BOS 11/14/24: Jones Badgers ROV Over Election Procedures

The weekly meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors was held as an evening meeting, called to order at 5:31 p.m. on November 14, 2024. The complete video and agenda are available here. Timestamps are in parentheses.

The Invocation was conducted by Sal Rodrigues, communtiy member. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Supervisor Garman.

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

(4:07) Supervisor Garman: Wow, there’s a long time coming. Way back in 2003,  Becca’s Cafe held their first fundraiser. It was for the, for the Northern California Burn Foundation, 21 years ago, long time ago. Fast forward to today. Becca’s has been doing fundraisers off and on over those years for any type of emergency, whether it’s a wildfire, somebody gets injured in the community. Becca’s Cafe has been here for our community to the tune that she has raised over $750,000. I’m going to say that again. She has raised over $750,000 for those in need in our community. And what the great thing is, is when you go to a fundraiser, it’s a dinner or something along those lines, a lot of times they get 10% of the proceeds. If Becca’s holding the fundraiser, they get 100% of everything. She takes nothing. Which is why I just feel so honored to award you this tonight, Becca. So it’s my honor to hereby recognize Becca’s Cafe is hereby recognized for their community involvement during times of emergencies and for holding numerous fundraisers from 2003 to present, raising more than $750,000 for those in need. This is presented on this 14 day of November 2024, and I’ll make a motion to approve this.

(8:51) R2 Receive an update from the County Executive Officer on County issues and consider action on specific legislation related to Shasta County’s legislative platform and receive Supervisors’ reports on countywide issues.
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote

CEO David Rickert

(9:04) CEO Dave Rickert: Update on county news. Director Bartolomei reports three completed public works projects. First, we have the Shasta County Regional Septage Ponds Clean out project. The contract was for $432,000 and they removed 816 tons of septage. Second project was the County Service Area 2 Sugarloaf water system upgrade. The great thing about the upgrade with this project, it was 100% funded by grants. We had a $2.8 million drought grant relief fund. In addition, we had an additional $500,000 planing grant that provided the preliminary engineering for the report for the project. Finally, we have the Intermountain Road Permanent road division drainage repairs. The replacement filled culvers on the Intermountain Road, a PRD is a public easement that not included in the county maintenance mileage, and that concludes my report.

(10:13) Supervisor Tim Garman, District 2:  It was a short week. I don’t have a lot on here, but I did attend the Sierra Sacramento EMS meeting last Friday, and some not so startling news, but something we need to keep an eye on, is out of the 10 counties that we serve, Shasta County came in dead last with ambulance offload times and there’s going to be fines that’s gonna start happening with that real soon, so we need to really, really do what we can in our community to help. Lessen the load of the emergency room so these ambulances can get these people off their ambulances and back out to help somebody else in need. I attended the NorCal Children’s  Diabetes Club walk last Saturday at the Sundial Bridge. A lot of community was out there. Doctor Mu, I want to thank you for showing up, and I noticed you were talking with lots of different families that day as well, and it’s just a beautiful thing to see you get involved. Today is World Diabetes Day, this is November 14, and tonight the Sundial Bridge will be lit up blue. If you all have a chance, go check it out. It’ll be blue all night. Go down and get a picture. It’s beautiful, you guys. Let’s see, I thought I had one more thing on here. Oh yes, right here.  I just want to remind you all, I had a constituent reach out last week about seating. They were told that their seats were reserved in the audience, and those seats are not reserved unless they’re the ones up here in the front which have the reserved tags for staff. So just a reminder to all that the seating is open it’s just first come, first serve.

District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones

(11:45) Supervisor Patrick Jones, District 4:   Attended the, was in the Shasta Lake Veterans Parade this year. We had over 80 parade contestants, that had a great turnout. I did see Supervisor Kelstrom along the side, and I was, I had the honor to be with MIPAP that’s Missing in America Project where they have congressional authority to remove veterans remains that have not been properly interned and then properly interned them. So that was great. Also with Supervisor Kelstrom, we were able to attend the Northern California Veterans Cemetery ceremony that they had on Veterans Day and had a very good turnout. It was the weather was a little bit stormy, but it broke just long enough to be able to get through that. Chuck Kenney was the keynote speaker. He’s from Shasta Gas. He was a pilot in Vietnam in 1970, and he was, he did a great job on that. And then lastly, Chair, just been going to the elections office fairly routinely taking a look and observing and I’ll have more on that later tonight. So that ends my reports.

District 5 Supervisor Chris Kelstrom

(12:48) Supervisor Chris Kelstrom, District 5: On November 9, I attended the VFW breakfast in Anderson,  the monthly breakfast. I did not make the one in Shingletown because as Supervisor Jones said, I was at the Veteran’s Parade up in the City of Shasta Lake. And then on November 10 I went out to the Whitmore community breakfast on Sunday, and although it’s outside my district, I sat next to the retired City Manager of Anderson, Jeff Kiser, so we got some stuff discussed that is in my district. And then on November 11, like Supervisor Jones said we were at the Veterans Day celebration out in Igo. And then yesterday I toured the Manor.  I went through and toured the Manor. They’re doing some great work there. They really put their money where their mouth is because they’re not seeking, you know, they’re not, they’re not getting a lot of funds. They’re, they’re actually funding it themselves, doing a lot of the work themselves. So,  great project. And then today I attended the planning commission meeting and that concludes my report.

Dist. 3 Supervisor Mary Rickert.

(13:43) Supervisor Mary Rickert, District 3: Yes, I attended the Shasta Health Assessment and Redesign Collaborative meeting. We talked at great length about opiate settlement dollars. It was, it’s a huge topic of discussion in the medical community in the county, so we had an extensive conversation about that. Had a sheriff meeting, met with him, Sheriff Johnson. Also had, well, attended the special meeting we had, the opioid settlement,  that was on Tuesday, and I have had a conversation with department head Leslie Morgan on the item that was pulled tonight, so that was, but at least I know understand it when it comes back. So I continue to have discussions with several people involved on the opioid settlement fund dollars and that will, that discussion, those discussions will continue. The one thing I wanted to bring to the attention of people in Shasta County is I have this map and it’s too hard to see from there, but there is approximate area of gray wolf activity in Shasta County, and we have one unnamed pack that’s in the southeast corner, that would be District 5. They haven’t named that particular pack yet and then we have two areas of sight sightings of wolf activity. And so according to this map, we have at least about, almost a quarter of the county that has had wolf activity. And for those that are in the livestock business or people that have goats, which CEO Rickert has goats, those are the, I just want people to be aware that there are wolves out there and this will continue to be a problem. We’ve experienced a lot of problems with it in Siskiyou County. It’s very devastating to livestock producers. So if you have the time and if you’re interested, go to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife website, and they will have this map available and you can find out a lot more about wolf activity in Shasta County.

District 1 Supervisor/Chair Kevin Crye

(15:46) Supervisor Kevin Crye, District 1: All right, so I attended, well, just to follow up on that, I think you should get the name the PAC since that’s your district classroom. So maybe you should put a call in. Anyway,  I attended the SRTA ad hoc committee. We’re in negotiations for the executive director, so,  that happened. I, I will jump to, I have, I’ve had multiple meetings with CEO Rickert, and the sheriff on some of the items we’re working on as it relates to the DHE program. As well as some code enforcement items and just overall security and safety in Shasta County. I’ll have a pretty extensive report the first meeting in December about the court system and the DA and the sheriff, and probation and public defender.

As I’m still on that, I’ve talked about that a little bit. We’re going to give that a little bit more time before I have more of a comprehensive report about how those talks are going. As we’ve talked about in the past, a lot of the finger pointing about who’s to quote unquote blame or what’s happening in that system. So I’m just letting you know those meetings are still being scheduled and moving forward, so that’s exciting. The meeting from Tuesday, so, I want to just make this clear, and again, I’m not sure if the other supervisors have done any social media stuff or spoken about it, but when we voted to bring different things back, that doesn’t mean we’re approving that dollars. I know there’s a supervisor up here that made that statement that maybe that we had spent that $26 million. That’s just to clarify, that’s not what’s happening. The vote was to bring some of those items back and they will be discussed. For me, you know, the Manor is one of the things I’m very interested in. I didn’t vote to bring them back and put that time on the staff, but just very interested in some of the ideas she had about bringing some of those different groups together, much how I brought the youth organizations together doing something similar. Now when you do that, you can’t necessarily involve 30 people. You may have to involve a few, a few key people that people want to work with together. That doesn’t mean other people are bad. It just means some might be a better fit.

Another example would be the Chemical People. They came up after and Supervisor Rickert, is was Cindy the one, the shorter one, or is it Liz, which is the, the one that’s – Cindy. OK, so I, I spoke, to Cindy after the meeting and then spoke to the other lady, and so we have a meeting next week. I don’t know the Chemical People, they never reached out to me, so I’m not opposed to any group that still maybe wants to come back because this isn’t something that’s gonna happen  quickly. For me, again, going back to this, I just want to restate this again in an open setting that’s not on social media. I think we can’t work fast enough when it comes to kids. Kids can’t choose their parents and the longer time goes by that we drag our feet, the more kids that will become exposed to drug addiction and then working towards it.  I spoke, I’ve spoken to quite a few constituents about the elections and about the process, and observers, I think it’s great that people are interested and involved and respectfully working with the the clerk and the ROV staff in terms of the observation, and we’re gonna talk about that later.

And then I went to  SCOE yesterday and spoke in public comment, and this isn’t anything we have jurisdiction over, but I really struggle that they passed 6 to 1 to put tampons in third grade boys’ bathrooms. I know, I know that I have a seventh grade son and some of those conversations. I can’t imagine having some of those conversations with my son in third grade that I waited till late fifth or early sixth grade to have those conversations. So I struggled with that and some other leadership items there. So I went as a constituent. I went not as the board chair, but really frustrated and so I made that known. And then that concludes my report.

(19:34) Stefany Blankenship:  Chair, if I may, I apologize for the interruption. We’re getting reports that our live stream is down, and I just confirmed that it is, so at this time I do request a small recess so we can get it back up and running.

(19:48) Supervisor Crye:  OK. At this time, Supervisor Jones will entertain us with balloon animals while we have roughly 3 to 5 minute recess.

(19:55) R3 Discuss potential issues related to time stamps on the Audit Log from the March 5, 2024, Primary Election (Sponsored by Supervisor Jones).
No Additional General Fund Impact
No Vote

(20:17) Supervisor Jones: I had some concerns on this. This happened in obviously the, the June, or excuse me, the March 2024 primary where we had the clocks and clocks are very important in establishing timeline in elections, and we had approximately 22 between the 11 and the 14,  unexpected and at this point unaccountable changes in time. 8 of those clock changes occurred in early morning or late nights when there was no one in the office. That’s what the evidence shows. More importantly, The clocks were set forward and back in no particular order, and starting in on the 11th at 9 at night, 9:48 and 4 seconds, the clock was moved back one hour and at 10 o’clock, 10:48 again back  another hour, and then again another hour back, and then 51 seconds back, 59 seconds forward, 59 seconds forward, 1. 39 seconds back. And it goes on and it gets even up to the point where it’s set back 24 hours,  12 hours, 23 hours and 59 minutes, 23 hours and 58 seconds. This is a concern because what it does to the audit log is it corrupts the audit log. You can’t reproduce what occurred. And so what I’m asking for, and I know there’s no vote here, but what I’m going to be asking for is to bring this back, write a letter to the United States Department of Justice to investigate this. I’ve asked representatives from Hart to be here tonight because they this is their machine. And they have failed to show up here. We have a contract with Hart. I expected them to be here to answer these questions. I think they’re legitimate questions and up to this date, no one has answered them correctly. The evidence in the log shows that we’ve had 22 changes and a lot of hours and times changed, and this has nothing to do or very little to do with the with the daylight savings time issue, which is a separate issue. So I’m going to make a motion that we bring this back and write a letter to the US Department of Justice to investigate.

(22:36) Supervisor Crye: Counsel Larmour, as, as it’s a no vote, is this something that we bring back then, or do we, you know, make, make a motion to bring it up?

Counsel Larmour: OK, yeah, you, the most you can do is  direct staff to put something on the agenda for you in the future.

(22:51) Public comment on R3 began.

(23:11) Thomas H: I don’t know that much about it, but  I feel that it would be stop payments don’t check. They didn’t perform And no one seems concerned about it. So it’s very simple. Get, get them here and have some answers and questions. And thanks for bringing it  up, Mr. Jones.

Eleven speakers generally agreed with Thomas H.

(45:59) Supervisor Garman:   I just have one quick question. Supervisor Jones, when did you reach out to Hart and ask him to come here tonight?

(46:04) Supervisor Jones:  I did, and, there was, they did not respond. In fact, I had  reached out and had a meeting with ROV Toller.  Hart was on the line,  and they knew that we wanted, I’d, I’d been requesting this to be on the agenda for quite some time, so. Yes, the word was put out. They knew about this meeting. They were even in town and could have come to a previous meeting but did not.

(46:30) Supervisor Crye:  I do know for discussions,  Supervisor Garman, that the person that was in town said that wasn’t something that they worked on when CEO, I believe it was CEO Rickert called and spoke to you spoke to someone at Hart as well, correct, CEO Rickert?

(46:49) CEO Rickert: I was in conversation with ROV Toller  to pass forward Supervisor Jones’s request. The technician from Hart in town was not an expert in that specific area and declined to participate. O

(47:07) Supervisor Rickert:  Yes, I was just wondering, we have our ROV here tonight and I don’t know, I think it would be the polite thing to do if he would if he would like to make any comments, please come forward. If not, don’t feel obligated.

(47:20) Supervisor Jones: Well, Supervisor Rickert, this really had nothing to do. This was, this was before ROV Toller, and it’s a specific system with regards to Hart. So I mean, you know, he’s not going, he wasn’t here at that time, nor is he an expert with Hart systems. So, you know –

(47:41) Supervisor Crye: Yeah, yeah, ROV Toller, come on up.

Supervisor Rickert: I just think it’s a polite thing to do.

(47:47) ROV Tom Toller: With respect to the request to Hart and to Runbeck, our office did make inquiries of senior vice presidents at both companies. We had been told previously by Hart that only someone at the senior VP level could address this issue. The technician who had come for the election night was not at that level.  I was privy to the emails. They didn’t originate from me. They originated from my staff. Initially they had indicated that they were willing but at some point both Hart and Runbeck decided that they needed more time in order to prepare. And  I don’t know at what point that information was communicated to the clerk of the board and to the supervisors, but at that point, I recognized that it was out of my hands and there was nothing more I could do until we heard from them. that they feel they’ve reached an adequate level of preparedness or have conducted whatever studies they believe that they do internally.  I won’t,  address matters that are are from before my time because I really have no direct knowledge of those matters.  I did communicate with Supervisor Jones in a rather lengthy email what my understanding of the events surrounding the time date stamp anomaly are. He knows my view on the matter and I will state for the record that it differs considerably from that shared by many of the public tonight. I don’t believe they have as much knowledge as perhaps would be necessary to draw some of the conclusions that they did, but I do agree that ultimately, this is something that Hart can probably shed the most light on.

(50:23) Supervisor Jones: Thank you, and Chair Crye, just to comment,  you know, I would expect we have contracts with both Hart and Runback, and so I think they’re gonna have to address, at some point they’re gonna have to address these –

Supervisor Crye: I mean, I know when we get into R4, that’s going to be when we’ll talk about financial ramifications of what’s going on currently. I think if no one else has any questions for ROV Toller, I think you can take a seat.  All right, so, so I’ll just give a quick two cents for me is, in terms of the letter like I, I have, I mean, if you drafted or, or if you have staff drafted with you, that’s fine. We know it gets round filed. I mean, I even delivered the one down at Newsom’s office about the fire situation. Well, and normally, normally, and I’m, I’m, I’m for it and I know that. I, I, I 100% think Hart does need to come. We, we paid them a lot of money. We paid those machines cash, saving our county a ton of money by buying them outright and not leasing them, contrary to some other opposite incorrect belief. But Hart does need to like answer for that. And if it’s a senior vice president, it’s a senior vice president. I don’t care if it’s custodian. Whoever has access to that information needs to share it because we’ve paid a lot of money for those

R3 passed on a 5-0 vote.

(52:16) Supervisor Jones:  So obviously everybody knows we’ve had a problem with the ballots that were produced by Runbeck. There is a barcode on the side and it, it appears that on maybe half of the ballots, the barcode cannot be scanned by our Canon DRG 2140 electronic scanners. The process that is being used is that we attempt to scan them and then they’re separated from those that can be scanned and those that cannot. Then those that cannot moved across the hallway, run back has brought in another, yet another scanner, which I do not know. Those are scanned and it’s it’s created an electronic image of that original ballot. You don’t know the model number. I don’t know what machine, brand or model of that electronic scanner.  I think they brought in 3 machines. I think some printing machines and one electronic scanner. I’m familiar with the Canon scanners that we have purchased. Those  are set up on a duplication stage behind a door with a window. There’s duplication station 1, 2, 3 or 1, 2, 3, and 4. There’s 2 people per station. So as that image comes up, there’s the original electronic image and then a different image. That different image is a computer generated image that is supposed to be a mirror image of what occurred on the front.

On election day, I went down at approximately 10:30 and watched the duplication process for 2 minutes. In that 2 minute time period, I saw two times where the image of the original ballot was not transferred over correctly, and they left off a race on two different ballots. The observers there, the county  employees, they saw the same error as I did. They corrected that error. In 2 minutes I saw two errors. And eventually went home not thinking too much, went on back to work. Later that day, however, approximately 3:30 I called our CEO up and said, Dave, I think I’d like to show you something down at the ROV. So he, he politely came down and within a short amount of time, he too witnessed the same problem on duplicator number 4, which really was at that time the only one that I could have meaningful observation. Duplicator 1 and 2 are too far away. I cannot see those. Duplicator 4 and 3, I, I can. I could see 4 most of the time, 3 some of the time. And so consistently, what the pattern that I saw, the failure of that scanning process was that when you had an X or a check or a scribble. It wouldn’t pick those up at all ever, and the election official would have to change that entire ballot to match what the, the legal marks on the original ballot were. And then about half the time a very filled in mark was not picked up by this process, and every time I saw the error, so did an election worker there. So they were correcting the errors. The errors were happening routinely, sometimes 1 a minute, sometimes 1 or 2 in 5 minutes. I could not see a pattern because I’m at at such a distance, I can’t see necessarily what proposition or what race it is.

I’ve gone back many times. I have been able now to observe. The last time I went back to observe, duplicator 4 was not on, but duplicator 3 was on, and again within a couple of minutes I saw two ballots where the votes did not register on various races or propositions. Again, I can’t tell because I’m looking at an angle, but clearly errors were being made routinely. The concern I have here with Runbeck is not only with the ballot overspray issue and the costs associated with that and the time that is taken with that, but also with this machine they brought out. I do not know if it’s a certified machine that’s approved for here in California. It had a vast number of errors which is forcing our county employees to correct those errors. And when you’re talking about two ballots front  and side. In front and back, you’re talking approximately 150,000 images that our county employees are going to have to look at and possibly as many as half of those they’re going to have to correct. This presents a big problem. This is, this, this system is not working correctly. We’re missing, the Runback system is missing a lot of these races, and I, and I cannot tell because of lack of meaningful observation if, if there’s much of a pattern to it. It could be possibly for certain races, which would be very alarming. It may not be, but without meaningful observation, I’m left in the dark.

When our CEO was there, I explained to him that both in the bat cave with our electronic scanners that I can only have this meaningful observation on one of the electronic scanners. The other three are out of my reach. I can’t see  them, and I’ve watched for hours, that particular scanner, and it’s great to be able to watch those ballots go through. You get to see patterns, you get to see things that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to see. And you know, that’s what this election I thought was all supposed to be about is, is transparency. That’s the one thing that is required by law that we can easily do is get these machines in an area where we can easily see them and not hold observers like myself in a distance as if we’re some sort of evil people. We’re trying to have meaningful observation. Separate from the Runbeck issue, I saw ballots this last time that I went down in the break room being counted in the break room, which is very concerning because there’s no observation in the break room. That’s a separate issue. I, you know, again, Runbeck should have been here to answer these questions specifically for me with the duplication process because I saw it, and everybody that watched it, if you took the time to really watch what was happening, you would see these errors come up. And again, I’m gonna do the same thing on this, Chair. I’m going to recommend that we send a letter off to the US Department of Justice to investigate this. And I put that into a motion to bring it back.

(58:37) Supervisor Crye: ROV Toller, would you like to speak briefly as long as you want on the overspray issue? One of the issues as this agenda item is stated, one of the things, I mean don’t have to talk about it now, but I would let the public know, I know we’ve already spoken about this,  at length, and I’m, you know, someone’s going to pay for this whether it’s Hart or whether it’s Runbeck. It’s not our fault. We’ve had, I know our auditor controller Nolda Short, who’s been in the bat cave for hours. Many people have had to pitch in, many of the CEO’s office staff, so thank you to all of them who have spent a lot of time, but it has come at a great county cost to  facilitate this, and we’re still very behind not at your guys’ fault, but –

ROV Tom Toller

(59:27) ROV Tom Toller:  I’ll touch on that briefly. First, the solution that we’ve chosen is a very labor intensive one. And it’s only because my staff has worked long hours. This week they’ve been working from 7 to 7  each day. It’s only because the county has very generously provided some very excellent volunteers,  some of whom have grasped the process very quickly, and we’re using a buddy system where people are returning so that anyone who’s new is paired with someone who’s done it and we cut down on our training and the reduplication of  you know, see, show, tell, and that helps. But the duplication process has been a bottleneck. We’ve been managing something on the order of about 6000 ballots a day. And so our our ordinary tabulator can process many more than that in the same amount of time, and we’re trying to pace the flow so that we don’t have other staff sitting around waiting while ballots are duplicated.

Now, with respect to the duplication process,  I generally concur with the first part of it as described by Supervisor Jones, but the second part where he refers to an error and seeing errors as frequently as 1 or 2 a minute or several. Those are not errors. The system is designed to catch those. And perhaps the best way to explain that is to set it against the ordinary way that we tabulate ballots. Had this problem not cropped up, ballots would have been fed into the Hart Intercivic tabulator. And they would be inserted and certain ballots would be kicked out for any number of reasons. If they had a coffee stain on them, if they had extraneous writing on them, or in particular, if they had been marked not according to the instructions which are on every ballot Shasta County produces. It’s clear that voters are meant to fill in the box, but some people put a thin check mark or a thin X or a small circle, or any other number of  designations. And those ballots are routinely kicked out of the scanners in the batcave, not because of a barcode issue, but because they’re marked improperly. And the same thing is happening in the duplication process. If it’s marked improperly, the other duplicate ballot can’t be created exactly. And so the individuals that are working two by two next to each other are trained to substitute their judgment.

Now, in the ordinary course, what happens is we put ballots through until we get a 100% match. Only when it’s 100% are they saved to the central processor and it’s not an issue. But in the duplication process, there’s no mark on the duplicate ballot, so the adjudicator, the human person has to actively press the screen to fill in the duplicate ballot. When they do that, they’re  ascertaining the voter’s intent. Now they can see that it’s an X or a slash or a small circle. And when there’s one in one box, they know what the voter’s intent is, and they supply it by touching the box on the duplicate ballot and it fills it in perfectly. It’s a perfect black square. Where it gets tricky is when there’s an overcount. That’s where someone’s voted for two candidates. We sometimes see voters will vote and then they’ve decided no, that’s not what I meant to do. They’ll fill in a second box and then they’ll indicate somehow. They’ll cross off a name or they’ll circle the name of the person they want or they’ll say this one. Somehow they’re indicating their intent. Whenever a voter indicates their intent, the human adjudicator follows that intent and checks only the box that was intended. But if there’s no way to determine that intent, if there’s no crossing off, if there’s no circling, if the two are marked and there’s no way to distinguish between the two of them what the voter really intended, then the adjudicator never puts themselves in the mind of the voter. They never substitute their judgment for the voter’s judgment. In that case, they overvoted. They touched both of the boxes. In a similar manner, if they see an undercount, so the voter hasn’t chosen a candidate in a particular race, all the boxes are empty, then the adjudicator, the human leaves all the boxes empty there, ensuring 100% accuracy in the duplication of that ballot.

Now it doesn’t just stop there. At that point, once the two ballots are verified by the two people to be exactly the same, they’re printed. So in that duplication room, you have 1 scanner and 2 printers. The ballots are printed. They go to a third person who basically physically scans both ballots, looking at each of the marks on them. And only after that third person has verified that the ballots match 100%, are they then remarried together and taken over to the tabulator, the Hart Intercivic tabulator to be counted. In that process, when the two ballots are being created, the voter’s ballot and the duplicative ballot, they’re each assigned a unique number. It’s the same number on each, and those two are married together and we can always identify those ballots. We can always prove that those ballots are marked 100% exactly the same. If there were to be a recount, we actually by law have to use the original ballot that the voter voted, even though it couldn’t be scanned, it can be used in the recount tally. Okay? If there’s ever a court challenge to the election or the duplication process, we can produce both of those ballots, the original voter’s ballot and the duplicated ballot with their unique identification number and show that they’re exactly the same. So I do take exception to the characterization of what’s coming out of the scanner as an error. It’s not an error, it’s what’s intended and it’s the prompt for human adjudication. It’s the prompt for the person looking at those ballots to appropriately mark them to ensure that they’re 100% the same.

Now again all of that takes time, a lot of time and a lot of staff, and I absolutely concur that Hart and Runbeck have to be bearing the cost for this. I will say this. I know that the problem at least involves Runbeck, because from a matter of serendipity, one of my staff is married to a scientist with access to a scanning microscope. And he took his ballot and her ballot and scanned them in the microscope and photographed them. And I’ve seen a picture of that ballot, and it’s very clear at the magnification he used that the black dots of ink infiltrate the white bars of the barcodes. So there’s absolutely a print anomaly, which makes those barcodes unreadable by the Hart Intercivic machine. What’s unknown at this stage is what role Hart plays, how the two act in concert to prevent the scanning of the ballot, and of course I’m disappointed that they’re not here to help us explain that tonight. I agree that they should be made to. It’s my understanding that the Secretary of State has essentially demanded it of them, that they’re both on the hook for testing and writing white papers to explain what happened. And that’s because this didn’t just happen in Shasta County, it happened in Nevada County as well, and it may have happened elsewhere.  I haven’t  any concrete proof of that in California. I’ve heard anecdotally of a couple other states that had problems. But that in a nutshell is the duplication process. And it will end up being a very expensive one.

But I will say this. It will end up being the most fair, accurate election I’ve ever seen in my life because I’ve got at least 9 extra set of eyes on half of the ballots that were voted. And that’s completely unusual. That’s going above and beyond to establish the accuracy of our ballots. And as I promised when this process began, I am putting accuracy far above efficiency. I realize that this will slow the process down and cost more, but accuracy has to be fundamental at this point.  I’m also confident that given the pace with which we’re duplicating the ballots and the way that my staff is working diligently to process the ballots, we will be able to complete the process and certify the election well within the deadline. If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. I do.

(1:11:26) Supervisor Crye:  What I’d like to do is I’d like to take Supervisor Jones, and then before we ask any questions ROV Toller would like, I’d like to get the public comment.

(1:11:38) Supervisor Jones: With all due regret, ROV Toller, I went down there 10 times to watch the duplication process and that what you’re saying is not true. So every time, every time there was an X or a check or a scribble, those were not scanned. That part, what you said is 100% true. At any time when somebody put an X or a check or a scribble, they didn’t pick those up. But half the other time. The boxes were filled in completely and they were being missed, and many other people observed that, including our CEO. He saw that same system. They weren’t picking it up at least 50% of the time. Every mark that was a light mark, they did not pick up. That’s true. And and every time I saw that, one of our workers did correct it. My my issue here is when there were completely marked in boxes, some of those boxes were not being scanned over on, and to say that they were light marks, they were not. They were completely filled in and they were missing. And if you ask your election officials, they will confirm that. They will confirm that.

(1:12:46) ROV Tom Toller: All right, well, I apologize for that oversight, but I think the good news is, as you yourself noted, in every case that was caught and corrected by the people in the duplication process.

Supervisor Jones: They, they did, just my concern is, as you know, they’re gonna have to look at 150,000 images. It’s a lot of work. And you still have one person doing a task, and that’s fraught with errors. That is just, it’s just, it’s the, the, the system that they have with Runbeck  is a very poor system and to compound they’re not getting all the marks over there, making it harder for them and so the trust in that is low.

(1:13:27) Supervisor Crye: And, and yeah, and, and I will say, I will say one quick thing about the observation, and I, I did liken the election’s office because I know Assistant ROV Francescut  has talked extensively about Santa Cruz and how they have the big glass boxes, and I think that’s great. You know, I like in our current  elections office there on Market, like trying to play basketball with 18 ft ceilings. Like you can shoot layups, but you can’t shoot outside. It’s not optimal. Can you do it? Sure, but it’s not remotely optimal, and I think that office is not remotely optimal for the observation we would like. I agree, it needs to be more meaningful, but to duplicate  100 or, you know, close to 60,000 ballots in a room with, you know, that’s, that’s tough. But anyway, we’ll take, we’ll take public comment. And I do think this is an important issue to bring up because it’s not like we’re the only county in the country discussing these very things. We’re not even the only one in California talking about it.

Public comment on R4 began.

(1:14:46) Laura Hobbs: OK, so spitting out one out of every two ballots,  being rejected in order to pass the Secretary of Voting System standard, they must have an error rate of less than 0.008%. We have an error rate of 50%. OK, if it’s not able to read the ballot, that’s an error. I don’t care what anybody says, that is an error. The county has refused to give us meaningful observation during the logic and accuracy testing. They didn’t allow us to see the hand count, nor did they allow us to see the final report from the logic and accuracy test. Despite having promised on more than one occasion that I would be given this access to the report, I was denied a public records request. The last press conference, Thomas Toller said that this was not the appropriate time to release the logic and accuracy test. For goodness sake, we have. A 50% error rate. How bad does it have to get before we can have access to the logic and accuracy test? We must have the audit logs for both the Hart machines and the Runbeck Novus system but Thomas Toller has, has vowed that he would not share this information with us. How can we have confidence in this election if we’re not allowed these basic auditing, auditing information for the public to look at? And the way Shasta County has handled this whole debacle is not right. The observers are not being allowed meaningful observation. They are not allowed to look over the shoulders of election workers who are ascertaining the will of the voters and they’re, they’re not allowed to in Shasta County, they can, they can actually go in the room and look over the shoulders of the workers. Here we have people doing the final QC check and teams of one. They’re sitting there, eyes glazing over all by themselves in a break room where nobody can get in there and see them despite the fact that here’s plenty of room for people to look over their shoulders. We are being denied access and that’s not right. This is not fair. This is not transparent. We need to go to hand –

Ten public speakers agreed generally with Laura Hobbs.

(1:21:57) Christian Gardinier:  So yeah, take them to court. Yeah, the effective product. You got a capable lawyer over there. Go for it. I fully recognize that. Go ahead and write that letter to the Attorney General. By the way, Mr. Jones, don’t throw it in the trash. You know. Listen, we can sit and talk about overspraying, boy, we’re overspraying here. And the fact of the matter is, the conspiracy theory tinfoil hatters will never be satisfied ever. And we’re never gonna have a State of Jefferson. I hate to say it, but it’s not gonna be the State of Jefferson. We are going to be a charter county in some degree.  However, the state and Mr. Toller has specific programs and policies and procedures to deal with these issues. And I fully, I think instead of criticizing our ROV and trying to figure out a way to kick them, under a very tough job, you ought to be actually congratulating all of the staff down there for doing the excellent work that they’re doing under pressure, and I fully believe that the ROV is accurate in saying that this is going to be found to be a very well tabulated and observed election and if you don’t think so, ask for the recall. But once again, Mr. Jones, you’re never gonna be satisfied, period. Half the people in this audience aren’t going to be satisfied, period. If you hadn’t wasted millions of dollars to begin with, we wouldn’t be here today.

(1:41:33) Supervisor Crye: All right, so bringing it back to board discussion. So we have a, we have a motion, we have a second, any other board discussion as it relates to this.  I will ask  Mr. Toller, if you don’t mind really quick,  the – does that request from Runbeck, cause I know Ms. Short being here, which is great, not necessarily just being here, but spending the time she has, her rate is going to be just a fraction higher than minimum wage, and she’s gonna make sure she knows every dollar that’s allocated in this process is paid back. And I do want to make sure that  that, that this board is made aware very clearly of when that’s coming back with Runbeck and who is going to be accountable for paying the county back for that. So I don’t, if you can articulate that just publicly to CEO Rickert, so I know.

(1:42:23) ROV Tom Toller:  I can tell you that we worked very closely with the auditor’s office  to provide the project codes specifically to elections and to this duplication process for the county workers who were volunteering. And so we will have a –

Supervisor Crye: Well, I don’t want to clarify volunteering in terms of trading one job for another, so it wasn’t they were coming in on their day off.

Tom Toller: No, it’s not that they’re doing this for free either. It’s – we will know what their time involvement was and what the cost was. It’s being billed as an election item, so I have every incentive to recover that cost from Runbeck and Hart because it’s my budget that’s gonna take the hit.

Supervisor Crye: And that and that’s all I just wanted to make sure we just publicly got it so you guys are working on that.

Supervisor Jones made a motion to write a letter to the US Department of Justice to investigate the overspray and duplication with Runbeck. The motion passed ona 3-2 vote with Supervisors Garman and Rickert voting no.

(1:47:46) R5 Discuss the grant agreement with Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and spending plan as approved on April 9, 2024, and consider waiving attorney-client privilege to release all email and other documents related to CTCL to the public (Sponsored by Supervisor Jones).
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote

(1:48:11) Supervisor Jones:   So as we got into this topic a little while later,  it was apparent that we needed to, you know, at least for the public’s sake to waive our attorney-client privilege to release these emails. And again, there’s, there’s 175 emails and I think the public is entitled to those. So this all started for the supervisors when I was chair of February 28, 2023. At that time, the item came up as R3. This was to approve a grant agreement with the Centers for Tech and Civic Life and awards County Elections grant in the amount of $1.5 million with an expiration of December 31, 2025 is what was on R4. I made a motion not to accept these funds. It was seconded by Supervisor Kelstrom. That motion failed. A substitute motion was made by Supervisor Crye. That substitute motion was made by Crye to direct staff to drop a counter proposal with language stating that the only use of the $1.5 million in grant funding would be to purchase real property or to build a new building for the elections department and to strike out. The ability for the CTCL to sole discretion to request the return of the general funds. What this was relating to is if you take a look at the CTCL grant and if you take a look at item number 12, you’ll see the language that’s there. This was to replace that language. And that was sent forward. And so then we have a variety of these emails, and I would like to talk about these emails, but we have not waived the attorney-client privilege. So at this time I’m going to make a motion that we waive the current client privilege for all emails and other documents related to the CTCL to the public to view. That’s my motion.

(1:50:10) Counsel Larmour:   CEO is in possession of a redacted version that’s been approved by counsel. Within the documents that you have there, there are sections that are not related to CTCL, and I don’t believe it’s the intent of the board to release the attorney-client privilege on other matters. So, I would request that the motion be amended to release and release the attorney client privilege as to the the redacted documents.

Supervisor Crye: Is the maker of the motion OK with that?

Supervisor Jones: That’s  fine.

Supervisor Crye: OK, so that’ll be the redacted version provided by county counsel and the second, which is me, is OK with that.

(1:50:58) Supervisor Garman:  What do we just – when were these added to us?

(1:51:00) Counsel Larmour:  Those are just placed on there for the meeting tonight.

Supervisor Garman: Yes, OK, so I have not had time to review this. I would like some more time, so I’d like to put this off at least one meeting, so I have some time to go over this to see if I agree with the redacted version. So I’ll put that on a motion to a substitute motion to read back at the next meeting.

(1:51:26) Supervisor Crye:  Let me ask you this, supervisor Garman, would you, would you take a few minutes during close, if we, during the recess of closed session, peruse it through it. Um, because, quite, quite honestly, like this is, this is, I mean, I respect that you and Supervisor Rickert wants some time to look at it. We have been talking about this for a while, and for me, I would like to not bring this item back forward, but I would like to give you a few minutes. I’m just asking, maybe you flip through it during the 30 minutes of public comment.

Supervisor Garman: So how many pages are here?

Supervisor Crye: Um, well, there’s 174 emails.

Supervisor Garman:  I’m not that fast of a reader.

Supervisor Crye: OK, no problem. First, yeah, a lot of it is like you’ll have a thread, so I just, I looked through just for a couple of seconds and you’ll have one email that will be 5 or 6 pages. So that’s fine.

Supervisor Garman: I just want to make sure it’s. OK, because it’s you’re asking us to waive attorney client privilege. I want to make sure that –

Supervisor Crye: I totally understand that, but the most important thing is transparency to the public. So regardless of what’s in there, if, if the county counsel –  you know, we’ll get the public comment. I respect that.

(1:52:47) Steve Kohn:  Welcoming board, staff, community members. So there were a lot of public comments at the last meeting that were untrue that would support looking into this issue and  I’ll address just a couple of them. One thing was Holsinger, an individual that you guys wanted to appoint to a very significant position, stated that there was a requirement in gaining this grant that we turn over the voter rolls. That’s just patently false, totally incorrect. OK, and I mean it’s been propagated and people bring it up over and over again and it’s just false. It was also stated that Cathy Darling Allen and the elections office lied and misled the board with regards to this grant. That’s untrue. I was at the meetings, you know, the, the when it was put off and then she brought it back saying, OK, we could buy a building. She looked and looked and could not find a building. This happened. I mean, weren’t you guys here? Did you miss that? I don’t get it. And so she couldn’t find a building and then when it became apparent that you guys were gonna have to replace the Dominion system that you got rid of, they, she suggested that we use that money,  you know, about a million dollars in order to get the equipment we needed. You approved it, you voted for it. But what the heck are we talking about here? I do not understand.  Falsity after falsity.
There was anyway several untrue things mentioned about this Laura Hobbs, she said that Cathy intentionally, you know, misled and lied about what was going on. She did not. It was the the  fact that the Hart machines could tally was right in the agenda. It’s written in the agenda. It can be brought up. You can bring it back up. So anyway. You’re relying on a bunch of garbage.

Five public speakers generally agreed with Steve Kohn.

(1:55:00) Laura Hobbs: Good evening, board, I think that we need to actually release the attorney-client privilege on the full unredacted file. Furthermore, I believe that we need to make an ordinance that outlaws our county elections employees from serving on a partisan far left leaning organizations board.  CTCL and CEIR are both founded by David Becker. They’re funded by the Soroses and the Zuckerbergs, and these people are not nonpartisan. We should not have anybody on our county payroll who’s been also wined and dined by the, these far left leaning organizations. We should also make an ordinance that stipulates immediate firing of any employees who are insubordinate in any county department, whether it be, you know, here with the county clerk of the board or within the elections department. Elected or not, I don’t care. They should have it. This is exactly related to CTCL. Joanna Francescut was guilty of insubordination when she wrote these emails and tried to subvert the will of the board, period. She should be fired, honestly, that’s insubordination. I’m asking you to do something to hold people accountable. If you don’t do something and take action, these type of things will continue. You guys have the ultimate say and the ultimate authority, and you need to use that authority. Thank you.

Eight public speakers generally agreed with Hobbs.

(2:15:35) Supervisor Jones:  So I’m not going to read the emails, but you know, if it passes, obviously it’ll be available to the public. What is upsetting for me personally is, you know, I didn’t support this. It was supported by the majority of the board to go forward with that counter proposal with those, and so it’s important that the will of the board gets done. I specifically asked three times over the course of the next year as chair if this counter proposal had been accepted by our acting CEO Mary Williams, and each time indicated no. And what we now know from the emails, they were accepted, just they weren’t accepted to the terms that this board authorized. And that is really disappointing. I’m gonna read you some of the minutes, briefly. I’m gonna read you some of the minutes. In response to questions by Supervisor Garman and Jones, Mr. Ross stated that the grant agreement did not specify the funds could only be used for the purchase of a building, but that a budget amendment would be necessary to direct the use of those funds, and the board could specify they could be used only for the purpose of the purchase of a building. Ms. Darling Allen stated that the purchase of a building was beyond her authority, so the board would have the ultimate authority to approve such use of funds. In response to these questions by Supervisor Crye, Mr. Ross stated that it is if the board directed staff could make the counter proposal to CTCL to restrict the grant funds for the only to follow for the purchase of real property. She did not have the authority. This body had the authority. That grant was rewritten. The substitute motion should have been number 12. Number 12 in the agreement was changed to this. CTCL may discontinue, modify, withhold part of, or ask for the return of all or part of the grant funds if it so determines that the CTCL is required to do so. That’s what was sent forward. It is obvious and once you read the emails, if it so passes, you will see the conversations go back and forth and you will see what they did to us. She couldn’t, she had no authority to do it, but she did. In that, in those emails, you will see that they, they were our county Ross, Jim Ross, Cathy Allen, and Joanna Francescut and a member of the CTCL. You will see that, and so, chair, that’s, that’s what I –

(2:18:06) Supervisor Garman:  I just want to respond to a couple of commenters who said, you know, to be, we need to be accountable, and they’re absolutely correct. In order to be accountable, it means I need to have time to read through this to understand exactly what we’re releasing. I owe it to the public to get this right. That’s all I wanted.

The board discussion devovled into a squabble, including personal attacks, about whether the full information for R5 was available for supervisors to review ahead of the meeting.

(2:26:43) The motion passed on a 4-1 vote with Supervisor Garman voting no.

Assessor-Recorder

SCHEDULED HEARINGS

A court challenge to action taken by the Board of Supervisors on any project or decision may be limited to only those issues raised during the public hearing or in written correspondence delivered to the Board of Supervisors during, or prior to, the scheduled public hearing.

Resource Management

(2:28:03) Leo Salazar: Good evening,  Chairman Crye, other members of the board and the public in attendance. I’m Leo Salazar, planning division manager for the county of Shasta. The item before the board tonight is Zone Amendment 22-0012 for Chad and Corey Abel. This project site is a 4.96 acre parcel located approximately 0.1 miles east of the intersection of Monique Lane and Holiday Road in the mountain gate area, and this is in District 4. The applicant is proposing to change the zoning for the subject property from the highway commercial combined with the design review zone district to the commercial recreational zone district for the expansion of an existing recreational vehicle and a boat storage facility. The proposed commercial recreation zone district is consistent with all general plan designations, and a storage facility is a permitted use in the district when used for recreational equipment. The proposed RV and boat storage facility is near various recreational areas within the county and is easily accessed from Interstate 5, which provides a convenient location for local residents and vacationers to store RVs, boats, and other recreational equipment. The proposed commercial recreation district includes a conceptual development plan that illustrates the location of the proposed improvements and serves as a special zoning map under Shasta County Code. That conceptual development plan was attached to the staff report. The proposed written ordinance specifies the development standards, operational conditions, and mitigation measures that govern the development and use of the property. An initial study and mitigated negative declaration was prepared for this project and circulated for public review. That document identified potential environmental impacts with respect to wildlife and oak woodlands. All potentially significant impacts discussed in that document would be mitigated to a less than significant level through implementation of the recommended mitigation measures which are incorporated in the ordinance. No additional general fund impact would result from approval of this project. The planning commission reviews this application on October 10 of 2024 and by a 4-0 vote recommended that the board approve Zone Amendment 22-0012. With that it is recommended that the board take the specific actions that were described in the written staff report provided with the agenda packet, and that concludes my presentation. I’m available for any questions you might have.

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.

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.

Clerk of the Board

Supervisor Rickert: Whereas California counties provide many services that are essential to the lives of Californians, and whereas the position of the clerk of the board of supervisors plays an integral role in the function of California county government, and whereas the clerk of the board performs many legally mandated functions to protect and preserve the rights of the citizens to an open and accessible government, and whereas the work performed by clerks of the board is a time-honored and vital part of local government. And whereas the clerk’s duties of record keeping is revered, their work among the earliest recorded on behalf of the public, and clerks have long pledged to maintain their neutrality and partiality of the proceedings of government. And whereas the California Clerk of the Board of Supervisors Association, and affiliate of the California State Association of Counties, is organized to promote the principles of good government, to represent the interests of clerks of the board with legislative bodies and other professional organizations to encourage the development of professional growth and education. And to support the objectives of all regional groups established within the association. And whereas it is most appropriate that  we recognize the accomplishments of clerks of the board across the 58 counties in the State of California. Now, therefore be resolved that the Shasta County Board of Supervisors hereby proclaims November 18 through 22 as California clerk of the Board of Supervisors Week in recognition of the high-level services bestowed upon the people of Shasta County and the people of the California by clerks of the board.The proclamation was passed on a 5-0 vote.C2 Reappoint Laura Mathews to the Burney Cemetery District to serve the remainder of a four-year term to January 3, 2028.

C4 Reappoint Kim Faires to the Shasta Public Libraries Citizens Advisory Committee for a four-year term to November 30, 2028.
No Additional General Fund Impact
Simple Majority Vote

County Clerk-Elections

Probation

Public Works

Resource Management

REGULAR CALENDAR, CONTINUED

CLOSED SESSION ANNOUNCEMENT

The Board of Supervisors will recess to a Closed Session to discuss the following item (estimated 1 hour):

REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

(3:18:50) There was no reportable action.