| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Mary Wagner | Okay. |
| 00:00:00.76 | Ray Withy | you Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013 meeting. At this time here, a roll call. |
| 00:00:12.50 | Unknown | Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 00:00:15.56 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:00:15.57 | Unknown | Here. Council Member Theodorus? Present. Council Member Wiebe? |
| 00:00:15.99 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:00:17.78 | Ray Withy | President. |
| 00:00:18.17 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:19.23 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:00:19.27 | Unknown | here. |
| 00:00:19.57 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:00:20.65 | Unknown | Vice Mayor Leon. Mayor Weiner. |
| 00:00:24.06 | Ray Withy | present. The pledge. Craig, you want to lead us with the pledge, please? |
| 00:00:35.28 | Ray Withy | You're going to lead us to the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. What's the matter? Catch you off, God? |
| 00:00:36.02 | Unknown | lead us to the pledge. |
| 00:00:37.04 | Unknown | Congratulations to the flag of the United States |
| 00:00:55.31 | Ray Withy | We had a, we went into closed session. It was referenced to a property negotiation on at 100 Ebtide. And we'll bring you up to date if there's anything else to add to that. Is there any at this time, any public comment on that closed session item? Okay, then I'll move to approve the agenda. This is the next item. |
| 00:01:23.43 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Wait a second. |
| 00:01:25.87 | Ray Withy | All in favor? Aye. Opposed? |
| 00:01:27.00 | Ray Withy | Hi. |
| 00:01:30.70 | Ray Withy | you At this time here, we have a special presentation, and that would to recognize Pat Guasco, Eric Abdullah, and Trevor Seidler for being in the right place at the right time and protecting water quality and city infrastructure from damaging during the MMWD's water main break. |
| 00:01:54.73 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:01:55.25 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Jonathan Goldman, your Public Works Director. This is kind of an important moment to me, so I hope you'll bear with me for a minute. In the dark hours of the morning, Sunday, March 17th, three intrepid City Public Works employees traveled from their warm homes to City Hall, not because they had to be here to work, but because they were here to teach and to learn. They were two motivated, relatively new hires. Eric Abdullah, a custodian with an appetite for knowledge and willingness to learn how to be more valuable to the city. and Trevor Seidler, a probationary employee, working hard to ensure that he clears probation. They were here to learn from Pat Guasco, an experienced senior specialist in wastewater maintenance with a passion for teaching, all here on their own time. As luck would have it, between the time Pat's truck crossed the intersection of Napa and Caledonia and Trevor and Eric got there, a Marin Municipal Water District main broke. lifting the pavement and sending torrents of sediment-laden water across the street and into city storm drains. Based on their training, their knowledge of stormwater quality regulations, and the city's recent coordination with the water district on just this kind of incident, all three employees immediately recognized the need to try to protect water quality in Richardson's Bay. They shifted gears, gathered their mirror radios, and responded with equipment from the corporation yard to place filter fabric, sediment control wattles, and other controls at affected storm drain inlets to reduce the amount of sediment entering the underground pipe network that drains to the bay. Pat coordinated by telephone and electronic message with his supervisor, that's me. and the maintenance division supervisor, Kent Basso, as well as in person with the police watch commander and the fire department incident commander to advise what actions were being taken, and their work reduced the workload of the water district personnel who arrived with the task of shutting off the flow of water and making the necessary repairs. for their willingness to be here in the first place on what would otherwise be an off-duty Sunday morning. their quick and timely recognition of the need to act their effective communication and coordination, and their clear and valuable success in protecting the quality of waters reaching Richardson's Bay, I salute them. And I ask that you do the same. |
| 00:04:33.71 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:04:37.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:37.05 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:37.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:38.08 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:41.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:49.67 | Pat Guasco | Thank you, Mayor Leon and other board members. Oh, well, pardon me, Mayor Weiner, I'm sorry, called up already. These two gentlemen alerted me of the whole thing and they knew it was wrong and MMWD was great to work with. I'm really, and so are these gentlemen, just a pale reflection of the people we serve. So we'll keep up the good cause. Thank you. |
| 00:05:17.03 | Ray Withy | Thank you, Pat. |
| 00:05:17.62 | Pat Guasco | Thank you. |
| 00:05:17.63 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.00 | Pat Guasco | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.05 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.10 | Pat Guasco | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.20 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.22 | Pat Guasco | I'm not sure. |
| 00:05:19.25 | Mary Wagner | I'm sorry. |
| 00:05:19.29 | Ray Withy | Can we shake your hand? |
| 00:05:19.66 | Pat Guasco | Thank you. |
| 00:05:19.73 | Thomas Theodores | Can we shake your hands because you did such a great job? |
| 00:05:20.25 | Pat Guasco | Thank you. |
| 00:05:20.30 | Ray Withy | And... |
| 00:05:25.75 | Ray Withy | See you tomorrow morning. |
| 00:05:28.10 | Unknown | Amen. . Thank you. Thank you very much. It's all right, Pat. Don't worry. It's water over the dam. Don't worry about it. |
| 00:05:33.79 | Ray Withy | All right, Pat. Don't worry, it's water over the dam. Don't worry about it. |
| 00:05:40.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:41.68 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:05:41.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:41.97 | Unknown | you |
| 00:05:42.04 | Ray Withy | you |
| 00:05:42.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:42.64 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:05:42.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:05:44.21 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:05:44.28 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:05:47.93 | Ray Withy | Thank you. And Jonathan, thank you for, I think those orange shirts are bright enough now. |
| 00:05:56.62 | Thomas Theodores | And thanks, we don't have to say thanks, but thanks to all three of you for, you know, A, being, going above and beyond the normal call of duty, just being here on a Sunday, obviously, and for responding and taking matters in your own hands in an emergency situation. Thank you very much for doing that. |
| 00:05:57.16 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:06:13.24 | Ray Withy | Okay, at this time here, an update from the League of California Cities. Nancy Hall Bennett. First time I ever said Hall. |
| 00:06:23.90 | Nancy | Thank you. I'd like to thank the council and the city manager for inviting me here today. I am your regional manager. I serve the cities within the four counties of Marin, Sonoma, Napa, and Solano County. Many of you know me. Many of you have been active in the league and have attended our events. I hope that this is an update for some of you and some education for those who aren't aware of who we are. So do I have a clicker? |
| 00:06:50.58 | Nancy | Thank you. So today's April 2nd. Today my presentation is to introduce you to the league, share some leadership opportunities with you, and let you know what you can expect from us as an organization since you're a member city. The League was formed in 1890. We're still doing the same thing today as we were back then. vision is to protect local control. Our actual mission statement is to expand and protect local control for cities through education and advocacy to enhance the quality of life for all Californians. In 2013, as we do in every year, we met in November with our leadership. Again, The association, you're a member city of, there are also 440 more cities in the state that are members as well. We got together and we talked about what our goals should be going forward. Traditionally we pick three goals, but this year we're excited to have four goals. And I'm going to go through those briefly for you. Our first goal is to build lasting partnerships. We want to go back to the legislature, back to Congress, go back to friends, county level, school boards, and see where we have common interests and build upon those. Number two is to expand community economic development tools. And with the loss of redevelopment for so many of our cities, as well as the loss of other tools from state takeaways, cities have lost opportunities to create economic growth in their cities. And we're looking to help cities do so. And also to think about other ways to increase revenues for cities. Our third goal is to continue to put pressure on the legislature and the state to work on pension reform, take it farther than they did last year. And number four is to implement and effectively brand our association. And that goes back to the first goal, going back, educating folks on who we are, what we do, and how we serve the state. League policies are established on many levels. Again, it's big association with 440 plus cities. We have representation from many city officials, over 300, that participate on policy committees. There are eight policy committees that set the policies for the League, everything from public safety to economic development. Our board of directors, we have one board member from the North Bay serving for us, but he sits on a board of 50-plus. The board sets policies and takes action on legislative and statewide ballot measures as well as other concerns. And then the League General Assembly, which is where I hope you all will participate. Every year we meet as an association. This year we'll be meeting in Sacramento. Register early. You'll have a vote to, as one city, one vote, you'll have a vote to vote on whatever resolutions come up at that point. We've had many resolutions make their way through that process. It's a great way to see how all the other cities interact with themselves. Sometimes you get stuck on your island, which is a beautiful place. Sausalito is lovely. But it's interesting for you to see how other cities operate and what their objectives are. Um, for you as council members and mayor, of course, as well as city managers and other professional staff. There are opportunities to engage within the association. Again, you're a member. It's like anything else. You can use us as much as you'd like to carry your voice through in Sacramento and Washington, or you could say, hey, we're doing a great job and let it go. But if you'd like to participate, we'd love to have you. In our legislative advocacy, Many of you get emails from me harassing you, and I apologize for that. That's the best way to do it sometimes. It's to ask you to engage on the legislation that can really impact what you all do. Again, our core mission being of local control, we're constantly trying to protect that within the legislature. Some of the ways to do that is to sign letters, pass resolutions at the council, participate in press conferences, op-eds. There are many ways to just get involved simply as calling your assembly member and saying, hey, this bill stinks and we'd like you to stay off of it. So you'll hear from me as things start to heat up in the legislature. It's not hot yet enough in Sacramento for that to happen. Again, we talked about policy committees. Regional divisions, there are 16 divisions. Again, it's a big state, big association. You all are members of the North Bay Division. Congratulations. The North Bay division is the best division. Because A, I'm the regional manager, again, congratulations. Secondly, it's a really beautiful corner of the state with Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Marin County. I encourage you to get active within the division. Our leadership is comprised of President from Councilmember from Novato, Madeline Kellner, right now. And we'll be seeking a second Vice President this upcoming spring from Marin County. So please keep that under. and pillow as you go to sleep tonight, the opportunities. Our mayors and council members department, just like we have a city managers department where the city managers can meet and talk about things as well as We have a mayors and council members department where it's just for you all. We have diversity caucuses, and these are really growing within the league. We have everything from our Latino to GLBT. Women's caucus, African American caucuses. Our caucuses are not limited to the demographic which you represent, but we engage equally within all of them. And actually some of our caucuses are starting to get active on the legislative front. Our Latino caucus is growing at rapid speed. It's been very impressive to see. We talked about the North Bay division, again, the best division. We have a lot of services that we provide out of our office in Sacramento. We have our city advocate. You should be getting those emails. Do you receive those emails? I hope you do. Those are call to actions as well as the emails from me. Sorry. Our Western City Magazine, which is published monthly, gives you a glimpse of what's going on in other cities throughout the state. As well as in social media, we ask you to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and I hear even on Pinterest coming soon. What to expect going forward. That was the history of who we are, and let me just dive into this real quick about where we're going. In 2012, we had some challenging times. You all are familiar with the difficult economy that we think that we're coming out of. Some cities had to take it as far as to file bankruptcies. The state was dealing with chronic deficits for the last eight plus years and dealing with aftermath of redevelopment. We think in 2013 there's some new opportunities and some new challenges. With Prop 28, The voters gave legislators the opportunity to serve in the legislature up to 12 years in either house. We think that that could be a positive. So often in the legislature we've had people for their next election as fast as they get in because they're anxious to move up to the next house. Well, now they have the opportunity to stay 12 years in one house. The top two primary has given us some competition. As you know, many districts are either Republican or Democrat districts. Well, as you saw right here in Marin County, we had a fight between two Democrats, one beating an incumbent. We think there are opportunities with new membership that we can work with. um both suggest that going forward we should invest big because these folks are sticking around for a long time, 12 years. is a long time for a legislature looking back on history. Also what that gave us in this last election was a super majority. So with the Democratic House, they're able to move legislation really fast to a Democratic governor. That could be a positive or a negative. What our observations are is that the governor matters. This governor is unlike any other governor except for the old, he's different than the old Jerry Brown as governor, we think. He is firmly grounded in his beliefs and he's very difficult to maneuver off of those beliefs, but we did see some movement in areas of pension reform where he did come off. He's easily swayed by those closest to him. If anyone knows his wife, Anne, please let me know. The Prop 25, the majority vote for the budget. is very difficult for us and for every lobbying organization in Sacramento. It gives the legislature a majority vote to pass the budget or they don't get paid. Well, guess what? They're really eager to pass a budget. And they do do it now on time. That means that not a lot of transparency happens. It happens really fast and it's hard to lobby members on a vote there. So the best course of action we have is to develop those relationships early on, work with those legislators so they know what your priorities are. And Prop 26, while they gave them the majority vote to pass a budget, they still said, hey, you have to pass a tax or a fee, one and the same to them now, with a two-thirds vote. Well, we thought that that would make a difference, but now with Democrats controlling nearly everything, it really doesn't. Recognizing the difficulties and challenges and the opportunities, the LEA created a task force to figure out where we go from here. One of them was to tell our city's story, explain what you all do. We're finding that with new legislators, they don't really know, although some of them came from cities, they don't really know what you all do and what your challenges are. Um, so telling your stories through, um, the media as well as through a new campaign which we've devised. Strong City, Strong State is an online warehouse of stories and profiles of what cities do. And we are using that tool to go to legislators' office and say, this is what Sausalito did. If you vote on this bill, you'll kill these options for them. We're also coming up with a charter city toolkit that should be available in the spring or summer to give cities knowledge on the pros and cons, really, of becoming a charter city. All right. You drive me out of that. litigation. Unfortunately, when all else fails at the legislature and they do pass unconstitutional pieces of language, we do have to go to court. And we feel like that is paramount to us to protect our constitutional authority. We've also devised a legislative scorecard. We really saw a difference this last cycle. One particular legislator who now has gone on to Congress scored in the high 80s here in Marin Forest, while an incumbent who was running for office scored in the low 40s. And he got a lot of questions on why, why he wasn't there for cities. So we've seen this as an essential tool in our lobbying efforts, and you'll see that again. um, Again, we want to encourage talented officials to go through our California Civic Leadership Institute. This is an intensive institute where we say, hey, this is what happens if you do run for office. These are the obstacles. And then this is what happens when you actually get there. It's been a really successful program. We've had former legislators come and talk. We've also seen a successful crop of about 18 legislators come out and go into the capital this last cycle. And they all interacted with each other and created a bond coming in that they didn't have prior. So we're really thrilled with it. There's talk of them creating a local government caucus. Again, this goes to our charter cities toolkit, draft home rule, legislation or ballot measures, potentially. If all else fails, this is our last resort. Chris McKenzie, the executive director of the League of Cities, always says that you have to talk softly while carrying a big stick. And the big stick has been our success at the ballots. Folks really identify with who you all are and think that you're doing a good job. So whenever we run a ballot initiatives. to enhance your job and keep it separate from the state, it's very successful. Likewise, every time we do that, the legislature gets upset and tries to figure out a way around it. So this is still an... consideration and development by the board. Fundraising, which goes in with the ballot initiative. It's very expensive to run a ballot initiative, as you know how expensive it is to run for council. It costs up to $3 million to run a successful race at the statewide level. |
| 00:19:29.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:19:29.77 | Nancy | Yeah. |
| 00:19:30.08 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:19:30.58 | Nancy | Do you have questions? |
| 00:19:31.09 | Unknown | for me. |
| 00:19:31.95 | Nancy | Thank you. |
| 00:19:34.46 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor? |
| 00:19:35.26 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 00:19:35.63 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you very much for coming and sharing. your charter with us and also the residents and everyone who's watching. My question is, I know you work closely with local elected officials and city management Have you also done outreach to perhaps local activists, you know, the groups like, for example, the pension reform, you know, group that's so, you know, at the forefront in Marin? I was just curious if you've kind of done any networking there, too. |
| 00:20:10.34 | Nancy | I have not personally, but many of our local elected officials have. So we're engaged on that level. most often our most effective tool is you all. to be fair, you all are the ones who are on the ground, on the forefront, and they bring that back to our board. So at that level. |
| 00:20:37.53 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.63 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.93 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:20:37.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:20:40.04 | Unknown | One more question, Mr. Mayor. And I know you touched on it, but what are things we can do to support you? Is it just as simple as getting involved? |
| 00:20:40.09 | Unknown | How? |
| 00:20:51.26 | Nancy | It can be just as simple as getting involved. And I think there's real value in attending our conferences, attending our events, meeting other local elected leaders. You find out best practices. I've heard of really wonderful stories of folks carpooling to an event where they start talking about regional collaboration. It happens on that. organic level most often. further building those relationships, you know, you are the league, we are you. It's all one and the same. It's a membership organization and we're only as good as our members. So by engaging calling Noreen Evans and or Mark Levine and establishing those relationships. And I'm here to help you bridge those if you need. But that's how you can best get involved, by getting outside of Sausalito. |
| 00:21:36.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:21:37.06 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:21:37.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:21:37.09 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Go ahead. Oh, hi, Nancy. Welcome. We have proposed two, you have two amendments to your bylaws, and one about taking positions on statewide ballot by two-thirds rather than the majority, and then the other is proposing resolutions by five or more. Can you give us a little explanation? Is there some change within the league itself that we're looking at? |
| 00:22:02.17 | Nancy | We're a very large association. Like I said, we represent 400 plus cities, but our board only represents 50 plus cities. So the power of those 50 can be very strong. Amen. And when initiatives come up and people get excited. A majority rule sometimes can be difficult for a large organization. And it's important for us to weigh in on issues of mutual concern to all cities. So that's where the idea of the two-thirds came from. for the taking on positions on the ballots. And then, I'm sorry, I know the other one, but it's a statement. |
| 00:22:40.95 | Ray Withy | Yeah, it was a resolution submitted to the League, must be concurred in by at least five cities or representatives of five cities. |
| 00:22:45.47 | Nancy | I see. Right, and that came out of the Desert Mountain Division, which is not the best division. They are so contrary to the North Bay Division, exciting at best. They represent southeast corner of California. They keep coming up with resolutions to save tortoises and things that are hard for other members to see as value. So the idea came that if they could find other cities to go on board, then maybe it would be of value to the rest of the community. membership. I tried to be kind. Man. |
| 00:23:26.31 | John Cox | I get it. |
| 00:23:26.93 | Nancy | Thank you. |
| 00:23:26.95 | John Cox | Thank you. you |
| 00:23:28.60 | Nancy | Thank you. |
| 00:23:30.06 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, no, I just wanted to say, I think where the League has added value for Sausalito over the years has been sort of amplifying our opinion to other legislatures. We can obviously bridge the gap to our local folks, but it's sort of getting out into the bigger sphere of influence, and that has been quite helpful on certain occasions, and we've appreciated that. that, you know, from being on a couple local committees here that certainly and that this is where you're funding executive branch of legislative is a very different lobbying effort, as you just mentioned, like things with the CPOC, which is in many people's a disaster area. That's where I think I'd like to see if there's a way to build inroads into the executive branch. And I know that's the hardest part, because those are all appointed, and it's not the same level of responsibility to lobbying groups, per se. |
| 00:24:26.81 | Nancy | We do lobby the CPUC as well as the VOE and many other statewide |
| 00:24:30.10 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 00:24:30.45 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 00:24:33.59 | Nancy | organizations, but our primary focus, of course, is on the legislature. But if there is a specific issue you have, please let me know. I'd like to try to be helpful. |
| 00:24:38.06 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 00:24:43.43 | Thomas Theodores | Well, I mean, like one that's, I think, important to small cities, especially a built-out city like ours, is what's going on in terms of the change of property tax legislation and assessed values of remodels, and that's very important to a small city like Sauslito that doesn't have undeveloped land to... |
| 00:24:53.38 | Unknown | of the world. |
| 00:24:59.48 | Thomas Theodores | So that's obviously one where it's not inside the Legislature's realm. |
| 00:25:03.34 | Nancy | We're on it. I've been meeting with the city managers in Wren County as well as Sonoma County. And as an association, we've been working with the Statewide Assessors Association, I'm hopeful to lobby it at that level. But to be fair, the best place would be for you all to call your representative, and I think I've spoken with your city manager about this directly. |
| 00:25:25.62 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, I think, and we're doing that, and I think this is where putting us in touch with like-minded cities inside the league to get that, some mass together would be very helpful. where we wouldn't know City A is sort of in the same boat kind of situation. |
| 00:25:42.24 | Nancy | Thank you. Thank you. Okay. |
| 00:25:44.50 | Unknown | Nancy, thanks for your update. You had a bullet point that was something akin to redevelopment aftermath, and then that relates to your sort of second strategic priority or goal around economic development. Could you just very briefly say, is there any movement in the legislature to try and find replacements for what was a really good source of funding? |
| 00:26:12.92 | Nancy | I don't believe that there's much of an appetite in the legislature to recreate what once was redevelopment, but there is discussion now with Prop 30 passing in the state in a better financial situation on how they can help with economic development. There are a few bills, probably six to seven, that we're really focusing on that everything from infrastructure financing districts, it's an old tool that hasn't been used much that we're lobbying to bring back and eliminate the voter mandate to go forward with it, as well as bringing back increment funding to really blighted areas and a stronger narrowed focus. Again, the legislature just started their two-year cycle this last January. They just really started policy committees today, yesterday and today, so things are moving slowly, but we are working with legislators and they're well aware. That boat, to be fair, is a classic example of what happens up there. It was one that was taken late at night. And and a lot regretted making that vote and want to make whole on where you all, I mean, even cities who didn't have redevelopment, benefited from the county with Marin City here or partners in their region through redevelopment. So there's a lot of regret, I can say. So we're hopeful that there will be some activity in the two-year cycle on that. |
| 00:27:36.06 | Adam Politzer | Okay. |
| 00:27:38.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:38.69 | Adam Politzer | No. Nancy, I think you want to thank you for coming. |
| 00:27:39.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:41.91 | Adam Politzer | But there is something that you left out that I think is important for our council and our community to know, and that's your relationship with Sausalito, your history, from your father into your own personal. I think it's important that folks know that |
| 00:27:52.97 | Unknown | TO YOUR OWN. |
| 00:27:56.56 | Adam Politzer | Nancy's not just coming down from Sacramento and telling us what the other 440 cities are but her also personal connection here I think it's important to share. |
| 00:28:05.81 | Nancy | Talk about blight. He had a harbor down behind Molly Stone's, but that I grew up at really. I'm told out of my fond memories of being in Sausalito. My sister lives on Locust, she wasn't able to come, but she lives on Locust and Sausalito is a very special place. I grew up just across from you all in Tiburon and still live in Marin County raising a family and much like Adam, think it's a privilege to still be in the area. So thank you. I wasn't going to bring that up. |
| 00:28:34.53 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:28:34.80 | Nancy | I'm not sure. |
| 00:28:34.97 | Ray Withy | Thank you. He wasn't going to let you get by on that one, believe me. Thank you. Okay. Nancy, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate you giving us this update. Thank you. |
| 00:28:42.78 | Unknown | appreciate you giving us this update. So thank you. |
| 00:28:50.95 | Ray Withy | You staying at your sister's house tonight? |
| 00:29:00.38 | Unknown | it. |
| 00:29:00.55 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 00:29:00.70 | Unknown | you |
| 00:29:00.76 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 00:29:00.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:00.79 | Michael Cohen | you |
| 00:29:00.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:01.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:01.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:01.08 | Unknown | it. |
| 00:29:02.68 | Ray Withy | Okay, at this time here, public communication. This is the time for City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. Except in a very limited situation, state law precludes the council from taking action or engaging in discussion concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. Okay, is there anybody that would like to speak to any from the public on any items that are not on the agenda? Great. |
| 00:29:37.31 | Craig Severance | Craig Severance, City Council President, I'm Craig Severance. I appreciate having an opportunity to spend a minute with you. I'm here tonight wishing I could stay and listen to the presentation by Peak Democracy. But since I will have to wait to enjoy the video presentation when it is published, I wanted to stand here in support of whatever it is they're going to be presenting to the extent that it makes an effort to attract input from these citizens of Sausalito. I have just two things I'd like to say that's in addition to my fervent appreciation for whoever it is that attracted them to you or whoever is here who has brought themselves to your attention. I do hope that the agenda that is presented on the website is one that comes from everyone and is not served up by the city as agenda items that you in particular may want to enjoy having a discourse on, but it comes from all members of the community, and I suspect they probably know how to encourage that. And the last thing I want to say is I hope, having had a software company before, I do know that this effort will be met with defeat unless there is a really strong effort to roll it out and really attract a lot of members of the community, including ideas such as if we can put a banner out on Bridgeway to announce the art festival, I think something of this import would be deserving, I know it sounds silly, of a banner with a website on it saying this is your opportunity to speak and to be heard. Anyway, I think it's a great idea and I appreciate having the chance to talk to you. Thank you. |
| 00:30:29.74 | Unknown | over his |
| 00:31:28.68 | Unknown | and, |
| 00:31:50.89 | Ray Withy | Anybody else from the public that would like to speak on items that are not on the agenda? Okay. Then moving along. I'd like to go into the action minutes of the previous meeting. I have a move for approval of the meeting of March 19, 2013. So moved. |
| 00:32:16.03 | Unknown | second. |
| 00:32:17.10 | Ray Withy | All in favor. Aye. Opposed? Okay. All right, next on the item is the consent calendar. Removal of items from the consent calendar matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial. require no discussions, are expected to have a unanimous Council support, and may be enacted by the Council in one motion in the form listed below. There will be no separate discussion on consent calendar items. However, before the Council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar, Council members, City staff, and members of the public may request the specific items to be removed from the consent calendar for separate action. have a move to accept the |
| 00:33:07.35 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor if I may just very briefly you have a additional |
| 00:33:08.75 | Ray Withy | Yes. |
| 00:33:12.02 | Unknown | Item that's been added to item 4C. |
| 00:33:12.06 | Ray Withy | I know. |
| 00:33:15.31 | Unknown | As indicated in the staff report, there was additional information coming from staff Staff has provided you with that information and is recommending that the contract be awarded to Bella Painting. who out of 10 bids received had a low bid of $78,485. |
| 00:33:32.07 | Ray Withy | Okay. Okay. Can I... |
| 00:33:40.44 | Ray Withy | Any public comment on that item? |
| 00:33:45.25 | Unknown | Okay. I move to approve the consent calendar as presented. |
| 00:33:53.50 | Ray Withy | Okay. Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, thank you. |
| 00:33:57.01 | Unknown | Hi. |
| 00:34:01.32 | Ray Withy | All right, now we'll go into business items. And the first discussion will be discussion on proposal for open town hall. Charlie Francis, good evening. |
| 00:34:15.62 | Charlie Francis | Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. My name is Charlie Francis, I'm your Administrative Services Director, and on February 27th, the OMIT Committee received a presentation from Peak Democracy regarding its public participation in online civic engagement forum. It's called Open City Hall. And we have with us tonight Mr. Mike Cohen, co-founder of Peak Democracy, to present the, to make the same make a similar presentation to this full city council. It was OMIT's recommendation that staff bring back Peak Democracy and Open City Hall to the city council for staff direction. Following Mr. Cohen's presentation, I'll come back up. I'll summarize the actions, the fiscal impact, and a proposed direction that the council could consider. Thank you. Mr. Cohen. |
| 00:35:15.43 | Michael Cohen | Thank you, Charlie. Thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here. My name is Michael Cohen. I'm a co-founder of Peak Democracy. I have a background in the computer industry and also in local government. For example, I'm the chairperson of the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board. And through that, I've Part of the experience on that board has inspired me to co-found this company. Tonight, I have a... about a 10 to 15 minute presentation. And you're welcome to ask me questions during my discussion or at the end. And I'm gonna start with a very brief overview of Peak Democracy, the company just about a minute on that. Then I'm going to spend a few minutes on why online civic engagement is becoming increasingly important to building public trust in government. Then I'm gonna go into a few pitfalls and best, and corresponding best practices for online civic engagement. And finally, I'm gonna show you how it works. I have a lot of screenshots, and if you want, I can go live and show you, for example, what Marin County's doing, or Humboldt County, or several other clients in the Bay Area. |
| 00:36:22.96 | Michael Cohen | So our mission is to use online set of engagement to build public trust in government. And that's very different from a lot of crowdsourcing tools now out there. Some people call it clicktivism. which is emerging as more of a tool for activists to promote their causes. So we're very different from those other crowdsourcing tools. We founded the company in late 2007. We've now hosted almost 1,000 online public comment forums that have attracted over 100,000 online attendees. We work with well over 50 government agencies across the U.S. We have very high user satisfaction ratings. And here's just a sample of some of our clients, including in the Bay Area, Berkeley, Metropolitan Transit Commission just launched, Fremont, Humboldt County, Marin County, Menlo Park, Morgan Hill, Palo Alto, San Ramon, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz County is using us for a general plan update, Vacaville also, Vallejo, Walnut Creek, and many more in the pipeline. So that's my introduction to the company. Let me move on to the why online civic engagement? What are the opportunities? The first is that your constituents are accustomed to online interactions. They're already doing it with their friends and family. They're doing it with their business and colleagues. So it just makes sense for them to also do it with their government. And in my ad, in North Bay here, you have a very sophisticated constituency. Secondly, a lot of people feel like they have robust government decision making. It all starts with broad, diversified public participation. That leads to more well-informed government staff and leaders. And that enables you to deliberate in ways that can increase public trust. So it all starts with that broad, diversified public participation. And often the public hearing or the workshop is the most influential, a conventional channel for public participation. It can be the largest. It's often the most transparent and that gives it a lot of influence in the media. But these days, a lot of your constituents don't have the time or inclination to go to these meetings. They can be parenting. They can be working. Some people that are elderly are not that mobile. A lot of people don't like to speak in public. Some people find these meetings very confrontational or intimidating. And in general, we have a lot of evidence that a lot of people with moderate views in your community don't go to these public hearings or workshops. So what you often get is feedback that's not necessarily representative of the community, and that can lead to government decisions that might frustrate people in your community. So what we've been doing for the last several years is complimenting, not replacing, the conventional communication channels with an online component that's convened for Sausalito citizens to participate at their own place and time. No public speaking, no confrontation or intimidation. And we have a lot of evidence, especially in Berkeley, that is very inviting to moderates in your community. So together, the conventional and the online communication channels lead to broader representation for your community, and that can just help staff and government leaders be more well-informed. So that's our objective, augment and diversify feedback. Let me now move into the four top pitfalls and corresponding best practices for online civic engagement. And I'm gonna do this in the context of two approaches to online civic engagement. One is our approach, which we've worked hard to optimize for government staff and leaders to improve public trust in government. And the other one is, again, what you might see out there in social media and crowdsourcing, which is in many ways optimized more for activists to promote their causes. So the first pitfall is losing control of the decision-making process. Many people have the expectation in government public hearings, both in person like this and online, that the ideas or positions with the most support should prevail. Even if that support is not statistically significant, the supporters are not representative of the community, or the idea is just infeasible. We call this the referendum effect. Here's an example in Seattle. The mayor put up a crowd sourcing tool to get feedback. He asked people to suggest ideas and then he asked them to vote them up. We call that the V word. You'll never see that on one of our forums because voting gives people the expectation that the idea with the most votes should win, usurping your decision making authority and government staff and leaders authority. So the top ideas in Seattle were legalizing marijuana and more nude beaches, so he had to shut down that forum. Thank you. So that's an example of kind of losing control, not achieving what you want. So our best practice here is we have software features, content techniques, and advice that allows you to maintain your decision-making autonomy. And one of the ways we do this is, first of all, staff decides what topics to post on your forum, not the community. I mean, community can suggest topics, but just like the agenda on this council meeting, staff and elected leaders together decide what gets posted. Secondly, the background information, again, is posted by staff, and that's often a staff report, so it's not just to take any additional work from staff to post it. You can figure all the options. if you're doing ideation or brainstorming, you can phase it so that you can focus the community on feasible topics. additional work from staff to post it. You can figure all the options. If you're doing ideation or brainstorming, you can phase it so that you can focus the community on feasible topics, not ones that are just ludicrous. And then you manage the whole process. The second pitfall is over influence from outsiders. When you put your online forum on the web, then anyone on the planet can participate. And those people or the next town over can overly influence your forum if it's not done So again, as a best practice, we provide filters for you to filter the feedback so you can focus on your constituents and your jurisdiction. Anyone who posts a comment has to register. The registration includes their street address. Our software geocodes their street address. We also map your jurisdiction. We place the feedback on a map, and then you can use all these tools to filter the feedback so you know who you're focused on. This is an example in Arlington, Virginia. At a minimum, the post, we ask for your real name so we can identify you, your street address so we know your jurisdiction, and your email address so that we can contact you. This is a screenshot from Palo Alto. And what it's just showing you is if I move my cursor over this, if we're live, it's an interactive map. I can see the feedback inside and outside of Palo Alto. I can also drill down within neighborhoods of Palo Alto. So it's very interactive, and I'll show you more of that later. The third pitfall is the web is full of vitriol and bullies. And they will try to disrupt a lot of blogs and Companies and bloggers can delete and ban them, but governments have to maintain free speech. So here's an example of the local Berkeley newspaper. They're banning, they have banned a couple commentages in order to have the discourse be more civil. They can do that, but governments can't. We do all the civility monitoring for you. We also have First Amendment experts on staff now that work with city attorneys across the And so we're stringently compliant with free street rights, all the records requests and retention, all the sunshine, and also it's a very transparent service. That's one reason why a lot of governments like it. So how do we do this? First of all, our software can emulate the public hearing protocols like you see here, the order and decorum that you have right now. We can notice the community in all kinds of ways, email through social networks and posters. Our service is accessible via Personal computers on smartphones via text messaging as well as voicemail, so it's very accessible. We authenticate users in four ways. We confirm their email address, we geocode and confirm their street address, we monitor their IP address, and we also monitor their browser cookies. And that's how we can maintain who's using the systems. And then also in reporting, it's important for freedom of information, not only to report just a forum, but also show metadata if necessary, and also data deleted by users. These are the subtle things that most crowdsourcing or social media tools don't do for you. The fourth and final pitfall is not to overwhelm government staff. Because you're gonna get two to ten times more feedback on the online form than you do in a conventional meeting. And many people assume that staff is gonna respond to each and every comment, even those that are ludicrous. And so that can overwhelm staff and lead to frustrated citizens. So we don't do that. We have, again, software features content, expert advice that allows you to minimize Here's some examples. First of all, the whole service is cloud-based. So all the information technology resources are coming from our servers in these highly secure cages in Texas. So we provide all the servers, all the bandwidth, all the backup, all the security software, everything. Again, we authenticate all registrants, we monitor all comments. If you have a civility issue, we take the lead in reconciling. And by the way, that's key because when we intercede, we don't have an adversarial relationship with that person. They may not like their government for whatever reason, but when we contact them, it's just friendly. You know, we're trying to keep the form civil. Can you remove your profanity or something? And every time, they have removed that problem and moved on. We can focus, we're your help desk for all your community. If they lost their password or something, contact us. We help you market the topics to your community and we also help set expectations. Okay, so those are the four pitfalls and best practices. Let me move on to how it works. I'm gonna do that by analogizing the online civic engagement to your conventional civic engagement. A lot of people consider it to be a spectrum. It can start with general ideation and workshops and charrettes where brainstorming is important. and it can evolve to specific feedback on proposals at public hearings at council meetings where order and decorum is important. By the way, it can also include ad hoc comments. for like notification of potholes and graffiti. That's more of a 3-1-1 service that's easily done with telephones and so forth and texting. So we don't focus on that area. We're just focused on this decision-making process here. And we have two services that are completely integrated for your community and your staff. But one is open-town feedback that emulates the order and decorum of a public hearing. And the other one is open-town ideas, which has the feature sets modeled after the best practices of brainstorming sessions. So let me now move to screenshots here. And again, I've got prepared on the computer also live websites, but I find the screenshots just move quickly if you're running out of time here. So these two, I'm gonna start with just the general idea that you're gonna have a portal. for Sausalito and within the portal you have forums and the forums can correspond to one of your departments or like a project, like a general plan update. And then within each forum, you have topics. So here on the right, this is Delray Beach, Florida. You can see they have several topics here listed. And here in Virginia Beach, Virginia, they have several forms. There's a homeless forum and a budget forum. And within those forms, they have several topics. And these, by the way, many of them are closed. A topic can be open for public comment or just closed and just up there just for the public record. These are specific topic examples. This is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, they're doing a discussion on your vision for the downtown. You've got a lot of images here. It's nice. This is in Tempe, Arizona. They're doing a, getting feedback on what Tempe should look like in 30 years. You can see they posted a video and other staff reports down here. These are examples of comments. This is in Aspen, Colorado. They're doing some discussion on an intersection. You can see people are posting images. This is the county of Salt Lake. Again, they're posting images here, so it's very visual. People can post videos as well and links. This is in Middletown, Rhode Island. You can see that they configure their forms so that everyone's name and jurisdiction is associated with their comment. You can do that easily, or... You can do what Decatur, Georgia did here with their topic on Sunday sales of liquor. They use this feature we call name not shown. And people like Mark Eagle can post their name with their comment or people can post name not shown. Now they're not anonymous because they've had to completely register with us and be authenticated. But this can increase participation by 25 to 50 percent because there are a lot of people in the community who don't want to express their position publicly. They may own a local restaurant and they don't want people to boycott it or the principal of public school or something. So that's just an option you can turn on and off at your discretion. The service is completely accessible via smartphones again, also through text messaging and voicemail. This is an example of our very popular widgets. These allow you to get structured feedback in addition to comments. So you can take a topic and put priorities up and people can drag and drop those priorities up and down. Humboldt County is using this quite well. This is in St. Paul, Minnesota again. They have a topic where people are dragging and dropping priorities as well as inserting a comment. This is another very popular widget. A lot of communities are doing priority-based budgeting. And with priority-based budgeting, this 4500 widget, which came from the industry, allows people to just tell how they would prioritize their budgeting. This is in Wellington, Florida, and this is again in Delray Beach, Florida. Planners love this. We have a lot of planning widgets. This allows you to set up area plans where people can drag and drop them across their community. And you can see, by the way, this here says private here. This is a topic that's under development in Santa Cruz County. It's only accessible to their staff or our staff. And so that's how you set it up. You set it up so once you're happy with it, then it goes public through your email list and your social media feeds. Let me just move on to other tools quickly. This is a map analysis. So this is in San Ramon, California, down in the South Bay. You can see that they did a topic on on 4th of July, and you can move the cursor around, look at different neighborhoods in San Ramon, and then click on it and look at the feedback This is Palo Alto again. They did a major topic on their downtown fountain design that you can move, see outside of Palo Alto all the way to within a quarter mile of it, and click on that and see the NIMBY effect if you wanted to. This is in St. Paul again. You can see there, when you're looking at the maps, you can overlay the feedback on it. So you can look at the priorities across different communities. This is in Portland, Oregon. They created, they're doing a transportation corridor. You can see the feedback inside and outside the corridor quite nicely. Really, they were very impressed with those tools. You can also look at the demographics. So this is by gender and age, and you can click on these and see the specific feedback by demographics. That's popular. This is something interesting. You can create, just like in your council meetings here, you can sometimes say how many people in your audience agree with the person at the podium. Well, likewise, you can have people support other people's comments. And that allows us to do something that Amazon.com does well. We can set it up so that people who supported one comment also supported these. And you can look at it in a graphic mode that allows you to really kind of browse through the comments that are related in a very interesting way. So again, a lot of staff. The staff at Wallenx really love this stuff. Just moving quickly again, there's a lot more here, but I'm just going quickly. These are staff-only reports. So here you can look at, for example, these are cumulative visitors for This is the city of Salt Lake, not the county. and other visitors, you can look at, You have user satisfaction results. You can see these are, again, all quite positive here. I don't have time to go to council meetings. I'm parenting and so forth. So this is for San Ramon, California. These are examples of reports nicely formatted to distribute to the council and to the public or for your public records. These are examples of how we market the service for you. You can see it goes through email. These are QR codes so people can get them through their smartphones easily. These can also be posted around the city. And then finally, this is a way that you, in real time, can watch our software and staff monitoring your comments for civility. So you can see that we look for whether it's review, whether it's civil or uncivil, whether it's protected and unprotected, and that's how we can, again, work with you to monitor comments in real time. So finally, in pricing, There's amazing economies of scale in this now, and we could not have done this company five or even three years ago. It's amazing how cloud-based computing has come down and cost so much. So we can offer this complete service. And things I haven't mentioned, and by the way, the service gets updated every few weeks, so if you have new features you want us to implement, we put them right into the pipeline. Anyways, for the full setup and training and launch, it's $4,000 and it's just $200 per month for the ongoing service and support. And again, that includes everything that we're talking about here and more, unlimited topics and users across all your government departments, even your public schools, some people in public schools participate, and all the ongoing staff support and user support. So that's my fast talking summary of Open Town Hall, online city engagement for increased public trust in government. Any thoughts or questions? Any questions? |
| 00:53:01.20 | Unknown | And Mr. Mayor, I have some questions. Thank you very much. I'm a big supporter of more, you know, public outreach, etc. And I do have a number of questions. So first of all, how is this stored in public records for the future? So let's say, you know, five years from now, we want to see who commented in |
| 00:53:11.38 | Unknown | of great things. |
| 00:53:11.97 | Unknown | So, |
| 00:53:28.56 | Unknown | et cetera. How is this stored and how easily accessible is it if it's stored online to, you know, search specific topics? |
| 00:53:39.68 | Michael Cohen | Very good question. So again, public records request for retention is key. So there's several ways that it's stored. First of all, in our contract, we promise to support it in perpetuity online. However, you can always produce a, I don't know if I didn't point out, all the forums are completely, there it is right there. You can produce PDFs and CSV files of all of your forums. And so that's a digital copy that you can archive electronically and in paper format for your records. |
| 00:54:10.32 | Unknown | Does that PDF include the names of who commented if they selected that they didn't want their name used? Thank you. |
| 00:54:17.75 | Michael Cohen | No. OK. But we have a very simple privacy policy. We're not in the advertising business or the data sales business. Our privacy policy is simple. We will not release anyone's private information unless we're required to do so by law. So if there's a public records request to do that, then we simply provide that information. |
| 00:54:18.17 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:54:25.01 | Unknown | Obviously. |
| 00:54:25.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:35.08 | Unknown | So my next question then is, given that, I know that you ask for their name and their street address, But what if I live outside Sausalito? So I give you my street address, but I'm not a you know, taxpaying resident. Um, Is there some way in displaying comments that you can, you know, tag, you know, business owner versus resident versus special interests? |
| 00:55:02.23 | Michael Cohen | Right. So first off, you can always use our search mechanisms. Again, I didn't show you a lot of this in detail. Oh, no, I know this. This is... |
| 00:55:08.04 | Unknown | Oh no, I know this, yeah, that's right, you mentioned the story. |
| 00:55:09.74 | Michael Cohen | That's right, you mentioned the street. You can definitely look at people inside and outside the community. And you can add demographic information to registration or information like, are you a local business person? So you can capture that information as optional information in the registration process. And that's often important. Some of your topics you want to get people that live, that are business people, not just residents. |
| 00:55:32.54 | Unknown | Can residents post videos or pictures as well? |
| 00:55:35.68 | Michael Cohen | Yes. |
| 00:55:37.43 | Unknown | And can council members get the names or emails to respond to comments? |
| 00:55:42.78 | Michael Cohen | Oh, good question. I don't know if I have the screenshot here, but we have a mechanism that allows government staff or leaders to respond to anyone's comment, either publicly or privately. And that's often useful because, for example, some of our counties have responded to help educate the community that some of their questions, some of their comments were not part of their purview. They're part of the city's purview, not the county. And so it allows you, and often elected people work through staff to respond to these comments, either publicly or privately. Also, if you are doing EIRs, you know, now when you are required by law, you put it out there, and then everyone's got a comment, and you have to respond to the comments. You can use this service, and it makes it so easy for you to take everyone's comment and respond to electronically and produce a nice report. Really, it helps automate the whole process. |
| 00:56:30.76 | Unknown | So when you say we can respond privately, you mean we don't have their email or their name, if they've so chosen. but an email will go to them. Exactly. |
| 00:56:40.38 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:56:41.22 | Unknown | And with respect to, you said that you have folks reviewing emails and comments for civility. Is counsel informed as to those remarks that are removed? I mean, do we have the option of seeing those? |
| 00:57:01.12 | Michael Cohen | Yeah, good question. So what we do is we have a standard stability policy that we've worked out with city attorneys. However, we find that communities across the country from the south to the north, they like to tweak them a little bit. So we allow you to tweak the template. And then our software looks at things and alerts staff, and our staff looks at your template. And then if something is uncivil, first thing we do is notify our point of contact in the city manager's office. And then we make sure that you're always informed about how we're working through this with you. And then you can set up a protocol where they can also notify elected officials. And if a comment is determined to be uncivil, you can move it to a separate page. And that page you can make public or private. And it's just analogous to a public hearing. If I'm disruptive, the mayor can ask me to leave, and I can speak in another space. That's my right, but I can't speak in this space. And that's the analogy on the web. You have a special room page for civil comments, and you have a page for uncivil comments, and you just warn people before they go there if you want to make it public. |
| 00:57:51.00 | Unknown | you |
| 00:57:51.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:57:51.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:57:54.26 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:57:58.39 | Unknown | And if there's a disconnect between the IP address and the street address, can you identify that and can you, is that flagged in some way? |
| 00:58:07.18 | Michael Cohen | Well, the IP address allows us to know where a person lives by general zone, not right down to the street address. But we use three geocoding databases to make sure we figure out where people live. |
| 00:58:20.80 | Unknown | And my last question is one thing I've learned from the installation of the automatic, automated parking system here is that there's just nothing like hands-on you know, demo. first and I was just wondering if there is an opportunity for council members if we could actually, you know, if you have a demo that we could actually go in as a user, maybe a city that is currently using this and perhaps not post a comment but actually, you know, log in and just experience that user interface. |
| 00:58:56.05 | Michael Cohen | Sure. As a matter of fact, I did that with OMIT. because I felt I had a little more time. And actually, I don't know what's on your agenda, but I have on this computer ready to go. I can show you, or I can send you after the season. Sure, after, yeah. OK. You can go on the open Marin, for example, or open Humboldt County, or look at Vallejo. Vallejo did a great topic on parking, as you just mentioned. |
| 00:59:05.49 | Unknown | Sure, after, yeah. Okay. |
| 00:59:14.60 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:59:15.14 | Michael Cohen | Sure. |
| 00:59:15.36 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 00:59:16.39 | Michael Cohen | Thanks for your questions. |
| 00:59:20.50 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, just a couple of technical questions. So as far as, you know, IP address isn't super accurate, obviously, and it depends on the ISP where you get, you know, how close you can get. It depends on who you're using as your ISP and how close you can get. So what are the three databases that you, so how do you say, you know, someone could just say I live on 305 Main Street, and how would you verify that? |
| 00:59:33.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:33.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:33.26 | Unknown | you're going to be |
| 00:59:43.98 | Michael Cohen | Yeah, well, what we do is we make sure it's a ballot shoot address and it's not like City Hall. Thank you. |
| 00:59:48.53 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 00:59:48.77 | Michael Cohen | And And then one of the interesting things about the way we structure the form is no person can have overly influenced the form because like a public hearing, the way you can structure, especially for contentious topics, is like a public hearing, people can comment once, They can't argue with other people. They speak to the staff and the elected officials. And furthermore, their comment is truncated to the first thousand words. So, it's no way for any one person cannot disrupt the forum. And because of that, we're learning that people are therefore can't, don't have, aren't interested in gaming the system. And having now had tens of thousands of comments in the system, no government staff has ever said, we're worried that people are lying about their address. Because it's almost, again, one person who said, if one person did it, they can't methodically game the system to make it a material impact on the response. So I guess the short answer is we can't guarantee that person lives there. But through other protocols, we can limit their impact, so there's no motivation to lie. And that's how it works. |
| 01:00:57.38 | Thomas Theodores | Okay. All right, I'll just leave it at that rather than discuss the technical aspect of it. Because, you know, obviously you could crowdsource and game your system, right? I could go out and pay through Amazon and game that by having people all over the world do it for one cent to post. For 11 cents is what you have to pay to have somebody to post a comment, and then I could game your system. |
| 01:01:20.32 | Michael Cohen | Right, you could, but so first of all, if you were using it from the same computer, we would know your, we have software that notes your IP address and your browser code. So that alerts staff that from the same location, someone's posting more than once. Then you can look at it and it's easy to tell whether that's just the spouses of one home that you can see their comments or if it's a group home. But if you saw someone who had, like for example, if you go to the Metropolitan Transit Commission's forum, |
| 01:01:27.40 | Unknown | You see, that'll |
| 01:01:31.89 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:01:38.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:01:38.53 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 01:01:46.83 | Michael Cohen | I don't know what's happening with the empty center. |
| 01:01:48.08 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, I was going to ask you with the Bay Bridge bolts and all that, what has that transpired in this? |
| 01:01:53.58 | Michael Cohen | Well, so the reason I bring it up is because conventional public hearings are being shut down by... Tea Party people and things like that. And one of the reasons why they're working with us now is you can't shut down these forums, and you can't overly influence them because of the protocols. And so we see there if someone is posting multiple times, and we can tell whether it's one person that has an agenda or just people that may have slightly different opinions from the same household. And again, I can give you references. They're very happy with that. |
| 01:02:07.77 | Unknown | so |
| 01:02:14.76 | Unknown | guys, |
| 01:02:24.12 | Thomas Theodores | And do, as far as the moderation goes, as you're saying, so is it that you have both, you're scanning for keywords and how do you do that for images and or videos or whatever? I mean, there are other, there's software that does that. Do you do that as well? |
| 01:02:36.64 | Michael Cohen | Right, so we have a battery of algorithms now. that we're building up and thinking we're building. We're looking for keywords and phrases and again, IP address, browse, all kinds of stuff. And even then, |
| 01:02:46.67 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:02:47.05 | Michael Cohen | Frankly, every comment is looked at by staff. |
| 01:02:47.44 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:02:49.13 | Michael Cohen | across the country. We have staff. And so we feel like we have a very efficient way to monitor for stability that way. And by the way, that's what we worked on for the first several years quietly, is building the infrastructure to scale this across the country. |
| 01:03:05.45 | Thomas Theodores | How can you, I mean, you have enough monitors that it's not real time, I imagine, on the human monitor system. The software system. |
| 01:03:10.91 | Michael Cohen | . The software's real-time and the human stuff is near real-time because when you're alerted to software, software alert to a problem, people get emails and messages and things they can go on to staff. |
| 01:03:20.69 | Thomas Theodores | Amen. Thank you. And just about your company, and answer what you're comfortable answering. |
| 01:03:26.20 | Michael Cohen | Exactly. |
| 01:03:28.31 | Thomas Theodores | I get this with my company, so I'll ask you. So how are you funded? How long have you been in existence? Are you profitable? All those things that you would ask a vendor. |
| 01:03:30.64 | Michael Cohen | However, |
| 01:03:34.39 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. Okay. So we started the company in 2007, so we've been around for half a decade. And again, we work with a small group of cities across the U.S. to build the software, the algorithms, and the infrastructure to scale this. Some of them include, for example, Palo Alto and Berkeley. And then when we were ready to scale, we started working with an organization called the Alliance for Innovation, which is a subset of the ICMA. Now we're working with all these leading cities across the counties, across the country. And we were able to bootstrap this company. It's amazing, as you well know now, the cloud-based tools, the open source tools and the way we do it, basically now our clients are paying for our scale. And therefore, we don't need outside funding and we're a very stable company. Same co-founders. I don't think anyone's left the company. We have about a dozen people now that are working full-time on it. And, um, As you know, if you're in the software industry, it's amazing how the economics have changed. |
| 01:04:33.87 | Thomas Theodores | Just as a general question, what have you found has been your greatest challenge? Because you're dealing with both crazy government people and people of the public. What have you found besides the technical aspect of it? |
| 01:04:47.29 | Michael Cohen | I mentioned those four pitfalls, those are the greatest challenges and again we encountered those early on and that's what we worked on. |
| 01:04:54.07 | Thomas Theodores | I wasn't pointing at you, Harry, but you go to a person. Right. I understand, though. |
| 01:04:55.10 | Michael Cohen | I understand, though. I can absorb it. In addition to those four major pitfalls, well, another thing that, again, maybe you can observe is that we run the company in a very fiscally conservative way. And the reason why is, |
| 01:04:59.49 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:05:10.64 | Michael Cohen | We started this company in perhaps the worst time in our lifetimes to start a company that sells to local governments. Great recession, we're in local governments, we're not only in budgetary decline, but laying off people. Because of that, we were very fiscally conservative, and just dealing with local governments and their budgets and their economy was a big business challenge. Those four pitfalls were product challenges, I guess, customer challenges. |
| 01:05:36.65 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:05:36.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:36.93 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:05:36.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:39.89 | Thomas Theodores | And you mentioned this earlier, and I'm just trying to get my head around it. So one of the reasons we, I can't speak for the staff, but haven't pushed to do more sort of social media-based communication is because you really have to be responsive. Or because people's expectation is, if I do something, somebody's going to reply to me, whether it's Twitter or Facebook, whatever you want to do. you But here, have you found that people don't have that expectation because it's a forum and you get your two minutes at the microphone and people are well aware of that versus saying somebody's going to automatically get back to you because that's going to create a lot of heavy lifting for staff. Right. |
| 01:06:16.95 | Michael Cohen | Right, well our user interface does not give anyone the expectation that staff respond to each and every comment. In contrast, a lot of crowd sourcing tools do that. I actually showed, I wanted, for brevity, I didn't show you the specific example. So we have a lot of content that sets expectations that that won't happen. Also, here is right here, you can see this is a crowd sourcing tool used in Austin, Texas. Your government will review all of your ideas posted, checked back for the status, and that puts a tremendous burden on staffs. You'll never see that, we would never recommend that. Also, another thing that I glossed over for the sake of time was our techniques. If you're gonna do ideation, So, there it is. It's interesting that a lot of the conventional tools, they don't use the best practices of brainstorming sessions. In a conventional brainstorming session, first you ask for all the ideas, and then you go into a second phase where you start to consolidate the best ideas and combine them and synthesize them. And then, after that, you start to ask for feedback and evaluation. And so, that's what we do. We allow staff to phase ideation so that they can take the feedback, then focus on the best ideas, and then that's what the community can then comment on, and that leads to ideas that are feasible. And again, it's a process we learned through those early days. |
| 01:07:36.34 | Thomas Theodores | And the last question, and I'm sorry to keep you so long. No, it's great. So you got some idea that some people might want to be more involved and use it as a communication tool, and others might be looking at it as a one-way, you know, depending on your philosophy of life and whatever. We had the same problem with our email list where it became |
| 01:07:38.67 | Michael Cohen | No, it's great. |
| 01:07:55.33 | Thomas Theodores | part of the public domain, our email list being how the city communicates outward and we decided to just jettison it and start over again so that wouldn't be sort of now a tool that people could use for their, do a public records request and do a use it, run their campaign through the city's email list. So how do you manage that in this system? Is that something that we can just set policies up front and the government can set policies about how you contact or not contact or use people's information or whatever? That's exactly what happened. |
| 01:08:11.71 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 01:08:25.57 | Michael Cohen | That's exactly what happens. Our government clients set the policy and in the standard operating practice, the emails, database, they're not public. And so, someone would have to go through a lot of hurdles to get the public records to reveal those. And of course, we would never because, again, we're not in the advertising and data sales business. So it has to be done through a very robust and comprehensive public records request to get those. I just wanted to also mention social media. So this completely integrates with your social media. So if you post a topic, it appears on your Facebook wall, goes out through your Twitter feeds or Google Plus. But that's just for building awareness. People then it brings people back into this form, which by the way, looks like your form. You can call this open Sausalito wherever you want. |
| 01:08:45.43 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:08:46.19 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:09:14.35 | Michael Cohen | And within that, and then it's under that controlled environment where everything's monitored for civility. |
| 01:09:19.13 | Thomas Theodores | So you're serving that page but inside like a framework. |
| 01:09:19.23 | Michael Cohen | Yes. |
| 01:09:22.65 | Michael Cohen | Exactly. We can either create an iFrame or we can create a whole separate URL for you. And again, for brevity, I didn't show you different examples, but whatever works for staff. And by the way, it can take maybe an hour of your information department staff time and then the rest is all of our servers and support and make sure it looks like Sausalito's |
| 01:09:24.76 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 01:09:45.23 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:09:45.98 | Ray Withy | Okay. |
| 01:09:46.50 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 01:09:46.53 | Ray Withy | you |
| 01:09:46.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.01 | Michael Cohen | Right. |
| 01:09:48.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:48.57 | Unknown | Thank you very much. I'm trying to get my arms around how this would work, for example, in the city of 70,000 people versus the city of 7,000 people. Do you have any data yet on sort of participation rates for especially the moderate middle ground you're trying to capture information from? And does it scale with size of community, size of the universe that you're trying to capture? |
| 01:10:26.97 | Michael Cohen | That's a good question. By the way, we do a workshop, a half-day workshop with the Alliance for Renovation across the country, and one of the modules is how to online engagement, how to increase participation, the quality as well as the quantity of participation. And so we've done a lot of studies. We've learned that. A lot of times it doesn't have a lot to do with the gross population of the community. with the topic itself, whether it's contentious or not. And sometimes, like for cities, we'll actually launch two topics at the same time. One will get very little participation. One will be off the map, just because that's really what drives it. And we aren't able to, it's hard for us, we're trying to figure out ways to capture the notion of using big data to understand the moderate minded community. And we'll only be able to do that anecdotally. And if I were to just try to do this in a minute, just to show you a very strong anecdote here. In the city of Berkeley, we have a Peace and Justice Commission that can put anything at once on a council's agenda. Before they started using our service, the Peace and Justice Commission 2009 put on the agenda a proposal to declare the Marine Recruiting Center in downtown Berkeley and then want an intruder and kick them out. I don't know if you remember this, but it was a huge public hearing. It attracted people from all over the Bay Area, people from Code Pink, and the feedback was almost entirely in support of that proposal. So the county, city council approved it. Within a week, there was a huge backlash from residents like me saying, you know, and businesses, no matter what your opinions of the Marines, they have a right to be there. focus on fixing the potholes in public communities. So they had to rescind that proposal because that didn't capture. So then in 2011, Peace and Justice Commission put on the city proposal, council agenda to repatriate Guantanamo detainees in Berkeley. Thank you. |
| 01:12:14.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:14.93 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. Again, a huge city council meeting. all in favor of that proposal. But this time, if you want to bring it up, you could, they ran our service in advance of that public hearing. And you could see in every single council district across the whole community, the overwhelming majority of people were against that proposal. And by the way, that feedback was two times the amount of feedback in the public hearing. So that gave the city council the political fortitude to say that this public hearing is not representing the community and we have, through the online forum, we got more of a moderate, response and they didn't approve that proposal. So that's the kind of anecdotes we get to know that this lowers the barriers for participation so that people that are parenting and working and don't have extreme views can participate. |
| 01:12:57.96 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, can I just interrupt for one moment because I know that Mike is sensitive to the time, but you have ample time. This is one of the most important items for tonight's discussion. And so if you want to go to some live feeds, you're welcome to do that. |
| 01:13:08.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:13:12.22 | Adam Politzer | We have about 15 more minutes that we've scheduled for this presentation. So I don't want you to feel rushed. If there's things that would help the council see, then I would recommend that you show them. |
| 01:13:23.88 | Michael Cohen | Okay, so feel free to, if you want me to show anything live, we can move to that. |
| 01:13:32.17 | Ray Withy | Any questions? Thank you. We were on the Omens. Yeah, we were on the Omens. |
| 01:13:35.27 | Ray Withy | Yeah, we're on the open. Michael, thank you for coming tonight. And we had the, Herb and I had the privilege of having a larger demonstration. We got to learn about it more. And we've, I've also had the opportunity to look at Walnut Creek and Albuato and go on other sites. And I'm very excited about |
| 01:13:42.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:13:42.46 | Ray Withy | I'm not sure. |
| 01:13:42.51 | Unknown | but I'm not sure. |
| 01:13:49.50 | Adam Politzer | Oh, wow. |
| 01:13:53.60 | Ray Withy | possibility of having this in Sausalito, that it's just another tool that we're able to with our residents and other stakeholders, businesses and such, and I think it's something we really – will really benefit. One of the things I just want to emphasize, and I think we got this in the – you said it here, but there – the issues – that you offer best practices and a lot of recommendations, but this is also customizable for us. And like, if we want to, just live it to residents and we could have them show all their names if we wanted. We could have none of the names. If we want to, we could give feedback to everything or no feedback. So we can make this our own in terms of personalize it to Sausalito. But you do recommend these best practices, which is helpful because as we go in, now that you have experience, we have, I think there's 10, cities and counties in California or more and of course other places, and we can benefit from their experience. So I just wanted to make that clear that we can make this, this is a very robust tool that we can also customize for Sausalito. |
| 01:15:00.91 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. You're absolutely right. By the way, we just introduced a new feature that allows, if you have a topic, like for example on budgets, you can now go in, do a search on all the budget topics across our network, and then find out which the best ones are. You can even cut and paste them easily to start your template. So we're trying to create a community of people that have these kind of best practices and suggestions beyond just our staff. But you're absolutely right. This is... And that was a big part of our objective, to make it so that it works for each city, and each topic with each city, because it can vary. softball topics or controversial topics, and you might, two now, you can figure it for Thank you. |
| 01:15:40.13 | Unknown | I had one more question, Mr. Mayor. So did I hear correctly that you limit posting? It's one post per registered user. Did I hear that wrong? |
| 01:15:41.04 | Michael Cohen | Mr. Mayor. |
| 01:15:54.49 | Michael Cohen | Well, actually, it depends how you want to configure it. |
| 01:15:54.51 | Unknown | Thank you. Well, actually... Okay. |
| 01:15:58.86 | Michael Cohen | Again, so for some topics that are later stage in which you just want feedback, like you would feedback for a proposal, say, coming to the City Council, you can use our feedback platform, which emulates the order and the quorum of a public hearing, where people have post one comment. They can update the comment while the forum's open. But just like coming here for the public hearing, it basically emulates the public hearing. you can, if you have like more of an early stage topic where you want a lot of idea generation, or brainstorming, you can use our other service. Again, it looks completely integrated to your clients. But this allows people to post multiple ideas. Thank you. |
| 01:16:31.90 | Unknown | Please. |
| 01:16:37.37 | Unknown | Bye. Thank you. So with the feedback, someone can post, make a post for feedback, but we could also set this to where We could allow someone to do a second post. |
| 01:16:49.13 | Michael Cohen | Yeah, if you use this service, if you wanted to create multiple ideas or comments, you can use this configuration. |
| 01:16:55.83 | Unknown | So if we use that configuration, is it still... Okay, all right. So I guess because I haven't seen it, you know, it's hard for me to wrap my- |
| 01:17:07.34 | Michael Cohen | And actually, again, to your users, it completely looks like one. It's transparent. And it just looks like one topic. A lot of it allows me to comment multiple times because that's kind of, it's almost inherent in how you talk. We're looking for ideas for like, and so post multiple ideas. |
| 01:17:09.13 | Unknown | Yeah. It's transparent. |
| 01:17:20.02 | Unknown | Thank you. So the other question I had is if we allow people to post more than one comment on the same topic, then if, because in city council we do sometimes allow people, often we do allow people to come up and share a second, you know, comment, |
| 01:17:36.35 | Unknown | Tommy. |
| 01:17:37.18 | Unknown | if it's new, the new information. And would it be clear to the viewer that this was someone who had commented before and now they're commenting a second time? Can we configure it that way? |
| 01:17:48.94 | Michael Cohen | Yes. And in fact, so you can do it that way. Other cities, for example, when they've had a series of discussions, like for example, Alpereta, Georgia, which is an upscale community outside of Atlanta, they were doing a downtown development plan. So they had just a series of online forums in conjunction with their series of public hearings and workshops. |
| 01:17:49.38 | Unknown | OK. |
| 01:18:10.61 | Michael Cohen | Each phase, they advanced the topic, the knowledge of the community and what they were drilling it down to. It was kind of beautiful. They use the online forms in the public areas to draw, to build consensus in the community, which is our objective. This is, you know, that's the idea, to help try to build consensus and reach the general public interest, not special interest. |
| 01:18:32.78 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. Okay. |
| 01:18:36.58 | Thomas Theodores | One last question. So how does, and I know your, how has this gone with the county obviously, but, and they used it I think in Open Marin, the stream thing. But the, so you have, do people, I can understand it perfectly well in the workshops and charrettes because you're guiding, you know, it's a process. And in the, more of the town hall-ish or commission, the meeting kind of scenario, How do you incorporate that? tip so that actually the comments are, because if someone's commenting right now they're kind of out of luck, right? So how do you incorporate that into the flow of a meeting or feed, because really the whole idea is to give feedback to in the decision making process. So how have people incorporated that into, how have different governments incorporated that into |
| 01:19:11.29 | Unknown | Oh, if you want to. |
| 01:19:21.01 | Thomas Theodores | Do they shut it off the day before or whatever it is? |
| 01:19:23.93 | Michael Cohen | So this is actually, you know, it's a deep dive into a whole new area of Government 2.0. And again, that's why we do these half-day seminars now. You're going to build, you know, whether it's two years or 12 years, there's going to be experts and government staff that know how to do this now. And so there's like three ways you can do this, just as a quick example. One is you can do what I just described with Alpharetta. You can have a series of different public hearings and online forums that, serially, that converge on the discussion. Another one is, for example, Salt Lake City did this quite well with a major Walmart rezoning. You can have a series of public hearings and have the online forum open the entire time |
| 01:19:24.37 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:20:01.15 | Michael Cohen | have sent updates to both the people that are subscribed and also on the website, and it allowed people to update their comments. And then it culminates in, so it's one Uber form. And so there's different ways you can do this. You can also run the form during the meeting, and it can really work well to grow usage. But one thing we would not recommend is it's not... |
| 01:20:23.50 | Unknown | I, I, |
| 01:20:24.27 | Michael Cohen | best practice to have to make the decision at that meeting, because you get overwhelmed with feedback in person and online. Sometimes some communities actually have it on the screen. |
| 01:20:34.99 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, and I've seen that in a variety of things. Well, they put a Twitter stream. Oh, yeah. It just drives the meeting. People are just looking at the screen, and they forget that it's part of, you know, when you leave. So, I mean, that's where we would have to have some sort of a dialogue with whoever provides this service to say, okay, what's the best practice here? Because you can't, you're not going to stop the meeting and read through the, essentially, your comment board, you know, your message boards to understand where people are going, you know what I mean? So how do you? |
| 01:20:36.49 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. It just drives the meeting |
| 01:20:41.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.28 | Michael Cohen | or just look at it. |
| 01:20:41.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.87 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.92 | Unknown | it. |
| 01:20:41.99 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 01:20:42.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:20:51.90 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:21:04.94 | Michael Cohen | So you wouldn't want to do that when at that point council meeting, you also had to make the decision. You'd want to do that when you had the public hearing open and then maybe postpone the decision to a subsequent meeting or maybe you had multiple public hearings. And by the way, while the feedback was coming in online, it's all going into our databases so you can store it and report on it and analyze it. In fact, a lot of staff now want to try to get all their feedback, including what's coming at the podium here, into our databases so they can do all that analysis and we're working on those kind of techniques. That's where this is going. I mean, this is just whiteboards of ideas. And this is, again, it's a deep dive into Government 2.0. And part of our service, we feel, is not just the software platform, but is our work with staff. Our objective is not just to make you satisfied with our service, but delighted with it. And a lot of that is just this kind of advice in how to configure this stuff and make it easy for you to be successful. |
| 01:21:59.67 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, I do have two more questions. So, with regards to the no name listed, does staff see the name? I mean, is it just your company that reviews that? |
| 01:22:12.85 | Michael Cohen | The standard configuration is the name not shown. Again, it's not shown to the staff. Unless staff says we're required to reveal that information by law, then we do. But the standard configuration is their information is, their name is not shown. Now, again, you can turn that feature off and not offer it if you're not comfortable with that. Thank you. |
| 01:22:34.58 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:22:34.60 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:22:35.26 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:22:35.32 | Michael Cohen | It's a simple just click of a box. |
| 01:22:37.64 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:22:41.25 | Michael Cohen | This is Open Humboldt County. They're doing a budget here. Sorry, I didn't mean to hear your question. |
| 01:22:46.18 | Unknown | And with regards to, you were talking about being able to hover over an area and see how many people had responded in that area. So it's not that you're zeroing in on the street so much as And you're saying council would have or anyone viewing, including residents, would be able to do that? |
| 01:23:05.31 | Michael Cohen | Good question. So these tools, this is the drag and drop feature for setting your priorities. |
| 01:23:11.76 | Unknown | you |
| 01:23:12.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:23:13.44 | Michael Cohen | Um, One of the things that we learned early on is this importance of transparency. So when I read how these 63 residents so far have responded to this, this is our inside bar right here. And all this is accessible to your community as well as staff. And that creates this transparency. It allows, again, everyone to kind of build consensus on what's going on here. So for example, if I click on the maps here. And by the way, we can set up your community in all kinds of ways. We can slice it by neighborhoods, by elementary school district. You can see this is Humboldt County by different areas here. You can see the overlays and if I click on one of these areas, I can see the feedback just from that area. So these are shape files that are easily integrated into the service here. Sorry, I'm having a hard time controlling on this thing. But if I go to... Marin, you can see how they Here's Open Marin. They've used a series of maps here, again, that we can set up for you so that you can drill down. They just launched. Here are some maps here. And so they have, this is a round Marin. There it is, so I can move around, I can drill down. Or I can, they have another map here. |
| 01:24:36.10 | Thomas Theodores | So is Marin allowing you to post comments if you're not in proper Marin County? Like, you see they've excluded all the cities over here on the right hand. Right. |
| 01:24:44.08 | Michael Cohen | Right, that's what we learned working with city attorneys early on is the best way is to allow anyone on the planet to post and then allow staff and leaders in the community to filter. |
| 01:24:54.15 | Mary Wagner | Break it down. |
| 01:24:54.93 | Michael Cohen | So that's how you get around this issue of having people overlaying. So this is around Marenza, just a different... And again, some cities have numerous maps of how you can filter the feedback. You know, these... Thank you. Word clouds are very popular too. It allows you to drill down into what's most commented on, and they're all clickable, and so you can click on that. |
| 01:25:22.84 | Unknown | And did you say that word posting, there's a word limit to posts? |
| 01:25:27.80 | Michael Cohen | No, what there is is, again, this is all, so no one can disrupt your forum. If someone wanted to say cut and paste the US Constitution into a comic just to disrupt, you can see it says read more. And so these are all the ways that no one person can overly influence you from. Blogs are known for this. People will post multiple times to always be on top. They'll attack other people's comments. They'll bully them. They'll intimidate them. They'll make it miserable for people to participate. So all these protocols have been set in place to make this civil so that people can be people will feel comfortable participating. Thank you. |
| 01:26:02.45 | Ray Withy | All right. At this time here, any public comment on this? Amen. |
| 01:26:16.15 | Peter Van Meter | Hi, Peter Van Meter, Cloud View. I've been around here in public life about 37 years now. |
| 01:26:24.86 | Thomas Theodores | Still looking good, don't you? |
| 01:26:26.43 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.20 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.62 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.68 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:26:28.05 | Peter Van Meter | And of course we've got the syndrome where you've had the public hearings going on for a year and you're coming up to the vote and the room fills with people and they say, why didn't I know anything about this? Thank you. |
| 01:26:37.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:26:38.09 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. What are you trying to do to us? Well, you know, this is going to go a long way, I think, to help alleviate that problem, which is a classical problem. You're still going to get a lot more participants, but maybe with the right promotion, you're going to get that participation upstream so you don't have that syndrome coming in at the last minute, which just happens over and over and over again. So I think it's a great idea. The one thing I was a little bit cautious about The gentleman said that you can have communication privately from members of the council, for instance, with people who have come in. I worry about the risk of potential manipulation of the process where maybe a council member decides, yeah, I'm going to... send messages out to those that are supporting my position, ask them to promote the position among their friends and maybe influence the process. So I'd be concerned about that one aspect of it, but I think overall it's a terrific terrific idea and of course having been in the software business. I can tell you it's extremely affordable. I don't know how in the heck they can make any money that kind of a price. I mean, this is just amazing. You ought to just go for this instantly. |
| 01:27:48.78 | Ray Withy | Thank you for your donation, Peter. |
| 01:27:55.61 | Michael Cohen | OK. |
| 01:27:55.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:27:55.76 | Ray Withy | Okay. |
| 01:27:56.44 | Michael Cohen | Well, thank you for allowing me to speak. Did you want to answer that? Yeah, I just wanted to say one quick thing. This is an example of a subtle thing that we do. So when you post a comment, then you are allowed to link it to your social media, like your Facebook page. However, a lot of clicktivism tools will then have it linked back to your comments so you can vote it up. We don't do that. We allow you to link back so your social media can come back to the topic, read the topic, and then comment. So it's just a subtle way of not doing this collectivism where people can easily influence |
| 01:27:58.85 | Ray Withy | THE END OF |
| 01:27:59.04 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:27:59.17 | Ray Withy | Thanks, honey. |
| 01:28:29.83 | Michael Cohen | And then finally, one of the things we've heard from elected officials is it's great to do this in advance of a public hearing because it prepares you for that. You don't have any surprises. It leads you to a more productive discussion because you've had all that feedback in advance of the public hearing. So again, thank you. I appreciate your time. Yes. |
| 01:28:48.97 | Ray Withy | and you want to come up, You've got to come up to the podium. |
| 01:28:55.05 | Thomas Theodores | identify your address |
| 01:28:57.04 | Ray Withy | an email in the name of your dogs. |
| 01:28:57.53 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:28:57.64 | Unknown | Yeah. I've read |
| 01:28:58.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:28:58.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:28:58.71 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:28:58.77 | Unknown | On the history. Both. Mr. Cohen, I was curious. I'm unclear still, this is part of the public record, correct? that will be searchable by residents. whether or not they post. Okay. And is it saveable by residents in form? So this will be a printable, searchable public record piece that all residents can access. Right. Okay. It sounds really interesting. I am kind of fascinated by the prospect, and I think it could actually work. |
| 01:29:36.93 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:29:39.75 | Unknown | quite effectively with public hearings in certain topics. I don't know if I'd like Ray's question about the size because we are a small community, and most of the communities I've been hearing about you know, considerably larger. So that's a question, but I think it is fascinating. Thank you. |
| 01:30:00.28 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:30:01.03 | Michael Cohen | You and I will take lessons. Two quick comments. One of the things the staff has told us is that they almost have no public records requests anymore for this because the citizens can do it themselves. And secondly, we do have small communities. I think Aspen is a small community. Ashland, Oregon. Again, if I go back to the map, there are communities that are quite small as well as ones that are close to a million users. Okay. |
| 01:30:26.26 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:30:26.37 | Michael Cohen | Any other questions? |
| 01:30:26.96 | Ray Withy | Okay, let's take it back here for comment, real quick comments. One more comment. Oh, Mr. Cox, you're on. |
| 01:30:31.74 | Mary Wagner | on more than... of the |
| 01:30:33.53 | John Cox | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:30:41.75 | John Cox | John Cox, 62 Marin. I find this extremely fascinating. And it's really- |
| 01:30:48.55 | Ray Withy | You've got to face this up here. |
| 01:30:50.10 | John Cox | Oh, okay. Sorry about that. That's okay. I thought you'd want to look the back. You can't look |
| 01:30:51.84 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:30:51.85 | Unknown | Sorry about that. |
| 01:30:53.03 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:30:53.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:30:53.09 | Ray Withy | That's okay. |
| 01:30:53.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:30:54.65 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:30:54.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:30:54.71 | Ray Withy | I'm going to go. You can't look at the camera. |
| 01:30:57.49 | John Cox | Thank you. Thank you. I guess my concern about this is simply, it's fascinating and I think it would be of great benefit to the city. My concern would be, again, this is not statistically significant. that the danger would be taking this to too literally that what people are commenting on is you're going to get the comments from the people that feel the need to comment. And as Mr. Cohen said, a lot of times you're not going to get the parents or the busy workers who don't have time nor the interest to take the time to do something like that. So that's my only concern would be that it can't be looked at as a viable tool to replace decision-making. Thanks. Thank you. |
| 01:31:23.75 | Unknown | I feel need. |
| 01:31:50.38 | Michael Cohen | We agree 100% with your concern and that's why we try to make sure the user emphasizes this is not a referendum. We try to prevent the referendum effect and I think that if I can show you every page Oh, it says right there. As a public comment process, there's a voluntary statement that are not necessarily representing the population, nor do they reflect opinions. So we're trying, wherever we can, to eliminate the referendum effect. And so we don't want to take away your decision-making autonomy. And that's what you get sometimes, both in public hearings and in crowdsourcing tools. |
| 01:32:25.68 | Mary Wagner | Okay. |
| 01:32:27.05 | Ray Withy | Okay, now let's bring it up here for some quick comment. Do we have any comment? |
| 01:32:31.52 | Mary Wagner | Amen. Thank you. |
| 01:32:32.02 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 01:32:32.65 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:32:33.49 | Ray Withy | And Charlie, would you like to finish it for us? |
| 01:32:37.29 | Charlie Francis | I'm just going to summarize with the fiscal impact is $4,000 one-time only ever implementation fee and then an ongoing service cost of $200 a month. And if the council directed staff to implement this now, we do have budget authority to do that this year. And we would provide a complete evaluation on the project based on participation, discussion items, and resources within the first six months so we can get feedback for how well it's working, the success of it. |
| 01:32:42.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:33:09.82 | Thomas Theodores | Charlie, I'll ask you a question then, Rhett. So did you look at any other providers of similar services I know there are blog commenting kind of services you can do, but there's a lot of variance to this. |
| 01:33:22.55 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. When we initiated the request, there's some public sites that analyzed three or four or five different kinds of public engagement forums. And so before we brought anyone to OMIT, there was a narrowing down of who's out there, and we thought we brought what was the industry best practice to the table in Canada. Thank you. |
| 01:33:44.69 | Thomas Theodores | and read it as far as implementation have you spoken with these guys and is there how much effort from your standpoint would have to be made on the website front to do this? |
| 01:33:58.91 | Unknown | As Mr. Cohen said, it doesn't live on our servers. |
| 01:34:03.08 | Thomas Theodores | but to place their, whether it's an iframe or a serve under your domain or whatever. |
| 01:34:04.45 | Unknown | or |
| 01:34:07.89 | Unknown | I could build an iframe for this in five minutes. We have access to all of our logos are all vector based. And we've already had a conversation about how to the two different paths we could go. Or they can either host in the Sausalito.gov and government or do it within our own website. So that's whatever way we want to go, we're totally prepared to do it. |
| 01:34:24.04 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 01:34:28.07 | Thomas Theodores | Whatever way we want. You don't see any big hiccups. |
| 01:34:32.93 | Unknown | I don't see anything else. |
| 01:34:34.01 | Thomas Theodores | Okay. |
| 01:34:34.39 | Ray Withy | you |
| 01:34:34.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:35.03 | Ray Withy | Amen. |
| 01:34:35.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:35.68 | Ray Withy | Don't hear that. Okay, so at this time here, do we have a... I guess you would say motion or a recommendation for influence? |
| 01:34:52.39 | Unknown | I... Mr. Mayor, I do. I have a comment. I think this sounds like a wonderful tool. I like anything that brings more transparency and more outreach to the community. One thing, though, that I would like to say is that I think a lot rests on the decisions that staff and council make with respect to the configuration of this tool. Because depending on how we configure this, I could really, you know, like it a lot, or I could really be concerned about it. And so I guess, you know, since there's no rush in, there's no, you know, rush in terms of pushing this through, One consideration would be to allow the council, to allow a peak democracy to set up a live demo where we can individually go to a city portal and, you know, test the system ourselves. And then we could also perhaps get a little bit more firm on what that configuration of the tool would be. And then perhaps get consensus to the point where it becomes a consent calendar item. |
| 01:36:17.80 | Unknown | you |
| 01:36:19.31 | Ray Withy | I mean, with respect to maybe a task force or something. It's our decision to see if we want to do a pilot program. It's for six months. |
| 01:36:19.63 | Unknown | I mean with respect to maybe a task force or something. |
| 01:36:32.78 | Ray Withy | I think from meeting Mike at the OMIT committee and listening to him now. And of all the ones up here, I'm the least has the ability for for computers, tech savvy. Thank you. See, I didn't even know that word. But I think this is a wonderful tool, and I really think to do nothing on this would be a negative. |
| 01:36:50.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:37:00.96 | Ray Withy | on us and it's not a lot of money. It's very, very reasonable. And then we can decide in six months if we want to continue or not continue. |
| 01:37:09.90 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:37:10.80 | Ray Withy | Yes, you may. |
| 01:37:11.54 | Ray Withy | Oh, I think that we should implement it. I mean, first of all, I think this is the leading firm in this area. I think all the jurisdictions that are using it. When you go on any of these sites, you see from the demo how robust. If we have any issues relating to it, it's customizable. I think this is very important that we could use it in the ways that we want to. And I think the idea would be that we'd come out slowly and with things that are non-controversial and see how it works for us as a community and roll it out. I think as Peter pointed out, the pricing was, we were at OMID very happy about it. One of the things Michael had mentioned, I think one of the reasons is because it's Thank you. I think, as Peter pointed out, the pricing was, we were at OMID very happy about it. One of the things Michael had mentioned, I think one of the reasons is because it's based on the city size and the population and some of the pricing is. So we benefit from our size in this. So I think, I can't imagine that we're going to find any better solution. spending a lot of time with staff and others to try to look around if this doesn't work, We're moving in this area. We could find someone else. We could always stop. It's $200 a month at some point. We can move over. But I can't see. I think it's the kind of thing we want to move now and move on it. If we had the tool, we could put it out there, but we'll have to wait until we get it in. |
| 01:38:23.48 | Unknown | This would seem to be a really low cost of entering into this, and so why not give it a shot? It's the obvious way to go and I think part of the way we'll learn to figure out what controls are right under different circumstances is to actually just start using it. Because you can theorize as much as you like. You can play with other people's websites or portals, but in the end we've got to decide maybe it's the early stage of a project or later stage of a hearing, we might want to set different controls. These guys offer best practices, from what I've understood. So rather than us trying second-guess Let's use the best practices first and then let's see if it works for us. We give ourselves our own feedback loop. |
| 01:39:14.56 | Thomas Theodores | I think it's important to know where you want to go before you start walking out the door. whether we want to use it as for every meeting or kind of more topic-based, as you were saying, kind of bigger issue kind of things, we should probably get our heads around that first. And either way is, I know druthers one way or the other. But I think we're going to use it for both. But we should definitely sort of decide that before you jump into the pool a little bit. And the other, I somewhat hear what Linda is saying when I come at it from the other way. I really don't want this to become a manipulative tool. So from either way you look at it. And there are a lot of boxes to check and preferences and things like that, and we could debate that forever. in terms of who says what or whether you can post without a name, which, you know, if somebody comes up with a microphone, they've got to use their name. I don't know if that's their real name, but it's a name. So, you know, you can't, the Internet is terrible for letting people hide in that way. You should have to have the same courage to stand up and say something in a public forum online or especially a public forum where your monitoring is after the fact. You don't have somebody there real time |
| 01:40:10.75 | Unknown | You know, so. |
| 01:40:29.48 | Thomas Theodores | deleting something as they're posting it, which is incredibly expensive to do, and you can't really expect that. So somebody posting crazy stuff, you know. So that the ‑‑ I lost where I was going. So I think we need to have a little bit of discussion at a very high level for what we want to do with this and just kind of is it for everything or for just kind of these more public sort of forum-based topics? And then, you know, what do you, as a general rule, how do we want to do that? implemented on it sort of again at a high level, not getting down into the, you know, checkbox why, but maybe some high level things. But I think, yeah, one of the reasons why I haven't pushed the staff and having attended some of the league forums on sort of outreach and social media, it was not, it's not a thing for Sausalito because it requires way too much time and monitoring and because people expect that constant comment back and forth. It's not just a one-way. This is a one-way direction, and that's great. and monitoring, because people expect that constant comment back and forth. It's not just a one-way. This is a one-way direction, and that's great, because we're here to listen to people and not necessarily rally them into a group or... So I think this is a better format than traditional or current social media or blogs in general because it becomes too crazy. It has to have some decorum as the gentleman raised the point. But I think if we tackle some of the bigger issues and before we implement it, then I think we're well on our way to having a successful implementation. |
| 01:42:23.27 | Thomas Theodores | I would say is that you come back, because you're on kind of a test drive here, right? that you come back with here's some issues that the staff identifies working with the company's kind of best practices at this level X and then counsel, do you want to do this on open forum topics or do you want to do it for every item on the agenda kind of thing. So that way it's not manipulated at one level. You just decide whether you want to do it, oh, we think these are high profile things or these are more opinion gathering scenarios for a park remodel or whatever the case may be or just have it for everything and it's open and you can comment on anything so there's no manipulating of what's on this or not so that way we don't debate it forever that someone's manipulating the yadda yadda yadda. |
| 01:42:46.38 | Unknown | It's not just what it's been. |
| 01:43:11.32 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:43:11.50 | Ray Withy | Does staff have direction on that? Repeat. |
| 01:43:16.04 | Thomas Theodores | repeat what I was trying to say is, you know, I think this is a good idea. Let's come back before you, you know, you can, whatever your contract process is, before it's implemented in your six-month trial starts, you know, come back to another meeting and say, here's our recommendations from the staff as to configuration. |
| 01:43:25.78 | Unknown | I'm not a problem. |
| 01:43:35.89 | Thomas Theodores | Here's how it would work for single topics, and here's how it would work for everything on your agenda. And then the council makes the decision based on that. And then implement it in that fashion. |
| 01:43:45.03 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:43:45.30 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:43:45.42 | Ray Withy | All right. Does that give you a clear direction? |
| 01:43:51.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:51.28 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 01:43:52.93 | Unknown | Yeah, I would agree with that to ask staff to provide a little bit more of a framing of how we would use the tool in the rollout. Just in listening, I've had more questions kind of bubble up with respect to and the clouds and backups, et cetera. I just think that that would be a good idea, prudent to to just take a little bit more time and bring it back for council. |
| 01:44:29.35 | Thomas Theodores | I think what I was suggesting is to approve the resolution. |
| 01:44:29.95 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:44:32.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:32.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:32.99 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:44:44.57 | Thomas Theodores | Well, the one here is different than that. So you just want the feedback. Because your staff recommendation is feedback, or is this an item you want? |
| 01:44:47.47 | Adam Politzer | Just because I'm the mayor. |
| 01:44:48.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:53.71 | Adam Politzer | Charles, can I just comment first and then |
| 01:44:57.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:58.94 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, we brought it to OMIT and OMIT, we could have, because it's under, $5,000 is something that staff could have implemented as a, just like we didn't come to the to the council and ask that the police department could have a Twitter account or a Facebook account or the library. We just launched them because we know that outreach is part of of our goal. but because I think. The committee and staff was very excited. a lot of folks in the room just to see the demonstration and spend I don't know, well over an hour going through the presentation. We thought that it was useful to bring to the Council to say, This is a really powerful tool, very powerful company to help us with reputable cities and counties already participating. Again, best practices. Thank you. and I think as Councilmember Theodorus mentioned, maybe go out with some softball items let us play around with it, test drive it for six months. keep the council updated during that period of time. work with the OMIC committee as part of the the guidance and then come back either sooner than six months if we crash this new car. into a wall. Um. and you'll hear about it because you'll be able to look at the feedback. You guys will actively be able to look at. |
| 01:46:13.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:13.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:13.97 | Unknown | You'll be able to look at |
| 01:46:17.90 | Adam Politzer | What color are the paint the library? That was something that Mary Richardson had a very difficult time getting consensus on It's not a very controversial issue, but it became difficult And then they decided not to paint it off. But, you know, I think working with the EOMIC committee, come up with some noncontroversial issues to test drive it. and then come back in three months, in two months, and say, here's where we are, here's some of the feedback we have, and then get a little bit more direction from you folks. I agree with Councilmember Withey I think for us, the best way to get started is to start driving it. Stay away from controversial things, as put out, Are you going to support the Fourth of July fireworks? I mean, something that is not controversial. We'll have to talk about that a little bit because some items, even when we think they're not controversial, become controversial. But I think that's what staff was recommending as we go out in this six-month test drive. and then report back to you. And I think, you know, come back in two months would be, a good amount of time to give us, just give you an update. If any council member, because we'll go live on it, obviously, if any council member thinks the topic is sensitive or is looking at the feedback and says it looks like you Maybe you should come back at our next meeting, then we'll come back at the very next meeting. But I think Thank you. Yeah. That's enough. Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:47:47.66 | Ray Withy | And the only thing I'd comment, I think the suggestion of getting some guidelines, and we don't know where it's going to go and how we're going to use it, but maybe we could maybe and the forum would be possibly the OMID committee of working with staff and just getting some initial guidelines about what we're going to do, what topics, and whether we're going to use names or name, not names or whatever it is. And we can start that process and that could evolve. But I think we could probably start working on that soon and we can run it by council or report to council. |
| 01:48:06.34 | Ray Withy | Start their project. |
| 01:48:13.80 | Ray Withy | Okay, so. We all in consensus that we implemented that? |
| 01:48:18.02 | Unknown | Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I will abstain because I just could love this and I just, you know, I don't. I have a lot more questions and I don't have that first-hand user experience with the demo and I don't have the framework that we're voting on. |
| 01:48:35.84 | Ray Withy | Yeah. |
| 01:48:36.33 | Unknown | I don't want to be against it, but I will abstain. Okay, well, I totally want to get some... |
| 01:48:38.52 | Ray Withy | Okay, well, the turtle will get somewhere when it sticks its neck out. Go ahead on that. Okay, you have direction. Yeah. |
| 01:48:47.05 | Thomas Theodores | I just ask that you set it up in a way that avoids the problem we have with whatever the former version of the wave or whatever it was that came from, so that it's not, we don't have to go down that path again. All right. |
| 01:49:01.51 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Oh, that went to 8.30. All right, let's go. |
| 01:49:05.02 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:49:07.14 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, can we have a short break? It's almost nine. For a lot of people, |
| 01:49:12.14 | Thomas Theodores | here for Harrison Park. |
| 01:49:12.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:15.23 | Thomas Theodores | No. |
| 01:49:15.83 | Ray Withy | Okay. All right. We'll take up to five minutes. |
| 01:49:27.85 | Ray Withy | That's update on Harrison Park. Mike Langford. Oh. |
| 01:49:33.22 | Lauren Umbertus | actually at all. Lauren Umbertus tonight. |
| 01:49:35.22 | Ray Withy | Okay, Lauren and Lauren. |
| 01:49:40.02 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you, Mr. Mayor and other members of the council for having me tonight. It's a fun opportunity to let you know about Harrison Park. I enjoy these types of presentations because I'm not asking you to give us anything or to make any controversial decisions, but rather to give you an update on the progress of work that's going on within the city. |
| 01:49:40.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:47.76 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:49:54.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:54.29 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 01:50:00.47 | Thomas Theodores | We'd like to debate the color of the slide. |
| 01:50:02.73 | Lauren Umbertus | I noticed that the woman was using something of the same motif as I was on that, and I thought, now I'm going to have to go change it. |
| 01:50:08.92 | Unknown | as a |
| 01:50:12.18 | Lauren Umbertus | So tonight I'm going to give an update on the Harrison Park construction. It's a project that's been in the works for quite a long time. We have finally broken ground and have a few pictures to show you and give you some updates on what's happening up there. These are some pictures taken of the park back to before we started. |
| 01:50:32.50 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:50:32.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:34.94 | Lauren Umbertus | Pretty sad. It's a beautiful spot if you've ever been up there. It's a beautiful spot across from the Church of the Sea and it's a beautiful location. |
| 01:50:35.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:36.02 | Unknown | Sad is the best way Yeah |
| 01:50:49.61 | Lauren Umbertus | But it was severely dilapidated. There used to be some old playground equipment that had become just finally unsafe and was removed. There is a park bench there. You can see... Here's the... Laser. |
| 01:51:09.60 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:51:09.79 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:51:09.82 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:51:10.03 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:51:10.26 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:51:10.58 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 01:51:11.46 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:51:11.48 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:51:11.49 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:51:12.96 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:51:14.08 | Lauren Umbertus | You can see here there is an old drinking fountain that was not accessible to somebody who might have some difficulties. The fence outside, just ratty bushes, not a very welcoming park at all. |
| 01:51:14.11 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Oh, yeah. |
| 01:51:14.84 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:51:14.85 | Ray Withy | you |
| 01:51:31.71 | Lauren Umbertus | You can see here are some other pictures inside. It was just grass. This is just as we started construction, so we protected some of the trees. Again, you can see just the fence. This was the exterior fence chain link. Dangerous if you rubbed your hand on it and just not a very attractive park. |
| 01:51:47.78 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:51:51.42 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 01:51:51.44 | Unknown | uh |
| 01:51:51.71 | Lauren Umbertus | when we began this project. So what do we want to do with Harrison Park? The intent is that we want to install safe, accessible, and code-compliant play structures and equipment. We want to increase the accessibility to the park for residents and visitors. We want to provide a safe and open environment for families and children. And we want to work with the community to preserve the intent of Harrison Park as a necessary and important aspect of our city. Here are some examples. dates, important dates on this project. In 1963, John and Barbara Davis donated the land that was to become Harrison Park. In 2002, Lions Club and the City of Sausalito joined forces to develop a plan to renovate that park. In 2010, the Planning Commission reviewed proposed improvements designed pro bono by local Sausalito architect, Don Olson. And in March 2012, the City Council authorized funds to be made available for the Harrison Park renovation. In August of 2012, the city issued an invitation to bid for the renovation of Harrison Park and nature scapes was selected as the general contractor. In January 2013, construction began. And May 2013 is our anticipated completion date. |
| 01:53:05.54 | Lauren Umbertus | What's notable about Harrison Park at this point? Well, the construction and the whole project really has been a collaborative process, including the park and rec department, Department of Public Works, Don Olson, public and private groups such as the Lions Club and other people who have donated money to this park, as well as the neighbors immediately adjacent to that location such as Stan Deck and also the church. NatureScapes was selected as the general contractor at a contract price of $148,713. We've currently spent $44,805 on this project. We do expect that there will be some anticipated changes that may exceed the project cost by more than 10% at this point. Todd Teachout is working closely with the contractor. on this project, much more so than Mike or myself He's very much involved and was very much involved in bringing the plans from Don Olson's of completion and bringing them up to a stage where we could get them out to the public for bidding purposes. So he's been involved and when we come back we will be able to give you some detailed cost breakdowns for this project. So some of the things that are happening that have some impact upon those costs but also have an impact upon how the park will look is we have changed the retaining wall supports on the perimeter walls from wood to concrete. This has cost us a little bit more money, but it will be better for the park in the concrete will last a lot longer than a wooden retaining wall. We're providing fencing to allow for better visibility from within and outside of the park. You'll see a small detail. The front of the park will be a hog wire fence of approximately 48 inches high. and also along the side of the park that borders the rectory. So people will be able to see the park as they're driving up Harrison, and people will also be able to see into the park from Harrison on the front, So it'll be a safer environment. And it'll also be more inviting |
| 01:55:16.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:19.30 | Lauren Umbertus | And we've been cooperating with the neighbors to maximize the utility of the park and minimizing the potentially negative impacts that the park might produce. In particular, the neighbor immediately adjacent is concerned with the loss of privacy. So we've worked on the We've worked on the height of the fence. We've worked on the height of the structures. And we've done a number of things to try to make sure that his privacy is retained. Part of that is we made an adjustment to the overall grade of the park to minimize the impacts of the play equipment while retaining accessibility. We basically took the entire park and we're able to lower it. by a few, by almost a foot and a half, two feet, in order to drop the height of the play structures and we still were able to retain the ramp to allow for accessibility by people with disabilities. So here are some pictures of what we've been doing at Harrison Park. And you'll see here, this is that concrete retaining wall that runs along the backside of the park. You'll see another picture, I believe, of that. We're going to be setting our fence on top of that. this will This will be a structure that will remain for quite some time. And if the fence itself ends up becoming damaged, we can replace the fence as it rests on that as opposed to sinking. posts. into concrete, into the ground, And when those rot, you just have a piece of concrete in the ground with rotted wood sticking out of it. So this will give us some long-term Abilities to maintain the party. As you can see, we've also protected some of the trees that were to remain, done some grading work here. This is the retaining wall as it wraps back around. We've had some discussions about, you know, making this look like it did before, so we're adding some Wood. basically 2x12 or 1x12s on that face just to make it look like it's wood all the way up. You can see that we've been doing quite some grading on the property. |
| 01:57:19.32 | Thomas Theodores | I think the kids would like it more if you just left this piece of equipment and the mud. |
| 01:57:22.04 | Lauren Umbertus | equipment and the mud. Thank you. Thank you. They would very much so. They would very much so. Here's a picture of Todd Teachout looking at this pile of dirt and saying, this needs to move. And there is that moving that pile of dirt over to another spot. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:57:42.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:57:46.10 | Lauren Umbertus | You can also see back here, here's the fence as it's been installed, and it looks great. It's not as dilapidated as the previous fence was, so that's really nice. And what you can see here, what we'll be doing on this length is that's where we'll have a fence that will be shorter than that back fence, and it'll allow for people to look into the park as they're driving up Harrison. When we're done, this is what it's going to look like. |
| 01:58:16.36 | Ray Withy | Where's the church? I don't see the church. The church is behind this. |
| 01:58:17.93 | Lauren Umbertus | The church is behind this castle here. Actually, it's not going to entirely look like that. It's going to be a little smaller, a little bit more low key. What we'll have is here's Harrison Avenue right here. You'll have an entryway. This will be the entryway gate. This will be hog wire that will go all along this length of the fence. So you'll be able to look over it, look into the park. Hogwire fence will also go down this side. There will be a redwood wall. going all the way along the backside as you saw and all the way up to the front here. We'll have a play structure here, a little tower. There's a little picture of that coming up. A little seesaw here, swing set here. And we'll have these are going to be low seat walls for people to use. This is the ramp to get down to this level. And also there will be a little small patio here with a picnic bench. And there will also be a new accessible drinking fountain at this location. This is an example of the play structure. It's not exactly like the picture of the other one that I showed you. But. There will be this type of structure here, slide, climbing apparatus. Here's a little rendition of the seesaw and also the swing set here. And that should be going in close, in about May. The kids are already waiting in line. If you go up there at times, they're sometimes there waiting to get in and play in the mud, most likely. But it's going to be a great project and it's going to be really nice for that community. As Abbott has mentioned a few other times before, the demographics of Sausalito are shifting. So it's important that we have places for those children to spend some time and do it safely and do it in a place where they can't get in. people want to go. So it's going to be a great project and I hope that I can come back in front of you again in May and tell you how successful it went. So if there are any questions, please. |
| 02:00:14.95 | Thomas Theodores | One thing before you, this is Parks Open, Lauren and Mike, maybe, and I don't remember how this falls out under the small park dog scenario that we adopted for some of the other parks where certain areas were off limits to dogs, particularly, you know, sandboxes and stuff, which is a tough thing to enforce, but what I've noticed in some of the parks where that's the case, it's better to try to come up with some way |
| 02:00:14.99 | Lauren Umbertus | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:00:40.69 | Thomas Theodores | there's no one there to enforcing it and then it becomes an awkward confrontation right so when someone's dog's going to the bathroom in the sandbox so and I have nothing against dogs, but it may be there's a scenario here where you can sort You're not going to be able to fence it and why it's not enough room in this particular park to create two areas, but where you provide an area for, you know, somebody who walks their dog and their kid to the park. That's what I see as the most common problem is they want to take their dogs into the park and they're not going to leave them out in the street here on Harrison. So I don't know how you're going to tackle that right here. |
| 02:00:53.99 | Mary Wagner | You're not going to do that. |
| 02:01:15.40 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 02:01:15.43 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:01:15.45 | Lauren Umbertus | It is a challenge. For your information, the Marin Humane Society has been stepping up some regular patrols down at Marin, or down at MLK, at the soccer field, and they've been spending some time talking to the community. And I know that in some cases it's been difficult for them to go and tell people your dog's not supposed to be on this park. And when people say, well, why and who's telling me? And it says this sign that says your dog is not allowed on this park. So it is a challenge. What may happen, and I'll discuss this with Mike, we have this pathway here which is going to be decomposed granite. This whole area in here is going to be wood chips that is going to have to remain clean and we'll have to maintain that until we decide if we want to do a different surface here. In this area will continue to be landscaping area. I believe that we have poppies and other low shrubbery that's going to go in here. So |
| 02:01:42.23 | Unknown | I'm not. you |
| 02:02:19.71 | Lauren Umbertus | Maybe if it's going to be used and we're not going to be able to force it, hopefully people are using this area which is a landscaped area as opposed to a patio area or even the children's area. Mike, do you have anything you'd want to add? |
| 02:02:34.71 | Unknown | Maybe this could be one of those non-controversial issues you put up on the dogs and dogs. This may be one of the ones that |
| 02:02:39.19 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:02:39.22 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 02:02:39.23 | Thomas Theodores | Sorry. |
| 02:02:39.45 | Lauren Umbertus | I mean, this is. |
| 02:02:39.98 | Thomas Theodores | It may actually be one of the ones that we did when we adopted it. This is one of the parts that it does say |
| 02:02:42.66 | Unknown | This is one of the parks that it does say that no dogs are allowed in the park in its entirety. We are definitely going to have signage with the various city rules for the park, as well as playground rules for that. So we'll need to come up with something creative. My hope is that by having the park be new and in good shape, that people will be responsible for their pets and understand that their pets really aren't supposed to be down in the playground there. Here at Robin Sweeney Park, the playground area is a no dogs area. We have a small sign on there. I rarely see a dog in there. They do have a place outside to tie their dog up, but I see the dogs tied outside to the bench and then the children and the parents playing inside the park. |
| 02:02:45.46 | Unknown | that. |
| 02:02:49.61 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:02:50.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:02:50.91 | Thomas Theodores | more. |
| 02:02:51.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:00.89 | Unknown | it is. |
| 02:03:33.52 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. I might also add, and this is only anecdotal, I happen to live next to a park in San Francisco, and there's a grassy field attached to that park, and then there is actually a children's area with play structures and sand, and that play area is fenced off. Thank you. |
| 02:03:51.02 | Thomas Theodores | Right. |
| 02:03:51.41 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. And when I take my dog to the park, you know, the grassy area is where the dogs tend to play, and the fenced-off area is where the children are, and I haven't seen a dog within that fenced-in area. the fact that this is a fenced off park. And there will be a sign adjacent to here hopefully will inform people that this is a children's park and that's why we have a gate. If it's wide open and there's no fence on there like we have here at Robin Sweeney, People bring their dogs and run them on the grass. perhaps a fence will have an impact on making people actively choose to enter into the park with their dog. |
| 02:04:36.30 | Thomas Theodores | Right, or if you accommodate, you know, with an area in the front here that if, you know, if people are going to bring their dogs, I can tell you from Southview Park, it's a constant problem that dogs you know, there's a dog area, but they're still in the playground area, right? And that's fenced off. So the – maybe if we – you know, the signage is poor, what we have now, just the slash through a dog, I mean, what's – you know, okay. You know, it doesn't have any sort of explanatory factor to it. Like, no dogs in the sand area, whatever the heck. So maybe here if there's an area and there's better signage and there's something in the front before you come through the gate that has here's your plastic bag, little doohickey, here's where you go over here, don't go to the bathroom at the party. |
| 02:05:12.38 | Lauren Umbertus | A little doohickey. |
| 02:05:17.96 | Thomas Theodores | Sure. We'll explore that. |
| 02:05:18.20 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:05:18.57 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 02:05:18.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:18.77 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:05:19.94 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, I have a comment. Follow up. Yeah, I would agree on that just because, you know, if people are taking their dog with the children, they will be reticent to leave their dogs outside, especially if it's a small dog. They might be afraid that someone's going to steal. |
| 02:05:20.91 | Lauren Umbertus | Yeah. |
| 02:05:21.19 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:05:21.27 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 02:05:35.07 | Unknown | the little dog, you know, they can't see over the fence. So I would echo that. But it looks lovely. |
| 02:05:43.54 | Ray Withy | And I agree. First of all, it's a very small park. I mean, you put a couple of big dogs in there, and you've now... So I agree with everybody. We should have signs... |
| 02:05:47.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:55.69 | Ray Withy | And I like the idea of the bag being out. before they enter at all. So, okay. |
| 02:06:05.13 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:06:05.26 | Lauren Umbertus | it's a great day. |
| 02:06:05.35 | Thomas Theodores | Yes. |
| 02:06:05.78 | Ray Withy | That's amazing. It may be. |
| 02:06:05.85 | Lauren Umbertus | It's amazing. I spoke with Todd before this meeting, and we talked about a few of the details, and the current schedule is for mid-May for completion. |
| 02:06:15.49 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:06:15.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:15.56 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:06:15.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:15.66 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:06:15.69 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 02:06:16.60 | Thomas Theodores | Let's definitely, when you come back when it's ready to go, I would ask that we have some sort of a thing, and also let's find out when the last time. Thank you. The park has been some efforts to do small parts of parks or say some part of the basketball court here or there, but this is the first one I think we've redone in I don't know how when, let's find out just like the concrete street kind of thing. When's the last time somebody redid a park in Sassalina? |
| 02:06:44.28 | Ray Withy | Okay, I'm going to open it up to public comment. Jean? You can bring it in. |
| 02:06:50.86 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, City Council. I wanted to bring up a name Mary Ann sees. She sat in here on the tree committee for many years. She wrote the tree rags and she kept this part going for years, keeping the dogs out, Keeping it in some kind of shape. It was Marianne. So it would be nice if there were a little tree or something in there. with Marianne's name on it. |
| 02:07:17.94 | Ray Withy | We will address that, and thank you. Okay, any other public comment? All right, bring it back up here. Any comments? |
| 02:07:30.56 | Unknown | Yeah, I just want to thank Lauren and Mike and everyone involved in this. It's very exciting to see this. And I also want to echo Jean's comment about Marianne Sears. She is the reason, I think. I mean, she tended this park for many years, and it would be wonderful if we could do something to acknowledge that. with the park. |
| 02:07:58.06 | Ray Withy | Yeah, and my comment is, I made this before that I had put her name in as far as naming the park after her. I think about... three years ago, I think it is. |
| 02:08:10.96 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:08:11.34 | Ray Withy | So we will revisit that. That would be great. |
| 02:08:14.22 | Thomas Theodores | I don't know if we need to go that far, but I think at the end of the day, asking the family if they'd like to donate a tree or come out of the Supervisor's Lush Fund or wherever the money comes to run, I don't care, to put in there and note the fact that she put such a lot of hard work into and gave back community in a lot of ways. |
| 02:08:34.40 | Ray Withy | Okay. Lauren, thank you very much. Mike. |
| 02:08:34.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:34.59 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:08:34.61 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:08:38.47 | Unknown | You're welcome. |
| 02:08:38.94 | Ray Withy | Okay. I think we get... Next on it is Community Development Department Progress Report. Jeremy? |
| 02:08:49.54 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 02:08:50.10 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 02:08:58.62 | Ray Withy | It's doggy dog out there. Watch it. |
| 02:09:05.86 | Unknown | Mayor, members of council, I am here to present my periodic progress report on the activities of the Community Development Department, the Building Division, and the Planning Division. |
| 02:09:22.68 | Unknown | First, just a quick listing of the various commissions and committees that are staffed by the Community Development Department. We have our city council plus our four standing committees. And this past year, we've had three ad hoc committees, the Housing Element Task Force, the ADU, the Accessory Dwelling Unit Working Group, as well as a Planning Commission subcommittee. The report I'll be providing to you this evening covers a 12-month period from March of last year to February, March of this year. There will be 12 words. So. So, sorry. So. Initially I'd like to review some highlights. The planning division has been active in the past 12 months. Obviously the largest of these projects is the housing element and quickly run through some to refresh your memories on the activities that were part of the housing staff's work on the housing element. We had some housing element task force meetings in the spring, followed by a planning commission meeting and eventually city council authorization of submittal of the draft housing element to the Department of Housing and Community Development. In August of this last year, HCD, the Housing and Community Development, issued their conditional letter for certification of the housing element. Staff prepared the environmental review of that document. The Planning Commission held hearings on the environmental review document as well as the general plan amendment for adoption of the housing element, followed by hearings by the city council, culminating in eventual approval of the general plan amendment, and then the State Department of Housing and Community Development, to our great delight, certified our housing element. |
| 02:10:52.71 | Unknown | last week. |
| 02:11:30.75 | Unknown | Then with the accessory dwelling unit regulations, that being the first of our implementation measures of the housing element, we had the accessory dwelling unit working group citizen member Ray Withey on that as well as others. They held 11 meetings in the spring of last year. And then in the fall, the Planning Commission and City Council held hearings on the ADU regulations, eventually culminating in adoption of those regulations and integration into our zoning ordinance. At the beginning of this year, staff mailed postcards to every property owner, every residential property owner in town, notifying the property owners of the two programs that are in effect. the amnesty ADU program and as well as the program for new ADU permits. We have approved three new ADU permits and we have nine amnesty applications that are in the process. And we even got two of those we received today. So there is a little buildup, it took a little buildup, a little time for property owners to become engaged with staff. with their designers or architects on these amnesty and new ADU applications, but they are becoming involved and so far it's looking to be a very successful program. Looking at the Department of Veterans Affairs machine shop, the VA machine shop, the Planning Commission and HLB nominated the machine shop to the local historic register last spring. In September, the city council placed the machine shop on the local historic register. In January of this year, city staff met with the VA representatives and expressed concern about the deteriorating condition of the building. That was followed up by meetings with Vice Mayor Leone and city staff with Congressman Huffman on the project. And then early last month, the council appointed an ad hoc committee to work with staff to continue preservation efforts for the building. And then staff this week has signed a contract with a consultant to prepare the nomination papers to nominate the building on the National Register. And we're anticipating that that is going to be scheduled to go forward to the state this coming August. Moving over to the neighborhood historical study, this was initiated as well as part of the work on the priority calendar and also, but it's been partially funded, for the majority funded by a grant we received from the State Office of Historic Preservation, a $12,500 grant. retained a consultant to assist us in the preservation or in the preparation of this neighborhood historical study. He held a workshop in February and then a draft of the study is anticipated to be out in May and then over the summer and into the fall, the Historic Landmarks Board and the Planning Commission will be reviewing that study and eventually be coming to the City Council for your review and acceptance. Next is the historic preservation regulations. The purpose of this is to update our regulations for the protection and preservation of historic resources. We will be, the topics that are going to be part of this study will be to update the procedures for placing sites on our local historic register, updating our procedures and criteria for review of projects involving historic resources, and procedures for ensuring that property owners maintain properties that have historic values. We will be retaining a consultant for this, and we anticipate bringing forward a recommendation of that consultant to you in May. Moving over to Plaza Vena Del Mar, the Planning Commission approved a design review permit for that in the fall, and the council accepted that as property owners accepted that in November, and then last month you issued a contract for construction of the Plaza Vena Del Mar accessibility improvements. Smoking regulations, a workshop was held in May of last year in coordination with the county staff, county environmental health staff, and then in July, |
| 02:16:21.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:16:32.76 | Unknown | The Council held public hearings on an ordinance to regulate Thank you. smoking in multifamily residences, public streets, parks, and outdoor dining areas and other locations in the city. So that's the highlights of the planning division in the past 12 months, moving over to the building division. In September, we instituted a concurrent plan check process. I briefly described this before to the Council. The shift is we are now requiring more copies of plans when an applicant submits their plans so that all five divisions that are reviewing the plans can do it concurrently, the building division, the planning division, the engineering, sewer, and fire. Thank you. Those comments from those five entities, five divisions, staff, they have ten working days to provide their comments on the first go-around. All those comments go back to the architect, the architect, or the designer, and has the whole set of those comments to be able to adjust their plans to. They resubmit with their changes bubbled, so it's sufficient for our staff to look at them. And our staff then has five working days as opposed to ten working days on the first go-around, five working days on the second and subsequent cycles to provide their comments back. We have also instituted an in-house review. |
| 02:18:02.87 | Thomas Theodores | Five days to review something, that's incredibly long time. |
| 02:18:05.23 | Unknown | Well, we're working on getting it to more. But right now we're... That's very quick is my point. We're working. I know you were saying that tongue-in-cheek. |
| 02:18:10.87 | Thomas Theodores | Very quick is my point. |
| 02:18:16.47 | Unknown | On the second item, On the second item, we've instituted an in-house review and approval process for minor, non-structural kitchen and bath remodels, and as well as laundry room remodels. Before we would typically send these out, now our permit technician has been trained to handle those, hopefully on a one-day basis, but on a worst-case basis, an overnight basis to be able to turn those around. on accessibility training our building inspector received a year and a half ago through the public works department we received accessibility training to keep polishing our building inspector skills. He attended a four day training at the beginning of this year to enhance his skills on the federal and state regulations regarding accessibility issues. and there is no shortage of accessibility complaints that we have to investigate, and so he is using those skills for that. We are constantly updating and reviewing our counter brochures. We also are in the process of conducting a review of our building division fees. Currently, most of our building division fees are based on the valuation of one's project. And we're looking at shifting over to a fee system that is based on the amount of time that it takes the inspector or the staff to conduct that review. A simple example, it does not take any longer to conduct a review of a kitchen with a marble countertops as opposed to four micro countertops. The valuation system, the valuation based system obviously has a greater charge for the applicant with the marble countertops. |
| 02:20:16.22 | Unknown | And then in terms of our procedures for building permits, we are... regularly receive suggestions from the public on how we can improve our procedures, and we take these comments seriously, and we discuss these, the pertinent ones, at our regular community development department staff meetings. a list of the public service activities that we at the Community Development Counter are engaged in. We use a variety of communication devices to get the word out to our citizens and business owners on the types of services we offer and the types of hearings that are coming up. We issue a variety of non-planning or building permits, our business licenses, occupational permits, and temporary parking permits. And then we also get a great variety of questions. And those that stump us, we shift over to the library because we know we have great reference librarians there who like challenges. |
| 02:21:17.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:21:17.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:21:24.17 | Unknown | 22 meetings were held by our Planning Commission in the past 12 months. Obviously, the largest portion of our permits are the design review permits, including residential, commercial, and some public projects. And then this year we have several zoning ordinance text amendments, the accessory dwelling and unit regulations that I mentioned, the short-term vacation rental regulations for the Americas. Zoning ordinance text amendments, the accessory dwelling unit regulations that I mentioned, the short-term vacation rental regulations for the America's Cup, and then the guardrail regulations that the council looked at last fall for streamlining the review and approval process for traffic safety guardrails. Our Historic Landmarks Board held 26 meetings. We have four members of our five-seat Historic Landmarks Board are very hands-on. They work on a very hands-on manner with applicants, conducting site visits and reviewing those projects to make sure that they comply with the historic design guidelines for those projects which are in our downtown historic district. Or when conducting 50-year reviews for any buildings or structures that are over 50 years old, our Historic Landmarks Board review those projects to see if those structures have historic significance. and if they do, the HLB makes recommendations to the decision makers on aspects or conditions that can be incorporated into the decision making process to retain those significant historic features. Our Trees and Views Committee had eight meetings this year. They made recommendations for the replacement trees in the Bank of America Plaza on the the The enforcement procedures, these were reviewed by the Trees and Views Committee to enhance the procedures to notify property owners of violations for removal, unpermitted removal of trees on their properties. Our business advisory committee meets on a monthly basis. They spent a considerable amount of attention on marineship issues. The types of issues that they were looking at included the level of the type of infrastructure that is there and the condition of the infrastructure, the land use planning activities in the marineship, and the effects of sea level rise on the marineship. in terms of the funding options that the BAC reviewed, business improvement district options as well. and the effects of sea level rise on the Marin ship. In terms of the funding options that the BAC reviewed, business improvement district options, as well as options to get transportation improvement funding from TAM. |
| 02:24:27.17 | Unknown | The Housing Element Task Force I mentioned reviewed the draft housing element and made recommendations to the Planning Commission and City Council last spring. Our Planning Commission subcommittee, which I briefly mentioned earlier, I think, is a two-member subcommittee of Chair Cox and Commissioner Stan Baer, and the meetings are regularly attended by Michael Rex. The purpose of this committee which is established by the Planning Commission is to take a look at the regulations that we currently have in place and how they might be able to be improved to retain parcels in the multifamily zones for multifamily uses and to minimize the use of those properties for McMansions. And so the McMansions aspect is on the first sub-bullet, discourage new large single-family residences on multifamily parcels. And then secondarily, or in addition to discourage the conversion of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes into single family residences, this is part of the implementation of our housing element. resource of our housing inventory. We want to make sure we retain that inventory for the purpose it's intended to provide housing for the number of families and households we have in the city. And then lastly to encourage the full use of these parcels which are designated for multifamily uses for multifamily uses rather than for single-family uses. So the committee is meeting about every three weeks right now. It's been re-initiated with the new year. We anticipate the subcommittee will complete their work in the next couple of months, and then their work, their recommendations will go on to the Planning Commission. The Legislative Committee may wish to review the draft regulations and eventually the draft regulations will be moving its way up to your City Council as a zoning ordinance amendment for your review and hopefully approval. |
| 02:26:37.48 | Unknown | of the government. |
| 02:26:55.77 | Unknown | On the... Upcoming priorities, we have had some staffing changes recently. Our associate planner, Lily Shinsingh, was reassigned to the administrative department as an administrative analyst. And then our assistant planner, Allison Thornberry, a Seth, went on maternity leave beginning this week. So we have retained a contract planner. What? |
| 02:27:27.71 | Thomas Theodores | What did she have, boy or girl? There's a dog. |
| 02:27:30.17 | Unknown | There's a daughter. She's scheduled for a daughter. |
| 02:27:30.85 | Thomas Theodores | Well, |
| 02:27:34.56 | Thomas Theodores | So she took lead before she didn't try to max go to the end, as they say. |
| 02:27:37.40 | Unknown | Yeah. Correct. |
| 02:27:43.24 | Unknown | So we have retained a contract planner who started last week. His name is Rafael Miranda, and he is handling counter duty and also processing planning permits, and he'll be handling projects going to the Planning Commission. |
| 02:27:58.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:27:58.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:27:58.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:28:02.24 | Unknown | Our upcoming priorities in the Planning Division include Oops. |
| 02:28:11.27 | Unknown | moment here. |
| 02:28:11.89 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 02:28:24.51 | Unknown | So we have our |
| 02:28:29.95 | Unknown | Our council liaisons of Councilmember Withy and Councilmember Theodore are working with staff to identify a scope of work and priorities on the Marinship specific plan following conclusion of their direction working with staff. Staff will be bringing that direction to the City Council for review and direction. The earlier mentioned that the planning division fees are to be updated. We'll be bringing those forward in the spring. The Marine Economic Forum study, this is a study that's being spearheaded by the Business Advisory Committee, part as a follow-on to the study a little over a year ago, the Community and Economic Development study that was prepared by Rob Eiler, and that's focusing on Looking at business clusters which could make Sausalito more competitive and also retaining marine-oriented businesses in the marine ship. The fourth bullet with the zoning ordinance amendment, that's the one that the Planning Commission subcommittee is working on. I previously mentioned the Machine Shop National Register moving forward to the State Historic Resources Commission in August, the Neighborhood Historic Study, which is underway. And then the last item, the Downtown Historic District National Register nomination That's going to be a tough project. And we will be retaining a consultant for assistance on that. The consultant will be conducting a community outreach on that and updating the historic surveys for the properties in the downtown area. And then the tough part is for the National Register nomination, we need to get a written authorization from a majority of the 75 property owners in the downtown area in order to move forward with that National Register nomination. After we get that, then the consultant will be moving the paperwork forward to the state who is the one who administers the National Register nomination, the National Register on behalf of the Department of Interior. The upcoming priorities in the building division, the building division fees. And then late this year we will be bringing forward adoption of the 2013 construction codes, the building code, the plumbing code, electrical code, mechanical code, along with our local amendments. And then we'll be also working with the fire district on the local amendments for the 2013 fire code. We are, as an ongoing process, we will continue to be looking at our current plan check process to make sure that that is just as sharp as we can have it. And then I always like to give a plug for filling three vacant seats we have on the Building Board of Appeals. And those are the highlights of the upcoming priorities for the billing division. Moving over to code enforcement. First, we have a large variety of code enforcement activities that we've been working on, but there's a couple I wanted to call out here that we spent a considerable amount of time on. The first is the Patterson storage containers. These are an office trailer, a construction equipment, and storage containers on two residentially zoned vacant parcels in the Wolfback estate subdivision. We followed the three-step process of a courtesy notice, compliance order, administrative citation, and lo and behold, as soon as we issue the administrative citation, we begin to get significant progress and that has been resolved. The second item is the site at 109 Cloud View Trail. This is a property that has a single parking space whereas two parking spaces are required. We went through the standard process of a courtesy notice compliance order administrative citation. The property owner in this case objected and requested a hearing by an outside hearing officer on the issuance of the administrative citation. That hearing was held last spring. The hearing officer concluded that the staff had properly issued that citation. Moving over to the Seahorse Restaurant, this is a sign that was installed without permits. It's an illuminated sign in the shape of a seahorse. We've went through, again, went through the three-step process, but this time the property owner or the business owner was not responding to us, so we issued, in addition to the first $100 citation, the second $200 citation, we issued the third $500, the third citation, which is a $500 citation. At that time, they came in and requested a hearing by the hearing officer. That hearing was held early last week and we anticipate that the hearing officer will render his decision within 30 days. Then moving over to the garbage collection, this was initiated following the Council's review of the composting process. addition of by Bay Cities and effects that that may have on billing rates and the interest by Bay Cities and the council to keep any increase in billing rates minimized as much as possible. And one of the options that was identified was to make sure that all business owners and residential property owners in town who are required to subscribe to have collection service, do have collection service. So we've got a list, staff got a list from Bay City, so some 276 business owners, property owners, who did not have waste service. Weiled courtesy notices to those, and of course, you can imagine that generate, some people paid attention to those, and that generated a number of phone calls and contacts with staff. In going through that, those contacts, some individuals notified, yes, we have have since we got your notice, we have started collection. Others had met the criteria to be exempt from service, and then we have a large batch that have not gotten service. So we are in the early steps of initiating or preparing the second notices, these will be the compliance orders. to those property owners and business owners who do not have garbage collection service. |
| 02:36:07.24 | Unknown | Then another project that we spent a considerable amount of time on is Bridgeway Marine Corporation. This was on what we call the Peninsula Parcel. It's a vacant parcel at the northeast corner of Locust and Humboldt, where, as you can see in the picture on the left, a collection of vehicles, boats, construction equipment, storage containers, and miscellaneous debris had accumulated. And we understand the property owner there may have likely been collecting rent on many of those. We issued, went through the three-step process again and earlier this year we got to the point where you see the picture on the right. three-step process again. And earlier this year, we got to the point where you see the picture on the right. And something that has helped, we're very hopeful to keep the condition that we see on the right is the council's authorization and direction to the Public Works Department to install bollards so the vehicular access to this property is no longer available. And we're also alerting In dealing with the different property owners, we see that it's really the administrative citation, not so much the courtesy notice on some of these problem property owners, it's really the citation that motivates them to come into compliance. And so we have a number of other issues with Bridgeway Marine that we are now, we can apply this lesson to, for this experience, too. |
| 02:37:52.34 | Unknown | a table of the different types of code enforcement actions. This was in your staff report. And so that's the conclusion of our staff report. We have lots of exciting work in the community development department in front of us, and we're looking forward to... Carrying that through that yeah coming here questions. Yes |
| 02:38:18.06 | Unknown | Yes, I have a question. Thank you. On your slide that was upcoming priorities. |
| 02:38:32.11 | Unknown | Yes. So upcoming priorities suggest that they're on the horizon, but I know that some of these are you know, they have meetings right now where staff is involved. And so our and some of them caught my eye. The Marinian specific plan was new. It was something the council majority put in place, I think two council sessions ago. Is that subject to the Brown Act? Is it noticed and everything? |
| 02:39:07.77 | Unknown | Well, the partnership student plan, it was on the priority calendar. |
| 02:39:08.14 | Unknown | I mean, meetings, I'm assuming. |
| 02:39:14.94 | Unknown | And so that's why the staff brought it to the council |
| 02:39:16.50 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:39:19.62 | Unknown | Right, Jeremy, I'm sorry. I'm not challenging the fact that you're working on it. Not at all. I mean, I obviously disagreed, but that's... |
| 02:39:24.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:24.12 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:39:28.39 | Unknown | That's okay. My question is, have they met yet? Have Councilmember Withey and Councilmember Theodores, have they met yet on the topic? That was my question. |
| 02:39:29.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:34.89 | Adam Politzer | Chairman Iy. |
| 02:39:39.58 | Adam Politzer | that we're going to be doing. That was my question. Right, so two answers. One is, but, Our Community Development Director mentioned the BAC has had discussions about the Marin ship and those are noticed in public meetings and then the Council at least one meeting ago Uh, authorized Councilmember Theodora Sinwuthi to meet with staff to create a framework and bring back to council and those are working group meetings so they are not governed by the Brown Act. with the recommendation that the council was discussing at its last meeting was creating a task force which would then follow the notice in public meetings similar to the housing element. Task Force. So right now we're just trying to at the 25,000 foot level of how do we move this discussion forward and then bring that back to the council and have an open and public discussion at that point in time with potential recommendations. |
| 02:40:42.98 | Unknown | Okay, so just to summarize then, there have been meetings on this Marinship specific plan, but they have not been noticed and they're not subject to the Brown Act because they are framed as they are described as working meetings. And right now they're creating a framework that will be brought back to the council for review. Is that correct? |
| 02:41:03.47 | Adam Politzer | There's been one meeting. |
| 02:41:05.07 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:41:05.59 | Adam Politzer | and the rest of what you stated was correct. |
| 02:41:08.68 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:41:09.10 | Adam Politzer | The committee is working on building the framework and will bring that back at the May 7th Council meeting. |
| 02:41:14.65 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. I just wanted clarity on that in terms of of process. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:41:21.81 | Mary Wagner | Any other questions? |
| 02:41:26.38 | Unknown | Jeremy, thank you for that report. Quick question on the building division. You... put a lot of data in your staff report on over a number of years, inspections, number of permits issued, number of inspections. I was struck by the number of inspections per day average, and it sort of, I couldn't see any trends, it sort of bobbed up and down over the different years. But I was just struck that it could be anywhere from 12 to 18 inspections a day. Should we be surprised about that? How does that compare with the best practices of number of inspections an inspector would do on a daily basis? How does it compare with other jurisdictions? Is that sort of par for the course? Is that about right or are we asking our inspector to do more inspections than would be an industry standard? |
| 02:42:34.22 | Unknown | Certainly on those 18, average 18 per day, which of course is average, so there can be days that there are 20 plus. And then for each inspection, there's follow-up of entering the findings of that inspection into our software so that it is retained. And then the next day, the whole cycle starts again. So it is as though you can Thank you. defer some of this work till the following day because the cycle starts again. On those high days and those high months, which are generally the spring through the summer, our inspector is working overtime. So it's at those times also that some of the other plan check that the inspector is capable of doing but does not have the time to do. So in turn, those activities, those plan checks are not done in-house, but instead are sent over to CSG, which you've got the mail time going there, and the overnight mail going there, and the overnight mail coming back. And then it. it goes through their process, which is a five or a ten day So that extends those plan checks take longer than if we had been able to handle those locally. So the system is straining at times, but other times it backs off a little bit. So we have to be very efficient with our time. |
| 02:44:19.60 | Thomas Theodores | So I mean, what that points towards, |
| 02:44:22.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:22.51 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:44:22.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:22.67 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 02:44:22.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:24.16 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. That, you know, when you come back with your free schedule, this may be something you reexamine as to, you know, maybe you have some other means, whether you have one full-time and one part-time or whatever, however you want to structure it, to, you know, make sure that Kenneth isn't, or whoever the person is, isn't overwhelmed on those peak days and that people are charged, you know, the right. |
| 02:44:48.02 | Unknown | The challenge on that is, I don't know if tomorrow's gonna be a peak day or not. I know, I know that's the problem. |
| 02:44:52.17 | Thomas Theodores | I know. I know that's the problem. You're so... |
| 02:44:57.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:58.21 | Thomas Theodores | Well, I mean, you know what your capacity is on average. You know, it's not right to expect him to be able to do a full regular, it depends on the project, right? And not every inspection is not the same, obviously. But to expect him to do a five-minute, you know, actual physical presence before, you know, it's a drive. If you're averaging two an hour, uh, And, you've got to drive to wherever the other place is, park, walk to get where you're going to go. You're leaving. No wonder you see him. He's crazy. So he's like, he should have the siren that he has on the top actually going all the time. So I mean, that's something to, and how you charge for that may be another way to do it. Because people expect. |
| 02:45:26.12 | Unknown | See you. Yeah. |
| 02:45:26.97 | Unknown | So, you know, he's like, Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:45:40.37 | Thomas Theodores | Some contractors are better at lining up their inspection far in advance of when so that you can plan for it and some call and one it the next day, right, because they don't want to stop their flow. maybe there's a way to accommodate that. If somebody really is in that situation, hey, I'll charge you, but I've got to bring Fred from CSG down here and he's going to cost you X if you want it tomorrow. |
| 02:45:57.92 | Unknown | Well, at times we have, on certain projects that have requested, we have contracted out for inspections on Fridays in order to keep the project moving. They pay a premium for that, but they say, you know, even though it's a three-hour minimum for that, in order to keep our project moving, we're willing to pay it. And we're willing, and we as city staff, we're very willing to accommodate that. |
| 02:46:15.32 | Unknown | with. |
| 02:46:28.17 | John Cox | I might have a couple questions. Go ahead. |
| 02:46:30.71 | Thomas Theodores | So thanks, and I thought this was kind of interesting because those building permits are certainly not economic indicators that you always hear on the news. Oh, they're external building, and this is not any way to gauge, we have no way to, looking back at these trends, they don't indicate anything. So it's kind of interesting to see that our community works that way. Sounds about right. Yeah, and just to point out and clarify and sort of back up a little bit on the fee-based system, you know, the city tried to move to evaluation-based, away from time materials-based planning charges, and we didn't have the right accounting software in place. Thankfully, Charlie and you have worked together. |
| 02:46:50.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:50.33 | Ray Withy | Sounds about right. |
| 02:46:52.07 | Unknown | I just don't know. |
| 02:47:09.49 | Thomas Theodores | to make sure we have the underlying infrastructure that could support this when we try to do it the first time in the city. lost track of a lot of things. This is before your time, I think, and it became a mess, and so now we're finally in place to actually move there, so that's great. The green building code, I know you have said in the past, you know, there's been some changes on the county level of how other communities are implementing that versus just going straight up with the new building code, the new state building code. Is there any concept of tagging that onto the UCC code? |
| 02:47:18.34 | Unknown | you |
| 02:47:35.20 | Unknown | No. |
| 02:47:39.89 | Unknown | I'll talk about it. This one here will include the green building code. |
| 02:47:46.36 | Thomas Theodores | I'm not sure. |
| 02:47:46.49 | Unknown | Okay, great. |
| 02:47:46.96 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah. |
| 02:47:47.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:47.83 | Thomas Theodores | And who's doing, was Allison doing the trash stuff, like for Bay Cities? |
| 02:47:53.76 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:47:56.21 | Thomas Theodores | Oh, that's a lot of work. I mean, a pain. You know, it's not really a... So, what are you? |
| 02:48:00.83 | Unknown | So enforcement sometimes is not appreciated. Thank you, Al. |
| 02:48:04.13 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you, Allison, if you're at home. We miss you already. |
| 02:48:08.45 | Unknown | it. |
| 02:48:08.50 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 02:48:08.51 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 02:48:08.75 | Unknown | . |
| 02:48:08.95 | Unknown | Can you go up on Princess? |
| 02:48:11.77 | Thomas Theodores | And the last one, you skipped over your America's Cup work that Heidi and your other folks in your department did a lot of work on. Is there any, you know, given the change of scope and the number of teams and blah, blah, blah, blah, have we seen any people actually come in for these permits that for the rentals and stuff? Has there been any activity? |
| 02:48:30.20 | Unknown | I have not checked recently on that. I know there's some, well, Heidi has mentioned that there were some inquiries in the past month on that, but I think it's probably less than a dozen permits that we issued last year for that. |
| 02:48:44.42 | Thomas Theodores | You'll see a lot of activity on the real estate sites. Yeah, so I just don't think people are complying. So, and a lot of people are leaving their rentals open so they can rent them for a very short period of time for a lot of money, and we'll see if that materializes. Great. No, thanks. That's a great... And I wish I had been on the Planning Commission in these years than where you have on average... I don't know what your average is, but if you do 54 projects over 22 meetings versus 13 a night, which is when in the early 2000s, that was horrible. But so don't complain so much if you're on the Planning Commission right now. That's great. Thank you for doing... That's a lot. Jeremy, your department does nothing. I don't know what you do all day. |
| 02:49:28.53 | Unknown | . |
| 02:49:31.30 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. You worked very hard and that's a lot. Just look at the special projects. It's a huge number of things. |
| 02:49:36.94 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Any other questions? All right, this time here, any comments from the public on this? Okay, bringing it back up. Jeremy, thank you very much. It was an excellent presentation. Okay, moving right along next to the update. |
| 02:49:59.64 | Thomas Theodores | these presentations to shame. Forget the shining, the sliding graphics and the things. I'm still waiting for the exploding sun, but this was top notch. |
| 02:50:01.59 | Ray Withy | Forget the... |
| 02:50:02.03 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:50:02.22 | Ray Withy | No, it is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:50:17.59 | Thomas Theodores | and yours are good too. |
| 02:50:18.08 | Ray Withy | Yeah. |
| 02:50:22.13 | Ray Withy | on the priority calendar. Above the line items, Adam? |
| 02:50:26.97 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Yes, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers, you have heard a couple of meetings back I went through kind of the list of a brief update on the current years of current fiscal years priority calendar and in preparation of the process for the 2013-14 priority calendar program which will begin at the April 23rd meeting with Step 1. and then go through the month of May with step two and step three, At this thought it was important that that verbal report turn into a written report so that the public if they are interested in READING THE UPDATE. or if the council has questions, on some of these items that we give the public the opportunity to see the update, not just AS I HAD STATED A COUPLE OF MEETINGS AGO, Thank you. And then also just remind the council of the importance of this process. and when the process the effectiveness of the process. As you heard tonight, from our Community Development Director, as you heard from the police chief during her annual police report, on the effectiveness of disaster preparedness and specifically when Sergeant Frost came and reported on that. when our public works director has reported on the various projects including the sewer updates. and maintenance projects as our Park and Rec Director and Uh, maintenance division manager Lauren and I've talked about the improvements both at the downtown, with a downtown restroom and with Harrison Park with park improvements you're actually seeing things get completed. And again, We do it in a in a process that allows Uh, the maximum amount of participation. We ask that the public provide us feedback in and comments on what they think the city should be prioritizing They have the opportunity to come to the mic And... and ask the council to consider X number of projects. We asked our boards and commissions, and as you saw, in the staff report. You have several boards and commissions including the Historic Landmarks Board, the Planning Commission, the Sustainability Commission, the Trees and Views Commission, Park and Rec Commission. VAC. all giving recommendations on what they think the city's priorities should be. And then obviously staff makes their recommendations as does the Council. Um, So we think that it's a process that allows the community to see what we're working on that really represent things that are outside of our day-to-day workload, and I think Vice Mayor Leon's comment there of just looking at some of those special projects. represents things that are traditionally outside of the day-to-day of a Associate Planner. and definitely outside of the day-to-day of an assistant planner in other like-sized cities here in Marin County. Recognize that last year the council considered 56 items and they ranked 31 of those items above the line, but there was many, many more items than the 56 that made it to our |
| 02:53:44.58 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:54:04.90 | Adam Politzer | sheet for ranking. AND WHAT THAT also provided was for those boards and commissions to one, get feedback from the public, but also take the time themselves to look at what their priorities should be the year and even though some of their items may not have made it to our list of 56, it didn't mean that they couldn't continue to work on those. in their own way, some of these items have been Um, moves forward. Some of them have even been completed. based on their own efforts, the composting, as an example of that. where the Sustainability Commission did the majority of the work. Um, making, updating our smoking ordinances, You know, both. Thank you. the Sustainability Commission and the Legislative Committee working with the County of Marin, where the County of Marin did most of the work we were able to move some of these items forward. So. I'm not going to take up much more of your time. because I don't think it's necessary. I just wanted to make sure that these items were put in front of you, in front of the public. So you can see the update. And then we have several of the department heads here If there are questions on specific ones, obviously, Community Development has several of them, as does the Public Works Department And then following close behind is the Administrative Services Department. So they are here if you would like to ask any specific questions related to items that we are currently working on. and the progress that has been made And then obviously if there's any comments for myself, I'm happy to answer those questions for you. If there's no action required from you tonight, this is informational. Okay. Any questions? Thank you. |
| 02:55:52.41 | Thomas Theodores | The top of my question is, why is the Administrative Services Department always following me so closely from behind? That's the first question that you raised. That doesn't sound good. But the others... You know what would be good is like we did this last year during the priority calendar setting where you try to detach numbers to some of these things, whether it's staff time or dollars, is to maybe come back when we do this again. because in the beginning, because we'll start with this list and take off the ones that were done and that'll eliminate some of these, but is, hey, how much did we spend on this or how much staff time did those take and compare it to what we estimated last year, just so we get an idea. and that'll eliminate some of these, but is, hey, how much did we spend on this or how much staff time did those take and compare it to what we estimated last year, just so we get an idea of how much we're imposing on the system with these special projects that are outside kind of the flow of the norm, you know? And that'll give us a better idea you know, we'll start, the council as a whole will start to learn, okay, well, it really does take X amount of time or, you know, you can't do a study for $5,000 in somebody's goodwill, you know, kind of thing. Yes, everyone can benefit from that. I think, and the public too, to know where these, you know, that these aren't crazy, wacky projects that are costing more than we estimate. So that would be helpful. |
| 02:57:10.40 | Unknown | I have a comment, Mr. Mayor. |
| 02:57:12.01 | Ray Withy | Mr. Mayor. for us and then we'll do the comment. Do you have questions? |
| 02:57:15.80 | Unknown | Yeah, okay. I have a question and then I'll have a comment later. So... |
| 02:57:19.94 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 02:57:19.95 | Unknown | Later. |
| 02:57:23.30 | Unknown | I know that before we had looked at where the bar should be, so to speak, the cutoff bar for the priority topics. And my question is, is it possible? One of the things I grapple with is the fact that we're we're making these rankings on priority items with this low, you know, cutoff bar, and allowing staff time of up to, I guess, 40 hours for basically up to 25 or so items. And my question is, there are some things that don't make it that are on that list because they are considered routine. And those routine items are very important to me, like street repair, potholes, sewers, storm drains. And yet I don't have a clarity in terms of the scope of how much staff time those things take. I mean, it could be that if we look at the amount of work that has to be done on our you know, basic infrastructure that we don't really have a lot of staff time to allocate up to 25 other projects. So I guess my question is, is it possible to get some sort of clarity around some of the more infrastructure oriented projects in terms of how much staff time you know we're looking at for there just so that we can kind of balance that and maybe debate whether to move that bar up. |
| 02:59:07.70 | Adam Politzer | But can I? Yeah, sure. I think that's a good question and a fair question. |
| 02:59:08.88 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:59:09.08 | Thomas Theodores | Sure, sir. |
| 02:59:09.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:14.40 | Adam Politzer | First, just to clarify, It's 40 hours or more. So things that are 40 hours or less are considered more routine and are at the discretion of the city manager and the department head to prioritize where those projects fall into place. So this is asking council when we believe that it's going to take 40 hours or more of staff time. That's one of the criteria that would be required in terms of placing it on the priority calendar. Through the budget process and especially during the capital improvement this capital projects discussion, where we're allocating resources. major sums of money in terms of streets. or bulkheads. or ADA restroom improvements or downtown restroom improvement or Harrison Park. We're bringing forward to you, this is what we think this project will cost. and then you're allocating money to support that project and by allocating that money we are directing the staff to obviously get those projects done in a timely basis and so the CIPs are scheduled out in a five-year calendar. so that we actually know what we're going to try to complete this particular year. A good example of where things get delayed are the sewer improvements. that we've been trying to move forward because we're working with the funding source, which is the state, and they're delaying make up making those funds available. cause a delay of opening bids or going out and rebid. I think during the budget process, you know, which Charlie will lead us through, Um, next month. or maybe the beginning of maybe the end of April, either end of April or the beginning of next month, we'll start that process. Obviously, the Finance Committee has already begun that process. |
| 03:00:58.77 | Unknown | either. |
| 03:01:05.83 | Adam Politzer | But that will be an opportunity to ask staff. You'll have each department head here their budget and their budget represents more of our routine regular services. including the library, park and rec, Community Development, Public Works. And so when you go line by line and look at how dollars are spent, You can ask that staff at this time, how much time does Allison spend you know, contacting sending letters to 276 people that have been identified. of not providing garbage service. You'd be surprised it doesn't take a lot of time because everything's computerized now. Give us the list of addresses. a program that turns those into labels and then they get put onto envelopes and off they go. And then as Jeremy pointed out, We don't start there actively calling this 276, we wait and see what of those which were 100. So that would be well less than 40 hours of Allison's time, so we wouldn't put that on the list for priority. |
| 03:02:06.76 | Unknown | So is it possible to reconsider the priority list following the budgeting process if we discover that the time requirement for staff, you know, may |
| 03:02:28.50 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, and that's why in some of these columns you'll see that we haven't started. or it's been delayed. So we have to do this process first to identify what the projects are And then the second step, so the first step is identify all the likely projects. The second step is to then staff go back and say, how much staff time it would require and or how much money we would ask in addition to that. So the housing element had staff time and the consultant. And so then during the budget process, you would have to agree that yet we agree that this is one of our top five priorities We should. direct staff to work on it. and we should direct money to support it in terms of supporting the M group. and consulting. If you don't feel you have the money, |
| 03:03:15.34 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:03:17.98 | Adam Politzer | then you would direct at that point in time we need to delay this project. and we need to reach on a consensus of three, at least a minimum of three votes to say, yes, delay this process or let's remove it and take it off of the list. You guys can do that at any time during the year if there's a reason to do so. Thank you. |
| 03:03:37.67 | Unknown | Jonathan. |
| 03:03:38.26 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, just to help get some clarity to the whole process is so two other things. One, when we do that management offsite stuff with the department heads, generally these are the things we're focused on, these bigger projects that are outside of the day-to-day flow and get feedback from them if they have the resources to actually in time to complete them. The second thing is what you know, we've tried to do a little bit more and I've tried to harp on is when you propose You got to take something else off somebody's plate. at this level. So you can't say let's just go do this and expect it to be done without taking something off somebody's plate and taking it off the priority calendar instead of like, hey, we need to do smoking regulations. Well, smoking regulations weren't above the line in this. It took a fair amount of time that we had some outside help and a committee involved OK, do you need to take something off Jeremy's plate so he has staff time to do that? We need to do a better job of that. And the third thing is that the on the capital side of things, that the at the finance committee meetings and you're Just from a Brown Act perspective, you can't comment because it's going to be a council meeting, but... they are noticed in the Brown Act, noticed things. We talk, Jonathan will come through when he does his department stuff and say, here's the projects I was supposed to complete off the CIP plan, here's how far we are, here's what we spent, and Charlie and he worked, they meet about this before they can come to the finance committee. And here's new ones that just because the sinkhole opened up or whatever, what we have to do. And then we see before it even comes to the council, during the project process, and he proposes to remove things off the CIP for this year, move it to next year. And then when it comes to us here, you know, it's rejiggered in that form so he feels he could complete it in the time frame that's in the new capital budget that's coming out of that that's in the CIP and in our budget. So there's a lot of checks and balances. It's not perfect. We need to get better a little bit about what we dump on the staff and then take off from the staff so they can manage their time better. But I hear what you're saying, but I think Jonathan would be complaining a lot more if, and judging from his straightforwardness, that we were giving him too much to do. and The third part of that is we're actually giving him money, which the council didn't do in prior incarnations years ago to hire outside people to manage these projects, even in addition to hiring Lauren as a project manager. you know, before, whether it was Todd or Gordon, were trying to be both an engineer and project manager, and that is recipe for not getting a lot done. And so now if we spend the money to hire both an internal project manager as well as external ones, even for simple things like I think we hired one to do the pothole repairs, we hired an outside consultant to make sure all the pothole repairs were done well in addition to the general contractor. All those things enable them to leverage their own time and get more done. |
| 03:06:41.98 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:06:41.99 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:06:42.01 | Ray Withy | Any other questions? Any public comment? All right, let's bring it back. Comments here. |
| 03:06:52.86 | Unknown | I don't have a comment related to this. I have a question for Mary regarding procedure. regarding, and I'm not sure if this is the right time to ask it, because it's not on this topic. |
| 03:07:01.92 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:07:01.96 | Ray Withy | on this topic. Yeah, no. Thank you. |
| 03:07:05.38 | Thomas Theodores | and maybe it's a future agenda. |
| 03:07:06.97 | Ray Withy | Yeah, carry it on the future. Okay, that ends business. |
| 03:07:11.37 | Thomas Theodores | What did you want from us as far as this goes? Just information. Just an update? Okay. |
| 03:07:12.89 | Ray Withy | from us as far as this goes. Just in formation. Okay, that closes our business items now, city manager report. |
| 03:07:22.75 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:07:24.99 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:07:25.02 | Adam Politzer | equally as quick and brief, but I think important. Because Susan Frank is here in the audience, I wanted to thank her and Vicki Nichols and the staff and teachers at Willow Creek Academy. Today, Debbie and I had you I... True highlight, having in the neighborhood of close to 40 third grade students come through City Hall on a tour and information about local government and how it works. Robin Sweeney also participated to talk about what it's like to be the mayor. in the mayor's role. And then the students asked a bunch of questions about what do we do here? What's it like being the city manager? with a city clerk. and we had some very interesting debate about how important it is to participate and said that they all have a vote. when they get to turn 18. And they should exercise their voice. And we had a debate about do you think if the council was going to pass a law that bedtime should be at 8 o'clock? Do they think they would all show up to be heard? And they all said they definitely would be here to be heard. And that the room would be packed and that would be a, we talked about |
| 03:08:34.72 | Unknown | He heard. |
| 03:08:39.53 | Adam Politzer | some of our meetings are boring. And some of them aren't. And they said that that meeting wouldn't be boring. |
| 03:08:44.34 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:08:45.70 | Adam Politzer | But we then went on a tour the library and then into my office because they were all fascinated that that used to be the principal's office. DEBBIE SHARED THAT THIS USED TO BE THE kindergarten room. And that was also interesting to them all. They also wanted to know what were some of the crazy things that people have said, at the diocese. And so we got to exchange some fun stories and then let them be on their way. But I think it was really beneficial to the city. So we appreciate. the leadership that came from Susan and Vicki and from the school to bring the folks here. And we really want to encourage the kids to participate. So if they are watching, because I told them that they could I'll see tonight's meeting by tuning in. Hello? and thank you for coming and joining us. and look forward to them participating with our local government in the future. The other... You're watching it the day after. We'll hear that tomorrow. |
| 03:09:46.03 | Unknown | . |
| 03:09:49.59 | Ray Withy | You're watching it the day after. |
| 03:09:53.61 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. The other one is important because it kind of follows the discussion that we had there with the priority calendar and that's a strategic Thank you. planning session. So at the beginning of the year, we were able to have our team building session and now we're going to move forward on the priority calendar process and the budget process but we also need to have our strategic planning session which is really difficult to schedule. because you're talking about all of the managers and all of the council coming together and finding a date. And I think that I'm not going to be successful in doing that where we have 100% participation. So I'm going to dis-email. the dates that we have available. and hope that we can get the majority of the council there. In the past, TO COUNCIL MEMBERS, We've had five council members, we've had four council members, But it is important that we hold these sessions and that we talk about the future And so we'll do our best to schedule these These have traditionally and will be my recommendation that they continue to be weekday sessions because of the amount of staff that you're asking to participate where the team building obviously is something that we can do that just affects a small number of us, but with the strategic planning session, recognizing how hard these folks work Monday through Friday, we'll look again for a Monday or Friday. So be on the lookout for those dates. I may ask Mayor Weiner and Councilmember Theodorus before, they leave tonight because I know you folks are taking some time off to just stay a moment afterwards, so give me your calendar for the month of May. |
| 03:11:38.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:11:38.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:11:43.31 | Adam Politzer | And we'll try to do something at the end of April, the beginning of May, because the budget process will conclude at the end of June, so we need enough time. both to do the planning session and also to look at the Finance Committee hearings and meetings and then the action that comes before you at the actual council meetings. That concludes my report. I'm happy to answer any questions from the council. |
| 03:12:11.19 | Ray Withy | Any questions? Any public comment? Okay, moving on to future agenda items. to know. |
| 03:12:25.62 | Ray Withy | At our last meeting, the Council approved the formation of a working group to act as liaison between the City and National Park Service concerning |
| 03:12:33.42 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:12:33.43 | Unknown | Thank you, Susan. |
| 03:12:35.03 | Ray Withy | Fort Baker improvements, and I'd like to request that at our next meeting that the Council Lord of the Mayor, I'm not sure procedurally Oh. appoint this group and that it consists of three residents, and I have names and we may have others, The names that I have are Carol Peltz, Tim Tyson and Robert Page that I be appointed the liaison, and that was discussed at the and that the city manager appoint a staff member for this group. |
| 03:13:05.38 | Ray Withy | Okay. All right. We'll get that on the next. Any other? |
| 03:13:14.39 | Unknown | Yes, Mr. Mayor. I noticed that the Finance Committee had... Finance Committee discussed the five-year financial projection assumptions, and I just wanted clarity that that will eventually make its way up to the Council for review. I mean, what they're... if they're doing the five-year projections and strategic |
| 03:13:37.73 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, no, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, we just talked about the process. like the actual numbers. Charlie's thinking to come back to the council with |
| 03:13:44.22 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:13:44.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:13:47.56 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:13:47.61 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. Here's what I want to do for... He's talking about just software and other things that right now |
| 03:13:53.59 | Unknown | I just want to make sure that, because I think that's really critical to have that five-year |
| 03:13:57.77 | Thomas Theodores | your Yep. |
| 03:13:58.58 | Unknown | strategic planning for finance given all of the pension issues coming up the other comment I have is I And this was for Mary. The consent calendar, I meant there was one item that I actually wanted to pull and just ask about. So I'm wondering, should I... Not that you would necessarily agree with the majority would agree with me, But I'm concerned with item 4D, the resolution for parking regulations, specifically the loss of four spaces. |
| 03:14:26.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:14:26.75 | Unknown | CONCERNED WITH THE |
| 03:14:27.96 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:14:42.85 | Unknown | Yeah, near the bus. That's correct. And I'm just concerned about losing. I feel like downtown we're losing parking spaces for residents two at a time, three at a time, four at a time. So would I move to reconsider? Move for reconsideration of consent calendar item 6D. |
| 03:14:44.64 | Nancy | That's correct. |
| 03:14:50.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:03.22 | Unknown | That would be the motion. |
| 03:15:04.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:04.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:04.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:04.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:15:04.45 | Unknown | Yeah, I moved to... |
| 03:15:04.46 | Unknown | If the council wants to... So you have voted on an item. Yeah, I know. So I'm trying to explain to the rest of the council why I'm nodding my head. Thanks. That since the item has been voted on and passed by the council, somebody who voted in favor, you were unanimous on the consent calendar, I believe, can ask for an item to be reconsidered. And I believe that that... I'm trying to pull up the Rosenbergs. I believe it requires a two-thirds vote of the council which when you have five means four, four of the five to pass that to reconsider it. |
| 03:15:08.11 | Unknown | So you have, Yeah, I know. Oh, okay. |
| 03:15:21.98 | Unknown | I believe. |
| 03:15:38.82 | Thomas Theodores | Just a point of clarification, if I would. So Adam, when or John G., you can answer this one too. When is – you're going to come back at some point with this restriping plan and repayment plan for both those – two, one, two. One and two. Right. I think that's part of the whole ferry thing. Is that right? |
| 03:15:53.81 | Ray Withy | to. |
| 03:15:58.18 | Thomas Theodores | Oh, that's correct. So, I mean, I think maybe we'll look at it holistically and, you know, if the concern is just another total number of spots because the, what's the one, not Tracy, what was the other one? A lot of that was yellow before anyway. So there were, I think, like three or four spots that were there before. But anyway, so maybe we can do it in a holistic fashion rather than reopen this specific thing. |
| 03:15:58.23 | Jonathon Goldman | That's correct. |
| 03:16:06.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:16:06.70 | Unknown | you know. |
| 03:16:06.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:16:12.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:16:14.51 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:16:23.45 | Ray Withy | Alright. to make a comment on that. Thank you. On Anchor, one of the problems is if someone pulls in there, if we open it up and someone pulls in there and parks there, legally they can pack there. If it's handicapped, they can pack there for three days. 72 hours. |
| 03:16:42.42 | Unknown | you |
| 03:16:42.58 | Ray Withy | So if they pulled in there and parked in there, that totally closes us down from the shuttles being able to pull in. What we do plan to submit also in the future is we notice at 1.30 in the afternoon now, we can utilize that. area and have that the afternoon taxi stand. |
| 03:17:06.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.47 | Ray Withy | and line them up there because we can then shift the shuttles after 1.30 can go on Humboldt because the demand diminishes after 1.30 and leave Anchor open so now we can line up all the taxicabs. And I like the idea of lining them up on Anchor because 90% of the people that take taxicabs there are going south into the city. all up to the Golden Gate Bridge. |
| 03:17:36.15 | Unknown | So- |
| 03:17:36.37 | Ray Withy | So yeah |
| 03:17:37.40 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, I apologize. If the council wants to talk about this item, we need to first take up the motion to reconsider. And I apologize, I misspoke. It's not a super majority, it's not a two-thirds, it's a majority vote. Simple majority, okay. |
| 03:17:48.17 | Thomas Theodores | It's a majority vote. Female Speaker 1.: Simple majority, okay. Male Speaker 1.: The majority of those vote in favor, which in this case would be through. |
| 03:17:54.48 | Unknown | It's always a majority, so it's three of the five. It's not... So I recommend... |
| 03:17:55.81 | Thomas Theodores | So it's three. So I recommend it. |
| 03:17:58.97 | Unknown | Yes. What are you? |
| 03:18:00.11 | Thomas Theodores | So, |
| 03:18:00.40 | Unknown | In order to make the motion, you have to have been in the majority on the action that you're asking to be reconsidered. |
| 03:18:00.55 | Thomas Theodores | It was. |
| 03:18:00.64 | Unknown | in order to |
| 03:18:05.67 | Unknown | Right. And I was. So I move for reconsideration of consent calendar item 6D, amending parking regulations for portions of Anchor Street and Tracy Way and integrating certain affected spaces into municipal parking lot 1. |
| 03:18:24.77 | Ray Withy | Do I have a second? |
| 03:18:26.17 | Thomas Theodores | Do you have a question that would change your vote? Or yes, you have a question. |
| 03:18:30.84 | Unknown | I just have questions about losing more parking spaces in downtown. It seems like for the past five years, we are whittling away our... our ability to park downtown. And it's turning into a, you know, tourist hub place. I mean, it's already a tourist hub, but I mean, for the residents who want to park, you know, rent to the ATM, whatever, it just, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, |
| 03:19:07.60 | Jonathon Goldman | It's being constrained more and more. With your permission, I certainly don't want to interfere with your process, but in listening to Council Member Pfeiffer's question, you've asked a question that we as staff addressed and perhaps didn't address well in the staff report. Residents actually gain parking spaces under the resolution that you adopted earlier this evening. They gain the ability to park for free for three hours in all of the 12 spaces on Tracy Way, which they do not currently have. |
| 03:19:07.92 | Unknown | It's being constrained more and more. |
| 03:19:13.18 | Thomas Theodores | Oh. |
| 03:19:45.99 | Jonathon Goldman | And so our position is that there's a benefit and that there is not a change in the number of parking spaces or the area devoted to parking. There's a change in the rates and who can park where, when, and how they can pay, but increasing or reducing the area of curb that's made available for |
| 03:20:09.56 | Unknown | Thank you, Jonathan. I just want clarity on that because I see, I think, I understand what you're saying about the 12 parking lots and incorporating them in terms of payment with the system in parking lot one. I get that. I was referring to the other a piece here referring to the four spaces between the shuttle bus zone and the entrance to municipal lot one. So the way I read this, we're losing four spaces, four physical spaces. Am I wrong? Did I misinterpret that? |
| 03:20:45.84 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah. |
| 03:20:49.27 | Thomas Theodores | So wait, if I may, we have to, in order to get to this level of discussion, decide whether you want to open it back up, right? Am I correct with this? |
| 03:20:50.33 | Unknown | That's my name. |
| 03:20:59.19 | Unknown | Yes. Well, first I just, but we are losing four physical spaces. |
| 03:20:59.24 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:20:59.41 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:20:59.45 | Thomas Theodores | I'm sorry. |
| 03:20:59.65 | Ray Withy | Bye. |
| 03:20:59.67 | Thomas Theodores | Well, first, |
| 03:21:00.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:02.33 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:21:02.42 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:21:02.67 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:21:02.97 | Ray Withy | spaces. |
| 03:21:05.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:05.69 | Unknown | And that's it. |
| 03:21:05.76 | Unknown | Thank you. It says four. |
| 03:21:07.75 | Ray Withy | But do we get a... |
| 03:21:08.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:08.66 | Unknown | We get it. Mr. Mayor, you had a motion on the floor, but the discussion on the motion is whether you want to reconsider it or not. |
| 03:21:09.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:09.28 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, you had a motion. |
| 03:21:16.54 | Unknown | Not the merits of the item being reconsidered. |
| 03:21:16.64 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:21:19.43 | Unknown | So there's a motion. There has not been a second. You don't have to technically have a second under Rosenberg's rules. And that's the procedural process in which we find ourselves. |
| 03:21:30.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:30.58 | Mary Wagner | Yes. the pro vote. Thank you. |
| 03:21:32.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:33.03 | Ray Withy | And quote. |
| 03:21:33.79 | Unknown | you |
| 03:21:34.02 | Ray Withy | Okay. |
| 03:21:34.06 | Unknown | Okay? |
| 03:21:34.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:34.58 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:21:36.32 | Unknown | Council member 5. |
| 03:21:37.33 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:21:37.35 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:21:37.80 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:21:41.19 | Unknown | Councilmember Theodora. |
| 03:21:42.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:42.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:42.65 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 03:21:42.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:21:44.05 | Unknown | and the number with you. |
| 03:21:45.55 | Thomas Theodores | No. |
| 03:21:48.22 | Unknown | Vice Mayor Leon. Thank you. |
| 03:21:49.82 | Thomas Theodores | No, I think we can deal with it with the whole strategy. |
| 03:21:49.85 | Unknown | you And Mayor Wider. |
| 03:21:54.17 | Thomas Theodores | No. |
| 03:21:54.51 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:21:56.01 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:21:56.09 | Ray Withy | Okay. Thank you. |
| 03:21:58.19 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:21:58.20 | Ray Withy | right |
| 03:21:58.59 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:21:59.20 | Unknown | That was easy. I do have a couple more future agenda items, Mr. Mayor. |
| 03:22:04.19 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:22:04.87 | Unknown | So the Arts Commission, of course, I'd like to move that forward. I've provided the documentation for a second time to the council. I gave it to the new council for the first time. And so I'd like to move forward with that. The Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, which I've raised before, I would still like to move forward with that. I believe we have some applications that have been received on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee. And I also heard something today that I hadn't heard before regarding the soccer field below the dog park, which is all grass. historically, residents have always taken dogs there to run. And so this was the first time I heard that there is now an effort. Did I hear that right? That there is an effort now to... |
| 03:23:01.57 | Adam Politzer | I don't necessarily know if what was communicated reflected what was happening. There's a leash law that doesn't allow dogs off leash at any park other than the dog park. That's a city ordinance, that's a policy of the city. |
| 03:23:08.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:23:08.88 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 03:23:16.96 | Adam Politzer | that they made back in maybe the early 90s. and There is a period of time in the 90s where the police department was enforcing the leash law at every park, but specifically at... MLK and for whatever reason, they decided to relax the enforcement and go to a complaint-only enforcement policy. which is pretty consistent with everything that we do in the city today. what Mike Langford, our Park and Rec Director, was sharing was that the Marin Humane Society is out doing education throughout the county about the lease law exists throughout the county. and was at MLK, either because they received calls from our residents. or asks The dog park association or the park and rec commission or the park and rec staff or law enforcement, I'm not sure where they decided that that was the location to do education, but I think We are all aware that people go and run their dogs at that particular park. Marinship is probably next on that list, but they were doing education of the leash law and as Mike said, pointing to the sign that says dogs aren't allowed to run off late. |
| 03:24:36.76 | Unknown | So I certainly support the leash law. I want to be clear about that. I certainly support the leash law and the parks and et cetera. But that soccer field has always been a just a wide open place where people have always historically bought their dogs. So I'm just surprised to hear. |
| 03:24:54.83 | Adam Politzer | You still bring your dog. No, no, I mean, obviously. |
| 03:24:56.62 | Unknown | No, no, I mean, obviously off-leash. I mean, I don't personally, you know, frequent it. There's been lathes. |
| 03:24:57.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:02.16 | Adam Politzer | There's been waves of enforcement, at least since I've been a part of the city from 2000 to today. Anyway, say, much bigger effort much prior to that. Um, That's one of the reasons why we looked at the pocket parks and then said no dogs, even on LEASH allowed in the pocket parks. So the Park and Rec Commission in the mid-2000s |
| 03:25:23.86 | Unknown | I, I, |
| 03:25:26.56 | Adam Politzer | took a more aggressive role and then the city council adopted that. |
| 03:25:30.10 | Unknown | Okay, so I obviously, I personally prefer the dog park, but I have visited actually the soccer field before with my dog, and I also know lots of residents who use it, so I'm just a bit surprised about that, and I think you might get some pushback on that, because it's historically been... kind of a doubled as a a pseudo dog run area for dogs that wanted grass for whatever reason, elderly dogs or whatever. So just thought I'd raise that as a potential future item. And of course I mentioned the five-year financial planning as a future item. |
| 03:26:02.18 | Unknown | you know. So, |
| 03:26:15.19 | Ray Withy | Well, as far as the dog cart goes, as far as MLK goes, we have a leash law. in. If you really watch some of the dogs running around out there, people don't even turn around, they don't know what the dog is doing there. And then we have young people go and play soccer there. No, I'm sorry. That's why we have the loose law. Okay, moving on to council member committee reports. |
| 03:26:47.09 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, I do have a question about the Butte Preservation Task Force. So what is the process regarding getting that going? Have the people been notified? Should I reach out to them and organize it? What is the scoop? |
| 03:26:51.98 | Unknown | Uh-huh. |
| 03:26:56.96 | Unknown | I have. |
| 03:27:03.91 | Ray Withy | What's the scoop? Leon Hunting will be the chairperson of that and I believe Debbie has Thank you. COMMUNICATING. |
| 03:27:14.73 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:27:15.64 | Ray Withy | So. |
| 03:27:16.45 | Unknown | It might not. Okay, thank you. That's okay. Thank you. Oh, no, that's good. That's good. Okay, thanks. |
| 03:27:17.99 | Ray Withy | Pitch. |
| 03:27:22.54 | Ray Withy | Okay. |
| 03:27:27.74 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:27:27.76 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 03:27:27.77 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:27:27.98 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 03:27:28.80 | Ray Withy | Yeah. I was one. In fact, we had the Meals on Wheels, and every mayor in Marin County participated in each city to go on it. And I went on ours. It's very moving. It really is. Some of these people don't see anybody all day, so you really see how the impact. It isn't the food that they bring. It's the impact of the touch, the communication. My first one I went to, she looks at me and says, you're not the mayor, you run that gas station down the street. |
| 03:28:07.21 | Unknown | LAUGHTER Thank you. |
| 03:28:10.15 | Ray Withy | So it was really cute. And I asked them, you know, and I think they were, one was right across the street at the Ecumenical Council, and she was really put back by the idea that a mayor would come in there to see them. |
| 03:28:10.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:27.24 | Ray Withy | You have to do it. I mean, it's unbelievably moving. |
| 03:28:30.18 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:28:31.63 | Ray Withy | And when you really find out how you really touch people that They don't get out. So it was very moving, and I recommend every time that they have it that you participate in it. Moving on with other reports other than the Royal Flush restroom is now open downtown. |
| 03:28:58.22 | Unknown | Oh, are we going to have a ribbon cutting for that? When is the ribbon cutting? |
| 03:29:02.85 | Ray Withy | Well, we, we. |
| 03:29:03.40 | Unknown | I want to do that. That would be fun. When is that? |
| 03:29:05.43 | Ray Withy | When is that? We were thinking of cutting it with tissue paper. Staff is working on it. |
| 03:29:08.01 | Adam Politzer | The staff is working. There'll be a celebration. |
| 03:29:09.23 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:29:09.26 | Unknown | Okay, tissue paper, that would be funny. Thank you. |
| 03:29:12.40 | Adam Politzer | but we had a soft Grand opening. And we will have an official grand opening at a date coming certain. |
| 03:29:23.91 | Unknown | It's really lovely. I look forward to the ribbon cutting. Is it going to be hopefully in April? Because we don't want to wait too long. Okay. |
| 03:29:33.05 | Thomas Theodores | The only thing I'll add on the committee reports is that Ray and I met with Charlie and Adam in the head of finance committee meeting to set the schedule so that I think Charlie will notice the meetings as they come up and we're meeting basically two or three times a week towards them starting in a couple weeks for the next foreseeable future. So those will be noticed and you can feel free to attend. You just can't say anything because of the council meeting. But if you want to get more insight into the budget process where we meet with each department head and then before it comes to the council. |
| 03:29:33.12 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 03:30:13.62 | Thomas Theodores | If you have that kind of time, I wish your life was different for you. It's three or four hours a day. |
| 03:30:15.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:30:15.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:30:16.02 | Unknown | your life was different for you. Three or four hours a day. I know. Believe me. |
| 03:30:21.97 | Ray Withy | . |
| 03:30:22.02 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:30:25.32 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:30:25.50 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:30:25.97 | Michael Cohen | that in April. |
| 03:30:27.04 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:30:27.19 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 03:30:27.27 | Thomas Theodores | It's starting this month. |
| 03:30:29.05 | Ray Withy | April Fould. |
| 03:30:29.92 | Michael Cohen | Thank you. |
| 03:30:30.88 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:30:31.39 | Unknown | April 12th. |
| 03:30:32.20 | Ray Withy | Okay, any other committee? All right, moving on to the appointments for the Sustainability Commission. I'd like to recommend that the applicants that we met tonight, Cynthia Nemo and Greg Kenden-Coulomb, be appointed to 2015 and 2016. It's three years, isn't it? |
| 03:31:03.45 | Unknown | Three years. Thank you. |
| 03:31:04.42 | Ray Withy | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:31:04.67 | Unknown | They have three new parents. Depends on whether you want both of them on for three years or |
| 03:31:11.13 | Ray Withy | I recommend the three years. |
| 03:31:13.38 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 03:31:14.02 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:31:14.05 | Thomas Theodores | Yep. |
| 03:31:14.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:31:15.42 | Thomas Theodores | Yep. Where does that leave us with the rest of it? Because it's slightly confusing. |
| 03:31:19.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:31:27.11 | Unknown | for sustainability. |
| 03:31:28.56 | Thomas Theodores | Do you run for this? Is there a campaign process? Yeah. When he found out he was at Yellow Ferry he came. |
| 03:31:29.64 | Unknown | Can I? |
| 03:31:30.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:31:30.08 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:31:32.29 | Ray Withy | Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Please. |
| 03:31:34.23 | Unknown | point. |
| 03:31:34.57 | Thomas Theodores | So... |
| 03:31:34.62 | Unknown | So Oh, you. |
| 03:31:35.97 | Thomas Theodores | I mean, where's the leave us with? |
| 03:31:37.67 | Ray Withy | Yes. |
| 03:31:45.57 | Unknown | Mr. |
| 03:31:46.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:31:46.96 | Unknown | in an expired term and you have Linda Sanfine who is also in an expired term. Jan Johnson's expired in 2012 so we took her up. Her's will go to 2015. Sanfine will go to 2016. Thank you. |
| 03:32:02.60 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:32:03.65 | Thomas Theodores | How many, seven members committee? Or nine, I can't remember. seven and the other, so we pointed to, there are two with, two more out of the seven that have expired terms and then the remaining three are, is anybody termed out on those three? |
| 03:32:13.75 | Unknown | Two more out of this. |
| 03:32:22.65 | Unknown | are both termed positions. |
| 03:32:26.29 | Thomas Theodores | Okay. |
| 03:32:27.19 | Unknown | So, Mr. Mayor, I nominate, I move to reaffirm Jan Johnson through 2015 and Linda Shanfein through 2016. |
| 03:32:39.15 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah, so I was going to suggest before you interrupted me that, because I was asking a question, that we interview some more people for the remaining spots because we have both people terming out as well as people with expired terms. But certainly for tonight, appoint these two people to make sure we have enough quorum issue in, but let's keep interviewing people and then... go from there. |
| 03:33:01.17 | Ray Withy | I could live with going around one more round. At least. Thank you. |
| 03:33:05.76 | Thomas Theodores | Yeah. |
| 03:33:05.90 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:33:05.97 | Thomas Theodores | you. |
| 03:33:06.17 | Ray Withy | I'm not. |
| 03:33:06.45 | Thomas Theodores | you |
| 03:33:06.52 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:33:06.57 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:33:06.66 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:33:06.71 | Thomas Theodores | We advertise this, so to speak. We don't advertise it anymore, but we got it out there. Okay. |
| 03:33:07.15 | Ray Withy | Do we need? |
| 03:33:12.02 | Ray Withy | Okay. you |
| 03:33:14.12 | Thomas Theodores | No. |
| 03:33:14.50 | Ray Withy | We're better than that. |
| 03:33:14.94 | Unknown | We could try it again, it's been a long time since. |
| 03:33:17.83 | Ray Withy | What I do recommend maybe that we do, and I reaffirm Jan Johnson and Linda, |
| 03:33:18.37 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:33:18.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:23.70 | Ray Withy | Um, Shanfein. |
| 03:33:25.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:25.39 | Unknown | Chan Fine. |
| 03:33:26.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:26.62 | Ray Withy | possibly and hold on from the, see the last two, Sue Currier and Monika Towers, they both met their turn limits, although both have expressed an interest in continuing should the Council not find quality for the council. qualified applicants. Right. If we don't have any names coming in, I think we ought to move on these two and then there's two more that we seek out. It doesn't matter to me. What do you think? |
| 03:33:40.66 | Unknown | That's right. |
| 03:33:41.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:33:45.01 | Unknown | to. |
| 03:33:50.48 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:33:51.59 | Ray Withy | And there's |
| 03:33:51.98 | Unknown | One more empty. |
| 03:33:52.03 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:33:52.17 | Ray Withy | MR. |
| 03:33:53.28 | Ray Withy | Well, that's why I'm saying, if we had more applicants, then I would say that. I'd rather assign them and then reach out for the other two and see if we get any more applicants. If we don't get any more applicants, then we have the choice of putting Sue Carey and Monica Towers on. on maybe another year, one year. |
| 03:34:21.30 | Thomas Theodores | Well, you always have that. They can just stay unless you have more people. |
| 03:34:24.67 | Unknown | I'd recommend that you take your vote on your first nomination, your two new applicants. Take your vote on that and then go back and take your vote on your next nomination that came through. |
| 03:34:35.94 | Mary Wagner | on |
| 03:34:40.11 | Unknown | I'm not making this decision. I don't think. |
| 03:34:42.64 | Mary Wagner | Because we've been searching now and it's been a while. It's been a while since I've had it. And that's all you got. |
| 03:34:48.53 | Unknown | And we're so lucky that Jan and Linda are stepping up again. |
| 03:34:49.21 | Mary Wagner | Okay, that's just... |
| 03:34:49.81 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:34:51.74 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:34:51.97 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:34:53.12 | Unknown | Boy. |
| 03:34:53.44 | Thomas Theodores | All right, let's take the first resolution. Okay. |
| 03:34:58.05 | Unknown | Okay, this is on your two new applicants. |
| 03:35:03.09 | Ray Withy | Cynthia Nemo and Greg Kanden Kulon. |
| 03:35:07.97 | Unknown | Council Member Pfeiffer? Yes. |
| 03:35:09.10 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:35:13.90 | Unknown | Councilmember Theodora. |
| 03:35:15.02 | Ray Withy | Yes. |
| 03:35:16.86 | Unknown | Council Member Withey? Yes. |
| 03:35:17.71 | Ray Withy | Yes. |
| 03:35:19.43 | Unknown | Vice Mayor Leung. |
| 03:35:20.48 | Ray Withy | Yes? |
| 03:35:20.83 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:35:22.75 | Unknown | And Mayor Weiner. |
| 03:35:23.73 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:35:23.75 | Thomas Theodores | Yes. Thank you. |
| 03:35:24.10 | Unknown | Thank you. All right, this is on Jan Johnson through 2015 and Linda Chanfine through 2016. Council member... Councilmember Fiverr. |
| 03:35:38.77 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:35:39.95 | Unknown | Council member Theodores? |
| 03:35:41.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:35:41.91 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:35:43.92 | Unknown | Council Member Withey. |
| 03:35:45.81 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:35:47.26 | Unknown | Aye. Vice Mayor Leone? Yes. And Mayor Weiner? |
| 03:35:49.06 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:35:49.48 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Yes. |
| 03:35:51.69 | Unknown | you THE FAMILY. And then it's my understanding the consensus will be to advertise to fill the final two seats. |
| 03:36:01.01 | Thomas Theodores | because these people are on expired terms. If we don't have any other candidates, they can just stay until we have other candidates. They stay until that. |
| 03:36:02.26 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:36:05.25 | Unknown | I have already in the state of the last delay |
| 03:36:06.82 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. I mean, they don't have to stay. You can't tie them to a chair. |
| 03:36:10.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:36:10.26 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:36:10.56 | Unknown | All right. |
| 03:36:10.68 | Unknown | into a chair. They have volunteered to stay. |
| 03:36:14.97 | Unknown | that it's very, I think it's very motivating for someone who is just saying to kind of be appointed a formal term because you get into projects and you're making commitments and- Three years. Something to consider in the future. |
| 03:36:30.27 | Unknown | you. |
| 03:36:32.84 | Unknown | Okay. Okay. No, I'm talking about Sue Curry or Monica Towers. |
| 03:36:35.03 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:36:35.15 | Nancy | I'm talking. |
| 03:36:35.47 | Ray Withy | Bye. Thank you. |
| 03:36:36.77 | Thomas Theodores | They're pre-appointed because they've expired. Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. |
| 03:36:39.69 | Unknown | Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. They've expired their terms. |
| 03:36:42.91 | Thomas Theodores | Okay. |
| 03:36:43.87 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:36:43.92 | Unknown | I love you. |
| 03:36:43.99 | Adam Politzer | All right. |
| 03:36:44.33 | Unknown | They're so good. Okay, with that, |
| 03:36:45.44 | Thomas Theodores | Thank you. |
| 03:36:45.46 | Adam Politzer | Okay. Thank you. |
| 03:36:46.52 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:36:46.56 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:36:46.89 | Mary Wagner | Okay. |
| 03:36:47.53 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, before you call for adjournment, one item that I did forget and I know that you received an email. from the Park and Rec Department But the volunteer recognition event is Thursday. April 11th. So I know that some council members are traveling, but it would be nice to make sure that the council is there because this is a Important night to thank our volunteers for their A year of service. and to also encourage them to continue to volunteer into the future year. So thank you. The date on that was the 11th? |
| 03:37:18.85 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:37:21.32 | Adam Politzer | the 11th at the Spinnaker at 6 p.m. |
| 03:37:25.87 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:37:26.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:37:27.27 | Ray Withy | Okay. Thank you. All right. With that, I have a move to a motion for an adjournment. So moved. |
| 03:37:34.31 | Thomas Theodores | Can you hold me to the next meeting in Portugal? Yeah, right. |
| 03:37:38.53 | Unknown | I'm going to put Hi, Cash Cash. All in favor. Hi. Hi. |
| 03:37:40.40 | Ray Withy | All in favor. Hi. Hi. Hi. |
| 03:37:43.54 | Unknown | . |