001and joint sample of the school district unified school district this Monday March 2nd 2026 at the community center if somebody needs translation in Spanish I think the equipment is with you Laurie his equipment over there okay see alien missy thumb oh you know it's a seat in this by them say I remember that's a mess up of home what are the people all right so I'd like to everybody if you can please stand if you're able to for the flag salute please and over your heart ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all. All right, we'll begin the roll call versus Santa Paula City Council. Councilmember Gabriella Arnelis is not present.
002Councilmember Pedro Chavez, present. Councilmember Leslie Cornejo, absent. Vice Mayor Jenny Crosswhite, present. And me, Mayor Carlos Suarez, present. All right, we have board trust, uh, student board trustee Gonzalez, president, uh, student board trustee student board trustee. Here student board trustee is absent board trustee. Here for trustee. Here or trustee fruit is absent board trustee. Uh, is on his way. And for trustee Sandoval present. Thank you. Dr. Thank you. Dr. Sandoval at this time. Go ahead and take public comment Do we have any public comments submitted? Okay, we have one written Comment just a reminder that if we do have public it needs pertains the items appearing on the agenda and limited to three minutes If we have English and Spanish, we'll take three minutes for English in three minutes three minutes for Spanish Yes, then
003the school, the school district has, um. Protocol to read any emails that are sent us a little bit different than council. So I'll begin this from Brian Schumacher. Of autism Ventura, dear marriage, have a mayor. Brian Schumacher, President of Santa vala superintendent Weinstein Council and board members and the staff of the city and school district. Brian Schumacher, My name is Brian Schumacher, and I serve as the advocacy and community impact manager for autism society, Ventura County. Brian Schumacher, I'm writing on behalf of our dedicated advocacy committee, which reviews city council and school board agendas each week to ensure that people with disabilities are represented on issues that affect their lives. This week, we would like to express our strong support and appreciation for the joint public session between the city of Santa Paula and the
004Santa Paula Unified School District scheduled for Monday, March 2nd, 2026. Collectively, our committee brings many years of experience engaging with city councils and school districts throughout Ventura County. In that time, we have never seen a joint public session of this kind, and we truly want to acknowledge the leadership it represents. When city and school district leaders come together in a shared public setting, it reflects care. for the community and a recognition that supporting students and families is a shared responsibility. Collaboration like this builds trust, strengthens relationships, and creates meaningful opportunities to better serve the people of Santa Paula. We appreciate your leadership and look forward to seeing how this partnership will further unite the incredible Santa Paula community. Thank you, Brian Schumacher, Advocacy and Community Impact Manager, Autism Society of Ventura County. And I don't
005think any of us could have said it better. No, I'll do it. Okay after okay, we're gonna next move to our order business 6a community Hospital and Health Services Mr. Singer lead on that. I'd be happy to do some all right introductions. We have a number of presentations on the agenda tonight, but primarily those are from staff members of the district or the city But there was a request from our two by two Committee, which is made up of two council members and two board members to Board of Trustees Meeting, and I would like to receive an update on kind of the status of our Ventura County Health Care Agency, the hospital and and what better person to do that than Dr. Fonkhauser, who's here with us tonight and has a PowerPoint to give and
006will be available to everyone to answer questions. Thank you. Council members board members. Mayor Juarez and Mr. Singer, I am the CEO of Ventura County Medical Center and Santa Paula Hospital and family doctor by background. I spent years working at Santa Paula Hospital, both in the internal medicine setting with Dr. Carl Constantine, as well as in the OB and done many deliveries there. It's an amazing... community hospital that provides great care for your community. So I wanted to just update you on some of the recent discussions about Santa Paula Hospital and in general the kind of health care services in Santa Clara River Valley. Kind of repeating some of what's been presented. at Ventura County Board of Supervisors meetings as well as your own supervisor Long's Blue Ribbon Advisory meetings. To start with, I just
007want to reassure people that Santa Paula Hospital is open. It is an active hospital and it is providing emergency care and inpatient care and surgery today. It is a great place to get emergency care. Waits are shorter. If I could get the next slide. Waits are shorter than other hospitals in the county. And the ER nurses and ER doctors are the same staff that provide care at our trauma center in Ventura. really provide very high quality care and excellent care for your community. Our clinics are also open and serving in an outpatient setting. offer imaging services, diagnostic services at Santa Paula Hospital. And we'll talk a little bit about that in just a bit. But just wanted to reassure people that Santa Paula is currently open. It is currently busy. It has a very active
008emergency room and sees, you know, between 40 and 55 patients a day there. So you can rest assured that your community does know about Santa Paula Hospital and they know that we're there. It's hard to talk about anything in health care without talking about what was termed the big, beautiful bill that we call HR1 in July. That was passed. I'm sorry. Yes. Thank you for pointing that out. I appreciate that. The HR1 is a cut to Medicaid. to the tune of $911 billion, so almost just short of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. That will have an impact on health care for the population that we serve at Ventura County, which is a large portion of our patients are covered under the Medicaid program, which in the state of California we call Medi-Cal.
009If you look at the timeline, next slide, it's really rolled out in a stratified manner over the next six years predominantly. It is sustained for 10 years. But what we see is in this year, there are small cuts. In the next two years, dramatic challenges and barriers to getting people enrolled in Medicaid. If people get... come out of the program. It's very difficult to get back into the program. What used to be an enrollment that was required every year is now required every six months. There are work restrictions. There are restrictions based on immigration status. And we have a great deal of effort and a large team working to keep people enrolled in the program, to keep people... to maintain people's access to good health care. And that is a multidisciplinary, multi-organization. We have a
010lot of community-based organizations working with us, our human services agency, all of our health care, our local managed Medi-Cal plant, Gold Coast, and all of the community hospitals or the county hospitals, CMH, St. John's, Los Robles. There's a... really a significant effort to keep people enrolled in Medi-Cal in that program. Just the impact on counties is really tremendous. The impact on just public hospitals statewide, about $3.9 billion in the next six years. Our county will see a reduction in our health care dollars by approximately $400 million over the next six years. If I could get the next slide, I'm sorry. That shows the graphic with the... really this kind of escalating reduction in health care funds over the next six years. There's many advocates at the state level pushing for those to be extended or
011to be filled in by state funds and we have advocates at the federal level as well our own advocates in addition to the traditional what I know you know of as the California Hospital Association American Hospital Association we have a public hospital system the California Association of Public Hospitals and at the federal level the Americans America's essential hospitals that specifically advocate for hospitals like santa paula hospital and vcmc that have a very large medicaid population so i wanted to talk just briefly about santa paula hospital and we brought this to the board of supervisors the the ventura county board of supervisors if i could get the next slide i think he's to the next two slides um oh i'm sorry i buried the clicker under my notes thank you kindly whoever's been covering for me
012um So if you look at Santa Paula Hospital, we've really seen a significant reduction in volumes in the inpatient setting in Santa Paula Hospital. Some of that has been because of shifts in the inpatient services with the reduction of ICU. But actually the reduction of ICU was really done in response to a pre-existing reduction in the use of the hospital. So we have seen a year-over-year reduction. in patient days kind of a similar reduction in admissions and our census although in surgery We have been able to open a third operating room and you'll see just the opposite trend in surgery. We've really been driving the surgery numbers up in order to try to sustain the hospital. If you look at the finances, you'll see a kind of a similar reduction in revenue. There is a
013The costs in orange and the revenue in blue, there's a gap, although that gap has been closed somewhat two years ago. The county of Ventura with the advocacy of supervisor long purchased a CT scan and a mammogram for the hospital and those have certainly helped financially, as well as helped in the kind of community service. And then, you know, a year ago when we closed ICU and OB, we saw that gap reduced by another approximately three to $4 million so that is currently at about seven and a half million dollars a year and that is subsidized by the county we came really what initiated the the board presentation in november is we really came to a crossroads where we had to decide weather to seismically retrofit Santa Paula Hospital. The deadline was December to communicate
014plans for seismic retrofitting. This is a statewide initiative that required hospitals, you know, full service hospitals like BCMC to seismically retrofit five years ago, but they had a an extension for rural hospitals and one-story hospitals that we were able to take advantage of push that deadline back to 2030. and when we had a an assessment with an architectural firm related to how much that would cost for us to seismically retrofit the hospital just the seismic work alone was going to be 15 million dollars And then what's the deferred maintenance would have been another 10 million. So to keep the hospital operating past 2030, it would have required an additional $25 million contribution to that loss that we just described. And so that issue was brought to the Board of Supervisors and they determined not to
015continue to put money into that building that was built in 1962 and not to continue to pursue seismic retrofitting. There wasn't really an option to signal that we were going to do it and then... You know, not do it. There are deadlines that were associated with fines that that we would have had to have met milestones in order to continue on that pathway. So really not a possibility to kind of signal we were going to do it and then figure that out later. But the county had decided that They wanted to charge us with doing a deeper dive into the health care resources and needs in Santa Clara River Valley in in Santa Paula, Fillmore and Piru, and to come back to them with a report ultimately. Later this summer coming back with some very
016detailed financial pictures of various options of health care resources that we could invest in in Santa Clara River Valley. So that is what we did. We came back to the board. really demonstrating some of the kind of health issues in Santa Clara River Valley there was some sense that there's a higher incidence of certain diseases what we really found were that the diseases in Santa Paula Fillmore and Piru parallel those in the rest of the county what really does lag behind is preventative care as you can see on not keeping up with myself on this slide There is cancer screening that has kind of lagged behind the county, really the types of things that are based in primary care. And we, as a system, as a health care system, are committed to putting an emphasis
017on really reaching out to the community and driving these numbers up. We'd like to see them above the county average. How the community uses the hospitals. What we see is that three quarters of the hospitalizations are outside of Santa Paula. About 23% of the hospitalizations from people who reside in Santa Paula, Fillmore, and Piru, 23% of those hospitalizations happen at Santa Paula Hospital, and another 25% happen. at Ventura County Medical Center. So about half of the hospitalizations in this area are served in our county system, but only about 23% at Santa Paula. And we looked at what are other things besides the hospital and how are people served with access to primary care clinics. And this is, I apologize that Pairu is not in this, just based on kind of the size of the map
018would have had been shrunk pretty dramatically in order to do that. But this is Santa Paula and Fillmore, and you can see the safety net clinic or traditional. kind of safety net clinics. There's two community clinics that CMH has. There's FQHCs that Clinicas has in Fillmore and Santa Paula. And then Ventura County Healthcare Agencies, three clinics in Santa Paula and one clinic in Fillmore. What you do notice is there's only one urgent care in all of this. And that is the CMH urgent care here in Santa Paula. With regard to I'm sorry I want one too far with regard to the the county of Ventura's investment in this area I think it's important to just recognize how many services the County of Ventura provides in this area. If you look at ambulatory care, which is
019the clinic side of our healthcare agency, they have the three clinics in Santa Paula and one clinic in Fillmore. When you look at behavioral health, they also have a clinic system in Fillmore and a clinic system in Santa Paula, the hospital, which we've talked about. And then in public health, they have a WIC program here in Santa Paula. Thought to just mention, I think when we talk about the use of the hospitals, it's important just to acknowledge that part of... the reduction in use as well as the 23% hospitalization in Santa Paula. Part of that is driven by clinical resources. And just to acknowledge that Santa Paula Hospital doesn't have all of the resources that other hospitals like BCMC, CMH, and St. John's has. And this is just a list of some of those resources.
020If you look at a trauma center, right now trauma... That happens in Fillmore on the 126 bypasses Santa Paula Hospital if it's severe. No severe trauma ends up at Santa Paula Hospital unless it comes in by private vehicle. Those all go by Santa Paula to BCMC. BCMC has this whole team of specialists on call that have to be within a half an hour response time. Several of them in-house, anesthesia, general surgery, and very clear. evidence when they when they do research studies that a patient outcome is better when the plan is to get the patient to the nearest trauma center not to the nearest emergency room And so our trauma system has been doing that. Safety has been involved in that. Public safety has been involved in that, as well as our EMS team. What
021we also see is most heart disease that EMS sees goes straight to CMH. CMH has a cath lab. Community Memorial Hospital has a cath lab where they can take patients who are having an acute heart attack directly in and balloon open those obstructions. We do have kind of severe illness in the Santa Paula emergency room, but most of that is coming in by private vehicle. It's just a couple more. data points to point out that same thing, which is, as you can see, the emergency room visits is steady. That's the purple columns. So year over year over year, we've seen a little bit of growth, but it's been steady and busy in the emergency room. But the severity of illness reflected by that line graph up above there, the percentage of those ED patients who
022get admitted to the hospital has dropped year over year. I think just reflecting that the severity of illness in that emergency room and I again this I want to make really clear this doesn't mean those patients don't have emergencies that's that but not the kinds of emergencies that end up being hospitalized that same five percent rate here is about 13 at ecmc so we see about 13 of our emergency room visits uh being admitted to the hospital the kind of a similar data point from ems's perspective ems breaks down triages their severity in the field esi level one is the most severe That makes up between 5 and 10% of all runs, but those runs to Santa Paula Hospital make up less than half a percent of the runs to Santa Paula Hospital. So just,
023I think, a reflection that already EMS for severe illness, for all trauma, all significant trauma, are bypassing Santa Paula Hospital and getting to Ventura. Another thing I'd like to just speak to, because it was raised in a couple of our meetings, two people have made comments that somehow the EMS takes a long time to get to, they're afraid the EMS is not going to be responsive. The truth is, here's the data from EMS, and this is real-time data on their website. You can look at their dashboard. Their response. This is both fire and the ambulance is excellent. It is really remarkable. If you look at that response time, less than five minutes in Fillmore, the arrival of fire in 3.8 minutes in Santa Paula, and I'm sorry, in 4.9 minutes in Santa Paula. And then
024in the EMS, the ALS is the... the advanced life support that team that that is able that comes with a paramedic that's able to provide care in the field and care in the rig on the way to the hospital those response times as well very very good and then the right hand column is really the total time from when fire arrives to when that patient arrives at the emergency room and what you see is that there is a lot of care being given in the field but there is a 10 minute longer uh transport from the from Fillmore to uh to the emergency room then from Santa Paula and I think that's reflective of just the distance as we all know so the the board has char I just you know it's it's a difficult
025time right now uh trying to decide what um What services to invest in given the resource constraints that we have and the board has charged us with taking a look at various models right now. We'll be looking at just a standard urgent care expanded urgent care, which would be an urgent care with extended hours that also include advanced imaging like CT and ultrasound and then something called a micro hospital, which is a we can't have standalone emergency rooms in california that they are they don't license standalone emergency rooms but an emergency room with a minimum inpatient footprint plus or minus some ambulatory surgery outpatient surgery department that would be what would be considered a micro hospital there's not a standard definition for that but it is a design of kind of smaller rural hospitals that
026has been you know written about and and is recognized we are looking at those in great detail kind of doing a financial analysis trying to figure out how much those each of those models would cost and we'll present that to the board in august for their input so that that is our plan and In the meantime, I just want to repeat, Santa Paula Hospital continues to be an exceptionally good hospital staffed by very, very talented nurses, respiratory therapists, imaging technicians, physicians, and it's a very safe place for people to get their care, and we're proud of the care that is given by that team at Santa Paula Hospital. And with that, I'm happy to field any questions. One thing I wanted to mention, a timeline of the seismic requirement, I think I neglected to mention
027that. That is 2030, so we cannot operate the hospital beyond 2030 without those seismic retrofitting, barring any new legislation that pushes that deadline out even further. Well, thank you very much. Dr. Fankhauser for your presentation. Myself and Council Member Cronojo have been to the Blue Ribbon Committee meetings and I just want to state for the public's information that since the hospital closed several years ago and reopened, you and your staff have been very responsive in giving us information. In fact, Savannah Johnson and our supervisor, Kelly Long, have attended many of those meetings and we've learned with HR1 that, yeah, the future is unknown at this time. But if you would just take a moment to tell us what were the plans because remember there was plans for a nice hospital southeast of Helicon 26. Just
028the cost is surprising. And then you did mention that by August of this year, we should be or you should be looking at what direction we're going. And I think you mentioned your final steps. If you would just mention what will that be based on your final decision? Yeah, I, and I said, August, I mean, I think that what what is certain is late summer. So I know that the board has, you know, those, those late August board meetings are coming back after a hiatus. So, um, if we're unable to present in early or late August, it would be early September. Um, those, those presentations will really be a financial presentation and I can't speak for the board as to kind of what. decisions will be made at that time or whether they will ask
029for more information will be as complete as our team can be. The mention with regard to the plans that had been presented, I think it was about six years ago, there was a analysis done with regard to building a new small hospital in Santa Paula and they identified a contractor who had built small hospitals in Nevada and Arizona and some of the executives from the healthcare agency took a tour of those facilities and felt that those would be you know appropriate in size and scope for Santa Paula hospital. That again was six years ago. There was some financial analysis done initially when the proposal first came about and then again more recently in the last couple of years and really looking at kind of somewhat aspirational projections that the losses in that hospital were estimated
030to be really unsustainable. to the tune of over $15 million a year loss. is really why the shift to the micro hospital model. You mentioned the site. The site is a site that was right across from the Harvest Festival, or the Harvest Festival, excuse me, from the Harvest Project. And that site is still being looked at. I think they've still got some issues related to egress and ingress. and related to water runoff that are still being assessed by the county team as well as the contractor and his team. So I think we don't know right now if we were to build a micro hospital, whether that site would suffice and that is going to be part of the analysis in the next months. Thank you just off the top of your head. Do you do
031you remember the rough estimate a couple years ago for that hospital? What it was gonna cost? I thought it was like 300 million years It was a lot. It was a lot. Yes. All right. Thank you. We'll open up for questions thank you mr. mr. mayor and thank you doc thanks also for the tour you gave and showing me the facilities I'm have several questions for you obviously the the one that's on all our minds obviously Santa Paula is and this whole Valley is growing in population and for families that are moving here and this hospital won't be available after 2030 That's very concerning for our families, especially those that are going to be losing access to health care because the federal government is no longer our partner. If you were to add the existing
032number of clients served by the hospital to the system that you already serve in Ventura, what would that do to time for patient care and the wait times and so on? And is there capacity for that? What would that look like? That's a good question and some of that will come with the presentation in August but I can tell you where we're at right now. When we look at the inpatient volume currently we average about six and a half patients. That's smaller than the smallest unit at Ventura County Medical Center. We do have a unit in the Feiner building, the 1980s building, that's a nine-bed unit that is rarely open because we have capacity, but we only open units if we can fill them. Today, there's one patient waiting in the emergency room this morning,
033and that unit was empty. So I think we do have capacity to absorb those patients the vast majority of the year. Emergency room wise, I think we're looking at the acuity of the emergency room is such that several of those patients and perhaps even half of those patients could be served by an expanded urgent care, one that had advanced imaging capability. There are many urgent cares across California and the United States that are staffed by emergency room groups. who have the capability of seeing a higher acuity of patients. So I think we don't know the details yet of how that would look. And then, you know, the remainder of the emergency room patients would be absorbed at BCMC. And yes, we have the capacity to do that. And just a quick follow up to that.
034I'm concerned about the local jobs and the ripple effect on the economy. Can you share a little bit about the footprint? of the number of employees you have and what the hospital does in the community of Lake Santa Paula in terms of our economy. Yeah, I know your point is well taken. So if we were to expand to an urgent care, we would certainly have space for employees in that new urgent care. And then we historically have, when we closed the ICU and OB, provided jobs for people in Ventura, the option of employment in Ventura. So we have a good track record of making these kinds of transitions. without costing employees, physicians. Of course, if we're talking about 2030, it's very difficult for me to project that with absolute certainty, but it is our intent
035to do that. As you know, every day we rely on about 70 to 80 registry nurses, nurses who are coming from out of state, many of them, almost all of them from out of town. to fill in gaps in our system. So there are certainly positions available for nurses and respiratory therapists and lab techs where we do have to rely on temporary labor. So our expectation would be to do everything we can to maintain those positions. And just for clarification, ultimately this decision, can you tell us who that falls under in terms of make a decision of what option might be in our best interest for a transition from the hospital to an urgent care or a medical facility, whatever that looks like? Who ultimately makes that decision? I think ultimately there will be a
036team of us, and I will be at the point of that. team as a position of the CEO of the hospital and currently the interim director of the healthcare agency. We will come with recommendations and then ultimately it's the board of supervisors who determines anything that we do as an enterprise fund that requires injecting new dollars from the board of supervisors. So we will be presenting that and following their lead with regard to this because I think for each of those options it will require some investment from the county. And because people are potentially losing health insurance and seeing the numbers that are presented in terms of some of these triggers that are happening with HR1, if we start seeing spikes in emergency room visits and who ultimately is responsible to take care of those
037that don't have the needs to. or the insurance to do so yeah so there is a legislative um section 17 000 that mandates counties to provide emergency care to um unfunded individuals and i i'm assuming uh councilman uh chavez that you're you're referencing the The people who lose their coverage. Yeah. So those are the responsibility of the county that there is. We've been fortunate in our county because. If you have insurance, you get care that goes way beyond emergency care. It includes. Prevented the care includes regular visits for chronic diseases. Those all have been covered under the Medicaid program. I have been around for long enough to remember prior to the expansion of Medicaid how that worked. We had an ACE program and an MIA program and a very narrow spectrum of pharmaceuticals available to
038patients. We were able to provide emergency care for people who developed cancer or for people who became pregnant. But there were certain constraints that didn't feel like the best care. I just, we are concerned. I mean, I'm concerned. I think this is not a step in the right direction to be taking funds out of the Medicaid program. There's some representation that this is about preventing fraud. This is really impacting very good programs that provide patient-facing care that those patients otherwise wouldn't get care. And I just have to acknowledge as much as I, you know, spend hours and hours strategizing to do as much as we can possibly do in the context of cuts to that program. There is no way to represent it in a manner that it doesn't hurt patients. So I think that
039we're doing everything that we can to preserve good patient care in the context of a a tremendous insult on on uh kind of the the the progress in providing care for this patient population there's there's no capacity at the local level to supplant that funding going away from the federal government where no matter where you're at not just a ventura county problem or a city of santa paula problem it's it's a nationwide problem And, you know, I think from the CEO's perspective, you know that the counties are putting their heads together, and both for the health executives as well as the county executives, there are teams of counties trying to come up with solutions. But, yeah. to fill a gap of a trillion dollars in the next 10 years is impossible. Quite frankly, it's impossible.
040So I think that it's really... you know underscores the importance of legislative advocacy on behalf of health care for the underserved which is um you know what i've committed my entire career to and uh you know we we have to do what we can to preserve some of this so thank you yeah i was just hoping my name is anna i was hoping you can elaborate on what is the committee doing between now and when you meet with the board what is your planning are you looking at consolidating all your clinics you mentioned something about potentially an urgent care or a micro type of specialty hospital what can the community do to assist or the city or the school board in looking for a low additional location what's like the square footage that you're looking
041at How can we assist? Yeah, no, I think right now we're working with consultants who this is what they do. And I am just to say this is not a specialty hospital. This the micro hospital is not a specialty hospital. It's a small hospital that has an emergency room and the basic inpatient services that are required to run an emergency room, which in California includes for ICU vets and that that footprint. is being kind of developed and we are going to be working with our consultants to kind of look at the, you know, the financial pro forma of a small micro hospital as well as urgent care and expanded urgent care. You know, 1 thing that we are at the school district, creating community schools. 1 of the benefits of the community school is bringing
042in services. Right? So the, the loss of. Santa Paula hospital rate is certainly, you know, going to be acutely felt by our community. Right? However, you know. have we we would love to partner with the health system right to bring at least short some of those services we may lose right to bring into the district right um so you know we're more than happy to be partnering with you know the health system right for delivering those services at the School sites to do outreach I think maybe there's a marketing problem too I don't know if our community understands how many resources we actually do have here. So that right and continuing to work on our career pathways as well, you know you and i've talked you know a lot about that and we're getting you
043know a lot of. interest in health care so that you don't have to be worrying about you know itinerant nurses and finding the personnel so you know we would love to be partnering strong more strongly you know with the systems in any way that we can right to make sure that our our families are getting the services that they need Thank you. And I look forward to those engagements and I agree that our intent is to this is not this is not a position that we. Hope to be in or that anyone kind of even quite honestly could have predicted to be in two years ago this HR one cut has been The largest cut to the Medicaid program since it was created in 19 1962 so we're I'm sorry in 1965 so we're We
044are very eager to work with community partners and with the school to identify areas that we can. you know, augment the healthcare resources. And then quite frankly, I think we're working with year after year after year decreasing resources. So working with community partners who have access to educational resources to continue to augment the education and healthcare and... It's a tremendous career. If you work around our nurses, you work around our respiratory therapists, work around our physical therapists, our doctors, they are inspiring people who can convince young folks that that is a career to consider. And yeah, we're eager to do that. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Ryan. Well, a lot of questions have already been asked, but just a couple of things. On the slide where it's showing declines in the patients that are admitted,
045is that patients admitted to Santa Paula Hospital or admitted anywhere? So if a patient were to come in and they need to require a level of care that the hospital couldn't provide, would that show up as an admit somewhere or would that just not show up as a Santa Paula admit? No, those numbers include the patients that were admitted to the hospital. We do have patients whose level of care requires a transfer test, mostly BCMC, but some to CMH. And those show up in those reduced admission rates, yes. And then... When you talk about the micro hospital, is that the same as when you've talked in the past about the hub and spoke? Is that what that is? Or what is a hub and spoke? I appreciate that question. What we have used, I don't
046love the term micro hospital, honestly. Someone else made that up and have written enough articles about it that people want to call it a micro hospital. We've called it an essential needs hospital. My sense is that, you know, looking at what the essential needs in an acute care setting. are in the community and building hospital around that makes a lot more sense than building another 49 bed hospital in a you know era where people are transferred to larger hospitals people bypass smaller hospitals to go to larger hospitals one of our challenges we're only 12 miles away from vcmc as the crow flies which limits even our access to some of the funds that are associated with rural hospital or critical access hospitals hubbin's folks a little different we actually fit the hub and spoke model.
047I think the hub and spoke model is a large central campus and then small services outside of that campus that expand your reach and access. And I think we are currently operating in a hub and spoke model. And some of that is, yeah, I think what we're envisioning in the future is as we're looking at kind of other healthcare models that we take advantage of the fact that VCMC has, you know, very, very broad spectrum of services, very, very high caliber and high acuity of care. And then what impact, if any, does the fact that the Santa Clara Valley has a very high number of transit dependent residents have as the county consider? Are they really just sort of looking at financial data or are they looking at the fact that we have because like
048on in BCTC, when we look at utilization of transit in the county, there is a higher number of folks that are dependent on transit in the Santa Clara Valley as opposed to some other parts of the county. Yeah, yes, and we will and are looking at that. Again, resources are limited, so we'll be doing everything we can with the resources that we have. But certainly what we see is a pretty significant number of patients walking to the three clinics that we have in Santa Paula. you know, really being mindful of how does that look if we centralize all care in one location and is it accessible to those who are walking and if not, how can we get bus routes to that location? So that's certainly part of the discussion and is. Again, we're challenged
049by resources, and this is a challenging chapter. It's not like we'll be able to come up with thoughtful ideas and just fund them because we're really looking at such intense financial pressures that we'll be challenged to sustain high-quality. care for the acute care population. Some of that will need to happen in Ventura. Some of that is already happening in Ventura and Oxnard. But certainly that is on our radar. And one of the things that we're discussing, what is the solution to patients who walk to clinic or even walk to the hospital or take public transfer transportation partway to the hospital and walk up that hill there are some advantages of relocating the hospital right i think it is it is not in the best location for people who are on foot Do you have one
050last one? Because we got to move on. We've been in. Let me ask one more question. So then for folks who are sitting at home saying, well, I want to be involved in the conversation, will there be any opportunities for them to be involved before it gets to the late summer meeting of the county supervisors? Or will that be sort of the next time that general members of the public would have a chance to have an idea of what's going on, what the conversation is? I mean, I know that there's the blue ribbon, but that's a select group of folks that get to go. I mean, not even not all the Council gets to go to that. So do you know I know that there's been groups that have been asking for community of engagement.
051Do you know what that might look like? Yeah, that so so the next scheduled engagement would be a Board of Supervisors meeting in late summer. That being said, I'm I'm here that this this is a community that I care about, and I feel charged with doing everything I can in my position to provide the best health care that we can possibly provide given the context of of where we're at. And I'm more than happy to make myself available to groups who are interested in having further discussion or just want to understand things better. So certainly please, I think most of you have, or many of you have my cell number and my email and know how to get ahold of me, but I'm at john.fankhauser. at benturacounty.gov and I'll certainly leave my contact information here.
052Thank you, Dr. Frank Helzer. We're going to move on. But again, thank you very much. And also just please, when information becomes available, schedule the Blue Ribbon Committee meeting sooner than later. So thank you very much. All right. We will move on to the partnership success. Dr. Ramirez and Mr. Barnes. I think that's what I've been told. Do you want to? We didn't reverse this yet. So it's all good. Good evening. Um, just wanted to give kind of a recap of the partnerships that have, um, transpired really over the last. 3 or 4 years, 5 years between the city and the district. This first slide just kind of demonstrates the different opportunities that we have been working together and it's kind of exciting because as we were putting it together As I mentioned, it's really
053grown over the last few years these a lot of this wasn't in existence four years ago Um, just to point out, you know, one of our most popular partnerships with you sports. I mean, we're serving together over seventeen hundred youth participating this last year in new sports. So. It's pretty exciting to to see that and then also highlight the joint use agreement that, um. Was put in place last August. So, with that, we get into a little bit of, um. Detail, um, the city we host interns. Um. In our economic development, economic and community development and parks and recreation departments, we have interns. Our staff really looks forward to mentoring them. Renaissance High School has been here on two occasions. You see the flyer there. They call it the high school takeover and a picture
054there with them with our seniors. They come in and do bingo with our seniors and partner with us and they enjoy that activity. Our summer program, the Rising Scholars. partner with the with the district and city to offer summer school and summer camp activities this last year in 2025 at barbara webster and blanchard elementary schools serving 432 students participate in morning academic and enrichment activities have lunch and then they transition to after lunch to various recreational opportunities this is another example The city alone, when we would run our summer camp, and it's taken on various forms, but we would have 50 kids in a summer because it's a paid activity, maybe 100 youth participating in our summer camps, but together we're serving a little over 400 youth at no cost for them to come and
055participate in summer camping activities during the summer. A couple photos there of them participating in things like woodworking and soccer camp and culinary classes. It's been a good it's been a good model took us a few years to kind of dial it in on what that would look like. But this last year or two been very successful. The model that Dr and I and staff have worked on. Our youth center, we also partner after school program comes and participates a few times a week at our youth center. School district staff and our city staff work together to provide services, do things like art classes. We have substance abuse workshops, monthly celebrations, special events. The picture you see there on the left is their holiday party hosted at the Odd Fellows. They got to go up
056and see the holiday trains, provided a meal to them. And then we actually had like a. white elephant gift exchange that we provided all the gifts but the students got to participate in that holiday party and then some other photos there of of youth participating in crafts and different activities at the youth center they also do some outdoor activities and we have our computer lab homework help and things like that as well when they come over to the youth center youth sports So again, just to highlight our most recent numbers in the most recent seasons, flag football serving a little over 350 youth, cheer at 134. Basketball, this is just our last, this current season that just ended this last Saturday. I was at the gym watching a couple of the championship games, 620 kids
057participating in basketball. So I've pointed this out to our council when I've done our department updates, just to give you kind of a context of what that looks like. City of Santa Paula has run basketball for 30 years. At our height, we would serve 300 youth in our community, maybe a little over on up years. Together, we're serving over 620 kids, students in this community playing basketball. So we're almost running out of space. We're trying to figure out where to have practices and where to have games. But I can tell you the excitement. We're building a gym, by the way. What's that? We're building a gym. When we get it, we're going to get up to about 800 kids. So it's but it's been exciting. It's given kids more opportunities. And we knew that if
058we took certain barriers away and I can remember the meeting that I sat in with the district staff and the directors and we first started talking about this, that if we took away barriers like cost, having to travel to practice and they can just practice at their school site, that the numbers would grow and participation would grow. And that's what we've seen. Again, offered micro soccer, which is a five on five. soccer program for young people and then also started a track program and you can see the numbers there next school year we're looking to expand and start offering volleyball and also offering cross-country there's a couple photos there of the students participating in the new sports programs and then lastly is the joint use agreement that was I believe took effect in August of
0592025. As the city, we've benefited from being able to use district facilities because of our agreements with summer programming. So we have access to facilities in order to run programming. And then with the sports program, have had access to the gymnasium and facilities like that, but it wasn't really reciprocated. when the school district needed to use facilities because we did not have that agreement in place. So I know it had been discussed for many years, talked about, but finally we were able to put kind of pen to paper and put something together and bring it to you all. And we're thankful that that was agreed upon. I will tell you that it's already paid some dividends. The high school hosted their first ever home. cross country meet at the sports park and we worked right
060alongside them as staff to prepare the park and make sure it was ready and and had staff on site to assist the coaches and the high school staff there's some pictures of participants at the cross country meet and we plan on hosting them again this year at the sports park the softball team is taking advantage of these of the softball field up there and our staff works hard to make sure it's prepared for them they're continuing to use harding park and then just a few weeks ago had an event here the uh the was the So due to our joint agreement, we were able to host our reclassification celebration here. And we were, I think, at capacity, which was not okay. But it was a beautiful event where, yeah, our families truly benefited and enjoyed
061being able to be in a nice environment. And it really made our families feel special for that day and thanks to our agreement. And we were excited to be able to host that here and and partner with the district. Um, so. With that it was a quick presentation just wanted to really highlight the partnerships and the growth over the last four or five years between the city and the district. We know there's more opportunity. Dr. Maris and are constantly talking about those opportunities and more things that we can do together. But we really appreciate both body support in continuing to help us with that journey and support the residents of students and the youth that participate in our program. So with that be happy to answer any questions. sorry i kind of took most of
062the mic time but it's okay we're going to start on this side any comments or questions I mean, yeah, first of all, great job. This looks amazing. The second thing is, you know, what other ideas are in the works? I know I'm asking for a preview before your presentations, but what is being talked about based on the numbers? They're growing. Are we thinking about expanding several programs to different off seasons now? Are we thinking about bringing new programs into Santa Paula? What does that look like and what can we expect as a community? I'll talk from the sports side. As I mentioned, we're going to expand sports offerings. The students have been sharing with district staff that they'd like to offer volleyball, cross country. Because of the event we held at the sports park with
063the high school, the cross country team wants to help support us and help the younger teams have a couple of meets during the year. So we're going to do that. And I don't know if you want to talk about a couple of other programs. Well, I know that in summer, you know, we meet. early on starting in December to plan some of the events and we work we're trying to make sure that we work with our neighboring companies like for example the magic show so that way our students can go and learn magic at the place and so we're always trying to think of what opportunities for our students that they would normally not have because they can't go to like a very fancy however we provide that to them, thanks to like Abel and
064all of us who get together and really develop, finding different opportunities for our students so that they can have access to things that they would normally not have access to. And I'd also comment too, we've been running a youth apprenticeship program, YARA. We finished our third cohort. We'll be starting our fourth cohort in summer. So we'd like to continue that program as well and partner with the district to help that kind of be a pipeline for young people to kind of register and join that program as well. Can you... Can you tell us what kind of apprenticeship it is? What pathway are they going through? So it's through the trades. So they do it, and depending on the time of year, it could be a four-week, it could be an eight-week program. But they get
065various certifications in, like, green construction, and they get their OSHA certification and things of that nature so that they're what they call union-ready. LIUNA sponsors it along with the California State PAL. uh we have a uh santa paula pal chapter so we're able to partner with the california pal um so they they work with the different trades and they do a finishing project right so they've done concrete work in fact they put where we we've done the largest uh yara project in the state um you know they'll still build benches or they'll do some garden boxes and things, but we actually had them also pull rebar and do concrete work and things. And we were told that it was one of the larger projects in the state with the art program. So it's really more
066of a trade like to get them ready, union ready and get the certifications that they would need so that they can have a pathway for our local unions. Just as a follow up to that specifically, you know, that's where I think we have a place for synergy, you know, our building and construction career pathway just opened this year. And we're investing a lot of money in the building and trades building, right to be able to house different activities. So certainly, that's something that I think you and Director Garrick. could could work on you know to expand and and better align right so that you're not doing one thing over here and we're not doing one thing over here but that that we're developing our our kids all right in a way that makes sense so
067i think that'd be a great opportunity and to tie in our city core program into that as well yeah i think did i just i just wanted to mention if you guys feel comfortable sharing how the city and the school district is able to fund all these um youth programs for the audience if you'd like to share that. So we are very fortunate that we get our expanded learning opportunity money and because of that we're able to fund such a great opportunity for our students to play for free. And really we are noticing as a district that our students are really developing their skill sets so by the time they get to high school our goal is that they're going to be more competitive and be able to you know. Get it to CIF and
068actually bring it home I'll just mention one thing the Oxnard College and the Ventura County Workforce Development Board are gonna be launching you might be aware of it already but are gonna be launching a workforce preparedness program shortly. And so it would be good if we're not already, which you probably are. But if you're not already, it would be good to probably be in conversation with them too, because they're getting a fairly sizable grant from the Clean Power Alliance to launch that program. We'll be on the lookout for it. And just if I could touch back on the question about financing this. So We do have a formula we use, though, so that the district funding funds the district portion of our leagues. We use measure T in general fund to fund city teams or
069things that are not district. So, for an example, if there's a game between. One of our pal teams in a district team we actually split those costs when we go to like bill it. So the funding is coming from both sides in order to make this possible. I just think it's a good example of when you share resources, how much you can really expand and serve the community. But we're we're sharing the actual funding between the two entities in order to get the best thing for our buck, if you will. Anything else. All right. Well, thank you very much. Hold on. I had one. Oh, good. I had one. I was waiting being nice. No, I just wanted to just. John Pimentel, Another opportunity right um you know i've been talking with Dr gara who
070I know is listening and is going to say no, but I think the the internship program right that you have established, you know I would really love to see at the district we create a public service career pathway that would involve. Public safety, but also, you know, government service as well. And so I know a lot of our, you know, number of our grants have gone on to get. And, you know, have been part of that program. So I think that there is a demand for that. It would just be wonderful if we could, you know, again, integrate better into what the district's doing and, you know, really like, uh. David. utilize those strengths that you guys have as well at the city to create an experience that frankly they wouldn't get anywhere else in
071the county, because I don't know of any other, you know, district that's doing a public service one. And again, i'm sure Chief Aguilar wouldn't mind some recruits right. So anyways um was there anybody else over here yes i do have a question uh also related to the internship program i know currently there are two uh interns with hsa i'm curious does the city and or district have any plans to expand that program at um the city office so in the past we're always open um it really depends on developed opportunity in the department at the time but we've hosted interns in our police department in our finance department in our city clerk's office currently we're hosting one in community development and one here in parks and recreation but there's times where we've hosted them in
072every department so it really kind of depends on each semester and that connection if you are availability all right thank you thank you thank you okay we're going to move on to item 6c which is city growth and development presentation director james mason thank you Good evening. I'm kind of excited about kind of the direction the conversation is going tonight because I was trying to figure out what to talk about other than just what's happening as far as growth. But really three themes. One is where is the growth? Because as a school district and as a city, population drives students and demands for services. But number two, what was talked about a little bit right now is what's the future and opportunities for students as far as partnership and where is our business growth going
073so we can try and keep our kids local and provide opportunities for them. And that kind of tying that together as partnerships, not just between the school district and the city, but broader partnerships. We talked about Ventura Community College District, but I'll get into that. So really, from a development standpoint, right now, we've got well over 2,500 residential units approved. They're in the pipeline right now, plans have been in. And that's between what's been approved for development within harvest and infill development throughout the city. That's just residential growth. We've got another 1,400 units under... construction and three to 500 in the due diligence period. And, you know, the one thing that's really hard about being on the development side is sometimes it's like watching grass grow. People come in, they have a concept review, they,
074you know, put in plans and then there's a back and forth and sometimes they disappear, sometimes they come back. So it's always a challenge to try and forecast what exactly is going to stick. And that's without externalities in the economy. Also, not as important, but vacancy rates have been pretty stable. One that we're seeing shifting right now is in the industrial development. It says 0.9%, but we've had several, just in the last couple months, large businesses that have moved out of the city, which are creating huge vacancies. I look at that as a little cautionary, but the good news in that is a lot of those are warehouse uses and the opportunity to be able to look at real employment-based uses in those spaces because industrial property in Ventura County is very low, and we
075have some of the most amount of industrial land and vacant buildings of any city in the county. For those of you that are familiar with the harvest development, You'll see the large yellow area actually start with the blue area just completed 121 units, which was the former school site or potential school site, but the yellow area. Lennar has taken down that whole hillside and There's seven phases within that development. They're doing four right now. There's 554 units within that. They're going to be doing about 120 right off the bat. And if you hadn't had a chance to go out and look at the models, please do that. They're pretty amazing. It's going to bring in a whole different level of consumer into this community. And then also... I went through all these already as far
076as development numbers, but the two big ones, for those of you who are familiar, Halleck and 126, between 126 and Telegraph, a red-tail project. You're seeing those apartments going up. 298 units, 40% of which are market rate, 60% of which are low and very low income, which really translates to, for a lot of people, working. So that those were supposed to be open for leasing in November. They're moving so quickly. They're going to be doing leasing in January. I mean, in July. So they're way ahead of schedule on that. So that's going to bring a whole lot more people in. But what we're also noticing is, you know, the few projects that we've had and what we have as far as in harvest, we're about 30, 40% of the folks moving into that are from
077the valley, from this valley or from Santa Paula. So one thing that we're going to be doing as those become available for lease, we're going to be doing some. workshops to be able to get people within the community to understand how to apply for these, apply for these departments and go through the process. And then proposed, we've got most of what's coming as far as proposed is affordable. Probably the biggest project that we have is the Kmart site. Right now they're looking for a partner on the residential side. They had one and they backed out. So But that's 213 townhomes for sale. And they're actually, even though they're going to be market rate, they're really trying to push competition from what they're going to be able to provide as far as a price point. And
078don't know what to hold them to, but they're trying to stay in a $500,000 range or below. So that could be really interesting. And then really development snapshot, we're talking about... almost 2,000 units under construction, but another 550 infill throughout the whole city. One thing I did want to mention, we're going to be providing this to our staff and we want to provide it for your staff too. Through the Harvest Development Agreement, we have a public benefit housing program. We partnered with Ventura County Community Development Corporation and they have... a whole lot of grants and loans that they underwrite for first-time homebuyers. So this is a $25,000 assistance that's coming through Harvest, through Lima Nero Lewis to the city for public employees. And it's very broadly defined. When I say public employees, those are people
079in public service. It could be anything from doctors and nurses to anyone working for a municipality, county, state government. teachers. So once we get this within probably the next 60 days, we're going to put together all the information on this. So we'll share it with the school district to see if they have folks that are interested in this program is specifically to harvest. But I also know through Ventura Community Development Corporation, they have anywhere from $100,000 to $120,000 in grants available, everything from grants to loans. One of them is $70,000 that's forgivable after five years. So walking into a new home, if you can come up with qualifying and a down payment, that's a lot of money to be able to put down on a first-time home purchase. So more to come. We'll share that
080with you. Then real quickly on the industrial and commercial side, really the two biggest things that are happening, you've seen the giant concrete building on the far west end of town. That's 73,000 square feet. No tenants yet. They haven't marketed it yet, but it can be anywhere from one to eight tenants. developers also looking at doing that same building just a slightly smaller right next door to that so that provides us with a whole lot of opportunity for new employment. And as I mentioned earlier, kind of that connection, we're working with the Ventura County Community College District and the Economic Development Collaborative to look at what type of employment should we be looking at in here as we bring things in that fit the amenities that we have within this community so that we provide
081a pipeline going from K through 12 to community college. And if it's four year, if it's trades. that there's opportunities for folks to have jobs here. So we want to match where our growth can be, but also where our future is as far as our young people. So real quick development snapshot, just want to go through some of the things I talked about. Number one was the Red Tail project, that large apartment complex, 198 units. Number two, right next to that, again, right just south of Harvest. is 113,000 square foot retail center. So it's going to have everything from grocery to inline shops and things like that. So that they're looking at some middle of the summer for plans for that. And probably the other two things we've talked about a little bit is a
082four and five. Five was what we were originally talking about for a county medical facility. We'll be looking at what the opportunities are for something like that or something else. But what's really pivotal about that is four is, you know, two opportunities for retail, which are going to be driven by what happens on five. The demand for the region to be able to make that happen. This is a far west end of town. So. The two kind of orange triangles in the blue area, that's what I was talking about as far as Bender Farms, 73,000 square foot building and then soon to come a 68,000 square foot building. The large green enclosed area is 54 acre Santa Paula West Business Park. That is just starting to get marketed. That's probably that is our biggest opportunity
083for employment. It's a specific plan designed for industrial business park. So it could be anywhere from offices to industrial uses and our big goal moving away from kind of warehousing. material storage and truck storage to actually employment. That's where we really want to drive these areas. And then again, the yellow within the red, that yellow outlined area, a heritage development, that's the Kmart site, which would be 213 units. And then I wanted to put this in there because if you're familiar with Lemonwood Business Park, there's been a lot of transition within that area. New businesses moving in, ARPs getting ready to expand again within there. And the purple area is a breeze of glass. They just vacated that building, 92,000 square feet on five and a half acres. So that's a really good opportunity for
084something or many things. And then Santa Paula RV. which is also vacant right now too. So we're looking at marketing these and having conversations with the regional economic development. And we're getting opportunities from the state. This is the first time we've had large building space and large land space. Almost everything that comes through the state economic development is large businesses looking for large space. And so the first time we've had the ability to be able to cater to that. Those of you that have any interest about some of the things I talked about as far as the development if you haven't seen this before on the city's website under the community and economic development department under economic development, there's basically development update landing page and if you scroll over those numbers on this page when
085you go through that what will pop up is information about that development and And hopefully soon some pictures we had some problems with Google, where they disappeared but we're getting them back on there but in any event, we try and keep this updated so you know what's happening so just from a standpoint we'll be checking in with the school district regularly but this is a good opportunity to be able to see if there's anything that's changed. And just I want to talk just really quickly kind of finishing up kind of where our strategic priorities are, and this is really from Council strategic goals. And one we have you know statutory requirement from the state on housing one thing we're really excited about is the requirements that the state h CDs put on us as far
086as number of units we're in a eight year cycle, we are in year two of that eight year cycle. And we're at about 60% of what the requirements are. And I would say by that eight year, we'll probably be at about 120% of what the demands are. And this is one thing that is really important. The state and our RHNA numbers, which is our Regional Housing Needs Assessment, says how many housing units within certain areas, as far as affordability, market rate, should we have? That's great from a standpoint of state analysis, but what's important to us as a city... and as a community is what are the actual needs that we have? The state could say we need, you know, a thousand homes. But if we know we need more or less in what areas
087for seniors, for people that are unhoused, for working families. So we're really trying to work with the developers from the standpoint of really doing strong market studies. So what we're developing is what the needs of this community are as it grows. And then I talked about the other stuff, just strategic priority from council is employment generation. Housing without jobs creates a really difficult imbalance for our community. And the last thing we want to do, especially from a city and a school district standpoint, is turn into more of a bedroom community that's a retirement community. This is our opportunity in employment, again, to attract the type of businesses that will provide a pipeline for our young people to be able to have jobs and be able to stay in this community. And then downtown, you know,
088we have one of the most unique cities, you know, in the county, if not in the state, from what our downtown is. And the opportunity to be able to improve that and create that as an even better economic engine. I tell people all the time, you can drive anywhere along I-5, 126, 101, and you can go retail center after retail center. But try and find a downtown as unique as Santa Paula. It's a gem, and it's an opportunity for us to be able to bring more people in here, both tourists and people that want to live here. And then economic diversification. We looked at some of our assets and what are the areas, and I'm talking about pipeline for the future. And these are kind of the things that we looked at as far as
089advanced manufacturing, clean technology, agriculture and food processing, because that's where our roots are. Healthcare and professional services, because those are things that provide a strong pipeline of employment. And then creative industries. We have an extremely creative and artistic community. And there's probably no single area as far as employment cluster that has a bigger impact on the economy than arts and culture. And then finally, tourism and hospitality growth and industrial services and trades. And again, the trades are really important. I mean, between I-5 and here, we're probably talking about 60,000, 70,000 homes in the next 10, 15 years. That's two generations of employment in the trades. I talked about strategic priority or partnerships. I just wanted to throw up there who we're working with and this is just kind of scratching the surface. There's a lot
090to carry and many hands make for light work. So as we work together, we can do a lot. That's the presentation. Be glad to answer any questions. Well, thank you, Director Mason. You're probably going to get a few, but let me start off with one quick one. And that is you answered the question about arena requirements. So See that you answered that well, but the question that I get, and I think probably a lot of council members and people in the community is the transformation of Kmart from commercial to now potential residential. And I think you can answer that by explaining the zoning or changes that occurred in that area. And then also ultimately comes down to who owns the property that makes that decision. So you could answer that. Great question. Thank you. Um.
0911st of all came mark was on the market. For about 5 and a half years. And they wanted a lot of money for it. And it came right at the time coming out of the recession where retail was just not happening. Everybody was shrinking and no one wanted to spend the money on it. The other thing is a 60,000 square foot building. There just aren't any retailers out there that are using a building that size unless you do an indoor racetrack or laser tag or something like that. Ultimately, two things to the mayor's point. One, our zoning in 2022, we changed our zoning that anything commercial zoning, residential is allowed outright. And it was a little bit in front of what the state actually passed a statute that anything that was commercial. affordable housing was
092allowed outright, but we did housing in general. And again, property rights, the people who bought it looked at, we tried to encourage them to do mixed use development there, but trying to find, based on our population right now, trying to find retailers that were willing to go even as a part of that just was not possible. It's timing is everything I mean in the next couple of years we're going to have everybody knocking down our door just because of our population and our shift in disposable income within this community. But that's where we ended up the beauty of what they did they came in with a very dense project they reduce the number of what they had and they're also mentioned earlier about a price point they're going to do. More affordable price point, and
093within our inclusionary housing ordinance, they're required to do 32 affordable units within there. So, thank you director. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Um. We've had conversations for the last 3 years and. You know, a lot of the stuff that we do behind the scenes. The public doesn't quite understand how that works in particular with housing. Can you just reiterate the housing mandate and why cities have very little control about housing development in California? The state legislature is constantly shifting demand on cities as soon as we kind of figure out our ordinances and get in alignment with what the legislation is, it changes again. And it's very housing forward, especially affordable housing forward right now. So there's a lot of assembly bills and state bills that require us to be able to fast track and provide more
094opportunities for affordable housing. Our requirements right now are about 652 housing units, half of which are market rate and the other half are affordable. That's what the state requirements are for us. What's challenging from a city's perspective is we don't build housing. The city does not have a housing department that builds housing. We depend on the developers. So our requirements to the state is to be able to provide a pathway through our policy process and our ordinance that if somebody came in and wanted to do housing, especially affordable housing, that we can fast track that and allow that to happen. But that does not withstanding we still have to make sure that there's health and safety requirements are met and there's some kind of give and take from that standpoint And a couple follow ups.
095The first one is you shared a lot about housing inventory that's coming to Santa Paula. Can you share what the projection is in numbers of population growth and what that potential looks like? Because that's going to be, again, a reinvestment in our local community. It's a little tough to sort. And if you look at the actual numbers and you just said that there was, you know, two and a quarter people per household as far as what's coming. but also understanding that we have a lot of people within a lot of families in Santa Paula that are doubled and tripled up, where you've got households that have multiple generations in a household. And just as a side note, it was kind of interesting. I was looking at the farm worker study and over 70% of farm
096workers Their ideal housing situation would be their nuclear family in a house. And a lot of people think, well, gosh, you know, people want, you know, everybody in their house. But I think most of us know when you have a lot of family, it gets challenging. And it's the idea is everybody wants family close, but to have that one unit. So what we're seeing is more and more demand for one and two bedroom apartments to be able to meet those needs. But and thank you, Mr. Mason. There's been a lot of conversations and concerns because we're growing and people don't know what the big vision is in the plan especially when you're talking about the railto project and the bottleneck of traffic that happens in that corridor how our infrastructure is not even Set up
097as well the fact that there's no bridge yet built So we only have one way in and one way out of harvest development. Can you share a little bit about? How we're going to navigate to ensure that we work together with. Public safety as well, because if you look at reptile. How are those people going to get out if they have to travel and we already know that the majority of people have to travel. Somewhere else for for work and my concern is regarding safety. As there's a bottleneck that happens at certain hours of the day. With that quarter that goes from telegraph to, um, how like. I'd say there's three major things. One is the bridge that is the Santa Paula street bridge that goes over Santa Paula Creek. There's limitations on the harvest
098development until that bridge can go in. They can add another 250 units in harvest until that bridge goes in. The bridges should be done sometime in 2027, late 2027. But the number two is as we one thing we don't have a lot of control over is the growth along the 126 corridor and then I-5 corridor. So we've got people that are cross commuting through the valley, through Santa Paula. And I probably said this to most of you before, but we've gone in the last four and a half years from 44,000 car trips along that corridor to 113,000. And it's and it's growing. So a lot of that isn't even us. it's externalities. But as we start to look at all the opportunities we have with 126, with telegraph improvements, with Santa Paula Street improvements, we
099just have to do a better job as we go through this of community outreach and collaborating, coordinating where the opportunities are. The 30,000 foot view of all of that kind of goes back to employment again. Most people are going to drive to work. This is Southern California. The key is how can we create opportunities where they're, just to give you an idea, 74% of our workforce drives 20 minutes to work someplace else every day. And that's close to 8,000 people. So you cut that down to a significant number. Maybe they're still driving, but they're only driving around the corner rather than getting on 126 or Harvard all the way across. So it's going to take a lot of public communication and a lot of coordination because some of these things are these road improvements are
100tied to development improvements and our CIP. So we've got we're kind of juggling or I guess the best analogy is spinning all these plates at the same time. How can we make sure that. they're done thoughtfully and intentionally rather than just letting it happen. I think that's probably the best message to the community is we're not just waiting, sitting back and waiting to see what happens. We're looking at this from a high level, multiple departments, how we can make this work together. And just that piece, just to reiterate the because you mentioned that they're fast tracking Redtail, that it's going to be completed, which means it's going to be completed before the bridge comes in. And I don't know how those people are going to get out, right? Because if they're blocked in, people right
101now are creating their own lanes just to get over to the left. So, even if we, as a city can consider conversations about maybe utilizing some measure, our funds. In that space in particular to alleviate traffic concerns, especially for new residents that would be moving to that location. That's just, I think a major concern we have to start thinking about, especially since they're fast tracking. That development in particular, thank you. And 1 thing about the retail we're talking about. But a third of that development will be ahead of schedule. So it's going to over the next two years, it's going to evolve and grow. But that's still a bit of a hit. We had a question over on this side. Uh, thanks, James. 1st off. Uh, thanks for the presentation and it's good to see
102the. Acknowledgement with the economic development of the county. I know. And. Where Martinez are doing great things and I know they partner with you, but to piggyback Mr. Thomas's question to what conversations are, is the city having specifically with about 126 because. You know, I think that as much as anything is critical to anything that. You know, the city does and tries to to do. um you know on its own you know and it ties directly to some of the comments that dr fankhauser made you know not specific to the potential hospital side or medical center site but just development in that area in general you know egress and ingress is going to be a challenge for any development there you know until that intersection is addressed and i i wasn't sure what conversations you
103know the city or your office was having with caltrans about trying to get that identified as a potential area for improvement. I think probably the best way to characterize it is that within our general plan, the type of growth that we're experiencing has been projected. We knew this was going to happen. And Caltrans knew this was going to happen. And one of the major things that we see is I guess to put it plainly, if you've been on 101, 405, 1, 215, 5, you know what that's like during rush hour. It's a parking lot. So those levels of service, Caltrans is a state organization with limited resources. So when they look at Santa Paula, they go, what's your problem? You're level C. So what it comes down to is advocacy and back to partnerships. How
104can we? work to advocate with Caltrans to see what can be done as far as improvements. And there's limited right-of-way. That's the other thing. There's a lot. It's not like we're going to get a clover leaf there. No, absolutely. But I mean, it is a public safety issue. I mean, I know people that were looking at potentially moving into harvest, and they sat at that intersection trying to make a left. And they were like, yeah, I'm not going to do that Monday through Friday. You know, just for my own personal safety, you've got people whipping down 126 to your point, and they're not going to stop. I mean, you've got five points in Santa Clarita right there by Magic Mountain. That's 20,000 units, you know, and that's all said and done. And they're going to
105be equidistant to other places in Ventura County than they are to L.A. County. And so, yeah, I mean, anything that we can do, I mean, speaking as a county employee, I'm not a school board, but it needs to be addressed. I always say, you know, if you're in Newhall Ranch. and it's a saturday afternoon you're probably not going to baker's field you're probably going to the coast so that's we're going to get hit with that thank you vice mayor crossway yeah i just want to add to that um two things one that intersection can't get finished soon enough and i know that that's not we're not the ones that are working on that intersection but uh those improvements We can't happen quickly enough and unfortunately, none of those projects move as quickly as any of
106us would like, but that aside, I did want to add to this conversation because I do sit on the venture county transportation commission that is currently engaged because we have brought up to them. Concerns about the 126 and so is currently engaged in a study for potential safety improvements because that's. Caltrans does maintenance and safety improvements. Any other major improvements that would be done to that corridor would have to be done by the Transportation Commission and they've already been spending decades trying to work on the 101. So those kinds of major improvements aren't probably coming anytime soon. However, Caltrans is currently looking at what safety improvements can be made to the 101 and Simultaneously, VCTC is looking at doing a study of the 126 corridor. The last time they did one was in 2018, and
107we all know that a lot has changed since then. So, um, is going to be embarking on a study of what are the current conditions. And are there things that they need to be planning for? Um, so we want to make sure that we're engaged with them so that they understand the magnitude, not just Santa Paula's growth, but Fillmore. And Santa Clarita, um, so I just wanted to make sure that we all knew that there are both the transportation commission and are aware. Of the challenges with the 126 and are engaging in in studies to look at both short term and longer term. What what are the solutions that are going to be needed? So, thank you. Can you have 1 more question? Yeah, 1 more in the interest of time. We'll, we'll move on
108after that. I do have a question. 1st, I am very happy to see that we are doing a lot of new development. However, on the topic of that new development, you were talking about the housing vacancy rate. I'm curious with the current state of the economy with the currency of the job market. And the direction that is currently going, are we as the city expecting a higher increase in housing vacancy or with the new conditions, or are they expecting a higher rate of immigration away from the city? Right now, we are the most affordable housing market in the county. And just as a rubric, 3% of Ventura County residents can afford to buy a house. So what we have in the pipeline as far as affordable housing, and I'm talking everything from folks that are
109unhoused to two young professionals trying to buy their first house. The best way I can characterize it is the median house price is three and a half times the median salary. So it just it just doesn't work out. So what we're having as far as affordable housing being built is going to provide a lot of opportunities for people that are already here. To your point of vacancy in this county, if you're trying to find an apartment or find a house, you're waiting in line in any category. So the idea that we're going to have enough available in the next couple of years is going to not only house people that are already here, as I mentioned, that are kind of. Dents in their families, but also bring in more disposable income into the community. So,
110just to clarify, the city is not expecting the vacancy to drop to increase. Correct Thank you. Thank you. Thank you director. Mason. We're going to move on. Yep. Uh, we are moving on to the community schools grant. Hello again, so I am very proud today to present to you a brief overview of our community schools. grant, we are very excited to be able to share that this is our North Star. So when we look at our community schools, we look at this to support us in our vision. So our goal is to be able to, this is our. we want our students to finish high school with these five competencies in the middle, and we're using the outside circle to be able to get there. And so this is what we're using as we're developing
111and implementing the community school strategy, which I will share with you in a moment. So here is what we were very excited about that California Senate Bill 820 in 2021 gave districts an opportunity to be able to apply for this grant. And this grant really was to be able to look at schools in a different way and really partnering with the city as well as with other agencies, so like the police department and so on. And we were granted two grants for uh two of our sites that i'll share with you in a few minutes so what is a community school a community school truly is looking at the whole child approach so we're looking at what is asset based so we're looking at what does our community have that we can build upon as
112well as looking at our utilizing and leveraging our community and our parents to be able to make that happen and really looking at an integrated focus. So instead of working in silos, really working as a community to develop a community school. Again, addressing every school has a unique need. Even though we're all in Santa Paula, we don't all have the same needs or assets. So here are our schools. We are very proud that Isbell Middle School is one of the recipients as well as Barbara Webster. And so we have, this is our second year with the grant, so we have been working very diligently to implement the strategies that I'll share with you in a moment. So we want great schools, right? Every child deserves to have a great school. In order for us to
113be able to have great schools, these are the four components, which are the four pillars of the community schools. As you can see there, we have the collaborative leadership and practices, which includes everyone. It also has our family and community partnership, expanded and enhanced learning time, which you can see that we do very well with Mr. Barnes and everything else that we do in our community. And then integrated student support. And so this is not only looking at bringing in clinics or bringing in therapy, but it's also looking at how do we respond when students are struggling and how do we support them when they are achieving. So it's really looking at the whole child again. So here's just a brief overview of what the four pillars are. And like I said, this is a
114very exciting moment for us because we get to share it with our city council so that we can see how we can partner in the future to be able to really develop and implement our community school strategy. But this is the pillars. This is what we rely on to be able to really create a cohesive school. And what's in place currently? As you can see, we are on our way. We do have our wellness centers, which is really critical for us. And in both school sites, we have wellness centers. We have our student mentors that also support because we want to uplift student voice. We are currently working with FoodShare. We're going to be able to pretty soon at the end of this month, we're going to have a FoodShare at the middle school that
115it will be. open to only our Isabel families, but we're also actually opening one up at Santa Paula High School. Again, it would only be open to our families from Santa Paula High, but this is an exciting partnership with FoodShare that we were able to secure. We also have our parent engagement piece is critical for us. You know, we are very fortunate we were able to open up our parent center at Isbell Middle School. It was the second year in the making. So we are making actually having it come to fruition was very exciting for all of us who have been working to open it up. And we had our first session just this month with the coffee with the community school outreach. They we also have the condor closet, which is amazing, you know,
116for our families to be able to go shop. And it is actually a beautiful space. If you haven't had an opportunity to go visit, it is very, very welcoming. And so no student would ever feel that they are shopping for. Actually, some of the stuff is brand new, which is really amazing. We had a recent visit from the regional technical assistant team, and they want to bring other districts to come and see the beautiful work that our district is doing. So that was very exciting for us. And again, we have our parent component, which is big for us. We have our parent ambassador program that we started. This is our second year and it's getting better every year. We had our parents present on the learner profiles to other parents, which is exciting. And we
117do so much. We have a limited amount of time, but we do want to say that we are on our way to having a... a great implementing the strategy as well. Then again, this California community schools really was meant so that we can meet the current moment. To meet the current moment, it is important not to view community schools as one initiative among many that are currently being funded in California districts, but rather as an equity enhancing strategy that aligns with and can help coordinate and extend a wide range of state, school, and district initiatives. So this is really critical for us because this is not an initiative. This is a strategy. This is the way we want all our schools to have. We want all our schools to be able to serve our students.
118as a whole child. We know that as a whole child, they have parents, they have community. So let's embrace everyone so that they can be successful and be able to graduate with the skills that they need to be successful in the future. So that's all I have for you today. So any questions that I may answer? All right, we'll start on this side. I do have a question. So first, I would like to say I love what's being done with the food chair and the condor closet. I'm curious. For those I know the future is limited to. Is bell and the highest line now that the convert closet is most likely limited to is Bell based off the name. I'm curious. Are there plans within the district to be expanding these? Even if it's 1
119program, like the condor closet in order to make it. all districts serve those families yes actually we are we did you know um with the support of our superintendent we were able to hire community school outreach coordinators so every site is either shared one or have their own. And the whole purpose is, so at Santa Paula High School, we're working on creating a closet there for high school as well, as well as Barbara Webster and Glen City. And we're even looking at having a district location. So we do have the adult ed school. And so we're transforming that space into a really welcoming space for parents. So we're thinking of possibly adding a a closet there for our community, for our parents and our students. You're saying in the oldest offices with the adult education?
120No, the adult education now is at Isbell. So we have it there. So it will be there. Those of you who went to Isabel, there's two rooms that face the Harvard. So one of those rooms is our adult ed room. And actually, with our wellness, we've created a wellness space. We'll have an opening soon so that you can all come and see our beautiful space. And the follow up question, are there plans in the works to get the other schools in the district recognized as community schools? We know we did apply and we were not awarded the grants. However, we hear that there is another round of. grants coming up, so we will definitely apply. However, I know that we're committed to the strategy. We know that this is a strategy that will work and
121that will produce college and career ready students. So we are looking at see how we can still expand the strategies even though we don't have the funds. Thank you. Quick question, Dr. Ramirez. Can you share a little bit about the structure of community schools in regards to working in coalition with community partners and public agencies? Yes. So that is actually key, right, for us to be able to work with our community partners. We have a district advisory committee. And during our district advisory committee, we are going to branch out. Actually, one of our community school outreach coordinators is being tasked to be able to bring all the different agencies that we have in Santa Paula to make sure that we have a partnership with them. And if not, then how can we get one? Right.
122And the same thing for like our city council. That was our next our next step is to get our city council also involved to see how what like just kind of like we talked about internships, like how can we, you know, build those relationships. And so really is really leveraging all our community assets and creating like a community coalition. For example, I always use Anaheim Union because that's where we when I went to see Anaheim Union. I was like, this is amazing. Like, we need a parent center. We need a closet. We need, right? So all these things. So there they have a partnership with the city and they meet on a consistent basis. And actually, I mean. The city gives Anaheim like thousands of dollars to be able to do different things, not that
123we wouldn't appreciate it, but, you know, just something to think. So it's just a beautiful time to go visit. We have a fairly new team at the middle school. So we're going to take the middle school team to Anaheim Union in March. They could see what. what the possibilities are. Like all the work, like the youth center that I was so excited when Greg said, we need to utilize it more. Yes, let's make it happen. So I have Aspire students. So then we took them three times a week, you know, on the bus to go and make it more functional because we want our students to thrive and be able to utilize what the resources we have. So we are constantly looking at what assets are out there so that we can build on those.
124Yes, and just to invite you to connect her with the two new chairs of the Santa Paula Social Services Coalition. It's a monthly meeting. It's going to be held the next week. It's going to be held at the Ag Museum. So it's a great opportunity for you to present to that group of social service providers. Perfect. Yes, thank you. All right. We will move on to the mental health initiatives. Dr. Santa Maria. SPEAKER 1 All right. Good evening. As much as I'd love to defer all my time to Chief Aguilar tonight I can't pass up on the opportunity to present to you this evening on what we're doing for mental health initiatives in the Santa Paula Unified School District. So good evening Mayor Juarez President Sandoval council members board members Superintendent Weinstein audience. My name
125is Dr. Andres Santa Maria. I'm the director of student support services for Santa Paula Unified School District. And tonight I'm presenting to you on our wellness centers. So in our district, we operate on or within a multi-tiered system of supports for social emotional learning, mental health supports for not only our students, but also for our families and community members. We have tier one through tier three level services. Depending on student need. However tonight's presentation is really strictly focused on wellness centers which fall within that tier one level of support. As the need grows students can be referred to more targeted counseling services at the tier two level or more intensive services with a mental health counselor. or sometimes we need to refer out to outside agencies through Logrando Bienestar or through Ventura County Behavioral Health
126for continued services outside the district. We currently have six of our nine campuses with a wellness center so we're really excited about that. We just opened Grace Thill on February 5th. We have a grand opening for Bedell on March 25th and we will be opening our final Wellness Center next year at McEvitt. So once we complete McEvitt's Wellness Center, we will have a Wellness Center at every one of our campuses. The Renaissance High School campus, because of its size, we operate more of a wellness office space for our students on that location. So What is a wellness center. So our wellness centers are safe spaces for students and parents to access support for their mental health. Our wellness center counselors coordinate activities presentations clubs and workshops for students and their families to promote healthy choices
127learn coping strategies to alleviate stress and anxiety and interact with their peers. The numbers you will see throughout these slides reflect our last data collection point, which occurred back in mid-January. So you can see, even though they were taken maybe about a month and a half ago, you can see just the sheer numbers of students that are visiting our wellness centers throughout the year. Having a wellness center provides our students with opportunities to serve as wellness peers or be involved in clubs. We partner with outside agencies such as Bright to facilitate workshops for students as well. Students typically visit the Wellness Center during their break times, recess and lunch so as not to interfere with their core instructional program. However, the wellness spaces are available to students throughout the day in case the need arises.
128Our wellness centers also serve as parent friendly spaces for our schools to provide parent workshops coffee with the principal and other activities to build community engagement like Dr. Ramirez had mentioned with community schools. As our wellness centers counselors engage with students on an ongoing basis they are able to determine when a student is in need of those targeted to tier two counseling services or even intensive tier three mental health counseling or as I had mentioned they may be in need of a referral to outside services to Ventura County Behavioral Health. Some of the more innovative activities offered for our students and parents have been our sound bath meditations and drum circles. Our peer mentors have the opportunity to receive specialized training through the VCOE Office of Education. One of the goals of our programs and
129activities that we offer through our wellness centers is to reduce the stigma that often comes with talking about mental health. Many of our activities focus on raising student awareness or self-awareness and emotional regulation skills. Currently in development several our wellness centers are in the beginning stages of building their own wellness gardens to create outdoor spaces for students to engage positively and purposefully with their mental health. And you probably wondering well, especially in the next couple years to come with the budget that we're facing as a district Where does all this money come from? We've been blessed to receive funding through VCOE and VCBH We've received grants to support mental health and behavioral health for our students and community. Our LCAP supports some of our expenses for our related to our wellness centers. And we have
130just begun engaging in these children and youth behavioral health initiative or CYBHI working with Healthy Campus so that we'll be able to begin Submitting claims for reimbursement so that leading into the future years is a potential sustainable funding source for us. That was a pretty brief overview. All right, we'll take any questions. We'll start on this side. Anybody. Yeah, so my first question over here is, what do referrals look like? If I was a student in need and crisis, right, I come into your wellness center, how would your staff, you know, either refer me out or how would they assess my need? So could you provide me a little bit more context? Let's say I'm sitting, I'm very upset, something traumatic happened at home. Law enforcement was involved, right? I come to your school site,
131right? What would that look like? You know, I'm obviously in... emotional distress how would you assess me so our wellness so at the high school and at the middle schools we have multiple council counselors on our counseling teams if it was at an elementary school we have one counselor who serves as both the counselor school counselor and the wellness center counselor so they wear multiple hats typically students that we see in crisis are students at the middle school or high school level if they're coming back from having been on a hold perhaps if that involved law enforcement or the crisis the CERT team through the county we would be working with that family from the get go in order to help identify a transition and an intake plan for when that student is ready to
132return back to our campus. We do refer our students in crisis to the mental health counselors, the tier three level of service. Those counselors are licensed professionals and they're able to provide crisis management for those students in most need. At the same time, when we do have students being referred to a mental health counselor, we do a simultaneous referral to vcbh because we know that those students are going to need long-term care which extends beyond the school year and so yeah yeah and how does that follow-up look like to to you know encourage the student or the family to ensure they go through with that referral or at least go through with a vcbh's intake process Well, usually just the crisis itself usually opens doors to enable us to work in partnership with the family.
133Parents are often seeking resources. And if this is their first experience going through a crisis like that, they're very what we've experienced is that they're very open to working with our counselors. who have access to those resources and are able to guide parents through the process along with um obviously law enforcement and outside agencies as well no that's great to hear and you know i was the one who made the request for this presentation because for a long for a long time you know bcbh and both the youth of this community have identified as mental health mental health um resources as a high need for our youth in this community and it's so important that we highlight what services we have at our local school district and how students can access them, especially when they're
134facing a high or a very traumatic situation. And another scenario I just want to throw out here is what if I'm a student, right? I'm just, you know, run-of-the-mill student, nothing has happened, but I really need help coping with the day-to-day stress of school and home life. If I were to enter your wellness center, right, can I talk to staff and say, hey, I'm facing some... some symptoms of anxiety and it's becoming more chronic, will they be able to refer me to an agency or able to refer me to a staff member within there fairly quickly or is there a wait time? Oh, no, absolutely. Well, first of all, our wellness counselors are there in the wellness centers to provide that immediate support. If a wellness counselor determines that working with a student over time
135or perhaps then and there in that moment that that student is in need of help beyond the scope of what they're able to provide, that's when they begin referring up to an intensive, more targeted or more intensive services or even possibly referring out to vcbh thank you sure thank you um how are you navigating the transition away from the mental health services act that sunsets june 30th as that's been a major source of funding and opportunity and investment in addressing these needs, mental health needs of our young people and their families. That's why we're currently getting on board. So we're one of several schools in the county that have joined in partnership with VCOE, who is taking the lead to work with Healthy Campus in the CYBHI initiative in terms of funding sustainability. for our
136programs moving forward. By being able to reimburse or submit claims for reimbursement for services that we're already providing, we're looking to recoup money that we may lose in other funding sources. Thank you. All right. We will move on. Thank you very much. Thank you. To public safety on and off. I think there's two or just chief? Chief. Good evening Board of Trustees and City Council members Thank you for the opportunity tonight This is just to give an overview a lot for our viewers as well of what the police department does in our community both on and off campus so we'll get to it and A basic understanding, if those aren't aware of what the school resource officers cover, they primarily cover one at our high school and one also at the middle school. And I
137will applaud the district and also our city. because we are one, if not the only district in the county that has a school resource officer assigned to the middle school. It's amazing work, it's a lot of work, but it's appreciated. And the relationships with admin and our instructors and all their staff has been amazing. So we also provide assistance to all of our other schools, such as the Renaissance High School and our elementary schools. and we also provide support in the need if there's an emergency call out in the city with our patrol officers answering calls and on the flip side of that our officers who are on patrol in the city will respond with our school resource office to any emergency that occurs on any of our schools some of the roles that typically
138the school resource officer does may not be known to a lot of our viewing audience here tonight and so I'd like just to have you look at the list of those and in addition just to working on campus with staff and admin and students our school resource officers conduct student welfare checks and site visits to homes to make sure the well-being of our students is is good We also attend the students attendance review board and we also respond to investigations regarding students outside of school hours. We've had a few incidents this year already where we've had minors involved in either a crime incident as a witness or otherwise and we've called our school resource officers in late in the hours of the evening to come in and assist our patrol officers. So our school resource
139officers are engaged with what's going on in our schools both what happens on campus and also off campus as well. We provide referrals and enforcement when necessary. We do Fun things also such as read across America. We've our officers and our school resource officers have been out today already reading on campuses I'll be at McKevitt school on Thursday reading to our students and it's a great fantastic Uplifting experience every year and we really really truly enjoy doing that and also we integrate our Officers and our school resource officers with our police activities league A little bit off campus, let's talk about crime stats. I don't want to delve too far into this, but I will share with you our 2025 national information-based resources for our stats has come out in comparison to year 2024. And
140so our crimes, they're in our group A offenses, which are crimes against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society. uh all of our categories i'm proud to say are down our crimes against persons are down 1.4 percent our non-consensual sex offenses are down eight percent crimes against property is down very significantly this year uh and just to note we had about 3 000 less calls for service uh versus the calls for service in 2024. our crimes against society is down 6.75 percent so total group a offenses for uh city of santa paula are down 15.1 percent so i can't take credit for all of that but i will tell you that our men and women of the police department take the job seriously they work on focusing on mitigating crime reducing crime and deterring
141crime when they can in addition to the enforcement so they do a fantastic job and and working together with our school district and collaboration really does help us move forward I want to take the time for our viewers just to remind all of our parents and staff what our school active threat awareness is. So the basic response as we move forward and we plan our threat assessments as we move forward on any given incidents. We always like to make sure we tell school staff immediately report active threats. and crimes in progress to police by dining 9-1-1 for fastest response and the decision by school admin is made in any instance while school is in session to either lock down or shelter in place the school in the district does initiate messaging and updates to parents
142and what i do appreciate about working with all of our school staff and district staff is that when we message we message together collaboratively. So we make sure that all the facts are together and we all are under collective agreement on what the stat what the statements that are going out to to all of our parents and students. I will tell you, we've already had a couple of incidents this year where it was immediate reporting. We've been able to investigate and get with the student and the parent, whether it be contraband or weapons or whatnot and we've come to to a very quick reaction and taking care of those issues and again that's a testament to having conversations with school staff and parents to let us know when things are going on when you see
143something we still want people to say something as quickly as possible And for our parents, we want to make sure that you can expect alerts and messaging from all of us, including the district and the police department. There are dynamic situations that evolved, whether it be students on social media making statements or on campus making statements. Those are things that we... we take very seriously and make immediate action to find out what's going on. So our response sometimes can be a little bit dynamic and out of the norm. But when we have to move forward with those situations, we keep our school staff and our parents and students in mind. There may be ongoing police operations which may sustain a lockdown or a shelter in place and as those situations develop sometimes they take a
144little bit twists and turns but we ultimately will get to those situations and work them through like we've had in the last two three years since I since I've been here so we appreciate the ongoing collaboration and work together with with our our staff at schools. Touching on some collaborative events, we actually have one coming up this Thursday, the first of its kind. It's our parent student awareness forum that's going to be presented in English and Spanish. We invite all students and parents of Isabel. Isabel Middle School, Renaissance High School, and Santa Paula High School to attend this event. You can RSVP on the QR code on that flyer, which has been distributed by the district, by the schools, and by the police social media out today. There's plenty of space available. These are topics,
145we picked three topics this year. and we feel are very valid and appropriate and timely. And one of them is the parent roles and best practices. The second one is dangers of tobacco and vaping. And the last one we have is mental health crisis awareness. In addition to that, we will have numerous information tables for providing our attendees with information, whether it be students or parents. Santa Paula High has graciously put together a lot of wellness information. Ventura County Behavioral Health will be on hand, the Family Justice Center, and I can't tell you the importance of that enough. The importance of that is because we do not ever want any student to fear reporting crime, and advocacy is really important for victims, and Family Justice Center has done a great job, and they'll be on
146hand on Thursday. Ventura County Office of Education does a great vaping program. I was just out there last week when they presented to kids in middle school a great presentation on the dangers of vaping, and we'll have a presentation on that. The Human Services Agency will be offering information on assistance programs for families. Ventura County Public Health will also be on hand with a booth to offer services and information. And the food. We have food for this event. It's going to be provided by McDonald's graciously. They are supporting and sponsoring this event. So we encourage students and parents from the three schools to come on out. It's a great event. We hope this continues and we want to provide engagement and information to as many as we can. And in closing, I just want to
147talk about some of our youth engagement that we take care of with the police department. We invest in all of our youth. It's super important to all of us. And as you can see by some of the pictures that I'll go through on the next three pages, it's amazing work that our officers and staff do to stay connected and engaged with our students. We provide... dinners for several of the high school sports programs we did football this last year they were super successful and prior to the championship game we provided a dinner for them our school resource officers are on campus they're not just there doing answering questions or or individual mentoring they're talking to groups of students at a time to help provide information as you see out outside indoors in the classroom they're
148there not just uh to help out what's going on on campus, but be there as a resource for our young men and women. Read Across America is in full swing this week. We have done that. We have career fairs at our elementary schools we present information on for those who may be interested in public safety. We have Law Enforcement Explorer Program, which has been super successful the last three years in going to national competitions and bringing back awards because of their attention to detail and their participation in these very difficult tactical events. Also the soccer team we brought dinner to last year when they had their good year and success, the boys soccer team. So we do lots of cool things. We're at the on the top left corner, the Boys and Girls Club. We
149attend events there every year. We work with them and pay visits to them and play basketball with them and make sure that we connect well with them, especially on the STEM day. it's a great great event by so many people in the community pulled together we have our police activities league we go out with parks and rec and and support our pal teams not only our pal teams but the rest of the other teams whether it be flag football or basketball or even soccer we're there to support our youth and stand by them in what we do We have our national night out, which is a big draw for our youth in the community over at Veterans Park. It's been a huge success the last two years. And again, engagement and opportunity for us to
150connect with with our community. And we had a cones with the cops summer event over at McDonald's where we handed out ice cream cones and. the attendance was a lot of adults, but it was also a lot of kids too who enjoyed the ice cream. So we had a great time visiting with all the students and kids in the community after school. So it was really a much better event than we anticipated. So we are appreciative of that. On the part of internships, I just want to say we also invested that. We've had internships with students come in and work in Records Bureau. We've had our internships established and advanced into uh the ventura college we have a uh and we have had an intern here uh this past uh school year uh from uh
151from the college and so we're always looking at opportunities to develop our young men and women or youth uh in our community so we really appreciate the opportunity and to serve uh our youth in the community and we'll continue to do that as we move forward with all of us At this time, I would like to answer any questions or comments you may have for the presentation this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. I see a lot of great work being done. I did want to ask, you know, we've had, obviously, under your leadership, a transition of a lot of new officers. And with that transition comes the opportunity to help mentor the new. the new blood that's coming into our town how has that been going and can you share a little bit about
152the escalation tactics that you're teaching through training and other training that you've offered yes you know so our new officers are just doing an amazing job they feed off of veteran officers the field training they receive and also the advanced training they received which we have um essential training and mandated training we've put them through there's perishable skills training that have really helped them especially in the area of de-escalation and our officers are really astute at understanding even in those few seconds they may have to apply a use of force whether it be physical control holds and if those don't work they have to figure out a next use of force is that going to be a taser is it going to be a baton is it going to be what is it going to
153be but our officers uh in their training or especially our young officers are learning uh good values um they're practicing uh good practices where they're looking at making good judgment uh sometimes they will reduce force in escalation uh to get something accomplished so we don't have to use a uh heavier use of force which could provide um or could result in injuries to both the suspect or the officer or the person that we're contacting so and in addition to that the mental health crisis training crisis intervention team training we have undergone and just about all of our staff is trained in that it's a 40-hour course we just uh honored one of our officers for the crisis intervention team officer of the year it was officer robbie mann that was last week at behavioral health
154and so we're always looking at opportunities to better ourselves especially in the area of technology and the use of force in de-escalation thank you thank you Any questions or comments on this side? Yes, I'm curious. Let's just add it and how it left. No. For crime rates, I'm noticing they're going down. I love that. That is great. I'm curious, what strategies have your office been using or what factors do contribute that decrease in crime to be going down? And what strategies do you plan on implementing in order for us to continuously see that decrease in crime? Thanks for the question. There are many facets of that. A lot of it is we've expanded our homeless liaison team to provide service and referrals for homeless, the unhoused community. That can mean everything from services to one
155stop every Friday to doing backpack medicine with doctors today. We go every few Mondays and we go out to the areas where we encounter all of our unhoused population. And it's empathetic, it's compassionate. law enforcement is at the bottom of that list and we figure and we know that we can get further with that and provide services and even people into programs whether it be veterans uh help or um programs for those who have drug dependency or mental health crisis so that is one of the things i think has been positive for us and instead of moving to the law enforcement side we're moving to the cert we're keeping on the services side so that's one thing the other thing is of course trying to figure out what's going on in our community with uh
156is there you know a lot of drug overdoses with fentanyl or is it is it opiates uh such as heroin uh those are things we take seriously whether it means we do street level enforcement um and take care of those We clean up our streets also with those for drunk driving. We have several officers who have made quite a few arrests this past year who will probably be recognized by Mothers Against Drunk Driving in this Tri-County area later this year. They're just things on the streets where we're making a difference. We're deterring crime by doing some enforcement proactive, and that means on the day shift, even on the day shift, and even on the night shift, a lot of good proactive police work I think helps. And I think as we continue to move forward,
157we're still going to look at what the areas of need are. you know again overdoses or property crimes we had a very significant reduction in property crimes a lot of those are those people who uh either have may have drug dependency or uh just don't are or have no other way to to um they don't have jobs and they're trying to find themselves so sometimes it may be um law enforcement for us maybe an enforcement tool uh or it could be finding them a housing or referral so we'll keep on that on that trend Thank you. On the topic of narcotics, I'm curious, especially among student populations, we have been seeing an increase in vaping and vape products being used in nicotine products. I'm curious, what has the police department noticed as in weights of
158drug-related offenses or nicotine-related offenses among the student population? What strategies is the police department using to combat that? So, on campus, as you know, a lot of kids are vaping in the bathrooms, they're going to restaurants after school, they're vaping in the bathrooms, they're just vaping on a, you know, nicotine is a very addictive drug, especially in the formative years with our youth's brains. So, that is a big issue with us. We take, and I know Shane's here from security from the high school, we're always. uh they're always confiscating uh vaping paraphernalia uh you can buy um vapes uh at some of these stores throughout the county and i think one of the movements is going to be here in santa paula is to modify ours City ordinance to reduce certain types of things being
159sold at our smoke shops. For example, the large nitrous oxide containers. We just had an arrest for that the other day. We've had several rest for that in the last few months for those possession of nitrous oxide. It's very dangerous. So those are kind of the focus areas we're going to continue to look at. I don't want to take away from the from the presentation this Thursday and from Dr. Santa Maria, which was very good. But maybe maybe really it goes back to drug addiction and the dangers of vaping are the chemicals it's it's the chemicals it's the devices themselves that are causing uh serious issues uh so those the vaping or that is the main issue uh not a lot of um the other illicit drugs are being used on campus but doesn't mean
160that that can't happen and if if they have access to drugs in the neighborhood or at home um you know they could either accidentally ingest or by contact with fentanyl be affected by it. Okay. Trustee? Yeah. Thank you, Chair Sandoval. First off, thank you for the partnerships, especially with the student or the resource officers. I know we hear a lot of positive feedback from that. But to piggyback our Board of Trustees Meeting, we have a question from our student chairs question. Can you talk a little bit about Kratom and what if anything you've observed with that in our community? I know that that's a big emergency or a big emerging concern with folks at the county, specifically public health. So locally here we don't have any haven't had too many incidents involving kratom but I
161attended a National drug symposium last year and across the country it is pervasive and where what's happening with derivatives of kratom are being sold in convenience stores across the country gas stations and whatnot and so uh the manufacturers of these of these um herbs and these these uh types of um powder substances uh they're just removing one chemical or two just to make it illegal just below the level of kratom but some of them are in high dosage quantities they actually will will have uh either sedative effects or pain relief effects if they take them in a large large amount so I think our goal is to again there is no national legislation or laws governing kratom or restricting kratom. There is no state laws restricting kratom or the derivatives of below that. So it
162may be on the local ordinance to to work on that or. Board of Trustees Meeting, uh, maybe as a county together, uh, and public safety. We can. We can work on something to, uh, or the State to try and come something come up with something to regulate somehow these um, these these substances that are being sold very easily without any licensing. I just wanted to take this Opportunity to to thank you and your team, because when we 1st, when I 1st got on the board 5 years ago, you know, the, the collaboration between. The police department in the district was needed work and that work has happened. Um, you know, I see it with the way we communicate now when there are events. to inform our parents and the community so that we can squash
163the facebook rumors as quickly as we possibly can i've seen it with the uh how we're communicating about ice activity in the area um you know we can always do better but you know the there were some that would have said maybe we need to go to sheriff when we were, you know, your force wasn't there and we had to reduce the number of SROs that were on campus. But, you know, I think that our faith in your team's ability to come together and provide the services that our students need in a way that's compassionate and not policing, so to speak, right, I think has been, you know, well... and very much appreciated on this side. Thank you, doctor. I just want to say whether it be our help and assistance on campus or making
164sure kids are safe in public demonstrations, we're here for our community. We invest in our youth and we look forward to continuing to develop those partnerships as we move forward. Chief Faglar, my question and comment. First of all, who is involved besides the SRO in the SARB review? It usually is the school resource officer or our commanders will also attend those as well. And from the school? Is there anybody at the school? There you go. All right. Well, thank you, Dr. Santamaria. The comment I want to make is we've heard... obviously if there's a problem with attendance sometimes there's an underlying problem and as was mentioned tonight there's a lot of resources and intervention that can occur so we certainly appreciate the partnership and the cooperation that the police has with the unified school district
165on in closing i'd also like to thank all our support staff and the presenters that were here this evening we went a little bit longer but each of these items are here that were presented are equally important uh to all of us or specifically to certain people so again thank you for everyone that helped us this evening thank you for the unified school district the council members and staff we appreciate the evening dr sandoval is going to close the meeting uh there is on our agenda um board member comments should we forego those No, it's not on here, but of course, you're you're welcome to. Oh, no, it's not on yours. Okay. Then now we'll go ahead and adjourn. I just wanted to take note of trustee fruitless's absence. It's because his father Ray fruit
166does passed away this weekend. Ray fruit does was a long time employee of the Santa Paula unified district. um and was very active in our community um so i think both sides feel that you know he was a veteran um he was i think that was the thing i most remember of him at least in my adult years was his involvement in the veterans for foreign wars and uh the dignity that he had when um Mayor Mrakas, Presenting a memorial day and veterans day, so I think it was it's just appropriate for us to recognize his passing, and I think he was recently recognized by the city as well, so I will adjourn this meeting, you know, in his honor at 737.