City Council May 21, 2024

City Council Meeting Summary

Time	Item	Item Summary	Motion Summary	Comment Summary
00:00:00	None: None	An announcement was made that the meeting for May 21, 2024, is being held in the council chambers at 420 Little Street. Staff and members of the public are participating via Zoom. The meeting is being broadcast live on the city's website and cable TV channel 27.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:00:17	I: CALL TO ORDER, ROLL CALL & ADJOURN TO CLOSED SESSION	The meeting was called to order, and a roll call was conducted. The council then moved to adjourn to a closed session to discuss two items: Conference with Real Property Negotiator regarding the MLSK School Site, 100 Ebtide, and New Village School, and Conference with Legal Counsel regarding Anticipated Litigation (00:00:38). Councilmember Kellman announced he would recuse himself from the closed session due to the proximity of his home to the properties being discussed (00:00:59). Upon returning to open session, it was announced that there were no announcements from the closed session (00:02:58).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:03:14	II: RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION - 7:00 PM	The meeting reconvened to open session. The Pledge of Allegiance was recited. An announcement was made that the mayor and vice mayor will join a working group to address the city's insurance issues, as Sausalito needs to find a new insurance carrier. The next action was to review the draft minutes and open the floor for public comment. (00:03:25)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:03:57	2: ACTION MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING	The City Clerk opened the floor for public comments regarding the action minutes of the previous meeting, both via Zoom and in-person. There were no public comments. Council then discussed a revision to the minutes, specifically to include an announcement that there were no reportable actions from the closed session. (00:04:22) A motion was then made to approve the minutes as revised.	Motion to approve the minutes as revised. (00:04:37)	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:04:44	3: CONSENT CALENDAR	The council is considering the consent calendar, which includes items generally considered routine and non-controversial. The items on the consent calendar are: 3A, proclaiming June LGBTQT Pride Month and approving to fly the Progress Pride flag during the month of June; 3B, approval of the memorandum of agreement of the Marin Operational Area and Political Subdivisions at an annual cost of $7,500; and 3C, approval of the agreement with Fireworks and stage FX America for the 4th of July fireworks show in an amount of up to $35,000. Item 3D will be withdrawn. The council asked if there were any requests to remove items 3A, 3B, or 3C from the consent calendar. No items were removed. There was a public comment on item 3A, followed by a motion to approve consent items 3A through 3C. One councilmember thanked Council Member Hoffman, Jim Gabbert, and the Parks and Recreation Department for negotiating and finding an affordable fireworks option (00:07:39).	Motion to approve consent items 3A through 3C (00:07:39).	1 Total: 1 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:06:06 Charles Melton was In Favor: Charles Melton thanked the council for item 3A, flying the Progress Pride flag in June. He highlighted Sausalito's history as a haven for the LGBTQ+ community and emphasized the importance of the flag in sending a welcoming message. He also invited everyone to the citywide pride celebration June 20th-22nd, and provided a link to Sausalito Pride's website.
00:08:07	5: BUSINESS ITEMS	The provided snippet only indicates that a motion was made and seconded, and then the council moved to a vote.	Motion made and seconded, all in favor. (00:08:07)	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:08:10	5.A: Fiscal Year 2024/2025 Budget and Requested Direction	City Manager Zapata and Finance Director Hess presented the FY 24/25 budget, highlighting both positive and challenging aspects. Positives included savings, improved audits, and cash on hand. The major challenge is a significant increase in insurance costs (potentially $2-3 million), along with rising pension costs and slower sales tax revenue. The proposed solution involves using unassigned reserves and 115 trust money to address the insurance cost increase, while maintaining current service levels. Staff does not recommend continuing the CDA contract. There will be a mid-year budget review and a 10-year financial projection plan in development. Councilmember Cox asked about collecting budget plans from department heads and inquired about plans to improve the subpar performance of the Section 115 trust. She also inquired about the plan for additional revenue-generating measures. Councilmember Kelman clarified that the current general fund budget gap is $2 million, with $1.7 million being the PRISM insurance premium. She also clarified the definition of unassigned fund balance and asked about the possibility of increasing reserves to 25%. She inquired why the item does not recommend that we look at the property portfolio update and divest ourselves as a way to help bridge the gap today on the deficit and what portion of the numbers from the transfer tax would go to Southern Marine Fire. Councilmember Blaustein inquired about deferred maintenance, risk, and revenue opportunities. She also discussed grant funding and funding for non profits and asked if they had considered the county of Marin's participatory budgeting roll out over the last year. Councilmember Hoffman asked about the city reserve and what an appropriate reserve for Sausalito was and expressed that a 15% reserve was low and potentially a red flag and we need to decide as a city on a strategy. She also stated there was no offer from PRISM for 1.7. She also expressed the opinion that the unassigned cash was not truly unassigned and we need to be more aggressive.	No Motion	2 Total: 2 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
00:57:51 Scott Thornburg was In Favor: Thornburg thanked the council for focusing on revenue generation and offered EDAC's partnership. He advised against a vacancy tax due to the current economic climate and suggested focusing on increasing off-season TOT taxes. He mentioned that EDAC discussed the vacancy tax the previous day and they recommend not pursuing it because they think it is already a difficult climate. 01:04:48 Bushmaker was In Favor: Bushmaker urged the council to prioritize revenue increases and reduce spending on non-priority items. She stated that we need to stop spending money on non-discretionary or non-priority items, tighten the belt, and then take a good hard look at the discretionary spending.
01:38:37	5.B: Discussion and Direction Regarding Bid Process for the Ferry Landside Improvement Project, Tracy Way Improvement and Closure	The City Council discussed the bid process for the Ferry Landside Improvement Project, including improvements to Tracy Way. City Manager Zapata reviewed the council's previous directions, emphasizing the need for a transparent and public bid process. The discussion covered various aspects, including BCDC permit approval, safety concerns raised by the Yacht Club, and the potential impact on parking. Director McGowan addressed concerns about parking spot removal and bike parking locations. Officer Mather voiced the police department's concerns about traffic management and pedestrian safety with the proposed changes. There was extensive public comment, largely in favor of moving forward with the project, but with some concerns about safety and parking. Councilmember Hoffman questioned the police department about safety concerns. Councilmember Kelman questioned the financial analysis in the staff report and the potential value of parking spaces on Humboldt. The Council ultimately directed staff to move forward with the bidding process, with the understanding that the project may adapt based on additional information and the price.	Direct the public works department to utilize the process specified in section 201.03 point B8A of the California public contracts code for the very landslide improvement project. With all project elements included in the base bid except element C Tracy way improvements to be bid as a separate alternate and include the additive and deduct alternates from the staff report, including any addition staff recommends to make Humboldt safer, particularly with regard to bike parking. Order the planning commission to complete a report and recommendation on the vacation of Tracy Way within 40 days of submission to the planning commission per government code section 65402. (02:36:17)	25 Total: 19 In Favor 1 Against 5 Neutral
01:54:54 Jim Gabbard was Neutral: Supports the concept but has concerns about the loss of parking places and the promise to keep the kiosk. Wants to see the bids to determine the cost of the project. 01:56:58 Mary Faust was In Favor: Happy that the project is moving to a bid phase and wants the bid to include the enclosure of Tracy Way, emphasizing its importance to the city's flow and the creation of a safe and enjoyable promenade. 01:57:43 Carolyn Revell was In Favor: Urged the council to move forward with the project as approved, including the vacation of Tracy Way. Highlighted the project's benefits for pedestrian and bicycle circulation and its funding through a grant, not city funds. 01:59:13 Jacques Alvin was In Favor: Requested approval of the staff recommendations for putting the entire project out to bid, as approved on January 6th, and to expedite the process for vacating Tracy Way. 02:00:55 Gail Schell was In Favor: Requested the council to move forward with the project, emphasizing that many community members support it and believe it is good for the city. 02:01:53 Sharna Brockett was In Favor: Expressed support for moving forward with the entire design, including bidding out Tracy Way, and stated misinformation about the amount of the parking revenue loss. Suggested improvements to maximize parking revenue and said downtown improvement will build tax revenue. 02:04:10 Peter Van Meter was In Favor: Stated bidding out the entire project and moving expeditiously at the parallel project of closing Tracy away is a great opportunity to have the whole project accepted by July 30th. Also, the project is likely to be within budget. 02:04:59 Muriel Ullman was In Favor: Expressed support for the project as a Sausalito resident who walks downtown several times a week and would love the promenade thing. Also, voiced the amount of goodwill and respect for each other the professionals have shown during Zooms from the house. 02:05:45 Cheryl Popp was In Favor: Urged the council to stay the course with the entire Ferry Landslide project as it was approved by all of you February 6th, while disagreeing with the ongoing opposition of the Yacht Club. The landslide improvement project is going to dramatically enhance the downtown for visitors as well as our residents. 02:07:46 Beth Swerke was In Favor: Expressed excitement to move forward with the plan and appreciated the Council approving the plan over three months ago. It would create revenue, including off-season through hotels and whatnot, and fix the current parking meters. 02:09:10 Karina Hughes was In Favor: Expressed enthusiasm for the plan and believed now is the moment, and it's time to improve the downtown waterfront for generations to come, in accordance with how the staff has recommended in their process and approach. During the bidding process, instruct the city staff to go out and do what they need to do to start the administrative steps required to close Tracy way. 02:10:48 Titus Antonovicis was In Favor: Expressed support for putting the ferry landing project to bid as is with Tracy Way work included. The project is a great investment to make the downtown more appealing to residents and tourists alike. The Tracy Way plan connects the whole project to the heart of the town. 02:12:08 Kit Hayes was In Favor: Encouraged the council to get bids out for the whole design, including the Tracy way pedestrian promenade. It would improve the look and feel of our downtown and to leverage the free money that's available to enhance the heartbeat of our city. 02:13:34 Martha Loftus was In Favor: Encouraged the implementation of staff's recommendation of bidding this entire process project in its whole. The construction bids can come higher than the estimates and move forward as it is. Tracy Way would be a promenade for pedestrians. 02:14:50 Michael Rex was In Favor: Asked the council to stick to the previous vote, five to zero, to move forward with the entire plan that included closing trace away vehicles and to direct staff to pursue the process promptly. 02:20:00 Jacques Alvin was Neutral: The two city employees working the bicycle parking on Tracy Way are also helping people with the parking meters and answering questions as to where you can go to a bathroom. Those two people can help to make all that work properly at a cost-effective system. 02:21:14 Kieran Culligan was Neutral: Discussed the math of taking the average revenue per space, multiplying that in terms of an increase in spaces, and a decrease in spaces, and that being a resulting financial impact. But that is not how it works. In Dixon study occupancy was 50% to 70%, so an extra space might not generate any money on that peak day. And $1,500 per space is gained if added one space if it fills up. The budget impact has been way smaller than we've been getting to. 02:23:10 Scott Thornburg was In Favor: Would love for the ferry landing to be a pride of place and have a place downtown that really showed the best side of this community. And is costing very little, because it's paid for with a federal grant. I really encourage you tonight to be brave and to move this community forward and move this project forward in its entirety. 02:24:20 Steven Woodside was In Favor: Complimented Director McGowan and the city staff for submitting a report tonight that I think is very consistent with the council unanimous direction to move forward. There may be an alternative that would also be viable, but the point is move on. 02:25:58 Alice Merrill was Neutral: All part of the plan was to get some parking from the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. It's a lot. There's a lot of places missing. And I really want you to work on working with the Yacht Harbor Make those spaces available. Please don't leave those out. 02:29:08 Adrian Brinton was In Favor: Supported the city staff recommendation for bidding the project. The bike counts are changing and that is happening with E-bikes. Change is hard, but can be done. And all the big pieces are in place to guide people. 02:27:31 Fred Moore was In Favor: Strongly support approving and continuing moving forward the ferry landing. The existing improvements don't prevent you from moving forward with an improved plan. Change orders are inevitable in any project and is a good part of the process. 02:31:34 Charles Melton was In Favor: Thanked the City Council for the thoughtful process behind this very land side improvement plan and sees it as a tremendous opportunity to really make meaningful change, impactful change that's really going to improve the quality of life for all residents of here of South Toledo. 02:33:46 Bushmaker was Against: Expressed concern about change orders and the report to make sure the project does not go one cent over the grant that was awarded to the city. I find that there are some flawed assumptions in that Dixon report and I don't think we should go to the bank with it. 02:34:44 Bill Hines was Neutral: In February, the plan was reviewed, and David Parisi was here to speak to the safety aspects of the plan. He identified the fact that we're widening the walkway along the Yacht Club, and that extends all the way over to Humboldt. The result is going to be getting the cluster and congestion of bikes away from our ferry landing.
03:08:46	5.C: City Property portfolio update and approval to issue a Request for Proposals for property management services	City Manager Zapata provided an update on the city's property portfolio, a process initiated a few months prior. He highlighted a map of city leases and properties, noting over 100 properties in the staff report. The primary request was for authorization to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for property management services for city properties, working with the city attorney. The goal is to explore private sector options for property management due to the current hybrid system's inconsistent effectiveness (03:10:20). There were no initial questions for the city manager, after which public comment was opened.	Motion to approve releasing a request for proposals for property management services and provide direction to the staff on information related to city properties (03:18:07).	2 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 2 Neutral
03:11:23 Peter Van Meter was Neutral: Peter Van Meter inquired if obtaining brokers' opinions of value for city properties, as mentioned in the staff report, would be part of the discussion, specifically the Spencer Fire Station. He commented that a broker's opinion of value is often influenced by the expectation of future business and is essentially free (03:12:01). He suggested that a proper valuation of the Spencer Fire Station requires a development pro forma (03:12:31), and the city should pre-approve development potential to maximize return (03:12:58). 03:13:34 Steven Woodside was Neutral: Steven Woodside expressed appreciation for Peter's comments but offered a different perspective focusing on charitable nonprofits (03:13:45). He volunteered to help prepare a policy document or draft ordinance (03:14:06) that balances the community benefit of charitable nonprofits with the market value of city properties (03:14:19). He emphasized transparency in how the city leases public property, acknowledging the variety of lessees with varying capabilities to generate revenue or provide community benefits (03:15:23).
03:18:23	6: COMMUNICATIONS	The council moves to the next section of the agenda, which is an opportunity for members of the public to communicate on items not on the agenda. The City Clerk is asked to take public comments.	The council called the question and the motion carries. (03:18:26)	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:18:47	7: COUNCILMEMBER COMMITTEE REPORTS	Councilmember Kelman provided an update on several committee activities. He mentioned the budget, expressing optimism about securing $250,000 for Gate 5 projects and thanked the mayor for participating in the Sea Level Rise walkabout. He is actively engaged in his EDAC role, having contacted Green Yachts regarding a potential green boating center in Sausalito, following up on their $24 million grant. Kelman continued discussions with the Army Corps about a living lab concept for the machine shop property, even after the Council's disinterest. Congressman Huffman has written a letter of support to GSA for the Army Corps to acquire the property, and Kelman believes a letter of support from the city of Sausalito would be beneficial. He also noted an upcoming housing committee meeting where discussions will include the school merging and consolidating in the city and its implication on teacher housing (03:19:05).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:20:52	8A: City Manager Information for Council	City Manager Zapata thanked HR Manager Catherine Key for establishing an internship program, introducing interns Betty and Libby, who are assisting with city projects (03:20:58.03). Councilmember Blaustein requested tabletops on disaster preparedness, inviting Mike McKinley to discuss his booklet, and supporting a neighborhood group's grant application for fire safety (03:21:50.49). She also proposed a proclamation against hate speech, especially given recent incidents and Jewish Heritage Month, and a discussion on a code of conduct (03:22:40.61).	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:23:18	8B: Future Agenda Items	Councilmember Hoffman requested that the council consider upgrading its Zoom or webinar platform to better manage public comments and prevent hate speech. She also wants to hear from EDAC about revenue-generating opportunities and prioritization requests. (03:23:18) Councilmember Kelman thanked Councilmember Hoffman for her comments regarding hate speech and affirmed Sausalito's commitment to inclusivity, especially during LGBTQ month. (03:24:17) Councilmember Bushmaker mentioned a community initiative for a blue economy innovation zone that may come in the form of an initiative. (03:24:58) She wants the agenda setting committee to be aware of it, because if the initiative is to be added to the ballot this fall, there is a short timeline. Other councilmembers expressed their support for the initiative. (03:25:41) They agreed that the city attorney should review the initiative and that it should be added to a future agenda.	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral
03:26:07	9: ADJOURNMENT	The council confirms there are no further items or comments from council members. The meeting is then opened for public comment on items, the city manager's report, and future agenda items. Seeing no public comment, the public comment period is closed and the meeting is adjourned. (03:26:13)	No Motion	0 Total: 0 In Favor 0 Against 0 Neutral

City Council Meeting Transcript

Adrian Brinton

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Time	Speaker	Text
00:00:00.03	Unknown	May 21, 2024 is being held in council chambers located at 420 Little Street. And staff and members of the public are also participating through Zoom. This meeting is being broadcast live on the city's website and on cable TV channel 27.
00:00:17.48	Unknown	Thank you very much, city clerk. We will now call this meeting to order and we will conduct a roll call. If you please roll call the roll.
00:00:25.88	Unknown	All right. Councilmember Blaustein.
00:00:25.97	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:28.35	Unknown	here.
00:00:28.97	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:29.41	Unknown	Councilmember Hoffman.
00:00:31.62	Unknown	Here.
00:00:32.68	Unknown	Council Member Kellman. Here. Vice Mayor Cox.
00:00:33.93	Unknown	Here.
00:00:35.87	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:36.01	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:36.02	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:36.04	Unknown	here.
00:00:36.23	Unknown	Thank you.
00:00:36.77	Unknown	and Mary Sobieski.
00:00:38.17	Unknown	year.
00:00:38.71	Unknown	We will be going into closed session and discussing the following two items, the Conference with Real Property Negotiator, MLSK School Site, 100 Ebtide, New Village School. And the second item is Conference with Legal Counsel, Anticipated Litigation. Is there any announcements concerning closed session items? Thank you.
00:00:59.73	Unknown	Thank you, Mayor. Because of the proximity of my home to both of those properties that are the subject of the two closed session items, I will not be participating in the closed session this evening.
00:01:11.78	Unknown	Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on these two items?
00:01:16.83	Unknown	Any public comment? I've seen none.
00:01:19.73	Unknown	We will close public comment and we will adjourn to closed session. We'll resume here at 7 p.m.
00:01:23.38	Unknown	Yeah.
00:02:58.85	Unknown	We are now resuming open session. There are no announcements from closed session. We will begin today's meeting with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
00:03:14.04	Unknown	Thank you.
00:03:14.97	Unknown	the republic, a way to stand, one nation, under God, individual, with liberty and justice.
00:03:22.53	Unknown	Thank you very much.
00:03:25.74	Unknown	Only announcement, a mayor appointment announcement is the vice mayor and I are going to join a working group or former working group to focus on the insurance issue as you know.
00:03:35.98	Unknown	Sausalito is going to need to find a new insurance carrier and we are going to
00:03:40.72	Unknown	work on that with a regular meeting schedule to help bird dog that solution. The next action is the review of the draft minutes. And are there any public comments for the draft minutes?
00:03:57.88	Unknown	Thank you.
00:03:57.90	Unknown	City Clerk. If any members of the public have, want to make any public comments, there's two ways. If you're on Zoom, you can use the raise hand function. If you're in person, there are speaker slips over by the television and you can fill one out and give one over here.
00:04:13.31	Unknown	I've seen none at the moment.
00:04:15.32	Unknown	Thank you very much, City Clerk. We'll close the public comment.
00:04:18.49	Unknown	May or may I recommend one revision to the minutes?
00:04:22.01	Unknown	Yes, please.
00:04:22.59	Unknown	Following the item recess to closed session, there should be an announcement that there were no reportable actions from closed session.
00:04:30.71	Unknown	Could you please make that amendment city clerk, anything else? Seeing nothing else is there a motion to approve the minutes?
00:04:37.34	Unknown	So I move approval of the minutes as revised.
00:04:41.37	Unknown	Is there a second?
00:04:44.11	Unknown	Second.
00:04:44.53	Blaustein	Thank you.
00:04:44.66	Unknown	Okay, all in favor, say aye.
00:04:46.57	Blaustein	Bye.
00:04:47.11	Unknown	Bye.
00:04:47.21	Blaustein	Bye.
00:04:47.43	Unknown	Opposed?
00:04:48.76	Unknown	And it's our proof when I move on to the consent calendar.
00:04:51.41	Unknown	These are items generally considered routine and non-controversial and require no discussion and are expected to be passed unanimously. There will be not any separate discussion on consent calendar items. However, any council member may request that one item or any item be removed, and that item will then be heard later on today's agenda as a separate item. The items on consent are first, 3A, proclaiming June LGBTQT Pride Month and approving to fly the Progress Pride flag during the month of June. Item 3B, approval of the memorandum of agreement of the Marin Operational Area and Political Subdivisions at an annual cost of $7,500. Item 3C, approval of the agreement with Fireworks and stage FX America for the 4th of July fireworks show in an amount of up to $35,000 and item 3d is going to be withdrawn by staff and heard at a future agenda time. Are there any requests to remove any of the items 3 a B or C from consent?
00:05:55.62	Unknown	Seeing no such request, it would there, uh, could you please open it up for public comment?
00:05:59.79	Unknown	Thank you.
00:05:59.82	Unknown	Yes, we have Charles Melton.
00:06:01.53	Unknown	for.
00:06:03.03	Charles Melton	Thank you.
00:06:03.08	Unknown	Item 3A.
00:06:06.15	Unknown	Thank you.
00:06:06.17	Charles Melton	Good evening. My name is Charles Melton. I want to give a hearty thank you to our city council for item 3A, which is flying the Progress Pride flag during the month of June to recognize pride. Sausalito has a vibrant history of an LGBTQ plus community. In the 1950s, Sausalito was a safe haven for members of the military where they didn't live in San Francisco, where their commanding officers were from. So that way they could live openly and freely without being afraid of being discharged. members of the LGBTQ community make up our vibrant community today. They are shipbuilders, artisans. so that way they can live openly and freely without being afraid of being discharged. Members of the LGBTQ community make up our vibrant community today. They are shipbuilders, artisans, public servants, city staff, residents, taxpayers. They are the ones who contribute here to our city. The importance of flying the pride flag during the month of June is really to send a welcoming message to the LGBTQ community that our city hears them, sees them, and welcomes them. And I want to thank our city council for displaying that message here in the month of June by having the pride flag flown here at City Hall. I also want to invite our city council, our incredible city staff, and also the public to join in a citywide pride celebration during the month of June. June 20th, 21st, and 22nd is when our pride celebration will be taking place. It is being led by Sausalito Pride, a local nonprofit that's established by local volunteers for putting together this effort. Entire communities welcome to attend our events. You can learn more about the events and also about our LGBTQ history here in Sausalito at www.sausalitopride.org. Again, thank you City Council for your leadership on this and look forward to celebrating with everyone during Pride Month in June.
00:07:32.08	Unknown	Thank you.
00:07:34.78	Unknown	Any other public comment?
00:07:37.19	Unknown	Is there a motion on the consent calendar?
00:07:39.71	Unknown	I will move approval of consent items 3A through 3C. I did want to just take a brief moment to thank Council Member Hoffman, Jim Gabbert, and our Parks and Recreation Department for negotiating and finding an affordable fireworks option for us.
00:08:01.12	Unknown	this year. Saving the 4th of July, is that what you meant to say? Yeah. Thank you.
00:08:01.14	Unknown	this year.
00:08:07.69	Unknown	Is there a motion? I'll second. Okay. All in favor?
00:08:07.92	Unknown	I'll second.
00:08:10.23	Unknown	Aye. Opposed? Consent calendar items passed. There is no public hearing items. We move on to 5A, the first item of business fiscal year 2025, 2425 budget and discussion. City Manager Zapata.
00:08:10.54	Unknown	Bye.
00:08:11.03	Kelman	Thank you.
00:08:23.72	Zapata	Thank you mayor members of the council members of the public on Chad has our finance director will be on on zoom if we need him but this is essentially some information that I want to bring forward that I want to have council direction to staff on involves how we finally in finish building a draft budget want to talk a little bit about our last report which showed some things that are good and some things that are challenging to the good we talked about some of the savings Thank you. want to talk a little bit about our last report, which showed some things that are good and some things that are challenging to the good. We talked about some of the savings that have been garnered by city administration and city councils over the past years. Talked about some of our audit conditions and how our audits have improved and talked about cash on hand in various different funds, whether it's general fund, MLK fund, Old City Hall fund, Thailand's fund. So all that was information that we shared that was to the positive. To the negative, what we said is, you know, given our insurance conundrum, that we are expecting a huge increase in that obligation. And so that obligation is about, you know, two million, potentially three. We talked about our pensions, which we understand are going to be more expensive this year, and we talked about a slower sales tax revenue capture this coming year that's been projected by our consultant, HDL. So I want to speak about the sales tax first. Sales tax trends, good years, bad years, that's not unusual. The pension issues that we've known about for 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, and have planned for, that's not a big issue. The big issue is our insurance cost increase, which is very, very sizable and very, very impactful. And so it puts us in a situation where we have a budget that is going to be in need of some assistance and some direction from the City Council so what we proposed was that we bifurcate the fix this two to three million dollar fix by using unassigned reserves of which there are unassigned cash which there are 7.75 million of and marry that to some of the 115 trust money that we save for pensions over the past it's like eight years now and that number is about 3.7 million dollars that's in that account I heard from the council also as I asked that we do not diminish our service levels that this year is not the year to diminish service levels. We understand there's a big budget challenge with our insurance costs, but the idea of fixing that in one budget cycle is probably not wise. So we want to maintain service levels to the community. We want to keep the same programs we've talked about to a certain extent, things like the 4 of July things like the cars programs things like this jazz by the by the Bay programs which are staples in Sausalito what we are not recommending is a continuation of funding the CDA contract in this year's budget we received a note from our chair of the economic development Advisory Committee Scott Thurmburg which, which says they're not asking for money, but they do recommend that, you know, we do fund that in the high season times to take advantage of it. I don't, and Chad doesn't, and Brandon doesn't, our Community Development Director, our Finance Director, and myself believe that we should make that expenditure at this time. $75000 is what it cost us last year this past year to fund that you talked about a stopgap measure which provided six months of funding of thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars that amount in that contract and that obligation ended at the end of April so we're essentially operating without the services of CDA right now as we don't have an agreement we aren't recommending that we continue that agreement at least this fiscal year and so that's one thing that we believe is important city staff is requisitioned certain purchases that I don't believe are necessary out of the general fund that involve some vehicle purchases and fleets and so some fleet upgrades that I think can wait one more year given our financial position so there's a real clear direction that's needed as it relates to how we maintain our service levels because if we do we have you know the problem of insurance pensions and lower sales tax if we don't then you know you're gonna ask me to make cuts in less than three weeks before we come back with a draft budget for you to adopt by June the 30 June the 30th so time is ticking and I think the answer this year is clear direction on you know how much of that 7.75 million dollars in unassigned cash that we've accumulated over the last 10 years through practices do we use if in fact there is a revisitation of using 115 trust the reason that was brought up is because the cash we have in the unassigned account is absolutely stronger in terms of its interest earnings over the last couple of years due to Chad's involvement and investment in Treasury bills and the Bank of Marin upping the interest return on our holdings with them to 4% so that's good what the average from the pars fund and the 115 trust has been more akin to two and 3%. So the idea of taking 3% money and spending that was why we thought it made sense as opposed to spending the higher yielding money in our unassigned reserve that we have in treasury bills and in the Bank of Marin. So again, the other piece of this is we also know,
00:14:07.46	Zapata	that there is a mid-year budget uh review that we're going to have to do and that'll give us time to see if we need to course correct some more there's a 10-year financial projection plan program that's being worked on by mayor sobieski council member hoffman citizen ray withy and chad hess that involves you know strategies for looking out more than one year two years or three years but actually 10 years so i'll stop there and see if there are questions for me or for Chad regarding some of the things that we've talked about but in order to build our budget for this coming year and get this to you on June the 4th clear direction is needed on where we take funds from to keep our service levels constant or we don't take funds from those unassigned cash reserves and then start to make some significant cuts in two weeks or less. So that concludes my report right now. I'll answer questions and I'm sure there'll be more to talk about as we go forward.
00:15:06.83	Unknown	Vice mayor.
00:15:07.18	Zapata	Thank you.
00:15:08.50	Unknown	Sure.
00:15:11.28	Unknown	So we heard about this for the first time officially at our last meeting. I'm certain that you've communicated these issues to staff. I'm wondering if there's any plan to collect a one or even two-year budget from the various department heads. And since they are the ones with boots on the ground, to ask them what cost savings measure can they recommend while maintaining levels of service and not reducing staff.
00:15:42.16	Zapata	Yes, so thank you for that question Vice Mayor Cox. In our discussions with staff this year, we told them that we were facing some insurance questions and challenges and that this would be at best a status quo budget, so they know that. And I go forward basis if in fact, you know, we know that we have issues. You know, there's a very interesting program that I want to implement here called Cost and revenue efficiency and that involves getting ideas from every department about ways to create revenue or create efficiency and so that will be a charge going forward because again you know we have worked on the insurance question for the last six months and it struck us full-on in the last three months and so now it's important to try to get our sea legs and then work with the staff to do exactly what you've asked me to do which is to get ideas from the departments who know where to find savings or where there might be revenue opportunities so that we can in fact be more efficient or recover revenue that will help us balance our budget if these costs continue down the road, because they could. The insurance costs are known for this year. What we've heard from our insurance advisors is because we have a bad 10-year loss history, because we've had some significant events in the past five years that involved claims of millions of dollars, we are in a bad state. But come off the books our insurance could go down but that's not to say we won't have another event which causes our insurance to stay high or go higher so we have to have a long-range plan that's what the tenure approach is about has to factor in insurance costs down the road future insurance costs our pension costs but there also has to be a corresponding effort by our staff to figure out internally how we can use our collective thoughts to figure out if there are efficiencies or revenue opportunities through the conversations that need to be had so that we can come back and give you better budget information in the future, better efficiency in the future to go along with, you know, a policy and a program that this 10-year plan could help us develop. So, again, that's a long answer to your question, but that's what needs to happen.
00:17:59.69	Unknown	Along similar lines, your staff report makes mention of the performance of the Section 115 trust. And I know this council expressed some dismay at the somewhat subpar performance of that fund during the report last year. So I know that we have the ability to give direction to our
00:18:30.79	Unknown	fund managers regarding how we'd like to see that fund managed. And so I wanted to hear what you had in mind regarding how we might encourage the realization of better performance of the monies in that fund.
00:18:44.90	Zapata	So I'm glad you brought that up. So the program, the group that manages our 115 trust and it's $5.7 million between the pension trust fund and the post-employment benefit fund is a group called PARS. And you've had this relationship with them from day one. And when they came in and they made the presentation to the city council this past year I was underwhelmed as well not just by the performance but by you know the acceptance of poor returns and so at that point you know I had a conversation with one of the representatives pars and I said the people that are doing the work for Sausalito really didn't impress the city council nor me. So something has to happen better. So they've been put on notice. The second part of that is Chad has been talking to, it's actually the California State Retirement Fund, I believe. Chad, if he's on the phone, he can correct me. But there are other people that administer 115 trust funds that have lower administrative fees that we want to initiate conversations with because again you know we need to find more efficiency in those funds and if we can find one that you know creates a return to sequel or better with less administrative fees then we'd probably make a recommendation to move that money out and over
00:20:07.83	Zapata	Chad, do you want to add anything to that?
00:20:10.05	Hess	No, you are correct. CalPERS is the second approved vendor of a Section 115 trust in the state of California.
00:20:17.58	Hess	their administrative fees are much much lower we are evaluating their their
00:20:22.96	Hess	performance of their investment options.
00:20:25.98	Hess	nothing to bring back to council at this point but we are exploring other alternatives for that trust
00:20:34.05	Unknown	And then I just wanted to inquire about, you know, when last year and earlier this year, we all identified possible revenue-generating measures for the city. One of those was a vacancy tax on businesses that remain empty. And I'm seeing more businesses become empty now.
00:20:56.05	Unknown	downtown and there's one business that has remained empty
00:20:59.50	Unknown	for
00:21:01.59	Unknown	I mean, it's coming, it's over five years, and it's a sizable business. And of course, businesses, storefronts that aren't operating affects our sales tax revenues. And so I wanted to know the plan for bringing forward. And then at the last meeting, you know, some additional revenue generating opportunities were.
00:21:24.54	Unknown	brainstormed. So I'm wondering if we might...
00:21:26.65	Unknown	include as a part of this dialogue
00:21:28.94	Unknown	a renewed attack on
00:21:31.81	Unknown	identifying and implementing additional revenue-generating measures.
00:21:37.97	Unknown	Thank you.
00:21:38.01	Zapata	Thank you.
00:21:38.55	Zapata	Thank you for that. And you did suggest that that would be something the staff should look into along with hotels, development impact fees. So the one that had the most bang for the buck are development impact fees. We've been working on those. Those are coming forward to you pretty quickly. You've approved an RFP for a consultant to do the work. Once they do the work, the idea is, you know, new growth pays for new growth, and that could be significant dollars depending on the categories you choose the hotels were brought forward to us we had conversations with not one not two but three different hoteliers I guess is how you call them and you know one was out of North Marin County or North Sausalito I call it and they expressed an interest and we've not heard back from them since we had the conversation with them. We talked to the owner of the Valhalla about the rooms that he thought could turn into something that would be beneficial if they were rentable. It's been you know quiet for that conversation as well. We were told to talk to every hotelier in Sausalito there are four of them about the possibility of expanding or their interest we've done that we haven't received any real strong ideas about how we could you know use existing people to add more room to sausage for the revenue there has been conversations and continue to be with community and economic development about flow tells which could be an option and an opportunity for Sausalito so that's the live is one at this point in terms of the hotels in terms of the vacancy tax you know we saw that is something that was a not a revenue generator but more of a policy push to have people create and send people to fill their their their spaces for you know obviously the jobs and the sales tax but again we focus primarily on impact fees but we can up the ante on the vacancy tax which I understand obviously you know the revenue would not be big big but the the message to people that are holding on to these properties would be loud and clear. So that's important, and analysis was done to show that we could, in fact, do that. The other item was, you know, talking about monetizing and creating opportunities on the water and, you know, things that we could do that would involve activating our shoreline, creating more activities, events, and sending businesses, you know, delving in and diving into the blue economy concept that then Mayor Kelman raised. And so that hasn't gone away, but, you know, there is, in fact, what I call a need to look at revenue. and so one of the things that came up at the last council meeting is also the idea of a charter city and what could be done there. I come from two charter cities and one of the benefits of a charter city besides more local control is there is no general law city attachment to a property transfer tax. And so when you have a property transfer tax right now it's stuck for the state regulation I think it's 55 cents per a thousand but if you're a charter city you can go higher and you know Anaheim benefited from that Stanley and we're benefited from that it's volatile revenue but at times with certain property sales it can be good revenue. So again, we committed to bringing back an analysis of charter cities, and that would be one of the pros to it that would also potentially create revenue.
00:25:15.10	Unknown	Thank you, Mayor. Those are my questions for now.
00:25:16.70	Unknown	Who would like to go next? Council Member Kellman?
00:25:20.50	Kelman	Thank you, city manager. So just so we're clear, the current general fund budget gap is $2 million, right?
00:25:29.06	Zapata	So let me be very clear there that that that is if we we are successful in acquiring prism as our carrier. Okay, if we don't acquire prism, it could be significantly more depending on our appetite for risk.
00:25:38.63	Carolyn Revell	Okay.
00:25:45.66	Kelman	So today we know it's at least going to be, was PRISM 1.7? Did we know?
00:25:53.14	Zapata	Say that again?
00:25:53.68	Kelman	Do we know how much PRISM is, the offer is for PRISM?
00:25:56.73	Zapata	Thank you.
00:25:56.90	Zapata	That's what you have in your in that 2 million calculation Chad is 1.7 prison with the end of.
00:26:02.54	Hess	Yeah.
00:26:02.69	Kelman	Yeah.
00:26:02.86	Hess	So the Prism General Liability Premium was about $1.2 million with a $500,000 SIR.
00:26:10.28	Hess	Um,
00:26:10.94	Hess	Our property coverage is increasing, our workman's comp is increasing, and then I'm setting aside $700,000 for
00:26:17.54	Hess	SIR to pay those claims that are under $500,000.
00:26:21.79	Hess	The impact on the general fund is 1.7 million. The other portion of this is gonna be allocated to sewer fund, MLK.
00:26:29.08	Hess	to ensure their buildings as well.
00:26:32.24	Kelman	Okay, I just wanted to confirm that we had a number and that's the base, it could be higher. And Chad, how much of an increase is that over what we're paying now for insurance?
00:26:42.01	Hess	significant doubles. It's more than double when we factor in the SIR payment or the SIR reserve.
00:26:48.32	Kelman	Okay, and then I know I emailed you on this, but I just wanna clarify it. So I think in one of the emails to us, there was a comment
00:26:56.22	Kelman	of
00:26:57.16	Kelman	unassigned fund balance in excess of reserves. And then there were two numbers for the reserves. Can you just do a definition moment for me? How are you defining
00:27:06.56	Kelman	unassigned fund balance and when you refer to reserves, is that reserves with a capital R or lowercase r?
00:27:14.80	Hess	So the reserves that I'm referring to in that email are the 5% and the 10%.
00:27:20.48	Hess	that we are holding on to. So it's the budget stabilization
00:27:24.99	Hess	budget stabilization
00:27:27.17	Hess	shortfall reserve and then the emergency shortfall reserve. So those are the five and 10%. Those are gonna be the last dollars that we spend. We do not spend those unless we absolutely have to.
00:27:38.56	Hess	the unassigned fund balance is
00:27:41.41	Hess	the
00:27:42.25	Hess	fund balance in excess of those reserves.
00:27:46.39	Hess	So it's available resources above and beyond what is designated for pensions.
00:27:51.74	Hess	what's designated for our interfund loans,
00:27:54.98	Hess	what's designated for any prepaids or anything like that. These are dollars that truly have no intended use at this point.
00:28:03.09	Kelman	Okay. And you also sent us an email, I think maybe you city manager that showed us, um, a comparison of Sausalito's capital R reserves to other communities with capital R reserves were around 15%. Is that right?
00:28:18.11	Hess	Yes, our current reserve policy is 15%.
00:28:21.20	Hess	Um, city managers of PADA did do a survey across Marin County, and there is a wide array of, of reserve policies that we found.
00:28:31.09	Kelman	Okay, I thought I read that sort of there was a disproportionate skew towards 25%. And so then I had asked you how much of the unassigned cash do need to be moved to reserves to hit a 25% reserve.
00:28:43.58	Kelman	And if can you just articulate that for everybody?
00:28:45.62	Hess	Yeah, let me get back to that email just so I can quote you.
00:28:51.93	Hess	Yeah, so as it stands now,
00:28:55.19	Hess	We currently have
00:28:57.35	Hess	an increase in reserves would increase that to our reserve amount to 5.2 million and then our excess
00:29:04.69	Hess	above reserves would be lowered to 5.6 million.
00:29:08.55	Hess	So it's about a $2 million increase to get us to a 25%.
00:29:12.57	Hess	reserve.
00:29:13.92	Kelman	Okay, and then one sort of strategic question. At the end of the staff report, the recommendation is to provide staff a direction in the areas of use of unassigned general fund cash. But also tonight on the agenda, we are looking at item 5C, city property portfolio update. Why not also recommend that we look at that portfolio update and divest ourselves as a way to help bridge the gap today on the deficit?
00:29:44.01	Zapata	So thank you. I think we can jump forward a little bit for that question, Council Member Kelman. In that staff report, one of the things that we talk about is, I believe it was Council Member Hoffman brought up this idea of small lots that we have or small properties that we should analyze in addition to our leases. And as part of that, a few months ago, I asked that we look at sale of the fire station number two given it's it's you know it's a storage bin for us right now and could be something that you know could create a nice little infusion to offset some of these insurance costs that we're facing but it's in that report so I think that all are fair game given the direction from the council that we look at the leases and the properties that we own aside from leases that's's going to take a little bit of time. But that exercise is started because obviously that is part of our spare property list that we have. In addition to some of these small lots and other lots that you own in this city that may be of value to a neighbor or nobody, but we should assess those all and include something larger, which is the fire station. Number two, not one, two.
00:30:57.06	Kelman	Number two, not one. Thank you.
00:30:58.53	Kelman	And one last Charter City question. You mentioned the tax roll. So the numbers that, if we were a Charter City and the numbers that would come off in the transfer tax that were associated with property tax, is there a way to carve those out so that they're not regular property tax and thus diluted by the deal with Southern
00:31:16.62	Zapata	So whenever there's a property transfer tax in your community, which we have, there's a certain amount that comes one time on the sale of the property to the organization. In general, all cities have a cap. You know, charter cities have more flexibility. And so they become part of your budget adoption. They become things like sales tax because they're not constant like property taxes. You know, there lot of sales selling a property going on in your city then your property transfer tax revenue is stronger if there is you know flattening or no then it becomes less so when you have that in place it's one of those you know good revenue streams it it is a little bit a volatile revenue stream but in my experience it's been good because there have been significant sales of properties in every city I've been in and including Sausalito and if you're capped by your general law status maybe you want to reconsider that along with other pros but you obviously have to look at the downside of a property transfer tax and other parts of a charter city that you may not want to do but I think we're going to give you that report next meeting is what I understood and you can do some more questioning then we can give you some more responses then about what it is and what it means in Sausalito, but it's not a stable revenue stream, but it can be a spiky revenue stream that could create assistance in bad times or in good times when things are running in terms of sales of homes and properties.
00:32:52.36	Kelman	Yeah, so my question for next time is whether a portion of that goes to Southern Marine Fire or not.
00:32:58.02	Zapata	I don't believe so.
00:32:58.94	Unknown	Thank you.
00:32:59.21	Kelman	Okay.
00:32:59.54	Kelman	Thank you so much.
00:33:01.41	Unknown	Who's going to be next? Councilmember Blassey.
00:33:04.14	Blaustein	Thank you, Mayor Sobieski, and thank you, City Manager and Chad, Director Hess, for your hard work on this. So when we met last time, we talked specifically about the issues associated with deferred maintenance and how we're trying to make a focus on risk and resilience and de-risking in our budget. And so with that in mind, are we considering those strategies that we had all discussed together with in the continuation of the larger picture for the budget? So what I'm asking is, is it clear that the direction that we gave at the last meeting, since I didn't hear it brought up in your report, is a continued focus on the deferred maintenance issue and de-risking in general, within a special emphasis on consideration of hiring a risk manager? Because we desperately need a risk manager hired.
00:33:48.66	Zapata	Yeah.
00:33:49.38	Zapata	So the risk manager position, obviously I gave you an update that we made an offer to a to a individual at the top level of our range and was turned down. So we started all over again. We're having conversations with the people that might provide insurance to us about loaning us a risk manager while we solicit one for us. So that's one thought on the risk manager. As it relates to deferred maintenance, yes yes there are a number of efforts that are going into trying to figure out what that amount is obviously you have allowed us to request proposals for overall comprehensive facility assessment and parallel to that we've engaged through an rfp process climate tech looked at our facilities to figure out, you know, some of the basic needs that we have in terms of lighting, cooling, energy efficiency, electrification. And so that report is ready to come to the council this month. We just have to schedule it with the agenda setting committee. But that's in partnership with the sole RFP for an overall facilities assessment so you know we know that getting a handle on that and then taking and turning that into our information that can be fed into our 10-year financial model which you know is really important because on one hand you see cash on hand on the other hand you see deferred maintenance and cost that you know we you know should be spending money on
00:35:16.63	Zapata	So trying to balance out how you do it, when you do it.
00:35:19.68	Zapata	and incorporate that into a plan in your capital improvement program really, really important.
00:35:25.13	Blaustein	Well, and also getting the premiums down over time, because if we're operating at the $1.7 million or the million-dollar-plus funds for insurance every year, it's not going to be a sustainable solution to pull money from our Section 115 or unassigned balance. So one of the other things we talked about at the last meeting was a lot of revenue opportunities. And my colleague, Councilmember Helman, mentioned outdoor adventure as an opportunity. We talked about potentially charging for parking on Caledonia or what parking funds are available and leases and property assessment. Will that come back to us on the fourth? Because I think these are all important areas for consideration.
00:36:02.04	Zapata	So what was the third one, Council Member Kelman?
00:36:04.00	Blaustein	Leases and oh the council member Kellman's was the outdoor
00:36:06.59	Zapata	Outdoor.
00:36:07.95	Zapata	Thank you.
00:36:08.86	Blaustein	Well, the leases and property assessment, which is on the agenda tonight. So that's good to know.
00:36:13.51	Blaustein	Okay, but the other two as well?
00:36:16.30	Zapata	You're saying parking Caledonia and outdoor recreation or the other 2.
00:36:21.46	Blaustein	Yes. And then we also talked significantly about our lack of grant funding received. I think we all saw that Tiburon received a multimillion dollar grant for electrification of their ferries simply by partnering and pursuing that. I forwarded you an email this morning from Arnita Harnan at the EPA, about $300 million that just became available for improvements in pollution in other areas. There was a $3 billion amount made available from the Obama administration, sorry, the Biden administration last week specifically for cleaning, clean pipes. And I believe that there are a lot of places where this is applicable. And I'd like to see built into our budget at least a grant target. Because if we don't have an incentive and we're just using the money we have, then we're just using the money we have. And I think we need to create a way for staff to be aggressively chasing some of this funding or to work it into our capital improvement projects. So is that part of the, these are kind of leading questions. Is that part of the consideration? I'm sorry. I just, isn't that right?
00:37:14.75	Zapata	Yeah. Isn't
00:37:16.05	Zapata	Yeah, no, so you know we currently have four grants pending with California consulting that we put the work in on. We had I think it was 11 grants that we applied for last year that we did not get funding for. And so the track record of getting funds in Sausalito from other people has not been good. So I have had questions raised to me about the effectiveness of our grants program. And so I think that if you're suggesting that we should have some questions
00:37:47.96	Zapata	Thank you.
00:37:48.07	Zapata	targets that we benchmark against to try to get done you know is it 5 million 10 million 15 million you know what is it because we've applied for over I can tell you it's over 20 million dollars we've received 450,000 through a COPS grant 40,000 was a pass-through grant and we got good information last week from the SB 1 OSHA Protection Council that we're lined up for a grant thanks to you all and Councilmember Kelman so you know maybe we'll see $250,000 there but yeah we could do much better with grants and putting a a target that you know we should try to reach to determine if we're successful or not and what that target consists of yeah that could be something that we should work on as a staff as well
00:38:33.17	Blaustein	Thank you. And then just another question before, because the rest of it is probably more comments. But there's a mention in here of funding for a nonprofit, which I'm a huge fan of. But we had had a number of discussions about how we would review funding for nonprofits as a whole. Is that being considered in the way that we look at the budget?
00:38:50.25	Zapata	Yeah, so you know the best laid plans of mice and men, you know, we wanted to have a full on conversation about, you know, nonprofits in our community and which ones that you felt we should fund in which one. But again, we're up upon a budget deadline again. So my apologies that responsibility is mine for not bringing it forward. But one of the things I've tried to do is take the ones that I believe are most beneficial to the community and we don't have many many outlays to nonprofits in our city. I did meet with Soss Little Beautiful where they made a request for funding. I told them that you know outside requests by individual nonprofits was probably this was not the year to do it. You know the one exception to this is the partnership we have with cars right now which is a relatively small grant but high impact service so we left that in there you know we want to take out some of the other funding that we might contemplate the deck isn't asking for funding but they did ask for us to consider continuing the CDA contract we're saying no to that so in an abbreviated way in a isn't asking for funding but they did ask for us to consider continuing the CDA contract. We're saying no to that. So in an abbreviated way, in a non-comprehensive way, we are doing exactly that. We're trying to tell you this is not the year to fund outside agencies other than those that we really, really, really need to fund.
00:38:50.47	Blaustein	Thank you.
00:40:12.65	Blaustein	Did you have a chance to see the county of Marin's participatory budgeting roll out over the last year?
00:40:19.99	Zapata	Pardon me, say that again.
00:40:21.02	Blaustein	I think the county of Marin as part of their equity managers program started a participatory budgeting program where members of the community voted on which grant funds would go to specific nonprofits. So maybe that's something that we could look at too.
00:40:36.19	Zapata	Okay.
00:40:38.00	Blaustein	Thank you very much, City Manager and Director Huss.
00:40:40.17	Unknown	Thank you, Councilmember Busting, Councilmember Hoffman.
00:40:44.71	Unknown	Thank you. I do have some questions. Primarily, and we've talked about this a lot in the past, both the city manager and I think with Chad too, about our reserve and what's an appropriate reserve for Sausalito. And we, I don't believe we've ever set, we've talked about it a lot at the city council level. I don't believe we've ever actually set a city council reserve or city council defined reserve. And so I think if, if Chad's still on the line, I have a couple of questions to ask him. Thanks, Chad. or City Council defined reserve. And so I think if Chad's still on the line, I have a couple of questions to ask him. So thanks Chad. So we've talked about this a lot in the past. We talked about it with our, when we received our audit, I think last fall. And the auditor talked to us a little bit about what an appropriate reserve is and how to determine one. I think my recollection was that
00:41:21.94	Unknown	And the otter?
00:41:32.38	Unknown	Thank you.
00:41:32.70	Unknown	a 15% reserve is a red flag for any funding agency or any other agency with regard to a city and that that's a red flag and that there is no standard, really standard for a city, but the higher your risk, the higher your reserve should be.
00:41:51.77	Hess	Yes. So the GFOA has come out with a new article that talks about
00:41:56.67	Hess	setting reserve policies based upon a risk-based approach.
00:42:00.78	Hess	And what that does is it looks at what are the risks, what are the probabilities of that risk happening or the occurrence and then assigning a value to it.
00:42:09.98	Hess	uh,
00:42:11.15	Hess	I agree that a comprehensive review of our fund balance using a risk-based approach would be warranted.
00:42:19.31	Hess	It takes time and effort.
00:42:21.47	Hess	um,
00:42:22.37	Hess	You know, that is something we could hire a professional service to do or something we could do in-house, but it would take longer to fit that into our work.
00:42:29.86	Hess	But yes, you are correct. 15%, I feel, is low.
00:42:33.12	Hess	25 is better, but again, the most appropriate would be a risk-based solution.
00:42:38.11	Zapata	If I can add to that, when you're done with your question, Council Member Hoffman,
00:42:38.18	Hess	Thank you.
00:42:38.20	Unknown	If I can add to that.
00:42:40.49	Unknown	Sure, go ahead, Chris.
00:42:43.07	Unknown	No, go ahead and then I have some follow-up questions.
00:42:44.81	Zapata	great. So one of the one of the things that you know I saw in this community when I came was this 5% and 10% reserve and I heard over and over the sauce that was unique has different challenges and you know we need to consider our policy for what we should say and so and talking to some people that were on the city council in the past in particular former mayor with the he indicated to me that you know it was never 15% as a floor it was always you know if it was 25% the 10% plus the 15% then on top of that they would take that money and put it in the capital or put it into the 115 trust so it was a practice but not a policy so one of the things that I did is I asked my colleagues in Marin County okay you know we're Sausalito and you have some of the same kind of situations as us in certain cities so what are your reserves policy so I want to read them to you so you have them so Belvedere which is eight million dollar general fund budget eight and a half million dollars has a policy of 50% that's Belvedere Corte Madera which is a 22 million dollar general fund budget has a policy of 50%. That's Belvedere. Corte Madera, which is a $22 million general fund budget, has a policy of 20%, so they have a $4.5 million reserve. Fairfax, which is a...
00:42:45.79	Unknown	So,
00:44:01.02	Zapata	larger budget 13.7 million or a smaller budget. There was our policy have a target of 25% and an unassigned amount kind of like Sausalito and their reserve is 2.8 million dollars. Larkspur policy on their 21 billion dollar budget is 25% of their operating budget and they currently have a reserve of 18 million dollars. The city manager qualified that said they've been saving money
00:44:30.38	Zapata	over a number of years for a particular need project. So that number is really generous at this time, but that's what they have.
00:44:39.86	Zapata	The city of Mill Valley has a policy of 15%. They have a $32 million general fund and they have $14 million in their reserve even though their policy is 15%. Novato has a policy of 15% and they have a $49 million budget and their reserve is $9.6 million. Ross has a $10 million general fund and they have a different mousetrap where they have economic uncertainty fund permanent at 1.5 and the operating fund reserve should exceed 30 so that's there so they currently have six six million four hundred ninety seven thousand dollars in their reserve on a 10 million dollar budget. Senanselmo is 20% of the annual budget. So they have a general fund budget of $100 million. So they have unassigned reserves of $9,783,000. Sausalito, we obviously have the 5% and the 10%. And then we have the excess cash that Chad's referenced that I've referenced it. Add when you add those three things together, it's $10.67 million. Tiburon's policy is 25% of the general fund budget. They have a $12 million general fund and their reserve is $6 million. So they're doing much better. And then Marin County has a policy of 5 to 10% so my experience has always been the larger the city the lower the amount because you have bigger chunks of cash that you could attach smaller cities may mean many larger reserves what's right for Soslo is something in the conversation that we should have because if it's 25% okay if it's 30% okay if it's 50% okay but right now what you have on the books is 5 and 10%
00:46:31.93	Unknown	So that brings me to the point of back to a circular point, I think, which is that we need to decide as a city before we move forward on a strategy. I think there's several things I think we need to talk about before we move forward on the strategy for next year and how to address the current, what I suspect will be a long-term shortfall. Do we have an offer from PRISM on the table that we are going to accept at the 1.7 or is there, are we still looking for other carriers?
00:46:59.42	Zapata	We only have a private sector offer on the table right now.
00:47:03.35	Unknown	So we don't have an offer from PRISM for 1.7.
00:47:04.80	Zapata	We're in discussions with PRISM right now.
00:47:07.13	Unknown	So we're in discussions with PRISM right now. So this is an unknown cost, and that makes me nervous as well. So I'll circle back to that when we get to our comments. But I think when we're talking about what's appropriate from a management perspective and from a risk reduction perspective, I don't think anybody in this room looking at the cancellation of our insurance from the pool would say that we are no longer...
00:47:35.77	Unknown	a low risk, that we are no longer a high risk town. We are a high risk town and we need to effectively address that one way to address that is having an appropriate reserve for these catastrophic events that happen and the risk that we're gonna have with our loss of insurance and much higher premiums, much higher premiums and much higher deductibles. So, and that's what Chad is talking about when he's talking about a range of, if we have a higher deductible, that means our costs go up, that we need a higher reserve. And we probably need to segregate some money into a fund specifically for that. But we can talk about that when we get to our strategies. So my next question, and then we can talk about that with our discussion about how we want to approach that aspect.
00:48:27.66	Unknown	You know, I think that's our that's our biggest issue that we need. Well, I'm sorry. Let me just do this. So we have we have this pool of money called unassigned cash. But, you know, we've talked over the years, I think, in the presentation that you gave back in 20, 2021, you know, we had. I mean, I think you said 500 million in
00:48:51.05	Unknown	500 million in
00:48:53.48	Unknown	deferred maintenance over, and we had some big ticket items in there. One was sewer and the other one was undergrounding, but the hard deferred maintenance that you had calculated that time was close to 25 million. And that's just deferred maintenance on things that we already, capital improvements that we need to make. So we don't, in my mind, we don't really have an aside in cash. We have non-prioritized capital improvements that we haven't gotten in the pipeline. And we have a capital improvement presentation we have from Kevin. We should be going much deeper as again, as a method to reduce our risk, right? I mean, you're the one that's brought these things to our attention on the capital improvement risks.
00:49:37.44	Unknown	We also had a presentation last fall,
00:49:40.76	Unknown	with Director McGowan on our payment index. And it was an add of another, I think, three million a year to get us up to a higher failing score of our payment index. So my question, I think, to you and to Chad is,
00:49:55.72	Unknown	you know, wouldn't you agree that we need to be more aggressive? It's not really unassigned cash. It's cash that we haven't assigned a priority projects in order to reduce our risk.
00:50:05.79	Zapata	If I can respond to that, I'm happy to. And thanks for the question, Councilmember Kelman. Yes, when I got here, I told folks that my observations of Sausalito were, you know, finances were important, infrastructure was important, and the people that were their people infrastructure were important. So infrastructure has been a constant. And one of the things that I knew was in front of us, as you all, as Councilmember laid out to me, was, you know, the revenue that we had for infrastructure through measure O was at risk of ending in 2024 so one of the big priorities was to make sure that we in fact got that on the ballot and became more aggressive with our capital improvement program so we not only push that to the public, which they embrace and support it, we extended and expanded Measure O to Measure L to add revenue so that we could work on infrastructure. So it's not like we've been sitting with our hands in our pockets. The second thing is the idea of, okay, we have cash in the bank, but what do we need to spend it on? And that's where the idea of we need to spend it on our facilities. We need to spend it on our infrastructure. And so where this facility management plan came into play was as a result of those kinds of conversations that, you know, before we start spending, you know, two, three, $4 million on capital projects, we need to know what those needs are where the priorities are and develop an approach. So so working through this RFP for facility improvements is going to inform that as well. So the third thing is, you know, we truly
00:51:43.33	Zapata	Thank you.
00:51:44.10	Zapata	in my mind, sitting on $10 million while your streets are falling apart were really not a wise course of action. So, you know, but for this insurance problem, my recommendation this year would have been to up the ante on the capital improvement program and fix more of our streets. Unfortunately, I don't think you'll be able to do that because this insurance cost is going to create a situation where you've got to use money to address that gap if you want to maintain services but yeah there have been some real work there's been real work done on trying to figure out infrastructure not just by this city council in this administration you know you put measure O together in 2014 I believe you know you've done some things that I think are important to help create revenue in the city through your TOT and the Mid-2000s, but as it stands yeah there is a big infrastructure versus Cash on hand gap that I I would say yeah we could blow through eight million dollars in fix some of our streets, but not all of them We could blow through eight million dollars and fix some of our sewer, but not all of it. But, you know, it's getting an informed look at what is in the worst condition and allocating the funds that we have to that is what, you know, we've been doing for the last year and a half.
00:53:01.83	Unknown	But my point is, and thank you for that explanation. My point is though that terming this as unassigned cash makes it seem like that we have excess cash that's just laying around that we can, you know, spend on whatever non priority projects. We have many priority projects that are currently unfunded that if we spent all of that money on those priority projects, it would reduce our risk.
00:53:28.27	Zapata	Yeah, and you should, but you have to do that once you figure out how much you're comfortable with having in your contingency accounts.
00:53:38.26	Unknown	I 100% agree. I 100% agree on that. That's the number one. And then the number two is, you know, how do we allocate the rest of the unallocated money that should be going to priority capital improvement projects? And that's how I would characterize any kind of excess over a reserve, whatever it is that we decide on. The other thing is, you know, going back to,
00:54:01.77	Unknown	Thank you for that analysis of the other cities, too. It's informative, but I go back to what our finance director has said and what our auditor said last year is that it's a very specific thing. It's somewhat informative to talk about other cities, but we have to do the analysis ourselves and come up with the specific analysis for Sausalito. That may take us some time, but we can certainly start off with going up to 25% right now. I would be even more comfortable going up to 30%.
00:54:35.62	Unknown	So let me see if I have a white
00:54:36.72	Unknown	Yeah, but why do you refuse to fix our sewers? Is it because of all those chews that are hiding down there?
00:54:38.98	Unknown	Is it because of all those shoes that are hiding down there?
00:54:41.86	Zapata	Thank you.
00:54:42.69	Unknown	Is it because those Jews are all in the sewers or what?
00:54:45.95	Unknown	Eating all those foreskins, drinking the blood of children. Come on, guys.
00:54:46.86	Unknown	skin.
00:54:49.32	Unknown	Let's just mute that audio. Google Ben.
00:54:51.58	Unknown	Google Matisse Bappe on NYC.gov. Did you suck baby dick?
00:54:53.09	Unknown	Oh my God.
00:54:54.27	Unknown	Do you?
00:54:54.45	Unknown	It was because.
00:54:54.89	Unknown	you
00:54:54.96	Unknown	Baby dick.
00:54:55.75	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:55.97	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:56.16	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:56.26	Unknown	Let's just take a break.
00:54:56.31	Unknown	Can I just take a break and tell them?
00:54:57.03	Unknown	I'm telling you.
00:54:57.29	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:57.46	Unknown	Thank you.
00:54:57.91	Unknown	Well, he's going to keep it.
00:55:00.73	Unknown	That's okay. We're off the record right now.
00:55:04.75	Unknown	You get it turned down.
00:55:07.77	Unknown	All right.
00:55:08.56	Unknown	okay fair enough let's continue do you have any other questions all right thanks um let's see um we can keep talking we know that your web host you're fucking niggers
00:55:08.80	Unknown	Okay.
00:55:10.91	Unknown	Fair enough, let's continue. Do you have any other questions? All right, thanks.
00:55:15.38	Unknown	Um...
00:55:17.23	Mary Faust	I had...
00:55:21.28	Unknown	Okay, I think we're back on the, we're back in.
00:55:28.15	Unknown	Okay, I think that's all my questions right now. All right, thank you very much.
00:55:29.40	Unknown	All right, thank you very much. So I will then, I have no additional questions. I will open it up for public comment. Are you able to handle that? So do you need a few minutes to get a grip on the,
00:55:34.33	Unknown	I was in the house.
00:55:34.48	Unknown	with the
00:55:34.53	Unknown	I will.
00:55:34.70	Unknown	Thank you.
00:55:34.80	Unknown	Do you?
00:55:35.09	Unknown	anything.
00:55:37.10	Adrian Brinton	Thank you.
00:55:37.11	Unknown	bigger.
00:55:38.70	Unknown	Niggers.
00:55:39.12	Unknown	Yeah.
00:55:39.32	Unknown	THE FAMILY.
00:55:45.18	Gail Schell	Amen.
00:55:46.34	Unknown	We don't have, we use the regular one, we don't use the other one, we have more control.
00:55:52.50	Unknown	Well, let's fix that in the future. But yep, fair enough. Fair enough. But can you, do you need more time?
00:55:52.59	Unknown	Thank you.
00:55:54.59	Unknown	I didn't mention that.
00:56:02.31	Unknown	You got to say,
00:56:05.01	Unknown	Thank you.
00:56:05.02	Unknown	I'm serious. I need to go shut it down.
00:56:07.57	Unknown	Thank you.
00:56:07.81	Unknown	Yeah.
00:56:08.45	Unknown	Thank you.
00:56:08.52	Unknown	Yeah. So I would suggest that you turn the Zoom off and let everyone who's legitimate rejoin the Zoom link. It'll be the same link and you can add them one at a time.
00:56:21.49	Unknown	No, did you get a grip on it? It seems like maybe you did.
00:56:27.74	Blaustein	He said it on me, but it.
00:56:31.84	Unknown	All right.
00:56:32.89	Unknown	Thank you.
00:56:33.26	Unknown	So let's take just a pause. How much time do you need to reestablish the public here to admit the people?
00:56:42.39	Unknown	that,
00:56:49.42	Unknown	Well...
00:56:49.66	Blaustein	I looked too and I was worried.
00:56:52.29	Unknown	So...
00:56:53.54	Blaustein	Yes.
00:56:54.20	Unknown	Well, we're tailing with a point of order, a technical issue on the Zoom. So, I mean, we can take a recess, but I wanna know whether-
00:57:00.98	Unknown	WHETHER
00:57:01.44	Unknown	Thank you.
00:57:01.55	Unknown	in.
00:57:01.78	Unknown	All right, there's a general request for a recess. So let's take a five minute recess and I'll come over there and speak with you, city clerk.
00:57:13.39	Unknown	Okay, resuming from recess.
00:57:13.54	Unknown	Thank you.
00:57:13.57	Kieran Culligan	papers.
00:57:13.82	Unknown	Thank you.
00:57:17.57	Unknown	So we're going to open this up actually to public comment. Public comment please on this budget item.
00:57:24.64	Unknown	Anyone in the audience?
00:57:26.82	Unknown	On the budget?
00:57:26.89	Unknown	On the budget?
00:57:28.34	Unknown	Amen.
00:57:39.47	Unknown	I'm happy just to let people know in the audience. Scott Thornburg, Mr. Thornburg.
00:57:40.05	Unknown	just to let you know.
00:57:44.33	Unknown	Thank you.
00:57:44.74	Unknown	Bye.
00:57:48.59	Bushmaker	Can't hear anything on Zoom.
00:57:51.54	Thornburg	I'll be really fast just to say thank you.
00:57:55.39	Unknown	but I'm also wondering why we could hear them say that. Can we please make it so that they can't speak up?
00:58:01.22	Bushmaker	We cannot hear anything on zoom.
00:58:15.62	Unknown	So that sounds like Ms. Vicki Nichols, is that right?
00:58:19.26	Unknown	It sounds like a question.
00:58:21.44	Unknown	Is that Ms. Bushmaker? Is that Ms. Bushmaker?
00:58:27.33	Unknown	There you go. I got the computer.
00:58:31.18	Unknown	I don't know.
00:58:38.28	Bushmaker	We can't hear anything on Zoom.
00:58:44.05	Unknown	So no one is saying anything. Oh, that's why she isn't responding, because she can't hear me on Zoom. So we will sort that out.
00:58:56.32	Unknown	Yeah.
00:59:00.64	Unknown	So.
00:59:01.59	Kelman	What did the city attorney say about not having a Zoom talk?
00:59:03.59	Unknown	Unfortunately, this meeting is advertised on Zoom, so we can sort that out to a greater degree, but the most straightforward thing is to have it on Zoom.
00:59:03.66	Kelman	Thank you.
00:59:24.28	Unknown	Thanks.
00:59:27.34	Unknown	you
00:59:30.41	Unknown	So,
00:59:31.93	Unknown	Since she...
00:59:34.17	Unknown	Okay, I'm going to text Ms. Bushmaker and see if she can hear us.
00:59:38.09	Bushmaker	We cannot hear anything on Zoom.
00:59:39.37	Unknown	So...
00:59:40.74	Unknown	Okay.
00:59:51.23	Unknown	I just texted her to see if she can. I'm just going to do a little soliloquy to see if she hears us. I just texted Ms. Bushmaker to see if she can hear. And we can hear you.
01:00:02.05	Unknown	Sorry.
01:00:06.02	Unknown	So she still says that she cannot hear us.
01:00:12.11	Unknown	of course, can anyone hear us on Zoom? If there's anyone on Zoom who can hear us, could you raise your hand just to make sure it's not an issue with Ms. Bushmaker? How many participants are there?
01:00:23.24	Unknown	Okay.
01:00:25.76	Unknown	Okay.
01:00:27.72	Unknown	Okay. Our city attorney also says that the audio does not work on Zoom.
01:00:43.70	Charles Melton	still.
01:00:44.03	Jim Gabbard	no audio.
01:00:44.96	Charles Melton	Thank you.
01:00:45.03	Unknown	Thank you.
01:00:45.10	Charles Melton	you
01:00:45.20	Unknown	Yes.
01:00:55.86	Unknown	So, Walfred, one thing you can do is disconnect computer audio and use a cell phone to connect using a speaker phone.
01:01:03.49	Unknown	it's actually more low tech and less susceptible to hacking.
01:01:10.01	Bushmaker	City Clerk, could you get some audio on Zoom, please?
01:01:10.66	Unknown	Could you get some
01:01:13.38	Bushmaker	Could you ask her?
01:01:13.99	Unknown	That's really not true.
01:01:14.93	Unknown	I don't know if that is that Ms. Bushmaker? Yeah. I told her we're working on it so.
01:01:14.97	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:16.45	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:24.72	Unknown	Yeah. You know, I'm going to stay here with the microphone to work on this.
01:01:30.39	Unknown	Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:31.32	Unknown	Yeah, that's why I'm suggesting that you all clear the dice. I'll keep working with the audio because they need someone speaking to hear it, and we will continue to work with this problem.
01:01:42.24	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:42.42	Unknown	Thank you.
01:01:42.68	Unknown	So...
01:01:44.28	Bushmaker	Amen.
01:01:46.54	Unknown	uh,
01:01:47.57	Bushmaker	There's nothing on channel 27 either.
01:01:49.81	Unknown	Thank you everyone for your patience and apologies for everyone for what just happened on many fronts. Mr. Thornburg.
01:02:01.14	Thornburg	Thank you. I'll be brief. I just want to say thank you for all of these wonderful ideas to focus on driving revenue and looking after our city's finances. In my letter, I also included a number of ideas that EDAC would like to focus on.
01:02:15.85	Thornburg	So we would love the opportunity to partner with staff more closely on some of those things and really would encourage
01:02:22.50	Thornburg	I would ask the council to guide us on where you want us to focus there to help really drive
01:02:27.83	Thornburg	revenue for the city.
01:02:29.17	Thornburg	A couple of things in follow-up to comments made. We discussed the vacancy tax very specifically on our call yesterday.
01:02:40.49	Thornburg	I personally, you know, I look around and I had the same reaction. You know, there's a lot of vacant buildings. Seems like a great idea. In discussing further with committee members with EDAC who really focus on real estate, they recommend that we not pursue that at the time because they think it's already a difficult climate.
01:03:00.20	Thornburg	Generally, they think this would be more of a deterrent. So I think that's worth a discussion with industry professionals and not just EDAC, but let's let's get some guidance on that. And then the only other thing I would mention is, you know, we have a lot of revenue coming in from TOT taxes currently. One of the greatest opportunities that I see in generating more revenue for the city is actually increasing our offseason TOT taxes. We're doing great in the summer. Occupancy at our hotels is at peak.
01:03:29.31	Thornburg	high, we're sold out, 90 to 95% occupancy pretty consistently. It's between November and March that we really need help. And that is where, if we do decide to invest in marketing, and I understand the city manager's perspective, that is where I would put the money. So my recommendation from my experience, but other than that, I think we're on the right track. So thank you for your attention to this tonight.
01:03:54.99	Unknown	Anyone online, Mr. City Clerk?
01:03:57.95	Unknown	One moment.
01:04:05.89	Unknown	Senator Bushmaker.
01:04:07.40	Unknown	Senator Bushmaker?
01:04:08.93	Unknown	Thank you.
01:04:08.97	Unknown	I'm not sure.
01:04:11.21	Unknown	Thank you.
01:04:11.24	Unknown	Thank you.
01:04:14.11	Unknown	Mrs. Bushmaker, can you unhost yourself? I'm sorry, unmute yourself.
01:04:23.71	Unknown	Sorry, I bumped up the security settings.
01:04:24.44	Unknown	That's okay. Let's see if she can.
01:04:26.97	Unknown	I'm going to have to do something else with security.
01:04:34.34	Unknown	Ms. Bushmaker, we are working on our end to unmute you.
01:04:45.01	Unknown	Thank you.
01:04:45.11	Unknown	I'm muted.
01:04:48.08	Bushmaker	Okay, I think I'm finally through here.
01:04:51.32	Bushmaker	Uh, but I can't start the video.
01:04:53.63	Bushmaker	All right, I just wanted to say good evening, everybody. I'm sorry that we went through that experience. That's very unpleasant.
01:05:00.50	Bushmaker	Um,
01:05:01.40	Bushmaker	I just wanted to let you know Marin TV is not on. So they need to rejoin the Zoom application or whatever they're
01:05:09.02	Bushmaker	however they turn things on. I'm looking at the TV screen right now, and all there is is a Zoom.
01:05:15.01	Bushmaker	email and password
01:05:17.26	Bushmaker	uh,
01:05:18.56	Bushmaker	frame. Anyway,
01:05:20.03	Bushmaker	Back to the budget.
01:05:21.66	Bushmaker	I just want to emphasize, you know, we're talking about the budget
01:05:28.61	Bushmaker	Uh,
01:05:29.59	Bushmaker	increasing revenues, we need to stop spending
01:05:33.53	Bushmaker	Money.
01:05:34.39	Bushmaker	on non-discretionary or non-priority items.
01:05:37.91	Bushmaker	while we get ourselves organized here.
01:05:41.98	Bushmaker	You know, when you run short of money at home,
01:05:45.46	Bushmaker	You stop spending.
01:05:47.13	Bushmaker	while you work on trying to increase your revenues. And I think the city needs to do that as well.
01:05:52.49	Bushmaker	And so I'd like to really encourage that we look at the spending on non-priority items and
01:05:58.92	Bushmaker	Put a brake on.
01:06:00.31	Bushmaker	Tighten the belt and let's wait until we get our revenues back up to stream and then take a good hard look at the non-discretionary spending. Excuse me, the discretionary spending. Thank you.
01:06:15.12	Unknown	Anyone else on zoom?
01:06:19.95	Unknown	All right, we'll close public comment and move up to a discussion on this item. Does anyone wish to be recognized?
01:06:27.27	Kelman	I'll go.
01:06:27.83	Unknown	Council member.
01:06:27.86	Kelman	Council member. Yeah, thank you. I actually wanted to clarify something with Chad, if he is still here. The question, or maybe it's Sergio, just somebody had asked me at the break about infrastructure and insurance. Sergio, are you able to just sort of give a sense to members of the public, how many of our claims tend to be associated with any type of deferred maintenance? So we have a sense of what the risk looks like for the city.
01:06:56.57	Kelman	Surgery may be unavailable.
01:06:59.18	Kelman	Okay, well, this is fine. So my understanding, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Yeah, for the next meeting, it's a rather high number. And so I just want people to understand that the risk is around deferred maintenance in a large way. So I think that's important. And the other question that I would have had for Chad, if he was able to join, would be to understand whether the budget numbers we're seeing here take into account loss of parking on future projects or anything along those lines. I'm just trying to figure out what we're dealing with. But I would say this overall, I think we need a matrix that prioritizes deferred maintenance with our capital improvement program.
01:07:35.09	Kelman	I think given the situation and thanks Sergio, I see your hand, but I'm just going to give my comments in the interest of conversation. So I think we do need to look at raising the reserve, I think 25%, given our risk profile right now. And I'll just tell you, the loss of insurance makes me very, very nervous, makes me very uncomfortable, and it is a very big deal for the community.
01:07:57.77	Kelman	And it's very expensive to move into the private market. I cannot emphasize that enough. So I think a 25% revenue is something we should consider as a council. I also think,
01:08:10.78	Kelman	Pardon me, reserve, sorry, can't read my own handwriting. I also think that when we get to the third item, so if we get there, we should look at selling off.
01:08:19.41	Kelman	One to three parcels, pay off our pension debt, pay down some of this deficit. I also call attention to what Scott Thornburg, the chair of our EDAC, put together about our parking opportunities. There's a September 19th Dixon parking report that is really, really good. And it tells us things like the value per spot in lot one, if you back out the numbers, is something like $7,500 per spot. And so if you wanna look at loss of revenue, you can understand in that fashion, but conversely, you could look at maybe areas around Humboldt Street and think, well, if I could put 20 spots there, that's $7,500 a spot, that's over $150,000. And so thank you, Scott, for raising that. I think we really need to look at that parking revenue as a huge opportunity.
01:09:07.72	Kelman	I agree with the comment around vacancy tax can be quite difficult, but maybe something to do in the future is take a look at our conditional use permits. Oftentimes our conditional use permits allow for certain uses or parking or other benefits in exchange for some give and take. We may have, let's say, a parcel that got a variance on a parking requirement because they were going to offer a certain type of use and then that use didn't come to fruition It may be worth looking at the conditional use permit. I'll also say and thank you for highlighting it on the grant program There's so much grant money out there I want to make sure everybody heard it this SB 1 grant is to help address flooding on Gate 5 Road We've been conditionally approved for two hundred,000 to do some planning around that. And there was more money. And so we'll hear about that on June 4th. So there's just my preliminary comments and I look forward to hearing colleagues.
01:10:02.38	Unknown	Who else wishes to be recognized?
01:10:06.51	Blaustein	Thank you, Mayor Sobieski, and thanks again to staff for your hard work on the budget. I'm going to share in similar concerns of Council Member Kelman and also just repeat what I had said at the last budget meeting, which is that I really believe that we're in a position at this point to address our budget through a lens of risk and resilience. How do we de-risk our existing deferred maintenance and how do we create a resilient city going forward? And I think that the path for that much of which was just outlined is it's essential to raise our reserve to 25% so that we can de-risk and be more attractive to insurers going forward and we need to start thinking about where the most critical capital improvements lie and invest in those I'm a huge believer in available grant funding as As I mentioned, $300 million that's available for pollution and other environmental issues. Just found out about that today. $3 billion for pipes. There's more out there that we need to be getting that can help fill some of these gaps. That's not going to be enough. We're going to have to do even more and explore aggressively the revenue opportunities that all of us have brought forward at past meetings and again this evening and I won't go over too many of them but I do think there's a strong emphasis on parking opportunities and revenues available through parking and would agree with councilmember Kelman's suggestion that we sell off some of our properties so that we might be able to be in a better fiscal position going forward especially if we're not using using them to their highest and best use right now. So another thing that I want to make sure we're working on and thinking about, I understand we've made an offer about the risk manager position and that's fine.
01:11:41.48	Blaustein	But that was several weeks ago, and we still don't have a candidate. And we may need to reconsider how we're advertising that position. We may be willing to allow someone to initially work remote. We may need to invest further in a search. But we need a risk manager sooner rather than later. So I'd like to see that prioritized in whatever form necessary going forward. But I look forward to seeing what the budget looks like. I'd also like us to consider thinking about potential for participatory budgeting going forward and how we think about awarding grants to nonprofits as a community. This the county's done some amazing work and Looking at budgeting from an equity lens and I think there's real opportunity there as well. So thanks to staff I'll look forward to what you come back with at the next meeting in our first budget hearing
01:12:26.91	Unknown	Thank you, council member. Who would like to go next?
01:12:32.19	Unknown	Johnson member Hoffman, please.
01:12:33.61	Unknown	So I think overall, the overall direction that I would give at this point is that I'm really uncomfortable with the strategy with regard to how we address the budget for this year. So I fundamentally disagree that this is the time for business as usual and that it's not the time to aggressively
01:12:52.97	Unknown	stop and look at how we're managing our budget,
01:12:56.73	Unknown	and really do a more...
01:13:00.07	Unknown	strategic dive into what are we gonna do this year? Because we know
01:13:04.49	Unknown	I know 100% that this deficit is not a one-year item. This is a multi-year...
01:13:10.94	Unknown	Increased incredible increased cost to our city and it's going to dovetail with the balloon payments for our pension debt in The next three to five years and so these two things together will overtake Any reserve that we have if they're going to overtake any You know actions that we could have with regard to our current revenue streams in our current expenses. And so... you know, actions that we could have with regard to our current revenue streams and our current expenses. And so I strongly feel that this is a band-aid approach and it's a temporary approach and it's the wrong approach for this year. And I think that we need to really pause and look at, you know,
01:13:57.58	Unknown	of our current revenue streams, all of our current expenses, and decide how we're going to move forward, not just this year, but for the next five years. Because we're gonna have to figure out, and keep in mind, the 1.7, that's why I asked Chad,
01:14:13.26	Unknown	the 1.7 million, is that a done deal or not? And the answer was it's not. And we're still looking at other insurance. And so.
01:14:21.12	Unknown	Much higher cost insurance And so waiting to do the 10 year, you know waiting for mid-year budget or waiting for us to finish our 10-year projections There's really no point in that because we know right now that we're gonna have a deficit this year We're probably gonna have a deficit next year and going forward if we can continue on the same track So I think it's great and the other side of it is yeah, we need to look at a
01:14:47.13	Unknown	increased revenues.
01:14:48.56	Unknown	and where we're going to aggressively go after and get increased revenues. But, you know, all of these things that we've talked about, you know, that we've just talked about increased revenue possibilities, we've talked about these for the past year. You know, those are aspirational in some sense, and so is grants. And so what we really need to do right now is look at the bare bones risk that we have with our budget, come up with some hard strategies for the next year, and then figure out
01:15:19.80	Unknown	what the bad news is a year out from now.
01:15:23.24	Unknown	I think
01:15:24.13	Unknown	we need to do a lot more work on this. And it's either,
01:15:29.90	Unknown	you know a deep dive at the next city council meeting and that's the only thing on our but our agenda because we you know do that or we set a special meeting to talk only about agenda items so i think um and i absolutely think we need to increase our reserve and we need to earmark all of the all of what we're calling unassigned cash because that that sends the wrong message to the community the wrong that seems that seems to indicate that we have a lot of money out there that we can spend on non priority projects and that is not true we have a lot of priority infrastructure projects that need to be funded that we're not funding and part of that is our facilities part of those our roads part of those are sidewalks so I'm
01:16:14.32	Unknown	throwing that out there for our council to talk about and maybe talk about future agenda items. But that would be my direction tonight and my input for the staff.
01:16:26.71	Unknown	All right, thank you, Vice Mayor.
01:16:30.34	Unknown	Thank you. I disagree with drastic changes at this time. We don't yet have full information, and I think we have to make informed decisions based on data. I think it's more important that we continue to act methodically and strategically to maximize our fund balance, which has been growing year by year at a healthy pace.
01:16:56.10	Unknown	I do not believe that we officially refer to it as unassigned.
01:17:01.13	Unknown	I saw the definitions in the staff report from our last
01:17:05.70	Unknown	City Council meeting on this issue and I felt that the Finance Director made important distinctions between reserves and fund balance, but I don't believe he referred to it as unassigned, but I suppose I could be wrong. I am very interested to learn the outcome of the 10-year plan and
01:17:24.82	Unknown	that our working group
01:17:27.46	Unknown	has been working on. I was hoping to hear some concrete recommendations at some point later this year. I think planning in the long term is what helps us avoid short-term emergencies. I'm dismayed to hear a member of that group say that its work is no longer relevant for some reason.
01:17:47.49	Unknown	I am very interested to hear feedback from department heads. They are boots on the ground. They know exactly what they're spending, what can be postponed, what is emergent. I'm very invested in upgrading PARS performance or replacing PARS with respect to the management of our pension trust. I endorse continuing to pursue revenue generating ideas, especially focusing on impact fees, which can be very lucrative.
01:18:18.42	Unknown	And I would very much like to continue to explore the concept of a charter city and the property transfer tax benefits that are available through that.
01:18:30.64	Unknown	I liked the idea of building a grant target into our budget and having staff aggressively pursue grant funding. I don't think that is, you know, shooting at windmills. There is so much grant funding out there, and Council Member Blaustein gave some examples of some
01:18:51.93	Unknown	that just became available recently, but
01:18:55.24	Unknown	In the Biden administration, there has just been tons of
01:18:58.70	Unknown	you know, BRIC funding, IRA, all kinds of funding available for the very types of needs that we have.
01:19:06.41	Unknown	continuing to be aggressive
01:19:08.34	Unknown	in pursuing grant funding, I think is an important strategy.
01:19:12.98	Unknown	We have annual revenues coming in from Measure L specifically to address infrastructure. We promise to spend those monies on infrastructure and related needs. I think we need to do our facility survey, our infrastructure survey, and then adopt an amortized plan just as we do for streets and sewers now. We don't need to fix everything tomorrow.
01:19:37.23	Unknown	we need to prioritize what needs to be fixed and then fix things at a reasonable pace within our budget.
01:19:47.37	Unknown	Once we know what we will need to spend on insurance, we will need to ensure that we retain enough fund balance to cover those needs for the next two to three years, which is the period of time it will take us to earn lower rates through better performance and reduced losses. And as to Council Member Blaustein's point, I will say that one of the priorities for the working group on insurance is figuring out how to get a risk manager on board quickly. And then parking. You know, that's an easy. We approved last year implementation of the Dixon parking study. And so we didn't announce that as a priority this year but I think revenue generating ideas should be a priority for us this year given this information and I think that is low-hanging fruit that is easy to realize and finally I do agree with a 15 and 10 percent
01:20:52.39	Unknown	um, reserve policy.
01:20:55.02	Unknown	Although we as a council have not in recent history adopted a reserve policy, we have adopted a reserve policy on an annualized basis. I know we did this in 2018 when we adopted our budget. Part of our resolution included our reserve policy for that year. And the reserves have served us well. But in addition to earmarking a percentage, we also need to
01:21:21.01	Unknown	adopt a policy that says how we can spend those monies and how we cannot, what they are eligible to be spent on and what they are not. So those are my preliminary thoughts. And I look forward to hearing more data as city staff continues to compile data for us to make these important decisions.
01:21:39.50	Kelman	Mayor, may I ask the Vice Mayor question? Please go right ahead. Vice Mayor, I want to follow up on your comment about hearing from the department heads who are on the ground. What type of information, because I agree with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what type of information we would want them to present, what KPIs we might look at, how that might benefit us.
01:21:40.46	Unknown	Please go right ahead and go.
01:21:41.29	Unknown	But...
01:21:41.93	Unknown	I WANT TO TALK ABOUT
01:21:58.96	Unknown	Again, when I was most highly focused on this was 2018 when I was the mayor, and we had a four or five page report from each department head that was attached to our budget in which they identified, here are our needs, here are our challenges, here's our recommended spending, here's our recommended savings.
01:22:19.60	Unknown	That was the year that we invested nearly a million dollars in the pension trust. We made a concerted decision to keep our belts tight, maintain level of service, but make sure that we were investing reserves in what we knew were these long-term investments.
01:22:36.93	Unknown	impending pension obligations. And what's interesting with pension, we could pay it off one year and then owe more the next year. So there's no permanent payoff of pension obligations. And so I think we have to be mindful of that as we figure out our investment and our spending strategies.
01:22:58.07	Kelman	Thank you. I'll just add, I'll thank you to Director McGowan. Director McGowan actually put together a really helpful, if I had money, this is how I would fix key infrastructure points, especially Gate 5 Road. And then Katie and I took that and went out and looked for funding. And it was really, really helpful. And I think maybe that could be included in what the staff are able to do. But, you know, Jill is right. There's no guarantee, and our track record on getting grants is not even over 50%, despite all the money that's out there. So I'm not sure how to reconcile that.
01:23:32.48	Unknown	Councilmember Hoffman, I see you. Yeah, so I have a... Recognized? Go ahead.
01:23:34.32	Unknown	Yeah, so I have a comment on something that the vice mayor said about the 10-year projection. So the reason that the 10-year projection is not something that we should wait on to figure out how we want to attack this ongoing deficit that we know that we're going to have for the next foreseeable future is because our projections, when you use standard assumptions, show that we were gonna be back in deficit, so pretty quickly, either this year or next year. And so, you know, if we're talking about
01:24:08.74	Unknown	right now the strategy right now today is it business as usual or is it let's take a look and how do we actually aggressively start attacking what we know is going to be at least a two million dollar deficit when we only have if we raise the reserve you know you know we're gonna be pretty close to even next year with our deficit and so now is the time to start thinking about
01:24:33.48	Unknown	how we reduce our spending in concert with what's our revenues and with you know i mean i i think i feel strongly that there's no point in waiting why would we wait we know that it's going to be at least two million going forward likely higher so um and the two millions that can serve in number so that's that's my i think that we should still do 10 year absolutely do 10 year but I don't 10 year modeling and 10 year planning knowing that we're gonna have to adjust as we go forward every year but there's no reason to I can't see a reason why you would have to wait for that or anything else to aggressively start looking at this right now
01:25:18.39	Unknown	Are you finished council member? I am. Council member Lusting.
01:25:19.60	Blaustein	Bye.
01:25:19.69	Unknown	I am.
01:25:19.96	Blaustein	Thank you.
01:25:20.06	Unknown	Thank you.
01:25:21.64	Blaustein	Yeah, just a couple of points that were brought up by Vice Mayor and Council Member Hoffman, because I find that the reports from department heads are really essential. And actually, when we all were on, not all, you were not back yet. Glad to have you. But when we were on the dais during, immediately after COVID, I think you'll all remember that we were given from each department head as well, scenarios at three different levels. So scenarios for if we didn't reduce spending, if we maintain level service, scenarios if we had to for a little bit in a catastrophic situation, and scenarios for if we didn't reduce spending if we maintain level service scenarios if we had to for a little bit in a catastrophic situation and scenarios for if we're in an extremely catastrophic situation but I appreciate and agree with the direction staff is taking on the budget but I think it's always a good idea to look at and have this data as vice mayor said so I think it would be helpful in a good way for us potentially to address some of Councilmember Huffman's concerns and look at them and also be able to have an idea of what the department heads concerns are. If we could have that same sort of scenario planning that you'd previously prepared from the department heads while we're making these decisions going forward.
01:26:18.80	Blaustein	you
01:26:20.60	Unknown	Any other comments?
01:26:23.00	Unknown	That was a good discussion. I guess I'll just summarize and add my own comments. I think that the insurance issue is real. The question is, is it an acute or chronic issue? We got kicked out of the pool in part because of three severe insults to our track record, a major landslide, a
01:26:41.58	Unknown	Yeah.
01:26:43.88	Unknown	Basically a victimization by a contractor in one of the parks and records programs and the homeless crisis. So it could be possible that with the hiring of a risk manager, the adjustment of risk that this is an acute issue. And by acute it could still be a number of years and very expensive, or it could be chronic. This is an unfolding situation that we need to take seriously and engage with as a whole council. The vice mayor and I are on a working group to work with staff on a weekly basis. We're going to meet weekly to do a check in on making sure the ball is moving forward and that this isn't sitting to the side. There will be more information that comes and the information could be bad news or good news. But that is, but both of those are possible. I agree with council member Kelman about the notion of selling some of our property. I think coincident with that, it would be a good idea to understand the value of what we owned. So my whole time here, I've been, I've been describing that in business you would have a balance sheet and your balance sheet would show the value of your assets. Under government accounting, we literally don't have that kind of balance sheet. The assets of the city are either held at $0 or at the price that they were purchased at. They're either depreciated to zero or they're held at cost. So a building might literally be worth millions of dollars, but it's hidden to you and me because it doesn't show up anywhere. And so we can, of course, obviously pick a few things we know and there's no reason to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We could proceed with the sale of some asset just to show that we can and that it's possible to do that i don't know when the last time the city sold an asset was uh but we should also commensurate with that uh understand the value of the things that we own i support the idea of a 25 uh reserve across both the reserve funds i I think there's consensus there on that. We give some credit where credit is due. We are beginning to get a handle under the leadership of the new finance department of our end up city council really of the entire picture. So we are doing for the first time and
01:29:04.11	Unknown	I know, I guess memory, a comprehensive facilities assessment of all our assists. And that's part of a council member Hoffman's description that I agree with entirely that we have a bunch of unknown liabilities and I appreciate the city manager's swag at that when he first joined, but the idea of actually doing a professional assessment is to have a good number of what that is. What we're not doing, and I think Councilmember Hoffman alluded to it, but we're not yet doing it is a comprehensive infrastructure assessment. We have it for our streets and our sewers, but getting a grip on what other liabilities are in town will help complete that picture. The 10-year model is in the works, but it can't really be perfected until those elements are inserted in it for it to be relevant out to 10 years.
01:29:52.96	Unknown	uh we do have a lot of cash the the term vice mayor that is in the last uh the last staff report was fund balance in excess of reserves so that was the phrase that was used for the 7.7 million dollars of uh excess fund balance so that's the accumulation of previous year surpluses and it's good to level set that last year we had a million dollar surplus that was put into the 115 trust. This year that ends next month is going to be balanced nominally in surplus, but by a small amount. The issue is this insurance and it is a kick in the shins and we have to get a grip on that over the coming meetings. And I support council member Hoffman's suggestion that we may even consider a special meeting devoted to the subject.
01:30:39.15	Unknown	And I agree with parking as well. I guess I'll foreshadow that I'm trying to put together a Mayor's Blue Ribbon Committee on Business Parking to bring in stakeholders to help staff move some of these things forward with the input of the community. And so as that comes together, that'll be one piece of the puzzle, but our attention to that issue is also important.
01:31:03.02	Unknown	That is it, and I don't know that we need a motion. That's a direction that you can bring back appropriate action from. Is there any comment here?
01:31:09.39	Zapata	and you're like,
01:31:09.83	Zapata	City manager mayor Council and I do want to you know have you indulge me for a minute because I think it's important that this all be said I understand the direction that I've been given today isn't consistent across all of you but there are some common themes that will take in we'll see as implementable I know there's some work that's been going on with the ad hoc committee of mayor Mayor Sobieski, Councilmember Hoffman, former Mayor Withian. know there's some work that's been going on with the ad hoc committee of Mayor sobieski councilmember Hoffman former mayor withy and Chad has to Work on the tenure model and in that work There are some things that I think are have been mentioned tonight. They're important, but there are some things that I think I want to highlight as well. So just indulge me for a second, you know, we really have a
01:31:59.02	Zapata	asked that our infrastructure and our funds that are related infrastructure whether it's measure L money whether it's monies that can be used for infrastructure like Thailand's or sewer enterprise be factored into this 10 year model in a meaningful way once we get our reports our analysis done you know you've touched on the idea of what to do with the 115 trust in terms of management of it and I didn't hear anyone say use it tonight So as we build a budget going forward that's going to be my assumption as it relates to you know rising insurance costs one of the things that the the committee is doing and has been asked to be done by me is to integrate rising insurance costs into that 10-year model so this is something that's ongoing and in process you know the idea of recommending general fund reserve if you did that tonight I heard you say 25% is a starting point it could be more but at least I heard that so I want to make sure I'm clear on that
01:32:55.36	Zapata	You know I I I had Chad on standby but last week when he was your last meeting when he was here he presented on our funds the old City Hall fund the parking fund the Martin Luther K funds and again the practice of the city has been to keep those different and away from the general fund so that if there were needs that came about there or debt service didn't be paid there that we would have the money in those funds to do this so that's something that you know I recommend that we continue. We don't lump all the funds into one general fund you know we keep them separate so we can allocate funds that come from these revenue generating enterprises and not as an enterprise fund to the actual needs of them we have a practice in this city of budgeting our budgets based on the full staffing of the city and the top of the pay range of the city so it's a worst case scenario budget it's not accurate I don't know that we should conclude or continue that I rather look at what we realistically have what our realistic pay ranges are and you know in fact, you know, what I call salary savings built into that. So I would think that would be necessary this year to kind of take in some of the edge of this deficit that we're talking about.
01:34:09.56	Zapata	I obviously know that you know when I got here there was a pandemic concern the following year there was a consultant concern the following year there was you know homeless cost concern and then we had a pretty smooth budget and now we're into an insurance concern. So these things happen. The question is how you manage through them and you know I don't believe that the Council sits on its hands or the city finance director myself sit on our hands. You know we have to do things whether it's create as vice mayor Cox asked you know ideas for revenue generation or efficiencies or as you have asked you know more revenue ideas but also efficiency ideas so I think that that's something that I know that we will do and have to do at this time so we won't just sit on our hands and say you know we've we've got a problem, you know, we'll see what happens next year We're working on it You know the sale of one-time assets Or one time of assets to create one-time revenue like the fire station and how you do that and if you should do that So that's important that you know that group has been asked to take a look at you talked about that tonight like the old fire station we talked about new impact fees and then the other thing that comes up is how we actually not just a
01:35:21.48	Zapata	find money, cut bills, become more efficient, but how we manage that money. And currently what we have is a situation where we have a city finance director who is also acting as our city treasurer. And so the question is, you know, and the question I brought to the group was, what's your recommendation on that? Because that's an old model that some cities have. It's pretty rare in California cities to have a city treasurer or an elected city treasurer outside of the city's Staff it's usually the finance director who manages all that But if you want that separation as a policy then we probably need to have that conversation as well because it's not just Finding money and managing money. It's making sure that there are policy guardrails in place so that the public feels like there are safeguards because if the city manager has too much control over the budget or the finance director has too much control over the budget and you're uncomfortable with that I think we need to have that conversation as well so those ten points are things that I've asked the ad hoc committee to take a look at have had some preliminary conversations with the finance director about some of those but I wanted to make sure that the public heard that those are factors in my mind as well finally you know we're going to I guess have a special meeting that's what I'm hearing and so if you tell me we want to have a special meeting you know somebody needs to tell me when is it next week? The following week we have not we have two more meetings scheduled before the June 30th adoption deadline. So we have a June 4th meeting in the June 18th meeting. So are we talking about a June 4th meeting to bring forward the culmination of some of this information? Are we talking about a meeting between June 4th and June 18th? Are're talking about a meeting after June 18th and work through this and have a special meeting if we in fact don't get to some type of agreed upon solution to the budget.
01:37:16.94	Unknown	May I respectfully suggest that the city manager recommend to us when the special meeting should be based on staff's readiness to address some of the issues that you've raised and that we've raised this evening. If we have it next week, I'm worried that staff won't have the wherewithal to put together the data and the presentations and such as staff is preparing for the next council meeting so perhaps it would be good for staff to put their heads together and figure out how we can best help move this forward
01:37:22.38	Unknown	when,
01:37:51.18	Zapata	Great thank you for that much for and that's very respectful I thank you for that. You know I I rarely get to set meetings special meetings that usually the purview of the city council but if you're going to allow me to do that and suggest that we need a little more time I would concur with that. And so maybe we come back on June the fourth with this kind of information that's been spoken about tonight and in between June 4th and June 18th or after June 18th we'll have a better read on what needs to happen given information we provide.
01:38:17.19	Unknown	Great.
01:38:17.47	Zapata	I think it's a good thing.
01:38:17.89	Unknown	Thank you.
01:38:17.93	Zapata	Bye.
01:38:18.55	Unknown	Okay.
01:38:18.89	Zapata	Thank you.
01:38:18.91	Unknown	Thank you.
01:38:18.96	Kelman	Sorry, sorry, thank you. And one thing to add to make your list 11 is the combined request up here that we see the different scenarios from the department heads when we have that special meeting. So we understand like we saw post COVID what it looks like if we make cuts, if we keep status quo, if we were to add certain things, I think that would be very helpful.
01:38:37.87	Unknown	I second that. All right, so we will close that item and move on to item 5B, discussion and direction regarding bid process for the Ferry Landside Improvement Project, Tracy Way Improvement Enclosure.
01:38:54.16	Unknown	Is there a...
01:38:55.46	Unknown	Is a staff member going to speak to this matter? Is it Director McGowan or yourself, City Manager?
01:39:00.32	Zapata	I we're gonna have a three-way conversation from the staff side mayor and council members of the public if we can I want to lead us off with on in June there was a special appeal of the Planning Commission decision approving the design review for the ferry landing project in that meeting the City Council heard from the local professionals group they heard from the appellants they They heard from concerned residents. They heard many, many testimonies received many many communications and as a result of all of that communication you took an extraordinary step that night rather than rely on city staff to put together minutes you did them in real time on the board and there were components to it that City Council unanimously agreed to and so I want to read those so that I can refresh to the public as well as our team so you authorize the approved local professional groups recommended plan it was presented that night that was one you directed staff to make construction level drawings of phases that can be funded by the grant and that was done given the estimates at the time were more than the grant we were receiving the grant funds we had and so we have now provided new estimates sharpen our pencil and come back so this one is a little bit uncertain at this time because you direct us to obtain professional cost estimates which we did you directed us to identify phases of the plan that can be built within the budget which we're finding those estimates are at 1.59 million 1.8 million and usually originally from SWA and refined by BKF to 1.59 million dollars so the grant funds available are about two million dollars there's a 20% contingency built into this bid package so you know if all things hold out then you know we don't need to phase it you can do the whole plan but what we won't know is the actual project until we get the bids in. You talked about authorizing staff to solicit private and public sources of additional funding to construct the phases that cannot be paid with by the grant such as Raising Tracy Way,
01:41:17.01	Unknown	Thank you.
01:41:28.73	Zapata	You directed the city manager to execute a service contract with this W a to continue coordination with design work which we've done. You authorize staff to submit a per app permit application with all the appropriate agencies that are required. And you asked us to bring back a phasing plan. And that's fuzzy again too, because the phasing was part of discussion around the potential of not having enough grant funds to do this so at that point we brought some conversations of the City Council we were directed to come back with a transparent and public bid process which is what is in front of you tonight so the specifics of the bid and what's in that package and in that report were developed by a team of us. And, you know, we believe that that bid package provides the flexibility that is necessary. But in that conversation, there was conversation that involved Tracy Way. At some point in this conversation, we were told by the city attorney, you know, Tracy Way is a process, not part of this bid package. so there has to be a parallel process that would involve the City Council considering abandoning vacating Tracy way separate from the bids but we should still go out and do the bids but do those in parallel and that's what is in the recommended staff report tonight so if you have questions about the particulars of the staff report the legality of the staff report as it relates to the bids Kevin is here as it relates to how we go out to bid our city attorney is online as well so that concludes my presentation there vice president
01:43:04.87	Unknown	Bye.
01:43:05.09	Unknown	Spare.
01:43:06.64	Unknown	Thank you. Thank you, City Manager, and thank you, Director McGowan, for the staff report, which was very thorough and which I carefully reviewed, given my background as a procurement contracting lawyer. City Manager and Director McGowan, one thing in the staff report mentioned that we would have to wait for BCDC permit approval before going out to bid. And I wanted to clarify, as I did with Director McGowan via email, that we actually can go out to bid while still awaiting final BCDC approval of the permit so long as we're prepared.
01:43:50.40	Unknown	if BCDC makes comments to address those via an addendum.
01:43:55.18	Unknown	to the bid documents or a change order
01:43:57.81	Unknown	to the bid if necessary.
01:44:00.17	Unknown	I would hope that we would have some
01:44:03.46	Unknown	hints from BCDC about what they might require in advance of them actually issuing the permit so that we can adjust our bid documents appropriately.
01:44:12.73	Unknown	Do I have that right?
01:44:13.31	Director McGowan	I think.
01:44:13.38	Unknown	Thank you.
01:44:13.43	Director McGowan	you
01:44:13.77	Director McGowan	That's correct, Vice Mayor. You've got it right.
01:44:19.44	Unknown	Anything else? All right. Any other questions?
01:44:22.97	Kelman	Yes, so Director McGowan, I had forwarded you the Yacht Club email, which I'm sure you got and we all got, about safety concerns. And I hope you saw it because I said, I'm going to ask you about that email. So I'm wondering if you can respond to that and if you've had an opportunity to review that.
01:44:42.49	Director McGowan	Yes, we were planning on making a written response to Miss Bott from the Sausalito Yacht Club. And a lot of the things in that letter are true. As far as the striping in the existing lot one, it doesn't necessarily match the current standards, nor should it.
01:45:04.56	Director McGowan	because this parking lot was constructed prior to
01:45:07.89	Director McGowan	the current standards for parking lots.
01:45:12.38	Director McGowan	And there are a couple other things in here that are good suggestions. One is to update the striping. I think that's appropriate. We'll take a close look at it.
01:45:21.52	Director McGowan	I was out there this afternoon and the striping didn't look too terrible. It could use some updating. So I agree with that.
01:45:29.45	Director McGowan	There are some questions in the letter dated May 7th from the Water Eek Design Group.
01:45:36.51	Director McGowan	And a lot of these things have been addressed in the past through the planning commission,
01:45:41.74	Director McGowan	through the
01:45:42.94	Director McGowan	the City Council as well.
01:45:45.05	Director McGowan	Why are we...
01:45:46.33	Director McGowan	considering putting bike parking over on Humboldt
01:45:49.25	Director McGowan	The idea is to split the flow between the pedestrians and those boarding the ferry with their bicycles.
01:45:55.66	Director McGowan	And the idea is also to
01:45:59.04	Director McGowan	improve the congestion in that specific area.
01:46:03.07	Director McGowan	And so this was the basic premise from the very beginning in order to split those specific flows.
01:46:09.08	Director McGowan	Thank you.
01:46:09.40	Director McGowan	and have a less congested area in the plaza itself.
01:46:13.77	Director McGowan	There are some more things in here, the letter itself, that will take a little more studying on my behalf.
01:46:20.08	Director McGowan	But that's the general consensus, and we've gone through this with the Sausalito Yacht Club in the past and have addressed their comments. They may not have agreed with the way this project has progressed, and we respect their opinions on that specifically. But at this point, the idea is to split the flows for bicyclists as well as pedestrians.
01:46:43.40	Kelman	Thank you and follow up question. So I know we've seen different iterations of the local recommended plan just for the record as of tonight, how many parking spots are being removed from lot one?
01:46:57.14	Director McGowan	Well, you had to quiz me on that one.
01:46:58.22	Kelman	Oh, sorry. It's like a big, we talked about
01:46:58.23	Director McGowan	.
01:46:58.72	Director McGowan	Sorry. It's like a big, we talked about parking and revenue. I had to. You know what? If I spout off, I'm probably going to get it wrong. I think it was 39 or 31, something like that.
01:47:08.48	Kelman	I'm hearing 31 so sounds like it's 31 okay and then so a quarter to that I had shared with my colleagues that I was very interested in looking at car parking on Humboldt that Parisi document I referenced earlier from September 19th valued the spots in this area at about $7,500 each right that 20 spots it 150 K. We just had a long talk about budget. Did you have the opportunity to potentially look instead of putting the bikes on Humboldt, but instead to round the corner on Spinnaker drive? Was that ever looked at?
01:47:45.81	Director McGowan	Absolutely, that was looked into quite extensively as well. And I believe that one of the reasons not to go in that direction was, there's a couple different things.
01:47:56.59	Director McGowan	One has to do with blocking the view, and the other one has to do with having enough space for bicyclists down that specific roadway in order to make that happen. In other words, there is enough space in that direction, but the group that was developing the design looked at specifically a more appropriate area would be on Humboldt itself. Why? Because it's in sight of the ferry itself. It's a more direct path for those who are accessing the ferry in that direction.
01:48:25.34	Kelman	Okay, so maybe you could just myth bust for me. I was under the impression, perhaps incorrect, that Spinnaker Drive was wider than it needed to be under the code. Is that correct?
01:48:36.43	Director McGowan	Thank you.
01:48:36.84	Director McGowan	That's true too. Our designer took a close look at that. And there's a bit of a sidewalk, or it's more of an asphalt sidewalk in certain areas. And the road could be narrowed in some way, shape, or form to provide some additional space for bicycles in that area.
01:48:55.50	Unknown	Any other questions? No other questions, Councilmember? Councilmember Hoffman.
01:49:00.76	Unknown	I actually have a question for Officer Mather, who's there in the back, as our lone police officer here. And I note that our police department is responsible for
01:49:14.52	Unknown	managing the traffic, managing the congestion downtown and did a tremendous amount of work in the past ten years about how to approach the safest avenue for bikes to make it to the ferry landing. So thank you for coming officer Mather and thank you for answering my questions. So I
01:49:35.19	Unknown	What are your safety concerns about moving the bicycles to the proposed location and building a new bicycle parking facility there next to the buses? How do you think that will affect
01:49:50.56	Unknown	the intersection of people and buses and bikes.
01:49:53.68	Officer Mather	Yeah, I think adding another element to that location is gonna be difficult.
01:49:59.00	Officer Mather	In years past, we had a big issue with the tour buses, just alone the tour buses on their own being there.
01:50:06.83	Officer Mather	and having to manage the influx of traffic with pedestrian traffic vehicle traffic bike traffic and then you know the tour buses coming and going and then the offloading of passengers that you know come off that bus and go whatever way they want right
01:50:20.43	Officer Mather	So,
01:50:21.56	Officer Mather	In the past, we didn't have anybody there to manage that. The only person we had was a former mayor and city council member.
01:50:28.19	Unknown	Thank you.
01:50:28.60	Officer Mather	and Herb Weiner would volunteer his time and would be out there
01:50:32.45	Officer Mather	all summer for my first five years here.
01:50:35.30	Officer Mather	So our concern is what's in place to manage that now that you're gonna add potentially
01:50:42.76	Officer Mather	bike parking to that same location. Who's going to manage the crossing of the pedestrians and the coming off of the buses with that bicycle traffic, with the vehicle traffic, and then going across Spinnaker towards the ferry landing.
01:50:57.13	Officer Mather	That's the police department's concern. We're not for or against or opposed to anything. We're just trying to understand what that impact is going to be based on what we've seen in the past.
01:51:08.14	Unknown	Thank you.
01:51:08.17	Officer Mather	Okay.
01:51:08.37	Unknown	Thank you.
01:51:08.56	Unknown	Thank you.
01:51:09.08	Zapata	Thank you.
01:51:11.81	Zapata	Yeah, that's Lieutenant Mathers, if I could.
01:51:12.29	Officer Mather	That's the truth.
01:51:15.31	Zapata	I'll tell you, he's our newly promoted Lieutenant.
01:51:17.89	Unknown	Lieutenant.
01:51:18.52	Unknown	Congratulations. Any other questions, council member?
01:51:25.30	Unknown	Any other questions? Council Member Blaustein, no?
01:51:29.75	Blaustein	I can just a clarifying question. Sorry to do this. And this might be for Director McGowan and a similar line of questions at our last meeting. But I just want to clarify based on the extensive staff report about the bidding process.
01:51:46.78	Blaustein	This is to understand whether or not the project is on budget and it's not possible without bidding every component of it, correct?
01:51:55.30	Director McGowan	I'm not sure I understand the question.
01:51:57.04	Blaustein	So if we bid the project per the staff recommendations, we'll have an understanding of whether or not we are within the projected budget as suggested by the two estimates we have now.
01:52:07.37	Director McGowan	Yes, that's the intent.
01:52:09.26	Blaustein	Okay, so the purposes of pulling this together is just to move forward following the direction we already gave regarding Stacey Way, Tracy, Tracy Way, and the professional groups assessment and design.
01:52:22.17	Director McGowan	Yes, that's the intent.
01:52:23.94	Blaustein	Okay, I just wanted to clarify. Thanks.
01:52:26.06	Director McGowan	I wouldn't mind adding a very small detail which probably doesn't really matter but
01:52:28.48	Blaustein	Yes, please.
01:52:31.28	Director McGowan	the furniture purchase will be handled internally
01:52:35.23	Director McGowan	In other words, it's cheaper for us to purchase any type of furniture for that area instead of having a contractor do it. So even though it says furniture purchases element, I think it's G, we'll end up purchasing it and possibly installing it ourselves.
01:52:49.91	Blaustein	Are you saying you're going to function as the landscape designer for the
01:52:53.66	Director McGowan	I would never propose to be a landscape designer, no.
01:52:54.10	Blaustein	I've never,
01:52:54.82	Blaustein	Thank you.
01:52:58.13	Blaustein	Okay.
01:52:58.25	Director McGowan	Bill Hines can help me with that.
01:53:00.07	Blaustein	Great. I'm glad to know that the professional group will continue. You'll help us with the furniture selection, Bill. Great.
01:53:07.43	Unknown	All right, thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Kellman? I'm sorry, Kevin, please sit down. Council Member Kellman has a question, Director McGowan.
01:53:10.07	Kelman	I'm sorry, Kevin, I'll free you to sit down. That's a question, Director. I'm sorry, we were talking about the BCDC permits. What are the BCDC permits for and how long might they take and does that impact the bids that we get, the bids expire after a certain time?
01:53:24.57	Director McGowan	So we have had several conversations with BCDC and their staff. We have submitted for a permit.
01:53:31.79	Director McGowan	And we are submitting for a permit because we are within 100 feet of the mean high tide level. That's their jurisdictional line. Some of our project extends past that, but some of the work is within it itself. So that's why we need to get a permit from them. They have not let us know if there's anything major with the project. So I'm not anticipating if there's anything that will be out of the ordinary.
01:53:56.92	Director McGowan	They may submit certain comments and requirements upon the city. And I'm trying to think of one. Let's just say for the sake of argument, we did not have a bioretention system noted on the plan. They may have required that of us and put it in their conditions of approval. So we would have to change the plan so that we put one in place. We're trying to stay ahead of BCDC so we have one on the plan already.
01:54:20.60	Unknown	REGULATIONS.
01:54:20.66	Unknown	Thank you.
01:54:20.70	Unknown	Thank you.
01:54:20.73	Unknown	everybody.
01:54:21.51	Director McGowan	In conversations with BCDC, they have mentioned that they are trying to get us the permit by July. We will continue to call them every other week to make sure that we can try to get the permits.
01:54:35.56	Unknown	Thank you, director. There are no other questions. We'll open this for public comment. City clerk.
01:54:42.94	Unknown	All right. I'm going to call a couple people. James Gabbert.
01:54:47.71	Unknown	Mr. Gabbert.
01:54:48.69	Unknown	Mary Faust and Carolyn Revell.
01:54:54.73	Jim Gabbard	Good evening, everybody. I am Jim Gabbard. I used to be my stage name on radio and TV after 67 years with James, but I prefer Jim. I am the Chairman Emeritus of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce and currently Chair of the Government Action Committee.
01:55:14.39	Jim Gabbard	And of course, this is something that involves a chamber.
01:55:17.75	Jim Gabbard	And what we did in the meeting we had at SWA back in January, the Chamber came back in and said, we support the concept and we think it's a great thing. However, there are a lot of problems that keep us from coming out and saying we endorse the entire project. We need the bids to see what it's going to cost. There's the issue of 31,
01:55:43.49	Jim Gabbard	parking places in parking lot one and talking to people. They think they have it solved by moving into another lot and everything. That's not completely done yet. There are some issues, but overall, I think it really could end up to be just an extraordinary plan for Sausalito, but there's still a lot to do before we as the Chamber of Commerce could come out and say we really support it. Now, one thing that the Government Action Committee of the Chamber came There's still a lot to do before we as a chamber of commerce could come out and say we really support it. Now, one thing that the government action committee of the chamber came up with, we heard and they promised us that the kiosk would stay. We've heard that twice. Then somebody, somewhere, someplace, one of the officials said, well, when they tear the kiosk down, we at the chamber, if the kiosk goes away, we're going to be kind of mad about it. And we hope that, you know, that becomes in, because we've been promised the kiosk. It's very important for the merchants and all. And overall, I think there's a lot of work to be done, but I think it's very good for Sausalito to get the thing done and done within budgets and everything else. Thank you.
01:56:49.91	Jim Gabbard	Thank you, Mr. Gabbard.
01:56:51.43	Unknown	Hi, Mary Faust.
01:56:53.59	Unknown	followed by Carolyn Rebell.
01:56:58.97	Mary Faust	Hello, I'm Mary Faust, and thank you, City Council, for your time. I want to let you know I'm also on the board of Sausalito Beautiful, full disclosure, and a park and rec commissioner.
01:57:08.96	Mary Faust	I'm up here to say that I'm happy that the ferry plaza the ferry landslide plan and
01:57:15.51	Mary Faust	is to a point to come to a bid. I'd like for it to come to a bid. And also like that bid to include the enclosure of Tracy Way. I think that promenade is very important to our
01:57:26.73	Mary Faust	to the flow of the city and I think it can be
01:57:30.34	Mary Faust	Um,
01:57:31.30	Mary Faust	designed to be safe.
01:57:33.93	Mary Faust	And it will also give all those people that eat ice cream a good place to sit down. Thank you very much.
01:57:43.03	Carolyn Revell	Good evening, Mayor and Council. I'm Carolyn Revell, an 18-year resident and urban planner and Sausalito-Beautiful board member. I urge you to move forward with the Ferry Landside Improvement Project. Please direct the Public Works Department to pursue the standard-based bid recommended in the staff report for the entire project approved on February 6th and initiate the vacation of Tracy Way within 40 days of submission to the Planning Commission.
01:58:04.29	Unknown	Indeed.
01:58:09.64	Carolyn Revell	All elements of the plan for the Ferrylandside project work together to improve pedestrian and bicycle circulation, including creating a pedestrian promenade on Tracy Way for strollers and events like art fairs and farmers markets and, yes, ice cream eating.
01:58:25.50	Carolyn Revell	Um,
01:58:26.47	Carolyn Revell	Two estimates indicate that the project can be funded by the grant.
01:58:31.31	Carolyn Revell	The project cost is not coming from city coffers competing with other priorities. The deduct alternates allow flexibility if the estimates are off a bit.
01:58:41.05	Carolyn Revell	So by approving the steps to initiate construction in a timely manner after years of planning,
01:58:46.80	Carolyn Revell	this council will be remembered as the one who transformed the heart of our Bayside town into a welcoming, attractive place for residents and visitors alike. Thank you very much.
01:59:00.27	Unknown	Okay, we have Jock Ullman followed by Gail Schell and then Sharna Brockett.
01:59:12.30	Jacques Alvin	Jacques Alvin.
01:59:13.72	Jacques Alvin	local professional group.
01:59:16.13	Jacques Alvin	We have come.
01:59:17.81	Jacques Alvin	through years of design, we've gone through years of design studies, public outreach,
01:59:24.48	Jacques Alvin	and discussions, compromises, mitigations, addressing budget concerns, investigating ordinance restrictions, and most recently working with council, legal expertise and city staff, crafted bid documents that conform to proper procedure and include alternates that provide ways for the project to proceed without removing any key elements vital to the basic design concept please approve the staff recommendations for putting the future the entire project out to bid as approved on january 6th and highly anticipated by an overwhelming number of citizens and please instruct staff to expedite the process for vacating Tracy Way so there are no delays in getting the project under construction. This project will create a ferry landing plaza free of bicycles we can be proud of and want to spend time in. A pedestrian pomade that will encourage folks to venture to businesses north of Anchor Street and to the Sauciot Center for the Arts. It will turn El Portal into a predominantly pedestrian way. The dominance of the automobile in the heart of our downtown will be replaced with a beautiful pedestrian experience. We have all worked long and hard, and the time has come to get it done.
02:00:53.24	Unknown	All right, Gail Shaw.
02:00:55.34	Gail Schell	Hi, I'm Gail Schell. I've lived here for five years. One of the things I've loved best about being in Sausalito is volunteering with other people who care about the city and want to make it better.
02:01:04.72	Gail Schell	and more enjoyable for us as well as visitors. And I have been thrilled to work with the group, have been promoting this project.
02:01:12.53	Gail Schell	and I was here when you voted to move forward. So I'm very excited the night has come.
02:01:17.32	Gail Schell	And I really want you to go ahead and put this project up to bid
02:01:21.04	Gail Schell	in its entirety.
02:01:23.05	Gail Schell	I know it's
02:01:24.11	Gail Schell	really easy for people to
02:01:26.86	Gail Schell	criticize or say no or be concerned, but I,
02:01:30.64	Gail Schell	I hope that you're hearing the voices from the community, not just here tonight,
02:01:34.65	Gail Schell	but in letters and emails you've gotten and in conversations you've had that this is something that's good for a city.
02:01:40.06	Gail Schell	And there are so many of us behind you. And we really want you to move forward. Thank you.
02:01:53.89	Sharna Brockett	Thank you for all your hard work volunteering to help our city thrive. I just wanna,
02:02:01.60	Sharna Brockett	talk about my support for moving forward with the entire design, including bidding out Tracy Way.
02:02:07.97	Sharna Brockett	Um,
02:02:09.23	Sharna Brockett	And I'm super excited to hear that our latest estimates are under budget. So that's great news. So let's get on with it and bid it out and see what the actual numbers are. And then we can make the decisions we need to make if we need to make them, if they are over budget.
02:02:22.07	Sharna Brockett	I do want to address budget because I could see that this is probably going to be part of the discussion since we are worried about money. This is free grant money that we have. And we all know that we're on the cusp of losing it. This has been seven years in the making. So let's get this going and use that money properly.
02:02:39.12	Sharna Brockett	Um,
02:02:40.03	Sharna Brockett	I also want to say I know that there's going to be probably discussion around loss of revenue with parking.
02:02:45.38	Sharna Brockett	When we take we do have to take out some parking we all know that for this plan to happen and
02:02:50.74	Sharna Brockett	But there's also some misinformation out there about the parking revenue loss. It's not like 200,000, and I'll let other people cover that, but it's more like 30,000. It's a much smaller number than it's been circulating out there. The math has been incorrect from what I've seen. And then with that said, the Dixon study, as you mentioned, has tons of opportunities, low-hanging fruit for us to maximize our revenue and to actually create more parking. A lot of our meters don't even work because we don't have, I guess, enough Wi-Fi or enough of a connection here. So let's fix some of those things, and let's really make sure that we're getting the maximum revenue. And then I also wanna say that the way I see it is that if you're talking about increasing revenue, let's look at the jewel of our city, it's our downtown. If we get more people to come downtown, because it looks nice, then they will spend more money, they will stay on our hotels in the off season, and we will fill our empty storefronts, and we'll build our tax revenue that way. Thank you.
02:03:58.90	Unknown	Next is Peter Van Meter followed by Muriel Ullman and then Cheryl Poff.
02:04:10.29	Peter Van Meter	Thank you. I don't need to repeat the benefits of bidding out the entire project and moving expeditiously at the parallel project of
02:04:10.38	Unknown	And they...
02:04:20.15	Peter Van Meter	closing Tracy away.
02:04:21.70	Peter Van Meter	The great news from that is that when you do those two things in parallel,
02:04:25.50	Peter Van Meter	We have a great opportunity
02:04:27.22	Peter Van Meter	to have the whole project
02:04:28.96	Peter Van Meter	They accept it.
02:04:30.22	Peter Van Meter	as a one project,
02:04:32.20	Peter Van Meter	including the
02:04:33.34	Peter Van Meter	closing of Tracy Way, because you've taken care of the legal aspects of that.
02:04:36.95	Peter Van Meter	And by July 30th, you can move ahead with the entire thing.
02:04:40.90	Peter Van Meter	And it looks very likely that's going to be within budget. And once you do those two things in parallel, then you're going to have that happen by the end of July. So please, go ahead. What a great milestone this is. And you'll be taking a terrific vote here tonight. Thank you.
02:04:54.08	Unknown	you
02:04:57.24	Unknown	Maria Ullman.
02:04:59.25	Muriel Ullman	My name is Muriel Ullman. I'm the wife of one of the local professionals who's been working on this project for years, doing Zooms from the house, which I have overheard
02:05:12.60	Muriel Ullman	Several a week, it's been going on, and it's been done with so much goodwill.
02:05:18.81	Muriel Ullman	and respect for each other. I was amazed.
02:05:22.99	Muriel Ullman	And it's just going to be a beautiful downtown.
02:05:26.82	Muriel Ullman	I'm a person who walks the downtown
02:05:29.91	Muriel Ullman	Several times a week and I would love this promenade thing and so I'm just hoping this happens soon Sooner the better. Thank you
02:05:45.06	Cheryl Popp	Hello, City Council. Thank you for all you do. I am Cheryl Popp, a 30-year resident of Sausalito, a downtown business owner, and a member and former board.
02:05:55.42	Cheryl Popp	uh,
02:05:56.42	Cheryl Popp	Officer at the Sausalito Yacht Club
02:05:59.15	Cheryl Popp	I'm sorry and dismayed I have to be here again. I thought this was all done. As much as I love you all, I'm here again urging you to stay the course with this entire Ferry Landslide project as it was approved by all of you February 6th. Please do not be swayed by a local minority at a private club. Do what's best for the community, especially local businesses. And I think we all agree, this landslide improvement project is going to dramatically enhance the downtown for visitors as well as our residents.
02:06:30.54	Cheryl Popp	Please approve the bidding process as proposed by city staff. It seems to have satisfied everything that you requested.
02:06:36.97	Cheryl Popp	And while I love the Yacht Club, I do disagree with their ongoing, seemingly irrational opposition to this project.
02:06:44.94	Cheryl Popp	Contrary to what has been suggested, I think that Humboldt and Tracy Way, as well as the entrance of the Saucido Yacht Club and their current condition,
02:06:53.47	Cheryl Popp	post far more life safety issues than the design that you have already approved. And I think our officer mentioned how chaotic and crazy it is down there. This is an opportunity with this improvement plan to make it much better.
02:07:06.82	Cheryl Popp	My bookstore is at Humboldt and Bay, right on the Sausalito Yacht Harbor Marina. I walk past the Yacht Club and down Tracy Way Daily,
02:07:16.00	Cheryl Popp	I'm there seven days a week right there. So I speak with some authority. So please let's demonstrate some fiscal responsibility. Don't risk losing this incredible grant and the opportunity to enhance our downtown area. It's already been delayed seven years. Let's break ground this fall. Thank you.
02:07:36.54	Unknown	Beth Swerke followed by Karina Hughes and then Todas Antanavisis.
02:07:46.07	Beth Swerke	Hi, I'm Beth Swerke, a resident of nine years, ferry commuter and walker of the future promenade daily. Thank you for approving the plan over three months ago. We really appreciate that and are excited to move forward.
02:08:00.57	Beth Swerke	Loved seeing in the currents that there's a farmer's market to coming to Dunphy Park.
02:08:04.37	Beth Swerke	Let's do more of that. That's what's going to happen at this new location where we
02:08:08.01	Beth Swerke	when we break ground and make this a really magical place for all of us.
02:08:11.60	Beth Swerke	Everyone who comes to Sausalito says it reminds them of Europe. Let's follow Europe's lead. Let's continue to do these awesome things with beautiful public promenades.
02:08:20.63	Beth Swerke	You mentioned during the budget combo idea that you need ideas for revenue generating measures. This is one, including off season through hotels and whatnot.
02:08:30.79	Beth Swerke	you talked earlier this evening about applying for grants to go towards budget.
02:08:34.98	Beth Swerke	that that's a great idea to get revenue. Well, we have one. We're sitting on it. We're about to lose it. We're looking for new grants. We literally have one for this specific thing.
02:08:44.97	Beth Swerke	parking again if that's a concern let's fix the current meters. My understanding there's a lot of money being left on the table through broken meters, issues with solar what have you. Those 30 spots aren't the problem.
02:08:55.95	Beth Swerke	Please pass the whole project tonight including Tracy Way
02:08:59.31	Beth Swerke	start the administrative process for Tracy Wade at the same time, and please do it now so we can stay on track and break during the fall. Thank you.
02:09:10.21	Karina Hughes	Hello, good evening. I'm Karina Hughes. I just want to express my enthusiasm and my energy and my excitement for this wonderful plan. It's a big yes for me, and I believe it appears that the money is there. So I think that now is the moment, and it's time to improve the downtown waterfront for generations to come. it'll be safer, better organized, and more enjoyable space for everyone to enjoy our visitors, our residents, and businesses alike. Please move forward with...
02:09:47.08	Karina Hughes	the bid, go out to bid, do so in accordance with how the staff has
02:09:51.47	Karina Hughes	recommended in their process and approach. Please bid for the entirety of the plan to transform Tracy Way into a pedestrian promenade. It'll be wonderful for everyone, and the safety will be underscored there as well. And lastly, during the bidding process, please do instruct the city staff to go out and do what they need to do to start the administrative steps required to close Tracy way. It'll be efficient in terms of time and cost and effective in the long run. So let's meet the moment for making something really really improving something wonderful for everyone in the downtown area of Sausalito. Thank you.
02:10:48.83	Unknown	Hi everyone, my name is Titus Antonovicis, I'm a resident of Sausalito. I wanted to voice my support for putting the ferry landing project to bid as is with Tracy Way work included. The project overall is a great investment. We use money we've already paid for in federal taxes to make our downtown more appealing to residents and tourists alike.
02:11:09.37	Unknown	One way to increase revenue that we've been talking about today is investment in things that make our downtown more appealing to spend money in. And this investment comes without a meaningful cost to our operational budget.
02:11:20.30	Unknown	We should even be able to fill more of our parking capacity to full for more of the year with improvements like this. Maybe creating more net parking revenue than we even lose for those Tracy Way parking spots.
02:11:31.69	Unknown	I personally feel like the Tracy Way plan connects the whole project to the heart of the town town in a way that will make me proud to show it off to visitors. It helps make the most of this Ferry Lineside project as a whole.
02:11:44.57	Unknown	I so appreciate all the hard work that has gone on to the project so far, and thank you,
02:11:53.97	Jim Gabbard	Thank you.
02:11:55.57	Unknown	We have Kit Hayes, Martha Loftus, and...
02:12:02.08	Unknown	Michael Rex.
02:12:08.75	Kit Hayes	Hi there. My name is Kit Hayes. Great to be with you all again tonight. And I'm so happy that the Ferry landslide project has continued to move forward and that we're still making so much progress. I want to echo some of the other comments that have been made and encourage you to please get bids out for the whole design, including the Tracy way pedestrian promenade.
02:12:29.27	Kit Hayes	I really love that idea specifically because one of my favorite things about living in Sausalito is that we have a kind of a heritage of having these beautiful public spaces that are available that everyone can enjoy the beauty of our city.
02:12:40.81	Kit Hayes	It's one of my favorite things to go around and find new little nooks, and this is sure to be
02:12:45.25	Kit Hayes	a favorite new little nook for a lot of people.
02:12:47.95	Kit Hayes	I also think this is a really substantive step we can take alongside our ongoing support of the SCA, of which I'm a board member, to be clear.
02:12:56.45	Kit Hayes	to improve the look and feel of our downtown. Now more than ever, I think we really do need to leverage the free money that's available to enhance the heartbeat of our city.
02:13:04.93	Kit Hayes	And I'm so excited to see the creativity that erupts from local business owners and the artist community to make good use of that promenade space.
02:13:12.22	Kit Hayes	I also want to echo some of what's been said about
02:13:16.87	Kit Hayes	getting moving,
02:13:18.12	Kit Hayes	on taking the steps that would need to be required to close Tracy way now so that if that's approved and we have all the money we can just go and keep our momentum. So thank you very much for your ongoing attention here.
02:13:34.36	Kit Hayes	Thank you.
02:13:34.37	Martha Loftus	Hello, thank you for having us. I'm Martha Loftus, resident of Sausalito, and I'm also a construction project manager. So I echo everything that's been said about how fabulous our community is, but I really want to talk to, I know extremely well what it means to bid level.
02:13:51.23	Martha Loftus	how to engage vendors, the procurement process, and specifically working with contractors. It's what I do.
02:13:56.99	Martha Loftus	So I really encourage you to
02:13:59.96	Martha Loftus	implement the staff's recommendation of bidding this entire process project
02:14:05.52	Martha Loftus	in its whole.
02:14:07.23	Martha Loftus	the entire project, the way that they put it together,
02:14:10.44	Martha Loftus	you can go through if the bids come in, the actual construction bids come in higher than the estimates
02:14:16.10	Martha Loftus	there's a way to assess this project and
02:14:18.53	Martha Loftus	and move forward as it is.
02:14:20.59	Martha Loftus	Out.
02:14:21.73	Martha Loftus	including Tracy Way, to have it be a promenade for pedestrians,
02:14:26.80	Martha Loftus	I personally would like to walk my dog there.
02:14:29.30	Martha Loftus	and sit outside and go to a farmer's market in our downtown
02:14:32.90	Martha Loftus	as opposed to the parking lot at CVS on East Blyesdale and Mill Valley.
02:14:37.05	Martha Loftus	So I really encourage you to move forward with this project and continue the great work that you've done so far and bid the whole project. Thanks so much.
02:14:50.06	Michael Rex	Hello, I'm Michael Rex, local architect and a member of the local professional group.
02:14:55.63	Michael Rex	I've been volunteering my time and energy for over 30 years to get a plaza downtown.
02:15:01.50	Michael Rex	we can enjoy our town more rather than the automobiles.
02:15:04.89	Michael Rex	taken over the downtown.
02:15:07.34	Michael Rex	And I ask that you stick to your previous vote, five to zero, to move forward with the entire plan that included closing trace away vehicles.
02:15:20.72	Michael Rex	And, um,
02:15:21.92	Michael Rex	I ask you tonight to direct staff to pursue the
02:15:26.66	Michael Rex	PROCESS PROMPTLY, COMMENCE THAT PROCESS, PURSUE IT QUICKLY.
02:15:31.33	Michael Rex	It could be part of the bid package.
02:15:35.44	Michael Rex	if we make that a swift process.
02:15:39.52	Michael Rex	And you don't need to abandon it as a right-of-way. I think staff's alternative that it could become a mall
02:15:45.63	Michael Rex	for pedestrian use and occasional
02:15:48.83	Michael Rex	special events like a farmer's market and a pop-up art show.
02:15:52.83	Michael Rex	In terms of parking, if we need revenue, I wouldn't just focus on parking.
02:16:00.16	Michael Rex	In fact, if downtown was more enjoyable,
02:16:03.43	Michael Rex	more of a desirable destination for residents and visitors, we wouldn't have probably so many empty storefronts.
02:16:15.61	Michael Rex	and we'd get greater revenue than from a few more parking spaces particularly in light of
02:16:21.22	Michael Rex	where the future is headed with autonomous vehicles and electric bikes
02:16:25.03	Michael Rex	will probably need less parking. And if you get going on implementing the low-hanging fruit and the Dixon
02:16:31.53	Michael Rex	A REPORT.
02:16:33.06	Michael Rex	That would be smart.
02:16:35.16	Michael Rex	If you want to know, you can ask me questions about our study of
02:16:40.72	Michael Rex	Parking bikes on Humboldt versus Spinnaker. I'm out of time now, but if you ask me a question, I can give you a quick answer to why we went with Humboldt, not Spinnaker. Thank you.
02:16:52.03	Unknown	Actually, Mr. Rex, I would like to ask you a follow-up question, if that's okay. You heard Lieutenant Mather voice some police department concerns about circulation and bicycle oversight. Do you, have you and the working group considered these concerns of the Sausalito Police Department? And if so, how would you propose to address them?
02:16:56.54	Unknown	Huh?
02:17:17.48	Michael Rex	Yes, absolutely. We considered those concerns before we even heard from the officer.
02:17:24.48	Michael Rex	And I think,
02:17:26.45	Michael Rex	We have some refinements that we can make to the bike parking on Humboldt Street.
02:17:31.85	Michael Rex	that are not in the current plan, where we can completely separate the bikes from the loading of the buses. It's not in the plan because we want to be sure that
02:17:41.49	Michael Rex	We can afford the basics. When we get the bids in, we might show as a change order
02:17:48.27	Michael Rex	a refinement. There is a very definite way to separate the two.
02:17:53.20	Michael Rex	and make it much more functional and safer.
02:17:56.71	Michael Rex	IT MIGHT COST A LITTLE MORE. I DON'T THINK SIGNIFICANT. WE CAN SHOW YOU THOSE OPTIONS. WE COULD PRICE THEM OUT ONCE WE HAVE A BUILDER AND NEGOTIATE
02:18:05.67	Michael Rex	A change order if need be.
02:18:07.72	Michael Rex	But it's just not there for the reasons I've shown because, or I mentioned, because we want to be sure that the whole package is affordable within budget.
02:18:18.87	Unknown	Well, why wait and pay a contractor a change order? Um, and I see Jacques behind you way.
02:18:26.80	Unknown	ready to weigh in as well. My thought would be why not include this as an alternate or as something to be addressed now. I certainly don't want to ignore concerns of those charged with protecting public safety.
02:18:43.64	Michael Rex	We don't want to delay getting this out to bid and we think the refinements I'm describing are a fairly minor cost. I'm just saying that we've considered it and I think it could be implemented pretty easily, but I wouldn't want to risk slowing the process down to try to nail all that down.
02:18:46.85	Unknown	And.
02:19:04.43	Unknown	I agree. I don't want to slow the process either, but this is, tonight was the first I've heard of these circulation concerns. I don't know why we've not been apprised of this sooner or why the police
02:19:13.97	Unknown	weren't,
02:19:14.51	Unknown	consulted sooner,
02:19:15.82	Unknown	but I believe we need to
02:19:19.91	Unknown	design and build a holistic project and if you have a simple and cost-effective way to address these issues why not put it to paper it was a
02:19:30.15	Michael Rex	It was a consensus of the local professional group to keep it simple because we were afraid the project might be in jeopardy. That was a decision that was made. I'm just telling you that there is possibilities that we could always refine a design and it isn't built yet.
02:19:48.64	Unknown	I'll just say this Council member does not consider public safety to be unimportant. For a project we consider Mr. Allman is ready to comment as well. Thank you.
02:19:55.17	Michael Rex	I see Mr. Ullman is ready to comment.
02:19:58.53	Michael Rex	Thank you.
02:19:58.55	Unknown	Thank you.
02:20:00.00	Jacques Alvin	I had a long talk a couple of days ago with the attendant who operates the bicycle parking now on Tracy Way. He was alone, but during the peak periods, there at least one other person. So you've got two city employees who are working the bicycle parking, and I observed that they also help people with the parking meters. They answer questions as to where you can go to a bathroom and so on. So you've got those two people that are going to be right there where the tourist buses are and they can certainly help to make all that work properly. I think that that's a cost-effective system that you've got right there.
02:20:04.83	Unknown	you
02:20:49.75	Unknown	Thank you.
02:20:49.78	Unknown	it
02:20:51.08	Unknown	Okay, we have Kieran Culligan followed by Scott Thornburg.
02:20:52.03	Unknown	Thanks.
02:20:58.39	Bill Hines	Is it possible to make a comment on the traffic item?
02:21:01.53	Bill Hines	What?
02:21:01.97	Unknown	Bye.
02:21:02.22	Bill Hines	Thank you.
02:21:02.24	Unknown	as a public comment matter, but can you just wait your turn? And if someone wants to ask you a question, I mean, you are part of the design team. And I think during our discussion, there's also an opportunity for city council members to ask you a question.
02:21:02.52	Bill Hines	Thank you.
02:21:10.34	Kieran Culligan	there's also
02:21:14.91	Kieran Culligan	All right, I'd like to apologize in advance for talking about parking dollars and cents, but the budget is super important. I've heard in numerous places, including tonight, this math of taking the average revenue per space, multiplying that in terms of an increase in spaces, a decrease in spaces, and that being a resulting financial impact. But let's talk about how the dollars flow, because that's not the way it works. It's quite a different result. Let's take an imaginary parking lot, 100 spaces. We're going to add one space. That space doesn't earn the city any extra money until the parking lot is full. So if there are 50 cars in that parking space, having 100 spaces or 101 spaces makes zero difference in terms of revenue. So it doesn't matter until it fills up.
02:21:20.16	Unknown	Yeah.
02:21:57.75	Kieran Culligan	So when does it fill up and what would we get from that?
02:22:00.98	Kieran Culligan	The Dixon study wasn't super comprehensive, but actually looked at two weekend days, and it only showed an average occupancy of 50% to 70% on those two days. Wow, like that would mean you might not have filled up at all that day. Even with an extra space on that peak day, we get nothing from it. But let's say what we do. So let's say 60 days a year, it fills up for five hours a day, $5 an hour. I'm like overestimating on all of these because we know the averages are lower. That's $1,500 per space. So we heard 7,500 is the average. In that overestimated example, it's actually $1,500 per space we would gain if we added one space.
02:22:40.15	Kieran Culligan	It's about the same math if we were to remove one space. We're talking about a tiny, tiny fraction
02:22:44.51	Kieran Culligan	of the illustrative math people have been using elsewhere.
02:22:48.13	Kieran Culligan	The budget impact we've been talking about, way, way smaller than we've been getting to.
02:22:52.40	Kieran Culligan	I'll discuss this at depth with anybody, because when I'm not doing Zoom security controls, I look at our parking. I'm really fun to hang out with. But yeah, that's all I got tonight. Thank you for looking into this.
02:23:10.66	Thornburg	It's a hard act to follow. Thank you. I just wanted to mention, from my perspective as a marketer, when I see a lot of the visitors that are coming to our town and I see them taking photos of our city, what I usually see them doing is they walk out to the water and they take a selfie. And what is behind them? It's San Francisco.
02:23:29.98	Thornburg	They're not actually taking photos of the city, they're taking photos of the bay. I love that we have that to offer them. What I would love even more is if we had a pride of place and we had a place downtown that really showed the best side of this community that I believe we have. I would love for the ferry landing to be that. We have a great opportunity. It's costing us very little.
02:23:52.61	Thornburg	because it's paid for with a federal grant.
02:23:54.56	Thornburg	And I think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know that's been said, but I really encourage you tonight to be brave and to move this community forward and move this project forward in its entirety. Thank you.
02:24:10.06	Unknown	Now we have, on Zoom, we have Steven Woodside.
02:24:20.21	Steven Woodside	CAN YOU HEAR ME?
02:24:21.67	Unknown	Yeah.
02:24:23.08	Steven Woodside	Well, thank you.
02:24:25.01	Steven Woodside	My name is Steven Woodside. I live in Sausalito. My ancestor's been hanging around Richardson Bay since probably about
02:24:33.53	Steven Woodside	1919.
02:24:35.64	Steven Woodside	Um,
02:24:36.72	Steven Woodside	I really wanna compliment
02:24:39.22	Steven Woodside	Director McGowan,
02:24:40.75	Steven Woodside	and the city staff for
02:24:43.55	Steven Woodside	submitting a report tonight that I think is very consistent with the council unanimous direction to move forward.
02:24:51.43	Steven Woodside	I know they've recommended a particular approach to bidding.
02:24:55.03	Steven Woodside	which I think is viable.
02:24:57.00	Steven Woodside	There may be an alternative that would also be viable, but the point is move on.
02:25:03.14	Steven Woodside	This project in its entirety was approved by unanimous council vote in February.
02:25:09.88	Steven Woodside	and
02:25:11.50	Steven Woodside	The bid is just the next step.
02:25:14.97	Steven Woodside	So take it.
02:25:16.10	Steven Woodside	And please take it promptly because we don't want to risk losing the federal grant.
02:25:21.81	Steven Woodside	that will help us
02:25:23.29	Steven Woodside	enhance
02:25:24.96	Steven Woodside	the access by
02:25:27.95	Steven Woodside	people visiting Sausalito, but also make the whole area much improved for those of us who walk
02:25:34.68	Steven Woodside	around that area.
02:25:36.35	Steven Woodside	separating the bicycles,
02:25:39.00	Steven Woodside	And
02:25:39.80	Steven Woodside	the ferry.
02:25:40.84	Steven Woodside	and the other pedestrians
02:25:42.95	Steven Woodside	is essentially
02:25:44.89	Steven Woodside	the heart of this plan. So please, please move forward. Thank you.
02:25:51.08	Unknown	Okay, next speaker, Alice Merrill.
02:25:58.83	Alice Merrill	Hello.
02:26:00.30	Alice Merrill	I all I want to say
02:26:04.32	Alice Merrill	part of the plan.
02:26:05.53	Alice Merrill	was to get some parking from the Sausalito Yacht Club
02:26:10.04	Alice Merrill	not Sassy Jack Club, sorry, strike that Sassy Go.
02:26:13.12	Alice Merrill	Harbor.
02:26:14.42	Alice Merrill	Um,
02:26:15.50	Alice Merrill	some parking places from them. And I don't hear anybody talking about those spaces.
02:26:22.08	Alice Merrill	I think that the parking
02:26:23.77	Alice Merrill	is important for the people in the town who like to come down
02:26:27.77	Alice Merrill	town.
02:26:28.53	Alice Merrill	to go to things.
02:26:30.02	Alice Merrill	And
02:26:32.33	Alice Merrill	And if we lose all of those
02:26:35.96	Alice Merrill	parking spots where the
02:26:37.51	Alice Merrill	or the sidewalk's gonna go in. It's a lot.
02:26:40.70	Alice Merrill	There's a lot of places missing. And I really want you to work on
02:26:45.02	Alice Merrill	working with the Yacht Harbor
02:26:47.97	Alice Merrill	Make those spaces available. Please don't leave those out. Thank you.
02:26:55.23	Unknown	All right, Adrian Brenton.
02:27:10.36	Unknown	Mr. Brinton, can you hear us?
02:27:12.37	Unknown	If you can, you're muted.
02:27:16.62	Unknown	No, their mic is on.
02:27:21.52	Unknown	maybe call on Fred and we'll come back to Mr. Brenton.
02:27:24.94	Unknown	Sure.
02:27:27.27	Unknown	All right.
02:27:27.98	Unknown	Fred?
02:27:31.91	Fred Moore	Um, hello, I'm Fred Moore and I strongly support you guys approving and continuing moving forward the ferry landing.
02:27:39.58	Fred Moore	The current intersection of Tracy Way between the intersection of the cars, the pedestrian paths and the bikes is an unsafe situation. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a lot of effort to try to change the existing. So I would hope that the existing improvements don't prevent you from moving forward with an improved plan. Change orders, I mean, I'm a real estate lawyer. I worked with developers for 40 years. Change orders are inevitable in any project.
02:28:10.00	Fred Moore	And oftentimes that's good.
02:28:12.89	Fred Moore	engineering, cost engineering happens, change orders occur. So I hope that you don't move forward with a no vote because you don't think everything is perfect with the plan and that you want to redefine and redefine thinking that you could approve a plan eventually that won't include change orders. That's part of the process and oftentimes a good part of the process. I appreciate your efforts in approving it earlier unanimously, and I look forward to you voting again tonight to continue moving forward with the bidding process. And thank you again for looking at all the details and being conscientious about making Sausalito better for all the residents and not a small minority. Thank you very much.
02:29:01.50	Unknown	All right, Adrian Brinton again.
02:29:08.78	Adrian Brinton	Hi, can you hear me now?
02:29:10.24	Adrian Brinton	Yeah.
02:29:10.87	Adrian Brinton	Yes, we can.
02:29:11.66	Adrian Brinton	Okay, sorry for the earlier technical issue. Sorry, Adrian Brinton, city resident.
02:29:11.73	Unknown	Okay.
02:29:12.91	Unknown	your technical issues.
02:29:16.77	Adrian Brinton	I just wanted to say I support the city staff recommendation for bidding the project. I think they did an excellent job.
02:29:23.78	Adrian Brinton	putting that together and I hope you move forward with it.
02:29:26.51	Adrian Brinton	Um, I did want to talk a little bit about the congestion management.
02:29:29.85	Adrian Brinton	You know, it's a hard problem and people obviously have a lot of scars from when it didn't work well in the past.
02:29:36.64	Adrian Brinton	Officer Mather talked about when Herb Wiener was out there helping with congestion management, when we had
02:29:43.40	Adrian Brinton	Like 150,000 bikes coming to town every year in 2016.
02:29:48.04	Adrian Brinton	Now bike counts are changing. You know, we have a window now after COVID, the bike counts are way down. E-bikes are coming, they're changing the usage patterns.
02:29:56.41	Adrian Brinton	There's a lot more opportunities with people on e-bikes to do more. They can go further than just get an ice cream and get on the ferry.
02:30:03.15	Adrian Brinton	The bikes might come back, but we have a window right now to get this change in and get it and dial it in and get it right.
02:30:10.03	Adrian Brinton	You know, the Waterside project is coming. That's going to make a lot more room for bike QA.
02:30:15.06	Adrian Brinton	You know, it may take some work. We'll need to work with the police department. We'll need to work with Wayne. We'll need to make sure we're getting the signing right.
02:30:22.42	Adrian Brinton	But we have the big pieces in place. Is it going to be borne perfectly, you know, whole cloth? Probably not. There'll be some adjustments that have to happen as the bike queuing goes in and the changes get made. Change is hard. We can do it. All the big pieces are there. All of the elements are there. We have people to guide people. We can adjust signing. You know, the question, will it be safe? You know, the Parisi analysis shows it's going to be much safer than the current configuration. We're talking about an area of very low speeds
02:30:51.56	Adrian Brinton	You know, there'll be a lot of people, but people aren't moving fast. They're not running into each other in cars. They're not going to kill each other. They're going to be inconvenienced maybe while we work things out. That is very workable. So, you know, I definitely think that
02:31:05.45	Adrian Brinton	We just need to move forward on this. Get it in.
02:31:09.03	Adrian Brinton	Everybody's so invested in this to get it right.
02:31:11.47	Adrian Brinton	We're going to get it right and we can do it.
02:31:13.89	Adrian Brinton	Looking forward to that and thanks very much.
02:31:18.36	Unknown	All right, Charles Melton.
02:31:24.50	Unknown	Oh, no, he's not going to speak.
02:31:26.39	Unknown	All right.
02:31:30.83	Unknown	Charles, did you want to speak?
02:31:34.37	Charles Melton	Yes, thank you, Alfred, for unmuting me. My name is Charles Melton. I'm a SOS Leader Resident. And I really want to thank the City Council for the thoughtful process behind this very land side improvement plan. As the previous speaker said, change is hard.
02:31:45.53	Charles Melton	But here we have a tremendous opportunity to really make meaningful change, impactful change that's really going to improve the quality of life for all residents of here of South Toledo.
02:31:53.97	Charles Melton	I appreciated the Vice Mayor's comment regarding safety being the utmost priority and of importance. Currently, our current situation downtown is unsafe.
02:32:03.65	Charles Melton	And that's really the purpose of this plan.
02:32:05.76	Charles Melton	The plan, as we've been given funding from the federal government,
02:32:08.70	Charles Melton	our taxpayers that have gone to the federal government
02:32:10.86	Charles Melton	that have the opportunity to come back to us, what it does is address the safety.
02:32:15.11	Charles Melton	Currently, with the intersection of Tracy Way and Bridgeway and Inker,
02:32:19.58	Charles Melton	There's vehicle traffic, pedestrian traffic,
02:32:22.10	Charles Melton	and bicycle traffic all right there.
02:32:24.98	Charles Melton	That is why I'm in strong support of repurposing Tracy way into a promenade.
02:32:29.74	Charles Melton	This would eliminate the longest crosswalk in town and actually create much more robust safety measures there in town in that critical intersection.
02:32:38.30	Charles Melton	Furthermore, there's been a lot of conversations about parking spaces. We've heard a lot about the finances about it. Let's also talk about the environmental impact.
02:32:45.15	Charles Melton	A typical vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year.
02:32:49.57	Charles Melton	30% of all air pollution comes from vehicles. As we live here in this climate, close to a fragile waterfront, it's really a question of, is vehicles really what we want to prioritize here? Or is it more active mobility such as pedestrians and bicycles?
02:33:05.19	Charles Melton	This whole plan has been a trade off from the beginning. No plan is perfect. No plan is going to check all the boxes. But what this plan does is it adjusts the safety,
02:33:13.90	Charles Melton	gets things done under budget, and improves the quality of life for all Sausalitoans. So please move the currently approved plan, including repurposing Tracy Way, into a pedestrian promenade, and move the entire bid, as they're currently approved by City Council, out to bid. Thank you and appreciate our City Council being a leader of change here in Sausalito.
02:33:33.75	Unknown	Senator Bushmaker.
02:33:46.28	Bushmaker	All right.
02:33:47.18	Bushmaker	Um,
02:33:48.75	Bushmaker	I just want to say that I'm,
02:33:51.01	Bushmaker	I'm very concerned about hearing over change orders already and I just.
02:33:57.95	Bushmaker	Hope.
02:33:59.08	Bushmaker	that you
02:34:00.22	Bushmaker	As the City Council.
02:34:02.13	Bushmaker	Are fiscally.
02:34:03.46	Bushmaker	responsible.
02:34:04.86	Bushmaker	in this project.
02:34:06.30	Bushmaker	And that it does not go 1 cent over the, the, uh, grant that was awarded to the city.
02:34:06.57	Unknown	at a date.
02:34:13.34	Bushmaker	In addition, I have read the Dixon report. I find that there are some flawed assumptions in that report.
02:34:21.13	Bushmaker	And I don't think we should go to the bank with it.
02:34:24.68	Bushmaker	So that's all I have to say at this time. And good luck. I'll be watching you. And I'll be watching the expenses. Thank you.
02:34:35.61	Unknown	All right, Bill Hines.
02:34:44.67	Bill Hines	I guess I'm using a public comment to respond to the issues about traffic, but I just wanted to remind everybody that in February, when the plan was reviewed, we had David Parisi up here to speak to the safety aspects of the plan. I believe his conclusion was that it's a good plan. He identified the fact that we're widening the walkway along the Yacht Club. That extends all the way over to Humboldt. At the Yacht Club driveway, we've provided a lot more space for maneuvering. We have provided all of the requisite standard striping crosswalks signage, both at the Yacht Club driveway and at the Spinnaker Drive intersection. Part of what David Parisi and I both do as professionals is envision a future scenario of one that doesn't exist yet.
02:35:40.97	Bill Hines	In this simple scenario on Humboldt, we're talking about expanding the sidewalk much wider than it currently is to provide some more space to avoid some of the congestion that was identified as a potential by Lieutenant Mather. So I do appreciate the observations. I do think that we've done everything that we can within our professional realm to address these issues. And the result is going to be getting the cluster. I do think that we've done everything that we can, you know, within our professional realm to address these issues. And the result is going to be getting the cluster and congestion of bikes away from our ferry landing. Thank you.
02:36:17.27	Unknown	Are there any other public comments? Seeing none. All right, we'll close public comment and bring it up for discussion. Just to give some form to the discussion, I'll kick things off with a motion, which is really a version of the city council, the motion that's in the staff report. So it's literally the words of the staff report I just added in red because I thought it should explicitly highlight the additive and deduct off the alternates from the staff report. So the motion is to direct the public works department to utilize the process specified in section. Two zero one oh three point B eight a of the California public contracts code for the very landslide improvement project. With all project elements included in the base bid except element C Tracy way improvements to be bid as a separate alternate and include the additive and deduct alternates from the staff report. Order the planning commission to complete a report and recommendation on the vacation of Tracy Way within 40 days of submission to the planning commission per government code section 65402. So that's the motion.
02:37:14.94	Blaustein	I'll second it.
02:37:16.51	Unknown	Okay, the motion is seconded and we can now have a discussion on the motion.
02:37:20.46	Unknown	and,
02:37:21.39	Unknown	Um, so I, I, uh, was concerned to hear Lieutenant Mathers comments tonight. And, um, I know that a member of the police department has attended all of our hearings on this ferry landing project, um, including the February hearing at which David Parisi spoke. So I would like to direct that, um,
02:37:47.73	Unknown	the local professionals group,
02:37:49.42	Unknown	meet and confer
02:37:51.23	Unknown	with the police department to identify
02:37:55.07	Unknown	an aligned-upon solution to the safety concerns raised by the police department to the extent they've not already been addressed by David Parisi's
02:38:04.66	Unknown	Right.
02:38:04.79	Carolyn Revell	for it.
02:38:07.83	Unknown	And whatever that solution is, I don't know if it's too, you know, Michael Rex seems to think it's a simple solution. If that's true, I don't know why.
02:38:16.34	Unknown	It can't be incorporated into the bid documents. If it's not a simple solution,
02:38:21.91	Unknown	um,
02:38:23.27	Unknown	I still think it's important that it be part of the holistic project rather than building something and finding out that it doesn't work from a circulation or public safety perspective.
02:38:40.58	Unknown	Bye.
02:38:42.66	Kelman	Mayor, I have a point of order question on your motion. Can you put the motion back up?
02:38:43.64	Unknown	Yes.
02:38:44.23	Unknown	a question on your
02:38:44.97	Unknown	motion.
02:38:46.44	Unknown	I thought it's me. I would do that. So and this is maybe
02:38:48.13	Kelman	Oh, sorry. You've got to do that.
02:38:49.28	Kelman	so and this is maybe maybe vice mayor one of you could respond to this so there were several public comments stating that we authorize pardon me we approve this in a 5-0 vote and as the city manager articulated in the beginning what we did was to authorize construction level drawings such that we could get the bid such that once once we knew the pricing, we could review it, and then we would vote on it and approve it. And so my question is whether your motion is intended to be an authorization to proceed with that direction wherein we receive the necessary information, or whether you feel your motion is intended to be an approval of an item such as Tracy Way.
02:39:41.15	Unknown	the motion the SAP report is that this project is being advertised for bid yes as with all the design elements we have to we have to award the contract to build anything correct after we get the bid and we have to act on closing Tracy way this is an authorization this doesn't award the contract nor does it affirmatively close Tracy way it just begins the administrative and legal process okay give us that choice so
02:39:47.83	Kelman	Yes.
02:39:53.82	Kelman	Correct, after we get the bid.
02:39:57.96	Kelman	So this is an authorization?
02:40:05.38	Kelman	to give us that choice.
02:40:06.33	Kelman	So not an approval.
02:40:08.17	Unknown	of closing Tracy way? Correct.
02:40:09.36	Kelman	Correct. No, it's not. Not an approval. No. But an authorization of getting the bid to see how much it would cost so we can discern whether or not we want to approve it. Correct. Okay.
02:40:10.87	Unknown	No.
02:40:16.99	Unknown	And it's also the-
02:40:18.00	Kelman	Can we get that somehow put into meeting minutes very specifically because it's making me feel circular here.
02:40:21.99	Unknown	It's making me feel circular here. And also to hear feedback from the Planning Commission regarding the closure of Tracy Way before we make a final decision on the closure or the vacating of Tracy Way.
02:40:24.67	Kelman	I'm sorry.
02:40:34.73	Unknown	So yeah, that's the process is that this is about advertising the project and we are going to get a contract proposal that's going to say $1.5 million for such and such or let's just say hypothetical. We have to act to award that contract. So that is another action which this director McGowan is nodding his head about. and there is a parallel administrative process for closing Tracy Way that we have. which this director McGowan is nodding his head about. And there is a parallel administrative process for closing Tracy way that we have to direct start. But Tracy way doesn't close without us affirmatively voting to close Tracy way at the end of that process. If we start now, then we can make that decision at the same time we award. But we may be able to make that decision the same time we award or not the contract.
02:41:22.99	Kelman	Great, thank you, Mayor. So we would be authorizing the information, not approving this. Correct.
02:41:27.83	Unknown	We do not have to award the contract.
02:41:29.83	Kelman	Okay, and then I will just share, I have some consternation around the Humboldt. And I would love to sit down with Kieron anytime. And Chad Hess, our planning director, as Chad told me earlier, and he hasn't had extensive time to review, but he says, I think you're in the ballpark with the Dixon number, $6,275 would be the value of each parking spot. So that's what I was basing my evaluation from was our finance director's information. So I just wanna share that with the public as well. So I had shared with colleagues that I think Humboldt is a great place to put more parking for a number of reasons. And then the addition of the public safety concern is just another reason to look at that again. But I'm not sold on that, although I appreciate that the sidewalk would be slightly larger.
02:42:27.15	Kelman	That is literally, the mayor knows this. I will walk by that area and text him and tell him how dissatisfied I am with those buses and everything that is going on down there. So it's in need of approval. I just don't know that this plan achieves that for me personally.
02:42:42.66	Unknown	Well, the thing is that we, on February 6th, we approved the plan. We didn't authorize its construction. We approved the design. And we're not designing from the dais, right? I mean, that's-
02:42:58.57	Kelman	I don't think that's at minute 350. I think we authorize, not approve of that meeting, which I went back to familiarize myself despite whatever transcription you may have. My ears listen to the video. So this is where we're getting around in circles a little bit, which is fine because it doesn't really matter other than to say, this is the opportunity for us to share what our concerns may be. And so I just wanna put on the record that is a concern for me.
02:43:31.38	Unknown	So the, you know,
02:43:34.43	Unknown	We are a legislative body. So we approved a thing called a local professional I mean, I'm not sure process-wise how he can be any more transparent and clear than having had the motion on the screen and Say it's construction by drawing says I could I Really want to have the dialogue but and I don't mean a bit pedantic But the first bullet point was the City Council hereby authorizes approves the local professional group plan Which is defined in the staff report with a bunch of details so we can set that aside but i just want to be clear that my view is we approved the plan the real point is that we've received a letter from the grant agency that this grant after seven years more than 10 is on the cusp of being rescinded So there is a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. And this sounds like, or even the good being the enemy, the very good being the enemy of the merely good. What we can agree on is right now what's down there is bad. We have railings, we have bollards, not bollards, but concrete barriers. It is unsightly, dangerous, unattractive, uneconomic. This improves it. It is progress. And we can't let the grinding down of progress mean that we get stuck. So this was assessed by David Preece in public here, where we had a chance to engage with him on safety concerns, who engaged with the police department about those safety concerns, and he said it's a safer design. It is an improvement. There is no perfect safety, there's safer. This is an improvement. Can it be improved? Yes. But did anyone design the current configuration down there? No, we have always adapted to circumstances and how you queue bikes, how you queue people, the you solve problems as they come up in practice. We can't keep sitting here trying to anticipate every possibility or we'll never move anywhere.
02:43:47.03	Kelman	It's construction drawings is what we do.
02:45:40.57	Unknown	I was just going to suggest we hear from all council members and then perhaps respond.
02:45:45.85	Unknown	I stopped speaking. Anyone else want to speak?
02:45:50.22	Unknown	Councilmember Hoffman please
02:45:51.81	Unknown	So yeah, based on some of the comments that we received today and other comments on this dais about what we actually approved or what our action was on February 7th led me to actually watch the video again today.
02:46:09.98	Unknown	Anybody else do that? Because it was super fun. So the real meat of it, if anybody cares, is the 20-minute conversation that we had amongst the council. And what was clear to me was that, like repeatedly, we said we're approving the concept. It's going to evolve, like every plan we've ever approved in this town. A example is dumpy Park so we approved dumpy Park we changed things and and had to adapt things as we move through that process so you know the clay and this is also and I'm trying to figure out how to make the motion clearer that
02:46:51.41	Unknown	You know, we're agreeing to move forward with the general concept of the local architects group. That is true. We did not agree to build this plan.
02:47:04.66	Unknown	Mayor, you and I had a conversation at the very end of that.
02:47:07.26	Unknown	that.
02:47:08.07	Unknown	This plan is the concept, it's a vision.
02:47:10.80	Unknown	Whether or not we actually build it depends on budget,
02:47:13.65	Unknown	It depends on operational issues.
02:47:16.00	Unknown	And
02:47:16.81	Unknown	to me,
02:47:17.77	Unknown	I'm not sure.
02:47:19.17	Unknown	as I talked about at the February 6th meeting, I'm not, I'm not, I'm still uncomfortable with,
02:47:26.87	Unknown	with building
02:47:28.64	Unknown	an entirely new area specifically for bike parking when we haven't done an actual safety plan on how that will affect
02:47:40.35	Unknown	our risk, our risk management,
02:47:43.17	Unknown	are increased.
02:47:45.12	Unknown	liability issues.
02:47:46.93	Unknown	when you're
02:47:47.74	Unknown	intentionally routing
02:47:50.27	Unknown	people,
02:47:51.23	Unknown	queuing to get to a ferry landing and you're routing them across
02:47:55.64	Unknown	at least at least two open roadways. One is Spinnaker Drive and the other one is the Yacht Club. And so my first comment is that I think we need to be very specific in whatever motion we make.
02:48:10.00	Unknown	that we are not
02:48:11.72	Unknown	committing to build this exact thing.
02:48:14.96	Unknown	we're gonna see what the bids come back with. And I hope that we're gonna do an actual safety study because the Parisi study was not a safety study, it was
02:48:23.48	Unknown	comments on traffic and load.
02:48:26.22	Unknown	no one talked to the police and i was getting i was ready to talk to ask uh chief gregory at the february 6th meeting about her you know her view of what um the increase or the increase in safety issues from moving the current bike corral over to the proposed area and unfortunately uh she She wasn't actually in the room when we got to that point. She was out in the room. When we got to that point, she was out in the hallway because there were so many people. So I couldn't see her, so I didn't call on her. But I'm happy that Officer Mather here was here today and gave us the benefit
02:49:04.77	Unknown	of his experience.
02:49:06.38	Unknown	And so,
02:49:08.03	Unknown	you know,
02:49:08.98	Unknown	These things are not divorced from the conversation that we just had at our prior
02:49:15.07	Unknown	And so decreasing risk.
02:49:20.17	Unknown	is a huge issue right now. Decreasing risk, not increasing risk, not even keeping risk the same as it is.
02:49:28.58	Unknown	when you're pushing people parking bikes, they're gonna be riding their bikes and then they're gonna be looking for a place to park.
02:49:36.57	Unknown	In the same area where these huge buses are, where you have pedestrians trying to navigate out between those buses,
02:49:43.08	Unknown	and then routing.
02:49:44.74	Unknown	people on the bikes
02:49:46.67	Unknown	on sidewalks, sharing sidewalks with people
02:49:49.66	Unknown	trying to get,
02:49:50.98	Unknown	you know,
02:49:51.82	Unknown	across one roadway,
02:49:53.34	Unknown	down a sidewalk that they're sharing with pedestrians
02:49:56.61	Unknown	and going to cross the Yacht Club parking lot and then
02:50:00.75	Unknown	and then into the ferry line.
02:50:02.98	Unknown	So,
02:50:03.84	Unknown	Yeah, I agree. Like what's down there right now is not, I wouldn't advocate for that, right? I wouldn't say, hey, this is marvelous. I think this is beautiful. It's a lot better than it was.
02:50:13.03	Unknown	But if you go down there and look at it, there's a reason the configuration
02:50:17.15	Unknown	You know, there's a reason why it's that configuration. It's a funnel.
02:50:20.92	Unknown	and it funnels the bikes into a barricaded area
02:50:25.44	Unknown	where they then, you know,
02:50:28.17	Unknown	funnel down to a single line.
02:50:30.52	Unknown	And then they get on the ferry.
02:50:32.20	Unknown	because that's a safe, and they're separated by bollards
02:50:36.46	Unknown	from pedestrians. So that's principally the area, the pink area, right? Like right now, that's the bike transiting area onto the ferry. So I'm not advocating that this is the best, but it's the best that we could come up with with the current situation that we have, which remains, frankly.
02:51:01.82	Unknown	Number one,
02:51:03.22	Unknown	We're increasing risk, I think, by moving it over here. I think that's what I'm seeing.
02:51:07.76	Unknown	Um,
02:51:08.55	Unknown	And that's a concern to me. So that's something that I would want to have addressed as we move forward in a more succinct way because risk and reducing risk is a big part of our conversation right now. The other issue is, you know,
02:51:22.75	Unknown	we are imposing, we are pressing an impact upon one of our lessees, right? We have a business relationship with the Sausalio Yacht Club. So I would hope that we would address them respectfully and not denigrate their concerns. Because we also have about eight other lessees in that same area.
02:51:41.59	Unknown	So we lease land to Casa Madrona. We lease land to Jean Hiller, Hotel Sausalito, Inn Above Tide, Spinnaker, Center for the Arts, Saucyoyacht Club's on the list, Saucyoyacht Harbor,
02:51:55.52	Unknown	in that same area. So if we were pressing impacts on any one of those other businesses in that area, I would hope that we would be respectful to the current concerns of that business as well. And so I think,
02:52:07.26	Unknown	That is part of the conversation. When you talk about litigation risk and income risk,
02:52:12.97	Unknown	you know,
02:52:14.32	Unknown	We've had a demand letter from the Yacht Club saying, we think this interferes with the quiet enjoyment of our leasehold. That's a serious claim that we need to look at. They've also said, we've also had a report from their, their safety guys that say this is increasing risk and that the current plan is not up to code.
02:52:35.48	Unknown	I think that we need to look at these things. The revenue thing is a simple annual revenue analysis of the spots in parking lot one. So we've talked about this in the past. Our parking guy confirmed it at the last meeting. So the annual cost for a parking spot
02:52:55.20	Unknown	in parking lot one is $7,500. The math on that is that if you lose 31 spots, you're going to lose $230,000 annually in revenue.
02:53:08.92	Unknown	If you lose 10 spots along Humboldt, I'm happy to talk to whoever and I'm happy to sit down with Chad
02:53:15.79	Unknown	And I mean, you can review the video from our last meeting when I confirmed that with our parking person.
02:53:21.38	Unknown	It's not, I'm not looking at the number
02:53:24.48	Unknown	a fungible number, that's an annual number. It takes into account
02:53:29.95	Unknown	these changes in the changes in
02:53:34.15	Unknown	you know, the changes in the timing, right?
02:53:36.82	Unknown	Because we do have times when our parking lots are empty. We have times when our parking lots are full. That's an annual number. So I think if somebody wants to engage with our parking experts or our finance expert about that, but that's the information that I have from our staff. So...
02:53:57.91	Unknown	So these are the concerns with the plan. Principally, I voted for the plan. I wanna move forward with the plan. I've been working on this for seven years, right? I mean, I've worked with Kevin, I've worked with subgroups, I've worked with the mayor on this.
02:54:11.71	Unknown	I think that we're close. I think we're really close. I think principally we're close.
02:54:15.63	Unknown	we have to look at
02:54:17.55	Unknown	Again, back to the conversation we just had
02:54:21.87	Unknown	you know, what's our overall budget constraints going into the next year? You're talking about a permanent loss of revenue
02:54:31.07	Unknown	and a permanent loss of parking spots, right? So they're two independent things. We're talking about a loss of parking lots straight off the top, but then you have the corresponding loss of revenue
02:54:41.43	Unknown	regardless of some sort of fix that you're gonna have. I think, anyway, it's incredibly important to talk about the safety stuff and get that nailed down before we move forward with Section F. You're also talking about increased cost with Section F. So I'm interested in seeing when the bids come back. And let me see if those are my current, that's the end of mine.
02:55:07.98	Unknown	Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's it.
02:55:11.57	Unknown	Vice Mayor.
02:55:15.99	Unknown	Thank you. I definitely hear the concerns. Some of the concerns are mine. I'm not prepared to delay this project tonight. I'm very mindful of the letter from the Golden Gate Bridge District about the importance of moving swiftly. And that is why I'm asking that we have several parallel paths. So we've already identified one parallel path and that's the
02:55:47.61	Unknown	decision making regarding the vacating of Tracy Way. That's one parallel path. Another parallel path we've already discussed from this dais is a parking agreement with the Sausalito Yacht Harbor to
02:56:03.39	Unknown	address the loss of parking spaces and revenue in lot one i know that is moving forward i'm anxious to see how that transpires i did not realize until tonight that a third parallel path i would like to see us pursue is um the safety concerns raised by the sausalito police department So if they don't believe the current plan is adequate, if Michael Rex and the local professionals group have ideas about how to address those circulation and safety concerns, I would like to see those before we vote on approving a final vote.
02:56:46.09	Unknown	contract with a general contractor to move forward. We have plenty of time to do that.
02:56:55.45	Unknown	A great thing about addressing these issues in our plans and specifications before we approve those plans and specifications in their final form and before we approve a contract with a general contractor is that if we undertake that properly, we enjoy design immunity legally based on our review and approval of plans and specifications. We as a public agency enjoy design immunity. But I want to make sure that we take the proper steps to ensure that we indeed are satisfied
02:57:31.55	Unknown	that our plan is a good plan.
02:57:34.37	Unknown	Um,
02:57:35.33	Unknown	I'm aware of correspondence from the Sausalito Yacht Club
02:57:39.01	Unknown	as with any threat of litigation,
02:57:42.09	Unknown	We treat those seriously.
02:57:45.15	Unknown	Um,
02:57:46.03	Unknown	I'm not convinced, based on other correspondence I've seen, that the correspondence we've seen from Yacht Club representatives represents the sentiment of the entire Yacht Club. So I would want to have a better understanding of that. But I do want to say that we take all such correspondence seriously and are addressing that. So those are my thoughts. I believe it's important that we move forward, but I would like to direct that staff address these other issues on a parallel path.
02:58:19.39	Unknown	So I just amended the motion to incorporate the feedback from Council members Hoffman and vice mayor. I'll come to you, Councilmember Vostum, just to add this. I included this phrase, including any addition staff recommends to make Humboldt safer. So that just gives the direction, part of your direction. The other direction, I think we all agree with moving the Yacht Harbor parking agreement forward.
02:58:43.27	Unknown	Councilmember Blavstein.
02:58:44.67	Blaustein	Thank you, Mayor Sobieski, and thank you again to the Local Professionals Working Group and to Director McGowan for your hard work on this project over many, many years. I'm happy to see it coming forward. I think it's no surprise that I'm consistently supportive of the project. I just want to remind us from the dais that the objective of this evening is, in fact, to bid the project. So we need need this information to have this discussion so I appreciate the concerns raised and that we're providing direction to staff but we will all have an opportunity to weigh in on the drawings and the biddings and and make a final decision but I think what's most critical is that we do get the bidding out including Tracy way so we know what the cost is so we can deliver on what we have agreed on whether or not it was an authorization or an agreement for moving forward in terms of bidding and we need to make sure we do it in a manner that will not slow the process so it's really critical that we do move forward with the motion including a demand for the Planning Commission to respond to the vacation of Tracy Way in a timely manner so that we can continue to move forward effectively. So those are my thoughts. I appreciate everyone's feedback, and I think there'll be ample opportunity for us to discuss all of those concerns. Safety is critical. The police department's involvement is critical. I think we heard from the professional working group that they're more than willing to engage in those conversations together. So I continue to look forward to seeing this project move ahead. And so I'm happy to continue to support the motion.
03:00:20.97	Unknown	Okay.
03:00:24.13	Unknown	This is the amended motion.
03:00:26.46	Blaustein	Can I second the amended motion to be
03:00:27.94	Kelman	be clear.
03:00:28.04	Blaustein	Clear.
03:00:28.36	Kelman	I feel that I did not get to fully express myself, so I'm hoping I can finish my thoughts. Yes, thank you very much. So I really just very much want to call out the Vice Mayor and Council Member Blaustein. I thought you both succinctly described my concerns, and you said it as well, because we're having around this is this is a project in motion. We want to move it forward as part of the motion, but it's also a place for us to explore better things for our community. And you know, if you'reiled up from the budget conversation we had then we should all watch the video again like it's we're worried and I think you can see it up here we're trying to be cautious and smart about how we make decisions and we spend our time so I would just make one change to your amendment I think we may want to say the police department as opposed to staff weighing in on the public safety concerns. And then vice mayor, you very succinctly articulated three parallel paths. I want to make sure you feel that this redrafted motion addresses all three of those.
03:00:31.13	Blaustein	Please.
03:00:31.86	Blaustein	and you can do it.
03:01:24.32	Unknown	Thank you, the motion does not address the Sausalito Yacht Harbor parking, but I do know that that is proceeding.
03:01:32.35	Unknown	already on a parallel path.
03:01:34.19	Unknown	And so the most important thing for me was the addition to the motion of
03:01:39.51	Unknown	any additions staff, including the police department, recommend to make Humboldt safer.
03:01:45.52	Kelman	Okay, great. So these are fine with that. And I will just, again, for the record to state that, should that not be the option,
03:01:52.89	Kelman	The option I continue to like is more parking on Humboldt. That's just for the record in case we ever want to watch the video again.
03:01:59.49	Unknown	I am with you. I would love to see that. But again, it's not up to us to design from the dais. I look forward to seeing what solution the local working group comes up with in collaboration with safety officials.
03:02:11.54	Unknown	Yeah.
03:02:13.66	Unknown	Thank you.
03:02:13.68	Unknown	So,
03:02:13.72	Unknown	So can I add, can I, um, I think I just, just to make it clear, cause I don't want, you know, when I watched the report, I watched the video and then I looked at our motion.
03:02:26.41	Unknown	there was some ambiguity between the two. And so I think that caused some maybe confusion up here at the dais and also in the community. So I think what I'm trying to get to is, what I'm trying to say is that I think one thing that I would like to is including any staff, let's see,
03:02:49.46	Unknown	including the police department, recommends to make Humboldt safer, particularly with regard to bike parking, because that's the main concern with that. I mean, the buses are also a concern, and you can put that in there too. But...
03:03:10.01	Unknown	Yeah, with regard to bicycle parking. And so, because I don't want it to come back later and say you approved whatever, right? And so also what language do we want to put in there? I'm just throwing it out here for everybody to talk about. What do we, that this is, we are design, we are approving the concept and directing to move forward with construction plans
03:03:36.28	Unknown	understanding that this plan may and likely will adapt as we move forward. I'm just thinking out loud here because I didn't see your proposed, but it was something I thought about today. And there needs to be something in here that calls out, I think.
03:03:54.90	Unknown	that we will likely, because we're moving on these parallel paths, we've asked for additional
03:04:00.80	Unknown	things will adjust exactly like they did with Dumpy Park and all the other parks.
03:04:05.66	Unknown	So the beginning line says that we're directing Public Works to utilize the process specified in Section 201.03.8. That's a bidding process. So what we're directing Public Works Department to do is to proceed with the bidding process. So by saying the process specified in the public contract code, that is only a bidding process. And that bidding process requires a subsequent award before a project can move forward.
03:04:34.08	Unknown	So how do we make it clear in here that the bidding process and the construction of this is contingent upon... Okay, I see it.
03:04:42.86	Kelman	maybe with all project elements included in the conceptual plan constituting the base bid. Is that what you're trying to get at?
03:04:50.94	Kelman	Thank you.
03:04:50.96	Unknown	I'm trying to get something that says it's clear from this motion so that we don't have the same ambiguity going forward.
03:04:52.27	Kelman	So that it's clear.
03:04:57.07	Unknown	This motion is not ambiguous, as the vice mayor said, is an authorization to bid the project. But normally we wouldn't even be doing this, as the city manager said. Typically staff, after direction, bids the project. And they have experts, Director McGowan and BKF and our contract with SWA and the volunteers of the architects. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen to look at this. So what I'm hearing is the vice mayor is giving and all of us are giving additional direction to staff to see if there are any, to work with the police department to see if there are any changes that need to be made to the bid documents. So that when they come back, they might be better. But at the end of the day, we have to award the contract. And if we're not satisfied with the price or the details that come back to us, then we won't
03:05:49.16	Unknown	award the contract.
03:05:50.02	Unknown	Right, and we also have concerns about the parking, and so, which the Vice Mayor talked about, and that's why we're talking to, you know, so my point being that, you know, I don't want to digress into, you know, arguments about what we approved tonight,
03:05:59.00	Unknown	you know,
03:06:09.97	Unknown	Because I think it's pretty clear that we're saying, we've got these other, we're requesting additional information and the project may adjust based on what we get back, the additional information as well as the price.
03:06:24.34	Unknown	What we're going to get back at the end of this process in July,
03:06:28.07	Unknown	is a set of responses to our bid, which will be construction response about how much it costs with additive and deductive prices. And over that period of time, as the vice mayor said, there's that period of time when there might be tweaks to what the details, the finishing details, to address some of the concerns of the police department. So we're going to have a chance to review all this and decide whether or not we're satisfied to award the contract. And if we're not, then we won't award the contract.
03:07:00.08	Unknown	And if we're not, then we'll be right back.
03:07:02.08	Unknown	And also the parking issues. Loss of parking spaces and the loss of revenue.
03:07:04.69	Unknown	It'll listen.
03:07:06.87	Unknown	We'll have to factor that into our personal decisions about whether to vote for or against the award of contract, yes.
03:07:12.60	Unknown	So I just want to, I just want that to be clear in this motion because I don't want to have to argue about this later. So I think what we've said is subject to, okay, hold on. Listen, I didn't get to see this beforehand. It's really helpful if you, maybe if we have proposed motions, if we circulate them beforehand.
03:07:20.15	Unknown	What's that?
03:07:20.32	Unknown	So,
03:07:30.20	Unknown	Normally we don't even have them on writing. Well, I'm happy that one in
03:07:32.70	Unknown	Thank you.
03:07:32.72	Unknown	Well, I'm happy that he's edited the one that was in the staff report. So well, this is the
03:07:33.90	Unknown	the staff.
03:07:37.72	Unknown	Yeah, this is the first page of the staff report, and the red is what I've added. So the red is all the stuff we've added here today, Council Member Hoffman, and otherwise it's the black that was in the staff report.
03:07:42.59	Unknown	Okay.
03:07:45.04	Unknown	Okay.
03:07:47.27	Unknown	Okay, okay, so apparently we're not gonna be able to get to it. So but the five of us here understand that we're asking for additional information and it That these plans may adjust based on the additional information. We've all five agree to that. I
03:08:04.90	Unknown	I agree with that. And with that, Mr. Mayor, I'm going to ask that you call a question.
03:08:05.91	Unknown	We're...
03:08:10.87	Unknown	Okay, I'm gonna call the question on this motion. All in favor say aye.
03:08:16.29	Unknown	Thank you.
03:08:16.31	Unknown	Aye. Aye. And I agree. And did somebody not agree with that?
03:08:20.10	Unknown	I'm not sure what you're saying so
03:08:22.75	Unknown	Okay.
03:08:23.02	Unknown	Let me say it again. Council member Kelman said she agreed. I said I agreed. You agree. Okay. So we've all said aye. Yeah. And we all said aye.
03:08:30.80	Unknown	Yeah, the next time we'll see this is the is the contract responses to our bids.
03:08:33.74	Unknown	No, no, no.
03:08:36.86	Unknown	It passes to our bids.
03:08:38.03	Unknown	Well, Mr. Mayor, I believe that's up to the agenda setting committee. If we think it's appropriate to see this again on consent before then, then we'll see it on consent again before then. Very well. Thank you.
03:08:46.23	Unknown	That's right.
03:08:48.69	Unknown	Very well. All right, the motion carries 5-0. Congratulations. Thanks for everyone for being here tonight. 10.30, do we want to take the last item? I've heard one person say no. I've heard one person say yes.
03:09:04.66	Unknown	Thank you.
03:09:05.13	Zapata	Mayor, if I could.
03:09:06.86	Zapata	you
03:09:08.45	Zapata	Mayor, I can make it three minutes. I need one thing from you and one thing really, okay?
03:09:14.09	Unknown	Okay.
03:09:14.44	Unknown	Take it over, that's okay.
03:09:17.83	Zapata	Thank you.
03:09:17.97	Unknown	right ahead city manager.
03:09:19.07	Zapata	Thank you.
03:09:19.10	Unknown	Thank you.
03:09:19.18	Zapata	So can you read the item, item three?
03:09:27.98	Unknown	I do.
03:09:30.66	Unknown	Thank you.
03:09:30.83	Unknown	It's city property portfolio update and approval to issue a request for proposals for property management services.
03:09:37.10	Zapata	Thank you.
03:09:37.14	Unknown	Thank you.
03:09:37.68	Zapata	Okay, again, you know, a couple of months ago in February, you committed a six-month process to look at our property portfolio. We had some conversations on February the 20th. I committed to updates at 60-day intervals. This is the first one. You see some information in the staff report that is part and parcel to what you ask. I wanted to make sure that was clear. the one thing I want to point out is the map of the leases that the city has and the property the city has There are over a hundred properties in the staff report as an attachment But what's really important for you to give me direction on tonight is this request for proposals and
03:10:20.29	Zapata	where I would work with the city attorney to issue and request for proposals for property management of city properties to see what we get back. It may be that you you don't want to do it, but I think we need to go out and kick that tire real good because the hybrid that we've been using effective sometimes ineffective others. I want to see what is out there and the private sector to manage our properties as you one time did't saw Salido. So if anything comes out of this conversation, it's authorizing the city manager to work with the city attorney to issue an RFP for property management services.
03:10:54.83	Unknown	Great. Are there any questions for the city manager?
03:10:58.27	Unknown	No, I'm ready to make the motion.
03:10:59.54	Unknown	I'm sorry.
03:11:00.15	Unknown	We got it.
03:11:01.63	Unknown	One step at a time, people are getting rambunctious. So are there any questions for the city manager? All right, we'll now take public comment on this item, city clerk.
03:11:16.99	Blaustein	Stephen Woodside has his Henrys.
03:11:23.11	Peter Van Meter	My public comment related to what I saw in the staff report
03:11:27.84	Peter Van Meter	about trying to get brokers opinion of value
03:11:31.16	Peter Van Meter	on this city property.
03:11:34.03	Peter Van Meter	And is that going to be part of the discussion here? Or is it only going to be talking about this RFP for property management?
03:11:43.58	Peter Van Meter	Mr. Mayor.
03:11:44.88	Unknown	I'm the city manager.
03:11:46.66	Unknown	It's just questions, I mean, it's just public comment, I'm afraid, Mr. VanVie.
03:11:47.03	Peter Van Meter	You want me to show you?
03:11:51.38	Peter Van Meter	Okay, I'll proceed with a public comment about broker opinion of value. That was my business for almost 25 years, commercial real estate broker.
03:12:01.61	Peter Van Meter	I know that a broker opinion of value is something that you get what you pay for, which basically you're looking for something that's free.
03:12:09.15	Peter Van Meter	And usually that broker is
03:12:10.84	Peter Van Meter	doing this with the expectation of getting some business from the person asking that question.
03:12:16.44	Peter Van Meter	That's not going to be the situation with the city.
03:12:19.38	Peter Van Meter	Number two.
03:12:21.25	Peter Van Meter	Many of your sites and the one that's been mentioned mostly tonight
03:12:24.98	Peter Van Meter	is the Spencer Fire Station.
03:12:27.51	Peter Van Meter	The way you're going to get a proper opinion of value on that property,
03:12:31.19	Peter Van Meter	is relative to a development pro-pharma
03:12:33.52	Peter Van Meter	for that site.
03:12:34.88	Peter Van Meter	It's a significant piece of property, as you know. It goes all the way over to Montemar.
03:12:39.27	Peter Van Meter	Now, a number of years ago,
03:12:41.33	Peter Van Meter	I, as a broker making an opinion of value,
03:12:44.54	Peter Van Meter	In fact, did look at that site
03:12:46.70	Peter Van Meter	and saw that then it had a potential value of about $5 million.
03:12:51.59	Peter Van Meter	because it could be developed into multiple housing sites.
03:12:55.74	Peter Van Meter	with a driveway similar to Lower Glen.
03:12:58.75	Peter Van Meter	to access those properties and part of that would be having the city pre-approve development potential for that site so you'd be offering it for sale with the ability of a developer to in fact build five or more homes on that property
03:13:15.57	Peter Van Meter	So you'd make that investment,
03:13:17.39	Peter Van Meter	and you'd get far, far more return for it.
03:13:20.61	Peter Van Meter	So what I'm trying to say is you've got many sites, some of them
03:13:26.18	Unknown	Thank you.
03:13:26.20	Unknown	Sir.
03:13:27.58	Unknown	Hey, Steven Woodside.
03:13:34.64	Steven Woodside	Can you hear me?
03:13:35.77	Steven Woodside	Yes.
03:13:35.95	Unknown	Yes, we can. Go ahead.
03:13:37.41	Steven Woodside	Okay, thank you. I really appreciate Peter's comments. Those are germane, but my approach
03:13:45.76	Steven Woodside	comes from a different direction, which is charitable nonprofits.
03:13:50.65	Steven Woodside	I know we've had some discussion in the past about
03:13:54.40	Steven Woodside	some of the properties that the city owns
03:13:57.86	Steven Woodside	are in fact leased or otherwise made available to charitable nonprofits.
03:14:04.19	Steven Woodside	and
03:14:04.59	Steven Woodside	I would be very happy to
03:14:06.77	Steven Woodside	prepare and work with others in the community to prepare
03:14:10.95	Steven Woodside	something of a policy document or a draft ordinance
03:14:14.45	Steven Woodside	that would take into account
03:14:17.13	Steven Woodside	the community benefit
03:14:19.63	Steven Woodside	of charitable nonprofits, as well as the market value of the property.
03:14:24.50	Steven Woodside	I think it's a delicate balance.
03:14:27.44	Steven Woodside	that the city will be asked to
03:14:30.22	Steven Woodside	Um,
03:14:31.59	Steven Woodside	try to balance.
03:14:33.21	Steven Woodside	when you consider whether some of the
03:14:36.28	Steven Woodside	and I think that's a good thing.
03:14:38.21	Steven Woodside	properties that you own.
03:14:39.89	Steven Woodside	are made available
03:14:41.75	Steven Woodside	to
03:14:43.15	Steven Woodside	entities that are
03:14:45.26	Steven Woodside	In fact,
03:14:46.61	Steven Woodside	delivering a community benefit by law.
03:14:50.05	Steven Woodside	So I'm happy to,
03:14:52.94	Steven Woodside	weigh in on this and try to help
03:14:55.91	Steven Woodside	prepare something of a draft to submit to you as you go forward
03:14:59.79	Steven Woodside	I think the key here is transparency and I want to compliment
03:15:03.65	Steven Woodside	the council members, all of you,
03:15:05.73	Steven Woodside	for bringing this up to take a close look
03:15:08.82	Steven Woodside	at how you lease.
03:15:11.23	Steven Woodside	public
03:15:12.06	Steven Woodside	property
03:15:13.31	Steven Woodside	There's quite a variety of lessees, some of whom are
03:15:17.58	Steven Woodside	well capable of generating revenue to the city,
03:15:20.56	Steven Woodside	directly.
03:15:21.62	Steven Woodside	others perhaps indirectly,
03:15:23.84	Steven Woodside	and yet others provide a community benefit. I think all of those need to be looked at.
03:15:29.73	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
03:15:31.38	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
03:15:32.56	Steven Woodside	Thank you.
03:15:32.59	Unknown	No further public comment? Opposed, comment, any discussion?
03:15:32.61	Steven Woodside	No further.
03:15:32.97	Unknown	THE PEOPLE WHO ARE
03:15:33.08	Kelman	Bye.
03:15:33.18	Unknown	but
03:15:33.30	Kelman	comment.
03:15:37.81	Kelman	I'll make the motion.
03:15:39.95	Unknown	I would just like to say, I would like to see us, so I think the motion is separate from the path forward recommended by Steven Woodside, but I would like to see us pursue
03:15:40.04	Kelman	I would just.
03:15:50.41	Unknown	that path. And it's something we've discussed earlier, which is the development of a policy for how we lease our properties and the factors that we consider in
03:16:00.91	Unknown	ascertaining
03:16:02.38	Unknown	what the lease amount should be. But I think that's something that we should do in concert, perhaps with a property manager if we're able to hire one. So I just wanted to make that comment.
03:16:12.50	Kelman	Thank you for making that comment, Vice Mayor. I could not agree more. And I don't know if we even need to wait for the property manager to be hired to do that. I think it's a council policy. How do we want to deal with our leases with nonprofits? And it shouldn't necessarily be tied to the value of a property because I could go, I think, either way.
03:16:31.89	Unknown	Right.
03:16:33.77	Unknown	I mean, I'd like to take Mister would side up on his offer to help develop such a policy as a former County County certainly well versed in those areas and I would want to confer with the city manager about staff because I know our staff are stretched to the max at the moment, so we might need to harness some volunteer labor to help get an initial draft. Prepaired.
03:17:00.06	Unknown	I agree with that.
03:17:03.64	Unknown	All right, did you want to make a move?
03:17:04.75	Unknown	I think Council Member Hoffman wanted to make the motion.
03:17:08.33	Unknown	Yeah, please do.
03:17:08.98	Councilor Mayor Hoffman	Thank you.
03:17:10.98	Councilor Mayor Hoffman	I made a motion that authorized the city staff or property management and approved an approach to utilize broker opinions of value on the full-form appraisals which is not raised and includes censor. I mean, fire station required affirmation for additional direction on areas including the staff.
03:17:31.85	Unknown	May I just say, but I do want to be respectful of what Mr. Van Meter raised, that we have to be judicious in the manner in which we solicit broker values of property.
03:17:46.65	Unknown	Yeah, my maybe friendly addition there, Councilor Mayor Hoffman would be, it's a little late so I'm trying to think of the words, it's to imagine different development scenarios in their assessment of the value of the property, so be somewhat specific on that.
03:18:07.96	Unknown	draw my motion to make another one. I'm sorry, I was reading at the end of the staff report. Okay, here's my motion. Here's a recommend motion approve release a request for proposals for property management services and provide direction to the staff on information information related to city properties. Okay.
03:18:23.30	Unknown	Okay.
03:18:25.26	Kelman	I'd like to second that much. Apologies.
03:18:26.66	Unknown	Okay, call the question, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to the next section, this is the opportunity for members of the public to communicate on items not on the agenda. City clerk, will you please take public comment from anyone who wishes to comment on something not on the agenda?
03:18:26.68	Kelman	Thank you.
03:18:29.65	Unknown	I...
03:18:29.97	Blaustein	Aye.
03:18:30.59	Unknown	Thank you.
03:18:30.62	Kelman	TODAY.
03:18:47.06	Unknown	Thank you.
03:18:47.08	Unknown	Is there any?
03:18:48.23	Unknown	I've seen none.
03:18:49.00	Unknown	All right, we'll close public comment, move on to city manager reports and other council business. City manager, do you have anything to add?
03:18:53.78	Kelman	Pardon me, Mayor, Councilmember Committee reports.
03:18:56.90	Unknown	I might think it's, you're right. Is that okay? Are your eyes that good that you can see it? I'm eager to share just really quickly. All right, council member committee reports first.
03:19:01.37	Kelman	I'm eager to share just really quickly.
03:19:05.35	Kelman	Okay, so we talked about the budget. $250,000, guys, I think we're gonna get it for Gate 5 stuff. I wanna thank the mayor for joining the Sea Level Rise walkabout and familiarizing himself with what the consultants are going to do. I'm also taking my newfound EDAC role very seriously. So I've been in touch, as I think you might have, Councilman Blaston, with Green Yachts, having seen their $24 million grant million dollar grant I've been talking to Graham who owns that about doing a green boating center here in Sausalito and they have a number of areas that they are very interested in so we'll be having a call with them and then also I think you may know this but um subsequent to Council's disinterest in the machine shop and we let that go I continued to have conversations with the Army Corps who asked me to help them come over the concept around a living lab and Congressman Huffman has now written a letter of support to GSA that the Army Corps should acquire that property and I talked to his office and they thought that a letter of support from the city of Sausalito would be helpful and And I think that's a prudent idea because I think that we should continue to have a place in the history of that building. And maybe even a space somehow for some purpose. And so that is happening. And then I'll just say, I guess it's not my report out, but we'll talk about it tomorrow. We have a housing committee meeting, and I am hoping that we will talk about this new information about the school merging and consolidating in the city of Sausalito. The reason that is relevant for our committee vice mayor is that they will need more money to fund that, and their original proposal had 30 to 40 units of teacher housing on that parcel, and so I hope that we will continue to pursue that.
03:20:52.48	Kelman	That's it. Thank you.
03:20:53.89	Unknown	Anyone else?
03:20:55.97	Unknown	No other committee report, city manager, would you like to?
03:20:58.03	Zapata	say anything just real quick for the council and public awareness I want to thank Catherine the key to sir HR manager for working with city staff to bring an internship program to the city of Sausalito so if you come to City Hall and you look at the window and you meet Betty she's one of our new interns who's working to help us help with Noelle's leave of absence we've also hired an intern to work with the city manager to help me with some of these little projects that are growing in responsibility. And so she will be with us through August. And so that's a start to try to build a pipeline of people interested in Sausalito so that we can, you know, fill vacancies and hire quality people. But I really thank Kathy for that. Just wanted you to know, so when you see new faces, Betty and Libby are their names. And they're great. So thank you.
03:21:47.08	Unknown	Any future agenda items for my colleagues? Councilmember Bostein.
03:21:50.49	Blaustein	I have a few. I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to keep mentioning it. I really want us to have some tabletops on disaster preparedness. I know we did a drill last week. That's great, but that's not enough. We need to have additional conversation about all of the potential scenarios. And I'd love to have Mike McKinley come talk us through the booklet that he provided for all of us, for members of the public to that. And there was a neighborhood group and an event at the Spinnaker, which the vice mayor and council member Kelman participated in around fire safety on the north side of town. And in speaking with Tom and others from that HOA, they are applying for a grant in partnership with Southern Marin Fire to do additional work. And I would love for them to come before the council and talk about some of their efforts and also have us agendize a letter of support for their grants from the council as a whole and from the city officially.
03:22:40.61	Blaustein	Given the really horrifying and upsetting hate speech that we heard this evening and especially given that it's Jewish Heritage Month I would expect or at least hope that we would have some sort of proclamation around hate speech and that we're not a community that stands for this type of Conversation as a whole and some sort of discussion around a code of conduct for how we might deal with that because I was rather dismayed and impacted and sort of surprised that there was no immediate feedback from the dais with regard to the magnitude and disgust of some of the comments that we heard. So just wanted to make sure that we, as a council, stand against that type of language.
03:23:18.23	Unknown	I endorse that. I would also like to see us, I don't know if we need to put this on a future agenda item, but I heard tonight that we have not authorized, you know, a platform that allows us to prevent that type of hate speech or mute that type of hate speech. So I'd like to see us work with Marin IT and with the city clerk or whoever else we need to work with to upgrade our zoom platform or our webinar platform or adopt a better platform so that we are able to manage the public comments that we hear because I do not want to dispense with allowing our residents to participate virtually but I do want to do it in a more responsible way I also would like to see us here from EDAC regarding their revenue generating opportunities and their request that we identify what we like them to prioritize
03:24:17.20	Kelman	May I, sorry Council Member Hoffman, before you go on. It is at the end of the meeting, but I do think it is worth just saying to the record, thank you for saying that Council Member Blasdain. It is very startling as a Jewish member of council to hear that and not quite sure where to go with that. So I do want to thank my colleagues for your professionalism on that. And I think just overall, including the LGBTQ month, I really just want to thank you all for that. We are an inclusive community here in Sausalito. Anything we can continue to do to articulate that and be very outspoken I think is very important and shows a lot of character for all of us. So thank you and thank you again, councilman for bringing it up.
03:24:54.53	Unknown	Agree, I agree on that. Okay, so I have a- Sure, yes.
03:24:57.25	Unknown	you
03:24:58.28	Unknown	Yeah, I'm aware that there's an effort in the community to bring forward an initiative on the of a blue economy innovation zone. And so I think it is, I believe it's gonna be in the form of an, sorry, an initiative. And then I want to draw that to the attention of the agenda setting committee. We haven't, I don't think
03:25:24.49	Unknown	We haven't gotten the proposal yet, but I think it's coming. And if we wanna add it to the ballot this fall, we're gonna be on a short timeline. So I just wanna highlight that and it's coming and
03:25:37.95	Unknown	Yeah.
03:25:38.39	Kelman	Do I have to say out loud how much I love that?
03:25:41.12	Kelman	Thank you.
03:25:41.16	Unknown	I love that. I mean, that sounds great. I think it will be important that we hear from the city attorney about how much time he needs to review any initiative in order for us to, I'm assuming they're asking us to vote on it or something?
03:25:43.28	Karina Hughes	Exactly.
03:25:49.07	Bushmaker	Thank you.
03:25:56.93	Unknown	They want, yeah, agendize it and then move forward however it is they want to frame it when we get it.
03:25:57.51	Unknown	They were on the back.
03:26:03.58	Unknown	Thank you.
03:26:03.80	Unknown	Okay, so I'd want to just include that as part of agenda setting.
03:26:07.21	Unknown	Yeah.
03:26:07.25	Unknown	Yeah, I agree.
03:26:07.65	Unknown	I agree.
03:26:08.33	Unknown	Thank you.
03:26:08.41	Unknown	Items anything else to council member happen?
03:26:09.96	Unknown	Yeah.
03:26:12.83	Unknown	Anything else for anyone?
03:26:13.91	Unknown	Okay, public comment, please on items, city manager report and future agenda items. Any public comment? Seeing none. We'll close public comment and that will be the end of our meeting. Good night. Have a good evening.
03:26:19.18	Unknown	See you then.