City Council June 3, 2025

City Council Meeting Summary

Time	Item	Item Summary	Motion Summary	Comment Summary
00:00:02	None: None	The meeting of the City Council for June 3, 2025, is being held at 420 Little Street in the Council Chamber. The meeting is also accessible via Zoom, the city's website, and live on cable TV Channel 27.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:00:18	I.: CALL TO ORDER AND ROLL CALL - 5:00 PM	Mayor Cox called the meeting to order (00:00:18). Roll call was taken. Councilmember Hoffman and Councilmember Sobieski will be joining shortly, with Councilmember Sobieski joining virtually (00:00:33, 00:00:37). Vice Mayor Woodside was present (00:00:42).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:00:46	II: CLOSED SESSION - 5:00 PM	The council will be adjourning to a closed session to discuss items C1 through C6. These items include labor negotiations with the Sausalito Police Association, anticipated litigation, real property negotiations for 558 Bridgeway and 750 Bridgeway with Verizon Wireless, real property negotiations for 300 Spencer Avenue with Verizon Wireless, and existing litigation regarding Yimby versus the City of Sausalito. Councilmember Sobieski will recuse himself from item C2, and another councilmember will recuse themself from items C4 and C5 due to previous client work with Verizon (00:01:38). The council will reconvene at 7 p.m.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:02:18	III: RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION - 7:00 PM	The meeting is reconvened and the roll is called. Councilmember Hollweg notes she arrived five minutes late to the closed session. Councilmember Sobieski announced he was participating remotely due to being back east caring for a family member, utilizing the just cause exception to the Brown Act. He also stated that he recused himself from one of the litigation items due to a potential financial conflict of interest related to a property he owns in town (00:03:29). Councilmember Hollweg inquired whether they needed to vote on the just cause section, but it was clarified that they did not need to vote on it (00:03:59). The Pledge of Allegiance was then conducted.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:04:48	1: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS/MAYOR'S ANNOUNCEMENTS - 7:02 PM	Mayor Silver acknowledged a motion and confirmed it carried four zero with one absent (00:04:59). She then introduced Brandon Phipps, the community and economic development director, to introduce the board.	Motion carries four zero with one absent (00:04:59).	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:05:17	1.A: Special Presentation from Marin County on Countywide Housing Land Trust	Jillian Zeiger, a principal planner from Marin County, presented a proposal for Sausalito to participate in a countywide housing land trust program funded by an MTC ABAG TOC policy grant. The goal is to support affordable housing by enabling land trusts to acquire and maintain land, ensuring long-term affordability. The presentation covered the TOC program, the Marin County grant, and the concept of community land trusts, which are non-profit organizations that steward land for community benefit. Sausalito, being a transit-oriented community due to its ferry terminal, is eligible. To comply with the grant, Sausalito would need to create a land trust housing policy, including an ongoing funding source and affordability requirements (80% AMI for rentals, 120% AMI for homeowners) (00:11:04). The county could designate a portion of its housing trust for land trusts in TOC jurisdictions (00:11:46). Next steps involve a council resolution expressing interest in participating and implementing a land trust policy (00:12:29). The presentation emphasized that only the land trust policy is required, not other TOC compliance areas like density and parking (00:07:42). Councilmember Silver raised concerns about the radius of the TOC area, potential conflicts with the historic district (00:16:43), and the extent of local control over land use decisions (00:14:23). Zeiger clarified that local jurisdictions retain developmental approval authority and that the complete streets policy is not required for the grant (00:15:38).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:22:25	2: COMMUNICATIONS - 7:03 PM	This agenda item is for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda. Sarah Silver explains that state law prevents the council from taking action on items not on the agenda. Two speakers, David Lay and Alice Merrill, address the council. David Lay initially tries to ask a question about a previous topic but is reminded to focus on items not on the agenda. He discusses sending a letter about environmental facts to a representative and seeks guidance but is told the council cannot provide feedback on items not on the agenda. Alice Merrill complains about items being placed on the consent calendar that are then pulled off for discussion, which disrupts the meeting's timing and public access to information, citing a parking study as an example. Mr. Lay then thanks the council for their service, acknowledging the challenges they face and expressing his commitment to open communication, despite sometimes disagreeing.	No Motion	3 Total: 0 In Favor 1 Against 2 Neutral
00:22:54 David Lay was Neutral: David Lay attempts to ask a question about a prior agenda item but is redirected to discuss matters not on the agenda. He mentions sending a letter with environmental facts to a representative and seeks advice on what to avoid in the letter. He later expresses gratitude to the council, acknowledging the difficulty of their roles and emphasizing his commitment to open communication and representing the community's interests. 00:24:38 Alice Merrill was Against: Alice Merrill complains about items frequently being pulled from the consent calendar for discussion, arguing that this disrupts meeting schedules and limits public awareness and participation. She uses the parking study as an example, questioning its accessibility to the public and expressing frustration that such items might pass without proper discussion. 00:26:13 Mr. Lay was Neutral: Mr. Lay thanks the council for their service, acknowledging the challenges they face and expressing his commitment to open communication, despite sometimes disagreeing. He hopes that the town can unite to move forward despite the difficult times. He also states that it is nothing personal if he has something to say about what is going differently than what has been the norm for the community all these decades and years.
00:28:04	3: CONSENT CALENDAR - 7:15 PM	The council is considering four items on the consent calendar: adopting the meeting minutes of May 2025, adopting a resolution proclaiming June 2025 as LGBTQ Plus Pride Month, approving updated position allocations and job description updates, and receiving and filing a parking study performed by Fair and Peers related to general parking in downtown Sausalito. Mayor Silver asked if anyone would like to pull an item from the Consent Calendar. (00:28:55) After no requests to pull an item, Silver opened the floor to public comment.	Motion to approve the consent calendar. Seconded. (00:29:57)	1 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
00:29:17 Alice Merrill was Neutral: Asked for more information about the parking study. (00:29:19) The Mayor offered her a copy of the report and presentation, and the City Manager offered to sit down with her to explain it in more detail. (00:29:24)
00:30:13	5: BUSINESS ITEMS - 7:25 PM	The council is moving on to business items, noting they are only five minutes behind schedule. The calendar adoption has already occurred. Public comments can be submitted via email to be attached to the agenda.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:30:41	5.A: Launch a Local Employee Parking Program for Caledonia Businesses; Caledonia Parking Review; Park Revenue Report to City Council; Parking Policy for Economic Hardship	Wayne Kwan, the parking manager, presented the proposed employee parking program enhancements for the Caledonia Street district. He outlined the current parking situation, including the number of spaces and time limits (00:32:10), and highlighted the challenges faced by businesses and employees in finding affordable and reliable parking. The proposed solutions include a new $5 daily parking rate in lots four and five (00:34:03), a $60 monthly employee permit valid in lot five (00:35:02), and reserving the upper portion of lot five for permit holders only (00:35:15). Kwan also requested feedback on extending the two-hour time limit enforcement until 9 p.m. (00:36:34) and clarified the new temporary guest permit fees (00:38:10). He also presented a parking revenue overview and a 2024 parking citation overview (00:39:15). Councilmember Blaustein thanked Kwan for engaging with the merchants (00:41:10) and enquired about reserved spots (00:41:29). Councilmember Hollweg thanked Kwan for overseeing the parking operation and working to update the systems (00:44:57). Mayor Silver suggested Kwan confer with Yoshi regarding the 9 pm parking cut off (01:06:28).	No Motion	6 Total: 5 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
00:47:03 Yoshi was In Favor: Yoshi thanked the police department for their engagement and emphasized the urgency of addressing the parking situation due to the loss of spaces on Caledonia Street. He supported the 9 p.m. parking limit and highlighted the need for employee parking solutions, given the limited residential parking options. He also urged the implementation of a new parking system. 00:49:19 Adam Driver was In Favor: Adam Driver echoed Yoshi's sentiments and stressed the importance of the 20-minute zones in front of their market. He appreciated Wayne's efforts to find a solution and supported the dedication of the upper portion of lot five to permit holders. He suggested that the city should look at where there are empty spaces after 6pm and see if we need to take a look again at residential parking areas. 00:52:09 Alice Merrill was In Favor: Alice Merrill inquired about parking behind the old theater and suggested exploring its potential use. She expressed concern for low-income workers who have to pay for parking and hoped for solutions to help them. She also asked if permits could be shared between employees. 00:54:12 Adrian Britton was In Favor: Adrian Britton thanked Wayne for the presentation and acknowledged the difficulty of fixing the parking situation. He echoed Alice's concern about the $5 daily rate for employees and suggested that employees should not be viewed as a revenue source for the city. He cited other communities with lower or no employee parking fees and argued that supporting employees helps businesses and the city. 00:56:17 David Lay was Neutral: David Lay talked about people taking the bus. He suggested the prices seem to only benefit the owners of the business and thought the more buses, the better. 00:57:44 Amy Svenberg was In Favor: Amy thanked the City Council, Police Chief Gregory, and Wayne Kwan for working with the community. She agreed that by providing the space for the employees, it's going to give more parking to the residents that have a C lot during the day, and also more space just for the businesses. She suggested that better buses are needed because people would take the bus, but there's only one an hour, and it just doesn't work, sadly.
01:08:42	5.B: City Council Budget Presentation on the Draft Fiscal Year 2025-26 including User Fees, Pension Analysis, and Provide Direction	This agenda item is a presentation and discussion of the draft budget for Fiscal Year 2025-26, including user fees and pension analysis. Chris Zapata, City Manager, introduced Jesus Nava, Interim Finance Director, (01:14:11) who then presented the budget plan, emphasizing its balanced nature without dipping into unassigned general funds (01:10:39), a capital improvement program (01:11:19), and pension management strategies. The presentation also included insights into the city's revenues, expenditures, and reserves, along with proposed new fee schedules and a commitment to capital improvements. The presentation also included Craig Hill, NHA Advisors to discuss the pension and OPEB plans. (01:38:31) Councilmember Silver then engaged in a detailed discussion with the presenters, questioning various aspects of the budget such as pension smoothing strategies (01:56:28), the use of unassigned funds (02:00:36), and revenue estimates (01:59:31). She highlighted the importance of maintaining a conservative approach to the 115 trust to hedge against CalPERS volatility and expressed reservations about additional discretionary payments to CalPERS given their track record. (02:04:12) Other councilmembers shared their appreciation for the clear and understandable presentation, particularly praising the Interim Finance Director's ability to communicate complex financial information. They also suggested ideas for future budget presentations, such as separating legally restricted funds and adding capital investment needs information. (02:07:15) There was a consensus on continuing to use the Veritas report and to continue developing a long-term, 10-year budget projection plan. Councilmembers expressed a desire for more information on potential hybrid pension strategies and raised concerns about the budget's assumptions regarding revenue and property sales. Nava agreed with some of Silver's points, and offered ways to improve the presentation and to address the council's concerns.(02:31:11)	No Motion	3 Total: 3 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
02:57:53 Adrian Britton was In Favor: Appreciated the improved clarity of the budget presentation and suggested separating legal enterprise funds. He emphasized increasing revenues to support infrastructure maintenance and suggested verifying the inclusion of parking technology improvements in CIP documents. 02:59:43 Sharna was In Favor: Expressed support for responsible financial management and new revenue streams, particularly capital improvements that would generate revenue. Appreciated balanced budget and hard work of city staff. 03:00:51 Carolyn Revelle was In Favor: Thanked the city manager and Interim Finance Director Nava for an excellent and clear budget presentation, emphasizing the short notice under which it was prepared.
03:12:12	6: CITY MANAGER REPORTS, COUNCILMEMBER REPORTS, CITY COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS, OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESS	This agenda item consisted of councilmember reports, city manager reports, city council appointments, and other council business. It appears Councilmember Silver noted she may have gone over the allotted time for her report (03:12:16).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:12:19	6A: City Manager Information for Council	City Manager Chris Zapata provided a brief report, referencing the detailed legislative update included in the council packet, which covers federal, state, and county information from various sources like the California League of Cities and congressional offices. He highlighted the dynamic nature of executive orders related to tariffs, immigration, clean energy, and emergency response, as well as ongoing federal budget processes and state legislation on insurance, sea level rise, and housing (03:12:31). Zapata also mentioned the after-action report from the last council meeting, which summarizes directives and subsequent actions by city staff (03:13:59). He reminded the council that his fourth year as City Manager is approaching, and they will be conducting his personnel evaluation on June 17th, providing background information for their review in a closed session (03:14:03).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:15:10	6B: City Attorney Information for Council	Councilmember Silver asked City Attorney Sergio if he had any information for the council. (03:15:10)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:15:16	6C: Councilmember Committee Reports	Councilmember Hill had no report. Another councilmember reported on two items from the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM). First, metering lights will be implemented at the freeway entrance on Bridgeway near Gate 6 Road starting June 24th to improve traffic flow (03:15:38). The city will assess the impact of these lights. Second, a new pilot bike share program has launched at SMART stations across Marin County (03:16:00). The councilmember advocated for the program to eventually expand to Sausalito (03:16:09) and potentially countywide and into Sonoma County.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:16:22	6D: Appointments (if any)	Councilmember Silver announced a sister city presentation scheduled for July 1st (03:16:28).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:16:37	6E: Future Agenda Items	Councilmember brought up the idea of revisiting the master plan for the city, especially in light of the housing element review (03:16:49). They emphasized the importance of a holistic approach to development, referencing previous discussions about a master plan for the Marinship area and Councilmember Sobieski's interest. Additionally, the councilmember suggested agendizing a discussion about the potential impact of AI on the city, including its possible effects on employment (03:17:29).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:17:50	6F: Minutes from Boards, Commissions, and Committees	Councilmember Silver stated that there were no minutes to review for this item.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:18:01	6G: Other reports of significance	Councilmember Silver had intended to report on something but couldn't recall what it was (03:18:01). She asked the City Manager if he remembered what she was planning to report on (03:18:11).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:18:18	6H: Public Comment on Items 6A-6C and 6E-6G: limited to 2 minutes/person	The meeting moved to public comment on items 6A-6C and 6E-6G.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:18:31	7: ADJOURNMENT	Mayor Silver adjourned the meeting in honor of Edward Schultz, who recently passed away on March 5th. He served on the County Commission on Aging, stepping down in February so Trisha Smith could take over his role. He also served on the mosquito vector control board. Edward was a longtime resident of Sausalito, known for his dedication to the community. He was named the 2017 Novato Citizen of the Year. He volunteered to bring the Buck Institute to Novato and served on committees for the Novato Fire Protection District. Edward was also a volunteer fireman for the Kent Field Fire Department and worked at the Mayor Island Naval Shipyard for nearly 35 years. Additionally, he was a member of the Marin County Sheriff's Citizen Academy, served on the Marin County parole board, the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force Oversight Committee, and was a Marin County grand juror. Mayor Silver stated that Ed's was a life well lived and we are privileged to have known him and benefited from his spirit of community service (03:20:36).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

City Council Meeting Transcript

Adrian Brinton

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City Council May 27, 2025

Positive People for Sausalito

contact@positivepeopleforsausalito.com

Time	Speaker	Text
00:00:02.73	Unknown	City Council the meeting for June 3 2025 is being held at 420 Little Street in Council Chamber it's also being shown on zoom on the city's website and live on cable TV Channel 27
00:00:18.12	Sarah Silver	Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the special meeting for the City of Sausalito for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025. I'll call the meeting to order and ask the City Clerk to take roll.
00:00:29.83	Unknown	Councilmember Blaustein.
00:00:31.23	Sarah Silver	Present.
00:00:32.06	Unknown	Councilmember Hoffman.
00:00:33.46	Sarah Silver	will be joining us shortly.
00:00:35.62	Unknown	Councilmember Sobieski.
00:00:37.36	Sarah Silver	will be joining us shortly via virtually
00:00:42.51	Unknown	Council member, sorry, Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox.
00:00:46.49	Sarah Silver	Okay, we are going to adjourn to closed session where we will discuss items C1 through C6. C1 is Conference with Labor Negotiator, Employee Organization, Sausalito Police Association. C2 is Conference with Legal Counsel, Anticipated Litigation.
00:01:04.07	Sarah Silver	Significant exposure to litigation one case. C3 is conference with real property negotiators under negotiation price and terms of payment with 558 Bridgeway. C4 conference with real property negotiators under negotiation.
00:01:20.10	Sarah Silver	Negotiating parties Verizon Wireless, property 750 Bridgeway,
00:01:25.10	Sarah Silver	C5, Conference with Real Property Negotiators, Property 300 Spencer Avenue, Negotiating Parties, Verizon Wireless. And C6 is Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, Yimby versus City of Sausalito.
00:01:38.24	Unknown	Is there any, oh, go ahead. Just, I will be recusing myself from item C4 with negotiations with Verizon and C5 as I have engaged with them in client work at a firm that I've consulted with. So out of an abundance of caution, I'd like to recuse myself.
00:01:52.22	Sarah Silver	Thank you and Councilmember Sobieski will be recusing himself from item C2. Is there any public comment on closed session items? We have no one here in the chambers. City Clerk.
00:02:04.31	Unknown	We have one person on Zoom, but no hand up, so no public comment.
00:02:07.88	Sarah Silver	All right, then we will adjourn to closed session. We will resume at 7 p.m. Thank you all.
00:02:18.88	Sarah Silver	All right, folks, good evening and welcome back.
00:02:23.25	Sarah Silver	We are reconvening.
00:02:26.62	Sarah Silver	and I'll ask the city clerk to take the role.
00:02:32.51	Unknown	Councilmember Blaustein.
00:02:34.27	Karen Hollweg	present.
00:02:35.28	Unknown	Councilmember Hoffman.
00:02:36.77	Karen Hollweg	Karen Hollweg, A present and i'll note that I did appear five minutes late for closed session and my apologies to the rest of my Council members, but I was here, I think 605. Karen Hollweg, So pardon me for missing our opening of the closed session, but I did shortly arrive thereafter.
00:02:47.55	Sarah Silver	5.05.
00:02:48.06	Alice Merrill	I'll talk.
00:02:48.24	Unknown	Thank you.
00:02:48.29	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:02:48.32	Alice Merrill	I don't know.
00:02:48.44	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
00:02:48.48	Sarah Silver	of the
00:02:55.40	Unknown	Councilmember Sobieski.
00:02:57.39	Unknown	here.
00:02:57.61	Councilmember Sobieski	to be able to get the
00:02:57.64	Unknown	Thank you.
00:02:58.84	Unknown	Vice Mayor Woodside? Here. And Mayor Cox. Here.
00:03:03.78	Sarah Silver	And I will note for the record that Councilmember Sobieski also joined us at 5.05 p.m. and that he is participating with us this evening remotely pursuant to the just cause exception to the Brown Act.
00:03:22.97	Sarah Silver	Councilmember did you want to expand on that at all?
00:03:25.64	Councilmember Sobieski	Yes, thank you. I'm back east, caring for a family member.
00:03:29.65	Councilmember Sobieski	I'm actually going to sign off now and not participate in the rest of the open meeting, but just wanted to announce that I did recuse myself from one of the items, litigation items, because the subject property poses a potential financial consequence to a real property I own here in town. So I recused myself from that matter and participated in the others.
00:03:51.46	Councilmember Sobieski	I did announce that.
00:03:52.13	Sarah Silver	I did announce that in advance as well, Councilmember.
00:03:55.15	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay, great. Well, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, my colleagues and community.
00:03:58.32	Councilmember Sobieski	Hold on.
00:03:58.39	Sarah Silver	Hold on.
00:03:59.22	Karen Hollweg	hold on one second uh council member hoffman has something just as a as a procedural
00:04:03.99	Karen Hollweg	Is that the just cause section we have to vote on? We do not have to vote on it. Okay, sorry.
00:04:08.90	Sarah Silver	on it.
00:04:10.05	Karen Hollweg	No, we're not.
00:04:10.34	Sarah Silver	it.
00:04:10.69	Karen Hollweg	We were.
00:04:10.88	Sarah Silver	THE FAMILY.
00:04:11.06	Karen Hollweg	or vote on that unanimously.
00:04:12.97	Sarah Silver	I'm sure, but.
00:04:14.12	Councilmember Sobieski	Thanks.
00:04:15.15	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you for that.
00:04:16.60	Sarah Silver	All right, thank you, Councilmember Sobieski and best wishes.
00:04:20.14	Councilmember Sobieski	Thanks, Farah.
00:04:22.96	Mr. Lay	Thank you.
00:04:22.99	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:04:23.03	Mr. Lay	Thank you.
00:04:23.05	Sarah Silver	.
00:04:23.08	Mr. Lay	Okay.
00:04:25.31	Mr. Lay	And you already announced your recusal, right? Yes. Okay.
00:04:28.55	Sarah Silver	All right, we will have the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:04:34.98	Unknown	Thank you.
00:04:35.26	Clark	Thank you.
00:04:35.55	Clark	of the United States of America and to the Republic for which
00:04:40.87	Clark	one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:04:48.90	Sarah Silver	PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB Sarah Silver PB, Sarah Silver PB Sarah PB Sarah Silver PB Sarah PB Sarah
00:04:56.74	Unknown	So moved.
00:04:59.21	Sarah Silver	Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries four zero with one absent. We will now move on to special presentations and I will welcome our community and economic development director, Brandon Phipps, to introduce the board.
00:05:17.79	Sarah Silver	our guest who will be providing us a special presentation from Marin County on countywide housing land trust.
00:05:29.62	Sarah Silver	Oh, apologies. I had thought I saw him come in the chambers. Good evening. Good evening.
00:05:33.94	Jillian Zeiger	Thanks.
00:05:34.29	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:05:34.36	Jillian Zeiger	them.
00:05:34.81	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:05:34.97	Jillian Zeiger	Thank you for having me.
00:05:38.17	Jillian Zeiger	This is, yeah, this is a sideshow.
00:05:40.70	Jillian Zeiger	Yeah. No, it's fine. So my name is Jillian Zeiger. I am a principal planner in the housing and grants division at the County of Marin. And I,
00:05:51.10	Jillian Zeiger	One of my primary roles is managing and facilitating the housing working group, which Brandon is a part of. All of our cities and towns in Marin.
00:06:01.26	Jillian Zeiger	meet once a month to talk about housing issues. And then we also receive funds from
00:06:06.66	Jillian Zeiger	a bag for technical assistance. So we received funds for,
00:06:10.71	Jillian Zeiger	our housing elements and housing element implementation.
00:06:14.71	Jillian Zeiger	So today I'm here to talk about a housing policy grant the county received
00:06:18.81	Jillian Zeiger	through a bag and how Sausalito may participate in that grant. Oh, I have a little clicker. Let's see if it works.
00:06:27.73	Jillian Zeiger	Great.
00:06:29.61	Jillian Zeiger	Oh, okay. Sure. It worked. Um, or you said, or you changed it already. Um, so first I'm going to give an overview of the MTC, a bag TOC policy. Um, then I'll talk a little bit more about the Marin County grant, um, that we received and then some next steps for your council to consider next.
00:06:53.30	Jillian Zeiger	So the TOC program is a Bay Area-wide program that advances planned Bay Area. Compliance is voluntary. However, TOC jurisdictions that meet requirements will be prioritized for one Bay Area grants or OBAG funds. TOC compliance includes a few aspects such as parking, zoning, and housing policies. Sausalito is considered a transit-oriented community or a TOC due to the ferry. You can go to the next slide.
00:07:29.21	Jillian Zeiger	So here's a map of the station area. It's considered a tier four transit area, which is the same level as SMART and our other ferry terminals. So Sausalito, Larkspur,
00:07:41.27	Jillian Zeiger	um,
00:07:42.07	Jillian Zeiger	Tiburon, Belvedere, San Rafael and Novato are all TOC jurisdictions. Next slide. So there are four areas for TOC compliance. This grant would help fulfill the affordable housing commercial stabilization policy tier. So by participating in this grant, ABAC is not mandating that you comply with any other
00:08:06.49	Jillian Zeiger	requirements or policy areas. So density parking management, transit station and access are not things that are required. If you accept this grant. Next slide.
00:08:17.79	Jillian Zeiger	So Marin County applied for this grant on behalf of the jurisdictions after consultation with each of the TOC jurisdictions to discuss what would be most beneficial or realistic for the participating jurisdictions and what aligns with work that they're already doing and issues they're already seeing in the community.
00:08:36.64	Jillian Zeiger	So Marin County staff, which is myself and others in the housing and grants division, would manage the grant on behalf of Sausalito, Larkspur, San Rafael, and Novato through the housing working group. So that is the monthly meetings that we have, additionally meeting one-on-one with the jurisdictions as needed. The funds for this program would go towards a countywide land trust. So supporting land trust policies in TOC jurisdictions. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what a land trust is and how we would all participate, but the scope may include feasibility for land trusts to purchase and or develop naturally occurring affordable housing in the TOC station area and funding options associated with that next slide.
00:09:27.44	Jillian Zeiger	So I realize that some of you may not know what a community land trust is. A community land trust are nonprofit organizations that acquire and steward land on behalf of community members. So they contribute to the affordable housing stock by maintaining land ownership to ensure that the housing built on the land they own remains affordable for future renters or buyers. So it's home ownership and rental properties.
00:09:55.89	Jillian Zeiger	Community control of land through CLTs have high potential to prevent displacement in a variety of housing markets.
00:10:03.90	Jillian Zeiger	So we have community land trust and unincorporated West Marin. There's also community land trust in Mill Valley. There's a community land trust in Marin city, and there's interest in the county for creating a countywide land trust. Next slide.
00:10:22.35	Jillian Zeiger	So just some examples of community land trust work.
00:10:26.53	Jillian Zeiger	Community land trusts purchase single family homes and either rent them or sell them as affordable homeownership.
00:10:34.58	Jillian Zeiger	Um, and they deed restrict them as affordable in perpetuity.
00:10:38.68	Jillian Zeiger	Also, land trusts have the capacity to rehabilitate and develop affordable multi-unit housing. We're seeing this in West Marin with the Coast Guard property. So a property that was owned by the Coast Guard
00:10:51.12	Jillian Zeiger	was purchased by the county and there will be a master lease with a land trust and an affordable housing developer to rehabilitate over 50 affordable town homes. Next slide.
00:11:04.84	Jillian Zeiger	So in order to comply with the ABAC grant, Sausalito would have to bring forward a land trust housing policy. As I said, these other parking density related policies are not needed. So the policy would include an ongoing funding source, affordability requirements, which are 80 percent area median income for rental and 120% area median income for homeowners. So 120% and below area median income or 80% and below area median income. And then a defined reporting and monitoring process. I will say about the ongoing funding source.
00:11:46.55	Jillian Zeiger	we could designate a portion of our county housing trust for land trusts in our TOC jurisdictions, and that would suffice if there isn't an ongoing funding source that you all are aware of. So we could designate a portion of our affordable housing preservation funds to land trusts acquiring or rehabilitating affordable housing. Next slide. So in terms of next steps, I'd love to answer your questions about the policy, about what work we're looking into. You would have to bring a resolution to your council saying that you would
00:12:29.67	Jillian Zeiger	would like to participate in the grant and you intend to have a land trust policy,
00:12:34.36	Jillian Zeiger	And then, you know, you and Mr. Phipps, Mr. Zapata would receive updates and deliverables on the project. And then you would have support from the county and technical assistance on implementing the land trust policy. Okay.
00:12:51.79	Jillian Zeiger	That's it for me. I'm happy to answer any questions. Absolutely.
00:12:55.98	Sarah Silver	So.
00:12:56.33	Jillian Zeiger	Thank you.
00:12:56.55	Sarah Silver	really important question given that the
00:12:59.67	Sarah Silver	Um,
00:13:00.79	Sarah Silver	subject of the transit oriented community would be our ferry landing. So
00:13:06.74	Sarah Silver	What is the radius of area that is embodied within
00:13:12.58	Sarah Silver	the transit oriented,
00:13:14.98	Sarah Silver	TOC land trust that you would be seeking to have Sausalito dedicate for this purpose.
00:13:22.25	Jillian Zeiger	So the priority area would be a half mile around that station. However, I think that in terms of a land trust, we have to look at the whole,
00:13:34.79	Jillian Zeiger	city. So the policy could actually apply to the entire city, but it would have to include the TOC area, which would be, I believe, half mile around the ferry terminal.
00:13:47.53	Sarah Silver	So are you aware of the current legislation proposed by Senator Weiner to
00:13:54.85	Sarah Silver	require the approval of affordable housing around transit areas such as this? Yes. Okay. So it looked to me from your slides, and I apologize, they weren't in my packet, so I didn't see them ahead of time.
00:14:14.01	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:14:14.35	Sarah Silver	Um,
00:14:16.61	Sarah Silver	It seems to me when we dedicate land into this land trust, we are
00:14:21.84	Sarah Silver	giving over.
00:14:23.42	Sarah Silver	development decision-making to HCD
00:14:27.64	Jillian Zeiger	Thank you.
00:14:27.91	Sarah Silver	and not reserving it
00:14:29.03	Jillian Zeiger	to Sausalito.
00:14:30.51	Jillian Zeiger	So that's a really good question. And how a land trust kind of works like a non-profit affordable housing developer. So HCD actually wouldn't be involved. So I'll give you an example. Let's say there's a piece of land in the half mile, in the half mile terminal, and it's, you know, an eight unit naturally occurring affordable housing, meaning it's not owned by an affordable housing developer, but it's naturally occurring because it's an older property. Maybe, you know, The maintenance isn't as great as it used to be. And it comes up on the market. It's not owned by an affordable housing developer, but it's naturally occurring because it's an older property. Maybe the maintenance isn't as great as it used to be, and it comes up on the market.
00:15:01.98	Jillian Zeiger	the affordable housing developer or land trust would, would purchase the property on the fair market, like any other developer. And then they would have to deed restricted in perpetuity, whether it's a rental or,
00:15:17.15	Jillian Zeiger	or homeownership. So HCD actually, they're not involved in the transaction. It would be the local land trust.
00:15:25.19	Sarah Silver	But nevertheless, Sausalito does not maintain developmental approval slash jurisdiction over though that area of land dedicated to the land trust.
00:15:38.43	Jillian Zeiger	They do maintain jurisdiction. So if they wanted to build additional units or they even wanted to do repairs, they would go through the city of Sausalito's building and planning department.
00:15:55.75	Sarah Silver	Okay, I'm trying to pull up.
00:15:58.26	Sarah Silver	But...
00:15:59.22	Sarah Silver	Sorry, again, I did not fully understand this item and I'm trying to pull it up on my computer because I don't have it.
00:16:09.79	Unknown	Would you mind if I? Yeah, go ahead, please.
00:16:10.24	Sarah Silver	Yeah, go ahead, please.
00:16:12.34	Unknown	Earlier you mentioned the one-half mile radius from the ferry landing, and I think you said that you're not limited, however, to projects within the half mile, depending on how they relate to the whole, and I would just offer to, when you look at Sausalito, lots of folks walk to the ferry, and they walk more than a mile, or they ride their bike even more. So where they live may not be within that one-half mile. The other thing I would...
00:16:43.87	Unknown	want to make sure you took a look at is within that half mile is probably the entirety of our historic district. That may have implications for how we site
00:16:55.37	Unknown	additional projects of any type within the historic area. So it's a little confusing compared to maybe the typical transit center in an urbanized area.
00:17:06.25	Unknown	Just a thought.
00:17:07.85	Sarah Silver	So I'm seeing, for example, the slide that caught my attention is there are required minimum and maximum densities for new housing and office development within the TOC.
00:17:18.23	Jillian Zeiger	Thank you.
00:17:18.92	Jillian Zeiger	Thank you.
00:17:18.94	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:17:18.96	Jillian Zeiger	Right. So that is the density policy, which we do not have to fulfill that policy according to this grant. This grant, we would only need to fulfill the land trust policy, which is a policy
00:17:32.02	Jillian Zeiger	that really says you know we'll work with the county to dedicate
00:17:36.78	Jillian Zeiger	funds for land trust to acquire property and deed restricted as affordable housing. So yeah, the density, the parking, I know you've all just gone through that with the housing element and we, you know, all the jurisdictions have, and there's a lot of sensitivity to it. You've crafted, you know, what you need to, to get through HCD.
00:17:55.76	Jillian Zeiger	Um, I am aware of that. That's why I'm not coming to you today with.
00:17:59.71	Jillian Zeiger	a parking study or density requirements for the TOC because I think
00:18:05.30	Jillian Zeiger	At this point, you know, looking at everyone's housing elements and looking at what the needs are in the county and in the jurisdictions,
00:18:12.48	Jillian Zeiger	Um, there's a lot of naturally occurring affordable housing that could be acquired by a land trust and made permanently affordable to keep people in their homes.
00:18:23.32	Sarah Silver	So I see another thing is that we would have to comply with complete streets policy. So in being granted our Measure 1A funds, we were able to negotiate
00:18:36.68	Sarah Silver	an accommodation because not all of our streets in the historic and downtown area are capable of supporting complete streets due to houses right up against the street and due to other buildings.
00:18:54.64	Sarah Silver	um
00:18:55.84	Sarah Silver	built constraints. And so...
00:18:59.72	Sarah Silver	So that's another concern.
00:19:02.33	Sarah Silver	The other thing is, you know, I work with folks who are stewards of land within malt, and there is very little that they actually can, there's very little leeway in this, in the Marin Agricultural Land Trust as to what a steward can and cannot do. And so it just...
00:19:24.49	Sarah Silver	What is the term? This is like the malt is permanent. So I assume this city would be permanently dedicating to this land trust certain land within its historic district, which is within a half a mile of the district.
00:19:42.33	Sarah Silver	of the ferry landing. And I have to say, I'm not aware of any affordable housing projects within a half mile of the, other than liveaboards, within a half mile of the ferry landing.
00:19:56.72	Karen Hollweg	um,
00:19:57.13	Karen Hollweg	We would have, except we just changed our ordinance.
00:20:01.94	Karen Hollweg	last week.
00:20:03.35	Karen Hollweg	So we did have some requirements, and we still do have some requirements.
00:20:05.70	Sarah Silver	He'll do have some recording.
00:20:06.49	Sarah Silver	But I'm saying existing. She says she was talking about existing affordable housing units, projects.
00:20:12.10	Karen Hollweg	Well, new units, yeah. We probably won't have any. So anyway, I have a follow-up question. Yes, please. So, and this is for, well, essentially an outside entity, which would be the trust, a trust that would come in and purchase a property in Sausalito. And so, and that trust would then own that property, correct? Yes. And they would have, obviously, control over that property going forward. Right.
00:20:16.28	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:20:39.10	Jillian Zeiger	Just like any property owner, right?
00:20:42.05	Jillian Zeiger	Um, I do, I do want to answer your question. The complete streets policy is not required for this grant. So.
00:20:47.94	Jillian Zeiger	um just understanding that and i think um i i will talk to a bag and look at the grant again but i think the half mile radius is this it's the start like if you were doing the parking the density etc it would be constrained to that half mile area but if you're interested in expanding the area for this policy i don't see an issue
00:21:09.55	Sarah Silver	I will just note that this slide is headed TOC compliance requirements. So each of the things that I read out to you that you said are not requirements, this slide says are requirements. So that's the reason for my misunderstanding. Okay.
00:21:22.30	Jillian Zeiger	Okay. I should have labeled, I should have labeled it differently. I apologize, but those are, if you want to.
00:21:28.62	Jillian Zeiger	comply with every toc policy those four policies for the grants specifically we only have to comply with the land trust policy, which is a subset of the affordable housing policy, but I appreciate the questions um.
00:21:42.88	Jillian Zeiger	I'm happy to clarify.
00:21:43.49	Sarah Silver	We have, just for context, we have groups in our, amongst our residents who are very concerned about our abdicating to MTC, our authority over our land by way of decisions we have already made. And so I think our community is very sensitive to MTC.
00:22:03.38	Sarah Silver	you know, the retaining of local control over, you know, of local control. So those, you know, grant funding, local control, that's sort of the balancing act. So thank you very much for this very informative presentation.
00:22:19.03	Sarah Silver	Sure.
00:22:25.27	Sarah Silver	Okay, with that, I'm going to move on to communications. This is the time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the
00:22:32.34	Sarah Silver	the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda
00:22:35.75	Sarah Silver	except in very limited situations, state law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items that are not on the agenda. And so I have two speaker cards. First is David Lay.
00:22:54.62	David Lay	First, can I ask you a question about what was just
00:22:57.20	David Lay	What was just.
00:22:58.14	Sarah Silver	Sorry, we don't take questions. You're welcome to chat with us after the meeting or by email, but this is the opportunity for you to...
00:23:05.69	Sarah Silver	communicate about things not on the agenda.
00:23:09.97	David Lay	Yeah, okay.
00:23:13.11	David Lay	Thank you.
00:23:16.67	David Lay	I've already given you all of the facts I could dig up on the environment.
00:23:22.04	David Lay	And I'm writing a cover letter to that, which I'm going to send to...
00:23:28.42	David Lay	to a representative over the mountain.
00:23:32.45	David Lay	Um,
00:23:35.10	David Lay	Is there anything I should steer clear of in that letter or dealing with somebody that's not our representative?
00:23:45.39	David Lay	Yeah.
00:23:45.95	David Lay	And I'm not representing anybody except myself, so that should be all right.
00:23:54.98	Sarah Silver	First of all, we really can't answer, we can't really discuss things in this section of our agenda because they're not on our agenda for discussion. So.
00:24:02.99	Sarah Silver	Um,
00:24:03.89	Sarah Silver	this is the time for us to hear communications about things not on our agenda. And so we can't really provide feedback
00:24:12.71	Sarah Silver	on an item that's not on our
00:24:15.21	Sarah Silver	Agenda if you'd like to reach out to the mayor or and the vice mayor. We are the agenda setting committee and we can place an eye on the agenda if it deems, you know, public participation.
00:24:28.02	David Lay	Okay, thank you.
00:24:29.08	Sarah Silver	Okay, thank you. Alice Merrill.
00:24:29.10	David Lay	Thank you.
00:24:38.74	Alice Merrill	Well, good evening.
00:24:39.98	Alice Merrill	Good evening. Welcome. Thank you.
00:24:42.90	Alice Merrill	Okay.
00:24:45.50	Alice Merrill	I guess this is a little nagly complaint. It seems like every time we have the agenda, there's something on the consent calendar that gets pulled off.
00:24:57.67	Alice Merrill	Which means, and it's pretty clearly something that is going to be pulled off.
00:25:03.83	Alice Merrill	you know, it's kind of like,
00:25:05.25	Alice Merrill	Well, yeah, of course we want to talk.
00:25:08.64	Alice Merrill	So why is it on the consent calendar? Because that means it's not on the agenda.
00:25:12.91	Alice Merrill	which means that it's not accounted for in time, which means that everything goes longer. And how can you guys figure it out? So what it's on the consent, like for instance, tonight, there's the thing about parking.
00:25:28.48	Alice Merrill	of a study performed by, has this been,
00:25:33.46	Alice Merrill	I mean, you know, you have to be pretty darn tuned in to know what this study is, if it's anywhere on a website that anybody could find.
00:25:43.16	Alice Merrill	And so here it is on the consent calendar, so do we get
00:25:46.36	Alice Merrill	Do we get to talk about it ever, or is it just going to happen? It just goes right by? That's problematic for me. Thank you. Thank you.
00:25:55.94	Sarah Silver	it,
00:25:56.08	Carolyn Revelle	Hey.
00:25:57.61	Sarah Silver	We do our best is all I can say. But your points are well taken. Thank you. All right. Anybody else on communications?
00:26:05.90	Unknown	Yeah, we have a bet on Google.
00:26:10.77	Unknown	You're going to mute.
00:26:13.54	Mr. Lay	Good evening.
00:26:15.46	Mr. Lay	So I just want to thank you very much for allowing me to address you.
00:26:18.96	Mr. Lay	I want to thank you for being on the council. It's not easy, and it's not easy for me.
00:26:25.40	Mr. Lay	time after time to have to call out what seems to be going sideways.
00:26:29.76	Mr. Lay	This is the first time I've ever had to do anything like this, to stand
00:26:33.45	Mr. Lay	in an opposing posture. I've never had to do this before in my whole life, particularly in my career life.
00:26:40.47	Mr. Lay	So I just want you to know that it does not go, it does not escape my own personal appreciation
00:26:46.40	Mr. Lay	or that of your community.
00:26:48.37	Mr. Lay	here in Sausalito, that you have volunteered yourselves to be on that dais to lead our community.
00:26:54.71	Mr. Lay	with the expectation that this representative government does in fact reflect the will of your constituents
00:27:01.06	Mr. Lay	and the broader community as a whole.
00:27:03.61	Mr. Lay	So I want to thank you again.
00:27:05.60	Mr. Lay	However, please know that it's nothing personal. If I have something to say about what is going differently than what
00:27:12.89	Mr. Lay	has been the norm for our community all these decades and years.
00:27:17.14	Mr. Lay	Yeah.
00:27:17.80	Mr. Lay	Sure, times are changing and with change comes new ideas and new ways of doing things, but...
00:27:23.10	Mr. Lay	Thank you for taking that time.
00:27:24.90	Mr. Lay	to explain to Mr. Lay...
00:27:26.88	Mr. Lay	about the protocols of how the evening is supposed to play out, because this is really the bottom line. We are trying to work together.
00:27:35.32	Mr. Lay	And hopefully, if we can unite in that fashion, we can go forward with something that the whole town can feel pretty good about. We're in a very difficult time.
00:27:44.12	Mr. Lay	and everybody's nervous.
00:27:46.59	Mr. Lay	So, you know, the ability to sail smoothly makes a big difference for all of us. So thank you for the hard work that you're doing. I don't want you to think that it doesn't go unappreciated or unnoticed. Thank you.
00:28:00.56	Unknown	No, for the...
00:28:00.97	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:28:01.03	Unknown	Thank you.
00:28:02.94	Unknown	No further public speakers.
00:28:04.16	Sarah Silver	All right, we will move on to the next item on our agenda, which is our consent calendar.
00:28:10.27	Sarah Silver	Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, or expected to have unanimous counsel support.
00:28:17.72	Sarah Silver	and may be enacted by the Council in one motion
00:28:21.01	Sarah Silver	Um, so
00:28:23.02	Sarah Silver	We have four items on our consent calendar. The first is to adopt the meeting minutes of May 2025 25
00:28:29.84	Sarah Silver	The second is to adopt a resolution of the City Council proclaiming June 2025 as LGBTQ
00:28:36.72	Sarah Silver	Plus Pride Month in the city of Sausalito.
00:28:39.74	Sarah Silver	The third is to approve the updated position allocations and job description updates
00:28:45.77	Sarah Silver	And the fourth is to receive and file
00:28:47.81	Sarah Silver	A parking study performed by fair and peers funded by
00:28:51.05	Sarah Silver	MTC related to general parking
00:28:53.60	Sarah Silver	in downtown Sausalito.
00:28:55.66	Sarah Silver	So are there any questions or would anyone like to pull anything off of consent? Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comment on the consent calendar.
00:29:04.91	Unknown	See you, none.
00:29:06.42	Sarah Silver	I moved to...
00:29:07.66	Sarah Silver	Okay.
00:29:08.65	Sarah Silver	I don't have a speaker card from you, but please come forward, Alice.
00:29:17.12	Alice Merrill	I didn't.
00:29:18.25	Alice Merrill	I'm,
00:29:19.54	Alice Merrill	I would love to know what this parking thing is about.
00:29:22.02	Alice Merrill	Thank you.
00:29:24.52	Sarah Silver	So Alice, would you like a copy of it? Because I have it in my binder. I'll hand it to you.
00:29:29.86	Sarah Silver	Okay.
00:29:32.65	Chris Zapata	Mayor, I can, the chief and I can work on sitting down with Mrs. Merrill and explaining what this is.
00:29:38.83	Sarah Silver	Yeah, I appreciate that, but I'm happy to give this to you in the meantime. It's both the copy of the...
00:29:45.51	Sarah Silver	of the report as well as a presentation that staff prepared regarding it.
00:29:52.80	Sarah Silver	There you go. And it is online, by the way, but
00:29:57.67	Sarah Silver	Okay. Any other comment on our consent calendar? Seeing none. All right. With that, I will seek a motion approving. So moved. Second. I move to approve the consent calendar.
00:30:01.47	Unknown	See you then.
00:30:06.45	Unknown	Second.
00:30:08.39	Sarah Silver	All in favor, aye. That motion carries, four zero, one absent.
00:30:13.60	Sarah Silver	Okay, with that, we will move on to our business items. We are only five minutes behind. Oh, yes.
00:30:21.91	Sarah Silver	during
00:30:26.09	Sarah Silver	Okay.
00:30:29.90	Sarah Silver	We've already adopted the calendar, so I'm going to move on. Apologies.
00:30:34.85	Sarah Silver	If you have a public comment, please feel free to send us an email and we'll attach it to the agenda.
00:30:41.95	Sarah Silver	All right. Next is item 5A, launch a local employee parking program for Caledonia businesses, Caledonia Parking Review.
00:30:51.12	Sarah Silver	Park Revenue Report to City Council and Parking Policy for Economic...
00:30:55.35	Sarah Silver	hardship,
00:30:56.79	Sarah Silver	Alice, I'm so happy you're in the audience for this, because you are largely responsible for us moving this forward. And I'll welcome our police chief, Stacy Gregory.
00:31:07.91	Wayne Kwan	Hi, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. I'm here to introduce Wayne Kwan, who's our parking manager. He's been working hard with the Caledonia community to develop this program and other things related to Caledonia Street in the area. We do want to make one quick statement that we're aware there's a lot of parking items and things in Sausalito that need attention, and tonight we're solely focusing on the Caledonia area. The other items will come, you know, at a later date with specific agenda items. So I'll introduce Wayne. Thank you.
00:31:44.78	Wayne Kwan	Welcome, Wayne Kwan.
00:31:45.78	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:31:47.21	Wayne Kwan	Thank you for having me.
00:31:49.32	Wayne Kwan	Good evening, Madam Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, Council Member, and City Manager. My name is Wayne Kwan. I'm the parking manager with the Sauselil Police Department.
00:31:58.82	Wayne Kwan	We have a slice show, I believe.
00:32:03.33	Wayne Kwan	Thank you.
00:32:05.16	Wayne Kwan	Okay, start off, Caledonia Street is a key commercial district in Saus Leo.
00:32:10.68	Wayne Kwan	Located one block west of Bridgeway, it spans six blocks from Johnson to Napa, and includes a mix of storefronts, restaurants, residential units, and service businesses.
00:32:21.31	Wayne Kwan	Currently, there are 100 mark parking spaces along Caledonia Street.
00:32:25.95	Wayne Kwan	77 are regular parking spaces with a two-hour time limit, enforced between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.,
00:32:32.94	Wayne Kwan	20 are green zone, 20 minute time limit.
00:32:36.70	Wayne Kwan	Two spaces are designated for a five minute curbside pickup.
00:32:40.79	Wayne Kwan	and there is one disabled parking space.
00:32:44.38	Wayne Kwan	Nearby, we also have several municipal parking lots that help support the Caledonia District.
00:32:50.15	Wayne Kwan	lot five which is the closest is located at locust and bridgeway and includes 80 parking spaces 22 which are paved
00:33:00.28	Wayne Kwan	Lot four is slightly further to the southeast and has 102 parking spaces.
00:33:06.71	Wayne Kwan	Lot three is even further down with 164 spaces.
00:33:11.89	Wayne Kwan	So as you can see on the map here, all of these off-street laws play an important role in how we manage employee and visitor parking in the Caledonia district, in which I will explain a little further.
00:33:23.18	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:33:27.35	Wayne Kwan	Employee Parking Program Enhancements.
00:33:30.38	Wayne Kwan	Over the last several weeks, staff have heard from both businesses and employees along the Caledonia Street District that finding affordable and reliable parking is a challenge for them.
00:33:42.35	Wayne Kwan	Staff have met with merchants and businesses on two separate occasions to listen to their challenges
00:33:48.59	Wayne Kwan	and hear their suggestions.
00:33:51.07	Wayne Kwan	And as a result,
00:33:52.24	Wayne Kwan	Staff is proposing a few new options designed to help employees park off-street
00:33:57.97	Wayne Kwan	which in turn helps open up more on-street for customers of the businesses.
00:34:03.95	Wayne Kwan	First, we are introducing a new $5 daily parking rate in last four and five.
00:34:10.88	Wayne Kwan	One note is lot five will require payment via contactless Park Mobile app payment, since we currently have no pay station at that lot and have no intention and do not have a replacement to put one in.
00:34:23.76	Wayne Kwan	However, Lot 4 will still allow the use of a prepaid daily parking card.
00:34:31.00	Wayne Kwan	And just to be clear, currently lot four is at a $6 rate for our commuters and employees. So we are suggesting to drop it to five as part of helping out the Cali Noir Street employees to make it more affordable and incentivize them to take advantage of this great employee parking permit program.
00:34:50.24	Wayne Kwan	Lot three, which is to the south and closer to the downtown area of Sausli Ho, will remain unchanged at $6 daily rate for employees and commuters.
00:35:02.69	Wayne Kwan	Additionally, another option that we are proposing is that folks who work regularly on Caledonia Street on a regular basis, we're offering a new $60 monthly employee permit
00:35:12.82	Wayne Kwan	that would be valid in lot five.
00:35:15.97	Wayne Kwan	And also to help make spaces available, we plan on reserving the upper portion, which is a paid portion, the 22 spaces in law five, converting that to permit requirement only. So in order to park up there, currently right now anybody can park up there, it's a three hour time limit, but we plan on changing that to restrict only permits with an L permit or employee permit.
00:35:40.88	Wayne Kwan	And this idea also is in response to
00:35:45.18	Wayne Kwan	our conversation with the merchants and the feedback that the merchants and businesses would like to be able to purchase these permits for their employees as a benefit for their employees. So that's something that we can work with the businesses
00:35:57.85	Wayne Kwan	just like we currently sell the D premise to our businesses in downtown Sosli.
00:36:04.13	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:36:09.03	Wayne Kwan	This slide focused on a proposed two hour time limit adjustment.
00:36:13.61	Wayne Kwan	So right now we're asking council feedback on a possible change to the two hour time limit along Caledonia Street and the adjacent one block side streets between Caledonia and Bridgeway.
00:36:25.97	Wayne Kwan	Currently, right now, the time limit enforcement ends at 6 p.m.
00:36:30.10	Wayne Kwan	but many businesses and restaurant business are busiest in the evening
00:36:34.56	Wayne Kwan	So we are proposing extending that enforcement until 9 p.m.
00:36:39.33	Wayne Kwan	And in order to do so, this help ensure better parking turnover later in the day, and it will also help move the employees off of the street and park in our lots. As of right now, with a 6 p.m. enforcement, they can technically park at 4.01 and be there all night.
00:36:58.03	Wayne Kwan	And to be clear, we're not asking for approval tonight,
00:37:01.24	Wayne Kwan	just your direction. If counselors are supportive,
00:37:04.32	Wayne Kwan	staff would return with a formal ordinance change for adoption.
00:37:09.08	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:37:13.42	Wayne Kwan	Economic Hardship Parking Program.
00:37:16.85	Wayne Kwan	I want to highlight an important program from the Saucer Little Police Department.
00:37:20.61	Wayne Kwan	We understand that some residents may face financial hardship when it comes to parking citations.
00:37:27.48	Wayne Kwan	And for those in need, we offer flexible payment options
00:37:31.81	Wayne Kwan	community service alternatives
00:37:34.19	Wayne Kwan	and also a potential reduction in waivers
00:37:37.08	Wayne Kwan	of late fees for individuals who are low income or unhoused.
00:37:41.89	Wayne Kwan	Each case is reviewed on an individual
00:37:44.84	Wayne Kwan	case by case basis and to go with to make sure we are being fair, responsive while at the same time, maintain, maintaining enforcement.
00:37:55.37	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:37:58.98	Wayne Kwan	New temporary guest permit fees.
00:38:01.92	Wayne Kwan	We understand there may have been some confusion from the last previous meeting
00:38:06.09	Wayne Kwan	regarding this new master fee schedule under the parking category.
00:38:10.61	Wayne Kwan	I wanted to take this opportunity to help clarify any confusion.
00:38:15.94	Wayne Kwan	Although the fee may be new,
00:38:17.88	Wayne Kwan	The guest permit is not.
00:38:19.97	Wayne Kwan	Residents have always been able to come to us to request a short term guest permit.
00:38:27.32	Wayne Kwan	Short term is definition of one week or less.
00:38:31.96	Wayne Kwan	The current...
00:38:33.88	Wayne Kwan	The current situation is that we're offering them for free.
00:38:36.87	Wayne Kwan	So all this is is the fee to recover the costs for the staff's time, effort to review, process, and issue these permits.
00:38:45.83	Wayne Kwan	So we are proposing that the new fee for a one day fee be $3.
00:38:51.13	Wayne Kwan	you know, or a one week fee for $10.
00:38:55.82	Wayne Kwan	It is also worth to note that these are separate from the permanent guest permit that residents are already able to purchase annually
00:39:04.74	Wayne Kwan	for $50 for the entire year. So these are in addition on top of that.
00:39:10.14	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:39:13.72	Wayne Kwan	Thank you.
00:39:14.16	Wayne Kwan	Here's a quick slide.
00:39:15.59	Wayne Kwan	Parking Revenue and Overview.
00:39:18.13	Wayne Kwan	So this is a snapshot comparison of parking revenue from Q1 of 2024.
00:39:23.51	Wayne Kwan	in Q1 of 2025.
00:39:26.07	Wayne Kwan	you'll notice a slight drop in revenue from the off-street municipal laws from 334,000 in Q1 of 2024 to about 327,000 in Q1 of 2025.
00:39:39.68	Wayne Kwan	That tip is most likely due to the temporary loss of parking spaces in lot one as a result of the fair landing project.
00:39:47.54	Wayne Kwan	However, we do expect those figures to rebound going forward
00:39:51.54	Wayne Kwan	now that the new public spaces in the Saus Leo Yacht Harbor are active and generating revenue.
00:39:59.37	Wayne Kwan	And just as a reminder, when we look at the entire year of the entire parking enterprise fund, it typically generates anywhere between 2.5 million to 2.9 million annually.
00:40:11.37	Wayne Kwan	I also want to point out that these figures does not include citation review, which we will look at next.
00:40:19.92	Wayne Kwan	Next slide, please.
00:40:24.70	Wayne Kwan	So here's a snapshot of 2024 parking citation overview.
00:40:28.99	Wayne Kwan	In 2024, the city issued over 14,600 parking citations.
00:40:33.73	Wayne Kwan	That total in 797,000 in total fines,
00:40:38.10	Wayne Kwan	With about 722,000 collected.
00:40:42.15	Wayne Kwan	And just once again to clarify, this citation revenue you consider punitive and is trapped completely separate from the parking revenue.
00:40:53.08	Wayne Kwan	Next slide.
00:40:56.98	Wayne Kwan	Thank you, and that concludes my presentation. That wraps it up.
00:41:00.27	Wayne Kwan	Thank you for your time and attention. I'm happy to answer any questions or hear your thoughts on any of the items we cover.
00:41:05.76	Sarah Silver	Thank you so much. And we do have some questions.
00:41:09.16	Sarah Silver	Councilmember Blaustein.
00:41:10.36	Unknown	That was great. Thank you for your engagement with the merchants and for taking so much time and looking at our fee schedule and coming forward with.
00:41:17.43	Unknown	a plan. It's really crucial for the Caledonia Street employees and also the people that frequent the street. I was wondering last meeting when we ended up deferring this item forward to the following meeting,
00:41:29.06	Unknown	We heard from Paul Geffen, who is one of the owners of Drivers Market, about an interest in potentially
00:41:34.44	Unknown	procuring specific spots that that market would be able to prepay for in lot five. And there was some interest potentially in looking at that. Did you guys have a discussion about what that kind of program might look like? We did.
00:41:45.77	Wayne Kwan	We did. We did take a quick look at that. So what that proposal from driver was he wanted to purchase a reserve stall. And his proposal was $100 per month.
00:41:46.53	Unknown	We did.
00:41:58.42	Wayne Kwan	Well, that equates to $1,200 for the entire year.
00:42:02.12	Wayne Kwan	But the problem with a reserve stall is that no one else can use it except the person that purchased that reserve stall. So if that person's not using it or that business, then it sits empty.
00:42:14.27	Wayne Kwan	And when we consider how much our
00:42:18.62	Wayne Kwan	parking spaces generate on an annual basis, that figure is far below the median. You know, I think, um,
00:42:26.03	Wayne Kwan	When we previously look at our parking spaces, each parking space generate anywhere from $4,500 to $5,500 per year.
00:42:34.74	Wayne Kwan	So if we were to offer that to the businesses, we'd be way undercutting ourselves, the city.
00:42:39.77	Wayne Kwan	And we didn't feel like proposing a much higher fee would be feasible for the businesses. So I think the $100 proposal compared to what the state generates per space on an annual basis, we were too far off on the map.
00:42:55.97	Unknown	Okay, I understand that. Did you have a conversation with...
00:42:58.73	Unknown	Paul or someone from drivers about that? We did. Okay. Okay.
00:43:01.16	Wayne Kwan	We did.
00:43:02.39	Wayne Kwan	So, yeah, we had a second meeting with them. So we decided to meet halfway. And the halfway proposal was the $60 monthly permit that they can purchase. And it's sort of like a semi-reserve section. And the other part I mentioned was to reserve the upper 22 spaces in Lot 5 for permits only, which means the general public would no longer be able to use those. So it's kind of like meeting the merchants halfway.
00:43:02.50	Unknown	So,
00:43:03.31	Unknown	Yeah.
00:43:03.46	Unknown	Yeah.
00:43:31.72	Unknown	Great. I really appreciate that. Thank you.
00:43:35.77	Unknown	Just a quick question. Did you consider having the employee permit cost be closer to the amount paid by residents? My understanding is the resident might pay $60 for an annual permit. And the employee permit, as I understand it, is $60 per month.
00:43:56.53	Wayne Kwan	That is correct. So, um,
00:44:00.83	Wayne Kwan	The formula that we use for looking at the employee permit program and these new enhancements was what's currently in place right now. So we currently have L permits that other employees outside of Caledonia can purchase for $160 per quarter.
00:44:16.75	Wayne Kwan	So I think if we were to offer the employees on Caledonia at the same price that we offer the residents, it would create a huge gap between what the employees currently pay right now, $6 a day, or
00:44:30.28	Wayne Kwan	$160 for three months. And then I think it would create a new problem with the current employees that's already paying that rate
00:44:37.86	Wayne Kwan	And so we would probably have to
00:44:40.83	Wayne Kwan	address that issue and potentially
00:44:43.61	Wayne Kwan	you know accommodate, it would be set a precedent, it would set a brand new precedent for employee parking
00:44:48.89	Wayne Kwan	And, you know, I think financially it would be a hit to the city.
00:44:54.61	Unknown	Thank you.
00:44:57.55	Karen Hollweg	Thank you. Thanks, Wayne, for your tremendous work on this.
00:45:04.69	Karen Hollweg	Understanding that you oversee almost a $3 million operation, and you're one guy in the police department. So thanks for your tremendous work.
00:45:12.64	Karen Hollweg	that you've done, not just this, but parking across the city and trying to show us ways to increase our profitability, not just our profitability, but bring systems online to...
00:45:26.17	Karen Hollweg	you know, update our systems, which has been a Herculean task, I know. So thank you for all of that.
00:45:31.59	Karen Hollweg	And I know you'll be coming back to us with
00:45:34.27	Karen Hollweg	what we need to do to upgrade the systems across the line. So I know that's going to be a big, big effort. And I support these, the proposition that you have, and I look forward to the ongoing updates of how this is working, knowing that we're going to continue to, I think, iterate how these are working and amend as we go forward. So I think I'm excited to see how this works and hear from the merchants of how this is helping them, I hope, and their employees. So thank you for all your hard work.
00:46:03.01	Wayne Kwan	I appreciate that feedback, Council Member Hoffman. And yes, you're correct. I'll be coming back with more different agenda items. And the end goal is to upgrade the parking system and equipment in Sauselio.
00:46:15.97	Karen Hollweg	I think that's part of our CIP improvement list. City manager, I think that's part of our investment this round is to invest in our parking systems.
00:46:30.19	Karen Hollweg	Yeah.
00:46:32.02	Karen Hollweg	Right.
00:46:32.54	Karen Hollweg	Yeah.
00:46:33.08	Chris Zapata	in our parking lots or our parking system? Both. Both, yes.
00:46:35.83	Karen Hollweg	Both.
00:46:37.26	Karen Hollweg	Yeah, both.
00:46:38.83	Karen Hollweg	Okay, thank you. Sorry to sorry to throw that out of the blue. But I just wanted to reinforce that we're supporting Wayne and his efforts. So thanks.
00:46:41.35	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:46:41.36	Chris Zapata	I'm not sure.
00:46:41.67	Chris Zapata	just,
00:46:41.77	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:46:46.38	Sarah Silver	No worries. There are no more questions. I'm going to open it for public comment and then bring it back up here for direction. So first person, Yoshitome, welcome.
00:46:57.48	Sarah Silver	And after Yoshi, we'll hear from Adam.
00:46:59.86	Sarah Silver	Great to see you here as well.
00:47:03.86	Yoshi	Hi there, good evening all.
00:47:04.86	Sarah Silver	Good evening.
00:47:05.33	Yoshi	Thank you. Thank you for Wayne and the police department. We had a couple of different meetings face-to-face. We talked about how we can mitigate a better place to work for the employee and the customer. A couple of suggestions. Please move forward very quickly. I think it's one big step forward, right directions. We are losing 20 spaces, Caledonia Street, we have to do something ASAP. That's where they're coming from, 9 p.m. parking.
00:47:38.93	Yoshi	parking limit, two hours limit. And also, same time, we have to have employee parking. Where else employees parking? Neighborhood area become many, many places of residence only parking after 6 p.m. So we have to find someone else employee can park.
00:47:55.97	Yoshi	We have altogether 16 spaces behind the building. I do lease with after-hours parking, eight spaces available across the street. But most of the business do not have that kind of option unless you prepare for, provide for employees to work in. Sassarero is a harder place to work. And then also we talk about, first, I read all the detail about parking study. Please, please, quickly get the new system to implement SaaS-ery, or Pock. First president, I read all the detail about parking study. Please, please, quickly get the new system to implement Sarsarero. Parking issues are such a huge issue for businesses. Wayfair is assigned to how you charge for the customer, how you can easier for the guest parking. Success parking program can be business success and great for the business residents as well. So please more pay attention to parking issue. And real estate is, parking issue is very tight to real estate what we have. And how you're going to share with the residents and the city can make money, huge business, and at the same time better for the business too. So in the future downtown area, I'd like to include, please include the EDAC business community. Thank you.
00:49:06.74	Sarah Silver	Thank you so much. Adam Driver, we'll get to you, David. Hold on. Wait, not yet.
00:49:13.71	Sarah Silver	David, not yet.
00:49:19.69	Adam Driver	Thank you very much. I just wanted to echo everything that Yoshi said. I definitely agree. I think it's an urgent issue.
00:49:26.71	Adam Driver	especially with losing the spaces coming up because of, I don't remember the name of it, but the issue with visibility on the corners.
00:49:33.07	Sarah Silver	The daylighting.
00:49:33.91	Adam Driver	Daylighting?
00:49:34.08	Sarah Silver	Daylighting. So if you're working to minimize the number of spaces you will lose.
00:49:37.54	Adam Driver	That's great. That's great. So some of those spaces, and I'm not sure if Paul brought this up at the last meeting, some of those spaces are 20 minute zones that are in front of our market.
00:49:38.42	Sarah Silver	That's great.
00:49:47.31	Adam Driver	We rely on those for basically, I mean, you know, for survival, because if people were parked there all the time,
00:49:54.92	Adam Driver	It would be really hard for people to shop, come in and bring their bag of groceries outside. So I just wanted to say that's one of the most important things for me. I also echo that I really appreciate Wayne working with us on coming up with a solution that I think will work.
00:50:08.10	Adam Driver	the upper portion of lot five being
00:50:10.89	Adam Driver	dedicated to people with permits, I think makes a lot of sense. And I think it will be utilized. I think it would.
00:50:16.55	Adam Driver	be a work in progress. I think it would take a lot of feedback.
00:50:19.56	Adam Driver	loops and making sure that we don't have empty spaces.
00:50:23.00	Adam Driver	On that note, I think that it's important also for the city to
00:50:26.53	Adam Driver	take a look at where there are empty spaces after 6pm and see if we need to take a look again at residential parking areas if there are any other spaces that could be available
00:50:36.08	Adam Driver	For customers, it could make a more vibrant business community. So not saying I'm pushing for anything to be changed, but just that we keep an open mind and make sure that we have an efficient parking system in Sausalito. So that's all.
00:50:50.20	Sarah Silver	Can I ask you a question since you're here? And again, thank you for being here.
00:50:51.82	Adam Driver	Of course.
00:50:52.72	Adam Driver	Thank you.
00:50:53.68	Adam Driver	OF COURSE.
00:50:53.90	Sarah Silver	Are you aware of any of your customers using the public lots, which are really not far from you?
00:51:02.18	Adam Driver	I think that I'm sure that some of them do.
00:51:04.99	Adam Driver	I think that it's a hard sell if anyone's going to buy more than a few items. Because if you imagine doing your grocery shopping and then having to walk a couple blocks, true, it's not far. But when you have heavy bags of groceries and maybe...
00:51:10.30	Wayne Kwan	because,
00:51:20.43	Adam Driver	you have a problem with your hip or whatever it might be, those spots out front are really, really important for us. But, you know, the more options, the better, obviously, for us.
00:51:32.22	Unknown	Obviously.
00:51:33.93	Unknown	Okay. Yeah.
00:51:34.11	Adam Driver	Yeah. And the last thing I'll say real quick, because I know I'm out of time.
00:51:37.96	Adam Driver	I've paid a lot of money in parking. I pay all my employees parking tickets.
00:51:43.19	Adam Driver	And
00:51:44.44	Adam Driver	So you're part of that revenue?
00:51:44.81	Sarah Silver	So you're part of that revenue we're getting.
00:51:46.67	Adam Driver	It will cost me less if we can come up with a solution where I can pay for them ahead of time instead of after they get tickets. So that's all.
00:51:54.36	Sarah Silver	All right, thank you, and thank you for everything you contribute to our community.
00:51:55.21	Adam Driver	Thank you.
00:51:58.21	Sarah Silver	Yeah, of course. Thank you.
00:51:59.64	Sarah Silver	All right, next, Alice Merrill, speaking of contributing to our community.
00:52:08.10	Alice Merrill	Thank you, Joan.
00:52:08.93	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:52:08.98	Alice Merrill	Thank you.
00:52:09.03	Alice Merrill	Thank you.
00:52:09.31	Alice Merrill	And yes. Okay. So a couple of things. There's, is there any parking behind the old theater? There used to be parking lot back there. Who uses it? I don't know. I haven't been by there, but.
00:52:25.63	Alice Merrill	maybe the owner would allow parking there if it's not being used for something specific. These guys are here, but I know I'm always talking for Ming. She's got a whole bunch of people now doing...
00:52:40.67	Alice Merrill	doing fingernails and toes. And I don't know where they park on, I know on Tourney, but
00:52:47.76	Alice Merrill	And I don't think they make much money. You know, I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it is for somebody who's making $150 a day to have to pay every single time they have to park. And I just would love it if somehow we could help our working people. I think that's, I think there was a lot of emails, but I can't remember, so anyway, that's it. And I guess it's...
00:53:22.30	Alice Merrill	Oh, I know. If they're getting permits, is it for a specific license plate, or can they be shared? So somebody comes and works, and then they leave, and the other guy comes, and they can use that same one for a day pass. So that's a question.
00:53:41.23	Sarah Silver	That's a great question. Alice, do you know Wayne Kwan? Have you met him?
00:53:45.45	Alice Merrill	Well, I have...
00:53:47.76	Alice Merrill	Seen him around. Yeah.
00:53:48.44	Sarah Silver	Yeah. So I wonder if you'd be willing, since this is, you know, we're giving direction this evening, he's coming back. He's been very generous with his time meeting with other community members. I wonder if you would mind sitting down and sharing some of your thoughts with him. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Adrian Britton.
00:54:02.34	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:02.98	Alice Merrill	Yeah.
00:54:12.69	Adrian Britton	Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my comment. And thanks, especially to Wayne for putting together a great presentation on the parking and coming up with recommendations, you know, to try to improve what's ultimately somewhat a hopeless situation. We're never going to have enough parking and the cheaper we make it, the more people will drive and the more people will park and then we'll not have enough parking again. So it's not an easy thing to fix. You know, the employee parking, I definitely want to echo Alice's sentiment, you know, $5 a day even is a lot of money for people working in our restaurants and people working in our businesses in the hotels. And I, you know, what I understand is that at that rate, a lot of them,
00:54:51.30	Adrian Britton	decide that it's better to move their car every two hours and actually pay the rate. And so as we lower, you know, if we look at lowering it, maybe more people will park and that'll actually make up for a little bit of that revenue. But I think it's also a bit of a false economy to look for, um,
00:55:05.66	Adrian Britton	to look at employees as a revenue source for the city. They come and they work in our businesses. They support our businesses. Without them, our businesses don't run. Our businesses pay a lot of the tax in our city. And so supporting our employees this way actually helps us by supporting our businesses.
00:55:24.19	Adrian Britton	Additionally, I looked at other communities. You know, if we look at Mill Valley, it's $12 a month for an employee parking permit. And most other communities in Marin don't charge for employee parking. So when our businesses are looking to recruit people, they're looking to get people into work,
00:55:39.29	Adrian Britton	They've got choices. They can go work in Tiburon where they don't have to pay anything. And so it makes it much harder to recruit and retain employees. Employee turnover is a huge cost for businesses that I know for my career. So the better we can make it for our employees to come and be able to park and easily work here,
00:55:54.82	Adrian Britton	the stronger businesses we have, the better it is for us. So really, you know, I feel like I'm up here a lot supporting our businesses. The reason for that is because I don't want to pay all those taxes. I'd rather have them paid. So let's support them so they can do that for us. Thank you.
00:56:09.83	Sarah Silver	Thank you. David Lay.
00:56:17.36	David Lay	So I think it's a great idea. People can come from the canal or any other place directly to Sausalito, get on a bus and get off from their house right here. And it's only going to cost them four bucks a day.
00:56:17.71	Adrian Britton	I don't know.
00:56:17.85	Sarah Silver	I think.
00:56:18.09	Wayne Kwan	He is great.
00:56:33.64	David Lay	And that's what they're doing. And some of those buses are like 8.30.
00:56:37.80	David Lay	going south in the morning is full.
00:56:40.22	David Lay	That's good. I made three trips to Alaska, ending in 92.
00:56:49.83	David Lay	And I came here looking for a place where I didn't need a car. And I sold the car and the truck when I came here because I was in the oil spill up there. And I was disgusted with all of the cars.
00:57:01.99	David Lay	Um,
00:57:03.09	David Lay	it looks to me like the prices are made for people that own the business and people like a canvas maker or something like that, they're going to go in and out to the docks or to the yards, whoever there is, they're making shade. And,
00:57:16.86	David Lay	they're going to just need a place for their truck at the business, which is probably not downtown anyway. So I think –
00:57:26.19	David Lay	The more we rely on buses, the more buses we get. And that's good for everybody, especially the world. Thanks.
00:57:35.44	Sarah Silver	Thank you. City Clerk.
00:57:38.70	Unknown	Amy Svenberg.
00:57:42.76	Amy	Hi, Amy, welcome.
00:57:44.65	Amy	Hello. Thank you so much. I first want to just thank, of course, the City Council, Mayor Cox, but really Police Chief Gregory and Wayne Kwan have been above and beyond working with the community.
00:57:58.98	Amy	to find solutions and we know it's not easy. So just thank you very much. You know, I'm in Bridgeway, so my employees have a different circumstance, but it's really serious what's going on on Caledonia Street.
00:58:09.56	Amy	And I also want to touch on briefly
00:58:12.73	Amy	The employees do move their cars every couple of hours and by
00:58:17.04	Amy	providing this other space for the employees, it is going to give more parking to the residents that have a C lot during the daytime and also more space just for the businesses. So there's really a lot to gain from this. You know, I also agree with David about the buses. You know, if there is better buses, people would take the bus, but there's only one an hour and it just doesn't it doesn't work, sadly.
00:58:40.78	Amy	So I would definitely advocate for that. And lastly, I just want to say again, thank you to Wayne for moving some of the bike racks along the very landslide. It's great to be proactive, and it's noticed and appreciated. So thank you.
00:58:59.02	Sarah Silver	Thank you, Amy. And thank you to the police department for managing the bike racks.
00:59:04.54	Sarah Silver	All right.
00:59:05.40	Unknown	No further public comment.
00:59:05.92	Sarah Silver	All right. With that, I'll close public comment, bring it back up here.
00:59:10.16	Sarah Silver	for discussion. This is our opportunity to give feedback on this
00:59:15.00	Sarah Silver	initial approach that has been
00:59:18.55	Sarah Silver	put together. I know there's been a lot of interaction with businesses and residents and that this, um,
00:59:26.38	Sarah Silver	Presentation we saw tonight has gone through various iterations before it got to where it is. So who would like to lead off?
00:59:32.03	Unknown	with thoughts.
00:59:32.96	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:59:33.14	Unknown	I can. Thank you.
00:59:33.95	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
00:59:34.64	Unknown	Councilmember Blaustein. Yeah. This is an issue that a lot of the merchants on Caledonia have been asking me, and I know others on this dais and at our city hall for at least as long as I've been on council, if not before. And I'm really thrilled to see it being addressed and to have heard that there was such a collaborative process between the PD and the merchants and that it wasn't just something that the city decided without getting engagement. Because it's really important to have a partnership with our business community. You know, half of our general fund comes from our sales tax revenue, and so if it wasn't for all of you, some of you who showed up tonight, thanks for being here and for making your comment and for choosing to have your small businesses in our community in Sausalito. And, you know, while it might seem like a small amount to pay for parking, you know, it's significant, especially for folks who are working in a restaurant or working in a grocery store. And so we need to think about the best possible approach to make it more feasible for our city employees and also beneficial for the merchants. And I really feel like this is a great example of that, a great example of partnership between our business community and our city and working together. And so just hats off and I'm really pleased with it. So I think we should move forward as quickly as we can to make this effective. And also if we could give further direction
00:59:34.71	Sarah Silver	Councilmember Blau's.
00:59:35.57	Sarah Silver	Yeah.
00:59:35.79	Wayne Kwan	Thank you.
01:00:51.01	Unknown	to continue the conversation, especially around things like how we move forward with the daylighting of crosswalks, just to make sure that merchants are in the loop about what's going to be happening when, especially if there's going to be re-striping or specific immediate impacts, because it's really important to have that ongoing communication. So thank you very much to everyone involved, and I look forward to seeing an official ordinance up here soon.
01:01:13.74	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:14.21	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:14.48	Unknown	You.
01:01:17.50	Unknown	Okay. I'm in favor of going forward. I think it's good that everyone is talking and paying attention to this closely. I would simply say that in other jurisdictions where the employee rates are much lower, I don't think it breaks the bank of those cities. And I think as we look forward and see how this works, I would pay attention to that going forward because I do think that bringing employees here, allowing them to park for a full shift, for example, it helps everybody. And I would encourage us to take a close look at that as we go forward. But in the meantime, this is a good first step, a very good first step. Secondly, the daylighting concerns everybody, including the person like me who might want to go down Caledonia Street and make a quick stop if I'm driving. I don't always drive, but when I do, it's a quick stop because there's no other place to park, and I'll go into drivers or whatever, say hi to Alice. But if you think about it, when you remove the corner ones, which is where most of the greens are, is it possible to provide a green in the next one? Is that good or is that bad? I don't have an answer. I just think we ought to keep our mind open to making sure that we do still have those short-term, quick parking spaces, because I think the businesses and the public really values them. Thank you.
01:02:42.90	Karen Hollweg	Councilman, thank you. Yeah, I just, again, want to reiterate thanks to Wayne Kwan and the South Dakota Police Department for really working with the community, with the merchants to amend the program to do two things, actually three things. One is to help them take care of their own employees and the employees and the ecosystem down there to support the merchants. And part of this is, too, is to encourage the turnover of customers along that corridor, right, so that people like us who live here and other people coming in can find a place to park, to get into the stores, to get into the restaurants, and encourage the turnover of parking down there so that people can get in and out. And also, as the vice mayor said, encourage people to find a place to park so they don't have the stress of during the middle of a shift to go out and then have even more stress of perhaps getting a citation on their car, which is such a bummer, I know, because I used to be in that position. And sometimes I do get a citation on my R. So thanks to everybody for working this out. I look forward to seeing how we can further utilize parking lot five and bring that online for further as a parking asset going forward. These parking lots on this end of town aren't part of the $3 million revenue
01:04:09.81	Karen Hollweg	generators that we have that are on the other side of town, but they're equally important to our
01:04:16.96	Karen Hollweg	our residents and the people that live here and work here.
01:04:19.73	Karen Hollweg	The other side of it too is I'm wondering
01:04:22.33	Karen Hollweg	if we can't be more proactive as Mr. Lee said in getting more
01:04:26.74	Karen Hollweg	community transit and reinvigorating that those assets into Sausalito so that people can take the bus here and commute here we used to have such great trans be a real transit corridor where people could actually transit in and out of Sausalito on public transit to work here instead of having to drive here and so and maybe work with maybe work with the merchants to time the shifts to um better react to the public transit that's available into Sausalito in and out of Sausalito I know since COVID that's that's been undermined somewhat but maybe we can get back to um getting better public transit in in and out of Sausalito and have that be um an actual asset to the people that work here so those are just some thoughts
01:05:14.34	Karen Hollweg	Thank you.
01:05:14.37	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
01:05:15.82	Sarah Silver	I agree with my fellow council members. I really appreciate the community engagement undertaken by the police department.
01:05:23.92	Sarah Silver	with
01:05:25.07	Sarah Silver	you know, residents and businesses.
01:05:27.91	Sarah Silver	I really appreciate the concept of employee parking and I think that
01:05:33.95	Sarah Silver	We're going to have to...
01:05:36.11	Sarah Silver	sort of treat this like a pilot project where we embark upon it, see how it works, see how much it's used, see, you know, whether we need to adjust the fees up or down. I will say that, you know, I do, I used to visit Mill Valley a good bit more than I do now. It's got a much, it's got much more space, much more real estate for parking downtown. There's a huge parking lot behind the row of stores right downtown that really provides a relief valve. And Sausalito does not enjoy that.
01:06:14.18	Sarah Silver	you know, we are challenged with the real estate that we have available for parking.
01:06:21.69	Sarah Silver	I am concerned about Yoshi's comments about the 9 p.m.
01:06:28.59	Sarah Silver	parking cut off. So,
01:06:30.65	Sarah Silver	I would invite Wayne to further confer with Yoshi and then advise us how you have addressed these concerns or whether they're not capable of being addressed. I think one way to address some of the concerns is with the daylighting. And when the daylighting requirements were brought to us, we gave direction to the Public Works Department to come back to us with their plan. We identified the fact that there is an ability to avoid some of the daylighting requirements
01:07:04.63	Sarah Silver	when you can demonstrate other traffic calming measures and street design that have been undertaken.
01:07:14.07	Sarah Silver	So, you know, we already have a 20 mile an hour speed limit on Caledonia. Can we reduce that to 15 in order to preserve some of our green spots and to avoid the loss of so many parking spots on Caledonia Street? We've not.
01:07:36.36	Sarah Silver	heard back yet from Public Works, but I do know that that work, I do know that that direction was given to them.
01:07:42.22	Sarah Silver	by the city council when this was brought to us
01:07:45.71	Sarah Silver	previously. So I'm hoping to hear back from them before any of the re-striping takes place.
01:07:53.88	Sarah Silver	Um,
01:07:57.15	Sarah Silver	I really appreciate the distinction in the staff report made between annual guest passes available to residents and daily slash weekly passes available to visitors. I think that's a really important resident serving distinction so that residents are able to accommodate their visitors with an annual.
01:08:16.89	Sarah Silver	Be.
01:08:17.97	Sarah Silver	All right, I guess my time is up, so thank you very much. Would you please return to us with a program to implement that we can approve? And if you want to frame it as a pilot project,
01:08:31.51	Sarah Silver	you know, initially and then circle back with us. Perhaps that's a way to allow the market sort of to provide guidance moving forward.
01:08:42.37	Sarah Silver	Okay?
01:08:43.62	Sarah Silver	That's it.
01:08:45.98	Sarah Silver	All right, with that, we'll move on to 5B, City Council Budget Presentation on the Draft Fiscal Year 2025-26
01:08:57.60	Sarah Silver	budget, including user fees, pension analysis, and provide direction. And I will welcome our...
01:09:04.94	Chris Zapata	City manager.
01:09:06.00	Sarah Silver	Okay, I'll welcome our city manager first.
01:09:09.04	Chris Zapata	all right thank you mayor um can you go to the next slide please noeli
01:09:14.71	Chris Zapata	So before we jump into the proposed budget for 25-26, I want to just give you a little update on the current budget, which ends in 27 days. The current budget, which we started last year at this time, it had some headwinds with costs related to pensions, insurance, and the slowing economy. We've navigated. A lot of people have worked really hard on trying to make sure that this current year budget is one that doesn't, you know, create harm to our existing funds. And so what we're anticipating at the end of this year, we're anticipating being in the black, not being in the red. And so that's a good start to a year, but that will be finalized and confirmed once the audit is done for these funds after we close out the books, and that's approximately December when you see the finality of that. Regarding any budget process, it's fluid.
01:10:11.19	Chris Zapata	It's continuous. The interim finance director and I were working on the budget last night at 10 o'clock. We were working on the budget five minutes ago because it is a fluid process. And I believe that the public understands that we do our best to take estimates and projections and turn them into parameters for delivering services that the council asks us to put forward to the public and our businesses and residents. I want to say that, next slide, please.
01:10:39.28	Chris Zapata	that this budget is balanced. It's balanced without using unassigned funds from the general fund. It meets many priorities that the council has proposed, and one of the things you will see is in the balancing of the budget and the aggressive approach to capital improvement projects, what I had told you a year ago was about $10 million in unassigned reserves. We are asking to use half of that in this coming year. So we're taking unassigned reserves, but not to run services, or it's all for our capital improvement projects. So service levels stay the same, next slide.
01:11:19.53	Chris Zapata	Again, going back to the capital improvement program, $16.6 million this year to finish the projects in place now and the projects that are budgeted for next year. The council this past year worked really hard to set a formal policy of 25% for emergencies, budget fluctuations, and economic emergencies. And so that amount is $5.5 million it's set aside in this budget.
01:11:47.95	Chris Zapata	So the current budget has 9.9 million in unassigned fund balance. And we're talking about taking
01:11:54.97	Chris Zapata	four and a half or so million to supplement the capital improvement program. So what you will see is with the $5.5 million and the roughly 5 million that will be left in the unassigned fund balance, that's about $10 million that's not committed. You have the 25% set aside and then you have the remainder from the $10 million or $9.9 million that you are going to take a portion of that for the capital improvement program.
01:12:25.26	Chris Zapata	Next slide, please.
01:12:29.58	Chris Zapata	One of the things that I think is really important is pensions. And so we have with us tonight a presentation on pensions. This program or this presentation tonight is bifurcated into talking about the budget and talking about our pensions. So one of the things that I want to really stress is that SOSDU has been a leader in trying to address pension challenges. And the pension challenges didn't start last year or the year before. They started 2001, 2002. They've escalated from about $400,000 a year in annual pension payments to cover our costs to about $3.5 million a year. So in looking at that, you started working toward that in 2015-16 when you set up the 115 trust, in 2018-19 when you set aside goals for the city council to achieve so when the pension spikes occurred that you might have the wherewithal to do it. So although the goal was, I believe, Mayor, you can correct me if I'm wrong, approximately $6 million for pensions, we are at $3.9 million set aside in protected funds to address pension challenges. And I apologize for the OPEB reference. It's other post-employment benefits. There's an additional $2 million set aside there that's in our 115 trust. You gave us direction to take the funds out of the administrator, which is PARS, and go to CalPERS. We had a change in finance director, so we will get to that. We haven't gotten to it yet, but the basis for that was we would save administrative costs on a go-forward basis, and so we will do that in the coming six months. Next slide, please.
01:14:10.96	Chris Zapata	Thank you.
01:14:11.28	Chris Zapata	We're very fortunate to have at this critical time somebody with significant experience. Our interim finance director is Jesus Nava. Jesus I've known for
01:14:24.77	Chris Zapata	20, 30 years. He worked for the city of San Antonio, which is not a small city, the city of San Jose, which is not a small city, the city of Laredo, Las Cruces, Oxnard, and most recently his finance experience was in Burlingame, which is across the bay from us where he worked 12 or 13 years as a finance director. So with that, I want to introduce Jesus. He will run through the slides that he has to show some of the information that is important because at the end of all this, we want you to feel confident that we will be able to do. to introduce Jesus. He will run through the slides that he has to show some of the information that is important because at the end of all this, we want you to feel confident that when we come back on June the 17th, that a budget can be adopted along with all the other supporting requirements that are part of the budget process. Thank you, Jesus.
01:15:06.40	Jesus Nava	Good evening.
01:15:07.97	Jesus Nava	I'm glad to be here. So Chris called me out of the blue and said, hey,
01:15:15.86	Jesus Nava	I'm in need of having a finance director. I know you've been retired for eight years and have been out of the business for some time, but would you take time out of your life to come help me as a city manager and help the city council? And I said yes. I mean, how could I say no? It's an important job. It's a job that needs to be done correctly. And more importantly, the council needs to be satisfied that when this budget is done, that it's a good product for its citizens and that nothing was missed because there was a change in personnel at a very crucial time. So I'm here to tell you that we've been working extremely hard on this budget, complicated by the fact that we simply had only two months to do it as opposed to five months. So we had to compress, work a lot of hours. As Chris mentioned last night, we were reviewing numbers again. I'll tell you that the difference between being a budget director or being a budget officer, which I have that, is that we do budget 12 months out of the year, 24 hours a day. That's what we concentrate on, not just finances, but on policy. As a finance director, I have the same duties, but half of it is also devoted to running the finance department, making sure bills get paid, that the staff is getting paid, that revenue is collected, so forth and so forth. So it compounds the budget functions to a certain extent. But the good news, as Chris mentioned, is that you have a 12-month spending plan, and that budget is balanced with the revenues that you have used historically to finance your programs. So it is a policy document as well as a financial plan, and it finances your operations, your capital improvements, your debt. It improves your services. It preserves your city assets, and it maintains, more importantly, surpluses in your funds so that you don't feel like you're spending everything but have resources available for future uses as well. As I like to say, no matter how revenues grow, expenditures always grow to meet those growing revenues. So in our business, there's just never enough money to do all the things that need to be done, and that's just simply the nature of government and the nature of local government in particular. Always more work to do than the money that's available. The good news is that you guys do have good surpluses and have had a history of good financial management. So to be able to come in and work with the council, with the departments, to understand the issues that the city is facing with the help of the city manager and with the departments was the only way that this job could get done. So, next slide, please. So, again, the participants were the city council, the departments. I know we've been meeting to discuss portions of the budget with members of the council. As Chris mentioned, it is a fluid process. You can do budget all year round if you want. You can always refine your numbers. It's good to set a plan for the year, but as an exercise to be continually improving your finances, it's just something that's done. And the other thing is that, you know, it's a return to your pre-COVID practice of hearing from your city departments and hearing from your employees as to what's going on in city hall and in their departments. Next slide. So what were the guiding principles? What were that we used to say, how are we going to prepare the budget? Well, the first thing was to have a balanced general fund budget and even maybe a surplus. So at this point, we're projecting a small surplus. to maintain city reserves. So we have the council-approved reserve of 25%. We made sure that that was funded up front. We recognize realistic revenue estimates and projections. I personally went through every single line item, not once, but twice, and then reviewed it with staff and then reviewed them with our consultants that are responsible for sales tax, property tax, and the other tax. So the amounts that you have right now have been vetted by not just myself but other people as well more importantly the council has enhanced and prioritized capital improvements if there's any way to describe this particular budget this year it's as a heavy intensive capital improvement budget it is designed to do the work that the council believes needs to be done at this point in time. That is the focus of this financial plan. Let's get these things built and let's get these improvements done. It includes the repair of city facilities. You had your assessment plan done. So we're using those assessment plans to try to incorporate some of the funding into repair and maintenance. And as you'll be discussing later on, your pension funding strategies and also your property and liability insurances, which I think, again, we funded at the levels with a slight increase, but we're still analyzing the numbers to make sure that we have a firm handle as to what those costs are and that we have them fully covered. Next slide. So there are some areas that we focused on. So we focused on adopting a new comprehensive fee schedule. So the council reviewed that fee schedule. They gave us direction, which was no increases in any fees over 5%. So we took that serious and implemented that limit. We adopted a funded capital improvements program. So fund balances have been ascertained. We're still tweaking the general fund a little bit, and Measure L is being committed 100 percent as per the Council's promise to its citizens to capital improvements. And as you'll see, in the budget, it uses up pretty much the entire amount. And then the reuse of the former fire station too the council has directed to repair it and to enter into negotiations to try to put it back into use as a fire station next slide
01:20:08.21	Wayne Kwan	you know,
01:21:10.95	Jesus Nava	We're still working on those insurance costs. We're pretty close, but I think the council has been fully aware of the insurance issues here in the city. Of course, the transfer of the sewer system is also being finalized. We're in the final stages of negotiations. We're performing our financial due diligence. We're looking at the defeasance of the system debt. And then, of course, the approval of the memorandum of understanding. And with your city leases, you entered into a professional agreement with the Kimber Companies, which have performed superbly and have been a real assistant to the staff in terms of working with the tenants, and more importantly, in helping us to identify some of the repairs and needs that are needed in some of the rental properties that we have. And then we're also looking at hopefully establishing some sort of model master lease agreement so that we have similar agreements among all our tenants. And more importantly, that we have built in cost of living adjustments and other types of increases in those leases as well, just to keep up with business. Next item. In terms of the city debt, we got the final payment of the 2006 general obligations bonds, which you use to finance the construction of the fire department and the police department. Your capital appreciation bond payments will commence, and then we're in the process of paying off your state water resource loan and paying off the sewer revenue bonds, as well as part of the transfer of the system. And then with the parking fund, we were asked to look at those parking revenues closely to try to make sure that we had a full understanding as to how they were moving and how they were being redistributed against the various forms of payment in the parking lots. Next slide.
01:22:55.05	Jesus Nava	And then we were also asked to focus on the business improvement district, making sure that we had our billing approaches in hand, that we had firm handle on the receipt of payments. And more importantly, that we were following through on our back office operations with billings and collections. And for that, we're proposing that we hire a firm to help us with that back office. A firm that specializes in that type of activity and in reality handles in excess of a billion dollars in business improvement district collections and administration. So it's a well-known firm, MBS, and we're hoping to enter into an agreement with them soon.
01:23:34.40	Jesus Nava	Next slide. So refining the budget. What does that mean? Well, as I talked about earlier, if you had a budget director, you would be doing budget all the time because that's what budget directors do. You have a finance director, but the council still has the ability to refine the budget all year long.
01:23:52.17	Jesus Nava	numbers change, we have a plan, things occur. So the good news is that the council through its authority can amend that budget at any point in time. And the council has some very specific times when they do that. The council strategy setting session, the post audit, and the publication of the financial statements in December, and then your mid-year budget review and your adjustments as you did this past year.
01:24:16.49	Jesus Nava	Next slide. So what is this budget process? I threw this quote, most of you will recognize who it's from, you know? So there are no knowns, there's things that we know.
01:24:25.99	Jesus Nava	There are things that we know we know, you know, but we also know that there are known unknowns. There's a lot of things that we don't know, and that is to say we know there are some things we don't know, but there are also unknown unknowns, the ones that we don't know we don't know about. And, of course, everyone knows who said that, our former defense secretary under a different administration, but what it tells you is that
01:24:52.99	Jesus Nava	The things that we do know about, we try to take care of. The things that we don't know about, we'll continue to try to find out more, educate ourselves, and try to define those issues in terms of finances and in terms of policy as part of the budget. So budget is really never done. Issues come up all the time, and part of the work of the budget officers to make sure that they're appropriately converting those issues into both financial matters and into policy statements as well.
01:25:22.86	Jesus Nava	Next slide. So we talked about the fact that we're not eating up all the monies in the slide. This is an all-funds summary. There will be a couple more adjustments in the next couple of days based on the refining of the numbers, but these numbers are pretty darn good. You'll see that in the general fund. You'll still have an estimated ending balance of about $14 million after your expenditures and your transfers. The only item that will bring that number down is the final CIP transfer from the general fund to fully fund the $16.66 million in projects. But I won't go through all the funds, but you can see that in reality there's only two funds that kind of sometimes...
01:26:07.76	Jesus Nava	go into the negative. And there's nothing wrong with having a fund in the negative. That doesn't mean that the financial plan is wrong. It just means that at this point in time, your investment is gearing up, you know, as an asset to hopefully generate additional revenue in the future so that those items can be fully financed. So, you know, you have to look at it in terms of does an asset immediately produce money? Some do, some don't. Some are an investment and you require additional passage of time and you need to grow that business in order to then get into the black as any other business. Next slide.
01:26:46.15	Jesus Nava	So here's your general fund. And again, we're working at refining. We looked at some other numbers in these, but the numbers in terms of the revenues are the way they will appear in the budget. As you can see, we start with the ending, the beginning balance of each year. So if you look at 24, that number, that first number in the column, 15.4, comes right out of your CAFR or your financial statements. Then we bring in the revenues, and then we bring the expenditures. We bring in the transfers, and then we come up with
01:27:17.37	Jesus Nava	an ending fund balance and then we give you the description of those fund balances based on the council's policies which means that we break it out for measure l we break it out for the parts pension trust and then we break it out to show the economic stability so that the council can look at the schedule and see that we've covered each of those items now the challenging part is that the city has developed individual funds for both PARs and for the Measure L. But for purposes of financial reporting, you've got to bring those financial activities back into the general fund. So for purposes of financial reporting, these numbers are included in the general fund. For purposes of budgeting, they're removed from the general fund and set up as their own sub fund. So part of the complexity is then remembering that, hey, when we do financial statements, I got to put the monies back in and account for them as a general fund. But when the council wants to see what are we producing, I got to take those monies back out and account for them separately so that I can show the council and the citizens what those numbers are at any point in time. It could be done a little bit differently. You really don't have to have a fund. It could still be a line item because when you look at your financial report, it's still reported as sales tax. We have a big number in there, 5.2 million, not the 2.5 that you see in the general fund, because it includes that measure L number. So when you look at your financial statements, you look here and you say, hey, well, why is NAVA only saying 2.5 million in sales tax, when the financial statements say it's more like 5.2, 5.3, because the financial statements include and combine measure L into the general fund.
01:29:04.02	Jesus Nava	putting it in, taking it back out, putting it back in becomes sort of this complex, and you have to make sure that it's done so that we're not double counting or excluding any revenues from any of the other funds. And that's kind of the complexity and the running of the numbers over and over and over to make sure that they are accurate and correct. Next slide, please. Revenues.
01:29:28.49	Jesus Nava	Simple formula in terms of revenues. So we took the adopted budget
01:29:34.90	Jesus Nava	The next column is your year end estimates. We went through all the revenue items again, line by line.
01:29:42.65	Jesus Nava	calculated 10 months worth of collections till the end of April. We still don't have the collections for May. May just ended this past week. We're finalizing that month, and we don't have our collections for June, so I used last year's collections for May and June as the approximate estimates for the remaining two months for the year. Once I had then the annual figure for this estimate, we augmented those revenues by 3% for the next year, your recommended budget. And then we took a look at the consultant reports for sales tax, for business licenses, for TOT, for anything that the city had a consultant that produces a revenue estimate, we looked at their estimates and we used them and compared them and came up with the best revenue estimate that we thought for the budget. So not only have the revenues been reviewed line item by line item, but we've also have had our revenue consultants take a look at them as well.
01:30:44.48	Jesus Nava	Next slide.
01:30:46.30	Jesus Nava	So in terms of expenditures, here are your recommended general fund operating expenditures for administration, $4.2 million. City planning and budget, $2.2 million. Non-departmental, $2.8 million.
01:31:00.31	Jesus Nava	Police or public safety, $7 million by far the largest. Public works, $3.6 million. Leisure and culture, $2.1 million for a grand total of $22.1 million in general fund expenditures, operating expenditures. And then next slide, please. You have a distribution chart showing the percentages of the budget as a breakdown by service. So you can see public safety is 32%, followed by the others.
01:31:31.83	Jesus Nava	Next slide.
01:31:34.11	Jesus Nava	So reserves, so the council has a committed reserve of 25% of budgeted general fund expenditures. So we looked at our $21 million number, what is 25% of that?
01:31:46.51	Jesus Nava	you know, 5.5 million. So that's set aside in your budget by council direction.
01:31:53.13	Jesus Nava	Move it over there, don't spend it, and make it available in case the economy goes bad. So we've done that. We've also have come back and said, hey, we've got an unassigned reserve of about almost $10 million that the council can use to fund the remainder of the CIP program or other needs that the council might have.
01:32:14.27	Jesus Nava	But more importantly, if the council were to look at what cash is really available in the full emergency for the city, you've got about $15.1 million in cash.
01:32:25.66	Unknown	Okay.
01:32:26.34	Jesus Nava	Okay?
01:32:28.60	Jesus Nava	Next slide.
01:32:31.25	Jesus Nava	Capital improvements. So as I mentioned,
01:32:35.52	Jesus Nava	New budget for operating, same budget for operating.
01:32:40.09	Jesus Nava	Capital budget, extremely new, very intensive, fulfills the City Council's commitment to its citizens that we will place these large sums of money into capital improvements, starting with the full use of Measure L. All $8.4 million will be transferred into the CIP fund to fund capital improvements, leaving a zero balance at the end of FY26 in Measure L. And as the city manager described, we will also be proposing a transfer from the general fund on appropriated balance to supplement the capital improvements program and make up the rest of the funding for it. So you have the money available, and we'll bring it back to you as part of the final budget as well so that you're fully funded for the entire $16.66 million. Thank you.
01:33:31.80	Jesus Nava	Next slide, please. Remaining budget issues.
01:33:36.98	Jesus Nava	Pensions and other post-employment benefits or health insurance payments for retirees is another way of putting it. So we continue to refine those numbers and work with our consultant teams to make sure that we have a good handle, not only on the current costs, but on the future costs moving forward, particularly in the years where those pension obligations are going to spike and where the city council is going to be looking for some financial relief in order not to cut their budgets at that point in time. But I think this city has done a fairly good job in terms of setting aside monies in that trust to try to cover at least those years where you're going to have some pressures. Climate emergency fund. So we're, again, looking at what is the appropriate amount. I heard a number of a million dollars possibly at some point for a climate fund. So we continue to do additional work as to what would be an appropriate climate fund and how that would be funded. and we continue to work with liability and property insurances. And in fact, tomorrow we'll be dealing with liability and property insurance to make sure that we have a good handle on when those costs will be. We do have a variety of unfunded department needs and requests. Since we had a short time period to prepare this budget, 45 days to 60, we didn't have the normal process where you would ask your departments, what are your needs, what are your capital needs? We simply had to get the budget done. done but we did the departments did still submit their lists of needs so we have it it's been delivered to the city manager so he can take a look at it and then together with the council you know consider what can possibly be done to fulfill any of those needs if any and then of course you know we're still looking at additional capital improvements funding since the council's priority right now is the improvement of the physical assets of the city, we're putting a lot of work into how do we come up with additional funding sources to fund even more projects for you. And one of the items that has been discussed here, I know, in the past has been the private placement of debt or borrowings of money in order to get some other projects done and possibly the creation of additional financing districts. But what this simply means is that the council is on the hunt for additional money to do additional improvements in the community. And I think that's a great exercise.
01:35:56.78	Jesus Nava	Next slide. So in terms of acknowledgments, I'd like to acknowledge the city council. I didn't get a chance to meet with the finance committee, but I know the finance committee has been busy in the past and has done lots of work. So for the work that it's done in the past, thank you. The department directors, the same thing. You know, I worked with Kevin closely. He helped me to understand how capital projects are funded here. And even though I still couldn't get it right, he had the patience to work with me and to finally, you know, help me figure it out. So, thank you very much. And to my finance staff, you know, um,
01:36:38.30	Jesus Nava	I'm working them hard.
01:36:42.01	Jesus Nava	And
01:36:43.36	Jesus Nava	More importantly, they're enjoying it.
01:36:46.77	Jesus Nava	they don't feel put upon and more importantly they feel like they're learning.
01:36:51.07	Jesus Nava	They're learning and we're teaching them how to do budget, how to look at revenues, how to collect rents, how to run the financial operations of the city. And that's a whole other task on to itself, but one that I have also embraced in order to make sure that that department functions properly. And then our city employees. So I have to admit, I have been welcomed with open arms here at City Hall. Everybody has been helpful. Everybody has been kind. Everybody has just been friendly. So for that, I thank the staff and I thank the city. And most importantly, the residents of Sausalito. You know, I'm a wanderer. I walk streets. I go inside shops. I talk to merchants. I ask how business is going. I ask how they feel about things. And I get a lot of information from them. So I want to thank them. Some of them are sitting here in the audience. So, you know, without that background, without that additional information, it's hard to come in in a couple of months, try to create a financial plan for a community that has existed for over 100 years. But everybody has pitched in, everybody has helped, and this plan really represents all these people helping and pitching in to try to get you this budget in front of you at this point in time. So with that, I'll give it back to the city manager. He can discuss pensions and cost management strategies, because I know that's a hot topic for the city council. And then we can take questions afterwards.
01:38:31.21	Jesus Nava	Yeah.
01:38:31.44	Chris Zapata	I'm going to ask Craig Hill to come up and load up his presentation. I think that the one thing that I want to say is that Sausalito, as an early adopter of 115, a trust of understanding how pensions could impact you in the future, has done a few things in the last couple of years that I think inform these conversations. Besides the help from NHA advisors, the city council authorized and got a report from Bartels and Associates in 2022 that show, you know, where we were because many things changed post-COVID. We all know that CalPERS is obviously the largest investment retirement fund in the world, but it has a lot of swings that impact cities. And so for you to try to navigate an approach, you've been doing that vigilantly and continuously for the last 10 years and now we're going to provide what we believe is the latest and greatest from our advisors NHA advisors and that's Craig so Craig please
01:39:28.50	Craig Hill	Thank you. Good evening. Good to see you again. Craig Hill, NHA Advisors. As Chris mentioned, what we're really trying to do is a quick update on where things are going for the city. So next slide.
01:39:44.28	Craig Hill	We'll start with just some of our observations. This was work that we did a couple of months ago before the budget process really got started. The good news you just heard from Jesus is that
01:39:53.78	Craig Hill	what the budget that's being proposed to you today,
01:39:56.58	Craig Hill	does not anticipate needing any
01:40:00.32	Craig Hill	Wick.
01:40:01.30	Craig Hill	Action on your pension.
01:40:03.72	Craig Hill	We have a number of other cities we're working with right now that are in this process and they're looking for immediate relief for solutions that do include your something like your 115. In your case, we are not suggesting that anything we talk about over the next five or 10 minutes is something that needs to be incorporated into the proposed budget as Jesus just mentioned. Next slide.
01:40:28.32	Craig Hill	Next slide.
01:40:30.24	Craig Hill	Thank you. So as you know, the city has historically been very proactive in at least looking and acknowledging
01:40:39.74	Craig Hill	the pension liability. What we,
01:40:41.84	Craig Hill	like to suggest for those that don't live in this space full time is, you know, the pension really has two things. It's one, it's a big dollar amount. You know, it's your biggest liability that you have.
01:40:52.01	Craig Hill	That seems for some magical reason to change every year, depending on what Sacramento and what CalPERS decides their calculations are going to generate. The more important thing from a budget perspective is how much is that payment, right? Unlike a mortgage that you pay on your house, which you
01:41:10.19	Craig Hill	unless it's a variable rate.
01:41:11.50	Craig Hill	You know?
01:41:12.55	Craig Hill	month after month, what you're going to pay.
01:41:14.86	Craig Hill	In the case of your CalPERS liability, it's moving every year based on what CalPERS is telling you your liability needs to be paid or the amortization needs to be made. So when we think about this from a budget perspective...
01:41:28.48	Craig Hill	We're not so much focusing on what that big total UAL unfunded actual liability that you hear about. It's more about what is this payment structure that people are or that Sacramento is telling you, you need to be paying attention to. And they soon alluded to that they've programmed and the city staff has programmed in for the proposed 2000.
01:41:50.03	Craig Hill	26, 27, 25, 26 budget, sorry, an amount that we know is going to be due. It's really those future years that we wanna talk about. So we'll get into a little bit about, you know, where do we think that's going? And then we'll talk about the assets that you have and how you might wanna think about this kind of a long term from a policy perspective. So next slide, please.
01:42:15.41	Craig Hill	One more.
01:42:17.98	Craig Hill	So as you probably all are aware, the way that the UAL works or your pension program works is you have assets that you've been contributing that are sitting with CalPERS being invested. And as the value of those assets goes up, it's matched against what your projected liabilities are going to be or the amount of payments you're going to be making to retirees. When you can see down below in this graph, the blue numbers are the returns that CalPERS was doing. And obviously when they do really well, your unfunded liability goes down, right? That the gray bars go down. When they don't meet their bogey, that rate proceeds to climb. So it's kind of a reverse of what you might think about. The next slide will show you what this really means over the long term. So here is some history. to climb. So it's kind of a reverse of what you might think about. Next slide will show you what this really means over the long term. So here is some historical data and projected data for what the city has been paying. And this is the pressure point that we've talked to council about in the past. And this has certainly been something that finance has been critically aware of. The payments as early as 2018 were down in a million and a half dollars.
01:43:26.79	Craig Hill	And yet today we're talking about programming three and a half million dollars in your budget, right? It's a $2 million increase since 2018. So, and we know.
01:43:36.75	Craig Hill	all things being equal, and even if CalPERS can meet its targeted investment returns, that you're going to see that number continue to climb as you see those blue bars up into the $4 million a year range. So when we think about your budget process, while maybe not anything we want to deal with today for this
01:43:57.55	Craig Hill	a proposed budget.
01:43:58.90	Craig Hill	know that this is a climbing liability that isn't going to go away unless, miraculously, CalPERS starts knocking it out of the park, the stock market does great, and they actually exceed their expectations. For every year that they exceed the 6.8 right now, those bars actually go down.
01:44:18.95	Craig Hill	As an example,
01:44:20.77	Craig Hill	if you see from the orange line right there,
01:44:23.31	Craig Hill	In the event they were to change one of their assumptions, which is, you know, we think that
01:44:28.89	Craig Hill	we're not going to continue to make 6.8% a year. We're going to go down to 6.5. We just did some sensitivity analysis for you. What you can see is just that one assumption change,
01:44:40.62	Craig Hill	would impact your payments to where they would effectively go up $500,000 a year, right? They would be you would be talking about peaking out in the next couple years at four and a half million. And for a budget your size, that's a substantial increase. So
01:44:54.73	Craig Hill	We want to just be sensitive to what can happen with either performance missing performance or with changes in the assumptions next slide.
01:45:07.38	Craig Hill	We also wanted to quantify for everybody's education, really, you know, what does it mean? So if they were, for instance, to change their assumption, this is the blue box from 6.8 to 6.5, it would actually increase your UAL from 37 million that we think it is right now up to about 42.
01:45:28.31	Craig Hill	And again,
01:45:29.93	Craig Hill	We don't think you need to focus on that big dollar amount. It's, okay, what does that mean for my max payments? They would increase from 4.2 million to about 4.6. So it's a $400,000 a year increase just by one assumption change.
01:45:44.59	Craig Hill	Likewise, if CalPERS doesn't meet their targeted investment returns, the green box, you can see that.
01:45:52.94	Craig Hill	In a worst case scenario, they actually go to zero. They could go negative. They've had years were negative. But let's just say they had one year at negative.
01:46:00.17	Craig Hill	or at 0%, that would increase from 37 million to 43 million. So you could see how quickly one bad return
01:46:09.97	Craig Hill	would do. It would increase your effective payments about $700,000 a year.
01:46:15.17	Craig Hill	So we always like to do this sensitivity analysis just in the
01:46:18.61	Craig Hill	context of
01:46:19.73	Craig Hill	what your budget is, you know, to somebody like San Francisco,
01:46:22.71	Craig Hill	These numbers don't move the needle to the city of Sausalito. They do. Right. So it's an important, important fact to figure.
01:46:30.64	Craig Hill	Next slide, please.
01:46:32.45	Craig Hill	So as we talk about
01:46:34.74	Craig Hill	Again, long-term, what are your management strategies? Well, the number one thing that the city did early on was
01:46:40.73	Craig Hill	set up at section 115 trust.
01:46:43.28	Craig Hill	And that allowed you then to,
01:46:45.71	Craig Hill	kind of park money into a pension reserve, if you will.
01:46:48.85	Craig Hill	And
01:46:49.76	Craig Hill	While it is locked up legally and only available for pension payments, whether it's your normal cost payments or your UAL payments, it is effectively, you know,
01:47:01.83	Craig Hill	promote or basically guaranteed to go towards one of those two things. Next slide.
01:47:08.12	Craig Hill	So there are a number of strategies that cities and public agencies throughout California look at. The city currently is doing two of these right now, which is great. The first one is you have historically paid, prepaid at the beginning of each fiscal year, the amount due. And from a cash flow perspective, yes, that draws your fund balance down a little bit early in August or in July. But...
01:47:33.54	Craig Hill	CalPERS appreciates taking that money early and actually gives you a discount or gives you credit
01:47:38.40	Craig Hill	Um,
01:47:39.44	Craig Hill	for making that payment early. So it's a prudent and most of the cities that we work with do it if they've got fund balance that affords that. And you certainly have that with your other reserve policies that allow you to maintain a good cash balance. The other options that people will often look at is, you know, negotiating cost sharing with employee groups and or,
01:48:04.13	Craig Hill	Um,
01:48:04.62	Craig Hill	going to CalPERS and asking for a fresh start. And real quickly, what does that mean? You saw the hump, you saw those blue lines and how that is kind of an odd amortization schedule.
01:48:15.64	Craig Hill	you can go to CalPERS and ask them
01:48:18.80	Craig Hill	to do a fresh start, which means can you just roll all of these little individual UAL
01:48:24.64	Craig Hill	liabilities together and create kind of a level mortgage payment for us. The bad news is it's a compressed period of time. So the payment actually goes up from what you're paying now.
01:48:35.96	Craig Hill	So unless you can budget for it, we don't see too many cities actually implementing the Fresh Start. You do get benefits from it because obviously you're going to pay it off sooner. So there's less interest that you're effectively accruing on that. But it is really a cash flow tool that we really want to stress test your budget and your projected budgets over the next five to 10 years to see whether it is something that makes any sense. The other thing that you use is your this 115 or your pension cash reserves to make additional payments or to,
01:48:51.47	Wayne Kwan	But it is.
01:49:11.68	Craig Hill	contribute one-time dollars to CalPERS to buy down the debt.
01:49:15.83	Craig Hill	Think about it like a car. You can always go in the bank and say, well, here's an extra five grand. Can you pay down my...
01:49:22.43	Craig Hill	My loan balance that I have on my on my car, the and we'll talk about this a little bit more because this is something we want to leave you with tonight, just in terms of a tool.
01:49:33.23	Craig Hill	and something to ponder really over the next year in terms of how do we want to use this 115 trust? You know, you've got about $4 million in it.
01:49:42.75	Craig Hill	And it is earning interest.
01:49:45.43	Craig Hill	And you're at a point in time where you can start to think about, well,
01:49:49.38	Craig Hill	It's not really set it and forget it, right? Because it's not doing anything for you other than accruing interest right now.
01:49:55.32	Craig Hill	But do you want to
01:49:57.70	Craig Hill	program it.
01:49:58.91	Craig Hill	to supplement or to partially pay some of your future year's payments? Or do you maybe want to just use it to, you know, give it to CalPERS to buy down your debt and then have it, you know, affect your future payment stream? So next slide, please.
01:50:17.98	Craig Hill	So when we talk about the options, I'm going to just real quickly go through four scenarios for you just to kind of give you a magnitude. But the idea really is, what do we do with this cash? You've got it right now invested. It is going to move over to as an administrator over into CalPERS. You've had it with PARS. You've actually had it and invested in a very conservative investment strategy. And that's been earning some money. It's not as high as some of the more aggressive options that they had. But again, if you're not doing anything, you're not contributing to it, it's just earning interest. Next slide. Next slide.
01:50:58.08	Craig Hill	So the main...
01:50:59.60	Craig Hill	Thing we want to start in, and again, there'll be four scenarios here, but the main issue is the benefit of you having this 115 is huge.
01:51:08.05	Craig Hill	Because simple math,
01:51:10.19	Craig Hill	allows you
01:51:11.43	Craig Hill	to kind of make the payment to Sacramento or to CalPERS every year from two sources going forward, you could say,
01:51:17.64	Craig Hill	We're only going to budget.
01:51:19.65	Craig Hill	that orange line.
01:51:21.43	Craig Hill	Right. That's every year we want to just only schedule in our side of our budget that amount. We know that CalPERS is going to be asking for effectively the top, the light blue bar that's above.
01:51:35.73	Craig Hill	But we're going to draw from our pension reserve to make that Delta or make that difference.
01:51:41.78	Craig Hill	And so you're effectively managing your budget process and your budget payments to PERS,
01:51:47.52	Craig Hill	All right. Bye.
01:51:50.61	Craig Hill	using up all of the trust over the next
01:51:54.48	Craig Hill	Call it 10 years.
01:51:56.16	Craig Hill	And so what does that mean? You're going to draw down 4.9 with interest earnings over that time.
01:52:01.36	Craig Hill	but you're, you're, you're managing your cashflow, you're managing your budget and you're making this pension,
01:52:07.45	Craig Hill	portion of your budget.
01:52:09.14	Craig Hill	stable year over year, right? So this is a good analysis to see
01:52:16.09	Craig Hill	And to the credit of the council and of the city, you have enough right now
01:52:21.12	Craig Hill	to effectively freeze your payments at 3.5 million a year, all things being equal and CalPERS doing what they're supposed to do for the next eight years.
01:52:31.48	Craig Hill	Next slide.
01:52:34.81	Craig Hill	If you were to, let's say, get a little bit more of an investment return on that trust while you're sitting around.
01:52:44.91	Craig Hill	it would effectively drop that payment to 3.4 million. So,
01:52:48.66	Craig Hill	Again, sensitivity analysis here. That's all we're talking about is same trust amount, $4 million.
01:52:54.06	Craig Hill	But what if it earned a little bit higher of a return than you historically earned? You can see that that effectively is worth about $100,000 a year to you.
01:53:03.14	Craig Hill	So something to
01:53:04.74	Craig Hill	think about in terms of an investment strategy with the 4 million. Next slide.
01:53:11.24	Craig Hill	Aight.
01:53:11.97	Craig Hill	Under these next two scenarios, this is where you actually, instead of using it to help make the payment, you're actually going to give
01:53:18.97	Craig Hill	all of it to
01:53:20.69	Craig Hill	CalPERS at once.
01:53:22.65	Craig Hill	and just buy down the debt? And then how does that affect your payments going forward? And you can see that's the difference between the solid line and the bars, right? So you would give them the money, the $4 million, it would adjust a number of the basis, and you would start getting a schedule from CalPERS going forward that would be something less than what was projected. And you can see it's still going to be going up.
01:53:48.57	Craig Hill	But it is starting at a much lower point.
01:53:53.55	Craig Hill	Finally, the last scenario is
01:53:58.32	Craig Hill	you're actually getting, you're giving them the money and you're telling them which basis or which portion of the debt you want to be paid off. This is a little bit more strategic. I'm sorry, next slide.
01:54:10.89	Craig Hill	where you can see you're taking all the savings in the next 10 years, not at all in those following years.
01:54:20.12	Craig Hill	So with that, I have one table that we don't need to go through, which is the actual numbers behind all these graphs. If you go to the next slide, and I will give it back to the city manager.
01:54:33.44	Chris Zapata	Thank you. Thank you, Craig. So these are the conversations that all cities must have, certainly with the budget, and this city with respect to its 115 trust and trying to get some direction from the council and how to approach this. And so this is not a tonight request. It's more of an information share so that as we go into the coming years where that hump is characterized, it starts to occur, that we, in fact, have a strategy that the city council is behind. The one thing I will also tell you is that in Jesus' presentation, one of the things that he mentioned was some debt coming off the books. In 2030, the certificate of participation debt comes off the books for the city. That's about $600,000 a year. So that's future revenue. And the one thing I really want to stress is we've been working and trying to get to a model of a 10-year financial plan or tool. And, you know, I think, you know, we've kind of had fits and starts, but we need to follow through on that. And, you know, it would be somebody that would be able to do that internally, which has been kind of difficult. So more than likely what I'm hearing is we might want to consult for that service and develop a 10-year modeling tool that way. That concludes the information that we have, Mayor and Council.
01:55:54.66	Sarah Silver	Thank you. I'm going to start with questions. If you can stay there. Can you go back to slide 30 Noelle?
01:56:10.72	Sarah Silver	one more back
01:56:14.13	Sarah Silver	Okay, that's it.
01:56:18.67	Sarah Silver	Yeah, that's it. So first I want to address, as part of my question, I want to address a comment by
01:56:27.63	Sarah Silver	Uh,
01:56:28.49	Sarah Silver	Interim Director Nava regarding the budgeting process. So you mentioned that the budget does not include any monies specifically allocated towards CalPERS other than our payment that is due at the beginning of the year. And I will tell you that has been the practice when in 2018 we adopted as a council a smoothing strategy
01:56:56.77	Sarah Silver	whereby we don't budget anything more than the payment each year.
01:57:00.54	Sarah Silver	But at the end of the year, we take our reserves and invest them into the 115 trust.
01:57:05.77	Sarah Silver	And the reason I asked you to pull up this slide is that even back in 2018, our predictions in terms of
01:57:14.21	Sarah Silver	the zenith of pension obligations were four years 29 through 34, those six years. And so our goal in 2018 was to, and at that time our surpluses were running about a million dollars a year. And so our goal was to build the 115 trust up to six million, so that we would then have a million dollars to smooth that four million
01:57:37.38	Sarah Silver	obligation in years 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, down to 3 million, which is more manageable, especially since we knew some of our debt would be paid off in 2030, which is, you know,
01:57:51.35	Sarah Silver	then we have that additional money that we're right now using towards debt to again reduce the general fund obligation. And so
01:57:59.55	Sarah Silver	your scenarios, um,
01:58:03.67	Sarah Silver	propose
01:58:07.30	Sarah Silver	not
01:58:10.11	Sarah Silver	not increasing the 115 trust anymore other than through interest earned.
01:58:18.28	Sarah Silver	and
01:58:19.68	Sarah Silver	With that approach, your scenario 1A, which I think is at slide 35, shows net payments of $3.5 million rather than the $3 million that I think we were hoping for
01:58:31.48	Sarah Silver	back in 2018. Now, obviously, a lot has happened since then. So I'm amazed that any of this remains even remotely relevant. Thank you, Barrels and Wells, for doing a great job of prognosticating. So why?
01:58:49.80	Sarah Silver	would we
01:58:51.73	Sarah Silver	Not.
01:58:53.35	Sarah Silver	provide more certainty, why would we not
01:58:57.46	Sarah Silver	keep that commitment to build the 115 Trust to $6 million, rather than just stopping that safeguard at,
01:59:08.21	Sarah Silver	4 million, particularly given the volatility of the CalPERS
01:59:13.77	Sarah Silver	Um,
01:59:14.56	Sarah Silver	rate of return that you discussed this evening. So why would we not be more conservative in our approach? Why would we stop? Because none of your scenarios contemplate carrying out
01:59:27.27	Sarah Silver	the policy adopted by the council in 2018.
01:59:31.23	Chris Zapata	Yeah. Mayor, I can answer that question because I think Craig wasn't here in 2018 when this was made, nor was I. But I think if you want to up the ante in the CalPERS Trust, I heard two ways to do it. One is go to a more aggressive investment strategy. And maybe you do, maybe you don't. But the other way is you look at your budget this year. You have...
01:59:54.70	Chris Zapata	$4 million in unassigned cash.
01:59:57.37	Sarah Silver	but our expenses exceed our revenues by 3 million this year alone.
02:00:02.03	Chris Zapata	and we've budgeted for that. And that's been part of how we've observed those costs. But if you wanted to add more to that 4 million, that 3.9 million, you could take 2 million out of your unassigned reserve and get there.
02:00:14.04	Sarah Silver	The policy was to take surplus. So this year we're looking at a surplus of 700. And there are lots of possible uses of that surplus. But my question to...
02:00:25.92	Sarah Silver	the
02:00:27.00	Sarah Silver	Consultant.
02:00:27.05	Chris Zapata	consultant. Let me add a little wrinkle to your comment about only surplus. That is surplus. That's an accumulation of surplus. That's what that $4 million represents.
02:00:36.27	Sarah Silver	We have for decades maintained a consistent unassigned fund balance beyond reserves in our general fund. So that would be a change in policy.
02:00:47.10	Chris Zapata	Well, I disagree with you respectfully. The policy you set was 25%. And every year you can look at the unassigned fund balance as you did this year with the capital improvement program, and you can suggest we want to take more out of it and put it into those infrastructure needs. If you wanted to make pensions a priority and get to $6 million, I'm saying you could do that tomorrow.
02:01:07.84	Sarah Silver	So I understand we can get there. We could put 700 into it this year. The goal was to have it at 6 million by 2829, since that's when the zenith reaches 4 million, and that's when the smoothing would occur. But...
02:01:22.93	Sarah Silver	My question is, given the volatility of the CalPERS investment portfolio and the
02:01:31.11	Sarah Silver	the huge variance in terms of what the UAL turns out to be and
02:01:35.30	Sarah Silver	and therefore,
02:01:36.88	Sarah Silver	our annual obligation turns out to be
02:01:40.63	Sarah Silver	why not increase the 115 trust to hedge against that volatility?
02:01:46.40	Craig Hill	Yeah, no, it's a great question. And from a policy recommendation side, we always are advocating
02:01:52.96	Craig Hill	for
02:01:54.04	Craig Hill	uh,
02:01:54.82	Craig Hill	putting as much as possible into that one 15, right? Because it really does,
02:02:00.66	Craig Hill	go a long way
02:02:02.30	Craig Hill	towards
02:02:03.73	Craig Hill	addressing the unforeseen
02:02:06.40	Craig Hill	One of the things that we briefly touched on in the slide was CalPERS is going through and going to be doing a study in 2025.
02:02:15.66	Craig Hill	that could very easily come back with some assumption changes with, like I said earlier, a switch,
02:02:21.82	Craig Hill	you could have a $5 million increase in your UAL and your payments could go up $400,000 or $500,000 a year.
02:02:27.93	Craig Hill	So it's
02:02:28.91	Craig Hill	We are concerned and we do believe that the
02:02:33.62	Craig Hill	You've got competing...
02:02:35.40	Craig Hill	needs, right? Is it, is it your capital program?
02:02:38.85	Craig Hill	or is it your pension liabilities?
02:02:43.22	Craig Hill	regardless of what those pension policies may have been, we have a lot of cities that set some pretty aggressive objectives and whether they're able to get money into those trusts as quickly or to the levels they want,
02:02:58.10	Craig Hill	is, you know, that's the, the unknown, um,
02:03:02.32	Craig Hill	If you were to ask a recommendation, we certainly, without knowing any other prioritizations, say,
02:03:10.00	Craig Hill	If you can make that 6 million, you can see already through our sensitivity analysis, the benefit of even just having the 4 million.
02:03:19.19	Craig Hill	Add 50% to that and it's going to only increase the benefit proportionally. So it's simple math, right? This isn't magic.
02:03:31.04	Craig Hill	Uh,
02:03:31.87	Craig Hill	By going from four to six, that's huge.
02:03:34.60	Craig Hill	from having that pension trust
02:03:37.45	Craig Hill	earn a higher return than it has, that's also going to be a big positive for you. So there are a number of factors that
02:03:45.37	Craig Hill	we know unfortunately are going to be
02:03:48.37	Craig Hill	offset.
02:03:49.25	Craig Hill	by
02:03:50.41	Craig Hill	future liability that's just going to almost be mandated on you through any kind of assumption change that CalPERS makes.
02:03:57.25	Sarah Silver	Okay, so that brings me to my next question, which is going to sound snarky.
02:04:01.72	Sarah Silver	And could you go to slide 37, Noelle? It's called Scenario 2A, 20-Year Amortization.
02:04:12.39	Sarah Silver	Next. There we go. So this additional discretionary payment where we take our money and give it over to CalPERS now, why in the world would we do that given their really dismal track record of managing their investments? Because now we don't have a hedge. Now we don't have a hedge against our future investors.
02:04:41.92	Sarah Silver	annual liability, we're taking that hedge and giving it away. So now, if things go haywire, we have no hedge against CalPERS mismanagement, and they have a track record of mismanagement. I'm looking at a five-year average of retirement funds, CalPERS for the period 2019 to 2024. CalPERS is at 6.6%. Marin is at 8.3%. Sonoma is at 9.5%. So why would we give Thank you. CalPERS is at 6.6%. Marin is at 8.3%. Sonoma is at 9.5%. So why would we give, why would we choose, you know,
02:05:14.84	Sarah Silver	um,
02:05:15.87	Sarah Silver	Joe Schmo instead of Warren Buffett to manage our investment, our really precious and so carefully compiled money.
02:05:27.02	Craig Hill	monies.
02:05:27.68	Sarah Silver	you
02:05:28.10	Craig Hill	It's a great question. And we have clients that are on both sides of that.
02:05:33.55	Craig Hill	We have clients who
02:05:35.88	Craig Hill	refuse to give
02:05:37.94	Craig Hill	any more than they have to to Sacramento because they say, you know, we can do
02:05:42.14	Craig Hill	To your point, we can...
02:05:43.61	Craig Hill	We can invest it higher. If you're thinking about it from a pure finance perspective, if you think your trust is going to actually earn something less than what their dismal rate is, then it's an arbitrage play, right? It's like, well, even if they're doing bad, but they're getting six and a half and we're in the trust earning four.
02:06:06.70	Craig Hill	Okay, that's two and a half,
02:06:08.55	Craig Hill	you know, 250 basis points. That's an advantage.
02:06:10.61	Sarah Silver	And I agree, and we are. We gave direction months ago to move our 115 from PARS to CalPERS because CalPERS...
02:06:21.61	Sarah Silver	historically does better than PARS. And so absolutely, I agree with you. If it's underperforming, then you seek a different alternative. So all right, well.
02:06:33.80	Sarah Silver	our vice mayor is new to this whole thing. So I thank you so much for the, really to our city manager, interim finance director and you.
02:06:43.42	Sarah Silver	for a really thorough,
02:06:44.92	Sarah Silver	presentation, it's hard to sit through some of it when I'm squirming at not really following the sort of conservative
02:06:56.39	Sarah Silver	in my view, fiscally responsible approach that we struggled to adopt years ago. But it's very informative, difficult as it is to see the real fluctuations and the real unpredictability of the CalPERS model.
02:07:15.07	Unknown	If I can, a couple questions and maybe comments on this part of it that I'm hopeful will really get into the meat of this year's budget, because that presentation from Jesus was just magnificent, and thanks to the city manager for bringing him in. It was in plain English, understandable. It wasn't just numbers, so thank you very much, and thank you for your presentation. I think I agree that managing the trust and making sure we have adequate funds in the trust to smooth out that peaking, which is the term I'm used to hearing, is the goal. Whether we need to put another $700,000 into it now or not, I'm hesitant to suggest that, and I'm curious because it is true that trust like that then is locked in for that purpose alone. So we have no other flexibility to spend it on, perhaps another need that at the moment we think may be more important at the moment. So that's kind of my question and comment. And as to volatility, I think it was just a couple years ago CalPERS lost money. It was in the negative. So it does fluctuate quite a bit. And we want to avoid that. So I agree with the mayor that this scenario 2A is probably not something we would ever choose. But managing this for the future,
02:08:41.26	Unknown	is key. So I guess the question is, as you understand our budget and given the expenditures that you think we're going to be making, will we be able to make our expenditure for retirement this year and the next year without adding, if you will, from the general fund into the
02:09:03.70	Craig Hill	Certainly under the current budget, proposed budget for 2526, that should not be a problem. Okay. Just to give context to where this analysis is, I'll call it volatile. When we started having the conversations with staff,
02:09:10.23	Unknown	Okay.
02:09:22.26	Craig Hill	I'm going to call it two or three months ago.
02:09:24.42	Craig Hill	I'm not sure if you're
02:09:25.10	Craig Hill	CalPERS was in the negative for the current fiscal year in terms of their investment. The stock market had crashed, and we were just...
02:09:33.06	Craig Hill	My shop was going crazy going, we don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but everybody is going to get destroyed in their next year's contributions or in 2627. So, and very quickly, right? Like everybody else's retirement accounts, it's stock markets kind of adjusted and
02:09:49.82	Craig Hill	and corrected itself and CalPERS right now, you know, we're literally 30 days away from knowing,
02:09:55.32	Craig Hill	how they did for the current fiscal year,
02:09:57.72	Craig Hill	But we're back into breathing room.
02:10:01.01	Craig Hill	So,
02:10:01.73	Craig Hill	If we were having this conversation,
02:10:04.28	Craig Hill	Two months ago, I would...
02:10:05.66	Craig Hill	have a different tone. I'm not suggesting I know what the returns going to be. But it is something that does make it tough to think about.
02:10:14.44	Craig Hill	What?
02:10:15.35	Craig Hill	2627
02:10:17.91	Craig Hill	impact is going to be on your budget. The, you know, the main takeaway, I think for everybody in the room and,
02:10:22.91	Craig Hill	on
02:10:24.44	Craig Hill	you know, out there listening is that because you do have funds set aside, whether it's 4 million or
02:10:31.47	Craig Hill	$4.7 or $6 million or whatever you get that trust fund built to, at a minimum, you're going to be able to throw money at whatever problem you have in these next couple of years. We would love to shave the peak like we showed under those earlier scenarios through the entire thing before it starts to fall off. But in a worst case scenario, you do have that emergency fund that if for if for some reason, CalPERS spiked a million dollars in one year, you could absolutely, as a council say, I want a million out of that trust being applied next year.
02:11:05.64	Craig Hill	It might mess up smoothing all the way out, but it'll get you through that calamity that you would see from that one year or couple of years of bad returns.
02:11:20.05	Unknown	A quick question. As the numbers go down, can you explain in plain English why we're seeing a decline as we go forward?
02:11:27.95	Craig Hill	Yeah, it's actually a great question. So if we actually gave you the real graph, those blue bars would be made up of multiple...
02:11:40.53	Craig Hill	liabilities. So every year that CalPERS does great, you actually get a negative
02:11:46.34	Craig Hill	you know, almost literally below zero where it's, you made more than you were supposed to, so we're buying down your debt. Every year that they have a bad return,
02:11:55.52	Craig Hill	It's a new loan.
02:11:56.75	Craig Hill	right? Or it's a new amount. So they get layered on top of each other. And what's happened is
02:12:02.66	Craig Hill	all of your
02:12:04.53	Craig Hill	projected liabilities that were older
02:12:07.53	Craig Hill	are stacked and that's the peak.
02:12:09.95	Craig Hill	Now that everybody's PEPRA going forward, you're not really creating new...
02:12:14.99	Craig Hill	UAL from your existing
02:12:17.88	Craig Hill	staffing. And so those later years, it's just, there might only be 10 what we call basis in those, whereas you'll have 20 or 25,
02:12:28.27	Craig Hill	in those earlier years. So it's, it's really like stacking multiple equity lines on your house, right? And some of them get paid off sooner rather than later.
02:12:36.22	Unknown	So those peaks are due to, for example, prior employees when benefits were enhanced and made retroactive? Yes.
02:12:44.57	Unknown	Yeah.
02:12:44.66	Craig Hill	Yeah. Every year your portfolio gets reevaluated by CalPERS and it's like, oh, this year?
02:12:45.13	Unknown	Okay.
02:12:51.98	Craig Hill	sorry, you now have $2 million more liability
02:12:55.54	Craig Hill	They stack that on and it had its own amortization period.
02:12:58.82	Unknown	Okay, and then there's a second tier for current employees who are newly hired that don't have that same benefits level?
02:12:59.10	Craig Hill	Amen.
02:12:59.93	Craig Hill	Independent.
02:13:07.96	Craig Hill	So PEPRA, I don't think you have any PEPRA liability, right? UAL related to your PEPRA employees?
02:13:15.62	Chris Zapata	It's a mix of classic and pepper.
02:13:17.77	Craig Hill	Yeah.
02:13:18.90	Craig Hill	But generally speaking, the normal payment, we're just talking about the UAL payments, right? The city also makes a normal payment, which does look more like a mortgage. And it's tied to basically your current employees. And with all of those that are PEPRA, you're pretty much making 100% of what is due. You're not short. So you're not...
02:13:39.77	Craig Hill	You're not creating new UAL.
02:13:40.06	Unknown	and creating new.
02:13:41.34	Unknown	We're not adding liability. Right. Correct. Covering it as we go forward. Exactly. Okay.
02:13:42.74	Craig Hill	Right.
02:13:43.28	Craig Hill	for a long time.
02:13:44.84	Craig Hill	Exactly.
02:13:44.97	Sarah Silver	Exactly.
02:13:46.46	Unknown	Thank you.
02:13:47.44	Sarah Silver	Councilmember Blaustein had follow on.
02:13:49.76	Unknown	That's why we're hopping under Henry's too. So I don't care. You can go first and I'll go after you.
02:13:53.97	Karen Hollweg	Thank you.
02:13:54.00	Unknown	Go ahead.
02:13:54.39	Karen Hollweg	Sometimes at the end you don't see. So thank you for the presentation. But I'd like to go back to slide 29.
02:14:05.12	Karen Hollweg	And just as a luminary.
02:14:09.07	Karen Hollweg	There you go. Nope. There you go, that one.
02:14:12.17	Karen Hollweg	So it's just a preliminary question. The discount rate, or what we call really the return rate, return on investment rate, is just set once a year, and it's set, I think it's June 30th. It's just like a snapshot. It's what's the return rate on this date, and that's what you get for the full year. So for this year, I don't know, you know, have you done a projection on what you think it's going to be for this year?
02:14:39.97	Craig Hill	Well, as I mentioned,
02:14:41.52	Craig Hill	Thank you.
02:14:41.55	Karen Hollweg	IT'S NOT A LITTLE BIT.
02:14:41.62	Craig Hill	as of a couple of months ago, we thought they might be zero.
02:14:44.73	Karen Hollweg	Yeah, it was going to be a bloodbath because the stock market was so low, right?
02:14:45.89	Craig Hill	because it's
02:14:47.93	Craig Hill	But we do not have a current estimate of where things are going to end up at the end of the month.
02:14:52.72	Karen Hollweg	Yeah, so that's part of the volatility of the stock market that we're at the mercy of this idiotic system that CalPERS set up. So if the discount rate was set in January when the stock market was rocking and rolling, we would be in Clover. But since it's June 30th, we're not. So this is an interesting chart. So, and the issue is, if you look at 2021, all of a sudden, our liability went down from $34 million in one year, went down $10 million, because the discount rate was, the stock market was a great year. So, we went down to $25 million. We went down from $34 million to $24 million. So, our city manager and I had a very, very strong conversation that year about can we refinance all of our, or most of our,
02:15:44.12	Karen Hollweg	unfunded liability because we would have saved $10 million if we had been able to react fast enough to go to refinance that. And we tried to scramble and do that and it was just too late in the game and we couldn't do it. So a strategy that we might want to talk about is if we have another slingshot year and it happens to be on June 30th and our liability goes down $10 million or more, do we have a strategy in place to substantially refinance our unfunded pension liability to get us out of this game? So that's something, a strategy we might want to have in a capsule ready to go if we hit that mark again. And that might be something we want to use our 115 trust to help us fund and whatever else we can pull from whatever other strategies might be out there. We just couldn't get off the mark fast enough in 2021 and pull it together policy-wise whether or not we wanted to go through that process. But we would have saved our $10 million had we been able to get but um going forward i um i think it might be a good exercise for us to discuss you know i wouldn't want to go too much below what we have currently that we discussed um with the 24 we have the 25 percent um uh policy um i think that's that's you know that's the hard deck that we're never going to go below but then we also have the other 4.6 million um some of that um to plus up our unfunded pension liability i'm sorry our 115 trust is not a bad strategy and keep in mind this um sorry chart 30 that's just an estimate
02:17:29.76	Karen Hollweg	So if we could go, sorry, Paige.
02:17:33.42	Karen Hollweg	Yeah, that next page. This is just an estimate. You don't know what wild swings are coming in the future. So we could have another. I wish we had another further, like all the way back.
02:17:44.88	Karen Hollweg	Like in 2018, right, we had another chart that showed these other incredibly wild swings of the stock market that went way below zero, right?
02:17:48.33	Wayne Kwan	THE FAMILY.
02:17:55.82	Karen Hollweg	And way above. So you have these incredibly wild swings, which is how the unfunded pension liability started. So every time you have a wild swing, you add millions of dollars to your unfunded pension liability. So these wild swings and the slingshots that you see going back and forth are how you get these millions of dollars added. So, you know, we have other obviously risks that we have to plan for, but this is probably one of our biggest financial risks, is our unfunded pension liability and how this has been set up by the CalPERS system that nobody actually foresaw. But this is what has landed in our lap that we're trying to plan for, that we've been planning for, that I've been, since I've been on the council for 10 years and trying to smooth out that risk.
02:18:46.58	Unknown	Thank you.
02:18:46.76	Clark	Thank you.
02:18:46.83	Unknown	you
02:18:46.97	Unknown	Yes, go ahead. And before we go back to the wonderful general budget presentation, which we also have a lot of conversation to have about that.
02:18:47.05	Karen Hollweg	Yes, go ahead for that.
02:18:55.40	Unknown	I really appreciate that we're having a proactive management discussion about the 115 trust and our liabilities. I really want to get a better understanding.
02:19:05.63	Unknown	And you've presented a couple of scenarios here, which is great. But the trade-offs between
02:19:11.92	Unknown	investing for smoothing versus making that additional discretionary payment given the risk associated with CalPERS management of these funds and also the swings that Councilmember Hoffman brings up because you know you projected up to seven million in savings under the 20-year ADP but up to five to eight if we do smoothing is there any possibility for some sort of hybrid option where we direct a portion like 2 million to the 115 trust ADP with CalPERS to shorter amortization, 11 to 12 years, while leaving like 2 million in the OPEB. Is that something, I didn't see a hybrid scenario in your projected possible scenarios, but I,
02:19:49.59	Unknown	I would wonder if that was feasible for something like that.
02:19:51.55	Craig Hill	Yeah, that's actually a great
02:19:54.06	Craig Hill	Great comment. And...
02:19:57.45	Craig Hill	While this was intended to be educational and informative, we do a lot of work with cities where we're really tunneling down into those hybrid strategies, where one, you're building out some pretty sophisticated modeling on how much more can we contribute into the 115.
02:20:14.65	Craig Hill	Two, what do we think that 115 is going to earn so that we can know what that fund balance is going to do in it? Three, how much of it do we actually need to draw down to give one-time dollars to CalPERS to get our bogey or get our projected new payment to a certain target? So we kind of reverse engineer the actual hybrid solution.
02:20:33.57	Wayne Kwan	Thank you.
02:20:33.60	Councilmember Sobieski	Mm-hmm.
02:20:39.37	Craig Hill	kind of based on where we want that payment to look like, right?
02:20:44.26	Craig Hill	It's not an all or none solution.
02:20:46.78	Craig Hill	Hey, we know structurally that the city's budget is going to be doing this over the next 10 years for, you know, either increasing police or CIP or whatever it is, right? But you have a really good five to 10 year financial plan. And then you say, okay, now what can we, what tools can we use to just offset the pension piece to help fit us inside of that, that goal?
02:21:10.98	Craig Hill	And it could be, oh, you take 3 million of the four
02:21:15.15	Craig Hill	4 million.
02:21:16.02	Craig Hill	and you give it as an ADP, or it could be the opposite. You only need to do a million, let's keep the other three,
02:21:21.44	Craig Hill	Let it earn.
02:21:22.66	Craig Hill	some assumed return,
02:21:24.41	Craig Hill	And we're actually going to be better off.
02:21:27.48	Unknown	Is that something you could work with us to help model going forward? Okay, and City Manager, I know that we have asked you from the dais for a longer term 10 year projection of our budget. So would it be possible in the preparing of the 10 year projections to work closely with your firm to figure out what a strategy would be?
02:21:44.66	Unknown	or when would we have to determine that? When would we do we have enough time to
02:21:48.52	Unknown	come up with a potential hybrid strategy for this budgeting cycle going forward, that would be really beneficial because it sounds like that's an approach that makes a lot of sense.
02:21:57.01	Chris Zapata	that.
02:21:58.99	Chris Zapata	Craig and I have exchanged an email about this service in terms of the 10-year tool and factoring that in. I think if you want to try to work on your pension for 25-26, I wouldn't recommend doing it in the next two weeks. I'd recommend doing it maybe in the next six months. And then I think that will give us the time to do the work right.
02:22:26.53	Unknown	And Craig, we could make those changes at any time, right? So if we decide now as a result of the budgeting decision to put $4 million into the OPEB, then we could do that 10-year analysis together and six months down the road, we could take that 100% of the budget.
02:22:36.94	Craig Hill	Mid-year budget adjustment for the contribution. Absolutely. We do that all the time.
02:22:40.45	Unknown	Okay.
02:22:40.80	Craig Hill	you
02:22:40.87	Unknown	Okay, great. Thank you for that.
02:22:44.18	Sarah Silver	So I know that we're going to have an audit and then a mid-year budget adjustment once we know what the surplus in our 24-25 budget was, expenditures. We're projecting that to be around 700. I think the time to have the conversation is.
02:23:07.90	Sarah Silver	about how we
02:23:10.01	Sarah Silver	invest in our
02:23:12.39	Sarah Silver	How we use our 115 trust and how we invest where our investment strategy is moving forward that's probably the appropriate time to do that, I don't know that we have alignment on this Council to include any ADP.
02:23:27.77	Sarah Silver	policy. So I think we would need to see scenarios in order to
02:23:32.54	Sarah Silver	especially given the volatility and the inability of CalPERS to manage monies. So if we invest in ADP, we lose any hedge other than our unassigned fund balance against zero years by CalPERS.
02:23:50.90	Unknown	But just to clarify, I would like us to see a full assessment and see what scenarios. We would see scenarios. I just want to be.
02:23:54.60	Sarah Silver	We've seen scenarios. We've seen scenarios. I just want to be clear that there's no consensus yet to...
02:24:02.83	Sarah Silver	adopt an ADP strategy. But we should definitely look at scenarios and understand the risks and benefits of all approaches. All right, so let's turn back to the budget. I had just a couple of questions on that.
02:24:24.21	Unknown	Thank you very much, by the way.
02:24:30.34	Sarah Silver	So one of the slides in your presentation
02:24:35.33	Sarah Silver	Noelle, if you could go to slide.
02:24:47.23	Sarah Silver	Okay.
02:24:50.89	Sarah Silver	21.
02:24:56.66	Sarah Silver	Yeah, so the slide that we had in our packet,
02:24:59.53	Sarah Silver	had the unassigned reserve at $4.5 million.
02:25:03.53	Sarah Silver	and had the
02:25:05.69	Sarah Silver	And you have it here at $9.9 million. Our packet had total available in emergency at $10 million, and this is $15.1 million. So I wanted to understand the reason for the big delta.
02:25:17.54	Jesus Nava	Mm-hmm.
02:25:19.92	Jesus Nava	A recalculation of our general fund expenditures and revenues and the contributions to the CIP. So that's what we did. So in a sense,
02:25:35.63	Jesus Nava	there's going to be additional more money left at the end of the year. So it brings up that unassigned fund balance higher and therefore with the council reserve set aside a 5.5 and the additional on assigned reserve of a 9.9, you get that 15.1. Now what we don't have built in here yet is the overall contribution to the CIP, which will have to come out from this amount as well.
02:25:46.60	Wayne Kwan	reserve.
02:26:03.45	Sarah Silver	And then I wanted to talk about-
02:26:06.22	Jesus Nava	And I'm looking at about 5.3 million, which is the difference between the 16.6 CIP and the 11.3, which we know we have.
02:26:16.80	Sarah Silver	Understood. And so in order to carry out this very...
02:26:21.27	Sarah Silver	ambitious CIP program in the upcoming fiscal year
02:26:25.06	Sarah Silver	we're going to need additional help. And we've talked about
02:26:27.84	Sarah Silver	Hiring.
02:26:28.82	Sarah Silver	maybe two more project managers to help
02:26:32.19	Sarah Silver	facilitate all of these projects that we're asking staff to undertake and manage.
02:26:37.83	Sarah Silver	Is that included in your budget? Yes.
02:26:39.09	Jesus Nava	Yes, we've included $450,000 as part of the Measure 8 money in the CIP for contractual assistance for the CIP program.
02:26:48.75	Jesus Nava	Thank you.
02:26:48.90	Jesus Nava	Thank you.
02:26:49.00	Sarah Silver	Okay.
02:26:49.14	Clark	Thank you.
02:26:49.19	Sarah Silver	Thanks.
02:26:49.24	Clark	Thank you.
02:26:49.27	Jesus Nava	you
02:26:49.39	Jesus Nava	So it's not salary, it's contracted hours.
02:26:52.83	Sarah Silver	And then speaking of salaries, we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but right now various of our departments have –
02:27:04.68	Sarah Silver	Um,
02:27:07.09	Sarah Silver	are seeking to hire to fulfill their current slate of employees, authorized positions. So is your budget based on all authorized positions, whether they are currently filled or not?
02:27:20.51	Jesus Nava	I believe with the exception of the police department positions, which you have set aside.
02:27:24.45	Sarah Silver	Well, there are two frozen positions, but there are four vacancies in the police department right now, so as I understand it. So is your budget based on
02:27:36.05	Sarah Silver	is just not budgeting for the two frozen?
02:27:42.17	Jesus Nava	Yeah, the actual budget is based on the $2.8 million that's budgeted this year. So in going back and looking at the payroll history, and in fact, we sat down with the police department and the chief, and we analyzed those salary numbers, did the projections for the end of the year, and calculated that there'll be about half a million in salary savings just alone in that budget, which then again we would bring back into the fund balance.
02:28:05.85	Sarah Silver	But at the same time,
02:28:07.47	Sarah Silver	you know, we're
02:28:09.85	Sarah Silver	every other year we're negotiating new contracts. And so...
02:28:14.42	Sarah Silver	how do you factor that? Are you including any cost of living or any of that type of calculation in the budget? Or will that be a mid-year adjustment after we've adopted?
02:28:24.14	Jesus Nava	after we've adopted. 3% is built in.
02:28:26.64	Sarah Silver	3% is built in.
02:28:27.55	Jesus Nava	Yeah.
02:28:27.67	Chris Zapata	Mayor, yeah, and that's a major adjustment, and it doesn't include the city council. I wanted to make sure you knew that.
02:28:34.84	Jesus Nava	All salaries are adjusted by 3% with the exception of the city council, which has a set salary where you have $300 for math.
02:28:38.27	Sarah Silver	That's it.
02:28:41.49	Sarah Silver	for our volunteer work? Okay.
02:28:46.69	Jesus Nava	But we've adjusted all the salary and benefit line items by that 3%.
02:28:51.43	Sarah Silver	Okay, and then speaking of 3%, so that was the CPI last year. We're at 2.3% this year.
02:28:57.11	Sarah Silver	I understand from prior conversations you used a 3%
02:29:02.23	Sarah Silver	Um,
02:29:03.48	Sarah Silver	escalation essentially on expenses.
02:29:06.04	Unknown	Correct.
02:29:06.41	Sarah Silver	anticipated expenses. So you took our expenses from this year and you escalated that by 3%.
02:29:12.39	Unknown	Yes.
02:29:12.76	Sarah Silver	Okay. And then I noticed that in one of your charts, our sales tax revenues went way down.
02:29:20.17	Sarah Silver	we're down from 67 to 62
02:29:24.72	Sarah Silver	um,
02:29:27.64	Jesus Nava	So there's two sales tax numbers. There's the Measure L sales tax number, and then there's the General Fund sales tax number.
02:29:32.54	Sarah Silver	It's the general fund sales tax number. Yes, general fund sales tax.
02:29:35.67	Jesus Nava	And yes, overall sales tax is predicted to settle down, level out, and possibly even reduce itself in the upcoming year. So we've taken a very conservative number. We double-checked it with our consultant, who was recommending the 2.67. That's the most conservative number.
02:29:53.76	Sarah Silver	Yeah, so it went down between 24-25, but then you predicted an increase in 26.
02:30:01.39	Jesus Nava	Based on current collections, yeah. Because we know what 10 months have produced and we're projecting two more months of revenue as per the prior year. So even though there may be a slowing down, we're projecting that it'll be pretty close to what we receive next year. And again, the difficulty with that sales tax payment is that it gets received almost 90 days after. So you're going to be waiting. We're right now looking at,
02:30:31.80	Jesus Nava	payments that were made in the first quarter of this year and analyzing those.
02:30:37.32	Jesus Nava	projecting that final payment, which will come in late August or September,
02:30:42.68	Jesus Nava	you know, is a difficult thing to do, especially in an economy that seems to be slowing down. So the most conservative thing to do was to lower the estimate in order to not have a shortage in the budget.
02:30:53.67	Sarah Silver	I also noticed a decrease in our population.
02:30:58.36	Sarah Silver	permit revenues.
02:31:02.18	Sarah Silver	for this year, and that you are predicting an increase next year, but still not back up to what they were in last year.
02:31:11.41	Jesus Nava	Yeah, so those permits, we looked at actual collections and then based on the fee increases that were adopted with a maximum of no more than 5% in any fiscal year, we made the adjustment.
02:31:22.97	Sarah Silver	I see. Okay. And then our franchise fees went down.
02:31:28.67	Jesus Nava	Yeah, that's the expectation at this point. My understanding is that solid waste franchise fees are frozen at a certain amount, so they're not the increase. So we kept those flat. And my understanding is that the others are going to be just as flat as well. So again, a very conservative. We don't want to be caught with a shortage in revenue. So those numbers are extremely conservative and double-checked by our consultants as well.
02:31:56.28	Sarah Silver	Okay. And then I.
02:31:57.46	Sarah Silver	one last question, which is on fines. So our fines were $290,000.
02:32:04.11	Sarah Silver	they're estimated to go up to $460, and so you're budgeting for $474. That seems like a big delta. Yeah.
02:32:10.28	Jesus Nava	Well, you'll see that in your first 10 months of collections, you actually collected in fines almost $326,000. So that's why we made the adjustments.
02:32:21.12	Sarah Silver	Okay.
02:32:21.81	Sarah Silver	And then finally, I do want to address ERAF. So last year, we did not budget for ERAF. And then it was a pleasant surprise when we were able to collect on ERAF.
02:32:31.70	Sarah Silver	This year, I understand we are budgeting for ERAF, but it's based on
02:32:36.74	Sarah Silver	um,
02:32:37.54	Sarah Silver	conversations with a county consultant and others who tells us it is
02:32:44.20	Jesus Nava	With our sales tax consultant. Yes. And our property tax consultant.
02:32:46.60	Sarah Silver	Yes.
02:32:48.47	Sarah Silver	And so you've really vetted...
02:32:50.24	Sarah Silver	that decision with the consultant who's in the know who can tell you,
02:32:55.31	Sarah Silver	there's very little likelihood that it will not come through this year, even though, you know,
02:33:00.22	Jesus Nava	I think the exact quote from the consultant was, well, you've received it in the past. I wouldn't know why you wouldn't budget for it again. And now we've just budgeted it the same amount that were the actual comment.
02:33:10.48	Chris Zapata	And if I can, Mayor, to augment that, the conversation that I believe you were copied on along with Councilmember Hoffman was from the county of Marin, who gets $66 million in ERAF to distribute to the cities. And, you know, their watching of that amount is critical to their services. And so what we see is communication from them is that they were looking for the mayor revise to see if this was in fact going to be adjusted. It's June yesterday or today or was it yesterday. I got a note back saying all good so far. So we are having it in our budget at this time.
02:33:48.01	Sarah Silver	Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Vice Mayor.
02:33:51.82	Unknown	Yes, let's pick up on the excess ERAF. That is, to your knowledge, that's something that has been paid to the city and budgeted in prior years.
02:34:03.67	Unknown	No, no. Last 10 or 15.
02:34:04.14	Chris Zapata	Last year.
02:34:05.03	Chris Zapata	Thank you.
02:34:05.12	Chris Zapata	Last year, which I can speak to, is we did not budget it. And when it came in, it was over half a million dollars. And so that was a real factor in our revenue projections to the good. So this year we were saying, is this real? It's been real, as Jesus mentioned, for many years. It'll be real again this year, whether it's again real the year after. That remains to be seen.
02:34:27.97	Unknown	Okay, and then you do have a slide with a lot of numbers that are I guess it's called the all funds slide I don't know if you can pick that one up it's I think 16.
02:34:37.96	Jesus Nava	Thank you.
02:34:41.21	Jesus Nava	Yeah.
02:34:42.24	Jesus Nava	That's a representation of the estimates at year end at this year and then the year end and next year after your budgets have filtered through them. That's what it does. It gives you a snapshot of.
02:34:52.76	Jesus Nava	what this year will end like and then after the budget is done for FY26, what the expectation for those fund balances will be on July 30th, 2026.
02:35:05.78	Unknown	OK, and the slide is now up. Those funds are listed by name. Some of those are restricted funds, such as the Thailand funds have to be spent in that area.
02:35:19.89	Unknown	The other funds, are there any of these that are true enterprise funds where the money has to be spent only on that particular subject or enterprise?
02:35:31.89	Jesus Nava	Well, I mean, that's an interesting question in the sense that cities set up enterprise funds to finance operations, mostly improvements. And in this case, you have a fund that is separated from the general fund. And I'm assuming that the purpose is so that you can record revenues and expenditures and isolate them so that you know what the enterprise is producing. But whether those revenues are restricted to that use, it's questionable. So in some cities, parking is part of the general fund. In other cities, they've separated it out. I'll give you a good example. When I went to go work in Burlingame, parking was part of the general fund and one of the biggest revenue sources for the general fund. The decision to break it out came about when the city council decided that we really want to improve our parking lots and the Burlingame Avenue all kind of at the same time. So give us a budget that covers your operations and your maintenance that has some reserve, reserve more importantly, that can show the capital markets that there is sufficient revenue to borrow and repay that borrowing. So then that's when you set up your enterprise fund. So it's separate, it's intact, and it produces the performance that is necessary so that your private investors who may be buying bonds know that your finances are well secured and that you can repay back that debt. But in terms of simply operating it as an enterprise for purposes of the enterprise, you can do that. But then, you know, what is the return back to the general fund from having made that investment in that land and in those improvements? I mean, ultimately, that land belongs to the citizens of Sausalito, and they're the ones who should benefit from it. So you're not...
02:37:25.61	Chris Zapata	So you're not...
02:37:26.39	Chris Zapata	Thank you.
02:37:26.42	Chris Zapata	I can add to this, if I may, Vice Mayor and Council. The question of what an enterprise fund is in Sausalito, the sewer fund is a legal enterprise fund. The money that comes from the sewer fund can only be used for sewer-related expenses. Sausalito has a practice of calling these parking fund, MLK fund. They called them enterprise when I got here, and my response was they're not enterprise funds in the legal sense. They're what we now term as hybrid funds. It can be used obviously in the general fund, which we do, and in those facilities or locations that they come from. The Tidelands Fund is a little bit different as well. That has restrictions that are legal. We have what I call a
02:37:28.33	Jesus Nava	Sure.
02:38:15.63	Chris Zapata	a robust portfolio of properties that are along the tight ends to generate money. And you can see from this, uh, all funds account, you know, it there's over, what does it say to 2 million? I can't see it. This is 2, 2 million. So, so, so when you talk about MLK as an enterprise front, uh, you know, I it's not when you talk about the, uh, the parking fund is an enterprise fund. It's not in the legal sense.
02:38:43.10	Unknown	So some of the funds would be used, for example, parking fund, we have a proposed budget that would put $1.2 million or so into parking lot one, but a balance of parking revenues are put into the general fund or a portion of them. Is that how I'm reading your budget?
02:39:00.36	Unknown	That's that's that's.
02:39:01.21	Chris Zapata	That's cool.
02:39:01.49	Unknown	Thank you.
02:39:01.51	Chris Zapata	Right.
02:39:01.65	Unknown	And has that been the case in this city over the last several years?
02:39:07.08	Chris Zapata	The city has a practice of taking its property sales tax, TOT, franchise fees, other revenues collected, and then augmenting them with transfers from the, quote, unquote, from the parking fund, from the MLK fund, from the old city hall fund. And that's how you see the balancing of the budget occur from, I don't know, 2010 to present. when I got here in 2021, there was a $3.6 million or so transfer. We had COVID. In prior years, we've always had a transfer from these funds into the general fund, which is perfectly fine. It's legal. If you did that with the sewer fund for police expenses, that would be illegal. If you do that with the sewer fund for administrative costs, like maybe Kevin McGowan's, then there's a nexus to that service, and therefore it's not a problem. So I know that, you know, Sausalito has been entrepreneurial in developing these revenue streams, and kudos to the councils and administrations before us, because you do have money from the parking fund and from the MLK fund and from the old city hall fund that you can spin off to supplement the budget as a revenue transfer in, which is what we do.
02:40:17.48	Unknown	it.
02:40:20.75	Unknown	And that's what you're proposing this year.
02:40:22.81	Chris Zapata	That's what we proposed for the last 15 years.
02:40:25.77	Jesus Nava	I did, at the end, include two slides showing a 13-year past history of all the transfers, if you care to see them. But again, just if you're interested in seeing them. But the practice is to bring in reserves or transfers into the general fund. And the city has been doing it at least for the 13 years that I went back and looked at. Like I said, we have a table showing all 13 years and the amounts of the transfers. Thank you. If you want to see them. Mm-hmm.
02:40:48.26	Unknown	Thank you.
02:40:48.28	Clark	And like I said,
02:40:48.87	Unknown	Thank you.
02:40:52.61	Unknown	Thank you.
02:40:54.25	Sarah Silver	I had a follow on to that and then I'll go to you.
02:40:59.87	Sarah Silver	We also in the city hall,
02:41:02.88	Sarah Silver	and the MLK, we have obligations for those facilities.
02:41:08.97	Sarah Silver	the MLK we owe debt.
02:41:11.70	Unknown	Mm-hmm.
02:41:11.95	Sarah Silver	And so
02:41:14.92	Sarah Silver	And the old city hall, we just had to undertake a number of repairs, which were quite expensive. And there was a reduction in revenues to offset the loss of business related to the inability to use the building. And then obviously our parking lots are in a shambles. We're fortunately investing some monies into our repairs this year, although not all needed repairs, are the transfers made after ensuring that all of the obligations for those facilities are paid.
02:41:53.94	Jesus Nava	Well, again, cities do things differently. So here, when I went back and looked at the timing of the transfers, they're spread out throughout your fiscal year. I think the majority of them took place in February of this year. My practice has always been to do them at the end of the year. That's the last thing that you do.
02:42:11.15	Jesus Nava	And I practice that for a couple of reasons. Number one, because it allows the host funds to build up their capital for the year. So that's one thing. And second, they're easier to track because that's the last thing you do on the budget. Or to close out the years, you transfer the amounts into the new funds, and you don't have this confusion. So one of the things that I had to do is as I looked at the revenues, I had to, well, why is it that in February, which is a short month, you had this big influx of revenue?
02:42:43.47	Jesus Nava	So as I'm going through all the revenue postings in that month, I realize, oh, the transfers were made. So then I've got to back those transfers out in order to get a clear picture as to what the revenues really were in the month. So by doing it at the end of the year, it's one transaction. The funds have built up their capital for the year, and it's easier to track because they're not embedded within the revenue or the revenue collection numbers for the prior 12 months.
02:43:12.37	Jesus Nava	Thank you.
02:43:12.41	Sarah Silver	But if you wait until the end of the year and you are depending on those transfers to balance the budget, you are running the majority of your year
02:43:23.09	Sarah Silver	in a deficit spending
02:43:25.49	Sarah Silver	uh,
02:43:26.36	Sarah Silver	if you're only relying on the general fund absent the parking MLK.
02:43:34.19	Sarah Silver	which really are part of the general fund. But if you treat those as separate and you're only looking at the general fund,
02:43:40.18	Sarah Silver	When you have a $3 million dollar
02:43:43.88	Sarah Silver	delta between revenues and expenses. If you wait until the end of the year, you're operating at a deficit, which we can, since we have unassigned fund balance in the general fund. But when you make those transfers mid-year,
02:43:58.12	Sarah Silver	as part of the mid-year adjustment after the audit results are in,
02:44:02.26	Sarah Silver	Now you're...
02:44:04.11	Sarah Silver	you're on paper balanced in your general fund, having made the transfers from the...
02:44:10.02	Jesus Nava	Yeah, I mean, it's one or the other. I'm just suggesting that there's less accounting when you do it. I agree with you. I fully agree.
02:44:10.05	Sarah Silver	Yeah.
02:44:10.19	Sarah Silver	I mean, it's.
02:44:15.81	Sarah Silver	I agree with you. I fully agree with you. I, yeah.
02:44:18.56	Jesus Nava	The other thing, too, about the transfers is that, you know, they're recorded as part of your financial audit as well. So they go in into the document and they're easier to then place into the document because that's one of the last things that you've done as well. But, you know, for all for cash purposes, we pull all funds together for purposes of cash. We don't distinguish where the money comes from. It all goes into the bank. It's all invested together. It's just then when we're making interest payments that we divvy it up based on the percentages of the funds, you know. But that's just a simple exercise where you take then your ending interest at the year and divvy it up based on the percentage of the funds across all funds.
02:44:34.88	Unknown	Thank you.
02:44:34.93	Unknown	Yeah.
02:44:39.42	Adam Driver	Thank you.
02:44:39.43	Unknown	Sure.
02:44:39.67	Wayne Kwan	Thank you.
02:45:04.41	Sarah Silver	But as the city manager mentioned, you don't have that luxury with expenses. You have to carefully manage where you're spending money's from because...
02:45:13.70	Sarah Silver	like the sewer fund, the Tidelands Fund, and other funds, we don't have the choice to spend those funds as any way we like. We must confine the expenditure of those funds to the purpose for which they were established.
02:45:26.93	Jesus Nava	But remember, we'll measure expenditures at the end of the year, right? So expenditures will get measured as of June 30th. So it doesn't matter what happened between July 1st to June 30th.
02:45:40.40	Sarah Silver	So long as you're not overdrawing your bank account.
02:45:43.20	Jesus Nava	Yeah, well, and we don't because we keep records of the fund balances and the payments.
02:45:44.38	Sarah Silver	Right.
02:45:46.88	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
02:45:46.90	Karen Hollweg	Right.
02:45:48.03	Sarah Silver	you
02:45:48.06	Karen Hollweg	Okay, thanks. Councilmember Hoffman.
02:45:48.60	Jesus Nava	Councilman.
02:45:49.61	Jesus Nava	Amen.
02:45:51.18	Karen Hollweg	So if you could go back to that fund balance page.
02:45:54.41	Jesus Nava	16.
02:46:11.08	Karen Hollweg	So I think it would be helpful for us. We sometimes digress into this and to the vice mayor's point,
02:46:18.03	Karen Hollweg	I think it'd be better if we, it'd be clearer for us and for the public if maybe when we come back, this is a suggestion.
02:46:25.42	Karen Hollweg	For these segregated funds, for the funds that we truly are enterprise funds, we might want to put those on a separate slide, maybe even a different color, so that we can track. If this is a Thailand fund, if this is a gas fund, if this is a sewer fund, and it truly is a segregated fund, that might be clearer.
02:46:46.33	Karen Hollweg	For ones that we're segregating for purposes of tracking and accounting, and because it needs capital, it's a capital asset that we need to track, I would suggest maybe a different table. And I would ask that we add those capital investment needs with columns, right? So now that we've got the Veritas report, we know that, for instance, MLK has, I think it's 5 million, maybe even higher. I'm looking at the Veritas report right now on the chart. I think there's five lines alone of MLK investment that needs to be done over the next 20 years. And so, hold on, there's more than five lines. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven lines on the Veritas of multiple millions of dollars that are capital improvements that need to be made so that this continues to be a revenue-generating asset for the city of Sausalito. And we depend upon that for just our general fund, period, and also to service the debt on that building. And so we can't continue to draw on this to plug up our general fund without investing back into that as a capital asset. And now that we have the Veritas Report, we know pretty well what the capital investments need to be. So that needs to be a line on this. When we see how we're managing this asset, we need to understand and know what the capital improvements need to be on this MLK total. And a rolling reconciliation of that on a P&L statement annually would be good for us to know as a city council how we're managing that. Because we are, I think, this year, we're, as our capital improvement project, we're investing, reinvesting in our MLK. Same thing for some of these other capital improvements, certainly our parking funds. So I'm looking, you know, parking lots one through five. That's also on our Veritas report, right? Same thing. This is, these are revenue generating, as we talked about earlier tonight, $3 million enterprise here in Sausalito. We need to continue to reinvest in our parking lots one through five. That's also a line item on the Veritas report. And I think that over 20 years we need to invest. It looks like 5 million. Am I looking at that? It's hard. Let's see, I think it's 4 million.
02:49:24.94	Karen Hollweg	Well, sorry, it may not be. Maybe, sorry...
02:49:30.20	Karen Hollweg	three million, three million over five years in our parking lots. Maybe I may be looking the wrong line. It's either two or three million over the next, in addition to what we've done in the past year for, you know, the million, whatever it was where you,
02:49:44.74	Karen Hollweg	did on parking lot one, right? So we need to understand and know that when we're looking at this, when we're drawing against that for something that's completely unrelated to that capital asset, and we're transferring that money,
02:49:57.04	Karen Hollweg	for a balanced budget that has nothing to do with this capital asset, we need to understand that in the context of our budgets. So that's a request. I think that might be, and then we don't have to digress into this conversation, right? It's just a snapshot. It's not something that's, I don't think we argue about that. That's just a fact that's here in the Veritas report. It's something that we all understand and know that this capital asset has to be maintained. and that goes for, I mean, that's the stairways, right? I mean, I'm looking. that's here in the Veritas report. It's something that we all understand and know that this capital asset has to be maintained. And that goes for, I mean, that's the stairways, right? I mean, I'm looking on the Veritas report. There's a line in here for what we need to do to maintain our stairways that are emergency egress for people who live here in town. So that's part of our emergency access in addition to just capital improvement for our stairways. So, and you can get Gene Hiller, right? Like there's a line item for Gene Hiller. There's a line item for the Sassu Center for the Arts, right? A building that we own. There's other buildings that we own that we need to, we have capital improvement needs for them. So that are listed. So that's a request for that slide. So, and this conversation that we have about transfers from these different funds.
02:50:29.49	Wayne Kwan	I'm not going to be able to
02:51:10.81	Jesus Nava	What I'm hearing is we could make better financial decisions if we knew what the real overall needs were for each of these facilities within these funds.
02:51:19.93	Karen Hollweg	Yeah, we have to do that.
02:51:20.80	Sarah Silver	you
02:51:22.34	Jesus Nava	Thank you.
02:51:24.62	Sarah Silver	All right, great. If there are no more questions, oh, I'm sorry.
02:51:27.03	Unknown	Thank you.
02:51:27.07	Sarah Silver	All right.
02:51:27.18	Unknown	a chance to. Sorry. It's okay.
02:51:29.90	Unknown	Ahem.
02:51:30.90	Unknown	No, I didn't kick you. I wouldn't do that.
02:51:34.25	Unknown	Um,
02:51:35.35	Unknown	Okay, I have a couple just generally about our approach and what we're doing and long term stability. So I appreciate what was brought up about like the Veritas report, which is obviously demonstrating significant amounts of maintenance required on city owned properties. We know when we have...
02:51:51.84	Unknown	infrastructure requirements, which is why 11 million of this is going towards infrastructure.
02:51:56.14	Unknown	But as you mentioned, the budget sets aside almost $11 million in reserves, so 46%.
02:52:02.10	Unknown	which is, you know,
02:52:03.30	Unknown	I guess prudent, but rather high.
02:52:05.81	Unknown	Is there a way to elaborate on like updated reserve targets or could we establish a target or policy related to capital improvements and what the possible
02:52:15.75	Unknown	I don't know, overall benefit or increase in the investment would be for our general fund or targets associated with, as we're thinking about the reserve and we're making these improvements, do we need to lower the reserve? Just kind of would like to get your thoughts on that, given how high it is and how we can maybe more effectively use it.
02:52:30.45	Jesus Nava	this and how it's going to happen.
02:52:32.69	Jesus Nava	Well, I mean, some city councils have a plan. They say we need this kind of cash by such and such year in order to meet these needs. And then they develop a spending or a savings plan that is built up in reserve. So it's, you know, they say here's what we need to fund this and we're going to save money over the years till such and such time, and we're going to do it by building up the reserve, and when the reserve is at the level, we'll use it. Other cities don't have that luxury and simply work with whatever they have left at the end of the year.
02:53:14.64	Jesus Nava	the better approach is a well thought out approach, which is let's do the 10 year forecast that you guys are after. Based on those forecast numbers in years where surpluses are identified, then let's look at those surpluses and begin identifying needs for those monies. And then you can start strategically deciding every year based on that 10 year plan where to place your savings. You know, so.
02:53:20.21	Wayne Kwan	Right.
02:53:43.45	Wayne Kwan	Yes.
02:53:44.34	Unknown	So what I think you're saying is we could use the information we get, as suggested from Councilman Hoffman, in partnership with the 10-year forecasting to make some of these decisions about what we're doing.
02:53:53.29	Jesus Nava	To make decisions, because then you'll have needs on a 10-year basis, capital and operational needs, equipment needs, every other type of need that can be identified by the staff, and then you can go about the business of trying to figure out how to fund that.
02:54:08.54	Unknown	Okay, which is great, but then also if you look at, and I appreciate that you have budgets, the conservative assumptions in here, but since our TOT is a little bit underperforming and we don't know what's going to happen in the next five years or so, can you just kind of maybe put forward what sort of scenarios you might have if revenues underperform and how we would adopt? Or do you think that given the reserve balance that we have, we don't necessarily need to do those kinds of projections in the budgeting process? Okay.
02:54:34.24	Jesus Nava	So a couple of things. Number one, I think the revenue estimates are fairly conservative. Okay. So I think they're good estimates. Again, the big ones have been double-checked with their consultants to make sure that they pretty much give me a conservative, a moderate, and an aggressive number, right, within their realm of possibilities. So we have chosen the conservative number at this point. If in the hopes that revenue is not diminished further than that amount. Now, if it grows beyond the conservative estimate, well then good for the city. You'll have the additional revenue collected and they'll be available to you at the end of the year to place wherever you want as part of your strategic use of those reserves.
02:54:38.78	Unknown	Okay.
02:55:04.72	Wayne Kwan	Mm-hmm.
02:55:19.77	Unknown	Okay, and then this is kind of a two-part question, but if you look at the...
02:55:23.15	Unknown	budget picture, it looks like about 13% of the general fund spending is non departmental. So it's kind of unclear
02:55:29.54	Unknown	what that is, right? It's like debt or insurance or administrative. Can you kind of explain what non-departmental items are in the budget to kind of break them out? And also, are any of them one time items like we just one time had to use this consultant so that we can when we're thinking about our 10 year picture?
02:55:45.61	Unknown	plan more effectively.
02:55:47.28	Unknown	And-
02:55:48.42	Unknown	Do we think that like
02:55:49.88	Unknown	for example,
02:55:51.75	Unknown	Are any of the operational one-time funds something that we need to plan for going forward, even though it might be showing up as a one-time fund right now?
02:55:59.93	Jesus Nava	Okay.
02:56:00.88	Jesus Nava	So let's go first to
02:56:07.78	Jesus Nava	The non-departmental. So if you're looking at line items, the non-departmental budget is
02:56:12.27	Jesus Nava	Right in there and it gives you the actual line item expenditures.
02:56:25.48	Jesus Nava	Okay, so here we go and non departmental so non departmental you have all your insurance payments for health 206 dental your hers you a l your payments that we're going to be making to the cow purse. And the biggest payments are of course your liability and your property insurances that's those are all in the non departmental that's why that number is so big.
02:56:46.69	Unknown	Okay, and that's what we're planning for with the tenure projections, but there's not really much we can change. No,
02:56:49.07	Jesus Nava	connections.
02:56:51.60	Jesus Nava	No, it's pretty much all the payments that are due that are citywide and don't pertain to one particular department.
02:56:52.72	Unknown	channel.
02:56:59.49	Unknown	And then the last piece is just around project prioritization. So I know we've had these conversations with Director McGowan around how we're going to spend our funding for capital improvements.
02:57:10.15	Unknown	But I just wanted to
02:57:12.36	Unknown	pull out a couple of things and just make sure I'm not wrong because there's a lot of projects on there and they're going to require more project management. So just to reiterate, this is approving the two project managers for these CIPs as suggested at our previous meeting, correct? Yeah.
02:57:25.51	Jesus Nava	Yeah, so up there on that all funds schedule, you see a $450,000 number, so that's it.
02:57:32.49	Unknown	That's the two. Okay, great. Okay, perfect. Thank you very much. And thank you for your hard work, you and your department and the city manager and our consultants on the budget. I really appreciate it.
02:57:39.38	Jesus Nava	Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
02:57:41.57	Unknown	All right.
02:57:41.98	Sarah Silver	So now open it up to public comment. I saw Adrian bring up a speaker card. So we'll start off with you, sir.
02:57:53.65	Adrian Britton	Thanks very much. And thanks again for taking another comment. Just want to say thank you to the interim finance director for taking a usually quite difficult to understand subject and making it much more easy to understand this year. I think it was a huge improvement just in the way it was presented and kind of understanding where the numbers are. The ideas about the enterprise funds, I think definitely separate out the legal enterprise funds and putting them as a separate block would be incredibly helpful. In addition to that, I think just one or two lines identifying what the funds are for would also be very, very helpful. You know, when we talk about the kind of what Mr. Zapata called the hybrid funds,
02:58:37.75	Adrian Britton	you know, it's very important to understand how much money we're bringing in and how much we're paying to maintain these assets. At the end of the day, really what we're doing is we're putting the money in different pockets and we're kind of saying, okay, this money came in this pocket and we spent this much money out of this pocket. But really, if we empty all our pockets on the table, when we look out into the future with the infrastructure, we have to maintain.
02:58:56.08	Adrian Britton	You know, we need to increase our revenues to be able to support that. So that's something I think, you know, we've had a huge focus on. I think it's something we really, really need to continue to focus on. We can keep doing these steps now, which we need to do with the money that we have. But going in the future, increasing our revenue base is super, super critical.
02:59:14.10	Adrian Britton	The only other comment I wanted to make was on the parking technology. I did look through all the CIP documents from the last meeting, and I didn't see the line item for the actual parking and technology improvements. We have line items for lot one. We have line items to fix the trees around lot three. But I think it might be good to just double check and make sure we've got that in there. Thank you.
02:59:36.98	Sarah Silver	Sharna. Rock it.
02:59:43.95	Sharna	Thank you so much. This is really great news. And it's great to know that our city's finances and be reminded that our city finances have been and are being responsibly managed. From what I understand, we're ending our fiscal year 2425 with a forecasted 700,000 surplus, from what I understand. And so that's a really clear sign that we're taking in more money than we're spending. So that's great news. And I just want to also thank the hard work of the city manager and our finance director and the finance staff. And kind of to Adrian's point, you know, I think at the same time, I encourage all of us and our city leaders to find new ways and explore new ways to grow our revenue.
03:00:26.51	Sharna	and invest in capital improvements or partially invest in capital improvements that help us grow our revenue, like parking technology, so that we can really bring in more money, more funds, increase our tax base so that we can further improve our town. Thanks so much.
03:00:42.44	Sarah Silver	Thank you, city clerk.
03:00:44.26	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:00:44.29	Unknown	We have Carolyn Revelle.
03:00:46.35	Sarah Silver	Welcome, Carolyn.
03:00:51.50	Carolyn Revelle	I just want to, can you hear me?
03:00:54.60	Unknown	Yes.
03:00:54.89	Carolyn Revelle	I simply want very much to thank the city manager and Mr. Nava for stepping up and,
03:01:01.42	Carolyn Revelle	doing an excellent presentation on such short notice of budget for the next year. And that's really all I'd like to say is thank you very much for an excellent, clear presentation. Thank you.
03:01:14.57	Sarah Silver	Thank you so much.
03:01:14.67	Carolyn Revelle	Thank you so much.
03:01:15.53	Carolyn Revelle	you
03:01:15.80	Carolyn Revelle	No further purpose.
03:01:16.86	Unknown	Thank you.
03:01:16.96	Carolyn Revelle	Thank you.
03:01:17.07	Unknown	Thank you.
03:01:17.18	Carolyn Revelle	Thank you.
03:01:17.23	Unknown	Thank you.
03:01:17.25	Carolyn Revelle	Amen.
03:01:17.49	Sarah Silver	All right, I'm going to close public comment and bring it up here. Several of you have already given some direction.
03:01:23.75	Sarah Silver	Um,
03:01:24.95	Sarah Silver	the
03:01:26.01	Sarah Silver	Our action tonight is to accept the report in preparation for final approval next week.
03:01:32.27	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:01:32.62	Sarah Silver	in two weeks. But any other direction or comments, this is your opportunity.
03:01:38.70	Unknown	Thank you.
03:01:38.72	Sarah Silver	you
03:01:38.77	Unknown	Vice mayor.
03:01:38.99	Sarah Silver	Vice Mayor.
03:01:39.90	Unknown	Thank you.
03:01:39.91	Unknown	It may not be direction in terms of new direction. I think what I've seen in this report makes sense to me. And to the extent I'm giving direction or suggesting direction, it's that we come back with a budget that mirrors and provides all the detail consistent with what we've heard tonight, because I think it's an excellent job of balancing our needs. We do have a 25% reserve. We have a balanced budget going into the year, which is a big deal.
03:02:10.42	Unknown	And we have unassigned...
03:02:12.95	Unknown	revenues and in light of all the concerns we have going forward on a longer term basis it's wise to keep that i think for the time being until we have a clearer picture of some additional needs that might surface it's not a an emergency reserve per se but it could be used in the event of an emergency it's it's unassigned and as to the long-term needs that we have for maintenance I believe that this budget meets the current projected needs under the Veritas report and for this coming year in other words we have a 20-year horizon of needs and there's a lot of them and we're not budgeting today for those 20 years we're budgeting for this coming year and I think it does meet the Veritas report as I read it so I'm very pleased with what I've heard and thank you again and thanks to the city manager for again for bringing in your friend he's now our friend thank you
03:03:15.49	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:03:15.51	Unknown	Who's next?
03:03:17.81	Unknown	I can go if you look to you. I don't mind. Well, I'm really just very pleased to see this balanced budget with a surplus and with the 25% reserves. I think that that is a testament to how much we've been putting an emphasis on smart financial management and bringing in Mr. Rivas is really smart. And I'm going to miss you. I'm sorry that you're only an interim budget director, but we've certainly appreciated your expertise. and I really appreciate the city manager's leadership on all of this through the transition and really you're only an interim budget director but we've certainly appreciated your expertise and i really appreciate the city manager's leadership on all of this through the transition and really i'm feeling encouraged because it seems like we're really thinking about our bigger picture problems i gave some direction but i think what's really clear in the context of this conversation because there's always room for improvement even though we're balanced budget and we have reserves is and we've all asked for this consistently is just we really
03:04:04.11	Unknown	would be beneficial for us if we were thinking about our 10 year planning and if we had that data to make these decisions in the context of. Well, what are our challenges going to look like in the years ahead and how do we prioritize each of these funds and how do we prioritize which items from capital improvement. And that will allow us to have more transparency on how we're spending each of the fund balances and also help us do things like.
03:04:25.63	Unknown	if we wanted to set goals around our reserves. So if we look at the Veritas report and we know that we have $5 million for MLK and we know that there's 25% reserves
03:04:35.65	Unknown	right now, what would it look like? What number would we have to feel comfortable with in our reserve bank
03:04:41.02	Unknown	in order to make those improvements? And why would that help
03:04:44.27	Unknown	us in the longer term. So I think the more we grow through this process and understand how we're using our funds and how we're making these improvements, the more we'll be able to set some of these goals and think bigger picture about the next 10 and next 20 years for our community to really set us up for success. And to that end, I would really like us to
03:05:01.28	Unknown	work closely with DHA to consider a hybrid approach to pensions if possible, because it seems like if we do the work and we get the information required to get our balance down or our annual payment down, and then we'll have more funds to use on things like capital improvements, we'd be in a good position.
03:05:18.51	Unknown	That being said, I absolutely don't want that to be rushed. So that's a conversation that we need to have with a lot of data.
03:05:24.03	Unknown	a lot of information, a lot of assessment around
03:05:26.41	Unknown	the markets because I share concerns around CalPERS given some of their returns over time.
03:05:31.66	Unknown	In general, I'm just really pleased with the work of our
03:05:34.71	Unknown	team, our finance staff and our consultants and really
03:05:38.12	Unknown	appreciate all of the time and thought that was put into our budget and looking forward to adopting it soon and moving forward with a great fiscal picture.
03:05:51.05	Karen Hollweg	So I also appreciate the arrival of Mr. Navi in helping us get our budget together and the presentation together due to the departure of our former finance director. And I know that was a challenge for you. And I appreciate all of the hard work it was to get our budget together. I do have some follow-up questions. It was a bit of a moving target, getting the numbers and the changing, or not changing, but the updating of numbers even throughout the day and the response to, you know, the numbers that we were getting. So I appreciate the hard work, and I will have follow-up questions. So you're going to get an email from me probably tomorrow requesting a meeting, follow-up meeting with you in the interim. So I appreciate that and absorbing the numbers and follow-up questions from me so thank you so much for that um as always the pension debt and and strategies um attacking that uh has been a something i've worked on ever since i was elected to council 10 years ago or 11 years ago now so we've done some uh good work on that i wish we had been more aggressive as we moved forward earlier. We would have saved more money, but it's always a balance, right, of how much money you want to devote to that and how much risk you want to take on in the balance of everything else. So there are brief windows of opportunity that I'd like to be more agile, and maybe we can come up with some strategies for that. If we can, great. I think that'd be really great if we could take some advantage of some of these swings in the stock market. That would be helpful for us going forward. So anyway, I look forward to finding maybe some opportunities for further success on that front. And thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate it.
03:07:48.18	Sarah Silver	Thank you all. I will echo the sentiments of my fellow council members about how much we appreciate the background of experience that our interim finance director and our city manager bring to this. I mean, I think between you, you have at least 60 years of experience. So and it really shows this is really one of them. I've been attending these budget presentations since 2010. This is one of the most clear budget presentations we've ever seen. And in law school, they teach us that you have to really know and understand your subject in order to explain it to a layperson. And so that is what you have done as financial experts. You have really drilled down to be able to explain it to laypeople so that they can understand
03:08:03.82	Unknown	Thank you.
03:08:36.05	Sarah Silver	what we're doing.
03:08:38.80	Sarah Silver	And I appreciated the fact that this, as you said, is both a financial plan and a policy document. So-
03:08:46.94	Sarah Silver	Happy to hear that your revenue estimates are conservative. Pleased that your budget addresses a lot of the City Council priorities identified at the beginning of the year. Streets, sidewalks, storm drains, sewers, stairways, parking lots, among others.
03:09:05.85	Sarah Silver	I do want to follow up on the comments by a couple of council members about our reserve.
03:09:12.87	Sarah Silver	You know, the reserve was increased to 25% after our insurance deductible
03:09:19.13	Sarah Silver	deductible rose from $50,000 to $500,000
03:09:22.46	Sarah Silver	per incident.
03:09:23.76	Sarah Silver	um,
03:09:24.82	Sarah Silver	The reserve remains at 25%, I think, because we have three years of challenges. We have.
03:09:32.33	Sarah Silver	We had.
03:09:33.53	Sarah Silver	three years of challenges for which we are still navigating. We had
03:09:37.33	Sarah Silver	a huge landslide in 2019.
03:09:39.42	Sarah Silver	We had the COVID
03:09:40.85	Sarah Silver	pandemic in 2020. We had a homeless encampment in 2021.
03:09:44.60	Sarah Silver	all of which were huge drains
03:09:47.45	Sarah Silver	on our budget. And had we not had
03:09:50.45	Sarah Silver	At that time, our 20% rainy day fund
03:09:53.47	Sarah Silver	We would have been challenged to navigate those issues while we were awaiting
03:09:58.42	Sarah Silver	federal assistance for the landslide, you know, state assistance and county assistance for the pandemic and for the homeless encampment. And so
03:10:08.41	Sarah Silver	I think it's important to remain conservative for several reasons. One, our costs for pensions and insurance, just those two alone, went up $700,000 this year.
03:10:18.72	Sarah Silver	Um,
03:10:19.85	Sarah Silver	Our insurance costs include a $300,000 premium per year for three years for the new customer rate. After three years, that cost may be eliminated if we have a positive loss ratio, but that's an expense we can anticipate not only this upcoming year but the following year as well. Our deductible remains at $500,000 per occurrence. Pension costs remain volatile with projected annual payments scheduled to reach $4 million a year in less than five years. So these are all, and we have not yet implemented some of the risk management strategies that we have on the books to reduce some of these risks, such as the recommendations of our Hillside Management Task Force that Councilmember Hoffman served on, such as addressing some of the ADA challenges
03:11:14.10	Sarah Silver	throughout town. So
03:11:15.96	Sarah Silver	For these reasons, I think it's important to
03:11:19.01	Sarah Silver	Continue to maintain
03:11:20.72	Sarah Silver	a conservative approach to our reserves.
03:11:26.67	Sarah Silver	I think there's consensus on the part of the council to undertake this 10 year plan. And I think hiring an outside consultant, given the drain on staff resources, given the that we won't enjoy having Mr. Nava with us for a whole lot longer. I think that's a really smart approach. Um,
03:11:46.13	Sarah Silver	And then I appreciated that your presentation kept alive the prospect for a possible private placement as well as the creation of infrastructure finance districts moving forward. So with that, I think this was a very successful item, more so than in prior years. So many thanks to everyone for that.
03:12:12.90	Sarah Silver	And I didn't hear a buzzer, so you must not have been timing me.
03:12:16.78	Sarah Silver	Because I think I went over my three minutes. Okay.
03:12:19.41	Sarah Silver	All right, with that, we will move on.
03:12:21.84	Sarah Silver	Um,
03:12:22.77	Sarah Silver	to city manager reports council member reports city council appointments and other council business we'll start off with the city manager report thank you and good evening
03:12:31.95	Chris Zapata	Given the attention you've expanded, I will be brief on the city manager report. In your packet, there's a full-on legislative update that includes federal, state, and county information. It's gotten from a number of sources, the California League of Cities, the National League of Cities, our Congressman Huffman's office, Senator McGuire's office, Assemblymember Connolly's office, Marine County. in the information. If you watch the news, you know that there's a lot going on in this country. Some of the executive orders that are currently winding their way through policy and judicial like tariffs, immigration, the things that happen in California in terms of clean energy and emergency response, those are all in flux right now, so that's important for us to know. Obviously, there's a federal budget process going on that has passed the House and is headed to the Senate, so we will see what goes on there. There's some serious state legislation related to insurance, also sea level rise, and obviously housing. So all that's in this report. Please feel free to peruse it. I want to thank our intern, Timur, who did a lot of this work because the mayor and council committed this communication to happen, and so it's happened. Not in the report is a...
03:13:59.65	Chris Zapata	you received an after action report from the last council meeting.
03:14:03.36	Chris Zapata	which I sent to you. This will be something we'll do after regular council meetings, kind of just summarizes what you directed and what we're doing about it. I think it's important to have that, even though it's additional work for city staff. But we think it's important to show process and carry through and follow through. In addition, this is my fourth year here. I am four years into Sausalito on the 7th of June. So in June, the city council evaluates the city manager per contract. So on June the 17th, you will be doing a personnel evaluation of the city manager, which I anticipate is going to be an interesting one. So I am going to provide for you some background information that you can take a look at in preparation for that discussion Thank you. I anticipate it's going to be an interesting one. So I am going to provide for you some background information that you can take a look at in preparation for that discussion, which is done in closed session. So please be on the lookout for it.
03:15:01.16	Chris Zapata	That concludes my report, Mayor.
03:15:04.34	Sarah Silver	Great. Thank you.
03:15:10.08	Sarah Silver	Next is city attorney information for counsel. Anything from you, Sergio?
03:15:16.58	Craig Hill	Uh, no, nothing from me.
03:15:18.39	Sarah Silver	Okay, thank you. Next is council member committee reports.
03:15:24.38	Unknown	I have an important one that's relevant for the community. So I, as you all know, I serve on the transportation authority of Marin and one of the newest transportation developments in Marin County is that you will begin seeing metering lights at the freeways to
03:15:38.96	Unknown	to address traffic flow. So we in Sausalito will be seeing as of June 24th, metering lights at the freeway entrance at Bridgeway when you are going by Gate 6 Road at the turn. So just don't be shocked. And we will be assessing that and reviewing the data, but that's gonna be a big change.
03:16:00.83	Unknown	Also at TAM we heard about the new pilot bike share program that's been launched at smart stations across Marin County, which is very promising and
03:16:09.57	Unknown	I made a strong push for it to eventually make it to Sausalito, so we'll see. But that's been starting. It potentially will move countywide and also up to Sonoma County. So those are two exciting pieces of information.
03:16:22.92	Unknown	Great, thank you.
03:16:23.84	Sarah Silver	Other council member reports.
03:16:28.13	Sarah Silver	We have a sister city presentation coming up on July 1st. I just wanted to remind you of that. Okay. Okay.
03:16:37.24	Sarah Silver	the Trigantianian helps.
03:16:38.78	Sarah Silver	So next is appointments. We don't have any appointments tonight. So next is future agenda items.
03:16:44.99	Unknown	Have a few for that.
03:16:45.80	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:16:45.82	Unknown	Yeah.
03:16:45.83	Clark	Yes, go ahead.
03:16:46.83	Unknown	I just want to.
03:16:47.08	Clark	I just want to... I think, Clark, you'll grab these.
03:16:49.63	Unknown	I just want to bring up again the idea of the master plan for the city now that our housing element has been reviewed. I'd like us to think more.
03:16:57.24	Unknown	um holistically about our approach to what all the development in our community is going to look like and i think it would be beneficial to have some sort of master plan that's something we had heard previously specifically for the marineship and i know that councilmember sobieski was something he had expressed interest in so i just wanted to bring that up again um i also wanted to bring something up that we haven't discussed but it's definitely been in the news and i just feel like we would be remiss as policymakers in general to not at least consider and agendize a discussion about what we might do about AI in our city. It is moving at a
03:17:29.69	Unknown	very, very rapid pace. And some predictions anticipate that we could see up to 20% unemployment in the next 10 years as a result of AI. And no one is really doing anything about it yet. And I think that it will actually matter at the local level quite a bit what people decide to do and how they decide to use it. So at some point, I'd like us to agendize a conversation around that as well.
03:17:50.46	Unknown	Thank you.
03:17:51.48	Sarah Silver	Anyone else?
03:17:51.58	Jillian Zeiger	Anyone else?
03:17:53.30	Sarah Silver	Okay.
03:17:55.98	Sarah Silver	There were no minutes.
03:18:01.16	Sarah Silver	I had something I was going to report, and now I can't remember what it was.
03:18:05.97	Sarah Silver	um,
03:18:10.09	Sarah Silver	Boy.
03:18:11.96	Sarah Silver	City Manager, do you remember I had said I was going to report on something, and I can't remember now what it was.
03:18:18.41	Sarah Silver	Other report of significance. Wow.
03:18:21.51	Sarah Silver	Karen Hollweg, Okay, I guess it'll have to wait for the next meeting alright, so I will now take public comment on items on all of these items.
03:18:31.40	Unknown	Seeing none.
03:18:34.02	Sarah Silver	Okay.
03:18:36.18	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:18:36.82	Sarah Silver	I am flat-footed tonight.
03:18:44.04	Sarah Silver	I, I,
03:18:50.57	Sarah Silver	I am adjourning this evening's meeting in honor of Edward Schultz. Many of you know that Edward...
03:18:59.21	Sarah Silver	Served.
03:19:00.27	Sarah Silver	on our County Commission on Aging. And he just in,
03:19:08.17	Sarah Silver	February asked to step down so that Trisha Smith
03:19:14.32	Sarah Silver	And so Tricia Smith kindly took over his role. He passed away March 5. So he literally served us up to within weeks of his passing. And that was really emblematic of his service to the city. He previously served on our mosquito vector control board.
03:19:34.21	Sarah Silver	He is a longtime resident of Sausalito. He kept in touch with everyone and never stopped giving his time and heart to the people and causes he believed in. His rich legacy of community service was reflected in the countless committees he supported. He earned the distinguished honor of being named the 2017 Novato Citizen of the Year.
03:19:56.79	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:19:57.11	Sarah Silver	He was a volunteer from the beginning to bring the Buck Institute to Novato. He served on several committees for the Novato Fire Protection District, including one to pass a tax measure.
03:20:07.84	Sarah Silver	Thank you.
03:20:08.03	Sarah Silver	He also served as a volunteer fireman for the Kent Field Fire Department, worked at the...
03:20:14.39	Sarah Silver	Mayor Island Naval Shipyard for almost 35 years. In short, this was a oh, and he was a member of the Marin County Sheriff's Citizen Academy and served on the Marin County
03:20:29.00	Sarah Silver	parole board, the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force Oversight Committee, and as a Marin County
03:20:35.09	Sarah Silver	grand juror.
03:20:36.77	Sarah Silver	Um, needless to say, uh, Ed's was a life well lived and we are privileged to have known him and benefited from his, uh, spirit of community service. And so we will adjourn our meeting this evening in his honor.
03:20:53.14	Sarah Silver	Thank you.