The regularly scheduled weekly Tuesday morning meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors was called to order at 9:01 a.m. on September 24, 2024. The complete video and agenda are available here. Timestamps are in parentheses.
(1:42) Supervisor Crye announced that item C8 was pulled for discussion and R6 was pulled to be placed on a later agenda.
CALL TO ORDER
(2:12) The invocation was conducted by Pastor Stephen Webb, Harvest Free Will Baptist Church. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Supervisor Crye.
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
(3:38) R1 Present a certificate of recognition to Valerie Ibarra, Agency Staff Services Analyst-Confidential, for her lifesaving actions on September 3, 2024.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
(4:31) Sheriff Michael Johnson: So I want to share with you a powerful story about one of our employees that exemplifies the need for awareness, quick reaction and teamwork. It’s truly life saving and heroic efforts by our Shasta County employee on this fateful day or could have been a fateful day for another employee. And that other employee, the victim, the rescued employee asked to be remain anonymous. So I will not be referring to that employee by name or in any sort of way. But our hero, Valerie Ibarra, is definitely going to be mentioned and recognized here today because what she did was extraordinary.
On September 3, 2024 approximately 1:45 p.m. one of our Shasta County employees was enjoying their lunch up in the office on the third floor there and a simple moment of lunch and nourishment quickly turned into what could have been a tragedy and was definitely a life-threatening situation. This employee found themselves with a piece of food lodged in their throat and quickly their airway was restricted and panic started to set in. In that moment this employee realized that most of the coworkers were not in the building and out on training or lunch or otherwise not available. The employee was unable to speak obviously because the airway was restricted and started to really go into a moment of panic, of what of what do I do, how am I gonna get help?
So, this employee just started banging on the walls and making as much noise as they could to attract anyone’s attention that might be in the building. And thankfully, this worked and we had three of our employees come to this employee’s aide. The three employees are Valerie Ibarra, Marcy Winstead and Stewart Buettell. They all three came rushing to this employee’s aid and quickly surrounded her and Valerie in particular, with her efforts and realizing that this other employee was in fact choking, stepped in immediately. So what you should know about this when we learned about this, is the part that’s really significant, that got to the point where this choking employee was feeling pins and needles, getting the shrinking vision and blurred-ness and feeling like they were gonna collapse. And when you get to that point, if you’ve ever been in any type of life-threatening personal health situation, you know that’s not good. That’s the end is coming quick and you’re gonna pass out. So Valerie recognizing what was going on, stepped in without hesitation, gave her the first thrust of Heimlich maneuver. It failed. But Valerie knowing her CPR and what needs to be done quickly administered a second more forceful thrust, dislodging the food from this employee’s throat and essentially saving her life. Heroic effort for sure. [Applause from audience.]
And Valerie, you deserve every bit of that standing ovation. I even brought in some of the paramedics and stuff to support you because they heard of what was going on and they wanted to be here too. This all goes to show the need for everybody to know your basic first aid and basic life saving efforts as Valerie did. Without that, this other employee may or may not be here today or may have at least, at the very least suffered irreparable brain damage or other health issues due to that. So, Valerie, your intervention is goes without saying, is just heroic. We’re super proud of you. The sheriff’s office upon hearing of this incident, We we recognize life saving efforts and within our organization and in public safety as well. But when we hear about something like this within our own broader organization, we want to make sure it’s recognized too. So let us honor Valerie today. We have a plaque for her and I, I think she or the board would like to say a few words to you as well. Valerie, congratulations.
There was one public commenter on R1.
(10:22) Monique Welin: My name is Monique Welin and I have been in here for nine years speaking every Tuesday. What an amazing thing that sheriff just honored you with. Everybody in this room has ever saved a life. raise your hand. That girl. Awesome. Thank you so much for what you did. Thank you for being there sometimes in life when you’re born, you don’t know why you’re born until the moment you live it and you lived it. Thank you for being there and thank you for seeing something and doing something, man. That was huge and I love you, Stephanie.
(11:06) Supervisor Rickert: I just wanna say again, thank you Valerie. I was there shortly right after it all happened and I shook for hours afterwards. It was such a scary moment in that office. So I just wanna say thank you from the bottom of my heart because the person’s life you saved is an extremely special person and we would never want to lose her.
(11:27) Supervisor Garman: I can’t speak any greater words that have been spoken already, but I just want to say thank you. You know, not everybody has the courage to step up in hose moments if you’ve ever come across an accident saying or this or that not everybody is willing to stop and take action needs to be done to save a life. You did so thank you so much.
(11:49) Supervisor Kelstrom: Yeah, Valerie, we’ve all thought you were pretty amazing anyways as it goes along, but this is icing on the cake. So thank you so much. You’re awesome.
(11:59) Supervisor Jones: I just want to know if she knows CPR too because that could come in handy around this place. Congratulations. Great job. You know, not everybody could do that. You did that and saved a life. So, congratulations.
(12:14) Supervisor Crye: Yeah. Well, if you’ve had Valerie’s salsa, you would know it’s important that she knows first aid and CPR because that’s what I thought happened. I thought she brought salsa in and somebody just, like, started to aspirate but, and some of you that have had it, know what I’m talking about. She goes, oh, it’s not spicy. Right.
R1 passed on a unanimous vote.
(14:10) R2 Take the following actions: (1) Receive an update from the County Executive Officer on County issues; (2) consider written requests from Supervisors-Elect Allen Long and Matt Plummer to attend the 2024 California State Association of Counties (CSAC) Annual Conference and New Supervisor Institute as authorized by Ordinance No. SCC 2012-10; (3) approve a letter of opposition to Assembly Bill 2642 which updates existing anti-intimidation laws; and (4) consider action on specific legislation related to Shasta County’s legislative platform and receive Supervisors’ reports on countywide issues.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
CEO David Rickert
(14:18) CEO Dave Rickert: First and foremost, a special thank you to Valerie for your life saving efforts and the service to your fellow coworkers. So thank you, Valerie.
On to an update for county and state issues. Last week, Chairman Crye and I attended the Rural County Representatives of California, commonly known as RCRC meeting and in the administrative officers portion of that conference, I shared the recent letter passed by our Board of Supervisors seeking an income tax deduction for fire insurance. The letter was well received by other representatives in the attendance and Chairman Crye will be sponsoring a presentation on fire insurance from the senior policy advocate for RCRC at a later date. In an effort to maximize our ability to assist county residents, I also advocated at the meeting for lesser restrictions on the future opioid settlements coming to the county. The RCRC conference was well attended with numerous opportunities to communicate with our counterparts throughout the state.
Onto our legislative update. On September 22, AB 2561 was signed into law by Governor Newsom. This bill requires a presentation each fiscal year regarding recruitment and retention policies and efforts during the budget process. The requirements are fairly vague and we will be reaching out to get additional requirements on this additional administrative burden passed by the state. As you recall, Shasta County Board of Supervisors oppose this bill on March 26, 2024.
Update on county issues. We received notice that our last FEMA COVID reimbursement of $1.3 million was approved for payment. The total reimbursement received will be 3.2 million dollars. We’re excited and appreciate staff’s efforts to collect this money coming to the county. This concludes my report.
District 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.
(16:21) Supervisor Mary Rickert, District 3: I attended the law library meeting. We had discussion on putting a clinic for the public in a few months. And what the law library does is that it’s a library, it’s located in the Health and Human Services building on the other side of the DA’s office. And so if people want to do some research, if they have a legal issue, they have the opportunity to go to that office and do legal research. But we’re talking about having perhaps a group of lawyers put on some kind of a seminar or something so that people can come and have people ask questions.
Attended the agritourism meeting. We’re still working on completing the document. Attended the League of Women Voters Forum in Shasta Lake City a couple of weeks ago. Attended a SHARC meeting, the Shasta Health Assessment Redesign Collaborative. I did a radio interview on KKRN. Attended the annual Cattleman’s picnic at Anderson River Park. For any of those in the ag community, take this time to honor the passing of a very dear friend of mine of over 50 years. Her husband and she owned the Shasta Livestock auction yard, name is Betty Peak. And she’s, for those of us in the ag industry, all know the family, the Peak family very, very well and they’re held in the highest of regard in this community. Been extremely supportive of a lot of youth activities, et cetera. So it’s been a real sad moment in our circle of friends in the ag community.
Attended the annual Shasta Land Trust event. They basically every year do kind of a annual gathering there at their facility along the Sacramento River, beautiful evening and it was great to see so many people supporting preserving the legacy of agricultural lands and open space in Shasta County. They have conserved over 61,000 acres in this county so far. And they’re well on the way to increasing that number. We have a couple of projects that we’re working on ourselves to help get those properties conserved in the Fall River Valley.
I was invited to an SEIU picnic in Burney and attended there and gave a talk. Attended the Republican Women’s Forum luncheon. I was interviewed by Jefferson Public Radio, attended the Shasta County Republican Central Committee event and I met with Larry Olmstead from United Way and Callie Brisbane, and I’ve invited them to do a presentation about a new program that they’re bringing forward, basically trying to engage community members and bringing the community closer together and working together. And then Saturday night, attended the Lassen Park Foundation Foundation dinner at the McConnell Foundation and it’s a fundraiser. Got to see a lot of good friends and I sat next to a newly elected supervisor for Tehama County. So he’s reached out to me and we’re going to continue communicating as we’re neighboring counties and he just wants to be able to, when he has a question or something, wants to be able to talk to me. So, anyway, all in all a very busy couple of weeks and look forward to the next couple of weeks too. So I got a lot on my calendar.
District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom
(20:02) Supervisor Chris Kelstrom, District 5: So after the Tuesday meeting on September 10, I attended the Cottonwood Community Center meeting and then the next night I attended the Chamber of Commerce meeting. So shout out to Captain Fernandez. He was one of the law enforcement officers was there. The crowd was a little unruly after the cruise being shut down because of the letter that the Chamber of Commerce had sent to Anderson, Redding Sheriff’s Department and the CHP. So Captain Fernandez handled himself like he always does. I mean, with grace and dignity and, you know, answering questions. He was awesome. So calmed the crowd down a little bit. Then I attended a planning Commission meeting on September 12 and then on September 14, I didn’t have my two breakfasts this time. I had the VFW breakfast in Anderson and then Shingletown had a 50 anniversary to celebrate the volunteer fire department up there. So and then I also attended the cattleman’s barbecue in Anderson River Park with Supervisor Rickert and Chairman Crye and Sheriff Johnson.
September 15, Sunday, I attended Our Hero’s Dreams open house. They bought a property up out of Oak Run. It’s a great veteran support group. They take some of the younger veterans say out of Afghanistan or Iraq and they’ll sit around a campfire with, you know, some Vietnam vets, you know, and these young guys that have some PTSD and some issues going on, they’ll be, you know, saying you guys don’t understand, you don’t know what I’ve been through and, you know, they have the old salty veteran from, Vietnam there. And yeah, I do know what you’re going through. I know exactly what you’re going through. So it’s a great program. Justin Bond leads it up. They’ve got a great piece of property. They’re gonna build a bunch of cabins on it. They’ve got a big house there now. They’re putting in a pond. It’s a amazing facility. So Our Hero’s Dreams, look them up online. They they do some great work.
And on September 17 I attended, I went to City Hall to get out the vote. I met a lot of great people there. Then September 18, I attended the fiftieth anniversary of the WIC program, women and infants and Children. They had their open house there on, I believe it was Hartnell. And then I went to the Chamber Mixer, the Shasta County Chamber of Commerce Mixer out at Norms in Palo Cedro. September 19 I attended the Anderson City Council candidate forum, sat next to my predecessor, Les Baugh in the crowd. His wife is one of the candidates that’s running for her seat back.
Let’s see. Then I did the Classics for a Cause and Sheriff Johnson, I so regret missing your email. So, they take children with, you know, horrific diseases and a lot of them terminal and the kids are the car show judges, they get to pick the car, you know, and they get to ride in their car. And we had one young man who’s pretty sick and he had wanted to be a sheriff’s deputy, he wanted to be in law enforcement. So the gal that puts it on reached out to Molly Roberts and asked, is there any way we could get him a ride in a police car? So our sheriff’s department went above and beyond there. They not only got him the ride in the police car but they swore him in as an officer and they got him a uniform. So, yeah, it was if you guys haven’t been there you’d have to go there because it is just absolutely heartwarming. I told Molly it should be a crime to make a 6 ft nine guy tear up, you know, when she pulls in with this little kid. But it was awesome. And then the people line, they have a golden carpet, not a red carpet, they have a golden carpet and people line it with paparazzi photos and they take pictures and they cheer the kids and have them sign autographs. It’s quite an event. It’s very awesome. So Classics for a Cause, look it up next year and make sure you’re there.
And let’s see, I had a meeting yesterday with Supervisor Jones and a nonprofit homeless advocate, talked about her program. It seems to be working and looks like, you know, some good work is done there. And then I had an impromptu interview with a young lady that’s here tonight or today. And then I just wanted to make a couple of announcements. So West Valley did get to receive their Golden Pathway grant. It’s $200,000 for the construction trade class. And West Valley football team is traveling to Texas this weekend. They’re going to be practicing at TCU and they’re going to be playing at Texas school down there. So, and their homecoming parade is in downtown Cottonwood October 11 at 3:30. Anderson’s homecoming parade is the week before in downtown Anderson on the fourth and that concludes my report.
District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones
(24:41) Supervisor Patrick Jones, District 2: I too was on the radio a few times these last couple of weeks and then along with Supervisor Kelstrom, I brought him on to talk with Christina Cage with No Boundaries and I’m gonna be talking with a variety of different organizations over this next month or two that advocate for the homeless and have successful programs. For me, what’s important coming up is this opioid settlement and the funds and using them correctly. I think it’s going to be very important. It’s a substantial amount of money. So I want to talk to people that are in the trenches that know the problem, understand the problem and have demonstrated that they have had success with this very difficult group of individuals and Christina Cage, she has No Boundaries. If you’re not familiar with her two programs, one of the hotels she has is across from Hinkel’s and the other one is across from Der Wienerschnitzel and two successful programs getting people off the streets that are homeless, that even sex offenders, she takes pretty much anybody, and has a high success rate of getting them back into society functioning. And there are other programs too and I’ll be bringing those up. And I have talked with Chair Crye and I think Chair Crye is possibly going to do just a special meeting just to have a variety of these organizations come, not only for our benefit, but for the community’s benefit to let the community know what we’re doing, what’s happening with regards to the homeless population, who has had success. and also how much money, you know, where the funding is coming from as a county funding, city funding, state funding so forth. There’s lots of different funding avenues there. So I brought Supervisor Kelstrom on that because I know it’s not his favorite subject. And it’s, it’s, but it’s important to all the supervisors or the sake of the county. And I know it’s very important to Supervisor Crye because a lot of the stuff that happens is going to be within district one. So a shout out to Christina Cage.
Yesterday, the election commission, I’ve only missed one of those and they had, I think probably the most important thing that they made a recommendation to the board, is consider assigning two or few commissioners to take a look at issues surrounding the electronic poll pads and the emergency operation preparedness plan, which is required by the state. And that’s why I’m glad that they took that up and they’ll be making that recommendation to the board and I hope we accept that.
In addition, I went to a Redding Area Bus Authority. I’m on that committee a few changes coming up, John Andoh is doing a very good job trying to get creative. As you know, the Redding Area Bus Authority continues to see loss of ridership so we’re trying to do a variety of different things to increase riders. We’re going to be doing some band pools and some other smaller units that or demand on response that you can call. There is an app now that pretty much will work almost throughout the entire country, but here in Redding as well where you can plan and get your route and plan for multiple days or weeks in advance. So, Redding Area Bus Authority attempting to try to get ridership up, which you know, since the pandemic, it has been dropping. And when I served on Redding City Council, it was better then, the ridership was better, but it’s been you know, over time, it’s continuing to drop and we’d like to see that improved. But John’s on that.
Attended get out the vote for those with handicaps. Chair Crye, you were there, Supervisor Kelstrom, I saw you there as well. And so that was a fun meeting, got to see a lot of people.
And then lastly Chair, I’m gonna make a motion that we bring this back if I can get support from the board. And I’ve been on the radio a couple of times now talking about this particular incident hat that happened as you know, in 2022 there was an investigation within for the DA. There was a whistleblower that had came forward and stated that campaigning was going on in the DA’s office. We have since learned now that in that 2022 season of the 1500 cases that the DA should have completed at least 90% of, like all the other counties in California did, she only completed 700 leaving 800 cases being dismissed. A massive issue. The investigation said there was sustained allegations but incidental. Under further review, this is not incidental. My motion is to bring back the DA to discuss what happened in the office in the season of 2022.
(29:34) Supervisor Kelstrom: I’ll second for discussion.
(29:41) Supervisor Crye: So, Counsel Larmour, is that Supervisor Jones bringing that up in his supervisor report right now. Is this something that we can discuss a little bit right now or no?
(29:48) Counsel Larmour: So the only thing you can discuss is whether you’re going to bring it back or not, not the actual issue to bring it back.
(30:41) Supervisor Rickert: I just want to ask county counsel, what jurisdiction do we have over this? I mean, I’m not sure as another elected official. It’s kind of a gray area for me. Can you clarify, please?
(30:58) Counsel Larmour: Yes. So the only control that this board has over the elected official who serves as the the prosecutor is those functions which are county functions and related to budgets, those functions that are related to prosecution are left to the attorney general.
The motion to bring this back at a future meeting was passed on a 3-2 vote with Supervisors Jones, Kelstrom, and Crye voting yes.
District 2 Supervisor Tim Garman.
(31:36) Supervision Tim Garman, District 2: I know as the sheriff is still here, I’m going to start with this one. Last week I took a flyover to look at some of the marijuana grows in Shasta County and what I saw was mind boggling. Sheriff, all I can say is thank you for your team. The whole entire MET team that’s out there working on boots on the ground, putting their lives at risk every day. And they go out, in a week prior to when I was out there, they served 34 search warrants, took out thousands and thousands of plants and we’re flying back over and they’re replanting already in the same exact locations and some of the pictures I have, you can see Shasta Lake in the background and what that tells me is these people are using such crazy chemicals and pesticides to grow. This stuff is leaching out and it’s getting into Shasta Lake. It’s getting into our water supplies. I don’t know if you guys understand this or not, but there is, there is over 300 illegal chemicals and pesticides being used in these marijuana grows. There’s one of them called carbofuran and was such a powerful pesticide that one drop can kill a 600 pound bear. And this stuff is being used. And if this stuff gets into our water supply, what are we doing? I don’t know, what are we doing? How do we stop this? And I know nobody has the real answer, but I think we need to start with maybe counsel changes and policies that will allow us to go after the property owner. Maybe allow us to cap the wells where these repeat growers are going over and over again because I was up there. These people aren’t living there. It’s not a home. It is a tent or it looks like a dump site over and over and over again. I was shocked at the amount of grows that there actually were. I’ve been on the ground with the eradication teams before and you see it but you just see it from the ground. When you see it from the air, you guys, you’ll be scared if you ever go up in the air and see what’s happening in this county. We have to do something. We have to stand behind our sheriff, we have to stand behind these people that are putting their lives at risk every single day. I don’t know how you guys go back to work and go back to the same grows over and over again. How do they not give up? I mean, it’s got to be so frustrated. I’m frustrated just after what I saw, anyway, I’ll leave that alone because I could talk all day about my frustrations with that. But sheriff, thank you for what you guys are doing in all your efforts.
So, moving on I had a meeting with the CEO and Troy Bartolomei and we talked about some of the issues we’re trying to accomplish out in Igo-Ono with the fire hydrant, which the grant is looking good. That’s not going to be completed before my term is up. I’ve had conversations with supervisor-elect Long this week. He’s going to continue that moving into the next section once he’s elected or put into office.
I had a Sierra Sacramento Valley EMS meeting. One of the things that came out of that is our ambulance times that we’ve been reporting for years have been a little bit off with SHASCOM. They were reporting them as when the call was dispatched, not when the call came in. So they’re just slightly different. We’re still ok, but just a kind of a correcting mechanism if you will in our ambulance times.
Attended a juvenile justice coordinating council meeting for Supervisor Crye. He was at RCRC. One of the things that struck me at that meeting was the ACES scores. Out of 23 juveniles that had, they’d asked these questions to, 17 out of 23 had ACES scores that range from 7 to 10. If you guys don’t know what an ACES scores is, Google it, look it up, do it yourself, give you find out what your score is. You score seven out of 10, you’re a messed up individual and our kids are messed up. OK? And what was interesting is that you look at the rest of the data that was shared. The three top categories were family violence, divorce, and physical neglect. So there’s your common problems that we’re having in with our kids.
I also attended a CCP meeting, Community Council Partnership. We barely had quorum, you guys, for that meeting. We did not have quorum earlier in the year and Supervisor Crye, thank you for letting me know about the juvenile justice meeting because I know that’s when they also struggled to get quorum as well. It’s important that we show up at our meetings and if we can’t, we do what Crye did and he asked me to show up for him. I was planning on going to RCRC but I had the Sierra Sacramento Valley meeting on a Friday no, excuse me, I had the CCP meeting and then when he asked me about following up with this one, I said, you know what, we have to be there because we had no representation at that meeting in March. So it’s like important, there’s like two meetings a month for us to show up and be there. So I appreciate the efforts with that.
District 1 Supervisor/Chair Kevin Crye
(36:45) Supervisor Kevin Crye, District 1: So I want to touch on one thing and I’m going to bounce around a little bit and I don’t, I don’t want to be combative, Supervisor Garman, but when you say about the ACEs scores and kids being messed up, that’s the [clapping in audience] please, that, that’s the issue of why ACEs is wrong because what we do is we tell kids or people in general that they’re victims, that it’s horrible, and instead of giving hope our system gaslights the kids and saying, well, you’ve got all these things against you, you got all these things against you. So kids don’t ever get a chance to raise their head up and say what I can be, they focus on all the trauma in their life and that’s why ACEs is a broken model and it has been proven out.
I’ll segue that into my work with SCOE recently. I’ve been asking for metrics and data around some of the programs. We roughly passed through 3 million give or take dollars in from HHSA from the state, HHSA to SCOE. And they were very excited about how engaged I was. But the more questions, and I call it the why shovel, in my private company, we say, why, why, why and we just drill it down to what the actual issue is. And the more questions I’ve asked it got to a point where it was like, OK, no more data because I think, challenging them about what the outcomes are and, and the quiet part was said out loud at one point where they said you get this money from the state, it’s got to be passed through to somebody. We’re the only game in town. So why not just give it to us? And I had to like replay that in my mind, like was that just said? And that’s the issue is if that is the only game in town, which I don’t know, if the metrics aren’t producing a great result then we got to find a new game. We got to find somebody else because the money we’re spending on kids is going up but there is still many issues that need to be dealt with. So I’ll just put that aside. I know Superintendent Freeman is new, newly appointed and he’s getting his bearings. I did go to the County Office of Education State of the County breakfast yesterday, I had to leave about 20 minutes early, but I was there, I got there at 7:30, it started at eight, left about quarter to nine. So I had a lot of time the first half hour before it started, talking to staff and others. And I think a lot of us want the same thing, but a lot of us sometimes get nervous about what they share publicly or privately because how it could affect their job or how it could affect their surrounding. And I just want to get to the truth on a lot of these issues I’ll be talking about today. I’ve had multiple meetings concerning the public defender’s office. CEO Rickert and I went over and spent, I don’t know, maybe an hour, hour and a half there, met with a lot of the staff, a lot of good people, a lot of people that really, really care about the criminal justice system, the constitution, making sure everybody has a fair trial. So I really appreciate the feedback from them as interviews are approaching for that new position. I had two meetings over at City Hall. One was the We Care a Lot event which was get out the vote. It’s for individuals with developmental disabilities, that was great. I met a lot of people, they had a lot of great questions. So I was honored to be a part of that. Also, I met with the director of the MLK Center and as it relates to the anti-drug and curriculum that they have that they’re working with. And again, some of that money is a pass that I believe from Hank. So I’m working through just seeing what all the different organizations are doing, how they’re putting metrics out of. Are they moving the needle in these areas about deterring kids from drugs and alcohol or criminal behavior?
I attended the Girls Inc. fundraiser, also attended the Shasta Cattleman’s fundraiser with Supervisor Kelstrom, Rickert and Sheriff Johnson. Youth Option Shasta, we have a new executive director, Jennifer Coulter. She’s our first new director in roughly 13 years. She’s the interim director at this time. I’m excited for some changes coming there. And there’s a lot more to follow and those that follow my radio show or other things, there’s a lot that’s gonna be unpacked over the next few weeks about that.
RCRC, one of the issues that came up was we had, there was different panels like you had Assemblyman Gallagher and Brian Dahle were up at one point talking and then another panel was all around basically AB 205. And the person that was up there was Shannon. Shannon wasn’t a lobbyist. Shannon was the head of a big solar company. And she’s talking about and she made the statement that some counties are very interested in giving over local control to the CEC because it’s easier for them. And it was like that record scratch. So I said, no, just like that. And it might, you know, we had maybe a couple of 100 people. And then I, and I said, like, I’m gonna say it louder. I said no. And then I just yelled out, Shasta says no. And then a few people started clapping, then people started cheering because we’re listening to this panel and a person is just trying to gaslight, you know, I don’t know, what do you think, supervisor or CEO Rickert, maybe 100 supervisors maybe. And then maybe 100 staff counties roughly make up that?
CEO Rickert: That’s roughly what it was.
Supervisor Crye: And so at the break, many came up to me and said, you know, we don’t know much about 205. I said, well, if you don’t, you better start paying attention because what happens in Shasta County is the roadmap for the rest of the country. What’s going to happen is, if Fountain Wind is successful and they are doing things right now behind the scenes trying to get different groups to flip sides, they’re working hard on it, but it’s not just about Shasta County it’s about the rest of the state and if other counties don’t, we’ve already spent a million dollars in litigation on this and the thing with most of these, you know, it’s like the nimby, like not in my backyard or it’s not, it’s not my problem. So, talking to a lot of the rural counties, I said this is where you’re gonna have solar fields or wind turbines and all this stuff all over if we allow it to happen here. So there are some that are gonna actually be reaching out to County Counsel and our CEO just about what are some things they can do. What are some things we’ve learned and, but it was interesting to have a person up there on a panel saying that counties want to give away local control and nobody kind of spoke up. But I’m, I’m glad I did.
So, I’ve had multiple meetings with the court. And I’ve had a couple of brief ones with DA Bridgett and the sheriff. I know we’re talking a lot about and I understand Supervisor Jones’ motion, wanting to come back. I’m not, I’m not personally. So I’m gonna support any motion if someone wants to bring somebody back for a discussion item, that’s no problem. But, you know, you, you see the interviews that are happening, the things that are being put out either on social media or statements. And I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say I’ve spent more time on this issue than probably any supervisor up here. I’ve met with Melissa Fowler Bradley three times. I’ve met with the sheriff, I’ve met with other law enforcement agencies, the public defender’s office and, you know, we do have an issue and I think as a community we need to just get to the bottom of it. Like, what is the real issue? Do we not have enough judges? Are the judges not working hard enough? Are we not arresting people? Are we arresting people but there’s no place to put them in jail? Are we not prosecuting people? I mean, the answer is out there and I think the public needs to be let in on what all of the inside talk is among all these agencies. So I’m gonna just publicly ask and I’ve already asked the sheriff, he said he’s absolutely on board for it. I would like to have, you know, the DA come in and, and, and we do an agenda item where we can talk about it because I don’t like the media telling Shasta County story or the City of Redding story. Let the people that are actually in the know and that are doing the work, tell us the story because I think we deserve that. So I’m going to push for that because honestly, I don’t want to spend a bunch of money, having a third party come in and do that work because it’s going to be a year or two. And I think we could solve this in one meeting in about two or three hours and let the public make up their mind of what’s going on. It shouldn’t come from Supervisor Jones, myself or anybody up here. Get the people that are making the decisions in the room and let’s have the discussion. Let’s, let’s be the adults in the room and say, hey, look, there’s a problem, criminal, the criminal element is substantial and it’s not gonna get better. The state’s not gonna help us. So we got to figure it out as a group. So I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna really push for that publicly to have us all come in on an agendized item. Maybe it’s a special meeting and we, we hammer it out because the next part, body cams, many of you saw the incident that was on Facebook of a traffic stop. You know, the individual that was driving was actually an usher in my wedding when he was in eighth grade, the arresting officer was, I played football with and we, we attend the same church today. It was horrible having two polarizing things happen to people you care about. But I’ll tell you, the body cams. I was already a believer in body cams. But now I’m glad Sheriff Johnson is still here. I know we’ve talked about it. You’re still working on it. But that can’t come fast enough because the thing about body cams is, I mean, there it is, there’s the truth. There’s what happened. People can make up their own mind with what happened.
The next thing is, last year when HHSA and this board moved to remove ourselves out as the lead agency of the COC you know, we got a lot of flak for it in the community. And you know, City of Redding swooped in and City of Redding, we are going to be the saviors and take care of it. But as we all know, now, the City of Redding is saying, we’ve got to dismantle it, it doesn’t work and the three reasons are administration, funding and collaboration. So, I just want to say that the things that we said a year ago of why it’s, it’s a broken model. The City of Redding is now saying the same exact thing and there’s going to be more to follow on that. And also, last year, there was a new initiative in HHSA which was instituted in regards to internal and external audits of programs. And, you know, I really wanted to bring forth some of the findings that they found very, very early on, but they said it was gonna be bad for employee morale. It was going to be bad. And then there was also a component of HR there, like, you know, you can’t just publicly hold an employee accountable or for mistakes they made. But, you know, I still struggle with that. That has even been something I’ve addressed with Counsel Larmour since he’s been here because those were past county counsels. And obviously, there’s definitely a different way to get places because I just want more of this information out there. So one thing I will say is any nonprofit that is receiving funds from Shasta County, I’m going to be looking at bringing forth the resolution of basically on executive compensation and the processes of what we do. And we’re going to get very granular about what we’re spending and what we’re giving, but roughly 1200 nonprofits estimated across Shasta County. Nolda Short’s office does a phenomenal job, but she can’t audit all of that stuff. And I think the more accountability we bring to the public of where our money is going and what’s happening to it. That’s just the most important thing. So that is a really, really [applause from audience] thank you, whatever, whoever that was or what it was for.
So the last thing is we have here, item 2, we have, we had a letter from two supervisor elect-Plummer advisor, elect –
(48:16) Supervisor Rickert: I’ve had my name up for a while.
Supervisor Crye: So when this part is done, I’ll come back. Ok,
Supervisor Rickert: Well, this, this has to do with the board reports.
Supervisor Crye: Ok. So can I get to number two and then we’ll, is that ok? I’m just trying to get through my reports.
Supervisor Rickert: It ties into the board reports. Well, first of all, I want to thank Tim for bringing up an issue that when I got in on this board in 2017 I started talking about was the illegal grows. And I just want to take this opportunity to thank Sheriff Johnson and I’m in continual contact with people that are involved in this. And we’ve had some major busts in the Montgomery Creek area. But it’s my understanding that they’re coming back even thicker, the grows are. But this is something that I have talked about. A matter of fact, my husband and I met with Doug LaMalfa of back in Washington DC about this in about 2015. And this has been a concern of mine because people need to think about what it’s doing to our environment. But the Furadan and all these other chemicals are being used on these plants and who’s ingesting it – our young people for the most part. So this is impacting, you know, health and people talk about the increase in cancer. I don’t know if there’s a correlation or not, but I’m saying is that we need to be really on top of this. And I want to reach out again I sent a message to the team to thank them and to know that I appreciate every single day that the work that they do, it’s not easy work. I talked to some of them. I know our personal friends and how difficult it is. And so please, Sheriff Johnson, convey that message to them again, that this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. I would like, I’m kind of in the process of working on bringing a speaker to our board chambers so that we can educate more and more people in Shasta County about the detrimental effects that these marijuana growers are having and also about AB 2205. You know, I started this fight for the people of Round Mountain and Montgomery Creek. As soon as AB 205 was implemented, I talked to Mr. Kennedy at RCRC and have been working with RCRC on this. We had the hearing here in Shasta County with CEC here and it’s all in the public record. So we have been, I’ve been fighting that for many, many years and I guess it’s been one or two, at least as soon as that went into a process. I want the public to know that this is a real issue for the people of Round Mountain and Montgomery Creek. And we are the test case for the state of California. And so I will continue that fight.
The other thing is I have talked to Bruce Ross and I’ve talked to Melissa Bradley Fowler and, you know, they keep telling me that the legislature is the one that funds these judges. So I don’t want to, is, is that true, Mister Larmour? That as, as a board, do we have any jurisdiction over what happens with the courts? I want us to focus on issues that we have jurisdiction over is the point I’m trying to make.
(51:12) Counsel Larmour: So, no, we don’t have any jurisdiction over the court. The legislature determines what judges are put on the bench, but that doesn’t prevent us from talking about a system wide discussion.
Supervisor Rickert: And that’s why I’ve sent letters and I’ve talked to the Dahles’ offices and that kind of thing about this. And so that, that’s where we need to put the pressure and that’s where we need to focus the attention. So maybe perhaps if we have that discussion that they are the ones that should be present here that we can convey that message to is where I think we ought to go with that. I just wanted to make some comments so that we kind of clarify things.
(51:52) Supervisor Garman: Supervisor Rickert, Round Mountain is, Montgomery Creek is a problem. That’s one of the areas we flew over and what is what is crazy is from the air, you sit there, you see 299 and you see the little road coming off and going up the mountain side, every property is growing and it’s just the hoop houses that, you just see it. They have no fear. Absolutely zero fear of being caught because if they do, they’re just going to get a little tiny fine. The people run, they don’t even hardly arrest anybody, no fault of the sheriff. But this is the reality of how this is happening. So they just come right back. It’s just a numbers game. These, big people in these pot stuff, pot farms, it’s just a numbers game. They’ll take their chances. But Montgomery Creek is a devastating problem. Well, what, what really threw me for a loop you guys is –
Stefany Blankenship: Chair, if I may, I apologize for the interruption, but we are getting a little off topic. I want to make sure we –
Supervisor Garman: I thought that I’ll get off topic, but it was on my board report, but literally right off the highway within 100 ft of 299 are gross. It just, you don’t see it from the highway. But if you’re out deer hunting in the next few weeks, guys, be careful.
(53:02) Supervisor Crye: So, I’m going to go back to number two on our list. We received a letter or a request to CEO Rickert. I reached out to Graham Noss who is the president of CSAC. Supervisor Garman, myself and Kelstrom all did different parts of the New Supervisors Institute. And I think they are is there’s definitely some positive things from it. But one of the things I brought back very, very early in the first couple of months was the need for a cohesive board. Now, elected officials are independent, mostly usually all type a personalities, but I said there really needs to be some training and that was shot down pretty quick, which is fine. I was here a month. Well, now I’ve been here almost two years. So I asked Graham considering the request of Mr. Long and Mr. Plummer about, would he do something specific here in Shasta County? Come to us, do the new training for our county individuals. If there is a new person because the District Three race is coming. If not, then it would be for Mister Long and Mister Plummer. And if it, if there was a third new supervisor, then they could have an onboarding themselves here in Shasta. But at that same time, bring in the other board members who will serve together as a unit and do a 1, 1.5 day workshop. He said they have done that in the past, it has been highly successful and he is willing to do that. So as the request, and that’s actually going to be less money for the county and there would have to be no travel and the entire board would benefit. So I would say for this item we move forward and I would ask CEO Rickert or maybe Mr. Deputy Buettell. Ever since sheriff pronounced your name like that, now, I, I’m gonna mess it up and I’ve never messed it up but have Stewart work directly with Graham on putting that together. So I don’t know if we have to have a motion because it was a written request and how it’s on here. But how does that go, Ms. Blankenship?
(55:12) Stefany Blankenship: Chair, we would need, this is a voteable item along with item number three. So we can either take them as separate votes or I would defer to counsel if we can take them all as one vote.
Counsel Larmour: Two and three should be separate votes.
After a brief discussion of how the training would be conducted, public comment on R2 began.
(57:39) Dawn Duckett: I wanted to speak in support of the new supervisors going to the new Supervisor Institute for CSAC and not waiting until after they’re seated. This is a huge job and the onboarding process should take place before they are seated. I also am in favor of your idea as well as well in doing like a cohesiveness training for the entire board. I’d also like to talk a little bit about Supervisor Jones. You brought up the whistleblower report on the DA and I just think it’s important that the, for the public watching that they know that the outcome of that report was that they, it was unfounded the allegations. There was a de minimis use of somebody’s personal device while they were sitting in their office. But most of the other allegations in the report were unfounded. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about the whistleblowing process and the fact that the county made that report public and it really, in my mind, kneecaps our whistleblowing program because it was very easy to figure out who that whistleblower was and the confidentiality of that person. And so what are other employees that want to, you know, report wrongdoing in their offices? They’re going to question is my name going to be out there in public. And then in terms of bringing back the prosecution rates for 2022 that’s really out of your –
CEO Rickert: I believe this is off topic.
Dawn Duckett: I’m speaking to the supervisor’s reports. And in the past you haven’t taken-
CEO Rickert: Those are non-voteable items. And so the voteable item before you right now is item two.
Dawn Duckett: Ok. Ok. Thank you very much.
(59:52) Delores Lucero: It’s amazing you wanna make a change. You want people to learn certain things and follow your steps, but yet you’re not willing to be a good leader without breaking the laws. You know, I, it is amazing how many times we have to come here to listen to you. And then now you want to cut two minutes for us to come up here because you talk too much. You take up our time for this, for this, item. I just can’t believe that Patrick Jones, you actually Patrick Jones, you recuse yourself an item on this item. Bill, assembly bill 2642 because it does basically have, has something to do with guns. Ok? So you should recuse yourself. But I could say that, but you know what, we know your process, we know how you deal with things. You’re not going to recuse yourself because that’s what you guys do. You think you’re above the law? So, you know, I think it’s kind of, I’m learning to understand. Just let you guys just violate all the laws and then I just take over from there and I do my part. So keep on doing a lousy job.
(1:01:25) Jeff: So I want to speak about the, this opposition, this proposed opposition to AB 2642. To me, this is just a further example of this board’s lawlessness, lack of common sense and lack of concern for public employee safety. You know, last week, I went into that issue about lack of concern of employee safety on the part of Jones, Crye and Kelstrom in that you adopted this resolution to allow concealed carry in all county buildings. And then you had also indicated that there were going to be signs posted, there was going to be training given to employees. There was, this was going to be implemented in a safe manner. Now, Mister Jones made my point last week and Patrick said, quote, county employees are different than members of the public end quote, the policies we stated for county employees and training will eventually come and when that training comes, employees can get permission from the CEO to carry weapons so that we’re nine months in and the training hasn’t come, what could be further evidence that you guys could care less about safety.
Counsel Larmour: This is not item three, this is related to the resolution.
Jeff: This is related to the lack of concern on public safety for our employees. AB 2642. As I understand it, let me, let me, let me finish –
Supervisor Crye: stop the clock. You only get to finish if you’re staying on topic.
Jeff: I’m staying on topic. [Shout from audience] Let’s bring this back.
Supervisor Crye: That, that’s your first warning.
Jeff: Are you going to give me some time back or are you just going to continually interrupt me?
Supervisor Crye: I’m not interrupting. You stay on topic.
Jeff: I am on topic.
Supervisor Crye: Our county counsel says you’re not.
Jeff: Well, this is the opposition to AB 2642. That’s what I’m talking about. The lack of concern for public safety. That’s what I’ve been talking about. This is, this is outrageous. It really is outrageous. That’s all I can say.
(1:03:42) Larry S: I do want to talk about item three, which is this letter of opposition and evidently, what is wanted is update existing anti intimidation laws that this letter that you want to send. And I’m assuming that it probably funnels down to the three person cabal. When I hear anti intimidation law, I think that’s a good thing. I don’t like to be intimidated. I don’t like to, I don’t try to intimidate people and I won’t be intimidated myself. So when there’s a movement to update existing anti intimidation laws and then I look at what I’ve observed over the months that I’ve been coming here, the eye rolling, the snarky comments and criticisms of people who you disagree with it all, a form of intimidation and, it’s just what you three try to do, especially two of you and it’s wrong. It’s intimidation. You’ve intimidated department heads and you’ve intimidated them and the even to the point of leaving county employment. And I wanna just as an aside when I see two of you, especially –
Supervisor Crye: You have to, you have to stick to R2.
Larry S: I did, some intimidation and you’re trying to do it right now. And it won’t, it won’t work. You try and intimidate a couple other members of this board in public. I can only imagine how you treat those two board members in private meetings. I can just speculate, I don’t know for sure, but you must be really rude and obnoxious to two of our other board members if that’s the way you treat them in public. [Applause from audience]
(1:05:55) Jenny O’Connell: Thank you for considering Matt Plummer and Alan Long and their training, especially since Matt Plummer has won by such a great deal. It is important that his training start so that he makes a good supervisor. I’m in great support of that. When it comes to the letter, I’m slightly confused why you would oppose voter intimidation. See, I’m against voter intimidation, but your letter specifically states that you are, you believe it infringes on the first amendment, right? But I do believe that first amendment rights are already infringed upon because you’re not allowed to, you’re not allowed to wear shirts with people’s names on it. You’re not allowed to do things that show you are for or against anyone. So how it infringes on a first amendment, right? I’m not sure. Now, a second amendment, right? With guns, you’re not allowed to have guns there in the first place. So I’m really concerned about why you would be against AB, hold on why you would be against AB 2642. It is interesting. Voter intimidation is a real thing.
(1:07:13) After a discussion about which trainings the supervisor-elects should go to, the board voted 4-1 to postpone voting on R2, subset 2, until next week, with Supervisor Garman casting the dissenting vote.
(1:14:32) Board discussion about R2, subset 3 began.
Supervisor Jones made a motion to approve a letter of opposition to R2, subset 3.
(1:15:08) Supervisor Jones: Well, so obviously when you read, when you read this Shasta County is mentioned, so obviously somebody from the elections department is in contact with the particular assembly member that, that did this and what it does is it, it’s, it’s accusing people that simply have a valid and concealed weapon permit as being extremists. And so it’s just a typical law that you would see that comes out of California that puts all the, I mean, it’s, it, it creates restrictions based solely on a person that has a valid concealed weapon permit, you know? And so the words are vague, they’re poorly defined and it would leave a law-abiding citizens not to be able to exercise their second amendment right and most likely their first amendment right. People that have valid concealed weapon permits do not cause troubles. And that’s been proven up and down the state. I think this, you know, and this is basically referring to a lot of people here that are, that have 12,000 people that have valid concealed weapon permanence in this county as extremists. And so I take offense to this and I think we should send a letter of opposition.
(1:16:30) Supervisor Rickert: Shasta County is mentioned in this again, we bring ourselves into the spotlight in the, in this state and which doesn’t make me happy. I’m, I, you know, I thought about this long and hard and I am a total believer again, I go through how many gun cases we have at our house and I believe in the Second Amendment Right. But this is a very volatile election cycle and that’s been evidenced in Donald Trump having two assassination attempts. And I think that’s something that we really need to take seriously here in Shasta County.
And I think that, you know, it’s, it, this is a response to prevent the abuse of intimidation and you know, I can’t, I’ve set it up here before a person that had a concealed weapons permit has made death threats to me. So, it, there’s, if you know enough about mental illness, a person can function pretty normally. And sometimes they go through a bad patch in their life and they become very unhinged so you can pass your, get your concealed weapons permit, you can pass everything, you’re fine, everything’s good. You have a, you know, trauma in your life, an accident, brain injury, whatever. And then that person isn’t functioning well and they still have a concealed weapons permit. And so I don’t think that’s a standard that you should hold as, oh, nothing’s going to happen if you have a concealed weapons permit, there’s no guarantees about persons behavior.
Again, I go back to the two Trump assassination attempts and you know, they, these people had guns. I am mostly concerned about supporting the staff. So the staff is not in a precarious position of feeling intimidated if someone comes in with a gun. Like I say, I go back to it’s a volatile election cycle. Tempers have flared in the past and I my first and foremost consideration is to protect the staff and I don’t want to lose staff if they feel that they’re not being supported by us as a board of supervisors to protect them and it’s all about public safety. Then we could lose people. And I want to make sure that our elections are move, you know, very seamlessly through the process this year. So I don’t want to lose staff. And so as a result of that, I’m going to vote no on this in support of the staff in the elections department so they don’t feel that they’re being intimidated supervisor if I may because I can’t get in one of the supervisor
(1:18:59) Supervisor Crye: Supervisor Rickert, would you be willing to Because to me, II, I read this more about supporting this is more of a second amendment issue and not saying that you’re by default, a criminal when you talk about the Trump assassinations and whatnot like that isn’t by a law abiding citizen who has gone through the steps necessary to have a concealed carry. My question is I do not like, and especially because I have to sign it as the chair. Would, would you, would you move to accept the letter if we put something in about whether it’s voter intimidate, like voter intimidation is not Ok. I would like to see a little bit softer language in here still making the point that it’s a citizens free exercise of their second amendment, right? However, voter intimidation of any kind is not ok. It’s not. Ok. Well, and I want to make sure that we support our staff, but at the same time, I want, I’m not ever going to really vote against something that’s second amendment because I think I just won’t.
Supervisor Rickert: I don’t think this is a second amendment right. This, this is not really what this is about, this is about people carrying guns into the elections department and –
Supervisor Crye: It doesn’t matter if it’s an election department, it’s, well, it’s carrying anywhere. It’s a second amendment –
Supervisor Rickert: I mean, I agree, I agree with that, but it’s primarily about the elections because that was the example that was used in the bill. if you read the bill.
Supervisor Crye: I read the bill.
Supervisor Rickert: And so that was the example that was used. And so that’s the only thing I could go and, and I have, you know, made contact in the, in the department and I, I feel very strongly that my primary responsibility as a supervisor is to protect our staff. And that is, that’s where I’m going to stand. And I’m not, I’m not going to deviate from that because that is the number one issue here. We cannot lose people before this very important election of November 5th. And, you know, we could lose people, they could feel unsupported and I, I just can’t do that to our staff.
Supervisor Crye: And for me it’s, it’s not just because it’s not just elections, it’s schools, it’s everywhere else. There’s vulnerable populations and people with the second amendment are the ones that stand in the gap and keep them safe.
Supervisor Jones: Supervisor Rickert, your argument is just, it’s just irrational. Criminals are coming and going in every building in this county, in every building in this state, criminal behavior. This doesn’t solve criminal behavior. You’re talking about 12,000 people, outstanding people that have concealed weapon permits and about 100,000 people in this state that have perfect backgrounds. You’re, you’re confusing two different things. You’re talking about criminal behavior. This isn’t going to stop a criminal from coming into the elections office and causing harm. It won’t, it won’t stop that. It’s protecting the second Amendment, which you have a hard time understanding.
Supervisor Rickert: No, it has nothing to do with protecting the second amendment. It has to do with people that have a mental health condition. It’s statistically, no, if you knew anything about mental health, if we can keep it, statistically, it shows anybody that knows anything about mental health. A person can be a highly functional person, not have an episode of any kind of mental health issue and then they can have a trauma in their life or something that triggers something and, or they have a brain injury or something and it could change their approach and, and you wouldn’t know, I mean, the sheriff can’t follow everybody around to see what their particular situation is.
We need to protect our staff. And I think this is an extremely volatile election cycle. People are on edge tempers are, are, you know, sometimes over near the boiling point, we’ve seen it in the past. I do not think support, supporting or being in opposition of this, of this new law that was obviously inspired by Shasta County one more time. I do, I just don’t think it sends the right message to our staff or to actually the citizens of Shasta County. And if you understood anything about mental health, you know, people can function oftentimes, young people, they, they go along fine in life and then, then they have their first episode as a 20 year old or a 25 year old of, of a, of a breakdown and they develop symptoms of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, all these various issues that don’t surface at a young when they could have gotten a concealed weapons permit. You don’t know where a person is mentally and how many times.
(1:23:44) Counsel Larmour: So I just want to be clear. We, we’re off on, on mental health, what this bill is related to voter intimidation. And we, we didn’t let the public get that far off task.
Supervisor Rickert: No, wait a second. This is tied directly to most of the shooters that we’ve had in schools have a mental health issue. Mental health is very much connected to this.
Counsel Larmour: I’m not arguing that it’s ok.
Supervisor Rickert: So I don’t understand. Are you just trying to silence me too?
Counsel Larmour: No. No.
[Much noise from audience]
(1:24:24) Supervisor Rickert: First of all, I’m going to say this letter is going to end up in the garbage can in Sacramento. It doesn’t really make a lot of difference. We’re spending taxpayer dollars to discuss this. There really doesn’t have any bearing on what the reality is going to be. The law is going to be passed and it’s kind of, I just want, I want to make sure that the staff feels that they’re supported and, and if you knew anything about mental health, most of the people that commit these crimes, they have a mental health issue. So that’s all.
[More noise from audience]
(1:25:00) Supervisor Garman: I will not be supporting this. I will not. The reason being you cannot take a gun into a baseball game. You cannot take a gun into a football game. We have an election cycle that like supervisor said, it’s going to be wild. It’s going to be crazy and we don’t need guns in that room. We have deputies to protect us in that room. There’s going to be crazy people in there, possibly on both sides of the equation, right? And it is what it’s about, it is what it’s about. And I’m sorry, I just cannot support this. There are certain places guns should be and shouldn’t be.
(1:26:09) Supervisor Jones: So, so again, Supervisor Garman, Supervisor Rickert, you’re not going to be able to stop anybody from coming in and, and if you know anything about mental illness, you know that those people –
Supervisor Rickert: Well, I do know.
Supervisor Jones: You do, you do, I know you’re mental, I mean, you know a lot about mental –
[Loud voices from audience]
Supervisor Crye: Hey, supervisor, stop, stop. Supervisor Jones. Like that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s not ok.
Supervisor Jones: Mental illness.
[Continued noise from audience]
Supervisor Crye: That’s, that’s not, that’s not, hey, hey, listen, everybody. We’re just, we’re just trying to get through the meeting. [Yelling from audience] Supervisor Jones. It’s not ok. I, I apologize. Quiet, please.
Supervisor Jones: I apologize for the remark but do not tell me you’re going to support the Second Amendment and then not vote for this. People come and go out of buildings that are criminals and this isn’t going to stop that. It never has, laws don’t stop what happened to President Trump.
Supervisor Crye: Supervisor Jones if you don’t, I mean, I’m just going to, I’m going to stop the, we’re just going to take a vote. I don’t, I don’t mean to and I just cut Supervisor Jones off. So we’re going to take the vote.
The motion passed 3-2 with Supervisors Rickert and Garman voting no.
(1:27:43) Supervisor Rickert: I just the only comment I say is that I think this is absolutely being used as election propaganda to use against me for the election. And I want to put that on the record.
Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer of Weights and Measures
(1:27:55) R3 Receive a presentation from the Agricultural Commissioner/Sealer of Weights and Measures regarding the 2023 Shasta County Crop and Livestock Report.
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote
John Ingram made the presentation.
John Ingram
(1:28:33) John Ingram: I’m here today to present the 2023 Shasta County crop and livestock report. I appreciate you guys giving us the time to highlight Shasta County agriculture and all of its greatness and everybody that participates in ag. I’m required by law, specifically food and ag code 2279, to compile the annual crop report which details the gross production of value Shasta County’s agricultural commodities. This report summarizes the acreage production and gross value of all agricultural crops and livestock produced in Shasta County. All figures in this report represent gross returns only and do not reflect the net income of any county producers. This report is used as a resource for various research institutions, schools, banks, agencies and businesses. For example, the farm service agency relies on this data when estimating the value of loss associated with agricultural commodities during a disaster declaration.
I’m pleased to report that the 2023 gross value of Shasta County agriculture crops and livestock totaled $92,705,000, which represents a $3.7 million increase or nearly 4% over the 2022 growing season, which is a new record for Shasta County. Major commodities that increased in 2023 cattle with a 26.4% increase due to strong prices throughout the year, walnuts with a 66.5 increase due to higher crop yields over the previous year, and nursery stock with an 83% increase due primarily to reported increases for price based off of strawberry nursery stock. Major crops that decreased in value for 2023 include hay which was down roughly 20.1% due to substantial price decreases, apiary products decreased by 11.5% due to reported declines in queen production and high pollination services that were reported.
In 2023, the top three highest individual crops of Shasta County in value was hay at $25,201,000, cattle at $23,957,000 and nursery stock at $9,644,000. This report also includes the total value of timber valued at $30,994,590. Timber and forest products remain as a separate item at the state and national level. With that national agricultural statistics, services recommends that timber be excluded from the grand total of this crop report.
International trade is a vital component of Shasta County’s agricultural economy with strawberry nursery plants and timber continuing to ad as the commodities as that are exported. In 2023 the department issued 474 certificates for Shasta County and exported agricultural commodities to 20 different countries. A federal phytosanitary certificate is an accountable inspection certificate used to certify domestic plants and unprocessed or unmanufactured plant products for export. The purpose of the federal phytosanitary certificate is to certify that plants and plant products conform with the current phytosanitary requirements of the respective importing country.
The department also works with the animal and plant health inspection services to issue health certificates to apiaries for their outgoing shipments of queen bees to Canada. Also included in this report were our efforts to eradicate, control and manage pests and our actions related to the exclusion of pests or quarantines against pests and other agricultural activities. Pest exclusion activities represent a total of 589 premises visited to facilities including UPS air, UPS ground, FedEx, FedEx ground as well as shipments entering the state through border inspection stations under quarantine. Last year, we inspected 13,420 total individual shipments resulting in 184 rejections and 319 pest interceptions, 63 of which were an A rated pest, whereas an A rated pest is a pest known of economic or environmental detriment and is either not known to be established in California or it is present in a limited distribution that allows for the possibility of eradication. Our pest detection program included 1234 traps placed and monitored from April to October for Mediterranean fruit fly, melon fruit fly, oriental fruit fly, spongy moth, Japanese beetle, glossy-wing sharpshooter, European grapevine moth and the Capra beetle. Pest eradication efforts for noxious weeds continued at 528 different sites totaling 40,934 acres, targeting a wide variety of A- rated weeds throughout the county.
Last year, the department has certified 35 local certified producers and nine certified farmers markets. We continue to monitor 21 organic farms totaling 8524 organic acres used for agriculture production throughout the county.
Today’s report is a brief snapshot in time representing the 2023 crop and livestock report for the approximately 40 commercial agriculture crops produced in Shasta County. The entire report may be accessed electronically on the Department of Agriculture’s website no later than this afternoon.
Lastly, I’d like to inform you on the commercial value of cannabis produced within Shasta County. While the cultivation of commercial cannabis is not legal in the unincorporated areas of Shasta County, the City of Redding and Shasta Lake allow indoor commercial production of cannabis. According to the statistics provided by the department of cannabis control, the approximate wholesale value of this production is estimated at $29,918,000. Cannabis is not considered an agricultural crop in California. However, some counties include this information as part of their respective annual crop reports. I personally did not include this information in the official crop report submitted to the Secretary of California Department of Food and Agriculture, but I did want to inform you of the approximate wholesale value of this commodity that is legally produced within Shasta County.
In closing, I wish to thank the producer, agriculture businesses and public agencies that cooperated in supplying the data necessary to produce this report. I would also like to thank my entire staff for their hard work and dedication to the agricultural industry this past year and even more so this last nine months. We are building a great team at the ag Department with several staff members taking on new roles, myself included. And I’m excited to see what the future of the ag department has in store. If anybody is interested in a hard copy of the 2023 crop and livestock report, you’re welcome to stop by our office at 3179 Bechelli Lane, suite 210 here in Redding. Appreciate your guys’ time and I’m open for questions. Thank you so much,
(1:35:27) Supervisor Kelstrom: Yeah, thanks John. Great report. First one, you did a great job, knocked it out of the park. Quick question on the placement of the flytraps or the traps. I had a constituent reach out to me. He was a little upset. He was over off Balls Ferry on the outskirts of Anderson. He found a trap in his tree and he’s like no one got my permission. No one talked to me. They had to go through two gates to get back there.
John Ingram: I’m familiar with that story and we reached out to that landlord. Supposedly, one of the property owners, a neighboring property owner, got the trapper, one of my county trappers got permission from that person. They said you could place it in the back. So my trapper was under the impression that that was their tree, but come to find out it wasn’t.
Supervisor Kelstrom: I had a feeling that’s what happened.
John Ingram: And so we called, we got the trap removed. But absolutely. And we get those calls from time to time that, you know, people are on vacation or whatever. We have door flyers, they hang the door flyers say, hey, we’re placing a trap in your tree. But then, you know, they get home, they’re like, well, I don’t like that trap in my tree. So then we’ll go out and remove it.
(1:36:49) Supervisor Garman: I really appreciate you and your efforts. Beautiful report. I just have 1 question, sir. These meetings get a little crazy. You might want to go home and have a bottle of wine. A lot of glass. You might want to go have a bottle, right? No, but the the wine grapes in all seriousness were way down. Is there a reason why?
John Ingram: You know, that is like a roller coaster events in our county. We have small acreage and it really fluctuates with yield and price depending on what they get. And a lot of our grapes growers use, utilize their own grapes for their own production. So they’re even reluctant to even give us any information because it’s not, you know, a product that they sell. But I always, you know, let them know. It’s like obviously, if you’re making wine, you’d be buying the grapes from somewhere. So those grapes that you grow do have value. But I mean, anything from pests and disease to too much water with a powdery mildew, you know, takes off. So that’s probably would answer that question. It’s just, but
(1:37:45) Supervisor Jones: Very good report. Thank you. A couple of questions. First, why do you think the forest products they’re not, you know, at the state level calculated?
John Ingram: That’s a great question. I really don’t know because in the eyes of the department of pesticide regulation, right, any of those foresters that make applications that forest timberland is considered an ag commodity and they submit a pesticide use report. So we’ve always broke out our forest timberland as a separate number, going back to Mary Pfeiffer. And later, you know, as I’ve been with the department for 16 years, how we’ve done it. And I’ve also asked that same question to my predecessors and surrounding ag commissioners. And if you look at surrounding counties, some counties actually add that number to their total, but we never have and I didn’t want to necessarily add it on my first thing. Make it look like it’s a stellar crop report because I added $30 million… It’s like, whoa, look at this big jump, but we’ve always broke it out and separated it. So it is there so people can compile that. But that is a future thought for myself included to reach to maybe in the state statistics service to see, you know, have them weigh in. It’s one of those things, you know, it’s how we’ve always done it. But is it accurate? And is it right? And that’s a really good question to see. And again, you know, every county is doing it a little bit different and that’s the other challenge.
Supervisor Jones: The other question I had and I recognize why you put the supplemental slip in here with regards to cannabis. But in the past, we have gotten some numbers for what’s illegal and you didn’t supply us with that. It’s obviously it’s an estimated number and I think that number is down. How did they estimate it in the past? And why are you not?
(1:39:25) John Ingram: That’s a good question. I don’t recall us estimating the illegal numbers in the past because there’s no matrix in my office because we go strictly through the Department of Cannabis Control and that is all legal processed marijuana that’s grown commercially. I have personally have not seen any numbers come through my office recording the illegal side of marijuana in Shasta County.
(1:39:56) Supervisor Rickert: On the timber production, do you know how much was salvaged timber, do you ever break that out?
John Ingram: So, unfortunately, you know, going back to the 10 or 15 years ago when I first started doing the crop report, they used to break that number out and there was actually two separate reports I could get from the timber tax board. And now as with life, right, everything, it’s more work and it takes time and now the timber tax board number is strictly like a lumped number. So, unfortunately, they do not break that out for me.
Supervisor Rickert: And as far as the, I mean, because it was a significant number that was drastically –
John Ingram: I think that was due to the fire, coal logs that they had prior to. And then now that they’re back to buying lumber from private –
Supervisor Rickert: But it seems to me, lumber prices have been very, very up and down, very, very inconsistent. So that’s, and then another question on the irrigated pasture from 22 to $23,000 and last year was $28,000. I’m assuming a lot of that has to do with ACID?
John Ingram: That was, that’s our ID reduction in back in business.
County Administrative Office
(1:42:18) R4 Form an ad hoc committee to create and recommend an Opioid Litigation Settlement funding plan to the Board.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Auditor-Controller
(1:42:33) Supervisor Crye: Before we get to public comment, I just want to make sure everybody understands where I am. I personally am not going to support an ad hoc committee. I don’t, I think all of us, what I would like to do is I’m going to bring this back. I won’t say every meeting. Our next meeting is October 1. I know there’s been some discussion that there aren’t enough items for an August. I’m sorry, October 8 meeting. Is that correct? Ms. Blankenship? I heard that, that we might move October 8 and just not cancel that one to move it to October 15. Is that the date?
Stefany Blankenship: Currently, there are less than five items on that agenda. So usually when there’s less than five items on the agenda, as the clerk of the board, I usually advise you of hat item and then it would be.
Supervisor Crye: So, so what I, what I would say is I don’t think we need to talk about this specific thing in a week, but that would give this board time to go out meet with different organizations. I know Supervisor Jones in his board report met with Christina Cage at No Boundaries. Supervisor Kelstrom accompanied. Correct. You, you want to go yesterday? Originally I was gonna go to that meeting but I bailed out of it. Supervisor Kelstrom went instead. So I think what would be best and I don’t know, Supervisor Garman, Supervisor Rickert, you guys could work together. One thing I’ve learned is we can’t, this is a weird deal as it relates to my original motion of wanting to see if we could do an ad hoc committee and have the supervisor elects part of that. We can’t do that.
So what’s weird is we’re a board of five, but Supervisor Long and Supervisor Plummer would be considered part of that. So we’re still a board of five and we still can only have an ad hoc committee with two people. So it’s weird that if we have to include them in our numbers, but we can’t include them in the total number of board members. So my original idea of having people that are gonna be here next year that aren’t here now to have some continuity is not gonna happen. And I don’t blame Supervisor Garman, Jones or possibly Supervisor Rickert wanting to have a say in this because they are supervisors until the end of the year. Two are going to be leaving, one may or may not. And so I think what we need to do is we just need to bring this back and we all bring our ideas up and we have this discussion in three weeks and here’s all the different items that each of us have bringing forward as an idea of where to go with this money.
(1:45:01) Supervisor Rickert: I think we need to move forward with it. This is, you know, time is of the essence and I think this is another situation of just kicking the can down the road. We had this money, we have this money in place and I worked on it from the very beginning with Jim Ross and I have been working with the Shasta Substance Abuse Coalition and got the $300,000 so that they could continue their work when they needed some gap funding. So I think we need to work on this. We need to step up and start working on this right away. So that’s my opinion.
Supervisor Crye: Ok, I agree. So, here’s, here’s what I’m saying is, and I’ve said this so many times over the 20 months we’ve served together, bring an idea forward and let’s vote on it. Bring your ideas for how we spend $39 million over the next 15 years. And let’s vote on it. It’s not kicking the can at all. It’s saying, hey, instead of two people being on an ad hoc and the other three just saying, hey, they’re gonna have all the meetings. I’m saying there’s Empire, there’s Visions of the Cross, there’s, you know, all the different entities with the At Home, there’s No Boundaries, there’s the pallet shelter, there’s a million different avenues to go. I’m saying we all should actively work on this and all be accountable to the public to bring ideas and solutions back.
A lengthy and contentious discussion followed about whether an ad hoc committee was preferable to all supervisors researching on their own, as well as whether supervisors-elect would be included.
(1:59:15) Supervisor Rickert: I’m going to say no, this is, this will be the third time we’re bringing this back and this again is not efficient government. I just want to make that point.
(1:59:23) Supervisor Crye: So you’re saying to have the discussion publicly? So your, your solution is to have this not public and then pass the $39 million without any public –
Supervisor Rickert: Chair Crye, you’re putting words in my mouth.
Supervisor Crye: Ok. Ok. Yeah, I mean, that’s, I just want the public to understand this is about you guys all emailing us about your solutions for the opioid money and how it could best impact our county.
Public comment on R4 began.
(2:00:16) Dawn Duckett: Yes, morning board. You know, as an alternative to both of the ideas, I’d like to suggest that maybe an ad hoc committee with supervisors Kelstrom and Rickert and then every three weeks or so the board puts it on the agenda so that individual board members can forward assignments to that committee and do that in the public eye and that would avoid the chaos of five different supervisors taking up staff time. And it would also incorporate the public and, and you would be doing that in an open transparent way. That’s just my two cents.
(2:01:18) Delores Lucero: Where should I start from? You? All, all three of you are embarrassing to our county. You’re disgusting how you treat Mary R, especially Patrick Jones R four. Yeah, I’m talking about R four. The only reason you wanna kick the can down the road is because you don’t want Mary on there and yet you, you’re support. This is supposed to be something that you’re supposed to move forward and it’s regarding opium, right? It’s a drug that kills people. So in other words, you wanna delay that, but yet you’re supporting Cory are for Corkey who actually somebody died regarding it is four, has nothing to do and it does it’s a drug, it kills people. So that’s why you don’t want Mary on it because you don’t like her. You don’t want her. You want stalled into maybe to November, you’re hoping she loses, but the way you treat her, she’s going to win because you know what God makes people like you accountable. How dare you use God’s name in vain. He’s not gonna allow that. This is why you’re gonna lose in so many ways. You don’t see it coming for it is you don’t talk to me like that. How dare you? Who you think you are? You might treat people like that. You could do it all you want. I don’t care if people look at me thinking I’m go, I’m going beyond what, how I treat you and how I talk to you that prevents me from running or getting elected. I don’t care because nobody’s gonna be standing here and allow that bullshit. How you treat Mary? How dare you? You don’t even censor him. R four. Yeah, it is R four. That’s all you know how to say, repeat yourself. And that’s why you make the same mistakes. How dare you postpone this what I thought you didn’t care about people, the drugs, mental illness, people. Huh? But you don’t, it’s all punish, you’re trying to punish Mary.
(2:03:23) Susan: Thank you. I know Kevin that you’re very interested in helping what finding a good way to get this money spent. I, I do believe you’re there. I am concerned though. I’ve spent two years studying with a group of people in my home. All the different agencies you’re talking about. I’ve been in the continuum of care meeting. I’ve gone to the at home meetings. I feel as I’ve said this before in public, very educated on at least what agencies are out there and what they’re doing. And I have all the data to show you. I am concerned though because I’d like for the board to find a way to truly get the public involved in this. Not just go back and each of you do your assignments that’s gonna take us forever. You know, in 2016, Kristen Schreder at the city did a huge program and you can see it online of getting input from business leaders, from police, from continuum of care from you, all these different agencies and, and that live here. And it’s a wonderful presentation they told what had to be done but nothing has been done. No, I mean, I can’t say nothing’s been done, but that’s not true. It just made the point. No, no. But all I’m saying is we’re hearing again that there’s lots of agencies doing wonderful jobs and there are, that’s the truth. What I took to the to the city a year ago is we need a czar for the homeless situation. Now, a czar is not the correct word. But we need a leader who can oversee all this. It can’t be just you guys going out and other people going out, even if we put in, there’s so much money, we could put a contract, we could contract someone to do this. It wouldn’t have to be forever. But if we find it’s effective, let’s have a homeless meeting. I wanna be on this committee, so I wanna give input. I wanna work on this with you. So open it up to the community in a different way than all of you. just Yeah, Susan, the best thing is when we sat
Rose Penelope Yee
(2:05:51) Rose Penelope Yee: This is my first time to speak before you, Rose Penelope Yee. I’m a resident of Shasta County. I’m also a candidate for Congress in district one. I would like to say thank you. First of all, to Benjamin Nowain for his North State Breakdown which allowed me to know what the agenda is. Yes and indeed, and it was R4 that brought me here and I truly support and thank Mary for the work that you’ve done for the county and especially for the mental health issues and the groundwork that done in terms of how the opioid settlement funds is going to be spent. I think that we need to identify who are the stakeholders in our community and make sure that all the stakeholders get to express much like what Susan said, her feedback and and what is valuable to all of the stakeholders. I would also call for transparency in the process of how the funds are going to be spent. I would like to call for clear financial disclosures so that all residents of Shasta County know that there is accountability and transparency in how in that indeed the stakeholder interests are made are paramount in this process. And so with that, I want to thank again, Mary, Tim for being responsible members of the board of supervisors.
(2:07:35) Jenny O’Connell: I can see actually both points of view in this one on the fact that the ad hoc committee prevents people from going retracing steps and wasting time. But I also really like your idea of it being really open in process where where everybody has their input. So I’m almost curious if there’s like some kind of in between where there’s like, where you guys maybe vote on, like, up here, who you’ll study, like, who you go to, who you’ll talk to so that there’s no overlap. So that, like, like problem solve up here, like, right now, so be like, all right, well, I wanna talk to At Home and I wanna talk to, you know, and, and then I’ll talk to the mental health board and SHARC and, and that, that way, there’s no overlap and there’s no waste of time and money or effort. And then that way, it’s sort of like both of you are right in that scenario where you all five of you come up with your solutions. But at the same time, there’s no like coming running in circles like that was just my idea. But thank you.
(2:08:48) Benjamin Nowain: So Shasta County secured a $38 million settlement largely in thanks to supervisor Mary Rickert’s dedicated efforts. Yet, Kevin Crye and others on the board are attempting to block her from overseeing how this money is spent because it looks like an effort to disregard the credit she she deserves. So we see through this charade. You can say that the board isn’t divided, but it’s obvious three of you are the very source of that division, driving wedges into our leadership and community. It’s also clear you don’t understand your job. You fumbled with the ad hoc committee suggestion because you don’t grasp the basics of governance. Now, we have to waste even more time and resources to make matters worse. Kevin, you spent five minutes speaking off topic and county counsel stayed silent. The selective enforcement of rules is raising serious questions about the fairness of this board. This is nothing more than a ploy to manipulate public perception and create a mirage of transparency and oversight watch closely where this money goes. And when the same three members make yet another controversial decision, their cronyism and abuse of power must end. We deserve leaders with integrity, leaders like Mary Rickert.
(2:11:31) In the end, the board voted 4-1 to bring R4 back as a topic about opioid litigation settlement funding plan, no ad hoc, in October, Supervisor Rickert casting the no vote.
(2:11:52) R5 Receive an update from the Auditor-Controller regarding Request for Proposals (RFP) 25-03 for tourism destination marketing, branding, and promotion services and consider appointing an alternate member to the RFP 25-03 evaluation committee.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
(2:12:10) Nolda Short: Thank you for allowing me to be here today to talk about the RFP process. One of the difficulties in, in being involved in this process is that if as I’m going through it, if I have concerns or questions, I can’t contact the board members because of the Brown Act violations. And so it prevents us from having this two way conversation. So if it’s something simple, like, you know, when we had the TOT talk originally and what the TOT tax was and what it’s for, I can just broadcast an email to all five board members, just sharing information. But if it, if it looks like it’s gonna present any two way conversation and you guys have questions for me, then the board, you know, this setting is, is presumably the most appropriate location for that.
So I would like to say that, you know, there’s, there’s nothing wrong with our, there’s nothing illegal about the RFP. So the RP is fine. But as I went through the RP in my role as an auditor, which was a kind of a unique situation for us because I don’t end up on a lot of rps. There were some things that caused me some concern and so I just want to share those with the board and then you can do whatever you want with that information. And I do respect that the decision is ultimately yours and you’ll make that decision on behalf of Shasta County. And so, you know, as I go through it, I start asking myself questions because I’m an auditor and we tend to overthink things. So can TOT dollars legally be spent on tourism and marketing? They can, will there be a public benefit from a marketing contract? There will be.
And so then I start asking myself, are we promoting or advertising in the unincorporated areas of the county? And we’re not exclusively doing that, but we’re indirectly doing that. And then, and then I start saying, you know, well, we benefit from this. How long will it take us for us to recover these dollars? Where will the tax dollars go from? You know what we’re doing? And because we’re, you know, as I started reading to rps, a lot of it was promoting events in the City of Redding and, and, and really making that like a, a tourist destination where we have a lot of events, it promoted things like Mount Shasta, Trinity Alps. And as I’m looking at this, I’m going, how is Shasta County gonna get the money back that we’re spending? Where is it going to come back to Shasta County as the entity? Because that’s what I’m responsible for is the fiscal soundness of Shasta County. And so I, I was struggling with that as I’m reading through that because I’m envisioning the tax dollars. So, what we’re talking about is TOT dollars which are gonna go to whoever, you know, wherever that lodging facility resides, that’s the entity that’s gonna get the money for that.
And then sales tax dollars and wherever those sales takes place, wherever people eat, play stay, that’s where the sales tax dollars are going to go. And so I’m imagining like what we have in the unincorporated areas and because a lot of them are really promoting and it’s not just Shasta County, it’s promoting all of the North State, which I think is good. I started asking myself, why are the people that are going to benefit from this the most like the City of Redding or even the City of Anderson, City of Shasta Lake or other counties not participating in this venture with us? Why are they not sharing in the cost in Shasta County? We’re, we’re looking to spend a lot of money. And part of my concern is that this is one of our discretionary revenue streams and TOT is meant to kind of offset the infrastructure of having tourists here.
So some people refer to it as a tourism tax. So why are we not spending it on tourism? But it’s a transient occupancy tax is meant for people who visit our community and use up our resources, whether it be police, police resources, fire resources or other resources while they’re here. It’s an opportunity for us to recover those and put that back into Shasta County. And so when I look at discretionary revenue, public safety is a big place where we spend a lot of that. And so I kind of go, are we going to be able to backfill public safety? Are we going to get our money back? And so I just, I struggled with it quite a bit as I was looking through that. And so I, you know, is it gonna be an ongoing, are we gonna spend it every year and then, or, or is it gonna take significant development in the unincorporated areas forever to ever get this money back?
So I did put together what Shasta County gets as far as TOT and sales tax. So I did, I took this right out of their AC First online, which is their financial statements online. And because you know, we’re always reporting a year later, this is the most current data that I have. But we get of, of all the tot that comes to Shasta County, we get about 16.4%. And of all the sales tax that happened in Shasta County, we get about 13%. And so, but the interesting thing is some people are, you know, they want numbers. Well, how much do you think we’re gonna get? And so I, I don’t have an answer for that. We could spend a million dollars in the marketing campaign and then the people that are gonna benefit, we could get zero. It’s gonna depend on where they stay, where they play, where they eat. And I do think the rps did a really great job of and I haven’t been through all of them yet. But they, they did a really great job of advertising, like skiing, biking, hiking, all the amazing resources that we have in Shasta County. And those happen largely in the unincorporated areas. But unfortunately, they don’t really have any revenue stream with them. So people are gonna stay in Redding and go do all of those things. And so I just wanted to share that information with the board, make sure that you have it as you’re making your decisions going forward. You know, I’ll happily go back and participate in the RFP process if you still want me to participate in that. But I just, I just felt like I couldn’t move forward until I shared that information with the board.
(2:21:50) Dave Halligan: Good afternoon, Nolda, that was a great report you just gave. How do we get the money back? How do we track this? We could, we could spend a million dollars and we don’t even know, it could be zero. Back when the RFP came out. 7/25. I spoke 7/30 at the board of supervisor meeting and I was against this. I still am against spending this money. August 12, I sent an email to all the supervisors telling them to take a look at the 20 sites I provided to you that it is all about Shasta County and what you can do up here. I sent it to Mister Kelstrom, Mister Garman. You both got, you’re both committee members here. I didn’t get a response. I didn’t get a comment. Kevin’s asking to send this stuff to you guys. I didn’t hear from anybody. Back at the July board of supervisor meeting, Mister Crye suggested that CEO Rickert be part of the Travel RFP Committee. CEO Rickert stated he could not do that. He had a conflict of interest and went to events with a vendor that was possibly bidding on the RFP. The right thing to do, CEO Rickert, the right thing to do. Good job. Now, it’s your turn, Mister Crye. One of the bidders is the Shasta County Chamber of Commerce led by your friend, your campaign manager, Nigel Skeet. Is this going to be a cronyism case? A reward for all that Mister Skeet has done for you, Kevin? You need to recuse yourself here just like CEO Rickert did. The RFP required everybody to bid three bids. $250,$500, and a million dollars. This money was going to come out of General fund. 57 cents of every dollar General Fund goes to the police protection. Again, who’s calling Sheriff Johnson and saying on the $250,000 you got to cut two officers, four officers, four officers on the 500,000. Seven officers on the million dollars. You need to kick this thing down the road all the way down the road and cancel this RFP.
(2:23:53) Dawn Duckett: Morning Board. I am in full support of NDA remaining on the committee. She’s a proven fiscal conservative and we need that voice at the table in looking at those numbers. I mean, you’d really have to almost double your to pay for this project. And I’d like to encourage the board to think about not diluting the really robust marketing campaigns that we already have such as Visit Redding, Choose Redding and perhaps look at ways to generate TOT and ways to generate sales tax with infrastructures and supporting projects in the unincorporated area like a wine village with, with accommodations and things like that, that would actually guarantee TOT and sales tax coming into the county. But the marketing scheme is really in my mind, you’re gambling with my taxpayer money.
(2:25:01) Delores Lucero: Kevin Crye, yes. Laugh. You think it’s a joke? But you are the joke. You need to recuse yourself. You have a conflict of interest because you are a member of that Shasta County Chamber of Commerce. You are a member with your business, Ninja Coalition. You need to recuse yourself and it is a prohibit law which means a criminal. So you need to remove yourself while people are even talking about it or even having a discussion. And then on top of that, didn’t you take some time off to help Mr. Niles to put this Shasta County Chamber of Commerce? Aren’t you the silent partner who put in money involved in this? Don’t you think that’s criminal? And now you wanna make profit off the people making money trying to give him the money to start this off? You guys wanna do it. What happened to you, Chris? What happened to your backbone? You don’t have a backbone to speak up, you just follow whatever whatever Patrick says. How come you don’t do what’s right? You don’t have any morals. You don’t have a voice. How can you have a voice for the people when you can’t even stand up to say this is a conflict of interest, you know what’s going on behind closed doors or behind the scenes. You know what Kevin, Kevin Crye is doing. Why don’t you have the backbone? Damn. It’s elder abuse when you guys abuse the people. Elder abuse is a crime. Penal code, California, penal code 368. It’s a crime when you abuse the financial, all the financial of the citizens. You think it’s funny, Kevin, but it’s ok. You look like, you look like a fool because you know what, we all know the laws that you’re breaking. You need to recuse yourself before you commit another crime. But go ahead and vote. I love to see you vote.
(2:27:11) Benjamin Nowain: So once again, we’re witnessing another instance of potential cronyism led by Kevin Crye as it relates to the tourism initiative. The Shasta County Chamber of Commerce is one of the primary contenders for receiving county funding and it’s becoming clear that you, Mr. Crye, are potentially doing everything you can to funnel money to Nigel Skeet, a business associate and personal contact. It’s unethical and you’re attempting to do it in broad daylight. At the very least you should recuse yourself from any discussion or decision making when Skeet’s name comes up in these proceedings. You need to seriously reflect on your role in government and recognize that people are watching. We see what you’re doing, that people are informed and they will not sit idly by while you abuse your position. And let me remind you that you, that in your campaign as well as those as Patrick and Chris, relied heavily on the promise of improving public safety with the jail being central to that of that goal. But where is that promise now? You abandoned it, citing budget issues. There was a plan on the table that would have secured substantial funding for the jail. It was discarded in favor of hastily conceived alternatives. Now with no real plan to ensure the safety of our citizens, you’re turning our attention to promoting tourism, but ask yourself this, why should we be investing in attracting visitors when we can’t even ensure the safety once they arrive? You put tourism before the basic security of our community. And that is an egregious failure of leadership. This is a beautiful place, but our first responsibility should always be to the safety and well being of the people who live here.
The board returned to discussing R5.
(2:28:44) Stefany Blankenship: If I could, I apologize for the interruption. So the item for consideration today is whether this board would like to choose to appoint an alternate member to the ad hoc committee or not to appoint. The board could also choose to take no action on this item.
Supervisor Crye: So we can take no action.
Stefany Blankenship: So the motion on the table was, was to keep Miss Short on the ad hoc committee, but that was not an item.
Supervisor Garman: So if we take no action, she would still remain on there.
Stefany Blankenship: Correct.
Supervisor Garman: Then I’ll withdraw my motion.
Supervisor Jones offered to be one of the alternates but Stefany Blankenship clarified that only a supervisor who had never been involved could be on the committee.
No action was taken on R5.
Board of Supervisors
R6 Review and discuss Administrative Policy 1-105, Board/County Staff Relations (Sponsored by Supervisor Crye).
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote
R6 was pulled from the calendar.
Presentations
(2:31:23) R7 Receive a presentation from the County Administrative Office on NextRequest, Shasta County’s new Public Records Act (PRA) Request management software.
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote
Administrative Analyst Bryce Ritchie made the presentation with a slide show.
Bryce Ritchie
(2:31:47) Bryce Ritchie: Thank you for having me. As noted in the staff report in search of more efficient business practices and transparency with the public, the administrative office along with County Counsel’s office entered into an agreement with NextRequest LLC for a Public Records Act management software. NextRequest was selected for its ease of use and the positive references that we received from other California public agencies that also use the product. And software comes with a slew of features that have already and will continue to streamline the PRA management process, greatly reducing the amount of staff time needed to oversee and respond to these requests. Just as important, it provides a single database for anyone to search previously close requests and release documents. The portal went live August 1, but we want to use this presentation as an opportunity to inform those in the public that may have been unaware of the new portal and to give insight to what it operates. The new portal can be accessed either through going to shastacountyca.nextrequest.com or through the county’s public records request web page on the county’s web page shown on the slide. If members in the audience would like to quickly access the portal right now, they can scan the QR code in the top right corner of the slide. Also on our county web page is some information about the PRA process as well as a quick walkthrough of the steps needed to sub to submit a request through the portal.
A few notes for those in the audience and those listening, the portal will allow for easier and quicker process to submit requests. You can also search for previously published requests as stated before. Requests can still be submitted through email, mail or any other previously used method. But now we will be entering and we already have been entering all the requests into the portal. Additionally, all requests or all communication about requests will be coming from the email shown on screen. PRA request at shastacounty.gov that ensures that those communicating with the county know that they’re actually hearing from us and not. So someone trying to spoof or impersonate the county accounts are not required to submit a request. The only caveat to that is if you want to attach documents to your request, you do need an account. Accounts are recommended though. They make it easier to find previously submitted requests as well as see the status of requests that are currently in process.
One last reminder is that any request submitted is public. So we recommend not including birthday, social security numbers and other sensitive information upon accessing the portal. This is the web page that people we greeted with from here. Users can submit a request by use. Either of the make request buttons that are highlighted there. They can search through previously submitted requests either through hitting the search button or the all requests or document button that are at the top. That number that’s shown on the screen was from when we very first went live. Currently, we have I think 124 requests in the portal, 62 of which have been published to date. It’s about, it’s just over three requests received per working day for the county. Additionally, if users have or members of the public have signed up for an account or like to create one, they can use the sign in button in the top right corner of the screen.
Lastly down at the bottom, helpful links can be found including the FAQs page that has helpful information regarding the request process. When someone submits a request and they hit that make request button. It takes them to this PRA form at the very top is the field to fill out the details of the request. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, if a requester has created an account, they can attach documents to the request using the choose files button. Next, requesters can select their department their request belongs to. So if they’re looking for building permit, they would select resource management, and so on and so forth. They do not have to select a department. Once we receive it, we’ll assign it to any departments that have responsive records.
Scrolling down the next fields are those where they can fill out their information. Requesters are not required to enter in any information. They can be completely anonymous. I will add that though if they don’t enter in any information, we won’t know how to contact them. We’ll still proceed with the request as we normally do. And if there are records, we would publish them, but they wouldn’t get notification that that’s been done or, and if we had any questions and needed to clarify the request, we wouldn’t be able to do that without some contact information. When they go to submit the request, let’s say they don’t enter in any information there. The shot on the right there of no email entered will pop up just letting them know that they won’t get any updates. They can still submit the request by hitting the continue button and then to, to finally submit requests, all they have to do is hit the make request button. And in the case, if they do include an email, they will get an automatic email confirming that the request has been submitted. Once a request is complete and the documents have been released, they will show up in the portal for anyone to access total number of published requests can see be seen in the top right corner of the screen there. It says one but like I mentioned earlier, we’re already up to much more. You can access this page by hitting the search button or the all request button on the main home page there. When you go to the link, you can select a request by clicking the request number there shown at the bottom. In this case, it was 24-4. And it’ll take you into the request screen which looks like what’s shown on the slide. On this screen, you can see the timeline of when the request was submitted. When departments were assigned to the points of contact were in any communication that went from the county to the requester. Additionally, if you click on the documents tab, it’ll show any documents that have been released. And anyone can download, use those using the arrow to the right of each document or if you want to download multiple, you can select as many as you want and then hit the download next to select all.
The county is very excited about this new tool for the benefits provides to both the public and staff and that concludes my presentation.
Public comment on R7 began.
(2:40:15) Delores Lucero: On this public record request to, did you have anything where it says that your, your privacy is gonna be violated? Because when you put that out there, you’re violating my rights, my privacy. What I’m asking for and then you’re also jeopardizing my life. What am I requesting any documents? So I’m not gonna be asking them for the public records through the email. I’m gonna ask them to provide them in person because I don’t have to ask them through email so I can do that. So we don’t have to go through that system just so you know that, yeah, you could move your shoulders. But I’m just letting you know if you’re trying to intimidate people who’s asking for public records to disclose that, who’s asking to try to stop them from asking for public records? Because that’s what it is intimidation. But it doesn’t scare me. There’s always a way around from what you do. We can always find the loopholes.
(2:41:16) Supervisor Crye: Bryce, Would you come up here? And I mean, this is the very first, I mean, we saw this on the agenda and it wasn’t even something I looked at the staff before because I knew there was a present. Can you explain how we got to this?
Bryce Ritchie: Yeah. So, the county spends countless hours a year dealing with public records requests. And what this does is this allows us a streamlined process for managing those communicating with the public releasing requests. It also provides a repository for all the documents which over time will prevent duplicative requests because the documents are already gonna be available to the public. And so there’s, I mean, in terms of reduced staff time and efficiencies, we’re looking at thousands of dollars saved each year. It also just to clarify, you can be completely anonymous. Again, you, you don’t have to enter in any information, any request that we receive, whether it’s by email or letter or even verbal, we enter into the system because if person B wants the same documents as person A, they don’t have to go through the process of filing a request anymore and waiting for that response, they can just go and get the documents. I mean, I appreciate the clarification for people that are misinformed and don’t understand the process. So thank you so much.
(2:42:51) 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.
(2:43:39) Margaret: I keep hearing from people who speak up here that there is no evidence of election fraud in Shasta County. And now I have heard it from a commission member. So I decided I would share my personal experiences of discovering election fraud in Shasta County. I’ve put together a little packet for you which includes a document from the ACLU explaining the legalities of canvassing and point of information. Voter rolls are managed at the state level. Not locally. In July, I canvassed with a friend checking addresses where a particular person voted yet. The postal services status base said they had moved out of state. Two addresses were very interesting. In Shasta Lake City, we went to a street that was two blocks long ending in a cul-de- sac. The highest number in the cul-de-sac was 2489. Yet the address we had was 2536. It was fraudulent but a vote came from that address in Palo Cedro. The address we had was 19,000 something. The first number on that street was 21,000 something and the addresses went up from there. It too was fraudulent registration and a boat came from that address. What does that mean? It means that if you voted yes on measure A and these two frauds voted no on measure A your votes would be null and void and they would not count. You would have been disenfranchised. Check out how you feel about ha not having your vote count. Am I on two minutes or three? Two? Ok. I’m not gonna get done two years ago. I participated in a canvass of 2020. That would be great.
(2:45:51) Deidre Holiday: Hi, this was a three minute talk So I’ll be submitting to talk to you. I recently read a letter from the Lex Rex Institute that was sent to each of you and was dated August 30 of this year, I’m asking you to draft and adopt an ordinance that was recommended by Alexander Haberbush. In that letter, the suggested ordinance would achieve three objectives. One, it would mandate a 100% hand verification audit of the election results conducted at the precinct level for all precincts two, it would prohibit the board from certifying the election results until the hand verification, audit and machine tabulations reconcile with a certain percentage. Variant three is that it would establish that the manual accounting process at the precinct level shall not serve as the official count but rather as a reconciliation tool to verify the accuracy of the machine tabulations, thereby reinforcing voter confidence and increasing transparency in the electoral process. These measures are in compliance with AB 969 and they address two of eight identified elements of a fair and transparent election. A 100% hand verification audit should provide an observable double check on the work done with machines and doing the count at the precinct would preserve that link in the chain of custody that is lost with the transport of ballots from precinct to the registrar’s office chain of custody is a must in order to avoid room for foul play despite repeated and exaggerated claims about cost hand counting is much cheaper than machine counting. What we can’t afford is the loss of our elections. I have not yet heard a reasonable objection to hand counting votes. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by having this ordinance in place for the upcoming election in November. As Mr. Haberbush stated, the work Shasta County is doing to ensure election integrity is of immense importance in establishing integrity of elections across our state. And I would add across America, please move forward with the groundwork. Your prior, your prior decisions have laid for making every voter in Shasta know that his or her vote counts.
(2:48:15) Antonia: Why election integrity matters? A big percentage of American citizens lack confidence in election fairness. Every citizen has the right to vote. No one has the right to interfere with or diminish the exercise of this right, our right to vote and our right to secure and fair. Elections are sacred institutions and that must be defended and held up to the highest standards. Every voter must know that their vote will count. No citizen should ever should have to question whether an election outcome was fair or rigged when elections are safe and secure. Voter turnout is higher and the public has more faith and trust in their election officials making election integrity The most significant issue currently facing our democracy. We are encouraged by New Hampshire who is require requiring voters to have proof of US citizenship in order to participate in elections. In Georgia they they are doing hand counting now. So those are encouraging words. So we want, we, we want to be secure and eliminate electronic voting machines. Go back to hand county. It was done before same day. Hand county paper ballots at the same precinct voting registration shall include ID and residence verification. Thank you.
(2:50:16) Rick: This is a letter to the Sheriff Johnson from Bev. She’s a citizen of Redding. Enclosed please find 101 declarations served on Joanna Francescut Shasta County ROV because of her unconstitutional action which may also constitute a crime. I have a copy of all these for all you on the board. There’s seven of them in here. I’m going to put you here. Writing on behalf of all those who have submitted the attached declarations reference as through fully set herein. We are asking you to initiate a criminal investigation of the above named person for the following crime. One, the above name person which is Joanna Francescut complaint. One perjury of oath of office. Every official must take the oath prior to starting their duties. Every person who while taking and submitting the oath of affirmation required by this chapter states as true, any material matter which he or she knows to be false is guilty of perjury and is punishable by imprisonment. Pursuant to subdivision H of section 1170 of the penal code for 2,3, or four years. The complaint two, Joanna Francescut was given 10 days to respond to these charges and failed to do so. Ignoring her constituents is morally wrong. Adding to that in us VT Twill 552 D 9 297 silence can only be equated with fraud where there is legal or moral duty to speak on or where an inquiry left unanswered would be initiate misleading complaint, complaint three, I’m not gonna make it anyway. I have a copy of all these right here and I’m gonna submit those. Thank you very much,
(2:52:25) Linda Glass: I thank each one of you for all of the, the community events that you attend and I know that you’re all trying to do your best to communicate and to pass laws and benefit the whole community. I moved here 44 years ago and I enjoyed so many of the public events that we all go to the Redding Rodeo, the Convention Center, the Christmas Cascade, The Garden of Lights. We all shop at Costco, Winco, various places, go to high school graduations. I’d like to call us together back to our roots to remember who we are as a community that is located in one of the most gorgeous places on the face of the earth with lots and lots of human resources, lots and lots of wonderful people and lots and lots of beautiful places to visit. When I first started teaching here and went to some of the events, I was so impressed by the attitude of the community. I don’t understand why we can all get together as a community at all of these events. And yet in the registrar of voters office, there’s one huge fence and I believe that the media is giving us false propaganda that we are divided, that we have some kind of being against each other.
Eight more speakers including Thomas H., Sherry Casey, Linda Lucero, Dan Ladd, Laura Hobbs, Bert, Gary, and Ron Pember echoed what the first three speakers said concerning election integrity, hand counting and distrust of the ROV’s office, voting machines, and California laws.
(3:03:43) Bev: Kamala Harris has said I’m a gun owner, Tim Waltz is a gun owner. Anyone that breaks into my house is getting shot. Kamala has told gun owners that authorities could walk into their homes and inspect whether there were they were storing their firearms properly under the new law that she helped draft. We are going to require responsible behaviors amongst everybody in the community and just because you legally possess a gun in the sanity of your locked home doesn’t mean that we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible and safe in the way. You conduct your affairs. Someone needs to read the second amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. She wants mandatory gun buybacks. She will take action in her 1st 100 days if elected president in Congress does not take, if Congress does not take action. My question is if this should happen, How are you going to protect our rights? Will you protect our rights to own guns? The same way you protect our rights to a fair election? Do you get to pick and choose what rights we are entitled to after seeing what happened this morning? I think I know how this is going to go if this happens. I don’t believe our rights are going to be totally protected any better than they are by some for the election.
(3:10:07) Dawn Duckett: I was gonna talk about this last week but I got distracted. So I’m gonna talk a little bit today about misinformation that comes off of the Dias here during the meetings. And I want to encourage the board when you’re hearing stories about your departments out in the community that before you repeat that story on the Dias. And I’ve heard lots of examples of that that you check with your department heads because it really ruins department’s reputations when you don’t check first. And I’ll use a recent example with the container ordinance hearing. Supervisor Kelstrom told a story about a buddy of his who essentially was run out of town by code enforcement that because of two containers or a couple of containers on his property. And Supervisor Kelstrom said that code enforcement had fined his friend and had put liens on his friend’s property and I’m not saying that you’re a liar, Supervisor Kelstrom, but had you have picked up the phone and double checked those facts with your department head, and the reason I know this is because I used to do it. Code enforcement is not authorized to place liens on people’s properties without a court process called a Nuisance abatement hearing. And the same thing goes with fines, those have to be authorized by a court or ordered by a court officer. So and I also wanted to say in all of my years, we never once took a property owner to a nuisance abatement court process because of two containers on their property. So it just the moral of the story is here before you tell stories on the Dias that you call your department heads and give them the benefit of the doubt to defend themselves.
(3:12:06) Chris Solberg: Hello, my name is Chris. I’ve been a homeless advocate for 20 years. I’ve been the director, our past director of Red and Loaves and Fisheries for six. About eight days ago, I was eating lunch at Tortilla Flats when I saw a homeless blind girl with the red and white cane trying to tap her way down the street. I thought how shocking that was when she ran into Tortilla Flats. So I started a little conversation with her. She’s very frustrated with her situation and has anger issues. They kicked her out of the mission when I talked to the green badge there, which is a paid staff member of the mission. Then the weekend I called the, their hotline and they said, well, you know, we got to start somewhere as far as kicking people out. She wasn’t allowed to stay there, but she was allowed to eat. So, you know, I challenge you, Mister Crye. You want to vet, I thought I heard you say you want to vet all these work organizations before you start giving them money. I applaud that you know, the Good News Rescue mission is not the bread and butter that everyone thinks it is. You want to get staph infections. You want to get MRSA, you better get some wipes for those maps that they lay down on the floor. You want to get lice scabies or crabs. They’ve had many multiple infestations there, you know, in the cities, various cities and counties, their leaders were challenged and I challenge you, especially you Mister Kelstrom to spend a night at the mission. Dress down and go there unannounced and see how they’re treated. I know you like to give reports on the food that you receive. So why don’t you give one on the gruel that people eat there at that mission? That’d be really nice. You Mister Kelstrom or Mister Crye. I applaud you for the work that you do at the, with Jerry and Skippy. Unfortunately, when you and the other city council member had that great big presentation. No more than two days later, they raided Mercy Canyon and ran everyone out. So maybe you could take another little step further. Get your 49er pajamas on and go down to the mission unannounced and see exactly how they’re treated. I think it’s preposterous that you use that as some kind of a deal.
(3:14:19) Delores Lucero: No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth. I speak the truth and I’m, I’m very hated because of it and people retaliate against me because I speak the truth and I thought we were supposed to speak the truth without being, without having to worry about retaliation. Is that what we teach our Children? You tell the truth, you’re gonna be punished, you, we’re gonna retaliate against you. That’s what you do to an adult. I’m actually a member of the ACLU including the First Amendment Coalition. The, remember the letter that you received when you try to silence the media to make sure they went to the little room. Well, I’m a member of that. So just so, you know, I know you guys always think it’s funny, a former Orange County education official sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for embezzling more than 16.6 million from school districts. So Kevin Crye had, I think you will fall into that category. This came from the FBI, I get these in the FBI website. So I’m sure you will be probably soon in that category and we’ll get a list of what you did and how much money you took from all the schools in the county. And, and then Patrick Jones, you, you’ve done nothing since you’ve been on the board, including when you were in city council in Redding. We have so many problems in the city of Shasta Lake you have not addressed. You’ve done nothing for our county, for our district. You know, the chamber is actually double dipping, Janice Powell, and you’ve done nothing. We can’t even come to you because all you are is one of those persons just looking to take a position to personal gain and that’s what you’ve done. You waste people’s time to be elected because we can’t come to you because it’s all about you.
(3:16:36) Laurie Bridgeford: I first would want to commend Valerie and it’s an honor to know you and what happened, the more I hear the details and just everyone would love to clone someone like her and have them work in their business. So I, I can’t say enough about how, how awesome that is. I just want to say something in case later speakers mentioned on my table top, I was giving away free feminine hygiene products for people that have a leaky mouth. Those that can’t keep their impulse control, the yelling, the screaming out and blurting. It’s been happening for a long time. And so an individual walked away with that. That’s OK. I photographed my table before I walk away from it and go to the media area. My topic today is about HHS and public health. I know they’re having issues with the different directors on the medical leave. There’s an interim person, there’s some financial issues. Morale, obviously, it’s almost half of our budget. So I’m, I’m wanna focus on how to make this very clear that I would like to see as well as some other people, an immediate address of what’s going on with the next variant, the next wave bird flu, monkey pox, Omicron, the XEC, the new COVID. I mean, this is just totally confusing. So here’s the two things I would like to see is one and this is what it’s either Doctor Mu or any other designee, but we need a formal panel or a forum, live with live Q and A not pretaped anything because that’s how you can just make it fit how you want. So here’s the one question is, is us childhood vaccine schedule safe. There’s some 70 jabs and now they want what? Three for, for the little kids born up until they’re nine months old. Three COVID? Really? And my second issue is, is the COVID vaccine safe. We are not being told the truth publicly and there’s under reporting, there’s long term consequences, loss of trust, ethical violations, increased disability, long term illness and early mortality. And I’ve brought this up before with the morgue sheriff’s office being separated, so the denial must be challenged. Thank you.
(3:18:46) Susan: Ok, I want to talk to you about the hiring of Wyatt Paxton for the, for the resource director. To me this, this is the most shocking form of cronyism. I can imagine here’s a man who worked for Anselmo. He wants to get rid of, from what I can tell if I’m wrong, correct me. He wants to get rid of resource departments. He wants to get rid of rules. He wants to get rid of policies about that, that the resource center would hold. How could you vote him in when the man who left that position not a month ago, had a person had served many years under him and said I would like this person to take it. Why did you not give it to the person that had the experience? It looks like cronyism to me. What else could there be? What, how else could you explain it here? Anselmo money coming in to, I don’t know who, but the rumors are out there and I’ve been talking about cronyism for a long time and this is so blatant. I can hardly believe it. It’s shocking and the public needs to start paying attention as to why all the votes, 99% of them, are 3 to 2, 3 to 2, 3 to 2, 3 to 2. There’s something wrong with the way the business is being handled in this county. I’ve been to 95% of the meetings in the last two years and occasionally there’ll be one other vote, but it’s always 3 to 2, 3 to 2, 3 to 2. Now in all my years, and you all know, I have a lot of years,. I have never seen a board act like this and that this is just shocking.
(3:20:49) Larry S: On November 5 we’re gonna have in Shasta County a free and fair and accurate election. MAGA Boy is gonna win overwhelmingly in Shasta County and nobody’s gonna think that that was a rigged election. However, well, I’ve been observing nationally makes me feel good about the fact that MAGA Boy is gonna get kicked to the curb on a national election and that’s gonna cause chaos and fracturing. I understand that. But what’s gonna happen is project 2025 will not be implemented by the far rightwing Heritage Foundation, which means America will not become a religious monarchy with the main religion being Christian nationalism. And by that, I mean white Christian nationalism and by that, I mean, angry white Christian nationalism and by that, I mean, militant, angry white Christian nationalism. When Pontius Pilate came out to MAGA and said, I want to release, release Jesus Christ to MAGA, MAGA screamed out, give us Barabbas.
(3:23:59) CLOSED SESSION ANNOUNCEMENT
The Board of Supervisors will recess to a Closed Session to discuss the following item (estimated 2 hours 30 minutes):
R8 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL – EXISTING LITIGATION
(Government Code section 54956.9(d)(1)):
Case Name(s):
John Patrick Kropholler v. County of Shasta, et al. (Case No. 22CV0199716)
Dungan v. County of Shasta, et al. (2:24-cv-2394-DMC, United States
District Court for the Eastern District of California)
County of Shasta, et al. v. California Energy Commission, et al. (Case No.
23CV-203737)
California Land Stewardship Council LLC v. County of Shasta and its Board
of Supervisors
R9 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE APPOINTMENT
(Government Code section 54957(b)(1)):
Title(s):
Public Defender
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
(3:24:08) Counsel Larmour: Mr. Chairman, R8 with four existing cases were heard. The first case, due to a recusal of myself, Counsel Webber was present. No reportable action. The three other cases under R8 where I was in the room, no reportable action. Public employee appointment for two positions, no reportable action. Nothing further.
(3:24:33) Public comment continued.
(3:24:57) Greg Bundy: Oh, ok. The purpose and I’ll just read this. This is the first time I’ve ever done this. Oh, ok. Purposes. communications formally communicate with this body with the hope of finding a fair and equitable response that will benefit the community of Shasta County with new housing development project. In fall of 2021 I acquired a 267 acre tract of land in Shingletown, California district five. Land had a tenant of 39 parcel residential subdivision map that had been extended 10 times over a decade, a decade and was near final but needed substantial push to obtain final final approval in a flurry of activity. The county, the the engineering firm is a developer. The realtors, the principals moved this project to a final approval by this board in December 2021. Thank you. During the the sprint to finalize was instructed to write many checks and sign reams of documents, one of which signings occurred in a conference room at Shasta County public works. I was in and out in 10 minutes and apparently within the pile was a PRD document and a road construction and maintenance agreements drafted by public works. No copies of these documents were provided by the county for review by myself or my counsel. However, the tenor of the meeting seemed to be friendly toward a new developer looking to add to the housing supply after recent wildfires. My understanding of PRD at that moment was a private road division with roads maintained by the local community, not the state. During the first year of absorbing the complexities of fire field management, local supply chain and labor cost versus market demand and absorption rates as well as weather, terrain and forestry dynamics, I received some unwelcome news in the form of 39 new tax bills reflecting a 3500% tax increase for Shasta County from the prior owner’s assessment. In a month of inquiry that followed, I discovered that through the real estate transaction county had taken –[cut off]
Supervisor Kelstrom: Ok. Yeah, we, we talked about this a year ago at Thanksgiving, you got a whole bunch of bills in the mail right now. How, how much further have you progressed on the property since now you’ve got cut the roads in. Have you cleared some of the trees?
Greg Bundy: We’re, we’re in a five year process which –
Supervisor Kelstrom: So since, since I talked to you about this and since I addressed it, I was working with the public works, public works director who has since retired. I was also had county counsel involved who has since retired. So we’ve got new public works, we’ve got new. But, but at the last I told you it was just go continue to move forward, get it cleared, get, you know, do the brush, do your stuff that you need to do and you know, we’ll deal with those PRDs. If you have to attach them to the new dwellings, once you get them developed, you know, for them to pay the back fees. But in the meantime, I will talk to county counsel. So you want me to briefly explain? [Conversation with County Counsel] No, not agendized? Ok. All right. You still have my number, right? Ok. So give me a call and we’ll work with the new, but I kind of, I know, I know so, but I’m well aware of the situation.
(3:28:20) Benjamin Nowain: Shasta County is in crisis. We’re seeing a mass exodus of employees, many forced out due to a lack of clear ethical leadership from the top down. This isn’t just poor governance. It’s an assault in public service where people are silenced for simply disagreeing with those in power. But public governance isn’t about silencing voices you don’t like, it’s about serving the people, all of the people. Supervisor Crye, you’ve criticized SCOE claiming they need oversight because they’re quote, the only game in town, yet you run a business, the Ninja Coalition that receives government money from schools with the very same without the very same transparency that you’re demanding of others. The hypocrisy is blinding. I’ve witnessed school boards discussing sending funds your way simply because quote, you’re the only one in town. This has got to stop. You can’t preach accountability while using your position to advance your own interest and silence those who disagree. Government is not about being the hero. It’s about doing the job you are elected to do even when those decisions are difficult. Even when they upset your supporters, the government is for the people, not just for those that align with you politically. Silencing others because you don’t like what they have to say is tyranny, not leadership. You need to do better for this county, your constituents and for the integrity of the office. I just don’t have faith that you will prove me wrong. If any employee or anyone for that matter has information or concerns with how the county is functioning, I would implore that you report with independent external agencies instead of using any internal procedures. Too many hard working employees have been targeted for trying to hold their leaders accountable. If anyone wants to speak up, I’m willing to listen as well. I love Shasta County and I’m so disheartened by what it’s become.
(3:30:20) Jenny O’Connell: So lately I’ve been very pleased with the more substantial subjects being tackled by the board with drug addiction, homelessness, ACEs scores. They’re all very important to talk about today. I’d like to ask the board to remember our most valuable populations while the common talking point with the homeless community is that the unhoused population is there by choice. We are forgetting that this is a complicated issue in life. Some people are heavily disabled and stuck in an endless loop of looking for a program to get off the streets that works with their specific needs. Shasta County needs to know that the homeless need a home that doesn’t feel like a renamed jail. People need to be worked with where they are at. My friend Jacqueline wants to build a space where people have a safe space to leave their things. It starts with a tent and a sleeping bag, but there are opportunities to do community service and work with the program to improve their lives and move upwards. They, they can get cots or space or even help each other build a real neighborhood. It’s important to remember the mentally ill, the disabled, the drug addict are all still people and some people just fall in hard times. Did you know that even some people are born into homelessness? That’s a lot harder to get out of. Sometimes people just need to be treated with a little kindness and respect. Something that I like to remind people is if you want people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, sometimes you have to give them a pair of boots. I’m not asking for funding. Jacqueline is in talks with innovation for funding. We’re just looking for support and maybe sometimes people to work with.
you.
(3:35:26) Nathan Pinkney: All right. So let me get this straight, Kevin. I just, you announced four speakers before lunch. You said their names. These are gonna be the last four speakers. So I was like, I don’t want to hear any of these people. So I left, I think you saw me leave and then you extended it a half an hour because I feel like that’s the type of person you are. Ok. So if anyone on this board here, Patrick is mentally ill, it’s definitely you, you want to call Mary Rickert mentally ill. That’s, that’s insane. That’s literally insane. You have literally taken a swan dive off of a windmill into a rabbit hole filled with Kool aid and drank all the Kool aid. That’s how cooked you are. So I’m glad intimidation is being discussed today because I believe the retaliation goes hand in hand with that. I know for a fact that you Patrick have been behind the scenes flexing what little political power you have left to mess with the career of someone I greatly care about. You know who I’m talking about. Yeah. Yes, you, yes, you absolutely do. Someone who has done nothing to you but you, people have an MO of going after people I care about to get to me. This isn’t even close to the only example of members of this board trying to screw with people’s jobs behind the scenes. And I’ll tell you this, it’s all being carefully documented. This thing with wanting to bring guns into the elections office is also pathetic and nothing more than intimidation on top of the fact that your rights end when they infringe on someone else’s, nobody needs a gun in an elections office. People, people just, people just want to instill fear. Well, I’m telling you now, you and your people have proved your cowardice entirely at this point and we aren’t afraid of you like at all. You also seem to think that they’re the only ones with guns. In fact, I encourage anyone who sees this to join my Facebook group called Shasta County Liberals With Guns because we actually believe in the second amendment is not just a way to try to intimidate others, but mainly I came down here to tell you, Patrick to your stupid face that I know what you’ve been up to and lastly, you’re out of office soon and you’re going to lose the legal protections of the county pretty soon.
(3:37:40) Bruce Russell: I just want to say the State of California despises the second amendment. They continue to try to pass laws to restrict the second amendment like SB2, A B 2642 is just another example of our overbearing state trying to neuter the second amendment. Thankfully, the board approved sending the letter in opposition to AB 2642 today. And sadly, that vote should have been a 5-0 vote. Anyone who truly supports the second amendment would have supported sending the letter. One of the arguments made against sending the letter basically said that any CCW holder could have unknown mental issues or problems and therefore it may become a problem of intimidation. Based on that argument, no one should be granted CCW permits. This ignores the fact that CCW holders are some of the most responsible law abiding citizens in the country. These are dangerous times. Crime is on the rise and criminals don’t follow the law regarding firearms. Citizens need to be able to protect themselves. I cannot support any elected official who does not support the second amendment. And thank you for sending the letter in opposition to ABB 2642. Sadly, our dictatorial state will likely ignore the letter. To remain silent on the second amendment would been, would have been a dereliction of your oath to support the constitution. And also I would just like to say on the elections, I support many of the people that spoke earlier. I couldn’t be here but a lot of great comments about the need to reform our election process. We need hand counting and we need to get rid of the paper, the electronic poll books. And I also find it troubling that Mr. Tom Hildebrand can’t be a poll worker for the comments that he cited that just seems outrageous that he’s been denied that right for what he said. And so that needs to be looked at.
(3:39:42) 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.
Supervisor Rickert recused herself from voting on C1 due to owning property that falls under the Williamson Act. The remainder of the Consent Calendar was passed by unanimous vote. C1 was passed 4-0 with Supervisor Rickert recused.
C8 was pulled at Supervisor Rickert’s request for further discussion.
Supervisor Rickert questioned the rationale about the new wording in C8, approving retroactive revenue agreement, California Department of Health Care Services for Mental Health Services and designate authority to the County Executive Officer or their designee to sign future documents, amendments and agreements including retroactive.
(3:45:32) Stewart Buettell: So within policy 6 101 the administrative policy, that is our contracts manual, there is some discretionary authority given by the board to designate authority. Typically it would fall to the CEO first and then potentially to a department head. In this particular case, the rules are a little bit unique only because it’s revenue agreement, right? So there’s money coming in and my, I would only caution the board if the board decides to bring this back at a later date, there is revenue on the line and because it’s with the state department DHC S it could be a significant amount of revenue.
Supervisor Rickert indicated she would vote yes on C8. It passed on a 5-0 vote.
County Administrative Office
C1 Adopt a resolution which suspends future annual considerations for implementation of the provisions of Assembly Bill 1265 regarding Williamson Act contracts in Shasta County.
Future General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Clerk of the Board
C2 Approve the minutes of the meetings held on August 20 and 27, 2024, as submitted.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Health and Human Services Agency-Behavioral Health and Social Services
C3 Approve an agreement with RG Legacy II, LLC, for skilled nursing care and residential mental health treatment services.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C4 Approve an agreement with Foothill Heights Care Center, LLC, for skilled nursing care and residential mental health treatment services.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C5 Approve a retroactive renewal agreement with Kings View for specialty mental health services through an Assisted Outpatient Treatment program.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C6 Approve a retroactive renewal agreement with JUMP Technology Services, LLC., for LEAPS software services.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C7 Approve a retroactive agreement with Brighter Horizon Group Home, Inc., dba Brighter Horizon Treatment Center, for youth residential specialty mental health
services.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C8 Approve a retroactive revenue agreement with the California Department of Health Care Services for mental health services and designate authority to the County Executive Officer, or their designee, to sign future documents, amendments, and agreements, including retroactive.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C9 Adopt a resolution which designates authority to the Health and Human Services Agency Director, or designated Branch director, to approve the annual service order for governmentjobs.com, dba NEOGOV, PlanIt Schedule software.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Health and Human Services Agency-Economic Mobility
C10 Adopt a resolution which acknowledges the completion of construction and full occupancy of the Burney Commons, a 30-unit affordable housing multifamily housing project.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C11 Approve an amendment to the bylaws of the Shasta County Community Action Board which acknowledges a change in the administering agency, amends the requirements for low-income sector representatives, and modifies the procedure for member replacements.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Public Works
C12 Approve a Letter of Commitment with the State of California, Department of General Services, for administrative, environmental, and appraisal review costs.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C13 Approve an amendment to the agreement with Burney Disposal, Inc., for collection, transportation, and disposal of residential and commercial solid waste, the recovery of recyclables, and the operation of waste collection transfer stations in Burney and Fall River Mills which extends the term.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
C14 Approve an amendment to the agreement with USA Waste of California, Inc., for collection, transportation, and disposal of residential and commercial solid waste, the recovery of recyclables, and the operation of waste collection transfer stations which extends the term.
No General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
Treasurer-Tax Collector-Public Administrator
C15 Adopt a resolution which authorizes the transfer of unclaimed funds in the amount of $29,688.61 held by the Treasurer into the Shasta County General Fund and authorizes refunds totaling $1,345.80.
General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote
REGULAR CALENDAR, CONTINUED
OTHER AGENCIES
The Shasta County Board of Supervisors will recess and convene as the Shasta County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Governing Board.
(3:48:13) SHASTA COUNTY IN-HOME SUPPORTIVE SERVICES PUBLIC
AUTHORITY GOVERNING BOARD
The Shasta County Board of Supervisors does not receive any additional compensation or stipend for acting as the Shasta County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Governing Board. The Shasta County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Governing Board will adjourn and reconvene as the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.
The board adjourned and reconvened as the Shasta County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Governing Board. Items C1 and C2 were approved by unanimous vote. The board then adjourn as Shasta County In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority Governing Board and reconvened as the Board of Supervisors.
(3:49:05) ADJOURN
