2024 NACo Board of Directors Report – County Crossroads Joint Symposium

By Kathy Ackerman, NACo Board Representative and Idaho County Clerk 

The County Crossroads Joint Symposium and National Association of Counties (NACo) Board of Directors Meeting was held on December 4-7, 2024 in Sonoma County, California. This symposium brought together members of the Large Urban Caucus, the Rural Action Caucus, and the NACo Board of Directors. It provided an opportunity to experience Sonoma County through numerous mobile tours highlighting agriculture, emergency management/response, Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO), commercial fishing, and of course, wineries. As I learned from the locals, “Sonoma makes wine. Napa makes auto parts!”

We spent a considerable amount of time on buses getting out into the county to learn about challenges and successes. During our first stop at Bodega Bay, we learned about environmental changes that resulted in massive destruction of the kelp forest, which is vital to the salmon and crab fisheries that provide economic stability to the area. A pivot to marketing black cod is slowly rebuilding the commercial fishing trade in the area.

The next morning, we went to The Ranch—a stunning venue that overlooks Lake Sonoma. Sonoma _­Water is the governing entity that manages Lake Sonoma, a reservoir that supplies water and mitigates flood hazards in an area where conditions can rapidly swing between extreme droughts and floods. Much of the information we received at this stop focused on the critical need to improve and expand precipitation forecasting so decision makers can take accurate and necessary mitigation actions and put contingency plans in place to protect the citizenry.

The afternoon mobile tour was of the fire ravaged area of Santa Rosa that was impacted by the 2017 Tubbs Fire. Our tour guides were emergency managers who explained the chain of events that resulted in the loss of 22 lives and over 6,000 structures in the span of six hours on October 8, 2017. The tour included a discussion of challenges, missteps, successes, and lessons learned.

The last mobile tour of the trip took us out to the farm! We received a warm welcome of fresh cheese products and whole chocolate milk to highlight the area’s dairy production. We heard from a nearby egg producer who was recently the target of protesters trying to shut down their production practices. This group was also successful in getting an initiative on the ballot that would have crippled the ag communities in Sonoma County. The proposition was soundly defeated, but not without significant money and efforts to educate voters. It seems that all initiatives are similarly vague when it comes to confusing double-speak that even the savviest voters find difficult to understand.

The Board Meeting included passage of the Board’s recommended Top 10 Federal Policy Priorities, establishing a working group to explore the feasibility of composing a Mid-Size Counties Caucus as well as two new multi-county forums for Great Lakes Counties and Southwest Border Counties. Also discussed were expectations for the Lame Duck Period, the drive for reauthorization of SRS, and possible cuts that may be coming as a result of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The consensus was to keep doing ARPA-like funding, giving counties the money to utilize within certain boundaries without the lengthy and confounding processes of applying for federal funds.

As always, NACo’s numerous resources are available at naco.org. A new resource to check out is AI County Compass: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Local Governance and Implementation of Artificial Intelligence.