| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:03.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:04.59 | Mayor Withley | So we're ready? |
| 00:00:05.26 | Unknown | Absolutely. |
| 00:00:05.65 | Mayor Withley | Okay, we are ready to roll. So good evening. And welcome to the adjourned. regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council. This is Tuesday, May 27th. Thank you. 2014. Debbie, would you call the roll, please? |
| 00:00:25.34 | Unknown | Councilmember Pfeiffer? Here. Councilmember Leon? |
| 00:00:28.36 | Mayor Withley | here? |
| 00:00:28.79 | Unknown | Vice Mayor Theodorus? Present. Mayor Withey? |
| 00:00:29.92 | Mayor Withley | present. Here. Thank you. Jerry Taylor, will you lead us in the pledge this evening, please? |
| 00:00:56.16 | Mayor Withley | Thank you, Jerry. |
| 00:00:59.80 | Mayor Withley | You're just going to have to excuse me with my jacket off because it's just too hot. So I have one other announcement, which is... Um... and I'm sure you're all going to be very sad about this, due to... conflicting city council meetings, the Community Media Center of Marin will not be running the live video feed of our City Council meeting tonight. We're in conflict with the city of Mill Valley, as it's their regular scheduled meeting. And our meeting was recently added to the schedule, as you know. However, CMCM has assured us that the video is being recorded and will air at the normally scheduled rerunning of Sausalito's meetings, and of course, our meeting will continue to be webcast live on your computers. Okay, so. Closed session, we met in closed session to discuss one matter, which was a conference with legal counsel. Is there any public comment on the closed session items? Seeing none, we'll move on and entertain a motion for approval of the agenda. |
| 00:02:12.82 | Unknown | So I moved. Second. |
| 00:02:14.79 | Mayor Withley | All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda, And as you all know, I'm sure, except in very limited situations, state law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning these items. Is there any member of the public present who would like to make a comment on an item not on the agenda? I have two people, so please, if you'd like to go first and then. |
| 00:02:59.65 | Unknown | Thank you so much for this evening taking up the matter of the hop-on, hop-off buses. And I'm here to speak on an intimately related matter. but not on the buses directly. |
| 00:03:16.68 | Unknown | Some of you. Some of you may or may not have seen these two telephone books which are the GGNRA 20-year master management plan. As far as we know, the last time the public heard anything about this was two years ago. On April 25th, these landed on a couple of desks. They were not reviewed, as far as we can identify, by the city of Sausalito. And yet, among other things, they propose a continuation and an elaboration of hop-on hop-off buses, not only in Sausalito, where they might be picking up passengers from a ferry, but all around the mountain. Congressman Hoffman was the first to respond after these documents surfaced on April 25th, and immediately wrote a letter which, and I will quote, Ask. for two things, one, that all offending language be deleted. And in quote, the strongest possible terms. And secondly, that we delay approval of this 20-year plan that will have such an enormous impact on Sausalito and all the communities around the mountain. The Park Service is planning to provide tickets to 1.4 million people. That is six times the population of Burin, twice the population, of San Francisco and send these people through our communities, especially the community of Sausalito, on their way to visit Muir Woods for less than 90 minutes. 1.4 million people going through our communities is more than double the amount that we currently have going through Muir Woods. Jared Hoffman responded on May 1st. On May 6th, the Board of Supervisors took this up as an urgent manner and responded and wrote a very strong letter, again asking the GGNRA to delay implementation of this 20-year plan until their concerns could be considered. On May 7th, Mill Valley took up the matter, and the mayor of Mill Valley wrote a letter part of a series of letters that started last October, again, objecting this in the strongest possible terms. My request tonight is very simple. We will provide you with copies |
| 00:06:04.60 | Unknown | of the letters written by your colleagues all around the mountain. And we would request that you write a similar letter as an urgent matter, which is, again, how the Board of Supervisors took this up, so that Sassolita will, in fact, no longer be excluded from this significant planning process, but will be included in future discussions. Thank you. |
| 00:06:29.59 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 00:06:34.38 | Mayor Withley | So could I remind everybody you have three minutes? |
| 00:06:38.69 | Luke Tessier | My name is Luke Tessier. I am co-chair for safety of the Mount Tam Task Force, the same group that Kristen Shannon is from, I'm from Tam Valley, and I'm here speaking to you tonight because we're all connected. As John Muir said, the world and all of nature is a tapestry And when we tug on any single thread, we find that we're all connected. what's happening with the general management plan that directly impacts Muir Woods and most of the GGNRA in Marin County. is that they are dramatically changing the usage model of the park. We are looking at traffic and parking areas all throughout the park that previously had a few small places for cars to park turning into parking areas that they insist are not parking lots but have numerous cars. Dramatic expansion of camping and usage facilities and dramatic changes in traditional usage like extreme restrictions on dog policy. a very important aspect of this change is an airport parking style hop-on hop-off shuttle. that will turn southern Marin into a launch pad for immense amounts of traffic that can potentially turn the entire southwest GGNRA section into parking lots and destroy the flavor of communities like Sausalito, Mere Beach. Stinson Beach and so forth, including turning the entire panoramic crest into a parking lot because the nature of the Shuttles encourages roadside parking that people can then be flagged to pick up In numerous conversations with Kate Sears and others, I continuously hear a lack of understanding that this will have dramatic impacts and dramatic consequences for Sausalito, Tam Valley, and areas nearby. One of the things you can expect to see if they get the growth that they're expecting to have, And by the way, 1.4 million a year versus the 1 million a year we have now over and above the 750,000 sustainable limit they agreed to in 2005. is actually conservative. the numbers show that they are actually, but won't say it on record, wanting to have on the order of 2.6 million people a year. So I urge you, to push back. write a letter similar to the one that Congressman Hoffman wrote. and take this up in the most serious way possible. Otherwise, you can expect Bayshore to be bumper to bumper seven days a week. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time and attention. And I also want to thank Congressman Hoffman, the mayor of Mill Valley, and our other local communities for stepping up. Thank you so much. |
| 00:09:44.35 | Mayor Withley | Thank you very much. Yeah, please give that to the staff. Thank you. |
| 00:09:57.46 | Jeff Butler | Sir. Good evening, my name is Jeff Butler. I'm an architect in Mill Valley. |
| 00:09:58.43 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 00:10:01.71 | Jeff Butler | and I'm working with several clients at 208, 210 2nd Street in Sausalito. I'm here tonight to ask the city council, based on its July 23, 2013, approval of the contract to SpaceWorks, Space Works to prepare initial environmental study and mitigated negative deck on the Valhalla project. It was very clear from the city council's Discussion, response from the planning staff, that private views would be taken into consideration for this project. and which they are not being today. And I'm asking the city council to direct staff. and the consultant to revisit the private views on that EIR and have that addressed. Thank you very much. |
| 00:11:05.11 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Is there any other member of the public who would like to comment on items not on the agenda? In that case, I'll call this matter closed. I know you want to make a comment. Council Member Rulia. |
| 00:11:21.16 | Council Member Rulia | I would just ask to direct both matters to staff for the council to agree to direct both matters to staff to look into and if we need to have Thank you. especially for the GGNRA stuff, if we need to get it on the next agenda to do so. |
| 00:11:39.13 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, Mr. Mayor, I have a quick, if I may just ask a question regarding timeline on this, because it speaks to how quickly to get this on the agenda. For the EIR? For the 20-year general calling? |
| 00:11:53.54 | Mayor Withley | Um... Thank you. |
| 00:11:54.80 | Unknown | Two dates for your consideration. One is June 18th, when the transit plans and buses |
| 00:11:56.04 | Mayor Withley | where- |
| 00:12:03.28 | Unknown | will be going into effect. That's the last time for public comment. And this week is the last opportunity to comment with respect to the general management plan, unless it's part of the administrative record for future legal action. |
| 00:12:20.00 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. As I said, we can really comment no further, but staff will take this matter up. Thank you. |
| 00:12:33.65 | Mayor Withley | It looks like we don't have any minutes from the previous meeting. . |
| 00:12:37.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:37.58 | Council Member Rulia | . |
| 00:12:37.67 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 00:12:37.70 | Council Member Rulia | or you move up that so if that comment |
| 00:12:38.92 | Mayor Withley | So we have. |
| 00:12:41.92 | Council Member Rulia | If you look into the comment period about, as they're saying by the end of this week, can we direct staff to reply without it having to come back to the council if that, in fact, is a hard date? Is that question for you? Do you have? Because we want the opportunity to weigh in. |
| 00:13:02.78 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | if the deadline is this week for the general plan. |
| 00:13:04.14 | Mary Wagner | This week for the general plan. |
| 00:13:05.88 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. |
| 00:13:05.97 | Mary Wagner | I mean, yeah, staff will look at it. |
| 00:13:08.13 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. But if the deadline is Friday, you will go ahead and the staff will go ahead and reply appropriately if there's a letter that needs to go out before our next council meeting. |
| 00:13:08.55 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. And this week. |
| 00:13:11.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:24.65 | Adam Politzer | staff will look at the information, we most likely will contact Mill Valley and the AND THE COUNTY STAFF AND FIND OUT WHAT THEIR COMMENTS WERE, WHAT THEIR ACTIONS WERE, AND SEE IF if a simple response supporting what others have already taken in this short period of time, that would be, that would probably be realistic for staff at this moment in time. But depending on, Uh. depending on what information we've received. and what the city of Mill Valley, when we reach out to the city of Mill Valley, and to the county of Moran. Um, we may need to reshuffle priorities. But at this moment, it's hard for me to tell you what in fact we can or cannot do. |
| 00:14:14.02 | Mayor Withley | Okay? |
| 00:14:17.60 | Mayor Withley | Okay. |
| 00:14:22.73 | Mayor Withley | A consent calendar can... Let's see, is there any comments from members of the public on the three items on our consent calendar? Okay, could I have a motion to approve the consent calendar, please? |
| 00:14:41.63 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 00:14:41.66 | Vice Mayor Theodos | . |
| 00:14:42.02 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 00:14:43.34 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Second. |
| 00:14:43.67 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 00:14:44.01 | Mayor Withley | All in favor? Mr. Mayor? |
| 00:14:44.23 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I'm sorry. |
| 00:14:44.42 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Bye. |
| 00:14:44.45 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Female Speaker 1, Mr. Mayor. Male Speaker 1, I have a question on item C, the Marinship Specific Plan Analysis and Evaluation. And my question is, by accepting it, and we've done this clarification before, we're not necessarily approving of everything that's mentioned in it. We're just accepting it as information as it's been completed, correct? |
| 00:15:07.53 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. That's correct. All you're accepting is the update, as opposed to any content. |
| 00:15:08.38 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. Yes. Yes, okay, just wanted to clarify that because it has been raised in the past. |
| 00:15:14.94 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 00:15:14.98 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 00:15:15.08 | Council Member Rulia | THE END OF THE END OF THE Right. So. It actually says, for information only, no action required. |
| 00:15:22.99 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, just wanted to clarify that. |
| 00:15:27.75 | Mayor Withley | Okay, we have a motion, second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. |
| 00:15:30.52 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Hi. |
| 00:15:34.18 | Mayor Withley | Okay. So the next item, item number five, is a public hearing on the appeal filed by Gerald Cunningham and Amy Wilson for a project at 206 Third Street. Council Member Leon is an interested party living within 500 feet and therefore must recuse himself from this deliberation. |
| 00:15:57.67 | Mayor Withley | And, It's my understanding our community development director, Jeremy Graves, will be beginning this presentation for us. |
| 00:16:09.55 | Jeremy Graves | Precisely. |
| 00:16:13.79 | Mayor Withley | Before we do that, we should probably have disclosure of ex parte communications. And I'll kick off to say that I visited... |
| 00:16:28.45 | Mayor Withley | . |
| 00:16:28.52 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:16:28.87 | Mayor Withley | Okay, thanks. I visited both 206 Third Street and 208 Third Street, talked to the owners and their representatives at each location. |
| 00:16:47.98 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I visited 206 3rd Street. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I visited the appellate and talked to them and viewed the the project from that view. |
| 00:17:03.53 | Vice Mayor Theodos | And I visited with the appellants Gerard Cunningham and Amy Wilson at 208 3rd Street. And I visited the premises with the architect at 206 3rd Street. |
| 00:17:15.09 | Mayor Withley | Okay. And just before Jeremy, you begin, I'm going to remind everybody of our procedure here for Planning Commission appeals. So there's... Following the staff presentation, there will be City Council questions of staff. We will then have the presentation from each team, and that would be limited to 10 minutes each. Um... We will then have the ability, after public comment, for each team to return for rebuttals, and that will last up to five minutes each. Then that will follow, city council discussion will follow. For those who have gone through this up here with or been here when we've done this recently, you will know that I'm very strict on time in these matters for reasons of fairness. Thank you. we've done this recently, you will know that I'm very strict on time in these matters for reasons of fairness. Jeremy. |
| 00:18:33.87 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you, Mayor Withey, members of council. So as Mayor Withey introduced, the item in front of us this evening is a proposal for a single family residence at 206 Third Street. |
| 00:18:42.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:18:42.89 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 00:18:48.16 | Jeremy Graves | In brief, the Planning Commission reviewed this project on March 12th and approved a design review permit. for demolition of the existing residence, construction of a new residence, which incorporated a single car garage and a single uncovered off-street parking space. In addition, the applicant had requested and the Planning Commission approved a tree removal permit for the removal of a palm tree in the rear of the yard. |
| 00:19:15.71 | Jeremy Graves | On March 21st, the property owners of the adjacent property appealed the project on three main grounds. privacy, view, and design. And so I will be going through in a moment looking at the privacy issues, the view issues, and the design issues. So beginning with the privacy issues, what we have in front of us here is the required finding out of the zoning ordinance that the decision makers, the planning commission, or the city council upon appeal need to make in order to approve a design review permit for the project, in this case, the new single family residence. and this particular section of the zoning ordinance reads, The project provides a reasonable level of privacy to the site and adjacent properties. |
| 00:20:03.47 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. |
| 00:20:03.52 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 00:20:07.86 | Jeremy Graves | taken into account, taken into consideration the density of the neighborhood by appropriate landscaping, fencing, window, deck, and patio configurations. The Planning Commission, in looking at the project, felt comfortable making that finding in light of the number of windows on the elevation of the house facing the appellant's house. What we see here are a lot of windows. This is a window. I believe it's in the... this window, and then we have a window here that is in the stairway, and this window is a clear storage window. So there are very limited windows on this elevation of the project that provide views onto the adjacent neighbor's property, the appellant's property. And then also the planning commission required an additional condition of approval for a screen on the lower patio of the residence, and that screen is shown right here. below the upper balcony and the lower balcony. So that was the problem. how the Planning Commission felt comfortable in making the privacy finding. Moving over to the finding out of the zoning ordinance for designer view permits for views. The proposed project has been located and designed to minimize obstruction of public views and primary views from private property. In this case, there were numerous neighbors who came out in favor of the project because the proposed project by the applicant was lowering the existing roof height. They did that through a number of techniques, one of which is they provided a lower roof at the rear of the property. And then they removed the palm tree that I mentioned earlier. And these, as I mentioned, these two actions improve the views. for many nearby residents. I don't remember the last time we had a project at the Planning Commission where neighbors came out and said, you know, this project is improving our views. The Planning Commission took that into consideration when they made the required findings. As part of the required finding, there are story poles installed, which are for all new projects. And out of City Council Resolution Number 4501, story poles are only needed on decks if the staff determines that the deck may have the potential to impact neighboring properties. And so in this case, the staff made the determination that the deck at the rear of the property did not appear to have the potential to neighboring properties, and so the staff did not require the applicant to install story polls. Obviously, since many of the grounds of the appellant's appeal are related to views, the appellant has installed story poles for the decks, and I imagine that the council members in your site visits have seen the story poles for the entire project, including the deck, including the story poles at the rear. Then moving over to the third general basis for the appellant's appeal as in regard to design. And this is the Once again, the required finding out for approval of a design review permit And this particular finding provides two ways in which the decision makers, the planning commissioner, now the city council can make this finding. Let me read it for you. The proposed architecture and site design complements the surrounding neighborhood and or district by either A, maintaining the prevailing design character of the neighborhood or district, or A, introducing a distinctive and creative solution which takes advantage of the unique characteristics of the site and contributes to the design diversity of Sausalito. So the Planning Commission found that this project is consistent with finding B, in light of the curved roof that allows for some existing views to be increased, and the curved roof and the overall project architecture provides diversity and interest along the streetscape that will contribute to the design diversity of the neighborhood. Another aspect that is discussed in the grounds for appeal is the geotechnical report that was prepared for the project. We've prepared a timeline here of tracing the different steps on the geotechnical report. The application for the project was submitted in May of last year, and the application included a geotechnical investigation. Staff referred the entire package of materials to various parties, including the city engineer, the city engineer reviewed the plans and the geotechnical report that at that time that had been submitted was dated November 2012. and the city engineer provided the condition of approval requiring a more detailed geotechnical report be submitted and reviewed by the city engineer prior to issuance of a building permit. This information came back over to the planning staff on June 6th. Several days later, the applicant submitted a revised geotechnical report. When the Planning Commission reviewed the project on March 12th, the Planning Commission reviewed the project on March 12th and approved it. And their approval included the Condition 41, which we've quoted here. And the Condition 41 speaks to that a geotechnical report shall be prepared by a geotechnical engineer. It shall evaluate groundwater, identify recommendations for adequate structural foundations, on-site parking pavement, sub drainage to convey the groundwater discharges to a public drain and manage soil creep. This is pretty much a standard condition. Standard issues that are addressed here are tailored to the project itself, but for The standard aspect of this condition is that the project geotechnical engineer shall provide a more detailed report after the discretionary approval has been provided. That's a more efficient way to utilize the resources. You don't want to require a full-blown geotechnical report if we don't know the project has been approved. The geotechnical report that we're talking about here needs to be approved by the city engineer and also will be used by the city engineer in his or her review of the project when it goes through plan check and then also will be reused by the city's Plan Check Consultant, CSG, and their review of the project when it gets to the building permit stage. So the staff recommendation is for the council to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission decision, which was to approve the design review permit for demolition of the existing residence and construction of a new two-story dwelling with the basement, and also to approve a tree removal permit. So that concludes the staff's presentation, and we're available for questions. |
| 00:27:59.40 | Vice Mayor Theodos | risk |
| 00:28:00.17 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, does anybody have any questions of Jeremy? |
| 00:28:04.21 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a quick question. So with respect to notifying the neighborhood regarding the HLB review, can staff comment and elaborate a little bit on that? when the Historic Landmarks Board was reviewing this with respect to the captain's cottage |
| 00:28:21.62 | Jeremy Graves | The review by the Historic Landmarks Board reviewed this project because the structure is over 50 years old, so this is a normal procedure. The zoning ordinance does not require a public hearing by the HLB in their review of the project. And so the notification that is provided on all HLB 50-year reviews is the public agenda that is posted on the website and available at City Hall. |
| 00:28:54.98 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So that's why the neighbors weren't notified when the HLB was reviewing this. |
| 00:29:00.06 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. Sure. |
| 00:29:00.48 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, thank you. |
| 00:29:02.58 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Can you go back to finding 41 on the Geotech report? Sure. I understand your timing that the report, there'll be the additional report to be approved prior to issuing building permits. But if you look at the building, the geotech report that was submitted, with the application, it has a lot of recommendations that would relate to work that needs to be done to the adjacent building, that is 208 3rd Street, and maybe others, actually. So when does that fit in? Because it's difficult for us to approve the project unless we know that something's been provided for in terms of costs, et cetera, on the adjacent property. So how would that be built into this process, according to staff? |
| 00:29:27.96 | Amy Wilson | I thought... Maybe others. |
| 00:29:47.80 | Jeremy Graves | So. The geotechnical The project is approved. We're walking down our hypothetical here. The project is approved. Then the project architect goes back and tells the geotechnical engineer, the project got approved, geotechnical engineer, now you've got to do more intense investigations in the property, maybe more borings, and then come up with working with the architect and the project structural engineer how the site is going to be secured during the construction process. Those are the documents and the plans that are submitted to the city staff as part of the submittal of the construction drawings. The city engineer, CSG, our plan check firm, takes a look at those drawings. It shows how the footing is going to be 6 feet deep, 8 feet deep. Are the footing going to be 10 inches wide or 10 inches in diameter, 14 inches in diameter. And so the information from the geotechnical engineer is given to the applicant structural here and the two of them work out what is necessary to support the project and then also they also go into the details of how the construction is going to take place on the project. All of that is reviewed by the city engineer and the city structural engineer CSG before a building permit is issued. |
| 00:29:52.54 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Yeah. |
| 00:29:54.76 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:29:54.77 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:29:54.82 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. I'm sorry. |
| 00:29:54.91 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 00:29:54.97 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:29:54.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:30:21.42 | Amy Wilson | So |
| 00:31:19.32 | Jeremy Graves | May I follow up? |
| 00:31:20.87 | Vice Mayor Theodos | But continuing our hypothetical, which is actually very close to reality here is, but what if work needs to be done? And if you look at the actual geotech report, there is. a lot of work would probably need to be done to adjacent residences. And we may be approving a project, and they may say, yeah, we'll have this work done, but each of the adjacent properties have to pay and may get into very large dollar amounts. And how is that provided for? Because then we're... in a position where we've approved the project, And actually we may approve a different project if we decided, well, there's a different way to build this if that would not require adjacent properties to incur expenses and, and, uh, time construction on their properties. |
| 00:32:05.94 | Jeremy Graves | Well, obviously the city cannot require an adjacent property owner to authorize anyone to come on his or her property. And I think there is a wording in, I think it's in condition 42, that says that the applicant is required to get written authorization for any property. |
| 00:32:12.32 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Right. |
| 00:32:27.02 | Jeremy Graves | Underpinnings, let me, I have the condition here. |
| 00:32:35.88 | Jeremy Graves | This is condition 42. It's on. Attachment 2, page 9 of 12, if anyone wants to follow along with me. Attachment 2, page 9 of 12. Condition 42 at the bottom. |
| 00:32:58.42 | Unknown | You don't have that on there, so I don't have it. I'm sorry, I don't, but I can. Okay, well, go ahead. |
| 00:32:59.81 | Jeremy Graves | I'm sorry I don't. Thank you. So condition 42 reads, shoring and foundation systems that utilize tiebacks shall be designed to not extend beyond property boundaries. But... Exceptions can be made if the property owner obtains tieback easement from affected property owners. No exception will be granted for encroachments in the public right-of-way. |
| 00:33:19.72 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:33:25.52 | Jeremy Graves | But if you look at. They're basically saying that the applicant has to stay on their own property. |
| 00:33:25.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:33:25.61 | Vice Mayor Theodos | But if you look at... |
| 00:33:30.27 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you. |
| 00:33:30.28 | Vice Mayor Theodos | But if you read the applicant's own geotech report, and there's several different ones, and it says that the... the slab design on the project by structural engineer to span between adjacent foundations. There's just, a variety of... adjacent foundations should be underpinned. I mean, it talks about requirements that have to be done, and that's in the applicant's own geotech report. That's what's... The approval is based on, and it says these things need to be done, so we're not provided. And, again, I don't know this. We have someone creeping up to the stand who does, and maybe he can explain. And we could go on, and we could do this later. Well, I think there's... |
| 00:34:10.73 | Jeremy Graves | These are fair questions. Jonathan, did you want to enhance my thoughts here? |
| 00:34:18.68 | Jonathon Goldman | I THINK YOUR THOUGHTS DON'T NECESSARILY NEED TO BE ENHANCED, BUT IF I CAN HELP HERE, I THINK YOU ARE Bye. Thank you. |
| 00:34:30.16 | Unknown | Uh, |
| 00:34:30.51 | Jonathon Goldman | should the council uphold the planning commission's design review approval of this project, that does not relieve the applicant of the responsibility to design and construct something that complies with the building code and to the extent that THE PROJECT CAN BE CONFINED TO THE APPLICANT'S PROPERTY. THE APPLICANT HAS THE OBLIGATION TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN. Should council, again, uphold the Planning Commission's design review permit, the entire onus of responsibility for what gets built and whose property it gets built on remains with the applicant. And that's why the condition of approval is written the way it is and why the applicants are required to retain design professionals with professional liability insurance to protect AND WHY THE APPLICANTS ARE REQUIRED TO RETAIN DESIGN PROFESSIONALS WITH PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY INSURANCE TO PROTECT THE COMMUNITY AND THE CITY IN THIS KIND OF CIRCUMSTANCE. Thank you. |
| 00:35:33.77 | Mayor Withley | So on this particular topic, I'm sure we're going to hear something in presentation format. So we might want to pick up these questions again after that presentation. I do have really good questions. |
| 00:35:44.66 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I do have related questions, but I'd be happy to wait until we hear from both parties before. But I do have additional questions about this topic. |
| 00:35:46.68 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, please. |
| 00:35:54.66 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. As do I, probably. Okay, so we'll move on from questions on this. And is there any other general questions of staff before we begin the presentation? |
| 00:36:13.04 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yes, I have a question. So staff mentioned the issue of privacy and pointed to the windows, the minimal windows on the side of the buildings. Was there any consideration with respect to privacy for the front the new proposed front window that would be slanted towards the appellate's property, it's kind of at an angle. Did you look at that too in terms of privacy impact? |
| 00:36:46.44 | Jeremy Graves | Did you look at that too in terms of privacy? |
| 00:36:48.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:36:49.20 | Jeremy Graves | This will... |
| 00:36:49.27 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | this was a No, this was the second floor. It's, it's, well, I can't reach it. |
| 00:36:55.70 | Jeremy Graves | I can't reach it. The applicants, however the appellants may have more enhanced architectural elevations that might show that. And so maybe we can address that question after we've had an opportunity to review their |
| 00:36:58.22 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, I'll listen to them. |
| 00:37:07.38 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 00:37:12.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, that's fine. I'll wait. |
| 00:37:15.14 | Mayor Withley | Okay. Thank you, Jeremy. So I think it is the... pellet that goes first, if I'm correct, Mary, is that correct? Yeah. And, um, The whole team has 10 minutes. |
| 00:37:35.38 | Len Rifkind | I got that. So can someone throw something at me at three minutes? Because it's... Is someone more important than me needs to speak after that I'm done with my three? Okay, so I'm stopping at three, even if it's in mid-sentence. Okay. Mayor, we're the members of the council. My name is Len Rifkind, and I represent Amy Wilson and Gerard Cunningham, who own 208 3rd Street. And they don't lightly bring this appeal. They don't oppose their neighbor trying to remodel or build a new house. But as Council Member Theodorus has aptly noted, and all of you have noted, there's a serious engineering problem here. And that's why there's a required submittal as part of the design review packet under 1054.06.0, I think I, that you have to submit a soils report. And if I saw correctly on the slide there that Jeremy was just showing, your city engineer hasn't looked at the current soils report. that looked at a prior one, but not the current one. The current one that was submittal that was done in June |
| 00:38:30.17 | Amy Wilson | Bye. |
| 00:38:34.64 | Len Rifkind | Um, and the soils borings were done in May, show a water table at seven feet. And the architect for the applicant designed his plans in January of 2013. So we have a design that was done even before the soils engineer's report was ever available that shows this water table or before your city engineer ever did it. And the whole point is, why approve a project that's infeasible from the get go? That is a waste of everybody's time. And why is it infeasible? Well, you've read the applicant's own geotechnical report from Nursi Hamadi. I mean, he says, there's gonna be damage on the existing facilities. Existing facilities are euphemisms for the homes of 208 and 204. And so basically they're gonna have to do completely new foundations, peers, structural slabs, and this so alarmed the Cunninghams, that they went and got their own structural engineer, as anyone would do, to say what would happen. And you've seen Mr. Riley's report in your packet. And so Mr. Riley's, and he's available here, by the way, for technical questions. He says it's likely to cause severe and costly damage. How much damage? Up to $200,000 and the Cunningham's have to move out of their house for a year. I have never heard of someone having to sit through a remodel by their neighbor and have to incur that kind of a problem. So, um, Uh, I'm not gonna repeat lots of the different things. Am I at three minutes? |
| 00:40:06.12 | Margaret Brindle | Thank you. |
| 00:40:06.14 | Len Rifkind | Did it start going? Where am I? Thank you. eight. eight |
| 00:40:10.42 | Mary Wagner | I'll turn that on and I'll tell you in three. |
| 00:40:13.19 | Len Rifkind | Okay, thank you. I just want to follow the mayor's rules here. |
| 00:40:16.40 | Vice Mayor Theodos | He only wants three minutes, I think. And then he's giving... I'll tell you when you're... Have you spoken for three minutes? |
| 00:40:21.44 | Len Rifkind | Please, that's exactly what I want. Okay, thank you. Okay, one left, and I'll try to speak clearly, but quickly. Basically, we've talked about findings, and you've seen that in my notice of appeal and letter, that there's privacy and view impacts, and Mr. Rex, |
| 00:40:25.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:40:37.79 | Len Rifkind | is going to give you slides that detail that aptly. And so my point is that the council cannot make mandatory findings for design review approval under 1054.050.D. and E. And, um... You know, in closing, it really makes no sense. I never like to threaten city council with liability. former city council member myself, it's not a nice thing to do, but we've got a situation here where both, Soils Report and Engineering Report, both agree there's a problem. I think there's a problem if City Council approves a project where both engineers agree there's a problem, and they put the neighbors in that kind of problem. I'm gonna be quiet, I have more to say, but I want Mr. Rex to be able to have his time, and then after me, we're gonna finish up with Amy Wilson. Okay, thank you. |
| 00:41:30.01 | Michael Rex | Before I speak, because every moment is regulated here, I want to see if this works. Yeah, okay. And I'd just like it to be known this first time I've seen a 10-minute limit. We normally had 15, and that's what we planned. That included our rebuttal, so I'll try to rush through this as fast as I can. Okay, I'm Michael Racks, I'm an architect representing Jardim Cunningham and Amy Wilson. |
| 00:41:37.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:41:43.24 | Unknown | Let me... |
| 00:41:44.01 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 00:42:01.48 | Michael Rex | This is what the planning commission saw. It shows that the deck would barely look into the dining room and living room windows. This is what's in your packet. It shows the deck cut back two feet, like it indicates that you'd never be able to see the deck. Well, those aren't correct. In the slides we show, you're in the Cunningham home looking out to 208, and this is what you're going to see with the 10-foot deck, somebody looking right in. So how could staff and planning commission conclude there's no privacy impacts? I'll tell you why. There were never story pulls for this deck, even though it's 15 feet in the air. Their staff never went out to Amy and Gerard's house to look out their windows, so they couldn't know. Even if they did, there was no pulls. They wouldn't see this. Planning commissioners never went and stood in Gerard and Amy's windows to see this. So they approved the project and they made those findings with no understanding or knowledge of the view impacts. That's how they concluded. Staff still has not gone out and looked out these windows in the current staff report, even though the polls are now in place. This is what we'll have to do to protect privacy and mitigate that deck. |
| 00:43:33.82 | Unknown | food. |
| 00:43:35.47 | Michael Rex | or a screen could go up. But when the screen goes up, the privacy would be improved, but the view of the pretty green hills, which is by code, a primary view of natural features, and the lights at night would be lost. In fact, here's the lights at night. This is what they see from their dining room and living room. There's the city at night. Here's somebody standing looking in at night, if this was screened with a privacy screen to protect privacy, all the view of the hills are lost. And that is an important feature because that's partly what defines Saucedo, is the village houses on the hill and the lights at night. It's not just the dining room. This is a view from the living room. Those are the poles. Sitting in the sofa. Why is the sofa over here? Yes, we have views of the bay out this way, the cities out this way. But when you sit in the sofa, you also enjoy the beautiful view of the hills and the houses and the lights at night. And that'll be lost. You'll have somebody on the deck looking back at you. This is the window that was proposed in the living room where somebody could be frequently. Privacy's lost, that's how it'll have to be mitigated. Now not only privacy's lost, but view's lost. When these were pointed out, these problems to the applicant, all that was proposed were two things. We're going to pull the deck back two feet. Still a problem. You can still stand on the deck and look right into the living room and dining room, primary living spaces. You know, if this deck was down, the existing deck's down here. If this deck was down on the lower level, you could screen it without losing the view of the hills or have a privacy problem. Planning Commission gave a condition, we gotta screen down here, because they didn't understand that the problem was up here. Here's the window being removed. That helps, but we still have somebody standing on the deck. Let's go up, and that's what we'll have to do. This is up on the master bedroom level, looking out the windows where Amy gets dressed every morning. The poles don't show at all because they don't indicate the 30-inch ease that are planned. That house, if it's built, will announce its presence in a very bold way. Thank you. because they don't indicate the 30 inches that are planned. That house, if it's built, will announce its presence in a very bold way, where right now it's very quiet. The view of the hills and the city lights at night, or the Saucedo lights at night are lost forever. |
| 00:46:11.90 | Mayor Withley | Michael, I don't mean to interrupt, but you only have less than three minutes left for your team. |
| 00:46:15.99 | Michael Rex | For your team. Okay. You can pull the deck back, still a privacy problem. There are options. I think it's a fatal flaw that they propose the main living level on the top floor, which ends up with a deck floating in space, impacting neighbors. If they put the main living level on the lower floor, like where the existing deck is, that could be adequately screened. Um, That idea was rejected. |
| 00:46:41.45 | Amy Wilson | I did. |
| 00:46:43.00 | Michael Rex | Right now the garage is 13 feet back from the sidewalk. If they pulled it all the way forward, the entire house could come back, They can have their 10-foot deck way up in the air, but it could be adequately screened. This too was rejected. Now you're going to have a car parking in front of that driveway, the garage door only 13 feet deep. It's going to stick out into the street. Thank you. Thank you. or the sidewalk. This is what we learned from our geotax. There's a seven foot water table They want to go down 14 feet. We have a report from Dennis Riley, structural engineer, that water will flow into the The excavation, taking soil with it and undermining the Cunningham-Wilson home. And when they put in drain lines, water will continue and perpetually flow into those drain lines until they silt up, and then the whole system fails. Um, Why are there findings that this can be solved? It's because the soils report was buried on a planner's hard drive. We have no knowledge, and I spoke to planners and city engineers, that they ever saw the report. The planning commission never saw the report. When we asked for it, it couldn't even be found until it was found on a hard drive, only recently. So nobody knew these issues, but now they do. And the last thing I want to point out is that drainage, Um, Here's the drain line under the house. This condition says you gotta drain to a public right away. Well, the outfall will be three feet below grade. There's absolutely no way to drain this system unless they have an easement across the neighbors. So, in conclusion, they cannot contain the work on their property. They're going to have to have an easement, and if the neighbor down below won't grant an easement, they can't drain the site. They cannot limit this project to their site because water from adjacent properties will flow onto their property and undermine adjacent properties. That is why their own engineer says the neighbor's homes have to be underpinned If I had more time, I would talk about the aesthetics. I think there's a design problem. I also can tell you a little bit about outreach because the statement that the Cunninghams supported this project that was told to the neighbors is simply untrue. There's three letters from the Cunninghams going back a year and a half consistently saying they do not support this project because of loss of privacy. So thank you very much. |
| 00:49:09.88 | Mayor Withley | Thank you, Michael. |
| 00:49:10.76 | Michael Rex | TODAY. |
| 00:49:10.84 | Unknown | for questions. |
| 00:49:11.42 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 00:49:12.51 | Mayor Withley | Um... So I think there will be time for another five minutes later on. So if you wanted to speak then probably is the best time. Do we have any questions? Now, what's our format? We can ask questions of the appellate presumably at this point before we ask the next presentation, or should we reserve our questions? Mary, what's your advice? |
| 00:49:39.38 | Mary Wagner | However it works best for the council, Mr. Mayor. |
| 00:49:42.96 | Mayor Withley | Do you want to hold off until we hear the... Next presentation? Yeah. Okay. So, we will now turn over to the applicant. And again, you have 10 minutes for this first presentation for your whole team. If you want to call out on time, we can |
| 00:50:14.97 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 00:50:15.56 | Michael Hecox | Yeah, we brought it to Rafael and he downloaded it on the computer. |
| 00:50:43.20 | Mayor Withley | Do you need to be alerted at any time point in the 10 minutes? Or are you guys OK? |
| 00:50:48.31 | Riley Hurd | Thank you. I do not. Thank you. All right. Good evening. My name is Riley Hurd, and I represent the Vanderlindens. I THINK IT'S REALLY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FOCUS ON THE ENTITLEMENTS THAT ARE BEFORE YOU THIS EVENING. |
| 00:51:03.08 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:51:03.59 | Riley Hurd | This is a design review and tree removal. This is not a building permit application, an engineering review, and you will not find any design review findings that talk about analyzing Soils engineering, geotechnical engineering, so on and so forth. So I just want to focus the legal issue that's before this council, and that's those two entitlements. So, Mr. Rex didn't get to talk too much about the design, but I would just note that while it is modern, it has a nod to the nautical history of Sausalito with the barrel roof. But not only does the barrel roof kind of harken back to that history, but that's what preserves the views. The Planning Commission said this design was, quote, brilliant in the way that it preserved the views of the neighbors. and um, You're gonna hear two sides of that tonight, but I would suggest that the objective third party board who you've tasked with making these decisions is someone and some people that should be respected and that it would take something quite egregious to overturn their decision. They support this project. they made some changes and you see them and it toned down some of the modern aspects, materials, colors, and the design It actually made for a better project. So while you will hear both sides, I would suggest that the Planning Commission got it right when they called it brilliant. Next is privacy and views. I have the pleasure of doing one or two of these a week and I can safely say that this is one of the more egregious cases of do as I say, not as I do, than I have ever seen. What you didn't see in the previous presentation was the massive 19 foot deck extending off the appellant's home. Yet at the same time, we're being told that an eight-foot deck is far too big and far too impactful on privacy. I would suggest that that does not add up, especially when the upper deck that's proposed is the lowest upper deck of any home on the street. |
| 00:53:18.77 | Unknown | you |
| 00:53:20.41 | Riley Hurd | Not only that, the new deck is smaller, and it's almost 10 feet further away than the existing deck. This is a huge privacy improvement. Uh-huh. It's gonna be supplemented by the removal of the palm tree which currently sits right in the middle of the appellant's view. So I have a hard time reconciling comments that they're okay with the palm tree remaining, but the deck over here, when you turn 90 degrees and look this way, is a problem. During the rebuttal period, take a look at those view analyses and look at the view angle that they're showing. It's not out to the city, the panoramic view in front. It's someone who's standing like this. That's not what the code says is protected. The code says, If it comes up right in the middle, like the palm tree, that's a problem. If it's over here, Thank you. That's not a problem. The impossible alternatives that were proposed require variances, they don't comport with the development code, and this project, as it's proposed, requires no variances at all. |
| 00:54:20.92 | Unknown | you |
| 00:54:21.24 | Riley Hurd | The code is the guide. |
| 00:54:21.50 | Unknown | THE COUNTRY IS |
| 00:54:24.35 | Riley Hurd | The biggest red herring is the engineering. I'd like to respond to Council Member Theodorus and let you know that no work needs to be done on adjacent properties. The language that you read in Mr. Hamadi's report when you talk about underpinning adjacent foundations, that's done solely on the applicant's property. At their sole expense, not one penny will have to be spent by the neighbors. So I just want to make that crystal clear, and Mr. Hecock will supplement that. So, This is not the forum for that review. You have an entire city department that looks at that very, very closely. And our two engineers, Tarnath and Hamadi, They are regularly used by Mr. Rex. So either his clients are being put at risk by people that don't know what they're doing or perhaps this is an advocacy issue. Um, The historic issue? We were very surprised to see that brought up. The appellants themselves sought to purchase this property and tear down the home to build a garage. |
| 00:55:28.84 | Jeff Butler | Thank you. |
| 00:55:28.88 | Unknown | garage. Thank you. |
| 00:55:29.54 | Riley Hurd | Thank you. So to then hear about a captain's cottage, It's very, very strange. So I'd like to conclude by saying that the Vanderlindens, they're not gonna be speaking, but this is their dream house. They don't understand the obstructionism. They don't understand how this has become a contest, EVEN AFTER THE APPEAL WAS FILED, THEY OFFERED TO REMOVE THE WINDOW THAT COUNCIL MEMBER PFEIFER DISCUSSED. SO WE ARE OFFERING TO REMOVE THAT ON THE NORTH ELEVATION, NOT IN PLAY, AND TO BRING THE DECK IN 8 FEET. So now Mr. Hecock will go over the graphics, which I think really tell the story. Thank you. |
| 00:56:06.93 | Michael Hecox | I'll lead somebody to come through the PDF slideshow, if you will. |
| 00:56:13.49 | Mayor Withley | And before you begin, could I let you know, via Mary, how much time you have left? Five minutes. |
| 00:56:19.54 | Michael Hecox | Five minutes. Okay, I'm gonna rifle through these slides really fast and then we'll come back to them if anybody has questions or wants to look at them more closely. As you, if you saw the Planning Commission hearing, you'll know that we made outreach to 13 neighbors, everyone on our block and everyone across the street. This is a diagram of all the views we looked at from all of those neighbors. Again, further diagramming the neighbors' views, making sure we had the least impact, trying to improve or at least preserve those neighbors' views. These are just a few of the neighbors' emails, starting with Jenny Wasser, one of the original emails before story polls went up. Here's another email after the original story polls went up. We understand she'll be here tonight. I've been in communication with her as early as Friday, and we'll have more to say about Jenny. Another email. This is from Dan Humphrey, who lives next door to Jenny. This email today saying he does not have any objections to the project. Dan is the first one who's directly across the street and has a view corridor between 206 and 204. No objection. Jolise and Chris Groenbeck, two emails here, one as early as last week, saying no objections to the project. They think it's quite a modest project. Aline directly across the street as well. No objections, she likes the curving roof line. Margaret, I'm sure she'll be here, or get up to speak. This was one of her emails. This is after the original story polls went up, saying I will not oppose the project. Now, Len and Eleanor at 405 Main Street support the project. They think we've done a great job. Okay. On to Amy and Gerard. Here's one of Amy's earliest emails to us after we emailed her a drawing, and she says, it's a beautiful design. Another email from Amy and Gerard. We really don't, now this is after the panic email if you read through all their correspondence. They cherry picked the communication, here's what you're missing. We really don't mind what the design is at the front of the house. Okay, here's all the curved roofs in the neighborhood. Okay, so to suggest that this curved roof line is somehow out of character, starting at the top left, that building is five houses away, 142 feet away, a curved roof building. Here's another building, 200 and then, what is that, five or 15 feet away? |
| 00:58:49.27 | Michael Hecox | Thank you. Sure, 405 Main. What's the address? Corner of Richardson and 2nd. Here's another building on the ridge line that Gerard and Amy's view looks up to. Curved roof line. I don't need to go through all these. This is Sausalito. Note there's not a single floating home on this slide. Okay, finally, Gerard's email. This was about a year ago, May 9th. Here are our issues, a party deck, a large party deck, and the proposed upper deck. No mention of character issues, no issue with anything other than the decks. That's really why we're here tonight. |
| 00:59:24.55 | Unknown | That's really why. |
| 00:59:27.22 | Michael Hecox | Okay, here's a comparison of the two floor plans. Ours, 206 is down on the bottom here. You see the concession that we recently offered to the pink line here is the approved deck. By planning commission, we've recently offered this two foot concession just to try to make them happy. You'll see the comparison. They're 532 square feet of roof decks, the highest of which is about seven feet higher than our proposed upper roof deck. You'll also notice their 79% floor ratio compared to our 59% floor ratio. Here's an isometric view, just comparing their property to our eight foot deck with 105 square Here's an overlay. The pink is the existing house. We're pulling the house back an additional three feet, so the new house will be four feet off the property line. You see the existing deck here, nine inches off the property line. That existing deck already, as you know if you've visited, already looks directly into their living room and dining room and over their deck. And since the removal of the tree outside Gerard's office, now the existing deck has a very clear view into Gerard's office. You'll note also our new deck that's four feet higher actually is going to provide more privacy for his office because of the view angle. In other words, if you're standing on this deck, you see less of the floor in this office than you do if you're standing nine inches off the property line. Here's a view showing up the new public view corridor between the two buildings. You'll be able to see the bay now as you walk from the sidewalk or even across the street. Between the buildings, there'll be a new bay view opened up right there. Here's the panoramic view from the roof deck. Here's the view of the city from their roof deck. You can see our roof line is way down here. You can see the ridge line way up there. So they're cherry picking their views. And I'm trying to be very objective here, as objective as I possibly can. |
| 01:01:30.63 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:01:35.18 | Mayor Withley | Do we have any questions at this time for the applicant? |
| 01:01:41.19 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a question. |
| 01:01:43.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:01:43.20 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. |
| 01:01:43.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:01:43.93 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Um. So I have a question regarding the windows and the privacy for 206. I was told that one of the windows that I had raised regarding privacy issues was going to be had been removed but I still saw it in that last The person who was just giving that presentation, yes, I'm sorry, could you come back and just Um. Could you go back one slide? and where you were showing the relation of the two homes next to each other. There we go. Um... From what I could see, the current house has the big windows that face kind of forward. from that view, was mitigated in that the windows were looking forward at 2.06. The new design appears to have one One window that is kind of cocked to the angle I'm assuming to maximize the view of the water with with the You know, it's a very pretty view in that direction. But I think that was the one that I was curious about with respect to privacy impact, because that tall window... that now angles Over. the 208. to me is something different in terms of having a privacy impact. And I was wondering if you could comment on that. Is that the window that's going away or? No. |
| 01:03:33.95 | Michael Hecox | No, it might be easier if we go back to the plan view and look at it there. or even Yeah, this is probably the best representation of that window. So this model shows that north wall window that goes away. Now, the top floor has a bit of a curve to it, and that was because Amy and Gerard had requested that we pull back that top floor so that it's flush with the existing building. So we did that. We give it a little slight curve so that we can gain a tiny bit of floor area in the living room and kitchen area. And that window does have a very slight cant to it. Now that doesn't necessarily mean the window has to be in plane with that curved wall. We'd be happy to make any kind of adjustment, you know, so that the window, the glass, for example, the frame of the window could be deeper. That's a relatively simple design solution that we could make if that was an issue. |
| 01:04:35.26 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. I have a comment on that. I guess from my perspective, it seemed that the current house because they were all front facing forward, then it was less of an impact to someone's privacy because the views are all forward and it's a beautiful view going forward. Whereas when you have that window that's kind of curved, then you do have that impact. |
| 01:05:02.46 | Michael Hecox | So I'm gonna... |
| 01:05:02.64 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | from what I could see, to privacy. Oops. If you could move the window forward so that it was like in sync with the other windows. |
| 01:05:15.23 | Michael Hecox | Thank you. It's absolutely possible to both get the window in plain with that perpendicular view to the bay. That's possible. It's also possible to deepen the sill, do a custom sort of sill around it so that there's not an immediate sort of glance down onto their deck. I'll also point out that the existing house has quite an expansive view of their master deck. When you go up to the top floor, you can see their whole deck quite broadly. |
| 01:05:49.34 | Mayor Withley | Okay? All right. Do you have any questions at this point? |
| 01:05:53.32 | Unknown | Well, we have questions of their sort. Is Geotech a person is there on here? Well, you talked about other questions on Geotech. |
| 01:05:58.05 | Mayor Withley | Well, Yeah, we have public comment. |
| 01:06:03.53 | Unknown | We have Thank you. |
| 01:06:05.47 | Mayor Withley | you And we have rebuttals and, um, I think we're going to want to get into more questions after the rebuttal phase. So my suggestion is we hear public comment. We then hear the five-minute rebuttals, and I think we're going to have then a bunch of questions. Is everybody okay with that? Okay. So at this point, let's open this hearing up to public comment. And can I have a show of hands roughly how many people would like to talk here this evening? Okay. And to remind you to try and keep your comments to three minutes. So who wants to go first? |
| 01:06:52.62 | Mayor Withley | Come on, I saw lots of hands there, so someone's got to go first. |
| 01:06:56.38 | Vice Mayor Theodos | I'm going to go first. |
| 01:07:03.86 | D.J. Puffert | Thank you. My name is D.J. Puffert. I'm a 42-year resident here in Sausalito. And the reason that I came here today is my two kids grew up on that block. There's a lot of people here that had friends with my daughters. And I know the neighborhood fairly well. I know the architect through one meeting only at this property. And I don't know the owners. I've never met them. Wouldn't know them if I saw them. But I do know the neighbors. And I do know what their concerns are. And I looked at the project, and as at least some of you know, I used to be the president of the historical society, and I spent a quarter century in the art business and primarily dealing with turn of the century products, some of which were houses. And I looked at this. You could say it's modern. It's not, in my opinion, it's not all that modern. It reflects back at what we see in the eastern seaboard more than we see out here. But as far as the sight impairment, Other than what I heard tonight, and I've got to be fair, I haven't spoken to Amy or Gerard, and I know both of them. I just, we haven't had the time to meet. on this project. But I have been on 206 and I have looked at it. I don't really see how it's going to impair the site that much, if at all. It's a small house compared to a very large footprint. Tonight I heard some things such as the window on the side which the applicant has said will take that window out. I've seen that the deck is going back two feet. In my opinion, I saw more through Michael's drawings tonight and Michael Rex's drawings tonight than I had through Michael Hecox. Still not opposed to it. I don't like the tree being removed. But the applicant has offered to remove the tree the way I understand it. And I am the first one here tonight. to appease the people who were opposing this project. I don't know that it was something that the city said they had to do. So I looked on all those things and it looked to me, and at least it appeared to me coming here tonight, that the applicant for this project had bent over backwards to try to make it look nice for the neighbors. setting it back from the project. If it goes into a drainage problem below the water table, it is my experience now, that's going to be a problem. But we heard tonight the attorney representing them has said it's not going to be anybody's financial burden, and that's what I think we're all concerned about. Thank you very much for your time. |
| 01:09:58.31 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:09:58.77 | D.J. Puffert | Thank you. |
| 01:10:01.18 | Mayor Withley | Gary. |
| 01:10:06.80 | Jerry Taylor | I'm Jerry Taylor. I live at 210 Third Street, which is the next door to Amy and Gerard. I've been there since 1949, so I'll poll rank here. In the late 70s, the owner of 214, Peter Sutter, the next house up, was told he needed to fit into the neighborhood. He couldn't change things or remodel. He needed to fit into the neighborhood, which he did. in 1980 when we remodeled at 210 Third Street We needed to fit in the neighborhood and keep the existing framework. In 1983, 84, Davood Cohenzada owned 208. He was a previous owner. He had grandiose schemes of building a two-and-a-half story L-shaped with a driveway underneath, car turned around in the back. The neighbors said, no, it doesn't fit in the neighborhood. At that time, there wasn't a historical landmarks board ruling. It was called the Community of Parents' Advisory Board. They encouraged all of us and lauded all of us to keep the look of the neighborhood, keep these houses in perspective. The forestall house, which is the subject of this conversation at 206, was beautifully maintained by an old sea captain from Standard Oil with lots of sailboats, Jim Crackery around the front. Small, beautiful, it fit in. I'm not saying that the people don't have a right to build to the maximum, but I do think they have an obligation And I'm confused by the Historical Landmarks Board now that says that this row of houses has no historic value when it was lauded for its continuity over 30 years ago. That confuses me, and no, I never knew the historic landmarks Barb was talking about this. And as far as the wonderful effort of outreach, I'm not that hard to find. I've never had a conversation about this house with the owners. Thank you. |
| 01:12:04.47 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. who would |
| 01:12:13.02 | Margaret Brindle | Good evening, members of the City Council and staff. My name is Margaret Brindle. I own 217 Third Street across the street from this house from 206 to 208 to 10 since 1968 My husband Roger's parents owned it before that since 1940. So I'll pull right on Jerry and say our family has lived there for some 74 years. Thank you. Eh? . Um, I'm here to voice my opposition to the project at 206 Third and support the appeal of Gerard and Amy. Over the past year, the project applicants have repeatedly said that their design does not impact but improves neighbors' views, because they are lowering the roof line at the back of the house by about two feet, I believe two and a half feet. They often don't mention that they're raising the front of the house by six feet. I mean six inches, pardon me. Six feet would not be tolerated. Six inches appears to be tolerated. But that does impact some of us. From the very beginning of the process, I've talked to the applicants, and I've talked to the architect about the need to preserve views and maintain current roof heights. Raising roofs unnecessarily, and I believe this raising of the roof, since we're talking about a 13.8 inch ceiling in the inner rooms is unnecessary. And I hate to see it, that precedent in our neighborhood. Jerry alluded to what's gone on before, in the three houses on the other side of the street. So they're raising the roof six inches. They say that their roof line is modest because the exterior wall line is only 7.5 inches in height, 7.5. seven feet five inches in height, but the ceiling height in the center of that room is 13. Feet, eight inches. I don't understand why we're approving a project with nearly 14 foot ceilings when we're trying to preserve views and roof heights I'm not familiar with the names or addresses of those who say their view is actually improved other than being told by the architect people's views are being improved. I do not know any of those names or addresses. |
| 01:14:22.54 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:14:26.76 | Margaret Brindle | I've lived here for many years and know many residents throughout the neighborhood. The more I hear about how neighbors were convinced that views are not impacted and roof lines are not raised, the more uncomfortable I feel about the outreach program that was undertaken. I read in the staff report that outreach lasted more than a year. But that fact that it lasted more than a year does not mean that the outreach was meaningful or totally genuine. I understand from tonight that the city council members have been out to see the property From what I understand, the staff that recommended that the project be approved, never visited the neighborhood or the property. I could be wrong there, but that's my understanding. because I read through the some of the pages. Um... I'm here to ask you to uphold the appeal. Thank you. |
| 01:15:19.39 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Who would like to go next? |
| 01:15:30.23 | Jenny Wasser | Mayor Whitley and members of the council. I must start that I'm one that gave Jeremy the impression that these people, that the applicant was improving the views of their neighbors. This is untrue. This was my house, and they repeatedly told me they're improving it. So... |
| 01:15:52.53 | Mayor Withley | Could you try and use the microphone a little? I'm sorry. That's okay. |
| 01:15:56.48 | Jenny Wasser | I'm sorry. That's okay. My name is Jenny Wasser, and I've lived at 203 Third Street for 27 years. I sculpted the large mermaid sculpture. the one at Shell gas station on my top floor, my art studio inspired by the view in front of me. |
| 01:16:08.52 | Amy Wilson | I'm not. |
| 01:16:12.72 | Jenny Wasser | I am here today to tell the Council that I do not support the approval of the 206 Third Street Project. |
| 01:16:14.86 | Amy Wilson | Do not serve. |
| 01:16:19.27 | Jenny Wasser | but I do support the appeal right before you. Back when the project was before the Planning Commission, I didn't attend that meeting, but I wrote a letter of support. but I rescind that approval because in part I was misled by the project architect into thinking my water views would not be impacted and they would, in fact, be improved. They showed me pictures that are now clearly untrue. The applicants, I'll have them in front of me. I plan to hand out to you. the Their pictures, their of how my view would be improved, and a photograph of mine of showing the correct alignment of the story poles. I was misled, okay, I'm sorry, The applicants were around all the time running their hotel. Despite the fact I didn't like the hotel, I wanted to be friendly and welcoming to new people. I was duped. Now that the accurate story polls are in place, it is clear that my views are impacted. My view of Belvedere and Raccoon Straits is wiped out, gone. I have brought to show you these designed by the architect showing one thing in my photograph showing the real story. |
| 01:17:43.37 | Jenny Wasser | The project architect has repeatedly tried to convince me that my views are not impacted, but see for yourself in the photographs that they are. When the project applicants came around, They told me they had created a design that all the neighbourhood supported. because they had adjusted it to meet the neighbor's needs. Mm-hmm. I found out later they had not met the needs of 208 Thurston Street and never gotten their support. I felt deceived. but I felt deceived by their representation of the neighbors' opinions. At the time, I thought, why should I oppose the project? They're not going to block, they promise they're not going to block my water view. And 208 Third Street is in support. But now I know that 283 is not and that quite a few other neighbors are opposed for various reasons. In the last week, the architect repeatedly contacted me asking me for support. In the latest communication, he offered on behalf of the applicants to contribute to the undergrounding of wires on our street in exchange for my support of their project. I laughed at what appears to me to be a bribe. For starters, the undergrounding project died years ago, and I was offended that he would think that in a last ditch effort, he would convince me to give up the significant part of my water view. |
| 01:18:53.52 | Mayor Withley | Yes, Mr. Thanks. water. THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:18:56.89 | Jenny Wasser | Thank you. Thank you. That is it. Thank you. Thank you. It is immoral to try to improve your property at your neighbor's expense. |
| 01:18:58.14 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:19:02.72 | Mayor Withley | Thank you very much. Who would like to speak next? Charlotte. |
| 01:19:13.73 | Charlotte Mastrangelo | Good evening. I'm Charlotte Mastrangelo, and I live at 105 3rd Street in the next block, just down from this house. And I'm coming to this party late. I did not receive a notice |
| 01:19:13.99 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:19:14.01 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:19:14.41 | Amy Wilson | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:19:28.23 | Charlotte Mastrangelo | of any development plan before the planning commission And they only heard of the appeal from one of the neighbors I'm only a block away and I can't understand that. If Jonathan Leon has to recuse himself He's further away than I am, so why wasn't I ever informed of this? I'm usually pretty up on happenings in the neighborhood. I've been there since 1958, and I was very much in favor of keeping the neighborhood like it has been. We've worked hard to underground the wires on the streets. We didn't quite make it, but the third block got undergrounded, and I'm very pleased about that. It clearly, this house that the Planning Commission approved is clearly taking views from the second block of Third Street. |
| 01:20:21.27 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:20:21.32 | Unknown | Commission. |
| 01:20:21.64 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:20:27.78 | Charlotte Mastrangelo | The design has a more industrial appearance than the small houses and cottages surrounding it. And the encroachment and the enormous land cut for a basement is mind-boggling. I would think the adjoining neighbors would be extremely concerned with such a cut. out for the foundation. I know I have a heart attack up next to me. It is my hope that the design can be greatly tweaked. Michael Winkler. Rex says yes, it can be tweaked, so I'm happy to hear that. The deck protruding into the buildings into and blocking the views, the windows directly lurking into the adjoining property, which they say they can do something about. So that's hopeful. And I hope that they can go back to the drawing board to design a more acceptable design to be presented that could not block any views or peering to the adjoining homes. I am totally against any building that blocks or encroaches on existing views. I hope you will support the appeal before you. Thank you. |
| 01:21:49.96 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:21:53.31 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 01:22:11.04 | Noel Norton | I'm Noel Norton and I live at 24 Glen Drive, but I own 202 3rd Street and 314 Main Street, the two buildings near the corner. there. And, um, FROM THIS... I took pictures of all of the, houses on the blocks, both sides of the block. and When I went and looked at the drawings here, I was very surprised to see that they had in their plans. See you. DRAWINGS OF THE VARIOUS BUILDINGS THERE AND DIDN'T NOTICE that there's a great spread of designs. And what I found by taking the pictures that The ones at the corner on both sides and at both ends of those blocks are flat roof and everything else in between it is a peaked roof, so it forms sort of a rhythm. And this rounded design totally destroys that and will be highly noticeable in comparison to everything else that is in that area. Actually, they belong more down at the foot of Johnson Street and Bridgeway where the other arcs are. And if you notice that I did try to ALL OF THE THINGS THAT WE curbs so that they were, and I tried to make all the houses from the pictures that I took. THEIR OWNERS, in relationship to one another. AND, UH, I THINK THAT THEY HAVE CHANGED SOME OF THE MATERIALS, BUT THE ORIGINAL MATERIALS DIDN'T SEEM TO FIT WITH THE OTHER MATERIALS THAT WERE USED IN A LOT OF THE BUILDINGS. Um, the – Thank you. |
| 01:24:18.23 | Noel Norton | So my main concern is. my view in any way or my properties in any way, but I think it does disturb the neighborhood in the way it currently does. is looks. So I hope that you will not approve this as it's envisioned. Thank you. |
| 01:24:42.61 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Is there anybody else who would like to |
| 01:24:55.94 | Joan Cox | Hello. Joan Cox. I'm a member of the Planning Commission and I voted on this project. And if you looked at the tape, you saw that I struggled with my vote on this project. and I'm not coming to you tonight to tell you how I would vote if this was remanded to us in the event that you decide to do that. But I do want you to know that had I been provided with additional information, THAT IS DESCRIBED IN THE STAFF REPORT, IT MAY HAVE INFLUENCED MY VOTE. AND THAT INFORMATION INCLUDES Well, first of all, we did not have this sort of neighborhood response at our Planning Commission meeting. heard these objections, that would have affected my perspective, and I would have wanted to make sure these concerns were addressed. Number two, we were not provided with the geotechnical report and so we did not understand the land cut that will be required for this project. And I also want to be clear that, you know, Thank you. The current planning Department did not prepare this report. This was done by an outgoing member who I think had many other tasks before them, and so I don't, by my comments, want to criticize our planning department. The story polls did not depict the deck. If that was the case, I think that information should have been conveyed to the Planning Commission. I do take umbrage to the criticism that planning commissioners didn't visit the site. I did visit the site. I'm pretty certain some of my fellow commissioners visited the site. It's our routine practice to do so. It's a rarity that we don't visit the site. However, we didn't go inside anybody's home. We weren't invited to do so. um, I was not made aware of the Community Appearance Advisory Board findings. So, um, I think some process improvements that I have observed from this and other projects would be if we're not gonna mark the decks, tell us that we didn't mark the decks so that the Planning Commission knows what they're seeing when they look at the story polls. um, Neighbors need to understand when they get the notice, this is it. This is their only opportunity to respond. I don't think many of these neighbors understood and especially the appellant understood this is their only bite at the apple. So perhaps something in our noticing provisions could be improved. And this is something I've shared with the planning department many – on many times. I would like to have planning commissioner contact information shared. WITH INTERESTED PEOPLE. People call the planning department to get my information, and they are turned away, and so they reach out in other ways. That's my understanding, and that's a problem for me. I understand, you know, maintaining privacy interests of planning commissioners, but I think transparency required of the process trumps that in my view. So those are my thoughts. Thank you. |
| 01:28:08.27 | Mayor Withley | Thank you, John. Vicki. Vicki. |
| 01:28:14.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:28:16.15 | Vicki Nichols | Vicki Nichols, 117 Caledonia. I, along with Chair Cox, are currently serving on the Planning Commission, and I did vote for this project. I agree with every one of her statements, so I won't repeat them. But I would like to say that in addition to what we talked about, the neighbors, We did get letters from neighbors saying that they felt this is a view improvement. In fact, that influenced me by getting those. So when you send those in, we look at every single one of them, if you're for them or against them. So just be aware of that. I'm not an engineer, obviously, but had I seen this soil report regardless of the size of the soil, legality of the packets. We've seen other soil reports. I, along with Charlotte, might have had a heart attack. I mean, that's scary. That means that the design is going to change, possibly, or whatever. We need to know those things, I think. I don't know. It would have helped me. And the story poll's not being up. In my view, this planning commission has not reviewed this project in the context that it is being presented. And I would urge that you remand it back to us and give us a chance to review it, because we didn't have a complete project. |
| 01:29:39.43 | Mayor Withley | Any other member of the public like to comment on this project? Okay. Um... Seeing none, I will then close public comment. Now... We now give each team the opportunity to make a further presentation, rebuttal, whatever you want to call it, for five minutes. And. |
| 01:30:12.18 | Len Rifkind | Good evening again, Mr. Mayor. Len Riffkind for the Appellants. Um, You heard Mr. Hurd in his comments suggest that you need to focus on the design review aspects of this, that the engineering is a red hearing. Here it is. what kind of fish is it? um, And, uh, I would respectfully disagree with my colleague and the reason why is because specifically, as I mentioned in your design review ordinance, specifically requires a submittal of a soils report. Why else require a submittal of a soils report if you're not going to read it? And presumably, the soils report should be read by staff. And if it's an engineering report, maybe the engineering department should read it and explain it to simple folks to understand what it means. But when I read Mr. Hamadi's report, there is a pretty simple sentence in here that most people can understand. It says on page five, it says, underpinning should be installed beneath adjacent foundations. Those are peers. That's the recommendation of the engineer that the adjacent foundation should have peers that go down. So that seems pretty clear and most of the folks that have read Mr. Hamati's report understand that. Thank you. Mr. Hurd also discussed about Uh, decks and things like that. And it's not fair because Amy and Gerard have a big deck and gee, why can't we have a big deck? My response to that would be, The Cunninghams didn't purchase – didn't build the deck. They bought the house that way. Maybe that deck wouldn't be approved today. It's on the second floor. And the deck that's really the issue here is a third floor deck. I don't think there would be a lot of issue if the deck was on the second floor. And I think it'd be okay, but when you put something perched up in the air, that's why it has the view and privacy impacts that we're concerned about. And, um, I encourage you to listen to the neighbors. I was impressed with the actually the quality and the articulation of what the neighbors said. I learned a lot from listening to them. And I'm going to be quiet now and have Mr. Rex finish up. Thank you. |
| 01:32:16.77 | Michael Rex | Actually, Amy's gonna conclude. I want to mention a little bit about aesthetics. Yeah. What? I have five. |
| 01:32:33.00 | Mayor Withley | You've now two minutes, 50 seconds. |
| 01:32:34.99 | Michael Rex | Okay, I'm just going to take a minute or so. Mr. Hertz says in his letter to you that this existing home at 208 has outlived its useful life. No evidence ever prepared to substantiate that, but I can tell you it's not a shack. It's not a tear down. We've remodeled many homes similar in much worse condition. This home contributes to the character of the neighborhood. In fact, I think it helps define it. It's one of the oldest houses in town. This is called Old Town for a reason. It serves in a great way to establish an important sense of place. I think the Planning Commission tripped over the findings, and so has staff. The findings state that. Um, The project needs to take advantage of unique characteristics of the site. What are the characteristics unique to the site? It's a standard rectangle, slightly sloped downhill, similar to all the other adjacent lots. There's nothing unique about it. did it take advantage of in this design that you need? to those characteristics. No one ever addressed that. That finding was never made. Um, And I can tell you why. There was no architect on the board when this was heard by the Planning Commission. We had nothing but attorneys, and no offense to attorneys, but when it comes to these aesthetic matters, |
| 01:33:53.90 | Amy Wilson | that's out. |
| 01:33:55.42 | Michael Rex | We needed an architect, and Bill was at a recuse himself. Really quick on rebuttal, I have three more seconds. |
| 01:34:03.22 | Mayor Withley | Well, your whole team does, Michael. So if you want Amy to talk, she's only got one minute, 25 seconds. |
| 01:34:08.18 | Michael Rex | Okay. I want you to know that the log was not cherry-picked. If you read that log, Amy quoted everything that was said, and there is concern about the historic character in her letter, as well as privacy. The lower deck we can screen, a 15-foot deck high in the air we can't. So I'm going to turn it over to Amy. |
| 01:34:31.73 | Amy Wilson | My name is Amy Wilson, homeowner at 203rd Street, and I just wanna say that we entered this process with goodwill, and those trippy emails at the beginning saying, you know, this could be great, came from a place of goodwill. I did not cherry pick views. The views that you saw are from my bedroom window where I stand getting ready every night. And those are the views that have this huge impact on both privacy and the view itself. I am terrified by having to underpin our home. We have a slab on grade foundation which does not support underpinning. and so we are gonna have to tear out our whole ground floor where my nine-year-old sleeps and replace it and be displaced from our home for a year while we do that project so that they can build this home. I ask you to consider carefully everything you've heard tonight, and thank you very much. |
| 01:35:33.70 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:35:40.65 | Mayor Withley | Again, you have five minutes for your team. |
| 01:35:43.47 | Riley Hurd | Great. Thank you. I would be concerned, too, if someone was going to build a house next door to me that required me to tear out my foundation. That's not what's happening here. If you remain concerned about that, make a condition of approval on this project that says absolutely no work of any type may occur on the adjoining properties. And if your design is not something that can accomplish that, You can't comply with the condition of approval, and you can't build the house. We're that confident. What you're hearing isn't true. No work needs to happen next door. It's really unfortunate to watch us get any type of traction. And our engineer's out of town, and so you're left with us. But we talk to them. Make the condition. The window that you are addressing has a three degree slant to it. I wanted to clarify that for you and let you know that if you prefer zero, it can be accommodated. It's true, 208, it would never be approved today. The deck that's proposed at 206 is below the large deck on top of 208. is much lower than it. So, I'm still trying to reconcile the We can have all this, but don't put one in between the two of them. It's hard to understand that concept. The round roof, besides having the nautical ties, that's what lets the views be preserved. Finally, the living room, kitchen, office, and bathroom have 7.5 foot high ceilings. This 13-foot trick is just above a stairwell. I would submit that 7.5 feet is Not much at all. Um, Finally, it's disappointing that the neighbor outreach has been undone with misinformation, but we're going to address some of that right now regarding the geotechnical issues. |
| 01:37:50.88 | Michael Hecox | If we could go through a few of the slides and get towards – oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So with regard to the geotechnical issue, if you read the report, there's a lot of information in that report that the engineer puts in for various types of conditions that may come up during construction. The real question is, how is their foundation supported? Here's the two-to-one slope that's required to support that foundation. Here's our adjacent building. Here's the retaining wall that we have to build. Yes, it's quite tall. Yes, there's going to be drainage to deal with all water that comes on site. We're retaining all water that comes on site. I have an email from our civil engineer who is also frequently hired by Michael Rex, so he's competent, that states that we have no drainage problems. With regard to this issue, we are going to be putting 18-inch concrete piles along the line of the house. That's four feet off of the property line. There's absolutely zero work going on on this site. It's just – I don't know why they're saying that. It's just not true. If we could stick to the deck, that's the real issue. If you have any questions about this portion of engineering, I'm happy to answer them. There'll be approximately six of these piles along the line of the new house. And there'll also be some on the street side 12 feet off the property line. So there's no impact on the public right away either. |
| 01:39:24.11 | Michael Hecox | That's it. |
| 01:39:28.80 | Mayor Withley | Oops, microphone, thank you. Okay, so, You technically have one minute, 35 seconds left if you wanted to continue. But if you're happy with your rebuttal, then OK. Let's bring it up here now for an opportunity for questions before comments, I think. |
| 01:39:58.62 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Well I would have a lot of I have a number of questions on the geotech report, even though Michael has said there's not much there. And maybe I just don't. I'm not an expert in this. But their engineer is not here. And I'd like to just hold that in abeyance. But, I mean, we have two planning commissioners and a lot of the – residents Here, I think it calls for sending it back, including all of it. If we were Moving in that direction, I would hold all my geotech questions. Otherwise, I'd have several of them. |
| 01:40:33.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I would have to concur. We've heard from two planning commissioners who have said that there was information here that they had not been privy to and expressed a clear indication that they would have liked to have reviewed this. And I'm looking at some of the things that have been discussed and would definitely like to send it, I think, back to the Planning Commission for review. |
| 01:40:35.21 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Yeah. |
| 01:41:10.42 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, I want to make sure that We're doing that for either comprehensive reasons, design reasons, not just because of this engineering issue. Idiot. |
| 01:41:25.16 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I would say that in addition to, well, with respect to the soil and the geotechnical report, the window that's at the angle is one issue. It definitely is, it shifts the design in terms of privacy of the current house design. because the current house looks forward and the new design has a window at a tilt that does look over the property of 208. And so it sounds like there is some flexibility, but I don't want a design from the dais. I think it's best for them to go back and collaborate, commiserate with the neighbors, and go through that process. |
| 01:42:18.75 | Mayor Withley | Okay. |
| 01:42:19.12 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | There was something else, and I have to look at my notes. |
| 01:42:21.03 | Mayor Withley | I have to look at my notes. So you really think that there's a, you really have no extra questions to ask that you think at this point it just needs to be remanded back to the Planning Commission? Is that where you go? |
| 01:42:32.64 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I think I've asked my questions, and they've been very thorough. Both sides have been very thorough, and it was nice to hear that the... |
| 01:42:36.06 | Mayor Withley | Ah, okay. |
| 01:42:36.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:42:38.21 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. |
| 01:42:38.53 | Unknown | . |
| 01:42:43.44 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | the property at 206 is amenable to changes. It sounds like they're amenable to changes |
| 01:42:47.74 | Amy Wilson | their minimal. |
| 01:42:49.26 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I did think that the It's important to consider also the character of the neighborhood. It did strike me that just how much things have changed in the last 10 or so years with respect to design review. The fact that prior developments on that street looked at the character of the neighborhood with respect to the cottage look and the scale and everything. I thought that was of interest. So that would be another thing the Planning Commission could look at. |
| 01:43:26.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:26.17 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. |
| 01:43:26.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:26.23 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Okay. Well, I think we need to remand the whole ISSUED TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION. I MEAN, I WOULD LIKE TO make some decisions on some parts of it. But we had two planning commissioners said that their decision would have been influenced in an unknown way. We don't know what they would have decided. And based on neighborhood input, the story polls, the geotechnical report. So I don't think we're prepared to really make any type of decision. I think it's come to us really prematurely. And we need to send it back, get everyone involved, And, uh, hopefully get the parties work together because this is something that we need to you know, it's adversarial at this point, but get together the parties to try to work something out. Then have it totally, |
| 01:44:07.83 | Amy Wilson | Add the... |
| 01:44:14.04 | Vice Mayor Theodos | heard in the Planning Commission and hopefully not back here. |
| 01:44:18.51 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, I'd just add it's clear we have a creative architect, creative architects on both sides, one a consultant for the appellate and one for the... for 206 and it sounds like they could collaborate and come together on something that would enhance the street. |
| 01:44:41.16 | Mayor Withley | Okay, before I've got a couple of comments to make, but before I do, I'd like to seek some advice from our city attorney on Uh... the actual mechanism that we use to get it back to the Planning Commission. And so what are our options here? |
| 01:45:05.26 | Mary Wagner | Well, I mean, typically you could remand to the Planning Commission to look at specific aspects of the project. And what I hear you saying is you actually want them to redo the whole design review hearing, or I've heard different things from various city council members. The other question is, you know, this is an appeal to this body, so a decision needs to be rendered by this body. So if you're sending it back down to the Planning Commission, |
| 01:45:25.59 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:45:28.38 | Mary Wagner | would typically come back to you. with the information that you're seeking. So if you want the Planning Commission to weigh in, on the project and specific aspects we would need that direction. If what you're saying is we can't uphold the project and we want to take action to have it all redone, another option is to uphold the appeal but without prejudice so that the project could be resubmitted. Um, actions that you thought were important to be taken, it could be done that way as well. But if you don't do it that – if you don't take an action tonight and if you don't direct that the Planning Commission do something specific and have it come back up here, you that's not final. It would need to come back to you. |
| 01:46:14.38 | Mayor Withley | Okay. So I'll entertain a motion in a moment, I'd just like to make a couple of comments. The first is... There's sort of three issues, two and a half issues here. the neighborhood character. The view slash privacy, I'll put those together, especially of the deck. and the engineering. the soils, and I sort of am calling that half an issue because even though it sounds really, really scary. I think you'll find if you talk to Engineers who work in this city a lot, they do a lot of this. And so this is not the first time this problem's been encountered for smaller houses that need major work, that are sitting slab on grade. I mean, we've got engineers in the audience who do this for a living every day. They know how to do it to stop houses falling down. I think that just needs to be put into perspective. I was actually preparing for this thinking that the Um. The major thing I was interested in and probably the most concerned about was, of course, views and privacy are really important, but the neighborhood character is as well. And I was actually quite surprised that for a quite creative and edgy design, When I listened to the Planning Commission, there was nobody who came forward to actually say that they didn't feel this was part of the neighborhood character. the fact that the neighborhood is out tonight saying, well, we've got some, you know, we're not sure about this. We don't like it, I want to make sure that if we do send this back without prejudice, with prejudice, what's the term? |
| 01:48:16.52 | Mary Wagner | MS. In order for them to be able to submit a similar project within a year, it's without prejudice. |
| 01:48:18.12 | Mayor Withley | a similar project. Without prejudice. That we don't mix up the issues. You know... Let's not be saying that we don't like it in the neighborhood because what we really don't like is were worried about Gerard and Amos' view. They're two separate issues. And so I think it's really important that the community regards these as two separate issues. So those are my only comments, but I'm supportive of the motion that I think... |
| 01:48:50.47 | Vice Mayor Theodos | And I do want to clarify. Mary, so if we have a motion that we uphold the appeal without prejudice and they... They resubmit the plans and it goes through the process and planning commission. It does not necessarily go. That doesn't let us stay up. They have to appeal again, a separate appeal, or someone else would. |
| 01:49:09.00 | Mary Wagner | Correct. |
| 01:49:10.94 | Vice Mayor Theodos | So I move that we uphold the appeal without prejudice. |
| 01:49:17.03 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I second. |
| 01:49:19.16 | Mayor Withley | All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. That carries 3-0. |
| 01:49:20.61 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Aye. |
| 01:49:27.81 | Mayor Withley | Nine o'clock, are we? So it's nine o'clock. I'm going to take a five-minute recess. Thank you. |
| 01:49:33.45 | Unknown | an hour. I have to swim like this. Come on. |
| 01:49:46.19 | Mayor Withley | calls. Captain John Robacher. |
| 01:49:49.82 | Captain Rohrabacher | Good evening, Mayor, members of City Council. I'm here to report back after our meeting three weeks ago with our proposed legislation changes to the Saucyutel Municipal Code regulating the tour buses. And just briefly to recap, we heard from many people after the end of last tour season about on the neighborhood along Alexander South, 2nd Richardson, and Bridgeway with the tour buses coming and going to Sausalito to and from. And we listened to that, met with people, and then met with the tour bus operators and brought to you a voluntary agreement in March. And that didn't last really very long. And so we're back with hearing from residents and business people in that area and also having them speak to you and you giving us direction to come back with proposed changes to the municipal code. So that's what you have in front of you in my staff report. In essence, it's just formalizing the voluntary agreement that we had crafted with the bus – tour bus operators in March. One – one difference is a little bit longer length of the quiet zone rather than ending at Richardson and Bridgeway. The proposed quiet zone goes all the way to Anchor Street. But the other is a complete ban on tour buses south of Bay Street to the city limits. at the south end of town in Alexander. So that's a really fast summary on that. I'm happy to take questions or Don't know really what happens next on first readings. |
| 01:51:48.77 | Mayor Withley | Okay, thank you, Captain. Do we have any questions of staff here before we open this to public comment? |
| 01:51:49.73 | Captain Rohrabacher | Okay. |
| 01:51:53.95 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I know. |
| 01:51:57.61 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a quick question. And first of all, Captain Rohrabacher, thank you so much for all of your hard work on this. Really appreciate it, because I know it has not been easy. Thank you. And I guess one of the questions is, is there a reason why we couldn't extend the sound ordinance to the, all the way through Sausalito to the, because I know we have some residences you know, that are along bridgeway to the north as well. So extend it not to end at anchor, but to extend it all the way to like Gate 5 Road and |
| 01:52:37.96 | Captain Rohrabacher | Yeah, I'm supposing that you could do that. We were really listening to the complaints that came forward. So even after the buses and actually have to say quite a few of them did leave to the north as we agreed. And we did not get any complaints at all about the noise. So I didn't bring that forward as a correction to a problem that wasn't reported. |
| 01:53:02.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:02.67 | Captain Rohrabacher | Okay. |
| 01:53:03.07 | Vice Mayor Theodos | So this applies to buses that carry nine passengers or more. |
| 01:53:08.68 | Captain Rohrabacher | Yes. |
| 01:53:09.18 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. |
| 01:53:09.59 | Captain Rohrabacher | It's actually defined as eight passengers, including the driver, so nine people altogether. It's a small distinction. |
| 01:53:09.89 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Is that because? |
| 01:53:17.40 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a follow-up question. So I just wanted to clarify nine passengers or more. I mean, some of these hop-on, hop-off buses only have one So we're talking about capacity size of the bus. Seating capacity, yes. Okay, great. Okay. |
| 01:53:33.62 | Council Member Rulia | size at the bus. |
| 01:53:34.97 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:53:35.03 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 01:53:39.45 | Council Member Rulia | John or Mary or whoever, which in the So the old, the original section, the 1526, is that definition still applicable? you know, I think versus the, in terms of what the bus is, that any, um, can you see it? |
| 01:54:07.21 | Mary Wagner | to do. The definitions in 1526.010, that's the definition that would apply to what is defined as a passenger bus, and it is any motor vehicle carrying eight or more passengers engaged in the transportation persons for compensation. The language in 1526.020, which deals with passenger buses west of South Street, Second Street, and Bridgeway, that additional clarification would not apply to this regulation, but the exemptions would. So That additional clarification would not apply to this regulation, but the exemptions would. So if there are vehicles that are exempt from this type of regulation like Golden Gate Transit, it wouldn't apply to them and the other public carrier whose name is escaping me. |
| 01:54:28.39 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:54:28.41 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:54:28.73 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 01:54:49.69 | Council Member Rulia | But do we need to reference – my question is that where it references Ordinance 1046-1-1989, is that going to catch the TCP or whatever that permit that the state – it's a category of bus, I believe, under state law. Isn't that what you kind of said the last time? There's a certain license that people get. |
| 01:55:13.87 | Captain Rohrabacher | Yes, this applies to the passenger buses as we defined with eight passengers plus the driver. And all of them are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission with their charter partner carrier certificates. |
| 01:55:29.45 | Council Member Rulia | TPC. So any bus that has that label on their side is theoretically subject to this. |
| 01:55:30.80 | Captain Rohrabacher | CPS. label. |
| 01:55:38.32 | Amy Wilson | That's right. |
| 01:55:42.25 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. So we don't need to amend this to reference that. |
| 01:55:44.72 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. |
| 01:55:45.55 | Mary Wagner | No. Thank you. |
| 01:55:46.25 | Vice Mayor Theodos | And all Marin transit buses are exempt, including the stagecoach, is that correct? That's correct. |
| 01:55:52.78 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | MS. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I have a question. So I see that we can fine up to $1,000 and the recommendation is $100 for the first violation, $200 for the second, $500 for the third. Is that – I guess my first question is that – MR. Thanks. it's feasible that a resident might catch a bus, you know, breaking the law. And could the police levy a fine and a ticket based on a, resident snapping a photo or doing a video of a bus, you know, with the date time stamp. |
| 01:56:39.68 | Captain Rohrabacher | It actually is possible, but it's rarely done because it's a lot of work, and not for the officer but for the citizen. So for a private person to observe a vehicle code violation or a violation of municipal code, they have to, in essence, do a private person's arrest or citation, meaning they have to be the one that testifies in court and goes through that whole process. Just taking a photograph or a video really wouldn't do it. It doesn't happen often. It's just really a lot of extra effort for citizens to do that. We should be able to take care of that ourselves. |
| 01:57:19.69 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So then a follow-up question, Mr. Mayor, is that if it's going to fall on the |
| 01:57:21.73 | Captain Rohrabacher | Yeah. |
| 01:57:26.86 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | on our officers to have to enforce this and be there in monitoring this. I'm wondering if that might be cause to raise the violation, you know, more money in terms of the time spent to monitor and for enforcement. What are your thoughts on that? |
| 01:57:50.56 | Captain Rohrabacher | I actually would defer to the city attorney about the government code section that applies to fines. I did some research on the local court system on incremental fines, but I know there's a little bit more to it than that. I just wanted to make sure we were covered under the current bail schedule, but there's actually something else that helps to find that. I'm not actually fluent in that, but the city attorney probably is. |
| 01:58:10.30 | Mary Wagner | So, Councilmember Pfeiffer, those are actually the statutory maximums that the city is allowed to impose for these types of violations. What we did was build into the ordinance that it's not just necessarily $100 the first time. The officer has some discretion. So it's set up as a misdemeanor, which is $1,000 and or six months in jail. but that the citing officer has the ability to cite it as an infraction. with the first violation as 100. the second 200. and the third 500. It's similar to other types of traffic citations that the police department works with all the time. So the concept there is if you have somebody who's knowingly violating and willfully violating, that the officer has the ability to impose the higher penalty. |
| 01:58:57.18 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So in other words, if a company makes this violation a third time, and I assume we're going by the company, not the driver. Is that correct? In other words, we're finding the – so it's big bus, and here's the big bus, and they do it once, and we – it's 100, and twice it's – as opposed to the driver. |
| 01:59:23.48 | Captain Rohrabacher | No. No, it's the driver. It's the driver? It's the driver's responsibility. Once this ordinance is passed, it becomes a driver's responsibility. Okay. |
| 01:59:26.24 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | It's the driver. |
| 01:59:32.07 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Okay. May I? I mean, the last... |
| 01:59:33.86 | Captain Rohrabacher | I mean. |
| 01:59:35.72 | Vice Mayor Theodos | sentence of 15 to 6.5 oh five oh It says a person from a corporation shall be deemed guilty of a separate defense for each everyday during which any portion of which a violation of this section is committed, continued or allowed by that person, or firm. So it seems like if the firm allows this thing, it's a separate offense each time by each bus driver. That's the way I read it. |
| 02:00:00.49 | Mary Wagner | Vice Mayor Theodos, I think what we would do is it's treated as a traffic citation, you know, the first few times that it happens. If there's a particular company that continues to violate it, we would look at our ability to actually start. imposing violations on the company. I don't think it's typical and I think that that language is just meant to impart that, you know, it's not just an individual person if the entity committing the violation is a company, we could go after them as well. |
| 02:00:30.53 | Unknown | We have the power. |
| 02:00:31.96 | Mary Wagner | Yeah, we would have to do some more work on that, though, to determine how that would happen if we were to go after the company because it's a traffic violation by the driver. |
| 02:00:32.00 | Unknown | Thank you. We're... |
| 02:00:40.87 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So Mr. Mayor, follow up to that. Yeah, because I think it would be important to confirm we could go after the company as well. Because I mean what if the driver, the individual driver just doesn't pay? I mean we – Can I actually answer part of that question? |
| 02:01:01.02 | Captain Rohrabacher | I actually can answer part of that question. Is while I was working on this, I made contact with the district attorney's office and talked to one of the prosecutors about your very question. anticipating that it would probably come up. Primarily the violation is on each driver. It's their responsibility. There's some on our part, of course, to provide notice and let them know, which we intend to do as this closing date comes up in July. But let's say we have somebody who is making this up now, but they're driving because their company's saying, I don't care what the cops do. I want you to keep going this way. That's up to us to make our case, and this provision in the ordinance allows us to do that. the company saying, I don't care what the cops do, I want you to keep going this way. That's up to us to make our case, and this provision in the ordinance allows us to do that. And the district attorney provided me with guidelines for officers if we intend to make a case against a company owner. So the language is in there allowing us to do it. I don't know that we'll ever have to, but if we do, we will have that ability. And the district attorney gave us guidelines on what to do to make that case so that the owner, we can prove the owner knew and willfully was making that happen. |
| 02:02:06.60 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:02:09.11 | Mayor Withley | Okay. Thank you, John. Let's open this up. |
| 02:02:13.99 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Oh, actually, it's going to feed in another comment. I think we may have had this discussion earlier, but on the noise... |
| 02:02:14.18 | Mayor Withley | It's true. Please. |
| 02:02:22.33 | Vice Mayor Theodos | the quiet zone. have a that it's it's unlawful to make the noise along the northbound corridor and describe it. And I'm suggesting that maybe we take out northbound and just have it. for two reasons. We may change the flow of the buses at some point, but secondly, If someone goes up the wrong way and we cite them, we might have to cite them twice if they're violating our quiet zone. To limit it to northbound really doesn't serve a purpose. You might as well just have it the whole quarter as a quiet zone. |
| 02:02:52.73 | Captain Rohrabacher | Everything doesn't |
| 02:02:57.65 | Captain Rohrabacher | And I would agree, I don't have any objection. I was probably being a little optimistic that if we enacted this, nobody's going to leave South Carolina so I can put it in. But I was probably, like I said, a little optimistic on my part. |
| 02:03:09.41 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor. Sorry, thank you. So I guess another question I had is from a safety perspective, I was looking at Alexander the other day, Again, I am... about those buses coming in southbound on Alexander. And I guess my question is, what is your opinion with respect to safety coming in south? versus entry and exit both to the north, or leaving north and entering, I'm sorry. Thank you. leaving southbound and then entering the north. In other words, reverse it. I'm just asking this question because Alexander is just so narrow, and on that downhill slip, there's no bike lane, there's no... you know, place at all to walk and we've put the shero in the middle of the road and now we've got everybody just converging. |
| 02:04:15.61 | Captain Rohrabacher | So I agree that we've heard and listened to all those concerns. There's no question about the width of Alexander and the sidewalks or lack of sidewalks. Listening to the complaints overall from people, and there were several who took the time to write or talk to me about you know, what was happening there. the majority of the people were, and I don't have actual accounts for you, but I can tell you the majority of the people initially happy with the Voluntary agreement, the terms of that agreement, and were supportive of when that did not work to take the steps to formalize the Voluntary agreement with what we proposed tonight. And I'd have to leave the engineering issues to someone better qualified to talk about that. |
| 02:05:04.97 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:05:07.62 | Council Member Rulia | I would imagine – well, you can answer me. The 30-day waiting period, that's state law, kind of, until it goes into effect. |
| 02:05:19.35 | Mary Wagner | Correct, unless there's a statutory basis for an urgency ordinance. |
| 02:05:24.32 | Council Member Rulia | It would be 30 days from today. |
| 02:05:26.43 | Mary Wagner | It's 30 days from the date of second reading. |
| 02:05:28.12 | Council Member Rulia | I'll second reading, okay. |
| 02:05:31.68 | Mayor Withley | OK, let's throw this open for public comment. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on this? Please you, sir, first and then. |
| 02:05:53.87 | Luke Tessier | Mayor Withley, members of the council, thank you again for an opportunity to speak before you for a second time this evening. First, I would like to say that I support the initiative. As I've read it briefly, it appears to be well-formulated and sound. Second, in addition to this initiative and this amendment, I urge you to consider an update that limits trips, numbers of tour buses, origins of tour buses, and circulation of tour buses that would start at San Francisco, originate in South Salido, or act as a connection between the ferry and Muir Woods, Golden Gate National Recreation Areas, and Beach Cities From the proposal, it mentions serious negative impacts to the health, safety, and general welfare of the citizens of Sausalito, And I would add, and Southern Marin. We are looking at the safety issues and the safety of Tam Valley and communities all the way through Southwest Marin, including all the way out to the ocean. This issue ties into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Muir Woods issues because the NPS general management plan and materials provided at the scoping meeting last September in addition to nearly identical materials proposed Ten years ago, and rejected by the county as untenable Indicate that the National Park Service intent is to increase without caps, by at least 40% the number of people going out to Muir Woods and GGNRA areas. They have also stated in their general management plan an intent to create additional parking areas, and the analysis that some of us have performed indicate that it may be as many as 2.6 million people. The NPS has stubbornly refused to enforce a cap on attendance. or do an EIR. and they have completely ignored the cap that was agreed to in 2006. Shuttle buses, additional mass transit, and other issues have been proposed as a type of solution to the problem of traffic going out to Muir Woods and GGNRA properties. The problem is unlimited, ever-increasing attendance that puts strains on our transit systems, overuses and commercializes Muir Woods, and threatens to destroy a national resource that is many of the trees are more than 600 years old. between 400 and 600 years old, predating Columbus. I expect that if a Hop on hop off shuttle system is allowed to originate in Sausalito. It will turn large portions of San Salido all the way up to Gate 5, all the way through Southern Marin properties into parking lots solely for the purpose of increasing attendance at Muir Woods. And I urge you to consider this in future amendments. Thank you so much. |
| 02:09:07.12 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Is there... Thank you. Anybody else from the public? |
| 02:09:21.23 | Linda Lyons | Greetings to everyone. Thank you. My name is Linda Lyons. I spoke March 6th at the first meeting. Well, it probably wasn't the first. First one for me. MAY 27, 1937. 77 years ago today, The Golden Gate Bridge was opened. to continue Highway 101 and connect it to Marin County and counties north. THE PLANNING OF THE CONTINUATION OF HIGHWAY 101. included the construction of the road and the Waldo Tunnel. which bypassed Sausalito. Even then, it was realized that our little town couldn't handle the anticipated increase in traffic. which was very minimal compared to now. I'm sure they had no idea what was coming. Some years ago, and I don't have the exact date, THE SIGN was put up. that as you exited the bridge, Alexander Avenue, one way, Sausalito north, continue north and go through the tunnel and come around and enter Sausalito that way. IT WAS APPARENT THAT THERE WAS TOO MUCH TRAFFIC, AND I THINK THE CITIZENS WERE THE ONES THAT RAISED THAT ISSUE, AND THAT'S WHY THAT SIGN WENT UP. AND OBVIOUSLY NOW IT ISN'T REALLY DOING ANY GOOD. Thank you. Let's see. It makes good sense. The traffic lanes at the North O My proposal, my specific request to you is that they enter and exit from the north. SOSCELIDO. It makes good sense. The traffic lanes at the north end of town are wider. They have adequate bicycle lanes and good sidewalks for pedestrians, all of which are lacking at the south end. Visitors often ride on the sidewalks in Old Town because there aren't adequate bike lanes, and you can tell by the looks on their faces that they're terrified of the proximity of the vehicles on the street. Presently, the signs indicating Alexander Avenue and Sausalito to the north does very little, if any, to discourage traffic from entering Alexander, especially the tour buses. Besides the increase in the number of tour buses, there are other tourist buses operated by charter companies, and there are no names to identify those buses. This is increasing. Um, THE VISION STATEMENT OF THE CITY COUNCIL IS AS FOLLOWS, AND I QUOTE, SAUSALITA WILL BRING TOGETHER ITS RESIDENTS, COMMERCE AND VISITORS TO CREATE A THRIVING, friendly community that cultivates its natural beauty, history, the arts, and waterfront culture. And I stress the word safety. THE MISSION STATEMENT OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT, AND I QUOTE, WITH INTEGRITY AND PROFESSIONALISM, WE ARE DEDICATED TO WORK IN PARTNERSHIP with our community to enhance safety, quality of life, and community trust. So this proposed ordinance now, it does not address the safety or the quality of life of the people who live at that south end of town. |
| 02:12:25.22 | Linda Lyons | Well, thank you. Thank you. I was going to ask a question if I could. When is there an opportunity for dialogue with the Council on this issue? |
| 02:12:26.42 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 02:12:35.65 | Linda Lyons | I mean, I know you listen and then, you know, but when do we actually have dialogue? Is there a place and a time for that? |
| 02:12:42.87 | Mayor Withley | Well, the procedure that we operate under is for us to have the dialogue, to listen to you in the audience that want to speak. And in terms of outside of this meeting, community outreach, I think our police department has been talking to a lot of folks in Old Town. |
| 02:13:04.79 | Linda Lyons | Thank you. |
| 02:13:07.61 | Mayor Withley | Is there any other member of the public? Yes, please. |
| 02:13:09.75 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:13:13.11 | Unknown | I second what she says. And I talk from a safety perspective. I have a daughter. We live on where Bridgeway and Richardson on the curve And what you said about the safety, I see it every day. It's narrow. The buses are coming down. The bikers are freaked out. They're on the sidewalk. Then you have the spandex bikers who are bombing down, too. My daughter's almost been hit twice. coming out of our sidewalk. She has to look up now. It's just too much. There's just too much going on. So safety is huge. I would second the motion to enter and exit from the north. Also, the noise is not just on the speakers. It's, you know, chugging up the hill. I saw two buses on my way down here. |
| 02:13:54.07 | Amy Wilson | my way down. |
| 02:13:56.19 | Unknown | listening to the voluntary agreement, they're chugging up the hill still. And it's also the cars beeping at the big buses who are slowing down as they come down the curb. so everyone can have their cameras up there taking pictures of the skyline. I get it, it's a beautiful city, but I think that limiting it might preserve it for the citizens who live there, and it can help us be safe too, so we can all enjoy it, not just have as much money as we can because of the tourists. And that's really it, I mean the noise, I live on that corner, I hear it every day. I hear the beeping, I hear it, you know, Tortoise are fine, but in limited capacity, especially when someone lives there like we do. And when you have kids, you just can't deal with the sidewalks, the bikes in the sidewalks. |
| 02:14:42.43 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 02:14:48.67 | Clayton Smith | Clayton Smith, I live in Mill Valley and I feel a great deal of sympathy for all the people who have had to endure this endless flood of tourists into Southern Marin. I can appreciate how beautiful Southern Marin is and it's a great attraction to so many people who come here from all over the world, even my relatives who do so. |
| 02:14:56.66 | Amy Wilson | And- |
| 02:15:10.65 | Clayton Smith | and yet at the same time we're facing an inundation of tourism here that is made parts of Southern Marin where I live, particularly towards Mill Valley where you can't even get in and out any longer on these busy weekends. And so when I'm looking at what you're doing here, this circulation element, that you're changing here. I think you have to take into regard here the impact you're focusing these buses back north on. You have on the weekends particularly this traffic jam from gate five going up to the and If you're going to be imposing this, I think you also have to begin thinking Also additionally, of imposing limits on the number of buses being able to come here. Now I don't know how on earth you can do that, in a free market kind of laissez-faire society where Caltrans may own these roads, I don't know how you do it. But I do think that we're facing in Southern Marin a kind of a growing sense of catastrophe. And I think it's incumbent upon the city councils here, particularly you, because you're at such an epicenter of this thing, to get a handle on this, Sears, who's the supervisor involved, we need to have a cross-community effort has to be done here in Southern Marin to get a handle on this circulation problem because we're drowning in it. And I also sympathize with these people up on Alexander. I just have to say what an awful right turn, left bend to get or right when you're going out of town. It is truly a gruesome, dangerous place. And I have a hard time thinking of those red, chopped back on and off buses which are now plaguing our community. That if something can be done, it should be done about them. They're very long and I just have a sense when you're looking at the drivers and whatnot that I don't get a sense from them that they have much of a regard for the communities they're plowing through. And I think something, so the police or somebody should be dealing with them on an upfront and personal basis so that we can arrest this plague of these things. Because my sense is that given what the Park Service is planning, you're going to have more shuttles, more transit affecting your community in the very near future. Thank you. |
| 02:17:19.52 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 02:18:02.32 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. you Is there any other member of the public who'd like to hijack? |
| 02:18:11.11 | Unknown | I support this greatly. My preference would be in and out on the north. I live right at the corner of Richardson and 2nd. I can tell you I spent a literal fortune putting in soundproofing windows, which works to a certain extent, but not with the loudspeakers and not with those god-awful old buses with the diesel hacking their gears to go uphill. So any exit going south, That's all uphill, the noise increases. The diesel pollution is horrible. I can swipe a quarter of an inch of diesel gunk off my front porch on a weekly basis. I would say north entry and exit if at all possible, and if that's not possible, then no exit by the south. And no offense, but why are we Shirley's shelling around with a $100 fine. We want this to stop. Make it something serious. Charge them $1,000 every time they're caught. They will. then not risk it. because it's $100, but they're getting a $100 tip to go back out, or $500 tips to go back out. they're gonna ignore you. on. Please save us. Because it's dangerous. I mean, they don't stop. and they don't look at little old ladies our kids on bikes, or any of the local residents. the history of the Bay, I don't wanna hear it at 16 decibels on a fog horn. |
| 02:19:51.26 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 02:19:52.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:19:57.42 | Jeff Liznan | Hi, I'm Jeff Liznan. I live at 211 Bridgeway, and I pretty much echo everything that everybody said. One of the things I would like to point out in addition is the communications about the meetings, like this topic, has not really been particularly successful I talked to a number of people that had no idea this was on the calendar today. I know that we get the currents. I pay attention to that. I try and stay involved. You've seen me up here before with the housing element. I do try and keep on top of it, but This was totally... unexpected. So it would be really helpful to have, to work on that communication somehow. I don't know what the solution is. One of the things I'd also like to add is that, you know, we are at Zorristown. I get that. We moved here. It's beautiful. People want to be here, but there's a balance. |
| 02:20:43.34 | Unknown | Between. |
| 02:20:43.71 | Jeff Liznan | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:20:43.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:20:44.03 | Jeff Liznan | tourism and community quality of life. We've moved here for a reason, and it's not to get overrun with tourists day in, day out, all year long. So there is a balance there. I get that. I mean, you can't. I mean, tourism is a good thing. It brings money into the city, keeps the taxes flowing. So I'm not saying no tourism, but there's got to be a balance. |
| 02:20:55.01 | Amy Wilson | There is a lot of people. |
| 02:20:58.29 | Amy Wilson | is it? |
| 02:21:02.15 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 02:21:05.22 | Jeff Liznan | Um, Sossilville has a fairly limited capacity. It's a small town. Somebody mentioned about maybe having the impact on the police. If we're gonna have to have the police do the policing of the buses, well, what are they not doing while they're doing the policing of these buses? I mean, we've got a pretty limited police force as it stands, no offense, I think they do a great job, |
| 02:21:07.21 | Amy Wilson | He's got a fairly low. |
| 02:21:26.23 | Jeff Liznan | I mean, we already have trouble with the bikes and enforcing the laws with the bicyclists. So we're just adding more duties to the police They've already got a lot to do. Safety, Alexander is not a road designed for major buses, bicycles, walking. It's just not that big. It's just not wide enough. I can't imagine. It's just surprising to me that somebody hadn't gotten killed. Truly, that's just amazing. exhaust fumes that were mentioned, volume, |
| 02:21:53.13 | Amy Wilson | EXHAUTION. |
| 02:21:56.18 | Jeff Liznan | It's... in terms of not necessarily the volume of the sound, but just the volume of the buses. I've been here 12 years now. It sneaks up on you. It's nice. We love it here. The buses, when we moved in, one, two, five a day maybe, now it's like a waterfall. It's just a flood. It's just dramatically increased. And plus, we're getting all these unlabeled tourist buses. these big, gigantic things that are coming through that have no label on them, you have no idea who to talk to, except that little bitty label on the back that you can't get it written down fast enough before they're gone. I mean, those things are huge, and they're as much a problem as the regular tourist buses. Um, The distractions, I'd like to point out that you've got, the tourist buses giving audio commentary the entire way |
| 02:22:39.89 | Jeff Butler | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:22:42.84 | Jeff Liznan | We don't like people talking on cell phones. And this guy's got a mic in his mouth. describing things. I mean, really? They stopped at Richardson and Bridgeway. I've read one of the comments that they don't stop long. Well, no, they do. They block traffic. It's a problem. Thank you. |
| 02:23:02.32 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. Any other member of the public like to comment on this subject? Okay. Let's bring it back here for... |
| 02:23:16.21 | Council Member Rulia | I just have a couple questions, actually. More questions? I don't know if the chief or John want to answer questions, but my memory of a couple things. So on the charter, more the regular charter bus size, a lot of them do have the same permit that we're allowed to – so they'll have to exit going north as well, if I'm not mistaken. Not just the tourist buses, but any charter bus. to exit going north as well, if I'm not mistaken. Not just the tourist buses, but any charter bus that has the – I think this is what you said the last time we talked about that. That has that license, has to obey. So whatever the signage has to make it clear to both the tour buses as well as the charter normal big buses. |
| 02:23:16.86 | Unknown | Very good question. |
| 02:23:17.64 | Mayor Withley | A couple questions, actually. More questions? I don't know if the Chief |
| 02:23:49.94 | Adam Politzer | That's true. |
| 02:24:02.36 | Captain Rohrabacher | That's why we wrote the definition as a passenger bus, commercial purposes, eight passengers, and a driver. That way it covers all the buses other than those exempt like school buses and public transportation. |
| 02:24:07.05 | Council Member Rulia | Right. |
| 02:24:10.68 | Council Member Rulia | Right. |
| 02:24:14.46 | Council Member Rulia | So that's something to – I forget who just made that comment, but that – they'll be able to cite those guys as well. And as far as – and I don't know if Jennifer – as far as the air quality emissions or the exhaust of these folks, that's regulated by the – the air quality just uh... |
| 02:24:37.83 | Captain Rohrabacher | The Environmental Protection Agency and the Air Resources Board regulate that. Those are done by inspection by the Hyde Patrol. |
| 02:24:40.55 | Council Member Rulia | Right. |
| 02:24:45.58 | Council Member Rulia | Right. And then those standards are going to be reviewed, I think you mentioned the last time. |
| 02:24:50.13 | Captain Rohrabacher | I did, and every year those standards are increasingly strict, and the buses, depending on their current age, have compliance requirements up to and including complete engine replacements. I know one of the more cooperative companies that we were working with actually changed their buses to natural gas, simply because they felt that was the best way to go rather than invest in even clean diesel. So anyway, that's part of the answer there. |
| 02:25:21.84 | Council Member Rulia | And if I can just ask the questions. It's not a comment. And so as far as the fine size, do you want to comment on the intent of having the sort of step function in fines? |
| 02:25:33.26 | Jeremy Graves | Sure. |
| 02:25:34.16 | Captain Rohrabacher | So all the drivers that work for these companies have to have a commercial driver's license, and all of the drivers are enlisted in their respective companies' pull notice program so that it's not just the $100 fine, it's the points against their license. So the motivation for the drivers to be good drivers allows them to keep their commercial driver's license. so too many points that goes against them and then they don't have a job to be good drivers allows them to keep their commercial driver's license. So too many points, that goes against them and then they don't have a job. Thank you. |
| 02:26:05.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:05.23 | Captain Rohrabacher | the Fees, as I understand it, of course, allow us some flexibility. We could go after a first time offender at the $100 rate or higher based on our experience with them. That's up to each officer to justify when they write their citation and submit that to court for prosecution. And then of course includes our ability to go after the companies as I explained a little bit ago for those that are encouraging their drivers and their buses to break our laws. . |
| 02:26:37.96 | Council Member Rulia | The last question I had was just about |
| 02:26:39.13 | Captain Rohrabacher | Yeah. |
| 02:26:40.48 | Council Member Rulia | The last question I have is about police capacity to enforce this. And we talked about this at the last meeting. But my understanding was, at least to start, we thought we had the capacity to enforce it. But if it became a problem, the police department would come – I don't know which one of you two wants to answer it – would come back at some point and say, this is too much. We can't handle this kind of thing. |
| 02:27:01.93 | Captain Rohrabacher | We would, I'm certainly guilty of being a little bit optimistic a couple times here, and I was at the volunteer agreement, and I certainly was when I listed northbound only on the sound. I probably am a little bit on the enforcement. I find it a little bit hard to believe that Any driver or company is going to line up for doing this a second time. Right. However, having experienced the disappointment with the volunteering agreement with a few of the companies, it's quite possible that a couple of them are going to give us some grief. Okay. |
| 02:27:28.52 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:27:28.88 | Captain Rohrabacher | we don't have a lot of excess capacity to do extra stuff. This will be additional work for us. And like one of the other speakers said, that takes us away from something else that we're doing. |
| 02:27:39.49 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 02:27:39.54 | Unknown | I'm doing it. |
| 02:27:40.18 | Captain Rohrabacher | I'm hoping that isn't. |
| 02:27:40.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:27:42.78 | Captain Rohrabacher | become a big problem, but I would have to that the potential is there. I think that's a good thing. with other agencies and learning what they did for the Public Utilities Commission and the San Francisco MTA to see how they handled their problem at the Alamo Square in the city, but also our partnership with Highway Patrol. and they are already helping us on weekends with the bicyclists and enforcement along that same corridor, and they've already offered their help with this as well. in addition to helping us with the larger problem if we choose to do so later with partnering with our motor carrier specialists on the inspections and making sure that happens with the buses. So we have a lot of things in mind for the future, not just this and hoping for the very best. But there's no question that initially it will take some officer resources. Probably those first few citations I hope would be enough for the message. But at this point, I probably wouldn't put money on that. |
| 02:28:36.97 | Council Member Rulia | there. |
| 02:28:51.51 | Mayor Withley | Captain, one quick question for me. If I recall correctly, and could you remind us, I think you said last time that you had discovered that we didn't have the power, the authority to regulate the number of trips. Is that – did I remember that correctly? Yeah. |
| 02:29:14.26 | Captain Rohrabacher | I remember that correctly. MR. Again, I'm not actually up to the status of subject matter expert on this yet, but I certainly learned more than in the last few months than I knew before. And the people at the Public Utilities Commission have been very helpful to us with all of our questions. And still, my understanding from them is we cannot at least easily say there can only be this certain number of buses from either a particular company or the number of trips. We can do as the safety issue and the impact on our residents. But to go further, I think would, if it's even remotely possible, would be a significant amount of exigency or extreme conditions to make that happen, if at all. People I talked to at the Public Utilities Commission didn't really hold out much hope for that because it would be so extraordinary. It would have to also involve the California Department of Transportation where we're actually trying to you know, regulate numbers of trips. Yeah. So I don't even know that you have that authority as a city council to do that. Okay. |
| 02:30:21.74 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. |
| 02:30:26.98 | Captain Rohrabacher | Thank you. |
| 02:30:27.06 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | it. Mr. Mayor, I have some questions. Captain, could we – I heard we couldn't regulate the number of trips. I'm really concerned in learning tonight about the actual – the long-term plans of – the GGNRA with respect to projections of increasing traffic by 40 percent, 2.6 million you know, in the future in their 20 year plan. And so clearly this just started last year and we're just gonna see more and more every year. And so, um... If we can't regulate the number of trips, Is it possible for the council to impose fees per bus? In other words, could we impose a fee or require permits for these companies to come in and park or what have you? Um... in such a way as to, I'm just thinking if we if we charged a really high fee per bus, that it would you know by default presumably reduce the number of trips because the cost would be such a burden. |
| 02:31:51.40 | Captain Rohrabacher | Again, working with the Public Utilities Commission, I learned that the tour bus operators pay the PUC one quarter of 1% of their gross income on their fares to hold those charter party carrier certificates. We have no authority to add to that and ask for any more money from them as a fee in Sausalito. We have a very small reasonable parking fee for the buses on Humboldt. It's an $8.00. fee when they come in and not for the hop on hop off because they're too short but for those that park and stay there while their clients walk around, then they already pay us, they have to go buy a $8 ticket out of the machine for parking their bus. |
| 02:32:40.07 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So just to clarify, you said the hop-on, hop-off buses, they don't stop or they don't – I mean, they don't park in Sausalito or – |
| 02:32:48.94 | Captain Rohrabacher | barely long enough to… Because they're hop on, hop off. Yeah, that's their idea. |
| 02:32:51.34 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | because they're hop on, hop off. And the last council session – |
| 02:32:54.16 | Captain Rohrabacher | And the... |
| 02:33:00.81 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I think one of the council members mentioned the the banning of the buses. Do you have a comment on that? |
| 02:33:10.22 | Captain Rohrabacher | Thank you. |
| 02:33:10.24 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I mean... |
| 02:33:10.29 | Captain Rohrabacher | Thank you. I mean... |
| 02:33:11.25 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:33:11.27 | Captain Rohrabacher | Thank you. |
| 02:33:11.29 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah. I mean, I was just curious as to your comments on this. |
| 02:33:14.51 | Captain Rohrabacher | your comments on this. Just again, based on what I've learned, I think that's a pretty big stretch. Yeah. I don't know that we can get there. |
| 02:33:16.58 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Hmm. Yeah. |
| 02:33:21.09 | Captain Rohrabacher | Now, I heard those numbers like you did for the first time tonight about the amount of possible visitors and such. I mean, who knows at some point if it gets to that point where we experience some kind of gridlock or something. Yeah. It's really speculation. I'm not really comfortable going much further than that. Right. Okay. So at this point, I don't see it. |
| 02:33:34.91 | Margaret Brindle | Thank you. |
| 02:33:34.93 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah. Right. Okay. So just to recap, there's no way we can put a cap on the number of buses. |
| 02:33:45.39 | Captain Rohrabacher | Correct. |
| 02:33:45.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:45.83 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | and there's no way we can regulate the number of trips, and we can't impose fees on the bus, buses beyond a parking fee. |
| 02:33:51.40 | Unknown | But... That's correct. |
| 02:33:57.44 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | That's correct. |
| 02:33:57.49 | Mayor Withley | I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 02:33:57.88 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:33:57.90 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 02:33:57.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. Case. |
| 02:33:59.26 | Mayor Withley | Do you have any questions? Okay, thank you, and |
| 02:34:09.20 | Mayor Withley | comments? Do we have a motion? |
| 02:34:13.01 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I... I have a comment, Mr. Mayor, and then I'll listen to the rest of the council's thoughts. You know, the more and more I've got to say, I just can't in good conscience not at least make a motion to have these huge buses enter and exit from the north. Because it's so dangerous to have them crowding on Alexander. I mean, it's a little two-lane road with a treacherous curve. And we've put a Shero in the middle of the road now, so now we're forcing the rental bikes, hundreds of thousands each year, coming in right over the Golden Gate Bridge. |
| 02:34:17.52 | Mayor Withley | Amen. |
| 02:34:17.79 | Amy Wilson | And, |
| 02:35:01.01 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | You know, the north side of town, they're not right next to the Golden Gate Bridge. They don't have that feeder coming in. And there are, you know, there's just more bandwidth to handle it. And hopefully we would see a reduction in the number of buses if we made it a little bit trickier for them, you know, to access Sausalito from the north and exit from the north. I do think we should also extend the sound ordinance all the way through town, through the north side of town. And oh, by the way, if I have the support to do the enter and exit from the north side of town, I think then we need to revisit it in six months and hear from the folks in the north to see how the impact has been. Because if we're looking at a 40 percent increase in the coming years and 2.6 million, you know what? We can't handle that. Our town can't handle that. You know, it reaches a point where our infrastructure couldn't handle that. Muir Woods couldn't handle that. Mill Valley can't handle that. It's just, it's too much. |
| 02:36:26.11 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Well, first of all, this is the solution we came up with the last couple of meetings. So we have to go forward with this. Otherwise, we're delaying any... I'm not sure. relief that we have. So certainly we're going to need to do this. Ongoing, whether we go... And out under the north we can consider that later. I think this is important first of all We have this in front of us and we can move forward on it But also, we have to see what effect we have on the north. We're going to double or Totally increased their traffic. We'll have to see. That's the first step. If we can handle it, we can look to see if we do both ends of it. the experiment on that. Just on this issue about the GGNRA, I mean, we had one speaker who has a certain point of view. There's a lot of different statistics. I don't think we can assume there are 2.4 million more people coming here. If you read the reports and all that, these numbers are totally different. That's one extreme point of view. We can debate that separately. I think we run this risk, though, that we start assuming there are going to be 2.4 million more people here, and it drives our decision. So I think we have to keep that in perspective. But I would... Um... Well, I'll let others go with comments, but then I would make a motion to waive the first reading. |
| 02:37:47.72 | Council Member Rulia | I think this is, you know, a second step. The first step was the voluntary effort that the city made, and now it forced to this step. And it's only the – this isn't the end of it, I would imagine. But it is a step. I would say let's adopt the – I think you mentioned it in the beginning, the south – have the whole sound corridor for the whole thing, because that's – it's not fair to the people in the north who have to put up with the sound, whereas the people in the south don't have to put up with the sound of the public address stuff. As far as the north-south – enter and exit, and I think certainly going south is not an option. That's where they struggle to get up the hill. It's just too – I mean, I can hear it. It echoes all through that valley, because – especially the older the bus, the tougher it is for them getting up there. So that, I think, is not an option as far as switching directions or what have you. As far as having everybody go out in and out of the north end, I think in order to do that, we better notice the people and have a better communication system to everybody along the Bridgeway corridor before we just push the problem to one end of town from the other. That doesn't help. It only helps halfway to the people on the south end for now, but why don't we – I think we, as you said, let's move forward with what we have and create some – it's probably mailing is the only way to get people along the whole corridor aware of it. And let's see what happens over the next month or so after it's adopted, after it goes into effect. And if it's really becoming a Um... If we're starting to get the complaints at the north end just from having one direction going in and out, well then we'll know that the whole town has an issue with it, and we should just maybe consider researching the fact that we have greater leverage to just regulate it entirely in one way or the other. So I would say, as we did with the voluntary agreement, let's put this in force, add the northbound sound corridors, the whole length of bridgeways. You can't have the public address systems blaring. But whenever I would have asked the police department to come back 30 days or after the enactment of it and give us an update, so it would be like in August at some point, and And then we'll, you know, again, take another look at it. that we're going to have to do that. But at the same time, if we determine at that point Alexander South and 2nd and Bridgeway and Richardson is still not acceptable, then we can try and come up with a different solution to maybe the whole thing. But let's put this in place and move forward. |
| 02:40:54.39 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. I basically agree with that and agree with... of the Vice Mayor's comments. I want to see what this actually, how this operates in practice before we go to the next stage. I think that's good practice anyway. because you just don't know what unintended consequences you're going to suddenly find when you have people coming in totally from the north. I think we should do this incrementally. I think we need to pass this tonight so we can move forward quickly with a second reading whenever our next meeting is so we can get on with it. So I would entertain a motion to actually waive first reading and proceed. |
| 02:41:38.45 | Council Member Rulia | Can I ask the city attorney a quick question? No. if we do change the Sound corridor, is that, can we not waive the first reading if that happens? |
| 02:41:49.10 | Mary Wagner | It's okay if you make those changes from the dais tonight because then you've considered them as part of your first reading. And we'll bring them back in the second reading as well. It's only when you make changes after the first reading that we have to bring it back to you. |
| 02:41:56.30 | Council Member Rulia | Right. |
| 02:41:56.37 | Mayor Withley | I just don't want to. |
| 02:42:00.89 | Mayor Withley | And just for clarification, I didn't say I do also support extending the sound corridor through the whole city. |
| 02:42:10.81 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And Mr. Mayor, just for clarification, too, my recommendation of entering and exit from the north, of course, there would have to be community outreach in the north, obviously. You know, we have to do that. we don't even have legislation in front of us that stipulates that. So, you know, in moving forward, with that recommendation, it would involve outreach. Yeah, I'm just concerned about the safety of the two-lane curved, you know, road and the fact that we've got no bike lane and no sidewalk, you know, at that intersection in Alexander. |
| 02:42:42.91 | Council Member Rulia | Right. |
| 02:42:45.90 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah. |
| 02:42:45.95 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah. Just to reiterate, if we did notice and tried to get the notice to the north end of town, we'd be pushing this off, and it would miss the whole tourist season for the summer. So I'm not saying we won't go there in the future, but at least for now, let's get this in place and see how it goes this tourist season. And the police can fill us in on how much of their time it takes and how well these folks are actually obeying what we have adopted currently. But as I said at the prior meeting, I'd be happy to revisit, researching the ability to – if they don't comply, to just try to find out how much by hand we can play in terms of a hammer over these guys, whatever, coming into south, north, or not at all. |
| 02:43:32.83 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And. |
| 02:43:33.11 | Council Member Rulia | You're going to make a... |
| 02:43:33.89 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 02:43:33.92 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. Yeah, I'll be happy. |
| 02:43:36.34 | Vice Mayor Theodos | So I move that we waive the first reading, introduce and read by title only, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending title 15 chapter 15 point 2 6 operation of passenger buses of the Sausalito Municipal Code with the proviso that we extend the quiet corridor. beyond what is currently stated in the proposed legislation from all the way through Bridgeway to the northern end of Sausalito. |
| 02:44:08.42 | Mary Wagner | including that it's set in its both ways northbound and southbound sort take that north down down thank you Thank you. |
| 02:44:13.75 | Vice Mayor Theodos | No, by the way, but just to be clear, my original comment when I took out northbound, that just meant northbound traffic in a smaller corridor. Now we're saying that it should be a total... |
| 02:44:13.80 | Mary Wagner | No. |
| 02:44:22.54 | Unknown | or, |
| 02:44:24.62 | Vice Mayor Theodos | quiet zone throughout all the way from south end of town to the north end of town. |
| 02:44:29.41 | Mary Wagner | Understood. |
| 02:44:29.81 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Okay. |
| 02:44:30.49 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And I second that. |
| 02:44:32.55 | Council Member Rulia | And just a point of clarification so you folks are aware, you know, Linda lives on South Street. I live on 3rd Street. Herb lives on 4th Street. So we may not be on the – you know, Linda's on the front line with you folks, but we're not far away. So, you know, we can't – we're not going to let this go away without paying attention to it. |
| 02:44:51.73 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And just to clarify, I think that's why I have a kind of a unique perspective in that I've treated, you know, bicyclists who have been hit and who have taken tumbles in front of my home. And it's very, very disconcerting to me now that we see the influx of the buses and the fact that they just don't stop on a dime. And it's just a matter of time before there's going to be a really bad accident. |
| 02:45:20.45 | Mayor Withley | So I think Linda, you seconded that. Yeah. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye. |
| 02:45:25.00 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 02:45:26.19 | Mayor Withley | you |
| 02:45:26.28 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And Mr. Mayor, I know we've said this before, but I want to thank Captain Roebacher for his hard work on this because it's not been easy. |
| 02:45:26.29 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. |
| 02:45:35.63 | Mayor Withley | your hair. |
| 02:45:37.23 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | It has not been easy. And I know they get pulled from the chamber and from our perspective, and it's got to be hard. |
| 02:45:48.45 | Mayor Withley | Thanks, and we all echo that. |
| 02:45:50.32 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | All. |
| 02:45:55.03 | Mayor Withley | Good. So our next item, moving on to business items, 6A, result from the community survey. And. for Administrative Services Director, Charlie Francis. |
| 02:46:13.34 | Mayor Withley | 9.30, okay. |
| 02:46:16.09 | Vice Mayor Theodos | 40 minutes behind this is my one-third. |
| 02:46:32.82 | Noel Norton | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:46:38.37 | Unknown | you |
| 02:47:21.08 | Charlie Francis | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. My name is Charlie Francis. I'm your administrative services director. As part of the budget review process at the mid-year budget review, the city council authorized staff to proceed with a community survey in order to improve our performance by hearing from our citizens about what kind of municipal services that they would like to understand the community attitudes, about a variety of the service needs, to understand public priorities in planning, budgeting, and managing services, and finally, to establish long-term strategies to provide for a fiscally sustainable future. you authorized us to proceed with a community survey. Tonight we have Bonnie Jean Croch and Sha'Carri Byerly from the Lou Edwards Group and Fairbank, Maslin, Mullen, Metzen Associates, respectively, to present the community survey. So this item is for discussion only. There's no action that needs to be taken at the end of it. So with that, I would like to begin by introducing Bonnie Jean Croch. |
| 02:48:34.23 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. use of table. |
| 02:48:38.40 | Bonnie Jean Croch | THANK YOU, CHARLIE, MR. MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. THANKS FOR HAVING US HERE TONIGHT. MY NAME IS BONNIE JEAN VON CROW. I'M THE MANAGING DIRECTOR AT THE LOU EDWARDS GROUP. HAPPY TO BE BACK IN FRONT OF YOU TO TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE COMMUNITY SURVEY RESULTS |
| 02:48:57.06 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 02:48:58.02 | Bonnie Jean Croch | that we have. I'm going to do it this way? All right, there we go. So just to cover a couple objectives of the project, as Charlie mentioned, this was commissioned as part of the city's budget process, so we did look at a wide range OF ISSUES THROUGHOUT THE CITY. Uh, IN PART LOOKING SPECIFICALLY AT GENERAL AWARENESS OF CITY BUDGET ISSUES, YOU KNOW, AWARENESS OF THE BUDGET IN GENERAL, AND THEN ALSO DRILLING DOWN SPECIFICALLY IN TERMS OF DIFFERENT SERVICES THE CITY OFFERED AND BUDGET FUNDING PRIORITIES FOR THOSE SERVICES. SO WE LOOKED you know, big and a more narrow view. We also looked at satisfaction levels with city services and city departments, and you'll see some feedback on that, as well as looking at potential community interest in a community enacted funding measure should the council choose to move forward with something like that to address local funding needs. So without further ado, you know, some of the results that you'll see here tonight really would be the envy of many councils throughout the state. We see really fantastic approval ratings of both your city in general and alsoS, REALLY THE RESIDENTS STRONGLY RESPOND TO. WE DID, AS I MENTIONED, LOOK AT SPECIFIC SERVICE PRIORITIES, AND WE FOUND THROUGHOUT THE SURVEY THAT THERE WERE SOME KEY PRIORITIES THAT DID FLOAT TO THE TOP THROUGHOUT. AND THOSE WERE IN were in particular And we found throughout the survey that there were some key priorities that did float to the top throughout. And those were in particular storm drain upgrades to protect the bay and the environment, very, very important to your residents, as well as fixing potholes, neighborhood streets issues, and the other areas that we've been doing. and maintaining the city's long-term financial viability. Really, financial accountability and, you know, that sort of long-term viability was a strong priority for folks. One of the things that you'll see throughout the survey, you know, there are obviously a variety of services that don't appear here, and that really we feel that really is due to the high level of satisfaction your residents have with their services that they're really seeing needs only in a few key areas. So I think that speaks to really the high level of service the city already provides. We also looked at, as I said, a funding measure for city services and specifically a half-cent general purpose sales tax measure is definitely viable for the November election should the city Council opt to proceed with that option. We are recommending that that is a viable option for the City to proceed with. So but of course it is up to the good judgment of the Council whether you'd like to proceed with that. But we're excited to let you know that you do have options in that regard. I'm gonna hand it over to Shikari Byerly to go through some of the very specific survey results and some of the research methodology. Shikari is here from FM3 Research. |
| 02:52:19.78 | Sha'Carri Byerly | Thank you, Bonnie Jean, and greetings to the mayor and the council. Very happy to be with you all once again. We did do research for the city a few years ago. She has my methodology up already. And so it's a pleasure to be back again. Just to provide some context for the results that you see, we did a telephone survey of 200 randomly selected City of Sausalito voters. All voters registered in the city were given the opportunity to participate in the survey. We were able to capture 200 interviews. April, early April through early May, so roughly about a month of calls. We put a significant effort into reaching every voter in the community. We made 12 to 15 attempts for those unresponsive households to try to solicit some feedback from them. So as we go through the resultsIN OF ERROR FOR THE SURVEY SAMPLE IS JUST UNDER 7% AT THE 95% CONFIDENCE LEVEL. SOME PERCENTAGES DON'T NECESSARILY ROUND TO 100. DUE TO PERCENTAGE POINTS AND WHERE APPLICABLE WE HAVE COMPARISONS TO THE PRIOR RESEARCH CONDUCTED ON BEHALF OF THE CITY. First we'll go through some of the contextual issues before talking about specific funding |
| 02:53:41.52 | Council Member Rulia | Would you want us to hold our questions until you're finished? Would that be? Sure. |
| 02:53:45.02 | Sha'Carri Byerly | I'd like to get through it and then we can go back to specific slides if that's okay. |
| 02:53:47.63 | Council Member Rulia | Yep. |
| 02:53:51.41 | Sha'Carri Byerly | I'LL TRY TO MOVE EXPENDITIOUSLY THROUGH SO THAT WE CAN FOCUS ON THOSE ITEMS THAT ARE OF MOST IMPORTANT. AS BONNIE JEAN SUGGESTED, WE HAVE VERY FAVORABLE APPROVAL RATINGS AS WELL AS GENERAL CONFIDENCE IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CITY. AND THAT SPEAKS TO, I THINK, THE SUPPORT OR APPROVAL THAT YOUR CONSTITUENTS HAVE FOR THE COUNCIL'S LEADERSHIP. 68% BELIEVE THAT THE COMMUNITY IS HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, WHICH VERY FEW, 17% SAY THAT THINGS ARE OFF ON THE WRONG TRACK. AND YOU HAVE 16% WHO DON'T FEEL THAT THEY HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO REALLY OFFER AN ASSESSMENT. BUT THESE RESULTS ARE VERY COMPARABLE TO THE RESPONSES THAT WE RECEIVED IN 2011. We also ask constituents about a variety of different city departments, the library, the police department, the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, as well as parks and recreation. And very high level of confidence in the service that is being provided. Solid majorities have very favorable opinions of these departments. IN other communities, they would be very excited to have a total favorable rating at this range. It is very unique and rare to see this strongly positive response, particularly for your library, but also for your police and fire, as well as parks and recreation. |
| 02:55:26.94 | Sha'Carri Byerly | A number of our questions related specifically to the budget, and we find that there is fairly good awareness. You have 52 percent of your public that follows news and information about city government in the budget specifically, and a much smaller proportion that follow it, but maybe not too closely. Very few that say they are not following it at all. In that context, we also find extremely high approval ratings for the provision of public services. 77 percent, more than three quarters, do approve of the job that the city is doing overall, disapproval ratings. MANY COMMUNITIES THROUGHOUT THE STATE AND EVEN IN SMALLER LOCALITIES SUCH AS YOURSELF, WE'RE SEEING THESE NUMBERS MAYBE IN THE MID-50s, THE MID-60s AT BEST. SO YOU ALL ARE REALLY SETTING AT THE TOP OF THE LIST IN TERMS OF CITIZEN SATISFACTION. When it comes specifically to managing budget and finances, we have majority approval ratings, slightly higher number of constituents that don't feel they have enough information to offer an opinion, so that may be an opportunity for public education. Disapproval ratings are very, very low relative to other areas up and down the state. We typically see that number, you know, around 35 or 40 percent when it comes to managing tax dollars. As Bonnie Jean said, we texted a potential local financing measure. Here you will see the actual ballot description that was read to respondents over the phone. It was at a half-cent level, temporary measure for 10 years. We highlighted a variety of potential uses for that funding. And what we see is that without any preface or additional information beyond that question, you have very solid support in your community. THREE IN FIVE VOTERS SAY THAT THEY ARE INCLINED TO VOTE YES ON SUCH A MEASURE. slightly more than a third. say they would be in opposition, but for a majority purpose measure these results are highly positive and outside of your margin of error. |
| 02:57:58.38 | Sha'Carri Byerly | We also tested a lengthening of the sunset, and we found that it does not make a significant difference in levels of support. You have 43 percent that say they would be more likely to support it at a 15-year level, compared with 31 percent that would be slightly less likely to support it at that level. And likewise for the 20-year sunset SUNSET. SO THERE'S NO – NOTHING TO GAIN OR PARTICULARLY LOSE BY CHANGING THE LENGTH OF THE TERM FOR THAT MEASURE. One of the core pieces of the survey were the actual budget priorities. We asked respondents, we read them a list of various service priorities. This presentation contains somewhat of an abbreviated list. And we asked whether they felt that service priority was important or not important. And if they did identify that it was an important funding priority for them, we asked them to what extent, whether they felt it was extremely important, very important, somewhat important. whether he did not have enough, information to offer an opinion. Thank you. And what you see here is just overwhelmingly positive ratings for the various service priorities that are listed. High priorities placed upon storm drain as well as streets and sidewalk infrastructure comes across very clearly. A real important and encouraging finding is that your constituents place a high value on the long-term stability of the city. And to Bonnie Jean's point, I think that speaks to or is an outgrowth of the confidence and the satisfaction that they have with the overall direction of the city. the trust that they place in the council to make decisions consistent with what is best for the city. A number of the second tier priorities span a range of services. Here we see slightly less intensity in terms of the level of importance, but still very high ratings. Seven in ten or more identify these as important service priorities, and those include street lights, as well as upgrading parks, improving the building permit process. anything that might contribute to improving the overall quality of life, as well as increasing emergency 911 response services. Our lower tier priorities appear on this slide. Again, they span a range of services, and I think the key here is that these priorities aren't unimportant. The intensity level is just lower. and again this is in the context of budget priorities so when THE COUNCIL IS CONSIDERING WHERE TO ALLOCATE ADDITIONAL FUNDING OR WHERE TO REALLY HIGHLIGHT AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT. I WOULD SAY THAT THESE, YOU'RE DOING A VERY GOOD JOB IN THESE AREAS, SO THERE'S JUST MUCH LOWER EMPHASIS OR INTENSITY around the importance of dedicating additional resources to these areas. We do begin to see the red bars increase in size, particularly for items such as open space or increasing the number of officers. WE ALSO PRESENTED CONSTITUENTS WITH A RANGE OF reasons why a sales tax measure might be needed to improve and enhance services. And we had both positive and negative information. We just include the top statements here for your consideration. One of the most compelling reasons to move forward, as is depicted on this slide, is the idea that with a sales tax measure you would have both tourists and residents contributing the investment in improving city services. THE IDEA THAT WITH A SALES TAX MEASURE YOU WOULD HAVE BOTH TOURISTS AND RESIDENTS CONTRIBUTING TO THE INVESTMENT IN IMPROVING CITY SERVICES. AND CERTAINLY THERE'S A RECOGNITION THAT THOSE WHO ARE VISITING SAXELEDO ARE ALSO MAKING USE OF STREETS AND SIDEWALKS AND PUBLIC SAFETY SERVICES AND SHOULD INDEED MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO MAINTAINING AND ENHANCING THOSE SERVICES. Also what comes through consistently is an interest in ensuring you have a revenue stream to improve and upgrade storm drains, and that Sausalito has local control of the funding that is flowing into the city. So while you may not find yourselves in the crises that many of our other Northern California, Central Valley cities find themselves in, there's a real interest in investing and ensuring that the city remains viable, sustainable and then CITIES FIND THEMSELVES IN, THERE'S A REAL INTEREST IN INVESTING AND ENSURING THAT THE CITY REMAINS VIABLE, SUSTAINABLE, AND THAT THERE'S LOCAL CONTROL OF THAT FUNDING. |
| 03:02:22.25 | Amy Wilson | may not. |
| 03:02:42.08 | Sha'Carri Byerly | A number of other statements also resonate as good reasons to move forward with the measures should the council decide. Attention again to streets and fixing any hazardous road conditions or trip hazards. Storm drain infrastructure specifically with the highlight on improving or preventing flooding or mitigating that. And certainly ensuring that there are strong or tough accountability provisions in place that allow citizens to review how the monies are being spent to ensure that there are fiscal state safeguards in place. We asked constituents both at the beginning with little information and just the description that you saw earlier how they would potentially vote on such measure or their attitudes toward it. And what we see is initially we started with 61 percent support and we got a slight uptick at 63 percent. Really that's a shift in some of those undecided voters as they get additional information they're willing to make a decision. And we see that we have consistently IN SOME OF THOSE UNDECIDED VOTERS AS THEY GET ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, THEY'RE WILLING TO MAKE A DECISION. AND WE SEE THAT WE HAVE CONSISTENTLY GOOD, POSITIVE SENTIMENTS ABOUT A POTENTIAL REVENUE MEASURE IF THE COUNCIL DEEMS IT APPROPRIATE. So with that, I'd like to turn it back over to Bonnie Jean for some strategic conclusions, and then we both will be available for questions. |
| 03:04:14.52 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Thank you, Shikari. So in conclusion, we do really recommend – I mean, the City Council has some options here. And we very much saw throughout the survey that certain services really resonate with your residents, including some of your infrastructure needs. And I know the City is going to be looking at the budget moving forward. And we, really going out and communicating about some of those needs. I think your residents strongly see, you know, in terms of storm drains, streets, sidewalks, some of those items that, you know, maybe the city hasn't been able to address at the levels that it has wanted. And that going out, talking to residents about those needs and what the situation is would be very helpful. certainly weaving in THAT GOING OUT, TALKING TO RESIDENTS ABOUT THOSE NEEDS AND WHAT THE SITUATION IS WOULD BE VERY HELPFUL. CERTAINLY WEAVING IN THOSE PRIORITIES THAT ARE REALLY IMPORTANT TO RESIDENTS, WE ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND IN ANY OUTREACH EFFORT. Should the council decide to move forward with a ballot measure, you know, in terms of deadlines, all documents must be submitted to the county department of elections no less than 88 days prior to a selected election date. For example, for this November, that would put the council at the first week in August to – as the statutory deadline, so typically acting sometime in July, something like that, for a November election. With that, I will open it up to questions – oops, I keep doing this backwards – questions and for both myself and FM3 research. |
| 03:05:47.49 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 03:05:47.74 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 03:05:47.96 | Amy Wilson | you |
| 03:05:55.40 | Mayor Withley | Thanks, Vonnegene. OK, anybody have any questions about this survey and its conclusions? |
| 03:06:07.01 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah, I've got to just take a look. I'll take a couple technical questions if you wouldn't mind. So in order to get 200 full survey participants, full people to go to the end of the survey, it was like almost close to 35,000 phone calls. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And then out of the – 5,500 or whatever the number of registered voters, how many of them would you guesstimate, or do you remember would have our ability to contact them, either through reverse directory or? or because they're in the voter registration records, they have a contact number. |
| 03:06:44.46 | Sha'Carri Byerly | Yeah. Let me make sure that I'm understanding the question correctly. Are you asking where we obtain the |
| 03:06:53.27 | Council Member Rulia | No, I'm assuming you got the reverse directory or a list of phone numbers, and then you have the voter registration, which some people give their phone number. Do we have any idea of how many of the total number of registered voters? I think there's about 5,500 or 5,000 registered voters that we tried to communicate to. You're basically saying we tried to reach everybody we could, but of those 5,000 or 5,500, how many of them did we actually not have any ability to reach? |
| 03:07:07.88 | Amy Wilson | thousands |
| 03:07:22.14 | Sha'Carri Byerly | I don't have the exact number. I believe it's relatively small, potentially under 200 or so. What we do is we take the voter file where people actually register and list their preferred phone number, and then we match that against a commercially available list. And we were actually able to find one or two or more numbers for either the residents themselves or another household member. And so we asked for each voter by name. We tried to balance the calls so we weren't asking for one partner and not available one night and then calling right back that same evening into the household. We really tried hard to be strategic, to be respectful, but we're very aggressive in making attempts to reach people and to actually have correct phone numbers. And the matching process enabled us to be very successful in that way. |
| 03:07:26.83 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 03:07:26.97 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:07:38.80 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 03:07:38.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:38.96 | Amy Wilson | Okay. |
| 03:08:19.24 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. And one last question, if I might. You gave us a lot of kind of benchmarks for other communities in a lot of these categories or in some of the categories. But as far as the overall approval rating at 68 percent, what are you finding in other communities in Northern California is kind of where that's coming out? |
| 03:08:38.65 | Sha'Carri Byerly | Sure. I think in my mind the best comparison might be to a community like Capitola, which is also small, and by the water as well, even though it's in the South Bay. They have very good approval ratings, I think around 65 or so percent, so that's relatively comparable, I think, for a community of IS THE INTENSITY AROUND CITY DEPARTMENTS AND WE JUST DON'T SEE THAT LEVEL OF STRONG SUPPORT. EVEN IN COMMUNITIES SUCH AS CAPITOLA, WE MIGHT SEE AN OVERALL FAVORABILITY RATING FOR THE LIBRARY AT 80%, BUT WE CERTAINLY WOULDN'T GET A VERY FAVORABLE THAT HIGH. And so we'd be happy to provide maybe some specific details to the council if that's of interest. |
| 03:08:47.05 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:09:04.10 | Amy Wilson | intention. |
| 03:09:29.87 | Council Member Rulia | but in general, across community sizes, |
| 03:09:33.93 | Sha'Carri Byerly | That's a very high watermark to reach. You all are certainly, I would say, in the top 1% in terms of your voter satisfaction, both with the overall provision of services and more specifically with confidence in your city department. |
| 03:09:35.47 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. |
| 03:09:36.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:09:51.62 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 03:09:54.39 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor. So... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. |
| 03:10:00.24 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Okay, I just have... Could you tell me on your first recommendation is legally permissible public information program? And can you describe that for me? |
| 03:10:09.15 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Absolutely. So we do recommend that the city go out and talk with residents about these issues, about service needs, priorities for funding, and do that through a variety of methods, one being going out speaking to resident groups, also communicating through direct mail to residents, making sure that they're aware of the needs, And then, you know, one-on-one meetings with with opinion leaders, things like that. So really reaching out in a very active way that's broad and tries to reach as many aspects of the community as we can to not only kind of highlight what the needs are from the city, but also hear back from residents. You know, continue, we view these community surveys as initiating a dialogue with residents and, you know, really going out and continuing that dialogue so that the city council has as much information as possible should you all decide to move forward that you really can get i mean we've been able to talk to 200 residents over the phone but to really continue to reach out to more residents through dialogue um before any decisions are made |
| 03:11:22.71 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, Thank you. So I see that in the staff report it lists the goals of this community survey as being, I see it as rather broad. you know, to establish long-term strategies to provide fiscally sustainable future, community attitudes about service needs, what the public wants and expects, revenue generation opportunities. But earlier in the staff report, it specifically highlights the need to fix our 80-year storm drains, our repair neighborhood streets, and fix our unsafe sidewalks. And so my question is, that I get the sense, and a couple residents called me when they got this community survey. I was not familiar with it, frankly. And they said that one of the questions asked them if they would be more likely to support a sales tax if it was to help fund pensions or something like this. I guess my question is, if our intent is to do a sales tax for infrastructure, for the 80-year storm drains for the neighborhood streets, to fix the streets, etc., I'm presuming we could target that revenue specifically for those interests. Is that correct? |
| 03:12:52.38 | Sha'Carri Byerly | to the first issue about the question about pensions. Obviously just to provide some clarity. We tested both positive and negative information with regard to moving forward with a potential And one of the reasons a community may not move forward, some residents in Sausalito may have this concern, is that there are resources that are dedicated to compensation and pensions for public employees, and therefore those areas should be scaled back to prevent having to go out to the voters. And that was the nature of that particular question, just for clarification. And I'll let Bonnie Jean respond to that. |
| 03:13:35.74 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Absolutely. So Councilmember, yes. So certainly the Council could create a measure that was earmarked for specific projects and services. Absolutely. That puts you into the supermajority type measure. So it would be a special purpose measure for specific services or projects and would require two-thirds vote of the public. In communities like yours where we do see a variety of things popping up such as storm drains or streets or in general the financial viability of the city which is a much more general service concern, we often see councils opting for a general purpose revenue sales tax measure. |
| 03:14:19.71 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So is it that the general purpose sales tax would not require the higher bar of the two-thirds vote? It would just need a simple majority? That's right. |
| 03:14:27.49 | Jenny Wasser | That's correct. |
| 03:14:28.45 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. Thank you. |
| 03:14:31.69 | Jenny Wasser | Okay, thanks. |
| 03:14:32.42 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:14:35.17 | Mayor Withley | Okay, seeing no further questions up here, thank you very much. I'm going to throw this out for public comment, and I see one member of the public here who wants to comment. |
| 03:14:54.62 | Vicki Nichols | Vicki Nichols. So what I'm hearing is basically the needs that got the most response sound like they're all capital improvement projects. But if you go for the 50 percent majority, it just goes in the general fund. So what's the mechanism to make sure, I'm not being cynical, but if you're trying to sell a sales tax, what's the measure to make sure these funds are spent for what they're being solicited for? And oversight and all that. So if it's strictly just capital funds or capital budget items, That's what you say, but I don't see how capital, I don't see how I heard land acquisition in there. Maybe that was rated lower. I'd like to see the executive summary and the questions and the tabs and all that. So I think we have that now that we should have that now that it's been paid for. |
| 03:15:56.54 | Council Member Rulia | Somebody wants to go. |
| 03:15:56.88 | Adam Politzer | Yes. |
| 03:15:57.23 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, does somebody want to answer that? |
| 03:15:59.63 | Adam Politzer | I'd be happy to answer that. Vicki, I think the answer is that you hold these folks responsible, which hold staff responsible. And what you saw were the top highlights, storm drains, financial stability, and the Streets. and sidewalks. But it didn't mean that parks weren't important or other items that tested Those were just the ones that tested very high. But the The budget process ultimately is going to dictate how the money is spent. And what we have said Going back to our last strategic planning session back in November, which, and was also repeated at the midyear budget, if you want status quo We can do that. the city can continue at our level of service at our spending rate, for the next two years if the city wants status quo. But if we want to continue to improve the streets, sidewalks, parks, storm drains at a level higher or at the same level that we've been doing it aggressively for the last three particularly streets. then we're going to need another revenue source. So the budget process And that's why it was important to have this information as we start the budget process, which is the next item on the agenda, so that we know that we have options. If the survey would have come back As some cities heard, using the Lou Edwards group that it isn't viable. Their city will not support projects then we would know We've got to live within what we have. But right now we're telling the council that we have some options. We're not telling the council, AT THIS MOMENT TO GO FORWARD, But as we go through the budget, and we can already tell you that We're going to have some challenges if we want to do what we've heard from the community. We want more maintenance. of our parks and our open space. We want to continue to aggressively pave our streets. So there are items on there that I think the council will ultimately have to make the decision if they were to go forward on it, that those monies would go for general purposes, but specifically for capital and other maintenance type projects. But until it actually, appears on the ballot. in his past. Tell us speculation. And these folks here ultimately, you know, report to the community and are elected and reelected based on their performance. The good news is that at this moment in time, similar a few years ago. when we did the same survey with the same group. Um, our rating has increased and we are on the right track and we are doing a good job as also the department and the department head. So I think we're moving in the right direction. This now gives the council some options. it. |
| 03:18:52.76 | Unknown | Yep. |
| 03:18:53.52 | Council Member Rulia | And I'll ask kind of whoever wants to answer this. As far as other communities in Marin that have recently passed sales tax measures, my understanding, like Larkspur and Novato, I don't know if anyone else has recently in the last few years, They've also sort of – my memory of it, and correct me if I'm wrong, they've also sort Infrastructure is their main but they still went with a general purpose measure. Is that correct? |
| 03:19:26.41 | Bonnie Jean Croch | That's correct. We worked with both Novato and Larkspur, and what you're mentioning is exactly right. They did both pass general purpose sales taxes. And yes, it is true, similar to Sausalito, Larkspur has a lot of street and road needs. And so that was something that residents absolutely valued and something that the council has really moved forward to address with the revenue. But that's not the only thing they've addressed with the revenue. Same in Novato, you know, went to helping reserves. You know, there's a variety of things. I mean, they have a very fiscally conservative community up there. And so really looking at those overarching concerns, as your city manager mentioned, it really is up to the council, but both communities really took that feedback from their surveys and then really tried to respond to the resident concerns. |
| 03:20:19.76 | Council Member Rulia | As far as accountability and monitoring, where I think – |
| 03:20:21.71 | Jeff Butler | I'm sorry. |
| 03:20:29.83 | Council Member Rulia | I can understand the... the concern that it just disappears into this big bucket and you're not sure where it gets spent on, but how those communities kind of, because they've also, in their ballot measures, have had very specific language, not Project X, but that it'll be used for street repair, da-da-da-da. how they manage kind of the accountability or reporting issues around it. I think it's very different from the public safety bond issue because that was a building and you could – it had a beginning and an end in terms of monitoring how the money was spent. |
| 03:20:51.65 | Amy Wilson | I think it's very interesting. |
| 03:21:01.94 | Council Member Rulia | has a beginning in a very long 10 year period, I believe. So how have other communities kind of convinced their or dealt with accountability and reporting and other things about this kind of thing. |
| 03:21:12.66 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Absolutely. And we saw accountability very important to Sausalito residents as well. So, you know, looking at annual audits and expenditure reports to the community, publishing those kinds of things on your website. You know, I know that the city is very committed to transparency, and your residents absolutely appreciate that and frankly kind of expect that at this point. That's what they're already getting. And so, you know, when we asked residents for citing those very specific things like audits, expenditure reports, that was the type of accountability that made them very comfortable. And we absolutely saw similar things in both Novato and Larkspur in terms of their process. |
| 03:21:51.59 | Council Member Rulia | So that could be some mechanism of – to that end could be – mechanisms could be baked into a ballot measure as far as accountability and reporting and accountability. |
| 03:22:03.50 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Yes, absolutely. |
| 03:22:05.12 | Vice Mayor Theodos | By the way, on the audits, would these be additional audits that related specifically to this additional sales tax, or are they talking about auditing in general? |
| 03:22:15.28 | Bonnie Jean Croch | So it's typically, you know, the city does its annual audit, and it's typically a part of that. You know, and many residents don't even realize that you guys already do those audits, so making sure that people understand that those are done, that they're available, people can take a look at them, I think that's really the priority. It's not necessarily a special audit, just of these funds, that these funds be included in the overall audit. |
| 03:22:38.74 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, so you were saying earlier that the general purpose measure, which is basically just vote for the half-cent sales tax and just goes into the general fund, is a 50% pass. We need 50% of the vote. And what was the second type of the special services or... |
| 03:23:01.11 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Special purpose message. |
| 03:23:01.22 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Special Purpose Measure. Special Purpose Measure. Okay. Thanks. And that is where we wanted to protect the money coming in for specific for a specific reason like storm drains or roads and streets, that would be a special purpose measure and we would need two-thirds of the vote, right? I just wanted to clarify and make sure I got that right. |
| 03:23:18.80 | Bonnie Jean Croch | I just... Yeah, simple majority measure, which would go into the general fund. As you saw in the ballot measure that we worked to craft with your city attorney, there's a variety of services, anecdotal services listed. It's certainly not all storm drains and roads. And that would be used for the general fund and would require a simple majority. The special purpose measure is when you look at specific earmarking the funds for specific purposes and then that does require the higher threshold of two-thirds. |
| 03:23:51.72 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:23:55.52 | Mayor Withley | Okay. Thank you, Bonnie Jane. There's no action required tonight on this. Is there any other comments the Council wants to make on this subject before we move on? |
| 03:24:08.38 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I have a comment. My feeling is that, We're entering anything but a status quo period of time in the coming years. We know CalPERS is requiring increase in 50% contributions. We know our unfunded pension liability is 22 million. I read today, and I think it was Dick Spotswood's column, that the city of Mill Valley has started to set aside 600,000 a year. to finance their unfunded pension liability, which is $20 million. Thank you. And it struck me that, wow, you know, Sausalito is much smaller than Mill Valley, and our unfunded pension liability is higher than Mill Valley. So you know, we're entering uncertain fiscal times and fiscal strains. And so if there was support for a sales tax on this dais, I would – personally, I would only look at the special purpose measure to protect those funds for the infrastructure, for the streets and roads, the sidewalks, for the storm drains, and protect those funds for that infrastructure. And that is my personal opinion. Because my fear is that entering the uncertain waters we've got coming, that I think there's going to be some, I'm seeing storm clouds on the horizon, and I think that it's important that we protect those funds. |
| 03:25:51.06 | Mayor Withley | Anybody else want to comment? |
| 03:25:54.71 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah, the only comment I would make are twofold. One, you know, we I think just both as representatives of the community and as the last recession has kind of played out, it's made people more aware that municipalities, you know, financial stability is not a given. If you look at, you know, Vallejo and other communities that had a tough time going through the last downturn. And part of that is looking at your expenses and part of that is looking at your revenue sources. So I think in this case it's a good idea to look at our revenue sources and consider the options on the table, especially if we want to increase our spending on capital projects going forward. So it's good to see what the community is thinking. And my understanding is this is a statistically significant sample of the community, so you can draw some inferences from it. But, you know, we need to digest this and kind of consider what the – whether it makes sense for Sausalito at this moment in time. It would be good to know. offhand of the amount generated by the half-cent sales tax, how much of it, you know, we sort of highlighted in the survey, how much of it would be paid to the best of our knowledge, by visitors to kind of get a sense of that degree of contribution. Obviously, groceries and some other things are exempt. |
| 03:27:18.93 | Amy Wilson | of the |
| 03:27:23.37 | Council Member Rulia | from a local perspective, but it still would apply if you buy a car. It would apply to that, even though we don't have car dealerships here. If you buy a car somewhere else, the half-cent sales tax kicks it up for you here. So it would be, I think, good for us to know and the community to know how much of the increased revenue is actually being or anticipated to come from inside 94965 and how much is coming from outside sources so as part of our ongoing research into this. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:27:54.82 | Unknown | All right. |
| 03:27:55.03 | Council Member Rulia | Is that a question you're asking him now? No, it's just something that comes back for discussion. If this comes back for more discussion later as a topic on the agenda, that might be something we want to know, you know? |
| 03:27:57.05 | Unknown | No, it's just something that they |
| 03:28:00.14 | Mayor Withley | Bye. |
| 03:28:00.17 | Noel Norton | Yeah. |
| 03:28:00.19 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 03:28:00.29 | Noel Norton | Thank you. |
| 03:28:00.44 | Mayor Withley | If this comes |
| 03:28:09.40 | Mayor Withley | We're in our three minute comic period. I have nothing. Okay. OK, so we'll move on. And thank you very much. I don't know if you're staying. No, you're not. |
| 03:28:26.48 | Unknown | So... |
| 03:28:27.83 | Mayor Withley | Shukari and Bonnie Jean, thank you very much for staying so late. Hmm. |
| 03:28:32.27 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:28:37.38 | Mayor Withley | Okay, our next item is the review of the operating and CIP budget. |
| 03:28:59.20 | Charlie Francis | MR. OK, THIS IS MR. MAYOR, MEMBERS OF THE CITY COUNCIL. THIS IS THE INTRODUCTION OF THE BUDGETING PROCESS FOR THE FULL CITY COUNCIL. THE ATTACHED TO YOUR AGENDA WAS A DRAFT RESOURCE ALLOCATION PLAN THAT HAD THE EXPENDITURES AND PERFORMANCE MEASURE INDICATORS THAT HAD A RECOMMENDED BUDGET LEVELS OF SERVICE AND HAD CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROJECTS. So the agenda for tonight, basically, this is for discussion only. There's no action to be taking, but we're certainly seeking direction from the council on proceeding forward. We'll introduce the draft budget by talking about a citywide summary, introducing the new budget and fiscal transparency tool that's on our website that any citizen can go to, and I will demonstrate how to use that. We'll have – we'll review each department along with the CIPs, go with the summary and outlook, and then conclude with council discussion. Just really basically the current budget summary is the same as we've been talking about through all of our long-term financial planning and in our strategic planning session. Our strategic plan goals was to first make the city stable, and we are stable. Our current levels of service are adequately funded. Several years ago we went to enhance that strategic plan goal by saying we want to be sustainable, and through the structural balance that we've accomplished over the past several years, we can say that we are balanced and we are sound. We have solid reserves. Our reserves are based on a risk analysis and a mitigation strategy. We're resilient for the current level of service and the current level of resources that are available for infrastructure. As you know, in the past, we've had excess resources available for infrastructure, and we managed to go through the worst recession since the Depression by maintaining levels of service, not cutting back, and also having the Sausalito Economic Impact Program by using the monies that had been set aside for capital projects during the recession that actually ended up resulting in demonstrably stimulating our economy, the economic stimulus program of Sausalito. But we're here today. And as we mentioned, at last year's budget, during the comprehensive annual financial report review, during the midyear budget review, and in your strategic planning session, we have significant infrastructure needs. our storm drain system is 80 years old. It's deteriorating and it's old. In many cases it's non-functional. And we have neighborhood streets, potholes, sidewalks that need to be replaced and repaired in order to continue the aggressive street repair program that we initiated five years ago. We also have a number of concrete streets that need to be completely rehabilitated. So if we want to do that, additional resources are needed. And that's a part of what the prior presentation was about, that you have choices when you see this budget. You'll see that the services are balanced, but we have deficiency in our capital program. So again, building on the basics, staff put together a proposed budget. We vetted that budget through the finance committee over months of meetings. And we not only do that, but we use our long-term financial projections, the strategic planning, we use the priority calendar process. All of these activities that occur throughout the year build and feed the 2014, the 2016 budget budget. So let's just begin by looking at high level summaries. First of all, we have a general fund is has proposed to have $12.9 million in resources during the first year and 12.908 in expenditures. And so as we go through each of these, we'll see that we're balanced in for fiscal year 15 and fiscal year 16. Our biggest fund is the general fund. The general fund is where we provide the majority of the city services. And from that fund, from whenever surplus is left over, we transfer to the capital projects fund for additional infrastructure investment. |
| 03:33:14.77 | Amy Wilson | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:33:32.10 | Charlie Francis | With that, I'd like to introduce our fiscal transparency tool. And I'm going to move my presentation from the podium over the table so I can better demonstrate this. |
| 03:33:55.43 | Council Member Rulia | Mary can do the commentary if you want. |
| 03:33:57.86 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:34:04.88 | Charlie Francis | website is I this is accessible through our website if you go to the city of Sausalito homepage right in the hot news topic area there's a link that says fiscal trim budget transparency tool it'll take you to a page that describes the process and and what it is and now I'd like to demonstrate it and how you and staff and our citizens can use this tool to dig deeper down into the budget first of all coming down across across here we've loaded every fiscal years actual financial information from two thousand two three all the way through through twenty twelve thirteen |
| 03:34:36.28 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 03:34:45.02 | Charlie Francis | Adam, could you hit Control minus on the pad there? |
| 03:34:55.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:34:55.97 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:34:56.09 | Charlie Francis | Yep, that's good. Thank you. So now you can see, read the bottom part of those actuals going through here. And then we have the current year budget, and then we have the two years of the proposed budget. Now how this works is if you put the cursor on any of the departments, a pop-up occurs, and the pop-up will say, here's how much this department has spent out of the total city spending. So this is total city spending, and the blue area is for city engineering. You can also put the cursor into a box. Here it's the police, color-coded green to the legend, and you can see how much they spent out of the total city spending for each one of those areas and so on non-departmental and you can go through each it's across and this is across all funds and account groups other view can be easily switched from expenses by |
| 03:36:05.57 | Charlie Francis | by department to expense by expense type. And here it changes automatically to how much was spent on salaries across all funds and account groups and each one of these items. And again, if you hover in one of the areas, it tells you that here's how much was spent on salaries or here's how much is budgeted in the current year and here's how much is budgeted for the next two years in salaries out of the total budget for all cities and account group. You also look at it by fund so now our funds are broken up into two categories two groups we have governmental funds and proprietary funds if we click on anywhere in here on here says tells us all of our funds and here's the general fund a special revenue funds we click on special revenue funds we would or is that capital projects it showed back to capital project funds |
| 03:36:57.95 | Amy Wilson | are too. |
| 03:37:02.10 | Charlie Francis | go back and collect on special revenue it'll show us all of our different special revenue funds but again our major fund is the general fund now the easiest thing to do when you get lost into going down and each drilling down each one of these categories is hit the reset button it's my favorite button it brings you Brings you unsupported browser. Yeah, that's what I... Your brother's out of date. |
| 03:37:33.47 | Charlie Francis | Yeah. |
| 03:37:37.42 | Charlie Francis | I don't know how this happened. |
| 03:37:44.54 | Charlie Francis | Now it's going to download. |
| 03:37:49.35 | Charlie Francis | There, let's try this. |
| 03:37:53.77 | Charlie Francis | Alright, so we go back to the reset and come back over here really quickly. Let's explore. The different graphs you have, this kind of a graph, and you also have a pie graph that as you move the fiscal year, the pie graph adjusts. You can see here's how much was spending for this year out of the total city budget. You know, if we just go over here to the, by funds, go back to here. At any point in time, you say here's the general fund. and we want to look at the general fund by expense type. Here's the salaries in the general fund. We'll sort it by the chart of accounts. Here's how much is in benefits. Here's how much is in operations, going down by the legend. At any point in time, you say, I would like to download this information. Well, all the information is right here underneath the graph, and if you go up here to download, you can download it into a csv which would open up into an excel file so the city is totally transparent if we wanted to say here's how much we're spending in benefits and how much is California PERS well here's our PERS contributions and one could ask why was there this spike in this year that's the year we paid off the the two side funds the fireside fund and the miscellaneous side fund but what's interesting to know that on the pensions is how the pension cost for the next two years are less than what our pension cost was in an 11-12 and this is assuming the worst case scenario and the pension assumptions that on mister bartell presented to the city so we're always looking at conservatively projecting expenses uh... by assuming worst case scenarios and then conservatively projecting our revenues we can also look at this by revenues uh... go back to reset hopefully We're going to... I'm going to do that for now. So, but what also, all of what this means, we can drill by that tool all the way down to the line item. And there's instructions on how our residents can do that on the website. They can just go to that how-to tab. And I was just talking to Abbott before I came in here this evening about putting on a webinar through the library to our citizens on walking through a presentation on how our citizens can use this tool, fiscal transparency tool. But this is going to give them the numbers. Our new budget document is going to say what are we doing with the money. So now we'll have two kinds of sources. How much money are we allocating to spend and what are we doing with it so that they can answer the questions, is the budget balanced? Are there adequate reserves? How much will this cost me? The things that citizens really are interested in. So the first question is, yes, we do have a balanced budget. Our revenues for the general fund for both fiscal year 14-15 and 15-16 exceed our expenditures in both of those years. We have reserves, and in the budget document that I presented to you, I gave a summary of what all of our reserves are and how they're calculated. But in our general fund, you see we have surpluses in both the fiscal year 2014-15 and 2015-16, and we have reserves that are based at our 5% level, our 10% level, and we have excess reserves in the amount of $900,000 plus another $900,000 in our disaster assistance. reserve fund. our general fund revenues again we could see if it allows to click through to the site It did. So now we can look at general fund revenues. Here's how much comes in from tax. Let's go back to this year. |
| 03:42:00.11 | Charlie Francis | Okay. I can do it so taxes as we drill down into taxes it says how much will come from property tax how much from sales tax and things like that so you can drill down to the line item one of the interesting things that you'll be able to see is if we would revenues by fund and let's go back to reset up Don't hit the reset. Yeah. Yeah. |
| 03:42:39.33 | Charlie Francis | Well, I was going to say, when we go to the parking fund, we have the revenues by each parking lot and by how much through parking meters and how much through all the different revenue sources. So you'll be able to see, as I think you saw in your budget, I have performance indicators, how much revenue we get per space from lot one, per lot two, per lot three for each parking meter. So it's very transparent to the citizen and to you and to staff that can be used the second thing about this is there's a current year in the current year this is expenditures in this case through the month of April. and is the budget and then the next column is the actual so you'll be able to see how much we spent actual and all the prior years I prorated for the same month so you can see the spending pattern for each of the fiscal years and as well as in the current year so it's a it's a tool that not only looks at at the annual expenditures but it also looks at the the budget for budget expenditures So a citizen then can go to that site and be able to see what taxes are being collected in order to pay the general fund services. In the same way they can do it with the expenditures. If we clicked on this, we can drill down to the line item for every department. So let's just start with first is the police department. For every one of our departments, for every one of our funds, there will be a narrative description and a description of a number of employees and some performance indicators. So for an example here, we've listed the police force strength. We've given some performance indicators in terms of traffic collisions, parking citations, call for service. And these are the resources then that are allocated in order to support this level of staff and these kinds of activities, as well as to address, and then how we're deployed on a basis through our beats and our patrols and what the workforce is doing in order to address the calls for service that we're experiencing throughout the fiscal years and what kind of crimes that we're out there taking reports on and trying to prevent. So a pretty good indication of the level of service of the police department. Same way with public works, we have two divisions, an engineering division and a maintenance division. And in the engineering, once again, we give the staffing across the years, we have the resources to support that staffing, and then indicators on what the staffing is doing. And you'll be able to read in the budget document some workload demand and workload outputs that is being performed. Same way with the maintenance division. We have a number of good performance measures in here that says here's what we're doing with the resources that are allocated for the Department of Public Works and their maintenance division. Library did a great job of putting together their indicators of what their circulation is and the volumes and how they're reaching out to their different populations. as well as the Recreation Department and their indicators talked about all their class enrollments, the classes. and how they're reaching out to their different populations, as well as the recreation department and their indicators talked about all their class enrollments, the classes they offered, and Mike has given me these other years. I apologize that they didn't get into this sheet. |
| 03:45:43.60 | Amy Wilson | Mary did a great job. |
| 03:46:09.76 | Charlie Francis | Community development department's been swamped, and we do have the number of positions and the resources allocated. We're still working on developing demand and workload indicators for the community development department. IT, and finally, administration and finance, non-departmental, talks about what we're doing and how we're spending the money. so in summary that the introduction here is general fund budget is goes through departments uh... we're building on the basics and uh... between now and your next meeting if you want to get into the details of any department or uh... the the object items that make up the budget you can come to uh... see me individually one-on-one or come and see the department heads one-on-one and we can talk about digging into that budget a little bit deeper as you know we we'd we have been using long-term financial planning for quite some time our long term financial model is based on certain assumptions assumptions as I mentioned there always very can high on the expenditure side and lower on the revenue generation side and we show that we are structurally balanced for the current level of service but we're we still have infrastructure investment needs repairing a storm drains repairing neighborhood streets fixing broken sidewalks so our five-year CIP program is color-coded where we do have substantial investment occurring in the 14, 15 year and programmed out through the next six years. You can see for traffic and transportation programs, was that $2 million, Adam? |
| 03:47:57.25 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 03:47:58.91 | Charlie Francis | 2.4 million appropriated there but we don't have a we don't have a revenue source for our storm drain infrastructure you know we collect uh... right now a personal tax of fifteen dollars a parcel on every uh... on every parcel and based on a stormwater runoff formula and that fifteen dollars for stormwater needs generates about seventy five thousand dollars a year the money goes to play a mix stop dues other administration and over the years that accumulated some resource in order to do some minor storm drain capital improvements but you know we're saying that of that seventy five thousand after we pay our mixed up dues after we play our other maintenance we only have about ten thousand dollars available for to address our significant storm during needs that we have over the next years which is about according to a report that we had during this sewer and storm drain study our infrastructure needs over the next five years are about a million dollars a year for storm drain facilities beginning with a storm drain master plan in order to, you know, detail know exactly what storm drains need to be addressed in a priority basis. |
| 03:49:18.61 | Charlie Francis | Building and waterfront programs, some of these are funded out of the Tidelands Fund, but the majority of them out of general fund contributions. Some grants and outside resources, and, of course, we assumed contributions. For example, here on the Parks Project, we have Southview Park. That million dollars there is in the capital improvement program, but we really need community contributions in order to do that facility. |
| 03:49:39.23 | Amy Wilson | We'll be right back. |
| 03:49:53.99 | Charlie Francis | bicycle sidewalk bicycle and pedestrian projects and then uh... we've broken up some new categories this year we included a uh... uh... right away uh... millions land and open space projects these were included in other areas and they've we finally have enough of them in order to have its own category where we want to say here's what the capital projects are here uh... we have Americans with Disability Act needs out there beginning with the development of an ADA transition plan and finally we have some minor studies that are going on through the priority calendar process. These are unmet needs where we have streets, storm drains, and more ADA needs and sidewalk and ADA parks and recreation needs that right now do not have a designated funding source. |
| 03:50:46.42 | Amy Wilson | ADA cyber. |
| 03:50:55.52 | Charlie Francis | We also have a number of supplemental requests that have been generated either by staff through the budget process or by the community where police are looking for some shared services, IT technicians. The grand jury report recently came out with a recommendation that police wear body-worn cameras. We're waiting to see on that because we want to make sure that there's no unintended consequences and no failures. Other departments are testing these right now, and so we're holding off on whether or not that's – we'll move forward with that. We have a tri-annual street tree maintenance program that's unfunded presently at about $10,000 annually. Tri-annual street tree maintenance program, about $3,500 annually. And finally, a tri-annual street maintenance in downtown area where we have some $20,000 streets need about $17,000 annually to be set aside for the trees. And also some $30,000 in tree grates should be We also have storm drain regulations management where the recommendations coming through that we have a full-time resource of $150,000, approximately $150,000 to handle all the regulations and the maintenance and the day-to-day things that need to be, that we would be mandated to do based on the regulations as they get passed down. And then some augmenting staff for permit approvals for construction inspections. And then we had the hospitality commission come in with a proposal to designate $72,000 annually from new TOT generated for a community marketing program. |
| 03:52:49.44 | Charlie Francis | so that concludes the the introduction of the budget to the city council and staff is ready now to answer questions you have and also receive direction and proceeding with the budget preparation |
| 03:53:03.74 | Mayor Withley | Let me start with a quick question. The supplemental requests you've shown there, have or have not been incorporated into the budget. They have not. They have not, right. I thought that was the case. Thank you. |
| 03:53:15.19 | Charlie Francis | They have not. They have not. |
| 03:53:21.66 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor? Thank you. |
| 03:53:26.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So my question has to do with the unfunded pension liability. And I know we're making our CalPERS payments, but I'm wondering if we are setting aside funds for our employees with respect to the unfunded pension liability. |
| 03:53:42.60 | Charlie Francis | the city has set aside money annually since 2003 into the employee benefits fund to address things as our obligation and around any pension liabilities that fluctuate from year to year based on the market performance the so that fund has built up I think it's about five hundred thousand dollars right now and it's continuing to be funded |
| 03:54:06.97 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So are we taking any extra steps, given the CalPERS actions of the 50% increase over five years, |
| 03:54:14.17 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 03:54:15.42 | Bonnie Jean Croch | Yeah. |
| 03:54:17.55 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | up the fund in lieu of the fact that we're looking at a $22 million unfunded pension liability as of two years ago. 2012. $49 million. unfunded pension liability if we apply what I perceive as more realistic rates in calculating that. |
| 03:54:37.43 | Charlie Francis | and and I'm sure the council will recall that mr. Bartell did indeed confirm them those numbers for two years ago but that they would be reduced the following year the fact they were reduced six months later because it's really a function of how much the CalPERS investments earn so the unfunded liable and as mr. Bartell also pointed out at that meeting, the unfunded liability and as Mr. Bartel also pointed out at that meeting the unfunded liability is less of an indicator of a financial health the real indicator of financial health is the city's capacity to pay and things they've done to mitigate and reduce their pension obligations and the city has taken significant pension reform and is continuing to do so throughout the past five years and into the next two years by asking its employees to not only pay their own share but to pay a portion of the employer's share by paying off our side funds and by instituting two new pension tiers one before the new mandated state law came out, which enabled us to significantly reduce our total labor cost expenditures. So much so that as I pointed out on the earlier graph that we're keeping our pension expenses at a level less than they were several years ago. And we continue as staff turns over, we continue to see that reduction in pension expense. And finally, in our long-term projections, I anticipate the worst market scenario and the most aggressive CalPERS increases into our expense projections. And then when I match that against our revenue projections, we still stay structurally balanced. And that finally confirms that Mr. Bartel's concluding statements that if the city has the capacity to pay just as if a homeowner has the capacity to continue to pay their mortgage, it's less, the unfunded liability is less of a factor than it is than are you doing everything to keep your annual pension expenses down. |
| 03:55:13.50 | Amy Wilson | Yeah. |
| 03:56:53.76 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, so you and I disagree with respect to the analogy of the mortgage. I think that is completely, I don't see that at all. But we also disagree in terms of we're okay if we can make the payments every year. We've got an unfunded pension liability of $22 million I'm seeing other cities taking decisive action. And I guess my question is, are we making any adjustments to to the amount of money that we're setting aside to be able to cover that. |
| 03:57:27.00 | Charlie Francis | Yes, and as I've said, we're taking every step possible to always have the capacity to pay our pension obligations. |
| 03:57:36.13 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So how much are we setting aside this year in this budget? Not for the CalPERS payment, but for, you know, to compensate for this uptick. |
| 03:57:47.69 | Charlie Francis | we have reserves that have been set aside and a number of different funds we have a unemployed benefit fund and has about a half a million dollars we have an emergence disaster assistance recovery reserve that has nine hundred sixty one thousand dollars we have revenue mitigation reserves and our enterprise funds that more than significantly cover the two the two-year wave of revenues. In other words, what I'm saying is. than significantly cover the two year wave of revenues. In other words what I'm saying is we have enough reserves to be able to continue to sustain the level of service that we have and still pay our pension obligations. |
| 03:58:27.30 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I think maybe I'll take this offline with you and have a separate meeting because I'm very concerned. |
| 03:58:30.74 | Charlie Francis | Okay. |
| 03:58:34.49 | Charlie Francis | Yeah, and I'm always welcome to go through those pension projections with you. |
| 03:58:40.65 | Mayor Withley | Does anybody else have any questions of Charlie? um, Does any member of the public have any comments on this item? |
| 03:58:53.60 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:58:53.98 | Mayor Withley | That's... Bring it up here. We have no action, I think. This was for information only. Right, that's correct. Yeah, so any comments anybody wants to make? |
| 03:59:09.43 | Vice Mayor Theodos | The only comment, well, actually, what's our next step? Can you go through whatever? So information tonight, and then where do we go from here? |
| 03:59:20.91 | Charlie Francis | the next time the full city council will receive the budget would be in their next meeting in june june 10th june 10th and then the next step after that would be budget adoption on june 24th in between then staff is open for you to come in and the finance committee will be also be meeting to if there's any other direction and lastly we have the priority calendar that we're going to be hearing about tonight and in the next budget meeting and and we'll be meeting with the Finance Committee then to see what priority calendar items make it to the top and and if those make it to the top how they can be incorporated into the budget document |
| 04:00:02.10 | Charlie Francis | But please come in and go over the budget with me. |
| 04:00:07.30 | Council Member Rulia | Well, I just wanted to thank you, Charlie, for both creating two new avenues for the public to be better informed about the city's finances. the – what's the name of the tool that we just demonstrated? The – Open Gov. Open Government tool, which would allow people to – |
| 04:00:24.93 | Charlie Francis | OpenGov. |
| 04:00:30.10 | Council Member Rulia | have the time and energy to dive deeply into both historical as well as future budgets and see where their money goes. And then the other one is the narrative and the performance indicators. that you and the departments have put together, which will, I think, also give people a better insight into what each department does on a daily basis or an annual basis, kind of what their roles are, how they're staffed. |
| 04:00:54.43 | Amy Wilson | Sure. |
| 04:00:54.48 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 04:00:54.53 | Amy Wilson | Right. |
| 04:00:59.54 | Council Member Rulia | the narrative which is to come I think a lot of the – And for us, we take it for granted that we understand Each department does, but a lot of people know which department does what or how many times officers go out on a beat or how many people are on a shift or how many events Mike has in Park and Rec, and to get a full scope of what's happening here. I think that'll be a good disclosure tool. |
| 04:01:22.66 | Charlie Francis | Yes. |
| 04:01:25.85 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 04:01:26.22 | Charlie Francis | . Thank you. |
| 04:01:30.24 | Mayor Withley | Okay, thank you, Charlie. And that was very good. |
| 04:01:36.11 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you, Charlie. |
| 04:01:37.85 | Mayor Withley | Okay, our next topic. is, um, I'm not going to spook it. Our next topic, we're sort of on time. Do we want a very short break? Very short. Very short break here. Okay. All right. Turn for five minutes. Thank you. |
| 04:01:56.06 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 04:03:11.07 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:06:34.66 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. Thank you. |
| 04:06:42.95 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Oh, yeah. I guess it might be neighbors. Anybody? |
| 04:06:53.78 | Unknown | That's where we're going to get to it. Thank you. |
| 04:07:16.53 | Mayor Withley | Okay. Next item is... Step two of the Priority calendar, reviewing the projects and finalizing the list to be ranked by the City Council. And it's over to our City Manager. |
| 04:07:46.45 | Adam Politzer | Okay, I'm trying to do two things at once, see if I can do one thing. |
| 04:07:51.19 | Council Member Rulia | Excuse me, members of the public. |
| 04:07:53.77 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 04:07:59.60 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor and City Council members, this is... |
| 04:08:02.25 | Council Member Rulia | For the record, there's only one person, and... So, and I won't mention names, but I wasn't trying – we were – I was joking with them that they were talking – but they were talking. |
| 04:08:15.53 | Adam Politzer | Okay. Thank you for the introduction and quieting down the ruckus in the audience. |
| 04:08:20.94 | Unknown | in the audience. |
| 04:08:24.82 | Adam Politzer | I'm going to try to make this as short and simple and sweet as we possibly can. |
| 04:08:25.57 | Unknown | to kind of make the... |
| 04:08:31.47 | Adam Politzer | And I will remind the council that the first step and the third step the difficult steps. Tonight is really just making sure and confirming that the items that appear on the list that you folks then have the responsibility to take home. and rank based on your own individual preference. Um, That information will need to be received to the city clerk. on June 4th. so that it can appear in the packet for the June 10th Council meeting. It gives us time. to take all of your information and do the reconciliation and provide that to the public. that. It's really not a time unless There's... Lots of members of the public that want to add new items. You really did that. step at the first the first session. So we're not encouraging you to add more. We went up to 26 We reviewed the 26, we moved items, that were staff items that should be on their work plan and moved two of those items off of the – or three of those items off of the list and then added an item which is a number on your alphabetical list which is number three, business analytics service status report. So that was really the only new item that was added. The other items were either taken off of the list, which We took nine off and we were able to And then. Move three. and put those onto the staff list. Amen. So what I'm asking you folks to do is what you see up on the screen here are the 23 items. which was in the staff report an attachment that got a little bit scrambled that you should now have, which again indicates the 21 department items. that are now on their workload, which they'll continue to work on as regular business. And they'll either do that through boards and commissions, staff or consultants, things that are now part of their day-to-day Um, workload. We use the example of the EPA. or disaster preparedness, as we talked about this in the past. Um, And then the third attachment that you have in front of you. is the staff's recommendation. as they went through each of the 23 items They gave comments on its status. what they think the order of sequence of some of these objectives. And I'll ask Debbie to pull that. We'll skip right to that slide. I moved fast through the first two, sorry. So the first slide was the alphabetical list, the second slide is the is the department projects And the third slide is the staff department head's recommendation on what projects they think that they either have the capacity or in the sequence of doing the work, it makes sense to do it in this fiscal in this priority calendar. fiscal year, which will start July 1st and run through June 30th. of 2015. So, Staff is here to address your questions, so if you look at the item, For example, beautification projects downtown. Median, City Hall, and Caledonia Street. Um, and the timing of that. and then the general fund costs, and if staff recommends it, if you have questions regarding those proposed costs, mediums 25,000, streetscape 20,000. If you want to know more detail on that, then obviously our public works director could to share that. If you go to the next slide, let's go down. There we got a no. for the central. waterfront master plan. You can look at the proposed action, the timing, and then the general fund costs associated with that and if you If you think that that should be something that the city works on this year, then you would want to ask why did staff recommend no, and if you wanted more information than what's provided there. Again, both our community development director and public works director probably both have opinions on this. They may not even be opinions that work together that they may be looking at through different lenses. But again, understanding why they voted no on this or why they're recommending No on this, again, an opportunity to ask questions. for your information. But at the end of tonight, ultimately... We want to make sure that the list of 23 plus the list of 21 represent kind of the priorities of the city And then when you go through this as an individual council member and rank them, between now and June 4th. um, then that will help us take that information and then look at the average and then tell you how the council as a whole ranks these projects and then you'll review that at the meeting on June 10th. and then at that point draw the line. In the SAF report, I suggest that you draw the line at 10. In my presentation last week I suggested that you have more discipline based on our have. a variety of activity in the city already. and the turnover in the Community Development Department that you limit that actually to seven when you look at some of the projects that are already taking a lot of bandwidth, both in dollars and in staff resources. So I'm going to conclude my report. I obviously could talk more and go into more detail. I'm happy to do so. but I'd like to answer Council's questions and then remind Council if there are any items that is either recommended that we take on by the department or not take on if you want to ask them questions on why they're recommending that we take it on. or not. They're here to do so. It is important to note just because they recommend that it's something that we can take on doesn't mean that we have the resources, financial, or the staff to take it on, it just means that They recognize the importance either by community. Feedback. or for council discussions on a variety of issues that have come before the council on some of these items that haven't yet been wrapped up but continue to be on the priority calendar. So with that, I will stop and turn it over to you folks to again look at the alphabetical listing. Um... and confirm that you don't want to add new items on it and then go back to this proposed project list if there are any specific questions of staff on what they've recommended or not. But really this is, The document at the end of tonight you want to walk away with saying, These are the items that we're going to rank. and we're proposing that you stay with the 23 unless something urgent and new should be considered. |
| 04:15:49.45 | Mayor Withley | So, MR. Adam, it seems that there's two clear things, and that is to confirm either we are or we're not going to add anything more, and then to go through the report and clarify why perhaps staff is making the recommendation it is. |
| 04:16:07.43 | Michael Hecox | Yeah. |
| 04:16:07.84 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:16:09.17 | Mayor Withley | I see someone on my left here who has a list of things potentially to put on. So maybe we should tackle that first because Um... remembering that In the last time we discussed this, there was a this priority calendar was reorganized and its purpose has changed slightly from years past. So let's recognize that. |
| 04:16:35.99 | Council Member Rulia | Yes, I recognize. So I just have a question more if I look at, you know, what I did in twofold. I didn't add anything new in my mind, but I'm looking at the old priority calendar from last year, and I tried to go through it and see what went where. Some went to the department. Some stayed up here. And then there were some that were finished, and there were some where I couldn't answer whether they were finished or not, and then, therefore, what happens to them. So anybody can answer these questions, and just one word answers is fine. Age-friendly initiative. Is that complete or does that come off the list because it didn't get allocated? It's on the platform. |
| 04:17:18.58 | Adam Politzer | on the park and recreation list. |
| 04:17:20.47 | Council Member Rulia | It's on your list? All right. I couldn't find that one. Building code update. Did we do that already? No. So where does that go? That's the green building code as well as the state building code, which has new green regulations. |
| 04:17:38.81 | Jeremy Graves | The President's President Obama, the President, and the President's President, |
| 04:17:43.76 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. And that's the same is true of the historic preservation regulations, right? Correct. Okay. And the citywide historic context statement, is that the same? Okay. Steps and stairways, Johnny G., is that on your list, or did that kind of fall through the cracks? It's in the budget. |
| 04:18:10.71 | Mayor Withley | This is easier than that. |
| 04:18:11.75 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah, I was just clarifying, right? Attorney Street Dock. I love them. Showers we talked about at the last meeting. I'm just going to put that forward as the one thing I would add, the showers. Community garden we talked about at the last meeting. Construction waste ordinance. You know, the recycling stuff. That was on the old one. That didn't get sucked into anywhere else as far as the new one goes. So that one I would ask we add back. Just so it goes on the list, otherwise it gets lost. I thought |
| 04:18:55.04 | Mayor Withley | checked everyone. |
| 04:18:56.22 | Council Member Rulia | I tried to – well, there was like 14 different attachments that said the same thing or different things because each department slipped in, so I couldn't quite follow them, and then I went through all 59 of the old priority calendar trying to find a home for most of the stuff. So the only ones – so my question is – |
| 04:18:56.24 | Mayor Withley | I tried to. |
| 04:19:16.15 | Council Member Rulia | Two general questions. One. for the things that are kind of in process but will still require staff time and money, in the next budget year like the historic preservation regulations, the building code, da, da, da, da, da, all those. Where do those fall? Because they're not on the staff list of being incorporated in the department. And they are a one-time thing. And they're not on this list either. So where do those go? |
| 04:19:45.16 | Adam Politzer | Yes, that's a good point. Actually, the mayor and I had this conversation that that was one of the flaws in the system. where those went are there on the current workload. What is before you is the proposed 2014-15 workload, 21 items that are going forward in the next budget. The projects similar to what you just asked our Community Development Director and our Public Works Director are current workload items. So that list is invisible because of current work. And that was the exact same point that the mayor had made in private conversation saying we need to show those. And so as you had asked during the break, there's eight items that basically are invisible but they should be on today's workload for this fiscal year's to be complete or significantly made progress on and that was something that I shared on step one. that those items, there should be significant progress if not completed at the end of this calendar year. |
| 04:20:54.36 | Council Member Rulia | Right. I hear you there. I'm sorry. I hear that, but, like, for some of these, they will require – there isn't enough funding to keep going unless we allocate funding to them, like, say, the historic preservation regulations. There's no funding in the current budget for that. There's funding in the current budget, but we're already blowing through that. We're not blowing through it. We're using it. it. But we're going to need more money to get it done. So – and the same thing I would imagine is true of staff time for the building code and the historic context statement and – what was the one that was a public works – |
| 04:21:34.10 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you. |
| 04:21:34.32 | Council Member Rulia | I can't remember. |
| 04:21:34.39 | Jeremy Graves | I can't really start context statement will not require any additional funding |
| 04:21:38.24 | Council Member Rulia | You don't think so? Correct. Staff time, though? |
| 04:21:38.89 | Jeremy Graves | That's right. Correct. |
| 04:21:41.00 | Council Member Rulia | Okay. |
| 04:21:41.46 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you. |
| 04:21:45.61 | Council Member Rulia | So what do you want to do with those? For me, if they require money, we've got to put them in here. |
| 04:21:52.07 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I think that we're blending here. I think the blending that is being suggested is that our budget that is going to – we're going to go to the next stage. You've got an overview tonight. Now the next phase, just as we've done in the finance committee meetings, is we go into the detail. So things that will continue funding that are ongoing projects. and concrete maintenance. disaster preparedness stuff. Um, We'll need to make sure that the department head has requested funding in their line item for that particular project. So if there are ongoing things, so the example of the Turney Street Oat, Maram. We've come to council. The council is approved moving forward with that project. So it's funded. If there's some reason that we need more money, if the estimate wasn't correct, or the project goes out to bid and comes back at its different dollar amount. Then we've got to come back to the council and ask for additional funds. at this moment in time. you know, those should show up in the – you know, that type of project would show up in the capital project. So I'm not suggesting that you blend, I'm suggesting that What's on this list of 23 are items that have come from the last priority calendar process that didn't make it above the line or were not significantly advanced based on a variety of things that may or may not have come up. or this didn't make much progress in the amount of time that they started. Um, So I wouldn't actually recommend taking projects that are currently being worked on that staff feels either is funded appropriately. or adequate staffing has been assigned to it, and putting that on the priority calendar. So I – and then the item – the new item that you suggested, which was showers, |
| 04:23:41.64 | Council Member Rulia | Bye. So you can add up. |
| 04:23:46.06 | Adam Politzer | We've gone through this. |
| 04:23:47.38 | Council Member Rulia | I know. We talked about it. I'm just bringing it up again. |
| 04:23:48.68 | Adam Politzer | And I don't suggest that the city of Sausalito look at creating public showers, I think that that's a discussion at the county level. and the location of those showers administered by the county is something that we'd want to be involved in the discussion. But the city of Sausalito to go up and move forward on public showers, we've been advised not to do that for lots of good reasons. but the bigger discussion on the county level I think we should be engaged in, but I don't believe that's a priority calendar. |
| 04:24:18.38 | Council Member Rulia | So can I make a suggestion then for the items that were on the old priority calendar that staff at some level considers still in process, that you sit with the department head of that process, talk with Charlie and you and make sure that there's – if there isn't adequate funding to finish that project or there isn't adequate staff time to finish that project, because the only augment staff time would be hiring a consultant or a new staff member, that that You go through those between now and the next. I think that's a good thing. finance committee meeting and or council meeting and if there's any gaps there, let's identify them and, you know, put them on the list of things we've got to deal with. because it wouldn't be if we don't fund something now, my concern, even though it's in progress, we don't fund it enough in the ongoing the next fiscal year |
| 04:25:12.62 | Adam Politzer | The next. |
| 04:25:13.04 | Mayor Withley | physical year. |
| 04:25:13.86 | Adam Politzer | May I expect? I'm sorry. |
| 04:25:14.03 | Mayor Withley | you No, I was just going to say that I think these things are increasingly being captured in this new budget format narrative where, you know, the the tables of each department activities, I think that's where you're going to find them. |
| 04:25:33.08 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:25:33.32 | Mayor Withley | Yeah. |
| 04:25:33.34 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah. |
| 04:25:33.35 | Mayor Withley | And that's where they should be. |
| 04:25:33.61 | Council Member Rulia | Bye. Right. And that – so I would take the ones that – |
| 04:25:35.48 | Mayor Withley | Right. |
| 04:25:38.33 | Council Member Rulia | were transferred to the department and stick them in the narrative part, but there are eight or whatever the number is that didn't go anywhere, and those should be accounted for somewhere. Either they stay on the list and you decide whether you want to do them at all, or you put them in the budget and we decide if we want to fund them at all. |
| 04:25:57.37 | Mayor Withley | That, I think, is the right process. Yeah. |
| 04:26:03.34 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, and I agree. And just to clarify, when you, received prior to the priority calendar process starting an update on the current list. So. there was a list that said, If there was 58 items, I think that's what you'd suggest that there were. then they were all accountable on that list. And then when we started the priority calendar process, we also attached that list But what is missing, which I agree with, is that we need to account for those eight items that didn't move forward in this new process. And we'll go back to staff. I agree with the mayor. I think the... to departmental meetings, to finance committee meetings. We address the priority calendar items for the most part, but it's definitely safe to go back and double check, and we'll make sure that happens prior to us coming back on June 10th. |
| 04:26:55.64 | Council Member Rulia | But what I'm trying to highlight is there are some here, like, urban wildland prevention program, where you've categorized and put in the department category. There are some that are just done, like – that we finished this year, like, the U.S. and the U.S. uh... |
| 04:27:19.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:27:20.85 | Council Member Rulia | Right. Some of the housing element pieces that were in here that we already have adopted. So those are just done. And then there's another category of ones that are still ongoing that don't fall into any – this list or the department list, and we just need to account for them somehow and then revisit whether they're important or not. |
| 04:27:46.06 | Mayor Withley | So I agree completely with that. I think we've partially done it in the budget, but I think you're right. We need to cross-check that. Yeah, that's why I just ran down that listing. |
| 04:27:53.94 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah, and that's why I just ran down that list and they said, oh, budget, budget, budget. So that accounts for some of them. And there's some of them like we just highlighted in our. |
| 04:27:57.20 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for people who are either watching this or don't have a clue what we're talking about, Thank you. the |
| 04:28:09.79 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 04:28:09.89 | Mayor Withley | So, |
| 04:28:09.91 | Council Member Rulia | Exactly. |
| 04:28:10.17 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 04:28:10.33 | Council Member Rulia | you or the other. |
| 04:28:10.68 | Mayor Withley | Smart. |
| 04:28:10.97 | Council Member Rulia | I'm sorry. |
| 04:28:11.03 | Mayor Withley | what is happening is that this is a transition year in which the staff is recommending really a transition of the priority calendar and this budget documentation which is more robust, which clearly shows goals, tasks, and so on. |
| 04:28:32.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:28:32.69 | Mayor Withley | I'm very supportive of that transition and I think we just need to bear with it for a Make sure we get it right, but bear with it. |
| 04:28:39.40 | Clayton Smith | Thank you. |
| 04:28:39.57 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 04:28:46.56 | Adam Politzer | So the question will be. So next steps. |
| 04:28:46.98 | Mayor Withley | So, next step. |
| 04:28:49.04 | Adam Politzer | Do you want to add anything to this list, or are you okay with this list? And if you're okay with this list, do you want to move to the staff recommendations and ask for clarification where and if needed. |
| 04:29:01.93 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. So for me... I'm not – but I promised you I wouldn't come up with anything new that wasn't on the old priority calendar, but the ones that I would consider putting on this list – As I said, the shower facilities, we talked about at the last meeting, and there wasn't enough support. The community garden, that was on the same situation there. We talked about at the last meeting. There wasn't support. The construction waste ordinance, which we've been trying to do for many years, it's been on the list, is not on either of these, and that I would like to add up here as a potential ranked category. |
| 04:29:47.27 | Council Member Rulia | You're Jeremy saying that staff can accomplish the building code update within the current resources, so that we should just put on the department list because we've got to do that. It's a state law question. You're telling me the historic preservation's regulations. You're going to revisit this in this discussion about the things that are kind of falling through the gap between the two or whether there's an adequate funding to finish it. So I don't know if that belongs – you're telling me that doesn't need to be on the list right up today, but it'll need to be in the budget. And the historic context statement, Jeremy's saying that's within staff's capability, so that should go on the department list if that's something to be accomplished. So that – the only one that I – uh, So the construction waste is the only one where I think there might be some support to put it on the list. The other – the parking – 94965 parking. the shower facilities, the community gardens, garden and those – I don't think there'll probably be enough support on the council to do that. |
| 04:30:57.78 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, Mr. Mayor, if I can just comment on the 94965 parking. We're actually planning on bringing that forward to the council. It did get. sidetracked because our captain and the police department have been working on two other higher priorities tour bus ordinance that you heard tonight and then bicycle The bicycle downtown bicycle activity and then their connection with the ped and bike commit so But that is on their work. That's this year. That's great. So can we |
| 04:31:23.92 | Council Member Rulia | They... |
| 04:31:24.31 | Unknown | but that is on their work plan. |
| 04:31:26.03 | Council Member Rulia | That's great. So can we put it on the department list then? Because it wasn't on the department list. |
| 04:31:31.21 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, again, just to clarify, the department lists for the 14-15 year. The department list that doesn't exist, what you're asking for, is the current year. So the items that they're currently working on, I need to create a new list that says 13-14, work less. That's the transition that the mayor is talking about that didn't exist. So we're talking about the future. |
| 04:31:54.65 | Unknown | Right. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:31:55.29 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So, Mr. Mayor, I have a question. I just want to confirm that, I mean, this parking thing where we would be |
| 04:31:58.16 | Adam Politzer | Yes. |
| 04:32:04.67 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | the council would be given like the three-hour free parking allocation to folks who don't live in Sausalito, who live in Marin City, etc. Um, You know, that is something that I personally do not support. because of the fact that our residents painted the tax base and pay for the infrastructure here. And so, and yet it's becoming a project that's going to be taking up staff time. Am I to infer then that there is a council majority view that that should be a staff project? I mean, I don't support it, but I'm assuming by default you do or the majority does. for it to be taking up staff time. |
| 04:32:56.09 | Adam Politzer | If I can just respond to them, Mr. Mayor. That was part of the last priority calendar process. So all those items that were ranked above the line, and specifically parking to include the houseboat community and Marin City was the specific. uh, Councilmember Leone. just renamed it 94965, but that wasn't the direction that we left with. when staff comes back, which is what our intent is, with a WITH A STAFF REPORT. and proposal. that's when the council can, and discuss the merits. So the old priority calendar ranked it above the line and staff is working on that. new direction and that's at their discretion. I took the responsibility of prioritizing where that fit in this fiscal year, and we pushed it off, obviously putting bicycles and tour buses ahead of it, but it is still our intent to bring that forward to the council. |
| 04:33:53.94 | Council Member Rulia | Mayor, if I may. So it's not a done deal in any sense of the word because there's a lot of research that we need to go into it to see about A, can we accommodate it, B, is it going to – how it would impact parking revenue because of free parking or what have you. And the second question is we've got to ask these people that actually – you know, hey, I've talked to members of those communities, but you're going to use it because don't do it if they're not going to use it. |
| 04:34:19.97 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | What? Thank you. I guess my point was that we're talking about staff time being at a premium and we have a lot of very high priority projects here. And it seems like it's kind of late in the year. I know it's technically still the fiscal year, but we're entering a new priority setting time now, so it What I might recommend is that we add it to this list. I mean, I don't support it, but add it to the list and see where it falls out in the new priority listing. Because that's really what you should, I mean, the year's almost, you know, we're... That's at the council. |
| 04:34:54.25 | Adam Politzer | That's at the council's discretion. Similar to how you heard the community development director say that certain items are in the budget and they're – or it doesn't need additional funding. and they're going to move it forward. It's a good thing. those things will take final action sometime in the fall. So again, they'll fall outside of the window but their significant progress has been made. Thank you. If the police department hadn't had to spend as much time with the community both on tours and tour buses and bicycle activity, you know, they would have had time to do the research for this, which I think is still their intent. We hear on a normal basis from the Houseville community that they believe that they do live hear from people that move into Marin City, because it's advertised as a Sausalito address, that they are South Saluda residents. On the staff level, we were writing people tickets or we're telling them that they don't qualify these types of benefits because they actually don't live in this. |
| 04:35:53.41 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | If they would pay for the infrastructure, I mean, if we could, you know, spread the taxes or the fees with respect to the things that our residents pay, I could see it, but I mean, you know, it's like, |
| 04:35:56.19 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 04:36:06.98 | Mayor Withley | I... |
| 04:36:07.57 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | It's very... |
| 04:36:10.30 | Mayor Withley | I was going to say I think we're getting a little off track here because I don't see the merits of or the point of debating the merits of that before it's actually formally in front of us. It was on the priority calendar for last year. They're a bit behind. I mean, that's basically what it is. So I think now we'll have the opportunity to decide whether we like this or not. when it comes up. Because I think all the work, I mean, essentially the work's essentially done. |
| 04:36:43.14 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | essentially done. Okay, so it sounds like the majority of the Council wants to move forward with staff time. I'm just concerned about spending. It's not something I would spend staff time on, but okay. |
| 04:36:55.83 | Mayor Withley | Okay, so staff's recommendations on the |
| 04:37:02.02 | Adam Politzer | Just to confirm, you now have 24 items that you agree that you want to rank. And now we're going to move to staff recommendations and Thank you. And if there are questions that you want to have clarified, This is a great opportunity for that. because we just added a new one, if you want Jeremy to comment on that one, on the construction waste. |
| 04:37:25.48 | Amy Wilson | So |
| 04:37:25.68 | Council Member Rulia | That would be Andy supporting the Sustainability Commission. Not, it's not a development department. I mean, that's up to you. You're the boss. But that would be, I would think, through that avenue would be my suggestion. |
| 04:37:36.85 | Unknown | I mean, |
| 04:37:41.61 | Adam Politzer | I'm deferring to Jeremy because in the past I've seen these come through community development departments. And Bob Brown, when he was in San Rafael on a lot of this, environmental support items, this film to his umbrella. But if Jeremy, I'm sure he would love to say, yep, it's a public works item and punt it over there. |
| 04:37:59.58 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:38:05.66 | Adam Politzer | Why don't we start with this item and let Jeremy comment on it, and if necessary, Jonathan can. |
| 04:38:17.51 | Jeremy Graves | I have written a construction degree and recycling ordinance, so I can't deny that. I cannot say I know nothing about it. But with the Public Works Department administering the contract with our waste management company, I really think Jonathan Goldman and Andy |
| 04:38:23.50 | Jeff Butler | Bye. |
| 04:38:39.49 | Jeremy Graves | by Davidson. to be able to handle something like this. |
| 04:38:47.93 | Jeremy Graves | Um, Thank you. But the counterargument to that is that It's through the building permit process that it is enforced. And so whether it's written by the community development department or whether the lead department is CDD or DPW, either of us are qualified to be able to do it. But the day-to-day administration of it would be through the building division of CDD. |
| 04:39:26.24 | Mayor Withley | Remind me where this was. Was this below the line on the last year's priority calendar? I don't recall. I think it was, actually. |
| 04:39:36.36 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So, Mr. Mayor, can we move on to asking city staff questions about their rating? Are we ready for that? So I actually had a question about the Mills Act, why that was no – it was my understanding that that was going to help us. |
| 04:39:38.29 | Mayor Withley | Can we move on to asking? |
| 04:39:43.89 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:39:43.94 | Unknown | Yeah, we're ready. |
| 04:40:00.76 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | with regards to historic preservation. So is it just a timing thing that you're going to spend the year on the historic? Yeah, go ahead. |
| 04:40:05.42 | Jeremy Graves | and spend the year. Yeah, go ahead. It's certainly a beneficial program. All of our staff resources that are devoted to historical issues right now are to my new assistant planner. I've assigned him to be the staff liaison with the Historic Landmarks Board, so he's going to have to speed there. The city attorney and I and the assistant planner are spending a considerable amount of time on meetings every two weeks on the historic preservation regulations update. And let's see, there was something else on it. And so I think in terms of staff resources, I think it makes more sense for us to complete the historic preservation regulations update and then before we bite off an additional project for us to chew on. |
| 04:40:33.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:40:52.79 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So you're saying that your time is going to be eaten up with all the other things that you're going to be doing? Your staff? Yeah, I think it's time. Yeah, time. Yeah. |
| 04:40:56.87 | Jeremy Graves | the other things that you're going to be doing. Your staff. Yeah, I think it's time. So I think it would be better to initiate. It's a very valuable program. I'm certainly very much in support of it. But I think the timing of it falls better to Next year or something. After we've adopted the updated preservation regulations. |
| 04:41:04.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Sure. |
| 04:41:09.21 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | next year or something. Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you. |
| 04:41:15.25 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you. |
| 04:41:15.27 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. |
| 04:41:15.37 | Jeremy Graves | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:41:15.92 | Vice Mayor Theodos | I asked a general question if staff is recommended against it Are we dropping it off our priority calendar list? How are we treating this in terms of I mean, if they say they can't do it, Don't worry, men doing it. |
| 04:41:29.97 | Adam Politzer | I recommend doing it. We probably shouldn't rank it. Very good question. Now, we want you to rank it. or also influencing you to rank it low. because we're telling you these are the ones we think we can take on and these are the ones that we don't. |
| 04:41:41.07 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:41:43.45 | Adam Politzer | But to take it off of the list would actually be an injustice because we want the community to know These are important. These are the top 24 now. that we think should be considered, and as funding becomes available throughout the year, we get a grant or in-kind donation of someone's time, then the item can move up. IF WE FIND OURSELF AT MIDYEAR WITH A LOT MORE TOT, or sales tax revenue that comes in Um, or grant for a capital project comes in that we weren't expecting, then we can use those monies to go back to the priority calendar first versus what do you want to do with this money and start dreaming of other projects? We would say keep it on the list, but we are obviously influencing you on how you rank them based on staff's recommendations. There are more check marks on yes than the seven that I'm recommending be above the line. |
| 04:42:41.26 | Council Member Rulia | So I would assume that, like, the Marinship Historic District and registration, that is also – you can't get – we won't be able to get to it in the next fiscal year. But for 15-16, that's the more reasonable timeframe. Is that – |
| 04:42:56.57 | Mayor Withley | Thank you. |
| 04:42:56.92 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 04:42:57.02 | Mayor Withley | kind of where |
| 04:42:58.07 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 04:42:59.77 | Mayor Withley | You're also tying that to the Mills Act in that as I understand it, the Mills Act should be adopted before that's really done. |
| 04:43:08.84 | Jeremy Graves | Well, from a staff perspective, we have limited resources. Right. So our top priority is to complete the project we've already – are halfway into, and that's an update of the historic preservation regulations. The next step for that is to adopt the Mills Act, which is an incentive, a carrot for owners of historic properties to be able to maintain those properties. And it's also, from the SAP perspective, good to have the Mills Act in place when we go out to the owners of properties in the proposed historic districts, because in order to get those properties |
| 04:43:11.79 | Mayor Withley | Right. |
| 04:43:46.65 | Jeremy Graves | nominated for the National Register, 50% of the property owners have to agree in writing. And so we want to have some benefits we can offer them, and the Mills Act, we ain't got many benefits, so we want to have the Mills Act as one of our benefits in our quiver. |
| 04:44:02.95 | Mayor Withley | Yeah, okay, thanks for the clarification. Does anybody else have any questions about staff's recommendations? No. |
| 04:44:16.27 | Mayor Withley | Okay. So, Adam, I think you've got all the info you need, don't you? |
| 04:44:23.56 | Adam Politzer | Yes, I have all the info I need. responsibility as individual council members uh, Debbie will send this out to you at some point tomorrow. Um... as a ranking sheet and reminder that your highest priority will be given the number 24. Your lowest priority will be given the number one. Um... So you will go through that process. You will send those back to Debbie. And then she will... Um... pull those together and send those out in the staff report with the average identified. You'll come back on the June 10th meeting. You'll now see the collective ranking. and agree that this makes sense. Um... and draw the line at the number |
| 04:45:15.28 | Amy Wilson | and |
| 04:45:18.10 | Adam Politzer | that you see appropriate. Staff says no more than 10, we're recommending seven. but until you actually see how those rank out, I'm not sure. And then as you continue in the budget process, you may be able to expand the priority projects based on where we fall out in the budget. And I think as the mayor indicate it. This is a transition year and as we go into the next strategic planning sessions. Later in the fall, of. hopefully in early November. Uh, a lot of the objectives will address these priority calendar items. We'll look at the goals and then the objectives And we'll start to fold these in to the strategic plan and the, a priority calendar will Um... you'll transition forward. and become a document that's easier for us to work with. |
| 04:46:10.48 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:46:10.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:46:10.60 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:46:13.15 | Adam Politzer | But at this point, Uh, I think we're moving the right direction. We have 24 items on there for you to rank. And we'll bring that back on the 10th for the third and final step. |
| 04:46:24.64 | Mayor Withley | Just for clarification, this is coming out as an Excel worksheet. So I can actually get into it. Yeah. Yeah. |
| 04:46:33.26 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:46:36.62 | Mayor Withley | Mine works a different way. I need to rank things 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then... is subtract them from 25, because it's the only way I can do it. |
| 04:46:47.79 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. It gets confusing. |
| 04:46:55.15 | Mayor Withley | So I think we're done on this item. |
| 04:47:01.78 | Council Member Rulia | Mike, you can go home now. |
| 04:47:04.99 | Mayor Withley | Okay, Item 7, City Manager Information for Council. |
| 04:47:09.81 | Adam Politzer | I will just refer to questions. I have nothing to report. |
| 04:47:13.78 | Mayor Withley | Okay. Uh... Councilmember Committee reports. I don't see great enthusiasm. I'm assuming that one member of the public, if she wants to actually speak on any of these, she'll – yeah, okay. Future agenda items. |
| 04:47:25.17 | Amy Wilson | I'm assuming. |
| 04:47:36.34 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I do have some. First of all, the GGNRA comment, the bus plan, the June 18th deadline coming up. So that's going to be something we'll need on the next council session, June 10th, to beat the deadline to provide comment. The other future agenda item has to do with A comment we heard earlier during open public comment this evening, a gentleman got up and mentioned that the Valhalla design is not considering private view impact, and that's something that I know the council had wanted the EIR or the negative deck to include. So I don't, I guess it's not a future agenda item, but maybe it is because maybe we need to clarify that However we want to handle that. |
| 04:48:32.53 | Vice Mayor Theodos | The Planning Commission's had, I think, three hearings on that particular report. |
| 04:48:37.17 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Well, yeah, but I guess the point is that I guess they haven't – they didn't consider private views according to the gentleman who spoke this evening. |
| 04:48:45.00 | Vice Mayor Theodos | this evening. Why don't we move on? I don't know that we, |
| 04:48:48.17 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, private view. This is just what he said. So I guess I'm just... |
| 04:48:51.30 | Vice Mayor Theodos | so I'm |
| 04:48:53.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Uh, thinking it's important to clarify that. That's okay. No worries. And then we also – I've mentioned this a few times regarding the PDA that's been designated in Marin City, the priority development area with Plan Bay Area. This is definitely going to have an impact on Sausalito. And I think that we should – And we should, just as we are exploring the GGNRA and their 20-year plan and how that impacts us, I think we need to take a look at the Marin City PDA and invite the county to talk to us about that as well in terms of impact. |
| 04:49:43.12 | Mayor Withley | On that last topic, I think it's, I mean, if necessary, we can bring it up for a vote. But I don't believe that there's any appetite for this council to be actually messing around in other people's jurisdictions. |
| 04:49:45.01 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 04:50:02.19 | Mayor Withley | But... Mr. Mayor, that's a judgment column, a future agenda item. That's a judgment column. |
| 04:50:04.18 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, that's a judgment call on my future agenda item. That's a judgment. I am not. Could I finish? |
| 04:50:09.92 | Mayor Withley | Oh. And... If, however, that is not, the view of this Council, then obviously it needs to be agendas. |
| 04:50:22.32 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Well, I think, Mr. Mayor, that if high density hyper development is being planned at our doorstep, then all due respect, that's kind of messing around with our infrastructure. with respect to traffic impact. And I think that we need to put that on a future agenda as an item and hear about it and learn about it and ask questions about it. |
| 04:50:45.83 | Mayor Withley | So I'm going to ask, actually, my colleagues to opine on that. |
| 04:50:49.71 | Council Member Rulia | Well, I would say I have heard The PDA is, I think, still up in the air. It hasn't been decided yet as far as I can tell. But it would be if we could ask Kate Sears' office to update us on what's – I don't think that's harmful. But also I've heard because of Best Buy and some of the other – this is rumor mill stuff – things are departing there. There are rumors that the current owner of that shopping center is going to sell the entire facility to a different – to someone who's used – a developer who builds housing. So I don't want to – I agree with you. It's a sphere of influence question, and it is within our sphere of influence, but it – I don't foresee – I would rather just get an update on kind of what's going on, and that would be helpful. But other than that, I don't – we'll see what they say, and then we can decide where to go from there. So I think we can do that. |
| 04:51:49.77 | Mayor Withley | I think an update's fine, but I can't see any action that this body can take. that could influence or should influence Marin County. |
| 04:51:59.60 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Well, Mr. Mayor, it's very similar to what we're doing with the GGNRA and their 20-year management plan, where we're looking at how it impacts us in terms of our infrastructure in our small town, and we're weighing in. We're writing a letter and we're giving them our opinion. We're giving them input. And I think that by... putting the Marin City PDA on the agenda and inviting them to come and talk with us about it. It gives us and the public and our residents an opportunity to ask those kinds of questions. |
| 04:52:31.19 | Vice Mayor Theodos | I just say we have a very full agenda we're adding special meetings and until at some point We may want to get an update and we may even want to discuss it But we don't even know what what's going on there It's not set and I just to be adding these things on the agenda Outside of jurisdiction when we're staying till 1 o'clock and having special meetings. Um, I don't think it's I don't think it's ripe for having it on the agenda yet |
| 04:52:56.58 | Council Member Rulia | Maybe we can have a – This is a compromise. Why don't we just – I don't know if you've had conversations or whoever the right person would be with Kate Sears' office to kind of understand where the current status of that is and if there's any – as far as ownership and all of that stuff of the shopping center |
| 04:52:57.35 | Unknown | But as well. |
| 04:53:16.59 | Council Member Rulia | Maybe they could give staff an update in the interim, since we don't have, you know, and then we could maybe staff could give us, you know. Yeah. I agree with that. And then we can decide whether we want to agendize it further after the, you know, after the budget hearings and everything like that. |
| 04:53:34.02 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Well, Mr. Mayor, that's better than nothing. I think anything that sheds a little transparency on what's happening over there makes sense. It is designated a potential PDA, and we know that Strawberry was very much opposed to that designation when they were a potential PDA, as was Marin would, as was Tam Valley. And all I'm saying is, you know, Marin City is on our doorstep, and I think we need to learn more. |
| 04:54:03.70 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Well, the other is that individuals, including members of this council, can go to their meetings and make their statements made |
| 04:54:10.44 | Adam Politzer | . |
| 04:54:10.52 | Vice Mayor Theodos | and find out their, and that's really the most important part. Unless we have a full on hearing, we're gonna have just a very short update |
| 04:54:10.56 | Adam Politzer | and |
| 04:54:18.08 | Vice Mayor Theodos | And, I mean, that's where the real... information is. |
| 04:54:22.37 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Well, using that logic, we would do the same with the GGNRA. I mean, to me, in my opinion, whenever we're seeing major development, major density, major changes, you know, at our doorstep, whether it's our open space in GGNRA federal parks or, you know, Marin City just, you know, fully close to us, you know, we need to be informed and we need to educate our residents about what's going on. And we need to weigh in. |
| 04:54:53.84 | Mayor Withley | So maybe staff could help us get an update, get yourselves updated, especially about the, I mean, beyond the PDA, the shopping center in particular, to know what's going on there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 04:55:03.26 | Amy Wilson | Amazing. |
| 04:55:08.52 | Council Member Rulia | Yeah. Talk to both the supervisor's office, Supervisor Sears office, as well as to – is Jonathan still the head at the Marin City Community Service District? Is that right? |
| 04:55:24.91 | Council Member Rulia | Thank you. |
| 04:55:24.92 | Mayor Withley | Okay. |
| 04:55:29.38 | Mayor Withley | Mr. Gendrick, agenda items, appointments to the Business Advisory Committee. There's one last appointment to make to this committee. As you know, this has been going through a process of completely reforming this committee. The last person to now leave is the person who's been chairing it for a while, Adam Kravashi. And he is stepping down. The group there has... We are, let me just get myself together here. Okay, there are, this is a city resident position that is appointed by the council. So this isn't just a recommendation from the other groups. I'd like to put forward the name of Martha Carvalho. and everybody on that committee would like her to join, thought that she brought an interest in perspective. So that's the name I'd like to throw out there. |
| 04:56:42.43 | Unknown | You need a second? |
| 04:56:43.38 | Mayor Withley | So the procedure is no, if anybody else has a name they want to throw, I think our procedure is if anybody else wants to put another name down, then entertain that. If not, if we have more than one, we have to vote. So is there anybody, any other nomination? |
| 04:56:48.30 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:56:48.34 | Unknown | SEE YOU. |
| 04:56:48.66 | Amy Wilson | Thank you. |
| 04:57:02.24 | Mayor Withley | So I'm assuming we'll have a consensus then to a point, Martha. |
| 04:57:07.24 | Council Member Rulia | I'm just staying on that one because I didn't actually interview her. |
| 04:57:08.05 | Mayor Withley | Same. actually interview her. Okay. Other reports of significance, I can pretty much guarantee there's none. So motion to adjourn. |
| 04:57:27.23 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Just after midnight. We are adjourned. |
| 04:57:27.92 | Mayor Withley | to get a little bit of a Adjourned. And we have actually adjourned ahead of schedule, although at 1220. |
| 04:57:29.97 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | . |
| 04:57:30.20 | Unknown | And. |
| 04:57:30.54 | Unknown | It's like a record. especially |
| 04:57:32.28 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. |
| 04:57:32.30 | Unknown | It's just so bad. |
| 04:57:33.12 | Vice Mayor Theodos | in a lot of time. |
| 04:57:33.38 | Unknown | you |
| 04:57:33.44 | Vice Mayor Theodos | Thank you. Oh. You know? We'll go to midnight. |
Luke Tessier — Against: Expressed concerns about the GGNRA plan's dramatic changes, including traffic, parking expansions, and shuttle systems that would negatively impact Sausalito and surrounding communities, urging strong pushback. ▶ 📄
Jeff Butler — Neutral: Requested council direct staff to revisit private view considerations in the Valhalla project EIR, referencing a prior council discussion. ▶ 📄