[San Francisco County] Scourge of car burglaries leveling out, but still an issue in SF

Blog note: this article references a grand jury report.

He broke into cars from the Marina to the Mission. In one case, he stole a visiting New Zealand couple’s passports from their car.

Twenty-three-year-old Eric Jones is one of the serial car burglars in San Francisco who, authorities say, are responsible for much of what a recent Civil Grand Jury report called the “scourge” of car break-ins that has plagued The City for the past several years.

Jones’ arrest and conviction is part of a coordinated strategy that is reportedly slowing down the trend.

“Our focus on serial offenders coupled with the SFPD’s increased enforcement effort is continuing to yield measurable results,” said District Attorney George Gascon after Jones was recently convicted of seven felonies and four misdemeanors for his crimes. And if the numbers are any indication, their efforts may be working.

Car burglaries citywide were down 18 percent year to date at the end of July, according to Cmdr. Greg McEachern, who oversees the San Francisco Police Department’s investigation bureau. By the end of July 2015, there had been 16,588 car burglaries across The City. This year, there had only been 13,640 by the end of July.

Last week, McEachern was one of a handful of department officers reporting to a Board of Supervisors committee in response to the Civil Grand Jury’s report on the problem.

“This has been a tough nut to crack,” admitted Acting Chief Toney Chaplin at the Government Oversight and Audit Committee hearing on Thursday.

The largest effort has been the eight-officer Patrol Bureau Task Force, which has been focusing surveillance efforts in districts most plagued by car break-ins like the Central and the Northern. Station captains have also focused on property crimes such as car break-ins.

These efforts have been coupled with renewed tactics and techniques that not only help catch criminals but also convict them, according to the DA’s Office. For instance, the collection of video surveillance and the use of fingerprints on cars have aided investigative efforts.

Because victims of break-ins are often tourists who leave town by the time a case reaches a courtroom, it has been hard to use testimony to convict car burglars, the DA’s office said. But simple reminders to officers, such as checking to see if the doors of the car were locked, which indicates forced entry, can make all the difference.

“Our numbers have gotten a lot better this year,” said McEachern, who noted that 10 people have been charged with 92 offenses in recent cases.

But Public Defender Jeff Adachi warned against connecting a drop in crime with any specific efforts.

“While it’s great auto burglaries are down, trying to answer the question of why is about as productive as gazing into a crystal ball. That’s because crime trends tend to defy simple cause-and-effect explanations,” Adachi said. “However, this certainly pokes a big hole in the argument of Prop. 47 opponents who claimed that the law reducing felony thefts to misdemeanors was the culprit.”

But car break-ins have yet to drop back to the lower levels of recent years, and Supervisor Aaron Peskin said as much at the hearing.

Peskin’s district, which encompasses the heavily touristed Chinatown and North Beach neighborhoods, has been one of the centers of the car break-in wave. And while the numbers have been in decline, they haven’t dropped far enough.

“We still have a long way to go,” Peskin said.

September 7, 2016

San Francisco Examiner

By Jonah Owen Lamb

OUR VIEW: We ask Kern County grand jurors to investigate KHSD

We’ve heard this before: “Trust us, we’re from the government.” And we don’t believe it.

Kern High School District administrators and elected board members have stretched their credibility to the public’s snapping point. The list of recent credibility-damaging episodes – ranging from their bizarre handling of a lawsuit involving a former student who was injured during a pep rally to contracting accusations and allowing guns on campus – have basically used up the district’s credibility points.

So it’s no surprise that the public now says, “Yeah, right!” to the district’s claims that it will investigate itself as a new scandal unfolds over the improper use of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, a confidential law enforcement database known as CLETS.

Enough already! The district now has hired a Chicago-based “police consulting” firm at an estimated cost of $78,100 to investigate itself. But wait, it gets worse. It also has hired a Sacramento-based investigative law firm, with reportedly no set cost-ceiling, to investigate itself.

It seems the intent is two-fold – to head off any real outside investigation and to keep the public from learning about district officials improperly (some say, illegally) using a strictly confidential database limited to police investigations to spy on students, employees and who knows who else.

Telegraphing the cover-up goal is the Chicago firm’s recommendation that the district “treat our invoices as confidential and safeguard them appropriately,” meaning block the public’s attempts to request to see them through the California Public Records Act.

We also are blocked by the district from knowing who the district was spying on because the database is “confidential” and to tell us the names would, ah yes, be a breach of confidence.

Are you getting the picture now? District officials seemed to care little that non-police people were breaching a confidential database to improperly target people not under police investigation. But when it comes to telling the public who was being targeted, suddenly there is a feigned respect for “confidentiality.”

When Joe Lopeteguy, a retired veteran Kern County sheriff’s officer, was recently brought in to head the Kern High School District’s police force, he correctly smelled a rat. He asked his officers to investigate and forwarded the findings to the Kern County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff’s officials concluded the database was being illegally used. They asked the Kern County district attorney to charge two district administrators with misdemeanors. The DA declined, claiming there was insufficient evidence and a statue of limitations had expired.

Reports are now surfacing that the improper (illegal) use of the confidential database may have been going on for years and may have involved many more present and former district staff.

Normally you could turn to the state Attorney General’s office to investigate. After all, the California Department of Justice is supposed to assure the system’s legal use. But Attorney General Kamala Harris has many more fish to fry. By comparison, this is just a minnow. And, Harris has other things on her mind, like running for U.S. Senate.

So that leaves us – the people of Kern County, the people paying the salaries of these administrators, and the people who elect the KHSD school board members – to act.

While district officials would like us to believe we have no choice other than to trust them because they are from the government, we do have an alternative. And it’s a good one.

We are formally asking – actually begging – the Kern County grand jury to investigate, publicly report their findings, and make recommendations to clean up this mess.

Grand jurors are everyday people appointed by the court to serve as government watchdogs. Their eyes can be sharp and penetrating.

It’s time they turned their gaze toward the KHSD.

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September 6, 2016

The Bakersfield Californian

Editorial

Napa County responds to critical grand jury report on jail

In its response to the Napa County grand jury report on the jail and Department of Corrections, the county executive officer complains that the grand jury didn’t get the whole picture.

The grand jury failed to interview the jail’s director, Lenard Vare, said County Executive Officer Leanne Link. The interview “could have provided information that would have led to a more accurate and balanced report,” Link said.

The grand jury found that the jail was operating understaffed and with inadequate facilities. The grand jury said that the jail had a breakdown in management that has caused low morale among employees and that the jail is a dangerous environment for the people who work there and its inmates.

Although Link and the Board of Supervisors agreed with some of the jury’s findings, they said that most of the jury’s recommendations were already being adequately dealt with, including employee dissatisfaction and staffing issues.

“While instances of employee dissatisfaction have arisen during the past year resulting from a variety of factors, actions have been taken by the director to address and resolve these issues on an ongoing basis,” Link said. Although employees do work in a difficult work environment, the Corrections Department acknowledges its responsibility to create a positive and productive work environment, according to the response.

The grand jury recommended that staffing become a top priority for the jail and, in response, Link says that having sufficient staffing is already, and always is, a top priority. The county executive officer said that the jail works closely with the human relations department to advertise correctional officer positions in other states and to recruit. Challenges to recruitment and retention of jail employees are the high cost of living in Napa, changes in retirement formulas and the stressful work environment, Link says.

The jail has been consistently understaffed for at least three years and each shift operates with about half the employees that it should, according to the grand jury.

In response, Link said that some employees have left the department for jobs offering higher pay and enhanced benefits in the private sector and to accept similar positions at other law enforcement agencies. Other staff members retired after reaching 20 years of employment, she said. The department of corrections has filled vacancies and hired 35 new employees in the last three fiscal years; however, in that time, 37 employees left.

Of those new hires, 24 of them were correctional officers, according to the county’s response.

To help with recruitment and retention, the grand jury recommended that compensation and benefits for correctional officers be analyzed to determine a more effective incentive package.

According to the county’s response, a study was already conducted in April 2015 by Ralph Anderson & Associates. The county came to the conclusion that compensation for correctional officers was in line with the “board’s philosophy” to be within five percent of the median of wages paid by comparable agencies – meaning that compensation stays as is.

The jury also found that many of the correctional officers had less than five years in service. The county executive officer explained that as additional and upgraded positions were made available in recent years, the number of staff with less experience has increased. Retirement has also created additional vacancies, Link said.

Although the grand jury found that some jail policies and procedures aren’t always followed or are inconsistently applied, Link said that, while that does happen, it is being addressed.

“Often changes in procedures result from enactment of new laws and new case law,” she said. “At times, there may be delays in adoption and implementation of the changes across all teams. Frequent meetings between managers and supervisors are held to ensure that the department is consistent in how it applies changes in policies across the department.”

Due to the number of Spanish-speaking inmates who may need support services, the grand jury recommended that the jail hire a bilingual forensic mental health counselor. However, the county executive officer said that the department had a bilingual forensic mental health counselor until a few months ago when the position became vacant. In the interim, she said, when there has been a need for a bilingual mental health professional on site, the Napa County Health and Human Services Agency’s Mental Health Division has provided staff.

Link said that the full-time forensic mental health counselor position has been filled, but did not say whether or not the person in the role is bilingual. There is also an vacant half-time position available, she said.

The grand jury said that rehab programs have been discontinued to the detriment of the inmate population and the public at large.

The county executive officer agreed with the grand jury’s assessment. Because of damage to that building that occurred in the South Napa earthquake, Link said that programs had to be stopped while the facility remained in “yellow-flag” status. During this time, crews were working on repairs and “it was difficult to both supervise work crews and manage inmate movement,” she said.

Programming was available through electronic tablets and some one-on-one visits were possible, but the amount of people who could enter the jail was limited, Link said.

Napa County inmates being housed in Solano County were given full access to programs available. The removal of the jail’s yellow-tag status has been approved and steps are being take to reintegrate programs into the jail, according to the county’s response.

The county executive officer disagreed with both the jury’s recommendation to have more oversight from the Board of Supervisors as well as the recommendation that a multi-year citizen’s oversight committee be established. The Board of Supervisors agreed with Link that they already have oversight over the jail and that the jail has periodic inspections by the state.

All are in agreement that a new jail is needed, but Measure Y – the proposal to increase the sales tax by ¼ cent – was voted down at the June election. The county is now looking at alternative ways to pay for a new jail on Highway 221, south of the city of Napa.

September 6, 2016

Napa Valley Register

By Maria Sestito

Napa County, reclamation district address grand jury flood report

Both the Napa River Reclamation District (NRRD) and Napa County Board of Supervisors are taking the hard edge off grand jury criticisms over south county flood protection, though they don’t deny that flood threats exist.

The area in question is Edgerly Island and Ingersol Tract about five miles south of the city of Napa. About 135 homes in a line for 1.5 miles along the east side of Milton Road depend on an aging levee for Napa River flood protection.

This is an area of Napa County where wetlands are more prominent than vineyards. But, though out of the spotlight, it caught the attention of the 2015-16 grand jury in an era when sea level rise is predicted.

“NRRD is not now performing, and has never performed, the essential levee control and maintenance responsibilities for which it was created,” the June 6 Napa County grand jury report said.

County taxpayers could be on the hook if a flood happens, the grand jury said. State and federal agencies might not pay for flood damages because local authorities failed to make sure that the NRRD was empowered and funded to take the necessary precautions.

The grand jury wants the Board of Supervisors to direct county counsel to write and make public an opinion on the potential liabilities of the county and NRRD. Its report said the NRRD’s county-assigned counsel refused to answer basic questions.

So is the NRRD failing to perform the levee maintenance responsibilities for which it was created in 1974, as the grand jury asserts?

In its recently issued response, the NRRD Board of Directors questioned the use of the word “responsibilities.” Sections of the levee are privately owned by each homeowner, except for about 50 feet that is owned by the NRRD.

“Without and until securing additional property rights, NRRD has no authority, let alone responsibility, to maintain those levees,” the response said.

The district receives only $20,000 to $25,000 annually that it could use to secure property rights and construct reclamation projects, the response said. It has worked on achievable goals, such as buying flood pumps and educating property owners on levee maintenance.

“Thanks in part to NRRD’s efforts and the work of many responsible members of our community that have improved their portion of the levee, the existing levees have kept the community dry for over three decades,” the response said.

But the district agreed that, if sea level rise and land subsidence predictions come true, the existing levee can’t protect Milton Road. The district’s latest effort involves trying to team up with the Napa Flood Control and Water Conservation District to do an engineering study looking at long-term flood protection needs, solutions and costs.

“The buy-in and support of our community on Milton Road over the years to come is vital” to addressing subsidence and sea level rise challenges, the response said.

And would Napa County taxpayers have to pay for Milton Road flood damages, as the grand jury fears?

Napa County has no legal authority to compel the NRRD to take action on levee maintenance, said a response approved Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors. The law indicates that the county cannot be held liable for the failure of private levees.

The county didn’t speculate whether state and federal agencies might balk at making flood damage money available. Instead, it called flood recovery funding “a very complicated subject which would depend on many factors,” including unknown factors.

The Board of Supervisors declined the grand jury’s request to direct county counsel to write and make public an opinion on the liabilities and responsibilities of the NRRD and the county, citing attorney-client privilege.

“It is not County Counsel’s role to provide legal advice to the public at large,” the response stated.

September 4, 2016

Napa Valley Register

By Barry Eberling

[San Diego County] Police respond to report on city’s jail efficacy

The city of Chula Vista sent two separate letters to the San Diego County Grand Jury in response to their findings that the Chula Vista jail was a financial drain to the city, and that the police department needed a citizen oversight board of police behavior.

Operating the Chula Vista jail costs the city about $1.62 million per year and generates about $1.5 million in revenue per year. The city provides use of the jail in the basement of the police headquarters to the U.S. Marshals Service at a cost of $110 per inmate per day.

The city disputes the claim that the 48-bed jail used by the U.S. Marshals to house pretrial female detainees is a financial burden to the city.

Because of the financial loss to the city, the grand jury recommended the city revise contract rates, increase the number of inmates or terminate its contract with the U.S. Marshals.

Chula Vista Police Capt. Vern Sallee said the grand jury only reported on the financial aspect of the jail, not the public benefit.

“The grand jury looks at the jail purely from a profit-loss standpoint, which is not the right approach,” he said.

The letter states that the city’s overarching objective of operating a jail is not to make a profit. Instead the city’s “overall objective is to provide enhanced and genuinely more efficient public services to the community of Chula Vista.”

The city said in the letter that this objective appears to be lost in the grand jury’s limited cost-to-revenue analysis.

In a second letter the city says a citizen oversight board as recommended by the grand jury is not needed because the department already has a system in place for monitoring police behavior.

According to the grand jury’s report, an unspecified number and type of complaints on police conduct from citizens in unspecified cities “who felt there was inadequate resolution of their grievances, suggested the current process needs improvement.

Accordingly, the grand jury recommended that seven cities in the county — including Chula Vista—with their own police departments each establish a citizen oversight board or form Joint Powers Agreements to set up regional review boards.

Sallee said the Chula Vista Police Department has had a 10-member Community Advisory Committee since 2001 that is committee that looks over police policies and procedures.

The department also has a professional standards unit that conducts investigations into allegations  into police misconduct. Salle said this has proven to be a robust and satisfactory system for fully investigating  such allegations as well as imposing appropriate discipline in cases where they determine there is misconduct and that includes termination.

The professional standards unit does internal affairs investigations and also reports statistics to citizens advisory committee.

Sallee said ultimately the Chula Vista City Council has the most oversight when it comes to holding the department accountable for their actions.

September 3, 2016

The Star News

By Robert Moreno

[San Mateo] County defends its teen mental health responses: Officials issue reaction to civil grand jury report on helping minors in crisis

San Mateo County officials differed with most of the findings and recommendations in a recent civil grand jury report suggesting more should be done to help local teens suffering a mental health crisis.

The county Board of Supervisors is slated to approve during a meeting Tuesday, Sept. 6, a response to the report “Teens in Mental Health Crisis: From 911 to the Emergency Room Door,” issued in June by the grand jury.

Much of the response from the office of County Manager John Maltbie is dedicated to defending the processes associated with offering urgent aid to teens and minors experiencing mental health trauma, as the county administers many of the area’s available emergency support services.

The initial report called for more collaboration, training, resources and education to improve care, but the county’s response agrees with only two of the grand jury’s eight findings and does not recognize any of the six recommendations as new ideas to be implemented.

County initiatives such as the Crisis Intervention Team, or CIT, administered through the Sheriff’s Office, and the health system’s San Mateo County Mental Health and Assessment Team, or SMART, program are recognized by the grand jury as useful in offering appropriate care to vulnerable teens.

The county’s response doubles down on such a position, acknowledging the programs are crucial to offering adequate emergency support and disputing claims that record keeping and training should be beefed up to improve the initiatives.

All county law enforcement officers are subject to eight hours of CIT training as part of their police academy education, according to the county’s report, in response to the grand jury’s finding that 20 percent of all law enforcement officers are educated in specialized response to mental health emergencies.

Police showing up to the scene of a teen or minor experiencing a mental health crisis in a discreet fashion is preferable to a response featuring sirens and lights, as it decreases the chance of further traumatizing a person already struggling, according to the grand jury report.

Such a technique is the type of lesson administered during CIT training, which the grand jury recommended should be amended to include more instruction specific to teens.

The county response indicated such a suggestion has already been implemented though, as the most recent CIT training included an expanded session including local school officials who offered guidance regarding best practices for dispatches to campus incidents.

CIT training is also an ideal opportunity for relationship building and idea exchange between law enforcement, education, mental health and other officials who can contribute to ensuring local teens are offered the best care possible, according to the grand jury report.

The county agreed with such a finding, and said in its report the Sheriff’s Office plans to further expand outreach to school officials and personnel from public agencies who may interact with a minor experiencing a mental health crisis, to build the network established through CIT training.

Another important component of ensuring vulnerable young people are not overwhelmed by the response to a mental health emergency is the SMART team, which dispatches trained professionals in a specialized van different from a police cruiser or ambulance to the scene of a crisis in an unassuming fashion, according to the grand jury.

Availability of SMART team services should be enhanced and response times should be tracked better to look for opportunities for service improvements, according to the grand jury, but both efforts are already underway according the county, though room for improvement exists.

“The current system to collect SMART response data provides sufficient information to determine the effectiveness of SMART, patterns of demand, geographic breakdown of where calls are generated from and demographic data,” according to the county’s report. “There is a need to improve data collection related to calls for assistance that emanate from school campuses.”

The county is not obligated to implement any of the grand jury’s recommendations and the response fulfills the responsibility of the Board of Supervisors to acknowledge the initial report.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors meets 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 6, 400 County Center in Redwood City.

September 2, 2016

San Mateo Daily Journal

By Austin Walsh

Yuba County says jail staffing grand jury recommends isn’t needed

A need for increased medical services for inmates in the Yuba County Jail was again a topic of a grand jury report, which cited two attempted suicides by inmates within the facility.

Jurors recommended in their 2015-2016 report that the sheriff apply to the Board of Supervisors to fund a full-time psychiatrist to work on mental health treatment and care plans and a full-time medical doctor to decrease the time it takes for inmates to be seen by a doctor or a nurse.

Supervisors and Sheriff Steven Durfor said the additional positions are not needed.

Jurors who investigated the jail found mental health care being provided to inmates and the number and quality of its medical personnel had considerably improved. Grand juries in the previous two years had recommended increased medical staff at the jail.

The need for more services was realized after the jail population increased and the average length of inmates' stays lengthened as a result of public safety realignment, which leaves some lower-offense felony convicts in county jails, instead of going into the state prison system.

Two crisis counselors, one part-time and one full-time; two part-time psychiatrists - one of whom is available through teleconference; and a full-time forensic mental health therapist are available to inmates, providing about 100 hours of non-emergency mental health care, the report says. Correctional officers now receive training in suicide prevention and a mental health first aid course. In addition, the county was awarded a $20 million grant for a building that will include room for additional counseling and medical beds.

Based on national estimates that 64 percent of jail inmates have mental health problems, that means the about 200 inmates suffering with mental health illness have access to less than 30 minutes of non-emergency one-on-one counseling or treatment.

Jurors learned that two inmates attempted to hang themselves and were interrupted by other inmates. Both people who made the attempts had allegedly asked for mental therapy, yet none was offered.

The Yuba County Sheriff's Department confirmed that two attempted hangings occurred and that inmates intervened, one in October 2014 and the other in January 2015. However, the department stated that allegations that the inmates had asked for mental therapy and were denied are "not accurate" and the department "disagree(s) with that statement."

Grand jurors learned that the doctor in the jail tried to see an inmate within 48 hours of an inmates' request. The doctor and nurse combined see 60-80 patients a week, and "it can be difficult for an inmate to get an appointment with the doctor which could cause a delay in treatment," the report says.

They also interviewed an ex-inmate who said they were misdiagnosed.

In his response to the grand jury, Durfor said their recommendations for increased medical staff will not be implemented because the department's internal and external reviews do not suggest the need for a full-time psychiatrist or full-time physician.

Supervisors responded that they are aware through discussions with the sheriff and Yuba-Sutter Behavioral Health that services are provided to inmates "at an appropriate level through their partnership and collaborative approach."

August 31, 2016

Appeal-Democrat

By Monica Vaughan

[Orange County] Newport-Mesa schools won't adopt grand jury recommendations on asbestos

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District says it does not plan to implement recommendations in an Orange County grand jury report on how area school districts can improve hazardous-materials management and communication with school communities about campus construction projects.

The grand jury's report, released in June, focused on how asbestos concerns in area districts are handled. The report was prompted by an incident in the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach in 2014-15 in which three schools were closed temporarily because of concerns about the potentially hazardous mineral fiber and millions of dollars in extra spending was dedicated to abating the material.

The jurors recommended that each district:

• Create a plan for how issues regarding hazardous materials will be communicated to parents and others;

• Maintain a computerized database listing all district buildings and their characteristics;

• Budget for asbestos inspections every three years and share inspection data with prospective construction bidders;

• Request that the Orange County Department of Education use one or more of its monthly "all districts" meetings to discuss the handing of hazardous materials and that representatives from each district attend.

But Newport-Mesa will not implement the recommendations, saying they are "not warranted and not reasonable."

At least four other districts told Orange County Superior Court Judge Charles Margines that they won't adopt the suggestions.

In Newport-Mesa's response this month, the district said its practice of making inspection reports accessible at its office and school sites, as required by the federal Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, is "sufficient" and that the grand jury suggestion of a computerized database would require additional funding or the transfer of funds from educational programs.

Under AHERA regulations, schools are required to perform inspections to determine whether asbestos-containing materials are present and to maintain an asbestos management plan.

Newport-Mesa schools are inspected twice a year, according to district spokeswoman Annette Franco.

Newport-Mesa wrote that the county Department of Education frequently distributes information to districts on a "wide range of subjects" and that the meetings that were recommended are unnecessary.

The district also noted that the grand jury's recommendations to budget for asbestos inspections and share the data with bidders are already in place in Newport-Mesa.

The grand jury report found that all but one of Orange County's 28 school districts have asbestos present in at least one of their schools.

While the jury noted that asbestos contained in walls or ceilings does not present an immediate hazard, any disturbance that releases the fibers into the air can pose a hazard to anyone exposed to a significant amount.

Ocean View School District staff has already presented an asbestos-management plan to the district board of trustees and made it available to the public this summer. Maintenance and custodial staff has been trained in asbestos safety, according to Supt. Carol Hansen.

Of the three Ocean View campuses that closed because of asbestos concerns, two — Hope View and Oak View elementary schools — reopened in September 2015 after construction crews removed small amounts of the material and completed upgrades in the buildings.

The other school, Lake View Elementary, will reopen Sept. 7.

August 30, 2016

Daily Pilot

By Alex Chan

[Monterey County] Civil grand jury advises county to be ready to take over lead on groundwater management

Salinas >> In order to avoid a loss of local control, a civil grand jury has urged Monterey County officials to be ready to take over as the state-mandated groundwater oversight agency for the overdrafted Salinas Valley basin if a collaborative effort to form one or more such agencies falters by the June deadline.

But in a response to the 2015-16 grand jury approved by the Monterey County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, the county would only indicate the recommendation “requires further analysis.” It noted the local “consensus building process” involving a range of Salinas Valley-area groundwater users and interest groups is still underway with county participation while promising staff would continue monitoring the process and advising the supervisors on their options.

At the same time, the response noted the board has the “legal discretion” in the future to agree to follow the grand jury’s recommendation.

Titled “Striving for Sustainability,” the grand jury report released earlier this summer takes aim at area groundwater management. It has a “special emphasis” on the state Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and its local application. Included in that are “preliminary steps” taken to comply with its mandates, including the formation of groundwater sustainability agencies with broad regulatory and enforcement powers and management plans aimed at restoring the balance between groundwater pumping and recharge by 2040.

Noting the importance of groundwater for the county’s agricultural and urban needs and the local economy, the report argues it is important to maintain local control of such an essential resource in an effort to ensure conditions don’t worsen. Area groundwater basins are in overdraft and some are experiencing seawater intrusion. If locals fail to meet upcoming deadlines for designating or forming a local groundwater agency, and creating a state-approved sustainability plan, the state water board could take over.

The report notes past state-level efforts to require groundwater management and addresses local basins including the Salinas Valley, Carmel Valley and Seaside, including a lengthy section on the range of area water projects the grand jury suggested could be included in a groundwater management plan.

But it focuses most of its findings and recommendations on the Salinas Valley groundwater basin, noting the collaborative process being led by the Consensus Building Institute to corral the various interest groups into a coherent approach. A sustainable groundwater forum set for Sept. 8 at Sherwood Hall in Salinas is expected to offer an update on the process.

The report seems to address the Salinas Valley directly when it warns that “legal maneuvering and delaying tactics” can lead to a loss of local control over groundwater and to “cause already critical groundwater conditions in Monterey County to get much worse, to the detriment of all concerned.”

It calls for “every public and private entity” interested in the formation of a local groundwater agency and adoption of a local management plan to offer a “pledge to consider the groundwater needs of every other interested party with an open mind and a commitment to fairness.”

The board also approved a series of responses to two more grand jury reports, including “Monterey County Parks and SCRAMP: Uncertainties and Instabilities,” and “Housing Homeless Women.”

Also Tuesday, the supervisors gave Natividad Medical Center the go-ahead to create and administer a six-month orientation program for Mexican national doctors to operate in the county at Clinica De Salud in Salinas as part of a three-year pilot program created by state legislation aimed at increasing access to primary care physicians in “under-served” areas, particularly among the Spanish-speaking population.

In addition, the board accepted a retroactive, cumulative 4.23-percent pay increase going back to 2014-15 and 2015-16, and worth about $6,300 per year per supervisor, whose salaries are tied to Superior Court judges pay by county code.

August 30, 2016

Monterey Herald

By Jim Johnson

Inyo [County] Grand Jury reports on Inyo County Office of Education

The 2015-16 Inyo County Grand Jury report zeroed in on the Inyo County Office of Education addressing concerns related to the management agreement between YouthBuild Charter Schools in Southern California and Superintendent Terry McAteer as well as how the funds from that agreement were spent.

The bottom line: The Jury recommended some changes in how those funds would be dispersed and the contract managed, but none of the report’s findings were all that damaging.

The one issue that could have future ramifications was “breach of confidentiality by the Inyo County Superintendent of Schools.” The report found there were breaches “about grand jury testimony at several levels in the Inyo County school system.” The Jury’s evidence will be “turned over to the appropriate authorities.”

More than half of the 62-page report was devoted to concerns, findings and recommendations to the Office of Education.

We’ll cut to the chase:

Funds from the charter agreement are used for special projects and not for district teacher salaries because the money is “not a stable source of income and there is not a need for them to pay teacher salaries.

How that $1.8 million money is spent should be determined by a committee of district superintendents and teachers rather than at the sole discretion of the county superintendent.

The charter contracts are with the superintendent rather than the Office of Education. The Jury recommended those agreements be restructured with the Office of Ed as the management services provider to assure those funds stay with Inyo County.

One issue raised was the amount of control the Board of Education had over the Superintendent. That relationship is different than the count’s school districts: those boards can hire and fire their superintendents; the county superintendent of schools is an elected position.

The report recommended a legal review to determine the roles, responsibilities and power of the ICOE board. Depending on the outcome of that review, the report recommended the board take a more active and critical role in the OCOE.

The Jury recommended “that at least two people be trained to manage and administer” the charter program contract.”

Inyo Promise—free admission to Cerro Coso Community College and reduced tuition at University of Nevada, Reno—should continue to be funded by an endowment administered by the Eastern Sierra Foundation.

In response to the erosion of vocational education funds due to state legislation, the Jury recommended an endowment similar to Inyo Promise to sustain adequate funding to districts.

The report found that McAteer’s projects and programs were good but may not have been reflected in individual school Academic Performance Indexes.

According to the report’s analysis, all schools in the county, with the exception of Round Valley and Owens Valley elementary, were below the 800 target score during the 2013 testing period. Seven of the remaining 11 tested schools were in the 700s.

The Grand Jury recommended a task force to develop a structure and process for “tracking and measuring the effectiveness of program-related expenditures by the ICOE and specifically how the expenditures are improving the overall quality of education in Inyo County.”

The Office of Education has either 60- or 90 days to respond. The report was officially submitted to Judges Dean Stout and Brian Lamb, June 20.

August 29, 2016

Sierra Wave

By Deb Murphy