| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:16.30 | Vice Mayor | Good evening. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Saucyocity Council for Tuesday, March 13th. Debbie, would you please call the roll? |
| 00:00:26.04 | Debbie | Council Member Pfeiffer? Here. Council Member Ford? |
| 00:00:27.34 | Councilmember Ford | Here. Here. |
| 00:00:30.32 | Debbie | Councilmember Weiner. Present. Vice Mayor Leone. |
| 00:00:31.47 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:00:31.49 | Unknown | President. |
| 00:00:32.95 | Vice Mayor | Here. Mayor Kelly will be late and hopefully will join us before 8 o'clock. Our first item on our agenda is closed session announcements. The council had one item on its closed session agenda, which was regarding a potential legal suit from Clipper Yacht Harbor. We gave direction to the council you and city attorney, and they will proceed on that. Is there any public comment on that particular item? Since you know nothing about it, it would be interesting if you had public comment. um, Maybe you could tell us a few things about what the hell's going on down there. Okay, with that, is there a motion on the agenda this evening? |
| 00:01:22.55 | Councilmember Ford | I move we approve the agenda. |
| 00:01:24.74 | Unknown | I'll second. |
| 00:01:26.45 | Vice Mayor | Any opposed? Seeing none, motion carries. We were due to have a special presentation by the Marin General Hospital, but they canceled for this evening. Oh, right. So we're going to move on. So with that. |
| 00:01:49.48 | Vice Mayor | Oh yeah, I'm gonna ask the two Greggs in unison to lead us on our Pledge of Allegiance from Bay City Refuge. |
| 00:01:53.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:53.94 | Unknown | to the |
| 00:01:54.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:54.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:03.49 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. of the United States of America. to the republic for which it stands. my nation, and ever better, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all |
| 00:02:18.64 | Vice Mayor | Well done. Great. With that, we have public communications. That's time for anyone to speak on any items that are not on our agenda this evening. I have two cards that were filled out, and if you haven't filled out the card, you can come up after these folks if you have something on your mind. The first one is Gail Barnett. Are you here to speak on an item not on the agenda? Please. |
| 00:02:47.55 | Gail Barnett | Thank you. patient. homeowner on Harrison Avenue, and over the last two years, have watched a city, apparently a city easement being under construction in many, many ways to do something about telephone poles and put them underground for other neighbors. I've heard so many stories over the last two years about I've talked to the head of public works. I've talked to contractors that leave the job. And recently I talked, and the reason I haven't really responded is because the person who's in charge of this is a neighbor, and I respect that. But recently two things happened. One is that I have grandchildren that were playing on the site. and got into some very unsafe situations. There's a lot of open ground and ditches and pipes that are open. I don't know what the pipes are going to, I think we need to really get active on this. I spoke with the homeowner last week who said that They have contractors who really want to go forward with the job, but things have gotten so complicated that now it's an issue that's really a city issue between the city engineer, and including PG&E and AT&T and it's gotten to be a mess. I want to know what is going on, what is really going on, and how we can, as a group in our community, get through this as quickly as possible. |
| 00:04:16.38 | Vice Mayor | Um, you We can't comment on that because it's not on our agenda, but if the city manager or public works director want to comment on that, Just a quick question. I'll say one thing. It was the same contractor that was on my street undergrounding, and they were eventually fired because they weren't finishing it, and somebody else had to pick it up and pay for it to be completed, and that may be a problem there, too, but I don't know the intimate details. It was the same contractor doing I know. |
| 00:04:53.52 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. |
| 00:05:01.15 | Vice Mayor | Well, I encourage you to, I saw you, yeah, and I know you've talked before, so hopefully we can get people on the same page. I'm sure it's more complicated than the story you're getting from your neighbor, but there's always a little extra twist to all this stuff. But we'll see if we can try and get it moving again, because I feel the same way about all those open things there. |
| 00:05:16.96 | Unknown | but, |
| 00:05:24.91 | Vice Mayor | Larry Hulick, thank you, sir. |
| 00:05:28.47 | Unknown | Hi, we're part of a group, Live on Harrison, And we've been bothered and upset and troubled by this issue. of the street repair in Harrison. Going on, as I understand it, this issue was raised 20 years ago, Construction actually started two years ago. indicating the slow pace of things in Sausalito. But at any rate, We are here tonight to talk about the safety issue And that is a serious issue. I did a little research. and I found out that if a municipality, a government entity, is given constructive notice, repeat, constructive notice. then there might be an issue of liability in the event of an accident, pertaining to that street repair. There's an ongoing problem in that there's a trench, an open trench marked by some safety cones But just this morning, I saw a trash pickup truck, which was partially blocking the street, and a car tried to maneuver past the trash and almost went into the ditch. you have a liability problem possibly facing the community. And I will just cite one case. and it was Metcalfe versus the County of San Joaquin in 2008 in the Supreme Court, California, upheld a ruling protecting the county. However, however, they said that under Section 835.2, of the California Government Claims Act that if a plaintiff can prove that a municipality had constructive notice of a safety hazard, constructive notice in advance of a safety hazard, and does nothing, then it is potentially liable Now, the cost of defending that liability suit could very well exceed the cost of making the repair and insisting that something go forward. specific recommendations. Number one, why not hire an outside consultant and engineer and or attorney to give an overview to the council of exactly where the situation rests today? And two, give some consideration to covering that trench, that open pit, so that the liability issue can be avoided. I think that's all I have to say tonight, but I hope that there's some action from this community. Thank you. |
| 00:08:09.25 | Vice Mayor | Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who has any comments on any items that are not on our agenda this evening? |
| 00:08:17.51 | Vice Mayor | Do you want to address that one or not? No. Just leave it alone. |
| 00:08:22.92 | Adam Politzer | We've heard from the community recently today and I actually forwarded some comments from our city engineer. It is a complicated and complex problem with private property and contractor disputes. City staff is working on it. The items that were raised tonight, especially the safety issues we'll take a look at immediately. to make sure that we're not putting anyone in harm's way. We'll continue to work with the community, especially the neighbors there on Harrison and Santa Rosa, and see if we can help bring this and resolve it. As the Vice Mayor mentioned, this is the second time we've had a challenge with private property owners doing these types of projects, and again, the issue with undergrounding is complicated. Just as we work on replacing our streets in town, especially the concrete streets, you never know what you're going to find and the contractors are responsible for doing the work ahead of time, the planning and development and design work ahead of time so that they know what they're going to find when they open up the ground so that coordination with any other public utility is also addressed at the same time, not after it's opened. So as I think everyone recognizes it's a little bit more complex than the story that's out there, but I strongly suggest that the neighbors continue to work with Jonathan Goldman, our public works director, and Todd Teachout, our city engineer. Maybe there's an opportunity to have a community meeting, a neighborhood meeting, to make sure that all the issues that can be aired in public are. |
| 00:09:53.03 | Unknown | Ooh. |
| 00:09:53.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:15.88 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Anyone else? Anything else? |
| 00:10:19.53 | Councilmember Ford | Mr. Vice-Mayer. |
| 00:10:22.84 | Vice Mayor | Yes. |
| 00:10:23.71 | Councilmember Ford | I'd just like to ask our city manager. |
| 00:10:25.72 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:10:27.80 | Councilmember Ford | Well, just on this subject, if we could take care, have the contractor or someone take care of the safety issue that exists. |
| 00:10:37.30 | Vice Mayor | I would encourage you to read Todd's email today because it's a very complicated issue. Thank you. Okay, with that, we're going to move on to our consent calendar, or no, the minutes of the February 28th meeting. Are there any comments on those minutes? |
| 00:10:59.74 | Vice Mayor | It's not regular. |
| 00:11:03.88 | Vice Mayor | See you. |
| 00:11:03.93 | Councilmember Fyber | I'm glad somebody got there. |
| 00:11:03.98 | Vice Mayor | Bye. |
| 00:11:04.06 | Unknown | I'm glad somebody gets that. |
| 00:11:06.31 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Vice Mayor, let's see, regarding the minutes. |
| 00:11:06.49 | Unknown | you |
| 00:11:13.12 | Councilmember Fyber | I do have a, just a, and this is a knit, but it refers to Councilmember Ford requesting Governor Brown's pension reform on a future agenda and I had supported that and I would just like the record to show that I supported that. Where is that? I'm trying to find it right now. |
| 00:11:38.99 | Vice Mayor | Whereas that's... |
| 00:11:41.22 | Unknown | Thank you. . |
| 00:11:47.67 | Vice Mayor | Oh, OK. Sure. Does anyone have a problem with that? No. Notation? |
| 00:11:50.75 | Mayor Kelly | No. you |
| 00:11:53.47 | Vice Mayor | Okay. City Clerk will take care of that. Thank you, Debbie. Any other comments on the minutes? Seeing none, is there a motion? |
| 00:12:02.30 | Unknown | Some move. |
| 00:12:04.71 | Vice Mayor | Is there a second? |
| 00:12:06.40 | Councilmember Fyber | 20 seconds. |
| 00:12:07.63 | Vice Mayor | All in favor? I know. |
| 00:12:08.66 | Councilmember Fyber | Aye. |
| 00:12:10.21 | Vice Mayor | Nothing not opposed, motion carries. Okay, we have one item on the consent calendar that is Purchase of a... I must say it's something to do with network storage for our internal network. Are there any comments on that particular item? Anyone from the public want to chime in on a Dell storage controller? Okay, seeing none, is there a motion on the consent calendar? |
| 00:12:36.61 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 00:12:36.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:41.58 | Councilmember Ford | I move we approve the consent calendar. |
| 00:12:44.59 | Unknown | I'll second. Thank you. |
| 00:12:45.65 | Vice Mayor | Any opposed? Seeing none, carry. Okay, moving on to our business items. Thank you for bearing with us. Some of them were... The first item is a received and filed update on the disaster preparedness program. which was continued from February 7th because of Sergeant Frost's absence. Thank you for coming. Hope you're feeling better. |
| 00:13:13.83 | Mayor Kelly | Do we have the little |
| 00:13:24.60 | Sergeant Frost | So, Good evening, Mr. Vice Mayor, Council Members, and Mr. City Manager. I am here tonight to speak on the accomplishments of our city's disaster preparedness program during the fourth quarter of 2011. Oh, good. It does work. We're going to be covering the topics of training, plans, equipment, community outreach and meetings, and our future plans. This is just going to be, as usual, a quick, preview of what was accomplished For a complete overview of everything and more details, please refer to my staff report. Regarding training, we are continuing with our online training through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's resources. During the fourth quarter, we trained our city work staff in local damage assessment and what the individual can do to respond to an emergency such as an active shooter. These trainings are very good because they're cost effective. They can be done. during the employee's downtime or at their leisure and they're very They're not complicated at all. They're very user friendly. |
| 00:14:31.74 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. |
| 00:14:31.88 | Sergeant Frost | So anybody with a computer and a mouse could click and get trained in very |
| 00:14:31.91 | Andrew Davidson | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:14:35.91 | Sergeant Frost | up-to-date information. Other training issues, I was able to attend a workshop and a training class on preparing plans for the individuals with access and functional needs and how we could care for them during times of emergencies and other disasters. I also attended the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago where I attended classes regarding disaster preparedness, disaster |
| 00:15:00.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:15:00.51 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:15:01.31 | Sergeant Frost | terrorism. how to identify any ongoing disaster or emergency problems, and how to prepare plans to prevent those as well as notifying the public. We also, back in November 10th, had our yearly emergency operations drill. As you can see from the photographs, our EOC is continuing to evolve. We added a lot more technology this year as from the use of online resources. All three TVs were utilized as well as laptop computers. The exercise was extremely successful. We had positive feedback not only from the participants but from the evaluators. Many evaluators which were all from outside jurisdictions stated that they were going to use this as the plan for their own upcoming drills. Tiburon, Twin Cities Police Authority. as well as other outside agencies. So I'm already in the process of planning next year's drill. which will probably be moved up to October since I'm getting married in November and I don't think my future wife will want me to be here. |
| 00:16:07.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:16:09.16 | Sergeant Frost | Plans. We're continuing always updating our emergency operations plans and resources book. We're going to have a brand new copy of our emergency operations plan in effect in the next few months with all new resource information. The most comprehensive aspect of that is getting, making sure we're updated with all our resources such as restaurants, where we could get food, where we could get water, and we have the most current updated information. My biggest fear is one day we have a disaster, we open up a book and we're trying to find how we get a hold of Gatsby's and they haven't been in existence for several years. We're also working on continually updating and preparing and getting the evacuation and tidal wave tsunami protocol finished. Right now, the biggest aspect of that is going to be our third point of discussion is preparing the citywide map And once the citywide map is developed, I, along with the Fire Department and Department of Public Works, will be able to develop some emergency routes for evacuation. These routes are going to be kept only To the city employees' knowledge, we do not want the public to know about those because we don't want them to evacuate into an area of danger. because that's their disaster route and they're not thinking of their of a bigger picture. We are going to control those, but we're going to have those disaster routes planned. And once those disaster routes are planned, The city will be presented with the protocol which will cover how to do any kind of evacuation as well as how to respond to a tsunami, a tidal wave, or any other kind of issue off the bay. equipment. We have continued to successfully test the emergency broadcast system. It has yet to fail on us, which I'm hoping that's going to continue to happen. and we utilized it successfully during the EOC exercise. We utilized this for the tsunami scare back in |
| 00:17:59.69 | Unknown | YEAR, BUT I'M NOT |
| 00:18:01.38 | Sergeant Frost | early March of 2011. We also utilized it for missing persons. And Once again, the exercises and the training aspects. We have yet to have any complaints about the system and people have noticed it and heard from throughout the city. Community outreach and meetings, the Disaster Preparedness Committee continues to meet every single month. We take December off. 11 out of 12 months a year for any kind of committee is very admirable. And We post the minutes from each meeting on to the disaster preparedness website and make those available for every citizen who wishes to see them to review them. And we hosted the second annual disaster preparedness day at the MLK field on October 15th. Members of the community were able to meet and talk to public safety professionals public agencies and private agencies specialize in disaster preparedness and view equipment. and view resources that they could utilize to prepare themselves and their families. A lot of them also were able to pick up a lot of safety information and resources, as well as watch public safety agencies demonstrate their equipment. future plans for 2012 we're continuing to look forward, we're continuing to progress the program and making this program the best we can for the city. We are going to continue our community outreach and education. We're going to continue our monthly tests of the emergency system. And we're going to continue to provide training to all city personnel in the emergency operations center. And if there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. |
| 00:19:40.99 | Vice Mayor | Any questions for Sergeant Frost? |
| 00:19:44.00 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Weissmere, have you a question? Um... So I remember that you were, one of the things you were looking at was the reverse 911 calls, the automatic calls. Are you still Exploring that, is that still on the table? Is that already implemented? It's not implemented yet. |
| 00:20:00.74 | Sergeant Frost | Let's go. However, I've been in discussions with the rest of the emergency service managers throughout Marin County and Marin County Office of Emergency Services is actually taking the lead in this. They are looking at a brand new system that will do the reverse 911 but also In the past, reverse 911 and emergency notifications could only be done over a hard line. And only a limited amount of people were able to enter the input and enter the phone numbers into that system. The new system that the county and all us jurisdictions are looking at are a system in which an individual can enter their own information and there can receive emergency notification phone calls on cell phones, home phones, work phones, they could put whatever way they want to be contacted. |
| 00:20:39.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:44.09 | Councilmember Fyber | Mm-hmm. I follow up question Mr. Gressler. So with respect to that could we tailor you know the reverse 911 calls specifically to Sausalito and like if another tsunami was to hit. |
| 00:20:58.64 | Sergeant Frost | Yeah, whatever emergency message or information we want to put out will be specifically tailored |
| 00:20:58.72 | Councilmember Fyber | Yeah. Okay. |
| 00:21:05.12 | Sergeant Frost | for our needs. It's this system allows whoever wants to get the system to receive information and we're able to say whatever we want to provide the citizen any information we want regarding that. |
| 00:21:16.49 | Councilmember Fyber | Is there a timeline yet regarding when Sausalito might have this in place for you? |
| 00:21:21.52 | Sergeant Frost | Right now, the system is still looking, we're still in the same system until probably about four to five months down the road. The system we have now is very effective. The contract is, we're still under contract. |
| 00:21:36.07 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:21:36.13 | Sergeant Frost | So we're looking at approximately four to five months down the road, With us, we're in Sausalito, it's very lucky. We have different resources and we have built-in redundancy regarding notification systems. Many jurisdictions in Marin County do not have that. So, um... Four or five months down the road, we'll have a one-shot wonder. But right now we have. three or four systems that all work in redundancy of each other to notify everybody. |
| 00:22:00.03 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 00:22:00.06 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. Mr. Beisling. I have two questions, Sergeant Press. the map. Is that the Dorothy Gibson map? Thank you. |
| 00:22:09.49 | Sergeant Frost | That is she. We have had input from her regarding this map, and she has been the citizen who has been pushing forward the progress. It's the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, Sausalito Police Department, |
| 00:22:17.78 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:22:22.45 | Sergeant Frost | and the Department of Public Works working together in conjunction with miss gibson in order to make this map work |
| 00:22:30.69 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, and what is the timeline on that? Any idea? |
| 00:22:34.86 | Sergeant Frost | Right now, the exact timeline, I would have to refer to Director Goldman. We are in the process of making sure we fit all the information and finding out all the resources where we want put. But the exact date, I can't give it to you, but I could get you that information and give it to you at a later time. |
| 00:22:52.09 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, good. Thank you. |
| 00:22:52.12 | Sergeant Frost | Thank you. |
| 00:22:53.81 | Councilmember Ford | Just one other little question. the not giving the public notice of, say, the stairs, if a person lives on a hill. Is there... Would you explain that to me? Is there not some way that we should let the public know that there are several stairs around you in case of a disaster? These are probably the stairs you would use, you know, just so they're familiar with that? Or what's the thinking around that, the public knowing or not knowing? |
| 00:23:29.60 | Sergeant Frost | The map will show, the map's going to be provided throughout the city. And it will show every stair wall. alley, walkway, every course of action for a person to actually leave their house or travel to different locations throughout the city. |
| 00:23:42.83 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:23:43.35 | Sergeant Frost | The problem about Providing an individual with an exact emergency route or an evacuation route is, Some people think that this is an emergency evacuation route, so any emergency, I have to follow this route. |
| 00:23:55.52 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:23:55.99 | Sergeant Frost | And let's say we have a major fire, we have an earthquake where there's damage, and that is smack in the middle of this one individual route where this one person believes is their only route. We could be putting that person in danger by going in there and forcing us to have to conduct a rescue mission spend additional resources into a dangerous area to try to save an individual who went against notification. The routes we're going to come up with are going to be kept by city professionals, It will be made available to the public during the times of evacuation. And we'll be able to give that information out through a means of different manners. And then you have public safety professionals that are organizing and supervising the evacuation during certain routes. |
| 00:24:35.48 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:24:35.87 | Sergeant Frost | So it's just to make sure we keep the community as safe as possible and people are not accidentally going in the wrong direction. |
| 00:24:43.33 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. |
| 00:24:43.58 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor, can I just maybe, Sergeant Frost is saying it in a more technical manner, and I think just in case there are folks listening at home that didn't quite follow that. But really when we use our outreach tools like radio Sausalito, so say there's the area right here above City Hall is on fire, then they'll send out saying the best evacuation is X. So as Councilmember Ford was asking, they'll all get the map. But when an actual emergency happens, when we reach out, when we send out emails or or reverse 911 information when we have those tools. it will advise people of what routes to take. to leave their homes. |
| 00:25:36.08 | Vice Mayor | No one size fits all route out of a disaster. Correct. It's not like a hotel where here's the red line that goes to the stairs kind of thing. |
| 00:25:39.44 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:25:39.50 | Sergeant Frost | it. that goes, the stairs. but disaster is a very fluid situation. So we have to have multiple response plans and multiple avenues or resources. |
| 00:25:50.37 | Councilmember Ford | Sure, my question was mainly that people know where the stairs are, because I think there are a lot of people who live here who are not aware that there are even staircases. And I do hope that an evacuation drill is still on your list with a picnic afterwards. |
| 00:26:05.12 | Sergeant Frost | That is standard. That is a future plan that we are continuing looking at and it is a future plan that we have to follow steps. Step one, step two, step three. Sure. The map is step one, planning routes are step two, resources for the plan for that additional |
| 00:26:15.40 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 00:26:15.43 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 00:26:22.11 | Sergeant Frost | Drill would be step three and four, but it is on the long-range price. |
| 00:26:26.45 | Councilmember Ford | Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:26:27.28 | Sergeant Frost | Okay. |
| 00:26:27.33 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 00:26:27.73 | Sergeant Frost | Thank you. |
| 00:26:30.80 | Vice Mayor | Bill, what would you say is your top... to do. |
| 00:26:34.95 | Sergeant Frost | Top to do is continual public outreach and education regarding emergencies and disaster preparedness. Preparing plans for the city and preparing our workforce is great. However, the citizens have to be prepared to be able to take care of themselves for up to 72, if not even 96 hours. And just getting the citizens more trained, better prepared, and more aware is number one on my list. Everything else, are very important, but citizen education is always number one. |
| 00:27:06.97 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. It's very true. Any comments from the public on this particular item? Please stand if you want to come up. You have to come up to the microphone. If you could just state your name, please. |
| 00:27:20.13 | Jan Johnson | Jan Johnson sort of I have two questions. There's a lot of medical professionals who live here, but I'm unaware of any volunteer site for us to gather to volunteer. if needed in disasters and if there's little subcommittees you know, we could be put into to be helpful. And the second question was, I know you say there's a lot of ways we're notified, but I'm unaware of how I get notified. Last year, with the tsunami. I woke up at 2 a.m. to the national tsunami thing I called 911, no information. I called the police department. no information. It took me two hours online to find out that it wasn't going to hit until six hours later and it wasn't going to be a big deal. But that was like two hours of no sleep in the middle of the night trying to figure out what was going on. So how do we get notified? |
| 00:28:15.38 | Vice Mayor | If you'll let him answer those are all good questions. of. |
| 00:28:20.46 | Sergeant Frost | The first question regarding medical professionals in the city, there are actually two great resources for medical professionals to volunteer or Let the city know regarding what skills you can bring to the table. The first is the Marin Medical Reserve Corps. It's a establishment of doctors, nurses, EMTs, nurse practitioners that are run out of the County of Marin that are volunteer to respond to any disaster or emergency occurring in Marin County. That database is always being updated and always available to all jurisdictions in Marin County. Another great resource is to get trained in our Southern Protection District's CERT program, Citizen Emergency Response Team, and to join one of those teams. You join one of the teams, they're spread out throughout Sausalito. I believe there are five teams in Sausalito alone. And during times of emergency, you are activated and respond to a designated location. And within those locations, we have several shelters in Sausalito that had medical emergency equipment. that could be utilized by those medical professionals to give care to the citizens of Sausalito. Regarding the notification, the last year's tsunami was kind of a abbreviate kind of a shot in the dark problem because what happened was A... notification system at Marin County had broken down which did not provide several jurisdictions with information regarding the upcoming tsunami. City of Sausalito as well as other jurisdictions to not find out about the tsunami itself. until several hours. after the warning brought down. The only reason that happened was because they were having work on the emergency notification system done. a technician who was working on the system, looked at the clocks, said it was 5 o'clock I haven't put this thing together, took it back together so it functions. collapse. you know what, what's the likelihood of them having to use this thing? Walked away. That has been settled now that that will never happen again because there is contingency plans. But here in Sausalito, we notify people through text messages, reverse 911s, emails, as well as personal notifications over loudspeakers. using the emergency broadcast system. If you want any of the information that we have regarding notification systems, please, I'll give you my business card. Feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to assist you in getting signed up and prepared in any manner of getting these notification |
| 00:30:59.66 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor. |
| 00:30:59.79 | Sergeant Frost | Peace. The City of San Salido's website, the Disaster Preparedness Emergency Operations Program, you can be fined right on... the city's website, and it will tell you every way of notification, how to sign up for it, and it provides numerous training information and numerous information to you to better prepare yourself for a whole host. of emergency. |
| 00:31:21.46 | Unknown | of emergency. |
| 00:31:22.72 | Sergeant Frost | And there's several things about tsunamis themselves in that website. |
| 00:31:30.18 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Vice Mayor, may I have a follow up question? So if a tsunami were to happen, you know, shot in the dark again, maybe. later tonight or whatever, somewhere in the world that could potentially affect us. Thank you. Are there things that we have put into place now since the Japan tsunami that would more effectively trigger the reverse 911 calls. And by the way, you might describe what a reverse 911 call is, because I think what I heard was, you know, if something was to happen, just getting information out to the residents regarding, you know, status updates or what have you. So sorry for the long question. |
| 00:32:15.95 | Sergeant Frost | A reverse 911 call is All hard line phone numbers are are entered and are available in a 911 database. So 911 could call Any number that could call 911, 911 could then reverse that phone call. So when we do a reverse phone call, all phone numbers in a jurisdiction... or in a geographical area. we want notified hard line numbers, we could do a reverse 911 call and notify those phone numbers and provide them with a prerecorded message of this is what the disaster is, this is what the issue is, please be aware of this. And then going back into the plans and how we prepare for the next one. We have had two minor tsunamis in the last two years. Our public safety professionals, Department of Public Works, have the experience in handling these and part of our plans are notification of the citizens through all our electronic means as well as in person contacts, monitoring areas around the waterfront, knowing what our tsunami inundation areas are. We have maps from California's, actually USC, that shows what areas are at risk of being inundated and just a hands-on experience of knowing that our supervisors on the field know how to handle these and we have a notification and a command level officer from the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, as well as the Sassaloo Police Department, and made aware of this and are constantly monitoring. and keeping everybody afraid. |
| 00:33:50.41 | Vice Mayor | Do you just want to list the... besides reverse 911, which will have problems if you're only having a cell phone. And if you're using a VoIP phone, which is like a Comcast telephone service, you have to be very careful of how you're listed with 911 with those because it doesn't work the same way as it would with reverse 911. That's why we're going to this new system where you can enter your own information in. But the Nixle and all the other Twitter feed, you know, do you want to just list them all off so people can? |
| 00:34:08.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:34:08.94 | Sergeant Frost | and where you could |
| 00:34:16.47 | Sergeant Frost | Yeah. Nixle. |
| 00:34:17.08 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:34:18.88 | Sergeant Frost | Instant messages. Emails. notifications and actually internet mail. Twitter. you I don't tweet. I don't know how to do tweeting. People that tweet, you get tweet messages. I guess that's what you're calling. Yeah. Sausalito's currents. |
| 00:34:38.59 | Vice Mayor | Right. |
| 00:34:38.96 | Sergeant Frost | Thank you. emails that way. We post right on. The City of Sausalito's website, this is the disaster, this is what the emergency is, please do this, please be aware of this. The phone calls through reverse 911. We have emergency broadcast system over 1610 AM. than our typical notification of fire engines and police cars riding to locations over loudspeakers, knocking on doors, making personal contacts. Those are all the resources we utilize. And then, It's also the word of mouth of contacting our CERT team members, contacting our volunteers in public safety and letting them spread the word through their communities. |
| 00:35:22.65 | Vice Mayor | And the Sheriff's Department also has a similar website. I forget the name of it, where they post a lot of emergency... |
| 00:35:29.50 | Sergeant Frost | Yeah, they use a system called MEANS, Marine Emergency Automated Notification System. That's very similar to our Nixle and our other systems. We use means ourselves to notify our emergency operations center staff to notify them of disasters and activate them. |
| 00:35:45.20 | Vice Mayor | Right. I think, Jan, the first step is to, you know, we all have to do a little effort to get signed up for these things if we want to get notified. Otherwise, going to, proactive going to these websites is the other way if, without signing up if you don't want to do that kind of thing. But we're trying to make it, we're trying to take it to the next step of getting people to to be able to get the information out where they so want to get it internalized. |
| 00:36:08.18 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Vice Mayor, can I comment? because I have to say that I had signed up for them and I had checked the websites, you know, at the time. So I just, I think that there is... It's good to hear, you know, what Sergeant Frass has worked on in the new developments with the upcoming reverse 911 because I think the timeliness of, you know, getting out that sort of communication in the event of a disaster is very helpful. |
| 00:36:40.72 | Vice Mayor | Any other questions from the public? Okay, so this is an ongoing thing. Part of, this is only part of your job, and we are lucky to have you doing this. We've gotten feedback from, different agencies and different municipalities on how far ahead we are in what we're doing thanks to your efforts and the Disaster Preparedness Committee's efforts, which has come a long way in case people don't know. There used to be a book about this thick. That was the city's disaster preparedness plan. By the time you found what was in it, God bless you in that disaster, Bill has made a very simple follow thing for the city to follow, and now we're it to the next step and trying to get the systems in place to get help us as citizens out, residents here out. And, you know, the next step in the longer run will be to conduct drills and things like that to get people to know where to go and who the doctor in their neighborhood is who's willing to help and all that kind of stuff. Thank you, Bill, for all your efforts. |
| 00:37:41.03 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, may I make a comment? And I want to thank you very much for everything you do in this area. And I think that the... response you received regarding the catastrophe cap, the fact that other cities are going to be emulating that, I think that speaks volumes. So thank you very much for your hard work. Thank you. |
| 00:38:01.16 | Vice Mayor | Thanks, Bill. |
| 00:38:01.87 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 00:38:02.16 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Okay, with that, let's note for the record that Mayor Kelly has joined us. It's 740-ish, and he will take over the meeting from here. We're on 6B. 6B. |
| 00:38:14.34 | Mayor Kelly | 6B. 6B? All right. Thank you, too, Bill. All right, the next item is proposed green waste and food scrap recycling program. Staff engineer Andrew Davidson. |
| 00:38:30.98 | Andrew Davidson | And yes, it is a mouthful. |
| 00:38:32.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:32.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:33.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:38:33.86 | Unknown | I have to say that. |
| 00:38:37.00 | Andrew Davidson | I hope not. |
| 00:38:47.41 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. I would like to thank the Mayor, Council, City Manager, Director of Public Works, and of course, the Sausalito Sustainability Commission for the opportunity to present to you a proposed green waste and food scrap recycling program for Sausalito. My name is Andrew Davidson. I'm staff engineer in your Department of Public Work. Over my tenure working with the Sustainability Commission, the topic of collection of food scraps for composting has been a recurring theme. The Commission has visited composting facilities, discussed the topic with communities that have a food scrap composting program in place and have tirelessly pushed for implementation of a program here in Sausalito. Bay City's refuse is your solid waste collector. And representatives of BCRS, most often Greg or Kim Christie regularly attend the Sustainability Commission meetings. In fact, tonight at the end of the presentation to help answer questions, we have Greg Christie, his son, Thomas and Greg Smith. Not too long ago, BCRS let sustainability know that BCRS would be able to start a food scrap recycling program here in Sausalito. With this information, sustainability came to your October 4, 2011 Council meeting and explain why composting food scraps is important and why it would be a good thing to implement here in Sausalito. Sustainability did such a good job that you raised this above your prioritized project listing list that you established in May. You raised it above the line. During that meeting, you directed staff and BCRS to prepare a recycling program to present to you at a future meeting. And here we are. your existing program includes weekly pickup of garbage and recyclables and twice a month unlimited green waste collection. You supply your own containers, Garbage may be picked up in your backyard while green waste and recycling is collected at the curb. |
| 00:40:52.07 | Andrew Davidson | With a great deal of help from sustainability, the elements of the proposed new curbside green waste food scrappling program are First of all, No change to your current weekly backyard garbage collection service. On a weekly basis, BCRS will collect from the curb your green waste and food scraps. To do this, BCRS will provide customers with a new cart into which you may place your green waste and food scrap items. This cart will be emptied by BCRS on your regularly scheduled garbage collection day. The program will also provide a limited number of smaller two-gallon kitchen pails to be used to collect and hold food scraps in a residence prior to transfer to the larger cart for pickup. These pails will be especially useful for folks living in apartments who transfer their waste to a central collection area. |
| 00:41:49.61 | Andrew Davidson | Each customer will also be provided with a new cart for regular weekly curbside collection of recyclables. This cart will help to better organize and streamline recycling, making recycling easier for the customer, and so will actually promote and increase the amount of material that is recycled. The program will offer a small number of home compost kits to encourage home composting. This is in recognition of the benefits of composting and reusing compostable material on site rather than carting the material off to recycling center. which in turn helps to eliminate the impacts of transportation while providing a customer with compostable material for their own use at home. BCRS and the Department of Public Works will develop a compostable program for green waste generated by public works landscape operations. The program will include a bin for hauling material away as compostable and an on-site program for additional materials that may be composted and used here in Sausalito by Public Works as part of their regular maintenance operation. The goal is to have this program fully implemented at the beginning of July of this year. |
| 00:43:02.56 | Andrew Davidson | Well, we don't really need this slide. |
| 00:43:27.40 | Andrew Davidson | These are two of the carts that are being proposed. The green, regardless of size, will be for your green waste food scraps, and blue will be for your recyclables. You will have the opportunity to select which you would prefer. This green one, currently, this one is 65 gallons, and the blue one is 32 gallons. Uh, You as a customer can choose which size you want for whichever color you would like as well. And this is the smaller kitchen pail. |
| 00:44:08.58 | Andrew Davidson | This is intended for use within your home. I'm not sure if this is the exact one that you will be offered, but it's of this approximate size. |
| 00:44:10.27 | Unknown | We'll be right back. |
| 00:44:10.32 | Unknown | within your |
| 00:44:21.93 | Vice Mayor | Can you get them in sky blue? |
| 00:44:24.47 | Andrew Davidson | I thought that was sky blue. I was told that was sky blue. Prior to the start of the proposed food scrap service, sustainability and BCRS will contact customers through an educational outreach campaign to provide information about the community's new service, benefits of food scrap recycling, what can and can't be placed within the green cards, and how the service will work. Outreach will include newsletters accompanying BCRS billings, information included with the carts when they are distributed, City and Sustainability website, Sausalito Currents, and quite probably a public workshop. Now I know that the Sustainability Commission has some ideas on getting the information out to residents and businesses as well. Here's an example flyer from Middle Valley Refuge Service. This is an example of what would be disseminated, and it shows what can and cannot go into the recycling, the green waste food scrap recycling. It's important to know what goes in in order to have an effective program. Really quickly, they show dairy products, vegetables, breads, meat, seafood, food, soiled paper products, and, of course, the green waste that can be recycled. into compost. Schedule. If the proposed program is acceptable or may be modified to be made acceptable, then a future City Council meeting will be needed to review and act upon a proposed rate increase to pay for this program. If a rate increase is approved, then educational materials will be prepared and educational outreach by the Sustainability Commission and BCRS will commence. New carts would be delivered in June of 2012, again with anticipation of starting the program at the beginning of July. In fact, at the beginning of February, a pilot program was started between DCRS and the Spinnaker restaurant, and it's my understanding that it's going along well. |
| 00:46:36.02 | Andrew Davidson | Benefits. You've heard this before, but I'll just quickly touch on it. During your October 4, 2011 City Council meeting, sustainability presented its findings and recommendations on food scrap recycling. Food scrap recycling will help Sausalito meet the goal of complying with the California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989, which is to reduce the amount of materials shipped off to landfills. It will also help meet the Marin Hazardous and Solid Waste Joint Powers Authority's Zero Waste Goal of 2025. You may recall that the JPA has identified that food waste comprises approximately 23% of the waste stream sent to landfills. Because of anaerobic conditions in landfills, This material decomposes at a very slow rate and releases methane gas. Methane gas is a greenhouse gas approximately 20 times more, I'll just say potent, than carbon dioxide. And that's not the smell, that's just related to the greenhouse gas. If composted in an aerobic environment, which it will be, food waste will decompose into a soil amendment without the release of methane gas. greenhouse gas emissions. some of the issues other than cost. As mentioned previously, this program does not propose to alter the current backyard garbage service, whereby BCRS goes into your backyard and collects your garbage, You are not required to bring your garbage to the curb. Now this is a very important issue. As the program is proposed, some customers may find it a lot more convenient to continue to dispose of food scraps in their garbage rather than a new green cart. because at no additional charge, garbage may be collected from the backyard, while green carts are to be collected from the curb. Charging additional for backyard garbage collection will promote food scrap recycling. Staff concluded that altering the existing garbage service now will take the focus away from starting the food scrap recycling program. During a future rate review, backyard garbage service could be revisited. Concern has been expressed about the attraction of animals with this service. As you can see, the carts to be left outside have lids. No one can guarantee that an animal won't get in, but if it's is a problem for folks, those lids can be tied down. Now, I've also stated that green waste and the food scrap recycling program will be a limited service. Currently, you enjoy an unlimited green waste service with collection twice a month. Under the proposed program, the amount of green waste will be limited to the size of the new BCRS supplied green cart plus one additional bundle of green waste that won't fit into this new cart. Beyond that amount, there will be an additional charge. Now, that additional bundle may be equivalent to a customer-supplied 65-gallon cart. Collection will increase from twice a month to every week. So in theory, you may be able to have picked up 8 to 10 65-gallon carts of green waste in a month. |
| 00:49:59.12 | Andrew Davidson | costs. The services proposed will result in an across-the-board rate increase of 9.5%. You can see what that does to you. If you currently have a single can rate of $33.70, the 9.5% increase will drive you up to $36.90 a month for a net increase of $3.20 per month. |
| 00:50:29.70 | Andrew Davidson | So what we're looking for this evening is that you accept this report, hear public comment, ask questions, provide comments, and determine if a rate hearing should be scheduled for the Greenways Food Scrap Recycling Program. And before asking to continue, Greg Christie of BCRS has a little comment. Demonstration? you may not be fully prepared for. |
| 00:50:53.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:50:55.06 | Greg Christie | Well, we talked about the possibility of bringing the toters to the meeting tonight, and we thought it'd be good to get everybody to actually visually see them. And these would probably be the toters that if the program was approved, we would use, or they would be almost identical to them. Most of the benefactors are the same, excepted at one, and they look real similar. Andy, would you hand Greg the mic? Thank you. The issue with the pail was to make it more convenient for everybody to transport the stuff, especially with the multifamily units. And I do believe at this point, I mean, it would almost be offered to everybody if they would, in fact, want it. We wouldn't try to limit it, but if everybody did want a pail, we'd make it useful. And it's quite simple. Over the course of the last couple weeks here, I saved some food scraps, and I can pass it around to council if you'd like to, you know, examine it. |
| 00:51:44.91 | Unknown | and I can pass it The President. |
| 00:51:49.00 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 00:51:50.48 | Greg Christie | Actually, this was a popular item. It was just made up today and I took it home and put it in the refrigerator so it would be nice and fresh for you guys and then I went to go get it and I said, Honey, um... Where's my food waste for the meeting tonight? And it was in our food waste container at home, so. |
| 00:52:05.92 | Unknown | So. |
| 00:52:06.65 | Greg Christie | And then simply everybody would take this and place it into their and you're done. It's that simple. And then hopefully, if you wanted, you could get food waste back. And this is what it would look like. And this is actual food waste from the landfill that was collected this morning. And so this sold as compost. |
| 00:52:21.80 | Sergeant Frost | Yes. |
| 00:52:32.36 | Greg Christie | And the landfill we take it to would be in Richmond. It's a transfer station and they compost on site. |
| 00:52:42.30 | Mayor Kelly | Terrific. |
| 00:52:43.16 | Andrew Davidson | And we should point out that you would not be using plastic bags. |
| 00:52:46.27 | Greg Christie | Thank you. |
| 00:52:46.34 | Unknown | Ha ha ha ha. |
| 00:52:46.51 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. |
| 00:52:48.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:50.41 | Mayor Kelly | All right. Thank you very much. Nice demonstration. Stay safe for a second. Anybody up here want to ask any questions? |
| 00:52:56.82 | Vice Mayor | Greg, just to clarify, thank you for going through this process. I know it's been a long time since people, and it's great that we're getting to this point. So you can mix your food waste with your green waste. |
| 00:53:00.63 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 00:53:07.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:53:14.84 | Greg Christie | That's correct. That's the idea behind it, yes. |
| 00:53:14.91 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Right. And is that the driver behind limiting the amount of green waste that someone can put out? |
| 00:53:24.47 | Greg Christie | Well, no, the thought is if you go to – right now we're twice a month, and if we go to four times a week, you're going to be doubling the amount of pickups, and you're going to have a 65-gallon container or whatever size you choose plus the extra, and it should, in most cases, meet up with everybody's capacity. If it doesn't, it would be a really soft rolling program where we're not going to go out there and just go after everybody that puts it out. But the idea is to try to get everybody to recycle weekly because of If you don't do that, then you might have one week where, you know, the truck might not make it, you'd have to make two loads or whatever. You want to get it spread out over the course of the month, and I think that, you know, in our experience with what we see out there, in most cases it'll be able to be done. |
| 00:54:12.52 | Vice Mayor | And if I may, Mr. Mayor, but the recycling would still be unlimited, the amount of recycling |
| 00:54:19.00 | Greg Christie | Correct. That would not change, no. But the idea behind that is you'd have a toter now and you can just dump it in there. You end up with a little bit more contamination when you go to toters, but you capture so much more material and quite frankly the recycling that's collected in Sausalito is some of the cleanest that you can imagine. It's actually unbelievable. The contamination rate is very low. |
| 00:54:40.16 | Vice Mayor | Okay. Thank you. Now I can, having dealt with this in an earlier life, it can be a big problem in other places where you get further along the line later in the process where you just get rats and everything and stuff goes. |
| 00:54:54.13 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:55:02.70 | Greg Christie | It ends up being just another avenue for the garbage basically in some cases. Thank you. |
| 00:55:08.51 | Vice Mayor | Now, I know, I think Andy mentioned this, and this is my last question, is, and I've gotten questions about this over the years, especially when you knock on people's doors for this stuff. Hey, well... I don't fill my container. I'm in a multi-unit building, and I'd rather have a smaller container. I know we're changing the system here, so we're kind of putting all the balls up in the air a little bit to understand how the costs are going to flow around a little bit for you folks. But is that something down the line we could consider doing as sort of maybe – I don't need a – 32-gallon or 64-gallon trash container. but I know you guys need to have some visibility into what your revenue is coming in to cover your costs. |
| 00:55:47.74 | Unknown | Right. |
| 00:55:48.59 | Vice Mayor | So maybe at some point, once we go through this program and understand the costs and the expenses that go with it. We can come back and revisit that for somebody who just doesn't generate a lot of waste in general. |
| 00:56:01.30 | Greg Christie | Yes, and I would anticipate that would be looked at at the full formal review that comes up in a year or two. The process would probably start in about 18 months actually. And then at that time you look at everything and you look at what all the revenues are and everything. The problem with going to differential rates at this time, you don't know, like you said, you addressed the revenue structure and how it's going to come in. And if you have a large amount change and you don't anticipate that, then it's going to kind of blow the whole thing apart. But we have like one set. |
| 00:56:25.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. We have like one. |
| 00:56:30.81 | Greg Christie | rate, like one, you know, one rate fits all type thing. It's worked for now, but with the way recycling and the green waste is going, it will be something that will have to be looked at. |
| 00:56:42.77 | Vice Mayor | And I think at the last hearing in October, if I'm mistaken, you had brought in kind of your rates in comparison to other, basically one other provider more or less than most of Marin and your rates are |
| 00:56:57.67 | Greg Christie | Right. |
| 00:56:58.16 | Vice Mayor | if not lower, in line with their- |
| 00:57:00.02 | Greg Christie | And currently right now after this last, the beginning of the year went by, everybody got a rate increase. And actually in some of the areas in Southern Marin they went up 10 and 15%. Our rates to the cities we're entitled to be compared to are below every one of them. And when you factor in the different services, it's significantly lower. Yep. Okay. |
| 00:57:29.16 | Councilmember Fyber | Yes, Mr. Mayor, thank you. So, first of all, this is very exciting, and I want to thank... for being here and answering our questions, and Andrew for the presentation, and of course our sustainability committee for their hard work. So full disclosure, I have backyard service. So I've had, I have a perspective on this and I've had a residents contact me as well. My question is, I'm I'm a big supporter of this, especially composting. In fact, I have a composter in my backyard. and with mixed success I have to say. How many... What is the percentage, not the percentage, but what is the actual count? How many households in Sausalito currently receive backyard service versus curbside service? How many households? |
| 00:58:25.27 | Greg Christie | How many households? We've had a discussion and Greg Smith might be able to answer that question just better than I can. I just want to ask how it will help out. The one route that we actually did a survey on and talked to the route guys, and he actually played the route back in his head, it's about 70% |
| 00:58:46.89 | Greg Smith | Yeah, 70, 75 percent, and it depends on the part of the town. We're talking about the hill part is at 70 percent, and I think the other parts on any given day would be in the 60 percent, maybe 65 percent. Just all what people want to do. |
| 00:58:53.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:04.66 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 00:59:04.68 | Councilmember Ford | So... Excuse me, I need to understand this story. Is this a percentage of people this percentage of people who have curb service or who have backyard service, 65 and 70? |
| 00:59:18.34 | Greg Smith | What everybody has? Thank you. Everybody has backyard service, but not everybody keeps it in the backyard. Some people put it in their front yard. It's a courtesy. They don't want them to scratch their car, whatever reason there is for the homeowner. But on our hill route, it's in the 75% bracket that there's still backyard service. Okay. And then over where you live? Yes. That part could be probably 50-50 or 60-40. And then when we go down to this part of town, it's probably more like 45. It all depends. |
| 00:59:27.74 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, so |
| 00:59:42.53 | Councilmember Ford | And then other... Thank you. |
| 00:59:45.16 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:59:45.61 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 00:59:58.62 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor, I have another question, a couple of questions. So this is just a follow-up to my first question. I would personally be interested in knowing what the number of households are for backyard service versus households that are actively using the curbside service. And the reason I'm asking that is because I want to encourage recycling. I'm sensitive to what I've heard from members of the Sustainability Committee regarding subsidizing and these types of things. And yet at the same time, I want to get a lay of the land. And I want to look in. And so Is that possible for you to do, to kind of calculate the households currently using backyard service versus households currently using curbside? |
| 01:00:56.62 | Greg Christie | Yes, we can do that. We can do that. But like Greg said in the Hill Route, from what we went through with the driver, and I mean they've been doing it for 15 years so they know every stop. He said it's 70%. |
| 01:01:09.89 | Councilmember Fyber | And just to clarify my question, 75% is good to know, but it doesn't tell me how many. Right. And of course, the reason behind the question is to encourage recycling and to get my mind around perhaps the potential of what could be. So that's my question. |
| 01:01:09.91 | Greg Christie | If, |
| 01:01:16.35 | Greg Christie | Right, okay. |
| 01:01:36.25 | Greg Smith | Well, we'll start with you. You're one. No, but I mean. Actually. |
| 01:01:39.25 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:01:39.27 | Councilmember Fyber | I actually, actually, no, I have a coffee. Let's just get it out on the table. |
| 01:01:41.21 | Vice Mayor | Let's just get it out on the table, so to speak. |
| 01:01:44.48 | Councilmember Fyber | I have a composter. |
| 01:01:45.92 | Greg Smith | Yeah, but see, your situation where you live, I mean, that's a little bit hard for you to bring your garbage all the way down to the street. |
| 01:01:46.36 | Councilmember Fyber | and- Yeah. |
| 01:01:55.37 | Councilmember Fyber | Yeah, 34 steps. |
| 01:01:56.70 | Greg Smith | And then, you know, I'll tell my famous story is Amby. Amby, gotta miss one Saturday. |
| 01:01:57.07 | Unknown | You know what? |
| 01:02:00.73 | Councilmember Fyber | Oh, yeah. |
| 01:02:04.55 | Greg Smith | and I went up to go get it. I didn't know she lived there. How she makes it up those steps? |
| 01:02:10.43 | Unknown | With rosaries, no matter what you do. |
| 01:02:10.47 | Unknown | with the |
| 01:02:10.72 | Greg Smith | THE END OF THE END OF THE Absolutely. So, I mean, yeah. I mean, it'd be hard for her to bring her garbage down, but at the same time, she still brings her recycling down. Thank you. |
| 01:02:24.19 | Councilmember Ford | Mr. Mayor, follow up on that, because that's one of my concerns too. If we have 75% of the people on the hill who will not be using composting because they can't log that... 32 gallon. container down their steps or up their steps, which is the issue. That's, those can be very heavy, and even though they have wheels on them, lugging them up or lugging them down. uh... is an issue uh... certainly for people uh... elderly people or people who are not weight lifters let's say so uh... uh... is there and i'm also thinking of like aunt bee as you call bee See you. She probably doesn't generate anywhere near that amount. Is there any way that we can have a smaller container or say that kitchen counter container that she could put that on the street. you know, that sort of thing, because I'm thinking of older people and people who can't manage, actually. |
| 01:03:34.62 | Greg Christie | Thank you. you know, We do feel like we service a unique community. I was going to say live here, but I used to spend a lot of time here and I felt like I lived here. But we're willing to address any issues that come across. I think there's the Sausalito Village group was looked at at maybe helping people that couldn't get their containers out and stuff. We went to the smaller. We're offering to the two sizes, but we do realize that there's going to be some areas that people are going to have issues with. |
| 01:03:40.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:40.51 | Councilmember Ford | Yeah. |
| 01:03:41.02 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:04:02.32 | Greg Christie | and that we're willing to address those, whatever's needed. And, you know, there was a talk about, you know, whether we want to have three sizes to offer, but I think we're going to be able to come up with something that's going to work for everybody. We're hoping that maybe if they can't, |
| 01:04:02.35 | Unknown | And |
| 01:04:16.91 | Greg Christie | I know people don't have garages and they have carports and in some cases they don't even have curbs or there's a hillside. They might not have a place to even put the toter. We're hoping that people will find a place to put the toter, but we're always, every day we're coming across somebody who has a unique request. So we're willing to work on it and come up with alternatives. |
| 01:04:19.63 | Unknown | and they don't need |
| 01:04:25.39 | Councilmember Ford | Right. |
| 01:04:25.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:33.53 | Councilmember Ford | Yes. Thank you. I think your service has been very good for our community. You've been very responsive to everyone's needs, and you've gone out of your way many times. So I really appreciate that. |
| 01:04:47.91 | Greg Smith | Thank you. Well, that's what we're all about, so it'll keep doing that. |
| 01:04:51.74 | Councilmember Ford | I know, and keep waving and keep smiling, Greg. All right, any more questions? |
| 01:04:53.33 | Greg Smith | You're smiling, Greg. Thank you. All right, any more questions? |
| 01:04:58.02 | Unknown | you |
| 01:04:58.46 | Councilmember Ford | Yes, I have one, but I'm not sure it's for the VCRS folks. I think it's for our staff, and that is the 350 residents that are not part of garbage, do not have any garbage pickup at all. Have we identified those residents, and what are we doing about them? |
| 01:05:25.36 | Andrew Davidson | I've got, I've got a billing list, or I've got a list from BCRS of the folks who have not paid for garbage service for this current billing cycle from January through April. There is probably on that number, probably that order. I want to get... the next billing cycle list as well. Because I imagine a number of those people just have their Garbage Surf has canceled for that period of time. So I wish to be able to compare two blocks of time before going after people, so to speak. |
| 01:05:49.68 | Unknown | No. |
| 01:05:54.65 | Unknown | So to speak. |
| 01:05:56.54 | Andrew Davidson | So once that second list is generated, then we'll be able to compare the two And see where it goes. We've spoken with Greg, and we'll also start looking at, and I know he is looking at the public cans, and he's aware of folks who use those public cans. So that'll be part of it. But it's taking a little while because I need another billing cycle. Okay. But it is in plan. It's going to take place. |
| 01:06:20.68 | Councilmember Ford | cycle. Okay. Yeah, thank you. And one last question about the rates. The 9-plus percent applies to every household, right? Everyone who's receiving. There's no opt-in, opt-out on this, right? |
| 01:06:40.49 | Greg Christie | No, it's applied to all the rates evenly. |
| 01:06:43.64 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, so that is even more, the size of these containers becomes even more critical, because if everyone's being charged for composting, everyone needs to be able to use the service. Yeah, so thank you very much. I appreciate your understanding and help. All right, any more questions? |
| 01:07:10.69 | Vice Mayor | Just two quick ones. Mary, when we came up on this last discussion in October about the |
| 01:07:12.62 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:07:12.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:18.44 | Vice Mayor | folks not paying for Refuge service. The problem is there's no real enforcement mechanism to it except for these folks sending bills and having lived through this on this what was then the Waste and Recycling Commission 10 years ago, or more than that now, God, time flies. that there's no way to sort of, besides Greg knocking on, leaving notes for them and knocking on, I mean Greg and people at that committee have knocked on doors, whether it's businesses or residents, is there was this other, there was this similar thing where we could pass something for some point for an ability to, We talked about this in October. I think you were going to look into the ability to not lean somebody's stuff, but it's to... |
| 01:08:08.42 | Mary Wagner | Right now, we'd have to treat it as a code enforcement action and go through an administrative code enforcement. |
| 01:08:11.12 | Vice Mayor | Right. Yeah. |
| 01:08:15.19 | Mary Wagner | I think I would like to have an opportunity to work with DPW about, you know, an outreach and also with the code enforcement personnel and community development to figure out a way to address that. But we could do it through a, what we do typically with code enforcement is a courtesy notice first. |
| 01:08:30.07 | Unknown | We can't. |
| 01:08:36.10 | Mary Wagner | followed up by citation and then follow up from there in enforcing the citation. |
| 01:08:42.48 | Vice Mayor | Okay, and the last thing is more for Jonathan and Adam and Andy to think about I don't know what, on a percentage-wise, what uptake we've had on the sewer tax folks who've enrolled in the care-based program. But we might consider that, you know, the same sort of thing here, where for folks who are really at a lower spectrum on the income level, to be able to sort of, you know, we have to find the funds to offset that, which we did for the sewer tax increase to, if someone really wants to come in and say, hey, I can't Is there a way to offset that for them? So that might be something just to think about between now and the hearing date. |
| 01:09:25.49 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:09:26.60 | Mayor Kelly | Any more questions? |
| 01:09:27.23 | Unknown | Thank you. I just want to comment. I'd like to thank you. |
| 01:09:30.18 | Mayor Kelly | I'd like to thank you. Less public comment. OK. |
| 01:09:31.82 | Unknown | We call it. Okay. |
| 01:09:33.13 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. Public comment? We'll open for public comment. What do you make from the public care to address this item? |
| 01:09:44.05 | Mayor Kelly | to draw straws. you |
| 01:09:46.45 | Vice Mayor | I've never known Sue to be short of work, so. No, in a good way, in a good way. |
| 01:09:47.87 | Mayor Kelly | We're known soon. Yeah. |
| 01:09:50.73 | Unknown | No, in a good way, in a good way. |
| 01:09:54.08 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:09:56.15 | Robert Haley | Good evening. My name is Robert Haley. I'm a resident of Sausalito. I also happen to be the zero waste manager for San Francisco, the city and county of San Francisco. And first I want to thank all the effort that's gone into this. I want to thank city staff and the Sustainability Commission and also Bay Cities. And I'd like to urge you tonight to at least move forward on the staff recommendations. I think they're good recommendations. I don't know when you're going to take up this issue again. I don't know kind of what your process is down the road, but I think it's really worth considering some things beyond the recommendations. Specifically, I think it's worth providing three containers, not just the green and the blue, but also a black one. It doesn't cost a lot for an additional cart, and you're going to get a lot better composting and recycling. You're also going to reduce the worker injuries further. It helps reduce litter, helps reduce vectors like rats, and it's just going to provide a lot better aesthetics. And this is a tourist town. I think it's good to have some aesthetics and reduce the litter, those kinds of things. I also think it's important to provide the kitchen pail, the small pail, to all residences rather than upon request. It's been shown that if you give everybody kitchen pails, you get higher participation, and they're not very expensive. And I think that it really is important to consider this backyard service issue. You know, most Bay Area communities are not providing backyard service, or they're at least charging for it. It's a very expensive service. It makes for a very inefficient collection system. You've got a truck idling, putting pollution in the air. You're blocking traffic. You've got workers going up and down stairs all day long. It's dangerous for the workers. And you just get a lot better recycling and composting if you have all three carts in one location. You know, if you recycle and compost properly, 90% of what you generate goes in these two carts. You're recycling your composting. So it doesn't make any sense to go backyard for the last 10% that's going to the landfill at that point. Your whole paradigm is shifting, so you need to kind of shift your whole mindset around this program. You know, people talk about groceries. If you can get all your groceries upstairs, you're going to eat most of your food. You're going to have empty bottles and cans. You can bring them back down the stairs. You don't have to lug your carts up and down stairs. You can ideally find a place lower where you can bring smaller amounts, like with your kitchen pail, and dump it into your carts. So there's ways to make it work. And I think Bay Cities is very good at finding solutions for its customers. So in sum, you'll have the most successful program if you provide three color-coded carts at the curb and give everyone a kitchen pail. So I'd like you to at least move forward on the staff recommendations, but I think it's important to consider these other aspects going forward as soon as you can. Thank you. |
| 01:13:01.00 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. Thank you. Yes. |
| 01:13:03.35 | Vice Mayor | Just to clarify, you're saying recycling, trash, green waste, three separate cans, is that the three? |
| 01:13:10.52 | Robert Haley | That's correct, with a black trash can and good labeling. The black can should really say no recyclables, no compostables. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:13:21.10 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else care? No. to address. OK. I'll bring you back up here for comments or a motion. |
| 01:13:35.97 | Unknown | My only comment is, The sustainability has done a great job. finally made it. Appreciate it. Maybe. But no, it looks, it's going in the right direction. I'd like to thank Andy and the staff and Jonathan Lohman and especially thank Greg Christie because Bay City over the years has really done a great job, very, make you feel very much like it's a local company, and they really go out of their way to help everybody in this town. So thank you. |
| 01:14:16.62 | Councilmember Ford | Mr. Mayor. Yes, I would like to also thank everyone, particularly the Sustainability Commission. This all, well, it didn't all start with, but one of the things that happened that I think gave it a boost was when Alexandria Hanson, a young woman in town who's Sue's neighbor, met with me and some of the council members and said that she would really like to see composting and met came before the council as well as the sustainability committee so she really Kicked it up a notch. So thanks to her and thanks to our staff for the good work and Thanks to Bay Cities. It's very much appreciated And thanks to Mr. Haley for his remarks and advice. |
| 01:15:13.74 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to say, echo that. Thank you to everyone, Mr. Haley, and the Sustainability Committee, and Andrew and Greg Christie and his team It really all makes a difference, and I'm a strong supporter of composting and recycling. And Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion and then discuss the motion. I frankly think that the elephant in the room is the backyard service. And just whether they pay, you know, what the solution is, whether they pay more or whatever, I would really love to see everyone participating in the composting opportunity and recycling. And so I would move, and I think Before I make the motion, I'm sorry. Part of that is understanding things like the number of households who currently use the backyard service, the number of households who currently use curbside. I'd be interested in knowing the percentage also of the backyard households who are even taking advantage right now of the recycling. So I would move that we ask the city staff and the sustainability committee to work with Bay City Refuse to take a holistic view, snapshot, of current service with respect to backyard household numbers and versus curbside, and to come back with a fair, something that would be fair to curbside as well as the backyard neighbors so that everyone can participate in recycling. |
| 01:17:21.28 | Vice Mayor | Okay. So this area. |
| 01:17:28.47 | Mayor Kelly | Well, we need to second. Second. We get a motion on the floor. |
| 01:17:31.69 | Councilmember Ford | I know. If it doesn't get a second, it's fine. |
| 01:17:32.22 | Mayor Kelly | If it doesn't get a second, it doesn't get a problem. |
| 01:17:35.15 | Councilmember Ford | I know, but you guys haven't commented yet, and so I'll comment in my one-minute period, but I think we need to discuss... |
| 01:17:42.68 | Mayor Kelly | Well, the way that works is a motion on the floor, and the motion either gets a second or dies. Right. So does the motion have a second? When it comes back to me, I may second it. No, for anybody here in this moment. So does anybody want to second this motion? |
| 01:17:48.16 | Councilmember Ford | Right. When it comes back to me, I may second it. Right. Okay, well, I will second it so we can discuss it. Okay, I would like to make it a decision. |
| 01:17:59.65 | Mayor Kelly | Same. I have an additional motion, another motion. And I, my motion is that we, Schedule a rate hearing for the proposed green waste and food scrap recycling program as is outlined in the staff report. |
| 01:18:15.15 | Unknown | Second. |
| 01:18:16.01 | Mayor Kelly | Okay, so we'll vote on the second motion first. Is there any comment on the second motion before we vote on it? |
| 01:18:23.60 | Vice Mayor | I'll comment on both at the same time, I suppose. |
| 01:18:27.38 | Mayor Kelly | um, |
| 01:18:28.85 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, I think in some ways we're, you know, and you said it, San Francisco's a little bit different, but in some ways similar. We're a little spoiled by having backyard service here. It's kind of been folded into the general cost structure of Bay Cities, along with street sweeping and sidewalk cleaning and all the other stuff that people don't realize they're paying for as part of their trash pickup fees. But... I think also people don't, you know, folks who are not really well-versed in this particular thing don't realize that eventually, and this is why I was talking about different size trash containers, you're motivated to recycle, forget the altruistic or the practical implications, because it means you have less cans of garbage you get charged for, frankly. I know that is a motivation for a lot of folks. And a lot of what people put out more recycling than they do containers or than they do trash. I know my house does that, but I know I've seen it all up and down the streets. And I think the same thing will eventually be true of food scrap recycling. It's a free service. They will be motivated to maximize that and reduce the size of the can you will use over time. But I think you have to go in steps here because we're not sure what the impact that would be on funding the whole service. There certainly are a lot of challenges with servicing the backyard aspect, even if it's in the front yard it's a challenge. And if you watch those guys with that thing on their shoulder, man, God bless. That is a tough job to walk up many stairs with that metal can on your shoulder and carry down full. |
| 01:19:30.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:30.14 | Unknown | of. |
| 01:20:08.92 | Vice Mayor | But, and this hopefully will make their lives a little bit less prone to injury, frankly. So, but, you know, at the end of the day, you are responsible for your impact on the world and the amount of trash you generate, including food waste, is your responsibility. I think for folks who have challenges in front of them, we have to accommodate them somehow, but maybe that's something you have to... with a different system and a way to sort of offset those costs, because it is both an environmental impact of idle and it's a very slow pickup process, as well as much more expensive. It's a longer route when you have to walk up and down all the stairs and everything and get in somebody's backyard. So should that cost be borne by somebody else who doesn't have that problem with their... But I think, you know, one step at a time, I think Bay Cities is with us in sort of that, let's look at our challenges and tackle them one at a time. But it's more important to tackle this one first and get this program up and running. |
| 01:21:12.86 | Mayor Kelly | Mr. Mayor. One minute rebuttal. |
| 01:21:17.43 | Councilmember Ford | for you. |
| 01:21:17.60 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. One minute rebuttal. |
| 01:21:19.30 | Councilmember Ford | Yes, what I would like to say is I would like to see in the report that comes back to us for the rate hearing, I would like to see the numbers for the backyard service and the funding difference for providing a smaller can. So if we could have those kinds of options, the city could see what's available, I think that would be very good because I I fully support composting. I think it's a wonderful idea, but I want to make sure we have as much participation as we can in this program. And I think that's a way to get it right off right at the start. So those that would be my request that we just include those in the report and as staff and VCRS, if they can do that for us tonight. |
| 01:22:23.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:22:23.80 | Mayor Kelly | Okay. |
| 01:22:23.88 | Councilmember Ford | Can you do that? Okay, great. |
| 01:22:23.92 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. Any other comments? |
| 01:22:29.18 | Vice Mayor | Let's make one last one. You know, just to thank the academy or anything that we often do up here, but the, I will just say the Sustainability Commission does it right. And, you know, I'm not liaison. That's probably why this came here. They're much better at getting things here now that I'm not, that Herb's helping them instead of me. But the, you know, they do the homework. they work with an outside provider or get the outside information. They don't just come in here and say, you know, we want this and dump it on the staff's lap. And this is, I think, the fourth or fifth thing in recent memory that you folks have done that really wouldn't have gotten done without, your help in shouldering a lot of this responsibility. So of all the boards and commissions, I think these guys really take the bull by the horns and get things done. |
| 01:23:16.70 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor, would you like to comment? Yeah, so I want to say again that I really am very appreciative of all the hard work that's gone into this, and I do support composting and recycling, but I'm still reticent to move forward on a rate hearing without seeing a complete proposal. with regards to the backyard service for all elements. |
| 01:23:48.49 | Unknown | Just one quick. Okay. And couple of things I think. I think we can rely on on Bay Cities to really kind of guide us through this as far as what they do on this. Keep in mind that we also have a percentage, a very high percentage of seniors, older people in this town, and that means that their use for the backyard is important to them. And also keep in mind that we heard that before that, I think if you take each household, it comes to 1.7 people per household. So that's what we've been told. |
| 01:24:21.57 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:24:32.79 | Unknown | I thank you. How long have you been doing service in this town, Greg, Bay Cities? |
| 01:24:43.73 | Unknown | 1962. It's been great service, and I think I rely on them If you see what some of them do, Some of these trucks can't even... They have to back up the streets. |
| 01:24:56.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:24:57.34 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:24:57.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:24:57.38 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. MS. OK, Mr. Mayor, may I have one more? I forgot something. |
| 01:24:57.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:01.11 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:25:01.31 | Councilmember Ford | Yeah. |
| 01:25:01.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:01.46 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. in the report that SAF and VCRS brings back. Could you also include the cost of giving everyone a kitchen pail, as Mr. Haley recommended? |
| 01:25:17.83 | Greg Christie | I addressed that at the beginning. I'm, it's good. It's going to happen. |
| 01:25:22.76 | Councilmember Ford | Oh, great. Oh, great. |
| 01:25:22.84 | Greg Christie | Oh, great. Oh, great. |
| 01:25:24.77 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:25:24.90 | Greg Christie | Thank you. |
| 01:25:24.97 | Councilmember Ford | I miss that. |
| 01:25:26.89 | Greg Christie | Thank you. |
| 01:25:31.70 | Councilmember Ford | OK, great. Thank you. Thanks for it. It wasn't part of the report. All right. |
| 01:25:33.47 | Mayor Kelly | The age group's. Thank you. |
| 01:25:36.46 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:25:37.15 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. |
| 01:25:37.54 | Councilmember Ford | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:25:37.57 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. I'd like to call the question on motion number two, please. Would you call the roll, Debbie? |
| 01:25:37.83 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:25:44.51 | Mayor Kelly | Okay, that's my motion. |
| 01:25:46.82 | Debbie | Council member Fyber? |
| 01:25:48.22 | Mayor Kelly | No. |
| 01:25:50.16 | Debbie | Council member Ford? |
| 01:25:51.18 | Mayor Kelly | Yes. |
| 01:25:52.24 | Debbie | Council member Weiner |
| 01:25:54.15 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:25:55.90 | Debbie | Vice Mayor Leone. |
| 01:25:57.18 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:25:58.04 | Debbie | Mayor Kelly. |
| 01:25:58.75 | Mayor Kelly | Yes. Okay, that motion passes, and then that avoids the first motion. All right, thank you very much, and we'll look forward to hearing back from you with some statistics and things that you can get for us. Good, excellent. All right. My iPad just went down, so let me. |
| 01:26:16.96 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm sorry. You're not going to share the food? |
| 01:26:18.48 | Mayor Kelly | Oh, yeah. You're not going to share the food? Oh, gosh. Gosh, we're ready. Okay, that brings us to the item 6C. Hey, Thomas, you're almost as big as your father now. |
| 01:26:27.20 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:26:33.95 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 01:26:33.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:26:33.99 | Mayor Kelly | . |
| 01:26:34.60 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 01:26:34.97 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. Item 6C, Fire Department Update, Jim Irving. |
| 01:26:49.36 | Unknown | There it is. |
| 01:26:53.63 | Jim Irving | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor and Council Members. Sorry to see everyone leaving. I guess the big topic was garbage. |
| 01:27:02.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:27:02.08 | Jim Irving | Is that right? You've been out of the barrel. That's right. Certainly garbage must be more important than the fire department. At the last council meeting, there was a lot of talk about dog and pony shows. I just want to say that in the fire service, we have a long history with dogs and ponies. So we'll follow in that regard. |
| 01:27:02.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:27:02.20 | Mayor Kelly | That's... |
| 01:27:02.56 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:27:02.73 | Mayor Kelly | I'm sorry. |
| 01:27:02.78 | Unknown | You've been at a |
| 01:27:03.94 | Unknown | I don't love it. |
| 01:27:04.23 | Unknown | the barrel. Thank you. |
| 01:27:04.89 | Unknown | That's right. |
| 01:27:05.32 | Unknown | you |
| 01:27:21.93 | Unknown | Ha ha. |
| 01:27:25.86 | Jim Irving | Let me see if I can make this thing work here. So that side's the laser. Does that work? No. |
| 01:27:34.64 | Unknown | Thank you. What were those Dalmatians they used? |
| 01:27:39.31 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:27:40.80 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 01:27:40.91 | Jim Irving | 101. How do I make the laser work? |
| 01:27:44.52 | Mayor Kelly | All right. |
| 01:27:54.94 | Jim Irving | I'll just point. |
| 01:27:56.39 | Unknown | so what's your point yeah |
| 01:27:58.21 | Jim Irving | Okay, at the last meeting, last two meetings actually, at the last regular meeting, as well as the meeting, the special meeting on Friday. A lot of subjects came up, and so I figured I'd talk about some of those subjects rather than just doing the standard. that we do quarterly. And a couple items that came up is the overtime, which is we're way over budget on overtime. Also, there's a about cost comparison that Councilmember Ford brought up regarding the cost per call, as well as a question about our response and how many people respond on a call. So the topics I want to discuss tonight are staffing level requirements, cost comparisons, effectiveness, cost savings, and efficiency, then our EMS response, and then overtime. I'll start off with our staffing. And our staffing is sort of, we staff to sort of meet some external influences that come about. And the first is NIOSH and OSHA. NIOSH is the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. And then OSHA, which everyone knows, is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. and they set standards for firefighters and fire departments. Up until probably 10 or 15 years ago, OSHA sort of ignored fire departments. They figured it was just a dangerous job and they didn't want to deal with it. And then in the last decade or so, they've actually become very involved in fire departments, and they want fire departments to adhere to safety standards. And so they set safety standards that we have to comply with. NFPA is a National Fire Protection Association And they're an organization that sets standards. The standards are not technically law. It's sort of like Gatsby. Whereas GASP, the Government Accounting Standard Boards, sets what they call misstatements and then they're enacted by legislation through the state in which we have to comply to. Whereas NFPA, if they're adopted by local agencies, then we have to comply to them. Some of them are adopted by OSHA, some are not. But there are certain ones we try to comply with. The next is ICMA, which is the International City and County Management Association. And they also make recommendations on what staffing levels should be and what response times should be. And last is ISO, which is the Insurance Services Office. And ISO, what they do is they rate fire departments. and they essentially rate fire departments from one to 10 and then your insurance rates are based upon the rating for your fire department. |
| 01:30:48.75 | Jim Irving | Okay, to start off with, I'll talk about NIOSH and OSHA. |
| 01:30:56.17 | Jim Irving | OSHA has created 29 CFR, CFR is Code of Federal Regulations, in 1910-134, which is also known as the two-in-two-out rule. What that requires is that firefighters enter an IDLH atmosphere in teams of two. An IDLH is immediately dangerous to life and health. In addition to that, that would be any time they go into a burning building. or burning. In addition to that, it requires two additional firefighters have to be outside to rescue the first team if something happens to them. So what that sounds like is we have to have four people. But in reality, it actually takes more often than not five. If you look at the diagram here, we have, because my laser doesn't work, I'll point, Oh, wait, I can take this with you. |
| 01:31:46.26 | Jim Irving | It would be show. I tried. you If you look up here, we have two firefighters inside. We have two outside, meaning the two in and two out. which John will figure it out for me. and then we have to have somebody operating the pump. |
| 01:32:02.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:02.26 | Jim Irving | Okay, all right. |
| 01:32:05.78 | Unknown | Ha ha ha ha |
| 01:32:06.93 | Jim Irving | Thank you. Yeah. You got to have the public works guy show the fire chief how to work the laser. |
| 01:32:11.27 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah, right. |
| 01:32:13.41 | Jim Irving | Okay, so anyway, you have here two people inside, the two outside, meaning you're two in, two out, but then you also have to have somebody operating the pump, Now, the... The law does say that this person can fill in for one of these as long as he's immediately available. And. His action to rescue someone inside doesn't jeopardize the crew by him not doing something else. Now the question is, if he's operating the pump here, as long as he walks away from that and nothing goes wrong, there's no big deal. But. you know, you have a pump running out of here pumping fire. If you haven't hooked up to a hydrant yet, you may not have water, you might run out of water. So it's really, you know, the best thing for us to do is to have fire firefighters. |
| 01:33:04.14 | Jim Irving | So NFPA, NFPA issued standard 1710, which has not technically been adopted within the state of California, but it is sort of a de facto standard which everyone tries to meet, although we don't technically always meet it all the time. And what NFPA 1710 does, it requires four fire personnel on scene within the first four minutes And then 14 to 16 personnel on scene within eight minutes And the 14 to 16 is depending on what things you have to do on the scene. And they go into a great detail about, you know, which gets more complicated about when you should ventilate, when you should do this, etc. But we don't need to go into all of that. then ICMA Um... ICMA recommends also 16 people on scene and they cite studies in which anything less than 16 people on scene, it dramatically increases the fire loss as well as injuries. They also compared different staffing. And what they looked at is having five people on scene in a company, here was 100% effective in task performance When you drop that to only four people available, it was only 65 percent effective. Then with three-person company, it was only 38% effective. And then lastly, they did not even evaluate two-person engine companies. And unfortunately, here in Marin, there are a number of agencies that actually run two-person engine companies. And if you sort of go that back to having the two-in, two-out rule, you know, having two people on a fire engine, you have to have two engines on scene before you can even send somebody into the fire. |
| 01:34:48.66 | Jim Irving | And lastly is the ISO rating. ISO rates over 45,000 fire departments in the United States. And what they rate is staffing equipment, training, dispatch, and water systems. They come up with a rating of 1 to 10, with 1 being a very excellent fire department, There's only You can see here there's only 42 of those in the entire United States. and then 10 being a very bad fire department. And you can see there's not that many of those as well. Sausalito ranks as a five. That puts it in the top 22% of all fire departments in the country. Southern Marin Fire ranks as a three. That puts us in the top 3%. The rating... They only do it about every 10 years. We have actually talked with them, and we're trying to get them to re-rate Sausalito. because we feel that Sausalito's fire department within the last 10 years has dramatically improved. But unfortunately, they're not willing to do that until there's a stable situation, meaning either annexation occurs or there's a long-term contract. |
| 01:36:05.29 | Jim Irving | Okay, so how do we meet the five people on scene? From a practical standpoint, we want to have that five people on scene to meet the OSHA two-in, two-out requirements. So what we do is we have here in Sausalito, A fire engine with three people on it and an ambulance with two people on it. These ambulance people are also trained firefighters, exactly the same as every other firefighter, so we operate them in a dual role to be able to meet that minimum five-person requirement. |
| 01:36:40.07 | Jim Irving | Additionally, to get up to the 16 people, We get... three people on an engine from Marin City. We get four people on an engine from the station in Tamal Pias Valley. And then we get four people on a rescue. and a battalion chief from the Southern Marin Station in Strawberry. |
| 01:37:04.13 | Jim Irving | So let's look at this as kind of a complicated chart here. I apologize for this. So if you look at the... the first line here, what you see is for a response in Sausalito, you have five people from Sausalito, five from Wren City, eight from Southern Wren, none from Mill Valley, none from Tiburon for a total of 16. And if you look at what Sausalito sends out, so if you look down this column here, this is what Sausalito is responding to other communities. You see, in Sausalito 5. In Marin City, we send all five people to a fire in Marin City, but Sausalito does not provide any other mutual aid on a first alarm to any other fire departments in Southern Marin. |
| 01:37:51.27 | Jim Irving | If you take that same chart, what I've done now is I've removed when the agency was the home agency, so they're not responding to their own. What you see here is if you look at Sausalito, you follow it down, Sausalito only provides five people on mutual aid anywhere in Southern Marin. versus you look at some other agencies like Marin City, 9, Southern Marin 41. Southern Marin provides the most amount of mutual aid of any fire department in Southern Marin County and actually probably any fire department in Marin. When you take that out and you look at the imbalance here of you take that number of personnel times the actual number of calls, you see that in general, Sausalito provides only 25 essentially man hours or staff hours to other agencies, whereas they receive 264 hours for an imbalance of 239. Marin City comes up with about 88 to the positive. Southern Marin, 241 to the positive. and then Mill Valley essentially even, and then Tiburon at about 90 behind. Okay. |
| 01:39:06.41 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:39:06.81 | Jim Irving | Well, actually, the county works out okay because a lot of these calls, we're supporting them. So it works out for them okay. Okay, Councilmember Ford brought up the issue of what it costs per call, and she pointed out that in Southern Marin, it's over $7,000 a call versus Sausalito, $39,000, or excuse me, 7,600 per call. and 3,900 per call. But looking at a cost per call is not a great way to look at it. I mean, there's a variety of different ways to look at it. But the issue with cost per call is that We staff our station in Chamaplias Valley exactly the same as we staff the station here in Sausalito. Sausalito has a higher density and it has more commercial area. So obviously there's more calls in this area. So whether we have, you know, 800 calls here and only 500 in Telmopias Valley, we still have to staff those stations essentially the same. So looking at that perspective, is not necessarily a great way to look at it. It's one way to look at it, certainly. I mean, if you take that out, you look at Marin County fire, Marin County Fire is essentially a rural fire department. So the cost for them is $15,000 per call. Does that mean they're an inefficient fire department? Not at all. It means they serve a lesser density populated area. |
| 01:40:41.18 | Mayor Kelly | It's your fault. |
| 01:40:42.40 | Jim Irving | Fewer calls, exactly. Now you can also look at cost per capita. If you look at cost per capita, Southern Marin does pretty good. You know, Saucyus still is pretty good. Mill Valley does really well. Tiburon does alright, Corbin-Medard does alright. You know, again Marin County is up and in because they serve a in a sparsely populated area. So it's just another way to look at it. Now, does any of this mean any fire department is better than the other or more efficient? No, not really. As we get more into this, we can see that every community is a little bit different. And to try to compare apples and oranges doesn't always work. |
| 01:41:23.33 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Thank you. Jim, can I ask you one question while you're on that slide, the one before it? |
| 01:41:25.12 | Jim Irving | Yes. |
| 01:41:27.67 | Vice Mayor | Um, some of it is spreading a fixed cost over a certain number of people, right? And not just the variable cost is also in that 7600 or 3900, |
| 01:41:32.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:41:32.99 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:41:39.06 | Vice Mayor | The more fixed, and I would imagine if you combine Southern Morena, the cost shrinks even further to what the cost per call is going to be for the combined district. I would imagine. Spreading that fixed cost over just more people. |
| 01:41:47.72 | Jim Irving | Correct. And I'll get to a little bit in this next slide here. But first I'll talk about population. So what I've calculated here is the population per firefighter. And again, Southern Rind does really well. We have one firefighter on duty per 2,150 people. Sausalito, one firefighter per 1,500 people. You know, Mill Valley, et cetera, down the line, you know, again, Marin County, 750, and that's because it's a very rural area. Again, just one more way to look at it. And it's not necessarily good or bad. You know? THE, UH, because Sausalito is a little bit lower, doesn't mean we need less firefighters here. Sausalito has one of the largest commercial areas in Southern Marin area for a very small town. So we have certain things we need to deal with here that maybe other departments don't have to deal with. |
| 01:42:44.38 | Councilmember Ford | She... |
| 01:42:44.40 | Jim Irving | She... Thank you. |
| 01:42:44.98 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:42:44.99 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:42:45.02 | Councilmember Ford | Excuse me, may I ask a question? Absolutely. How many people are on the Marin County? Fire Department. Not the Marin County, the Marin City Fire Department. |
| 01:42:45.46 | Jim Irving | Yes. Absolutely. |
| 01:42:52.03 | Jim Irving | Fire Department? Thank you. There's three people in Marin City. They work for Marin County Fire Department. |
| 01:43:01.29 | Councilmember Ford | OK, OK, thank you. |
| 01:43:05.14 | Jim Irving | Now if you look at the last thing I did here was the percent of management employees as a percentage of the entire group of employees. And if you look at Southern Marin, we're at 8%. SOSU is zero because SOSU has no management employees. They're all provided by Southern Marin Fire, Mill Valley 17, etc. Southern Marin actually has the best ratio of management to regular employees of any fire department in Marin County. And then when we look at that, you know, The 8% is with Sausalito included in that because we provide management services for Sausalito. And it's 12% even without Sausalito, which still puts it on the end of the spectrum. |
| 01:43:55.09 | Jim Irving | So let's talk about effectiveness, cost savings, and efficiency. Effectiveness is the adequate to accomplish the purpose producing the intended or expected results. Now, we can be very effective I said that we need 16 people to fight a fire here in Sausalito. We could staff the station here with 16 people. That would be very effective, but it wouldn't be very cost efficient. Likewise, we could have cost savings, a reduction or lessening of expenditures or outlay, we could staff two people here. That would not be very efficient either because we wouldn't be able to meet that requirement of the two in, two out. So people would have to wait for another engine to arrive from Marin City. before they could actually fight a fire. Lastly, we want to be efficient. And that's achieving a maximum productivity with a minimum wasted effort or expense. And that's what we're shooting for, and that's what we'd like to do. Let's look at the different fire stations here in the Southern Marin area and what they have. How many of them are able to meet, you know, that requirement of having the two in, two out as well as having, you know, an engineer at the engine? So that requires five people. Basically, you can do it here in Sausalito. You can do it at the station in Telapais Valley, our other station, and you can also do it in Strawberry. So basically, all three of the stations that we run are capable of meeting that two-in, two-out requirement with an engineer by the first arriving station. And that's what we're striving for, is to be able to do that for every call. Now, how many of them or get close to that, if you look downtown Mill Valley here, they have four people cross-staffing an engine and an ambulance. So they're able to do it under optimal conditions. If the engine is close enough to the residents, they can actually do that. Or if they're willing to walk away from the engine, they can do that. Um, Not exactly the best thing to do, but they can do it in a pinch. Then you look at say the headquarters station in Mill Valley, they operate with a two-person engine company and a battalion chief. If there's a fire in this area, They cannot make an initial attack on a fire until another engine arrives. So is that efficient? Well, they had a very low cost per capita, which is good, but Is that being efficient? I don't know, I worked for the city of Mill Valley for 16 years. I think they have a good fire department. They have some great people there. I know their chief, good friend of mine. But I'm sure that he would love to have more people there. But they have a budget to make, and so that's what they've decided to do. the one thing they do have going for them Is it right across the freeway here? We have five people. And as I pointed out earlier, we have the greatest amount of mutual aid in Southern Marin and probably in the county. |
| 01:46:56.16 | Councilmember Ford | Chief, do you want questions going through this or do you want me to hold them? |
| 01:46:56.38 | Jim Irving | Do you want to- |
| 01:46:56.97 | Mayor Kelly | Are there any questions going through this? I'm running the meeting. I would like to ask to hold the questions and let Jim finish your presentation, then we'll ask you questions. Is that okay? |
| 01:47:03.74 | Councilmember Ford | I would like to. |
| 01:47:11.82 | Jim Irving | That's fine. Wherever they're pleased as a council. That's what I do. |
| 01:47:17.99 | Jim Irving | Efficiency. We have a very low cost per capita while maintaining effective staffing levels. We have dual role for our EMS people. Our EMS response is not eliminated by fire response. Let me back up here to point out a couple of things. If you look at Tiburon over here, they have essentially three people cross-staffing an ambulance or an engine. Engine goes out, that ambulance is left with nobody on it. Likewise, if that ambulance goes out, The engine is left with nobody on it. downtown Mill Valley. A similar thing, if the ambulance goes out, they're left with only two people on that fire engine, which is very ineffective. Or if the engine goes out, they actually take all four people on the engine and the ambulance goes out of service. Again, while we send the engine with three people, we leave the ambulance in service. Same thing here in Sausalito. |
| 01:48:16.91 | Jim Irving | Each of our stations has appropriate staffing to meet NFPA 1710 and OSHA 2 in, 2 out with the first response. And then we have a low management to firefighter ratio, 8%, you know, one of the probably the best in the county. Let's talk about EMS response. Councilmember Ford asked the question at the last meeting, why do we send a fire engine? Well, this is the standard equipment we carry. that has to be carried up to every incident we respond to. We have oxygen, we have a heart monitor here, you ALS bag as well as a BLS bag. ALS being your advanced life support stuff, BLS being the basic life support stuff. We also have additional equipment. This is not our ambulance, by the way. You see the gurney, you've got more stuff. You have airway equipment, suction unit, other items in here. All told, we're looking at about 150 pounds of equipment and probably an 80-pound gurney. Plus, you take that up, you know, all the stairs here in Sausalito, we have, you know, a 200-pound patient. All of a sudden, you're carrying, you know, 350, 400 pounds back down. You know, kind of like the garbage guys who are coming down the stairs here. You know, 34 steps and they're slippery. And so we need those people to help carry all that equipment both up as well as back down. Not only that, we need to deal with patient care. You look at an emergency room, you see that you have a vast array of people here doing different things at the same time. We're no different in the field. We're basically bringing the emergency room to your living room. So, We have people to do, we have one person doing airway management, someone monitoring vital signs, Someone doing primary care, that's starting IVs, cardiac monitoring, administering medications. Then someone doing primary care support. That's the person who floods the IV bags, he sets up the cardiac monitor, sets up breathing treatments in the background and then hands them to the guy who's actually doing patient care. And, takes care of getting all the medications. The other thing is we have to have someone to actually communicate and document all this. It's part of a legal process here. We need to document the time. Every med was given, every blood pressure was taken, et cetera. And so he's recording that and then also talking to the family to get the patient's history. So we have a lot of stuff going on with all these people there. And to only have two or even three people there is just not a good use of our personnel. So, why does the fire engine respond? Simple, because we need them. And the last subject I want to talk about is overtime. Um. And obviously the overtime is high, and we don't like it when overtime is high. But there's a reason for that. Station 1, that's the Sausalito station, operates at what we call constant staffing. Thank you. That means that there's no difference between the regular staffing and the minimum staffing. At Southern Marin Fire, we operate at one over minimum staffing. That means we have 11 people on every day. Our minimum staffing is 10, so one person can be on vacation or call in sick, and we don't have to hire over time. When that second person calls in sick or is on vacation, then we have to hire overtime. Every time somebody calls in sick, you have to hire overtime. Now unless at Southern Marin we have that extra person, then we will put that person down here. Unfortunately, in the last year, we have not had that extra person. And, Excuse me. So when Sausalito requires overtime, we're probably already paying overtime or we don't have the extra body to ship down. I think it maybe happened maybe 10 times in all of last year, which is not insignificant, but it's certainly not enough to save the budget. It's probably, you know, about $10,000 or so. Oops, back up here. I wanted to talk a little bit about why this came about. And people always forget this, and I don't mean to pick on the city council, but sometimes you guys have a short memory, whereas our firefighters remember this very well. This came about in 2006 when the city eliminated three full-time positions within the fire department, saving approximately $450,000 a year. So every time you look at that large overtime expense, you have to balance it out with the fact that you're saving $450,000 a year by eliminating those three positions. So I just wanted to point that out. And then what causes overtime? As we mentioned in the meeting the other day, we've had a lot of workman's comp injuries in Sausalito. As a matter of fact, last six months, workers' comp injuries have cost us 2,400 hours in overtime, about $98,000. That's for just a six-month period. Vacations, 21-20, about 86,000. Sick call out, 763 hours for 31,000. A lot of it, this is a little higher than it normally is. We've had one of our firefighters took a lot of sick leave because he had a wife with a brain tumor. all that. She's doing well, but he had a lot of personal sick leave use. Training, 60 hours, and then strike teams, that's when we send units out to other parts of the state for 168 hours for about $6,000. These numbers are estimated costs solely because we can pinpoint the exact hours But we have two separate programs. One that we can actually run these numbers on, but then there's a separate program that actually calculates out the exact dollar amount. that we exchange between the city and the district. but that one is not able to tell us exactly what it was for. It only tells us who was responsible for it. |
| 01:54:24.26 | Mayor Kelly | Mr. Mayor, may I have a question? You're going to hold the questions to the end. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. |
| 01:54:26.84 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 01:54:26.87 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:54:27.28 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 01:54:28.22 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:54:28.24 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 01:54:28.26 | Jim Irving | Questions? |
| 01:54:28.78 | Mayor Kelly | Bye. Are you done? Well, okay. Well, this is your hour. |
| 01:54:31.06 | Councilmember Fyber | Okay. MR. Thank you, Mr. Manning. So I just had a question in the prior slide. So, Are you saying here with the breakdown that, like for example, vacation, this was someone had left on vacation and then someone else came and filled in for them? Okay, thanks. |
| 01:54:50.89 | Jim Irving | That's correct. |
| 01:54:50.90 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. Correct. That's my question. |
| 01:54:53.79 | Jim Irving | Again, because you're a constant staffing, Almost every time someone goes on vacation, it costs overtime. |
| 01:55:02.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.50 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:55:03.07 | Councilmember Ford | Mr. Mayor. |
| 01:55:03.49 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. for it. |
| 01:55:04.20 | Councilmember Ford | you Chief, could you go back to the slide on the staffing at the various stations here in town, or not here in town, but in the county. Mill Valley, you show six and seven. Oh, six. Yeah, those are the station |
| 01:55:21.90 | Jim Irving | Yeah, those are the station numbers. Yeah, this is station 7 here, and this is station 6. All the numbers in Marin are numbered sequentially, starting here in Sausalito with Station 1, and going all the way to Nevada, which ends up at 65. |
| 01:55:37.65 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, so the Mill Valley Station has a headquarters and then another station in town somewhere. It's not in Tam. It's not in the Tam. Correct. Tam Junction is subject. Right. Right. |
| 01:55:46.03 | Jim Irving | Right, if you're familiar with where Hockey Park is, that area there, Camino Alto, |
| 01:55:53.48 | Councilmember Ford | Come in and welcome. |
| 01:55:54.10 | Jim Irving | The Mill Valley Middle School, it's actually on the other side of the little slough from the middle school. And then they also have a station downtown Mill Valley. |
| 01:55:59.45 | Councilmember Ford | And then they also Sure, okay. So they have four people stationed |
| 01:56:08.19 | Jim Irving | Downtown. |
| 01:56:08.90 | Councilmember Ford | downtown and three at the other. OK. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:56:13.79 | Unknown | Certainly. |
| 01:56:13.81 | Councilmember Ford | Certainly. |
| 01:56:14.23 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:56:14.35 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.40 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.41 | Unknown | Any more questions? Yes, you could leave that one up. |
| 01:56:15.50 | Mayor Kelly | you |
| 01:56:15.67 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 01:56:15.77 | Mayor Kelly | What? |
| 01:56:15.85 | Councilmember Ford | Sure. |
| 01:56:20.78 | Unknown | Would you say that Sausalito by far gets more ambulance calls than any of the other cities. |
| 01:56:28.37 | Jim Irving | That is correct. Sausalito's ambulance is the busiest ambulance. And for that matter, Sausalito Zone is the busiest single zone. |
| 01:56:32.54 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:56:36.81 | Jim Irving | We consider all of Saucely to be one zone. For example, Southern Marin runs more calls, But for a single station, Sauslito is the busiest station. |
| 01:56:46.65 | Mayor Kelly | Why is that, Jacob? Thank you. |
| 01:56:48.35 | Jim Irving | Probably because it's a slightly denser population, Um, Although there's more people probably both of the zones within Southern Marin But there's also a large commercial area here. You get a lot of tourists through, and there's just a lot more going on. And then there's also an older population here, I believe. |
| 01:57:08.27 | Unknown | Yeah, you also have, like you said, you have tourism, a lot of bikes. And you have to also respond to Alexander Avenue. |
| 01:57:16.45 | Jim Irving | Right, although we don't include the calls on Alexander Avenue within Sausalito's calls because technically it's outside of the city limits. |
| 01:57:25.93 | Unknown | I have this for you. |
| 01:57:26.07 | Jim Irving | And if I could actually add one thing, when we talk about the call volumes, when we compare, for example, in the CityGate report, it shows the call volumes of Sausalito and Southern Marin, those are actually just the calls occurring within the jurisdictional boundaries. Obviously, we respond up to Alexander Avenue, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin City, and then we responded to Tennessee Valley and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Mount Tam and all that. So there's a lot more calls than what you actually see on that CityGate report. Okay, thank you. |
| 01:57:55.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:55.26 | Mayor Kelly | There's a lot of people. |
| 01:58:01.94 | Mayor Kelly | Okay, any more questions? |
| 01:58:04.19 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor, I have one question. It's just a small one. So looking at this map, just to confirm, for all of Tiburon and Belvedere, There's only one station and |
| 01:58:20.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:20.24 | Jim Irving | No. |
| 01:58:20.57 | Councilmember Fyber | I'm back. I'm sorry, Jim, can you? |
| 01:58:24.71 | Jim Irving | Yes. Tiburon has two stations. Station 11, which is downtown Tiburon. It serves both downtown Tiburon and Belvedere. And then out Trestle Glen. It's kind of, I showed it sort of out here in the Bay, but it's actually, you know, it's right there where that is. If you're familiar with what Trestle Glen is, Black East Pasture area. |
| 01:58:33.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:34.02 | Councilmember Fyber | Outtrustable. |
| 01:58:42.65 | Councilmember Fyber | Yes, okay, thank you. That makes sense. |
| 01:58:46.68 | Vice Mayor | And Southern Marin covers part of Tiberon. That is correct. Incorporated town. |
| 01:58:49.77 | Jim Irving | Thank you. That is correct, the incorporated town. That is correct. We actually cover about a quarter of the incorporated town of Tiburon, which includes out right to Blackie's Pasture, essentially. |
| 01:59:01.30 | Mayor Kelly | Okay. Anybody else have a question? |
| 01:59:03.98 | Councilmember Ford | Yes, mutual aid. It appears that Sausalito doesn't respond in terms of mutual aid. That was on one of the charts. What's the story there? |
| 01:59:17.33 | Jim Irving | Well, the story is that mutual aid is based more upon what's logical to respond in response times. Sausalito being sort of on the end of the peninsula here, it doesn't have as good a response time to other areas. Also because it's on the end of the peninsula, It doesn't have agencies on both sides of it. One of the reasons Southern Marin responds to so much, if you look at where we are, we kind of go out this way, so we have Marin County here on this side of us. We have... Mill Valley on this side of us, then over here in our Strawberry Station, again, we have Mill Valley on this side of us and Tiburon on this side of us. So we end up responding in all directions to emergencies, where Sausalito being down here on the peninsula, There's not as much opportunity to respond, but you're also more reliant on other agencies because you're on the end of a peninsula, as is Tiburon. When you think back, Tiburon also had a negative impact. a negative mutual aid balance. |
| 02:00:21.91 | Councilmember Ford | Uh-huh. Okay. The second question is in regard to the number of calls, does that include the GGNRA? you Thank you. |
| 02:00:33.43 | Jim Irving | When you talk about... Tossalitos. |
| 02:00:33.48 | Councilmember Ford | When you talk about it. Talk about... |
| 02:00:35.90 | Jim Irving | No, when we do saw those numbers, they do not include the G-GENRA numbers. |
| 02:00:36.52 | Councilmember Ford | I don't know. |
| 02:00:36.77 | Unknown | I know. |
| 02:00:40.65 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, where are those included? |
| 02:00:42.68 | Jim Irving | Those will be included in the total, which we don't have here. It's approximately 144 calls a year. |
| 02:00:48.99 | Councilmember Ford | Okay. And, Thank you. I've heard that one of the reasons we have higher numbers in terms of our calls is because we respond to rescuing cats out of trees and people locked out of their homes and do more of that than the other areas. Is that true? |
| 02:01:04.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:04.13 | Jim Irving | and he was like, Is that true? That's not true. Every fire department in Marin does the same type of calls. We don't treat the people's hostility any different than we do everywhere else. |
| 02:01:19.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:19.13 | Robert Haley | It's good. |
| 02:01:21.54 | Jim Irving | not necessarily getting cats out of trees, but we do respond to a lot of just things within the community to help people out. |
| 02:01:29.20 | Mayor Kelly | Great. Thank you. Any more questions? All right, thank you, Jim. Great, thank you. I'll ask for a public comment. Would anybody care to comment on anything to do with the fire service? Excellent fire service. All right, seeing none, I'll bring it back up here. I don't think there's anything we're being asked to do here. This was a report, so unless anybody has any. Can we hold it short because we're running behind time? |
| 02:01:34.45 | Jim Irving | Thank you. |
| 02:01:50.15 | Councilmember Fyber | Yeah. |
| 02:01:50.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:50.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:50.28 | Unknown | you |
| 02:01:54.43 | Councilmember Fyber | Oh, very short, because I'd like to request a quick break. Oh, okay. But I also do have a comment. I want to thank Jim, our fire chief, for presenting this very informative presentation, and thank our firefighters. And I would love to have an e-copy of this, if possible, if you could send it to the whole council. Thank you. |
| 02:01:58.35 | Mayor Kelly | Sure. |
| 02:02:16.22 | Mayor Kelly | Could you wait a bit for the break? |
| 02:02:19.07 | Councilmember Fyber | I might kind of need a break. |
| 02:02:21.16 | Mayor Kelly | All right. |
| 02:02:22.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:22.23 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:02:22.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:23.61 | Councilmember Fyber | I can just leave. Two minutes, OK. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's it. Perfectly fine. Can I make one quick question? |
| 02:02:23.64 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:02:23.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:23.69 | Mayor Kelly | it. |
| 02:02:23.96 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 02:02:24.03 | Vice Mayor | I can just leave. Two minutes. |
| 02:02:25.53 | Unknown | So, |
| 02:02:25.79 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 02:02:25.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:25.97 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's it. Perfectly fine. Can I make one quick comment before we break on time? So this map kind of spells out a lot of things, and it's very important to keep it. There was a time where we looked at all different pieces of this. about not having our own ambulance, about doing other things to be able to make this jigsaw puzzle of response work. And so the City of the Council has looked at this both at subcommittee level and working with Southern Marin over the years to try and figure out how to balance this. It's been six years of this stuff for me, and I wasn't here in 2006 when they got rid of the three other firefighters, so don't blame me for the overtime. But it is a complicated web of stuff, and this is a very complicated subject, and folks tend to oversimplify it to look for reasons why, to solutions for it. |
| 02:02:59.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:00.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:05.58 | Unknown | But the... |
| 02:03:20.17 | Mayor Kelly | Okay, we'll take two minutes. |
| 02:04:43.84 | Mayor Kelly | of Public Works, Jonathan Goldman, and Lieutenant Curtis Scoot. Oh, a team. Yes. I love teams. |
| 02:04:46.57 | Unknown | I know. |
| 02:04:46.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:46.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:46.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:04:49.04 | Unknown | I love teams. Good evening, mayor, city council people. |
| 02:04:55.28 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:04:56.65 | Unknown | Tonight, myself and Jonathan Goldman are going to discuss the bicycle reservation system, a progress report. I'd also like to thank Jim Swindler from the Golden Gate Ferries for showing up, Carolyn Horrigan from the Blue and Gold, Jeff Sears from Blazing Saddles, and Elena Sears also from Blazing Saddles. Let's see if I can use this correctly. |
| 02:05:23.85 | Unknown | I just love this picture talking about trying to manage the onslaught of tourist bicycles coming to Saucyut. It's a bit of a challenge, but we understand it's impacting the downtown area and we just want to go over the steps we're taking to try to help mitigate that issue. |
| 02:05:31.68 | Unknown | I lost it. |
| 02:05:32.03 | Unknown | It's hot, it's hot. |
| 02:05:32.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:48.71 | Unknown | Here's some pictures we have of the bicycles lining up on the Tracy Way, some of the bicycles near the visitor's booth. you and some more bicycles near the visitor booth. As you can tell, you have quite a few down there. In talking to Carolyn Horgan, you know, her ridership over the last three years has gone up 10%. She states that approximately 675 bicycles a day ride her ferry on the weekends. And the Golden Gate Ferries, they're up 3.5% since 2009. And it's estimated that approximately 1,700 bicycles can be on the ferries on a given weekend day. So it's quite a few. |
| 02:06:46.61 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:06:52.56 | Unknown | As we all know that bicycles downtown are a problem. If that area fills up, then they're locked up to meters or areas by businesses. The long lines, obviously, sometimes that impacts businesses. And then we have the problem when the number of bicycles exceeds that ferry. People see the long lines, they panic, and they get into a line, and we've seen the lines stretch to almost where it blocks the entrance of meeting lot one. And again, that's Tracy Way, bicyclist backing up. So one thought that was kicked around starting last year was a bicycle reservation system, a system where a bicyclist would know which ferry they could get on. So the bicyclist could show up, say, 10 minutes before that particular ferry was going to leave, so they didn't feel the necessity to get in line early and kind of ruin their social experience. We thought the benefits to a reservation system would again maximize the bicyclist time in Sausalito, hopefully to spend their tourist money and have a overall great time instead of coming down to Sausalito and feeling the necessity to get into a long line, I believe I'm quoting Councilmember Weiner to where It's that bad cup of coffee at the end of a great meal. It's that experience that the tourists have is coming is negative in general. And a reservation system, we hope, also will reduce the congestion in the ferry landing area in the vicinity. One of the two-pronged approach we have is first is a system suggested by Jeff Sears from Blazing Saddles, and it was a first-come, first-served reservation system. I believe that you have copies of the tickets. Oops, I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 02:09:13.37 | Unknown | So when the Bicycles would show up, there would be a kiosk near the ferry terminal so they could grab a ticket and know exactly when they could get on the ferry. So if they showed up at 2 and they grabbed a ticket for a 5 o'clock ferry, they know they would have until about 4.45 that they could spend in Sausalito. Thank you. And as the amount of bicycles grew, that representative could be in touch with Golden Gate Ferry and request additional ferry service. |
| 02:09:53.26 | Unknown | A secondary system that we're looking into is a joint venture between Blue and Gold and Gold and Gate is an online reservation system to where once you rent the bike or as you came into town or even maybe by an online application on your phone to be able to register when and which ferry you want to leave back in San Francisco again, that would allow the bicyclists to know exactly how long they could stay in Sausalito and when they get in, and also for those times that there were past capacity that they could use some other ways of getting back to town other than the ferry system. Unfortunately, the system isn't quite ready, but we're working towards that. Uh, The short-term plan is to go ahead with that reservation system that you have the coupons for. Um, It should be ready by about March 16th. We plan to do about a one-month pilot program to see how that works downtown. Obviously, it's something new, so by implementing it, we'll know if it works. And if it doesn't work, then we do the fallback on the secondary system. Also, the police department has tried to create partnerships with the taxi companies to be able there to be overload relief for the ferry. So if the taxi driver is in the car, excuse me, if the fairs are beyond capacity, people could pay to be driven back up to Golden Gate Bridge, are all the way back to their point of rental. I believe and maybe Jeff Sears could comment later that you provide the racks for free to the taxicab companies. Okay. And also you might have seen the new shuttle company that's running, Golden Gate Shuttle. I believe he has... room for 16 bikes and also he's going to try to do a loop that goes both to the north tower of the Gongay Bridge and to the point of rental. And I believe it's six or eight dollars per person, which is pretty reasonable. Um, Staff, myself, Jonathan Goldman, Chief Tejada, and City Manager, we're working closely with the rental companies and the ferry companies to try to address this issue of the bicyclists. I can't see that the popularity of this form of tourism is going to go down. I believe we'll probably see about 2% or 3% increase every year. I'm not sure if it'll max out. And we will, again, monitor the progress of the reservation system to see if the current one works or if we should go to the secondary system. Before I take any questions, I believe that Jeff Sears would like to say a few comments, or did I cover everything? |
| 02:13:09.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:11.61 | Unknown | Okay. Okay, is there any questions? |
| 02:13:17.89 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor? Thank you. So first of all, thank you very much for This looks very complex and looks like there's been a lot of thought into it. and seeing those pictures or those photos of the long lines, I just can't imagine. So my question is, if we were to go to a reservation system And I know that in certain months, in certain times, those times would probably fill up Sometimes we have residents with bikes who want to go over. And I guess, is it feasible to somehow factor in That in this strategy in some way, in other words, I mean, I'm sure it's a very small percentage, I would hate to see our residents shut out of being able to take their bikes now and then into the city. |
| 02:14:21.03 | Unknown | Because at this time, if Council Member Weiner could correct me, is that they try to accommodate bicyclists that aren't tourists. Unfortunately, that sometimes irritates the people with the rental bikes as they see the commuter bicyclists getting on the ferry. But it's my understanding that they are allowed on the ferry with some priorities. |
| 02:14:46.43 | Unknown | Yeah, we do that because if you don't take care of those commuters and get them on their schedule, then you won't have them. And over the time when they, Golden Gate and the others, start looking at how much is taking place now that we've discouraged them from going and you don't have them now in the winter numbers, then we jeopardize possibly cutting a service a little more. |
| 02:15:14.81 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. So that was, thank you, Council Member Weiner. And my, so that was my question. And perhaps going forward, that would be something of interest to take a look at. And sometimes, you know, on the weekends, we're looking at commuters who are basically trying not to drive into the city. who are trying to be conscientious and take mass transit but with their bicycles. So anyway, something to consider. |
| 02:15:41.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:15:41.58 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:15:45.63 | Councilmember Ford | I have, Mr. Mayor, one question, and this relates, but it relates to the south end of town. And what I'd like to ask, and along the waterfront, has this committee that you have formed taken a look at that part of town as well, or do you plan to? because we have lots of tourists coming through that part of town, of course, and the... at that part of town as well, or do you plan to? Because we have lots of tourists coming through that part of town, of course, and the complaints regarding the tourists and their riding bicycles on the sidewalks and doing all of this. Uh. continue. And so I think we must need to have some sort of better signage or something, but anyway, my question is, has the team Consider that or do you plan to consider it in the future? |
| 02:16:39.24 | Unknown | Well, what we've done in the past is that we want to make sure that the people at the point of rental know our rules of the road. But enforcement is actually a secondary group that's more with the direction of Chief Tejada than the focus of our meetings with the rental companies. We've talked a lot about education, handouts, but, you know, on the reverse side, we've talked about doing informational booths with the Marin County Bicycle Coalition. |
| 02:17:03.96 | Jan Johnson | Uh-huh. |
| 02:17:04.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:17.53 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, then I have a question for the owner of the Blazing Saddles. |
| 02:17:27.10 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you, Curtis, or Sergeant Skuog. No, is it Sergeant Skuig or Lieutenant? Sorry. Sorry. |
| 02:17:33.42 | Unknown | Lieutenant. |
| 02:17:33.97 | Unknown | sorry |
| 02:17:40.23 | Councilmember Ford | Hi, thank you for coming tonight. |
| 02:17:40.78 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 02:17:40.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:41.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:44.43 | Councilmember Ford | You know, here in Sausalito on the south end of town, I live there so I observe this often, we have the tourists coming through, and even people with small children, families coming through, coming down Alexander Avenue and then down South and Second Street Bridgeway, of course, to the ferry. And I'm wondering what kind of... warning do you give them about the situation they're going to come into in terms of the narrow streets and traffic that they're going to experience? |
| 02:18:26.34 | Jeff Sears | Well regarding Alexander, when the bridge construction will be finished on the west side of the bridge, we'll be able to go back to our normal recommendation of making sure we recommend always going down to East Fort Baker by Cavalla Point and coming out basically at the city limits. There have been some improvements made the last few years with some signage and warnings for bicyclists that this deep hill is approaching. And there's also some stairs that we recommend people to walk their bike down if they feel like that that would be a better situation for them. If they have families, we recommend that. |
| 02:19:06.24 | Councilmember Ford | May I interrupt you here? Sure. Because I'm not talking about the roadway before you get to Sausalito City Limits. What I'm talking about is once you get into the city limits on Alexander Avenue, that portion of the roadway. So what you're talking about, I believe, is Fort Baker, have them take the Fort Baker route and that way. |
| 02:19:07.76 | Jeff Sears | THE END OF THE |
| 02:19:28.06 | Jeff Sears | You asked about Alexander and that's what I was responding to. |
| 02:19:32.04 | Councilmember Ford | Well, Alexander, the Sausalito city limits, that's Alexander Street, and then South Street, 2nd Street, Bridgeway. That's where the traffic is most congested and where the danger is. And I see the kids coming down, and they're scared to death, and the parents look very worried, too. And I'm wondering what kind of... |
| 02:19:32.82 | Unknown | I would say, |
| 02:19:38.01 | Jeff Sears | That's right. |
| 02:19:38.23 | Jan Johnson | Thank you. |
| 02:19:45.17 | Unknown | Most. |
| 02:19:56.56 | Councilmember Ford | warning or advice you give them before they rent those bicycles and decide to come over here. |
| 02:20:03.86 | Jeff Sears | We do let families know that it is a steep and narrow last few blocks into Sausalito. Unfortunately, due to the geography and narrowness of the road, there's unfortunately not a lot to be done. As I said, we've also recommended frequently to families to please walk whenever you feel uncomfortable, and I think many of them take that advice. |
| 02:20:15.36 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:20:26.71 | Councilmember Ford | Amen. Yes. Okay, yeah, yeah. It is a very narrow roadway, so the most you can do is warn them. Do you have a handout? Yes. |
| 02:20:33.97 | Jeff Sears | Amen. |
| 02:20:38.02 | Councilmember Ford | Okay. I'd be very interested in seeing the handout, maybe. Sure. |
| 02:20:45.24 | Jeff Sears | Most all of our customers are carrying that. I can send you one. |
| 02:20:49.36 | Councilmember Ford | Okay, great, thanks. |
| 02:20:51.59 | Unknown | You could say, Jeff, I... I want to compliment you. you and the other major bike companies because, and by the way, the good pattern when you can go down Baker and then come up to Alexander. you're now coming on a flat surface at that stop sign, rather than flying down Alexander. |
| 02:21:13.81 | Robert Haley | Yeah. |
| 02:21:15.33 | Unknown | and hoping that you can stop Just, and thank you for for you and the other major bike companies for really stressing how dangerous it can be in Sausalito. And to add to the effectiveness of that, I believe last year we had six or seven reported accidents at that end of town. And you're talking about approximately 320,000 bikes coming through there. So that's, I think it's working. I think your communication is finally getting to them. So I hope it continues. |
| 02:21:48.00 | Jeff Sears | I, I, |
| 02:21:54.77 | Jeff Sears | Thank you. |
| 02:21:54.78 | Mayor Kelly | It will. Okay, any other questions? All right, thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Curtis. Thank you. I will open this up to the public. Anyone from the public care to comment on this agenda item? Seeing none, we'll bring it back up here. Is anybody... There's no action required, right? Okay. Just information only. Anybody have any comment that they must? |
| 02:22:21.82 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor, I'd like to just make a short comment. Yeah, I want to thank Lieutenant Skuke and Chief Tejada and Jonathan Goldman for their work on this tourist bicycle plan. I think it's a really important project. And I have to say I live on South Street. So I've tended to quite a few spills, some not reported, you know, to the, to, you know, not requiring an ambulance. So I have a first aid kit in the trunk of my car and I've pulled it out. More than a few times. And I would echo what Council Member Ford has said. I think that they have a wonderful experience. The vast majority have just a wonderful experience in Sausalito. But I do think that it's important to tell young children, especially, to consider on South Street walking their bicycles on the sidewalk. Just walking. Thank you. their bicycles on the sidewalk. not riding the bicycles, blocking them. Thank you. |
| 02:23:40.00 | Unknown | You do, I believe, on South Street, we have three signs. Let's take that. Yeah, I counted them. I went by this morning. |
| 02:23:51.58 | Mayor Kelly | Any other comments? Seeing none, I thank you very much for coming and giving us this. And good luck. Hope it all works. |
| 02:24:00.55 | Unknown | Don't forget, it's too late to take the ferry back, so you have to drive back. |
| 02:24:03.03 | Mayor Kelly | Bye. |
| 02:24:03.24 | Unknown | Right there. Ha ha ha. Thank you. |
| 02:24:05.35 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Thank you to the ferry companies for coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 02:24:08.99 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you, sir. Yes. |
| 02:24:12.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:12.47 | Mayor Kelly | Thanks, Jim. |
| 02:24:16.82 | Mayor Kelly | All right, it's now time for the city manager report. Adam. We're going for a new record. Here we are. Yes, we are. Don't make us fail. Yeah. Could we have a summary? |
| 02:24:27.33 | Jeff Sears | I'm sorry. |
| 02:24:27.40 | Unknown | Yes, we are. |
| 02:24:29.02 | Unknown | Don't. Thank you. |
| 02:24:30.91 | Unknown | Yeah. If we have a summary. |
| 02:24:37.65 | Councilmember Ford | I'm sorry. |
| 02:24:37.71 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:24:38.02 | Councilmember Ford | LAUGHTER |
| 02:24:40.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:42.50 | Adam Politzer | It will be short and it's all very condensed here. We have a series of events coming up here in the next week starting with Hal Brown's memorial service. You all read that Hal finally lost his battle with cancer and they'll be holding an event on Saturday the 24th, the Civic Center. and I'll get the times out to you folks. We'll probably place something in the Sausalito Currents as well. Followed with that celebration, we'll be celebrating Amy's life on the 26th, Monday the 26th at 4 p.m. at the Bay Model. Basically an hour of reflection from 4 to 5, and an hour or so for reception for the second half of the day from 5 to 6. So we look into having a wonderful turnout of both speakers and guests. Then something more fun and positive and social is the MCCMC dinner in Mill Valley. And if you saw the invitation, they are going to have a very dynamic menu of, I think, a lot of sushi, to be honest, and some other choices for the non-sushi eaters. But those dates there, I think it's really important. The last MCMC, we didn't have a lot of folks that were able to make it at the city of Larkspur. This one will be in Mill Valley and strongly encourage everyone to be there if possible. The invitations were sent out and if you can confirm with Debbie your attendance, that would be very much appreciated. |
| 02:26:35.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:35.13 | Vice Mayor | I appreciate it. That's the 21st item. |
| 02:26:36.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:38.32 | Adam Politzer | The last thing I wanted to share, and I think that you're seeing the pattern now, parade in front of you, where we've had the various departments come forward and kind of talk mostly about their operations, about what, in some level of detail, starting with the police department, the level of detail that they came forward. We had the library, Public Works came at the last meeting with both Todd and Lauren talking about maintenance and some of the things in the capital projects. And then tonight you heard from our fire department. So you have community development and park and rec that will be coming in the next months. Again, it's really to help you and the community as we go into the budget process, as we go into the priority calendar, |
| 02:26:38.37 | Vice Mayor | THE END OF |
| 02:26:38.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:38.77 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:26:38.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:38.98 | Vice Mayor | . |
| 02:26:39.03 | Unknown | to. |
| 02:26:39.18 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:26:39.25 | Unknown | with the |
| 02:26:39.62 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 02:26:43.08 | Unknown | wanted to. |
| 02:27:28.91 | Adam Politzer | process. just to make sure you have a fresh understanding of the amount of work that happens in each of these departments and the personnel resources that we have attached to this so that you folks are really going to this prepared and a clear understanding of what the departments actually do. So I just wanted to make that clear to both the council and the public of the value of them coming in and giving these presentations. So thank you for your patience when they come before you and your good questions. I think that the staff appreciates the questions and then obviously I think on each occasion they've also felt very much appreciated on the work that they do providing services to the city. That concludes my report. Happy to answer any questions that you folks may have for me. |
| 02:28:21.88 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. The meeting, the post office I see through Sausalito Currents is holding a meeting shortly. And do you have an update for us on that, any new news? |
| 02:28:38.81 | Adam Politzer | I don't have any new news other than it did go out in the currents. The meeting is tomorrow night at 6 p.m. here in the city council chambers. Our associate planner, Heidi Burns, and our community development director have met with the folks at the post office. Really their intent is, and I think you've read this in the MarinScope and maybe even in the IJ, but the intent is for them to keep a storefront here in Sausalito but move a lot of the operations that go on behind the scenes to a more centralized location and to kind of downsize the size of what they have here. So they are looking to either share their location or move to a different location of smaller size. I think the square footage that was possibly quoted in the paper was around 6,000 square feet. I may be totally off on that, but that's the number that jumps out at me. It might even be a smaller square footage. But their presence here, they understand it's important to our community. As you heard Jim Irving mention about just our business community requires a lot of activity there, let alone our residents that still very much utilize the post office. And then because we have a lot of folks that live on boats and houseboats here in town, those P.O. boxes, as you know, are also very active. So it's one of the more vibrant and active post offices. But I recommend that the community come tomorrow night. I think that's why we had good coverage both in the papers and then also sending it out in the current. But there's also a comment period that extends, I think, 10 days. I don't know if either of you remember. 10 days past tomorrow night, so the public comment period opens tomorrow night and then continues, I believe, for at least 10 days. And that information is also in the Saucet Occurrence newsletter on who to send your comments to. So please encourage the residents to be heard so that when they make any decision that they are not under any impression that that post office isn't important to our community. |
| 02:31:02.56 | Unknown | When you were a kid, where was the post office? |
| 02:31:06.21 | Adam Politzer | Well, when I was a kid, when I could remember, it was next to Cafe Trieste or Taste of Rome, but I think the person to my right might have another understanding of where it was. |
| 02:31:10.90 | Jeff Sears | Thank you. |
| 02:31:10.92 | Unknown | to Cafe Taddeus. |
| 02:31:16.30 | Vice Mayor | any awareness. Thank you. inside the boat or something? |
| 02:31:20.40 | Adam Politzer | I'm going to go. |
| 02:31:21.85 | Unknown | or a better memory i'd see |
| 02:31:21.87 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:31:21.97 | Vice Mayor | For a better memory. |
| 02:31:23.03 | Mayor Kelly | No. |
| 02:31:23.25 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:31:24.55 | Mayor Kelly | Or was it, Debbie? Thank you. |
| 02:31:28.11 | Unknown | No, wasn't it? And before that, wasn't it at the, where the West Marine was down on Haber Drive? ICB voting. Yes, it was. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. That was speculation. |
| 02:31:42.19 | Mayor Kelly | Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. None of the speculation. All right, any other questions of Adam? All right, then moving along to future agenda items. |
| 02:31:46.96 | Unknown | . |
| 02:31:47.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:31:47.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:31:56.51 | Vice Mayor | Oh. Yeah, just seeing Jim Swindler here reminded me, I don't know, Jonathan, if you might know this better, you know, is there any update on the design and implementation of that new dock? And, you know... |
| 02:32:09.24 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:32:09.25 | Unknown | So. |
| 02:32:10.87 | Vice Mayor | You don't have to speak to it now unless you don't have anything. But if you have something, that would be great. But we should, you know... |
| 02:32:16.53 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 02:32:17.78 | Vice Mayor | I hope we're involved enough that nothing's going to surprise us the next time it comes back here. |
| 02:32:18.15 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:32:18.25 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 02:32:18.26 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:32:18.37 | Unknown | were involved in |
| 02:32:19.55 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:32:23.48 | Mayor Kelly | All right, we'll get an answer to that question. Any other agenda items that anybody has? Thank you. OK, seeing none, and we'll move back to the next item, which is council member committee reports. Anybody have a committee report? |
| 02:32:41.06 | Mayor Kelly | No committee rewards. |
| 02:32:43.51 | Councilmember Fyber | I will say, Mr. Mayor, I will say CDBG recently appointed members of, I believe the term is underrepresented members of communities for diversity, a more diverse kind of representation on the main CDBG board. And we also have a regional meeting tomorrow night at the Senior Center in Marin City. |
| 02:33:10.12 | Unknown | True. |
| 02:33:12.15 | Mayor Kelly | NEXT IS MAYOR'S APPOINTMENTS, COUNCIL LIAISONS. DO WE HAVE ENOUGH? gathered together now to look at, to interview for |
| 02:33:24.13 | Unknown | something. |
| 02:33:24.79 | Mayor Kelly | Well, landmarks seem to have a number of these. |
| 02:33:26.76 | Unknown | I think you have between old and new, you have about eight. Yeah. That's, I think that's the only one that's really gotten |
| 02:33:30.29 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. |
| 02:33:34.37 | Mayor Kelly | gotten any traction okay maybe we can schedule those then the next council meeting |
| 02:33:35.15 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:33:35.82 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 02:33:35.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:35.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:40.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:40.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:41.16 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 02:33:41.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:41.39 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. How about trees and views? Don't we have a couple there? I thought we had a couple applicants. |
| 02:33:53.98 | Gail Barnett | Thank you. |
| 02:33:54.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:54.27 | Gail Barnett | Thank you. |
| 02:33:55.31 | Councilmember Ford | you |
| 02:33:57.05 | Unknown | Mmm. |
| 02:33:59.72 | Mayor Kelly | All right, well, if you do, we can schedule them as well, maybe over the next two council meetings or something. |
| 02:34:00.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.22 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.29 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.38 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:34:00.70 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.86 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:34:00.88 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:34:00.97 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:34:01.03 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:34:02.22 | Councilmember Fyber | and |
| 02:34:05.88 | Councilmember Fyber | Mr. Mayor? |
| 02:34:07.04 | Mayor Kelly | Yes. |
| 02:34:07.38 | Councilmember Fyber | I have a clarification regarding the Arts Commission because I know that there was discussion to remove that as a potential, as a commission, and of course I wanted to keep it. I know we have applicants. Is, have we made a, what is the status regarding that, the Arts Commission? Because a number of people have submitted their applications, and I would like to follow up with them if there's no traction on this commission because of the, you know, majority vote. |
| 02:34:41.09 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:34:41.11 | Mayor Kelly | Um, |
| 02:34:41.84 | Vice Mayor | But we knew it wasn't a vote on it. |
| 02:34:43.22 | Mayor Kelly | We didn't vote on it. It's my view that after talking to a number of people in the arts community from different perspectives that there's not very much interest in it, frankly. So it got into trouble twice over the time I've been involved with the council, and I'm just not a proponent of it. So I mean, do you want to? |
| 02:34:43.39 | Vice Mayor | vote on it. Thank you. |
| 02:34:44.05 | Councilmember Fyber | I'm not. |
| 02:34:44.30 | Vice Mayor | Thanks, Mark. |
| 02:35:06.81 | Councilmember Fyber | Well, Mr. Mayor, if I may, as you know, I served many years before it had gotten into recent trouble. I was on it, and we launched the first ever website for artists, local artists. We had directories in all the hotels with portfolios of all the local artists. We had art showings of local arts and themes like houseboats and Fort Baker, you know, original oils. So I see tremendous value in the Arts Commission and I know we have applicants and if possible if we could move forward or put this on a future agenda item for discussion, or do something, because I would love to see an arts commission in Sausalito. I can't imagine not having one. |
| 02:35:57.17 | Mayor Kelly | I'll take it under advisement and we'll discuss it at the agenda setting committee. Otherwise, it can be voted on here if someone |
| 02:36:06.31 | Councilmember Ford | Well, Mr. Mayor, I certainly support an art commission because many people in town who work with the |
| 02:36:13.96 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I think all we're really talking about here is whether it's on the agenda or not. |
| 02:36:16.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:16.29 | Councilmember Ford | Yes, sir. |
| 02:36:17.03 | Councilmember Fyber | So I move, Mr. Mayor, if I may, Councilmember Ford, Mr. Mayor. |
| 02:36:19.14 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 02:36:24.54 | Mayor Kelly | Yes, too. |
| 02:36:24.98 | Unknown | talking. |
| 02:36:27.42 | Councilmember Fyber | Because you mentioned making a motion. I'd like to make a motion to put the Arts Commission on a future agenda item. |
| 02:36:27.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:36.82 | Councilmember Fyber | Thank you. |
| 02:36:38.31 | Mayor Kelly | Second. |
| 02:36:40.28 | Councilmember Ford | Yes, I'll say. |
| 02:36:41.03 | Mayor Kelly | Seconded. Okay. Debbie, would you call the roll? |
| 02:36:46.75 | Debbie | Councilmember Fyfer. |
| 02:36:47.88 | Mayor Kelly | Yes. |
| 02:36:49.31 | Debbie | Council member Ford, Thank you. |
| 02:36:51.25 | Councilmember Ford | Yes. |
| 02:36:51.88 | Debbie | Thank you. Councilmember Winers. Thank you. |
| 02:36:53.80 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 02:36:53.83 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 02:36:55.77 | Debbie | Vice Mayor Liam. |
| 02:36:57.65 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, I think it's worth discussing at some point. |
| 02:37:00.01 | Debbie | Madam Mayor Kelly. |
| 02:37:00.92 | Mayor Kelly | No. So it passes, so it'll be on the agenda. |
| 02:37:05.17 | Debbie | Thank you. |
| 02:37:05.66 | Councilmember Ford | Thank you. |
| 02:37:07.18 | Mayor Kelly | Thank you. |
| 02:37:11.25 | Mayor Kelly | Okay. |
| 02:37:11.37 | Unknown | of the |
| 02:37:14.18 | Mayor Kelly | most |
| 02:37:18.57 | Mayor Kelly | All right, any other reports of significance? Thank you. |
| 02:37:21.97 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:37:22.03 | Mayor Kelly | Uh, |
| 02:37:22.52 | Vice Mayor | Just on the MEA stuff, so now every jurisdiction is part of MEA and Marin and we as both a customer, as a city, |
| 02:37:22.59 | Mayor Kelly | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:37:32.66 | Unknown | you |
| 02:37:34.62 | Vice Mayor | We have the opportunity if we want to join as a city. Actually, it would probably be our financial benefit to join because of the Our solar panel installation, their net metering program is far better than PG&E's. I'm not saying we should be a customer or not. Is anybody listening to this? No, I'm not saying you guys aren't, but I have to say I'm not the most positive on the MEA at the moment, but I'm not saying what they're doing is not good. But you basically had a full turnover of that board, so a lot of people don't know exactly what it started out to do. And that's the problem with having a governmental board, right? So especially without McGlashan here, and every other town is based, I'm the only one, I think, left. There's maybe one other person that I can think of just for various, you know, turnover and people retiring or whatever. |
| 02:38:14.02 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:38:19.96 | Unknown | I think, less. Thank you. |
| 02:38:26.51 | Vice Mayor | But the staff is doing a fine job. It's just I think the board is a little funkadelic, and I'm sure I'll hear about that in the next MEA board meeting. But I do think it's something we might want to revisit because they'll pay us for electricity at a much higher rate than what PG&E is willing to pay and someone who's got solar panels. So it's something the city might – you can just call them up and they'll have to do an analysis for you to see if it's in our benefit or not, to revisit that. And also, all of us will be getting... |
| 02:38:32.45 | Unknown | hear about that. |
| 02:38:33.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:38:33.35 | Unknown | Thank you. But, uh, |
| 02:38:57.21 | Vice Mayor | Well, if you live in Sausalito, we'll get your notice this in a few months, a month or two, about your ability to opt out of, because you're going to be transferred over this summer, I believe, summer and fall. to the MEA. and they're going to notice the heck out of it. Um, So that transition point, it had already gone through the big customers, and now it's on to the rest of us. um |
| 02:39:21.90 | Mayor Kelly | Do you get to throw your smart meter away? |
| 02:39:24.27 | Vice Mayor | Well, if you want to pay PG&E, you can throw it away. Or if you have... The one benefit of having solar panels is you can't have a smart meter. So they don't make the ones that can keep track of |
| 02:39:24.95 | Mayor Kelly | Yeah. Thank you. You're willing to pay PG&E. Anyway. if you want to. I'm going to go. |
| 02:39:34.38 | Unknown | That's... |
| 02:39:37.64 | Vice Mayor | of what's going on on the roof as well as sending this stuff out to the pole. Or you can underground your street and then you won't have, there's nothing to pick up the transmission anymore. So those are the, that's the only, one of the few benefits of undergrounding your street and paying for it. So that's probably the wrong way to go about the smart meter solution set. But yeah, so this summer will be coming up. So I imagine the city will get some calls at some point. What is this? How do I get out of it? So we may want to put something on the city website. |
| 02:39:38.18 | Mayor Kelly | Mr. President. |
| 02:39:43.87 | Mayor Kelly | There's nothing to pick Thank you. Right. |
| 02:39:48.42 | Unknown | One of the few benefits of underground issues. |
| 02:39:51.55 | Jeff Sears | Um, |
| 02:40:06.06 | Vice Mayor | about their contacts and their phone numbers and plan ahead. Because that's going to start, the mailing's going to start coming soon, but the actual opt-out date will, I think it's July, I think, when the cutoff is. |
| 02:40:16.57 | Mayor Kelly | All right. We've come to the end of the hour, and this is a new all-time record. |
| 02:40:23.42 | Unknown | It's for you. |
| 02:40:24.77 | Mayor Kelly | I move we adjourn. I second it and third it and fourth it. |
| 02:40:24.81 | Unknown | I moved we adjourned. I seconded it and thirded it and fourthed it. |
| 02:40:39.45 | Vice Mayor | Greg, I know you couldn't stay away. You just had to come back. You had to come back? |
| 02:40:41.46 | Unknown | You had to come back. You had to come back? |
Larry Hulick — Neutral: Raised liability risks due to safety hazards from open trenches on Harrison Avenue, citing legal cases on constructive notice. Recommended hiring an outside consultant/engineer and covering the trench to mitigate risks. ▶ 📄