Santa Barbara County supervisors met Friday and approved a Community Workforce Agreement with the Tri-Counties Building & Construction Trades Council, which will apply to capital projects costing more than $10 million.

At the end of the special meeting, the Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to approve the agreement, which has been negotiated for more than a year and been under consideration for almost a decade.

Supervisors Gregg Hart, Joan Hartmann and Das Williams voted for the agreement, and Supervisors Steve Lavagnino and Bob Nelson voted against it.

CWAs set employment terms and conditions on large construction projects, according to the county.

Santa Barbara County has high local participation in bids for projects of less than $20 million, but less local participation in bids for large projects for more than $20 million, according to a staff report.

The $10 million threshold “will ensure that our local contractors continue to bid these projects as they have in the past, and if an outside contractor bids, they must utilize local labor,” the staff report states.

The county identified 12 specific capital projects that would be eligible for the CWA, for a total cost of about $360 million.

The list includes new buildings and additions — such as a Probation Department headquarters building and fire/emergency medical response dispatch center located next to the Emergency Operations Center — and renovation projects at the Main Jail and Cachuma Lake Recreation Area RV camping spots.

The CWA would not apply to maintenance or repairs projects, according to the county.

It also allows the county to rebid projects outside the CWA if all bids come in higher than the engineer or project manager’s estimates.  

Hartmann said the agreement was “carefully calibrated,” and she hopes the local hire rate is higher than the 50% floor.

The five-year review will be a good time to look at the impacts, and “I’m expecting it will be a very good success,” she said.

“I’m thrilled this’ll be the last vote I take,” said Hart, who is leaving the Board of Supervisors after being elected to the State Assembly representing the 37th District.

Lavagnino said he was thankful that the negotiating team removed “so many poison pills of this,” including the requirement that nonunion workers pay into union pension plans, but said he couldn’t support the agreement.

“The way I see it right now, the programs work, the system’s working and I don’t see a reason to change it,” he said.

Lavagnino said he would like to mandate a local hire ordinance, “but I’ve been told we can’t do that,” and the county already does a good job of hiring locally with a 75% to 80% rate.

Now that the Board of Supervisors approved the CWA, the TCBT will take it to its affiliate unions and get approval. If there isn’t 100% approval, the CWA conditions won’t be enforceable, according to the county. The agreement has a tentative effective date of April 1.

The county’s 2014 attempt at a project stabilization agreement was never implemented because one of the affiliated unions didn’t sign it.

County Executive Officer Mona Miyasato said on Tuesday that the county’s negotiating team brought the board “a balanced agreement with public benefit that also would not reduce competition.”

Public Works Director Scott McGolpin said the CWA’s core worker formula mirrors the City of Santa Barbara’s Project Labor Agreement — it allows a non-union contractor 10 employees and additional workers on a project have to be union members.

The county will hire a full-time community workforce coordinator position to manage the CWA.

During public comment, local contractors and trade organizations criticizing the CWA asked for a higher dollar amount threshold ($20 million rather than $10 million) and provisions to allow local non-union firms to use their entire local workforce.

Supporters thanked the county for its 14 months of negotiating on an agreement and said it would benefit the community and local workers.

Anthony Ventura of Southwest Mountain States Carpenters said the union has about 700 members in Santa Barbara County and CWAs help local economies. As a dispatcher for the Oxnard project labor agreement, he has seen non-union contractors bid and receive jobs, he said.  

Joshua Medrano of TCBT said the proposed CWA is “what’s most equitable for the entire community,” adding that he understands the process hasn’t been proven to work here, but the agreements have worked well other places they were implemented.

Danny Deveraux of CalPortland said about 85% of the local contracting workforce is non-union, and the CWA would give union workers an advantage for bidding on public projects.

Union contractors would be allowed to use their entire team on projects while non-union contractors would be limited to 10 of their core workers, he said.

Les and Lee Cushman of Cushman Contracting asked the supervisors not to approve the CWA, or to alter it to allow local non-union firms to use their entire workforce for projects.

“It would only allow us to bring 10 at the most of our 40 or 50 employees onto a county construction project. Only 10. So what do the other 40 do?” Les Cushman said. “They pay taxes here, but they can’t work here.”

“You’ve created a document which displaces local tradesman that choose not to be union and the potential to backfill them with union people from outside the community,” Lee Cushman said.