With over 100,000 votes over a 6 county spread, 209 Magazine readers have voted for Stanislaus Animal Services for BEST Pet Adoption!
With over 100,000 votes over a 6 county spread, 209 Magazine readers have voted for Stanislaus Animal Services for BEST Pet Adoption!
The State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) continues to propose that 40% of the water produced by the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers watershed be released to the San Joaquin River...
The State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) continues to propose that 40% of the water produced by the Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers watershed (“unimpaired flow”) be released to the San Joaquin River so that it can flow into the southern Delta under their Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan (Plan). The Water Board asserts that this flow regime will have limited harmful effects. In truth, this is a water grab and it will have long-term, devastating impacts to our region.
Following years of tug-of-war with the Water Board, multiple review and public input sessions, including extensive scientific research, the Water Board is giving voice to our region for only 21 days to review and comment on the latest draft, the Final Amendments to the Plan. The local irrigation districts, whom are most directly affecting by the Plan, are working to petition the Water Board for more time to comment. As it currently stands, comments will be accepted only through noon on Friday, July 27, 2018.
Assembly member Adam Gray released the following statement condemning the announcement from the State Water Resources Control Board proposal to adopt radical new requirements to seize and waste critically needed San Joaquin Valley water. “The State Water Resources Control Board’s decision today is the first shot fired in the next chapter of California’s water wars. The board has chosen to create, in their own words, ‘a permanent regulatory drought’ and shrugged off our concerns as ‘significant but unavoidable’…A small group of special interests have spent years plotting one of the largest water takes in our state’s history. People [could] question why the proponents of a plan designed to save fish cannot demonstrate any meaningful benefit to those very fish or why the questions and concerns of a million people do not deserve even a halfhearted response.”
Stanislaus County will stand with those who oppose the new proposal and will continue to negotiate in favor of the best interests of the Valley. We will support a policy that opposes such extreme increases in unimpaired flows. Local control of water is the only way we can meet local needs.
The Water Board will hold Public Hearings in Sacramento on August 21-22 to consider adoption of the Plan. Speakers will be limited to three minutes. We encourage you and or your representatives to attend. Stay close to the conversation by following the Worth Your Fight on Twitter and Facebook feeds.
The Community Assessment Response and Engagement effort is a targeted approach to addressing what many see as a crisis in our community.
In December 2017, over fifty community leaders were convened to discuss noticeable problem behaviors in and around the core of downtown Modesto. The group made a commitment to support a 90-day review and strategy process focused on addressing what many see as a crisis in our community. Out of that meeting, the Community Assessment Response Engagement (CARE) program began as an intensive effort to address the issues that arise in communities when homelessness is coupled with mental illness and substance use and/or alcohol abuse.
While recent efforts such as Focus on Prevention have begun to make progress in strengthening the community's system of care in response to local homelessness, an urgent response was not available. A small population is in need of immediate help- individuals experiencing significant distress for themselves while also causing distress to the community. These are individuals that often exhibit high-risk health and safety behaviors, engage in vagrancy-related criminal behavior, experience high-frequency emergency department use, high-frequency jail detention due to behavior resulting from serious mental illness and substance use disorders, and many experience frequent detention for evaluation and treatment.
The CARE initiative is an innovative approach to a complex problem. Over a 90 day period, a work group met weekly to map assets, unpack problematic processes, and identify service gaps while building a new approach that could increase accountability, and alignment- developing a system and service model that has never been utilized in our community. The group was made up of representatives of twenty or more partners who directly serve this population, regularly working with those who show signs of high-risk health and safety behaviors, mental illness, criminal behavior and substance use. This effort was led by Stanislaus County and the City of Modesto with Emergency Medical Services, Doctor's Hospital, Probation, Board and Care Homes, Probation, District Attorney and many others at the table.
"This really represents what a true partnership is. With public agencies joining together, along with the private sector," said County CEO Jody Hayes. "It began with a discussion about what we can realistically expect to accomplish through the long term efforts of the Focus on Prevention initiative, recognizing that even with all of our work, it is going to take us some time to see meaningful results. But many of us are driving to work each day seeing individuals in distress in our community. We knew we needed to challenge ourselves to come up with something else to serve individuals who are not being served through the system."
A Multi-Disciplinary Team(MDT) made up of police & fire department from the Homeless Engagement and Response (HEART) Team, behavioral health and recovery services clinicians and other support services were deployed as a pilot program model to engage this priority population, determine how individuals might be helped, and how ongoing issues might be addressed. Over a span of two weeks the pilot program tested a new service model with multiple agencies working in tandem to engage individuals on a case-by-case basis. Results of the two week pilot indicated that many were willing to engage (75% signed the release of information, 25% agreed to services).
On June 26, the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors approved the continuation of the CARE MDT strategy to address vagrancy and help individuals in distress due to severe mental illness and substance use disorders in our county. Contingency funds of $500,000 from the Focus on Prevention budget will be used if needed, along with the following approved resources:
The City of Modesto will continue to support the HEART team by sustaining and adding public safety personnel. For the 18/19 budget, the city has added a dedicated crew who will come in after the MDT and HEART teams have delivered care in order to provide the necessary restorative clean-up work throughout impacted areas of the city.
Interim Modesto City Manager Joe Lopez is very encouraged by this process, stating, "This effort has proven to be a tremendously successful collaboration with the County. It's a unique program that seeks to help - not only our community who sees the effects of mental illness and homeless in their neighborhoods - but also the individuals who need additional support in connecting with the necessary services. The City has learned a lot in this process about the need that exists, and the services aimed at providing help."
In addition to the fiscal resources allocated, the Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution in support of Senate Bill 1045 Conservatorship: Chronic Homelessness, Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorders and issued a letter of support for this conservatorship bill requesting inclusion in the legislative language. As written, this bill proposes targeted treatment of homeless individuals who struggle with mental illness and substance abuse disorders, individuals that experience high-frequency emergency department use, high-frequency jail detention due to behavior resulting from serious mental illness and substance use disorders, etc. in San Francisco and Los Angeles Counties only.
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