City Council May 20, 2025

City Council Meeting Summary

Time	Item	Item Summary	Motion Summary	Comment Summary
00:00:21	III: RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION - 7:00 PM	The meeting reconvened to open session at 7:00 PM. Roll call was conducted, noting Councilmember Blaustein's expected arrival later in the evening (00:00:42). The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. Mayor Cox announced there were no closed session announcements, but she recused herself from item C3 due to her residence's proximity to the property under negotiation (00:01:15).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:01:37	1: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS/MAYOR'S ANNOUNCEMENTS - 7:02 PM	Director Vitale from the Community Services Department and acting city librarian Jeffrey Jackson gave budget presentations. Director Vitale discussed the alignment of the department with the city's five-year strategic plan, focusing on strengthening community identity and enhancing fiscal responsibility. He mentioned the organizational chart, highlighting the roles within the library and recreation departments. Jeffrey Jackson emphasized the library's thriving state despite funding cuts, noting 65,000 annual visitors and the library's role in combating misinformation and promoting literacy. He detailed various services, community support, and recent improvements, including new programming, collections, and facilities upgrades. Director Vitale then covered Parks and Recreation Services, detailing programs, facility rentals, special events, and community partnerships, generating approximately $334,000 in revenue in fiscal year 2025. He highlighted accomplishments like the Marin Park reopening and goals for 2026, including gym floor resurfacing and Playland Sausalito acquisition. The recreation budget showed increased expenses offset by increased revenues, while the library budget remained stable. The council members praised the presentations and thanked the presenters for their work. (00:22:24) Mayor Cox praised the high level of service the Library provides the community, especially to those most in need. Councilmember Sobieski asked about the library's revenue from fines and grants, and also praised the revenue growth for Parks and Rec. Councilmember Hoffman praised the rec department for running all the city events and asked where the revenue increases were coming from.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:37:36	1.B: Budget Presentation from Human Resources	Cathy Nikita, the Director of Human Resources, presented the HR budget, emphasizing the department's role in supporting city staff across various departments, including Police, Library, Public Works, and Finance (00:37:57). HR's key functions include recruitment, benefits administration, risk management, training, payroll, onboarding, and labor relations (00:39:38). Nikita highlighted the importance of supporting and encouraging employees, aiming to create a positive work environment (00:40:20). She mentioned that the HR office serves the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) with 31 positions, the Sausalito Police Association with 23 authorized positions (2 frozen), and 25 non-represented employees, plus seasonal, on-call, and temporary staff (00:42:27). Goals for the next fiscal year include continued recruitment efforts, retaining employees, improving internal processes, and providing a supportive atmosphere (00:43:17). Mayor Cox thanked Nikita for her presentation (00:45:51). Walford Solorzano, the City Clerk, then presented on the functions of the City Clerk's office, detailing responsibilities such as overseeing elections, managing city records, and ensuring legislative transparency (00:46:40). Solorzano explained the City Clerk's role as a compliance officer, ensuring adherence to laws like the Brown Act and managing campaign finance disclosures (00:47:43). He also discussed the office's role in managing public records, answering PRA requests, and preserving important city documents (00:49:24). A major project is clearing out the firehouse on Spencer, which involves indexing and scanning a million pages and 1400 maps, estimated to cost $300,000 (00:53:11). The process includes assessing, seeking CIP approval, and contracting with ECS for the work (00:55:01). Councilmember Sobieski praised Solorzano's dedication (00:58:06). Vice Mayor Woodside inquired about the storage and accessibility of digitized maps (00:58:34). Councilmember Hoffman thanked Solorzano for taking on the project (00:59:37).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:59:44	2: COMMUNICATIONS - 7:45 PM	Mayor Cox notes that Councilmember Blaustein has arrived at the meeting.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:59:50	1.C: Budget Presentation from City Clerk	This agenda item consists of public comment regarding the budget presentation from the City Clerk. David Lay suggests the library acquire a scientific globe. Babette McDougall thanks Walford for reinforcing the need to uphold democratic institutions, praises Brian for bringing fun back to Sausalito, and expresses curiosity about the growth of the community services division. She highlights the library and Department of Communication as guardians of the First Amendment and acknowledges the city's efforts to honor Sausalito's traditions. Sandra Bushmaker commends the activities of Brian's department, requests more information on the marketing and communications coordinator position, and expresses pleasure in the organization of documents at the Spencer Firehouse and the presence of a strong HR department. Another public commenter praises the city's presentations, especially Brian's work, highlighting the efficiency and helpfulness of his small team in the Community Services Department.	No Motion	4 Total: 3 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
01:00:06 David Lay was In Favor: Suggests the library should acquire a scientific globe with detailed geographical and scientific features. 01:01:29 Babette McDougall was In Favor: Thanks Walford for upholding democratic institutions, praises Brian for his engaging personality and positive impact on Sausalito, and expresses interest in the growth of the community services division. She also emphasizes the importance of the library and Department of Communication in upholding the First Amendment and appreciates the city's efforts to maintain Sausalito's traditions. 01:03:21 Sandra Bushmaker was Neutral: Commends Brian's department for their activities, requests more details about the marketing and communications coordinator position, expresses satisfaction with the organization of documents by the City Clerk, and appreciates the presence of a strong HR department. 01:04:52 Unknown was In Favor: Praises the city's presentations, especially Brian's work in the Community Services Department, highlighting the efficiency, civility, and helpfulness of his small team, based on her experience as a public relations director for San Francisco's Rec and Park Department and current collaboration on age-friendly programs.
01:06:52	2: COMMUNICATIONS - 7:45 PM	The Communications section of the meeting began with Mayor Cox stating that this is a time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the City Council that are not on the agenda, but state law prevents the council from taking action or engaging in discussions on items not on the agenda (01:06:54). Several members of the public spoke during this time. Zach Monsis introduced himself as a new resident of Sausalito and advocated for the construction of pools near the beach or marinas, emphasizing the importance of aquatics and water safety for underserved communities (01:07:25). David Lay spoke about climate change, focusing on ocean warming and its impact on weather patterns. He also discussed the misunderstanding of net zero and the potential for increased population movement due to cuts in aid around the world (01:09:42). Charles Melton requested that the Sausalito City Council adopt a resolution to fly the pride flag at City Hall starting June 1st for the month of June, highlighting the importance of visibility, representation, and inclusivity for the LGBTQ+ community (01:12:09). Lorette Rogers asked if it's possible to see the people who are speaking on Zoom (01:14:29). Mayor Cox said that she will pass the request along to the city clerk (01:14:56).	No Motion	4 Total: 2 In Favor 0 Against 2 Neutral
01:07:25 Zach Monsis was In Favor: Advocated for building pools near the beach/marinas in Sausalito, emphasizing the importance of aquatics programs and water safety, especially for underserved communities. He cited his background in commercial real estate and passion for leveraging the natural environment to improve outcomes for athletes. 01:09:42 David Lay was Neutral: Discussed ocean warming and its impact on weather, highlighting data from satellites. He mentioned the misunderstanding of net zero and predicted increased population movement due to cuts in aid, providing paperwork to council members. 01:12:09 Charles Melton was In Favor: Requested the City Council to adopt a resolution to fly the pride flag at City Hall starting June 1st, emphasizing visibility, representation, and inclusivity for the LGBTQ+ community. He invited the council and community to the pride celebration. 01:14:29 Lorette Rogers was Neutral: Asked if it was possible to see the speakers on Zoom.
01:15:08	3: CONSENT CALENDAR - 8:00 PM	Mayor Cox introduces the consent calendar items: meeting minutes from April 15 and May 6, 2025 (3A), Jewish Heritage Month proclamation (3B), San Francisco Zoo and Garden Proclamation (3C), Treasurer's Report for Fiscal Year 2025, Quarter 3 (3D), waiver of second reading and adoption of ordinance number oh five dash two two five (3E), shoreline adaptation plan update (3F), authorization for the city manager to execute a contract amendment with WRT Consulting for shoreline adaptation planning services (3G), authorization to solicit construction bids for the Bridgeway Safety Improvement Project (3H), and authorization for the city manager to enter into an agreement with Marin City Sausalito FC for lease of property at Martin Luther King Park (3I). The Mayor recuses herself from item 3I due to proximity of her residence (01:16:53). The Mayor proposes textual changes to item 3E, requiring it to be a first reading with the second reading postponed (01:16:53). Councilmember Blaustein thanks the council for including the Jewish heritage month proclamation (01:17:37). The City Attorney recommends removing item 3E if textual changes are to be made (01:18:38), and Mayor Cox removes 3E from the consent calendar and moves it to item 5A (01:18:45). Councilmember Sobieski notes people are present to comment on item 3E and suggests hearing them first (01:19:04). The Mayor opens public comment on the consent agenda, excluding item 5.2, and then 3E (01:19:20).	Motion to approve consent items 3A through 3D and 3F through 3H by Vice Mayor Woodside, seconded by Mayor Cox (01:21:38). Motion to approve consent item 3I, moved by Councilmember Blaustein and seconded by Vice Mayor Woodside (01:22:12).	3 Total: 2 In Favor 1 Against 0 Neutral
01:19:47 Lorette Rogers was In Favor: Wishes to comment on the residential uses and commercial districts, but is told that will be heard at item 5A. 01:20:15 Babette McDougall was Against: Expresses concern that the council is moving too fast without inviting sufficient comment. She is specifically concerned about item 5e being on the consent agenda, given its sensitivity coupled with other formula retail products, and the city's ongoing review for housing density. 01:21:08 Judy Wetter was In Favor: Thanks the Mayor and Council for removing 3E from the consent calendar. She requests clarification on where it will be discussed in the business.
01:22:48	3.E: Waiver of Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance No. 05-2025, An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito Amending Chapter 10.44 Section 10.44.010 (“Purpose and Applicability”) and Section 10.44.190 (“Residential Uses in Commerci	Mayor Cox introduced the item, noting it was removed to address public comment regarding its breadth. She proposed removing revisions to Section 10.44.190 C2 (changes to affordability standards) and Section 10.44.190 D A3 (modification to residential and affordable housing requirements). The goal is to discuss these further with community feedback and to narrow the circumstances under which second-floor commercial is allowed. Councilmember Blaustein requested clarification on the code sections under discussion and the City Attorney worked on making that visible. Councilmember Sobieski expressed surprise at the proposed changes, arguing the existing ordinance might conflict with state law and create a more restrictive environment in commercial zones, potentially reducing housing availability. The City Attorney said that HCD might see current affordability requirements as a constraint and shared that policy arguments from the councilmember are well-noted. Mayor Cox wants to put it on a future agenda item in July until a housing element is approved to reduce risk. The City Attorney noted that if there are any changes to the ordinance other than correcting typographical errors, this would need to be reintroduced as a first reading. The city attorney stated that this language was suggested in consultation with staff due to concerns about it being a constraint on development and proposed language to align the requirements to mirror affordability requirements in residential districts. In this meeting this item was discussed by council and the public was allowed to make comments.	Councilmember Blaustein motioned to approve the ordinance (as in the agenda packet), while also directing staff to provide an affordability assessment including Councilmember Hoffman's data requests, and this motion was seconded. (02:21:39)	14 Total: 9 In Favor 3 Against 2 Neutral
01:39:31 Adrienne Brinton was In Favor: She supports splitting the two issues in the ordinance as they were confusing. She wants the process to move forward to get her restaurant at 715 Bridgeway open. She argues the documents have been public for some time and the changes are necessary, and any delays impact the business owner. 01:41:03 Sharna Brockett was In Favor: She believes many people don't know what's going on and it took her a while to figure it out. She believes that the code is being cleaned up so the Wells Fargo building can be turned into a fabulous restaurant and boutique hotel and this is a gift to the town. She says affordable housing is not realistic for property owners or developers to develop housing and in effect, the existing law stops the building of housing. She read a quote stating the solution to the housing crisis is more housing (not just affordable housing), and building market-rate housing creates vacancies throughout the market. 01:43:14 Brian Powers was In Favor: He is a recent resident, thanking the council. He notes Sausalito has a housing shortage and the 2011 law was not successful. He hopes this is passed to increase housing, and that this is just a small step. 01:44:14 Lorette Rogers was Against: She appreciates the mayor giving more time and consideration. She states there needs to be a fuller analysis of how these changes would affect Sausalito's residential space and particularly affordable housing. She and Mike are worried about how this could affect the adopted housing element, which hasn't been certified yet. She is glad the council is waiting to get more information. 01:45:30 Babette McDougall was Neutral: She says there is an implication of precedent beyond just the Wells Fargo building, creating a ripple effect. She echoes other's comments and thanks the mayor for slowing it down, as there is a potential for a collision. She would like to see the council get through the housing element, and moving slower is one way to get together on this. 01:46:59 Linda Foch was Against: She says the ordinance is a mess, and reminds the Council that there's a voted-upon and approved resolution that clarifies that ordinance 1022 does not apply to the CC district. She says the ordinance needs to be cleaned up and brought back to another meeting at a later date. 01:47:40 Joe Carr was In Favor: He is an architect and homeowner, stating there is a serious housing problem. He believes most people who object to new housing haven't taken economics 101 and that you restrict housing, you make it more expensive. He also says a rising tide floats all boats, and market-rate units will vacate lower-end units. He believes we need to stop stopping these things. 01:49:18 Kieran Culligan was In Favor: He wants to acknowledge persistence. He notes that many projects in Sausalito never happen, but that this developer has created something awesome and staff has identified code issues and ways to fix it. He is hoping that this gets across the finish line and shows better outcomes than in the past. He notes he reached out to someone who works in affordable housing, and they laughed at the statement that what is proposed would hurt housing stock. He states the existing language restricts housing, and the opposition is made up of those who oppose other housing projects. 01:51:16 Bonnie McGregor was Neutral: She is not sure what she has to say is pertinent. She has trouble understanding what is considered affordable housing and who determines when a town is full. She says we do not want to look like Manhattan, as that is why we live in a small town. She notes traffic is god-awful almost 24-7. 01:53:48 Eric McFarland was In Favor: He is a resident and renter. He and his wife have been challenged in trying to find a place to live and are in escrow to buy a property on Caledonia Street with a vacant upper level. His expectation was that this was going to be discussed and pushed forward. He feels not moving forward is a tremendous impediment to the project. 01:55:51 Sandra Bushmaker was Against: She states the priority is to get the housing element adopted and certified. She finds this very confusing and supports a continuance and to clarify the changes with an executive summary. She disagrees that more market rate housing will create more affordable housing, and that there was no data to support that. 01:57:10 Judy Wetter was In Favor: She appreciates the item being moved to the summer for more study. She says we need to understand how these changes to the ordinance will affect more than just one project, and we need to make sure that we're enabling smart growth. 01:57:38 Scott Thornburg was In Favor: He is really frustrated with the issue and thinks the anti-housing NIMBYs will use anything to stop housing, and overregulation is how we got here. He is frustrated that as a renter, volunteering in the community, it is difficult to find a home. It is difficult for him to watch friends be forced out. There is not enough supply, so he says the city has to pave the way for more housing and he encourages the council not to let policy get in the way. 01:59:22 Charles Melton was In Favor: He is a Sausalito resident who faces housing uncertainty, it's a constant battle. The decision makers, the council, need to think about those who do not own homes and contribute to the community. We absolutely need affordable housing, it's a complicated issue. He says there needs to be progress made to enable more housing.
02:26:30	5: BUSINESS ITEMS - 8:10 PM	Mayor Cox proposed postponing the hearing on item 5c, concerning launching a local employee parking program for Caledonia businesses, due to time constraints (02:26:35). Councilmembers Blaustein and Sobieski acknowledged that some individuals came specifically to speak on the item and suggested allowing them to make their public comments before the item is officially continued (02:26:57). Mayor Cox agreed to take public comment on item 5C, but clarified that the item would be brought back for full consideration at a later date (02:27:20).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
02:27:24	5.C: Caledonia Employee Parking Permit Program, 2-Hour Time-Limit Parking Expansion Proposal, Economic Hardship Program, and Parking Revenue Review	This agenda item concerns the Caledonia Employee Parking Permit Program, the expansion of 2-hour time-limit parking, an economic hardship program, and a review of parking revenue. The item was heard, but will be brought back hopefully on June 3rd to the council (02:37:03).	No Motion	5 Total: 4 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
02:27:52 Paul Gedner was In Favor: Paul Gedner, an owner of Driver's Market, expressed concerns about the parking challenges faced by employees who can't afford to live or park in the area. He proposed dedicating the concrete platform in lot five for employee parking, with businesses applying to the city council for designated spots at a monthly fee. He suggested a rate of $100 per month for three spots, arguing it's a simple solution to a complex problem (02:28:31). 02:30:20 Yoshitomei (Yoshi) was In Favor: Yoshitomei (Yoshi) highlighted the difficulty of living in Sausalito, with many employees holding two jobs. He noted the expansion of the C permit area and suggested making parking lot 5 a larger, affordable employee parking area to attract more workers. He emphasized the need to balance the needs of businesses and residents in the residential-commercial zone (02:31:20). 02:32:30 Adrienne Brinton was In Favor: Adrienne Brinton emphasized the importance of businesses and their employees as part of the community's fabric. She pointed out the generous parking benefits provided to residents and suggested that the employee parking program should be seen as a service to the community, advocating for more generosity to help businesses attract and retain employees. She highlighted the financial contributions of employees through parking fees (02:33:22). 02:34:36 Vicki Nichols was Neutral: Vicki Nichols, a former Caledonia Street resident, recalled past efforts to address employee parking issues. She supported Paul's idea of using the concrete pad for parking. She cautioned against squeezing residents further due to the lack of garages and limited parking, especially with the loss of green spots, and suggested shifting parking demand away from Caledonia Street (02:35:11). 02:35:56 Babette McDougall was In Favor: Babette McDougall, a Sausalito resident, acknowledged the role of residents in the parking situation. She praised the politeness of employees who park in her neighborhood and supported the creation of an employee parking area. She emphasized the need for equitable solutions and agreed with Yoshi on the importance of making Sausalito a desirable place to work to attract quality employees (02:36:39).
02:37:31	5.A: Waiver of Second Reading and Adoption of Ordinance No. 03-2025, An Ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito Amending Chapter 10.44.240 “Formula Retail”, Table 10.24-1 “Land Uses in Commercial Districts”, and Chapter 10.24.040 “	The item concerns amending the city's formula retail ordinance. Matthew Mandich presents the current ordinance's background, issues, proposed changes, and potential new directions. The current ordinance, adopted in 2003 and amended in 2007, requires a conditional use permit (CUP) for formula retail, which is problematic because the CUP should run with the land (use) rather than be establishment-specific (user). The definition of formula retail is vague, and the CUP requirement increases risk to the city due to court rulings. The proposed changes include removing the CUP, adopting a formula retail zoning clearance allocated by zoning district with caps, and clearly defining formula retail as businesses with six or more locations worldwide and two standardized elements. Existing formula retail would receive zoning clearances. Certain uses like grocery stores and banks would be exempt. The Commercial Waterfront would be a new zoning district allowing formula retail. The City Council approved the ordinance on April 1st with modifications, including the Planning Commission issuing zoning clearances. Potential alternatives include disallowing formula retail in the Central Commercial Zoning District, redefining formula retail with a higher bar (e.g., 10, 20, 50, or 100 locations), and lowering cap numbers. Councilmember Sobieski notes the motivation is to fix the ordinance to better protect the city from lawsuits, explaining that current CUP process is problematic and fixing it will prevent the city from paying attorney's fees and being forced to allow a business like McDonald's to open. Councilmember Hoffman questions the Malibu case reliance, and whether San Francisco and Healdsburg have similar CUP processes. The City Attorney does not recommend a CUP, as it can’t regulate the applicant. The City Attorney also advises against a wholesale ban. Vice Mayor Woodside asks the city attorney and director about the Planning Commission having to review the ordinance if a large change to the definition or cap number is made. City Attorney says it is always safest to take it back to the Planning Commission, but it may not be necessary. Director Phipps believes that the number of establishments was discussed by the Planning Commission, but that taking it back is the safest action. Mayor Cox asks whether it would need to go back if it was defined as fewer than 50 businesses to outlaw formula retail, and the City Attorney confirms that this would need to go back to the planning commission. Several councilmembers and the city attorney state that a wholesale ban could result in litigation against the city. Councilmember Blaustein points to Sebastopol's CUPE process which defines formula retail as 25 businesses or less, and recommends looking into a number of different potential paths that could be taken.	Motion to provide direction to staff that (1) additional formula retail be disallowed in the CC zoning district, (2) formula retail be redefined by setting a higher bar from 6 to 50 California locations, (3) allow up to three formula retail in the CR zoning district, and (4) ban all formula retail for businesses that have over 50 establishments throughout town, with the exception of one site TBD by a working group comprised of council members Sobieski and Hoffman. (03:27:32)	16 Total: 9 In Favor 7 Against 0 Neutral
03:00:25 Vicki Nichols was Against: Vicki expresses concern about allowing formula retail in the historic district (CC) and not wanting a McDonald's there. She suggests that reducing the allowed number in the CC would not shift the potential six to another area, but simply not allow it. She is also concerned about the waterfront and the potential for formula retail there, similar to the PEATS issue. She appreciates the cutoff number as a way to handle the issue. 03:01:55 Sharna Brockett was In Favor: Sharna expresses excitement for improvements to downtown and urges action to fill vacant storefronts. She notes the town's reputation as hard to do business with. She shops in other cities, and wishes Sausalito had stores like Malibu Farm (seven locations) and Marine Layer (45 locations), but those are considered formula retail. 03:03:59 Meryl was In Favor: Meryl supports Sharna's sentiment, wants permits made easier to obtain, and mentions Sartage's difficulty opening. She suggests getting experienced people involved and simplifying the process. 03:05:15 Yoshitomei (Yoshi) was In Favor: Yoshi shares his experience of a failed business in San Francisco due to franchise rules and inability to sell. He does not want to see empty stores next to him. 03:06:22 Brian Powers was In Favor: Brian says vacancies don't help anyone. He states that if people want to shop at stores with 7,500 locations, there is no reason to stop them. 03:07:26 Adrienne Brinton was In Favor: Adrienne notes the economics of opening a business and the challenges of filling large storefronts. She says single unique businesses is really risky. She states that opening up to larger regional chains can address this. 03:08:43 Paul Gedner was In Favor: Paul reiterates the need to fill empty businesses that hurt the city. He recommends making the process work for all the tourists, and states to consider how they fit in. 03:09:43 Babette McDougall was Against: Babette claims going against constituent will is not good. She asserts the community should have a say, and the city is at its limits of capacity. She argues that every formula retail has impacts and traffic impacts should be included. She states that there is no consideration of legacy status. She says the City does not know what it is inviting. 03:11:34 Kieran Culligan was In Favor: Kieran does not want a McDonald's, an Arby's, etc., but is more concerned with keeping what is currently in place. He says that current conditions are torturing business and themselves. Phil's could not put names on their cups, and Equator had to change their name. Kieran calls what is in place today is broken, and suggestions are an improvement. 03:12:59 Lorette Rogers was Against: Lorette wants to retain residential input from the formula retail permit process, and is against eliminating the residential input. She would like the spread to be throughout the city, and not just the CC and the CR. and should have a say in formula retail businesses. 03:14:30 Sandra Bushmaker was Against: Sandra believes there should be community input for the small town maritime character, citing other towns with the CUP process. If marineship is in the zoning areas, it is going to impact the working waterfront. 03:16:29 Bonnie McGregor was In Favor: Bonnie urges to vote in favor of updating the current retail rule because of being very restricted. The ordinance allows smaller chains with a wider range of retailers who are attracted to the residents and visitors. A look at history, says Starbucks failed, while Pete's was turned down. Times and shopping trends have changed as well. 03:18:38 Judy Wetter was Against: Judy fears that it mandates approval by staff and planning commission, and removes the abilities for the community to weigh in. Retail is down, which is not just there, so this is the time to get it right. 03:19:23 Jacqueline Armikas was Against: I believe at this time, we should not update the formula retail as a resident and business. Local Owners, Commercial. Buildings have a right to have input into how many chain stores should be approved near their businesses. The current six already. Storefront's where the stores are a year. 03:21:29 Joe Carr was In Favor: Joe cites friend saying it is a town of t-shirts, candles, and fudge. That store that can locate here are the ones that have maybe a couple of outlets and want to open here. If we raise a number of 30, 40, or 50, anything under 50, we don't want McDonald's. Evidence that are great, great stores that really fit. 03:22:56 David Lay was Against: David discusses how, in Vermont, they were a tourist trap and everyone loved it. And only one place was formula with liquor store and it was four seasons, everything was just the one. And even the locals meet them because it was not what was needed.
03:41:40	5.B: Second Review of Draft Fiscal Year 2025/2026 Capital Improvement Program	The City Council conducted a second review of the draft Fiscal Year 2025/2026 Capital Improvement Program (CIP). City Manager Chris presented an overview, emphasizing the importance of infrastructure investment for community needs, safety, property values, and resilience. He outlined the city's financial position, noting approximately $20 million available for infrastructure investment, potentially growing to $25 million by the end of the next fiscal year, sourced from gas tax, county funds, and Measure L. The city manager requested an allocation of $15 million for capital improvements and an additional $400,000 for contract project managers to handle the workload. Public Works Director Kevin McGowan then detailed specific projects in the CIP, including Parking Lot 1 reconstruction, Fire Station 2, and Bridgeway pedestrian crossings, with an additional $1 million for the paving project based on the strategic planning session. The council discussed funding sources, project priorities, and staffing needs. They addressed concerns about Dunphy Park Phase Two, Bridgeway improvements, water access, and the fire station. Council members inquired about existing and future impact fees, sidewalk pilot programs, and community input, with a focus on balancing strategic goals, financial responsibility, and community needs. Council members considered a direction from a letter about the water access to downtown that the town has been looking at and three different locations for it, which they had pros and cons of all three, and also identified funding sources for it, stating that those be an active project and allocated the sum of $75k to have the areas refurbished. This project was the prominent part of a Facilities Condition Assessment. The council members also weighed the financial position of the city to ensure that operating budgets and future spending are balanced, with enough resources in place, while not spending too much and still meeting the basic needs of the city.	No Motion	3 Total: 1 In Favor 1 Against 1 Neutral
04:34:46 Adrienne Brinton was In Favor: Expressed support for selling the fire station, emphasized the importance of the Trident dock as a priority, and urged for a more aesthetically pleasing redesign of Parking Lot 1. 04:36:05 Vicki Nichols was Neutral: Raised concerns about the deed restrictions on the former Malia property regarding park expansion and its potential impact on the use of that space. 04:37:03 Babette McDougall was Against: Criticized the CIP process, accusing the council of subterfuge and prioritizing personal agendas over community needs, particularly regarding Dunphy Park and conservation easements. She stated that what was being discussed contravenes the city's own interpretations of open water, open shoreline, and open land.
04:55:57	6: CITY MANAGER REPORTS, COUNCILMEMBER REPORTS, CITY COUNCIL APPOINTMENTS, OTHER COUNCIL BUSINESS - 9:50 PM	Mayor Cox acknowledged the detailed engagement of her colleagues on an important project and noted that they were nearing the end of the meeting with one more substantial item to discuss. (04:55:57)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
04:56:16	6A: City Manager Information for Council	City Manager Chris provides an update on the pending asset and obligation transfer agreement with the Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District. He thanks Vice Mayor Woodside and Councilmember Hoffman for their work as an ad hoc committee. The new MOU involves three changes: removal of the service area expansion and board membership items, and tightening up the finance section. The existing revenue in the sewer enterprise fund is close to $5 million. The City of Sausalito would use $1.6 million for pension costs, $500,000 for post-employment benefit costs, another $600,000 for a state revolving loan fund, leaving approximately $2 million in the account. To de-feas and pay off the 2015 bonds, the sewer district would need to pay the city $3 million. The city is working with the Bank of New York Mellon and the state revolving loan fund to get the payoff schedules and dates. If these conditions are met, the MOU, including public engagement, transfer of assets, and transfer of records, would happen over the next nine months. The aim is to bring the agreement back to the city council in July after a meeting with the sanitary sewer district on June 5th.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
04:58:39	6C: Councilmember Committee Reports	Mayor Cox reported on the MCCMC meeting scheduled for May 28th in Sausalito. The planned presentation on e-bikes was moved to a later date in a different city, leaving the May 28th meeting without a speaker. Cox invited Senator McGuire, Congressman Huffman, and Assemblymember Connolly to speak. Councilmember Blaustein inquired if MCCMC has an agenda and business as expected. Cox clarified that it would become a virtual meeting, with the in-person meeting postponed until later in the year. Walford Solorzano suggested moving the in-person meeting to July, so people can visit the Spinnaker. Babette McDougall agreed that July would be a good time. Cox confirmed a virtual MCC-MC meeting at the end of May. Walford Solorzano will contact Jeff at the Spinnaker.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
05:00:34	6D: Appointments	Mayor Cox appointed Vice Mayor Woodside as the liaison to the Library Board and the Marin Clean Energy Board. Additionally, Tricia Smith was appointed to complete Edward Schultz's term on the Commission on Aging, as he had to step down due to health reasons. The Mayor requested that the next meeting be adjourned in honor of Ed Schultz for his contributions to the Commission on Aging (05:01:13).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
05:01:29	6E: Future Agenda Items	Mayor Cox mentioned two future agenda items: protection of legacy businesses and the affordable housing inventory, which the Community and Economic Development Department is tasked with addressing.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
05:01:48	6F: Minutes from Boards, Commissions, and Committees	Mayor Cox mentioned that the minutes from boards, commissions, and committees will be reviewed in the new fiscal year. (05:01:48)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
05:01:53	6H: Public Comment on Items 6A-6C and 6E-6G: limited to 2 minutes/person	Mayor Cox opens the floor for public comments on items 6A through 6G. Babette McDougall raises a point regarding committee reports, specifically asking if Ms. Blaustein is on a tax-related committee and requests a report on the committee's activities (05:02:38). She also wants to know how infrastructure taxes can be properly returned to the municipality for more direct access and control (05:02:59).	No Motion	1 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 1 Neutral
05:02:08 Babette McDougall was Neutral: She asks for an update on any tax committee Ms. Blaustein may be on and how infrastructure taxes can be properly returned to the municipality.
05:03:15	7: ADJOURNMENT	The meeting was adjourned by Mayor Cox at 12:11 AM. She thanked everyone for their hard work and collaborative spirit throughout the meeting (05:03:23).	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

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City Council May 6, 2025

Positive People for Sausalito

contact@positivepeopleforsausalito.com

Time	Speaker	Text
00:00:21.33	Mayor Cox	All right, good evening everyone and welcome to the Sausalito City Council meeting for Tuesday May 20 2025 we are returning from closed session. So city clerk will you please call roll.
00:00:37.98	Walford Solorzano	Council member Blaustein, she is not here yet.
00:00:42.08	Mayor Cox	She expects to arrive between 7.30 and 8 p.m.
00:00:45.46	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Hoffman.
00:00:46.67	Mayor Cox	Here.
00:00:47.75	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Sobieski. Vice Mayor Woodside.
00:00:51.48	Walford Solorzano	Here. Mayor Cox.
00:00:52.88	Mayor Cox	Here, we'll have the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:01:00.41	Judy Wetter	I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
00:01:04.92	Judy Wetter	and to the republic for which it stands, one nation,
00:01:07.60	Bonnie McGregor	one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
00:01:07.97	Unknown	under God.
00:01:08.97	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
00:01:09.37	Vicki Nichols	Indivisible with liberty.
00:01:12.22	Unknown	Thank you.
00:01:15.39	Mayor Cox	There are no closed session announcements, although I would like to. Remark that I recused myself from item.
00:01:27.39	Mayor Cox	C3 due to the proximity of my residence to the property subject to negotiation.
00:01:37.16	Mayor Cox	All right, we will move on to special presentations and mayor's announcements. And we'll start off with a budget presentation from our community services department.
00:01:52.32	Mayor Cox	Welcome.
00:01:53.92	Mayor Cox	Director Vitale, very nice to see you.
00:01:56.59	Brian	Thank you. Pleasure to see you. Congratulations.
00:01:58.27	Mayor Cox	Congratulations on a fabulous spring fling at Marinship Park on Saturday.
00:02:02.12	Brian	Oh, thank you.
00:02:04.58	Brian	Yes, thank you so much. It was a lot of work. The Chamber of Commerce and lots of volunteers did lots of great work for it. It was mostly them. They just had a few of our materials for it, but I'm happy that people came for it and enjoyed the wonderful day. I'll get started. I know that we have a busy day today. So good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, City staff, members of the public. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present here tonight. Part of our overarching objective for combining parks and recreation, library services and communications is to align with our city's five-year strategic plan.
00:02:39.04	Brian	We're strengthening our community identity, goal B, and enhancing our fiscal responsibility, goal C.
00:02:45.71	Brian	We want to build long lasting relationships, provide safe gathering places, support wellness and health, facilitate inclusive community programs and events and promote lifelong learners. By creating a community services department, we're streamlining our organization processes and working towards our objective, which is to strengthen our civic engagement. Together we can enhance local participation and create a stronger, more connected community. Next slide, please.
00:03:13.12	Brian	Here we have our organizational chart for community services. Our community services director will be in charge of three departments. The city librarian will be in charge of the library. And there are four full-time staff, including the acting city librarian, with six part-time staff and four subs.
00:03:33.43	Brian	For recreation, there are four...
00:03:35.88	Brian	Full time staff, including the acting community services director with a rec admin that splits time 5050 between HR and recreation and a new communication marketing and communications coordinator position.
00:03:51.64	Brian	Next slide.
00:03:53.53	Brian	All right, I'd like to turn it over to our acting city librarian, Jeffrey Jackson, who's going to discuss our library services.
00:04:00.99	Mayor Cox	Good evening and welcome.
00:04:03.30	Mayor Cox	Thank you. I don't know if you've spoken to this council before. I have not. Welcome. It's great to see you here.
00:04:09.63	Jeffrey Jackson	Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Manager, Council members, friends, colleagues, and members of the public.
00:04:16.88	Jeffrey Jackson	Even its funding to libraries is being cut at the federal and state level, and our existence is challenged by those who would deny Americans the freedom to read. Sausalito, I'm happy to say, is – Sausalito's library is thriving.
00:04:31.58	Jeffrey Jackson	65,000 people a year walk through the doors of Sausalito's living room as the library has been affectionately dubbed by our patrons.
00:04:39.79	Jeffrey Jackson	To them and to the countless others we reach remotely through online services, outreach, and partnering with schools, businesses, and community organizations, we provide the following and more seven days a week.
00:04:52.78	Jeffrey Jackson	access to information.
00:04:54.85	Jeffrey Jackson	Google a question and get a thousand answers.
00:04:57.72	Jeffrey Jackson	Ask a librarian and get the correct answer.
00:05:00.56	Jeffrey Jackson	Libraries are at the front lines of the war against misinformation.
00:05:04.69	Jeffrey Jackson	We promote literacy. Our children's librarian, Reva Pollard, does our storytimes herself, including Second Saturday's Family Storytime and Art in the Library.
00:05:14.92	Jeffrey Jackson	In addition to her master's degree in library and information science, she also has a master's in children's literature. We're lucky to have her.
00:05:23.95	Jeffrey Jackson	We serve as a community hub over 5000 people attended our programs last year.
00:05:30.17	Jeffrey Jackson	Digital inclusion to ensure everyone has equitable access to online resources, computers, and Wi-Fi.
00:05:37.51	Jeffrey Jackson	If you're homebound, for example, you don't have to come to the library to check out and stream a movie or listen to an e-audiobook.
00:05:45.68	Jeffrey Jackson	Educational support by providing learning materials and partnering with the school district. You can sign up for a live tutor online or learn a new language through the Mango app.
00:05:57.06	Jeffrey Jackson	preservation of knowledge and culture through our carefully curated collections. For example, our local interest collection not only contains books about Sausalito, but also by Sausalito authors.
00:06:11.65	Jeffrey Jackson	We encourage creativity and innovation from providing museum passes to co-sponsoring the Evening of Poetry event at Sausalito Women's Club.
00:06:20.90	Jeffrey Jackson	We support job seekers and entrepreneurs from helping people fill out and submit job applications to leadership workshops and a program series on launching a new business.
00:06:31.45	Jeffrey Jackson	We provide health and well-being resources. We had an elderly lady come in who had a dental issue Medicare didn't cover. She wanted to know what resources were available to her, and we helped her out.
00:06:43.66	Jeffrey Jackson	We provide safe and inclusive spaces. The library is free and everyone is welcome no matter who you are, what you look like, or what you believe.
00:06:53.13	Jeffrey Jackson	We are supported by a library board of trustees who reviews the administration of library operations, makes recommendations to the city librarian and helps establish library policies. It also serves as liaison between the library
00:07:07.44	Jeffrey Jackson	and the community and between the library and city council.
00:07:10.95	Jeffrey Jackson	The Friends of Sausalito Library, through donations and book sales, pays for things like children's programming,
00:07:16.86	Jeffrey Jackson	and furniture for the children's room.
00:07:19.30	Jeffrey Jackson	And the Library Foundation provides a permanent revenue source to enhance the library's programs, materials, and environments, such as the remodel in 2013 and purchasing our new meeting pod. Next slide, please.
00:07:33.04	Jeffrey Jackson	The library is blessed with a really terrific team. Together in the last six months, we have accomplished the following. New and improved programming for children, teens, and adults. New and improved collections, such as our horror and weird tale collection, the best in Northern California.
00:07:50.54	Jeffrey Jackson	and our music CD and LP collections.
00:07:53.86	Jeffrey Jackson	We have a new media listening station and new furniture for the children's room, both courtesy of the friends of the Sausalito library.
00:08:01.63	Jeffrey Jackson	A new book return in the City Hall parking lot paid for by the Library Improvement Fund
00:08:07.84	Jeffrey Jackson	A Pika Books program for those hard to find books. A new leisure periodical collection. You may also have noticed improved selection of magazines out in the hall.
00:08:19.13	Jeffrey Jackson	New material selection policy in response to the California Freedom to Read Act last year.
00:08:25.44	Jeffrey Jackson	We have streamlined and simplified our policies, procedures, and workflows. Nuts and bolts stuff I won't get into here.
00:08:35.14	Jeffrey Jackson	with the aid of library staff. Next slide, please. Is there any?
00:08:39.38	Jeffrey Jackson	Nope.
00:08:40.34	Jeffrey Jackson	um
00:08:41.60	Jeffrey Jackson	I'll just sum up here. With the aid of library staff, the Friends of the Library and the Library Foundation, efforts are already underway to accomplish the following long-term goals to keep Sausalito informed and inspired.
00:08:54.95	Jeffrey Jackson	Reposition, remove books to accommodate fire sprinklers. That is...
00:09:00.69	Jeffrey Jackson	70% completed.
00:09:03.29	Jeffrey Jackson	walk-in tech help this summer provided by a local high school student. It's his first job
00:09:10.26	Jeffrey Jackson	A new projector and sound system this summer paid for by a donation administered by the Friends of Sausalito Library. It will make library events so much easier and more professional.
00:09:21.60	Jeffrey Jackson	We're getting a new Zoom Room Study Pod this summer paid for by a grant from the Library Foundation.
00:09:28.97	Jeffrey Jackson	First Friday's adult programming series starts this summer.
00:09:33.36	Jeffrey Jackson	We'd like to resolve some serious storage issues. If we end up building a storage closet, it can be paid for by the foundation or the library improvement fund.
00:09:43.67	Jeffrey Jackson	We'd like to refinish the wooden furniture, which we've had since 1979.
00:09:49.15	Jeffrey Jackson	Maybe it gets some.
00:09:50.35	Jeffrey Jackson	new armchairs, coffee table, table and floor lamps, new carpet and paint.
00:09:54.20	Jeffrey Jackson	These are the kinds of things the library foundation is happy to pay for.
00:09:58.52	Jeffrey Jackson	And ADA compliance, my understanding is that funds have been earmarked for this. It chiefly has to do with the width of the aisles and the stacks. Thank you very much.
00:10:11.70	Brian	All right, next slide, please. Jeffrey's been wonderful to work with. I've been working with him for the past nine or so months. He's been an integral part of our library since 1998. So he's been here, he's been around, he's been able to see lots of different renditions and changes take place. And with him at the helm, he's given me great insights into our library, into the culture behind libraries, and have really opened my eyes to the wonderfulness of what our staff and the library have done for this community. So thank you, Jeffrey. I appreciate you. So we're going to talk about Parks and Recreation Services. First, we're going to talk about programs and activities. We host a wide variety of programs catering to all age groups. They vary from enrichment classes, such as bridge or writing series, to fitness programs like yoga and strength training, birthday parties, summer camps, tennis, ping pong clinics, bocce, and volleyball leagues, and a whole bunch more. There's a mixture of paid programming and free programming. It's offered throughout the year, and in the last 60 days, over 600 people have registered for some type of programming on our registration software. In fiscal year 2025, we've generated approximately $334,000 in revenue.
00:11:23.01	Brian	For facility rental management, we manage programs and rentals for all of our parks and community rooms, which in 2025 has brought in approximately $90,745 in rental fees so far. These rentals include the MLK gym, the parks, the large mixed-use fields, tennis, pickleball courts, basketball courts, Marinship Field, Dunphy Park Gazebo, Gabrielson Park, the exercise room, downstairs, edgewater room, and the game room. Our three park landscapers and two maintenance staff work hard to keep these spaces looking good for our renters, visitors, and community members who utilize these amenities daily.
00:12:02.01	Brian	Next, we have our special events and community events. Our small team of four downstairs in the rec office manages and hosts 27 special events throughout the year. Most of them are free for the community and visitors to attend, while some like the Chili Cook-Off, Jazz & Blues, or Toast-A-Sauce Lido have paid components that allow others to further participate, like sponsoring a table or sampling food or drinks. We rely on sponsorship from community partners and nonprofits, which help offset our costs. And in turn, the money gets reinvested back into Sausalito through community projects or donations. In fiscal year 25, we've generated approximately $207,000 in revenue. Additionally, we approve upwards of 12 community special events per year. These fees are nominal bringing in somewhere around 2500 annually, but the city and community events bring in somewhere between 25 and 30,000 attendees in total. So that's 37 ish events with about 30,000 people that come into town.
00:13:03.38	Brian	We have a memorial bench program and film permit and banner program. Our memorial bench program is very popular. A lot of people want to honor their family members and Sausalito community members by memorializing them with a bench, a plaque, or a tree. The space gives them a place to reflect, rest, and grow. The revenue generated is about $12,000 this year, and we expect that to grow in 2026. We paused our program to update our pricing with our new fee study and currently have a wait list of eight to 10 people looking for space in the ferry landing, Tracy Way, Yitakchi, and other parks and public spaces. For film permits, we get a handful throughout the year, mostly promotional videos or pictures of people wanting to do some brand stuff. And then once in a while, we'll get a larger production in town for a week plus that'll bring us ten to twenty thousand dollars Hopefully not causing too much trouble for residents around town We have lots of community partners. We partner with a variety of nonprofits businesses restaurants local artisans We proudly collaborate with Trisha Smith from the Sausalito Village in the CARS program CARS is celebrating ten years of supporting seniors with free rides, activities, workshops, and a whole bunch more. We also partner closely with Sybil Boutier from Age-Friendly Sausalito on a variety of projects. As their fiscal agent, we've been hosting their Tai Chi for fall prevention via Zoom and in person for the last five years. This program is fully funded through Title III grants and supported by Marin County HHS. Age Friendly has been awarded $21,948 in fiscal year 24-25 and approximately $95,000 in the last five years. They've hosted 608 hours of valuable programming to 384 participants that are improving their balance, mobility, reducing pain and arthritis, and avoiding dangerous falls. Thank you. of valuable programming to 384 participants that are improving their balance, mobility, reducing pain and arthritis, and avoiding dangerous falls. Sybil's also secured Breathe RESPA grants from 2020 to 2025, enabling inclusive senior field trips to the Edgewater seniors and other senior groups. They've gone to Angel Island, Samuel B. Taylor Park, and they've taken 22 trips and had 361 people head out to them.
00:15:11.70	Brian	Our rec department also helps fund these trips by providing meals, transportation, or other services four times a year.
00:15:17.90	Brian	We work with our neighbors in the 94965 neighborhoods in Marin City. We work with Play Marin, the Performing Stars, Marin City Art and Culture, and Marin City Community Services District. We partner on programming, provide free event space, and strengthen our community ties by supporting each other when we can. The city also sponsors Marin City's Juneteenth event. This will be our third year sponsoring it at $5,000. All of these efforts with our local partners and businesses, local nonprofits, and committed community members keep Sausalito's traditions alive and foster a thriving and connected community.
00:15:53.50	Brian	Lastly, we have our boards and commissions. Our Parks and Rec Commission does a great job at supporting our community while approving high-impact applications, creating subcommittees to assist with pricing or fee structures, identifying park impacts, and starting the process with Sausalito Beautiful on being park liaisons. Additionally, I sit on the SCA board as a liaison. I've been working with SCA on utilizing our city days. So far, we've hosted the winter market, the opera, and a few others. And we plan to host more as we navigate through our event season. Next slide, please.
00:16:30.00	Brian	So our 2025 accomplishments and 2026 goals for our accomplishments, Marin Park has reopened. The courts are back and opened and secured 24 hours a day. The court membership program that we have has 190 members topping out at 200 and has generated $26,000 in revenue so far. Depending on annual memberships each year, we can generate about $30,000 in annual sales. And there's also opportunity for lessons, leagues, and tournaments, which would generate an additional $10,000 to about 30,000 in annual sales and there's also opportunity for lessons leagues and tournaments which would generate an additional 10 to 15,000 annually our goal is to always be mindful of our key card holders and create a balanced approach with programming and our members uh
00:17:10.72	Brian	We've provided over 250 free programs to the public with a focus on inclusive, age-friendly, and intergenerational programming. We've reached $600,000 in generated revenue for the first time. We've provided services to over 70,000 people, and we refurbished the gazebo this year. For 2026, our goal is to resurface the MLK gym floor, which has not been done in 25 plus years. Not longer than I've been alive, but.
00:17:43.00	Brian	And that's going to be happening this September. We're increasing our inclusive programming. We're increasing our partnerships with a variety of community partners. And we are considering purchasing Playland Sausalito, which has been an integral part of Sausalito for the last 15 or so years. They host toddler, children, family, and preteen programming. We feel like it's a good time to grow our programming, and this will add minimal overhead costs and focus on long-term growth. This is part of City Manager's Care Program, and it's something that I would be happy to discuss more in the future. There is a, in your packet, there should be something with little tidbits on the programming over the last few years and how we could see it grow and add staff to add other areas of growth as well.
00:18:38.78	Brian	All right, next slide, please.
00:18:40.80	Brian	So we're going to take a look at the recreation budget here. You can see we have a comparison of our year-over-year from 2019, 2023, 2024, and 2025 for months 1 through 11. I added 2019 in there in the blue on the bottom. So you can get a picture of what things were like pre-COVID and what they're looking like now. I did the same thing on the bottom with the revenue. So you could see our year over year revenue pre-COVID times and then in the last three years.
00:19:17.99	Brian	So year over year, we've increased our expenses, but that's only because we've increased our revenues. We're looking good in 2025 and are hitting our targets while staying economical in our purchasing. We're 1% away from hitting our revenue goals, which will be an increase of $100,000 from fiscal year 24 to 25. So I talked about that blue line of our pre-COVID numbers. For expenses, we're right on track. And for revenue, we're right on track. And for revenue, we've grown our recorded income by over $200,000 in that six-year period. We're on target to reduce our spending by $30,000 this year while exceeding our revenue budget by $40,000 this year.
00:19:58.41	Brian	for budget reduction strategies, uh,
00:20:01.88	Brian	Most costs are reflective of revenue generated or services provided. If we cut costs in a department that generated revenue to offset
00:20:11.56	Brian	Excuse me, if we cut costs in the department that generated revenue, it'll offset our financial costs and any reduction would impact services offered in our overall revenue growth. Next slide, please.
00:20:25.80	Brian	Next, we have our library services budget. I did the same thing with this. The last three years of expenses with a 2019 budget in there. We're looking at a break-even budget for this year. So the library's budget has held strong and has been consistent over the last five years. No significant changes will be made in 2026. And the goal is to be able to look at the Friends of the Library, the Foundation, and the Trust to offset any capital improvements or added programs that would extend the library's offerings. In our budget reduction strategies, there's little bits and pieces that you'd be able to take away from material costs, which could be supplemented by...
00:21:09.98	Brian	different friends programs or the foundation programs, but fees of books and fees of materials are always increasing year over year. So any reduction in those would be a reduction to our collection or our catalog and are just things to be thinking about over time with what services we provide with the library. If you looked at a return on involvement for the library, getting 65,000 people in that library at $950,000, it's $15 per person to be able to go into that library. So that woman that didn't have her insurance came in, it cost the city 15 bucks to be able to give her some really great resources to be able to help her out and that statistic thank you city manager for that return on involvement there i think it's something that really holds true to the library services the amount of people that uh
00:22:04.08	Brian	are able to come in there day after day and year after year. Next slide, please.
00:22:10.00	Brian	So that's it for us. We're happy to answer any questions about
00:22:15.21	Brian	recreation, library, communications. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
00:22:20.12	Mayor Cox	Thank you so much. Thank you for the great
00:22:22.15	Mayor Cox	Presentation.
00:22:24.23	Mayor Cox	I do want to comment on the presentation on the library. We give a lot of praise to Brian because every time there's an event in town, we're all so pleased with how successful it is and how much we pull the community out. But I also wanted to acknowledge the librarian because I have started spending some of my afternoons and evenings in the library when I'm in between meetings here at City Hall. And so I have really experienced firsthand the level of service that your librarians give to those most in need. One of your librarians has come up to me several times to describe a challenge for an unhoused individual who visits the library all the time and it is so great and gratifying to see how caring our employees are for our residents and so I just wanted to give a special shout out and acknowledgement to you and your staff for that level of service that you provide to our community.
00:23:23.58	Jeffrey Jackson	Thank you, Mayor Cox.
00:23:25.08	Jeffrey Jackson	uh,
00:23:25.35	Mayor Cox	in.
00:23:25.62	Jeffrey Jackson	Thank you.
00:23:26.38	Mayor Cox	it.
00:23:26.90	Councilmember Sobieski	I don't know if this is for Mr. Jackson or you Brian. It's a question about the library. So the budget, the expenses is roughly $900,000. What I didn't see on that slide as opposed to others is I know there's revenue from book fines and grants and whatnot. How much does that add up to?
00:23:48.74	Jeffrey Jackson	Well, none of the Marin libraries charge fees anymore. We only charge for a book if it's lost or damaged and needs to be replaced. And that covers the exact cost of the item. Okay, thank you. Okay.
00:24:08.01	Jeffrey Jackson	The friends of the library typically pays for
00:24:15.03	Jeffrey Jackson	Mm.
00:24:16.12	Jeffrey Jackson	all of our children's programming
00:24:19.09	Jeffrey Jackson	We ask for specific grants when it comes to things that we want to accomplish that we don't have the budget set aside for. So an example of some of those would be $3,000 to update our Spanish language materials collection for adults. Okay.
00:24:41.76	Jeffrey Jackson	furniture for the children's room.
00:24:44.98	Jeffrey Jackson	Let's see, the media listening station was paid for by them. So as the need comes up and we look at the budget and say, well, we don't have anything set aside for that, that's when we go to the friends and write a grant for that. Where the foundation comes in is typically for more capital improvement related things like, you know, new paint or carpet. They're paying for a meeting,
00:25:13.73	Jeffrey Jackson	pod. It's like a miniature room that you can go into and it's soundproof. And we get asked all the time for, um, like, for example, by job seekers who have an interview coming up.
00:25:26.78	Jeffrey Jackson	and they want to, uh,
00:25:28.03	Jeffrey Jackson	a platform that can have privacy
00:25:30.37	Jeffrey Jackson	Um, and,
00:25:31.69	Jeffrey Jackson	Right now, all we can do is say, well, you're welcome to sit in the hallway. It's pretty busy out there, but there is free wifi.
00:25:38.19	Jeffrey Jackson	But this would provide them a place to do a job interview in privacy and not disturb other library patrons. The cost of that meeting pod is $13,000.
00:25:50.32	Councilmember Sobieski	OK, so do I understand correctly then that the numbers we saw, the roughly $900,000, that's the expenses of the library, and then special things like the children's thing, the pod, other kinds of special expenses are paid for off budget by some of these by the Library Foundation
00:26:08.12	Jeffrey Jackson	That's correct. I could mention also the book drop in the parking lot was $7,500. And that came from the Library Improvement Fund.
00:26:08.14	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
00:26:17.22	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
00:26:17.39	Jeffrey Jackson	Great. Thank you.
00:26:17.98	Councilmember Sobieski	sir and then i have a question for you brian uh first off just truly echoing congratulations this is very exciting i just want to emphasize that yeah you grew uh revenue 15 your expenses went up 15 but your revenue went up 50 so 200k extra in revenue 200k extra in expenses every dollar of expense was matched by a dollar of revenue so you're doing literally more with exactly the same expense to the city so true kudos to that achievement and I want to make sure that was underlined and seen just one question for example you said that there are charges on park fees we got a last-minute letter that was pretty rough and I just wanted to ask you a question about fourth of July last year there was a company that did a demo demonstration of some kind in dumpy Park
00:27:05.28	Councilmember Sobieski	Can you tell us what that company was and how it came and what it paid the city?
00:27:09.62	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
00:27:09.67	Brian	Sure, absolutely. You know, we get, we have our fee schedule where we have a variety of different charges that we can charge groups. And on that schedule, the maximum for sponsorship that we had was $10,000 and in that
00:27:29.07	Brian	structure, we looked at the group. I can't think of what their pivotal was their name. They were an aeronautics company that wanted to fly a drone and be able to
00:27:47.77	Brian	have an opportunity to present this new technology. And we saw it as a great opportunity to be able to promote a new brand while doing something fun and generating some revenue to offset the cost of the fireworks, which cost about $40,000 each year. With that maximum of the sponsorship funds that we could get, we saw that that was what we were able to capitalize on based on what our fees schedule said. So that's why we charged that price for that particular group coming out.
00:28:24.79	Councilmember Sobieski	So for something like that, is the city council involved? Was any city council member involved, or is that a decision you make as a staff member?
00:28:31.34	Brian	There was no council members that were, or there was no council approval on that per se. I did talk with some individual members along with Parks and Rec Commission members, but usually sponsorship were things that I discussed with city manager during our meetings and how we can move forward in a way that doesn't really disrupt our public, but is able to generate things for the city and kind of create new fun things that make people, you know, ooh and ah during a Fourth of July celebration. Thank you.
00:29:06.37	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you very much.
00:29:08.97	Vice Mayor Woodside	Yeah, I'll try to be quick, but with respect to the library, I know the federal government has made some cuts to some obscure institutes that help fund local libraries. Are any of those cuts having an effect here?
00:29:21.14	Jeffrey Jackson	I'm sorry.
00:29:26.12	Jeffrey Jackson	Not to Sausalito Library. The state of California receives about $15 million from the federal government. And then the state library distributes those funds in the form of grants to all the public libraries at the state. So we don't apply for those directly. But the Marinnet consortium that we are a member of,
00:29:51.36	Jeffrey Jackson	They get some of those grants.
00:29:54.89	Jeffrey Jackson	Thank you.
00:29:55.46	Jeffrey Jackson	There is, I think, the scenic internet provider that provides the internet for the
00:30:03.34	Jeffrey Jackson	public computers that the library has. That's not the same internet that city hall has, but it's its own thing.
00:30:11.26	Jeffrey Jackson	That's an example of one of those things that's subsidized by
00:30:16.49	Jeffrey Jackson	you know, higher up agencies.
00:30:18.38	Jeffrey Jackson	Okay.
00:30:18.45	Vice Mayor Woodside	Okay.
00:30:18.58	Jeffrey Jackson	So we don't expect to really feel much pain from it, fortunately. But...
00:30:26.12	Jeffrey Jackson	Rural libraries might
00:30:29.37	Jeffrey Jackson	suffer significant hardships when their entire programming budget goes away.
00:30:34.92	Jeffrey Jackson	They don't have
00:30:37.28	Jeffrey Jackson	any way to recover that
00:30:40.94	Vice Mayor Woodside	Thank you.
00:30:42.34	Vice Mayor Woodside	And then to Director Batali quickly, one special event that you were able to resurrect recently as of last Sunday, you didn't mention, that's the farmers market. So what's your role in relation to things like the farmers market, in particular, this farmers market?
00:30:59.91	Brian	Yeah, absolutely. So the farmer's market is a third party vendor of ours. They are contracted with us. It's a certified organic farmer's market. And this was something that for the in the five years that I've been working here, people have wanted to be able to get the farmer's market back. Carly Bartlett, our recreation supervisor, somebody reached out to her last year saying, hey, I want to do a farmer's market. And we worked to try and figure out where the best location for it would be without impacting the community. And we worked with that vendor to provide that farmer's market. We paid for those fees to operate. We went through some of the trainings to make sure that we were following all the directives of the county and of the state and of agriculture. And after a year of that, that person didn't want to operate it anymore. We opened it up to taking it in-house and having a part-time staff member run it. We had some bids from some of the vendors that worked at that market, gathered a couple other people that hosted other farmers markets and presented us with a idea for them to take it over. After hearing their proposal, after doing the interviews, it made sense for us to go with that third party operator so that we would be able to work with them to collaborate on the market, set the guidelines for what we see fit for our market, looked at previous leases or guidelines from the 2000 to 2009 farmer's market that took place on Tracy Way, and are looking to grow the market to potentially move it into the Tracy way downtown area. Potentially have some evening markets that could be down there. And we're working on with working on with them to expand and to grow as a small community market and as something that they feel is an integral part of the community to be able to go out and shop on a weekly basis.
00:33:08.38	Vice Mayor Woodside	Thank you.
00:33:11.90	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm just, thank you, and great job, by the way.
00:33:15.06	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm curious, you know, I get not just feedback from the city, obviously, who love the events, but also from the broader community. And the feedback is that people are amazed that the Parks and Rec run these huge events that we have here.
00:33:32.34	Councilmember Hoffman	And it's not the Chamber of Commerce for something else. And they're amazed that it's our Parks and Rec that run our 4th of July. They're amazed that it's the Parks and Rec that run our sip and stroll or whatever it is we call it. And these huge community events and not some other group here in town. So kudos to you. I mean, honest to God, it's amazing. And the Friday night Jazz by the Bay is our Parks and Rec department, not some other vendor down here. So, you know, and these are institutions, we take it for granted, but, you know, other communities and towns are amazed that we can pull it off. So here's my question. So what's the origin of these revenue increases that you're seeing, these big revenue increases that you're generating through Parks and Rec? I'm just curious if you can define it.
00:34:20.64	Brian	Yeah, absolutely. It's little bits here and there. It's not one main cash cow that comes in. We've added an offset revenue costs with after-school tennis programs, HRT utilizing our tennis courts two hours a day by providing high-performance tennis that has a higher price point. Those two hours, while it could be
00:34:48.90	Brian	not great for a few community members to be able to come out. It generates somewhere near $40,000 to $50,000 of annual revenue for us. Playland generates probably about $35,000, $40,000 in annual revenue. Their summer camp programs, our rentals have gone up in some areas. Dunphy Park Rentals, after the revitalization of that park, has gone up by about $15,000 a year. MLK Field, their rentals have gone up by about $15,000, $20,000 in the year. MLK Gym has gone down a little bit, but those are all offset different costs. Some sponsorship and other types of events that...
00:35:29.93	Brian	also generate more revenue. Chili Cook-Off used to generate about $10,000 in revenue. We really marketed it hard for the last few years, tried to get more vendors to come out. Now it's generating about $30,000 a year with sponsorship for Toast-O-Sauce Lido that brought in about $25,000 of revenue in the year. So we're trying to work with different groups, trying to take the little bits from all the different areas that we work in. And, you know, recreation is kind of a volatile business. Some years it's going to be higher, some years it's going to be lower. But as long as we kind of maintain our service, each year we try to get better and better on the things that we provide and the things that we offer. So, an example, Chili Cook-Off, you add a hot pepper eating contest. It adds a little bit of variety or someone say spice to the, sorry, adds a little spice to the event. You know, you add a adult Easter egg hunt that takes an event that used to be $3,000 to host that event. Now it's bringing in $3,000. So that's a $6,000 difference in that event there. So it's little things like that that we kind of try to work on. I always try to look at it from an entrepreneurial standpoint and from a community standpoint of what people would enjoy to do, what they want.
00:36:51.38	Brian	what they're getting the best bang for their buck, and really trying to make it community focused. Our recreation leagues, different things like that. So I would attribute it to that mostly.
00:37:02.18	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, thanks. Appreciate it. And I wrecked the part.
00:37:03.14	Brian	Yeah.
00:37:03.36	Brian	And our rec department is very different than every other rec department in the types of events and types of things that we host. I haven't worked in this type of rec department before, but I really enjoy it. And I know our staff do, too.
00:37:17.94	Councilmember Hoffman	Thanks. Thanks for your job and your team too. Are any of the rest of them here?
00:37:21.61	Brian	They are not. No.
00:37:22.41	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah, they're home because they work all the time. Yeah. Okay.
00:37:23.19	Brian	They're home.
00:37:23.56	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:37:24.42	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
00:37:25.40	Councilmember Hoffman	Thanks.
00:37:25.49	Mayor Cox	Brian your enthusiasm and your department members enthusiasm really shows through so thanks for a great presentation and keep up the great work
00:37:33.92	Brian	Thank you so much. Have a great night.
00:37:36.79	Mayor Cox	OK, and with that, we will welcome our Director of Human Resources, Cathy Nikita, for her budget presentation.
00:37:47.42	Cathy Nikita	Well, following Messrs. Vitaly and Jackson is a very tall order. But good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers, City Manager, City Clerk.
00:37:57.41	Cathy Nikita	residents and other members of the public here. So human resources is not a public-facing job. So really, I am here to help all of the people who help all of you. So if you could go to my first slide, please, after the end. So here's a model that I've come across and I really love. We train people well enough so that they can leave and they can go anywhere but we try to treat them well enough so that they don't want to that's not always something that is achievable but it's always a goal of mine personally so who are we and what do we do so the HR office is part of administration so we don't't have our own budget. We are part of administration of the city. We are staffed by myself, a full-time HR manager. Next slide, please. Thank you. And a half-time admin aide, which I share with Director Vitale. She works mornings in HR and afternoons in recreation. So that keeps her quite hopping. We serve the city's full-time staff of 70-plus full-time employees, 40-plus part-time employees. Then we have seasonal, temporary, and on-call employees. And that's what we're here to do is to take care of what they need done so that they can take care of everyone else. We're here to support the staff who provide those critical services to the residents of our city.
00:39:28.27	Cathy Nikita	Police Department, the library, Public Works, Finance, Recreation, Community Development, and all of us in administration, I'm here today.
00:39:38.06	Cathy Nikita	to support them. So you might not see me, but if you're an employee, you've probably seen me, and I hope it hasn't been for anything too unpleasant. So what are our key functions? So, of course, we try to recruit to find the best people for our workforce, and we administer benefits for those people to take care of them. We work in risk management, hand-in-hand with finance. Human resources is all about risk management. Try to keep people trained with their skills, keep them up to date. I work with workers' compensation strategies to try to keep them safe.
00:40:18.44	Cathy Nikita	I do payroll and finance support.
00:40:20.53	Cathy Nikita	I have a background in payroll and finance before coming here, and so it's been a natural synergy, but it's probably a lot more than some people think. You think, oh, HR's over there and payroll's over here, but we work closely together. I do onboarding, and I do, when we're bringing a new employee in, we do job descriptions, do labor relations. We prepare the pay plans that you'll see on our website and contracts memorandum memoranda of understanding the mous that we have with our various groups but really when it comes down to it at this last line are the things that i think are the most important for for what i do i try to support our people i try try to inspire, encourage, nudge, cheerlead, advise, and listen to them. I'm not a counselor, but I counsel people when we need it. I'm not a coach, but sometimes I have to be a coach. I have to act like a coach. And I don't mean act like in a...
00:41:25.26	Cathy Nikita	any way other than to say sometimes that's what I have to do. And that's what I enjoy doing. These are the parts of the job that aren't on a job description normally. And for human resources, my door downstairs is usually mostly open, except when there's Zumba across the hall, because then I might need to concentrate a little more and not get carried away by their rhythms. But I try to keep it open because employees need a place to go to talk about a lot of things, and whether it's their benefits or not, but it's really being available for people.
00:42:02.52	Cathy Nikita	And as a matter of fact, you know, I try to do things for our staff, but I get back in return. I have staff members who this afternoon, I got an unexpected moment of Zen from one of our staff members who I had a worried look on my face. And they gave me some really great Zen advice, and I appreciated that. And that's what I think Sausalito and our workforce is all about.
00:42:27.19	Cathy Nikita	So the employees that my office serves is we have the Service Employees International Union. Next slide, please. Sorry.
00:42:36.56	Cathy Nikita	Our SEIU group, we have 31 positions, and they cover public works, library, CDD, recreation, and admin. We have the Sausalito Police Association, that group has 23 authorized positions, two of those are frozen, so we have 21 active positions. And we have the non-represented employees, and there are 25 positions in that group. And they encompass administration, finance, and city and police management.
00:43:04.84	Cathy Nikita	And then we have our groups of seasonal on-call and temporary employees. And HR is there for all of them.
00:43:13.06	Cathy Nikita	So some of our goals... Next slide, please. Sorry.
00:43:17.14	Cathy Nikita	Thanks, Maria. Some of our goals for the next fiscal year are continue our recruitment efforts. That seems like the obvious one, right? We want to keep filling vacancies as they arise. And vacancies aren't always the result of something negative going on. Sometimes it's, you know, people retire or people move. So it's a certain amount of vacancies that's a normal part of doing business. And we just recently, I wanted to mention, we just recently took part in an online recruitment meeting through Civic Match. There's a Civic Match database that we found out about through the National League of Cities. And there are a lot of federal employees, as most people know, a lot of federal employees who are leaving the federal workforce. And so Civic Match has come up with a database of matching people with the skills that they are bringing from Washington and trying to get them into local governments, local and state governments. So there were about 10 employers and about 80 job seekers that we're online a few weeks ago, and it was pretty great. And so we've got access to that database now so we can keep developing those relationships and finding the best people. We want to retain, we don't want to just bring people in. We want to try to retain the ones who want to keep growing, and we try to provide them great benefits and give them opportunities to grow in their careers. One of my goals is to improve and streamline our internal processes, and I won't go too far into that, but that's always a goal, and less paper, which will lead into our next presentation as well. And my goal always is to provide a supportive atmosphere for our employees.
00:45:13.03	Cathy Nikita	Next slide, please.
00:45:16.11	Cathy Nikita	I really do believe that nothing is more important, nothing that we do here is more important than hiring and developing good people.
00:45:25.73	Cathy Nikita	Again, the public may not see what we do here in HR...
00:45:29.83	Cathy Nikita	But I try to be here for all of our employees because our employees want to be here for the city of Sausalito. And so I'm going to keep supporting them. And Cindy Jane and I, she's our halftime admin aide. So we are here for the employees, and we're here for you. And if you have any questions, I'm happy to do my best to answer them.
00:45:51.21	Mayor Cox	Thank you so much. Thank you for everything that you do for all of our employees.
00:45:55.95	Mayor Cox	The city manager told some third graders, I think, that we had 75. So now you're saying 79 tonight. So pretty close. Yeah.
00:46:08.12	Mayor Cox	I have no questions. Any questions from anyone? Very straightforward. Thank you so much. Sure. Very much appreciate it.
00:46:12.36	Cathy Nikita	so much. Sure. Thank you.
00:46:16.36	Mayor Cox	All right.
00:46:19.19	Mayor Cox	we are...
00:46:23.53	Mayor Cox	Thank you for the question. Let's get through this presentation.
00:46:28.84	Mayor Cox	Go ahead. Welcome to our city clerk, Walford Solorzano.
00:46:33.06	Walford Solorzano	Hi, good evening, Mayor, City Council, Public, and Shawna and Piper and Willow. They're watching at home.
00:46:40.51	Walford Solorzano	So next slide, please. So we're going to go over the functions of the city clerk, the responsibilities and services. So what does the city clerk do? So the city clerk is kind of the guardian of the democratic process at the local level. We're responsible for elections. We're responsible for the city records and we're responsible for legislative transparency. So that kind of, you know, it includes the Brown Act, Public Reforms Act. Whereas we act as the process arm for the local government. While the city council does set the policy and the city manager works as the chief executive officer, the city clerk, with the help of the city attorney, they ensure that everything is done and transparent, that everything is transparent and everything is done legally. One of the clerk's roles, they are the election officials. So we oversee the local elections, ballot measures, initiatives and recalls. So when we receive, like, for example, we receive initiative from the public.
00:47:41.36	Walford Solorzano	They come over to us, we do a prima fiche account,
00:47:43.95	Walford Solorzano	send them over to the county to make sure they have enough signatures. When people apply to run for office like we did last year, they come over to the city clerk's office. We provide them the paperwork. We provide them any legal, sorry, any assistance as legally allowed to help them fill out the items. And then we process the elections and we outsource the actual election with the county. But at the end of the day, we're the city clerk's office is the one that certifies everything. We're also the compliance officer. The city clerk ensures adherence to laws regulating open meetings, as I mentioned, with the Brown Act. We're also with campaign finance. So you'll hear form 700 form for 60s. And what I like to tell people about form for 60s, because people always like to say, Oh, elected officials are in there for the money. I like the officials get this, elected officials get that.
00:48:38.11	Vicki Nichols	Yeah.
00:48:39.29	Walford Solorzano	460s, if you go onto any city website or if you go onto the Secretary of State,
00:48:44.05	Walford Solorzano	For 60s, especially for the public watching at home,
00:48:47.18	Walford Solorzano	That's where you can see where the money goes in and out.
00:48:49.51	Walford Solorzano	So you can see who contributes money to elected officials and you can see where that money goes to elected officials. That's why it's important. That's why it's an important piece. And that's why you've seen in the news with like some presidents and dealing with FPC issues, because all of that transparency matters because we want to see like
00:49:09.93	Walford Solorzano	who's giving a certain elected official money, and maybe how does that affect their decision making into everything. And so the city clerk's office at the local level, that's what we provide, and we use our vendor net file for that.
00:49:24.14	Walford Solorzano	We also answer, okay, we also, and we're also the records manager. We manage public records. We answer PRAs, and we preserve council minutes, resolutions, ordinances, and agendas. So we're the big records keeper, kind of like the historian, but really more, we're not really telling the story. The story is being told and everything that's in there, but we're there to to preserve everything and then we're also kind of the municipal officers so we kind of you'll probably see in uh two meetings from now you'll see me administer ults to new police officers or the police officers getting promotions uh i manage the city seal and we also uh get all these summonses and city claims and then you know whatever we need to do we pass it over and work with this the city attorney and city manager's office for that
00:50:13.06	Walford Solorzano	And so
00:50:14.16	Walford Solorzano	kind of rounding everything up, why the city clerk matters. And I think I mentioned earlier about checks and balances. We ensure that the officials and public and this agency operates within the law. Again, we've heard
00:50:26.63	Walford Solorzano	We've heard over here complaints by certain members of the public saying, oh, we're not complying to Brown Act, we're not complying to Transparency.
00:50:33.85	Walford Solorzano	If we weren't, we wouldn't be having the meeting.
00:50:35.98	Walford Solorzano	and that's part of the city clerk's job with the assistance of the city attorney and then sometimes advice from counsel who we have municipal lawyers with in the council. And so they help us with the checks and balances. And again, with transparency, we provided public access to public information to citizens. And we helped create some of that oversight and trust. And then kind of like a final thought with, as far as the responsibility, there's got to be a strong relationship between the city council, the city manager, city attorney's office, and the city clerk. It's essential for like a balanced, effective governance. And, you know, again, with the city clerk's office, we're not just here for meetings and helping the city council, but we're also kind of the records keeper. We're we help with compliance and we're a critical part in democracy. So next slide, please.
00:51:31.97	Walford Solorzano	So just kind of some numbers. So PRA requests that we've gotten this year is about 61. We had 112 last year, which was we were averaging before that. We're averaging about 70, 75. What ended up happening is when I came into office, I added next request, which makes it a lot easier to provide requests and also keeping track of everything. So that number kind of blew up once we got that because it made it easier. The number of staff we have myself and we have Noelle Gonzalez. She is the deputy city clerk and man aide. We conducted one election last year, got a couple of complaints from Jeffrey Chase. But otherwise it was a good election and records.
00:52:10.68	Walford Solorzano	I'll start touching about records because that's kind of the biggest thing right now.
00:52:14.78	Walford Solorzano	Our city started back in 1893. And so we have records that go back there.
00:52:19.73	Walford Solorzano	We used to use this system called DocuWare. What I found with DocuWare, it was...
00:52:25.19	Walford Solorzano	it wasn't a very good system. It was very difficult to search for things. It was very difficult to manage, and it was really outdated. What I did a couple of years ago when I came in, we started migrating all our stuff that we had digitized over into Laserfish. Laserfish is like the number one electronic repository in California California and ECS is our provider. And so we started making a project. We started migrating everything. And so a lot of our our spare time is doing a quality control of the records and shifted over because we're checking records. We're talking about minutes, resolutions and ordinances from and then agendas from 1893. So if we can move to the next slide.
00:53:11.87	Walford Solorzano	So as we segue into this, we're going to talk about the firehouse. The City Council has identified the firehouse on Spencer as something that we want to clear out to possibly make it a functioning firehouse for firefighters. So
00:53:27.09	Walford Solorzano	In order to kind of comply with the city's retention schedule, we need to clear the firehouse because we have a lot of records out there. So we need to index and scan, and that's all going to cost a lot of money. I have experience from power cities that I've done this, and it's a really long project, but it can be done if we spend a little bit of money outsourcing some of it. because in-house, the only people that we really have, we would have to rely on. project, but it can be done if we spend a little bit of money outsourcing some of it because in house, the only people that we really have, we would have to rely on, on
00:53:59.80	Walford Solorzano	on interns. And right now we have one intern. He went from Public Works with us. And so right now he's identifying and helping index records. So we'll go to the next one.
00:54:09.62	Walford Solorzano	So,
00:54:10.98	Walford Solorzano	We went up there with ECS. We went with Community Economic Development Department to go check out some of the stuff.
00:54:16.28	Walford Solorzano	And then again, Sanjay, who was the intern working with Public Works, went to go see what's over there. And we identified there's about a million pages that possibly need to be scanned. We have about 1400 maps. Maps are very expensive to scan because they come in different sizes and they're very there's a lot of detail on these maps. And so the so what we're going to be asking in the CIP is we're going to ask for about
00:54:39.49	Walford Solorzano	$300,000 to clear all this. It shouldn't cost more than $300,000 because we're hoping as we identify and index a lot of this stuff, a lot of it can be destroyed because there's some things out there that aren't part of the retention schedule and legally do not need to be on there. So that's kind of the overhead. And then next slide, please.
00:55:01.25	Walford Solorzano	So kind of the process, how is this process, what are we gonna do? So the first phase, we're basically gonna assess everything. So right now what we did is
00:55:10.45	Walford Solorzano	We pulled everything out of the closet, pulled out all the mess.
00:55:13.42	Walford Solorzano	And now we're in the process of stacking the whole mess. So that's kind of where we're at. The second phase is we're gonna come and we're gonna ask council to pass the CIP and ask for money so we can put it in the budget. Third part of the phase is we're gonna come back. We're gonna come back with a resolution and we're gonna ask, we're gonna work with ECS making a contract and we're gonna,
00:55:36.08	Walford Solorzano	We're going to come back and ask for money, hopefully, like in July to go do this. And so and it'll be an agenda item.
00:55:42.46	Walford Solorzano	if you want to have more for discussion. And then we can start getting the work done. So as we start stacking things, there's going to be things that need to be destroyed.
00:55:50.28	Walford Solorzano	There's going to be items that need to be scanned and returned, and there's items that can be scanned and then the physical items can be destroyed.
00:56:00.53	Walford Solorzano	With all this, we use our retention schedule to make sure that we're compliant with the city, with everything that we do. And anything that gets destroyed has to get signed off by the department head.
00:56:11.27	Walford Solorzano	the city attorney, and the city clerk. So we're just not like,
00:56:14.63	Walford Solorzano	grabbing a piece of paper and be like, okay, it's trash. No, no, we have to index it. We have to log what's in there.
00:56:19.84	Walford Solorzano	And then we have to take it for signature because the department
00:56:22.71	Walford Solorzano	Department had say something with Public Works.
00:56:25.19	Walford Solorzano	and they're saying, why are we getting rid of these maps? And it's like, oh, my mistake. And then as a city clerk,
00:56:31.62	Walford Solorzano	I go over and see that we're compliant with government code and we're compliant with our retention schedule to see if it's okay. And then the city attorney oversees and then he signs himself too. So there's really good checks and balances of this. And then ultimately we're hoping we're going to get another intern that's going to help with the indexing. The indexing gets pretty rigorous. And from my experience, it takes about three or four hours to go through one box index clean out and do a lot of things uh because before it gets sent out to scanning so hopefully we get a lot of it done and the idea is that maybe sometime by early next year we can clear out the place of records and they're getting scanned and hopefully they come back and we can have everything into our repository so that's uh
00:57:14.08	Walford Solorzano	Next slide. I think that's all we have for right now. Thank you. If you have any questions about, yeah, I'm here.
00:57:18.63	Mayor Cox	Thank you city clerk. Thank you for this overview of this really important project a big challenge. That I personally have seen is the.
00:57:29.94	Mayor Cox	you know, our various department heads don't always know what we have. Because, like, I'll say, hey, back in 2012, we did XYZ. And they're like, well, you know, they didn't know that because they weren't here in 2012. So I think that this project with an accurate indexing system will really be a tool for department heads, both existing, but also incoming, to better understand the resources available when it comes to institutional knowledge and records of prior actions. So thank you so much. Any other comments?
00:58:06.47	Councilmember Sobieski	I would just love to speak to Sharna, Piper, and Willow and say your dad is treasured here. And he was supposed to take your mom out for their 10th anniversary. And instead, in honoring another parent who had a child's birthday, one of his colleagues, he came here and spent the day here so that that colleague could be with his kids. So that's the kind of dad you have. So congratulations.
00:58:34.06	Vice Mayor Woodside	You mentioned the maps, the 1,400 maps or something like that. And I know out in the hallways here, we have a few historic maps that are beautiful. And I'm sure there's a great interest on the part of historians to maybe take a look at that maps before they are simply digitized or otherwise stored.
00:58:52.10	Walford Solorzano	Well, the maps, most of these maps, they're not going to be, they're going to get digitized, but they don't get tossed. Most of them have to be stored permanently. And ideally, they, you know, we need to find kind of a location because you want to store these in a place where it's fireproof. And you file fireproof cabinets. They kind of have cement inside and they're pretty big. So we need another location. Eventually, that's something that we can get at later on where we actually store these maps. same thing with like um They kind of have cement inside and they're pretty big. So we need another location. Eventually, that's something that we can get at later on where we actually store these maps. Same thing with like other documents that kind of deal with real property. A lot of them have to be stored like in fireproof maps, fireproof areas. Good. That's good to know. Thank you.
00:59:31.93	Vice Mayor Woodside	Thank you.
00:59:33.89	Unknown	Thank you.
00:59:33.90	Councilmember Hoffman	All right. Oh, go ahead.
00:59:37.03	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you for this presentation and taking on the project. I know it's a big one.
00:59:37.84	Babette McDougall	All right.
00:59:40.37	Babette McDougall	Thank you so much.
00:59:44.77	Mayor Cox	All right. And I will note for the record that Councilmember Blaustein has arrived. Welcome.
00:59:50.37	Mayor Cox	Okay, we're now going to move on. Oh, I actually am going to open up our three special presentations for public comment. I know David Lay had a comment.
01:00:01.16	Mayor Cox	If anybody else has a comment, please.
01:00:04.14	Mayor Cox	Approach the podium.
01:00:06.64	David Lay	Yeah, I had a comment on the library.
01:00:10.99	David Lay	At home as a kid, we had a really good globe.
01:00:14.77	David Lay	And most homes don't have...
01:00:17.76	David Lay	We have a globe, and we need one in our library. And the globe should be a scientific globe, not necessarily political, although you can have country borders. But a scientific globe has ocean currents, prevailing winds. It shows color code for a depth of ocean. It shows color codes for the type of geology over land and stuff, where it's desert and so on. And the modern ones have raised places where there's mountains and it's really very instructional and it starts very early. Thank you.
01:00:55.17	David Lay	Thank you.
01:00:58.16	Mayor Cox	And I see Director Vitale is still here, so he'll take your recommendation under advisement.
01:01:04.69	Zach Monsis	Council members, Mayor Cox, thank you for having me. My name is Zach Monsis. I'm a new resident of Sausalito. Thank you for having me, residents.
01:01:12.10	Mayor Cox	Oh, I think you're here for communications.
01:01:15.37	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
01:01:15.81	Mayor Cox	Yeah, so I'm about to get to that. So just hold on one moment, because I invited him to come for communications. Is there any other comment on our special presentation?
01:01:24.37	Walford Solorzano	Yes, we have a Babette McDougall.
01:01:25.85	Mayor Cox	Okay.
01:01:29.55	Babette McDougall	Hi, good evening. Thank you for inviting me to speak. So I want to just make one comment, first of all, to Walford. Thank you so much for reinforcing the need to uphold and observe our democratic institutions. And you are indeed the city clerk, and the city clerk's office is responsible for all of that. So thanks for reminding us of that. I'm also reminded, thanks to Brian's presentation, and I want to say thank you.
01:01:52.55	Babette McDougall	Hats off to Brian. Brian has done a really good job just by virtue of his own personality, which is very engaging, of bringing back the fun to Sausalito. So I think a lot of us are really glad that Brian is doing the job he's doing.
01:02:04.48	Babette McDougall	And I'd like to see this community services division
01:02:07.45	Babette McDougall	And.
01:02:08.11	Babette McDougall	I'm curious to see how it grows and thrives over time. I'm glad to see the library being singled out for what it is, a library.
01:02:16.16	Babette McDougall	Because here we are, the guardians of the First Amendment,
01:02:19.61	Babette McDougall	First and foremost, through the library and also through our Department of Communication, how we professionally communicate with our publics very much represents the First Amendment as we speak to our constituents and other audiences.
01:02:32.24	Babette McDougall	So with that in mind, I just want to say I did submit a letter asking for some clarification. I want to thank Mr. Sobieski for guiding the conversation. A lot of those questions that he raised were in my letter. So thank you for that.
01:02:43.51	Babette McDougall	And the other thing I'd like to point out
01:02:46.30	Babette McDougall	is that honoring and upholding the traditions of Sausalito is really what this town is about.
01:02:51.41	Babette McDougall	And so far, we've had some wonderful programs that have become engaged, like the Taste of Sausalito,
01:02:56.79	Babette McDougall	and some of these other wonderful programs. So I really think that there's generally a really good
01:03:01.92	Babette McDougall	momentum afoot here for bringing back the flavor of this town, which is highly volunteer driven.
01:03:07.78	Babette McDougall	So I want to thank you for acknowledging the character, the authentic character of Sausalito.
01:03:13.46	Babette McDougall	And with that, I yield back the balance of time. Thank you.
01:03:17.45	Unknown	Thank you.
01:03:18.05	Walford Solorzano	We have a Sandra Bushmaker.
01:03:21.60	Sandra Bushmaker	Good evening, Council and staff. Thank you very much for the presentations. I really enjoyed them. And Brian, I particularly want to give your department kudos for all the activities that you've done in our town and kind of kept our spirits up during some difficult times. I would like to hear a little bit more, since we're going through a city reorganization, about this marketing and communications coordinator. Maybe not tonight, but at another time, I'd like to see a description of
01:03:51.06	Sandra Bushmaker	this person's job and what your expectations are of this particular person.
01:03:56.73	Sandra Bushmaker	With regard to the city clerk's job, it is indeed a vital role here in Sausalito. And I'm very happy to hear about the organization.
01:04:06.11	Sandra Bushmaker	of the documents up at the Spencer Firehouse. I am sure you will find my 30 some pages of minutes that we had during
01:04:13.12	Sandra Bushmaker	during my tenure. It was quite a job to approve the minutes back then.
01:04:17.99	Sandra Bushmaker	So I'm sure you'll love to go through them. The present council members will love to go through those
01:04:23.11	Sandra Bushmaker	long pages of minutes. And of course the HR department is extremely important
01:04:29.99	Sandra Bushmaker	We did not have that during my time, and I'm really pleased to see
01:04:35.09	Sandra Bushmaker	that we have such a strong HR department. Thank you.
01:04:41.09	Babette McDougall	All right, next speaker, Sibabotliri.
01:04:48.99	Unknown	Um,
01:04:52.00	Unknown	Thank you, City Council members, Mayor. I just want to say how amazing all of these presentations were tonight. I just think the city did such a fantastic job. But I really want to call out Brian because it's just amazing to me
01:05:15.49	Unknown	what he and Carly and
01:05:20.95	Unknown	and Candace are able to do a three person office has just been incredible in terms of the production of big events and day to day
01:05:34.79	Unknown	coordination of their office. People don't know this, but years ago I was public relations director for San Francisco's Rec and Park Department. So I know something about how they operate.
01:05:49.79	Unknown	He does...
01:05:51.23	Unknown	as much as that whole office did, I have to say. He and his small crew. So, and on top of that, because I do work with him now in terms of some of the age-friendly programs, I want to say that throughout, despite being
01:06:10.95	Unknown	so busy and turning out so much activity and production for City and making it such a fun place to live.
01:06:23.59	Unknown	Always civil, pleasant, helpful.
01:06:27.98	Unknown	and the whole staff is.
01:06:30.21	Unknown	And it's a pleasure to work with them.
01:06:33.52	Unknown	And I just wanted to mention that aspect.
01:06:36.61	Unknown	Because I don't think that's been brought up.
01:06:39.12	Unknown	And it's really important.
01:06:40.97	Unknown	And of course, that's true for the other employees that spoke today, the staff that spoke today. But this is a lot of personal experience.
01:06:52.94	Walford Solorzano	OK, no more further public speakers.
01:06:54.53	Mayor Cox	All right. Thank you all. We will now turn to communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council that are not on the agenda, except in very limited situations. State law precludes the council from taking action on
01:07:10.30	Mayor Cox	or engaging in discussions concerning items that are not
01:07:13.02	Mayor Cox	on the agenda.
01:07:14.20	Mayor Cox	And so now I'll welcome Zach back up to the mic. Thank you.
01:07:17.88	Mayor Cox	so much and welcome and welcome to Sausalito.
01:07:21.04	Mayor Cox	Thank you so much. So as I said before- You just pulled the mic up. So there you go. Thank you.
01:07:25.49	Zach Monsis	As I said before, my family, my 18-month-old daughter, and my wife, Alexis, dog Winslow, all just moved into the lovely city of Sausalito. During that time, I was also starting an aquatics program. One of the key components that I think is just truly important that both the residents of San Francisco and Sausalito need to recognize is underserved communities are massively underserved when it comes to aquatics and water safety. And then beyond that, taking a very holistic approach to athletes that want to go and excel in the sport later on. We've kind of developed a number of pillars with regards to the things that Northern California does best, like leveraging our technology to really improve outcomes for athletes. And what's the other thing that Northern California does best? It's our natural environment. So getting outdoors, getting into the waves at Fort Cronkite, the beach at Shoemaker, leveraging all of those things, because that ties us to our resources, our natural beauty, and actually gives us a passion for that. And to that end, I do have a background in commercial real estate and building pools is something that is near and dear to my heart. If you look up and down the coast of Barcelona or the Italian Riviera, something that we're compared to quite often. We don't have much when it comes to that. Pools near the beach or near marinas where the Coast Guard, sailors, children needing to learn to swim have that sort of access. I've dug through hundreds of sites and what we're seeing right now is you'll get a stack full of CEQA documents for, for every time you try to attempt to build a pool. And I'd love to have a pool built around here by the time I'm my, my daughter is, is, is playing in high school. So that's my hope. Thank you so much for your time and appreciate it all. Take care.
01:09:27.55	Mayor Cox	Thank you so much. Thank you for coming here to share your vision with us.
01:09:31.38	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:09:31.56	Mayor Cox	All right, next is David Lay.
01:09:42.13	David Lay	Last time I was here, I started with...
01:09:45.65	David Lay	One, two, three. Three is the important one. And that's new stuff. And that's what Zoe Lofkin is fighting about. She's got her hands full out there. And you could give her some support, I'm sure. Anything I say, we'll probably go in the wastebasket.
01:10:06.36	David Lay	Um,
01:10:08.05	David Lay	But the budget that made the last part of this chart is really satellites looking at the radiation from the water. And all of a sudden, we know what we're looking at, where the warming is going. And it turns out it's not warming all the ocean really deep. And that means it's going to go a lot faster. And we're in trouble because of the way the ocean is acting there. That's what causes our weather is the ocean.
01:10:40.85	David Lay	Um,
01:10:42.07	David Lay	Thank you.
01:10:43.79	David Lay	You can look at the other charts here and
01:10:48.85	David Lay	Next time I'm going to talk a lot more about net zero. There's a huge understanding in the public about where net zero is and what that really is. That's not zero CO2 in the atmosphere. That's net increase of CO2.
01:11:05.63	David Lay	CO2 in the atmospheres. And that's a big difference. And we'll talk some more about that.
01:11:12.66	David Lay	the news sheets I just added there, one is about what's going on with aid around the world that's being cut.
01:11:20.81	David Lay	that's going to be a big cause of
01:11:23.72	David Lay	a lot more
01:11:25.40	David Lay	population movement across the globe.
01:11:28.12	David Lay	And of course, our population in the globe is increasing.
01:11:31.39	David Lay	This is going to get much stronger and be a much more difficult time at our borders and Mexico's borders and European borders is going to be very hard.
01:11:43.98	David Lay	Was that three minutes?
01:11:45.13	Mayor Cox	Yes, thank you so much. By the way, I'll note for the record that Mr. Lay left paperwork on the dais for each of the council members to support the comments he just made. I'm going to pass a copy over to the city clerk to record.
01:11:58.70	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:11:58.75	Unknown	THEM.
01:11:58.93	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:11:58.97	Unknown	MEETING.
01:11:59.03	Mayor Cox	meeting.
01:12:00.54	Mayor Cox	And next we'll call Charles Melton.
01:12:08.42	Unknown	you
01:12:09.35	Charles Melton	Good evening, City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments tonight in person. I'm here to speak briefly on an item not on the agenda, which is to ask the Sausalito City Council at an upcoming meeting to adopt a resolution to fly the pride flag here at City Hall starting on June 1st for the month of June. This request is complimentary to a letter that was sent to City Council and City Manager last month. our city has flown the pride flag here at city hall uh since our first pride celebration in the city uh two years ago and I'm respectfully asking that that tradition of flying the pride flag continue. The pride flag is relevant and pertinent to our city and to our community for many reasons. First, it increases the visibility of our LGBTQ plus community and provides representation for individuals who may feel marginalized or unseen. This includes visibility for residents, business owners, public servants, and our community who live and work in our great city. The pride flag also represents hope, safety, and belonging for the LGBTQ plus individuals, especially during times of adversity or in facing discrimination.
01:13:10.30	Charles Melton	Flying the flag also demonstrates a commitment to creating a safe and inclusive community where all people feel seen, valued, and respected. Lastly, the pride flag is rooted in LGBTQ plus history, which is rich and vibrant here in Sausalito. Our city for many years has been home to shipbuilders, to military officials who made Sausalito a place of safety during the war, to local artisans and business owners. Our city has reminders of our past history, including a hand symbol etched in a local restaurant to serve as a memory of one of the many LGBTQ plus establishments that once called our city home.
01:13:44.81	Charles Melton	Sausalito has a rich and storied LGBTQ plus history, and through raising the pride flag, we can honor our past while also building our future. And just like the actions the city council is taking tonight, to recognize our local community, including Jewish Heritage Month and San Francisco Zoo and Garden, I'm respectfully asking that our city once again fly the pride flag starting June 1st. I'd also like to take a moment to invite the city council, our city staff, and the community to join us in our pride celebration June 20th, 21st, and 22nd. Thank you.
01:14:14.12	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:14:15.55	Mayor Cox	City Clerk.
01:14:17.60	Mayor Cox	Any other communications?
01:14:19.99	Walford Solorzano	We have Lauret Rogers.
01:14:27.42	Walford Solorzano	You can unmute, please.
01:14:29.07	Lorette Rogers	Hi, this is Lorette Rogers. I just had a quick process question. Although a pool in Sausalito sounds awfully good, I just have to say that. But I was just curious,
01:14:39.64	Lorette Rogers	Is there a way to see people who are speaking on Zoom?
01:14:43.95	Lorette Rogers	Is that something that you've done in the past or that could be done or is it
01:14:49.15	Lorette Rogers	is it too hard? I just, I would love to see who's speaking, even if they're,
01:14:53.27	Lorette Rogers	via Zoom. That's all. Thanks.
01:14:56.68	Mayor Cox	Thank you. I will pass that request along to the city clerk. It's not new. Yeah, we can we can promote people to panelists. We're not going to discuss it this evening, but I just like to make note of the request.
01:15:08.44	Mayor Cox	Any other communications?
01:15:10.43	Babette McDougall	I've seen none.
01:15:11.38	Mayor Cox	All right, we will close communications and move on to our consent calendar.
01:15:19.29	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
01:15:21.64	Mayor Cox	matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support, and may be enacted by the council in one motion in the form listed below.
01:15:34.04	Mayor Cox	The items on our consent calendar for this evening are 3A, adopt the meeting minutes of April 15 and May 6, 2025. 3B, Jewish Heritage Month proclamation.
01:15:44.45	Mayor Cox	3C San Francisco Zoo and Garden Proclamation,
01:15:47.73	Mayor Cox	3D, receive and file the Treasurer's Report for Fiscal Year 2025, Quarter 3.
01:15:52.92	Mayor Cox	3 e waiver of second reading and adoption of ordinance number oh five dash two two five an ordinance of the city council of the city of Sausalito amending chapter 10.44 section 10.44.010 and section 10.44.190 of title 10 of the Sausalito municipal code.
01:16:11.87	Mayor Cox	3F, receive and file the shoreline adaptation plan update. 3G, authorize the city manager to execute the first contract amendment with WRT Consulting to provide additional planning services for the shoreline adaptation in the amount of $40,000 supported by the sea level rise planning grant. 3H, authorize staff to proceed with soliciting for construction bids for the Bridgeway Safety Improvement Project, Napa to Johnson Street Project, and 3i, authorize the city manager to enter into an agreement with Marin City Sausalito FC for lease of property at Martin Luther King Park, 610 Coloma Street, beginning at $700 per month.
01:16:51.94	Mayor Cox	um,
01:16:53.69	Mayor Cox	I will start off by noting that I will recuse myself from item 3i due to the proximity of my residence to the property in question. I am also going to propose some textual changes to 3e, which, if adopted by us, will require that tonight be our first reading and that the second reading will be postponed.
01:17:23.51	Mayor Cox	to our next meeting, which will still be the day before any Planning Commission action dependent on this ordinance change.
01:17:34.44	Mayor Cox	Any other
01:17:36.20	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
01:17:37.11	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
01:17:37.13	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:17:37.16	Councilmember Blaustein	Go ahead. I don't want to pull an item. I just wanted to thank the council for including and acknowledging Jewish heritage month and, and having that proclamation there as many other communities have as a
01:17:46.54	Councilmember Blaustein	Jewish women, it's really important that we acknowledge our history and heritage, and it just meant a lot to see the proclamation there. So thank you for including it in the agenda.
01:17:55.59	Mayor Cox	So I'll just remind us again that our barometer for what we include and do not include, Vice Mayor, is the federal, you can help me.
01:18:05.09	Vice Mayor Woodside	Well, we want to make sure that we do include there, I think, about nine that are nationally recognized heritage months, this being one of them. And we want to make sure that as we look ahead at the other months that we get ahead of the months as this time we're kind of in the middle of the month. But that's that's something that we're desiring to do on an ongoing basis.
01:18:29.05	Councilmember Hoffman	Any other items to, Mayor, on item 3E, the textual change, do we need to remove that, this?
01:18:36.39	Mayor Cox	No, I'm going to call it out and...
01:18:38.35	City Attorney	Mayor, I actually do recommend that you remove item 3E if you're going to make textual changes.
01:18:44.69	Mayor Cox	All right.
01:18:45.35	Mayor Cox	I'm going to remove 3E and I'm going to
01:18:59.43	Mayor Cox	All right, it's gonna become the new 5D.
01:19:04.82	Councilmember Sobieski	Mayor, I think some people are here to comment on that. I don't expect it to be on consent. Could we hear it first?
01:19:09.03	Mayor Cox	If anyone is here to comment on item 3E, would you please raise your hand?
01:19:15.52	Mayor Cox	Alright, so then I'm going to move it to item 5A.
01:19:20.48	Mayor Cox	All right, unless there are any other questions or comments, I'm gonna open it up to public comment on our consent agenda, excluding item 5.2.
01:19:31.93	Mayor Cox	you
01:19:32.13	Mayor Cox	E three E.
01:19:37.55	Vicki Nichols	I don't have any sheets.
01:19:37.68	Walford Solorzano	I have any sheets. Yeah, so I'll call Lorette Rogers again. Actually, no, hand back down. Okay, hand back up. Lorette Rogers. Yes.
01:19:47.84	Lorette Rogers	I'm sorry, I'm confused about, I would wait, I would like to comment on the residential uses and commercial districts.
01:19:54.96	Mayor Cox	Yeah, we will be hearing that at item 5A.
01:19:57.53	Lorette Rogers	Thank you. I appreciate it. Bye, babe.
01:19:59.30	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:19:59.31	Lorette Rogers	Thank you.
01:19:59.74	Babette McDougall	right, Babette McDougall.
01:20:03.41	Mayor Cox	Wait, which one?
01:20:05.61	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:20:08.26	Mayor Cox	Formula retail is going to be the new 5B. Okay, anyone else?
01:20:11.95	Babette McDougall	City clerk. Babette McDougall.
01:20:15.52	Babette McDougall	So I just, you guys are moving so fast that you don't invite comment on all these little segments and it's a bit hard. So to keep up when you're not in the room.
01:20:25.25	Babette McDougall	So I apologize if I'm not able to keep pace with you, but I'm glad that you are moving.
01:20:30.84	Babette McDougall	5e off the consent and we will debate it publicly.
01:20:34.45	Babette McDougall	You have to realize the sensitivity, having this especially coupled with the other formula retail products,
01:20:40.84	Babette McDougall	These things combined,
01:20:44.25	Babette McDougall	at a time when the whole city is under review for intense
01:20:48.98	Babette McDougall	housing density. I mean, come on, of course it's a
01:20:52.28	Babette McDougall	It's a time bomb for heaven's sakes. It's a really hot topic issue.
01:20:56.37	Babette McDougall	Oh, no, that's all I want to say. Thank you.
01:21:00.06	Walford Solorzano	All right. Next speaker is Judy Wedder.
01:21:08.87	Judy Wetter	Thank you, Mayor and Council members. Thank you for also for removing 3E from the consent calendar.
01:21:16.43	Judy Wetter	It is.
01:21:17.56	Judy Wetter	It sounds like it's now going, I'm still not clear
01:21:21.41	Judy Wetter	where it's going in the business,
01:21:24.85	Judy Wetter	If it's going to be combined with 5A,
01:21:27.86	Judy Wetter	No, there is a new
01:21:27.89	Mayor Cox	No, there is a 25A. So you'll have an opportunity to comment on that at that time.
01:21:30.24	Judy Wetter	Okay.
01:21:33.60	Judy Wetter	Okay, thank you.
01:21:34.54	Walford Solorzano	you
01:21:37.53	Walford Solorzano	All right, no further public comment.
01:21:38.93	Mayor Cox	Okay, with that I will entertain a motion to approve consent items three a through three D and three F through three H.
01:21:53.85	Vice Mayor Woodside	So moved.
01:21:56.34	Mayor Cox	Second. City Clerk, will you call the roll?
01:22:00.71	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Blalstein?
01:22:02.50	Mayor Cox	Yes.
01:22:02.76	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:02.84	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:02.92	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:03.31	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:03.45	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Councilmember Sobieski? Vice Mayor Woodside? Yes. Mayor Cox?
01:22:05.34	Mayor Cox	Yes.
01:22:12.17	Mayor Cox	Yes, I'll entertain a motion to approve consent item 3I.
01:22:18.64	Mayor Cox	So moved.
01:22:18.74	Walford Solorzano	So moved.
01:22:19.80	Mayor Cox	Second, city clerk. So,
01:22:19.90	Walford Solorzano	I'll second.
01:22:23.24	Walford Solorzano	Officially, who's a mover?
01:22:24.93	Councilmember Blaustein	I moved and vice mayor have seconded. Right. Okay.
01:22:25.57	Walford Solorzano	Okay.
01:22:27.68	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Blastin
01:22:29.48	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:29.52	Councilmember Blaustein	Yes.
01:22:29.54	Walford Solorzano	Yes.
01:22:29.91	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
01:22:30.30	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Hoffman. Yes. Councilmember Sobieski. Vice Mayor Woodside. Yes.
01:22:31.41	Councilmember Blaustein	Yes.
01:22:37.03	Mayor Cox	Cox recuse.
01:22:41.05	Mayor Cox	Okay, that both of those motions pass 5-0 for the first one, 4-1 for the second.
01:22:48.79	Mayor Cox	Okay, we will now move on to business items, the first business item will be item three E.
01:22:59.25	Mayor Cox	Community Development Director Phipps, is there a presentation on the 3E?
01:23:06.64	Director Phipps	Excuse me, I don't have the agenda in front of me. Are you referring to these-
01:23:09.50	Mayor Cox	referring to it's now five a this is the
01:23:11.86	Director Phipps	This is the. Understood. Well, there's. If there's not, it's fine. There's no presentation attached to the agenda, but there is a staff report.
01:23:14.14	Mayor Cox	If there's not, it's...
01:23:16.63	Mayor Cox	Okay.
01:23:18.74	Mayor Cox	Yes, so I removed this item in order to address significant public comment that we received regarding the breadth of the item. And so what I'm proposing to do this evening is to remove
01:23:33.14	Mayor Cox	the revisions to section 10.44.190 C2, which is the changes to...
01:23:47.31	Mayor Cox	to the affordability standards for
01:23:53.35	Mayor Cox	So it was the it's entitled the new title is requirements for affordable units. And so I'm proposing to remove those changes so that we can further discuss them at a later time with careful community feedback. I'm also seeking to remove.
01:24:08.66	Mayor Cox	Section 10.44.190 D.
01:24:13.13	Mayor Cox	A3.
01:24:15.04	Mayor Cox	which has to do with the modification to residential and affordable housing requirements and specifically the
01:24:28.05	Mayor Cox	one of the exceptions to the...
01:24:34.98	Mayor Cox	project to propose projects within existing buildings or structures um c a3 uh is the language that allows when the planning commission finds based on substantial evidence that the conversion of existing space to residential uses is physically or financially and feasible. I believe that provision is covered elsewhere in our ordinance and is unnecessary. And I want to narrow that.
01:25:07.42	Mayor Cox	the circumstances under which we allow
01:25:10.83	Mayor Cox	second floor commercial.
01:25:12.60	Councilmember Blaustein	Mayor Cox, could you share your screen or something so we can just show exactly which piece of the code? I'm trying to pull it up, but I know members of the public definitely don't have this in front of them, for example.
01:25:22.18	Councilmember Blaustein	I'd like a better understanding of what the proposed changes are. I didn't mean to jump ahead of you, Councilmember Hoffman. I see you wanted to.
01:25:25.04	Mayor Cox	I didn't eat it up ahead of me.
01:25:27.55	Councilmember Blaustein	I am not in the Zoom.
01:25:28.97	Mayor Cox	It's gonna take me, I have it.
01:25:30.79	City Attorney	And Mayor, I will try to accomplish that request.
01:25:33.86	City Attorney	All right.
01:25:34.05	Mayor Cox	Right.
01:25:34.08	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah.
01:25:34.16	City Attorney	Thank you.
01:25:34.20	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:25:34.22	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
01:25:34.87	Councilmember Hoffman	I can also direct. No, let's have the city attorney do it. That's fine.
01:25:38.28	Mayor Cox	That's what I'm saying.
01:25:42.70	Mayor Cox	All right, any questions on the proposed revisions?
01:25:48.04	City Attorney	And mayor, I would recommend that we take public comment.
01:25:49.59	Mayor Cox	We'll pause for a moment to see what they are.
01:25:56.22	Mayor Cox	So I will remind the council that section...
01:26:00.10	Mayor Cox	10.44.190 C2 is the revision.
01:26:07.00	Mayor Cox	that garnered the most debate at our last meeting and raised the most concern in the public comments that we received. Yeah, Marit.
01:26:15.59	City Attorney	City Clerk, I do need you to enable screen sharing for me.
01:26:20.69	City Attorney	in order to
01:26:21.72	Mayor Cox	Can you allow him to screenshot
01:26:28.16	Councilmember Sobieski	Right.
01:26:28.30	Mayor Cox	HEAD.
01:26:28.54	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
01:26:28.81	Councilmember Sobieski	I guess, yeah, I'm surprised by this. I didn't know this was going to get changed, so.
01:26:35.10	Councilmember Sobieski	I...
01:26:35.15	Mayor Cox	Because our housing element is under review, and because there's community feedback and concern that we would be reducing...
01:26:44.43	Mayor Cox	housing stock by this, I am proposing that we bifurcate these changes and undertake consideration of this change at a later date.
01:26:53.38	Councilmember Sobieski	I understand. However, I also understand
01:26:56.30	Councilmember Sobieski	You know, this was discussed at the last meeting.
01:26:59.32	Councilmember Sobieski	And the point is that our
01:27:02.52	Councilmember Sobieski	restriction in the commercial district is inadvertently
01:27:05.95	Councilmember Sobieski	uh apparently in conflict with state law that it creates a more restrictive environment for that zone than currently exists in residential zones so just to say that again in residential zones we have a waiver of the affordability requirement for fewer than five units and in the commercial zone we currently do not have such a waiver
01:27:26.18	Councilmember Sobieski	So the.
01:27:27.30	Councilmember Sobieski	requirement for affordable units is higher in the commercial zone than even in our residential zones.
01:27:33.71	Councilmember Sobieski	I understand that.
01:27:34.69	Councilmember Sobieski	unintended consequences, it's actually unconstitutional.
01:27:38.15	Councilmember Sobieski	Because if you only have room,
01:27:40.26	Councilmember Sobieski	in your commercial building to build one unit.
01:27:43.83	Councilmember Sobieski	then this ordinance as written requires you to have 100% affordable units. And that the state has said is an impediment to housing.
01:27:52.49	Councilmember Sobieski	The paradox of this rule
01:27:54.24	Councilmember Sobieski	is that it actually reduces the amount of housing available.
01:27:57.48	Councilmember Sobieski	So after the last meeting, I guess this gentleman didn't know it was a first reading, but a gentleman who owns a commercial property,
01:28:05.82	Councilmember Sobieski	sent me an email, which now I wish I'd encouraged him to send to the public record. I didn't think this was going to get switched to the last second, but I'll read it out loud.
01:28:13.04	Councilmember Sobieski	Excellent job getting the affordable requirement changed. This will increase housing supply. I'm now going to use it to get my back structure upgraded to be rentable. I had been holding other plans for that, but until something changed.
01:28:26.90	Councilmember Sobieski	So this lack of action is literally going to deprive the city of Sausalito of housing. Whereas...
01:28:34.29	Councilmember Sobieski	going ahead with this change
01:28:36.25	Councilmember Sobieski	doesn't remove any housing stock because anyone who wants to build residential on the second floor in the commercial district can do so.
01:28:42.91	Councilmember Sobieski	Nothing changes.
01:28:44.21	Councilmember Sobieski	The only thing that changes is the requirement to do so.
01:28:46.84	Councilmember Sobieski	And I posit to my colleagues in the community that that requirement is actually decreasing the amount of housing.
01:28:54.20	Mayor Cox	City Attorney, did you want to comment on the constitutionality of the existing ordinance?
01:29:03.21	City Attorney	So I will say that we don't know for certain that HCD would find this existing affordability requirement to be a
01:29:11.87	City Attorney	a constraint, but it certainly is a valid concern.
01:29:16.22	City Attorney	that I believe is shared by both the city attorney's office and by staff.
01:29:20.46	City Attorney	Additionally, I do think that in terms of the constitutionality of the affordability requirement,
01:29:27.11	City Attorney	There is no clear case law that would say that it is
01:29:30.90	City Attorney	obviously unconstitutional. And there is, you know, some allowed usage of that property regardless, because again, they're allowed for, the property is still allowed to have commercial uses on the first floor. So I think there would be arguments in defense of this ordinance. But certainly, I think the policy arguments that have been articulated by the council member are well noted.
01:29:55.02	Mayor Cox	So all I'm suggesting is that we bifurcate
01:29:58.51	Mayor Cox	consideration of the revisions to this ordinance so as not to even remotely jeopardize receipt of the certification of our existing
01:30:09.41	Mayor Cox	Revised amended housing element from HCD. So I'd like to just go ahead and put it on a future agenda item in July, but I would until we have an approved housing element adopted, I'm trying to reduce risk.
01:30:25.55	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:30:25.56	Councilmember Sobieski	I just a question for my colleague raised her hand. So I want to.
01:30:27.40	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
01:30:29.21	Mayor Cox	Yeah, so you can finish your question, and then we'll turn to Council Member Hart.
01:30:31.00	Councilmember Sobieski	I,
01:30:32.68	Councilmember Sobieski	So Sergio or just so I'm getting caught flat-footed on this one, but if we have a commercial interest you know, we just had an editorial in the IJ that was entitled Saucedo turns the tide for downtown businesses and in there it talked about development of Commercial properties. We know we for instance have talked about having boutique hotels in town if we I
01:30:58.57	Councilmember Sobieski	proceed just as the mayor outlined by removing this affordability change. Would a hotel be able to expand? Let's say if the Inn above Tides wanted to expand or some other hotel wanted to come into town and be on the second floor, would that hotel be able to proceed or does this
01:31:13.22	Councilmember Sobieski	affordability requirement preclude that.
01:31:16.51	City Attorney	So I think the affordability requirement could potentially be problematic unless the project as proposed fits into one of these exceptions set forth in subdivision D. So if the project does not include a physical expansion to existing buildings or structures exceeding 1000 square feet.
01:31:34.61	City Attorney	or the proposed project involves historic structure and a certificate of appropriateness issued for the project.
01:31:39.78	City Attorney	is given pursuant to the municipal code. That project
01:31:44.18	City Attorney	is exempt from the requirement to have residential units at all on the second floor. So it would not be subject to the requirement to provide at least a minimum of one affordable unit.
01:31:54.97	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay. Thank you very much.
01:31:57.01	Councilmember Sobieski	All right, Councilmember Hoffman.
01:31:59.14	Councilmember Hoffman	So, and that's why I feel like that would, these would be. This is time for questions. Then we're gonna hear public comment. Then you can make comment. If Council Member Sobieski didn't give a five minutes soliloquy. So I'm responding to that. Okay.
01:32:04.55	Mayor Cox	This is time for
01:32:06.59	Mayor Cox	public comment, then you can make comment.
01:32:13.11	Mayor Cox	OK.
01:32:13.60	Unknown	Thank you.
01:32:14.44	Councilmember Hoffman	Well, no, you did. And so I'm responding to his comments.
01:32:18.19	Mayor Cox	And so I'm going to ask you not to respond to his comments. He made his comments in order to frame his question.
01:32:23.91	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, well, let me ask you to- Let me make some comments to frame my question to our city attorney, based on our conversation this morning.
01:32:24.53	Mayor Cox	That's right.
01:32:29.75	Councilmember Hoffman	And so...
01:32:31.21	Councilmember Hoffman	So.
01:32:32.36	Councilmember Hoffman	Part of the issues that I talk to our CDD staff, and let me frame my question to our CDD staff, it's true that we received this quite broad survey
01:32:47.58	Councilmember Hoffman	change in our ordinance it's not at the request of the city council at a time when we're trying to certify our housing element without an inventory
01:32:56.07	Councilmember Hoffman	of our housing stock, our residential housing stock on our second story, correct? CDD director?
01:33:05.40	Director Phipps	That is correct.
01:33:06.55	Councilmember Hoffman	And there's no inventory of how this quite substantial change to
01:33:12.76	Councilmember Hoffman	the
01:33:14.03	Councilmember Hoffman	the
01:33:15.61	Councilmember Hoffman	a voluntary plan by the city council back in 2011, as the mayor explained at our last hearing on this subject,
01:33:24.13	Councilmember Hoffman	to address affordable housing. So this was a plan
01:33:28.23	Councilmember Hoffman	by the city council to increase affordable housing stock, a voluntary plan by the city council to increase our housing stock. But there was no
01:33:37.82	Councilmember Hoffman	inclusion of
01:33:40.10	Councilmember Hoffman	the inventory of what housing stock was produced and
01:33:46.53	Councilmember Hoffman	What?
01:33:47.07	Councilmember Hoffman	Housing stock has been produced.
01:33:49.07	Councilmember Hoffman	produced as part of that plan in the past 14 years, correct, CDD Director?
01:33:53.99	Director Phipps	I can't speak to that.
01:33:55.64	Councilmember Hoffman	Well, okay. Well, I can tell you that we have received units and there have been
01:34:01.11	Councilmember Hoffman	Units produced.
01:34:02.86	Councilmember Hoffman	And so we haven't had any lawsuits pursuant to it.
01:34:05.77	Mayor Cox	Can you confine this to questions, and please reserve your comments?
01:34:08.21	Councilmember Hoffman	And please reserve your comments.
01:34:10.93	Councilmember Hoffman	or the CDD director, we haven't had any lawsuits in past 14 years pursuant to this voluntary strategy that we
01:34:18.84	Councilmember Hoffman	came up with in 14 years ago, correct? City Attorney?
01:34:22.34	City Attorney	I'm not aware of any litigation
01:34:24.40	City Attorney	either historical or threatened with respect to this particular section, other than
01:34:30.62	City Attorney	with respect to one project that came up.
01:34:35.87	City Attorney	of which the council is aware.
01:34:38.62	Councilmember Hoffman	So no lawsuits.
01:34:39.95	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
01:34:40.31	Councilmember Hoffman	It's actually produced affordable housing stock
01:34:43.04	Councilmember Hoffman	We're in the middle of a housing
01:34:44.73	Mayor Cox	Is this a question?
01:34:46.13	Councilmember Hoffman	Yes.
01:34:46.64	Mayor Cox	I really would like to not.
01:34:48.58	Councilmember Hoffman	I would like for not to be, you didn't interrupt.
01:34:52.00	Councilmember Hoffman	Councilmember Sobieski during his long questions, his long...
01:34:52.12	Unknown	because
01:34:55.97	Councilmember Hoffman	you know,
01:34:56.96	Councilmember Hoffman	comments leading up to his questions i would like the same courtesy mayor i would
01:35:01.08	Councilmember Hoffman	I think that's fair to ask.
01:35:04.17	Councilmember Hoffman	So, I mean,
01:35:04.96	Mayor Cox	I am making these proposed revisions in deference to you and residents over this.
01:35:12.39	Councilmember Hoffman	I would say in deference to our city and getting our housing element passed, we absolutely should narrow this down if that's what we want to do tonight. And I support that.
01:35:23.26	Councilmember Hoffman	So I think
01:35:25.48	Councilmember Hoffman	But in light of the comments Council Member Sobieski made,
01:35:29.82	Councilmember Hoffman	I think it needs to be clear to the public what we're doing up here tonight. So, okay.
01:35:36.18	Mayor Cox	Okay. Any other questions? All right. I'm going to...
01:35:41.46	Councilmember Sobieski	Is it possible to buy for, I'm not sure how it works, you're the municipal attorney.
01:35:47.34	Councilmember Sobieski	So you're taking out a section on affordability and we're leaving in the sections on the exemptions and all that other stuff.
01:35:52.77	Mayor Cox	with the exception of one phrase in the exemption.
01:35:55.59	Councilmember Sobieski	So the section on affordability, can it be also just split out and propose that we take a vote on that as a separate matter here today? So basically creating two first readings.
01:36:07.69	Mayor Cox	The whole purpose, well, no, because we're changing the ordinance. I think that's a question for the city attorney. If we excise it and take two separate votes, it defeats the purpose of exercising it, which is to reduce risk with HCD.
01:36:24.04	City Attorney	Any changes to the ordinance that are not
01:36:28.56	City Attorney	Correction of typographical errors requires that the council reintroduce this as a first reading this evening. So you'll have to come back for adoption at another meeting.
01:36:38.18	Councilmember Sobieski	I guess I do have a question for you, city attorney. I mean, you came up with this in your ongoing effort to
01:36:43.75	Councilmember Sobieski	fix our code and make it decrease risk to the city. So this around the affordability to the mayor's point, in your opinion, does it actually increase our risk? These will be HCD and our housing element.
01:36:58.97	City Attorney	So in terms of the exemption of developments of small projects, um, one of the reasons why this language was originally suggested was, um,
01:37:10.21	City Attorney	In consultation with staff, there is a concern about it being a
01:37:14.17	City Attorney	a constraint on the development of housing and also just being a constraint on
01:37:18.70	City Attorney	development more generally. The proposed language does align the requirements
01:37:24.57	City Attorney	in
01:37:25.85	City Attorney	the code sections for commercial districts to mirror the affordability requirements in the residential districts.
01:37:32.90	City Attorney	So that was the purpose of this particular provision.
01:37:38.07	City Attorney	And
01:37:39.35	City Attorney	I would anticipate that HCD would not have a problem with the proposed language, but we have not had any direct discussions with HCD on this subject.
01:37:48.65	City Attorney	We don't know that for certain.
01:37:51.33	Councilmember Sobieski	Would the path forward be that this go back to the planning commission? Would it come back to us, Mayor?
01:37:55.57	Councilmember Sobieski	This.
01:37:56.50	Councilmember Sobieski	affordability changed aligned with the city attorney's recommendation.
01:37:59.92	Mayor Cox	I'll defer to the city attorney. Does, if we remove,
01:38:03.40	Mayor Cox	I think because the Planning Commission already considered it, that it doesn't have to go back to them, City Attorney, but what's your view?
01:38:10.91	City Attorney	Correct. I think the planning commission has seen this exact language. It's already presently in the municipal code. So they've had an opportunity to consider and study it. You are effectively rejecting one of their recommendations, which you are entitled to do.
01:38:26.31	City Attorney	So I don't think that it necessarily, it's,
01:38:30.43	City Attorney	it's not an issue that wasn't presented to the planning commission for study and recommendation. And therefore I think you can move forward with making these proposed amendments.
01:38:37.94	Mayor Cox	And again, my proposal is that we remove this this evening and give direction to staff to bring it back to us with the additional data requested by Councilmember Hoffman and the community so we can...
01:38:51.53	Mayor Cox	So you bring it back sometime this summer? Yes, absolutely.
01:38:56.20	Vice Mayor Woodside	Just a question, would it be possible to tonight continue it to a date certain or would you rather
01:39:04.27	Mayor Cox	Because a portion of this ordinance affects other pending projects, I'd rather not continue it.
01:39:10.21	Mayor Cox	All right.
01:39:10.26	Bonnie McGregor	All right.
01:39:11.14	Mayor Cox	So I understand.
01:39:13.14	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
01:39:14.17	Mayor Cox	All right. With that, I'm going to open this up to public comment. Anybody in the chambers?
01:39:19.12	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:39:19.13	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
01:39:20.62	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
01:39:20.64	Mayor Cox	.
01:39:22.59	Mayor Cox	Adrienne Britton, welcome.
01:39:26.51	Mayor Cox	He was one of the first people here this evening and has been patiently waiting.
01:39:31.23	Adrienne Brinton	Yeah, I came because the room was quite warm and I wanted a bit of a sauna before that.
01:39:34.71	Mayor Cox	You thought it would be cooler here.
01:39:37.02	Adrienne Brinton	Thank you for taking my comment. I don't disagree with the idea to split these two things apart. I think it made them very confusing. I think the reason that I would give would be slightly different that
01:39:45.80	Adrienne Brinton	You know, the priority here is to keep moving forward to get our restaurant open.
01:39:49.26	Adrienne Brinton	Thank you.
01:39:49.68	Adrienne Brinton	715 Bridgeway. And I saw in the public comments that were submitted concerns about, you know,
01:39:55.09	Adrienne Brinton	we're moving too fast, we're going to change the character of the town, things are really going to go in a bad direction if we make these changes.
01:40:01.76	Adrienne Brinton	I have a hard time imagining city government moving too fast. These documents have been in the public domain for some time. They have been very difficult to understand, but we have had time to read them and understand them, even as myself as a citizen and not a lawyer.
01:40:19.14	Adrienne Brinton	The changes are necessary. And every day we delay the restaurant is a day.
01:40:22.95	Adrienne Brinton	that the owner is paying his mortgage, he's paying his insurance, he's losing the opportunity costs of not being open and it's weakening the opening stand of the business that he's trying to open. So really hope that we can keep this on track, get it back to the planning commission, keep it moving forward, get our vacant storefront filled. And I think we're on track for that and I'll cross my fingers and hope that we move as fast as possible to get that done. Thank you very much.
01:40:51.47	Mayor Cox	Thank you. Sharna Brockett.
01:40:56.57	Mayor Cox	I don't have any more speaker cards from the chamber. So if there's anyone else in the chambers to speak on this, please fill out a speaker card.
01:41:03.71	Sharna Brockett	So I'm Sharna Brockett, a resident. I just want to point out that
01:41:07.34	Sharna Brockett	You know, I think a lot of people don't know what's going on here. Well, it took me a while to figure it out, too. But a lot of what's going on here is we're cleaning up our code so that our historic building, the Wells Fargo building, can be turned into a fabulous restaurant and boutique hotel. And if we can't get this across the finish line, then we're really lost. And I know we're going to get across the finish line. But this is such a gift to our town. And I'm so grateful that we're doing all the right things. So thank you for your leadership in trying to get this cleared up, but we need to simplify our code And this this is one of the things that it's blocking potentially if we don't clean it up I do think it's better. I mean, I think it was confusing with the housing part in it But I do have a few comments about that so
01:41:51.87	Sharna Brockett	As it reads right now, basically the affordable housing, from what I understand,
01:41:56.83	Sharna Brockett	in the commercial just or the housing is that you if you're a property owner and have a commercial building and you have a second unit
01:42:03.73	Sharna Brockett	or a second floor.
01:42:05.62	Sharna Brockett	that if you wanted to build housing, you would have to have one unit be affordable. So if you were to build one unit of housing, it would have to be affordable. If you built two units, one of those would have to be affordable, and so on and so on. That's a very strict requirement. And I just want to point out that it sounds really good. I want more affordable housing.
01:42:28.08	Sharna Brockett	It's just not realistic. A property owner or developer is not going to spend, is not going to develop housing. So in effect, what happens is that this law that we have actually stops the building of housing. And so it's really not working. And all housing is good housing. And I found this quote that I thought was really good from...
01:42:49.41	Sharna Brockett	this woman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the solution to the housing crisis is more housing. It's not just affordable housing. It's all types of housing. When you build market rate housing, you create vacancies that ripple through the rest of the housing market. So I think it's important to mention that. Thank you so much. Thank you.
01:43:07.01	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:43:07.37	Sharna Brockett	Brian Powers.
01:43:14.79	Brian Powers	Hi, Brian Powers. My wife and I are recent residents in Sausalito. Thanks for all the work you guys do. This is our first city council meeting ever. I don't have anything prepared. I just want to say in response that Sausalito has an incredible shortage of housing. The idea that a law in 2011 was successful is not accurate. I mean, there's been so little increase in any housing, let alone affordable. So I would just, this seems like this is just a procedural block to blocks, something that's a no brainer. Seems to be very little risk to anything related to the housing element. So I really hope this is just a speed bump and that this gets passed so that we can have more housing, just a small step toward that. Thank you.
01:44:04.07	Unknown	Thank you. City Clerk.
01:44:06.40	Brian Powers	Lauret Rogers.
01:44:07.36	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
01:44:09.42	Lorette Rogers	It's time, Lorette. Hi, okay, it's Lorette.
01:44:14.26	Lorette Rogers	Sarah Silver, yeah I appreciate the mayor. Sarah Silver, giving more time to this and more consideration, it just seems like there needs to be a fuller analysis of how these changes. Sarah Silver, would affect Sausalito's inventory of residential space and particularly affordable housing, I mean, has that been enumerated where we can actually see. Sarah Silver, What the potential is and what the possibilities are to see what it would do, and as the mayor mentioned.
01:44:44.45	Lorette Rogers	You know, both Mike and I are worried about
01:44:46.81	Lorette Rogers	how this could affect the adopted housing element, which hasn't been certified yet.
01:44:51.57	Lorette Rogers	It just seemed to run counter to all the work you guys have been doing.
01:44:55.98	Lorette Rogers	So, you know, we're glad you're going to wait and get more information, maybe get an idea of what the quantity and what the effects will be on affordable housing possibilities and residential space. So, yes, thank you. Hope that you study the ramifications of these proposed changes and that we get to assess and decide this together. Is this the best move for future Sausalito? Thank you.
01:45:23.50	Lorette Rogers	THANK YOU.
01:45:23.58	Unknown	Thank you.
01:45:23.94	Lorette Rogers	Thank you.
01:45:25.78	Babette McDougall	Next speaker is Babette McDougall.
01:45:30.62	Babette McDougall	Thank you so much for including me. So first of all, we have to realize that there is this implication of a precedent.
01:45:37.72	Babette McDougall	That could well be said here. It isn't really just
01:45:40.51	Babette McDougall	about that one location that we all call the old Wells Fargo building.
01:45:44.68	Babette McDougall	There are broader implications for what could happen elsewhere in the community. So whether we know it or not going forward, there is a ripple effect.
01:45:53.91	Babette McDougall	one that we may or may not anticipate now. So I also feel that, I just wanna echo everyone's
01:45:59.93	Babette McDougall	comments, and I want to thank the mayor for slowing this one down because there is this potential for a collision.
01:46:05.13	Babette McDougall	And after all, the best way to avoid a collision is to create a little bit more open space. That's what the FAA is figuring out. So I don't think we can go wrong here. And I want to thank you all for just keeping your eye on this because this is a delicate process. We've invested a huge amount of resources, not just money,
01:46:23.10	Babette McDougall	but other human capital and other assets.
01:46:25.50	Babette McDougall	And I think citizens of Sausalito would like to see us get through this housing element. It's a mess.
01:46:30.09	Babette McDougall	It's a disaster from the beginning.
01:46:32.35	Babette McDougall	And it's sort of an invitation to fail.
01:46:35.40	Babette McDougall	And there are so many challenges being thrown at us to encourage the failure.
01:46:41.49	Babette McDougall	That's why I want to encourage us all to try to get together on this. And moving slower is one way to get together on this. Everybody can do a high kick if we slow it down. Right, Mayor? Thank you. I yield back my time.
01:46:54.07	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Linda Foch.
01:46:59.50	Linda Foch	This ordinance is pretty much a mess. I'd like to remind the Council that there's been a voted upon
01:47:06.99	Linda Foch	and approved resolution
01:47:08.93	Linda Foch	that clarifies that ordinance 1022 does not apply to the CC district. Yet you have thrown that in under the guise of doing something with affordability for housing units. And that really doesn't apply in this ordinance. So I think it really needs to be cleaned up and brought back to another meeting at a later date. Thank you.
01:47:32.86	Linda Foch	Thank you.
01:47:33.25	Joe Carr	Thank you.
01:47:34.41	Walford Solorzano	Our next speaker, Joe Carr.
01:47:40.14	Joe Carr	Yes, good evening.
01:47:42.38	Joe Carr	Madam Mayor, City Council, thank you for taking my comments.
01:47:46.46	Joe Carr	I'm an architect and proud homeowner in Sausalito.
01:47:51.71	Joe Carr	I love our town, but we have a serious housing problem.
01:47:55.71	Joe Carr	And the problem is that
01:47:58.19	Joe Carr	Most everybody speaking and every other person in the city
01:48:03.66	Joe Carr	who objects to new
01:48:05.58	Joe Carr	housing.
01:48:06.34	Joe Carr	hasn't taken economics 101
01:48:08.76	Joe Carr	in college, the fact is that
01:48:11.68	Joe Carr	you restrict the number of housing units and you make it more expensive. If you add new units, you make it less expensive. And the notion that a rising tide floats all boats,
01:48:27.49	Joe Carr	is what you have to consider. And what was just said previous to me about the fact that more high-end units and market rate units are going to help
01:48:40.85	Joe Carr	vacate lower end units, which then become
01:48:44.11	Joe Carr	more accessible to people of less means. So I'd like
01:48:50.56	Joe Carr	I have to say that I think that we need to stop stopping these things. We need to stop being obstructive and let these ordinances go through.
01:49:03.04	Joe Carr	so that we have more housing. That's the bottom line, just more housing.
01:49:08.76	Joe Carr	Thank you.
01:49:10.74	Unknown	Thank you.
01:49:11.48	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Kieran Culligan.
01:49:13.47	Kieran Culligan	Thank you.
01:49:18.16	Kieran Culligan	Hi there, Kieran Culligan, Sausalito resident. I just want to acknowledge persistence. There's a lot of projects in Sausalito that have never happened, never even made it to the Planning Commission, never made it to city council, because it was clear that it was just dead on arrival. Too much regulation,
01:49:36.74	Kieran Culligan	Essentially, just as Joel just described, it just grinds everything to its halt. But we have a developer here who has created something, a concept that looks pretty awesome. We have a city staff that has worked on identifying ways that our code is outdated and ways to fix it so that positive projects like this can happen. And I'm hoping that we can now finish the deal and show that we can do better than we have historically.
01:50:07.13	Kieran Culligan	When it comes to affordable housing, I read through this. I didn't get it all at first. And I actually reached out to someone who thinks about affordable housing day in and day out. It's their job. And when I brought this topic of what we have today and what's changing, does this hurt housing stock? They laughed. This is completely normal. What's being proposed here as an evolution, the existing language restricts housing. Anyone who's kind of claiming otherwise, and in many cases, these are the same folks who oppose other housing projects, like it's kind of laughable how the story changes depending on the situation. So I hope that we can move forward, that people who are putting in time and energy and ideas and effort, we can help bring positive evolutions to
01:50:54.91	Kieran Culligan	to actually see them come to light instead of having things grind on. So hopefully tonight, if not very soon, let's see this come to fruition. Thanks.
01:51:04.56	Walford Solorzano	Nick.
01:51:04.98	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Bonnie McGregor.
01:51:11.85	Walford Solorzano	Please unmute.
01:51:16.54	Bonnie McGregor	Hi there, this is Bonnie McGregor.
01:51:20.45	Bonnie McGregor	Thank you.
01:51:20.49	Unknown	Hello?
01:51:21.27	Unknown	Welcome, Bonnie. We can hear you.
01:51:23.59	Unknown	Hello?
01:51:24.76	Unknown	Yes, we hear you.
01:51:26.41	Unknown	Please proceed.
01:51:29.10	Unknown	I'm not signed in or something. No, we hear you, Bonnie. Can you hear us? I hear no feedback.
01:51:36.17	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:51:36.18	Unknown	Thank you.
01:51:36.20	Mayor Cox	OK, Walfred, can you try and text her or something?
01:51:39.15	Walford Solorzano	I don't know her phone number.
01:51:41.38	Mayor Cox	No, in the chat.
01:51:43.03	Bonnie McGregor	So that we can solve the problem.
01:51:43.10	Mayor Cox	I'm so glad.
01:51:44.96	Bonnie McGregor	Um,
01:51:46.58	Bonnie McGregor	I'm not sure that what I've got to say is pertinent to this particular issue or not. I'm getting more and more confused the more I hear. I have not read this thing that is on the screen. As a matter of fact, I can hardly see it.
01:51:56.75	Bonnie McGregor	But I do have a couple of comments to make about things.
01:52:00.70	Bonnie McGregor	And I did write a letter tonight, and I don't know whether what you're talking about at the moment is pertinent to the letter or not.
01:52:05.97	Bonnie McGregor	But one of my comments I have that I've not written down is this.
01:52:10.15	Bonnie McGregor	I have trouble understanding when
01:52:12.97	Bonnie McGregor	what is two things. One is what is considered to be
01:52:17.27	Bonnie McGregor	affordable housing.
01:52:19.55	Bonnie McGregor	And the other one is,
01:52:21.00	Bonnie McGregor	Who determines when a town is full or the cup runneth over?
01:52:26.84	Bonnie McGregor	You know, we do not want to look like Manhattan or Chicago or some other large monstrosity of a town. That's why we live in a little town.
01:52:35.92	Bonnie McGregor	And anybody that drives around town anymore, the traffic is god-awful almost 24-7.
01:52:42.05	Bonnie McGregor	I'm out at various different times during every day of the week.
01:52:45.47	Bonnie McGregor	And the traffic is almost gridlock most of the time.
01:52:48.81	Bonnie McGregor	And when there is an accident on 101 going north, let's say it's
01:52:52.56	Bonnie McGregor	3.30 in the afternoon.
01:52:54.55	Bonnie McGregor	It backs up all the way down past sailors.
01:52:58.18	Bonnie McGregor	So how much more, where's the end? Where's enough?
01:53:01.96	Bonnie McGregor	Who makes those determinations?
01:53:05.57	Bonnie McGregor	And if this is a time for me to read my letter that I wrote referring to
01:53:09.97	Bonnie McGregor	of 5A, which apparently has been changed. Is this the change? Or are we still talking about the same thing that was broadcast to be 5A?
01:53:19.29	Mayor Cox	No, formula retail is now the new 5B.
01:53:27.20	Bonnie McGregor	Okay, so that comes up next, correct?
01:53:31.40	Bonnie McGregor	you
01:53:31.44	Mayor Cox	Yes.
01:53:31.91	Bonnie McGregor	Thanks.
01:53:31.96	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
01:53:33.19	Bonnie McGregor	Okay, well, it's...
01:53:34.75	Bonnie McGregor	Yeah.
01:53:35.44	Bonnie McGregor	with all the commentary in this one, very interesting, but I think we got a long way to go before we come to a resolution.
01:53:42.48	Walford Solorzano	Right next speaker is Eric McFarland.
01:53:48.47	Eric McFarland	Hi there. Good evening. Hope you can hear me. I'm a little bit ill-prepared. This is my first attendance of a city council meeting. I'm a resident. I'm a renter here. We moved from Mill Valley, where we lived for 15 years to sort of realize a dream of living in Sausalito.
01:54:03.89	Eric McFarland	And we are kind of challenged in trying to find a place to live. We have honed in on the heels of learning a little bit about the ordinance, the affordable housing ordinance changes, and we are an escrow to buy a property
01:54:17.17	Eric McFarland	on Caledonia Street that currently has an upper level that's vacant. And our vision is to be able to
01:54:24.43	Eric McFarland	purchase the building and occupy the upper level as a residence. And so my expectation, um,
01:54:31.53	Eric McFarland	attending tonight after hearing the news of the ordinance changes was that this was going to be
01:54:37.86	Eric McFarland	discussed and pushed forward. And this is a real life example of a situation where
01:54:43.77	Eric McFarland	I have the potential ability to create an additional unit. This would be something for myself and therefore free up the space that I live in now for another resident in the community. But by punting this further or by dismissing it, it limits that ability. It also paralyzes the person that owns the building from being able to potentially sell it to us to realize this path forward.
01:55:07.81	Eric McFarland	Um,
01:55:10.16	Eric McFarland	I just, you know, I don't necessarily follow how this is. It sounds like there's two things happening at once and I probably need to dive deeper. I don't know how this relates to the development of a boutique hotel or a restaurant. That seems like a different matter. But I am just a real life kind of in the live sort of live moment case study of somebody trying to actually create a housing unit, one additional housing unit for an existing resident. And this feels like a tremendous impediment to being able to realize that path forward. Thank you for letting me speak.
01:55:46.07	Walford Solorzano	All right, next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker.
01:55:51.77	Sandra Bushmaker	Good evening, counsel.
01:55:53.27	Sandra Bushmaker	I think your first priority is to get the amended housing element adopted and certified.
01:55:59.08	Sandra Bushmaker	I think that's where you need to go, number one.
01:56:02.22	Sandra Bushmaker	Number two is this ordinance
01:56:05.29	Sandra Bushmaker	as I understood the comments tonight, arises from the Wells Fargo building, and all these changes are being made to accommodate that.
01:56:13.25	Sandra Bushmaker	Now I have,
01:56:15.04	Sandra Bushmaker	Read this, I find it very confusing and I would support a continuance of this entire matter and clarify what this is, what these changes are really doing and in an executive summary that the public can clearly understand.
01:56:32.52	Sandra Bushmaker	And I also contest the and disagree that
01:56:36.17	Sandra Bushmaker	More market rate housing is going to create more affordable housing.
01:56:41.03	Sandra Bushmaker	That's just not going to happen, in my opinion. And I saw no data to support that when we went through the housing element cycle for the sixth cycle to get our approved.
01:56:51.19	Sandra Bushmaker	housing element. In fact, some of that
01:56:53.52	Sandra Bushmaker	um,
01:56:54.58	Sandra Bushmaker	Those assumptions were challenged.
01:56:56.57	Sandra Bushmaker	in Sacramento and there was no data to support
01:56:59.83	Sandra Bushmaker	that allegation.
01:57:01.11	Sandra Bushmaker	Thank you.
01:57:03.42	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Judy Wetter.
01:57:10.95	Judy Wetter	Thank you, Mayor and Council. I appreciate that this is being moved
01:57:14.71	Judy Wetter	to the summer and more study.
01:57:17.16	Judy Wetter	We do need to understand how these changes to the ordinance will affect more than just one project. And we need to make sure that we're enabling smart growth. So thank you for slowing this down. Thank you.
01:57:33.65	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker, Scott Thornburg.
01:57:38.79	Scott Thornburg	Good evening, Council. I got to be honest, I'm really frustrated with this one. It really seems to me like the anti-housing NIMBYs in Sausalito will really use just about anything to stop housing from being built, even good intentions. Overregulation is exactly how we got to the place we are now.
01:57:58.54	Scott Thornburg	And it's really frustrating to me that as a person that is renting in this town and giving
01:58:03.09	Scott Thornburg	hours and hours of my life
01:58:05.88	Scott Thornburg	to volunteer in this community, that it is really difficult for me to find a home.
01:58:10.69	Scott Thornburg	It's also really difficult for me to watch friends and community leaders be forced out of this community, be forced out of their homes because they don't have other housing options available to them in Sausalito because we do not have enough housing.
01:58:26.73	Scott Thornburg	Someone mentioned economics earlier. I would encourage you to go back and look at the definition of what we're talking about here. It is truly basic supply and demand. There is not enough supply, so demand goes up and so do the prices. If we want
01:58:43.68	Scott Thornburg	to solve this problem, we have to
01:58:46.78	Scott Thornburg	free up
01:58:48.62	Scott Thornburg	pave the way for more housing in Sausalito, this is not going to do that. This is just going to inhibit additional housing and it's good intentions, but this is not the path. And I would just encourage you to not let policy get in the way of progress when it comes to our housing and our community and the lives of residents. Thank you.
01:59:10.93	Walford Solorzano	We have no further public comment on Zoom.
01:59:14.17	Mayor Cox	I'll call Charles Melton.
01:59:22.07	Charles Melton	Thank you. I want to first apologize for submitting my form late. The room was heating up and so was I.
01:59:27.20	Charles Melton	Especially on this topic about housing.
01:59:28.84	Charles Melton	I'm a Sasslita resident who faces housing uncertainty.
01:59:31.69	Charles Melton	It's a constant thing I battle.
01:59:33.09	Charles Melton	I do not own a home and sauce lead out.
01:59:35.38	Charles Melton	The decision makers here in this room,
01:59:37.17	Charles Melton	How many of you own your home?
01:59:38.69	Charles Melton	How many of you are thinking about those who do not own homes, who contribute to our community every single day? That's really what's at stake here. As we're talking about this, about affordable housing, we absolutely need this. It's a complicated issue.
01:59:52.32	Charles Melton	It's a multi-prong issue. We hear about traffic.
01:59:55.40	Charles Melton	Traffic is often caused by individuals commuting in long distances, plaguing our streets and parking lots so they can work here because they can't afford a house because there isn't a housing supply.
02:00:05.67	Charles Melton	We've heard how this ordinance, or when it was adopted, created housing downtown.
02:00:11.07	Charles Melton	I've yet to see any facts behind that.
02:00:13.40	Charles Melton	How many housing elements, how many housing units did it actually create?
02:00:16.83	Charles Melton	How many projects did it actually stall?
02:00:19.53	Charles Melton	how, what will be done with this ordinance in this bifurcated process to actually move progress forward to enable more housing.
02:00:26.09	Charles Melton	That is the core question here for this tonight.
02:00:29.35	Charles Melton	I appreciate that the city council is being very
02:00:31.64	Charles Melton	Consider it.
02:00:32.67	Charles Melton	and considering
02:00:33.82	Charles Melton	input from the community. That is powerful. Thank you for listening to us. But I also appreciate you
02:00:39.14	Charles Melton	I also ask you to move forward.
02:00:41.97	Charles Melton	Government moves slow. I recognize the process. I appreciate the process. But let's not stop progress by asking more questions or throwing roadblocks in the way or bifurcating processes or saying that our housing element won't get approved when yet there's no actual evidence from HCD, according to our city attorney, that that's going to happen.
02:01:00.70	Charles Melton	Let's make progress together and address these issues. Let's remove the gridlock that exists in our code.
02:01:06.27	Charles Melton	So that way.
02:01:07.32	Charles Melton	Sausalito, our community.
02:01:09.55	Charles Melton	our business owners, our residents can address some of the issues that we've heard tonight.
02:01:14.37	Charles Melton	We've heard about individuals not able to put in housing where they currently are.
02:01:17.46	Charles Melton	That's a problem. Let's break through that gridlock together. Thank you.
02:01:21.71	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:01:22.72	Mayor Cox	All right, with that, I'll close public comment and bring it up here for discussion. I do want to just clarify a couple of things to lead off.
02:01:32.87	Mayor Cox	We adopted a housing element two years ago that required us to build 724 new units of housing in the next, or to identify the development potential for 724 new units of housing over the next six years. We have already...
02:01:47.75	Mayor Cox	We already have on the books 189 of those 724 units. And so we are not ignoring the need for housing. We are moving smartly forward with new housing. The city itself is working hard to sponsor housing development on city owned property. And you will see some ballot initiatives later this year to facilitate the city's ability to do that. And that will be
02:02:15.54	Mayor Cox	hopefully affordable senior housing, 50 units. And so the city is not ignoring or unaware of
02:02:25.84	Mayor Cox	um
02:02:27.19	Mayor Cox	the community interest in increasing the stock of affordable housing.
02:02:32.67	Mayor Cox	That being said, we were criticized earlier tonight for not being transparent with all of our processes.
02:02:44.20	Mayor Cox	I have been immersed in housing law since 2010, and I have difficulty understanding how all of our various ordinances interrelate with one another. And so I understand the frustration of the community. And when I received a lot of community feedback, expressing concern, not fully understanding the implications, wanting more data, I wanted to be respectful of that community feedback without holding up.
02:03:10.98	Mayor Cox	important aspects of this ordinance altogether. And that is why I am simply proposing a bifurcation of this ordinance and a slight pause on a portion of it to ensure that we have adequately communicated with HCD and that our public
02:03:29.30	Mayor Cox	better understands and can weigh in on the proposed revisions to this ordinance. I voted in favor of it two weeks ago, but it's not just up to me. We are here to serve the residents. And so when folks are concerned about the implications of changes to our ordinance, I think it's important to air those out. And so that's the reason I've proposed the bifurcation. It will be up to the Council tonight to make that decision. Having heard.
02:04:01.47	Mayor Cox	Um,
02:04:02.90	Mayor Cox	all of the public comment. I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion that we,
02:04:10.65	Mayor Cox	uh,
02:04:13.35	Mayor Cox	bifurcate this ordinance and that tonight be the first reading of the revised ordinance and that we bring it back for a second reading in two weeks. And the
02:04:25.21	Mayor Cox	proposals that I'm making
02:04:27.45	Mayor Cox	are to eliminate the revisions to Section 10.44.190 C2, which are on the screen in highlight and red.
02:04:42.14	Mayor Cox	and that we eliminate the new
02:04:46.79	Mayor Cox	phrase in section 10.44.190D.
02:04:52.78	Mayor Cox	A three.
02:04:54.27	Mayor Cox	that says the Planning Commission finds, based on substantial evidence, that the conversion of existing space to residential uses is physically or financially infeasible. And so those are my two proposed revisions. That's my motion.
02:05:07.85	Mayor Cox	Oh, and give direction to staff to return to us in...
02:05:14.54	Mayor Cox	in july with a um proposed uh ordinance to address the section that i've removed this evening
02:05:24.14	Director Phipps	May I ask a quick clarifying question, Mayor?
02:05:26.55	Mayor Cox	Yeah, let me see if I have a second.
02:05:29.52	Mayor Cox	Second.
02:05:30.40	Mayor Cox	Yes.
02:05:31.12	Director Phipps	Clarifying question. I heard you say bring this back in two weeks. I know that we have a council meeting next week on the 27th. Just want to clarify, would you like this to be brought before council on the meeting at the 22nd or the meeting in two weeks?
02:05:43.49	City Attorney	So unfortunately, it's not possible to adopt an ordinance at a special meeting. This does need to come back at a regular meeting.
02:05:51.00	Director Phipps	So I'm hearing two weeks. Thank you.
02:05:53.21	City Attorney	Thank you.
02:05:53.30	Mayor Cox	THE FAMILY IS THE FAMILY
02:05:53.35	City Attorney	THANK YOU.
02:05:53.55	City Attorney	Thank you.
02:05:57.10	Mayor Cox	who I know others have comments.
02:06:02.04	Mayor Cox	or not if we, if we,
02:06:05.78	Councilmember Sobieski	I really appreciate what you're trying to do, Mayor. If there were three votes, just proceed with this resolution. I'd vote for it as is tonight because I have two data points. The gentleman who spoke in who wants to turn it upstairs residential and this fellow who emailed me. I actually think it creates housing stock out of the box. If there are three votes, I respect what you're trying to do. And I will vote for it if there isn't an alternative that has a majority.
02:06:06.11	Mayor Cox	I really,
02:06:29.95	Mayor Cox	So the reason I made the first motion is so someone could make an alternate motion, which will be voted on first.
02:06:38.69	Councilmember Sobieski	then i'll make the motion to approve the second reading as is
02:06:40.84	Mayor Cox	reading as is.
02:06:43.74	Mayor Cox	And is there a second to that motion?
02:06:49.96	Councilmember Blaustein	I mean,
02:06:52.14	Vice Mayor Woodside	One of the problems with the Brown Act is that we can't talk to each other until we come up here and we try to sort this out. And we're looking at each other because I'll second the motion.
02:07:01.91	Sandra Bushmaker	Yeah.
02:07:02.03	Councilmember Blaustein	I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
02:07:05.76	Mayor Cox	Okay, I think we've already talked this to death.
02:07:08.83	Councilmember Blaustein	I haven't said anything at all. So to be fair. Okay. I haven't had an opportunity to weigh in because as, as you're aware, I had the same concerns with regards to affordable housing at our last meeting. And I put significant emphasis on ensuring that staff was taking steps to consider ordinances that would protect existing affordability and existing affordable renters. Since this item came up again, I've been thinking a lot about what is, it isn't feasible with regards to how do we encourage building more housing? Because that's what we inevitably really want and need to do. I mean, this is a difficult issue.
02:07:49.13	Councilmember Blaustein	different
02:07:49.94	Councilmember Blaustein	to consider because any changes to something that's designed to encourage affordability, it's difficult for me to vote for. At the same time, given that we have data points advancing
02:08:02.65	Councilmember Blaustein	So saying essentially I would build something upstairs and I would create more affordable units makes me think differently about it. So given that we did talk about this substantially last time, I'm inclined to move it forward to the best of our ability this evening. I'd like to hear what the vice mayor has to say so we can come up with – I always like to come to some sort of shared consensus. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but I just feel like we need a little bit more time to talk about it amongst ourselves because I'm not necessarily –
02:08:30.59	Councilmember Blaustein	decided at this point.
02:08:31.97	Vice Mayor Woodside	I'm convinced that the four members of the planning commission who all voted for this knew what they were doing. The city attorney knows what they're doing. Staff knows what they're doing. I think these changes are going to benefit in the long run affordable housing. I think the limitation in the existing code that requires it for five units or less is a block, is a bar. We heard a case study by one of the speakers tonight who would like to go forward but can't because of the change that we may not make tonight unless we move forward. I am persuaded at times that we want to make sure that HCD approves our amended housing element. I am perhaps more confident than some people that they're going to do that, and they're going to do that soon. And that's the reason why I'm not inclined to delay. I think as I look back at the history of many things that have happened in this town, often delay becomes the deadliest form of denial. And in this case, we really shouldn't delay. This is not just because of one proposal that illustrated some of the problems we face. It's because that illustration got staff and others and the city attorney to think about what else in our code is a bar to actually providing in small numbers, in isolated places, in places that we know historically have included housing. If you go back in history far enough, a lot of the second floors in this town were all kinds of housing, including hotels, dormitory-style housing, etc. And take a history walk, and they'll point them out to you. Our second floor hotels are right in the historic district for example. So I don't think this is going to destroy the notion that our existing residences on the second floor are all going to be somehow converted to hotels which I think is one of the fears. I'm just saying all that because that's how I see it. I think that's how the Planning Commission has seen it. The one member who did not vote simply did not vote. And I like the revisions. So I'm willing to go forward now. We've heard from people. I've read all the letters. I know there are concerns. I think they are concerns that will be overcome with time if we make these changes. And I think there are probably going to be more changes we're going to have to make going forward to actually provide affordable housing in this community. And the mayor has alluded to some that we will be voting on later this summer. So that's where I'm coming from. So I'm willing to move forward now because I think I don't want to see any more delay. This has been debated and debated and debated by good people. I know there are different points of view, but I'll vote yes.
02:09:23.19	Unknown	And it,
02:10:22.99	Unknown	example.
02:11:25.87	Councilmember Blaustein	So on the subject of the delay then, could I ask that we might
02:11:31.47	Councilmember Blaustein	I was just a follow up. I just would like if I were to vote on it, I would want to know that we were immediately going to agendize a conversation about affordability and protection of existing affordable units in the context of these changes. So we would have to do something in our code to protect, to further protect affordability for me to feel
02:11:48.48	Vice Mayor Woodside	I'm certainly open to that.
02:11:54.57	Councilmember Hoffman	I think to your point, Vice Mayor, I think I would be more inclined to support moving forward if we had had a comprehensive discussion of this in the past. And if we had all the data that was provided that we would normally have had we had a comprehensive discussion of this in the past. In other words, if this had been part of the housing element discussion as we had moved
02:12:18.89	Councilmember Hoffman	in the past two years or three years that we've been discussing this. So had this been rolled up as a discussion, and if these had been part of our inventory numbers, if this had come forward with the challenges of this program that was introduced 14 years ago, and I'm talking specifically about how do we provide more housing for, this was a, and I'm just talking about the calculation of the inventory, right? The opportunity sites for affordable housing, right? So I'm talking about that calculation. If you add new units above the second floor, that you have to have a certain calculation of affordable units. That was a specific program.
02:13:08.72	Councilmember Hoffman	in reaction to a housing element in 2011. So that was a program that Sausalito came up with.
02:13:15.25	Councilmember Hoffman	If we had decided as part of our program
02:13:18.21	Councilmember Hoffman	this round hey let's do away with that we want to try a different program great um then that's part of our strategy we're pivoting to something else this is not something that was part of that strategy um so we would be looking at how many sites did we have how many sites are we going to lose um you know how many you know what was the impact i know for a fact that in the past 60 days we've gotten one more site at one of the projects that's been going on that that was required and so we got one more affordable site. So to say that this strategy hasn't come up with more affordable units in town over the past 14 years
02:14:03.80	Councilmember Hoffman	is not true. And so we as a council should be afforded that. And you can't sit up on this council and say that I support affordable housing and throw this strategy out at a time or trying to look at affordable, every bit of affordable stock in town
02:14:24.86	Councilmember Hoffman	and not acknowledge that and do it in a vacuum without even having staff provide this information.
02:14:31.31	Councilmember Hoffman	A short.
02:14:32.51	Councilmember Hoffman	A short delay of two weeks and asking staff to come back and say, we want to have this information and we want to make a reasoned approach with the numbers, I think is, you know, it's reasonable. The fellow that called in that wants to do a unit, absolutely he should do that. He's not going to get his unit done in two weeks. And I would ask him to reach out to staff. They're amazingly adept at coming up with ways. If you're an owner and you want to do an owner move in, I'm pretty sure you can probably do that, and we can figure out a way to do that. So we need to have an inventory of second-story units before we make our, across all four of our financial districts. Let me just say, too, you know, this, I have, my concern about this is in the commercial Central District, the way this is written, this gives wide latitude to the Planning Commission.
02:15:23.37	Councilmember Hoffman	to eliminate residential on the second floor. We will lose many residential units across the central district, the way this is written, in a way that DA3 clause is written
02:15:40.95	Councilmember Hoffman	It is a pretty broad...
02:15:44.24	Councilmember Hoffman	an easy hurdle to get over.
02:15:47.08	Councilmember Hoffman	to eliminate your second floor residential units.
02:15:50.72	Councilmember Hoffman	So if you're talking about maintaining second floor residential units,
02:15:54.79	Councilmember Hoffman	That is something that we need to look at very, very closely. And again, what's the inventory of second floor residential units across
02:16:05.37	Councilmember Hoffman	Sausalito, those units are going to shift from affordable
02:16:10.37	Councilmember Hoffman	to high end market rate
02:16:12.86	Councilmember Hoffman	Those people that came and talked to us during that in-the-pocket that were living in those affordable units, we're going to lose those units. And so, again, if you're talking about we care about affordable units, you need to actually have your actions...
02:16:28.68	Councilmember Hoffman	Follow up with your rhetoric up here on the council and that's what this vote is about and so we need to I think um
02:16:37.57	Councilmember Hoffman	The first motion that the mayor made that should be our vote tonight. There's no downside. A couple of weeks to get this information up here and make a reasoned approach harms no one. I can't see why we wouldn't follow that as a council.
02:16:52.77	Councilmember Blaustein	Can I ask a question of Steph?
02:16:56.55	Councilmember Blaustein	Please. No, no, go ahead. Director Phipps, have we had any applications to build residential in the downtown or Caledonia in your tenure as community development director? And have any of those included in affordable units?
02:16:59.49	Linda Foch	Last capture.
02:17:15.62	Director Phipps	Thank you for the question. I'm pleased to state that we actually did recently approve a housing project off of Bridgeway that locates directly adjacent and as a part of the Caledonia zoning district. So that's one project that we're aware of. However, that project locates on a housing element opportunity site. We're excited to be initiating the building permit review process once applicant submits.
02:17:42.30	Councilmember Blaustein	What's that going to be?
02:17:43.28	Director Phipps	That's going to be a four-unit development.
02:17:45.03	Councilmember Blaustein	And so one of the four units will be affordable? Correct.
02:17:47.51	Director Phipps	Correct. Correct. As related to development in the Central Commercial District, in my experience in CDD in the last two and a half years, there has been very limited development discussion and very limited development proposal as related to affordable housing.
02:18:07.50	Mayor Cox	Okay. Again, I voted in favor of this ordinance two weeks ago. I brought it back to...
02:18:16.37	Mayor Cox	in deference to significant public feedback.
02:18:20.32	Mayor Cox	We heard significant public feedback this evening and so
02:18:24.96	Mayor Cox	that was what was most important to me.
02:18:28.91	Mayor Cox	And so now that everyone's had an opportunity to comment, I'm going to call the question. This will be on Councilmember Sobieski's motion. City Clerk, will you call the roll?
02:18:40.22	Babette McDougall	Councilmember Blastin.
02:18:42.83	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:18:42.85	Councilmember Hoffman	No.
02:18:44.23	Babette McDougall	Councilmember Hoffman.
02:18:46.73	Councilmember Hoffman	No.
02:18:48.26	Babette McDougall	Council member Sobieski.
02:18:49.65	Councilmember Hoffman	Yes.
02:18:49.68	Walford Solorzano	you
02:18:49.72	Babette McDougall	Yes. Vice Mayor Woodside? Yes.
02:18:52.21	Walford Solorzano	Mary Cox
02:18:56.96	Mayor Cox	I know.
02:18:57.65	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
02:18:57.77	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:18:57.80	Councilmember Blaustein	you
02:18:57.87	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:18:58.04	Councilmember Blaustein	You just completely floored me.
02:19:02.07	Councilmember Blaustein	I just, if I could for a minute, I just, if we are going to do a full analysis of all our affordable units, then I don't think it's a problem to stop and examine our affordability. I want to see this move forward. I absolutely want to see it move forward. I am deeply concerned about affordability across the board based on what everyone has said. And I don't think that necessarily waiting to assess affordability because affordability is so critically important to me in the context of this is going to be necessarily problematic, but I need to know, I'd assume that we're going to hear it in two weeks. If we're not, I'm going to have a problem
02:19:34.28	Mayor Cox	Mayor, you called the question. What we're hearing in two weeks is only...
02:19:38.98	Mayor Cox	is only a second reading. We're not going to hear
02:19:42.37	Mayor Cox	C2 until July.
02:19:47.65	Mayor Cox	I'm Claire.
02:19:48.59	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay.
02:19:49.84	Mayor Cox	Okay, no.
02:19:52.56	Councilmember Hoffman	Next motion, please. Wow.
02:19:57.77	Mayor Cox	uh,
02:19:58.67	Babette McDougall	Councilmember Blostein?
02:20:01.13	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay.
02:20:01.66	Councilmember Hoffman	you
02:20:01.86	Councilmember Sobieski	This is my motion. Just a point of order, because I do see some consternation here. A person who's voting with the motion can ask for reconsideration and
02:20:01.98	Mayor Cox	THIS IS MY MISSION.
02:20:12.32	Councilmember Sobieski	I think under parliamentary rules. So I see my colleague. No, the only person that can ask for it.
02:20:15.05	Councilmember Hoffman	No, the only person that can ask for a point of order, the only person that can ask for reconsideration is a person that voted in favor of the motion. Correct.
02:20:21.91	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
02:20:21.97	Councilmember Sobieski	That's that way I'm pointing that out just for my council members benefit.
02:20:23.54	Councilmember Hoffman	just for my counsel.
02:20:24.74	Councilmember Hoffman	of the person of the prevailing person.
02:20:28.42	Councilmember Sobieski	that prevailed on the motion. Someone who voted with the prevailing can ask for a reconsideration.
02:20:28.66	Councilmember Hoffman	that prevailed on the most.
02:20:32.59	Councilmember Hoffman	But what prevailed, your emotion did not carry. I'm not making an emotion.
02:20:37.14	Councilmember Hoffman	Your motion did not carry.
02:20:37.19	Councilmember Sobieski	I'm just bringing it up.
02:20:38.93	Councilmember Hoffman	But I could still say your motion did not carry. Okay.
02:20:39.30	Mayor Cox	Well, but I
02:20:42.31	Councilmember Blaustein	We'll be right back.
02:20:42.32	Mayor Cox	Okay, before I call the question on my motion, I'll hear from Councilmember Blaustein.
02:20:42.98	Councilmember Blaustein	or,
02:20:43.03	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm sorry.
02:20:47.86	Councilmember Blaustein	I mean, based on your feedback, I'm
02:20:51.39	Councilmember Blaustein	inclined to change my vote.
02:20:55.79	City Attorney	And if both motions fail, we could consider alternative motions.
02:20:59.65	Councilmember Blaustein	Okay, so then I would, okay.
02:21:01.76	Mayor Cox	Okay.
02:21:02.30	Mayor Cox	So-
02:21:02.78	Councilmember Blaustein	Maybe we should discuss a motion with direct action with regards to assessing our affordability that moves this forward anyway, because my biggest concern is an assessment of our affordability index. And I believe we can push this forward if we do that, but I want to really have it demonstrated somehow in the motion.
02:21:15.72	Mayor Cox	All right, so I'm going to call the question on my motion. If my motion fails, I'll entertain an alternative motion.
02:21:21.74	Babette McDougall	Council member Blostein.
02:21:22.96	Mayor Cox	No.
02:21:23.84	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
02:21:23.87	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Hoffman.
02:21:25.17	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
02:21:25.19	Mayor Cox	Yes.
02:21:25.32	Walford Solorzano	.
02:21:25.42	Walford Solorzano	.
02:21:25.64	Walford Solorzano	Councilmember Sobieski? No. Councilmember, sorry, Vice Mayor Woodside? No. And Mayor Cox?
02:21:32.59	Mayor Cox	Yes, that motion does not carry. I'll entertain an alternative motion. Council Member Blaustein.
02:21:39.65	Councilmember Blaustein	I would like to motion to approve the ordinance but also have some language and I would welcome the city municipal attorneys help with language directed specifically with regards to assessing inventory of our affordability as suggested by Council member Hoffman in the context of this ordinance.
02:21:55.54	Mayor Cox	So are you moving approval of the second reading and adoption of this ordinance as it exists, and then making a separate motion to come back with an affordability assessment?
02:22:09.80	Unknown	Thank you.
02:22:09.82	Mayor Cox	Yes.
02:22:09.91	Unknown	Yes.
02:22:10.02	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:22:11.81	Councilmember Sobieski	second.
02:22:12.89	Unknown	Is that clear, city attorney?
02:22:14.66	City Attorney	Yes. So in terms of you're looking your
02:22:18.68	City Attorney	Motion is to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance as in the agenda packet directing staff to provide a
02:22:25.13	City Attorney	affordability assessment of our existing unit stock and any other
02:22:30.37	City Attorney	information you would like included, council member?
02:22:32.87	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by affordability stock, an assessment of affordability stock.
02:22:37.48	Councilmember Blaustein	All of the issues that you outlined with regards to what's happening on our second floors, how many affordable units do we have, how many market units have they created, inventory overseas?
02:22:46.67	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
02:22:46.69	Councilmember Blaustein	I'm not sure.
02:22:46.74	Mayor Cox	How is that in any way? I'm going to wait. Oh, there is a second. So...
02:22:48.50	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
02:22:48.51	Councilmember Hoffman	We're going to.
02:22:51.40	Councilmember Hoffman	Go ahead.
02:22:52.28	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, how is that in any way going to cure...
02:22:55.75	Councilmember Hoffman	the issues with the way this ordinance is written that allows broad latitude of the planning commission
02:23:01.80	Councilmember Hoffman	to basically
02:23:03.99	Paul Gedner	I
02:23:04.66	Councilmember Hoffman	gut all of these second floor residential in the Central Commercial District. That's the problem with this ordinance. And that's the issue with
02:23:12.75	Councilmember Hoffman	Why?
02:23:14.10	Councilmember Hoffman	Why the?
02:23:15.30	Councilmember Hoffman	you know, why we narrow it down, first of all, to do the inventory
02:23:21.29	Councilmember Hoffman	of the housing stock so that we could look at it, and second of all, to do the inventory
02:23:27.31	Councilmember Hoffman	of,
02:23:28.37	Councilmember Hoffman	how the strategy from 2011 and the requirements...
02:23:33.20	Councilmember Hoffman	before we gutted that in the context of our current housing element.
02:23:36.84	Councilmember Blaustein	Because if we see an issue in result of that affordability index, we can do what we just did tonight and reassess and make a change if we need to.
02:23:43.54	Councilmember Blaustein	So it allows us to move forward with the new information as requested. And then if we want to make the change, because we see that actually something was or wasn't working, as we adapt.
02:23:52.30	Councilmember Blaustein	Typically, we could do the same thing.
02:23:54.14	Councilmember Hoffman	And what are you going to say to the people
02:23:56.56	Councilmember Hoffman	over at site 84 when we're going to we're asking them to approve changes to 1128 to absorb all of this new housing that we're now getting because of the changes in this ordinance
02:24:09.16	Mayor Cox	So council member Hoffman, rather than cross talk, I invite you to make any comments that you might have.
02:24:13.94	Councilmember Hoffman	Well, these are the impacts that we're now imposing on other parts of town because you're changing the- You set the clock, please.
02:24:19.27	Mayor Cox	Set the clock, please.
02:24:19.98	Sharna Brockett	Thanks.
02:24:22.25	Councilmember Hoffman	So either you agree and you want to protect housing and affordability units in Sausalito or you don't, Councilman Blaustein.
02:24:29.90	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
02:24:29.93	Mayor Cox	Please.
02:24:30.71	Mayor Cox	refrain from crosstalk. Please confine your comments to comments on the pending motion. Do not specifically address other council members in a derogatory manner.
02:24:37.65	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay.
02:24:40.53	Councilmember Hoffman	in a derogatory manner. I'm trying to understand her...
02:24:44.14	Councilmember Hoffman	her reasoning on this.
02:24:46.25	Councilmember Hoffman	So last reasoning is. Well, Mayor, I would like to just actually have Councilmember Blouse.
02:24:46.67	Mayor Cox	reasoning is that
02:24:52.50	Mayor Cox	I'm not going to have her respond to you. I'm going to ask you to make comments, and she can make comments. I'm not going to have an adversarial dialogue.
02:24:58.25	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm asking somebody to explain to me how this is going to address the problems with this ordinance that have been raised by many people who have contacted me, they contacted you, about this ordinance that we're passing here. Apparently we're going to pass tonight at your behest.
02:25:23.75	Mayor Cox	So I wanted us to slow down. There weren't the votes to slow us down. So we are going to adopt this ordinance this evening. However, we are going to reconsider the very important issues that you raised this evening in the very near future. That's the motion made by Councilmember Blaustein. Call the question.
02:25:43.98	Mayor Cox	Yes, I'll call the question.
02:25:47.76	Mayor Cox	City Clerk, did you want to call the roll?
02:25:50.24	Babette McDougall	Sorry, Councilmember
02:25:52.03	Walford Solorzano	Blasting yes council member Hoffman no council member Sobieski yes vice mayor Woodside yes and mayor Cox
02:25:52.76	Mayor Cox	Yes.
02:25:53.08	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
02:25:55.25	Mayor Cox	No.
02:26:00.87	Mayor Cox	Yes. Community and Economic Development Director, at our next agenda setting meeting, would you kindly advise when this will be ready to bring back to the council? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.
02:26:12.94	Director Phipps	Absolutely. Thank you.
02:26:14.59	Mayor Cox	All right, I apologize for the length of the discussion on this item. It was important to me
02:26:23.43	Mayor Cox	for transparency and public participation purposes that we fully vet this item.
02:26:30.77	Mayor Cox	Because this has taken up a good portion of our
02:26:35.72	Mayor Cox	time this evening i am going to ask that we postpone uh the hearing on item 5c launch a local employee parking program for caledonia businesses any objection
02:26:48.36	Mayor Cox	We will take public comment, but we just won't hear it this evening because we still have Formula Retail and our budget to hear.
02:26:53.76	Councilmember Blaustein	I just know there are folks that came to speak on that. So-
02:26:57.79	Councilmember Sobieski	given that they just are making public comment, do you think you could hear their comment so they could leave if they're not interested in staying, uh,
02:27:04.59	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah.
02:27:05.05	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
02:27:05.30	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
02:27:05.40	Councilmember Sobieski	out so they could go ahead and do that.
02:27:06.15	Councilmember Blaustein	Go ahead and do that.
02:27:09.10	Councilmember Sobieski	and then they know it'll be continued so they don't have to stick around.
02:27:12.44	Mayor Cox	Sure.
02:27:13.20	Mayor Cox	Okay, we're going to take public comment on what is on our agenda as item 5C.
02:27:18.09	Mayor Cox	the employee parking program.
02:27:20.08	Mayor Cox	But please know that we will be bringing this back for full consideration.
02:27:24.94	Mayor Cox	hopefully at our June 3rd meeting.
02:27:32.88	Mayor Cox	And apologies for those of you who came to comment on this item. All right, my first card is from, I can't read it, Paul Gedner.
02:27:52.25	Brian Powers	Hi.
02:27:52.64	Paul Gedner	Thank you.
02:27:53.38	Paul Gedner	First, I would like to thank my wife, the lovely Lisa, who came to rescue me tonight. But,
02:28:03.71	Paul Gedner	I'm one of the owners of driver's market.
02:28:06.44	Paul Gedner	And like many small businesses, my associate down the street, Yoshi from Sushi Ron, we're all struggling with the idea that we have employees that can't afford to live here and can't afford to park here. So we're creating this log jam in the city that
02:28:26.15	Paul Gedner	that we need to address, and it's only going to get worse because I think, as everybody knows here,
02:28:31.62	Paul Gedner	They're going to eliminate the corner green zones, which will eliminate another 20 parking spots and increase more pressure on the parking facilities here. So I had a suggestion that I'd like to put out, which is I went to see lot five, which is across the street from drivers. And on the on the high end of lot five, there's a concrete platform that has 22 spots. And I would like to suggest that that space be dedicated to employee parking and that all the businesses can make proposals to the city council to say, like for us, we would be willing to pay $100 a month and try to get three spots. So $300 a month for three spots that would be designated. I like simple solutions for complex problems. And to me, this would be a simple solution. All the businesses would apply to the city council and ask for request spaces that are...
02:29:41.23	Paul Gedner	Um,
02:29:42.53	Paul Gedner	contingent with what their needs are. In our case, we think if we had three employee parking spaces that would relieve an enormous amount of stress on our employees. We as a business are willing to pay for it.
02:29:56.35	Paul Gedner	That's my suggestion.
02:29:57.88	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:29:58.52	Mayor Cox	I think I'm not wearing my glasses, but I think I see in the back Wayne Kwan and Brandon Rogers. Are you two taking notes on this to convey to the chief? Thank you so much.
02:30:08.90	Mayor Cox	Okay, wonderful. All right, next I will call Yoshitomei.
02:30:13.96	Mayor Cox	Welcome Yoshi.
02:30:20.88	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	Thank you, Mayor and City Council members.
02:30:24.63	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	The housing element that we talk about the how difficult living in South three, a lot of employee work for me.
02:30:31.02	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	Most of them are at least half of them, they have a two job to meet and.
02:30:36.32	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	And I would say 20% of them are carpooling to go home together and take a public bus to come to work. And then even we talk about this five hours a day is very difficult for a lot of employees. And now we have been more sea permit has been expanded.
02:30:58.21	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	along the hillside of Caledonia Street and the city hall area nearby, everything around here, everything C permit, come to Silicon Valley and we cannot park here. What's happening to Saucerino? My position is I'm hesitant to speak how I speak. I do not want to create war against my neighbor.
02:31:19.00	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	I will lose it.
02:31:20.32	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	And yet the bigger picture is that we have to make Sars-Rero is a better place to work. We have to give them affordability, how we can come to Sars-Rero. If Sars-Rero is creating a free employee parking lot, a lot of people come to Sars-Rero. Parking lot 5, I would suggest to make a much bigger parking lot, very affordable employee parking. Then more people come to work. So the, a lot of, Kyrgyadonis City particularly, it's a residence commercial zone.
02:31:52.72	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	It's very difficult to see what works for business and the residents. I really, this is the opportunity to look at what we can do socially. People parking on a Caledonia street,
02:32:04.02	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	It isn't just my employees. I have 16 spaces behind the hillside, and across the street, I did sub-release another six spaces. And yet, we need to have more, easier for employees to come to work in Sassarira. Please look at those situations. Thank you.
02:32:20.81	Unknown	Thank you, Yoshi. Adrienne Britton.
02:32:30.62	Adrienne Brinton	I thank you for taking my comment again. So I've thought a lot about parking and have involved myself in a lot of other parking issues. This one is particularly interesting to me.
02:32:41.64	Adrienne Brinton	You know, we think about our businesses and we think about the employee parking, you know, our businesses are really a part of the fabric of our community. And sometimes we tend to think of.
02:32:49.62	Adrienne Brinton	The businesses and the kind of people that run them, they're not residents, they don't vote.
02:32:53.42	Adrienne Brinton	But the reality is they are part of our community and the employees are part of that fabric.
02:32:58.41	Adrienne Brinton	that make the town work. Our businesses provide 45%, I think, of our taxes. And they're really, really important. At the same time with parking, we provide very, very generous parking benefits to residents. We provide $60 a year parking permits for effectively private parking in our residential streets. We provide a parking card program that's very generous.
02:33:22.00	Adrienne Brinton	I looked at the meter receipts. We had meter receipts of about $170,000 last year on residential parking cards. Probably not $170,000 in revenue because if we took those away,
02:33:33.16	Adrienne Brinton	not as many people would go downtown. We don't want that. We don't want to take that away, but we're probably subsidizing that to the tune of $100,000 a year. At the same time, we're bringing in a hundred and something thousand
02:33:45.07	Adrienne Brinton	from our employees for their parking and they're paying five, six, $7 a day. Uh, and they don't earn very much money. That's a significant cost for people that are working in the town. And I think by thinking about our employees a little bit differently and thinking about them more as part of our fabric and on, you know, maybe not a completely similar level to residents, but I think we're a little bit out of balance there that if we think about this employee parking program more as providing a service to people who are part of the fabric of our community, maybe we can figure out how to be a little more generous with it and help our businesses attract and retain people that helps them generate more taxes, helps me pay less taxes. Thank you for taking my comment.
02:34:30.16	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:34:31.75	Mayor Cox	Okay, Vicki Nichols, if anyone else wants to speak, would you kindly fill out a speaker card?
02:34:35.66	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
02:34:36.93	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
02:34:36.94	Vicki Nichols	I will fill one out, sorry. Thank you, I wasn't going to speak. Vicki Nichols, I just recently moved off of Caledonia Street after 43 years living there. Yoshi and I were on a committee...
02:34:47.31	Vicki Nichols	I don't even know how many years ago, trying to talk and solve the employee parking issue. Paul's idea, I think, has some merit.
02:34:55.79	Vicki Nichols	that
02:34:56.62	Vicki Nichols	Concrete is probably the old parking pad for the police trailers, it sounds like.
02:35:01.60	Vicki Nichols	Um,
02:35:02.95	Vicki Nichols	But I would say that one thing that's not been taken into consideration, Yoshi mentioned it, it is a residential commercial parking area.
02:35:11.39	Vicki Nichols	Those residents, many of them were built without garages. So without the employee parking, the parking is already maxed out. I did a survey years ago going through conditional use permits for the whole street. Conditioned parking for the businesses. There's not enough parking there wasn't then. It's going to be horrible when you lose the green spot. So if you can shift even the number that they're asking for off of Caledonia Street, I think that would be something to look at. I don't think you need to keep squeezing the residents. There's no other place to park. There's no garages for these residents. Thank you. Thank you. All right. City Clerk.
02:35:50.35	Unknown	Thank you.
02:35:51.95	Babette McDougall	We have Babette McDougall.
02:35:56.65	Babette McDougall	Hi, I'm Babette McDougall, Sausalito resident. So I definitely want to weigh in on the parking situation because we residents are
02:36:04.52	Babette McDougall	play a role in that on a day in and day out basis. And I have to say that
02:36:08.80	Babette McDougall	The people who work for the businesses down around Caledonia in particular that park up in my neighborhood, they're always very polite, thoughtful people. If they say they're going to be back in less than two hours to move their car, they mean it and they do it.
02:36:22.63	Babette McDougall	So it's a very unfortunate situation. It impacts parking for the residents. It impacts...
02:36:28.01	Babette McDougall	all the way down the line. So I don't know why we can't get together and have an employee parking area. It's so long overdue, and we have so much neglected area that could be deployed.
02:36:39.66	Babette McDougall	And I imagine eventually, thanks to Wayne, it's all going to pencil out.
02:36:43.54	Babette McDougall	And that's what matters is that it pencils out in an equitable way.
02:36:47.96	Babette McDougall	But I agree with Yoshi, people have to want
02:36:50.61	Babette McDougall	to work here.
02:36:52.21	Babette McDougall	Otherwise, we're not going to have quality people.
02:36:54.78	Babette McDougall	that helps to reinforce this quality of life that we're so attached to.
02:36:59.45	Babette McDougall	Thank you very much.
02:37:02.19	Babette McDougall	No further public comments?
02:37:03.62	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
02:37:03.64	Mayor Cox	All right, thank you everybody for your public comment. I know that the police department has already made an effort to put together a program that addresses many of your comments. And I am hopeful that they will take into consideration the comments that they've heard this evening and further refine that proposal that they will bring back to us hopefully on June 3.
02:37:31.58	Mayor Cox	All right.
02:37:33.19	Mayor Cox	With that, I'm going to move on to business item 5A, waiver of second reading and adoption of ordinance number 032025, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending our formula retail ordinance. And once again...
02:37:48.36	Mayor Cox	um,
02:37:49.35	Mayor Cox	All right. We have brought this back.
02:37:53.22	Mayor Cox	for public, for as a business item, in light of the numerous public comments that we've received since we first considered this on first reading.
02:38:04.03	Mayor Cox	And welcome senior planner, Matthew Mandich.
02:38:07.41	Matthew Mandich	Thank you, Mayor. I just have a brief presentation here just for edification of the public and just as a brief reminder to counsel on this item. So try not to take too long and hopefully we can just get right to the discussion. Next slide, please.
02:38:21.13	Matthew Mandich	Thank you. So yes, as that title was stated, this is technically the waiver of the second reading and adoption ordinance. That was the request. However, I have a feeling we're going to hear some comments that might send us a different direction tonight. So next slide, please.
02:38:33.57	Matthew Mandich	So just going to give a little background on the current formula retail ordinance, discuss some of the issues that staff and city attorney have identified, some of the proposed changes that were approved by the council, and then potentially some new directions we could take. So the current ordinance was adopted in 2003 and amended in 2007. Currently requires a conditional use permit to establish formula retail use within the city. This has both conditional use permit findings and additional special specific findings required that are rather subjective. This also requires a CUP for expansion of a formula retail establishment if it's for 500 square feet or more. Definition of formula retail as it currently stands does not clearly define how many locations or standardized elements constitute a formula retail business. It's very vague in the code right now. It also limits formula retail to the central commercial, the central shopping and or commercial shopping and the commercial neighborhood zoning districts. Next slide, please.
02:39:29.94	Matthew Mandich	So here's just a map showing where formula retail is currently allowed in the city in the CC, CN and CS. Next slide, please.
02:39:36.93	Matthew Mandich	So the problem that's been identified by staff and by our city attorney in particular is the requirement for the CUP. The CUP technically must run with the land and cannot be establishment specific as a permit must be able to transfer to subsequent purchasers. So something like a restaurant use, cafe use, retail use can run with the land. However, something like a specific establishment, McDonald's, a CUP cannot be tied to that. So it's kind of a situation of the use versus the user. And right now the CUP is being tied to the user when it should be tied to the use. Again, as I mentioned, there are some additional subjective findings that are required for this conditional use permit. And there's also some case law that has shown that CUPs are not exactly the best way to be governing these types of uses, in particular the Malibu case, which lost in court. Formula retail is also not clearly defined in the code. As I've already said, the current definition is very vague, and it could be applied to pretty much all businesses in the city with a logo, sign, or trademark. So really looking to clean up that definition. Current ordinance also can increase risk to the city. Violates recent court rulings, as just discussed discussed with Malibu again too vague to enforce and could also be understood in its current state to discriminate against interstate commerce through the commerce clause. Next slide please.
02:40:53.59	Matthew Mandich	So the proposed changes that were presented to the council on first reading included the removal of the CUP requirement, adoption of a formula retail zoning clearance, which would be similar to an OUP or an occupational use permit. Formula retail zoning clearances would be allocated by zoning district with a certain cap for each zoning district, and they would be approved administratively by the planning department. However, as we'll see, that was one of the amendments amendments that the council made we also clearly defined formula retail in these new proposed changes the definition that we set in this ordinance was businesses with six or more locations worldwide would qualify as a formula retail establishment and that they along with that they also had to have two standardized elements as defined in the code existing formula retail in the would receive zoning clearances, and that's something we can talk about a little bit more if the definition were to change, but they would also receive zoning clearances that would count against the cap for that district. Certain uses are also going to be exempt from formula retail, such as grocery stores, pharmacy, banks, medical, real estate, service station, movie theaters, and couriers. One of the other proposed changes was to include the commercial waterfront as a new zoning district, which would allow formula retail uses. And we also wanted to, of course, amend table 10.241, which governs our commercial uses to make this change to eliminate the CUP. We also added a prohibition of fast food drive-throughs in our special requirements section. Next slide, please.
02:42:22.02	City Attorney	Mm-hmm.
02:42:22.25	Matthew Mandich	Thank you.
02:42:22.37	Matthew Mandich	So the city council approved this ordinance on April 1st by a four to one vote. They made a couple of modifications. Some of them were just to the text, which you can see above there. But the two big changes were that instead of the planning department or the community development director and or his or her designee, it would be the planning commission that would issue the formula retail zoning clearance. If the formula retail use comply with the following requirements which are the table there they also asked us to modify this table to specifically break out cn1 and cn2 into two separate zoning districts the recommendation of the planning commission was to include those as one so that's what we brought forward but city council asked us to revise that so that's been done so that those modifications were approved on april 1st next slide
02:43:10.05	Matthew Mandich	This is just a breakdown of our existing formula retail and the CC we have three again these are based on the current definition we brought forward which was based on six so if that definition were to change some of these existing. Formula retail establishments would no longer be considered formula retail so just something to keep in mind for the Council and so that's just a breakdown there of what we have three in the CC one in the CM one in the CN two and none in the other districts next slide please.
02:43:36.13	Matthew Mandich	So here is the formula retail zoning clearance table. In the central commercial, we proposed six. We have three existing, so a future capacity of three. CM1, three, one existing, future capacity of two. CN2, two is the proposed limit, one existing, and one future. CW also was a new ad, so it has none, and the CS is Molly Stones, which is an exempt grocery store. So if you can see that down there at the bottom, the proposed limit would be 14 formula retail establishments. We currently have five. So the ordinance that was approved allows for an additional future capacity of nine.
02:44:11.13	Matthew Mandich	Next slide, please.
02:44:13.34	Matthew Mandich	So potential alternatives. Obviously, there was definitely some concern from the public, from the council, despite the approval. So we've examined a couple of different things that we would propose that could be changes. And we're very open to feedback from council on any of these and additional changes, too. But these are just a couple that we thought might help with some of the concerns we've heard. One would be to disallow all formula retail in the Central Commercial Zoning District. So just remove that district from an allowed district, just like the CR is currently not allowed. We could redefine formula retail by setting a higher bar for what qualifies as formula retail. Right now we have it at 6. We could change that to 10, 20, 50, 100. That just depends on what we want to set the bar as for what amount of businesses, establishments count for formula retail, how many locations. Another thing we could do is lower the cap numbers. So, for example, we had six in the CC. If the CC were to stay, we could lower that to four or three or something like that. And then we also have the option, if we do some of these changes and move some of the caps around, maybe eliminate the CC, we could also include the CR. And I know that that's's not included now and never has been but could help fill some of those difficult vacant spaces particularly 101 caledonia and potentially make up for some of the losses if we do change the cc or the cap numbers so these are just some potential alternatives that staff is presenting and we're very open to hear council's feedback uh next slide, please. So recommendation, we could either wave the second reading and adopt the ordinance or the Council could provide direction to staff on how to alter the language in the ordinance to more align with Council and community preference. That concludes my presentation. Happy to take any questions. Thank you.
02:45:51.00	Unknown	Thank you. Any questions? Yes.
02:45:53.28	Unknown	Thank you.
02:45:53.40	Councilmember Sobieski	Bye, Matt.
02:45:53.73	Unknown	Thank you.
02:45:53.80	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you. So you said that I think this is the crux that I was wondering about, too, and I think members of community are, too. The current process where a CUP is required, you said, is the problematic part.
02:46:06.07	Matthew Mandich	Yes, that's the issue. Yes. Right now, the CEP requirement is one of the main problems with the ordinance that city attorneys identified.
02:46:12.62	Councilmember Sobieski	So that's our current, that's what the city attorney identified. Maybe he'll want to chime in on it. If, if this, if someone.
02:46:18.69	Councilmember Sobieski	If that way, I understand some cities have been sued under that. I think last meeting there was a discussion about Malibu being sued. If the city loses a suit.
02:46:28.24	Councilmember Sobieski	and that is that the court, like they did in Malibu, finds a CUP like they did in Malibu, is not valid, then we're on the hook for attorney's fees, and the person that sues, like McDonald's, let's say if they sued, could force their way in. The verdict would be we have to pay McDonald's lawyers fees and we have to let McDonald's in. So I think the motivation is to fix the ordinance to better protect us from that kind of risk. Is that fair to say?
02:46:53.77	Matthew Mandich	Oh yeah, I'll defer to the state attorney on that. I see who's jumped on.
02:46:56.41	City Attorney	Yeah, no, I do think that the possibility of attorney's fees is a risk with respect to
02:47:02.82	City Attorney	you know, someone challenging an ordinance and winning.
02:47:05.50	City Attorney	Yes.
02:47:07.61	Councilmember Sobieski	And then, and so that's the motivation for this. And then once we're fixing it, the question is how to fix it. And I think none of us want,
02:47:14.99	Councilmember Sobieski	you know, the golden arches or dollar store here, but, uh,
02:47:19.81	Councilmember Sobieski	you're looking for feedback. And so I guess we'll give you that when we're, when we're in the discussion point, but basically.
02:47:25.77	Councilmember Sobieski	There are two things we can do.
02:47:27.88	Councilmember Sobieski	define what formula retail is and the proposal six, but you're suggesting it could be some other number like 50 or 100.
02:47:34.83	Councilmember Sobieski	And
02:47:36.94	Councilmember Sobieski	And if it was 100, that would exclude Starbucks because that's a chain with thousands, but would allow something like Blue Bottle that has 50 locations. Is that...
02:47:46.34	Councilmember Sobieski	If Blue Bottle would be considered not formula retail, Starbucks would be considered formula retail. Is that-
02:47:52.62	Matthew Mandich	That's correct, yes.
02:47:52.87	Councilmember Sobieski	Right.
02:47:54.66	Matthew Mandich	That's what would define formula retail would be the number of locations.
02:47:55.06	Councilmember Sobieski	That's what we're defining.
02:47:57.39	Councilmember Sobieski	of locations. Defining what formula retail is.
02:47:59.45	Councilmember Sobieski	and then setting a limit on the number of formula retail.
02:48:03.49	Matthew Mandich	by dining district
02:48:04.38	Councilmember Sobieski	you would allow.
02:48:06.29	Councilmember Sobieski	Apparently in town we have to potentially allow some number of formula retail to stay straight with the law, but we could limit it to as few as one, let's say.
02:48:15.85	Councilmember Sobieski	Uh,
02:48:16.51	Matthew Mandich	I believe that's correct, but I'll let the city attorney clarify that.
02:48:16.65	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
02:48:21.10	City Attorney	Yeah, so, you know,
02:48:23.67	City Attorney	I'm not aware of any jurisdiction that has tried to entirely ban formula retail, and I do think that it would be potentially concerning to enact a wholesale ban in the city.
02:48:33.69	City Attorney	So I'm,
02:48:34.97	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay, but we could limit it to say one.
02:48:37.03	Councilmember Sobieski	or two.
02:48:38.80	City Attorney	Some reasonable number, yes.
02:48:41.56	City Attorney	Thank you.
02:48:41.59	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah.
02:48:41.64	City Attorney	Yeah.
02:48:41.72	Councilmember Sobieski	you
02:48:42.11	Councilmember Sobieski	And then could we limit it
02:48:44.17	Councilmember Sobieski	in the area of town say could we define formula retail at 100 and but prohibit it in the historic district and allow a cap of one or two formula retail uh somewhere along bridgeway like in the molly stones area or
02:49:02.61	Councilmember Sobieski	Something like that.
02:49:04.05	City Attorney	Yeah, I think that probably is within the city's zoning power to decide, yes.
02:49:08.15	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay. Thank you very much.
02:49:10.85	Mayor Cox	Other questions? And then I'm gonna open it up to public comment.
02:49:14.82	Mayor Cox	Yes.
02:49:17.80	Councilmember Hoffman	So just a couple of questions. To be clear, the Malibu case that we seem to be relying on
02:49:27.73	Councilmember Hoffman	The Malibu case didn't say that
02:49:31.84	Councilmember Hoffman	you couldn't have a CUP. They just said the way that the CUP
02:49:37.26	Councilmember Hoffman	that the Malibu Ordinance
02:49:40.60	Councilmember Hoffman	the way it was written,
02:49:42.68	Councilmember Hoffman	their CUP was.
02:49:44.89	Councilmember Hoffman	not written correctly or actually that it was unenforceable, correct?
02:49:52.26	City Attorney	So the concern and what the court held in Malibu was that a CUP
02:49:57.75	City Attorney	process cannot be used to regulate who the applicant is. And there was expressed concern that that was what
02:50:05.29	City Attorney	Malibu is trying to do in the way that it had structured its CUP process and subjecting only formula retail establishments to CUP requirements.
02:50:09.76	Unknown	on.
02:50:09.91	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah.
02:50:09.95	Unknown	Thank you.
02:50:14.22	Councilmember Hoffman	So
02:50:15.40	Councilmember Hoffman	You can have a CUP. San Francisco has a CUP, correct? Process for formula retail.
02:50:22.64	City Attorney	Yes. And one of the key things there is that their CUP process is a little...
02:50:28.29	City Attorney	Um,
02:50:29.69	City Attorney	It's let's just say it's very unique.
02:50:32.64	City Attorney	Um,
02:50:33.82	City Attorney	in terms of the way that they have structured theirs and that they do have a CUP process for formula retail, but once it is granted, it does run with the land. So any subsequent formula retail business that chooses to buy out that location can establish without further review.
02:50:50.41	Councilmember Hoffman	And Healdsburg also heals the town of Healdsburg has also has a CUP process.
02:50:56.89	City Attorney	I believe they have
02:50:58.97	City Attorney	Their ordinance when I reviewed it was also very strange and unique. They have a CUP process only in one zoning district, and they have an approval by right in other zoning districts.
02:51:11.79	Councilmember Hoffman	So...
02:51:13.33	Councilmember Hoffman	I think
02:51:15.18	Councilmember Hoffman	You've seen some of the public feedback. Part of the consternation of this draft ordinance is that we've done away with the discretionary CEP process. Correct?
02:51:27.30	City Attorney	I understand that is some public feedback we've received.
02:51:30.83	City Attorney	Um,
02:51:37.66	Councilmember Hoffman	Um,
02:51:39.13	City Attorney	And to be perfectly blunt, I would not necessarily recommend the City Council continue to have a CUP process in light of
02:51:47.42	City Attorney	recent court decisions.
02:51:51.85	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm curious, where did the recommendation come from to eliminate formula retail from the commercial central district?
02:52:02.70	Matthew Mandich	That was a potential alternative that staff presented to the council this evening. That's not something that
02:52:08.61	Matthew Mandich	You, you can, or cannot act on that. It was just one of the alternatives we were presenting.
02:52:12.54	Councilmember Hoffman	And what's the benefit for that?
02:52:14.72	Matthew Mandich	Well, it would disallow formula retail establishments in the CC entirely and force them to locate in other commercial zoning districts.
02:52:21.99	Councilmember Hoffman	And so those impacts would fall on those other commercial districts.
02:52:26.23	Matthew Mandich	Yeah, that's one way to look at it, I suppose.
02:52:29.05	Councilmember Hoffman	And the benefit would be that the central commercial wouldn't have those impacts, but that the commercial neighborhoods that would absorb those impacts.
02:52:36.98	Matthew Mandich	I mean, impacts is a tough word to define here. I mean, maybe a little more specific. I don't know what you mean by that.
02:52:45.15	Councilmember Hoffman	What's the reason that you would eliminate formula retail from the commercial center district?
02:52:51.19	Matthew Mandich	Well, that's up for you guys to decide. It's just an alternative potential.
02:52:55.10	Councilmember Hoffman	What prompted it to be part of your presentation?
02:52:57.50	Matthew Mandich	Um, well, we heard that there was a lot of concern about the character of the central historic district, um, and you know, a potential that,
02:53:05.24	Matthew Mandich	you know, business like a McDonald's or Burger King could locate on the waterfront. And there was concern about that. So we suggested potentially eliminating that district.
02:53:13.19	Councilmember Hoffman	And so the converse being that other parts of town would be delighted to have a McDonald's or Burger King located in their part of town.
02:53:19.45	Matthew Mandich	We didn't receive a lot of public comment about other parts of the town. So that's why we focused on the central commercial.
02:53:26.15	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, thanks.
02:53:28.85	Councilmember Hoffman	Any other questions?
02:53:29.31	City Attorney	Justin Fields' My recommendation is if the Council does wish to entertain that rather than entirely remove it from the central commercial, because I understand we do have some existing.
02:53:38.01	City Attorney	Formula retail uses, I would recommend that you lower the cap to match the existing number of uses.
02:53:43.23	Unknown	Thank you, city attorney.
02:53:44.07	Matthew Mandich	I also had a quick question about that city attorney about the number of. So right now we have it set at six that currently defines several businesses that have below, let's say, 50 or 100. So those would no longer be formula retail if that definition were to change. I just want to put that on the other side.
02:54:00.02	City Attorney	Yes, I would recommend the council to the extent that the council wants to modify the definition.
02:54:05.00	City Attorney	modify that first and then give further direction to staff and we can provide some feedback on the appropriate cap.
02:54:13.11	City Attorney	or not.
02:54:13.35	Vice Mayor Woodside	I have a procedural question, but it relates to the, I think you had four bullet point alternatives. I'm wondering if that could be put back up so I get my question straight.
02:54:13.37	City Attorney	number.
02:54:35.10	Vice Mayor Woodside	Yes. So if, for example, we were to give you direction on items or bullet point two and three, if we were to, say, raise the number of such that a greater number of relatively small, but nonetheless, several locations, but not a huge number. If we were to give direction to redefine, quote, formula retail with a higher cap,
02:55:09.44	Vice Mayor Woodside	and at the same time, lower the total number allowed
02:55:13.41	Vice Mayor Woodside	Would that have to go back to the Planning Commission?
02:55:16.14	Matthew Mandich	I believe so, but I'll let the city attorney respond. Okay. That's my question.
02:55:20.38	City Attorney	Yeah, I think,
02:55:27.84	City Attorney	I do believe that the number
02:55:30.74	City Attorney	of allowed establishments were debated at the planning commission.
02:55:35.33	City Attorney	Um,
02:55:36.61	City Attorney	And perhaps our.
02:55:38.84	City Attorney	CTE director can also weigh in on this issue.
02:55:42.62	City Attorney	in terms of the staff presentations, but
02:55:46.53	City Attorney	The safest course of action, obviously, is to take things back to the Planning Commission. There is never, other than some slight delay, there's never an issue with
02:55:55.73	City Attorney	taking proposed revisions to the Planning Commission.
02:55:58.75	City Attorney	But
02:56:00.15	City Attorney	Assuming that the Planning Commission weighed in on both the appropriate number of retail establishments,
02:56:08.93	City Attorney	to be considered formula retail and the caps, I don't think that this would necessarily need to go back.
02:56:15.42	City Attorney	We would just need to review the tape of that meeting to ensure that's the case.
02:56:19.69	Director Phipps	and I can just state for the record, appreciate the prompt, Attorney Rudin. I believe that the Commission in a general sense discussed both of the things that Vice Mayor just pointed to. We generally discussed how we would define formula retail and in what number. So that was, it started as a more amorphous concept of open to any potential number. However, staff did bring a recommendation forward. Same with the cap.
02:56:47.98	City Attorney	But I think under those circumstances, it probably would just be safer to take their ordinance back to the Planning Commission.
02:56:48.16	Mayor Cox	I think
02:56:54.95	Mayor Cox	And if, for example, we decided to ban all formula retail for, if we were to redefine formula retail as being
02:57:04.97	Mayor Cox	The number of locations is 50.
02:57:07.57	Mayor Cox	or fewer, and then ban all formula retail in town except for one
02:57:12.67	Mayor Cox	identified location as discussed earlier, that's something that would need to go back to the Planning Commission, right?
02:57:18.84	City Attorney	Yes.
02:57:19.95	City Attorney	Yeah, I think that that is a substantial enough revision and
02:57:23.78	City Attorney	you know,
02:57:25.12	City Attorney	is significantly further from the proposed regulatory structure before you that it would be appropriate to get the recommendation of the Planning Commission.
02:57:32.85	Unknown	Okay. If there are no, okay.
02:57:34.48	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
02:57:35.70	Councilmember Blaustein	I mean.
02:57:36.98	Councilmember Blaustein	I had my hand up earlier, so.
02:57:40.17	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah, that's okay.
02:57:41.22	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
02:57:41.25	Councilmember Blaustein	Hi, I think this might more be for our city attorney, but in researching formula retail across California and the Bay Area, did you have a chance to look at, I know we discussed Malibu at length, but Arcata, Ojai, Sebastopol, and Palo Alto all have CUPs for their formula retail. Did you have any chance to take a look at any other ones?
02:58:02.16	City Attorney	So I have not done a hundred and something city survey of all of the formula retail regulations
02:58:09.45	Councilmember Blaustein	I did it. Stay wise.
02:58:10.17	City Attorney	Stay wide.
02:58:10.83	Councilmember Blaustein	So I would recommend.
02:58:12.79	City Attorney	But I would suspect that a number of jurisdictions are like Sausalito in a position where they have not revisited or reviewed their formula retail regulations since the, I believe it was a 2019 decision in the city of Malibu case.
02:58:27.39	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah, well, interestingly, Sofastable has the CUPE process and they define formula retail as 25 businesses or less. So I just wanted to see if we had some of that context because there's a number of different potential paths that we could take. But we do have available to us, as the mayor mentioned, if we were to say define formula retail as 50 or fewer businesses to outlaw formula retail outright.
02:58:52.24	Councilmember Blaustein	Correct.
02:58:56.01	City Attorney	Sorry, I missed your question because I was looking up Sebastopol's ordinance.
02:59:01.46	Councilmember Blaustein	Oh, great. Let me know what you find out.
02:59:05.51	Councilmember Blaustein	I was just reiterating to confirm that it would be possible for us to have the CUP and also ban formula retail outright if we were to define formula retail as 50 or fewer.
02:59:15.46	Mayor Cox	Well, ban fifth formula retail over 50 units.
02:59:19.13	Councilmember Blaustein	Right. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. I just wanted to, I did look at some of the other ordinances and it does seem that they have higher numbers. So,
02:59:20.09	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
02:59:27.41	City Attorney	Yeah, I would not recommend a wholesale citywide ban on all formula retail, because I do think that that potentially does create some litigation risk for the city.
02:59:38.31	City Attorney	under the Dormant Commerce Clause in particular, but
02:59:41.89	City Attorney	I do think that it is within the city council's power to establish some numerical limits and reasonable location requirements for these businesses.
02:59:50.90	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah, I think that's a key learning that,
02:59:53.82	Councilmember Sobieski	An outright ban, zero is a problem, but a pretty aggressive limit.
02:59:58.97	Councilmember Sobieski	is defensible is what you're saying.
03:00:01.89	City Attorney	Yeah, that would be, I think, an ordinance I would feel comfortable defending in litigation.
03:00:09.16	Mayor Cox	Thank you, city attorney. If there are no further questions, I'm going to open it up to public comment. I have no speaker cards on this so far.
03:00:15.12	Matthew Mandich	Thank you, council members.
03:00:19.24	Mayor Cox	Okay, Vicki Nichols.
03:00:25.75	Vicki Nichols	Bye.
03:00:26.14	Vicki Nichols	I actually wrote out some comments on my phone in the parking lot, and my phone's dead, so I'll just try to remember what I was going to say. I think I would like to see the consideration of in the CC, the historic district, we've got a new business improvement district.
03:00:44.43	Vicki Nichols	We've got people really trying to work on that. I don't want to see McDonald's down there. And if you have this open, you're going to have a heck of a time saying no to McDonald's or no to anybody else. And they will sue you, and they should, if it's allowed.
03:00:58.13	Vicki Nichols	I think the, isn't it true that if you only, if you reduce the number that are allowed there, say you've got three, you're gonna grandfather those, you don't shift then six, which was potentially being considered to another area. No one else has to absorb it because you're not allowing it in that area, it would seem. So I appreciate you looking at this. I am concerned about the waterfront, the same issue when we were doing the thing with PEATS,
03:01:27.34	Vicki Nichols	down in the CW and the big Bruhaha and Barbacci got in there, but that could have been any formula retail down there too, unrelated to any water.
03:01:38.24	Vicki Nichols	considerations. So I think you have to look at every business, but it sounds like your cutoff number handles that. So good thinking it through. Thanks.
03:01:47.49	Vicki Nichols	Thanks. Sharna Brockett.
03:01:55.14	Sharna Brockett	Thanks so much. You know, I'm really excited with all the improvements we're seeing downtown, in particular, thanks to our planning staff and the PVID and our council members. So thank you. But there's a lot more work to do. And unfortunately, we're still overcoming a reputation that South Saludo has that we're a very hard place to do business with and to open a business. Um, and that's starting to change, but again, we have a lot more work to do. We still have 17 open storefronts. And so let's do, let's take the next step to fill them and really show the community, the business community that we are open for business. Um, I, for one, when I, you know, I love to go downtown and shop as much as I can, but to be honest, I often go to mill Valley or to go, go to Larkspur landing.
03:02:45.41	Sharna Brockett	or go up to Petaluma and go shopping because I find that there's more stores that I enjoy.
03:02:50.87	Sharna Brockett	And a lot of them are small chains. For example, some of the chains that we love, like in Larkspur Landing or in Tiburon, are, for example, Malibu Farm. It was started in Malibu, and there's seven locations. And right now, they would probably have a hard time starting here. Marine Layer, a casual clothing store, started in San Francisco, 45 locations. I would love to have a Marine Layer here, but...
03:03:19.56	Sharna Brockett	They're right in there with formula retail.
03:03:22.80	Sharna Brockett	Credo Beauty, another great chain started in San Francisco, 15 stores. I think a lot of my friends, a lot of people, a lot of tourists, a lot of people from Mill Valley would come here to shop as well. So you get the idea. I think it's time to open this up. Let's be creative. Let's welcome these small business chains. They're still very much small businesses, but they would just add so much to our community, and I think we would all be very grateful for them to start here. Thank you so much.
03:03:50.80	Sharna Brockett	Thank you.
03:03:51.77	Sharna Brockett	Meryl?
03:03:52.26	Unknown	Thank you.
03:03:59.71	Meryl	Good evening. I think what Sharna just said is quite true. It's quite, you know, we...
03:04:06.91	Meryl	We need to make it more...
03:04:09.09	Meryl	available to get the permits to do what it is to do to get a business going in this town. Just look at Sartage. It's been trying to be open forever.
03:04:21.07	Meryl	They just can't get open for some reason. I don't know what it is. Permits.
03:04:26.62	Meryl	the
03:04:28.24	Meryl	health department, but it seems like it's harder to do here. That's what we hear from anywhere else.
03:04:36.61	Meryl	If moving this along by getting some people who are experienced and already going, let's do it. But let's, as a town.
03:04:45.74	Meryl	simplify the process, make it easier, make it better, but still retaining our, our, um, control. Is that the word that I want to say? We,
03:04:58.28	Meryl	you know, you can't just be anybody. You can't just do everything, but, but we can just do it better. Thank you. Thank you.
03:05:07.04	Mayor Cox	Joshi Tomei.
03:05:15.53	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	Hi again. I had my failed business in San Francisco on Market Street. And then I tried to sell the restaurant. I could not sell. Castle Merchant Discs had 12 franchise, whatever those rules are. People can afford to buy restaurant, much bigger operation. I could not sell. That's one. And two, my next door empty, it hurting me.
03:05:43.49	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	I don't like to see an empty store next to me. How long?
03:05:48.40	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	So please, please fix ASAP. Thank you.
03:05:51.42	Yoshitomei (Yoshi)	Thank you.
03:05:51.96	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:05:55.23	Mayor Cox	And I'm just gonna, for the record, that's in the CC district, right, Brandon?
03:06:04.24	Director Phipps	Yoshi's business, I believe, is in the CR district.
03:06:07.25	Mayor Cox	CR, OK.
03:06:10.62	Mayor Cox	All right. Brian Powers.
03:06:18.11	Brian Powers	Hi, thank you.
03:06:22.22	Brian Powers	So vacancies don't help anyone. They don't create jobs. They don't create tax revenue. They don't create fun or meaningful experiences. They don't create anything positive. All it does is send people on the 101 North or into San Francisco. And then it just creates more traffic and we lose a lot of that positivity. I mean, if people want to shop at a store that has 7,500... it just creates more traffic and we lose a lot of that positivity. And if people want to shop at a store that has 7,500 other locations, I don't see any reason to stop them. If those businesses aren't serving the community, they'll fail. And more local ones, smaller ones will thrive as well. But the real thing is just how do we not have so many vacancies in the community?
03:07:09.11	Brian Powers	It just seems like it'll make it a much better experience and stop having everybody have to go north and peak traffic. Thanks.
03:07:16.33	Mayor Cox	Thank you. Adrienne Brinton.
03:07:26.32	Adrienne Brinton	Thank you again for taking my comment. I feel like I've been up here quite a lot tonight, so I'll try to be quick. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the economics of opening a business, especially in regards to some of our larger empty storefronts. With our current restrictions, we're really looking for those individual, unique, one-location businesses. When you think about going into a large storefront like the old movie theater, it's very hard to open a business. It's very expensive. And when we limit it and try to find that individual, unique business that can open there,
03:07:55.92	Adrienne Brinton	it's really risky. And I think that may have something to do with why some of the larger empty storefronts are staying empty by opening to these slightly larger regional chains, up to 50. We looked at a lot of them. There's a lot of great businesses in that area. And they can come in and afford to actually invest in some of those larger storefronts. They have more financial resources to get it up and running, and they have more financial resources to make it work. So I think, again, opening this up a little bit. I think it doesn't harm our character. It actually enhances it. to get it up and running and they have more financial resources to make it work. So I think, you know, again, opening this up a little bit, I think it doesn't harm our character. It actually enhances it. It could bring in businesses that really help and also maybe fill some of those large, really hard to fill storefronts that we've been suffering with for some time. Thank you.
03:08:35.34	Unknown	Thank you, Paul Geffner.
03:08:43.39	Paul Gedner	I would like to just reiterate what's been said. We have some businesses that have been empty for five, ten years that are key locations. It really hurts the city.
03:08:55.00	Paul Gedner	The movie theater, obviously, next to Sushi Ron. Starbucks, how long has that been gone for? Like if Starbucks was turned into a blue bottle, that would be a tremendous help to this city. Because we need something like that for all the tourists to come in, have a cheap place to eat or drink, but still has a level of sophistication that refers to Sausalito. We, we need some creativity here. And I, I agree that we shouldn't limit it by the amount of, uh,
03:09:26.31	Paul Gedner	um,
03:09:27.40	Paul Gedner	stores these places have, but more a conditional use process that sees how they fit in with the city.
03:09:35.08	Unknown	Thank you.
03:09:35.27	Paul Gedner	you.
03:09:36.38	Unknown	City Clerk.
03:09:38.47	Babette McDougall	We have Babette McDougall.
03:09:43.60	Babette McDougall	Thank you. So this formula retail thing...
03:09:47.21	Babette McDougall	And just like the last, you know, end run.
03:09:49.66	Babette McDougall	Really, going in the defiance of your constituent will is really not a good thing for you all to do.
03:09:56.11	Babette McDougall	But as you've pointed out rightly, you know, people can exercise their opinion with their vote. So here we are.
03:10:02.08	Babette McDougall	Listen, what I'm hearing from you guys right now is that there is no authority invested in a resident to say, hold the phone. And we already have watched this year alone, right in your council chambers, neighbors fighting over one parking spot.
03:10:19.76	Babette McDougall	because one guy just doesn't want to use two spots in his garage. So, I mean, really, we already know we're at the limits of capacity here. We already know that we're overbuilt. And every time you bring in a formula retail, yes, they can be very sexy, but it creates impacts. And I don't see the presentation from the city dealing with traffic impacts. I don't see any question about how do we assume this legacy status, once a formula retail, always a formula retail, bypass future consideration. Hey, that could be horrible.
03:10:50.61	Babette McDougall	I mean, you're inviting, you don't know what you're inviting with this. This is out of your league, probably. I don't know what to think about this. But I just can't believe the short-sightedness. Yes, there are empty storefronts. There used to be a community in Sausalito that thrived. We used to have our own pharmacy downtown.
03:11:08.65	Babette McDougall	But, you know, times change. So does that mean we just grab every, you know, Lululemon and Harry because we want to fill an empty storefront? No, you need to be thoughtful about what works for the community, which is why investing in authority opinion among the residents who will be most directly impacted matters. Thank you very much.
03:11:29.38	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
03:11:29.46	Unknown	Thank you.
03:11:30.42	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Karen Culligan.
03:11:31.97	Kieran Culligan	Thank you.
03:11:34.89	Kieran Culligan	Hi there, Kiran Culligan, Sausudah resident. I also do not want a McDonald's, an Arby's, a Blockbuster, Circuit City, or whatever interesting boogeymen we're worried about. But honestly, the biggest risk of entry for these things is keeping what we have today because of the legal opening that exists. We're torturing businesses and ourselves. Phil's couldn't even put names on their cups because of the conditions that were put on
03:12:01.99	Kieran Culligan	Equator had to change their name. Lapperts was listed in the presentation. I didn't realize this one until tonight. If they didn't already exist in Sausalito and wanted to move in, they would have to jump through all sorts of hoops to maybe
03:12:14.03	Kieran Culligan	eventually, with a bunch of restrictions, open an ice cream shop.
03:12:17.67	Kieran Culligan	We don't even know about all the people that have never even considered Sausalito because of what we've put in place.
03:12:22.97	Kieran Culligan	Councilmember Blaustein mentioned Palo Alto. I just looked it up on Google Maps, and the first thing that popped up for me was Serena and Lily.
03:12:29.30	Kieran Culligan	a cherished local company based here,
03:12:31.49	Kieran Culligan	Hey, 17 locations. They would equally have to jump through a TBD number of hoops if they wanted to open something in town.
03:12:39.51	Kieran Culligan	what we have today is broken.
03:12:41.68	Kieran Culligan	The suggestions are improvements that create new opportunity that still prevent the downside that people are worried about. So I look forward to having something better in place. Thanks.
03:12:54.75	Kieran Culligan	Thank you.
03:12:54.76	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Lauret.
03:12:56.42	Kieran Culligan	Rodgers.
03:12:56.97	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
03:12:56.99	Kieran Culligan	Thank you.
03:12:59.93	Lorette Rogers	Hi, Lorette Rogers. Please don't eliminate residential input from the formula retail permit process.
03:13:07.82	Lorette Rogers	And, um,
03:13:09.53	Lorette Rogers	Please spread the formula retail throughout the city and the CC and the CR. We live in the CN, the spring valley area of Sausalito and have lived here continuously for a hundred years.
03:13:21.09	Lorette Rogers	Our family helped build the Golden Gate Bridge and Bridgeway and other roads, Sausalito sewer plant, the stairs through town as well as homes. So we've been part of the building of Sausalito for a century, part of decisions and developments.
03:13:34.67	Lorette Rogers	Shouldn't we have a say in what formula retail businesses will now be located near our homes?
03:13:41.15	Lorette Rogers	Have you ever been awakened by beep?
03:13:45.50	Lorette Rogers	We have a delivery truck coming early in the morning. And guess what? It really could be worth it. We love Sausalito businesses every week. We eat in town, we buy in town. We're glad they're here and understand they're a trade-off. More convenience, new community members, tax revenue, great.
03:14:04.12	Lorette Rogers	But, you know, it can also in the wrong place have unwanted traffic congestion, garbage and parking problems. So all we're asking is, can't we have a say? Can we please be at the table and ensure that each neighborhood has as retains its character and has great new businesses that fit? Thank you.
03:14:27.37	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Sandra Bushmaker.
03:14:30.95	Sandra Bushmaker	Hello again. A couple of things I wanted to talk about. I remember when the retail ordinance or formula retail ordinance passed, there was a lot of passion in town about not having the town turn into something it isn't historically and isn't a
03:14:47.88	Sandra Bushmaker	the small town maritime character that we've all grown to love here in town.
03:14:54.17	Sandra Bushmaker	So what I'm hearing is that there is a way to do a CUP process.
03:15:00.41	Sandra Bushmaker	in other communities, we might want to look at that to allow the community to have some input. And that was the thing that the original ordinance, when it passed,
03:15:11.28	Sandra Bushmaker	Um,
03:15:12.99	Sandra Bushmaker	raise the most hackles is that the citizens did not have a say so they made their voice known in that way. What I'm hearing is that we could develop our own unique CUP process that doesn't violate
03:15:27.36	Sandra Bushmaker	the Malibu decision or violate any other decisions that would allow the public to have input on whether or not to approve a specific formula retail application in their area.
03:15:40.15	Sandra Bushmaker	I cannot remember whether the marineship contains
03:15:43.58	Sandra Bushmaker	CW,
03:15:45.98	Sandra Bushmaker	areas, zoning areas or not. But if it does, I have grave concerns that putting formula retail in the marineship is going to really impact the working waterfront and the ability to carry on business in that area.
03:15:59.95	Sandra Bushmaker	But basically, I think the important thing is
03:16:03.42	Sandra Bushmaker	and you've heard this from more than me tonight, is that the citizens of Sausalito have a right and
03:16:10.36	Sandra Bushmaker	have a desire to have input
03:16:13.72	Sandra Bushmaker	into formula retail presentations in Sausalito. Thank you.
03:16:20.74	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Bonnie McGregor.
03:16:29.78	Bonnie McGregor	I guess I was muted. Hi, good evening again.
03:16:33.97	Bonnie McGregor	I'm going to just pretty much read the letter that I wrote because I think more people would might be interested in it. As a longtime resident, I urge you to vote in favor of updating the current formula retail rules. The current regulations are excessively restrictive, stifling the potential for diverse and vibrant businesses in our downtown area.
03:16:54.71	Bonnie McGregor	by allowing smaller chains, specifically those under 50,
03:16:58.34	Bonnie McGregor	locations can significantly enhance our downtown business environment by attracting a wider range of interesting retailers attracted to
03:17:05.91	Bonnie McGregor	attracted to residents and visitors alike.
03:17:09.02	Bonnie McGregor	A glance at a recent commercial history illustrates an example of sidestepping those regulations when Starbucks was established on Princess Street. It closed.
03:17:19.67	Bonnie McGregor	In my opinion, that was due to their planning and product.
03:17:23.46	Bonnie McGregor	Prior to this, the city turned down Pete's coffee, and I believe Pete's would still be here.
03:17:29.13	Bonnie McGregor	And Pete has far fewer units than Starbucks does. Like it or not, the oscillator visitor volume is affected by a visitor volume in San Francisco. And as we know, that's been down since 2020. We're all still, the whole world is trying to recover from the pandemic.
03:17:44.56	Bonnie McGregor	So that's another reason we've got so many empty stores. And who wants to risk starting something and then especially turn around and see a lot of empty stores?
03:17:53.67	Bonnie McGregor	Times and shopping trends have
03:17:56.25	Bonnie McGregor	Um,
03:17:57.94	Bonnie McGregor	change since the current regulations were established, so there needs to be amenable to these changes to remain viable. Revising the current
03:18:05.30	Bonnie McGregor	Regulations by more target approach, such as defining a formula retail as a business of 50 or fewer locations will change will offer stronger legal standing while protecting South Korea's unique character.
03:18:17.97	Bonnie McGregor	Adopting these changes will demonstrate a commitment to revitalizing our downtown area and fostering a more dynamic and prosperous community. It's time to take the safe of ashes and modernize our formula retail rules to reflect today's needs and aspirations of Saucolier Red.
03:18:33.12	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Judy Weder.
03:18:38.44	Judy Wetter	Thank you again. I'm concerned that is written, as other people have mentioned that the ordinance
03:18:45.46	Judy Wetter	mandates right now administrative approval by staff and approval by the planning commission and removes any ability for the community to weigh in on the type of businesses in any of our commercial neighborhoods especially input from those who live in
03:19:03.43	Judy Wetter	or near the commercial neighborhoods along Bridgeway.
03:19:06.52	Judy Wetter	Retail is still down everywhere.
03:19:08.98	Judy Wetter	not just here. And this is the time to get it right. Thank you.
03:19:14.69	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
03:19:15.29	Walford Solorzano	Next speaker is Jacqueline Armikas.
03:19:17.96	Walford Solorzano	I'm a kid.
03:19:23.33	Unknown	Hi, I'm unmuted. Can you hear me?
03:19:26.99	Unknown	We hear you.
03:19:28.24	Unknown	Okay.
03:19:28.91	Unknown	Thank you.
03:19:30.72	Unknown	City Council.
03:19:33.47	Unknown	Mayor Cox.
03:19:34.70	Unknown	Um,
03:19:35.90	Unknown	So I'd like to comment on revising the formula retail.
03:19:40.72	Unknown	Um,
03:19:41.65	Unknown	I believe at this time we should not update the formula retail.
03:19:45.72	Unknown	As a resident and business owner in Sausalito for close to
03:19:49.58	Unknown	25 years.
03:19:51.17	Unknown	I ask that you do not rise
03:19:53.09	Unknown	revise this formula at this time
03:19:56.03	Unknown	The surrounding business owners, property owners, and residents must have input into how many chain stores
03:20:02.49	Unknown	should be approved near their businesses, homes, and commercial buildings.
03:20:07.07	Unknown	Using a number like fewer than 50 locations to be used in updating the
03:20:13.23	Unknown	formula or changing the current ordinance, which allows six locations is clearly arbitrary and supporting the premise that this change will bring about
03:20:21.02	Unknown	a new renaissance.
03:20:22.44	Unknown	and approval of local economy at the same time
03:20:25.46	Unknown	filling empty storefronts
03:20:27.96	Unknown	Where are the studies that prove this premise? There have been chain stores in the past, for example,
03:20:33.76	Unknown	Serena and Lily just closed.
03:20:36.28	Unknown	A Starbucks was a failure.
03:20:38.77	Unknown	And there was recently a store that closed on Bridgeway near Barrel House, women's clothing store, which lasted a year.
03:20:45.37	Unknown	That was a
03:20:46.45	Unknown	Chain.
03:20:47.57	Unknown	Um,
03:20:48.49	Unknown	So where are the studies to prove this premise?
03:20:51.53	Unknown	Um,
03:20:53.41	Unknown	Now,
03:20:54.75	Unknown	I believe that
03:20:57.76	Unknown	Over the last 30 years, I've seen retail businesses
03:21:01.32	Unknown	And restaurants fail repeatedly in the same locations on Caledonia as well as
03:21:06.09	Unknown	Bridgeway.
03:21:07.78	Unknown	And
03:21:08.96	Unknown	Let's.
03:21:09.89	Unknown	Find out.
03:21:10.74	Unknown	exactly why there are business failures and empty storefronts.
03:21:15.76	Unknown	in these areas.
03:21:17.13	Unknown	I believe resolving this formula does not
03:21:20.30	Unknown	address this issue.
03:21:22.34	Unknown	Thank you.
03:21:23.73	Babette McDougall	Thank you.
03:21:24.54	Babette McDougall	Joe Carr.
03:21:29.30	Joe Carr	Yes, hello. Thank you for taking my comments.
03:21:32.69	Joe Carr	Um,
03:21:33.58	Joe Carr	I have some friends who call Sausalito the town of t-shirts, candles and fudge.
03:21:40.67	Joe Carr	The reason they say that is...
03:21:43.71	Joe Carr	that
03:21:44.64	Joe Carr	The kinds of stores that can locate here are the ones that have maybe...
03:21:50.31	Joe Carr	a couple of outlets on Union Street, a couple of outlets at the Fisherman's Wharf, and they want to open here, and they're already at their limit. Six locations is unbelievably onerous, and I think that if we raise the number,
03:22:13.12	Joe Carr	of outlets that these stores are allowed to have.
03:22:19.53	Joe Carr	It could be any number 30, 40, 50, whatever it is. I think that there's a lot of evidence that anything under 50, of course, we don't want McDonald's or any of the huge national retailers. But I think there's lots of evidence that there are great, great stores that would really fit with the character of our town.
03:22:42.59	Joe Carr	And I would like to see the number revised. Thank you.
03:22:48.71	Walford Solorzano	No further public speakers.
03:22:50.20	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
03:22:50.23	Unknown	David Lay.
03:22:56.61	David Lay	Thank you very much. I lived in Vermont for about 12 years around around 1970. And it was a four season tourist trap and everybody loved it.
03:23:08.34	David Lay	And every place you went, it was a one. I'll have to use some places here because you know them.
03:23:15.53	David Lay	Places like Phyllis's, you don't get a hamburger like that anywhere else. It's a bomb.
03:23:21.26	David Lay	Um,
03:23:22.31	David Lay	The only multiple place formula was the liquor store.
03:23:27.62	David Lay	State liquor store was the only way he could buy booze.
03:23:30.68	David Lay	But everything else was the one and everybody loved it. Combs Sugar House, we sell combs here, right?
03:23:37.19	David Lay	But that's a one. It comes out of the trees right there. I used to live half a mile away.
03:23:41.50	David Lay	Um,
03:23:42.69	David Lay	Everybody, and we had four ski areas right there.
03:23:46.85	David Lay	And they were all just the one, and they were all different.
03:23:50.83	David Lay	people like that.
03:23:52.85	David Lay	And even the locals did meet.
03:23:55.28	David Lay	Thanks.
03:23:56.78	Mayor Cox	Thanks. With that, I'm going to close public comment, bring it up here for discussion, and I'm going to lead off with a motion, but let me make a couple of comments to explain my motion. So, you know, again, as with all difficult issues, we run the risk of analysis paralysis. This has been an issue in Sausalito for as long as I can remember. We considered putting a pizza where we now have a pizza place. And we said no because it was formula retail. We considered putting Subway in the 7-Eleven shopping center. And we said no because it would be an overconcentration of formula retail.
03:24:35.14	Mayor Cox	So this is something that the city has struggled with for a long time. I want to clarify in response to one of the public comments that the ordinance that is before us for second reading this evening already takes the review of a potential formula retail establishment away from
03:24:57.96	Mayor Cox	the city staff and puts it in front of the planning commission. So the public would have opportunity for feedback. However,
03:25:06.40	Mayor Cox	It does not include a CUP process, and that is because under the Malibu case, a CUP is only appropriate for land use decisions. And so the reason San Francisco is able to get away with a CUP is that once a formula retail establishment is approved on a site, that use then runs with the land. And the risk with that is if you adopt a formula retail for a six establishment coffee shop,
03:25:38.58	Mayor Cox	That formula retail now runs with the land, which means a Starbucks could easily come in with no further public feedback whatsoever.
03:25:47.40	Mayor Cox	because it runs with the land. So although you have initial
03:25:51.74	Mayor Cox	Feedback pursuant to the CUP process, you're abdicating all future feedback.
03:25:57.14	Mayor Cox	If you bring in a mom and pop hamburger shop that can later turn into a McDonald's and you have nothing to say about it,
03:26:03.57	Mayor Cox	because it runs with the land. And so that's the challenge of attempting to continue to use a CUP process.
03:26:13.81	Mayor Cox	Our old model of brick and mortar storefronts is no longer feasible for many mom and pop shops. They have been...
03:26:23.36	Mayor Cox	replaced with the convenience of Amazon and Walmart and Target and all kinds of similar mail order services. And so we cannot stay entrenched in the past. We have to do something to try to continue to revitalize our commercial areas. And so...
03:26:42.97	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:26:43.07	Mayor Cox	I'm going to make the following proposal with respect to
03:26:47.68	Mayor Cox	the alternatives identified by city staff. And city staff, thank you for revisiting this issue in response to public comment to enable us to
03:26:58.16	Mayor Cox	you know,
03:26:59.17	Mayor Cox	attempt to address some of the concerns that were raised.
03:27:04.99	Mayor Cox	I, we cannot, if we adopt, sorry, I'm about to make a motion. If we, if...
03:27:12.37	Mayor Cox	Karen Hollweg, I didn't see a clock i'm sorry I didn't see a clock so I wasn't watching it so maybe we can see a clock in the future, so we can be aware of our time okay. Karen Hollweg, If you'll indulge me for emotion, fellow Council members okay um.
03:27:28.89	Mayor Cox	I, I,
03:27:30.93	Mayor Cox	um,
03:27:32.13	Mayor Cox	Recommend we disallow additional formula retail in the CC zoning district.
03:27:37.46	Mayor Cox	We can't take action on this tonight.
03:27:40.83	Mayor Cox	Because it has to the planning commission if we change. So I'm making a motion to give.
03:27:44.21	Mayor Cox	Direction to staff.
03:27:45.97	Mayor Cox	that we disallow additional formula retail in the CC zoning district that we redefine formula retail by setting a higher bar from 6 to 50 and I chose 50 because blue bottle for example has 47 and there are a number of other somewhat local establishments that I'm sure other council members could expand upon that are under 50 that we
03:28:14.33	Mayor Cox	allow formula we allow up to three formula retail in the CR zoning district that's next to Yoshi's um
03:28:24.90	Mayor Cox	shop so that perhaps at the old theater building we could have a formula retail. And the reason for this is that
03:28:31.98	Mayor Cox	formula retail up to 50 units
03:28:35.00	Mayor Cox	have the wherewithal to go through our still somewhat challenging commercial planning process and to withstand fluctuations in tourism.
03:28:44.83	Mayor Cox	tourism, and other challenges. And finally, that we ban all formula retail over 50%
03:28:51.39	Mayor Cox	that for businesses that have over 50 establishments throughout town with the exception of one site, that site TBD by a working group of the city council comprised of Ian Sobieski and Jill Hoffman. And the reason for that is to avoid getting sideways with the dormant commerce clause. That is my motion.
03:29:18.05	Vice Mayor Woodside	I'll second it.
03:29:21.21	Mayor Cox	And it's now open for discussion.
03:29:23.69	Councilmember Sobieski	So, Mayor, bravo on that summary, and happy to work with my colleague, Jill, on that.
03:29:31.26	Councilmember Sobieski	This is going back to the Planning Commission, so just a process question. They would, of course, opine on their own about whether they like this and make suggestions, and the public would be part of this discussion. When this comes back for a first reading at some future date, there is more discussion. We can change some of the numbers you just suggested, right? Okay, so you're nodding. Absolutely correct.
03:29:51.72	Mayor Cox	Absolutely correct. And I embrace that additional process. We're not in a hurry, but it is an important process that
03:29:59.02	Councilmember Sobieski	we undertake. So you're just setting a marker with this direction. Correct. And it's going to be, cause I point out a couple of things for everyone's knowledge. We talked about 50. I've
03:30:07.73	Councilmember Sobieski	and I use this blue bottle example also because there are 46 locations, but those 46 locations are in California. Nationwide, there are 99 blue bottles. So I'd actually say the number should be 50 California locations.
03:30:19.78	Councilmember Sobieski	I don't know.
03:30:19.81	Mayor Cox	I accept that friendly amendment.
03:30:19.98	Councilmember Sobieski	except
03:30:21.43	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay.
03:30:22.11	Mayor Cox	And then.
03:30:22.48	Councilmember Sobieski	You second.
03:30:22.61	Mayor Cox	I second the amendment.
03:30:23.68	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
03:30:24.05	Councilmember Sobieski	you
03:30:24.07	Vice Mayor Woodside	No problem. I agree.
03:30:24.98	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
03:30:25.13	Councilmember Sobieski	And then I consider our neighbor, Ms. Bushmaker's comment about the marine ship. I can't help but note that West Marine used to be in the marine ship. There are 250 West Marine locations. So I don't know how to get them in because you don't want to have a blanket. Pro, but I would love a little direction to staff to think about that question. How could we get a few?
03:30:48.92	Councilmember Sobieski	things like West Marine, is it possible? If it's not, then it's not. But if it is, I'd love some ideas on that from the planning commission or others.
03:30:54.71	Mayor Cox	So my motion allows at least one over 50.
03:30:57.83	Councilmember Sobieski	We'll be right back.
03:30:57.92	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:30:57.97	Mayor Cox	And that's up to you and Councilmember Hoffman to discuss that.
03:31:01.63	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
03:31:02.36	Councilmember Sobieski	I support what you do.
03:31:03.27	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:31:03.42	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
03:31:04.13	Mayor Cox	Any other comments?
03:31:05.85	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah, I really appreciate all of the thought that went into this, especially researching deeply what types of business we want to have in our community, because I think the problem that we've come up against time and again is encouraging.
03:31:17.97	Councilmember Blaustein	new
03:31:18.74	Councilmember Blaustein	businesses to open. We hear frequently about the 17 storefronts in our downtown, and I really feel like
03:31:24.70	Councilmember Blaustein	Changing the definition will change the direction of that trend, and I'm really excited about it. One thing that I'd like to propose, though, just given concern about all of the existing mom-and-pop businesses that we do have, and I don't know if this is a future agenda item or direction to staff, but it would be nice if we could consider legacy business protections. I know the City of San Francisco has a legacy business legislation, and I would like to have us take a look at perhaps some sort of legacy business program for those small businesses that would be competing with, because the rent that those larger businesses will be able to pay is going to be much more competitive.
03:32:00.24	Mayor Cox	So I believe that's already built into our ordinance is the protection of businesses that of formula retail that we already have in place. And I'm seeing the community development. That's correct, ma'am.
03:32:11.46	Vicki Nichols	Yes, that's correct, ma'am.
03:32:12.59	Councilmember Blaustein	Talking about formula retail, though, I'm talking about if you consider, for example, a company in Healdsburg, Faiarty opened, and I imagine they're paying 10x the rent that the neighboring mom and pop shop next door is. And I don't want to see our mom and pop shops get priced out potentially by new businesses coming in. So a legacy business legislation would allow us to create some protections for those older businesses that have been in town a long time. For example, for a while, Smitty's was for sale. We would never want to see our little hardware store leave Water Street. So just if we could add that on perhaps as a future agenda item, but I would like us to take a deep dive on legacy business protections in addition to the protections of existing formula retail.
03:32:51.33	Councilmember Sobieski	Councilmember Sobiet. I would love to second that thought. The notion I think that the council member is speaking to is there are a bunch of other tools like fee waivers, help with employee parking, any kind of ways the city could bend over backwards to support incumbent businesses in town that might be struggling or that, you know, just seniority has its benefits. They've been here a long time. We should support our local businesses that are here with any kind of extra service that we're allowed to under the law. So I think the council members...
03:32:51.69	Mayor Cox	All right.
03:32:51.84	Mayor Cox	THE PEOPLE WHO ARE
03:32:51.91	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah.
03:33:19.31	Councilmember Sobieski	asking for direction to study some of those and come back with recommendations.
03:33:22.40	Mayor Cox	So I'm adding this to our future agenda items list.
03:33:24.56	Councilmember Blaustein	Could it be part of the motion or is it just going to be future agenda items? Is there any way to consider protections or direction to staff at least?
03:33:33.67	Councilmember Blaustein	I,
03:33:34.65	Councilmember Hoffman	I think that would be, those would be two separate things, because it would be in ways contrasting with, contrasting with
03:33:45.40	Councilmember Hoffman	the effort to bring in a larger operator. Because if you bring in a larger operator for all the reasons that people just talked about, they have more resources by definition.
03:33:57.01	Mayor Cox	Because it's not confined to formula retail, it's a different ordinance, I believe. But I am adding it to future agenda items list.
03:34:05.75	Mayor Cox	Other comments?
03:34:07.56	Vice Mayor Woodside	I'm going to support the motion, obviously, but I just want to thank you, Mayor, for explaining the law. It's complicated, but you explained it well. Ironically, the conditional use permit process opens discretion, but because the approval runs with the land, it ultimately opens the door much wider to big formula businesses that would be an unintended consequence and that's one reason why i'm supporting the motion i thank the city attorney for being clear you've read the case carefully and i and i rely on your advice and then with respect to the the fundamentals i really like the idea of both
03:34:49.10	Vice Mayor Woodside	raising the number so that we are not so confined.
03:34:55.84	Vice Mayor Woodside	And so there's a little bit of an expansion there. At the same time, it appears we're going to substantially reduce the number of places where the big box or the big formula retail could possibly locate. And I think that's a great compromise view. I hope the Planning Commission sees it the same way or very similarly, and we can move on this as quickly as possible. Thank you.
03:35:16.92	Mayor Cox	Council Member Hoffman.
03:35:17.64	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah.
03:35:18.55	Councilmember Hoffman	I, given my review of the case and the fact that San Francisco, Healdsburg, Sebastopol, other towns have the CEP process and the proximity of the commercial districts to housing, I mean like right across the street or literally right next door. You know, I'm not giving up on the CEP process or community input yet, and my direction would
03:35:47.07	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
03:35:47.66	Councilmember Hoffman	you know further review through this process we're looking at this. To figure out how we can have community input and Community direction on how we can.
03:36:00.72	Councilmember Hoffman	we can drive what we want, how we can cultivate businesses to come in, right? And not stop them, but also right now it's a race to the permit window, right? Because if we've only got, I'm looking at the list, right? So we've got in the CN1 district, we've got three proposed, we've got one existing. There's only two. so the first two people to the window that's it you're done so you're at capacity so it doesn't matter if you want serena lily if you you've got these grandiose ideas about who you want to come in it doesn't matter you've got a whoever gets there first that's it they're there and now you're at capacity and you're not going to be able to have any more in there. So you have to have community input and the people that live there are the people that know and have lived there and understand what the impacts are going to be. So
03:36:54.32	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
03:36:54.60	Councilmember Hoffman	I, you know, I fundamentally disagree that we as citizens and residents and actually business people who live and operate in those districts, as Yoshi pointed out, you ought to be able to understand and know who's going to be operating next door to you. and you ought to be able to have input on who's going to be operating, you know, who's going to be your neighbor business and how they're going to affect your own business. And they should be complementary and not competing with you or taking business from you. have input on who's going to be operating, you know, who's going to be your neighbor business and how they're going to affect your own business. And they should be complimentary and not competing with you or taking business from you or negatively impacting your business. And there should be a way for you to weigh in on that.
03:37:28.93	Councilmember Hoffman	in a way that can be complimentary.
03:37:31.83	Councilmember Hoffman	We got to be able to figure that out. And it may not be. And I agree, you know, the CUP, it is a risk. And maybe there is some other way that we can do this. And there's got to be in some other town has got to probably crack this nut.
03:37:46.14	Councilmember Hoffman	you know, the two, it's funny, the two, the two, the two examples that you gave, right? Okay, so we didn't get a Pete's. We have a Pete's actually, it's down at Molly Stone's, interestingly, but, you know, we didn't get a Pete's, but we had a pretty great Barbacci. That's pretty awesome. So that kind of worked out okay. We didn't get a Subway at 7-Eleven, but we sandwiches inside Subway and the impacts frankly that would have come from Subway at that location probably would have been problematic so anyway that's my thoughts
03:38:22.59	Mayor Cox	Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and call the question. City Clerk.
03:38:26.74	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
03:38:28.02	Walford Solorzano	Council member Blasin. Yes. Council member Hoffman. Yes. Council member Sobieski. Yes. Vice mayor Woodside. Yes. Mayor Cox.
03:38:32.51	Mayor Cox	Yes.
03:38:34.86	Mayor Cox	Yes.
03:38:38.30	Mayor Cox	Yes, I am so happy to have a 5-0 on that. It really concerned me when we were split the last time we decided this. So thank you, everyone, for your feedback and your indulgence as we revisited this important item.
03:38:52.22	Director Phipps	Mayor, apologies. Yeah.
03:38:53.05	Mayor Cox	Yeah, I'm gonna call a five minute, just go ahead, city manager.
03:38:55.18	Director Phipps	That's good.
03:38:57.07	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:38:57.34	Mayor Cox	Oh, I thought somebody started to say something on the, oh, Brandon.
03:39:00.66	Director Phipps	I'm hoping that you will indulge me just one moment more. I was hoping that you would restate the motion before you voted on it, because I believe that I had a clarification question in connection with the initial motion.
03:39:13.05	Mayor Cox	I'll restate it, but you're killing me.
03:39:14.38	Director Phipps	You're killing me.
03:39:16.10	Mayor Cox	Okay, we're going to disallow additional formula retail in the central commercial zoning district, other than already existing. We're going to redefine formula retail by setting a higher bar.
03:39:30.09	Mayor Cox	uh,
03:39:30.72	Mayor Cox	changing the number of locations that qualify as a business for formula retail from six to 50.
03:39:37.72	Mayor Cox	In California.
03:39:40.17	Mayor Cox	allow formula retail in this up to three formula retail in the CR zoning district that makes up for the diminution of the CC district and addresses the concerns raised by Yoshitome ban all formula retail.
03:39:57.43	Mayor Cox	over
03:39:58.80	Mayor Cox	50 units.
03:40:01.56	Mayor Cox	throughout town with the exception of one site TBD by a working group comprised of council members Sobieski and Hoffman.
03:40:09.58	Director Phipps	Very good. So I think that my clarification is still there based on the recent motion. You directed staff to amend the formula retail section to allow three formula retail in the CR. But then you followed that by saying ban formula retail everywhere in the city. I think what I, and my clarification is.
03:40:27.11	Mayor Cox	No.
03:40:29.10	Mayor Cox	over 50 units.
03:40:30.67	Director Phipps	So my clarification is all we're doing is changing the definition of formula retail. Yeah. The CR will be able to avail themselves of that in all cases. So we won't need to take action to do that. Thank you for the clarification. All right.
03:40:35.11	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
03:40:42.00	Councilmember Hoffman	All right.
03:40:42.30	Councilmember Hoffman	I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mayor. I've got to change my vote to no. I misunderstood. I thought that, I thought that, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that we were saying that we were allowing
03:40:54.33	Councilmember Hoffman	Formula Retail in the CC. So I'm sorry. We are. We are.
03:40:56.88	Mayor Cox	We are.
03:40:57.88	Councilmember Hoffman	It's three. We're keeping the three.
03:41:00.31	Councilmember Hoffman	We're keeping three, but yeah.
03:41:02.08	Councilmember Hoffman	In the CC? In the CC. We're still having the CC? Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. Then I'm... So we're still having the CC? Yes. Okay. All right. Then I'm... So we're still having the CC? Yes. Okay. All right. Then I'm... Let me... Okay. Okay. All right. Then I'm... Let me... Let me... Let me... Let me... Let me... Let me... Let me...
03:41:04.42	Mayor Cox	Yes.
03:41:06.13	Mayor Cox	So we're still 5-0.
03:41:07.02	Director Phipps	But I'll clarify that by saying, when we change the definition of formula retail, what counts as formula retail also changes.
03:41:07.34	Mayor Cox	Bye.
03:41:07.51	Councilmember Hoffman	Thank you.
03:41:13.10	Mayor Cox	That's right. So there may be additional allowed in the CC.
03:41:19.32	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
03:41:20.35	Mayor Cox	Yes.
03:41:20.60	Director Phipps	But if our definition of formula retail is 50, technically any business under 50 would not be considered formula retail.
03:41:23.42	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:41:26.04	Mayor Cox	That's right.
03:41:27.68	Unknown	Thank you.
03:41:27.69	Mayor Cox	Okay.
03:41:27.90	Unknown	I'm sorry.
03:41:27.93	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:41:27.96	Unknown	Hey.
03:41:29.16	Mayor Cox	We're going to take a five minute break for personal convenience. Thank you, everybody.
03:41:40.16	Mayor Cox	Um,
03:41:42.34	Mayor Cox	And we are going to undertake a second review of the draft fiscal year 2025-2026 capital improvement program.
03:41:51.50	Mayor Cox	um,
03:41:52.70	Mayor Cox	I think I'm inviting our Public Works Director
03:41:56.65	Mayor Cox	Kevin McGowan, although I know that we have other staff members here to support him.
03:42:01.59	Chris	Mayor, it's going to be the city manager to start.
03:42:04.02	Chris	Okay. Thank you very much, and thank you for your time and patience this evening. Thank members of the public that are still with us. Mr. McGowan will help me.
03:42:12.93	Chris	And Mr. Nava is here as well tonight.
03:42:16.60	Mayor Cox	Yeah, I'm not hearing your microphone, City Manager. And I also want to thank...
03:42:19.21	Chris	I'm gonna say.
03:42:19.90	Chris	on.
03:42:20.11	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
03:42:20.58	Mayor Cox	Chief Barnes and Chief Tubbs for being here to help us as we consider the future of the Spencer Firehouse.
03:42:30.40	Chris	Is that better?
03:42:31.80	Mayor Cox	Yes, better. Thank you.
03:42:33.50	Chris	Thank you.
03:42:33.56	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
03:42:33.62	Chris	Yeah.
03:42:33.67	Mayor Cox	you.
03:42:33.86	Chris	Well, thank you again, Mayor and Council members of the public who are with us now. Mr. McGowan is here to provide information, as is Mr. Nava, who have worked very hard on this item. But I will lead it off. This is a very, very, very important council priority that we're talking about.
03:42:52.29	Chris	As you recall, last month we brought forward a six-year capital improvement plan, which was the whole kid and caboodle. Tonight we're talking about two years of the six-year capital improvement plan. And so I want to make the case real clearly. What is infrastructure in the city? It is investment. It's investment in our streets. It's investment in our American with Disabilities Act compliance, in our buildings, in our parking lots, in our storm drains, in our sidewalks, our stairs, and resiliency. Next slide, please.
03:43:27.74	Chris	Why would you make investment in infrastructure because of community needs, resident safety, resident property values, business support, resiliency goals, livability and recreation? Next slide, please.
03:43:44.41	Chris	So before 2021, the city of Sausalito did quite a bit with the infrastructure, beginning with the new police station and a new fire station built around 2010.
03:43:57.41	Chris	Followed up by investments in parks in 2015. Followed up by the creation and passage of Measure O, which is money for infrastructure. So fast forward to 2021, my first year on the job here. And it was important that we understand the scale of need. We provided information to the community, the council that suggested if you...
03:44:20.41	Chris	completed all of the needs in the city, you are well over $100 million in need. So the first thing the council did was secure the extension of Measure O by extending and expanding Measure L, which creates about $3 million a year now for infrastructure investment. The second thing that the council did after that was to make sure that there were adequate reserves in our general fund so that if there was an emergency that there would in fact not be zero in our bank account. The city council adopted a policy of 25 percent formally so on a 20 million dollar general fund that means for any emergency economic contingency budget problem there's five million dollars set aside there for that particular purpose. Again, to help with infrastructure, you approved as a city council two new project manager positions, which are important in order to get the work done. And then you directed us to do a number of studies that involve looking at facilities, looking at our landslide task force recommendations, and others, which I'll get to later. And tonight, we are making a budget request and staffing request to carry out and meet council and community priorities. Next slide, please.
03:45:40.68	Chris	So before you say yes to what staff is recommending, I think it's really important to understand your finances. And the one thing that I want to be very, very clear about is Sausalito has one-time money
03:45:54.71	Chris	an amount of about $20 million as we speak for infrastructure investment. At the end of next year, 25-26, it'll be closer to $25 million. So that's important for you all to know. The money comes from reoccurring sources such as gas tax, county funds, business enterprise funds, parking funds, property lease funds, titling funds. In addition, there is a semi-reoccurring pot of money, which is Measure L, which has a 10-year lifespan. We're two years into it. And again, that generates about $2.8 to $3 million per year. So the estimated funds available, again, are about $20 million today.
03:46:39.41	Chris	That includes unassigned fund balance. It does not include the $5 million you've set aside for emergencies. It does not include the $6 million you have set aside for pensions and post-employment benefits. So, again, you have a significant amount of money to do a project and program year. What we're looking for in the budget that we're bringing forward in two weeks is that there be a set aside of money to complete this year's capital improvement program, which is about $10 million. And then to meet the new priorities of the city council of another $6 million. So the total amount that you'd be looking to authorize when we bring forward a budget in two weeks in a draft form and finally adopted in final form on June the 17th is about $16 million. Next slide, please.
03:47:32.72	Chris	So the question I would ask as well is you got money. So have you done your due diligence? And the council has directed various, various steps so that that in fact happens. We have a pavement management assessment that gets done. We did a facility study. There's been a hillside study. There's an ongoing storm drain study. And we're involved in the Climate Tech Resiliency and Sustainability Study and Program. Next slide, please.
03:47:59.18	Chris	So if you have money and you've done your due diligence and you have policy direction for a capital improvement program this year and next year, you need staffing. And so what we see is a very aggressive catch-up program that has been augmented by two new project managers but needs additional staffing resources to actually complete a program that is as aggressive as we are proposing in the next two years. And so what we are saying is, in addition to the money you set aside for the capital improvement projects themselves, there needs to be a separate set aside of about $400,000 that can be placed into that fund so that we can hire contract project managers, not one, but two. And those would be limited duration positions based on, you know, how we progress in the plan and the completion of projects. But that's essential. It's akin to a python eating a rhinoceros. You know, we can't swallow all those projects without the capacity of staff. So thank you for indulging me on that request. Next slide, Maria. So again, we would take tonight's comments, and if you agree that this is what you want to do, we would integrate that into our next budget. I'm missing a slide. I went too far. Sorry. Yeah.
03:49:29.07	Chris	Yeah.
03:49:31.48	Chris	Next one. Yeah. It's my fault. I jumped on my paper.
03:49:36.19	Chris	Yeah.
03:49:37.02	Chris	Stay there. Right there is where I need you to be. We'd integrate it into the 25-26 budget.
03:49:42.99	Chris	We're not asking you to tell us how much to spend and what specific project to schedule and et cetera. We would come back with fine tuning of those specific projects that Kevin is going to talk about. Some of them may be upsized. Some of them may be downsized. Some of them may be delayed. Some of them may be advanced. But the idea of taking and putting aside $15 million for capital improvements is what we're looking for. And then, obviously, since there are more needs than money, there needs to be more discussion about.
03:50:11.34	Chris	how we improve our funding resources to actually continue to make a dent in the community infrastructure needs. And this includes certain things that we've surfaced with the city council at the finance committee level, such as a private placement. There have been conversations about setting up community facilities districts. So there's partnerships with the city and people that benefit. And those are the next steps. But tonight we want to talk about this coming year and the funding we need, the staffing we need. And Kevin's going to cover that in a little more detail than I. Thank you.
03:50:44.79	Kevin McGowan	All right, next slide, please.
03:50:45.99	Mayor Cox	I'm going to actually beg your indulgence to ask a couple of questions before we move on to the next section. So, City Manager, you mentioned a number of...
03:50:58.73	Mayor Cox	resources of this total one-time money that you've identified. Does that include the Tidelands Fund?
03:51:08.75	Chris	Yes, Mayor. It includes the Thailand's Fund, Measure L Funds, gas tax funds, county grant funds, MLK funds, parking revenues. It's the gamut of resources that you have.
03:51:26.38	Mayor Cox	And I would like to confirm as we move forward with allocating how monies are spent to confirm that we are confining our use of the Tidelands funds to water-related activities and public use of the shoreline as mandated by the, as trustees of the state's public transportation.
03:51:52.03	Chris	trust lands? Absolutely, Mayor. Matter of fact, the Vice Mayor asked that question today. And so we got the specifics on how to use Title Lens funds. And we've been aware, but we'll give you assurances that we will not use funds in a way that they're not legally allowed for, whether it's grant funds, whether it's Title Lens, whether it's sewer funds. The other funds are various variations of a general fund where you could use them on different things as you saw fit. But those restricted funds that are legally restricted, we understand what those are, and Tidlands is one of them.
03:52:31.40	Mayor Cox	And then this is probably a question for our next meeting, as we start to consider the budget. But I wanted to confirm as a follow on to our initial comments on the proposed CIP plan, that we are.
03:52:52.48	Mayor Cox	in allocating
03:52:54.71	Mayor Cox	our
03:52:57.19	Mayor Cox	money's on hand, we are undertaking a process to ensure that we have allocated adequate funds for projects already in process, and that moving forward,
03:53:15.38	Mayor Cox	Mm-hmm.
03:53:16.36	Mayor Cox	And that moving forward, as the city council approves a project, we remove those monies from the general fund to ensure that they are allocated to the project for which they were approved. So that there's never a question that projects we have approved, the monies have been encumbered and won't inadvertently be spent on something else.
03:53:39.55	Chris	Thank you for that question and Mr. Nav. I will address it as it should be addressed.
03:53:44.29	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
03:53:44.30	Sergio	Thank you. The plan is to actually make an appropriation. Could you please?
03:53:49.62	Councilmember Sobieski	Can I speak into the microphone a little bit?
03:53:49.70	Sergio	Thank you for my...
03:53:50.67	Sergio	The plan is to actually make an appropriation from the source of funds into the CIP once those decisions have been made so that the new budget will literally move the monies from these funds into the CIP fund while they will reside until the project is completed. So that the council never has to worry about whether the project was fully funded or the level of fund because those amounts will appear in the CIP moving into the future and will no longer appear in the source funds.
03:54:19.07	Mayor Cox	And I wouldn't dare try to micromanage the manner in which staff carries out its process, or maybe I would.
03:54:28.89	Mayor Cox	But other cities that I advise, as soon as a project is approved, there is a sub-project created within the CIP fund or within the general fund, so that the monies within those funds are specifically earmarked for specific projects. Is that something you would consider as an additional safeguard to ensure that,
03:54:52.70	Mayor Cox	you know, money set aside for Southview Park are spent on Southview Park. And if we exceed it, we go back to Measure L or the general fund, we don't spend other monies within the CIP.
03:55:05.96	Sergio	Yeah. So part of the process will be to do a reconciliation of project funding sources at the end of each year. If the project is short of money, then you would seek a reallocation or an additional appropriation to fully fund that project. If a project is completed and there's surplus funds, then the public works director would be able to assign those projects or those monies or recommend them for a future project or to supplement an additional project. But since the decision has been made to use it for capital. would be able to assign those monies or recommend them for a future project or to supplement an additional project. But since the decision has been made to use it for capital improvements, those monies will remain in the CIP until the council decides to move them back out.
03:55:42.36	Mayor Cox	Thank you, and thank you for indulging my questions while they refresh in my mind.
03:55:43.04	Sergio	Right.
03:55:46.53	Mayor Cox	And any other, go ahead.
03:55:48.23	Vice Mayor Woodside	Just for the city manager, and this is sort of a big global question at this point. You mentioned in their presentation that when you get to the general fund, we will still have the 25% reserve. Are you confident that you're going to be able to put together a balanced budget on the operation side within the next couple of weeks? If we were to approve your recommendations here?
03:56:13.72	Chris	Absolutely, Vice Mayor. So we're working toward a draft budget that involves looking at our revenues and our expenses for the coming year. You know, with some variables, whether it's insurance or pensions or labor costs or utility costs, all that's being worked on right now. And I can say with confidence that that $7 million in unassigned funds, there is not going to be a need to balance the budget this year with that money. What we're asking is for you to take some of that $7 million and inject it into the capital improvement program so that, you know, maybe you cut it in half, but you have the $5 million plus potentially $4 million in unassigned general fund fund balance. So your practical retainage in your general fund is not 25 percent. It's closer to 50 percent.
03:57:11.46	Vice Mayor Woodside	Okay. And then just with respect to your recommendation, obviously, you're not recommending that we spend down to the last dime. You're holding some back. And I assume that if during the year something came up that we didn't anticipate now or that we needed to move additional money for some reason, that we could at that point make an appropriation or revisit it. In other words, we're not wedded to only these dollars if something were to come up that we either hadn't thought through or we wanted to add to the list during the year.
03:57:46.39	Chris	Yes, and you may want to consider a more aggressive street program, a more aggressive stair program. And if you wanted to add some of the unassigned fund balance and the general fund to that, you could. Or if you wanted to delay a project or move a project into another year and use that money, those are all council decisions that can be made by the council. And at the same time, at the midyear, you will have an opportunity to look at your budget to see where you're tracking, whether it's capital improvement wise or other areas of the budget and see where you really stand. But there is, as I said, two years ago, it's really a question of how much you want to set aside to save for emergencies. You've done that. It's really documenting and making sure how much you have in unassigned fund balances for the general fund. And it's really sure about what are the amounts of money that are available in the specific, what you call business enterprise funds like parking, like MLK, like Old City Hall, like Tidelands, or Tidelands is actually a real restrictive fund. So we are doing all that for you so you don't have to worry about it.
03:58:55.97	Chris	If you wanted to do a more aggressive program, you could theoretically spend $25 million this year.
03:59:01.81	Chris	I wouldn't advise that. I don't know that we have the work, the staff to do that. I don't know that you wanna, you know, not keep some of your powder dry for emergencies or other projects you may wanna see down the road. So we're only asking for 15 million of a potential $25 million available pot of money.
03:59:19.85	Vice Mayor Woodside	Thank you.
03:59:24.23	Mayor Cox	Welcome, Director McGowan.
03:59:26.66	Kevin McGowan	David Miller, Hello again good evening next slide please there we go. David Miller, I do have some short slides and it's late, so I apologize, but here we go, so the capital improvement program is a fluid document then with costs changing as individual projects are developed.
03:59:45.50	Kevin McGowan	The CIP is utilized to develop a list of possible improvements and estimates, which estimates the amount of funding needed to support those projects. The CIP also prioritizes the improvements with the intent of providing recommendations to the council for allocation of funding in conjunction with the annual budget. Sausalito's five-year capital improvement program is updated annually and is included with the annual budget as you all know. Next please.
04:00:25.49	Kevin McGowan	Nope, too far.
04:00:27.70	Kevin McGowan	Here we go. On April 15, staff presented the draft capital improvement program to the council. Council was thankful for staff's work but had some questions related to the next year's CIP. Parking lot one reconstruction is I is included in the active projects. And staff has solicited for designers to move forward with that project already.
04:00:54.13	Kevin McGowan	Staff has included projects related to the fire station number two and the bridgeway pedestrian crossings in the next fiscal year as well. In addition, based on the...
04:01:08.05	Kevin McGowan	Council's direction from the strategic planning session in January. Staff is recommending an additional allocation of $1 million for next year's paving project.
04:01:19.79	Kevin McGowan	Since April's council meeting, staff from Public Works and the Finance Department have worked together to examine the funding, the fund centers for the CIP to match up projects that can utilize specific funding sources such as the Tideland funds. You've mentioned that before. Also, staff utilized recent estimates from the Bridgeway Improvement Project from Napa to Johnson Street and determined the cost for resurfacing bridgeway from the southern city limits to Napa Street is approximately $6.7 million, compared to a micro-seal project, which is $5.1 million. This is noted in the staff report as well. Staff does not recommend a full resurfacing approach at this point in time on the fact that this will significantly impact the other capital projects next slide
04:01:35.13	Unknown	you.
04:02:14.91	Kevin McGowan	Right.
04:02:15.51	Kevin McGowan	The city's finance department has been diligently examining city accounts to determine the amounts available for the capital improvement projects and next fiscal year. At this time, staff estimates approximately 25 million is available for capital projects, which is shown on attachment six in your documentation next slide.
04:02:40.57	Kevin McGowan	The result of the strategic planning session in January 2025, the Council noted several priorities. Many of these priorities have been or are currently being addressed by staff. For example, the city has finished the facility assessment study and has included many of the prioritized projects from that study in the current CIP.
04:03:05.26	Kevin McGowan	Storm drain assessment is underway and staff recommends including an allocation of $450,000 in anticipation of utilizing these funds in the next fiscal year to address the deficiencies known in that study.
04:03:19.49	Kevin McGowan	Staff is working to complete the shoreline adaptation plan and are starting a sea level rise facility assessment as well. I'm not sure if I categorize that right, but Katie's not here. And so we'll go with that. The CIP includes an analysis and possibly repairs to the existing stairway systems, which
04:03:45.16	Kevin McGowan	which parallels Bridgeway from Napa Street. This is an old stairway system that has basically failed. Other stair systems in the city are shown in the CIP, but being addressed in future fiscal years. Other projects, such as the geologic monitoring plan, sidewalk program, and further improvements associated with ADA transition plan, are included in the CIP. Next slide.
04:04:15.38	Kevin McGowan	The city is currently working on more than 20 active projects. Some of these projects are moving to the construction phase and will require allocations of funding to complete. A total of $10.7 million is estimated to be needed to address these projects.
04:04:35.97	Kevin McGowan	Mark Benthien, important projects, such as the bridge bridgeway improvement project from Napa to Johnson street are ready to bid or will be in the next week or so, and we intend to get that out to bid as soon as possible with construction happening later in the summer next slide.
04:04:54.58	Kevin McGowan	Staff initially recommended addressing nine new projects in the next fiscal year based on Council's comments on April 15th.
04:05:02.97	Kevin McGowan	An additional nine projects have been added to the CIP itself. Staff estimates that an additional 5.6 million will be needed to support these projects. One of these projects, Coloma Street Pedestrian Improvement Project, has specific grant funding such that the allocation shown on this slide and in the CIP is less than the total amount of the project. I just wanted to mention it because we do have some grant funding for the project.
04:05:33.09	Kevin McGowan	Staff also recommends a one-time general fund allocation of $1 million to the 2025 resurfacing program. The 2025 resurfacing is intended to be designed in the next fiscal year with construction following the subsequent year after that. For resurfacing, we usually do that work in the fall where weather is better dependent for it. Next slide.
04:05:58.89	Kevin McGowan	The city has two full-time dedicated project managers. In addition, our engineering division, as well as myself, do step in to manage some projects on the capital program.
04:06:12.47	Kevin McGowan	Estimating work loading for our staff is very difficult to very difficult to do since projects tend to change in complexity as and they can also be impacted by other things such as weather and contractors availability.
04:06:32.79	Kevin McGowan	Nevertheless, project managers cannot address more than about seven projects at one point in time, and with the total number of projects for the next fiscal year being closer to 43 projects, additional project manager assistance will be needed in order to execute some of these projects. Staff did prepare a rough schedule for the projects and recommends seeking consultants, consultant firms to assist with addressing projects that are important to initiate in this summertime, such as the old city hall skylight project. I mentioned this one because we got to get it done this summer before it starts raining.
04:07:14.59	Kevin McGowan	As other projects are completed, our city staff can take over individual projects initiated by our consultants. So as we free up time as we move forward, our two or two project managers can step in. Next slide.
04:07:31.15	Kevin McGowan	Funding for the more than 43 projects is available within the budget centers available. A total of $6.3 million is recommended to be committed for these projects. My staff will be making every effort to complete the work on the CIP. Changes and modifications should be anticipated since the details of these improvements are not completely known at this time. In addition, as noted in the staff report, staff continues to examine budget criteria such as MLK and the general fund to make sure that numbers conveyed to council with the next fiscal budget are relatively accurate. Next slide.
04:08:14.29	Kevin McGowan	A couple pictures of projects that we have, we'd like to initiate. I won't run through these because of the lateness of the hour, but you can tell we do have a lot on our plate at this point in time and we'd like to move forward with them. Next slide.
04:08:29.62	Kevin McGowan	Thank you. Lastly, this is a very dynamic process. Our intent is to identify capital projects before they become emergencies. We have not presented the CIP to the Planning Commission yet, and that's one of our requirements. We're anticipating bringing that to the Planning Commission either next week or the week after. So it'll be basically the same presentation that you see here. And that concludes my presentation at this point in time. And I'm here for questions and comments. Thank you.
04:09:03.42	Mayor Cox	I had one quick question.
04:09:07.79	Mayor Cox	You mentioned the skylight, or I forget what you called it, at Old City Hall, which is the Gene Hiller building.
04:09:14.52	Mayor Cox	In looking at attachment six, the restatement of our fund balances, it's showing that we have a fund balance in Old City Hall of 488553, but it's showing zero estimated revenue in fiscal year 2526. Can you address what, because they pay rent, and so I'm wondering why there's zero revenue for 2526.
04:09:19.38	Kevin McGowan	It's a great day.
04:09:19.47	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:09:19.65	Kevin McGowan	It's true.
04:09:39.06	Sergio	Basically, because we're still looking at that operating budget as well. So there are expenditures in there also. So we're wanting to make sure that we have a clear handle on what the expenditures will be before we put them into and then give you a fund balance for that amount. But there are expenditures as well.
04:09:55.43	Mayor Cox	Okay, thank you.
04:09:57.47	Sergio	And point anywhere where you see a blank that's because we're still working on those revenue and expenditure numbers and trying to make sure we have a clear handle on them.
04:10:06.17	Mayor Cox	Okay, because the Arts Building, that's the SCA?
04:10:06.77	Sergio	All right.
04:10:09.06	Sergio	Yeah.
04:10:09.08	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
04:10:09.45	Mayor Cox	And so we obviously get revenue from that as well.
04:10:12.18	Sergio	We do, but I believe it's currently maybe showing a negative. So again, we're looking at the revenues and the expenditures associated with that fund for next year.
04:10:22.16	Unknown	Okay.
04:10:22.97	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah, if I could follow up on that question. What's the negative revenue from the SCA?
04:10:28.57	Sergio	I think it's just over a balance that's been carried over from a prior year. And I mean...
04:10:33.40	Councilmember Hoffman	I see what the negative revenue on the SCA, do you have that?
04:10:37.83	Sergio	on the S.
04:10:37.85	Councilmember Hoffman	on the S- The Center for the Arts.
04:10:38.51	Sergio	Thank you.
04:10:39.40	Sergio	Oh, I don't have that. I thought you were talking about the arts building. Yeah, that's the arts building.
04:10:42.24	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah, that's the Arts Building. We call it, it lists about several different things, but they're good.
04:10:43.92	Chris	Thank you.
04:10:43.94	Sergio	Thank you.
04:10:43.98	Sergio	Look.
04:10:44.03	Chris	I'm literally.
04:10:45.78	Chris	Yeah, let the city manager answer that question since he's been here a little bit longer. So last year, the city council entered to an agreement with SCA for a lease amount of $4,000 a month, Mayor? Six. $6,000 a month. Okay. And in addition, there's $2,000 a month that we get from the ATM. So there's $8,000 in revenue coming in, but we have debt service on that private placement of about I thought it was 111,000. So we're running a shortfall of multiply eight by 12. It's 96. So we're running a shortfall of about 15 $20,000 in that operation council member.
04:11:25.34	Councilmember Hoffman	15, 20,000 annually or 15,000.
04:11:28.17	Chris	Correct. Yeah. And we'll fine tune those and get you the accurate numbers after we do the payment that we understand we have to make for the placement and then add up our ATM and lease revenues. And then that will Delta between those two will give you the difference multiplied by 12 months. What we are short in a year in that particular building.
04:11:50.36	Councilmember Hoffman	And because I've asked for that, so when will we have that reconciliation?
04:11:55.34	Chris	We can do that in a week. That's easy.
04:11:57.57	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, thanks. And then also, and then the,
04:12:01.45	Councilmember Hoffman	the total of what we're spending on it with the CIP, and that's in the CIP, right?
04:12:07.66	Chris	This...
04:12:08.38	Chris	Go.
04:12:08.59	Kevin McGowan	Okay.
04:12:10.66	Kevin McGowan	So I don't have any projects associated with the in the CIP associated with the arts building at this point.
04:12:16.26	Councilmember Hoffman	Oh, we don't? Oh, because the Veritas had
04:12:19.66	Mayor Cox	They identified issues, but we're not going to address any of those in this CIP, according to CIP.
04:12:25.02	Kevin McGowan	staffs,
04:12:25.28	Mayor Cox	proposed.
04:12:25.95	Kevin McGowan	Let me clarify that I do have one project that has small maintenance items, items that are less than $35,000 are all bunched into one project, and that may have some items at the arts building itself. But those projects that are greater than $35,000 I don't have a specific project on the CIP associated with the arts building.
04:12:41.21	Unknown	Thank you.
04:12:41.22	Councilmember Hoffman	But,
04:12:48.97	Councilmember Hoffman	Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry for that tangent.
04:12:52.21	Mayor Cox	I'm going to continue. I had a couple of questions. So again, on attachment six, we list construction impact fees. Are we not considering updating our impact fees?
04:13:03.75	Sergio	We have the council authorized impact fee study, and that is going to commence fairly soon, but it'll take some time before we come back with those final recommendations on impact fees.
04:13:16.32	Mayor Cox	But within this calendar year, we will update our impact fees. And so that may increase the projected revenue that you have for fiscal year 25-26?
04:13:29.22	Sergio	I think this is a different type of
04:13:32.37	Sergio	impact fee is what we're considering under the study, which is impacts to new development or that new development would have to pay for under an impact fee study.
04:13:43.25	Mayor Cox	Okay, so what is construction impact fee?
04:13:45.65	Sergio	I'd have to actually look, but there is an actual definition for that fund.
04:13:50.75	Sergio	I don't know if you know that.
04:13:53.74	City Attorney	I do believe that is the city's existing theme.
04:13:56.86	City Attorney	It's the construction road impact fee, I believe.
04:14:03.50	Kevin McGowan	Yes, that's correct. We bring it to your council, usually in the fall each year. And so it would be the same thing.
04:14:11.99	Mayor Cox	Okay, so then, Sergio, what impact fees are we updating based on the study we're doing right now?
04:14:19.05	Chris	I can answer that question, Mary. Yeah. So we want to look at the gamut.
04:14:20.30	Mayor Cox	Yeah.
04:14:22.96	Chris	fees and come back with a menu based on the analysis by will dan which is part two they started with the user fee analysis they'll come part two with impact fee analysis and you know we brought some preliminary information to you all a couple years ago where we suggested you know everything from library impact fees to park impact fees to street impact fees and augmenting existing impact fees would be brought back so the council could consider them so that new growth pays for its fair share so that's in process i'm not sure what the time frame on that is but will dan has been contracted to do that work as they did the user fee analysis
04:14:25.49	Unknown	Okay.
04:14:25.59	Mayor Cox	PLEASE STAY.
04:15:00.81	Mayor Cox	So really the purpose of my question was to confirm that although we have estimated revenues contained in attachment six, there is some hope that some of these revenues may go up or there may be additional revenues, so that if we spend a significant amount of our unassigned fund balance, we have some confidence that those funds will be restored within our coffers.
04:15:26.68	Chris	Yes. If you get money in future years from these impact fees, then that could really augment your capital improvement program to the point where maybe you pay back your unassigned use of general fund or you have a less reliance on the general fund for capital improvement projects.
04:15:49.18	Chris	Thank you.
04:15:49.30	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:15:49.48	Mayor Cox	Thank you, Councilmember Sobieski.
04:15:52.37	Councilmember Sobieski	Hi, thanks.
04:15:55.30	Councilmember Sobieski	Let's see. Director, thank you. It's good to see you at the podium again. I actually had my question for Director McGowan, actually, sir. Sorry. How are you tonight, Kevin? So I'm the one that brought up the – there was a lot of people who brought it up, the notion of paving or treating bridgeway from the south end of town in Napa Street. and you responded to that comment in your staff report with two estimates, one for a slurry seal or micro seal. south end of town in napa street uh and you responded to that comment uh in your staff report with two estimates one uh for a slurry seal or micro seal at roughly five million dollars and then a complete rebuild at six point something and i was surprised that those two numbers were so close together uh because i thought the reconstruction was dramatically more expensive since it lasted for 20 years versus a slurry seal that lasts for three to five uh so how did i get that wrong. Is there something I'm missing?
04:16:45.54	Councilmember Sobieski	there.
04:16:46.75	Kevin McGowan	Are you asking me to make a comment on your assumption that they would be vastly different?
04:16:52.66	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah, because I thought that they were, yeah, I misunderstood. I thought the reconstruction fundamentally was a lot more expensive and it's not, it sounds like, than a slurry seal.
04:17:01.96	Kevin McGowan	Well, with some projects, you have to look at where they're being constructed.
04:17:07.53	Kevin McGowan	In this particular case, Bridgeway is the busiest road in town. A lot of the construction effort will be into traffic control and managing the traffic through that specific area. So the costs are relatively close because a lot of that goes to setting it up, making sure that you control traffic through town. When you take a look at the difference in the cost of between asphalt and micro seal. Yeah, there's not a huge amount of difference. But like I said before, the major cost there is the traffic control.
04:17:43.74	Councilmember Sobieski	So just help me out with one more just sanity test. When we were considering the thing we unanimously rejected, the grant for the bike lanes, we
04:17:57.61	Councilmember Sobieski	I was under the impression that within that grant 500k, we were going to get a slurry seal from the Golden Gate Market to Princess Street. But was that wrong? That was wildly not the correct price? Because that's the perfect.
04:18:11.11	Kevin McGowan	No, that was based on a, you are correct. We were going to get a slurry seal across that road.
04:18:17.41	Kevin McGowan	From Golden Gate Market down to Princess. And that was based on 2021-22 timeframe when I submitted for that grant.
04:18:28.24	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay. But that's 500 K. It seems like the length.
04:18:31.19	Kevin McGowan	It does seem a little
04:18:32.04	Kevin McGowan	bit low.
04:18:32.54	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
04:18:32.58	Kevin McGowan	you
04:18:32.98	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:18:33.00	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah.
04:18:33.07	Kevin McGowan	That's true.
04:18:33.57	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
04:18:34.64	Councilmember Sobieski	Is there a way of just giving direction to explore some creative thinking on the pricing, maybe get some more estimates on ways it could be done? It sounds like there might be a variable cost there. So I don't know how, how did we get the pricing? Is it from your estimate? How did you come up with it? What was the process?
04:18:53.10	Councilmember Sobieski	On which one? On the 5.1.
04:18:55.04	Kevin McGowan	$1.1 million slurry seal.
04:18:57.40	Kevin McGowan	As I mentioned in the staff report, I took a look at the latest estimate that we have for the work straight out in front of us that goes from Napa Street to Johnson Street. And I took a look at those costs and compared it to the square footage that's out here compared to the square footage that you requested going from the southern border all the way to Napa Street.
04:19:19.78	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay. And by the way, for that thing, you just mentioned that project, is that going to be a slurry seal or reconstruction?
04:19:25.90	Kevin McGowan	The original plan is to have a slurry sealed. However, based on council's requests, we're including a bid alternative to resurface the road at the same time. So the council can choose, depending upon how much funding is available, which option you would like to pursue.
04:19:43.82	Councilmember Sobieski	And if we wanted to give, if there was consensus to give direction on doing that kind of treatment all the way south on Bridgeway for the 5.1 or $6 million, how much more money would you need?
04:19:57.27	Councilmember Sobieski	than is currently being asked for in the CIP to do that project. I don't quite understand the question. You recommended not doing that project because it would take away money from other capital projects. That was the staff's recommendation, not to do the full bridgeway because it would take away money from other staff projects. So incrementally, how much...
04:20:18.62	Councilmember Sobieski	more money would you need in the road program to redo Bridgeway?
04:20:21.47	Kevin McGowan	So while we're diving into the amount of details on one project, I think that the latest estimate for out here from Napa to Johnson Street for resurfacing it with a two-inch mill and fill is $2.1 million. Now, the estimate that I came up with based on the same thing is $6.7 million for the entire reach that you requested. So if you subtract 2.1 from 6.7, and it is almost midnight, so I can't do math anymore, but it's in that ballpark.
04:20:55.96	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay. So, and then we'd have to allocate more money from, uh, some, one of our funds to be able to,
04:21:01.36	Kevin McGowan	Yeah, another four something million or so.
04:21:04.00	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay.
04:21:04.89	Councilmember Sobieski	City manager, you
04:21:07.02	Councilmember Sobieski	I think you answered the vice mayor's question, but I wasn't sure I heard it. I want to make sure I heard it. I know we'll have a budget discussion next meeting, but your current best guess is that the operating budget going forward is going to be balanced or in surplus for next year.
04:21:21.29	Chris	So we are getting our numbers together, our estimates of revenues and expenses for 2526. And we're pretty close, depending on what, you know, the departments have presented in front of the city council. And they have a wish list that I call a wish list of items that, you know, you know, could be a million dollars and then we'd be a million dollars out of whack. But as it stands right now, if we said no to everything the departments asked for in this coming budget year, you'd be essentially balanced. Okay.
04:21:58.32	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you. And I have a question. I don't know who to direct this to. It's about the fire station because that's in there and I'm supportive of it. But I know that the whole presumption of the fire station redo, half of it is a document business, but the actual physical improvement relies on the fire department. And I see some firemen in the background and my question to them or to someone in the city is can we get a lease agreement with the fire department before we spend the money so we're sure that the money isn't wasted? And then I have a related question I'll ask after that. But can we actually negotiate the lease deal with you before we spend the money?
04:22:16.41	David Lay	Thank you.
04:22:27.14	Unknown	Yeah.
04:22:35.09	Chief Tubbs	Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council. And yes, we're open to partnering in any way, which makes the most sense and working, you know, directly with the city manager and staff to develop a process and come to some sort of agreement. And I think we can do that
04:22:52.05	Chief Tubbs	prior to any, um,
04:22:54.70	Chief Tubbs	Promising of any money.
04:22:55.88	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay, and then just a related question, because I don't know how it works between districts and different agencies.
04:23:01.43	Councilmember Sobieski	Would you be willing to consider possibly buying the fire station from the city so we don't have to pay for those improvements and we'd actually turn that physical asset into cash on our balance sheet?
04:23:11.03	Mayor Cox	I'm sorry.
04:23:11.66	Mayor Cox	are you considering the surplus lands act requirement that we make it available for affordable housing before we sell?
04:23:18.31	Councilmember Sobieski	I do, but I also know that we don't have to take the bids. If the bid from the fire department is higher, we can take the bid from the fire department. So is that something that you'd be willing to consider?
04:23:27.32	Chief Tubbs	Yeah, we would consider any option to reoccupy the station that works for both the city and the district.
04:23:34.00	Chief Tubbs	Thank you.
04:23:34.05	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay.
04:23:34.25	Chief Tubbs	Thank you.
04:23:34.35	Councilmember Sobieski	Great.
04:23:34.54	Chief Tubbs	Thank you.
04:23:34.61	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
04:23:36.36	Councilmember Sobieski	That's all I have for now.
04:23:37.12	Mayor Cox	So.
04:23:37.75	Mayor Cox	Thank you. Yes, Councilmember Blaustein. Thank you.
04:23:40.41	Councilmember Blaustein	Hi, Director McGowan. I know it's late. Thank you for being here.
04:23:44.39	Councilmember Blaustein	I wanted to just ask a couple of questions about the additional projects and then more generally about priority projects based on the direction that we've given. So the skylight on the downtown, or sorry, on the old city hall building, that's not necessarily required immediately and needs to be in this cycle, or does it in your perspective?
04:24:05.22	Kevin McGowan	It does. It does. It needs to be done. Otherwise, our tenant may be impacted by us not fixing that skylight.
04:24:12.86	Councilmember Blaustein	Okay, what about the police vencing? Can you give more of an in-depth explanation of what that might be? Because that was a new issue.
04:24:18.33	Kevin McGowan	Police venting?
04:24:19.36	Councilmember Blaustein	Fencing on the roof. Fencing, yes.
04:24:20.03	Kevin McGowan	Oh, fencing. Yes. Our police department has requested that we put a fence around the top area of the building itself because they've had folks come on that section of the building from the roadway. They feel it is a safety issue that they need to make sure that they don't have entrance to their police station from above.
04:24:39.88	Councilmember Blaustein	Okay, and I appreciate the additions of the Colombo Street Bridgeway, the street trees, but one of the things that we've talked about quite a bit here is just prioritizing disaster preparedness. I think it's timely that we have our fire here, safety folks here.
04:24:54.95	Councilmember Blaustein	But was there consideration or could there be direction or consideration for addressing and improving the roadways at exit routes and at the stairways? I know we have one stairway project in here, but I would really like to see.
04:25:07.28	Councilmember Blaustein	or understand why that may or may not have been prioritized or included.
04:25:11.37	Chris	Let me answer that question Kevin. So the answer is yes, Council Member Blaustein So you have we're asking for 2.9 million dollars for street improvements We normally get 1.9 million an augmentation of 1 million dollars is 2.9 million dollars for street improvements so when we come back with the pavement program whether it's more money for Bridgeway or Programs that we have or streets we have in our plan throughout the city. One of the things that was asked by the council is, do we make sure that whatever we do considers exit and disaster evacuation? And we will do that when we come back with the $2.9 million program. But tonight we're just saying we need to get your approval on a funding amount. But no, we don't have that detail yet, but we will.
04:26:01.64	Councilmember Blaustein	Okay. And then I noticed as well that in the staff report and packet, there were a few letters of correspondence that we received in 2023.
04:26:09.65	Councilmember Blaustein	with images from tourney street and while I appreciate the decision to include the tourney street correspondence I know that there are a number of neighbors who have in the last at least in my tenure on the council written letters regarding the quality of pavement or their complaints about their roads could you speak to why you decided to include those specific letters or that emphasis on tourney street
04:26:31.07	Kevin McGowan	So we've had a couple different requests for different areas. It wasn't just Turney Street. I think it was, yeah, it was, that's right. It was Turney and Upper Intersection. And so in taking a look at that, obviously we look at the PCI for the roadway itself, but we actually do a field view review. And it does look like those specific areas, the concrete itself, is displaced in such a way that it's not fixable. So the the intent is to include that on the street resurfacing program, maybe not do the entire street, but to do just that section that really looks pretty bad. So that was the intent.
04:27:03.96	Councilmember Blaustein	Thank you.
04:27:08.55	Councilmember Blaustein	Do we receive any other correspondence that we're aware of from neighbors with similar concerns and have we considered how we might address our way those with the same level of. I don't know urgency.
04:27:20.06	Kevin McGowan	Yes. Other places such as Ariana Circle. Okay. It's on the street resurfacing list. We've got a couple others that are on the list as well. We've had some complaints about North Street, where North Street joins Josephine.
04:27:22.62	Councilmember Blaustein	Okay.
04:27:30.05	Vicki Nichols	Mm-hmm.
04:27:33.20	Kevin McGowan	Another complaint on Josephine itself. So we're trying to include those in our street resurfacing project. Josephine and North Street are going to be bid alternatives for the design that's going through right now. And Ariana Circle is already on this list at this point.
04:27:51.78	Chris	Council Member Blasen, if I can give you a little flavor on requests from residents. 87,000 emails I get, but I know I've seen four from Mrs. Umbertus Lyons about the work that she believes needs to be done to make that corner of Bridgeway safer. So that's definitely one of the things that I'm aware of, and I believe we're trying to address that in this capital improvement program, as far as specific requests for capital projects, I can sort through what I have and come back with you in terms of what residents have specifically asked me for, and Kevin can do the same.
04:27:51.80	Kevin McGowan	Okay.
04:28:33.75	Councilmember Blaustein	I just think it would be helpful. I was happy to see the three letters, but I know that we've received a lot of correspondence from a lot of neighbors who have concerns about their respective streets. So if we could just be fair in what letters we choose to consider in the staff report going forward, it would be helpful.
04:28:50.41	Councilmember Blaustein	That's it. Thank you. I know it's late hour. I appreciate it.
04:28:56.09	Mayor Cox	I'm not seeing any raised hands. I'm going to ask about Dunphy park phase two. So city manager, I thought there was perhaps consideration of deferring that as we complete our planning for that area of town.
04:29:09.78	Chris	Yes, Mayor and members of the council, there's an asterisk on that particular item for that particular purpose. The city council has been improving parks since 2015 with the COPs. Phase one of Dunphy is done. Phase two was scheduled, what, three years ago, Kevin? It's been worked on, worked on, worked on, trying to get approvals from the tribe, trying to figure out the cleanliness of the site. And so the project itself is ready, but given the conversations around that strategic area of town, whether you want to expand Dunphy, or whether you want to integrate it into some other use that is much more comprehensive or broader. That's why I put an asterisk on it, because that could be one of the projects in that $16 million ask that gets pushed to $27.28 or $26.27. But I thought it would be important to have that conversation before we went out and said we want to build phase two even though I think the public's expecting that and waiting for that I think it may be a situation where you're building parks that create expense and if you have an opportunity to create something that involves housing or revenue you might want to consider integrating that into the ultimate design of that property and hold off on this 1.2 million dollar project that's been planned for the
04:30:37.65	Mayor Cox	So on slide 14 of the PowerPoint presentation, Dunphy Park is the second one listed, and it is designated as a project heading to construction. So I just wanted to be sure that we were timely giving direction so that we don't continue to head something towards construction that we might want to.
04:30:56.33	Mayor Cox	rethink.
04:30:57.44	Kevin McGowan	Yes, I think the city manager is correct. It's almost ready to go if you choose to. So whatever you'd like to do, we're ready for it.
04:31:05.71	Mayor Cox	So is tonight the time to give that feedback?
04:31:08.38	Mayor Cox	Uh,
04:31:08.78	Chris	I would appreciate it, you know, because we pulled it. I unilaterally pulled it off an agenda because I thought this conversation needed to be had before we went too far down the path of approving a phase two project at Dunphy when you might want to do something different there, be it a mixed-use development, housing, potentially a hotel, any of those conversations that we haven't had we've had this whole bridgeway marina on our agenda and the conversation going back to then mayor kelman where that land is so strategic and so important and so trying to integrate it into a better plan than just continuing along the path we're on is why i pulled it to have this discussion tonight
04:31:54.66	Mayor Cox	And then we, the, uh, council member Sobieski inquired about the fire station and I, I see we have funds set aside. We don't, I did not see funds set aside to address the $300,000 expense mentioned by our city clerk for moving the records out of the firehouse to facilitate its recommissioning, if that's the path forward. Yeah.
04:32:19.72	Kevin McGowan	Madam Mayor, there is a item in the CIP that includes $80,000 for that. And the news from our city clerk that we'll need more, I'll just need to amend the CIP to include the amount that he's stating. But we did have a line item for it. It just wasn't the total amount that he's requesting.
04:32:19.77	Mayor Cox	I'm sorry.
04:32:20.01	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:32:20.03	Mayor Cox	Maybe.
04:32:36.09	Mayor Cox	Okay.
04:32:39.99	Mayor Cox	I just didn't see 300,000. That's...
04:32:42.11	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:32:42.47	Mayor Cox	Yes. Oh.
04:32:43.89	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:32:45.44	Vice Mayor Woodside	Just to follow on on your questions about and your request of us on extension of Dunphy, I think a pure extension of the park as it's currently planned for Phase 2 is one thing. When you say mixed use, there's a whole lot of host of issues that could be possible that we probably should at least consider before committing to the park only on our property. There's adjacent property that could work with us on a public private partnership that would accomplish park like uses that would be, you know, in effect, an extension of the park, but not currently as planned. It might be in conjunction with some other neighboring property. I'm just thinking out loud. I don't have a proposal, but I think that may be part of your thinking.
04:33:00.51	Unknown	All right.
04:33:33.16	Chris	Yeah, that would be my recommendation that you keep your powder dry on it, even though you've been doing the study and been working, have actually spent money to turn it into a project tomorrow. I just don't know that that's the project that you want to turn it into until, you know, this conversation is had.
04:33:50.22	Vice Mayor Woodside	So your recommendation is hold off for a bit.
04:33:52.69	Chris	Correct.
04:33:55.07	Mayor Cox	Council member Sobieski.
04:33:56.52	Councilmember Sobieski	My question is about the stair pilot program. Is that in the CIP?
04:34:01.09	Councilmember Sobieski	you
04:34:01.39	Councilmember Sobieski	Spare.
04:34:02.12	Councilmember Sobieski	The stair, not stair, sidewalk. Sidewalk. Yes.
04:34:03.62	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:34:03.64	Kevin McGowan	Sidewalk.
04:34:04.36	Kevin McGowan	Yeah.
04:34:04.96	Councilmember Sobieski	It isn't there. Yes. So if we wanted to expand that program, is now the time to give you that kind of direction? Yes.
04:34:10.66	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:34:10.69	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah.
04:34:10.83	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:34:11.55	Councilmember Sobieski	I don't know that's probably more of a discussion point I'll wait for the discussion and then did you guys see the letter that was late mail from Linda Fotch and Cass Green
04:34:14.69	Mayor Cox	That's the scum, yeah.
04:34:15.84	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:34:16.99	Kevin McGowan	Okay.
04:34:24.31	Kevin McGowan	I did not.
04:34:25.26	Kevin McGowan	Thank you.
04:34:25.27	Councilmember Sobieski	Okay.
04:34:25.78	Councilmember Sobieski	I did not. I'll discuss that. I'll just read it into the record. It's one page during discussion.
04:34:31.16	Mayor Cox	Okay, seeing no further questions, I'm gonna open it up to public comment.
04:34:35.85	Babette McDougall	Babette McDougall.
04:34:37.79	Mayor Cox	Actually, I see Adrian Britton standing up in our chambers. So we'll hear from folks in our chambers first.
04:34:46.33	Adrienne Brinton	Thank you all.
04:34:46.70	Mayor Cox	Welcome again.
04:34:47.77	Adrienne Brinton	Thank you. I feel like I've overstayed my welcome tonight, but anyway, I'll try to be quick again, do the late hour. The fire station, I think is a great idea to look at selling. I don't see that the city would get a great benefit for being a landlord to the fire department. So that's an excellent idea that we should definitely explore. The Trident dock is something that I think was not listed as a priority that I think we should definitely look at. I know that there's a lot of work going on downtown looking at that, looking for grant money, also looking for other ways that the businesses can contribute to improving that. And the city, I think we should be willing to do something there to get that fixed. It could be a source of pride in our town. Today, it's not. The last thing I'll mention is parking lot one, we have money to do it. I know there's design work going on. I think we should be open to looking at doing it right, not just paving it the way it is, but actually looking at how to make it into a more beautiful space while still being a parking lot. It's our front door. We've done the ferry landing. It looks great down there. Parking lot one could really, really be game changing there as well. So thank you for taking my comments.
04:35:56.48	Mayor Cox	Seeing none, others, and OK.
04:36:02.27	Mayor Cox	I'm not wearing my glasses, so when I don't get speaker cards, it's sorry.
04:36:04.73	Vicki Nichols	Sorry for me.
04:36:05.15	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:36:05.31	Vicki Nichols	Yeah.
04:36:05.66	Vicki Nichols	I'm interested in hearing about the park expansion. If you're talking about the
04:36:14.06	Vicki Nichols	area that's on the other side of the wetland that the city owns, and then you have the former Malia property on the other end, unless that property is used for a passive park, that is deed restricted by the Coastal Conservancy. And a previous council forgot about that, and they went back you use, make a dollar off of that property, you have to give that land back to the Coastal Conservancy. It's deed restricted for park expansion. So I don't know where that is. It should be in your record somewhere. Has anybody looked at that?
04:36:52.24	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:36:57.18	Babette McDougall	Okay, Babette McDougall.
04:36:57.77	Vicki Nichols	Yeah.
04:37:03.32	Babette McDougall	Well, I really have to say thank you, Vicki Nichols, because...
04:37:06.97	Babette McDougall	You saved me from going blue in the face. But yes, you really need to know this idea of deploying
04:37:14.75	Babette McDougall	the CIP, which is
04:37:17.75	Babette McDougall	supposed to be a tool to enable infrastructure to move forward in our community. And instead, you've created as an assassination hit list. You know, you you're doing subterfuge. You've got your own priorities. All this stuff about the secret deals going up and down the town that are finally eking out in your council chambers by your own admission.
04:37:37.17	Babette McDougall	happens.
04:37:37.82	Babette McDougall	So you want to take away Dunphy Park where there are permanent conservation easements and you want to turn it into a hotel or apartment buildings?
04:37:45.19	Babette McDougall	Great.
04:37:46.71	Babette McDougall	We will see you in court.
04:37:48.60	Babette McDougall	So many people came forward from Friends of Dunphy Park second iteration to expand on what is in fact the unique quality is of our town's character, just like trying to use the CIP list to subvert the
04:38:02.93	Babette McDougall	prominent place that the corporation yards, imagine saying, oh, let's just move the corporation yard to Mill Valley. We separate ourselves by a lake now because of king tides. You're not thinking this through very carefully. And your consistent insistence that you have to keep City Hall somehow relegated to a backseat so that you can somehow, what, bring it back one day and say, oh boy, let's have high density, low income housing. Who needs City Hall? I mean, the ultimate marker is why are you recommissioning these things on the CIP list that completely contravene the city's own interpretation of its own unique character, which is most certainly open shoreline, open water and open land, especially as it equates to our shoreline.
04:38:47.21	Babette McDougall	I urge you to not dive into these holy cows. I mean, these are sacred cows. I mean, really, it starts with Miwok burial sites. You have no idea what you're treading on here.
04:38:58.58	Babette McDougall	These are very deep feelings. Thank you.
04:39:02.48	Babette McDougall	No further public comments.
04:39:04.20	Mayor Cox	All right, I'll close public comment, bring it up here for discussion.
04:39:10.65	Councilmember Sobieski	Can I, since you didn't see it, I'll just, I'll use my, you want to put me on the clock? I would not read it.
04:39:15.56	Mayor Cox	I would not read it into the record. It's already attached to the agenda.
04:39:18.29	Councilmember Sobieski	agenda? I'll just highlight that there's a letter from
04:39:19.57	Mayor Cox	Right.
04:39:22.49	Councilmember Sobieski	Linda Fotch and Cass Green, representing the
04:39:25.92	Councilmember Sobieski	the analysis that they've been doing on water access to downtown to make a point about water access being important apparently there's been a group of business owners and residents looking at three different locations for water access in the downtown area they've identified pros and cons of all three and they've identified funding sources for grants for all three including the public pier and they note that the public peer was originally from our facilities condition assessment listed as a priority project. The most recent staff report was basically asking a question of whether it should stay there. And the letter advocates that it should, not for the purpose of rebuilding it currently,
04:40:02.97	Councilmember Sobieski	that it be remain an active project and their proposal is that 75k be allocated to doing i'll just quote this part uh the design of the three locations the preliminary design and grant and supporting a grant application process to find monies to actually uh refurbish those three areas so my narrow discussion suggestion would be that we do give direction on that and add it to the project. I have two minutes, so I'll say my other points. I got a really interesting letter from a resident that didn't get submitted about expanding the sidewalk.
04:40:37.67	Councilmember Sobieski	program with an interesting concept that I hadn't considered. We currently are proposing a little
04:40:43.21	Councilmember Sobieski	cost sharing. The thought would be to be more generous with the cost sharing.
04:40:47.59	Councilmember Sobieski	in the first year and less than the second and less than the third. It would encourage people to apply. So if we advertised it well that we were
04:40:55.03	Councilmember Sobieski	if we allocated a reasonable amount of money, half a million dollars, let's say, or something like that, and then set it up in three tiers, and the first people who get to use it, there'll be an incentive to apply in the first year. So whatever subsidy we provide in year one, we cut it in half for year two, cut it in half again in year three, and that would deplete that fund. They would also accelerate the sidewalk repair program across town. It's a way of getting scale. So I think we should consider doing that. And then I'm...
04:41:26.34	Councilmember Sobieski	bummed that it's so expensive to redo bridgeway from end to end. But to me, that's still important. So I can't keep track of how much one time monies we have available, but I would be interested in nevertheless, considering an allocation to do bridgeway from end to end now, um, if it's sensible in terms of allocating our one time monies for that purpose. Uh, and I just can't tell without looking at the numbers. So we'd love to direct staff to look at that.
04:41:54.38	Councilmember Sobieski	Thank you.
04:41:55.50	Mayor Cox	Vice Mayor.
04:41:56.29	Vice Mayor Woodside	As to the first points on the water access, I'm in complete agreement. I think we have some opportunities. It's a top priority, both from emergency evacuation point of view, as well as recreation, and just overall beauty and sensibility of the whole community. So I'm really looking forward to seeing some actual capital improvements along the waterfront that provide that kind of access. When the city manager is recommending holding off on the final go on the expansion of the park, my reason for thinking that that recommendation is a good one is not that it wouldn't be used as a park, but how would it coordinate with the adjacent property? It might be that the design would need modification before we would go forward. That's what I was thinking. I just want to say, as a park but how would it coordinate with the adjacent property it might be that the design would need modification before we would go forward that's what i was thinking i don't think anyone is suggesting that we abandon the notion that there be a park it's a question of how does it relate to the immediate neighboring property and there might be a better way there's also a very important point that goes out into the water right nearby. There's been talk about creating an island that would be a refuge for seals and other such things. There's a whole lot of ideas floating around there. Some involve city property, some involve private property. It would be worth making sure we've looked at the alternatives before we give the final go-ahead. That's all I was thinking. So having said that, I'm impressed by the ability to identify as specifically as you have these projects with estimates that I hope are reliable. And I also think that we're going to see things in this next year, such as water access and maybe things we don't foresee right now. So I would hate to spend all of it on one project such as Bidway. I may disagree with you, Member Sobiesti, but I really think that we've got to be a little careful before we spend all of it on that one project when there may be some other things that we'll look more favorably upon if we got a little further into the process. So having said that, I'm prepared to accept the overall recommendation with those additions.
04:44:12.89	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:44:14.35	Mayor Cox	Councilmember Hoffman?
04:44:15.41	Councilmember Hoffman	You're talking about the one project, the Bridgeway project?
04:44:18.36	Mayor Cox	The bridge, he wants to do the entirety of Bridgeway as opposed to sections.
04:44:18.50	Councilmember Hoffman	Bridget.
04:44:23.71	Councilmember Hoffman	OK, thank you. Thank you for that. Sorry.
04:44:27.03	Councilmember Hoffman	Yeah, that's an interesting proposal. I'd be interested in exploring that and looking at when we get the number from Chris of what we have in our excess and what that number would be to do end-to-end. When we're out there and when we have the crews retained and what that number would be. in acknowledging that numbers go up, right? So, you know, and just knocking it all out at once, right? So whatever the lower bid is between asphalt and
04:45:02.89	Councilmember Hoffman	What's the nice name we're calling it? It's not slurry, but we're calling it something. Yeah, micro seal. So, yeah, I'd be interested in that and knowing that, right? So I think that's interesting. The rest of the plan that you put together, I think it's a good plan. I support it. It's interesting, the downtown, you know, the P-BID, that they put together this proposal. You know, I don't oppose it, but, you know know that's the reason why we funded the pbid i'm not in i don't think it's the time to give further um funding for them um i don't you know i don't oppose the conceptually the but that's why we gave them the funding i'm not interested or i don't think it's appropriate for us to give further funding at this point and I you know it's interesting that the amount they're asking for is about the amount that they're underfunded by their own businesses in their business district so they're underfunded by about eighty thousand dollars and they're asking for another 75 so you know the city we funded by a hundred and twenty thousand
04:45:06.88	Unknown	Microsoft
04:46:06.95	Councilmember Hoffman	and they're asking for another 75 so i'm not interested in adding that to our priority list at this point so thank you for bringing that up interesting project i like things on the water but um not this time so
04:46:24.42	Councilmember Blaustein	Yes.
04:46:25.51	Councilmember Blaustein	I first I just want to say I agree with the general budget direction and I appreciate the hard work of our interim finance director and the city manager in securing responsible use of the funds for our CIP and for what our budgeting picture looks like going forward and I look forward to those discussions in the weeks ahead. Ed, generally just some comments on the projects and it shouldn't surprise you based on my questions but I really do when we come forth with the plan on the repairs for the streets want to see an emphasis on emergency access points and would even push to see potentially more stairs not just one set of stairs because again
04:47:01.76	Councilmember Blaustein	We need to be aware and prepared in the event of a fire or disaster. We're living in a time of climate change where much is unpredictable. And to that end, I really would like to see a continued emphasis on sea level rise, not just with grant funding, but given the work that Katie's office is doing, I think that we could give a closer look perhaps to infrastructure projects to improve sea level rising climate change mitigation more generally. I appreciate the beautification efforts here, the street trees. I was at a meeting community meeting yesterday with the vice mayor, where everyone raised their hand enthusiastically about the idea of adding more trees.
04:47:38.74	Councilmember Blaustein	I appreciate the waterfront access point and would like to at least see us cost that out and pursue what that might look like, although I'm uncomfortable.
04:47:46.38	Councilmember Blaustein	necessarily saying yes to anything without having an idea of our more full budgeting picture and again as i mentioned in my comments i think it's really important that we weigh equally all of the feedback that we receive from residents with regards to their concerns about each of their streets and their pavement so when we do look again at which projects to consider if we can somehow aggregate the correspondence that we have received from neighbors so that we are adequately addressing and fairly addressing everyone's concerns but I I definitely appreciate the strong emphasis on infrastructure as we have consistently prioritized that as a council and I look forward to seeing this in the context of the budget and appreciate the direction tonight
04:48:27.81	Mayor Cox	Thank you. I will echo the majority of my fellow council members comments. With respect to water access, you know,
04:48:38.39	Mayor Cox	We listed on slide 13,
04:48:41.31	Mayor Cox	you know the 11 things that we identified during our strategic planning process that were priorities our facilities storm drains improve our roadways uh deferred maintenance uh sea level rise flooding stairs um water access was not one of those i think that's important we've been wanting to find funds to fix the trident dock since 2012, when we considered repairs before it was totally obliterated by a subsequent storm.
04:49:16.14	Mayor Cox	I think I would want to see us address the basics that we've identified in our strategic planning process at the beginning of the year before we add
04:49:27.19	Mayor Cox	additional wonderful projects, but
04:49:29.74	Mayor Cox	Um,
04:49:30.87	Mayor Cox	not necessary projects to the
04:49:34.46	Mayor Cox	to the infrastructure needs of the residents in general. If we were able to obtain grant funding, that would be amazing, but most grant funding requires a match of some level, at least 10% typically.
04:49:50.48	Mayor Cox	I would be concerned.
04:49:52.86	Mayor Cox	I would be...
04:49:53.87	Mayor Cox	I would be supportive of seeking out grant funding and considering it,
04:49:58.14	Mayor Cox	but I would want to be sure that we have other things in hand first, such as Bridgeway, which our residents traverse every day. For Bridgeway, I would be reluctant to spend $6 million in the coming year. I would rather see us divide that into three tranches, with the most important one being Princess to Napa, which is the most traversed, the most necessary to our downtown businesses. and so I'd like to see us undertaken. to Napa, which is the most traversed, the most necessary to our downtown businesses. And so I'd like to see us undertake that project first. If the difference between micro seal and concrete is 10% or less, I would say go ahead and spend the extra money on concrete, depending on that delta. And we'll get to see that delta when proposals come in. For Dunphy phase two, I have to say I was not as green as the vice mayor in college
04:50:54.40	Mayor Cox	my thoughts for the future. I really want us to consider the, that holistic area, the police, the former police station, the parking pad, uh, what we're going to do with Bridgeway Marina. I really want us to sort of master plan that little area before we decide how best to proceed with Dunphy part, uh, phase two. So I do think we have to obviously be respectful of deed restrictions and tribal. We've been very careful to preserve our relationship with our tribal partners. All of the work done at Dunphy Park was very respectful of the burial grounds. Thank you.
04:51:38.53	Mayor Cox	I'm going to invite further comments. I had just a couple more.
04:51:42.44	Councilmember Sobieski	Yeah, I'm just wondering how to bring that home, because we've all provided different comments.
04:51:47.94	Councilmember Sobieski	like I mentioned, at least wanting to explore, looking at the total cost with maybe a more refined estimate for doing Bridgeway. The vice mayor isn't so psyched with that, but Council Member Hoffman is. So how can we...
04:52:00.96	Councilmember Sobieski	make a decision among the five of us around that. I don't know if we should take them one at a time.
04:52:05.07	Councilmember Sobieski	I have a notion that I would love to direct that we should at least ask the fire department for a bid on buying the building, as well as leasing the building. So we have the purchase option as well. And I know we have to go through the whole process that we know.
04:52:18.13	Mayor Cox	I think that's a whole separate conversation. I suggest we have staff come back to us as part of the budgeting process with the revised feedback that we've provided.
04:52:28.33	Councilmember Sobieski	On all of our questions. On all of our various feedback. So any one council member's comment is direction. And so my comments will get responses, but so will everyone else's.
04:52:29.37	Mayor Cox	I'm not sure.
04:52:38.47	Mayor Cox	Yeah, I'm just, I feel as though the hour is too late and I can't, I don't feel as though we can do a comprehensive enough job tonight. If we try to take items one by one, I'd rather.
04:52:48.56	Councilmember Sobieski	So the direction of staff is to listen to all the comments we made and respond to them all.
04:52:52.12	Mayor Cox	and come back with another recommendation as part of the budgeting process. I see the interim finance director nodding his head, which makes me happy.
04:52:56.24	Councilmember Sobieski	I see.
04:53:00.54	Vicki Nichols	you
04:53:00.91	Vice Mayor Woodside	It would make us all happy, and I certainly think that none of us would disagree with understanding alternatives and the costs before we have to make a final decision. And I'm not adverse to seeing what the numbers are for these things, but since I was very green at our strategic plan and neglected to mention, as I now realize I should have, water access, to me it is a priority. I think it's a priority to our residents and for a lot of reasons. So I would like to see us at least be willing to not spend all of our capital funds such that we can't during the course of the year as proposals may come forward. There are some public-private possibilities. There are some grant possibilities, and I do think it is a real benefit to the whole community if we can do that one other little part of the roadway that we all think probably all agree is one of the most dangerous parts or or at least risky parts and that's when you first come into town on the south yeah there's no not even a sidewalk there's no not even a sidewalk
04:53:01.12	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:53:01.15	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:54:03.06	Unknown	Thank you.
04:54:03.08	Vicki Nichols	Yeah.
04:54:05.19	Vice Mayor Woodside	and such. And
04:54:07.96	Vice Mayor Woodside	We haven't mentioned that specifically, but that's a small portion, and maybe...
04:54:12.53	Mayor Cox	Alexander Avenue.
04:54:13.76	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
04:54:14.12	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:54:14.15	Vicki Nichols	Thank you.
04:54:14.17	Vice Mayor Woodside	Yeah.
04:54:14.74	Mayor Cox	But part of that's owned not by us.
04:54:17.27	Vice Mayor Woodside	I understand. I understand. And there may be some private owners interested in cooperating with us on moving a retaining wall, for example, such that there could be a sidewalk. I've heard rumors to that effect in the neighborhood. But at least we should, for safety reasons, when we look at these things, be open to that would not be a major project, I don't think. But it's something that, again, we're not giving—
04:54:40.63	Mayor Cox	City clerk, I'm not seeing a clock.
04:54:42.62	Vice Mayor Woodside	Sorry.
04:54:44.00	Vice Mayor Woodside	My two minutes are up.
04:54:45.42	Mayor Cox	No, it's okay. I just didn't want to... I've been doing this... I got called on a clock, so I want to be sure the clock is in use because we all are having a second bite, so I wanted to finish my comments. Did you have anything further? Okay, um...
04:55:01.13	Mayor Cox	I want to be sure we have enough money for the firehouse records.
04:55:05.06	Mayor Cox	300, not 80.
04:55:08.01	Mayor Cox	I endorse Councilmember Sobieski's $0.5 million sidewalk fund.
04:55:15.27	Mayor Cox	to incentivize undertaking
04:55:18.75	Mayor Cox	that program.
04:55:19.84	Mayor Cox	I...
04:55:20.72	Mayor Cox	For the same reasons I enunciated regarding water access, I'm a little leery of an island concept until we've addressed some of our ADA requirements. We don't yet know what our storm drain requirements will be, and so I'm loathe to spend our entire nut until we have all of the...
04:55:39.45	Mayor Cox	um data that we need to accomplish a holistic plan but i think we've given good direction this evening i'm going to look at staff and ask do you need further direction from us this evening
04:55:53.49	Chris	No, no, I think it's clear, Mayor. Council, thank you very much.
04:55:57.12	Mayor Cox	And thank you to my colleagues for really engaging in such a detailed manner in this really important project.
04:56:04.61	Mayor Cox	Okay.
04:56:07.25	Mayor Cox	I know. Well, and we're close to the end. So we have one more sort of meaty item. Thank you.
04:56:16.06	Mayor Cox	Mr. Nava, thank you to
04:56:19.03	Mayor Cox	our fire folks. Thank you, Director McGowan.
04:56:24.00	Mayor Cox	Okay, we're going to move on to city manager reports. The first is city manager information for council that includes an update on
04:56:31.82	Mayor Cox	Pending asset and obligation transfer agreement with Sausalud Marin City Sanitary District. You can assume we've read your staff report, but please.
04:56:39.16	Chris	I will be very brief, and I want to thank Vice Mayor Woodside and Councilmember Hoffman for their work as an ad hoc committee. We're essentially at the finish line to bring back a new MOU, which would involve three changes. One is removal of two items that the city put in place when the MOU was approved by the city council, the service area expansion and the board membership, but then also tightening up the finance section of it so that the existing revenue in the sewer enterprise fund which is close to five million dollars is broken out this way that the city of sausalito is able to use that funding to pay about 1.6 million dollars for pension costs another 500 000 for for post-employment benefit costs, another $1.6 million for pension costs, another $500,000 for post-employment benefit costs, another $600,000 or so for a state revolving loan fund. That would then leave approximately $2 million.
04:57:37.66	Chris	million dollars in that account and in order to de-feas and pay off the 2015 bonds we would need the sewer district to pay the city three point million something dollars and then we could then pay off the bonds we're working with the bank of new york mail-in we're working with state revolving loan fund to get the payoff schedules and dates that they require and then at that point then and only then, if those three conditions are met, could we bring back the MOU that says, you know, this would all happen with all the specifics in the MOU that currently exists, public engagement, transfer of assets, transfer of records. All of that would happen over the next nine months. But we want to bring this agreement back to the city council in July. We're scheduling a meeting with the sanitary sewer district for June 5th, I believe is the date to get this all finalized and then bring it back to the full Council as you've been working on this since 2019.
04:58:39.29	Mayor Cox	Thank you, City Manager.
04:58:41.16	Mayor Cox	City Attorney information for Council.
04:58:43.90	City Attorney	No, nothing to report this evening.
04:58:46.09	Mayor Cox	All right, council member committee reports.
04:58:54.53	Mayor Cox	So we have an MCCMC meeting scheduled here in Sausalito for May 28th. I had thought we were going to hear about e-bikes, but the county has decided instead to present that e-bikes at the following month in a different city. And so we do not have a speaker for May 28th.
04:59:14.12	Mayor Cox	And so.
04:59:15.42	Mayor Cox	um,
04:59:16.40	Mayor Cox	I've invited Senator McGuire. I've invited Congressman Huffman. I've invited Congress.
04:59:22.44	Mayor Cox	Um,
04:59:24.40	Mayor Cox	Assemblymember Connolly. So if somebody has a brainstorm for a speaker, otherwise I think we're going to postpone the city of Sausalito MCCMC until later in the year.
04:59:40.22	Councilmember Blaustein	But doesn't MCCMC have an agenda in business as expected? It would be.
04:59:44.19	Mayor Cox	It would turn into a virtual meeting, and then the in-person meeting would happen later in the year.
04:59:50.79	Meryl	Okay.
04:59:51.68	Meryl	Thank you.
04:59:52.58	Mayor Cox	Yeah, so apologies for that.
04:59:56.48	Meryl	Yes.
05:00:01.64	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
05:00:03.26	Walford Solorzano	Sorry, I got an update earlier from the people organizing that. So they wanted to see if maybe we can move it over to July. Yeah. People want to come and visit the Spinnaker during that time.
05:00:12.47	Councilmember Blaustein	Yeah.
05:00:15.22	Walford Solorzano	And so...
05:00:16.83	Babette McDougall	It is beautiful during that time. So is July good with everybody?
05:00:20.93	Mayor Cox	Thank you.
05:00:21.38	Mayor Cox	And then we'll have a virtual MCC-MC meeting at the end of May.
05:00:24.57	Walford Solorzano	And I'll contact Jeff over at the Spinnaker, letting him...
05:00:28.32	Mayor Cox	If you could let him know, and hopefully he won't charge us a cancellation fee, and then...
05:00:34.09	Mayor Cox	if you'll confirm with Unknown.
05:00:36.82	Mayor Cox	Okay, yes. Okay. Thank you for that, city clerk. Okay. All right. Appointments. It is my pleasure this evening to appoint Vice Mayor Woodside as the liaison to the library board and to the Marin Clean.
05:00:37.58	Walford Solorzano	Okay.
05:00:37.89	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
05:00:37.97	Walford Solorzano	Thank you.
05:00:50.59	Mayor Cox	Energy Board.
05:00:52.43	Mayor Cox	Um,
05:00:53.56	Mayor Cox	It's also my...
05:00:55.54	Mayor Cox	honor to appoint Tricia Smith to complete the term of Edward Schultz on the Commission on Aging, who had to step away for health reasons.
05:01:07.27	Mayor Cox	Oh, no.
05:01:10.66	Mayor Cox	Oh, gosh.
05:01:13.38	Mayor Cox	Well, I don't have the info to do it, but I'll do the next one. So, Walford, will you remind me to adjourn our next meeting in honor of Ed Schultz, who made a huge contribution in a very short period of time to our Commission on Aging?
05:01:29.44	Mayor Cox	Okay, future agenda items I have listed here, protection of legacy businesses as a future agenda item. We've already given direction.
05:01:37.84	Mayor Cox	to the Community and Economic Development Department to bring back the affordable housing inventory
05:01:48.97	Mayor Cox	in the early, in the new fiscal year.
05:01:53.99	Mayor Cox	um,
05:01:57.25	Mayor Cox	No minutes. We have minutes from boards, commissions, and committees. Okay. So I'm going to take public comment on items 6A through 6G.
05:02:08.27	Babette McDougall	For Bette McDougall.
05:02:16.12	Babette McDougall	Thank you. It's awfully late, but I...
05:02:21.28	Walford Solorzano	Oh, sorry.
05:02:26.49	Babette McDougall	Do you hear me now?
05:02:27.90	Walford Solorzano	Yes.
05:02:28.62	Babette McDougall	Okay.
05:02:28.64	Walford Solorzano	Okay.
05:02:29.36	Babette McDougall	All right, thank you. So I wanted to address the issue about committee reports. I seem to remember at the beginning of the
05:02:38.17	Babette McDougall	first quarter of this year that Ms. Blaustein mentioned that, did she not mention that she would sit on a committee having to do with tax?
05:02:45.61	Babette McDougall	And if that's true, I'd like to hear a report on that.
05:02:48.96	Babette McDougall	Um,
05:02:50.14	Babette McDougall	I have some questions about tax for sure that I'd like to put to Ms. Blaustein, if I remember correctly.
05:02:56.31	Babette McDougall	So I'd like to put that out there that if that's true,
05:02:59.06	Babette McDougall	Be nice to hear what's going on with regard to tax. And then also we'll circle back to find out how our infrastructure taxes can be
05:03:07.08	Babette McDougall	properly returned to our municipality so that we may have more direct access and control over our own rightful infrastructure tax remittances.
05:03:15.69	Babette McDougall	Hopefully Ms. Blasstein will learn something about that too. Thank you so much.
05:03:16.04	Walford Solorzano	you
05:03:16.09	Vicki Nichols	is
05:03:21.88	Walford Solorzano	No further public comment.
05:03:23.09	Mayor Cox	All right, then it's my pleasure to adjourn our meeting at 12.11 in the morning. Thank you all. We accomplished an awful lot tonight, and thank you for the collaborative way in which we worked. And good evening.