| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:07.25 | Mayor Withey | Debbie. Thank you. All right. |
| 00:00:15.57 | Mayor Withey | Good evening, and welcome to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council for Tuesday, November 11, 2014. Debbie, would you please take the roll? |
| 00:00:29.50 | City Clerk | Council member Pfeiffer? Here. Council member Weiner? |
| 00:00:32.65 | Mayor Withey | President. |
| 00:00:32.67 | City Clerk | President, Vice Mayor Theodorus. Present. Mayor Whitty. |
| 00:00:34.41 | Mayor Withey | present. Here. Thank you. As you all undoubtedly know, today is Veterans Day, and today is the day that we honor those who've served our country. So the Pledge of Allegiance tonight takes on, I think, a special significance. We shall be adjourning tonight's meeting in honor of all that have served our country. So Chief Irving, I ask you to lead the pledge tonight. |
| 00:01:15.63 | Jim Irving | I pledge allegiance. to the fire. United States of America. Thank you. |
| 00:01:24.12 | Jim Irving | MAKING A LITTLE BIT OF Thank you. |
| 00:01:25.11 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:01:25.15 | Jim Irving | God. Thank you. |
| 00:01:26.18 | Mayor Withey | indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Jim. |
| 00:01:36.39 | Mayor Withey | There was no closed session this evening, so could I have a motion to approve the agenda, please? |
| 00:01:45.03 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So move. |
| 00:01:46.53 | Mayor Withey | Second. All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:01:48.49 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:01:48.67 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 00:01:52.13 | Mayor Withey | so tonight uh... and it back to Chief Irving, who's for our special presentation this evening, is going to introduce our new Deputy Fire Chief, Chris Tubbs. |
| 00:02:13.75 | Jim Irving | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council Members. It's my pleasure to introduce Chris Tubbs. He's our recently appointed deputy fire chief for the Southern Marine Fire Protection District. He comes to us from the city of Mercer Island Fire Department of Washington State. He served as a Mercer Island Fire Chief for the last seven years. Chief Tubbs has a 35-year career in the fire service where he's worked at a number of different capacities, from firefighter, lieutenant, captain, battalion chief, deputy chief of operations, and finally fire chief, and then back to deputy chief for us. He also spent 19 years as the Washington State Urban Search and Rescue Team. It's one of 28 teams throughout the country, part of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA USAR, which is Urban Search and Rescue System. During his time with that task force, he was deployed to Oklahoma City bombing and to Hurricane Katrina. He currently serves on the International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Council and the Department of Homeland Security's Information Sharing Committee. He's also a member of the DHS virtual social media working group and a member of the National Information Sharing Consortium. He also serves as an executive board member of the King County Fire Chiefs Association and a member of the King County Emergency Management Action Council. He's been involved in a variety of regional, local technology initiatives. He holds an associate degree in fire command administration, a bachelor's degree in Fire Services Administration, and a master's degree in Executive Leadership with an emphasis in disaster preparedness. He's a graduate of the National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer Program and a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate Center for Homeland Defense and Security Executive Leadership Program. He holds membership status in the Institution of Fire Engineers and a Chief Fire Officer designee through the Center for Public Safety Excellence and is a certified Homeland Protection professional as well as a certified labor relations professional. He's received numerous awards including the Mercer Island Fire Department Distinguished Service Medal for the Life Rescue of a Police Officer, and Outstanding Research Award from the National Fire Academy. In the short time that Chief Tubbs has been in Submarine, he has demonstrated the ability to learn and adapt to his new environment. I believe he will be a tremendous asset to both the fire district and of the city of Sausalito. Chris Tubbs. |
| 00:05:11.71 | Chris Tubbs | Thank you, Chief. I'm exhausted after listening to that. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, Mr. City Manager, it truly is an honor and a privilege to be here. I look forward to working with you in the coming years and serving this beautiful region. So thank you very much for tonight, and I look forward to working with you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:28.93 | Unknown | This is... |
| 00:05:34.73 | Mayor Withey | Thank you and welcome. And of course, it goes without saying, is we welcome one new person. We're going to be saying goodbye to someone who's a dear friend of ours, Jim Irving. And later on this month, there's going to be a special celebration for his work. And we'll say a proper goodbye then. So thank you, Jim, as well. |
| 00:06:10.20 | Mayor Withey | OK, the next item is item number two, communications. And this is a time when it's time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on tonight's agenda. So if any member of the public would like to address the Council on any item that's not on the agenda, please come up to the podium. |
| 00:06:42.77 | Kathleen Clark | I have blood. |
| 00:06:48.76 | Kathleen Clark | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council Members, City Management. Thank you. I'm nervous. This is my husband, Robin. I'm Kathleen Clark. And I'm just going to read you a small, a wee email that we sent to you members, you council members last week. It wants to raise your attention to our issues with violation in Airbnb ordinances, but also the more pressing issue. for our lifestyle is four months of ongoing construction that was mostly unpermitted. And so I'm just going to read this quickly, if I may. Is that all right with you guys? Please. Please do. Okay. |
| 00:07:29.56 | Mayor Withey | Please, please do. |
| 00:07:31.98 | Kathleen Clark | Thank you. We have been residents and business owners in Sausalito for nearing 35 years. We purchased our very first home here 10 years ago at 619 Locust Street. We wish to bring your attention to the multiple construction permit and Airbnb violations that have occurred at 617 Locust Street. Since the property changed ownership last year, this multi-unit property has become in part an Airbnb business. in that development. we observed a rapid turnover of Airbnb guests, the dramatic change of activity and traffic on our very congested and small street, prompted our investigation into Airbnb regulations. Our findings revealed that there are ordinances in place that restrict guests to 30 days or Anything less is a transient occupancy. We then contacted the city and Airbnb and submitted the proper yellow zone ordinance violation form. The new owner has also for the last four months also engaged in nonstop construction activities, and we do mean nonstop every single day of the week and also on Sundays. We observed a permit posting that allowed for the reinstallation of a kitchen in the lower studio. Our concerns grew when the magnitude of men, sounds, activities, materials, and length of time on the job seemed to be escalating to a much larger scale than allowed on the posted permit. We then began to voice our concerns to the building department. I'm almost done. Multiple stop workers were posted on site. But then family members appeared to be on lookout on the parking debt to alert construction workers of approaching building inspectors. Plastic tarps have been hung to conceal construction activities, and this owner again and his group have ignored multiple stop orders, even with police presence. The construction activities continued up until 7 or 8, and again, every day. Final paragraph. Building Inspector Mr. Kenneth Henry informed us that due to the gravity of this situation, it is now an administrative process in which involves the city attorney, Mrs. Wagner, but releases our police department from response. With the retirement of Director Jeremy Graves and the unprecedented nature of the owner's disregard of city regulation, we are concerned that the city has not taken the proper steps to resolve the situation. |
| 00:09:47.52 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:10:08.58 | Kathleen Clark | If the owner continues to disregard city codes and ordinances, we are requesting that the city more immediate and appropriate action against all violations. Thank you very much. |
| 00:10:18.85 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:10:19.50 | Kathleen Clark | Thank you. |
| 00:10:19.51 | Robin Clark | Do you have anything to add? Yeah, our concern is that it appears that the building is trying to maximize the property for more living space, for more people living on the property. Where this location is, it's on a very narrow and the grade is fairly steep and there's not much parking as it exists. So we're concerned that there's more traffic, more concerned about safety and just more congestion in general. So our concern is that these people will continue to now put, they will submit plans, but they'll be allowed to build out more than what's allowable for that particular lot. And they would probably apply for variances. So we're concerned that the variances would be approved and then after the fact, then we have this larger situation than what's really comfortable on our street. So however you can help in this matter, we definitely appreciate it. Thanks for your time. |
| 00:10:28.47 | Unknown | More living. |
| 00:11:06.22 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:11:20.99 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:11:21.00 | Robin Clark | Thank you. |
| 00:11:21.02 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Could I ask our city manager to briefly comment on that? |
| 00:11:30.10 | Adam Politzer | Yes, and first off, just thank you for sending the e-mail and the coming tonight. Your particular case has elevated up as I think Kenneth Henry suggested. So Jeremy Graves, our Community Development Director, and I, with our new Community Development Director, Danny Castro, have this item, not just your particular location, but the whole item is elevated to another level. Our city attorney is also involved in looking at options. The Finance Committee has had a discussion about this, and we plan on bringing options to the council in January on what we can do to regulate and review citywide. But your case, because of the work order and ignoring the work order of police involvement that's now being taken up to the police chief, our new community development director, our city attorney, so we hope to get some resolution to your particular case and then look citywide on how do we enforce the activity that exists today. |
| 00:12:43.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:45.80 | Adam Politzer | Absolutely. Yes. |
| 00:12:48.33 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Adam. Is there any other, Bessie, please. |
| 00:12:55.13 | Betsy | I just wanted to thank the City Council and the City of Sausalito and the Parks and Rec Department for supporting our Sausalito Village Art Show. This is our second year, and we just had a very, very successful launch party. We must have had over 100 people here, and it took a lot of work by a lot of people, and I wanted to... I mentioned Tricia Smith who was in charge of the food, which was glorious, and the decor, and Carolyn Zaroff and Anne Bailey organized the art show and got the artists together. We had 18 artists who were all members of Sausalito Village, and that's up from 13 last year and there were more people who wanted to do it. It's a success and we're very, very happy that the city is supporting us on this and we wanted to thank you. |
| 00:13:50.03 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Betsy. Any other member of the public like to comment on an item that's not on tonight's agenda? Jeff. |
| 00:14:03.98 | Jeff | Thank you. |
| 00:14:04.03 | Joe Horak | Hello there. |
| 00:14:05.30 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:14:05.40 | Jeff | Good evening. |
| 00:14:05.69 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:14:05.86 | Jeff | Thank you. TO THE COUNCIL. Sausalito workers and citizens. I've been doing Torah readings for a little while, for some months now. and They didn't vote against it, I guess, in the last election, so here I am again. And what I have here is something about a successor to Abraham, who is the father not just of the Jews, but of the Christians and the Muslims for sure. And I think the Hindus and the Buddhists and the atheists too. Now Abraham needs a successor. And Abraham has a bit of a troubled relationship with his sons, right? He's got Yitzchak. and he has Ishmael. And Ishmael is where the Arab lineage is traced through, and Yitzchak is where the Jewish lineage is traced through. This is a story about a person who doesn't get much play in the Torah. It's Isaac, Yitzchak. This is from chapter 24, verse 2. It says, And Abraham said to his servant, the elder of the house, who ruled over all that was his, Please place your hand under my thigh. That was the way that they were shaking hands and signing the contract. And I will adjure to you by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose midst I dwell. That the Canaanites had some issues that Abraham didn't want to deal with. He wanted his son, the next person in line, to have a holy marriage. And this is how he did it. And if the woman will not wish to go after you, Abraham says, you will be absolved of this, Only do not return my son back there. So the woman had a choice. She didn't have to go. This was, you know, this, The Jews trace our lineage through the mother. We are not patriarchs. This is 14. Now Abraham has sent his servant to go to the well and find a wife. And it will be that the maiden to whom I will say, lower your pitcher and I will drink. And she will say, drink and I will also water your camels. Her have you designated for your servant, for Isaac, and through her may I know that you have performed loving kindness, which is chesed in Hebrew, for my master. So... This is exactly what happens to Rebecca. Rebecca goes, out of the kindness of her heart, she offers to a wandering person water. for not only himself, but for his camels as well. And now, Rebecca, by doing that, she receives gifts, and she's brought back to meet Isaac. And this is what it says. In Hebrew, it says,. And this is translated as, Is it okay if I just finish this part? A couple of seconds. Okay. A couple of seconds. That's all I need. It says, Isaac went forth to pray in the field towards evenings. And to meditate is really the exact pronunciation of this, the exact meaning. And he lifted his eyes and he saw, and behold, camels were approaching. Isaac brought her to the tent of Sarah, his mother, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her. It's never talked about Abraham loving Sarah, though of course he did, or Jacob loving Sarah. his wife, his wives, Rachel and Leah and his handmaidens, though he did as well. Isaac only had one wife, and he didn't have to deal with a lot of the mishigas, and he loved her. So that's the portion for this week, and thank you for listening. |
| 00:17:55.96 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 00:17:55.98 | Jeff | Thank you. |
| 00:17:58.85 | Mayor Withey | Any other member of the public like to address this council on anything not on the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll close our public comment. of the Item three is action minutes of the previous meeting. We have two. The first is the meeting of October 7th. Do I have a motion to approve as submitted, or is there any changes? Some will. Second. All in favor? Aye. The second is the City Council meeting of October 21st. So moved. |
| 00:18:27.65 | Councilmember Leon | Bye. |
| 00:18:35.82 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:18:35.97 | Councilmember Leon | Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.03 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.04 | Councilmember Leon | Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.19 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. All in favor. Aye. Aye. |
| 00:18:38.62 | Councilmember Leon | Bye. |
| 00:18:40.84 | Mayor Withey | Those two motions carry. The next item is item number four, the consent calendar. I noticed that on item F, on the first reading, Council Member Pfeiffer, you abstained. I don't know if you want this item separately done so that you could abstain again. Is that your wish? |
| 00:19:06.47 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Your wish. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I was going to request that. |
| 00:19:09.45 | Mayor Withey | Okay. So could I have a motion to approve the consent calendar with the knowledge that item F, Council Member Pfeiffer, will be abstaining? And is there any other comments on the consent calendar? |
| 00:19:22.13 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I do have a request to pull item D regarding the status report on the tourney boat ramp gangway. You'll recall I voted against this. It's going to cost upwards of $50,000, and I had questions about that. |
| 00:19:47.88 | Mayor Withey | Okay, we'll deal with that issue immediately after. So could I have a motion? To approve the consent calendar for items A through A, B, C, E, and F, with Councilmember Pfeiffer abstaining on item F. So moved. Second. All in favor. Aye. |
| 00:20:16.45 | Councilmember Leon | Bye. |
| 00:20:18.59 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 00:20:19.27 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And Mr. Mayor, you moved item D. Yes, so we're going to now |
| 00:20:21.93 | Mayor Withey | Yes, so we're gonna now move to item D. Okay. And so, |
| 00:20:24.53 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 00:20:28.87 | Mayor Withey | What specifically is the issue here that you want to raise? |
| 00:20:29.00 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 00:20:32.93 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Let's see. The staff report from May 6 included a progress report from Klaus and structural engineers that, I guess, put an estimate somewhere around 50,000. And, you know, I had a lot of questions about this because of the inability to enforce the, you know, time frame of how long the dinghies are docked by the anchor routes. But it included boat ramp extension TBD with an asterisk. So I was unclear as to whether I know the budget has allocated about $50,000 for this, but I'm unclear as to whether we were – I know the budget has allocated about $50,000 for this, but I'm unclear as to if that's the total cost or does that include the boat ramp extension. |
| 00:21:30.95 | Mayor Withey | Could I ask our public works director and city engineer, Jonathan Goldman, to |
| 00:21:37.63 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Very briefly, the gangway does not include the boat ramp extension or any other improvements, and the gangway is really the the the topic of the status update to let the council know that that's where we are in the process and that that at this point the city is planning to have the replacement gangway fabricated and delivered. |
| 00:22:11.70 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I have a follow-up question. So is the whole project just the gangway, or is it the... the piling, the flotation to the dock, et cetera. There's stuff listed here. |
| 00:22:27.14 | Jonathon Goldman | There's still a lot of people. listed here? At this point, the project consists of reusing the existing pilings and the existing float, removing the existing gangway and replacing it with a longer gangway, and then resetting the pilings further away from shore and reattaching the float at that location. |
| 00:22:53.77 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So when it says, Turny Street ramp dredge in the strategic plan in the budget from June 17th, is that included as well? There's no. |
| 00:23:03.73 | Jonathon Goldman | The dredging? No, there's no dredging included. |
| 00:23:06.30 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And so then I see the line item budget is for 55,446. |
| 00:23:12.56 | Jonathon Goldman | That's the appropriation that Council made with the budget, yes. |
| 00:23:15.85 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. So I guess I just, again, have just... Thank you, Jonathan. You've answered my questions. You're welcome. I just have questions, again, about... |
| 00:23:22.53 | Jonathon Goldman | You're welcome. |
| 00:23:22.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:23:27.09 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | allocating money to that project. I continue to have a lot of concerns about that, and I'll just leave it at that. |
| 00:23:35.59 | Mayor Withey | Okay, it looks like this was for information, so there's no action necessary. Is that correct, Mary? Adam? |
| 00:23:44.32 | Councilmember Leon | I think we should vote on... |
| 00:23:45.58 | Mayor Withey | MR. On simply receiving it, yes. |
| 00:23:45.61 | Councilmember Leon | We can see that. Yeah. |
| 00:23:47.52 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | it, yes. And, Mr. Mayor, I would make a motion to revisit the project and the budgeting. I also don't – I think it's going to cost more than $55,000, frankly. |
| 00:24:00.79 | Mayor Withey | Well, I think if indeed it's more than appropriated, it has to come back here anyway. |
| 00:24:07.40 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I know it will come back, but I guess what I'm saying is I think it, to me, it's looking like a boondoggle and it's a project for the anchor outs and I'm just questioning the allocation of that much money for that project. |
| 00:24:09.12 | Mayor Withey | but. |
| 00:24:23.75 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 00:24:24.78 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I move to reconsider that project. |
| 00:24:28.46 | Mayor Withey | There a second. |
| 00:24:32.61 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:24:32.63 | Ed Carey | Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:24:36.19 | Councilmember Leon | I move that we approve item 4D. you |
| 00:24:41.02 | Mayor Withey | second. Thanks. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Thank you. So that's 3-1. |
| 00:24:43.90 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I... No. |
| 00:24:51.55 | Mayor Withey | Okay, next item five, public hearings. A is introduced and read by title only, an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito, amended in section 6.04.160C of the Sausalito Municipal Code to prohibit dogs from inside the fenced area of the playground at MLK Park. and Mike Langford. |
| 00:25:19.96 | Jonathon Goldman | our Farx and Reich director. Well, good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council. Let's see. So all the way back in October 30, 2006, with the urging of the Parks and Recreation Commission, the City Council at that time put in an ordinance that would prohibit dogs from the playground areas of certain parks. So that included the fenced-in area here at Robin Sweeney Park, all of Casno Park, as it is basically just a playground, or it was then and will be soon, hopefully, if the Rotary can, as they're working with their project. Harrison Park, as you know, we finished that, and that's basically just the playground, as well as the fenced-in area, playground area of Southview Park. And again, that ordinance was brought forward based on the recommendation of the Parks and Recreation Commission and residents at that time in order to keep the kids safe and also to maintain a sanitary area for the kids to play on. Now with the recent completion of the very popular park at the Martin Luther King Park park there, actually the playground that's located at the park campus site, the Parks and Recreation Commission as well as staff is recommending that that area, just the fenced in playground, be added to this ordinance so that the dogs on leash or off leash, unless they are service animals, would not be allowed within the confines of that fenced in area. |
| 00:26:45.69 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Do we have any questions? |
| 00:26:49.60 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a question. So when I was noticing in the resolution and the staff report, there's reference to the playground, but then also there's reference to the fenced-in area. and there was some some questions out there in the community with regards to are we only talking about the playground or are we talking about the broader NLK fence areas? |
| 00:27:14.00 | Jonathon Goldman | This is only the fenced area of the playground, so that would be the area that the Lycée Francais worked on over the past year to make the playground. |
| 00:27:23.99 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. Okay. Thanks. So one thing we – well, I'll save my comments to the comment period. |
| 00:27:31.12 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Thank you, Mike. Let's invite public comment. I'd like to open public comment on this item. Is there any member of the public who would like to make a comment about this specific item? Please. |
| 00:27:54.15 | Marjorie Liu | I'm the mayor in the office of the city and my name is Marjorie. Thank you. My name is Marjorie Liu. I lived in this city for 28 years, and I enjoyed it very much. and and proud to be part of the community. Recently we saw this agenda coming out and many of our friends were concerned about is the MLK field. Um. We all understand that this new fence in the playground is for the children for the school and also not allow for any pet inside, which I personally involve in the construction and everything for a long time. I understand that because this is for children, it's for the sanitary reason. uh, uh, signs on the gaze, there's no pets for anything inside, so we understood that. And I go there and watching the kids play, and my neighbor, I myself don't have, but I enjoy watching them. and I did not see any pets inside a fancy area. So I do not think that it's a concern for the community, and I think we have better sense for doing that. The only concern we have is most people we talk about it is just like Councilman Linda talked about it, the MLK field, and that means it's the broader area for the whole place. Are we allowed to have dogs in there or even on leash or people just playing there after an hour or whatever? Because I understand most of our groups are very responsible citizens and we pick up garbage. For myself, if I see a lot of things on the ground where I can't stand it, I'll clean it. So this is a little confusing because the wording. So I hope the council will have some clarification for all the citizens to understand the wording. the whole meeting for that. Thank you. |
| 00:30:13.15 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Anybody else like to say anything on this topic? Okay, seeing none, let's close public comment and bring it back up here. Does anybody have anything to say? |
| 00:30:32.12 | Mayor Withey | Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 00:30:33.26 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I think that all we need to do is just clarify we're referring to the playground. |
| 00:30:42.48 | Mayor Withey | Seems that's what we're talking about. |
| 00:30:47.15 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So in the wording, because I think it's really key, even if we're looking at the broader MLK, dog owners have to be responsible and pick up and keep their dogs under control. This particular resolution is focused on the playground area. And so if we could go in and specifically on item 5A, attachment 2, page 1 of 2, third paragraph, whereas fenced children's area of Southview Park, if we could say, or rather the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th paragraph down, whereas fenced children's area of MLK Junior Park, if we could say fenced children's playground area. |
| 00:30:52.87 | Unknown | you know, even if we're |
| 00:31:43.53 | Mayor Withey | Mary? |
| 00:31:45.79 | Mary Wagner | If the council would like us to change the recital, that's fine, Mr. Mayor. I would direct your attention to the language that's actually what the council is amending in the ordinance which is set forth in Section 1 that says specifically adding the language or the fenced children's area of Martin Luther King, Junior Park because that's going to be the language that's added to the municipal code. But if you'd like the change in the recital, we'd be happy to make that also. |
| 00:32:11.44 | Unknown | It's a good thing. |
| 00:32:11.53 | Mayor Withey | He's like, |
| 00:32:11.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:32:16.93 | Mary Wagner | Well, I think the important thing is |
| 00:32:16.96 | Mayor Withey | Well, I think the important thing is to clarify that. I mean, just add playground where it needs to be. |
| 00:32:23.49 | Councilmember Leon | She's basically saying it's only a recital, but let's just do that. Let's just clarify. I mean, it is only for the playground. It really just mirrors what we do at our other playgrounds. Dogs aren't appropriate in these playgrounds, so this is just a basic matter that we do in every park. I don't think there's any controversy of it, and we can certainly add that word if it beefs up the statute here. |
| 00:32:48.11 | Mayor Withey | Okay. All right. Okay, so we need a motion for this first reading. |
| 00:32:59.40 | Councilmember Leon | Do you need to read it? |
| 00:33:00.30 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I think we need to read the whole thing. So I move. |
| 00:33:02.27 | Councilmember Leon | So I move that we introduce and read by title only an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending section 6.04.160C of the Sausalito Municipal Code to prohibit dogs from inside the fenced area of the playground at Martin Luther King Jr. Park. |
| 00:33:28.38 | Mayor Withey | Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries 4-0. |
| 00:33:30.52 | Councilmember Leon | Hi. |
| 00:33:35.87 | Mayor Withey | OK, item B is to introduce and read by title only an ordinance of the City Council amending Title 10 of the code to add a new section to require a design review permit for new commercial and industrial structures. That was a summary. |
| 00:34:00.40 | Mayor Withey | And... |
| 00:34:01.81 | Jeremy Graves | I thought that was a staff report. Mayor, members of council, Jeremy Graves, your Community Development Director, So as Mayor Withey indicated, tonight is a public hearing on a zoning ordinance amendment to require design review permits for new commercial and industrial structures. |
| 00:34:29.38 | Jeremy Graves | There's the page down. Excellent. So our current Zoning ordinance, chapter 1054, establishes the procedures and requirements for design review permits. And one of the subsections within chapter 1054 requires design review permits for commercial and industrial structures if that project, the commercial industrial structure project, adds more than 10% floor area, adds more than 300 square feet of floor area, increases the height of the structure, or potentially impairs views from other properties. Now staff has been applying these principles and requiring design review permits also for any new commercial or industrial structure. And this is by practice and under the theory that any new commercial or industrial structure is going to be a more intense use than an addition onto an existing commercial or industrial structure and, of course, have greater design considerations. So in order to remove any ambiguity with regard to the city's requirements for design review permits for new commercial and industrial structures, staff has proposed an amendment of this particular chapter of the zoning ordinance to add a new subsection B, which would require design review permits for any commercial, industrial, or similar structure proposed for construction, and then also renumbering the following subsections of subsection B. The Planning Commission considered this zoning ordinance amendment at their October 15th meeting. At a public hearing, the Commission, at the following consideration, recommended City Council adoption of the amendment. And the recommendation tonight is for the Council to hold a public hearing on the proposed amendment, introduce and read by title only the title, which is listed on the PowerPoint presentation here, and, of course, continue the second reading of this proposed ordinance to your November 18th city council meeting. This, I am coming near to the conclusion of my tenure, the delightful tenure with the city of Sausalito and we wanted to make sure that we're going out on an upbeat note here and this is one of those items on your priority calendar so we're trying to get every little item that we can out of the way here. And so that concludes our presentation. We're available for any questions. |
| 00:37:16.37 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Jeremy. Um... Anybody have any questions of Jeremy? I think this is pretty straightforward. um, I mean, was this just an error, do you think, in the code? |
| 00:37:34.03 | Jeremy Graves | From staff's perspective, yes, we think it was an oversight. |
| 00:37:36.61 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, because it seems very strange. Very glad you called this. Okay, and for those who don't know, I think, Jeremy, today's your last day, actually. Tomorrow. Is it tomorrow? This is tomorrow. |
| 00:37:51.84 | Jeremy Graves | Is it tomorrow? This is true. Today, with completion of my presentation, I'll be walking out and becoming a retiree tomorrow. |
| 00:38:03.67 | Mayor Withey | Okay, well, obviously, congratulations. And I won't say too much because I know that we will be celebrating, commiserating, or whatever you wish you were leaving us on Thursday. Please. |
| 00:38:27.28 | Adam Politzer | In echoing those, I mean, we have a party that is planned for Jeremy on Thursday night, and we're all very excited about it. But I want to publicly thank Jeremy here at City Council meeting for his six-plus years of service, April 7, 2011. Is that correct? No. 2008 is when you were hired. Feels like yesterday. And what I've shared with folks as we've been interviewing and taking the transition to our next community development director with Danny Castro is that for a lot of years we had a revolving door not only at the staff level but also at the director's level. And my six previous years with the city when I was the Parks and Recreation Director, we had six community development directors in that period of time. One of them was interim three times, but you went from Charlotte Flynn, who everyone loved, to Reva Wright-Quastler, who everyone liked. Um, And then on to Drummond Buckley and Sian Henderson, who was the interim, and Paul Cromoyan. And so in that period of time, we had a lot of community members, which meant we had a lot of inconsistency in terms of starts and stops and looking at things. So the last six and a half years, we've had a lot of consistency at your level, at the staffing level, and on Thursday night when we actually celebrate your retirement, we'll have more to say about that. But congratulations on your service to our community, and thank you very much for all you've done for us. |
| 00:40:11.76 | Ken Shapiro | Here, here. |
| 00:40:17.54 | Jeremy Graves | I want to just briefly, I want to acknowledge it's been a privilege to work for the city of Sausalito. I've had excellent staff with the support from Adam and his staff to hire and retain very well-qualified people. And it's been a privilege to work with many council members who have brought a variety of perspectives to the discussions we've had, kept staff on our toes all the time, but in the end come forward with conclusions and projects that best fit the community. And then I also want to thank Adam and Debbie and Mary for your long-term support of the projects we've been taking on in the Community Development Department as well as the community and residents. Thank you. |
| 00:40:30.11 | Unknown | . |
| 00:40:39.04 | Unknown | Uh, |
| 00:41:15.37 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Jeremy, and I'm sure we're going to have more to say on Thursday. Now, we still have a public hearing going on, and is there – I don't think there were any other questions, any questions from up here. Does any member of the public wish to comment on this particular ordinance change that we're drafted here? Okay, so seeing none, we'll bring this back up. Does anybody have any comments or should we look for a motion? Okay. |
| 00:41:53.85 | Councilmember Leon | I'll make a motion to introduce and read by title only. An ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending Title X. of the Sausalito Municipal Code to add a new section. 10.5 4.050 B 5 to require a design review permit for new commercial and industrial structures and consecutively renumber existing portions of section 10.54.050B. |
| 00:42:30.89 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Second. |
| 00:42:32.46 | Mayor Withey | All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. 4-0. |
| 00:42:33.47 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 00:42:41.77 | Mayor Withey | Okay, moving right along. |
| 00:42:49.16 | Mayor Withey | Item six, business items. And we have our chief of police here tonight to give us a crime update and community policing report. Welcome, chief. |
| 00:43:08.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:43:16.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:43:16.79 | Unknown | Oh, I'll find it. |
| 00:43:17.82 | Kathleen Clark | Thank you. |
| 00:43:34.04 | Unknown | So does this have a really good idea? |
| 00:43:36.92 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:43:39.23 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:43:39.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Rise, peace, heart. |
| 00:43:52.50 | Unknown | Just one moment. |
| 00:44:02.98 | Leslie Hale | Someone should wish me happy |
| 00:44:10.79 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 00:44:31.53 | Unknown | All right, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmember Pfeiffer, Weiner, City staff, and audience. Thank you for this opportunity to present to you this evening. Tonight you are going to hear an overview of the police department. We're going to review statistics to date January through September of 2013 for the first three quarters of the calendar year. look at, do some case studies. I'm actually sorry, back up. One of the most important topics to cover tonight is staffing and also technology like license plate readers in response to community requests that we address those two issues. So we have that and then we have an overview of our criminal investigations to date. We will showcase one of the residential burglaries on Cloudview and go through all of the steps that are involved in a case like that. And that segment is titled, What's in a Tip? And then Sergeant Gregory is going to close out with an overview of our community outreach and crime prevention programs, and then we'll take questions after that. Um... |
| 00:45:57.36 | Unknown | And so that's what we're gonna cover tonight. And so it's nice to remember that we're fortunate to live, work, and play in a place like Sausalito, and we're all vested in keeping it what it is and maintaining safety. This is our organizational chart. I don't know how well you can see it there, but for people who are not familiar, we have two divisions, operations and administration, and I have a captain in charge of operations, and that includes investigations, and a lieutenant in charge of administration where we do professional standards, training, hiring, and other administrative work like legislative actions. On the operations side, we have patrol, which is the officers you see on the street, and we have a detective division with one very competent detective in there. This is our beat system. We have a three beat system. We have the south end of the city is beat one, then the other half is beat two, and along the waterfront and out into the bay that is the city of Sausalito jurisdiction we call beat three. |
| 00:47:13.26 | Unknown | We wanted to review our calls for service. This is a call for service is any action that takes place over the radio. So it's the officer, a call coming in from a community member requesting an officer, an officer going out on a traffic stop. These are what we term calls for service. It's an incident. This is the number of incidents that we've had. As you can see, the number of incidents is steadily increasing. Those comparisons are from 2010 up to this year, and it's January through September. So all of your stats tonight are comparing January through September of 2014 to January of September 2014. this year, and it's January through September. So all of your stats tonight are comparing January through September of 2014 to January of September 2013, our previous years for the most part. This is a chart that shows overall crime trends in the categories of assault and domestic violence, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, grand theft, petty theft, fraud, DUIs. And if you look at the far left, you have 2010, and the far right you have 2014. Again, you can see that we had some peaks last year. The year before, 2011, we were down. 2010 was fairly busy with, that looks like residential burglaries. And then, so you can see that over a five year timeframe that we are trending back down in those categories. This is a 13-year review of Crime in Sausalito. What's interesting about this one is theft has always been our most prevalent crime. And what's interesting about that, and it is a, People in the community tend to not lock their cars. Some don't lock their homes. Most of our thefts occur from unlocked vehicles, and Sergeant Gregory will cover that a little bit later. But I believe it's a crime that once we get more community engagement around it, we can see a significant decrease in that. But again, if you look at the burglaries in 2012, you see where the spike is before it comes back down in 2013. These are just burglary and stolen vehicle stats from January through September for the last five years. |
| 00:49:52.42 | Unknown | I wanted to give you a map of the burglaries that have occurred for the nine months. This is where they occurred throughout the city. The, I don't know, I don't have a pointer. You see the, there's the two on Cloud View, Prospect. Um... sort of towards the south end, but that's where they occurred for the first nine months of 2014. I want to move on to staffing. Service delivery is what we're all about, and this is a table that shows what our considerations are when I, as your leader, your police chief, look at service delivery. We have to have a shared community, shared mission, shared goals to meet community expectations. We need to have effective resources. Officers need available discretionary time. If officers are going from call to call to call all the time, there's no discretionary time to do proactive police work. And all of this leads to quality problem-solving strategies when all of those are in place. When any one of these is missing, jeopardized, then we affect service delivery and we have to go back to the table and think, well, how can we make this all work, which we are adept at doing in the police departments. So what is our police staffing? It's no secret. It was mentioned in our last meeting when this came up that in 2002 we had 24 sworn officers. Today we have 19, which is a significant difference. But for the last three years, we have been engaged in conversation on what can we do with limited city budgets to increase our staffing. So this year was a great year for us in terms of making progress there. We added a part-time officer in May of 2014, and then we added a 19th officer, and she actually had her first day at work today. So we now have 19 officers as of today. That officer was added with funding from the money that we had been putting into the Marin County Task Force, as well as money from a vacant parking officer position. So moving forward, what are we doing? About six months ago, we engaged the services of the police officer standards and training commission, POST, to do a workload and staffing study for us. That study is being wrapped up, and we should have it in the next three or four weeks, and that will give us direction based on our calls for service, needed discretionary time for our officers, time. It'll take into consideration time that's taken away at court, vacation, injuries, report writing. It will look at the entire 24-hour period of an officer over last year and tell us whether or not we need more staffing, if we do, what that looks like and how best we can deploy them. It will also give us direction or choices in service delivery, and it will probably prompt us to look at, do we want to make available reporting online, for example, in lieu of adding an officer? So are there events that happen in the city that could be reported online, like maybe a car that was vandalized and reported a week later, and there's no suspect information, the officer goes out and takes the report. Could that be a report that a citizen could do online? And we're saving officer hours, and maybe we can make some decisions there and prioritize what it is we can do in a more efficient manner online and then free up the officers to do other police work. So we expect to have that in the next few weeks. We are coming close to an agreement with a new dispatch contract with another police agency and the savings from entering into that contract and exiting the one from that we are currently in with the Marin County Sheriff's Office will be enough money to fund another officer. So we expect that to happen next year. And then we applied for a COPS grant, which is a federal grant that gives agencies who demonstrate a need funding for staff. In our case, we got funding of $125,000 spread out over three years. And so we need to review that and look to see if we have funding within our city general fund to match that, which would be, and the matching is about $59,000 a year over three years. So we have been exploring opportunities to create funding for new positions, as well as looking at our service delivery model and community expectations around officer workload. |
| 00:55:50.82 | Unknown | The other topic that's really important to some members of this community right now is technology and how can we use technology to enhance what the police department is doing. So one of the topics that came up was video surveillance around homes and private residences having video surveillance. We have a program in place called Citizen View to encourage people to share with us when they have surveillance at their homes and enter it into our log, and Sergeant Gregory will cover that in a little bit. Separate to that is the technology that takes photographs or video of cars and records license plates. And so several agencies in Marin County utilize that technology. There are two kinds. There's a mobile license plate reader and static license plate reader. The mobile ones are on police vehicles or parking enforcement vehicles, and they capture license plates as they drive around the jurisdiction. The static ones, they're fixed. They're in fixed positions. I think people are most aware of the Tiburon system that has been in place for about four years. And so the static one takes pictures of cars as they pass by. The value in having a license plate reader is a study was done by the several entities. I usually refer to the International Association of Chiefs of Police for quality research on topics about law enforcement service delivery. And so they did a – they researched this in 2012, and there were three main areas of value in a system like this. One was as a post-investigation tool. So it's not preventing the crime, but it's capturing the information after the crime, leading to enhance the investigation. The other value is that we can enter license plates into the system, and it will give us an alert when that plate is recorded. So for example, an Amber Alert. If an Amber Alert came out, we could enter the plate from the Amber Alert into our system, and it would notify us if that car was in our community. Likewise, if we had... a citizen call in and say, hey, I saw a suspicious vehicle. Here's the plate. We can enter the plate in, and it can alert us when that plate was in the community or when it re-enters the community. And then, of course, the third one is that anything that we do to demonstrate that we care about our community and we want to protect it, acts as a deterrent. And so when the message gets out to would-be criminals that you might be captured on video if you attempt or do commit a crime in this community, it does act as a deterrent. So those are the three main points of value of having this kind of system. It's currently used, just to give you a little bit more information, Novato Police Department, San Rafael Police Department, Belvedere, Central Marin, which is Corte Madera, Larkspur, and San Anselmo, San Rafael, and the Marin County Sheriff's Office all have a system of some sort, either mobile or static. So I was very fortunate when I was looking at this issue that Belvedere just had this topic on their city council agenda on Monday night, so I was able to get quite a good bit of information. And so I just selected the high points in the systems that they looked at are the 3M system, which has a dedicated server. So if you have that system, you need to have the storage for the footage that's captured. The vigilant system is a hosted solution, meaning that they store the information off-site. You don't have to worry about it. So those two systems are in place in Marin County with law enforcement right now. The estimated cost per the Belvedere research is between, for the 3M system, the static one, $78,000, and then the Vigilant, $46,000. This does not include issues of, let's say you wanted to put one of these systems at a location and there was no electricity to that area. You would have to install a pole, get electricity to the area, so this does not include those costs. This is just to give you a snapshot of what these systems' baseline cost. So with that, we'll take questions on that at the end. I wanted to talk about actually one important part while the captain is pulling up his PowerPoint here. The difference between there's a lot of talk about residents getting the system and the city buying the system. So why go either way? We have quite a few, quite a lot of cameras in our citizen view log. That is, residents who have video surveillance at their homes and businesses contact us and give us access to that when we need to see what's happened in their areas after a crime has been committed or we get a suspicious incident call. We really like that because when a private person has a system like this, you're not subject to the Public Records Act. If I have that system at the police department, I'm subject to the Public Records Act. So you can come in, an ordinary citizen, and request the information from that, which then triggers storage mandates. And so it's much better for us, from my perspective, because I don't have to worry about storage. I don't have to worry about Public Records Act requests if it's on private property. So that was a question that I got today to sort of clarify what the difference is and what the benefit is to us. It really is about storage and storage mandates around capturing video of the public. The other piece of this is that we can't go out and just decide we're going to put a video camera on public property to capture the activities of the community because some people don't want to do that, and they don't want to have that. So we would have to go through a process to gain community consent around doing something like that if we're doing it on city property. I think we'll just move on to criminal investigations, and Captain Robarker is gonna come up and do that. |
| 01:03:24.01 | Unknown | not to |
| 01:03:31.93 | Unknown | Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. I've not been up to speak before the council for a while, so it looks like we have a new gadget. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it. Luckily I only have like three slides. It's a pleasure to be here. |
| 01:03:47.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:48.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:48.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:50.23 | Unknown | and tell you a little bit about our criminal investigations. I am still very proud of the hardworking men and women in our department and the kind of work that they do on a regular basis. And it's probably difficult for most people to get a really firm understanding or grasp of what these types of crimes entail. You notice I listed some things up there, but I did not list things like drunk driving arrests and some more sort of routine things because officers can do those fairly quickly. I know it's easy for me to say because I don't write the reports or make the arrests, but these things I've listed are very, very time intensive. And they have a significant effect on the quality of life in our community. And so I'm going to talk about them in general terms and the type of effort that goes into a successful case. It's important to keep in mind that We are basically a one supervisor and two officer police department for most shifts. Some shifts we might be running with one supervisor and one officer, but for us a really good day is one supervisor and two beat officers. And so getting a call for service of this type to respond to usually takes both the supervisor and both lead officers out of service because we really want to put our best efforts into these types of investigations. in order to help ourselves a little bit, starting when we had the detective before Detective McMahon, which we'll meet in a few minutes, and under some urging from Chief Dejada, we entered into I'm non-MOU type of agreements with other police departments to work together. As you heard the chief say, we only have one detective. That's it. And so oftentimes we need the help of other agencies, And so they will come and help us out. But by the same token, we will respond to their agencies and help them out as well. So I just wanted to add that in there that when we need it, that's how we get some extra help pretty quickly. And our agreements are, you know, word-only agreements that If they call, we just go. It doesn't have to go up a large chain of command to get that kind of permission. So that works both ways, and we're very pleased that that's been successful for us. We get this nature of crimes, the auto burglaries, the narcotics and sex crimes, the social host violations, which are very time consuming, then of course, residential burglaries, crimes against seniors, and then fraud and identity theft. And so these are really our top group of very time-intensive types of crimes. And so I just want to go to my next slide. Not sure how to do that. How about that? Okay. So as some examples, I'm not going to go into, like, for instance, a particular case number, but some examples of types of cases. And so auto burglaries that the chief described, you know, thefts are certainly a common crime for us, and we tend to get our victims get arrested. you know, their cars broke into in the municipal lots, primarily meaning lot one, and of course we get some in the residential neighborhoods. So solving those, it may seem like just a little you know, property crime where somebody takes somebody's backpack out of the car, cameras and maybe their passport and stuff. But we take those seriously. We have, like I said, we have some excellent people working in the police department. And so each and every case. Thank you. we devote this type of effort to solving. So a couple of examples in cases that occurred. in the first one I said we solved one using DNA from evidence collection so the responding not only dusted for fingerprints, but he looked for blood. And so in a case where the criminal used something to break the glass, chances are they cut themselves. And so we searched pretty hard for blood. We grabbed that up, take a sample. submit it to the lab, And then wait for a return on it. Then when we get that return. if there is a match in the DNA database, then we have to do additional work after that We have to submit another search warrant to get a sample from the person whose blood is on record and then compare it and then go forward with requesting charges from the DA's office. It's a lot of work for what's a property crime. It impacts a lot of people, and so they're very important. But that process could take months. I know we say this all the time, you know, television things happen within commercials and it's a lot of fun. And they're never sure the officer slaving over their computer trying to write the reports or doing all this type But nothing happens in 20-minute segments for us and, frankly, take a lot longer. Another case we had with auto burglaries in the mini-lot was one of our officers, Thank you. simply patrolling, recognized a person who he arrested in the muni lots two years prior. and said, I remember that guy. Last time I saw him, he was breaking into cars in the mini lot, and here he is in the mini lot again. And so we did what we call a little preemptive strike. and contacted him before he could break into something. He was in possession of burglary tools But more importantly, he had two Nobel arrest warrants from other jurisdictions, so off he went and prevented some crimes in that case. Thank you. In the residential areas, we had a case where, again, we found our responding officer took blood evidence out of the car. was able to get a match. and later we identified a A transient woman who actually was from San Francisco who was here committing crimes But in order to follow up, as I explained before, we have to get a search warrant for a second sample from the person who's actually bloodshed in the database. finding that person under the terms of the search warrant who's a transient in San Francisco is no small task. So there's a lot of time involved in going over to San Francisco and doing the the surveillance necessary to find that person and then get the blood evidence, the DNA evidence, and then get our arrest warrant, and then they go to jail too. So it's got a good ending, but it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. You're gonna hear a little bit more about the residential burglaries from Detective McMahon, but in this particular case, So overall, we were very fortunate to have a tip from a resident And then we used our multiple agency investigation protocol that I talked about already. to spread the word about what we were doing, and then with getting one person, and you'll hear the details from the detective, |
| 01:10:34.07 | Robin Clark | Thank you. |
| 01:10:34.14 | Unknown | Thank you. The interview and interrogation of that first person was you know, something that Thank you. Detective McMahon had did such a great job on and got admissions from the person that led us to another person and then led to something else. And then we got search warrants and then we started identifying victims. And so then you'll hear about that case, and pretty soon both people are going to jail. But, again, it's all those things have to take place for successful criminal investigations. And my last slide. Another very, very time-consuming type of crime for us, and this affects everybody in the nation now, unfortunately, is fraud, identity theft. It may not seem like a big deal until you ask one of the persons who's the victim of that, and they find their life turned upside down trying to get credit cards again or have their identity restored, and it's actually a terrible process for the victims, and so... We've had several of those, and we've had the significant successes identifying people, and arresting them and having these cases go forward. But again, it takes so much work. because as the people are skilled at using multiple identities, they're carrying multiple identifications with them, they're carrying fraudulent credit cards that they've stolen and the identity from other people, and then they're out committing these crimes of purchasing things and renting hotel rooms like just crazy people. leaving you know, chaos in their wake. And it's the police officer's job not just the detective, but the beat officers, to locate all those victims and gather up all that evidence and then go back and find videos from every store where a purchase was made and see if we can get a positive identification on the person use that fraudulent card to you know, put that whole case together and and have them go to jail and face charges. We're on a roll. I dare people to come to Sausalito and try this because we're really on it, and we're very proud of that. And some of our noteworthy cases are one where it was just an overnight visit by a visiting nurse. and she was a guest appearance, a replacement, And in the eight hours she was there, she took the 97-year-old lady's credit cards and wallet identity and went on a Spending as soon as she got off work, still in the videos that we got, still wearing the same clothes that she was wearing when she reported to work the night before. And the crimes were occurring all over the Bay Area, not just in Marin County. But for us, that means our detective has to go to all those places, gather all that evidence, come back. And then... In this case, it was kind of fun because the detective arranged for her employer who didn't know what she was doing and set up a fake job Thank you. Thank you. in San Rafael. near the civic center, I want to be close to the jail, and lured her there on the promise of a job, and then when she came in and saw her. The detective, she knew the gig was up. But not the least bit remorseful, by the way. That's just how it goes. And then lastly, Things like narcotics and weapons possession types cases, again, they're very complex once the You know, an officer makes typically an on-view arrest or investigation. We're rarely satisfied, rarely, with just finding that small amount of dope in methamphetamine or whatever it is, heroin, in somebody's pocket. We want to know where they got it. And how'd they get it here? And is there more of it? And so, again, it's the same thing. It requires a good interrogation or an interview. It takes a lot of follow-up work. And of course, hoping that the person will provide some information. In the case that we just had a few weeks ago, It was simply a traffic stop for a minor violation of some type, I don't even remember what it was, but it turned into an on-view narcotics arrest and the guy in the car had a handgun and, and some stolen equipment. But I have to say, as much work as it is, the cops really like this stuff. That's why they signed up to come to work. So, We're not complaining. I just take it to saying that this is how much time is involved in these. these cases, what we're not doing is is what's important as well. And it's that discretionary time that the chief talked about. And so we put our efforts into solving these because we know how important it is. But then, you know, when the officers are writing the reports and doing all their follow-up, And if there's other calls pending, we have to interrupt that to go handle them. But there's not any discretionary time to go out and do what we would call proactive patrols when we know that there's something that needs our attention. Thank you. Again, it's sort of a mixed bag kind of thing. And that's my last slide. So I think what's next is the detective. |
| 01:15:41.33 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:15:53.97 | Unknown | Now it's my pleasure to introduce Detective Ryan McMahon. He has not presented before you before. He is an exceptional detective. He has just an innate sense of how to solve a crime, where to go get his investigative leads. He is just an awesome employee and you will find him very interesting and competent. |
| 01:16:22.37 | Ryan McMahon | Mayor, City Council, citizens, hello. I'm Detective McMahon. I work at the Sausalville Police Department, as you know. I'm here to talk about a tip tonight. Tips are very important to me because it could lead to much bigger things. What may be miniscule to you is huge to me, and I'm going to present to you a little bit of what I do with the information that you provide. So, Saucyut Police officers can be everywhere at one time. We rely on you because you know your neighborhood's better than any of us and you know what suspicious activity is. Somebody looks funny in your neighborhood, something's just not right. please call us and let us know because more likely it's not going to be right. on this particular instance, I don't know what's going on with my slide, but we're just going to keep it moving. So, a Sausalito resident notices some suspicious activity, excuse me, sorry, and he calls 911. I have the 911 tape that he had that I was going to play for you guys. I thought it would be interesting, so you guys don't normally get to hear this. |
| 01:17:13.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:17:35.20 | Unknown | for possible burglary. |
| 01:17:37.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:17:37.75 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:17:37.94 | Unknown | Bye. Crowsing Road 66, did they close you? Okay, I have Edward on the phone. Okay, go ahead, Edward. Thank you. I'm not even in the cloud view. Six, six. Okay, got it. Now what's going on? I'm not even in the cloud view. |
| 01:17:49.65 | Unknown | Thank you. All right. |
| 01:17:55.08 | Unknown | I don't know. with a brand new Apple computer. Okay, yeah. He had a space cover. Okay, and I'm in a circle of that word, say that she was carrying that for our new Apple computer. I mean, the Quran. I'm even in a car. I've also had a handicap. like on the rear view mirror. It was two African Americans in a silver BMW. Okay, I'm not telling you me one, and then we know like, Thanks for the time. I got the license plate number in the back. Ah! The front way this spring missing, but there were like screw holes there. And there's also like this magnet. So it's making a foot nice and safe. Bye. |
| 01:18:40.95 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay, but I'll see you tell me about it. Ah. Yeah, there's like that coated plastic, and you can't even have parking for anything for the dealer. plastic plastic from the mirror. Yeah, just like a handicapped car being on the mirror. |
| 01:18:56.94 | Unknown | Thank you. . Canal Fox, the little unit is interrupted. 45961 Cloud Beach Trail. |
| 01:19:11.56 | Unknown | 61 Crown News Trail. He saw a male subject running around the house with a computer. and there was I think I'm lying in space. |
| 01:19:22.86 | Unknown | Copy. Thank you. Unit's on Paris Coaster. |
| 01:19:26.22 | Unknown | I'll be all you know, something I excuse me. We're all south. We know units. The subject pool is short over space as we ran out of the house holding computer. Associated vehicle is a silver BMW. |
| 01:19:39.76 | Ryan McMahon | So when we get a tip, we have to decipher what's going on. And as you can see, the dispatchers do a really good job at getting us the information, and then we go out and we find bad guys. And this was all from a tip. This particular tip right here was a series of events that led to closing out seven residential burglaries around |
| 01:20:00.68 | Ryan McMahon | around Marin County. So the first burglary happened in Marin City. There was unknown suspects, unknown vehicle. We didn't know what was going on. We'd take a burglary report and we'd throw it in a suspended file until we get further leads. Then there was a burglary in Mill Valley. Unknown suspects again. And it goes on where a cell phone was taken from the San Francisco nightclub. Not our jurisdiction, but it plays out later in the future. The gold drop in San Rafael received stolen property from one of our burglaries here in Sausalito. But we didn't know that at the time because we didn't have any suspect information. We didn't know where to go. And there's so many pawn shops in Marin County that you don't know what to do with that information. Mill Valley has another residential burglary. Again, unknown suspects. And then we have a residential burglary in Sausalito. Again, unknown suspects. The next day, another residential burglary, but this time a citizen gives the police a huge tip and he's able to get a license plate number and that's part of the dispatch call that you called in or you heard. So the citizen is... Hey, there's something suspicious in my neighborhood. Here goes the vehicle. This is what the guys are driving. And he notices things about the vehicle that are odd. There's thousands of BMWs on the road today. But this particular guy said, hey, this one has a disabled placard. It doesn't have a front license plate. The person was wearing a white shirt. They're both African American. One was awaiting it as a getaway driver, so there's two of them. All this information comes into play, and he called right away. He called 911. He didn't send an email. The chief didn't get it through an email. It was right then, right there, so the police department could respond as fast as possible to possibly get the merchandise back from these crooks. Unfortunately, the crooks, we set a perimeter for them like we normally would, and we had other agencies come and try to help us find these guys that were robbing around. This happened earlier. And they contact two guys who own the vehicle in the department building. And on their case, which was another residential burglar, they say, hey, this might be a good place to look around. This happened earlier. And they contact two guys who own the vehicle in the department building. And on their case, which was another residential burglar, they say, hey, this might be a good place to look around. and earlier and they contact two guys who own the vehicle in an apartment building and on their case which was another residential burglary they find a stolen cell phone and narcotics on our suspects. So one of the suspects goes to jail, the other one doesn't because they don't have enough probable cause to take them to jail. They relate to the Sausalito Police Department. Hey, this is what we have going on. Send an officer over here so you can check out this car and see if there's any stolen property in here and you can identify these suspects for your guys' report. Officer responds, nothing happens that night but the information gets passed on to me. I look into it and when I'm looking into it, I hear over the radio that this burglary suspect and vehicle are driving around Sausalito again. And so the officers do a great job when they find probable cause to stop the vehicle, because we can't just randomly stop cars. We have to find a reason. The officer stops the car, and when I hear that, I go to the scene. At that time, I contact the driver of the vehicle who voluntarily tells me, hey, I will go to the police department and I will talk with you. So this is day two of the investigation. Get the guy to come to the police department and he gives me a full confession. Tells me everything that happened. It didn't happen right away. I had to pull it out of him, but we got it. He also implicates another person. Can't do anything with that other person because it's two bad guys talking about each other, and the law says I've got to have a little bit more before I do anything. So, I continue my investigation and, um, from the name that the suspect gave me, I go and I do more investigation on who this other person is. I generate a photo lineup with six different people that look similar and I take it to the witness who called in this whole burglary thing in the first place and the witness says, that's the guy that I saw running from the house. So I'm like, great, now I have enough probable cause to get a warrant, and I can go and hopefully arrest this guy. Before I do that, I meet with my detective buddies from around the county, because we have meetings every month to talk about cases that are similar and trending in our areas. At that meeting, I find about a silver BMW that's committing residential burglaries in all these other jurisdictions. And I'm like, hey, I know of a silver BMW and I have a license plate and I know who the suspects are that were in the car because we contacted them. Everybody collaborates and we're like, wow, this is really good information. Central Marin is there at the time and says, hey, you know what, those guys sound familiar, and I think they're pawning stuff at the eco ATM at the Northgate Mall. We have an account that costs $1,500 a month to run, so let's look at it. So we pull up the account, and I love this account now, I think we should get it, but it's $1,500 a month, so if you guys wanna give us more money, that's fine. The account shows that these guys are pawning stolen stuff into the account from right after they commit the burglaries. So right off the bat, the stolen property that we get is sent back to us from the EcoATM, and we're able to close out two additional burglary cases. With that, I obtained warrants, which takes a little bit longer than normal because I have to wait for residents within the community of Sausalito to give me exactly what's missing because search warrants need, with particularity, everything everything that we're looking for I can't just go search for random stuff get the search warrant and I go on a mission I'm like a fusel fugitive retrieval unit I drive all the way to Santa Rosa with a bunch of guys from all over the county who have a vested interest who have been burglarized in their counties end up finding the the person who I have a warrant for and he's in the process of moving thank God because he has a lot of stolen stuff in his car. And I have to search for it, but I find it. And it's hidden pretty good, but I find it. And that links him to two burglaries here in Sausalito. Talking with him, he gives me the name of another criminal mastermind who's behind it, who we originally arrested for the burglary, who tried to say that he was just a driver. And it goes on and on and on, all from a tip from a license plate. And there's a lot of investigation, and it goes through, and I got this great timeline that shows that when we got each day, and within a month and a half, we had everything wrapped up. The people that we arrested took a plea deal, and they have to go to court to seal that plea deal, so I'm not going to talk too much about that, but they are in custody, and since then the crime spree around the county has slowed down quite a bit. |
| 01:26:56.33 | Ryan McMahon | From the pawn shop, it comes into play because these suspects, they had a receipt from the pawn shop, and when I was doing the search warrants, I found this receipt. I was able to go to the pawn shop and retrieve additional stolen property and get a picture of the suspect and thumbprint who pawned it. I also listed the gold drop as a victim because now they have to give this stolen property backing so I can give it back to the victims of our crime. And that's unheard of a lot of times. A lot of times, like, our stolen property goes to San Francisco and it's gone. We don't get to see it again. You get to write a claim for your insurance policy and that's that. After everything was said and done, there was over 100 pages of crime reports and search warrants written for this case. Approximately 100 hours of investigation time and man hours spent investigating this case. Multiple jurisdictions who collaborated and communicated to solve a county-wide crime spree. And like I said, it was invaluable the tip we got from the license plate. These are the two suspects who we arrested. |
| 01:28:09.70 | Ryan McMahon | Going on, every tip that we get means something. So we had two females that were in our town not too long ago, and what happened was it was September 14th, a resident gets a knock on the front door, and two college women announce themselves and say they're raising money for a college trip. Solicitors, that's what you're thinking at first. The resident doesn't see any student ID. The women are asking for specific denominations of money and the resident's like, you know, I smell alcohol in your breath. Something's just not adding up here. I'm not gonna give you any money. So what the resident does is he notifies his community. a community like neighborhood watch email. He sends out to the residents and says, hey, watch out for these females, because I tried to contact them and they just didn't want to have anything to do with me when I started asking them questions. And they left. I don't know where they're going, but they left. This email gets around to our chief. Chief is like, well, these people might not be doing soliciting. They might be, you know, casing houses for potential burglary. We might want to look into that. So Chief sends the captain an email, captain sends me and the sergeant an email, which we get a couple days later. And we're behind the curve at this point, but we're still moving with the investigation because it's important that we at least try to identify these people that are doing this crime. Sergeant Gregory and her team take charge on it, and the officer that was initially investigating finds out that one of the females doesn't even work or have any ties to the school that she was saying that she was trying to raise money from. Also, the officer and this patrol team hears that Mill Valley Police Department go out with a similar call for service that females are soliciting, but this time it's a different school, different scenario. Our officer calls up Mill Valley and says, hey, we had a similar call for service. Can you give me some information on what's going on? Mill Valley officers say, hey, we've got to figure out what's going on first. identify the two females, stop a car, identify two additional males, find out that a citizen within their community had actually given them money. Even though their story didn't make any sense, the citizen said, here's some money. They were to get that money and give it back to the citizen, and they kicked the girls out of their jurisdiction. They were able to identify them. From Mill Valley's investigation, I took their information of who they contacted, and I looked them up. I was able to find a picture on Calphoto of one of the females that was portraying herself as a student. I then contacted a citizen within the community that had a doorbell camera in the neighborhood where these women were going around. And I pulled a picture from there and I was able to match the picture to the Calphoto I sent that information to Mill Valley and said, hey, are these the same people that you contacted? Because they were in our city, as you know. Officers looked at them, said, absolutely, that is. And I did further investigation and learned that they were just out trying to commit a scam. They weren't doing burglaries, but they were scamming people out of money. That was the easy thing for them to do. So what we did in return is we sent a community message out to all Sossilio residents saying, hey, watch out who you give money to because this is what could happen and these are the two, the female's pictures who we identified. |
| 01:30:58.67 | Unknown | is just, |
| 01:31:31.09 | Ryan McMahon | Green colored Audi. if somebody told you I saw a green color Audi leave the scene of a crime you're gonna probably say yeah that's great what am I supposed to do with that well for the officers of Sausalito Police Department we track cars that come in and out we're familiar with our beat areas and when I saw this It meant to me that, hey, this green colored Audi was seen leaving a residential burglary. I know a guy that lives in Marin City that drives a green Audi. and he's a gang banger. He's a prolific residential burglar with gang ties in Marin City and it might be a good idea for me to go contact this guy and see if he has stolen property on him because as a bad guy, he has search clauses from prior arrests and it allows me to go into his house and his personal effects to look for stolen property. I pulled up the report for a burglary that occurred where the vehicle was seen, got a property list, and went to this guy's house who wasn't home. So I had the Marin County Sheriff's Department look out for this vehicle as well. They were able to locate it. They stopped the vehicle. I went to where he was at. I searched him. I searched his house. And unfortunately, I didn't find anything where I can arrest him. But he hasn't been seen in Sausalito since. So that works great for me. The main thing is that tips are awesome. Tips lead to locating possible suspects, even though sometimes tips don't pan out you know probable cause might not be found we might not be able to do anything but we do document it and we are watching and when you get enough these tips accumulated with the same person then we're able to act. We have more teeth, and we're able to do something about it. Each tip from the community helps. You never know where a tip's going to lead with the South School Police Department. With that, I just wanted to say thank you very much. |
| 01:33:32.56 | Unknown | So next we're going to have Sergeant Gregory. and she's going to give you an overview of our community outreach programs. and So the reason we're doing this is, one, to share with you who we are, how we're structured, and two, what our service delivery model is. And it really, as you can see, is not about just what we can do. It's about what we can do with you as our partners, and it really is, I hope you're getting the message, very effective for us to have you work with us on these various |
| 01:34:20.18 | Unknown | Sergeant Gregory. |
| 01:34:23.13 | Unknown | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members, staff. I'm here to talk and community members. I'm here to talk about some of the community programs that the Sausalito Police Department is involved with. A lot of them you've heard before. There's some updates to these programs. But I want to start with saying, All these programs have three things in common. Crime reduction, quality of life, and communication. You'll find those three concepts in most of these programs that I'm going to talk to you about tonight. First one I'm going to talk to you about is the R U OK? program. That is a program that I'm pretty passionate about. We're in the process of revamping this program, but currently we have 25 seniors enrolled. And on November 17th, if any of the community is interested, I'm doing a presentation that's hosted by the Sausalito Women's Club and the Sausalito Village. They are working together as a team to develop disaster preparedness for their members. They've invited me to come and talk to them about the RUOK program. So that's in the Edgewater Room here at City Hall, November 17th from 4 to 6, I believe. So there's updated protocol and forms. The forms, which I think I can go forward here. There's a new form, you probably can't see it very well, but it's been updated a little bit and The protocol as well has been updated to incorporated into the vial of life. So I think everybody's familiar with the vial of life. Now, this form and information that we house at our police department will be included in the vial of life, so the fire department as well as the police department will know where it is because it's to be kept in the refrigerator. And that information is good for us when we respond, as you know, to medical calls or anything like that where we would need emergency contact information and immediate information about the person that we're dealing with. The future plans also working with the women's club and the Saucado Village as well as the VIPs is to hopefully in the future have maybe monthly twice a month phone calls to the people on the program, as well as home visits, to make it more of a face-to-face and have, you know, start that communication so we can know when somebody is in need of services that we can hopefully get them to. So there's the form. The other neat thing about this R U OK? program is it's all of the people that are enrolled are in this website, spatchgeo.com. So on each of those little pinpoints is somebody that's in the program. So in case of a disaster, whether it be citywide or just one specific area of town, we can when we have the time and resources, where these people are, because they're the people that are gonna need the extra assistance, so we can go to them and get them what they need. So that's a big benefit of this program. The Postal Carrier Alert Program, brand new program, the press releases, have just gone out you'll see it in Sausalud occurrence on Friday I've talked to the Marin IJ and the Marin Scope, and they're both going to run the article on it. And the flyers, the registration flyers, will go out on November 20th. What this is is a program where the postal carriers are going to be a second set of eyes for us, so elderly, disabled, people who feel like they want their postal carrier to be aware of what's going on at their house, because again they are people that are at this house every day, know what's know, suspicious, know what's out of order, they will be able to contact us, and we will go and do a welfare check if that's what it takes. So you'll see up there, it's also, we've also incorporated the Marin City area, and that's the Margaret C. Johnson Senior Center, Age Friendly Saucelot Village, the Marin County Sheriff's Department, and it was coordinated by the Episcopal Senior Communities in Nevada, who also has the program currently running. So we've trained the postal carriers. They're ready to go. The forms are going to be available on the Sausalito website, on the police department's portion, and they'll be held at the police department. So hopefully we'll have some good success in that program. The citizen's view, this is a crime prevention and investigative tool. And I know that the captain spoke about it a little bit. It's a database of surveillance and security cameras around town. It's a voluntary database. And so what we're looking for is to have that information readily available to us. So if we have a crime in a particular area, we can look at the database, see what cameras are close, if any, and hopefully get some key evidence from those cameras to help us in our investigation. Those forms are also available online. And if we feel, if you're on the list and we feel that you do have footage that would be beneficial to us, we would make a phone call and make a time to come and view that footage if you would allow us to. the Homeless Advocacy Program, Again, this is reaching out to our homeless, the people in need in our community. We've had, I believe this is our sixth outreach event, and the next one is held on November 20th. During these events, we give flu shots, we hand out medical information, do blood pressure. There are students from UCSF that assist with that. This year, they're going to be receiving, most everybody that arrives will be receiving blankets. We'll have some life preservers, fire extinguishers, and all kinds of socks, first aid kits, things like that, that people who don't have much need, especially coming into the winter months. The other part of this is that crisis intervention training. So this is a training that's four days long, four eight-hour days, and it helps officers better understand how they're going to interact with people whether it's mentally ill, which we know most of our homeless are in some form or fashion. So currently we have five officers that are CIT trained. We are going to be sending our chaplain to this training as well as soon as we have the next training in the county. So that's huge because the way we interact with these people will definitely gear us towards how we're going to be able to help them. So if they feel confident with us then the chances of us getting them the resources that they need is better. |
| 01:41:14.51 | Unknown | Currently, we have a |
| 01:41:45.79 | Unknown | So, and we always have ongoing outreach and referrals to county resources on an individual basis as we come across these people in town. The Unlock Vehicle Project, this project has been in place. It started as a community policing project in 2010. And, um, So what this is is the officers, when they have discretionary time, especially at night, the officers will walk around town, certain areas, neighborhoods, look in cars, look for valuables, check doors, And if car doors are open, You'd leave a little note saying, hey, you know, maybe it was an oversight, but this note that you'll see up on the screen is left with the officer's ID that was there, their email, and their voicemail extension in case the person wants contact. But this is just a reminder, as you've heard tonight, is that we need help with the officer's ID. the crime in town. We need doors locked and this will help us deter the criminals because they know that Sausalito no longer keeps their stuff open. We lock doors. RAIDS Online is our new crime mapping service. It's replacing crimereports.com. It's more accurate and easy to use than Crime Reports was. It's free of cost. And what this does, it allows you to designate the type of crime, the date, the time, the location. And once you put those parameters in, it'll give you a map of the crimes in that particular area. And it's pretty neat how it lays it out. You can also sign up for daily neighborhood watch reports and submit anonymous tips through that program as well. It's accessible online and also has a mobile app that you can use on your cell phone. The very neat thing about this program is that it allows us to do predictive policing, which means we can study the burglaries and say we have however many number of burglaries and based on the analysis that they've done on those 16 burglaries, they know, they're happening at a particular day of the week, particular time of the day. We're going to focus our resources more on that time of day and that, you know, whatever information is provided to us from that. So it's a pretty neat tool. And the website's on there, but you can also get that website that you can't see up here off our city's website. You can get it there. Some other community outreach stuff is Neighborhood Watch. Neighborhood Watch is coming back, which is exciting. We have two new and active Neighborhood Watch groups, one in the Prospect area, one in the Cloudview area. And the communication in those areas between the community and the police department has increased dramatically. We're getting calls of suspicious people and cars and situations, and so that's great. I mean, and that's what we need throughout the entire city of Sausalito. The Citizens Police Academy, we do have that. We haven't put one on in a while, but our intention is to, and that just gets citizens educated and informed of what we do as a police department, and it's an eight-week program, and it's also on the city's website if anybody's interested. The ride-along program, we'll take citizens out on ride-alongs to get an idea of what it is to be in the patrol car and responding to calls for service. Our vacation house checks, our VIPs, our volunteers in public safety, I believe twice a week go out and check houses that are on our vacation house check. This is a form that is available online also. It comes in and the. out and check houses that are on our vacation house check and this is a form that is available online also it comes in and the officers are made aware of you being gone on vacation as well as the volunteers and and your house is actively checked while you're gone I put foot, bicycle, and motorcycle patrols in here only because these officers are a lot more accessible than when they're in a car. So I think that's helped with especially the downtown businesses. A new program that the chief is interested in starting is called Business Watch, similar to Neighborhood Watch, but it will focus in the downtown business area. which is the same thing, sharing information, communicating with each other, passing information on, and then we will be partnering with the Chamber of Commerce when that does happen. Nixle and Twitter, we put information out on that on a regular basis. And the last thing I want to talk about is directed patrols, and what that means to us is when we do have a significant crime or a series of crimes in a particular area, that automatically is on our list of directed patrols, meaning we give that area extra attention, we're there, we're walking around, we're driving around, we're trying to figure out who's coming in and out and talking to the neighborhoods. you know, giving that particular area or those particular areas special attention for, for the time period after the crime occurred. Thank you. So that's all I have. |
| 01:47:43.24 | Unknown | So that concludes our presentation. Thank you for your attention. I know we probably went over time. Really surprising that that happened. And so now I'm ready to take some questions, but I wanna just say one thing. I wanna thank my staff. I am blessed to have such competent staff, dedicated, loyal people, both our sworn and professional staff. They do do an amazing job I hope tonight that you learned how committed and dedicated they are to this community and to solving crime and helping everybody we really do have a fabulous staff and so thank you to my three staff people tonight. And I also want to, I wasn't here for the beginning of the meeting, but today is Veterans Day. So thank you to all the veterans in our audience. We have three veterans at the police department, Officer Bartle, Officer Ritz, and Officer Rose. And I just want to publicly thank them for their service. And so, with that, I'll take some questions if you have any. |
| 01:48:52.83 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Chief. Actually, I did say at the beginning of the meeting that we were going to adjourn tonight's meeting in honor of all our veterans who've served our country. I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of questions up here before we open it up for public comment. So let's rotate around among each other. Can I kick off with a question about surveillance cameras? Yes. Because I almost, I get asked about this on a almost daily basis. |
| 01:49:04.80 | Unknown | you |
| 01:49:24.03 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:49:33.55 | Mayor Withey | So, Could you comment on the, if you just put cost aside for a moment, okay? comment on the practicality of actually really effectively surveilling all the entrances and exits to Sausalito. It would seem almost impossible to do that. Some people argue we've only got four or five actual entrances, and therefore, why don't we have cameras there? |
| 01:50:09.87 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:50:10.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:10.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:10.61 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:50:10.63 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:50:15.13 | Mayor Withey | I... used to live in a city years and years ago in London that probably has a surveillance camera on every single street now. You know, it's the most famous surveillance |
| 01:50:30.20 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:50:30.57 | Mayor Withey | you Thank you. city in the world, right? So tell us what you think about how we can incorporate that technology, if at all, and what success Tiburon's had. to pick on Tipperod. |
| 01:50:45.96 | Unknown | Well, I mentioned it earlier. I do see value in it. I think practically every law enforcement agency that you would ask that question to would say, post-incident investigative follow-up, it's really beneficial to have that. So it's not a prevention tool, but an investigative tool. it does send a message that people are watching and you're likely to be caught on tape if you commit a crime. So it does act as a deterrent in some sense. And then it has an alert component to it that we can use to our benefit and the community's benefit. In terms of the city and looking at the map, we could probably cover the city with six sets of cameras. There are six points of entry. If we wanted to be more efficient about it, we would look at how are people accessing the city to commit the crimes. Spencer is a very attractive off-ramp to this city, and most of our crimes, as you saw on the map, they're kind of south of Spencer, so that would be a location. Alexander and Bridgeway at the north end would also, I think, be appropriate locations if we were going to take this in increments. So I do see value in it. How we do it, where we do it, is another item, discussion item. |
| 01:52:21.37 | Councilmember Leon | actually. I want to follow up on that issue for the license plate readers. If we did, which I think would be of value to have, I mean, if we're going to do it to ultimately go for all the entrances and exits in the city, which you identified as six, what would that cost? It cost us in terms of both the initial capital. Expense and what ongoing expenses? I mean, just in general, your estimate on that. |
| 01:52:47.85 | Unknown | So I think your baseline cost for six locations is about $300,000, minimally. |
| 01:52:54.15 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:52:58.77 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So again, follow up on the surveillance cameras. I think it's a great idea. I think it makes sense starting with the Spencer area, per the comments we've heard from the community and your comments regarding the entry accessibility for the bad guys. So my question is, what is the first step for moving forward? What would you recommend as the first step for getting momentum and getting traction towards getting this done, being where Belvedere was last night? |
| 01:53:33.45 | Unknown | Well, I don't have $300,000, and so I would look to City Council direction on this topic. And if you directed me to research it and come back with more solid costs, I can do that. But I would look to you for direction on how you want to proceed. Perfect. Thank you. |
| 01:53:55.98 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:53:57.44 | Councilmember Weiner | Question on those cameras. Does the technology, which I think it does, have it that you mentioned about installation on poles and certain ways of getting it, Now in this technology, do we have them that they're able to use solar? to do this. |
| 01:54:18.18 | Unknown | Probably, but I'm not positive. None of the ones I've looked at are solar-powered |
| 01:54:20.33 | Councilmember Weiner | But I Yeah. |
| 01:54:22.79 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:54:27.26 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:54:27.68 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. To move on to resources, manpower resources, I mean, we, I mean, as you know, you and I have been in dialogue on this for a long time, and in connection with budgets and the like. And congratulations on your 19th officer starting today, by the way. When is, I think, one of the things |
| 01:54:47.29 | Unknown | Um, |
| 01:54:53.01 | Unknown | started. |
| 01:54:59.24 | Mayor Withey | you recommended and we decided to do was the post workload and staffing study. When are we expecting to get the results of that? And could you also remind everybody what post is? Because I've forgotten as well. So if you could remind people. |
| 01:55:16.00 | Unknown | It's... So POST is the State Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training, and they set the mandates on our training, what we should be training on and how often and for how long. They also provide a service to police agencies and municipalities. They call it managerial support. One of the areas where they provide that is the workload and staffing study where they actually fund this research and the consultant. And we were very fortunate to be selected as one of the recipients of this great service. So we had our last meeting with the post-consultant about three weeks ago. He has gathered all of the information that he needs to produce his report. He anticipated that he would have that report in November. So we're in November, and I'm expecting it to come in the near future. |
| 01:56:20.63 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thanks. |
| 01:56:23.04 | Councilmember Leon | Just going back, I was looking at some of the earlier statistics you had. And I was just a little, I mean, everything seemed I understood, but with the crime statistics going down, but calls for service were up. And can you explain why that would be? |
| 01:56:39.04 | Unknown | So as I said, calls for service captures everything. So for example, all of the false alarm calls that we go to, the 600 plus a year, that's a call for service. So is a traffic stop. So if the officers are doing more activity, those calls will go up, as well as calls from the community. And so we seem to be getting more calls from the community. It's a variety of things that contribute to that, but each one represents the engagement of an officer in some fashion in a detail. |
| 01:57:20.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, Ms. Merr, thanks. So just a follow-up on my prior question about the next step for the surveillance camera. It is that you need direction from this council to make that a priority to come back and create a proposal for, you know, research that, propose it, look at the pricing, look at... you know, what it would take to implement that. Okay, so my next question actually is just, I'm just curious about right now the beets are, it looked, this is short-term memory, but it looked like you had a beet in northern Sausalito and southern Sausalito and then along the coastline. Ah, so I'm just curious, what, have you seen any, any crime patterns that would prompt a beat like, a new beat like around the hills versus the flatlands. Thank you. |
| 01:58:21.93 | Unknown | One of the topics in the workload and staffing study will be beat structure. So we will get some guidance on that in that study. |
| 01:58:30.24 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Some guy. |
| 01:58:33.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:34.02 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:58:37.43 | Mayor Withey | So I'm wondering whether it would probably be helpful at this stage to open this up for public comment. And I know there's a number of you who would like to comment this evening on this. So... why don't we do that? And... Can I have a show of hands, roughly how many of you would like to say something tonight? Okay, so try and limit your comments to three minutes, if you would be so kinder. |
| 01:59:04.11 | Ryan McMahon | Okay. |
| 01:59:13.70 | Leslie Hale | I'm Leslie Hale. I live at 10 Cloudview Road. I want to thank the police department and the council. I have read the staff report that states there is a downward trend in crime. I don't see how, respectfully to the chief, this is determined in this statement. What were the numbers for the fourth quarter each year? That's not covered. The chart is both up and down. Only five years are reported in 2014. It's not yet over. The average isn't down at 21.4. In any case, like cancer, when it strikes at home, it doesn't matter how many were last year. This is in our face, and if there were to come to be, for example, 35 burglaries in 2015, it seems not so important that there is a downward trend. being predicted for 2014. Trends are only thoughts, they're not concrete fact. I can't argue something that's subjective like this. In town in 2014, with 15 residential burglaries year to date in September, or from the chart 21.4 average in five years, it is 15 too many year to date Fremont with 224,922 people in 2013 have 12 cameras it costs $300,000 no fuss |
| 02:00:31.04 | Unknown | and |
| 02:00:50.93 | Leslie Hale | Velvedere has approved four cameras at 52,000, including a year of surveillance. That's $24 per person that they are investing in. It doesn't help. or ring true when someone is speaking out of both sides of their mouth, asking for help, additional staff, et cetera, at our meetings and base a decision to protect the citizens on a trend of reported crime to the city? Why not stop this trend up or down in its path? Sausalito has 7,099 people as of 2013. The investment would be $9.86 per person based on the Belvedere cost. If it were five cameras, it would be $65,000. We need patrolling. We need cameras. We need our neighbors to continue to be proactive and a department and police that cares as much about the citizens as they do about the tourists who visit. We wouldn't be waiting for change, and we shouldn't be, as though the burglars were to cease. We need to be proactive and stop this as much as we possibly can before someone is hurt and it gets worse and harder to contain. Right now it feels as though we are the last item of concern and we have been cast aside. I don't feel safe and I don't feel listened to nor do our neighbors feel cared about. |
| 02:01:30.84 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:02:22.07 | Unknown | NOR DOES IT. |
| 02:02:25.41 | Leslie Hale | Install five or six cameras and do it now. |
| 02:02:36.27 | Mayor Withey | who would like. Yes, sir. |
| 02:02:54.14 | Unknown | Neil Whitelaw, a long time resident of South Stato, almost 50 years now. First, I want to commend Officer Brandon Rogers. Last week I had $100 worth of groceries swiped inside of six minutes when I couldn't carry it any further. Went home to get a dolly. half an hour later, uh, Brandon came by with a bag of groceries. He'd gone to Molly Stones and got me some stuff. I said, that's my week's groceries. Thank you. I mean, that's incredible. appreciate that, not just for myself, but the community should appreciate a police department that has officers that do that out of their own free will, probably The... Think about the cameras. A lot of positive things have been spoken about it. been talked about how it's been positive in London. I've heard all the positive sides, You can really open a can of worms, we need to think very carefully about this. because there is concern nationally and locally. about possible Misuse. in the future. There isn't anything right now I don't feel like anybody's going to spy on me or I've got a problem. But there's that potential. of. stepping on people's rights of privacy and it's... wonderful things have been said, but a lot of careful thought has to be thought about the other angela, but not for now, but for the future. Should... I mean, to me, our national government's out of control. But I don't know if 20 years from now before local government will be out of control. Hopefully not. But pay attention to that. The third thing is I'd like to get some information about and what can be done about, if anything, about telephone fraud, solicitation fraud and computer fraud, which are two areas. I know it's very difficult to deal with that locally, but is there anything that can be done on that? Thank you. |
| 02:04:57.93 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, sir. John. |
| 02:05:08.49 | Unknown | Jeanne Fidler, 501 Ulema Street. I was really interested to hear Sergeant Gregory's report and that the police take such good care of the homeless in Sausalito, because I'm in the library quite a bit and I read the reports and I know that the Presbyterian Church gives the meal to the homeless on Wednesdays. But what perturbs me are a couple of women I know in the library that as far as I know have nowhere to sleep They just find somewhere. And so in the police reports, when I read that if the police come across somebody sleeping in a car in the middle of the night, urged them to be gone. And I think that that's unfair. I think someone's sleeping on a bench, and that's the only bench they have for the night, why not leave them there? If they are sleeping in their car, why not let them sleep in their car? And I know there's plenty of people around in their vans. But I want to thank the library and I want to thank the police. |
| 02:06:19.94 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, John. Who else would like to? I know there was a number of you, so please. |
| 02:06:31.77 | Larry Wolf | Good evening. My name is Larry Wolf. I live at 39 Prospect in Sausalito. First of all, kudos to Chief Tejada and her staff for a really superb report this evening. That said, it wasn't so long ago that a number of us were approached by the powers that be with hat in hand asking us to support the funding of a state-of-the-art police department and fire station. That we did. And at this point we find our – asking us to support the funding of a state-of-the-art police department and fire station. That we did. And at this point, we find ourselves where from the aspect of brick and mortar, we do in fact have a state of the art police department, but in terms of human resources and the assets available for discretionary time leading to proactive patrol, the department is seriously lacking. And I think this evening's presentation simply reinforced that and validated that in my mind. Though the statistics would indicate that crime is generally down in Marin in general and Sausalito in particular, That simply is not true. in our neighborhood of Prospect and Booker and Cloudview and Spencer. In 60 days, we had four catastrophic burglaries and intrusions into our homes. I'm a surgeon. When a patient walks into my office with a presumptive diagnosis of carcinoma of the breast, what she expects is for me to listen to her. to establish a therapeutic regimen which is going to end up with this patient being in a position of a satisfactory outcome and survival. She takes very little consolation if I pat her on the back and tell her, you know, the trend nationally is that carcinoma of the breast. is less frequently seen than it was last year or in 2010. To her, the important thing is that she be listened to and that her crisis be resolved. And she would probably take the position that statistics be damned. I look at this as sort of a three-legged stool where the citizens are one leg, the Chief and her department another, and you the City Council, the third. We as citizens in the area of Spencer and Prospect and Cloudview and Booker have done everything we possibly can. The Chief has addressed us. We have certainly listened to her recommendations and have acted upon them. We all have alarms, and we set those alarms in our home. We all have locks and we lock our doors and windows. We have a neighborhood outreach and we are constantly emailing and communicating with one another. Some of us have spent thousands of dollars with video surveillance of our own homes. We are passing the hat around trying to get license plate readers because the presumption is that Sausalito will not do for us what Tiburon and Belvedere have done for their citizens. So I think that Chief Tejada is obviously... articulated a need for sufficient staffing to allow discretionary time for proactive patrols, and we would implore the city council to find the funds necessary to give her adequate staffing. I think if you Don't listen to what we're saying. If you ignore what is happening up in our neighborhood, then the unintended consequence is going to be that these burglaries will continue And as they continue, there will be and enhanced possibility that either intentionally or unintentionally, there's going to be a confrontation between us and them with a potentially catastrophic result. Thank you. Thank you, sir. |
| 02:10:33.64 | Mayor Withey | So if the people who, folks who want to address the council, if you could start lining up so that we can see how many of you there are. I know there are a lot of you who would like to talk, so please. Or is that it? No? |
| 02:10:52.63 | Ed Carey | My name is Ed Carey. I live at Fort Cloudview. And I think that the... The situation has been well stated, the severity. But I think a little bit of the debate needs to be, it seems that you're open to the idea of having cameras and spending money for cameras, but I think, We need the chief's input and everybody else's input is, where is the money best spent? Is it best spent with boots on the ground or is it best spent with this new technology? I think The problem I have with the technology side is it's great for the post- atrocity. What I think we really need to address is prevention of these atrocities. So I would love to see a little bit more debate and not just jump into conclusions that a camera is going to prevent this. And I think my concern is prevention more so than the post event. So that's my quick statement. |
| 02:11:51.22 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. |
| 02:11:51.60 | Paul Mowry | Thank you. |
| 02:11:57.24 | Paul Mowry | Hi, my name is Paul Mowry. I live on Bulkley Avenue. I'm the pastor of the Saucido Presbyterian Church. And, You know, I know what it's like to have been burglarized and to really suffer through it. And even if you get all your stuff back, it's just, you know, it leaves you feeling so vulnerable and shaken. And it's just a horrible thing to go through. And I'm, you know, it pains me as I think it does everybody for people who, are living through that, and especially, you know, when it's happened to a number of your neighbors and friends. I'm also concerned, though, I also, belong to an online thing, nextdoor.com. And I also... I am concerned for you know, a sense of... lack of safety or panic I'm that it feels is spreading just sort of around the community in general. And to be honest, I moved here three years ago, but there hasn't been a time in any 24-hour period that I didn't feel safe either in my home or walking on the street. And since this has happened, and I totally, I don't want it to be like, oh, those people who were burgled and those who weren't. Everybody needs good, safe protection. But I've been checking with my neighbors, and they too have felt like Sausalito's a very safe place. And my, and I am, last spring, was appointed the chaplain of the police department, which has been a great honor. And it's been very interesting sort of getting to just hear more about the police department, because people share their thoughts with me. And, um, the stories of people going officers going way beyond the call of duty to help people out, like the story about you know, the groceries. I know so many stories like that. So I guess I just wanted to say that I am so sorry that there's this part of our neighborhood that's going through this. But, you know, every place I've ever lived, There have been periodic, minor, not minor, but periodic waves of crime. And I think that... you know, of course, to each individual, that is critical. And yet we've got a whole community. And if you haven't ever heard of Laura Goodrich, YouTube a video called Red Cars, because she does a whole study about, you know, we see what we look for, and we tend to look for what we don't like. And I just, you know, want us to know, oh, thank you, that I want us to appreciate that I think we live in a very safe town and with a really good police force. And I feel for you guys and we need to address whenever there's crime that comes up. I don't think we'll ever eliminate crime because we live in the United States and the world. But thank you. |
| 02:15:24.08 | Ken Shapiro | Thank you. |
| 02:15:27.72 | Paul Mowry | Thank you. |
| 02:15:27.93 | Ken Shapiro | I'm Ken Shapiro. I live in the crime-ridden Prospect Cloudview area. But actually, I spent the first half of this night at the bikes and buses meeting, which unfortunately only Chief Tejada attended. And there was a huge crowd there. And most of what they were complaining about was the lack of police presence to deal with the crowds and the bicycles. And I think that we're not only dealing with crime here, we're also dealing with traffic issues and it's just a question of manpower. And I think we need to get behind the police department. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:16:17.67 | Mary Barter | My name is Mary Barter and I was a single parent at a very young age and we lived in Oakland, we lived in Berkeley, We lived in Richmond, and this is the first time that I've been frightened in my own home. Thank you. Oh, I'd live on prospect now. |
| 02:16:44.52 | Mayor Withey | Is there anybody else who'd like to make any comments tonight on this? Okay, we'll close public comment then. Okay, let's bring it back up here. And who would like to go first? |
| 02:17:02.66 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I would like to follow Rosenberg's Rules of Order where we make a motion and we discuss within the frame of that motion. And I would like to make a motion to direct city staff, specifically the police department, to research a solution for the hills, the Spencer area, with respect to what combination makes sense, following the receiving the analysis on the post, work, you know, resources and looking at the beats, proposal of, for example, if a new beat makes sense, up to patrols, surveillance camera, and come back at a future date to make that presentation. |
| 02:17:58.45 | Mayor Withey | I'll second that motion. But I think one thing is that that was a very broad motion. But I get that. I'll streamline it. We get the idea. Is that, you know, we're going to ask the chief to come back with a series of recommendations both on technology. But also let's wait for the postanalysis because part of the analysis of manpower was that it is an analysis. Let's see the results of that. |
| 02:18:06.87 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | motion but I get I'll streamline it we get the |
| 02:18:21.72 | Unknown | Yeah. Right. |
| 02:18:31.34 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And in fact, as a follow-up, what was the time frame for the post? When are you getting that? Because obviously November, was it mid-November? So perhaps, you know, to have this by January would be coming. |
| 02:18:37.15 | Mayor Withey | November. |
| 02:18:37.89 | Kathleen Clark | Thank you. |
| 02:18:44.25 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. Would be good. Why don't we leave that in the hands of the chief to figure out how to do that? We are coming up with mid-budget review in the early part of the year. We will have the results of those studies, and we will have the chiefs researching on possible technology solutions as well. to |
| 02:19:08.43 | Councilmember Leon | Thank you. |
| 02:19:08.53 | Mayor Withey | you, |
| 02:19:08.97 | Councilmember Leon | Did you want to? Well, I'll make my comment. I mean, we're commenting on the motion at this point. And that's fine. I just hope someone's written it down because we have comments and that we're going to circle back to this when we have the motion so that we're clear about when we get to voting on it. But I do appreciate Chief DeHatta and everyone, the police department's presentation, which was thorough. And I appreciate everyone coming here. This is probably the most important issue we have, security, and certainly security in our homes are the most important things that we have, so we certainly hear that. I think the motion to find one is one I may have made. I want to make sure that we keep in mind, though, as we go forward that... |
| 02:19:09.44 | Mayor Withey | No. All right. |
| 02:19:12.75 | Jeff | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:19:13.22 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:19:50.38 | Councilmember Leon | And I think someone commented, we have to look at everything that will possibly prevent this. And my guess is it's not going to be any one particular thing. I think the license readers were an excellent idea that we should explore. We also need to take a look at if we need other patrols at time, other things, other community involvement. My guess is it's an incremental process that we have to look at all of these things. And I certainly agree. I don't want to get hung up on... community involvement. My guess is it's an incremental process that we have to look at all of these things. And I certainly agree. I don't want to get hung up on statistics. It's, you know, we look at what they are. I certainly agree that the goal is zero, crime or zero burglary certainly at times that's our goal. I'm not certain that we're ever going to make that but I think we're always working for that. I think we need to have this. This is something that we're going to need to come back to fairly early. I think Council members Pfeiffer's had some reference of bringing it back, but we should probably set a time as when we come back with it. And I think, you know, that we need to work together on this. I think we have to be a little bit, you know, we also have to look at the entire city. We realize we have the prospect in Codview people, and that's very important. We have to be careful that we don't put all the resources in one area, and then they just pop up in another area. We have to make sure that when we take any actions we take, we're taking protection for the whole city, that everyone in the entire city needs to be safe, including the prospect in Cloudview area. So we have our work cut out for us, but we need to take a look at some of these things. I think we have a lot of important possibilities that we can take a look at, and we should bring them back soon. |
| 02:21:39.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Instead of all |
| 02:21:42.45 | Councilmember Leon | Thank you. |
| 02:21:42.47 | Mayor Withey | I would simply add that, reinforce actually what the Vice Mayor said about We've got to think of a whole city I'm going to look at a multiplex of solutions because there isn't just one solution. If there was, it would be easy. It would have been done by now. I understand, I really do understand how you feel and the insecurity you feel. you know. 32 years ago, 32 years ago, that's a long time ago, when I lived in Southern California, I was burglarized. And I remember it to this day when I came home that night. You never forget it, ever. But that's reality. You do feel very vulnerable. And we've got to do what we can to make you feel less so. But remembering our job is to look at the whole city, and our job is to look at all of the possible solutions that we could put in place. I have nothing else to say. |
| 02:23:05.25 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I have a comment on that. |
| 02:23:07.45 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:23:09.76 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | We do have different issues around this. We've got, and we've got various priorities. Clearly, I did a survey through my newsletter distribution about a year and a half ago, and 90% said that they encountered bicycles whizzing through and breaking the law like 100% of the time they drew through town. So clearly that's one aspect we need to look at. But what we're talking about right now, clearly we have a section of town that has, you know, been targeted in the last few years with these burglaries. And I'm wondering if perhaps this motion could, we could introduce like a Phase I focused on Spencer, because I'm concerned that if we take this, you know, too broad just at the get-go, we might, you know, it might take a long time. So what do you think about like a Phase I solutions for the Spencer area or that, that, where the crime, the burglaries have been occurring to get a proposal there and then to focus on the bicycles and the enforcement and a separate |
| 02:24:31.77 | Mayor Withey | I'm not prepared to micromanage that up here. Perhaps we could have the chief come right now and sort of respond to how would you – so we're saying, okay, chief, come back to us. You will have the post-study done. Come back with your set of recommendations as to some solutions. You yourself said it may need to be phased in. I'm presuming you don't want us to be trying to micromanage that right now, but give you some time to come back. But you answer, please. |
| 02:25:15.58 | Unknown | Well, since I don't have the study in front of me, I can't give you an answer. But, you know, phasing in projects does have merit. And, you know, we would look at the statistics, look at the areas of occurrence, and we do know that Spencer is a well-trafficked entrance into the city, not just by residents but by other people. So there's merit to that idea. There's also merit to using Alexander or Bridgeway as a initial starting point if we are going to introduce license plate readers. But let's not get hung up on just license plate readers either. I think Ed had a very good point. This is not going to prevent incidents. It may act as a deterrent, but it is greatly used as a post-incident tool as well as an alert system, and it's very difficult to measure prevention. So that is my roundabout answer. |
| 02:26:36.26 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So just to respond, thank you. |
| 02:26:38.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:39.03 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:26:39.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:26:39.16 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Chief Tejada, I appreciate that. I guess based on that answer and your concern, I could kind of make the motion to have Chief Tejada come back to us with a recommendation for, you know, phases after the post-study. So I guess the motion would be to direct the police chief to prepare a proposed proposal for crime prevention researching options, including beat structure, patrols, and surveillance cameras. by February 2015. |
| 02:27:16.93 | Mayor Withey | in chief, is that too limiting or |
| 02:27:21.70 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | The time is too soon. |
| 02:27:24.71 | Unknown | Well, no. Okay. I will. produce what you need as long as I have that post-study back. So the post-study will give us options. So I think we're looking for options. What are our options in staffing? What are our options in service delivery? What are our options in IT enhancements to our resources? So those three areas we can come back and cover once we have that workload study. I will do some research on the license plate readers prior to getting the study, so we'll be ready to go, so January is workable. |
| 02:27:30.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | you need. |
| 02:27:31.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:28:05.80 | Councilmember Leon | In that, we can get into deals, but on the license plate readers, certainly we've heard different numbers, and I'm sure that because they're different systems, I'd like to take and have statistics on the effectiveness and further detail as we look in this because we want to look at our options. There's going to be a dollar amount attached to them all, and we want to be able to decide which are the most cost-effective to us to prevent crime. |
| 02:28:33.44 | Mayor Withey | Okay, I think we've got a consensus on that. I don't think we need to vote, so that was... Would you still second that? Okay, great. I've done so, yeah. |
| 02:28:38.37 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Would you still second that? I've done so. Because I reworded it. Okay, great. |
| 02:28:43.30 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. So, okay, so we know what the motion is. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay, that motion carries. Thank you. |
| 02:28:48.78 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 02:28:57.99 | Mayor Withey | And we're going to adjourn for five minutes. Five minutes only, please. |
| 02:29:21.84 | Charlie Francis | You could have said that. |
| 02:29:24.32 | Unknown | Nope. |
| 02:29:30.59 | Mayor Withey | Okay, let's resume. So item 6B, to consider whether or not to enroll the City of Sausalito electricity accounts in the Marin Clean Energy Light Green program or keep the city accounts with PG&E. Charlie Francis, our Administrative Services Director. |
| 02:29:56.06 | Charlie Francis | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Joining me tonight in presenting is representatives from MCE, Justin Kudo, and from PG&E, Joe Horak. They're in the audience, and they'll be available to answer questions as well as put on additional presentation if we need it. Tonight's decision is talking about, first, the PG PGD supplied electrical system. Electrical system has three major components. You have a power that's generated in some manner. Then it goes into a transmission system. WHOOPS. goes into a transmission system and then finally into the distribution system. And what we're talking about tonight is only about the purchase or the generated power section of the whole electric system. And that determines, can be influenced on the bills of the city's accounts. So and what we're specifically talking about is there's a bunch of different electric generation. You have large hydro, which You have large hydro, which is not a renewable source based on state law, but small hydro is a renewable source based on the definition. You have... of, wind power, we have solar power, those are all renewable sources. And non-renewable sources then would be your large hydro, your nuclear plants, and your burning of fuel to generate electricity. So those are the difference between the two kinds of electric generation. And tonight we're talking about should PG&E be the supplier of electricity into the system, or should MCE be the supplier into the system? And so if we took PG&E out and put in MCE, then we'd be looking at renewable energy sources. And we actually have two decisions that we're asking the council to make tonight. The first is, should we move from PG&E to MCE? And the second one is, if you do want to move into MCE, should we go into the light energy program or the deep energy program? And I'll be talking about the economics of that now on this slide. This slide shows the impact of moving into, moving the city's accounts from the PG&E, which is costing us about $100,000 It costs $100,000 right here per year. And if we moved into the MCE light green program, it costs us about $89,000, so we would save $11,000. $335. If we moved into the deep green program, this amount would be about even. We would save about $600 per year instead of $11,000 per year. But in either event, moving to MCE, there's an economic advantage to move in there. Now, this is based on the current rates, this analysis, and MCE and PG&E have both advised that their rates are going to be going up in 2015, this year. They're not going up. Well, if they do go up, they'd be proportional, and they expect the same kind of relationship and savings to us. If the rates ever went up on PG&E, or MCE and PG&E rates became lower, and we wanted to switch back, the city could always opt out and go back to PG&E for a charge of about $880. So in the long run, the economics are such that we could go into the deeper the deep, um, green program and break even economically, from a financial standpoint. So at that point, we have both MCE and PG&E here to answer any questions you might have on what does deep green mean, what does light green mean. But from an economic standpoint, from a financial standpoint, you'll save $11,000 by going to MCE light green. You can about break even by going to PG&E deep green. |
| 02:34:17.32 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Charlie, I have a quick question. Yes, sir. |
| 02:34:18.62 | Charlie Francis | Yes, sir. |
| 02:34:20.69 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | The city has solar panels, right? We have solar panels. We do up here on the roof. And do you have a comment on in terms of like do we have, do we generate an excess on our solar panels? How is that crediting with PG&E versus MCE? |
| 02:34:26.57 | Charlie Francis | We do up here on the room, yes. |
| 02:34:39.83 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | in terms of cost savings. |
| 02:34:41.25 | Unknown | That's not the nature of the solar panel deal you have with SolarCity. |
| 02:34:46.31 | Charlie Francis | And the solar panel powers this building and any excess goes into the grid, but we're also paying for the equipment. So I believe right now we're about breaking even between the lease and what we're putting into the grid. |
| 02:34:55.14 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Oh, I see. Okay, I guess, okay, I was just wondering if it made a difference. |
| 02:35:03.08 | Jonathan Goldman | Jonathan Goldman, the Public Works Director, just to fill in some details on that. We don't generate an excess on this building or on Fire Station 1. |
| 02:35:14.47 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, thank you. |
| 02:35:19.32 | Mayor Withey | So Charlie, question. Is PG&E and or MC gonna give a presentation here tonight or is it just they're available for questions? |
| 02:35:30.12 | Charlie Francis | They're built. |
| 02:35:30.56 | Jonathon Goldman | All right. |
| 02:35:30.62 | Charlie Francis | They're available for questions, but they could talk at length if you wanted them to. |
| 02:35:35.84 | Mayor Withey | Okay. So how would my colleagues up here like to proceed in terms of questions or Yeah. |
| 02:35:49.62 | Charlie Francis | Justice. |
| 02:35:55.67 | Mayor Withey | I'm going to actually try and not talk very much on this topic tonight. I represent you all by sitting on the MCE board, and I know this story really well. So welcome, Justin. |
| 02:36:12.34 | Justin Kudo | Thank you. I'll try to be as brief as possible with respect to everybody's time here. My name is Justin Kudeau, Manager of Account Services for Marine Clean Energy. The cost comparison that was put together here was something that was requested by the city. It's something that's sort of a standardized process that we do with PG&E. We try to have as much transparency as possible really in the process and make sure that we both vet each other's numbers so that the customers that we deal with can have a high level of confidence that the figures that are there are accurate and representative. What we do is we take the most recent usage that we can, an annual block of usage, and we run it based on the current rates with respect to some of the comments earlier about what to expect from future rates. I think utility rates are always something that are very difficult to project for the future. There is a small PG&E rate increase that's projected for January 1st which is when PG&E's annual rate changes go into effect. MCE's rate changes would be set for April every year. Those figures are not available yet, but we are not expecting any sort of substantial increase. |
| 02:37:27.74 | Mayor Withey | And could you, for everybody's benefit, explain the difference between light green and deep green? |
| 02:37:33.73 | Justin Kudo | Yes, absolutely. So our light green service that we offer is the basic service that we offer to all customers throughout our service area. Customers who initially take service with MC, they receive light green service. That service is approximately 50% renewable. It's actually a little bit higher than that. And there's also some other non-polluting hydroelectric power that goes in addition to that 50%. The price for light green service is set to match PG&Es and is lower than PG&Es. So any customer in MC's service area who takes light green service right now has a lower bottom line cost on their bills. Deep green service is an optional voluntary service that we offer. It's a 100% renewable service. It's focused primarily through wind energy resources. I believe that's primarily made up through out of state wind right now, but in 2015 it should be entirely in state wind. That's a premium service, so it does cost a little bit more. That was indicated in the earlier figures that it's about $10,700 more for the accounts for the city, which would still be about $660 per year less than the current rates that are being paid. |
| 02:38:58.88 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Can we ask questions? So regarding the wind, I was wondering if you could comment on the impact on the birds and hawks with respect to the wind power and why you don't look more towards solar energy for the wind? |
| 02:39:00.11 | Justin Kudo | Thank you. |
| 02:39:00.13 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:39:22.13 | Justin Kudo | Sure, I'd be happy to discuss that. I'll try to stay fairly brief on this one as well because I have a lot of background in this particular issue and I don't want to talk your ear off with it. As far as wind power goes, wind power actually is one of the most predominant forms of renewable power that's in the United States. There is more wind power than there is solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass combined. So it's a pretty substantial and very important resource for us to use here in the United States. Also the cost point is usually a little bit lower with wind, and only recently has solar become a more cost-effective resource that has become a lot more favorable. As far as impacts associated with wind, modern wind turbines, there are very minor impacts to avian species and wildlife. There was one study that was done in Marin for the |
| 02:39:23.28 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I'm just going to say that. |
| 02:39:24.02 | Marjorie Liu | Thank you. |
| 02:40:23.81 | Justin Kudo | There's a certain olive farm, I'm forgetting the name, it's escaping me, up a little bit further north in Marin, |
| 02:40:29.24 | Unknown | Thank you. It's a mess and a little. |
| 02:40:30.97 | Justin Kudo | Thank you, yes, yeah, McEvoy Ranch. And they did a study over several years of the impacts of their wind turbine out there and found no avian fatalities associated through the several-year study. |
| 02:40:43.22 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And do you have a comment regarding the impact on bats? Because I've heard that there's been a real impact on that population too with winter. |
| 02:40:52.75 | Justin Kudo | That's been certainly a trending topic. I don't have a lot of familiarity with the impacts on bats. I do know that the McEvoy study did show, I think, one or two bat fatalities over the course of the installation's existence up there. Not that that's one of the resources that we were purchasing from. We, of course, would expect anybody that we're buying wind power from or any other resources, much like any other energy service provider, that they're doing their due diligence and making sure to build their resources appropriately. |
| 02:41:27.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:27.72 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Mm. And is another one more question. Is there a certain like a source that you use to contract? Is it shall? I mean, who provides the wind, which is the vendor? |
| 02:41:44.14 | Justin Kudo | We currently have 17 different renewable power contracts with a number of different companies. Most of those are for solar resources, either existing or new and contracted ones. As far as wind goes, the main contract we have for wind at this point is, I believe, down in the Palm Springs area now, and I cannot remember the name of the new agency that we're working with there. Councilmember Mayor Withey might be able to fill in the blank there. |
| 02:41:48.69 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | with a... |
| 02:42:16.85 | Mayor Withey | Off the top of my head, no, but I can look it up for you. |
| 02:42:20.53 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So even though of the 17 vendors you listed, most of those are solar, you're getting the bulk of the deep green from wind, and it's from one vendor? Did I hear that right? |
| 02:42:33.48 | Justin Kudo | I believe it will be from one. It could be from multiple. Some of these allocations, because we're looking forward, I don't have that specific information yet. |
| 02:42:43.00 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:42:46.10 | Councilmember Weiner | If we started out on light green, what we have to, how long would we have to wait if we then decided that we wanted to go to a deep green? Would we have to wait a cycle, a year cycle, or any time? |
| 02:42:58.91 | Justin Kudo | We don't place any restrictions upon that, so you could switch at any time. Additionally, if you were deep green and you wanted to switch to light green, all you need to do is call us. In the same way, light green to dark green. |
| 02:43:09.88 | Councilmember Weiner | In the same way, light green to dark green. |
| 02:43:11.87 | Justin Kudo | Correct. It would just be your next billing cycle. |
| 02:43:14.89 | Councilmember Weiner | Okay. |
| 02:43:16.07 | Justin Kudo | Thank you. |
| 02:43:16.09 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 02:43:16.46 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. With no switch in charge other than the rate appropriate for the product that you would deliver. |
| 02:43:22.31 | Justin Kudo | That's right. That's correct. |
| 02:43:31.75 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? |
| 02:43:32.56 | Councilmember Leon | I do. On the white-green, in terms of the mix of energy sources, how does that compare to PG&E, which we currently have? How do they relate? |
| 02:43:44.74 | Justin Kudo | Sure. Our renewable energy content for light green, I believe, is made up through, currently it's about 51% renewable resources. I think we're close to about 10% large hydroelectric power, which, as was discussed earlier, does not count as renewable. However, it's still zero emission, and the remainder is conventional conventional power that's purchased from the grid. In PG&E's case, I'm a little reluctant. I hope Joe doesn't mind if I run off memory here. But as of what's currently on their website, it's about 22% renewable, about 25% nuclear. I'd say roughly maybe 10 to 20 percent hydroelectric, about 20 percent natural gas, and the remainder would be system grid power purchases. However, my understanding is that the renewable content should be coming up higher in 2015 for purchases that are happening this year. |
| 02:43:46.12 | Councilmember Leon | Renewable. |
| 02:44:58.25 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thanks, Justin. Joe, is there... |
| 02:45:07.93 | Mayor Withey | anything you'd like to |
| 02:45:09.94 | Joe Horak | There's not much I can add. My name is Joe Horak with PG&E, and thank you, Justin. Your memory is very good. It looks like into 2014, we'll be at about 27%, but we won't know because we won't know for renewables. We won't know until next year when we get state authorized. So we're... We're looking at about 27 percent renewables coming in, and that will get us really starting to get really close to our 33 percent mandate, and we'll be in about 64 percent carbon-free. But one thing I wanted to emphasize, and I appreciate all the slides, is that no matter what you choose tonight, that the service that you get from PG&E when the power goes out, when things go on, still remains with PG&E. We'll still be here to answer the call. We'll still be here with the blue trucks for whatever needs that the city may have for the residents that may have. It does not change at all no matter what you decide you're going to do tonight. We We continue to look forward to working with the city on a host of different issues, both from what concerns for citizens, for safety, for things that we want to make sure that we work closely with the city on. So we look forward to continuing that relationship. And if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer. |
| 02:46:24.51 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 02:46:28.02 | Joe Horak | Thank you. |
| 02:46:28.04 | Mayor Withey | Any questions of Joe? Okay. |
| 02:46:33.31 | Joe Horak | Thank you very much. |
| 02:46:37.52 | Mayor Withey | Okay, is there any member of the public who'd like to comment on this topic? Okay, seeing none, we'll close public comment. |
| 02:46:51.61 | Unknown | I'll make a motion that the city of Sausalito move its accounts to the Deep Green program with Marine Clean Energy. |
| 02:47:03.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:03.26 | Councilmember Weiner | Do we have a second? Yeah, I'll give you a second. |
| 02:47:09.26 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I'd like to make a substitute motion to move the city of Sausalito to the light green. Option. |
| 02:47:23.17 | Councilmember Leon | Are we going to comment at any point? Yeah. I mean, I have to say this shows one of the problems of having motions before we have comments, so I'm just going to make that comment. It's a little difficult. I have to say, I'm just going to my comment period. I mean, I certainly support the switch, and I like the opportunity on the deep green. I would go to the light green, I think it's justifiable on the economics, and then I would |
| 02:47:24.89 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.96 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:47:24.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.99 | Unknown | Oh, well. |
| 02:47:25.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:25.36 | Unknown | I mean, |
| 02:47:48.48 | Councilmember Leon | I'd like to have, and I'm not sure if the sustainability committee is the right one, but I'd like to, I need a little further detail on it and I'll just be frank about what the difference was between light and green and we had the question answered that we could switch at any time. So I would certainly I'd move to light green and I'd take a look at and I'd certainly be open to it. I unfortunately I am not prepared at this point to make that decision to go to deep green. |
| 02:48:24.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:48:24.68 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 02:48:31.13 | Unknown | We get a motion. And the second, so unless there's a lot of comment. |
| 02:48:35.02 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Did someone want to second my motion? about moving to light green. |
| 02:48:43.97 | Councilmember Leon | the procedure will be going with it. |
| 02:48:47.61 | Mayor Withey | Well, procedurally, if somebody did make a – if somebody did second Linda's motion, then we would vote on Linda's motion first. I think that's the correct procedure. |
| 02:48:49.60 | Councilmember Leon | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:48:49.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:48:55.81 | Councilmember Leon | I prefer to have – I'm not going to second it, mainly because I prefer to see the initial motion voted first, and then I'd consider it later if you remade your motion to second it. |
| 02:49:10.68 | Unknown | I think the thing with the deep green, you know, whether you can always switch. So if it's costing you more and that's your concern, you can always switch out from underneath it. And that can be done, frankly, at the staff level for that matter. I'm not exactly sure why we're voting on this, but because the dollar cost probably is not, if it breaks out even. what have you lost, you know, kind of thing. Um, |
| 02:49:41.46 | Councilmember Weiner | And even if you went to PG&E, it's $800 worth of products. |
| 02:49:48.16 | Mayor Withey | I think the reason why I actually agree, I think this should be a staff issue because just to switch around for $11,000 here, well, should be in the hands of staff, to be frank. But back in, 2010 maybe? Was that right? April 2010. April 2010, when the decision was made up here by the... Thank you. |
| 02:50:18.08 | Unknown | It could be a good one. |
| 02:50:18.81 | Mayor Withey | because, you know, there were the votes to allow the residents to move into marine clean energy with the opt-out provision. But then the council at the time voted not to switch the city accounts. So it let the residents do their thing and then switch the city accounts. I mean, at that time, it wasn't so obvious the financial, there were two issues, I think, at the time. I don't want to speak for those who were on the Council at the time, but watching it and then I know I was asked by the Pacific Sun in my campaign, you know, what do you think about marine clean energy and what the hell went on at the Council two years before? My point was, well, Probably if I'd have been sitting on the council, I'd have been a bit dubious. Marine Clean Energy was new. I think there was a... You know, responsibility to be careful and cautious, and it wasn't quite sure how the rates had gone. But on a pure economic basis, it's a no-brainer now, right? I mean, so that should not be the issue and also, I mean, the track record of marine clean energy has clearly shown that You know, the CCA has actually built a viable utility that's actually delivering a cleaner product. I mean, that is a fact. So with that, it's very difficult, in my mind, not to switch. just as a point of information, we're the only city left in the whole of Marin County that doesn't have its accounts with Marin Clean Energy, by the way. So... |
| 02:52:03.28 | Unknown | And that being said, you know, a lot of the things that drive sustainable decisions aren't necessarily economically driven. I mean, the gold program we did for the police and fire buildings, you know, That cost us a little money. It saves money in the long run, but in the short run, it definitely costs us money. The solar panels on this roof are at a higher rate than what electric rates are now because when they were done, um, the deal, you know, nobody wanted to put money up front. The city saw, they didn't want to spend money. So, you know, we did one of those lease deals with solar city, which, you know, okay, but that's what it is. So, um, you know, and the solar panels on the, uh, fire station, I'm sure, um, are not an economically viable alternative. That's just the nature of the beast with renewable power of those types of renewable power at that scale. So it really is a question of just – it's a question of principle. And this is the case where it doesn't cost you anything. So if you were trying to put yourself forward as a sustainable city, which at some point in the early 2000s the city council voted and said we're going to be a sustainable city, but very little was done to carry forward with that until not too long ago. There's really no downside here that, you know, whether you think marine clean energy should be this big or this big or this big is a different story altogether. Whether you should buy, you know, 100% renewable, you can make, you know, whether it's, you know, offsets or whatever the hell, you can argue until you're, you know, green in the face about that. But there you go, I changed it to green. So, but at the end of the day, this is, in my mind, it's a no-brainer. You can make up reasons why you shouldn't do it, but at the end of the day, it doesn't cost you anything, and you're showing leadership by being out ahead of the game. So. |
| 02:53:33.88 | Unknown | you know. |
| 02:53:44.38 | Unknown | But it's... |
| 02:53:58.25 | Mayor Withey | Okay, I think we've exhausted this. There is no second on the light green. |
| 02:54:00.12 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | See you next time. Yeah, so I just wanted to make a comment about the, my motion with the focus on finances and, you know, costing the $11,000, you know, at this point projected is a pretty good delta to me, pretty good savings. But most of all, I'm a little bit, I wish I, I just wish I knew what the wind turbine vendors were for the deep green. I am on the impact on the bird and the bat populations, and I have read research about that. That is alarming. I just wish Deep Green was more focused on the solar. That's all. |
| 02:54:53.70 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Let's vote on this motion. We had a second, I think. vote. |
| 02:55:08.36 | Mayor Withey | Do we want a roll call or should we just? |
| 02:55:10.62 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Bye. |
| 02:55:12.30 | City Clerk | Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 02:55:14.93 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Come back to me, I'm still thinking. |
| 02:55:17.66 | City Clerk | Councilmember Weiner. |
| 02:55:17.85 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. Okay. Yes. |
| 02:55:21.85 | City Clerk | Council Member Leon. Vice Mayor Theodora. |
| 02:55:26.96 | Councilmember Leon | You can come back to me, too. |
| 02:55:28.73 | City Clerk | Mayor Whitty. |
| 02:55:30.15 | Councilmember Leon | Yes. |
| 02:55:31.68 | Councilmember Weiner | Don't have to come back. . |
| 02:55:34.37 | City Clerk | Thank you. |
| 02:55:34.50 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 02:55:34.54 | City Clerk | Thank you. |
| 02:55:37.17 | Councilmember Weiner | We don't have to go back, now we go forward. |
| 02:55:39.13 | City Clerk | that was a good thing. Can't remember Pfeiffer. |
| 02:55:43.28 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And the savings, we're still getting savings with the deep green too, is it like? |
| 02:55:47.65 | Unknown | No, it's not. |
| 02:55:48.07 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:55:48.10 | Unknown | THE FAMILY IS |
| 02:55:48.24 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. It's a very good question. |
| 02:55:48.53 | Unknown | But even... |
| 02:55:49.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | It's about the same. $600 savings. $600. I'll take it. Okay, yes. |
| 02:55:51.41 | Councilmember Leon | . |
| 02:55:51.44 | Charlie Francis | $600 savings. |
| 02:55:52.93 | Councilmember Leon | Thank you. |
| 02:55:57.55 | Councilmember Leon | I'll follow the game so I'll go this |
| 02:55:59.56 | Councilmember Weiner | about this. you |
| 02:56:00.25 | Councilmember Leon | you |
| 02:56:00.31 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 02:56:00.32 | Councilmember Leon | you |
| 02:56:00.78 | Mayor Withey | Yes. Okay. That motion passes 5-0. Okay. |
| 02:56:03.55 | Councilmember Weiner | So now we're all green in the face. |
| 02:56:05.64 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:56:09.99 | Charlie Francis | What's wrong? Oh, control key. |
| 02:56:17.13 | Mayor Withey | So the next item is review and next steps, greenhouse gas reduction, staff engineer Andrew Davison. Thank you. |
| 02:56:27.96 | Andrew Davison | This is a good time to have this. Good evening, Mayor Withey, Vice Mayor Theodorus, Council Members, Pfeiffer, Leon, and Weiner. My name's Andy Davidson and I'm an engineer in your department of Public Works. I'd like to thank you, the city manager, city attorney, the director of Public Works, and the Sausalito Sustainability Commission, and since it is 11th day of the 11th month, our veterans, for the opportunity to speak with you this evening about the status of the city of Sausalito's greenhouse gas reduction review and next steps. |
| 02:57:03.40 | Andrew Davison | So in sort of what Council Member Lyon started off with here, the city in 2008, the city pledged to take a leadership role in promoting public awareness about the causes and impacts of climate change, and resolved to undertake the City for Climate Protection Campaign's five milestone process to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. And here are the steps. First would be, or is to conduct greenhouse gas emission inventories, both for the community and the local government. Second is to establish a reduction target. Third is develop a climate action plan. Fourth is to implement the action plan. And five is to monitor and report progress on it. |
| 02:57:52.78 | Andrew Davison | So milestone one, back in June of 2011, the City Council accepted the City of Sausalito Government Operations Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory using 2005 as a base year. This inventory found |
| 02:58:10.99 | Andrew Davison | This warms up. There we go. |
| 02:58:11.66 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:58:12.28 | Andrew Davison | that the city in 2005 generated roughly 1,760 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions or carbon dioxide equivalents. The majority of that emissions came from the employee commute, roughly 60% of the total |
| 02:58:24.45 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:58:32.57 | Andrew Davison | Now, there are six recognized greenhouse gases. They do not all have the same effect on greenhouse gas, or on the greenhouse effect. So there's a conversion to a standard unit, which is the carbon dioxide equivalent, and it just has a ratio, and that allows for accounting of these gases. One unit of carbon dioxide has a value of one, makes sense. An equivalent unit of methane gas has a value of 23. So there's definitely a difference between the gases that are generated. |
| 02:59:15.55 | Andrew Davison | Following up on that, the continuation of Milestone 1, in October of 2012, the City Council accepted the greenhouse gas emissions inventories for 2005 and 2010 for your community. Christine O'Rourke, sustainability coordinator for the Marine Climate and Energy Partnership, prepared these inventories, and they showed that in 2005, roughly 56,300 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent were generated here in Sausalito and then in 2010, joining. roughly a slight reduction, 54,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, roughly a drop of about 3%. Pointing similar, as I pointed out with the local government, the lion's share of the emissions are related to transportation issues. Both in 2005 and in 2010, that's roughly 40% of the total |
| 03:00:26.54 | Andrew Davison | So the state has a reduction goal to reach greenhouse gas emissions of 1990 levels by the year 2020. To align this, the California Air Resources Board, often called the CARB, recommended that local governments and communities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 15% relative to their 2005 emissions. So in your meeting in October of 2012, you followed the recommendation of the CARB and your Sausalito Sustainability Commission and set a reduction target of 15 percent below 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2020. So with that action, during that October meeting, you completed both milestones one and two. |
| 03:01:04.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:07.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:21.15 | Andrew Davison | and now to the present and next steps. Milestone three is preparation of a climate action plan, often I may abbreviate with just CAP, the purpose of which is to compile existing and potential strategies that the community and the government can use to address climate change to meet your adopted reduction target. Now until this fiscal year, development of the CAP had been below the line of your priority calendar, but this year you decided to move it above the line. |
| 03:01:56.23 | Andrew Davison | The CAP is being prepared by Marin Clean Energy Partnership, the same folks who did the community inventory, greenhouse gas emissions inventory. It's being funded by Marin County Energy Watch, which is a joint project of Pacific Gas and Electric and the county of Marin. The city's sustainability commission has an ongoing review of this development of the CAP. They've met in September and again in October and will meet one more time – I think just one more time – this upcoming Thursday. They've been providing comments and review to Ms. O'Rourke of Marin Clean Energy Partnership. The intent is that after sustainability is done with it, Mr. O'Rourke will finalize the. to Ms. O'Rourke of Marin Clean Energy Partnership. The intent is that after sustainability is done with it, Ms. O'Rourke will finalize the cap and will be able to bring it to you for your review, comment, and hopefully approval early next year. |
| 03:03:01.22 | Andrew Davison | So continue with milestone number three. The CAP will propose action programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in five focused areas. And you kind of dealt with the first one just before me here. Energy efficiency and renewable energy. You've gone deep green, and that's what the CAP will probably ultimately recommend. The concept there is that by decreasing consumption of fossil fuels and using renewable resources, that you're reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation and land use will examine the transportation sector, including emissions from vehicles traveling on local roads and to some extent those within Marin itself. And it will also examine mixed use and infill development at higher densities near transit locations and amenities to promote use of public transportation. And that does follow from those two inventories where the line share in the local government operations, that 60 percent is based on the employee commute and 40 percent for the community's greenhouse gas emissions are also related to transportation. Waste reduction, reuse, and recycling, salude, reduce impacts to the environment by reducing the amount of methane gas generation from the decomposition of organic solid waste and alternative daily cover at landfills. This was an issue that was brought up when sustainability brought composting to you. Whereas in a landfill, waste is buried and essentially in a tight system, and decomposition is by an anaerobic process with one of the byproducts being methane gas. And I did mention to you the relationship between methane gas and carbon dioxide and just relatively the potency of the methane. So going with composting and promoting composting, which sustainability is actively working on, increasing the community's removal of composted material and recycled materials from the waste stream, getting it composted and recycled where it should go. They're working on that. And that also follows from a waste audit that the city had performed in 2013, which found that roughly 60 percent, maybe a little bit more, of material that was being landfilled at that time was actually – could actually be composted or recycled. So sustainability is working hard on that one. Water and wastewater. Water conservation efforts reduce the demand for electricity to pump, treat, and convey water from the water source to users here in Sausalito. Other than we need to conserve water, its conservation and also reduction of inflow and infiltration into your sanitary sewer system reduces the amount of sewage that must be conveyed by pump stations to and treated at the Sausage-Marin City Sanitary District's wastewater treatment plant. So by reducing usage of water and infiltration into the sanitary sewer, less electricity is required to pump it all the way over to the wastewater treatment plant. And the fifth area is natural system sequestration. Trees and other vegetation reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and instead put it into the soil and into trees. So a program that promotes planting of trees will help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by sequestering it. So this is just a slide showing the other communities in Marin and Marin that have climate action plans and that's a sequential. The county has updated their plan. I think it's done, it's 2014. |
| 03:06:54.67 | Andrew Davison | After sustainability's upcoming meeting this Thursday and their further input, the draft cap will be finalized with the intent to bring it before the city council, hopefully early next year for your review comment and presume hopefully its approval. And finally, milestones four and five, implementation of the Climate Action Plan, along with monitoring and reporting of its results, will follow completion of milestone number three. After putting in place recommended programs identified in the cap, further emissions inventories will be needed to check results. So prior to the 2020 target date, we may want to revisit the CAP as well to recalibrate it to determine, based on updated inventories, both for local government and the community. So with that, that wraps up my presentation. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them. THANK YOU. |
| 03:07:56.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:56.82 | Andrew Davison | Right. |
| 03:07:57.04 | Unknown | for a great presentation. Is there any questions of Andy? |
| 03:08:06.08 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I have a couple questions. So thank you for the presentation. And if I go back to the original, you were talking about the benchmark in 2005. and the survey on the transportation So did Was that, you did a survey of city employees and asked them how long they traveled, or is that |
| 03:08:28.04 | Andrew Davison | I'd have to go back to the report itself, but yes, it was probably related on miles traveled. to the city of Sausalito. |
| 03:08:37.43 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. So two follow-up questions to that. In that survey, did you capture the make and the year of the car that they used, you know, to drive? |
| 03:08:51.34 | Andrew Davison | I don't know. I don't think I was asked what car I drove. I don't recall that. |
| 03:08:52.17 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I don't know. Okay, because I've done carbon footprint surveys online and they ask for the car and the make. Is there a way of being able to go back and try and capture that information? I know that our turnover hasn't been |
| 03:09:14.51 | Andrew Davison | Well, the proposal will be to re-inventory. So with a new inventory after the cap, assuming it's approved, following that to check on the results of those actions, new inventory will be performed. That's the only way to check on how the city is doing. |
| 03:09:30.66 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | more. |
| 03:09:34.22 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I guess where I'm coming from is that they've done studies that show that with the technology increases with cars and the better gas mileage. and the availability and more affordability of electric cars that we might, you know, it would help us meet that reduction You know, if we also tracked, you know, if we were getting, if the employees were purchasing cars with better mileage or, you know, more efficiencies. |
| 03:10:00.75 | Andrew Davison | Understood. If that's one of the questions in the inventory, it will be captured that way. |
| 03:10:05.10 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:10:08.75 | Andrew Davison | And, |
| 03:10:08.97 | Mayor Withey | else with any questions? |
| 03:10:15.14 | Mayor Withey | Nope. Okay. Let's open this up for public comment. Greg. |
| 03:10:28.41 | Greg | Thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak today, Councilwoman and Vice Mayor and Mayor Withee. I sit on the Sustainability Commission. And also going back to the last topic as well, just in reference to the cap, there was also a recommendation about light green and deep green, and I'll kind of allay some of the fears that you kind of voted in the direction that the CAP was going to make a recommendation for. But we're still doing our survey of the CAP, going through it with a fine-tooth comb. We've broken out into a lot of the CAP |
| 03:10:28.88 | Unknown | be being |
| 03:11:08.32 | Greg | teams looking at the different topics in small groups. We will be finalizing that this Thursday in our final meeting. But I think in response to the question about technology increases, I know that inventories that were taken in 2005 and I myself am a sustainability consultant and a renewable energy kind of evangelist. there's been changes in the way that those inventories have been taken over the last, you know, nine years now, since the last inventory and since the last benchmark. So I think there will be some changes in the way those inventories are done. We will, I think it was a great point. We can bring it up with marine climate at our next meeting. So I think that was a great comment. Other than that, you know, I applaud the priority to elevate the need for the cap from prior priority agendas. So thank you for making that change. And, yeah, that's really all I had to say. So thank you. |
| 03:12:12.95 | Mayor Withey | And, Greg, thank you and your colleagues for all the good work you do on the Sustainability Commission. Okay, let's bring it up here. I think this was for information only. Is there any comments on this topic? Okay, just a note, San Rafael only managed to meet its interim targets because it enrolled in rain clean energy and actually provided the means that San Rafael could actually meet its targets. Okay. City manager information for council. |
| 03:12:54.34 | Adam Politzer | I have to say... Thank you. I will start with the easy ones. Earlier this evening the mayor gave mention about our fire chief Jim Irving's retirement. There will be a retirement party and you should have all received an invitation for November 22nd which is a Saturday. If you haven't received that information feel free to contact me or Debbie and we'll make sure you get the information. But the Southermer and Fire Protection District Board specifically asked that the city of Sausalito at our city council meeting not make a big production on Jim's leaving, thank him for a service which the mayor did. But they do want to do all the pomp and circumstances and proclamations and speeches at the November 22nd meeting. So we honored that. And we will be there in full force to celebrate Jim's service to our community and to Southern Marin. And worth noting, he shared this before, that he grew up in Mill Valley, worked for Tam Valley and Mill Valley and now Southern Marin. So it's nice to have someone for as many years as Jim worked for our communities be a person that was raised in the community he got to serve. And Jeremy Graves, as we also mentioned as he was giving his final presentation, he is now off to retirement land, and on this Thursday we will have a celebration for him. And again, you folks received an invitation from Lily, and we will And we will have a handful of speeches, a lot of visitation, and that event starts at 5. folks received an invitation from Lily and we will have a handful of speeches, a lot of visitation and that event starts at 5 p.m. and ends at 7. So short window. So hopefully everyone is able to make it and come and wish him well as he goes forward. On the November 18th meeting, we'll be introducing our new community development director, Danny Castro. He started yesterday basically at 48 hours or 16 hours of work with Jeremy. And when I saw Jeremy this morning, I asked if Danny came back to work today because we spent three and a half hours with him and just trying to give him as much information as we can on the project similar to what you heard earlier this evening from one of the residents on their concerns with stop work orders being demanded by the city and the property owner ignoring us or doing a little trickery there as we heard, you know, having people look out for us and then stop work when we arrive. So two of the greater, bigger things, you know, the Valhalla, as much as it was a great celebration to approve that at the last council meeting. And have it on. and stay on consent tonight. You saw Alex in the audience and his family. Um, Now the tough work actually begins. It's building it and staying on track and making sure what is built meets the conditions of approval. And the neighbors obviously will be helping us keep track of that. But that's another whole different process. So talking about the conditions, working with Danny on that, you know, was just one of many projects, large and small, that we met with him yesterday, and Jeremy continued this evening. So the life ring is now off of Danny, and he's on his own, and we're looking to all of you. to the planning commissioners and the HLB members and the Trees and Views members, and all of our other volunteers that serve us, our architects, our contractors, Um, and our various consultants. So he will start reaching out to each of you and other members in the community to spend some time. Some of it will be just a five-minute hello and others it will be an hour or so walking through various things. What I ask from you and to the community is realize that we hope he's here at least six years like Jeremy was, so know that you don't have to cover everything that you want to talk about in the first meeting and you may want to set up a series of meetings as he gets acclimated to our job. But a lot of excitement with Danny coming on board. While we were waiting for Danny to come on board, we posted the two associate planner positions that were previously held by Heidi and Lily and those positions will come to a close and we'll get to interview them and our hopes is by the first of the year that department is restaffed. The two new associates joining Calvin who is the assistant planner, Albert, and Kenneth Henry and then you've met who's still in an interim position or a temporary position, John Olson who is the permit technician. That will be the final piece to that puzzle for hiring and filling that department back to full staffing. So we hope to, just like you'll meet our newest police officer, potentially on the 18th if that date works for the officer and the officer's family to come and get sworn in, or we'll wait and push that off to January if it doesn't. And you'll see a handful of new community development personnel coming across and being introduced as well. I've mentioned and I've sent out at least one email announcing that it's a strategic planning session. We've made a change where there's going to be three sessions. Two of those sessions will be in the evening on the weeknight. Monday, December 1st from 6 to 9 p.m., Thursday, December 11th from 6 to 9 p.m., and then Friday will be the daytime session from 9 to 1 p.m. on Friday the 12th. So we'll send out a reminder on that again that will show up if it's not already on the future agenda items so you can see that those are posted. We're still looking on the location. The Spinnaker is not available on consecutive days so we're looking at alternative sites including the Bay Model and the Public Safety Facility and so we'll continue to keep you informed on that. We just recently as of Friday with the agenda setting committee on the request of the applicant decided that it's best to hold a special city council meeting on December 2nd to hear the third street appeal. The good news for two of you is that you don't have to come because you already have a conflict because of where you live, and that's Councilmember Weiner and Councilmember Leon. The bad news is that the other three of you need to come so that we can take the recommendations that the items that were sent down from the council to the planning commissions for them to review and provide recommendations back up to the council so that we can close this item that obviously both sets the applicant and the neighbors would like to have come to a close. So we will now schedule that meeting, and I'll be recommending that meeting starts at 6 p.m. and hopefully we're out of there at some reasonable hour in the evening. And so we'll also make sure that you folks get that notice. But for Councilmember Pfeiffer, Vice Mayor Theodorus and Mayor Withy, we will need you present for that meeting to happen. It doesn't make any sense for our first meeting of the new seated council to have an appeal take up that night when that is usually a night of celebration and so to kick this into I don't think it's fair to the neighbors or to the applicant, so that's why we've made this recommendation. I think that comes to the end. So we have two additional council meetings that are regularly scheduled, the 18th which is next Tuesday. So time will fly. Your packets will come out in the next few days. And then our last council meeting of the 2014 calendar, will be on the 9th. with the strategic planning being the last gathering of the council on December 12th. And then we'll return to the holidays and come back in session in January. Happy to answer any other questions to the council. And that concludes my report. |
| 03:22:06.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:22:06.54 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Happy to answer any of this. |
| 03:22:07.35 | Unknown | you |
| 03:22:07.43 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:22:07.45 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 03:22:07.52 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yes, indeed. |
| 03:22:09.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:22:09.27 | Mayor Withey | Please. |
| 03:22:11.47 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So I have good news and bad news. So the good news is that I'm here on the second. And the bad news is, unfortunately, with the holiday period in December, the Monday, the first following, that's the Monday following Thanksgiving. And the first following Thanksgiving. I've had some new announcements in my family. My sister is moving out of state, and the whole family's having to get together down in San Diego, and it's extended through the first. In addition, on the 12th, that's when the Coast Guard Auxiliary, of which I'm a member, we go to the VA hospital and do outreach. every year, and so unfortunately I have a conflict with that too. and Believe it or not, there is a slight chance, albeit it's not confirmed, a slight chance that I will have a business trip that could extend to the 11th. So I'm just, that's the bad news. And there are other problems with the rest of my December. It's just really crazy for me during the holiday, during December. And so I guess that's one thing I would ask to consider, perhaps doing the strategic planning in January. That's just a consideration. And I really regret this, but this is just, my December is crazy. |
| 03:24:07.84 | Mayor Withey | I think we're going to have to talk about this in the agenda setting committee. So, rather than here. |
| 03:24:13.83 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah. I had a question. I guess this was a rumor I heard about the parking lot sensors. I was wondering if you could comment on that to, if nothing else, dispel the rumor that there was something with the parking lot sensors in not being able to communicate if a spot is occupied or not. Is that, can you dispel that? I said I would ask. |
| 03:24:46.52 | Adam Politzer | Um, That's an issue that we've had from the very beginning and it's related to the AT&T connection. read. So it has been inconsistent. So, Um, |
| 03:25:05.47 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, I did not know about this, and it's not on the agenda, so we can perhaps revisit it. |
| 03:25:05.62 | Adam Politzer | to the next day. |
| 03:25:09.65 | Adam Politzer | The good news is that we are at the end of that parking lot equipment. and our finance director has been working with the police department and looking at new parking lot equipment for a variety of options and plans to bring that to the council in January for their consideration to look at what's the next generation of parking lot equipment that the city of South Seattle will embark on for the next five years. |
| 03:25:40.31 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Great. Yeah, I had the first time hearing about the inconsistencies. |
| 03:25:40.33 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:25:43.76 | Adam Politzer | And just to – I don't want to leave it at that. It's operating at 85% accuracy, and we were expecting it to be closer to 90% accuracy. So it's not as if it's not working. It's just not working at the accuracy that we had before. One of the two. |
| 03:26:03.13 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, that is unfortunate. I did not know that. |
| 03:26:06.59 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 03:26:07.65 | Unknown | And you haven't been listening when you're giving your updates to the department system. Because it's been before cancer and we have a fine time. |
| 03:26:18.33 | Mayor Withey | Councilmember Committee reports. I'm assuming there was no public comment on the city manager's report. Sorry, I skipped that. Council member committee reports. You heard from sustainability tonight. I don't need to say... that what a good job they're doing the only other committee report I'd have is I have the I'm the ABAG delegate, as you know, and the only thing the ABAG delegate gets to do is show up at an annual meeting of ABAG. That's it. Literally, that's all the delegate does. However, Pat Eklund, who, as you know, is the Marine, represents the cities on ABAG, represents the Marine cities on ABAG, has started having regular periodic meetings, monthly, bimonthly meetings of the Marine City delegates so that seeing what a bad job ABAC did in the last cycle of trying to communicate its plans and its long-term future plans with Plan Bay Area, and it got such a bad press, that the Marine delegates have decided they're going to meet on this periodic basis so that we can get information through PAT and two-way communication so that there can be more involvement at this very early stage with a bag get up to down the road so I'll keep you all tuned on on that it means that when in four years time some a new plan Bay area pops up we will have been hearing about it from now through to then not just five minutes before they're ready to to do this and I think that's a good move. So that was the only thing I had on committee reports. I don't know if anybody had anything else. Public comment on that? None. Future agenda items. We're starting to collect the list for really next year now. Is there any future agenda item that hasn't been already put on the list, such as all the items of the last meeting, or is there anything new anybody would like to put on the list for consideration? |
| 03:28:28.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:58.83 | Councilmember Leon | I do want to go back to giving it a little thought of this issue about our strategic planning meeting moving it into January. |
| 03:28:59.73 | Mayor Withey | You wanna get a little bit of a |
| 03:29:10.07 | Councilmember Leon | The new Councilmember Huffman and myself will be going to the new Councilmember of Mayors training in January. We have two meetings and actually going through it, all the meetings and committees, various committees get moved into January. And so what I would recommend since there's and putting it off any further would be difficult both for council and staff, but it's also very important with the new council member that we have that early, I think, for integration. So what I would recommend is, Councilmember Pfeiffer, if you can give all the possible dates that you have in December, and we will do what we can to accommodate, and then we'll take it under consideration, but I think in the agenda setting meetings that we, if we have to have it in December, at least we can have as many of your dates as possible. |
| 03:30:03.40 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | So to respond to that, I can guarantee I'm available on Saturday, December 13th. Anytime between noon and 6. Okay. Yep. I mean, just off the top of my head, I can guarantee that time slot. |
| 03:30:21.40 | Councilmember Leon | Well, there's going to be more. So we would ask that if you could maybe look at your schedule in detail and maybe Communicate with the city manager and let them know all the possible dates would be great |
| 03:30:30.01 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Sure, but that just in case the Any takers for that one? |
| 03:30:36.60 | Mayor Withey | Okay, any public comment on future agenda items? No. |
| 03:30:40.01 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry, I have to respond. It's a three-day process, so we're doing it differently. So that's why it's set up the way that it is. So if Saturday was an option, we still need another two days prior to it. |
| 03:30:54.53 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you, Adam. So what you're saying is that it's actually three separate meetings by design. So it's three hours, three hours. And then is there, I don't, I guess I don't understand why we shifted to that design. |
| 03:31:16.55 | Adam Politzer | I'm happy to talk about that offline or more. Sure. |
| 03:31:19.37 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, sure. We can. Sure, that's fine. It's just because I'm not retired. I work full-time, and it's during the week, and it's a day as well, a work day as well for me. |
| 03:31:22.35 | Adam Politzer | It's just. |
| 03:31:31.82 | Mayor Withey | Okay, other reports of significance. I actually just wanted to mention that on November 1st, Kate Sears hosted a report and workshop that her sea level rise climate impact, I can't remember the exact name of the task force, sorry, Kate, but that's focused on sea level rising and climate change. They held a workshop for Southern Marine at TAM. It was on Saturday the 1st I attended. It was really good. It was, I think, very informative for everybody who was there. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh... Yeah, so at that, |
| 03:32:25.31 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Oh. future agenda items I've mentioned the Airbnb but we did hear it in public comment and I know it's on the list and it's on the list for January and I think city manager said perfect |
| 03:32:30.80 | Mayor Withey | public comment, and I know it's on the list. And I think the city manager said the staff are coming with. |
| 03:32:37.57 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | staff are coming with. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:32:39.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:32:39.52 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Okay, so with that, we're going to adjourn, and as I said previously, we're adjourning to honor our veterans today. So, thank you. |
| 03:32:39.77 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 03:32:39.98 | Unknown | Okay. |
Robin Clark — Against: Expressed concerns about property expansion increasing traffic and safety risks on the narrow street, and worries about future variances being approved. ▶ 📄
Betsy — Neutral: Thanked the City Council and Parks and Rec Department for supporting the successful Sausalito Village Art Show. ▶ 📄
Jeff — Neutral: Presented a Torah reading about Abraham's servant finding Rebekah as a wife for Isaac, highlighting themes of kindness and love. ▶ 📄