Turn on my mic.

Like to call to order this meeting of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors for Wednesday, February 26th.

2025, Manal Clerk will you please call the roll and establish a quorum.

Good afternoon.

Supervisor Schenny.

Here.

Desmond.

Here.

Rodriguez.

Here.

Hugh.

President.

And Chair Serna.

Here.

We do have a quorum.

All right, very good.

If you'd please rise and join me in the pledge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which

it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Manal Clerk, please read our statement.

This meeting of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is live and recorded with close

captioning.

It is cable cast on Metro cable channel 14, the local government shares channel on the

Comcast and direct TV universe cable systems.

It is also live streamed at metro14live.setcounty.gov.

Today's meeting will be repeated Sunday, March 2nd at 6 o'clock PM on Channel 14 and viewed

at youtube.com slash Metro cable 14.

The Board of Supervisors, Fosters Public Engagement during the meeting and encourages

public participation, civility and use of courteous language.

The Board does not condone the use of profanity, vulgar language, gestures, or other inappropriate

behavior, including personal attacks or threats directed towards any meeting participant.

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Each speaker will be given two minutes to make a public comment and are limited to making

one comment per agenda off agenda item.

Please be mindful of the public comment procedures to avoid being interrupted while making

your comment.

Comments made by the public during Board of Supervisors meetings may include information

that could be inaccurate or misleading, particularly concerning topics related to public health,

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To make a comment in person, please fill out a speaker request form and hand it to clerk

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Thank you in advance for your courtesy and understanding of the meeting procedures.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Again, I want to welcome everyone that has taken time out of their schedules to join us

here in Chambers this afternoon.

We have a light agenda in terms of the number of items.

However, I know that there are a number of members of the public that wish to address

the board.

And certainly you're welcome and invited to do so on our one time to matter.

However, we are going to begin as we normally do.

We are hearing sessions with public comment on items not on agenda.

And I'll just remind everyone that you're certainly again welcome to address the board

on any item that's not in our post to agenda.

The Brown Act, which is our statewide Sunshine Law in terms of meeting notices and how we

carry ourselves to make sure that we do the public's business in front of the public.

Restricts our ability to respond in great detail to any of the items or issues or subject

matter that you may bring up during off agenda.

So just please realize we're not ignoring you.

It's that state law really restricts our ability to engage with you on anything that's

not on the agenda.

We do have a time limit of two minutes per speaker and that is the protocol here so

that everyone who wishes to address the board has the opportunity to do so.

So with that, Madam Clerk, can you please call the first member of the public that wishes

to address us on off agenda?

We have one speaker for off agenda and that would be Jeffrey Tartigilia.

Jeffrey, good to see you.

Good work.

This should be able to, you should be able to hear me.

First item I'm going to draw attention to is simply there was a number of incidents that

occurred this month and extremely hard to find them on any calendar.

You as members know what you have in front of your next month calendar.

I'm suggesting it will be nice for the public to be able to see items even though you may

change and move the time on there.

This became apparent to me because Channel 3 reported that you were having this item related

to the jail today.

But I first thought it was at 10 o'clock in the morning.

So I came because right now I have had cataract surgery so I can see Sacramento County but

I can't see anything electronically out there period otherwise print wise and everything

else.

The second item I will remind you is your outside trash containers.

It's not real clear that they are trash containers versus so I wanted to throw away a pizza

with box and was unclear where I needed to put that.

It's just an item through there is just realizing you may know it and the public may know it

but may not be clear how often the trash can gets used outside front or back.

At first I thought you didn't have any outside just inside.

That's my public comment until we get too related to the jails.

Thank you Jeffy.

That concludes public comments that I have.

All right very good.

Then our next item is our one or only hearing matter.

Madam Clerk would you like to call the item?

Item number two contract number 81710.

County of Sacramento, main jail, intake and health services facility peer review.

Approved recommendations in the County of Sacramento intake and health services facility.

Comprehensive peer review final report.

Thank you supervisors.

Before we get started with the CGL report we've asked Deputy County Executive,

so Mr. Fadalini come up and give a little background on it.

Very good thank you Mr. CEO.

Thank you.

Good afternoon Mr. Chair.

Chair.

Members of the board.

Silveste Fadal, Deputy County Executive for administrative services.

In view of the importance of this item I'm going to give a very quick backdrop into how

we got to this position and in front of your screens a set of epitographic layout of

the sequencing of all the actions that was taken up to this point.

The board of supervisors meeting on August 8th 2023 would discuss the jail annex project

on the estimated cost.

Concerns were raised both from the board and from several different areas regarding the

project cost and the increase in scope of the project leading to county leadership

making a recommendation to the board to consider pausing the overall project and the board

agreed and the project was paused to seek a third party peer review as it's typically

stand out in the industry.

It's important to state very clearly for the record that during the cost of this entire

review process county executives, county professionals were not involved in making the ultimate

decision that is going to be presented to the board today.

With some level displaced, a high level of professional humility we didn't try to share

our beliefs, our recommendations with the team they acted independently and Brian Lee

is going to be presenting that information to the board solely based on their findings

and recommendations.

The decision to pause again was simply to ensure that an informed choice which is essential

for such a significant construction project was followed and a good decision is made.

In January of 2024 the county released a request for proposal, second qualified firms

for the peer review.

This led to the selection of CGL companies which the board approved on April 9th of 2024.

The peer review process essentially is to access the jail annex project documentation

by not in Lewis, including programming and conceptual plans to determine adherence

to best practices compliance with the May's consent decree.

CGL of course has completed the tax that has been assigned to them.

They're presenting the numbers today.

They're going to lay out their presentation.

We're ready to take questions.

At the end of CGL's presentation, both Eric and the public safety and justice deputy

county executive, Shivankotari, deputy county executive for social services, and myself

will be here to respond to questions relating to our independent agency areas.

But again, just to restate, this is entirely CGL's recommendation and the county is actually

asking for the board to accept this recommendation so we can proceed with some of the key steps

that has to be implemented.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the board.

My name is Brian Lee.

I'm a vice president with CGL companies.

It was contracted to do the third party peer review.

So going through the, I have a quick presentation to kind of share the overview of how we approach

the project, our findings and recommendations.

And then from there, obviously, I'll answer questions during the presentation after the

presentation or however you see fit.

Next slide, please.

Oh, do I have a clicker?

Here it is.

Thank you.

So the agenda for the presentation is just to give a quick overview of the project as it

was presented to CGL companies discussing the methodology, how our project team approached

the project.

Again, our findings and specific findings to six questions that were presented to us in

the scope of work.

And from there, we'll discuss our recommendations and then questions.

Okay.

So the objectives of the peer review project were to examine and verify IHSF, the intake

and health services facilities, likelihood of achieving compliance with the MACE consent

decree as far as the work that had previously been done.

Examinate if less costly methods were explored in the development of the plan as it was presented.

And to answer specific questions outlined in the scope of services and to make recommendations.

Okay.

Excuse me.

I'm going to have you back up one slide.

Okay.

And just so you're familiar with how we tend to treat these presentations, we tend to

ask a lot of questions in the process of delivering the information so please bear with

us.

So in terms of the objectives here, the first bullet is kind of a forensic look back, right?

Yes.

Absolutely.

But was there a reminder, was there an inquiry that was either offered by staff or by us or

by the public that really asked the question should moving forward, should at least cost

lower cost alternative be pursued?

If I understand your question correctly, yes, in the form of six questions that were outlined in the scope of work,

given the information provided specifically, we reviewed the draft program presented by

noct and Lewis conceptual design and the Maze consent decree.

And there were six questions that were very specifically asked with that information in mind, should the county pursue with a project?

Does that accurately answer the question?

Well, yeah, I mean, just speaking for myself, my other colleagues might have tangential questions here to the ones you've outlined in the objective list here.

But for me, what's really interesting and important for me to consider is whether or not moving forward, there is a, hopefully, much lower cost alternative that still meets the Maze consent

decree.

That's, I've been a bit of a dissent on the project mostly because of the extraordinary initial cost, but then, you know, the second time, third time we saw the cost adjustments increase the way they did that really kept on placing even more

in the process.

So, that's what I'm interested in understanding.

Yes, and that was specifically one of the questions if less costly options were explored.

No, no, not, not, were they explored?

Will they be explored?

Gotcha.

Yeah.

I also want to point out before, sorry, one more question here from Supervisor Hume.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to put kind of a finer point on the Chair's question because I think this is a question I had in my mind as I was reading your report.

And it speaks to, I think the, the, the genesis of what he's asking, and that is in your scope of work, you were asked to review the work that had previously been done and the options that that work had presented.

That's correct.

Not necessarily to come up with new solutions that would be a different path forward.

That's accurate, yes.

Okay, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying.

That's absolutely correct.

I think that was a little bit of blasting back at the work that had been done and to clarify the point that I was just about to make.

I think it's important to indicate that this is a third party peer review.

And this was, this was intended to be an independent review.

So we did not have the opportunity and nor was it intended for us to actually talk to knocked in Lewis and other groups that performed the work.

So that was an awkwardly third party.

And, and by making that point, I will offer that the project was approach fromacher from the, the perspective of CGL companies and how we might have approached this project.

And obviously, CGL is another vendor that does similar type of work.

So we're not some type of, you know, governing authority that says this was the right way or the wrong way.

We're merely offering our input and recommendations based on the work that we've seen done from our perspective and how we would have approached it.

Okay. So real quick, the project methodology, how the project team approached the peer review.

We first connect, we first commenced a project kickoff.

The reason for the project kickoff, and if I haven't mentioned this, I was the project director leading the project from CGL side.

And the purpose for the project kickoff is something that we do on all of the projects to meet with the client and to ensure that we have a clear understanding of the scope of work and the expectations of the work that we do, the timelines and to establish the lines of communication who will be our direct points of contact during the project and to make sure that we're meeting deadlines and deliverables as expected by the client.

So that's always the beginning of the project. From there we had a pretty substantial data request and we commenced to data collection and stakeholder interviews.

And I will mention that there's quite a bit of data that had to be reviewed for this project.

Most a center to that part of the project being the Maze consent decree and the remedial plan. So those are very specific documents that lay out certain requirements.

And then of course we had, as I mentioned earlier, the conceptual design, the space program.

And there was a Marshall kitchen study, there was a population reduction study, those are some of the things that reviewed but departmental policy and plans it was a pretty substantial data review.

Also we commenced the interview of over 40 stakeholders in this project. And if you, I think it would be helpful for me to list who the not by name but by position of all the stakeholders that were interviewed just to maybe alleviate some questions that you might have.

So, and again, a lot of the people that we interviewed may have had the same title. So this is just a list of titles of folks that we did interview.

Behavioral health psychiatric manager of the Sacramento County Adult Correctional Mental Health Services, Captain Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, Chief Assistant Public Defender from the Public Defender's Office, Chief of Architectural Services Division, Department of General Services.

Medical Director of the Adult Correctional Mental Health, Compliance Commander Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, Court appointed experts for the May's consent decree, members of the Public Group Decarcerate Sacramento, Deputy County Council, County Sacramento,

Deputy County Executive Sacramento County Public Safety and Justice Agency, Deputy Director, Department of General Services, Executive Lieutenant, Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, Health Services Administrator, Sacramento County Adult Correctional Health,

IHSF Project Manager from the Department of General Services, the then Interim Director of Department of General Services, Operations Commander Sacramento County Sheriff's Operations Commander, the Planets Class Council, the Sheriff's Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, Supervising Deputy County Council, County Sacramento, Under Sheriff's Sacramento County Sheriff's Office,

and that's the list of titles and positions that we interviewed as part of our stakeholder interviews.

Can I ask about the nature and the length of that list?

Well first of all, have you done this type of work before for not specific necessarily to a consent decree, satisfying the parameters of a consent decree, but doing a peer review on a facility similar to this?

To answer the question specifically, we have done this type of work, but every project is different, and we have not specifically engaged in what has been referred to as a peer review.

So what I'm going with is your experience, that list and kind of the variety of the parties on that list, do you feel that this has been somewhat exhaustive in terms of kind of covering the nature of acquiring different perspectives?

So I thought it was a great list. We got perspectives from all the way around the project for those that are in support of the project, those against the project, those who may not necessarily have an opinion in the project, but it was helpful for us to talk to the range including, of course, class council and the court appointed experts.

So we were important interviews, but we did also, like I said, talk to members of the community, and we were present on our last onsite visit during the project, we did listen to a wide range of public comment during previous board meetings.

And also I did spend quite a bit of time reviewing past board supervisor meetings, public comments and things like that that are available on the website.

Thank you.

From there after data collection and review or during data review, we conducted the project team came out for site visit to actually walk the two jail sites, the real Consumance Correctional Center and the main jail downtown.

We had extensive tours from staff from the sheriff's office, from the department general services, from the adult correctional health, and were able to personally walk around and physically view some of the issues that are that are currently being worked on as a result of this project.

Again, like I said, we did listening sessions during that and attended a couple of board meetings during that time.

Again, after we left the site, we went back and continued our information review.

We continued stakeholder interviews throughout the process as natural in many of these projects, as you get further into the project, there's recommendations of additional people to talk to.

We continued and from there after our information review and analysis and a lot of collaboration internally with our project team, we drafted our reports and recommendations and put together that report that I'm talking about here today.

As I mentioned earlier, being the fact that we approached this project from our own firm's perspective and how we would have approached this work, it's important for me to make note to the board.

We did note that the time of the project in which we came in to do the reviews very early on in that project.

We did a lot of the things that we could have done in the process, the conceptual design phase.

I say that as a disclaimer because a lot of the things that we may have pointed out or asked for more information on likely could have been resolved later in the process through the extensive phase of design, development, construction design and whatnot.

Again, from our perspective and our standpoint, the vendors that did this work were very early on in the process and it's very likely that some of the questions that we had or the information that we came across might naturally been resolved in that process.

But we're offering our viewpoint from the perspective of as it was at the time that we reviewed it.

So from there, the presentation I get into referring to the report in the six specific questions that were outlined in the scope of work and we tried to stick specifically to those questions to answer as directly as possible.

And so that's the intent of the rest of this presentation is to help understand the findings or the answers to those questions.

So the first question stated was does the draft architectural program and conceptual plans respond to all appropriate requirements.

In our review, we found that the architectural program and conceptual design fell short of achieving compliance and the maze consent decree in some specific areas.

Those specific areas of note were brought to our attention by the maze consent decree court appointed experts.

And the information that we pulled to come to this finding was from those individuals.

It was also brought to our attention again, as I just previously mentioned, we were at an early phase in the project.

It was brought to our attention that possibly the next step in the project was for the contracted vendor to engage in contact with the court appointed experts for full review of those conceptual designs.

So the first question was, how do we get the information that we found by talking to them likely could have been resolved.

Had we reviewed this after the vendor had the opportunity to collaborate with the court appointed experts.

The peer review found that the architectural program and conceptual design fell short in specific areas of the standards of the American Correctional Association.

And that was part of the peer review and those were directly related to the size of some of the recreation spaces and the conceptual design.

And again, those are standards of the American Correctional Association and I will point out compliance with the American Correctional Association is strictly voluntary.

Because I thought it popped off the page of me that if it's a standard, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's codified law.

Sure, it's not. You're correct.

So to me, that's not a requirement. That's a standard. That bulletin is, it belongs on a slide that's standards.

Yes.

I think it's a really important distinction that I'm glad you just pointed out. But I just wanted to, I wanted you to hear from me that that really stood out and maybe have more questions than be satisfied with that because I certainly know as a urban planner in a past life that there are standards that the American Planning Association offers that aren't.

They're meant as good professional practices. That's very different than something that's codified.

Yeah, no, it's a valid point. Thank you. Thank you for pointing that out. And again, again, approaching this project as our firm, would you're absolutely correct? It's not a standard.

Or I'm sorry, it's not a requirement. It is a standard if you're looking to achieve accreditation in your, in a lot of people don't care about accreditation.

However, from our firm's perspective, we always aim to design a facility that would have the ability to meet those standards for accreditation. But your point is well taken. It's not requirement.

I assume the American Correctional Association has been around for some time. Yes.

Do we know whether or not the current jail was even, did it meet the standards of the association when it was initially built?

I couldn't answer that question. Okay.

Standards have evolved over time and accreditation. I do not believe if I recall correctly that the jail has ever received accreditation.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that it wasn't built to those standards. Some people just don't seek that accreditation.

No, I understand. Thank you.

Thank you.

In the peer review, determine that the architectural program and conceptual design require more planning work regarding potential changes in the population's systems estimates.

And again, that's referring to our last discussion. That might be more opinion based than standards based.

Question number two. Does the draft architectural program and conceptual plans exceed the requirements if yes, is there sufficient justification to meet the functional requirements of the project?

The peer review found that the IHSS space program and conceptual design included program space, not specifically required to achieve compliance in the May's consent tree. However, the review also determined that there was adequate justification that exists in the planning and designing.

So, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.

Of a modern congressional facility to warrant additional space. I mean, the question has been asked during our work.

The differentiation between question one and number two, right? Because the first question was, does it respond all requirements and then does it exceed?

And so, the answer to the question is, what is the general facility or any jail facility for that matter, especially in the in light of a federal consent tree?

There are obviously a lot of requirements in that consent degree that ask for specific, perhaps specific space specific practices.

The answer is very here is to the first question,

it fell short in very specific areas

of the Maze Consent degree.

As I pointed out, according to the court appointed expert,

there was not sufficient space for certain

in medical and mental health stuff.

However, the same program did include additional space

that was not specifically called out

or required in the Maze Consent degree.

And one of the examples is staff support space.

There's nothing that specifically is called out

in the Maze Consent degree that requires

there to be an employee break room or a gym

or locker rooms or anything like that.

And I will point out that the plan,

the space that exceeded what is required

in the Maze Consent degree was fairly minimal.

In my opinion, it wasn't a lot of space,

but it was consistent with the second part of that question

was it's very common in the design

of a modern correctional facility

that you would add some of these spaces

to improve upon the functionality of that space.

So there were some very specific areas

and a lot of those were employee support space.

There may have been circulation areas,

always and things like that that weren't specifically called out

in the Maze Consent degree,

but square footage wise, yes,

were in excess of what specifically required.

So that's the reason for the differentiation

and those two answers.

I've really applaud your explanation of that.

I think it's something critical for us to consider.

And let me see if I can put a finer point on it.

If we were looking at satisfaction of the consent decree

from purely, every single red scent that is being proposed

is gonna go to meet the strict requirements

of the consent decree versus what would even be

kind of the professional expectation of the architect

or the engineer that if let's say you're going to,

have to tear down certain space

to accommodate the construction of new space

just to meet the consent decree.

Well, at the same time, you might wanna put in that gym,

you might wanna put in that locker or whatever.

Doesn't make sense to think from a budget perspective of,

okay, if we're gonna have two buckets of funds,

public funds to do this, you'd have the funding

that is strictly just to meet the architectural

engineering requirements to meet the consent decree.

And yes, it does make sense, perhaps,

to do that gym for a person now,

but that should come from a different source.

Like, for instance, the sheriff's budget, right?

So is that the right way to kind of compartmentalize

somewhat what we're saying?

I think the way you're explaining my explanation is accurate.

Yes, I think that's a reasonable approach.

Whether or not that's the approach that you all choose to take.

Well, obviously it's different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

I will point out, however, as you were explaining that,

one of the things that was noted during our peer review

was the fact that there is a specific call out

in the MACE Consent Cree that refers to staffing

and having sufficient staff to operate and maintain the jail.

So there are some of the space that may not be called out

like the staff support space,

may not, it may not say in the MACE Consent Cree,

you need a gym or a break room,

but when you're experiencing staff shortages

and staff have options of places that they want to work,

it makes sense in the design of a correctional facility

that you would consider those things

in the design of that facility.

I don't dispute that.

I think that's a valid point.

I'm just kind of approaching it a little differently,

just from the standpoint of where,

what agency should bear the cost of which component parts,

because I mean, the MACE Consent Cree does not say build a gym.

Right.

Okay.

So if we were just going to kind of collectively think of,

how do we compartmentalize appropriate cost distribution

to eight to different agencies,

it doesn't seem like you have any disagree with that kind

of assessment?

No, I don't.

I mean, that's obviously an internal policy decision of that,

but I've seen that approach absolutely.

Okay.

Good.

Yes.

Okay.

Question number three, did the draft architectural program

in conceptual plan fail to consider less costly

or more efficient ways to achieve compliance

with the MACE Consent Cree?

And our answer here was it is unclear with the information

provided whether or not less costly options were considered.

As I mentioned earlier in the presentation,

this was conducted as a third party assessment

that was separate of, so we did not specifically

have opportunity to interview or talk to the vendors

that conducted this work.

So with the information that was provided to us,

we did not come across any less costly options

under those conversations and whether or not they did occur.

We do have some recommendations later on in the presentation

that we think are helpful in that conversation moving forward,

however.

Thank you.

Question number four, if new construction is required,

how will the vacated space be used to meet the MACE Consent Cree?

We determine in our review just with what we found

in the MACE Consent Cree, the requirements based on our opinion

and our review, either major renovation or construction

would be required to achieve compliance with the MACE Consent Cree.

Again, that's our opinion from our professional standpoint.

If the county's decision is to move forward with the IHSF

in its current form, we feel like the proposal by Nocton Lewis,

the vendor was well thought out in what happens with the backfill space.

It's referred to as backfill space in the draft architectural program.

One other thing that I would like to point out that we found in the review

just to bring to your attention.

Again, as we reviewed all of this information,

we also reviewed local media sources, stories and things like that.

And we noticed there's a lot of references to cost,

how much the project would cost, and it was very specific to certain phases

of the project or elements of the project.

We did notice in our discussions and in our review that nobody ever seemed

to reference a cost of the backfill.

What we found was all of the costs in the cost estimating that was done

was on the new construction of IHSF, although the space program lays out

how the old space should be used.

I don't believe there was an estimate or any discussion

about how much that renovation of backfill space would be in its

our opinion based on the amount of space that it would be a substantial cost

that may need to be considered.

Okay.

Question number five.

Can the IHSF project scope be reduced while meeting the main concentric

requirements?

The peer review concluded the possibility of reducing scope

while achieving compliance and the main concentric is unlikely.

And again, that's based on the fact of our findings that court-appointed experts

cited that there was a lack of space for certain functions within the jail.

And another concern that we had during this review process was some of the changes

that were coming to the local community here as far as potential impacts

to criminal justice populations, and specifically, I'll refer to the passage

of, I believe, Proposition 36 in November.

So that obviously wasn't information available when this work was done previously.

However, in our recommendations, I talk about population analysis being done.

We did review the population reduction study that was conducted in those recommendations.

However, again, from the perspective of CGL, we feel like there would be benefit

of a more robust population analysis that doesn't only consider one option

that may consider several different options like changes in legislation,

changes in the local population, all of those things that may have an impact

on the needs of the jail moving forward.

I'm going to stop you here.

Going back to my last line of questioning, given your response here,

isn't there a footnote though to this?

Because based on what you said earlier, if I heard you correctly,

that for instance, we could reduce the scope to meet the consent degree

by withdrawing the need for constructing the staff space, generally the staff space.

Doesn't mean that we wouldn't construct it.

We just wouldn't, it wouldn't be in the budget for how we're meeting may's consent.

Right.

So do you agree?

So your point is, in your previous explanation of the buckets of money,

could the scope be reduced to just meet the may's consent degree?

That's an interesting perspective.

I would have to go back and look at that.

Again, we approached it from the totality of the project and didn't,

we didn't look at it in that light of the different buckets of money.

But with that question, I think that would probably require some further analysis

on our part.

From what we found though, again, the excesses that were noted in the space program

were negligible in terms of the amount of space.

The shortfalls were a little bit more substantial than that.

So the overall thought is that it's unlikely that the scope could be reduced.

But if you're approaching it from that standpoint of just specific to compliance

in this bucket of money to build that part of the facility and you're funding

the rest of the project with something else, I suppose that could require some further analysis.

Okay.

And just a note for those, I just did a quick check earlier this week.

I reached out to the sheriff's department to find out if there have been any population

changes with the jail.

And there has been somewhat of an increase since the passage.

I don't know if it's related to Proposition 36, but I've noted from December until this

week there's been an addition of about 200 in the daily population of the jail.

So again, I'll talk about that a little bit more in the recommendations of a more robust

of a population analysis.

And finally question number six, this was kind of an open ended.

What questions should the county consider in reviewing the draft program?

These kind of fall a little bit under and get to some of our recommendations.

Again, with the approach that we would take from our firm, some of the questions that might

be worth worthy of asking is how to achieve better jail functionality and improve outcomes

of those involved in the criminal justice system.

And again, that's with the additional planning work that I'll talk about here in a minute.

The total cost of ownership of all options, that point was specifically related to something

that comes in the recommendations of facility conditions assessment.

And also instead of the narrow focus to the main jail and compliance with the main consent

decree, what are some of the other systems and infrastructure that may be coming due for

replacement or overhaul during this process.

So just other things to consider there.

The current status of the jail population reduction efforts, the impact of proposition 36.

And do the jail management strategies reflect best and most current practices to kind of

expand on that a little bit.

It's rare, most jails that are constructed, you know, can be 50 to 100 year buildings

typically.

And they're very hard facilities.

They're masonry, they're concrete and steel.

So the way that those buildings or constructs should constructed, designed and laid out at

the time makes it very difficult over the passage of time to change operations in the way that

things are done.

So the point of this bullet point was while there is this opportunity, if you are considering

the construction or renovation of a jail, should more time be spent to see that those designs

and layouts reflect the best practices or some of the changes that may come in the future,

just, you know, taking advantage of that opportunity.

Excuse me.

Yes, Mr. Brizer, Kenny.

Thank you, Chair.

So a lot of import is being placed on proposition 36 and its impact on the population.

Understandably, it will have impact.

What I'm in reading the report, it seems like we're not also factoring in, or at least

it doesn't seem like we're factoring in enough, just the fact that this is a 40 year old

facility and the county of Sacramento is in a very different place population wise, which

would mean that crime would obviously go up, or the number of people committing crime

would go up when population rise.

I don't see very much put into just the fact that the population impact on this facility

that's 40 years old.

Yeah.

If we didn't do a good job of explaining that I apologize, but that is actually probably

one of the central points of the recommendations is an actual population analysis.

And you know, we did have the opportunity to interview folks that took part in the population

reduction study.

And I think there is some thought in the community that some people don't have a high level of

faith in population studies and whether or not they're accurate.

Again, from the perspective of CGL and where we come from, we feel very strongly about

conducting the population.

And we think it's a starting point that's necessary and required that considers all different

outcomes or different possibilities and changes in population because you're absolutely correct.

Is the community growing?

Is it reducing?

What are the type of people, are younger people living here, is that it can strike all of

these things, have impacts on population aside from proposition 36, which I think is your

point.

And again, the age of the facility, that's a great point as well.

And what efforts are being carried out in the current facility for the reduction of

recidivism, all of those things.

So that's, again, this is a cornerstone of the work that CGL does, is population analysis,

again, which is why we felt strongly about this.

And it may be, again, not speaking to the other firms that took part in this, those conversations

may have happened or perhaps that wasn't considered at the time.

Perhaps there was a directive to build something specifically to meet the most consensory

as being discussed.

I don't know.

We didn't have the opportunity to talk to them.

But again, we were very early on in that process.

So your question is noted.

I think you're correct.

Thank you.

Let's see.

Okay, where I left off, do current jail conditions assist in attracting the highest qualified

employees to achieve compliance?

Again, I touched on that a little bit earlier.

I think this is an element that gets, it often gets dropped out in many of the jail projects

or the facility projects that I've worked on in the past that I'm working on currently

that the firm's working on.

It's a pretty common place.

You know, there are expensive facilities.

It's a big decision and it's a huge commitment for local communities.

And typically, when it comes time for value engineering or to cut costs, usually the first

elements of those plans to go are employee support spaces, things that accommodate employees

and things like that.

And I just wanted to put that question there because there's a real impact to that.

You know, there's in today's day and age, there's a lot of choices.

There's a lot of places to work that bring less challenging conditions.

A lot of people work from home.

There's more positive environments to work in.

So I just, I wanted to point that out, or we wanted to point that out because that is

an element of the main concentricry to ensure sufficient staffing.

And so I just, I don't want that to be lost on the discussions of other spaces.

Have court appointed experts been consulted?

I think we've achieved this that they have not been, but they were going to be in the

next phase of this project.

And how will back fill space impact the projected budget?

Again, that was an important one because I had not heard that mention throughout the process

of this project that the back fill space seemed to be kind of something that people didn't

have a lot of knowledge about.

And we think that could be a substantial cost.

Okay.

So moving forward, these are our recommendations.

And again, based on our opinion and the information that we had, we offer these recommendations.

Suspend the current IHSF project and in parentheses, design build only.

We made that distinction because I know, or we know from the project team standpoint,

there's a lot of work going on outside of the IHSF planning that's being conducted

currently to achieve compliance.

So when we say Suspend the project, we're merely talking about the planning and construction

of the renovation in addition to main jail until the below steps are completed.

Number two, establish a jail system planning compliance oversight committee comprised

of representation from all criminal justice system stakeholder agencies in the Sacramento

County government and a charter outlining the members, their roles, reporting structure

and goals.

I don't know if there's any any questions on this one, but this is one that I personally

feel strongly about because of the number of stakeholder groups that are involved.

It's typically not a county jail justice system is not overseen by one agency.

There's multiple agencies, there's multiple elected officials, departments, a lot of groups

have a stake in those discussions.

And as part of our review, we found that there were a lot of different ideas about what the

priority was in this project.

So we felt that moving forward establishing such a committee that strictly or that specifically

outlined membership in that committee and kind of recorded the discussions and the decisions

that were made maybe helpful moving forward in this process.

Contract the following planning services for a jail system master plan, facility conditions

assessments, population analysis, operational analysis and space programming.

I refer to this as a jail system master plan and I understand based on our review there's

a lot of planning work that was done.

So what I call a master plan made by other firms be considered to have been complete in

this project.

However, I feel that engaging in an actual system master plan that's very specifically referenced

to everybody knows what we're referring to that provides specific options, timelines

and requirements of a project is critical in making sure that all parties are moving ahead

with the understanding of what the project's goals are, what the desired outcomes are and

the process is involved.

Before you go to the next slide, kind of a question for you for Mr. Jones.

This is to me a pretty important slide because it spells out a specific process and I guess

what I'd like to understand from you Eric is how different is this from what we're currently

doing and I don't know if I'm beating you to the puncher on your next slide I don't

know but how different is this from what we're currently doing and if it was the will of

the board to adopt the resolution and move forward with these recommendations, how much

time and effort would it be to kind of fit what we've done in the past or what we're expecting

to do in the future regardless of these recommendations to satisfy these recommendations.

Yes, Chair.

For others, Eric Jones, Deputy Account Executive of Public Safety and Justice, so I can speak

specifically to recommendation two and then others if you have questions as well.

So even prior to CGL's recommendations coming out, we in the County Executive Office realized

we needed to formulate a better structure for an oversight committee.

So we actually instituted a number of months ago, a new what we call policy group committee

for jail improvement conditions, not just a potential intake health services facility

but also other repairs and renovations that could happen in the main jail and other

things we can do for maze compliance but just improving jail conditions period.

And so that includes three of the Deputy County Executives on this policy group as well

as the under sheriff himself, County Council, where we meet monthly to make sure we're lifting

maze consent decree things up high level and priority.

So it essentially follows this structure as well as I can foresee better leveraging the criminal

justice cabinet which has all of the criminal justice system stakeholders.

And then of course there's the public component.

So we need to do a better job at ensuring we have a lot of public, proper public comment.

We have three current avenues I would like to retool and to get even more public input

specific to this type of project.

That is the Public Safety and Justice Advisory Committee.

There is also the Sheriff's Community Review Commission.

And in fact that is the commission where CGL came and presented and had public comment

specific to this work.

And also the Community Corrections Advisory Board.

So those are just three bodies right there that I think we can better leverage to even

get more community input in the process.

Okay, so I guess what I'm hearing short answer is it wouldn't take that much.

And it wouldn't be the shoe hoarding, shoe hoarding anything in that is completely 180 degrees

different from kind of what we were thinking in the first place.

Correct.

Okay.

And then in terms of item three, I don't know if there's another member of staff wants to maybe

the same kind of question relative to what we have been doing, what we thought we would

be doing in terms of either contracting with these various services or expecting to

contract with these various services.

How much does this deviate from kind of the path we were on as relates to professional

help?

Silver, that's the Federal Deputy County Executive for Admin Services.

And this function falls under the Department of General Services obviously.

I believe Brian is going to speak to some timelines relating to some of these projects

because of this is going to entail going through the contracting services team to do an

RIP and try to get a firm on board.

I think the report speaks to about 18 months total, but there's going to be a process to

it.

We can speak to those timelines, but obviously it will take some time to be able to bring

in the right firm to do this job and get all the parties involved in those conversations

before we actually get into contract and try to stack the process of complying with

8 through D as a least idea.

So, Sebastian, I'm assuming that there's really no visceral or reflexive objection to any

of that that you tend to, sounds like tend to agree that these contracting out these

particular services would be a good idea.

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, you also reminded me as that conversation was happening.

I wanted to mention it came to mind that as you look back at the work that has been

done and the money that has been spent in planning, I realized that especially this community

might have concerned if we waste our money.

I think absolutely not.

I don't think a lot of that work that was done has been lost.

I think a lot of that work can still be used.

The point here in the recommendation of a master plan is to take a lot of that work that's

already been done and kind of organize it in such a way that makes moving forward more

direct in terms of making decisions, making presentations, providing options and things

like that.

And it's also, I don't know if that to the earlier point, we talk about contracting services

to make that happen.

I don't know if that's just an amendment to the current contract that you have with

vendors that we stop and take a step back and go back through some of that work and organize

it and present it in such a way that's where we are going with that recommendation.

Thank you for that.

Recommendation number four.

Require the jail planning committee to study options and provide the county board of supervisors

with recommendations and ranking order.

And again, in the absence of actually interviewing and speaking to the other vendors that conducted

the work, we're not certain if a range of options were asked for or if there was a very

specific direction to build a facility that meets maize consensory.

But it would be our recommendation from CGL and the way we'd approach the project to

maybe provide a range of options for the governing body to take into consideration.

Supervisor Humas in the queue here and I believe you need to change your slide.

Oh.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

That was going to be one of the things I was going to say if you're going to four you need

to bump the slide.

Thank you.

But before we did that, that's okay.

You don't have to go back.

On item number three in your recommendations in the report, it's into a lot more detail

of what actually you hope to accomplish with those different contracts.

Starting in the space program contract would include new construction options with site

selection analysis.

Does that include new construction that would not be what had been contemplated before

with the IHSS?

That's in that, including potentially not at the current location.

So that is in reference to if the project stops and more planning work is conducted.

There's a staffing analysis.

There's facility conditions assessments.

You take this step back and say, maybe it's not worth doing this project at the main

jail or maybe there's space at the arts, whatever those options might be.

So the space programming would be a re iteration of based on the planning work that we have

now done and completed.

What's the best location, site analysis, and then to reconduct the space program?

So you currently have a space program based on the current project.

But going back and doing the planning work, there may be a change in thought.

Maybe we need more beds.

Maybe we need less beds.

Maybe we need different type of beds.

Maybe this site doesn't make as much sense as we thought it did based on this planning

work.

So it's retooling what's been done to update based on those options.

Does that make sense?

It does, but let me ask my question in different ways.

So hopefully you can give me an answer.

Number of beds irrespective.

You said maybe this site doesn't make as much sense.

And so what I'm asking is does this, because it looks like the bullet points in the report,

the current facility remodel, expansion to existing facilities, new construction options

with site selection analysis, sounds like that's a menu and that you're not necessarily

being pigeonholed into the previous solution that had been studied.

That's correct.

That's a great way to put it.

It's a menu.

Yes, so it's options based on whatever work is done.

Thank you for that.

And oops, I'm going the wrong way.

Okay.

So number four, as I mentioned, require the gel planning committee to study options and

provide the candy board supervisors with recommendations in ranking order.

Number five, candy board supervisors to select best best option and determine finance options.

Number six, multifaceted, develop and or modify RFPs for the following services.

And again, like I just previously mentioned, these might be amendments to current contract

vendors, whatever.

This is just kind of the generic to that process.

In project management, space program staffing impact analysis, a detailed cost modeling

of the options being presented, design and design compliance services, construction,

and one of the services that we approach from CGL that often gets left out of this process

is the transition and activation.

Typically, we see a lot of firms do a lot of the planning work, the construction and then

the projects essentially done.

We think there's an additional step in this process that's important and that's the transition

and activation.

How do you prepare people to take ownership of that building?

How do you prepare staff to operate there?

How do you update and develop new policies and procedures, the purchasing of equipment,

all of the things that go into play and opening and activating a new facility.

And then part of the transition activation process is also looking back if you're vacating

another facility.

How do we decommission?

What do we do with that facility?

Some of the equipment and materials that are left behind.

How do we essentially adjudicate that and figure out where that needs to go?

So that is essentially it for our recommendations and the presentation.

So I'm happy to take any additional questions.

Thank you for the third report.

I know again, we've interrupted you plenty of times myself, mostly with questions, but

it's kind of the nature of the beast here.

I'm sure we'll probably have questions after we hear from members of the public.

But to my colleagues, any questions of either the speaker or staff?

All right, thank you.

Madam Clerk.

Would you like to do it in public comments?

Please.

I believe that we have some comments from the Sheriff's Office.

Oh, do we?

Yes, supervisor, we have a short comment from the Chair.

Definitely Chair and Board.

Chief Deputy Robles, Sacramento County Sheriff's.

Unfortunately, the sheriff couldn't be here.

He's down in Southern California for another meeting, but we definitely wanted to express

our response to the CGL report.

The Sheriff's Office agrees with the CGL recommendation to suspend the current IHSF project.

We agree with the CGL that the consent decree compliance cannot be achieved without new

construction or major renovation and that the IHS project will not be sufficient.

The Sheriff's Office looks forward to continue to work with all the stakeholders to design a

solution which will meet the county and communities needs.

Thank you.

Before you hear from members of the public, do we?

So if the, I think it's the third time I've heard suspend in the last 15 minutes.

So question for the county council.

Do we know what would likely be the disposition of plaintiffs council if by suspending kind

of taking a step back, absorbing the recommendations offered by CGL to do things a little differently?

That's going to take time, some might call it additional time.

Do we know whether or not there is some director, a wink from across the room from plaintiffs

council that that is something that would be tolerated?

Can I please confer with my attorneys that are handling this and get back to that questions

that we have a specific answer for you?

Please, it's an important one because if we think that there is a great sensitivity to suspending

things, taking a little bit more time, we need to know that.

So while we hear from the public, you'll confer with your Deputy County Council folks.

Supervisor Dazman.

Mr. Chair, thank you.

I'm glad you asked that question and just made me think of something.

I mean, depending on what action we take today, even if we decide to adopt these recommendations,

suspending the IHSF project doesn't mean we're suspending every effort in the county to both reduce the jail population through framework one that had been established.

I think, I'm looking at you, Mr. Jones, I was like two years ago.

I think you came up with that structure framework one and framework two.

And we are not suspending a lot of current physical efforts we're doing in the main jail.

And I think that's really important.

And I hope at some point, you know, after maybe after public comment, give you a chance to highlight some of those things.

I believe you'll be coming back to the board with a more detailed report about some of those efforts as well.

Is that correct?

Yes, Supervisor Dazman.

We are doing, even though this has been paused and may now before you be suspended, which might be paused longer.

We are not suspending all of the other work we're doing around May's consent to create.

And this is from a variety of things, enacting and changing policies, improving staffing, new programming,

the renovations, both at our triple C and at the main jail, working on ADA compliance.

And there have been a lot of investment by the county in, again, adding staffing.

We're looking at expanding the intensive outpatient and enhanced outpatient treatments, the acute psychiatric unit.

So those are all just examples of a lot of things the county is working on, even while this project is suspended.

And I'll also add that yes, in mid May, I will be coming back to you as the board giving you an update of overall May's consent decree compliance issues.

Okay, great.

And thank you.

I think it's really important that nobody be under the impression that any action we take today will mean that we pause or

suspend efforts towards criminal justice reform in Sacramento County.

Thank you.

Good points.

Thank you.

All right, Madam Clerk, can we please go to members of the public?

We have several members of the public, Susan Hauss.

And again, respectfully please, try and limit your comments to two minutes.

Hello.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

In reviewing the IHSF report, a question continued to come up throughout the document.

What's the most economical way for the county to achieve compliance with the May's consent decree?

Part of the MOA provided direction to create a plan for jail population reduction and a version with strategy number one to reduce jail admissions.

The Yolo County Restored of Justice Partnership, RJP, has proven to be an effective strategy for the specific purpose.

The Yolo County RJP is an adult criminal diversion program.

They use this principles of restorative justice to resolve offenses outside of a traditional courtroom.

A conference held with community panelists is designed to hold participants accountable by helping them recognize the harms caused by their conduct.

Then a collaborative solution is designed to address those harms in a way that is restorative rather than punitive.

The data is proof that Yolo County RJP is making a difference.

In 2023, 10.77% of felony filings were diverted to RJP.

We've diverted over 250 felony cases.

81% of the enrollees graduated.

A 12.8% three year recidivism rate, down 37%.

Over 90 community members have participated in the program in the past year and for the life of RJP,

over 3,163 conferences have been held with 2,822 participants graduating.

Please consider Yolo County, a restorative justice partnership as an action approach to reducing jail population and recidivism rates in Sacramento County.

It's a data-led program and a replica model located in your own backyard.

I'll be leaving you with some information on RJP, including program description of funding summary, additional outcome data and contact information.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Three seconds to go.

Next speaker is Barbara Ram.

Hi, I'm Barbara Ram.

And I wanted to mention to a supervisor Kennedy that on February 13th of 2024, police chief Kathy Lester made a presentation to City Council saying that

crime is actually down, including violent crime is a way down.

So just because we're increasing in our population doesn't mean that crime is going up.

Our taxpayer dollars would be better.

Would better support Sacramento and its jails by following the recommendations outlined in the Sacramento County Jail Study May of 2022.

Following are the recommendations to reduce jail population found on page 17 of the study.

Reduce the number of jail admissions to only those posing the biggest threat to public safety.

Reduce length of stay.

Reduce the number of returning by placing everyone in the appropriate levels of treatment and programming.

Invest in treatment, early intervention, housing and jobs.

If or when we implement the recommendations put forth by the Sacramento County Jail Study, we can immediately reduce the jail population by 600 per page 19.

We could start the recommendations today.

In the 170 pages of recommendation after recommendation, I couldn't find a single reference to building a $1 billion anx.

And a new jail annex will lock us into an expensive bond.

Let's spend millions of dollars on mental health and drug treatment affordable housing, home of services and youth programs.

Violence prevention programs like Brother to Brother Work.

What's funded and other community programs like the Restorative Justice Partnership just mentioned by Susan already working in your county, which are successful at reducing jail populations.

I oppose expanding a system that criminalizes poverty, warehouses our neighbors and perpetuates systemic racism.

I'd like to see the county investing community building and not jail building.

Thank you.

It's your advisor, Kenny.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to point out that crime rates are down, which is a good thing.

But crime rates are based upon per capita numbers and not necessarily numbers of occurrences.

Thank you.

Dr. Karim, McIntyne, I go.

Chair, sir, in at a recent meeting I heard you state you would allow speakers to introduce themselves before starting their two minutes.

May I have that benefit today?

Thank you.

My name is Dr. Karim McIntyne Sacco.

My pronouns are she, her.

I'm a licensed psychologist and private practice with over 20 years of experience.

Providing mental health services to Sacramento County residents in a variety of settings, including correctional facilities.

I serve on the board of directors of the Sacramento Valley Psychological Association and a service chairperson of the Sacramento County Mental Health Board.

I'm also a lifelong resident of Sacramento.

I represent only myself as a community mental health advocate that is a resident of district two and making these comments.

Thank you.

I agree with the recommendation to suspend this project.

However, I urge you to be even more dutiful and permanently cancel this project altogether.

At least $1.5 million has already been spent on reports.

From jail design builders justifying why a jail annex should be built.

Meanwhile, our county is facing devastating impacts to its MediCal program and the people at service.

Community is at experience significant disadvantage.

I urge you to direct staff instead to focus their efforts on building out our continuum of community-based care and

engaging members of the public as well as medical and mental health professionals, including the May's court-appointed subject matter experts in the planning process.

The jail does not have to be Sacramento County's largest provider of behavioral health services.

And people should have better options than having to go to jail in order to receive mental health treatment.

And let's be clear, the May's consent decree was a result of the inhumane and unconstitutional treatment that plaintiffs received while experiencing incarceration at our county jails.

The building being out of ADA compliance as soon as it opened its doors is just one of the many reasons the county finds itself in this situation.

And in large part does have to do with the quote, callousness, apathy, and unacceptable tolerance for human suffering, end quote, inside the Sacramento Sheriff's Department.

Now I cannot take credit for this description.

It's one that was made as recent as six months ago by the plaintiffs' council in the May's consent decree.

If the sheriff can't trust his deputies to not use excessive force in the field when responding to non-criminal mental health calls, how can he expect them to behave any differently in a $2 billion tower?

Now I submitted written public comment with statistics and references to help better inform your decision today.

It is possible to satisfy the needs of the May's consent degree with judicious stewardship of taxpayer dollars and investing in community-based care that yields a higher return on investment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Jeffrey Tartiguglia.

Jeffrey Tartiglia.

I remember listening to 11 o'clock to 11 o'clock, you listening to the public and the next day making the decision that has resulted in this effort here of dealing with now the annex.

And you're talking about $60 million having to be set aside.

Now not for 20 years, now you're talking about 30 years.

This has been a failure of the Board of Supervisors for 30 years that they've recognized a problem.

Was the disability lawsuit that forced you into realizing what you're doing right now?

Are you doing the correct actions for the next?

You can't even count 20 years forward.

I've got to go because I've been here since before 10 o'clock this morning that I thought this was occurring.

Now to let you know that, you know, please think of what you are doing.

I give you Mr. Desmond that it seems that you've been doing a lot in your district for the homeless.

Now the question is dealing with how the incarceration are occurring and what is going on here.

You do need better facilities.

You've known that for more than a decade and you've done nothing.

Now you are here that you need to do the correct actions.

Will you do that?

I don't know.

You've mostly been politicians.

So how have you gotten out there and gotten the information and knowing what you expect that's going next 20 years are going to be like?

I remember telling before in 2000, I believe eight or 16 that you know you guys need to look with five years of hindsight.

Back what's the decision you need to make here that will effectively do what you need to accomplish?

And you know what the decree says you need to accomplish?

Is this the best way to accomplish it?

It seems everything takes you too much time and with that I will stop and go get my eyes corrected with drops.

Thank you.

Thanks, everybody.

Michael and Michael Andrew Bonbon.

Thank you.

To iterate some points made in the presentation and to some previous speakers.

I want to iterate that the jail needs major renovation but not new construction.

There needs to be more invested in remodeling what you have today and not building more facilities than what is there already.

To the speakers points before yes, use what Yolo County has done and as a good example, they've stated that in very detailed statements.

To the point made by the speaker, Dr. Corrin McIntosh Soko.

If the motion was to cancel this project altogether, I will go on record to second that motion.

This is a very sensitive matter and is a topic.

People are watching this as a topic of local news that matters.

We need to invest more into mental health treatment at our medical centers and hospitals and not in incarceration rates.

The jail population needs to be reduced.

Let me give you just a personal example.

My best friend is here today and is going to speak immediately after me and has recommended that I see a therapist because I'm going through mental health issues as a result of what happened November 5th and December 3rd.

I've been diagnosed with political stress anxiety disorder because of what happened in this country on November 5th.

And on a side note, I've had a diagnosis of severe anxiety and mildly severe depression.

And to this day, I cannot still get over what happened November 5th or December 3rd.

It is very uncomfortable to have a felon of the United States and mass firings of our federal workers.

Can you include your remarks please, Mike?

Yes, and so my final thought is investment in mental health care.

I am going to Kaiser for this twice a month.

And I'm glad I have the support of my best friend who is going to speak to you next as a public health professional.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dr. Flasjan A. Griffin, co-fer PhD, epidemiologist.

Quite an introduction.

Good afternoon.

May I please have the courtesy of an introduction as well?

Sure.

All right.

Good afternoon.

My name is Dr. Flosjan Cofer.

I am an epidemiologist.

I am also here representing the Morris Possible Coalition, which is a coalition representing tens of thousands of Sacramento County residents who want to create a vibrant, inclusive and equitable Sacramento where everyone can thrive,

feel safe and have access to affordable housing and economic opportunity.

I also for two years served as the technical assistance provider for Sacramento County for your community health improvement plan, which has goals that are related to the reason why we are all gathered here today.

So first, I want to remind everyone here and I think we heard that in the presentation that this proposal is not needed to be able to meet the maze consent decree.

We do not have to expand the jail to be able to do that and a lot of money has already been invested.

And so I would like to just affirm the recommendation that we do away with this plan and actually think about investing these dollars differently.

Evidence based investments to reduce the jail population and improve staff behavior and conditions in the current structure is the best use of county staff time and financial resources.

Furthermore, this proposed billion dollar investment comes at the cost of critical needs in this county.

My team when I was running for mayor had the privilege to directly connect with over 70,000 county residents over 18 months and asked them directly what their challenges and priorities are for Sacramento.

And many of your constituents did not say to expand the jail.

In fact, when I looked back, not one person said that is one of their priorities.

But what they did mention was this, they talked about significantly reducing homelessness.

They talked about investing in youth development and young people said they are tired of adults leasing away their futures on proposals that they don't support.

They talked about expanding mental health and substance use services, supporting small local businesses, investing in arts, public transportation and transportation savings, addressing the 4,000 students in scowey with GPAs between 0.0 and 1.9 who are at risk of dropout.

They talked about disability access and medical reimbursement rates and service delivery, increasing the wages for SEIU 2015 home health care workers,

beefing up emergency preparedness and addressing climate change.

So at a time when federal funding is drying up and people are facing political and economic uncertainty, we should be smart about the investments that we make in our community to make our community safer.

Investing billions of dollars in an expansion of the jail is not only unnecessary.

We are also unprepared to do it as we've heard earlier today from the presentation.

It's out of step with county-wide sentiment and it's an irresponsible use of our taxpayer funds.

Please, let's stop wasting all of our collective time on this proposal.

Thank you.

Mark.

Mark Marin.

Good afternoon.

Members of the Board of Supervisors, my name is Mark Marin.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of experience looking at what's going on inside the jail.

I've sued the jail countless times for unnecessary deaths, avoidable deaths within the facility.

And as a result, I've gotten access to how these things happen.

And I think that you have to direct your attention to actually eliminating some of the problems in the jail as opposed to furthering the problems and the culture by just expanding the facility.

And I would think that if you focused on answering the questions which your consultant has set out in response to question number six,

looking at the functionality of the jail system to improve the justice system outcomes, looking at the jail population reduction efforts,

implementing programs of treatment, and getting qualified staff.

I just have to say that that is paramount, getting qualified staff for law enforcement, medical, mental health, and treatment.

Seven inmates have died in the jail just this last year.

As a result of the deliberate indifference of the staff to their serious and obvious medical needs,

this classification failure to do safety checks to prevent suicides, failure to or

interdict the introduction of drugs which leads to drug overdoses.

And this is mostly as a result of poorly trained staff and non-performing staff.

I've distributed a New York Times reprint of the Barefield story that they wrote, which is a horrible, horrible dereliction of duty where masses of staff

just stood around laughing at the desperate condition of a gentleman who died in their custody.

And it was only discovered that he was dying when they had to unhand cuff him so that they could take his fingerprints.

And he was crouched on the floor and dying within moments of that.

It's just absolutely outrageous.

I realize you don't have control over the sheriff itself, but you should use whatever means you have to actually correct the conditions in that facility.

Fisher, you know of because you just approved a settlement, which was a gentleman who died in custody and who died of sepsis.

Well, I see, my time is gone.

But you can step away from that, that the requirements of the maize consent decree.

Talk to your lawyers about getting back into court and reconfiguring that based on the actual needs that you can accomplish through alternative means other than this.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you.

I'm Liz Blum.

Thank you.

Good afternoon board of supervisors.

My name is Liz Blum.

I'm a co-founder of DeCarcerate Sacramento, an organization that has successfully prevented jail expansion in Sacramento County for over five years now.

For half a million dollars, you've been told what you've, what we've been telling you since 2020 that the county has never seriously explored the most cost effective options for meeting the maize consent decree.

This means asking architectural experts explicitly to explore all retrofitting options to meet the legal requirements in the current jail facility.

Seven people out of CGL's eight person team have spent their entire careers in law enforcement and corrections.

CGL's report incorporates arbitrary American Correctional Association standards that are completely irrelevant to the county's legal obligations and completely unrelated to the maize consent decree, which is the sole reason why the maize, why the main jail annex project was proposed.

This was completely outside the scope of CGL's contract and should remain completely outside the scope of the county's considerations.

One of the most glaring inaccuracies in CGL's report is their attempt to address the question of if unused upper tier cells and top bunks can be used to house incarcerated people in order to prevent or reduce the need for new construction page 22.

They don't seem to understand that no part of our analysis or any other analysis that responded to non-lucous studies ever included that the general population and mental health population would be on the same floor.

Court appointed maize experts have specified in specific a specific percentage of mental health patients that must be in lower tiers, which is less than half of the total mental health population.

CGL's claim that mental health population should never be on top tier cells is simply false and not a requirement of the maize consent decree.

But perhaps misleading information like this should be expected when considering CGL interviewed more sheriff staff than any other county department.

CGL contradicts themselves throughout their entire report claiming that they think the current scope can't be reduced while stating in the same paragraph that there has been insufficient research to determine if this is the most economical choice.

Leaving the next steps up to solely county staff will result in a plan that favors the sheriff's department preferences over the legally necessary and most cost effective options.

The planning over the project on elected county executive is dangerous is a dangerous dereliction of your responsibilities as elected officials.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Kathleen Williams.

Kathleen Williams.

Thank you. I'm an attorney. I'm a resident in Mr. Surnas district. And I am particularly concerned about the impact of the $2 billion that is projected to cost more than $2 billion because homelessness and jail are intertwined.

Those two conditions homelessness feeds the jail and when you are released in the middle of the night in your paper clothes you become homeless.

We need housing and adequate dignified self governed communities for unhoused folks who can afford housing.

We do not want this corrupt, knocked and Lewis recommendation to go through.

They stood to benefit from that report that they produced and the other people that stood to benefit are the legions of lawyers and banks that are going to put together this bond and make money on the interest.

We want our people to be employed by the county but we don't want a jail to be built because the correctional community sees that as a job program.

These are the people in addition to the construction industry. These are the people that will benefit the community in Sacramento.

We will not benefit from the jail. Jail's harm communities. That is what we really feel you should take into account diversion, other kinds of we want community mental health.

We want all the neighborhoods in Sacramento particularly low income neighborhoods to have an open door mental health facilities along with community centers for the kids.

We want to see our community supported. We don't want to have this huge vacuum which is taking people into the jail killing them and destroying their lives.

Jails are not a good place. Of course we have a few or many, however many dangerous people, let's get them out of the community, let's get them treatment but do not spend our taxes on this jail.

Alexandra Wilson.

Alexandra Wilson.

Alexandra Wilson.

Hello. My name is Alexandra Wilson. I'm here today as a resident of Sacramento County and as an organizer with Decarcerate Sacramento.

I have spoken with many people inside the jail including those who have waited weeks for necessary medications or to see doctors for acute conditions.

Some have suffered irreversible harm while waiting for treatment. Many have had their concerns dismissed by both medical and custody staff.

I have also reviewed expert monitoring reports on the county's compliance with the May's consent decree.

These reports highlight significant obstacles to consent to agree compliance including staffing deficiencies and adequate training for custody staff.

Excessive use of force, medication errors and myriad other problems symptomatic of general mismanagement by the sheriff's department and a culture of indifference towards the well-being of inmates.

A new facility will not solve these problems. It will merely change their address.

Many inside the jail struggle with mental health challenges and are an urgent need of treatment. In carceration and recovery are incompatible.

We need to invest in community-based accessible mental health care, not more jails.

Many individuals in the jail are also housing insecure or without housing, a situation that can only be exacerbated by incarceration.

Rather than investing in a new jail, we need to prioritize affordable housing and support systems.

Population reduction is a critical need. Despite the fact that holding someone pre-trial due to their inability to pay bail has been unconstitutional in California, 83% of the jail population is pre-trial and that is in large part due to outrageous bail costs.

Addressing the number of people held pre-trial, investing in housing resources and investing in community-based mental health care are real, doable and effective solutions to gaining consent decree compliance, improving public safety and securing a better vision for the future of the court.

I urge you to cancel this project in its entirety and instead invest in solutions that will ensure the long-term safety and health of our community.

Thank you.

Trevor G.

Hello, my name is Trevor Jaltema. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I live in your district, district, Mr. Serio.

I'm here today to speak in opposition to expanding the jail. I think it's an expensive, non-solution to a much larger problem.

Sacramento needs more resources. Currently, if a teenager were to have presented an emergency department mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, the likelihood is they would be sent out of county.

We don't have enough beds and one of the things that I heard is just the importance of beds.

Locking people up isn't shown to reduce recidivism, it's not shown to reduce crime, it's not shown to make our community safer.

Why are we not spending the money on creating a community that actually supports our citizens? If we'll spend money to feed and house people after a crime has been committed, why not before?

Thank you.

Adriana Lucera?

Good afternoon, my name is Adriana and I'm a resident of District One. I'm asking you to look after me and my neighbors over the next four years.

The expansion of the main jail and frankly the time and money spent talking about it over and over again is not the answer.

As someone working in education, I'm scared for our kids right now. I'm likely to lose my job because of federal cuts.

The Trump administration is sloshing funding for Medicaid education, hunger, seniors, parks, climate resilience, they're attacking trans kids and immigrants and erasing black and brown people from history.

As we face this, I need you, our county supervisors, to be strategic and wise.

I need you to focus on how you will spend your time and your money to protect the lives of our most vulnerable Sacramento residents over the next four years.

Mortgaging our future to a system that reacts to social problems instead of preventing them wasn't working in the best of times.

We keep throwing money, had the wrong solutions and being surprised when our incarceration rate and homelessness and inequality continue to grow.

So I'm asking you to be wise, bold and creative.

When scared people insist that we need more jails or whatever the next slow and expensive and regressive study or idea is, the answer is not to cage each other.

It is to take care of each other. Instead of paying for jails and paying for jails and paying for a study and paying for jails, invest in cost effective solutions that stop the cycle.

Ask your staff to partner with the people in this room who have answers, who have policies, who work, and ask them to partner with the people who know how to fix this problem best, which are the people who are living in it, not the people who are building jails.

Please think about why you chose to run for office.

Please think about what you want your legacy to be over the next four years.

I'm scared. And I want to know how you will choose a better future for all of us with every dollar and minute and agenda item. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alana Marcucci Morris.

I'd like to request my introduction not go to my time. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair and Supervisors. And thank you especially to Supervisor Desmond as I am a homeowner and parent in your district.

My name is Alana Marcucci Morris. I am a licensed clinical social worker at Kaiser Department of Psychiatry.

I'm also the vice president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, where I represent over 2500 integrated behavioral health workers of Kaiser Permanente and more than 19,000 dedicated medical professionals throughout Northern California and other states.

I'm a dedicated healthcare workers include mental health clinicians, substance rehabilitation counselors, psychologists, nurses, nursing assistants, medical technicians, pharmacists, clerical workers, and many other caregiving medical professionals.

I am here on behalf of my colleagues in industry with a very simple message.

I'm here on behalf of my colleagues with a very simple message.

I'm here on behalf of my colleagues with a very simple message.

I'm here on behalf of my colleagues with a very simple message.

I'm here on behalf of my colleagues with a very simple message.

I'm here on behalf of my colleagues with a very simple message.

My colleagues with a very simple message.

My colleagues with a very simple message.

We stimulate our patients' suffering from illnesses.

Government continues to allow my employer and other profit-motivated health plans to violate mental health parity laws,

and deny Sacramento's people life-saving psychiatric care.

If you listen to the loved ones of young people who end up in the jails.

You want to expand.

Their stories always begin with the denial of trying to access behavioural healthcare

trying to access behavioral health care from their health plan.

These are premium, pain patients upstream from incarceration.

They're being denied.

Your residents are being denied the care while government allows them to continue to violate

the law.

This threatens our safety.

If health and safety for Sacramento is your interest, this expansion will only worsen

these problems.

Safety can only occur when people are well and get the health care and basic services

they need to live productive and healthier lives.

These are less costly options to improving the health and safety.

So I urge you to do the job you were elected to do by ending this expansion altogether

to keep our communities and patients safe.

Thank you.

Dylan Hoy Bianchi.

Hello.

My name is Dylan Hoy Bianchi.

I'm a resident of District 1, live off of Northgate.

And I just want to say that I actually agree with the CGL consultants that the most important

next step is to spend more money talking to consultants.

Definitely not self-serving recommendation at all.

I'm here to ask the board to do the sensible thing and to reject this needless jail expansion.

This whole thing is a mess.

But I think it boils down to this.

The county got sued and was placed under a consent decree primarily due to issues with

staffing and operational policies within the jail, not due to a perceived need for a new

facility.

The May's consent decree was intended to require the county to treat inmates well and

ensure that they're protected and their health is valued.

Instead, the county has cynically warped this into a justification for a billion dollar

jail expansion, which would not actually address the main concerns brought up in May's,

and instead would give a massive gift to the very same entity that was successfully sued

for mistreating its inmates.

If your child gets in trouble at school for treating kids badly, you set up a plan to

improve your child's behavior.

You don't buy the child a shiny new billion dollar toy.

Please don't move forward on this pointless jail expansion and focus instead on fixing

the actual conditions that are causing inmates to suffer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Christopher Camillo, Carbohol.

Can I raise this a little bit?

Appreciate it.

We're in the cowboy boots.

Cool.

Thank you.

I'd like to have my time too.

And she just myself very quickly.

Good afternoon.

My name is Christopher Camillo Carbohol.

I'm the program at Camping, coordinated for Decarcery Sacramento.

I'm a resident of District 1.

Nice to meet you, Phil.

I'll start.

The crisis isn't the jail.

It's a harm inflicted on people inside.

I don't think this is on.

Is it on?

Yeah.

Perfect.

Thank you.

I'll continue.

People call us from behind those walls.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We're not going to be able to do this.

We need new priorities.

We should allow well SMU to help

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I'm also very introducing myself.

My name is Frances Sue.

I'm resident of District One,

and I work as a manager at California Department

of Social Services.

I have a doctoral degree in economics from UC San Diego,

and I'm an organizer with the Carcerate Sacramento.

I'll get started.

I am here to advocate for a permanent cancellation

of the main jail expansion project.

I am appalled by the ongoing and humane treatment

of people in the counties' jails.

It has been over four years

since the May's consent degree was finalized,

and they deserve justice now.

At the Carcerate Sacramento,

we regularly receive reports about people inside,

about medical neglect and mal treatment,

including not receiving prescribed medication,

not receiving timely and appropriate treatment

after injuries and ability to access mental health services,

and having requests for basic needs ignored repeatedly.

A new jail building will not solve any of these issues.

Many of these issues can be solved

by the proper enforcement of existing policies

and hiring qualified county staff.

Instead of prioritizing the recommendations

of an overpaid consulting companies,

the board should be listening to the people

inside of the jails,

and you are responsible for their care

and you are failing them.

Instead of relying on a new building

to solve all of the problems in our jail system,

the board should be focused on policies

that reduce the existing jail population

such as diversion programs

and reforming the county's unconstitutional cash bail system.

Instead of promising $2 billion to construction companies,

architectural firms and banks,

the county should prioritize funding programs

and services that actually improve health

and safety of the communities that they serve.

Please listen to your constituents

and vote to cancel the main jail expansion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Courtney Manson.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi.

Good afternoon, Board of Courtney Hanson.

I have thought about and advocated on behalf

of those languishing inside our jails every single day

since I saw the inside of that building in 2011

and experienced directly the quote,

unacceptable tolerance for human suffering.

That's a quote from the attorneys

enforcing the May's consent decree.

And that is what is exhibited by our Sheriff's Department

routinely.

What had such an impact on me was not the outdated building

but the sadistic behavior of the guards

who treat people in their custody as less than human,

as not worthy of dignity,

sometimes not worthy of even living another day.

How to comply with the legal mandates

of the May's consent decree remains the core issue today.

So let's focus our attention on the plaintiffs.

Those incarcerated in our jails

are the attorneys who represent them.

I've submitted to the clerks some copies

of letters from plaintiffs council

demanding that the county invest in community-based

mental health beds, reduce the jail population,

and hold jail staff accountable for policies and practices

that are hurting and killing people.

I know you've probably seen these

and I'm not trying to insult your intelligence,

but there are so many moving parts to keep in mind

for a comprehensive and informed conversation today.

I recently had the privilege

of negotiating a consent decree

on behalf of currently and formerly incarcerated women

in the federal prison system.

Consent decrees last a few years,

but they do not last forever.

The legacy of your budget decisions and moral integrity

will extend far beyond the timeline of this particular lawsuit.

And last I read, the county was in partial compliance

with over 33% and substantial compliance

with over 65%.

That's progress on 98% of the consent decree

without a new jail building.

The resolution you're being asked to vote on,

this part's important, delegates the next steps

to the county executive and I urge you as the board

of supervisors to take a proactive role

and ensuring that the people you represent

change the language of this document

that you're being asked to vote on today

to make sure that a county executive

does not take the next steps behind the scenes.

You know how much the community cares about this topic.

Thank you.

Thank you, 40.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bobbie Ramy Clark.

Bobbie Lein.

Okay.

Andrew Bianchi.

Hello.

My name is Andrew Bianchi.

I'm an organizer with the car street Sacramento

and a resident of District One.

Members of this board,

you have a duty to the people in this county

and especially to those communities

who desperately need to be invested in.

This is an opportunity to think critically

about what you would be committing to

and what future you would be creating

by expanding a jail that has been killing people for years.

People aren't dying because the building is too small.

People are dying, I suspect, in part,

because the board sees the folks inside the jail

as less than human the same way our sheriff does.

I would caution you against making decisions

because they seem easy in this moment.

So many of the problems we face

are the results of people avoiding difficult conversations

and avoiding dealing with the cognitive dissonance

that comes along with choosing policies

that benefit the few while stomping down

on the humanity of the whole.

Empowering the sheriff's office

to keep killing members of the community

they are supposed to protect

but insisting that these structures of oppression

have to exist for public safety

certainly must be powerful descendants

to try and think your way around.

This board's understanding of safety

being the equivalent of investing

in an ever-expanding carceral system is a myth.

It's a narrative.

Who is really kept safe in this narrative?

Certainly not the people inside the jail

who safety or lack thereof is a clear statement

of how uncaring this county is

and of how the idea of safety is only true

as far as people have convinced themselves

for the people who call 911

and feel that they were rescued.

Should we not measure the success

of law enforcement officers?

By how they treat the most vulnerable,

those who are struggling the most,

this current narrative of safety is a luxury.

It is neither legitimate nor tangible.

The existence of jails both incentivizes

and ensures their continued use.

We will never move in a different direction

unless we understand that jails themselves

necessitate their own existence.

Please vote against any form of jail expansion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So thank you for that.

Nicely done.

Thank you.

You can ask most of the searching

that are among the beds of such heights

as well as other homes to tool and work

for people else,

a nearby facility.

Jessi,

how's your face?

How's my heart going?

Hi, Sao.

Ms. Sao,

how are she doing?

always surprised and shocked honestly that this is called a mental health facility or a

health intake facility because it clearly is a jail. And I am surprised that we think

that a new building will help improve the health of those incarcerated as well as the health

of our community because every day I witness the harms of incarceration of both individuals

and our communities. Patients must choose between their humanity and their health. I have

patients who miss their visits with their oncologists or with their cancer radiation treatment.

Not because they don't want treatment for their cancer or they don't care about it but

because they need to prioritize and are trying to preserve their dignity.

Now whether that's prioritizing family visitation or it's due to poor treatment by certain custody

officers or the stigma of having to enter through a separate entrance of public buildings

or remaining in chains while hospitalized. Prior to AB 732 which mandated standard of

care for reproductive health in California, Jels and Prisons, I took care of patients

and labor who were chained to the bed. I can see how depression and anxiety are worsened

by incarceration and how it causes PTSD. Some people start using the list of substances

to help cope with their incarceration. And without treatment for opioid use disorder,

the risk of overdose deaths for people who are released from incarceration versus those

who have not been incarcerated is anywhere from 40 to 100 times higher depending on which

study you read. People also experience homelessness are more likely to be incarcerated and

similarly people who are incarcerated are more likely to experience homelessness. So

it's blatantly clear to me that incarceration only worsens the health of individuals

in our community members. These programs are that are beneficial on the inside or ones that

share that show care and dignity for people's humanity not because it's in a fancy building.

Imagine what we would look like if we could do that in our communities before people make

mistakes. Before we decide we no longer want to look at human suffering when we drive under

bridges around the streets. A gilded cage is still a cage and over 80% of people in the

Sac de Olive pre-child why aren't we working to reduce the overcrowding of the jail? Why aren't

we investing in communities? There's a better way and I'm asking the board to be brave enough

to choose it. Thank you.

Allen Ash.

Hello, I'm Allen Ash speaking today for myself as a recovering attorney and as a resident

of district three. I'm joining the other community members asking you to end this jail expansion

plan for good today but I also wanted you to be aware that the CGL report that's in the packet

is not the independent third party review of the jail expansion we were promised.

According to public records request I filed CGL's actual independent third party review was

delivered to the county last September 13th. All the changes county staff got in the CGL report

since last September have only made it not independent and not third party. The county has not

released that September report calling it a draft report but the draft exemption in the public

records act is supposed to protect intergovernmental communication not an independent third party report

that costs taxpayers over half a million dollars. Before approving anything you as supervisors should

have access to that original report and the community should be able to see it as well. What's

particularly suspicious about the changes made to the CGL report since last September is the response

I got from the sheriff to my public records request. I asked for all communication between CGL and

the sheriff's office and even records showing communication between CGL and the sheriff's office

and the sheriff claims no such records exist even though the county records and even the report

that was presented today show CGL had a lot of communication with the sheriff. That means the

sheriff's office is either hiding something that they told CGL or just doesn't believe the sheriff has

to comply with public records act requests. Either option shows a serious problem with the

transparency of the supposed independent process as well as the continuing need in Sacramento

County for stronger sheriff oversight. So please stop the G.L. Expansion plan today but also

release the September CGL report to give us the independent third party review we were promised.

Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Gohli Sabah.

Good afternoon chair and supervisors. My name is Gohli Sabah. I'm a family physician and I've

been a resident of district one for over 30 years. Also I've worked as a family physician in the two

sack county jails for 11 years ending in 2021. I'll make this short and simple. During my time there

we help so many folks detoxify safely from drugs and alcohol. In reviewing their charts

I would notice so often that these people would have five to eight incarcerations per year

for the same issues substance related problems. Substant treatment programs could have helped these

folks come out of this repeated cycles of incarceration but were inadequate or realistically

nonexistent in our community. So based on my long experience working in main jail and artiopalcy

we needed an expansion of drug treatment, mental health treatment programs, affordable housing

and job training, education and jobs. This would vastly reduce the jail population and eliminate

the need for expansion of the jail. Thank you. Thank you.

Keon Bliss.

I'd like the time to actually introduce myself as well. My name is Keon Bliss. I'm a member of

DeCarserate Sacramento and a long time community organizer and I'm here to advocate for not only

the suspension of this jail expansion project but really a reallocation of the funds that you're

trying to pursue into community based needs and ending this boom doggle entirely. I don't

specialize as much in stories as much as I do data and analysis and just to note for anyone who

wants to know about county crime rates among 1 and 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-oding

that's an overall crime rate of about 1700 per 10,000 for all offenses or 0.01% of the entire

population and that includes 46 violent crimes per 10,000 people or 0.003% among the one half

million people. Do you know how much how many of those crimes actually resulted in arrest by

the Sacramento Sheriff? 14% just in 2023 and that's 32% for violent crimes which is actually lower

than the state average and 8% for violent over property crimes and that's the same year that the

Sheriff's budget actually exceeded $925 million from discretionary and restricted revenue sources.

For all of that money that you could be spent like that you're looking to put into a jail system

and to building a new jail you could actually be putting it into so many of the different

community programs that have already been described to you by all these other speakers.

In fact you could actually address the 40% staff vacancies that were reported last year

among the Behavior Health Services Department such as Behavior Health Peer Specialist,

Mental Health Workers, Social Workers, EMTs and Health Educators and Paramedics which even

for just 2% of the billion dollar bond that some of you approved in 2022 or pursued of

you could hire them at a parity of the minimum salary range for Deputy Sheriff's Officer which was

at $89,000. That amounts to about 223 behavioral health staff of any equivalent combination of those

numbers that I cited to you. So rather than continuing to like allow staff to come back to you year after

year asking for more like asking to build either an intake facility or a new jail entirely. How about

you actually address some of the like the actual critical community needs that actually like that

directly impact people and not just putting people in the cages out of your site. Thank you.

Thank you.

Cesar Aguiri.

I'd like some time to introduce myself too please. Thank you. Just I'm an in-rope. There's no need

for you to premise the request. We're going to give it to you. Just go ahead and introduce yourself.

I've got control of the clock so we're going to we're going to make sure everyone has the time they

want to introduce themselves to tie it all their position or so until you start the substance of

your testimony the clock will not run. Thanks for that clarification. My name is Cesar Aguiri. I am a

lifelong resident of Sacramento here and a very recently formerly incarcerated individual.

It has just passed a year since I was at our county jail and we've heard a lot about what it's

like for people in there so I'd like to give you my account and also just state that I am very

firmly opposed to the expansion of the jail and hope that you will as soon as you can deem fit

decide not to continue with this project. My time in the jail a year ago was both detrimental to

my physical and mental health. It was extremely stressful seeing lots of violence being inflicted

upon not just myself but other inmates from before I was even in a cell and I suffered both

losing about 8% of my body weight and a concussion which resulted in staples in my head in an

emergency room visit. I was also attacked not only by guards but also another inmate who I was

placed with who had as I was informed by other inmates recently attacked a different inmate before

they were placed with me so that's again a decision made at the sheriff level where they decide who

they placed people with and it's that disregard for safety that I felt while I was in there I

prior to suffering a concussion requested not to be put in isolation in solitary confinement

and that was exactly what I got when I refused to and it's it's it shines through so clearly to

me from my experience in there that there isn't a a regard for well-being that's not the priority in

there is it seems like the well-being of the people in that building are just isn't a priority for

that for the sheriff's institution and to give them an entire new facility as if you know these

experiences aren't happening I mean I was in fear of being one of the number of people who have

died in there and I just urge you to reallocate that money to services where there are professionals

who are trained to provide care to rehabilitate and not have people continue to be harmed by their

time in jail thank you Morgan Murphy oh thank you hello my name is Morgan Murphy and my pronouns

are she her as a registered nurse in Sacramento and someone who cares deeply about public health

and safety I'm urging the city of Sacramento to halt its consideration or the county of Sacramento

to halt its consideration of the prison expansion I support the recommendations of decarcerate

Sacramento you can't get well in a cell it is pertinent that we put our efforts towards decreasing

the population of our community who are currently incarcerated especially considering that our

city is unable to support the health needs of its current incarcerated population as they must

wait at least three months to be able to even access mental health services please do away with

this expansion project entirely and support and fund resources that promote the long-term health

and safety of our community instead and going forward please consider the voices of the health care

professionals and advocates in this room about how to actually meet the maze consent decree thank you thank you

Teddy George off

hello my name is Teddy George off as a quick background I was interviewed by CGL and asked

to share the research I collected the year prior around nocton Lewis IHSF H or IHSF plan

I've spoken to three of you one-on-one about that research I've shared my findings with Eric Jones

DGS and others and I think it's fair to say that I've been incutely involved in this process so

given that I have very little time there's just two things I want to convey first is that although I

have issues with some of the subjective conclusions of CGL's report I am agreeing fully with the

recommended next steps spending the projects creating a committee and doing comprehensive analysis

of all these solutions available makes the most sense since the beginning we had had an architect

firm do the first analysis we were always a bit stuck in the mentality of building something this

is an inevitable conclusion if you're an architect firm but stepping back from this will be

beneficial to the county to address your concern over a pause supervisor sernah quarter over quarter

we have seen progress towards maze compliance last quarterly report showed only seven provisions out

of the 350 plus were classified as non-compliant so we have substantial or partial compliance of over

97 percent of the demands my point being here that no federal judge would determine that our county

has not been showing progress towards maze compliance so we have time and we should use it to make the

best choice my second point goes back to the question of fiscal bust fiscal buckets which again

to provide a sernah you kind of hinted at earlier appreciate your line of questioning today I think

it was effective is it legally required or a choice just as an example in the report CGL said that

the upper tier cells and top bunks could only be used on a limited basis because it does not take into

account industry best practices okay we are here to address maze compliance not some accreditation

agency right we can use upper tiers because maze allows it and the county did an analysis of the

percent of population that needs lower tiers due to disabilities and is significantly less than

half of each segregated population do not let that be a reason we need more beds I believe that going

forward with the suspension will give the committees that we are going to make time to plan and

save significant funds for our county allowing us to spend those dollars on the things we all want to

see in our community thank you very much thank you

Alyssa Lee

hello my name is Alyssa Lee I live in a supervisor sernah's district in district one I'm a state

employee and I echo all the comments before I really urge the board to cancel this jail expansion

project as Adriana and Dr. flow said it's not just the money it's the time it's a community's time

I think you've heard very well-reasoned research rational explanations as to why this is not only a

waste of money a waste of time waste of energy but is really showing a perversion of our priorities if

we go forward with it and I'm really worried that this meeting is going to end and we're going to

keep talking about this jail expansion and that you're not really listening because it doesn't

feel like this affects you like this affects every single resident and it's not just the price tag

the price tag is outrageous but let's say the price tag seemed reasonable the idea of can't get

well in a cell is that the very act of putting someone behind bars and separating them from their

community is not a condition that allows for people to heal or get better or become a better person

I had a loved one incarcerated in the jail recently and to not be able to know if they were alive

when we were cut off from them the few times I got to visit them in person to not be able to hold

their hand to know that how whether they got a blanket dependent on if the guard on duty like

them or not to not have access to letters that we had sent them this is mental health issues are

not just about you know what pre-diagnosis that they have going into jail the very condition of

isolating people and cutting them off and creating an environment where they don't know what's going

to happen to them at any moment or have no control over what goes on is what creates the challenges

and is how they feed into the cycle of homelessness of poverty of unwellness so there's no reason to

consider this jail expansion I really hope you listen to people here today thank you thank you

you

can I get up a little bit yeah just a little bit

right all right pj key him lifelong resident of sacrameno in the report the conclusion states while

answering these questions it became apparent that a larger overarching question remained what is

the most economical way for the county of sacrameno to achieve compliance with the main's consent

that was literally the entire point to address the elements of the consent decree that could be

met prior to ever discussing spending two billion dollars on a new location and that wasn't

looked at I'm here to voice my opposition to a new jail when many of the those being held

are folks who have minor violations many many held who have failure to appear for unpaid fines due to

being on house all of this money will be much better spent to address those issues and support

build housing in your jail population will go down don't punish poor folks who can't pay bail

by insisting they stay in jail due to their lack of monetary support rich people who can pay bail

aren't inherently safe or due to their access to money yet we treat them like they are and all the

wild poor folks barely subsisting being removed from their neighborhoods for weeks or months while

their trial process goes on can utterly destroy their lives even if they are then found innocent the

reality is that we need to move towards restorative justice and actual rehabilitation and a way for

incarceration incarceration does is move people towards more unstable ways of existing resulting in

them being more likely to offend in the future not less it's been shown time and again that when

folks receive community support they are less likely to offend initially because their needs are met

and it also makes them less likely to reoffend if our system has already pushed them towards the

jail pipeline i need you to understand the circular logic of the path of incarceration historically

disenfranchised and discriminated populations have supported have support removed from them through

redlining no GI bill money etc some then at a desperation turned a crime to survive to meet

there and their families basic needs they are then jailed jails expand and more support is removed

from these communities then more offend and are jailed and then jails need to expand again

you're heading down the wrong path thank you thank you

let's light

yama volunteer organizer with the tenants union in district five so again we're

you're taking this appalling approach to addressing i guess the mate and maize consent degree

so i'm going to rehash what i said first time around so we're grown-ups here we should be grown-ups

you say you want to spend more money in police and jail expansion because

well it's become a little foggier now but i guess at the back of it is some concern with violent

crime but if we're grown-ups we know we're crime and violent crime comes from but we don't talk about

that it is born of a maliciously generated poverty in a community characterized by cruel inequality

the proposed jail expansion is inflicted here as a containment for anticipated acceleration

of mental illness and addictions resulting from the continued malicious failure of our municipality

and county's policy and administration of housing in Sacramento policy of housing like everything

else is a consequence of a of control and domination by scale real estate and property development

interest and corporate rental interests you talk about criminals with blood on their hands

but if we're honest about blood on hands there's is a bloodiest if you have any role to protect the

interest in physical safety of the more general population for this interest you must fail you

have been selected and your career is cultivated by these controlling interests as failure you are

examples for them and how good there are their ideology that government must fail and that puts blood

on your own willing and bloody and failing hands now glad to see the DA and his dog and pony show

you're aren't here this time I think we've made some progress can you please conclude your remarks

sure I think you know you know my point of view on this I think I made it clear so I'm happy to

conclude thank you

Lauren win

Lauren you win

Rachel Harrington

hello I urge you to halt the expansion an additional jail building would not solve the maze

descent maze consent decree most of the decree issues are about jail staff behavior improving those

conditions is not about a building it's about reducing staff patient ratios and enforcing current

policies within the jail for all jail staff even with a new building the county will still need to

reduce the jail population and continue to retrofit the current building to meet the consent

decree the board should prioritize meeting the lawsuit without a new building thank you thank you

Bernice sing

you

hello my name is Bernice sing Rogers and I'm a fellow with legal services for prisoners with children

and a Sacramento chapter member with all of us are none as a member of the Sacramento community I

stand in opposition to the proposed expansion of the county jail I believe we should not allocate

$2 billion to this project but instead these funds would be better spent on addressing the

root causes of incarceration like the need for mental health resources housing programs youth

programs and alternatives to incarceration our county jail currently has a long wait list for

mental health services numerous tragic deaths and a crisis of mass incarceration rather than

expanding the jail we should focus on improving the conditions of the existing facility so I firmly

oppose funding this expansion thank you

Philip Minard

Hello I'm just going to play a testimony from somebody currently in the jail

who

is anybody have any expertise working with this

while he's working on the technology I have advised the clerk to

request that the individual state that he has permission to do so from the person that was

recorded and as of right now I don't have that so I do have expressed consent from the person

and is recording to play this as a satisfy county council yes thank you

I'm going to hold the testimony even though it's remote the same two minute limit that we're keeping

everyone else on how about this why don't you have a seat and we'll let the next person's time

and hopefully you can resolve it and we'll call you back after the speaker can you just add them

back on for me so we'll do our LR Roberts I guess in a park I LR Roberts ran lots of

way list legal services for many years my non attorney services were to get SSI and other

benefits for disabled people so regarding jail population reduction a new building wouldn't fix

these problems I've attempted to get a developmentally disabled man assessed and a deputy told me

that the person was not disabled I've had clients have SSI hearings scheduled and if they got

on SSI more money would come into our county and they would not release the person to go to their

SSI hearings I've asked to talk to the social worker when I was at our triple C and the deputy

at the desk told me that there wasn't a social worker I had just gotten off the phone with the

social worker and the deputy later admitted she said that to get me to stop standing near the desk

a mentally disabled client was put in the general population which they promised they wouldn't do

the resultant blood stayed on my client during a meeting with his wife later and during his

hearing later the same blood was on him this was in the days before effective AIDS treatment

oh and the original guy that I was trying to get developmentally disabled assessed eventually

died of AIDS people aren't getting their medications in a timely manner you've heard three weeks

that sounds what my experience was the jail does not refer clients to so there's a form you're supposed

to fill out when you've had somebody in a hospital or in any other institution and there's a form

that if you think they're eligible for Social Security benefits that you're supposed to give to

Social Security so as soon as they get out of the jail or the hospital they're supposed to be

referred immediately for disability and they're not doing it in fact the the sheriff that I

talked to at the time and I've been here through several dev sheriffs had never heard of the form

so a way to get more funds into our community is to have people get on disability and we should

be helping with that instead of going the opposite way thank you

is it all bono does

I'll add it mr. Monard to the end or you want to bring him back now well let me check let me just

do a check and did you resolve the why don't you go ahead and come on up and

and again hopefully the testimony albeit remote is within the two minutes

and I'm big the Sacramento time jail for the past six months have been in disciplinary

environment and I selected today I got here and I'm not on discipline they treat us like slaves

in here in order for us to get their own or cause most we have to clean the cells we have to clean

rooms that people move out of same some of them the EOP and it's real nasty with the scene that

piss everywhere and the police saying for us to have us begin with other inmates possibly started

our consequence of their behavior due to that behavior we keep constant limit because they're not

act alright so we have twenty thousand this pod and they only have one shower working when they're

supposed to have to work it and then bottom shower just deal with easy that urine and throw up in it

and they won't clean it and the truth is picking shoes when they want to clean it and we have to pick up

their slacks during their own so we have like minimum time to do what we need to on our day room time

is this really a scandal is how they treat us here and how we have to live in order to get

what our capacities are you know that's one of my main concerns is the way they treat us is how they

not spend the time in the cells before somebody moves in it how we have to get treated like

wearing the trustees and the porters and they're not even doing their job right if they're

sick they can hear by law you're not supposed to even be in a disciplinary pod unless you're on

different planet not been in the pod for like six months and I have not gotten a line up at all

at first I thought it was because I was transgender but there's transgenders and other pod

than they just let them just have me here about myself like

my name is mn that was it good thank you

thank you

aja albano

my name is aja albano i'm a volunteer at de carcerate sacramento and a resident of district one

i'm grateful for this active engaged community and for the value shared by those who have spoken

and who will speak today what i hope is not lost on this board is that our individual values don't

compel us to be here today we are here because of Lorenzo maize rickie Richardson gender for betune

armani lea lear cheese beers and kody garland they expose in humane conditions within the sacramento

county jails and set this county on path to signing the maize consent decree which holds a county

accountable for the health and safety of incarcerated individuals then and now yet six years after

it was signed we were discussing a two billion dollar jails pension worse we're being told then

or it's a comply with the maize consent decree population growth should be expected and plan for

this undermines the county's own commitment to jail population reduction in order to meet maize

requirement the decree cannot support both jail population reduction and construction for

population growth the maize remedial plan clearly references only one of those goals provision b

reduction in jail population is a cost effective means to achieve constitutional and statutory standards

construction for a growing jail population does not appear explicitly or implicitly

and suggesting otherwise misrepresent the decree's intent the county should be familiar with the

consequences of misrepresenting illegal intent in 2021 the california supreme court ruled that

conditioning pre trial release on whether someone could afford bail was unconstitutional to indicate

its intent the supreme court stated liberty is the norm and detention prior to trial without a trial

is the carefully limited exception yet our judiciary has misused its decision to justify

revoking bail for individuals and continuing the practice of trapping people in pre trial detention

83% of the Sacramento jail population is pre trial 90% of whom has serious mental illness

it is time for the county to operate with integrity and honor its legal obligations especially when

it comes to the health and safety and constitutional rights of its residents this expansion projects

should be canceled and finally it is imperative for any future committees this board approves not

only include but center the voices of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals it was

incarcerated people who exposed the problems and they can guide us to the solutions thank you

thank you

Jessica Rago

good afternoon my name is Jessica Rago I live in Folsom in district four and I'm here in support of

decarcerate Sacramento against the jail expansion construction and I basically would like to second

everything that everyone else has said in opposition to this and through decarcerate Sacramento

excuse me with the permission of Tiffany Richards they have given me this testimony that she

would like shared and I really feel like there but for the grace of god go I or any of my friends and

family

sorry is this is this an inmate yes okay we need the same

great we appreciate that um carers being given for consent

and I'm in apis permittve

I don't know if the sound quality is very good, but she just mentioned rat feces and urine in the food.

Yeah, with the sound quality, I'm not sure how much of this is making it through, but she's

mentioning officers lying to get inmates in trouble, being denied phone calls, going into

the hole for no reason.

So I'll wrap up my time, but I encourage the supervisors to talk to Decarcerate Sacramento

with extra time.

There's a lot of these stories.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Terry Sharp.

Sorry for that.

It's just nervous.

My name is Terry Sharp.

I'm a community member.

Formally incarcerated.

I'm a volunteer with Decarcerate Sacramento.

I'm on the CWRT Committee Advisory Board.

I volunteer with a church on Wednesdays to give our food to the homeless.

I highlight those things as my introduction to show the potential of somebody that's

in the jail building right now.

So the problem I had today was with the time limit.

There's a whole bunch I could talk about today, but I'm going to try to narrow it down.

Specifically to two things.

We speak about allocating funds to different resources, like mental health diversion.

Now the experience I had in the jail gave me the relevant experience to come out here

and speak about the things in the jail.

Now that I'm in the mental health diversion program receiving services from L.

Hogar in programs like core, I can speak to that reality.

And I can tell you there's not enough funding for anything, right?

Right now, my housing's in jeopardy and I have been the most proactive I can be and

I've ever been in my life.

These type of things I've never been involved in.

I never trust the government.

I'm not speaking ill on any of you guys.

It's just my perspective from where I'm from and the things I've experienced.

But here, there's not enough money going to these programs.

And often times I have so many objectives that exceed their expectations of myself.

So they discourage me and they want me to minimize myself and I want to allow that to happen.

On top of that, I take it to account the fact that a lot of people aren't in the same

space as me and what it took for me to get to this space where I wanted to be a productive

member of society, despite all the things that I've been through and the challenges that

these people face.

It's almost impossible to address with the resources that are available with these programs

that being designated to with the mental health diversion program.

I also want to talk about the jail population and steer the attention since we're taking

a focus off of building a jail.

Steer the attention to the low quality arrests and the malicious prosecutions that occur

in that jail.

Right now, I can identify three problems in anybody's case that are constant no matter how many

times I pick up that jail call as I am a jail support advocate for the people in there.

I got six people that I'm helping with their cases providing participatory defense.

And number one, A, five, nine, B, you have a right to a speedy preliminary.

The district attorney has found a way to alter the court schedule to violate that right.

So you have to be provided a speedy preliminary within 10 to 60 days.

I didn't get a preliminary hearing for eight months.

The public defendant's office does terrible.

It took me three attorneys to file motions.

By the time I got that third attorney, I had six motions that I should say were granted

on my behalf.

All of these people face these problems.

They play stalemate with people when you have a right to face your accuser and that accuser

no longer wants to cooperate with the district attorney.

They stalemate you until they force you into making a decision to take a plea deal.

I appreciate you guys time.

Joe, thank you.

Thank you.

Christina Alvarez.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Hello.

As a resident of Sacramento County, as a spouse, a daughter, a sister with many aunts and

uncles and the aunt of 12 nieces and nephews, I strongly urge you to oppose this project

and gel expansion.

I urge you to consider how we invest resources and our people's well-being and our public

health and our families public health.

Ask yourself if you are doing the correct action to deal with the court issues of your

very own constituents, such as their mental health, their housing, resources, and investing

in public, necessary public resources.

Please ask yourself this over and over because that's what you're here to do to decide on.

These are the questions that you cannot forget, despite hearing how beneficial and party

a new gel annex sounds.

As it was mentioned earlier, there were seven deaths in our gels last year.

That is not acceptable.

It is not acceptable that this board invests county resources into the deaths of the incarcerated

rather than investing in our families.

I know that's a broad statement, but it's better to invest in the better gel conditions

or just better yet to reduce the gel population.

Or what is the alternative that we continue on the same path and circle leading to the

incarceration of our family members and investing our money into horrible conditions

that lead to death all while a gel annex is being built?

That is not acceptable.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Diamond Hyatt.

Greetings, supervisors.

Thank you for hearing us today.

My name is Simon Hyatt, resident of District 1.

So elected member representative of the California Working Families Party here in Sacramento.

I'm here to oppose any expansion of the gel.

And you know, we, it was really powerful to hear the testimonies, especially coming from

those that are inside across the street right now.

I think, I think we should all center ourselves on the suffering that exists in our city

and the suffering that exists in that building.

Jim Crow lives in Sacramento.

Jim Crow is alive today.

The legacy of the history of this country.

The ending of slavery and moving into segregation.

From segregation to the Jim Crow era.

And now the new Jim Crow where we isolate our poorest, our people of color.

We don't provide them with economic security.

We don't provide them with education.

And we house them in facilities like this.

And we're here to talk about potentially expanding a facility with such suffering.

At the same time spending $2 billion that we don't have.

Of spending $2 billion of people's money that are not yet born.

We didn't ask for this system.

But we're here with it today and we want to see a new world.

Excuse me.

We want to see a world where we care for each other as a community.

And a world where violence and suffering is not the thing that we perpetuate, especially

at our community level.

One last thing as far as that money goes.

It's time that we take a stand as local municipalities and at the county level we're losing

everything at our federal level.

The world is changing very rapidly and we need to find ways that we can be resilient as

a community here in Sacramento.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Matt.

Hey, all.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon.

My name is Mack.

My pronouns are they them and it is good to see you.

I know it has been a while.

I'm a community organizer, artist, abolitionist, anti-fascist.

I'm a parent.

I could go on.

But just in general, I'm a person who cares, lives and creates here in Sacramento.

No offense.

But it sucks that we started this conversation with we don't want to hear about standards

because they're higher than the bare minimum of what's required.

But I guess this overlining is that we also began with this current plan fall short across

the board in compliance standards and what's required.

I think next I want to name that crime does not just increase with population.

It increases as well.

Disparities get bigger and folks don't have access to choice, opportunity, good jobs, mental

health, substance use services, public housing, and all of the real solutions to crime rates

that a few billion dollars could be better spent on.

We know it's at least two, but after hearing today that not all costs were included,

let alone it was unclear if less costly measures were even looked at, we know that a tire.

I'm glad to see that the recommendations have suspend this project and

telling you the things that this community has been telling you to do since we started talking about this in 2019.

Not just cancel this plan and invest in proven crime prevention, but

build a collaborative space to have a conversation about jail population reduction and

the entire cops, courts, and cages system that doesn't only have county staff and

hell bent on construction.

And these have community experts and stakeholders that are in this room living in the jail.

And those who have the intersection and connections, like their family.

All our remaining in our county budget goes to cops, courts, and cages.

And then we wonder why our jail is full of unhoused people.

People struggling with mental health, folks with addictions, folks who are black, brown, poor.

Your lack of investment in your community is showing.

And it's never too late to start to do the right things.

And I know you've been trying, but five years later, and

saying the same things over and over again to you just to still be in the same position as crazy.

The only way to stop doing the same thing over and over again without getting any different results is to introduce a new quality.

And in this case, it's stopped trying to build your way out of this crisis and

collaborate with this community to build the world that we all know is possible.

Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Enjoy.

Hello there.

My name is Joy.

I am a disabled veteran and resident in District one.

I am going to play a recording today.

We do have the express consent from Shanie Phillips to play this recording in four parts.

So there are four of us who will be playing.

Thank you.

My name is Shanie Phillips and I'm 46 years old.

I'm reading this statement from the seventh floor of the Sacramento County Main Jail Facility.

Specifically the 400 part or the maximum of the treaty that the women.

I'm sure I'm into this most sensitive, first of all, with a different weapon.

I'd like to give my saying that I've spent my first year trying to crush my dead.

I've been lost in the Sacramento, Los Angeles, Colorado and Yolo County.

I suppose I technically have a parental but my main problem are drugs and mental health.

If I didn't have those problems, that would be the right thing.

I understand the police can't account me of a big job to do and that is not easy.

But many things need to change.

The focus of the jail system from the time of arrest through release and probation and

incarceration for the maximum length of time possible and re-incarceration whenever possible.

Leading to a disdounding recent history.

Never under any circumstances is rehabilitation considered.

We need rehabilitation, not re-incarceration.

Programs like mental health court can go up court on the right track but they don't do enough.

I've essentially completed the mental health court last year.

I went from jail to rehab and during my stay received my similar check which I used to pay for

in school and became a drug and alcohol counselor for the whole day.

I'm sure I've begun too much for me and I've had a mental health and addiction relapse.

And now I'm back here.

Periscuration is not the answer for people like me.

I'm schizophrenic, actually because I'm a bit of an orthodignexmic depression and an incline disorder.

I need mental health treatment including case management services for long term success.

Unfortunately, I'm chronically homeless but you know family.

When I'm released from jail, I have a catchment of these kind of relationships with probation

which is really out of necessity, not choice.

The incarcerated is the only opportunity I have to get help and it's just not available here.

There is no therapy whatsoever in re-entry services or lawfuls.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I lean.

Snicker.

Snicker.

Snicker.

Looks worse it is.

I live in district one in Supervisor Cernid District and own a home.

Of course we all pay taxes every time you buy a burrito or something.

So here we are with the public here.

I'm also here as I'm a full-time caregiver for my partner with late-stage Parkinson's

and I'm talking about 24 hours because we have a terrible mental health system and health care system.

That's why I'm a caregiver for a godly hours.

I'm also the payee and supporter of my brother with a serious mental illness who is doing well.

Now thanks to mom who was his support for 50 years.

He has an example with my brother who has been hospitalized locked up with psychosis.

The reason he's doing so well in the last 20 years living independently is food, a safe place to stay, and mental health services.

All the same stuff that everybody else is talking about here.

It doesn't matter.

You're going to go drug rehab which was not his problem.

That's half of people diagnosed with mental illness are self-medicating with street drugs.

It's not just drug rehab.

Not just some time in jail.

You need it all.

Where are you going to lay your head tonight?

That's safe.

Where are you going to be safe and have food?

Not just tonight for your future and get the mental health treatment.

So come on, wake up.

I can't believe that we're back here after.

Is this the third time I've been back in this room listening to this?

I mean, it's not about your embarrassed but you should be embarrassed.

I looked at the pie chart of the county budget.

So we're the public and we're the people paying taxes and we're the people who have mentally ill family members.

You all are elected and you're elected to do a lot more stuff than manage a budget.

But when you look at the pie chart of the budget, guess what's the largest part?

Law enforcement and incarceration right now.

Okay, so yeah, where's the housing?

Where's the food?

Where's the mental health treatment?

Wake up.

A man, good to you.

I'm going to play another portion of the Shani Williams.

I mean, sorry, Shani Phillips testimony who is currently incarcerated within the Sac County prison system and gave their consent for this to be shared.

This is the first time I've tried about the experience or obviously your intuition.

Hopefully nothing happened to me.

I have witnessed police brutality in one other time and now in sunny.

A woman has her arm broken and her teeth not found with a flashlight.

And the third of the guys were getting dressed down and not to be arrested.

Police brutality is real.

Police brutality is real.

Police brutality is real.

Stars is real.

People really do sure to blind eye to things that are slightly unprotatable.

People let hope things like these aren't a problem.

When they were in and they go about the day.

Constantly stay with their parents the way out for me.

They're taking this broken and people like to have no escape.

And now they wouldn't stand the jail without fixing a goddamn thing.

They're criminal and they're going to keep on going back to the park.

We need to fix what is broken and not making more of the same mistakes that try on a larger scale when they're in.

So if you couldn't hear that, they were talking about being escorted into an elevator where they were assaulted.

Their arm was dislocated.

And this was a person with sexual trauma, PTSD, likely from that.

And then another incident where another person's arm was, I believe, broken what they said from the same type of handling.

This is totally unacceptable and just want to echo everything that everyone else has said about how.

Disconversation is still continuing to happen.

Despite the fact that there has been no real connection to this like solving community problems and making the present safer and making this community safer for the residents and for the people in the presence.

Thank you.

Adam, Adam, I'm.

Yeah, hello. My name is Adam. I'm going to be playing a continuation of that testimony that you have consent for.

Obviously.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

I'm not going to be playing a game.

Linsie De Genova.

Good afternoon.

My name is Linsie De Genova and I'm my resident of District One.

I'm here today to comment on the county's $2 billion

jail expansion project.

As a resident of Sacramento County,

I strongly oppose this project and ask

the board of supervisors,

causing our postponing this project,

but to cancel and get all together.

So much has already been said by my fellow community members,

so I'd like to briefly echo a few important points.

This project is not only financially costly,

but is also a step in the wrong direction,

in terms of how the county should invest in its residents

in public safety.

Rather than spending $2 billion on

incisorating residents of Sacramento County,

the board should be focused on investing in funding mental health

and substance use programs,

as well as creating affordable housing solutions

and other preventative measures that reduce

or incarcerate a population.

Decarceration in reducing our jail population

and investing in community programs is a solution

to the May's consent decree,

not funding a massive jail expansion project.

That does nothing to change the culture of neglect,

that puts the county in its position in the first place.

I urge the Board of Supervisors

to hear the calls from its community members,

including myself, and to cancel this jail expansion project

once and for all.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Applause.

Arza.

You'll just give me a moment.

I have a recorded testimony that I want to share out,

and I just need it to load for me.

So sorry about that.

And the reason I ask that you start with the premise

that you do have consent each time you come up.

Of course.

It's for the record.

It's not that I want to.

I want to pass through you for it.

No, it's okay.

I do have consent for this.

Thank you so much for checking for the record.

Let me get it loaded for you.

Thank you for your time.

I'm almost there.

It seems.

Okay.

Thank you.

Of course.

Thank you for that feedback.

No, eight months now.

I have 39 states with 68 people.

So every participant in the dinner,

people are walking on a first night to sit down.

All the people got a stand on the wall by the wall.

Or sit on the floor to eat, or to start cases.

It's just so horrible.

There's 28 people that are on a second set.

So people are running the lines, following down,

stuff trying to get to their lines,

or they get to milk, and then we have plastic dinner trays

that are all hot.

They're sticking to your dinner trays.

They're plastic.

And they're out.

They're not on a meeting.

But they're just trying to keep our eating pad.

They're all not some kind of, they'll tell me.

They'll think these are plastic when they're talking about them.

We shot on cardboard, she's in her food.

It goes on and on.

there's a screaming and storm on.

Do you know a bunk can?

It's not believed.

Even the men are supposed to settle down.

Down I think anybody on a joke should have to get up

and get the tap on them and they're on.

Every medicine can make them smitten on.

If you say there's suicidal, they're doing a wrong

for two weeks to make it.

So, and if you hear from people in your arms,

they throw a graven test 90% of it.

Pretty much by the time the trial says number one,

you know, if there's no one,

it's just so crazy, they've been hit

wrong wall, they've played hard,

you know, or human beings and the act

that's in the marker in this test,

if you mind.

Just quickly for future reference,

how clearly are you all able to hear that?

So we can make sure to try to improve it.

It's difficult.

It's difficult.

Thank you for the feedback.

We hear it.

We just can't discern kind of what they're saying.

Thank you so much.

Melanie?

We have Melanie.

And our final speaker is Lauren Winn.

Hi.

Good afternoon.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Dr. Lauren Winn and I'm a psychiatrist

who's worked at UC Davis Hospital,

the Sacramento County Mental Treatment Center,

the Sacramento Adult Psychiatric Support Services Clinic,

and the Sacramento County Jail on the Acute Behavioral Health Unit.

I'm here today to demonstrate my strong opposition

for the building of this expensive, unnecessary,

and life threatening jail.

Ask anyone who studied mental health or public health

and they'll tell you that it's understood as a field

that jails and prisons are places where mentally ill people

decompensate.

The loss of rights and autonomy in the name specifically

of punishment isn't doubtedly harmful to the psyche

as I'm sure you all can imagine.

And that's exactly what I saw when I worked at the mental health unit.

At the Sac County Jail.

The guards responded punitively.

If at all, to call for help, denied patients

of being able to leave their bathroom-sized cells to see the sun,

denied them of the ability to call their loved ones,

and denied us providers from even being able to see our patients

without guards presence, which as you can imagine is not really therapeutic.

I had one patient who is probably still there now

who has not been able to go outside and see sunlight in over a year.

That's not an issue that gets resolved by a bigger jail.

That's an issue of the guards policies

resulting in solitary confinement of an already mentally ill patient.

Incarceration is incompatible with health care.

It is unbelievable to me to even be talking about spending that money

on an extremely expensive jail in the name of mental health.

While we still don't currently have enough beds in our sub-acute

mental health facilities and multiple community-based organizations

promoting mental health are underfunded.

Court-appointed monitoring reports,

or demonstrate numerous stories of medical neglect here at the Sacramento jail,

and a bigger jail just will not fix this problem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not going to include that public comments.

Okay.

I want to start by thanking everyone who, again, took hours

out of their afternoon to join us and to provide your input on this important matter.

And we certainly value your contribution, whether we agree or not.

It's part of the beauty of our process that we hear from you

and take that into account when we make the decisions that we do on your behalf.

So, again, many thanks.

All right.

Is there anything that County Council wants to mention relative to my earlier question

about the disposition of plaintiffs' council about this prospect of maybe taking more time?

Yes, I can certainly do that.

Let's see, our office and the County Executive Office met with plaintiffs' council

a few weeks ago to discuss many issues, including this one.

They have expressed at that meeting concern and dismay with the recommendation to pause the project.

They feel that it is imperative to construct this project to address the mental health needs

of the people that are currently incarcerated and also the other issues regarding ADA and intake.

They're outlined in that consent decree.

That has been their position the entire time that we've been discussing this project.

They have not indicated, however, that they will be taking any action or court action

if we do pause at this time.

They have given us a demand letter on some other issues that you may be hearing about shortly,

but as far as pausing this project, they have not indicated any legal action.

Okay. Any questions from my colleagues of County Council?

Right. Seeing none, anything additional that the County CEO would like to mention before we deliberate?

No, the supervisor is certain. I would just add that staff are always here to answer your questions.

Very good. Thank you.

Okay. I don't see anyone in the queue. I guess I'll start.

So for me, I think both staff, my colleagues and the public have been,

I think you're pretty knowledgeable about what I believe to be a fairly consistent position

where I've not been supportive of the project for different reasons.

And it really is a unique position I feel placed in because, and at times, uncomfortable,

because I feel like I'm being forced down a narrowing corridor where I have to go through that door.

And that's not the way to make good decisions about public policy or in this instance,

relative to a legal order, a consent decree.

And in the past, I've raised concerns about the extraordinary cost, the increasing cost.

But there are other kind of parallel reasons why I really have a personal strong objection

to investing more in this particular jail where it's located, by the way.

I don't think our main jail should be in the region's largest central business district in our downtown,

one that's struggling to revitalize and to deal with things like the state of California,

closing offices. Of course, it's a relic of the pandemic that we continue to grapple with,

those office vacancies and getting used to the new life of working remotely,

those types of things all have a pose of challenge for all downtowns, especially a downtown

that is the state capital of California.

So, and there's a lot of reasons why it's challenging to even consider building a new jail.

I'm not suggesting a new jail at all, but I have a lot of different parts of my constituency

that have made very, very valid points, including many of you that have taken the time to speak to us today,

about why this is not a good investment.

And many of the speakers obviously really couch their concerns relative to the human side of things,

which we should not, at least I will not ignore.

The fact of the matter is that, where I think perhaps I disagree with some of you,

is that jails are a part of county infrastructure that I believe are probably always going to be necessary.

There are going to be people that need to be incarcerated for their behaviors.

So, I don't want to miss, I don't want anyone misunderstanding what I'm saying, especially my colleagues,

about my principal thoughts on the general subject of incarceration.

And I think it's going to be always probably part of our judicial law enforcement and carceral system.

It certainly behooves us to continue, regardless of the consent decree, to stay focused on reducing the jail population.

That's a must.

And we actually had some focus on that even before the consent decree was offered, was issued.

But of course that certainly puts the fire under us to act much more swiftly and thoughtfully about it.

And in terms of being thoughtful, I also don't want our staff believing that just because they will not be supporting this resolution today,

that I don't appreciate their thoughtfulness.

And they have a different place in life when it comes to county governance than elected people.

They are our professional staff.

So they are looking at options for us.

That's what we expect is to have alternatives and options, even when it comes to something as challenging as how do we meet the terms of consent decree.

So I want to thank all of our staff that have touched this particular issue before today and certainly going forward.

Your professional help is very much held in high regard by all of us.

But today I will not be supporting the resolution.

And with that, I will give the floor to my colleagues.

We'll start with Supervisor Him.

Thank you, Chair.

First of all, unfortunately, the appearances left.

But in case he's out in the lobby or watches this later, listen to it later.

I just want to say, Terry Sharp, you are an inspiration, what an amazing glimmer of hope of why this system as necessary as it may be if it's done correctly.

You have someone that comes out of it like that and just turns their life around and pours back into their community.

And so I thank all of you for taking your time, but especially for him sharing his experience.

And I want to touch on something that my colleague Supervisor Desmond brought up and that I believe was Mr. George Off that also mentioned it, that there is progress being made on a lot of the aspects of the maze consent that are aspect or I mean, excuse me, irrespective of the facility.

But on how the policies are implemented, the treatment and care that's provided.

And so I think that taking a pause is prudent and acceptable and warranted.

I share a lot of the opinions just expressed by the Chair even though we probably have different reasonings behind how we arrived at those opinions.

And the difference is that he got to participate in a lot of the decision points along the way, whereas I feel like I've been handed a coloring book and a pencil.

And so with those two objects, you're only going to get certain variations of the same picture.

If you want to hand me a pencil, hand me a blank page, and if you want to hand me a color book, hand me a box of crayons.

Let there be some options and some decisions. Now maybe those efforts were made earlier on, but it seems like this report was examining the work of a previous consultant.

And the previous consultant and their defense of their work as a response to this report said, well that's not what we were asked to do.

And so to the point of going down a narrow hallway, there were these guardrails put on all of these things that said, tell us how to build this aspect.

Tell us whether or not the work that they did on building that aspect was good.

Tell us, and there wasn't, there doesn't seem to be the step back that I think is the point that's on the final conclusion page in red of what is the most economical way to abide by the amazed consent decree.

And in my mind, there are many different definitions of economical and cheapest is not always the only definition.

And in fact, even in our contracting, it's not always lowest bid. Sometimes it's best value because there are other aspects that come into that.

Now I'll give you an example of my own personal life where I am not as frugal as I am in other parts of my life, and that's on a good pair of shoes.

Because if you buy the cheapest pair of shoes, they might not last as long as a shoe that's built well is going to last you longer, and it's going to give you the opportunity to re-soul it at a later date potentially.

Right? This is a weird analogy, and just stay with me for a second.

Right now, all I've been asked to do is figure out whether or not the materials and the cost to re-soul an old pair of shoes is worth it.

And I just, I don't feel like that's been a prudent exercise for me to date. It hasn't been a prudent exercise for all the folks that showed up.

And unfortunately, I think it's been a situation where the consultants have produced a lot of work, hopefully a lot of which can be salvaged, but that the larger overall question of what is the best solution going forward for the people being housed there, for the people that have to show up to work there, and for the care of the folks who have ended up there, and hopefully can find a way to get turned around and into a better situation life.

So unlike the chair, I am fully in support of the resolution today. I do want to explore those options. I do want to make sure that we're doing it right, and that we kind of put all the cards back on the table. So that's where I think.

Thank you, Steve, for the human. I couldn't agree with you more, Mr. Shurps. Tested when he was aspiring, and I wanted to tell him I don't know why he was nervous because he was extremely articulate.

Mr. Provider Desmond.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I also want to start by thanking everybody who provided public testimony today.

Even though you may not believe it, we do hear you, and we do take it into account when we make decisions up here on this diaz.

It just occurs to me. I would love to have some of you here at other board meetings. I wouldn't wish that on anybody to come to board meetings unless you're fighting insomnia.

But there are an awful lot of investments, a lot of decisions we make that are addressing a lot of the problems that you're mentioning today.

Just yesterday, we approved, despite a lot of community blowback, tripling the size of a behavioral health treatment facility in Sacramento.

And there are so many cases of additional low-income housing, affordable housing projects, permanent supportive housing, the state-state communities.

Investments, this board is making in programs and resources to address a lot of the social issues that we are facing and that unfortunately result in some people end up being finding themselves involved with the criminal justice system.

I really appreciate all the comments of the chair. And I, too, actually agree with everything the chair said. We may have a different result today in our vote.

But agree with everything he said. And I look at this as an opportunity to really step back and take a much more comprehensive look at how we can not only address the maze consent decree, which I think maybe we've been a little too focused on that in the past few years and how we can address changes in the larger community.

The larger system we have, criminal justice system we have in the county. And I like what Eric Jones described as some of your efforts already.

Certainly efforts including some of our advisory bodies involving them in this effort. I don't think, and I'm glad we had the discussion before public comment that the work that has been done here to four is not wasted.

We're not as if we're starting over. It feels to me like we're stopping. We're suspending and we're taking a larger look and maybe looking at things that we had not considered in years past.

So with that, I will be joining Supervisor Human in supporting staff's recommendation and the recommendations of CGL.

Thank you, Supervisor Resman. Supervisor Rodriguez.

Well, I do want to thank the individuals that came and spoke and shared. I came into this meeting with a little more of a black and white view.

And your testimonies and the information that you provided have really in some ways reminded me of things that I have valued in the past.

And that is to see people rehabilitated from a life that they have lived because I believe that people have the good in them and that they wanted you good.

And that sometimes certain circumstances in our lives create a pathway for us that maybe we didn't intend to go down.

And so I recently was quoted saying that our jails are full of people with severe mental health issues. And I do believe that today.

I believe that we have as a society allowed the jails to become the psych wards that many that we oftentimes were quoted back in the 80s.

And we've made police officers, you know, psychiatrists when they need to address criminal issues.

And I think that really will be supporting the recommendations today because I want to look at options. I want to look at, you know, having now been in this role for about what six, seven weeks.

It gives me something that I want to understand a little, a little better in my personal opinion when I look at economic development, which is a really huge priority for me.

I think the jail in the downtown area is detrimental to the health and well-being of the downtown Sacramento.

And because downtown Sacramento is incredibly beautiful, there are so many amenities that Sacramento can utilize just to make our communities better.

And the location just to me is not a good place. So if we're going to invest in some kind of a location, I think maybe some more different from the downtown area.

Are there crimes that people commit that they should be in jail? Yes, I do. I believe that there are certain crimes that as a society, we need to, what we need to protect you from individuals who may not be well and who need to be in the place where they should be.

I want to talk a little bit about the recidivism rate. I do want to see what other options we have to be able to help people not commit the crimes that they have committed and to get well and whether it's through mental health programs or other type of programs.

I would like to see what can be done.

And that's pretty much all my comments. Thank you. Thank you to the supervisor Rodriguez, supervisor Kennedy.

Thank you, Chair. So I look at this as an opportunity to get more information and make better decisions down the road.

But I don't see the harm in looking at a plan and a master plan to guide us with more information.

One of the things and some of my friends in the audience will know who I'm talking about that we've had discussions over the years and we've, you know, had some heated discussions, but always friendly.

Look what's happened since 1986 or so since it was built. This county's twice as big as it was that it had approximately 900,000 people almost half of the population of today. We can't just ignore that fact.

I think that's a direction we as a nation should be heading in. I think that we're way behind in actually helping people and curing what is making people, putting them in the positions that they are, be it mental health, be it substance abuse.

Even while they're focusing on rehabilitation over punishment, because the facilities become aging, the facilities can no longer serve the need of the people who are in them.

So I'm not going to write off spending money, capital improvements on a facility that is, it's 40 years old and has intense uses and really is not serving the needs of those that it's supposed to be serving.

So I will support looking going forward to look at what our options are, doing more of a master planning process, thinking about this more deliberately than perhaps we have in the past.

But make no mistake. That is not a blank check from this supervisor.

And I will be looking at balancing those things as far as the processes, procedures and policies that need to be changed along with making the conditions that that is a silly better. Thank you.

Thank you. Motion, Mr. Jim? Absolutely, sir. I just wanted to say that I was going to say earlier there's an adage that when you're on the wrong path, the quickest way to the right path is to turn around and go back.

And so I want to go back to the fork in the road. And with that, I will move the recommendation to adopt the resolution to move forward the CGL recommendation.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion of second.

That item passes for the one.

Again, thanks to everyone for being here and contributing.

Item three on the agenda is county executive comments.

My house is 80 years old.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're not, our hearing is not over. We have to conclude our business, please. Thank you.

Okay. Supervisor, no comments for today. Thank you.

Okay, very good. Thank you. Any comments from my colleagues?

No comments? Okay.

Again, thanks to staff. And there is no further business before this Board of Supervisors. We are adjourned.

Thank you, supervisor.