City Council Feb 18, 2025

City Council Meeting Summary

Time Item Item Summary Motion Summary Comment Summary
00:00:01 None: Call to Order and Roll Call Mayor Cox calls the meeting to order at 5:03 PM and asks the city clerk to take the roll. Councilmember Blaustein is present. Councilmember Hoffman is present. Councilmember Solyeski is absent. The Vice President will arrive later. Vice Mayor Woodside is present and Mayor Cox is present. No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

00:00:29 1: Interviews for the Historic Preservation Commission and Disaster Preparedness Committee The council conducted interviews for the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and the Disaster Preparedness Committee (DPC). Mary Lee Bickford was interviewed for the HPC, highlighting her background in interior design and her desire to make Sausalito's history more known, suggesting improvements like adding historical plaques at sites like Swede Beach. Councilmember Hoffman, the council liaison for historic preservation, encouraged Mary Lee to attend HPC meetings and offered to discuss ways to get involved. Bonnie, a former member of the DPC, was interviewed and shared her experience, including developing a bug-out bag index and organizing community outreach events. She suggested regular meetings with representatives from the fire and police departments, citizen organizations, and neighborhood visits (00:11:14). Councilmember Hoffman requested Bonnie to provide a one-pager summarizing the highlights and key takeaways from her time on the committee (00:13:49). Stella Benton was interviewed, expressing interest in serving as a liaison between Sausalito and Marin City for disaster preparedness, given her experience in Marin City. Janelle Kelman, a former mayor and council member, was interviewed and proposed focusing on creating a more resilient Sausalito, including graywater catchment systems and piloting new fire suppression technologies (00:22:14). A councilmember asked about her thoughts on the governor's proposed five-foot rule for vegetation management (00:23:16). Janelle suggested that Sausalito needs an approach tailored to its specific environment. After the interviews, there was a discussion about the application process and whether to make appointments immediately or wait until all applications have been received. No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

00:28:15 II: CLOSED SESSION - 5:30 PM Mayor Cox announced the start of the closed session, which included discussions on items C1 through C3. The items to be discussed include conference with labor negotiator regarding the Sausalito Police Association, conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation with significant exposure (one case), and conference with legal counsel regarding initiation of litigation (one potential case) pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 D4. Mayor Cox also stated that she will be recusing herself from item three due to the proximity of her residence to the property under discussion. (00:29:05) No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

00:29:25 III: RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION - 7:00 PM The City Council reconvened to open session at 7:00 PM. The City Clerk called the roll, noting Councilmember Sobieski would arrive around 8 PM. The Pledge of Allegiance was led by Cass Green. Mayor Cox announced there were no closed session announcements and opened the floor for public comment on closed session items. Jeffrey Chase initially responded in the affirmative but then clarified he was not on a closed session item. The council then approved the agenda. (00:30:37) Mayor Cox sought a motion approving the agenda. (00:30:43) The roll was called and the agenda was approved unanimously. Motion to approve the agenda. Seconded. Motion passed. (00:30:43) 1 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
1 Neutral

00:30:27 Jeffrey Chase was Neutral: Initially indicated he had a comment on closed session items but then clarified he did not.

00:30:59 1.A: Special Presentation from Supervisor Stephanie Moulton Peters Supervisor Stephanie Moulton Peters provided a presentation focusing on the county's new direction towards a more client-focused and 21st-century approach (00:31:39). She highlighted the importance of placemaking, smart city planning, and challenging assumptions to improve county processes (00:34:06). She emphasized the need for digital transformation, public engagement, and agile methods to enhance efficiency and responsiveness (00:38:20). Key focus areas include housing for working families, transportation improvements, and cultivating private investments in communities (00:42:09). Supervisor Moulton Peters also discussed her work on emergency preparedness, the Marin City renovation project, and progress in addressing the Richardson Bay anchor-out issue (00:44:05). She noted her appointment as vice chair of the MTC and its potential benefits for Marin County, particularly in securing funding for projects like Highway 37 and addressing sea level rise (00:47:47). Councilmembers discussed regional collaboration on housing, disaster preparedness, and environmental issues, with Supervisor Moulton Peters expressing support for a regional approach and refining state housing tools (00:49:36, 00:51:18, 00:52:43). Mayor Cox thanked the supervisor for her collaboration on various projects, including the Dorothy Gibson house renovation, homeless housing, the Vista Point Trail, and sea level rise mitigation (00:53:47). No Motion 5 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
5 Neutral

00:47:21 Councilmember Blaustein was Neutral: Asked about the impact of Supervisor Moulton Peters' regional work as vice chair of the MTC on Marin, particularly regarding transit and funding.

00:49:18 Councilmember Woodside was Neutral: Expressed encouragement for the new spirit of cooperation between the county and cities in the district and countywide, and hoped for a regional vision for addressing housing issues, especially for worker and senior housing.

00:51:11 Councilmember Hoffman was Neutral: Inquired about balancing housing pressures with geologic and environmental issues, especially concerning sea-level rise and fire dangers, and whether there were changes in thinking about appropriate housing locations.

00:53:47 Mayor Cox was Neutral: Thanked Supervisor Moulton Peters for collaborating on various projects, including the Dorothy Gibson house, homeless housing, Vista Point Trail, sea level rise adaptation, and regional housing requirements, and suggested including CSDs in Southern Marin mayors and city managers meetings.

00:55:16 City Manager was Neutral: Thanked Supervisor Moulton Peters for her work and the service she and her team provide, particularly Doreen Gennard, a Sausalito resident, and expressed interest in the Sausalito C-Click Fix app.

01:02:13 1.B: Special Presentation from Southern Marin Fire District The Southern Marin Fire District provided a presentation on wildfire preparedness and prevention efforts in Sausalito. Chief Barnes highlighted the partnership with the Marin Wildfire Authority (MWA) as a national standard for collaboration (01:02:13). Chief Hilliard discussed the lessons learned from the Tubbs Fire (01:03:46) and the formation of the MWA (01:05:56). The presentation covered the district's 2025 work plan, including major fuel breaks (01:07:44), community fuel breaks, forest health restoration projects (01:09:01), evacuation route maintenance (01:09:51), emergency notification systems (LRAD) (01:10:30), on-demand and scheduled chipper programs (01:11:14), and collaboration with the Marin Water District (MMWD) (01:13:39) for hydrant maintenance and upgrades (01:15:18). The fire code cycle was also explained (01:18:14), emphasizing the importance of fire and life safety. Barnes emphasized the importance of a systems approach to home hardening and defensible space (01:21:36). Councilmember Hoffman raised concerns about the Golden Gate National Recreation Area's (GGNRA) fire management (01:28:22). Mayor Cox announced that the National Park Service Superintendent would address the council in April (01:31:06). No Motion 4 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
4 Neutral

01:23:29 Unknown was Neutral: Asked about Zone Zero enforcement and funding (01:23:29), Zone Zero assessments during safety visits, frequency of fire hydrant testing (01:26:06), and community responsibility in fire preparedness (01:26:35).

01:28:04 Councilmember Hoffman was Neutral: Inquired about the fire management of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) (01:28:22) and requested an assessment of the vegetation along the Sausalito border (01:31:23).

01:33:14 Unknown was Neutral: Mentioned community members active in collaborating with GGNRA, Caltrans, and others and emphasized the need for a group effort.

01:33:46 Mayor Cox was Neutral: Requested an update on the implications of the new fire hazard severity zone mapping for Sausalito (01:33:46) and thanked the fire district for their collaboration (01:34:11).

01:36:21 2: COMMUNICATIONS - 7:35 PM The Communications section of the meeting allows citizens to address the City Council on matters within their jurisdiction that are not on the agenda. Mayor Cox limited public comment to two minutes per person due to a full chamber. Jeffrey Chase spoke about religious freedom and the war in Gaza. Babette McDougall praised Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters' presentation and discussed censorship issues. Sandra Bushmaker inquired about an extension for the Bridgeway Bicycle Commission Lane project, and the City Manager confirmed a six-month extension and a hearing scheduled for March 29th. Sunshine spoke about being evicted and her need for a Section 8 voucher for low-income housing, appealing for help from the council and Marin County to protect seniors. (01:42:21) City Manager indicates that the hearing will be March 29th at 1 p.m. No Motion 4 Total:
1 In Favor
0 Against
3 Neutral

01:37:21 Jeffrey Chase was Neutral: Spoke about jurisdictional matters, religious freedom, and the war in Gaza, expressing hope for peace and prisoner releases.

01:39:38 Babette McDougall was Neutral: Praised Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters' presentation, discussed Sausalito's designation as a tier four regional transit nexus, and criticized censorship in city videos.

01:41:46 Sandra Bushmaker was Neutral: Inquired about an extension for the Bridgeway Bicycle Commission Lane project and the date for a decision on the project.

01:42:56 Sunshine was In Favor: Spoke about her eviction and the difficulty in obtaining a Section 8 voucher, appealing for help in finding housing and advocating for the protection of seniors.

01:44:51 3: CONSENT CALENDAR - 7:50 PM Mayor Cox introduces the consent calendar, comprising items 3A through 3I, and explains that these items are considered routine and non-controversial, expected to have unanimous council support and enacted in one motion (01:45:05). The items include adopting meeting minutes, proclamations, resolutions for agreements, landscaping improvements, authorizing the City Manager to execute professional service agreements related to geologic hazards and storm drain assessment, and a management and disbursement agreement with the Downtown Sausalito Business Improvement District Association, and a property management agreement (01:45:15). Councilmember Hoffman asked about the budget for item 3H, the business improvement district (01:50:50). There was discussion on how the funds that council has already approved via assessments in the bid will be dispersed to the non-profit that will manage and implement the management district plan (01:51:49). The private assessment dollar bucket is approximately $117,000, and the city's share is $117,000 (01:51:49). The city is taking the responsibility of collecting year one assessments from private property owners in the bid. Today they have collected approximately $77,000 from private landowners in the P bid, and are yet to collect approximately 40,000 additional dollars (01:53:35). PIPID meeting minutes are posted on a PBID webpage (01:55:08). Motion to approve the consent calendar (01:55:47). 3 Total:
0 In Favor
2 Against
1 Neutral

01:46:58 Jeffrey Chase was Against: Jeffrey Chase comments that there are no items that were costing the citizens of Sausalito on the last consent calendar (01:47:16). On this list is half a million dollars for consultants (01:47:41). He is critical of the Geologic Hazard Monitoring Plan and Storm drain assessment study (01:47:50). He states there is no reason for any of these consultancies (01:48:54).

01:49:06 Mickey Nichols was Neutral: Mickey Nichols has a question on 3H, the agreement on the new business district (01:49:06). Asks about the page that talks about physical improvements. She is not sure if the authority for improvements has been given to the district exclusively (01:49:24).

01:50:10 Babette McDougall was Against: Babette McDougall says 3G is a terrible contract for Sausalito, and it should not be signed (01:50:10). She is concerned about the Sausalito policy governing how the city manages its portfolio and asks where the city is on that (01:50:30).

01:55:54 4: PUBLIC HEARING ITEMS - Appeal of Planning Commission Resolution No. 2024-24, approving a joint hotel and restaurant use at 715 Bridgeway. Mayor Cox introduces the public hearing items, specifically the appeal of Planning Commission Resolution No. 2024-24, which approved a joint hotel and restaurant use at 715 Bridgeway. Matthew Mandich, Senior Planner, is welcomed to present the item. No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

01:56:32 4.A: Appeal of Planning Commission Resolution No. 2024-24 approving a joint hotel and restaurant use at 715 Bridgeway (APN: 065-071-25) Matthew Mandich presents the appeal of a Planning Commission decision for a joint restaurant and hotel use at 715 Bridgeway, the former Wells Fargo building. The building, built in 1924 for the Bank of Sausalito, is a contributor to the historic downtown district. The proposal includes a fine dining restaurant and bar on the ground floor with a maximum capacity of 105 guests, outdoor seating for 16 guests, and the construction of a second floor for three hotel rooms with guest amenities like a patio, fire pit, and hot tub lounge area. The project required several permits, including design review, variances, and conditional use permits. The Planning Commission approved the application on December 11, 2024. Following the approval, the project was appealed by Breckhouse Law on behalf of neighbor Sharon Kahn, citing errors in granting the CUP for the hotel use, FAR calculation, variance issuance, parking exemption usage, and inconsistency with the general plan. Mandich rebutted each point, stating that the hotel use qualifies as residential under the California Building Code, the FAR calculation excludes intercourts, the variance was appropriately issued due to the building's historic nature, and the parking exemption issue can be addressed with a CUP waiver. The staff recommends denying the appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's decision. Mayor Cox then asked the councilmembers to reveal any ex parte communications, to which all responded they had none. The public hearing was opened, but it was discovered that the public hearing was not properly noticed, therefore action could not be taken on this day. The public comment period was still opened, after which the public hearing would be continued to a later date. No Motion 10 Total:
8 In Favor
1 Against
1 Neutral

02:14:46 Sharon Kahn was Against: Sharon Kahn, representing herself, argues against the project's approval. She contends that the general plan mandates residential use on the second story to minimize impacts on surrounding neighborhoods. She disputes the staff's reliance on state law to classify hotels as residential, citing the municipal code's definition of residential occupancy as 30 days or greater. She raises concerns about the lack of on-site management, the inadequacy of the parking exemption process, and the incorrect calculation of floor area ratio (FAR) due to the inclusion of a covered patio. Kahn asserts that the requested variance is unreasonable and injurious, particularly regarding the visibility from the stairs and the potential impact on the adjacent vacant lot. She requests a minimum 30-day rental condition, on-site management, provision of parking spaces, correct FAR calculation, and denial of the variance for the parking deck and hot tub.

02:27:51 Bonnie was In Favor: Bonnie supports the restaurant and hotel project, urging denial of the appeal and upholding the Planning and Historical Commissions' approval. She believes the project will revitalize a long-empty historic building. Bonnie stresses the proven ability of the project team to operate a small hotel and restaurant and emphasizes the rarity of such an opportunity in downtown Sausalito. She also believes that existing ordinances can address neighbors' noise concerns and that the owner is committed to running a business that works well in Sausalito. She also had questions about parking and when the hotel would be opened.

02:30:04 Fred Moore was In Favor: Fred Moore also supports denying the appeal and approving the project. He praises the staff's presentation and Bonnie's comments, stating that the project will be a great addition to downtown Sausalito. Moore believes the applicant has gone overboard in making concessions and that the city will benefit from the dining and hotel opportunities. He dismisses concerns about noise impacts, citing existing city ordinances and the likelihood of neighborly vigilance.

02:31:40 Gail Schell was In Favor: Gail Schell supports moving forward with the project. She highlights a letter from the mayor of Carmel praising the developer's contributions to the community, stating that she wants to see this business in Sausalito.

02:32:23 Adrian Brinton was In Favor: Adrian Brinton supports moving forward. He notes it seems like a difficult process for the developers. He believes that Sausalito is hard to do business with due to vague and ambiguous ordinances that can be used to stymie business. He suggests cleaning up the vague and ambiguous parts of the city ordinances.

02:33:37 Hank Baker was In Favor: Hank Baker requests that the council deny the appeal, as it is a terrific project for downtown Sausalito. He had spoken in favor of it at the Historic Commision, and notes that they overwhelimingly approved it.

02:34:32 Cass Green was In Favor: Cass Green states that she is the owner of the Inn Above Tide, and that people may think that she would be against the project, but in fact she is in support of the project. She says the hotel and restaurant will help revitalize downtown.

02:35:01 Mickey Nichols was In Favor: Mickey Nichols spoke on behalf of the Historic Preservation Commission and stated that this is a building of importance, that the applicant engaged with the city early, checked all the ordinances, and cooperated. She wants to thank the developers for their considerate planning that made it a joy to work with, and that it adheres to the preservation standards and will not lose signifiance.

02:36:04 Babette McDougall was Neutral: Babette McDougall states that she'd like to see it go forward, but that it opens the door to a much bigger question for the community. She wants to be really wise about it and that we work with our neighbors. Babette believes this will require rigorous debate and examination.

02:37:48 Jeffrey Conan was In Favor: Jeffrey Conan states that he is in support of this project, as it does a great bank conversion. Conan states that we are in a great situation to have a private investor invest in Sausalito and for Sausalito to invest in this space. He states that this project can help with the vacancy and blight.

02:40:53 5.A: Adopt a Resolution to Amend the Mid-Year FY 2023-24 Operating and Capital Budget as Directed by the City Council Chad Hess, Finance Director, presented an overview of the mid-year budget adjustments for FY 2023-24. The presentation included a review of the general fund, MLK rentals, and parking fund performance, highlighting revenue and expenditure trends. He noted that revenues are exceeding the prior year and salaries are trending as expected, while insurance costs are a significant outlier. Adjustments to the budget included reallocating the pension UIL payment to the general fund and addressing an unfunded position in the engineering department. Challenges include insurance uncertainty and deferred maintenance, with a facilities assessment report expected soon. Hess also clarified the nature of Measure L funds and COP debt payments. The budget currently has a $91,000 deficit, which he anticipates being able to balance. He also addressed a public comment stating the COP debt service payments increasing as untrue, stating it is designed as a level payment of around $620,000 per year. Mayor Cox raised questions about transfers from the Tidelands fund, the parking fund (given the need to repave lot one), and the sewer fund. She questioned the appropriateness of transferring monies from the parking fund into the general fund when lot one needs repaving, and wanted to know what will be left after the transfer. She also suggested delaying the transfers until there was more clarity on the deferred maintenance at the MLK. (03:02:57)Councilmember Hoffman asked about the facilities assessment from Veritas, and its relevance to the funds, since it will hopefully show the scope of the deferred maintenance on properties that are specific to these funds. (03:18:16) Councilmember Sobieski, asked if there was going to be an amortized annual expected obligation to maintain facilities. (03:24:35) Motion to postpone the decision for 30 days or until the evening that they hear the facilities assessment (03:42:35), passed 3-2. 3 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
3 Neutral

03:37:02 Adrian Brinton was Neutral: Commented on the enterprise funds and recommended considering how to apply money for maximum flexibility while maintaining visibility. Suggested prioritizing paving parking lot one to make progress.

03:39:11 Babette McDougall was Neutral: Thanked the council for their work on the budget and requested clarification on whether labor costs include consultant fees, advocating for drilling down on staffing needs.

03:40:27 Sandra Bushmaker was Neutral: Expressed anticipation for the facilities assessment report and emphasized the importance of developing a preventive maintenance plan to avoid large, unexpected repair costs.

04:00:32 5.C: Introduction by Title Only and Waiver of First Reading of Ordinance No. 03-2025, An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito Amending Chapter 10.44.240 “Formula Retail”, Table 10.24-1 “Land Uses in Commercial Districts”, and Chap Mayor Cox introduced the item regarding the amendment of Chapter 10.44.240, concerning Formula Retail and opened the floor for public comment. The City Manager apologized for a staff error in the public notice format, taking responsibility and assuring improvements. Mayor Cox requested a SWOT analysis from staff to understand and prevent future occurrences (04:03:16). The City Manager suggested re-noticing the item for the meeting on the 4th (04:03:06). No Motion 1 Total:
0 In Favor
1 Against
0 Neutral

04:01:05 Babette McDougall was Against: Babette McDougall expressed concerns about amending the formula retail regulations, questioning whether local businesses are prepared for increased competition from larger companies (04:01:28). She referenced past instances of businesses like Starbucks and Autodesk leaving Sausalito and asked how local businesses will compete with the resources of larger, formula retail businesses (04:01:57).

04:03:33 5.B: Introduction by Title and Waiver of First Reading of Ordinance No. 02-2025, An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito Amending Section 15.04.060 To Prescribe Speed Limits Within the City of Sausalito The City Council is considering an ordinance to amend Section 15.04.060 of the municipal code to update and codify speed limits within Sausalito. Kevin McGowan introduces Jimmy Jessup from Parametrics, who presents the findings of an engineering and traffic survey (ENTS). The survey recommends reducing speed limits on six segments of Bridgeway and 2nd Street, resulting in a continuous 20-mile-per-hour zone from Napa to Alexander Avenue. Other speed limits would remain unchanged. The presentation highlights the importance of context-sensitive speed limits and the impact of Assembly Bill 43, which allows local jurisdictions to consider safety goals when setting speed limits. Sergio Rudin, the city attorney, explains that codifying all city speed limits in the municipal code is advisable for clarity and ease of reference, especially given the procedures enacted by AB 43. Councilmember Hoffman raises a question about recusal due to proximity to the roads in question, and Sergio Rudin clarifies that recusal is likely unnecessary as the changes are unlikely to impact property values. (04:14:55) Sergio Rudin recommends codifying all the speed limits. Mayor Cox motions to introduce by title only and waive the first reading of Ordinance No. 02-2025, amending Section 15.04 to prescribe speed limits within Sausalito (04:19:08). The motion was seconded and passed unanimously. 2 Total:
1 In Favor
0 Against
1 Neutral

04:17:01 Sandra Bushmaker was Neutral: Sandra Bushmaker suggests consolidating the three proposed speed limits on Bridgeway into two for clarity.

04:17:46 Jenny Silva was In Favor: Jenny Silva encourages extending the 30-mile-per-hour speed limit from Nevada Street to Gate 6, citing safety concerns and the location of a previous fatality. She argues for equal safety protection for residents in the north end of Sausalito.

04:23:22 6A: City Manager Information for Council The City Manager provided an update on several key areas. First, he discussed the monitoring of federal actions and their potential impact on Sausalito, particularly regarding funding. He noted that the Gate 5 Economic Development Administration grant is already executed and not in jeopardy. The city is also monitoring potential impacts on tax credits for renewable energy. Secondly, the City Manager announced a finance committee meeting scheduled for Thursday morning at 8 o'clock, noting the posting would be done tonight, (04:24:31) with two main items on the agenda: a discussion about a climate emergency strategy to allocate funds for dealing with natural disasters and a conversation about waste and financing infrastructure using a private placement model. No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

04:25:24 6B: Councilmember Committee Reports This agenda item consisted of reports from councilmembers regarding their attendance at various committee meetings and community events. Councilmember 1 reported on the Sustainability Commission's special meeting concerning sea-level rise implications for the planned bridgeway safety grant. The commission recommended moving forward with a solution that considers a longer-term impact beyond a 10-year horizon (04:25:30). Councilmember Hoffman reported on attending the I-desk hall crab feed with the Vice Mayor, noting the presence of the new consul general from Portugal (04:26:10). Hoffman also mentioned being voted as the president for the North Bay Executive Committee for the county (04:26:59). Councilmember Sobieski reported attending the 94965 fundraiser at the sausage center for the arts, highlighting the thousands of dollars raised to benefit the local school (04:27:38). No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

04:27:54 6C: Appointments Mayor Cox opens the floor for appointments to the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and the Disaster Preparedness Committee. She nominates David Kornblum and Vicki Kornmeyer to replace an HPC member whose term has expired (04:28:04). A councilmember asks if appointments require a vote (04:28:24). Mayor Cox moves to appoint David Kornblum and Vicki Kornmeyer to the Historic Preservation Commission (04:28:04). 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

04:28:50 6C: Appointments Mayor Cox addressed the expiring term of Commissioner Nichols and her application for a second term, which will be on the consent calendar at the next meeting (04:28:52). The Mayor then moved to appoint Bonnie McGregor and Janelle Kelman to the Disaster Preparedness Committee, with Stella Benton as an alternate (04:29:17). Mayor Cox mentioned that this would still leave openings on the committee and stated that she spoke with Mike McKinley to get an agenda and meeting scheduled. She also stated that Rob Cox is going to apply and as other applications come in, they can do more interviews and fill the other slots (04:29:37). Motion to appoint Bonnie McGregor and Janelle Kelman to the Disaster Preparedness Committee and Stella Benton as an alternate, seconded and passed (04:29:17). 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

04:30:12 6D: Future Agenda Items Mayor Cox stated that the 715 Bridgeway appeal will be placed on the March 18th agenda for rehearing barring unforeseen circumstances (04:30:24). She also wants to add a report from the successor to Bartle Wells on the city's pension as a future agenda item (04:30:42). No Motion 1 Total:
0 In Favor
1 Against
0 Neutral

04:31:12 Babette McDougall was Against: Babette McDougall criticized the council for not calling for public comment at the February 4th meeting and for Ms. Blaustein's repeated attempts to bring Bridgeway Marina to the council without proper paperwork (04:32:09). She also questioned why Linda Fotch should not have to play by the same rules.

04:33:16 7: ADJOURNMENT Mayor Cox adjourned the meeting in honor of Adam Krivatsi, a long-term Sausalito volunteer and urban planner who recently passed away. (04:33:21) She highlighted his significant contributions to the city, noting his attendance at General Plan Advisory Committee meetings and his invaluable feedback on the strategic plan. (04:34:08) He was also a board member for the Terraces of Sausalito. (04:34:44) Mayor Cox shared a message from Adam's wife, expressing gratitude for his life of service and his positive impact on those around him. (04:35:01) No Motion 0 Total:
0 In Favor
0 Against
0 Neutral

City Council Meeting Transcript

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Time Speaker Text
00:00:01.94 Mayor Cox I will call the meeting to order. It's 5.03 p.m. and ask the city clerk to take the role.
00:00:11.20 Bette McDougal Councilmember Blaustein.
00:00:12.82 Mayor Cox Here?
00:00:14.24 Bette McDougal Councilmember Hoffman.
00:00:16.65 Mayor Cox Here.
00:00:17.70 Bette McDougal Councilmember Solyeski.
00:00:19.54 Mayor Cox Absence.
00:00:20.75 Bette McDougal Vice President.
00:00:21.75 Mayor Cox He will be arriving later.
00:00:24.62 Bette McDougal Vice Mayor Woodside here and Mayor Cox.
00:00:27.96 Mayor Cox year.
00:00:29.43 Mayor Cox Okay, first thing on our agenda for this evening is interviews for the Historic Preservation Commission and the Disaster Preparedness Committee. And so...
00:00:40.55 Mayor Cox Um,
00:00:42.08 Mayor Cox Our first interview and do we have anybody participating via Zoom, Walfred? I don't know.
00:00:46.66 Bette McDougal No, none that have told me.
00:00:50.69 Mayor Cox Okay, well, do you want to pull up the zoom just in case someone because I see that not of all of our applicants are here.
00:01:03.26 Bette McDougal I see the city attorney is promoted to panelists. And then we have Lynn and Lynn is not one of the applicants. So the first person we have is Mary Lee,
00:01:11.51 Jeffrey Conan applicants.
00:01:12.04 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:01:14.80 Mayor Cox is,
00:01:16.39 Bette McDougal Hi. Okay.
00:01:17.27 Mayor Cox But,
00:01:17.56 Bette McDougal That's a big vertical.
00:01:18.52 Mayor Cox But this is a public meeting, and so we need to make this meeting available to observe these interviews. Okay, I'm not seeing it up on our screen.
00:01:23.81 Bette McDougal Inter-unus?
00:01:25.97 Bette McDougal Oh, sorry. I forgot to turn on.
00:01:39.04 Mayor Cox Mary Lee Bickford, please come forward.
00:01:43.96 Mayor Cox Sorry, you can stand at the podium.
00:01:46.75 Mayor Cox and turn on the mic so that we can. Okay, great.
00:01:50.85 Mayor Cox And
00:01:52.28 Mayor Cox These interviews typically last five minutes apiece.
00:01:52.70 Vicki Nichols Thank you.
00:01:52.72 Unknown Thank you.
00:01:56.20 Mayor Cox And we have received your application and reviewed it.
00:01:59.93 Mayor Cox Congratulations on being in Sausalito for such a long time.
00:02:03.79 Mary Lee Bickford Thank you.
00:02:05.06 Mayor Cox And so go ahead and share with us anything you'd particularly like us to know about why you're applying for the Historic Preservation Commission.
00:02:13.51 Mary Lee Bickford Thank you very much to all of you. I've lived in Sausalito 15 years.
00:02:19.01 Mary Lee Bickford I...
00:02:20.35 Mary Lee Bickford Come from the Northeast, from New England, where I grew up in historical places. I'm degreed in interior design technology, where we also were studied and had a part of that was in architectural design and interest. I've served on two previous boards here for the City Arts Commission and
00:02:40.14 Mary Lee Bickford Trees and Views. So anyway, I just note about Sausalito is that there's so much richness in its history and its culture and its places that my desire is to make that part of it more known.
00:02:56.81 Mary Lee Bickford Not just the retail shopping, not just a few plaques here, but more of the secret places or the unknown places like Swede Beach, which I think needs...
00:03:06.62 Mary Lee Bickford whole lot more attention and
00:03:08.79 Mary Lee Bickford More history there.
00:03:10.38 Mary Lee Bickford So...
00:03:12.41 Mary Lee Bickford That's where I am with Sassalita.
00:03:14.03 Mayor Cox you know.
00:03:16.39 Mayor Cox Wonderful. Thank you for that. I'll open it up to questions.
00:03:20.54 Unknown Just a quick follow on. Give us some thoughts, your thoughts, on how you would make it more visible or unlivened.
00:03:28.98 Mary Lee Bickford Love to. So for instance, Swede Beach, for example, at the top of the stairs to Swede Beach, you have a trash can, you have doggy bags, and you have a sign that says clean up after your dog.
00:03:40.76 Mary Lee Bickford No mention of a historic site, historic landmarks.
00:03:45.21 Mary Lee Bickford or anything about the history of
00:03:47.07 Mary Lee Bickford of.
00:03:47.49 Mary Lee Bickford the fact that it was even called
00:03:49.18 Mary Lee Bickford Whale Cove, I believe.
00:03:50.91 Mary Lee Bickford So that is just, I would put a plaque at the beginning with...
00:03:55.56 Mary Lee Bickford notification of what's going on down there and what used to happen.
00:03:59.39 Mary Lee Bickford And see the railings that used to be out there. That was for, I mean, there's such an in-depth timeline, pick any part, but I'd like to expose more of that original history.
00:04:11.49 Mayor Cox Thank you. Have you ever attended any of our Historic Preservation Commission meetings? I have not.
00:04:16.99 Unknown Okay.
00:04:17.36 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:04:18.13 Mayor Cox Okay. And are you aware of our historic preservation guidelines that we adopted, I think, about
00:04:25.98 Mayor Cox eight, seven, eight years ago.
00:04:28.24 Mayor Cox The guidelines as far as service on the committee.
00:04:31.30 Mayor Cox No, the guidelines for Sausalito for evaluating
00:04:31.63 Sandra Bushmaker Timeline?
00:04:35.23 Mayor Cox the historic nature of our various buildings and structures.
00:04:39.62 Mary Lee Bickford I'm aware of what is considered or
00:04:43.85 Mary Lee Bickford looked at for historic
00:04:45.56 Mary Lee Bickford preservation as far as
00:04:47.75 Mary Lee Bickford exterior. It could be a place. It could be a person. It could be, um,
00:04:53.49 Mary Lee Bickford an architectural feature.
00:04:56.10 Mary Lee Bickford Okay.
00:04:56.36 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
00:04:58.97 Councilmember Hoffman Oh, please.
00:05:00.66 Councilmember Hoffman Hi, Mary Lee. We met before the meeting and thank you for coming down. I'm the, you're welcome. Currently the board, the council liaison for historic preservation. So,
00:05:09.70 Councilmember Hoffman I want to thank you for coming down tonight and joining us here in the council chambers for an interview. You're welcome.
00:05:14.60 Councilmember Hoffman And I invite you to come to any of the historic preservation meetings.
00:05:18.58 Councilmember Hoffman They're also on Zoom if you'd like to join on Zoom.
00:05:21.75 Councilmember Hoffman And there are lots of ways to become, come involved with this work preservation and the efforts that that board does outside of their meetings too. And so I'm happy to talk to you more about that offline if you'd like to. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. So thank you for throwing your hat and ring. We appreciate it.
00:05:35.61 Unknown Yes.
00:05:38.96 Mary Lee Bickford Welcome, welcome.
00:05:41.46 Mary Lee Bickford Thank you all.
00:05:42.00 Mayor Cox All right.
00:05:42.15 Mary Lee Bickford Thank you.
00:05:45.94 Mayor Cox Okay, so that concludes our interviews for Historic Preservation Commission. We'll now turn to disaster preparedness. And city clerk...
00:05:57.31 Mayor Cox Did you invite Janelle and Bonnie to the meeting?
00:06:00.99 Bette McDougal Yes, they all received emails and they all responded that they would attend.
00:06:03.96 Mayor Cox Yeah, I thought I saw Bonnie in the hallway, but...
00:06:07.65 Unknown Thank you.
00:06:07.72 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:06:07.75 Unknown Thank you.
00:06:07.91 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:06:08.12 Mayor Cox ride in the parking lot.
00:06:09.39 Mayor Cox But I thought I saw her come down.
00:06:13.12 Unknown of faculty section.
00:06:14.03 Unknown Yeah.
00:06:14.32 Unknown Thank you.
00:06:15.08 Unknown Okay.
00:06:15.42 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:06:20.56 Bette McDougal I put the time slots on there. I think I put 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5 o'clock, 5.14, and 5.21. So maybe they're waiting till the time slot begins.
00:06:28.64 Mayor Cox And when did you send the emails?
00:06:30.08 Bette McDougal I sent it to them on Monday or Tuesday, I believe.
00:06:32.83 Mayor Cox it.
00:06:33.15 Bette McDougal I'm going to go.
00:06:33.22 Mayor Cox of,
00:06:33.30 Bette McDougal of this week.
00:06:34.25 Mayor Cox Last week. And did you receive anything back from anybody?
00:06:37.17 Bette McDougal Yes, I received
00:06:39.02 Mayor Cox responses that they would have done.
00:06:40.42 Mayor Cox So Janelle said she would attend? Yes, she would. Okay.
00:06:45.00 Mayor Cox Well, it's not yet 520, so.
00:06:52.20 Unknown I know Stella's here so we could start with her. Yeah.
00:06:54.53 Mayor Cox Yeah.
00:06:54.97 Unknown And she was slated for that time.
00:06:59.12 Mayor Cox Sure. Hi, Bonnie.
00:07:03.66 Mayor Cox No, welcome. We're just starting the interviews for Disaster Preparedness Committee. So we have a person here, Stella, who had applied for...
00:07:16.98 Councilmember Hoffman We're still on.
00:07:18.55 Mayor Cox Oh. Oh.
00:07:19.98 Mayor Cox HPC, but who's
00:07:22.76 Mayor Cox And HPC does not have an alternate position. She's ineligible for...
00:07:28.69 Mayor Cox the commission...
00:07:30.95 Mayor Cox but she could be an alternate for disaster preparedness, given that she lives within the 94965 area. So I was gonna start with you, Bonnie, because you have experience on the Disaster Preparedness Committee, and thank you for your application. So would you like to come up
00:07:46.68 Mayor Cox chat with us for a few minutes. Oh, and here's Janelle.
00:07:51.87 Mayor Cox Just to the podium.
00:07:58.62 Mayor Cox It says on paper.
00:07:59.62 Bonnie Yes.
00:07:59.63 Mayor Cox Yes.
00:08:00.01 Mayor Cox Yes. So first I want to thank you for your long years of service already on the HPC. And perhaps you'd like to share with us a little bit about what that was like for you and what you'd like to see happen.
00:08:13.52 Mayor Cox as we reconstitute the committee.
00:08:16.34 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:08:16.36 Bonnie Oh,
00:08:16.49 Mayor Cox Okay.
00:08:16.92 Bonnie Thank you.
00:08:18.38 Bonnie Well, I was on the committee for quite a few years
00:08:22.15 Bonnie along with Tom Perazzo,
00:08:24.76 Bonnie and other members came and went over the years. I would say it was probably...
00:08:30.79 Bonnie I think I was on that committee for at least 10 years.
00:08:35.17 Bonnie It got casual as to when your time was up and this and that, and there was no one else to take our places, so we kept going on and going on. Gosh, so many things did happen, and then a lot of things kind of petered out. We did develop some documents that I looked up on my computer, which we can pull up and print if we need to. I put together a pretty heavy-duty bug-out bag, and I could have been... I'd hate to have to do it. I can hardly lift it now. But...
00:09:10.70 Bonnie I could have survived, if I had to, in the boondocks for at least a week out of that bag, probably longer, because the only thing that would run out would be water and food, depending on where you were. And I made an index, a table of contents, but it was more than that. And I did it alphabetically, and I also did it by what pocket on my backpack the items were in.
00:09:35.03 Bonnie So he had a good cross-reference on it. So I would hand that out every time we went somewhere. We also set up days in the park during the flea market garage sale times, and we would have a tent there and hand out materials that we had. And over the years, we started getting more and more materials. Of course, we had a representative from the fire department and the police department who were our...
00:10:03.73 Bonnie co-sponsors, that type of things. And we met monthly. Sometimes we met more frequently than that. After about ten years,
00:10:14.43 Bonnie I wasn't invited to leave, but I wasn't invited to stay because I had kind of outlived my
00:10:20.51 Bonnie terms, if you will. So I did keep in touch with Tom and a couple of the other people, Sandra Bushmaker, and I can't remember some of the others now. It's been a while. So I'm happy to see that this is being regenerated when you brought it up. I think it's a wonderful idea.
00:10:40.10 Bonnie I made a list of some things that this is just very cursory, of course. Regular meetings, of course, and with reps from citizens, such as the team would be, really, and represent from the fire and the police departments again. Probably we actually were under the police department. And how about some citizen organizations, Women's Club, Sausalito Village, et cetera, to again And how about some citizen organizations, Women's Club, Sausalito Village, et cetera, to again, more saturate the community with what needs to be done.
00:11:14.91 Bonnie And I think neighborhood visits, which haven't been done since Herbie was around.
00:11:20.06 Bonnie Herb Weiner, for those who don't know, he's a city council member and a former businessman in town.
00:11:25.41 Bonnie And he was adopted by the whole town. Everybody in town loved Herbie. And we went around to, we did this two or three times. We went to various neighborhoods from one end of town to the other with the city council members. And we had donuts and goodies and coffee. I think we called them, excuse me, mobile coffees. And I think something like that would have a bigger impact today than it did then.
00:11:51.97 Bonnie We hadn't had all these horrendous fires at that time when they were being done. I don't think...
00:11:57.52 Bonnie I guess the Oakland Hills fire had happened, but there was enough time in between.
00:12:01.74 Bonnie Excuse me.
00:12:02.86 Bonnie that's my curse for having smoked. Um,
00:12:07.19 Bonnie So I think we need to do things like that again. And I would like to see
00:12:14.25 Bonnie In the meetings, in the visits...
00:12:17.99 Bonnie would be council members and DPC members and perhaps some other people. And it would be what I call educational support and neighborhood get people encouraged to do neighborhood watch groups. This town is not very good at that. And I think our geography has a lot to do with that. Now, I think people are going to pay more attention now as fires are getting closer and closer and floods. Not that I have a problem with a flood. I live on Princess Street.
00:12:44.32 Bonnie we need funding to develop meaningful materials to distribute, such as more publications and videos, and whether we can get them from other fire departments and what have you, I don't know. We need in-person meetings to the neighborhoods, which I just alluded to. I think we also should have the funding in order to get speakers at the meetings and maybe some of the neighborhood things or use this room to have a meeting.
00:13:15.55 Bonnie And,
00:13:16.11 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:13:18.34 Bonnie Thank you.
00:13:18.35 Mayor Cox Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Did anyone have any questions of Bonnie? Bonnie, thank you for your service and for all of your brilliant ideas. It's great to hear some of the things that you did do and that we could redo again. Does anyone have any questions for Bonnie?
00:13:33.85 Unknown I, yeah, I should do.
00:13:35.74 Councilmember Hoffman I think it would be super helpful, Bonnie, from the time that you were on. This isn't really a, this is an ask actually from you.
00:13:43.90 Councilmember Hoffman from the time just from the summary that you read off I think it'd be super helpful if if
00:13:49.99 Councilmember Hoffman you could put together a one-pager kind of the highlights um you've already started it from when you were on the the committee before um you know of what you thought were the the biggest things that we could transfer going forward i mean some of the things aren't going to transfer because you know the different environment that we're living in now but um some of the things were that were the most helpful um and I think the neighborhood outreach is, I mean, I think that translates very well and some of those things and some of the other efforts that you guys did. So I think that would be really helpful for reconstituting this group.
00:14:26.54 Councilmember Hoffman You know, some of the guys are still around. I think Mike McKinney was probably still on there, you know, when you were on there. Yes, he was. So, and maybe touching base with him and just sort of paring down. I saw him.
00:14:32.71 Bonnie Yes, it was.
00:14:33.40 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:14:37.63 Mayor Cox I saw him the other day. Oh, he's going to be the liaison for staff.
00:14:38.51 Councilmember Hoffman Oh, he's going to be the liaison.
00:14:40.97 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah.
00:14:41.41 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, so I mean, I wouldn't want you guys to waste time, or new people coming on might have great ideas, but to kind of focus the group moving forward, I think would be super helpful. So anyway, just that's just...
00:14:51.27 Bonnie Thank you.
00:14:51.28 Unknown Thank you.
00:14:51.30 Bonnie I'll be happy.
00:14:51.81 Bonnie Happy to do that.
00:14:52.41 Unknown Thank you.
00:14:52.57 Bonnie Since you're here.
00:14:52.97 Councilmember Hoffman THE FAMILY.
00:14:53.04 Bonnie Anybody else?
00:14:56.45 Unknown Thank you.
00:14:56.47 Mayor Cox All right, Bonnie, thank you so much.
00:14:58.84 Mayor Cox We're hearing from Stephanie Moulton-Peters and from Chief Tubbs this evening, if you feel like sticking around.
00:15:05.68 Mayor Cox OK.
00:15:07.08 Mayor Cox Karen Hollweg, All right, i'm going to go ahead and invite and invite Stella benton since we're still a couple of minutes ahead of Janelle's slot.
00:15:16.56 Mayor Cox Hi, Stella. Welcome. Thank you for applying and for your interest in serving on one of our boards and commissions. Do you want to say a few words? Yes, please.
00:15:19.90 Unknown Thank you.
00:15:19.97 Babette McDougall Thank you.
00:15:20.04 Unknown And for your interest.
00:15:20.73 Babette McDougall Thank you.
00:15:26.98 Stella Benton Well, thank you for having me.
00:15:30.69 Stella Benton So I'm not originally from Marin, but my mother is. She was born and raised in Mill Valley.
00:15:38.86 Stella Benton And so she does take a liking into wanting to protect Marin, and especially from any natural disasters. Right now, we reside in the headlands of Marin City, and as many of you are aware, it's susceptible to a lot of floods, and the fire roads are closed. I have been interning in the interim for the past year with Felicia Gaston, who, alongside Housing Commissioner Sarah Kanson, run the disaster preparedness for Marin City, preparing backpacks and supplies as the stored supplies for Marin City were all molded and unusable. this includes developing pamphlets to pass out to community to advocating to possibly open up the fire roads for an emergency escape, since there's one way in and one way out, as well as meeting with the Office of Emergency Planning to develop what is going to happen in case there is a flood that we cannot drive through.
00:16:41.95 Stella Benton I know that Marin City is the unincorporated Sausalito, and I would like the opportunity to be a liaison with Sausalito Incorporated.
00:16:55.21 Stella Benton to reach across the aisle and have more collaborative efforts with disaster preparedness, since we all share this Southern landmass, um,
00:17:05.78 Stella Benton there's any questions whatever but uh thank you for having me and
00:17:10.87 Stella Benton Thank you for allowing me to speak.
00:17:12.28 Mayor Cox Thank you. We're always looking for more ways to collaborate with Marin City, so this just sounds ideal to me. Did anyone have any questions of Stella?
00:17:22.18 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:17:22.21 Unknown I mean, I really appreciate that you're here and also your willingness to shift your service from sorry about the historic preservation committee, but we're so fortunate that you're interested in disaster preparedness. And I was looking at your resume and seems like you have a lot of board experience already serving on interfaith council and doing a lot of work, as you mentioned with Felicia.
00:17:41.77 Unknown Um, do you want to just share a little bit about how your, you know, your style or your previous experience there would be applied here just to highlight some of the great stuff that's already on your resume? Okay.
00:17:52.10 Stella Benton Well, for one, I tend to, I know they're all very unique and diverse in experience. I take what I know and anyone I can reach out to to bring them into the fold. So for the Marin Organizing Committee, being part of the Housing Corps team,
00:18:12.54 Stella Benton While I believe it's the Bellinas, or no, it's CLAM CLT, they're part of the members of MSC. And I thought, well, all CLTs should. So I serve on Mount Tam CLT, and I think they should be members of MSC as well. I mean, we all want affordable housing, so we all should together formulate some kind of plan to do so. With MIC, it's reaching across and collaborating and bringing together people of different faiths, but even people of no faith, but also helping communities that are disadvantaged. That means the canal, that means Marin City, that means West Marin. And MIC has a lot to do with just people and communities throughout Marin County. So my experience has been well, serving as secretary, but also handling along with our accountant of MIC, the financials.
00:19:07.55 Stella Benton And now Tam.
00:19:11.11 Stella Benton Right now, we're only serving in Mill Valley, but we hope to expand out into Southern Marin, just earmark some land that is maybe dilapidated, vacant, and make it affordable housing for essential workers, teachers, firemen, police officers. Keep the community of Marin County a community like it used to be when a lot of hippies came through from the 60s and 70s. That's just a little tidbit.
00:19:42.88 Unknown Thank you. Any other questions?
00:19:44.67 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:19:46.87 Unknown Thank you.
00:19:46.93 Mayor Cox No. All right. No.
00:19:47.93 Mayor Cox Thank you so much, Stella, and welcome.
00:19:51.31 Mayor Cox All right, and this next applicant needs no introduction.
00:19:54.55 Mayor Cox Mm-hmm.
00:19:56.89 Mayor Cox I'm wearing a pocket square this evening in your honor.
00:19:59.57 Janelle Kelman Thank you. Well, thank you everybody for having me. Wonderful to see all of you. And I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity.
00:20:08.01 Mayor Cox Thank you, Janelle, you had said, and for anyone watching who doesn't know, this is Janelle Kelman, former mayor, former council member, candidate for lieutenant governor. If you could share some of the ideas that you shared with me in text when you were saying that you'd like to get involved again.
00:20:24.82 Janelle Kelman Sure. Thank you for that, Mayor. So I know we've had a really great history of community outreach and trying to bring people together to explain what some of the programs or evacuation patterns are. I really want to focus my efforts on creating a more resilient Sausalito so that we are prepared to respond effectively. I've been spending some time with some of the victims of the Eaton fire down in Altadena, the Palisades fire victims. And one of the big issues I'm sure you know is the hydrants run out of water. Well, because most residential hydrants are not intended for more than a one alarm fire. And when you have something that's massive, you run out of water.
00:20:59.95 Janelle Kelman You may also notice that many of the hydrants in Sausalito are placed along right of ways. We also, when it rains, it literally pours here. So one idea that I think is long overdue, and I think Councilmember Blaustein had said
00:21:11.11 Janelle Kelman I talked about this previously, generally.
00:21:13.86 Janelle Kelman are graywater catchment systems. So I would imagine a graywater catchment system in every neighborhood, right? So divide Sausalito into neighborhoods, develop these graywater catchment systems, align them closely where the hydrants are so that every neighborhood, based on what Chief Tubbs and his battalion dictate, have extra water resources should they be needed. I'm sure you've all seen the Southern Wind Fire model that should we have a fire, it comes across GGNRA and rolls down the hillside. And there's a lot of vegetation up by Montemar and Spencer in that area. So being able to respond very quickly. We also have a lot of landmass devoted to MMWD.
00:21:51.76 Janelle Kelman We have the area up over Woodward. We have actually the Cypress Ridge area. What if we co-located larger cisterns there so that we made sure that we had water? Another effort that I think is an opportunity for us is to be able to pilot new technologies. If you may recall then in Australia, they had a terrible bushfire a couple of years ago. It was actually devastating.
00:22:14.20 Janelle Kelman And out of that came a technology around fire suppression, not a retardant, but suppression. And I've been approached by some of those technologists to deploy this in California. And what it does is it takes the inner heat
00:22:28.48 Janelle Kelman and reduces it from 10,000 or pardon me, from 2,000 degrees down to 150 degrees. And that's a much more manageable fire to be able to fight, particularly,
00:22:38.38 Janelle Kelman the way we are oriented on hillsides. So I would want to continue to do that type of work, bring some new technologies to make us more resilient so that we are ready.
00:22:46.13 Janelle Kelman The other part of what I'm hoping or willing if you if the council so wishes is to continue a focus on insurance with community based cash traffic risk insurance parametric insurance ways to make sure that our community members many of them are actually on fixed incomes have the opportunity to respond should we have some type of disaster which as we know could be a landslide could be flooding and not just fire related.
00:23:12.62 Janelle Kelman Thank you for all of that.
00:23:13.97 Mayor Cox Does anyone have any questions?
00:23:16.05 Unknown Since she's running for lieutenant governor, the governor announced last week, I believe, that he was directing senior people in his administration, various departments, to develop regulations for a five-foot rule whereby every residence would be separated from anything flammable by a...
00:23:38.26 Jimmy Jessup Okay.
00:23:38.76 Unknown So in zero.
00:23:40.37 Unknown Yeah, but it's a five foot zone.
00:23:42.80 Unknown Just curious if you've had a chance to look at that and what your thoughts are about that.
00:23:48.06 Janelle Kelman Yeah, so let's take the Palisades fire. So the chaparral that exists along the mountain behind Palisades is not the same as the type of fuel that we saw burning in say the Sonoma or the Santa Rosa fires. So there's no one size fits all for every community when it comes to vegetation and vegetation management. When I was on the planning commission, we began to see a number of people come in and wanted to cut down trees, including coastal live oaks, which are a protected species in this community.
00:24:15.70 Janelle Kelman What I would say is there's an opportunity to craft something that is applicable to Sausalito, but I wouldn't necessarily just flat out deploy something I saw in another community, because I think what you'll see is we'll remove much of the vegetation in Sausalito and we'll have other impacts that could lead to erosion, could lead to heat sinks that will be unintended consequences.
00:24:41.15 Mayor Cox And you're going to hear, if you stay or can watch via Zoom, you'll hear Southern Maroon Fire talk about Zone Zero more this evening.
00:24:47.77 Janelle Kelman Yeah. And thank you all for elevating this and making sure it's, I was very happy to see that in your newsletters and on the current. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Nice to see you all.
00:24:57.05 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:24:57.33 Mayor Cox Great to see you.
00:24:58.85 Mayor Cox All right, and that concludes our interviews.
00:25:02.70 Mayor Cox Yeah.
00:25:03.14 Mayor Cox Um,
00:25:04.98 Mayor Cox I'm going to wait a couple of minutes to give anyone who wants to sign on for closed session to provide public comments.
00:25:15.69 Unknown Do you want to maybe just, we'll be continuing to accept applications for some of the committees, or do you know what the...
00:25:20.67 Unknown Just because I know there are folks who submitted that didn't interview this evening, for example.
00:25:24.64 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:25:25.75 Unknown Thank you.
00:25:25.80 Mayor Cox So we interviewed everyone who has so far applied for disaster preparedness and for HPC. I know of someone else that applied.
00:25:33.97 Unknown late last week, probably after that had been posted.
00:25:36.87 Bette McDougal I believe we got more applications after the posting of the agenda. And so...
00:25:43.20 Mayor Cox Okay. I was not aware of that. So yes, absolutely. But I am going to go ahead and make some appointments this evening with the council's concurrence.
00:25:51.65 Mayor Cox because I want to get the Disaster Preparedness Committee started.
00:25:54.47 Unknown Sure. I just mean, but it's not going to be full yet, right? Because I know there are additional interested applicants. I want to make sure they know that that's going on.
00:26:02.03 Mayor Cox That agendized that we're making appointments? It is agendized at the end of the evening. It's a appointment. I just haven't gotten there yet.
00:26:08.07 Unknown And just so that the public-
00:26:09.73 Mayor Cox So it says it's 6C.
00:26:12.09 Unknown So there are still vacancies, if you will, for disaster preparedness.
00:26:17.61 Mayor Cox So there are three people already. We have two people that we interviewed tonight.
00:26:23.65 Mayor Cox And then we have an alternate, and that does leave one or two additional spots.
00:26:28.56 Unknown people.
00:26:28.64 Mayor Cox I had invited one person to apply. I don't know if he's applied yet. And...
00:26:28.80 Unknown I had a
00:26:33.98 Mayor Cox And then for HPC, we have someone who is termed out.
00:26:37.32 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:26:37.33 Unknown I think.
00:26:37.47 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:26:37.69 Mayor Cox And so I'm hoping to
00:26:39.82 Mayor Cox appoint at least someone to that term
00:26:42.06 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:26:42.18 Mayor Cox this evening.
00:26:43.39 Mayor Cox And then the chair
00:26:46.03 Mayor Cox or I don't know if she's the chair, Vicki Nichols is about to be termed out, and she's going to, she submitted her application today.
00:26:52.89 Mayor Cox And so that will go on consent for our next
00:26:56.74 Mayor Cox agenda as per our policy that someone who is currently serving who would like to continue to serve, we consider on consent.
00:27:05.01 Unknown Thank you.
00:27:07.13 Councilmember Hoffman But there are, let me just,
00:27:11.29 Councilmember Hoffman But the window for applications for disaster preparedness is still open. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm just throwing this out here.
00:27:22.68 Councilmember Hoffman But as long as the window for applications is still open, we don't know the universe of who's going to apply. And I'm just saying this as a caution. We can talk about this later when we do the applications. Yeah, I think that's – Do we want to fill up the slots before we know the universe of who all is going to apply? And I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah. Because if we fill up tonight, we don't know who might want to apply during the open applications.
00:27:46.74 Mayor Cox Yeah, even if we appointed everyone who applied tonight, we're not going to fill it up. And I actually invited those people to apply, other than Stella.
00:27:52.82 Councilmember Hoffman other than Stella. Yeah, but we might have more people that we would want to consider for the slots that would apply after we do the appointment. So the thing is, this is urgent. If I could finish. But the more prudent way to do it is to wait until the applications close, you know, all the universe of people that we're going to consider and then make the appointments after we know of all the applications. So I'm just throwing it out there. Okay. We can talk about it later.
00:28:01.03 Unknown This is urgent.
00:28:02.27 Unknown Thank you.
00:28:02.35 Unknown Thank you.
00:28:15.44 Mayor Cox Okay.
00:28:15.68 Mayor Cox We can talk about it later.
00:28:16.41 Unknown Thank you.
00:28:16.73 Mayor Cox All right.
00:28:16.88 Councilmember Hoffman All right.
00:28:17.74 Mayor Cox Okay.
00:28:18.95 Mayor Cox It's now 5.30, so I'm going to turn to the next item on our agenda, which is closed session. Items C1 through C3 will be discussed in closed session, and I'll open it up for public comment on closed session items.
00:28:33.89 Bette McDougal Soon, then.
00:28:34.97 Mayor Cox All right. So we will adjourn to closed session to consider the following. Conference with labor negotiator, agency designated representative Charles Sakai, employee organization Sausalito Police Association. Number two, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, significant exposure to litigation, one case. And item three, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, initiation of litigation pursuant to California government code section,
00:29:01.63 Mayor Cox 54956.9 D4.
00:29:05.02 Mayor Cox one potential case, I will be recusing myself from item three.
00:29:10.83 Mayor Cox Okay, because of the proximity of my residence to the property under discussion.
00:29:16.63 Mayor Cox And that's it.
00:29:18.17 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:29:25.46 Mayor Cox after 7 p.m. so I will say welcome to the regular city council meeting for the city of Sausalito
00:29:32.26 Mayor Cox for Tuesday, February 18, 2025. City Clerk, would you call the roll?
00:29:37.74 Bette McDougal Councilmember Blalstein.
00:29:39.37 Mayor Cox Present.
00:29:40.46 Bette McDougal Councilmember Hoffman
00:29:42.00 Mayor Cox here.
00:29:42.86 Bette McDougal Councilmember Sobieski.
00:29:45.31 Mayor Cox He will be arriving around 8 p.m.,
00:29:48.85 Bette McDougal Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox?
00:29:52.24 Mayor Cox Here. Cass Green, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?
00:30:00.26 Mayor Cox I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
00:30:00.29 Mary Lee Bickford My pleasure to meet you.
00:30:04.86 Mary Lee Bickford it.
00:30:05.05 Mary Lee Bickford I'm going to be pretty.
00:30:05.45 Mayor Cox public for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:30:15.83 Mayor Cox Thank you. We had held a closed session this evening. There are no closed session announcements. Is there any public comment on closed session items?
00:30:27.05 Jeffrey Chase But...
00:30:27.86 Jeffrey Chase Yes.
00:30:30.01 Mayor Cox On slow session items?
00:30:32.44 Mayor Cox Step forward. On closed session.
00:30:33.55 Jeffrey Chase Oh, I'm on closed session. I'm sorry. I misspoke. Okay.
00:30:37.18 Mayor Cox Okay, okay, thank you. All right, I'll seek a motion approving our agenda.
00:30:43.37 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:30:43.39 Unknown So moved.
00:30:43.78 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:30:43.79 Unknown Thank you.
00:30:44.42 Mayor Cox Second.
00:30:46.97 Mayor Cox I'll roll.
00:30:49.03 Bette McDougal Councilmember Blossin. Yes. Councilmember Hoffman. Yes. Councilmember Sobieski absent. Vice Mayor Woodside. Yes. And Mayor Cox.
00:30:50.11 Unknown Yes.
00:30:51.88 Unknown Yes.
00:30:58.37 Mayor Cox Yes.
00:30:59.81 Mayor Cox Thank you that approves unanimously. All right, the first thing on our agenda is special presentations mayor's announcements, I have no announcements this evening, but I am very pleased to welcome the first of our two special presentations we have with us supervisor Stephanie Moulton Peters welcome supervisor Moulton Peters.
00:31:25.58 Stephanie Moulton Peters Good evening, everyone. I'm admiring your fancy new podium, or at least it's new to me. Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council, City Manager Zapata, and members of the public for having me this evening. It's an honor to be with you here.
00:31:39.55 Stephanie Moulton Peters And so I'm going to do something a little different tonight. I will report out a little later on what's going on in the county, but I thought for a change I'd change it up and talk a little bit about where we're going at the county because we are making some changes. We have a new county executive, and I think it's fair to say that the current Board of Supervisors, which includes Supervisor Brian Colbert, who I'm very happy has joined us. And actually, I will say, was the instigator of many of the thoughts on this slide. And along with Derek Johnson, our new county executive, we're all really blazing a new trail. So let me share with you a little bit about where we're going. We really are aiming now to bring the county to a new level. I think cities have always been more outwardly focused and focused on your residents. The county has, but we've also had more of an inward facing focus. So that's shifting now with Derek Johnson. And we really want to work on rethinking how we work.
00:32:43.67 Stephanie Moulton Peters the processes we use become more client focused and become more 21st century. So next slide please, if we could.
00:32:53.21 Stephanie Moulton Peters Just a brief overview. It's a little light, folks, but here are our five county supervisor districts, starting with the best district, District 3 in the south, and that's where we are.
00:33:04.58 Stephanie Moulton Peters And then you've got Supervisor Rodoni with a very large West Marin District and part of
00:33:10.76 Stephanie Moulton Peters the baylands that he connects with,
00:33:13.31 Stephanie Moulton Peters You have Mary Sackett in District 1, the San Rafael area,
00:33:18.12 Stephanie Moulton Peters Brian Colbert in District 2, the Ross Valley, where some of us are from.
00:33:23.30 Stephanie Moulton Peters and then yours truly. So let's quickly look then at the next slide.
00:33:30.33 Stephanie Moulton Peters which is just to give you a sense of our incorporated cities. And I think it's a good perspective that a lot in Southern Marin and the Ross Valley that were built on the old train lines, these are communities that have been around for a very long time. Going farther north into Terra Linda and Nevado, newer communities, and then out to West Marin, very small villages and wonderful parks and open space out there.
00:33:59.66 Stephanie Moulton Peters So 21st century, let's go to the next slide. What does this mean?
00:34:06.56 Stephanie Moulton Peters We are taking a placemaking focus, which is something that Derek Johnson has brought with him in name. It is looking at the public realm and the things for which we are most responsible, our streets, our parks, our gathering spaces.
00:34:23.07 Stephanie Moulton Peters And all of the new places for mobility hubs and shared rides and these things that are happening to us in the transportation world.
00:34:32.57 Stephanie Moulton Peters And we're taking a fresh look at the county and how can we think
00:34:37.02 Stephanie Moulton Peters forward in the future building on the wonderful past that we've had in our rail-oriented older communities like Sausalito, Mill Valley, Tiburon,
00:34:46.88 Stephanie Moulton Peters How can we think about the future in creating neighborhoods where people want to live? Now, I'm talking primarily in the unincorporated area where we have a fair amount of property that has been open where we will build houses. But we are taking lessons from great cities like Sausalito. What makes them work? What makes your downtowns charming? What makes people want to
00:35:10.22 Stephanie Moulton Peters park their car and walk around. And,
00:35:13.15 Stephanie Moulton Peters You're doing placemaking in your own Landside Ferry Plaza extension right now. It's fabulous. It adds to the beauty that you already have. These are features that we want to look more closely at.
00:35:27.55 Stephanie Moulton Peters and give our communities an invitation to think into the future, not fearfully, but as a way that we can create neighborhoods that we all want to live in. So that and smart city planning. I know, Council Member Blaustein, that's been on your list to do smart city planning. That was always my thought in Mill Valley, is to keep our communities charming. We are going to have to be smart and up our game to make them function in a modern way while retaining their community character and charm. So lots of ways to do that. I know you've had those conversations. We are too. Next slide, please. Now something that is always a good thing to do is see things with fresh eyes. And again, our new county executive and Brian Colbert have fresh eyes, and we are looking at
00:36:19.55 Stephanie Moulton Peters What do you do when you come in? You challenge assumptions. I did this as a new supervisor. Why are we doing things this way? Are there better ways to do them? Learn from others. Yes, look around. What are other people doing? What are other counties and communities doing that's worthwhile and things that we could learn from? And then engage diverse perspectives. I think anyone who has sat on the dais, as you do, realizes that we don't always have all the great ideas, so we need to engage with diverse perspectives and learn from others. And so...
00:36:54.52 Stephanie Moulton Peters Um,
00:36:56.02 Stephanie Moulton Peters These are the conversations we're going to be having in the county and we are having with our many communities. What can we learn from what Sausalito is doing? What can we learn from Nevada, from San Rafael? What can we learn from other countries, honestly, and other places across the country?
00:37:13.28 Stephanie Moulton Peters Next slide. So here we are in the lovely Frank Lloyd Wright building, which is pretty fabulous, except for finding your way around. Steve, as you'll remember, is not always the easiest thing to do in that building. But again, rethinking our processes. Government has a way.
00:37:30.77 Stephanie Moulton Peters And I know you know this, Mayor Joan. Just we...
00:37:34.58 Stephanie Moulton Peters We can get very bureaucratic. We can add processes on top of processes, and sometimes you just have to say, stop the music. How did this all get started, and is this the right way to continue going? And so we are looking to identify outdated methods and barriers, and we have quite a few of them, frankly, at the county. So we're going to be looking at making our systems customer focused, more efficient and adaptable. Things change quickly now. So how do we keep it moving? Let's go to the next slide. This is revolutionary tools and this is how do we
00:38:16.26 Stephanie Moulton Peters How do we harness digital transformation
00:38:20.70 Stephanie Moulton Peters Do you have Report a Pothole online here in Sausalito? Because we don't have it at the county yet. You do? Okay. See? That's it. Well, finally, we're going to be behind you on this. But, you know, how can we make it easier for our citizens to report in their service needs and then respond reliably to them? So that's good. City Manager Zapata will be down to take a look at how it works. How do we use AI and data and really get more sophisticated about identifying where our real problem areas and friction points are and then what we do about them? So we're going to be employing these tools. Public engagement happens in our city council chambers a lot, happens at civic center a lot, and we need to get out to the communities too and meet people where we live. So that is high on our list of adding to our toolbox in public engagement. And then finally, just agile methods. And this is a recurring theme. Change is constant. So how do we keep looking at
00:39:24.89 Stephanie Moulton Peters what we're doing, continuous improvement, things like that. We have to look at who our stakeholders are, too. Are there new stakeholders?
00:39:32.61 Stephanie Moulton Peters Are there different ones? Are there changing demographics that we need to deal with? So all of these tools and lenses will help make us more efficient at our decision making and more efficient in the way we conduct our business. And that's what we want. But we don't only want to be efficient. Let's go to the next slide.
00:39:53.39 Stephanie Moulton Peters We want to be user friendly and responsive.
00:39:56.82 Stephanie Moulton Peters Because that's the other side of bureaucracy is, boy, it's hard to find your way into our services sometimes. And I think we all know that. Finding the right door, the right person. Here in cities like Sausalito and Mill Valley, you can walk into City Hall and probably find what you're looking for on a face-to-face basis. At the county, it's a little harder to do. So despite our size, how do we do that? And again, I'm a little repetitious, but streamlining things, prioritizing what the community wants and finding a way to meet that and then make the back room and back house work to meet what people want.
00:40:35.40 Stephanie Moulton Peters And just improve in customer service across the board.
00:40:39.35 Stephanie Moulton Peters So let's go to the next slide on intentional placemaking. And again, we don't have to look very far to communities like Sausalito that have done this. You live in a beautiful community. You've been doing placemaking for a very long time. For us in the county, again, our focus, we are more far flung in our unincorporated communities. A lot of them don't have community centers. A lot of them are not very walkable or bikeable or even easily drivable for a lot of people. So, you know, we're going to take a fresh look at what is it that makes great places and how can we do that in the county. I don't know the way.
00:41:19.58 Stephanie Moulton Peters will ever equal Sausalito, but we'll try.
00:41:22.85 Stephanie Moulton Peters Um,
00:41:23.96 Stephanie Moulton Peters And I think then this bottom
00:41:26.88 Stephanie Moulton Peters square, you know, the housing numbers
00:41:30.09 Stephanie Moulton Peters There's no debate. They're over the top, and it remains to be seen how all communities will do meeting the Renda numbers. But one thing we do know is we need to add some housing where it makes sense in a way that blends with our communities. Marin has placed a big premium on open space, and it is wonderful, but at 80% open space, I think we have enough open space. We need to focus now on how do, again, we create neighborhoods that people want to live in and are accessible.
00:42:06.86 Stephanie Moulton Peters Okay, so.
00:42:08.97 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you.
00:42:09.53 Stephanie Moulton Peters Moving on to the next to the end. So key focus areas at the county, as I've been saying, are housing.
00:42:17.00 Stephanie Moulton Peters and particularly for supporting our working families.
00:42:20.24 Stephanie Moulton Peters We know that we want our people who work here to live here, and we need to create more housing for that to happen. Transportation is always an issue. We can always do better with this, and we will. And then finally, and you have Yoda and, oh, God, who's the swashbuckler from the other movie? Thank you, Harrison Ford. Okay, you know, right. Thank you.
00:42:47.93 Stephanie Moulton Peters So this is taken in San Anselmo, the little park that was built by George Lucas, when he decided they needed a park next to the Civic Center.
00:42:58.75 Stephanie Moulton Peters They have one, but that was a public-private partnership, the same way the median that goes out to San Ensamuas.
00:43:04.71 Stephanie Moulton Peters On Sir Francis Drake, Mr. Lucas had a hand in that. How can we cultivate more people to invest private funds in our communities? So finally, last slide. Thank you.
00:43:18.90 Stephanie Moulton Peters Here we have the Guggenheim Museum, another one of Frank Lloyd Wright's creations. This one was to be a hub of art and culture. You have your own wonderful Sausalito Center for the Arts as your own hub. But it really is a call to how do we shape Marin's future in a way that honors our past and then helps us go forward with the needs and challenges we have. We have to have bold conversations and honest conversations. Let's try pilot projects. Those are always a way to start a new concept and see how it works. And then let's understand that Marin and California are going to be dynamic. We always have been. So how do we move forward in a way that is, again, honoring the past, but moving us forward to the future?
00:44:05.53 Stephanie Moulton Peters So those are some of the things we're thinking about, and that's going to keep us busy for a while. But I want to move now just briefly to a few of the areas that I've been working on and then open to your questions. So I think you may know or you may not that I have spent quite a bit of my volunteer and elected career on emergency preparedness, whether it's wildfire, earthquake safety, or flooding and sea level rise. And we live in a part of the state that has an abundance of all of those issues. So those continue to be forefront for me and helping our communities through them. I'm very pleased that in Marin City, for the first time ever, in December when the atmospheric river came through, the only place that didn't flood was Marin City because of the portable pumps that we put in. And this is the same as happened in this last atmospheric river. Donahue underpass has not flooded. It's miraculous. I wish we had pumps for every community, including Gate 5 Road that Melissa and I walked. But anyway, this is a huge accomplishment for a community that has waited a long time for this. In Marin City, we have also moved forward now with a contract to renovate the units in Golden Gate Village. We've selected Burbank Housing, and they are moving forward. We expect to apply for financing in May and then another tranche of financing in September. And we hope to be under construction next year. So that will be welcome news. We will be bringing a county services hub to Marin City in the rec center building, the old Marin Clinic building that will bring social services as well as other county services to Marin City, but also all the southern Marin. So you won't have to drive to San Rafael.
00:46:03.85 Stephanie Moulton Peters Um,
00:46:05.86 Stephanie Moulton Peters Well, all right, let me move on from that. RBRA, Southern Marin, Richardson Bay. We've made quite a bit of progress working with the anchor outs. Appreciation to Jeff, who's here tonight. We have, at this time...
00:46:23.12 Stephanie Moulton Peters Housed 20 individuals in the last, I'd say, 14 months. We have nine more clients who've been referred for vouchers. Two more, in addition, who are in the search for housing. And one new client will move into a new apartment this week. So we are making steady progress. We have a total of 18 votes left in our BRA waters. Two of those are recent and here just visiting. The others, we will be moving again out of the yield grass protection zone. But
00:47:00.18 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you, Mayor Joan and Jill. You set a model that we followed, and it took us a while to get it together, but we did, and we're making progress, and I think that we'll meet our deadlines with BCDC. So let me open now to your questions.
00:47:18.62 Unknown questions.
00:47:19.67 Unknown Sure.
00:47:21.02 Unknown Thank you so much for being with us. Supervisor Moulton Peters, we're really lucky to have you representing us. And I know you didn't speak about this specifically because you're very humble about your achievements, but you were recently also appointed vice chair of the MTC. And I think this is the first time that Marin County has had a representative ascend to that level within the MTC. Could you talk a little bit about how your regional work is impacting what's going on in Marin, some of the larger transit vision areas?
00:47:47.62 Unknown Yeah, thank you.
00:47:47.65 Stephanie Moulton Peters Yeah, thank you, Council Member Blasting. I'd be happy to. You know, it was quite an honor to have been recruited here
00:47:54.55 Stephanie Moulton Peters for vice chair, which role I will serve in for two years and then be chair the following two years. Now, Supervisor Steve Kinsey did precede me in this role. But what it means for Marin County in the North Bay is honestly some extra influence, some extra leverage when it comes to funding. And we do need funding for some of our various projects. northward we have Highway 37 and raising that and making that wider. And we do need funding for some of our various projects. Northward, we have Highway 37 and raising that and making that wider and more passable.
00:48:25.89 Stephanie Moulton Peters Yeah.
00:48:26.29 Stephanie Moulton Peters But right here in Southern Marin, I want to go on record as saying that flooding and sea level rise in Southern Marin are one of my high priorities. And it will take a mega effort working with Caltrans. Our community, Sausalito, has done a fabulous job with your sea level rise vulnerability adaptation study. I'm hoping to link that together with the work up the road in both the marsh and with Caltrans and really dig in to what can we do for sea level rise. I don't know. I'm hoping to link that together with the work up the road in both the marsh and with Caltrans and really dig into what can we do for sea level rise in the future. It will take money and MTC has money. So I hope to help that way. We always need more transit. MTC and ABAG have joined hands now. So there's a housing component. So I think we'll see some benefit that way, too. So I'm honored to do it. It's a whole lot more work, but it'll be worth it.
00:49:18.13 Unknown Just quickly, Supervisor Moulton Peters, it's a real privilege to be working with you in a new capacity. I'm speaking for myself now, but in your capacity, cooperating with the cities in your district as well as countywide, it's really encouraging to see that new spirit.
00:49:36.09 Unknown And speaking of housing, I know the mayor and other council members from some of the other jurisdictions have indicated an interest in looking at our housing issues on a more regional basis because we here in Sausalito have precious little room to grow.
00:49:55.01 Unknown We do want to preserve our historic character, et cetera, and way of life and quality of life. But we also recognize in these, particularly for worker housing, senior housing, and the like. And I'm just hopeful that while working together.
00:50:09.11 Unknown or we might be able to come up with a new vision for how we can meet those needs on a more regional basis. Just want to make that comment. Curious as to your thoughts.
00:50:17.64 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you, Council Member Woodside, and I couldn't agree with you more. I know the mayor and I have talked about this as well, and frankly it came up spontaneously at a meeting of the Southern Marin mayors and city managers, city manager Zapata's brainchild that we started a couple years ago. I just bring together the mayors and city managers, and at our first luncheon this year, which Sausalito hosted, Belvedere brought up the idea for collaborating in the future on planning housing. Maybe we don't all have to hire consultants to do our own housing elements. Wouldn't that be nice? Could we do it together? And then how can we work together to figure out where future housing needs to go? So I am envisioning already asking MTC for study dollars to help us look at the feasibility. And so we will look at it, Steve. Thank you. Thank you.
00:51:09.83 Councilmember Hoffman Yes.
00:51:11.50 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you, Supervisor Milton Peters, for coming in and for our brief conversation earlier today about coming in.
00:51:18.86 Councilmember Hoffman I'm excited to work with you as president of the North Bay Division for the Cal Cities, which is some of the overlap I saw from your slides and some of the things we talked about last week with the meeting that we had for the executive committee for the North Bay Division of the Cal Cities. And I just wanted to talk a little bit about what
00:51:23.50 Unknown Gotcha.
00:51:23.97 Stephanie Moulton Peters Some of the things that I've been doing.
00:51:38.15 Councilmember Hoffman Stephen just talked about and
00:51:40.26 Councilmember Hoffman you know, working collaboratively on a broader sort of effort, especially with the housing, because I think one theme I think that sort of works our way through all of our regional discussions is the need for more housing and how we can all work together. But also when you talked about disaster preparedness and how
00:51:59.46 Councilmember Hoffman You know, we try to work with that and the environmental issues that we have and the work that you've done on disaster preparedness. Have you seen, and through your work with MTC, so all of these things all touch on each other, have you seen any sort of...
00:52:14.21 Councilmember Hoffman Um,
00:52:15.59 Councilmember Hoffman any sort of theme going through of how to
00:52:20.33 Councilmember Hoffman you know, balance all of these pressures of the, you know, the geologic issues, and especially in tight communities like ours that are reacting in ways with sea level rise and our hillsides and the fire dangers and all of these things, and where's an appropriate place for housing? Do you see any changes or amendments to where we're thinking about appropriate places for housing?
00:52:37.31 Stephanie Moulton Peters Yeah.
00:52:43.03 Stephanie Moulton Peters That is a great question, Council Member Hoffman. And I was just speaking with Damon Connolly, our Assembly member, this morning about this. And I think, honestly, we've had some pretty blunt-edged tools used at the state to encourage housing. And I think there are a lot of people talking about how do we refine these tools, refine the parameters for the lands where housing really makes sense and also where it doesn't. And so I expect that we'll see initiatives aimed at sharpening the focus of where housing can be and to have more of a partnership with cities in the state. I don't think it's going to happen overnight. I don't think it's going to happen overnight.
00:53:27.06 Stephanie Moulton Peters But, um,
00:53:28.56 Stephanie Moulton Peters You know, honestly, if the fires in the Palisades and Altadena and all the ones we've experienced up here haven't made the point that we really need to think carefully about where we add housing, nothing will. So I think it's coming, Jill.
00:53:43.32 Stephanie Moulton Peters Yeah.
00:53:43.76 Councilmember Hoffman For sure.
00:53:44.03 Mayor Cox your efforts.
00:53:44.79 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you.
00:53:47.58 Mayor Cox I've been lucky to meet with you a couple of times, so I don't have any questions. I do just want to say a thank you for some of the things that you've done for collaborating with us to provide funding to renovate and occupy our Dorothy Gibson house.
00:54:01.08 Mayor Cox which is about to be finalized for collaborating with us on housing the homeless and in particular some of the anchor outs in Richardson's Bay for collaborating on the Vista Point Trail that bicyclists will be able to use it as they cross the Golden Gate Bridge.
00:54:17.48 Mayor Cox for collaborating with us to adapt to and mitigate sea level rise, for collaborating with us in your role on BCDC as we address the intersection between sea level rise and incursion of sea waters inland.
00:54:32.43 Mayor Cox And for collaborating with us to address housing requirements on a regional level rather than confining them to individual local municipalities. And I listened with interest to your mention of the CSDs. And you and I have talked about perhaps starting to include them in our Southern Marin mayors and city managers meetings, which I think would be a great way for us to encourage collaboration with them as well. So thank you for the collaboration. That's the theme of the evening that you bring to us and to your other towns.
00:55:06.38 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you, Mayor. Collaboration is what it's all about. Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to be with you tonight.
00:55:13.76 City Manager Mayor, before the supervisor leaves, can I say a word?
00:55:16.96 Unknown Yes, absolutely.
00:55:16.98 City Manager Yes, absolutely. Thank you. On behalf of our staff, thank you for the work you do.
00:55:23.24 City Manager the service you provide and also your team. I really want to point out
00:55:26.82 City Manager how happy we are that you have a resident of Sausalito helping you, and that's Doreen Gennard.
00:55:31.00 Stephanie Moulton Peters We absolutely do. Doreen, raise your hand.
00:55:33.82 Stephanie Moulton Peters And thank you, city manager. Doreen Gennard, I tell people, is like having two supervisors.
00:55:40.45 Stephanie Moulton Peters So Doreen is fabulous. Thank you for sharing her. Doreen, thank you for doing what you do for this community and for the county.
00:55:48.57 Mayor Cox And then I do want to tell you that our software that we use for identifying issues that need repair is called
00:56:00.42 Mayor Cox Sausalito C-Click Fix, Sausalito Fix-It app. And I'm sure the city manager will collaborate with you on that.
00:56:04.48 Unknown app.
00:56:05.26 Unknown Good.
00:56:10.20 Unknown I'm sorry.
00:56:10.24 Vicki Nichols And...
00:56:10.36 Unknown .
00:56:11.20 Mayor Cox I do also want to extend a welcome to Supervisor Brian Colbert. I did not know that he would be attending.
00:56:16.92 Mayor Cox you
00:56:16.97 Unknown Brian, go over here.
00:56:18.05 Mayor Cox Oh, I thought you were saying
00:56:19.03 Stephanie Moulton Peters He was here.
00:56:19.52 Mayor Cox Yeah.
00:56:19.69 Stephanie Moulton Peters No, he's not here, but he was the genesis of the slides that I'm working from tonight. These are his framing, and I thought it was appropriate to use and share with you on what's new. So thank you again.
00:56:24.97 Mickey Nichols Good night.
00:56:33.66 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you so much.
00:56:34.22 Mayor Cox Thank you so much.
00:56:34.52 Stephanie Moulton Peters Welcome.
00:56:34.82 Unknown Thank you.
00:56:34.84 Mayor Cox Thank you.
00:56:34.86 Stephanie Moulton Peters Thank you.
00:56:43.03 Mayor Cox Okay, we have another special presentation. And so I am happy to welcome Southern Marin Fire District. I know we have Matt Barnes and Fred Hilliard and there are others here as well. So welcome and thank you for being with us this evening.
00:57:02.01 Matt Barnes All right, good evening, Madam Mayor and council members and city manager Zapata, thank you for having me. And of course, thank you for all your work, supervisor, Moulton Peters. My name's Matt Barnes. I'm your deputy chief of operations for the Southern Marin Fire District.
00:57:18.09 Matt Barnes We're here to talk a little bit about what we're doing in regards to wildfires,
00:57:25.26 Matt Barnes We're here to also discuss a little bit of the aftermath and a lot of the sensitivity around the Los Angeles fires. I was actually down at the Eaton fire for almost three weeks as part of the incident command team, and I'll talk a little bit about that. And then Chief Hilliard is also here. He's going to talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of all the community preparation and preparedness and all the wildfire mitigation efforts that we're doing throughout the county and specifically to Sausalito.
00:57:56.99 Matt Barnes If you can go to the next slide, please.
00:57:59.77 Matt Barnes So just that this is a big collaborative event or program between the district, the Marin wildfire community prevention authority, Mill Valley and city of Sausalito. So that's that's everybody that we serve in in working towards the progress of home hardening community resilience and wildfire mitigation. Next slide, please.
00:58:23.40 Matt Barnes So I'm going to talk very high level and then Fred's going to come up and talk nuts and bolts, but
00:58:30.89 Matt Barnes The big things that we want to, this is actually, I'm going to take that back one second. This is a great segue from Stephanie Moulton-Peters, Supervisor Moulton-Peters. The vision of the county is to have, you know, a pristine area, want people to live in our communities. Beautiful county. I live here in the county in the city of Novato. So our work in the fire department, as well as the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority, is to plan and prepare and really respond to emergencies so we can keep them as small as possible so we can continue to live in such a great county environment.
00:59:10.97 Matt Barnes The I'm going to talk a little bit about the wild land impacts for the L. A fires. These were significant, a little bit more significant than the 2017 18 19 and 20 fires that we historically saw in the North Bay.
00:59:25.90 Matt Barnes Fred's going to talk a lot about the proactive measures.
00:59:29.70 Matt Barnes Um...
00:59:30.61 Matt Barnes Fuel reduction and infrastructure evaluation is super important to us. It's one of our highest priority things. We have a significant and talented staff that work tirelessly every day in preparing, evaluating and planning for future fuels reduction programs.
00:59:52.87 Matt Barnes The biggest thing tonight for us is to really concentrate on the community
00:59:58.20 Matt Barnes holistic approach. It cannot be done just with one firefighter, one prevention division, one aspect or one city. This is a countywide initiative that we need to take a holistic approach to looking at our regulatory things like zone zero ordinances, home hardening and preparation and communication around wildfire.
01:00:23.68 Matt Barnes And then really kind of a renewed call to action for this community and the county as a whole. So we can collectively collaborate and work together and really build better plans.
01:00:38.06 Matt Barnes I think a lot more people and a lot more brains involved will create some significant success and build on some of the national standards that here in Marin that we've already undertook with the Marin wildfire authority. If we can go to the next slide, please.
01:00:54.35 Matt Barnes So the recent wildfires in Los Angeles really brought out a lot of community sensitivity, worry, anxiety, because of the significant amount of devastation, 26 square miles of devastation, 15,000 homes approximately. At the Eaton Fire, my area of concentration was over 8,000 homes.
01:01:23.34 Matt Barnes that were destroyed in less than 24 hours. So what does that mean to Marin? And the water system was a big issue in Los Angeles. And how are we prepared in Marin County water system? And Chief Hilliard is going to talk a little bit about that. One of the downsides of major catastrophes is the amount of misinformation that comes out.
01:01:49.97 Matt Barnes And we're here to tell you today that when questions arise, when concerns arise, we're only a phone call away. We're willing and able to meet people in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in their communities, and talk about facts and preparation and things that we're doing throughout Marin to hopefully ease some of that anxiety.
01:02:13.61 Matt Barnes And then some of the things that are super important is the Marin Wildfire Authority and our partnership with the district is really becoming a national standard and example of how we can come together, collaborate.
01:02:29.18 Matt Barnes Hey.
01:02:29.77 Matt Barnes and move initiatives to home hardening,
01:02:32.56 Matt Barnes wild wildfire risk reduction, pathways, emergency egress, things like that are super important and one of our highest priorities. And then Chief Hillier is going to really talk about some of the things that we're doing locally with the Marin Wildfire Authority and through some funding and some initiatives to really amplify some of the progress that we've made.
01:02:57.79 Matt Barnes I'm gonna turn it over to Chief Hilliard and then I'll come back.
01:03:01.26 Matt Barnes and wrap things up and hopefully answer whatever questions everybody has.
01:03:09.80 Chief Hilliard All right. Good evening, everyone, Madam Mayor. Sorry, I sound worse than I feel. I got that flu bug last week, and so I'm still recovering. So if I start coughing, that's
01:03:21.09 Chief Hilliard I remember a couple of council meetings, but all right, let's get in the weeds now, no pun intended. But so I think, you know, really important to start and think, let's see what's the side with next slide, please. Thank you.
01:03:38.07 Chief Hilliard Let's see. I apologize. Go back to the other one.
01:03:42.13 Chief Hilliard Yeah, a note.
01:03:43.37 Chief Hilliard Yeah, that one.
01:03:46.35 Chief Hilliard So let's talk about wildfires and wildfire preparedness. It's not a new concept, obviously. Over the past eight years, we've been working full steam ahead after the devastating Tubbs fire, October 8th of 2017.
01:04:00.92 Chief Hilliard Some of you will recall, and I can tell by the smile over there, the visiting the site. And unfortunately, it wasn't a fun time to see that. But we went out to the Tubbs Fire location in Coffee Park. We were with the past deputy chief, just retired not too many, like two years ago or a year ago. Yeah, Tom Welch. And we looked, he gave us a very dramatic perspective of what happened because in the fire, obviously, he lost his home, but he also saved a bunch of lives, actually, because of his ability to do that in his skill.
01:04:38.90 Chief Hilliard I think it's important we talk a little bit about the Tubbs fire because I know we wanted, we're looking at Los Angeles, but the Tubbs fire was a fairly close reminder of what Los Angeles fire was. It's just a much smaller scale, but the same kind of idea. It was in a vegetative area. It burnt down a hill and then it got into an urban area, right? And then there was a conflagration in the urban area where the houses were igniting themselves through ember transfer and direct flame impingement.
01:05:07.84 Chief Hilliard Some of the stats from that from the Tubbs fire, it was active for 123 days. That was, you know, of active fire burning. 36,000 acres. It was through Napa and Sonoma counties.
01:05:22.52 Chief Hilliard It destroyed about 5,000 structures, 5,600 structures, actually, and caused direct loss exceeding $7.8 billion. So...
01:05:32.33 Chief Hilliard We've gained a significant amount of information and data since the fire and many others that happened throughout the state since the 2017 fire, the Tubbs fire. Science software and new hardware and early detection has become available. And from all these fires, we've learned throughout the state of what we could do better and what needs to be done.
01:05:55.18 Chief Hilliard Um,
01:05:56.46 Chief Hilliard So following the Civil Grand Jury Report, which was in 2019, on wildfire preparedness in the county, the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority was dreamt up. It was actually a conversation over at a local cafe between a couple of fire chiefs on a napkin. That's how, honestly, that's how MWPA was formulated. It was, what do we do in the county to make sure that we have the funding and the support that we can make sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen or at least limit the effects if it does happen.
01:06:29.97 Chief Hilliard Um,
01:06:31.71 Chief Hilliard So following the civil grand jury report and the standup of MWPA was established through a countywide tax measure to foster a comprehensive wildfire prevention strategy across the county. MWPA total tax generation of $20 million annually gave 17 member agencies the ability to work together to provide fire protection and prevention services in the areas of, and this is important, vegetation management.
01:07:01.06 Chief Hilliard wildfire detection systems, evacuation planning and alerting, and public education initiatives. So those are the majority. Then on top of that, there was ability for grants, for local grants, for homeowners, and also to work collaboratively with other partnering agencies or jurisdictions so that we could limit the amount of flammable vegetation.
01:07:25.61 Chief Hilliard Next slide, please.
01:07:28.07 Chief Hilliard So the Southern Marine Fire District has laid out a comprehensive work plan for 2025.
01:07:34.72 Chief Hilliard focusing on enhancing community safety and forest health through targeted projects initiatives throughout the city of Sausalito. Some of the key points,
01:07:44.14 Chief Hilliard is our major fuel breaks. We have seven total in progress right now. They were started in 2023. We're about 85% complete, and we're going to complete the rest of that this year. So we have 15% to go. I can tell you it's Sausalito Boulevard, High Vista, Alexander Avenue, Marion Avenue, Hetch Avenue, Wolfback Ridge, and Edwards Avenue. So those are the areas where this major fuel break is happening. And then on top of that, we're also looking at extending more fuel breaks surrounding the city. So our goal is to go from point to point all around the backside of the city, and then certain pockets that are within the city, that's where we're going to do these fuel breaks. What is a fuel break? I know everybody, this is where everybody has that sudden urge to, you know, take a deep breath, but,
01:08:35.59 Chief Hilliard We're not going to moonscape the city. That's.
01:08:38.80 Chief Hilliard like the most important thing for everybody now, we're not into moonscaping the city. What we're into doing is
01:08:43.64 Chief Hilliard We're trying to get
01:08:45.19 Chief Hilliard Basically...
01:08:46.24 Chief Hilliard good forest health and management and remove flammable vegetation and limit the ability for fire to travel quickly. So that's what, when we talk about a fuel break, that's what we're looking at.
01:09:01.56 Chief Hilliard We also want to establish new community fuel breaks and forest health restoration projects. There's five total sites that we're looking at this year. Cypress Ridge and Rodeo Avenue, Nevada Street and Kendall Court. The terraces, open space Sausalito and Willow Creek are some of the target areas that we're looking at doing this year. Efforts are aimed to reduce fire hazard and promote healthier, more fire resilient forced ecological systems in our community. And the work plan underscores the district's commitment to preserving community safety and enhance environmental health and Sausalito.
01:09:40.98 Chief Hilliard And then we should talk about evacuations and evacuation routes, which falls in line with what MWPA is also do, is evacuations.
01:09:50.18 Chief Hilliard So ongoing maintenance.
01:09:51.76 Chief Hilliard maintenance and clearing of over 100 essential evacuation routes of encroaching vegetation throughout Sausalito. That's what we've been doing. That's what we're going to continue to do. We're maintaining those. And as as
01:10:04.18 Chief Hilliard Time goes on, the emergency personnel
01:10:07.80 Chief Hilliard in the case of an emergency or emergency personnel in case emergency can break up fuel continuity and reduce overall fuel load
01:10:19.20 Chief Hilliard if we're doing these evacuation route cleanings. So in other words, people can get out, we can get in, and we can do the treatments that we need to do to stop the fire.
01:10:28.03 Chief Hilliard Emergency notification systems.
01:10:30.32 Chief Hilliard on the emergency notification systems otherwise known as l rad long-range acoustical devices we have two sites within the city currently uh the two sites that are located at uh the old fire station 2 on spencer avenue and then also uh sorry just really good
01:10:51.53 Chief Hilliard on Cypress Ridge.
01:10:53.12 Chief Hilliard So those are the two current locations of LRAD Sirens. And then in the next year or two, depending on funding, we're going to add one more additional site, which is going to be in Old Town. So it'll be, you know, somewhere located. We don't have a specific site picked out yet, but we're looking at somewhere in Old Town.
01:11:13.25 Chief Hilliard Um,
01:11:14.35 Chief Hilliard And then our major fuel break. So we were talking about that. So then our on-demand chipper program. So with our on-demand chipper program, what does that mean? It's a free service provided to all residents, allowing them to efficiently utilize chipping services for reducing flammable vegetation and overgrowth on their properties. So you call us and you have a project. We usually try to get three homes to do it together, just more efficient. But if not, then, you know, we have a clearing system.
01:11:45.69 Chief Hilliard service that will be able to go to your house, pick up the vegetation that you cut from your property, you put it in the street, and we'll pick it up and haul it away. And that's our on-demand chipper. But we also have a scheduled chipper program. And our scheduled chipper program is actually throughout the year, and it's all year round. We pick certain areas in Sausalito streets to go in, and we send mailers out. We do emails. If we have your email address, we'll do door hangers and let you know that we're going to be in the area to remove vegetation. That's to promote people to really get involved and clean their lots. All they have to do is just have somebody clear whatever vegetation, bring it to the street, and we'll haul it away.
01:12:28.62 Chief Hilliard So another really good program that we have right now. And then again, forest health restoration is continued maintenance. So this is the funny thing is I've been doing this for a while and the forest, we always talk about we need to clear.
01:12:45.80 Chief Hilliard We need to clear, make fuel breaks, we gotta keep
01:12:48.72 Chief Hilliard Well, once we do it once, it's not one and done. So this is do it and then we have to maintain it. So a lot of what we do at the beginning is we put a bunch of money into clearing a bunch of, you know, areas to have people.
01:13:04.22 Chief Hilliard you know, good defensible space. And then we have to annually go back and maintain those. It's a much lower cost because obviously we've done all the heavy work, which is the big costly portions of it, but we have to revisit it. And we revisit it on a cycle between two and three years is what the cycle is, depending on what aspect they are, because some areas grow faster than others.
01:13:31.02 Chief Hilliard But we continue to do that type of maintenance. Next slide, please.
01:13:39.71 Chief Hilliard Okay, so I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the MMWD or Marin Water District. They do actually a very good job to help with wildfire prevention and also to prepare the community for large scale fire events. Now, I'm gonna tell you that they're really, the fires that happen in LA and the fires that happen up in the Tubbs Fire
01:14:09.24 Chief Hilliard The
01:14:10.41 Chief Hilliard MMWD has the capability of managing their water and getting water to where it needs to be, but on a scale that big where you've got every fire hydrant almost in use and then you have these, basically the structures are burned so that you have these open plugs. They're just, you know.
01:14:30.02 Chief Hilliard it's really difficult for the water district to be able to keep up with that kind of demand. And that's where we have the biggest, we have water problems.
01:14:38.56 Chief Hilliard But what I'd like to point out and what I'd like to talk about is that, you know, the fire flow program that was with MMWD in response to water system delivery limitations for firefighting demands. And that was states back to 1986. So MMWD was already collaborating with the fire departments in 1986, looking at the fact that there was a lot of water source issues, supply issues, old pipes. Like when I say old pipes, I mean like wood pipes in the ground, old pipes.
01:15:12.37 Chief Hilliard that needed to be changed and upgraded so that they could carry the water supply and the demand that was needed.
01:15:18.14 Chief Hilliard We have a very robust hydrant maintenance program where we're able to service our hydrants. We replace hydrants as a hydrants, you know, age. And then as they need maintenance, we're able to maintain those hydrants. So we do that annually. So if you have a hydrant in your neighborhood that doesn't look so good, please let me know because I got to talk to somebody at work because they should be looking real nice. Yeah.
01:15:40.67 Chief Hilliard And then the funding mechanism, the fire flow program is funded through the resident approved parcel tax, which is renewed, but was renewed in 2020.
01:15:49.14 Chief Hilliard 2012 the program operates in coordination with local fire agencies and the primary objective of the fire flow program is to enhance district and infrastructure.
01:15:59.76 Chief Hilliard especially in areas with substandard fire flow. And I know that Sausalito has gotten some of that funding back in the past, probably in the year 2000 range where MMWD did a fairly substantial upgrade of some of the water mains and hydrants that were in some of the older areas of Sausalito.
01:16:23.18 Chief Hilliard And then the fire flow plan, which during this period between 20 or sorry, 1997 and 2012 during the period, the fire flow program achieved 50 miles of fire flow improvements averaging about three miles per year. And that's that's countywide. And then from 2012 to the present, the program is focused on additional 26 miles of fire flow improvements averaging about two miles per year.
01:16:51.77 Chief Hilliard So they're doing a lot of work. They're in, we're collaborating with MMWD. They're doing a lot of good stuff for the fire district. They call us when they're doing, if they're replacing some pipes, I'll get a call and they'll say, you know, Chief Hilliard, do you guys want to move a hydrant? You want to add a hydrant? You know, we're doing work here. We got the road cut up. We can easily do that if you need that. So they're a good partner. Next slide, please.
01:17:20.12 Chief Hilliard So,
01:17:22.09 Chief Hilliard As part of what MMWD does, I know I'm talking about MMWD, but it's important because they also do home hardening and defensible space.
01:17:31.90 Chief Hilliard And through their programs and their initiatives, they've done improvements like
01:17:37.65 Chief Hilliard prioritized list of facilities that need to be upgraded, like pump stations and whatnot. And then they've also,
01:17:47.20 Chief Hilliard are now part of a regular re-evaluation cycle, ensuring ongoing compliance with safety standards over time. So they're looking at what they're doing, what's in our area, and what they can improve on for us, for you, for the community, so that way we have the water that we need in order to fight the fires.
01:18:09.80 Chief Hilliard Okay, next slide, please.
01:18:13.04 Chief Hilliard Okay, so
01:18:14.77 Chief Hilliard This slide talks about the fire code cycle, and I think it's important that we also bring up the fire code. Because part of the problem that we've had, and I've been doing fire prevention for the city of Sausalito since 2010. I can't believe it's been that long. And I've been a firefighter for 31 years, 25 with this district. And I've got to tell you that the one thing I learned when I came into fire prevention is, okay, we have all these codes, but how do we enforce them and what do they mean? Well, the fire code simply is a book of rules and standards, right? The fire code is looked at as things that have gone wrong or potentially could go wrong that
01:18:52.78 Chief Hilliard It needs to be addressed and it needs to be codified and put into place before something else bad happens, right? So every three years we have a code cycle and it happens to be that this year's one of our code cycles. And what does that look like? Well, the International Code Council...
01:19:09.64 Chief Hilliard has a model code. They're just basically model code makers. They have the international fire code. And then the state of California takes that code and looks through it and goes through a whole series of code adoptions and then comes out with the minimum code standards. So at the end of the day, when they finally say this is the fire code that we want for California, then this is what we get as the model code for California. And we'll see that. We'll receive those codes in July of 2025. And then before January of 2026, then we have to adopt that code. So we'll adopt the code and then we'll come to you to ratify that code. What we do in that is we take that model code and we take the minimum code standards that the state gives us. And we look at what how does that apply to us and here and locally? And what we do with that is we come out with local ordinances that may be more stringent because we need those in certain aspects in certain areas. And.
01:20:14.98 Chief Hilliard Or we may adopt some of the model code that actually has not been adopted by the state because it applies here. Because at the end of the day, it's fire and life safety. That's what we're trying to do. We're not trying to cause people to spend more money or, you know, have more heartache. What we're trying to do is just have a really safe place for you and I and families to be here and visit here. So, yeah.
01:20:38.43 Chief Hilliard That's basically how the code cycle works. Next slide, please.
01:20:44.32 Chief Hilliard And I'll turn it back over now.
01:20:47.10 Chief Hilliard Thank you.
01:20:47.12 Matt Barnes So as we wrap up, I just want to hit on a couple key items. I'm not going to read all the bullet points that you can see on the slides and in the staff report. But a couple key concepts to really start to focus in on. A call to action. And one of the things that I'm super proud to stand in front of.
01:21:06.88 Matt Barnes of the council tonight is that your fire department has been working tremendously hard well in advance of 2017 and just got into a highlight and more broadcast community wide after 17 and in.
01:21:26.42 Matt Barnes Our firefighters and our prevention officers have taken a ton of the lessons learned from the Tubbs fire, from the Nuns fire, from the Glass fire.
01:21:36.35 Matt Barnes and then recently from the LA fires to bring home those lessons learned and apply them here locally. The next point I really want to focus in on is it's a systems approach to home hardening and defensible space. It's not just removing a bush. It's not just replacing some soffits on your roof line, and it's not just putting a new roof on your building. It's a combination of all those things. It's preparing the eave lines, it's preparing the clearance around the home to really minimize the ember mitigation or the ember propagation when when wind is introduced with with fire. And then and then lastly, just the the work at a county wide level through the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority has been super significant and beneficial for this community of Sausalito and all the hard work that Fred and his team and all our partners throughout the county, including Marin, Marisville Water District, have under, you know, taken big shoulders to start to accomplish. And I believe we've accomplished a lot. We still have a lot more to go. And then I'm sure there'll probably be a few questions about the zone zero. And, and I think Fred put it very clearly that it's not about moonscaping our communities. It's about protecting our communities in, in a logical, um, intellectual way that, that will help, um, reduce the amount of ember cast in the event of a fire associated with wind. So thank you for your time. I'm happy to answer any, any questions.
01:23:26.35 Mayor Cox Thank you.
01:23:26.37 Unknown Thank you.
01:23:26.40 Unknown Thank you.
01:23:27.37 Mayor Cox Thank you.
01:23:27.45 Unknown Thanks.
01:23:27.60 Mayor Cox Yes, Melissa.
01:23:28.82 Unknown Thank you.
01:23:29.17 Unknown First, thank you so much for the great work that you both do, and especially, Chief Barnes, thanks for being in Los Angeles. And I know that we sent a number of our staff down there and really appreciate the amazing work that you all did. This was a very comprehensive presentation, so a lot of information to digest. I want to hone in on a couple of things. You mentioned Zone Zero and not wanting to moonscape. in conversations I've had with the chief, he has said that we finally have political momentum potentially for some enforcement of Zone Zero at the very least. And in researching Los Angeles, there were existing programs that lost funding or didn't have enough funding to provide for Zone Zero for residents who wanted to be able to do that. I guess my question to you is how can we support Zone Zero efforts and what can we do to lobby to get more funding for that to support you? And also, are you offering as part of your on-demand chippering or just in terms of general safety visits, Zone Zero assessments, if folks want to go ahead and take those steps proactively as well?
01:24:30.53 Matt Barnes Great, great questions. I'll try to hit each one of them. And if I miss, just, just let me know. So the, the first part of zone zero is I think we have a statewide level engagement and, you know,
01:24:44.47 Matt Barnes um,
01:24:45.30 Matt Barnes interest in providing some state level
01:24:48.60 Matt Barnes recommendations and
01:24:51.02 Matt Barnes um
01:24:52.21 Matt Barnes Um,
01:24:53.28 Matt Barnes Authority levels that will go down to the counties in in in city. So that's a that's that's one thing I think is super important that no one city is going to have to bear the burden of being the first to to introduce zone zero as an as an ordinance. So I think there's significant state level momentum.
01:25:10.61 Jeffrey Conan at
01:25:14.49 Matt Barnes That will be driven throughout all of our counties and specific to Marin. And I think we're have a very good head start. And then as far as inspections, absolutely. I'm going to put our prevention division on notice. We're more than happy to come out.
01:25:31.94 Matt Barnes provide some education and, and some information in regards to zone zero, because I think that's one of the very first steps, because I think, again, there's some miss misunderstanding and, and, you know, miss information out there and then provide, um, recommendations and assistance towards, um, any of those goals that people want to take on the independently.
01:25:52.78 Unknown So if a resident wanted to make an appointment for a Zone Zero assessment, would they go to the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority website or would they reach out directly to SMFD?
01:26:00.24 Matt Barnes Reach out directly to SMFD.
01:26:01.94 Unknown Okay, great. And then I have a couple more questions. Sorry. I just, it's very important issue.
01:26:06.58 Unknown So you mentioned as well, we digged in a little bit to the work that MMWD is doing with regards to water pipelines and making sure that we would have the access that we need. I just wanted to get a sense for how frequently we're testing our fire hydrants in the community and what those tests look like in Sausalito in particular.
01:26:22.95 Matt Barnes We touch and, um, inspect our hydrants every year.
01:26:27.62 Matt Barnes Every single hydrant in the city of Sausalito is either looked at, tested, and or touched every year.
01:26:35.17 Unknown And then the last question, a lot of your presentation touched on what your team is doing, which is fantastic, but what can our community responsibility be in terms of what residents can do to prepare beyond just working proactively to set up assessments? What does that look like?
01:26:50.47 Matt Barnes Yeah, I think the city of Sausalito has done a wonderful job in firewise community buildup, community engagement. And then I think very specifically, we're going to push out a lot of social media and news articles in and around just understanding fire weather and being prepared in the times of the year. that is important for them to be listening to the radio, be, you know, not turning not turning in their phones on, on silent at night, um, having, having their go bag ready and, and, and having all the preparation steps that, so when we.
01:27:26.79 Matt Barnes hit the unfortunate bell of evacuations. People are already ready. They already have a plan.
01:27:32.39 Matt Barnes And they're already engaged in the community and they can help their neighbors. We need people to multiply. Our communities need to multiply in an emergency versus just solely rely on one engine company or two engine companies or 100 engine companies to get the thousands of community members out of harm's way. So I think those are some significant things that we can all do together as a community.
01:27:51.60 Unknown way.
01:27:56.00 Unknown Thank you.
01:27:56.03 Unknown Thank you very much.
01:27:56.61 Unknown Thank you very much.
01:27:56.86 Unknown Thank you.
01:27:57.20 Matt Barnes You're welcome.
01:28:01.21 Unknown Hi, thank you for coming. Nice to see you guys.
01:28:04.10 Councilmember Hoffman I have a question about, we saw each other, I think recently at a, at a,
01:28:09.99 Janelle Kelman We're oriented.
01:28:10.88 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, the Lions lunch recently. And one of the things we veer off into, because every time I see you guys, I opportunistically...
01:28:18.61 Councilmember Hoffman heckle you about certain things.
01:28:20.87 Councilmember Hoffman But one of the things that came up was
01:28:22.81 Councilmember Hoffman the management or the lack thereof of the Golden Gate, our nearest neighbor, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And so I was wondering if you could just sort of the synopsis of our conversation of
01:28:35.99 Councilmember Hoffman you know,
01:28:37.72 Councilmember Hoffman .
01:28:38.20 Councilmember Hoffman it seemed to me a concerning lack of management and coverage for, you know, the, the recreation area that comes right up to,
01:28:46.35 Councilmember Hoffman the line of Sausalito or Sausalito line. And it comes right over the hill.
01:28:50.61 Councilmember Hoffman from the seashore and should the conditions prevail, it would be a high risk risk. Could you guys just a quick synopsis of that? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe what we might wanna look into is a policy of coverage for Sausalito and how we might want to address that going forward.
01:28:57.29 Matt Barnes Yeah, absolutely.
01:29:03.89 Matt Barnes Great, great questions. The first thing, just to clarify,
01:29:09.61 Matt Barnes The headlands, the national park system does have a seat at the table at the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority at the operations level. And then we have, you know, multiple decades, the Southern Marin Fire District has a multiple decade period.
01:29:26.11 Matt Barnes very positive relationship with, with the, um, and so, um, even though Greg Jones just retired, the new, um, fire, uh, prevention, um, Ranger that will be taking his spot, um, is very, is already very engaged, has already had a few meetings with us. I I'm meeting with him personally, um, in March. Um, and I think that the biggest, the first tool is communication and relationship building. And the second tool is just the understanding of some of the complexities of decision making that happens at the national level that goes all the way back to Washington, D.C., where we can make local changes very quickly. Sometimes national changes are a little bit more difficult to make, but that does not under signify the importance that we need to do work in the, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This last year, I probably was part of and have seen more defensible space work on their fire roads than I've ever seen before. We ran multiple large machinery to open up the fire breaks and reduce some of the vegetation that if we weren't able to control at the fire roads could spot across the fire road and into the city of Sausalito. We still have a lot of work to go. I'm not here to say we don't, but I think that we can leverage our relationships I don't, but I think that we can leverage our relationships. I think this council and the city manager can also leverage some of the needs and the importance of those needs to protect the community of Sausalito as well.
01:31:06.15 Mayor Cox Yeah, let me just say, I'd like to announce that the National Park Service Superintendent, David Smith, will be addressing this council in April. And Chief Tubbs has already committed to attend that meeting as part of this ongoing collaboration between the two. Yes, absolutely.
01:31:23.46 Councilmember Hoffman One of the follow up then that I would ask is that whatever the grade that we have or what are the assessment we have for inside of Saus Leo for defensible space and whatever grade we give for our streets and for fire fuel, I would ask that whatever contiguous spots we have next to the fire, because some of our streets go right up.
01:31:46.90 Councilmember Hoffman up against some of our houses go right up against the that we receive that before they come and give us an assessment and that's part of the staff report so i'm going to ask that that be part of the staff report when we get um a report in the golden gate national recreation superintendent comes and talks to us because um that's a real uh concern that i have about the vegetation that comes right up to the side of sauselillo and we don't you know we have an issue with whether or not we can even go in and assess that or prune that. Anyway, thank you for that. I appreciate that, and thank you for bringing that up, Mayor.
01:32:15.37 Mayor Cox I appreciate it.
01:32:15.74 Gail Schell Thank you.
01:32:16.69 Mayor Cox Mayor.
01:32:16.95 Mayor Cox Yes, absolutely. I'm going to ask staff to make a note of the request from Councilmember Hoffman for the presentation that David Smith will be making, that we include the information she's requested in our staff report.
01:32:31.67 Matt Barnes The report specific to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area work will come from them.
01:32:35.52 Councilmember Hoffman That work will be.
01:32:36.82 Councilmember Hoffman them.
01:32:36.94 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, well, yeah, but give me your grade for what it looks like, what that – your site across the street, like what does that look like? I mean it's not – Understood. It's not that onerous, I don't think. Yeah.
01:32:44.61 Matt Barnes Understood.
01:32:47.09 Matt Barnes No, and, and like I, um, opened up, this is a system wide approach. We need to engage not only national parks, but Caltrans has a significant easement, um, and right away passage that butts up against the city of Sausalito along the one-on-one corridor. Um, our, our open space also has some, some, um, you know, uh, responsibility as well as the city of Sausalito and in some of the unincorporated areas as well.
01:33:14.58 Unknown Councilmember Hoffman anticipated my questions about cooperation with the GJNRA. So what I'm going to do is just ask you before you leave to meet two of my neighbors who've been very active in that interface in one part of town, Rob and Maggie Cox who are sitting at the back of the room.
01:33:32.05 Unknown I think there are many members of the community who at different places have been active in that level of collaboration with you and also with the GJNRA, Caltrans, and others. It's got to be a group effort. Absolutely. Thank you.
01:33:46.41 Mayor Cox And I'll just close it out. I spoke with Chief Tubbs last week about the new fire hazard severity zone mapping that will be coming out. It's already come out for 16 counties, but not yet Marin. Marin is due February 24th. So I'm renewing my request that you all provide us some sort of update about the implications of that new mapping on Sausalito.
01:34:11.20 Mayor Cox And then I just want to thank you for your ongoing collaboration with us as we address all of these issues moving forward.
01:34:22.27 Matt Barnes Absolutely. And our plan is to do a, um, a wide broadcast of the new severity maps. Once they become public with some, with some recommendations and, and what does that actually mean to our communities?
01:34:34.82 Mayor Cox And then, you know, Chief Tubbs mentioned to me that MWPA has an evacuation tool. So we would like to focus on that because that's something of great interest to our residents. We are reconstituting our disaster preparedness committee. I mentioned that to you earlier, and I want to thank you for agreeing to staff that, along with Mike McKinley, our police department, and our residents. That will be conven convening very soon and so we will count on that committee to keep us up to date on a monthly basis on your activities and to collaborate so thank you
01:35:11.36 Matt Barnes Yeah, you're welcome. Just one thing on the ladder is AI. That's the tool for evacuation planning. It models traffic flows time. One of the things that we're still working on refining is introducing the weather component as far as specific to the smoke and, and how detrimental smoke at the ground level is for our traffic.
01:35:38.36 Matt Barnes Um, when you can't see the road in front of you, it becomes, it becomes very hazardous for people to drive and, and oftentimes they'll drive, you know, the wrong way. So one of the limitations of that program right now is we we're still refining some of the weather aspects in it. And then once it's available and we're, we're confident with some of the modeling and we've tested it, we're, we're more than happy to share.
01:36:02.25 Unknown All right, thank you so much. Thank you all for coming.
01:36:05.09 Matt Barnes You're welcome.
01:36:11.79 Mayor Cox Okay, we have a public hearing scheduled at 8 p.m. We're running a little bit late. I'm going to go ahead and hear communications and our
01:36:21.05 Mayor Cox consent calendar and then we will move on to the public hearing so communications, this is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda. So is there anyone here who would like and, by the way, because we have a full.
01:36:39.68 Mayor Cox Chambers this evening, I will limit public comment to two minutes per person. So is there anyone here to speak on the communications? City Clerk.
01:36:49.65 Bette McDougal I don't have any speaker cards. No? No.
01:36:51.06 Mayor Cox No? No. Okay.
01:37:05.69 Mayor Cox Is there anybody to speak? Otherwise, will you step up to the podium, please?
01:37:14.73 Councilmember Hoffman You have the clock clock city clerk.
01:37:16.47 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
01:37:16.52 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
01:37:16.54 Jeffrey Chase you
01:37:16.59 Bette McDougal Yes.
01:37:21.16 Jeffrey Chase Madam Mayor, city council, city workers, fans of politics, local and otherwise,
01:37:30.85 Jeffrey Chase you asked to have the opening comment on
01:37:35.72 Jeffrey Chase jurisdictional matters within the city of Sausalito.
01:37:41.02 Jeffrey Chase Now, as an anchor out still on the Jubilee II sloop, 27 foot,
01:37:47.50 Jeffrey Chase We are in the middle of many...
01:37:50.24 Jeffrey Chase different jurisdictions.
01:37:53.56 Jeffrey Chase One of our jurisdictions here
01:37:57.17 Jeffrey Chase happens to be whether or not we are supporters
01:38:02.62 Jeffrey Chase of war.
01:38:05.37 Jeffrey Chase Whether we're supporters of hostage taking,
01:38:08.24 Jeffrey Chase whether we're supporters of prisoner releases,
01:38:12.29 Jeffrey Chase So I have tried to fit in in the two minutes. I mean, I don't see a big line of people, Madam Mayor, to talk on communication.
01:38:20.27 Jeffrey Chase here. Two minutes is a very short time.
01:38:23.58 Jeffrey Chase especially when I'm dealing with a Torah portion called Mishpatim, which means judges, excuse me.
01:38:30.36 Jeffrey Chase Please.
01:38:31.65 Jeffrey Chase Thank you, Chris.
01:38:32.46 Mayor Cox Please confine your comments to us.
01:38:33.81 Jeffrey Chase Yes, yes. I speak as a member of the Jewish community that our religious freedom is to give
01:38:43.12 Jeffrey Chase our words from the holy text before every public meeting, not just speak about the minutiae
01:38:50.87 Jeffrey Chase of budgets and amortization.
01:38:53.94 Jeffrey Chase and fire safety, however important all of those things are.
01:39:00.37 Jeffrey Chase So because I've tried to fit in,
01:39:03.31 Jeffrey Chase In two minutes, this Torah portion, which I absolutely cannot do,
01:39:07.49 Jeffrey Chase You can say thank you later or right now.
01:39:10.24 Jeffrey Chase If you'd like.
01:39:12.18 Jeffrey Chase I will say the war in Gaza now means no bombing. The hostages have been released and the prisoners released
01:39:20.52 Jeffrey Chase from the Palestinians as well. And the Jewish community here says hallelujah.
01:39:24.70 Unknown Thank you.
01:39:25.31 Jeffrey Chase Hallelujah. Hallelujah.
01:39:26.17 Unknown Anything else city clerk?
01:39:27.71 Bette McDougal Yeah, online...
01:39:29.97 Bette McDougal Thank you.
01:39:30.51 Bette McDougal Online, we have Babette McDougall.
01:39:37.51 Vicki Nichols Good evening, Babette.
01:39:38.81 Babette McDougall Good evening. Thank you so much. First of all, let me just say, wow. Now, are we in public comment on the two public presentations? Because I do have something to say about that. Or are you in general citizenship?
01:39:51.03 Mayor Cox communication here.
01:39:52.12 Babette McDougall Where are we?
01:39:52.14 Mayor Cox We do not take public comment on special presentations. We are in item two, communications, on items not on our agenda.
01:39:55.70 Babette McDougall Okay.
01:39:58.69 Babette McDougall Thank you.
01:39:59.84 Babette McDougall Okay, great. Well, you know, I'll just blend it all into one lovely pie.
01:40:04.26 Babette McDougall as we Southerners do.
01:40:05.81 Babette McDougall So I want to say bravo to Stephanie Moulton-Peters, our supervisor. That was a brilliant presentation. And I applaud her because...
01:40:14.45 Babette McDougall in a very elegant way.
01:40:16.98 Babette McDougall She was capable of putting everything
01:40:20.56 Babette McDougall that Sausalito currently faces, good, bad, or otherwise, on the table.
01:40:24.73 Babette McDougall And I applaud her for that.
01:40:26.78 Babette McDougall And I'm glad to know that of all people,
01:40:29.72 Babette McDougall It's our supervisor who ascends to that vice chair role because we need to get down to business with the MTC.
01:40:36.83 Babette McDougall After all, it was Kieran Culligan who pointed out to me that it's been over two or three years now since we were designated as a tier four regional transit nexus. And not anybody in town has a clue what that means or it's all about.
01:40:50.55 Babette McDougall So bravo. I had other things that I'd like to speak about, like censorship issues.
01:40:55.51 Babette McDougall This idea of talking over someone because you disagree with what they're saying during their right of public speech.
01:41:01.28 Babette McDougall and the editing and the censorship that goes on in the videos that you finally post.
01:41:05.89 Babette McDougall It's appalling.
01:41:07.07 Babette McDougall And what are you afraid of?
01:41:08.87 Babette McDougall I mean, honestly,
01:41:10.34 Babette McDougall We love to disagree because it allows us to find common ground.
01:41:14.71 Babette McDougall And if you won't allow for that common ground, then how do you know that who those, as Ms. Peters pointed out, who are the stakeholders today?
01:41:22.98 Babette McDougall Is it really the citizens of Sausalito who reside here and have a vote?
01:41:28.35 Babette McDougall I think we need to carefully examine this, and I think it's great that we have Doreen to help facilitate our ongoing connection to Ms. Peters.
01:41:36.56 Babette McDougall Stephanie, that was well done. Thank you so much for your time.
01:41:41.69 Bette McDougal Next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker.
01:41:46.60 Sandra Bushmaker Good evening, Mayor and Council.
01:41:48.24 Sandra Bushmaker I'm making an inquiry as to whether or not you got the extension from the authorities with regard to the Bridgeway Bicycle Commission.
01:41:56.39 Sandra Bushmaker Lane project.
01:41:58.16 Sandra Bushmaker And if not, are you going to be making a decision on the project
01:42:04.12 Sandra Bushmaker at the February 25th meeting. Thank you.
01:42:11.26 Bette McDougal Next speaker is Sunshine.
01:42:12.56 Mayor Cox Actually, hold on one moment, city clerk. So we have scheduled the hearing on the Bridgeway median city manager.
01:42:21.70 City Manager That would happen Saturday, March 29th at 1 p.m. Sausalito time. And we did receive a six-month extension from the granting agency.
01:42:33.38 Mayor Cox So there's a question about whether it's 1 or 2 p.m. City Manager.
01:42:39.51 City Manager My notes said 1 p.m.
01:42:41.92 Mayor Cox Okay, in any event, it will be March 29th. We will publish the agenda in advance.
01:42:46.97 Mayor Cox All right, city clerk.
01:42:49.94 Mayor Cox All right, sunshine.
01:42:56.99 Sunshine Some of you, hello?
01:42:59.10 Sunshine Can you hear me?
01:43:00.55 Sunshine You can hear me?
01:43:02.69 Bette McDougal Yes.
01:43:03.32 Sunshine Yes, okay.
01:43:04.87 Sunshine As many of you know, I used to live across the street
01:43:08.97 Sunshine from the city council meeting in the library.
01:43:11.99 Sunshine And I was evicted.
01:43:13.49 Sunshine And so at this point, I have not been able to find a home. So I want to speak on behalf of all of the seniors, me being handicapped,
01:43:23.69 Sunshine 84 years old.
01:43:25.54 Sunshine I lived there 12 years. A new manager came in from EAH, who had only been there for three or four months before she placed an eviction notice on four handicapped women, three of us being 80 and one of us being 70.
01:43:42.37 Sunshine I have not been able to find housing because I cannot get a Section 8 for low income housing.
01:43:49.27 Sunshine I need help.
01:43:51.09 Sunshine I need help immediately.
01:43:53.60 Sunshine And I don't know how to go about getting that help. I've called every agency possible.
01:44:00.19 Sunshine and no one
01:44:01.79 Sunshine No one can give me a Section 8 voucher so far.
01:44:05.84 Sunshine They say they haven't been given out for two years. What is Marin doing? What is Sausalito doing to protect seniors, especially handicapped seniors,
01:44:16.91 Sunshine And
01:44:17.82 Sunshine I miss sitting in that front row and seeing all of you.
01:44:21.38 Sunshine But one of these days, I hope to be back. I hope I can find, I have found places that I could live, but no one will take me because I don't have a Section 8 voucher.
01:44:31.88 Sunshine So saying that there's no place to live is not true. It's just that you need a special voucher to be admitted into those places. So someone, please help me.
01:44:44.18 Sunshine I need some help getting a place to live. Thank you very much.
01:44:51.72 Bette McDougal No further public speakers?
01:44:53.02 Mayor Cox Okay, then we will move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the consent calendar. We have consent items 3A through 3I.
01:45:02.79 Mayor Cox um
01:45:05.19 Mayor Cox Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous Council support, and may be enacted by the Council in one motion.
01:45:15.74 Mayor Cox So the items are 3A, adopt the meeting minutes from February 4, 2025. 3B, adopt the 2025 Women in Construction Week proclamation. 3C, adopt a resolution adopting Sausalito's Title VI program and language assistance plan. 3D, adopt a resolution approving an encroachment agreement for exterior improvements in the public right-of-way at 207 Woodward Avenue. 3D, adopt a resolution approving an encroachment agreement for exterior improvements in the public right-of-way at 207 Woodward Avenue.
01:45:39.61 Mayor Cox Thank you.
01:45:39.70 Mayor Cox 3E, adopt a resolution approving landscaping improvements in the public right-of-way at 388 to 390 Sausalito Boulevard.
01:45:47.17 Mayor Cox 3F, adopt a resolution authorizing the City Manager to execute the Professional Services Agreement with Miller Pacific Engineer Group to develop the Geologic Hazard Monitoring Plan in an amount not to exceed $220,000 from Measure L funds. 3G, adopt a resolution of the City of Sausalito authorizing the City Manager to execute the Professional Services Agreement with CSWST2 for the development of the Storm Drain Assessment Study in an amount not to exceed $188,764 from the General Fund.
01:46:16.84 Mayor Cox 3H, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a management and disbursement agreement between the city of Sausalito and the downtown Sausalito Business Improvement District Association. And 3I, adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a professional services agreement with Kimber Companies for property management services for an amount not to exceed $102,000 paid by MLK, Tidelands, Old City Hall, and Bank of America funds. Is there a request to remove any items from the consent calendar?
01:46:48.35 Mayor Cox Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comment.
01:46:51.45 Bette McDougal I have Jeffrey Chase.
01:46:58.98 Jeffrey Chase I said earlier that I was making a mistake, the closed calendar versus the consent calendar.
01:47:06.39 Jeffrey Chase Now we're on the consent calendar.
01:47:09.56 Jeffrey Chase And I thank you prematurely, Madam Mayor.
01:47:13.17 Jeffrey Chase That last meeting, there were no
01:47:16.26 Jeffrey Chase items that were costing the citizens of Sausalito
01:47:20.07 Jeffrey Chase on the consent calendar, there were no consultants is what they're called.
01:47:25.47 Jeffrey Chase What are consultants?
01:47:27.82 Jeffrey Chase Consultants are people that do not work for your government
01:47:32.27 Jeffrey Chase They work for themselves and their companies, and they make a link with the government to achieve certain things.
01:47:41.37 Jeffrey Chase On this list is half a million dollars.
01:47:44.64 Jeffrey Chase justice
01:47:45.97 Jeffrey Chase Meeting.
01:47:47.39 Jeffrey Chase for consultants.
01:47:50.53 Jeffrey Chase Geologic Hazard Monitoring Plan.
01:47:54.97 Jeffrey Chase That sounds pretty technical, not easy to figure out for a layman, certainly.
01:47:59.37 Jeffrey Chase But there's nobody in government or there cannot be somebody hired to work for a temporary period without getting a pension, Mr. City Clerk, that cannot also do that job.
01:48:11.27 Jeffrey Chase Storm drain assessment study, same thing.
01:48:15.25 Jeffrey Chase that that's very technical, but there's nobody that can take a position
01:48:20.47 Jeffrey Chase work for the government for a limited period of time, and then leave. Otherwise, there is not nearly as much transparency.
01:48:28.15 Jeffrey Chase 3J is called property management.
01:48:32.87 Jeffrey Chase I visited the jail.
01:48:35.22 Jeffrey Chase Twice recently,
01:48:37.51 Jeffrey Chase And there is a private company now that makes sure that they're making money every time somebody visits the jail.
01:48:45.32 Jeffrey Chase every time somebody makes a phone call, every time somebody sends a letter, anytime somebody puts money on an inmate's account,
01:48:54.94 Jeffrey Chase There is no reason for that. There's no reason for any of these consultancies. Not a one.
01:49:00.44 Jeffrey Chase Thank you very much.
01:49:02.77 Jeffrey Chase Bikini.
01:49:02.91 Vicki Nichols Thank you.
01:49:03.02 Vicki Nichols Mickey Nichols?
01:49:06.11 Mickey Nichols Good evening, Mayor Vicki Nichols, and my pen ran out of ink, but I'll fill out a card. I know you have a tight agenda. I have a quick question on 3H, which is the agreement on the new business district, which I'm very happy to hear that you're getting so close to getting this signed. I have one question, though, on the...
01:49:23.81 Mickey Nichols Um,
01:49:24.73 Mickey Nichols the page that talks about physical improvements. As you know, the downtown district is a historic district. I'm not sure if the authority for improvements has been given to the district.
01:49:37.74 Mickey Nichols exclusively and if so what kind of oversight if anything there might be even some of the landscaping is documented down there so just a question don't really want it removed and maybe i can talk to director phipps afterwards thank you
01:49:51.78 Mayor Cox Or Cass Green is in the audience. Speak with her.
01:49:58.22 Mayor Cox Uh, other public comment?
01:49:59.22 Bette McDougal Other public comment? Online we have Babette McDougall.
01:50:10.42 Babette McDougall Thank you very much. So I realize we do have a heavy agenda. So I just rather than go through the motions of moving things around, I'd like to just say, first of all, 3G, I actually read the contract. What a terrible contract for Sausalito. Don't sign it. And then with regard to...
01:50:25.34 Babette McDougall three I.
01:50:29.32 Babette McDougall Well,
01:50:30.59 Babette McDougall You know, that really gets us down to that Sausalito policy governing how we manage our portfolio. So where are we on that?
01:50:38.42 Babette McDougall And I just want to put that out there that, you know, we might just sort of pass this under consent, but that doesn't mean this issue goes away, y'all. Thank you very much.
01:50:48.17 Bette McDougal No more further public comment.
01:50:49.73 Mayor Cox All right.
01:50:50.03 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
01:50:50.70 Mayor Cox Thank you.
01:50:50.74 Councilmember Hoffman We'll close public comment. I'll entertain a motion. I'm sorry, Mayor. I think I do need to. I'm looking at the staff report for.
01:50:59.55 Councilmember Hoffman the business improvement district. I'm just trying to find the...
01:51:03.83 Councilmember Hoffman I'm just trying to find the budget for the business improvement district. I see that in the staff report, there's a narrative, but I don't see, I mean, someone can help me.
01:51:13.40 Mayor Cox Yeah, the budget was already approved. This is simply, it was approved
01:51:16.69 Councilmember Hoffman By our prior meeting city manager. Well, this is to talk about a disbursement, but I don't see anything in here about what the disbursement is.
01:51:18.67 Mayor Cox Well, this is-
01:51:24.12 Mayor Cox 100,000 from the city and then 100,000 from the, is that right, City Manager?
01:51:29.96 City Manager Yeah, I think we've gone through the 50-50 split of how the city pays and how the property
01:51:34.31 Councilmember Hoffman But it's not 100,000, is it?
01:51:36.01 City Manager So that hasn't changed. And so the exact number of branding can provide that for you. It's a little bit over $200,000 in total.
01:51:43.69 Unknown Yeah, if I may.
01:51:43.90 Councilmember Hoffman Where is that in the staff report and where is that in this? I mean, if we need to take it off, we can, but I can't find it.
01:51:49.46 Unknown So thank you for the question, Council Member. Happy to clarify that. Everything related to X's and O's and dollar signs is encapsulated in the management district plan, which is attached to this item. I believe it is attachment two. I would say that the mayor is correct. This particular item before Council this evening is related to a disbursement agreement which clarifies how the funds that council has already approved via assessments in the bid will be dispersed to the non-profit that will manage and implement the management district plan. To further clarify the specific numbers that we're talking about here from the private assessment dollar bucket is approximately $117,000, and the city's share is... from the private assessment dollar bucket is approximately $117,000. And the city's share is $117,000.
01:52:40.51 Unknown The same. So that would be 117,000 approximately 234, $235,000 in total.
01:52:48.14 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, and what page is that on?
01:52:51.55 Unknown All of the details related to funding will be detailed in the management district plan, which is an attachment to this item.
01:52:59.46 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, and it's an attachment too?
01:53:02.28 Unknown It's on the agenda.
01:53:03.07 Unknown I believe so. Let me look at the staff report to clarify for you.
01:53:03.11 Councilmember Hoffman I don't know.
01:53:10.94 Councilmember Hoffman So,
01:53:11.22 Unknown Thank you.
01:53:11.26 Unknown It is shown as attachment three, council member. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
01:53:14.21 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you for the question. Okay, thank you. And so we're, I'm just for budgeting reasons, is this in our budget tonight?
01:53:25.43 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, and so in the disbursements from the, sorry, I'm just following. And the disbursements from the property owners have occurred, it's going to occur, sorry.
01:53:27.52 Unknown from the
01:53:28.99 Unknown Sorry.
01:53:35.34 Unknown Happy to provide some detail on that. I just didn't see that detail in there. No, again, I appreciate the question. So the city is taking the responsibility of collecting year one assessments from private property owners in the bid. We have worked closely with the Department of Finance on that, so I'll just give a quick tip of the hat to Director Hess. Appreciate your time and your collaboration. I'll give a quick update. Today we have collected approximately $77,000 from private landowners in the P bid. That means we are yet to collect approximately 40,000 additional dollars.
01:53:36.72 Councilmember Hoffman You just didn't see that detail in there.
01:54:10.23 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, and at some point we'll get an update or something on that. Okay, from the finance department I assume.
01:54:15.23 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, certainly.
01:54:15.43 Chad Hess Yeah, certainly we can provide a listing of collections. We can show the agent schedule of those unpaid parcels. All of that information is available in my accounting system.
01:54:24.86 Councilmember Hoffman And is somewhere, is the 77 that we've collected to date, is that noted anywhere? Yeah.
01:54:31.01 Chad Hess in terms of
01:54:32.53 Councilmember Hoffman if anybody wanted to look at what the status of collections is at this point. It's not in the staff report anymore.
01:54:37.81 Unknown We have provided updates on collections at recent P bid meetings. I'm glad that you brought this up for the record this evening, so it can be on the record and we will be doing an update as far as any changes to the most recent aging report. This is a report that I received near the end of last week. I'd like to do an additional update with, with Chad's department for our P meeting that we'll be holding this Thursday so that they can have the latest and greatest information.
01:54:43.23 Councilmember Hoffman Okay.
01:55:03.81 Councilmember Hoffman Great, are PIPID meeting minutes posted anywhere?
01:55:08.00 Unknown Yes, they are. Thank you for the question. Yeah, we want to be very transparent with the nonprofit prior to its transformation into a more formal board. And to that effect, we've created a PBID webpage, which, similar to the Planning Commission, Council, Historic Preservation Commission, other Brown Act bodies, contains all of the meeting recordings, meeting agendas, and meeting minutes associated with the item. I'll have to confirm on the minutes themselves, but at the very least, you'll find the agenda and the video recording.
01:55:09.52 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
01:55:40.77 Councilmember Hoffman Great. So if everybody's interested in that, they would find it there.
01:55:44.18 Councilmember Hoffman Absolutely. Okay, thanks so much for your
01:55:44.48 Unknown the assessment, right?
01:55:47.25 Mayor Cox Indulgence, I appreciate that. Certainly. All right, I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved.
01:55:52.14 Unknown No movement.
01:55:52.51 Unknown moved.
01:55:54.52 Mayor Cox All in favor? Aye. That motion carries unanimously. We will now move on to our public hearing items. The first item is for A, Appeal of Planning Commission Resolution No. 2024-24, approving a joint hotel and restaurant use at 715 Bridgeway. I will welcome Matthew Mandich, Senior Planner.
01:56:32.27 Matthew Mandich Excellent. Thank you. Thank you, council members, mayor, vice mayor. Happy to be here before you tonight.
01:56:37.91 Matthew Mandich So before we have an appeal of a planning commission decision for a joint restaurant and hotel use at 715 Bridgeway, the former Wells Fargo building. Next slide, please.
01:56:48.45 Matthew Mandich So just quickly here to brief everyone on the location. Here's 715 Bridgeway right across the street from Vineyard Elmore Park next to the Excelsior Stairs. Here's a view of that in Google Earth on top here. And there's the property in question right there in our Central Commercial District and in our historic downtown. Next slide, please.
01:57:07.09 Matthew Mandich I'm just going to give a little bit of background on the building as well as a little background on the project. I know probably council members are familiar having read the staff report, but for the public here and those watching, I just want to give a quick overview of what happened at the Planning Commission, what was approved, and then we'll talk about the appeal and the rebuttal. So the building was built in 1924 for the Bank of Sausalito. It's designed to be a grand banking temple that was popular on that time, although of a smaller scale to fit with the Sausalito landscape. It is a contributor to the Sausalito downtown historic district. It's on the local and state register and is eligible for the national register with a listing of 2D2. The building remains largely unaltered and is very well preserved. Following the Sausalito bank, it became the American Trust and Savings before the Wells Fargo, which it was until July of 2023. It was purchased by its current owner, Kent Ipsen, who's here with us tonight in 2024.
01:57:58.67 Matthew Mandich Next slide, please.
01:58:01.14 Matthew Mandich So here's the rendering of the project proposal here.
01:58:03.97 Matthew Mandich Can we go back one, please?
01:58:06.57 Matthew Mandich here's what the building will look like once restored. It will have a joint use of the pocket restaurant on the ground floor. An artificial floor will be constructed right here inside the building. This is a very large space there presently, which will line up with the mouillons for the in the pocket hotel use on the constructed second floor. Next slide, please.
01:58:24.96 Matthew Mandich Um, so ground floor, fine dining restaurant and bar, um, has a maximum capacity of 105 guests. Um, there will also be outdoor seating, which will actually be, uh, 16 guests that was conditioned down from 20 in the planning commission meeting. Um, there will be construction of the second floor inside the building for the three hotel rooms and the Western rear facade will be removed to create space for a new patio fire pit and hot tub lounge area, which will be guest amenities. Um, this will all be contained within the existing retaining walls on the site that are coterminous with the property lights exterior we're looking at new signage lighting flower boxes and just a general repaint refurbish all the defining characteristics of the building will be preserved and rehabilitated next slide please.
01:59:05.94 Matthew Mandich So this required a number of permits to get this done, first at the HPC and then at the Planning Commission, but a design review permit for extra floor area, variants to demolish and remodel existing legal nonconforming structures in the rear setback, a conditional use permit for hotel use in the Commercial Zoning District, another conditional use permit for the sale of alcoholic beverages in the Commercial Zoning District, a conditional use permit for a parking waiver, which we'll discuss later. That was not heard by the Planning Commission. A minor use permit for outdoor seating, and then a signed permit for the signage and a certificate of appropriateness for the for the work on the historic building next slide please.
01:59:42.99 Matthew Mandich So just a little bit about the building. We're gonna do kind of an outside in. As you can see, the building remains largely intact. Existing facade here, proposed facade there, very few changes. Next slide, please. And again, you can see here on this other facade, very similar, no changes at all to the building's envelope and shape. Next slide, please.
02:00:03.02 Matthew Mandich Exterior details, here's the palette that's going to be used right here, and these are the colors that were approved by the HBC and the Planning Commission. It's kind of an off-white gray graphite. The new lighting system here, which will have bulbs here, incandescent bulbs, which will replace the LED lighting that's currently on site. Next slide, please.
02:00:22.63 Matthew Mandich as well as some exterior restoration. So there was a safe deposit box that was installed here by Wells Fargo that'll be restored and brought back to its former glory. You all remember the ATM that used to be right here. That's since been removed. That will now become the entrance to the in the pocket, which will take the guests upstairs to the rooms. Next slide, please.
02:00:41.97 Matthew Mandich So moving into the floor plan here.
02:00:45.19 Matthew Mandich You can see down here, this is the main dining area. This will be entered through the main entrance of the building, which was the old bank entrance. Number of seats in here, max capacity of 105, full bar right there, kitchen, back area here. As we discussed, this little door right here where the ATM used to be, that will be the entrance to the inn in the pocket, which you go up to the stairs. So you'll walk through here. There'll be a little elevator and a stair set here that will take you up to the second floor. The stairs will let you out right here. These will be the bathrooms that will be used by the restaurant as well. They can be accessed via stair as well as elevator. This is a little kind of lobby area here, which will enter into this inner court. You'll see there's a spa here, a kitchen there, fire pit, and then the rooms going down here to the arched windows facing out to look at Viña del Mar. This is the largest room here on the left-hand side, two-bedroom, two-bath, kitchen, lounge area, fireplace. The room in the middle is the smallest, just one-bed, lounge area, fireplace, and then another medium-sized room here with one-bedroom, bath, kitchen, and lounge area and fireplace. Next slide, please.
02:01:50.45 Matthew Mandich Moving up one level from that, you have the electrical kind of mechanical level that's on the same level as this first little patio right here, which also contains a fire pit, another electrical area on this side. And then above that is a patio or view deck up there, which will be restricted to hotel guests only. This area closest to the Excelsior stairs will be landscaped and not accessible for guests. Next slide, please.
02:02:15.17 Matthew Mandich Looking at the floor area, here's how the floor has been calculated here. This is the first floor down here in the restaurant, second floor with the hotel use surrounding this inner court that we have on the second level. This comes in at 1.29, which is just under the 1.3 floor ratio for the CC district required by both the zoning ordinance and ordinance 1022. Next slide, please.
02:02:37.80 Matthew Mandich Oh, so this is the second floor edition that was approved by both the HPC and the PC. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but this will again, go across the mid, the middle of the windows and the mullions here and the three bedrooms will, or hotel suites right here will line up with views out to vineyard, Del Mar park and the waterfront. Next slide.
02:02:57.12 Matthew Mandich Again, Western facade, here's a rendering, an early rendering that was done on the project. Following the HPC hearing, the applicant already agreed with the appellant to limit access to this area in particular. So this area will not be part of the plan and is not part of the plan that was approved by the PC. So that's kind of an older rendering. But just to give you an idea of what this space will look like in the rear area, which is currently occupied by unused space. There are rooms underneath here. There's bathrooms over here, which the new bathrooms will also be there, as well as a storage area and old break room for the Wells Fargo. Next slide, please.
02:03:31.26 Matthew Mandich Um, yeah, and here's actually a breakdown of that. So you see the bathrooms here, storage area here, that's all contained under this area, um, in the back of the building. Next slide.
02:03:40.58 Matthew Mandich So we had some concern about views from the stairs. And will this be something that a lot of people can see? There's an apartment building here next door. Will people be able to see in? And as you can see from the photos that I was able to take here, there's really, this is a quite imposing retaining wall. And you have to really stand on this top rail and really hook your body over on your chest to even see down in here. So there's really zero visual impact to anyone that will be walking down the stairs or from these apartments and certainly nothing from the street. So these are pretty imposing tall retaining walls right here. So I just want to highlight that for the council. Next slide, please.
02:04:11.49 Matthew Mandich Here's another look. This is a photo that I took again, kind of hooking myself up on top of that retaining wall. Just want to give you an idea of this space down here. This will all be, you know, demolished and remodeled and for the new amenities that we already discussed in the back area. I want to highlight this line right here. I know it's a little hard to see. It's yellow, but you can see the flagging right here. This will be for where the deck will be located, the view deck in the back. And you can see that drop down from the top elevation of the walls and where it will extend out to.
02:04:41.11 Matthew Mandich So just some kind of story pulls there for you. Next slide.
02:04:45.12 Matthew Mandich Um, again, just some sections of this back area, just to show you, you know, the roof of the structure here and then the proposed patio deck that was already approved by the PC and a look back into the spa area and this kind of inner courtyard that we have next slide.
02:05:00.63 Matthew Mandich All right, so already kind of talked about the use permits conditional use permit required in hotel for a hotel use in the central commercial zone. We do have a noise ordinance that governs noise in the central commercial zone as well to make sure that ambient noise is kept at a certain level, especially at past certain hours. Next slide.
02:05:19.38 Matthew Mandich We also needed a conditional use permit for the sale of alcohol and beer on site consumption, as well as a minor use permit for outdoor dining. Next slide, please.
02:05:26.82 Matthew Mandich I just want to highlight some of the approved outdoor dining areas in the vicinity and what a great location this is. It's kind of a keystone piece in our historic downtown with this historic landmark building. These stars represent outdoor dining places that have already been approved. So you have Copita here, Cultivar, soon to be, Lappert's, and Napa Valley Burger. It's also very close to two other hotel uses, Hotel Sausalito and In Above Tides right there. So really centrally located among a number of restaurant and hotel uses already. Next slide, please. Sign permit was approved. Largely mimics the signage from the previously approved Wells Fargo sign program. Same amount of square footage complies with our sign ordinance. Next slide, please. And here's just some visuals of what those signs will look like. They will be the pocket restaurant sign, which is the sign below and the end will be interior Lee illuminated while the upper sign in above pocket will have some soft exterior lighting that will be done with an LED stripped recessed into the cornice. Next slide please.
02:06:27.81 Matthew Mandich So certificate of appropriateness also approved by HPC and the PC all the defining features of this building will be kept and preserved and refurbished, which includes the decorative freeze the medallions the Corinthian column capitals arch windows and bronze sashes next slide please.
02:06:45.44 Matthew Mandich So you can skip this one. Next slide.
02:06:47.70 Matthew Mandich So planning commission approval on December 11th, 2024, the planning commission approved the application for seven one five bridgeway approving a number of permits, which we just covered. The proposed project is designed appropriately and will not result in a substantial adverse impact on the historic resource or the historic district. It's in conformance with the required standards of the secretary of the interior one through 10. The proposed project is in conformance with all the required findings in the saaselido municipal code as detailed in the staff report and the resolution the proposed use also fills a really difficult space in the heart of our downtown central commercial corridor and this historic building the proposed uses are also a boon for economic development within the city if we have sales tax from the restaurant as well as the tot at 14% for each of those hotel rooms each night. And approval is also subject to the conditions of approval that were included in the resolution approved by the planning commission. There's a number of conditions that were built in there to kind of restrict the impact of that rear area on surrounding neighborhood.
02:07:45.67 Matthew Mandich These included, you know, reducing capacity or limiting capacity to only hotel guests with keys only allowing, you know, use of that space up to certain hours and trying to make sure that everything, of course, abides by our city noise ordinance. Next slide please.
02:08:02.32 Matthew Mandich So following that approval, and despite the conditions being put in, the project was appealed by Breckhouse Law on behalf of the neighbor, Sharon Kahn, the appellant, the owner of 10 and 14 Excelsior Lane, which are behind the property on Excelsior Lane. The grounds for appeal stated were that the CUP for the hotel use was granted an error as no commercial use over $1,000.
02:08:25.39 Matthew Mandich 1,000 square feet is allowed on the second floor in CC. They also stated that the design review permit would issued an error because the FAR was incorrectly calculated. The variance was issued in error as the findings cannot be made. The parking exemption, which uses AB 2097, cannot be used for hotel use, and that the project is inconsistent with the general plan. So I'm just going to give a quick rebuttal to each one of those items here, and then we will turn it over to the appellant. So next slide.
02:08:54.03 Matthew Mandich Um,
02:08:55.21 Matthew Mandich Excuse me.
02:08:57.39 Matthew Mandich The CUP for the hotel was not granted in error. It was issued due to the fact that California Building Code qualifies a hotel use as a residential use and not a commercial use. As we can see here, I've taken a snippet from the code section itself. We can see residential use, R1, hotel transient, which is what this would be. It's considered a residential use by the California Building Code. Again, I want to emphasize these are sleeping quarters. They have to be accessed only by guests. This is not a locus for commercial activity. No one can just walk up those stairs and enter into that area. So it's not a retail space, as you would say, and I think it aligns with the intent of the code of not having commercial spaces above the first floor in the CC. Next slide.
02:09:40.10 Matthew Mandich Again, they also state that the FAR was calculating correctly. However, intercourts do not count as part of the FAR, as we can see here. They are excluded as our elevator shafts, which you can see here. An intercourt, as defined by the code, is an open area with no roof that is surrounded by at least three sides of floor area, which we can see this is clearly surrounded by floor area on three sides. You have rooms extending here the bathrooms here and the kitchen there so all three sides surrounded by floor area there is no roof over this space there's only a slight overhang over the hot tub here which was the patio which is approved via variance next slide
02:10:19.99 Matthew Mandich Um, the variance also not issued an error. The findings can certainly be made. They were made and they were approved on a unanimous vote by the planning commission. Um, this is an existing historic building. It's a legal non-conforming building, which imposes its own constraints. It was already built all the way up to the lot lines on all sides when it was constructed, which of course it predates the zoning code. So, um, you know, there are constraints there that the, the owner of the building is trying to work with and we granted a variance in order for him to be able to build in that rear setback and remodel that area this variance is not injurious to other properties in fact there's a vacant lot next door this is an undeveloped lot the appellant owns both of these lots however the one that abuts the property is undeveloped and there's plenty of conditions that were put on the outdoor space including the approval that will limit the impact on the surrounding neighborhood next slide please
02:11:06.82 Matthew Mandich So.
02:11:08.40 Matthew Mandich This is one where I'm happy to fall on my sword. Appellant is correct that the parking exemption used via AB 2097 is invalid, cannot be applied to a hotel use. This is a parking exemption I've used on other commercial and residential projects. Hotels don't come around very often in Sausalito, so there's some fine print in there, and I didn't catch that. You cannot use it for hotel use. However, this does not preclude the project's viability. our code does allow for a waiver of parking exemptions via cup whenever a new or expanded use allows This does not preclude the project's viability. Our code does allow for a waiver of parking exemptions via CUP whenever a new or expanded use allows the preservation of a historic structure, which we have, in the downtown historic district, which we are, and does not require substantial alterations, which it doesn't. So we can get around the parking with a waiver through the granting of a CUP. Again, it's qualified for this as none of the defining characteristics will be altered or removed the project conforms to the secretary of interior standards and a certificate of appropriateness was approved by both the planning commission and historic preservation next slide please
02:12:05.44 Matthew Mandich Um, also the appellant, uh, says that, you know, this project's not consistent with the general fact plan. In fact, it is, it's very consistent. Um, they focus on this sentence here in yellow, which talks about hotels can potentially generate nuisances due to overnight parking, employee parking. However, they choose to ignore the green here, which says that hotels can really have a minimal impact as long as they're well-managed and there's adequate parking. There's a number of public parking lots very close to this parking lot one, two, three. This building is going to be managed by someone who has a lot of experience doing this, a proven developer who has a proven model. It'll be managed very well. It's in the historic setting. It serves economic uses. It's small. It's to scale. It's compatible with the surrounding structures. It's in line with everything the general plan wants for a hotel, not to mention it's also right next to three other hotel uses, including Casa Madrona, Hotel Sausalito and in above tides, all of which have hotel rooms above the first floor. Next slide, please.
02:13:05.75 Matthew Mandich So on that note, recommendation staff recommends the City Council adopt the resolution denying the appeal and upholding the Planning Commission's decision to approve this project for a new joint hotel and restaurant use in the historic building at 715 Bridgeway.
02:13:19.09 Matthew Mandich Thank you very much, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
02:13:21.92 Vicki Nichols Any questions of staff?
02:13:23.03 Mayor Cox Jeff.
02:13:25.50 Mayor Cox All right, seeing none.
02:13:27.94 Mayor Cox I am going to go ahead and ask the council members to reveal any ex parte communications they may have had concerning this project.
02:13:39.32 Councilmember Sobieski I've done nothing.
02:13:39.84 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:13:40.75 Mayor Cox I've had none.
02:13:42.07 Unknown then.
02:13:44.08 Mayor Cox And I've had none as well.
02:13:45.43 Mayor Cox Okay, with that, I will open the public hearing. City Clerk, can you confirm the notice required by law for this public hearing?
02:13:56.82 Mayor Cox or Community Development Community and Economic Development Director.
02:14:04.41 Unknown I'd have to defer to admin staff or planning staff on that.
02:14:12.01 Mayor Cox I'm just seeking confirmation that this public hearing was properly noticed.
02:14:15.30 Matthew Mandich um,
02:14:16.97 Matthew Mandich I, I believe so. I'm not a hundred percent sure. I'd have to check.
02:14:20.12 Mayor Cox All right, so I'm going to ask you to check.
02:14:21.94 Mayor Cox while we're hearing from others and circle back and it's this is on the agenda so um if someone can please confirm that that would be great and so i'm now going to uh open this to the appellant for a presentation uh 10 minutes that will be followed by a presentation uh from the respondent and then we'll hear public comment
02:14:46.21 Sharon Kahn Thank you. Can you, you've got my slide.
02:14:48.96 Sharon Kahn Mayor Cox, members of the council, thank you. I represent.
02:14:54.07 Mayor Cox It's important that you actually speak into the microphone because we're on Zoom as well as here in the chambers. Got it.
02:14:59.32 Sharon Kahn Thank you.
02:15:00.99 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:15:01.01 Sharon Kahn Mayor Cox and members of the council. Thank you. I represent.
02:15:04.15 Sharon Kahn Sharon Kahn.
02:15:05.35 Sharon Kahn who's here and this
02:15:08.74 Sharon Kahn I want to start by saying I did direct a letter to many of you, but I was not in the staff report. And the letter is dated February 12th, 25. And unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened to the cons along this public process where their communications were included in staff reports.
02:15:28.33 Mayor Cox And did you address that just to the counselor or did you send it to the clerk and the city manager?
02:15:32.57 Sharon Kahn Yes, we did. OK, yes. So starting with slide one.
02:15:39.69 Sharon Kahn Um, the general plan does require residential use on the second story of the CC district to minimize impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods. That is the general plan that you elected and that the city adopted and it cannot be ignored. Um,
02:16:04.98 Sharon Kahn you okay next slide thank you um and the general plan specifically speaks to this scenario and it says that second story downtown is where you are going to place more housing units
02:16:18.33 Sharon Kahn And it specifically talks about the fact that housing on the second story is
02:16:23.93 Sharon Kahn of the CC district is going to minimize impacts on the intensely used commercial area on the surrounding neighborhoods. So the idea is you're not gonna intensify that use, which is what this project proposes to do, but rather you're going to minimize it. Next slide, please.
02:16:42.90 Sharon Kahn The staff report notes that a state law
02:16:47.71 Sharon Kahn calls hotels residential. But you can't look to the state law because your own code has its own definition.
02:16:56.10 Sharon Kahn And so they have gone out and scoured the internet for a state law that looks and describes this as residential. But you are required to use your own definitions, and your municipal code says that.
02:17:09.83 Sharon Kahn You look at your definitions, and when you look at your definitions, you find that residential occupant is defined in the code as occupancy for a period of 30 days or greater.
02:17:24.13 Sharon Kahn So that analysis and interpretation is flawed and it's wrong.
02:17:30.17 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:17:33.44 Sharon Kahn And the general plan also requires that there be proper management and parking
02:17:40.19 Sharon Kahn And it notes that both management and parking are needed in order for hotels to have minimum impacts on nearby residential areas. And this hotel has no management. There is nobody on duty at night. And you have a huge party space that is right up next to a residence.
02:18:02.36 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:18:05.08 Sharon Kahn So we pointed out that the parking exemption, it requires a CUP, but it's not just that it requires a CUP, it requires an application. And it also requires a notice. And that has to be done to the plan.
02:18:19.76 Sharon Kahn Planning Commission and we didn't even know that a cup what might be adopted at this hearing until the staff report issued. So the public did not have the proper notice that an application and a hearing before the Planning Commission would have given them. So it isn't okay.
02:18:36.28 Sharon Kahn and the city cannot
02:18:38.04 Sharon Kahn fix this flaw by doing what staff recommends you do and just
02:18:44.38 Sharon Kahn adopt a cup in response to this appeal because the notice is inadequate. And I'm I believe that those of you with a legal background, those of you who have served on planning commissions, and those of you are familiar with just general the way planning approvals work know that first an application occurs, then a hearing, and then we consider adoption, we don't just do it in response to an appeal after we realize we made a mistake.
02:19:09.41 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:19:14.05 Sharon Kahn Okay, the staff report and the presentation incorrectly state that this is not a covered patio.
02:19:23.03 Sharon Kahn And I understand why the staff report, it's a little more clear from the presentation while he's, why he's seeing like that.
02:19:31.19 Sharon Kahn But what I want to point out, and if I could go up to the page and just show you why this particular area is not covered by three sides of
02:19:43.80 Sharon Kahn FAR and therefore
02:19:46.92 Sharon Kahn It is cannot be exempt from the FAR count. And it does have a roof and it's cute to call it overhang, but it's not an overhang, it's a roof. And it absolutely meets the definition. So I just wanna point that out.
02:20:11.17 Sharon Kahn So again, that area has no
02:20:14.23 Sharon Kahn housing by it there's no other floor area counted and that area where there is a roof
02:20:22.21 Sharon Kahn being called now an overhang, that has to be counted to FAR, and that takes it over the
02:20:28.01 Sharon Kahn the limit that it was approved at.
02:20:31.29 Sharon Kahn And again, you have your own definitions, and you have to look to them. So the inner courts must have a roof.
02:20:40.58 Sharon Kahn And here it has a roof.
02:20:42.54 Sharon Kahn And
02:20:43.72 Sharon Kahn the covered patios are counted as if they are, and the definition meets the definition of a covered patio.
02:20:52.30 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:20:56.03 Sharon Kahn So the variance requested is unreasonable, and it doesn't pass the legal requirements. And the reason for that is that it's not a hardship to have this great big outdoor space for these guests. And they don't really need the upstairs party area. It's an extra amenity. And if it's not going to be used intensely, it is not needed. It can be used as landscaping or as a critical space, vacant space that would be a side yard and can be afforded as a side yard here to lessen the impact on the properties. And again, no management is on site at night.
02:21:41.93 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:21:44.91 Sharon Kahn Um,
02:21:47.51 Sharon Kahn Also, the project does not meet the variance requiring because it is injurious to appellants and to
02:21:55.58 Sharon Kahn even the public for that matter, using the stairs, the presentation noted that people on the stairs won't see it. But there's two levels to that patio. There's a lower level, and then it goes up to the hot tub, which is a raised area. And then everybody gets a view of everybody on the party deck. So that presentation I don't think is fair. And that party deck also is going to be exactly below the,
02:22:20.25 Sharon Kahn the lot. The folks
02:22:22.43 Sharon Kahn or suggestion that it's a vacant lot, you're supposed to make good land use decisions for all residences, all lots, buildable or not. And in fact, that lot that currently doesn't have a home on it, the home did burn down. It is subject to being developed. You've even identified it as subject to development in your housing element.
02:22:43.20 Sharon Kahn Next slide, please.
02:22:47.28 Sharon Kahn So again, appellant's request here.
02:22:51.49 Sharon Kahn are that the rental of the hotel units is conditioned on a minimum of 30 days. I do want to point out this project is a complete end run around the city's
02:23:04.78 Sharon Kahn prohibition on Airbnbs.
02:23:07.03 Sharon Kahn And what is to bring them in?
02:23:08.90 Sharon Kahn other people from having a non-managed hotel
02:23:13.93 Sharon Kahn and simply call it a hotel.
02:23:17.84 Sharon Kahn So this should be conditioned on a minimum of 30 days.
02:23:23.38 Sharon Kahn Thank you.
02:23:23.46 Sharon Kahn The next request is that the applicant guarantee on-site management or public post the telephone number of management less than five minutes away,
02:23:34.42 Sharon Kahn who can reasonably enforce the limits on the outdoor space for the project, including noise limits, times of use, and no hosting event space management. You know, the idea of them having bachelor parties, which they say is a desired target of, of,
02:23:51.14 Sharon Kahn their population that's quite a concern to people who live right next to that again staff should be able to enforce maximum occupancy and subdued exterior lighting
02:24:02.82 Sharon Kahn We also request that the applicant provide parking spaces
02:24:06.75 Sharon Kahn because without the application of AB 2097,
02:24:12.03 Sharon Kahn And for this intensive use, it should require parking spaces and it's not providing any. 29 spaces. And we know that the public would like to weigh in on that because the public always wants to weigh in on parking.
02:24:27.69 Sharon Kahn The applicant should correctly calculate and then reduce the FAR.
02:24:34.35 Sharon Kahn And again, there should be a denial of the variance for the third tier parking deck and the raised hot tub. These are impactful, they're injurious on nearby residences, and they also are just don't meet the hardship or the legal requirements for variance. Thank you very much.
02:24:52.78 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:24:54.91 Mayor Cox I'm going to pause for just one moment here.
02:24:57.46 Mayor Cox you
02:25:08.56 Mayor Cox Okay.
02:25:11.97 Mayor Cox I'm going to circle back to my inquiry regarding confirmation of notice required by law. Unfortunately, this public hearing was not properly noticed.
02:25:21.54 Mayor Cox And so we are going to have to
02:25:24.29 Mayor Cox um,
02:25:25.22 Mayor Cox I will go ahead and take public comment, since I've noticed this for this evening, and then we're going to have to continue
02:25:32.08 Mayor Cox this hearing to a date that is properly noticed. And my apologies to the appellant and to the applicant and to all of those who wrote in and commented on this really important project.
02:25:49.79 Unknown Can I just ask what the error was in noticing?
02:25:53.72 Mayor Cox No.
02:25:54.00 Unknown Thank you.
02:25:54.39 Unknown Okay?
02:25:55.14 Mayor Cox I don't yet know. Oh, okay. I'm going to have to investigate. Okay. All right. So I'm going to call out the – and so applicant, we're not going to hear from you
02:26:07.44 Mayor Cox This evening, now that we know
02:26:09.01 Mayor Cox that this hearing was not publicly noticed, you are welcome to make public comment should you like.
02:26:14.63 Mayor Cox um,
02:26:15.18 Unknown Thank you.
02:26:16.03 Unknown Thank you.
02:26:16.04 Mayor Cox So I'm
02:26:17.26 Mayor Cox I have some-
02:26:18.68 Councilmember Sobieski just ask about that?
02:26:20.78 Councilmember Sobieski I know it's a curveball here.
02:26:23.27 Councilmember Sobieski but we heard a full presentation from the
02:26:26.05 Councilmember Sobieski We're not going to.
02:26:26.10 Mayor Cox We're not going to.
02:26:26.61 Unknown to take action on something that wasn't properly noticed.
02:26:28.46 Councilmember Sobieski I know.
02:26:29.58 Councilmember Sobieski I know just in terms of
02:26:31.97 Councilmember Sobieski giving air time to both parties is it would be appropriate to at least give the person the option i'm seeing the lawyer shaking their head no but
02:26:38.83 Mayor Cox Not properly noticed.
02:26:39.70 Councilmember Hoffman All right.
02:26:39.70 Councilmember Sobieski All right.
02:26:39.72 Mayor Cox Alright.
02:26:39.85 Councilmember Hoffman I'm not sure.
02:26:40.99 Mayor Cox I did not know it was not properly noticed before I heard from the appellant. I now know it's not properly noticed.
02:26:46.25 Councilmember Hoffman So-
02:26:47.13 Councilmember Hoffman We do apologize.
02:26:48.76 Mayor Cox Yeah, I totally apologize. And I'll hear from the city attorney if he disagrees. But I believe the safest course is to take public comments, since this item was on the agenda, and continue it. And, of course, the appellate will get to make...
02:26:49.84 Councilmember Hoffman I apologize.
02:27:03.34 Mayor Cox their presentation again at the continued hearing.
02:27:07.24 Mayor Cox And thank you to the mayor for confirming that.
02:27:11.66 Mayor Cox Yeah, that's the danger of being a lawyer at the dais.
02:27:16.83 Mayor Cox Okay, so...
02:27:19.61 Mayor Cox City Attorney, do you disagree?
02:27:21.64 Sergio Rudin No, I agree completely. The safest course of action is to re-notice the searing.
02:27:27.24 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:27:27.26 Unknown Okay.
02:27:28.13 Mayor Cox All right, so with that in mind, I'm going to call out the people who provided speaker slips
02:27:34.26 Mayor Cox Knowing that this is going to be heard at another date, it's up to you whether you choose to make public comment this evening. The first speaker slip I have is Bonnie McGregor.
02:27:51.94 Bonnie Yes, I will make public comment, and I will make it again when we reconvene on this. I'm so sorry this happened, but, you know, the expression does happen.
02:28:04.04 Bonnie I feel very strongly about this moving forward. I spent 15 years in the hospitality business, so I'm not totally a novice at it. I'm not an expert, but I'm not a novice.
02:28:18.89 Bonnie I support the restaurant and three suite hotel at 715 Bridgeway. I urge you to deny the appeal and uphold the unanimous approvals of the planning and historic commissions.
02:28:29.90 Bonnie This project will revitalize a historic building that has sat empty for way too long.
02:28:35.43 Bonnie The pocket team, I called it,
02:28:37.96 Bonnie has demonstrated their ability to create and successfully operate a small hotel and restaurant. There are so many empty stores in our downtown without prospective operators. Why would we let this golden opportunity
02:28:51.26 Bonnie Get away from us.
02:28:53.77 Bonnie This is truly a rare opportunity to restore and preserve a handsome and unique landmark, strengthen our local economy, and bring new life to downtown for locals and visitors.
02:29:04.78 Bonnie We have ordinances in place to address noise concerns that neighbors have raised, and the project certainly is smaller than the one other successful downtown hotels. The owner has expressed a strong commitment to running a business that works in Sausalito. Please deny the appeal and move this project forward. Time is slipping by.
02:29:28.57 Bonnie I have a couple of questions on it. How long would it take to, before they can open, forgetting about appeals, et cetera, et cetera. When they get down to the nitty gritty of doing the reconstruction, when do they expect to open? What's the timeframe?
02:29:42.41 Bonnie And parking would be where? In the public lots with certain assigned spots? Okay, those are my questions. Thank you.
02:29:49.70 Mayor Cox Thank you for your questions. I encourage you to reach out to Matthew Mandich, senior planner, who's overseeing this project. Next, we'll hear from, I think it's Fred Moore.
02:30:00.38 Mayor Cox I recognize you even if I don't recognize your writing. Sorry about that.
02:30:04.13 Fred Moore No one recognized my writing. Good evening, Madam Council members. I also hope that eventually when it gets come back before you, you deny the appeal, you approve this project. I applaud staff for, I think, amazing job they've done on presenting this project. I've gone to numerous hearings, heard numerous complaints about it. I think staff has done a great presentation. I applaud Bonnie's comments. It will be a great addition to downtown. We need it. The applicant has done, in my opinion, gone overboard in making concessions to some good points of design, which maybe aren't there anymore. But overall, it's a great project. I think everybody in the city will enjoy it. The opportunities for dining, the opportunities for the hotel. I know I'm not injured when I'd walk up the stairs, walk by that place with an outdoor area. I think there's been comments before about the potential noise impacts. My neighbor down the street probably has louder parties and may occur in this place, and there's noise ordinances to keep that in check. I'm sure that will occur here. I'm sure the neighbor behind will make sure that the noise never gets above a level that doesn't get a ring to the police. So there's all sorts of mechanisms in place already with the city to ensure this is a convenient, well-run, managed opportunity for the city. And I'll probably be back again. I submitted something in writing. I'll come back the next time. And I do hope you deny the appeal, make this project go forward, give us something to look forward to this summer. Thank you.
02:31:30.80 Mayor Cox Thank you, Mr. Moore. Gail Schell.
02:31:40.40 Gail Schell Hello, Council. Thank you for taking the time to listen to all of us. We really appreciate it.
02:31:44.50 Gail Schell I'm also in support of moving forward with this project that I think it's wonderful.
02:31:48.82 Gail Schell You've heard all the professional reasons why it's a good thing. I think the city staff, the planning,
02:31:53.69 Gail Schell I really applaud their efforts. I have to tell you, the one thing that really meant a lot to me was reading a letter from the mayor of Carmel...
02:32:00.43 Gail Schell who spoke about the person developing this project so highly and talked about what they brought to the community in addition to the actual physical property. And that's the kind of people that we want to do business with here in Sausalito. I hope you move forward. Thanks.
02:32:14.72 Gail Schell Thank you. Adrian Brinton.
02:32:16.31 Unknown Thank you.
02:32:23.06 Adrian Brinton Adrian Brinton, thank you for taking my comment. Great to see so much community support for this. It looks like a great project, and I hope we do come back and move forward with it. Also, you know.
02:32:33.99 Adrian Brinton I think in the last year or so, I've been
02:32:35.95 Adrian Brinton getting more involved with the city. I heard that Sausalito is hard to do business with, and I'm learning a lot more about why. And when you see the way our ordinances are written, there are a lot of vague and ambiguous parts that are used in a way to stymie business. We've said hotels are good for Sausalito. There's second floor hotels all over downtown.
02:32:56.71 Adrian Brinton Why on earth would we put that in our general plan? We need to go and clean these things up. If we wanna have business in town, we should make our ordinances support doing business in town. And today they just don't. And I applaud the applicant for coming in and working with the city, even though it's clearly gonna be a difficult process. So I hope we can also look at that and make a difference to make this place easier to do business and we can actually hope to fill more than just this storefront as well. Thank you.
02:33:26.73 Vicki Nichols Thank you. Hank Baker?
02:33:37.38 Hank Baker Good evening. I, too, echo most of the comments, request that you deny the appeal. Your job is to take a look at what is best for the city overall. This project is terrific, terrific use for downtown. I spoke in favor of it at the Historical Commission, one hearing at the Historical Commission, and they overwhelmingly approved it. It's going to be a great addition. And I think that the applicant has demonstrated their professionalism. They've demonstrated their ability to consider the concerns of their neighbors in the revisions that they've made before coming in front of the Planning Commission. Again, I hope that you deny the appeal and let's get a beautiful new building going downtown as soon as possible.
02:34:24.19 Mayor Cox Thank you, Cass Green. If someone wants to speak, please submit a speaker card.
02:34:32.84 Cass Green Hi, I'm Cass Green, one of the owners of the Inn above Tide. You might think as an owner of a hotel downtown that I would be against this project, but I'm totally in support of it.
02:34:42.17 Cass Green I think it'll help to revitalize the downtown
02:34:45.68 Cass Green I echo what other people have said, so I urge you to deny the appeal. I think this is going to be an incredible, incredible asset to downtown Sausalito.
02:34:56.72 Cass Green Thank you.
02:34:58.06 Mickey Nichols Vicki Nichols.
02:35:01.21 Mickey Nichols Two cards now to turn in and a borrowed pen. Thank you.
02:35:04.21 Mickey Nichols I don't want to speak to the miracle.
02:35:06.71 Mickey Nichols of the projects or the appeal, but I'd like to just say something on behalf of the historical preservation
02:35:11.50 Mickey Nichols Commission.
02:35:12.38 Mickey Nichols You've all heard what an important building this is. The applicant engaged with the city early. He checked all of the ordinances, the Secretary of Interior Standards. He has cooperated, and I would just like to thank him again. This is just in terms of historic preservation, and if we had projects like this that people did enough considerate planning, it would be a joy to work with. So not about the applicants or anything, but just how the project
02:35:45.05 Mickey Nichols adhered and really worked with the preservation standards with that building will not lose significance they did a great job thank you
02:35:52.97 Mickey Nichols Thank you.
02:35:54.03 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:35:54.13 Mickey Nichols Thank you.
02:35:54.16 Mayor Cox Do we have any questions?
02:35:54.92 Mickey Nichols ANYTHING?
02:35:54.97 Mayor Cox anyone online
02:35:55.51 Mickey Nichols Thank you.
02:35:55.55 Mayor Cox City Clerk
02:35:56.31 Bette McDougal Yes, we do, Babette McDougall.
02:36:04.15 Babette McDougall Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak.
02:36:06.79 Babette McDougall I want to say that actually all these affirming remarks about
02:36:12.41 Babette McDougall What a lovely treatment with that architecture.
02:36:15.71 Babette McDougall really lovely.
02:36:17.82 Babette McDougall I would like to see it go forward, but I also totally appreciate the door that it opens to a much more
02:36:24.81 Babette McDougall bigger
02:36:25.67 Babette McDougall Question.
02:36:26.70 Babette McDougall that the whole community will suddenly examine with great scrutiny
02:36:30.99 Babette McDougall that rigorous debate and examination that you guys are so fond of speaking of. So I think that's why,
02:36:37.25 Babette McDougall if you
02:36:38.33 Babette McDougall I finally do
02:36:39.41 Babette McDougall a convener.
02:36:40.49 Babette McDougall Proper hearing and everyone does get to weigh in. You would not want to be surprised to know that there would be some that would raise exception.
02:36:47.22 Babette McDougall That doesn't mean it shouldn't go forward.
02:36:49.36 Babette McDougall It just means let's be really wise about it. Let's consider what this appeal represents and let's make sure we work with our neighbors. That's what we want to do, right?
02:36:58.09 Babette McDougall So, I mean, I think we can, if we're going to be the model for the world and how it rebuilds itself,
02:37:03.94 Babette McDougall well, then we need to really show how we step up with our neighbors, don't we?
02:37:08.62 Babette McDougall And other than that, I just think,
02:37:11.25 Babette McDougall We can find a way. Ultimately, there will be the whole question of whether it's wise to have parking along the seashore at all.
02:37:18.25 Babette McDougall I think there are a lot of good ideas on how to resolve problems like that, but ultimately the bottom line is correct.
02:37:24.87 Babette McDougall The downtown is appropriate. That is an appropriate use for the downtown. We just have to find a proactive way.
02:37:30.76 Babette McDougall to make it work for everybody.
02:37:32.75 Babette McDougall And I have the impression that all the parties are keen to do that.
02:37:36.56 Babette McDougall Thank you very much for allowing me this time.
02:37:39.87 Babette McDougall Yeah.
02:37:39.90 Gail Schell City Clerk.
02:37:40.86 Bette McDougal Yeah. Jeffrey Conan.
02:37:48.48 Jeffrey Conan Yes, thank you. I am in support of this project. Please deny the appeal. I think it does a great bank conversion, which is a daunting and difficult task in and of itself. With a proven concept in Carmel, I think we are in such a great
02:38:09.49 Jeffrey Conan situation to both have a private investor invest in Sausalito and Sausalito invest in this space. We really want to tackle the vacancy and blight that empty buildings project not only in
02:38:27.68 Jeffrey Conan the downtown space, but also in Caledonia, I think we need to really
02:38:33.50 Jeffrey Conan take this project and
02:38:36.45 Jeffrey Conan apply the merits of it across the city and really look at our empty buildings and how we can engage
02:38:45.65 Jeffrey Conan with other investment partners to really revitalize the city and bring it back post COVID. Thank you.
02:38:55.96 Bette McDougal No more further public speakers.
02:38:57.55 Mayor Cox Thank you. I will close public comment. I will close the public hearing. We will not take action on this tonight. Again, I sincerely, on behalf of the city and the staff, apologize to the appellant, to their counsel, to the applicant. We will work with you to schedule a new hearing on this. Thank you.
02:39:18.91 Councilmember Sobieski Madam Mayor, could I just ask a question about that?
02:39:21.05 Councilmember Sobieski scheduling question we had a special meeting scheduled that we're not going to use and
02:39:27.75 Mayor Cox I don't think we have time. It doesn't give us adequate notice for the public hearing.
02:39:27.87 Councilmember Sobieski I don't know.
02:39:31.57 Councilmember Sobieski Okay, but I'm just wondering while we have everyone here, whether we could find the time to-
02:39:35.11 Mayor Cox The agenda setting committee will do that.
02:39:36.85 Councilmember Sobieski All right.
02:39:39.50 Mayor Cox And I do want to accommodate the applicant and the appellant since we brought them here tonight and then didn't move forward. So, all right. Thank you, everybody.
02:39:49.84 Unknown And just a closing comment from my perspective. This is the first time I'll be sitting as an appellant, as part of an appellate body. And my understanding is that we at the council level will be hearing this anew or fresh de novo. And I just want to make sure everybody understands what that means. We have to keep our powder dry, not prejudge anything. And we will be hearing all of the arguments from scratch.
02:40:17.18 Councilmember Sobieski The reason I'm asking about the scheduling is I appreciate that the agenda setting committee has a lot in their mind, but there is also just a policy approach about how long we let these things fester. And this is already dragged on. Okay.
02:40:27.12 Mayor Cox Okay, we can discuss this under future agenda items. I'm not going to take this, have this discussion. I'll bring it up again then.
02:40:32.26 Councilmember Sobieski Thanks.
02:40:32.42 Mayor Cox Thank you.
02:40:32.48 Councilmember Sobieski Thank you.
02:40:35.17 Mayor Cox I'm going to pause 30 seconds for the chambers to clear.
02:40:44.97 Mayor Cox unless people want to stay right let's take five minutes i'm going to take a five minute break city clerk
02:40:53.32 Mayor Cox Okay, so we're going to move to business items first business item is five a adopt a resolution to amend the mid year fiscal year 2024 25 operating and capital budget as directed by the city council. And I'd like to say welcome in person Chad Hess our finance director.
02:41:13.03 Chad Hess Good evening, Mayor, Council, members of the public. It's an honor to be here in front of you in person this evening. So tonight's agenda, we are going to adjust or modify our fiscal year 24-25 budget. So to begin, what I want to do is just give a quick overview of where we're at for our current fiscal year. What you're seeing up on your slides here, this should be very familiar. I've done this four or five times now. My goal is to continue to do this monthly as we close out our months. So this will give you a high-level overview of our general fund, the primary operating fund of our local government. This general fund captures about $20 million of the $30 million enterprise-wide budget. So this is a great indicator of where things are trending and going.
02:42:01.30 Chad Hess So first off, I want to mention that the first seven months, revenue is exceeding the prior year. We are trending above prior year by $350,000 or about 3.5%. Some of the key highlights of this budget is the building and planning departments. They are doing very well with charging the appropriate fees for projects that are coming across their plates. So combined, those two departments are exceeding last year's revenue by 270,000. So great job, Director Phipps, of really coordinating a cohesive staff and making sure that they're aware of what are the proper fees to assess all of these applicants that are coming through the door.
02:42:43.48 Chad Hess Again, interest earnings are up over last year. Again, we are going to be cautious on that with the feds tapering down their rates. But overall, year to date, we've collected about $10 million of general fund revenue, and we will collect the second half for the last five months of the year. Again, that property tax settlement coming in April will be a large portion of that uncollected revenues.
02:43:05.79 Chad Hess On the expenditure side, we are trending above last year, as expected. A couple of those primary changes, should be no surprise, insurance is still that large outlier when it comes to prior costs year over year. Our UIL payment is slightly higher in the general fund, but overall salaries are trending where they need to be. Salaries over last year are up about $387,000, which is expected with our step increases in cost of living adjustments that were taking place by our MOUs. Next side, please.
02:43:37.85 Chad Hess Here is just a visual representation of this year's activity. Again, if you look at the green line, the green line is this year's fiscal year 2425. You can see that is above the blue line, which represents last year. And again, that red dotted line is a linear representation of our budget. Again, our budget.
02:43:57.30 Chad Hess for revenues isn't quite linear, but you can see that inflection point will be coming up right around April when we can collect those property tax settlements that our actuals should exceed that budget line. Next slide, please. This slide here is going to look at your general fund wages. General fund wages are the primary expense of the general fund. It accounts for the majority of those expenses. Looking here, you can see the top graph looks month by month, and you can see how wages have changed over the last three fiscal years. And then I think the more important graph down below, you can see the cumulative wages. That green line is trending right in line with budget. That is a perfect representation. Wages are more of a linear representation or a linear expenditure. Every two weeks, we make payments to our staff that perform their services for the city. You can see we're trying to get on a budget, slightly above last year as expected, based on those cost of living adjustments. But right in line with budget. I really have no concerns right now with our labor budget seven months in. So overall, great controlling of expenses there from our departments.
02:45:05.45 Chad Hess Next slide, please. We're going to look at the total expenditures. Here you can see we are above budget as it stands now, but again, that is due to those nonlinear expenditures. If you look at the top graph, kind of a broken record, July is really our most expensive month in terms of cash out the door, simply due to the UAL payments that we prepay to take advantage of the 3.5% savings savings. And then our insurance premiums to prism are due in July as well. You can see that inflection point where our expenditures will come in line with budget is is forward coming. But again, I'm not concerned about our current status and where things are trending. We do monitor this every month. And again, I hope to bring this forward to council every month so you guys can stay current and informed on the status of the general fund. Next slide, please.
02:45:54.00 Chad Hess Here we are going to look at MLK rentals. The MLK is basically an investment fund for the city. We invested in this property years ago as we bought it from the school district, and we've been running it as a rental enterprise ever since. You can see here that our revenues are right in line with where they have been in prior years, right in line with budget. The expenditures are up a little bit due to some facility repairs and maintenance that we've performed at that facility. And we will be amending the budget to account for that later in this presentation. Next slide, please.
02:46:27.36 Chad Hess This slide talks about the parking fund. And again, I do want to bring forward, if we look at January, they are trending slightly below last year or below last year. I'm curious as to why last year's January was as high as it was. I haven't had a chance to dig too deep into that. But again, we are trending above last year. That positive growth is starting to taper back as we've lost some of that ground over the last couple of months. But we will continue to monitor this and keep the council posted and informed as the year continues on.
02:47:01.77 Chad Hess Overall revenues are up about 97,000, looking at a year over year comparison. And the expenses are up. Again, that's due to the recording of that UAL payment that we're gonna actually move back to the general fund and then adjust the transfers accordingly like we spoke about last time we discussed the budget.
02:47:18.29 Chad Hess Next slide, please.
02:47:20.54 Chad Hess So now, we're gonna get into more of our mid-year budget amendment. A lot of these adjustments we've already talked about, so I'm not gonna go super deep into it, just to be brief here.
02:47:30.66 Chad Hess Here on this slide, some of those general fund revenues, again, are very stable. Nothing is alarming at this point. We are adjusting, not adjusting, we are undergoing a comprehensive fee study. We've got a couple departments that are still working on theirs, but we hope to bring that forward to council late March for review and adoption. That's going to help our general fund. We're going to start getting more of a cost recovery when it comes to those fees for services that we charge, primarily building, planning, DPW, and then also police and parks and rec have revenue sources that should be operated on a more cost recovery basis. So as we go through that, we will see positive increases in revenues for those transactions that are more of an exchange-like, where somebody comes in and requests a service from the city, we should be charging an appropriate amount for that.
02:48:23.70 Chad Hess Looking at the expense side, again, primarily driven by
02:48:29.73 Chad Hess I'm sorry. Yeah. So primarily driving by, you know, recording the pension UIL payment in the general fund instead of the parking. So that accounts for about two hundred thousand of that increase. Again, I discussed the air in my in my budget regarding the engineering department. I had an unfunded position that snuck in there on me. That was one of our project managers from last year. And then we had some additional professional services that were required for an annual speed survey, not an annual, I think it's every five years that that's required. And then to answer Council Member Hoffman's question regarding the P bid included in the budget that is captured in the general fund budget as well.
02:49:06.73 Chad Hess You know, again, the care plan is in effect. We are slowly working through that, primarily on the expense side right now, but we are having really good conversations in some of our departments on the revenue side on what we can do to increase revenues. But again, right now, we're really focused on the expenses, evaluating things, making sure we know what we're paying for, and trimming things as we can.
02:49:31.52 Chad Hess Next slide, please.
02:49:34.64 Chad Hess Some of the challenges facing the general fund, you know, a lot of uncertainty remains around insurance. You know, looking out, I anticipate that we're gonna have higher insurance costs coming up in our next fiscal year. It's still a really tough market. There was a letter that came out from the PRISM CEO today talking about the property market. Is seeing a little bit of softening, so I think rates will be stable in the property market next year, but I suspect general liability and workers comp will probably be held
02:50:04.07 Chad Hess higher than, than we would like.
02:50:06.49 Chad Hess Thank you.
02:50:06.72 Chad Hess And I do envision that we're probably going to have a significant SIR next year as well. But we're going to continue to evaluate with PRISM and Allegiant, I'm sorry, Alliance, to really take a hard look at our premiums and our SIR and try to drive those down to a more affordable level for the city.
02:50:25.66 Chad Hess Um, deferred maintenance on our buildings, road, sidewalks, stairs, storm drains, uh, will continue to challenge the budget. Uh, we have a lot of deferred maintenance within the city that we need to start addressing. That facilities assessment is going to be coming forward in the very near future. Uh, I believe a report release date in March. So that will give us a lot more clarity on what do we need to set aside and what are some of those funding requirements in
02:50:48.81 Chad Hess you know, the general fund for the city hall, for the police department, but then also our enterprise funds. When we start looking at old Bank of America, we look at old city hall as well as the MLK. So that's going to give us a lot more clarity on what do we need to set aside or having those funds to continue to invest in those facilities so they can continue to provide revenues and profits for the city to reinvest or subsidize the general fund for.
02:51:14.58 Chad Hess Um,
02:51:15.62 Chad Hess Next slide, please.
02:51:17.19 Chad Hess This slide I did update, so I wanted to redline it. I tried to increase a little bit of transparency due to a question at the last time. They wanted more clarity on the general fund revenues, which are external revenues versus the internal transfers. So I added the internal transfers as a carve out, but my total didn't update. So this is a different slide than what's out on the public agenda. I apologize for that, but I will give this to Walford to update the online as well.
02:51:45.22 Chad Hess So our current budget, as it stands, we had that $1.8 million deficit. I have diligently worked with our departments and looked at revenues and expenses until I was blue in the face, and I've got this down to $91,000, still in the deficit. You know, I didn't want to just plug it or balance it just for the sake of that. I really wanted to try to give an accurate reflection where we're at. I still believe that there are going to be additional savings to help us effectively manage this budget. But I didn't think it would do us justice just to pick an account to plug it. I didn't feel that was right. So I left it where it was. Looking at even my department, I know there is going to be small pockets of savings that are going to come out.
02:52:26.45 Chad Hess Over time, those are going to add up. So I am confident we're going to be able to balance this thing for this year. I'm talking with some departments next year. We're going to come forward with with a larger package. We have some needs in some of our departments for vehicles.
02:52:40.12 Chad Hess we're going to have to spend some of our accumulated fund balance in, I believe, next year to really start to address some of those deferred maintenance items on our vehicles, but also our facilities. So that's where we are at today. The total increase in revenue is about 1.4. A large portion of that is the ERAF, the excess rebate that we discussed before. Again, that revenue is something that we have to monitor. It's been given for the last many, many years, but again, that could be a target of the state in future legislative season, so we do need to be cautious. Internal transfers are increasing slightly. I have decreased the transfer in the MLK and slightly increased it from the parking. One of the reasons for that is, with that facilities assessment forthcoming, I know that that MLK fund is going to need some additional resources to start making some of those improvements. So I wanted to start to taper that down. And I believe that we are going to continue to invest in that property, but I think the general fund support will be limited in the near future. With that being said, our COP debt will expire 2031. That is a level payment. There was a public comment that was posted earlier today that said that the COP bonds or the COP debt service payments is increasing. That is untrue. It was designed as a very level payment. That annual debt service payment is around $620,000. It varies by about $3,000 each year just because of the interest and the principal. But again, that is a more, it's a very level payment, $620,000 per year. As that rolls off, it'll free up some capacity in that fund, but I do envision that that fund's ability to transfer to the general fund will be limited in the coming years. With that being said, let's move forward. The next slide will give a more general understanding or more visual of where are those transfers coming from. So if you look, the rows represent the transfer from, what is the fund giving the dollars, and the columns represent the receiving fund. You can see the largest beneficiary of transfers is the general fund of about 2.9 million.
02:54:42.39 Chad Hess 1.8 of that comes from the parking fund, 500,000 from the MLK, which was reduced by 200,000. Old City Hall Fund, about 1.5. That is going to cause a slight reduction in fund balance in that fund, but there is ample cash in that fund, and we have been investing in that fund with replacement of the roof, with the exterior backside doors, and then the new HVAC system, which was included in the Climatec agreement. And then $200,000 from the Thailand's to help with some of the administrative costs that take place from that fund. And then you can see in that second column, that's our capital projects funding. We got some dollars from Measure L moving over to the Capital Project Fund, Measure A, Measure AA, and then our construction impact fee. We're going to use some of those resources. So that's part of our transfers. And then we have a couple debt service, just one debt service transfer from the Tidelands to the debt service fund. That debt expires next fiscal year. So that'll free up about 72,000 in the Tidelands fund and the go forward basis to deploy as the city chooses to. Next slide, please.
02:55:47.73 Chad Hess This slide here is a little busy. I would definitely recommend looking at the attachment. Again, here on this, I tried to continue to follow that grouping that we see on our treasurer's report. So we have kind of the operating funds. We have our trust funds when we start looking at our resources for pensions, self-insurance, and then the restricted use like CO-level rise grant, the million dollars that we got from the state, the tidelands, et cetera. Do want to focus on the operations. So here you can see the first column is the cash balances, audited cash balances. Where were we at the beginning of the year in terms of cash? The second column is audited fund balance. And you can see that there is a slight difference between fund balance and cash. So I did want to bring that to your attention. You know, cash to me is king. What we have in cash is really what we can use to deploy.
02:56:38.68 Chad Hess Here you can see projected revenues, expenses, those transfers, again, are outlined here, and then that projected change in fund balance. When we look at our operating funds, that first subtotal, you can see we have deficit spend of about $158,000 across all of those funds. But when we look at that total cash balance of about $14 million, I'm not concerned about that slight consumption of resources. And again, a large portion of that is in the general fund. And I feel that we will be able to budget that slight consumption of resources. And again, a large portion of that is in the general fund. And I feel that we will be able to budget that or close that gap.
02:57:09.44 Chad Hess Um,
02:57:10.61 Chad Hess A couple other highlights. Our self-insurance reserve, that is starting to accumulate a decent cash balance. At the beginning of the year, we had about $781,000. Our general liability was underfunded, but as of now, as of December 31st, it has $700,000 of that original $2 million that was put into that fund. The rest was sent towards PRISM for premiums and then defending some small claims that have come in over the last seven months. Our workers' compensation fund is well-funded. That's got over a million dollars in it. We may consider doing a reallocation between the workers' comp and the self-general liability fund in the future, but at this point, I'm not recommending any changes there.
02:57:55.97 Chad Hess Next, if we go down to the next slide, you'll see our infrastructure and improvements. Total cash balance at the beginning of the year was 5.3. Cash balance as of December 31st was 5.0 million.
02:58:09.99 Chad Hess But again, we are trending really well when it comes to Measure L collections. Measure L collections are projected to be about 2.9 million this year.
02:58:18.85 Chad Hess Cash balance as of December 31st was 3.8 million, which is an increase of the 3 million in there at the beginning of the fiscal year. That fund is, again, continuing to accumulate resources. We have a discussion coming up for the Finance Committee later on and potentially borrowing against some of those dollars to do a big bang or a big road project in the near future. But again, at the current point, we have 3.8 available in that fund.
02:58:47.40 Chad Hess Next on the list is debt service funds. Those are the second one, the debt service fund for the Tidelands, that's really just a zero balance fund. We transfer dollars from the Tidelands fund to this fund, and then we make our payment to the state. The other 2006 A and B bond, I do want to again remind the council and the public that that is a separate levy. That does not impact our general fund. So as those B bonds start to become due and those payments start to increase, that is the debt that has increasing payments. That is a separate levy. So it's not going to stress the general fund, but it is going to impact our community. Those individuals paying the taxes are going to see that line item on their property tax statement increase to defies those capital appreciation bonds. So that is something just to be aware of from a personal standpoint as ratepayers or taxpayers.
02:59:44.76 Chad Hess That that that line item is going to increase to pay for those bonds. And then the last item is the sewer fund. Again, we are looking to use some of our sewer fund resources as we continue to rebuild and invest in that that infrastructure. But again, we had, you know, five point three million at the beginning of the fiscal year. We're at four point nine.
03:00:06.66 Chad Hess as of 1231. And we still have our second half of property tax collections coming into that fund later in April. So overall, the city is looking very good. From my perspective, we have some challenges coming up, but I think we are well positioned to manage them considering the resources that we have available on our books. So with that, I will pause and open it up to questions and discussion.
03:00:31.62 Mayor Cox Thank you, Chad. I'm actually going to start off with some questions.
03:00:34.30 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:00:34.37 Chad Hess possible.
03:00:34.54 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:00:34.59 Chad Hess Thank you.
03:00:34.61 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:00:34.66 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:00:35.13 Mayor Cox And my questions mainly pertain to the transfers. So...
03:00:40.30 Mayor Cox AND
03:00:41.59 Mayor Cox The first is Tidelands. We're transferring 200,000
03:00:45.66 Mayor Cox Um,
03:00:46.69 Mayor Cox from tidelands to the general fund? Yeah. That doesn't seem like an appropriate administrative cost.
03:00:51.79 Chad Hess That's been that way for a number of years, and it's probably something we should reevaluate. Yeah, I would welcome that, or I think that is something that we do need to look at. Down the road, I think a cost allocation plan would be appropriate. Right now, a lot of our administrative costs are just reported as general government. So when I think finance and IT, those are really support services that benefit all of the departments. And right now, those costs are just accumulated general government. But I think a cost allocation and really looking at those costs would help us better understand what is an appropriate transfer from Thailand's over to the general fund, but then also look at what are those general government costs that should be pushed out towards those departments. They are being considered when we look at our cost recovery or fee study, but from financial reporting, I think it would be better to look at that in the near future.
03:01:43.17 Mayor Cox I mean, if you treat each of our funds the same way you would be transferring
03:01:49.40 Mayor Cox $2 million.
03:01:51.14 Mayor Cox into the general fund if you assume that every fund costs us $200,000 to administer. That just doesn't seem right to me. I don't understand how the Tidelands Fund costs us $200,000 to administer given how infrequently we actually use it.
03:01:55.93 Jeffrey Conan Yeah.
03:02:07.18 Unknown Thank you.
03:02:07.69 Chad Hess Yeah, so that is something we certainly can evaluate. If that's your direction, I can engage, look at for a cost allocation or some more additional justification or background on that.
03:02:19.15 Mayor Cox Yeah, I think the reason for my questions is that
03:02:19.33 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:02:23.67 Mayor Cox Like you, I don't want to balance our budget through fund transfers unless the fund transfers are justified.
03:02:31.65 Mayor Cox I agree. And so that brings me to the parking fund. We're transferring 1.85 million.
03:02:32.24 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:02:37.86 Mayor Cox but we know we need to repave lot one.
03:02:41.52 Mayor Cox Back in 2018, when I worked with
03:02:44.95 Mayor Cox My dear...
03:02:46.35 Mayor Cox colleague who passed away, Bill Werner,
03:02:48.97 Mayor Cox He estimated the cost of simply repaving and restriping lot one doing it properly at $2.5 million.
03:02:56.65 Mayor Cox And so
03:02:57.74 Mayor Cox And every meeting we hear Peter Van Meter talk about now that we've done all this work on the ferry landing, the one thing we haven't done is the thing that really needed to be done, which is repave lot one. And so I question the appropriateness of transferring monies from the parking fund into the general fund when we really need those monies.
03:03:15.95 Vicki Nichols Wait.
03:03:18.21 Mayor Cox to
03:03:19.90 Mayor Cox So I would like to know from you what will be left
03:03:24.05 Mayor Cox because we're not going to repave it this fiscal year. We would repave it next fiscal year. So I'd be interested to know from you what will be left.
03:03:31.81 Mayor Cox after this transfer for us to...
03:03:35.36 Chad Hess Thank you.
03:03:35.44 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:03:35.46 Chad Hess So,
03:03:35.80 Mayor Cox Not just what's there now, but what will come in in revenues, anticipated revenues from parking, some of which we know.
03:03:35.98 Chad Hess If we...
03:03:42.38 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:03:42.70 Jeffrey Conan So,
03:03:44.18 Mayor Cox will go down due to this construction, but some of which will recover through parking spaces at the Maddens and through moving buses elsewhere and parking across from lot two. So I'd like, not necessarily tonight, but I'd like to hear from you
03:03:53.26 Jeffrey Conan elsewhere.
03:04:02.83 Mayor Cox What
03:04:04.09 Mayor Cox I'm not sure.
03:04:04.63 Mayor Cox whether we will have 2.5 million in our parking fund next year that we can spend on lot one, if we should so choose.
03:04:12.08 Chad Hess Yep, so if we look at the beginning of the fiscal year, we had just over,
03:04:16.41 Chad Hess We just had over 2 million in that fund, and I am projecting an increase in available resources by about 160. So I'm not taking all of the profits, but I'm taking a large portion of that. And that fund, I believe, is going to outperform my budget. I'm budgeting very conservatively. But, yeah, I think we need to take a more holistic approach on that parking fund to make sure that we have adequate parking surfaces, but also our parking technology is in need of investment.
03:04:43.28 Chad Hess You know, I think as we continue to move forward, I think maybe one policy or one thought that we could look at is, you know, if we if we end the year with a surplus in our general fund, we may want to start scaling back some of these transfers to only transfer what would be needed.
03:04:59.09 Mayor Cox But what I'm saying is that we should not even transfer to make a balanced budget if it's not appropriate to transfer given known obligations coming along. Sure.
03:05:10.70 Mayor Cox I don't want to have an unassigned fund balance or a surplus in the general fund at the expense of our enterprise funds that we need to make
03:05:21.45 Mayor Cox to address deferred maintenance.
03:05:23.93 Chad Hess Understood. Yeah. So that that's certainly something we should look at in the next fiscal year's budget and continue that dialogue.
03:05:31.10 Mayor Cox With respect to the sewer fund, you have a transfer of $225,000. You know that we are...
03:05:37.95 Mayor Cox negotiating a
03:05:41.89 Mayor Cox consolidation of services, and that it will be important that we retain a certain balance in order to make that transfer financially viable. So I want to be sure
03:05:51.66 Mayor Cox that you're in
03:05:52.85 Mayor Cox sync with the city manager with respect to his negotiations with, um,
03:05:58.22 Mayor Cox Saucyde Marin City Sanitary District in terms of maintaining
03:06:02.12 Mayor Cox the balance that we need to make that
03:06:05.98 Chad Hess that a successful trend
03:06:06.86 Mayor Cox a successful transfer, and we're hoping to do that this fiscal year.
03:06:10.27 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:06:10.47 Mayor Cox you
03:06:10.57 Chad Hess Yes. So that that again is one of those legacy transfers that have been out there for a number of years. The the.
03:06:17.63 Chad Hess you know, the concept or the thought around it is none of the administrative salaries for
03:06:23.35 Chad Hess Mr. City Manager Zapata myself, a small portion of Kevin's are us signed record. McGowan's are assigned to the sewer fund, but there are a lot of administrative costs that aren't directly assigned. Information technologies would be a big one. The finance component. So there is, you know, those administrative burdens. But I yeah, that cost allocation study would be helpful in that. But again, that that is going to be eliminated upon the transfer of the sewer fund.
03:06:51.34 Chad Hess But some of those administrative costs, I would believe, would also be reduced.
03:06:55.49 Mayor Cox Okay, and then the other funds that are being transferred are going into the...
03:07:04.28 Mayor Cox Capital Projects Fund. And so that those, like Measure L, we promise to only use that in a particular way. But by transferring it to the Capital Projects Fund, we're still keeping that promise to our voters. Is that right?
03:07:16.08 Chad Hess We certainly are. Yeah. So in the past, we've always receded the measure O in the general fund, and then we would make a transfer over. The way it's set up now is I created a segregated fund from all measure L dollars, and it's still part of the general fund. But if we look at our audit report, there's what's called a combining schedule, where it shows the detail of the operating fund, the measure L fund, and the pension trust fund, which represents the general fund in total. So yes, with that transfer, it's being assigned or allocated to very specific projects that meet that pledge to our community to invest those dollars in infrastructure. Yes, ma'am.
03:07:57.34 Mayor Cox Okay, and then finally, the...
03:08:00.23 Mayor Cox MLK fund, thank you for reducing the transfer. I still, you know, we're going to have the report from Bureau Veritas within the next 30 days. So I would question whether we should make this transfer now or better understand what the deferred maintenance, what the immediate...
03:08:18.52 Mayor Cox need in terms of deferred maintenance that we need to address this year or next year and make that transfer based upon more full knowledge. Would you agree that would be prudent?
03:08:29.15 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:08:30.50 Chad Hess Yeah, I think we certainly should reevaluate when that comes out. I know that there's gonna be costs that are going to be needed in that campus. I just know it.
03:08:42.14 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:08:42.26 Mayor Cox So then to wrap it up, what is your timing on needing to make these mid-year budget adjustments? I mean, could we...
03:08:52.99 Mayor Cox postpone some of these adjustments until we have, because we're getting a whole lot of information coming in in the next, yeah, 30 days.
03:09:00.54 Chad Hess So there's no requirement that we do it today. There's no requirement that we amend our budget at all. But yeah, if that is council's direction, we can certainly postpone that adoption of our resolution tonight and wait until that report from Baro Veritas is available. And then we can incorporate some of those findings or that information into a updated mid-year.
03:09:20.96 Mayor Cox I'll wait to hear from my fellow council members regarding how they feel about that. But thank you for answering my question. Great questions. Thank you. Questions.
03:09:25.70 Chad Hess Great questions, thank you.
03:09:31.81 Unknown some of these funds such as measure arrow are, uh,
03:09:35.77 Unknown essentially restricted.
03:09:37.51 Chad Hess So Measure L was a general tax. So it was a 50% plus one. It wasn't a special. So it's technically general revenues, and it's not restricted, but we've made a pledge to our constituents that we would invest those dollars into infrastructure, buildings, roads, sidewalks, stairs, et cetera.
03:09:57.35 Unknown So whether it's legally restricted, it is effectively restricted by counsel.
03:10:02.54 Chad Hess Internally, yes. It's not restricted by law.
03:10:05.61 Unknown And with respect to other funds that are separately identified apart from the pure general fund, such as a parking fund?
03:10:13.18 Unknown Thank you.
03:10:13.22 Chad Hess Mm-hmm.
03:10:13.93 Unknown Those aren't officially restricted.
03:10:16.31 Chad Hess those are unrestricted dollars as well. Yeah, the city could deploy those in any manner that they choose.
03:10:22.82 Unknown And the mayor suggested that if there are parking lot needs for infrastructure improvement, that whatever the balance is available to us in terms of available funds to spend, that could be a choice.
03:10:39.56 Mayor Cox Yeah, I'm proposing we treat it as a cost center, even though we're not required to within our general fund. This is a system that we set up
03:10:49.40 Mayor Cox over 10 years ago in terms of segregating certain funds so that we understand what is the MLK, what revenue are we getting from MLK and what's it costing us? What revenue are we getting from the old City Hall, Gene Hiller building? What's it costing us? And if there's...
03:10:53.18 Unknown I'm certain.
03:11:04.03 Unknown And if there's a surplus, sorry to interrupt, but if there's a surplus, it would be up to the council to decide how to use that surplus.
03:11:10.88 Mayor Cox And we could serve if there's a surplus, if there's a true surplus in any, uh, uh,
03:11:16.65 Mayor Cox Fund.
03:11:17.29 Mayor Cox operating center, cost center,
03:11:19.40 Mayor Cox then we can just transfer that to the general fund.
03:11:22.69 Mayor Cox positing hypothetically is that we consider delaying those transfers until we really know whether there's a true
03:11:31.45 Mayor Cox surplus in those funds, given what we know are the needs in the next fiscal year.
03:11:38.91 Unknown Okay, so there's definitely cash on hand, and the question is how is it allocated, how is it accounted for, and what we do with it.
03:11:47.33 Unknown at the end of the day.
03:11:48.11 Mayor Cox So the finance director would like us to have a balanced general fund budget.
03:11:54.70 Unknown I think we all would.
03:11:55.61 Mayor Cox Yeah. And
03:11:57.42 Mayor Cox He is suggesting that we...
03:12:00.51 Mayor Cox and this is really part of discussion, but he's suggesting that we make certain transfers
03:12:06.40 Mayor Cox cost centers that we have traditionally maintained
03:12:10.21 Mayor Cox in an effort to balance the general fund balance.
03:12:13.17 Mayor Cox And I'm saying,
03:12:16.27 Unknown Okay.
03:12:16.51 Mayor Cox I consider.
03:12:16.83 Babette McDougall Thank you.
03:12:17.74 Mayor Cox whether that is appropriate, because we already have a significant unassigned fund balance in the general fund. And so I prefer to be completely transparent in what MLK is costing us, in what parking is costing us. And so when we simply transfer all that into the general fund, we're not as effectively tracking those as separate cost centers, which is, again, a process adopted by the council years ago. We are not required to follow that process, but I think it makes it,
03:12:47.94 Mayor Cox more clear for us as decision makers about how to allocate dollars.
03:12:53.78 Unknown Okay, so apart from we don't have to do anything tonight, we're getting a mid-year report as to where all these things are.
03:13:00.97 Unknown You're not asking us necessarily...
03:13:02.29 Chad Hess Apparently.
03:13:02.83 Chad Hess There is a recommended motion to adopt a resolution to amend the budget. Okay. But you certainly, as a governing body, could delay that and recommend some adjustments or wait until that Bureau Veritas report is available.
03:13:15.03 Chad Hess and then incorporate those needs into our mid-year adjustment and bring it back to the body if so desired.
03:13:22.30 Unknown And apart from what you're looking at now, there is also available funding in addition to the annual budget.
03:13:30.67 Chad Hess Yeah, so the fund balance, the residual surpluses of the government from the beginning of time, you know, we've built up revenues or accumulated surpluses over the years. You know, we had at the end of last fiscal year, it was close to $35 million in cash on hand, and that has accumulated over the years. You know, the city of Sausalito, in order to get that cash on hand, has run surpluses for a number of years to accumulate those resources.
03:14:01.20 Mayor Cox And the city manager has recommended, and we'll hear this at a future
03:14:05.47 Mayor Cox uh,
03:14:06.01 Mayor Cox on a future agenda item has recommended
03:14:08.83 Mayor Cox but the Finance Committee will hear this first, that we leverage some of that unassigned fund balance to
03:14:15.98 Mayor Cox undertake a borrowing to address today the most urgent infrastructure needs, raise our road index, fix our stairways that are critical to, and these are priorities we established at our strategic planning session. Understood. And so-
03:14:34.31 Mayor Cox That's, again, until we have all this information and can figure out how best
03:14:39.22 Mayor Cox to spend our monies, which right now are segregated into cost centers, I'm suggesting we take a breath.
03:14:48.15 City Manager Mayor, if I can, I always hear numbers. And the number I heard was $35 million. And it needs to be balanced with what that $35 million can do.
03:15:02.00 City Manager And you can't spend $5 million of sewer money on general fund purposes. You can't spend certain monies from grants on other general fund purposes. So that's one factor that I think needs to be crystal clear to the community. The second one is if you had $35 million, you'd put that up against the $100 million in deferred maintenance we have. So when the community here is $35 million or anybody in the public that's interested of the public, here's $35 million that we've accumulated. We've also accumulated a significant backlog of deferred maintenance. And so how to get to that is going to be the challenge. And so all the studies that you've talked about doing and we're doing, they will help facilitate that and inform that. But, again, let me be clear. We know that we have money in the bank, but we also know that we have a larger ticket that is involved with our streets, our roads, our stairs, our buildings, our sidewalks, et cetera.
03:16:02.19 Mayor Cox Did you have other questions, Vice Mayor? I'm thinking.
03:16:05.15 Mayor Cox Okay. I mean, we have plenty of time to address this. I'm happy to speak with you offline, or I recommend you talk to Ray Withey, who really is a great historian on some of this.
03:16:14.23 Unknown Thank you.
03:16:15.90 Unknown Understood. I just I don't want to have things extend or continue to the point where we don't take action on our urgent needs, which I think we recognize we have and we.
03:16:28.77 Unknown me personally would like to see us get on with identifying some of those priorities it may well be parking lot number one or such but and we don't have unlimited funds we have limited funds and to the extent we're going to defer decision now.
03:16:48.25 Unknown to
03:16:49.76 Unknown in effect not respond to the recommendation or not approve the recommendation that's before us now, I think we are putting off
03:16:58.35 Unknown further when what we should be doing, I think, is identifying what those needs are and then identifying what funds are available.
03:17:06.52 Unknown to spend them. I think the practice of moving from fund to fund, I understand historically, has been done. In other words, these haven't been pure enterprise funds where the money's locked up forever and ever for parking, for example.
03:17:19.87 Jeffrey Conan I'm not sure.
03:17:19.92 Unknown Right.
03:17:20.07 Jeffrey Conan Thank you.
03:17:22.45 Unknown So I'm reluctant to not approve the recommendation.
03:17:27.51 Mayor Cox So again, this is questions, not discussion yet.
03:17:30.47 Unknown Okay, I'm sorry, but I thought we were getting into that also.
03:17:32.98 Mayor Cox .
03:17:33.55 Mayor Cox If you have...
03:17:33.88 Unknown Thank you.
03:17:33.89 Mayor Cox I'm getting into that.
03:17:35.21 Mayor Cox Yeah, so I was trying to answer your questions by explaining. But in terms of what you recommend doing going forward,
03:17:42.63 Babette McDougall Thank you.
03:17:43.26 Mayor Cox I still have to take questions from
03:17:45.26 Mayor Cox Council members in here public comment before we can make a decision about how we'd like to move forward
03:17:49.38 Unknown I understand. I'm just responding to your suggestion that we not.
03:17:53.97 Mayor Cox I only said I was asking the questions. I'm not. Anyway.
03:17:58.68 Mayor Cox I mean,
03:17:59.03 Unknown Thank you.
03:17:59.74 Unknown Okay.
03:18:00.10 Mayor Cox You'll have your three minutes. We'll each have our three minutes to comment. Yes, Councilmember Hoffman.
03:18:10.44 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:18:10.46 Councilmember Hoffman Sorry, this is a, I think, a relevant follow-up question with regard to
03:18:11.05 Mayor Cox This is a.
03:18:16.06 Councilmember Hoffman the facilities assessment from Veritas, and the reason that we're waiting for it, and the reason why it's relevant to these funds, and that's because it will tell us, hopefully, the scope of the deferred maintenance on
03:18:29.58 Councilmember Hoffman properties that are specific to these funds.
03:18:32.74 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
03:18:32.75 Unknown Yes.
03:18:32.77 Councilmember Hoffman Yes. And the idea is that the revenue from these funds, the reason they're segregated is because the maintenance cost is supposed to come out of these funds. And that's the whole purpose why they're set up this way. That's correct. Yeah. And so that's why it's relevant.
03:18:43.94 Chad Hess That's correct.
03:18:46.93 Councilmember Hoffman And that's why they were set up this way to help us keep a more traditional good business practice for the operating expenses for these hard assets that we have. Correct? Yes. Okay.
03:19:01.35 Councilmember Hoffman And so, and we expect to have this within the next 30 days. That's right.
03:19:07.68 Chad Hess That's that's my understanding. Yeah.
03:19:09.61 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah. Well, let me just say, we've been hearing this for the, about the next, the last year.
03:19:14.06 Councilmember Hoffman So the agenda can be.
03:19:14.64 Mayor Cox The agenda committee has put it on the agenda already.
03:19:16.93 Councilmember Hoffman Okay. So we will have it. Yeah. Excellent.
03:19:17.77 Mayor Cox So we will have it.
03:19:19.73 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, well that's a step in the right direction.
03:19:22.38 Chad Hess Yeah, the March timeframe, I don't think it's changed for a while.
03:19:25.22 Councilmember Hoffman Okay.
03:19:25.39 Chad Hess It took us a while the RFP issued, but it's progressing.
03:19:28.25 Councilmember Hoffman It's pretty.
03:19:29.38 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, well, then we could have a, for this issue, I mean, we could have that on the same agenda. That would be nice. Okay, that would give us some certainty, certainly.
03:19:37.97 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, thank you. There was a public comment letter that was sent in, and I did see your responses, so thank you so much for that.
03:19:47.64 Councilmember Hoffman I don't have any follow-up questions on that, but I do thank you for giving me those responses. I might later, but I don't have any. Thank you. Okay. I don't have any follow-up questions based on your questions I've been asked. Thank you.
03:19:54.09 Sunshine Thank you.
03:20:01.99 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
03:20:02.00 Unknown Yes, thank you.
03:20:03.17 Unknown Thanks, Director Haas. Always lovely to hear from you. Appreciate seeing you in person. Thank you for being with us. So I particularly appreciated that you proactively address the general fund challenges as a conversation here, because that's going to be
03:20:07.08 Unknown Thank you.
03:20:16.79 Unknown potentially where we see the most risk or shift in what our budget looks like.
03:20:20.84 Unknown And I'd just like to
03:20:22.41 Unknown understand. I mean, you acknowledge here on the slide that the UAL payment will be roughly 190 in
03:20:28.40 Unknown 25, 26.
03:20:30.18 Unknown before we see the relief, that's all been put into your budgeting plan.
03:20:34.10 Chad Hess Yeah, yeah. So next year, fiscal year 26, our UAL payment will be higher than the 25 payment by 190. That's known. The fiscal year 27 UAL payment is not known at this point. CalPERS releases those reports mid-August. So mid-August, we'll know how much of a savings our fiscal year 27 UAL payment will yield due to CalPERS' better-than-expected rate of return.
03:21:01.28 Chad Hess in fiscal year 24.
03:21:02.94 Unknown which is expected to be good. So that's positive for us. But there are other things on here like,
03:21:07.76 Unknown the insurance cost uncertainty and deferred maintenance uncertainty. And I guess I just would like to hear you revisit a little bit our reserves policy that we voted on together and where we're at in the event that something does show up that would significantly impact our budgeting purview for
03:21:24.27 Chad Hess Yeah. So last year we did adopt a updated reserve policy. Our previous reserve was composed of two components, a budget stabilization and an emergency shortfall. Combined, that was at 15% of the prior year's general fund expenditures. The council approved a resolution, I don't think it was a resolution, but directed staff to adjust that policy and increased our reserves to 25% of the prior year's general fund operating expenditures. And that was simply a reclassification between unassigned fund balance and assigned fund balance.
03:22:01.29 Unknown But so let's say our infrastructure assessment comes back that we've all been waiting for just to follow on, and it is five times the anticipated costs that we would need to make some of those improvements. Would that be a time when you would consider dipping into
03:22:14.83 Unknown the reserve? Is that a situation where we have a planning for that kind of budgeting horizon?
03:22:19.58 Chad Hess Yeah, I don't think that we would necessarily want to tap into the reserves for facilities improvements. I think we have resources in excess of reserves that I think would be prime for expense on some of those. But I wouldn't tap into our reserves to fix...
03:22:37.96 Chad Hess the MLK campus unless it's a dire emergency.
03:22:40.81 Unknown So we shouldn't need to.
03:22:42.00 Chad Hess Yeah, I wouldn't. You know, those improvements are going to take time. They're not going to recommend that we replace every system or every component in these buildings in year one or two. I mean, these things are going to be multi-multi-year plans. I guess what's going to be?
03:22:42.06 Unknown Yeah.
03:22:53.72 Unknown I guess what I'm trying to get at is it appears, and please let me know if I'm wrong, that you have sufficiently planned for the general fund challenges in your budgeting. Yeah.
03:23:03.34 Chad Hess Yeah, the UAL payment is already kind of baked in. We can find another $190,000 for next year, and then we'll find some relief. You know, there are a lot of challenges, but we will overcome. We'll find creative ways to manage our expenses. We'll increase our revenues from this fee study.
03:23:20.76 Chad Hess You know, we are also looking at impact fees is another revenue source that we're exploring with our with Wilden, one of our consultants who's doing the fee studies. So those are some other ways that we can help fund some of these improvements that need to be made.
03:23:33.26 Unknown Thanks, Director Hess.
03:23:36.55 Chad Hess Thank you.
03:23:36.57 Councilmember Sobieski Thanks, Mayor.
03:23:39.32 Councilmember Sobieski Back in the fall of 2023, I put a video out asking the question of is Sausalito broke? And in that video, amongst other things, I called for this facilities assessment and this 10-year model.
03:23:49.87 Councilmember Sobieski When that facilities assessment is done, we're going to get a number, which is the cost of deferred maintenance on buildings. Yep.
03:23:59.32 Councilmember Sobieski In that video I made, the call for that number wasn't just to have a singular number, but was to actually create.
03:24:06.52 Councilmember Sobieski a business model for
03:24:09.10 Councilmember Sobieski our MLK business unit. And similarly,
03:24:12.70 Councilmember Sobieski the deferred maintenance in our parking lots and other
03:24:15.77 Councilmember Sobieski Equipment costs and operating costs should be put into a business model So my question is when that facilities assessment is done or when you do some of the work around parking lot number one Or the other parking lots are we gonna get just a simple scary number like a hundred million dollars that city manager Sited for our whole towns deferred infrastructure. I
03:24:35.73 Councilmember Sobieski Are we going to get something which is an amortized annual expected obligation to maintain our business in a certain level of operating quality?
03:24:45.86 Chad Hess Yes, so the facilities assessment that I've seen, some preliminary drafts, they break it out by system. So they went and evaluated all of the systems and all of the components of these buildings, and then they would put an estimated remaining life on that. So they provide us with a schedule over the next, is it 20 years, I believe?
03:25:06.06 Chad Hess the next 10 years of what are those components that are going to be due so we can start to plan for year by year those projected expenditures. And they also adjust them for inflationary costs as well. So it gives us a much better understanding of what are those capital requirements
03:25:22.92 Chad Hess going forward so we can plan our business model accordingly.
03:25:26.16 Councilmember Sobieski Great. So that's what we should expect.
03:25:27.83 Councilmember Sobieski Not just the headline number, but actually inputs into a more robust...
03:25:27.91 Chad Hess not just the headlines.
03:25:32.55 Councilmember Sobieski business model that we can assess the
03:25:35.59 Councilmember Sobieski profit or loss of the enterprise.
03:25:37.19 Chad Hess Of that enterprise. And that's going to be a key component in our 10-year model that I've started to develop and you and I have collaborated on. But I think that big missing component is what are those capital costs? What are those capital costs for MLK, for the parking lot, Old City Hall, etc.?
03:25:51.97 Councilmember Sobieski A related question to that is we have, we're still gonna debate what our Pavement Quality Index aspiration is. It's currently 58. And we're gonna decide, are we shooting for 65 in 10 years or 75 or 85 or A, 95?
03:26:08.92 Councilmember Sobieski Uh,
03:26:10.28 Councilmember Sobieski It would be easy. My question is, are we going to have the same symmetric
03:26:15.89 Councilmember Sobieski a strategic choice about the quality of our various business enterprises. So, or are we going to,
03:26:23.75 Councilmember Sobieski imply that because there's 10 million dollars of deferred infrastructure in our buildings that we have to bring all our buildings up to A and
03:26:32.58 Councilmember Sobieski 95 plus quality, even while we leave our roads, at grade C, 75. So I'm asking,
03:26:37.17 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:26:38.67 Chad Hess That may be getting a little bit out of my expertise.
03:26:39.24 Councilmember Sobieski you
03:26:42.38 Chad Hess I'm going to defer to Director McGowan.
03:26:43.59 Councilmember Sobieski i mean it's to the business model a little bit question like will it be a variable control where we as a city council can choose that we're going to take money from the enterprises because we want to fix our roads or fix our stairs or fight the potential wildfire risk or landslide risks or are we going to implicit in the business model uh have our buildings be a plus quality and our streets paved with gold i mean our parking lots paved
03:27:07.29 Mayor Cox I mean, they're part of the-
03:27:08.43 Mayor Cox So I just want to, as a point of order, I just want to confine us to...
03:27:12.59 Mayor Cox the topic of tonight, which is whether we want to approve a mid-year budget adjustment.
03:27:17.38 Mayor Cox And
03:27:17.95 Mayor Cox Remind us that this is all part of our strategic planning effort for this year and will be addressed in great detail in
03:27:23.71 Mayor Cox in
03:27:24.45 Mayor Cox meetings upcoming very soon. But I don't want to shut you down, but just remind us that this dialogue is not for tonight.
03:27:32.11 Councilmember Sobieski Thanks, Mayor. I was riffing off of the previous questions. Maybe if we could answer this one, I'll move on.
03:27:34.57 Mayor Cox Yeah. If we could say this one I'll move on.
03:27:36.48 Mayor Cox Yeah.
03:27:36.62 Kevin McGowan Yeah.
03:27:39.11 Kevin McGowan So good evening Kevin McGowan Public Works. I think what you're going to get is you're going to get a list from Veritas of what needs to be done in each building. It's not going to have a rating system similar to our road system where you're going to have put in a million dollars into one facility and that will make it a a one facility.
03:27:58.05 Kevin McGowan Buildings aren't rated that way.
03:27:59.97 Kevin McGowan It's just going to give you a list of what they think needs to be done. And we're going to hopefully prioritize that list per the next 10 years so that you have a cost per year and you can look down, you know, a 10-year period to say, okay, in this year we need 1.5 and year 7 we need 5.2 million, that type of thing.
03:28:18.52 Councilmember Sobieski Great.
03:28:19.16 Councilmember Sobieski Thank you.
03:28:21.98 Councilmember Sobieski Why don't you, since it's follow-up, and then I'll finish. Go ahead, if it's directly on point.
03:28:26.90 Councilmember Hoffman So Kevin, this is a follow-up question for you and from Veritas.
03:28:31.59 Councilmember Hoffman So, okay.
03:28:34.68 Councilmember Hoffman Not a surprise to anybody. I have a military background, right? So every time you walk into a military building or ship, something called a PMS, a preventative maintenance schedule for every piece of equipment.
03:28:47.07 Councilmember Hoffman Everybody that works on that equipment, it's a checkoff. You pick up the PMS, and you know what you're doing almost every day on that equipment. If you're responsible for that piece of equipment, you pick up the PMS sheet, and you know what you're doing that week, sometimes that day, that day, that week, that year. And so...
03:29:03.61 Councilmember Hoffman that's your schedule, that's your preventive maintenance schedule. I was a little bit surprised that we didn't have anything like
03:29:09.41 Councilmember Hoffman for Sausalito. So is that what Veritas is going to give us? Are they going to give us a preventative maintenance schedule? Are we going to have a PMS schedule for our, you know, for our buildings? Are they going to say, this is your, you know, this is your MLK building number 55. You need to do, starting tomorrow, you need to do this, you know, you need to start looking at your, you know, this switch needs to be switched out in today, and then you need to switch it out again in five years and you need to start looking at your, this switch needs to be switched out today, and then you need to switch it out again in five years, and you need to start, this is your preventive maintenance schedule from...
03:29:41.88 Councilmember Hoffman A to Z, and here's your schedule. Is it going to be...
03:29:44.98 Councilmember Hoffman that
03:29:45.90 Councilmember Hoffman I mean, maybe not that level of...
03:29:47.99 Councilmember Hoffman You know specificity or at least going to tell us this is what you need to do on an ongoing basis. You know to keep this equipment in working order until it needs to be replaced.
03:29:59.14 Kevin McGowan I think what you're going to get is you're going to get a list that's going to say on this building, your HVAC needs to be replaced in year seven. It won't get into that level of specificity of you need to replace those filters every year or you need to paint the building every year. It may have some specificity on carpet, things that we all need, but I don't think they're going to have that level of detail that you will see in a military facility.
03:30:28.64 Councilmember Hoffman So, okay, so they're going to tell us what, so granted, but then does it come back to our public works department? Who's responsible for maintaining those physical assets that are owned by the city of Sausalito? Is it public works?
03:30:41.70 Kevin McGowan It would depend upon the facility, of course, and whether it's leased or not. But those that are our responsibility, yes, that's up to us.
03:30:48.97 Councilmember Hoffman Okay, so then we get, the city manager is going to take the report from Veritas. He's going to talk to you as our public works, and you're going to look at it with your team and say, okay, here's our report.
03:31:01.23 Councilmember Hoffman Here's our to-do list. And then you guys are going to figure out how to move forward from there.
03:31:05.38 Kevin McGowan I think the way I look at it is we're gonna use this report to help us with our capital program.
03:31:10.54 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
03:31:10.56 Unknown Mm-hmm.
03:31:10.84 Kevin McGowan We're going to start allocating funds to facilitate these improvements, including, you know, the easy one is HVAC systems don't last forever. So within the next years, 10 years, a lot of these will have to be replaced. How much money do we set aside to do that?
03:31:24.21 Councilmember Hoffman And then, yeah, that's our end.
03:31:25.05 Kevin McGowan That's our intent.
03:31:26.22 Councilmember Hoffman then that will be helpful for us as a council to then evaluate and decide, is this something we want to keep or do we need to sell it because we can't maintain it? Okay, thanks.
03:31:36.06 City Manager And Mayor and Council, if you can.
03:31:37.30 Councilmember Hoffman Perhaps.
03:31:38.32 City Manager So they're doing this building by building, which is really important, and it's phased. But I think the thing to consider is always safety. And where are you going to spend money that relates to safety? And then the second thing is what's producing revenue for you? Are you going to fix buildings that don't produce revenues for you when you can fix something that does? So those factors all be to work into this whole conversation about how we move the needle in a significant way on our buildings as well as our streets. But yeah, they're doing good work. I've seen drafts of it, and I think it's going to be what the council's looking for, but not to the detail that a trillion dollar military has. So we're just a small place. Thank you.
03:32:23.56 Councilmember Sobieski My last question, Director Hess, is just about the, uh,
03:32:27.59 Councilmember Sobieski the way we should think about our city's resources as just regular residents, because I think a lot of it's pretty complicated when we have 14 different funds.
03:32:37.48 Matt Barnes The eighth.
03:32:37.89 Councilmember Sobieski 28 different funds, some of which are restricted, some of which are not restricted.
03:32:44.96 Councilmember Sobieski Even the example that the mayor cited, parking lot number one, could be paid for with monies from parking revenue, but might also arguably be paid for partly by Tideland's funds because it's within the Tideland's range. Correct. And that's an example that we face on many different projects across the town.
03:32:57.07 Hank Baker Correct.
03:33:02.56 Councilmember Sobieski You often report just on general fund, the main operating funds of the city. And yet there are many funds that have sources of revenue that are
03:33:10.93 Councilmember Sobieski Really?
03:33:11.79 Councilmember Sobieski similar to
03:33:13.46 Councilmember Sobieski Other operating businesses. So MLK generates rent. So does Spinnaker Restaurant. MLK rent goes to the MLK fund. Spinnaker Restaurant goes to? Tideland's. Tideland's fund. So...
03:33:25.30 Councilmember Sobieski Would it be appropriate to comment on just how the city's doing overall? Sort of total revenue in? Yeah. Total expenses out this year and previous years?
03:33:32.22 Chad Hess Yeah.
03:33:33.81 Chad Hess So,
03:33:35.95 Chad Hess Yeah. So if we, you know, if that's a report going forward, we'd like to see that certainly available. I think one great gauge of that is our treasurer's report that comes out quarterly. That's going to tell you your cash position and how it's changed over that quarter, over that current fiscal year. So that gives a very holistic view of the enterprise on how things are changing in terms of cash. That report could be brought forward every month. I've created a great workflow or a template that it's really easy to update. So that's one opportunity that we could bring forward. We could publish this on our website so people could see that cash balance month by month and how it changes. You know, when we talk budgets, we could start talking more broad than just the general fund. I mean, we could talk about the enterprise wide if that's a direction we want to go. You know, we could also change those classifications of those categories that I've been
03:34:28.43 Chad Hess Grouping the treasurer's report on or the report on today.
03:34:31.27 Chad Hess I'm open to ideas. If there are better ways to convey this information, I certainly want to explore them.
03:34:37.80 Councilmember Sobieski I'd look a little bit, it's just a question and maybe it's even a recommendation.
03:34:42.42 Councilmember Sobieski Fair enough. I did say that. And I will actually honor that. Go ahead. Go ahead. It could also be a comment, which is you're the expert also. And some of those funds are very small. But other ones, you could draw a dotted line around and say, this is the operating business of the city. I mean, we're a town with a lot of, you know, we generate a lot of money from parking. We're in the parking business. So it's an operating income and there's an expense. And it's that top group that's really getting that. You know, people, they basically want to know, are we going to go broke? And it's easy to forget that as a finance director, that that's what people are wondering about. And I'm wondering if we could get a kind of reporting that basically says, are we really in a deficit or are we really in a surplus? And that's a little lost if we only look at one fund and then argue about transfers, but then don't have an amortized cost of the underlying asset maintenance. Everybody can see what they want to see in that picture. And it would be helpful as the expert if you could actually take a firm grip and say, this is what I think the truth is, as best as I can say it.
03:34:45.95 Unknown I'm just going to say,
03:35:42.94 Councilmember Sobieski Yeah.
03:35:43.02 Mayor Cox Yeah.
03:35:43.26 Councilmember Sobieski Thank you.
03:35:43.27 Bonnie Thank you.
03:35:46.08 Mayor Cox Okay.
03:35:47.80 Mayor Cox Yeah, and I think it's his job to report on facts, and it's our job to interpret those and set policy based on those facts. So...
03:35:57.65 Mayor Cox Okay, and I need to open up to public comment, so go ahead.
03:36:10.68 Mayor Cox We do annually, so I'm hoping that will be part of our budget planning.
03:36:14.42 Mayor Cox Yeah.
03:36:14.66 Chad Hess We certainly can devote a session to how do we want to approach that pension? Like what is going to be our plan in fiscal year 27?
03:36:21.58 Mayor Cox We had a consent item on our last agenda to switch our...
03:36:26.34 Chad Hess I'm not sure.
03:36:26.56 Mayor Cox and, you know,
03:36:26.68 Chad Hess Thank you.
03:36:27.03 Chad Hess Well, our section 115 trust that where that is in the process of being converted over to the CalPERS.
03:36:29.65 Mayor Cox in the process of being
03:36:31.43 Mayor Cox And a job.
03:36:36.55 Chad Hess Bartle and Wells used to do it. Yeah, we used to bring Bartle and Associates here and offer some guidance on pensions. They have been acquired by another firm, but we could certainly engage them if you so desire to have them come in and give us-
03:36:48.11 Mayor Cox Can you just raise that on future agenda items,
03:36:49.54 Chad Hess to report.
03:36:50.18 Chad Hess Okay. Yeah.
03:36:52.23 Mayor Cox Okay, with that, I'm going to open it up to public comment. I have one speaker card from Adrian Britton.
03:37:02.32 Adrian Brinton Again, Adrian Brinton, thanks for taking my comment. Just wanted to comment really quickly on the enterprise funds. Great to hear this discussion. I think the discussion that I'm hearing
03:37:10.53 Adrian Brinton You guys have aligns a lot with the understanding I have of the enterprise funds, which is that we have
03:37:15.58 Adrian Brinton Revenue generating assets, we want to take the money from those, understand how much money we're getting, and then have money to apply to maintain those assets so they continue to generate revenue, which is great. It's also fairly limiting in that things like the Tidelands Fund, which is a restricted fund where we can only spend it within certain parameters., something like paving parking lot one to pick up Peter's mantle since he's not here. Yes, we definitely need to pay parking lot one. And yes, we can definitely pay for it by saving up parking revenue and paying for it with parking revenue. We can also take restricted tidelands funds and pay...
03:37:57.95 Adrian Brinton If we're parking lot one is within the title and zone. And by doing that, we take. Unrestricted parking funds and open them up for use anywhere in the city. So things like that, we can get a definite benefit from, even though it doesn't quite align with the idea that we want to actually know exactly that the parking money is paying for the parking lot. So I think, you know.
03:38:19.82 Adrian Brinton It's great to have that in concept, but I think we should also be open to
03:38:24.72 Adrian Brinton looking at how we're applying the money that we have to spend and doing it in the most sensible way.
03:38:30.57 Adrian Brinton and having the most flexibility with money.
03:38:33.09 Adrian Brinton without losing the visibility, uh, as well. We have a ton of backlog of infrastructure. We've obviously talked about it a lot and that's a huge priority. Um,
03:38:42.40 Adrian Brinton It's going to be really hard to get to a perfect plan to move forward with something. You know, paving parking lot one is a great place to start. Let's start there. Get that done this year. We'll have something to show for it. We can move forward. We've got a ton of other stuff to do. It won't be the only thing. But I think if we can just pick one thing and move forward with it, we do the city a great service. Thank you.
03:39:02.82 Mayor Cox Thank you. I have no other speaker cards. Is there anyone online?
03:39:05.52 Bette McDougal Yes, we have a bet.
03:39:11.87 Babette McDougall Thank you. Well, Joan, I just want to know, are you going to time all my public comments tonight, too?
03:39:16.96 Babette McDougall So I'd like to know what it turns out to be. This was a, I want to thank you. It wasn't me that timed you, Babette.
03:39:21.99 Mayor Cox Very amazing.
03:39:23.92 Babette McDougall Okay. All right. I don't want to use up my time talking about that. Here's what I want to get to.
03:39:25.28 Mayor Cox I don't know.
03:39:29.50 Babette McDougall I want to thank you because you're running a really tight ship here.
03:39:32.00 Babette McDougall And I really do appreciate all the drilling down that you all are doing.
03:39:35.14 Babette McDougall So I
03:39:36.37 Babette McDougall And you answered a lot of my questions. So I've got one question that I would just like to know that we get clear on. I will, my question is, I will phrase it as an assumption. The labor, the line item thing called labor, the three colored trajectory lines, right? On how we're doing with budget.
03:39:54.17 Babette McDougall I would like to know, does labor costs, I immediately just think of our city staff.
03:40:00.60 Babette McDougall But maybe it also includes the paid consultants. Now, we're paying out millions to these consultants, and that could be staff positions, well-earned and well-deserved.
03:40:10.07 Babette McDougall So I just really would like us to drill down on the dang labor costs as a line item. Let's get real about what kind of staffing we really need. Thank you.
03:40:20.33 Babette McDougall City Clerk.
03:40:21.27 Babette McDougall Set.
03:40:21.51 Bette McDougal Thank you.
03:40:21.73 Bette McDougal Sandra Bushmaker.
03:40:27.11 Sandra Bushmaker Hello again.
03:40:28.95 Sandra Bushmaker I'm really looking forward to this report on the facilities assessment, because I think we're going to get a shockingly large number.
03:40:38.65 Sandra Bushmaker of repairs that need to be done. And then we're going to need to decide
03:40:43.46 Sandra Bushmaker Which ones take priority?
03:40:45.59 Sandra Bushmaker But I would like to piggyback on what
03:40:48.53 Sandra Bushmaker Councilmember Hoffman was saying about maintenance schedules. My father was a deputy commander of maintenance for SAC Wings.
03:40:57.44 Sandra Bushmaker And maintenance was the name of the game.
03:41:00.54 Sandra Bushmaker And I see you.
03:41:02.90 Sandra Bushmaker Council member Hoffman smiling there. But nevertheless, I think one of the problems, we're going to have a large number coming from this report
03:41:12.96 Sandra Bushmaker And I think that we need to start factoring in some preventive maintenance.
03:41:18.50 Sandra Bushmaker some maintenance that will be done on a regular basis so we're not
03:41:23.22 Sandra Bushmaker bludgeoned by these huge numbers when we finally decide to look at the total picture. I think we can avoid some of these surprises by developing a preventive maintenance plan to not only, but we have a lot of catch up to do to get to that point.
03:41:39.25 Sandra Bushmaker And I would just like to see the council
03:41:41.43 Sandra Bushmaker focus in on how we're going to hit that big number
03:41:45.92 Sandra Bushmaker how we're going to plan to do that.
03:41:47.77 Sandra Bushmaker and also develop a preventive maintenance plan so we don't constantly get hit
03:41:52.75 Sandra Bushmaker with these large numbers. Thank you.
03:41:56.75 Bette McDougal No further public speakers.
03:41:58.24 Mayor Cox Okay, I'll close public comment and bring it back up here for discussion. So the motion before us this evening is to adopt the resolution that was provided to amend
03:42:09.09 Mayor Cox the mid-year fiscal year 2024-25 operating in capital budget i would like to propose that we postpone
03:42:16.50 Mayor Cox that decision for 30 days or until the evening that we hear our
03:42:24.92 Mayor Cox our facilities assessment so that we can
03:42:30.89 Mayor Cox move forward more confidently with more
03:42:33.61 Mayor Cox information.
03:42:35.08 Mayor Cox That's my motion.
03:42:37.59 Mayor Cox Someone else can make an alternative motion or someone can second my motion and then we can have discussion.
03:42:45.55 Councilmember Hoffman I'll second the motion that the mayor just made.
03:42:47.36 Mayor Cox Okay, so anyone is welcome to make an online.
03:42:51.06 Mayor Cox alternative motion and if there's a second then that will be the first motion heard otherwise we can discuss uh have discussion on my motion
03:42:59.83 Unknown I'll make an alternative motion that we accept the recommendation of the staff.
03:43:07.12 Councilmember Sobieski I'll second it.
03:43:09.36 Mayor Cox Okay, so we have two motions. It's now open for discussion. Can I just ask a question with regards to
03:43:14.97 Unknown the two motions what are the implications of of
03:43:18.98 Unknown say we adopt it tonight to amend and then the facilities assessment comes back differently wouldn't we just amend again in light of that conversation
03:43:27.67 Mayor Cox Go ahead. I just want to get a sense of the implications for both of them. I think we have to move things back from the general fund.
03:43:28.26 Unknown I just want to...
03:43:33.60 Chad Hess Yeah, you can adopt the amend the budget as many times as you like. So if we get new information and it's overwhelming, we can certainly revisit this and make another adjustment down the road.
03:43:45.26 Unknown Wouldn't we do that anyway?
03:43:46.73 Chad Hess Say that again.
03:43:47.37 Unknown Wouldn't we do that anyway if there was a significant? Yeah.
03:43:49.38 Chad Hess Yeah, yeah, we would. So it.
03:43:52.58 City Manager Mayor, if I can, I'm getting comments from the public about speaking into the mic. From me? No. I won't point a finger, but please speak into the mic.
03:43:58.49 Unknown From me?
03:44:02.74 Unknown Okay.
03:44:02.98 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:44:03.03 Unknown Thank you.
03:44:03.21 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:44:04.26 Unknown But I'm so loud, naturally.
03:44:06.03 Mayor Cox I'm not really.
03:44:07.36 Mayor Cox Yeah, but if you don't speak into the mic, people online can't hear us.
03:44:11.89 Mayor Cox Okay, so who would like to... Okay, go ahead.
03:44:17.08 Mayor Cox and
03:44:17.17 Sunshine Thanks, Nathan.
03:44:17.74 Unknown If I can just speak to the motion that was made and seconded, I think... Well, there are two motions that were made and seconded....the alternative motion.
03:44:21.62 Mayor Cox There are two motions that were made in second.
03:44:25.15 Unknown Um,
03:44:26.43 Unknown It seems to me that there's been a pattern of using, for example, parking revenues to balance our budget. It's not unique this year. It's been done for a long time.
03:44:38.53 Unknown I'm not saying that's the best way to go forward if you're trying to improve your parking lots as a top priority.
03:44:45.37 Unknown But I don't think we've reached the point of establishing what our priorities are for spending what few dollars we have on infrastructure. And I agree.
03:44:56.62 Unknown with the mayor that we're gonna learn a lot more about our facilities. But to me, we already know we have priorities that affect public safety, better infrastructure related that we haven't yet come to grips with. So what I'm afraid of is that we
03:45:11.34 Unknown to.
03:45:13.92 Unknown by continuing this to wait for yet more information that is relevant. It's irrelevant.
03:45:19.98 Unknown But we keep postponing what I think is the inevitable coming to grips with how do we spend our very limited funds.
03:45:28.33 Unknown And yes, I've heard from...
03:45:30.51 Unknown Many people, we should make parking lot number one our top priority. I'm not sure I agree with that.
03:45:35.57 Unknown for public safety reasons.
03:45:38.42 Unknown I'm not prepared to decide that tonight. I don't think we are deciding that tonight. We're simply...
03:45:44.60 Unknown following the past practice of trying to reach a balanced current operating year budget, and then we can calculate what limited funds we may have available to spend according to the priorities we're setting and have yet to be set in terms of infrastructure. So that's where I stand. I just think Chad has done an excellent job with the numbers. He's doing his best to balance the current year operating. This year we have a much higher reserve, general reserve, that I think you suggested.
03:46:17.52 Unknown Councilmember Hoffman. So we're in a different dynamic this year.
03:46:22.19 Unknown than perhaps we've been before. And when we finish
03:46:27.16 Unknown when we deal with our budget coming up and what our priorities are that's where the rubber meets the road and I'm afraid by keeping
03:46:36.03 Unknown this issue off the table for
03:46:38.75 Unknown long time just postpones the inevitable. So that's where I'm coming from.
03:46:43.41 Mayor Cox So I'll respond. So I'm not suggesting we postpone it for a long time. I'm suggesting we postpone it for 30 days.
03:46:51.69 Mayor Cox My hope is to create a business as the as as Councilmember Sobieski referenced.
03:46:59.88 Mayor Cox My vision is to have a 10-year comprehensive plan that addresses facilities, streets, storm drains, sidewalks, stairs, ADA requirements, hillside management, all of the things that we identified in our strategic plan that need to be addressed properly.
03:47:19.28 Mayor Cox ASAP. So I am calling this the year of foundational building blocks, and it's my hope to create a business model.
03:47:26.66 Mayor Cox to address deferred maintenance in each of those facilities.
03:47:30.93 Mayor Cox Um,
03:47:31.67 Mayor Cox When we
03:47:33.19 Mayor Cox And
03:47:34.49 Mayor Cox We are now, we started out this year with a $1 million dollar
03:47:39.13 Mayor Cox deficit to make
03:47:41.80 Mayor Cox transfers from funds that we know we're going to have to spend else. We're making a $200,000 transfer from the Tidelines. I guarantee you we have not spent $200,000 in administrative expense on the Tidelines fund. That is...
03:47:58.69 Mayor Cox And that is a restricted fund. I think that's illegal.
03:48:02.43 Mayor Cox We don't have the legal base. I don't believe we have the documentation to support a $200,000 transfer from the Tidelines Fund. The others are, you know, cost centers. They are not restricted. They are cost centers. I appreciated what Adrian said about the distinction.
03:48:21.97 Mayor Cox between
03:48:22.99 Mayor Cox restricted funds versus enterprise funds.
03:48:26.14 Mayor Cox But if we look at lot one, lot one is going to cost $2.5 million.
03:48:30.58 Mayor Cox minimum i think that's a priority because that's how we get to our ferry we park our visitors there i i trip
03:48:37.63 Mayor Cox all the time over the potholes and the tree roots in that lot. So I think that's a priority.
03:48:44.62 Mayor Cox We only have $1.3 million in the Tidelands Fund, and so we don't have adequate monies in the Tidelands Fund to fix that one. We also gave direction at the end of 2023 to carry out much of the recommendations of the Dixon Report for parking. We haven't yet done that.
03:49:01.80 Mayor Cox And we heard at the end of last year that Climatech had identified all of these electronic needs in order to for our parking meters to function so we can actually collect monies. And so making this transfer, making a.
03:49:18.49 Mayor Cox 1.850 million dollar transfer from the parking fund when we have these unaddressed obligations is concerning to me. It's not illegal.
03:49:30.67 Mayor Cox You know, if we want to pretend that we have a balanced general fund when we know that these enterprise funds are operating at a deficit, you can do that. But that's the criticism. If you read the Marin IJ, that's the debate that's going on right now amongst Sausalito residents about whether these inter-fund transfers, when we know there are outstanding obligations to these funds...
03:49:59.87 Mayor Cox are a legal fiction and not a way to announce the fiscal health of Sausalito. So I'm just trying to be more transparent about the way
03:50:08.79 Mayor Cox that we
03:50:10.09 Mayor Cox um,
03:50:11.53 Mayor Cox that we
03:50:13.72 Mayor Cox um,
03:50:16.07 Mayor Cox manage our finances.
03:50:20.66 Unknown Point of order. We don't have the three minute clock going and I think we all have to hold ourselves accountable. I appreciate everything you're saying. I think it was very good. I don't want to interrupt, but I just think we're breaking our own rules here.
03:50:23.12 Mayor Cox with the whole ourselves.
03:50:24.49 Mayor Cox I appreciate it.
03:50:26.83 Mayor Cox Yeah.
03:50:27.84 Mayor Cox We're breaking our own rules here. Yeah, I didn't see the three-minute clock.
03:50:32.43 Mayor Cox Um,
03:50:33.46 Mayor Cox And the last thing I'll say is the MLK fund is the collateral for the borrowing that we undertook to fix our parks. And that's another aspect of the MLK fund that I believe needs to be...
03:50:44.58 Mayor Cox that's another reason that fund needs to be
03:50:48.06 Mayor Cox a separate cost center that we monitor. So listen, the council will do what the council does. It's just a difference of opinion. But this is what I believe we could reach consensus if we put this off for 30 days.
03:51:01.43 Councilmember Sobieski I admire your motivation, Mayor. I just share with the Vice Mayor the point of view that the liabilities of the parking enterprise or the MLK buildings are not prima facie superior to the liabilities of the general obligation of our city to maintain its streets, its sidewalks, and its hillsides.
03:51:24.65 Councilmember Sobieski And that's why I'm supporting the vice mayor's motion, because the...
03:51:29.25 Councilmember Sobieski idea
03:51:30.43 Councilmember Sobieski of scrutinizing the transfers in the way that some members of the community have is to elevate
03:51:36.02 Councilmember Sobieski the quality of the pavement in our parking lots above the quality of the pavement on Bridgeway or in Lotus Street or somewhere else. We should agree as what our priorities are for our spending of all our resources for our community obligations, whether it's stairs, sidewalks, fire risk. And and so I do think they all should be brought onto the same playing field. And that's why I'm supporting the vice mayor's motion. I, as I said,
03:52:06.04 Councilmember Sobieski You know, more than two years ago, called for this kind of work.
03:52:09.26 Councilmember Sobieski Then your model is a real tool. It's always going to be imperfect. It is hard to develop.
03:52:13.42 Councilmember Sobieski We haven't even seen a first draft of it. The first draft is going to be poor. It's going to get better over time.
03:52:18.83 Councilmember Sobieski I have the highest faith in our finance department that will have a useful tool, but Council Member Hoppen brought up our UAA payments and pension liabilities.
03:52:29.19 Councilmember Sobieski What we've seen with Bartlett is not my view of what you would need to have a rational
03:52:34.98 Councilmember Sobieski input about pension liability into a 10-year model. You'd have to have a Monte Carlo analysis of a range of interest rates and a range of stock market performances and figure out
03:52:45.93 Councilmember Sobieski what confidence interval you're comfortable with? 95%, 80% about the
03:52:50.76 Councilmember Sobieski net liability over time.
03:52:52.61 Unknown Yeah.
03:52:53.16 Councilmember Sobieski So I cannot imagine any that's going to get done in the next 30 days. So we're not going to be in a position yet. It's aspirational and I want us to move in that direction, but I don't want to hold up the game and or the regular order of business that our department is asking us to proceed with. So that's why I supported the vice mayor.
03:53:10.70 Vicki Nichols Thank you.
03:53:11.14 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:53:13.34 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:53:13.35 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
03:53:13.37 Mayor Cox Council Member Hoffman.
03:53:14.40 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, so I think if I could just respond to the concerns that we get from the public about the funds, especially these three funds here. And when you talk about the enterprise funds, particularly the parking fund, the MLK fund, the Old City Hall fund,
03:53:31.36 Councilmember Hoffman These are funds that
03:53:33.52 Councilmember Hoffman they have an operating cost. And so they have it's a hard asset and it's a revenue generating asset. And so the concern is
03:53:40.94 Councilmember Hoffman that you have to invest in this asset to keep it generating revenue. And if you don't invest in the asset and if you don't, if you don't,
03:53:48.50 Councilmember Hoffman use the revenues from that asset
03:53:51.16 Councilmember Hoffman to actually pay for the maintenance on the asset that you won't have a revenue generating asset anymore because you're not going to have a roof
03:53:58.21 Councilmember Hoffman on your building over at MLK because you've rented it to
03:54:02.44 Councilmember Hoffman a very high paying school and it generates quite a large revenue for the city that we've also used to pay off our cop funds so that that's the key and that's why you want to segregate these funds and that's why it was set up that way so and that's why we have to know what that maintenance number is and and also the parking fund keep in mind mind, we have five parking lots. It's not just parking lot one that needs to be redone. Parking lot two looks pretty good. That's the one by,
03:54:34.14 Councilmember Hoffman the Bank of America that looks pretty good that was done recently but parking lot 3 looks also pretty
03:54:40.53 Councilmember Hoffman darn bad and has tree roots also growing up in it that needs to be redone we conveniently not talked about that but that's also going to be about a million I think or 1.2 million right that's also a pretty good revenue generating lot
03:54:54.01 Councilmember Hoffman Not as good as parking lot one, which is our highest revenue generating parking lot. We also have a parking lot five.
03:55:00.39 Councilmember Hoffman that is unpaved and has no, Chad's nodding at me, and this is something we talked about last year. It's unpaved and there's no revenue off it at all. And there's another lot at the end of that that also is not revenue generating. So we have another parking lot next to a commercial area that is not revenue generating at all because it's unpaved and completely out there.
03:55:26.90 Unknown Yeah.
03:55:27.46 Councilmember Hoffman it's a lot that we need to take care of. So that's why I see no harm, actually. And if we need to, if we get a bad report back,
03:55:37.75 Councilmember Hoffman um it would just take more time and more effort to come back on this and more you know more headache for chad i don't see any reason there's no downside to waiting a month i know it's a hassle i know i i actually think all of us up here agree
03:55:52.40 Councilmember Hoffman At the end of the day, I think we all agree, of course, we need to, you know, you need to balance your deficit. You wouldn't have a deficit. You would pull the money from somewhere.
03:56:01.58 Councilmember Hoffman I think we,
03:56:03.54 Councilmember Hoffman The mayor and I are saying pull it from the general fund surplus that we have not from enterprise funds because that that's a bad accounting system because you need to keep your your assets with your enterprise funds.
03:56:19.17 Unknown like to yes if I could yeah
03:56:20.89 Unknown Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate this discussion. I think it's really brought about that what Councilman Hoffman just said, which is that we generally all agree about wanting to balance the budget and also about understanding the critical importance
03:56:34.67 Unknown these enterprise funds and why we need transparency surrounding the funds but i tend to agree with the vice mayor on his motion particularly because i take the more holistic view shared by councilmember sobieski that we need to prioritize management of our city's infrastructure as a whole as it relates to these enterprise funds and i just wanted to address mayor your comments about the tidelands funds and the $200,000 and to push back because I have a lot of respect for our budgeting process. And I'm aware that we have a sustainability coordinator who does substantial work specifically on the waterfront and sea level rise. We spent quite a bit of money, whether it be from the grant or otherwise, for sea level rise assessment and sea level funding. We've hosted a number of workshops. We've put a lot of effort into finding grants for our tidelands, specifically for the waterfront. We've spent a lot of time and efforts on the waterfront and the future of sea level rise. So I believe that if we were challenged about our spend on tidelands funding, it would be quite easy to find administrative costs associated with that. And I wouldn't suggest otherwise with regards to our decisions around budgeting, although I take no harm in putting together itemized places where we have spent the money because I am in favor of transparency. But I do just want to say for the record that I believe that we are spending substantial amounts on things like our sea level rise and how we're thinking about our future, which we absolutely should be doing with a resilience lens. The issue of the facilities assessment, again, tend to agree with everything that's come up with regards to what it's going to mean for a 10-year program. Totally agree, Mayor, with all of the topics you mentioned there. And I think that they're
03:58:08.55 Unknown spot on and I appreciate thinking about that plan.
03:58:11.69 Unknown with regards to our 10-year
03:58:13.58 Unknown planning horizon, but I also don't think that in the next 30 days that will shift
03:58:18.05 Unknown the picture of what it looks like
03:58:20.19 Unknown in the lens of our budget right now, we will have to continue to make changes to our budget.
03:58:24.87 Unknown We already saw that there are some risks associated with our general fund that I specifically asked Director Hess about.
03:58:30.64 Unknown that we will need to address and assess and make changes for. And I think in the context of the facilities assessment, we can do that. I also came forward and asked for this facilities assessment, as well as for Climatec to do a more comprehensive climate facilities assessment. And I think
03:58:46.13 Unknown looking at,
03:58:47.29 Unknown These issues with the climate lens and the need for resilience that we have going forward and the conversations we had about. wildfires tonight in our insurance we're going to have to consistently make these changes and think about.
03:58:57.35 Unknown all of the decisions with regards to our enterprise funds from a larger holistic view but i would push as well for more transparency about where and what is being spent from each of those funds because the concerns of our community members do deserve to be addressed but i am going to vote in favor of the vice mayor's motion
03:59:13.50 Mayor Cox Okay, so I'm going to call the question...
03:59:16.34 Mayor Cox Um city clerk will you take the role on the second motion made by vice mayor? um
03:59:25.35 Mayor Cox Woodside and seconded by Councilmember Sobieski.
03:59:29.65 Bette McDougal Council member, sorry, Council member Blostey.
03:59:33.06 Bette McDougal Thank you.
03:59:33.09 Mayor Cox Yes.
03:59:34.39 Bette McDougal Council member Hoffman.
03:59:36.91 Bette McDougal Thank you.
03:59:36.94 Councilmember Hoffman No.
03:59:37.16 Mayor Cox Thank you.
03:59:38.17 Bette McDougal Council member Sobieski. Yes.
03:59:40.69 Bette McDougal Vice Mayor Woodside. Yes. And Mayor Cox.
03:59:42.02 Mayor Cox Yes.
03:59:42.27 Matthew Mandich Thank you.
03:59:44.43 Mayor Cox No. So that motion passes 3-2. I hope that's one of our only 3-2 votes this year, but we shall see. Okay, the next item on our agenda is...
03:59:57.78 Mayor Cox Actually, I'm going to flip our agenda with the indulgence. We are not going to be able to hear item 5C tonight, our formula retail ordinance item, because it was not properly noticed. So if there's anyone here who would like to make public comment, so I'm going to move. I'm going to switch the order of items 5B and 5C so that if there's someone here for item 5C, they can make their public comment.
04:00:27.60 Mayor Cox and depart.
04:00:28.97 Mayor Cox Is there any objection to my flipping the agenda in that manner? Okay, so I'm going to open up 5C, introduction by title only and waiver of first reading of ordinance number 03-2025, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito.
04:00:32.48 Vicki Nichols manners.
04:00:45.00 Mayor Cox Amending Chapter 10.44.240, Formula Retail.
04:00:49.54 Mayor Cox and ask whether there's any public comment on item 5c.
04:00:55.61 Bette McDougal Babette McDougall.
04:00:55.63 Mayor Cox I know.
04:00:55.68 Jeffrey Conan Thanks.
04:00:58.78 Mayor Cox So I see none in the chambers, so we'll turn to Bebette.
04:01:05.50 Babette McDougall Thank you very much. And again, I really want to applaud each and every one of you. By the way, Ms. Blaustein, I really...
04:01:11.24 Babette McDougall like the character that you played tonight, really drilling down on questions and,
04:01:16.94 Babette McDougall It's starting to sound like a real leader instead of a cheerleader. And I think a lot of people will agree with me on that. So I just want to go to this issue because...
04:01:26.51 Babette McDougall of
04:01:28.85 Babette McDougall Are we saying we're going to let, I mean, we had Starbucks in Sausalito for a while, and then we kicked them out. I mean, we had Autodesk in Sausalito. We kicked them out for crying out loud. So, I mean, what do we mean when we say we're going to amend the formula retail thing and bring it online? Are we, how are, do the local businesses know that this is coming? Have we got a, are there shields up? Are they ready to run this gauntlet in terms of price and competition? You're talking about, you know, who, Cisco and the likes of,
04:01:34.48 Jeffrey Conan with the
04:01:57.12 Babette McDougall infuse these people with their foodstuffs. That is not locally sourced, right? How do they cost compete if this is what we're talking about? Thank you.
04:02:08.87 Bette McDougal And all further public speakers.
04:02:10.11 Mayor Cox Okay, we're going to close public comment and we're going to move on to
04:02:10.18 City Manager Thank you.
04:02:12.97 City Manager Mayor, if I can, I'd like to make a comment. First and foremost, thank you for apologizing on behalf of staff on the 715 Bridgeway item. That was gracious of you. This one here, which is the same scenario where staff failed to put something on in the proper format for public notice, that's staff's fault, as was the first one. So I AGAIN APOLOGIZE ON BEHALF OF STAFF. IT'S NOT THE COUNCIL THAT SHOULD BE APOLOGIZING. IT'S THE STAFF THAT SHOULD BE APOLOGIZING. SO WE'LL DO BETTER. AND THIS IS A TWOFER WHICH, YOU KNOW, SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. BUT WE APPRECIATE THE PUBLIC'S UNDERSTANDING THAT IT WASN'T THE
04:02:14.69 Mayor Cox OK.
04:02:52.86 Mayor Cox Vicki Nichols and Matthew Mandich, could you please let the city managers speak? Thank you.
04:02:58.24 City Manager Okay.
04:02:58.82 City Manager We just want to make sure the public knows that the council's not at fault here. This is all the staff Problem that we will fix. Thank you
04:03:06.61 City Manager One last thing, if we can re-notice this for the meeting of the fourth, I think that's probably the right approach.
04:03:16.23 Mayor Cox Thank you, City Manager. And I have already sent a note to you and to staff asking for sort of your SWOT analysis. How did this happen? And what are we going to do to prevent this from happening again? And I'm asking that staff make that report to the council at the appropriate opportunity.
04:03:33.17 Mayor Cox Okay, we're going to move on to item five be introduction by title and waiver of first reading of ordinance number two dash two oh two five and ordinance of the city council of the city of Sausalito amending section 15.04 point oh six oh.
04:03:48.97 Mayor Cox to prescribe speed limits within the city of Sausalito.
04:03:52.19 Kevin McGowan Thank you, Mayor.
04:03:53.03 Mayor Cox Oh, and welcome to our Public Works Director, Kevin McGowan, and our City Attorney, Sergio Rudin.
04:04:00.07 Kevin McGowan Yes, thank you so much. Due to the lateness of the hour, I'm hoping we can make this fairly quick. Reviewing and amending speed limits was performed in 2020. This happens every five years or so. In the past, we have updated our speed limits via a resolution. However, in 2025, staff recommends passing an ordinance to amend Section 150460. Thank you.
04:04:33.82 Kevin McGowan In order to assist with establishing the applicable speed limits here in Sausalito, the city secured the services of Parametrics. This evening, we have a short presentation for you about changing speed limits on Bridgeway and 2nd Street. And Jimmy Jessup is here from Parametrics to kind of lead us through a couple different slides. And hopefully we'll move this fairly quickly. Thank you.
04:05:01.75 Unknown .
04:05:02.34 Jimmy Jessup Thank you, Kevin, and good evening, Honorable Mayor, Council Members.
04:05:07.22 Jimmy Jessup If we could go to the next slide, Jimmy Jessup, transportation engineer with Parametrics. I'd like to talk just a little bit about speed limits and the work that we've performed for the city. The basis of this presentation is largely upon the requirements in the California Vehicle Code. The California Vehicle Code or the CVC is quite specific.
04:05:31.11 Jimmy Jessup on what has to take place in order for speed limits to be established and to be enforceable by radar, by local police enforcement. One of those requirements is that
04:05:41.84 Jimmy Jessup Speed limits are set, established and updated every five years. And as the last ETS was conducted, Kevin mentioned in November and 2020, that time for renewal has come to pass now. And so parametrics has been
04:05:58.13 Jimmy Jessup Uh,
04:05:59.55 Jimmy Jessup prepared a citywide ENTS, engineering and traffic surveys, and our recommended speed limits are also in accordance with new state provisions through Assembly Bill 43,
04:06:12.96 Jimmy Jessup Assembly Bill 43 for the first time offers local jurisdictions the ability to lower speed limits from what used to be a prescribed engineering approach. So on the next slide.
04:06:25.53 Jimmy Jessup We'll discuss a little bit about how speed limits are established.
04:06:29.77 Jimmy Jessup Because CBC...
04:06:31.32 Jimmy Jessup has two categories of speed limits. One, you might be familiar with, say, in a residential community, you might not see a posted speed limit sign, but there is a presumed speed limit of 25 mile an hour on residential streets.
04:06:46.02 Jimmy Jessup For all other streets, an engineering and traffic survey is required in order to establish a speed limit. And this traffic survey is based off of taking speed surveys of free-flowing vehicle speeds
04:06:59.18 Jimmy Jessup And the speed limit is established at the 85th percentile, or...
04:07:04.38 Jimmy Jessup that speed.
04:07:06.49 Jimmy Jessup at or below which 85% of the vehicles travel on the roadway.
04:07:11.54 Jimmy Jessup Another way of thinking this is the fastest 15% of the vehicles are actually determining what the speed limit is.
04:07:21.04 Jimmy Jessup The industry largely now agrees that the 85th percentile, which was established 75 years ago, is no longer appropriate for allowing cities to achieve safety goals and often results in speed limits higher than appropriate context. That's where AB 43 comes into play.
04:07:43.04 Jimmy Jessup First a note about safety on the next slide.
04:07:46.74 Jimmy Jessup The reason why we take great care in establishing speed limits within this range of 20 to 40 miles an hour is the chance of pedestrian surviving a crash with a vehicle traveling 20 miles an hour is 90%. But if that vehicle is traveling 40 miles an hour, the chance of pedestrian survival drops down to 20%. And so this...
04:08:09.72 Jimmy Jessup range between 20 and 40 miles an hour is really quite a great inflection point in terms of safety. And for that reason, we take great care in attempting to look at the context of our roadways and establishing speed limits that are appropriate.
04:08:24.71 Jimmy Jessup Now for the first time on the next slide, AB 43 harkens back to this idea of wanting to improve safety on our roadways. Last year, Sausalito approved the local road safety plan for the city.
04:08:39.79 Jimmy Jessup And one of the recommendations from that study was to use recent legislation such as AB 43 to set context appropriate speeds suitable for all roadway users and to improve safety outcomes. And you'll see here on the map.
04:08:55.40 Jimmy Jessup the crashes from the recent
04:08:57.66 Jimmy Jessup historical period
04:08:59.20 Jimmy Jessup that result in injury are largely centered along the corridor bridgeway from North and South. That's not a surprise to us, but also kind of concentrated on this area with near and within the historic downtown. One other item to note from the local road safety plan is that unsafe speed is the most dangerous,
04:09:16.88 Jimmy Jessup a frequent primary collision factor that we see. And so managing vehicle travel speeds is one of those intentions from the local road safety plan that we're putting into play with this work.
04:09:28.98 Jimmy Jessup On the next slide, we're going to talk just a little bit about Assembly Bill 43. As mentioned, it's been largely recognized that this 85th percentile engineering approach to setting speed limits has not improved safety outcomes. Quite the opposite. You'll see over the last 10-year period in California overall, pedestrian fatalities have increased and are now at an all-time high. Over a course of an eight-year period, legislatively within the state, Assembly Bill 43 now finally, for the very first time, allows local jurisdictions to consider what speed limits are context sensitive and appropriate for their own cities, as opposed to just being at the whims of an engineering study.
04:10:15.34 Jimmy Jessup So on the next slide, we talk a little bit about how Sausalito has gone about a in-depth evaluation of
04:10:23.98 Jimmy Jessup what goes into considering appropriate speed limits. There's a bit of talk about how roadway characteristics, collision history, land use adjacency is all investigated as part of the work that we've come alongside the city with. If you can go to the next slide, thanks.
04:10:45.26 Jimmy Jessup And what AB43 allows us to do is to...
04:10:49.93 Jimmy Jessup reduce speed limits in certain areas.
04:10:53.12 Jimmy Jessup And in pursuant to the updates to the California vehicle code. So we've looked very closely at identifying safety corridors within the city. We've looked carefully at land uses that do generate high numbers of pedestrians and vehicles.
04:11:11.01 Jimmy Jessup bicyclists, what we would consider vulnerable roadway users. And then we've also looked at other provisions in the code that allow for business districts to take advantage of reduced roadway speed limits.
04:11:23.80 Jimmy Jessup The next slide is just a snapshot of some of what we've seen in the Bay Area in
04:11:31.65 Jimmy Jessup From larger cities to smaller cities, there have been a lot of recent implementation of AB 43. You'll see some pictures of speed limits being reduced to 20 miles an hour. This is being largely undertaken in accordance with local safety goals to reduce the number of crashes that result in injury and fatality.
04:11:54.01 Jimmy Jessup Um,
04:11:54.65 Jimmy Jessup And so cities from as large as San Francisco to
04:11:58.65 Jimmy Jessup neighboring Petaluma, Napa, San Rafael, Corte Madera have all implemented 20 mile an hour zones in business districts and on neighborhood commercial streets.
04:12:11.29 Jimmy Jessup The next slide just shows a little bit of what we do as part of our work and some of the evaluations that we undertake as described. It's it is based in an engineering study and we also layer on an additional evaluation in accordance with provisions in AB 43. And then the next slide shows our recommendations as part of our work.
04:12:34.98 Jimmy Jessup We do recommend that the roadway speed limit be reduced on six segments. All of these segments are really along bridgeway, and as it curves down into 2nd Street,
04:12:46.52 Jimmy Jessup The recommendations result in a 20-mile-an-hour stretch between Napa and Richardson, continuing on second.
04:12:56.48 Jimmy Jessup Currently.
04:12:57.76 Jimmy Jessup And maybe strangely, northbound 2nd Street is 25 miles an hour, whereas southbound is 20. So our recommendation is also aligned that both directions be posted at 20 miles an hour.
04:13:08.93 Jimmy Jessup What this actually results in is that 20 mile an hour zone connecting down to the southern border, down to Alexander Avenue, which also has a 20 mile an hour speed limit.
04:13:17.25 Jimmy Jessup Other speed limits within the city would remain unchanged as a result of our evaluation.
04:13:23.36 Jimmy Jessup So in conclusion, tonight we're here to recommend that these changes be adopted as part of an ordinance that would change the municipal code indicating posted speed limits within the city. If you go to the next slide, thanks.
04:13:42.82 Jimmy Jessup And then as further steps going on into the summer, the city will undertake installation of new speed limit signs and stencil markings to indicate the updated speed limits. Recommended speed limits throughout the city that are subject to our engineering traffic surveys are here on a city map.
04:14:02.93 Jimmy Jessup for us to understand.
04:14:05.63 Jimmy Jessup That's all for the presentation. Happy to.
04:14:08.62 Jimmy Jessup Take any clarifying questions. Thanks.
04:14:13.31 Mayor Cox I had a question. The ordinance that is proposed lists
04:14:22.41 Mayor Cox like 20 declared speed limits for roads. But the chart, can you go back two slides?
04:14:30.08 Mayor Cox The chart you listed only lists six changes. Can you go back forward one slide?
04:14:36.93 Mayor Cox Thank you. So it's not clear from the ordinance what's being changed. It's simply saying that these speed limits shall be set forth as set forth below. Why are we declaring speed limits on roads that we're not changing?
04:14:55.41 Sergio Rudin And mayor, this is city attorney Sergio Rudin. I'll handle that question. It is my recommendation that all the speed limits for the city be codified in one place in the municipal code.
04:15:06.92 Sergio Rudin And that is in part because of the process enacted by AB 43 and the general procedures in the vehicle code.
04:15:14.87 Sergio Rudin that require that the city set the speed limits by ordinance, and it is generally advisable that they be
04:15:21.06 Sergio Rudin listed in your municipal code for easy reference.
04:15:24.47 Mayor Cox That was a great, simple, concise answer. Thank you, city attorney.
04:15:27.97 Mayor Cox Any other questions? Yes. This is a...
04:15:32.35 Councilmember Hoffman Just clarification with the city attorney and city attorney because these are roads that go all the way through Sausalito because many of us are within 500 feet of these roads we don't need to recuse.
04:15:44.10 Sergio Rudin No, that's correct.
04:15:45.92 Mayor Cox I was sore.
04:15:47.54 Mayor Cox I think this is a matter of general concern, right?
04:15:52.70 Sergio Rudin Um,
04:15:53.72 Sergio Rudin Yes, I do believe that either the public generally exception applies or there's also I believe another exception that potentially applies to the setting of speed limits. I'll double check that really quickly.
04:16:04.52 Mayor Cox or a
04:16:04.58 Councilmember Hoffman or,
04:16:04.70 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:16:05.07 Councilmember Hoffman Or is that, or am I incorrect on that?
04:16:07.35 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:16:07.49 Mayor Cox Well, and also, if all of us would have to recuse, then at least three of us don't have to recuse. So that's the other. Because I'm moved.
04:16:13.63 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah.
04:16:15.25 Councilmember Hoffman So I don't have to.
04:16:15.26 Mayor Cox So I don't know.
04:16:16.21 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:16:16.28 Councilmember Hoffman At least three of us are within 500 feet.
04:16:20.72 Sergio Rudin Yeah, I mean, as a practical matter, this is not something that would actually impact
04:16:21.10 Councilmember Hoffman I mean, as a, as a,
04:16:27.11 Sergio Rudin have any reasonable possibility of impacting the value of
04:16:31.36 Sergio Rudin your real property. And for that reason, I don't anticipate recusal would be required.
04:16:35.31 Councilmember Hoffman I'm sorry I didn't...
04:16:37.96 Councilmember Hoffman Bring this up with you before the meeting. Just sitting here.
04:16:40.75 Mayor Cox Any other questions from council members? All right, I'll open it up to public comment. Seeing none here, city clerk.
04:16:55.61 Bette McDougal We have two. We'll start with Sandra Bushmaker.
04:17:01.33 Sandra Bushmaker I'm just looking at the schedule here of...
04:17:05.27 Sandra Bushmaker three different speed limits on Bridgeway. And I wonder if we could get it down to two speed limits because it's gonna be confusing as it is.
04:17:14.53 Sandra Bushmaker Uh,
04:17:15.64 Sandra Bushmaker to have three different speed lengths on Bridgeway.
04:17:22.72 Sandra Bushmaker City Clerk.
04:17:24.60 Bette McDougal Our next speaker is Jenny Silva.
04:17:29.28 Jenny Silva Hi, thanks for Welcome, Jenny.
04:17:37.94 Bette McDougal Oh, sorry.
04:17:41.73 Jenny Silva Can you hear me now? Yeah, we hear you.
04:17:42.98 Bette McDougal Yeah.
04:17:44.28 Jenny Silva Okay.
04:17:46.12 Jenny Silva I would like to encourage you to extend the 30 mile per hour speed limit from
04:17:51.15 Jenny Silva Nevada Street to Gate 6.
04:17:53.46 Jenny Silva I agree with Sandra Bushmaker that having the three different segments is a lot of change in a very short distance. And that 30 mile per hour segment is very, very short.
04:18:05.75 Jenny Silva increasing it to 35 miles an hour would
04:18:09.64 Jenny Silva In the best of circumstances, save drivers maybe two seconds of travel time,
04:18:14.86 Jenny Silva But the safety difference is really, really stark.
04:18:18.13 Jenny Silva The slide that was shown at the beginning that shows the difference in fatalities between 40 miles an hour and
04:18:24.49 Jenny Silva 35 miles an hour. It's a really big differential.
04:18:28.71 Jenny Silva And I think it's worth noting that in the chart on the accidents,
04:18:32.95 Jenny Silva There are fewer accidents up north, but that is the site of the one fatality. So.
04:18:39.17 Jenny Silva It seems like where we've had a fatality,
04:18:42.09 Jenny Silva we should have a lower speed limit.
04:18:44.54 Jenny Silva And as a resident of the North End,
04:18:47.80 Jenny Silva I walk and ride my bike down there.
04:18:50.53 Jenny Silva And it's really, really uncomfortable having cars speeding by you.
04:18:54.35 Jenny Silva when you're walking and it would just be
04:18:56.79 Jenny Silva I feel that the north end residents deserve the same safety protection as those in the southern end of Sausalito. Thank you very much.
04:19:08.23 Mayor Cox Okay.
04:19:08.35 Vicki Nichols Okay.
04:19:08.74 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:19:08.77 Bette McDougal No further public comment.
04:19:08.79 Mayor Cox No further public comment. I'm going to close public comment and move it back up here for discussion. I will start off with a motion that we introduced by title only and waive first reading of Ordinance No. 02-2025, an Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending Section 15.04.
04:19:27.66 Mayor Cox Point.
04:19:28.57 Mayor Cox Those are going to prescribe speed limits within the city of Sausalito.
04:19:31.98 Unknown So moved.
04:19:33.31 Mayor Cox That's my motion. I'm seconding it. Yeah, sorry. Thank you. Okay.
04:19:34.31 Unknown I'm seconding it. Yeah, sorry. Thank you.
04:19:36.01 Unknown Thank you.
04:19:36.09 Unknown Thank you.
04:19:36.33 Unknown Thank you.
04:19:36.38 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:19:36.91 Mayor Cox All right, any discussion? Yes, Council Member Sobieski.
04:19:40.38 Councilmember Sobieski I'd actually just like to ask you, sir, a question based off of the public comment from Ms. Silva about whether you'd considered
04:19:48.01 Councilmember Sobieski the idea of having the 30 mile speed limit going all the way to Gate 6 Road.
04:19:53.65 Councilmember Sobieski and whether you're...
04:19:53.85 Mayor Cox We're asking parametrics? Yes.
04:19:57.48 Jimmy Jessup Thank you for the question, the public comment.
04:20:02.22 Jimmy Jessup the section
04:20:03.97 Jimmy Jessup that is currently recommended to retain is 35 mile an hour speed limit from Nevada northward to the city limit.
04:20:10.40 Jimmy Jessup is eligible for reduction to 30 miles an hour.
04:20:13.57 Jimmy Jessup In consultation with city staff and the police department, we had decided that the
04:20:13.78 Jeffrey Conan I mean,
04:20:21.32 Jimmy Jessup priority and the primary focus for reducing the speed limit was along the main section of Bridgeway, which did incur the highest number of crashes in its historical analysis. But that being said, that northern section does meet the provisions of AB 43 for crashes.
04:20:40.76 Jimmy Jessup Reduction of five mile an hour to 30 mile an hour.
04:20:45.03 Councilmember Sobieski Well, I was just hoping to get a little bit of the rest of me in some discussion about pros and cons and trade off and a rationale for why you chose 35 over 30.
04:20:54.23 Councilmember Sobieski you heard Miss Silver talk about the one fatality being in that area.
04:20:58.24 Councilmember Sobieski So is there any more color you can help?
04:21:01.23 Mayor Cox Well, the one fatality was a car that ran into a pole. That was, it was not a...
04:21:07.47 Mayor Cox I mean, I live there, and I walk there, and I scooter there.
04:21:10.24 Councilmember Sobieski That's exactly the kind of detail I was looking for. I was wondering if you had any other as professional traffic engineers and staff to why you, in balance, are recommending 35 miles an hour instead of 30.
04:21:10.27 Mayor Cox That's exactly right.
04:21:11.93 Mayor Cox Yeah.
04:21:12.79 Mayor Cox Yeah.
04:21:22.83 Kevin McGowan I think our concentration was where the other accidents were occurring, you know, Napa Street down to Richardson and that type of thing. So that's where we concentrated our efforts to look at reducing the speed limits per AB 43 and didn't necessarily think that extending that all the way up to gate six was necessary at this point in time. But as Mr. Jessup does say that you can definitely change that if you so choose.
04:21:52.36 Councilmember Hoffman I do note that there are stoplights all along the North Bridgeway corridor, which does calm traffic, and there are, which also helps pedestrians cross and helps the safety aspects along North Bridgeway that you don't have in the corridor of Napa, Napa all the way down to Johnson. And so I think that might, that justifies a slower traffic along that corridor from Napa to Johnson. Well, actually from Easterby, I think, to Johnson is a lack of.
04:22:27.93 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:22:28.94 Mayor Cox I'll also note the road is wider from Easterby to Gate 6 with more healthy bike lanes. So when I take my scooter, I'm great up until I get to the 7-Eleven, and then I take my life in my own hands.
04:22:43.58 Unknown So,
04:22:43.76 Mayor Cox So.
04:22:45.97 Mayor Cox So that's just my personal experience.
04:22:47.96 Councilmember Hoffman experience.
04:22:48.52 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:22:50.23 Councilmember Hoffman Yeah, agree. It's a four lane. It's a four lane, divided four lane from east to north.
04:22:58.81 Mayor Cox or comments from anyone?
04:23:02.05 Mayor Cox Okay, I'll call the question. Um...
04:23:06.41 Mayor Cox All in favor.
04:23:07.50 Mayor Cox Aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously.
04:23:12.47 Mayor Cox I don't know.
04:23:14.83 Mayor Cox All right.
04:23:19.87 Mayor Cox Yeah.
04:23:22.96 Mayor Cox Okay, we're going to move on to item 6A, city manager information for council.
04:23:32.55 City Manager Yeah.
04:23:32.97 City Manager Thank you.
04:23:33.27 City Manager Thank you, Mayor, members of the council, members of the public. I'll be brief. In this staff report, you have an executive action analysis that is telling the community and the council that we are monitoring federal actions, and we're doing that with our partners at the League of California Cities, National League of Cities, which we're members of, and in particular looking at the impact of funding to Sausalito. you received a memo from Katie Tho Garcia that said you know the gate five members of, and in particular looking at the impact of funding to Sausalito. You received a memo from Katie Tho Garcia that said, you know, the Gate 5 Economic Development Administration grant for $600,000 and change has already been executed, so that's not in jeopardy. We're still monitoring what might happen to tax credits that go along with renewable energy. We'll see what happens. So we are monitoring. I wanted to let you know that. The other thing I want to report on is...
04:24:21.92 City Manager Thursday morning at 8 o'clock, there is a finance committee meeting. There will be a posting of that, Chad, tomorrow.
04:24:31.54 Bette McDougal Got to do it tonight.
04:24:32.67 City Manager Tonight. Tonight. Okay. And the items on the agenda include two things of interest to the council and community. One is to talk about a climate emergency strategy to put some money aside beyond the 25% that you have so that we can, in fact, deal with anything from floods to landslides to fires to earthquakes, et cetera. That's something that came up in a council discussion. So that's a conversation. And then we're going to talk about waste and tools that you might consider to finance infrastructure, in particular a model or a technique called a private placement. So those are the two items on the agenda, 8 o'clock in the morning on Thursday night.
04:25:16.97 City Manager That concludes my report.
04:25:19.92 Mayor Cox Thank you. Any public comment on the city manager report?
04:25:23.03 Bette McDougal See you then.
04:25:24.28 Mayor Cox Next is Councilmember Committee Reports.
04:25:28.44 Unknown I'll start.
04:25:28.97 Unknown you
04:25:29.37 Unknown Go ahead.
04:25:30.25 Unknown I attended the Sustainability Commission's special meeting with regards to the sea level rise implications for the planned bridgeway safety grant. and we they determined recommendations that are I believe going to be in the minutes but essentially their overarching recommendation for the project was that we move forward that we consider a solution that has longer term impact for a sea level rise beyond a more short term 10 year horizon. So I just wanted to make sure that I shared that out.
04:26:04.19 Unknown Thank you.
04:26:08.03 Councilmember Hoffman Yes, Councilmember Hoffman.
04:26:10.30 Councilmember Hoffman um i we'll see if this falls in our committee reports but i think that by the vice mayor and i attended the i-desk hall crab feed saturday night was that last saturday night yeah i think it was yeah uh it was a not last prior the prior yeah prior it was a full house and it was a delight and um it was uh our our um the new consul general from Portugal was there with his wife and two sons who were not.
04:26:24.07 Unknown Not bad.
04:26:24.98 Mayor Cox The prior, yeah.
04:26:26.21 Jeffrey Conan Thank you.
04:26:41.56 Councilmember Hoffman They were not grumpy. They were just tired and they were a delight. And it was a very nice to meet him. And he was very gracious and his wife was very gracious. And it was a nice evening. So anyway, I think that's my report. I think you qualify.
04:26:57.04 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:26:57.07 Councilmember Hoffman FIGHTING.
04:26:57.19 Mayor Cox Because you are the liaison to Sister City. I am. That's true.
04:26:59.91 Councilmember Hoffman I am. That's true. So that's an ancillary report. And I was, I was voted as the, the president for the North Bay Executive Committee for the county. So that was good. That was a unanimous vote. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good. And I look forward to, you know, creating forward regionally, you know, for Sausalito, but also for all of us with that group. It's a great group.
04:27:08.63 Mayor Cox Can't see.
04:27:08.97 Jeffrey Conan So that was good. That was a unanimous vote.
04:27:11.03 Mary Lee Bickford Yeah.
04:27:11.40 Jeffrey Conan Thank you.
04:27:25.22 Unknown And although I wasn't, it's not part of a committee, we didn't talk city business. We enjoyed the crab.
04:27:25.34 Janelle Kelman Thank you.
04:27:25.37 Councilmember Hoffman Thank you.
04:27:25.41 Janelle Kelman THE FAMILY.
04:27:30.33 Unknown Enjoyed the conversation.
04:27:31.82 Unknown It's only two of you. I know.
04:27:34.13 Unknown Thank you.
04:27:34.15 Unknown Absolutely.
04:27:35.87 Unknown Okay, did you have something?
04:27:38.96 Councilmember Sobieski since you're talking about parties we attended i went to the 94965 fundraiser at the sausage center for the arts and though it's not of course city council it is community and was a delight to see thousands of dollars raised to benefit our local school by by our local residents
04:27:38.97 Unknown So, let's go.
04:27:54.45 Mayor Cox Okay, next is appointments. Appointments to the Historic Preservation Commission and to the Disaster...
04:28:00.76 Mayor Cox Preparedness Committee.
04:28:04.62 Mayor Cox I am going to move that we appoint
04:28:08.54 Mayor Cox David Kornblum, Vicki.
04:28:11.46 Mayor Cox Kornmeyer to replace the HPC member whose term has expired.
04:28:22.38 Mayor Cox Any objection?
04:28:24.45 Mayor Cox Okay.
04:28:24.97 Unknown Don't we have to vote when it's an appointment? I don't remember, but I don't care. I just remember that we've done that previously.
04:28:25.24 Mayor Cox We have to watch.
04:28:26.68 Mayor Cox Amen.
04:28:30.61 Mayor Cox I forget if I can appoint or if we have to vote.
04:28:35.66 Mayor Cox We interviewed for this.
04:28:37.34 Unknown I remember being
04:28:39.35 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:28:39.40 Unknown Thank you.
04:28:42.25 Unknown I think you do, because I remember.
04:28:43.15 Mayor Cox All right. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries unanimously.
04:28:44.31 Unknown and the.
04:28:50.91 Mayor Cox uh,
04:28:52.43 Mayor Cox Commissioner Nichols term is expiring. I mentioned this earlier. She has put in an application.
04:28:59.52 Mayor Cox to serve a second term.
04:29:02.27 Mayor Cox And as with other commission, in accordance with the policy we adopted two years ago, that will be an item in our consent calendar at our next meeting to reappoint her to a second term.
04:29:17.05 Mayor Cox Okay, next is disaster preparedness. I am going to move that we appoint Bonnie McGregor and Janelle Kelman to the committee and-
04:29:28.58 Mayor Cox that we appoint as an alternate
04:29:31.51 Mayor Cox Um,
04:29:33.91 Mayor Cox Stella Benton. I think the correct term is
04:29:35.53 Unknown term is
04:29:36.03 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:29:36.05 Unknown 949650.
04:29:37.11 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:29:37.15 Unknown Thank you.
04:29:37.17 Mayor Cox Thank you.
04:29:37.22 Unknown to the next day.
04:29:37.23 Mayor Cox Okay, 94965 liaison that will still leave openings on that committee. And so that committee is still open, but I would like to get I spoke with Mike McKinley this evening about getting an agenda out and getting a meeting scheduled to get the work of the committee moving forward. And then as more.
04:29:37.69 Unknown Okay, 94965, the ASI.
04:29:57.45 Mayor Cox applications roll in. I know Rob Cox is going to apply. As other applications come in, we can do more interviews and fill the other slots.
04:30:01.11 Unknown Mm-hmm.
04:30:06.21 Mayor Cox Karen Hollweg, All right, any may I have a second to that motion.
04:30:09.80 Unknown Thank you.
04:30:09.82 Unknown seconds.
04:30:10.85 Mayor Cox All in favor?
04:30:12.22 Unknown I.
04:30:12.86 Mayor Cox That motion carries unanimously.
04:30:14.92 Mayor Cox Okay, future agenda items.
04:30:17.92 Mayor Cox We conferred during the break on the
04:30:24.35 Mayor Cox 715 Bridgeway appeal and barring any unforeseen circumstances, we are planning to place that on our March 18th agenda for rehearing.
04:30:38.41 Mayor Cox I asked you to remember a future agenda item to something you mentioned earlier.
04:30:42.79 Mayor Cox pension so city clerk we'd like to add a report from the successor to bartle wells on our pension as a future agenda item
04:30:55.08 Mayor Cox Any others?
04:30:57.73 Mayor Cox Okay, I have no, I'm gonna go ahead and take public comment.
04:31:04.36 Bette McDougal We have a Bette McDougal.
04:31:12.86 Babette McDougall Thank you, ma'am.
04:31:14.13 Babette McDougall Now, I waited all this time specifically for this agenda item.
04:31:18.11 Babette McDougall The last time on the February 4 meeting, you did not call for public comment. And I was in the room at the time. And I could not miss the look on the city clerk's face. Because last year, he didn't hesitate to always remind Sobieski
04:31:31.66 Babette McDougall while serving as mayor. Don't forget public comment. And Sobieski was ever gracious in that regard. He always says, thanks for guarding my six. And that's the way it's supposed to be. But I could see this cultural crisis washing over that man's face because he was taught by his, you know, it's a matriarchal culture. You love your mothers, you respect them, and he's not going to call you out for forgetting public comment. I could see it on his face. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but he did not call you out where he never hesitated to call out the previous mayor.
04:32:01.11 Babette McDougall So, and I'll tell you why I'm making an issue of it now, because...
04:32:06.31 Babette McDougall Actually, something was said that really troubled me.
04:32:09.28 Babette McDougall Ms. Blaustein mentioned the need again. I mean, I have lost count of how many times she has raised this since I've been paying attention. But she is so desperate to bring Bridgeway Marina to the city council. And there's not a stitch of paperwork anywhere in the planning trail that would legitimize why this ought to be fast-tracked up to the city council and actually start there first. Now, if Linda Fotch can play by the rules, surely she'll.
04:32:35.15 Babette McDougall the resident
04:32:36.60 Babette McDougall notorious slumlord of Sausalito can play by the rules? Or is he exempt because he's a slumlord
04:32:42.23 Babette McDougall and is therefore in league with the convicted felon in Washington leading the show right now.
04:32:47.40 Babette McDougall I mean, it's pathetic. It's pathetic that you continue to flout what is supposed to be our institutions.
04:32:54.18 Babette McDougall So I just want to call this out because it happens a lot.
04:32:58.06 Babette McDougall Thank you very much.
04:33:01.07 Mayor Cox I will just respond with the fact that we ended our last meeting at 1229 AM. And so hopefully I can have a mulligan if I forgot to ask for public comment. And hopefully if someone was in the room, they could raise their hand.
04:33:16.03 Mayor Cox All right, I'm going to move on to adjournment.
04:33:21.64 Mayor Cox I am going to adjourn this evening's meeting in honor of my friend and neighbor and long-term Sausalito volunteer, Adam Krivatsi.
04:33:36.64 Stella Benton Bye.
04:33:36.72 Mayor Cox It happened a week ago Saturday. Adam was, I think, 94 years old.
04:33:42.83 Mayor Cox Um,
04:33:45.60 Mayor Cox Yes, he just wrote. He came to our strategic planning session. He wrote to me after that.
04:33:46.95 Jenny Silva He's more strategic.
04:33:47.76 Jenny Silva Thank you.
04:33:48.89 Jenny Silva you.
04:33:53.19 Mayor Cox For over a decade, I have been personally aware of his huge love and contribution to the city.
04:34:00.35 Mayor Cox Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB Sarah Silver PB, Sarah
04:34:07.13 Mayor Cox Um,
04:34:08.26 Mayor Cox Although he was not a member of the General Plan Advisory Committee, he attended every meeting sitting in the back. He wrote a one-page overview.
04:34:17.61 Mayor Cox of his recommendations for what we were considering that evening for every meeting.
04:34:23.89 Mayor Cox He, and as an urban planner, his contributions were invaluable. Despite his health struggles over the last couple of years, he wrote to us less than a month ago with feedback on our strategic plan,
04:34:37.67 Mayor Cox And of course, I happen to be on the board for my homeowners association and he lived in my development.
04:34:44.59 Mayor Cox He was a board member for the Terraces of Sausalito for years and continued to volunteer even after his retirement
04:34:51.21 Mayor Cox from the board.
04:34:52.63 Mayor Cox I wrote to his wife to let her know that we would be bestowing this honor upon
04:34:58.26 Mayor Cox him this evening and she wrote this lovely
04:35:01.40 Mayor Cox response, she said, Adam was a man who lived a life of service to his family, his friends, his community, and his profession. We are all so very grateful for his love, his kindness, his joy for living, and his timeless example.
04:35:18.68 Mayor Cox It is my privilege to honor Adam this evening and to adjourn this meeting in his honor.
04:35:26.92 Mayor Cox Thank you.