The regularly scheduled weekly Tuesday morning meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors was called to order at 9:00 a.m. on August 27, 2024. The complete video and agenda are available here. Timestamps are in parentheses.
(1:42) [Voices from audience]
(1:48) Supervisor Crye: And if we could, can we get through the prayer and invocation before we resort to bedlam?
(2:12) CALL TO ORDER
The Invocation was conducted by Board Member Frances Belden, Christian Science Church of Redding. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Supervisor Jones.
REGULAR CALENDAR
Members of the public may comment on any item on the Regular Calendar before or during the Board’s consideration of the item. Members of the public may also address matters scheduled for public hearings at the time such public hearings are opened for comment. Those wishing to participate in public comment for Regular Calendar items must submit a speaker request card to the Clerk of the Board before public comment on the item begins. Each speaker is allocated three minutes to speak. All speaker request cards submitted after public comment for each Regular Calendar item begins will not be heard by the Board.
Board Matters
(3:15) R1 Receive an update from the County Executive Officer on County issues and consider action on specific legislation related to Shasta County’s legislative platform and receive Supervisors’ reports on countywide issues.
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote
CEO David Rickert
(3:25) CEO Dave Rickert: August 23 was the last day to amend bills for the 2024 legislative session. August 31 is the last day for each house to pass bills. The California Legislature will reconvene on January 3, 2025. With this in mind, we should consider contacting both RCC and CSAC and let them know about future bills we would support. And with this in mind, I would propose a letter be drafted and placed on a future agenda expressing support for a state income tax deduction for fire insurance. This would go a long way to reducing the impact of this additional burden on our citizens and benefit those mostly impacted by fire risk. A bill regarding this was introduced in 2024 but lacks sufficient support to pass through the legislature.
Moving on to county business, on Saturday, August 24 a team from the CEO’s office with a special assist from Supervisor Garman participated in the Strike Out Domestic Violence Bowl-a-thon at Country Bowl. Our team won a trophy for the most funds raised. This is an annual event hosted by the District Attorney’s Office.
On Monday I met with county department heads for an update on county activities. Some of the topics discussed were future budget expectations, long term strategic planning, recruitment challenges, public safety and current and future proposed legislation. And this concludes my report.
District 2 Supervisor Tim Garman.
(4:57) Supervisor Tim Garman, District 2: I’m gonna keep it brief this morning because I’m not feeling the greatest. I had a First Five review with some grant applications. I had a Community Action Board meeting with Supervisor Rickert. I had Alliance Club Health Foundation meeting. We talked about Camp McCumber and, and what we could do to hopefully make that better and bigger next year. I met with Troy Bartolomei, Josh Foyes, and others out at Whiskeytown Park. We met for three hours. We drove around the entire park, basically looking at trees that are dangerous, looking at culverts need to be changed, looking at roads that need to be striped, and speed limits. And that’s just among some of the stuff we looked at, I attended the District Attorney fundraiser. I think it was the eighth annual fundraiser, Strike Out Domestic Violence, with CEO Rickert and we had a lot of fun with that. And I will tell you if you go bowling, it makes you feel 20 years younger.
District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones
(5:52) Supervisor Patrick Jones, District 4: Last week, met with CEO Rickert and County Counsel and Chair Crye to go over several important issues. Those will be coming up at future dates. Met again with Shasta County Chamber of Commerce as well as Eric Woodstrom. He was the former EDC chair or president and obviously this week the RFP for our tourism is coming up or coming to an end. And so obviously, these two groups have an interest in that and I’m sure there will be others as well. Yesterday, I was on site with the Bear Fire. Our fire season unfortunately is not over. CalFire and Shasta County Fire did a great job. They got that out within about nine acres and that was very much in the footprint of the Fawn Fire just a few years ago.
We have set the date or I have set the date for the KIA fundraiser for the monument. This will be our first fundraiser, September 21, doors open at 4:00. It will be at the Anderson VFW September 21.
And then lastly, Chair, I just wanted to clear up, there’s still some misconceptions about carrying concealed weapons in Shasta County buildings. And so I wanted to read a little bit about what happened or at least inform the public about SB 2, which took effect starting January 1 of this year. So prior to January 1 of this year, if you had a valid California concealed weapon permit, you would be able to go on city and county property if you were properly permitted. SB 2 changed that starting this year. Now there has been a stay put on a large portion of SB 2 and a future court will decide whether those provisions are lawful or not. However, what was not put a stay on was the state and local government buildings. What this board did last year is we passed a resolution and it was section 171 B, subsection B 4, and I’ll read a little bit so people can understand. Under existing law, it is a crime to bring a firearm into a state or local building and it makes it a crime to bring a loaded firearm into or upon the grounds of any residence of the governor or any other constitutional officer or member of the legislature. Existing law exempts a licensed person from that prohibition. If among other things, the licensee has a license to carry the firearm. This bill, SB 2, would remove those exceptions except as specified, and so those last three words, except as specified, then you go to subsection 171 B4. And there it tells you exactly. It says 171 B subsection B, subdivision A shall not apply to or affect any of the following. And this is where 4 comes in a person who has permission to possess that farm granted in writing by the duly authorized officer who is in charge of local government buildings. That’s us. And so we pass that resolution that allows a person anywhere in any person in the State of California that has a valid concealed weapon permit can enter this building as they were prior to January 1 of this year. So hopefully that cleans it up. I will continue to work on this, with our County Counsel and give more clarity and eventually a press release to that.
District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom
(9:27) Supervisor Chris Kelstrom, District 5: After last Tuesday’s meeting, I went to the Anderson City Council meeting that night and the next morning I met with a constituent in Anderson, who had a road, a problem on her road. So I went and toured the road and saw the issue. And shoutout to Troy Bartolomei because by the time I sent him the pictures in the email, he had already been on it. They had already been discussing it that day and there’s already a plan to fix it. So it was late, a little late to that.
So then after that I went to the chamber, the Shasta County Chamber Roundup at Good Times Pizza out in Palo Cedro. And then, let’s see, I had a meeting on August 23 and Rebecca Baer from the EDC reached out to me. She dropped off some business cards. We’re going to look into the financial losses up in Shingletown due to the Park Fire. So I gotta get up there and get her cards out to all the businesses up there. And then I went to a ribbon cutting for the GOP headquarters on Cypress and Hemsted Drive in Redding on that evening. Then I did go talk to the owner of Roosters about the Molotov cocktail case on Saturday. And then I went to the Cottonwood Community Center back at the ranch dinner at the Heart S Ranch.
Let’s see. And then yesterday I worked the last Avelo flight, worked it with Mark Mezzano. Mike Mangas was there, did a good story on that. So, it’s pretty sad to see them go. I talked to some, the representative from Avelo there. According to him, he said Avelo wants to come back. And, you know, I told him we’re going to do everything we can to get them back. So that’s in the works. Hopefully it’s not completely dead. Hopefully there’s a chance to get Avelo to come back here. I talked to the gal in the coffee shop yesterday and there was 120 people on that flight, which is amazing for that to be the last flight cause words got out there that, you know, Avelo is no longer flying out of Redding. So there were still 120 people that flew out yesterday. How they’re gonna get back? I’m not sure. I talked to a couple of them, but one of them is gonna have to take a United Flight back at three times the price. But I talked to the girl in the coffee shop at Theory Coffee shop and I just asked her after that flight was over and I said, how many, how many cups of coffee did you sell a day? You know, on this flight? So the one flight she I said, was it 30, 40, 50? She said about 60 cups of coffee. So, you know, there’s another $400 out of our local economy that we’re gonna lose just in a little tiny coffee shop behind TSA lines. We talked to a couple of guys that were up here fly fishing. They went to the McCloud River, they were from Pasadena and they came up for the week, they went fly fishing. I mean, you know, they bought two cups of coffee before they left. So, I mean, spent a couple more dollars in our economy before they flew, you know, flew back and how much they spent on the McCloud River with guides. And I know they went to the Fly Shop, you know, how much those guys spent in our local economy. You know, it’s really sad to see. It’s not just a flight that we’re losing. It’s quite a jump to our financial economy.
And then last of all, yesterday afternoon, I met with DA Bridgett, we discussed this Molotov cocktail case because there’s all these rumors going around that, you know, the owner had been told that they were dropping charges and he’s like, are they going to let this guy out? And so you get two bites of the apple on criminal charges. So the first did expire but they immediately refiled, he has a court date on August 28 and 29 for a preliminary hearing, they’re going to go forward with the case and you know, hopefully justice will be served. So shout out to Stephanie Bridgett. She clarified everything. It took five minutes and I appreciate that very much. And that concludes my report.
Supervisor Mary Rickert, District 3
(12:43) Supervisor Mary Rickert, District 3: Yes, a radio show to discuss issues germane to the county on KCNR. Attended a Community Action Board meeting with Supervisor Garman. There was a presentation by Robin from our Health and Human Services department on the homeless assistance case management programs. Joshua Johnson from the Redding City Council was there and he reported that there will be 17 micros shelters available in the fall for housing for homeless and for housing at the Manor Hotel. That should be available later this, maybe around the first of the year. So that’s all real good news that there’s some opportunities for housing for those who need housing.
I attended the Nortech meeting in Anderson. That’s a group of basically north state counties to get together. It’s a huge board. There’s about 40, 50 people on that board. One thing that was very disturbing is Anderson Farms, for those of us that are familiar with the agricultural world, they’re a big processor of walnuts in the close to the Vina area and they had to file bankruptcy and so they’ve closed, which is 321 jobs. The other part is that this isn’t gonna be an outlet where walnut growers can bring their products. So our economy is taking a hit. These are the kinds of things that we are all really concerned about. It was a very interesting topic for everyone there, very concerned about it. We had other stories from Lassen County, similar kind of stories. So I met with a Five Counties Labor Council. Miss Blankenship has hosted the northern region of the clerks of the board. And so I went over and said hello. I had lunch with them so it was really fun. So many of them, I know the supervisors in their county. So we had some good times talking about, sharing stories about them.
And then I talked to Bailey Cogger from Health and Human Services on Prop 1 funding. We want to stay right on top of that particular issue. I asked her to give this board an update of, basically if she would, on a monthly basis so that we know exactly where that funding is, what the status of it is and how it’s progressing. because we do not want to lose any potential dollars to serve those that are most vulnerable in this county.
District 1 Supervisor/Chair Kevin Crye
(15:19) Supervisor Kevin Crye, District 1: I had a Youth Options board meeting last week. I do believe that is one of the most impactful boards in the county in terms of dealing with youth. If those individuals enter that program in peer court, I think that’s a real opportunity to help turn some things around. So again, I’ve mentioned this before, if you’re looking to get in involved in a nonprofit Youth Options is a great one. We are looking at doing some things to really improve the organization. So we have a special board meeting next week that I’ll report back on.
I met with County Counsel Larmour and CEO Rickert as well as Deputy Buettell about the rodeo grounds. Really trying to understand some of the information of, again, the rodeo grounds isn’t under this board’s jurisdiction, but it is a District 1 and a staple of Shasta County. So, trying to understand really what the council is able to do in making sure that we educate the public and how that affects he county and agritourism and everything else that goes along with it. So, working on something for that.
Met with four different City of Redding candidates and asked questions about some various main topics. One of them about the airport authority, the At Home program, also asking them about their stance on the rodeo grounds as I feel like staying to our rural roots in Shasta County is important. And I think that’s gonna be a big thing that come this next election. Also, I want to give to a thank you to Councilman Mezzano who is somebody that I call quite often when it comes to things in my district and District 1, oftentimes some of the businesses in District 1 fall under the city’s jurisdiction. So when a constituent reaches out to me and he helped an individual with a pizza parlor that’s been having an issue getting a permit for about eight months and they got it in about eight hours. So thank you, Councilman Mezzano for that.
Presentations
(17:16) R2 Receive a presentation from Golden State Finance Authority regarding the ReCoverCA Program (Sponsored by Supervisor Crye).
No General Fund Impact
No Vote
Dan Winn from Golden State Finance Authority made the presentation.
(17:34) Dan Winn: We are here to present information on our Recover California Homebuyers Assistance Program. So basically what the program is going to do is it’s going to provide up to $350,000 to help people that were impacted by the fires in 2018 and 2020 to get back into home ownership. It’s being funded by a grant from HUD and from HCD and GSFA is the program manager and the administrator for the product and we’re proud to do so because we’ve been supporting home ownership in California for over three decades, specifically providing over $664 million in down payment assistance and helping over 85,000 families purchase homes.
So being that we’ve been a proponent of housing for the last three decades, we are aware of the many benefits that homeownership provides to the communities for the homeowners. Some examples of that are increased ability in neighborhoods as well as increase civic engagement. There’s also a reduction of crime and more important, there’s a big financial impact on homeowners versus people that don’t own homes, on average, a 38 times increase in their net value. So, what we’re hoping to do with this program is increase home ownership in the county itself and for someone to apply for the program, it’s pretty simple. They just have to have been impacted by the fires here in 2018 or 2020. They don’t need to have their property, you know, burned down. They didn’t have to evacuate. We have a tool on our website where they can type in their property address during that time frame and if their property address comes back in either red, orange or pink, it’s considered impacted for the purpose of the program. The other requirement is that they do have to be below 80% of the area median income based on their family size.
The structure of the assistance is we are providing up to $350,000 in the form of a forgivable second mortgage. It has a five year term. There’s no rates, there’s no payments, there’s no interest. Basically, if they live in the property that they purchased with our program for the five years after the home was bought, the entire amount is forgiven. Otherwise, it’s forgiven on a prorated basis of 20 percent per year for that five year period and it is intended for the purpose of down payment, closing costs, as well as the homebuyer education required for the program. In order for an applicant to apply, the process is pretty simple. They begin by contacting a lender approved off the program on our website that will determine if they’re eligible, they will qualify the buyer for a first mortgage, which helps us determine how much assistance we will provide as well as how much of a house they can buy. Once they find a property, the lender that they work with will lock their first loan with our program as well as reserve the assistance funds. The borrower will complete their home buyer education as required by the program, and they will get their loan closed and they will go from being a prospective home buyer to a homeowner.
Now, our objective with this program is to help bridge the gap between what someone can afford and the reality of the California housing market. So in our example, here we have a sample applicant that’s gonna qualify for a first mortgage of $268,000, but they’re gonna be able to buy a home of $600,000 because our assistance is gonna provide them that gap funding for their down payment as well as their closing cost.
Now, the calculation of the assistance we provide is going to hinge on a couple of factors. First and foremost, you’re gonna look at the purchase price for the appraised value of the property. You’re going to deduct from that whatever amount that the borrower can qualify for on a mortgage and they’re going to add back in their closing cost. And that’s what we define as the borrower’s need. Essentially, that’s how much they would need to close the transaction. The two things that will impact that need calculation would be if that applicant has any funds from a previous disaster recovery program that was intended for home purchase that they still have,\ or if they have any amount of liquid assets over $100,000. The greater of those two numbers will reduce what they actually qualify for on the program, but they are eligible for up to 350 to go towards their down payment and closing cost.
Now this is a first mortgage with assistance. Our first mortgage that’s tied to the program is very basic. It’s just gonna be a 30 year fixed rate loan that comes in government and conventional loan options. There is a maximum amount of available on the first, but it shouldn’t be an issue because with our program, there is an income limit of 80% of the area median based on the household size of the applicant. We do have a minimum credit score for the program of 640 which will expand the many people that can apply and qualify. And we also uniquely have a range that we have for a maximum total debt ratio. What that means is that we have a minimum so that the borrower has skin in the game when it comes to qualifying for a mortgage. But there’s also a maximum to ensure the borrower doesn’t qualify for more than a mortgage payment they can afford, so that they can keep their homes.
Most importantly, we are requiring homebuyer education and that course can be paid for by the program funds. HUD has a requirement of bedroom size, minimum and maximum based on the family size of the applicant. And then for the program itself, we are open to pretty much all property types as long as they’re single family, one unit only. The other requirements for the properties being purchased on our program is that it has to be located outside of a high and very high fire area. So the same map on our website referenced before to determine if the borrowers are qualified, that same map can be used as long as the property being purchased isn’t in a red, orange or pink area. The property would qualify for the program. On top of that, the property does also need to qualify for a standard homeowners insurance policy that includes fire coverage. Unfortunately, HCD doesn’t allow the California Fair Plan to be an accompanying policy on the purchase.
Now, for someone to apply, it’s really simple. They go to our website. We have a list of lenders that offer our program online. That lender will be their main contact for the program. They will help them from the beginning to end, process their application, their loan, determine what they qualify for, provide them with guidelines and information as well. We are also engaging in a comprehensive marketing and outreach campaign to the lending and mortgage community through online and in person trainings. We are working with the local association of realtors here in the county as well to provide education. And then we are always updating our website and our contact with the program information.
Similarly, with regards to home buyer outreach, we are doing the same marketing campaign with the addition of newspaper and radio advertising. And we are also holding 10 public events in all of the impacted counties for the program. We actually have an event here next week at the Redding City Hall. We’d appreciate the board’s ability to get that information out there. It’s also going to be on our website as well as on the radio and in newsprint.
(25:19) Supervisor Garman: I should ask, is this open for renters as well or is it only home home buyers?
(25:27: Dan Winn: It’s actually open to anyone that can document that they lived in an impacted area of the county in 18 or 20 renters, homeowners, as well as people that might have been living at home, rent free. The only thing that would exclude anybody is that they currently own real estate property.
(25:51) Supervisor Rickert: It’s my understanding if you’ve owned a house previously, but you do not own one now that you still qualify. Is that correct?
Dan Winn: That is correct, supervisor. As long as you don’t currently own a property at the time of application, you would be eligible. There’s no first time home buyer requirement.
Support Services
(26:13) R3 Take the following actions: (1) Receive a presentation from the Health and Human Services Agency regarding changes in duties for the Eligibility Worker classification series; (2) adopt a Salary Resolution, effective September 8, 2024, which amends the: (a) Position Allocation List to delete 10.0 Full Time Equivalent Eligibility Worker I/II/III position allocations in the Social Services Administration Budget (BU 501); (b) Shasta County Classification Specifications to delete the Eligibility Worker I/II/III classifications and add the Eligibility Specialist I/II/III
classifications; and (c) Salary Schedule to increase the salary range for the Eligibility Specialist Series and the Fair Hearing Officer Series; and (3) make conforming amendments to classification specifications impacted by the change of duties and title of the Eligibility Specialist Series.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Monica Fugitt and Christy Coleman made the presentation.
(26:20) Monica Fugitt: So the item that we had before you today would adopt a salary resolution which would increase the compensation for the eligibility worker series. It would also change the job title and the job classifications for the eligibility worker series from eligibility workers to eligibility specialists and make other amendments to make this possible.
(26:59) Christy Coleman: Before you today, like Monica said, is a request to update the job classification for the eligibility worker series to eligibility specialist, adopt a salary resolution, and it’s a deletion of 10 vacant positions.
Over the years, the eligibility worker duties have become more complex. The requirements for increased knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to be successful as an eligibility worker has outpaced the current job classification. The request today is to update the eligibility worker job classification to eligibility specialist, and in doing so, the specifics in the job classification will be updated to align with the current tasks that are being performed by the workers.
Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, eligibility staff are now responsible to learn about qualified health plans through Covered California. They need to have a working knowledge of plans to help clients with questions, plan enrollment, or in guiding the client to what best fits them. The Affordable Care Act also brought a new automated system that staff were required to learn and the combined knowledge needed with the added challenges of the interface between the two automated systems. Evaluating advanced payment tax credits, working through program changes, increased program accessibility for pre released inmates, medical expansion for adults between the ages of 26 and 49, and dual enrollment for Cal Fresh and Medi-Cal benefits. Eligibility workers need to have the knowledge of health insurance plans, regulations and rules for households for filing statuses related to the Affordable Care Act, and the ability to review tax documents to obtain needed household information. All of these are some of the changes to the classification that will become the eligibility specialist. Merit Systems performed a study through CPS HR consulting and found that the changes brought about by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act have affected the eligibility work classification across the state. That No Wrong Door approach to service delivery means that eligibility workers must know all of the programs. The lines between intake and continuing cases have multiple approval steps through the state and federal systems, and through the steps, customers can change benefit choices, creating more decision making and judgment of programs appropriate as part of an ongoing duties. Requirements for each program have diverged in some areas, creating more complexity and determinations and necessitating more time in dissemination of information to the clients on programs.
The new eligibility specialist classification will justify the work the eligibility staff are currently doing and bring their pay in alignment with the duties and requirements needed to be successful. The increase in the cost to the 501 social services budget will be offset by the deletion of 10 vacant eligibility worker UPNs. This will result in a net county cost of about $79,000 per year. From 2017 to 2023 there’s been approximately 1,237 program update letters that the eligibility staff have been responsible to learn and implement. And just another figure to give you guys – the help desk has received an increase of 50% in calls in that same time period. Thank you and I’m here to answer any questions.
Public comment on R3 began.
(31:07) Robert: I’m speaking in support of the eligibility workers. I see the job that they do, day in and day out. They are in the front lines, Supervisor Crye as he said, along with the office assistants who should not be forgotten either. Both of them work hand in hand to serve the public. Not only do they have the skills necessary but they have de-escalation skills also. And that really helps to calm people who are agitated or upset or not happy with their current state of life. It doesn’t, you can’t, obviously it doesn’t work for everyone but most of the people are served well. So whatever we can do to help them and stem the tide of attrition would be great. And also if we could in the near future add the OAs to that list. Thanks.
(32:33) Jenny O’Connell: I just wanted to thank you for bringing this forward. The eligibility workers deserve the extra pay and the extra nod of acknowledgment for the work that they do so.
R3 passed by unanimous vote.
SCHEDULED HEARINGS
A court challenge to action taken by the Board of Supervisors on any project or decision may be limited to only those issues raised during the public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the Board of Supervisors during, or prior to, the scheduled
public hearing.
Resource Management
(33:07) R4 Take the following actions regarding Zone Amendment (ZA) 24-0003: (1) Conduct a public hearing; and (2) either: (a) uphold the Planning Commission’s recommendation to deny the proposed amendments to the Shasta County Code identified as ZA 24-0003; (b) find that ZA 24-0003 is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) pursuant to State CEQA Guidelines section 15061(b)(3) and introduce, waive the reading of, and enact “An Ordinance of
the Board of Supervisors of the County of Shasta Amending Chapter 17.88 of the Shasta County Code Concerning the Regulation of Intermodal Shipping Containers” identified as ZA 24-0003; (c) make modifications to the ordinance and refer the matter back to the Planning Commission in accordance with Shasta County Code section 17.92.080(J); or (d) consider providing alternate direction to staff.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Assistant Director of Resource Management Adam Fieseler made the presentation.
(33:31) Adam Fieseler: Today, I’m here to present the recommendations of the Planning Commission regarding amendments to the intermodal shipping container regulations and the recommended options for the board to consider. On April 23, 2024 the board of Supervisors enacted an ordinance amending chapter 17.02 and 17.88 of the Shasta County zoning plan which expanded the ability to utilize intermodal shipping containers for permanent storage on parcels which are not designated for industrial or full-time agricultural uses. At that time, they directed staff to bring back resolution of intention to consider proposed amendments to section 17.88 0.280. E to increase the number of intermodal shipping containers allowed for permanent storage on such parcels as follows with no exceptions: one, no more than one on parcels of one half gross acre or greater but less than one gross acre; two, to no more than two on parcels of one gross acre or greater but less than five gross acres; three, no more than four on parcels of five gross acres or greater.
On July 11, 2024 by a 3 to 1 vote, the board of Supervisors adopted resolution 24-050, a resolution of intention directing staff to submit the before mentioned changes as a proposed amendments to the zoning plan to the Planning Commission for the Planning Commission’s consideration. On July 11, 2024 staff presented the proposed amendments to the Planning Commission and by a 5 to 0 vote, the Planning Commission recommended that the board deny the zone amendment. The minutes of the Planning Commission include public comment made during the hearing were included as an attachment to the board report. So the recommendation before you today is one, to conduct a public hearing, and two, either uphold the Planning Commission’s recommendation to deny the proposed amendments to the Shasta County code identified as zone amendment or Z A 24-0003. This option maintains the current ordinance allowances for intermodal shipping containers of one intermodal shipping container on parcels of one gross acre but less than five with a potential increase of up to two on parcels of one gross acre but less than five gross acres with an administrative permit; two intermodal shipping containers on lots of five gross acre or greater with a potential increase of up to four on lots of five gross acre or greater with an administrative permit, or B, this is another option, find the zone amendment 23-003 is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act, pursuant to state secret guidelines section 15061 B3, and introduce, waive the reading of, and enact an ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Shasta amending chapter 17.88 of the Shasta County code concerning the regulation of intermodal shipping containers identified as Z A 24-0003. This option would increase the number of intermodal shipping containers allowed for permanent storage on parcels as I explained previously, with no exceptions, or C, you can make modifications to the ordinance and refer the matter back to the Planning Commission in accordance with Shasta County code section 17.92 0.080 J, or consider providing alternative direction staff.
Public comment on R4 began.
(38:04) Jeff Gorder: I happen to be here at the last meeting where the board had an extensive discussion about the number of intermodal shipping containers allowed on parcels and in the furtherance of transparency. I wonder if we could learn who it is that actually sponsored this issue because it was apparent to me that Mr. Jones had an incredible amount of interest in this issue. And I think I’m probably not alone in thinking that this has to do with Mr. Jones that there’s perhaps some self dealing here. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think in the interest of transparency, let’s who brought this up and is the public clamoring for changes in this particular area. You know, the Planning Commission has spent an inordinate amount of time addressing this. They, they made a recommendation the first time around and then this board led by Mister Jones wanted to increase the number of intermodal shipping containers now it’s gone back to the Planning Commission in five and the experts in this area have thoroughly examined this and, and if again, made the conclusion that what they have recommended is correct. So I’m not sure why this is an issue that is taking so much of the board’s time. And so I’m hopeful that somebody can let us know why this was brought up, who brought it up and, and why so much time is being spent on this. And I would ask the board to follow the recommendations of the Planning Commission.
(39:42) Susan: I’ll just agree with Jeff. Why is this coming forward? Who brought it forward? What is the need? It’s just like the eminent domain. We need to hear as the public, what the need is for this. I suspect self interest. I do because based on the history of this, the majority of this board, a lot of things have been passed in self-interest. I think you should take the recommendation that you take the recommendation of the planning commission because you can always – [pause] Mr. Crye?
Supervisor Crye: Taking notes.
Susan: Oh, good. You can always get whoever wants more, can get an administrative permit to have more if they want it. But to pass a general policy like this for the entire county is not ok with me. And if I had that coming near my property. I would be extremely upset. There has to be a real need and we need to hear it as the public.
(41:07) Dawn Duckett: I’d like the record to reflect that my next door neighbor, Sue Nicholson, who came to several of the planning commission meetings on this was unable to attend. And also Elena Tupper from Palo Cedro was unable to attend due to a family emergency. And both of those individuals have given me permission to say that they agree with the comments I’m about to make. I’d like to start my comments by thanking the Planning Commission. They did an excellent and thorough job of examining this and they had three public hearings on this. They heard from a lot of the public, mostly in opposition, but they really did a fine job of balancing property owners needs and rights to have what they need on their property, like shipping containers, and balancing those needs with the aesthetic concerns of neighbors and also property value concerns and orderly development. And they really took that seriously and have thorough discussions on that. And I think that capping it at two is a reasonable alternative. Also, the board passed the original ordinance which caps it at two in April. The county has not received not one application, not even for one cargo container. I think that right there shows that there isn’t an overwhelming need. There was a lady that spoke that has a horse sanctuary and said that she needed four on her property. However, there are administrative remedies available to those folks. And it doesn’t make sense to rezone the entire territories of Shasta County based on the need of one or two people. It just defies orderly development. And again, I’d love to at least give props to the planning commissioners. I spoke at several of their meetings and they really exhibited the thoughtfulness and statesmanship and interested in listening to the feedback from the public. Thank you very much and also I encourage you to stick with their recommendation. Thank you.
(43:41) Delores Lucero: For the record, I don’t think you’re writing notes. Kevin, I think you’re texting and it’s pretty rude because we could see who you’re texting. So, you’re not the type who cares what people say to write notes. But for Patrick Jones to bring this item back up and it is Patrick Jones. Let’s face it. It’s Patrick Jones. The only person who’s interested in having more of these stinking boxes is gonna be a sore eye, you know, for everybody, but Patrick Jones is actually the person. It’s pretty sad that you guys are not willing to put the information, why and who and what’s the reason you’re putting this item and you’re not giving any answer to the voters. You are just excluding all the voters, the rights for them to know because you think you guys are above the law, like always, you think you’re above the law that, that people don’t need to know as long as you do what you want. And that’s what you’ve been doing for so long. It’s so pathetic. I’m so sick of corruption. Corruption is just unbelievable how bad it is when it comes to you three, because you three are just on top of everything, whatever you want before you go out, before you lose your position. But Patrick Jones is pretty pathetic that people know who you are already and what you want. You’ll do anything to get what you want. It doesn’t matter what the people want. It was always about what you wanted from the day you were sat, you took office in the city council. That’s all you want. It’s what these to do whatever you want in your shooting range. It has to do with the shooting range. These stupid containers are gonna cause so many problems for people to have because eventually they’re gonna have, you’re gonna find out there’s gonna be probably doing drugs in those things, you know, putting stuff in them that you’re not gonna even know. You’re not gonna even know to have a right to go in there and look at them because you guys pass these stupid things to for the people to say oh yeah, it’s for the people. No, there’s nobody is asking for these, it’s you, it’s you Patrick. It’s all about you. You guys don’t care about people. You never cared about anybody. Remember when you told me you’re gonna do whatever it takes to get what you want and you’ll do it and that’s what you’ve been doing. It’s all about you.
The board brought R4 back for discussion.
(46:13) Supervisor Jones: So, I’ve already publicly said that I brought this forward. So Jeff and Delores and anybody else, if you did not understand that, yes, I brought this forward and publicly stated that. So you just, you probably needed to pay a little more closer attention to that. Now, I’ve had many people contact me over several years about this issue and so it wasn’t one person or two people. It was probably at least five or six people. Then I took the time to start driving around the county and take a look and see how many that you see that’s out there and there is a lot and we’re not talking about the cities of Anderson or Redding or Shasta Lake. We’re talking about the unincorporated areas of Shasta County and it has created problems for other people. I see when people have a half acre lot that they should have the ability to have a container on their property if they have a larger piece of property. I don’t see any reason why they can’t and I don’t think government needs to tell them what they can do on their property and, or not, concerning a limited number of containers and we’re not stocked and there are conditions these that they had to be at the back of the property. They have to be painted in neutral color. They can’t be stacked, they can’t be lived in, they’re just simply for storage, which is what hundreds of people are already doing right now in the unincorporated areas of the county. This would simply make it legal.
(47:41) Supervisor Kelstrom: I talked during the campaign before I was even elected about this issue here and I mentioned that I had a neighbor, probably 10 years ago now, eight years ago, who was ran off his childhood home because he started getting fined for having two storage containers on his property. No one in the neighborhood complained. No one and not a single neighbor cared. They weren’t unsightly. They were neat and orderly. He kept his equipment in there so it wouldn’t get stolen, much cheaper than building a shop or a shed. And again, nobody complained. They were not unsightly. Everybody in the entire area had no problem with him whatsoever. And he started getting fined by code enforcement again. This is several years ago and finally threatened to lien his house and he just gave up and put his house up for sale and moved out of his childhood home. So, you know, the lady from the horse sanctuary that came in here and spoke during this, is a perfect example. I mean, this lady, you know, was thinking of moving out of the area because she has no way to store her stuff. She’s been ripped off, the secure, safe way to store stuff in his shipping container and they weren’t allowed and she thanked us for, for bringing this to our attention. I had a constituent up in Shingletown that reached out to me. His neighbor had weaponized code enforcement. He had two storage containers in the back of his property. They you could barely see him. You know, again, nobody complained except his neighbor and him were having a little spat. So his neighbor went ahead and weaponized code enforcement and they started, you know, going to fine him for these containers. So these containers, they’re not going to be stacked on top of each other. They’re not going to be in, you know, 10 of them in a neighborhood. I mean, I think that we’re making a mountain out of a mole hill personally.
(49:22) Supervisor Garman: While I understand there’s been nobody taking advantage of this program, which is a little odd. I thought we would get with more response with this. I really truly did, but it seems like we’re not. So I think we spent a lot of time in this already. We probably didn’t need to. I’m going to make a motion to uphold the Planning Commission’s recommendation to deny the proposed amendments to Shasta County code identified as ZA 24-0003.
Supervisor Rickert: I’ll second that.
(49:51) Supervisor Rickert: Yeah, I wanted to share with everyone. I don’t have an overhead projector, but this is what a shipping container transition in for use at a gun range looks like. And I think this is probably what we have in mind here in Shasta County. I don’t know if this is going to be a problem in a lot of different areas, but I just want people to see that this is what you’re looking at. And so I think there are special waivers, special situations as Mr. Hellman and Mr. Fieseler explained at our last discussion and I think will be continue to be a real problem for land values if people have these next door to them and they want to sell their home and it may be harder to market their home if they have some neighbor – in the appraisal world, it’s called hazards and detriments. It would be listed as a hazard and detriment to have two or three or four shipping containers next door. So with that, I think we need to listen to our planning commissioners. They are the experts in the field. They represent the five of us and they are saying, absolutely no. I talked to my planning commissioner about this at great length and they are adamantly opposed to this. So I think we need to listen to them and I am in opposition of this.
(51:11) Supervisor Jones: So again, misconceptions by Supervisor Rickert, there will be no shipping containers on my shooting range. So if you’re implying that, you would be wrong, plus this has to do with residential properties, not commercial properties. So again, you’re giving out misinformation.
(51:26) After discussion with Adam Fieseler, Supervisor Crye made a motion to amend the half acre to an acre to be a 20 foot standard one trip shipping container as opposed to the 40. The motion passed on a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Jones, Crye, and Kelstrom voting yes.
(56:57) PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD – OPEN TIME
During the Public Comment Open Time period, the public may address the Board on any matter not listed on the agenda that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors or on any agenda item listed on the Consent Calendar. Each speaker is allocated three minutes to speak. Those wishing to participate in Public Comment – Open Time must submit a speaker request card to the Clerk of the Board before the meeting begins. All speaker request cards submitted after the meeting begins, and any public comment not heard by the 12:00 p.m. recess, will be heard once all Regular Calendar items on the agenda have been considered by the Board, and before the Board’s consideration of the Consent Calendar.
(56:57) Supervisor Crye: We have pushing 40 cards and I am going to take a supervisor, so here’s what I want to do as it relates to public comment and I do, I have considered actually what Supervisor Garman did say about, let’s just always make it two minutes and I do want the ability and any chair going forward has this ability going forward as well to set the time as they see fit. I did have a constituent stopped me in the hall and she said, hey, if it’s going to be cut down because it will be two minutes today. So, what I will do is if you’ve prepared something and you want to be skipped and brought back, I’ll put you at the bottom of the stack. So you’ve got plenty of time to amend or change what you’d like to say. So if you feel like you’re not ready public comment will be two minutes.
(58:03) David Halligan: I want to talk about the letter investigation that came out last week. You hired Ellis Investigation to do the investigation. What I didn’t understand is it was really only covered one subject and that was, did Mr. Jones improperly fail to disclose the January 29, 24 letter. I don’t get that. Everybody in this room knows he did. Everybody out here does, everybody on television knows he did. I mean listen to his 5/7 statement. [Plays recording] “All right. So we’re not, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s unfortunate, but I did share the letter with Chair Crye. So if you, if you think I didn’t share the letter, your, you would be wrong. I shared it with chair cry. In fact, I asked him if, did you receive the letter? And he said, I don’t know. So I made sure that he had a copy of the letter.” So that was 5/7 and he and Mr. Jones said he went over it with Mr. Crye, gave him the letter. Kevin’s twice denied that, that he ever received the letter. What I don’t understand is the documents that were submitted, six of them, a couple of emails from Dave Rickert. I gave a copy of what I submitted to the Board of Supervisors back on June 19. I gave a copy to Mr. Larmour this morning. He said he hadn’t seen it. I sent it to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors. “Please find below a timeline of information that is relevant to the evidence in the upcoming investigation of the letter dated 1/29. Do not destroy a delete this email of communication that would be destruction or deletion of evidence. You will be required to share this email with the investigator regarding your knowledge and your possession of this email. When asked for any and all communications”. Didn’t happen. Could it help the investigator out? I don’t think it was right. I think you guys did not turn the information over that you should have. It wasn’t interesting, Mr. Crye, that you had your own lawyer in the office. The only one that had its lawyer present. I wonder if you were worried about self-[cut off]
(1:00:07) Rick: Thank you Jesus for this beautiful day. First, I’d like to say during the interview process for a new ROV, we had the man that was selected Tom Toller. He said right here at this lectern ,yeah, he said local election confidence is low due to lack of transparency, lack of transparency. And how are we gonna get that back? Are we gonna get it back by not having a projector for us to use? Are we gonna get it back by cutting public speaking time? Are we going to get the transparency back by telling other members who to vote for, for the elected, supposed to be elected,. ROV, the selected person that was selected was by you, Kevin Crye. You selected the person by pressuring other members. And I find that to be absolutely against transparency. I think that’s dictatorship is what it’s called. The 34 time convicted felon doesn’t engage in cryptographic schemes. Not that I’ve seen. The 34 time convicted felon doesn’t engage in anonymous billionaire angel donors kept anonymous like Zuckerberg, which he’s admitting today. He doesn’t engage in that. The 34 time convicted felon is who I’m going to be voting for because he’s the most transparent person in our entire government right now. And I find it absurd that you guys are going the direction you are. We need local transparency in our elections and somebody needs to start standing up for it.
(1:02:05) Linda: Good morning everybody. This is what I could be doing. This is my profession and my love. However, since I heard in a court case that there are 700 more ballots than people that voted, I am presenting this following information. I’ll try to do my best and then maybe come back. The question is hand counting has been used for 238 years. About 10 years ago, an independent contractor for the CIA, I’m not mentioning his name, invented the Hammer and Scorecard program. This program is, has an app, it’s called Scorecard. The Hammer part is the computer cyber accessible part. It was supposed to be used for our US enemies. However, because some of the bureaucrats are communist leaning, they gave the source code to the CCP bankers. Those bankers have the holdings of all the finances in China. This, however, he kept the identifier. So I do have a copy of the whole thing. The bribed politicians in every state have access. Dominion Hart which we switched to also use the same program. Bribed politicians chosen by big bankers use this. We are not fighting Democrat Republican. We should not be divided. We need to be against the international – [cut off]
(1:04:27) Alisa: Let’s work together to ensure fair and secure elections. It shouldn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. We are all Americans and we should want integrity and transparency in our elections. The state has made our elections much less secure by instituting blanket mailing of ballots to everyone on the voter rolls. The current system has allowed dead people, illegal aliens and ineligible voters to be on the rolls and receive ballots. The ballots that are out there can be used by people who want to cheat in our elections. We should not be using electronic poll pads because they are connected to the internet and can be accessed. We should be using only paper poll books. The vote should be hand counted at the precinct and the numbers should match with those that have signed in to vote. We have able-bodied citizens ready and willing to hand count and election code 15 270 outlines the method to do so. We should not be relying on machines made in China to count votes. These tabulating machines are able to connect to the internet and can be hacked or preprogrammed to flip votes. To those who say that election fraud cases were brought to court and were thrown out for lack of evidence, that is not true. The judges would not hear the case or the evidence and rule that the plaintiffs lack standing. Right here in our county in the Hobbs versus Long contest, Judge Baker did not allow the county’s ballot tracking data into evidence that showed there was a discrepancy of 167 more votes cast than voters who voted. This was very unfair and the case dismissal should be overturned on appeal. I’m praying that you will agree to stand up for election integrity and implement hand counting, hand counting in our county. Thank you.
(1:06:22) Linda: Good morning. My first time. I’m a little bit nervous but I’m excited. I’m new to this. And so I just for today, I want to say that I am in standing in agreement and joining these courageous men and women that come here to speak week after week, month after month, fighting for us to have fairness and transparency in our voting system. I pray for you, courage to fight for us also, I want my vote to count. Thank you.
(1:07:22) Ron Pember: My name is Ron Pember. I’ve written out a little thing here that I’m gonna read to you. We need transparent and fair elections. It’s our right to vote and have our vote counted accurately as guaranteed in the US as a US citizen. This is the first right acknowledged and promised in the original United States constitution. So, you and excuse me, you as the board of supervisors may canvass all election returns. Canvass is defined, defined as public process and processing and tallying of all ballots received in an election. So we need to hand counted paper ballots as no one can observe the actual tally of a ballot by a machine as we as citizens don’t have the code that the people who are in charge of the voting machines like the Dominion machines and, and whatever. So again, we need hand counting of ballots and you as a board of supervisors have should have Thomas Toller, I guess his name is, to have those ballots out. And we need to have the people be able to go in the office and physically watch what’s going on with the ballots being counted and not being not have somebody stand in the way or looking at them through a little peephole in the window. This is just not according to the constitution and this is backed up by millions of veterans, starting with our founding fathers who put their lives on the line and this is why I’m standing here because [cut off]
(1:09:34) Carl: I’m here on behalf of election integrity. I believe that we should have hand count. I think that we shouldn’t have the electronic poll- .
[Voices from audience]
Supervisor Crye: Hey ho hold on, hold on one second. Just give us, oh, Ben. Do you need someone to come in? Hey, stop, stop Ben. Do you need someone to come in? [Angry voices] Who said that? Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Let’s just please. Is there a nurse here by any chance? Right? So, ok, we’re gonna go ahead and take a five minute recess if you can be respectful and just be very quiet, please.
(1:10:53) Supervisor Crye: All right, we’re coming back from recess. We’re picking up with Carl. He’s got 1:23 left.
(1:11:13) Carl: Well, first of all, I’d like to just say a prayer for Jenny and her husband Ben, just shortly that Lord, we just come before you, Lord, we just pray for Jenny and Ben. Now I just pray now that whatever has come upon her today, Lord, that you would give her peace, Lord, that you would just ease whatever suffering she’s going through. And Lord, I just also pray for Ben that he’d be comforted also. And we just thank you for that in Jesus precious name. Amen. So to continue on, I want to talk about an election integrity. I do support hand count. The reason for it is when we think about chain of custody, I work in the polls. Swan and I have volunteered for the last three years. There’s a protocol in which we go through. And what concerns me is when we actually drop off the ballots in the alleyway behind the ROV that the minute they go in chain of custody is lost because whoever handles them and when they go through the machine, we no longer have our hands upon it. So I would hope that we would be able to change that, that we’d be able to initiate hand count and we’d have a ballot verification before anything is verified in this county. So thank you very much for your time.
(1:12:28) Swan: I appreciate being able to talk. So what I want to talk about also is selection integrity. And I know there been a lot of good comments here already and I would say that I agree with that. So I think that in this high tech world, it’s disingenuous to believe that the machines could not be, are not hooked up and cannot be monitored or altered. Rather if that was true that they are not hooked up to the internet, then how can news agency report real time data? So again, one more um point here, there is credible evidence that the data has been manipulated in many cases. So to restore confidence in fair and transparent elections, we must make changes and we simply cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results because we would not be able to trust the outcome. Maybe some people would but the majority I believe would not. So what can we realistically do now with the time that we have left for the upcoming election, we must have 100 per cent hand count at the precinct, but we could do that in conjunction with the machines. If we cannot change the process right now, there are plenty of people who are willing to count and we must reconcile those numbers with the machines and in any business that is done. So you can trust the data. We also need to not use electronic electronic poll pads, but return to paper poll pads and those books rather. And that can be done immediately. And this is at least one way we can begin to restore confidence. And I guess the biggest question is are we willing and courageous enough to take that move now? So I’m asking respectfully that you listen.
(1:14:30) Patty Plumb: As a disclaimer I want to make sure everyone knows that I’m not coming to you as a commissioner for the election commission. I am speaking as a citizen of Shasta County and Mary Rickert’s constituent for district three. I want to affirm and praise you for your efforts to strengthen and support our county to rise up against the state’s overreach and unconstitutional control. On April 23, our Sheriff Johnson did a presentation on his trip to Southern California to the border in November 2023 with sheriffs from Siskiyou County and also Yuba County. As an example, this is what we want, more of what he shared that day and your cooperation with him to protect our county is what we want more of. We have the authority as a county to be able to stand up against the overreach of the state and our sheriff has more authority than he realizes and we want to back him in that, in that effort. Another example is passing the proposal to to become a charter county. Thank you for that. Also the importance of the eminent domain. I didn’t realize how important this was. But that night on Tuesday evening, I was on a statewide county chair call throughout the state, 47 counties and without it being provoked or me even asking, all these other counties were rising up with information about the importance of protecting our property from eminent domain. So this may not have been active in the past, but it’s certainly something that’s currently a concern and going forward, we know that the government is becoming even more aggressive. So to have this amendment attached to our county charter is very important. So, thank you for that. The goal at the same time is for us as a county to stand up against the overreach in our elections. And there’s so much I want to say about that. But what I will tell you is that there is a code California 19207 that says any city or county ordinance shall govern voting systems and list the other provisions of law is deemed consistent with the division. Therefore, the county laws and ordinances supersede any state laws in regard to the voting systems. We need to go back to one day voting, paper in the pre [cut off]
(1:16:55) Bruce Russell: Good morning board. On consent item C 18, I really like the idea of requiring board approval of any travel of a lame duck supervisor during the last three months of the supervisor’s term. It is doubtful that end of term supervisor travel will be of much benefit to the county and would be a waste of money. So please approve for the upcoming November election. I have some comments. It’s critically important that our local election be as transparent as fair as possible. Preferably, we would hand count all the ballots and dump the proprietary software of our black box voting equipment. The county needs to do all it can to reduce the risk of fraudulent voting in this critical election. The board should also ask for an election status update from ROV Toller. The update should include status to where the election’s office stands on cleaning up the voter rolls. I personally requested the ROV in early June to review some 670 active voters that I provided because their listed address is outside of Shasta County. In the last election, we learned that the required 1% manual hand count audit can be expanded to account all ballots in an election. Like was done for the Crye recall election item and was partially done for the district two race. At a minimum I’d like to see the board and the and or the ROV to require the 1% audit manual count be expanded for the November election to include a full hand recount of all close election races. I would suggest using a 5% winning margin to be considered as a close race. If problems are discovered, the manual counting should be expanded to cover more of the races. But of course, I’d still prefer a hand recount of all races. If you were paying attention, you know this election will determine whether we remain a free people. The choice is crystal clear. Americans can go down the path of communism with Kamala Harris or Americans can embrace Trump and the MAGA agenda and work to fully restore our constitutional republic. So please do all you can to preserve our freedom [cut off].
(1:19:06) Terry Rapoza: One thing I think we’ve neglected to see is the doctrine of lesser magistrate. And in a nutshell, what that says is if the state is doing something that we believe is unconstitutional as a county, we have the jurisdiction to not follow it. I’m surprised this, this counsel hasn’t passed a resolution of some sort to follow constitutionally only protected and constitutional positions rather than following a position of policy or following a position of mandate. The 10th amendment clearly explains how that works. And remember that the doctrine of lesser magistrate is what we based our declaration of independence on. You have that power, the idea or the thought process that you don’t have the power to do and create an ordinance is protected by the California Constitution article 11. So I’m at a loss here on what’s going on with this hand count thing. We got rid of one machine for another machine. Everyone that’s talking about a hand count is totally constitutionally protected and nobody has to worry about going to jail. No one has to worry about going to prison. The position that we have right now is that we don’t understand the 10th amendment. And that is that anything not delegated, which means we have ownership of a lower power, can’t delegate to a higher power. Only a higher power can delegate to a lower power. It also states that everything that’s not delegated is reserved to the States or the people, not and the people, we, the people want hand counting period[cut off]
(1:20:55) Christian Gardinier: So I’ve added it up so far. We’ve got 15, 6, no, I’m sorry, 16 county employees and they’re not making a whole lot of money, but they’re making some serious money. The rent of this facility. our two security guards. We are spending probably today on a item that is completely out of your jurisdiction. Period. We are spending probably up to $2500 and add that up over three years. This is not even close to your jurisdiction. Jones know this when he and Hobbs tried to circumvent the vote of the American people by getting this board not to certify the elections which you have no power to do. This board has no power about the elections period, zero zip. Now, if you want to go to the election commission meeting, all of this is where this is supposed to take place. In the meantime, you’re flushing money down the toilet. All for basically for a lie, called the big lie, to try and help a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist become president. It’s, it’s pathetic. Now, Jones is affiliated with national organizations. The plot is to use Shasta County. Right. The spearhead, the one that’s going to turn elections over, as a way to clog certification of the vote by the Secretary of State. This, you guys are, are well, Supervisor Crye. They’re calling you a treasonous because you won’t fight back the communist. But this thing is a joke. It’s out of the jurisdiction of the board. You have wasted three years. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars plus the cost of voting machines for your big lie.
(1:23:07) Elizabeth: I just want to say that I do absolutely agree with hand counting and they should be done. It should be done at the precincts. I’ve worked at the precincts and there’s just a lot of standing around. I realized that they can’t count till the end. But, you know, you could give a little bit more money to those precinct people and those ballots could be actually counted there. Also get rid of those poll pads. You have to do ID. I know for a fact that my son received three ballots on this last election. One went to his old address which was forwarded to his new address. He got one at his new address and I got one for him. So that’s three ballots. So obviously the, you know, the roller, the things are not cleaned up because you have three addresses just for my son. So I am absolutely, I disagree with Christian, I think, I believe and I know this is in your, you know, area that you can absolutely clean this up for us as the people. And we really do need to clean up the voter rolls as well as voter id and hand count.
(1:24:49) Thomas: Appreciate the opportunity of being here. You guys are in a special position, three people here, a very special position. You, you can be leaders, you can get back to basics of being Americans the right to vote and the right to have your vote counted. And Mr. Crye put Mr. Toller in a position. I mean, it’s, he’s on your shoulders. And so far I’ve seen, I don’t see any tendency to want to change from change, from the lack of the last time. And that’s why most of us are here. We, we want change, we want our votes to be counted. I wanna make sure your vote is counted and I went down on my own. And I’ve seen our votes weren’t counted and you guys can do it. There’s been all them. You see that big board, she’s got, those are all the rules. You don’t have to do a lot of research in there. The counties are in charge. We do not need those machines, all that money. Somebody’s making money on the machines. We can vote at the precinct, we can vote at the precincts, we can [voices from audience]
Supervisor Crye: Show some patience.
Thomas: Well, just shut the fuck up.
Supervisor Crye: Hey guys, please, you know, you know,
Thomas: Number eight here it says the chair may order removal now show some and get that character out of here.
(1:26:33) Tessa: Good morning. My name is Tessa Borquez. I am owner and operator of Alacrity Destination Services and I am here today on behalf of the upstate California Film Commission and I just wanted to go over their Q two report I provided the report but this quarter, the film commission has hosted 15 projects which included six commercials, two episodic television, one documentary, one student film, two shorts and three features. Combined, the productions have reported 67 shoot days, seven permits were issued, 108 locals were hired, 40 room nights were actualized and had an estimated economic impact of $554,000. In addition to the hosted productions this quarter, the film office responded to 32 inquiries. We also had the privilege of hosting 11 professionals, industry professionals on this year’s FAM tour and highlights spanned Shasta, Tehama, and Siskiyou counties. As the FLICS presidents, our film commissioner Sabrina Jurisich had the wonderful opportunity to connect with filmmakers at one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals in Cannes this March in partnership with film USA and during the event, she hosted many networking events and participated in the panel Explore America’s Film Frontier with the USA Film Commissioner. This spring, we also celebrated Miracle Mile’s screening which filmed almost entirely in Shasta County, and the Golden Ghosts, which filmed in Shasta, Tehama and Siskiyou counties. We are celebrating the Film Shasta’s 10 year anniversary on Friday, October 11 at Riverfront Playhouse. And we are proud :that the film commission has continued to bring work to locals as well as inspiring unifying and uplifting this community.
(1:28:30) Laurie Bridgeford: I just wanna say this, that the two minutes is a, is a bit of a hardship, especially with this incident. This medical thing that just happened. I’m also like everyone else wanting to send good wishes and prayers to Jenny and whatever her situation is and she completely recovers today. I plan to talk about the next pandemic scandemic in the works. We have the bird flu, the, the mpox or monkey pox, the vaccines have been ordered. The insurance companies already have their CPT codes. I would like to have our HHS, public health and anybody else. proto get with the public meeting live Q and A, a forum, a town hall or something. Because these are already in the, in the works. I listen to Jon Knight at the Mountain Top Media Do a, do a, I don’t know, 34 to 40 minute thing. I’m all over on alternative media constantly because the regular fake news suppresses and censors. So we’re in trouble. The, the FEMA camps COVID-19 was supposed to really scare everyone into compliance and obedience. It didn’t work here in Shasta County did it. Where’s Karen Ramstrom? I kind of don’t care. She had to move on. She was just a script reading order following parrot. Sad to say. So I absolutely am convinced Mary you might want to listen as a rancher, this, this PCR test. They, they all they have to do is say, hey, your cow uh failed this test. So we’re gonna take your whole herd. We’re gonna close your business. We’re gonna take six miles away, seven miles away. We think it’s spreading aerosol droplets. Look at what happened to the sky yesterday. Our sky was shredded with aerosol dispersions. Bio weapon labs. We have 400 FEMA camps have been put in place. We were supposed to be locked down for two or three years. And apparently it’s hard for me to get this. But if, if Trump absolutely had to play the game of putting out the tweets saying it’s not that fatal, it’s not mandated and all the rest, they want two or three years of lockdown crushing the middle class, crushing everything. So when they take our food supply, we’re screwed and they’re burning up factories. If you just pay attention a tiny bit, focus a little bit. They are going to go first. Seriously.
(1:30:38) Larry S: Personally, I think we have pretty fair elections throughout the history of the United States voting system that we have may not be perfect. And yes, there have been instances of fraud. But I think what we find is that the little bit of fraud that we experience from time to time really doesn’t change the outcome of a, of an election, maybe a few votes here and there. It’s funny that most of the national cases that I’ve read about in terms of voter fraud that was actually adjudicated in court had to do with Republican perpetrating voter fraud. I really want to urge the board to not be quite so obviously MAGA. We’ve got a cult of personality and if it hadn’t been for the fact that Donald Trump didn’t win the last election, we wouldn’t really be having these conversations. He perpetrated the big lie and it filtered on down all the way to Shasta County and we’ve had an uproar about our election systems ever since. Now when you have a man like Donald Trump who makes a statement, I’ll only be a dictator for day one. And that’s like offering Donald Trump one potato chip and Christians vote for me this time because I’ll have the situation so fixed by the next time you won’t need to vote. Those two phrases put together are scary to me along with Project 2025 which intends to dismantle the administrative state of, of America and basically institute a constitutional monarchy by putting all of the power in the executive and then reestablished white Christian nationalism.[cut off]
Jeff Gorder. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(1:32:49) Jeff Gorder: So I think we all know the county is losing many good leaders. The latest example being Paul Hellman and I believe a lot of this has to do with the lack of ethical leadership at the top, specifically with regard to Mr. Jones and Mr. Crye. And I think the handling of the attorney general’s letter is just the latest example. I mean, we recall how much time and effort was spent on the Zogg Fire settlement resulting in a five page letter sent to the AG in which the board accused the DA of having a moral conundrum and perhaps violating government code 1090. The closing of the letter indicated the SCBOS thanks you for your attention to this quote, critically important matter, the quote, the SCBOS looks forward to your response. Well, apparently you didn’t look too forward to the response because when the response came in and it went to Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones did basically nothing with the letter other than tell Crye about it. Mr. Jones apparently is saying, well, there’s no rule that requires that I save the letter or publish the letter. So as far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any obligation to disclose this letter to the public. Mr. Crye becomes aware of the letter and apparently says, well, the letter is not addressed to me. The letter was addressed to Mr. Jones as the chairman. So I don’t have anything to do with it. Come on folks, you’ve got to ask what is the right thing to do, Mr. Jones? You ever asked that question? How about it, Mr. Crye, when you’re at the Ninja gym? What’s the right thing to do guys? The right thing to do would have been to disclose the letter, ok. And, and, and don’t give me this garbage that you didn’t know that it hadn’t been disclosed. You know, Jones, you thought somebody else got it. There was no CC on the letter. Why not disclose it? You know, do unto others as you would have them, do unto you.
(1:34:57) Susan: Well, to your surprise, Kevin, I’d like to thank you for what you did. The last meeting when you said you, you were starting a forum with the attorney with the DA and the police chief and the course to try to figure out how we can get the court processes going along. That’s the kind of leadership I’d like to say, thank you for, I think that’s good. I want to talk about the lack of, of, I want to talk about the letter. Jeff already said a lot, but no matter what that letter from the LS legal team said you two did not come forward and let the public know you’d even receive the letter. And to me that is lying. That’s lying. And it’s not OK. You knew the public was waiting to hear about that and for you two to keep it away from even the other supervisors is totally unacceptable. I’ve never seen such a, a way of handling this in my life and I’ve been to a lot of meetings, a lot of board meetings, but that was totally unacceptable. And I think, you know that I also want to talk about the loss of people we have in this, in this county. The loss of history, the loss of people are flooding, every time I come, there’s a new director that’s leaving, Paul Hellman this week at last. You know, every time there’s a new director flooding out of here. Now, the Redding police just sent out a thing about what they’re doing about their strategic planning. And this is right off their website that they direction, they want to have direction, cohesion, leadership, focusing on mental health and safety. And they want to work on department staffing, recruitment and retention, conducting interviews of departing staff and use input to assist in the retention process. Now, I know the top leadership are not going to give you true information about why they’re leaving, the directors. But how about an anonymous survey among everybody? So we can find out why people are leaving here in droves.
Lee Clark. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(1:37:02) Lee Clark: Yeah, this is a supplement, treason or not. We started in January about indebtedness, guaranteed public debt. 14th amendment, section four. Mr. Larmour got suckered into this later on in the thing. You’re for the constitution, you claim to be conservatives, you’re not, you might fool most of the people who are simple, manipulate with mass formation, psychosis or convenience. Oh, I want this, I want that, you know, in the Marine Corps what I learned most of all? You can’t have your rights if you don’t protect others. First, the Zogg Fire thing. Sorry, Mr. Jones. Friends is friends, but honor is different. You shouldn’t have destroyed the document. It proves the conspiracy with the DA over the Zogg Fire and the attorney general based on what I told you guys about treason is penal code. My jury agreed bad. Boom. My jury agreed treason. Penal code 1252. It says pass the buck when things are quote adverse the state. So now now you’re violating Grimson. So we have to cram 10 pounds of poop or two pound bags. Sorry ladies, this is conspiracy people. 18 US C section 2384 opposed by force the authority thereof, including your conspiracy with your public defenders and giving them contracts. Article one of the constitution imper obligation of contracts where the public defender is misrepresenting me with the HHS fraud. Dr frauds. This is a conspiracy, whether you’re wanting it done and everything else, you’re involving yourself, especially with neglect. You should be prosecuted for crimes. Enough’s enough.
(1:39:09) Dawn Duckett: I understand item C18 is being pulled but I may not be here for the consent agenda. So I just wanted to speak briefly on that item. C18 are amendments to the personnel rules. Mr. Crye, you’re going to be surprised that I agree with most of the amendments. On their face they all appear to be good for Shasta County. You’re going to hear some conspiracy theories. But if we take out who the board majority is right now, who the travel requirement for board members at the end of their terms is directed at, it’s a fiscally conservative thing to have checks and balances in place for a board travel at the end of the term. And I, and I tend to agree with that. I am not saying that Tim Garman shouldn’t go to his conference, but I do agree that there should be checks and balances. And speaking of checks and balances, I may have missed it in the policy but I would like to see some checks and balances for elected officials for international travel. I did notice that the CEO signing off on out of state travel was removed. But I do think I have faith and trust in Nolda Short’s office to examine every travel claim, but I do think that the policy should not be silent to that. And I would also just briefly like to say that I agree with Jeff Gorder. Let’s make a vow to do better with transparency. And when in doubt, disclose it to the public, I know the Ellis report said that nothing improper was done but it was wrong and it, the public had a right to that information and you all know that. Try to do better.
(1:41:10) Bill Gilbert: Hi, I’m Bill Gilbert and I’m not likely to shut up anytime soon. I received this Mary Rickert political flyer in the mail. She claims that she’s securing our water future. She must have an in with Mother nature because if I get enough rain I have water. If there’s not rain, I’m screwed. A safe community she says, well, except the Big Bend Road, it’s been washed out for eight years. Mary, there’s a 50 foot drop off that’s especially dangerous in the winter and especially dangerous to your snow plow driver and public safety people who, who may drive faster than some others. When is that road gonna get fixed? I’ll bet it won’t be, you won’t be here for that. Oh, and a transparent government. Shasta County hired a convicted forger thief and two time drunk driver named Amy Andrews, made her a hearing officer where I caught her with a forged document cheating a poor minority child. What kind of scumbag cheats a poor child? Apparently you and your buddies, Mary. Then your criminal scumbag waited three days, went home, got drunk and called the cops with the impossible story. I assaulted her. Impossible is the word your security guard used when he heard her story because he was 10 feet away and she’s being assaulted, but she doesn’t call for a security guard. Then if I assaulted her, somebody in that room would have seen it was full of employees of this county and other people beholden to this county. Not one witness. Your shyster lawyer, Adam Pressman, told the court I would have brought witnesses, but Mr. Gilbert would have called them liars. The truth is there were no witnesses and he slandered me. I hope he would be a county counsel, but he knew better.
(1:43:12) Supervisor Rickert: Mr. Gilbert, Troy, the Director of Public Works is right behind you. He can explain to you exactly the timeline of the Big Bend Road.
(1:43:27) Nick Gardner: I’d like to say, I like this new format with all the department speaking before public comment. That makes me stay here and I’m realizing a lot more that’s what’s going on than before when I’d leave right after comment. So, thank you. You know, Christian’s talked about flushing money down the toilet. I’d like to ask Mary, where’s Eric? Where’s Eric Magrini? We kind of flushing money down the toilet by still having him on the payroll, aren’t we? And I see where you, you voted to create a position for him and gave him a $32,000 raise. Maybe you could tell us where Eric is. Do you have any idea? And, I’d, I’d like to mention that, you know, when, the people overwhelmingly passed a two term limit, you justify running for a third term, whether it’s legal or not, it’s not morally right. And then we’ve got Jeff coming up here and whining about a letter that was written six months ago. Why don’t these people come up with some solutions to what’s going on right now instead of whining about what happened and Susan comes up here and accuses you guys of lying. Well, I can think back when they started the recall and it was based on lies, either that or they just didn’t pay attention in school and they, they can’t count. And then you’re talking about eminent domain and things that haven’t happened. Thank God the writers of our constitution could foresee what could have come up and, and passed laws to alleviate those problems.
(1:45:13) Jim Burnett: I was happy to see that Mark Zuckerberg wrote a mea culpa to Jim Jordan yesterday about the content moderation that Facebook did and content moderation is a euphemism for knuckling under to the strong arm tactics of the Biden administration when it came to information regarding COVID-19 and all the attendant policies that they were trying to push on us. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t the only example of government collusion with social media because certainly the political realm is, was not exempt from that. And so, it was again, it was good to see that Zuckerberg says he believes the pressure was wrong from the government and he regrets that he was not more outspoken about it. And then he further stated that he wanted to address the contributions that he made during the last presidential cycle. What we called the, the Zucker Bucks. He said they were designed to be nonpartisan and he knows that some people believe they benefited one party over the other. But he understands that wasn’t the case. So he doesn’t plan on making any more similar contributions to this cycle. So that brings to mind that the big government and the big powers that be. And now it’s the, the Democratic Party that’s in control has an enormous amount of sway over where the money goes. A lot of this money goes to registrars of voters throughout the land. So everything that the money that money comes into Shasta County was skewed, I believe to the left end of the spectrum that was not uh in, in keeping with every vote should count. What happened was every vote, every illegal vote seemed to count more than regular votes.
(1:47:27) Leslie Sawyer: So I would actually ask during consent that you guys also pull C8 and look at that one. It’s to approve a retroactive renewal agreement with SCOE for the amount of $1.5 million that’s a big amount of money, it’s retroactive. So, since it wasn’t like approved ahead of time, probably doesn’t hurt to look at it and ask questions before rubber stamping that one. What I would like you to do is ask SCOE for a complete documentation look at what program is being implemented or has been implemented. I think the doctor that you had come, come and speak, Kevin, has a really good program for Aces that actually.it actually looks at Aces and finds out solutions for it rather than just more SEL junk that uses Aces as a way to get money in but doesn’t actually address this is the issue of, sorry, I just choked. So, I would say that or work with Dr. ,Mu find a similar program to that guy’s program or even Mr. Brown has really good programs on Aces, So I would just look at what program you’re retroactively approving because 1.5 is kind of a big, big number. And then in my last 30 seconds, I think Tom Toller is doing a great job. So thank you for that. And I think after November we’ll see him do more and thank you to the people who take the courage and time to get up here and speak. I know that’s really hard and I’m really sorry to our guests to do that and show up and take that time to come up here and nervously speak with people who never learned how to not talk when it’s not their turn in kindergarten.
Delores Lucero. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(1:49:25) Delores Lucero: Kevin Crye. You’re a dictator. You continue to dictate everybody. You continue to take everybody’s rights. There’s so much corruption in the schools, in the city council, in the courts, in Shasta County Board of Supervisor, there’s fraud in the election. You know why there’s fraud because you guys are creating fraud by allowing people to, who should not be qualified to run for a board of supervisor like Mr. Corky Harmon who actually has a conflict of interest and yes, the conflict of interest. I’ve been saying it but the FBI takes a long time for them to process this because there’s so much involved. So if you think that the FBI is gonna come in here and just do, do their job to come in here within three months, it doesn’t work that way. So those who constantly talking crap on the, on the radio about me, maybe you need to do more homework and make, get smart enough to know what the heck is going on. But I’m so sick about your corruption. Kevin Crye, you continue to mislead the people A a and by because now on C 18, I’m gonna go into a different thing. C18, you’re trying to dictate the what Mr. Tim Garman wants to do. You’re, you’re not his boss, you’re not his boss. We are your boss and for you to try to put the C 18 to pass this to dictate what, how much he can spend or what he can do or anybody else can do, you can’t do that because now you’re violating the people’s rights, the people’s rights who he represents or anybody who represents. So you go ahead and do that violate his rights, including the people’s rights. So just so you guys are aware, I’m also, I filed multiple complaints with the Secretary of State to have Corky removed from, from running against Mary because there is a multiple conflict of interest. So because you guys file, you actually approve contracts and over a million dollars for Corky when he first ran in the primary since, since he’s going to November
Therefore, it makes it a conflict of interest because you already approved it. So therefore you better watch out corruption.
Mary Williams. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(1:51:40) Mary Williams: My name is Mary Williams. I served Shasta County for seven years until I resigned last year as Deputy CEO. Since my departure, I’ve not set foot in this room that meant so much to me for so long. But I’m compelled to come today, not out of frustration, but with a commitment to accountability and a sense of duty to remaining county employees that just won’t go away. Item C18 today, specifically, the updates to Chapter 22 of the personnel rules tells a story of a work environment where such specific and detailed policies are now necessary to address harassing, abusive, and retaliatory conduct and procedures must be outlined for handling of complaints against elected officials. It’s a story of a year of pressing for change and outcomes in a system that is designed to intentionally lead employees to a dead end. Historically, Shasta County did not need such explicit policies because a commitment to a safe and respectful work environment was evident in our work culture. However, I can personally attest that the current environment has necessitated spelling out what was what was once a standard way of doing business. It is unfortunate that victims had to pave the way for these policies to be considered. Tireless actions behind this scenes to make improvements should have been enough. But here we are. C18 is a reactionary measure, not a proactive one, and those of us who have been in the trenches know it as a band aid on a deeper wound. Progress is slow but it is imminent because we will not stop pushing for it. A step in the right direction will be when this board does not selectively release investigation findings only when they like the outcome. To county employees, I want you to know that I am still here. I did not simply walk away after I resigned from my position. I’ve remained engaged this entire time. Although I don’t work for this county any longer, I still live here. I’m raising a family here and I’m invested in this future and in yours. I’m on LinkedIn and on Socials. If you’d like to connect with me, even if just for a listening ear. Thank you
(1:53:46) Bev: I wanted to talk to you about the alpha draw for local races. Did you know the state draw is supposed to be used for local races and it’s not supposed to be changed? Did you know that in primary of 2022 the alpha draw law was not followed for some of us local races. Did you know that it was not followed for the 2024 primary for some local races? Did you know, did you think it is ok to violate some laws but not others? Did you know that Cathy even told us right here in the room that for, for example, sometimes her name would be on the top and sometimes Bob’s name would be on the top. That is not the only time that was said, my question is, did the machine recognize whose name was on the top? The program reads the marks not the names. Is this how she got her high percentage of how she won? And when do you ever count your own votes? Did you know some precincts have more of one party than another? Did that come into play with who was selected to be on top? Did you know that it was an oversight by the ROV office that they did not use the state alpha draw? Everything is a mistake. Do you really think the wrong alpha draw is by accident for a reason? Did you know it is proven that 1% the first person on the ballot for the race has a 3 to 5% advantage for being first. Even if not all judges know this does not require expert witness.
(1:55:56) Sharon Landon: Short and sweet. I just want to make my information known that I want, I support hand counting for the voting. So that’s what I’m here for.
(1:56:16) Laura Hobbs: I’ve described the Mesa pattern of fraud which we’re still seen in every election. The difference is that now they have poll pads, to perfect their cheat supervisors crying. Kelstrom and Jones, remember how they cheated against you, but they didn’t quite cheat enough. You managed to overcome the cheat. That’s no longer possible. Once we implemented the electronic poll books, we need to get rid of those poll books now before the election, why haven’t you put this on the agenda? Code breakers are used to unscramble enemy communications. In times of war. We have code breakers who have identified complex cryptography and voter number assignment occurring in the state voter rolls. Dr. Andrew Piquet has identified this happening in 13 states. Now it provides pockets in which to place fake voters to hide them away so that only the bad actors can identify them and reactivate them when needed. There’s no honest reason for this CIA level cryptography to be present in our voter rolls. We must dis disconnect from the state rolls. Now, this is how they perfect the cheat. They have a slush fund of fake voters and when the poll pads tell them what is needed, they can add in real time, they can get these voter rolls, activate the fake voters and then send in completed ballots that then get counted and certified, certified rather our ability to choose our representatives. That is at the very foundation of our freedom. It’s what distinguishes us from a monarchy or dictatorship or an oligarchy. The way we choose our representatives here is with black box voting machines where nobody can see the result. It’s not fair and it’s not public. There’s no accountability and there’s no transparency. If we remain. If we want to remain a free people, then we must make changes to the existing system. The time to do that is now not after this upcoming election.
(1:58:30) CONSENT CALENDAR
The following Consent Calendar items are expected to be routine and non-controversial. They may be acted upon by the Board at one time without discussion. Any Board member or staff member may request that an item be removed from the Consent Calendar for discussion and consideration. Members of the public will be provided with a single opportunity to comment on one or more items on the Consent Calendar, during Public Comment – Open Time, before the Board’s consideration of the Consent Calendar.
C8 was pulled by Supervisor Crye and C18 was pulled by Supervisors Garman and Rickert. Supervisor Rickert recused on C13 because it was brought forward by the opponent she is running against.
The remainder of the Consent Calendar passed by unanimous vote; C13 passed 4-0 with Supervisor Rickert recusing.
Kevin Crye. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(1:59:55) Supervisor Crye: I pulled C8. Quite honestly, there’s, I just would like a lot more information. So one of the things I’m gonna propose is that we approve a retroactive agreement, for six months, not one year and we’ll give it, then we can bring this back in the next month or two… So that’s the motion that I have for C8. So we have a motion by myself seconded by Supervisor Kelstrom. Is there any discussion up here? And one thing I’ll tell you about Aces and I don’t want to go, I, I had a lot of stuff here prepared for my board report. And quite honestly, I’m just not gonna go into it in depth. The thing about Aces and how they’re doing some of these assessments. The the science is, is, is way moved beyond what we’re doing as a society with educating our children. You have resilient kids and you have non resilient kids and the things that we’re doing in education right now is like 40 years late. I mean, you have kids that it’s still a very carrot and stick process and intrinsic motivation is what turns these young people’s lives around. And again, I there this is such a bigger uh conversation for me. I will be having it also with the new superintendent of schools, Mike Freeman.
(2:01:27) Supervisor Rickert: Have you, have you ever attended a training or anything on Aces?
Supervisor Crye: I had one of the world’s leaders present to us in [unintelligible] K on Omahony.
Supervisor Rickert: Yeah. Right. But I mean, because we, this, we have for years, this was started by Terry Hosler when she was the Public health director. And I talked to her about this Friday and she’s quite concerned about the fact that that Aces is coming under attack and that we need to ensure there have been so many people that have been trained on how to go out and detect that work with children on a day to day basis. And so this is important that we get contracts move forward instead of stalling it. Time is of the essence. And I think that I trust I, no, I think we need to move this forward. We need to make, get this. We’ve been doing this for years and it’s been –
(2:02:22) Supervisor Crye: I’m sorry. But when, when I hear something’s been done for years, we’ve spent billions of dollars. Here’s an example. We’ve spent billions of dollars in homelessness and, and the governor now says maybe we should have some accountability. We’ve spent billions and it hasn’t improved. It’s gotten worse. I mean, I could rattle off these stats but quite honestly, Supervisor Rickert, I don’t think, I mean, ok, I I’ll go over some, the trend shows that 200% increase in school spending from 1970 to 2010. However, academic achievement shows up as completely stagnant. There are no changes in reading math or science, increased spending is not only improved outcomes for students in 40 years, it has gone down. And so I have all the I mean, it doesn’t matter.
(2:03:00) Board discussion of ACEs funding became heated and continued for several minutes.
A substitute motion to extend the contract for six months was approved by a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Garman and Rickert voting no.
(2:10:25) C18 was brought back to the board.
(2:10:41) Supervisor Rickert: It’s going to take a long time to find the right page. The part where it talks about essentially what you’re targeting is Mr. Garman saying he can’t attend the last RCRC meeting. That was his appointment. That was he was supposed to fulfill, you know, this. And I think that’s just very punitive. He’s done a lot of work on RCRC and I find it really distasteful that you would do something to a fellow colleague, to a fellow board member.
Supervisor Crye: Thank you.
Supervisor Rickert: I am not finished. Chapter 22. I, I think there’s a lot of things where and I’ve got so many, I’ve marked it up a lot. Would you like me to come back to you? And so you can find it? Yeah,
Tim Garman. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(2:11:46) Supervisor Garman: The first thing I want to bring up it is the page 412 A not section 20.2. First of all, I have just to be clear, I have no plans to travel in the last three months of my term this year. However, if something comes up and I need to travel, I will absolutely travel and I will absolutely turn in a receipt. I have every right to work for the people of this county. You’re talking three months. This has never been a problem. Again, you guys are trying to create problems where none are, you’re putting stuff time into something that doesn’t need to be done. It’s more dictatorship about who you want to allow to go where. I am not the one on this board who’s wasted any money. So I think this is an attack on me personally and it’s, it’s shameful on your part. Supervisor Crye. And then moving on on the abuse of conduct and retaliation. I will agree with our former interim CEO Mary Williams and she was in here. This is reactionary and it’s obviously needed. Where was this before? And I want to know why all of a sudden did this came out? So I don’t know who we would ask that question, but I want to know why this was redrawn. All of a sudden, there’s a lot of red lines, you guys, a lot of red lines, I can go page after page after page. So I would like some explanation as to why all of a sudden we have this policy. And I also would like to know where the protection is for the Board of Supervisors when we’re in closed session. We’re being called liars and other things. We’re at the point of where is any other job? The way some of us are treated, that person would be fired. And Monica and personnel, you know what I’m talking about. Anybody who gets mistreated and they file a complaint at some point, you’re going to take some action. Unfortunately, we don’t have that recourse on this board and it’s wrong and we need it. So I’m asking for your help.
(2:13:34) Supervisor Rickert: And I also, there’s so many things when I read this the other night I just went, oh my gosh, we could, we could actually kind of have a whole meeting called just to go over this chapter 22. First of all, I want to agree with Supervisor Garman that there’s no protection for those of us in closed session. There’s no accountability and anything can be said in closed session that anybody wants to say and there’s no personal responsibility, no accountability, everybody just gets. And so I find it very hypocritical that we have a whole chapter on how to not discriminate, not to harass, not to be abusive. And yet it’s happening at the very highest level in this county and it has to stop, it has to stop. This also says, I mean, there’s, there’s so much in the for any of you who’ve read this chapter. There’s so much in here that, I mean, it was amazing. I, I admire Mary Williams for coming forward to speaking her part. You have no idea what has been going on in this county. You have no idea that the employees that have been retaliated against and harassed and it’s got to stop. We’re losing people all the time as a result of this. It’s, it’s, we are the laughing stock of the state of California. I have people that tell me that they have relatives in other counties that watch our board meetings for entertainment. This is reprehensible. This is not a gestapo state anymore. It’s got to stop and I am sick and tired of people being abused, of us losing talent and institutional knowledge that we will never be able to replace and I am tired of it. When will Shasta County come to the realization that what’s happening right now in Shasta County is going to take decades to ever recover from and that’s all there is to it. It talks about the policy is also intended to prohibit treating a county client or customer in a discriminatory harassing or abusive manner. This happens at this Dais on a regular basis when we have people come up with public comment. So we’re gonna have plenty of words on a piece of paper. But are those words going to have any meaning whatsoever? Are these people gonna continue to abuse speakers I have been called every, I’ve been threatened with my life from that, from people standing there other than the license plates, I never really got upset. Nobody go after my license plate. But the fact of the matter is this has got to stop. We have got to return to civility and decorum in this county or we will never recover. We will never be able to attract qualified people to come here to work and it’s got to stop. We, we are losing physicians. We’re losing veterinarians, we’re losing lawyers. We’re losing business people and I have people complain to me about that all the time. It has got to stop.
(2:17:04) Supervisor Jones: Well, I don’t know, I don’t know what planet Supervisor Rickert’s from right at this second. [Boos from audience] We are attracting [Boos]
Supervisor Crye: Nobody interrupted Supervisor Rickert:
Supervisor Jones: Yeah, fine, to be honest, we are attracting very good competent people. I am very, I’m very happy. It’s, it’s disappointing that Supervisor Rickert is unhappy with Shasta County. I’m very proud of Shasta County. I’m proud of the direction that it’s gone. And frankly, and frankly, for Mary Williams to come in here to try to school us as to what she did with the CTCL is inexcusable. [Continued noise from audience]
Supervisor Crye: Supervisor Jones. Please. Supervisor Ricker spoke uninterrupted. Please. Please. Please let super. Hey, let Supervisor Jones finish. Let Supervisor Jones finish.
Patrick Jones. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
Supervisor Jones: Mary Williams is not a county employee any longer. I asked her – quiet, quiet. I asked her on multiple occasions, did the counter proposal for the Centers for Tech and Civic Life contract get approved and she told me no, an outright lie, outright lie. I’m very proud of Shasta County. I’m proud of the people that are coming here and I’m proud of our employees that are doing a good job. Change was needed. Change has happened. That’s what this board represents. At least the majority is change. Some people don’t accept that change. I am sorry for that, but change is happening in a good way and I’m proud of Shasta County.
(2:18:56) Supervisor Garman: Monica, I’m going to ask you this this here question again. Was this policy change, is it, is it due to the retaliation that’s happened over the last year plus? Is that why we’re making these changes? Because I know this retaliation stuff seems to be happening on an ongoing basis. I found out last week when an employee got a hold of me who was just let go and they basically said it was retaliation and when is this going to stop? And is was this, I guess the question I ask you is this policy created because of the retaliation we’ve been facing.
Monica Fugitt: So no, the, the policy updates weren’t in response to the retaliation or alleged retaliation or harassment. California law outlines abusive conduct and that was not covered in the existing policy, the policy only covered harassment discrimination. So we needed to add abusive conduct to the conduct that is not lawful that we would investigate if it was reported to us. So that’s what these changes are intended to do is to align with the law.
(2:19:54) Supervisor Garman: Ok. How long did it take to, to put all these changes on paper here?
Monica Fugitt: We’ve been working on this since probably about January and we also met and conferred with UPEC General on these changes and provided copies of these policies also to the other unions as well.
Supervisor Garman: I guess the question I have is, is like Supervisor Rickert said, that this could take a whole meeting just to go over these changes. It’s a lot of changes just to be put on a C item for a consent calendar. I think that we should have more time to go through all these changes and all that. So I I don’t know if this is an urgent matter it needs to be dealt with today or if we have some time, we can come back at a further time and agenda. Is this and go over it in more detail. Do we have time to do that?
Monica Fugitt: Well, obviously it’s up to the board, what the board direction is. But for us, there are some changes in the personnel rules that we are interested in having made effective as soon as possible. So if this was to be pushed, my request would be that it would be the balance of the changes would be approved excluding that chapter.
Supervisor Garman: Then I’ll make a motion that we approve except for the, except for section 20.2 A .
Supervisor Rickert: And I’ll second that.
(2:21:12) Supervisor Rickert: And Monica, why do you know is there any protection for, a supervisor in or anyone actually in closed session? Why is closed session not addressed in this?
Monica Fugitt: So I’m going to have to defer to county counsel on you know, because that’s in closed session. Those, those conversations cannot be made public.
Supervisor Rickert: But, but I would think that there would at least be some verbiage in the the rules that covers it.
Supervisor Jones: Director Fugate, is there anything in this that has changed for supervisors like Supervisor Garman and Supervisor Rickert using profanity from the dais? Is that covered in here or not? Can they continue to do that or is that, is that, is there a section here that’s covering that?
Monica Fugitt: I couldn’t speak to a specific section. But there is, there is various sections in here that talk about verbal, remaining professional keeping positive verbal language.
Supervisor Garman: I just want to clarify, Monica, you mention that you’re going to ask the counsel about closed session conversations, whatever is on our agenda. Counsel can correct me here. Whatever is on our agenda is protected under the Brown Act. We cannot talk about it. Any other conversations like when Supervisor Crye calls somebody a liar in closed session can absolutely be brought to the public as long as it’s not referring to the item on the calendar and I plan on bringing these forward from here on out.
(02:22:52) Supervisor Crye: Yeah. And, and Supervisor Garman, when I call you a liar, I think you should, I think you should bring that out of closed session.
Yeah, there we go.
County Counsel Joseph Larmour. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
(2:23:22) Counsel Larmour: So I just wanted to try to save Monica here a little bit. The reality is as elected officials, you guys are not employees which means you aren’t subject to discipline by any county staff. Ultimately, the only way for you to react and enforce any rules is for you to agendize the matter and, and put it on and take a vote on it. Unfortunately, as members of the board, you have to police yourselves. There’s, there’s really nothing within the county code that allows any other county officer to take action against a board member. So adding the, the sections to the code would, would be grounds for a censure um to have those sort of discussions. But unfortunately, you, you guys are in charge of that.
(2:24:11) Supervisor Rickert: Yeah, I just wanted to say so. So as long as the board majority can vote not to disclose findings of investigations and can continue to treat anybody any way that they want, wish to in closed session, it will never come to the public for the public to be aware of that because they will protect themselves.
Supervisor Crye: I would absolutely want any of that stuff in closed session because, you know, I mean, you know, as well as I do the stuff that I’ve, that I’ve had to just shut my mouth and keep buried now for 20 months. And, you know, Mary and Supervisor Garman, the day of reckoning is coming and, and, and it’s gonna be great because you guys know, and that’s what’s funny is you start to see people coming forward and talking and it’s gonna be glorious when everybody is let in to know what has gone on in this building just in the time that I’ve been here. All right. Supervisor Richard,
(2:25:01) Supervisor Rickert: I think you interrupted me again. I just, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to follow up with that one. That was, that’s –
Supervisor Crye: well, you’re going to have to figure it out how to follow it up because it’s going to be pretty good information. It’s on the, it’s on everybody’s laying the ground work, but it’s OK, because the truth will come out and it will set us all free.
Supervisor Rickert: The truth will come out.
Public comment on C18 began.
(2:27:42) Jeff Gorder: So, you know, I, I agree this is retaliatory against Supervisor Garman and it, it’s just totally unnecessary. But you know, as I understand it then if, if Mister Garman had a, if he was running for election in November. He couldn’t take any travel in the last quarter of his first term. Is that, is that correct? I mean, you take a look at that, we’d, we’d have to have a vote of the people in somebody’s last term in order for him to take travel. I mean, this has never been an issue before. And then down below, you allow, as I understand it, you allow department heads and elected officers to travel out of state as necessary without any prior approval of the county executive office. So, so a department head could travel five days out of state to Nevada without any approval whatsoever. No checks and balances correct me if I’m wrong and then a an elected official could travel anywhere out of state without any oversight whatsoever. You know, I, I just don’t see the logic in that, you know, I think there, if you’re going to have checks and balances on, on Mr. Garman, you should have checks and balances on department heads, you should have checks and balances on other county elected officers like yourself. I mean, why shouldn’t somebody have looked at at Crye’s trip back to Mike Lindell and decide whether that was appropriate or not? And yeah, you paid for it, but you only paid for it after there was a public outcry. So don’t come out with that righteous BS about you paid for it.
(2:29:29) Delores Lucero: You didn’t pay for it because I have the documents. Actually, the public pay for it. The citizens did. So for you to say you pay for it, that’s wrong. And that’s actually a lie. Really a lie. So you’re a liar and for you to try to dictate Tim Garman’s for him to wherever he needs to go or anybody, you are not the boss of the board of supervisors. There’s five of you that means there’s five districts for them to represent. Everybody has the right. So now you’re gonna dictate their right and dictate Mary or anybody you don’t like. You’re a Hitler, you’re just like a Hitler’s because the Hitler’s, you try to be nice and then when he gets what he wants, he pulls the rug under the feet. So for you to violate Tim Garman’s right to go where he needs to go, you’re violating the people’s right? And for you, Chris, you also go along with this bullshit. You know that you go along with this and you’re supposed to be what? Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re Patrick Jones little sidekick because that’s what you are. You, whatever you guys vote, you guys talk about it, you talk about it. It’s shameful. You should be ashamed of yourself. How can you do that? Just because you don’t like Tim, you have to be so vicious. It’s so disgusting, don’t you? See, we see you and we have to come up here and be the, we have to come up here and tell you what you’re doing wrong. You think we want to come up here and get up every morning, get ready so we could come over here and bitch about everything. You do. You think we enjoy it? I don’t but I have to because you guys work for us. Somebody makes, needs to put you, make you accountable. We have to hold you to your feet, to the fire is bullshit. How can you do that? You’re violating his district. You know that he, you’re, you’re allowing Kevin Crye to violate his district. The people that you guys are supposed to represent as five as a one whole, not individual God. Oh my gosh. Are you kidding me?
(2:31:34) Supervisor Crye: Yeah. And I, and I, I do want to clarify the just, just to make it abundantly clear. So when I asked about my travel, at the very, very beginning, I was told it had to be paid that way. So when I came back, I donated actually the amount it cost, which was like 1300 bucks and more to Shasta Youth Options because I couldn’t reimburse the county because Nolda Short said I couldn’t. So I just made a donation. So anyway, go ahead.
(2:31:59) Leslie Sawyer: I think the only thing that’s important that needs to be pointed out is Monica pointed out. These changes are based off of law, not proposed retaliation. That’s it, but it’s off of law. And people are leaving because when the truth comes out, that’s what happens.
The board voted to pass C18 5-0.
(2:32:43) Supervisor Garman: I’ll go ahead and vote yes on this. Although I don’t agree with the one part, it is important to get these changes done that Monica works so hard to put together.
(2:33:00) Supervisor Rickert: And I’m going to vote yes with the disclaimer that there are things I do not agree with in spite of it, but we do need to get these in place sooner rather than later so that perhaps some of our board members can improve.
(2:33:09) Supervisor Crye: Are we, are we still under board discussion at this time? Counsel Larmour? Because I’m because I’m super like, I’m puzzled. I’m puzzled that Supervisor Garman and Rickert made such a big deal and they vote yes. Anyway, like I, I, I’m just, I’m curious because I, I’m not gonna ask in the parking lot or in closed session. So, could you, could you please under, can you please help me understand the, Supervisor Rickert, how you go on and on for like seven minutes about why it’s all wrong. [Yelling from audience] Hey, I’m talking, I would just like, because this, this is, this is what you want. You want it to be public, nothing in closed session. So please articulate for me per I mean, I, I’m just curious, I’m not questioning it. I’m just trying to understand it.
Supervisor Rickert: Did you just not go on for quite an extensive amount of time over the Aces vote?
(2:33:54) Supervisor Crye: And I voted how I felt.
Supervisor Rickert: But you talked about it extensively
Supervisor Crye: Ad nauseum, but that’s I was passionate and then I followed my vote up with it and I’m curious.
(2:34:06) Supervisor Garman: We can actually go ahead and talk about previous items. I’ll talk about the Aces score. You don’t care about kids, we’re talking about – [Garman and Crye talk over each other]
Counsel Larmour: The discussion should stop.
County Administrative Office
C1 Take the following actions: (1) Approve an agreement with the Law Office of Aaron Williams, Inc., for adult felony indigent defense services; (2) approve an amendment to the agreement with the Law Office of Aaron Williams, Inc., for conflict indigent defense services which temporarily modifies the conflict defense services specific to adult felony cases during the term of the adult felony defense services agreement; and (3) approve a budget amendment transferring
appropriations in the Public Defender Budget (BU 207).
No Additional General Fund Impact
4/5 Vote
C2 Approve a retroactive evergreen agreement with SHIELD Regional Training Center for non-exclusive use of 44,000 square feet of space located at 4300 Caterpillar Road, Redding, for public safety training purposes, membership dues,
and participation.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Auditor-Controller
C3 Receive the annual report of shortages relieved by the Auditor-Controller.
General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C4 Approve an evergreen agreement with CentralSquare Technologies, LLC, for annual finance system subscription services and professional services.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Board of Supervisors
C5 Adopt a proclamation which designates August 31, 2024, as “International Overdose Awareness Day” in Shasta County (Sponsored by Supervisor Rickert).
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Clerk of the Board
C6 Approve the minutes of the meeting held on August 13, 2024, as submitted.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Health and Human Services Agency-Behavioral Health and Social Services
C7 Approve a retroactive amendment to the agreement with Restpadd, Inc., for inpatient psychiatric mental health services which increases the daily rate and maximum compensation.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C8 Approve a retroactive renewal agreement with Shasta County Office of Education (SCOE) in the amount of $1,568,169 for the Community Connect Program to aid in the reduction and prevention of Adverse Childhood Experiences and designate signing authority to the CEO, or their designee, for budgetary amendments.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C9 Approve an agreement with Clinical Buddy, Inc., for clinical trainings.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C10 Approve a retroactive amendment to the agreement with Crestwood Behavioral Health, Inc., for residential mental health treatment services which increases rates and maximum compensation.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Health and Human Services Agency-Public Health
C11 Approve a retroactive agreement with Clinisys, Inc., for Laboratory Information Management System software licenses.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Probation
C12 Approve a retroactive revenue agreement with Superior Court of California for
pretrial release program services.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Public Works
C13 As introduced on August 13, 2024, enact “An Ordinance of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Shasta Establishing Requirements for Road Acceptance and Maintenance.”
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C14 Approve an amendment to the agreement with Morrison Structures, Inc., for engineering services for the “Spring Creek Road at Fall River Bridge Replacement Project,” Contract No. 705920, which increases rates and maximum compensation.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C15 Approve a retroactive amendment to the agreement with Nichols-Melburg & Rossetto, AIA & Associates, Inc., for architectural and engineering services for the “VSO Move to 1880 Shasta Street Project,” Contract No. 610601, which modifies the terms, and approve budget amendments which increase appropriations and revenue by $1,500,000 in the Land Buildings and Improvements (LB&I) Budget (BU 166), increase appropriations and revenue by $1,500,000 in the Miscellaneous General Budget (BU 173), and increase appropriations by $1,020,000 offset by use of Restricted Fund Balance in the Accumulated Capital Outlay Budget (BU 161).
General Fund Impact
4/5 Vote
C16 Award Request for Quote (RFQ) 24-25 to, and approve a contract with, Power Up Electric for generator installation, maintenance, repair, and rental services.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Sheriff
C17 Approve a retroactive Memorandum of Agreement with the County of Butte for mutual aid in connection with the Thompson Fire.
General Fund Savings
Simple Majority Vote
Support Services
C18 Adopt a resolution which amends the Shasta County Personnel Rules to make necessary adjustments to certain language and maintain compliance with state and federal laws.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C19 Adopt a Salary Resolution, effective September 8, 2024, which amends the Shasta County Position Allocation List to add 1.0 FTE Captain position in the Sheriff’s budget and approve a budget amendment increasing appropriations by $254,942 in the Sheriff’s Office budget (BU 235) offset with the use of Reserves for Contingency (BU 900).
General Fund Impact
4/5 Vote
REGULAR CALENDAR, CONTINUED
(2:34:56) CLOSED SESSION ANNOUNCEMENT
The Board of Supervisors will recess to a Closed Session to discuss the following item (estimated 15 minutes):
R5 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE APPOINTMENT
(Government Code section 54957(b)(1)):
Title: Director of Resource Management
At the conclusion of the Closed Session, reportable action, if any, will be reported in Open Session.
REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS
There was no reportable action.
(2:35:12) ADJOURN
