On Tuesday, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors will name 21 low-income neighborhoods in the county that are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in an effort to pinpoint hotspots.
These neighborhoods are part of the new health equity metric created by the state, and the neighborhoods are identified via census tract.
Factors included in the identification include social and physical conditions, poverty, level of education, housing density, transportation, access to healthcare and more.
The Santa Barbara County Department of Public Health will increase outreach, testing and partnerships in two neighborhoods in Santa Barbara, 11 in Santa Maria, one in Guadalupe, four in Lompoc and three in Isla Vista.
In addition to an update on COVID-19 in the county, the District Attorney will conduct a random drawing to select the first five commissioners of the Citizen’s Independent Redistricting Commission, with one from each of the five subpools established by the elections official.
The commission will determine supervisorial district boundaries of the county to ensure members of the public are equally represented, a process that occurs every 10 years per federal and state laws.
The CIRC includes residents who are not elected officials, lobbyists, candidates, campaign donors or their close family members, and nearly 200 individuals applied.
After the first five commissioners of the CIRC are drawn, those five individuals will review the remaining 40 names in the subpools, and they will appoint six more to the commission.
In other business Tuesday, the board will receive a report by KPMG regarding the county’s cannabis permitting process, to identify areas where service delivery, efficiency and effectiveness can be improved.
KPMG includes six recommendations geared toward improving the process.
They encourage the county CEO’s office and Planning and Development Department to work together to ensure the permitting software, Accela, and workflows are complementary.
They also support expanding the existing Subdivision Development Review Committee’s function and membership to ensure all cannabis applications get a thorough review early on.
KPMG also recommends to encourage simultaneous review of use permits and business licenses, improve the application review process for use permits, strengthen business license fee procedures and modify the cannabis-based website (landing page) to provide a clearer path for those applying.
Moving to robust online permitting and a digital plan review system under Accela and Bluebeam are also technological improvements KPMG wants to make.
The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, and can be viewed at https://t.e2ma.net/click/kf68rc/8tpo0z/krbtsk.
email: gmccormick@newspress.com
