| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:06.70 | Unknown | How are you? Thank you. |
| 00:00:14.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:28.65 | Mayor Withey | Okay, good evening and welcome to the Sausalito City Council adjourned regular meeting. Tonight is Tuesday, June 17, 2014. Debbie, would you call the roll, please? |
| 00:00:44.73 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Pfeiffer? Here. Councilmember Weiner? |
| 00:00:47.52 | Mayor Withey | present. |
| 00:00:47.53 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Present. Councilmember Leon. Here. Vice Mayor Theodores. Present. Mayor Withey. |
| 00:00:49.51 | Mayor Withey | here. |
| 00:00:50.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:51.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:51.06 | Mayor Withey | and the Lord. |
| 00:00:51.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:52.75 | Mayor Withey | Here. Well, we have a few dedicated members of the public here this evening, so welcome. Mr. Novak, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight? |
| 00:01:10.82 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 00:01:10.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:10.96 | Mr. Novak | Just the beginning. Say aye in your mouth, San Francisco. Aye. I pledge allegiance to the flag. |
| 00:01:11.29 | Councilmember | Just the beginning. |
| 00:01:12.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:12.75 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:01:14.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:14.26 | Unknown | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of America. |
| 00:01:18.35 | Mr. Novak | Yeah. |
| 00:01:22.03 | Unknown | for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:34.03 | Mayor Withey | See, that's what happens when you come early and sit in the front row. |
| 00:01:36.61 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:39.61 | Mayor Withey | But thank you, sir. |
| 00:01:45.38 | Mayor Withey | Sorry, there was no closed session this evening. So could I next ask for approval of the agenda? One note, there will not be a special presentation this evening. Some moves. |
| 00:02:01.04 | Councilmember | Second. |
| 00:02:03.88 | Mayor Withey | All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Communications, this is the time. |
| 00:02:04.82 | Vice Mayor | Bye. |
| 00:02:10.49 | Mayor Withey | for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. and as you know, except in very limited situations, State law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions. Is there any member of the public who would like to make a comment? Okay, please, sir. And may I remind you, you have three minutes. |
| 00:02:35.04 | Luke Tessier | Yes, I would just ask that you hold the timer until I have a chance to distribute it. for tonight. |
| 00:02:58.87 | Luke Tessier | My name is Luke Tessier. I'm a member of Mount Camp Task Force. I'm co-chair for safety, numbers, and... Communication. I understand there's some confusion about numbers that we have presented in the past And I wanted to clarify... and also walk you through a few items on the presentation. So, We have been averaging up last year the total number was 954,000 attendees at Muir Woods, So when we take into account the Park Service estimate of 4,000 people a day times 365 days a year, that's 1.46 million, which is a 53% increase as opposed to a 46% increase over what we have today. And in addition, it's an 88% increase over 2005. Apologies. I need to. Thank you. take back. Thank you. |
| 00:04:00.25 | Councilmember | And Luke, this is regarding the Muir Woods visitation, right? |
| 00:04:04.48 | Luke Tessier | This is regarding Muir Woods visitation. So in the package I handed to you, the first page is visitation trends. This is a slide published by the National Park Service in September. of 2013. and it shows in the beige box on the lower right-hand side, daily visitation 3,500 to 4,000. On the next page, It shows Their studies are customer satisfaction studies. So the red is my markups. Their estimate of the worst day being 6,000 is incorrect. The worst day was actually at least 7,929 and had to be worse than 8,000 because of the way averages work. And what they are doing is not an environmental study, does not take into account traffic, does not take into account biological effects, the effect on the woods, pollution of Redwood Creek, It is purely a Disneyland style, how much do the customers want? If you look on the page that says smoother visitation, This is from the same slide deck published by the National Park Service September 2013 You see the line. the vertical black line with red people to the right of it on Saturday and Sunday. That's the excess above 4,000 people a day. You can also see the green people to the left of the line which demonstrates very clearly, in addition to information that we have from other meetings, such as the closed agency meeting on that same day, where the story was very different This shows their intent to grow visitors up to that limit. Now what's entirely missing from the whole discussion is Any admission from them or any willingness to set a limit on attendance. In spite of repeated requests, they will not set a cap on attendance. And you can see on the last page, The actual numbers I draw your attention to the upper right-hand side, 2013. And along the right column, You can see that on many, many years, the annual attendance exceeded 1.4 million. And finally, I have for you a letter from Congressman Huffman that specifically states his concerns. |
| 00:06:32.09 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 00:06:54.30 | Mayor Withey | Is there any other member of the public who'd like to make a comment on any item that is not on tonight's agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on. The next item is... |
| 00:07:10.48 | Councilmember | And Mr. Mayor, before moving on, I do have a comment on Luc Tessier's presentation. |
| 00:07:15.96 | Mayor Withey | Well, I don't think you can actually make a comment at this time. |
| 00:07:18.24 | Councilmember | Well, we've made a comment in the past. No. Well, yes, of course we have. |
| 00:07:20.81 | Mayor Withey | No. |
| 00:07:22.90 | Councilmember | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:23.34 | Mayor Withey | My comment is, again, I – Could I have the city attorney, please, comment? |
| 00:07:23.45 | Councilmember | My comment is, again, I... Could I have the city attorney... I would like to make sure that goes on the agenda. |
| 00:07:28.96 | Mayor Withey | Could I please have the city attorney? comment on whether we can make comments on this subject right now. |
| 00:07:36.69 | Mary Wagner | Under the Brown Act, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, for items that are not on your agenda, you can ask staff to provide a brief response or you can direct that it be brought up on a future agenda. |
| 00:07:49.88 | Councilmember | And my comment was regarding staff action for the future agenda. My comment was, I think we need to put this on the agenda. |
| 00:07:56.56 | Mayor Withey | And I do believe we have an item later on called future agenda items. |
| 00:08:01.07 | Councilmember | But it's in the moment now, and I wanted to stress that. |
| 00:08:02.54 | Mayor Withey | I'm going to distract. The next... The matter is moved to approve the action minutes of the regular City Council meeting of May 27th. Do I have a motion or do you wish to note any changes or corrections? |
| 00:08:25.67 | Vice Mayor | Move to approve. |
| 00:08:26.82 | Mayor Withey | Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. |
| 00:08:29.33 | Vice Mayor | Bye. |
| 00:08:33.25 | Mayor Withey | Consent calendar, there's one item on the consent calendar. Is there any questions before I call for public comment? Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on the one item on the consent calendar? Thank you. Thank you. Seeing none, could I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? |
| 00:08:56.72 | Councilmember | Second. |
| 00:08:57.99 | Mayor Withey | All in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. |
| 00:08:59.07 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 00:09:03.59 | Mayor Withey | okay arm |
| 00:09:10.34 | Mayor Withey | I'm just posing to see why we are so ahead of time, but it's because we skipped the presentation, the special presentation. So our next matter is item 6A, which is the Dunphy Park Schematic Master Plan Update. And I believe we're starting with our Director of Public Works, Jonathan Goldman. |
| 00:09:33.60 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council and staff and folks listening at home and here in the audience. I'll be brief. The staff report really kind of sets the stage for the presentation that we're going to hear this evening from Jacques Gaumann, who's representative of Friends of Dunphy Park. But just for posterity, I think it's kind of worthwhile stepping through some of the history here for people who don't have the staff report available to them. In 2013 – thanks, Debbie. In 2013, the Friends of Dunphy Park encouraged the council to place the Dunphy Park schematic master plan process on the council's priority calendar for fiscal year 2014. The master plan was then ranked fifth on the priority calendar and the Council approved a public forum and schematic master planning process to further develop community consensus on a guideline that will assure that future detailed plans for incremental improvements at Dunphy Park are compatible with the city's long-range view. are compatible with the city's long-range view for that area. The forum and schematic master planning process included identification of desired improvements and priorities, preferred locations for various physical improvements and activities, as well as appropriate guidelines such as size and technical requirements without specifically designing them. On November 16th of last year, 2013, with the assistance of a neutral professional facilitator, a public forum was held with over 90 interested persons in attendance. The Friends tabulated and organized the data, and with Parks and Recreation Director Mike Lankford, presented the preliminary results of the forum during the course of council's regular meeting March 18, 2014. Thank you. direction at that time from the council to continue to work in developing a schematic in collaboration with staff and input from the Audubon Society. The Friends of Dunphy Park and staff have this presentation to make this evening. And after the presentation, I'll kind of wrap up. I think it's a wonderful piece of work and I think does represent a very synergistic vision of the park that's consistent not only with the objectives that the community expressed with respect to Dunphy Park itself, but also a number of uses adjacent. So with that, I'd like to introduce to those of you who don't already know Jacques Ullman, representing Friends of Dunphy Park. He'll go through the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:12:25.40 | Jacques Ullman | Uh... |
| 00:12:26.28 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:26.31 | Jacques Ullman | about, |
| 00:12:26.53 | Jonathon Goldman | Totally. |
| 00:12:26.82 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:26.83 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:26.85 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:27.04 | Jonathon Goldman | You can either drive or I'm happy to drive. |
| 00:12:30.14 | Jacques Ullman | Well, |
| 00:12:30.51 | Jonathon Goldman | just to pay the slides that way and then the laser will eventually come up. |
| 00:12:35.76 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:35.88 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:35.95 | Jacques Ullman | So the laser is the center one, and then I can go backwards or forwards? Backwards or forwards? This is forwards and that's backwards? |
| 00:12:38.53 | Unknown | or Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:12:39.62 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:12:48.47 | Jacques Ullman | So maybe now I know what I'm doing. Jacques. |
| 00:12:51.12 | Jonathon Goldman | Jacques. |
| 00:12:53.77 | Jacques Ullman | Yeah. Jacques Olman, Friends of Gumphy Park. Um, |
| 00:13:04.67 | Jacques Ullman | Okay, where do I point this? |
| 00:13:11.77 | Jacques Ullman | I thought maybe I was doing the wrong one. Thank you. |
| 00:13:13.44 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 00:13:24.07 | Jacques Ullman | While he's doing that, maybe I can just explain. |
| 00:13:35.75 | Jacques Ullman | Oh, okay. All right. We'll start. So, well, obviously the motivation behind this is to preserve for public use as a park this last remaining portion of undeveloped waterfront. There is other open waterfront, such as the walkway south of the center of town, but that's developed in the sense that it's rocks and sidewalks and so on. The unique thing about the Dunphy Park shoreline is that it is really – it's been, of course, altered by man over the years, but it still basically has habitat, has a natural feel to it, and it's very unique. Next slide, please. So it's important to understand the neighborhood. The area in dark green is the area that's owned by the city. Of course, the city owns all of the streets. And the area in red is, we call it Bridgeway Marine Corporation because I think that's still the way it's listed by the county, but it's Saucido Marine or the former Gossage property, you know what it is. And then Galilee Harbor. Thank you. Thank you. And these are sort of some of the major neighboring stakeholders along with Cas Marina and the cruising club that are actually within the park. Next slide, please. So the schematic master plan, I mean, you've been told this many times, so you know what it is. It's a guideline, and I'm not going to – we can go to the next slide because you've been told this over and over again. Oh, good. Thank you. Okay. So, Now, it is important to understand that the program for this schematic master plan is based on the public outreach program. And fortunately, the council supported this effort, and we feel that it's very important that we have this as our background, that we can go back to support the decisions that we've made. Now, as I explained when we were discussing the priority calendar, this master plan does not include any planting because we will need some soil testing and horticultural consultation before we can do an adequate job of that because we feel strongly that it's a big mistake not to do the planting properly. You really pay for it in the long run. |
| 00:16:35.18 | Jacques Ullman | Whoops. |
| 00:16:44.16 | Jacques Ullman | Okay, so this is the overall plan, and then I'm gonna zero in on different parts of it. But. The overall concept was, and this is a result of the public input, is that the active part of the park should be to the north, to the left, and that should include the parking and the activities like bocce ball and the park. the volleyball and the parking facilities. And then it sort of transitions see if the laser will work for me. In any case, it transitions into the central area, which is the large open bowl area, which is sort of multipurpose. It can go from just one person under a tree reading a book to the big community activities that we have around the gazebo and Fourth of July and so on. And then in this area is a picnic area which acts as a sort of a transition from the |
| 00:17:57.95 | Unknown | and |
| 00:17:58.31 | Jacques Ullman | joint use area to the passive area on the other side of Lithuania Street. So we'll go into each of these areas now, but that's the overall, and I'll go back to this image many times so that you always relate to what's happening to the entire area. |
| 00:18:27.13 | Jacques Ullman | I'm not pushing the wrong button. So now following the idea of going to the various subjects that we had in our outreach program and then the results that we compiled and how we responded to those results. So it was clear that the public in general wanted the parking to be at the north end of the park with the toilets and active uses such as boxing and volleyball near the parking and to minimize parking on the railroad right of way and not to have any toilets at pedestrian entrances. So, This parking area, It has about 70 spaces, but actually these hammerheads here and here are what you use to turn around if the parking space area is full. So one space needs to be devoted to allow you to turn around. So let's say there are approximately 68 spaces here. Now, when we went to the planning department to get some guidance as to how many spaces to provide, we were told to count the number of cars that are parking there now and use that as a guideline. And we counted about 65. So there's a little bit more than we were asked to provide. But we wanted to be careful not to go past B Street. Obviously, the more parking you have, the more park you lose. So the important thing was to try to find an efficient way to park as many cars as possible using as little space as possible. So this layout, we tried many other layouts. There have been a lot of layouts done here. This was the most efficient one that intruded the least into the park. We'll discuss the entrances later, but one of the major entrances would be here. The city will have to study how to make the pathway from the bus stop to the park and the various functions in the park ADA accessible. We're suggesting that that route take you to sort of an entrance plaza here that could have bicycle racks, benches, whatever is deemed appropriate here, and then direct the pedestrian traffic in this direction. And then from here, people could disperse, but the handicap, the accessible route would go up here and lead to Cass Marina, lead to the cruising club, and then also to, we'll discuss this later, the shoreline trail here, which also has to be in accordance with The bachi ball and the volleyball, Paul Leffingwell studied the contours here. We'll look at an overall of that work later. But he created two raised areas on either side of the bachi and also on one side of the volleyball so that those could be used for viewing those activities. And at the same time, when the volleyball and the bachi is not used, which is the majority of the time, it still is an agreeable area for people to use. And there would be picnic benches and other kinds of benches around. Of course, we haven't gone into that in detail. And the restrooms would be nearby. And also the bocce, we showed a size which is a little closer to regulation size, I think a little wider than they are now. So it's an opportunity to upgrade the bocce ball facility and place it near the infrastructure that it needs and opens up then other parts of the park for other uses. |
| 00:22:40.06 | Jacques Ullman | So this gives you an idea of how the land is contoured and people can sit on these knolls and watch the Bocce ball |
| 00:22:40.43 | Mary Wagner | This is... you. |
| 00:22:49.47 | Jacques Ullman | Uh, or the the volleyball sitting on this knoll. You also see the shoreline trail. It gives you a sense of how we've tried to maintain the present concept of having the terrain undulate, but I'll show you how we've tried to improve that. So again, I talked about the grading here but it's all integrated in a way that when Bachi ball isn't used, this knoll, you could sit on the other side of the knoll. It still feels like a park in this area is usable and integrated into other things that are happening. |
| 00:23:38.22 | Jacques Ullman | improve beach with possibility for some water-based activities, reorient the cruising club, and remove dangerous culverts. Again, these were comments that were quite prevalent during the outreach. So I want to say something about the cruising club because there were quite a few comments about the cruising club. I think it came second to bocce ball. The bocce ball comments were mostly pretty positive. The cruising club comments tended to be negative. Now I happen to have been the first chairman of Southfield Environmental Action way back in the early 70s when we had our meetings at the cruising club. But that was a completely different cruising club than we have now. There were a lot more public events there. It felt much more part of the community. It doesn't feel that way now. And a number of people objected to the visual impact that the cruising club has on the park. And we found that by taking it and turning it this way, and this is not necessarily an original idea of ours. A number of other people have said that in the past. It opens up the shoreline and really improves, potentially improves this area. We can do something about the trees here as well. And so the area around the gazebo really becomes a nice area, whereas now this area is a very grim area. And of course, removing the parking from here helps too. But we feel that doing something about the cruising club is a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with. I know that it may have some negotiations involved and so on. And of course, that's not our role. But we are advising you as designers that if we're going to put all this effort into the park, this is a crucial thing to try to accomplish. |
| 00:25:23.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:25:43.37 | Jacques Ullman | So you can see that there's a much more open view to the water. We have the possibility of possibly enlarging the beach a little bit, creating an area here where maybe the kayaks could pull up. It just creates a nicer situation. provide limited access for non-motorized vessels without disruption of eelgrass and wildlife preserve. This light green area is the area that was identified in the Merkle 2008 report as the high potential for increasing the eelgrass area if it were left undisturbed. The dark, I don't know if it comes off well for you on this screen, but there's a dark line here which indicates where there actually is eelgrass right now, and then the other line is where there is some but not as intense. So it sort of grades from high intensity to medium intensity to potential. So what we're suggesting here is in order not to disrupt that area, plus if we want to have a wildlife preserve here, and I'll talk more about the passive, that it's not only for the eelgrass but also for the birds, other animals that might be on the shoreline, that we don't necessarily want to have a lot of traffic coming in close here. I observed during the Hobie races, I mean, I really enjoyed watching those boats, but boy, they're hard to handle. And those poor people and the wind we have here, they were having a hell of a time staying in the lane that they were given. And a lot of them drifted off this way. So we need to have a very well-defined, I'm not sure how it's done probably with buoys and so on, we'd have to get help on that, to route the traffic in such a way that it preserves the areas that we want to preserve. |
| 00:26:45.25 | Mary Wagner | IS |
| 00:27:15.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:27:55.53 | Jacques Ullman | maximize open space and water views park more visible from Bridgeway and open to the waterfront into Great Railroad right of way into the park. Again, we haven't shown the trees, and there are some Monterey pines along here. And we would need some advice on their health and on maybe thinning them out or in the future maybe replacing them. I mean, strangely enough, they're actually on the list of trees in this city. They're considered not acceptable. But, I mean, these things don't all want to be done at once because you don't want to denude the park overnight either. So it's a long range plan, but the idea is to create this openness, remove the bushes that we could certainly do right away and give the park more visibility from Bridgeway. And this shows in more detail the way Mr. Leffingwell worked out these contours. Basically, what he was trying to do was to sort of eliminate the current look where, with all due respect to the people who created this park, who were friends of mine, and I really admire what they did way back in the early 70s. But they sort of went in there with truckloads and dumped a mound here, a mound there, and a mound there. It doesn't have a feel of a nice integrated bowl as if this was all sort of sculptured is one thing. So Paul worked to reconfigure this in such a way that it will really feel like it was all done at once and well coordinated. Now, in order to maintain the view of the water, he kept the highest point no more than four feet above the sidewalk elevation. So my eye level is five feet, so I'd be safe, and most people are taller than I am. So this seemed to be a good compromise. You want to have enough mounding there to give it a nice visual feeling and also to allow people to have something to sit on. And we might, when we get to trees, we might be suggesting some trees on the top of the mounds, but those trees could be pruned in a central way that they give the umbrella to give you the shade, but you have the view through. |
| 00:28:37.74 | Mary Wagner | What a... |
| 00:29:58.91 | Mary Wagner | enough. |
| 00:30:21.35 | Jacques Ullman | So this is just again to remind us how this fits into the overall. And here you can get a sense this, One of the sections is taken looking from the sidewalk to the water and the other one is taken cutting, I'm sorry, one is taken through the park looking to the north and then the other one is taken standing more here looking out to the water. So the one that's looking out to the water is this one. This is the Litho Street Inlet. And so that gives you a sense of how these mounds work. And then here, this is the sidewalk, and you can see that the mounding is such that it doesn't block the view to the water. accommodate local community celebration such as the fourth of july and he's very musical events at the farmers market The farmer's market could be located somewhere in the parking lot exactly the way they do it in Mill Valley. Um, When you have large events, of course, people, and I'm sort of jumping ahead of myself, but you have entrances at Napa Street and at Litho Street for 95% of the time, and they're well-defined and so on. But when we have big events, usually the parades end in the park in front of City Hall, and people will tend to flow from B Street. But at that point, it's such a mass of people that they can just walk right over the lawn. That's not – I mean, that's what that event just overtakes the park, and that's okay. |
| 00:31:46.08 | Adam Krivach | to. |
| 00:32:11.56 | Mary Wagner | It's been just over |
| 00:32:15.36 | Jacques Ullman | we feel it would be wrong to try to tailor for that event that's 5% of the time and compromise what happens the other 95% of the time. So that leads into a pedestrian path that is integrated with the overall shoreline path through Saucy Hill, no bicycle paths in the park. What's kind of nice is that we have the shoreline path that actually has – it goes past the wine bar, and then we pick it up here, and it travels throughout the park. And then on the other side has a building here that I understand Galilee is contemplating doing some sort of a food service facility. And then it picks up the shoreline path at Galilee and continues on. And this path also serves as the way to give ADA access to the various functions. We probably should show some of these picnic tables having paving around them, as these do, so that they're ADA. But you can come along here, and you can branch off and observe the passive area. You can hear, we'll get into this, but we're suggesting a demonstration garden for appropriate native low water planting. And then people can picnic here. They can observe the beach. They go to the beach. They can go to the gazebo. They can go to the Cass Marina. They can go to the cruising club, go to the parking, go to the toilet and these activities. |
| 00:34:07.69 | Jacques Ullman | This shows you a little bit the relationship of the shoreline path to the water. It's generally a little elevated, so it'd be a nice view over the water. This also gives you another feel for how the mounding works and to observe the, volleyball. Define safe entrances with good crosswalks at Ridgeway. Well, I've already talked about that a little bit, so a special change of pavement here just to identify that it's a place of importance and maybe the crosswalk would be more emphatic than on other streets and do something similar here. We could put bicycle racks here because we don't want bicycles to go on the shoreline trail, but we certainly want people to come by bicycle if they want to and then have a place for them to leave their bicycles. And remember that there is a major bicycle path planned, and there are already a lot of bicycles here, so you want to minimize the number of places where people cross, because otherwise everyone's got to stop, boom, boom, boom, boom, and that becomes awkward, or they won't do it, and then that's dangerous. Rolling grass with contoured berms, shade trees, and low water use planting. Again, this was comments that were made during the outreach that this is what people expressed they wanted. Improve the condition of planting by progressively replacing with more appropriate species and improve the maintenance. So we do need the horticultural and soils advice before we can be specific about the planting, but we've plugged in the fact that this needs to be paid attention to. improve runoff water management to minimize wet soil and eliminate standing water by re-grading and installing an engineered subsurface drainage system as required. Again, Mr. Leffingwell, work the contours to make this possible. Drainage is directed toward the bay, or in this area some of it will go toward the parking. In this area some of it may have to go toward Ridgeway. Now, there are two things. Well, there will be subsurface water, but the subsurface water is not going to be able to go very far because of the soil conditions here, because of the fill and so on. So therefore, there will have to be a series of drainage systems here that lead this out to the bay. And that's why we've been having the problems here of the puddles and so on for two reasons. One, the grading was such that some of the grading was just created puddles, but also even if the grading were done properly, if it doesn't have the subsurface drainage, it's just going to get saturated and would still have a problem. We'll also have to choose the proper grasses that can survive in this kind of soil. My understanding from Mr. Leffingwell is that you need at least a foot for the grass to really be able to establish itself. But some grasses will be more appropriate than others, and we want to choose one that's going to be successful. |
| 00:37:47.29 | Jacques Ullman | So this is just again zeroing in on the areas where we had the puddle problems around here and around here. And so the grading is such that it will avoid that if it has proper subsurface drainage. The habitat restoration and preservation, passive recreation area in the undeveloped portion of park for viewing restored habitat and the bay and for picnicking. Well, you're all not new to this concept. We've talked about this, so now we're able to really think about it. So some of the things that we've done, we took this little peninsula here and actually made it into an island because we were advised that this would encourage more birds to come. We're saying that this Litho Street sloth should be cleaned out and some kind of engineering done to have the flushing action work better. We're suggesting a an area for a demonstration garden for low water native plant. Actually, there's been quite a bit of interest in this idea. I think that if we get this going, we're going to get some outside support. And then really this is meant to be passive. It's meant not to do much more than enjoy being there and having the wildlife establish itself there for us to enjoy. |
| 00:39:31.56 | Jacques Ullman | So this is just reminding you again that that's what we've done, is we've tried to identify this area as the wildlife and habitat preserve area and have the active areas be here and have the boat traffic be directed in here. And then we go from the active to the joint use area to the transition area to the passive area. |
| 00:40:03.84 | Jacques Ullman | So the next steps would be the soil testing and horticultural guidance, the engineering input on the parking lot design. And you may want me to bring that image up again, because I know there should be some concentration on the parking, because that's the first issue that's coming up that needs to be addressed in the park. Advice on appropriate control of the water traffic include Marin Audubon schematic plan into our plan, which I think just basically needs for the city to indicate to Audubon that we're serious about this, that it's now part of our plan and get them to then be more engaged. |
| 00:40:39.31 | Mary Wagner | THE END OF |
| 00:40:49.32 | Jacques Ullman | Park improvement priority list. First, then we, I assume we go to a first draft of the actual schematic plan, which we would bring to you again, and it would go through the various review processes, and then there'd be a final draft, and then it would go again through the review process, and hopefully we'll have something that's adopted. So I'm happy to answer questions. |
| 00:41:21.23 | Mayor Withey | Thank you very much. I'm not an expert, but it looks like that this is a lot of work gone into this from you and your colleagues. So thank you very much. And I'm sure my colleagues up here have a lot of questions. |
| 00:41:41.66 | Vice Mayor | I could... you |
| 00:41:42.80 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 00:41:42.81 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:41:42.97 | Mr. Novak | you |
| 00:41:43.03 | Vice Mayor | I touch my hand. Could you go to the next step slide or the very last slide you had? Oops. Sorry. |
| 00:41:48.91 | Jacques Ullman | Sorry. . Yep. Last night when I presented this to the Galilee, they had just a sort of a WE HAVE A LOT OF PEOPLE |
| 00:42:04.14 | Vice Mayor | I could go. |
| 00:42:04.80 | Jacques Ullman | you |
| 00:42:07.50 | Vice Mayor | Well this looks great and thank you for all the work that you've done on it and it's exciting. On the next steps, I was wondering, What do you view as the next steps, particularly in the next year? What do you see that you need and possibly need from us in terms of moving this along |
| 00:42:25.42 | Jacques Ullman | Well, Obviously, the soil is testing because we really like to be able to include the plant material. the the engineering that's involved for parking lots or drainage these are things that we won't be doing but we'd like to be able to be consultants so that we can kind of make sure that that the technical aspects are in harmony with with our vision of the design. Honestly, some of the ADA stuff that I've seen happen in the last few years, not been in areas that I've been involved in, but I'd like to avoid some things that I've seen happen that maybe are, |
| 00:43:00.02 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:43:04.25 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 00:43:19.96 | Jacques Ullman | maybe be done better. I realize it's difficult. It's very difficult to satisfy all those requirements. Um, So I think that we should get a little more involvement from Audubon, be able to tell them, okay, now we have a preliminary design. We've gotten the blessing of the city because I think they don't want to move much further until they feel confident that something really is gonna happen. So I think we will be able to get more guidelines from them. |
| 00:43:38.05 | Mary Wagner | preliminary design. |
| 00:43:57.39 | Jacques Ullman | So I think those are the areas that we really drainage. I think the parking, moving the parking area forward seems to be critical because from what I sense, Casa Marina has certain needs. Galilee is very anxious to do their paving and so on, and that should be coordinated. There's a need for a toilet facility, it would seem to me to be, I mean, if, quite frankly, if that northern end of the park could be developed at this point, I think it would be quite a positive thing. And, you know, it may be that if it's designed, then maybe one can find funds. |
| 00:44:41.25 | Mr. Novak | Jacques, let's go back and see where you plan to put your bike racks. Was that on Napa Street? |
| 00:44:49.50 | Jacques Ullman | Well, okay, we haven't done any strong planning on that. It just seems that you want bike racks to be at near entrances to the park. This is quite a large area. I forget exactly how large it is, but I know that this is approximately 60 feet from there to there, so this is probably about 50 feet square, 45 feet square to think about, isn't it? |
| 00:44:58.48 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:45:13.30 | Unknown | I'm not sure. . it's okay he's always there for you to scale to scale |
| 00:45:15.10 | Jacques Ullman | It's okay. |
| 00:45:17.56 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 00:45:17.58 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:17.60 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 00:45:17.63 | Jacques Ullman | Bye. |
| 00:45:17.65 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 00:45:17.66 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:17.80 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:45:17.95 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:18.04 | Councilmember | Enjoy. |
| 00:45:18.34 | Jacques Ullman | you |
| 00:45:18.39 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:45:18.41 | Jacques Ullman | I'm sorry. |
| 00:45:18.47 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:45:18.54 | Jacques Ullman | Yeah, to scale, I can tell you it is. So that's the idea. Now, it wouldn't be a bad idea to maybe contemplate |
| 00:45:22.91 | Adam Politzer | It is. |
| 00:45:28.90 | Jacques Ullman | Subbicyclorax. I mean, we do own this property. So, in other words, you want to catch them as they come in. You don't want them to bring their bicycles into the park. |
| 00:45:39.50 | Mr. Novak | No, but at the same time, the more you have it up to the very front where Bridgeway and Napa is, the more you're going to find out that that might become a very congested area for bikes. You'll find out sometimes they'll just stop there, just stopping on Bridgeway. So it might be good to just have them set back a little bit. |
| 00:46:05.56 | Jacques Ullman | Yeah, well, okay. Just a thought. I think it would be good to get more detailed in these areas, and maybe, yeah, maybe something will happen. |
| 00:46:06.59 | Unknown | Thank you. I just want to say, |
| 00:46:07.03 | Mr. Novak | I think it's just a thought. |
| 00:46:14.75 | Chris Bond | Thank you. |
| 00:46:14.79 | Mr. Novak | Something will happen. Thank you. Just a thought. Thank you. |
| 00:46:17.27 | Jacques Ullman | Yeah, that's important. |
| 00:46:20.19 | Councilmember | Jacques, let me just say that first thank you for doing this. Your vision is very – I haven't gone to meetings on purpose because I tend to get too vocal. And these are – I like your designs here, and I think it's incorporated with a lot of things that you've put forward and the other parts of the community have put forward for different aspects of this. So I think the overall plan is great for both you and Paul. I have a couple specific questions, which I'm sure you already thought through, but I just kind of want to hear your thinking on them. As far as entering through a parking lot to get into the park, I know that's probably something you struggled with. You know, it's not anyone's ideal entry, but it's sort of the necessary evil here. Is that kind of where it sort of fell out to have the |
| 00:47:10.22 | Jacques Ullman | Yes, but we tried to make it less evil. I mean, it isn't that there's gonna be constant flow here and you know that, |
| 00:47:10.24 | Councilmember | Yes. |
| 00:47:19.32 | Jacques Ullman | It varies. A lot of times this may not be used that much. I think that what's important is that you change the surface here so that it's identified as pedestrian. I think this is something that we could do in other parts of town around Vina del Mar Park, for instance. If you want to really say, we have to let cars through here, but the real priority is for the pedestrians. You announce it by making it a different surface. So that was really, and you have a beginning place and a place you're going to, so you don't, you're going to be looking here, you're going to be looking at park, you're not going to, that's the whole idea is to funnel you through. And of course we don't have that problem here. |
| 00:47:24.46 | Unknown | Right. |
| 00:47:59.77 | Unknown | you |
| 00:48:05.74 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:48:05.76 | Mayor Withey | I have more, but there's other people have. Council Member Pfeiffer, you wanted to? |
| 00:48:11.58 | Councilmember | Thank you. So good job. It's so exciting to see this come together. So I want to thank you just for all the hard work on this. So one question I had is you mentioned I like that the the waterfront path will be a pedestrian path. I think that's important because I don't think we want to see the hordes of cyclists, you know, getting that congestion there. But to ensure that doesn't happen, my question is, you mentioned the the bike path along Bridgeway, and I think you mentioned there was another bike path planned that would be Inland, I mean, not like off road, skirting the edge of the park, not the waterfront, but the bridgeway edge. Is that correct? |
| 00:49:00.97 | Jacques Ullman | I have seen, I guess we've all seen, a major plan for it to come along Ridgeway. I don't know of a bicycle path officially there. I mean, bicycles do go alongside the, between the parking, the gallery parking lot and that building, but I'm not sure they should. |
| 00:49:07.62 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:49:07.64 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:49:07.91 | Mary Wagner | Bye. |
| 00:49:24.50 | Councilmember | Yeah. It's not there now. I guess my question was, I heard in your presentation you referred to the plans for, you know, a bicycle path along Bridgeway that would be off-road, and I was just wondering if your plan compensated for that or... or, you know, factor that in. |
| 00:49:40.48 | Jacques Ullman | I don't know what you mean by off-road. |
| 00:49:43.95 | Councilmember | Well, right now we have a bicycle lane that's right on Bridgeway, that's on the road. An off-road path is not on the road. It's something that shelters the bikes on the road. |
| 00:49:47.34 | Jacques Ullman | Oh, okay. That's on. |
| 00:49:54.31 | Jacques Ullman | Right. You know, shelters, the bikes, and the roads. At the forum I had a, and so that is, I mean that would be here. The sidewalk was shown as part of it, so that was a part the bicycle path would run along here. |
| 00:50:13.50 | Councilmember | that's Okay. The reason I ask is I just want to make sure we don't have the bikes lined up on the waterfront path. That's my primary concern. |
| 00:50:14.85 | Jacques Ullman | The reason |
| 00:50:22.61 | Jacques Ullman | Well, and that's, I think, what Carlson Weiner was saying too is that, I think we have to think about it. Because I know that bicycle situation is not an easy one. So we have to be aware of it. Yeah. because we don't want people, I mean, we don't want a whole bunch of bicycles brought onto the beach. |
| 00:50:47.49 | Unknown | Right. Thank you. |
| 00:50:48.01 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:50:48.03 | Unknown | Council. |
| 00:50:48.09 | Councilmember | Council Member Leon. Jock, you mentioned in your discussion of – kind of brought to mind in your discussion of the drainage and the culverts that are there already. I think there's one that goes in through this – through Litho, and there's one that comes down from B. I think Jonathan, is that right, that comes out? Would there be – I got – the Litho one's pretty straightforward in terms of how that would be handled, but would there be any – did you guys think about – did you folks think about – and did it come up in the forum? You know, there's been some discussion maybe daylighting some of that, either one or two of those, you know, what are now essentially – whether it's – you could deem them however you want to see fit with their drainage or watercourses, and use that as part of the subsurface drainage plan. Is that something that was – if that's a possibility, or does that create too much of a break in the flow of the main bowl there? |
| 00:50:48.53 | Jacques Ullman | Amen. |
| 00:51:00.33 | Mary Wagner | Through the lift row. |
| 00:51:48.19 | Jacques Ullman | uh... i can't really speak to technically how the subsurface page would be done and jonathan may have a comment on it but my understanding was as far as the culvert is concerned or the two culverts there there's a possibility of some diversion to litho street and that would solve that problem my gut feeling that the subsurface drainage for the bowl area is a completely different animal than storm drainage, which is really what those are. Right. That's just my... |
| 00:51:54.24 | Councilmember | . |
| 00:51:55.56 | Mary Wagner | I don't know. |
| 00:52:05.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:05.72 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:52:06.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:06.26 | Unknown | Listen. |
| 00:52:06.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:07.29 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:52:07.81 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:52:09.89 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:52:16.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:16.77 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:52:16.96 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm sorry. |
| 00:52:23.71 | Councilmember | Right. Okay. And one last question for you. So you're both – experienced designers and architects and What would be your guesstimate as to If this ever came into... |
| 00:52:42.02 | Unknown | is |
| 00:52:42.86 | Unknown | Cheers. |
| 00:52:43.23 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:52:43.55 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:52:44.33 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 00:52:44.51 | Unknown | That's what he's got. Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.34 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.38 | Unknown | in. |
| 00:52:45.61 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.78 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:45.83 | Councilmember | . Well, you are now, Jacques. I know it's a tough question, but if you had to – I'm sure you thought about |
| 00:52:47.49 | Unknown | Are you at it? |
| 00:52:48.26 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:52:56.18 | Councilmember | There's obviously some construction costs with the parking and the grading of parking and the regrading of parts of the park, but it's not a – from a layman's point of view, it doesn't look like a high-cost venture in terms of you're not going back to square one and reinventing the wheel because it's not |
| 00:53:14.20 | Adam Krivach | Exactly. |
| 00:53:14.54 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. I'm serious. I'm not trying to avoid your question. But, you know, I mean, it's a very difficult part of the kind of work that we do. And it's very dangerous to mislead people. So there's a certain amount of input that you need. For instance, going back to the soils report, okay, how much soil amenity is required? How much imported soil is required? The jury on that subject could make, you know, a $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 difference, and then you have 10 items like that. So it's incredibly dangerous. You know, it's misleading. I think we need to work toward a point where we can do that. But I really feel that there should be input on the drainage issue. I think there should be input on the ADA requirements. There should be input on the design of the parking lot and what's required in terms of curves and so on so I respectfully I think I'm going to avoid that question |
| 00:53:51.04 | Adam Krivach | I was in the |
| 00:54:26.02 | Unknown | It's okay. I had to ask just from a... |
| 00:54:28.75 | Jacques Ullman | Even though in the long run, the clients that I've had that get angry at me at the end are the ones that have forced me to give them numbers, and the ones that are happy are the ones that realize that I've worked hard to bring the project to a reasonable conclusion. |
| 00:54:45.47 | Vice Mayor | Jacques, on the kayaks and the other non-motorized vessels, so you're going to... have them come in, but I noticed there's a very small little area that have to come in. And how do you plan to build be able to direct him in that way. Um, |
| 00:55:05.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:05.24 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:55:05.25 | Unknown | No. |
| 00:55:05.27 | Vice Mayor | I mean, because this is all going to be open water in the other part. I just thought I was just... |
| 00:55:09.64 | Jacques Ullman | I just thought I was... Let me explain that this light green area we can intrude on it to some extent. It's an area that we wanna pay attention to. But if we eat away, that's why, we could eat away at a corner of it here, whatever we need. This is not like a sin to go, |
| 00:55:20.12 | Unknown | Right. |
| 00:55:31.16 | Jacques Ullman | to eat into this. So we have some wiggle room there, I think. |
| 00:55:34.51 | Vice Mayor | But how are, I mean, they might just come directly through it. How do you direct them to that end? Thank you. Well, to start with... |
| 00:55:39.68 | Jacques Ullman | Well, yeah, I mean, there would be bullies and there would be signs. And Heather Richards, when she's active here, she's very interested in having this be a preserve and having this be part of the didactic sort of thing that she's doing here. So I think we're going to have to have help. I mean, one of the positive things about the potential for the kayak people to be located over here was that they were going to respect the lanes that were created for them, and they were going to act as policemen for us too in a way. I think the community has to get behind it. |
| 00:56:16.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:27.38 | Jacques Ullman | I mean, I have to say that when people ride their bicycles on the sidewalk there south of downtown, I give them a peace of mind in whatever language seems appropriate. |
| 00:56:37.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:37.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:37.80 | Unknown | LAUGHTER |
| 00:56:38.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:38.39 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:56:38.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:38.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:38.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:39.23 | Councilmember | Yes. |
| 00:56:39.72 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Council Member Pfeiffer. |
| 00:56:43.87 | Councilmember | Thank you. So Jacques, I know at the last council meeting when we were talking about the budget and budgeting for this, I remember when we talked about next steps, you mentioned $3,000. And it was for some action. Do you recall that? That really was out of the ballpark. I pulled that completely out of my ear. |
| 00:56:59.28 | Jacques Ullman | Do you recall that ballpark? It was a ballpark. I pulled that completely out of my ear. |
| 00:57:03.78 | Unknown | Bye. you |
| 00:57:04.27 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:57:04.34 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:57:04.37 | Councilmember | Okay. Well, so if we go to the next phase, how can the council help you? How can we help you in your group move forward? |
| 00:57:04.39 | Unknown | Okay. Well, so if we |
| 00:57:16.61 | Jacques Ullman | Well, I think to provide this testing and horticultural information. And if we want the parking to move forward, then to get some engineering input on the parking lot design. For our planning, it would be nice to be able to consult about the drainage, just to have at least to know that the grading that we're showing can be coordinated with a proper drainage system, at least to be alerted to any issues down the road. to our plans. It won't have to be specifically completed the design, but at least to have some... to any issues down the road to our plans. It won't have to be specifically completed the design, but at least to have some input, some... |
| 00:58:01.63 | Councilmember | Yes. |
| 00:58:07.42 | Councilmember | So because the soils testing is the first, and you've mentioned it a couple times when we've asked this question, would you say that that is the number one step? Yes, I think so. Because it's number one. Is there a. |
| 00:58:16.95 | Jacques Ullman | Yes, I think so. Is there a... Yes, but I... I know they're all high priority. The important thing is that is very important, not to our planning, but I think the pressures that Casparina and Galilee have. |
| 00:58:20.73 | Councilmember | I know they're all high priority. |
| 00:58:32.31 | Councilmember | Okay, so soils testing and the park improvement priority list, is that the two? |
| 00:58:34.49 | Jacques Ullman | Sorry. |
| 00:58:40.81 | Jacques Ullman | Well, I mean, the park improvement priorities list, that's something we don't need anymore. |
| 00:58:44.66 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 00:58:44.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:58:44.80 | Councilmember | Thank you. I'm sorry, when you were talking about parking, which one is that? |
| 00:58:46.84 | Jacques Ullman | Part key, yeah. |
| 00:58:49.32 | Councilmember | Well, that's not true. Number two, engineering. Okay, thanks. |
| 00:58:49.51 | Jacques Ullman | Well, that's not... |
| 00:58:52.66 | Councilmember | So those top two. And is there a dollar sign attached to those top two? |
| 00:58:58.45 | Jacques Ullman | Well, maybe Mr. Goldman can address Thank you. |
| 00:59:01.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:01.30 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:59:01.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:01.37 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:59:01.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:02.01 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:59:02.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:02.09 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 00:59:03.76 | Councilmember | Because the reason I ask is, as you know, we're going through the budgeting process, and I just wanted to make sure that we had allocated funds for you. And have you had meetings around that already? No. No, we haven't. |
| 00:59:13.65 | Jacques Ullman | No, we haven't. I know that Mr. Goldman has some funds available for soils testing. I don't know that he has any for horticultural guidance. I believe there is someone that the city has been using. I'm not sure if that person is able to deal with the grass issue and other things other than just trees. I see. |
| 00:59:16.66 | Unknown | If you rent the budget, number one. |
| 00:59:30.73 | Mary Wagner | is able to deal with |
| 00:59:32.00 | Councilmember | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:59:32.27 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:59:36.42 | Councilmember | I see. So you were thinking perhaps staff time would address those top two bullets. Is that it? No. |
| 00:59:42.36 | Jacques Ullman | No. No, I think it requires outside consultants. Outside consulting. Absolutely. |
| 00:59:46.96 | Councilmember | outside consulting. Absolutely. Okay. I guess the reason, the nature of, may I just summarize this? So my, what I'm trying to do is I'm just trying to confirm that the council knows how to help you and we're lined up to do so. |
| 00:59:49.02 | Jacques Ullman | The reason the name is |
| 00:59:50.03 | Councilmember | That's true. May I just summarize this? Number one is already in the budget. |
| 01:00:03.97 | Councilmember | Is that... Is that correct? Well, I just want to know those top two bullets are where we need to start. |
| 01:00:05.34 | Unknown | Exactly. |
| 01:00:09.09 | Mayor Withey | Those top two bullets are where we need to start. MR. Could we ask Jonathan Goldman to briefly – or Director of Public Works to briefly comment on what might be in the budget? |
| 01:00:18.76 | Jonathon Goldman | Hi, thank you. Obviously the budget is an item later this evening and council could decide not to fund the items that my department has requested including maintenance operations budget that as I indicated I think at last meeting is adequate to cover the cost of the soil testing that Crens of Dunphy Park have indicated they need. In addition, as I think Council is aware, we have capital projects identified with the Tidelands Fund for this site primarily because of stormwater issues that have been identified that we need to resolve and that we have the advantage now of a schematic master plan that represents a lot of community consensus. And what we wanted to do this evening is let the council know that this product exists. And as the owners of the property property I guess, if there is some consensus that we ought to go forward to continue going forward with this process, we also have the benefit of a Parks and Recreation Commission and a Parks and Recreation Director who have done a really good job of doing a number of things, Swinney Park development program being one of my favorites, for example. So the objective this evening was to let you know what the status of the work that the Friends of Dunphy Park and the community have done. Make sure that if you do have any issues with the conceptual proposals for parking and things like that, that we have an opportunity to hear about it. And basically, if you don't want us, as a matter of priority calendar items, to continue and invest staff time in it and to continue to expend resources, now's a good time to let us know. I don't expect you to say that, but we just want to make sure that the council's aware of what's going on, where we are in the process. And with your direction, we'll work with the Parks and Rec Commission and continue to work with Friends of Dunby Park, with Cascadley Marina that are very interested in getting their doors open as soon as possible, with the Cruising Club, and with Galilee Harbor, who, as Jacques mentioned, are very interested in paving a parking lot in their property as well. |
| 01:02:18.32 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 01:02:37.10 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:02:37.16 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 01:02:37.18 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:02:45.72 | Councilmember | there. So in the budget, I can't remember, Charlie, what page, where you try the priority calendar into the – but I think there's $5,000 for the soils testing. There's $94,000. It's a carryover for Dumpy Park drainage, day lining, and outfall. And there's $15,000 for the electrical improvements, which is, I think, kind of would tie in a little bit to some of the schematics for – and we can always reallocate those amongst where they're going to get the most bang for the buck going forward. So we already have – we have a lot of questions. close to $110,000 in the current budget to start on steps 1 and 2. |
| 01:03:27.81 | Mayor Withey | Okay. At this stage, I'd like to open this up for public comment. |
| 01:03:31.97 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 01:03:32.13 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. I just wanted to briefly say I had a chance to talk to Paul. Please. If $5,000 is available for soils testing and horticultural advice, this might be adequate. |
| 01:03:33.97 | Councilmember | Yeah. |
| 01:03:34.36 | Mayor Withey | chance to to |
| 01:03:35.38 | Adam Krivach | Bye. |
| 01:03:35.50 | Unknown | you |
| 01:03:35.67 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.89 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.94 | Mayor Withey | Please. |
| 01:03:36.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:42.74 | Mary Wagner | No. |
| 01:03:49.66 | Jacques Ullman | if it is indeed available for that. |
| 01:03:53.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:53.84 | Mayor Withey | Okay, great. And it is, so we can pick that up. Yeah, Charlie. Charlie. |
| 01:04:01.64 | Charlie Francis | We just turned to page 158 in the budget document. It designates that $5,000 has indeed been set aside for soils and horticulture work. |
| 01:04:11.78 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thank you. Okay, so public comment. Is there any member of the public who'd like to comment? I see some hands, so Jean, please. |
| 01:04:27.28 | Unknown | Mr. Mack. and Council members. |
| 01:04:29.77 | Luke Tessier | Thank you. Good evening. |
| 01:04:30.30 | Unknown | John did not |
| 01:04:30.36 | Luke Tessier | . |
| 01:04:31.64 | Unknown | by the one who lemurs I've looked at this magnificence, and to me, there's just one thing that's very important about the whole thing, and that is public restrooms. I've been going into Dumfrey Park since 1972, and I think it's always been the same porta potty. Thank you. |
| 01:04:52.77 | Mr. Novak | Yeah. |
| 01:04:53.31 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:04:53.48 | Mr. Novak | Bye. |
| 01:04:53.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:55.64 | Mr. Novak | So you would say it's holding up pretty good. Thank you. |
| 01:04:58.09 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:05:01.97 | Chris Bond | Yeah. Sir. Hello, Council. My name is Chris Bond, and I live in Mill Valley at 134 Woodbine Drive. But I'm the commodore of the Sausalito Cruising Club. That means I'm the elected chief executive officer of the club. Just a brief overview of what we are. We have more than 400 members. About a third of those are Sausalito residents. Another third are from neighboring communities. and the balance are people from outside of the local area who come and visit Sausalito. They come and visit our club and enjoy Sausalito and its businesses here. Contrary to what the gentleman said earlier, we actually do a lot of public stuff because you may not know it, but all the AA meetings in Sausalito are held at the club. There's two of them per week, and we've done that for years. We also hold political discussions and general topic interest lectures throughout the year. So we do provide that. We are a private club, though. We're not obligated to do that. I don't know if the Sausalito Yacht Club does that. |
| 01:05:06.09 | Unknown | Hello, council. |
| 01:05:19.27 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:05:19.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:19.49 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:06:06.16 | Chris Bond | We are, by the way, along with the Sausalito Yacht Club, the two yacht clubs in Sausalito. So I want to just speak about this plan a little bit. There are a lot of stakeholders in this plan, and we're probably one of the biggest ones, by their own admission, because they said that this whole thing keys off of moving the cruising club. So you would think that we would have been involved in this, but we've kind of been stone-balled. We had one meeting with these guys who came to the club a couple years ago and talked to us briefly about their plan. We said, well, we'd like to learn more. Before you put this out there, would you please let us know where you're going with it. We tried to contact them several times, nothing. But I'm looking at this next step here. And... Given that the gentleman said that the number one top thing is to move the cruising club, I'm really surprised to see that not here. Because I can tell you that moving the cruising club is going to be a big deal. Okay? The cruising club is situated. horizontal parallel to the shore. And part of that, part of the reason why is that during the winter when we have some big storms, you get big waves coming in. And then those run parallel to the club. If the club's moved to this position, it's now going to be broadsided by these waves. We have about a two-foot... clearance for our concrete hull. If that gets swamped, and that's not a lot of headroom right there, |
| 01:07:36.17 | Mary Wagner | Ah, clearance. |
| 01:07:44.24 | Chris Bond | It goes to the bottom, probably. Okay? So I've heard just some rough estimates from engineers that it's going to take a quarter million to move this thing. Okay? You're also going to have to do a lot of dredging. There is a sandbar right off of the club. To move the club barge, that's probably going to have to be dredged. The gentleman also said you want to This is important, if I can have one more minute just to finish this up. Because what's also missing from here is BCDC. If you're going to do any dredging, and they're going to dredge that culvert over there where the egrets nest, they're going to have to get involved. So I don't think that this plan has really been thought out. I know as a Bashi player, I've played in the league there for eight years now. We have a meeting every year, twice a year before every season. These guys should have come here and said, hey, what do you think about moving the courts? It never happened. So I think this is kind of a vision that they have, and they're not seeking out the stakeholders to see what they feel. |
| 01:08:43.56 | Unknown | that. Thank you. but they Yeah. Thank you, sir. |
| 01:08:46.20 | Chris Bond | Thanks. Thank you. |
| 01:08:48.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:48.90 | Chris Bond | Thank you. |
| 01:08:49.23 | Unknown | Adam, please. |
| 01:08:54.61 | Susan Nelson Kendall | I'm Susan Nelson Kendall. |
| 01:08:56.28 | Councilmember | We can get up to the microphone. Okay, hi, thank you. |
| 01:08:58.09 | Susan Nelson Kendall | Thank you. Okay, hi. Thank you. It's my first city council meeting. You're doing fine. I'm Susan Nelson Kendall, and I'm actually secretary of the cruising club, but I'm really not going to speak. |
| 01:09:03.16 | Councilmember | I don't know. |
| 01:09:07.94 | Susan Nelson Kendall | for the cruising club I'm just gonna speak to One is sort of disabuse the motion that we're not good community members. That may have been true in the past. You may not know it, but this year we are sponsors of Sauce Litter Jazz by the Bay. We are buying a table at the fireworks. We have an active kayaking school and program going. We're having family brunches every Sunday. |
| 01:09:19.36 | Unknown | know it. |
| 01:09:32.65 | Susan Nelson Kendall | We have an all-volunteer board. There are no longer any outside paid vendors running the club. We're basically an affordable social club for the community, about a quarter of the price of the Sausalito Yacht Club, and we're really anxious to join the community, We were very surprised that the master plan was done because I actually posted the one meeting with Friends of Dunphy Park, and we said, great, in principle, interesting idea. We'd like to be part of this. Never heard any more. Sent a couple of emails with no follow-up. We would very much like to continue to be involved with this. We are members of the South Florida community. Dunphy Park is our front door and we love it as much as anybody. We're probably there more and we're really a group It's very much a part of the diverse Sausalito community. We have moderate income, high income. We serve the full-time boating community, the kayakers, the sailing community. We really want to be part of this planning going forward. So thank you for that. |
| 01:10:36.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:43.54 | Unknown | Good evening, Adam. |
| 01:10:44.13 | Adam Krivach | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, honorable members of the Council, Adam Krivach, 840 Olima Street. |
| 01:10:44.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:52.16 | Adam Krivach | I would like to ask questions from the designers, and if they can answer those questions, then I have no concern. But I participated in a number of work sessions with a group that got paid $100,000. I don't know who paid them, but that was their fee. who designed the combined bike and pedestrian paths along bridgeway at the council's instruction, not on the waterfront, not on bridgeway, but parallel somewhere to bridgeway. Their original idea was that there is a 55 foot right away along-way along the bridgeway, which used to be a railroad right-of-way, and wherever possible they will use that right-of-way. Of course, over the years, individual projects built blocks there, and they had to figure out how to go around those obstacles, but they figured them out and they filed a plan. So we do have a plan for a bike, combined bike pedestrian way where not the spandex warriors but the families and people who wish to walk along the community, north and south, from one place to another, could walk safely and not be part of the vehicle, the traffic. If we would move the parking a little bit in, we could save that right away and we wouldn't have any problem creating another obstacle. But I'm afraid that the way the parking is laid out totally ignores the need for a continuous right away for that pedestrian and bicycle path. |
| 01:12:00.10 | Mary Wagner | So, |
| 01:13:00.56 | Unknown | Thank you, Adam. Any other member of the public who'd like to talk? Yes. |
| 01:13:05.78 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:13:05.79 | Councilmember | Yeah, just one. |
| 01:13:07.06 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:13:08.02 | Councilmember | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:13:11.33 | Mayor Withey | I'm sorry. It's okay. |
| 01:13:14.16 | Jacques Ullman | The short answer is that I attended some of those meetings about the bicycle path, and I was quite aware of it. And I guess I should have maybe put the section that I used at the forum, but I think the gentleman was at the forum. Our plan is completely free of that bicycle path. We are not interfering with it. We understand the importance of that bicycle path, and there's no conflict between our plan and the bicycle path. Now, if for some reason some of the sidewalk area needs to be used, that kind of detail a few feet this way and that way, that's fine. But there's no conflict. |
| 01:13:14.70 | Councilmember | I'm sorry. |
| 01:13:14.99 | Mayor Withey | is this. |
| 01:13:19.24 | Mayor Withey | aware of. |
| 01:13:42.53 | Mary Wagner | of some reason. |
| 01:13:54.61 | Unknown | Thank you, Jack. |
| 01:13:55.35 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, if I can just add to that very briefly. The city engineer, our public works director, is also aware of it. And this is the gate 6 road to the ferry landing bicycle plan that was done several years ago now. And so we've looked at that, and we've had this discussion with Jacques, and I agree with Jacques |
| 01:13:55.86 | Unknown | I can just add to the interview. |
| 01:14:15.72 | Adam Politzer | comments there. But that intersection, is a difficult intersection for vehicles and pedestrians. So we will have to call that out and really study it. But I agree that there's plenty of room and flexibility there to address it. But that's going to be a difficult intersection that will need special attention. |
| 01:14:36.44 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Doreen. |
| 01:14:41.44 | Doreen Gunnar | Councilman, members, and mayor. I'm Doreen Gunnar, 300 Napa Street, Galley Harbor. I want to thank Jacques and Paul and the rest of the Friends of Dunphy Park for including us. Galley Harbor, we did host them last night, and we got a sneak peek at the plan. We are really, really happy with things that they're actually moving forward. We have one consideration, and that is the reduction of parking in the park. Because, as you can see, the amount of parking that is presently there on the railroad right away will be cut down by almost two-thirds. And that will impact our community considerably whenever there are events in the park and whenever there are events, you know, cruising club, weddings, et cetera. It will give us – it gives us some pause to lose that much parking. So that's what we'd like you guys to consider in this process. The rest of it we're really happy with, and I thank you for your time. |
| 01:15:47.94 | Councilmember | Can I ask you a question while you're up there? Sorry. Sorry. Yeah, I know. It's confusing. Who is that? If we could flip back to like an overall picture, and you may not know this on top of your head or not, but Jacques, is there a property line for Galilee that kind of runs through the middle of the parking lot? So how would that work with Galilee versus with the park? Maybe whoever the right person to answer that is. |
| 01:15:52.43 | Doreen Gunnar | You sound like you're from. Yeah, I know. |
| 01:15:54.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:54.81 | Doreen Gunnar | Thank you. |
| 01:15:54.93 | Unknown | What was that? |
| 01:16:17.07 | Doreen Gunnar | This is going to be talking |
| 01:16:18.71 | Councilmember | Oh, yeah. Chuck, you need the mic. Sorry. |
| 01:16:21.63 | Doreen Gunnar | Thank you. |
| 01:16:22.23 | Jacques Ullman | So I have to be really careful. That is a property line right there. And then this is a property line. So these spaces are on Galilee property Those spaces are on city property. So in this plan, I think there are nine or 10 spaces that are on Galilee, and three or four that are not in this line here. But the concept of this parking is that you're not really identifying that this space is for Galli and that space is for the cruising club, etc. It's a combined for all those uses. |
| 01:17:09.87 | Doreen Gunnar | which is why we're a little concerned because we are going to lose some parking. And we understand the shared use. We want to do the shared use. That's exactly what we would like to do. But we're concerned about the fact that we're going to lose a lot of the parking that currently exists, and that could be a little more pressure on us. So that's our only concern at this time. |
| 01:17:32.86 | Unknown | Thanks, Storine. |
| 01:17:33.53 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:17:33.55 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:17:35.98 | Mayor Withey | Yes. |
| 01:17:36.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:17:43.15 | Nate Clawson | I'm Nate Clawson and I live down Whiskey Springs. I went to the forum and I think this is a very beautiful plan and I don't think it all rests at all on whether the cruising club gets turned or not. I think most of this plan could be done irrespective of that. That may be an obstacle. It would be nicer, I think, but certainly from my perspective, that isn't driving the plan at all. All of these things definitely reflect what was said at the forum, and it's been integrated really nicely, I think. |
| 01:18:17.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:18:17.85 | Nate Clawson | Thank you. |
| 01:18:24.80 | Warren Novak | Warren Novak, and I just want to address the eelgrass situation. How, can anybody ask me why I had going through there would impact that at all? Thank you. I mean, I can't imagine it happening in fact whatsoever. |
| 01:18:41.67 | Unknown | out. |
| 01:18:44.52 | Jacques Ullman | I thought that I did point out that it isn't just a question of the eelgrass, it's also a question of Let's see if I can... I think it's... Yeah, all right. So it's also the wildlife that we want to encourage to come to this area. So that's why we're trying to route the traffic this way. if traffic went through this way, I would need more. I realize that kayaks don't have any draft, and therefore, in fact, when the Hobie races were here, they don't have any draft to speak of either, and they were directed across here. But because you can't guarantee, if we're going to identify a path, sort of an authorized path here, we're not going to be able to guarantee that all the boats that go that way have the kind of draft that a kayak has. So it would seem better to direct them this way, but you'll notice that in our next step, we said we needed more input from people who know about boats. So this is a negotiable, we need people to advise us, and maybe this would be altered. |
| 01:20:00.75 | Warren Novak | I feel. |
| 01:20:06.27 | Warren Novak | Well, just because I used to live across the street there for years, and I spent a lot of time in the park, you'd have to dredge a lot of that area. And it's just fine, and it should be. I mean, that Lifflo Street should be dredged. There's an island right there behind the cruising club where Cass Gidley, in the 60s, dredged Cass Marina and dumped all the spoils here and created that island. So it's not a natural island by any means. It's not a sandbar. So, I mean, that does need dredging. Now, the cruising club has been aware for years that they'd like to have the cruising club turn sideways the way it is. And it was engineering things done to alleviate the wave action by putting some docks in there alongside of it that would catch the waves and not slump the barge itself. That was done, well, I don't know, years ago, I guess, actually. So I think that's a great plan. I mean, I'm looking forward to it. Like I said, I used to live across the street, and depending on the way the wind was blowing, it would blow all that particulates from the parking lot, either on the boats. I worked at Castamarina for a while, too. We had to wash those boats off every day, and I'd have to keep my windows shut so it doesn't blow into there. So it looks like it's a good idea. |
| 01:20:23.41 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 01:21:08.59 | Mary Wagner | So I think that's a great Thank you. |
| 01:21:36.72 | Unknown | Thanks, Warren. |
| 01:21:38.35 | Councilmember | Can I ask Mr. Goldman a question? Yeah, please. Jonathan, can I ask you a couple questions, if you would? |
| 01:21:39.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:39.47 | Unknown | Yeah, please. |
| 01:21:44.65 | Councilmember | So I think one of the things, a couple of things that were brought up here that kind of bring back some items that are on your domain. I believe Cass Marina or Cass Gidley is at some point going to, if they have the money and if they get their project fully off the ground, is going to plan on doing some dredging to get certain draft boats into their harbor. Am I mistaken in that? No. |
| 01:22:10.42 | Jonathon Goldman | Well, I think that's, based on my conversations anyway, a little bit of an overstatement. |
| 01:22:17.28 | Councilmember | the thought they need to accommodate certain draft boat and they were unsure |
| 01:22:20.86 | Jonathon Goldman | In the short term, they don't need to dredge to accommodate their business plan at this point in time. One of the things that the city did to address that possibility in anticipation of the America's Cup and also to address Edgewater and Turney was to characterize dredge materials so that in the event that somebody did need to dredge, there did the enough information and the truth that possibly are very high quality suitable for disposal potential even usable construct contribute with or contribute to the wave attenuator or something like that. So I don't believe that it has to dredge to |
| 01:23:08.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:23:08.52 | Councilmember | Right. And that was my step. I don't know if they have to or not, but I know there's some discussion about it, and I know the city had done some work regarding that. But also you let in my second question is, is in part one of the things that somewhere, I don't know if it's still in the budget, but is the wave attenuator study that you're contemplating with working with Galilee as well as can you highlight that for people to be more knowledgeable about the idea there? |
| 01:23:19.39 | Unknown | but also, |
| 01:23:36.44 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah, and we've kind of summarized it already, but recognizing that the issues that the Commodore from the cruising club identified are not unique to the cruising club. They have historically resulted in the loss of the beach at Dunphy Park. They've resulted in the changes in the wintertime operations associated with the Cass Marina, which used to be there, the fact that boats would beat themselves up against the docks in the wintertime. It affects Scali Harbor and the boats that are exposed to the long fetch and wave action associated with that side, as well as Schoenbacher. So recognizing that there's kind of a public interest in maybe unifying solutions to those problems, we've solicited a proposal for design of a wave attenuator that might be able to address those issues more globally. And my recollection is that the proposed budget includes funds for that initial phase of design. |
| 01:23:38.28 | Councilmember | Summarize. |
| 01:24:09.57 | Mary Wagner | you with. |
| 01:24:40.55 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Jonathan. We still are in public comment. Is there any other member of the public who would like to comment on this particular item? Okay, seeing none, let's bring it back here. This is, I believe, not requiring any action of us tonight. This is to file. Is there any final comments that anybody would like to |
| 01:25:07.79 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 01:25:08.77 | Councilmember | So it sounds like there's still a little bit maybe of information dissemination. That's true of any public project at any stage along the way. Maybe some individual meetings with the cruising club or the bocce ball folks that need to kind of be brought a little bit further along in how much you've already thought about incorporating things that are going to be a little bit more. as we've discussed tonight, that may be impact. And some of that city staff and some of that may be Friends of Dunphy Park actions. I think a lot of these things are already in your head and already in this plan in terms of the bike path and other things, but just disseminating that that's already in there is probably part of the task, and that's true of any public project, and that's not pointing any blame. That's just getting more word out there. And as you said, the next two steps are parking in the soils and how many spaces is part of the parking engineering work that needs to be done. And we have to see if we have money allocated to do that. And working with Galilee in terms of shared or not shared parking or if there's a trade to be made here of parking spaces versus something else with Galilee, then that's something also to consider. sort of unknown, and this is why I've always been pressing for a Central Water Fund master plan here. There's certainly public right-of-way on Humboldt that could be used for some at parts of parking, whether it's bicycle or over on this side of the park, which may, depending on how the flow of the park is designed, you know, may need to be tweaked one way or the other. How you bring people in is important in a passive area, certainly, and that's you try to minimize that type of traffic coming in there. But that's the other sort of outlier here in terms of solving some of these parking issues. I know you're well aware of that, but I just wanted for the rest of the public to be aware of where the trailer police station used to be is an opportunity for additional either parking or bike parking. or both, and that impacts what's going on with the Bridgeway Marine or whatever they call themselves these days. So it's all kind of an intricate path. But I think it's all – I think this is a great second or third or fourth step, however you want to characterize it. And we can do some of the initial soil studies and some of the initial parking studies with the budget I think we have in the amount of dollars that we have in the budget, some of the drainage work perhaps, initial drainage work studies and get things – keep things moving while the process is ongoing with the public because, as you said, it's a multi-step process even on the public side. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:28:04.28 | Mayor Withey | Council Member Pfeiffer. |
| 01:28:06.82 | Councilmember | Thank you. So my comments are, again, a big thank you to Jacques and Paul and the Friends of Dunphy Park for your hard work. We really appreciate all the hours you've put into this. I think it's a beautiful plan. It's lovely. I think that collaboration with the cruising club to – I think this is just a proposal, and this is just the beginning of a very long process, and clearly there needs to be collaboration with the cruising club with respect to what makes sense. The cruising club has been here for many years and is very popular in Sausalito as well, so we're looking for a win-win, you know, here. I love the emphasis on the environment that this plan shows, with your respect for the eelgrass and the open space and the island for the birds. I love that. And I also, the reason I raised the bike path before I was interrupted over it was that It's very important to preserve that waterfront pedestrian path and keep it away from cyclists speeding through. We need to look at what was initially discussed with the original, I guess the Greenway it was called, project where they had the bike ped path that was off Bridgeway. parallel to Bridgeway. And so thank you, Adam Krivatsky, for mentioning that. And thank you. to Jacques for you're, that it would be easy to kind of move things a couple feet or something to just accommodate that right away. And because I think if you do that, then you will preserve your vision of that beautiful waterfront pathway that is serene for pedestrians. And so other than that, I just really want to thank everyone who has participated in this, and I look forward with this moving forward. you know, the plan will be tweaked as we move forward. And again, with respect to working with the cruising club. |
| 01:30:25.34 | Vice Mayor | Just also want to thank you a shot Paul and the friends of dumpy parks I think it's a great plan, and it's the first step in a long road. I agree with a lot of what other council members have said, and we've already raised a couple of important issues that have to be addressed, and they will as we get to the schematic plan and all that. And I also want to just compliment you that you've already reached out to the public. I thought it was a great public forum workshop. that was done. I think a lot of stakeholders had input. You're going to need more input as time goes on, as we see tonight, including more interaction with the cruising club, which I'm glad to see that they're going to be involved and more active in the community. So thank you to everyone. |
| 01:31:09.19 | Mayor Withey | I have nothing to add that's not already been said, so except to also reiterate thank you to both, to the friends. This is a really well thought through plan, I think. So thank you very much. |
| 01:31:30.18 | Mayor Withey | Okay, it is just past 8.30. Do you want to take a break now, or should we start the next? What do you want to do? |
| 01:31:35.73 | Councilmember | or should we just go? Mr. Mayor, I just want to just clarify again. I know no action was required, but I just want to confirm with Jacques and Paul. Jacques? Jacques? |
| 01:31:47.39 | Unknown | Excuse me, we've ended this subject matter. |
| 01:31:49.79 | Councilmember | Subject matter. And now we move forward. |
| 01:31:55.73 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. So I was trying to ask whether anybody wants to take a break now, or should we get through the next agenda item? |
| 01:32:08.31 | Councilmember | I would like to take a break to discuss the rudeness of experience tonight. Mr. Mayor, I'd like to talk with you in the back room. |
| 01:32:15.86 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 01:32:15.88 | Mayor Withey | Well... |
| 01:32:16.45 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 01:32:16.57 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 01:32:16.65 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 01:32:16.67 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:32:16.69 | Councilmember | Okay. In the bathroom. I think you might want to sit. |
| 01:32:16.75 | Councilmember | I'm sorry. |
| 01:32:16.77 | Mayor Withey | Oh, yeah. |
| 01:32:16.84 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:32:17.33 | Mayor Withey | I'm not even. |
| 01:32:19.67 | Councilmember | I said the back room. |
| 01:32:19.74 | Councilmember | I think. |
| 01:32:22.30 | Mayor Withey | I will adjourn this meeting for five minutes. |
| 01:32:41.81 | Jonathon Goldman | Not that, not your boss. |
| 01:32:45.05 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:32:47.41 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:32:47.50 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 01:32:47.55 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:32:47.77 | Mr. Novak | We have a general. |
| 01:32:49.03 | Vice Mayor | Go ahead. |
| 01:32:52.09 | Mayor Withey | Debbie are we running yet? |
| 01:32:52.10 | Vice Mayor | And... Thank you. |
| 01:32:53.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:53.74 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:32:53.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:53.89 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:32:54.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:55.36 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thanks. The next item is an update. from the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. Again, Jonathan Goldman, our Director of Public Works. |
| 01:33:05.34 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be brief. Just wanted to, the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee, which was reconstituted by the Council, has a pretty broad range of responsibilities. And by having an active committee, it satisfies a number of requirements of the cities that allow us to qualify for grant funding in some areas and things like that. I want to recognize Patricia Pigman, who's one of the committee members who's in the audience, as well as Dr. Ed Fosch, who is the chair of the committee, and I also want to recognize Captain John Rohrabacher, who's, along with me, staff liaison to the committee. And with no further ado, turn the slide controller and the microphone over to Dr. Fox. |
| 01:34:00.50 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:34:00.52 | Ed Fotch | Good evening. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council, thank you for time on your obviously very busy schedule. I've had the pleasure of meeting all the council members, but for the record, my name is Ed Fotch. I live at 2 Alexander Avenue. I've lived in town for about 35 years. The first 10 years I practice medicine, I've been in health technology for the last 20. More importantly, I raise four kids here. Twenty years ago, I was asked to be the founding chairman of the Sausalito Disaster Preparedness Committee, and I have to say that that was quite easy compared to being the chairman of the Bicycle Committee. At least everyone was in agreement, almost everyone, that we didn't like natural disasters. Not so with bicycles. There are people in town who swear by bicycles. There's others who swear at bicycles. But I think one thing that we all know is that there's a fundamental change going on in Sausalito in terms of how folks come to visit our town. I think that there are many cities who would love to have the problem of all these people coming to see our natural beauty and our location and our weather. But we have at least an embarrassment of riches if not a real problem associated with the tremendous demand of the city. for our town and so whether you're in the former category of swearing by or the latter category, one thing we can't do is ignore the problem because I believe that this is not going to change and at a minimum we have to mitigate and optimize based on the tremendous amount of traffic. So what I want to talk to you about tonight is the committee status, the committee research that we've done. We'd like to share with you our key findings and some requests of the council. There were five members seated at the council. We have two non-voting members. We have an invitation out for one of the non-voting members who's a member of the Bike Coalition. We had our first meeting nine months ago. Patty, it seems like quite a bit longer than that, but hopefully that's because we've accomplished some things in the interim. We've met with folks from the GNRA, the Park Service, from bike vendors, and the rest of the list I won't read for you. We have agenda minutes and resolutions that are posted online if folks from the public are interested. We've tried to be active and transparent. Our initial priorities were bike and pedestrian safety, and I'll mention some of the statistics there. Some of that's mom and apple pie. Some of it's actually quite real. There are 50 bike accidents requiring the response from fire and safety on an annual basis, at least there were in 2013. I expect that will go up. We want to optimize bike flow and try to mitigate and minimize angst. We did a survey of citizens, of vendors in town, merchants in town as well as bikers and I'll share some of that with you tonight. We have some recommendations with the council and of course we have to update the bicycle and pedestrian plan and that's a work in progress with the help of the transportation authority of Marin. Let me start with the survey information. Transportation Authority of Marin. Let me start with the survey information because we found this really interesting. So I'll give a plug to one of my younger sons who's a |
| 01:36:19.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:37:43.57 | Ed Fotch | business major at USF and he took the time to do some census work of bikes coming into town which is a member of sitting and watching and clicking a meter and he segregated into the recreational riders and the renters also known in our vernacular as the spandex speeders and the weekend wobblers. And interestingly and for those of us who live particularly on the south end of town We sort of knew this intuitively, but it's always nice to see the data. The recreational riders all wear helmets or almost all wear helmets. Their peak flow is around 10 o'clock, 10 to 11. It starts to fall off and then the renters come into town. And their peak flow is later in the afternoon. Now this is important if you want to say, when are we going to maximize either enforcement? Because enforcement has more, as we'll get to, to do with the recreational riders in terms of pedestrian crosswalks and stop signs, these kinds of things. Thank you. Because enforcement has more, as we'll get to, to do with the recreational roads in terms of pedestrian crosswalks and stop signs, these kinds of things versus parking and information. in the survey work which went across four weekends, about 20 percent of the of the renters did not have helmets. At times it seems like it's a higher number. Maybe that's just because I'm an emergency department physician, I always notice people. You know, the kids have helmets and the parents don't, and the kids ride better than the parents. But I think there's a limit to how much we can do and how fast we can do whatever we elect to point out. Interestingly, where did you find out about coming to Sausalito? Was more often than not friends and family? Internet was second. I would not have guessed that. A substantial number of the folks who bike across the Golden Laid Bridge are actually local people who decide to rent a bike and cruise across the bridge, also somewhat surprising. Um, very interesting. And the way this was done, by the way, and I'll differentiate the citizen survey, which almost certainly has some survey bias because It was really only people who cared about bikes who responded to the survey as opposed to this survey that was done by taking the folks waiting for the ferry and asking them one by one with a clipboard. for authority. a bunch of questions. How did you find out about Sausalito and where did you rent your bike? anywhere with a clipboard. You got a clipboard? you're in charge. In medicine it's a white quote, and a step is go, but for the rest of the world it's a cliff work. And it was at least to me, again, and I think to the committee, somewhat surprising that the average ticket in town in terms of what was spent was $30 maybe north of that times hundreds of thousands of bikers a year, it's obviously real revenue. When you pivot then and you look at the emergence in town, it's split right down the middle. again, in terms of swear by, swear at, there's a whole bunch who say, I strongly benefit, and there's a bunch who say, I don't. benefit at all. But the one thing everyone agreed with is that parking of the bicycles was an issue, particularly in the busy weekends, the parking on the sidewalk was something that impacted even the people who benefited from the tourists. thought something needs to be done with regards to all these bicycles that are chained to trees, chained to parking meters, chained to each other. And so, you know, sort of an obvious issue there. Looking now at the Residence Survey, And as opposed to the A bicycle survey that was done by picking people in line, so not a lot of skewing data there. The merchant survey was really every merchant in town and we did that in collaboration with the Chamber. The resident survey was posted online with an outreach and so skewed toward elect to respond to a survey. I'm not sure. A fair amount of division as to the impact of bikes, southern residents much, much more often. appear to be impacted much more than the residents on the central north end of town, banana belt areas. But the themes that came up over and over again were the bikes on the sidewalks, bike speeding, particularly through intersections and crosswalks, bike parking. And those were sort of the pain points from the residents. So we took that information and got most of that toward the end of last year and looked at what are some of the options for engaging FOLKS. I will say that a lot of the attention of the committee is spent on bikes. But that's not to say that it doesn't have an impact on pedestrians because when you think of it, When the bicycle's on the sidewalk, who are they impacting? They're impacting the pedestrian. When the bike's parked on the sidewalk, who are they impacting? They're impacting the pedestrian. We do have some recommendations that impact bikes. one in particular that impacts pedestrian, and a lot that impact both bikes and pedestrian, they're sharing this. So first thing I wanted to touch on is an ambassador option that we've discussed and we've done a little bit of work on. There are ambassador programs associated with bicycles elsewhere in the United States. They tend to be split into just developing bike paths and others that have more to do with being a concierge there's really nothing quite like Sausalito in terms of literally hundreds of thousands of people converging on such a small area where you need to hopefully tell them where to go, tell them what to do, tell them what not to do, answer questions, and as Patty's I found out, they ask you, you know, where should I go for lunch? My bike's broken. How can I get it fixed? And one of the byproducts of an ambassador program, and I'll give you a little more detail, that I think is helpful is it gives the folks coming into town a sense that this isn't a free-for-all when you come into Sausalito, that someone is actually there paying attention and cares enough to, you know, have some information for them and to have an have a little vest on that will make it clear that they – the only thing more powerful than a clipboard is a vest. or Will we? We actually have a We actually have a gift for you tonight. you beware of doctors and pretty ladies in gray outfits bearing gifts because it's almost always bad news. But the idea here is that with an appropriate bit of gear that you can become a spokesperson for the town and and Tom Theodorus and Herb know well because they've been involved in our committee meetings that we've gotten started on this. And it really is helpful to engage the folks. So it's a means to engage bikers prior to their coming into town and then after they're in town. to address issues of bike parking riding on the sidewalk. And we've begun a collaboration that hopefully will prove fruitful with the VIFS program and we're looking for citizen volunteers. But coming out of the blocks, we're using THE BITE COMMITTEE TO DO SOME So you'll recognize Patty there with her hat on. And Patty and I spent a couple hours a few Saturdays ago, engaged a few hundred people in less than two hours. And this is, you probably recognize this is a little outcropping after the East Road was redone. It's a natural place to engage folks, particularly, and we'll get to this later, particularly if they're coming up. from Fort Baker, from the Cavallo Point area. And it's very different if they're coming down Alexander because coming down Alexander, they're flying past here. and then they stop on my driveway. But when they're coming up through East Road, this is where they stop. It's a terrific place and I'm sure Patty would agree. It was no problem talking to people. You very quickly realize their English capabilities. have begun to create a sort of a guide for the ambassadors is the things you need, the stuff that you should – they'll all – you need to post the ferry schedule right there. I can guarantee you that. And then there's all these other things about where's Cavallo Point and you tell them, well, you just rode through it. A bunch of people are asking how to get to Muir Woods, like you're really going to bike there. I mean, some of it's pretty humorous. But it's great and I think that this could really turn into something that would be valuable. Equally important would be – and this gets getting some signage ahead of that point. Most of the people who get to Sausalito, and I know this from having lived in the first house in town, on Alexander. that they don't even know if they're in Sausalito or not. They take a picture next to the sign that says you've arrived in Salcido, but I don't know if they have five miles to go or one mile to go or when's the – so some signage could help them. They have no idea that the road's about to narrow. and that buses are coming down and that they're having to share the road with the – I mean, so there's an opportunity to have better looking signs than these along the way, but that's not in our jurisdiction, so we would have to be working with the Park Service on this, and that's one of our recommendations. There's probably three or four messages you'd love to give them, because as we found sitting there, you cannot impart all the information particularly when they're coming, hundreds of bikers coming usually in groups. typically if they're foreign speaking one person speaks English and you're engaging with those people. So having some signage up to this point would be extremely helpful. Thank you. Item number one. Item number two, and I have to say that if you could do one thing, it would be to focus the political clout of this council on opening up the Vista Point Trail. Now if you – I won't use the pointer because I've seen so many people struggle with it. So currently, when folks come across the Golden Gate Bridge, If they're on the west side of the bridge, which is only on the weekends and so early and so late in the day that it's not important during the weekends, they come down and they go into... Fort Baker. and that's fine, and then they come up. that we can do. during the week. And in the summertime, we're talking about thousands of riders a week are coming on the east side of the bridge and they just come flying down Alexander Avenue and that's where things get dangerous, that's where the citizens who are driving get frustrated. And I didn't know this. I'm sorry, I pointed it wrong. Alexander's up there. But there is a trail called Vista Point Trail. And it had been closed so long I forgot about it. But it actually loops around and drops down. into Fort Baker and it's absolutely gorgeous. It's a stunning, it's the prettiest way you getting into Sausalito, AND It's been identified in a Department of Transportation study as something that should be reopened and paved but it wasn't prioritized in the study. It was just identified with five other projects. So this is a simple, convenient means to get into town. It improved bike safety because it's not as steep, but more importantly, you're segregating bikes from cars. And as they come into Sauce Lido, they're not flying down the street. They're actually coming up a gentle grade with a nice wide place in to stop. And I think it could – I mean, just speaking from a safety standpoint, it would be great. It would also be great from an experience standpoint. If you're at Vista Point, the entrance is still open. You can bike down and you just can't get all the way down. and the views aside from the goofy guy with the transit, the views are really stunning. Now I shot the elevations of this because a member of the Bridge District said that he was concerned that the elevations were too steep. But they're actually not as steep as the west side that already exists. So it really – I mean, it can be confirmed, but trust me, it's sort of 7 percent grade, which is nothing. And because it's not associated with the cars, It's great. So Vista Point Trail, huge thing. Last thing in terms of our research and the opportunity is one of signage. When you do come across on the west side, And you see the question mark there. That's literally what you're looking at. There's no particularly good signage. Now, if you look in the right, there's a red circle. And if you look really, really hard, there's proof positive that that a white sign on a white sidewalk is not particularly Visible. But, but. But that's what we've got so far. So I think there's some – |
| 01:51:09.20 | Unknown | on the road with this presentation. |
| 01:51:13.05 | Ed Fotch | So there's some opportunities for improvement. Then as you come into the park, you'll probably, if you're down there, you'll recognize there's one sort of park-ish sign, national park sign, that's one on the left, it's circled. A different sign further ahead on the right, that's a different style of sign. My favorite sign is the one just as you're coming in. It's got a five and an arrow that points right into the bay, which I think is probably what a lot of the South Lydans wish would happen. Just go five miles out into the water and then you see the last one. But the point of this is that I think some collaboration with the Park Service. and the bridge district could consolidate because you're not going to – even if you don't want the bikes to come, they're going to come. What you really want is them to come efficiently, know where to park, and hopefully – have a decent time. So this gets me to wrap up. These are our recommendations The first is pure pedestrian and there may not be anything that we can do but Thank you. For those on the south end of town, there's a crosswalk that is near the Valhalla bottom of Main Street but further north there's an area with a fair amount of pedestrian crossing next to the Golden Gate market. And what you really have is funneling that entire area above that, that valley above that, or the gulch, Hurricane Gulch. And it all sort of gets funneled in there. Of course, most people are going into town. There's no crosswalk. It's quite wide. It's somewhat blind on both sides. And I'm not sure it fits as a crosswalk, but anything we could do to improve that, because it really does just simply get dangerous. there. The second I spoke about, which is the Vista Point Trail, And I think outreach to the GGNRA, the Bridge District, the County of Marin, the Department of Transportation, anyone who will listen to us. And again, this is not a, gee, this is our new idea. They've already come up with the idea. This is a question of prioritization. And if they can push this ahead of the other – more fluffy stuff in that group of five, I think that that would be great. If you can support the ambassador's program, we're really not looking for money. I think our biggest expense is – is INVEST, which we've now covered But it's still going to take some collaboration with the police department and with VIFS and other stuff. And I think your support there would be great. I already mentioned the signage issue. I think that would be – it's important in general, but particularly as bikes are coming into Sausalito to give them the sense that, okay, there's rules of the road here, and at least during the couple busy hours on Saturday and Sunday, maybe you're going to have, or maybe more than that, but at least during that time you're going to have some ambassador programs. consider an ordinance to keep the bikes off of the narrow sidewalks in the south end of town. It's really too – it's really just so tight down there. And I know the road's narrow and it's a tough thing, but when you have that area that's on South Street where the sidewalk is at a different level than the street. you put a bicycle on there and it's just pretty tough stuff. Consider an ordinance to reduce bikes parked on the central city sidewalk. Tracy Way is now open. We've got dedicated space for them and I think at least we feel like, if for no other reason based on the merchant survey, There's a part of town where they just shouldn't have bikes littering the sidewalk. And then lastly, support police surveillance of the traffic lights and the crosswalk. This is not for the renters, this is really for the recreational riders. And they're pretty good at communicating. We get the reputation that says stop when you're in Sausalito, the word will get out. I don't think this is about more folks. This is really, and of course if there's something that's a higher priority. But even recently, I see that we put some folks down there. I go down into Starbucks on Saturday morning. People see it. and the word gets out. So those are our half dozen, I guess seven, wish list. I know this isn't exhaustive, nine months, I'm sure we'll have some more, but this is sort of our starting point. And on behalf of the committee, I really thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the city. |
| 01:55:39.82 | Mayor Withey | Ed, thank you for a really very comprehensive report with lots of interesting ideas there. Okay, let's throw this open for questions from up here on the dais before we throw this open for public comment. So does anybody here have any technical clarifying questions of Dr. Fosch? |
| 01:56:04.31 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 01:56:04.73 | Councilmember | My question for both of you would be, since you both live in that kind of crosshairs of South and Alexander, these are all, I think, very good and straightforward suggestions, and we'll find a way to make them happen. I don't know how we'll do the crosswalk, but I agree with you. That's like there's nowhere to cross that's safe from Valhalla to Yitachi. There's no crosswalk across Bridgeway, and people are going to – that needs to be addressed somehow. And it may just slow people down along the way at some point somehow. But the question is – the question is, you know, you're – again, the toughest part is where you live, you know, because of the – just the breadth of – and the discussion – the breadth of the road and the amount of people funneling through there. |
| 01:56:37.27 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:56:54.51 | Councilmember | Is there any sort of initial thoughts besides buying the house that's for sale now on Alexander and destroying it and making the road wider? Is there any – have you – I know that's the toughest question, but is there some – have Have you managed to have some sort of a light bulb moment on how to make that area a little safer, or is there just no way around it given the configuration, at least at this moment in time? If there's no answer to that, then that's okay. |
| 01:57:22.49 | Ed Fotch | So, if you're not, if you While Patty's formulating her answer, nothing ever gives me from talking. You should probably figure it out by now. But what I would say is that, look, everyone who lives on Alexander or South Street and Bridgeway has the same volume of bikes by definition going by. What makes it very tough for the homes right at the beginning of town, among the things, is the people coming down on Alexander are going so fast they don't stop until they get right there. And then once they stop then other people stop. And then the people who try to go around them have to be in traffic and it turns into a bottleneck. And you can't pull into your driveway, you can't get out of your driveway. So aside from buying the home you referenced which is on the market for $3 million or something like that, which seems like it's unlikely to be demolished. I would say, again, that Vista Point trail thing is the thing that's going to get people to stop before they get |
| 01:57:52.34 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:57:52.72 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 01:58:21.86 | Ed Fotch | to the beginning of town. And then once they've stopped and they've recuperated and they've had their bottle of water and all the things we experienced when they were there, particularly if we have an ambassador program, |
| 01:58:22.41 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:58:33.03 | Ed Fotch | they're gonna be moving through there. They won't be stopping 100 yards from where they just stopped. And I think that would be a great first step to alleviate what we have there, which is a big bottleneck. You've got a bunch of driveways on the bay side of the road and the bikers are just littered in there and they're so exhausted and complaining. Nobody told them that it was this hard to bike, the sauce, and all that stuff. So I'd say, do you, |
| 01:58:59.69 | Unknown | . Thank you. . |
| 01:59:06.09 | Patricia Pigman | I would say what we learned from what we did that Saturday was that If you can alert people that the road gets narrow and there's a sharp turn. They just automatically slow down, but they have no idea what they're getting into. and I, It would be great if the bike rental companies gave them more information but that's probably not gonna happen, so I think it's up to us. I really think having ambassadors at that where we were. would be very helpful. And it would also make the people coming feel more welcome because they get up there and there's just cement and they really don't know where they are and how far town is. So I think that would be a great help for all |
| 01:59:57.27 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 01:59:57.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:57.30 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 01:59:57.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:02.18 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:00:09.13 | Councilmember | Does the city have the ability to charge fees to the bicycle rental companies to try and recoup some of the impact to the infrastructure, loss of parking for bicycle parking and the |
| 02:00:23.91 | Ed Fotch | Well, let me start by saying I'm not an attorney and I don't care for them. |
| 02:00:30.04 | Councilmember | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:00:30.31 | Unknown | Hey, awesome. |
| 02:00:30.97 | Councilmember | and that's fine |
| 02:00:34.44 | Adam Politzer | Oh, yeah. Exceptions. |
| 02:00:36.52 | Councilmember | Mary, now you know who's on your side. You're the city attorney's now. |
| 02:00:36.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:36.57 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry. |
| 02:00:36.60 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:00:36.76 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:00:36.94 | Ed Fotch | Yeah. |
| 02:00:40.18 | Councilmember | I'm about to pass out. |
| 02:00:40.62 | Unknown | Pass out. Awful exception. |
| 02:00:41.40 | Warren Novak | Bye. Bye. |
| 02:00:43.71 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:00:44.48 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:00:44.54 | Ed Fotch | What do you expect a doctor to say? I love it. But, you know, most of them don't operate in our jurisdiction. So I'm not exactly, you know, sure how you do that. And we met with Mr. Sears, who runs one of the largest, who I know has put staff in Sausalito for stuff. And I think they have some project with the Chamber of Commerce that we heard. So I agree that basically you've got some private companies that are making a fair amount of money. |
| 02:00:46.41 | Warren Novak | That's a real... |
| 02:00:46.97 | Unknown | laughter |
| 02:00:47.94 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:01:20.95 | Ed Fotch | And at the same time, I also am aware or I am told that there are more bicycle rental companies coming all the time. And so while it's attractive to cut a deal with one or the other since this is sort of never ending, seems like a growing group of folks that we don't particularly have jurisdiction over, I think the only option we have is what happens when someone comes into Sausalito The only thing we've discussed that's associated with this, and I have to say that I think that there was relatively solid support, is to appropriately charge some amount of money to the people who park their bikes in town. I think if you did that, of course the downside is if it's too much, then they won't park in the lot, but if it's a nominal amount, I think what you'd find based on our conversation with the vendors is that they would charge that amount ahead of time, so the people aren't having to get money in their pocket, they could have some kind of a token to park And I also think that's more like they're actually going to park there because they've already paid for their park. So I don't have an answer for you in terms of how you can tax or otherwise levy someone who doesn't have their nexus of business in our jurisdiction. But I think when bicycles come into town, at least the parking component of it might be something where we can generate some revenue. |
| 02:02:45.55 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? |
| 02:02:47.32 | Ed Fotch | No, I do this every day. |
| 02:02:48.60 | Mayor Withey | All right. |
| 02:02:48.80 | Ed Fotch | All right. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:02:49.60 | Vice Mayor | Are you? |
| 02:02:50.74 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor, I have a couple more questions. |
| 02:02:51.32 | Councilmember | Yeah. |
| 02:02:51.59 | Mayor Withey | I know. |
| 02:02:51.65 | Councilmember | We have a couple more questions. Ask any questions because he's an attorney as well. |
| 02:02:54.66 | Councilmember | you |
| 02:02:54.81 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:02:54.91 | Councilmember | Thank you. It ain't right. |
| 02:02:56.90 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:02:57.04 | Ed Fotch | They can ask about it. |
| 02:02:57.68 | Warren Novak | Yes. |
| 02:02:58.03 | Unknown | What? Yeah. |
| 02:03:01.06 | Councilmember | So another question I have is, it's my understanding that Sausalito already has an ordinance that makes it illegal for cyclists to ride on the sidewalks. And so I'm wondering why we're not enforcing that. |
| 02:03:16.55 | Ed Fotch | So I'm not a police officer, but I like them. So I can't answer in enforcement. It's my understanding from the committee meetings that we actually don't currently have an ordinance against that would prohibit bicyclists from riding on the sidewalk. And I will tell you that they're this has been discussed and the reason that our focus was on the south end of town is folks in town who say, well, I understand your concern about biking on the sidewalks, but I bring my young kid, my four-year-old or five-year-old who rides a bike, and that's actually where I want them. riding the bicycle. So our focus has really been on the south end of town, but I cannot answer your question about, |
| 02:04:03.31 | Councilmember | Just a follow-up question on that. I believe the ordinance, I think it It allows children that that's okay, but for adults to ride in. I wonder if Chief Tejada could comment on that, because it was one of the officers in town that actually, it was about six years ago, showed me the ordinance. |
| 02:04:24.72 | Mary Wagner | Good evening. To my knowledge, we do not have any restriction on bicycles on sidewalks. |
| 02:04:32.05 | Councilmember | So I'll do some research on that and follow up. |
| 02:04:35.56 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Mary, do you have any knowledge on that? |
| 02:04:39.88 | Councilmember | Yeah, I saw it. |
| 02:04:41.58 | Ed Fotch | And to be clear, one of our suggestions is to look into, you know, to create such an ordinance, particularly on the south end of town, because it's just too tight. |
| 02:04:51.81 | Councilmember | And a follow-up question? |
| 02:04:53.04 | Mayor Withey | Sure, and then let's see if there are any other questions. |
| 02:04:55.64 | Councilmember | I'm fine to yield at this time, if anyone else. |
| 02:04:57.73 | Mayor Withey | If anyone else. . |
| 02:04:59.40 | Councilmember | So the other question I had was why would you only apply that to the south side of town, why wouldn't it apply to all of Sausalito? It seems like we wouldn't want to have adult cyclists on pedestrian sidewalks. |
| 02:05:17.22 | Ed Fotch | Well, two reasons. One is that, again, even on the committee, we have one committee member who has a four-year-old who says, well, that's where my son rides. You're talking about adults and tourists. And the second is really just one of logistics because as you go further north in town, the street widens. And so there's not as much of a bottleneck. And once you get past the middle of the downtown, the vast majority of the renters stop there and they don't go any further. But to be clear, our recommendation really doesn't comment on more than the south end of town. We're not saying don't do anything on the north end of town. We're saying the pain point right now |
| 02:05:27.75 | Councilmember | You're talking about adults and tourists. |
| 02:05:59.26 | Ed Fotch | We really have a bicycle pedestrian interface that isn't working. is on the south end of town. And to be clear, this doesn't say you can't have a bicycle on the sidewalk. It says, if you do, walk |
| 02:06:12.11 | Councilmember | As a point of clarification, there are bicycle – there are parts of the sidewalk along Bridgeway where bicycles are allowed to ride. You know, at the north end of town along Bridgeway, that whole thing is a bicycle mixed-use path. And also right out here in front of Dunphy Park and on Bridgeway here is a mixed-use bicycle pedestrian path. So there are other – that's one of the reasons, I think, also that you want to tackle the south end first where it's a little less ambiguous as to what's – |
| 02:06:36.62 | Ed Fotch | So, |
| 02:06:40.92 | Ed Fotch | There's just one more piece to it, which is, frankly, this is just a very practical, tactical thing. If you have a sign on the south end of town where all the bikes are coming in and it says don't ride on the sidewalk, by the time they get to the north end of town, they're unlikely to be riding on the sidewalks because you've already sort of trained them in that direction. This is not to say that it's the position of the bicycle committee that you only limit it to that, but we think this is the pain point that needs to be addressed. |
| 02:07:03.73 | Councilmember | So just a point of clarification, I wasn't referring to the off-road bicycle lanes that are already allocated in the north end. I'm talking about specifically the pedestrian-only sidewalks, like along Whiskey Springs and that area. So, yeah, and also I think the signage is a good idea, but I'm specifically looking at legislation, you know, and ordinance. |
| 02:07:30.56 | Mayor Withey | Okay, let's at this point, |
| 02:07:33.89 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry. I do have another question. I thought you were going to open it to other council members to ask questions. |
| 02:07:38.90 | Mayor Withey | I was actually going to open it up for public comment, but if you have another question, please go ahead. |
| 02:07:43.09 | Councilmember | Well, I thought perhaps somebody else had a question. |
| 02:07:44.71 | Mayor Withey | I don't know if you've got a question. |
| 02:07:46.95 | Councilmember | Okay. My other question had to do with the Vista Point Trail. And it wasn't clear to me how that would mitigate traffic to Sausalito. It didn't look like the Vista Point Trail connected to Sausalito. Is that correct? Are you just saying it would be another place – I just need more clarification on that. |
| 02:08:10.49 | Ed Fotch | It's hard to get an image that you have any questions. captures this well. Do you have any questions? So... |
| 02:08:18.88 | Unknown | you have an |
| 02:08:21.75 | Ed Fotch | Alexander Avenue is up at the top of this slide. Vista Point Trail does nothing more than get folks off of the sidewalk coming off of the east side of the Golden Gate Bridge and drops them down into Fort Baker. It basically drops them down and reconnects. You see this goes underneath and it reconnects to the same road they take down. And then it goes to the Discovery Museum in Cavallo Point. So they would be coming up. |
| 02:08:32.01 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:08:48.38 | Ed Fotch | East Road. having passed the Discovery Museum. They'd still come into Sausalito. We're still the only way you can get into Sausalito. but they would be coming up a gentle grade instead of flying down Alexander. They would be on a dedicated bike lane versus Alexander which is. |
| 02:09:06.65 | Councilmember | which is... So you're saying instead of the other, is that called consulmen that goes along? |
| 02:09:08.14 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. |
| 02:09:15.11 | Ed Fotch | Well, right now some of the bikes come on the west side, but that's only if they come across the Golden Gate Bridge on the west side. And that only occurs essentially on the weekends because the west side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the west side sidewalk of the Golden Gate Bridge is effectively closed to renters during the week. It's open in the morning to commuters and at the end of the day, but when the big slug of rental bikers come through on a warm Friday afternoon in July, |
| 02:09:18.24 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 02:09:25.70 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:09:25.87 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:09:44.23 | Ed Fotch | They all come off. of the east side and they all end up going down Alexander Avenue. This would take all those bikers, tens of thousands of bikers, and put them safely and in an aesthetically pleasing way into Fort Baker. And then they would come into Sausalito with a lot of time and a place to stop before they get into town. |
| 02:09:53.16 | Mary Wagner | as bikers. |
| 02:10:07.20 | Mr. Novak | Ed, one comment on that is that the reason that the West Side The reason that the west side is used on the weekends is because the maintenance crew does not work. Sir, question. No. Okay. |
| 02:10:17.51 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. you |
| 02:10:24.95 | Mr. Novak | I'll comment on that later. |
| 02:10:26.23 | Unknown | There's a point of clarification. Nothing you should have said. |
| 02:10:29.27 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But I – no, no, no. I think that's – I just wanted to clarify that. Okay. There's a reason for that. Okay. But I think, you know, if we're going to stick to what we said was going to be the way we operate, this is time for questions. So, is there any other questions up here? |
| 02:10:29.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:29.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:29.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:10:29.93 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:10:30.35 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:10:30.37 | Unknown | you |
| 02:10:30.52 | Unknown | I got it. |
| 02:10:31.62 | Mr. Novak | Okay. I just wanted to clarify that. There's a reason for that. |
| 02:10:51.28 | Mayor Withey | So, If not, Let's open this up to the public, because we may actually have some more questions for you, Edwin. as comments evolve. Is there any member of the public who'd like to comment on this item? No. Okay. So... |
| 02:11:10.77 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:11:15.56 | Mayor Withey | Let's bring this up here for comment. And any other questions, actually? |
| 02:11:18.34 | Councilmember | I think the Vista Point is a great idea. I always wondered why. I mean, there may be some obscure reason why they closed it way back when, and there may be some security reason why they haven't reopened it, you know, at post 9-11 kind of thing. But that would be a great way to at least get the wrecked by it. You know, the Spandex guys aren't going to go that way. They want to go the fastest way possible, and they love the speed going down the hill. But it would be great for the renters. That would be perfect. And maybe they will like it because of the cool view. Who knows? The spandex people. |
| 02:11:45.23 | Unknown | And... |
| 02:11:49.77 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, I wrote it today, frankly. I mean, it sort of depends. Look, if you're trying to get to the Paradise Loop, you're not going to go there. But if you're just really trying to get some exercise, you may do that. But I just wanted to point out, and your comment reminded me of this, excuse me, both the GJNRA and the Park Service and the Bridge District have been at our meetings and said they are in favor of this. I think there was a 9-11 security thing, but they have big fences and you can ride up. There's no different than going the other way on Councilman Road. So we're not setting you up for, gee, someone's against this. It seems to be a, it needs a political push to prioritize it. Otherwise, I think we're going to be talking about this two years from now or three years from now, as opposed to getting it done maybe for next year. |
| 02:11:55.94 | Councilmember | Right. |
| 02:12:23.23 | Councilmember | Right. Thank you. That's great. |
| 02:12:27.23 | Adam Politzer | . Thank you. |
| 02:12:29.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:34.64 | Mayor Withey | three years from now as opposed to getting it done maybe for next year. Okay. Is it before, you sort of started your comment period there, Council Member Leong, but, |
| 02:12:46.11 | Councilmember | No, you just put it. |
| 02:12:47.24 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:12:47.26 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:12:47.33 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:12:47.51 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:12:47.78 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:12:49.72 | Councilmember | Thanks. Yeah. I thought you said it was the coming |
| 02:12:52.61 | Mayor Withey | It is. No, but they kept your time running, so I wanted to reset it for you. |
| 02:12:56.51 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:12:56.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:56.59 | Unknown | I wanted to reset it for you. |
| 02:12:59.17 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:12:59.24 | Unknown | Go. |
| 02:12:59.75 | Mr. Novak | Okay. All right. By the way, one of the reasons that that road was closed for the last three years was because the Golden Gate Bridge was doing a lot of construction, and that's where they stored a lot of the materials. Kerry Witt, who's one of the people that's in charge of Golden Gate, has told me that once that was clear... that would open up the possibility and most likely to use that road down. positive point is when you're traveling down there, first of all, it is a beautiful view, but you're coming up on a flat, before you're coming into Sausalito. There's that stop sign. So at least at that point, they're not flying down Alexander. but they're starting off at that point at that stop sign. at a very slow speed, and I think that makes the big difference also. |
| 02:13:57.09 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:13:58.93 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. Well, I just want a great presentation, Ed, and thank you, Patricia, and the other members of the committee, John Cox and Tom Riley and Bob Page. I also want to say I think this committee's done a lot of work and it's been great. And one of the main reasons is we've had excellent staff support. Our public works director, Jonathan Goldman, comes to all the meetings, as does Captain Rohrabacher. and we get the Marin Bicycle Coalition there. So we've really had the right people at the table. to work on these issues, and I think it's shown in the kind of Recommendations that we have from everyone and also councilmember what miners every month |
| 02:14:35.60 | Mr. Novak | And also Councilmember Weiner's. service. |
| 02:14:38.52 | Vice Mayor | Park service. Oh, yeah. And he put up a lot of people. So we've really had the right players. And I think we're on the right track to address a lot of these issues. |
| 02:14:38.62 | Mr. Novak | Park Service. |
| 02:14:46.63 | Vice Mayor | I support you know, the entire wish list that we have there. Specifically, I think even tonight, I think on the sidewalk legislation, I'd be willing to entertain a motion to have our city attorney draft something in terms of that, and we can talk about some of the specifics Bicycle parking, we're going to talk about it at OMIT tomorrow, but we're also going to bring it in the next council meeting, some legislation about. bicycle parking on the sidewalks, This is the point. It's... a great idea. I think at some point, I think this council probably should draft a letter supporting, but we've also contacted Kate Sears, Um, our representative on the County Board of Commissioners, and we have her on board to help us on some of these others, like TAM and other places that we can really move that along, because this Vista Point is a really important part, I think. And it's actually not that far away. The Park Service really wants to do it. I think the bridge is certainly a minimum neutral, but we want to do it. I think it's now just moving it along, and it's not that difficult to do. I think the crosswalks we should take a look at, and we need to work with public works on that. So at any rate, great job, and I think we're on the right road, so thank you all. |
| 02:16:05.47 | Councilmember | Thank you. So I want to thank the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee as well for your hard work. Really appreciate it. I appreciated the presentation tonight. A couple comments. It seems like there continues to be a focus on mitigating and managing the bicycle numbers. And I understand we have to do that, but I'm also interested in exploring more opportunities to regroup some of the fees we're losing and potentially even mitigate the numbers in some way by looking and exploring fees, fees for parking, fees for infrastructure, any creative way that we might be able to do that, because I think that's warranted. I would certainly support an ordinance if we don't already have one, which I thought we did, regarding riding on the sidewalks, stopping that and enforcing that, because that's just a real hazard. And the other thing – I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor? And the other thing would be the Vista Trail. You know, I'm looking at this slide, and I'm seeing what looks like a pristine hiking trail. in a very quiet, serene area. And the thought of that getting paved over for hordes of tour bikes, I guess, I need to kind of walk it and familiarize myself with it and understand what the logic is on that. Because if we're not If it's not another artery into Sausalito, so it wouldn't, I mean, and we're not going to have the spandex crowd taking that. For me, the verdict is still out on the Vista Point Trail option. I don't quite know if I understand that yet. And let's see, other options. Oh yeah, and with respect to the ordinance for the sidewalk, I would like to encompass the town. you know, apply it, you know, to all of Sausalito. I think that would be good. And finally, if there might be some calming opportunities, street calming opportunities for Alexander, where Alexander, you know, meets South, you know, whether it's painting it. I know Cavallo Point has done some stuff to slow down traffic. That would not be a hazard. Obviously, we don't want to speed bump there because cyclists would go flying. But, you know, something to slow folks down would be good. But I want to thank the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee for your hard work. And I also want to thank you for all the time you put in and your presentation. Thanks. |
| 02:19:04.72 | Mayor Withey | Ed and all the members of your committee, thank you very much. I know a couple of years ago when I was campaigning, This was something on everybody's mind. You couldn't get away from it, you know? And it's been ever since I've been on the Council. Everybody wants to What is the solution for the bikes? I heard some really interesting stuff tonight, so thanks a lot. One of the benefits or hazards of going commenting last is that everybody said everything before, and that's true. I also fully endorse all of the recommendations and see no reason, time permitted, why we can't explore some of the perhaps ordinance suggestion changes that you suggest. Is there anybody who'd like to, I'm done, so we have one minute rebuttals or further comments? Yeah, the only thing I... |
| 02:20:14.31 | Councilmember | for one minute? MR. Yeah, the only thing I would – I understand the idea of not riding on the sidewalks. I think it kind of goes without saying that that's the most safe way. But it's too bad the chief and the captain left because what I'd like to ask them how you would ever enforce that on a – |
| 02:20:32.42 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:20:32.65 | Councilmember | Thank you. on a busy day for people, most of whom don't speak English and who don't have any ways of accepting a ticket because they don't live in the United States. That, to me, it's an interesting quandary. I also – but I hear it's like you want to say don't write on the sidewalks and we need better signage to indicate that. That's not written signage. That's more – international signage of graphic signage along that line. But that would have been interesting to see how to get their feedback on that. And I agree, like, what do you do to ask for someone's ID, and what age do you take? to be a child to ride on the – what age is that? Is it 5? Is it 10? Is it 18? You know, so it's kind of an interesting – because there's really nowhere for kids to ride their bikes at Sausalito. But with that being said, you can't really ride your bike on the sidewalk, on Bridgeway on the weekends anyway, because you can't – it's just there's too many people to ride your bike there. |
| 02:21:29.74 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 02:21:31.87 | Mary Wagner | Bye. |
| 02:21:31.89 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:21:31.90 | Councilmember | Bye. |
| 02:21:32.07 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 02:21:32.16 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:21:32.17 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:21:32.24 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:21:37.44 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:21:37.45 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:21:37.49 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:21:37.72 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:21:38.55 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:21:38.60 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:21:38.65 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor? |
| 02:21:38.84 | Vice Mayor | you |
| 02:21:41.42 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, either one of you. |
| 02:21:43.09 | Vice Mayor | I just actually, if you don't mind, I just, because on that point, on the sidewalk. |
| 02:21:43.11 | Mayor Withey | I just, |
| 02:21:49.13 | Vice Mayor | One of the issues I think as on many things, we don't have police enforcement. It's complaint driven or on a necessity basis, speed and everything. One of the points I wanted to raise is that we've had conversations with the bike rental companies, it would actually help them if they put it in their brochures and says Sausalito said you can't write on the sidewalks. So that's do's and don'ts. So that would be a helpful thing to do. I think it helps with the residents. I mean, I think Jacques mentioned that he |
| 02:22:10.44 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:22:10.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:22:10.72 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:22:10.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:22:10.82 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:22:18.85 | Vice Mayor | told someone not to write on Vice, sidewalk, actually that happened to me before I knew that it was legal. And of course, you know, most people, once you know it, you only want to tell them if it's the truth. So, and, you know, we could look at exemptions. I really trust our police department that, that they're gonna walk in and if someone happened to have a kid on a thing that they're not gonna be given tickets. So I think it's the right thing to do. I would really start on the south end, mainly because we have these other bike paths on the north end. You said so, and I'd be making a motion at some point, but I'm out of my time. Thank you. |
| 02:22:53.07 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor? Yeah, so I just quick rebuttal. I think we're all in agreement that it's okay for children to ride on the sidewalks, and I have a feeling that |
| 02:22:53.88 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. |
| 02:23:03.53 | Councilmember | There are some ordinance that a town has already created that has, you know, addressed that issue that we could leverage from as a guideline. Second of all, I think one of the things we can do is make sure that the rental bike companies are not promoting riding on our sidewalks. I know at one point I visited their website and they had a photo of a cyclist riding in Sausalito on our sidewalk, actually two people. So I don't know if that's still there, but I remember we complained about it at the time. So those types of things, it's all about safety. I know I was almost hit and I've talked to others, folks who have had near misses walking on a sidewalk with the cyclists that they encountered. So I do think it's a very important thing. So that's all I have to say. |
| 02:23:58.12 | Mayor Withey | Does anybody else want to? |
| 02:23:59.03 | Mr. Novak | comment. Well, yes. First of all, to be able to pull a bicycle that's on the sidewalk, they don't have license plates. they'll spend 20 minutes just trying to find the number, the model number. So I don't think that's going to work, but I think the expansion of, And we've discussed this of the ambassadors. It doesn't have to be just at that point up there at East Road. We've also discussed the possibility of having ambassadors on on Bridgeway, maybe at Richardson, and maybe at Princess Street to remind people of staying off the sidewalk if it's possible, or walk your bikes and where the bike parking is. And I'm hoping that these ambassadors, with their vast are able to just get across. I think when they see the people, ambassadors there, I think 95% of them are going to listen to them. So, and once again, thank you for your hard work, both Patty, And your team. Thank you, Wade. |
| 02:25:11.48 | Councilmember | Can I just add that, not to belabor this, but my point was not that we shouldn't make it not legal at a certain point to ride on bicycles. My point is we shouldn't expect there to be a lot of enforcement of that action because it's just not, A, really great use of our three officers on duty time and the amount of tickets they could actually issue to someone who would tell somebody that you can't ride on a bicycle on the sidewalk is just – I think your other goal is of diverting traffic, having them come more slowly into Sausalito, up through Fort Baker, and then having signage that says you can't ride on the sidewalk, and if that's the legal – we pass something that makes that not legal at an appropriate age, then, you know, that's I think the realistic limit to where you could go with that. But the other – I mean, and I think your ideas that your committee came up with prepaying for parking. as opposed as calling it a tax or a fee would work exactly. If you pay for something ahead of time you're more inclined to use it. I think that's a great suggestion. |
| 02:26:17.07 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor, I have a quick comment on that. So I think that with respect to enforcement on riding on sidewalks, to me it's about the price of safety. What's the price of potential liability lawsuits from folks who are hit on sidewalks? To me, to me, it's well worth the investment. I did a survey of residents about two years ago and asked them questions about bicycle safety and how many times they encountered a bicycle infraction downtown. |
| 02:26:20.94 | Councilmember | at least. |
| 02:26:21.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:58.10 | Councilmember | And something like 85% stated that 90%, actually, no, it was all of the time, 100% of the time driving through downtown Sausalito, they witnessed some form of of infraction on safety, either a cyclist riding on a sidewalk, a cyclist running a red light, a cyclist running a stop sign, a cyclist speeding, passing on the left, some sort of behavior. So clearly there's opportunity for enforcement. |
| 02:27:27.22 | Mr. Novak | There is no stop signs on Bridgeway. Oh, Alexander. It's talking about downtown. |
| 02:27:31.96 | Councilmember | It's talking about downtown. |
| 02:27:33.03 | Mayor Withey | Um, |
| 02:27:33.25 | Mr. Novak | So if I could... |
| 02:27:33.33 | Mayor Withey | So if I could... If I could have my one minute. I hear that I understand that this is almost impossible to enforce, but it shouldn't stop us at least putting some form of rules in place. If we got the rules in place, the chances are it will reduce the frequency that people will write on the sidewalks. It's just that simple. And that's a good thing. And if we can promote the fact that we don't allow riding on the sidewalks, we get the bike companies to put it in their don'ts and do's so that they can give their clients some rules of the road. going to be – make life a lot easier. So you mentioned you wanted to, Vice Mayor, make a motion. Thank you. I realize that there is no motion needed but the vice mayor wants to make a decision. |
| 02:28:37.39 | Vice Mayor | There is. Well, |
| 02:28:40.78 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:28:40.80 | Vice Mayor | and don't Well, I want to actually, so we want to explore. I'd like to move this along on the sidewalk issue. And I know that we can't. So I'd like to. |
| 02:28:48.19 | Mayor Withey | and I know. |
| 02:28:51.09 | Vice Mayor | to move that we have our city attorney, draft force or give us an outline of what would be necessary to have, an ordinance that would restrict riding on sidewalks from the south border of Sausalito to Johnson Street uh... that and that would include walking bicycles would not be illegal be it'd be uh... riding bicycles. And I would say we would have it 12 and over exempt. I'm just arbitrarily taking a stab at that. |
| 02:29:26.09 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:29:26.19 | Vice Mayor | I would say. |
| 02:29:27.25 | Mayor Withey | if. Before we proceed, I think our city manager wanted to say something. |
| 02:29:30.16 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Something. Yeah, I would – understanding the desire, I think there's a process that this should follow. The bike and ped committee I think is the first place, and I think they put through some objectives that they want the council to consider, and then they can come forward formal recommendations. but they can also call out which ordinance review they'd like the council to consider, and then I would direct that to the legislative committee to let you folks prioritize all the types of ordinances and other legal activity that we have the city attorney working on. come back to the Council and ask to either move that up or keep it in the same location, but I would start with Good question. Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee to go back through and narrow this down. There are certain things there that have no cost, and it's volunteer-driven. Other things that are politically driven that we use our leverage with the Park Service and the bridge to look at increasing signage. But the ordinance, you know, be it the we're going to hear tomorrow, the bike parking ordinance, so that's working its way through the system. Thank you. And then if we want to look at the sidewalk ordinance again I would have that come from them to the Legs Committee back up to the council |
| 02:30:52.17 | Vice Mayor | But just to be clear, Bicycle parking ordinance is not coming through the Ledge Committee and was actually originally scheduled to go directly to the council. So I mean, I have to say, this is a fairly simple matter. Thank you. |
| 02:31:05.38 | Adam Krivach | I don't know. |
| 02:31:05.52 | Vice Mayor | It sounds fairly to have the Bicycle Committee go back I mean, these are a few... points and then go to the Legislative Committee and back to hear on a recommendation. It just difficult, and we're not taking that path on the bicycle parking. We were going to come right to the council. So I actually would prefer that we expedite. I second. |
| 02:31:25.87 | Councilmember | I second. Let's move forward. |
| 02:31:28.38 | Adam Politzer | Well, I'd like to respond. Nothing that we do here has ever been easy. Even easy things have been difficult. |
| 02:31:33.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:31:35.59 | Adam Politzer | The bike parking has been in discussion for multiple years and it's finally making its way up to get to the Tracy Lane bike parking has taken six years to get there. All of this has been working methodically forward, work of the committee is where this is now starting to gel because as you mentioned earlier having the captain and our public works director work with the committee that are bringing all of the right stakeholders and players to the table to have this discussion. is probably actually accelerate it what has happened in the past. So all due respect, um, talking about limiting bikes on the sidewalk is going to be complicated. And as a reminder, because we all have seen families and seniors on sidewalks, the five-year-old doesn't ride by themself on the sidewalk. They're there with mom or dad. or the babysitter on the sidewalk. we have to look at the nuances of this and again I think the bike and ped committees best place to be in the weeds on this discussion and then bring that recommendation forward. But the council can direct as they wish I just wanted to give a little bit of clarification on the process and where it's been in the past. |
| 02:32:53.82 | Mr. Novak | Amen. You know, the age seems to be an issue. I really don't look at it that way. I think the age should be 12 or 13. And. and let it fall that way, really. Thank you. Do we have a second for that motion? |
| 02:33:13.50 | Councilmember | Do we have a second for that motion? I seconded it. |
| 02:33:15.27 | Councilmember | I know. |
| 02:33:15.35 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:33:18.17 | Councilmember | I think this is an important issue, and I think we can move forward on it. |
| 02:33:22.37 | Councilmember | So who's going to do the work for this? since you're in such a hurry. Where's it going to come from? Is Mary going to write it? Is Mary going to write it? Are you going to lower again, you know, is Mary going to write this legislation for you? |
| 02:33:32.63 | Adam Krivach | More work. |
| 02:33:33.36 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:33:35.20 | Councilmember | Well, |
| 02:33:35.43 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:33:36.40 | Councilmember | Or is the bike committee going to start it and then give it to Mary? Or how do you want it to work? |
| 02:33:36.43 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:33:36.46 | Vice Mayor | whereas the bike- |
| 02:33:36.95 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:33:37.02 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:33:40.24 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:33:40.31 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:33:40.41 | Councilmember | Chancellor Gowdorff. |
| 02:33:41.04 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:33:41.09 | Councilmember | politics on your mind here. |
| 02:33:41.68 | Vice Mayor | I don't think it's politics I think it's just a matter of getting this thing done I you know just got it through |
| 02:33:46.03 | Councilmember | We're going to get it done. Don't say we're not going to get it done. I don't know why you're in such a, like, go full tilt on this, but let's hear it. |
| 02:33:47.87 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. |
| 02:33:53.41 | Vice Mayor | Okay, well, we can start with the bike committee, and then we'll go to the legislative committee, but I think we're overcomplicating something that could be quite simple. So it's... Yeah. I mean, it's one thing that we have when we're redoing our historic regulations to go through all this, but this is a fairly simple thing, I think. So... |
| 02:34:03.73 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 02:34:03.75 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:34:03.85 | Jonathon Goldman | I mean, |
| 02:34:10.65 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:34:11.01 | Vice Mayor | Uh... That's all I can say. And the bike committee weighed in on it. There are a few points to it. I don't know if I'm sending it back to them. We need someone drafting the language, and we need to approve it. Those are the two things that need to be done. |
| 02:34:24.34 | Councilmember | Yeah. |
| 02:34:24.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:34:24.98 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, if I may just have clarify a couple of things from Mary and staff. |
| 02:34:25.08 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:34:36.62 | Mayor Withey | Have we done any previous research on this? Do we know what other cities have done? Do we have draft ordinances to look at? Do we have, you know, the basic stuff that we do, the groundwork that we do when we start asking the question what should be in the text of an ordinance? What have we got to draw on right now? |
| 02:34:56.11 | Mary Wagner | Mr. Mayor, I have not. I don't know if the committee has done any of that gathering of information, but I personally have not to date done that. |
| 02:35:05.85 | Mayor Withey | Okay, and my second question, Ed, if I can put you on the spot. Wearing the committee's hat, what would your recommendation be for how we move this forward? |
| 02:35:21.71 | Ed Fotch | So I can tell you with certainty there are cities, including cities in California, that have ordinances that say you cannot ride on the sidewalk. In fact, I think it was San Jose that passed an ordinance most recently. I don't know the extent of the ordinance. In other words, I don't know which parts of town. It's probably not the entire town. There's no doubt that there are ordinances of that type. I'm personally not aware of an ordinance that identifies an age at which you can and can't ride on the sidewalk. And so I'm really not an expert on that subtlety of this. But I agree that it does need some priority. I also assume that it needed some research that was probably beyond the scope of the committee and that would need to be prioritized with staff time. So I don't frankly know what the typical legislative process is. On its face, it's quite a simple thing, and it doesn't seem like you need a whole lot to move the concept forward, but to move the ordinance forward, I would assume, would need some research to see how other people have tackled this, particularly in towns in California. |
| 02:35:40.39 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:35:56.58 | Unknown | the |
| 02:35:56.75 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:36:12.86 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:36:16.47 | Mary Wagner | and |
| 02:36:31.78 | Councilmember | I mean, I know Berkeley has bicycle on the sidewalk legislation. And there are other cities. San Jose, as you're saying, is one. So there's certainly it's just a question of process. I think we can gather those together, pick and choose the pieces that, you know, kind of meld. And I would suggest running it by. you folks, if you're willing to do it first, in terms of what the, um, not the legal language of it so much as, like, here's what the criteria should be about ages or whatever the case may be, and get buy-in from the community level and then bring it back and give it to the council to go with. And if you want to send it. |
| 02:37:05.66 | Ed Fotch | And if you want to send it. We have a meeting coming up in two weeks, and so we can get that turned around in our next meeting and bring that back either to you or to the city staff. Actually, I mean, it's a good forum to have the discussion. We've had some of this, but I think now that we see that the council has an appetite for this, I think we can get a bit more specific, and it's a tremendously helpful to have Jonathan there and the captain, because we can talk about this. I will say this is really not the expectation of anyone certainly on the bicycle committee that we're going to be giving tickets. But you don't want to tell people that's illegal when it's legal. I think this is really directionally, I mean it's illegal to jaywalk but people do it all the time and we seem to have found our way but I think we all really directionally. I mean, it's illegal to jaywalk, but people do it all the time, and we seem to have found our way through it. And I think we all think of it in that. And if the ambassadors can say, please don't ride on the sidewalk. And the bike companies tell them you can't ride on the sidewalk. And the signs say, I think we're going to get 90% of the bikes off of this sidewalk. And that's really what we're looking for. |
| 02:37:17.09 | Mary Wagner | Actually, I mean, |
| 02:37:43.78 | Councilmember | Oh, yeah, I'm with you. |
| 02:37:52.17 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:37:52.49 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:37:57.08 | Unknown | And if the evangelists |
| 02:38:00.56 | Councilmember | Right. |
| 02:38:10.55 | Councilmember | Right. So, I mean, I'll volunteer to work with the bike head committee or to go to help, you know, bring that language together if the |
| 02:38:11.26 | Unknown | I mean, |
| 02:38:20.64 | Mr. Novak | other |
| 02:38:21.65 | Councilmember | I'm not sure. |
| 02:38:22.11 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 02:38:22.95 | Councilmember | . |
| 02:38:23.03 | Mr. Novak | Just a question then. If it goes to the... debate committee. Then it comes back here. And we'll say we do put it into legislation. We're still talking also about a 30-day... wait to? So you're talking now July, August, you're September so The question is, do we rush in now? or do we make sure that whether it's September, October, November, really doesn't, it changes anyway, so we have it for the next year rather than this year. Because no matter what, you're not going to get it through any earlier than... September 1, anyway. service. |
| 02:39:09.73 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. I mean, that's fine. Legislation is going to take what legislation is. I just don't want to have this thing just get buried that we start back at square one, go through these other – Councilman Leone's suggestion is a good one. Work with the bike and pet committee, and then we bring it back here. Is that a fair thing? I think that's – because it doesn't – He's all ready. He's okay. |
| 02:39:29.18 | Mr. Novak | He's already... look, he's got his vest on. |
| 02:39:31.19 | Vice Mayor | He's got his best answer. Okay, so I would certainly... I can get a bigger one. I can't accept this one. With that kind of direction from council, I would draw my motion, and then they can consider it. We consider it when we get back. |
| 02:39:31.21 | Mr. Novak | I just got to say, |
| 02:39:35.58 | Mr. Novak | . I'm here. |
| 02:39:36.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:37.03 | Mr. Novak | that kind of direction from |
| 02:39:38.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:38.45 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:39:42.84 | Councilmember | Okay. |
| 02:39:44.47 | Vice Mayor | But to be clear, |
| 02:39:45.99 | Councilmember | I'm not trying to slow you down. I'm just trying to make it walk through the same process as everything else, but I don't think that'll be much slower what you're anticipating anyway, because it's not super complicated, at least from what you're asking for at the moment. We may find, if we look at – other legislation in other communities that there are some weird nuances we haven't thought about, but at this point it doesn't seem super complicated. Okay. So where are we? Yes, please. |
| 02:40:08.83 | Councilmember | Okay, so where are we? Yes, please. I would like to comment. So, yeah, all I can say is I've been asking for this since my first year of election, so I would love to see this happen. We need this ordinance. Countless near accidents happened, so I'm glad. So we're not going to do a motion. We're going to just move. We've, by consensus, we're going to – okay. |
| 02:40:10.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:29.55 | Unknown | We've, by consensus, we're going to... |
| 02:40:35.72 | Mayor Withey | I think the good news here is that this is very much in motion, you know? So – and thank you very much to the Bike and Peg Committee for getting us there. |
| 02:40:43.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:49.61 | Unknown | Good. |
| 02:40:50.03 | Councilmember | Part of that kind of consensus direction, I would direct, and this is a consensus direct staff to write the appropriate people of the National Park Service and the Golden Gate Bridge District about the Vista Point Trail, at least saying, hey, we'd like to have you study this a little further, and how can we move this forward to the next slide. |
| 02:41:11.77 | Mr. Novak | I think that's the That's the political will that we're going to have to have to be able to make sure that they address this and give us our answers that we've been asking for the last few years on this. |
| 02:41:26.43 | Vice Mayor | And One last thing on their wish list on the crosswalks. Are we going to have any study on that, any further? What would be the next steps on that type of thing? |
| 02:41:40.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:40.61 | Councilmember | That's a tough one. |
| 02:41:41.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:41.60 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:41:41.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:41.65 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:41:41.65 | Mr. Novak | I think maybe we should ask for the police or DPW to maybe give us some input on it and see what they recommend or what they would do. |
| 02:41:41.70 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 02:41:41.72 | Councilmember | I, |
| 02:41:42.01 | Unknown | but, |
| 02:41:42.21 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. |
| 02:41:42.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:54.51 | Councilmember | Yeah, I have a comment on that. It's my understanding that – and maybe, Mary, you can help me on this one – it's my understanding that it's by law that if there's an intersection, I guess, on either side of the street, that there is kind of – the public has a right to cross. Or is that – did I get that wrong? Oh, is Chief Tahiti – or – |
| 02:42:12.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:42:12.10 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:42:12.11 | Unknown | you |
| 02:42:17.29 | Councilmember | Not if it's unsafe. It's an expert. You can't put a certain line of sight to have a cross-block. |
| 02:42:19.25 | Councilmember | Big, big. |
| 02:42:19.98 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. |
| 02:42:22.75 | Councilmember | I'm specifically thinking of Valley Street and, is it Valley and Second? |
| 02:42:27.76 | Jacques Ullman | Bye. |
| 02:42:31.30 | Jonathon Goldman | Um, |
| 02:42:35.94 | Jonathon Goldman | how best to answer the question. We actually have studied, at Mr. Mitchell's suggestion, the feasibility of a crosswalk at Valley and 2nd, and on both legs of that intersection, and have determined that it is entirely appropriate and that there's adequate site distance for crosswalks there and intend to mark those along with some other traffic calming improvements that that we've identified. With respect to the law as to whether there's an implied crosswalk or not, I asked Mr. Mitchell to give me the code that he referred to when he indicated that he was under the impression that that law existed. but I think the higher issue here has to do with safety and liability. And if there is an implied crosswalk and someone walks into it and is struck by a car because the car didn't have adequate sight distance to tell whether there was someone in the intersection or not, The person who decided to cross the street there, I think would be more likely to not only to suffer physical harm, but to at least be found in part responsible for the accident. And we won't strike any crosswalks in places where the sight distances aren't adequate for safe. |
| 02:44:21.92 | Councilmember | But the site distance is adequate for Valley and second? It is. Okay. I remember because, Mr. Mayor, I remember driving down recently and there was an elderly woman and she was standing there And I look back, she was standing there forever just waiting to try and cross at that. It was very sad. So I'm very happy to hear about the crosswalks. |
| 02:44:45.02 | Mayor Withey | Good. So do we have, have we given direction to staff sufficiently? |
| 02:44:47.57 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 02:44:49.46 | Adam Politzer | Correct. Mr. Mayor, similar to the Duffy Park discussion earlier, you know, I think the committee was looking for the consensus that their priorities are are on track. is valuable and encouraging them to continue to work. We have two staff members that attend the meetings Obviously, we're getting a consensus from the council that the items that were listed there and a handful of others. and staff will continue to work on those. And this, again, is on the staff's workload. So this whole area is part of the public works and the police department's workload. So they'll take – there is no direction that's necessary. There's a consensus and a variety of comments that were made that we'll take and fold that into our – |
| 02:45:22.70 | Mary Wagner | area |
| 02:45:38.02 | Adam Politzer | workload, some of the things will be brought to the top of the workload and some of the things will be pushed down. |
| 02:45:44.15 | Unknown | Everybody happy? Thank you. |
| 02:45:45.62 | Mr. Novak | I'm not. |
| 02:45:46.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:45:46.78 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:45:47.30 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:45:47.64 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 02:45:48.97 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. So, okay, so with that, we will close this agenda item. And again, Ed, Patty, and the whole team, thank you very much indeed. |
| 02:46:03.17 | Mayor Withey | Okay, I'm... |
| 02:46:04.26 | Charlie Francis | The Press-A-B. The President. I'm just... |
| 02:46:09.12 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:46:09.33 | Charlie Francis | Okay. |
| 02:46:09.98 | Adam Krivach | . |
| 02:46:10.15 | Charlie Francis | Yeah. |
| 02:46:10.98 | Adam Krivach | Thank you. |
| 02:46:11.03 | Vice Mayor | You guys are always doing that. Swapping clothes. |
| 02:46:11.84 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 02:46:11.98 | Adam Krivach | You guys are always |
| 02:46:13.97 | Unknown | I'm doing that. Swap and close. Thank you. Thanks. |
| 02:46:21.32 | Mayor Withey | The next item on the agenda is the adoption of the fiscal year 2014-15 budget with a number of other authorizations needed by law. And we will... |
| 02:46:21.58 | Unknown | like, you know, like, you know Thank you. |
| 02:46:37.02 | Mayor Withey | hand us over to our capable administrative services director, Charlie Francis. |
| 02:46:43.55 | Charlie Francis | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the council. |
| 02:46:49.42 | Charlie Francis | I don't have a clipboard, but I have a binder. It's more empowering than authoritative. |
| 02:46:55.24 | Unknown | . |
| 02:47:04.14 | Unknown | up. |
| 02:47:08.57 | Charlie Francis | This is my... |
| 02:47:16.81 | Charlie Francis | Well, the agenda item before you tonight is the third and final presentation of the draft budget. By the end of the evening, staff will be recommending that you take a number of actions to officially adopt the budget. We start off with a two-year resource allocation plan that includes a two-year operating capital budget and a multi-year capital improvement plan. And then we distill that down until tonight where we officially adopt a budget year-by-year or the first year of the budget. So tonight we would like to cover some budget highlights, go into, again, some department CIP discussions, talk briefly about long-term financing, summarize again the new budget format, and then we'll be recommending that council adopt the budget. Just dot me at any time if you have any questions. It might be easier that way. The budget was proposed and prepared based on some strategic budget strategies where we wanted to optimize all our revenue sources. We are capitalizing on the cost streamlining that brought us into structural balance. We're maintaining our reserves that are determined on a risk-based analysis. And finally, there'll be linkages to the priority calendar that I'll cover here tonight, too. So first, some budget highlights. The first budget highlight we'd like to point out is that we've got a rebounding economy, and the balance between our elastic revenues and our non-elastic revenues not only brought us through the recession, but when the economy now is rebounding, we're able to then generate more revenues to stay structurally balanced and continue providing the excellent level of service that we've provided through the recession. We've – our cost streamlining, we've capitalized on our labor reform strategy. And I'm just going to highlight two quick points. One was our pension reform. Our pension reform that went into place right before the state of California's pension reform allowed us to close a Tier 1 pool and create a Tier 2 and a Tier 3 pool. We also then used some of our reserves to pay off the miscellaneous side fund and the fire side fund, and we lowered our pay ranges. And the result of that for the three years since pension reform has been a total of over $750,000 of cost savings. So we have optimized revenues. We have cost savings occurring through the three years, and that allows us to stay structurally balanced as we go forward into the future. In terms of our OPEB cost returns, and just to put our OPEB costs into perspective, we only have 29 retired annuitants right now. And because of our OPEB reform, we closed the pool. There's only 36 more that will ever be eligible if they stay working at the city and if they enter that retirement. So the most that at any one point in time that we would ever have retired is 65. I did a little analysis of projecting out when people would come into the pool and assume that everyone who could retire would have retired. would retire at the at the date that they were eligible. And then I assumed a mortality age of 90. And what we have is going from the 29 current annuitants to a plateau of 52 to 53 annuitants about 10 years out. And then that currently, and then that just starts to drop till within 60 years, the final annuitant is no longer in the pool. And the other thing important about that reform is that the median age grows. Right now our median age is 66. Now median means Half of those 29 annuitants are over 66 and half of them are under 66. And that's important because when you hit 65, you go on to Medicare, and that reduces the employer cost. So – and it shifts the cost to the annuitant. So our reform then brought this age up higher so that we continually reducing the employer's cost and exposure to any benefits. If we did not do pension reform. we would have had an additional 31 eligible retirees added to that 36. And they would have never gone away because they would – as many come into the pool or leaving the pool. And we did that by converting 17 employees from to find benefit to defined contribution by offering them Uh-huh. a switch out and then we completely removed without any cost to the city 14 employees from eligibility by just by saying if you were here three years or less you no longer receive that anymore. Now so those 31 added to those 36 and then continually growing the pull would have kept our median age in the 60s so we would have always never – we've never optimized our cost and our return based on moving into Medicare age. But our pool of retired annuitants would have increased exponentially. uh... the The actions of this city council is based on the recommendations of staff. created the ability to have labor reform generate significant savings and thereby keep us structurally balanced as we move forward. We took those intrepid actions that that addressed a serious issue because it was a serious issue. And we continually to look at pension reform and OPEB reform as things that – where can we continue? What can we do and what ought we do? Because that's what we did in the past. We did what we could, and we did what we ought to. So we're always looking at that. But now we have other serious issues that we need to look at. maintaining our reserve funds. Our reserve funds are growing. They're growing substantially from where they were back in 2002. But right now they're based on a risk-based strategy that looks at our revenue fluctuation, looks at our exposure to certain kinds of other risks, and we believe that we are adequately funded for reserves, totally liquid reserves, cash we could access right away of over $3 million. But this other $6 million in reserves are assets that could be monetized with very little effort. So we have close to about $10 million of reserves just for general fund activities. The budget also created net operating income by restructuring all the leases, by having our core anchor tenants now in place with automatic increases to their rents where our revenues are increasing. And now that we'll be paying off the last debt service to West America Bank, we've created a $400,000 cushion so that we'll have money to invest back in MLK to improve the facilities, to improve our recreation facilities, and to address accessibility issues that we have at MLK. This year's budget created the ability, a gap, created the revenue gap to be able to provide significant infrastructure to prevent, continue to prevent sewer spills, to prevent contaminants from entering the bay and to fix our aging sewer infrastructure. So – and we still have a pretty aggressive capital improvement program where we're addressing streets, including concrete streets, parks, ferry terminal shoreside improvements, and the wave attenuator for the Dumpy Park area so that – and we can continue to invest in our infrastructure as we go forward in the community. And we're continuing – and we're doing all that and still delivering services, services that our citizens appreciate. Our approval rating from 2011 to 2014 is increasing, but staying within that same two-to-one majority. We have a majority of citizens that approve of the job we're doing, that approve of the fiscal management, and they think we're going in the right direction. You know, the the Sausalito economic recovery program got us through the recession and invested considerable amount of money back into our economy and we were able to do that and continue delivering excellent services and our citizens appreciate it. On page 157 and 158 of your budget, you will find the priority calendar linkages where I list – I rehearse the results of the priority calendar from your last meeting. And then on this page, on page 158, I then put a narrative section along with what department is responsible for leading that activity of where we stand with funding it. And then within each department, you'll find a section in the new formatted budget where it says like for all the CDD activities, if we turn to that page, you would see all those listed in that particular department. So there's responsibility and accountability going back and forth. |
| 02:56:49.02 | Councilmember | I can't interrupt you on that slide because you said it was okay to interrupt you. MR. Of course. Otherwise, I wouldn't interrupt you because I've learned not to interrupt you. |
| 02:56:51.67 | Charlie Francis | Of course. |
| 02:56:55.96 | Councilmember | Thank you. So on the previous slide, just because we talked about this last week and you did the effort to kind of tie this beautification projects, which we're calling, that total of $215,000 is in a bunch of different areas, but that's the total amount that's been allocated in one budget year, is that correct? Not two, in one. to to the efforts that are underway on kind of the- |
| 02:57:26.03 | Charlie Francis | It's within the two-year period. Two years. |
| 02:57:27.46 | Councilmember | Two-year time period, so $180,000. |
| 02:57:29.57 | Charlie Francis | It's not all the resources that are available for beautification, but it's the preponderance of them that are specifically called up. |
| 02:57:37.22 | Councilmember | Okay. |
| 02:57:42.38 | Charlie Francis | So just in summary, we have a rebounding economy that's increasing our tax revenues, our labor cost reforms, generated savings. We're structurally balanced. We're maintaining city reserve funds for those exigencies that may occur during the year. We're improving our enterprise operations, and we're continuing to develop excellent city services. Meanwhile, continuing our street improvements, increasing our funding for small parks, projected ferry terminal, shore side improvements, and a strategic use of financing to accelerate our sewer infrastructure projects. Those are our highlights. So as we summarized at the strategic planning session as I did during the mid-year budget review and throughout these budget hearings, we're meeting our strategic plan goal of maintaining and sustaining our fiscal situation and becoming resilient. We have current levels of service that are adequately funded, we're structurally balanced and we have reserves. But, and this is a, we have significant infrastructure investment that's needed. This is part an excerpt from our long term fiscal models that shows our operating budget as revenues and expenditures are balanced with very aggressive and I should say conservative assumptions. I've overestimated expenditures where I could overestimate them, and I underestimated revenues, always looking for the worst-case scenario, and we remain structurally balanced as we go forward into the future. However, we have deficiencies in our resources that are available to us for our aging and deteriorating storm drain infrastructure, and this graph highlights where those deficiencies occur. And we also have significant need to do additional street improvements, sidewalk improvements. The sidewalks are cracked and dangerous, need some accessibility. We have parks improvements that we could do, and of course there's always room for more beautification. So with those two identified through the fiscal model as well as identified through the community survey, we know that we do not have the funds to adequately address current infrastructure needs right now. Thank you. Maintaining and repairing our 85-year-old storm drains is critical. They're deteriorated, they're rusted through, and upgrades are needed to prevent contaminants from going into the bay. And we need to maintain and repair our neighborhood streets and fix the broken sidewalks. We have steep hillsides, we have crowded sidewalks, pedestrian safety. We need access for seniors and the disabled. So staff is proposing and recommending at this time that we look at enhanced revenues to meet those urging needs. Our constituents place a high value in the community survey on maintaining the city's fiscal stability. They placed a high priority on a number of key services. And they also identified that in order to improve these services, that by a two-to-one margin, they were willing to support a potential temporary local sales tax measure to address those community needs. And a local sales tax passed at a half-cent measure level would generate approximately $1 million annually. So, What would that mean to us? That would mean that we would be able to ensure a guaranteed source of local funding to improve the central city services. Tax dollars would be spent locally and we can calculate the immediate return of dollars spent in the community, how much stay in the community and what the ripple effect of that is. with... Tens of thousands of tourists coming each year to shop, they would ensure that only out-of-towners, that mostly out-of-towners pay their fair share for the strain they place. In fact, that $30 that a bicycle spends, we'd spend an extra 15 cents out of the three, now instead of spending three sales tax, that'd be $3.15, and that extra 15 cents would stay in the city of Sausalito and be used for infrastructure improvements that we need on our sidewalks and our streets. not applied to food purchase at a grocery store or persp City of Sausalito would be used for infrastructure improvements that we need on our sidewalks and our streets. It's not applied to food purchase at a grocery store or prescription medications. So again, our residents wouldn't be impacted as much by that. And there's recommended fiscal accountability provisions where we, part of our regular independent financial audits, there'd be a sunset, and we would require all funds to remain in Sausalito. So staff is proposing, in addition to the budget process, that we move forward with continuing to explore the sales tax proposal. The new budget format, with all of this, the new budget format increases our accountability and our transparency. We're moving away from line item budget and more into a management performance budget where we identify levels of service. And it's very important because it establishes accountability. Accountability from the council to the public and from the department heads back to the council. And with accountability, always comes transparency. So they go hand in hand and that transparency then says, what are our spending priorities? What are the actual service levels that we're delivering to our community? How does the city allocate funds? The budget will inform citizens of government policy and spending decisions and finally it links our strategic plan with our priority calendar to the budget that you're implementing today. So this new budget format is goes hand in hand with the last element that I would like to mention tonight, and that's our fiscal transparency tool. The facts are in the numbers. As I always said, sooner or later, it always comes down in line. And at any point in time, our citizens can go right online and drill down right to the object level anywhere in our budget to explore how money is being spent in the city. And they can not only do it historically and looking forward, but there's a transparency tool where month by month they can see how much was spent compared to the budget. Thank you. It's a great tool. So we started back in 2008 with building back to the basics. With this new city council, we moved from back to the basics to building on the basics. We got through the worst recession since the Great Depression. We continued a very high level of service. Our budget is structurally balanced, but we do have some infrastructure needs that we need to address in the future so tonight I'm asking the City Council to approve the budget and that would take three actions the first action is to approve the GAN limit the second is the staffing levels and the third is the budget so our GAN limit which is a process that you go through and calculate based on the increase in population and the increase in per capita income, shows us that we have a GAN limit of $12 million. Our appropriations subject to the limitation are $8 million, and so we have a $4 million surplus to our GAN limit. So once again, we're in good shape for that. |
| 03:04:50.42 | Mayor Withey | Charlie, sorry for the interruption. For those in particular who may be viewing at home, could you explain what the GAN limit is for that? |
| 03:04:51.23 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:04:57.00 | Charlie Francis | In 1978 when Proposition 13 was passed, which limited the property tax to 1% of property value, it also then said they wanted cities' appropriations not to grow faster than the per capita income and the cost and the inflation. And so over the years, a number of other initiatives have passed and court cases have been filed. And this resulting calculation then says if the city exceeds its appropriation level, then by Prop 13 it has to give money back to the citizens. And we have never come close to exceeding our appropriation level. Thank you. |
| 03:05:37.63 | Unknown | you |
| 03:05:37.68 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. So we have room in our budget to continue improving our levels of service. second item be asking you to pass tonight is the authorized staffing levels the authorized staffing levels is seventy broke up by this classification or by these departments and then there's a third schedule in your budget that has it broken up by bargaining unit all three reconcile and then within those authorized positions are the salary tables for every position so all in the budget there the ranges for every position and this is authorized staffing and finally then we'll be asking you to pass the budget which establishes the legal level of control the legal level of control is the amount by which can be spent without the City Council coming, without going back to the city council and asking for more money. So the police department can't spend more than 4.8 |
| 03:06:22.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:06:37.59 | Charlie Francis | six million dollars unless they come back to the city council now within their budget they're free to spend money between this line item for pencils and the line item for vests and line item for ticket citation books but within outside of that that's the legal level of control for our other funds the legal level of control is the funded level. And that's because each one of these funds are providing resource to our capital projects fund or their enterprise fund activities that act and look just like a single department would. |
| 03:06:49.59 | Mary Wagner | And them. outside of the |
| 03:07:12.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:12.66 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. So if we're ready to answer any questions that you might have about the budget, and then I'll just put this back up there after the questions so that you know the order. It's not a precise order, but it's a recommended order. |
| 03:07:29.12 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Charlie. You're welcome. I'm sure there are going to be lots of questions up here. Let's try and spread it out. So ask each of you to ask one or two questions and then yield and pass it on down the line. |
| 03:07:29.99 | Charlie Francis | The Rotten. |
| 03:07:48.60 | Mayor Withey | Who would like, who has, I would like to begin with some Questions? |
| 03:07:57.04 | Councilmember | Okay, so one or two questions and then pass it on? Yeah. Okay, so my first question is a question I had asked a couple weeks ago at a prior council session, which is the survey question, the survey that was conducted in town. And I'm eager to see a list of the survey questions that were used to conduct that survey. We saw the summary report. We saw the summary report. We saw the pie charts and, you know, a breakup of responses, but we haven't seen the actual raw survey questions. |
| 03:07:58.17 | Mayor Withey | When I was in the hospital, I was in the hospital. Yeah. |
| 03:08:04.82 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 03:08:33.20 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. The survey questions themselves were not city products. They were in the hands of the consultant. The consultant has those questions and uses those questions. And the only deliverable in the contract was the survey PowerPoint and the executive survey. |
| 03:08:48.94 | Councilmember | But didn't the city have input in terms of what questions were being asked for that survey? |
| 03:08:53.70 | Charlie Francis | They were talked about, yes. Well, then... |
| 03:08:55.59 | Councilmember | Well then... |
| 03:08:56.54 | Charlie Francis | They did not end up as final work projects. |
| 03:08:59.32 | Councilmember | So are you saying that we can't get a copy of those questions? |
| 03:09:02.73 | Charlie Francis | saying that the city doesn't have |
| 03:09:04.96 | Councilmember | But can we ask for a copy of those questions? From the consultant? |
| 03:09:09.89 | Charlie Francis | these. Thank you. |
| 03:09:11.02 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:09:11.05 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:09:11.20 | Adam Politzer | you |
| 03:09:11.45 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:09:12.15 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, traditionally and as I mentioned at the last meeting, these are documents that the city and most cities don't take possession of because people, once you release the information, people then go through it and potentially manipulate it. So when you work with these consulting firms, they purposely take the information, work with the city. in draft and then they take possession and conduct the survey, provide the final product Thank you. And traditionally that's the the work product that the city maintains and releases out into the public. All the information is work product and as Charlie said and as I said in the past meetings, traditionally that material never surfaces back to the city. |
| 03:10:01.14 | Councilmember | So will the city ask the consultant for a copy of the questions, or has the city already done so? |
| 03:10:09.57 | Adam Politzer | The city has not done so and the city traditionally does not and at this point we're not looking for that information to be made public. So we are not going to request for that information. |
| 03:10:23.00 | Councilmember | So if you had, so what, you'd need a petition from residents to get the survey questions that were, the survey that was paid for by the taxpayers? I mean, because to me it's just a simple question of the consultant. |
| 03:10:39.46 | Councilmember | I'm seeing blank stares. Okay, I'll pass it on. |
| 03:10:44.77 | Mayor Withey | Um, |
| 03:10:45.20 | Unknown | you of questions. |
| 03:10:46.61 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:10:47.51 | Councilmember | I have a question about, Charlie, what would be the appropriate number to kind of compare the OPEB – the 250, I think, is the number of annual savings – to is it the 3.7 annual total benefit cost or in terms of like if you were going to say, or what subset of that 3.7, annual benefit cost is related to OPEB. Like, how would I – if I wanted to – if you wanted to be able to say it saved X percentage or compared to what, what would you compare it to? |
| 03:11:21.34 | Charlie Francis | Are you referring to a specific page? |
| 03:11:23.72 | Councilmember | Well, I'm looking – I'm trying to find it. I've been trying to find, like, what the right number is, and I can see salaries and benefits total citywide, and I'm trying to find what the right comparison number would be to say, you know, the – |
| 03:11:38.49 | Charlie Francis | Okay, our actual pay-as-you-go OPEP cost is $200,000, which is about $7,000 per retired annuitant, and we have 29 annuitants. That $200,000 is not a direct relationship to current costs, but go ahead. |
| 03:11:38.59 | Councilmember | Yeah. |
| 03:11:57.32 | Councilmember | Yeah, so if you flip back to that slide with your pension reform |
| 03:12:02.32 | Charlie Francis | Oh, the person. Yes. |
| 03:12:02.35 | Councilmember | Oh, yeah. or is it, yeah, so all three of those are 250. What would be the number to compare that to? because some of it's paying off side funds, some of it's OPEB savings. Would it be the total benefit? |
| 03:12:08.49 | Unknown | or, |
| 03:12:08.58 | Charlie Francis | All. Thanks, David. |
| 03:12:13.54 | Councilmember | Number annually. |
| 03:12:15.73 | Charlie Francis | on page 41 of your budget document. Um, We can see on the So it's 41. There's a little graph. And those numbers where it said 2014, 1,270,000. Right. That would have been 1,270,000 plus the 250,000. |
| 03:12:25.10 | Councilmember | So it's. |
| 03:12:33.42 | Councilmember | Right. |
| 03:12:37.15 | Councilmember | So it's really almost a – oh, God, I'm doing numbers in my head. 20%. Yeah, a 20% number. That's significant. |
| 03:12:42.11 | Charlie Francis | in my head. |
| 03:12:46.02 | Councilmember | First savings. And the same, if you don't mind, so. One follow-up question. With the 215 number, give or take what it is for the beautification projects, if you compare that to... |
| 03:12:49.92 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:12:49.94 | Unknown | Yeah, one follow-up question. |
| 03:12:59.84 | Councilmember | and this is just my read of it, and you tell me if it's not a good way to look at it. that's almost 10% of the public works budget. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison, and it's like almost 15 percent of the park and rec budget, so if you took the just straight dollar amount. So it's a meaningful amount of – compared to those two departments which are the closest maybe in relation to that item. it's a meaningful expenditure compared to those overall budget numbers for those departments. In my estimation, it's like 10 to 13 percent of either one of them, so it's a good chunk of change going towards these projects. |
| 03:13:44.65 | Charlie Francis | Right. Specifically, we could look at page |
| 03:13:52.10 | Charlie Francis | Here we go, page 55. And on page 55, the public works budget is $1.672 million for the 2014-2015 year. So $215,000 would be about 15, almost 12, 13%. |
| 03:14:11.36 | Councilmember | Right. Okay. Thank you. |
| 03:14:13.92 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:14:13.97 | Councilmember | MR. Okay. I just want to try to get a frame of reference for both of those things. |
| 03:14:15.39 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:14:15.42 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:14:15.44 | Charlie Francis | I'm afraid. THE FAMILY. |
| 03:14:15.91 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:14:16.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:14:16.25 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:14:17.18 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Yeah. Any more questions of Charlie? Charlie, please. |
| 03:14:24.54 | Councilmember | So Charlie, I have a question about just – and Mr. Mayor, is this one – another one question and two question or |
| 03:14:34.33 | Mayor Withey | A question and reasonable follow-up. |
| 03:14:35.83 | Councilmember | Okay, I have actually, question about the allocation on some items on this. And I just wanted just clarification. I notice on page 146 it allocates, I guess, a carry forward budget, $125,000 for the South City limits to Richardson Planning. And then on page 150 it refers to South City limits to Richardson planning, and it says 6 million in 2016-17. So could you clarify the – I just don't know what those are. |
| 03:15:17.61 | Charlie Francis | Definitely. I think public works director Goldman can do a better job than me. |
| 03:15:25.54 | Mayor Withey | Sorry, could you remind us what budget page you were on? |
| 03:15:28.44 | Charlie Francis | On page 146, right at the end of the first grouping, there's South City limits to Richardson planning, and there's $125,000 carried forward and appropriated again during the 2014-15 years. And then the second half of Council Member Pfeiffer's question is on page 150, where the very last item of the first grouping in red shows $6 million in the 2016-17 year. |
| 03:15:30.81 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:15:58.53 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:15:58.95 | Councilmember | I'll repeat steps away, and Jonathan comments on the details of projects. Do you want to comment on carry forwards in general? And, you know, some are carried forward and some are not, and then you can – |
| 03:16:08.91 | Charlie Francis | That's a very helpful question for the audience. So capital improvement projects are different than the annual operating budget in that they're usually longer term in nature when you start a construction project. It's not necessarily so that it will be finished by the end of the fiscal year. And so on a capital improvement project, we allocate a certain amount of money in a year. And then if the project doesn't start or if it starts and it has money left over, the balance is carried forward until the next fiscal year. So this was money that was allocated in the previous fiscal year for this project to do the work that Mr. Goldman is about to explain and it just carried forward to this year because we have not yet initiated that work. |
| 03:16:08.94 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:16:54.18 | Councilmember | to some other projects which we've defunded in that, which were in theory could be, can carry forward. There's others that are defunded. |
| 03:17:03.15 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah. |
| 03:17:07.09 | Chris Bond | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.11 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.15 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.18 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:17:07.18 | Jonathon Goldman | So thank you. Just very, very briefly to remind the council and members of the community, the city was successful in being awarded a grant under the One Bay Area Grant Program through Transportation Authority of Marin for planning associated with a project that we described as South City Limits to Richardson. As you may recall, that project was conceptually developed |
| 03:17:07.19 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:17:07.25 | Councilmember | Oh. |
| 03:17:07.43 | Unknown | . |
| 03:17:07.67 | Chris Bond | So, |
| 03:17:08.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:08.17 | Chris Bond | Yeah. |
| 03:17:08.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:08.60 | Chris Bond | Thank you. |
| 03:17:08.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:17:08.75 | Chris Bond | Yeah. |
| 03:17:43.19 | Jonathon Goldman | attempting to try to identify what kind of improvements within the existing public right-of-way could be accomplished that would improve pedestrian and bicycle and then implicitly motor vehicle safety and operations within that road segment because we recognize, as your pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee did earlier this evening, that sidewalks are too narrow and, you know, THE BUSINESS OF THE PERCENTAGE OF THAT TOTAL PROJECT THAT IS IN FACT GRANT FUNDED AND THE PART THAT'S FUNDED BY THE CITY MATCH. ONCE THAT PROJECT IS COMPLETED AND AGAIN IT'S INTENDED TO BE A DESIGN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, THE IDEA IS THAT THE PRODUCT OF THAT PLANNING EFFORT IS A MUCH MORE DETAILED SET OF PLANS THAT GIVES US THE OPPORTUNITY TO MUCH MORE SUCCESSFULLY to much more successfully compete for grant funding to actually construct that project. And as one example, the pedestrian and bicycle advisory committee recommended the possibility of improvements at the Golden Gate Market Richardson intersection, for example. Because that intersection is in the road segment associated with this project, the designers that we would retain to do that work would have the opportunity to evaluate that intersection and make recommendations about how the actual operations of pedestrians and bicyclists and motor vehicles at that intersection could be improved. |
| 03:19:02.98 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:19:39.86 | Jonathon Goldman | possibly including a traffic signal or something like that. So in the spirit of attempting to continue to develop and populate a 10-year, a rolling 10-year capital improvement program as part of our budgeting process, based on the preliminary estimate that was produced for that road segment some time ago, I requested that the budget reflect |
| 03:20:01.78 | Mary Wagner | us. |
| 03:20:06.85 | Jonathon Goldman | a construction cost estimate of $6 million, I wish it were only $6,000, which would only, as we heard earlier this evening, buy us one house. But program those funds, assuming that we will be successful in developing a design that is successful in competing for grant funds to try and actually implement that construction. |
| 03:20:12.09 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:20:16.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:31.20 | Councilmember | So a couple questions just for clarification. The Richardson to – the South Street to Richardson plan that I recall you presented, we've talked – I brought this up intermittently since then. When we voted for it, it was tentative, and it was with the agreement that there would be a lot of public outreach, and it was just a conceptual plan to move the grant application process forward. And so. When I see this $6 million, are you referring to the part of the plan that included I think there was something about the rip-rap, and is that what you're talking about? |
| 03:21:07.76 | Unknown | No. |
| 03:21:07.80 | Councilmember | Yeah. Thank you. So I... |
| 03:21:08.46 | Unknown | Thank you. you This is for the SEWA project. |
| 03:21:10.92 | Councilmember | Thank you. Okay. I guess I'm still grappling with it. So the grant from this one Bay Area is the $6 million? No. $125,000. Okay. It's the $125,000 because they're both under the same title. So it's |
| 03:21:19.26 | Jonathon Goldman | That's where you're – okay. Speaker 1 005,000. |
| 03:21:25.70 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. It's the same project, but the phase that was completed, and you're correct in recalling that we did evaluate South City Limits all the way to the ferry landing as part of our original conceptual plan. We broke it into two segments for a number of reasons. The segment that there was consensus on going forward with was South City Limits to Richardson. So staff applied for the One Bay Area Grant Program with the intent to try to take the development, the design development associated with that segment to a higher level to better allow us to compete for construction grant funding down the line. And that's where we are at this point in time. |
| 03:22:09.06 | Councilmember | And the six million would be used for what project? |
| 03:22:14.34 | Jonathon Goldman | If we're successful in getting a grant to construct the project that the $125,000 grant would further develop, including a lot of public participation, then it would go to construct that project. |
| 03:22:30.77 | Councilmember | Okay, thank you. |
| 03:22:36.16 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? |
| 03:22:37.03 | Councilmember | at this time. Just a general question just to make sure – because we talked about this last time, but just to make sure the public's aware. So these red entries that are in the capital improvement budget, which is sort of more in the back of – what page is that? MR. 145. MR. 145. So those are – that amounts to about a million dollars a year. There are line items in the capital improvement projects that are in red. Some have money allocated towards them and some don't. But there's additional funds that are requested in the – further on in that same section, And they're largely driven by storm drains and additional street and road repair and some ADA improvements as well. Those are not funded in the current budget, but those are requests largely from public works of things that, you know, need to be addressed in the short term. |
| 03:22:58.62 | Unknown | Well, |
| 03:23:43.94 | Charlie Francis | Is that correct? It is correct. |
| 03:23:44.05 | Councilmember | Is that correct? |
| 03:23:53.53 | Charlie Francis | Let's see, 146. |
| 03:24:09.71 | Adam Politzer | Oh, almost. |
| 03:24:20.95 | Charlie Francis | There we go. See up here on the very top, has funded capital improvement projects. So that's the section of funded projects unless the amount is in red. And if the amount is in red, that means that there are more projects in the unfunded section. If we go down to page, uh... one forty fifty there's a section called unfunded so there and for every place you see red and the funded section you'll see a red and the uh... unfunded section so if there's a number of here in the funded section it's in it's in red but there's no red numbers that means in the unfunded section there's additional needs that need to be done that's unfunded, but the black part is the amount that is funded. In the |
| 03:24:45.33 | Councilmember | 50. |
| 03:25:13.45 | Charlie Francis | This section here, for example, a city hall. meeting rooms you'll see the defunding of two hundred twelve thousand it's in red that means it's nothing's being budgeted in the capital improvement project but it is in the the unfunded section. |
| 03:25:35.50 | Councilmember | Thanks. I just wanted to make sure. |
| 03:25:36.91 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor? |
| 03:25:37.58 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:25:37.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:37.65 | Councilmember | . |
| 03:25:37.82 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:25:37.87 | Councilmember | And by the way, the copy I'm looking at, I don't have the color. It's in black and white, so I don't know which ones are red or white. |
| 03:25:46.69 | Charlie Francis | All the online copies are in color, but for cost purposes, I didn't do any of the copies in black. I just did them in black. |
| 03:25:46.90 | Patricia Pigman | Whatever, so. |
| 03:25:47.65 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:25:54.98 | Councilmember | Yeah. And that's okay. I just wanted to share you for context. So if I ask a question and it's in red, you know why I'm asking the question. So fishing pier repair, is this the grant, the $104,685? |
| 03:26:12.33 | Doreen Gunnar | And what page are we on? |
| 03:26:13.46 | Councilmember | We're on page 147. |
| 03:26:16.46 | Doreen Gunnar | Okay. |
| 03:26:16.83 | Councilmember | Thank you. That's in black. |
| 03:26:21.27 | Councilmember | So that's the grant. |
| 03:26:24.05 | Charlie Francis | Capital projects, and it's difficult to show in a budget document, they're three-dimensionals. So you think of the spreadsheet, you have the projects coming down here and the years going across here. The third dimension is where are the funds coming from? And all the worksheets designate funds coming from certain projects, and here's so that at the staff level we make sure that the funding sources match with the appropriations. |
| 03:26:50.51 | Councilmember | Okay, and then the Turney Street ramp and dock. Thank you. I'm surprised. I mean, we're allocating, is this right, $55,000 for that, which is basically… |
| 03:27:04.84 | Charlie Francis | Which is basically... There's a carryover. And so going back to explain the carryover, I only took how much was spent through April as being spent through the current fiscal year. And then I carried forward the balance. If there are more expenditures occurring in April and May, it will affect the carryover amount. But in order to finish that project, an additional $32,750 was requested in the proposed budget, bringing the carry forward and the proposed up to $55,000. Public Works Director, Mr. Goldman, can explain the project in more detail if you'd like. |
| 03:27:48.12 | Councilmember | That's okay. I asked all my questions when it was presented, and I wasn't Edgewater kitchen code upgrade. What's that? |
| 03:27:58.47 | Charlie Francis | It was a project that was allocated last year, was it? |
| 03:28:04.16 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah, just again very briefly, we had a problem in the Edgewater room a couple of years ago where circuit breakers were tripping regularly. And during the course of evaluating that issue, we made code improvements to make sure that there was adequate electrical service there. but we've identified the opportunity to reduce the energy usage associated with the appliances in the edgewater room and also improve ventilation. So what we've done is actually asked council to defund the carry forward to some extent, but appropriate funds so that we can replace the – Yeah. And – |
| 03:28:39.09 | Unknown | Sorry. |
| 03:28:50.93 | Councilmember | Yeah, and just to let you know, my question was more about Edgewater. It wasn't clear to me it was the room, Edgewater. I thought it was. some other structure, so never mind. I mean, Kitchen Code is pretty straightforward. And... you One last question. The Harbor 2 Gate 5 pedestrian road bike way, 1.1 million. on page 146. |
| 03:29:20.38 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, that too is mine. As you may recall, and it was alluded to earlier this evening, the council accepted the Ferry Landing and the Gate 6 Road path plan several years ago that identified a number of... bicycle and pedestrian path segments that needed to be improved. And one of those segments was Harbor to Gate 6 Road. We also independently of that had been successful in receiving a grant to study and are in the process of preparing construction drawings, or consultants are, for improvements to the Gate 6 intersection. And so what we did with a call for projects under alternative transportation programs call that came out recently is prepare a grant application to try to construct some of the improvements that were conceptually designed in that ferry landing to gate 6 path plan document between harbor and gate 6 road. Assuming we are successful in receiving that grant, we're asking council to appropriate the funds so that they can be constructed. |
| 03:30:04.48 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:30:49.87 | Councilmember | So in other words, when I see just above it says, Gate 6 Road Signal Mods, and that's 45,000. That is a line item you're asking for funding. But is that related to the bikes as well, or is that different? Is that modifications? |
| 03:31:06.12 | Jonathon Goldman | different Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It is the Gate 6 Road intersection improvements project that does improve, is intended to improve operations for bicycles, pedestrians, and motor vehicles in that intersection, and it's already grant funded. But we can't spend grant funded money unless the council appropriates it. |
| 03:31:19.72 | Mary Wagner | Yes. |
| 03:31:27.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:31:27.55 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:31:30.18 | Councilmember | So anyway, the $45,000, that's a grant. That's a grant. Thanks. And the $1.1 million, that's a grant. |
| 03:31:36.86 | Jonathon Goldman | The 1.1 million for- For the harbor? Yes. |
| 03:31:39.19 | Councilmember | For the harbor. |
| 03:31:48.81 | Mayor Withey | So does anybody else have any questions? |
| 03:31:53.86 | Councilmember | I think to be clear, Charlie, there is a section here which sort of shows, even though it's not in three dimensions, it shows where all the grant funding is being asked for. |
| 03:32:03.11 | Charlie Francis | It summarizes it, and that would be on page 145. On page 145. I feel like I can go to it here. |
| 03:32:08.02 | Councilmember | . |
| 03:32:08.29 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:32:16.89 | Charlie Francis | So up here is all the contributions. It would be all the money that's coming in from grants or contributions for all the different projects. And then here are the funding sources for all the other projects. But they're not in this document, but in our work papers are the specific funding sources for each one of the capital projects. And that's how we track it internally versus purchase orders. We cannot, the internal controls are such that we will not let a project move forward if the funding source isn't secured, if it was identified as a contribution or a grant at the beginning of the process. So that's part of why we route those staff reports through all the departments before they go to the city council to make sure that all the boxes are checked. |
| 03:32:40.62 | Mary Wagner | And that's, |
| 03:32:56.08 | Mary Wagner | grand |
| 03:33:08.97 | Mayor Withey | Charlie, I have a couple of questions, actually. Could you put a slide up that shows the The wiggly thing. The wiggly thing. Projections over time. The last one to do, the one where you showed the |
| 03:33:16.21 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:33:16.23 | Unknown | Wiggly thing. |
| 03:33:25.49 | Mayor Withey | The |
| 03:33:29.67 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, and if you look at the one where you showed the tool, the new transparency tool that you're using, would be, yeah, that will do. Okay, again, for folks at home who may have either begun to start playing with this or trying to just look at it, could you just give a one-minute explanation as to why we've got these two... peaks and valleys, because you don't normally see that in a budget. |
| 03:33:58.85 | Charlie Francis | So this is what's called a stacked area chart. And a stacked area chart means that the next item in the stacking builds on top of the previous one. And you can see as we go along here, the first stack, which is a group of about eight departments, are fairly level as it goes through time. But the next grouping shows a big spike in spending in this particular year. The particular year is, who can read that? |
| 03:34:30.44 | Councilmember | I can't read it from you. |
| 03:34:31.13 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:34:31.15 | Charlie Francis | I'm saying. |
| 03:34:31.27 | Mayor Withey | 10-11, I think, Charlie. |
| 03:34:31.47 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:34:31.59 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:34:31.69 | Councilmember | 11. Thank you. |
| 03:34:32.84 | Charlie Francis | 10-11. So if we go and we click on that... I have to get a close to see. I think my |
| 03:34:39.98 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:34:48.14 | Charlie Francis | So this line item is called transfers. And what that was was the year where we transferred a significant amount of money out of the vehicle replacement fund and the employee benefits fund into the general fund in order to pay down the CalPERS site funds. So when you drill on them, you can get the answers to those questions. But that's part of what drives the spike. And then the next area in spike is this blue, which is, I think it says DPW up there, engineering. And when you drill down that, those are the capital projects. And specifically, that spike right there is the public safety building and the bulkhead. |
| 03:35:19.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:35:29.00 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:35:29.01 | Unknown | And the second spike is... |
| 03:35:29.03 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. . And the second question. The spike over here is the $5 million for the sewer capital improvements as well as the capital improvements that we just covered today. |
| 03:35:40.73 | Mayor Withey | Right. Again, that was a question that I just specifically wanted for folks who were viewing at home. My second question is we've highlighted a number of capital improvement projects, probably most significantly the storm drain projects because they're really projected to be quite large and we don't have revenue sources for it. We've identified other capital projects that we don't have revenue sources. Staff is suggesting that a possible, if the council is interested, a possible way forward is to consider revenue sources in order to actually get those projects funded. |
| 03:35:45.74 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:36:32.09 | Mayor Withey | Primarily, you've suggested the Have Sense sales tax measure is the way to do that. So what would be the timing? that the City Council would need to make a decision in terms of our city council calendar, that we would need to consider that. |
| 03:36:52.76 | Charlie Francis | Let me give you a brief summary and a next step action plan. So the timing in order to put this on the ballot for a November election would be a decision by the council to do that by August 5th, I believe. For our purposes, it would be the last meeting in July. But what we will do is come back to you at your next meeting, if you so direct us, with a timeline that outlines the specific steps that need to be taken. |
| 03:37:21.00 | Councilmember | Is this one of the... One of the taxes that needs to be on the ballot while there's a election amongst the councilmen is |
| 03:37:29.59 | Charlie Francis | That's correct, it cannot be a special election. Okay. |
| 03:37:34.11 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. Does anybody else have any other questions before we move on to comment period? There is a member of the public here. I don't know if you want to comment, Doreen. So seeing none, is it – okay, go on then. |
| 03:37:43.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:37:43.58 | Unknown | . |
| 03:37:44.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:37:56.77 | Doreen Gunnar | I'm Doreen Gunnar of 300 Napa Street, and I just want to say that I have really read this budget. Actually, I picked it up at the last meeting, and it's really outstanding. I mean, really, it's clear. It's easy to read. It's easy to understand. There's lots of information in there that helps you really understand how the city works and where the money comes from and where it goes. And I really want to thank Charlie because I think you are amazing. |
| 03:38:24.08 | Councilmember | Thank you. And since Doreen asked the question about how much money is going to the Park and Rec Department, I'm going to ask you a question. |
| 03:38:32.97 | Charlie Francis | She just got a few dollars more. |
| 03:38:35.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:38:35.64 | Councilmember | I see. |
| 03:38:38.22 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. Lastly, I just want in the full spirit, I mean, with accountability comes transparency. We've been talking about this for years now, and I just wanted to say that I'm really happy that the management and the city council has given us the opportunity to transition to this new budget format, this new online tool. and in spirit of just reaching out to as many people as we can, we'll not only have color copies in the library for people who want to be able to trace it through that, but we've prepared this little budget and brief document that just covers some of the basics. It'll be available in the library or in any of the counters. But what's important is that the QR code and the box or so, that it will be directing everybody who wants to look at our budget and read it, they'll be able to find it on our website just by scanning this or going to that fiscal transparency tool. So this is a concerted effort to put the facts out there so that people have all the facts available to them when they come and talk to the city council. |
| 03:38:40.14 | Mary Wagner | the full speed. |
| 03:39:42.97 | Councilmember | Mr. Mayor, one question. Just because I was looking through my notes, I don't have it. What was the ARC payment again for OPEB? |
| 03:39:42.98 | Charlie Francis | Mr. Mayor, one question. |
| 03:39:52.21 | Councilmember | You mentioned the pay as you go was $220,000. I thought the ARC was something like $400,000, $300,000. |
| 03:39:58.95 | Charlie Francis | Yeah, the arc is not in the budget document, so I don't know the exact amount off the top of my head. But, you know, just to summarize that discussion, this council has really taken significant actions to mitigate OPEB and pension reform. We're at that point where we did everything we could and ought to do, and we're continuing to do everything we could and ought to do. We need to focus on the primary issue that is facing the city council now, and that's having enough revenue to stay fiscally viable and meet all of our infrastructure needs. |
| 03:40:34.79 | Mayor Withey | Any more questions? Okay, so, um... Who wants to go first with their three-minute comment period? |
| 03:40:52.00 | Vice Mayor | about this. I just want to thank Charlie for the great work. And this is our third session on the budget, so we've been through it. And I also appreciate the work and your availability to me offline so that we can go through a lot of the details and really understand it. And this budget is much easier to understand. And I certainly appreciate the format changes, the online, the open government thing. I think we the moving in the right direction of tying our strategic plan and Our priority calendar to these items. So I think we're really making a lot of progress also want to thank the Finance Committee and all the staff members that have spent hours and when I'm looking for these guys are always in finance committee meetings and they've done a lot of work on that and councilmember Leonin Mayor Withy, so I have to thank everybody for it. So I think we're... really a good shape and we should be proud of that. Thanks. |
| 03:41:53.09 | Councilmember | Yeah, I'll just agree with Doreen. No, I mean that. You know, I think this is a big step, a lot of work, and mostly Charlie's went into this kind of 109,000-page document, the 182-page, which isn't – I wouldn't – It's almost like a business plan in a sense because it's looking forward a few years and it has description about what everybody does and what you're doing with the money and where the money is coming from versus a line item budget, which is how we traditionally have done things. And so it's a good addition to that. because it lets the layman read through it and get a sense of what's actually happening, where the money's coming and going. I will highlight a couple of things which I think are important in here. There's over $400,000 that's going towards just park planning, and that's park and rec planning. So that's both facilities as well as small parks and some of the bigger parks. And that's not grant funded. It's real money that's in there as well as small parks and some of the bigger parks. And that's not grant funded. It's real money that's in there that we already have. close to a million dollars of street repair, of total street kind of related stuff repair in there for the next couple of years. And if we choose to do more through some of these other revenue-altering choices, and compare that to just the amount that the general fund, and we always forget there's two big chunks of change that roll through here. There's the general fund, which is everybody's salaries, more or less, and then there's this other stuff, which is about the same size, more or less, as the general fund. And, you know, so there's a lot of stuff that flows through there that doesn't – that benefits a lot of the capital projects, mostly, for a large extent. And so we're still pushing ahead with that, with the capital improvements, so we have have more that we need to do both from an environmental and it's the right thing to do kind of standpoint as far as ADA and storm drains. And there's a big expenditures for sewer coming up in the next year because we just passed this augmented sewer tax. So once we issue the bonds that are going to go underneath that, we'll have some big expenditures to start upgrading some major projects that we haven't had because of problems at the state revolving fund for sewers. |
| 03:43:15.14 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 03:44:13.56 | Councilmember | I think from an operating cost standpoint, as you said, We've been forward-looking. We're going to come to that. end of that forward-looking in a year or so as far as the next round of contract talks and with the economy improving, it's going to be a tough discussion, and rightfully so because it's not, any cheaper to live in the Bay Area than it was three years ago. So that'll be an interesting discussion in a year. But I think we have – 30% reserves versus zero eight years ago. We have a much more robust capital budget, and I think we're much better prepared in planning for the future in terms of what our obligations are going to be. |
| 03:45:05.19 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:45:05.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:45:05.68 | Mr. Novak | Charlie, I really want to thank you. Even I could understand this. So I really, you did a great job. So thank you very, very much. |
| 03:45:18.37 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 03:45:21.68 | Councilmember | Thank you. And thank you, Charlie. Good job. Good job. I know you put a lot of work in this every year, and I appreciate it. And so I still have concerns. My biggest concern has to do with the fact that we're doing the pay-as-you-go for our OPEB, for retirement, as opposed to the full ARC payment. And I think that we should be paying the full payment. I think that when we delay making the full payment, we're adding costs down the road and even though there's a smoothing, you know, out 50 years or so, there's something called generational equity that we're taking our debt and we're pushing off to the next generation and they're going to be paying for services that they're not receiving. They're going to be paying for the services that we're receiving today, and it just doesn't feel right to me. I also am just on principle very concerned that city management is not asking the consultant for the original questions from the survey that are being used to support the half-cent sales tax. And I would ask this council to join me in directing city staff to get those questions from the survey questions because I think it's important for us to understand what residents were asked because it gives us more context into their answers. Finally, I also think the sales tax should not be something that is targeted for the general fund. I think if we're going to people and asking folks to vote for a half-cent sales tax to address storm drains and the like, that it should be earmarked for storm drains and the like. I understand it raises it from a 51% requirement to a two-thirds vote bar, but I think it's appropriate. And when I look at the pension costs and OPEB costs ahead, I think that we need to make sure that we don't just – that we stay true to the original purposes that we're going after some of these taxes. And I think that by earmarking that sales tax, that's what we would be doing. So I can't support what I'm looking at right now because I would like to see that full ARC payment and I would also like to see the questions used in the survey backing the half-cent sales tax. |
| 03:48:09.17 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thank you. you for you. |
| 03:48:13.98 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:48:14.40 | Mayor Withey | So the – you know, our budget process is now two years. I've been through this, and this was the start of the new two-year period. Way back, Charlie and I talked about the fact that it wouldn't be nice to have a document that was almost like a road map, a manual, an encyclopedia, whatever you want to use. Mr. Martin? |
| 03:48:38.17 | Councilmember | Or too long for a road map. |
| 03:48:39.15 | Mayor Withey | Okay. But by integrating to sort of really opening up and providing the narrative as to what's going on, I think has been a significant step forward in transparency. and just transparency in the sense of simply our residents, public in general, being able to actually go through a complex financial document. And so that is a major achievement of the public. the work that Charlie has done in this process. So for people who may not realize, this has been a transformation in how a budget is presented. So everybody out there, you need to know that. So our budget's structurally balanced. It's structurally balanced going forward. We are spending a lot of money on capital improvements, a lot more than many other cities are doing as a percentage of our revenues. We've really dedicated it to where it counts. But we've also been realistic in identifying the fact that we do not have the revenue sources for capital. extra mandates that have been put on us, say around stormwater, but Nonetheless, mandates are not stuff that we actually should be doing to protect the environment, protect the bay. And so I would like us, in addition to Um, uh. entertaining motion to pass the three resolutions that we need to tonight. I would also, ask us Oh. by consensus or vote if we need to direct staff to come back probably July 8th is probably the meeting that we need to do this at, to come back and present options to us timetable so that we can, in a more focused way, consider the sales tax option as that revenue source. |
| 03:51:03.70 | Councilmember | I'll just add in my one minute that – because I will take it that most people won't read this because it's a long document, and probably you've got more interesting things to read at home. |
| 03:51:03.92 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:51:16.48 | Councilmember | is that if you really want to know how often the trash cans are emptied at MLK fields, It's in this document. If you want to know how many times they mow, at a certain location. a month. or year. You can figure that out. It's in this document. If you want to know how many classes the Park and Rec Department puts on, It's in this document. If you want to know how many books are in circulation in the library, it's in this document. Both the department heads and the departments themselves, as well as Charlie, have gone through the trouble of kind of really highlighting some information for everyone to consume to know exactly what they do. and how they're being, in a sense, not totally, but because no one wants to be measured to the test totally for their whether you're a student or an employee, of some ways that they're being understood how the departments are doing their job. So not by us, but by the city manager. So I think this is really a – it's not just a financial document. It is a kind of encyclopedia of what goes on at the city of Sausalito. |
| 03:52:22.00 | Mayor Withey | Anybody else want to say anything? No. So could we have a motion? Charlie, we're going to need to do this in three separate motions, I believe. Okay. and four if we're gonna direct staff on the sales tax. |
| 03:52:37.92 | Mr. Novak | Okay. The first one would be a resolution of the City Council of the City of Sausalito establishing the appropriations limit for the fiscal year 2014-15 pursuant to Article 13, Roman numeral 13B of the California Constitution. |
| 03:52:58.42 | Unknown | I have a sec. |
| 03:52:59.08 | Vice Mayor | THE END OF THE END OF THE Second. |
| 03:53:02.81 | Mayor Withey | Are we okay doing a voice vote or do we want to do a roll call? |
| 03:53:09.56 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:53:09.59 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:53:09.61 | Mr. Novak | Do we have to formally do a roll call? |
| 03:53:09.62 | Mayor Withey | Do we have to formally do a role |
| 03:53:12.97 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:53:13.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:53:13.02 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:53:13.03 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Debbie Calderall. |
| 03:53:13.52 | Unknown | . |
| 03:53:13.61 | Mr. Novak | I think it's a good idea. |
| 03:53:16.63 | Debbie (City Clerk) | No. you |
| 03:53:19.57 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:53:19.58 | Mr. Novak | Yes. |
| 03:53:23.65 | Mr. Novak | Yes. |
| 03:53:28.39 | Mayor Withey | Yes. |
| 03:53:32.03 | Mayor Withey | And our second motion is around staffing levels and salary ranges. |
| 03:53:38.28 | Councilmember | Can I, as a quick... point of clarification. You can also see how many – because I like them and I don't want to get in trouble – how many arrests or calls for service that the police department Thank you. |
| 03:53:48.71 | Councilmember | the sun didn't go back |
| 03:53:49.03 | Councilmember | I love it. They're in the audience, too. |
| 03:53:51.81 | Councilmember | And Mr. Mayor, I have a quick point of clarification, too, because we're voting on salary ranges just to |
| 03:53:54.29 | Councilmember | to you. |
| 03:53:54.78 | Unknown | . |
| 03:53:54.82 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:53:57.87 | Councilmember | to comment that although the salaries are not, they're just grouped. In past budgets, we've had line item by position and salary, but this budget, it's just kind of grouped. |
| 03:54:09.14 | Councilmember | grouped, but it's... You have those in the back. Thank you. |
| 03:54:12.03 | Councilmember | I looked in the back. I didn't see that. |
| 03:54:13.60 | Councilmember | Each position has a salary. |
| 03:54:16.03 | Councilmember | I didn't see name and salary. |
| 03:54:19.25 | Councilmember | It doesn't put the person's name as the title of the job. |
| 03:54:23.28 | Councilmember | I guess, what page, Jonathan? |
| 03:54:26.69 | Councilmember | . Thank you. |
| 03:54:27.45 | Unknown | It's good. |
| 03:54:33.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:34.20 | Councilmember | It's state law that you have to be here for a year. No, I know it's – Charlie, could you – |
| 03:54:36.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:36.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:36.28 | Unknown | I know. |
| 03:54:36.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:37.22 | Mayor Withey | Ms. Jarni, could you help us? |
| 03:54:38.03 | Councilmember | The state law should put the ranges, but I saw the categories. I didn't see it. |
| 03:54:42.98 | Councilmember | It starts on page 169 and it runs all the way to page 169. |
| 03:54:54.03 | Councilmember | Yeah. 79. |
| 03:55:00.09 | Unknown | for. |
| 03:55:00.55 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Bye. |
| 03:55:01.19 | Councilmember | Mm-hmm. It's also in the form of resolution. It's the second resolution we have to make, so it's actually in the resolution as the second resolution. |
| 03:55:06.53 | Warren Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:55:06.55 | Mayor Withey | actually. |
| 03:55:09.35 | Councilmember | Well, thank you, because I was looking for that, and I just missed it. Yeah, no, thanks. That clarifies it. Thank you. Great. |
| 03:55:16.66 | Mr. Novak | Okay, okay, so I'd like to make a resolution of the City Council of the City of Sausalito establishing the authorized staffing levels and salary ranges for all permanent and temporary positions for the fiscal year 2014-2015 |
| 03:55:16.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:55:17.00 | Councilmember | Thank you. That's good. How about |
| 03:55:35.58 | Mr. Novak | I have a second. Thank you. |
| 03:55:37.64 | Unknown | Do I have a second? |
| 03:55:38.43 | Mr. Novak | Second. |
| 03:55:39.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:55:40.17 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:55:40.28 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 03:55:40.30 | Mr. Novak | Yeah. |
| 03:55:40.32 | Mayor Withey | Debbie, would you take the roll? |
| 03:55:41.33 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:55:41.60 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:55:41.64 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:55:45.01 | Councilmember | Thank you. Doubt and fear. Yes. Yes, I'm in favor of paying the members who work here, yes. |
| 03:55:55.88 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:55:56.03 | Mr. Novak | Yes. |
| 03:55:57.67 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 03:55:57.68 | Mr. Novak | Yes. And the third resolution. Resolution of the City Council of the City of Sarcellino approving the budget for the 2014-15 fiscal year. Do you have a second? |
| 03:56:14.93 | Mayor Withey | Debbie, would you call the roll, please? |
| 03:56:16.21 | Debbie (City Clerk) | So, the second. |
| 03:56:17.46 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. was Council Member Leung. |
| 03:56:20.50 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council member Fiver. |
| 03:56:21.93 | Councilmember | No. |
| 03:56:24.63 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Fear and doubt. Yes. |
| 03:56:33.05 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. |
| 03:56:33.07 | Mayor Withey | Yes. |
| 03:56:33.91 | Debbie (City Clerk) | you're with us. |
| 03:56:34.67 | Mayor Withey | Yes. And... Why don't I make a motion to ask the city staff, direct the city staff to return on July 8th with a staff report on the Timetable, options timetable, and next steps for effectuating or discussing and then for the City Council to consider a half-cent sales tax to go on the November ballot. Do I have a second? Second. |
| 03:57:20.94 | Mayor Withey | Debbie, would you call the roll, please? |
| 03:57:22.45 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. I'm not. Thank you. Okay. |
| 03:57:25.81 | Councilmember | Yes, this is to discuss the sales tax. |
| 03:57:28.35 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 03:57:28.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:57:30.68 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 03:57:37.50 | Mayor Withey | Yes. Okay, thank you very much, Charlie. And I think... The whole of the department heads and staff and our city manager also thank you for all the hard work, because we know it's not just finance, but all you guys have to spend a couple of months doing this as well, so thank you. Okay, the next... topic is the city manager If I've got this right. Yep. City manager report. |
| 03:58:12.63 | Adam Politzer | I just have two items that I want to bring forward, and Vice Mayor Theodores may want to talk about one of them because he's been more involved than I have, and our Mayor Ray Withey may want to talk about the other one because he was there with me. I'll start with the second. The mayor and I, Public Works Director and Shelby Van Meter met yesterday with the SWA group. and they unveiled the master plan for City Hall. and went through the various phases that this could be looked at and afford to make improvements throughout a series of years, or if we had a big chunk of money or a very generous donor in the community, we could do it quicker. Very impressive plan. We're going to ask them to come to the council. in the near future as soon as we can squeeze them in so that they can give this presentation to the council and to the public. And then they'll work with the Park and Rec Commission and the Public Works Department to look at what projects could come forward sooner and work with the beautification group to prioritize those projects and then bring those back to council. So we are very impressed, very pleased with appreciative of their efforts. They put their whole team together and on a voluntary basis, I think four to six members of their business volunteered to work on this project. They were all very excited about it. And you can tell in the work that they put a lot of heart and soul into giving back to their community. It is important to note that SWA has been in our town since 1964. This is their first project with the city of Sausalito and it's an in-kind project. So that also makes it a special moment for the city. And if the mayor wants to comment more, he can in one moment. And I'll just touch base that there is a community meeting, a public meeting tomorrow night in Tam Valley at the community center to discuss the Muir Woods parking reservation system and shuttle. We expect it to be well attended. I learned from Vice Mayor Theodorus that it's going to be on |
| 04:00:29.98 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 04:00:30.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:30.47 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 04:00:33.79 | Adam Politzer | The media center is going to film it. So it will be available to the public on TV and web stream. Uh, And so we are paying close attention. to the discussion working in alliance with the county. City of Mill Valley and interested parties and also continue to reach out and we'll schedule meetings here at the council for them to come and propose. what comes from the various actions that are going to happen in the next several days, including tomorrow's workshop. And again, I'll let Vice Mayor Theodore's comment more if he so chooses. That's it. |
| 04:01:13.47 | Vice Mayor | No, I don't have anything to add. I'm just not sure whether it'll be broadcast live tomorrow. I believe so. But certainly it'll be broadcast at some point and it'll be streamed. So I encourage everyone to watch. |
| 04:01:27.25 | Councilmember | And Mr. Mayor, I mean... Mr. City Manager, sorry. It's late. Yeah, so as you know, I sent out a city newsletter on this and a lot of people, a lot of interests regarding Muir Woods and what I see is the commercialization of Muir Woods. And so I saw the letter that you wrote and you probably saw my letter too. Thank you. Um, Did you also just comment that you're going to bring them, the Park Service, to City Council for a presentation? on the impact. Did I hear you say that in your report? Thank you. |
| 04:02:06.77 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, not necessarily impact, you know, Council Theodores and I have been talking about this offline. |
| 04:02:06.79 | Councilmember | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 04:02:13.64 | Adam Politzer | AND IT'S A BIT OF A PERFECT STORM. THERE IS A LOT OF ACTIVITY STARTING WITH THE MARINA AND THE Air Force Base operation of the cafe there the Mirwood shuttle Um, the paving of streets there, you know, the improvements that are being made on a regular basis, the work that's happened on Alexander Avenue. Um, Yeah, so we think that it's time for the Park Service to come back to the Council and talk to us. you know, through the umbrella, but we have no illusions and we've told them this, that we want them to come and update us on what comes, what are the results of these public meetings that they're having and what actions they're going to take. So I think we're asking them to come actually give us a broader update but with some specific discussions so that our community and our council can be updated where we stand at the moment they come to the council meeting. THE SOONEST THEY COULD COME TO THE COUNCIL MEETING IS PROBABLY JULY 22, BASED ON OUR OWN AGENDA. And so, you know, again, working with the agenda setting committee, we'll try to prioritize this action coming before the council. |
| 04:03:31.52 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, let me also just – I was going to actually talk about this in the future agenda items, but as we're on it now, we might as well finish it off. So I would encourage anybody who's listening at home to go to try and attend the meeting tomorrow evening, Tam Valley. 6.30 to 8.30. |
| 04:03:52.61 | Councilmember | I'm sorry. and community center? |
| 04:03:54.28 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. Time value. |
| 04:03:55.67 | Councilmember | Mount Tam Community Center. |
| 04:03:57.96 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. I unfortunately can't be. I have a longstanding commitment, so I can't be there, but would be there otherwise. So I think it's important, and as City Manager has said, we already are working through how to get the park service on the agenda here to discuss that, among other things. |
| 04:04:21.42 | Councilmember | Yeah, and along the lines of this same topic, Mr. Mayor, I'd be interested in it seems like they should have done an EIR on this project based on the numbers that we're seeing and the projections. You heard during public comment, Luc Tessier talking about the 46 percent to 53 percent now increase. |
| 04:04:43.25 | Vice Mayor | You know, this is not agendized, and we're not hearing the other side of this. It'd probably be best we're going to put it on the agenda. |
| 04:04:46.43 | Councilmember | and everything. |
| 04:04:51.37 | Vice Mayor | But... The stuff there, there are other sides to it. Rather than debate it, I think we'll put it on the agenda and hear from all interested parties. Also, tomorrow night, that's why we're encouraging everyone to come, it'll be fully explored. We'll have... Actually... Kate Sears and Steve Kinsey will be there. I'm not sure about Jared Huffman, but we'll have... certainly all the interested residents and we're going to have the park service. It'll be aired there. We'll have it come back. I don't think it's good. place to look at one side's information at this point. |
| 04:05:24.55 | Councilmember | Yeah, my point where I was going was that when they do come to present to us on July 22nd, that's the topic that I'm going to be interested in. I'm going to be interested in the environmental impact on Sausalito. |
| 04:05:39.43 | Adam Politzer | Councilmember Pfeiffer, just to clarify, that's the soonest that we can get it on the agenda, and it's no guarantee that it will be on that agenda. So I just want to clarify that we haven't yet agendized it. We'll look at it and prioritize it based on the other items. |
| 04:05:57.50 | Mayor Withey | Okay, the next topic is council member committee reports. I want to follow up on what I discussed last time, but does anybody else have any committee reports that they want to share? Okay. So I want to follow on with the discussion last week or the alert last week that I gave you about marine clean energy and pending legislation AB 2145 which is passing through has passed through the Assembly is in front of a Senate committee next Monday the Senate Senate Committee being, if I can, if you can bear with me, I will tell you what it is in a minute. It's the Senate Energy Utilities and Communications Committee. To back up, AB 1245 is basically legislation that's being sponsored by PG&E through a group of labor unions. Not quite sure why they're involved, but they are. But definitely sponsored by PG&E. Allegedly in – contradiction to CPUC rules, but that's not for us to talk about, which basically will eliminate community choice aggregation in the state of California. What it will do is essentially flip the opt-out mechanism to an opt-in mechanism. It's generally recognized it's impossible for CC. If we flip the opt-out mechanism to an opt-in mechanism, it's generally recognized it's impossible for CCA to actually purchase power unless it's got the collateral of future power. essentially customers with the percentage opt out predicted. So it effectively destroys CCAs and the same thing you We have received a letter from a number of folks, but including Leslie Olden through 4K Sears, asking each jurisdiction to ask the city managers to write a letter in opposition to AB 1245. Pretty much every jurisdiction in Marin is planning to do that. And... I'm asking this city council to consider directing the city manager to do that as well. Thank you. I know we don't normally do this, but I am particularly concerned here that you have the state legislature who's imposing mandate after mandate on local jurisdictions, including, um, Uh. the demands to create climate action plans with specific goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, et cetera, et cetera. um, County Marin has been able to actually meet its greenhouse gas emissions nine years early than planned, simply because it Um, uses marine clean energy for all of its accounts, and was therefore able to actually prove the amount of greenhouse gas reductions it had saved. So... On the one hand, you've got The state. thrown a bunch of legislation at you and at the same time you've got PG&E and labour unions working in the state to actually take away the tools that you could use to do that. So I think this is actually quite serious. And as I said, I went into this whole thing with a healthy degree of skepticism, but have come out the other end thinking that this is something that we should definitely support. So I am very much in favor of directing our city manager to write a letter along with all the other jurisdictions here opposing AB 1245. |
| 04:10:46.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:10:47.03 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:10:47.10 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 04:10:49.14 | Councilmember | Yeah, I do have a comment. I have a different viewpoint on this one. You know, I understand why PG&E is involved, obviously, from a business perspective, but I'm looking at this from a transparency perspective. One thing that's always made me uncomfortable from the get-go regarding the current legislation around MCE is the fact that people are automatically opted into MCE and have to opt out. It reminds me of some of the controversy today regarding some of the Wi-Fi apps that automatically download when you walk into a store and maybe track your purchases, etc. You're automatically opted in. And you're even unaware that it's going on. There was a time where governments took action and passed legislation against these types of things. They were referred to as schemes. The fact that MCE was able to, you know, I mean, that Sacramento went forward with this and went with the automatic opt-in, so that you're automatically in MCE and you better pay attention to your snail mail, because if you don't, you could wind up in a program that you're not aware of. And then you can go to the MCE, And paying more. So I just think in the interest of transparency, it makes me feel uncomfortable. It's not that I'm a big fan of PG&E by any means, but I am a fan of transparency, and I've never felt comfortable with the automatic, the fact that people were automatically enrolled in something, and many were not even aware of it. |
| 04:12:37.70 | Mayor Withey | in a way. Neither was I, actually. I thought that that was my first reaction, sort of gut reaction without studying it, was that that can't be right. But the fact remains that any state in this country that has adopted community choice aggregation, and there's a lot of states beyond California, every single one has adopted the mechanism that exists in California. and the reason being is that you cannot form a CCA. It's impossible to sustain a CCA without it. Now, that's a fact. So if you are opposed to the concept of this, which I can understand, you know, reasonable people could object to that, the fact remains that if you go to an opt-in mechanism for a CCA, the CCA can't exist. |
| 04:13:34.82 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:13:34.97 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:13:35.05 | Mr. Novak | My comment, first of all, |
| 04:13:37.15 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:13:38.87 | Mr. Novak | PG and E is involved in it. You know something negative for the public is going to come out of it. |
| 04:13:44.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:13:44.74 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. Thank you. There's no question about it. and buying energy As far as they're concerned, naturally, the less competition they have to go out there to buy the energy, the higher you will pay for the electricity or the energy that we buy. There's no question about it. Here, at least, our local energy can go out and... and seek. bids or buy energy for five years, seven years, and be locked in or be reasonable with it. P, G, and E, you're just at their mercy. If you just go in that direction, They will just slam it or they will create. shortages or whatever they contrive. Shortages. They told us we were running out of fuel or oil in 1973. Here we are in 2014, and we have more fuel oil now in the world than we've ever had. So I think it might not be as transparent as you want, but going in there with the PG&E animal, no way. |
| 04:14:55.16 | Vice Mayor | May I ask a question? On these... |
| 04:14:56.54 | Unknown | Good. |
| 04:14:56.78 | Mr. Novak | I'm fine. |
| 04:14:57.05 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:14:59.28 | Vice Mayor | opt-in and opt-out. If this were to pass, would the consumer get a choice to pick one or the other or would it it would all is so so you're not opting out of it you have that opt out a PG&E basically I mean I |
| 04:15:09.32 | Unknown | You're not. |
| 04:15:09.52 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:15:13.30 | Mayor Withey | It gives PG&E the automatic. |
| 04:15:13.40 | Vice Mayor | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:15:13.49 | Unknown | It gives heat. |
| 04:15:14.48 | Vice Mayor | It gives people... I'd like to count. Because a council member Pfeiffer's point I certainly Sympathize with the opt-in and out opt-out, but the problem is you're you know gonna have to opt out of one of them And I have to say I take a different well Somewhat sympathize with council member Weiner the idea that we have a public utility and unions influencing our assembly and If they were looking at this from a consumer protection point of view, and this was an opt-in, opt-out issue, I might have another thing. This is purely a power play. on PG&E's part, so I actually would support the motion. |
| 04:15:51.40 | Mayor Withey | Very good. |
| 04:15:52.30 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 04:15:52.77 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:15:52.79 | Mayor Withey | What's going on here is that, you know, you've got to remember the legislature is very busy. |
| 04:15:52.81 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:15:52.89 | Mr. Novak | What? |
| 04:15:53.04 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:15:53.18 | Mr. Novak | Thank you. |
| 04:15:53.41 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:15:53.68 | Mr. Novak | It's going. |
| 04:16:01.28 | Mayor Withey | You know, it's not like they've got You know, they've got minimal staff, half of them, and they're dealing with a lot of bills, especially this time of year. This was pitched in the assembly as basically a labor bill. So all the folks who were going to automatically back labor just voted for it. I mean, it lost. the bill passed in the House with only 15 actual the Assembly, with actually only 15 votes in opposition. which you can't say by any rational reason means that it went through thorough consideration. |
| 04:16:39.36 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:16:41.61 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:16:41.62 | Councilmember | Yeah, I guess my general point of view of this is the same as when we debated this, I don't know, six years ago, is that opt-in, opt-out, it doesn't make a difference if you don't have a choice. And the reality is you won't be able to give someone a choice if they can't have the option of staying with whatever provider is the new alternative, because it's sort of like the First of all, people don't generally... by and large, and this was true in this – where the power comes from. The vast majority of people, as long as the price doesn't change dramatically. And the reality of the Marin Clean Energy is that the price didn't change dramatically, and it made a pledge to not change the price dramatically for the people who are going to carry over from – as prior customers into the non-opt-out folks. And that's played out over time. Now, that's maybe not going to happen in all circumstances because it depends how you handle all those things, the contracts and all that good stuff. But the reality is if you want to give somebody a choice of where they get their power from, If you're a libertarian at heart, you don't have a choice because no one will form one of these things because there won't be the critical mass to drag people across. Now I agree it is dragging people across into these new entities. But if they're run correctly, they provide a competitive alternative and a more environmentally responsible alternative to PG&E. And the other monopolies because this is a monopoly protecting its business. That being said, they were monopolies for a reason, because the cost of construction of all this stuff was – it was too hard to do with competitive businesses doing it at the same time. There's just too much infrastructure. Now what PG&E has separated itself into a transmission business and a production business, and that's true of every utility in the United States. So it's nothing against PG&E. because they still get paid for the transmission side of things. It's just if you want to change things quicker, than what PG&E is offering to do on the non-fossil fuel side of things in terms of the amount of emissions that are being generated. you have to have an alternative to do that faster, and that's these community choice aggregation models for the most part. It seemed to me, even in the beginning, that the idea that you could make someone do something and they would have to opt out was a bad thing. But it didn't. At the end of the day, it provides people choice. And without it, there isn't the critical mass to give them a choice. And that's, I think, whether you're a libertarian a free markets person. this is creating that choice. As far as the labor issue, I'm not going to wade into that. I think there's different You know, the labor unions would have supported the CCAs if all the CCAs had agreed to use You know, union labor. We don't – RCCA doesn't actually employ anybody to generate power. So we don't have that issue. And the people who work for the Marine Clean Energy, I think, are covered in some sense under a quasi-union kind of contract that's similar to the county's. But that being said, You know, we're I understand where unions are coming from or labor is coming from on this issue, but I think at the end of the day, it's a consumer choice issue. |
| 04:20:17.34 | Councilmember | I didn't have a choice. I didn't have a choice when it came to paying for MCE's infrastructure, the pensions, the retirement costs of their employees. We've added another – I think |
| 04:20:18.00 | Councilmember | Yeah. |
| 04:20:18.30 | Patricia Pigman | Thank you. |
| 04:20:31.83 | Councilmember | agency and government here in Marin County, and we're all paying for that. We all wound up opting. We were all put into MCE. If you weren't watching the ball, if you weren't aware of it, you had no choice. You didn't even know what had happened. So I have, in my opinion, In a free society, we always have a choice. Another business could step forward and offer clean energy. Instead, we've got a government agency that's been inserted another layer of bureaucracy. more pension costs, more unsustainable retirement. I mean, the whole thing is a big – if you have public employees working for MCE, they are under CalPERS or they are under MSERA, and – well, then MSERA. |
| 04:21:08.60 | Unknown | Big. |
| 04:21:22.17 | Councilmember | There you go. |
| 04:21:24.18 | Mayor Withey | Okay, so I'd like to make a motion to direct the city manager to write a letter to, I think this has been, The city staff have all the details. Letter in opposition to AB 2145 or whatever it is. Do I have a second? Thank you. |
| 04:21:49.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:21:49.27 | Jacques Ullman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:51.18 | Mayor Withey | Would you take the roll, Debbie? |
| 04:21:56.26 | Councilmember | No. |
| 04:22:03.75 | Mr. Novak | This is a trip. Doubt and fear again. Yes. |
| 04:22:07.97 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council Member Leone. Vice Mayor Theodora. Yeah. |
| 04:22:12.31 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 04:22:14.40 | Mayor Withey | Yes, that passes 401. Moving on to future agenda items, we've, I think, talked about the Muir Woods Park Service issue. We are, I just wanted to mention that we are trying to figure out when to put the Marin City PDA on the agenda. It's not scheduled yet, but it will occur. I don't know when. |
| 04:22:44.17 | Vice Mayor | May I on that? And we have it. But I look at it as. |
| 04:22:45.06 | Mayor Withey | on that. |
| 04:22:49.84 | Vice Mayor | report on Marin City in general I think it'd be a great thing for for the city and any other ways that we you know they are a neighbor and court coordination but certainly that in anything relating to that would so I'd have it a broader contact |
| 04:22:56.10 | Mary Wagner | They are. |
| 04:23:01.19 | Adam Politzer | have |
| 04:23:03.89 | Councilmember | And Mr. Mayor, just to clarify, I want to be really specific. My request for the future agenda item is the priority development area designation or potential PDA that Marin City currently has. Even a lot of people in Marin City don't understand it and don't even know what it means. That's the ultimate opt-in situation. Strawberry got out. Marinwood got out, et cetera. We – I'm looking forward to this on the agenda to learn more. |
| 04:23:03.91 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. Mr. Mayor, just a quick question. |
| 04:23:28.36 | Mayor Withey | Right. to learn. it will be on the agenda don't fear is there arm any other arm future agenda items that we'd like the agenda setting committee to consider. |
| 04:23:40.23 | Councilmember | Yeah, I was like... Yeah, at some point, we promised folks, the art commission appointees would start flowing this way, and we don't have to do it all at once, but let's start interviewing folks over time and get that on the flow. I know that we have enough folks to at least start interviewing, I think. |
| 04:23:52.07 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 04:23:52.09 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 04:23:52.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:24:01.35 | Unknown | Right. |
| 04:24:01.56 | Councilmember | So – and if people want to get the word out, get some more people, the better the – the larger number of candidates, the better choices we have to make. I would ask – and just because I don't know the answer – to have the city go back and look at what was done with the public safety building survey. And I don't know if one was done for the fire consolidation. I can't remember. But there was one before that. And just see how we handled that and just come back and... So the air is clear on that and just how the city handled that. And I know – I think one was done before my time on the council. for the public safety stuff, too. So just so we're following the same practice and to see if there's some legal reason why the consulting firm doesn't want to, you know, rather not do this just so we can clear the air and not have people make seem like there's a smoking gun here or not. So those are two things that, yeah. And for me, it's more of an update on what's happening with the whole Pomerantz City, that big shopping center, as well as the PDA, because the PDA is not just on the shopping center. It's on the whole area. So I want to know, the shopping center is going to drive the PDA, because the rest of it's pretty much developed. |
| 04:25:14.35 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 04:25:14.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:25:14.51 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 04:25:21.73 | Councilmember | So whatever happens in there – and it's more of a sphere of influence. We can't control what happens there, but I'd like to know we should be in the flow. |
| 04:25:29.22 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I mean, just for some information, I know West Marine is definitely taking that spot where babies are us or whatever the... |
| 04:25:40.04 | Councilmember | Oh, where babies are restful. |
| 04:25:41.29 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, they're definitely taking that spot because I was invited to a ribbon cutting, which unfortunately I can't go to. But anyway, they're definitely doing that. |
| 04:25:42.69 | Councilmember | That's a lot. |
| 04:25:50.91 | Mayor Withey | That's a good spot. |
| 04:25:51.95 | Councilmember | Oh, I just want to echo the Arts Commission. It would be great to start, move forward on those interviews. |
| 04:25:57.74 | Mayor Withey | OK, let's move on. Any other reports of significance? I see none. Then why don't we adjourn? |
| 04:26:06.77 | Vice Mayor | MCCMC, we all in 18 minutes and up on that. |
| 04:26:10.92 | Councilmember | June 25th. |
| 04:26:11.93 | Vice Mayor | 22 minutes. |
| 04:26:14.28 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:26:14.33 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:26:15.00 | Councilmember | No. |
| 04:26:15.76 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 04:26:15.78 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:26:15.80 | Mayor Withey | No, it's next Wednesday. Next Wednesday. It is in Fairfax, I think. Largsville, sorry. Yeah, Fairfax was last week. That's right, yeah. |
| 04:26:15.81 | Councilmember | David. |
| 04:26:16.25 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:26:16.40 | Councilmember | next Wednesday. |
| 04:26:17.21 | Councilmember | next Wednesday. |
| 04:26:18.38 | Councilmember | is |
| 04:26:22.23 | Councilmember | Thank you. |
| 04:26:22.24 | Unknown | Larksworth, sorry. |
| 04:26:25.01 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:26:26.95 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Okay, if there's nothing else, we will adjourn, and the next regular City Council meeting is next week, June 24th. Thank you. |
| 04:26:43.28 | Unknown | You're the wrong con. |
| 04:26:45.97 | Unknown | You're the wrong guy, man. |