City Council Jan 16, 2024

Jan 16

City Council Meeting Summary

Time	Item	Item Summary	Motion Summary	Comment Summary
00:00:03	None: None	The meeting was called to order at 5:30 PM on January 16, 2024, and is being broadcast live on the city's website, Zoom, and cable TV channel 27. (00:00:03) The council will be discussing closed session items including real property negotiations, existing litigation, and anticipated litigation. (00:00:23) The Mayor opened public comment on the closed session items (00:00:38), but no members of the public were present in-house or via Zoom. (00:00:55) A roll call was requested. (00:01:09)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:01:15	I: CALL TO ORDER IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS AT CITY HALL, 420 LITHO STREET - 5:30 PM	The meeting was called to order, roll call was taken, and the council adjourned to a closed session (00:01:26). Upon returning from the closed session, the Mayor announced there were no announcements besides Happy New Year (00:04:37). The mayor announced that agenda items 3C and 5C have been removed (00:04:44). Additionally, item 3B was removed at the applicant's request (00:04:53). Items 3 and 5C will return on February 6th. The meeting then proceeded with the Pledge of Allegiance (00:04:53).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:05:22	III: INTERVIEWS FOR BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS - 7:05 PM	The meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance. The Mayor then called for a motion to approve the agenda. Vice Mayor Cox moved to approve the agenda as amended and was seconded. The Mayor asked the City clerk to call the role but then stated it was not necessary. Then the Mayor asked all in favor to say aye.	Vice Mayor Cox moved to approve the agenda as amended and was seconded. (00:05:41)	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:05:55	III: INTERVIEWS FOR BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS - 7:05 PM	This agenda item covered interviews for various boards and commissions. Michelle Dumont was interviewed for the planning commission, where she discussed her background in architecture and design, her passion for community engagement, sustainable growth, and respecting the city's history (00:08:19). Councilmember Kelman inquired about her views on public spaces, beautification, and resilience (00:09:24). Vice Mayor Cox asked if she had watched recent planning commission meetings (00:10:31). The Mayor asked about her experience presenting before planning commissions in other communities (00:11:09). Virginia Irwin was scheduled for an interview for the Historic Preservation Committee but was not present. Instead, Christina Irwin joined the meeting, but she was scheduled to speak on the housing element programs and was not Virginia Irwin. Craig Merrilies was interviewed for the Economic Development Advisory Commission (EDAC). He discussed his experience working on economic policy and development questions (00:16:27), his involvement with the Working Waterfront Coalition (00:17:46), and opportunities for economic development in Sausalito, particularly regarding the working waterfront (00:19:41). Councilmember Boston asked about Merrilies's previous involvement with the city (00:17:39), and Councilmember Kelman asked about opportunities for economic development that the city may have missed (00:18:53). Mayor Sobieski asked about ideas to revitalize the working waterfront (00:20:51). Jackie Spencer Davis's interview was removed from the agenda because she declined the opportunity for the appointment (00:22:41).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:23:12	1: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS/MAYOR’S ANNOUNCEMENTS - 7:20 PM	The Mayor began by highlighting a ceremony held on a rainy Saturday at the Spinnaker, which was packed with attendees, to honor officers who received promotions, including Lieutenant Brian Mather, Lieutenant Brandon Rogers, Sergeant Nick Wright, Sergeant Edgar Padilla, Corporal Adam Clarice, and Corporal Ryan Walsh (00:23:12). The police chief reported high morale within the police department. The Mayor also acknowledged Martin Luther King Day and the City Council's approval of a proclamation given to the event organizers, which was well-received (00:23:42). Councilmember Boston announced that the Community Development Department received a check for $160,000 due to their follow-up on an old SB2 grant from 2019, which will support the department and the general fund (00:24:20). The Mayor requested that encouragement from the audience be limited (00:24:42).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:24:50	3: CONSENT CALENDAR - 7:22 PM	The Mayor introduces the consent calendar, explaining that these items are considered routine and non-controversial, requiring no discussion and expected to have unanimous approval (00:24:50). The consent calendar items include ratifying the proclamation honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Day (3A), and items concerning the city council calendar (3B, 3C) which have been removed. These include canceling the August 20 and November 5 regular meetings, calling special meetings for January 22, February 10, and March 30, and establishing three special Saturday meetings on June 1st, July 30th, and October 29th. Councilmember Kelman requests that item 3F be removed from consent for discussion and seeks clarification on item 3E regarding the scope of consulting services related to Dixon parking (00:26:11). Chief Gregory clarifies that the Dixon contract is on an as-needed basis to provide expertise and knowledge to the new parking manager, Wayne (00:27:25). Councilmember Kelman requests an update on parking services within the police department (00:29:09). The City Manager supports the contract, noting the parking enterprise is a $3 million operation and Dixon's help is needed (00:29:23). Councilmember Kelman requests a report on parking at the upcoming strategic session on February 10th (00:30:30). Item 3F is moved to item 5G for further discussion (00:30:51). Public comment is then opened.	Vice Mayor Cox moves to approve consent calendar items 3A, 3D, and 3E (00:34:17). Councilmember Boston seconds (00:34:36).	2 Total: 1 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
00:32:01 Babette McDougal was In Favor: Babette McDougal supports the relationship going forward (referring to the Dixon contract). She hopes the data will be shared with citizens to better educate them on the importance of parking and implications of trade-offs. 00:32:52 Kieran Culligan was Neutral: Kieran Culligan highlights Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Public School and promotes an upcoming gala on February 2nd to support the school. He invites council members, city staff, and the community to attend.
00:34:38	5: BUSINESS ITEMS - 7:20 PM	The meeting appears to have concluded with a vote on business items. The mayor called for a vote, Councilmember Boston voted aye, and the mayor acknowledged the consenting.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

00:34:42	5.A: Study Session and Presentation Regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for Housing Element Programs	This study session and presentation was regarding the draft environmental impact report for housing element programs. Brendan Bips introduced the item, noting the city's adoption of the sixth cycle housing element and the subsequent preparation of a program EIR by DeNovo Planning Group, focusing on programs 4, 8, 16, 17, and 19. The 45-day public comment period for the EIR ends on February 20, 2024. Beth Thompson and Christina Irwin of DeNovo Planning Group then gave a presentation. The purpose of the meeting was to provide information and solicit comments, with a court reporter present to transcribe comments. Vice Mayor Cox sought clarification on the purpose and timing of the EIR, while Councilmember Kelman inquired about the type of comments most helpful to receive. The City Attorney, Sidithi, clarified that the EIR is to study the programs of implementation. Mayor Sobieski highlighted Sausalito's timely adoption of its housing element compared to other Marin municipalities. Thompson discussed the Housing Element Programs Project focusing on implementation of specific programs 4, 8, 16, 17 and 19 and actions regarding a general plan amendment, revisions to the zoning ordinance, and adoption of objective design and development standards. The presentation went into specific details of each program and how each program would affect areas in the city. Irwin then discussed the purpose of an EIR and where the city was in the process. She discussed what is included in the EIR and the significant and unavoidable impacts, one being cultural and tribal cultural resources. The presentation included information on how to comment on the draft EIR. Councilmember Boston raised concerns about significant and unavoidable impacts like tribal resources, human remains, and water facilities. Vice Mayor Cox questioned the classification of certain impacts as significant and unavoidable, particularly regarding water and the Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District. Councilmember Kelman discussed greenhouse gas emissions and requested a lay person's articulation of the review process of historic districts in the context of overlay zones. Councilmembers requested that staff seek more comments, post information around city hall, and make sure the community is informed. (00:35:20) Brendan Bips notes the programs of rezoning in the housing element (00:38:45) Brendan Bips notes the the programs that were already adopted and certified by council is what is the subject of this enviromental impact report (00:40:58) Brendan Bips discusses comments on mitigation startegies that would be helpful (01:07:43) Christina Irwin notes that there would be significant and unavoidable impacts to the historic resources (01:13:33) Link for Housing Elements in Marin (01:21:07) Vice Mayor Cox discusses hundreds of pages of docuements in the executive summary pages 24-51	No Motion	6 Total: 0 In Favor 3 Against 3 Neutral
01:42:08 Babette McDougal was Against: Babette McDougal asked if her late-arriving letter was received. She felt the public comment period, starting January 5th, was inadequately noticed, as she and her neighbors only found out about it recently, thus she requests that public meetings and hearings would always be notified of in a more traditional manner. 01:44:23 Daniel Chidor was Against: Daniel Chidor questioned the interaction between the Historic Preservation Committee and the EIR, expressing concern about parcels in the historic district being placed in the overlay zone, potentially circumventing the committee's oversight and putting projects into a ministerial process. He requests California Office of Historic Preservation's comments. 01:46:05 Linda Fitch was Neutral: Linda Fitch, owner of Housing Opportunity Site number 201, questioned ordinance number 1022's application to CC or residential zoning districts and pointed out a discrepancy in the EIR regarding the date of availability, noting she also didn't see the EIR until recently. 01:47:46 Jeffrey Chase was Neutral: Jeffrey Chase spoke about the importance of providing housing for everyone. And equal land distrubution among the people. 01:50:01 Alice Merrill was Against: Alice Merrill expressed confusion about the housing element process and felt the noticing period, starting January 5th, was inadequate. She requested that the public comment period should be the whole period. 01:51:08 Sandra Bushmaker was Neutral: Sandra Bushmaker questioned if the EIR and Program 16 anticipated changing the 32-foot height limit in Sausalito and wondered if it can't consider view corridors, what recommendation does the consultant have.
02:13:54	5.B: Auditor Presentation and Receive and File Fiscal Year 2022-2023 Basic Financial Statements and Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting	City Finance Director Chad Hess introduced Ahmed Badawi from Badawi & Associates, the city's external auditor, to present the results of the Fiscal Year 2022-2023 audit. Ahmed Badawi presented an overview of the audit, covering the engagement team, deliverables, scope, areas of emphasis (including management override of controls, revenue, and turnover risk), and the unmodified audit opinion. The presentation included summaries of the city's assets, liabilities, and equity over the past three years, highlighting fluctuations in net pension liability and unrestricted amounts. Ahmed Badawi noted that the city has about six months worth of expenditures in its fund balance, which he said is an adequate amount. He then discussed pension and OPEB liabilities, explaining the potential impact of changes in discount rates. He closed by summarizing the responsibilities of both the audit firm and city management, emphasizing the importance of independence and timely completion. He noted a material weakness related to the restatement of opening balances, indicating that the city's internal controls did not work timely enough to detect errors prior to the issuance of the 2022 financial statements. Councilmember Boston inquired about the unassigned fund balance in the general fund, to which Director Hess responded that it was approximately $10.8 million (02:34:52). Mr. Badawi said that the city probably falls within the average within what most of our clients would have (02:36:16). Vice Mayor Cox clarified that the material weakness was in the issuance of the 2021-22 financial statements prior to the current finance director's hiring (02:36:57). Ahmed Badawi confirmed, emphasizing the controls over financial reporting were the issue, not the safeguarding of assets (02:38:46). Councilmember Kelman asked about controls in place when budgeted items are not spent and how to ensure those monies stay allocated to their original purpose (02:41:58). Ahmed Badawi responded that having a strong policy in place about what happens when a budget year is over and the money is unspent will help. Councilmember Hoppen inquired about how much of the $10 million general fund unassigned balance is attributable to the Measure O/L sales tax. Director Hess responded that $691,000 is attributable to Measure L (02:46:30). Mayor asked about the amount of cash in the parking fund and its performance, to which Director Hess replied that the parking fund has $1.3 million in cash (02:49:47), and brought in $2.6 million in revenue, and had an increase in net position of $237,000 (02:50:31). Mayor then asked for a qualitative assessment of the city's finances compared to other cities (02:50:57). Mr. Badawi noted that pension liability is always a concern, and that compared to other cities the auditor works with, he does not see any issues that would concern him in Sausalito (02:51:31). Vice Mayor Cox and Councilmember Boston thanked Chad Hess and city staff for their work in improving the financial position of the city.	Vice Mayor Cox moved to receive and file the fiscal year 2022-2023 basic financial statements and report on internal control over financial reporting (03:00:02). Councilmember Boston seconded the motion (03:00:11).	2 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 2 Neutral
02:54:22 Babette McDougal was Neutral: Asked a general question about how an auditor would find evidence of fraud, for example, in the context of the housing element and payoffs to government participants. She criticized the council for running out the clock with repetitive comments instead of submitting questions in advance. None Pat Zuk was Unknown: Attempted to provide public comment, but encountered technical difficulties and was unable to be heard. The City Manager offered to contact her, obtain her questions, and bring them forward for the public record.
03:02:57	5.D: Introduction and Waiver of First Reading of Ordinance No. 2024-01, An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito Municipal Code Re-Adopting Chapter 2.60 Military Equipment Use Policy	The council discussed the agenda after 10 PM and decided to proceed with items 5D and 5E, considering public interest in the Edwards item (03:03:40). Lieutenant Brandon Rogers presented the annual renewal of Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 2.60, the Military Equipment Use Ordinance. A public hearing was held on December 5th, 2023, to present the 2022-2023 military equipment use report. There were no questions or public comments at that hearing (03:05:14). The police department is requesting $468 to replenish beanbag rounds used during training (03:05:25) and is asking the city council to renew the military equipment use ordinance. The mayor opened and closed the floor for public comment and then opened the floor for council discussion.	Vice Mayor Cox moved to introduce by title only and waive the first reading of ordinance number 2024-01, regarding the re-adoption of Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 2.60, Military Equipment Use Policy (03:06:24). The motion was seconded and passed unanimously.	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:06:50	5.E: Adopt a Resolution authorizing the City Manager to Award the Construction contract composed of the Base Bid plus three Bid Alternatives for the 2023 Pavement Improvement Project – Edwards Avenue in an amount of $1,050,530.00, authorize a construction	Andrew Davidson, Senior Engineer, presented the proposal to award a construction contract for the resurfacing of Edwards Avenue between Marion Avenue and Alexander Avenue, and to award a contract for construction management and inspection. Edwards Avenue was initially included in the 2022 street resurfacing project but was separated due to its steepness, concrete paving, and sanitary sewer work. The existing street is concrete with some asphalt patches, is narrow, and very steep. The street is past its useful life, and must be fully replaced with asphalt and concrete. The sanitary sewer main also requires replacement. The original budget was $2.49 million, but now needs an additional $530,000 from the sewer enterprise fund for the sewer work. The city received three bids, with Majoran Gelati's bid being the lowest at $1,050,530. A retaining wall at the intersection of Edwards and Marion was originally intended to be included, but was removed because specialty construction is required, wall estimates came in between 1.5 and 2 million dollars, and it would delay the roadway project. The Director of Public Works presented proposed 2024 pavement improvements in October of 2023. The city's current pavement condition index is 58, and to maintain that, an annual budget of $1.8 million is needed, or $2.9 million to increase it by five points. Over the next month, they will verify streets and develop a list for the 2024 pavement project, maximizing the number of streets treated. They plan on working closely with residents during the complex project. Councilmember Boston asked about the retaining wall and the risk of mudslides, and Director Hess noted a past landslide on Sausalito Boulevard cost several million dollars, and the hillside repair on Edwards is estimated at one and a half to two million. Councilmember Kelman asked about the other bids, noting one was $300,000 more and the other was more than that. She raised concerns about quality control with Majoran Gelati, who did the Gerard project, and the seams around storm drains and sidewalks. Andrew Davidson notes that there will be a construction manager and inspector this time and that George Rolotti is a good contractor. Vice Mayor Cox said as a general law city, they are required to take the low bid when they do a design, bid, build project like a roadway, but can implement a process to pre-qualify bidders so that if there were a lot of complaints or various other criteria, we could evaluate and thereby weed out the pool of potential bidders for projects that we're particularly worried about ensuring quality for. Director Hess noted the overall budget for capital expenditure infrastructure improvement is just over 5 million 5 million 36,000 was the budget request for fiscal year 24, and 2.9 million of that was roads. Councilmember Hoppen discussed Edwards' low Pavement Condition Index (PCI) of 28 and questioned the timeline. Andrew Davidson said the construction project has an 84-day calendar window, but the closure of Edwards will not be that long. Councilmember Boston asked if doing them at the same time will result in additional closure time, and Andrew Davidson did not think so. The road work is the section that has more closure time.	Vice Mayor Cox moved to adopt the recommended motion in the staff report, including adopting the recommended Resolution, and moved to direct staff to utilize any surplus funding from the original allocation and the award of the resurfacing to the installation of the uphill wall, and to return to the council with any additional appropriation that may be needed to carry out that project. (03:36:35)	3 Total: 3 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:30:01 Rob Cox was In Favor: Commended the council for working on the Edwards Avenue project, but thinks the wall issue is equally important, noting that city consultants recommended a retaining wall in this area 28 years ago due to a landslide in that area. Urged the council and staff to expeditiously work to get the wall in place as soon as possible. He submitted an email with a proposed amendment and they built a wall a few years ago on the private road on the same slope, and is happy to cooperate with the information they have from that experience. 03:32:18 Steven Woodside was In Favor: Also lives in the same neighborhood, agrees with Rob Cox, thanked the council for their hard work, appreciates the effort, concerned about landslides, and notes Councilmember Hoffman led an effort in 2019 to create a task force with serious recommendations, including areas like this, which were deemed hotspots that required attention. These areas need to be looked at, assessed and mapped so that progress can be made to gain public safety. 03:33:40 Jeffrey Stafford was In Favor: Thanked the council for prioritizing Edwards Avenue as its in rough shape, and some neighbors are scared to drive down it. Brings attention to the fact that the retaining wall is much scarier than Edwards. He hopes there is some priority towards the retaining wall as well. Notes the sharp turn at the bottom of the retaining wall needs improving as a fire truck and ambulance have to do multi-point turns to get up there.
03:37:23	5.F: Receive and File the FY2024-25 Budget Calendar and Provide Direction if Necessary	The Mayor suggested pushing item 5F, the budget calendar, to a future agenda item due to the late hour. Vice Mayor Cox recommended putting item 5F on the consent agenda for the next regular meeting on February 6, given that everyone had already read the staff report (03:37:47).	Motion to put item 5F on consent for the next regular meeting on February 6 (03:37:47).	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:38:09	3.F: Cancel the August 20 and November 5 Regular Meetings; and Call for Special Meetings on January 22 at 7:00 pm, February 10 at 8:30 am, March 30 at 8:30 am, June 1 at 8:30 am, July 30 at 7:00 pm, and October 29 at 7:00 pm.	The council is discussing the proposed schedule of canceling the August and November regular meetings and setting special meetings for various dates. Vice Mayor Cox suggested adopting the schedule through February 6 and postponing the remaining calendar items to the February 6 meeting (03:38:15). Councilmember Kelman sought clarification that the immediate action would only approve the special meeting on January 22 and February 10 (03:38:26). Vice Mayor Cox clarified that the motion would approve the special meeting on January 22, the meeting on February 6, and the workshop on February 10 (03:38:34). The Mayor suggested discussing the calendar at the priority planning session on February 10 instead of the February 6 meeting due to the press of other business (03:38:50). The council agreed to discuss the calendar at the February 10 meeting. The Mayor stated that no motion was needed as they had direction on the next three meetings and would move the item to the priority planning session (03:39:09). The item was then opened for public comment.	No Motion	1 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
03:39:35 Unknown was Neutral: A member of the public apologized for attempting to speak out of turn and asked if they could either speak on the topic now or return to speak during the free speech section at the end of the meeting. The speaker went on to speak incoherently, and the council appeared to be having difficulty muting the speaker.
03:40:39	6: COMMUNICATIONS - 10:00 PM	The Communications section of the agenda focused on public comment procedures. The discussion centered on reverting to the prior protocol of taking public comment at the beginning of meetings. Concerns were raised about the current timing of public comment, with speakers noting that the lateness of the hour made it difficult for some people to participate effectively (03:41:02). There was a call to reinstate public engagement processes and allow citizens to re-engage with the council, especially by responding to comments that request a response (03:44:09).	No Motion	4 Total: 4 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:40:54 Unknown was In Favor: The speaker congratulated the Mayor and urged the council to revert to the prior protocol of taking public comment first. They noted that the late hour made it difficult for some people to stay coherent and participate. 03:41:48 Jeffrey Chase was In Favor: Chase seconded the call to move public comment to the beginning of the meeting. He emphasized that public comment sets the tone for the meeting. 03:42:32 Sandra Bushmaker was In Favor: Bushmaker stated that 26 years ago, the council moved public comment to the beginning of the agenda and that it worked well. She encouraged the council to do the same now. 03:42:57 Babette McDougal was In Favor: McDougal stated that she usually represents the body politic when speaking at the lectern. She urged the council to reinstate public engagement processes and move public comment back to the beginning of the meeting. She noted that citizens should get responses to comments that request them. She also thanked the council for their service.
03:45:06	7: COUNCILMEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS - 10:10 PM	This agenda item consisted of reports from councilmembers regarding their committee involvement. Vice Mayor Cox reported on attending the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) meeting and raising concerns about the city's eelgrass restoration plan and a drafted letter to BCDC, seeking consensus from the council to send it on behalf of the council as the liaison to BCDC (03:47:56). Councilmember Kelman highlighted a San Francisco Estuary Institute proposal for a living shoreline project that included eelgrass restoration and suggested a future agenda item to discuss the city's future plans (03:48:23). He also inquired about the city's consultant for the eelgrass project (03:49:07). Councilmember Boston reminded the council about the upcoming Marin County Council members and mayors committee meeting on January 24th (03:49:30). Councilmember Kelman added that there is SB2 money for projects and planning for Sea Level Rise and it was conveyed to the Sustainability Resilience Manager (03:49:57).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:50:42	8: CITY MANAGER REPORTS AND OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESS - 10:20 PM	Mayor clarifies that item eight is the combined city manager reports, city manager information for the council and future agenda items. They also confirm that public comment will be taken on these items.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:51:08	8B: City Manager Information for Council	City Manager provided information on upcoming meetings. There are three appeals pending to the city council. On Monday, January 22nd there will be a special meeting to consider the Pine Street appeal, which will start at 7 PM. Prior to the appeal hearing, at 6 PM, there will be two additional items for the council's information and consideration, including catastrophic-based insurance and a request for proposals for facilities. The City Council has agreed on a February 10th strategy session, which will start at 8 AM. (03:51:15) Councilmember Hoppen questioned the start time of the special meeting, stating she recalled being polled for a start time of 7 PM and not 6 PM. (03:53:03) Hoppen also questioned if regular city council work should be on a special meeting (03:53:31). Vice Mayor Cox explained that the special meeting was scheduled due to the unavailability of all council members for another Tuesday night meeting in January (03:54:12). The Mayor stated that on the consent agenda for the December 19th meeting, the city council directed staff to cancel the January 2nd meeting and find another date for a special meeting (03:55:02). The City Attorney stated that generally, agencies are allowed to do any business at a special meeting with some limited exceptions (03:55:26). The Mayor apologized, stating that she thought it was the direction of the council to find a substitute for the January 2nd meeting, and that staff operated in good faith to try to find a business meeting to do their work (03:55:53).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:56:21	8C: Future Agenda Items	Mayor opens the floor for future agenda items. Councilmember Boston requests a discussion about the Social Center for the Arts' lease be added to a future agenda, mentioning they were approached by board members who want to discuss their lease, particularly the upcoming escalation of rent. Councilmember Hoppen notes the lease has three years remaining.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

03:57:24	9: ADJOURNMENT - 10:45 PM	The Mayor asks if there are any future agenda items. The meeting is adjourned at 11:05 PM, with the next meeting scheduled for January 22nd at 6 p.m. (03:57:29).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

City Council Meeting Transcript

Adrian Brinton

City Council Feb 10, 2024

Time	Speaker	Text
00:00:03.22	Blauskne	Good evening, Mayor, City Council. It is now 530 and welcome to the special and regular City Council meeting of January 16, 2024. We are broadcasting live on the city's website. We're also on Zoom and we are on cable TV channel 27.
00:00:23.35	Mayor	Thank you, city clerk. Call this meeting order on January the 16th at 5.30 PM. We have the following closed session items, conference with real proper negotiators, Jean Hiller, price and terms, counsel with legal counsel, existing litigation,
00:00:38.51	Mayor	Government case Portche versus City of Sausalito. Conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, Whiskey Springs Villa, HOA versus the City of Sausalito. Conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, one case. Could we please open public comment on any of these closed session items?
00:00:55.99	Blauskne	For any members, currently we don't have any members of the public in-house in council chambers, and there are any Zoom members. You can use the raise hand function. There are no members of the public right now.
00:01:09.15	Mayor	All right, and could we, for the record, please call the roll.
00:01:12.68	Blauskne	Council member. Sorry, let me do that.
00:01:15.51	Blauskne	Councilmember Blauskne. Here.
00:01:15.77	Mayor	I don't.
00:01:18.75	Blauskne	Councilmember Hoffman. Here. Councilmember Kelman.
00:01:21.42	Councilmember Kelman	Here.
00:01:23.24	Blauskne	Here. Vice Mary Cox. Here. And Mary Sobieski.
00:01:26.94	Mayor	here. So we will now close public comments since there is no public comment and we will adjourn to closed session.
00:01:35.19	Unknown	you
00:01:35.86	Unknown	Recording stopped.
00:04:37.29	Mayor	Meeting back to order. There are no announcements outside of closed session.
00:04:43.09	Mayor	Aside from Happy New Year.
00:04:44.93	Mayor	uh i went to announce that on the agenda items uh 3c and 4c have been removed uh
00:04:53.01	Mayor	I'm sorry, 3C and 5C. Thank you for the correction, Vice Mayor. As well as I'm sorry to report that item 3B is also being removed. The applicant indicated today via email that she is no longer interested in being appointed to the commission. Items 3 and 5C will come back on February the 6th. So we would like to start with the Pledge of Allegiance. So if we would kindly all rise and recite the pledge.
00:05:22.36	Unknown	Pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
00:05:23.68	Steven Woodside	word.
00:05:24.35	Steven Woodside	United States of America.
00:05:26.39	Unknown	and peace republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:05:26.58	Steven Woodside	These are all the
00:05:27.59	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:05:28.12	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:05:29.14	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:05:30.21	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:05:35.27	Mayor	Thank you very much. And I'd like to approve the agenda. Is there a motion?
00:05:41.33	Vice Mayor Cox	So I move approval of the agenda as amended. Second.
00:05:46.66	Mayor	City clerk, would you kindly call the role?
00:05:50.46	Blauskne	We don't need to do a roll call.
00:05:52.87	Mayor	All right. All in favor, say aye.
00:05:54.98	Mayor	Thank you.
00:05:55.00	Blauskne	Aye.
00:05:55.87	Mayor	Aye. Agenda is approved. First item on the agenda are interviews for boards and commissions. The first interviewee is Michelle Dumont for the planning commission. Is Ms. Dumont here?
00:06:08.33	Mayor	Please come up to the podium. Welcome. Please come up to the podium and kindly spend a minute introducing yourself, and then we'll spend the rest of our time asking questions.
00:06:25.30	Mayor	We have it. Very pretty.
00:06:36.19	Michelle Dumont	ready and eager to talk to you, hopefully as a member of the planning committee.
00:06:41.06	Michelle Dumont	at creating my efforts to what makes salsa re-do really accessible
00:06:45.98	Michelle Dumont	My admiration for our community runs deep, seeking ways to get back
00:06:50.94	Michelle Dumont	We can hear the theme believe the essence of our city.
00:06:54.70	Michelle Dumont	For me.
00:06:56.12	Michelle Dumont	Our thoughtfully designed the environment seamlessly blend with our natural surroundings, creating an emplastic city that I probably call home in here.
00:07:06.50	Michelle Dumont	Paul's call.
00:07:08.22	Michelle Dumont	And every morning I wake up in this amazing place and I always remember it's our city, but it's also an iconic place where over a million visitors come at the view.
00:07:18.90	Michelle Dumont	With a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Architecture in the Savannah College of Art and Design, and over 15 years practicing architecture and design, I've established myself in the Bay Area
00:07:18.93	Steven Woodside	with a bathroom.
00:07:20.06	Steven Woodside	Fine Arts and a Master
00:07:24.77	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:07:30.48	Michelle Dumont	Um,
00:07:31.30	Michelle Dumont	As a designer of buildings and spaces, that range of cost, and multiple building technologies.
00:07:39.59	Michelle Dumont	and the Breast Panic for Biden, I was in several projects.
00:07:40.55	Unknown	Thank you.
00:07:43.74	Michelle Dumont	Some of us are definitely visible people, and that's a skill I can have.
00:07:49.80	Michelle Dumont	to this commission.
00:07:51.74	Michelle Dumont	Currently, I'm working on a remodel of the home in San Francisco, and I thought it would be right on.
00:07:57.17	Michelle Dumont	feeling the scale that I love.
00:08:00.53	Michelle Dumont	For careful for the project, the time you're listening might be strength.
00:08:04.44	Michelle Dumont	I joke and I call it my superpower because it offers collaboration to bring people together. It's something that we're usually taught as children. But it's something you have to communicate with practice. And it really is the most important thing in bringing people together.
00:08:19.68	Michelle Dumont	So this is a few items, sustainable growth, community engagement, and respecting our city's history are really important values that I'm the most passionate about.
00:08:22.81	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:08:29.93	Michelle Dumont	And I was also honored to serve on the Los Angeles Groups and Housing and Development Advisory Committee.
00:08:30.03	Unknown	Yeah.
00:08:36.14	Michelle Dumont	So I got to observe everything and learn a lot about Sal Salido really quickly. And this has really inspired me to keep here tonight and get back at a much larger capacity.
00:08:48.37	Michelle Dumont	And to be clear, I'm not least passionate about buildings. I'm passionate about the school in the community, too.
00:08:54.04	Michelle Dumont	And that's why I'm motivated about the self-intention.
00:08:57.14	Michelle Dumont	to ensure that cells lead overcame distinctive identity and continues to grow.
00:09:03.42	Michelle Dumont	Thank you.
00:09:05.65	Mayor	Thank you.
00:09:06.21	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you.
00:09:08.45	Mayor	Thank you, Ms. Zipant. Are there questions from the dais, please?
00:09:11.56	Councilmember Kelman	Always. Hi, Michelle. Nice to see you. Thank you for being here. I
00:09:16.57	Councilmember Kelman	Really great resume. Thank you. For those of you who don't see it, we got this printout, which is actually really beautiful and thoughtful. Thank you.
00:09:24.50	Councilmember Kelman	So you're passionate about people and you're passionate about buildings. How do you feel about space?
00:09:29.48	Councilmember Kelman	And I ask that because one of the things on our docket this year is about public spaces.
00:09:34.96	Councilmember Kelman	and the trade-offs between, I think, beautification and resilience. What are your thoughts on some of those trade-offs and how communities like ours can address those?
00:09:51.70	Michelle Dumont	But making sure that there is
00:09:57.29	Michelle Dumont	time and effort to raise
00:09:59.72	Michelle Dumont	Resoliency in the future.
00:10:02.92	Michelle Dumont	Thank you.
00:10:05.66	Michelle Dumont	What one person considered a vehicle can be very different to someone else's. But the most important role is that we provide spaces
00:10:14.74	Michelle Dumont	for our community.
00:10:24.34	Mayor	Thank you. Other questions from the dais, please.
00:10:31.85	Vice Mayor Cox	Sure. Have you watched any recent planning commission meetings?
00:10:37.15	Michelle Dumont	Yeah.
00:10:46.43	Michelle Dumont	I think there are a lot of things to consider, but a lot of the countries don't have. So I think it's important.
00:11:04.89	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:11:06.24	Mayor	Are there other questions from the dais?
00:11:09.99	Mayor	I have a question then. Have you gone before a planning commission in another community in your role as an architect?
00:11:35.13	Michelle Dumont	But a lot of work that we say is really trying to be
00:11:40.46	Michelle Dumont	and cherish it. There's a lot of history in the process.
00:11:45.29	Michelle Dumont	So no, but I have on the floor design review
00:11:49.46	Michelle Dumont	in the Senate of the Senate.
00:11:52.91	Unknown	you
00:11:53.61	Michelle Dumont	And I found that it was extremely
00:11:56.80	Michelle Dumont	Thanks a lot.
00:11:57.88	Michelle Dumont	Bye.
00:11:59.16	Michelle Dumont	In one such meeting,
00:12:00.71	Michelle Dumont	He's going to keep this great because we're that hot.
00:12:03.87	Michelle Dumont	when we all stood around.
00:12:05.93	Vice Mayor Cox	Her mic is not on.
00:12:09.79	Mayor	Sorry, that was our fault.
00:12:13.60	Mayor	Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
00:12:17.35	Unknown	and
00:12:18.06	Mayor	We'll let you answer this last question, if you'd like from the start on the microphone. Just repeat.
00:12:23.59	Michelle Dumont	Can you hear me now?
00:12:24.52	Mayor	We can, yes.
00:12:25.28	Michelle Dumont	Okay.
00:12:26.85	Michelle Dumont	Did you hear anything I said?
00:12:28.40	Mayor	I have to pull it.
00:12:30.41	Michelle Dumont	I see. Okay. So the last question, have I been in front of a planning commission in another city? And generally the work I've done in San Francisco, we try to maintain as much of the history as possible. So there's the ability to notify your neighbors and have that 30-day review.
00:12:50.91	Michelle Dumont	Um,
00:12:52.20	Michelle Dumont	There's so much history there. We really want to make sure our clients under my clients understand that we want to maintain as much of it as possible.
00:13:00.57	Michelle Dumont	Another example, I've gone before design review boards in the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel.
00:13:06.69	Michelle Dumont	And that is you go with the landscape architect and we had great success recently on a project because we didn't use a screen. We printed out large drawings, we came together.
00:13:20.93	Michelle Dumont	And everyone could really understand and see. So those are, you know, those, I realized we can't do that all the time, but the in person meetings and the engagement. That's what I try to always look for is how to better engage with the people I'm communicating with.
00:13:37.71	Mayor	Mr. Dumont, thank you very much for being here and for applying. Thank you.
00:13:41.02	Michelle Dumont	Thank you.
00:13:41.05	Mayor	Thank you.
00:13:41.12	Michelle Dumont	Thank you.
00:13:41.17	Michelle Dumont	Thank you.
00:13:41.22	Mayor	Thanks.
00:13:41.35	Michelle Dumont	Thanks.
00:13:41.40	Mayor	Thank you.
00:13:42.15	Mayor	Our next candidate for the Historic Preservation Committee is Virginia Irwin.
00:13:48.10	Mayor	Is she here?
00:13:51.83	Mayor	city clerk. Is she appearing by zoom or was she coming in person?
00:13:58.08	Blauskne	Virginia earlier.
00:13:59.75	Blauskne	Christina, that might be. Let me see if Christina Irwin is her.
00:14:05.38	Mayor	If Virginia Irwin is on the Zoom, if she could kindly raise her hand in the Zoom function so this city clerk can see you.
00:14:16.89	Blauskne	Ask you to unmute. If you can unmute yourself, please, Chris or Virginia.
00:14:29.82	Blauskne	Now somebody else is.
00:14:32.57	Blauskne	Sorry, you're welcome.
00:14:34.93	Blauskne	wise.
00:14:41.06	Blauskne	I'm asking the person that's Christina Irwin to unmute.
00:14:44.82	Blauskne	or so.
00:14:47.15	Christina Irwin	Hi, good evening. I'm sorry. My name is.
00:14:47.34	Mayor	Bye.
00:14:49.02	Mayor	We can hear you hold on the volume is very low. Can we do anything about her volume?
00:14:55.13	Mayor	City Clerk.
00:14:58.40	Mayor	Can you say something, Virginia?
00:15:02.17	Christina Irwin	Can you hear me now? Is the volume better?
00:15:04.60	Mayor	Yes. The floor is yours, and then we'll follow up with a few questions.
00:15:11.50	Christina Irwin	already.
00:15:12.53	Christina Irwin	Is.
00:15:12.61	Mayor	We can hear you if you can introduce yourself and your interest in joining the Historic Preservation Committee.
00:15:17.83	Christina Irwin	I think that you have commented or asked me on the wrong item. My name is Christina Irwin, and I'm here to talk about the housing element programs.
00:15:26.40	Blauskne	Okay, so you're not Virginia Irwin. All right, we're just trying to make sure.
00:15:28.76	Christina Irwin	OK.
00:15:30.35	Christina Irwin	Yeah, thank you.
00:15:31.14	Mayor	Yes, would you like...
00:15:31.29	Blauskne	Yes.
00:15:33.94	Mayor	So does that mean that we can't find Missouri? Nope.
00:15:36.31	Kieran Culligan	can't find Missouri? Yeah. All right.
00:15:38.08	Mayor	So is Craig Merrillist on the, oh, there he is. Hello, Craig, Mr. Merrillist, I apologize.
00:15:45.79	Mayor	Yes, just to let you know, we're here to interview. We're not acting on EDAC tonight. That item was taken off the agenda, but we're glad you're here. Thank you. If you kindly introduce yourself and you're interested in joining EDAC, we'll follow up with some questions.
00:15:57.86	Craig Merrilies	Thank you, Mayor Sobieski and council members. My name is Craig Merrilies, and I'm here tonight to stand before you, be questioned, and hopefully give you thoughtful answers about the Economic Development Advisory Commission.
00:16:11.91	Mayor	All right, questions please for Mr. Merrilys.
00:16:14.75	Mayor	Please.
00:16:15.03	Unknown	Bye, Spare.
00:16:16.03	Vice Mayor Cox	What is your interest in serving on the Economic Development Committee, and what is your understanding of its role, and how would you contribute to that role?
00:16:25.19	Craig Merrilies	Okay, three questions.
00:16:27.81	Craig Merrilies	I have a long history of working on economic policy matters, including development questions, and have done so by working with diverse communities, often ones that are at odds with each other, groups that go to war. And I can't say everybody was always totally satisfied with the result, but it's like the struggles that you all go through trying to find common threads and look for ways to get people to agree on things that benefit the entire
00:17:10.89	Craig Merrilies	the entire constituency, the entire city, county, state. I've worked at local, state, and federal levels
00:17:20.49	Craig Merrilies	on those kinds of projects. I'd love to do some work here. I'm recently retired and I have more time available and would like to put some of that to work for the service of the city.
00:17:36.36	Mayor	Got it. Other questions, please.
00:17:38.46	Mayor	Please.
00:17:38.75	Craig Merrilies	Thanks.
00:17:38.84	Mayor	Thank you.
00:17:39.82	Councilmember Boston	Hi, Craig. Nice to see you. I know you've actually already been quite involved in the city of Sausalito. Could you maybe talk a little bit about that work?
00:17:46.48	Craig Merrilies	Yeah, I think you probably are referring to my work with the Working Waterfront Coalition and land development questions, housing questions, and economic development.
00:18:02.63	Craig Merrilies	And, you know, that all came about largely as a result of my experience building one of the last houseboats in Sausalito before the untimely passing of the owner there that had kept that going for many, many years. So after Ian's passing, we had our houseboat, but we were one of the last ones to be built there in the yard. And it gave me a wonderful impression of...
00:18:34.46	Craig Merrilies	the challenges and the problems with that area in the city, but also the incredible potential that area has.
00:18:44.39	Craig Merrilies	It was a firsthand experience and I'm glad, better off for it, I think.
00:18:49.80	Mayor	Any other questions? Council Member Hoffman? Yeah. General?
00:18:53.12	Councilmember Kelman	So Craig, thanks for being here. What are some opportunities you think that we should explore for economic development that perhaps we haven't spent enough time on?
00:19:05.07	Councilmember Kelman	I,
00:19:05.88	Craig Merrilies	I can't say that the council hasn't
00:19:09.59	Craig Merrilies	at times, discuss all, I think, the important aspects of economic development. You know, it may be questions of balance, emphasis, but I don't fault the council for not being aware of reviewing and considering all the good options, but getting the balance right and sometimes getting the particulars, that's the hard part. And that's what you guys are doing day in and day out. I think that,
00:19:41.82	Craig Merrilies	It's often thought that industrial and maybe maritime work is kind of grungy, low value.
00:19:50.16	Craig Merrilies	old fashioned kind of work. But I think the past few years have
00:19:56.20	Craig Merrilies	taught a lot of us that that kind of work, the kind of physical work, the kind of manual labor now supplemented with the latest high tech kinds of technology is becoming more and more something that we want to be able to do in this country, whether it's train young people to be engineers.
00:20:20.73	Craig Merrilies	machinists, all of which require
00:20:24.73	Craig Merrilies	you know, really advanced training at this point and the Marine ship and, and, uh,
00:20:30.07	Craig Merrilies	The working waterfront is where some of that's happening, and a lot more would, I think, only serve to benefit the city and make us known and generate significant revenues for the city. There's a lot of people looking for that kind of work to do, and we happen to have a place to do it. Most people don't.
00:20:51.06	Mayor	Do you, Mr. Mariluz, I guess I'll ask the last question. Do we have, do you have any ideas?
00:20:56.81	Mayor	like Council Member Kellman was asking.
00:20:59.26	Mayor	around how she rivalries the working waterfront.
00:21:02.74	Mayor	activity there in the context of landlords charging rents that are above what people can pay.
00:21:10.67	Craig Merrilies	Yeah, that's part of the conundrum. I think a lot of that has to do, meaning the higher than
00:21:18.41	Craig Merrilies	optimal industrial rates that are being charged has to do with land use policies that predate all of you. And that involves the struggle to enforce zoning as it exists. I think, Mr. Mayor, you had some firsthand experience with how frustrating that can be, despite the best of intentions, to try and make sure that we have conforming uses. And, you know, naturally folks are always trying to slip in around the edges and make the most money, regardless of what the city's policy is. But oftentimes I think that's money for them and not in the best interest of the city.
00:21:59.83	Craig Merrilies	So your work and the work that we have yet to do for enforcement and coming up with coherent
00:22:06.96	Craig Merrilies	land use policies that make sense to people.
00:22:10.13	Craig Merrilies	The Marinship Specific Plan is a challenge to read. It's a challenge to enforce. And, you know, we might, you know, benefit from having a more straightforward approach to land use, if that's possible.
00:22:24.60	Mayor	Our time is up. Thank you for all your work on behalf of Sausalito and for your interest in applying to the Economic Development Advisory Committee.
00:22:31.72	Craig Merrilies	Thank you for your kind reception.
00:22:34.59	Mayor	We're done with any views. The next.
00:22:36.63	Blauskne	We might have Jackie Spencer Davis who was...
00:22:41.18	Mayor	I'm sorry you missed that. That has been pulled from the agenda. She has indicated she's not interested in declining the opportunity for that appointment. Sorry, city clerk, that just happened a few minutes before the meeting. Thank you for trying to catch a possible error. Our first agenda item is now special presentations and mayor's announcements. I just have two. One is to acknowledge the promotion of our own Stacey Gregory to chief of police. Congratulations.
00:22:43.84	Blauskne	Okay, okay.
00:23:12.62	Mayor	He was, the ceremony on Saturday was on a rainy day like today, and it was standing room only at the Spinnaker. An incredible crowd of residents and well-wishers came to salute her and the other officers who received promotions, Lieutenant Brian Mather, Lieutenant Brandon Rogers, Sergeant Nick Wright, Sergeant Edgar Padilla, Corporal Adam Clarice, and Corporal Ryan Walsh. They should all be congratulated for their promotions today.
00:23:42.83	Mayor	The testimony from the police chief is that the morale in the police department is high and positive, and everyone is excited about moving forward. So the next mayor's announcement is that yesterday was Martin Luther King Day. The city council is approving a proclamation that was given to today, that was given to the organizers of that event. I was there at the community center. It was acknowledged by the crowd at that event and very well received.
00:24:17.26	Mayor	Councilmember Boston, did you have an additional announcement?
00:24:20.16	Councilmember Boston	I wanted to share some exciting news from our community development department, which is that
00:24:24.31	Councilmember Boston	Thanks to their hard work, they just received a check of $160,000 back to our Community Development Department as a result of an old SB2 grant that they followed up on continuously from 2019. So I just wanted to give them acknowledgement of that new sum of dollars that will help to continue to support our department and our general fund.
00:24:42.47	Mayor	I can thank you. Thanks for the encouragement. But if we could keep the encouragement from the audience limited. Thank you.
00:24:50.03	Mayor	So now we move on to the consent calendar. These are items that are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, and are expected to have unanimous council approval. They may be acted in one motion in the form, as I will read them. There will be no separate discussion of these consent calendar items. However, the council, before it votes, any council member can ask for an item to be removed from the consent calendar. The consent calendar items are 3A, ratifying the proclamation, honoring and observing Dr. Martin Luther King Day. That was the consent calendar. The consent calendar items are 3A, ratifying the proclamation, honoring and observing Dr. Martin Luther King Day. That was declared on January 15, 2024. 3B and 3C have been removed.
00:25:28.28	Mayor	PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ensign PB, David Ens
00:25:49.68	Mayor	concerning our city council calendar.
00:25:51.76	Mayor	canceling the August 20 meeting and November 5 regular meetings.
00:25:55.47	Mayor	calling special meetings for January 22, February 10 and March 30.
00:25:59.97	Mayor	and then establishing three special Saturday meetings on June 1st, July 30th, and October 29th. Are there any consent items that anyone wishes to remove?
00:26:10.89	Councilmember Kelman	Yes, Mayor.
00:26:11.97	Councilmember Kelman	As we discussed earlier today, I'm going to request that agenda item 3F be removed from consent for discussion by the full council. And then I do have a question, a clarification for the city manager around item 3E. I'm hoping the city manager could explain the scope of said consulting services articulated with S to Dixon parking.
00:26:12.44	Unknown	Thank you.
00:26:36.29	Mayor	would you like to respond to that city manager to see if she, a council member would like to request it to be removed or if she's satisfied? Okay.
00:26:42.38	City Manager	We can respond to 3E.
00:26:44.27	City Manager	Can you hear me?
00:26:46.01	City Manager	Can you hear me?
00:26:46.57	Mayor	I'm not sure your microphone is on.
00:26:48.84	City Manager	Thank you.
00:26:51.29	Mayor	Madam, kindly, if you'd ever not make comments from the audience, it is appreciated. They're positive. It is nevertheless somewhat disruptive.
00:27:00.72	City Manager	So the best person to respond to 3E is Chief Gregory. So Chief, can you come on up?
00:27:14.80	Mayor	Hello, Chief.
00:27:15.79	Chief Gregory	Hi.
00:27:17.62	Mayor	Councilmember Kellman would like you to clarify something regarding the Dixon contract.
00:27:21.82	Chief Gregory	Okay.
00:27:24.79	Councilmember Kelman	I want to know what the scope is.
00:27:25.95	Chief Gregory	Oh, so it's on an as needed basis. There's no specific project. But as Wayne, I was hoping that he'd be here today so I can introduce him to you. But as we move forward with some of the projects that we have on our future list of to do's for parking, their expertise and knowledge of our city is invaluable. so there's no, we might not spend any money out of that agreement, but it's there in case we need it because Wayne is a one, one man show and still learning and getting his feet wet here in Sausalito. So it's an insurance policy.
00:27:26.27	Councilmember Kelman	so it's
00:28:04.98	Councilmember Kelman	so i maybe sorry just a little clarification so what but what what do they actually do i mean are they are they parking uh services are they coming up with a parking um
00:28:15.50	Councilmember Kelman	the fees involved or they didn't doing what Elliot used to do? What's the so they
00:28:19.43	Chief Gregory	So they would help Wayne, who is the new Elliot with tasks and projects, um, and provide their information, you know, the information that they know about Sausalito, as well as the information that they have on parking in.
00:28:37.59	Chief Gregory	California and the United States. So they would be that key expert opinion on how to move forward, whether it's contracts with ALPR on vehicles,
00:28:55.94	Chief Gregory	anything and everything that we could, um,
00:29:00.11	Chief Gregory	deal with, they'd be, they, they're the go-to they're the, the front runners and the information that parking has, you know, to offer.
00:29:09.43	Councilmember Kelman	I won't ask any more questions of this, but maybe city manager, we could get a
00:29:13.43	Councilmember Kelman	sort of an update on a consent item or maybe a one-way communication about
00:29:17.83	Councilmember Kelman	So the parking services within the police department so that we fully understand that scope.
00:29:22.93	City Manager	Thank you.
00:29:23.21	City Manager	Happy to do that, Councilmember Kellman. We can give you some sense of what we think we might be needing to do in the future and really round out the information that you're asking for tonight because there are many unknowns in terms of parking, but I will say this. The parking enterprise in the city is a $3 million operation, and in order to manage that properly right now with a new person to provide the support for that is why Dixon is being asked to help. One of the things that we also want to do is be transparent, because some of these contracts are essentially within the city manager's authority, but this is something that we needed to bring to council for council's full understanding of what we're trying to do. So I'll give you an example of a different help that we could get from Dixon. If we have a particular project that is challenged by parking, to have some analysis done quickly and readily by someone that's a professional, whether it's a redo of the Valhalla, whether it's looking at technology around our parking lots, Dixon would be a good go-to person to have on-call as necessary. So that's why I would recommend support for this tonight.
00:30:08.96	Steven Woodside	if,
00:30:30.11	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you, City Manager. So let me just make this request publicly then. We have a strategic session coming up on February 10th. If you could include a report out on parking, I'm sure it'll be interesting for us as to revenue as well at that session. I think that'd be very helpful. So we have a little bit more granularity and clarity about what exactly
00:30:46.97	Councilmember Kelman	this type of contract entails.
00:30:49.50	Councilmember Kelman	Ken?
00:30:49.70	Councilmember Kelman	to be able to do it.
00:30:49.73	City Manager	THANK YOU.
00:30:49.82	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you.
00:30:51.54	Mayor	So council member coming, I heard you went to pull three F off. You it's three E okay to stay on consent.
00:30:56.33	Unknown	Yes.
00:30:56.69	Mayor	Thank you.
00:30:57.16	Mayor	All right, so 3F will become item 5G on the business items, and we will now entertain public comment on the consent calendar. Anyone wishing, city manager, can you please provide?
00:31:09.75	Mayor	City...
00:31:12.89	Mayor	Is that what you recommend?
00:31:14.83	Mayor	All right, we're going to take a five minute recess, please. Just to get direction on.
00:31:22.99	Unknown	Record.
00:31:23.18	Mayor	Recording in progress. Ready for public comment on the consent agenda. City Clerk, would you please advise on how to make public comment?
00:31:31.58	Blauskne	If anybody in the audience wants to make a public comment, there are some speaker cards located over at the desk by the TV. You can fill it out and bring it back over here. If you're on Zoom, there's a raise hand function and you can just press that.
00:31:44.96	Blauskne	So right now in the house, we have a public comment on consent.
00:31:52.54	Unknown	Thank you.
00:31:54.45	Mayor	The city clerk called on you.
00:31:54.70	Unknown	doing in the city.
00:32:01.27	Babette McDougal	Thank you very much. Tabette McDougall on 15 Girard Avenue.
00:32:05.06	Babette McDougal	I would just like to say that I would like to see this relationship go forward.
00:32:10.33	Babette McDougal	It sounds promising, especially because the data is not just available to you within a closed session environment or within the police department confines.
00:32:18.48	Babette McDougal	but hopefully that it will be shared with the citizens as well so that they, we all.
00:32:22.97	Babette McDougal	may become better educated.
00:32:24.89	Babette McDougal	to the importance of parking to the city, and if there were ever some
00:32:28.55	Babette McDougal	changes
00:32:29.75	Babette McDougal	to be brought forward in the near future or,
00:32:32.28	Babette McDougal	medium term future.
00:32:33.97	Babette McDougal	then there's a better...
00:32:35.42	Babette McDougal	immediate understanding of the implications of the trade-offs and how to mitigate that. Thank you.
00:32:43.84	Blauskne	Next speaker on Zoom, Kieran Culligan.
00:32:52.72	Kieran Culligan	Hi there. Good evening. Kieran Culligan. I'm a resident, also a resident. I'm also a board member on our public schools nonprofit foundation. And in honor of item 3A, I just wanted to call out one of the most shining examples of diversity in our school is our public school named after none other than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And so with the timing is important because on February 2nd, we have a gala upcoming that's going to support the school. It's the first we've done with our new unified public school and all of the proceeds go to Rise Up to support the foundation. So the whole community is welcome. Council members, people listening live, city staff, we'd love to see you there. There's going to be food from Davie Jones, a big auction, music from Sips and Sounds in Marin City, and everything goes to support school programs. So please check out riseup94965.org. And the link is also in so thank you for honoring Dr. King on this day.
00:34:00.93	Blauskne	So you know for the speakers.
00:34:02.90	Mayor	Seeing no further speakers will close public comment.
00:34:05.90	Mayor	And I would look for a motion to approve the consent agenda.
00:34:10.14	Vice Mayor Cox	I move, we approve. Well, we have to move three up somewhere.
00:34:15.25	Mayor	or even move to 5G.
00:34:16.70	Vice Mayor Cox	Okay.
00:34:17.62	Vice Mayor Cox	I move we approve consent calendar items 3A, 3B, 3D, and 3E.
00:34:27.34	Mayor	3B was removed. So it would be...
00:34:29.73	Vice Mayor Cox	Oh, sorry. 3A, 3D, and 3E.
00:34:34.36	Mayor	Your second?
00:34:36.68	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:34:36.72	Councilmember Boston	Second.
00:34:38.39	Mayor	All in favor?
00:34:39.59	Councilmember Boston	Aye.
00:34:40.13	Unknown	Bye.
00:34:40.23	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
00:34:40.26	Unknown	Thank you.
00:34:40.97	Mayor	All right, the consenting.
00:34:41.97	Mayor	Thank you.
00:34:42.56	Mayor	Calendar is approved unanimously. There are no public hearing items. The next agenda item is our business agenda, 5A, a study session and presentation regarding the draft environmental impact report for housing element programs. We will turn the podium over to our director, Brendan Bips.
00:35:02.30	Brendan Bips	Thank you very much, Mayor, and good evening to you, council members, members of the public and staff. As always, happy to be here this evening, this time to introduce item 5A regarding a study session and presentation on the city's draft environmental impact report for housing element programs.
00:35:20.16	Brendan Bips	As council may recall, on January 30th of last year, the city council adopted the city's sixth cycle housing element. I will note, once certified by HCD, City of Sausalito was the first and only jurisdiction in Marin County with an adopted and compliant housing element. Following adoption and certification of the element, the city directed DeNovo Planning Group to prepare a housing element program's EIR to address the implementation of programs of rezoning discussed in the housing element. Since that time, DeNovo have been leading the environmental evaluation with specific focus on certain programs, those being 4, 8, 16, 17, and 19. And DeNovo will be speaking to those programs in more detail during their presentation.
00:36:05.78	Brendan Bips	De Novo staff
00:36:07.57	Brendan Bips	as well as staff have now completed the draft environmental impact report for the project.
00:36:13.33	Brendan Bips	On January 5, DeNovo filed the notice of completion with OPR. That's the Office of Planning and Research. And the city filed the notice of completion with OPR.
00:36:22.34	Brendan Bips	um
00:36:23.74	Brendan Bips	Excuse me, the notice of availability to comply with other state noticing requirements. Based on the January 5 release date, the 45-day comment period on the EIR will end on February 20, 2024. For those interested, the draft EIR is published on the state clearinghouse website as well as on the city's housing element webpage.
00:36:45.49	Brendan Bips	As now...
00:36:46.96	Brendan Bips	As we are now within the public comment period for the EIR, DeNovo and city staff have coordinated the study session to provide high-level information on the purpose and structure of the draft environmental impact report and to solicit any comments from city council, members of the public, or any other interested parties. So I'll note, while the consultants and staff can provide clarification on the process and the purpose of the draft environmental impact report, we will not be providing answers or responses to comments provided at this meeting. Rather, all questions and comments provided will be included in the record and will be appropriately addressed prior to the adoption of the EIR. So to ensure an accurate record, we have a court reporter here in attendance this evening who will be transcribing your comments. To support their efforts, please make sure to speak clearly and slowly when making your comments and to please provide your name for the record. With that said, to complement the item, we are joined here this evening by both Beth Thompson and Christina Irwin of DeNovo Planning Group. Thank you for virtually attending this evening, and they will be providing a short presentation on the draft EIR and next steps. I believe Ms. Thompson will be speaking first. So Beth, the floor is yours.
00:38:04.96	Mayor	Director Phipps, if you might just give the council members an opportunity to ask you any questions before we get too deep into the presentation. There may not be any, but let's just see. Do any council members have a question for Director Phipps?
00:38:15.89	Vice Mayor Cox	I do.
00:38:16.58	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:38:17.34	Mayor	Vice Mayor Cox.
00:38:18.56	Vice Mayor Cox	Director Phipps, I wanted to clarify the purpose of the EIR. So the EIR is to perform an environmental analysis of the housing element that we've adopted.
00:38:30.40	Vice Mayor Cox	to request.
00:38:30.57	Unknown	Correct.
00:38:30.59	Vice Mayor Cox	right?
00:38:31.11	Vice Mayor Cox	And so there's not, as part of this process, we're not modifying any of the programs, policies, or content of the housing element that we've already adopted and that has already been certified.
00:38:45.36	Brendan Bips	Absolutely, you're 100% correct. And that's an excellent question. The programs that were already adopted and certified by council is what is the subject of this environmental impact report.
00:38:56.91	Vice Mayor Cox	And then I noted with interest in the executive summary that it was actually not possible for us to perform some of this analysis prior to adopting the housing element because some of the –
00:39:12.57	Vice Mayor Cox	development that may occur and other factors were not yet known until we actually started our implementation process. Would that be an accurate statement?
00:39:20.91	Brendan Bips	I believe that is an accurate statement, Vice Mayor, and thank you very much for the comment. You know, there were certain things that became more clear as we move forward in the process.
00:39:30.90	Vice Mayor Cox	And so really this timing is ideal in the process.
00:39:35.32	Brendan Bips	I agree.
00:39:36.34	Vice Mayor Cox	All right, thank you. Those were my overview questions.
00:39:38.75	Mayor	Are there other questions? Councilmember Kelman.
00:39:40.67	Councilmember Kelman	Yes, thank you for being here and nice to see the Denovo team. So in light of your comments about some of the comments and with the court reporter, what type of comments would you like to receive from counsel? What would be most helpful and can you help us fashion some of our comments, questions?
00:39:59.82	Brendan Bips	I invite counsel to provide any comments as they see fit based on the draft EIR that we have provided. I'm not sure that I understand that.
00:40:09.58	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, so we're not, as Vice Mayor Cox just mentioned, we're not changing the opportunity sites, we're not changing the programs and policies, and so comments on the program or policy would be inappropriate or irrelevant at this time. That would be a type of guidance you might give us.
00:40:09.76	Brendan Bips	I'M NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO
00:40:25.91	Brendan Bips	Correct. You know, that being said, we're very open to any comments that council has. And I'm not in a position to restrict those comments. But I agree with your assessment.
00:40:37.71	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:40:38.03	Brendan Bips	Bye.
00:40:40.12	Vice Mayor Cox	Yes, just as a follow on. There is included in the EIR a mitigation and monitoring program, some recommended mitigation measures. And so those are new to us and comments on those would be perhaps more germane than commenting on the content of the housing element. Would you agree?
00:40:58.28	Brendan Bips	Certainly. So comments as to the set of opportunity sites or inventory sites included in the element, I would generally say are not relevant to this study session. What is relevant is the new document that has been generated by De Novo Planning Group in collaboration with staff and legal counsel. and the means or actions taken in connection with some of those mitigation strategies that we've mentioned, all of that would be helpful. counsel and the the means or actions taken in connection with some of those mitigation strategies that we've mentioned, you know, all of that would be helpful. And I'm seeing
00:41:29.20	Mayor	I see the city attorney is the attorney jumping on his video, which means he has something to say.
00:41:31.56	Brendan Bips	You know?
00:41:33.90	Sidithi	Yeah, and in response to one of the comments, one of the council member questions earlier, you know, the purpose of the draft EIR today is to study.
00:41:45.80	Sidithi	the programs of implementation they are not necessarily to
00:41:50.15	Sidithi	study the actual adoption of the housing element. So we are analyzing the environmental effects of the programs that are laid out
00:41:57.92	Sidithi	in the housing element in order to best determine how to undertake those programs. So that's just a clarifying point.
00:42:06.12	Mayor	Thank you, city attorney. Director Phipps, I had a question. You said that the city of Sausalito is the only municipality in Marin to adopt its housing element by the required statutory deadline. Not doing so, my understanding is, would have exposed Sausalito to potential penalties, including something called the builder's remedy. Is that correct?
00:42:24.95	Brendan Bips	That is correct. It also creates a longer time period for the city to adopt required upzonings or amendments to the general plan and the zoning ordinance. City of Sausalito is a result of our prompt action or appropriately timed action has three years. If we did not adopt within the state timeline, we would be subject to a one year rezoning timeline.
00:42:51.83	Mayor	So all the other municipalities of Marin, with the exception of Sausalito, now have that penalty opposed.
00:42:56.95	Brendan Bips	I won't be making that statement.
00:43:00.03	Mayor	They were exposed to it as potential.
00:43:01.42	Brendan Bips	But it is more likely that they will be exposed than less likely.
00:43:04.94	Mayor	And they're also potentially exposed to the builder's remedy.
00:43:08.08	Brendan Bips	If they did not receive a letter of substantial compliance from the state within 120 days after January 30th, 2023, that is correct.
00:43:19.78	Mayor	Thank you, Director Phipps. Are there other questions for Director Phipps before we move on to the consultant?
00:43:24.77	Mayor	Thank you very much, sir.
00:43:26.63	Brendan Bips	Thank you.
00:43:28.40	Mayor	Welcome de novo to the podium. And again, yes.
00:43:30.14	Brendan Bips	And again, yes, I will open the floor to Beth Thompson.
00:43:39.81	Mayor	Ms. Thompson, welcome.
00:43:41.31	Beth Thompson	Thank you. And if I may share my screen, that would be great.
00:43:51.62	Beth Thompson	you.
00:43:53.44	Beth Thompson	Okay.
00:43:56.61	Beth Thompson	Well, good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. It's a pleasure to be back before you with the draft program EIR for the Housing Element Programs implementation. And so we'll go over a few items tonight. We'll discuss the Housing Element Programs Project, so what this project specifically entails. We'll discuss what an Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, is, the findings of the Housing Element Programs draft EIR, and then also let the community know how to comment on the project and the draft EIR. There is a long public comment period, so we are in the midst of that public comment period, so tonight's not the only opportunity to provide input.
00:44:35.48	Beth Thompson	on this. So there will be opportunities to provide comments in writing as well as additional meetings to consider the adoption of the project and the response to the comments we've received on the project.
00:44:46.55	Beth Thompson	So the Housing Element Programs Project focuses on implementing specific programs of the housing element. So it doesn't look at the housing element as a whole. Rather, it looks at the programs where we have enough detail and the city's ready to take the step of considering adoption of the implementing actions for those programs. And so the implementation programs that we're looking at are programs 4, 8, 16, 17, and 19. And implementing these programs will result in three primary actions. A general plan amendment primarily
00:45:18.17	Beth Thompson	Revisions to the land use element as well as some to the circulation element and some other of the elements revisions to the zoning ordinance. So revising title 10 of the city's municipal code and then also adoption of objective design and development standards that would add title 10 a to the city's municipal code.
00:45:36.85	Beth Thompson	And I'll just go through each of the programs briefly and how what what those programs entail and how that feeds into these actions that the city council will be asked to consider in the future.
00:45:49.98	Beth Thompson	So Program 4 is probably the most interesting program to most people. This ensures that the city has adequate sites to accommodate the regional housing need allocation throughout the planning period. So this program, Program 4, requires the city to redesignate and rezone enough sites to accommodate its regional housing needs allocation, or RENA. And so during the housing element process, we identified the capacity the city had to accommodate housing on its existing zoned sites for housing, as well as projects that are being considered and accommodating some development through ADUs and SB9 units. However, there was still a shortfall. So program four identifies how the city will close that shortfall and meet that gap to ensure that you have adequate sites to meet the state's requirements. And so program four would both amend the general plan to establish overlay designations. So your land use map will have new overlay designations identified on the land use map. And then the zoning code will also be amended to establish new overlay zones. And the zoning map will be amended to identify where these overlay zones will be applied. And there's four different types of overlay zones. There's the housing 49 zone, and this allows development of housing at up to 49 units per acre. That's applied to about 4.2 acres. The housing 70 overlay zone, which will allow development up to 70 units per acre.
00:47:13.48	Beth Thompson	and this is applied to about 2.6 acres. The housing mixed use zone that would also allow up to 49 units per acre and then the housing mixed use 70 zone that will allow up to 70 units per acre. Now the two mixed use zones are required to accommodate 100 residential projects and they do require a minimum of 85 percent of residential uses. So when future development happens on sites that have the overlay zone applied, that development has to be consistent with the overlay zone. So the underlying zone doesn't apply as much as the overlay zone does because that establishes the minimum densities that will be required for development of those sites and then also the maximum densities that could be accommodated. The zoning does include some requirements for the development standards, and then the bulk of the development standards that will address the development of these sites are contained in the odds.
00:48:06.26	Mayor	sites are contained in the odds. Yes. There's a question from a court reporter.
00:48:07.97	Unknown	Thank you.
00:48:07.99	Beth Thompson	moment.
00:48:08.15	Unknown	Yes.
00:48:12.88	Mayor	So, Ms. Thompson, we have a court reporter in the audience who's trying to keep up with you. So if you'd kindly just slow down a little bit.
00:48:20.07	Beth Thompson	Absolutely.
00:48:21.64	Mayor	And it probably would help to turn her microphone up as well. So thank you.
00:48:27.83	Mayor	Thank you.
00:48:28.64	Mayor	Do you need her to repeat anything, court reporter?
00:48:32.30	Mayor	Could you please back up for about 30 seconds and start again?
00:48:36.49	Beth Thompson	Sure, I'll just go back to the four overlay zones. So there will be four overlay zones established in both the general plan and in the city's zoning ordinance. And there's the housing 49 zone,
00:48:48.64	Beth Thompson	This will allow development of up to 49 units per acre and it's applied to about 4.2 acres in the city. The housing 70 zone, this will allow up to 70 units per acre and it has to be applied to at least 2.6 acres in the city. The housing mixed use 49 zone, which allows both residential and non-residential uses at up to 49 units per acre.
00:49:12.31	Beth Thompson	And this will be applied to 10.1 acres in the city or almost 10.2 acres. And then the housing mixed use 70 zone that allows up to 70 units per acre. And this is applied to about 0.3
00:49:23.94	Beth Thompson	acres in the city. And both of the mixed use zones do allow 100% residential uses. So part of the requirement under state laws when you're rezoning to accommodate the city's, the gap in the arena, particularly for the very low and low income units, that you do allow 100% residential uses on those sites. And to ensure that the city gets enough residential density and does not have to seek
00:49:47.83	Beth Thompson	additional sites in the future, a minimum requirement of 85% of residential uses is also required on those sites.
00:49:57.30	Beth Thompson	So that's program four.
00:50:00.09	Beth Thompson	Amy Nunez- Program eight also addresses accommodating the arena and it specifically looks at the public property conversion to housing, so there are a number of sites in the housing element that are city owned.
00:50:11.46	Beth Thompson	And so implementing program eight would make those publicly owned sites available for development during the 2023 through 2031 planning period. And there are also a number of sites that are constrained by either. Let me scroll down to the specific note. Ordinance 1022, the fair traffic initiative or ordinance 1128. And so these specific sites would also go to a vote of the people for consideration. And so the housing element programs EIR does look at as part of the opportunity sites and as part of the sites that are being considered development of those sites and the environmental implications of those sites as well.
00:50:50.29	Beth Thompson	Program 16 is a number of edits to the zoning ordinance. And this looks at changes that address design standards just to ensure that there's specific requirements and clarify the procedure for projects that are not allowed to have discretionary review or do not require discretionary review.
00:51:07.57	Beth Thompson	ensuring that the height limits and setbacks are adequate to accommodate the maximum densities identified by program four. And then a number of changes to accommodate a variety of housing types. And most of these housing types, such as emergency shelters, employee housing, low barrier navigation centers, transitional housing, supportive housing, these are these all have specific standards in state law. And so a lot of these changes are specifically to incorporate those requirements of state law into your zoning ordinance and to ensure that those are appropriately reflected and applied.
00:51:41.59	Beth Thompson	And then we also ensure through the zoning ordinance amendments that the city is making those sites identified by program four available. So any-
00:51:49.84	Mayor	I know it's Ms. Thompson. I know it's a people speak at their natural gate, but the court reporter is struggling to
00:51:55.70	Beth Thompson	Okay. I'll, I'll slow down.
00:51:57.49	Mayor	So,
00:51:59.51	Mayor	Please repeat the last two sentences.
00:52:02.34	Beth Thompson	Absolutely. So the program for our program 16 does include changes to accommodate a variety of housing types. And these are mainly changes that reflect the requirements of state law to ensure that the city standards for emergency shelter employee housing agricultural employee housing.
00:52:21.08	Beth Thompson	Amy Nunez- Low barrier navigation centers transitional and supportive housing are consistent with those standards required under state law, so this these uses are already allowed in the city because state law requires it this just makes sure that the city zoning ordinance does provide correct guidance to. Amy Nunez- People who are interested in building these types of uses.
00:52:45.01	Beth Thompson	Program 17 addresses implementing the state's density bonus law.
00:52:49.61	Beth Thompson	Once again, these are specific requirements in state law that are mandatory, and so it just ensures that the city's zoning ordinance provisions reflect the current state law. The city's density bonus component of your zoning ordinance hasn't been updated for a while, so this just ensures that that's in sync with state law. And then Program 19 addresses objective design and development standards, and you'll have a future workshop to really specifically discuss the objective design and development standards. The Housing Element Programs EIR does look at the sites where the objective design and development standards could be applied, primarily the overlay sites that are being identified, because these sites would have increased capacity with implementation of the housing element programs.
00:53:33.50	Beth Thompson	And the objective design and development standards apply to housing projects that qualify for expedited or streamlined ministerial review under state laws and to the housing projects on the opportunity sites. And these will provide the city with form based development standards and they're applicable specifically to new multi unit developments.
00:53:54.53	Beth Thompson	in the existing multifamily and commercial mixed use zones. So the R2, R3, commercial neighborhood, commercial residential, and community commercial zones.
00:54:06.44	Beth Thompson	The changes for these existing zones basically reflect and implement the city's existing general plan and zoning ordinance standards so they
00:54:14.41	Beth Thompson	establish those standards in one place. They don't necessarily change
00:54:18.81	Beth Thompson	how those uses are necessarily allowed, but they just
00:54:23.67	Beth Thompson	reflect the current requirements for those and consolidate all of those in the objective design and development standards.
00:54:30.96	Beth Thompson	So in the.
00:54:32.51	Beth Thompson	In the housing element programs, the IR, we have a number of figures, and there are sites throughout the city that are accommodated through implementation of these housing element programs. And the primary sites that are affected by the overlay zones are those sites that are highlighted as having a housing overlay. So you have sites in your housing element that are allowed to develop under your existing housing.
00:54:55.11	Beth Thompson	zoning and your existing general plan land use designations and these wouldn't necessarily have any change in capacity with implementation of the housing element programs project however the sites that have the new housing overlay applied will have an increase in the capacity
00:55:10.64	Beth Thompson	both residential and then in some cases for some of the mixed use sites, some additional non-residential development as well.
00:55:19.72	Beth Thompson	So regarding that capacity,
00:55:22.23	Beth Thompson	the housing element
00:55:23.07	Mayor	Sure.
00:55:24.24	Mayor	Ms. Thompson, again, we just need you to slow down a little bit. Did you miss anything, Court Reporter?
00:55:31.88	Mayor	So just pace yourself a little bit slower. This session is being recorded, but I understand that there's a legal procedure for taking an official transcript. So if you would kindly just proceed, but a little slower. Thank you.
00:55:45.23	Beth Thompson	Thank you.
00:55:48.50	Beth Thompson	So the housing element identified the capacity that was required to be accommodated or required to be accommodated through the overlay sites to meet the city's regional housing need allocation. So in Program 4, there's a discussion of that realistic capacity. And so when the state's looking at the capacity of the city's sites, the state is not looking at the maximum possible development that could happen on those sites. The state is looking at what they consider a realistic capacity, so typically a reduced development potential to account for some component of the site potentially being used for infrastructure not being able to be used to its fullest potential.
00:56:32.06	Beth Thompson	So the housing element anticipated
00:56:34.54	Beth Thompson	A total of 908 units would be accommodated through implementation of your existing sites, as well as implementation of the program for rezoning efforts for the opportunity sites.
00:56:49.42	Beth Thompson	We.
00:56:50.30	Beth Thompson	For the purposes of the environmental impact report, we look at the maximum density that would be allowed on those sites. So there's some additional capacity that could occur. So the program EIR looks at the potential for a total of 1,076 units on these sites to accommodate the maximum capacity that would be allowed at those maximum densities for each of the overlay categories. There's also the potential for an increase in non-residential square feet of about 16,852 square feet. So there's some additional non-residential capacity that's also evaluated in the Housing Element Programs EIR.
00:57:29.18	Beth Thompson	And with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Christina Irwin, to talk about the environmental impact report.
00:57:43.37	Christina Irwin	Christina Irwin- Thank you, Beth. I really appreciate it. Good evening, Council members. My name is Christina Irwin and I'm going to talk with you about what an environmental impact report is and where we are in the process and how the public can continue to engage in the commenting process.
00:58:02.96	Christina Irwin	First of all, an environmental impact report
00:58:06.17	Christina Irwin	is guided by the California Environmental Quality Act.
00:58:10.69	Christina Irwin	also known as CEQA.
00:58:13.17	Christina Irwin	And it is an informational document that identifies the potential environmental effects of implementing a project.
00:58:22.71	Christina Irwin	and CEQA lays out very clearly the elements that need to be included in an EIR.
00:58:31.14	Christina Irwin	Every document is guided by state policy.
00:58:35.11	Christina Irwin	The EIR allows public participation and highly encourages public participation in the environmental review process.
00:58:45.03	Christina Irwin	An EIR does not advocate or promote any project.
00:58:50.91	Christina Irwin	What it is, is a disclosure document for informational purposes so that decision makers can understand what the ramifications, the environmental ramifications of approving a project are.
00:59:05.55	Christina Irwin	And if there are mitigation measures that are also required as part of the environmental analysis, those are disclosed to the decision makers and the public as well.
00:59:16.45	Christina Irwin	As both Beth and Brandon noted, no specific development projects are being proposed as part of this project. What is being proposed are rezoning efforts and implementation of the programs that Beth just shared.
00:59:27.56	Unknown	Yeah.
00:59:27.76	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:59:27.78	Unknown	Thank you.
00:59:27.83	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
00:59:35.29	Christina Irwin	So where are we in the process?
00:59:38.27	Christina Irwin	We kicked off the process, the CEQA process quite a while ago.
00:59:42.83	Christina Irwin	We prepared what is called a notice of preparation, alerting the public that we will be preparing an environmental impact report.
00:59:50.91	Christina Irwin	that analyzes the environmental effects of the project
00:59:55.76	Christina Irwin	following the issuance of that notice of preparation,
00:59:59.82	Christina Irwin	There was a 30-day public comment period.
01:00:02.95	Christina Irwin	in which the public were invited to provide comments on the scope of the EIR. That is to say, recommendations about what the EIR should analyze, should consider, and
01:00:17.86	Christina Irwin	disclosed to the public in the document.
01:00:22.03	Christina Irwin	We've taken those comments, we've evaluated them, and we are responding to those comments and performing the analysis as part of the draft DIR.
01:00:34.69	Christina Irwin	As Brandon noted,
01:00:36.00	Christina Irwin	We issued the draft EIR on January 5th. So we are partway through the 45-day public review process.
01:00:47.53	Christina Irwin	And these review timelines are guided by CEQA.
01:00:53.30	Christina Irwin	And we're complying with the law.
01:00:57.67	Christina Irwin	Following the close of the public review cycle on February 20th,
01:01:02.04	Christina Irwin	we will prepare a final EIR.
01:01:05.40	Christina Irwin	That document will include
01:01:08.13	Christina Irwin	um,
01:01:09.16	Christina Irwin	responses to the comments that we have received on the EIR
01:01:14.82	Christina Irwin	And it will also include a mitigation monitoring and reporting program that will lay out the mitigation measures
01:01:22.00	Christina Irwin	that need to be implemented as part of the project, when they need to be implemented, and by whom. And it's a way for the city to track actual implementation of the measures to reduce environmental effects.
01:01:37.65	Christina Irwin	Following preparation of the final EIR,
01:01:41.98	Christina Irwin	The document and the project will go before the decision makers for consideration of approval of the project and certification of the final EIR.
01:01:52.97	Christina Irwin	Along with that,
01:01:55.65	Christina Irwin	The Council will consider the adoption of findings of fact and statement of overriding considerations, which lays out
01:02:03.43	Christina Irwin	what all of the effects of the project would be, and some rationale about
01:02:09.17	Christina Irwin	why the project should be approved.
01:02:12.22	Christina Irwin	as well as the EIR certified.
01:02:16.29	Christina Irwin	Adoption of the mitigation monitoring and reporting program will be considered.
01:02:21.64	Christina Irwin	Oh,
01:02:22.26	Christina Irwin	After those processes are complete and the project is approved and the certification of EIR has occurred,
01:02:29.71	Christina Irwin	we will issue a notice of determination, which is a statutory requirement
01:02:35.60	Christina Irwin	to notify the public and the governor's office of planning and research that a project has been approved and final decision has been rendered.
01:02:47.51	Christina Irwin	So,
01:02:49.72	Christina Irwin	What is included in our EIR?
01:02:54.50	Christina Irwin	CEQA dictates the
01:02:57.31	Christina Irwin	the topical areas that should be considered and evaluated as part of a project.
01:03:03.34	Christina Irwin	There's quite the list, I believe, 17 technical areas in addition to mandatory findings of significance, including a disclosure of cumulative impacts.
01:03:17.21	Christina Irwin	and a description and analysis of potential project alternatives.
01:03:23.89	Christina Irwin	So these topical areas
01:03:24.01	Steven Woodside	these two.
01:03:25.88	Christina Irwin	are all included in the EIR.
01:03:28.95	Christina Irwin	There are impact discussions for each of them.
01:03:32.18	Christina Irwin	and where appropriate,
01:03:33.59	Christina Irwin	There are also mitigation measures.
01:03:39.38	Christina Irwin	We had some topical areas that we could
01:03:43.70	Christina Irwin	Um,
01:03:44.87	Christina Irwin	mitigate to a less than significant level
01:03:48.55	Christina Irwin	once we added in mitigation. So that is to say the project would create a potentially significant impact
01:03:57.41	Christina Irwin	we would then apply
01:03:59.82	Christina Irwin	mitigation to that impact.
01:04:02.99	Christina Irwin	and then make a determination about whether that mitigation measure reduces the impact below a level of significance, below specified thresholds that are identified in the EIR,
01:04:16.04	Christina Irwin	or if mitigation would not
01:04:19.45	Christina Irwin	get the impact below that threshold.
01:04:22.85	Christina Irwin	and that is disclosed.
01:04:25.27	Christina Irwin	In this case, we had four topical areas where mitigation
01:04:31.21	Christina Irwin	would be required to get impacts down to less than significant levels.
01:04:39.00	Christina Irwin	Biological resources primarily address special status species, nesting birds, riparian habitat, and wildlife corridors.
01:04:48.39	Christina Irwin	The mitigation roughly for that topic is to survey potential
01:04:57.80	Christina Irwin	development sites as development proposals
01:05:01.61	Christina Irwin	are proposed later on down the line
01:05:05.12	Christina Irwin	and evaluate whether or not these resources exist and then how to implement mitigation accordingly.
01:05:14.74	Christina Irwin	Geology and soils, we identified a potentially significant impact to paleontological resources, also in the cumulative setting.
01:05:24.28	Christina Irwin	That is really to say that sometimes we don't know what an undiscovered resource is until we discover it.
01:05:33.90	Christina Irwin	in construction.
01:05:35.45	Christina Irwin	So this is really a safety net and mitigation outlines the procedures that are necessary to
01:05:44.87	Christina Irwin	reduce impacts on potential finds of paleontological resources during construction activities.
01:05:54.32	Christina Irwin	Hydrology and water quality addressed erosion and siltation, as well as a number of other items that are discussed in the EIR.
01:06:04.17	Christina Irwin	but mitigation was identified to reduce erosion and siltation on project sites by following storm water pollution prevention plans and
01:06:16.76	Christina Irwin	and having low impact development standards followed
01:06:21.67	Christina Irwin	And
01:06:22.84	Christina Irwin	really adhering to a number of the city policies that are already in place.
01:06:30.07	Christina Irwin	Noise and vibration identified a potential construction-related vibration impact.
01:06:35.34	Christina Irwin	And that is to say that
01:06:37.99	Christina Irwin	Sometimes when construction is too close to adjacent buildings, there can be a vibration impact, a noticeable impact.
01:06:48.08	Christina Irwin	That distance though is very, very small.
01:06:53.07	Christina Irwin	when he's six feet.
01:06:54.68	Christina Irwin	I believe. So you have to be really, really close and
01:06:59.32	Christina Irwin	loud, but their measure lays out.
01:07:02.68	Christina Irwin	the plan to mitigate those impacts should they occur.
01:07:08.67	Christina Irwin	Now, there were some topical areas where we had to apply mitigation as is required
01:07:14.91	Christina Irwin	by CEQA.
01:07:16.28	Christina Irwin	to apply mitigation to any potential significant impacts
01:07:21.32	Christina Irwin	But even after we did that, we determined that the impacts would still be significant and unavoidable.
01:07:28.95	Christina Irwin	That is to say that the impact would exceed the thresholds that are established in the EIR.
01:07:33.84	Unknown	Bye.
01:07:34.27	Unknown	you are.
01:07:36.49	Christina Irwin	One of those areas of significance finding was for cultural and tribal cultural resources.
01:07:43.24	Christina Irwin	For all of the topics under that heading level, we determined that there would be significant and unavoidable impacts.
01:07:51.63	Christina Irwin	the concept of
01:07:53.82	Christina Irwin	potentially disturbing historic resource as the city has a number of historical
01:07:59.71	Christina Irwin	areas and historic buildings that are noted and disclosed in the EIR.
01:08:04.98	Christina Irwin	but any damage or destruction of a historical resource
01:08:10.50	Christina Irwin	cannot be rectified once it's lost.
01:08:13.89	Christina Irwin	it's lost and we've determined that that is a significant and unavoidable impact.
01:08:21.03	Christina Irwin	Archaeological resources and human remains are of a similar vein in that
01:08:29.11	Christina Irwin	We have disclosed where we know archaeological resources are, but sometimes you run into things that are previously undiscovered.
01:08:39.10	Christina Irwin	Um, and
01:08:40.74	Christina Irwin	Although the mitigation for archaeological resources lays out a very logical plan about how to address such a find,
01:08:49.70	Christina Irwin	and the potential for finding human remains, although low,
01:08:54.93	Christina Irwin	is also laid out as a mitigation measure as dictated by state law.
01:09:01.66	Christina Irwin	any sort of a loss to those resources would be significant and unavoidable. That is to say, we couldn't get it below a threshold.
01:09:11.92	Christina Irwin	For tribal cultural resources and historic tribal cultural resources, the city worked with the Federated Indians of Great and Rancheria and consulted with the tribe, as is required by state law.
01:09:29.57	Christina Irwin	We worked with them to help identify potential mitigation measures that could reduce potential impacts to known resources. But similarly, any loss of such a resource would be significant.
01:09:47.36	Christina Irwin	and potentially could not be
01:09:52.25	Christina Irwin	replicated. So we have determined that that is a significant and unavoidable
01:09:57.77	Christina Irwin	Impact.
01:10:00.51	Christina Irwin	Transportation and circulation
01:10:02.92	Christina Irwin	analyzes vehicle miles traveled, and that is in compliance with state law.
01:10:09.65	Christina Irwin	What we determined is even though implementation of the project, the rezoning of these sites would reduce the vehicle miles traveled for both employees and residents.
01:10:24.20	Christina Irwin	that reduction would not get below
01:10:28.91	Christina Irwin	the threshold VMT number that is required, that's 15% below the regional average,
01:10:37.04	Christina Irwin	and therefore the impact would be significant and unavoidable.
01:10:42.24	Christina Irwin	In utilities and service systems, we identified a potentially significant impact
01:10:47.65	Christina Irwin	to water supply facilities and water supply.
01:10:53.48	Christina Irwin	The reason that you're seeing that is not that there isn't enough water.
01:10:59.75	Christina Irwin	What it does say is that the Marin Municipal Water District
01:11:04.98	Christina Irwin	has an urban water management plan.
01:11:09.22	Christina Irwin	that does not yet reflect
01:11:12.07	Christina Irwin	all of the housing element updates that are going on within its service area.
01:11:18.67	Christina Irwin	And as these housing element updates are being approved,
01:11:22.92	Christina Irwin	The district will rightly analyze the effects of adding on those new customers.
01:11:29.94	Christina Irwin	and determine what facilities are needed to ensure adequate water supply.
01:11:36.52	Christina Irwin	because it hasn't been added to the urban water management plan,
01:11:40.07	Christina Irwin	Um,
01:11:41.10	Christina Irwin	within the Moraine Municipal Water District's jurisdiction.
01:11:46.24	Christina Irwin	conservatively, we determined that that would be a significant impact.
01:11:54.01	Christina Irwin	So that is an overview of where our impacts and the types of mitigation
01:11:59.73	Christina Irwin	landed us in the EIR analysis.
01:12:04.22	Christina Irwin	Moving forward.
01:12:05.95	Christina Irwin	We,
01:12:07.15	Christina Irwin	are in the middle of our 45-day draft EIR
01:12:10.91	Christina Irwin	public comment period.
01:12:13.14	Christina Irwin	Tonight we are having an informational meeting and welcoming public comment.
01:12:18.91	Christina Irwin	The draft EIR public comment period will close on February 20th.
01:12:25.49	Christina Irwin	And then moving forward, we hope to have certifications before you in late spring 2024.
01:12:32.55	Christina Irwin	Because that's where we are headed.
01:12:37.31	Christina Irwin	In order to comment on the draft EIR,
01:12:42.12	Christina Irwin	We request written comments that can be in the form of email or regular mail. And the address and addressee is on the screen here.
01:12:55.92	Christina Irwin	Comments can be sent to Brandon Phipps,
01:12:59.97	Christina Irwin	And his email address is B Phipps, that's spelled B.
01:13:04.51	Christina Irwin	P-H-I-P-P-S
01:13:06.92	Christina Irwin	at Sausalito.gov.
01:13:09.73	Christina Irwin	and we'll be accepting those comments
01:13:12.09	Christina Irwin	until February 20th.
01:13:16.63	Christina Irwin	Finally, to disclose where all of the documents related to the housing elements
01:13:23.49	Christina Irwin	programs are. Those documents are on the city of Sausalito's sixth cycle housing elementary
01:13:31.41	Christina Irwin	update web page.
01:13:33.60	Christina Irwin	And that can be found here at Housing Elements Marin
01:13:37.10	Christina Irwin	dot org slash city
01:13:39.85	Christina Irwin	dash of
01:13:41.01	Christina Irwin	dash Sausalito.
01:13:43.42	Christina Irwin	And that concludes our presentation about the EIR and the project itself. So I will turn it back over to asking for public comment. Thank you.
01:13:57.06	Mayor	Thank you very much, Ms. Erwin. Questions from the dais, please. Let's start with...
01:14:01.97	Mayor	Councilmember Blavstein.
01:14:03.42	Councilmember Boston	Thank you very much, Mayor Sobieski. And thank you to our consultant team and to Director Phipps for your
01:14:10.20	Councilmember Boston	exhaust your presentation and your hard work on the EIR preparation. I had a few questions in particular about the mitigation programs that you mentioned. I'm quite concerned about some of the significant and unavoidable impacts that you mentioned when you were
01:14:24.87	Councilmember Boston	going over some that may come up in particular,
01:14:28.94	Councilmember Boston	the tribal resources and human remains, for example,
01:14:31.94	Councilmember Boston	Can you give an idea or a guide into what we might do to mitigate those impacts, even though they may be unavoidable?
01:14:44.63	Councilmember Boston	You're muted.
01:14:50.62	Mayor	Is anyone going to respond to Councilmember Blossene's question?
01:14:55.61	Christina Irwin	There we go.
01:14:57.76	Christina Irwin	Yes, and thank you for asking your question about mitigation, particularly cultural resources mitigation.
01:15:07.18	Christina Irwin	So
01:15:08.15	Christina Irwin	to address archaeological resources and tribal cultural resources. And you mentioned human remains as well.
01:15:17.35	Christina Irwin	I will talk first about tribal cultural resources and how we might mitigate that. Mitigation measures are identified in the executive summary and throughout the EIR.
01:15:32.76	Christina Irwin	But for this topic, the types of mitigation that we would implement here
01:15:39.02	Christina Irwin	are to prepare a tribal cultural resources awareness brochure and a training program for all personnel involved with
01:15:49.92	Christina Irwin	developing actual projects on the ground, and that is to alert construction crews what type of resources are sensitive, what they look like, and also involve the local Native American tribes that have been in the area and have expressed interest in working with the city.
01:16:12.35	Christina Irwin	Um, and so
01:16:14.74	Christina Irwin	The type of program for the training is laid out in Mitigation Measure 3.4-2.
01:16:24.82	Christina Irwin	Um,
01:16:25.34	Christina Irwin	Further, we would implement an avoidance and minimization
01:16:31.16	Christina Irwin	element to that.
01:16:32.80	Christina Irwin	which is to first avoid any resource that is found.
01:16:38.79	Christina Irwin	stop construction on the site
01:16:42.35	Christina Irwin	within a certain distance,
01:16:44.63	Christina Irwin	a notified construction contractor,
01:16:47.31	Christina Irwin	and notify the city as well. And from there, we lay out exactly what would happen on the ground.
01:16:55.07	Christina Irwin	about how to avoid or minimize
01:16:59.43	Christina Irwin	effects on resource.
01:17:02.18	Christina Irwin	For human remains, it's a little bit more straightforward in that the
01:17:08.22	Christina Irwin	Laws in place require notification of the coroner
01:17:12.81	Christina Irwin	within a certain amount of time.
01:17:15.48	Christina Irwin	And if
01:17:18.24	Christina Irwin	you know, the,
01:17:19.52	Christina Irwin	Human remains are determined to be of Native American origin.
01:17:24.65	Christina Irwin	The contractors and the city must contact the Native American Heritage
01:17:29.35	Christina Irwin	Commission.
01:17:30.56	Christina Irwin	within a certain timeframe.
01:17:33.09	Christina Irwin	so that there's a lot of notification that happens from there.
01:17:36.94	Christina Irwin	And then determination about how to actually deal with the resources
01:17:37.02	Councilmember Boston	Uh,
01:17:41.97	Christina Irwin	are also laid out in the measures.
01:17:44.20	Councilmember Boston	Yeah, I don't know if I imagine that you were brief that there wasn't that we did find a former Miwok burial ground in Thosolito. So I just wanted to be especially mindful of that as we're conducting the IR because it's something that we've seen previously. Also, on the risk mitigation piece, I'm quite concerned about the potential impact to water facilities, given the climate challenges that we're already facing with respect to the future of water and what that looks like. Could you, for purposes of the public to better understand, talk about what that might mean in terms of not being included in MMWD's current plan and what we as a community would need to do?
01:17:44.74	Linda Fitch	Thank you.
01:17:44.75	Christina Irwin	know if you
01:18:23.89	Christina Irwin	Well,
01:18:25.91	Christina Irwin	I will first say that water supply planning is a joint effort between local municipalities and their water districts.
01:18:34.81	Christina Irwin	um
01:18:35.94	Christina Irwin	The city of Sausalito is clearly describing what the anticipated growth in the city will be, and that has happened both as part of the 2040 general plan.
01:18:47.09	Christina Irwin	and now here as implementation of the housing element programs.
01:18:53.18	Christina Irwin	MMWD.
01:18:55.10	Christina Irwin	will bear the
01:18:57.32	Christina Irwin	some responsibility at least,
01:18:59.59	Christina Irwin	to update the urban water management plan.
01:19:03.09	Christina Irwin	to look at the jurisdictions within their service area
01:19:08.00	Christina Irwin	and do the hard math to determine exactly where the water is going to come from, what the demands look like, whether or not supply is able to meet those demands. Close coordination with the district
01:19:21.73	Christina Irwin	doesn't hurt.
01:19:23.02	Christina Irwin	and can be quite helpful, especially when providing just additional information about how the city anticipates to grow.
01:19:33.01	Councilmember Boston	Thank you. And then I have another question with regards to the public comment and response time, because we've received a number of correspondences from the community about wanting as much transparency as possible into the EIR process and being given significant opportunity to weigh in. So in addition to you just sharing online the page where we submit comments, thank you for doing that and for providing Director Phipps' email, where will those comments be available so that all community members might review what their friends and neighbors have posted? And what will the process be for us in reviewing those comments before we approve the final EIR? And how will they be taken into consideration in your assessment?
01:20:08.87	Christina Irwin	So those written comments are going to be gathered and collated.
01:20:12.93	Christina Irwin	We are going to number each of the letters and identify the specific comments in each of the letters as many letters have
01:20:22.84	Christina Irwin	many comments about different topical areas.
01:20:26.84	Christina Irwin	We will include those letters, all of them,
01:20:30.90	Christina Irwin	including this public transcript in the final EIR.
01:20:35.43	Christina Irwin	We will address all of the comments in writing in the final EIR.
01:20:41.32	Christina Irwin	So the public and decision-makers are able to see both the comment that was provided by the public
01:20:48.66	Christina Irwin	and our response to those questions or comments.
01:20:54.92	Councilmember Boston	Thank you very much. I don't have any further questions. Thanks again for your hard work on the EIR and the housing element. Thank you.
01:20:59.74	Mayor	Thank you. Bye, Samir Cox.
01:21:02.19	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you. For members of the public, I did just want to point out that the,
01:21:07.79	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:21:07.83	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
01:21:09.40	Vice Mayor Cox	mitigation measures are contained in the executive summary.
01:21:13.92	Vice Mayor Cox	hundreds of pages document. They're in the executive summary
01:21:17.48	Vice Mayor Cox	pages 24 to
01:21:20.28	Vice Mayor Cox	51.
01:21:21.58	Vice Mayor Cox	Um...
01:21:22.86	Vice Mayor Cox	I wanted to follow up on the question about the water.
01:21:26.29	Vice Mayor Cox	When we first were assigned our RENA by our regional housing needs analysis quota by the Housing and Community Development Department,
01:21:42.32	Vice Mayor Cox	We communicated that to Marin Municipal Water District. Isn't that right?
01:21:50.35	Vice Mayor Cox	that.
01:21:51.30	Christina Irwin	That is my understanding, yes.
01:21:54.67	Vice Mayor Cox	Yes, and we in fact shared our plan, our general plan, with all of the agencies for comment
01:22:03.19	Vice Mayor Cox	Isn't that right?
01:22:04.78	Vice Mayor Cox	I believe that is also
01:22:05.22	Christina Irwin	I believe that is also correct, which is excellent practice.
01:22:09.77	Vice Mayor Cox	And so by sharing our planned growth with MMWD, we are giving them the opportunity to weigh in and communicate to us if, in anticipation of a particular project, they anticipate they will not be able to provide a will-serve letter. Isn't that right?
01:22:29.13	Christina Irwin	MMWD is welcome to comment on this EIR. Our analysis is included and demonstrates what
01:22:38.70	Christina Irwin	the demand for water will be as part of implementation of the programs, and we welcome their comments.
01:22:49.16	Vice Mayor Cox	Yeah.
01:22:51.64	Vice Mayor Cox	I'm sorry.
01:22:52.62	Vice Mayor Cox	And yet, at impact 3.15-2, you classify this impact as significant and unavoidable.
01:23:03.98	Christina Irwin	Indeed, we did. And the rationale behind that
01:23:08.62	Christina Irwin	is
01:23:11.64	Christina Irwin	impact 3.15-2 is a cumulative impact that will look at all of
01:23:19.11	Christina Irwin	these areas within Marin Municipal's water district service area.
01:23:26.99	Christina Irwin	In that case, we have looked at
01:23:30.40	Christina Irwin	as far out as we can as part of this project and what is known right now about moving forward with other projects within their service area
01:23:42.15	Christina Irwin	Um,
01:23:42.74	Christina Irwin	Our analysis
01:23:45.93	Christina Irwin	is conservative
01:23:47.99	Christina Irwin	in that
01:23:49.69	Christina Irwin	um,
01:23:51.33	Christina Irwin	we are looking to identify the maximum possible impact.
01:23:56.69	Christina Irwin	It is important to be conservative here on such an important topic.
01:24:02.43	Christina Irwin	And that is why we concluded a significant and unavoidable impact, because out of an abundance of caution,
01:24:10.52	Christina Irwin	We think that the district should update their urban water management plan to identify capacity in the cumulative scenario to serve future regional development.
01:24:24.00	Christina Irwin	And because of that, that their current plan does not
01:24:28.15	Christina Irwin	reflect that yet, conservatively, we are concluding a significant impact.
01:24:35.00	Vice Mayor Cox	But it is avoidable if they update their urban management plan. So it's not unavoidable.
01:24:42.68	Beth Thompson	Can I just chime in? It's unavoidable in the context that the city itself cannot adopt the updated urban water management plan, so that has to go through Marin Water. And so
01:24:55.37	Beth Thompson	This reflects that this is out of the city's control, that the Marin Waters Plan needs to address the arena for the other jurisdictions in Marin. There are only several areas that are excluded, so they have to plan for that additional water. And so you could include a mitigation measure. The city would not be able to fully implement nor enforce it.
01:25:17.83	Vice Mayor Cox	So I will say that we objected to our RHNA number on the basis that we had concern that MMWD would be unable to meet all of the water needs of 724 new units in Sausalito together with all of the other
01:25:34.70	Vice Mayor Cox	new units required throughout Marin
01:25:37.30	Vice Mayor Cox	And that was, and that,
01:25:39.70	Vice Mayor Cox	And isn't it true that the
01:25:42.05	Vice Mayor Cox	EIR adopted in support
01:25:45.07	Vice Mayor Cox	of
01:25:46.01	Vice Mayor Cox	Plan Bay area found that was not an unavoidable impact.
01:26:01.81	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:26:01.84	Beth Thompson	So you break up a good,
01:26:01.84	Christina Irwin	So you break up a good,
01:26:02.24	Beth Thompson	.
01:26:03.26	Christina Irwin	Go ahead, Beth.
01:26:03.98	Beth Thompson	Go right ahead, Christina. That's fine.
01:26:07.00	Christina Irwin	So you bring up a good point about needing to look at regional development.
01:26:10.87	Christina Irwin	Planned Bay Area, as you know, is an enormous
01:26:15.29	Christina Irwin	regional undertaking
01:26:18.75	Christina Irwin	and does identify a number of impacts and conclusions, even though some of those that are unavoidable
01:26:26.66	Christina Irwin	or could be mitigated.
01:26:29.23	Sidithi	And I would suggest that this is an issue that would be more appropriate for us to respond to in writing and responses to comments.
01:26:37.33	Vice Mayor Cox	Okay, thank you.
01:26:39.73	Vice Mayor Cox	I'll curtail that discussion, but I do want to turn to a similar issue with
01:26:44.15	Vice Mayor Cox	um Marin Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District so you also see uh classify that impact at 3.15-1 as significant and unavoidable um
01:26:59.10	Vice Mayor Cox	But...
01:27:00.33	Vice Mayor Cox	um,
01:27:01.26	Vice Mayor Cox	That plant was just completely revamped and upgraded, and there are plans to close that system. And so the likelihood of any development exceeding the capacity of that system is
01:27:15.85	Vice Mayor Cox	appear to be remote. And so can you explain why you considered that to be a significant and unavoidable impact?
01:27:25.39	Christina Irwin	Thank you, I'm happy to clarify our conclusions on impact 3.15-1.
01:27:31.85	Christina Irwin	The impact addresses a number of utilities, water, wastewater treatment, storm drainage, electricity.
01:27:39.53	Christina Irwin	and the like.
01:27:40.86	Christina Irwin	for water.
01:27:42.25	Christina Irwin	we concluded significant and unavoidable, but for wastewater,
01:27:46.94	Christina Irwin	and storm drain capacity.
01:27:49.72	Christina Irwin	Electricity and Power.
01:27:51.88	Christina Irwin	we concluded that those are less than significant impacts.
01:27:53.87	Vice Mayor Cox	significant.
01:27:55.83	Vice Mayor Cox	So the table at 3.15-1 says the level of significance after mitigation is significant and unavoidable.
01:28:05.52	Christina Irwin	It does because it identifies
01:28:09.10	Christina Irwin	the level of significance before mitigation
01:28:12.69	Christina Irwin	And we tried to
01:28:14.90	Christina Irwin	Be transparent with our conclusions about explaining which things would be significant and unavoidable.
01:28:22.85	Christina Irwin	we concluded a significant and unavoidable impact
01:28:24.59	Vice Mayor Cox	No.
01:28:26.04	Christina Irwin	due to the water issue.
01:28:28.15	Vice Mayor Cox	But this is in the after mitigation column.
01:28:30.90	Vice Mayor Cox	So in it.
01:28:32.59	Vice Mayor Cox	Entitled Level of Significance After Mitigation, it says significant and unavoidable.
01:28:38.54	Christina Irwin	Yes, ma'am, and that's correct for water.
01:28:41.38	Christina Irwin	and determinations were made for wastewater, storm drain, and electricity.
01:28:46.62	Christina Irwin	that the impact would already be less than significant. There's no need for mitigation measure.
01:28:52.04	Vice Mayor Cox	So I'm just pointing out, I think there's a typo in your table because under the wastewater section, it says significant and unavoidable after mitigation.
01:28:55.52	Christina Irwin	that
01:29:01.27	Christina Irwin	Thank you, we'll take that comment and clarify our text.
01:29:05.37	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
01:29:06.00	Vice Mayor Cox	Vice Mayor, what's up?
01:29:06.49	Councilmember Boston	What page is that on just so that we can note and take a look?
01:29:08.88	Vice Mayor Cox	Page ES-49. Thanks. Okay, and then my last question has to do with Program 4 and your slide presentation at Slide 4, where you listed the range of densities for the overlay zones, Housing-49, Housing-70, Housing Mixed Use 49, and housing mixed use 70. And you listed a range of density between 43 and 49,
01:29:39.65	Vice Mayor Cox	for housing 49, between 50 and 70 for housing 70, et cetera, et cetera.
01:29:45.64	Vice Mayor Cox	I'm sure you're aware of the case of Martinez versus City of Clovis from May of 2023, in which the court held that zoning, a zoning overlay that allowed both high density and lower density options did not satisfy housing element law requirements for minimum density to be established for sites designated.
01:30:08.65	Vice Mayor Cox	to accommodate a carryover portion of the RENA allocation. And I wanted to be sure that, in your opinion,
01:30:15.69	Vice Mayor Cox	This range of densities
01:30:18.48	Vice Mayor Cox	in program four
01:30:21.61	Vice Mayor Cox	does not violate
01:30:23.50	Vice Mayor Cox	housing element law in the way the city of Clovis's housing element was found to violate housing element law.
01:30:32.04	Beth Thompson	And that is correct. So the
01:30:34.93	Beth Thompson	Modifications to the zoning ordinance are made to require minimum densities.
01:30:40.80	Beth Thompson	where you have an overlay zone and you allow development at lesser densities based on the underlying zone, I think that would be problematic under Clovis. But given that you will be establishing a minimum density requirement that meets the standards of the government code for these rezoned sites,
01:30:57.79	Beth Thompson	it should not be an issue.
01:31:00.83	Vice Mayor Cox	Okay, thank you. Those were my questions. Thank you.
01:31:03.19	Mayor	Thank you, Vice Mayor. Council Member Kelman.
01:31:05.73	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you. Hi, guys. Thank you for
01:31:08.27	Councilmember Kelman	all your hard work.
01:31:09.30	Councilmember Kelman	It's a little follow on with prior questions here. Let me start with my favorite topic. Sea level rise.
01:31:16.54	Councilmember Kelman	So I'm looking at
01:31:19.77	Councilmember Kelman	Impact 3.10-2.
01:31:25.30	Councilmember Kelman	which provides implementation of the housing element programs would not conflict with any land use plan, policy, or regulation adopted for the purpose of avoiding or mitigating an environmental effect. I am just curious as to how something like this interacts with SB 272, which is the new statewide law requiring that a local government has to have a sea level rise plan on or for January 1st, 2034. But it also requires that BCDC and the other regulators must have a plan in place by 2024. And so since this is not final, and your conclusion is that there is no significant impact, I'm wondering how we should be thinking about a topic like sea level rise with these pending requirements coming up at the end of the year.
01:32:30.84	Christina Irwin	Yeah, I would say thank you for your comment and for noting that there are
01:32:34.96	Christina Irwin	pending requirements out there in the future.
01:32:38.05	Christina Irwin	Two things. One, we have a greenhouse gases chapter that also talks about climate change and the effects of that. That is section 3.2.
01:32:49.27	Christina Irwin	Seven.
01:32:50.60	Christina Irwin	in our EIR.
01:32:52.65	Christina Irwin	Um,
01:32:53.79	Christina Irwin	And I will let
01:32:55.56	Christina Irwin	Beth, talk a little bit more about the upcoming changes to state law.
01:33:02.92	Beth Thompson	And so where you have upcoming changes to state law, those aren't adopted regulations that the project currently has to comply with. So there's not a conflict in the context of the EIR. Definitely in terms of the city's planning and developing a program to address sea level rise, you do want to consider where you're allowing development and how that development is structured.
01:33:26.94	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, so the EIRs drafted wouldn't consider, because I know we intentionally, of course, didn't put anything in a FEMA flood map zone, but the county and the state have overlays indicating potential flooding areas under one of six sea level rise scenarios
01:33:50.21	Councilmember Kelman	The EIR doesn't speak to any of that at all. I'm wondering, should it? And if so, where?
01:34:00.18	Beth Thompson	So typically we would not speak to that in an EIR. There's specific thresholds for looking at flooding impacts. We look at the 100-year floodplain. We don't necessarily look at
01:34:10.76	Beth Thompson	at other iterations of that, and that's something we can definitely address in the final EIR.
01:34:16.13	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, I think the just commentary, I think 272 is intended to update our thinking around FEMA flood maps, which are
01:34:24.94	Councilmember Kelman	extremely antiquated and out of date. Yes, okay, so let me just move on then. So you mentioned, Christina, the greenhouse gas emissions section, and I know that impact 3.7-3, less than significant. Just to clarify, does that conclusion evaluate greenhouse gas emission increase both from vehicles and from concrete and other building materials?
01:34:57.62	Councilmember Kelman	concrete being one of the largest emitters of GHG emissions in the world.
01:35:01.74	Christina Irwin	Yeah, at this time, because there are no specific projects proposed, like we don't have a building proposed under this project.
01:35:12.19	Christina Irwin	We are evaluating primarily vehicle emissions and then usage emissions after that that are associated with things like energy.
01:35:22.14	Christina Irwin	So that is what is included there. We don't differentiate.
01:35:25.90	Christina Irwin	specifically by
01:35:28.94	Christina Irwin	the source such as concrete.
01:35:32.57	Councilmember Kelman	Well, let me ask you slightly differently though. When you reach the conclusion that it's not significant,
01:35:38.27	Councilmember Kelman	you are either mitigating or saying that the causation is not significant. So what causation are you dismissing as not significant?
01:35:48.26	Christina Irwin	What our conclusion determines is that the
01:35:52.33	Christina Irwin	emissions are below the threshold of significance.
01:35:56.53	Christina Irwin	That's what the conclusion reflects. But we can take a look at the text and see if there's some clarifications that we could make.
01:36:03.59	Councilmember Kelman	Yeah, the emissions from what I think would be relevant here, given the city's existing low action emission plan and climate action plan, which are part of the city's guidance. Okay, back to a question that the vice mayor had. In addition to asking about water in our RHNA appeal letter,
01:36:23.87	Councilmember Kelman	We also...
01:36:24.86	Unknown	Sarah Oswitz, Council members i'm sorry can I jump in here a second i've been trying to unmute my name is Sarah oswitz i'm your deputy city attorney working for Sergio ruden.
01:36:35.33	Unknown	Sure. Welcome.
01:36:37.02	Unknown	I apologize for jumping in just like that. I just haven't been able to get the system unmuted and I wanted to respond to a couple of points you just made and try to assist you in giving you a bigger picture to your causation question.
01:36:54.01	Unknown	Fantastic.
01:36:55.51	Unknown	So the first thing I wanted to say is that this, and we,
01:36:59.48	Unknown	This wasn't part of our earlier discussion, but we can certainly share this with you. There are two different kinds of EIRs. Project level EIRs that certainly would look at something, for instance, like the amount of concrete needed to build a roadway, an office building, a warehouse, or a programmatic EIR.
01:37:18.58	Unknown	where we don't actually have a specific project proposed at all. And we're looking basically citywide, some programmatic EIRs are specific plan areas,
01:37:27.69	Unknown	But the information level,
01:37:30.31	Unknown	it
01:37:31.44	Unknown	it's too macro for the type of specific, um,
01:37:36.41	Unknown	analysis.
01:37:37.78	Unknown	that you're referencing. And the purpose of a programmatic EIR is to essentially allow the city in future
01:37:45.78	Unknown	to look at a project and say, well, we didn't anticipate that level of concrete. That's problematic. That's more of an impact than we anticipated in our overarching GHG announces.
01:37:56.11	Unknown	So you cannot rely on this EIR for that project, you will need to do
01:38:00.66	Unknown	supplemental or subsequent or additional environmental review. But for the purposes of the housing element implementation program,
01:38:10.25	Unknown	There are no specific projects.
01:38:12.43	Unknown	There is no specific impact. It's just a general concept of what if the maximum capacity of dwelling units
01:38:20.68	Unknown	were built in certain areas of the city that were walked through by both Beth and Christina. And so, yes, absolutely, these issues can all be addressed in greater detail. And any comment that you might want to submit,
01:38:35.95	Unknown	planning and land use planning and sequel planning consultants can work on addressing those,
01:38:41.79	Unknown	in the final year, but only to the extent that
01:38:45.59	Unknown	Um,
01:38:46.19	Unknown	and, you know,
01:38:46.41	Unknown	I guess the best way to say this is this is an 80,000 foot
01:38:49.99	Unknown	document and some of these questions are two feet questions.
01:38:57.77	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you, Sarah, for that perspective. I appreciate that point of view. I'm going to carry on.
01:39:08.05	Councilmember Kelman	Just going back then to the letter that we wrote on appeal, we talked about water. We also mentioned geologic hazards and the slope of the community in large part. And my question is not to be too specific as to the EIR, but I am wondering how the EIR handles that as a geologic resource within the city and a known geologic resource within the city, that being very steep hillsides in excess of 30 and 40 percent.
01:39:39.38	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you.
01:39:39.40	Christina Irwin	So,
01:39:41.43	Christina Irwin	When the city was going through the housing development process and identifying opportunity sites and potential areas for rezoning,
01:39:52.98	Christina Irwin	That was one of the considerations about
01:39:56.31	Christina Irwin	which sites were added to the site's inventory list.
01:40:01.22	Christina Irwin	If an area was simply too steep to build on, it was eliminated.
01:40:06.43	Christina Irwin	as a potential opportunity site. That information is included in Appendix D,
01:40:13.54	Christina Irwin	of your housing element.
01:40:16.26	Christina Irwin	And there is kind of a
01:40:16.52	Steven Woodside	And there are
01:40:17.08	Steven Woodside	kind of
01:40:17.34	Unknown	But...
01:40:17.39	Steven Woodside	I know.
01:40:18.23	Christina Irwin	checklist of things that were considered
01:40:21.52	Christina Irwin	when identifying the sites.
01:40:21.60	Steven Woodside	Um.
01:40:24.83	Christina Irwin	That said,
01:40:27.16	Christina Irwin	slopes, landslides, instability, expansive soils, those were all addressed in the
01:40:36.30	Christina Irwin	geology and soil section, section 3.6, and disclose about what types of soils, what types of hazards may be present.
01:40:47.46	Christina Irwin	Thank you.
01:40:47.51	Unknown	uh,
01:40:48.06	Councilmember Kelman	Great. So Christina, last question then. So then 3.6 would be the section that would include anything about subsidence? Correct. Thank you very much. Thanks guys.
01:40:58.54	Mayor	Any other questions from the dais?
01:41:02.54	Mayor	All right, seeing none in a moment, we'll put public comment, but I received a request to have a little bio break. So we'll stay in a recess for
01:41:09.18	Mayor	Five minutes, and we will reconvene at 8.48. And you may use in the public the interview. Recording stopped. If you have an interest in making a public comment, to raise your hand and or submit a public comment slip to the city clerk.
01:41:16.95	Unknown	Recording stopped.
01:41:26.62	Mayor	David Vogelpohl- provide the public instructions on how to provide public comment on this item.
01:41:34.82	Blauskne	All right, members of the public who would like to comment, you can fill out one of the speaker cards over by the television on that desk. Bring that over here, and we'll call you when it's your turn. If you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function, and we'll call you.
01:41:55.55	Blauskne	So let's start. Sorry. We'll start with Babette McDougal.
01:42:08.59	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
01:42:11.26	Babette McDougal	I have a number of questions. First of all, may I just ask, were you able to see the letter I submitted late arriving, ma'am? Did you see it? Thank you.
01:42:19.21	Babette McDougal	So,
01:42:20.56	Babette McDougal	Appreciate that.
01:42:21.91	Babette McDougal	Um,
01:42:23.15	Babette McDougal	So it was meant to be sort of a broad overview of some of the problems that have truly vexed the housing element around.
01:42:31.17	Babette McDougal	this time.
01:42:32.50	Babette McDougal	compared to previous years.
01:42:35.37	Babette McDougal	Did I understand correctly from this presentation that the public comment period actually began on January 5?
01:42:43.15	Babette McDougal	to best of my knowledge and those of my neighbors,
01:42:45.68	Babette McDougal	And I've had four meetings today that included this housing element.
01:42:50.14	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
01:42:50.21	Babette McDougal	public meetings or meetings around town.
01:42:53.80	Babette McDougal	And none of us got this thing until last weekend.
01:42:57.12	Babette McDougal	I mean, we didn't find it until last weekend. So...
01:43:00.13	Babette McDougal	Did I misunderstand that? I just wanted to ask that, and I realize you're in.
01:43:04.57	Babette McDougal	even though your document that says that you're,
01:43:07.84	Babette McDougal	the diocese have said that you have adopted a policy of not responding to public comment directly
01:43:13.10	Babette McDougal	There's nothing in a policy that I was given via the Public Records Act that actually supports that. There's only one bullet.
01:43:20.50	Babette McDougal	And that whole thing that addresses the public at all, and it says, please fill out the slip.
01:43:25.68	Babette McDougal	So.
01:43:26.49	Babette McDougal	I don't quite understand why we're not talking to the public.
01:43:29.63	Babette McDougal	Traditionally, we have always responded
01:43:33.51	Babette McDougal	So that's just something to think about. And the reason for tendering the letter as I did
01:43:38.81	Babette McDougal	is that this whole process has been vexed with inadequate noticing.
01:43:43.87	Babette McDougal	I'm sorry that you feel that you've done a good job, but it turns out.
01:43:47.92	Babette McDougal	that
01:43:48.80	Babette McDougal	Most of the people in town didn't know about most of it, and myself is included. I received no noticing, and I'm right above City Hall.
01:43:58.36	Babette McDougal	Most of the people in this town got no noticing of the
01:44:01.79	Babette McDougal	housing element meetings, most of the people.
01:44:05.11	Babette McDougal	That's not acceptable. There's only one way to remedy that, and that's the traditional noticing method.
01:44:13.37	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
01:44:15.41	Blauskne	Next speaker is Daniel Chidor.
01:44:23.85	Unknown	Hi, Daniel Shador, Gables Inn Sausalito and Hotel Sausalito.
01:44:28.49	Unknown	The property owners in the historic district have spent decades and tens of millions of dollars working with the city to preserve the downtown historic district.
01:44:37.56	Unknown	Um,
01:44:38.32	Unknown	At this time, I'm aware, my big issue question is, is I'm not understanding how the Historic Preservation Committee is interacting with this EIR and protecting the historic district as its mandate. And as I read the EIR, it states the draft EIR you are reviewing has stated significant impact unavoidable to the historic district in section 3.4-1.
01:45:03.28	Unknown	And I know the EIR has alternatives. It's what alternatives exist. I also reached out to the California Office of Historic Preservation, and I'm wondering if they've commented on the EIR or the draft and made comment. Obviously, what I'm concerned with is that you've put parcels in the historic district into the overlay, the opportunity zone. And what that does is circumvent our historic preservation committee, as well as designer view and potentially puts them into a ministerial process.
01:45:33.98	Unknown	I'm not opposed to development.
01:45:35.75	Unknown	But in the historic district, it requires
01:45:38.96	Unknown	an oversight of architecture in harmony with the historic district.
01:45:43.02	Unknown	And that's why I'm concerned is that the ministerial process will be used
01:45:46.82	Unknown	and we won't be able to control what takes place in the historic district.
01:45:50.67	Unknown	Thank you.
01:45:55.07	Blauskne	Next speaker is Linda Fitch.
01:46:00.83	Blauskne	parts.
01:46:05.40	Linda Fitch	I'm Linda Fotch. I'm a resident of Sausalito and I'm the owner of Housing Opportunity Site number 201.
01:46:08.49	Blauskne	I'm the owner.
01:46:14.95	Linda Fitch	The questions that I have are first one on
01:46:20.44	Linda Fitch	Page ES15, and this is about the sites that are proposed for rezoning subject to vote of the electorate.
01:46:31.71	Linda Fitch	and it refers to ordinance number 1022. And I didn't see online that any, anything that changed the ordinance 1022 from what I'm reading now, which says it does not apply to CC or any residential zoning districts. If that's true, then
01:46:58.03	Linda Fitch	Ooh.
01:46:59.94	Linda Fitch	the designated sites there need to be re-looked at. They're not correct.
01:47:07.35	Linda Fitch	My other comment is on page ES23.
01:47:14.76	Linda Fitch	And that's about the date of availability of the EIR. You're saying it's January 5th. I believe they in the document say it's May or something.
01:47:26.06	Linda Fitch	And I also didn't see it on January 5th, but like I bet Medugl said. But those are my comments.
01:47:37.65	Blauskne	Next speaker, Jeffrey Chase.
01:47:46.02	Jeffrey Chase	Hello, Mayor. Hello, City Council and citizens of Sausalito. Anybody watching on Zoom? Happy New Year, and it's good to see you all here.
01:48:00.42	Jeffrey Chase	I feel that to set the stage for the idea that everybody needs a place to live, and when that's obstructed,
01:48:10.68	Jeffrey Chase	then it leads to million dollar settlements and more.
01:48:16.25	Jeffrey Chase	going to people that we still are dealing with to make sure that
01:48:21.48	Jeffrey Chase	Everybody.
01:48:23.30	Jeffrey Chase	that we're dealing with as
01:48:26.36	Jeffrey Chase	Camp Cormorant 1, 2, and 3.
01:48:29.44	Jeffrey Chase	started in December of 2020, that the people that we continue to follow up,
01:48:36.26	Jeffrey Chase	Uh,
01:48:38.89	Jeffrey Chase	In Leviticus 25.10, it says, declare freedom throughout the nation and to all its citizens therein.
01:48:47.18	Jeffrey Chase	It's on the Liberty Bell.
01:48:49.86	Jeffrey Chase	Cracked, of course.
01:48:52.48	Jeffrey Chase	And it goes on to speak...
01:48:54.35	Jeffrey Chase	of
01:48:55.47	Jeffrey Chase	The fruit trees that are given in equal portions...
01:49:00.12	Jeffrey Chase	to all the people.
01:49:03.14	Jeffrey Chase	Equal value, it doesn't mean equal land.
01:49:06.53	Jeffrey Chase	You know, if there's no water and there's a million acres, it's not as valuable as 10,000 with the flowing waterfall.
01:49:15.73	Jeffrey Chase	And even in Ezekiel 47,
01:49:19.46	Jeffrey Chase	It says...
01:49:22.31	Jeffrey Chase	The land is divided by tribes, by families. It's not individual because people have to watch each other for this. And even the strangers who live amongst us
01:49:37.96	Jeffrey Chase	That's the Palestinians, too, have equal land, and that solves an issue that's going on. So thank you. I don't understand all the housing element. Very confusing to somebody like me, a layman. Thank you.
01:49:51.62	Jeffrey Chase	Thanks.
01:49:55.91	Blauskne	Okay, Alice Merrill.
01:50:01.14	Alice Merrill	Hello, everybody. I think it's confusing too. And I'm guessing that this has...
01:50:08.64	Alice Merrill	if you were in the housing element, you would understand what this is. But my comment is that
01:50:15.76	Alice Merrill	I come to these meetings to find out what's going on. And I find out that you have, this is complicated and it's deep and people who know what they're talking about will want to have something to say.
01:50:28.36	Alice Merrill	And it started on the 5th of January. And here it is the 16th.
01:50:33.27	Alice Merrill	And this is kind of the beginning of when anybody might have heard of it.
01:50:37.44	Alice Merrill	unless it's been very well noticed in places that I haven't noticed.
01:50:41.49	Alice Merrill	So I think that if you're going to have
01:50:44.14	Alice Merrill	a noticing period when people can comment that it should be the whole period instead of just part of it.
01:50:50.92	Alice Merrill	And, you know, that's kind of my thing all the time is that fairness thing. Thanks.
01:50:59.16	Blauskne	Okay, next person, Sandra Bushmaker, if you can...
01:51:04.88	Michelle Dumont	Go.
01:51:08.64	Sandra Bushmaker	Good evening, everybody. Good to see you all again.
01:51:08.71	Blauskne	Good evening,
01:51:12.25	Sandra Bushmaker	Something piqued my interest during the presentation by the
01:51:16.93	Sandra Bushmaker	by the consultants and that had to do with program 16.
01:51:21.62	Sandra Bushmaker	And listed in Program 16 were height limits.
01:51:25.57	Sandra Bushmaker	So my question is, are we anticipating changing the height, 32 foot height limit in Sausalito?
01:51:32.84	Sandra Bushmaker	And does this program address this? Does the EIR address this potential?
01:51:37.62	Sandra Bushmaker	Or is it not a potential at all?
01:51:40.23	Sandra Bushmaker	And I also noticed in the list of considerations, views was not
01:51:46.16	Sandra Bushmaker	listed. And so with regard to height limitations and view corridors, I think that, um,
01:51:54.59	Sandra Bushmaker	uh,
01:51:55.88	Sandra Bushmaker	if we can't
01:51:57.48	Sandra Bushmaker	address the impact of height on view corridors, then I think we're missing something. But it may not be permissible under the EIR law. I just don't know the answer to that question.
01:52:08.45	Sandra Bushmaker	But number one, are we anticipating a change in the height limit in Sausalito? And number two, if we can't consider views, what recommendation does the consultant have for how we address the
01:52:20.80	Sandra Bushmaker	height limits in Sausalito. Thank you.
01:52:28.56	Blauskne	You know, for the speakers.
01:52:31.23	Mayor	No further public comment, then we will close public comment and bring it back up to the dais for discussion.
01:52:37.07	Mayor	Council Vice Mayor Cox.
01:52:39.23	Vice Mayor Cox	I would like to ask a couple of questions as a follow on to the public comment.
01:52:45.49	Vice Mayor Cox	Do we have Beth or?
01:52:49.98	Mayor	Ms. Thompson and
01:52:54.75	Mayor	Could you please unmute yourself, Ms. Thompson? And Ms. Erwin?
01:52:59.44	Vice Mayor Cox	There we go.
01:52:59.77	Mayor	Okay, thank you.
01:53:00.20	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:53:00.76	Vice Mayor Cox	Um, so.
01:53:04.15	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you, Beth. I guess it's on slide five of your presentation that you do address Program 16. And when I saw the references to design standards, including height limits, I assumed that was in deference to the density bonus law, which we've already adopted.
01:53:23.71	Vice Mayor Cox	and did not entail
01:53:25.65	Vice Mayor Cox	any plan
01:53:27.41	Vice Mayor Cox	by
01:53:28.59	Vice Mayor Cox	the city council or city management to change the zoning ordinance 32 foot height restrictions.
01:53:35.71	Vice Mayor Cox	Is that accurate?
01:53:37.09	Beth Thompson	So let me go to the project description of the EIR because we do discuss this in a little more detail in the project description.
01:53:46.26	Beth Thompson	we do anticipate that not necessarily changing the height limits for the
01:53:52.84	Beth Thompson	existing zoning districts, but where we have the overlay zones allowing
01:53:58.57	Beth Thompson	Lisa Saldana, Greater Heights and this would also be encapsulated in the odds, and so if you look at table to for it identifies the proposed heights and setbacks for the new overlay zones and those would be above 32 feet would be a max of 45 feet or four stories.
01:54:17.39	Vice Mayor Cox	So I, you know,
01:54:19.25	Vice Mayor Cox	I attended every single housing element committee meeting and helped finalize the housing element, and I don't recall, including in a program,
01:54:30.18	Vice Mayor Cox	and increase.
01:54:31.92	Vice Mayor Cox	in any zone, including the overlay zones, beyond the 32-foot height limit.
01:54:37.84	Vice Mayor Cox	discuss.
01:54:39.12	Vice Mayor Cox	that the overlay zones would necessarily
01:54:42.72	Vice Mayor Cox	be subject to density bonus law, which could result
01:54:46.53	Vice Mayor Cox	in a net increase beyond the 30 32 foot height limit if the
01:54:52.49	Vice Mayor Cox	proper
01:54:53.37	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
01:54:54.73	Vice Mayor Cox	if they met the requirements to gain those density bonus concessions. But I don't recall ever
01:55:01.31	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
01:55:03.69	Vice Mayor Cox	authorizing
01:55:04.98	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:55:05.30	Vice Mayor Cox	a program that would result in a height limit above 32 feet, even for overlay zones.
01:55:13.75	Beth Thompson	And so this doesn't sound like a comment on the EIR itself, but rather a comment on the project.
01:55:13.92	Vice Mayor Cox	So,
01:55:20.27	Beth Thompson	they're
01:55:21.73	Beth Thompson	is it,
01:55:22.63	Beth Thompson	a need and there's a discussion of reviewing these densities, the standards to ensure that you can accommodate the maximum density. So as part of the odds process, the odds team reviewed
01:55:36.25	Beth Thompson	Erika Endrijonas, The Capacity Collective, Ph.D.: What the setbacks and heights would need to be to accommodate the densities established by the housing element, and there was some discussion of that during the housing element update that. Erika Endrijonas, The Capacity Collective, Ph.D.: Once those zones were applied there would need to be specific standards developed for those to accommodate those those densities.
01:55:53.91	Vice Mayor Cox	but we have not yet updated the zoning ordinance. And so we have not yet identified and adopted those standards that you referenced.
01:56:03.79	Vice Mayor Cox	Correct. That is part of the proposed project.
01:56:06.40	Vice Mayor Cox	Okay.
01:56:07.01	Vice Mayor Cox	And so we haven't actually yet adopted any revised standards, even within the overlay zones, for our zoning ordinance.
01:56:15.58	Beth Thompson	Correct. Those would be considered by the Planning Commission and Council after the EIR process is complete.
01:56:21.67	Vice Mayor Cox	and the housing element as written includes a buffer for the required
01:56:28.44	Vice Mayor Cox	number of units and so it's possible that if some of our other
01:56:32.93	Vice Mayor Cox	zones pan out in terms of
01:56:35.97	Vice Mayor Cox	you know, adopting revisions to SB 1022 or 1128, then we may not need to exercise the maximum density within each of the overlay zones. Would that be a true statement?
01:56:53.26	Beth Thompson	So Program 4 commits the city to rezoning specific acres at specific densities. If you wished to alter Program 4, you would probably want to go back to the state and discuss the revised approach. But yes, there's definitely the potential if the city identifies other methods to accommodate your regional housing need allocation, you would have an opportunity to go and make really specific adjustments to your housing element just to focus that discussion at the state level. But the project is looking at accommodating the arena through application of the four overlay zones.
01:57:32.04	Councilmember Kelman	Love.
01:57:32.77	Councilmember Kelman	So, Beth, it seems somewhat inconsistent that on one hand, to the base mayor's question, on one hand, Program 4 says let's throw everything in the kitchen sink to see if we can meet this. But elsewhere in the housing element, it says we may not need to utilize all of these tool sets to meet this. and I think what we're expressing is at least I speak for myself perhaps a caution around creating ambiguity as think what we're expressing is, at least I speak for myself, perhaps a caution around creating ambiguity as to what we intended. And those seem to be inconsistent to me.
01:58:06.35	Beth Thompson	So...
01:58:08.73	Beth Thompson	Program four is clear in the densities and acres that would be applied to each density in the rezoning effort.
01:58:21.17	Beth Thompson	Yeah, that's.
01:58:21.98	Councilmember Kelman	So,
01:58:22.18	Beth Thompson	Thank you.
01:58:22.69	Councilmember Kelman	So are you saying that by default, that density in some instances can only be met by a lifting of the height restriction? Right.
01:58:22.77	Beth Thompson	So, and I think-
01:58:29.18	Beth Thompson	Correct. Yes. When the odds
01:58:32.07	Beth Thompson	project was looking at these
01:58:34.67	Beth Thompson	these densities, this was the recommended height limit, and they looked at some higher heights.
01:58:40.13	Beth Thompson	Thank you.
01:58:40.27	Beth Thompson	Then they tested a number of scenarios and came up with the 45 feet as being adequate to accommodate
01:58:46.95	Beth Thompson	the densities. And in some cases, there would have to be modest size units to be built within those heights.
01:58:54.29	Vice Mayor Cox	I think that was our intention in identity. So we used rotary housing as our benchmark for identifying what the highest density could possibly be on a site. And rotary housing is housing that has a density of 70 units per acre, but is not above 32 feet. And so...
01:59:16.69	Vice Mayor Cox	when we were identifying potential sites elsewhere in town, we were using that as a metric, but we were very cognizant of the square footage so as to not violate
01:59:33.54	Vice Mayor Cox	Sausalito's existing 32-foot ordinance. So I'm not sure where the disconnect was between the work that the working group did to identify opportunity sites and densities for them and the work that the consultants did to identify the required height to meet those densities.
01:59:56.17	Beth Thompson	And I think it would be good to, since we are focused on getting comments on the EIR, I think when you have your workshop to discuss the odds, this would probably be a great topic for discussion at that time, since those odds are really what are helping people.
02:00:12.61	Beth Thompson	address and determine how the shape and form of buildings that will be built under these overlay zones.
02:00:20.32	Vice Mayor Cox	Okay, and along a similar vein, my last question has to do with view corridors.
02:00:25.27	Vice Mayor Cox	Is there, are we, are we,
02:00:28.77	Vice Mayor Cox	in your view, contemplating dispensing with the protection of view corridors within overlay zones or anywhere in Sausalito?
02:00:41.52	Vice Mayor Cox	Other than the...
02:00:43.52	Vice Mayor Cox	revisions to the objective design standards which will
02:00:47.59	Vice Mayor Cox	necessarily
02:00:50.43	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
02:00:51.42	Vice Mayor Cox	implement a standardized approach to evaluating view corridors.
02:00:57.04	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:00:57.06	Beth Thompson	And I will, I think Christina is ready to answer this question since the aesthetic section does discuss view corridors.
02:01:07.99	Beth Thompson	And do you need to be unmuted here? Let me see.
02:01:12.33	Christina Irwin	Hey, thank you, technology.
02:01:15.03	Christina Irwin	Um,
02:01:15.72	Christina Irwin	To address your question, we do indeed address view corridors and scenic resources in Section 3.1 Aesthetics.
02:01:25.27	Christina Irwin	as well as identified the view corridors that were identified in the Marinship Plan. And that is on Figure 3.1-2.
02:01:39.14	Christina Irwin	So in that regard, we demonstrate where those view corridors
02:01:44.90	Christina Irwin	are in that plan.
02:01:46.94	Christina Irwin	how it relates to public space. And we have an analysis about views in the city.
02:01:57.88	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you. I did see that that does address my question. Those are all of my questions. And my thanks to the public for their comments that prompted additional questions.
02:02:10.60	Mayor	Please.
02:02:11.12	Councilmember Kelman	So I'm going to follow up on the vice mayor again.
02:02:14.35	Councilmember Kelman	So maybe just for the sake of everybody in the room, I know you guys know how it works, but the objective design standards have not yet been approved. You're saying, what I'm hearing you say is that they could potentially mitigate some of the impacts that we are seeing.
02:02:30.24	Councilmember Kelman	But because it's not approved yet,
02:02:32.27	Councilmember Kelman	How do you...
02:02:34.39	Councilmember Kelman	how do you think about them within the context of the EIR in terms of mitigating impacts? Is it ignored completely because they're not approved or is it anticipated
02:02:44.75	Councilmember Kelman	down the line.
02:02:47.15	Beth Thompson	For the purposes of the EIR, we analyze the development that could occur kind of within that general footprint envisioned by the proposed odds, so we don't necessarily look at them to
02:02:58.98	Beth Thompson	mitigate impacts as much as what what form would development take under the odds and how what would be the environmental implications of that development.
02:03:11.15	Unknown	but the odds are not established yet. Correct.
02:03:13.39	Beth Thompson	Correct. They're part of the project. So they're being reviewed as part of the housing element programs project.
02:03:20.83	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, so you're saying if the odds as currently contained within the housing element project were to be approved, this is the XYZ result. Okay. All right. So then let me switch gears and just address the question from a member of the public around if you could just articulate how the, oh, sorry, how the, I reverted to my East Coast roots, how the historic district operates and the impact of the overlay zone and how we might consider historic resources within the context of overlay zones.
02:04:01.50	Councilmember Kelman	So I'm just paraphrasing one of the questions from the public about the fact that
02:04:07.63	Councilmember Kelman	Oh, are you immune?
02:04:08.74	Councilmember Kelman	Birth.
02:04:09.33	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, Beth is on mute.
02:04:11.90	Unknown	Can I be unmuted?
02:04:17.63	Mayor	Can we just leave them both unmuted and allow them?
02:04:21.23	Unknown	Sarah, go ahead.
02:04:22.70	Unknown	Yeah, I can answer that question.
02:04:25.51	Unknown	And the answer is actually
02:04:28.05	Unknown	far more positive than I think
02:04:30.95	Unknown	it's possible to perceive.
02:04:33.06	Unknown	I believe Christina used the phrase abundance of caution.
02:04:37.75	Unknown	To be perfectly honest, there is extensive
02:04:41.07	Unknown	historic resource mitigation in the EIR. We do not in any way expect a significant impact to historic resources as a result
02:04:49.83	Unknown	of the implementation of the housing element programs.
02:04:53.78	Unknown	The only reason that the EIR concludes a significant and unavoidable
02:05:00.31	Unknown	impact to historic resources.
02:05:03.74	Unknown	is because we cannot guarantee
02:05:07.90	Unknown	100% that no one will ever seek to demolish a historic structure
02:05:13.84	Unknown	in any area
02:05:15.80	Unknown	where
02:05:16.76	Unknown	I'm not saying where we know there's a historic structure. I mean, in some area where there's a housing opportunity site and we later find out
02:05:25.03	Unknown	that a proposed project would result in the demolition of a property that we now know is historic.
02:05:30.52	Unknown	So basically it speaks to what we cannot anticipate, what we cannot know. If in the future, a building we didn't know was historic is proposed for demolition to build housing,
02:05:43.83	Unknown	The demolition of such a historic structure is a per se, as a matter of law,
02:05:49.18	Unknown	significant impact. We do not expect it. It is not proposed by the project. We just cannot know
02:05:55.86	Unknown	at the 80,000 foot level, whether it might in the future possibly happen.
02:06:04.37	Councilmember Kelman	Um, so Sarah, thank you for that. Can I request a very stripped down lay person's version of that articulation? I think sort of the question here in the room is we have a historic district.
02:06:22.34	Councilmember Kelman	The housing element provides for an overlay zone.
02:06:25.33	Councilmember Kelman	That means some aspects of these historic resources will be potentially compromised. What is the process within the city? We have a historic preservation committee, planning commission. How does that get reviewed? How does the public get to weigh in?
02:06:42.25	Councilmember Kelman	Or is it
02:06:43.60	Councilmember Kelman	some sort of default, it will happen because there's an overlay zone.
02:06:48.09	Unknown	So there are three pieces, I think. The simplest answer is that there are the mitigation measures that are already in the EIR, that is the draft EIR before you now.
02:06:58.64	Unknown	So that's one piece.
02:07:00.11	Unknown	The second piece is the city's code and I defer to
02:07:04.68	Unknown	Brandon and Sergio.
02:07:06.64	Unknown	the city's code as it applies to already designated historic structures and anything that might impact them.
02:07:12.97	Unknown	And then the third,
02:07:14.33	Unknown	is subsequent discretionary review
02:07:18.67	Unknown	of a project under the California Environmental Quality Act, just like this one, must look at potential impacts to cultural resources and must impose all feasible mitigation measures.
02:07:31.93	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, thank you.
02:07:37.43	Mayor	Are there any other discussion or questions on this topic? The recommended action is to receive the presentation and accept public comment.
02:07:47.52	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:07:49.30	Vice Mayor Cox	I would like to make a couple.
02:07:51.78	Mayor	Vice Mayor Cox.
02:07:53.23	Vice Mayor Cox	I did want to respond to the issue of lack of notice. So I was not on the city council when the housing element committee was formed.
02:08:05.78	Vice Mayor Cox	and when it conducted its meetings, but I attended every one of those public meetings, and there were dozens of them in which every single component of the housing element was thoroughly vetted, considered, debated, and voted upon.
02:08:23.65	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
02:08:25.22	Vice Mayor Cox	I it was also published in the current and then there were various public meetings held by the city council to consider various the progress of the housing element to hold consultant to task for getting it done more quickly. There were, and so there was lots of feedback by.
02:08:48.22	Vice Mayor Cox	in public and at which members of the public had an opportunity to participate. Now, much of this happened during the Zoom era. And so people were not sitting in chambers like we are today. We're fortunate to have this available to us again. But I did want to point out the very transparent process that was undertaken both in appointing a housing element committee
02:09:14.95	Vice Mayor Cox	in the meetings held by the public meetings held by the Housing Element Committee and the meetings held by the City Council. So...
02:09:25.60	Vice Mayor Cox	we do still have more opportunity to consider how best to implement the housing element, and that will happen as we update our zoning ordinance and as we adopt the objective standards. So there is still more opportunity for the public to weigh in, but the process thus far has been as transparent as I've seen in many of the municipalities for which I work. So I just wanted to make that clear
02:09:54.85	Vice Mayor Cox	in response to some of the public comments. And we take this responsibility very seriously. We worked very hard.
02:10:03.96	Vice Mayor Cox	to ensure we had a motto of not of no one area would be overly impacted over another area so we did our very best to spread out the impact of identifying 724 new units of housing throughout Sausalito and not
02:10:24.61	Vice Mayor Cox	overly impacting any single area so those the the imp and we also went out and interviewed many members of the public regarding did they want to build did they want you know where could we put these units so i just um it is our commitment to address any concerns and a couple of you have written to me and i will absolutely meet with you offline on an individual basis but i just wanted to make that clear for all members of the public
02:10:53.18	Vice Mayor Cox	And.
02:10:54.25	Vice Mayor Cox	I know the mayor already thanked you, but I type 130 words a minute. Some of tonight's comments, I'm told, were at least 220 words per minute. So bravo to our court reporter for her Herculean effort in keeping up with us.
02:11:13.40	Mayor	Thank you, Vice Mayor. Are there any other comments from the dais?
02:11:18.51	Councilmember Kelman	My comment, Mayor, is really to staff. I think we need to see the odds that has to come to council
02:11:25.31	Councilmember Kelman	within this process, I mean, I don't know when it is on the agenda, but it's very difficult to fully appreciate the potential impacts and the different levers that can get pushed and pulled without also seeing those in front of us. So I would love an update from Director Phipps or the city manager as to the timing of that.
02:11:45.38	Mayor	Could we ask just right now, Director Phipps, I know we are working on trying to agendize out for the entire year many things that we anticipate coming down the pike, since there are key deadlines to meet for ballot initiative, ballot measures and otherwise. Do we have some guidance to Councilmember Kelman on this subject?
02:12:03.91	Brendan Bips	So, Council Member, thank you very much for the question. Much appreciated. I can tell you that we are working hard on bringing a draft version of the odds before the Planning Commission sometime in February. Based on Planning Commission's action in connection with the draft odds, we may or may not be able to bring the item before Council.
02:12:24.73	Brendan Bips	prior to the closure of the comment period. I would estimate, however, that it's more likely that council will hear the item sometime in March based on the annual calendar.
02:12:36.27	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you, Director Phipps. So while we have you up there and we have the consultants, are there any other ongoing city decisions in draft form that should be considered in parallel with this EIR? Thank you.
02:12:53.59	Brendan Bips	My short answer is no.
02:12:56.49	Councilmember Kelman	OK.
02:12:58.55	Councilmember Kelman	I shall take that. Thank you.
02:12:59.78	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
02:13:01.35	Mayor	Any other comments from the dice before we move on?
02:13:03.74	Mayor	I just...
02:13:03.88	Councilmember Boston	I just...
02:13:04.22	Councilmember Boston	I want to thank staff for the amount of time that's been put into both the housing element and the EAR and the members of the housing element subcommittee that sit on our council, which would be Vice Mayor Cox and Council Member Kelman, who have put in several, probably hundred additional hours to help us get through this process. And I would just direct staff as well to be as proactively seeking comment as we may. So that means including it maybe in every occurrence until the comment period ends, making sure that it's adequately posted around City Hall, and to the extent that we can really trying to seek additional public comment or just make sure that folks are informed. Since I do appreciate that we have made a lot of effort to do so so far, and I appreciate the vice mayor's comments, but I want to as well respond to the community concerns and do what we can in response.
02:13:10.51	Unknown	of the housing
02:13:12.39	Unknown	Uh,
02:13:12.62	Unknown	that.
02:13:54.22	Mayor	Seeing no other comments or discussion, we will move on to item 5B, the auditor presentation and receipt on filing of the fiscal year 22-23, basic financial statements and report on internal control over financial reporting.
02:14:09.85	Mayor	Director Hess.
02:14:12.63	Mayor	Would you unmute yourself, please?
02:14:17.66	Mayor	Stand by while we figure that out. Okay. All right.
02:14:19.92	Chad Hess	All right, now I
02:14:20.63	Mayor	animated.
02:14:21.25	Chad Hess	Awesome.
02:14:22.16	Chad Hess	All right. Good evening, Mayor, Council, members of the public.
02:14:25.98	Chad Hess	Tonight we have our external auditor with us remotely via Zoom.
02:14:31.82	Chad Hess	from Badawis and Associates. We are going to share the results of our audit. Our fiscal year ended June 30th, 2023 audit.
02:14:41.22	Chad Hess	As required by state law, our books are audited annually by an external
02:14:47.43	Chad Hess	independent auditor who comes in and assesses our account balances.
02:14:51.37	Chad Hess	Also looks at our internal controls and gives a statement as to whether they are designed effectively or not.
02:14:59.54	Chad Hess	With that, I would like to introduce you to Ahmed Badawi with Badawi & Associates, the audit partner on this engagement.
02:15:09.02	Chad Hess	He's got a presentation to share with you. And after that presentation, we will be available for comments or questions.
02:15:21.09	Chad Hess	You guys go ahead and unmute Ahmed.
02:15:27.88	Chad Hess	There we go.
02:15:29.88	Ahmed Badawi	Thank you.
02:15:30.68	Chad Hess	Good evening.
02:15:32.26	Ahmed Badawi	Good evening. My name is Ahmed Badawi. Thank you for the introduction, Shad.
02:15:37.10	Ahmed Badawi	And today I will be presenting to you the results of the fiscal year 2023 audit.
02:15:42.40	Ahmed Badawi	If you allow me to share my screen,
02:15:45.00	Ahmed Badawi	I think I have permission.
02:15:47.42	Ahmed Badawi	I would go ahead and do that and get started.
02:15:55.09	Ahmed Badawi	All right, you should be able to see my screen right now. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started. So again, thank you for inviting me to the meeting today.
02:16:03.48	Ahmed Badawi	I will present to you the result of our audit of the city of Sausalito.
02:16:07.65	Ahmed Badawi	What I'm going to cover today, I'm going to let you know who the engagement team was,
02:16:11.89	Ahmed Badawi	Thank you.
02:16:12.05	Ahmed Badawi	What were the deliverables and the scope of our audit? Areas of primary audit emphasis, the type of audit opinion we issued, and summarize for you the numbers in the financial statements, provide you some of the required communications as your independent auditor, and then finally see if you have any questions or comments for me.
02:16:33.13	Ahmed Badawi	So starting with the engagement team, this was a composition of our engagement team. I acted as the engagement partner.
02:16:39.80	Ahmed Badawi	We always have a quality control reviewer, and this person is in the background. Their role is to review the audit teamwork, make sure that we adhere to professional standards. They also provide a secondary review of the financial statements. We also have an IT specialist, and this is strictly an information technology professional who focuses on the security embedded in the city's IT system and infrastructure. We also have an audit manager and three professional staff assigned to the audit.
02:17:11.52	Ahmed Badawi	As for the deliverables, we were mainly engaged to provide an opinion on the city's basic financial statements.
02:17:17.43	Ahmed Badawi	Also, the city is subject to what we call government auditing standards, which require us to issue a report on internal control over financial reporting and on compliance with laws and regulations.
02:17:28.85	Ahmed Badawi	We performed the agreed upon procedures on the appropriation limit schedule. That's the GAN limit. And then finally, the communication was the governing body, which is what I'm doing today. And normally we issue a letter also summarizing that communication.
02:17:44.82	Ahmed Badawi	As for areas of primary audit emphasis, some of the areas are pretty standard in most of our audits. So for example, the first one, the risk of management override of controls. This is a risk that exists in almost every audit. Management is usually the one responsible for designing and implementing.
02:18:04.66	Ahmed Badawi	and monitoring internal controls, and they are oftentimes in a position to override those. So we designed audit procedures to minimize this risk to an acceptable level,
02:18:14.99	Ahmed Badawi	So we make sure that we assign
02:18:16.93	Ahmed Badawi	more experienced staff to more complex areas of the audit,
02:18:20.34	Ahmed Badawi	that we incorporate an element of unpredictability so we don't let management know ahead of time about all the procedures we're going to be looking at. We look at the accounting principles and how they're applied and their consistency. We examine journal entries prepared by management, make sure that they're properly supported.
02:18:39.15	Ahmed Badawi	We review any estimates made by management to make sure that they're free of bias, evaluate business rationale for any unusual transactions, and also do fraud and related party inquiries. Another area of focus for us is revenue. Revenue by default is an area of a higher risk as well.
02:18:59.69	Ahmed Badawi	We rely heavily on confirmations. So we send confirmations to the county, to the state,
02:19:06.29	Ahmed Badawi	to other franchisees and so on, and asking them to confirm amounts submitted to the city. We reconcile those to the city's accounting records and make sure that we are able to tie them back.
02:19:19.37	Ahmed Badawi	Proprietary funds, we do a lot of trend analysis and ratio analysis on the revenues of the proprietary funds.
02:19:27.52	Ahmed Badawi	Another area of risk that we considered during our audit was a turnover risk. The city have experienced turnover in staffing in the finance area, so we just had to consider that
02:19:39.21	Ahmed Badawi	And again, part of it was just making sure that we're looking at all the journal entries as much as we can.
02:19:44.73	Ahmed Badawi	scanning the generator ledger for any unusual transactions, doing a lot of analysis of
02:19:51.16	Ahmed Badawi	prior year comparison, budget to actual comparison, ratio analysis, and so on.
02:19:58.82	Ahmed Badawi	So those were the main risks that we dealt with during our audit.
02:20:03.68	Ahmed Badawi	As for our auditor's report, we have issued an unmodified opinion. The opinion state the standards that we followed, which are the generally accepted auditing standards and government auditing standards. An unmodified opinion means that we believe financial statements are fairly presented, that all accounting policies have been consistently applied, that all estimates are reasonable, and that all disclosures are properly reflected in the financial statements.
02:20:31.90	Ahmed Badawi	I wanted to summarize for you some of the numbers in the financial statements. On this slide here is just a snapshot, a summary of the city's assets over the last three years. Please keep in mind this is really a 30,000 foot view, so we're not focused on any specific fund. This is all city funds combined, just looking at it as a snapshot. I don't see any major fluctuation over the last three years. Like most of our cities, the two largest assets are usually the cash and investments and the capital assets. This is fairly consistent with every municipality, every city we audit. I would say that fluctuations were not significant year over year.
02:21:21.59	Ahmed Badawi	On the next slide, there is a summary of the liabilities over the last three years.
02:21:25.67	Ahmed Badawi	And I would say the most significant would be the increase in net pension liability. This is a result of CalPERS performance on investments and also changes in assumptions, most notably the discount rate that has caused the net pension liability to increase. Otherwise, again, numbers are fairly consistent year over year.
02:21:50.60	Ahmed Badawi	On this slide here is a summary of the city's equity over the last three years. Equity is just assets minus liabilities. And we divide the equity into three categories. The first one, the net investment in capital assets. This is the amount that is not really in a spendable form and unlikely to become spendable any time in the future. This is how much the city invested in streets and roads and bridges and buildings and so on.
02:22:19.41	Ahmed Badawi	The restricted amounts are the amount that have legal restriction by a third party. So this would be any unspent grant proceeds, TDA funds, gas tax, those types of revenues.
02:22:32.60	Ahmed Badawi	And then the unrestricted amount is the amount under the council control. And this is currently a deficit, $10 million. Obviously, the most significant factor in this deficit will be the pension liability and the OPEP liability.
02:22:52.19	Ahmed Badawi	If we were to just look at revenue over expenses year over year, again, this is just really taking all the city revenues and expenses, not one specific fund. I would say that the most, you obviously can see that the short is increasing quite a bit during the year. And mostly this is the result of changes in pension, pension expense, CalPERS activity, and so on that is causing those fluctuations.
02:23:24.63	Ahmed Badawi	Another thing that we look at is what we call the net cost of service to tax revenue. So the net cost of service is the cost of the city running its own departments without basically using tax revenues. So you will look at a department like public works or community development, and you will see how much does it cost to run them and whether those departments are able to bring in any revenues on their own in the form of grants or fees or so on.
02:23:53.96	Ahmed Badawi	And the net will be what's going to be covered by tax revenues. So you can see that tax revenues in the past have not been sufficient for the net cost of service. In 2023, it is exceeding the net cost of service. This is the amount that is reported on the financial statements. I do caution that sometimes those amounts fluctuate quite a bit. For example, one year you may have something like ARPA funds that may offset the net cost of service and reduce it. Another year you don't have it and you see it increasing and so on. What I would say from this slide is that what is consistent is that the tax revenues are increasing year over year.
02:24:41.81	Ahmed Badawi	And that's obviously a good sign.
02:24:44.43	Ahmed Badawi	Um...
02:24:46.22	Ahmed Badawi	If we were to just focus on the general fund, obviously the general fund is where most of the city's unrestricted resources reside. So this is a measurement of the city's liquidity. What we do here is we look at the unrestricted fund balance and we compare it to annual expenditures. The idea is to see how long can the city continue to pay its bills just using existing fund balance. And we have determined that the city probably have about six months worth of expenditures in its fund balance. And we have determined that the city probably have about six months worth of expenditures in its fund balance. And that is a decent amount of fund balance. The minimum recommended ratio is about no less than two months. Anytime you go less than two months, it's obviously
02:25:26.14	Ahmed Badawi	There are some red flags there.
02:25:28.41	Ahmed Badawi	So the city is at six months. That's a comfortable place to be.
02:25:35.80	Ahmed Badawi	The next few slides are going to focus on pension and OPEP. So on this slide here, you see that your pension liability over the last three years, and you can see the fluctuation
02:25:47.05	Ahmed Badawi	from 32 million back in 2020
02:25:50.34	Ahmed Badawi	or 2021 to 20 million to back to 35 million. A lot of it has to do with CalPERS in the prior year had a very good year. This year, not as good. Also, the change in assumption are making these numbers fluctuate significantly.
02:26:12.31	Ahmed Badawi	Wanted to bring to your attention that the pension liability is an estimate. And one of the most significant assumptions in coming up with this estimate is the discount rate.
02:26:23.03	Ahmed Badawi	So we wanted to show you what the numbers would be if the discount rate is either increased or decreased by 1%.
02:26:30.25	Ahmed Badawi	Currently, the discount rate used is 6.9%.
02:26:34.32	Ahmed Badawi	That's the discount rate used to determine the city's pension liability.
02:26:38.77	Ahmed Badawi	So you can see how significant the number will change with one increase, 1% increase or decrease.
02:26:48.09	Ahmed Badawi	Similar to pension, the city also offers OPEB benefits, the retiree medical benefits. So on this slide here, it's a summary of the city's assets invested in the plan, which are on the first column on the left, the city's liability, the total liability of the plan, and then finally the unfunded portion on the right.
02:27:08.49	Ahmed Badawi	over the last three years. Currently, the city have about 5.3 million unfunded.
02:27:17.84	Ahmed Badawi	Again, this number is an estimated number similar to pension.
02:27:21.97	Ahmed Badawi	Discount rate is also a significant assumption. So I wanted to show you what the numbers would look like with a 1% increase or decrease.
02:27:30.73	Ahmed Badawi	In addition to the discount rate, the healthcare trend rate is also a significant assumption in determining this number. So I wanted to show you also within 1% increase and decrease.
02:27:43.02	Ahmed Badawi	The last part of my presentation is the required communications as your independent auditor. On this slide here is a summary of the responsibilities between the audit firm and city management. Our responsibility is mainly to provide an opinion on the financial statements, whether they are fairly stated in accordance with US cap or not.
02:27:59.77	Steven Woodside	worth
02:28:04.53	Ahmed Badawi	Part of doing that is to also evaluate internal control over financial reporting
02:28:09.46	Ahmed Badawi	including the tone at the top, and we mean by that
02:28:12.57	Ahmed Badawi	whether management is sending the right message to the rest of the organization about
02:28:17.44	Ahmed Badawi	the importance of internal controls, the consequences of committing fraud,
02:28:21.78	Ahmed Badawi	Thank you.
02:28:22.05	Ahmed Badawi	also evaluating whether management take corrective action to address audit finding and issues and whether the governing body cares about
02:28:31.26	Ahmed Badawi	management addressing those audit findings or not.
02:28:35.35	Ahmed Badawi	We're responsible for evaluating compliance with laws and regulations that could have an effect on the financial statements. We're responsible for ensuring that the city's financial statements are clear and transparent. And then finally, we are responsible for communicating with the governing body.
02:28:51.92	Ahmed Badawi	Management have a lot of responsibilities in this process. Our audit does not relieve management from its responsibility towards the financial statements. Management is still the one responsible for the completeness and accuracy of those financials. Also responsible for establishing and maintaining internal control over financial reporting, making all financial records available to us, establish controls that will prevent and detect fraud, inform us of any known and suspected fraud, comply with laws and regulations, and take corrective action on any audit findings.
02:29:28.70	Ahmed Badawi	As far as independence, it is solely our responsibility to maintain our independence. We adhere to the AICPA standards and the California Board of Accountancy rules,
02:29:39.17	Ahmed Badawi	We evaluate any relationships that we may have, any firm member may have with the city staff or city personnel in general. We also evaluate any additional service that we offer the city that may impair our independence. Financial statements is a service, compiling the financial statements is a service that does impair independence if no safeguards are put in place. And we do put safeguards by having an independent reviewer reviewing those financial statements.
02:30:09.64	Ahmed Badawi	As far as timing, we believe that the audit was performed timely in accordance with the engagement letter that we agreed to with the city. I wanted to highlight to you that every year there are some new accounting standards that the city will consider whether they apply to it or not.
02:30:26.79	Ahmed Badawi	In fiscal year 2023, there were three new standards that the city have taken into consideration.
02:30:39.31	Ahmed Badawi	I mentioned earlier that some of the numbers in the financials are estimated numbers, so I just wanted to highlight to you some examples of those numbers. Claims liability, useful life of capital assets, pension, OPEB liabilities, all of these are estimated numbers.
02:30:57.97	Ahmed Badawi	I also wanted to bring to your attention some of the more sensitive disclosure in the financials. So I highlighted some of the notes that I think add some more clarity and some rather complex numbers.
02:31:15.95	Ahmed Badawi	I'm pleased to say that we encountered no difficulties during the audit. We had some adjusting entries and management has posted all of those adjusting entries with the exception of a couple that were considered to be immaterial.
02:31:29.95	Ahmed Badawi	There were no significant risk or exposure.
02:31:33.12	Ahmed Badawi	We normally communicate with legal counsel. We ask them to confirm any outstanding litigations, and we make sure that disclosures are in the financial statements, especially if those litigations are not the standard ones covered by insurance.
02:31:48.43	Ahmed Badawi	We're pleased to say that we had no disagreement with management. We did identify a material weakness related to restatement of opening balances. So what this means is that the city, after issuing the financial statements in 2022,
02:32:03.95	Ahmed Badawi	discovered that there were several errors that needed to be corrected in those financials. So the way to correct them is by restating the opening balance in the 2023 financials. So the city had a few of those restatements, and that normally reflects that the internal controls did not work timely to detect those errors prior to the issuance of the financial statements.
02:32:31.97	Ahmed Badawi	Right before we issued the financials, we obtained representations from management, basically a letter from management acknowledging that they have taken responsibility for the financials, that they have recorded all transactions, they have disclosed to us unknown facts, and so on. We're also not aware that management have consulted with any other CPA or accounting firms regarding audit matters. Other than our engagement letter and their presentation letter, we had no other communication with management. There were no material uncertainties relating to events and conditions, and we have not become aware of any instance of fraud or illegal acts.
02:33:11.17	Ahmed Badawi	Just finally on my last slide here is a summary of the new accounting standards that are coming the city's way. Every year with management we will be discussing those standards and how they may or may not impact the city. I think other than that, I'm obviously available for questions and I want to say thank you very much for allowing us the opportunity.
02:33:33.09	Mayor	Thank you, Mr. Badawi. Are there any questions from the dais?
02:33:40.61	Councilmember Boston	Thank you for the substantial audit, which I know required a lot of time and hard work. And thank you to the city of Sausalito staff for your cooperation in the audit and in helping us to demonstrate where we are financially. We had a number of questions and this might be a question for Director Hess, but it might be a question for you, sir.
02:34:02.17	Councilmember Boston	There's been a lot of consideration around the current status of our
02:34:05.98	Councilmember Boston	fiscal picture. And based on your audit, it seems that we are in a strong financial position, in fact, much stronger than we were, say, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Could you just reiterate the amount of money that we have that is not yet classified for going into the 2023 budget? I understand the number is somewhere around 10 million, and I just want to confirm that based on the audit.
02:34:30.75	Ahmed Badawi	I think this will probably be a question for Shad. I don't know what's going into the
02:34:37.69	Ahmed Badawi	The budget.
02:34:39.12	Chad Hess	So I think the question at hand is the general fund's unassigned fund balance.
02:34:45.30	Chad Hess	that we're going to be able to
02:34:46.16	Chad Hess	If I can share my screen real quick, I think I can tell you what they're referring to.
02:34:49.97	Councilmember Boston	That's exactly what the question at hand is. Thank you, Director Huss.
02:34:52.74	Chad Hess	Yes. So the general fund currently has an unrestricted fund balance of $10 million, $8.
02:34:59.00	Chad Hess	$10,088,000.
02:35:01.23	Chad Hess	I'm sorry, $10,882,266.
02:35:05.77	Chad Hess	Um,
02:35:06.53	Chad Hess	That is very similar to what we had last year, a slight increase of that unassigned
02:35:11.30	Chad Hess	Fund the balance.
02:35:12.75	Chad Hess	I'm
02:35:14.09	Chad Hess	let me see my screen can be shared
02:35:16.97	Chad Hess	Let me go ahead and share that. So I think what you're referring to is right here.
02:35:21.11	Chad Hess	as far as that unassigned fund balance. And as noted in his presentation, that represents just over 50%
02:35:28.24	Chad Hess	of our general fund expenditures.
02:35:31.18	Chad Hess	Um,
02:35:32.21	Chad Hess	I think your question is, is,
02:35:34.22	Chad Hess	for him to elaborate on the standing, is that an adequate amount of fund balance? Is that what you're looking for, council member?
02:35:41.17	Chad Hess	Yes, thank you.
02:35:44.34	Unknown	Yeah, I mean, obviously, I look at it the same way. I look at my personal finances. Six months is probably okay. It could always be more.
02:35:58.97	Ahmed Badawi	We have cities that are in the six to eight months or four to eight months. And I would say that's the majority of our cities, but we definitely have some that have
02:36:10.33	Ahmed Badawi	a year, year and a half and two years worth of fun bounce. I don't know if that's ideal, but
02:36:16.71	Ahmed Badawi	There are really a lot of variation, but I would say that you probably fall within the average within what most of our clients would have.
02:36:26.65	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
02:36:30.31	Mayor	Vice Mayor.
02:36:32.25	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:36:33.04	Vice Mayor Cox	I just wanted to clarify one of the things on your presentation, which was the you had identified a material weakness related to the restatement of opening balances. And I just wanted to clarify that when you go back into your report, it reports that
02:36:51.40	Vice Mayor Cox	there were
02:36:52.87	Vice Mayor Cox	actually in the
02:36:57.56	Vice Mayor Cox	in the issuance of the 2021 to 22 financial statements. So that was long before our current finance director was hired. And that there were some of the fund balances were closed in,
02:37:20.61	Vice Mayor Cox	late or
02:37:23.26	Vice Mayor Cox	But it's.
02:37:24.78	Vice Mayor Cox	Essentially, you said the city had inadequate controls over the closing process, and therefore they had to restate some of the opening balances the following fiscal year. Is that an accurate overview of your comment on that issue?
02:37:41.02	Unknown	There is an accurate overview. My comments are obviously not intended for the current direction.
02:37:41.15	Vice Mayor Cox	There is an accident.
02:37:48.97	Ahmed Badawi	director of finance, we look at it from a city perspective. The city's 2022 finance statements were issued with those errors in them.
02:38:00.52	Ahmed Badawi	And the comment is saying that the city's internal controls did not work timely enough to detect those errors prior to those financials being issued. I probably want to say that probably Director Shedd is the one who discovered a lot of those errors as we went through the audit. Nonetheless, they were discovered after those 2022 financials were issued. And that's what the comment is focused on.
02:38:28.77	Vice Mayor Cox	So while things were late or not completely accurate, there weren't any misdeeds by city employees. It was simply...
02:38:41.70	Vice Mayor Cox	accuracy of reporting. Would that be a fair statement?
02:38:45.19	Unknown	The way we see internal control
02:38:46.96	Ahmed Badawi	that they're not just focused on safeguarding of assets, but also we focus a lot on internal control over financial reporting, over how the numbers are reported, over whether errors are being detected in a timely manner. So yeah, the concern is not about safekeeping or safeguarding of assets, but it is about controls over financial reporting, producing the financial statements, making sure you have adequate accounting records.
02:39:20.60	Vice Mayor Cox	And management gave you several actions that they've taken to improve the situation, including more technical training for the accounting department, more detailed account review and reconciliation process sooner, and building a more complete month-end and year-end and close schedule to ensure an accurate and timely close process. And is that what you observed in your review of the most current financial statements?
02:39:45.32	Ahmed Badawi	So, again, the management plan was provided to us after we concluded our audit for 2023. So this would be something that we will actually be visiting in 2024 and see if the plan was put in place and whether it worked or not. in our opinion we actually say that we have not audited the management response But in our opinion, we actually say that we have not audited the management response, but obviously something that is normally followed up in the following year to see if it worked or not.
02:40:23.67	Vice Mayor Cox	And I'll just wrap up with, certainly we closed our books and completed our audit.
02:40:31.08	Vice Mayor Cox	before the end of 2023, which I think is the first
02:40:35.54	Vice Mayor Cox	time I've seen that happen in at least a decade.
02:40:39.27	Vice Mayor Cox	And so wouldn't you agree that's an upstat in terms of
02:40:43.69	Vice Mayor Cox	timely
02:40:45.36	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
02:40:46.24	Vice Mayor Cox	a timely year-end close schedule to ensure an accurate and timely close process.
02:40:52.50	Ahmed Badawi	No doubt. I mean, not only that this is the first time, but the first time also while changing audit firm, that usually add to the burden on city staff because the audit firm is new, is asking more questions and gathering more documentation. So city staff were able to not only work with a new audit firm, but also meet deadlines. And obviously the credit goes to... city staff were able to not only work with a new audit firm, but also meet deadlines. And obviously the credit goes to the city staff for this, for being prepared and responsive and able to produce quality documents that are acceptable to the audit firm.
02:41:32.63	Vice Mayor Cox	Well, thank you, sir. We appreciate your report, and we certainly appreciate the outcome of your report.
02:41:39.06	Ahmed Badawi	You're right.
02:41:39.17	Mayor	welcome
02:41:42.19	Mayor	Are there other questions from the DAX?
02:41:44.79	Councilmember Kelman	I have one follow-up question, which is,
02:41:47.65	Councilmember Kelman	A little bit looking backwards, but on the topic of internal control. So what, if any, control is in place...
02:41:58.02	Councilmember Kelman	when we budget for an item and the monies do not get spent, what controls in place to prevent the movement of that unspent budgeted amount into another fund or department? How does one
02:42:19.93	Councilmember Kelman	sort of track that and because what happens for us up here is
02:42:23.88	Councilmember Kelman	we'll be asked to approve something, and then a year from now, we'll be reminded we approved that budget, but perhaps it was never spent. And I'm just wondering what, from you as an auditor, what your perspective is on the right control to make sure that those monies stay where they were originally allocated.
02:42:45.22	Ahmed Badawi	Obviously, I think that having a strong policy about what happens when the budget year is over and the money is unspent, whether it's just it becomes subject to reappropriation or stays where it is. We see that, we hear that concern oftentimes where you have a lot of staff uh salaries that are scheduled but these positions are vacant and the money doesn't get spent um again it all depends on the policy but obviously at some point uh this money is reflected in fund balance and um
02:43:28.69	Ahmed Badawi	will have to be reviewed at some point. It's not something that our audit focused more on the actual numbers, what did occur versus what will happen based on a budget. But we do compare the actual results every year to what was budgeted. We do inquire about items that exceeded the budget. There is disclosure in the financial statements about funds and line items that exceeded their budget. We sometimes also inquire the other way around when there were large budget amounts and no expenditures or significantly lower expenditure. but oftentimes we would not necessarily like it would not be a finding for us that something was budgeted high and then the spending didn't occur because there can be a variety of reasons why the spending didn't occur whether you couldn't find a qualified contractor timely or just there's always there are many reasons for that
02:44:39.87	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
02:44:40.93	Councilmember Hoppen	Thanks very much, Mr. Badawi or Chad, either one of you.
02:44:47.55	Councilmember Hoppen	Of the 10 million
02:44:50.47	Councilmember Hoppen	the general fund unassigned balance.
02:44:52.78	Councilmember Hoppen	About what of that, I think this is probably for Chad, about what of that number of people
02:44:58.25	Councilmember Hoppen	is attributable to the Measure O slash Measure L sales tax.
02:45:05.22	Councilmember Hoppen	that we, or is any of it?
02:45:08.93	Chad Hess	Yes, I can share that response. So...
02:45:11.23	Councilmember Hoppen	So even though that's a tax, I'll just recap for Bula, that that's a tax that was implemented mainly for to fund capital improvements because of the structure of the vote. It goes into the general fund, but we as a policy at the city council level
02:45:27.68	Councilmember Hoppen	attribute or we allocate that to capital improvements. So I just want to make sure that even though it's lumped in with unassigned, it's still, I guess, informally earmarked for capital improvements.
02:45:41.23	Chad Hess	Are you guys able to see my screen now?
02:45:43.17	Councilmember Hoppen	Yeah.
02:45:43.96	Chad Hess	Okay. Of the 10 million, $882,000.
02:45:46.73	Mayor	I've always seen your menu, not your PDF.
02:45:49.53	Chad Hess	Nope.
02:45:49.89	Chad Hess	you
02:45:50.04	Mayor	to pick your
02:45:50.34	Chad Hess	Okay. You're not seeing the PDF. I am sorry. Let me reach here.
02:45:50.39	Mayor	Thank you.
02:45:55.05	Chad Hess	I see technical difficulties here.
02:45:57.34	Chad Hess	I'm going to share screen
02:45:59.69	Chad Hess	One.
02:46:00.77	Councilmember Hoppen	on.
02:46:01.58	Councilmember Hoppen	I think Walford maybe.
02:46:02.74	Chad Hess	Chad, let me try it.
02:46:04.30	Chad Hess	Are you guys able to see it here?
02:46:05.09	Councilmember Hoppen	here.
02:46:05.41	Blauskne	Do it.
02:46:05.93	Chad Hess	Thank you.
02:46:05.97	Blauskne	Thank you.
02:46:06.03	Chad Hess	Thank you.
02:46:06.05	Blauskne	Do you want a driver or do you want me to drive?
02:46:07.43	Chad Hess	I'll drive if I can.
02:46:08.75	Chad Hess	Are you guys able to see my screen?
02:46:10.78	Chad Hess	with the PDF on it or not?
02:46:12.35	Councilmember Hoppen	No, that's the list of your PDFs.
02:46:14.47	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay.
02:46:14.62	Chad Hess	Okay, you're seeing this screen then.
02:46:18.02	Chad Hess	Do you see the financials now?
02:46:20.46	Councilmember Hoppen	Yes.
02:46:20.97	Unknown	Uh-huh.
02:46:21.26	Chad Hess	Yes. Okay.
02:46:22.34	Chad Hess	So I've,
02:46:23.35	Chad Hess	Of this $10,882,000,
02:46:26.18	Chad Hess	Measure L, which is our penny sales tax,
02:46:30.27	Chad Hess	represents 691,000.
02:46:33.05	Chad Hess	of that $10,892,000.
02:46:36.53	Chad Hess	So this year we did present the three funds that make up the general fund that we report on the front schedules, the general fund proper,
02:46:44.73	Chad Hess	which is our operating account. So that funds police, Department of Public Works, library, et cetera.
02:46:50.85	Chad Hess	We have our Measure L sales tax, the penny,
02:46:53.77	Chad Hess	sales tax that we are collecting to
02:46:56.19	Chad Hess	repair our roads and infrastructure with.
02:46:58.89	Chad Hess	and then our pension trust fund is included in that general fund.
02:47:02.90	Chad Hess	and that has a restricted fund balance of $3,576,000.
02:47:10.46	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you. And then as a follow up also, as part of that, is there also a portion that's attributable to unfilled but allocated
02:47:22.21	Councilmember Hoppen	allocated, meaning we budgeted for it, employee positions that we haven't yet filled.
02:47:29.28	Chad Hess	That would be in
02:47:32.89	Chad Hess	that would close into fund balance. So any unspent
02:47:36.05	Chad Hess	So we budgeted a million dollars for salaries, but we only spent $800,000.
02:47:41.36	Chad Hess	at the end of the year, that
02:47:43.49	Chad Hess	unspent proceeds would just close or roll into our unassigned fund balance.
02:47:49.01	Chad Hess	to be appropriated in subsequent years.
02:47:52.04	Chad Hess	So any savings, any salary savings that leads to a surplus,
02:47:57.09	Chad Hess	goes into fund balance.
02:47:57.17	Councilmember Hoppen	Right.
02:47:58.56	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, thanks.
02:47:59.91	Councilmember Hoppen	And so that's also included in the number that we've been given as the...
02:48:05.98	Councilmember Hoppen	of the unassigned balance.
02:48:08.61	Chad Hess	That's any previous year's savings. Yep. Any previous year's surpluses are all captured in that fund balance number.
02:48:17.44	Chad Hess	Um,
02:48:18.23	Chad Hess	that we can see here on page
02:48:21.24	Chad Hess	129 of the printed book
02:48:23.82	Chad Hess	or 135 of the PDF.
02:48:26.43	Unknown	Okay.
02:48:27.33	Unknown	Okay.
02:48:27.43	Chad Hess	If we look at current year general fund,
02:48:30.70	Chad Hess	When we go to the next page here, here's our revenues and expenses.
02:48:34.52	Chad Hess	Here you can see in the current fiscal year,
02:48:37.76	Chad Hess	We had a net change in fund balance of the general fund of $1.6 million, meaning we had more inflows, more resources come into the general fund than we had go out.
02:48:48.71	Chad Hess	In the operating portion of that account, we had a deficit spend of 86,000.
02:48:56.34	Chad Hess	But because of that million dollar transfer that we made from the general fund proper to our pension trust fund, that's the leading cause of that deficit. You can see that movement here
02:49:07.09	Chad Hess	a transfer out of general fund proper over to our pension trust fund.
02:49:12.18	Chad Hess	That does get eliminated, but you can see overall, we had an increase of 1,688,000
02:49:18.34	Chad Hess	in the general fund, a positive increase, more revenues than expenses for this fiscal year.
02:49:26.56	Mayor	I just had two questions. What is the amount of cash in the parking fund? And what was its performance last year?
02:49:35.57	Chad Hess	Arkansas.
02:49:39.33	Chad Hess	So if we look at page,
02:49:42.59	Chad Hess	38 of the printed book, page 44.
02:49:46.81	Chad Hess	of the PDF.
02:49:47.87	Chad Hess	We can see here our parking fund has cash of $1.1 million.
02:49:52.68	Chad Hess	$1,307,000.
02:49:55.08	Chad Hess	Yeah.
02:49:56.11	Chad Hess	Um,
02:49:56.75	Chad Hess	The performance of that parking fund would be found on
02:50:00.72	Chad Hess	page.
02:50:02.23	Chad Hess	46 of the PDF.
02:50:04.48	Chad Hess	page
02:50:05.59	Chad Hess	40 of the printed book.
02:50:07.80	Chad Hess	I'm
02:50:08.41	Chad Hess	Parking Fund brought in $2.6 million of revenue.
02:50:11.58	Chad Hess	in fiscal year 23,
02:50:13.96	Chad Hess	they had expenses of $453,000. Now, I do want to note that that does not include salaries.
02:50:20.16	Chad Hess	In fiscal year, 23 salaries for parking enforcement was in the general fund. That changes in 24.
02:50:26.01	Chad Hess	We made a $2 million transfer from the parking fund into the general fund.
02:50:31.55	Chad Hess	And we still had an increase in net position of $237,000. So we had a very positive.
02:50:37.89	Chad Hess	rootful year in the parking fund.
02:50:39.93	Chad Hess	We increased our net position. We transferred $2 million over to the general fund.
02:50:45.03	Chad Hess	and we still have $1.3 million of cash available in that fund.
02:50:50.60	Mayor	Got it. And just to emphasize the parking fund is separate from the general fund.
02:50:54.77	Chad Hess	That is correct.
02:50:57.18	Mayor	And then just the question, this is, I have no idea what our auditor will say this, but I was just curious if he might opine, since he mentioned that he does this for many cities. Are you comfortable qualitatively just summing it up for everyone? In your experience, is Sausalito's finances average, above average? Are we in a good financial picture from your assessment of liabilities and revenues, cash on hand? What's your impression?
02:51:31.45	Ahmed Badawi	Yeah, so obviously our opinion is only our written opinion that is in the financial statements. But if you just ask me my personal assessment based on the cities that I see, of course, as the auditor, I'm always cautious. I'm not going to say you have no risk or that I see no issues. Pension liability is always a concern. The numbers fluctuate significantly. And next year, you may find yourself, you know, having even a bigger liability with higher contributions that needs to be made. So things can change very quickly. That's why I'm saying, you know, six months in the general fund is good. One year is definitely better and will make the city more comfortable. But I would not say that this should be your goal. But obviously, I'm always cautious about saying everything is just great because things can change. But I would say that, yeah, compared to we work with almost 40 plus cities and again the ones that we get concerned about are the ones that have low fund balance that the revenues are not exceeding expenditures that it's a consistent trend and that also that they don't have industries, they don't have, you know, potential for newer revenue sources and things like that. I don't see any of those things in Sausalito. Yeah.
02:53:09.63	Ahmed Badawi	So, yeah, our opinion did not disclose that we have any concerns about the city's financial condition. But please keep in mind that we're not financial forecasters. Our opinion will only consider 12 months from the date of the opinion as to whether the city is financially viable or not. So that's a very short period of time. We just really look at can the city just continue to pay its existing bills for the next few months? But it's by no mean a long-term assessment of the city's financial position.
02:53:45.20	Mayor	Thank you.
02:53:45.73	Mayor	Are there any other...
02:53:48.04	Mayor	Comments?
02:53:50.77	Mayor	Oh, yeah. I meant questions.
02:53:52.97	Mayor	Any other questions?
02:53:54.97	Mayor	Thank you.
02:53:55.31	Mayor	All right, so we're opening up for public comment on this item.
02:54:00.22	Mayor	Pretty quick.
02:54:04.85	Unknown	Any none?
02:54:08.31	Blauskne	Oh, that's right. You did.
02:54:10.84	Blauskne	Yeah, right here, 5B. Yep, you're right. Yeah.
02:54:14.38	Blauskne	Babette McDougal.
02:54:22.34	Babette McDougal	Good evening. Thank you again for acknowledging me.
02:54:25.79	Babette McDougal	So I just want to ask a general question because it reflects
02:54:31.34	Babette McDougal	what seems to be a growing sentiment, not just in our own community, but within the region generally.
02:54:36.98	Babette McDougal	And that has to do with being in this extraordinary time known as the housing element. So the question is,
02:54:43.08	Babette McDougal	How would an auditor, when you mention that there's no evidence of fraud or illegal acts,
02:54:51.08	Babette McDougal	I would assume that if someone were embezzling funds out of the city coffers, that the sharp eye of an auditor would capture that rather quickly and track it down and
02:55:00.65	Babette McDougal	find evidence of fraud, for example. But when we have citizen
02:55:06.37	Babette McDougal	participants in government, whether they are appointed or elected, and they seem to champion a certain cause
02:55:14.12	Babette McDougal	um,
02:55:15.06	Babette McDougal	because it appeals to them. And then it's somehow revealed that there was payoffs
02:55:20.56	Babette McDougal	Is that ever revealed by an auditor's study?
02:55:24.46	Babette McDougal	And if so, how?
02:55:28.41	Unknown	Um...
02:55:29.31	Blauskne	Thank you.
02:55:29.36	Unknown	Thank you.
02:55:30.59	Blauskne	But we're...
02:55:31.75	Blauskne	What?
02:55:32.04	Blauskne	No, we're not answering any questions. Thank you.
02:55:35.09	Vice Mayor Cox	public comment.
02:55:35.82	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
02:55:36.49	Babette McDougal	Oh, that's unfortunate because your own policy does not prohibit this. It only says fill out the piece of paper.
02:55:46.08	Babette McDougal	So this fellow is not allowed to answer either.
02:55:49.77	Babette McDougal	And so we're marked at this time zone limit, while you guys run out the clock ad nauseum at times, because you're not adequately prepared, or you just want to repeat one another or embellish each other, instead of moving on or submitting your questions and comments ahead of time so that we can be more expedient. There needs to be an equitable sharing of how this time is used.
02:56:12.37	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
02:56:12.39	Blauskne	Thank you.
02:56:12.40	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
02:56:16.12	Blauskne	We have online, we have PEDZUK.
02:56:35.27	Blauskne	Pat, if you can unmute yourself.
02:56:37.16	Blauskne	Thank you.
02:56:53.97	Blauskne	she doesn't seem to be responsive. It's past tense, so maybe...
02:57:01.26	Blauskne	Yeah, but she's getting a prompt to unmute herself and not getting any response.
02:57:14.59	Blauskne	Okay, now I don't see what she should.
02:57:16.51	Blauskne	You will too.
02:57:21.08	Blauskne	Yeah, we're clicking ask to unmute and she's not doing it on her end. So not sure what might be going on.
02:57:30.03	Councilmember Hoppen	Walfred, where, sorry, where is the prompt? Where does it appear on her screen, the unmute?
02:57:38.85	Councilmember Hoppen	Bye.
02:57:40.19	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
02:57:41.98	Councilmember Hoppen	Where?
02:57:44.86	Unknown	Thank you.
02:57:44.88	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
02:57:44.95	Unknown	Thank you.
02:57:45.32	Unknown	Thank you.
02:57:46.30	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, sorry.
02:57:47.83	Unknown	Thank you.
02:57:50.23	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay.
02:57:53.52	Councilmember Hoppen	We might want to have a tutorial at some point.
02:57:55.70	Mayor	Thank you.
02:57:56.98	Councilmember Hoppen	from our city clerk.
02:57:58.68	Mayor	Well, look, if there's no objective, are there any other public comments?
02:57:58.72	Councilmember Hoppen	Bye.
02:58:04.00	Mayor	Say none. Well, so we could begin our discussion if there is any. If you can keep working that, I would welcome her comment as you work that item technically. So in the interest of time, let's continue our discussion. But if Pat Zook and you can work that out, then we will hear her comment. So on the dais, is there discussion or comments on what we have heard today?
02:58:29.41	Mayor	not buying the Zik anytime.
02:58:31.77	Mayor	Thank you.
02:58:31.91	Vice Mayor Cox	I mean, for myself, I would say thank you to the auditor and primarily thank you to Chad Hess for his really hard work and really competent work in the last year to, you know, starting with revising our opening fund balances to accurate amounts, to enabling us to invest over a million dollars into our pension trust fund, to facilitate the policy we put in place in 2018 to kind of
02:59:07.60	Vice Mayor Cox	flatten the curve on our pension obligations
02:59:11.19	Vice Mayor Cox	and to creating the monthly reports that you provide to us with the vice mayor's recommendation to increasing the amount of interest we earn on monies that sit in our various accounts. you know I am contrary to public comment I'm actually very very proud of the work that the city staff and the policies that the city council has adopted to enhance our financial position over the last year.
02:59:47.16	Vice Mayor Cox	The clean audit report, the first clean audit report we've had in several years, actually bears out that effort. And I look forward to continuing that practice of excellence.
03:00:02.07	Vice Mayor Cox	And I would move to receive and file the fiscal year 2022-2023 basic financial statements and report on internal control over financial reporting.
03:00:11.73	Councilmember Boston	I'll second that motion. I don't have much to add except to say that I'm thrilled to see that we are
03:00:18.53	Councilmember Boston	in a stronger fiscal position than we were in prior years. That's very much in part to our city manager, Chris Zapata, as well as our director, Chad Hess, and the entire finance department team, and the result of hard work from our department heads in cutting back on some of our budgets and making some necessary changes. So I really appreciate everyone's efforts here. I'm thrilled to see a clean audit, and I'm happy to support the vice mayor's motion and move us forward.
03:00:46.64	Blauskne	Before we continue, I think Pat Suck might be able to. All right. We welcome Ms.
03:00:50.18	Mayor	We welcome Ms. Zuck's comment.
03:00:59.68	Blauskne	Thank you.
03:00:59.70	City Manager	Mayor, if I can.
03:01:00.21	Blauskne	Pat, you're...
03:01:00.24	City Manager	Pat, maybe you can speak.
03:01:00.80	Blauskne	Yes.
03:01:01.64	Blauskne	Thank you.
03:01:02.01	Mayor	Yes, city manager Zapata.
03:01:04.58	City Manager	Thank you.
03:01:04.92	City Manager	If Kat can't come on anytime soon, I will call her, get her questions, bring it forward, make it a matter of the public record, provide a response if we need to, and also want Chad to tell the public how they can access the audit document itself.
03:01:22.42	Chad Hess	Certainly. The audit report will be posted to the city's website under the finance department's page. We'll get that up tomorrow.
03:01:29.43	Chad Hess	We also have bound copies that will be coming, and we, as a past practice, we have put them in the library so somebody can go down and check out the printed book.
03:01:39.54	Chad Hess	I don't know when that will be available. Probably within the coming week, we'll have a bound copy there.
03:01:45.30	Chad Hess	But you can always check it out tomorrow online. It's also attached to the agenda for this evening. But it'll be up tomorrow on the finance department's page.
03:01:57.83	Mayor	Thank you.
03:01:57.85	Unknown	Okay.
03:01:57.90	Mayor	other colleagues?
03:02:00.84	Councilmember Kelman	No, I'll just echo the thanks to Chad. If anybody's not sure where we are fiscally, since Chad has been on board, things have gotten extremely clear and transparent. And if you have questions, I urge you to go and review those documents or review the meetings if you have further curiosities, but he has done an extremely diligent job in cleaning this up. So thank you, Chad.
03:02:10.05	Linda Fitch	Thank you.
03:02:28.08	Chad Hess	you're.
03:02:32.28	Mayor	I will second that. Any comments?
03:02:35.05	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
03:02:35.21	Councilmember Hoppen	echo those positive comments about Chad's work. Thank you.
03:02:39.89	Mayor	All right, well done. We will move on to our next agenda item, which...
03:02:43.43	Mayor	We have to vote on the motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks for reminding me there's a motion that's made and seconded to accept and file the report. So all in favor?
03:02:54.91	Linda Fitch	Bye.
03:02:55.78	Mayor	Bye.
03:02:57.03	Linda Fitch	Bye.
03:02:57.83	Mayor	Opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Item 5D is the introduction of waiver of the first reading of Ordinance 2024-01, an ordinance of the City Council and the City of Sausalito Municipal Code Re-Adopting Chapter 2.60 Military Equipment Use Policy.
03:03:18.06	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:03:19.61	Vice Mayor Cox	Vice Mayor, before we start that, it's after 10. Can we just look at our agenda and figure out what we're going to do?
03:03:25.53	Mayor	Yep, it's look to the sense of the council about whether you wish to stop working at this moment or seeing, you know, estimates of the length of this item and whether you'd like to hear this from Sir Rogers.
03:03:40.86	Councilmember Boston	I note that we have members of the public here who are very interested in the item with regards to Edwards, who have been here since the beginning and probably want to comment. Yes. So if we were going to hear an additional item, I would suggest that we hear that item, although I would be very mindful of time. I'm hoping.
03:03:48.06	Unknown	Yes.
03:03:48.57	Vice Mayor Cox	THE FAMILY.
03:03:55.28	Vice Mayor Cox	I would love to hear 5D and 5E. In terms of the new 5G, I'd like to just agree on the next three meetings or so so that we can defer that discussion.
03:04:03.98	Mayor	So yeah, hearing, I'm sorry, go ahead.
03:04:07.22	Councilmember Boston	I just, I don't, it depends on how long the Edwards, I don't know.
03:04:10.94	Councilmember Boston	Okay.
03:04:11.42	Vice Mayor Cox	I know this is very short.
03:04:13.68	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:04:16.53	Councilmember Kelman	through this and see and confirm it short. And then if we have to.
03:04:20.99	Mayor	All right, so that sounds like the plan. We'll hear from 5D and 5E, and that will probably be our meeting this evening. So Officer Ed Rogers, please proceed.
03:04:33.24	Brandon Rogers	Yes. Good evening. I'm Brandon Rogers, lieutenant for the Saucyote Police Department.
03:04:39.19	Brandon Rogers	I want to thank you for letting me speak tonight about the annual
03:04:43.28	Brandon Rogers	excuse me, annual renewal city of Sausalito municipal code chapter 2.60.
03:04:48.49	Brandon Rogers	Military Equipment Use Ordinance.
03:04:51.72	Brandon Rogers	At the December 5th, 2023 regular council meeting, a public hearing was held to present the 2022-2023 military equipment use report per government code section 7072 in Saucelido Municipal Code Chapter 2.60.
03:05:09.89	Brandon Rogers	a staff report was presented and a public hearing was held
03:05:14.26	Brandon Rogers	There were no questions asked or public comments made about the 2022-2023 annual military equipment use reports.
03:05:25.84	Brandon Rogers	So the fiscal impact of the 2022-2023 report is that the police department is asking for $468 to replenish beanbag rounds that were used during training during that period. And then the police department is also asking the city council to renew Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 2.60, the military equipment use ordinance. And I'm open for any questions you may have. Questions please for Officer Rogers.
03:05:53.97	Mayor	you
03:05:59.10	Mayor	There are no questions. I was there. We will open the floor for public comment.
03:06:06.84	Mayor	See you then.
03:06:08.89	Mayor	closing public comment. Is there any discussion from the dice?
03:06:12.36	Vice Mayor Cox	Mayor, I move we receive and file the fiscal year 2022-2023 basic financial statements and report on – oh, sorry, I'm at the wrong item.
03:06:21.93	Linda Fitch	Sorry.
03:06:23.48	Vice Mayor Cox	them.
03:06:24.66	Vice Mayor Cox	I move we introduce by title only and waive first reading of ordinance number 2024-01, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito re-adopting Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 2.60, Military Equipment Use Policy.
03:06:40.10	Mayor	Is there a second? Second.
03:06:42.35	Mayor	Any discussion on this motion?
03:06:46.11	Mayor	Seeing none, we'll call the question. All in favor, say aye.
03:06:49.03	Unknown	Aye. Opposed.
03:06:50.97	Mayor	measure passes unanimously. We'll now hear item 5E.
03:06:57.06	Mayor	Adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager toward the construction contract composed of the base bid plus three bid alternatives for the 2023 pavement improvement project Edwards Avenue, an amount of $1,050,530. Authorize a construction contingency for the project in the amount of $121,920.00.
03:07:17.26	Mayor	and authorized the city manager to award the professional services agreement
03:07:20.98	Mayor	with the CSW Stuber Stroh Engineering Group for a contract construction management amount not to exceed 107,000.
03:07:29.04	Mayor	$550. Please proceed, sir.
03:07:32.20	Andrew Davidson	Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'd like to thank you, the City Manager and Director of Public Works, for this opportunity to bring before you the award of the 2023 Payment Improvement Project
03:07:41.80	Andrew Davidson	Edwards Avenue. I'm Andrew Davidson, senior engineer in your Department of Public Work.
03:07:46.42	Andrew Davidson	This evening, we will be asking you to award a construction contract for the resurfacing of Edwards between Marionave and Alexander.
03:07:53.73	Andrew Davidson	and to award a contract for construction management and inspection for this project.
03:07:58.35	Andrew Davidson	Next, please.
03:08:01.15	Andrew Davidson	A little history as part of the 2022 streets resurfacing project, the city resurfaced portions of Gerard Johnson and Platt Edwards was included in the initial list of roads to be resurfaced.
03:08:13.67	Andrew Davidson	However, because Edwards is very steep, includes concrete paving and sanitary sewer work,
03:08:18.91	Andrew Davidson	It was separated from the 2022 project.
03:08:22.53	Andrew Davidson	This was also done so that we could get the work on Gerard and Johnson started and completed. It started in October of 2022 and followed and completed the following month. Next slide, please.
03:08:34.45	Andrew Davidson	David Miller- Location map there's Edwards for the project and high side is Marion Avenue to the west low is Alexander to the east next slide please.
03:08:45.74	Andrew Davidson	Whenever I mention Edwards, I'm talking about the project within the limits. The existing street is concrete with some locations that have had asphalt placed on top.
03:08:54.60	Andrew Davidson	The street is narrow and gets very steep as you go east down the hill. This portion of Edwards is also one way from uphill to downhill, west to east. Where there's asphalt on top of concrete, the asphalt is separating.
03:09:08.54	Andrew Davidson	and crumbling away from the concrete.
03:09:10.66	Andrew Davidson	The concrete's highly cracked and parts are breaking away, spalling,
03:09:14.31	Andrew Davidson	and there are vertical displacements in the surface.
03:09:17.48	Andrew Davidson	Edwards is past its useful life, and unfortunately, we cannot maintain the existing roadway with a less costly treatment. It must be removed and fully replaced with a new structural section. Replacement will be both with asphalt and with concrete. The flatter uphill 600 feet of Edwards will be replaced with a new asphalt roadway, while the steeper and narrower downhill 300 feet will be replaced with a new concrete roadway.
03:09:44.58	Andrew Davidson	The intersection of Marion will be partially asphalt and partially concrete.
03:09:48.99	Andrew Davidson	in conjunction with the city sanitary sewer staff.
03:09:52.53	Andrew Davidson	It was determined that the existing sanitary sewer main
03:09:55.50	Andrew Davidson	within the project limits requires replacement and the existing sanitary sewer maintenance holes require either
03:10:01.49	Andrew Davidson	rehabilitation or complete replacement.
03:10:04.59	Andrew Davidson	The approximate length of sanitary sewer main that needs to be replaced is 1,100 feet.
03:10:10.35	Andrew Davidson	Additionally, the city will be installing new lower sanitary sewer laterals, clean outs, backflow and backflow preventers.
03:10:17.07	Andrew Davidson	This is going to be a complex project, the roads needing to be partially or fully closed during demolition and placement of new asphalt and concrete.
03:10:28.07	Andrew Davidson	Next slide, please.
03:10:30.94	Andrew Davidson	The original budget for the project was identified with the 2022 Street resurfacing project and was presented to the Council in March of 2022 as $2.49 million.
03:10:42.58	Andrew Davidson	This encl...
03:10:43.71	Andrew Davidson	I'm sorry, this included Edwards as well as Gerard, Johnson, and Platt.
03:10:48.23	Andrew Davidson	Now we're going to need an additional money from the sewer enterprise fund to take care of the sewer work in NWRDS. And you can see that in the table of about $530,000 just for the sewer.
03:11:00.26	Andrew Davidson	Next slide, please.
03:11:03.83	Andrew Davidson	The city received three bids for the Edwards Project, the lowest being Majoran Gelati's bid of $1,050,530. All bids were determined to be responsive and responsible, so we are asking you to award the cons...
03:11:18.44	Andrew Davidson	construction contract to Majoran Gelati as the low bidder.
03:11:23.17	Andrew Davidson	The cost of the 2022 project was $715,000, as you can see on the table.
03:11:29.38	Andrew Davidson	The cost of the Edwards project with construction contingency and construction management and inspections estimated to cost $1,280,000.
03:11:40.61	Andrew Davidson	So it looks like we'll have about $1 million left in the allocated budget, which we may wish
03:11:47.78	Andrew Davidson	to use to construct the retaining wall at the intersection of Edwards and Marion.
03:11:53.81	Andrew Davidson	This wall is currently under design.
03:11:56.42	Andrew Davidson	Next slide, please.
03:12:00.31	Andrew Davidson	The photo on the left shows where Edwards narrows and where the proposed transition between asphalt and concrete roadway will occur. The photo on the right shows the location where the retaining wall that we've just spoken about may be constructed.
03:12:15.16	Andrew Davidson	We had originally intended to include the wall in the Edwards project. However, we decided to remove it for several reasons.
03:12:22.57	Andrew Davidson	Specialty construction. It's likely that the wall will require it be constructed by a contractor that specializes in various types of retaining walls.
03:12:31.80	Andrew Davidson	Costs
03:12:32.71	Andrew Davidson	During the earlier stages of design, retaining wall estimates were coming in between 1.5 and 2 million dollars.
03:12:40.35	Andrew Davidson	and delay in order not to delay this roadway project any further,
03:12:44.38	Andrew Davidson	The retaining wall was removed with the anticipation of going out to bid as a separate project.
03:12:49.75	Andrew Davidson	later this year.
03:12:51.64	Andrew Davidson	Next slide, please.
03:12:55.03	Andrew Davidson	2024 payment improvement. So, uh,
03:12:57.90	Andrew Davidson	The director of public works made a presentation to you in October of 2023 about proposed 2024 pavement improvements, where he mentioned that the city's current pavement condition index
03:13:08.43	Andrew Davidson	is 58.
03:13:09.92	Andrew Davidson	and that to maintain that current pavement condition index, it's estimated that an annual budget of $1.8 million is needed.
03:13:18.18	Andrew Davidson	And actually to increase the city's payment condition by five points, it's estimated that an annual budget of $2.9 million is needed. Next slide, please.
03:13:29.49	Andrew Davidson	So the 2324 CIP allocation for streets work is $1.95 million.
03:13:37.03	Andrew Davidson	Now, our 2023 pavement improvement project that's before you this evening is not part of that allocation. That money was already allocated except for the sewer piece.
03:13:47.67	Andrew Davidson	Next slide.
03:13:51.82	Andrew Davidson	Over the next month or so, we plan on visiting the field and verifying streets to develop a list for a 2024 pavement project. We hope to maximize the number of streets that will receive treatment by looking where lighter treatments may be employed to extend the life of pavements, such as microsurfacing, slurry sealing, crack sealing, and digouts.
03:14:12.86	Andrew Davidson	We hope to include some streets that are in poor condition and require full pavement replacement.
03:14:17.84	Andrew Davidson	But as you can see, those are quite expensive.
03:14:21.62	Andrew Davidson	We anticipate coming to the city council for approval of the list of streets before moving forward with a design. Next slide, please.
03:14:30.75	Andrew Davidson	So here's the recommended motion before you this evening. There are seven elements. And before we get to that, let's go to one more slide, please.
03:14:40.23	Andrew Davidson	Lastly, as mentioned earlier, this is going to be a complicated project. If the council approves this item tonight, staff, the contractor, and the construction manager will work closely with residents along Edwards.
03:14:51.81	Andrew Davidson	and those who use it.
03:14:53.27	Andrew Davidson	The roadway will be closed to allow the concrete sections to cure.
03:14:58.71	Andrew Davidson	This is one of the more difficult roadways to repair, and we will need to work together with the council,
03:15:03.70	Andrew Davidson	emergency services,
03:15:05.42	Andrew Davidson	and the residents to mitigate as much as we possibly can
03:15:08.83	Andrew Davidson	The construction and conveniences associated with the project.
03:15:12.40	Andrew Davidson	So that concludes my presentation, and I'm available for questions, and thank you very much.
03:15:16.76	Mayor	Thank you, Councilmember Blofstein.
03:15:18.62	Councilmember Boston	Thank you very much. Nice to see you, Andy. Great. Always great to hear from you. I appreciate the time and effort. I have driven and walked on Edwards many times, and I appreciate the attention to it because it is long overdue. I wanted to ask specifically about the retaining wall because I know that it is now storm season. Look outside. And typically just remind us, isn't that one of the sites that you often check on when there's going to be a storm for potential erosion?
03:15:46.47	Andrew Davidson	Well, there's always erosion off of that slope. It continuously abrades. So yes, we always walk past or drive past that slope along with many other places in the city of Sausalito. So that's not unique, though it's very visible.
03:16:01.28	Andrew Davidson	And you will see
03:16:03.51	Andrew Davidson	sediment running down the street on Edwards and wrapping around on the second and going into storm drain. So it is something we need to address.
03:16:11.12	Andrew Davidson	Going a little bit further than that, the cost of the walls, it's really high.
03:16:15.54	Andrew Davidson	The lowest cost wall, all it would have done was to catch debris. It wouldn't have stabilized the wall.
03:16:20.96	Andrew Davidson	Um,
03:16:22.71	Andrew Davidson	And
03:16:23.84	Andrew Davidson	So at some point it was going to fail anyway. So that's one of the reasons we're going with these bigger, more expensive walls.
03:16:30.49	Andrew Davidson	So.
03:16:30.69	Councilmember Boston	And so you would say that that location is at risk of a potential mudslide?
03:16:35.72	Andrew Davidson	Any side, any exposed surface in Sausalito on a hillside is at some risk.
03:16:41.51	Councilmember Boston	Okay, this is a question for director has is he still on?
03:16:44.94	Councilmember Boston	Is he gone? Did we lose him? Is it?
03:16:48.01	Councilmember Boston	I'm here. Could you remind me what the cost of the landslide that we experienced at Sausalito Boulevard was to our community?
03:16:54.10	Chad Hess	work.
03:16:54.83	Councilmember Boston	you
03:16:54.98	Chad Hess	Was that in 2019? Was that the 2019 one?
03:16:55.16	Councilmember Boston	Was that in 2020?
03:16:57.63	Councilmember Boston	Yes.
03:16:57.86	Chad Hess	Yeah, I think we were out several million on that. I don't have the specific number in front of me, but it was expensive.
03:17:04.36	Councilmember Boston	But several million dollars.
03:17:05.96	Chad Hess	Yeah.
03:17:06.17	Councilmember Boston	And then Andy, what's the estimated cost for the repair for the hillside at Edwards?
03:17:11.01	Andrew Davidson	Right now we're looking one and a half, two million.
03:17:13.05	Councilmember Boston	Okay. And just to clarify, so the allocated amount, we have enough to do the pavement repair, and then what do we have left over potentially for the hillsides?
03:17:21.71	Andrew Davidson	About a million right now.
03:17:22.89	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
03:17:22.92	Councilmember Boston	Okay.
03:17:24.20	Councilmember Boston	This evening, potentially, we could approve moving forward on that as well, because I didn't see it in the...
03:17:28.90	Councilmember Boston	Recommend it.
03:17:29.01	Andrew Davidson	recommended? No, it's not part of this project. Okay.
03:17:31.11	Councilmember Boston	Okay.
03:17:31.58	Andrew Davidson	that where our intent is to bring it, to get it to bid documents, to bid it and then bring it before you.
03:17:37.77	Councilmember Boston	Okay. And what direction would you need from us to move that forward? Just to ask you to bid it out immediately or-
03:17:43.81	Andrew Davidson	Our plan is to bid it as soon as we're able to. We're not holding back on it for that purpose. So we do plan on moving it forward.
03:17:50.75	Councilmember Boston	Okay, thank you.
03:17:54.53	Vice Mayor Cox	Yeah, so your presentation and your staff report both say that we have monies allocated for this project that will exceed the cost that you have obtained for the budget.
03:18:06.04	Vice Mayor Cox	for this project by about a million dollars.
03:18:07.00	Unknown	Bye about.
03:18:08.50	Unknown	Correct.
03:18:09.14	Vice Mayor Cox	And your staff report recommends utilizing any surplus funding from the original allocation and the award of the resurfacing to the installation of the uphill wall, which is expected to start in the summer of 2024. So that's your recommendation in your staff report. It's not part of your recommended motion. And so I think the question from Councilmember. Exactly right.
03:18:23.77	Unknown	Mm-hmm.
03:18:28.95	Alice Merrill	Thank you.
03:18:28.97	Councilmember Boston	from councilmen. Exactly right. Thank you.
03:18:31.06	Vice Mayor Cox	Blaustein was, can we at least give direction that you, rather than returning that surplus to the general fund or to the Measure L fund, that we actually allocate that towards the Marion Wall project, and then you come back to us and tell us how much more you need when and if you're able to design and bid it out.
03:18:51.84	Andrew Davidson	So,
03:18:51.91	Mayor	Certainly.
03:18:52.17	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:18:55.06	Mayor	Please.
03:18:55.55	Mayor	So.
03:18:56.19	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you. So you said you had three bids. What were the other two bids?
03:19:01.78	Andrew Davidson	One was about $300,000 more than the Majoran Gelati bid. So 1.3, 1.4. And the other was a lot more. I just don't remember those numbers.
03:19:13.74	Councilmember Kelman	Who else do we use for roads in Sausalito besides Maggiore and Gelati?
03:19:18.45	Andrew Davidson	We don't pick folks. We go out to bid with large projects like this. So other firms that have done work in the city of Sausalito, Gelati Construction or Gelati Brothers did the gate.
03:19:31.83	Andrew Davidson	The gate six project out of the intersection with 101. I think gelati construction did a 2017 project out on
03:19:41.30	Andrew Davidson	Uh...
03:19:42.50	Andrew Davidson	third main and fourth
03:19:45.18	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:19:45.21	Councilmember Kelman	Who did Gerard?
03:19:45.92	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:19:46.83	Andrew Davidson	Who did Gerard? That was Maggiore Gelati last year.
03:19:49.23	Councilmember Kelman	Who did Johnson
03:19:52.00	Councilmember Kelman	Miss Erina Gelati.
03:19:52.94	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you.
03:19:52.96	Andrew Davidson	So those three, those three streets were done under one project. Majoran Gelati was the low bidder for that project.
03:19:53.01	Councilmember Kelman	Thanks.
03:19:53.19	Councilmember Kelman	SO THOSE THREE
03:19:56.33	Councilmember Kelman	Oh.
03:19:59.69	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, so let me ask you this. But those are three separate companies that you're referencing.
03:20:04.91	Councilmember Kelman	I understood. Yes, thank you. So here's my question, though. But the same folks who did Gerard are the ones that were selected for this project is what I'm hearing.
03:20:14.76	Andrew Davidson	They're the low bidder, correct.
03:20:16.04	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, so my question view is sort of quality control, because we had a lot of complaints on the Gerard project around seams around the storm drains and around the sidewalks. When Director McGowan came in to present the project for our budget to consider, there was some dissatisfaction with the quality. And so I'm just wondering kind of how some of that selection process, it seems like we have the same,
03:20:43.47	Councilmember Kelman	We have the same bidders come in winning the contracts, and I want to make sure that we're getting the highest quality work each and every time, not just the lowest bid. What is our process for ensuring that?
03:20:53.54	Andrew Davidson	Part of that will be having the construction manager inspector. We didn't have that with the last project. So we will have it for this project. So that's one way.
03:21:05.81	Andrew Davidson	But George Rolotti is a good contractor. They come in, they work hard, they bang it out. So I generally – and they're very prideful of their work.
03:21:14.97	Andrew Davidson	I don't need to defend them. They could do it for themselves.
03:21:16.35	Councilmember Kelman	They can do it for themselves. Yeah, I just want to have a sense of who's doing the work around town and how we're selecting when we kind of conceive past work, prior work, things like that. So I just want to have a sense of how we make decisions around what contractors we bring in.
03:21:30.83	Andrew Davidson	And again, when we go out to bid, we are required as long as those are responsive and responsible bidder, then we go with the low bidder. Unless there's a real risk.
03:21:40.18	Andrew Davidson	really big red flag and then we would have to do something.
03:21:43.44	Councilmember Kelman	Okay, and then a question for Director Hess. And I had sent these emails to Chad and to Kevin, but I didn't hear back. So I was just wondering, what's the total available for roadway repair in 2024? And what was the total cost estimate of our top five projects? So I was trying to just give a perspective on, you know, this is an expensive project, but it's a high-risk area. Where does it fall into our overall game plan for infrastructure for interest of transparency? So I don't know, Andy, if you have that, you probably don't. But Chad, if you do, that would be very interesting for us.
03:21:43.54	Andrew Davidson	Okay.
03:22:12.48	Chad Hess	No.
03:22:15.87	Chad Hess	Yeah, let me look it up real quick. Because your question is how much are we expecting to spend on infrastructure in 2024?
03:22:22.10	Councilmember Kelman	Yeah.
03:22:22.24	Chad Hess	Thank you.
03:22:22.27	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you.
03:22:22.84	Councilmember Kelman	Yeah.
03:22:22.88	Chad Hess	Yeah.
03:22:24.77	Chad Hess	Yeah, let me check.
03:22:28.83	Vice Mayor Cox	While he's checking, can I address your question on
03:22:32.55	Vice Mayor Cox	How do we ensure quality? Yeah, for sure. So as a general law city, we are required to take the low bid when we do a design, bid, build project like a roadway. But we could implement a process to pre-qualify bidders so that if we had a lot of complaints or various other criteria, we could evaluate and thereby weed out the pool of potential bidders for projects that we're particularly worried about ensuring quality for. Yeah.
03:23:00.84	Councilmember Kelman	Yeah, and just to be clear, I was not attacking or addressing any particular contractor. I only know the names I see on the
03:23:11.80	Councilmember Kelman	whatever things are going to go in the middle of the road. I just want to make sure that we don't have folks come in afterwards and say, hey, this thing with the seams there didn't work, and the sidewalk is crumbling, and the storm drain didn't line up, and the pavement stopped right there. Sorry you missed that meeting, but we had lots of those comments. I'm just trying to avoid future comments that are similar.
03:23:35.22	Chad Hess	So the overall budget for
03:23:37.77	Chad Hess	David Larson, M.D.: Capital expenditure infrastructure improvement is just over 5 million 5 million 36,000 was the budget request for fiscal year 24.
03:23:46.34	Chad Hess	I don't have a handy breakout of what was Rhodes versus what was other
03:23:51.54	Chad Hess	Smaller improvements, the bulk of it is roads, though. I think 2.9 million of that was specifically just roads.
03:23:57.95	Chad Hess	in the 24 budget.
03:24:04.83	Mayor	Council Member Huffman, please.
03:24:06.32	Councilmember Hoppen	So, Andy, I know that, and I'm not going to use this acronym right, and I'm not going to probably, so correct me, but like every year as part of your ongoing process of updating our roads, you have a way that you index roads that are more at risk than others.
03:24:24.36	Councilmember Hoppen	And I seem to recall Edwards has been like at the top of the priority list.
03:24:28.26	Councilmember Hoppen	but the complication of the
03:24:30.55	Councilmember Hoppen	the different angles and the elevation has made it difficult to actually
03:24:36.98	Councilmember Hoppen	you know.
03:24:37.74	Councilmember Hoppen	get it to this point. Is that correct?
03:24:40.83	Andrew Davidson	So you're thinking about the pavement condition index for, for all the streets here in Sausalito and that's prepared every couple, couple every four years, something like that. Um, Edwards is about a 28. It's, as I said, it's going to be a hard street to construct. Uh, it's going to be inconvenient for folks. And that's probably maybe why it hasn't been done. I don't know when it was originally built in the twenties maybe. Um,
03:25:06.21	Andrew Davidson	but it's going to be very impactful for the people who live and use Edwards. It's one way. It's narrow.
03:25:13.23	Andrew Davidson	Yeah.
03:25:14.36	Andrew Davidson	So,
03:25:15.86	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:25:15.90	Councilmember Hoppen	It's steep.
03:25:15.91	Andrew Davidson	It's steep.
03:25:17.08	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, first of all, the 28, is that the index against the 70 or higher number as Good Roads? Correct. So, we had the payment index presentation we had back in October. I think it was like,
03:25:24.75	Andrew Davidson	Correct.
03:25:31.30	Andrew Davidson	So it's 58. The city has an average PCI of 58. A 70 would be considered good.
03:25:33.68	Councilmember Hoppen	Overall average
03:25:38.56	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:25:38.59	Councilmember Hoppen	Right.
03:25:38.64	Andrew Davidson	Right.
03:25:38.84	Andrew Davidson	Thank you.
03:25:38.95	Andrew Davidson	Um,
03:25:40.06	Councilmember Hoppen	And so, yeah. And so then – so Edwards is an index of 28. So it's pretty bad. It's a 4K. And then we were talking about what – the number that Chad just had, but –
03:25:44.51	Andrew Davidson	So it's a free bet. It's a free bet.
03:25:47.27	Andrew Davidson	Man.
03:25:52.75	Councilmember Hoppen	but we have specific projects for specific roads that we allocate money for, but we're also talking about, and also as part of that conversation back in October.
03:26:00.65	Councilmember Hoppen	what we need to allocate annually to get our number up just five points, which is what you just indicated, which was instead of 1.6 million a year, we really need to do 2.5.
03:26:09.88	Councilmember Hoppen	5.
03:26:10.50	Andrew Davidson	2.9, 1.8 and 2.9.
03:26:12.36	Councilmember Hoppen	2.9.
03:26:13.74	Councilmember Hoppen	And that's just all of our roads. That's to get our total index up to still a subpar 60 something.
03:26:20.17	Andrew Davidson	That would be the network. That's correct.
03:26:21.52	Councilmember Hoppen	But that's better than 58.
03:26:23.18	Andrew Davidson	Yeah, it's better than 58, and Edwards would be at 90-something.
03:26:27.56	Councilmember Hoppen	Great. Well, okay. My next question. Do you have a timeline? Like how long is it? Not that I'm not going to hold it to you. I promise. But what's the timeline for people in the room and watching that are looking at how long they're going to have to be hoofing it up that hill to get home?
03:26:42.04	Andrew Davidson	Well, so the construction project has an 84 day calendar.
03:26:47.56	Andrew Davidson	Window. All right.
03:26:48.47	Andrew Davidson	The amount of time that Edwards is closed is not going to be 84 days. We've got.
03:26:52.44	Andrew Davidson	the preparation, the sanitary sewer work. I believe the first part of the roadway work, that's the reconstruction part, will probably be the lower concrete piece to get that in. Unfortunately, that's going to be the pain for people because that has to sit and cure for a number of days.
03:27:10.53	Andrew Davidson	They'll pour the concrete and it's got to be left alone. The upper two thirds, 600 linear feet plus or minus is going to be asphalt. So that's going to be inconvenient, but that's just a matter of hours once that's placed.
03:28:09.02	Unknown	recording in progress recording stop recording in progress
03:28:13.57	Councilmember Hoppen	We're on a technical update.
03:28:15.92	Andrew Davidson	I'm unmuted.
03:28:18.40	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay.
03:28:20.20	Councilmember Hoppen	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:28:20.27	Andrew Davidson	Yeah.
03:28:20.51	Vice Mayor Cox	Yeah.
03:28:20.61	Unknown	.
03:28:20.71	Unknown	to the next step.
03:28:22.45	Councilmember Hoppen	I think we're good. Am I good to keep going? Or do I need to pause for a second?
03:28:28.91	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, thank you. Okay, so this is, I think, my last question. So the wall, the retaining wall that we're talking about?
03:28:36.30	Councilmember Hoppen	Do those need to be done contemporaneously? The work to the road and the wall.
03:28:41.87	Andrew Davidson	No, and that was a discussion we had, or I had with the designers. Hey, can we do these?
03:28:46.76	Andrew Davidson	Thinking about breaking it up so we can do it. Are we going to be able to do it? The answer is yes. We won't be damaging the new road.
03:28:52.79	Andrew Davidson	Because it's going to be...
03:28:53.95	Andrew Davidson	you know, a little inboard from the street.
03:28:56.81	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, so they don't need to be done at the same time.
03:28:58.44	Andrew Davidson	Yeah.
03:28:59.12	Councilmember Hoppen	And that's city property that we're talking about, that retaining wall.
03:29:02.31	Andrew Davidson	So we're going to need to get some easements, potentially because the property line is not all the way at the top of the slope, and we need to protect to the top of the slope. Otherwise, we're kind of in trouble. So we'll be working with the, I think it's one property on her and what I've heard so far from that individual, they've been receptive.
03:29:21.65	Councilmember Hoppen	Great. Thank you. Thanks for your work on this.
03:29:23.42	Councilmember Boston	follow-up question to Councilmember Hoffman's question. If we're not doing them at the same time, is that going to result in additional closure time for Edward's
03:29:31.91	Councilmember Boston	for
03:29:32.48	Councilmember Boston	to the road.
03:29:34.22	Andrew Davidson	I don't think so. That's the wider part of the street, right? There may be times when it's closed, but I don't think it's going to be as
03:29:44.34	Andrew Davidson	Nearly as big as what we're going to have with the roadway.
03:29:47.06	Councilmember Boston	Okay, thanks.
03:29:49.96	Mayor	If there are no additional questions, then we'll open the floor of public comment.
03:30:01.99	Rob Cox	Good evening.
03:30:02.91	Rob Cox	Good evening. My name is Rob Cox and my wife Maggie and I are long time, long time residents on High Vista Road, which is the road just above.
03:30:13.62	Rob Cox	Edwards Avenue, which we use every day to access our house.
03:30:18.68	Rob Cox	And we commend the council and the committee, as well as the city staff are working so hard on this project on Edwards Avenue. Now with its complexities and the road resurfacing and also the sewer issue.
03:30:35.54	Rob Cox	But we think equally as important is this wall issue.
03:30:40.98	Rob Cox	Um,
03:30:41.94	Rob Cox	The
03:30:43.42	Rob Cox	City consultants over 28 years ago recommended a retaining wall in this area due to a landslide in that.
03:30:52.10	Rob Cox	in that part of Sausalito.
03:30:54.68	Rob Cox	And as a matter, it's really as a matter of public safety that we need a wall in that area. And then there is also the issue of the sloughing off of topsoil down that slope into the storm sewer system.
03:31:10.73	Rob Cox	for the city of Sausalito, which has not been a good thing as well.
03:31:15.01	Rob Cox	And we note the discussion we've just had about what the city staff has recommended with respect to the budget.
03:31:23.18	Rob Cox	And with respect to the design of the wall, and we appreciate all that, we're glad to hear that that is in process.
03:31:30.33	Rob Cox	And we urge the council members and city staff to expeditiously work to get this
03:31:35.90	Rob Cox	wall into place as soon as possible.
03:31:39.45	Rob Cox	Earlier today, I submitted an email to council members and city staff about a proposed amendment to try to add to the ones that you're considering and hopefully approve tonight with respect to Edwards Avenue.
03:31:53.32	Rob Cox	on this question of building the wall, and we hope you do so.
03:31:58.30	Rob Cox	High Vista Road is a private road.
03:32:01.72	Rob Cox	on that same slope. And a few years ago, residents
03:32:07.90	Rob Cox	built a wall, and we're happy to cooperate with the information we have from that experience.
03:32:18.85	Steven Woodside	My name is Steven Woodside. I also live in the same neighborhood and my neighbor Rob does a great job presenting our concerns which I agree with. I just, I'm here though to say thank you, thank all of you.
03:32:32.13	Steven Woodside	Uh,
03:32:33.31	Steven Woodside	Uh,
03:32:34.00	Steven Woodside	Mayor Sobieski, congratulations. And I see all the rest of you on the council are former mayors. So I appreciate very much the hard work.
03:32:43.69	Steven Woodside	that you perform every day, staying up late. It's now 20 to 11 past your normal time to try to finish a meeting.
03:32:51.66	Steven Woodside	I very much appreciate it. I also come from the perspective of being concerned about the landslides generally. And Member Hoffman led a effort
03:33:03.53	Steven Woodside	Also in 2019, to create a task force with serious recommendations, including areas like this, which were deemed hotspots that required attention. Doesn't mean that you need walls everywhere, but they do need to be looked at.
03:33:18.37	Steven Woodside	and assessed and mapped so that we can collectively throughout the city make some progress and gain public safety. Thank you.
03:33:30.33	Blauskne	We have Jeffrey Stafford.
03:33:35.33	Blauskne	You can unmute yourself.
03:33:36.85	Blauskne	Peace.
03:33:40.42	Unknown	Hi, thank you. Yes, I just want to thank you for prioritizing Edwards Avenue. It is indeed in pretty rough shape.
03:33:49.89	Unknown	I have neighbors that are scared to drive down it and they go out of their way to take Marion instead.
03:33:56.84	Unknown	um
03:33:57.81	Unknown	Which shouldn't be.
03:33:59.27	Unknown	I do also wanna bring attention to the fact that the retaining wall is actually much scarier than Edwards.
03:34:05.99	Unknown	Um,
03:34:07.58	Unknown	but I understand the idea of not wanting to put the two together and delay Edwards.
03:34:12.91	Unknown	But I do hope there is some priority towards the retaining wall as well.
03:34:17.50	Unknown	My mailbox is right at the bottom of that retaining wall and that intersection there.
03:34:22.00	Unknown	And when I'm there getting mail and I hear cars going by on the private road above,
03:34:26.65	Unknown	You can hear rocks and dirt and everything crumbling down.
03:34:30.54	Unknown	And it's pretty scary. So...
03:34:32.72	Unknown	It was always kind of
03:34:35.52	Unknown	I knew it was a private road and it was always kind of interesting to me to think about, well, is that a problem of the private road or is there a problem of the city road?
03:34:42.14	Unknown	in retaining wall, but it sounds like that's also being addressed.
03:34:46.96	Unknown	But, and then lastly,
03:34:49.09	Unknown	The turn that's there is actually very sharp.
03:34:51.70	Unknown	And I was hoping that there might be an opportunity to
03:34:54.86	Unknown	through the design of the wall.
03:34:56.89	Unknown	maybe improve on the severity of the sharp turn,
03:34:59.47	Unknown	going up from Marion,
03:35:02.50	Unknown	along that wall where currently I imagine a fire truck and ambulance probably has to do like a five, if not a nine point turn to get up there. So,
03:35:10.72	Unknown	Um,
03:35:12.02	Unknown	That's all I have. Thank you.
03:35:16.44	Mayor	No further comments? Seeing no further comments, we'll have a discussion from the diocese. Does anyone want to make a discussion or a motion?
03:35:25.32	Vice Mayor Cox	Can I just ask the city attorney, this recommendation of staff to utilize any surplus funding from the original allocation toward
03:35:35.56	Vice Mayor Cox	the installation of the uphill wall was a recommendation in the staff report, although it was not
03:35:41.77	Vice Mayor Cox	uh part of the recommended motion so
03:35:44.10	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:35:44.15	Vice Mayor Cox	Can we add that to the recommended motion, or can we give direction on that, if that's the consensus of the council?
03:35:50.50	Sidithi	Yeah, I think you can give direction to staff to follow that course of conduct.
03:35:59.22	Sidithi	I think ultimately, you know, there may be need to be some other future appropriation actions that need to happen and will need to come back to council in order to effectuate that direction.
03:36:08.89	Vice Mayor Cox	Agreed. I just want to make sure that money is segregated, if that's the will of the Council. And then in terms of the recommended motion, this is a one-page motion. Can I just move to adopt a resolution, you know, essentially adopting the recommended motion in the staff report, or do I have to read the whole thing?
03:36:29.06	Sidithi	You can say that you move the recommended motion as in the staff report
03:36:35.23	Vice Mayor Cox	All right, so with that, I will move the recommended motion
03:36:38.64	Vice Mayor Cox	in the staff report
03:36:40.60	Vice Mayor Cox	including adopting the recommended
03:36:44.16	Vice Mayor Cox	Resolution?
03:36:45.42	Vice Mayor Cox	And I will also move that we direct staff to utilize any surplus funding from the original allocation and the award of the resurfacing to the installation of the uphill wall.
03:37:00.76	Vice Mayor Cox	and to return to us with any additional appropriation that may be needed to carry out that project.
03:37:07.43	Mayor	Second,
03:37:07.70	Councilmember Boston	Thank you.
03:37:07.73	Mayor	and
03:37:09.05	Mayor	So we have a motion on the floor. It's been seconded. Is there any discussion on the motion?
03:37:15.12	Mayor	Seeing no discussion, we'll simply call the question. All the papers say aye.
03:37:18.38	Mayor	Aye.
03:37:19.06	Mayor	Opposed?
03:37:20.15	Mayor	Thank you.
03:37:21.00	Mayor	Passes unanimously.
03:37:23.66	Mayor	So, given the hour, we could push item 5F, the budget calendar, to a future agenda item. The question then is simply 5G pulled off of consent, which is an internal matter. It's our city council schedule. Do we wish to discuss that item in full or in part?
03:37:47.86	Vice Mayor Cox	May I recommend that we put item 5 F on consent for our next regular meeting on February 6 unless there's any objection to that, given that everybody's already read the staff report for this evening, and that for the budget sorry for the.
03:38:05.93	Vice Mayor Cox	meeting calendar that we
03:38:09.95	Vice Mayor Cox	agree that we adopt the schedule through
03:38:15.08	Vice Mayor Cox	February 6 and place the balance of the calendar for consideration at our February 6 meeting.
03:38:26.94	Councilmember Kelman	Vice Mayor, can you just clarify them, we wouldn't really be doing anything then other than to approve the special meeting on the 22nd and the 10th?
03:38:34.44	Vice Mayor Cox	I would like to approve the special meeting on January 22, the meeting on February 6, and the workshop on February 10.
03:38:42.33	Vice Mayor Cox	and then leave it until February 6 to adopt the balance of the calendar or discuss alternatives.
03:38:49.86	Councilmember Boston	Yeah, that's okay.
03:38:50.45	Mayor	If I might suggest then, given the press of business on the 6th, and if there is some discussion, it might be more appropriate to talk about our calendar at our priority planning session on the 10th. It would dovetail with an assessment of our work and our priorities and how we want to operate the rest of the year.
03:39:07.29	Councilmember Boston	Sure.
03:39:07.80	Mayor	So
03:39:09.76	Mayor	Okay, with that in mind, then I would think we don't need a motion. We have direction on the next three meetings, and we will move this item to our...
03:39:16.34	Sidithi	a comment.
03:39:17.70	Mayor	public.
03:39:19.33	Sidithi	Sorry, public comment.
03:39:21.15	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:39:21.28	Mayor	Thank you very much for the reminder. Any public comment on this item of our...
03:39:21.91	Vice Mayor Cox	Bye.
03:39:26.12	Vice Mayor Cox	Uh,
03:39:26.23	Unknown	THE FAMILY.
03:39:26.29	Vice Mayor Cox	Absolutely.
03:39:26.97	Vice Mayor Cox	5F and 5G. A padzak.
03:39:35.54	Unknown	I apologize. I meant to have public comment during the free speech section at the end. I can say what I want to say now or go away and come back later.
03:39:46.07	Unknown	This.
03:39:46.48	Unknown	But if you tell me to go away, you do so at my risk.
03:39:50.71	Unknown	I'm worried about losing her.
03:39:53.33	Vice Mayor Cox	you
03:39:54.86	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:39:54.88	Unknown	So,
03:39:55.50	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:39:55.99	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:39:56.05	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:39:56.08	Unknown	Is it okay?
03:39:57.17	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:40:00.70	Unknown	That's up to the mayor. Yeah. Feel free to pop it with your mute button now.
03:40:06.31	Unknown	My mute button is on a different machine.
03:40:06.31	Unknown	My mute button is on a different machine.
03:40:07.18	Unknown	SHOW.
03:40:08.58	Unknown	How about this?
03:40:08.82	Unknown	about this.
03:40:09.21	Councilmember Hoppen	of
03:40:09.51	Councilmember Hoppen	fish.
03:40:09.88	Unknown	No.
03:40:09.97	Councilmember Hoppen	I can go away if you'd like.
03:40:11.25	Unknown	I'm not sure.
03:40:12.31	Councilmember Hoppen	How about this solution? Leave your microphone on, just don't say anything.
03:40:16.57	Councilmember Hoppen	Fine on this. And then the next thing is going to be public comment. I think let's do that.
03:40:16.61	Unknown	Fine.
03:40:17.14	Unknown	Thank you.
03:40:21.39	Unknown	So thank you for that.
03:40:25.78	Unknown	Perfectly made out of the grace which comes in the love box. So do you have any other problems that you have to put in that? That is the calendar, if I could play that with you.
03:40:39.57	Unknown	See you then.
03:40:41.61	Unknown	I don't think there's any emotion on that. We now move to the portion of the agenda for comments on the agenda. And maybe I'll take a comment on this.
03:40:54.47	Unknown	Thank you. First of all, congratulations, Mayor Sobieski, and I hope you have a good year.
03:41:00.59	Unknown	Um,
03:41:02.47	Unknown	Part of the technical difficulty was the lateness of the hour.
03:41:05.91	Unknown	And this is to urge you to revert to a prior, the prior protocol of taking public comment
03:41:12.57	Unknown	First.
03:41:13.70	Unknown	I know several people tonight who would have had something to say
03:41:17.64	Unknown	but couldn't handle
03:41:19.51	Unknown	um,
03:41:20.15	Unknown	staying coherent.
03:41:21.91	Unknown	until 11 o'clock.
03:41:23.64	Unknown	I know why the
03:41:25.35	Unknown	Public comment was moved.
03:41:27.24	Unknown	And I urge you to certainly test it out.
03:41:31.88	Unknown	by moving it back.
03:41:33.14	Unknown	to the start of the meeting.
03:41:34.63	Unknown	Thank you very much.
03:41:38.65	Unknown	about.
03:41:39.27	Unknown	You died.
03:41:40.42	Unknown	Is it?
03:41:41.31	Unknown	it.
03:41:41.77	Mayor	City Clerk, would you like to manage public comment?
03:41:45.70	Mayor	Thank you.
03:41:45.72	Blauskne	Thank you.
03:41:45.73	Mayor	Sorry.
03:41:46.00	Blauskne	Jeffrey Chase
03:41:48.16	Jeffrey Chase	Yes. Hello, Mayor and City Council. So I want to second that, that...
03:41:53.80	Jeffrey Chase	This was a very technical meeting. I think I understood maybe half of it, which is pretty good for me, but that the public comment is at the beginning and it sets the tone from from we the people.
03:42:11.97	Jeffrey Chase	Thank you.
03:42:12.19	Jeffrey Chase	Uh,
03:42:13.37	Jeffrey Chase	Especially as the year goes on and who knows what kind of controversies come in to keep us awake. All right. So thank you and good night.
03:42:26.28	Blauskne	And we have Senator Bushmaker.
03:42:31.28	Sandra Bushmaker	Bye.
03:42:32.21	Sandra Bushmaker	26 years ago, we moved the public comment to the beginning of the agenda.
03:42:37.56	Sandra Bushmaker	And it worked very, very well for many, many years. And I would like to encourage you to do the same.
03:42:44.17	Sandra Bushmaker	Now. Thank you.
03:42:47.56	Blauskne	I'll put you in.
03:42:48.44	Blauskne	Thank you.
03:42:48.56	Blauskne	Thank you.
03:42:48.58	Sandra Bushmaker	Thank you.
03:42:48.61	Blauskne	you
03:42:48.64	Sandra Bushmaker	Yeah.
03:42:48.69	Blauskne	Yeah.
03:42:50.70	Sandra Bushmaker	Okay.
03:42:51.83	Sandra Bushmaker	Right.
03:42:52.03	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
03:42:52.10	Sandra Bushmaker	Thank you.
03:42:52.69	Blauskne	Yeah.
03:42:52.88	Babette McDougal	Thank you.
03:42:57.01	Babette McDougal	It's been a long day for everybody.
03:42:59.58	Babette McDougal	Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging me.
03:43:04.08	Babette McDougal	Well, it turns out
03:43:06.02	Babette McDougal	I just want you to know that when I speak to you from this lectern, I am usually representing
03:43:12.98	Babette McDougal	the body politic to the extent that people have checked in with me and made known their wishes.
03:43:18.82	Babette McDougal	but prefer to stay watching on the closed circuit television.
03:43:22.90	Babette McDougal	public input.
03:43:24.57	Babette McDougal	in general, has got to be reinstated by the city council. COVID is over and the people want to come back. They just don't like the way the council works.
03:43:33.92	Babette McDougal	has gotten in the habit of comporting itself. And it started before the five of you. So it's not like I'm trying to point a finger here, but we need to reinstate the public engagement process. It's vital.
03:43:46.62	Babette McDougal	It's vital.
03:43:48.09	Babette McDougal	It's vital to the survival of our community's small d democracy.
03:43:53.07	Babette McDougal	And that really is important.
03:43:55.60	Babette McDougal	So I'm asking you to consider it strongly.
03:43:58.94	Babette McDougal	move this public comment thing back to the beginning like it used to be. You want to implement the two-minute thing because you think we're responsible for you guys running long in your meetings? Fine.
03:44:07.84	Babette McDougal	But the point is,
03:44:09.00	Babette McDougal	Let public comment come back and re-engage the citizens when they say something.
03:44:14.62	Babette McDougal	that requests a response.
03:44:16.86	Babette McDougal	Kindly respond.
03:44:18.40	Babette McDougal	It's kind of an unfortunate thing to learn.
03:44:20.78	Babette McDougal	that we don't get to hear about the,
03:44:23.78	Babette McDougal	a housing element, EIR, until we read the final draft. We finally see our comments then.
03:44:30.30	Babette McDougal	really not the way it was meant to be.
03:44:32.34	Babette McDougal	So that's it. And then on a personal note, I want to say thank you to each of you.
03:44:37.05	Babette McDougal	Some of you have really
03:44:38.67	Babette McDougal	excelled.
03:44:39.61	Babette McDougal	over the last year.
03:44:41.10	Babette McDougal	And I just want to say thank you for being here for the citizens of Sausalito. This is the start of a new calendar year. We are halfway through the current budget cycle.
03:44:50.92	Babette McDougal	I say, let's just go forward and make Sausalito better than it's ever been. And we can do that working together with our elected leaders and the citizens that put you here to do that work. Thank you.
03:45:06.36	Blauskne	All right, seeing none, all the speakers.
03:45:09.26	Mayor	Seeing no other public comment, we'll move on to council committee reports.
03:45:15.00	Mayor	Any reports from anyone?
03:45:20.05	Vice Mayor Cox	Um,
03:45:22.15	Vice Mayor Cox	Yes, I'm opening my, okay. On Thursday, I attended the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission meeting as the city council liaison to that committee. And we presented our quarterly report regarding our waterfront management plan and our eelgrass restoration plan.
03:45:45.83	Vice Mayor Cox	um,
03:45:47.20	Vice Mayor Cox	together with the Richardson Bay Regional Agency.
03:45:52.06	Vice Mayor Cox	and, um,
03:45:54.07	Vice Mayor Cox	We raised an issue with BCDC, which is the acronym for that agency, which is that
03:46:00.44	Vice Mayor Cox	in our settlement agreement that
03:46:02.74	Vice Mayor Cox	we negotiated in 2020, it requires us to mitigate eelgrass loss at a ratio of 1.2 to 1. Since undertaking, and interestingly, VCDC required that of us in our settlement agreement, but did not require it of the RBRA in their settlement agreement.
03:46:24.39	Vice Mayor Cox	And now that we've actually hired some biological experts to assist in this effort, and we have prepared an initial restoration plan which has been vetted by three regional experts, all three opined that this 1.2 to 1 goal, which is enunciated as a goal in our settlement agreement, is likely infeasible.
03:46:51.10	Vice Mayor Cox	Immediately after receiving that information in July from these agencies, BCDC staff
03:46:57.45	Vice Mayor Cox	in December inexplicably announced that they would no longer treat this as a goal, as enunciated in our settlement agreement, but would treat it as a requirement.
03:47:09.38	Vice Mayor Cox	knowing that it's likely infeasible. And so I raised this issue during my public comments and three,
03:47:17.06	Vice Mayor Cox	BCDC commissioners asked staff for further information about why is it that Sausalito is being treated differently from RBRA? Why is it that this goal is now a requirement? And why is it that this was agreed to in the first place? Did we have, and why has it changed? And the answer is we didn't have any biological consultants advising us. And very little is known about eelgrass. We are learning as we go.
03:47:47.99	Vice Mayor Cox	So I have drafted a letter with the help of Katie Thro Garcia, our sustainability manager,
03:47:56.66	Vice Mayor Cox	to answer those questions from the city of sausalito's perspective i've asked um councilmember hoffman to weigh in on the content of that letter and i would like consensus from the council that i can send that letter on behalf of the council as the liaison to bcdc that's the gist of the letter and the communication i'd like to advance
03:48:21.25	Unknown	Thank you.
03:48:23.09	Councilmember Kelman	Thank you very much for handling that and representing us well. So you're aware that SFEI, the San Francisco Estuary Institute, applied to the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority for a proposal to advance a living shoreline project that included restoration of eelgrass. and I just want to make you aware of that as a possible additional benefit to the conversation that we have one of, I think, seven Living Shoreline projects that were picked out of this restoration authority.
03:48:47.86	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
03:48:47.88	Vice Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:48:47.91	Unknown	Thank you.
03:48:47.96	Vice Mayor Cox	or
03:48:53.95	Vice Mayor Cox	So I'm wondering if it might be appropriate to just put this on our calendar as a business item at some point in the future so that we can all better understand our future.
03:49:04.19	Councilmember Kelman	Stop talking about it.
03:49:04.35	Vice Mayor Cox	Yeah.
03:49:05.51	Vice Mayor Cox	I'm talking about it. It's not agenda.
03:49:07.25	Councilmember Kelman	So I thought we had a consultant. That's my second question.
03:49:09.65	Vice Mayor Cox	We do have a consultant, Robert Mooney.
03:49:11.20	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
03:49:11.22	Councilmember Kelman	It was a woman, Kathy.
03:49:12.83	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
03:49:12.97	Councilmember Hoppen	That's
03:49:13.38	Councilmember Kelman	I think we should.
03:49:13.38	Mayor	I think we should.
03:49:13.39	Councilmember Hoppen	I don't know.
03:49:14.79	Councilmember Kelman	that.
03:49:14.84	Councilmember Hoppen	us.
03:49:15.18	Mayor	Comport with our recommendation from our city attorney.
03:49:15.22	Councilmember Hoppen	Report with our record.
03:49:16.50	Councilmember Hoppen	Thank you.
03:49:18.02	Councilmember Hoppen	I think it's under future agenda items, perhaps.
03:49:22.76	Sidithi	Yes, I would recommend you put this on the agenda for a future agenda item.
03:49:27.55	Sidithi	fine.
03:49:27.82	Mayor	Thank you.
03:49:28.12	Mayor	Any other committee member reports?
03:49:30.20	Councilmember Boston	I have a quick, just a reminder to members of the council that we will be having our first Marin County Council members and mayors committee meeting on January 24th, which is next Wednesday. It's also open to members of the public, by the way.
03:49:42.15	Councilmember Boston	And this time it will be on Zoom and we will be hearing from our Transportation Authority of Moran Executive Director Ann Richmond, as well as our Bridge District Executive Director Dennis Mulligan. So if you are able to join on Zoom, council members will be at six as usual, and I hope to see you there.
03:49:57.08	Councilmember Kelman	Mayor, thank you for that. One thing to add. So I am a member of the BCCC Regional Elected Officials Task Force for Sea Level Rise and was made aware that there's money, SB2 monies, for projects and planning and conveyed that to Katie Tau Garcia, our Sustainability Resilience Manager, and hopefully we'll be able to pursue some of those funds because apparently the Ocean Protection Council wants to literally give them out. So we should prioritize that.
03:50:27.93	Mayor	Thank you.
03:50:30.63	Mayor	Is that it? Any other committee reports? Is there a public comment on any of the committee reports?
03:50:30.80	Steven Woodside	it.
03:50:37.97	Mayor	City Clerk, nothing. All right, item.
03:50:42.27	Blauskne	I don't think we do public comment on committee reports, do we, Sergio?
03:50:45.31	Blauskne	Not sure.
03:50:45.90	Mayor	Well, in any event, there are no, there is no public comment. Item eight is the combined city manager reports, city manager information for the council and future agenda items. Is there public, we take public comment on this first. Is there any public comment on these items?
03:51:07.40	Unknown	See you then.
03:51:08.45	Mayor	Seeing no public comment, we'll move on to the city manager information for
03:51:11.16	City Manager	Thank you.
03:51:11.20	Mayor	I'm sorry.
03:51:11.21	City Manager	I don't see.
03:51:11.40	Mayor	So.
03:51:12.19	Unknown	Thank you.
03:51:12.23	City Manager	Thank you, Mayor, members of the council. Thank you, public, for being here tonight.
03:51:15.82	City Manager	Thanks for all your work. I want to say to you that there's more work to be done. There are three appeals pending to the city council. So at our last agenda setting committee meeting, a pretty vigorous discussion was held about the upcoming Monday, January 22nd meeting, which is a special meeting to consider the Pine Street appeal, which will start at 7 and has been posted that way. Given that we didn't have one meeting in January, the recommendation was made that we have two additional items at 6 o'clock, no closed session, but two additional items for the council's information and consideration. They are a part of the pending council agenda list. And starting at 6, the items being discussed would be catastrophic-based insurance, which I think is extremely timely given the weather and Saucyotl's history, and then the pending request for proposals for facilities that we need clear direction on. So those are two items scheduled for six, but if they don't get resolved before seven, the hard stop is the advertisement has been made for the Pine Street Appeal to be heard at 7 p.m. So that's a Monday meeting that is really important that everyone be aware of. The start time in particular, which is 6 o'clock. The second thing is the city council has agreed on a February 10th strategy session, which is a Saturday. So I want to make sure that the public is aware of that as well. That's always an open to the public affair, where the council does a lot of its work to build consensus and help us build a work plan and therefore identify budget priorities and work for the coming year. So that's on February the 10th, and it will start at 8 o'clock. That concludes my report, Mayor.
03:53:03.43	Councilmember Hoppen	I have a follow-up on that. When we were polled as city council members for our time, weren't we polled for a start time of 7 for that special meeting? Because I don't remember being re-polled for a start time of 6.
03:53:21.45	Councilmember Hoppen	I recall that we were polled and that there were specific times that we were talking about.
03:53:27.83	Councilmember Hoppen	So I could be wrong, but the other thing is,
03:53:31.56	Councilmember Hoppen	Special meetings, as my understanding, special meetings are for special...
03:53:37.86	Councilmember Hoppen	work, not regular work at the city council meeting. So, and this is a different night. This is not our regularly by resolution scheduled night for a city council meeting.
03:53:50.68	Councilmember Hoppen	I'm just wondering about
03:53:54.55	Councilmember Hoppen	one, we're changing the start time from what we were polled. And number two, we're putting regular city council work on a special meeting
03:54:03.00	Councilmember Hoppen	instead of having it at a regular meeting.
03:54:07.17	Councilmember Hoppen	So I don't know if the attorney wants to weigh in on that or parameters on that.
03:54:12.74	Councilmember Hoppen	Yeah.
03:54:12.86	Vice Mayor Cox	I will say we scheduled the special meeting because of the unavailability of all council members for another Tuesday night meeting.
03:54:21.75	Vice Mayor Cox	in
03:54:22.88	Vice Mayor Cox	January, so we scheduled it on a Monday to accommodate Council members' pre-existing commitments.
03:54:29.78	Councilmember Hoppen	Because it wasn't a regularly scheduled time.
03:54:32.78	Councilmember Hoppen	because our regularly scheduled meetings.
03:54:35.13	Councilmember Hoppen	By resolution, our meetings are first and third. And so that's, we canceled the first meeting, and now this is the third. We, this,
03:54:45.12	Councilmember Hoppen	So tonight's the third. And we wanted to have a special meeting to get, anyway, to address, I thought, the appeal, which is not regular city council business. It's something...
03:54:58.91	Councilmember Hoppen	you know.
03:55:00.26	Councilmember Hoppen	different in a different kind of work.
03:55:00.71	Mayor	on the consentive.
03:55:01.62	Councilmember Hoppen	Sorry.
03:55:02.33	Mayor	Thank you, Councilmember Hoppen. On the consent agenda for the December 19th meeting, we passed a
03:55:07.51	Mayor	direction from the entire city council to cancel the January 2nd meeting and find another date for a special meeting. So it was this special meeting is a substitute for the January 2nd business meeting. And so we comprehend doing business at that special meeting.
03:55:26.23	Sidithi	I don't know if you still need an answer. Generally, you're allowed to do any business at a special meeting with some limited exceptions. Those include passing ordinances and...
03:55:36.45	Sidithi	passing contracts for executive compensation, calling special meetings on salaries of
03:55:43.31	Sidithi	local agency executives. And I think there may be one other one
03:55:47.66	Sidithi	that I am blanking on. But in general, you can conduct most regular agency business at a special meeting.
03:55:53.94	Mayor	Thanks, Sidithi. So I apologize, I thought it was the direction of the council to find a substitute for the January 2nd meeting, which was the first day everyone was back. So I think staff operated in good faith, as did we all to try to find a business meeting to do our work.
03:56:10.64	Mayor	end.
03:56:11.37	Mayor	Everyone's schedules are very busy and it was a gargantuan effort to find any time. And so I'm glad we did find a time that we could do this.
03:56:21.82	Mayor	Thank you very much. Thank you, City Manager. That completes our business here tonight. And we're going to join. Thank you very much. Thanks for catching it. The future. Just saying you're paying attention. This late hour. Item 8C, future agenda items. Does anyone want to formally add anything to our list of future agenda items? I was applauded.
03:56:27.33	Unknown	Thank you for agenda.
03:56:28.16	Unknown	Thank you.
03:56:37.54	Councilmember Boston	I was approached by some members of the board of the social center for the arts as a request to have a conversation about their lease potentially at some point in the new year so I just want to flag that and make sure it's on the list of future agenda items.
03:56:50.91	Mayor	Okay, that'll be added.
03:56:53.94	Mayor	Anything else, Councilmember Hoffman?
03:56:55.75	Councilmember Hoppen	what's specifically about their leaves.
03:56:59.09	Councilmember Boston	I think they just wanted to have a discussion about where they stand on their lease and the changes in the terms, or sorry, the upcoming.
03:57:03.77	Councilmember Hoppen	sorry,
03:57:05.69	Councilmember Hoppen	upcoming escalation of their lead their the rent so they want to come and talk to us about not absolutely in the room they just want to come and talk
03:57:11.68	Councilmember Boston	They just want to come and talk to us about the lease. I don't have specifics. Okay.
03:57:14.40	Councilmember Hoppen	Okay, because the lease is for another five years, I think, right? It's five years. It was five years when we started, so they've got another three years on the current lease. So, okay, got it.
03:57:24.20	Mayor	Any other future agenda items?
03:57:27.17	Mayor	from anyone.
03:57:29.08	Mayor	All right, so now we get to complete this meeting. Five minutes past 11, we will adjourn. And see you again on January the 22nd at 6 p.m. for a special city council meeting.
03:57:35.05	Steven Woodside	Yes.
03:57:40.98	Mayor	Thank you, and I will bang the gala.
03:57:42.70	Unknown	Recording stopped.
03:57:45.60	Unknown	That's right.
03:57:47.27	Unknown	What did you say?
03:57:47.66	Mayor	What did you say?

City Council Jan 16, 2024

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