| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.50 | Unknown | So. |
| 00:00:26.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:28.73 | Jill Hoffman | Welcome everyone. to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council for April 21st, 2015. Debbie, would you take the roll, please? |
| 00:00:37.87 | Unknown | Councilmember Weiner? Present. Councilmember Pfeiffer? Here. Councilmember Withey? |
| 00:00:38.98 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE here. |
| 00:00:43.08 | Unknown | Mayor Theodore. |
| 00:00:44.26 | Jill Hoffman | Present. Can we have Tom Riley lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, please? |
| 00:00:53.84 | Jill Hoffman | Putting the pressure on. |
| 00:00:56.92 | Unknown | of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:00:58.03 | Jill Hoffman | to the flag of the United States of America. |
| 00:01:01.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:01.74 | Jill Hoffman | and to the republic for which it is |
| 00:01:03.97 | Unknown | one nation, under God. Yes, it is. |
| 00:01:12.86 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. We were we had adjourned to close sessions on items D one, two, three. Are there any public comment on our closed session items? okay see none we move on to approval of the agenda we have a motion to prove the agenda So moved. Second... All in favor? I okay passes for zero. Okay. Moving on. to Mayor announcements. I do want to announce that the on the ferry landing, the joint Planning Commission, Historic Landmarks Board, HEARINGS ON THIS WILL BE TENTATIVELY THE EXTENSION IS NOW Wednesday. April 28th at 6.30. It's the 28th Wednesday, the 28th. We got give me a hard time. Um, I, it will be at the City Hall Chambers. Now, I think that, uh, the, the two boards are looking at some of their quorum issues and attendance of the members. Is that correct? So we look, keep a look for out for the, um, announcements, but that will be, um, at City Hall, the the city council 29th is a when oh i'm sorry so you were right right wednesday the 29th at 6 30. here at city hall that's it's also the important part wednesday 29th city hall we will also have the city council will have a hearing on the ferry landing on may 5th at its regular meeting but that meeting will be at the idest hall so people make a note of that so we'll have it at the idest hall Thank you. |
| 00:02:51.78 | Unknown | And, uh, |
| 00:02:52.48 | Unknown | Excuse me, Mr. Mayor Theodorus. Is there a reason why we are not having the 29th at the iDesk Hall? |
| 00:03:02.69 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, because it's a condition. Well, just because it's a continuation of the last meeting. And because it's a continuation, public comment is closed on that meeting. They will just be finalizing their findings at that meeting, which hopefully will not be quite so long. And so we've moved it here in the IDES hall is $5,000 each. And I think at this point, because there's public comment is closed that we're looking at, there's no necessity to move it to the Eidus Hall. But of course, the city council meeting will be at the Eidus Hall. |
| 00:03:31.59 | Unknown | THE END OF Is this something we can discuss later? I mean, it's not agendized, so I don't see how we can discuss it. I guess I'm just, I would like to have the continuity of the larger venue. I think, I mean, we just financed a something for the chamber at the last meeting at, at 10 grand and, you know, It just seemed like we could. |
| 00:04:03.05 | Jill Hoffman | Like why don't we move it to the when we have council reports? We'll discuss it then. Okay. |
| 00:04:07.79 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:04:08.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:08.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:13.12 | Jill Hoffman | is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. Except in very limited situations, state law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. So would anyone like to speak on a matter not on the, sir? |
| 00:04:33.89 | Jill Hoffman | Did you state your name? Thank you. |
| 00:04:35.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:35.19 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:35.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:35.94 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, into the microphone please, sir. |
| 00:04:39.19 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. I'm here to discuss code enforcement or lack of code enforcement. The property that I'm referring to is 303-305 Harbor Drive. in Sausalito. I'm the owner of that property. There's a restaurant on that property that I've written to all the council about via email. I've given my complaint to the city. I've dealt with the ex-planning director who said, well, what do you want me to do? Well, I guess I'm here now to find out why aren't we enforcing the codes that you have in your city code books concerning parking containers that are not licensed outdoor dining, and using your parking dining. So. I... wrote a letter, I guess it was in March. I've been waiting for an answer. I gave the please respond by April 15th. We're on the 21st. I haven't heard anything. I guess that's what I'm here to discuss. code enforcement, I think it's called. |
| 00:06:06.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:06:07.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:06:09.46 | Jill Hoffman | And take that up with the city manager, |
| 00:06:12.60 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:06:12.63 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:06:14.35 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, let me just give a brief response if you like. We received the letter, our Community Development Director, Danny Castro, has been sent that information and will communicate with you on what our next steps are. As property owner, you'll have some responsibility in terms of those violations as will your tenant. So that's what our Community Development Director will meet with you to discuss. Yeah. |
| 00:06:50.74 | Jill Hoffman | I have a speaker card from Roberta Wayne Becker. |
| 00:06:58.07 | Roberta Wayne Becker | Thank you. Hi. I'm Roberta Wayne Becker. And nice to meet you, Mayor Theodorus and City Council. I'm here because I'm the artistic director of the Golden Gate Opera, which has our business office in Sausalito. Very proud to be part of Sausalito and the Chamber of Commerce. And I'm traveling next week. to an international conference of opera companies in Washington, D.C. And at that time, I plan to propose endorsement of the opera that we're putting on, which is called The Boy Who Grew Too Fast. Composed by John Carlo Minotti. an anti-bullying opera. We will be performing this in the Marin Center Showcase Theater in October... And in schools. And did you know that October has been proclaimed national anti-bullying? Month. So we're really happy to set that date and be taking an action in support preventing bullying with this opera and going into schools with it. So, um... Thank you. It became a national anti-bullying month because the U.S. Conference of Mayors is declared it and they have a very big project, the Bully Project. So I wanted to come to you at the Sausalito City Council and the Mayor of Sausalito to ask for your endorsement of this opera. because before I go to any other towns in the county of Marin because it would be such wonderful news to hear that be able to send out a press release that the of staff. Council of City of Sausalito endorses this bully preventing opera that Golden Gate Opera is going to produce. And that's why I'm here. I wanted to ask for a letter of endorsement for you to consider that. And that would make it easier for me and my task of raising funds because we want to bring it into low income schools that don't have the money to afford the costs of this and who will really benefit by it. and schools like Martin Luther King Jr. Academy or Willow Creek Academy, or Bayside Elementary School. So if I have a letter of endorsement, From the city of Sausalito, when I go and talk to a business or here or there, They would be more likely, I think, to... participate in some way that might help to add up to the costs where we could go into one of those schools. So, um... That's why I'm here today to tell you about that and I don't have any papers to give you, to show you, to remind you of this awkward title, The Boy Who Grew Too Fast. But I can be back tomorrow morning and give you some papers so that you can look at it as you consider this endorsement. So that's why I'm here. |
| 00:09:51.62 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. Please submit any of your documentation to the city manager tomorrow. Thanks so much. |
| 00:09:55.38 | Roberta Wayne Becker | Okay. I'll bring them tomorrow. |
| 00:09:59.67 | Jill Hoffman | Would anyone else from the public like to comment on any items not on the agenda? Okay. We'll move on. |
| 00:10:10.04 | Jill Hoffman | We'll move on to item four, consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial. require no discussion are expected to have unanimous council support and may be enacted by the Council in one motion in the forum. listed in the agenda. There will be no separate discussion of calendar items unless a council member decides to pull that item. Do we have any issues on the consent calendar that we need to discuss? |
| 00:10:35.17 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, could we pull item 4F regarding the entry on Butte and perhaps agendize it at the end of this evening? It would just be a very short few words and certifications. |
| 00:10:51.41 | Jill Hoffman | Well, Well, why don't, I mean, what is the clarification? We can do it now. |
| 00:10:55.71 | Unknown | Well, it might be a little bit more In India. detailed than I mean I'd be happy to |
| 00:11:05.02 | Jill Hoffman | that's a good. Well, we put it. I would recommend continuing to the end of the agenda. We're going to continue that as part of the agenda to |
| 00:11:07.71 | Unknown | I would recommend continuing to the end of the agenda. |
| 00:11:15.91 | Jill Hoffman | We'll have that as item, it will be item 6E. Move that in. |
| 00:11:21.97 | Unknown | I move approval of the consent calendars items 4A, B, C, D, and E, and we'll move 4F to be a new 6E. Thank you. |
| 00:11:37.51 | Jill Hoffman | So, |
| 00:11:37.58 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:11:37.85 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:11:38.64 | Jill Hoffman | All in favor? Aye. That passes 4-0. Moving on to business items. |
| 00:11:39.67 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:11:40.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:11:40.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:11:44.61 | Jill Hoffman | And the first item is the ambassador program update. And that's Chief of Police Jennifer Tejada and the Chair of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, Dr. Ed Fotch. who would like to Chief Tejada, please. |
| 00:12:02.25 | Unknown | I would like to introduce Dr. Ed Fotch of the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, who has a wonderful PowerPoint presentation for you this evening. And then we'll take questions afterwards. |
| 00:12:04.91 | Jill Hoffman | of the bicycle. |
| 00:12:10.50 | Unknown | them. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:12:16.49 | Ed Fotch | Well, I have a PowerPoint presentation. I guess you'll decide how wonderful it is. Good evening, Mayor Theodorus and council members. |
| 00:12:28.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:12:49.04 | Ed Fotch | Like all of us, it's searching for a source. Pleasure to see you again. And I appreciate the generous amount of time on the agenda tonight, particularly because we have a number of items to cover. You'll recall that I was here reporting on the work of the committee about two months ago, and I'm pleased to say we've made a fair amount of progress. I should note that one of my fellow committee members is here, Tom Riley, with his lovely wife Stacy. Not that Tom's not lovely, but anyway, he's here and a terrific contributor to the committee. So tonight I want to talk to you, give you an update on the committee. very importantly give you some initial feedback and experience from the ambassador program, discuss briefly options for expanding revenue for the city for Tracy Way, options for bike staging, which we discussed for quite a bit of time last night. Our last pedestrian and bicycle committee meeting was last night, and then some specific requests of counsel. So you recall from the last presentation that the committee has five goals, improved communication and signage. open Vista Point Trail not only to get bikes off of Alexander, but as we'll discuss, because it appears to be a preamble to one of the options for bike staging. begin the Ambassador Program, and begin preferred parking to fund the Ambassador Program. So just to touch bases on a few of those, we're in active discussions with the Park Service with the help of Jonathan Goldman related to a no-left-turn sign on Alexander Avenue southbound. That's important because the large number of cars coming northbound on Alexander Avenue combined with the bikes means that folks who are trying to get into the Park Service property, whether it's Cavallo Point or the Discovery Museum, are stopping and holding up traffic, backing up into town, and then bikes have to go around them and cars try to go around them. There have been vehicular accidents there as well as bicycle accidents. so it's an example of the work that we have done in collaboration with the city you'll notice if you're on the south end of town there are no no bike riding on sidewalk decals which I pleased to say has had a noticeable impact between that and the ambassador the number of bikes riding in the south side of town has reduced dramatically uh... this two point trail we've been working on for about a year uh... you may recall that back in the day prior to nine eleven just a point trail was open and you could get off of the east sidewalk of the golden gate bridge and drop right down into kvala point fort baker uh... now you cannot because it goes right down past. the supports on the north side of the bridge. So what I have in blue for you is the current weekend. direction of rental bike or visitor traffic to Sausalito. They get off the west side of the bridge, the west sidewalk, because on the weekends the west sidewalk's open. and the natural flow of bike rentals is down into Cavallo Point, Fort Baker But during the week, and particularly during the busy summer period. They come right down Alexander Avenue, and I'm sure we've all experienced that. If Cavallo Point is open, you'll see this yellow line where they, as soon as they get off of the bridge they will be directed down into Fort Baker and off of Alexander Avenue. is that during the weekends or the week, Essentially, all the visitor bikers are going to go through Fort Baker. So to the extent that there's a staging opportunity on the south end of town, You've now concentrated the bikes in one area. I'm pleased to say that the Ambassador program is up and running with a combination of paid seasonal staff and volunteers. It's being run by Sausalito Plus, a California not-for-profit, and I want to introduce my wife, Deb, who's here tonight. who is taking a sabbatical from being my chief operating officer of our technology company It, it, it, um, Thank you. which we miss her. and look forward to having her back. I mentioned there's a combination of paid and volunteers. We're fortunate to have more and more volunteers. Deb's on the right. She's a volunteer. The kid on the left is his thumb up because he's being paid. The locations of the ambassadors are noted on the right. So there's one at the entrance to town, one at that choke point at the intersection of Alexander and South Street, and then more concentration in the downtown, and then a moving ambassador, which is point number four. To date, the ambassadors have collaborated with the city during a developmental period. The goal of this spring break period, and I think everyone knows we had quite a number of bikes during spring break, was actually to pressure test some of the experiences we had last year with the bike committee. We did a pilot of the ambassador program to test out the communications. There's walkie-talkies to test out the role of the managers the locations and basically to create the training manual for our seasonal workers when they start in the May June timeframe we've obtained the ambassadors have obtained permits from the Park Service to station their table on Park Service property for signage There's manuals, vests, walkie-talkies, workman's comp, liability, all of the things required for a startup situation like this. Made preparations to be in preferred parking in the May time frame. Very importantly, provided quite a bit of feedback to the pedestrian and bicycle committee, which we reviewed last night and which we'll share with you tonight. I think we're collaborating well with both engineering and with police. As of this week merchants in town or residents in town who see an issue related to bikes can call Star Star Bike Help and they'll be in touch with the manager for the ambassadors that day, and created some temporary signage both on the Park Service property and at the south end of town. This is examples of those signs that are on cones that we obtained from the city, and they just reinforced messages particularly related to our new codes, including no bike riding on the sidewalk if you're 13 and over, and no parking on the sidewalk in non-designated areas, and basically trying to keep the flow of bikes moving in a safe and orderly fashion. Let me move that forward and back. There you have it. A few of the key learnings. First of all, on the sidewalk. So we have an ordinance that says you can't park your bike on the sidewalk attached to a tree or basically any place that is not designated bike parking area. But even with two full-time ambassadors downtown, it has been impossible to keep up. Over a number of weekends that the ambassadors were there. It's just too easy to quickly park the bike, lock it to a meter, and move on. So while the riding on the sidewalk is much improved, the bike parking on the sidewalk is not, frankly, much improved. And once one bike is parked and attached to a meter, as you see there, it just sort of says that's where you park bikes. It's sort of a monument to the fact that |
| 00:20:12.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:51.24 | Ed Fotch | that not only to the visitors but also to our fellow citizens. It sort of says we can't control our sidewalks, which is a challenge that we think we can improve on. Also associated with this, the three or four bike loops right in the middle of town send a message that our sidewalks are a place where you park bikes. And I'll note that it is actually not very common to have two bikes connected to a meter or to one of these bike loops. It's typically a larger group. or oftentimes a larger group. So that expands out onto the sidewalk. uh... and and if you look at the picture on the right and the picture on the left, it's pretty hard to see what's in the middle of those bikes. So trying to parse this and say, well, the loops are okay, but the... but the meters aren't, you know, is sort of a tough nut. At times in the very busy period, there's another choke point that's very obvious, which is the corner of Bridgeway and Richardson. It's the first big vista when you come into town. probably we've all seen this, but it becomes an impromptu picnic area which is great and it's lovely if it's not too many people, but it kind of pulls right out to the curb We're telling the people, to keep the sidewalks clear, but it's very difficult to do when you get a large number of folks. And you have to keep in mind, These people, as far as they know, this is the high point of the whole ride. They don't know what's up ahead. So they stop and they take their photographs and they eat their meals. Another issue that became very clear is the recreational, aka spandex riders. When it gets busy downtown on the weekends, oftentimes the recreational riders ride right down the middle of Bridgeway. And, you know, that's sort of tough enough. But then the rental bikes see that and figure, well, I guess that's where I should be biking. |
| 00:22:30.03 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:22:42.99 | Ed Fotch | And then you add to that that we don't have a crosswalk on Bridgeway and so you have I'm not sure. bicyclists that are moving pretty quickly down that center lane and folks walking back and forth and oftentimes looking over their shoulders and talking with other people, and it's a concern from a safety standpoint. And also it's just a violation of our vehicular code based on the striping on the roads. Last major learning is that we have a lot of tours that come into town, and the tours oftentimes are dozens of people, 40 people, with a fellow in front or a gal in front with one of those flags, and it's fine. Really what we found is we've been running a ski hill for the last few years without ticket takers or lift line operators or ski patrols. So when Our ambassadors ask these uh, these tour folks, you know, please don't stop there or please get your folks in single line because when you stop 40 people on the side of Alexander Avenue, The bikes coming up behind them have to swing out into traffic. to go around. At any rate, we've experienced some very colorful language in response to our requests. And basically the message is we've never had a problem with this before. There isn't any rule we're breaking, and so who are you? So we're communicating directly with the vendors, but in addition have agreed, as you can see here, this isn't one of our photos, it's just an example, but we agreed to take photographs when these things. We're not looking for encounters. We're not looking for arguments with bikers. We'll take pictures. We'll give them in our collaboration with Chief Tejada and let her ask the bike vendors to please make sure that her folks are riding in a safe place and stopping in places that aren't causing additional problems. Lastly, and this is predicated on success starting next month with preferred parking, but if we continue to have success at the speed that we're having with the ambassador Program, both in terms of recruiting and training, not only the seasonal workers, which tend to be young people, and local volunteers, we may be in a position to look at fee-based parking on Tracy Way, something we've discussed at the bike committee for the past two years. Obviously, we close a street in our town, for bike parking, and there are certainly those in town who say, well, if I bring a car into town, I pay for parking for the convenience of being downtown. Why aren't we charging for bike parking in the downtown, either to support our general fund or to deal with some of these issues of enforcement? So I'm certainly not here to tell you that we've achieved success in our relatively modest preferred parking program, but if we do, we may be in a position to move this summer with fee-based parking which frankly could generate six figures for the city even this year The reason I'm mentioning it tonight, despite the fact we're not ready to go, is if we start heading in that direction, it really needs to be choreographed very carefully. Ideally, the tickets would be sold by the bike vendors themselves, so we're not having transactions and long queues of people waiting to buy tickets. But just a couple of items around that. Any kind of an automated system for this year I think is a bridge too far. I don't think we have people that are going to walk around and basically be meter maids for bikes that don't have any license plates and try to find their serial numbers. That's sort of be a tough one, but I did want to mention that if we have fee-based parking that has staff associated with it one benefit is we will have more we will have more capacity for parking bikes on Tracy Way And the reason for that is that frequently now when people park their bike on Tracy Way, they don't park in a very orderly fashion and if they have a nice bike they often park it parallel to the bike rack so they can lock their frame so if it's an organized ambassador or other staff program where you have ingress and egress that's controlled and parking that is directed by someone you're going to increase the volume of bikes that you can park on Tracy Way None of this will work if we can't maintain control of our sidewalks. One of the real challenges that we've discussed at the bike committee is if you can't keep people from parking illegal on your sidewalk, then you're never going to achieve any success in having fee-based bike parking because people will just park on the sidewalks. As I mentioned, we would strongly encourage, if we move in this direction, to consider pre-purchase. Most of the bike vendors pre-sell a ferry ticket in addition to their bike, and so they could pre-sell bike parking. And lastly, again, we discussed this last night. I think there's a strong argument. If you do charge for the convenience of parking downtown to identify an area for free parking that's out of town. One concept is lot five because it tends to not be a very busy lot. I suspect there's people in town who would say, well, you know, you're forcing people to pay just to come to Sausalito. So there is at least an argument to consider looking at free parking that is less convenient. So you're really not charging for parking. You're actually charging for convenience. Bike staging concepts. So we've discussed on a number of occasions bike staging and done some site visits, had some discussions with the bike vendors. It's a relatively complex issue and discussed it at various meetings again last night. And to the committee, the principal value of having bike staging is to reduce the number of bikes in the downtown. There may be other benefits, but at least for our consensus, that is number one. So what does that mean from a practical standpoint? Well, if you wanted a 20% reduction on a day when you have 2,000 bikes that come in, and we have days where 2,000 bikes come in, that's 400 bikes. Or if you look at that, that would be roughly 30 trips from a truck or a van capable of hauling back 15 or 20 bikes. And I say it that way because they won't always be full. But suffice to say there's going to be some vehicular traffic associated with that. and that's just sort of the raw numbers. So if you say the goal of bike staging, the goal of putting the effort, and it would be an effort to create bike staging, if the goal is to reduce the visitors on bikes in the downtown, you really have to focus south of the city. There's only one way through town that I'm aware of on a bike, which is Alexander Avenue onto 2nd Street and Richardson and Bridgeway and so on and so forth. So I think that's a good thing. If you try staging in the downtown or north of town, you don't really reduce the number of bikes in town, and it also means that the cars... excuse me, the trucks the vans to pick up the bikes have to be. you know, somewhere, near the bikes or it'd be pretty hard to load them Thank you. There's also some practical challenges in getting bikes to ride through town and go past where they want to be, which is the ferry in the downtown. So because of that, we've really focused on the south end of town. and particularly, as I've mentioned, the Fort Baker area. To even consider that, there are some real important keys for success. I mean, first of all, the opening of Vista Point Trail, as I mentioned, would mean all the bikes, or nearly all the bikes, the rental bikes would be headed down into Fort Baker. Obviously, the Park Service would have something to say about this. It's our understanding that their goal is to increase the utilization of Fort Baker. That doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to give up that and agree to have the kind of vehicular traffic required to pick up hundreds of bikes. There would need to be a means for people who want to get to the ferry and come to Sausalito to get from Fort Baker. And so it could be that the hop-on, hop-off buses, which go down there now, have a role to play in this. And then there's economic drivers. How do you actually motivate the vendors and the bikers to adopt? There is a practical reality that if you charge for parking in downtown Sausalito and it's free to drop off your bike at Fort Baker, now you've created an economic reason for people to drop their bike off. We see that as I'll discuss, and a lot of these concepts are interrelated. So most of our focus, frankly, has been on Vista Point Trail because absent that, we didn't really have a practical idea of how we would handle staging. When you really think through the details, certainly open to other ideas. So all this ends up with a series of interrelated issue that I'm now calling the MOBS strategy, manage our bikes, sidewalks and streets. It's interrelated because Increasing the management of the bikes takes resources, and using city general fund for those resources is problematic on a number of levels, including, I believe, politically. Substantial revenues can come from parking fees, but we're not going to get parking fees if we can't control our sidewalks. And staging could be driven by having fees for parking. So these things sort of you know, tied together. You need people to do the right things, and you need resources for the people So we do think think that we have a path to move forward in a logical fashion here. you And then one last comment about, even though I like the mobs thing. and I mentioned this a number of times at our committee, so all these folks that are coming to visit are, frankly, just folks like us. We've all been tourists someplace that's very crowded. We don't like being treated like locusts. If you do, I suggest Paris in the summertime. We like being treated like, you know, and they're families. And so while biking, bikes are clearly a challenge to this town, I think that, you know, aggressive their families. And so while biking bikes are clearly a challenge to this town, I think that, you know, aggressive rhetoric sort of moves the ball backwards. And we try to suggest that at the bike committee meetings. Everyone has, everyone who comes there has an opinion about what we should do about the bikes, but they're just folks like us. And we're trying to, you know, deal with them as folks like us and make our life as pleasant as possible and theirs as well. So we have a few requests of council in the city. Complete the agreement with Sausalito Plus to operate the ambassador program and the collaboration with the city and also with the chamber and also with the ferry district. And there's been pretty good collaboration there. We've run a business model. Of course, frankly, all the business models associated with fee-based parking in the downtown, be it the preferred parking or be it on Tracy Way, is highly speculative, as you can imagine, because nobody's done this stuff before. But it would appear that if there are 20 bike racks with some reasonable amount of utilization that the ambassador program can be funded for the year. And, of course, we're going to have to report back on how that's going. Secondly is to collaborate with the ambassadors to address in any reasonable way the issues of controlling our sidewalks. It's just very challenging right now, as I had mentioned. One of the things we discussed last night was the possibility of creating what we were calling, at least last night, bicycle parklets, where you take out one parking space and you put some loops on the street so you're not sending the message park on our sidewalks you're sending a message you park in a designated parking area uh... and that's you know was discussed at least for the first time last night When there is obstruction, reduced bikes parked on Richardson and Bridgeway. Consider other Bridgeway configurations. I think some of this is going on, but Bridgeway is a very wide street with a big open lane down the middle of it with people who kind of walk back and forth in between cars and in between relatively rapidly moving spandex bikers. And there may be a way of making that better bike lanes crosswalks because as I suspect everyone in the room knows there's no crosswalk on bridgeway south of Princess so you're not even jaywalking as Captain John pointed out last night because jaywalking is walking across the street between two controlled intersections. There's no controlled intersection south of Princess. So i'm not sure the bike committee is going to have a whole lot more to contribute because that really gets to be an engineering issue that would i think need to be prioritized by the council and uh... whether it's breezy associates or or others reduce the instance of large bike tours from blocking the streets and sidewalk we hope that simply sending photographs to the bike vendors will be enough but if it's not we may be back to you asking for you know further enforcement or for even the creation of a new ordinance because that is a concerning area consider, if things go well, fee-based parking on Tracy Way in the June-July period, as well as the steps to identify Fort Baker as a staging area and support for the opening of Vista Point Trail. Obviously, we could get to the point where there were hundreds of bikes that never get to Sausley in the first place. That reduces issues of bike parking. It reduces issues of bike safety, it reduces issues of bike boarding on the ferry and so on and so forth. So we could take a little pressure off of the volumes by having some staging that could, in fact, be helpful. So I will stop there, and I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you. |
| 00:37:16.29 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Questions from Council? |
| 00:37:21.76 | Unknown | Okay. First of all, thank you very much, Ed, for a great presentation. I know that the bike committee and bike and pedestrian committee has worked very hard on this, and I really appreciate it. Actually, my first question, I do have a number of questions on some of the concepts that were presented and then some of the things that were not and i perhaps that my first question is um mayor theodore doris you're the official liaison to the bike committee so Do you... I'm assuming you endorse this... these programs. |
| 00:38:00.25 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I think we need to take them one at a time. Certain things we do and certain things are works in progress as we talk about certain things that we're identifying. So I think we need, but I certainly, I think the bicycle and pedestrian committee is doing a fabulous job. I certainly endorse most of it. But I mean, I think as Dr. Fotch went through it, there are certain things that the bike and pet committee is asking for. A couple of them are more on issues that we need to do including uh issues relating to parking on these bike loops downtown uh issues relating to you know what we exactly what we do to support vista point etc But I generally endorse what we're presenting here tonight. |
| 00:38:37.56 | Unknown | Thank you. So I guess my first question is, as you know, two of your members asked me for a copy of what I had proposed with respect to bike regulation. As you know, the district has predicted numbers of four to eight percent per year, and there's a concern that it's unsustainable. I am looking to regulation or capping the number of bikes. And it's my understanding that they brought that proposal And to look at different strategies and research that issue just to start the conversation. And so my question is, was that discussed at the bike committee? Is the bike committee going to research regulation, what we can do, what we can't do, the legal aspects of it? |
| 00:39:33.16 | Ed Fotch | Thank you. So, yes, your request, particularly of city staff, Mary Wagner, to research this was discussed last night. And we're waiting with bated breath to – frankly, from our standpoint, it's a legal – two issues. One is it's a legal question, and we're not – that I know of of attorneys. And the second is slightly different which is there's really nothing in our charter that says anything about capping bikes. I think we've taken a very liberal approach to our charter because we've looked at staging bikes and ways of more aggressively managing them. But the charter of the Pedestrian Bike Committee is actually to support additional bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the city. So if the council's desire is to have the charter of the Bike Committee to, you know, cap bikes, reduce bikes, I think it would be important for the council to give that direction to our committee because we would be doing that essentially on our own. |
| 00:40:40.56 | Unknown | So that actually leads to my follow-up question regarding your comment that the charter is to support additional infrastructure for bike and pedestrian. So to that point, As you know, I have been supportive of the concept of ambassadors as volunteers, you know, as going out as a volunteer regarding the bicycle situation. I have not been supportive of paying the ambassadors because I would like to see the funds from the rental bike parking put into the pedestrian infrastructure downtown. So I was wondering if you could comment on that. |
| 00:41:33.72 | Ed Fotch | I have two comments. One is that I believe that the city, with the appropriate infrastructure, can generate an order of magnitude, a half million dollars a year from bike parking, perhaps substantially more. Secondly, I think a purely ambassador program would not succeed in achieving the goals that we've laid out as a committee. Anything from scheduling, people showing up on time, training. It's fine to say you'll have volunteers, but I ran a pretty busy emergency department for 10 years, and we had volunteers. but if we didn't have paid staff we would have I ran a pretty busy emergency department for 10 years and we had volunteers. But if we didn't have paid staff, we wouldn't have had much in the way of infrastructure. |
| 00:42:22.94 | Unknown | Right, it's just the concept of taking funds that should go into our infrastructure to pay for a rental bike model, you know, because we're managing, you know, the mess that they're sending over. Anyway, I will. Yes, yes. |
| 00:42:44.12 | Unknown | I don't at the moment have any questions for Ed. I do have a question for our city attorney or city manager. So pardon me. With the ordinance we passed for attempt to stop bikes parking on the sidewalks, What was the fines that we were, we'd built into that if we were in a position to aggressively enforce it? What were the fines there? Can you remember? |
| 00:43:17.40 | Unknown | you're right. |
| 00:43:20.25 | Mary Wagner | Yes, thank you, Councilmember Withey. The additional enforcement mechanism that was included in the bike parking ordinance that was passed recently by the city council, Really focused on impoundment, in that the bike would be collected, |
| 00:43:32.86 | Unknown | MISSING. |
| 00:43:36.14 | Mary Wagner | I believe there was a minimal fine attached to the collection, but there was a storage fee that was also attached, something in the area of $25, I believe. I have had conversations with the police department specifically about modifications to the ordinance, which would allow for a ticketing. you know, a pure ticketing function like a parking ticket. THE FAMILY. We're talking about the logistics of that and how it would work, and it might require us to bring something back to you. Every violation of the municipal code is treated as an infraction, unless it's indicated that it's a misdemeanor. THE FAMILY IS We don't believe that that alone is enough to issue parking tickets and to give them some real teeth. So we would be looking at that and probably looking at something akin to the charge for illegal parking, what that rate structure looks like. That's set by the vehicle code. So it's a little bit of a different situation in that this would be under your municipal code and not run through that same kind of system. You don't have the same licensing ability to track down the owner. |
| 00:44:37.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:42.03 | Mary Wagner | We talked about it as being analogous to a rental car. where you know the company, then it's up to the company to try and figure out who rented that particular vehicle. |
| 00:44:51.73 | Unknown | Okay. So then, Ed, if I may, sort of follow-up question. And thanks again for your leadership here. This has moved along in a very interesting way. You made the comment that it appears that the signs, basically warning people not to ride on the sidewalk seems to be having some use. Do we have or would it, is a committee ever considered we sort of put some signs up warning people what could happen if, you know, they parked on the sidewalks, you know, the bikes could disappear because we're going to impound them or there's going to be a fine or something. Has that been talked about? |
| 00:45:40.99 | Ed Fotch | So we haven't discussed that specifically, and I have to say we kind of, in prep for one of the meetings, one of the committee members stumbled on that decal you saw, and it sends a message pretty quickly, particularly when it's in the sidewalk. The icon you would use that says you can't chain your, I mean, maybe there is one, but, and I just have to say, and this is just personally, this isn't the opinion of the committee, we have so many signs and so much clutter downtown. I'm a little concerned about that. I actually, and Mary knows this, I'm extremely supportive of the concept of sending, just like we do to Hertz and Avis, sending tickets to the bike vendors and let them be the ones that say to the folks, whatever you do, don't hook to a meet park in the designated places to be clear I am not anti-bike vendor if you lined them all up and shot them today there would be a whole new group tomorrow |
| 00:45:41.05 | Unknown | So, |
| 00:46:18.31 | Unknown | VALERIE VALERIEVSENCY. |
| 00:46:36.02 | Ed Fotch | there's a business opportunity and nice taxpaying folks are going to take those rules. At the same time, you know, they have a business to run. They have a few minutes with each of their clients, and they're going to say some things to them. And if one of the things was whatever you do, don't, you know, because it's going to cost you 50 bucks, I think our problems would be substantially, substantially improved. And I did suggest the ambassadors are capable of taking a photograph with a time-date stamp and a photograph of the serial number of the bike. But I don't know if, you know, deputizing ambassadors, you know, to the extent that that's the appropriate word, you know, for that. What I do know is if you want to – what we're currently doing is very challenging. |
| 00:47:29.97 | Jill Hoffman | THAT THE JUST REFERRING TO THE BIKE AND PET COMMITTEE, WHICH, BY THE WAY, MEETS EVERY THIRD MONDAY AND IN THIS COUNCIL CHAMBER IS TELEVISED. And just to the point, in terms of your presentation, which THE BIKE AND PET COMMITTEE WENT THROUGH DETAIL. I DID YOU. THAT WAS A UNANIMOUS VOTE. AND THEN ALSO THERE WERE CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVES, INCLUDING OF THE I forget the Sausalito Coalition for Bikes, which is a large citizen group which had their 200 people. I think you want to comment. I think there was fairly unanimous support for, well, actually, unanimous support for everything in this particular, in your slideshow. Or do you want to comment on that? |
| 00:48:13.97 | Ed Fotch | Yes. So while I, as I mentioned, I am 100% firm believer that you have to have paid, organized, trained staff as the backbone of the ambassador program. You want people showing up and to do all the stuff. Um, The volunteers are really excellent. I mean, first of all, they tend to be folks who've lived in town longer, and they're you know have like me a little bit of gray hair so they have a little more gravitas when they're speaking. But I've been really impressed at the number of folks who were very anti-bike not anti-bike, but anti-too-many-bikes-and-sauce-little-vocal people, who sort of said, all right, this is what we were talking about. And without singling them out, ALF, who was the leader after last night's meeting, volunteered today to be an ambassador. And I think we're going to see more of that. I think obviously the bikes have an impact. And I think one of the big frustrations, at least in my experience, that folks have is if they don't think anything's changing. Now, in fairness, last year and the year before, there were changes right at the ferry terminal in terms of boarding and parking and tokens and so on and so forth. that did have an impact. The problem is most of the people in town aren't there. They're on Bridgeway or they're on Alexander, and they're not seeing the change because there's really no visible evidence that things have, in fact, changed. So, you know, we have gotten extremely positive feedback, including at the bike and pedestrian meeting and on some of the social media. And, you know, and I expect we're going to, you know, continue to get that. I will also say that there have been one or two times when people just sort of said, unfortunately it was mainly to the volunteers, who are you and what authority do you have? It's the same issue as the bikes. It's change, and people don't necessarily like change. And so, you know, our feedback to the ambassadors is this is our opportunity to win these people over. You know, help people get out of their driveway when they're backing out into traffic without, you know, making it more dangerous. Or help somebody with their groceries or do something so that, you know, people say, hey, this is a positive force. It's not just bike babysitting. You know, there's other roles for this. And, you know, so we've had a fair amount of positive feedback. |
| 00:50:17.82 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:50:37.70 | Unknown | Yes, I do. So I'm just curious as to if we have an ordinance on the books that it is illegal to park and block ADA access and lock bikes to meters and trees and such. Have bikes been impounded? |
| 00:51:03.49 | Unknown | Yes, I think it's something that the police chief can respond to. |
| 00:51:05.32 | Unknown | I think that the police chief |
| 00:51:14.76 | Unknown | The answer is no, we have not impounded any bicycles. The ordinance, when it was created, was created to give us a tool. When we receive complaints, that access is blocked. And we do not currently have the staff to do proactive enforcement around this. And so that's when the ordinance was created, we were very clear about that. This is a tool to respond to complaints. |
| 00:51:45.44 | Unknown | And you have not had complaints? None. Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:51:57.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:52:00.34 | Unknown | Um, maybe, uh, no, I think I'm okay. |
| 00:52:05.20 | Jill Hoffman | So now we'll move to public comment on this. Anyone like to comment on this subject? I know we have a few out there. Please. |
| 00:52:20.47 | Carol Morales | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Carol Morales, and I've lived in town for over 30 years. And I'm kind of on both ends of this. I did my first volunteer a week ago Sunday, and I've been very outspoken, very angry, frustrated. I've been to the police department many times. complaining about the tourists on the sidewalks and the spandex guys riding in packs so This nice The presentation that Ed Fotch did tonight is nothing compared to what I found when I showed up the first day for my... volunteer job Um, I met Deb at their garage. I had a little fanny pack. I had a walkie-talkie. first aid thank you first aid I had a vest I mean I was so impressed this was like the second coming of Christ for me. that this was actually happening. I live on Edwards, so my first assignment, I showed up at 11 and worked until three. Um, I sat on that little post my butt got sore but and I had my little orange flag And I basically put a big smile on my face. And as the tourists were coming down, riding in their packs, I would say very nicely, please go single file, Don't ride on the sidewalk. Have a great day. |
| 00:54:05.89 | Unknown | Have a great day. |
| 00:54:07.27 | Carol Morales | And I would say 80% of the people, of the tourists, thanked me, and then when the spandex guys came by, some were with the tourists and some were separate, I would just stand up and hold my flag, and they would automatically slow down because they thought I was important, or whatever they thought, and... they would automatically slow down and I made a point of smiling at them and saying, welcome to Sausalito. Boy, that's a brilliant comment. They even smiled back at me and slowed down. So we have this single file going down Alexander where that huge congestion is over there by Edwards. We have the Spandex guys slowing down. We have the cars. I mean, everybody is just getting along. And I am just so impressed with this program. I had locals walk by, about two or three that stopped me, and I tried to have a conversation between them because it's not quite the tourist season, so it's a little busy, not real busy, but... |
| 00:55:19.21 | Unknown | We all, |
| 00:55:20.37 | Carol Morales | And wanted to know what was going on and thought it was a positive pro- Does that mean I talk too long? Okay, that it was a positive program. I asked if they wanted to volunteer. No, they didn't want to volunteer. I got nothing but positive feedback. And then my last hour, I went downtown, and there's a kid there with his sign where to park the bikes. And mostly, I was just, people walked up to me and asked where the restaurants or tourist information. There was really nothing for me to do. I think I went, stopped two people from parking. Parking their bike. on the tree or the signs. So I just, I mean, it was, this is the best program. And nobody was more frustrated than I was when this million bikes started coming in town. So I think what this committee has done and what Deb Votsch has done to put this program together, it's a well-run machine and it needs to continue on every level. Thank you. |
| 00:56:22.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. David? |
| 00:56:30.13 | David Sudo | Thank you. David Sudo. I just wanted to primarily thank Deb and Ed for putting together the ambassador program. It's the first really tangible evidence of managing the bicycle rentals. Also, and I brought this up at the meeting last night, I just want to make sure when we're controlling the parking situation on the sidewalks that we're not also inadvertently discouraging people from using their bicycles as basic transportation as they run errands downtown because that just contributes to more cars downtown. And I think that the fee-based system would work as long as we're providing a value-added. And I know lots of people will, especially maybe not the rental people, but everybody else, recreational people would pay to have a secure biking facility where they don't have to bring a 10-pound U-lock with them to town. And so if we could provide a secure parking system, you know, with controlled access, I think that's something that people would pay for rather than finding alternative places to place their bikes. Thank you. |
| 00:57:43.84 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Anyone else from the public like to comment? |
| 00:57:52.01 | Ed Fotch | I just had one last comment, which is I don't think I adequately thank my wife for the work that she's done. These things don't just happen, and Carol reminded me of it. You know, putting the legal infrastructure in place and the workman's comp and the liability insurance and the walkie-talkies and the standard operating procedures, and then it turns out that the work's on the weekend. So you get to work all week and then work on the weekend. So it's a pretty full-time job, and it does reinforce my belief in Margaret Thatcher's old saying, if you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman. So thank you. with that. |
| 00:58:30.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Anyone else? OKAY, SO WE'LL CLOSE PUBLIC COMMENT. AND BEFORE I BRING IT UP HERE FOR COMMENT, I WANT TO BE CLEAR on the action that the council is supposed to take on this. what we have here support the ambassador program. Is there anything specific that we are asked to do other than the action support the ambassador concierge parking program and designated areas. Anything else? |
| 00:58:57.61 | Adam Politzer | You know, it's not on the recommendations, but you've heard it, you know, through both the questions to the city attorney and to the chief on parking enforcement. So if you want staff to continue to evaluate options and bring that back in terms of parking enforcement, or if you want to give direction tonight that we work with the bike and bed committee to enact parking enforcement, that's up to the council. I didn't hear either from the chief or from Dr. Fotch specifically on what they want to do on parking enforcement other than it sounded like there may be more work to be done. |
| 00:59:43.59 | Jill Hoffman | THAT'S A GOOD POINT. I JUST TO FRAME IT. NOW WE'RE BACK UP HERE FOR COUNCIL COMMENT. |
| 00:59:48.55 | Unknown | I actually have, before we get into comment, I have another question of our city staff. THE END OF END OF THE END OF THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. Are we gonna be talking soon, is there gonna be a report back soon on all of our options, you know, the work, Mary, that you were going to do to look at all of our options for regulation of bikes. When's that? Is that sort of any time soon? Because it seems like a very similar discussion that we might be having tonight. |
| 01:00:19.53 | Adam Politzer | Right, so May 5th is going to be very exclusive and May 19th is the date that we target for city attorney to come back with options if options exist. But a discussion on caps or some type of regulation to deal with the volume of bikes in Sausalito that target it for May 19th. |
| 01:00:33.57 | Unknown | Discussion. |
| 01:00:43.72 | Unknown | Okay, so we're gonna have another sort of go at this. |
| 01:00:49.49 | Unknown | So I would like to make a motion, a move to support the volunteer ambassador program and the pay for the program parking for rental bikes pay premier parking parking for rental bikes but to direct the revenue from the rental bike parking to downtown pedestrian infrastructure |
| 01:01:24.70 | Jill Hoffman | I'll make a friendly amendment that we, that the motion be, that the ambassador program be structured exactly as presented by Dr. Fudge tonight. |
| 01:01:34.46 | Unknown | So I, I, Okay, and respectfully, I'm going to stay with my motion because the fundamental difference here is I really firmly believe We have serious safety hazards in our pedestrian infrastructure downtown. We need to implement the lit crosswalks that we see, for example, in Petaluma, I think is a Best in class example of pedestrian safety as just one. We know there's a lot of ADA improvements we have to look forward to in downtown. And the thought of having six figures from rental bike parking is something I really like a lot. But I want to see that money and all of that money going into our infrastructure. I don't want to see it. funding the ambassadors, the funding, a a personnel business basically a new business that supports the san francisco rental bike uh business model i so that's that's my motion yeah we can discuss it do we have a second |
| 01:02:43.75 | Unknown | motion. |
| 01:02:51.22 | Jill Hoffman | Seeing no second and we'll move on. |
| 01:03:00.79 | Unknown | Sure. I think we're here tonight to talk about the ambassador program and what's the best way to move forward. Um, I think we have to have a separate discussion about whether to institute a permanent parking fees for all the bikes that come in so that it's not just a concierge program or an initial sort of attempt to look at this. It's comprehensively that we intend to get revenue off of bikes, that we create an incentive for less bikes because we're charging for it. That's a separate discussion than tonight. I think we, and that's why I asked our city manager about when we're going to talk about a bit more at a, a level of what to do to actually regulate and reduce the number of bikes. I think we're going to wait for May 19th for that discussion. So I'm fully supportive of the ambassador program. In fact, all of the recommendations that the Bike and Peg Committee has made, I think I'd like to thank all of those volunteers who are working on that, and as I said before, Ed's leadership in this. And so to the extent we need a motion, I would be willing to make some sort of motion if we need one for this, and if we don't, if it's just general direction, we need some |
| 01:04:37.50 | Jill Hoffman | I think we need a motion. And we all should have a discussion about. Yeah, okay. And enforcement would be. |
| 01:04:38.58 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:04:42.92 | Unknown | Yeah, okay. Okay, so I will make a motion then to direct staff and to move forward with the preferred program under the terms and conditions that the bicompetent committee has recommended. Is that a suitable motion? |
| 01:05:01.04 | Jill Hoffman | It's not a suitable moment. Thank you. We can act on that motion. We can move into other parts. Do we have a second on that? |
| 01:05:06.27 | Jill Hoffman | Yep, second. |
| 01:05:07.76 | Jill Hoffman | Dad, did you want to take a roll on that? |
| 01:05:14.96 | Unknown | Councilmember Weiner yes Councilmember Pfeiffer |
| 01:05:16.04 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:05:20.58 | Unknown | I'm voting no on this because I feel very strongly we should not be taking revenues from I support paid part requiring rental bikes to pay for parking. I support that very much. I always have since 2010. I don't support taking those revenues and using them to pay the ambassadors that I believe should be a volunteer, not when we have, especially when we have crumbling roads and pedestrian infrastructure. |
| 01:05:48.85 | Unknown | Councilmember Withing. |
| 01:05:50.45 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:05:50.67 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:05:50.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:51.84 | Unknown | Mayor Theodore. |
| 01:05:52.95 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Now moving on to further comment, have you made your comments or do you want to further |
| 01:05:59.45 | Unknown | Well, I'm looking forward to the May 19th discussion because I think we really need to be asking the question, do we want to regulate and find policies to have a reduce, with the goal of reducing the number of bikes in town? And that, I think, is for May 19th. And I'm happy to talk about enforcement. Right. |
| 01:06:27.66 | Jill Hoffman | And I just want, before we go too quickly, besides thanking the Bike and Ped Committee. I want to say this ambassador program, it's one program that that everyone that's been involved in this, and some as we've support everything in there. The onlyINK IT'S IMPORTANT. GOING BACK TO THE PRESENTATION, I CERTAINLY SUPPORT EVERYTHING IN THERE. THE ONLY RESERVATION I HAVE IS I THINK THE PARKLET is something that I think the Bike and Ped Committee It's just starting on, so I think that's premature. But I think the The bike and ped committee is really on the right track on a lot of these issues. including staging, I think we're really getting A lot of the residents. To coalesce on a lot of this, I think some were Again, we have skeptics, some issues, and I think we're really getting to see that Um, We're coming with a lot of positive solutions. There'll be more solutions, but I think it's really important that we move forward. We're now in the middle of April. We can't wait until next year. We're moving right now on some of the solutions that we can get done. And if there are better solutions, we'll do those too, but we have to move with what we have right now. I think on the issue of capping the bikes, we're gonna come on the 19th. That's something we can discuss. So that's another part. We're gonna look at everything. Thank you. I think on the issue of capping the bikes, we're going to come on the 19th. That's something we can discuss, so that's another part. We're going to look at everything. The one issue, and I'm glad the city manager raised it, on the parking enforcement. I think that's going to be an important part to regulating the traffic, I think, Um, staff has taken a look at it. I think there's really opportunities to do this in a way that can It can work. So I certainly would would move in like consensus from Council for staff to move forward on that and and to bring back details on how we can enforce this because I think that's really important element that there's been a lot of talk about how we can get the attention of the bike companies to help us in this. And when their bikes are parked illegally and the tickets go to them, the parking citations i think that's going to get a lot of Number one, their attention and revenue. So I think we need to do that. So I would make that motion to move forward on the direct staff to move on the evaluating parking enforcement. |
| 01:09:20.88 | Unknown | I would second that. What? Okay? Well, you're talking about the impoundment, the code enforcement regarding impounding and the staff required to enforce that. |
| 01:09:26.55 | Jill Hoffman | Well, |
| 01:09:31.09 | Jill Hoffman | Also citations, which would be basic parking tickets as well. |
| 01:09:32.26 | Unknown | which would be great. Yeah, but it would include the impoundment piece, correct? |
| 01:09:37.99 | Jill Hoffman | Well, it's already there, the empowerment pieces. Okay, good. |
| 01:09:39.02 | Unknown | THE IMPOUNTMENT PIECES. |
| 01:09:47.73 | Jill Hoffman | Go ahead. |
| 01:09:50.19 | Unknown | Just a point of clarification on the ordinance that we have. It is for impoundment, a $25 impoundment fee, and a $5 release fee. So if we're talking about issuing tickets, that would be a new ordinance. Thank you. And so we can look into that, happy to do that. If we are going to move forward with enforcement either of the ordinance on file, which is what we could do right away, that comes with a cost because I don't have the staff to do that right now. And so the cost would be in additional enforcement staff not sworn but like our peos we would need some oversight of that program somebody to supervise somebody to do the administration of it there is no automated system in place for ticketing bicycles there is for cars because it's connected to dmv and the collection of the fine is linked to DMV registration. So there's a great motivation to pay the tickets. With bicycles, a lot of these bicycles do not have serial numbers, which is the unique identifier for them. So one challenge would be to have a way of identifying, having a unique identifier for each bicycle. And then there's the transportation cost, a vehicle to transport the bicycles once we take them into custody for being parked illegally. So those are some of the costs associated with creating a new bicycle parking enforcement system. |
| 01:11:40.46 | Jill Hoffman | But I'd like the staff to take a look at all the issues, including some of them, impoundment as the chief is, as stated, is a more complex, |
| 01:11:46.33 | Unknown | That is. |
| 01:11:48.40 | Jill Hoffman | issuing citations may be easier. Why don't we have staff take a look at that what it would involve and then come back to staff. But I would like them to look at both pieces. |
| 01:11:57.82 | Unknown | I thank you. Yes, I would concur. I think we should look at both pieces and look at the personnel, extra personnel and required organizationally, administratively, and then perhaps revisit. You know, I hope that the council majority would would revisit the revenue coming in from the rental bike parking to perhaps fund this. You may get that in addition to it may be self but do we |
| 01:12:20.89 | Jill Hoffman | You may get that from the citation. It may be self-infrastructure. Do we have a second? Did you second that motion? |
| 01:12:26.15 | Unknown | Yes, I seconded. |
| 01:12:27.03 | Jill Hoffman | Can we do it on a Weiss all in favor aye that's a 4-0 vote okay now before we move on I think any other comments that anyone would like to make |
| 01:12:37.91 | Jill Hoffman | Other than Ed, thank you very, very much. This is the second step. Last year, the first step was that we closed out Tracy Way. So I want to thank the Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee. Tom, Riley, thank you. Certainly takes a little pressure off of me working so much on this. But I think this second stage, I think we can communicate with the bike companies and be able to – get it across to them that these bikes have to, so long as we have, which I hope that we will have, We have bicycle racks enough to accommodate them. We just got five more, we have 12 more coming in. That will give us a total of 55 bike racks. Average is around 16 bikes per rack. So I think this is an excellent program that you put together, and I think that it will be very successful. So thank you. |
| 01:13:45.21 | Unknown | Yes, I have a comment, but first I have a request for Ed or a clarification. In your presentation, you mentioned Sauce Little Plus, which is a new nonprofit. And is it my understanding that the revenues from the bike rental parking, Ed, you're proposing to give those to the ambassadors funneled through Sauce Little Plus? Did I misunderstand that? Please. |
| 01:14:19.98 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, the design of the plan is that the preferred parking revenue goes to pay the ambassadors and the managers for Saucelido Plus. And I'm kind of counting on that because right now I'm writing the checks to Saucelido Plus to fund it. |
| 01:14:32.36 | Unknown | So could we get a document that just provides an overview of who is Sauce Little Plus? |
| 01:14:40.80 | Unknown | it's us |
| 01:14:44.33 | Unknown | So it's the bike committee, no it wasn't clear to me, I'm sorry. So it's the bike committee, so you are Sauce Little Plus, it is the bike committee? |
| 01:14:52.53 | Ed Fotch | well i'm not the bike committee i'm just a member i'm sorry i got but actually that is on this is an agenda so i don't know if you take action actually was so hoping that a member of the city council would join the board of sauce little plus because frankly the reason we're we created not for profit is frankly we hope the city could do this and we sort of proposed running some of this for the city and that didn't work we hope the chamber would do it that didn't work i am so um... |
| 01:14:54.67 | Unknown | I'm sorry. Yeah, but you understand the spirit. |
| 01:14:57.76 | Unknown | Thank you, Janice. Thank you. |
| 01:14:58.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:14:58.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:19.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:19.85 | Unknown | I- |
| 01:15:21.84 | Ed Fotch | And having started a number of businesses, nothing happens until someone does something and someone else writes a check. So we just sort of stepped into the breach here. So to the extent that a typical not-for-profit, you have a board, we'd love to have representation from the city on the board. |
| 01:15:37.94 | Unknown | Thank you, Ed. When you say Sauce Little Plus is us, could you create a document for us to say just formally the names and who Sauce Little Plus is? Because I'm still confused about that. Yeah. |
| 01:15:51.20 | Ed Fotch | Yeah, absolutely, I think, yes. |
| 01:15:53.24 | Unknown | Thank you, that was my request. So, my comment um in looking at this presentation i first of all i want to thank the bike committee and thank ed for the presentation um i uh concur we have a real problem here we have a real big problem with these rent with the rental bikes the numbers keep growing exponentially each year As you all know, we've had over 30,000 in August alone. And with the numbers keep growing exponentially each year. As you all know, we've had over 30,000 in August alone. And with the numbers projected to keep increasing, our chief of police made that comment in her presentation at an earlier council meeting that she, you know, did not see the numbers decreasing. There was no indication they would not not continue to grow so I see this as unsustainable I'm I That's why I created the proposal around regulation and I wanted to pass out a copy of what the bike committee received yesterday from two of their members Patricia Pigman and John Cox that I provided to John and Patricia and Then I have some for the public record for the city clerk so perhaps you guys could just take take this just so that you're in the loop you know on that and so regarding the parklets I'm concerned about the the parklet concept I'm concerned about we know now that each parking space represents seventy two200 in revenue per year for the city to remove even more revenue spaces downtown for these bike parklets I'm concerned about. And I would just say in conclusion that regarding the ordinance that I seconded and voted for, I mean the ordinance for the enforcement exploration, I know at one point I had suggested that the council somehow look into requiring the rental bike companies to require tourists to sign an agreement that says they will not park, you know, in different languages. You know, just to have something that informs them that there is a consequence, be it impounding or a ticket or fines or something, something that would educate the tourist, you know, before they get on that bike and go over that bridge, that there will be consequences if they block ADA access, park on the sidewalk, and create safety hazards downtown. So I guess in conclusion, those were my points, and I look forward to May 19th to learn a bit more about the aspect of regulations. |
| 01:18:41.00 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I also want to thank Debbie for for a hands-on operation. You really worked hard. You really got a little feel or have a feel for what's going on. And I really am happy to say and thank you for attempting to make people that are visiting our town having a good experience, so thank you. |
| 01:19:10.53 | Jill Hoffman | And in conclusion, thanks, Ed and Deb and Tom Riley. And we have Patricia Pigman, John Cox, Bob Page, they've all done a great job over the last over a year now and it really moved us around to FROM A PLACE THAT WE WERE GRAPPLING WITH ALL OF IT and it's starting to clear up. We got some solutions and we're moving forward. So thanks again. Okay. Moving on. |
| 01:19:42.24 | Jill Hoffman | Hey Tom, don't pack your automobile on the sidewalk either. Thanks. |
| 01:19:51.55 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, moving on to we're moving on to the marine rails update and the issue shinsing and Danny Castro. |
| 01:20:00.23 | Lily | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members, good evening. PowerPoint for you. |
| 01:20:16.66 | Lily | So this item tonight is an update from your conversation you held in February on the marine rails. As you're aware, the Marine Ships Specific Plan Steering Committee, held 13 meetings through January this year on evaluation of the Marinship specific plan. And they presented a recommendation to council in February, which in part included a variety of recommendations, which included the exploration of the marine rails, of the protection mechanism for the marine rails area in the marine ship. The council gave direction at that meeting on February 10th to explore a budget, a timeline, and a process for creating a marine rails production overlay. So tonight I have a presentation for you, giving you an update on different options that we've explored. |
| 01:21:16.94 | Lily | Just in terms of background, the marine rails or the ways or the shipways were constructed during World War II as part of the shipbuilding effort in the Marin ship. The ways were used to stage and assemble the sub-assemblies of each new ship. And once those sub-assemblies and the hull have been joined together, then the ship would be launched and then towed to the outfitting docks for completion. And as you are also aware, during World War II, the Marin Ship area produced 93 vessels, and the last tanker was launched in September of 1945, and then the yard was closed in 1946. |
| 01:21:59.19 | Lily | Many of their original marine Rails survive today and are actively being used in the Marinship area. as a part of the former yard, which is currently the Sausalito Shipyard and Marina site. Businesses today like Boatside Boatworks, Bayside Boatworks, Aquamaison, and Richardson Bay Boatworks and Ways use the rails to haul out boats and houseboats for maintenance and repair. Some of the boats that are hauled out using the marine rails, like classic wooden boats, were referred to during the Marinship Specific Plan Steering Committee meetings as not being able to be hauled out any other way except for using the marine rails, which highlights the importance of the rails themselves. It was also presented during the Marineship Steering Committee meetings and to the City Council in February that the marine rails in the Marineship area are a rarity across the United States in terms of the amount of tons that can be hauled out. It was reported that the rails in Sausalito are capable of hauling vessels up to 250 tons, which is third to two locations in Alaska. |
| 01:23:12.10 | Lily | The Marineship Specific Plan provides specific regulations today with regards to the allowed uses at the parcels on which the marine rails sit. The marine rails are located in the waterfront zoning district on what is identified in the Marineship Specific Plan as parcel 5B. Parcel 5B is zoned in two different zoning districts, the waterfront zoning district as well as the industrial zoning district, and there are a variety of uses that are allowed parcel today including general and marine industrial industrial marine and fine arts marine commercial services marinas and others and all of those uses were listed in the staff report as long as along with some expert excerpts from the marineship specific plan for the that parcel in particular |
| 01:24:04.76 | Lily | So with the goal being to recognize that the marine rails are a valuable historic resource to Sausalito and to ensure that the working waterfront uses that currently utilize the rails are not lost and that also that the rails themselves are not lost, we've provided four options for protection for them for consideration. So the first is a marine rails overlay. And this would restrict the uses in the marine rails area to only those uses that need and benefit from the marine rails themselves. The other uses that are allowed today on the property outside of that marine rails overlay area would be allowed as they are today. The process would include a zoning ordinance, specific plan, and general plan amendments. And that would involve also the retention of a consultant to guide the process, to draft the required ordinance amendments, as well as reports to the board's commissions and the council. The benefits to this approach would be that it would ensure that the only uses that are allowed in the marine rails overlay area would be maritime in nature. And therefore, there would be an economic incentive to keep them there. Also, this is the option that could be completed most quickly compared to the other options I'll be presenting tonight. The drawbacks would be that even though there would be an economic incentive to keep those maritime uses on the overlay, there would be no assurance that they wouldn't be terminated. Additionally, there wouldn't be assurances that the rails themselves would be maintained with this option. And the estimated cost for this process is estimated to be $50,000, $35,000 for a consultant. and then 15,000 for environmental review, which is anticipated to be a mitigated negative declaration. Option B is a historic preservation option, which would be listing the rails on the local historic register. And the process would involve going through the city's local nomination process, which is outlined in the zoning ordinance. And this involves the city council initiating the listing. It would also involve hearings before the historic landmarks board and the planning commission as well as the city council to actually make the designation. A historic consultant would also need to be retained in order to write a statement of significance, prepare the required application materials, including maps. draft conditions and then also draft maintenance requirements and a penalty section The benefits to going through this process would be that it could place conditions on how the rails are used. And it could also require a maintenance plan for the rails themselves and penalties if the conditions are not met. And the drawbacks would be that there are no assurances that the maritime uses that are using the rails could be terminated. Staff has also identified the need to conduct further research to determine if the rails would be required to be maintained themselves as a historic resource, and therefore restrictions put on how they could be used. And so we'd need to do some more research on that. And the cost associated with this option is $50,000 with $20,000 for a historic consultant, $15,000 in staff time, and also the $15,000 for environmental review. The third option is a hybrid option, which combines the overlay options with the listing on the historic register option. So this option, so it's A and B combined essentially. And this option provides better protection than A and B alone. because it ensures that the only uses allowed on the overlay site would be maritime uses, as well as ensuring the establishment of conditions on how the rails can be used, requiring a maintenance plan, and establishing penalties. There is also economies of scale with this approach, as we've identified in the staff report, because the public hearings could occur together and not sequentially. Also, if these two approaches were conducted together, only one environmental document would be required, not two. And then the city could also retain a single firm and that might save some money on the consultant costs as well. The drawbacks to this approach are again that besides economic incentives, there are no assurances that the maritime uses could not be terminated. And the cost for this option is also estimated at $50,000, $20,000 for the planning arm of the consultant, $15,000 for the historic, and then $15,000 for the environmental review. |
| 01:29:13.79 | Lily | So the last option we presented in the staff report you is a development agreement and it assumes that there's an actual project proposed by the owners of the Marine Rails property. And this would involve negotiation between the property owner and the city in the form of a development agreement. The agreement would be that the property owner agrees to maintain the maritime uses at the site and the rails themselves. And in exchange for that, the property owner would likely seek concessions from the city, possibly in the form of permitting development that's not currently allowed on that parcel in the future, on another area of the parcel. The process would involve findings to be made that the project is in conformance with the zoning ordinance, the specific plan, and the general plan. So depending on what the scope of the project is, those documents might need to be amended as well. So the benefits associated with this approach include assurances that the only uses allowed at the site would be maritime uses and that they would be protected from termination, unlike the other options. There would also be assurances that the rails are maintained in working order. The drawback would be that the city would be in a position of negotiating with the property owner regarding additional development on another area of the parcel. And the costs associated with this option are undetermined at this time. It would depend on the scope of the work. And it can range greatly depending on the need for a consultant and also legal assistance as well. So this is the matrix that's provided in your staff report showing all the different options with the pros and cons and the costs associated with them. And that concludes my staff report, and we're recommending you provide direction as appropriate on these options or alternative options. Thank you. |
| 01:31:17.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Lily. Questions will start. The ultimate fight for the |
| 01:31:24.91 | Unknown | Yes, thank you, Lily. So I'm curious. Preserving the marine rails are very high on my list. So is... preserving the maritime uses in the marine ship as a whole. So I'm just curious, when we look at option C, I think it was, you know, if we... if we designate the marine rails as a historic resource on the local register, aren't we in effect providing a degree of protection for those marine rails? That's correct. Okay. And it isn't the current marineship-specific plan, doesn't it? require or man you know that whole area is zoned for light industrial and maritime use is that correct |
| 01:32:26.03 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 01:32:26.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:26.08 | Lily | There are a number of uses that are allowed. So all of these uses listed here are allowed in some form, either principally outright or with a conditional use permit, as I've noted. |
| 01:32:35.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:35.03 | Unknown | with. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:32:38.15 | Lily | Okay. |
| 01:32:38.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:39.50 | Lily | Um, |
| 01:32:39.97 | Unknown | And so... Okay, so food service initially was supposed to be for the employees of the Marin ship. And I see the bait and tackle shop there, too. I guess... When I was looking at these options, I guess I was trying to understand how, if we have codes and zoning for certain uses, how is it that other uses can get in? And how is it that we could potentially lose the marine rails in the current situation? I mean, obviously, I'm really concerned about it. Okay. |
| 01:33:26.36 | Lily | and this might help, the parcel that we're talking about is quite large. It's outlined in red at the top of the screen there. The marine rails is just a portion of that parcel, Yeah. Here we go. This shows just the portion. So the actual parcel is much larger that allows all of these different types of uses. So the area that we're looking at with the marine rails, that's not specifically today only designated for... example, marine industrial uses. That's an allowed use, but there's also other allowed uses on that site as a whole and in addition in that area. |
| 01:34:07.42 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. So just to wrap up, the option, I think it was C. So what kind of assurances would we have that the marine rails would be preserved? I mean, wouldn't that add a lot of protection, having it a historic resource, maritime use only, et cetera? Can you comment on that? So the... wouldn't that add a lot of protection having it a historic resource maritime use only etc can you comment on that so the penalties yeah the big |
| 01:34:17.10 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:34:37.57 | Lily | The big protection for the rails themselves would be designating it as a historic resource and establishing penalties if the rules that are put in place are not abided by. The concern listed as a con would be that the rules are not abided by the rules are be that even though we've specifically said through the zoning overlay, that only those maritime uses that need the marine rails are allowed. the only incentive is economic to keep those uses going. So even though the rails would need to be protected, the businesses could potentially be terminated. |
| 01:35:26.83 | Unknown | Thank you. Let me follow on a question just to help out on that last point. So when you're saying that in option C there's no assurance that maritime uses could not be terminated. You're not saying that another use could be replaced. What you're saying is that in a sense, Zoning doesn't provide for forcing a property owner to do stuff to operate or to use their property as a marine business. They could leave it fallow, just idle, right? Correct. Right. I think that's what the con is that Lillie's trying to get to there. So and then option D. |
| 01:36:08.53 | Lily | Correct. |
| 01:36:08.99 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:36:21.76 | Unknown | is really one would need a lot of time a property owner with a plan willing to come forward for discussion before option D we have any ability to exercise ourselves in option D, right? |
| 01:36:41.71 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. And I take it one of the goals were to protect the maritime uses there, but as I take it on all of. A, B, and C that there's no assurance that the maritime uses could not be Is that correct? |
| 01:36:58.97 | Lily | With all of those options, the restriction in terms of zoning would limit the uses to those maritime uses, but there's no |
| 01:36:59.02 | Jill Hoffman | with all the- |
| 01:37:09.55 | Lily | There's nothing that I'm aware of that the city could do outside of this development agreement that would require the property owner to maintain leases with those types of businesses. |
| 01:37:18.70 | Jill Hoffman | So they could just say there's no more maritime uses, but we're going to let people come in and take photographs of the marine rails. I mean, or whatever, something on that. They don't necessarily have to keep these maritime uses going for actual boat maintenance or whatever, boat building or whatever it might be. Correct? |
| 01:37:25.55 | Unknown | or a |
| 01:37:25.61 | Lily | or, or, |
| 01:37:25.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:37:36.20 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:37:36.21 | Lily | Correct. |
| 01:37:36.65 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:37:36.80 | Lily | Thank you. It would be an economic incentive to have that ongoing. |
| 01:37:47.38 | Unknown | Yeah, thank you. I guess I'm just struggling with this. I mean, if we have zoning in residential zones, let's say this is R2 and this is R1, and these are the uses that are permitted, I guess I'm struggling with how we can have a zoning that says maritime uses only in the The owner, are you suggesting then that they would just allow the whole property to just kind of not be maintained and disintegrate to kind of by disrepair and Let it go. |
| 01:38:20.66 | Unknown | Letting go. |
| 01:38:21.03 | Lily | . Thank you. |
| 01:38:21.23 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:38:21.76 | Lily | If the historic... If it was designated as a historic resource, then there would be the requirement to maintain the rails. But just thinking of an example, so in a single family, residential neighborhood, there's a single family house and you own it. The city doesn't require you, even though you have a single-family house, to actually live there. You could, if you wanted to, just keep the house empty forever if you wanted to. So it's kind of a similar situation. Thank you. |
| 01:38:50.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:38:50.92 | Lily | the |
| 01:38:50.97 | Unknown | And then just to drive home your earlier point regarding, I know we had talked about this with regards to the machine shop is, I think it's called, I don't know, tear down by neglect or something. I forget the formal term, but it's where you have a historic... |
| 01:39:05.52 | Unknown | or something. |
| 01:39:09.84 | Unknown | building and the landlord just doesn't maintain it and waits for it to fall into disrepair. So option C, where we would have, if I could see option C again, where we would designate the marine rails as a historic resource on the local register, this would then require upkeep of the rails? Correct. Good. And we could establish the penalties. Correct. That DMM, correct. And so we could, okay, good, thank you. |
| 01:39:53.63 | Jill Hoffman | Let's open this up to public comment at this point, please. |
| 01:40:02.91 | Joe Lemon | Hi, I'm Joe Lemon. I'm with the Sausalito Shipyard and Marina, which is the subject of property here. Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I can limit my comments to three minutes. If you have further questions, let me know. And if you need to have an additional hearing on this matter, I'd be happy to address more concerns at that time. Earlier, Dr. Fotch said that we don't want for our tourists to be treated like locusts. I would only add that we should have the same gracious sentiment with our residents and our property owners. It's a little unusual to be sitting in the room and have people talk about you. And you're right here. So I'm glad to have the opportunity to address Any questions that you have? As a preliminary matter, We seem to have created this term called marine rails. I don't know where that came from. This book here is the definitive history on the Marin ship. It doesn't discuss anything about the historic marine rails and furthermore Apparently the city had a report commissioned in 2011 that discusses the historical context This is the document that's cited in the staff report for the purpose of establishing this historical importance of the marine rails. but it's not in this report. I'm happy to discuss the really valuable importance of the maritime industry and in our community, particularly in the Marin That's something that we're committed to. But I don't think it's productive to pretend that there's a historic feature The rails that are in question were added after the fact. They're much smaller. THE FAMILY. the historical photos of the enormous ships that were built here, compared with the small boats that are repaired today. it's evident that the rails that we're talking about today. are not original to the World War II era. I think it's worth mentioning that implicit in the staff report is a concept that there is an inadequate market demand for maritime services. on our property or for the use that's discussed today. apparently, if I had a bike rental business, nobody would be disputing the wonderful economic opportunity that would exist there. That's gangbusters. But the issue here is, yeah, there's not enough market demand for people to repair the boats, therefore we're going to require that nothing can happen there except boat repair And I would just suggest to you that though the Marineship-specific plan had a very noble intention of helping to preserve certain uses in this really important district of ours. What we found is that by strictly reducing the use is. to these few things. It hasn't. hasn't created the robust maritime that we would like to have there. And Recent examples include the departure of West Marine. That was a huge loss. Our property is intent, because of its Enormous size, as she points out. is intended to be the site of a Marine Service Center The anchor tenant of that was intended to be West Marine. And we ran them out of town. So the restrictions that we've imposed aren't working. I don't think adding a further level of restriction is going to Um, encourage. a maritime use there. The staff report suggests that let's call it the sloping shipways, are rare. That may be, but The report concludes that Because they're rare, somehow they're more valuable. In fact, we could draw just the opposite conclusion, Why do other boatyards use other means to get the boats out of the water? Most boatyards use a travel lift. Our neighbor to the north, Clipper Yacht Arbor, has KKMI. They haul out boats with a travel lift. The staff report says that small Classic wooden boats can't be removed from the water Tell that to the Spalding Wooden Boat Center, which is considered to be the region's leading wooden boat repair boatyard. They haul them out with a crane. I'm happy enough to have our ways used as they are today. but I don't want to use inaccurate facts to try to, I'm not sure. the have a different agenda here. THE FAMILY IS I would add that we do a lot to support our tenants already. For example, for certain of our tenants, We haven't had rent increases in five to seven years. We do what we can to help create success for them. I think it's interesting that none of them are here. If this is such an important issue, why aren't they here to say, yes, we endorse the staff Apparently, the conditions that they're working in are working for them and I work with them daily Because as their landlord, I benefit when they do well. THE CITY IS A LITTLE BIT. I'd like to suggest to the city that rather than trying to... this approach with the stick. you try to consider using a carrot. What can we do? to help subsidize, Foster. the maritime industry. There are a number of things we can do. And we can embed them in the case of our property under this option D. Happy to discuss that with you. Um, I've had meetings with many people in this room, with the city manager, with the city attorney, We've sought to keep other maritime businesses from leaving. I sat on the business advisory committee for several years, I waved the red flag. We're going to lose West Marine. We're going to lose West Marine. And sure enough, we did. I'm not sure. I participated at the suggestion of some of your predecessors very earnestly in the Imagine Sausalito process. I listened to what the community had to say. We've tried to incorporate those things into our planning. for two years I was on the water, front and Marineship steering committee. I was elected the vice chair of that committee. So we're very committed. to the prospect of a vibrant maritime future on our property. But I would just suggest to you that we need to do that in terms of fostering that kind of use rather than mandating it. Thank you. |
| 01:45:57.92 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 01:45:57.99 | Adam Politzer | Amen. |
| 01:45:58.26 | Unknown | to the next day. |
| 01:46:00.56 | Joe Lemon | I have a memo here, I can leave with you. Does anybody have any questions? |
| 01:46:06.04 | Jill Hoffman | Not right yet. We may when we get into the further part. Anyone else from the public like to comment at this stage? Thank you. |
| 01:46:22.86 | Susan Frank | Susan Frank, 500 Turney Street. And it's my understanding that the previous speaker, I think, made a couple of wrong assumptions. The ways are from marinship, and that is verifiable. We have the records up at the Historical Society and also at the Bay Model. And secondly, it is a very viable business. The three businesses that were mentioned in Lilly's wonderful report, thank you, Lilly, are all incredibly viable and they need to be encouraged. And my understanding was... I'm sorry, Joe, to have to say this, but my understanding was that a lot of the current tenants are afraid to be here. |
| 01:47:15.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:16.00 | Susan Frank | Yeah. So that's it. |
| 01:47:18.15 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:47:23.06 | Jill Hoffman | Anyone else from the public like to comment? We will close public comment. We'll bring it back here. Who would like to start? |
| 01:47:34.79 | Unknown | So I certainly see the critical historic importance to the marine rails, the ways it's a part of our heritage. It's part of what makes Sausalito unique. We need to step up and take action to ensure that they do not deteriorate and... that we stay true to the economic diversity that the MarinShip Specific Plan has heralded for Sausalito. We are not just about tourism. We have this amazing working waterfront. And I'm going to quote here from Tony Badger's letter Aqua Maison maintains and builds the houseboats that form our world-renowned Saucyutu boat The health and existence of this community depends on this business and others in the Marin ship. North Bay Boatworks, they can haul and work on delicate classic wooden yachts can be carefully supported and worked on without damage to the aging and fragile holes. Bayside boat works, able to haul and maintain larger craft, etc. These and others, KKMI, we have a working waterfront, a wonderful working waterfront that provides so much more dimension to Sausalito. And because of that, I would support option C, where we are establishing penalties and we are getting it on the local register. And we are taking concrete action to preserve that area. I am concerned with D um i am concerned with doing a trade-off uh for you know development uh you know i i i just think that's opening the door to something that we've already seen happen in bits and pieces in the marine shop and men ship i noticed one of the listings in a prior slide said bait and tackle shop. I used to go to the bait and tackle shop and buy fishing gear. The last time I went there, there was a wedding reception going on and the bait and tackle shop had been kicked out and moved into a smaller place across the way, and it was now an entertainment venue. So, you know, I think we need to really, you know, take a look at, you know, code enforcement and staying true to... to the spirit of the Marineship, and that means taking decisive action, including the historic register and fines, penalties. |
| 01:50:31.97 | Unknown | Thanks, Lily. That was a very interesting report. The Marineship Steering Plan Committee recommended a lot of different things, including looking at the Marineship as a whole, but flagged this in part through some of the members there having been there THE FAMILY IS an issue for a while. but I think generally also our consultant advised us that. The historic resources here are potentially important, I think it certainly is worth as a first step and I'm sure would be in a first step in evaluating this that we recheck if we got two very disparate points of view as to whether there's historic resources there, let's just confirm that. But I think at least from the consultant we use for the Marinship Specific Plan and most of the previous discussions there was an assumption that there was certainly historic resources Thank you. Marinship specific plan and most of the previous discussions there was an assumption that there was certainly historically these were historic resources. So I'm of the belief we should definitely move ahead with both options C and D. But we can't do much with option D. until you bring something forward really and we can't really explore option D unless you're willing to engage with us so I was very encouraged to hear you're happy to chat with everybody. Maybe for you it's again, but for some of us it's fresh. So I... again believe that exploring option c which will require some money to be spent by the city i think the decision therefore in that regard before us would be do we program this into our budget discussions and over the course of the next um two months you know it become a item we discuss or Or should we, when we look at what we also have to spend money on, or do we say this is option C is sufficiently important that we encourage staff to at least begin moving ahead and determine if there's, you know, whether it's an RFP or whatever we need to do to just get going anyway. I think that's something that's here for us tonight for a decision or not. Do we incorporate into the budget or do we make some sort of decision now and also perhaps direct everybody that an option D might be a very interesting one to explore and so we should look at it. |
| 01:53:37.50 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I also, I agree. It'd be nice to, Save the rails, but I also agree that we've seen that for many, many years that that piece of property is full of containers and justifiably he has the right to do that, to be able to pay for his bills. But I would like, it's time. That isn't, that property has been sitting only because there's been, no movement on both sides to look at that property. And I think it's time. It was timed 10 years ago. But I think to attempt to work together Thank you. to benefit both. I think it's the direction that I'd like to see us go. Option C. Only if I had to. |
| 01:54:44.52 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I agree. The Marin rails is a historic and its uses. Those are the two areas that |
| 01:54:48.85 | Jill Hoffman | artificial. |
| 01:54:53.01 | Jill Hoffman | the Marin Ship Task Force took a look at uh to preserve. are concerning about going through A, B, or C is that on all of those, there's no assurance that the maritime uses could not be terminated. And that's an essential part of including Mr. Badger's letter and I think a lot of what was discussed. And I also think there are appears to be little dispute about whether on some of the factual issues and we certainly in fairness to the property owner so what I would what I'd recommend is that we we have staff go back and work engage with Mr Lemon take a look at any presentation he may have on both The factual side. and potentially on option D. But I think that I would certainly want to go forward with option C if we can't find anything. I wouldn't want to go there without a firm factual basis. And I want to make sure that whatever we do, that we are going to protect those maritime uses and whatever the best would be. So I think we want to go forward with that first. |
| 01:55:58.05 | Unknown | If I may, Mr. Mayor, I'm very concerned about option D because I'm concerned it sends a message and sets a precedent for the rest of the Moranship. You know rather than enforcing our codes and ordinances and uses or adjusting those uses to reflect the economic diversity and maritime uses of our of Saucido history we're playing we're going into a Let's make a deal, so to speak. I think we need to take decisive action to protect the maritime rails and put in place penalties that deter Um... owners from deviating from the uses that they were aware came with the property when they purchased the property. We're not pulling any surprises or any punches on this. I mean, when they bought, they knew the Marinship-specific plan was in place. It is time. It's past time. It's time for leadership. It's time for leadership to ensure we don't lose the infrastructure and the maritime uses we have. And I concur that the – I think that it would be a bit daunting if you were,. I know that personally I know that some of the businesses, from what I understand, would love to invest in the infrastructure and would improve the infrastructure of their businesses if they had more than a month-to-month lease. This is what I've been told. I do not know if it's hearsay, but, you know, it's something to consider. So I would move to move forward on option C immediately. |
| 01:57:43.75 | Jill Hoffman | Let me just respond. You said protect the maritime uses a number of times, If you look at the presentation, It says there's no assurances that A, B, or C would protect the maritime uses. And that's the important part here. And by the way, I'm not even suggesting we adopt D. I don't want to get into the names. I think we really need to go back and do a little bit more work before we finalize what we do. Because, again, A, B, or C do not protect the maritime uses. It's very clear from the staff's report. |
| 01:58:13.62 | Unknown | Well, if we implement incentives and make it economically unattractive with penalties that are high enough and establish the marine rails as a historic resource on our local register and all the hoops that go along with that, I think – I think we are effectively putting as many hoops and levers in place as we possibly can. I mean, if we put hefty, hefty penalties in place, it's just not going to be economically viable to try and do anything other than what that infrastructure was designed to do. |
| 01:58:59.02 | Joe Lemon | May I respond to that? I would just only say that that theory works great provided that the only cost is on whoever you perceive to be the person who's not in compliance. Any landlord would assign the cost of that onto the tenants and then they in turn would do it onto their customers. The issue is that you want to create a vibrant demand for those services, And then we can all afford to make the facility as excellent as it possibly can be. And by the way, North Bay Boat Works doesn't exist anymore. So Tony, I don't know where Tony. Thank you. Stay moving, bye. |
| 01:59:42.03 | Unknown | Well, the letter is about four years old, so that would explain it. Well, it, yeah. But I know that there is, I was down in the Marin ship just about three months ago. And anyway, I'm not going to get into it. a conversation with the audience. But I support Option C and the penalties and the historic register and all of the other action items affiliated with Option C. And my motion still stands. |
| 02:00:18.36 | Unknown | Well, I'm not sure I've got much to add that I previously said. you know, Uh... I've said we should move along in parallel. We should move along with option C. I think staff could help us out a little bit here, asking the question whether we have We're totally comfortable that these are historic resources or not. And if they are, let's move ahead. If we've got some doubt, we should clarify this. Yeah. |
| 02:00:59.99 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, if I can respond to Council Member Withy's question. I think we feel confident in the information of staff report, but Mr. Lemon introduced some material that I haven't seen. I don't know if Lily has seen it. And Heidi Burns, who was responsible for the past report that he shared, I don't know what information they took. So I'd like to have the opportunity as I'm hearing directed by the one of the recommendations that may be coming from the council is for me to meet and and with staff with mr. lemon have a discussion in terms of of his interest in working with the city. Obviously receive copies of the material that he has. And then come back with a recommendation. I'm also supportive of the dual path that is being suggested by Council Member Withey. that during the budget discussions that we look at having the council consider the $50,000 requests split up into different amounts for different uses. We can go back and look at the timing of how those amounts would be |
| 02:01:32.11 | Unknown | What? |
| 02:02:19.63 | Adam Politzer | spent because they wouldn't all happen at one time. So if there's a need and an interest from the council TO MOVE. in this fiscal year before June 30th. then we can come back and look and asking the council to make an appropriation to continue to move forward. But at the very least, what I'm hearing, and I want to make sure that I get the consensus from the council, is that you would like staff to meet with Mr. Lemon. to have a discussion about option D and you'd like staff to verify that the historic information that's provided in the staff report is in fact correct. |
| 02:03:00.97 | Jill Hoffman | I would like to add that. I would like the staff to explore that whatever we can have assurances that the continued use of the maritime, the continued maritime uses there could not be terminated or to protect that the greatest possible, because that was missing in A, B, and C. So in the course of that investigation, that would be helpful. Do you have... |
| 02:03:25.14 | Unknown | Oh, I was just going to say, I said North Bay, I meant to say Bayside, Bayside Boatworks. That was my correction. And I'm sorry, I cannot support option D at all. Not at all. No. |
| 02:03:37.44 | Jill Hoffman | That's not option D he's talking about. |
| 02:03:40.31 | Unknown | Oh, I'm sorry, I heard him mention meeting with Lemon to talk about, that's option D, to talk about development, other development on the property in exchange for the marine |
| 02:03:49.57 | Jill Hoffman | He's the owner. I think it only makes sense to talk to an owner whenever you're going to do something like that. |
| 02:03:54.65 | Unknown | Well, no, but that's option D. |
| 02:03:58.43 | Jill Hoffman | terminology option D has a set of rules |
| 02:04:00.25 | Unknown | Option D. |
| 02:04:01.92 | Jill Hoffman | as issues with it. They're going to talk with the owner, have the owner's input, verify some of the factual disputes, look at some of the issues and explore other options as well as we pursue options. |
| 02:04:13.23 | Unknown | Let me clarify, if I can, what I meant by a dual trial. |
| 02:04:13.90 | Jill Hoffman | um Thank you. |
| 02:04:17.26 | Unknown | Can we see option D up here again? Please thank you. |
| 02:04:20.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Option D can only be viable if this city council and that property owner have a meeting of the minds about the way that property should be developed. So option D isn't an option until it's real, and it's not real. You can't figure out if anything's real if you're not willing to talk to the property owner. It doesn't make sense. So at least getting a dialogue going makes a lot of sense. But I, so a dialogue, not to actually say this is, we're going to do a development agreement. We have no clue what's going on. We can even begin to assess option D until a conversation started. Maybe Joe has no intention of developing the property, and there's no way an option D could even be constructed. But we should be talking to the property owner. At the same time, we should be moving ahead to protect the historic infrastructure there. That's my proposal. |
| 02:05:23.28 | Unknown | Can I respond to that? So I'm all for dialogue and conversation and discussion, and I really support that. I would, we all know that Mr. Lemon has plans for his property and development plans. They've been published in articles, and we've all seen them. And so that's, you know, part of the history around that area. I'm looking at option D right now. |
| 02:05:52.96 | Jill Hoffman | right now. Can I get a clarification? Can we ask Mr. Lye? I'm not aware of that. |
| 02:05:55.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:55.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:55.86 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:05:56.37 | Unknown | Oh, sure, absolutely. |
| 02:05:57.21 | Jill Hoffman | Miss, do you have development plans that |
| 02:05:59.63 | Unknown | that were featured in an article? |
| 02:06:00.05 | Jill Hoffman | future. that you currently, well address that please. |
| 02:06:08.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:08.27 | Joe Lemon | Our position is that when you do take a parcel of the size of ours that has such a significant role to play in the community, it creates a great opportunity for the community and for us as the property owners to do something exceptional and that a very viable and strong maritime component. That's our desire. And what that would look like, you know, you've cited a letter that's four years old. Drawings that you may have seen could be 10, 12, 15 years old. And so the landscape has changed for all parties. And I think that if what you want is a commitment from us that will ensure that those ways will be available for maritime uses for a long time, then let's talk about how we can get together and make the entire project economically viable to sustain that other use. I can tell you that the people who are operating businesses in those ways are all of retirement age And we don't have any new maritime tenants who approach us. That's just a fact. And I want to... you know, beat a dead horse here. But the one sort of young aspiring group of Boe workers that we had. that were graduates of the Arceus School, They flamed out. They don't exist anymore. We can't have indentured servitude where we mandate that people work on boats. So we have to make it done in an attractive way for the people who work there. And including those actual hourly workers, where are they gonna live? Do you want them to live in your community? If so, where are you gonna account for that? If you want them to live in Sonoma, that's another interesting question. These are all issues that should be on the table. And I'm, and. And I'm happy to have a broad discussion about all of that. in a way that makes sense for the whole community. And by the way, I grew up here, I moved here in 1983, and so I've been a resident way longer than I've been a business person in this community. the net results of what we do. are important to me as a resident. |
| 02:08:13.87 | Unknown | Mr. Lemon, so I'm sorry, the question was, was there an article that featured your development plans for your parcel? |
| 02:08:21.78 | Joe Lemon | I'm sure there have been a number of articles. |
| 02:08:25.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:25.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:25.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:26.71 | Joe Lemon | I hope that it stands to reason that we would like to have improvements on our property which are really in a shambles right now. I mean, this is not something that... gives us a great sense of pride. You know, we'd like to have it, Um, be a great a beacon for the community and not, as Herb points out, a bunch of containers. |
| 02:08:53.03 | Jill Hoffman | Do we have a motion on this? Yes. |
| 02:08:54.60 | Unknown | Well, I have a motion on the table. I move to proceed with option C. Can I see option C so I can get my motion exact? |
| 02:09:07.87 | Unknown | Sorry. Thank you. I'd like to move to pursue with motion C, pursue an overlay on the portion of the property to permit only maritime uses that need rails and listing the marine rails as a historic resource on the local register, pursuing penalties for compliance. |
| 02:09:34.28 | Jill Hoffman | Do you have any amendments? |
| 02:09:35.98 | Unknown | No, I'm going to make a counter motion, which is to Proceed with proceed with option C which is the hybrid an overlay and historic preservation designation for the staff to come back with having verified the historic resources in our next budget update or actually our first budget meeting which is on may 19th uh... to include that so the council if necessary could vote on beginning that process and secondly in addition to for the staff as a at the appropriate timing uh... to uh... have a discussion with uh... uh... the property owner updating him on this progress and on this process, and to explore other options that the property owner might have that would incorporate an option C. So that's a complicated motion, I realize, but I think you got it, right? |
| 02:10:59.88 | Jill Hoffman | Now, before we have seconds on either, do we have community development director? Did you wanna say something? |
| 02:11:08.51 | Unknown | I just want to comment, thank you. Mayor Theodores, I just wanted to comment regarding the discussion of historic significance. The process for option C does not predetermine that this is a local historic significance. It actually is a process to make that determination. And as Council Member Withey was saying, if we were to proceed with option option C it does require that we would need to do a historic resources report and that would that would respond to Whether you are feeling it's not historic if one determines it's not historic and one does that's just Not cannot be verified until a proper historic report is done So I just wanted to indicate that |
| 02:11:57.68 | Unknown | So with that clarification, I think my motion still stands. |
| 02:12:00.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:00.63 | Jill Hoffman | WE HAVE A SECOND TO EITHER OF THOSE MOTIONS. go further and further. Well, I, well, the first one, no, no, we give second on the second one, I think. Which, which is council member with these. Okay. |
| 02:12:05.61 | Unknown | Well, the first one needed |
| 02:12:07.97 | Jill Hoffman | First one. I'll second the second. |
| 02:12:15.74 | Jill Hoffman | So you vote on it? Vote on it. So we'll vote on... vote on that. Debbie, we're going to take the role. |
| 02:12:23.72 | Unknown | Are we voting on Councilmember Withey's motion and then mine? |
| 02:12:29.73 | Jill Hoffman | I think what happens... |
| 02:12:30.53 | Unknown | If his is passed, then it doesn't go? |
| 02:12:32.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:32.93 | Jill Hoffman | Then it's superseded. |
| 02:12:34.30 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:12:39.26 | Unknown | Council member Weiner? |
| 02:12:40.34 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:12:41.44 | Unknown | Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 02:12:43.16 | Unknown | No. |
| 02:12:45.60 | Unknown | Councilmember Withy. |
| 02:12:46.70 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:12:46.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:12:48.14 | Unknown | Mayor Theodora. |
| 02:12:49.27 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Okay, we move what. So we will now take a five minute break. Thank you all. |
| 02:13:11.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:13.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Oh. Thank you. |
| 02:13:28.30 | Jill Hoffman | Back in session, moving on to item... 6c Parking update, the Administrative Services Director, Charlie Francis. |
| 02:13:39.93 | Charlie Francis | Thank you, Debbie. Okay, good evening, Mayor, members of the Council. This agenda item is an update on the parking technology pilot project that we initiated several months ago. We'll begin by a brief introduction of the team that's been working in the field and doing the evaluation, move on and talk a little bit about the existing technology, what the request for information process looked like, where we're at, and the next steps. So first of all, the whole technology team consists of, of course, our boss, Adam Pollitzer, and Jennifer Tejada, police chief, department public works director, Jonathan Goldman. The real heart of the team was police lieutenant Curtis Skoog and Elliot Holt and Gene Shirts and all the parking enforcement officers. This really really was a collective effort and we couldn't have gotten through this part of the evaluation phase without all of their collective efforts. I thank you. And of course, one of the leading, the person who led us through the whole process was Julie Dixon, our parking consultant, and she's been assisted by Patrick Smith, who is one of her colleagues on the team. So that was the parking enforcement team that's been working on this throughout the process and and the this has been a very public process you know it was on the adopted priority calendar it was included in the adopted budget There were priority calendar status reports. So it's something that's been talked about for almost a year now, even longer in terms of the second phase of the parking technology. We've had a number of finance committee meetings and this phase that we just completed was the citizen and customer engagement phase. And finally there's been city council meetings and there'll be yet some more. Right now, we have off- and on-street parking. The picture is an attempt to kind of show where the parking meters and parking lots are. There's 214 single-space meters located throughout the streets, and there's currently 22 Siemens Prisma Series 5 located in lots 1 through 4. We just were notified yesterday that on Friday, Siemens APARC declared bankruptcy, and so we're working out to make sure that the PCI interface will still be turned on and the management system will still be turned on. And as a team, we're working on what we need to do for alternatives in case the Internet IP connection and the PCI connections are turned off so that will be a separate report coming back to the council later we may have to take some urgent actions The request for information process began with planning and initiation, moved to analysis, we did pilot testing, and phase four is recommendation with assessment and a recommendation, not selection yet. So really quickly, we developed a draft RFI. This was really an interactive process where the RFI was drafted by Julie Dixon, vetted through the staff here, and then we actually Senate. to the vendors who we were going to send the RFI to so that we could get feedback from them to make sure that it was fair, it was competitive, and all the information that we should be asking and a request for information was in there. We did receive several responses from them. We incorporated that into the final RFI, which was distributed in September 2014. We got a few more requests from other vendors to supply the RFI to them, and on September 24th, we received all the responses. The responses were analyzed. We received responses from APARC, which is now Parktoria, and we received Calais Digital Global Parking Solutions, IPS, Parkion, and POM on the single space meters. They provided thorough responses, you probably recall, at your February meeting. I brought in the whole pile of responses. I thought I'd spare you that this time, but they were thorough responses and took a lot of effort to go through them all. They included three different single-space meter solutions, five pay stations, and one type of a pay station retrofit. So then we moved into the pilot testing, where each vendor participated in the technology project. Six vendors had agreed to participate, including two single space vendors and five pay station vendors. Eventually, POM decided to drop out and they did not provide any single space meters. So we only had IPS having single space meters and they provided us 20 extra so that we could test the communications throughout all the city. First, they were located on Princess Street. For the pay stations vendors, we had CalA Digital. Digital was the machine that had been there for about a year already, and then we continued with the pilot testing on that. Global IPS provided two solutions, a retrofit and a new machine, and Parkion. And then about halfway through the process, Ventec, which is a Petaluma company, called, and after a lot of discussion about whether or not it was fair to let a late entrant into the program, we determined that we should let them in because they weren't part of the original RFI process at the beginning. So they were able to install a machine for a final two weeks of testing. The pilot testing included having an open house. That open house was on February 10th, the day of the city council meeting. That was followed by 45 minute presentations to the evaluation team by each one of the vendors. Then during the middle of the pilot, we had a field assessment where the evaluation team went from machine to machine. Vice Mayor Hoffman was with us during part of that assessment. And we kept good records, kept notebooks on what was right and what was wrong. We started a vendor, an issue tracking summary so that each week we could get back to the vendors and say, here's an issue we're experiencing, you know, so that they could address it immediately and look their best during the pilot assessment. We then solicited community trials and feedback. We prepared envelopes, 35 members of the community picked up their envelopes, filled with cash, coins, and credit cards, and rating sheets, and they went out into the community, did their ratings, and returned them. We then took all that, ran them through spreadsheets, did our evaluation. We also did a committee evaluation where the committee got together, and we then followed up with two of the vendors with additional questions that we had. So one of the primary objectives were to make sure that we engaged all the key stakeholders, the consumers and users of the project, as well as department heads, city council, and our team. We generated press releases that was going on so that we made sure that we got as much participation as we could. There were ongoing public updates, and we coordinated the technology installation schedules with vendors. Interested in participating. Hats off to Elliot for doing a great job of making sure all those installations occurred. So the evaluation criteria included the user interface, whether it was easy to use and simple to use, both at the meter and at the remote programming. We wanted to make sure that the communications were reliable was one of the issues that we've had for the past several years with the 2G modems. We wanted to make sure that the 3G modems, you know, there's some modems that are CDMA, there's some modems that are GSM. They talk to different wireless companies. And what we found is that there's some machines that can have two different modems, you know, one modem in one area to talk to the best signal here and another machine talked to that one there. So we went through all that kind of testing. We looked at all the technical and functional capabilities and the operational capabilities, including the ability to see the screen at nighttime. So there were vendor issues on the single space meters. While we only had IPS group, they all performed very well, the IPS single space meters, the POM withdrew. There weren't any other providers out there. IPS is well known in the industry for their single space meters. They're the ones that provide all the single space meters in San Francisco, and I'm sure Julie can talk about everywhere else in the world they have put their IPS single space meters. So that's the only vendor left for the single space. We could either stay with not having credit card acceptors or we could move to credit cards. But we had very, very with the credit card processing and we're probably generating more revenue per meter because people have the option to have the credit cards they're not going into stores and saying can i change five dollars into coins so i can pay the meter things like that so you know staff will be recommending that at the end of this that we do a price analysis for you and move forward with a recommendation to install the single space meters on the streets. For the pay station vendors, Kale America, the most common complaint we had from the user group was nighttime glare, and the credit card interface and the messaging was poor. On the IPS, well, we actually asked for one of the retrofits to be removed from the pilot. It was non-functioning. In fact, at one time, Public Works was going to get a blowtorch to cut off the door because the key got broke. They couldn't open the door to fix the machine at all. So we just had them remove it. Their new machine, the MS-1, One of the functions that people liked was that you could touch any key on the display, and it would start the display. But it just didn't have the robust functionality that we were looking for. Digital payments technologies was shortlisted, and I'll go through some of the reasons why on the next slide. Global parking solution seemed to be the easiest to use at night, but most people did not like the credit card insert and the messaging that was involved in that. And then Parkion, the buttons, which they offered to apply decals to the buttons, but people preferred their keypad over the buttons that they offered. And finally, Ventec, the late entrant, was shortlisted. So let's go look at some of the benefits of the shortlisted. digital payment technologies, the Everyone, including the evaluation team, like the versatility and the vendor management system, the back-end system is very robust. It's contemporary. It not only sends error alerts like exception reports to management, but it has kind of a dashboard that lets you know how things are going, when revenues are spiking, when they're going down. Very, very robust back end. They needed an improved lighting solution at night, so we did write them and asked them for what they're going to be proposing to improve their lighting solution at night. Julie can talk about if you have questions on that, about what their response was. The reliability of the machine is fantastic. It works all the time. We know it works all the time because it's been working for the past year that it's been out there. The people preferred the extend-by phone, but sometimes it seemed to be sporadic in terms of you're walking away and you got to the end. You didn't have to go through the Park Mobile, the pay-by-phone app. The machine talked to you and you could extend your time right there from your phone they have a complicated looking typing board pad there and many people didn't like that so we asked them if they had a 10 key keypad option and i think they responded yes so that you know if we move forward with them we could get that 10 key keypad option. And the modernity of the equipment, the easy to use vendor management system, there was a preference from staff for that too. On the other side, Ventech was really easy to read and for customers to use. It had a nice big display. |
| 02:25:48.86 | Ed Fotch | it. |
| 02:26:08.08 | Charlie Francis | little because of the solar it didn't have as much light in the screen At nighttime, Thank you. There was lots of great options. It had a dome light on top of it. It was simple to use. Went offline four times a day. We asked for explanation. And we're checking references on Ventec right now. They seem to be a good alternative for digital. But the references, we want to make sure, because they're not a nationwide company. They don't have the management infrastructure behind them and one of our neighbors uses them San Rafal and but the neighbor also uses digital and I think that you know we want to make sure that the references are solid on Ventec before we move forward with a recommendation |
| 02:27:02.40 | Charlie Francis | So overall, our recommendation is to bring back to you a fiscal impact to replace all of our single street space meters with the IPS single space smart meters. We want to short list digital payment and Ventec as possible vendors for the pay station installation in the city parking lots. Dixon is gonna provide the addition, Dixon Julie will provide the additional information from each vendor, follow up questions, and then we'll analyze purchase versus lease costs and determine overall fiscal impact and come back to the city council more than likely on May 19th with a recommendation. and we want to ensure that all the parking technology vendor agreements incorporate performance requirements, liquidated damages for system uptimes and revenue reconciliation and any other enforcement mechanisms in the contract that we can use to make sure that we get what we pay for. So that concludes the staff report, but I'm sure you have lots of questions, and Julie's here to help me answer those. Well, probably to answer them because I can't get into that much detail. |
| 02:28:06.52 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:28:06.78 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 02:28:06.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. Would you like to start? you Yep. On the... On digital, the question would be, you What kind of service program do they have and where are they based? |
| 02:28:22.17 | Julie Dixon | So the company is based in Indianapolis currently, and they have local representatives. So there would actually be West Coast representatives so that they would have service requirements for 24-hour response. And that's something that was really important. What Charlie highlighted was the performance requirements, that there would definitely be strict requirements outlining service requests and basically response times. The other piece that's very important is the warranties that go along with it. Part of the vetting that we're looking at for both of the shortlisted vendors is to really define and identify the warranty support as well as that field response times too. But typically all of the vendors that you see here on this shortlist basically have those built-in warranty programs as well as the customer service support. |
| 02:29:03.71 | Jill Hoffman | You said Ventec is out of Petaluma? |
| 02:29:06.02 | Julie Dixon | Yeah, they're very close. |
| 02:29:07.70 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, wow. Okay. So I found the vent tech was very easy, especially with the board as far as lighting up, I observed people not having too much problem with that one at all. |
| 02:29:21.75 | Julie Dixon | The enforcement officers in particular, especially on the weekends, the tourists and the visitors had very positive experiences with the machines for Ventec. And that was probably the most common response that we had, especially from enforcement, was because the customers really responded to the Ventec machines. I think the part that Charlie highlights right now is really the reference checks right now, I think are what's going to come into the short list right now between digital and Ventec to really see the outcome. |
| 02:29:48.67 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, and what really, go ahead. |
| 02:29:49.82 | Charlie Francis | THE END OF I was just going to say that their back end is more old school back end. It's like the difference between a green screen computer and a mobile phone. So you don't get the same kind of robust error reporting, management reporting out of the Ventec system. Although, I'm sure they have plans to move as the industry is moving towards that. |
| 02:30:09.16 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. And that does concern me, the one offline, because If you remember with these other machines, |
| 02:30:18.98 | Julie Dixon | Right. |
| 02:30:19.23 | Jill Hoffman | went out on a Saturday You're dead in the water. |
| 02:30:22.40 | Julie Dixon | Absolutely. I think that's one of the things that, I mean, especially Elliott, because Elliott helped manage all of the machines on the back-end solution, and we're working right now with Ventec on the follow-up. We've actually already sent and received some additional information from all of the vendors, and that's really where the vetting comes into play, so that ultimately with the recommendation that comes back to council, we'll be based on that response, the thorough vetting of the references, and really looking through all of the details that are happening. It just so happens that because of the APARC, Parktoria bankruptcy on Friday, kind of threw us for a little bit of a loop. We weren't quite prepared for that to happen. But in the meantime, we think we have three solid vendor recommendations that are up there. We just want to be very thorough in the final vetting process. |
| 02:31:02.43 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:31:06.46 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. |
| 02:31:11.80 | Unknown | So I'm just curious with our finalists here, are they installed anywhere in Marin County as well, or the Bay Area close by? Both digital. |
| 02:31:23.81 | Charlie Francis | Both Digital and Ventic are in San Rafael and |
| 02:31:28.47 | Julie Dixon | So, IPS, so the single space credit card meters, they're the common ones that are all over the Bay Area. San Francisco just finished installing about 25,000 of them. So Berkeley, Oakland, all of our major surrounding cities have them as well as San Rafael, et cetera. And like Charlie said, digital and Ventec are installed currently in San Rafael, but you'll find they're really kind of all over the place in the Bay Area. Digital more prevalent just because it's a substantially larger company. Ventec is the interesting thing about Ventec and actually to your point about the user screens and sizes. Ventec also has a transit option, which digital offers as well, but they're also very commonly used for transit tickets and to be able to buy bus fare tickets. So you'll see them in places like Las Vegas along the Las Vegas Strip. |
| 02:32:20.88 | Unknown | So I think, yeah, the Vintec has the VIN station and the 400. I guess they've got the two. Does San Rafael use both those models or just one? Both? Okay. |
| 02:32:36.10 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question with the bankruptcy of APAR Phase four, when would that be started and completed? And then what else would be after that? When would we be able to have them installed? Whatever we could. |
| 02:32:44.32 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. When would we be able to? The current schedule before the bankruptcy was to come back to the City Council on May 19th with a purchase or lease recommendation and then installation to occur before the summer traffic comes. If it turns out that with the bankruptcy that our options are limited, we may have to come back sooner with a purchase or lease recommendation or an interim solution. So we reached out, Julie did, reached out to Digital. Digital can provide 14 machines, which is what we need, within 10 days? 10 days. So if we wanted to go with Digital, if you wanted to make that decision tonight, 10 days from now we could have Digital up and running in the parking lot. |
| 02:33:37.10 | Jill Hoffman | How many units could they have ready? |
| 02:33:40.70 | Julie Dixon | So Ventec, we have to do some more vetting with them, and it's just the difference in sizes of the companies, and so we'd have to do some build-out in time with them. The typical delivery timeframe for the average meter vendor is about 12 weeks usually from the longest of the lead time. So that's what I would anticipate, but we have to vet that thoroughly with Ventec at this point. We've also worked on some alternatives with the single space meter vendor too, and those are relatively quick as well within a couple of weeks. Yeah, exactly. |
| 02:34:09.98 | Unknown | . |
| 02:34:10.91 | Unknown | And, and... |
| 02:34:10.94 | Unknown | and the other side. |
| 02:34:12.85 | Unknown | Okay. I have a question that I have a sense has been asked before. So is there a reason why we can't do the credit card enabled single space? They're so easy, you know, in the city parking lots as well. |
| 02:34:30.38 | Charlie Francis | Well, the quick answer to the question is yes, you can. I mean, it's intuitive. The driver gets out of the car and knows where to go and what to do. But it would require installing poles in every space, and you lose a lot of flexibility in terms of reconfigurations of the parking lot in the future. |
| 02:34:53.33 | Unknown | Would it be more cost effective to go with IPA? |
| 02:34:55.32 | Charlie Francis | It would be more. So the cost per single-space meter is less than a pay station, but you need 400 or so single-space meters, whereas you only need 14 pay stations and single-space meters. So, for example, if we put in 14 single-space pay stations, that would be approximately $135,000 purchase price. And the cost of an IPS single space meter is $500 a meter. So our existing streets have 200, so we're looking at another $100,000 for the single space meters. Now, how many parking spots altogether were there? Do you remember? . So 600 times 500, so you'd be looking at $300,000. So the difference in price is only $70,000 to put single-space meters everywhere. |
| 02:35:50.23 | Unknown | So you actually raised a good point, which is parking reconfiguration, which I personally hope really doesn't happen. But I guess it does pose another question, embarking down this road at a time when there's a lot of controversial discussion and everything. So how will that play with the contract, contracting? |
| 02:36:13.59 | Julie Dixon | And that's actually one of the reasons why we've identified for 14 pay stations. Right now there is an abundance of meters in the parking lots today, almost too many for that matter. And so what we've done is taken into account of what the future potential impacts are in the parking lots, and that's also identified with the design of where the 14 pay stations would go. So that basically along the access flow, so that folks that are basically heading into the commerce area so that as you're leaving the parking lot the machines would still be easily accessible with one or two placed on Is that the south side of the parking lot? Forgive me in terms of the direction that we're pointing in. On the water side of the parking lot. And so because of there may be future configuration changes, that will also be able to be addressed. I also want to address to your point about the single space meters in all of the parking lot spaces. We actually discussed this quite extensively with the selection committee, with enforcement in particular. One of the things we also have to think about is besides the physical cost of buying the infrastructure there's also ongoing monthly fees associated with the single space meters and in your parking lots you also have permits and you know your commuter permits and your different residential parking programs so you would actually be paying a monthly fee on infrastructure in a space that was actually occupied by a car that had a permit on it. And it was something that the committee discussed quite extensively so that you are actually going to be paying for a service that's not needed because of the permits. And that's where this multi-space, the pay stations come into play. It's more cost effective in the law. |
| 02:37:46.01 | Unknown | So in other words, the IPS single space meters outside the city parking lot will take the resident cards, but there are less of them, so the hit is less than in the city. |
| 02:37:58.52 | Julie Dixon | So that's an excellent point. Today, your on-street parking meters, the single space meters today, do not take the residential parking card. Ultimately, the IPS single space meters potentially could take the residential card, that would be a policy decision that would have to be made. So to your point that with the residential parking card, they would be able to potentially use that for on-street and off-street, depending on policy. I know we're not discussing that today. But for your off-street parking lot locations, it's the matter of the permits that people that basically buy the prefix time, they have a single space meter in the parking space That permit Parker is basically you're kind of basically paying a fee for the meter when you have somebody with a permit in that space So you're kind of you're not making any money back off |
| 02:38:55.15 | Unknown | So going back to the street parking with the IPS, so what I heard you say for the street IPS is that the technology is there for the resident cards, and that would be a policy decision by the council. |
| 02:39:10.47 | Charlie Francis | It's going to be a little bit more. The technology is there, but it would require programming costs. So that programming would be an additional fee, and it would be quite extensive programming because our residential parking program as it currently exists is pretty complicated to program. |
| 02:39:16.28 | Unknown | So that program |
| 02:39:17.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:29.42 | Unknown | And could that be integrated with Ventec or digital payment? Because I know right now the residents have three free hours a day. And if we had different vendors, could that be integrated? |
| 02:39:42.67 | Charlie Francis | The current program can be continued using these two technologies. Thank you. |
| 02:39:48.00 | Unknown | No, I know it could be continued using either technology. My question is if we had two different vendors, like the IPS on the street and then a |
| 02:39:53.79 | Charlie Francis | on the street. |
| 02:39:54.58 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:39:54.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:58.04 | Unknown | lot system in the parking lot If the council made the policy decision to allow the residents to also have the three hours, you know, cumulative on the street, could those two systems be integrated to track that? |
| 02:40:15.42 | Julie Dixon | So ultimately, yes, I think the important part too with the short listing, process right now all of the vendors were challenged with the residential parking policy and we said three hours free per day tell us how you would make that work because the card that is being used today is a proprietary card relating to the APARC solution so all of the vendors proposed different ideas some pretty interesting ones and some pretty simple ones Ultimately, that will be part of the shortlist vetting process. But ultimately, you will have two vendors. You're going to have a single space vendor and a pay station vendor, and there will be integration development of whatever that solution is, and that will be part of the negotiations, but it is anticipated that it would work across the board. But again, policy would ultimately be. |
| 02:41:07.55 | Charlie Francis | Yeah, and I want to point out that it would not be part of this purchase, it would have to be something that occurred downstream, because it's not easy to program all the requirements have to be gathered, put in, |
| 02:41:22.40 | Unknown | I see. So it would not be part of the negotiations this time around. So resident parking would remain in the city parking lot, but not on the street. |
| 02:41:26.26 | Charlie Francis | So resident, Correct. Part of the negotiations is do you have the capability to do it, but we're not gonna, program it to do it because it requires a lot more effort. |
| 02:41:41.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:43.61 | Jill Hoffman | Now, when you pull into the packing, we'll say packing you put your time in, your money in, When you pull out, it clears. Is that right? |
| 02:41:57.06 | Julie Dixon | With the parking sensors, that's what is supposed to happen. |
| 02:42:00.27 | Jill Hoffman | But the single spaces unit that you would have, if you put those in the lot, they would still remain on the time someone could pull in and use someone else's time rather than the clearing. Is that right? |
| 02:42:13.70 | Julie Dixon | Yeah. So you're talking about the parking sensors and parking sensors haven't been used for a while, right? Just making sure. Okay. So to your point, the parking sensors basically haven't been operational for quite some time, but what was intended to happen with the reset, that was the original intention. |
| 02:42:26.56 | Unknown | Your point. |
| 02:42:36.02 | Julie Dixon | RIGHT NOW, WITH ANY OF THE SOLUTIONS THAT ARE PROPOSED, THERE IS NO There's no inclusion of meter reset or sensor technology at this point in time. It's strictly pay at the meter, pay for your time. |
| 02:42:42.02 | Jonathon Goldman | that system. |
| 02:42:43.03 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:42:47.09 | Mary Wagner | It's a good thing. |
| 02:42:50.96 | Julie Dixon | Use your time and go. Nothing about resetting or anything like that today. |
| 02:43:01.29 | Unknown | So with the bankruptcy of our current system, it... i'm not sure if that was just um... you know a fluke bad timing or if that suggests consolidation in the industry and i guess my my question would be you As we go into these negotiations, will there be something built in in terms of that, like a... Performance requirements and probationary, you know, an exit clause in case things go south. Or they can't, they make promises to certain features and then they don't live up to those features. |
| 02:43:50.80 | Julie Dixon | And I think that's where... I think that's where the liquidated damages and performance requirements really come into play. So I will say this, there's no secret in the industry of the challenges that I'll say APARC customers in general have gone through because you are not alone in the experience that you've gone through and some of the other customers have had similar challenges. So all of the vendors understood, even in responding to the RFI, like when we did the vetting of the original draft document and things like that, everybody knew that Sausalito's had a rough time with parking. And if you were going to come here to have a very serious solution in basically what we were looking for, We were very clear in the solicitation regarding performance requirements, and that's also why it's rather atypical these days because the vendor technologies are so proven in the industry today that it's very rare that vendors will go into a head-to-head pilot the way that we did it in the parking lot one. But because of the nuances of what's happened here with APARC, the vendors understood this is a high profile high profile location where it's been a rough go with parking and so they understood why and they all really want your business so it's a little bit of an anomaly compared to what's really the industry trends have been but they've all been very clear on the fact that the performance requirements for whoever is selected are very strict and we also identified in the RFI that there was a potential for a bond requirement and all of those pieces and components that tie into that as well. |
| 02:45:24.79 | Charlie Francis | And it's also a reason why we're looking at leasing rather than purchasing, because a lease can be terminated and equipment come out and put new ones in. |
| 02:45:35.68 | Jill Hoffman | Any other questions? |
| 02:45:36.08 | Charlie Francis | And we'll be presenting those options to |
| 02:45:37.97 | Jill Hoffman | city council. Okay. All right. So moving on to public comment. Anyone from the public like to comment on this item? |
| 02:45:39.12 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 02:45:47.83 | Jill Hoffman | All right, seeing none, we'll bring it back. There's no action. Any final comments? Right. |
| 02:45:56.64 | Unknown | My comment is a big thank you to the police department for that wonderful packet that was put together for the testing with the mapping and everything. You know, I must confess, I didn't get through everything. I did, you know, check out all the, but I didn't get through the, but I mean, it's just truly quite impressive to get that. It was very organized and just really wonderful. And also a big thank you to all of our citizen volunteers who stepped up and went through the parking lot and just tested all of these systems. They really did a great public service in helping us out there. you |
| 02:46:44.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:44.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:47.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you all, and we're all excited to see that it's just a couple of months away. So thanks again, or sooner. Yeah, thank you. All right, moving on. We move on to item 60 Public Works Department report. |
| 02:46:58.31 | Unknown | Thank you, Elliot. |
| 02:47:00.49 | Jill Hoffman | And that's our director of public works, Jonathan Goldman. |
| 02:47:08.15 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just let me bring this up. |
| 02:47:17.16 | Jonathon Goldman | This is part two of a presentation that I started at our last meeting. Just to kind of provide some additional information on the status of a number of our capital improvement projects. And then also talk about our maintenance division as well. defer to Andy Davidson, who's our senior civil engineer in engineering, and Lauren Umbertus, who's the public works maintenance division manager for most of this presentation. And rather than saddle them with the introductory slides that in large part you and the community saw at the last meeting, I'm just going to fly through those. We have made a few changes and have even made some changes in this presentation since it was distributed in the packet. So by all means, if somebody sees something they have questions about or wants to understand why something's different today than it was two weeks ago or something like that, please feel free to get a hold of me. I am going to let Andy Davidson start with some more details on the traffic and transportation projects. As I think I told you at the last meeting, we had at that point relatively recent benefit of finally getting our pavement condition index reporting from the PTAP consultant that MTC arranged for us we've been working between the last council meeting and now on looking at the data that we got back we've identified some quality issues with the database but wanted to share with you the way the pavement management system works the information that it takes from pavement condition and then automatically run some algorithms that were actually required to run and report back to Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Andy can take you through some of the results of those algorithms and ideally point out some humorous errors in the database. And then from there, turn the presentation over. Lauren, I'm not running away, so you're welcome to ask me questions. We'll certainly be here at the end as well. So with that, Andy Davidson. |
| 02:49:40.68 | Andy Davidson | Thank you, Jonathan. I've been challenged to do this quickly, so I will attempt to do it. So as Jonathan mentioned, he had spoke about a lot of this at the prior council meeting, so I am just going to dive into some new areas. So in 2012, the pavement in Sausalito was assessed with a pavement condition index of 68. And you can see here, this is that assessment. You can see here where that resided within other communities here in Marin. |
| 02:50:13.02 | Andy Davidson | In 2014, also as Jonathan just mentioned, the pavement condition index, or PCI, was reassessed. And when the PCI was determined to be ahead of an index of 68, which coincidentally is what it was in 2012. Now the PCI is calculated by use of a program, it's known as Street Smarts, that takes input from field inspections. And these inputs include existing pavement distresses, such as cracking, potholes potholes, vertical displacements, and utility cuts. The table here shows a qualitative comparison of street conditions and the PCI range. It also gives typical maintenance for those particular conditions. So Street Smarts runs through its model and looks at different scenarios over a five-year work plan and provides a recommended list of repairs and streets to be repaired. The scenarios are using a current budget. Here we have an annual budget of $575,000. Maintaining the current PCI, which your PCI is now 68. Raise the PCI by 5, which would bump it up to 73. And also an unconstrained or unlimited budget process. for street repairs and that would actually run your PCI up to 82. There's a note here that if there's no work done in the next five years, the PCI will drop down to 58. I should have mentioned that with the current 68, it's considered fair. And as it drops, you can see what happens. So this is an output of the model for the current budget forecast. It's a five-year output. That's all it is. It's just the computer spitting out numbers and information. The output shows highlighted streets, which would be repaired in this case in 2015, and it shows the method of repair. We did note some errors in it, which is, I don't know if they're humorous or not, but they, as an indication, it includes marineship, which we all know is not an asset for the city to maintain. So those things need to be extracted. There are also some other streets that are very minor, but recommendations are for full replacement, and that might not be the appropriate way to spend money, though those streets may need some capital improvements. Selection of streets, again, this is just a draft and it's just a computer run, but selection of streets also depends on capital improvement projects that we know are coming up. In your last meeting, Jonathan mentioned the urgent sewer project on Main Street where the whole street really is in bad shape and it will be replaced as part of that sanitary sewer replacement project. Also, the selection of streets needs to go through the process with the city manager and, of course, the council. So here's the scenario that was run 2015. You can see some pretty colors. You'll see different colors and different streets highlighted. Some of the repairs include full repair, crack seal, slurry seal, reconstruction of base, and asphalt. Moving on to next year, which is 2017. Fewer streets to be addressed, 2018, and then finally the last year is 2019. |
| 02:53:45.54 | Andy Davidson | of this run. Uh, doing that run, uh, with the current budget, uh, it would extend the life of streets that had been worked on by eight and a half years. The repaired segment PCI would be improved on an average of 18. And if all the work on all the streets identified was performed, it would raise, uh, the network's PCI, uh, up to 73 by the end of 2019. Okay. |
| 02:54:15.34 | Andy Davidson | I touched on these. These are just the scenarios that were discussed earlier and limitations of the scenarios. Well, this is just simply the output I've mentioned several times, and we have other things to take into account than just the computer-generating information. Additional work that we've got coming up this fiscal year are pavement markings on Bridgeway. You've probably seen the no parking signs heading north from Napa to Gate 6. that work will start later this week and continue markings on Bridgeway. You've probably seen the no parking signs heading north from Napa to Gate 6. That work will start later this week and continue on into next week. Dig outs in bicycle hazard areas on northbound Bridgeway, around Coloma, and getting out towards Gate 5. There are additional road-based failures that I think Jonathan mentioned at your last meeting. I'm not going to talk about this. I think Jonathan did touch on these items. Storm drain projects Jonathan did speak about. This was the outfall at the bottom of Coloma, where Jonathan was talking about the whalers and the braces failing. I want to get to the ADA. So the ADA, and the reason I wanted to stop here was that the project has started, one of the projects has started down at Princess and Bridgeway. You've probably seen it if you've driven through at that location. Four existing curb ramps are going to be removed and replaced, and one new curb ramp will be constructed at the northwest corner, which will allow easier crossing of Princess itself. |
| 02:55:44.07 | Andy Davidson | Now, those are capital items that I touched on quickly. In engineering, we spend a lot of time on non-capital projects, private development, stormwater permit compliance, and encroachment permits. And it's not just me. It's Alex Chan, who is your new assistant civil engineer, and I'm just so happy to have him. So encroachment permits. This table shows last two-plus years of encroachment permits that were processed. And I will spend a couple minutes on encroachment permits because unless you're at my house, you probably don't speak about them at the dinner table. THE FAMILY IS An encroachment permit is required whenever an entity wishes to perform work within the public right-of-way. It's a permission to temporarily access or occupy the public's property for a non-public use. For example, if you wanted to put a dumpster in front of your house for a period of time, you would need an encroachment permit. If you had to remove or replace your sanitary sewer and that work is extended out into the roadway or the city's right-of-way, you or your contractor would need an encroachment permit. Those are kind of typical ones that we run into. Not only do private entities require encroachment permits when they work within your public right-of-way, public agencies like the MMWD and PG&E, when they're doing planned work, also require encroachment permits. However, if they've got an emergency, they just go in and take care of the business, and they may or may not apply for an encroachment permit afterwards, the next Monday, for example. One of the really important parts of an encroachment permit, and that's something I learned here, is the temporary transfer of risk from the city onto the encroachment permit holder. As an example, if someone was injured related to an encroachment permit they had, if someone was injured in a project that had an encroachment permit, it wasn't theirs, it was somebody else's, there might very well be a lawsuit and the city very well might be drawn into that lawsuit. Typically, we require contractors to name the city as an additional insured, which protects you from lawsuits. Their insurance coverage would have to pay for the city's defense. Encroachment permits also have standard conditions. There's 38 of them that are just general. Often we will add encroachment permit conditions that are site specific to make it right for that particular location. design review, and building permit review last year and the beginning of this year. We also provide in engineering, we provide review of private development projects during the entitlement phase. That would be before or part of the completeness application process before going to the planning commission or to the zoning administrator. We review the projects for layout, encroachment outside the property lines, grading and drainage, or things that catch our eye that make us think, hey, this may become an issue for the planning commission, or if it unfortunately were to go through the planning commission or the zoning administrator, it becomes an issue during construction, and they might have to come back to the planning commission or the zoning administrator. So we're trying to pick things up ahead of time the best we can. During the building permit phase, after the entitlements phase, we also review projects using those conditions of approval as sort of our checklist. The conditions are generally broad enough so that we can get into the nuts and bolts of specific items. |
| 02:59:01.56 | Unknown | that. |
| 02:59:17.44 | Andy Davidson | Unfortunately, for those of you who have been in or currently are in this process or those of you who will be, it takes time. It's an iterative process. We review drawings. We make comments. They go back to the applicant. The applicant looks at the comments, responds to them one way or another, and we do try and get it done as quickly as possible. I know it's never fast enough for those people who are waiting, and we appreciate that fact. Stormwater compliance. This past rainy season, we had 10 active sites that were inspected. We inspected those sites 27 times during that period. During the wet season, we visit sites where erosion and sedimentation control is required. We want to make sure that only clean stormwater leaves a construction site. We do this by requiring erosion control plans be prepared as part of the building permit review process and then visit those sites before during and hopefully after rain events to verify that the control features are installed maintained and operating correctly and with that I'm going to turn it over to Laura Lawrence? |
| 03:00:32.75 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you, Andy. It's a pleasure to come back in front of you and talk a little bit about what we do as a department. We have right now a number of great employees that I'll go into right now. But to begin with, the Department of Public Works on the maintenance side is made up of the Director of Public Works, Jonathan Goldman, as you're well aware, myself, Division Manager, Kent Basso, We currently have now 11 employees that make up our streets maintenance workers, our fleet mechanic, our landscape workers, and our custodians, and our wastewater maintenance workers right now. And then our sanitary sewer coordinator, of course, is Pat Guasco. So first off I'll talk a little bit about the maintenance division. many things that those gentlemen do on a daily basis. There are some some highlights here that we can point out you'll see that the maintenance workers, in the course of their jobs maintaining our open spaces, doing vegetation management along all of our roads, keeping those roads clear, cleaning out storm drains. In this last year, in the year of 2014, they pulled 176 tons of green material and disposed of that in conjunction with Bay City's Refuge, who leaves us dumpsters. And to give you an idea what that actually represents, about each dumpster is about three tons worth of green waste. So that's close to 60 dumpsters a year. So we're filling a dumpster full of green waste every week. That's a lot of that. This last year, we didn't have a significant winter, but we did have a couple storms in there, and I'm happy to announce that we didn't have any claims that were filed against the city as a result of overflowing storm drains. There was some damage. We had some trees down, but in this last year, we did not have any claims that I'm aware of that were brought against the city for our storm drains being filled with leaves or any other kind of debris that we weren't able to take care of. And finally, there's another item down at the very bottom. DPW maintenance staff over the course of the year collected 29 tons of land-filled waste. That's stuff that's being left on the road abandoned equipment and and just other stuff that we end up finding in the course of our work so there's a lot of stuff that leaves this city that we collect on a yearly basis |
| 03:02:50.70 | Unknown | and |
| 03:02:59.68 | Lauren Umbertus | Some other little notes about the maintenance division here. We hired a third-party firm, a grinding contractor, sidewall grinding contractor, to come into town this last year and they removed offsets. Those are those are hazards in our sidewalks that would cause someone to trip. Those end up becoming claims against the city. They can become very expensive depending on who does the falling and what kind of injuries they sustain. So we did hire a group. They came out here and ground approximately 3,000 square feet of sidewalk. And if you walk around town, you'll notice on some of our sidewalks there's a different kind of consistency there. And so they started at the north end of town. They went along Bridgeway. They got some of Old Town in there. and did some other areas in Hurricane Gulch as well. Other activities that we get involved in in DPW are we get calls about people requesting pruning of trees within the public right-of-way. So, And this last year, we received 50 public right-of-way requests to either remove or alter a tree. And to give you an idea what that entails, we generally go out, inspect the tree, make sure that it is within the public right-of-way, determine what type of work is going to go on, At the time that that pruning or that removal goes and takes place, we're usually there on site or at least informed to make sure that we understand what's happening. And you'd be surprised at how many of these come our way. And it takes up a lot of time for the supervisor, Ken Basso. He deals with a lot of those directly. And finally, one of the other items that I think was a nice project for us to complete this year is we and the North Bay Conservation Corps replaced the entirety of the Filbert-Casnew Street steps. We ended up also including a new handrail on that location. So that was, we did about half of that and then we, hired North Bay Conservation Corps to do the rest of that. So that's a nice little project between Casno and Philbert there. The other important part of DPW, in fact, a high visibility part of our work is the sanitary sewers. And we maintain the city's gravity sewer system and we tie into the system with Sal Saludo Marin City Sanitary District. And we have a great deal of responsibility to maintain that system and as you'll note on here, And as you've heard many times before, we're under an EPA order to prevent sanitary sewer overflows from occurring. You'll see here this little table right here talks about cleaning frequency. So we have about 28 miles of sewer system, but there are certain sections of that where we have to hit that multiple times. And this is a good indication of what we need to do here. So certain locations and certain segments, we're having to do at least twice a year, and some of them four times a year. And so you can see here the number of pipes and the length of our system and how often we're cleaning that. And there should be another note in here on this next page Thank you. We have approximately 27 or so miles worth of sanitary sewer, and over the course of the last year, we cleaned 59 miles worth of that system. And again, going back to that other note, many of those locations are places that we have to go back to on a very regular basis. The next item is part of what we track. It's in our computer management maintenance system. And so we're going to actual locations, pulling manhole covers, inspecting those, and making sure that there aren't roots and other types of debris that are collecting in our sewer system. So 7,500 individual site inspections by the sewer maintenance workers as they're doing their regular job of cleaning the sewer system. So there's a lot of that that takes place, that takes up time. And one of the other things that they're responsible for are USAs. So USAs are underground service alerts. That's whenever... There is an excavation project anywhere that happens in the city by either a private or public entity. We are responsible for sending out a crew to identify and locate our sewer system so that they aren't damaged in the process of that work. PG&E. has been in town quite a bit this last year doing a lot of gas repairs. And so they've kept us quite busy in making sure that they're not hitting any of our sanitary sewer lines and causing any problems there. But you can see that in 2014, we conducted over 499 underground service alert inspections. Some more facts about the sanitary sewer maintenance crews. We were able to repair or replace 1,100 linear feet of public sanitary sewer lines in 2014. |
| 03:07:51.94 | Unknown | uh, |
| 03:07:57.90 | Lauren Umbertus | I'm not sure. You'll also see that here, we, since 1991, part of our, A responsibility or part of the city's responsibility through ordinance is that private sewer laterals be inspected when a building served by waste plumbing is remodeled or proposed by sale. This is one of the tasks that Pat Walsko spends a lot of his time on. He reviews those private sewer laterals to make sure that they're in proper condition, and if they need to be replaced, he manages that process. And that takes up quite a bit of time. You'll also see here that part of what we have done is we have adopted a sewer system management plan. This basically is the roadmap for how we maintain our system and how we judge our success and how we basically take a look at what we do, how we do it. And if anyone wants to come in from an outside agency, they can take a look and see what our responsibilities are towards that. And there are some links there. And you've seen this before in previous council meetings. As here's a quick description, it basically establishes the policies for the city regarding allocation of resources. So this is what gives us our roadmap for the sewer maintenance crew on how we maintain our system and how we spend money on that. And in the next few years, we're going to have a lot of work that's going to be going on in the city. And I just want to say now it's going to be fantastic when it's all done. But it's going to be all over town, and people are going to probably be impacted by it. But ultimately, it will be good for the community and good for the city. |
| 03:09:40.31 | Lauren Umbertus | So one of the things that Jonathan has actually looked into and has pointed out here to me and for you to know, we've contacted Marin Municipal Water District, and what we're going to try to do now as one of our tasks is we're going to start taking a look at using recycled water for the cleaning of our sewer systems. Right now, we tap into fire hydrants. and now that's not probably such a great idea if we can find other sources of water. So we're looking into trying to find reclaimed water sources. so that we can clean our system with that, and that will leave the potable water for the people who need it. We're also starting to take a look at what might be needed for irrigation too. We've opened up that conversation with Moran Municipal Water District, and there are a number of rules and regulations about using reclaimed and treated water irrigated and landscaped areas and I brought some of those those challenges up last year when we were discussing some drought so We are looking at that, and based upon what the Moran Municipal Water District comes forward with in terms of water regulations, we're going to continue to look at what we can do to reduce our use of irrigation and use of potable water for irrigation sources. So that is about it in a nutshell. I mean, we do plenty of other things. You see our guys in orange shirts all around town. But I did want to give a couple points and kind of give some information there. So if there are any questions for either myself or Andy or Jonathan, we're ready. Thank you. |
| 03:11:17.93 | Jill Hoffman | Just one quick question. When you say picking up water from Lagunitas, |
| 03:11:21.24 | Unknown | that. |
| 03:11:27.97 | Jill Hoffman | How would that be done? I had a car wash up in Terralinda and I tapped into that system up there for recycling on my car wash. |
| 03:11:39.18 | Lauren Umbertus | So the one... you direct way is that the the vector that we currently use now has a 500 gallon tank and so we would use that we would fill that up on occasion when we needed it so that would be one source of water and in our discussions we're always talking about you know how we would go about |
| 03:11:55.82 | Charlie Francis | Thank you. |
| 03:12:00.53 | Lauren Umbertus | bringing water, getting water, having some source. But that would be one way of doing it, is just simply taking the truck and filling it. |
| 03:12:13.76 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question on with these, Glad you touched on some of the issues relating to the drought and lack of water and and the new state mandated restrictions How are you responding in other ways or do you anticipate we'll have to make other adjustments because of these water restrictions? |
| 03:12:31.12 | Lauren Umbertus | Well, if you remember the report that I gave last year, we're putting a lot onto the staff, as we've done in the past, that they are responsible for taking a look at their fields and working with trying to keep them green as best they can, but also being judicious about their use of water. And when I went back and did the research and took a look at what we've done over the number of years, we've done a very good job of that. We have not really gotten to the point now where we've said, you know, we're going to cut off water at these areas. quite yet. We haven't made that decision. It may come, especially based upon some of the guidelines. And I recall one of the guidelines being medians are one of those areas that are supposed to be restricted towards their use of water. So we've started to uptick a little bit of the water use over the last couple of months, just because everything was getting so dry and brown. So we wanted to make sure that we kept as much green, but we're going to have to take a look at what those regulations are going to be, and we're going to have to act accordingly. And we did a great job last year of reducing the water. I'm curious to see how they're going to judge us this year, whether or not we have to do. you know, 5 to 10% more than we did last year. Uh, I did hear something along the lines that those communities that have done well in reducing their water usage. We'll not have to reduce as much, but there's some question as to whether or not that's going to take place. So we'll just have to see what they come back with. |
| 03:14:09.82 | Unknown | I have a quick question. You know, the big expanse of the green grass by the tennis courts, that's privately owned, is it? That's the Marinship, and that is. |
| 03:14:21.16 | Lauren Umbertus | That's the Marinship and that is the city's property. So we have that property down there by the tennis courts, correct. |
| 03:14:24.07 | Unknown | So we have that property down there. Okay, and do we currently water that whole area? I notice sometimes there are kind of slushy areas. Is that... What is the plan right now in terms of any adjustments? So right now... |
| 03:14:38.86 | Lauren Umbertus | So right now we are watering all of our green spaces. So the Marinship is among that group, and that is currently being watered. And there are certain areas that do collect that particular location. Based upon what its previous use would be wasn't wasn't necessarily a perfectly built field so it does tend to get some water spots, but that is currently being watered now as is Dunphy Park Gabrielson Robin Sweeney here in MLK. |
| 03:15:10.10 | Unknown | Yeah, I was specifically asking about that Marin Ship area, because I know Dunphy Park and, you know, those areas are used a lot. But that one, it is used, but it's not, you know, it's not the soccer field and the, you know. |
| 03:15:18.10 | Unknown | Right. |
| 03:15:18.35 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 03:15:24.68 | Lauren Umbertus | In my own thoughts on how we're going to eventually approach our watering, depending upon what those regulations are going to come back as, we're going to have to take a look at those locations and say what are priorities potentially. And if you recall in the report that I gave last year, I focused on those locations because those are the really high water use locations. Anywhere where you have a lawn that's of any significant size, those have a lot of use. Our medians here and some of our parks, as a percentage of our total water use are not very high. So if we really needed to come back and dramatically reduce the amount of water that we used as a community, that would be a decision that perhaps one of those fields is allowed to go brown while retaining some of the other fields. In the discussions that I've had, one of the things that we want to promote is that uh, especially here at City Hall. that the community can come and use our law. And if they need to reduce water on their own properties, because we want to be able to provide a place so that the community can come together and actually enjoy that, rather than everyone having their own lawn. So if that's something that we can do, that would be great. And if we have to say, one field we have to sacrifice in order to meet the goals that are mandated, then perhaps that's a decision that we'll have to make. |
| 03:16:49.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:16:50.34 | Lauren Umbertus | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:16:54.62 | Lauren Umbertus | Thank you. |
| 03:16:54.67 | Unknown | Well, |
| 03:17:12.29 | Neil Whitelaw | Neil Whitelaw, a resident across the street at 408 B Street. resident of South Florida for 48 years as of April Fool's Day. Give me a marker to look back and see how foolish I've been. If I haven't been foolish, there's something wrong. It sounds like you're doing a great job. I wonder about some of the streets. my residence across the street on B Street, the middle of the road there's a three inch deep crack I've measured it with a tape measure It's been there I don't know how many years. memorize where it is so I don't trip and break my nose. but I wonder if there's doing anything about that. Also, I don't know if you're the right department to handle the timing of crossing streets with the lights. I know there was a little girl here at the last city council meeting that pleaded to make The lights. a little bit longer so she could get across. I can no longer get across Bridgeway at Johnson Street with the traffic light Even though I'm primed to go the second it changes, but I cannot get to the other side. before the light changes. I'm not as worried about the cars because I think they'll see me. I'm worried about getting struck by a bicycle come roaring through because they don't want to stop for the lights anyway. And if they've got a green light, They'll go hellbent for leather. I'm not sure. Again, completing and requesting that you agendize and fund. putting flashing Lights. embedded in the crosswalks in Saus Lido. I got struck again. Hit and run on Saturday. I JUST COULDN'T. I'm late coming here to the meeting today. because I was just getting a scan to see if I broke any bones in my left. foot. which got run over by somebody turning into a crosswalk. Um, Please do something about these things. You're doing a good job. I'm getting tired of getting struck every five years. Thank you. |
| 03:19:31.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Anyone else? public comment? Seeing none, we'll close public comment, bring it up here. Any other comments? |
| 03:19:42.82 | Unknown | I just want to thank staff for their good work in progress with this presentation. |
| 03:19:53.14 | Unknown | Yeah, I just add I concur with that. And I just add I've been saying all along infrastructure is the most important thing that we're going to face over the next number of years. Most of our decisions, many of our decisions will be around choices there. And I think we have a great department to help us make those choices. Thank you. |
| 03:20:16.58 | Jill Hoffman | I APPRECIATE THE PRESENTATION AND I REITERATE THE BOTH THE APPRECIATION AND FOCUS ON INFRASTRUCTURE AND TO BRING UP ALL THE MAINTENANCE AND ALL THE OTHER areas that Public Works takes care of. Thank you all. OK moving on. We move on to item. We'll call it 6E, which is which was previously for F on our consent calendar. The authorization the city manager to execute a right of entry onto the beauty property in favor of open space, Sausalito. subject to review and approval by the city attorney and uh Councilmember Pfeiffer, I think you have an issue on that was on the consent item. |
| 03:20:59.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:59.90 | Unknown | Yes, yes, just very quickly, a couple of things. Just looking at the item 4F, the staff report, it has one comment. It says, you know, the time period is to end on a before midnight. This is our option to buy, June 30, 2016. If when OSS has obtained the Huns' one-half interest in the property, the council will meet to consider transferring the hunts one-half interest in the property the council will meet to consider transferring the city's one-half interest in the property to OSS and I just wanted to confirm that my interpretation of that is indeed the the motion, the intent to donate the interest of the Butte Street property Yeah. And that all the terms and conditions will be brought back to the city council for final action. That was the motion that was passed on February 11, 2015. And I guess the other confirmation I wanted to do is just I sent you guys an email of this. This is the newsletter announcement that went out. Leave a legacy of open space. I... You'll see under details, I say on April 11th, actually, that should have been February 11th. The city council voted unanimously 5-0 to donate its 50% ownership in the parcel to open space. City's 50% ownership has been gifted to the city through an estate and was not purchased with taxpayer city funds. Um, Yada, yada, yada. Bottom line is, as you know, Our goal we needed to get 15,000 by June 6th to purchase the option to buy. That was Open Space Sausalito. To date, we have, actually in four days, we raised 22,000 in pledges. And we are still getting emails coming in. So there has been a tremendous support for the council's position on this and I just wanted to kind of you know share that as a yay and a a you know just a just to share some good news. And so we are well on our way. And the other just side comment, I know that Leon, he's the treasurer, of Open Space Sausalito. I volunteered to be secretary. Bill Monnet currently is president. And that Leon is working with the city manager to arrange to get access to the, to the public works, I guess, is gonna clear that access. And that he's talked with you about timeframes, about that, you know, so I'm sure he's touch base. So that's the only other thing. So there you go. There we go. Speaking of that. That's why I just wanted to share that good news. |
| 03:24:21.62 | Jill Hoffman | We go. Speaking of that. We don't want to... |
| 03:24:25.17 | Unknown | . |
| 03:24:26.22 | Jill Hoffman | overlook the motion that helps implement that so we need the motion to authorize do you want to make that motion yeah |
| 03:24:33.96 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:24:35.23 | Jill Hoffman | Question now where I |
| 03:24:35.38 | Unknown | Now we're actually on the topic. My only question is I'm presuming we're including some form of indemnification in the right to access? Absolutely. Yeah, okay, cool, thanks. |
| 03:24:49.74 | Mary Wagner | Absolutely. |
| 03:24:50.53 | Unknown | that. |
| 03:24:53.33 | Unknown | OK, all right. Let me just find it. I just had it here. Okay, I move to authorize the city manager to execute a right of entry onto the Butte Street property in favor of open space Sausalito, subject to the review and approval of the city attorney. |
| 03:25:08.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:25:09.01 | Jill Hoffman | I'll second that motion. All in favor? Aye. Passed 4-0. |
| 03:25:11.51 | Unknown | I... |
| 03:25:23.98 | Adam Politzer | Thank you Mr. Mayor, I'll be brief with my comments because we'll have Okay, I won't be brief with my comments. Let me go to page 14 of the list here. Just simple reminders, MCC, MC, tomorrow night at the Spinnaker. We've invited the executive director of the Marine Mammal Center to be our guest speaker. I think he's actually going to provide a very interesting topic and presentation tomorrow night. So I'm actually excited about that reminder that several of our department heads will be there which is nice for them to be able to join us as other cities have their department heads there to see what happens at these meetings and be introduced for their good work Um, Two quick things and I appreciate the council's recognition of the public work staff tonight in terms of the amount of work and not to miss the opportunity to point out what Lauren says there's 11 people doing the maintenance division and it's a huge amount of Each one of those sections could take 11 people to do it properly in a larger city. That's in fact. you know, what happens. So they do a great job. You will have another opportunity when Charlie comes back with the recommendation to move forward on the parking equipment at our next meeting. But I missed the opportunity as did the rest of the council to recognize Charlie. The past practice is that the police department managed this process with our public works director. And in this case, we gave that task to Charlie to manage the process working with the police department. But Charlie really has done an outstanding job of shepherding this project forward. And then the other person that I'd like to make sure that we recognize at the next meeting is Julie Dixon, who's done a great job as the parking manager that we've had working with Elliot and the rest of the police department staff, as you saw, Curtis Scoob there as well. So this is a lot of work, a lot of detail, and as Councilmember Pfeiffer pointed out with the packet that she reviewed and went through a lot of details both on what's in front of the customers and then what's on the back end so that we're able to manage this as we go forward so always appreciation of the council's recognition of the staff and I just wanted to make sure in this case I mean we thanked a few folks there but Charlie Julie and Elliot and Curtis group probably deserve a lot of credit and when they come back just special attention to that going forward the budget is where we are now in the Finance Committee meetings we've started the three to four hour long meetings today and that will continue right up until May 19th when we introduce the budget to the council and as it's been referenced a number of times there will be hard decisions made we've talked about this for four months now each one of the council members has made that statement to some level or the other they'll be hard decisions we can't do everything and there's some things that will be forced to do based on mandates and there'll be other things that we want to do because our community wishes that upon us so as we bring forward this information keep in mind that this is the second year of a two-year budget where I'm really trying to steer this discussion is when we start this same process next year in January for the next two-year budget for the 1718 budget really to do the heavy lifting and big policy discussions for the next two year cycle, but to try to stay conservative and focused on what we agreed to over two years ago now when we started the process for a two year budget and resist making big, moves in this budget. We may be required to make big moves, and the council members may decide that they want to make big moves, and that is obviously your purview to do that. But we are looking at trying to maintain the existing budget based on what we projected, especially on the capital projects. And then when we go through this process, less than a year from now for the next cycle for a two-year budget will be the more appropriate time to really get into the heavy lifting and dissecting the various programs that are within the budget itself. with that said there is an interest from the agenda setting committee vice mayor Hoffman and mayor Theodorus to hold a study session because we don't think the is an interest from the agenda setting committee, Vice Mayor Hoffman and Mayor Theodores, to hold a study session because we don't think the allocated time the 19th for the introduction of the budget is going to be it was going to suffice and so having a study session at 6 o'clock to go through some of the components of the budget is what we're going to recommend and then continuing the discussion as the regular council item also in on the 19th as as originally planned so there'll be two opportunities to really roll up our sleeves and go through the introduction of the budget and the various components of it both during study session where we'll highlight certain components of it and then in the actual beginning of the hearing session what overly complicatesates this and when you look at future agenda items that's currently attached to this budget, we have several big items and we talked about a couple of them tonight. Including, sorry, I'm pausing here. TV timeout so that I can get to the item. Future agenda items. |
| 03:31:50.82 | Adam Politzer | future agenda items. Thank you. include the budget that we just talked about awarding the parking technology contract that came as your introduction. with some level of urgency that we may need to move quicker. So, it's on an item that we can push out. We're going to be talking about the MLK facility assessment, which has a tie to the budget, looking at the conditions of the roof, the overall conditions of the property, and then how do we budget towards making those improvements over time. the IT strategic plan. We're going to be talking about the funding policy for pension. and OPAD, as we've now created the irrevocable trust, what's going to be the funding policy related to that. An update on the fee study, again, all tied into the budget. The post report for the police department that we've been anticipating several months now is now scheduled to come before the council. The other big subject is the RBRA discussion, the workshop that they had down at the Bay Model, in March. We've asked them to come and give us a report on that action. The preliminary discussions that I've had with folks associated with that. is that there would probably be a significant ask for the City of Sausalito as well as the other members of RBRA. We have some fun ones here with the Green Business of the Year and the CYO Basketball Proclamation. but together, Massive one. is the Alcatraz embarkation comment letter that we'll be sending out that's due to the park service on the 20th. So you can already see that the agenda setting committee is gonna have their hands full looking at this and prioritizing this and the potential need for a special meeting just from the initial reading of this is gonna be there and then we've asked for two things to come or at least one thing to come back on Lily's presentation on the marine rails to come back clarifying the historic information that was shared at a minimum and then the potential recommendations on how to move forward on option c so you can see that that evening just with the budget itself would be a full evening but you throw in all of those is going to I think require a need for a special meeting so with that I'll conclude my brief report from the general from the city manager Happy to answer your questions. Any questions from council? |
| 03:34:34.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:34:35.12 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:34:35.13 | Jill Hoffman | Amen. Any public comment? Seeing none, we'll move on to Councilmember Committee reports. I'm not sure. I think on these reports, I think this is the appropriate place. I think. Um, I will make it, we're making a change of council representation on the OMIT committee and I will be appointing Councilmember Pfeiffer to the OMID Committee to replace Councilmember Weiner. Thank you. I think that's it's merely mere action on this. Correct. And there's no. So that's an announcement. Any other council member committee reports? |
| 03:35:15.89 | Unknown | I will just say that the sustainability committee is making great progress on they have a grant and they are looking at a potential mailer on recycling and composting and They are also taking a look at the climate action plan. So that's that's what the focus is right now |
| 03:35:45.67 | Jill Hoffman | Any other committee reports? Any public comment? on committee reports, seeing none. Okay, we'll move on, future agenda items. Any questions from counsel? |
| 03:35:58.48 | Unknown | I have a couple. I actually mentioned this last time, and I don't know in protocol how often I should mention, but I'm hoping we can get the pedestrian, the lighted crosswalk topic. on the agenda if you've never seen those in there it's truly an amazing feature to have for safety. |
| 03:36:23.13 | Jill Hoffman | WHAT WOULD All that and I think we can have the city manager just what we're doing on that in a minute. |
| 03:36:27.76 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:36:27.82 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, good. |
| 03:36:28.28 | Unknown | Yeah. Okay. |
| 03:36:29.66 | Jill Hoffman | We'll move on. Well, do you want to address? I mean. We've discussed that. |
| 03:36:33.46 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:36:34.42 | Unknown | As an agenda item? Yeah, I don't think that we'll be |
| 03:36:35.72 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:36:35.75 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I don't think that we'll be recommending as a separate agenda. And I think since we are starting the budget process, it will be what we've asked the public works director to do is give us a cost estimate of the two different examples that have been talked about. As we've heard from the public, the light at crosswalks on the ground, that's one approach, and then the light at sign. that, turns on to alert drivers that people are across crossing the street. Those are at least two options that we'll provide cost to and then in the option menu that the council will be looking at it will fall into where does this rank in terms of where we're going to spend our money. because we can't do it all. And so the council will make a decision on. Where do we budget these infrastructure improvements? short term and long term. |
| 03:37:29.59 | Unknown | Well, that's wonderful. I'm really, really, really happy to hear that. I've been requesting this particular item for at least a couple years. So I'm just really happy to see that that's going to be considered in the budget. And on a side note, I would just recommend as a best practice, Petaluma system is really, really great. Downtown Petaluma, the system they use. |
| 03:37:51.71 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:37:52.72 | Jill Hoffman | That's a helpful discussion. |
| 03:37:53.57 | Unknown | And then I just have a couple other items. One is the Muirwood shuttle. I'm very, very concerned about this. I've been opposed to it from day one. They're using Sausalito as what I would call a tourist transit hub for their shuttles. It's my understanding the shuttles have increased. This really needs to be stopped. And I think we need to agendize it and really kind of revisit this. To my understanding, I don't recall any kind of a traffic report done by NPS or any formal request submitted to us. I wrote a letter of protest in 2014 and submitted it. So, yeah, yes, yes. |
| 03:38:47.16 | Adam Politzer | It's not NPS, it's Marin Transit Authority that operates the show. |
| 03:38:50.96 | Unknown | Oh, okay. |
| 03:38:51.97 | Unknown | All right, okay. |
| 03:38:52.53 | Adam Politzer | Any request would go through. |
| 03:38:54.79 | Unknown | Gotcha. |
| 03:38:54.97 | Adam Politzer | transit and they have public meetings which the public as well as our council members are obviously welcome to attend. or seek additional information from their staff. |
| 03:39:06.75 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. So whatever the agency, Moon Transit, it just seems that if they're going to increase a tourist transit shuttle, you know, in the way they are using our downtown right now, that it's something that they should have a dialogue with us, and there should be an assessment regarding traffic impact. I don't like it at all. I really have a lot of concerns. So that's a an agenda item and the the other one has to do with the grand jury report that was just released regarding the pension benefits and trans lack of transparency regarding that they mentioned the board of the southern Marin Fire District and I think that I would I presume that's going to be agendized in the near future. And finally, we also talked about the We've got a moratorium on Roundup, so I'm happy to, it's my understanding we have a moratorium on the use of Roundup right now, so I'm very happy to hear that. And I'm not sure if perhaps we need to agendize some sort of a, you know, what is the weed deterrence or, you know, revisit the policy on that as a result. So I'm just sharing that. Maybe that's a question for the city manager. Okay. |
| 03:40:24.24 | Adam Politzer | Yes, thank you Councilmember Pfeiffer for bringing that up. I met with the chair and the vice chair of the park and rec commission last week. They're going to hold a general meeting on this. Just as a regular Park and Rec Commission meeting in May, I think they meet on the third Wednesday of the month. And they've invited Public Works to attend the meeting to talk about the practice, what has been our past practice, allow the public to share their comments. and a there was some discussion on if there is in fact a need to have a workshop which is the direction that the mayor and staff were working on with the Park and Rec Commission was that they host a workshop bringing experts in on both sides of the discussion. to talk about. future practices and best practices as we move forward. At the moment, the chair and the vice chair aren't certain that there's a need for a workshop. So they may hold a series of park and rec commission meetings but I think that they'll hear from the public at its first meeting in May. We'll make sure that that gets widely publicized through our efforts and theirs. But again, there is rather than waiting until later in the summer which was the original plan, They'd like to have this discussion in May, so it's going to be scheduled for their May regular meeting. |
| 03:41:52.60 | Unknown | Well, I'm happy to hear that. So I guess the process would be they'll do the community outreach and do the research and then it'll come back to council with respect to recommendations. |
| 03:42:04.41 | Jill Hoffman | Well, only, I mean, we have an indefinite |
| 03:42:04.43 | Unknown | . |
| 03:42:07.32 | Jill Hoffman | moratorium on use of roundup and and similar. So if they find other alternatives, we won't need to come back to council. There's just no no point in it. I mean, if on the outside chance, the recommendation is we would certainly come back, but they may not may not need to come here. They may just work out other ways to do it, which is the likely course at this time. |
| 03:42:27.72 | Unknown | Okay, good. And the last thing has to do with conflict of interest and committees. And just I know that we have a policy. I guess conflict of interest is not, I'm not sure if that's the right term, but just, you know, guidelines, you know, on committees. I don't know. I mean, we heard a presentation tonight where we've got a new nonprofit that is being established to receive potentially up to six-digit you know, figures from the bike parking revenue to to fund ambassadors you know and there's just something about that that just it it it it first of all as you know i i don't think that's the way the money should be used but to to to send it through that non-profit you know it just i don't know it's it's just |
| 03:43:31.74 | Unknown | It, it, it, it, |
| 03:43:32.20 | Jill Hoffman | We seem to be probably using a nonprofit for the Butte Street. So they're very useful. |
| 03:43:33.77 | Unknown | It's not a nonprofit for Butte Street. They're very useful. The difference is Butte Street is fundraising, and the ambassador program, we are using public space where we used to have revenue at $7,200 a space. Now we are going to be charging for bicycle parking on and and we're going to take that revenue and we're going to send it through a nonprofit that's going to be staffed by who the one of the people that is currently the chair of the of the bike committee so you know I don't know it's just |
| 03:44:12.41 | Jill Hoffman | They're doing it for public. you Thank you. |
| 03:44:19.83 | Jill Hoffman | Public comment on, okay. |
| 03:44:27.14 | David Sudo | Thank you. |
| 03:44:33.10 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:44:33.11 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 03:44:36.91 | Unknown | Yeah, I'm going to turn it on to you. |
Roberta Wayne Becker — In Favor: Requested a letter of endorsement from the City Council for Golden Gate Opera's anti-bullying opera 'The Boy Who Grew Too Fast' to aid fundraising for performances in low-income schools in October. ▶ 📄