initiatives, and also have created a new wheel with the stakeholder or external pressures.

So we clearly operate under multiple simultaneous pressures that require balancing stakeholder expectations, fiscal realities, policy mandates, and board priorities.

With regard to stakeholder pressures, your board must respond to the needs and expectations of residents, labor, community-based organizations, advocacy groups, advocacy groups, civic organizations, and our government partners.

We continue to face increasing service demands while managing structural funding challenges, aging infrastructure, unfunded mandates, state and federal funding uncertainty and limited revenue growth.

So the fiscal pressures continue to grow with regard to policy pressures, new legislation, regulatory requirements, compliance obligations, governance changes, and modernization initiatives continuously reshape our operating environment.

And your board has also advanced strategic priorities that require resources, organizational focus, and implementation capacity across all county departments.

These pressures do not occur independently.

They often compete for the same limited resources, staff capacity, and leadership attention.

Success requires balancing immediate operational demands with our long-term strategic goals, and our challenge is to remain fiscally responsible, policy compliant, responsive to stakeholders, and aligned with board priorities while continuing to deliver the highest quality services possible to our residents within our limited resources.

The complex environment is why prioritization, coordination, and organizational agility are important more than ever for Elameda County.

Turning now to the fiscal year 2627 proposed budget.

As the county administrator noted, the fiscal year 2627 proposed budget totals approximately 6.7 billion across all funds, while the general fund budget totals approximately 4.3 billion.

The proposed budget supports a workforce of over 10,000 full-time equivalent positions, representing a reduction of approximately 45 positions compared to the prior year.

Most importantly, the proposed budget closes a maintenance of effort funding gap and presents a balanced budget without requiring additional net counting cost.

So as you can see, the general fund is the largest portion of the proposed all funds budget at sixty-four percent.

The inclusion of measure W adds three hundred twenty three million or five percent of the all funds budget.

If we take a look at appropriation or spending authority by major object, uh services and supplies, which represents operational expenses, including the internal service funds and contracts.

This is the largest category at $2.8 billion or forty one percent, followed by salaries and employee benefits at $2.2 billion or 31%.

Other charges includes assistance payments and fixed assets includes equipment and capital expenses.

In terms of appropriation by program, health is the largest category at 1.6 billion or 24% of the all funds budget, followed by public protection at 17%, public assistance at 16%, and general government at 13%.

Together, the four major programs comprise over 70% of the all funds budget.

The $795 million in capital projects is financed by $633 million of capital funds, a $50 million contribution from the general fund, and $112 million from the property development fund or surplus property.

And in terms of available financing by source, even in the all funds budget, you can see that together state and federal aid still make up a sizable portion of the county's financing, in addition to charges for services at over a billion or 15%, and property tax revenues at roughly $860 million or 13%.

And then the next slide, as you've seen before, represents the proportion of state and federal aid of the $4.3 billion in total financing in the county general fund.

That is over 60%, roughly 65% of our financing in the general fund compared to the $1.5 billion in all other revenue.

So these are the board approved policies that govern how measure W revenues are managed and allocated.

First year board established two dedicated Measure W funds, the Home Together Fund and the Essential County Services Fund.

These funds provide clear separation of resources and accountability for how Measure W revenues are used.

Second year board approved a fixed allocation formula for Measure W sales tax revenues received between July 1st, 2025 and June 30th, 2031, which are currently estimated at approximately 170 million dollars annually.

Under this policy, 80% or about $136 million per year is allocated to the Home Together Fund, while 20% or about $34 million per year is allocated to the Essential County Services Fund.

The board also established a prudent reserve policy.

This reserve consists of 170 million dollars in one-time accrued measure W funds.

It's maintained in a designation, and the intent is to provide financial stability and help manage revenue volatility.

And under this policy, any interest earnings from the reserve are accessed first and only if actual year-end measure W receipts fall below budgeted levels.

Finally, your board amended the policy regarding revenues that exceed annual estimates.

Any measure W sales tax revenue received above projected levels will now be allocated to the Essential County Services Fund rather than the Home Together Fund for fiscal years 25-26 and 26-27.

Once the revenues are confirmed by the auditor at year end, and they may be used for one-time board priority programs and to help mitigate the impacts of HR1 in the final state budget.

Together, these policies create a structured approach to allocating Measure W revenues, maintaining fiscal stability and ensuring flexibility to address emerging county priorities and financial risks.

This is a high-level summary of Measure W allocations through October 2025, consistent with your board's direction.

80% of the revenues are allocated to the Home Together Fund and 20% to essential county services.

This framework also includes the prudent reserve strategy, and to date, substantial one-time investments have already been approved, particularly for housing homelessness infrastructure and county capital needs.

This structure allows us to balance long-term system investment with flexible flexibility and fiscal resilience.

Here you can see the FY26-27 investments for the Home Together Fund.

This is the um this shows the launch of most of the substantive programs of the Home Together Fund.

The total expenditures are projected at approximately 288 million dollars.

Capital investments and housing operating subsidies account for the largest portion of spending during this year, and significant investments are also proposed for housing placement, shelter operations, coordinated entry, and prevention.

And this reflects the transition from planning efforts into operational implementation.

And here we have the Essential County Services Fund, and this is a summary of the allocations your board has already approved, totaling 73.5 million dollars across these six categories.

And at the top of each category, you can see the departments that are responsible for the implementation.

The FY26-27 essential county services fund budget allocates 38.7 million dollars toward critical county priorities.

More than half of the funding, 20 million dollars is dedicated to stabilizing the safety net.

7 million dollars is allocated to basic needs programs.

An additional 7 million is directed towards services in the unincorporated area, and 4.7 million is reserved for capital and major maintenance.

The spending plan is a balance of immediate community needs and long-term responsibilities.

This shows the combined total investment of approved expenditures and FY26-27 expenditures totaling 150.9 million dollars.

You can see by category the largest investment investments on in the blue chart, totaling the 38.7, and then by department uh in the orange chart.

Um the number is different due due to rounding there, but you can see each department's um allocations in the orange chart.

And these this budget aligns with your board's direction to use the essential county services fund to strengthen critical services, support vulnerable populations, invest in communities, and maintain the infrastructure needed to deliver county services effectively.

In the proposed budget document, we have prioritized making enhancements to how we display information regarding unincorporated services for another year.

The proposed budget continues significant investments in unincorporated communities.

Major expenditures include 70 million for road improvement projects, 65 million for fire protection and emergency response, 37 million for sheriff's patrol services, 9 million for flood control infrastructure, 7 million for library operations, and 5 million for housing and community development programs.

This slide shows a proportion of Measure W investments proposed to benefit the unincorporated areas from the essential county services fund for programs as well as capital and major maintenance, reflecting 30% of proposed Measure Wentral County Services Investments for fiscal year 26-27.

And this next slide shows the unincorporated budget at a glance by agency and department as well as by object or major spending category.

Turning now to a focus on the general fund proposed budget.

The fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget again totals approximately $6.7 billion across all funds, but $4.3 billion in the general fund.

Compared to the current fiscal year, you can see general fund appropriations have increased modestly by approximately 11.5 million.

And the proposed budget includes 10,000, well, 8,500 full-time equipment positions in the general fund.

And the document also reflects authorized positions, totaling nearly 14,000.

This uh sorry, most importantly, the proposed budget closes uh maintenance of effort funding gap and presents a balanced budget with without requiring requiring additional net county costs.

So, as you can see in this pie chart again, the general fund makes up 64 percent of the proposed budget with uh other funds representing six, sorry, 36 percent.

As a reminder to your board, the maintenance of effort funding gap was 185 million.

We were able to close more than half of that gap with 93.4 million in savings from one-time retirement rate reductions.

Of concern here is that less than 25 percent of the balancing strategies are ongoing and addressing our structural funding gap.

If we focus on the proportion of one-time to ongoing strategies used to balance the remaining 91.4 million dollar funding gap, you can see we used 52.1 in one-time strategies, 52.1% in one-time strategies, and 47.9% in ongoing strategies.

The next couple of slides illustrate how general fund resources are allocated across major expenditure categories and program areas.

In the general fund, personnel costs remain the largest expenditure category consistent with the labor-intensive nature of county operations.

22% of general fund appropriations are for direct client services administered by community-based providers on behalf of the county.

The largest proportion of county spending continues to support health care services, public assistance, and public protection functions, reflecting the county's role as a provider of critical safety net services in the general fund.

The four major program areas make up over 90% of budgeted appropriations.

As we saw in a previous slide, community-based organizations remain essential partners in delivering services throughout the county.

The proposed budget includes approximately $1.25 billion in contracts with $271 community-based providers.

These partnerships support health care, behavioral health, housing, social services, public safety programs, and other critical community needs.

This next slide is essentially a graphical representation of the information you saw in the previous slide.

So you can see the proportion and value of health program contracts administered by CBOs compared to the other program areas.

Mental health services represent the county's largest investment at over 800 million in appropriations.

Other significant investments include our partnership with the Alameda Health System, Home Together Fund programs, health pack, transportation and infrastructure capital improvements to address the county's aging infrastructure, essential county services fund initiatives, community-based reentry and public safety initiatives, emergency food and shelter programs, and countywide board initiatives for Vision 2036 and East County Infrastructure, demonstrating the county's continued commitment to supporting residents and strengthening community outcomes.

Despite the fact that we've been able to achieve a balanced budget once again for fiscal year 26-27, significant funding challenges remain, and I think you all know that front and center is that our costs continue to outpace revenue growth.

In addition, health care costs continue to rise, federal and state policy changes or increasing administrative and program costs, public safety departments continue to face inflationary pressures and implementation costs associated with new mandates, and additionally, housing, homelessness, infrastructure, and capital improvement needs continue to exceed available funding resources.

Looking ahead, we continue to focus and maintain that delicate balance between short-term priorities and longer-term obligations and investments.

The county has continued to maintain its AAA credit ratings for major rating agencies, reflecting strong financial management and fiscal stewardship.

The proposed budget also contains investments in infrastructure, deferred maintenance and pension liability reduction, and the five-year capital improvement plan totals 2.6 billion dollars with still another half a billion unfunded, despite the fact that your board has established a long-term capital financing plan.

It's important that we maintain strong fiscal leadership and adhere to your sound financial management policies.

Those assist the county to manage uncertainty and maintain essential services.

And with that, the auditor controller will present an overview of the annual consolidated financial report.

Good afternoon.

My name is Melissa Wilk.

I'm the Alameda County Auditor Controller Clerk Recorder.

And today I'll provide brief financial highlights from the annual comprehensive financial report covering fiscal year 2024-2025.

The annual comprehensive financial report or ACFER provides a comprehensive overview of a government's financial activities and position.

It serves as a detailed auditable record of a government's financial performance designed to inform stakeholders about how public funds are managed.

The three major sections of the ACFAR are introductory financial and statistical, and there's also a management discussion and analysis immediately following the independent auditors report that provides a narrative introduction, overview, and analysis of the financial statements.

The ACFAR has been prepared by the auditor controller agency in compliance with the principles and standards for financial reporting set forth by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, or GASBY.

For fiscal year 2024-25, the ACFR was audited by the independent certified public accounting firm of Messias, Gini and O'Connell, or MGO.

MGO issued an unmodified or clean opinion on the ACFAR with no findings, as well as no findings on the county's single audit, which ensures that federal awards expenditures are in compliance with federal program requirements.

The county has received the prestigious certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting from the GFOA for its AFRA for the past 42 consecutive years.

If you want to go back, I think the introductory section provides general background information about the entity, its structure, services, and environment.

The financial section is the core of the report.

It presents the entity's basic financial statements, including the government-wide and fund financial statements, as well as the notes to the statements and the independent auditors report.

It also includes the management's discussion and analysis, which again provides an overview of the financial statements.

The statistical section is the last section, and it offers a variety of statistical information, including historical financial trends, revenue and debt capacity, demographic information, and other operating data.

The next slide, I was going to cover the fund balances as presented on page 67 of the ACFAR, which has also been this information's always also been presented in prior years.

The fund balance focuses on assets and liabilities in the short term and can be used to assess an organization's ability to address financial challenges in the near term.

The total fund balance for the general fund as reported in the fiscal year 24-25 annual comprehensive financial report is $2.4 billion and is made up of the following classifications.

The first one is non-spendable, and you can see it on your the left hand side of the chart.

These are amounts that cannot be spent because they are either not in a spendable form or legally or contractually required to be maintained intact.

And they include things like inventory, and that totals about $37 million.

The next classification is restricted fund balance, and these are amounts with constraints placed on their use, either A by externally imposed by creditors, granters, laws, or regulations, or B imposed by law through constitutional provisions or enabling legislation like grants or donations.

Restricted fund balance is 592 million.

The committed fund balance are the amounts that are established for specific purposes pursuant to constraints imposed by formal action by the Board of Supervisors, the county's highest level of decision making authority.

The committed classification includes funds for capital projects, reserves, and designations, and totals about 1.2 billion.

The assigned fund balance includes amounts that are constrained by the county's intent to be used for specific purposes that are neither restricted or committed and is primarily comprised of rolled purchase order amounts, and that totals $386 million.

Lastly, the unassigned fund balance represents fund balance that has not been assigned to another classification and has not been restricted, committed, or assigned to other purposes within the general fund.

And this can include trust funds, unrealized gains and losses on investment pool assets or monies that have not yet been allocated.

The unassigned fund balance as of the end of 2025 was $131 million.

Next slide.

To summarize, the $2.4 billion fund balance as of June 30, 2025, includes resources in a non-spendable form of $37 million, $592 million in funds that are restricted by an external source like a grant or the state, including Prop $172 funds, AB 109, Measure A.

There's also $1.2 billion committed by actions of your board for various items, including fiscal management rewards, settlements, general contingency reserves that totals about $213 million, capital projects, pension liability, the emergency budget stabilization of $59.5 million, and other commitments, including proceeds from the Coliseum JPA, Enhancing Vision 2036, and redevelopment residual funding.

The commitments by your board total approximately $1.2 billion.

Assigned or rolled over encumbrances from the prior year are an additional $385 million, and funds in the unclassified or I'm sorry, unassigned classification of $131 million include fiduciary funds set aside for specific purpose, unrealized gains on investment pools, interest and depreciation for AHS, and then funds related to other board funding policies.

And then the last slide is focused on the county fund balance policy and the government finance officer association's best practices.

The county has a minimum fund balance policy that strives to maintain an annual amount of up to 5% of the total general fund budget within a designated contingency account and maintain the designated fund balance, general reserve at a level of at least two months of expenditures of general fund budget.

And the annual budget account for capital has been increased from 1% of discretionary revenue up to 5% of the general fund budget.

The county's policy is to pay current operating expenditures with current operating revenues.

Budgetary procedures that fund current expenditures at the expense of future needs are avoided.

The county's minimum fund balance policy is consistent with best practices.

The government finance officer association's best practices state that at a minimum, general purpose governments, regardless of size, should maintain unrestricted budgetary fund balances in their general fund of no less than two months of regular general fund operating revenues or regular general fund operating expenditures.

Per GFGFOA, the adequacy of unrestricted fund balances in the general fund should take into account each government's own unique circumstances, and establishing a policy governing the level of unrestricted fund balance in the general fund, a government should consider a variety of factors, including the predictability of its revenues and the volatility of its expenditures, its perceived exposure to significant one-time outlays, including disasters, immediate capital needs, litigation, state or federal budget cuts, the potential drain upon general fund resources from other funds, as well as the availability of resources in other funds, and lastly, the potential impact on the entity's bond ratings and the corresponding increased cost of borrowed funds.

Two months per minimum fund balance, two months of general fund operating expenditures is $715 million, and is shown in our committed fund balance of the Act for the general contingency amount as of June 30, 2025 is 213 million, which is about 5%, which is far short of the county school of having two months of operating expenditures and a designated reserve account.

This report, the current ACFER, as well as the current single audit report and all prior reports are available on the auditor agency website.

And I will turn it back to the CAO.

Looking now at several factors that continue to influence budget future budgets.

So maintaining strong reserves and disciplined fiscal management will remain essential as we navigate these challenges.

These include inflationary pressures, workforce challenges, disaster recovery needs, uncertain state and federal funding environments, and liability and insurance costs.

To better understand the impact of litigation, liability claims and insurance costs, this slide illustrates the changes to the risk management risk management budget over the last five years.

We can see that insurance premiums, legal expenses, and settlements has largely made up the risk management budget budget throughout this time and they continue to grow.

In the current fiscal year, we also made a significant contribution of $75 million to case reserves based upon industry best practices and actuarial analysis done to provide guidance on appropriate funding levels for pending litigation.

And here we see the workers' compensation budget.

The workers' comp budget continues to see increases in settlements.

And while there are fluctuations in contributions to case reserves, these amounts are again determined using industry best practices and actuarial analysis.

Turning now to salaries and wages and positions.

So the proposed budget includes a salary savings of 12%.

While salaries and wages are initially budgeted at the highest levels, salaries are adjusted based on trends while allowing staffing and hiring flexibility.

The total salary and wages for the proposed budget is 995 million.

This is shown in the blue bar on the far left.

Looking at our vacancies, there is a 19% vacancy rate countywide for full-time equivalent positions in the general fund illustrated in the middle bar.

However, looking at the bar on the far right, out of the total number of filled positions, 19% are unbudgeted.

As a county, there are a number of unbudgeted positions in order to provide departments with additional staffing and hiring flexibility.

Vacancies and budgeted positions help cover the costs of unbudgeted filled positions.

Departments have been working with central HR to transfer funding from vacant budgeted positions to filled unbudgeted positions.

It's important to keep in mind that vacancy rates are for a point in time and fluctuate throughout the year.

As this cleanup with Central HR continues, we anticipate that the point-in-time vacancy rate illustrated here will decrease.

Circling back to available financing by source and the general fund.

This slide highlights not only the county's reliance on state and federal funds, but also the importance of local property tax revenue.

Note that over half of budgeted revenue and charges for services are Medicaid charges for services, which is federal revenue.

On this next slide, with the addition of Measure W, roughly 36% of the county's revenue is discretionary in nature.

Most of the revenue reflected as program revenue on this pie chart has restrictions on its use, with over 60% coming from and largely supporting mandates in our program areas.

As your board knows, property tax-based revenue is the county's most important type of discretionary revenue.

Note that vehicle license fee ERAF revenue is also property tax-based.

So property tax measure W and vehicle license fee ERAF comprise 80% of total discretionary revenue.

All proposed, oh sorry, it's just a slide there.

All proposed budget balancing strategies included in the proposed budget were evaluated through the lens of your board's adopted vision 2036 with the objective to preserve services that advance equity, community well-being, economic opportunity, public safety, and organizational excellence while minimizing impacts to residents.

This slide is a high-level overview of balancing strategies by program to close the remaining 91.4 million maintenance of effort funding gap.

As reviewed in a previous slide of the remaining 91.4 million, approximately 43.7 million comes from ongoing solutions, while 47.6 million comes from one-time strategies that will become the start to the funding gap for the following developing budget.

Program areas collectively contributed nearly 60 million in reductions in efficiencies, while countywide and non-program adjustments contributed an additional 31 and a half million.

These strategies were developed with a focus on minimizing service impacts while improving long-term fiscal sustainability, though, again the reliance on one-time strategies will continue to pose a challenge for future years.

CAO staff will provide more detail on the program overviews and the presentations that followed.

President Howard, that includes the overview.

So before we get into the individual program areas, do you want to take public comment on the overview?

Sure, we'll open public comment just for this item, the introductory remarks.

Anyone wishing to speak on this item only?

Raise your hand or to let a speaker slip.

Do we have any speakers for this item only?

We do.

Could I kindly ask?

Okay, there we go.

I'll share my screen.

We have two in person, Jean Moses and then John Lindsay Poland.

Welcome.

I think this is off there.

My name is Gene Moses, and I want to thank you first, everybody, particularly the departments and the Office of the Administrator for their hard work.

And then I would like to make two comments.

One is that I found it impossible to read the handouts, which were handed out so late I probably couldn't have studied them anyway.

And that there's an awful lot of uh information to absorb it.

So I have a whole bunch of questions.

And I'm wondering if there's any way that we could establish an opportunity for people to have a discussion of the budget between now and when it's finalized.

Could we have office hours or sometime when people could ask questions and get feedback?

My second comment is that on the slide which discussed it was towards the end that 19% of actual positions are unbudgeted and therefore filled with budgeted and unfilled positions.

So we're trading off unbudgeted for unfilled.

And I wanted to know if we could see a breakdown of that comparison by department or by agency.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon.

I share the concern that it is impossible to read.

It's not just because of my age.

These were these are not posted online.

They were just handed out here.

Um there's a lot of new information here.

If you want the public to respond, if you want public input, then there has to be meaningful, accessible, advanced information.

Um, one of the things I am noticing here is it appears that in the the uh handout that there's 223 million dollars um in the capital fund proposed for Santa Rita Capital Projects, um, which is financed by a percentage of revenues and unspent funds each year.

Um, but it's it says 182 million dollars is shown as SRJ FAC, which I assume means facility.

The capital improvement plan included 235 million, which your board approved last September for critical improvements.

It's not at all clear that for this coming year whether that um that more than 200 million is part of the same money because the capital improvement plan also has 200 million dollars of unspecified future improvements.

So if so, that is a lot of money that would be um designated and appropriated in this budget with almost no information, zero information about what it is really for, when there are clearly other urgent critical needs in front of you that you've been hearing about for the last several months.

So please ask some specific questions about the information that's in front of you before going forward with any of these decisions.

Thanks.

One more person in one person in person, um Kari Maki.

Hi, good afternoon.

Um, thanks for having us.

Uh looking forward to commenting quite a few times today.

Um Kari Malki from Restore Oakland and Lena Tams district, um, because this is just an overview.

I wanted to just comment on this um CAO's presentation because I hear that we are a very fiscally responsible county, and I'm sure that's important.

Um, and I just think about a family who is wealthy, despite the pressures that we live under, and is using their prudence to um have a lot of money and savings or investments or stocks, and their kids are unhoused and unwell, and really struggling, and um then maybe they spend like $100 a week on a security system.

It feels like we wouldn't characterize that as fiscally responsible.

We would just be confused.

And I think we would think that that family was neglectful.

And I just really wonder about how we can continue thinking of ourselves as responsible in any way when so many of our residents are struggling.

And we actually do have the opportunity to take some money that we just heard about and do something different.

So I really want to just genuinely ask your board what we can do to radically change the status quo and address the needs rather than maintain some sense of superiority because of our fiscal responsibility.

Thank you.

Online, Shirley G, you're allowed to unmute.

Shirley G, please unmute.

We'll come back to you, Alison M.

Hello, Alison Monroe here with families advocating for the seriously mentally ill.

Um just four words uh care first, jails last.

I don't know when we'll have an opportunity to do this, but we need to explore what this 200 million plus of capital expenditures in the jail is going to do for us.

We need that money for other things if we are to move the seriously mentally ill out of jail, as we say we want to do.

I also echo the concerns about the accessibility of the budget documents.

I would love it if they could be posted, perhaps ahead of time is too much to ask, but if they could be posted online in a form we can download and read between meetings.

If we're going to have any input, maybe it'll be between today and tomorrow or tomorrow and Thursday, possibly.

We would read these budgets if they were available.

Thank you very much.

Mina Kuchi.

Hi.

Um I uh don't want to take too much time and just want to repeat the sentiments that were shared previously.

Um, and just echo about the 200 um million that is being shown as SRG FAC.

Um, so that's the county jails facility improvements.

So just as the members had spoken previously, I'm not I would love to understand what these improvements are for and why they are necessary.

My opinion as a taxpayer of this county and a homeowner and all those other things that are contributing is that we do I don't want my money going towards any of that.

And that's it.

Oh, and additionally, yes, please can you post these online so that we can actually read them and make informed comments at these at this time?

Thank you.

Shirley G, I'll give you 10 seconds.

10 seconds to unmute.

Okay, am I on?

Yes.

Hi, this is Shirley G.

I'm CEO for the Vietnamese American Community Center of the East Bay.

Our senior clients include uh the monolingual population within vulnerable communities in the county, especially in Oakland, Alameda, St.

Leangel, Hayward, and the unincorporated cities.

We provide complete wraparound service in a one stop sort of model, including uh services like food security, translation services, health and wellness, language literacy, and social navigation.

We are focused on diverse older adults and are and that and they are uh apparently uh consistently underserved, particularly our Southeast Asians, Asians, Latinx populations.

We also serve the Middle Eastern North African populations.

We are noticing a significant increase in need for food security and mental health services due to the severe cuts supporting these services.

Our elderly population is trying to hang on to health insurance and stay housed while maintaining their prescription regimen and deal with the 25% increase in food cost.

We are asking our supervisors to support all of the senior services coalition requests, which was developed along with the 40 plus CBO serving our aging population, besides backfilling and continuing existing supportive services for our seniors, which you have all deemed a high priority.

We are also requesting that you consider increasing funding in all of the requests based on anticipated increases in demand.

CBOs like ours are having difficulty keeping up with the increase in demand and mitigating the economic hardship that this aging population is serving.

All of these headwinds are causing mental health issues for our seniors, particularly in acute depression.

Please support uh the senior services coalition of requests.

Thank you.

A thought occurs to me.

You have given us an overview of income, expenditures, gaps, whatever in the budget.

But things change between the beginning of the fiscal year and the end of the fiscal year.

And if the public could um enjoy a kind of an ongoing report of how the meld of the various expenses and incomes, um, are changing.

If it would help us, I think um better understand services.

That's just a thought.

There are no other public comments on the introductory remarks.

Thank you very much.

Comments from my colleagues, or we'll go to the next report.

Anyone wish to comment on this?

I don't know.

Supervisor Marquez, the unfortunate best.

Uh, thank you to everyone who worked on this.

I'm gonna ask um our auditor Melissa Wilkes if she could please come back.

I just wanted to make sure um I'm capturing the information you share with us with respect to the best practice of having, I believe you said at least five percent, two months of operating reserves.

And we we don't have that, is that correct?

So two months would be about 16% of the operating expenditures or the revenues, okay.

Um, and we have about 5% at this point.

Have we ever had the 16% to two months?

Not that I'm aware of.

Okay, and we keep on getting these high ratings, um, and acknowledgement with the audit.

Is that since we're not meeting this criteria?

Are we do we continue to get the recertification acknowledgement for the high standards because of the high reserve balance and other funds?

Or just help me understand as to if that's a best practice and we're not meeting that.

So uh the triple A credit rating from all three credit rating agencies looks at um multiple funds, including what's in the reserves.

They look at what is in the committed fund that the board has discretion over.

Um, they look at the restricted.

The restricted includes a lot of um grants and trust funds that are used to help provide support for operating uh departments.

So they look at those two areas along with the surplus lands fund, um, and then they also look at agreements that we have to manage our debt.

They look at our debt, they look at outstanding debt, how it's going to be repaid, they review our permanent agreement with AHS as a mechanism to manage health care debt.

So they consider all of those factors.

Okay.

And when will we get the so this was for 2425?

When will we get the next report?

Is it will be for the current fiscal year 2627?

Do we expect that sometime next year when it's due uh December 31st?

Okay.

So six months after.

Okay.

And all of this information that you presented, we could find under your website your section of the county website under your department.

Yes.

Okay.

Those are all my questions for you.

Thank you for explaining that.

With respect to risk management, we know because of settlement fees and the cost of that keep on increasing.

Not a discussion for now, but I would like the board to be briefed.

Um doing a look back like the last five years and kind of projections moving forward because of those fees continue to escalate.

So wanting to look at um, you know, correlation of what has been said by many of our public members, but wanting to reinvest funding to go towards direct services and keeping people out of Santa Rita jail.

Since I could just say anecdotally, our high settlements have to do with people in custody.

And I think I can also say I want to give acknowledgement to the sheriff and her team because we're still dealing with settlements under the previous administration, not the current.

So I want to be clear about that.

So I just want to flag that for the public that this is something that I deeply care about and want us to do an analysis on because I think there's policy decisions and investments we can make to help reduce those risk factors.

And I'll stop there.

I have other comments, but I want to give others an opportunity as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Fortnite.

Thank you.

Maybe just picking up where Supervisor Mark has left off.

I am also very interested in pages 54 and 55.

Um risk management, where our um contribution, our budgeted amount uh increases quite a bit in FY26, and also in 27, though not as much.

And then for workers' comp, our contribution to case reserves increases quite significantly in 27.

It would be helpful to understand that more, whether it's um uh an open session if that's appropriate or in closed sessions, since this this does involve litigation, I presume.

And as it relates to the page on vacancies, uh that's page 56.

I would appreciate.

I'm also digesting this information, having seen this handout for the first time and also hearing it.

I'd appreciate hearing just a quick high-level summary of that again.

It looks like we are budgeting for a 12% vacancy rate.

Um, but we do have roughly 19% unfilled.

I would love to just understand that a little bit better if that information could be repeated and summarized again, just very briefly.

Um yes, so that is correct.

Uh we so we do um already incorporate a big uh salary savings into the proposed budget, and so this is typically done based upon um historical trends.

So we are taking some salary savings up front.

And then we also do have a vacancy rate of our budgeted filled positions.

So those are our full-time equivalents.

So supervisor, part of what this slide is trying to capture is that to the extent that we would have had savings associated with the uh funded vacant positions that are represented in that middle bar.

Some of those savings are supporting the cost of the unbudgeted and filled positions.

In addition, we uh sometimes have departments that need to transfer spending authority between objects to close the fiscal year.

So we've had a few examples of departments that have come to your board uh mid year to address a projected um overage, if you will, in another object, and so they will transfer uh with your board's approval spending authority tied to presumably in part vacancies and salaries and employee benefits to cover other costs.

Thank you.

And then um I also want to, I know we're just doing the overview right now, but I think it would be helpful to hear how we are going to discuss our capital improvement plan.

Um, and I do have a few specific questions about that.

Um, one is on the fund balances.

Well, this is not related to our capital improvement plan but related to properties on the fund balances.

I notice properties held for resale at 33 million.

Um has the board been briefed in the past about those properties and sort of the status of whether or not it's possible to um sell some of those so that we have could have more funds for safety net services.

I can bring it gas away, director of GSA.

So right now uh we are evaluating the uh properties that are available for sales.

So as you're aware, we're in a deal on the caliseum property.

Malibu property may have some connection to that.

It's jointly owned with the city of Oakland.

We have um the Glendire Jail uh board letters coming forward to look at segregating the utilities.

The Glendyer jail is directly attached to the Wiley Manual Courthouse, so segregating those properties and how we strategize that with the courts is a significant undertaking.

I had a brief conversation with some of the sheriff's command staff.

I didn't speak to her directly, but about um the inmate transport is happening at the jail and what how would could we possibly um stop that operation would be a significant challenge.

So we are looking at that.

The property that is um the most challenging for us right now is the arena center, and that um building on the other across the highway from the Coliseum has never been occupied.

We have tried a number of ways.

It is surplus property.

We've looked at a number of ways of um disposing of that or leasing it in whole or in part, and that because of the current market conditions has been a significant challenge.

So we're continuing to have that conversation with your board and we'll look for further direction regarding that particular property.

At the back of the capital plan that's published now, and the one that's coming, it has a list of all uh vacant or underutilized properties, including those with the fire district, which is separate from the county and the surplus property authority, as well as those managed by GSA.

So you can see them and and the actions we're taking to deal with those properties.

Thank you.

And I assume when we get to general government, we'll talk more about the capital projects.

So I'll save my specific questions for that section.

Thank you.

Supervisor Miley.

Will you be covering that when we deal with the capital piece, people raised questions for Glendayer.

We'll be covering an overview of the capital budget for 2627.

The updated five-year capital improvement plan will be reviewed with your board after adoption of the budget.

So what's in this year's in the proposed budget is the funding for 2627.

And as you know, we update the five-year plan, but we still need to bring the updated five-year plan to the board.

So once again, the Glenn Glendayer, when will that be covered so folks can get their questions answered?

Some of it will be presented as part of the capital overview to the extent funds are included in the budget for the upcoming year.

Okay, right.

Then the budget process, when does it start?

It's a year-round process.

It's a year-round process as your now your board adjusts your budget every week when you take actions, you have board letters that come forward, you make financial adjustments, so you adjust the budget throughout the year.

Our formal process usually starts in December with your board's adoption of policies, the budget work group starts meeting early in the year, and we strive to adopt by the end of June.

Okay, and so uh I you have a staff of about 15 folks or thereabouts, counting the straight.

So I know you folks work pretty hard.

So is there any particular, can you explain why we're just getting this today so people have a sense of that?

Because I know you most of you are over there now.

So we're some of the data that we presented today, should not is not new data, it's all data that's included in the budget documents that we presented to your board on May 28th and have been posted online.

So we've taken that information and summarized it for your board in the presentations today.

Okay, so this information was out roughly a month ago, correct.

Okay, I'm just asking, I'm just asking the questions.

Um then I've been through a few budgets, so I'm just trying to figure something out here.

There, oh thanks for including that fourth wheel too.

That was very fascinating.

Um the fourth wheel.

Um there was the all fund budget, I think was six point seven billion.

Correct.

Yeah, then there was oh yeah, then there was the state and federal aid as a percentage of the total financing, and that's uh 2.8 billion, and then other revenue 1.5 billion.

Where is the additional amount that adds up to 6.7?

We'll pull up the slide that shows the financing for the 6.7 billion dollar all funds budget.

Because I see the available financing by source, but then I then I saw the state and federal aid as a percentage of total financing and just trying to reconcile the numbers.

So supervisor, I think the slide that you're referring to was actually a recap of revenue revenues by source in the just the general fund, so the 4.3 billion total financing.

Uh, the point here being that state and federal aid makes up 65% of our financing in the general fund.

Um, there is a pie chart on uh financing in the all funds budget as well that we can pull up.

But under that, that one slide, yeah, that one, it says all of the revenues 1.5 billion.

But that doesn't include all revenue, does it?

Uh, this is just this just represents this pie chart just represents the 4.3 billion in the general fund.

Okay, because there's additional revenue on top of that.

Okay, correct in all fund budget.

Okay.

So this pie chart here, supervisor slide 20 represents uh the available financing by source in the all funds budget.

Okay, totaling the 6.7.

Yeah, that's the one I was looking at.

I was just trying to figure out the difference between the two slides, and you've answered the question.

Okay, then um with the appropriations the do we know the percentage of funds that goes to public assistance and public health that's that's um that's non-discretionary.

I think there might have been a slide that shows that shows that.

I don't think we have a pie chart that separates the mandated and discretionary, but that's information I know we've collected from the departments.

Okay, so the departments might be able to show that.

Okay, and then uh on one of your slides two, Melanie, you talked about the community-based organizations, and uh I'm kind of like a broken record on this.

So uh 1.2 billion dollars we provide to 271 community-based contractors, uh, and most of those contractors are either in health care or public assistance, so that 1.2 billion, um, do we have a sense of how many um, you know, the ancillary um spinoff is for the local economy or how many employees that um uh that funding provides.

I know that's something do we ever ask that question?

So for instance, when a contractor gets a grant from a county, how many employees is that grant equal?

And then do we have an overview of how many employees are provided as a result of the county's um contracting?

We don't have that information represented in the budget document.

I think that would require additional research and understanding the composite budgets of the CBOs that we contract with.

So if, for example, the county is the major funder of that CBO, we could presume that uh, you know, a significant portion of the investment is supporting staffing, um, but we would have to look at the full picture of their funding sources to understand.

I think it would be nice if you know, I think I've said it before.

Um, if we can ask the CBOs who receive funding from the county, how many employees does that fund?

And if we start gathering that data, because I know the county has about 16,000 employee employee positions when you count temporary positions as well as positions for elections and then funded positions, that this total number of authorized positions.

So as Melanie mentioned, I think some of the departments are moving towards requesting that each of the organizations we contract with provide a composite budget so that we're able to see their entire um financing sources as well as their expenses.

Yeah, I know because we've been pushing on that the procurement and contracting committee, so yeah, I just think that's useful information to have.

Because I think, but for the we know CBOs are important to the county's ability to deliver safety net services, and I just think it's important that we get a sense of the resources that are being provided and how that's helping to um provide the safety net services.

And I also want to just um thank even though there's that one slide here where where it talks about the staffing or the salaries.

I do want to thank uh all the county uh employees and bargaining units as well as unrepresented folks for delivering the services they do and helping us um balance our budget when it comes to negotiations, and I know in times of difficulty our bargaining units have stepped up to help us, and I just want to acknowledge that and acknowledge everyone's work there.

Then under the CAFR, I wanted to ask the auditor in the CAFR.

What is that um the committed?

It's kind of small, so I'm that's what I'm gonna be down to take a look at it in the CAF.

It's just committed to it has other commitments, and that's is that 146 million or 146,000.

Other commitments.

So under the committed, the other commitments is 146 million.

Okay, okay.

So what is how what is the what are those other commitments?

So the okay, so some of those other commitments uh include um things like enhancing vision 2026.

There are other designations that don't necessarily um such large amounts that they're reported separately, like the capital projects or settlements, but they would include things like um uh major maintenance, um, east county economic development, uh capital projects like the African American Wellness Hub that has been fully funded but was still had some funds left.

Um, HS reimbursement they give us seven million, um, and then uh we end up transferring that back for them to be used uh to for them to use it on their electronic health record system.

Um it includes the uh JPA uh funds that we've received from the Coliseum JPA, uh redevelopment residual funding percentage of that, or some of small amounts related to that, and then smaller things like tech innovation.

Okay.

Um the transfer of the county's rights to the Coliseum.

That's that would be in that it's in committed to in the other commitments that 146.

So it's about a hundred million, okay.

It's there, okay.

Um the any designated counts or escort counts that we have that are not being utilized.

Do you does the county administrator you just put those back into the reserves?

What do you do with those?

So those um anything that um any available fund balance at year end uh per board policy, two-thirds goes to budget balancing.

Um, and uh one third goes to the I'm sorry to the general reserve.

Okay, right to the general reserve, and as you said, we're we're um five percent of what we would need to be correct, okay.

Okay, I think those are all my questions for now, so thank you for providing this overview.

Thank you, Supervisor Miley.

All my questions have been asked and answered.

Follow up from Supervisor Marquettez.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just wanted to hear what my colleagues had to say, and just to round out the conversation, um, not expecting responses right now, but just um want to flag for staff because we have this budget deficit, we're projecting a higher one.

Um we've got the the forecast for the next five years.

Um so I know we received a work session update on the fact that we're on track to spend all of the ARPA funding by December.

I think we'll get another update just to make sure that we're doing that.

It's been a while since we talked about FEMA owes us some money, so want to check on the status of that, and also I have asked for our assessor to come back and give us a status update.

I don't remember the number, but it was significant in terms of how much money the county has not been able to collect because of all the assessment appeals.

We even talked about is there some type of legislation we need to work on?

It's just um unconscionable that people can hold out and not give us money for so long.

There's got to be a kind of you got to pay something like the baseline.

So that's something I want us to look at basically what it comes down to me personally that the county should not be leaving any money on the table.

And also, we've talked about this repeatedly, but we have to advocate even stronger with CSAC on these unfunded mandates.

Um I'm not going to get into it right now, but I'm hearing more and more concerns about Prop One and just the impacts it's having on our local cities.

So I just want us to make sure that we're keeping that top of mind as we're dealing with these budget challenges.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll just say that on that last point, second to last point.

Property tax appeals.

Not only do people not pay while their evaluations are under appeals, if they win, that money goes away forever.

Their assessed value goes down, they don't have to pay that year, the next year they don't have to pay, the next year they don't have to pay.

We have a huge risk in that regard.

Follow up again from Supervisor Force Not of Ass.

Thank you.

I appreciate that you both raised this issue around our property tax assessment appeals.

It's something I've also been um very interested in.

So back in April when our assessor presented um his information, um, it was really interesting to me that we have an estimated 7,500 appeals that we will receive this year, totaling 1.2 billion in assessment disputes.

And given that property taxes are such a significant portion of our general fund budget and overall budget.

Um, I shared with the county administrator that I'm very interested in looking at the um assessment appeal fee, which is currently $50 and has not been adjusted in many, many years.

I know Santa Clara County recently adjusted their fee, and it's much more significant, which allows for cost recovery of the actual staff time that it takes.

You know, the clerk, uh the county council, and the assessor staff are all involved.

And I do want to urge us also to look at revenue and our fees in particular and really prioritize the assessment fees.

Um, I understand that the next period for filing assessment appeals begins July 2nd.

So we're already missing that opportunity, but I think we can as a board prioritize direction such that we update that.

Um we look at and analyze and potentially update that appeal.

Um, ideally, you know, by the end of the year, so there's ample time to be on track for updating those fees by next fiscal year and hopefully um generating more revenue so we have more staff to handle this and ensuring that we get the property tax we deserve.

Thank you.

Very good.

Seeing as how we've concluded the first item, we have one, two, three, four, five more to go.

The next one is the public assistance budget overview.

Public assistance will be presented by Mark Lipkin.

Thank you, Susan, and good afternoon, members of the board.

I'll provide a brief overview of the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget for the public assistance program, which consists of the Social Services Agency and Child Support Services.

The public assistance program focuses its services on the economic stability and living circumstances of the county's most vulnerable residents in alignment with the county's Vision 2036 10x goals and shared vision.

Here we see the proposed budget overview for public assistance.

Appropriations for the program are over $1.1 billion, which is a decrease of $20.7 million or $1.8% from the current year.

Revenues for fiscal year 2027 are just over $1 billion, a decrease of $23.1 million from the current year or $2.2%.

The net county cost for the program is $76.4 million, and there are $2,553.59 full-time equivalent positions.

The largest share of the public assistance budget is for direct payments or other charges, which is budgeted at $477 million.

Salaries and benefits make up $33% of the budget at $368 million, and services and supplies are budgeted at nearly $257 million, with $135.3 million supporting community-based organizations.

Here we see a breakdown of the public assistance revenue by source, totaling just over $1 billion.

Federal and state aid make up the majority of public assistance revenue sources, equaling over $1 billion or $98% of all public assistance revenues.

Public assistance appropriations are allocated to child support services and the four departments within the Social Services Agency.

The Social Services Agency makes up nearly 97% of the total public assistance budget.

Here you'll see a summary of the child support services proposed budget as compared to the current fiscal year.

The proposed budget includes over $35 million in appropriations and revenues.

The department is funded by federal and state revenue with no county match.

There are a total of $174.5 full-time equivalent positions with no change in FTEs from the current fiscal year.

Turning now to the Social Services Agency, the fiscal year 2027 appropriations are budgeted at over $1 billion with a decrease of $19.1 million from the current fiscal year.

The decrease is largely accounted for by salary savings applied to reflect SNEB actuals and staffing trends within the agency.

Revenues are over $991 million, a decrease of $21.5 million, resulting in a net county cost of over $76 million, a 3.2% increase when compared to the current fiscal year.

There are a total of 2,379.09 full-time equivalent positions, which is a decrease of $1.26 FTE from the current year.

Here we see the breakdown of SSA's total appropriations.

Assistance payments has an appropriation of over $477 million, making up over $44% of the appropriations for the agency.

Salaries and employee benefits have an appropriation of over $340 million, making up nearly 32%.

In addition to over $114 million in service and supplies for the agency's operations, over $135 million is allocated to CBO contracts.

Other financing uses total to $3.5 million, which is less than half a percentage point of the agency's budget.

Here we see the agency's revenue by source.

As is the case for the public assistance program, over 98% of revenues for SSA are from state and federal sources.

SSA's proposed budget includes over $570 million in state aid and over $404 million in federal aid.

Meanwhile, the net county cost is just over $76 million or about 7.7% of SSA's total financing.

Public assistance budget balancing strategies for fiscal year 26-27 include the incorporation of over $3.2 million in additional revenue to offset increases in operating costs for the agency, as well as over $330,000 in savings resulting from the elimination of a long vacant project position.

$7.3 million of Measure W is allocated to the public assistance program area in the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget.

Of the 7.3 million total, $5.8 million supports CBO contracts.

The Measure W commitments reflected in the fiscal year 2027 budget include 1.3 million dollars to extend CBO immigration contracts, half a million dollars for CBOs to develop workfare slots, $4 million to augment the Alameda County Community Food Bank contract, and $1.5 million for temporary staffing within adult and aging services.

The proposed budget for the public assistance program includes spending to support children and families, older adults, and to assist our community in obtaining services for food, housing, and employment.

I will focus on just a few budget highlights, including just under $477 million for assistance payments.

This is comprised of over $200 million for the in-home supportive services program, over $120 million in children and family services for programs such as foster care, adoptions, and KinGap, $119 million in workforce and benefits for programs such as CalFresh, CalWorks, and Refugee Cash Assistance, more than $35 million for general assistance, and more than $1 million for other assistance payments.

In addition, the public assistance budget supports over $135 million in appropriations for community based organization contracts, which does not include the additional $5.8 million in Measure W funding, over $35 million for child support services, and more than $18 million for the Area Agency on Aging for supportive services for our aging population.

There are a number of pending factors which may impact the public assistance budget, several of which are highlighted here.

As previously mentioned, the bulk of public assistance funding is from state and federal sources, which makes the program vulnerable to funding swings at the state or federal level or during times of economic uncertainty.

The impacts of HR1 will become more perceptible throughout this budget year, and changes within the state budget often create additional precarity within the public assistance program for those who depend upon it.

The administration of CalFresh and MediCal are also pending factors in the budget for fiscal year 27, as well as future budget years, as some of those who depend upon these benefits may lose access or face additional hurdles to enroll or to stay enrolled.

In-home supportive services continues to be an area of concern.

Although the legislature has rejected several proposals in the governor's budget, which would have shifted significant costs to counties, annual increases to the county's obligations, together with the uncertainty of state funding poses significant challenge.

Costs for IHSS are expected to increase to reflect growing caseloads and provider costs, which follow broader demographic shifts within the county, specifically related to the actual and projected growth in the number of older adults.

It can generally be expected that as the federal government defunds critical services where the county experiences other economic shocks, reliance on the county's safety net will increase, and the need for public assistance among older adults, immigrants and refugees, and those facing economic hardship will expand.

Well, my last slide is the concluding slide.

So thank you, and this concludes the public assistance overview.

There it is.

Thank you.

We'll go to public comment on item number second bullet point number two, public assistance budget overview.

Anybody in the room first and then online?

How many speakers?

Wendy Pearson, Kim Olson, and Sherry Novet Novich Navik.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

I'm Wendy Peterson with the senior services coalition.

Thank you for your patience.

It took a little while getting up here.

It's hard for me to respond to this budget and this presentation on public assistance because we don't see any of the funding that we actually need for aging services for senior services that are contracted through AAA in the current proposed budget.

We're hoping that that funding shows up in your discussions around the last item on your agendas this afternoon, which is Measure W Essential Services Funding.

But right now we don't see the additional Measure W funding that we're asking for 2.2 million to backfill cuts that will happen and have been happening every year to uh triple A contracted services.

We don't see a continuation of the Measure W funding for um senior meals and and food.

Um 1.7 million.

Um that was a one year allocation.

If it ends, the fund the funds stop and the services stop.

If the backfill funding ends, the services stop.

Thousands of older adults will not receive services.

We're very much hoping that those recommendations or at least the possibility of those recommendations show up at the end of your hearing in the last presentation.

Um, we're also very much hoping that there will be additional funding because we need more capacity.

Um, as more and more older adults are in crisis.

You've heard why from the very presentation we just listened to.

Um we need capacity among triple A contracted services.

Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisors Kim Olson, SOS Meals on Wheels.

Uh, you know, Wendy is much more of a budget expert than I am, than most of us are, I think.

Um, but some again, including this, we didn't we don't know where it is, but we do want to make sure that that something is provided for for our seniors to continue the great work that was done in the last year to help support them to help make sure that we didn't have to say no to anyone that needed our services to make sure that we could step up and provide additional meals for those seniors that needed it.

Um, and we know we all know that the growing the crisis is going to grow.

Our folks, about 1,400 of the 3,000 seniors that we serve are on CalFresh.

And we know it's not just uh budgetary um grocery budget that it's affecting them.

It's it's a combination of things, the same things that are hitting us all, are compacting their daily household budgets, and we want to make sure we can provide whatever service we can.

Just to keep in your minds the good work that was done this year with Measure W.

Uh we are going to provide over 500,000 meals in Alameda County to homebound seniors, and about 15% of those are thanks to the latest Measure W augmentation for our program.

We also have served uh 21,000 supplemental meals to seniors in Alameda County.

That is for our seniors who are most food insecure, where one meal wasn't enough for them, and we were able to say yes and bring them additional meals.

Those seniors are feeling better, they're more healthy.

A client in Oakland just told me a while back that it cured his anemia.

I don't know if that's entirely true, but I do know what that's like when you're getting the nutrition that is designed for you, and you feel stronger and better because of it.

So please, I don't know how it happens exactly, but please continue to prioritize seniors.

Thank you.

Supervisors, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

My name is Sherry Novick.

I am the mother of an adult child with a serious congenital disability that includes behavioral health challenges.

And I wanted to make a couple comments about a program that the clients of many departments on the agenda today touch.

Specifically adult residential facilities, commonly referred to as a licensed board and care.

I think I know you heard a lot about this last week in the moving heartfelt testimony that people brought forward, but I wanted to make a few very specific points.

It feels like these Title 22 licensed programs are truly a stepchild of in the county.

It's unclear what department has any accountability responsibility, who's looking at what happens in them.

For instance, the cost of providing care.

These facilities under licensing regulations are required to have 24-hour care, uh, three meals a day, medicine management providing personal care services.

Um, they often are funded with the Social Secure SSI check, right?

And a patch, some subset, yeah, a patch from the county.

Uh, is that actually enough?

It's really unclear that anyone's looking carefully at that.

Um, this leads pressure on count on uh providers to leave, which they are at a rapid rate, when they can turn their property into a sale, right?

Um, which of why would they not?

Many of them, it's their home.

That points to the importance of the alternative model.

Um, the county at one time endorsed, which is using a land trust model.

And so I would call your attention to the role of uh supportive housing community land alliance or other land alliance land trust programs that could develop facilities that remain even after even if providers should change.

Thank you.

Next three online, Cassie Bartholomew, then Linda TCV Food Bank, and then Maria Alderete.

Cassie, you may unmute.

Good afternoon, supervisors.

My name is Casey Bartholomew.

I'm a senior program manager at Stop Waste.

And Stop Waste is a member of the Alameda County Food Sovereignty Roundtable.

As I've shared previously, we are also a convener of the Alameda County Food Recovery Network, which is a countywide collaborative.

We have more than 40 community-based organizations working to strengthen food recovery and distribution systems in each of your districts in Alameda County.

And the work of these organizations is critical to reducing the impact of more than 300 million pounds of food that's thrown away each year in Alameda County.

Much of this is estimated to be edible food that could instead nourish our communities.

Just last year in 2025, over a hundred community-based organizations were covered and redistributed close to 14 million pounds of food, which is the equivalent of nearly 12 million meals distributed.

And yet most of these organizations are nonprofits, they continue to operate with minimal staffing.

As we've all heard, they're facing major funding and transportation costs increase, as well as infrastructure gaps.

And these organizations, as we've heard, continue to increase need to supplement food as food costs continue to rise.

So we really appreciate the board's action to increase Measure W Essential Services funding to 20 million dollars for the next two fiscal years to help support food security efforts and essential services in the county.

We do further encourage you to adopt this funding allocation in the final budget and increase funding.

This past year, 500,000 was uh allotted for food recovery services.

Uh, we would like to see that increased in the proposed expenditure plan for food recovery and distribution organizations in the next two fiscal years.

Thank you for your time.

Linda, you may unmute.

Hello, Linda Liu with TCV Food Bank, serving 1,500 of our food insecure neighbors in South County, serving District 1 and District 2 every week.

And proudly participant of the food sovereignty roundtable.

I just wanted to start by thanking the board for your action on June 2nd regarding the letter, increasing the Essential Services Fund to 20 million dollars and encourage your adoption of this action into the final budget.

Every day here, we are seeing growing need and people struggling to put food on the table for their families.

And we know that HR1 will impact the benefits of thousands in South County.

And so we are hoping that that is also a consideration as we roll out additional, the current measure WRFP that there is a geographical consideration, but continue to fund this essential services fund at the highest level possible.

Thank you so much.

Maria, you may unmute.

Good afternoon, supervisors and county staff.

My name is Maria Alderetti, and I'm the founder of Community Kitchens, a frontline food justice organization that feeds people who are left behind from traditional food systems.

I want to thank this board and county administrative staff for your leadership in proactively addressing the impact that HR1 is having in our community.

I support Alameda County Food Sovereignty Coalition's request for 17 million in funds to help address the critical food need in our community.

At community kitchens, the number of clients we serve has doubled since November last year, and we must prepare for further increases when SNAP work requirements begin to really fully impact our community.

Our programs right now, 88% of the meals that go out are distributed to seniors throughout our community.

We are supported through not only the food bank's uh unhoused meal program but also uh the prepared emergency prepared meals program that enables us to reach Berkeley seniors.

Um, and a great example of how our coalition works together is community kitchens receives trays of recovered food from Daily Bowl.

The other week that included trays of roasted lamb and pasta, and our chef added ingredients from the food bank to prepare delicious meals that were distributed out our door within four hours of receiving this food.

We are stronger if we work together, and with this project, we are able to distribute food at 25% of the current food production costs with these food recovery channels.

Please, I just want to end with my uh gratitude and support of uh the food sovereignty request for 17 million in food for food security efforts.

Thank you so much.

In person, Janice Roberts, Almas, and Kendall Johnson.

Good evening, supervisors.

My name is Alma Zideko.

I'm from the African Research Center.

I'm also from the Food Servante Roundtable Group, which is multiple organizations and uh food distributors and the group.

Uh, we've been really working together to make sure that we reach out to all communities.

I personally advocate for African um immigrant populations, which is like there's a lot of gaps within the African immigrant population.

Um, as supervisors, I'm sure you don't see any African immigrants come here and advocate for any support.

But now it's about time.

Um, I'm coming from the African resource center.

There's a lot of issues within the African community.

So I'm here to make sure that you, since there's a lot of that is going to happen with this um, you know, food stamping, cash assistant medical for immigrants, specifically for immigrant communities.

And it's uh we uh initiate to have this 20 million dollars to put food support increase, please.

Um, you know, and that the one that you have on uh June to June 2nd, and now we want you to adapt that budget to pass through, and we make sure that also pay attention to the immigrant population that it's gonna lose a lot of the benefits and include CBOs like our organization because we are not being served properly, we don't have food access, and we want you to really really pay attention to us.

Thank you so much for listening.

I appreciate it.

Hello, afternoon, supervisors.

My name's Kendall.

I'm representing my organization called Feed Black Futures.

This is my first time speaking to the board of supervisors, so I'm gonna share a little about myself.

I'm the daughter of a single black mother who was able to survive and thrive in East Oakland due to the beautiful local food economy we have here in Alameda County.

And not everyone like me can have a grandma with an extremely successful green thumb, which is why I'm here to talk about the population that I'm representing.

I'm representing black and brown mamas and caregivers who are impacted by the car sale system here in Alameda County, and through that are systemically excluded from the uh investments for public food access.

So whether it's you know, access to a stable job, access to addresses to receive public assistance, people who have been through the car sale system in our county um do not have easily access to applying and maintaining those services.

Um, so with these new staff require snap requirements, there are compounding effects on black and brown residents who also have experience within prison and jail systems, and this layers on top of anti-black racism experience through residents throughout our community.

Um, and so we're here to affirm the 19 million dollar commitment to food and essential services.

My organization feeds over 250 families in West and East Oakland.

Um our average family size we feed is four four people, and so when we invest in food, we invest in public services.

It's not the individual person receiving the food, but also the families and the future generations that are invested in.

So we're asking to maintain this budget allocation and invest in our local food system for economic resilience and healing.

I want to highlight the sign, you know, invest in care.

Black lives matter, investing in food is saying that Black Lives Matter.

Thank you.

What is the name of your organization again?

You mentioned it, but I didn't get it.

Yeah, my sticker is tiny, but it is feedback.

Feed Black Futures.

Feed F-E-E-D.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Thomas Udago, Aliyah Phelps, and Benika Coleman.

Hi, good evening, supervisors.

Um, I'm here addressing.

Oh, my name is Felika Folks.

Verika Coleman.

Um, and I'll be speaking on behalf of Parent Voice Oakland, um, based off of the unhoused families.

Basically, at our Parent Voice Oakland budget forum in March of this year, parents and providers shared their affordable housing and economic stability are foundational foundational needs for families across Alameda County.

We urgently need increased investments in affordable housing, renter protection, workforce development programs, and access to living wage, employment opportunities.

Participants shared the housing instability and the high cost of living continue to be major barriers to financial security and upward economic mobility for families.

With $650 million and measure C measure W funds collected to date and additional $190 million available annually through 2031.

Alameda County has a historic opportunity to invest in lasting solutions for families experiencing homelessness.

This can be done by explicitly prioritizing pregnant people and families with young children and the up-to-date home together plan soon to be released by Alameda County.

And who is your partner?

It's Aliyah.

Oh.

This would be Malaysia.

Gorgeous.

Thank you.

And do you have comments also?

Yes.

Hello, my name is Alia Phelps.

I'm the director of organizing with Parent Voices Oakland.

Um here to talk about the Alameda Alameda County Children's Budget.

So since 1992, as you all know, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors has published a children's budget as a part of their overall budget document.

However, it was not included in the fiscal year 25-26 budget.

The Board of Supervisors should direct staff to continue this practice to show investments the county makes in families and children for fiscal year 26 to 27.

In addition to this, we would like to, we would like you all to make a commitment to fund food access for early care spaces.

We would like you to approve the Measure C Pediatric Fund Plan that meets the needs of community and sure funds are being spent.

And again, bring back the children's services budget.

I just wanted to state for the record that our organization reached out in January to meet with everyone on this board.

And we met with two of you.

Um to meet with you.

And as the president, we felt like that was crazy.

We are constituents.

Oh, it's too early to schedule a meeting.

Call us back in some months, and why can't we get on the calendar?

That was crazy.

So it was very disappointing, which is why we're here speaking these things, and the rest of our constituents will continue on with this message.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you experienced that, but a question just to confirm.

You said that you were zeroed out of a budget last year and are asking to be reinstated this year.

No, sir.

Um, we're saying the children's the family and children's budget is normally a document that's put so that we understand how children and families are being served in the Alameda County budget, and a staff person is no longer here that did that or something like that.

And so we want to see that.

We would like to see how families and children are being prioritized in the Alameda County budget.

And it was happened before, but isn't happening now.

Yeah, since 1992.

Yep.

And stopped happening this year.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is LaShar Tokyo.

Okay, my name is Ashar Toki, and I'm with Parent Voices Oakland.

And I want to talk about the food sovereignty.

Um rising food costs are putting an immense strain on our families and our family child care providers.

Family child care providers are providing foods for thousands of children in Alameda County, often at their own expenses coming out of their own pockets.

And according to Feeding America, there are two thousand, I'm sorry, 29,860 food insecurity children in Alameda County.

One thing that we know is that sometimes at child care, that's the only time children are getting an actual proper meal.

Parent Voices Oakland put forward a 2025 one million ARPA request to ensure that family child care providers have post-COVID relief funds to provide fresh produce and healthy meals for Alameda County children.

Food sovereignty must include healthy meals for Alameda County children and families, and especially our most vulnerable folks.

I'm an organizer with parent voices as well.

And I just want to uh lift up a concern that we heard from our community within our own budget forms that we hosted.

As we know, measure C is a half percent sales tax that was approved by voters in March 2020 to support expanding access to early child education and fund pediatric health care at UCSF Penny Off Children's Hospital Oakland.

Um while the child care funds are now flowing, pediatric health care funds have been not have not been spent, and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors should be working closely with the community to ensure the plan of these funds is fulfilling the purpose for them set out in the measure C legislation and make sure funds begin to be expended.

Um that'll that's all thank you.

Madeline Stacy, I know that the board already approved um multiple contracts for Alameda County health contractors and CPOs on the 16th, the previous meeting of the board, which a meeting I did have to miss, but I do want to say that in all things, homelessness, housing, incarceration, mental health.

Please listen to the people with lived experience and let their input lead your priorities.

I think that's vitally important.

And I want to speak about measure W.

I know that the allotment was already presented and essentially decided, but I want to say Measure W funds must be directed towards the provision of homeless and housing services as described in the Alameda County Home Together 2026 plan in accordance with the will of the voters, with a small portion also allocated to food security as people have already spoken about.

We're in a crisis with that, and health care.

But measure W really should not be used for other than that, other budget priorities or to supplant existing funding for homeless and housing services.

It was voted for for uh homeless and housing services, and that's really what it needs to be allotted for, more than the 80% that was already allotted.

Thank you.

President Albert Celebriel let me know that they had one more minute left and they forgot to say something.

Would you allow them to come back up for that one minute?

Okay, so liberal.

Sorry about that.

Um yeah, so uh like my colleague stated back in January, we reached out to all of you, and I just wanted to let you all know that I will be following up with you as we also drop off one pages in your office last week as well.

So if you guys could take a look at those, and I will be following up with you uh very soon.

Thank you.

You'll see my staff right back there.

You got it today.

Right there.

There are no other public comments.

Okay, very good, thank you.

Uh, let's see.

Questions, comments.

Supervisor Miley.

Sure, thanks.

Thanks, President Howard.

So, with the measure W.

Allocation for public assistance is 7.3.

What is that?

What is that earmarked for?

So that's an allocation already approved by your board, and that is earmarked for extending CBO immigration contract and amount of 1.3 million dollars, half a million dollars for CBOs to develop workfare slots, $4 million to augment the Alameda County Community Food Bank contract, and the last 1.5 million is temporary staffing within adult and aging services.

And that's just for this fiscal year.

Do we have an additional amount that we set aside for the next fiscal year?

Yes, so that is correct.

That is for fiscal year 2627.

And some of those also have allocations for fiscal year 2728.

So specifically another half a million is committed to CBOs for workfare slots in fiscal year 2728.

Another four million dollars is committed to the food bank for fiscal year 2728, and another 1.5 is committed to temporary staffing for adult and nature services for fiscal year 2028.

Because I think some of the speakers were concerned about where the money for measure W was appropriated to address the needs that were brought to our attention.

So I think that's addresses that.

I think I think no supervisor back's not talking about it.

So we often get a line by line by line provider by provider by provider breakout.

Do we get that on Thursday?

On community-based providers, we we do have that information.

It's been recently updated, but as you know, we provide it by program and we provide it by provider, and that's part of our budget document.

When will we get that delivered to our offices?

Or will we?

I think last year we got it in a binder.

Um you know what we will it's it's online, but we'll provide printed copies to add to your binders.

Okay, also online.

That's very helpful.

Yeah, because I just want to make sure that the triple A providers and the folks associated with uh senior services coalition, uh the requests that were made to us, and we covered at the um work sessions, uh that we're addressing their concerns.

Okay, um then we'll deal with uh housing and everything where we get to um the health agencies budget, but um what uh what's the the level of um vacancies and social services?

We know yes, so for the total agency in terms of FTEs, there's an 18% vacancy rate, which is 425.45 vacant FTEs, 425.

Did you say?

Yes, 425.45.

And are they mostly eligibility workers or do we know?

It's a mix.

I do believe primarily it's eligibility workers.

There's also high vacancy rates within uh child and family services as well, okay.

And I know we've asked this in the past, but I just want to ask you once again.

So um what's what's the plan to try to get those vacancies filled?

Good afternoon.

I'm supervisors.

Andrea Ford, Social Services agency Director.

Um, just to sort of break it down a little bit for eligibility workers, Supervisor Miley.

Um the vacancy rate is 18.27 percent.

Um, the last update I provided to at the joint health social services committee meeting is that we plan to bring in large classes to start training them in preparation for well for implementation of HR1.

And currently we have the recruitment opened um, I think two weeks ago for eligibility workers.

We have over 500 applications.

Wow, okay.

So we are screening those applications.

We have a class of 46 graduating in August of this year.

Okay.

And then with um child and family uh support for children family services, the vacancy rate for child welfare workers is 24%.

And we have continuous hiring.

Um as soon as one recruitment closes, one immediately opens.

Um and we have brought that vacancy rate down by 10% over the last few years, and we continue to work towards bringing it down.

Also acknowledging um attrition plays a factor in this as well.

And is attrition also an issue with the eligibility workers?

Yes, um, we have high periods of retirement, typically in March.

We lost a lot of staff in March to retirements, and um, I think I mentioned before we're losing a lot of staff to um other departments who are poaching them.

Um so they're still with the county government, but no longer with SSA.

Um, so is there anything that we should be looking at in order to not just recruit eligibility workers but to retain them, both the eligibility as well as uh the children and family support?

Um, I think for children and families support services, um, it's a high stress rate in the work that they do.

So whatever can be put in place to address that for eligibility workers, I think bringing down caseloads to make them more manageable um with assist with retention.

And I would say case load reduction for both child welfare and eligibility workers.

The only way to bring down caseloads, obviously, if we have fewer cases, that brings it down, but we can't bring have fewer cases, we need more workers.

Absolutely.

Okay, because I'm you know, that continues to be a concern of mine for this um agency.

And then the whole issue around now that's a tough one because with measure C, Measure C wasn't set aside for food.

Um, how are we trying to get um resources in the hands of folks who are child care providers?

Are we doing anything through um first five on that or is there any strategies because measure C, yeah, measure C Pediatrics portion is outside of social services?

Um, and we're not working with first five on um providing food, not at the current time, yeah.

What about the food bank?

Anything?

Uh we're always working with the food bank on outreach enrollment, um, food recovery, distribution, procurement.

We're constantly working with the food bank.

They've been a partner for over 20 years.

But are we doing anything with child care providers?

I'm not sure what they're doing for child care providers, yeah.

Right, okay, because we just heard that.

At least I'm just hearing that now because I thought we did address everything with child care providers through measure C when it came to salaries, facilities, um, services and stuff.

But and I know first five has um been allocating money um to different providers.

I'm not sure if it's been in the area of food.

Okay.

When are we having an update for first five?

Do we know what Christian's coming in to give us?

I know we adopted a five-year plan, but don't we get a PRI update on?

We don't usually get one, but she she would be open to providing one.

How soon would you like to have an update provided by first five?

Oh, looking forward with my learned colleague next to me who serves on the first we both serve on that commission, so okay.

I think that's it for me for now.

Thank you.

Supervisor Fort Center Bass.

Thank you.

Uh just to follow up on Supervisor Miley's comments.

I believe in the overview section, slides 26 and 28, which have the one year and uh next two years allocations for the essential County Services Fund.

Does include some of the information that the public speakers asked about regarding uh seniors and food.

Um, while you're there, Director Ford, do you happen to know the CBO community-based organizations contracts that is online connected to our budget portal?

Is that up to date with the Essential Services Fund allocations?

I'm gonna defer to the county administrator's office.

It would be updated to the extent that there are actual providers selected or contracts if contracts executed.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I do concur that it would be helpful to see a little bit more detail in regards to the Essential Services Fund similar to what we had seen previously at a work session, perhaps, so that it's really clear to the public what we will ultimately vote on regarding our budget.

And um, I did want to thank folks who um shared public comment around food security.

It's something that my office cares very deeply about, and we helped to facilitate the food sovereignty round table, which some of our county staff also participates in.

Um I did want to share that first five does or has participated in the past in that food sovereignty roundtable.

So hearing the comments, we definitely will engage them as well as the care collaborative to make sure we're in a larger conversation about food access as it relates to early child care settings.

And I do want to ask about the child services budget that was raised.

Um, it was named in the budget letter as something that will be brought back.

Um, what does it look like to have more community engagement in that and to have it come back to the board?

Children's budget that that's been that's been referenced.

Yes.

That has been laid out of the county administrative's office in prior years, and um agencies and departments work within those requirements.

That's correct.

Uh in the past, uh the county administrators' office has requested information from agencies and departments on uh what portions of their budget support programs for children and family services.

Uh, we have opted for the last couple of years to undergo a redesign process in part because the structure of the special budget didn't capture uh your board's latest changes with respect to your strategic priorities.

Um so we are looking, we are looking at uh currently redesigning that section of the document to modernize it and incorporate it into our current budget document.

Do we have a sense of the timeline or how the public can engage in that process?

Uh we can come back to your board with our a proposal on what that could look like.

Okay.

Um, and finally, I just want to thank folks who participate and are part of the care collaborative.

Um, I appreciate the outreach that you did as part of the budget process and my um office being able to meet with you and regarding um the home together plan, we can probably address that with our uh when we talk about health care.

Um, but did want to reference that um my office will be following up in terms of the food sovereignty roundtable.

We help lead to make sure that we're helping to address the need for food in early child care settings as was said.

Um, thank you to the administration for answering the question about the children's services budget.

And I know there was an additional question about the measure C pediatric fund plan.

I don't know, Supervisor Miley, if you want to reference that because you noted wanting to have bring that back to a work session in the fall.

I think I brought that up last week.

The uh measure C PDF portion, we're supposed to be coming back with an update to talk about that either at a board work session or special meeting, and I think either next month or in fall.

Correct.

The request was that it be deferred until after budget adoption.

Thank you, Supervisor Marquez, questions, comments?

Yes, thank you.

So if I'm tracking correctly, it sounds like um the request from the senior services coalition, most of that those requests will be captured in the Measure W Essential Services Fund.

Is that correct?

Sorry.

Um the request was made um through Measure W.

And it was a present.

Well, it was requested one of the last work sessions that we had.

Um a letter I think went to all board members.

And if I can remember correctly, Supervisor Tam or one of you all requested a breakdown of how much is currently being invested through other funding sources and um food for seniors, mental health services, and it was just a list, um, not just wanting to it was it was an informational item, not wanting to adopt anything right then, but just to look at comprehensively countywide how much is being invested in those areas.

Okay, but the goal is to obviously see if we're able to maintain what is currently in place.

We do need that information to um also.

I think the ask included when do the contracts expire, just to make sure there is some uh continuity in services.

Um, so when will that information be available?

I think it's available.

The basically the comprehensive overview of what is being done to do uh to um support um food and security.

We have slides that we previously predicted sent to your board at work sessions and and things like that that we can share back with you.

Um in regards to to the food investments through Measure W.

Okay.

So I just want to make sure that we're doing our best to capture um, acknowledging we're not gonna be able to get to everything, but just so the public it could be clear in terms of what is actually being done for the populations that have come out.

Um we've heard from others today as well.

And then with respect to um advancing the work of the Office in Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

I know we've been meeting, we've been having conversations and identifying a position specifically, the director position.

Um, do we have a path forward for that yet?

Um, the path forward is an update I provided to you and your staff a couple of weeks ago.

Um, a draft job description has been written and presented to our human resources department who's working with human with county human resource services, um, to get a final um I think draft of the position and what the pay scale should be.

Okay, and whether it should be union represented or not, so just the normal steps that have to occur when creating a physician.

Okay, and then just for the public's um awareness, we are going to receive an update at the Act Committee on July 16th, I believe.

Supervisor Fortano Bass, where our current um coalition partners are three CBOs that are currently funded to do the rapid response, the legal services, the defense services are going to be providing a status update.

I know we've also identified funding the 1.3 million to look at extending the contracts, and then my understanding is if our receipts come in excess of the 170 million, that's where we look at additional funding because I don't know if the 1.3 million is going to be able to cover the costs to extend those contracts.

So we don't have to get into it right now, but just want to make sure that we're tracking because it's like what if this it's contingent on additional revenue coming in.

But the um main takeaway is I want to just make sure that we could extend contracts, and um, I guess I'll get ahead of myself now.

We are gonna opt launch an RFP because we've heard feedback from the public that we did our the best we can to be in a responsive to the threats from the federal administration, but they are areas that we still need to be more comprehensive specifically when it comes to refugee services.

So we'll be looking at that as well.

Um, do you want to thank you and your team for already identifying funding for the two positions?

Uh, one person has been hired, another one is being uh the recruitment process is underway.

Um, and then also thank you for the amazing work you've done with updating the website to specifically call out the services for immigrant and refugee community members.

Um, so thank you for that work.

Um I will put a little plug because um we're doing our best to get ahead of all of these threats and issues.

This has been an unprecedented year with the cuts from the federal administration with Prop One.

The list goes on and on and on, even you know, as I mentioned before.

Um issues with even our own delegation with specific legislation, but I do want to just be very upfront with the public, and I've said this through all of the work sessions leading up to today.

We also need to um identify what our approach is going to be in response to the reparations commission, and I'm just saying this here because we don't know exactly where that's gonna land.

Um, and there is going to be a presentation on the report on June 30th as a set matter.

I think we're looking at like 130 or two.

So I'm just flagging that.

Um, I don't know if it's gonna the work where it's gonna land, but um, it's important that I just make that comment that that is something else that's top of mind.

I don't know if you have a response.

Are you said the reparations committee?

I'm not a part of that.

No, you're not.

I'm just I'm just saying we haven't we're kind of like ahead of ourselves here in terms of talking about budget.

We have a presentation, we don't know exactly where it's gonna land just yet, so I'm just kind of putting it out there as uh a placeholder.

I'm not saying your department has any ownership or responsibility, saying because there's so many unknowns.

I'm just putting it out there right now.

That's yeah, it's one of those things on one of those pressure wheels.

Um I thought the presentation you were talking about, is it July 28th?

Um, I mean, maybe it's the 30th, but it was no no.

So there's so thank you.

Let me clarify.

So at the Act Committee on July 16th is an update from the current providers on July 28th.

I didn't share that, but thank you for reminding me.

On July 28th, the same presentation that took place at the Act Committee on April 30th, where consultants are providing uh their findings, their report on the implementation study for launching the office of immigrant and refugee affairs.

That is going to come to the full board on July 28th as a SEP matter.

All of our colleagues will get uh the report in advance to review.

It will be an abbreviated version of what we received on April 30th.

So those are two additional touch points, one at Act Committee, one to the full board, all under the umbrella of advancing the work of the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs.

Thank you for catching that.

Thank you.

Thank you for your positive comment.

Thank you.

So I have a question about food.

The need for food cuts across as we've seen today, seniors and meals, also cuts across the need for parents with children, also cuts across the need for homeless, also different groups that need food.

Do we segment these by um recipient?

And do we keep track of their demographics and who they are, what age, what ethnicity, or do we keep track of the food that we give out based on the provider we give it to?

And then they give it as they see needed.

Yeah, it's both and um we don't have demographics in their totality, but for um the individuals and families we serve and social services, we can provide demographics, and I think the food bank can provide them a graphics for those that they serve and who their um uh partner distribution sites serve.

But if we touch them through social services, we can give you whenever whatever information you need.

Do we have any way of tracking our people being served by multiple providers, multiple sources, multiple locations?

Is social services providing food to somebody and also another group and also another group, or do we keep track of unique needs and everybody gets something, but nobody gets something from every provider?

We don't keep track of duplication.

Yeah, I would guess it would be hard to do.

Okay, uh, thank you.

Thank you.

Follow up Supervisor Force and Auto Bass before we go on to health.

Yes, although one of my questions was for Supervisor Marquez.

I just wanted to clarify that the Measure W allocations that we've made include both for the 20% that we have set aside as well as the overage that we're estimating of $20 million per year.

So I would like to get a little bit more detail when this comes back to us so we're really clear, especially for social services, what will be funded through Measure W, both from the ongoing as well as from the overage.

Okay.

Thank you.

I had a couple questions for my colleague.

But actually, you may know this, Director Ford.

I wanted to clarify regarding the immigration contracts, the current contracts.

Is the idea that those will be extended with the three current coalitions, or that an RFP will be issued for those contracts?

Or some combination of it's a combination.

I really prefer that your colleague answer those questions because she wanted to hold that information until the July 16th presentation, but it will be a combination of what you just described.

It'll be an extension of the current three principles.

Future opinions for an RFP as well.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Very good.

Seeing no more questions or comments, we'll go to the next presentation, which is health care services.

And healthcare will be presented by Ambi Bohan and Jones from my office.

Thank you, Susan.

Good afternoon, members of the board and members of the public.

I am pleased to present the fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget for the health care program.

Led by Director Anika Chadry, Alameda County Health or AC Health includes four departments working to achieve health equity.

So all Alameda County residents can live healthy and fulfilling lives.

Those departments include the office of the agency director, behavioral health, public health, and environmental health.

The proposed budget reflects the significant investment in the health of Alameda County residents.

Appropriations total 1.3 billion dollars, an increase of nearly 21 million dollars, or 1.6% from the current fiscal year, primarily driven by an increase in employee salary and benefit costs.

Revenues have increased by 26.1 million dollars or 2.4% to total revenue of 1.1 billion dollars, largely driven by the identification of nearly 11 million dollars in one-time revenues.

The proposed budget includes intergovernmental transfers supporting Alameda Health System, St.

Rose Hospital, and Children's Hospital Oakland, as well as voter approved funds for measure A to support essential health care services and measure C to support pediatric health care safety net services.

The proposed budget also supports approximately 1,835,000 full-time equivalent positions, which is a decrease of nearly 30 full-time equivalent positions from the current year.

This reduction is driven by adjustments to funding of 21 vacant full-time equivalent positions in behavioral health as part of the transition to the the Behavioral Health Services Act.

This chart shows the breakdown of appropriation by type.

As you can see, more than half of the proposed budget, approximately $769 million, is for contracts with community-based organizations.

This amount reflects contract terminations, reductions, and other BHA, BHSA related adjustments within behavioral health, as well as cost of living adjustments on eligible CBO contracts throughout the program.

The next largest appropriation is for salaries and employee benefits, followed by services and supplies.

Next is other charges, which includes appropriations for intergovernmental transfers and other hospital contracts for Alameda Health System and Children's Hospital Oakland.

Interfund transfers are reimbursements for services provided to other county agencies and departments and total nearly 130 million dollars in the proposed budget.

As shown here, AC Health utilizes a variety of funding sources to support the diverse portfolio of health programs and services administered by each department.

Total revenue for the proposed budget is over 1.1 billion dollars, with government aid representing nearly 65% of total revenue.

The largest portion of the government aid is state aid, which includes sources such as Behavioral Health Services Act funding and state realignment revenues, which are dependent on income and sales tax.

Local aid is primarily the Alameda Health System share for intergovernmental transfers.

Charges for services, which represents 26.3% of total revenue, is largely comprised of Medi-Cal revenue.

Combined, the revenue sources for all government aid and charges for services equal approximately $1 billion or 91% of total program revenue.

Taxes of $65.1 million from Measure A and Measure C pediatric Safety Netflix comprise 5.7% of program revenue.

Again, government aid represents nearly 65% of total health program revenue.

This slide shows the program's historical reliance on government aid, particularly state aid as a revenue source, and underscores how impactful significant reductions to government aid at the state or federal level will be for the program area.

This is a similar representation of historical budgeted revenue for charges for services, which makes up more than a quarter of total program revenue and again is largely comprised of Medicail revenue.

Medi-Cal policy and program changes at the state and federal levels that negatively impact eligibility, enrollment, retention, benefits, reimbursement rates, and other factors will also negatively impact this revenue source.

Here we see how the total $1.3 billion appropriation is budgeted within the broader program area.

$802.4 million or 60.5% of the total appropriation is budgeted for behavioral health, which supports mental health and substance use disorder services.

$202.7 million, representing 15.3% of the total appropriation, is budgeted for the Office of the Agency Director.

OAD is the administrative unit for AC Health and includes indigent health, housing and homelessness services, emergency medical services, and healthy schools and communities.

11.8% of the total appropriation, or $156.9 million, is budgeted for public health.

Public health programs include communicable disease control and presentiment prevention, family and community health, and public health nursing.

$38.5 million, representing 2.9% of the total appropriation is budgeted for environmental health.

Environmental health services include food and recreation inspection, hazardous waste removal, and other critical environmental enforcement activities to protect public health.

This chart also shows Measure A funded services budgeted at $52.2 million, Measure C pediatric funds at $12.9 million, as well as medical care financing, where $60.3 million in intergovernmental transfers are budgeted to facilitate supplemental Medicaid payments to our local hospitals.

This table shows appropriation revenue and use of county general funds by department.

Although Measures A and C and IGTs are not departments, they are shown here to reflect total appropriations and revenues within the program area.

Moving on to budget balancing strategies, the health care program contributed a net county cost reduction of $13.8 million with no service impacts.

The reductions are driven by a combination of one-time and ongoing budget balancing strategies and include revenue adjustments across the program totaling $11 million, including adjustments of $4 million in various state and federal revenue and public health, an increase of $2.7 million in one-time IGT reimbursement revenue in OAD, a one-time $2 million increase in Medi-Cal revenue and behavioral health, the use of $1.9 million in SB 12 MATI funds to offset the cost of Alameda Health Systems HFAP contract in OAD, the use of $200,000 in trust funds from environmental health.

Appropriation adjustments total $2.8 million and were achieved through a countywide strategy of eliminating long-term vacant positions, impacting nearly nine FTEs and resulting in a net county cost reduction of $1.5 million, and right sizing the budget for professional services contracts and supplies with an adjustment of $1 million.

In accordance with your board's direction, the proposed budget invests $308 million in Measure W funds in the health care program area, increasing total proposed appropriations to over $1.6 billion, and CBO contract appropriations to over $1 billion.

Approximately $289 million in home together funds administered by the Housing and Homelessness Services Program within OAD will support implementation of the Home Together Plan across targeted program areas.

$19.2 million in essential county services funds will support the stabilization of the Health PAC network, help to mitigate the impact of the transition to BHSA, and provide food and nutrition supports via recipe for health.

The proposed budget for the health care program reflects spending to provide essential medical, behavioral, environmental, and public health services while advancing your board's priority and directives.

To highlight a few, as I mentioned, more than half of the proposed budget is appropriated for contracts with community-based organizations to provide key services to Alameda County residents.

This includes over $440 million in mental health and substance use CBO contracts and over $138 million in contracts with the Alameda Health System.

The proposed budget also includes a countywide investment of approximately $125 million, including $124 FTEs to support housing and homelessness services.

As a key priority for your board, the proposed budget also reflects continued investment of $85.3 million in the health program of Alameda County, including $17 full-time equivalent positions.

It also includes $17.2 million dollars for EPIC electronic health record implementation, which is expected to enhance patient care and management, increase revenue by increasing capacity for claims and billing, and improve the health of Alameda County residents through increased care coordination across the county.

In accordance with the three-year Measure C Pediatric Safety Net allocation plan approved by your board, the proposed budget includes almost $13 million to provide health care services at the juvenile justice center, support violence prevention programs, sustain school health centers, and provide other safety net programs and services to children and young people throughout the county.

Listed here are pending factors that may impact next year's budget.

The county faces potential challenges due to new Medicaid eligibility and administrative requirements under HR1 and concurrent state policy and program changes that may impact enrollment and revenue.

In addition to significant programmatic changes required to implement the Behavioral Health Services Act, there are also expanded administrative and reporting requirements associated with full implementation.

Potential reductions in federal and state funding for homelessness and housing programs threaten the county's progress in reducing the number of unhoused residents and cuts to federal grants or regulatory actions may impact a range of public health services.

A potential economic downturn may not only reduce the sales and income tax dependent revenue sources utilized within the health program, but would likely coincide with an increased need for county's health services.

Lastly, new unfunded mandates for which the county does not receive adequate funding from state or federal sources to implement or administer continue to be a pending factor.

This includes the overview of the health care program area.

Thank you very much.

We'll go to public comment now on healthcare services.

Madeline Stacy, Jane Kramer, and Alma Udigo.

You know the mantra.

If Medicare will not pay for alternative medicine, then you need to advocate for state funding, which simply means you asked the state for less funding that you now asked for conventional medical services.

And it makes no sense to pour money into incredibly expensive health services when alternative medicine establishes individual health at a fraction of the cost that it now does.

That is beyond the uh initial intervention, the individual knowingly takes responsibility for his own lifelong health.

Melan Stacy, uh Almaz Hidalgo.

Okay.

Uh Carrie Mulkie and Tony Punnett.

Good afternoon, supervisors Tony Panetta.

Tony Panetta with the Alameda Health Consortium.

I want to thank CAO and Alameda County Health for the work that they have done to present um today's budget.

And I want to provide an update to the supervisors uh regarding the clinics budget analysis very briefly at a high level.

We've talked about what we have been watching in Sacramento.

Um we were pleased to see what was included in AB 109, but we of course are waiting to see if the governor will sign it.

Um we are in very close conversations with um Director Chowdhury about what the concerns are related to potential movement of immigrant patients outside of Medicaid and how that could continue to destabilize our health centers.

We do still have concerns the health centers losing revenues for those patients who have already fallen out of Medicaid.

We know, for example, in new data point today that we saw about 3,000 medical patients did not renew for the month of June.

So we continue to see that type of pressure.

But like I said, we are in communication with the agency director, and we would encourage adoption of the proposed budgets that were presented for the health pack contracts, as well as the proposal for measure W funds related to both fiscal 2627 and fiscal 2728 for the county's health pack budget, and we appreciate the board's action for the mental health bridge funding and the action that has already been approved.

Thank you.

Speakers can line up one after the other so that they can speak when the other finishes.

Thank you.

Thank you, supervisors.

I'm not really public speaker.

This is my first time coming here.

I'm sorry if I didn't say anything as appropriate appropriate.

Anyways, um, I'm here just to also advocate for the African immigrant community gaps because we have a lot of mental health issues within our community.

There is no space that we can have a culture appropriate mental health center.

So as in uh the Africa within the African Resource Center, that's what we are uh looking for help.

Thanks to Alameda County Public Health.

Um, as we speak right now, there is a community meeting is called Community Navigators Meeting that uh within the Alameda County Public Health.

We've been addressing this matter, but also like we we are trying to do that at the segregation because as I as I am like Almaz uh right now I am considered like um African not African but black, but the need is different because the access accessing the system is very difficult.

I can tell you story.

There's a lady that um she had a son with mental health issue, and then the lady was going to work to give uh as a caregiver, and she took her son, she used to take her son with her, like you know, to work.

And then um, you know, because he's he have mental health issues, she doesn't know where to put him, and she was taking her with him, and then um this uh his episode started, and he killed his mom at work when she was given uh was when she was at work given a care to a lady.

So she's a caregiver, but she doesn't know where to put her son, but she was taking him to work.

He killed her.

His mother is dead, and then he called his friend herman, his mother's friend called, and then he told the lady that, oh, my mom is on the floor, I don't know what happened to her.

So there's a lot of uh barriers in our community, and then that we uh urge you to support our African immigrant population and within the African Resource Center, we also advocating for you know uh mental health support services.

Thank you so much.

True.

Go ahead.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Um, hey again.

Umkey with Restore Oakland.

Um just wanted to thank um a lot for that testimony um and also speak on um similarly the needs of black Americans and low income people as well as justice-involved people with behavioral health needs.

Um specifically, I I know that we've spoken about this um with multiple county leaders and agency leaders today and in the last few weeks, um, but I want to just uplift one more time the need to fund the types of housing interventions that include serious mental health care.

Um, and the one that I'm really excited about and hopeful that your board will ensure is funded in full this year is the Supportive Housing Community Land Alliance.

We know that people are not totally understanding what licensed boarding cares do and are.

Um, as Sherry spoke about and as others have spoken about, they are a real missing piece in the continuum of care and housing, especially in a place like this where housing is so inaccessible to people that are not wealthy, and even more inaccessible when you have um unstable mental health.

And we want to advocate for the union.

Um, 24 beds in West Oakland serving some of the highest acuity, seriously mentally ill Tay.

Um, I wanna just say personally that as some of you know, I have I lost a friend um last year who would have really benefited from this resource, um, who I think would still be alive if the county were able to fund and chose to fund the types of care that actually support black, queer, trans, low-income people with serious mental health issues and keep them stable in a place that is not a site court, not a locked facility, but actually somewhere holistic and nourishing and Shikla is one of the only organizations that tries to do that and is in a community land trust structure which makes it permanently affordable.

Please fund Shikla.

True.

Now you can go ahead.

My name is Drew Scott.

I'm a therapist at the Fairmont Intensive Outpatient Program, which serves clients living with severe mental illness.

And first I wanted to say that if our program closes, many of our clients will literally have nowhere to go.

Alameda Health System is suggested that our clients can go to programs like Herrick Laheim and Fremont IOPs, but these aren't viable replacements for many of our clients because they provide short-term treatment.

They have limited transportation support, and they may not serve clients with Medicare.

Um, secondly, I wanted to say that if you provide us with an additional six months of funding, we can demonstrate that our program is viable.

AHS says we're operating at a loss of 1.94 million.

But when we correct for revenue that isn't being captured and costs that shouldn't be counted, the operating gap narrows to roughly 622,000, and it continues to close as enrollment grows.

And a six-month extension would allow us to continue increasing our census of clients, fully review the budget and demonstrate the program's true financial picture if AHS budget department will collaborate with us with full transparency.

And we have a number of concrete ideas for balancing our budget.

And third, I want to address the claim that our clients do not graduate.

Many do graduate and step down successfully into the community.

We also have an internal step-down process from five days to four or three, and eventually one day per week.

And the reality is that we serve people with chronic and severe mental illness, and recovery is a lifelong process.

Some clients stabilize, discharge, experience another episode, and months or years later return.

And that isn't a failure.

That's exactly how a behavioral health safety net is supposed to work.

And so we urge you to support six months of funding and give us the opportunity to prove what we already know that our program saves lives, keeps people stable, and is worth preserving.

Thank you.

Craig Metz.

Go ahead.

Hi, thank you.

So yeah, I'm Craig Metz.

I'm the clinical manager at Fairmont Hospital's IOP PHP program.

I just have three things I want to talk about.

The first, there's been a little bit of uh misinformation about the length of stay of our clients, and as Drew just said, issues about people not graduating.

Um our average length of stay at discharge for the first five months of this year from our PHP and IOP program is 2.5 months.

That's uh below the national average.

Um we track this directly, those are the numbers.

Um if you're hearing different figures, you're not being um informed properly.

Um the second uh uh item is I just want to, you know, we we've done a study that shows that when clients come to us, their psych hospitalizations drop by 83%.

Um we can't track police encounters or ED visits, but um, those are correlated and probably follow pretty pretty similar patterns.

And without us, our clients are gonna fall back onto you, the county at a far greater cost than our program.

Um and that's not counting the human suffering.

Um lastly, I just wanted to mention our the costs of our program, and I'm talking about Fairmont and Highland together.

Um, we finally got an hour with our billing department after asking for this for more than a year um through that meeting and things that we noted.

HS reduce the state of deficit of our program from 3.6 million to 2.7 million.

Uh I think just punch and crunching the numbers myself that it's closer to 2 million.

And our Fairmont program is just 600,000 of that, roughly.

Um, we have very concrete, realistic plans.

Um, and we could definitely balance our budget.

We just had no one to talk to, no one to do it with.

Um, please give us the six months and we will have a balanced budget.

I promise you, keep our program open.

Thank you very much.

David Padilla.

Hi, supervisors.

Good afternoon.

Uh Debbie Pelia, I'm with SCAU 1021 and uh District 4 constituent.

Um, to begin, I'd like to recognize the importance of these budget discussions and your openness to hearing the concerns from uh workers and community members.

Um I also want to take this time to remind the public that Alameda Health System, our public health care system in Alameda County, which has about 3,800 of our SCA 10 to 1 members has decided to shutter some services and lay off healthcare workers due to HR 1.

These cuts by the federal government will have a devastating effect on people that are underinsured or have no insurance at all.

And so today we asked the board to continue to lead the way to protect these vital services.

Um I also want to recognize the uh important work of the ad hoc committee that this board convened and was led by supervisors Nikki Fortnotto Bass and Nate Miley to identify savings and reduce the impacts of planned cuts and layoffs to the entire system.

Um, as some of the folks have already spoken about IOP and some of the other program, vital programs in AHS.

Um I also just want to make sure that uh I lift up the important work that SCIU 1021 members have been doing and um uh advocating in Sacramento to make sure that there is money in the state budget.

Um while that that process has not finalized yet, we're hopeful that there's um uh resources coming down to Alameda County um shortly.

So today I asked the supervisors to um uh a budget asked to reduce the impacts of the layoffs on Alameda County um uh patients and to support the uh budget asked from supervisors for Notto Bass and Miley.

Thank you so much.

John Lindsay Poland.

First, I want to acknowledge the county administrators saying that the information presented today was presented on May 28th.

I went back and looked, and yes, indeed, the capital improvement information was there.

However, it was buried in a lot of other things.

It's unclear what is the new information today.

That would be very helpful at the beginning of a presentation to say we presented something three weeks ago and now this is the new information.

I still can't quite tell.

Um funds.

I think there was a presentation a couple weeks ago, and I remember Supervisor Miley looking at Dr.

Tribble and saying, What?

It was so complicated.

It is so complicated.

I have looked at this for hours and hours with some people in the department.

It is still very complicated.

And honestly, I think that there is probably more money available there that either is not being used or there are vacancies being kept open.

On the vacancies question, it would be very helpful to see the breakdown by department or area of uh funded uh vacancies versus unfunded filled positions.

So in public protection, what is the net?

What is the balance of those things?

In other areas, what is the balance of those things?

Because it if we don't know, then we can't really tell whether there's money available there.

And finally, I want to add my voice to um asking you to find a way to fund the supportive housing community land alliance before June 30th in the amount of two million dollars because if those funds are not um brought forward, then the lenders that Shikla is going to will pull out of the union by June 30th.

And so there's a there's a deadline that is not only a budget deadline, it is also a lender deadline for that particular project that otherwise will not be able to go forward.

Gene Moses?

Wait, or just clarifying question.

Can you please repeat?

Are you saying the name of the lender?

I'm not familiar.

No, the lender is the city of Oakland.

Okay, what's that organization here?

The supportive housing community land.

But you mentioned another organization.

And the union is a project that SHICLA is running in the SHICLA is supportive housing community land alliance.

Got it.

Thank you.

Hello again.

Um, Dean Moses with the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in Our Jails.

And I wanted to speak for a moment on the continuity of care.

One of the things that we're talking about, which I know you appreciate, is the disruption that is occurring with all the loss of funding.

It's crucial that we keep continuity as much as possible of the services that are available today and from the most intensive services to step down services to have intensive services and no place for people to go except the streets is a disaster.

So that's another reason why you should uh support the Shikla license penant care program.

One other thing briefly is that my understanding is that the Cal Aim changes enabled us to begin care for people when they're still in Santa Rita jail, and to be able to connect with some of our neediest populations in the jail and continue that service into the community is extraordinarily valuable.

My understanding is that the Alameda Healthcare Services is not supportive of initiating care in the jail because it's complicated and perhaps it's hard to get people in health care to go to the jail.

But if we can do that, the um Cal AIM, the state will finance that care.

And I think it's really crucial in this day and age that we look for every opportunity to begin care early and continue it into the community.

So I urge you to ask the health care department to look again at the possibility of starting care 90 days before people are leaving the jail.

Thank you.

Parisa Farohi online, Derek Food, and then Chelsea's iPhone.

Hi there.

My name is Parisa Farohi.

Thank you so much, supervisors for um hearing us.

I am a therapist at the Alpesian program.

I've been there for 24 years.

I'm currently the interim admission coordinator.

I have been with the IOP program for 24 years.

And the reason I've been there so long is because there isn't a program like ours out there.

I've seen, because I work also at uh PES in terms of bringing folks from John George Psychiatric Hospital to our program.

And throughout the time that I have done this work, bringing folks right out of the hospital to our program so they won't go to the hospital.

I've noticed that the length of stay in the hospitals are shorter.

So folks who are going into the hospital are coming out a lot quicker.

They're less stable as they were 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

So they're coming to us to get stabilized, so they won't go back to the hospital.

There aren't programs like us.

So if we're closed, these folks are needing, then they would be going to programs that are shorter in stay.

Different programs that their suggestions are being made by our managers that our clients would be sent to.

And that is not an appropriate level of care.

It's like sending somebody who needs heart surgery for maybe um just some vitamins or just to see the doctor more often.

And it's really, really hard to see this.

And it's been taking a toll on our staff and our clients, the misinformation, um, that and uh just the lack of transparency.

Good afternoon.

My name is Derek Vay.

I am the East Bay Regions vice president for SEIU 1021, and I'm actually an employee also of Alameda Health System.

As an active participant of ad hoc committee meetings between AHS, the county and labor, I am asking that you honor the work we have done.

We have identified millions of dollars in savings, increase the net negative balance to meet today's needs, and the county has committed important resources to stabilize our public health care system.

All of this has been done as an important also, want to make sure that the number of layoffs are reduced to the lowest possible number today.

You have the opportunity to ensure that we can keep vital services open and essential health care workers employed on the front lines.

Our members ask that you do the right thing and approve the budget.

We ask that the resources and impact of the layoffs on Alameda County's patients.

And lastly, I want to thank Supervisor uh Miss Bass and Nate Miley in leading the charge to protect access to health care in Alameda County.

Thank you.

Chelsea, it's iPhone, you may unmute.

Hi there.

So my name is Chelsea DeMarty, and I am a uh licensed mental health clinician at the Fairmont Intensive Outpatient Program.

So I've been working with this population for 16 years, and I know them very, very well.

And I really want to stress that the proposed referral sources that AHS has for our clientele are very, very inappropriate, just as my colleagues have been stressing to you.

And I'm just going to give you some examples of why this is.

So our clients at least will have to wait one year to get in, right?

And some of the programs do not have transportation, which limits their ability to actually go to these clinics.

As you know, this is a private IOP program, just like all of the other ones.

Even though they provide transportation, the actual groups that they have are not appropriate for our patients because the clientele there are much more privileged than our community.

Let me give you an example.

Someone that might go to the Fremont IOP is a person who makes $500,000 a year, who's gainfully employed and has an episodic depression where they have to leave work for a couple weeks to go to the program.

They have a family, they have a mortgage, they have a house, a car that they drive to their to the clinic with.

Whereas our patients have been chronically mentally ill for their entire lives, have not worked.

Some of them are so psychotic and disorganized that they can't complete coherent sentences out loud, and they live in a crowded board and care home full of bed bugs.

So think about how those two different people would match up in a group or how they might may or may not benefit.

So I'd like to ask you all to please help us keep our doors open for at least another six months.

We're very confident that we could narrow the gap of the $600,000 right now that we need to.

Thank you very much.

Mina Cucci, Alicia, Laura Cox, Mina, you may unmute.

Okay, hi.

So as the woman prior to me just expressed, I just want to follow up her sentiment.

I am currently going through my second bout of Hodgkin's lymphoma.

I am housed, I have insurance through my partner.

I can get rides to my appointments.

And recently I went to an event where the California Nurses Union, the SCIO, you and um nurses that were working at the Highland Hospital were sharing what their um what their patients were going through.

What I'm what I'm going through with all that support is hell.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to not have that support.

So please, I'm urging you as someone who is struggling to please do whatever you can to give all these people that have spoken today the money that they need.

Because I've I've met these unhoused folks that are going through cancer.

I've met them, I've heard them.

It is so completely unfair.

So please do the right thing and do whatever you can.

I just want to remind that we have the budget with the county jail that is inflated.

We have the budget with the sheriff's office that's that's inflated.

Please find the money there.

We've been asking you for a long time to please look at those two areas and support those that truly need it.

Thank you.

Alicia, you may on you.

Thank you.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Um, my name's Alicia Caldwell.

I'm a licensed clinical social worker at Alameda Health System and part of the behavioral health department.

And just want to thank you for your time, attention, consideration that you've given historically, and especially these last several months.

Several of us at the IOP program have at AHS have met with you regarding the behavioral health needs of Alameda County, the services that currently exist, and the significant gap that will be created if Alameda Health Systems, outpatient behavioral health programs close, which to be clear, like these programs include partial hospitalization program, the intensive outpatient program, the chemical dependency intensive outpatient program, the behavioral health wellness center, the aftercare program, and others.

And the good news from what I've heard is there's a chance that the county affiliated wellness centers will remain open.

And if that's the case, that's worth celebrating for sure.

And at the same time, as we've discussed in previous public meetings and individual conversations, the wellness centers and other existing programs, while valuable, are unfortunately not equipped to meet the needs of most of our patients served in the behavioral health program.

And so we respectfully request that the board continue to collaborate with us to preserve the outpatient behavioral health services at um at Alameda Health System, including IOP, and even if that's just for a six-month extension, so we can show you what to do, what we can do, so we can have less community members falling into John George, Santa Rita, homelessness, and most pervasive of all just the increased isolation and suffering that comes with mental health symptoms.

Thank you.

Laura Cox, then Dr.

Freed, then Cynthia, and lastly, Sandra's iPhone.

Laura, you may unmute.

Hi, good afternoon.

I hope everybody can hear me.

My name is Laura Cox, and um I am a registered nurse and proud SCIU 1021 member.

I am here today to request that you support the work of our ad hoc committee to reduce the impacts of cuts and layoffs at Alameda Health System.

After months of meetings and deliberations, we ask that you support the request to provide funds to reduce the number of impacted services and workers.

While HR1 will continue to have negative impacts on our social safety net, we call on leadership of the county to help support much-needed health care services for Alameda County residents.

We call on the state to ensure that we have local resources to help keep our local public hospitals open and available to all.

Only through our partnerships at the local, state, and federal level can we turn the tide on these attacks on our safety net.

We ask that you help us keep as many health care services open and valuable people employed while we fight the cruelty.

That is HR1.

Thank you.

Dr.

Freed, please unmute.

Okay, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Great.

Just want to make some uh points, really reiterating what what people have been saying thus far.

I think the first point is closing our program obviously is going to put our patients at risk for rehospitalization, homelessness, incarceration and death.

There's no comparable program.

Um we have written um emails from directors of Fremont Herrick and Maheim saying they're not they're not going to be able to take our patients.

Our patients would be relegated to living at home with limited support, other than uh uh getting uh treatment like PES or inpatient at John George.

Number two, uh we're really talking about uh a budget issue here.

Uh AHS wouldn't be discussing this with you guys if there wasn't uh from their perspective this huge budget deficit that they continue to uh talk about, but haven't been able to clearly define when we do our budget, we are almost budget neutral.

We uh as uh as it has been uh stated already within the six-month extension, we would easily be able to show you that our budget is near budget neutral.

Uh AHS does not uh uh utilize our enhancements or the or the things that we are going to be doing in our budget that make it budget neutral.

Another another uh item is we serve more than 120 patients between Highland and uh Fairmont, 45 patients a day, that's 11,000 visits a year.

We have more than 100 admissions per year from three to 400 county referrals.

We get referrals from every place in the county for our services.

Um, we are the FSP for the county's FSPs, as I've said before.

Um we really would like to sit down with the board of the ad hoc committee to show them our numbers so that they can we can have equal time and explaining what we would what we would be doing this uh six months.

So uh hopefully that can happen, which would be great.

Thank you so much.

Cynthia, you may unmute.

Cynthia, you're unmuted, but we cannot hear you.

Sandra's iPhone, you unmute.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes, thank you.

I'm Sandra Marshall, and I am a therapist at the outpatient behavioral health program at Vermont.

Um thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Board of Supervisors.

As AHS is continuing to consider closing our program, I would like with the Board of Supervisors to understand the uniqueness of this program and the value to the people of Alameda County.

In addition to I want to first point out that we serve, unlike many of the other programs, the chronically severely mentally ill.

By definition, this refers to long-term disabling disorders that significantly impair daily function.

And these conditions require intense consistent treatment and support because of the functional limitations of the diagnosis, the significant difficulty in maintaining daily activities, working, attending school, maintaining relationships.

This is what these are the needs of our patients.

In addition to having approximately 20 therapy groups per day that address their specific needs, we also provide services that help them with their daily function in terms of uh connecting to family members in terms of vocational services when they're ready, in terms of maintaining their housing, in terms of getting housing, in terms of connecting them to medical appointments.

All of these services help keep them out of the psychiatric hospitals, take care of their medical needs, and keep them most importantly, able to live a more staying stable and meaningful life.

And so uh I want to also add that we have increased our community outreach throughout Alameda County, so we will be able to hopefully uh bring in more people than we have in the past.

We're capable of that, we have the capacity to do it, and we have no.

Cynthia, you may unmute.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes.

Great.

Hi, my name is Cynthia Harris, and I'm a registered nurse over at the family birthing center at Highland Hospital.

I'm also a proud SEIU 1021 member.

I'm here today on behalf of the 3800 members to request that you support the work of the ad hoc committee and to help reduce the impacts of cuts and layoffs at Alameda Health System.

After months of meetings, we act that you support the request to provide funds to reduce the number of impacted services and workers.

While the HR1 cuts will continue to have negative impacts on our safety net, we call on the leadership of the county to help support much-needed health care services, as everyone else before me has spoken about.

We call on the state to ensure that we have local resources to help keep our local public hospitals open and available to everyone who needs it.

Only through our partnership at the local, state, and federal level can we turn the tide on this attack of our on our safety net.

So we please ask you to help as many health care services open and valuable people employed while we continue to fight this.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your comments.

That was the last public comment.

Thank you very much.

We'll close public comment on this item and go to supervisor comments, Supervisor Miley.

Thank you.

President Howard.

So let me ask the healthcare director.

Agency director.

So um what's what's the situation with the licensed board in care?

Good afternoon.

Sure.

Good afternoon, Supervisor Zanika Chowdry, Director for Alameda County Health.

So I think you've heard a lot of uh comments today and in uh previous board meetings related to the need for board and cares in our community, uh licensed board and cares in particular.

And I think we've been able to share with you in various settings this is a level of care that has been declining across the state and the nation, um, largely because it used to be run by uh families, um, and as you heard uh many of the commenters talk today, the level of support that it provides, it can be expensive to run, especially in an environment where um housing itself is expensive.

Um you've also heard about the supportive housing community uh land alliance, uh and this was a model that was incubated through our behavior health department with MHSA innovation funds uh several years ago, sort of just as the pandemic was happening, um, with the idea that we could have an organization that would potentially be able to buy uh you know small buildings or or housing and be able to um uh support board and care providers with providing those services without having to worry about the capital.

Um, and there is a specific project that we're hearing folks talk about, which is uh in Supervisor Bass's district uh related to uh the union where there's an opportunity for capital funding from the city of Oakland as well as uh maybe some some other funding.

So there we uh have been having uh direct conversations with the uh supportive housing community land alliance uh team um and have been trying to figure out how to make the thing work.

It's not necessarily just a $2 million operating commitment, um, it's actually a 10 to 15 year operational subsidy commitment, right?

So they they would get some sort of uh capital funding to help buy the building, but then the county would need to support um those beds for the next couple of decades.

And as you know, we've done that in other uh ways like through no place like home, or we do it through the B chip awards that Behavior Health has gotten.

Um, and anyway, I don't want to go into the specifics of that particular project, but we are working with them and have been trying to see what else is available.

I will say that the uh supportive housing community land alliance um uh was one of the organizations that received bridge funding from um the Prop One Bridge, the one year bridge that we just did.

So that's about 900,000.

Um, but the union is a different thing.

We also had a meeting uh just this morning with behavioral health leadership, H and H leadership, as well as some of the um uh carefirst community coalition members, and that was specifically to talk about boarding cares and how we can think about um where it makes sense to make more investments, um, and we need a little bit more data and a little bit more analysis on going forward.

So um I'll leave the supervisor um follow up on the West Oakland situation, but more broadly speaking, um do we need to allocate more money in this direction?

From like uh measure W.

What do we need to do?

I'm talking about in the bigger context, not just the situation, or is it not sustainable, even if we allocate additional resources?

There's general consensus uh among our team, both at behavioral health and at H and actually even HCD, as they've been involved in in some of this this conversation, is that uh board and cares and licensed board and cares play a really critical role as a part of our our system.

Um, but I think what we're struggling with is that there's so much upheaval happening in the system right now that we kind of need to see what other resources are coming online.

Um, and again, totally agree with the speaker who uh said that it's a part of a continuum, it's not going to meet the needs for everybody, but we do have uh, so for example, the BCEP projects that I mentioned, that's residential treatment that's coming on.

That's a shorter length of time than someone would spend in board and care.

Um, but at the end of the day, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't, it's not just a question of money, it's also a question of system need and utilization, and you know, if we're talking measure W money, does that mean that we're then not going to invest it in what else?

And so not wanting to have a game of whack-a-mole for lack of a better word.

Um, so we we would look forward to partnering with the community and with our team to kind of figure out uh what's a reasonable proposal to bring to you all.

Okay, the last question on this.

This is not my last question, the last question on this item.

If we figure out what to do with the West Oakland situation, would that serve as a prototype moving forward or not?

So I don't I again I I hesitate to go too deep into that particular situation, but as of right now, um, because of the costs um and funding that's available that what we're actually talking about with uh the supportive housing community land alliance is something different than board and cares.

Okay, all right.

Okay, so let's see.

Um couple of other quick questions.

So what's the situation in terms of the release of uh folks from salary to jail?

The medical services and the continuity of those services when they you know when they're released.

I thought I know Epic was going to help us.

Is that something you can talk about, or and I need to wait to talk to the sheriff about that?

I might ask for an assist from the under sheriff, but um, I will say I was surprised to hear that our agency is not supportive of providing services in in the jail.

Um, as you know, we provide behavior health services, we provide uh other services, we coordinate with um well path where needed, and so my understanding is that the 90-day pre-release is actually starting just in a couple of weeks, if not yes, um so we're glad to be supportive of that and and helping that continue.

Okay, great.

So a couple other quick questions.

So um your agency knows has all these CBO contracts, and I asked the county administrators staff about the, you know, the ancillary benefits of all the contracts that we provide to, you know, to the economy and to staffing.

So I think your agency's looking to try to add um or request that type of information when you do the contracting in the future.

Yes, so we have um through some of the departments.

So I think Behavior Health, for example, had started collecting that information, and I think some of our other departments were trying to figure out a way to make that uh a not cumbersome reporting requirement for for the CBOs, um, and also recognizing that you know some of our largest CBOs, for example, might uh work in multiple counties as well.

So trying to figure out how to get just Alameda County specific data.

Okay, and then under one of the slides, uh this might be directed at the county administrator staff.

It mentioned locally of sixty-two million dollars.

Well, what is comprised of local aid?

The revenue sources local aid, 62 million, 5.5% of the agency's budget.

Yes, that is the funding for intergovernmental transfers for our local hospitals, and I can break it down for you if that's helpful.

So that one slide where it says locally 62 million, 5.5% that's in our governmental transfers program.

Yeah.

Okay.

Alliance share it's 60.3 million of that are for the IGTs.

Okay.

Um then I have a question under one of the other slides, budget highlights.

It mentions 35.8 million for environmental health.

What's what is that?

Towards the end of the slide presentation.

Under budget highlights 35.8 million for environmental health services.

Yeah, whoever can answer it, yeah.

Um, so you're I believe you're looking at slide 12.

Um, so this is just us saying the uh that's essentially almost the full budget for environmental health, um, but it's essentially saying that those are services that we provide to the community related to um, you know, food protection, air protection, water protection, and and the various permits, okay.

Because I know since I've been on the board, environmental environmental health department has pretty much been self-uh supporting through fees and stuff, but it was brought to my attention maybe a month or so ago when the environmental health department reported to the unincorporated services committee, supervisor Tam and myself about the fact that they're they have staffing challenges that prevent them.

I think you're at that meeting, prevent them from doing the necessary work they need to do.

For instance, dealing with the sidewalk vending ordinance.

So do we have a sense of their vacancy rate, how many are vacant, and what we need to do to try to boost environmental health?

Because if they're just relying on services and fees, do we need to look at um having another fee study to increase the fees?

Uh and these are mutually exclusive, or do we need to look at um providing additional resources so environmental health can do their jobs?

Because I was pretty rough on the director that evening.

Overall, listening.

Yeah, um, I I think it's it's a combination of things.

So one of the issues that uh we generally have is that uh we our environmental health department tends to be a training ground for people who then will go and work in other counties um because they have different compensation available.

Um but I I will say that we've been working pretty closely with um uh the central HRS team to to bring vacancies down.

Um and uh so last year, for example, our vacancies in we had more than 400 vacancies across the agency this year.

This year we're down to 300, um and environmental health was the one that had brought theirs down the most, actually.

Really?

Yeah.

Um but that you know, but it uh we in our CUPA program, for example, or the food program.

Again, the places where people stay and get trained and get certified.

Um we we have a little bit of a retention issue that we'd like to work through.

Yeah, I'd like to either we're gonna take this up in the health committee more or bring it back to the full board, because I'd like to know how we can, you know, obviously have a strategy of retaining the staff there, and if we have and if it's not a recruitment issue, it's some more retention, uh concern the retention because obviously I've got constituents that are um hammering about the need for the environmental health department to be able to do its job and do it better.

Okay, um, and then in the office of the uh agency administrator that that's your office.

You're but you have about two hundred and two million dollars, but that doesn't include it.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't include the measure w monies for H and H or does it?

Uh no, that includes the non-measure W H and H budget.

So if we include the measure W funding, it'd be 202 plus 275 or 308.

Just about, yes.

How much?

If Ambi says that's true.

308?

Yeah, the additional three.

Okay, so w is in a separate fund.

So that's 510.

That's 510 in the agency direct the office of the agency director.

Are we having troubles getting the H and H money through Measure W out on the streets, delivering services and being implemented?

Because that's that's a lot of money in your you know in your direct orbit.

It is a lot of money, Supervisor, and we appreciate you for entrusting us with that.

Um it is uh as we've gotten more staff hired.

So over this last year we've hired 16 more staff with with Measure W funding, which allows us to get more money out the door.

Um we've gotten more than a hundred and twenty or thirty million dollars out the door just in this first fiscal year.

Um, and this coming year, you know, we've got more RFP RFPs planned.

Okay, because we're gonna we really, you know, I'm stressing this we really need to get that measured of money out on the streets delivering service.

And if that's if you're if you're if all being in the office of director isn't um allowing for the efficient um you know getting the money out the door, then I know you need to kind of struggle with what you're gonna do with that.

I know you've only been in the position of the agency director for a few months.

How many months?

Two two months.

Just two months, okay.

So I okay.

So what do you do?

Come on, let's get let's get moving here.

All right, but I know you you're working on it, but I want to flag that because we really need to get that money out the door.

That's a lot of money that's going through your office, 510 million dollars.

510 million dollars.

Okay, all right.

I think I've said enough.

So, I'm sorry, not a best.

Thank you, President Halbert.

Um, and thank you to the AC Health staff for the budget presentation.

Um I will try to limit my comments to just three um questions that I want to focus on for right now.

Um, since we did talk uh about um SCHLA's project that happens to be in my district, I appreciate you, Director Chowdhury sharing a little bit more about that.

Um, I think since you already spoke to this, I just want to um say for the record that I have been uh communicating with our staff both at AC Health as well as our housing and community development department, um, about this project.

There's what seem to be two separate issues.

One is a request for ongoing organizational support, um, of which we've committed um some funding through the Prop One Bridge transition, and then a request to support the union.

Um, as you heard from our director, um the current proposal is different than board and cares, and so I do want to let people know that myself and my team are very engaged, and um we are trying to figure out exactly what the path forward is that is sustainable, given that um there's a number of different things that need to come together to make this successful, not only the ongoing long-term subsidies, which you heard um is a 10 to 15 year commitment, um, but also the financing and other pieces.

So just wanted to share that for the record.

And I don't know, Director Chowdhury, if there's anything more you want to say on this topic.

Uh no, I I think you've captured it, right?

Um, I wanted to then touch base about um two items.

Um, the care collaborative had members in the audience who spoke um at this meeting in the last meeting with um with an ask that the updated home together plan include um prioritizing children, families, and pregnant people.

I do want to support that request and ask how that can be done.

Uh so thank you for that.

Um, you know, children, pregnant people and families are uh generally highly prioritized within the the homelessness system.

Um that of course doesn't mean that uh we're serving every single person who needs it.

Um but in specifically with regard to the home together fund or the home together plan and refresh, the next stage of that is implementation planning.

So while the plan doesn't specifically call out each population, because there would be so many populations to call out.

Thank you for sharing that.

And prevention is also a part of this in addition to interim shelter and permanent housing and just a reminder that we're seeing a lot of families who are unhoused living in their vehicles.

And so safe parking is one of the things that could be helpful.

Okay.

And then the last thing is in regards to behavioral health.

So at our last meeting, we did hear from the prevention, I believe they're called the Prevention Matters Coalition.

These are folks who serve the UELP, the underserved ethnic language population.

I was wondering if you could speak to the transition and some of the challenges in terms of shifting from prevention to early intervention and how that transition.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

It's been a challenging one, and I know you've heard a lot about it over the last full year almost.

But you know, under the BHSA transition, behavioral health and specifically BHSA funding can't be used just for prevention activities.

So what the behavioral health department has done, just for context, we had about 26 million dollars of prevention programmed into our BHSA budget, our MHSA budget.

Of that, we think that about 18 million is eligible for early intervention, which is an allowable activity under BHSA.

And it leaves about, you know, 8 million or so that is strictly prevention and not fundable.

So we've been able to cover prevention either through the one-year bridge funding or specific to the UALP providers.

Uh, I believe there were 12 of them and 10 of them opted into the early intervention cohort, which means that they are going to be receiving technical assistance from behavioral health for this coming year, their contract amounts will be kept whole.

Um and the idea is to help them transition to billable services and services that qualify for you know future state funding.

So we do think this is a good way to transition some parts of our system toward sustainability while they're not necessarily able to do some of the uh prevention oriented things.

So I think some of the examples you heard from the team last time were that prevention might be that you know someone comes in and they're getting community building and like resilience building services, whereas for early intervention, they need to be exhibiting symptoms, right?

So it's a little bit more clinical, and that is a challenging shift, especially because we're really proud of the system that we've built up in Alameda County with the ULP providers.

Um, and I will just note that we also really need UELP providers to help make sure that our system for behavioral health services continues to be able to reach people.

Um so we're, you know, we need their support in making that transition.

Thank you.

And final question, is there um a space where there could there can be ongoing conversations about this transition that includes those 12 UELP organizations?

Yes.

So part of uh, and this kind of gets to the broader BHSA funding uh mix is that, you know, the um the state is redirecting about 4% of statewide uh funds to go to prevention, but that's to be administered from the state uh California Department of Public Health.

Our local public health department will have a role to play in that, and so we plan to convene um providers who are, you know, it's a part of our BHSA bridge planning, um, but we do plan to have uh the public health department convene specifically around prevention so we can also think about ways that we can support providers in uh applying for state money or being aligned and you know kind of figuring out where there's gaps.

Thank you.

Supervisor Morcas.

Thank you, President Howard.

Not sure what direction I want to go because there's so much to cover.

So let me just start with um just thinking I'll be concise because I know we have a lot more information to go over but um I I am just sitting here in awe with with your um agency your department, your organization between HR1 Prop one, um behavior health needs at Santa Rita Jail at Juvenile Hall.

I mean this has been like a very chaotic storm for um a year on the federal stuff and state stuff but even before that and just um the institutions where we provide care for people.

So I just want to acknowledge a lot of great work has been done.

So just thank you for that.

Thank you for your leadership behavioral health team just everyone involved.

I don't really have questions at this time but I just feel compelled to just share kind of what's top of mind for me.

So I was really pleased to hear Cal AIM is launching July that that's it tentative uh sorry April Lucky Behemoth Sheriff Allen County Sheriff's Office July will one is when they will start the 90 day pre-release part of the calling program.

Okay yes and we've been waiting for that that's for a very long time.

So that that's good news.

So I just want to want to highlight that also really excited about the health pack work and I fully understand we we need the governor's budget to be adopted but just a lot of work has been done in in that space and and just want to continue to flag and be consistent in my comments although I'm very excited about the B chip funding I have to advocate and consistently bring up the fact that the city of Hayward is absorbing the majority of the services I know we've already started conversations but I just can flag for you I've been in meetings and phone calls all day it is um becoming increasingly challenging some of the issues that EMS police the community are interfacing I'm very supportive of this work.

I just will flag I'm I'm disappointed in the governor that this wasn't part of the conversation from the beginning how do you expect one city to absorb all of this wraparound services knowing that we're placing people with the highest acuity and there's no conversation with bringing our public safety providers to the table.

So we need to course correct and we need to have that conversation because this is just the first program out the gate and we have so many more in the pipeline.

So just just want to flag that um also as you know very important to me that we're on track with Epic that's also a significant investment that this county is finally making to make sure we have continuity medical records care and services for people in our care at Santa Rita jail as well as undergoing behavior health services.

So a lot of great things happening but a lot more work to be done.

I really appreciate your approach on the um boarding care home the licensing there is always more to the conversation there's always more to learn I'm definitely in support of looking at how we could expand those services but it definitely has to be sustainable and I'll kind of piggyback to my comments made before we launch Measure W.

And I don't want to see us lose any beds.

So anything we could do to fast track maintaining current beds, I think needs to be a priority.

And then we look at what are we doing to expand?

But how can we provide quick, fast support so we don't lose current providers?

And then I think the next step should be expansion, but I don't want us to lose what we currently have in our inventory.

And I think that's it, and just you want to have a lot of respect and appreciate everything you're doing, and it's a lot.

So thank you.

I'll follow up on that.

I mean, I guess we can say, please don't lose any beds, or we can also say, let's look at the number of beds that we actually have, verified, known.

Let's look at them in three months and make sure we have the same number.

And three months after that, make sure we have the same number.

Keep a track of it, because if we can measure it, if we can report on it, we can understand it better.

And I think it indeed is important.

A question I have is: what is the difference between the board and care beds that we've been talking about and our BHS services that we provide beds for?

Are they the same process?

Um, so the board and care, the licensed board and care beds are uh essentially administered, uh they're co-administered by behavioral behavioral health and um HH.

So HH does the contracting and it's the housing supports program, so they make sure that the uh people who need to get paid are getting paid.

Uh behavioral health uh holds the referrals for those beds and sort of uh they also pay the patch that is on top of um you heard people's SSI is used or there's you know state reimbursement.

Um, so behavioral health provides some of the funding, the additional funding on top of that.

Additional funding.

Okay.

And there and it's uh in terms of how it connects to the broader system of care, it's one component of care.

So it's not going to be appropriate for someone who is going to be, you know, harmful to living in a group situation or harming or or hurting themselves, like people who might need a more restrictive level of care.

Um, but it's also for people who uh can be in community but might need to be reminded to take their medications, right?

Or might need somebody else to prepare their meals for them.

Um, and so it's a it's a subset of the larger behavioral health population that we serve.

Not for today, but I just want to put it on the radar.

Um, and I think Supervisor Marquez will resonate with this.

We have had feedback from city agencies, police and fire, that they are being called excessively three times a day to locations, yeah.

Conditions are off the hook.

We have to get our hands wrapped around this, so um we will get our hands wrapped around them.

Prevention and early intervention.

Is there a study that the state did that validates why prevention doesn't work and they now want to move into early intervention?

I mean, it seems like a situation isn't dire enough, you have to actually fall into trouble, not imminent trouble, you have to be in trouble to get help.

It it I don't understand that difference.

In another sort of parallel scenario, it's like I can't do anything until a crime is committed, it's about to happen, but until it does, we can't do anything, and it feels the same way.

I can prevent it, but I'm not allowed to anymore.

You have to be in trouble before I can help you.

How do we cope with that?

I the the coping is the difficult part.

Um, and I can't speak to whether the state uh undertook any studies to inform the the shift that they wanted to make, but there were a couple of things that were um specific to the development of Prop One.

So one was that they did want to make sure, because not all counties spent their MHSA dollars on housing.

Um we were one of the counties that actually did that just from the start.

So there was a we want to make sure we do that.

Um, and then as that pot of what's available for services shrinks, um, then you know, the overlay is that uh because it's county behavioral health, and their role is to serve people who are seriously mentally ill, because mild to moderate are the responsibility of regular Medicaid.

Um, that those funding that those funds should be serving people most in need.

And so that sort of just trickles down to all the way down to prevention saying that at that point you're not demonstrating need, and so it's not an appropriate use of that funding.

We don't agree with it.

Um, okay, that's what it is.

Again, also not for right now, but I did send an email.

I received notification of properties that are up for auction, extended stay hotels, for example, and they seem to be going for a very reasonable rate.

We can't build apartment buildings fast enough and cost effectively enough.

Let's look at buying things on the open market if we can, especially if we get them at auction.

Check the email.

That's it.

Okay.

Miley, go ahead.

Yes.

The the other thing, I didn't mention it, and supervisor best didn't mention it, but I will make sure the folks from SEIU, 10 to 1, and the IOP folks.

Um, if they if they stay on and listen when we get to final budget adjustments, Supervisor Bash might will have a board letter to submit for the board to consider uh relative to Alameda Health Systems.

Um, so stay tuned.

Very good.

Thank you.

With no other comments, uh, we'll move to public protection.

For a brief update, public protection.

Public protection will be presented by Adam Seggy.

Good afternoon.

I'll be presenting the fiscal year 27 proposed budget for public protection.

The public protection served program area includes services from the district attorney's office, the probation department, the public defender's office, and other providers of indigent defense, the sheriff's office.

It also includes trial court funding.

This presentation is going to focus on general fund services and revenues.

That means it's going to exclude the fire department, which is a special district, as you know.

It's also going to exclude the police protection service area and the fish and game fund.

Both of those are special funds.

So within the general fund, public protection has appropriations of nearly 1.2 billion and revenue of approximately 584 million.

The net county cost is approximately 578 million, which is a roughly 5% increase from the current year.

The program has funding for 3,116.32 full-time equivalent positions, and that is a net reduction of four FTE from the current year.

If we look by type, the total appropriation includes $774 million for salaries and employee benefits, $453 million for services and supplies, which includes $61.5 million for community-based organizations, $6 million for other charges, and about $800,000 for fixed assets.

Turning to revenue, revenues total $584 million of this $391 million comes from state aid.

That includes 2011 realignment funding and also revenue from Prop 172, which, as you know, is the half cent public safety sales tax.

$23 million is from federal aid, $98 million is generated through charges for services, $16 million is from taxes, and $56 million is from other revenue and other financing sources, including $8 million from permits, penalties, and related sources.

So again, these sources together total $584 million, which leaves a net counting cost of $578 million.

This table shows appropriation revenue and use of county general fund by department.

The county fire department, police protection, CSA, and fish and game are not shown.

Again, they are non-gener, so they have no net counting cost.

The sheriff's, oops.

Go back.

The sheriff's office has the largest net counting cost, followed by probation, DA's office, and the public defender slash intergen defense budget in that order.

There's also a net counting cost for trial court funding, public protection sales tax, and realignment reflect program revenue.

This shows uh appropriation by department.

We see 647 million for the sheriff's office, 231 million for probation, 116 million for the DA's office, 92 million for the public defender's office in integent defense, and 76 million for trial court funding.

So in the next few slides, we'll go through these one by one and provide some more detail.

Looking first at the DA's office, appropriations in the proposed budget are increasing by $4 million with revenue increasing by $2.5 million.

That results in a net counting cost increase of approximately $1.5 million.

There's a reduction of two long-term vacant project positions as part of budget balancing as well.

For probation, appropriations decrease by $2.6 million with revenue decreasing by 0.2 million.

That results in a net counting cost decrease that rounds to $2.5 million.

Community-based organization contracts make up approximately $55 million of probations budget.

And here as well, there is a reduction of FTE.

It's a reduction of four FTE, resulting from a reduction of funding for four vacant project positions.

Again, as part of budget balancing.

So across all of these total appropriations are increasing by $9.2 million with revenue increasing by 0.9 million, resulting in a net counting cost increase of $8.3 million.

In the sheriff's office general fund budget appropriations are increasing by $11.3 million with revenue increasing by $4 million, resulting in a net counting cost increase of $7.3 million.

The number of FTE is increasing by two due to the addition of two senior fingerprint examiner positions, which are funded by state revenue.

And in the trial court funding budget, appropriations are increasing by approximately $400,000 with an increase of approximately $800,000 in revenue.

These changes amount to a net county cost decrease of approximately $300 after rounding.

During the budget balancing process, the public protection program area contributed net savings of $29.3 million.

This included an increase in one-time fee backfill revenue, an increase in public protection sales tax revenue, increased department revenue, including trust fund revenue for the DA's office and the sheriff's office, increased Dublin police revenue for the Sheriff's Office, increased grant revenue for probation, increased SB 90 revenue for the public defender's office.

There were also increased salary savings, and as mentioned previously, a reduction of funding for vacant positions and probation in the DA's office.

Finally, there were one-time savings identified in building maintenance division charges.

This slide shows budget balancing strategies by departments.

It is broken down by appropriation revenue and total net counting cost change.

Highlights from the public protection budget include ongoing funding for the positive youth development community program, the Family Justice Center and CARES Navigation Center, utilization of a holistic defense model and innovative vocational training and reentry services for individuals at Santa Rita jail.

There are also new resources in this budget for gun violence prevention, the use of expert witnesses and case management software.

As in the other program areas, there are numerous pending factors, several of which are listed here.

Geopolitical tensions and inflation continue to create uncertainty around economic growth, which determines the amount of realignment revenue and public safety sales tax revenue, delays or reductions in federal grants could also affect public protection departments.

State mandates have imposed increased requirements on public safety departments, often without sufficient reimbursement.

Implementation of new initiatives requires ongoing coordination and planning, both for state reforms like Cal Aim and also for county initiatives like Care First Jails Last.

And finally, there continue to be operational and financial risks from years of deferred maintenance due to funding constraints.

And that concludes the public protection presentation.

Thank you very much.

We'll go to public comment in room first.

Rotating to online back and forth.

Thank you.

Okay, I will move to Zoom speakers.

I have Richard Spildman.

You may unmute and begin your comments.

Richard.

Hi, this is Richard Spiegelman.

I chair the Interfaith Coalition for Justice in our jails.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

One of ICJJ's concerns is that the number of people in custody be limited and that those in custody be taken well care of.

And one route for keeping people out of jail is to use diversion programs.

So we're very interested in seeing that the public defender's office gets the capacity it needs to do the job it needs to do in, for example, mental health diversion.

In turn, the people in that court will get the services they need, hopefully to keep them out of returning to jail in the future, and there'll be a net benefit to the entire community.

One of the things that I think we know and we need to operationalize is that quality of life on the outside limits the number of people going into the jail.

And it's really important that we do everything we can in this county to focus our resources to keep people out and healthy rather than retained in jail.

Thank you so much.

Mina Kuchi, he may unmute and begin your comments.

Mina.

Hi.

If I know the go uh Alameda County's defend uh defenders organization had come in and done a presentation, they had said that they were drowning in paperwork, that their folks were really suffering and unable to complete their work.

And I believe they proposed and asked for an additional three million dollars.

I know that the folks at Restore Oakland have proposed some additional points to change in the budget as well.

And I believe they also asked for an additional $5 million for the public defender.

So I just want to uplift and reiterate the asks from Restore Oakland, which includes taking some um funds from the public county um jail budget and the sheriff's department.

Additionally, I just wanted to understand if there would be um uh a way for transparency for those of us that have concerns around the technology that's being used by the Sheriff's Department.

Uh the contracts with Peregrine, Flock, and any other additional um technology companies like Celebrate if they those can be show shared with transparency with like in a line item um way too because i know there's many people in the public that have expressed their concern around those so just wanted to make a comment there as well thank you thank you for your comments seeing no other hands in Zoom thank you I'll go to comments from the board supervisor Marquez then uh Miley thank you um can you please repeat I know we are increasing the budget for the public defender's office but there's also funding going to conflict counsel so can you just uh reiterate what the additional investments are being made to specifically the public defenders department thank thank you supervisor for the question uh we did work with the public defender to build flexibility within his budget to support additional staff uh in addition as you noted we uh uh as part of the proposed budget we recommended uh an increase to the indigenous budget which could support our contracted conflict counsel or the public defender there's flexibility there just based on what the need is because there's no way to project how many people are going to have to conflict out so there's some flexibility there and just um kudos to everybody working on this I think I had a meeting with the former presiding judge probably over a year ago about concerns and it seems like those have been mitigated um it seems like the panel's expanding and things as far as I know have been improving so I'm glad to hear that so thank you to everyone who worked on that and then um my last comments are I know we're going to receive an update on care first jails last at our joint public protection and health committee meeting I believe it's Thursday July 23rd and uh really appreciate you flagging that work as well as reimagined adult justice we did a crosswalk many of the initiatives from CARES first and reimagined adult justice um are uh in alignment and just noting again one of the significant investments is epic there's other work being done um and hopefully we'll be able to point to specific recommendations that have been implemented when we meet in July but just thank you to the community to uh reminding us to keep that top of mind and to my comments earlier today it is a priority has to be a priority so that way we reduce the number of people in our care in our custody to also reduce our liability it's it's not always um the easiest place to have people in Santa Marita jail so I do um commend everyone that's been working on reducing the population there and the services that are being um provided um I think those are all my comments on this topic thank you supervisor miley then for it's not about sure thank you so I I should know the answer but refresh my memory under trial court funding what what does that go to what do we pay for I believe that's our maintenance of effort funding when the court separated from the county there was some base funding that were required to continue.

So that's 75 point almost 76 million dollars is just funding that we've committed that we have to well that we're statutorily required to pay.

Right does that ever does that statute requirement ever expire.

I'm not sure it's been revisited as you know we have multiple agreements with the state around um our court facilities as well all related to the 12 court funding act okay and then I'm just really pleased that we've got stability in the district attorney's office.

That's all I have to say.

Supervisor Force Center Bass.

Thank you.

A few comments.

Firstly, I do appreciate that uh the CAO was able to work with the public defender's office and add $5 million to the maintenance of effort for indigent defense um it's good to hear that there is flexibility there so that the public defender can do what needs to get done in terms of uh contracting or staffing.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you, Supervisor Marquez for mentioning that the Care First Jails Last update will be at the July 23rd public protection health meeting.

It's a joint meeting, right?

10:30, great.

I know our mental health advisory board had an update.

I haven't had a chance to watch or read the slides, but I do want to just state for the record that those recommendations are really important to me.

You know, when we are when there's so much need in the community, I think it's really important to focus on the types of services, support, and interventions that are effective and cost-effective as well that lead to strong outcomes.

So more care in the community is something I support.

So I just wanted to lift up, even though we will likely take this up in relation to the PPC meeting and the health meeting, that I do support the Care First Jails Last Coalition requests for $5 million to support the PD's office for mental health diversion courts.

I think that could really enhance our ability to give people the right support and services that they need.

Through the existing rental subsidies, how much is already going towards or allocated towards people who are justice involved who may have serious mental illness or substance use disorders?

I think really understanding how we uh support those vulnerable populations is important.

And then I'm glad that there was a meeting with the coalition to talk about board and cares.

There's a lot more work that needs to be done.

I think that was just sort of scratching the surface of the conversation between the community and the county, and I hope for more of those conversations so that we can really move forward on the variety of strategies that will make sure people get the care that they need and are not incarcerated when they actually need care instead.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll uh echo comments by my colleagues.

Question I have is around slide seven, and I note that this is appropriations by department.

And I'll just make a comment that I've made before.

It's great that we know the percentage of each appropriation, but it's uh not as helpful as change versus year ago.

I would like to know for each of the appropriations the change versus year ago.

You may have that, maybe I missed it, but that's something that I would like to know.

Doesn't have to be right now.

Supervisor, I just want to note that that detail is included in the proposed budget document by department.

You can see the percent change in the financial summary.

Okay, in the summary.

Correct.

Thank you.

Okay, very good.

Um seeing no other questions or comments, we'll go to general government.

Thank you again for the presentation, general government.

So next is general government and capital projects, and those program areas will be presented by Nicole DeLuca in Amy Vienn.

I see this is a catch-all.

We have assessor, auditor, county administrator, library.

This is like a potpourri of general government.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the board.

I will be presenting the proposed budget for fiscal year 26-27 for general government.

The general government mission has two components to it.

We have departments that provide efficient services to county residents and support to other county agencies and departments.

This is a comprehensive list of the 13 departments and agencies under general government.

The proposed budget includes two nondepartmental budgets, which are the arts commission and countywide expenses.

This chart will provide an overview of the general fund within general government.

Looking at the proposed column, appropriations will have an allocation of $343 million.

This is an increase of the $20 of $25 million from the current fiscal year, driven by a shift in charging methodology from the county council budget.

Revenue totals $194 million with an increase of $9.8 million from the current fiscal year.

This is resulting in a net county cost supported by the general fund with a total of $149 million.

And this is an increase of $15.2 million from the current fiscal year.

The proposed budget includes $980 full-time equivalent positions supporting the program, and this is an increase of over two positions from the current fiscal year.

Going into more detail, this chart shows a breakdown of the general government appropriations by type.

More than half of the appropriations are allocated to salary and employee benefits, $193.4 million.

Services and supplies make up the second largest appropriation in the proposed budget, and this is totaling $164.5 million.

This is a combination of both the services and supplies and the CBO contracts you see here on this slide.

This chart displays a specific amount allocated to CBO contracts, which is $7.2 million.

The remaining appropriations are allocated to other charges, fixed assets, and other financing sources or uses.

Going into further detail for revenue, the total revenue is $194 million.

The largest source is stemming from charges for services at $102.9 million.

This can include property tax administration or assessment and tax collection.

The second largest source is stemming from aid from the local government agencies, or my apologies.

The second is coming from aid for aid from federal government.

The main driver here is going to be the community development agency for housing services.

And the third largest revenue source is other taxes, and this can include property transfer tax, business license tax, utility use tax, or hotel and lodging tax.

All remaining expenditures are supported by the general fund represented in the net county cost of $149 million.

This chart shows the general government proposed budget by department.

The community development agency is the largest allocation of $78.6 million.

This agency supports the county's long-term well-being through land use planning, housing, environmental stewardship, and economic development.

The auditor controller agency has a second largest allocation of $49.4 million.

This agency supports the county in administering public funds and protection of public records.

The registrar of voters has a third largest share of appropriations of $41.5 million.

This department provides services to encourage all eligible residents to exercise the right to vote and conduct elections.

Through budget development, the general government departments helped balance the budget and reduce the gap with over $5 million.

This includes an ongoing strategy of revenue increase combined across three different departments, resulting in $800,000 and a $800,000 reduction in net county costs, and this is stemming from the county administrator's office, human resource services, and the auditor controller agency.

The elimination of 3.83 full time equivalent positions that were that had long-term vacancies and reduced the net county costs by nearly $900,000.

The use of retained earnings by the information technology department, resulting in a $1 million reduction in net county costs.

This strategy has a corresponding effect to on charges to other departments.

One-time reduction of $400,000 of over $400,000 from the early completion of a project by the information technology department or the assessor's office.

There is a one-time reduction of $2.4 million in election operating costs and a one-time right sizing of professional services contracts for the treasurer.

This chart provides an overview of the measure W and general fund dollars allocated towards contracts for the community-based organizations or CDOs.

Of the total appropriations in the general fund for general government, $7.2 million will be allocated to CBO contracts.

And of the total appropriations for Measure W for General Government, we have $1.5 million that will be allocated to CBO contracts.

The total investment in CBO contracts are largely driven by the community development agency's housing and community development program.

These contracts support housing and essential county services.

Our general government departments provide a wide range of services to county residents and to other agencies and departments.

For fiscal year 26-27, we'd like to highlight a few of these.

$42.9 million general fund dollars within the community development agency are used to support housing and community development.

This investment supports community planning and funding to expand and preserve affordable housing, advance fair housing and homelessness solutions, and coordinate grants and partnerships with cities and community organizations.

29.4 million dollars for election services.

This upcoming November, the registrar voters will conduct the general election.

And this investment makes it possible for all voters to vote either by mail or voting center.

$20.6 million for county utilities and services.

And this investment is an operational logistic that helps support the functioning of over $120 county owned buildings.

$8.2 million for countywide radio upgrade and enhancement.

This investment for the information technology department supports the installation, operation, and maintenance of mobile radio for unified messaging to support fire, sheriff, police, emergency medical services, and other county offices that provide public protection and general government services to the public.

$4.6 million to support the recruitment efforts for employees.

This will help the human resource services department with managing county hiring and conducting recruitments and evaluations to attract and place the most qualified candidates to fill our vacancies and newly approved positions.

And nearly $300,000 for digital accessibility efforts to comply with the ADA services that are implemented by the information technology department.

Looking at several pending factors that impact the budget in the coming years, rising property assessment appeals create ongoing revenue risk for the county and overall property tax revenues to the general fund.

As a reminder, property tax is a significant portion of the county's discretionary revenue.

Global factors, including tariffs and international conflicts, can drive up costs for fuel, goods, and construction materials.

Construction projects for departments may have a long lead time, and building maintenance operations may have increased cost for goods.

Our pending litigations and settlements impact our insurance costs in addition to overall hardening of the insurance market.

President Halbert, members of the board, and members of the public, I'll be providing a brief summary of capital projects.

The county's facilities and the infrastructure are critical components in delivering services.

Therefore, maintaining and upgrading the county's infrastructure is key to help implement the board's vision 2036 goals.

The capital budget represents appropriations and funding for projects scheduled in year one of the FY2627 through FY 3031 five-year capital improvement plan.

This plan will be presented to your board at a later time.

In the FI26-27, close to $795 million is budgeted, an increase of close to $210 million over prior year.

$745 million of needed revenues have been identified, which is an increase of $175 million from FY2526.

The county will contribute $50 million of general fund to cover the net county cost.

Two long-term vacant FTEs in surplus property are being eliminated as a cost savings strategy, and the remaining work will be absorbed by existing staff.

This chart shows a breakdown of the $795 million appropriations by project fund.

The major slices represented here are the countywide solar and energy savings project fund for $246 million or $31%.

Projects at the jail for $223 million or 28%.

Facility condition assessments related to health care for $120 million or $15%, surplus property authority $412 million or $14%, miscellaneous counting projects for $41 million or 5%, and major maintenance is supported by $50 million general fund contributions.

In the capital improvement plan, projects administered by the general service agency are organized by project categories.

This slide shows the more detailed level of the project's budget in category one, which is approved and underway for a total of 41.1 million.

These projects are mostly miscellaneous projects at county-owned facilities.

The major projects in this category include $11.9 million for the White Cotton Cottage Project, $8.6 million for the African American Wellness Hub, $6.7 million for the Edgewater Drive building renovation, $4.8 million for the fence work at Camp Screening, $1.8 million for the Elevator Project at the St.

Leandro Veterans Building, $1.7 million for the turn of court fuel station, $1.5 million for the Nike Missile Site Improvement, and the remaining $4.2 million is for a collection of smaller projects.

Further details can be seen at the end of the capital chapter in the proposed budget under year one capital projects.

This slide takes a closer look at the 223 million capital budget for projects at the jail.

All jail projects are categorized as category two.

Investments at the jail consist of 182 million in the facility assessment condition project category.

This category includes projects such as kitchen renovation, critical operations, and program management.

25 million is invested in the health and services category, which includes projects such as safety enhancements, housing unit treatment pod, behavioral health staff space and treatment areas, outdoor reconfiguration and recreation yards.

12 million is planned for network security projects, and 3.4 million is in the access and disability category.

Again, details can be found at the end of the capital chapter in the proposed budget.

This slide shows details of the 416 million in the Category 3 projects.

Category 3 include projects related to facility condition assessment, ADA, has map mitigation and major maintenance.

The major projects in this category include 246 million for the solar project, 103 million for the facility needs project, priority one projects at the Fairmont campus, 50 million of major maintenance, and 70 million for deferred maintenance.

The county uses a mixture of funding sources to finance the CAPA program.

This chart here is inclusive of the net county cost of 50 million.

The largest funding source is the long-range capital financing of 315.5 million.

The county also leverages 256.5 million of available fund balance.

Other resources include property development fund at 112 million, other revenue at 51 million, government aid at 7.7 million, geo bond at 2.3 million, and use of money and property at approximately 175,000.

The FY2627 capital program also includes 215 million capital projects budgeted in the public works department.

127.6 million are projects related to the flood zones.

Well, 87.6 million are projects for the roads.

Public works finances their capital projects using special district revenues and funds for FY26 and 27.

Public Works is leveraging 110 million of flood fund, 57.5 million of roast fund, and 47.5 million in government aid.

Although funding for FY2627 capital projects has been addressed, from a long-term standpoint, there are still concerns.

First of all, the cost of construction is on the rise due to tariffs and the availability of parts due to supply chain issues may delay construction schedules.

Second, with changes to federal and state policy, the county needs to closely monitor policies and crime requirements related to capital projects.

Additionally, the uncertainty in the market creates fluctuations in the balance of the special capital construction fund.

The county will need to keep a close watch of the market condition.

Last but not least, the departments will actively look for and recruit qualified workers to perform construction work.

This concludes the capital section.

We'll go to public comment in person first and then online.

And there is a description there of 181 million dollars for capital investment.

Now this is on top of the 287 million that were in the capital budget for Santa Rita last year, the fiscal year that is just ending.

There's I'm looking in the capital project information that you know that's in the prior year capital plan.

And you know, there's there were 235 million put into critical infrastructure critical uh needs projects in Santa Rita for capital in this past year that was approved last September, but I am not finding any information about this 181 million dollars.

That is a lot of money.

Now, there in the in the five-year capital plan, there are future Santa Rita capital needs infrastructure needs that are not identified at all.

The 235 million included about eight uh items, each one had two lines in them and what was approved by the board.

So there was discussion about it at the board meeting, but there's been as I'm as far as I can tell, no further information about that.

So, when another 181 million dollars comes before you, I hope you will ask, well, what is this for?

Has the 235 million dollars already been RFP'd?

Has it already been spent?

Has it been contracted out?

You have 181 million dollars for future Santa Rita needs.

What is this really for?

I can't imagine how one could approve this without more information.

There are no other public comments.

Very good.

We'll take it back for board deliberation or comments.

Supervisor Marques.

Sure.

Um, thank you, President Howard.

Um my understanding is we are adopting the CIP separately.

Is that correct?

Okay.

When will that become you to us so that way we can further um elaborate on some of these questions that have been posed?

Our goal is to bring it to you before your recess, but as you know, the meeting meetings are limited, but the CIP is the five year plan as I indicated.

Correct.

Okay, so the goal is before August 4th or possibly August 4th.

Worst case scenario would be when we return.

Well, I think you have a work session in late July.

Ideally, we'd like to bring it to the work session.

Okay, and then I will just uh publicly uh own that last year I asked that these items come to work session, and I don't think it's a matter of Director Gassaway not wanting to come to work session, but this past year, every work session agenda has been slam packed to where we can't even get to the items on the agenda.

Um, and that's not short of us not willing to stay here.

If you watch the record, we're here for 12-hour meetings, probably at least once a month.

So it's not that people aren't willing to work hard and stay hard, it's just again, we've been hit with so many threats this year, which has made the workload extremely difficult.

So our goal is now that we've have a plan with prop one and the bridge funding, we're getting through HR one, we had a VLANSIN hearing, which I haven't even um shared earlier today.

It's just been a lot.

So uh our goal is to get back on track so that way we can advance this work and have more thorough discussions.

But you heard it today.

We will definitely discuss this CIP uh budget in a work session before it is adopted.

So the community will have an opportunity to weigh in.

Um I did have a couple clarifying questions.

I'm trying to find the slide.

Um, there was a reference about with regard to um slide three on my end.

I think you have it numbered from the beginning to the end, but ours has different numbering per section, but this is the capital program proposed budget overview.

I wasn't clear about the savings.

Was it specifically to two positions?

I heard something about surplus buildings.

I wasn't clear on that.

Can you clarify?

Supervisor, the savings of the two FTEs that you're seeing in the overview were contributed by the community development agency.

Uh these were staff that used to be budgeted and surplus property.

The work is being absorbed by got it.

So that's what was confusing me.

It was absorbed in another area, but the basically would just have limited two positions.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

Um again, thank you excellent presentations.

Thank you for flagging what we brought up earlier about the assessment of pills.

Thank you to Supervisor for Sando Bass for coming up with some concrete solutions to get ahead of this for next year.

So I'm definitely um in support of that.

And again, just echo my comments I made earlier.

I don't want us to leave any money on the table.

Um, I do want clarity in terms of register of voters for the special election, which was oh, everything's a blur.

It was a prop 50.

When was a prop 50 election?

We've had so many elections, 2025 November, correct?

So we were reimbursed for that, or we were provided full compensation for the cost of that election.

And then we have a special election occurring right now that's costing us six million dollars, correct?

For Congressman Swallow resigning.

Good afternoon.

Cynthia Cornejo, interim registrar voters.

Yes, for the November 2025 election, the state did reimburse counties for the cost of that election.

Okay, I I will follow up with you.

I know there's concerns with Washington Health.

They had a measure on the ballot and the cost, and so we could talk about that offline, but just want to make sure we're clear on the cost of that since uh the state did pay for the cost of that election, and my understanding it was Prop 50 was countywide, but Washington Health was the only local measure that was also on that ballot.

Is that correct?

That's okay.

Okay, just want to make sure we close a loop and track that.

But I think just to follow up in dovetail that I don't know what our policy is, but I would hope that we can discuss the just incremental variable cost to a fixed cost that the state put on our backs for Prop 50.

If it was the only ballot uh thing on the ballot, and then separately, how much incremental does it cost?

So that we're not saying splitting it 50-50, yeah, but rather just the incremental cost of printing an extra piece of paper, putting it in the same envelope with the same return postage.

Anyway, I want to be very clear about how we're accounting for that.

Correct.

We'll take it offline, but thank you.

And then can you remind us what the cost was for the current special election that will be certified this week?

Yes, we will be certifying on the 25th.

Uh, the estimated cost is six million dollars for each of the special um primary and the special general in August.

Okay, um, so six million each and the state is not reimbursed.

That's an additional 12 million dollars that we were not correct, anticipating accounting for um okay, thank you.

And the just so everyone's clear, I'm referring to the special election for congressional district 14.

That's correct.

Okay, thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah, question.

So supervisor Miley and then Fort Center Bass.

Fortunately, and then Miley.

Thank you.

Um, appreciate the information.

I have questions around three sets of topics: capital, um, HR and vacancies and um fees.

In terms of the capital program, I'm just curious.

You know, in December, we approve our board policies and we approved up to 7% of our general fund as I recall going to our capital program.

Is that the $50 million contribution that we see on page eight under revenue by source?

Supervisor, I believe the $50 million that you're seeing on slide eight is in reference to uh appropriations for major maintenance.

So distinct from so um when we agreed back in December to appropriate up to seven percent of our general fund towards capital, where do we see that in these documents?

And what's that amount?

That amount, the up to seven percent corresponds to 75 million, uh and that is represented in the non-program budget.

Okay, thank you.

And then um, in regards to Santa Rita jail, I am really interested in understanding what the total budget is, and you know, I'm I'm looking at a particular page, it's actually online.

I don't know that it's I'm not sure if it's represented in these documents, but last year we approved 287 million for Santa Rita facility assessment and program wide.

That's what it says online, and then this year we're proposing the 181 million.

So that 181 million, is that new funds being approved, or is that encumbered from when we approved those funds last year and being rolled over?

So to be clear, these are not new projects or new funds, these are projects your board has already approved.

When the new fiscal year starts, we have to re-ummit the appropriations in the budget.

So there's a timing issue with the fund balance adjustment, et cetera.

So we some of them are still in design, not yet bid out for construction.

So if they um some of our POs do not roll, so this is not new projects.

This is stuff that you've already approved.

Okay, so that 181 million proposed for the next fiscal year.

Is actually less than the amount that's in the current year's budget, correct?

It's 100 million dollars less.

So that's whatever we've already spent.

Mm-hmm.

We're just asking yeah, I see it's 36% less than last year.

Correct.

Okay.

And is there somewhere where we can see the total budget for Santa Rita?

Or is that gonna be part of the capital plan when it comes to us?

We can send the total budget, but it the capital plan is for five years.

We're asking for one year of appropriation.

Correct.

But if you want to see the full scope, that's something that would be included in the CIP.

In the CIP, okay.

Okay, but just to be clear of the 81 million proposed in this example, it's part of what we already approved.

So it's correct, it's the kitchen, the critical operations, the big items that were referenced by the public.

Okay, I appreciate that clarification.

Um, and then since HR is also part of general government, I sent um, I actually shared some questions around vacancies at the May 28th meeting, and I don't know if there's um answers.

I asked about the number of vacancies at Santa Rita jail and what if any overtime we have incurred year-to-date for this fiscal year as well as each of the previous two fiscal years, and then also overtime attributed to staffing requirements under the that we settlement.

Dr.

Noon Margarita Samora, director of human resource services.

So those are questions I'd have to defer to the sheriff, uh specific departmental overtime.

They would be tracking their vacancies and so on.

Um good afternoon, April Lucky Behimi under Sheriff.

Um, I do have the questions.

I did provide them to the CAO's office.

I'm happy to send them to you or report them to you now if you want to hear the total vacancies for Santa Rita specifically or agency-wide.

Um, I definitely would appreciate getting uh the answers over email, but if you are able to briefly summarize some of that information, that would be helpful.

Yeah, so currently at Santa Rita, we have 703 sworn positions allocated in 500 of them are currently filled.

We have 295 positions that are professional staff and 258 percent of them are currently filled, which gives our Santa Rita vacancy rate at 24% vacancy rate overall.

Do you know how much overtime is attributed to those vacancies?

So I can tell you the total overtime for 2526 as of May of 2026 has been about 54 million dollars, and that you'll have the um exact numbers broken down when I email it to you.

Okay.

Supervisor Bass, I know that you also had questions about social services.

So we had planned to put all this in writing and submit it to you in the full board tomorrow during the deliberations.

Thank you.

That will be very helpful.

Appreciate it.

Um, and then lastly, in terms of the assessment appeal fee, um, I would like to make sure that comes to the board so that there's ample time to prepare for implementation before the next assessment period, July of next year.

Um, what is the potential timeline for working on this and getting something to our board?

As you know, we're looking at all of our fees and expect to have a master fee schedule, something we've been working towards, like other jurisdictions have.

I know we will make the assessment appeals a priority.

I think there's been some preliminary work done.

I can give you a better, I don't want to make commitment until we have a better idea of how long it might take.

Great.

I definitely appreciate the work on the master fee schedule and making sure we're up to date and certainly want to prioritize that particular fee.

Thank you.

Supervisor Milan.

Yes.

So a few things just to follow up on that.

Don't forget the environmental health department and the fees there.

I'd like to make that the second priority when you bring the master fee schedule forward, because specifically I was told once again that the fees haven't been adjusted in a while, and I need to make sure these we have enough people in that office or they got enough revenue coming in the office for that department so that it can do its job.

So back under proposed budget balancing, uh, the um the countywide strategies, it was a 31.5 million countywide.

What composed that 31.

That was largely your non-program revenues, property tax, sales tax.

Um that had some growth.

As you know, the growth was limited.

The assessor had initially estimated two and a half uh percent growth.

So it was largely um non-program revenues.

Because typically the auditor recorder, uh clerk, yeah, all the stuff.

She is usually they can she her office contributes money to the.

Well, unfortunately, this year, um, and I think as we had pointed out, many of those fees, like the recording fees and trans property transfer tax have actually declined.

So she the the auditor, she has a negative net county cost, recorder clerk wasn't able to make any contributions this year.

We did make contributions, they were just lower than in the past because of the transfer taxing, yes.

So we do have a negative.

Okay, okay.

But I do think it's important to note that those discretionary general purpose revenues.

While there's some slight growth, it's significantly less than it has been in prior years.

And in some cases, documentary transfer tax and recording fees have actually declined.

Okay, and then uh I know the auditor controller recorder clerk isn't at the mic, but what's the status of the um the redaction project with the no that's okay?

I can talk from here.

Um, we're currently in process.

Uh we have another, I think about two years left on it.

Uh, one of the efficiencies that we were able to um uh share with the county administrator recently was that we've been working with Stanford to expedite the review uh some of the uh redacted files, the tens of millions of redacted or uh public files that were reviewing for unlawful language.

Uh we worked with Stanford, they came in and created an AI function, they expedited the review of our uh public records, they cut it down to five weeks instead of probably about a year and a half.

Um they did that at no cost as part of a project that they were working on.

So we are on schedule, we continue to move forward.

Um we've been funding it through our FMR, some of our savings.

Uh, we never did initiate a fee for the program because there was some debate about uh the implementation of a fee.

Most counties have not implemented a fee.

There's a small number um who have implemented a fee.

Okay, that's what I wanted to kind of find out.

So we still feel going trying to pursue a fee would not be appropriate.

Since we're we're more than halfway through, uh we could consider we could look at it.

There's still a few few years left in the legislation I'd have to go back that would allow us to recover some of our costs.

So I can go back and look at what costs are remaining and then the period of time left.

Yeah, because you know, Supervisor Marquez, she said we don't want to leave a stone unturned.

We need to look and squeeze every dollar we can.

So if this is still a possibility, I think we should consider that.

We'll look into it.

Then with um county council, I know the county council interim county council's not here, but um Christie's here.

I guess you can answer this question.

What is your vacancy rate like?

Um how many attorneys are you down?

We're actually pretty good right now, although we have some positions that are we're hoping are going to be funded, and then we will be.

I think we'll be at six vacancies.

But we are right now we're we're only got a couple in our in our attorney staff.

We have some a few vacancies in our at the clerical level as well.

And obviously the attorneys need clerical support.

Um, because I still I'm still very concerned about the workload in the county council's office, and if you can keep up with it, because I know there's some things that you know all of us are concerned about.

We differ different of us are concerned about different things that some of us are concerned about the same thing, but um uh specifically, for instance, I'm just a little concerned about the disparity study and getting that uh, you know, the study was done a long time ago.

It's held up, I believe, in county council, and I mean it's been a while now, and I we just need to.

If you don't have enough staff, that's one thing, but if you have enough staff, I need we really need to move some things along.

Um that's just something.

So is it a is it a staffing issue or what is it?

So I can get that information and bring it back to you.

Um I will get in contact with the interim county council and I can get some more information.

But I do know that we've recently made some hires and brought in some additional folks, and we are trying to do some catch-up based on that.

Okay, also, Supervisor Miley.

Just to remind the board, I think we presented as part of the proposed budget.

We did some realignment within county council's office, and we did add a net number of positions and reduce some of the interdepartmental charges.

Okay, but we still you still gotta fill those positions, right?

We added a net number of new positions for county council's office.

Yeah, but they they're not filled, right?

Are they correct?

Okay, um, let's see with uh I think I'm ready to go over to the capital budget.

Let's see, uh, I think so.

Yeah, the camps camp sweeney fence.

Now it's just the camp sweeney fence.

What's the status of the funding from the state with Cam Sweeney?

Where where are we with that money?

And are we subject to losing that money?

Why can't we get that money spent and get those just decide how we want to use it and get it done?

Because we've got budgeted for next year, 4.8 million for camp sweeney for the fence.

Now we've had the Camp Sweeney grant, I don't know, a dozen years.

What's what what's wrong here?

And where's that?

And it are we gonna lose that money?

What because that once again, that's a bit of funds we could use.

Uh thank you, Supervisor Mario.

Brian Ford Chief Probation Officer money, uh, chief probation officer.

Like I said, money.

Um, yeah, there's 35 million dollars still on the table.

We remain in um regular communication with BSEC, uh, my department at least once a month, uh providing updates.

Um, there's been no threat that we are aware of from the state that has been.

How long have we had that grant, Brian?

I know it's been way before you were in probation.

I want to say it goes back to 2011, maybe.

And you and you really don't think we're in jeopardy of losing that money.

Uh as far as we've been coming as far as the communication to us from BSEC, not at this point.

Could we use the 35 million?

We could certainly use 35 million dollars.

So can we get get you know get something in the hopper here so we could make some improvements out of either Camp Sweeney or you know, um at Juvenal Hall or wherever.

Yeah, certainly.

We've been in constant conversation with GSA, uh talking about improvements for Camp Sweeney, and I don't know if Kim wanna do an update.

Because once again, it's 35 million that's just out there, and at some point the state might say, hey, county you've held on to this money for so long and you're not using we're gonna call we want it back, we're gonna use it ourselves or send it to some other counties.

So supervisor of the Kimberly Gasway, director of GSA, this uh conversation has circled around many times, and with each probation chief, I've had this conversation.

Um there's a number of operational and programmatic issues related to the money, including that it's least revenue bonds and the impact it has on our property, how many kids at the site has um been an issue so recently with each chief.

We've had brought this conversation up.

Um Brian and I have had a couple conversations about potential options.

It's an ongoing challenge of what is the best use and to programmatically discuss it further again and then meet with the county administrator.

I mean, right now there's um only a small number of kids at the site.

Uh as far as we are doing some uh renovations at the property right now to keep the facility stable, but we've looked at many options.

Are we building a new building?

And you know that property has a lot of seismic issues up there.

Are we remodeling juvenile hall?

One minute we are, one minute we're not.

So I mean, we're still talking through it.

I think the chief has also been in conversations with other probation chiefs and how it's going with what they've done with those funds and had some questions or concerns about using that type of money for our properties.

So I'm not it's not a dead in the water, but we are definitely still talking about.

Okay.

And there's not a large number of kids there right now, so I mean, at one point I was programming the camp squeenie money with a previous chief.

I don't know how many ago, but and we were looking at a facility for 100 and something kids, and now there's like less than 10.

Well, before you know at one point we're looking to build a a big old juvenile hall, and you know this is before David Halbert was on the board of supervisors, and he was campaigning against a large juvenile juvenile hall.

You know, he didn't jump over the he didn't jump over the good news is we didn't build another facility that would be virtually empty, had we moved forward with those plans.

Sorry to prolong, but what about the gym?

That's the gym, is the gym operational?

The gym is not currently operating.

So can we use the money for the gym?

I don't think I don't think so.

But we are um looking at some potentially taking putting up a new building.

Um the gym we're looking at with hard.

So right now we're doing utility infrastructure upgrades up there at the property.

So um, because you know hard had an idea for the gym.

Okay, so finally on this, um, if you know, I know you continue to struggle about it, but I know we're reimagining dual justice, a junk adult justice, um care first, jail slash, etc.

I mean, I just wish we could do something with that 35 million, you know, Camp Sweeney Juvenile Hall to kind of it's capital to reimagine.

Yeah, I totally agree.

I know it's not you know, it's not services, but it's capital.

No, I mean it's okay all righty i'm off my off my i more saw that one so i pre and then edgewater drive can we don't go yeah edgewater drive is that is that social services building out there um next to the DMV uh my no no okay that's not that building is that so which so I want to make sure I'm clear there's two edgewater drive projects one's with probation that a new building we bought and one is with SSA you want to come on ink I can use the support wait somebody just messaged uh supervisor miley the one by the MV is 8477 enterprise way and that building's okay they have um GSA has made lots of improvements to that building so it's fine right now we do have one location on Hagenberger it's an edge water so that don't change that the PID.

So 8201 Edgewater Drive is a new property that we bought for probation.

Okay so this is probations property this one on edgewater drive okay and this is a new building that this new property and we're gonna build a and what are we what will be building there?

So it's probation services so you know we temporarily put them in the lakeside building we have remodeled one of the floors now for offices and now we're doing another floor for uh program stuff okay and this is out on edgewater what's the address again 8201 edgewater drive to one so we've got to take a look at that location okay all right when do you think that'll be completed actually it's just about complete I think we're just waiting for fire inspection and we uh have already noticed the unions and we'll begin meeting conferring uh this month if all things go well our plan is to move in uh mid-August how many uh employees will be there about 70 to 75 and you you're moving out of where we it's all of the staff that vacated 400 Broadway and where are they now?

They have been rotating in groups of 15 out of the edgewater building oh okay but then they'll all be there okay sort of so they will all be housed there uh as a permanent workspace however that's the the building is two floors the second floor first floor second floor is where all the staff will be housed first floor is where we intend to see clients the first floor still needs uh renovation and so we'll continue to operate out of the lakeside building until the first floor at edgewater is complete and when is that gonna that project almost more time so that project right now is still in operational development we have received the operational needs from probation and then we'll move to design it's gonna take a while for that to happen.

It's just frustrating these projects take so damn long geez okay all right let me see if that's that's it on capital I appreciate the white cotton cottage moving along and the Nike missile site moving along um and is um the capital dealing with the um castor valley library or where we still need the board to take action on that for the old cash valley library library oh Sandy Rivera community development agency director so for the old cash valley library funding for that's coming from the measure w uh unincorporated fund so we'll be putting an RFP um for the work but for the design work and then we'll go from there.

So that would be happening this late summer okay okay okay and then I think I'll let Halbert ask about the um the sewer line out there in East County.

Thanks.

Okay.

Thanks for saving a question for me.

Supervisor Bradley.

How are we going to make sure that we finish sewer line?

For the uh savings of the wine region out in East County.

Well, currently uh that's also in the Measure W Essential Services for County County projects.

And right now that's for architectural services, and then we'll have a better idea of how much will be needed to complete the project, but we need that uh design work done first, the engineering and design.

When is groundbreaking expected to take place?

I will come up with a timeline after we've got the engineering design work done.

I trust that you will.

Thank you.

Any other questions, comments?

With that, we'll move on to the next item.

Which is rounding third headed to highlight final adjustments.

So final adjustments.

That concludes our formal presentation on the proposed budget and a couple things just to remind your board that our goal is to close the public hearings today, uh, and continue the meeting to your board's deliberation tomorrow.

Your deliberation is on the proposed budget.

You have the ability to move funds within the proposed budget and discuss any items that are included in the county administrators' recommended proposed budget.

So I understand that there is a request to enter an additional item into the record prior to the close of the hearings and before your deliberations.

And before you do that, I wanted just to enter into the record the final budget adjustment letter, which, as you know, we uh enter into the record every year.

These are essentially board-approved adjustments that have been approved uh after the development of the proposed budget, and in some cases, some adjustments to internal service fund charges within the maintenance of effort budget.

There's no increase in net county cost.

Um, the total amount of adjustments for the general fund in measure A funds is 14 million dollars, and the addition of 27 full-time equivalent positions and for other funds, including Measure W, there's an increase of 29.8 million offset by the same amount of revenue in total adjustments which are detailed on the attachments for 43.8 million in appropriations offset by a like amount of revenue, no net county cost, and a total of 28.3 FTE.

Um, we will enter this into the record and ask that your board incorporate these final adjustments in the final budget adopted by your board on Thursday.

Is there any public comment on this item before we go to board member comments?

Yes, there's one percent online to be bomb line, Janice Roberts, email unmute.

Thank you.

Uh good evening, supervisors.

Janet Roberts, executive director at Mercy Brownbag.

As a brief reminder, Mercy Brownbag provides fresh healthy groceries to 11,000 low-income older adults across Dalameda County.

I would like to build on Wendy Peterson's earlier remarks about the requested six million dollars in measure W Essential Services funding for the Senior Services Coalition.

Of this, the coalition had prioritized 2.2 million of funding on services that had lost funding and another 3.8 million for capacity funding.

I did not see this funding in your plans today, but if I could give you an example of why that capacity funding needs to be incorporated into the safety net funding at Mercy Brownbag, we have grown from 6,000 older adults served regularly just prior to COVID to $11,000 in 2025.

These are some of the most vulnerable residents with an average age of 78 and just $1,068 a month in income.

We know our free groceries not only helps to keep them housed but also healthy, since they can then spend those freed up grocery monies on rent and utilities.

And on another front, I wanted to report to you on your food recovery measure W monies approved in February.

And the first 90 days of this program, I am very pleased to report Mercy Brown bag has picked up, sorted, stored, and distributed 39,000 pounds of recovered food saved from Alameda County landfills.

That equates to over 1,200 new bags of groceries and another 30,000 meals to seniors in need across the county.

So thank you for your continued support of older adults and please consider the senior services prioritized request for safety net services.

KC online.

Good afternoon again, supervisors.

My name is Casey Bartholomew.

I'm a senior program manager at Stop Waste.

We are here representing the Alameda County Food Sovereignty Roundtable, as well as being a convener of the Alameda County Food Recovery Network, collaborative of more than 40 organizations based in Alameda County, working in your districts to strengthen food recovery and distribution.

The work of these organizations, as Janice just mentioned, is critical to reducing both the climate and food security impacts when good edible surplus food gets tossed or disposed of in our landfills.

And we are extremely fortunate to have over a hundred of these organizations located in our county that recovered and redistributed over uh 14 million pounds of food just last year of the equivalent of 12 million meals served, and yet these organizations are operating with limited funding, staffing, uh they're facing increased transportation costs and demand for food resources.

So we do appreciate the board for your action to increase Measure W Essential Services Funding for the next two fiscal years to support food security efforts, and we strongly recommend increasing the funding allocation in the expenditure plan, specifically for food recovery and distribution grants, which was previously budgeted at $500,000.

The previous funding allocation this past fiscal year was just uh unfortunately not enough to support the number of organizations and need across the county.

And lastly, I just wanted to uplift our partnership and appreciation for Dr.

Director Ron Browder and the Environmental Health Department for their help with conducting SP 1383 edible food recovery inspections.

They're really helping ensure that large food-generating businesses in the county are donating uh food and doing that in a safe manner.

Thank you.

To in person Wendy Peterson and Kim Olson.

Thank you.

I'm here again, supervisors.

Um, and my colleague uh Kim Olsen from SOS Mules on Wheels is going to cede her time to me because this is really important.

It's really important to get it right.

I'm here again asking for confirmation that the senior services coalition's Measure W funding requests are indeed included in the 150.9 million essential services fund on slide 28 of today's overview presentation.

We're seeking the specific allocations that were listed on the board's May 19 working meeting on Measure W Essential Services Plan.

Slide 29 from May 19.

We cannot find confirmation that our funding requests are included on the list of CBO contracts on the county budget website because most of the triple A contracts are in RFP and they've not been approved.

And so if you look at those CBOs, you'll see zero amounts.

It looks like they're getting nothing.

We also can't find the information we're seeking on the board letter that was approved June June 2, redirecting Measure W excess tax receipts to the Essential Services Fund because it only generally states directing that funding to board priority programs with no attachments or reference to slide 29 or any specifics.

The reason this is so urgent is that we are approaching June 30.

Contracts are ending.

Not all contracts were extended thanks to your board.

Some categories were.

Those that were extended were extended without the Measure W funds that we're seeking.

CBOs need to know that.

I just want to confirm she can see our time.

No, we don't seed time, it's just not something that we do.

And if I seed time for one person, then I have to cede time for every person.

However, this is an agendized item.

You're making public comment on an agendized item.

Any one of us can ask for clarifying questions or additional comments.

And so I would ask you if you were to have more comments, what would they be?

Thank you, Supervisor Halbert.

I appreciate that.

I'm not seeing any of the gotcha.

So the urgency.

Contracts that were extended.

They weren't all extended, but the ones that were weren't extended with the Measure W funding that we're asking for.

CBOs just need to know if that 2.2 million that's gonna backfill the cuts to triple A contracted programs is gonna be there.

And they need to know that the 1.7 million that's gonna continue the triple A food and meal services is gonna be there so that they can know what their funding levels are, so that they can plan accordingly, and know what to expect for their new contracts or their extended contracts.

So it feels like something that we can just ask the clarifying question of, and I will ask our county administrator and/or any other staff to make comment.

So if the question is about your board's action where you did amend the policy to um redirect prior year excess receipts to the um essential services fund, the direction that you gave, so it is included as the final adjustment.

The funds are not allocated.

The recommendation that we brought forward to your board that you approved was to direct the county administrator to include the fiscal year 2526 excess measure w tax receipts estimated at 20 million in the 26-27 final budget as part of Measure W Central County Services Fund for board priority programs and to mitigate the impacts of HR one.

So as and that further we indicated that staff will return at a future meeting with the proposed expenditure plan for the projected 20 million estimated excess measure w tax receipts, utilizing your board's priorities of senior services, food recovery, food security, and immigrant and refugee support.

And when will that come to us?

So it is included as the final budget adjustment if your board approves the final budget adjustments with your with the budget that you adopt on Thursday, those funds will be in the budget, but they will not yet be allocated.

When will they be allocated?

We would have to bring forward a proposal to your board, but I know that your board has many other competing priorities, and Measure W is just one potential funding source that might be available.

What page does it show?

These are the final budget adjustments that you referenced.

This packet that we just got.

So where is it?

Testing my eyesight with this font, but you can show us.

So if you look on attachment one page two, um at the top, special funds and districts, the fourth line down says CAO unallocated measure w 20 million dollars.

Okay.

So it would be incorporated in the final budget that you adopt.

The allocation would still be subject to your board's approval.

Okay.

Supervisor Marquette's follow-up question there.

Uh can I just note as I as I know your board is you know well aware, we're certainly tracking the receipts for measure W.

And to date, we do not have an excess of 20 million dollars.

We also indicated that we would want to wait until the auditor closed the books to finally determine how much excess receipts is available for allocation.

Don't count your chickens before they come in the sales tax receipts.

I got it, okay.

Supervisor Marques, follow-up.

Thank you, President Howard.

Um, so to piggyback on the commentary by the senior services coalition.

Do we have a list of the CBOs whose contracts will be expiring June 30th?

I don't know if that's all of them, some of them.

What we left that work session with was a very broad list based on public input and comments by your board.

The departments may have more definitive information.

Sorry, I'll forward again.

Um agency director social services.

I don't have the list with me um at this time, but I can get it to you before tomorrow's okay budget meeting.

That would be helpful.

And are we meeting?

I apologize at one thirty or one forty-five tomorrow, one thirty.

1:30 tomorrow, okay.

So we will get that information in advance of our next budget meeting.

And let me ask, hypothetically, I don't know that number, it could be five, it could be 20.

I don't know, somewhere in between.

Um, hypothetically, um what are our options if we had to like do an emergency extension to just to get us through a short window because we don't know what the excess receipts are.

There's still these unknown variable variables, but we've made a commitment that we want to fund this services, but we're, you know, it's it's a timing issue, right?

So I just want to know what options, if any, if we needed to do like an emergency extension for a few months until we kind of know exactly how much funding will be available before we extend contracts for a more lengthier period of time.

Should that be an option?

It could be an option if your board, you know, once your board identifies funding, so that could be some of the discussion that you have during your deliberations, whether it's the measure w source of funds or another source of funds.

Okay, and if we're talking about a short-term extension, short-term, just until we sort out that measure w excess receipts question, which let's be clear.

I don't think sorry, have to sneeze.

Who doesn't want to come?

Oh, sorry.

Um, I just with everything on our plate, I don't see us being able to accomplish that before August 4th.

So I want to be uh realistic and manage everyone's expectations.

So I'll just state that I would like to see an interim solution to allow adequate time to have a more thorough conversation with everything related to Measure W Essential Services Receipts.

Thank you.

So with regard to these final budget adjustments, we're gonna take these up tomorrow.

They'll actually be part of your action when you adopt the budget on Thursday.

And if we have any questions, we can ask them tomorrow or Thursday.

With regard to this letter.

When do we discuss this?

Well, Supervisor best, and I would like to introduce this letter for board deliberations tomorrow uh having um convened uh four ad hoc meetings over the last few months with uh labor and with uh Alameda Health Systems executive team and our staff and ourselves.

We've been in constant conversations with the county administrator's office, as well as talking with our agency, the agency director.

And as I said, we've talked with AHS as well in labor.

We want to submit this letter for board deliberations tomorrow so that we can uh address some of the concerns the board heard um around public testimony uh today dealing with the HS and its uh it's a budget situation, and I'll turn it to Supervisor Bass to kind of give you a preview of what we'd like to have the board uh discuss tomorrow.

Thank you, Supervisor Miley.

So through the conversations we've had at the ad hoc, uh we are presenting these recommendations to our board, and I will just read them since people on Zoom don't have this piece of paper.

Uh recommendation A approve an allocation of up to 19.3 million to Alameda Health System to one eliminate the proposed reductions in force for the remaining 92 FTEs set for July 6, 2026 for the entire fiscal year 2026 through 27.

Two, conduct a performance audit of AHS by an outside firm that is mutually agreeable to AHS leadership and labor partners, and three, extend the PHP IOP program through October 31, 2026.

B is direct the AC Health Director to convene a planning group with AHS leadership and key stakeholders to assess the feasibility of the PHP IOP program and ensure that all patients continue to receive appropriate care.

C.

Extend the board's AHS ad hoc committee to continue its work to address future AHS budgets, support a collaborative and transparent process to create fiscal stability at AHS and engage the entire health ecosystem to support AHS.

D support the 28 PHP IOP staff if the program is determined to be infeasible within AHS to explore potential county employment, including vacant positions in AC Health or the Social Services Agency, and E, direct the CAO to work with the auditor controller and AC Health Director to identify funding options to provide a one-time supplemental allocation of up to 19.3 million to AHS during fiscal year 26-27 to help address its remaining funding gap by eliminating proposed reductions in force funding and performance audit and extending the PHP IOP program through October 31, 2026.

And to our county administrator, is it possible to upload this letter so it will be available to other members of the public?

Yes, we can do that.

Thank you.

So I won't go into it right now, but you can read this letter and have access to it later.

It does detail the fact that at the start of the B.

Lenson process, there were 372 proposed reductions in force in terms of FTEs.

And this also goes through some of the work we've been able to do in terms of the county's investment and AHS revenue generating strategies and cost savings, and um specifically the performance audit, we think is really important to ensure that uh some of the conflict around ideas of cost savings gets resolved so that we can move forward productively for the subsequent fiscal years.

Thank you.

Um Supervisor Marquez, any comments or questions?

Supervisoroughly read the letter, appreciate the work that's been done on the Adam Hop committee.

Um we also received um a letter from Elemental Health System CEO James Jackson.

I think that was sometime last week, but also I'm just providing us kind of an update on the status of how things are unfolding.

So I will look at the letter in more detail.

Um I guess just early question is kind of like what are the timelines.

I know we talked about the performance audit, not expecting you to answer now, but if we could just have maybe some more information tomorrow in terms of um how soon you think that will actually occur, because what I'm hearing is the goal is to keep things intact to allow more time to come up with other cost savings, um, but I don't know how expeditiously that can be done.

So just one more information on timelines, that's all thank you.

I'll echo those comments.

I would like to see timing associated with this with regard to recommendation A sub bullet B conduct a performance audit by an outside firm.

Is this consistent with the presentation we had a few meetings ago about finding efficiencies?

Yes, it is, and there is um a potential firm that I think can be mutually agreed upon.

All right, but we didn't want to name it in this particular letter today.

Okay, well, I see um the possible conflict or rather synergies with recommendation D, where we're asking to determine it to explore potential county employment, including vacant positions in AC Health or the Social Services Agency, and again when I look at efficiencies and when I look at exploring things like vacant positions and AC Health and Social Services, I see the same thing, and I don't know why we wouldn't want to include AC Health or social services in an efficiency review if we're going to do something uh at AHS, and I I say that because just one example when I heard our uh public commenters, people that work at AHS describing some of the things that they do, it sounds identical to the things that maybe social services staff members would be doing, and so and that's not wrong because people are at AHS, they're in a position to share with a social worker their needs.

Those social workers are very knowledgeable, they know how to connect people to programs, but they just don't work for social services, they work for AHS, and again that's the dovetail of how we have an interconnected network of of service providers, and so if we have buckets of money in AHS and they're short, and we have similar functions being done in social services, we need somebody to come in and help us maybe understand those efficiencies.

So I would recommend that we, and I may be the only one, I think that we should be looking at efficiencies across multiple departments that all share a similar space, and that's exactly what this talks about.

So I would recommend that we modify this to include those departments in an efficiency review.

And if it doesn't happen here in this document that we provide for it happening very soon thereafter because they're all related, and so that would be my I guess this is meant to be entered into the record, so we that's not to say we can't modify this.

Correct, it's entered into the record for you to enable the board to discuss it tomorrow during your budget deliberations.

Got it, along with everything else that is in the proposed budget as well as the final budget adjustments.

Thank you.

My last question is this group planning group.

What does that mean?

Is it a new committee?

Is it a referred to the health committee?

What would be on this group?

Is it some group that already exists?

We're just delegating it to, or is this new?

So this group has this group has met um at least one time.

So this includes AC Health Interim Director, um, or her designee, uh, the behavioral health staff, the one we've already leadership of AHS as well as um ideally staff of that program, and the purpose is to assess the feasibility of it.

So it's a group that's already there, yes.

They've had at least one meeting.

So when you say to convene a planning group, it's really to give this to a group that's already convened, right?

Correct.

Oh, okay.

I just wanted to clarify, I wasn't sure.

If I read this to convene a planning group to me says a new group, but you've clarified it's a group that already exists and it includes our health director.

Yes, I think another reason to include the health department in an efficiency review, but we'll talk about that tomorrow.

Thank you for the this any other supervisor Miley.

Just one other thing, item C, at the end it says engage the entire health ecosystem to support HS.

Um, it's a little broader than it.

Uh I our intent is not just to support HS, but to also look at the county's obligations to deliver safety net services, yeah.

So it's so because it's HS, it's the clinics, it's the uh health CBOs, it's the alliance, so it's it's much broader than just HS, but it's coming about as a result of uh HR1, Prop one, and the demands that are being placed on our the delivery of safety net services in our health um arena.

So the the fat definition of entire health ecosystem includes things like social services, play a role in uh medical, yes, yeah, uh behavioral health, yeah, uh environmental health, not quite.

I uh, yeah, I get uh not quite.

Um what about I think that's broad enough, yeah.

Uh, thanks for the clarification.

I I appreciate that.

Any other questions or comments on this?

So before I ask you to close the hearing, just to a couple of quick updates.

We do have um the updated list of community-based providers that will is also online.

So we have a hard copy for you, and just to remind you that all the complete budget document and all of the supplemental information is available online, and we also had provided your board with binders with printed copies of that on May 28th.

So you should be able to access um all of the documents, and we will also post the final budget adjustment letter as well as the letter submitted by supervisors Miley and Fortunato Bass on the website as well.

So with that, I would recommend that your board close the public hearing and then continue um the meeting for deliberations and final budget adoption to tomorrow, Tuesday, June 23rd at 1 30 p.m.

So Miley moves 400 bass seconds.

Miley moves in Fortana Bass seconds a motion to close the budget hearings, to close public comment, but to continue our deliberations on recommended and proposed budgets to tomorrow, Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026 at 130.

In this room.

Yes.

Did I get that right?

Motion has been made and seconded.

Roll call vote, please.

Supervisor Marquez.

Hi.

Supervisor Tam, excuse Supervisor Miley.

Supervisor Fortinato Bass.

Aye.

President Halbert.

I vote yes.

We are now recessed to continue tomorrow, June 23rd at one thirty.