| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:10.56 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 00:00:32.72 | Mayor Theodore | Welcome everyone. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council for Tuesday, June 16, 2015. Debbie, would you take the roll, please? |
| 00:00:42.20 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Weiner? Present. Councilmember Pfeiffer? Here. Councilmember Whibbey? |
| 00:00:46.93 | Mayor Theodore | here. |
| 00:00:47.25 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Vice Mayor Hoffman. Present. . Mayor Theodore. |
| 00:00:50.83 | Mayor Theodore | Present. We will. Do we have... Let's see, closed session announcements. OK. In our closed session, we had three Items. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Pledge of Allegiance. Can we have Shelby Van Meter, is she here? |
| 00:01:12.97 | Mayor Theodore | Would you lead us in the pledge, please, Shelby? Yeah. Yeah, we gotta give her again. Thank you. |
| 00:01:18.97 | Shelby Van Meter | to the flag of the United States. |
| 00:01:20.10 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:01:20.14 | Unknown | and the flag of the United States of America. and to the public of the righteous. you one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:34.38 | Mayor Theodore | Okay. closed session announcements. In closed session, we discussed items D1, 2, and 3 on the agenda. There are no announcements on D. one and three. On the Golden Gate Bridge, the only announcement is we had initial discussions with representatives of the Golden Gate Bridge District, the city manager, vice mayor, and I just, uh, general discussions on the path forward. We talked about a path forward with a call of stakeholders that I announced two sessions ago that Kate Sears has called. We'll give details of that in council reports and we'll have something at the end and in the currents. But the stakeholders meeting is now set for June 27th and we'll have further details later in the council session. Okay? or IN THE CURRENTS, BUT THE STAKEHOLDERS MEETING IS NOW SET FOR JUNE 27TH AND WE'LL HAVE FURTHER DETAILS LATER IN THE COUNCIL SESSION. OKAY. ALL RIGHT. CAN I HAVE A MOTION FOR APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA OR ANY CHANGES THERE TOO? |
| 00:02:32.24 | Unknown | you |
| 00:02:32.43 | Mayor Theodore | So, |
| 00:02:32.50 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 00:02:32.58 | Mayor Theodore | THE END OF THE END OF THE Second. All in favor? Aye. That passes. |
| 00:02:37.79 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:02:38.32 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 00:02:39.60 | Mayor Theodore | five, zero. Okay, now we're moving on to item. 1A, announcement of the 4th of July, Parade Grand Marshal and We have Mike Langford. and He has not even advised the city council members. Oh, we have Doreen Granada. There she is. Well, you're doing everything tonight, Doreen. I know. |
| 00:03:00.27 | Doreen Gunnar | No, we're... |
| 00:03:00.47 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:03:01.22 | Doreen Gunnar | Well, I didn't realize that I disallowed my first note that I was going to talk about something because this is on the agenda. I didn't realize it was on the agenda, but it is on the agenda. And as the chair of the Park and Recs Commission, I am really proud to let everybody know that this year's Parade Mars show is Miss Debbie Pagliaro. for all of her 42 years with this city, She has a nerve to be leaving us soon. But we really want to thank her in the biggest way that Saucy-Tle has, which is parading her down the street, in front of all your friends and family and really to tell you thank you, thank you, thank you for all you've ever done for us, really. |
| 00:04:05.85 | Mayor Theodore | Moving on to item two communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding items 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. However the council may refer matters, not on the agenda to city staff. or direct the subject be agendized for a future meeting. So I have speaker cards, and I'll start off with Liam Bigelow, please. |
| 00:04:39.50 | Unknown | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor and Councilmembers. I've met most of you either on the telephone or in person. I have a company called Easy Bike Return and I was up here last month discussing my proposal to the city. I have presented you with a proposal to move forward with the next step in positioning trailers to facilitate moving bicycles out of Sausalito back to San Francisco. Looking forward to getting on your agenda and moving forward to helping clear the city with the bicycles and helping getting the butts off the seats and the butts into the stores spending money here in Sausalito. So I'm looking forward to your support, and hopefully we'll be able to get on the agenda soon. Hopefully there will be some spaces available downtown that we can discuss at the next meeting. And I have several options that I'll be sending you new proposals. I spoke to the city manager earlier, sending you new updated proposals to move forward with this. And hopefully we can get it on the agenda. |
| 00:05:39.74 | Mayor Theodore | I think, and the city manager is advised Mr. Bigelow of the process that we do with vendors and going through bike and ped on this. All right. my apologies, reading this, is Loxley Brown, is it Brown or Brunel? |
| 00:05:57.87 | Lexley Brown | Hello, I'm Lexley Brown. |
| 00:05:59.35 | Mayor Theodore | Um, |
| 00:06:00.14 | Lexley Brown | I want to thank you for letting me stand up here and talk to you about this because it's, as a new resident of Sausalito, and someone who has just, become accustomed to the tourism that's here in the city. and the fact that I do business development and watch these practices happen, I really think it would be a great idea to look at the way that the bicycles are arranged, the way that the development occurs, and bringing tourists in and out of the city and the way that you develop the tourism dollars so they can be spent properly in the city Right now I'm just kind of watching, standing back as like somebody that's new that's been here that doesn't see it through your eyes all the time. But I see it from a fresh perspective, and I can see ways that the business development could be. work properly to really help develop the city so that it brings in the tourism dollars that it needs but it also helps to please the tourist so that you have a simpatico between the two because right now I kind of see a disconnect so I would just like to voice my opinion and saying that it would be great to see a company who can bring the the bikes in and out the way they can, but it can also work with what is already presently in process so that everything plays together like properly so that You develop a really great cohesion between all of the different wills that need to happen to make this a great city the way it's supposed to be. So thank you very much. |
| 00:07:38.96 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Tammy Blanchard. |
| 00:07:44.04 | Tammy Blanchard | Good evening, I'm Tammy Blanchard. Hello, mayor, vice mayor, and council members. I'm also here to speak about the bike staging that has been presented to you, all of you, including the city manager. And, um... What I would really like to urge you to do is to, what I thought we agreed at the last meet, or you agreed at the last meet, is that we were gonna look at every option, try everything we could in order to alleviate or mitigate the bike congestion that we have downtown and also to allow these people that are coming into our town get away from those bicycles so they can go into our businesses and they can eat meals and so they can shop and they don't spend two hours waiting in the ferry line. Even if we put them in parking, they still are going to be worried about how they're going to get on the ferry and which ferry they're going to take. And they spend hours waiting there when they really could be waiting in a restaurant. They don't have a bicycle. They can enjoy the view. They can walk down the street. And that's what we really want them to do. And while we're doing that, we are also pleasing the residents and alleviating some of the pressure that the ferry feels in order – As we know, we've had a lot of discussions about that. And I think this is a really big step in alleviating that pressure for the ferry and for the riders and for the residents. So I would urge you... Let me just back up for a second. It is my understanding that the city manager has actually been given permission. to grant uh, permission to these types of pilot programs and instead of waiting until the next city council meeting I would like it if you could make your opinions known. To him. and let him know that this could work with the parking. They're not exclusive of each other, they could work together and I think we need to know which one's going to work best. at the end of the day. Is it parking? Is it getting him out of here? I mean, we need to throw it all out there, just like we said at the last meeting. So that's what I would urge you to do, please, for the city of Sausalito. You live here. Thank you. |
| 00:10:12.29 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. David Sudo. |
| 00:10:20.93 | David Sudo | Hi, David Sudo. After the last city council meeting, I thought I needed to say something about what happens every time we hear the words bike or taxes or ferry in city council. It seems like the process breaks down. Things happen both in city council and residents that really keep us from doing anything about anything in town. You know, it's interesting. I was reading today's packet on the budget, and I noticed, you know, there's a page about the mission statement. And along with that, there's a city of Sausalito core values in their innovation, creativity, informed, risk-taking, honest and open government, creating an environment where people excel their full potential, professionalism, a sense of community, quality public service, and esprit de corps. And I think people just need to remember that when they're both the community making statements and city council, especially when they're asking questions of people who come and volunteer their time to come in and stand and answer questions that you know we do in a respectful manner possibly if we have a lot of questions and coming the meeting maybe sends people an open email so that people can be prepared to answer questions and maybe edit the list you You could come up I attend a lot of the meetings and I could come up during public comment and stand here and talk about every single thing but I don't because I find one or two things that I really feel passionate about and I think about them for a long time and I talk about them. Maybe city council needs to limit the question period, like they do the rest of the discussion and rebuttal sections. Because last week we had the bicycle portion went so long that we had a bunch of people here with young children who wanted to speak about the parks and funding the parks and they never got a chance to because we didn't get to it till 10 or 11 o'clock at night and you know we just need to change how we do things in the City Council thank |
| 00:12:36.34 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Anyone else like to speak on an item not on the agenda? Okay, see none. We'll move into item 3 a Action minutes of previous meetings, the minutes of the regular city council meeting for June 2, 2015. We have a motion to approve those or any comments or Recommended changes. |
| 00:12:57.61 | Unknown | Motion to approve as submitted. |
| 00:13:00.45 | Mayor Theodore | Second. All in favor? Aye. That's approved, 5-0. Okay, now we move on to item four. Consent calendar matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial. Require... |
| 00:13:16.29 | Linda Pfeiffer | Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just noticed the draft meeting minutes for June 2nd, we usually state what the future agenda item requests were. And I noticed for the first time, the minutes for June 2nd do not list the future agenda items requested. So I think that's an omission. And I think we should include, per the regular minutes, what future agenda items were requested. |
| 00:13:41.64 | Mayor Theodore | Do we have any discussion on that? Can we do that Debbie, just whichever was requested. Okay? |
| 00:13:51.83 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Do you want those verbatim because that's what I've had to switch to. No. I've been putting out interpretations. Unfortunately, my interpretation of what is said and they're being changed to nearly verbatim. So that's why I switched to this as we did with public comment. We switched to name only because of the interpretation. |
| 00:13:52.31 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:13:52.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:52.98 | Mayor Theodore | BEGINNING. |
| 00:13:53.49 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:13:53.55 | Mayor Theodore | I've had to switch to. |
| 00:14:11.63 | Linda Pfeiffer | Whatever is most convenient for you and perhaps if we, when we get the packet early, if we have any changes, we can email you. if there's a clarification. So. Because I do think it's very important to state what the future agenda item was that was requested. |
| 00:14:27.20 | Mayor Theodore | Yeah, we could do it generally, whether it's a discussion on pensions or bikes or I mean, we as did the best you can, but some level of detail. And of course, the backup on all our minutes are our videotapes and audio. So that's our verbatim minutes. But these are action minutes. And if you get one level of detail, I know it's difficult. Thank you. |
| 00:14:47.42 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. So should we take a vote on that again with that amendment? Perhaps. |
| 00:14:53.87 | Debbie (City Clerk) | You can accept that as consensus of directing staff. |
| 00:14:54.22 | Linda Pfeiffer | I've been. Okay, so I would make that motion and is there Consensus? Okay. |
| 00:15:04.41 | Mayor Theodore | We have consensus on that? |
| 00:15:05.61 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:15:06.59 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Again, moving 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 Thank you. in the form listed. Below, there will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items. Now, we have a motion to approve the consent calendar items. Anyone have any questions on it before we begin? Can we have a motion to approve? Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Public comment on our consent calendar items. Seeing none. So moved. We have a second. All in favor? I it's passage unanimously 5-0 |
| 00:15:54.06 | Unknown | Aye. |
| 00:15:57.79 | Mayor Theodore | Okay. Um, now moving on to business item, six a adoption of the fiscal year 1516 budget. Uh, can we have our administrative services director Charlie Francis? |
| 00:16:23.62 | Jonathon Goldman | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council. Tonight's agenda item is adoption of the fiscal year 15-16 budget, which is the second year of the 2014-16 resource allocation plan. Tonight I was just going to give a brief summary, talk about the items in the operating budget, cover the capital budget, discuss the GAN limit calculations with you, entertain some questions, and then the council action will be twofold tonight, adopt the budget and approve the GAN limit calculation. |
| 00:16:30.31 | Shelby Van Meter | 16 budget. |
| 00:17:01.15 | Jonathon Goldman | I'll explain what the gambling is when we get there. So just to reinforce what we've said at the prior two meetings as well as the budget workshop that we're in the second year of a two-year budget. And in that second year, as we went through the process, there's the original second-year budget. It was revised for those economic factors that had occurred in between the original second-year budget and new one one of those being the passage of measure O then department heads made some specific requests for adjustments to levels of service levels of staffing levels of the mixtures of supplies and services and then in between these two we had a number of City Council Finance Committee where we reviewed the operating capital budgets and a specific item of requests that major items that were considered during the budget process. And in between your last meeting and this meeting, we've made a recommended staff is proposing a recommended budget for you to adopt tonight. In summary, the budget is balanced. I'll go through each one of these. The general fund, which is the major operating fund of the city, where we provide our police services, our maintenance services, library, recreation, community development planning and building inspection, as well as all the support services of the city, finance, administration, information technology, all occurs within here. and the budget has 14 million nine hundred thirteen thousand six hundred seventy six of revenues from various sources and 14 million eight hundred eighty three thousand of expenses with a surplus of $30,207. So consistent with past practice and the council policy, we're presenting to you tonight a balanced general fund budget. Special revenue funds are generally revenues whose purpose is restricted either by state law or by policy and can only be spent on certain purposes. Mainly these are funding sources for our capital project funds or our debt service funds. And those monies go into there and are part of the revenues in the capital project funds. Debt service funds just simply account for the annual debt service payments for non-enterprise fund activities, so our general obligation bonds, which is a special tax that's put on the property tax bill every year in an amount to cover debt service. And the Tidelands loan is a transfer out of the Tidelands fund into the debt service fund to pay for a boats and waterway loan that built a bulkhead in prior years. Our enterprise funds, the sewer enterprise fund, has a user user fee that user fee is to provide collection sewer services as well as certain capital improvements old city hall is rented out to a tenant provides income that's transferred back to the general fund our mlk rental property again is properties that are leased out to tenants and also provides for the campus activity. And the rental property leases are there to cover the operations of the city and then for other purposes is designated by the city council. And I'll be talking about changes to the normal in a second here and the parking parking enterprise fund accounts for all the operations of parking in the city including off-street and on-street parking and the monies from the parking enterprise fund are typically transferred to the general fund to support general fund activities however it does leave a reserve in the parking fund for certain capital improvements and replacements and renewals that are necessary for example parking lot repavement and equipment Thank you. However, it does leave a reserve in the parking fund for certain capital improvements and replacements and renewals that are necessary. For example, parking lot repavement and equipment replacement. Internal service funds, the vehicle replacement fund, workers' comp, and employee benefits is a methodology of charging operating departments expenses in order to accumulate funds for vehicle replacement or to pay for workers' comp expenses and to accumulate money for employee benefits such as compensated absences, OPEB, vacation sick time, things like that. There's interfund transfers that occur during the year. For example, expenses from the general fund go into the internal service fund. So we net those transfers out to get a net budget of $33 million in revenues and $34 million in expenses. Now, that negative $925,000 is not a deficit. It's simply using monies that have been set aside for a specific purpose in the past and have been accumulated for expenditures in this year. In the general fund, majority of the general fund revenues come from taxes, which is $9 million of the total almost 15 million comes from taxes and those taxes are broken out into four major categories, three really, we have property tax, which is, whoops, which generates $4,350,000. Our sales tax, this is the sales tax not including the Measure O, is $2,260,000. We're expecting another million from Measure O, the half-cent sales tax. And then we're expecting $1.4 million of revenues from transient occupancy tax. Transient occupancy tax is the 12% tax charged on guests and hotels, and then collected by the hoteliers and transferred back to the city. |
| 00:22:43.23 | Jonathon Goldman | In any one of these graphs, if we can click on the graph, we'll go into the OpenGov site where citizens, council, and staff can go in and examine the past history, the projections that were used, and some of the assumptions that were made in developing these things. So OpenGov transparency is throughout the budget process. The general fund expenditures can be looked at in two ways. You can have expenditures by department, and you can see that our police department is almost 34% of our general fund budget right here and then we also have engineering and building and planning services library and recreation administration which includes finance and city council maintenance that maintenance is both internal to the city to the city vehicles as well as external to the landscaping improvements and then non-depal, this is where we transfer the million dollars and more money from the general fund into the capital project fund for certain capital projects. Let's look, the other way of looking at general fund expenses is by expense type. And here we have salaries and benefits. We're a service organization and typically the service organization is 65 to 75% of total expenses. And here we have 40 plus 21 is 61%. Just back in 2012, our expenses were closer to 75%. were personal related. So this is a combination of the labor reform that we took in 2012, but it also has a factor of the extra million dollars that's being transferred out to the general fund. |
| 00:24:30.72 | Jonathon Goldman | The budget is balanced. This is one of the questions that is most commonly asked by the citizens, and it's balanced with a $30,000 surplus. The budget has reserves. The reserves are completely adequate and exceed the target policy that the city council has set, that the city council has said we would like a budget stabilization reserve of 5%, and that's $744,000. That's 5% of this year's expenditures. Also have what's called an emergency shortfall reserve. That emergency shortfall reserve is at 10%, and you can see that 10% here is 10% of that number up there. So those two, and then we have remaining reserves within the general fund of 1,217,000. And outside of the general fund, there's a disaster assistance fund balance of 964,000. These four reserves equal 4,413,000, and they represent almost 30% of general fund expenditures are set aside many cities are lucky they have 5% so we have that now you also notice that as beginning the fiscal year we would have the six million three hundred sixty eight thousand of reserves which is non spendable that was the interfund loan between the general fund and the MLK Enterprise Fund. But the staff is proposing for a bond issue to make certain capital improvements for parks. And in return for the MLK Enterprise Fund, making those improvements on behalf of the General Fund, the General Fund then would be releasing that interfund loan and bringing it back to just forgiving the loan in a sense in lieu of those projects being accomplished so that would bring that back down to zero |
| 00:26:28.76 | Jonathon Goldman | Major items that were considered that were a little bit outside the original two-year budget was, well, the Measure 0 half-cent sales tax. At the past three months, the City Council has been approving and funding OPEB and pension through establishing an irrevocable trust to set aside monies to pre-fund our unfunded liabilities, as well as providing reserves for volatility and market risk mitigation. We've upgraded a position in the administration department from a senior business analyst to a finance manager. Information technology is looking to improve the way it delivers its planning and permitting processes by putting in new software that would benefit both community development, building department, planning department, as well as the engineering department. We'll be bringing to the city council in mid-July an IT strategic plan, and that IT strategic plan will be suggesting certain investments that need to be made to our rather aging IT infrastructure, and so we put a placeholder in that plan to start the implementation we are fortunate enough to have received a grant that set almost 70% funds a police officer so the city would be funding adding a new police officer for the next three years hopefully then that would become a permanent full-time equivalent when that funding runs out or we get add-on funding to keep that officer We've provided for historic preservation regulations, formula retail zoning ordinance amendment, vacation rental code enforcement, and planning commissioners academy training as upgrades to the community development's level of service. And recreation department, there's a, call a ride senior service program revenues. I hope I got that right. And that accounts for the revenue coming in through grants as well as other contributions and the expenses going out. You know, cities can't just say it's zero in the budget. They have to record grants as revenues and then the expenses go out as expenses. The library has a small enhanced book budget and then non-departmental, there is some contributions towards that CARS grant. There's funding for homeless civic funding and of course the transfers out to the CIP fund, both the normal general fund transfer out to the CIP fund and the measure O sales tax transfer out. The capital projects fund, we're recommending major parks renovation, Dunphy Park, Robin Sweeney Park, and Southview Park, as well as funding for the Marinship Marine Rails Project. There's allocation for an appropriation recommended for general plan circulation element to be completed, and of course all the measure of funding. Appropriations are there for downtown and bridgeway tree median maintenance enhanced landscape maintenance water conservation improvements a flashing crosswalk indicators Dunphy Park modular restroom and City Hall beautification the MLK fund Staff is recommending not only financing the 10-year facility assessments that were identified through the facility assessment that you received at a prior council meeting, but also to use the lease revenues from the MLK fund for major parks renovation projects, those major park projects being the three I mentioned up here, the MLK fund being the funding source. And within the parking fund, there is an appropriation for the Bicycle the bicycle parking congestion management program and the Chamber of Commerce kiosk request and finally in the sewer fund the city and the district will be doing a consolidation study there's a small appropriation of $15,000 to pay half of the cost to begin the studying process of the benefits and of consolidating the district and the city for sewer services. Items that were considered but not included in the budget include police body cameras, mobile license plate readers, mobile for both cars, patrol cars, as well as stationary and some smaller Police Department items. They're not being recommended for funding at the present, but they'll be considered during the fiscal year. Staff will be bringing back to the City Council a series of reports over the winter on what the next steps should be. At your last meeting, you received a post-Police Officer Standards Training Report on level of service at the Police Department, and staff will be continuing to study that and bringing proposals back to the City council on what's the right mixture of technology and manpower we need to effectively patrol and police the city. In terms of community development, code enforcement was not recommended at the present time. This was an extra $50,000 for a person for enhanced code enforcement. But not only because it's beyond the city's current structural balance, but staff is looking into shared services. There are other ways of delivering this service. And, again, staff will be coming back to the city council with reports on how that research is going to enhance our code enforcement level of service. Within community development, these items were not funded in the current year, but they are funded in the six year capital improvement program. And they're funded within the order of 80,000, 60,000 for the Downtown National Historic Register, 80,000 for noteworthy structures, 30,000 for the Marinship Historic District and National Register, 30,000 for Machine Shop, 20,000 for the Mills Act, respectively, in fiscal year 16, 17, 17, 18, 18, 19, and 19, 20, and 20, 21. we considered appropriation to Richardson Bay and based on the council action at a previous council meeting, that funding decision will be considered after the RBRA workshops and staff will be bringing back a staff report at that time for the city council to consider. The following charts outline all of the capital improvement projects. I'm not going to go through each line item, but basically it's a very richly funded, not richly being overly, but robustly funded, mainly through Measure O monies, also through the special revenue funds that are for that purpose, as well as the other general fund appropriation to provide for traffic and transportation projects a storm drain master plan and subsequent construction of storm drain infrastructure I saw certain buildings and water fund projects that very heavy in the first year parks and projects. This is where the appropriation occurs for the three park enhancements, as well as sidewalks, American with Disability Act work, and city-owned right-of-way. The city-owned right-of-way is where we have included appropriations for the downtown tree maintenance and enhanced landscape maintenance, as well as here you can see the marine rails project and the general plan circulation element. As I mentioned earlier, there is a six-year CIP program. That six-year CIP program is funded through proposed sources, but as with anything, it's a plan, and the first year of the plan is adopted along with the first year's operating budget. So this is the plan, but every year we review that plan to redetermine priorities and redetermine the funding sources that plan is funded through appropriations that come from the total here. They come from the Tidelands Fund, the Gas Tax Fund. Gas tax money can only be used for streets. Our construction impact fees can only be used for certain infrastructure based on new development that occurs within the city limits. Marin Measure A and B has certain restrictions on transportation projects. And, of course, storm drain funds can only be spent on storm drains activities. And the Stairs Fund was established as a result of a CASNU lawsuit many years drain funds can only be spent on storm drains activities, and the stairs fund was established as a result of a CAS new lawsuit many years ago. It can only be spent on stairs-type activities. And then, of course, other bonds, grants, and loans usually are restricted in their revenue source, in their usage. So it's a fully funded program. And at the end of the current fiscal year, there will still be a $543,000 reserve in the capital improvement program in the event that any contingencies happen with any one of those projects. So it's like a built-in contingency reserve for capital projects, which is always good to have. You try to build contingency reserves into every major construction project. With that, I'm gonna quickly go through the GAN limit. Prop 13, when it was passed, it's had a limitation on the dollar amount of appropriations that a city could make, and they came up with a rather bizarre formula. The amount that can be spent is determined by the amount of revenues that a city collects that are tax-related revenues. So the first thing that it does is a limit was established back in 1978, 79, and that limit increases or decreases each year based on a formula. and that formula says what's the change in population and what's the change in per capita income. Those numbers are sent to the city by the State Department of Finance, so we have no control over that. The state tells us what those numbers are. We apply the factor of A times C, 1.019 times 1.03 to see the growth factor. That growth factor is multiplied times the original base to give us a new base. The second calculation is what are the proceeds from taxes that are subject to the appropriation? So we take our revenues. You notice the $14,913,000 right here is the amount of revenues in our general fund. And we break them into two classes, how much are proceeds of taxes and how much are non-proceeds of taxes. so we add and then you prorate the interest income that's expected during the year but on the amount that's either proceeds or non proceeds and that nine million eight hundred and eighteen thousand then becomes the the appropriations that are subject to the limit isn't that funny they take revenues and they call it appropriation subject to the limit so the appropri that funny? They take revenues and they call it appropriation, subject to the limit. So the appropriations then are 9.8. Our calculation is 12.7, which means that we are under the appropriation limit of $2,917,000, and that's a good thing. If we were in excess of the appropriation limit, then we would have to refund back to taxpayers any excess and of course that's a good thing too it's good for the taxpayers so the protection is there in the law to um to make sure that we're within the spending limits the spending caps as envisioned by prop 13 article 13 of the california constitution Annually, the city council is required to approve this calculation, and annually our auditors opine that the calculation was correct. The city, as always, has really enhanced its fiscal transparency tool from what you saw last year. Not only do we have annual expenditures going back from 2003 all the way through 2014 but we've included two budget years we also have the revenues all of these numbers come from audited financial statements which the public can click and download and validate that they really are indeed from audited financial statements We have balance sheets that are on there that looks at our cash, our long-term investments, our long-term debt, our current debt, current ratios I put on that site so the city can start seeing what our assets are to our liabilities, what our assets are to our total net worth. I started to put some business indicators to our financial statements, and I've done that through saved views. The public's all welcome to go there and call me if they have any questions on those we have two ways of looking at the budget as we go through the year we have budget to actual which is expenditures through the month and you can also see what the expenditures were through that same month for every fiscal year since 2002 three so and then it compares it to budget and you can also look at the accumulated budget the complete budget preparation process is on this site so people can see what the last two years of expenses were and what the original second year budget was and how it was changed over time we have our long-term financial plan is on the site as well as every You can go into any, drill down into any item and go down to the transaction and see what vendor supply was bought for any certain line item within the city. And finally, we have the treasurer's report, which gives us our cash reconciliation every month. So I encourage the public, the council and staff to use this tool. It's become basically a full-time equivalent for me. It sits right next to me. The first thing I turn on in the morning, the last thing I turn off at night, and I'm able to answer some council member questions that come in five minutes before a meeting within that five minutes, questions that would normally have taken me a week in other times. Okay, well, we think that all makes sense. It's a staff budget that's recommended. And so now we have questions that we'll entertain from the council, from the public, and answer any what-if, why-not questions that anyone has. |
| 00:40:25.39 | Mayor Theodore | Now, we've had requests from public to have public comment before questions. And does anyone make a motion to change the agenda in that way? or Okay. |
| 00:40:38.87 | Linda Pfeiffer | Well, I would I would recommend having a few questions from Council first, but if you have a well, this was behind the rest of any recommendation, I think. |
| 00:40:43.38 | Mayor Theodore | If you have a reason behind the recommendation. I think in this particular case, anyone have any objection? what your we have, I think, comes public comments. |
| 00:40:56.69 | Unknown | I think it's a good idea to move ahead with public comment first. |
| 00:40:59.87 | Jill Hoffman | today I think if council woman Pfeiffer has some questions to things pertinent and maybe well then we |
| 00:40:59.90 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:41:00.74 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:41:05.76 | Mayor Theodore | Well, then we have to open it to all our questions. |
| 00:41:07.78 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 00:41:08.83 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. All right, well, this was the request from the public. They would like to have that, but if council insists, we can move on with questions. All right. |
| 00:41:19.90 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I guess my first question, I have, as you know, a lot of concerns about the MLK certificate of participation. And I see it's kind of baked in this budget, it's assumed. Was that done because? Council majority supports that I mean I have a lot of concerns around that I was just I guess it's more of a question for for my fellow council members. Because at the last session, I got the impression that there was a big question mark, and I see it throughout. |
| 00:41:49.53 | Mayor Theodore | SEE IT. Well, I mean, to answer it, we're at the budget proceeding right now, and it is in the budget. And it doesn't mean we're going to do it. We will have a hearing at a later time, but we will vote tonight about whether the council wants to put it in the budget and then bring it back to the council to work out the details. That doesn't mean that we will absolutely do it tonight, but it means that we are authorizing staff to go forward on necessary steps to bring it forward. So we're absolutely voting to put like every other item here tonight we're just putting it in the budget or not put in the budget okay |
| 00:42:22.47 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, so as a follow-up question to that, I know at the last Council session, too, there was a lot of concern regarding the length of these certificate of participation. Is it still assuming that 30-year? Is it cut back to 15? Is it 10? Is it 10? And is it still the full amount? It looks like the full amount. |
| 00:42:38.91 | Mayor Theodore | What I'd like to do what what we did at their last meeting was we spent the entire budget time on the on these certificate participation. What I'd like to do at this point is to talk about everything else in the budget and we'll talk about that at the end of it because we've gone through this quite a bit. We'll also have a time to vote because we need to get to the budget tonight because we have to adopt a budget by June 30th. Again when we put it in the budget doesn't mean that we will definitely do it. It means it's in the budget and staff can work on and bring it forward to us again. |
| 00:43:07.44 | Linda Pfeiffer | I think in fairness to the public though, I think the public wants to know where we stand on this. |
| 00:43:11.88 | Mayor Theodore | Well, again, they will know we have the rest of the budget to do. So what I'm at requesting is we'll hold those questions until after we review all of Council's questions on everything else and then we'll go back to it. So we will hit everything tonight, including all questions and all public comments. |
| 00:43:21.78 | Linda Pfeiffer | So we will. |
| 00:43:26.44 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I'll go direct my question to the sales tax. I remember when we, the city of pushed measure 0 that there would be accountability as it would be you know very clear a separate line item and how it was spent so right now in my I'm looking at the budget and I'm seeing that it's been grouped under the sales tax banner is that correct or is it |
| 00:43:50.99 | Jonathon Goldman | It is not. You saw more than several times there's a separate line item for Measure O sales tax. |
| 00:43:52.73 | Linda Pfeiffer | Because I see it. |
| 00:43:58.88 | Linda Pfeiffer | Um, Charlie, could you help me out? Because I went through it, and I saw it qualitatively discussed. |
| 00:44:04.93 | Jonathon Goldman | We have discussed. |
| 00:44:06.61 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'm talking about within the ledgers, the line items that we have. |
| 00:44:12.71 | Jonathon Goldman | These are summaries. |
| 00:44:15.72 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. Because there's line |
| 00:44:16.00 | Jonathon Goldman | There's line items and right here is the line item. for the half-sun sales tax. |
| 00:44:21.07 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, so my next question is, do we have clarity as to how that $1 million specifically is being spent? |
| 00:44:28.80 | Jonathon Goldman | We do, there's a line item in the, NON-DEPARTMENTAL. Right here. There's a line item within there. We can drill in through open guard and you'll see a transfer out to the capital project fund. |
| 00:44:40.37 | Linda Pfeiffer | What page number is that place? |
| 00:44:44.18 | Jonathon Goldman | Page number on the budget. |
| 00:44:51.56 | Linda Pfeiffer | It's just that I've been asked a question and I just want to get clarity on it. |
| 00:44:55.53 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 00:45:13.11 | Jonathon Goldman | To answer your first question, here's the, right here is the million dollars on the half cent sales tax. Let me pull out my |
| 00:45:20.84 | Linda Pfeiffer | I guess I was looking for Thank you. |
| 00:45:22.29 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:22.31 | Linda Pfeiffer | Measure A. |
| 00:45:22.66 | Jonathon Goldman | measure A |
| 00:45:27.66 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I guess what threw me is it didn't say Measure A, so I wasn't clear. |
| 00:45:32.03 | Jonathon Goldman | I should say half-cent sales tax. |
| 00:45:34.81 | Linda Pfeiffer | I was looking for measure A. Measure O. And then how is that being spent? |
| 00:45:38.41 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:38.45 | Unknown | And then... |
| 00:45:42.69 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:45:42.71 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:45:47.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:45:47.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:45:47.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:45:47.40 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:45:52.60 | Jonathon Goldman | Aha. it's combined in this category, $1 million plus $500,000 for transfers out, but in the city's official accounting system, there's a separate line item for transfers out of $1 million to the capital project fund for sales tax, for the half-cent sales tax. And how is that $1 million? And then within the capital project fund, which is at the end here, |
| 00:46:11.34 | Shelby Van Meter | they have. |
| 00:46:13.24 | Linda Pfeiffer | And how is that one million? |
| 00:46:26.57 | Jonathon Goldman | They're coming in from the general fund, this $1,450,000 consists of $1 million of measure O sales tax, which has a separate line item in the detailed general ledger as well as here. As you know, we changed our budget format from detailed line items to summary tables in order to focus discussion on how our money's being used rather than what's underbite. |
| 00:46:51.91 | Linda Pfeiffer | It's just that we told people there would be a line item, it would say measure O. |
| 00:46:55.51 | Jonathon Goldman | There is a line item in the city's general legislature. |
| 00:46:57.14 | Linda Pfeiffer | THE FAMILY. And how can how are we spending that 1 million from measure? Oh, how is that being allocated? I saw qualitatively it was talking about storm drains and sewers, et cetera. It's allocated. |
| 00:47:08.01 | Jonathon Goldman | it's allocated in this column here That $1 million is part of the total expenditures that are occurring of this $2 million right here, one million of it is sales taxes. |
| 00:47:26.30 | Linda Pfeiffer | so we don't have the percentage about how measure o is being divvied up across the planning projects and what I mean |
| 00:47:38.34 | Jonathon Goldman | We have a million dollars more than we had last year and that million dollars is allocated to these capital projects. |
| 00:47:38.67 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 00:47:44.60 | Linda Pfeiffer | but in what percentage? I mean, we told people that they would know how Measure O funds were being spent. And, and, and. |
| 00:47:53.56 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah. |
| 00:47:53.95 | Linda Pfeiffer | We can pick it up. |
| 00:47:53.98 | Jonathon Goldman | We can pick it out. We can say there's $300,000 for a concrete street. Should we just go through and start adding up until we get to a million? And then we'll say that's how much was for the half-cent sale. |
| 00:48:02.20 | Linda Pfeiffer | How much was for the half-cent sales tax? Oh, okay. Okay. |
| 00:48:07.80 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:48:07.82 | Unknown | Could I just add a bit of clarification here? Charlie, in an earlier version of this, we had sort of highlighted in green which of these actual things were from Measure O. That color code in this been sort of surpassed in this final budget, but that was the way it was being presented earlier. Yeah, I could pull that up. |
| 00:48:20.10 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 00:48:20.12 | Jonathon Goldman | We did. |
| 00:48:24.69 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 00:48:24.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:48:30.23 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:48:30.29 | Unknown | this |
| 00:48:30.83 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:48:31.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:48:31.78 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 00:48:35.88 | Mayor Theodore | And it was 100% Storm Dreams and Capital and Provence Street. |
| 00:48:39.14 | Linda Pfeiffer | And it was storm drains and, okay. Okay. And I have two more questions, but I don't want to... Anybody? |
| 00:48:52.18 | Unknown | Anybody? |
| 00:48:53.83 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. Does the Turney Street ramp and dock at 75 grand, that's not a restricted spending item, correct? I know that some of these capital improvement projects are strictly by |
| 00:49:08.63 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 00:49:16.55 | Linda Pfeiffer | you know funds like the tidal and funds you know the gas tax have to be spent on roads |
| 00:49:20.28 | Jill Hoffman | you know, |
| 00:49:23.13 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'm seeing some projects here. |
| 00:49:25.66 | Jonathon Goldman | The Turning Street ramp and dock is coming from the from the Tideland Fund. |
| 00:49:33.51 | Linda Pfeiffer | from the Tideland Fund and the so that's restricted to Just... |
| 00:49:43.07 | Jonathon Goldman | The Tideland Fund monies can only be spent on activities that occur on the Tideland. Okay. Yeah. |
| 00:49:43.09 | Linda Pfeiffer | The Tideland Fund money is |
| 00:49:48.16 | Linda Pfeiffer | OK. Yeah. And then the city hall elevator upgrade, is that |
| 00:49:52.59 | Jonathon Goldman | coming from the general capital improvement fund unrestricted or not unrestricted but kind of non-discretionary |
| 00:49:55.68 | Linda Pfeiffer | That's right. |
| 00:50:03.12 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 00:50:07.43 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. Non-MLK questions? |
| 00:50:13.23 | Mayor Theodore | So are we, any other questions? Are we ready to open it up to public comments? |
| 00:50:17.53 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:50:18.06 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:50:22.31 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I'd like to. I say open it and then. |
| 00:50:27.34 | Mayor Theodore | Let's open it up to public comments now. We'll go to questions afterwards again. Do we have a speaker cards? |
| 00:50:38.27 | Mayor Theodore | And if anyone else would like to come out Doreen. You want to start? |
| 00:50:52.35 | Doreen Gunnar | Hello, I'm Doreen Gunnar, 300 Napa Street, Sausalito. I also am the chair of the Park and Rec Commission. And of course, we really, really, really do want you guys to do the COP for MLK. And it's because of our families. I just lost two families right now who are prepared to come and speak. And those two young mothers just left because they got to deal with their children. And that's why we were asking for this time to happen earlier. It's already 8 o'clock. It's bedtime for the kids. That's what's happened to our town in just the last 10 years. There are many more young families here, and they're very disappointed with our parks. And I have to say, as a You know, being on the commission, it's difficult to answer that question of why our parks are so bad. Why people have to leave our town to go play with their kids. It's embarrassing. And here is an opportunity for us to not look backwards, but to look forwards and to actually get it done. Right now, Rob and Sweeney, we had how many meetings in this town to plan that park? There were at least 16, 17, 18 meetings that people came to, and we actually planned that park together. And it's going before planning now. It's almost shovel-ready. With these funds, we could actually have this thing going sooner than later and really get it done and have our children play in the park not just plan a park but play in the park so that's what I'm asking for is that we take a leap for our kids They're the fastest growing population in our town right now are children because the schools are in MLK right now. Those schools are bringing families. Sausalito is changing. And I think we all have to embrace that and prepare for that change. you by fixing our parks. Thank you. |
| 00:52:53.05 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Lance Alameda. |
| 00:53:04.85 | Lance Alameda | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. Distinguished citizens, I'm Lance Alameda, local crackpot, a.k.a. The Walking Dead. You may remember me from the film Love in the Age of Fish Sticks, where I play the dual role of infomercials Pitchman and the Face of God. But I digress. Thank you. It was an awful movie. That said, Once again, I wanted to come forth and voice my... Well, let's go back. Let me take a step back. I'd like to voice my ire first in... Coming here to see how difficult it is to do such a simple thing, and how intractable Some people seem to be behaving, and some people who are on the council who worm. stepping forward with their campaign saying that they were supporters of parks and recreations. And I'm not seeing that here. I'm seeing a lot of questions that don't reflect our interests. I just see lots of questions. And we have... a great answer before you, the certificates of participation which will not impact the public, It will pay for the parks. It's, A foregone conclusion, it's a perfect plan, and yet here we are, Just... sitting here with our up our and not moving forward when it's such an easy thing to say, yes, let us include this in the budget. Yes, let us make sure these funds are dedicated to Robin Sweeney, Dumpy, Southview... and the MLK properties. It makes perfect sense. And if all of you have said that you're in favor of supporting the parks, then I would do it. Because, you know, here's the one thing. I grew up in Fremont, California. I don't live in Fremont anymore. You know why? Because it sucked to be a kid there. There were no good parks. There was nothing to do. I take my daughters to the parks every single day. And you know what they usually say to me now? can we go to the Corte Madera Park? When we come to Rob and Sweeney, you know what they do? They'd rather play in the bushes. |
| 00:55:20.17 | Lance Alameda | There's a plan that's been sitting there, tacked up, on the parks and rec wall, for a new park. It's just been sitting there. The money is right in front of us all. All we have to do is say, Yes. I don't think it's that hard. And I think, you would disappoint all of us. If you couldn't get together, and just make this happen because we're going to have debates on this. long after We know that's true, but at least I think you can all get together and put it in the budget. I'd really appreciate that. In conclusion. Giants. Go Warriors. Thank you. |
| 00:56:05.97 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:56:06.04 | Lance Alameda | Patrick |
| 00:56:06.58 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:56:13.26 | Shelby Van Meter | Pat Zook, and now for a different point of view. I have some comments that I'd like to read into the record on the matter of the proposed $7.2 million certificate of participation. to be secured by the MLK site revenues briefly. I believe that refinancing the MLK property in order to pay for various unrelated projects throughout the city would be in violation of Ordinance 1128 unless approved by the electorate. The city entered into a lease purchase agreement with the school district in 1987, covering the entire 17-acre MLK site, the fields, tennis courts, track, and buildings. Many residents had worked throughout the 80s. I was one of them. to encourage the city to purchase the site with the vision that it would become a park and recreational area for residents. Then, because that goal was threatened by other council and staff intentions, we worked in the late 90s to memorialize that vision in a citizens initiative. That initiative became Ordinance 1128. The ordinance was put on the ballot twice. it was upheld by an overwhelming majority each time. MLK's for purchase has finally been consummated. The city... now owns the property free and clear. It therefore seems to me that it is time to move the goals of 1128 and the general plan forward and prepare a plan for recreational development at MLK. On several occasions in the past, it was made clear that the city would prefer to view the MLK site as an ATM to subsidize various city projects. Your budget this year revisits and adopts that approach and resurrects the threats that led us to 1128 originally. There is no question but that placing $7.2 million in debt on MLK would obligate the city to continue, perhaps for 30 years, the commercial uses on the site. It would give the largest tenant, the Lycée Française, which has the option to vacate the site every five years. Enormous leverage over the city. And it would postpone, perhaps forever, the vision of creating a community center and recreational facility serving residents of all ages on that property. In accordance with 1128, I think this must be approved by a vote of all the voters of Sausalito, not just you five. And I've... got written copy of this. |
| 00:58:46.77 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 00:58:52.31 | Mayor Theodore | Christine Scarpino. |
| 00:58:59.71 | Christine Scarpino | Good evening, City Council, City staff, residents of Sausalito. Thanks for being here. This is a follow up to my comment from the last meeting. I trust now you have received additional emails and letters asking you to consider the MLK and Park proposal. Over the past two weeks, I also expect that you have looked this over very closely. I would request that the council include some very important points to this matter. First, the MLK obligation to the general fund would be forgiven. if the COP were to go through as an exchange of funding. MLK will not owe the general fund. as it will take out the debt in exchange for payments. Second point. Measure O revenue currently is predominantly funding the city's urgent environmental legal requirements for sewers. and ADA access. under this current budget and over the next six year CIP budget I read ordinance 1128 and I'm not an attorney. But it does state. No part of the Martin Luther King property shall be used for purposes other than for park and recreation. without voter approval, provided, however, that the land area of said property currently devoted to commercial use may continue in such use on a temporary basis. Right now the city has lease obligations with the Lise and the New Village School of whom predominantly occupy MLK. The current lease term obligation to the city is just under 20 years. Therefore, the site for a recreational facility is not in the immediate future. In saying this, if the proposal were to go through, some possibilities are that the MLK and parks could be upgraded in... maybe three years. And is it possible that the debt could be paid off in 15? These are all possibilities that we could explore. If we directed the parks upgrades on a pay as you go basis, my financing projections do not see that the parks complete anytime before 20 years from now. It is up to you and the council to decide on this. In saying all of it, we appreciate all you do for the city, and we do. Thank you all for being here. I really appreciate it. This is a tough decision. Stick to the facts and good luck. Thank you. |
| 01:01:21.46 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:01:21.57 | Christine Scarpino | Thank you. |
| 01:01:21.58 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:01:21.80 | Christine Scarpino | Thank you. |
| 01:01:23.14 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak? Public comment on the budget. We saw someone come back in. Would you like to speak on the? Okay, so before I close public comment, Anyone else want to speak on the budget matter? |
| 01:01:59.32 | Unknown | Dorothy Gibson, Johnson Street, Sausalito. I'm very pleased that Pat Sook spoke so thoroughly about the situation and when it started. I was here. I was active here. I was very thrilled with the original plan. I envisioned what I wanted on that property and when I wanted it. And my idea included a swimming pool, sort of like Mill Valley's. I remember later, and I don't know the details, that something changed and shifted. And we were, although we had paid it off that debt, somehow the monies were getting involved in other projects as I listen now I hear us wanting to get even more involved in other projects perhaps as Pat says the only thing we can do to clear the slate and go back and vote again and this time legally force you force us to do what's proper |
| 01:03:08.86 | Mayor Theodore | Thanks, Dorothy. Monday. |
| 01:03:16.45 | Unknown | Thank you. Regardless or independent of the legal question, I'd like to reiterate what I said before, which is that whatever debt is taken on, that we can find that debt within the bounds of the lease agreements. I do not want to take on debt that those two little girls are gonna have to pay for when they're 30. That's not what this is about. We need to be conscious of what has already been done in the past. Too much debt that our young people are paying off. So my first point is I'd like to reiterate that and I think that is certainly possible if these legal questions are resolved in that direction. Secondly, on a different note related to the budget. I had a number of questions, and I met with Charlie, and he did an awesome job and answered them all. So I'm not here to ask those questions today. What I see is something that I'd like to add to what we as citizens receive each year in this process, and that is a services review. What we see are the inputs, one new police officer or a new this or a new that. And it's very hard when you look at inputs to understand outputs. Since the fire department was centralized, our budget has grown back again as revenues have grown. with lots of little things, a new here and a new this there and whatever, and without the opportunity to step back and say, hey, wait a minute, we need parks. Maybe we, a couple of years ago, could have actually set aside this money. So what I'd like to see us do in the next six months, whatever it takes, is actually get some measures of services. How are we doing? Are we meeting our goals? What kind of services are we getting? Are the residents being served? I'm, the budget is all about Thank you. you know, very carefully laying out the tasks and the people, but what about the services? Are the residents getting the right services? Are we getting, you know, I was at the hospital recently and they sent me a survey the next day. How do we do? When's the last time we asked our people literally how'd we do yesterday at the planner desk? Are you happy with that service? That's the culture I'd like to see next. I think Charlie and the team have done an awesome job in putting this all together and the budgets and a lot of that. I'd like to see a real service mentality as our next goal. So that's my request to you is to build that in as we go forward. Thank you. |
| 01:06:00.83 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else like to speak? Okay, seeing none, I'll close public comment. At this point, we'll move it back to questions. But again, what I'd like to do is let's finish questions on anything other than the COP, get through those questions, then we'll go through that, and then we'll move to comments. So any questions other than related to the park COP? Questions? |
| 01:06:28.76 | Jill Hoffman | I do have a question. Sure. Charlie, I'm looking at the, just because it's easier for me to see it, I'm looking at the major items considered during finance. |
| 01:06:29.48 | Mayor Theodore | Sure. |
| 01:06:38.28 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, it is this week. Thanks. I'm looking at the major items considered, and I'd just like to go down. I had a couple questions on that. Sure. Are you? |
| 01:06:48.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:06:49.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:06:50.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:06:51.49 | Jill Hoffman | All right, here, let me do this. How's that? That's good. That's better. Okay, so as I'm going down and we're looking at the If we look at the, well, that's different than what I'm looking at. |
| 01:07:06.73 | Jonathon Goldman | this one. |
| 01:07:08.95 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-mm. This is actually from the June 2nd, 2015. Report, oh boy, sorry, I didn't mean to stump you. I just wanted to know what, when I'm looking down through the individual |
| 01:07:30.62 | Mayor Theodore | major items considered during our review. So there should be at least something pretty close to that. |
| 01:07:34.60 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. There's four columns. It's project, one-time cost, annual cost, and then budgeted with a question mark. |
| 01:07:41.98 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:07:42.01 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:07:42.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:42.05 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Let me throw it. I'm looking at page, it starts on page 12. Oh, I'm sorry, page 4 of 12 from the June 2, 2015. packet. Sorry, let me throw a question to Mary. You know what? That's on the MLK site. So let me retract that question to Mary. |
| 01:08:12.51 | Jonathon Goldman | Is that it? it. |
| 01:08:16.37 | Unknown | if I may, Mr. Mayor. The data that you're looking for is actually in the staff report, I think. Because nearly everything that was on that table is basically in Charles' staff report, I think. |
| 01:08:17.59 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah. |
| 01:08:23.73 | Shelby Van Meter | because nearly... |
| 01:08:30.68 | Jill Hoffman | thing. |
| 01:08:34.43 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I just wondered what it meant when in budgeted it says no in that column. That's a good. With a question mark. |
| 01:08:40.85 | Jonathon Goldman | With a question mark. Which line item is it? I know what's in there. |
| 01:08:46.00 | Jill Hoffman | There's a couple that jump out at me. One is... one is the the dumpy home modular restroom and it says yes CIP fund so I'm assuming that means yes, it's a capital improvement Yes, and it's still |
| 01:08:59.91 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, and it's still in the budget. |
| 01:09:01.36 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. THE END OF Okay. And then under the project, the Chamber of Commerce kiosk project, it says no and then general fund. Does that mean it's not budgeted or that it is budgeted and it's committed? |
| 01:09:08.95 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Between that meeting and this meeting, now it's a yes and it's in the parking fund. |
| 01:09:16.58 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, great, thanks. |
| 01:09:18.17 | Jonathon Goldman | as part of the Bicycle Congestion Management Program. |
| 01:09:25.68 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, well, let me see if there's any other. And then all the police stuff we talked about, right? It's a no, but it's with the thought that we're going to look at it. |
| 01:09:32.58 | Jonathon Goldman | It's a no. No, but it will come back to the city council this year. Okay. Thank you. during the budget year. |
| 01:09:42.47 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. That's good. |
| 01:09:48.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:48.03 | Mayor Theodore | All right. Any others? Okay, so, all right, no further questions on items outside. So, questions on the COP and the parks issue? You want to start off? You have a back one. Yeah, you have a back one. |
| 01:10:00.20 | Unknown | Thank you. Bye. |
| 01:10:02.72 | Jill Hoffman | You want me to bounce off? OK. All right. So let me throw the first question to Mary. Mary, the 1128 ordinance, how does that square with the COP proposal? And under that ordinance, are we allowed to do the COP or |
| 01:10:25.02 | Mary Wagner | unless we go back to the voters. Thank you, Vice Mayor Hoffman. I believe that as we discussed at your last meeting, when this similar question came up, that the operative language in 1128 is the language that was added to the general plan, which was actually read during public comment, which is that MLK site may have commercial uses as a temporary condition, without any increase in land area or floor area, devoted to commercial use, until the city is able to finance its permanent use as a temporary condition without any increase in land area or floor area devoted to commercial use until the city is able to finance its permanent use as a public recreation facility. So I believe it's very defensible and the city council can make the determination to issue the certificates of participation, particularly if they're coterminous with the. the leases that are currently on the site and with the offset of the general fund loan, because both of those factors factor into the city financing it for its permanent use as a recreation facility. There's nothing in Ordinance 1128 which prohibits the city council from using funds from MLK outside of the MLK site. It's been set up as an enterprise fund, but it's not. legally required. to be one. So I do believe that the city is in a strong position to issue the certificates of participation, particularly with those conditions that I mentioned, and to utilize the funds as have been identified. |
| 01:11:49.67 | Jill Hoffman | In the current leases for the schools, which are the Lise and the New Village, are 15-year leases, did I have that right? |
| 01:11:56.34 | Mary Wagner | I believe that there's 18 years more, but I'm not positive. I can look that up for you, though. |
| 01:12:04.93 | Jill Hoffman | I have a couple questions for Charlie on this as well. Go ahead, sure. Male Speaker 1 on the 1128 issue. |
| 01:12:06.24 | Mary Wagner | I'm partly on this as well. |
| 01:12:06.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:12:09.85 | Mayor Theodore | AND THIS IS TAKING IT FROM A BUDGETARY POINT OF VIEW, CHARLIE, WE'RE IN THE BUDGET PROCESS AND WE, IF WE DECIDE TO TAKE ON THIS PARK AND FUND IT WITH A BOND OR COP, WE PUT IN THE, WE SAY THAT WE'RE GOING TO FUND THESE THREE PARKS AND THEN WE'RE GOING TO, |
| 01:12:14.54 | Shelby Van Meter | Yeah. |
| 01:12:25.55 | Mayor Theodore | uh, pay for them through the bond issuance. 1128 applies or not, or whether we go to a vote or not. my assumption is makes no difference from a budgeting process. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. So if we pass the budget tonight and add it in, we can determine whether 1128 applies or not, or whether we need to vote on it, because the thing we need to remember tonight is we're passing the budget. |
| 01:12:40.72 | Unknown | So if we. |
| 01:12:51.16 | Mayor Theodore | And then some of these technical issues about how we would funded or not, and whether the bond issue would have to be voter approved is something we can do later. Thank you. |
| 01:13:02.13 | Jonathon Goldman | you I'd like to add to the answer from Mary. Mary gave you a legal answer. We have a past practice answer. The 1999 lease and leaseback revenue bonds that were issued by the city on the leases of the MLK property not only included MLK improvements but also included City of Sausalito capital projects that were outside that area. So we have a past practice of issuing debt to pay for other capital projects. |
| 01:13:37.97 | Rebecca Woodbury | you No. |
| 01:13:42.24 | Unknown | A member or one of the residents or several have made the comment that putting the debt onto the MLK facility is essentially pushing out and almost, in a sense, inhibiting the future use of the MLK potentially to be converted to a recreation facility of residents in the future, so decided. And yet, as I look at the numbers, because of the way the transaction is structured, we'll be forgiving $3 million more worth of debt that the MLK enterprise owes the general fund. So in one sense, if you actually accumulated the funds that were accumulating in the enterprise fund, isn't it actually true that through this transaction, the MLK enterprise actually gets, is going to accumulate more funds? That's correct. So it's completely wrong to say that putting this transaction on MLK will actually delay any future recreation facility if in fact people decided they wanted that. |
| 01:15:05.44 | Jonathon Goldman | In fact, I think it accelerates it and it positions the city within 15 years, which is the end of the current commercial leases, to make the determination, as one of the residents said, we can now examine whether or not we can finance a continuing ongoing use of the MLK facility. So I think this is a good positioning move to enable the city to reach the goal of 11-28. |
| 01:15:06.80 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:15:29.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:33.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:33.60 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, so Charlie, just to make sure I'm clear on this. So we could structure the certificates of participation so that they, instead of 30 years, they're 15 years to be concurrent or coterminous with the current leases. |
| 01:15:54.04 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah, a citizen at the last meeting, I believe it was Wendy Richards mentioned, why don't we make the leases coterminous with the bond issue? And I thought to myself, that is a great idea. So I went and looked on the feasibility of the cash flow and the back of the envelope check says, yes, that makes perfect sense. And there's enough cash flow, more than enough cash flow to cover that level of debt service. |
| 01:16:17.22 | Jill Hoffman | Great, and then we could also, as an accounting practice, draw down that general fund debt as the certificate of deposit payments are made on the MLK site. So at the end of 15 years, you have a piece of property with no debt, either from the city or from the certificate. |
| 01:16:33.12 | Jonathon Goldman | In fact the proposal but again it's we're not coming forward at this moment with a proposal My initial thought was that we would eliminate the debt when the parks were completed after the after the parks construction |
| 01:16:39.16 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:16:46.42 | Jill Hoffman | eliminate the debt that's on the debt that's against the MLK property by the city. |
| 01:16:50.48 | Jonathon Goldman | By the city. The Interfund loan, yes. The Interfund loan. |
| 01:16:52.41 | Jill Hoffman | Interfront line, yeah thanks, sorry. Um, Okay. And then it would also be possible. Yeah, I just just ended that. |
| 01:16:59.11 | Jonathon Goldman | Yeah, I just added that. The amount of debt that will be forgiven as Council Member Withey said, will be $3 million more than the actual construction costs of the park. So in essence, the interest income that is accreted on the property would be forgiven and the total and all of the principle that the MLK Enterprise Fund owns the general fund will be repaid by the parks improvement projects. |
| 01:17:24.77 | Jill Hoffman | And then, and we can also segregate those funds that are coming from the certificate of participation so they can only be spent on the three parks and not in the MLK improvements and not other projects |
| 01:17:37.41 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, that can be built into the covenants and the resolutions that the city council passes on the use of the proceeds of the bond funds. Thank you. |
| 01:17:44.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:17:44.55 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:17:44.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks. Those are all the questions I have on MLK right now. |
| 01:17:49.97 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah, I have a couple questions. So, Charlie, I know that the lease with the Lise French School, I guess now it's at 17 years, but that's if they exercised their five-year interval rights to extend it. What is the lease duration where that first five year option kicks in? Is it five years? How long? |
| 01:18:24.80 | Jonathon Goldman | Do you? |
| 01:18:27.21 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah, because where I'm going with this is, you know, you mentioned and we've heard it's a good idea to match the certificate of participation with the length of the lease, and yet we have kind of a one-way lease with the lease. after that certain period, every five years, they can choose to leave or stay. And so, to me, there appears to be a great degree of risk with the Lise just saying, you know what, sell this to us or we're leaving. I would be... I mean, when I hear about the length of the certificate of participation, is it truly 17 years, or is it more like seven years or something? And I guess Mary's looking that up now. |
| 01:19:18.19 | Jonathon Goldman | While she's looking that up, let me just comment that and revisit when we presented the Lisset lease on why the Lisset lease was an excellent lease for the city as well as an excellent lease for Lisset. It's properly located for the Lisset School. They have made significant millions of dollars of investment into the tenant improvements, investments that they're not likely to want to walk away from because they would have to replicate that investment anywhere else they went. The lease terms, although favorable for the city, are also favorable for Lisset. To move out today into the competitive market for commercial space would be hard for them to find a similar deal that they have with the city not saying that the city's not maximizing I think we built in cost-of-living escalators that are totally consistent with the marketplace So I think that the likelihood of at any given point in time of, let's say, not exercising their option to renew is very, very small. |
| 01:20:32.03 | Adam Politzer | I'll just add to that, that the structure of the lease was in an effort to protect their investment. If they're going to put $4 million into improving the school site plus close to $800,000 on the playground, they want to make sure that they're able to stay there for a while. |
| 01:20:48.23 | Linda Pfeiffer | Well, this is, I'm just looking at risk here. And I mean, if you're investing money in an area and you realize there's a march to create a community center, and this is in the general plan, and it's protected by a citizen initiative, this is no small thing. I would, if I were the French school, I would look at that and I would use that as leverage knowing it was, you know, Absolutely. Up to the eyeballs in debt. |
| 01:21:14.04 | Jonathon Goldman | Absolutely. And just like the Marin School tried to leverage the city for their investment, we kindly asked them to leave and we found another tenant. |
| 01:21:24.08 | Linda Pfeiffer | We didn't have millions in debt over it at the time. |
| 01:21:26.63 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, we did. |
| 01:21:27.59 | Linda Pfeiffer | We had the lease purchase |
| 01:21:27.60 | Jonathon Goldman | We had the lease purchase agreement in the West America Bank building. We were at a place where we knew we had a market. We knew that there were tenants out there looking for space. When we realized that the Marin Bank wasn't able to meet the market demand for rent that that building could demand in the supply market, we went out and found someone who wanted it. |
| 01:21:51.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | My point is we didn't we didn't have the debt that we're looking at right now with in a 30 year time frame. Yeah, all I'm saying is and everything |
| 01:21:57.86 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. All I'm saying is in everything we do in life, there's risk. And so what we want to do is mitigate it. And we've mitigated it through a lease that has protections for the city as well as for the tenant. We've mitigated it by having a space that has millions of dollars of improvements so that it makes it easier to find another tenant in the unlikely event that that would happen. as well as you know the other strength of that positioning of that property as a valuable property for any new commercial tenant so I agree that there's always risk and I think the risk has been mitigated by the actions the City Council has taken |
| 01:22:39.20 | Unknown | Charlie, just to clarify, The word risk is thrown around a lot, and you mitigate risk by having reserves in part. Just if we look at the MLK enterprise itself, with this transaction, after a year or two, by my calculation, there's a healthy fund balance in the MLK enterprise. Is that right? That's correct. And to almost like within a couple of years, you've got almost a year's worth of rent sitting in the annual rental income sitting in the MLK fund as a reserve. In the event a tenant walked away and there was a period of vacancy, we've got way enough reserves in just the MLK enterprise to cover that eventuality, I believe. Is that correct? |
| 01:22:54.04 | Shelby Van Meter | So. |
| 01:23:03.27 | Mayor Theodore | That's correct. |
| 01:23:24.92 | Jonathon Goldman | Absolutely. Thank you. In fact, there's two levels of reserve. Any debt issuance has a reserve fund built into the level to be drawn upon in the unlikely event there isn't enough revenues to pay for it. And then the fund itself has enough reserves in order to cover that. There's over a million dollars net operating income in the MLK fund to support this level of debt service. There will still be cash flow at the end of this trend every year. |
| 01:23:58.18 | Mary Wagner | you |
| 01:23:58.23 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, if- Worst scenario, at least say he moves out, we'll say. |
| 01:23:58.35 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:23:58.82 | Mary Wagner | IF... |
| 01:24:05.15 | Unknown | the playground that they built stays just like it is. Is that correct? There's an 800,000. They're not moving. They couldn't afford to leave. |
| 01:24:15.12 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Yeah. Not only the 800,000 they put three or four million dollars in tenant improvements inside the classrooms Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:24:23.10 | Unknown | And they're going to walk away from that? |
| 01:24:26.40 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, any other questions? We spent a lot of time on it last time. Mary has an answer. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. |
| 01:24:28.82 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:24:28.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:24:29.64 | Mary Wagner | . Oh, yeah. |
| 01:24:29.99 | Unknown | So, I'm going to go. |
| 01:24:30.16 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:24:30.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:24:30.28 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. So, Mr. Mayor, in response to Councilmember Fyfer's question regarding the term of the Licea lease, the initial term was for five years, commencing September 1, 2013, running to August 31, 2018, and then there are three consecutive renewal periods each for five years apiece. Okay. So the lease could run out until 2033. Okay. |
| 01:24:57.21 | Mayor Theodore | questions. Mm-hmm. |
| 01:24:59.00 | Jill Hoffman | I have non-MLK questions. |
| 01:25:01.97 | Mayor Theodore | All right. |
| 01:25:02.59 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:25:02.95 | Mayor Theodore | you |
| 01:25:03.00 | Jill Hoffman | We close. |
| 01:25:03.17 | Mayor Theodore | Let me close that. Go ahead. We're done with MOK. |
| 01:25:05.12 | Jill Hoffman | Are we done with MLK? |
| 01:25:07.33 | Mayor Theodore | And then we'll be do these and then we're done with questions. Moving on. |
| 01:25:09.80 | Jill Hoffman | OK. Charlie, I'm sorry, this may be a... left field question again but um I'm looking because I use this the major major items considered during finance committee budget review kind of is what I was looking at so other than the kiosk that moved from a no to a yes Do you know offhand if anything else moved from a no to a yes? |
| 01:25:34.30 | Jonathon Goldman | Well, the MLK facility. The MLK, right. |
| 01:25:35.67 | Jill Hoffman | The MK, right, but that was with the certificate of participation, but anything else on there? |
| 01:25:38.59 | Jonathon Goldman | Anything else on there? |
| 01:25:41.14 | Jill Hoffman | I don't think so. Okay. And then, |
| 01:25:41.78 | Jonathon Goldman | I don't think so. |
| 01:25:48.17 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:25:48.19 | Linda Pfeiffer | That's it. Thanks. I do have a couple more questions. So Charlie, I'm seeing $360,000 for the Gate 6 Road signal mods. Is that part of, is that restricted funding or is that... |
| 01:26:08.25 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, on page 18 of this presentation. |
| 01:26:08.29 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yes, on page eight. |
| 01:26:14.38 | Jonathon Goldman | Let me get my pointer. |
| 01:26:16.05 | Linda Pfeiffer | And I'm for the council. I'm on page 101 of 110. |
| 01:26:22.58 | Jonathon Goldman | So you see over here is the gate six and the funding is in other bonds, grants, or loans. So in this case, of funding that would have to come from Thank you. |
| 01:26:34.54 | Jonathon Goldman | him. Yeah, or any other entity. We don't currently have funds for construction. Jonathan Goldman, your public works director. So it's unfunded, but we know what it will cost to construct. |
| 01:26:47.28 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I guess my question is, what I'm doing is I'm looking for opportunities I know that if we looked at Robin Sweeney Park and we looked at the playground section, that alone, I remember four years ago when Carolyn Ford was here, we were pushing for funding the playground alone just to get that done. And it was like 500,000, maybe it was three years ago, 500,000 or something. And with the ADA, it's 700. So I'm just looking at, you know, opportunities in current funding, you know, line items that... where there might be some wiggle room. And so that was the genesis of my question about the 360 for Gate 6 Road. So it's TAM money. |
| 01:27:32.12 | Jonathon Goldman | Sick. |
| 01:27:35.97 | Jonathon Goldman | In other words, to rephrase what Councilman Goldman said, is that project can't start until we find funding, and that funding has to come from a granting agency. |
| 01:27:48.57 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. So, and I think we talked about TAM funding, too, that we, the council would this time get to see the list of, you know, options and discuss those priorities for TAM funding this time. Because I'd like to do that. |
| 01:28:00.49 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:28:05.40 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:28:05.67 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:28:10.80 | Mayor Theodore | We done? Any questions? Okay. Moving on to comments. Who would like to start comments? |
| 01:28:15.27 | Unknown | to start... |
| 01:28:15.81 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:28:15.85 | Unknown | Comment? |
| 01:28:18.66 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. I can right. |
| 01:28:26.10 | Unknown | Thank you. And just, Jonathan, just one quick question. I looked it up. I wrote down. How many packs do we have in town? I've got Old South, Tiffany, Mary Ann Sears, Cazenau, Cloudview, Robin Sweeney, Dunphy, Marinship, MLK, and Gabelson. I said Casanova. with it. |
| 01:28:57.86 | Jonathon Goldman | Can anyone in the audience think of any he's missed? |
| 01:29:00.87 | Adam Politzer | It... |
| 01:29:01.29 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. In Langan. All right. Excellent work |
| 01:29:01.66 | Adam Politzer | You know what? |
| 01:29:02.17 | Unknown | AND I THINK IT'S A |
| 01:29:02.23 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. There's technically in the neighborhood of 19, but it depends on how you classify a park. We have sitting areas. |
| 01:29:10.05 | Unknown | park. We have sitting areas. That's enough though. If you really look at it Mary Ann Sears, which the Lions Club stepped up to redo, All the others have just barely been minimal. When I came to this town in 1970, Six. There were more cats in this town than there were dogs and children. Then it shifted. And now then it became more dogs in this town. than cats or children. Now it's shifted again. And then now, believe it or not, there are more children than the rod dogs and cats. So the times have changed. All right? And as far as a swimming pool, you want to build a swimming pool when you got 11 parks for our young, and these are not old, older children, these are young children. And you want to leave and think of putting up a swimming pool when all of these parks in this town need work desperately. This thing doesn't even make sense. Here we have the opportunity, and we know every 10 years the cost of these things goes up. All right? You going to wait for it? You'll wait more than 10 years because within that 10 year period, as it indicates, as our economy goes, we fall into recessions. We fell into one in 08. And we did nothing for all those years. It takes that many years to come out of a recession, and it takes you five years on top of that just to get back to where you are. So you won't see anything unless you do something that makes sense now with that part, taking MLK, or you might as well wait around for your children to get up here and ask for it. |
| 01:31:03.68 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:31:08.54 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, well, I want to thank everyone who sent me emails. I heard from, I think, all sides on this one. And I also want to thank everyone who came tonight, because I know how busy everyone is. So there are some things that I find challenging about this budget that I have to say I disagree with. I have a problem with the ambassador program paying ambassadors. They were volunteers. Now we've got, we're charging money for bike parking, which I think is good, but then I'd like to take that money and put it into infrastructure like parks, like pedestrian safety, et cetera, and instead we're paying the pedestrians, I mean the ambassadors, and we're paying them to a nonprofit that's managing and getting $150,000 run by the wife of the Bicycle Committee. Personally, they're wonderful people, but I think it's a conflict of interest, my personal opinion. I think we should have had competitive bids to manage the ambassadors because it's a service to the city. I wanted to attach an audit to it. I did not have support up here. So I have a problem with that that as for the MLK certificate of participation you know that's part of the MLK designation it's in the general plan folks and it's protected by ordinance 1128 and I it's really unfortunate because it's not the first time that we've had folks look at this and say, hey, let's do a loan against MLK. We looked at that for building the police and fire building. And the outcome was like, no. Instead, we're going to do a bond for the police and fire building. Voters know priorities. They voted for that. They passed that. I think if we looked at a bond specifically for parks and reserved for these parks, that the voters would embrace that as well, but not at the cost of putting MLK into debt. I also feel that if we go with a separate bond just for parks to fund, not the certificate of participation, that we're going to have to need designs for all three parks. Right now we have, we funded a consultant to work on Robin Sweeney and we've got that, you know, push through. But Dunphy Park, we've got the master plan, but, you know, we haven't gotten to the details and we need more community outreach and design. We know that Southview Park needs the retaining walls, but we need to design with that. We need, we need We need details behind the numbers. And I know that's what voters will want. Parks are really important. We upgraded Harrison Park. We upgraded Cloudview Park. We funded the consultant for Robin Sweeney Design. As you heard earlier, I pushed to fund at least just the playground portion years ago. I've repeated that theme on several occasions. And the truth is we were facing also inundated with huge infrastructure demands. We had the police and fire buildings, storm drain sewers, we've raised sewer fees twice, roads, the EPA mandates, the housing element, the bulkheads, American with Disability Act settlement north of 800,000, which just wrapped up last year. So I have more to say, but I'm going to yield to the rest of the council, and I'll just come back and wrap it up in 30 seconds later. |
| 01:34:35.97 | Unknown | Well, I think from Councilmember Pfeiffer's long list of all of the things that we need to work through and find monies for, what I think the last two years four five six budgets of previous councils together with last year's two-year strategic resource allocation plan have been addressing all of those issues and one of the things that i'm particularly proud of but also previous councils should be really pleased that they actually changed the direction of this city. And they changed the direction because they made up for a previous 20-year lack of investment in infrastructure. Everybody talks about deficits, the biggest deficit, not only the city of Sausalito, but I'm afraid the state of California, and in fact, the whole the U.S. suffer from, is an infrastructure deficit. It's by far the most important problem this country, this state, this county, and this town has. Everybody has this problem. What this budget does, what previous budgets have done before, is to put a major focus on infrastructure investment. Early on, before my time, with simple things like paving roads, which hadn't been done for years. right then sewers last year we passed measure o so we could really up the infrastructure up to over a million dollars in storm drains further road works and yes parks But in the end, the parks, it's going to be some years before measure of money can be used for the parks. ADA is going to have to come first. Storm drains, because of mandates, are going to have to come first. And so what we saw in the opportunity with MLK, and this was staff's superb idea, was to actually leverage that facility, now that there's no longer any, we own it outright, in such a way that was not only consistent with, but enhanced Ordinance 1128. Let me repeat that. This actually enhances Ordinance 1128. It's not against it. Because in the end, Through this transaction, the general fund is forgiving a significant portion of the interest that's accumulated that is owed the general fund. And so in return, the city is going to forgive the loan, and in return, the city is going to get three new parks. It's actually a very easy decision. |
| 01:37:37.93 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I've given this a lot of thought and anybody that stayed up and watched the last couple of city council meetings understands that I looked at the MLK issue specifically and the budget as a whole, but specifically the MLK part of it, it gave it a lot of time and thought. And I talked to members of the staff, and thank you for your time and to give me input. My concern, obviously, is that we pushed the idea of a town community center out for some years. And, you know, the good people of Sausalito passed 1128 for the specific purposes of putting the community center as a priority in our town And so I don't take that lightly and I don't take the fact that any action We might take would push that out for a certain number of years. I um, But on balance, when I look at the current leases that are on the property, that it would be some years at any rate before we could have the community center for the town. I think looking at the certificate of participation if we are able to make them coterminous with the current leases so that they end when the current leases end, and that they draw down on the interfund transfers so that at the end of that term there would be no debt either from the city or from any other source. and that the funds are segregated in such a way that we can track that they are actually spent for the three parks. I think that that's a reasonable method of funding or revamping of the desperately needed repairs to our three parks. And I think a couple of the parks do have specific components of them that are for younger children and when I was had a younger child in town I certainly use those parks but I think There are components to each of the parks that also appeal to older segments or more mature, however you want to say it, segments of the community. And so Dumpy has obviously has a broad appeal, as do the other two parts with the basketball courts and the tennis courts. |
| 01:39:32.94 | Shelby Van Meter | I'm not going to say that |
| 01:39:43.45 | Jill Hoffman | and the picnic areas. So I think I can support that with those three provisos, I can support that. The other specific things that I was looking at in the budget with regard to what's funded and not funded, The thing that jumped out at me was the modular the 75, the $75,000 modular toilet for Dumpy Park. I mean, we're going to redo it anyway. I don't think we should spend $75,000 on a modular toilet. It'd be nice if we could get some nicer looking porta potties, but that's a, |
| 01:40:04.48 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:40:15.58 | Jill Hoffman | That's for Jonathan back there to figure out. The other thing, this is an ongoing, this is a policy issue of mine. I don't believe that we should be funding the kiosk any more than we already do. And I'm talking about the Chamber of Commerce kiosk. And I'm sorry that it moved from the no column to the yes column. And I've talked to Unu about it, and I understand that it's, they do help, direct traffic, but that's for a specific chamber purpose. And I believe that should be paid for by the chamber. So that's those are my thoughts on first swing. |
| 01:40:51.17 | Mayor Theodore | Well, I want to thank everybody. I particularly want to thank Charlie and staff. I mean, one thing that gets lost in this is our budget. We're doing the second year of a two year budget. And we're, I think we've gotten it's a very important discussion on the COP for the parks. But we do have to keep in mind how well we've done as a city and how well we've done is we'll give some kudos to the council but mostly to staff and charlie who will be sorely missed in terms of managing our finances and in terms of uh directing us uh staff into investing into uh investing in sausalito which we're doing at every stage with storm drains with our with our streets and with our parks so i think uh i've had the privilege to sit on the Finance Committee, but those are so we get the insider view. We spent hours and hours on this. But as many of the public have said, Charlie is out there willing with his door open to talk to anyone because it's hard to go to every one of these questions while we sit up here and all of us have spent time with them. So we're familiar with this budget. So we're I think that's something that we should celebrate how well we've done, how well we're doing as a city. I think most of the issues are small stuff except for the parks. I think to me, I am. I agree this is something we need to do, we need to invest And Sausalito? I think the parks, without doing this, parks would always get a little short shrift on many things. It's very difficult as much as we . appreciate them. It's the kind of thing that across the board people need them. We need them for our families now that we're bringing them back with our better schools. We also our seniors want them. The friends of Dumpy Park want them. Everyone uses our park and we're the kind of city. We're a first class city. We can afford to have good parks. This is not splurging. It's investing in us and it's investing in the future. and investing in a future of Sausalito all the way around. I think it's a good idea. We can make them coterminous with the leases. Well, there are more details to work on, but there's no question that we need to move forward on this. So I think I think we've done a great job with the budget. I'm certainly supported as is, including these the COPA and park proposal. um do we have my councilman pfeiffer |
| 01:43:02.09 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah, I just want to wrap up two things. I agree with the visitor kiosk. I also would not have funded that. You know, I heard someone said that I had advocated parks. I do advocate parks. I support parks, and I support getting funding for parks. I just don't support going against and gutting, in my opinion, gutting a Citizens initiative, 1128, to do it. In terms of a coterminous lease, the fact is this lease goes to basically five years, 2017, and then you've got five years of risk beyond that. Secondly, we don't know about MLK's future needs. We could have $4 million beyond in maintenance. I know we are getting $500,000 roughly a year overage, but we don't know what emergencies happen. And also we need to firm up designs for Dunphy Park and Southview to clarify those bids. But I also want to comment on what I view as the real culprit in terms of the budget. pension costs they're unsustainable in 2013-14 our pension payment was 1.1 this year it's 1.7 next year it's 1.6 that's a 448 000 increase our general fund revenue is growing at just 3.8 per year our pension payments are growing at an annual rate of 10.6 per year and our and the salaries are growing at roughly 2% a year. So, you know, I look at that and I... payments are growing at an annual rate of 10.6 per year and our and the salaries are growing at roughly two percent a year so you know i look at that and i see a squeeze all over with with uh city services and i'm really concerned about that so um anyway finally i do want to i want to thank charlie and for the budget presentation and everyone again who who spoke out and your views. And, you know, I believe that working together, we can honor the Citizens Initiative, we can honor the vision of the community center, and we can also provide some strategy that everyone can get behind to fund these parks, but to do so in a prudent way, in a way that is not going to exchange one vision for another and take our general plan in a different direction. Thank you. |
| 01:45:16.55 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Do we have a motion? Yeah. |
| 01:45:17.98 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor, I'd like to start off by making a motion. I believe we need two motions here tonight, Charlie. One. Okay, fine. So... |
| 01:45:18.13 | Mayor Theodore | Oh. |
| 01:45:25.30 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:45:33.49 | Unknown | The first part is to approve the appropriation limit for the fiscal year 2015-16 pursuant to Article 13B of the California Constitution that's known as the GAN limit. And then secondly, to overall motion to approve the budget as presented by our financial services director for the 2015-16 fiscal year. |
| 01:46:00.13 | Mayor Theodore | Second. |
| 01:46:01.37 | Linda Pfeiffer | Can we vote on those separately? |
| 01:46:03.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:03.44 | Mayor Theodore | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:46:03.51 | Unknown | We'll wait. |
| 01:46:03.59 | Mayor Theodore | We'll be right back. |
| 01:46:03.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:03.68 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:46:04.52 | Linda Pfeiffer | Because I would vote yes on one, but I'm not prepared to approve the MLK certificate without a ballot vote. |
| 01:46:06.66 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:46:06.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:06.98 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 01:46:09.33 | Mary Wagner | certificate without a ballot vote. It's up to the City Council, Mr. Mayor, but the motion included both as one item, so you'd have to amend your motion. Thank you. |
| 01:46:16.81 | Unknown | So I'm happy to amend the motion into two parts. |
| 01:46:16.84 | Mary Wagner | you |
| 01:46:19.96 | Mayor Theodore | Bye. Yeah. I don't see any reason not to. Debbie, we'll vote on part one. And would you take the role? |
| 01:46:36.99 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Weiner. |
| 01:46:38.02 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:46:40.65 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council member Pfeiffer. Council member Withy. |
| 01:46:45.31 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:46:47.94 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Vice Mayor Hoffman. Yes. Mayor Theodore. |
| 01:46:51.43 | Mayor Theodore | Yes. Now back on to part two. |
| 01:46:54.73 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. |
| 01:46:54.98 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question because of the two the two items in the budget that I don't support what can I Can I make my own alternative motion with regard to those? Or I'm just trying to figure out. Yeah, just to respond to that. |
| 01:47:14.42 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, just to respond to that, you can. You can make a friendly amendment, and they can accept or not, or you can make your own motion. |
| 01:47:19.24 | Jill Hoffman | and they, |
| 01:47:21.93 | Adam Politzer | But you can also wait until those items come before the council's actual projects and then you can vote again then to either say that we should do something else with those monies. |
| 01:47:26.05 | Shelby Van Meter | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:47:32.54 | Adam Politzer | or vote no against it the project with a comment. |
| 01:47:35.14 | Linda Pfeiffer | when they come before you. Okay, thanks. I would like to make a substitute motion, which would be to approve the budget with the exception of the MLK certificates of participation, which should be withdrawn and held to a ballot vote. |
| 01:48:01.36 | Mayor Theodore | Seconds? There are no seconds for that. |
| 01:48:04.13 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 01:48:05.38 | Mayor Theodore | So can we have a roll on a second or two? |
| 01:48:15.29 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council member Weiner. |
| 01:48:16.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:48:16.21 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yes. |
| 01:48:16.62 | Unknown | you |
| 01:48:18.10 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Pfeiffer. |
| 01:48:19.25 | Linda Pfeiffer | No. |
| 01:48:20.47 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council member Withy. |
| 01:48:21.43 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yes. |
| 01:48:24.31 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Vice Mayor Hoffman. |
| 01:48:25.95 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, with the comment that I would not vote for the, I would accept the new modular toilet and the funding for the kiosk. Vice Mayor. |
| 01:48:36.55 | Debbie (City Clerk) | I'm sorry, Mayor Theodore. |
| 01:48:37.91 | Mayor Theodore | AND CAN WE NOTE THAT IN THE ACTION MINUTES WHEN WE GET THERE AS WELL? |
| 01:48:44.73 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:48:44.90 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. |
| 01:48:44.90 | Mayor Theodore | Yes, I vote yes. |
| 01:48:44.92 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah. |
| 01:48:45.46 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Thank you. |
| 01:48:47.79 | Linda Pfeiffer | Can I just make a comment to my no, which would be I oppose the CIP without a ballot vote. I oppose the $150,000 for the embarrassment. |
| 01:48:55.95 | Mayor Theodore | $50 grand for the ambassadors. We voted. |
| 01:48:57.73 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:48:57.78 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah. |
| 01:48:58.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:48:58.05 | Linda Pfeiffer | I can't. and the visitor kiosk. |
| 01:49:00.16 | Unknown | We need more cans to kick down the road up here. Thank you. |
| 01:49:04.63 | Mayor Theodore | We'll take a break, five-minute break. |
| 01:49:11.97 | Rebecca Woodbury | Thank you. you |
| 01:49:13.66 | Jonathon Goldman | The extra 11,000. |
| 01:49:15.56 | Rebecca Woodbury | It's just the six months. Yeah, yeah. So we collect the average six months. |
| 01:49:20.80 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:49:21.01 | Rebecca Woodbury | Thank you. |
| 01:49:21.72 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 01:49:21.88 | Rebecca Woodbury | Thank you. |
| 01:49:28.39 | Debbie (City Clerk) | you |
| 01:49:28.44 | Unknown | So was that you when you closed it? |
| 01:49:28.54 | Debbie (City Clerk) | with that. |
| 01:49:28.98 | Unknown | You would be. |
| 01:49:29.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:29.33 | Unknown | What? |
| 01:49:31.09 | Unknown | I mean, it was like, oh my gosh, what just happened here? |
| 01:49:42.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:09.97 | Unknown | Oh, thank you. Congratulations. My last budget. I know. |
| 01:50:12.90 | Jonathon Goldman | Oh, thank you. Congratulations. My last budget. I know. |
| 01:50:17.87 | Unknown | Thank you. and we know this. |
| 01:50:53.98 | Jonathon Goldman | Oh, you're welcome. THE END OF THE END OF THE Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. It's a place I can actually visit the open-goth page. |
| 01:51:00.17 | Unknown | Yeah. The Press. Yeah. you |
| 01:51:06.97 | Jonathon Goldman | I'm over here. |
| 01:51:11.01 | Jonathon Goldman | You can find it on my website, on the city's website. |
| 01:51:14.26 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:51:16.32 | Jonathon Goldman | But while you're there, go down here and there's a budget. And this is the original two year budget and all the performance metrics and whatever. So the outputs are in. Is there anybody there? |
| 01:51:28.84 | Unknown | I know that you should have asked me. |
| 01:51:31.04 | Unknown | Oh, okay, good. you |
| 01:51:33.55 | Jonathon Goldman | Okay. |
| 01:51:33.92 | Unknown | What about the news question about the session? |
| 01:51:38.33 | Jonathon Goldman | There is a budget and we've done a number of reforms. It just went as severe as she wanted. We have three pension teams. No employees can go into the first pension tier and she's going to all the latest employees. Yeah, like Adam and Jonathan. But any new employee either goes into a tier two or a be-pepper plan, both of which are consistent with the pension reform that was submitted by the state legislature. |
| 01:52:13.65 | Unknown | state legislature. And that's, so every time, well we're spending that. |
| 01:52:15.37 | Jonathon Goldman | And that's, so every time, well we're spending, I mean, we are spending over a million dollars every year, but you notice how it's going down, and that's because there's more employees going in this lower tier than the higher tier. |
| 01:52:20.97 | Unknown | you Yes. |
| 01:52:31.16 | Jonathon Goldman | And that's what we call the police. |
| 01:52:32.97 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:52:36.16 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. No, no, it's fake. Thanks. |
| 01:52:52.32 | Jonathon Goldman | Part of it is normal and part of it's not normal. |
| 01:52:57.17 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 01:53:02.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:02.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:02.78 | Unknown | Uh-huh. That's right. That's right. Congratulations. Thank you. |
| 01:53:08.15 | Jonathon Goldman | And this next group, our employees are |
| 01:53:14.99 | Jonathon Goldman | you Employees are paying a portion of the employee. They're paying all their own costs. So like in Social Security, you pay your employee pays half and half. |
| 01:53:22.06 | Unknown | So I get to beat you up tomorrow. Half an hour. Thank you. |
| 01:53:25.03 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Right, so in our case, for questions, the employee pays their cost, plus part of the employees. Right. All the people. All the people. Yeah, we negotiated that in 2012, and we're gonna... |
| 01:53:25.21 | Unknown | Right, so in our case, |
| 01:53:26.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:30.60 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:53:30.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:53:30.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Hey! |
| 01:53:31.96 | Unknown | Coffee. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:53:36.42 | Jonathon Goldman | And the next round is going to be |
| 01:53:45.19 | Jonathon Goldman | Oh, yeah. |
| 01:53:57.70 | Jonathon Goldman | The amendment reform is that |
| 01:53:58.96 | Unknown | I never asked that. This document is supposed to be a surprise. That's the one that was written on your desk. I've ever since married to you. I have never asked questions. |
| 01:54:00.06 | Jonathon Goldman | I remember that. |
| 01:54:01.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:01.22 | Jonathon Goldman | This document, please. |
| 01:54:02.54 | Unknown | That's the one that's written on your desk. I've ever since married me to this. I have never asked questions. . |
| 01:54:08.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:08.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:09.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:09.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:09.93 | Unknown | you You do sound bad, go away. I said, you do sound bad, go away. |
| 01:54:13.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:18.55 | Adam Politzer | Yes, you know. |
| 01:54:20.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:20.46 | Unknown | and introduce the honor of the pressure. |
| 01:54:20.56 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:54:20.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:20.95 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:54:20.97 | Unknown | I'm very impressed. Yeah, of course. I don't know if they're here or where should they be, right? Right. |
| 01:54:22.65 | Unknown | Yeah, of course. They're here on March. You see, right? Right. I felt comforted after the agenda. |
| 01:54:30.05 | Unknown | I feel so. |
| 01:54:36.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:36.64 | Unknown | and she, right there, she sits there. |
| 01:54:36.76 | Unknown | Oh, she was pretty great. It's a little bit easier. |
| 01:54:40.41 | Unknown | . That's right. |
| 01:54:44.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:45.00 | Tammy Blanchard | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:54:45.18 | Unknown | I know. |
| 01:54:46.43 | Tammy Blanchard | Thank you. |
| 01:54:46.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:46.50 | Tammy Blanchard | Thank you. |
| 01:54:46.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:57.28 | Unknown | you you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:54:59.88 | Unknown | Or your hurdles. Thank you. I was going to see it's a little bit. |
| 01:55:06.33 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 01:55:07.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:07.83 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Up. |
| 01:55:08.98 | Tammy Blanchard | you |
| 01:55:09.04 | Unknown | Really nice. |
| 01:55:09.13 | Unknown | Good night. |
| 01:55:09.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:10.21 | Tammy Blanchard | Thank you. |
| 01:55:10.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:10.72 | Unknown | The Press. |
| 01:55:12.50 | Unknown | you Yeah. |
| 01:55:13.15 | Unknown | I can't stop myself out here. |
| 01:55:14.46 | Andrew Davidson | you |
| 01:55:14.66 | Unknown | you |
| 01:55:14.75 | Andrew Davidson | you |
| 01:55:14.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:14.97 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. |
| 01:55:35.03 | Andrew Davidson | That's a problem. |
| 01:55:36.03 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:55:36.85 | Christine O'Rourke | Thank you. |
| 01:55:37.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:37.26 | Christine O'Rourke | But escape. |
| 01:55:38.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:38.86 | Christine O'Rourke | Thank you. |
| 01:55:38.90 | Unknown | Well, that's what I do. |
| 01:55:38.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:39.00 | Andrew Davidson | Well, that's what I do. |
| 01:55:40.03 | Unknown | but for me. |
| 01:55:41.93 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. |
| 01:55:41.95 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:55:42.00 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:55:44.97 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. Oh, and then we've got a pointer, too. You can use the clicker on the fan. |
| 01:55:48.21 | Christine O'Rourke | Oh, and then we've got a queer tip. Oh, that's six-lake bear. |
| 01:55:53.29 | Andrew Davidson | I don't know. |
| 01:55:56.87 | Christine O'Rourke | Thank you. |
| 01:56:12.43 | Christine O'Rourke | I know. I told you, like, sometimes you get one of these, and you're like, you just blow on it, and it changes, or nothing happens. I know. Everybody's. Great. Okay. I'm going to go. |
| 01:56:29.03 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:56:35.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:42.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:38.24 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, everyone, we're gonna start. We're moving on to item... Let's see. The B, actually, greenhouse gas reduction. And we have Our staff engineer, Andrew Davidson, presenting. |
| 01:58:52.91 | Andrew Davidson | Good evening. I'd like to thank the mayor, city council, city manager, director of public works, and sustainability commission, both past and present members, for the opportunity this evening to present the city of Sausalito 2015 Climate Action Plan. My name is Andrew Davidson. I'm senior engineer in your Department of Public Works. I'm going to touch on the city's history, on how we got here, and then turn the presentation over first to Mrs. Rebecca Woodbury, who is the chairperson of your sustainability commission. And then to Marin Climate and Energy Partnership's sustainability coordinator, Ms. Christine O'Rourke, who's going to present the climate action plan. Word of warning, often the climate action plan is referenced as a CAP for the CAP, so I'll go back and forth. Ms. O'Rourke did the hard work of preparing the CAP with a lot of input from the sustainability commission. |
| 01:59:47.99 | Andrew Davidson | February 2008, the City Council passed Resolution 4935, by which the City joined ICLEE, the local governments for sustainability, and pledged to take a leadership role in promoting public awareness about the causes and impacts of climate change. The City also resolved to undertake the City's for Climate Protection Campaign's five milestone process to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the community. Here are those milestones. Milestone one was preparation of greenhouse gas emission inventories. And milestone two was setting a greenhouse gas emission reduction target. Both of those were finalized in October of 2012. Milestone three is the climate action plan, which is here before you this evening. Milestones four and five will follow acceptance of the cap and your direction to continue the five milestone process. |
| 02:00:42.21 | Andrew Davidson | This slide is from the local government operations inventory, and it shows that in 2005, local government greenhouse gas emissions were about 1,760 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent gas. I know it's small text, but it's right there. |
| 02:01:05.01 | Andrew Davidson | This slide from the community-wide inventory shows the 2005 and 2010 results. In 2005, the total community-wide greenhouse gas emissions were about 56,300 metric tons. And in 2010, total emissions were slightly less, at about 54,400 metric tons. |
| 02:01:28.55 | Andrew Davidson | On to the CAP. The purpose of the CAP is to compile existing and potential strategies that the Sausalito community and government can use to address climate change. The CAP proposes actions in the five focus areas listed here. Full implementation of those actions will result in the greenhouse gas reductions also tabulated in red. here. Saucyutus CAP was prepared by Ms. O'Rourke of Marin Climate Energy Partnership with funding provided by Marin County Energy Watch, a joint project of PG&E and the County of Marin. |
| 02:02:05.06 | Andrew Davidson | There's just a list of other communities and the county that have Climate Action Plan. It's also my understanding that Corner Madera is moving forward with their cap. Something I do really wish to emphasize. Since last September, the Sausalito Sustainability Commission has met multiple times to review and provide comment on the CAP. And the Commission's comments and recommendations have been incorporated in that document. During sustainability's regular meeting of May 23rd, 2015, the Commission unanimously passed a resolution urging the City Council to adopt the 2015 Sausalito Climate Action Plan. |
| 02:02:50.85 | Andrew Davidson | Other than staff time, there have been no fiscal impacts related to the preparation of Sausalito's cap. As I mentioned before, Marine Clean Energy Partnership prepared the cap with outside funding. Review of the CAP has been extensively performed by voluntary efforts of your sustainability commission. Future costs will depend on direction for the CAP's implementation. The expertise of the sustainability commission will be valuable in holding costs down, as this body will be able to make recommendations about the CAP's implementation, perform community outreach, provide updates, and perform research. |
| 02:03:28.78 | Andrew Davidson | Now, before finally turning this over to Ms. Woodbury and Ms. O'Rourke, I want to show you this evening's recommended action. First is to accept and approve the City of Sausalito 2015 Climate Action Plan, and second to direct the Sausalito Sustainability Commission and city staff to begin the 2015 Climate Action Plan's implementation as resolved with Resolution No. 4935 at Milestone 4 of the Cities for Climate Protection Campaign. And with that, it's now my privilege to introduce Ms. Rebecca Woodbury, who's chairperson of your sustainability commission. |
| 02:04:25.51 | Andrew Davidson | but there's a partner alone. Okay, great, thanks. |
| 02:04:30.00 | Unknown | Good evening, the Warriors, one. . Thank you. Was I not supposed to tell you? . So special thanks for your budget item allowing me to watch the entire game. Thank you. |
| 02:04:46.74 | Unknown | That was not sustainable. |
| 02:04:46.79 | Unknown | That was nuts. |
| 02:04:50.52 | Unknown | you |
| 02:04:51.05 | Unknown | Oh, no. |
| 02:04:53.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:53.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:53.19 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:04:53.44 | Unknown | You should have heard the screams. It's all good. So I want to echo the thanks to Christina Rourke for preparing the plan, Andy Davidson for his staff support, for Kim and Greg Christie from the Bay City's Refuse, and from our city council liaison, Linda Pfeiffer, for all of the assistance that we've had in overviewing the cap to date. We are very pleased, very much looking forward to and pleased to look forward to your comments tonight because they will help us prioritize and move forward on this plan. So we're looking forward to hearing that. But first I wanted to start with talking about who is on your sustainability commission. Thank you. And let me see if I can... Start with Cynthia, who's here tonight. Cynthia is a proud resident of Sausalito, the town she's called home for over a decade, and has a son at the Sausalito-based Willow Creek Academy. She is the CEO of the Women's Funding Network, an association of over 100 organizations investing in social change globally. And then we have Millard Arterbury. He is now our secretary and he is a native San Diegan. Millard Arterbury has a unique fortune to work and live in Sausalito for the past two years with his wife of 15 years and his daughter. Millard is a lead accredited project architect with McCoy Architecture and has worked for 20 years in the architectural profession on a wide variety of residential design projects in four states as well as Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Then we have Greg Kanakoulam. He is a former naval nuclear engineer and a current utility scale sustainability energy strategist for NRG Energy, the largest independent power producer in the country. He has an MBA in sustainability from Presidio Graduate School, where he has had a recurring role as a graduate assistant and guest lecturer. We have Linda Shanfin, who is originally from the Bronx, New York. She received her Bachelor of Science in MBA from Cal State University, Dominique's Hills, and an Executive Certificate in Sustainable Enterprise from Dominican University. Her focus as a commissioner is to help educate the residents, restaurants, and businesses in Sausalito in recycling and composting, and give them the tools to take responsibility individually for their carbon footprint, to live sustainably now, and for future generations. Thank you. I am an analyst for the city of San Rafael, where I've worked for the last six and a half years. I have a master's in public policy from Mills College, and I moved to Sausalito two years ago, and as of now, have no plans to ever move again. We have Kristen Walzigal. She is currently completing an MPA degree and teaches biology at City College of San Francisco. She is passionate about environmental issues and wants to apply her scientific knowledge toward helping Sausalito forge a more sustainable future. Next we have Kathy Hutton, one of our newest members. She has over 10 years of experience managing residential and commercial recycling operations in San Francisco and Berkeley. She is an outdoor enthusiast who is passionate about sustainability issues and adores life in Sausalito. And we have Marjorie Thomas, who is our alternate. She is on the board of Sausalito Chamber of Commerce, a former executive in overseas international trust management and administration. She currently provides strategic assistance and practical support with a financial emphasis to small businesses in Marin. So that is your sustainability commission who's been working hard on this. And that is to lead into the idea that we have just recently created these four action committees on waste management energy built environment and community activation and the purpose of these committees is to take this plan should you approve it tonight and to start to prioritize these actions This is an ambitious plan and many of these items require further study to see how this will fit into our local context. So I want to end with the fact that this is an important plan, and we urge your adoption and welcome your comments tonight so that we can press forward with prioritization and implementation. Thank you. |
| 02:09:19.43 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you. |
| 02:09:19.44 | Unknown | I won't say anything about the game. |
| 02:09:20.83 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:09:21.20 | Unknown | Or the Giants game for them, huh? |
| 02:09:40.79 | Andrew Davidson | So, and now, it's my pleasure to introduce Ms. Christine O'Rourke, Sustainability Coordinator of the Marine Clean Energy Partnership, who will present this to you this evening, the City of Sausalito's 2015 Climate Action Plan. And she won't discuss the game. |
| 02:09:57.72 | Christine O'Rourke | No, I did not see the game. So good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Thank you for having me here this evening to present the draft climate action plan. And I want to say it really was a pleasure working with your sustainability commission. They were really terrific, and their enthusiasm is great, and it's going to really help to implement this plan for you. So I'm going to go through this pretty quickly. I know you have a long agenda tonight, but I am available, of course, to answer any questions about specific programs. So briefly, what is a climate action plan? There are four essential components of a climate action plan. First, it has to identify baseline greenhouse gas emissions. Next, the plan projects emissions under a business as usual forecast, or BAU forecast. So that's assuming... projecting what emissions are going to be. in the absence of any programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Third, we set a goal for reducing emissions by a specific target year. And then finally, the plan has to include identify policies and actions that the city and the community members can take in order to reduce emissions to reach that goal. So what we've done is we have two greenhouse gas inventories that were prepared for the city for community-wide emissions both in 2005 and 2010. So we're utilizing those inventories in our climate action plan. This is a snapshot of emissions in 2010. And as you can see, most of the greatest majority of the emissions come from the transportation sector. So that is vehicles traveling on local roads and a share of vehicles traveling on state highways in Marin County. That's mostly, of course, Highway 101. Next, we have emissions coming from the residential sector. So that comes from primarily the consumption of natural gas and electricity in Sausalito homes. Third is the emissions from the commercial sector. Again, consumption of natural gas and electricity. And then there are some smaller emissions coming from the wastewater, wastewater, and off-road sectors. On the government side, emissions from government operations represents only 3% of total community-wide emissions, and they were about almost 1,800 metric tons. And these emissions are coming from consumption of energy in buildings and facilities, from the vehicle fleet, public lighting. This includes mostly your streetlights. And then government generation of solid waste, water transport, that's irrigation and electricity used in stormwater pumping. And the most of your government operations emissions come from the employee commute sector. So for the Sausalito cap, we're using 2005 as our baseline year, and the target is 15% below those 2005 levels by 2020. And that goal is consistent with the AB 32 target, which is the state's target to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. And this goal is also the one that was adopted by the city council in 2012. So this kind of graphically shows what we're looking to do with our climate action plan. Here's your 2005 baseline, and that's the 56,000 metric tons. And then here in 2010 is what the emissions had dropped to, and emissions had actually fallen to almost 3.5% in 2010. So we take that point and we project out for our business as usual forecast. And that shows that emissions will go up if nothing's done in the community by about half a percent. It's not that much, but it's based on projections for jobs. and population growth, which is not that significant here in Sausalito. So then what we now need to do is to make this gap here in order to reach our 15% below our baseline, which means that we're looking at a reduction of about 12% from the current, what we're estimating our current levels. And then in government emissions, here's your baseline, and we're just looking to reduce emissions 15% from 2005 levels. So what we do first is we identify and quantify the state actions that are going to impact greenhouse gas emissions here in Sausalito. And there are eight state actions that we've identified. Some of the largest emissions reductions are going to come from the renewable portfolio standard. That is the state mandate for all electric utilities. And here that would be PG&E and MCE, to include 33% of renewable energy, that's from eligible renewable sources, by the year 2020 in their electricity power mix. And then also the Pavley and low carbon fuel standard have some very significant emissions reductions. The Pavley standards are increasing fuel efficiency in passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks. The low-carbon fuel standard is seeking to decrease the carbon intensity of transportation fuels, so that would be things like promoting electric vehicle car use, for example. |
| 02:14:32.44 | Shelby Van Meter | Green. |
| 02:15:26.10 | Christine O'Rourke | And then there are a number of other programs that we're taking credit for. Lighting efficiency, residential solar water heaters, the California Solar Initiative. All of these programs are aimed at increasing renewable energy or increasing energy efficiency. And a lot of those programs are promoted through the use of rebates. So all of these together will decrease emissions to 21% below the 2005 level. So just in state actions alone, the climate action plan actually demonstrates that the city can meet that 15% target. So what we do next is to identify local actions that the city and the community can take to reduce emissions even further and these have been are categorized according to these five sectors in your climate action plan I'll go through them very quickly but essentially they add another 2,000 2100 metric tons reduction which will up that total reduction to 25% below 2005 baseline And then looking at the local actions for government operations, where when we add all of the local actions that can be taken and the state actions that apply primarily, there's the transportation programs that would apply to your employee commute, we get emissions reductions of 19% below 2005 levels. So in the energy efficiency and renewable energy sector, most of the reductions here are coming from energy efficiency programs. So this would be to... for the city to participate in rebate incentive programs. Most of these are already either in existence or their programs that are provided through the Marin Energy Watch Partnership, also rebate programs from PG&E, MCE, et cetera. The goal here is to reach 5% of existing homes and businesses for energy efficiency by 2020. The second largest reduction comes from MCE Deep Green. So this would be promoting deep green or if another 100% renewable electricity source, if that becomes available, to the residents and businesses in Sausalito. We estimate that, well, for MCE's customers, almost 2% of their customers currently subscribe to Deep Green. So in Sausalito, that's about 74 customers. Our plan is to reach 500 households and convert them to Deep Green by 2020. There is also the Green Building Ordinance. This would be adopting a reach code to increase, require energy efficiency 15% above existing Title 24 standards and then programs to promote solar energy and also to require energy audits at time of resale. So that's to require energy audits, not to require any upgrades, but experience shows that when the audits are required, that a lot of the households will then go ahead and make some energy efficiency improvements, and we're assuming about 10% will make those improvements. On the government side, most of the reductions here come from MCE deep green. The city is already using that deep green, so that's terrific. Public lighting is converting all of the outdoor lighting to LED and again the city has already taken steps to do that. Nearly 80% of the street lights have been converted to LED. There are also some energy efficiency projects that have been identified. Some like the lighting has been completed here in town hall, but there are other projects that have been identified by the marine energy management team that could be implemented. Energy efficiency protocols are things like instructing staff to turn off computers and printers at the end of the day, to use duplex printing to purchase Energy Star equipment. And then solar. There are two solar systems that the city has already installed, one here, at City Hall and another at the fire station. We're taking credit for those and also recommending an additional solar installation, perhaps at MLK, that would be about 25 kilowatts, which is the size of the one at the fire station. In transportation and land use on the community side, most of the reductions here come from the bicycle and kind of shifting vehicle use to bicycle and pedestrian transportation. And so this would be accomplished through implementation of your bicycle and pedestrian master plan and also just supporting programs to support bicycle and pedestrian use. And then there are some other programs to support public transportation, carpooling, electric vehicles, a bike sharing program, et cetera. On the government side, the largest emissions reductions could happen through reducing the city employee commute emissions. And here we're trying to shift about 5% of emissions in employee commute. And that could be accomplished through offering incentives, transit incentives, offering flexible schedules, teleworking, telecommuting, where that's practical. And adopting high-efficiency vehicles. Our plan is just to convert four existing vehicles to hybrid models and reap some of the benefits there. In waste reduction, reuse, and recycling, there are a number of programs here that are aimed at accomplishing zero waste. So that goal by the JPA is to reach 94% diversion by 2025. We're currently at 74%. So in the plan, we're looking at kind of an interim goal of 86% diversion by 2020. And that could be accomplished through programs for mandatory recycling, composting, construction, demolition, diversion requirements. In the water and wastewater sector, most of these reductions could be accomplished through the indoor water efficiency and conservation. And that's because really then you don't have to heat the water. So that's why those emissions are so great. And also a program to produce energy from wastewater at the water treatment plant. And other programs to improve outdoor water efficiency and also to promote gray water systems and rainwater catchment. So that's a very quick view of the programs in the Climate Action Plan. I'd like to kind of switch very quickly to a discussion of sea level rise. Now we already know that flooding from storms and extreme high tides already poses a threat to marine communities. And it's gotten to the point where the term king tides has entered our vocabulary and regularly appears in the headlines of the Marin IJ. This shot here was taken in 2012, and it's at the interchange of 101 and Route 1. And this is during a king tide event. And what's interesting is that it hadn't rained for over a week when this shot was taken. There's no storm surge effects here. There's no storm water runoff effects. These king tides happen several times a year now. This is a shot of Gate 5 Road here in Sausalito during a Kingtide event in 2012. And here's another shot of the Liberty Dock parking line. So if you're a longtime resident of Sausalito, you probably feel like these kink tides have gotten worse over the years. And you would be right. And we know that because of this San Francisco tide gauge, which is in San Francisco Bay. It's been measuring tides since 1854. It's not only the oldest tide gauge in the United States, it also has the longest unbroken record of tide data in the Western Hemisphere. And what we know from the data that's been collected by this tide gauge is that sea level has been rising since about 1900, and it's rising at a rate of over eight inches per century. And so scientists expect that sea level rise is not only going to continue, but is going to accelerate through global warming. And that's because as temperatures rise globally, the land ice that's stored in glaciers will melt and flow into the sea. And also as the temperatures rise, the ocean water will warm and expand. So there are many sea level rise projections. The ones that we're using in the Climate Action Plan and the one that the state recommends using are sea level rise projections that were developed by the National Research Council specifically for the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. This was done back in 2012. And we are using the projection which is kind of the middle of the road here. So we're looking at a sea level rise of about 11 inches by 2050. And essentially what that means is that today's king tides are going to be tomorrow's high tides. There are some new modeling tools that are out just in the last year or so. The one that we really like to use is our CoStar Future. This is available online. It's a very simple, user-friendly tool. I encourage everybody to go online and check it out. And what it allows you to do is to kind of pick your sea level rise scenarios. It comes in 10-inch increments, or I'm sorry, 25-cent centimeter increments, which is about 10 inches. And then you can lay over that storm scenario. So you can look anywhere from an annual to 100-year storm. And you can also lay over the king tide scenarios. So I'm just going to kind of quickly show you one area that we kind of zoomed in on in Sausalito. And this is looking at to the north here, to the top of your screen, is Gate 6 Road. And then at the bottom is West Harbor Drive. So this is what the inundation we would look at with a 10-inch sea level rise. And it's mostly the water is inundating parking lots, but there are some buildings some buildings that are affected now if we look at 10 inches and we add in the annual storm then we can see more areas that are inundated And then if we look at 10 inches with the king tide, now we're seeing even greater areas of parking lots, buildings, and then the water is beginning to breach a couple of the roads here, the Varda Landing Road and also Gate 5. So recognizing that sea level rise poses a very real threat to Sausalito, we've included some adaptation programs in your climate action plan. One is to conduct a sea level rise and risk assessment. What we've done here is a very high level view of sea level rise. All of these models, there are other models to look at, and they all need to be ground truth to determine exactly what the impacts would be on a parcel by parcel assessment here in Sausalito. We are also recommending to develop adaptation measures to partner with neighboring municipalities and regional agencies. And on this front, we have some very good news because the county of Marin has already dedicated $250,000 to conducting a countywide risk and vulnerability assessment and they would like to include all of the Bayfront communities in that effort the county has also applied for a $250,000 grant with the coastal conservancy that grant has been recommended to their board for approval and should be knock on wood, approved next week. So there will be at least $500,000 available for this effort and should be getting underway fairly soon. We also have a program to incorporate sea level rise in your capital planning process. in your local hazard mitigation plan and in emergency planning and training. Then finally, there are programs to implement your climate action plan. We're recommending that you monitor and report progress on implementation of the programs in the plan annually to update the greenhouse gas inventories. At least every five years, we at the Marin Climate and Energy Partnership are already beginning to undertake this effort and we're going to be preparing inventories for all of our communities in Marin for 2015. We recommend to continue and expand public and private partnerships, including with the Marine Climate and Energy Partnership, to pursue funding whenever that's available, and then to update your climate action plan for targets beyond 2020. In that regard, the state does have targets to reduce emissions to, let's see, 40% below 1990 levels by 2030, and then to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, which is a very ambitious goal. And so although your plan does have, reduces emissions to 25%, that really is only a small way to go to get to that 2050 goal. And it's going to require a lot more action on both the state level and regional and local levels. So that's it, and thank you again. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. |
| 02:29:15.02 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, bringing it to the council who would like to start off with questions. Thank you, sir. Thank you. |
| 02:29:20.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:20.52 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 02:29:22.78 | Linda Pfeiffer | Well, I just want to say thank you, and I want to also, of course, thank the Sustainability Commission and Rebecca and Andy's hard work as well, and everyone on the Sustainability Commission, because you guys just do a great job. And one of the great jobs they do also is they're very patient with me when I have questions that sometimes, you know, I disagree or what have you, and so they work with me. So my question for you, this is one of the points that I kind of kind of diverged a little bit. And so, and it has to do with the, I see there's an action implementation of the Climate Action Plan. And specifically, I'm looking at page 44 of, is it, I gotta put my readers on 92? 92. Thank you. And I notice here it says 2-9, mixed use and infill development. And it says the target is develop 43 units of mixed use and infill multifamily housing. So I guess this was one of the items that we kind of a little bit diverged on. My question is, to my knowledge, I know that they've looked at hypothetical studies with regards to mixed use on greenhouse gas reduction. But to my knowledge, I have not seen any hardcore studies of actual developments showing a reduction in greenhouse gases. Because we can't force someone who lives in mixed use to not drive. We can't force them to use mass transit. I remember I was at a dinner with Senator Steinberg was there the author of SB 375 and I asked him do you live within half a mile of mass transit and he said yes. I said do you use it? He said no. My schedule is too crazy. So I guess it goes back to my question about putting mixed use and specifically this number of developed 43 units into this climate action plan and I was just wondering if there was some wiggle room with that. |
| 02:31:45.22 | Christine O'Rourke | Okay, I'm wondering where you're seeing 43 units, because on 821 we're saying 36 units. |
| 02:31:52.28 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'm looking at it. What am I looking at wrong? I'm at page 44 of 92. And I see 2-9, mixed use and infill development. Am I looking at the wrong thing? |
| 02:32:06.37 | Jill Hoffman | No, you're right. It's at table 15 of your report, and our packet says page 44 of 92. But I guess... |
| 02:32:12.73 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. But I guess more to my point is putting any number there. Okay. |
| 02:32:18.16 | Christine O'Rourke | MOTIVATED. Putting in. |
| 02:32:20.51 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:32:20.53 | Christine O'Rourke | Okay, so the number of units came from ABAC projections. So we're just, you know, because of your housing element, of course, we're just assuming that the units that ABAC is projecting is going to be needed by 2020 is what the city will be planning for. And then we're using the same percentage of multifamily housing that was kind of, you know, assuming low and very low and even moderate were multifamily units. So that's where the multifamily split comes from. The literature, which is shown on page 821, the background is in the appendix. So the literature and the studies support a 5% reduction for development that's close to transit or is in mixed use development. What we've done is we've used a guide called CAPCOA, the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association. developed this guide for taking reductions. So we've used that guidance. in order to determine the reduction. So we're looking at a 5% increase in vehicle miles traveled for those developments that are near transit or in mixed use. A 5% reduction is not really that, it's not that large. So I think, I mean, it kind of seems reasonable, I think to most people would seem reasonable. And I haven't looked in depth at all of these specific studies, but they are quoted. And I can get you those studies in particular if you're interested. I'd be happy to do that. |
| 02:33:56.04 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. I'm very interested in that. And also with regards to the vertical mixed-use program we had, it was more to satisfy the variety of housing statute as opposed to ARENA. And so I guess with respect to the reference of ABAG for the number of units there, I guess it's, in fact, there was a lot of controversy in terms of the assumption that all of the sites designated as vertical mixed use would be actually used. So, okay, that was my question, and I will yield to the rest of the council. I have a follow-up question, but I don't want to monopolize everything. Thank you. |
| 02:34:44.42 | Mayor Theodore | I do have a question on that and on that table too. I mean, a similar one is on, um, The same chart. to one increased bicycle, my walking and biking mode share for you, utilitarian trips from 13.6 to 20. And we have a bike and pad plan. And I'm just wondering, as Councilmember Pfeiffer's question, we have a housing element. We certainly don't want to have a climate action plan that conflicts with our housing element or adds anything different. unfortunately for most of us, we've gone through it, but there's a lot of these things that we're not sure. Now, we're told that It requires further study as our, um, co-chair of the sustainability set, and we know implementations now, but I'm a little concerned about making commitments to things that we're, we're not certain of, and again, housing, a lot of things, and they're good, but they may conflict with other things that we have in other places. So I'd like you to address that. |
| 02:35:42.15 | Christine O'Rourke | Right, absolutely. So one of the programs, Program 2-1.A, It does say specifically to implement the city's pedestrian and bicycle master plan, and that really is in there so that it does kind of, you know, reduce any kind of conflicts that might be between the two plans. And then the other ones that are listed here, as we went through them, we did consult the bike and pedestrian plan to make sure that there, and I don't think there are any conflicts, at least least for those policies and programs but if there's anything that you see that would be a potential conflict we can we can you know explore that for example for |
| 02:36:21.18 | Mayor Theodore | Well, for example, on that to wanted to that come from the bike and pet plan or was that a number that was researched or for example, how did you come to that number? |
| 02:36:27.49 | Christine O'Rourke | How did that? Oh, how did we come up to that number? Well, that number is really an increase of 50% over the existing mode share to get to 20%. And 20% is a number that's been – I'm not sure if Sausalito has adopted that, but there was a resolution that many of the cities in Marin County had adopted to kind of set that as the goal, to increase the bike and pedestrian share to 20%. So it's really kind of a goal as opposed to, it's very difficult to quantify if you do these programs or if you build this infrastructure exactly how many new bicyclists you're going to get. So that's really, that one's a little bit more of a goal. |
| 02:36:30.80 | Mayor Theodore | Yeah. |
| 02:37:13.54 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question with regard to how this plan would be implemented with regard to the city and also the cost estimates that are in here. And were those included in the budget that we just voted on? Because as I'm going down through here, I'm seeing $13,000, $8,000 for different things, $3,000 for hybrid cars versus regular cars, $12,000 per year, and zero waste grant. Oh, those are grants, so that's good. That's under zero waste. But I see $800,000 here for a Whiskey Springs pumping station. So an estimated annual cost for planting new trees of 10,000 so I I guess this is a question for me sorry this may be a left field question for the Finance Committee or for or for Adam are those are is this a plan a prospective plan in the future or is this a plan that's already been implemented in our budget and or can anybody answer that yeah see Jonathan |
| 02:38:10.65 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I see Jonathan making his way up there. I think the first part would be that some of it is in the budget, you know, the trees. And then some of the requests looking at vehicle replacements, you know, to look at alternative vehicles. You know, again, that would be something that we would address as we bring it forward. But I'll yield to that. |
| 02:38:13.01 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:38:18.34 | Shelby Van Meter | Yeah. |
| 02:38:19.36 | Jill Hoffman | that |
| 02:38:30.68 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:38:32.32 | Adam Politzer | a public works director who was named council member earlier. |
| 02:38:34.85 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 02:38:34.90 | Unknown | TODAY. It's a good evening. |
| 02:38:35.47 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 02:38:35.52 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry. |
| 02:38:36.03 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 02:38:36.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:38:36.10 | Jonathon Goldman | . I've since resigned that position. Just briefly in answer to your question, first of all, as you know, the Department of Public Works provides staff to the Sustainability Commission and has been involved as actively as possible in helping to support this planning process and this planning document. Ms. O'Rourke mentioned the benefits from a greenhouse gas reduction perspective of reducing the cost of pumping water. We have already replaced the oldest of our wastewater lift stations with state revolving fund monies relatively recently. the next project on the list, and it's a project that's being designed in collaboration with the Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District, is precisely the replacement of the Whiskey Springs pump station that is included in the plan. So in general, the answer is yes, these are reasonably well integrated, although this planning document is not a one-year planning document. It's a planning document, again, to reiterate, that is intended to help us achieve the goal that council agreed to try to achieve and hopefully go beyond that once we reach that goal. And that's an iterative process. So the short answer is to some extent, to a large extent, I think that the capital projects that you've alluded to in the plan are either built into this next year's budget or into our longer-term plans. |
| 02:39:52.42 | Shelby Van Meter | I'm not. |
| 02:40:18.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks. And then my second question was also about the Uh, you know, the mixed use, the two point, the two dash nine on that table 15, um, that talks about 43 units of mixed-use and infill multifamily housing And I think these are coming, it seems to me these are coming from the same, requirements that we just finished with our housing element and I wouldn't want to do anything that was inconsistent of the incredibly torturous process that we went through for our housing element so I'm wondering if we could just you know in order to make that consistent just take out develop units of mixed-use and infill multi-family housing consistent with the Sausalito housing element I think that would satisfy the requirements of both plans it wouldn't cause any confusion or additional burden on anybody I think |
| 02:41:13.02 | Linda Pfeiffer | So you're saying remove the number. Yeah, just remove the number. |
| 02:41:14.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, just remove it over. And just say, consistent. Units of mixed use, consistent with the South Slayer housing element. |
| 02:41:18.94 | Linda Pfeiffer | And just to highlight too, the wording on a different page for 2TAC 9 on 34 of 92. Encourage mixed use and infill development at higher densities near transit and amenities. Okay. |
| 02:41:38.51 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry, Councilman? |
| 02:41:39.49 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. It's page 34 of 92. I just want to fully disclose that the wording for the 2-tack-9, page 34 of 92. |
| 02:41:56.71 | Unknown | June of the year. |
| 02:41:58.36 | Linda Pfeiffer | page 34 of 92 to tech 9 halfway down the page encourage mixed use and infill development at higher densities near transit and amenities. It says the higher densities that caught my eye. |
| 02:42:15.69 | Jill Hoffman | How about if we just did the same thing about after amenities, put a comma consistent with the Sassali housing element plan? Do you want to leave that at higher densities? |
| 02:42:24.97 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:42:25.02 | Jill Hoffman | there. |
| 02:42:25.31 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:42:26.34 | Jill Hoffman | consistent with that. |
| 02:42:26.96 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:42:27.03 | Jill Hoffman | plan. |
| 02:42:27.98 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:42:28.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:42:28.28 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 02:42:28.31 | Jill Hoffman | Well, no, or did you just say, yeah, I don't know. |
| 02:42:29.14 | Linda Pfeiffer | dedicated to anyone. |
| 02:42:31.06 | Mayor Theodore | May I? |
| 02:42:31.08 | Jill Hoffman | MEDICAL. I mean. |
| 02:42:32.72 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 02:42:32.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:42:32.75 | Mayor Theodore | Do we need this at all? I mean, we have a housing element, and we want to add things in our climate action plan that help us with climate action. If we have any doubt about it, and if we're addressing it other places, And, you know, I've been talking about I wouldn't want to be arguing about the wording. And when things change, this Climate Action Plan is going to evolve. Are housing elements gonna evolve and okay we have. |
| 02:42:53.71 | Linda Pfeiffer | And we're only looking at three. If you look at page 31 of 92, the whole mixed use and infill is only representing three metric tons of greenhouse gas. |
| 02:42:55.25 | Mayor Theodore | If you look at the |
| 02:43:02.22 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Unless we need this accountant. I mean, that's, city attorney has a comment? |
| 02:43:08.09 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My only point to add was obviously any development has to be consistent with the city's zoning. So the climate action plan wouldn't trump your existing general plan, housing element, specific plan, or zoning ordinance. You may, if you're contemplating changes to any of those documents, take into account what the climate action plan is recommending, but it would not supplant those documents or those controls. |
| 02:43:39.39 | Christine O'Rourke | So as I said before, we did look at the housing element and at the RENA numbers, and we looked at the projections because ABAG does projections for the number of housing units that are expected through 2020. And so we took their 2022 number, your RENA, which goes to 2022, and then we took a percentage of that to 2020. And then we assumed the low, as I recall, because I don't have the calculation exactly in front of me that the very low low and the moderate would be in multifamily just so that they are affordable whether that's whether it's deed restricted or if it's market rate housing so so it is consistent but like you said it's very small number what we're just trying to do trying to do is to take credit for that, for what's inevitably the development that should happen under your housing element. But it's a small number, so we can either amend it or we can just take the program out. |
| 02:44:14.05 | Shelby Van Meter | whether it's not. |
| 02:44:38.84 | Linda Pfeiffer | My personal preference would be to remove it only because it's a small number. And also, frankly, I voted against the housing element partially because of the vertical mixed use. Partially because I felt that it also incentivized removal of small businesses on second floors in favor of of uh housing anyway so in favor of walkable communities my my preference would be to remove two tech nines |
| 02:45:12.10 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I agree. If it's not necessary, we're sitting, we just spent another seven minutes talking about something that we've resolved. You know, I would say take it out, take that out. |
| 02:45:26.53 | Unknown | I think that's it. |
| 02:45:29.70 | Mayor Theodore | We still want more on questions, don't we? Yeah. |
| 02:45:31.58 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:45:31.59 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah. |
| 02:45:31.93 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. OK, just want to see where we are. We got a little. |
| 02:45:32.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:45:32.05 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay. |
| 02:45:35.49 | Mayor Theodore | All right, other questions? |
| 02:45:36.67 | Linda Pfeiffer | I do have a different question. This was the only other thing that I I had a question about when I was looking at this with the committee, which has to do with Um, sorry, bear with me. Gotta find it. |
| 02:46:04.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | Sorry, I had marked it. has to do with the recycling. |
| 02:46:20.11 | Linda Pfeiffer | I don't believe I don't see it. It says eliminate free backyard pickup, trash pickup. And full disclosure, I have backyard waste, you know, trash pickup. Here it is. It's on page 36 of 92, 3-tack-1-C. Eliminate the second line, eliminate free backyard pickup service. And I guess this, I guess, can we interpret that as a suggestion to explore? It's not part of the steps in the table. Is that a correct assumption? Right. Interpretation? |
| 02:47:10.06 | Christine O'Rourke | Right, interpretation. It says to explore the feasibility of that. |
| 02:47:12.03 | Linda Pfeiffer | feasibility of that. Okay, perfect. Because I know they looked at the you at the wording of that. So I'm fine with that. I'm sorry. Never mind. |
| 02:47:21.40 | Christine O'Rourke | Thank you. |
| 02:47:22.14 | Linda Pfeiffer | I mean, I don't support eliminating free backyard pickup service, but I like the way it's worded, so to just explore the feasibility. |
| 02:47:31.42 | Mayor Theodore | I have a question on 2.3, which is on page 33. It says, Um, See you. Establish a bike sharing program with pods in high traffic locations. location of prods parking structures and use restrictions should target short term trips without sin. So I can tell you that, that's just not something that would fit in what we're trying to do with our downtown right now. So, that just wouldn't work. And so I'm just a little concerned about Some of that, and I realize all the work that's gone into it, gone into this, which is great. Some of it, though, I think at some of the levels, we haven't had a chance to look at some of those details. And I guess one of the questions is, If we adopt this, I mean, how... Obviously we're doing something. We're adopting a plan. But how committed are we to it? And then when, of course, someone's going to say, well, it's in your climate action plan. So I'm a little, I have some questions about There are a few things like that, and this is one of them. I will hazard to say that it's unlikely that we will be approving pods in our high traffic downtown to encourage more bicycles there right now. |
| 02:48:38.06 | Christine O'Rourke | Right. So the so the Sustainability Commission did, of course, vet all of these programs. So these are programs that they're recommending. But that said, that if there are programs in here that the council really does not want to be included in your climate action plan, I think we should probably strike them now so that they are not so it isn't confusing and have this you're not I mean, the plan is kind of setting a roadmap for how you're going to achieve these reductions, and so you're not committed to enacting all of them. You do need to Really, the job here is to kind of prioritize what you want to accomplish over the next five years. But if that's something that you're sure you're not going to implement, then it does seem to me to make sense to take it out. |
| 02:49:25.24 | Linda Pfeiffer | And, just to add to that my sense was that and and you know you can comment if you like Rebecca but my sense was that there was flexibility on the sustainability committee and they really truly said we want council input we want council comment so I think there's tremendous flexibility at the same time they they wanted to be bold they wanted to you know, put things out there and then, you know, and then get our feedback. So I... I sense that we could say, we're not thrilled about this, we like this, we don't, you know. And I think there is flexibility there. especially since there's a plan, a game plan to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions and so not all of these strategies necessarily you know are absolutely paramount to achieving those numbers. I had a question about the teleworking. I just love that. I love that it's in there. And it's my understanding that... |
| 02:50:24.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:31.99 | Linda Pfeiffer | there is an agency that provides guidance on implementing teleworking programs for cities. Are you familiar with that? How would we get engaged in that? |
| 02:50:39.97 | Christine O'Rourke | Yeah. Can you? How would we? Yeah. So, so. So, so. The Transportation Authority of Marin does work with 511.org to implement transportation demand management programs. So the staff there, Derek McGill, he actually just came to our Marin Climate and Energy Partnership meeting last month to discuss transportation demand programs. They also work with a consultant who is available. They're available to come to the city to work with staff to implement a program here for city staff. They're also they do outreach for businesses and to try to get the businesses to implement programs as well. So they actually have a very good program that is just really about kind of helping them to do their outreach and implementing it within the city operations. |
| 02:51:29.07 | Linda Pfeiffer | That's great. That's a great resource I didn't know about. |
| 02:51:40.11 | Unknown | Um... Thanks a lot for your presentation. I think some of the questions up here and what's kind of rattling around in my head is exactly how the action, the climate action plan is conceived to be used. You know, we have just budgeted. We have got yet to, of course, work out any details or prove it. For example, that this coming year, we're likely to initiate a planning exercise with regards to our transportation element, you know, the basic core element of our general plan. So should I be all worried here to make sure I got every single word right in the climate action plan so that I don't in any way, you know, preempt the work that's going to get done? Perhaps not. Perhaps it's, you know, okay to have the action plan informing than the work we've got to do to change the general plan. Is that how it's conceived? |
| 02:52:51.74 | Christine O'Rourke | Is that how it's conceived? I would agree with you. I mean, this is not your general plan, so you don't have to be. And, you know, these are kind of all programs that do require future research and future vetting. I think the way it is going to be used is, first of all, it provides direction to your sustainability commission. So at least they kind of know, have a general idea of what the council would like to accomplish so that they can kind of move forward in their planning. |
| 02:52:56.11 | Unknown | So you don't have to. |
| 02:53:17.36 | Christine O'Rourke | The plan is also used at the Marine Climate and Energy Partnership when we work together with all of the cities. We look for programs that are common to all of the climate action plans so that we can prioritize the work that MCEP does on behalf of all of the cities. And then, of course, it also would be utilized by the staff for capital planning, for example. So it really is kind of a guide. |
| 02:53:57.77 | Mayor Theodore | Public comment? Moving to public comment. Thank you. Anyone from the public like to comment? Okay. See none. We'll bring it back up to close public comment. Bring it up to city council comment. |
| 02:54:12.49 | Linda Pfeiffer | Well, I'll just start and say I'm so impressed with the sustainability committee. I mean, they're just so passionate about what they do And the whole, the target of zero waste and, I mean, they went so far. as to ensure that I got a recycling bin for my backyard and now I'm using it every single week and it's great. I mean, they've done outreach to the schools. It's just amazing. And this climate action plan, they put so much energy and so much work into it. And I think it's such a great start. I think that the changes we've made, get it closer there. I think there's flexibility, like I said, with the committee if Council wants to look at this a little bit further. But I guess I just want to hear from the rest of you to get your input in terms of the way forward. |
| 02:55:15.01 | Unknown | Yeah, I had the pleasure of working with the Sustainability Commission until the end of last year. And when we handed over to Council Member Pfeiffer. And I've seen a transformation in the committee and the work it's doing. This is a very important job. You know, there's only one other jurisdiction other than us that has not adopted a climate action plan. And so, you know, in Marin. So we're playing catch up a little bit. And I was very impressed with the document. I know the hard work that you've all been doing. You've notched up the sustainability thinking to a new level. And this piece of work was really good because it really got everybody thinking about this. I mean, I'm quite happy just accepting it as is, as understanding that this is a guide informing us about our future planning efforts. If we're going to start micromanaging certain words in it, then I'm not so sure I'm happy to do that up here right now at the dais. You know, just what catches your eye now because you happen to be, you know, energized about a housing element doesn't necessarily mean that's a comprehensive review of the document. So I'm sort of trying to think through what would be a good process for the council to get the council feedback on this document rather than trying to just do a few little edits to the few things that are on everybody's, on a few people's minds right at this moment. |
| 02:56:56.65 | Jill Hoffman | Well, in looking through this, I have a couple of comments about what I would want to see deleted tonight. And definitely it's the 2TAC3 and the 2TAC9, two sections. The 2TAC3 is the bicycle pod. I don't see any reason to include that in there because there's no way we're going to want to facilitate more bicycles downtown at this time. And the other one's a two-tack nine. I mean, I wouldn't want to go anywhere near anything about the housing or higher density or any kind of comments in the, I don't think it's necessarily appropriate for this plan. It's not necessary for this plan. And I wouldn't support referencing that in this plan. Um, But I certainly understand council member with these, you know, comments too about taking a look at it. And if you want our... more comments to give us a little more time and we can get back to you but those are the things that I would be most concerned about on my first read of the document. The second thing is, you know, if you're exploring – eliminating the backyard trash service, that would probably be a non-starter as well. We have many residents in Sausli who rely on that service. And so that's just one thing that we would have to address much more specifically if that was ever actually proposed. |
| 02:58:26.71 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:58:28.50 | Unknown | Well, I think as far as bicycles goes, we certainly know that bicycles work a lot better than automobiles. So I can't see us, we're trying to work against it, no matter what the regulations are. Some of you want up here, I still think that our direction still should be non-motorized and we should stay on that course, whatever it is. So I could, there's some things that we could change and we could change some wording. But I think the sustainability The group has really worked hard. and presented something that with one or two little flexibilities. So I would be in favor of this. |
| 02:59:13.78 | Mayor Theodore | Well, I certainly appreciate all the work in the Sustainability Committee, and certainly it's a dynamic group and all the work that they've done. And I'm really... grateful to have this climate action plan and it's something that we want to work with. I'm a little bit torn on the way of Councilmember Withy in a sense that we could pass this and it could be a climate action plan. If we don't really look at in detail and want to use it, I'd be a little reluctant to say, I'm going to use it because we haven't vetted it. There are things that might conflict with other things. So we could pass it tonight and we can have a climate action plan. We've told we're not bound by it, we need to implement it. On the other hand, we could take time to look at a little more in uh, little more detail. And I agree that we've caught different things. But to really do the right job, we'd have to look at it in detail. And then we'd have a climate action plan that we'd actually probably reference and rely on a little bit more. So that's kind of our choice. I'm inclined to have the latter. I mean, it's more work on all of our parts. We have to come back here, more work on your part, but I'd certainly like to have a climate action plan that we say this is something that really fits with us. It works with all our other plans. And this is something I want to rely on because I really think highly of this. I think this is something we should be looking at, all the things we do when we do general plans and everything that we might do. If we have things that don't quite fit and we're not, We have invented don't work. we're not likely to have given it as much stature, so that's That's my... kind of concerned about it. I'd be willing to pass it, but I actually think We'd end up with a better document and better climate action plan if we spent some more work on it. |
| 03:00:56.78 | Unknown | Amen. I- I agree, and the problem is even in that process of providing feedback, let's say on those suggested programs that relate to transportation, I'm using that as a deliberate example. we could end up going through the process of wanting to almost like rewrite the general plan to give comments back simply on the action plan. So you could end up going around in circles here and getting nothing done. |
| 03:01:36.22 | Linda Pfeiffer | So if I may, I heard specifically remove 2-tack-9, the mixed use, and I heard remove 2-tack-3, the pods. And... Specifically, frankly, they reworded the backyard service because that was something that I kind of diverged on. And they were the ones, they, on my, at my request they they rewarded it to say explore feasibility of the following provisions I still feel kinda prickly and very uncomfortable about eliminate free backyard service even as an explore feasibility however at the same time the fact that they wordsmith this, there's flexibility. So I would be okay. if there is comfort up here to move forward to pass it with those exceptions to remove the the mixed-use reference at 2-tack 9 and to remove the reference to 2-tack 3. I guess in a perfect world I would remove the reference to eliminate free backyard service as well even if it's even though it's exploring feasibility just because I feel so strongly about that either way but I'm flexible |
| 03:02:52.21 | Mayor Theodore | ask a question and what sustainability of our consultants? What is the next steps consult? We implementation, I should say. So we adopt this our is a sustainability. And I guess you guys are a very dynamic group. So you've thought this through. What are the next steps in implementation? What are the next things that we're looking at? So that might help us judge where we are now with it. What do we need to do next? What do you need from the council after we approve this? |
| 03:03:25.96 | Rebecca Woodbury | I'll try to address that. What we're looking forward to tonight is I think that your comments are important and to hear things that you want to take out, I think is very important feedback to hear. I think for us, we have formed those action committees that are based on, you know, things that are in the, Climate Action Plan, we've got an action committee on waste. So that action committee is going to look at those items in the Climate Action Plan and start to prioritize those items working with staff, And then you'll hear from us once we kind of look at the items that are in there, what we see as feasible, what, what we see as working in the local context of our community, and then those items would come back forward to you for further consideration. So I think what we're looking for you is the feedback that you're giving us right now, which is your comments on all of the things in here. And then these action committees would then go off and work as subcommittees, if you will, to go with a fine tooth comb and look at all the things in there and say, what are long term, what are short term, what are things that we can do very easily versus what are things that are going to take five, ten years of planning to accomplish. So I hope that helps. |
| 03:04:50.64 | Linda Pfeiffer | So my, you know, the more I think of it, the more I feel like I would, I, my preference would be to remove the reference of eliminating the free backyard service. If the given that we've got the, they've got the subcommittees looking at that, that would be my preference. I'm flexible if the rest of the council is, you know, not as strong about that as I am, but that would be the only other thing I would change. And then I would be comfortable passing this. |
| 03:05:17.40 | Mayor Theodore | But just to be clear, it's got to be in the action plan for them to consider it. So if you took it out, then they wouldn't consider it. |
| 03:05:22.29 | Linda Pfeiffer | If you took a... And I frankly would not want them to, I would what is it, 65% of our residents actually use backyard service? It's a very large percentage, and we're vertical living here. And so, you know, I think it would be quite a hardship, especially with the goal of zero waste. I mean, I could not participate in recycling up until the point when I finally got a can and they agreed to go up my stairs. to pick up my recycling. I just, you know, 38 steps, you know, and there are people, many people who live in Sausalito who, you know, cannot, you know, they just can't participate. They're paying for composting and they can't participate in it. because they have backyard service. So. Thank you. |
| 03:06:12.51 | Mayor Theodore | I don't disagree with your comment, but it highlights that if we have other things in here that may be not doable, I think, |
| 03:06:12.55 | Linda Pfeiffer | I don't, |
| 03:06:19.16 | Mayor Theodore | What they're saying, though, is that it's going to be guidelines, you're going to look at all this stuff in depth, you may decide that it's not appropriate for sauce. They're correct. That's so that's, that's the one thing that I mean, the only disagreement, I hear what you're saying. But we that we could just start going through this and we're making the judgment for them of what they recommend. And yeah, I |
| 03:06:38.58 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah, and I realize that, and I am saying, you know, to me, in my mind, would we want to spend time on something that would be, A, controversial, B, very, very difficult, I think, to implement, and C, would not, I really don't think would get us to our zero waste. But I don't want to divert this to that. If you're all comfortable with it, then I will go with it. |
| 03:07:07.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:09.04 | Jill Hoffman | I think we have two choices here. One is that we would vote to pass it with the elimination of the two sections or that we schedule it at a later time. |
| 03:07:22.04 | Unknown | AND I THINK IT'S A or three, because Councilmember would fight for that. |
| 03:07:23.24 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:07:25.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:25.38 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:07:26.32 | Unknown | So what do you want me to weigh in |
| 03:07:26.53 | Jill Hoffman | I'm |
| 03:07:30.09 | Unknown | Because I agree, I think that's basically our choices now. Do we want to hear? |
| 03:07:33.02 | Linda Pfeiffer | Do we want to hear... |
| 03:07:38.25 | Unknown | you |
| 03:07:38.42 | Mayor Theodore | or we want to do it ourselves. |
| 03:07:38.46 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:07:38.47 | Unknown | for the rest of the day. |
| 03:07:40.62 | Linda Pfeiffer | Do we want to hear a preference from the Sustainability Committee? Maybe they have a preference in terms of... |
| 03:07:52.09 | Mayor Theodore | Certainly like to hear their preference. |
| 03:07:54.07 | Rebecca Woodbury | Thank you. Are you asking our preference for whether you vote on this now or take your time? So I think our preference is that you vote on this, and we agree. Um... |
| 03:07:56.23 | Unknown | our preference for Thank you. |
| 03:08:05.41 | Rebecca Woodbury | We want you to be comfortable enough to enable us to move forward in considering some of these things. So those two sections, if you want to strike them. I think we're comfortable with that. And just a reminder, our primary responsibility on the commission is to be an entity that is educating citizens, business owners, others that are here, and doing outreach. We can't, of course, make any decisions that are legally binding on behalf of anybody. So this would be, something that we can use when we're in our meetings and determining what we might want to be you know, using to educate folks. And I just want to say that this isn't just a plan for us, and it's not just us who are waiting to get some direction from you. In some ways, it's really... your town. I think a lot of people are aware of And, you know, we saw tonight things about seawater rising and you know that's just one example It would be really powerful for all of us to be able to say that Sausalito is not now the last city to adopt a climate action plan |
| 03:09:10.85 | Shelby Van Meter | now. |
| 03:09:14.88 | Rebecca Woodbury | that has been informed by many other cities in this county in a very, very thorough process. And so some of what we went through when we were looking at this was everything that had been considered in other cities. So just please remember this isn't we're not the first one. In fact, we would be second. We don't want to be the last one. And just to say, you know, when there's something new happening, it can feel Maybe overwhelming, but I just want to give you an example of the kind of change that has happened already. Because three years ago, there was no composting, just for example, in Sausalito. And so you fast forward to today, and we have it. There hasn't been a study done within the last couple of years to see exactly who was doing it, but we know from Just our own. looking at things and from anecdotal evidence that that number is increasing, not just in residences, but in businesses and restaurants. We've all just on our own been out speaking to restaurant owners, for example. Of your three publics or three schools, elementary schools that are based here in Sausalito, two are composting now. And that's new as of this year. It's a huge change. So just know that we're all of us waiting to get I think this direction from you and your stamp of approval to move all of us forward in a way that feels responsible thank you Thank you. |
| 03:10:35.29 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I'd like to. |
| 03:10:35.85 | Rebecca Woodbury | Thank you. |
| 03:10:35.97 | Linda Pfeiffer | entertain a motion I move to accept the climate action plan with the with the exception of with the removal of to tech nine and to tech three a Oh, two tack three. Two tack nine and two tack three. |
| 03:11:02.51 | Mayor Theodore | We have a second to that motion. |
| 03:11:03.96 | Linda Pfeiffer | Second. |
| 03:11:05.50 | Mayor Theodore | You want to do it by roll? Let's just take the roll. It can just be easier. |
| 03:11:12.65 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Weiner. |
| 03:11:15.28 | Unknown | We really don't want to take anything off the board, about. Thank you. Let's move ahead with that. |
| 03:11:23.15 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Pfeiffer? Yes. Councilmember Withey? |
| 03:11:31.16 | Unknown | Yes. I think the... having a climate action plan without any reference to the policies in your housing element that seems a little strange, but yes. |
| 03:11:48.82 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Vice Mayor Hoffman? Yes. Mayor Theodore. |
| 03:11:52.41 | Mayor Theodore | Yes. Okay, so it's passed, 5-0. Okay, thank you all. Thanks for a great job. |
| 03:12:01.32 | Linda Pfeiffer | Congratulations to the Sustainability Committee for this milestone. |
| 03:12:07.93 | Mayor Theodore | All right, so now we're moving on to item five a Good night. Thank you so much. |
| 03:12:14.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:12:20.37 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, item 5A, introduction and first reading. Reading by title only of an ordinance of the City Council of Sausalito repealing the existing municipal code chapter 1117 and adopting a new chapter 1117 and our public works director Jonathan Goldman. |
| 03:12:42.06 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Let me just. Pull all this stuff up to the front so that I'll be able to find it. Oops. Um, |
| 03:13:14.27 | Jonathon Goldman | So this item is consideration of an ordinance to repeal the city of Sausalito's current stormwater ordinance. It's titled urban runoff pollution prevention ordinance and then adoption of a replacement ordinance in order to comply with the state of California's national pollutant discharge elimination system 2013 general permit for stormwater discharges from small separate stormwater sewer systems, storm sewer systems. What I'm going to do is you have the staff report before you, which is kind of an abbreviated version of a sequence of staff reports that you saw previously. This item came to you as a status update, I think, in October of last year, and then Sorry, I wanted the staff recommendations there. And then you heard a presentation from Terry Fashing in October of last year that uh was more detail about the new stormwater permit. So what we're doing is attempting to conform to the schedule that was established in that. stormwater permit for this adoption of this new ordinance Wake up, computer, thank you. Again, in September of last year, you got a status update. I don't know if you had a chance to review that, but for your purposes as well as the audience at home tonight, I've got a link in the PowerPoint to that presentation and staff report as well as to Terry Fashing's October report. Just a little bit of stuff I'll fly through this, just again for context, not that you're not already aware of it, but there's a lot to this, and the context is kind of important. Next stop is the Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program that was formed in 1993. It's actually the nexus for the existing stormwater fee that we charge. this is a pre-prop 218 fee that was formed in 1993 it's actually the the nexus for the existing uh stormwater fee that uh we charge this is a pre-prop 218 fee that was established um across the board in the county to fund specifically fund this program it's a joint effort of marine cities towns in the county the idea and there are other models or similar models in other counties is that we're coordinated and consistent in our approach to protecting water quality. Member agencies implement local pollution prevention programs and contribute funding to the countywide program which is kind of a shared services model. To the extent that the county can provide services to all of the local agencies. so that the agencies don't have to provide it independently, the community saves money and is better off, as well as having consistent policies and public information, et cetera, countywide. I won't read through all this. These I plagiarized from Terry's prior presentation, but it is a countywide program. They do a lot of different stuff, as you can see by all the letters on this page and the pictures. Long story short, our municipal storm drain systems are regulated. They've been regulated for some time under the national pollutant discharge elimination system, which is a regulatory part promulgated under the federal Clean Water Act. Fundamentally, discharge of pollutants to the waters of the United States from any pipe is unlawful unless it's in compliance with a permit. And our new stormwater permit is our permit to discharge water into the bay, waters into the bay from our storm drains. Um, Again, trying not to take too long or read this. Our new permit, bless you, is issued by the State Water Resources Control Board, enforced by the Regional Water Quality Control Board here in San Francisco Bay. And the new permit was adopted in February of 2013. Here's a longer term chronology slide. Um, our new permit is more prescriptive and increases our reporting requirements. Um, non stormwater discharges are prohibited. Here are some details about some of that. There are a couple of things that I wanted to highlight in this evening's pop quiz, which I'm sure you were all prepared for. One question. this solid waste deposited on the sidewalk? This is a recent photograph collected by our franchise waste hauler. Whether that is prohibited or not, you don't have to answer now. Just letting you know. It's a question. Same kind of thing. Um, this is, is also an area. Let me go back to these and, and tell you that, um, these in and of themselves don't constitute a clean water act violation because it isn't raining. And, um, there isn't the opportunity for those wastes to come into contact with water that would get discharged to the bay. Unfortunately we're not in a position to go out there in a hurry every time it's going to rain and make sure that those aren't there. In addition, this manner of depositing solid waste for pickup is a violation of South City Municipal Code. Wastes, and specifically things that are going to be landfilled or composted, are supposed to be left in a closed container at the curb downtown. We have an issue with recycling, with cardboard, which isn't a waste. It's a recycling product. We don't currently have a good way of dealing with that in the context of stormwater prevention, but it's something we're going to have to deal with. One other area I wanted to highlight, and this is hard to read, but it has to do with waste storage areas for food service establishments, as well as the mats that are used in food service establishments. The common practice historically was that whatever rainwater fell in those areas went into the storm drains without any form of treatment. In fact, I still to this day see restaurants. I've seen it in San Francisco repeatedly at the Ferry Building. I see it here repeatedly, even without getting up at the wee hours in the morning like some other city staff do. Washing their mats on the sidewalk with detergent, no controls whatsoever, and that wash water going directly into the storm drain. That's a federal crime. And we have done some significant outreach to food service establishments especially. Some are better than others. But this is an area where we're going to have to do a better job independent of this new permit. But we certainly have to do a better job than we have in the past. All right, changes to the ordinance. Provide the city with the authority to minimize discharges of the storm runoff to storm drains or water courses. Respond to the discharges of spills, et cetera. Reduce pollutants and stormwater discharges to the maximum extent practicable. Require operators of construction sites, et cetera, to install, implement, and maintain appropriate best management practices and require newly developed or redeveloped land to maintain the pre-development stormwater runoff rates and prevent stormwater pollution wherever possible through management controls and ensuring that these controls are properly maintained. Changes to the ordinance, there are added and updated definitions. As I recall in your packet you received both a clean version of the ordinance that we're asking you to first read this evening as well as the red line version that shows you the changes from prior versions. revised exceptions to the discharge prohibition, lists all the discharges that may be authorized, and specifies conditions that must be met to authorize incidental irrigation runoff. This is kind of a new area for, you may not be aware of this, but the discharge of potable water. In other words, if one goes to the hose in your yard and discharges that chlorinated potable water into the storm drain system, that's a Clean Water Act violation because the chlorination is not, rainwater and it has adverse aquatic effects so for example we now carry dechlorination equipment in our sewer flushing apparatus in case we're in a situation where what we take from a fire hydrant with a hydrant meter has to be used to clean the storm drains or something like that in the case that water inadvertently escapes from that system, we want it to be dechlorinated. The water district and the fire department are, to some extent, doing the same things. All right. Other changes, reduction of pollutants in urban runoff. We've added ground disturbing activities to the activities that may result in pollution. Identified best management practices for those activities. Provides city staff or the city with explicit authority to review designs for construction and development plans that wasn't necessarily there as strictly in the past. establish our authority to require certain erosion and sedimentation control plans, condition local permits on approval of those plans, and then require that they be implemented year round, not just during the rainy season and so on. Revised to include authority to require I think LID is, it's in the ordinance. Low impact, I'm sorry, I looked that up before. Low impact development and hydro modification measures. Again, requiring hydrology studies and related studies in the course of a new development application to verify that the peak flow rates, the total flow rates, the velocities of flow and things like that that leave a developed site will not be any greater or have any adverse impacts when compared with the pre-existing condition. Provides for additional authority for inspections and sampling, added types of actions, enforcement actions that we can take when we identify violations, we being the city. This is in here from a prior presentation just to kind of compare with a grading ordinance, the revisions to the urban runoff section give agencies. Sufficient authority for the permit requirements, but if more specificity is desired, language from the county grading ordinance could be incorporated either into the urban runoff section or to our grading or land development code sections. I don't think we've done that here. All right. There is a technical guide that I believe the Bay Area Water Quality or Bay Area Stormwater Management Association prepared that is referenced in our ordinance and has been adopted by mixed-up agencies as a technical guide for post-construction requirements, again, providing consistency throughout the county. In fact, it's intended to provide that consistency throughout the Bay Area, so that contractors working in any area are gonna be treated consistently. It also, I skipped that, but allows us to require financial security for erosion and sedimentation control plans and stormwater control plans, meaning we can require that somebody post a bond, and in the event that they have not implemented what the plan required them to plan, we have the resources to draw on to put it in place to protect stormwater. And it doesn't require city resources to do that. All right. |
| 03:26:31.31 | Jonathon Goldman | Let me just go back to this. |
| 03:26:44.17 | Jonathon Goldman | I just want to reiterate that I'm not going to read through the ordinance. You have it in the packet. I'm happy to address questions and rely to some extent on the city attorney who helped, significantly helped get this pulled together when we did. What we're recommending that the council do this evening by motion is adopt the ordinance that |
| 03:26:49.37 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 03:27:13.36 | Jonathon Goldman | the attached ordinance, repealing the existing code chapter and adding a new chapter and approve that as the first read of the ordinance, wait for the reading of the ordinance in its entirety and we would come back with a second reading at your next meeting assuming there are no changes to the ordinance. Any questions? |
| 03:27:37.76 | Mayor Theodore | Thanks, Jonathan. any council questions. |
| 03:27:43.15 | Unknown | Thank you, Jonathan. So for how these regulations apply to development, either residential or commercial, is this, these new regulations and powers, would they essentially be, Will they change what your department, the engineering department, will be requesting of anybody who's developing a property, either by more stringent conditions of approval or what you'd extra study? I was interested in the runoff studies and show that the development, you're not going to have, you know, extra runoff off the property compared to, right? Is that something that you would now incorporate into demanding of developer, homeowner, whatever it is, during the permitting process? |
| 03:28:45.03 | Jonathon Goldman | How does that work? Demanding is a... as a keyword there. This isn't these, well, first of all, my previous employer was already operating in an impaired water body under this same permit level. And we, through the benefit of McStop, have been aware of what the requirements of the new permit are for some time, and have been working primarily through training, progressively on implementing these, not necessarily as demands or even having the strict regulatory authority to require them, but simply as our own best management practices. So to some extent, our community, our contractor community, our designer community is already aware of some of these issues. What the ordinance revision does is gives us the clear authority so that if someone doesn't want to do something, we now have much clearer authority to compel them to do it. And that makes it a lot easier for us to get compliance when we do have a violation. So there's still, you know, and this is only one milestone in the permanent implementation phase. And Terry's spreadsheets and her work lay out a lot of other things that happen in the future. But a lot like I point or tried to point out with the obnoxious garbage pictures, there's a huge education component to it. It's something that we have discussed with Sustainability Commission and I personally really see as a sustainability issue. And in the best of all worlds, we're successful in educating the people who live here, the people who work here, the people who operate public accommodations and food service businesses here. And we're able to demonstrate much like greenhouse gas reduction that we're making incremental improvements and that's one of the benefits of having a clear ordinance an ordinance revision that gives us the clear authority to do that so that if someone just says i'm not going to we don't have to worry about you know a nuisance abatement process or a lot of other time-consuming things that it would require us to do in order to accomplish the objective. |
| 03:29:03.96 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 03:29:54.86 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 03:30:06.89 | Shelby Van Meter | We're going to have a great day. |
| 03:31:24.68 | Unknown | Thank you. That was helpful. |
| 03:31:29.10 | Linda Pfeiffer | Is this going to apply to anyone then who's doing a remodel, or is it just certain circumstances like what you were saying, like people who, like more commercial businesses? Like if someone's remodeling their kitchen, do they now have a new box to check on the list of permits? |
| 03:31:47.40 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, although the burden for someone who's replacing their countertops or replacing a water heater or something like that, the burden is not significant. it's just the point is that we as a regulator and a regulated entity are making sure that the people the entities that we regulate know that we're paying attention and that we're responsible for protecting stormwater quality. So in the context of a kitchen remodel, for example, how their waste material is handled on their job site and off their job site becomes a much higher level scrutiny than yes, you can just pile it up in the gutter and pick it up whenever you want to. |
| 03:32:39.88 | Linda Pfeiffer | So it does as a follow up question. So does that mean that you mentioned the bond? Does that mean in addition to the check mark on the permit list that the person would have to go and and do this bond work or something in case they didn't follow through? |
| 03:32:56.47 | Jonathon Goldman | It depends on the magnitude of the project. I certainly wouldn't contemplate a bond being necessary in the case of a kitchen remodel, but it depends on the context. Again, if the proposal is, in the case of a kitchen remodel, throw the waste products out into the yard during the rainy season and not pick them up till spring. |
| 03:33:21.24 | Linda Pfeiffer | well that's extreme you know what I would be surprised |
| 03:33:23.14 | Jonathon Goldman | You'd be surprised. |
| 03:33:30.30 | Mayor Theodore | The question, just to be clear, we're required to have these increased standards by the state of California and the statute cited. |
| 03:33:39.21 | Jonathon Goldman | Correct, although the permit did not prescribe our ordinance. This is a relatively traditional way of regulating under the Clean Water Act in my experience, and it's like our EPA order. EPA doesn't really care whether we put our residents and private properties at arm's length. They look to us as both a responsible party and a regulator, and our job is to figure out how we, the city council, forgive me, you, the city council of the city of Sausalito, are going to ordain that we comply with the permit. And to the extent that there are changes that need to be made in time, you know, you have the authority to make those changes. We've taken advantage of work that McStop has done, that the county's done, that other jurisdictions have done in complying with the permit. Tried to provide the best of the draft ordinances that we could with the information that we have knowing the community as we do. But like all the other rules and regulations we have, it's kind of a living document. But the expectation from EPA flowing through State Water Resources Control Board is local jurisdictions have to figure out how to comply with the permit. |
| 03:35:00.82 | Linda Pfeiffer | So as a follow-up, so the state of California is requiring this, but they're not, to your point, they're not requiring the bond as a safety measure. |
| 03:35:11.87 | Jonathon Goldman | No. They're telling us that we're obligated to comply with our permit, which strictly prohibits the discharge of anything but stormwater into the storm drains. |
| 03:35:14.49 | Linda Pfeiffer | We're obligated to comply with our permit. |
| 03:35:23.19 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yep, good. |
| 03:35:31.50 | Mayor Theodore | this issue? Okay. Seeing none, David. |
| 03:35:39.82 | Unknown | Mr. Mayor is there any point in the agenda where I could speak on the previous agenda item? I was... Frankly, driving back from an event in Sonoma County, and I've just got here. |
| 03:35:49.11 | Shelby Van Meter | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:35:53.99 | Mayor Theodore | No. I'll chat with you tomorrow, but The answer is no, we've passed, and the good news is it passed 5-0, but public comment on that issue is closed. Thank you. |
| 03:36:09.77 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, bringing it back, so no public comment. We're back here for council comment. |
| 03:36:18.61 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, so I think this is something, I mean, anyone else have any comments to, I think it's, we've, we've heard this is probably a third time and it's something we need to do and we trust. So can we have a motion on that thing? |
| 03:36:30.27 | Unknown | Yeah. Motion adopting an ordinance repealing City of Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 1117, Urban Runoff Pollution Prevention, and adopting a new Chapter 1117, Urban Runoff Pollution Prevention Ordinance and Related Actions. Introduction and first reading of the ordinance by title only. |
| 03:36:57.78 | Mayor Theodore | Do we have a second to that? |
| 03:37:03.35 | Mayor Theodore | by acclamation all in favor aye passes 5-0 thank you Jonathan |
| 03:37:05.20 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 03:37:12.88 | Mayor Theodore | move on to a city manager information for council. |
| 03:37:24.19 | Adam Politzer | So let me just give you a couple pieces of good news. The first is, and I sent out, I think you folks may have seen an email that floated around yesterday that the bike parking program began yesterday. and they successfully parked And charge for parking. 300 bikes. They repeated that action today about the same number of bikes were parked and paid. With the help from Elliot Holt and Charlie Francis and Lieutenant Skuig, they were As I think you've heard earlier, we're able to put four Um, machines out there. that are cash friendly. So anyone that doesn't have a credit card has the ability to pay by cash. There were some concerns from the community. when we had this discussion that you know, we would have a cash handling problem. with people handing in cash. So all of the transactions right now are being handled by those machines. We have a few of the bike rental companies that have agreed to pre-sell bike parking, which obviously takes a little bit of the demand off of the ambassadors and the machines there as people come in to figure out where to park. They know exactly where to go and they bought their pre-sold tickets. So we hope that that will continue to increase. I just also wanted to point out one of the things that wasn't mentioned when this was discussed before, that for anyone to get onto the ferry, and if you haven't pre-bought your ferry ticket by one of the bicycle companies that there are only two machines that sit there at the base of the bicycle companies that there are only two machines that sit there at the base of the entry of the ferry landing. And for a number of years, it's worked just fine. People have all received their ferry tickets. and been able to get onto the ferry. So we have four machines and then we also have some squares, handheld devices that take credit card and they're attempting to pre-sell those tickets up at the top of Alexander Avenue. as they greet some of the cyclists. And so far we've gotten a lot of very positive comments. One individual actually sent a letter to me and I passed it on to the ambassador program. and to the chamber into the ferry landing just saying what a pleasant experience it was riding into town with his daughter and daughter's boyfriend with a pretty picture of their scenic view at the end so just again I think that they're off and running I also wanted to address and share with you that staff is working with Mr. Bigelow William on his program But it's a lot more complex and he sent you all his proposal which is lacking a lot of detail. But one of the concerns, obviously, is that we have to have agreements from the bike companies pick up their bikes, and return them to them. Thank you. And so without those agreements, we don't have a program that can return bikes to the bike vendor. So I know that he's working on that. We also have at least two or three other entities that are interested in providing the same service. So I've asked the police captain, John Robacher, and the bike and ped committee, the ped and bike committee, to continue to work with these interested parties to dig down into level detail as as you saw in the proposal that he sent to you and to me he's offering to pay the city a thousand dollars a month we collected nine hundred dollars yesterday and nine hundred dollars today so you know that's not an equitable agreement you know for the use of our property but we are very interested in moving forward with a trial project of the return program councilmember Weiner as you guys are aware, has been talking about a return program and a way to do it that has little impact on the community and a lot of benefit. The bike and ped committee has also been having these discussions as well as members of the community that are interested. So we are absolutely going to try this. I'm not exactly sure who the vendor is going to be that we work with. It might be one of the bike companies that step up and becomes the vendor. But we have to vet that. We also, using Dr. Fotch's words, We have to walk. before we run. And so last year we were crawling We're now walking, and as I said to everyone that was pulling on my sleeve last week, with all these great, terrific ideas. Where are 100? percent focus was on yesterday, getting the program up and running and collecting our first dollar in terms of parking so I'm committed to working with with mr. Bigelow and others that are interested in providing the service I trust that the pen bike committee and our police captain will vet all of the issues And and then I imagine that the proposal that was sent to you will actually be developed and the detail be provided in terms of all the different components there. Our intent is to offer the return program sometime in July and run it through August. when we think there'll be more of a demand. The reason why we're only parking 300 bikes is the demand isn't there. We don't think there's a need right now to offer the return program when we have plenty of capacity both for parking and for ferry departures to take these folks home. without any without any complications, but by the time we get to July. I think that the crowds will grow and having a return program in place will be helpful. So I just want folks to know that the issue is not being ignored. There's two different entities, being the police department and the Ped and Bike Committee, that will vet this and work with all interested parties to move this forward. And like all of the activities, we did come to the council. the police chief comes to the council every year and says here's our our parking program this is what we're exploring and this is what we're we're putting forward so you know what we you did not give me the authority to wing it out there you gave me the authority to charge for parking in Tracy way and with a range of two to three dollars two to five dollars in charges so that's what that's where we started when when it's been vetted we will bring back to the council prior to the recess with it with a proposal on how to move forward with the refer preferred return program we were all interested in it The other big item that will eventually get on the agenda a second time, and we had the RBRA staff come and Ben Berto come and present to you a few council meetings back and then you had Leslie Alden who is aide to Kate Sears come at your last council meeting public comment under the budget. urging us to propose money to help support the public workshops. You noticed tonight that we did not propose putting money into the budget for that, but we will look to the council at a future time to consider contributing towards the public workshops. once we actually have more discussion. And so I'm meeting... with the RBRA staff next week and then as the mayor appointed at the last council meeting, Then we'll sit down with Vice Mayor Huffman and Council Member Weiner their staff and you know start going through the details but the two issues that i have continued to share with them and i have stated to the council at least on one occasion we have to address the cost sharing component before we have any other discussion because the thirty thousand dollars that they're requesting the city of Sausalito to contribute is still based on the 30, Or 35%. cost sharing. And if it makes sense, then we would absolutely support that. But we're not quite sure what happened when, and why that was the cost sharing agreement So, That conversation will happen and then eventually we'll bring this all back to to the council through the working group. But I just wanted folks to know that this is going to be, we're just talking about $30,000 for our workshop. you know, a series of meetings. I'm not even talking about the big project yet. You know, we're still a ways away from getting to, you know, to the end result. But again, it's top of mind and it's going to be a very significant discussion here at the council chambers as this progresses. And then one thing, and Andy, I wish that I would have reminded Andy to do this, but, you know, we have a tremendous sustainability commission and very impressive. I was very happy that they introduced each of the members on the slides there and gave your background, I mean very impressive group. In the past, the sustainability commission was also just as committed to moving these agendas forward and have been doing a great job. But one of the things that has been relatively new in the last probably four years, maybe a little bit longer, is that we also have a city team, the green team. which works and Andy's a part of it and Augie Webb from the library is a part of it and you folks may remembered young David Weatherford who was an intern in my office who unfortunately just passed away recently recently but he was a part of this green team and there's probably several others I think Katie Laughlin from the Public Works Department is amongst that team but they have been putting on a variety of educational meetings here in the chambers, and they're all on the website. And some of them are a little bit longer necessarily polished because all we use is the equipment that we use here. But the various consultants have come in and talked about green waste and talked about zero waste and talked about a variety of things. And they're fun to watch because they are really organic. in terms, no pun intended, but really organic in the style. And I just wanted to give credit to the city staff that are part of the green team. looking at things here at City Hall and then things on working with the community and really appreciate the library and Andy's efforts to keep that moving forward. I will leave that for now for any questions that the council may have of me, but that concludes my report. Okay, council questions? |
| 03:48:01.83 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 03:48:03.56 | Linda Pfeiffer | I have a question. So Adam, regarding the staging comment you made, I was a little perplexed by that with the bike staging because you mentioned that Mr. Bigelow, who is proposing the staging, had offered, I guess, $1,000. I guess he's looking at where the taxicabs are parking currently and using part of that, giving $1,000 revenue. And you compared that to $900 earned with bike parking fees today and $900 earned yesterday. But that money is going straight to the ambassadors. That's not coming to the city. I mean, to me, getting $1,000 revenue from just a businessman who is, and also that would be 300 bikes that would have been staged and carted out of town. So we would be getting revenue, and we wouldn't have the bikes here. So I was perplexed about the statement. That's all. |
| 03:49:03.81 | Adam Politzer | Well, just to clarify, his offer is $1,000 a month. And the email that I sent earlier to the council that shared that the expenses, which is what was approved by council, not to exceed $150,000, are, I think, conservative projections say that we're going to generate $250,000 of revenue. So that's $100,000 of profit versus his four months of $4,000 of profit And we don't think that's a fair agreement at this moment in time, but it hasn't been vetted. |
| 03:49:32.53 | Shelby Van Meter | We don't think so. |
| 03:49:36.21 | Adam Politzer | It's still very premature, so I'm not passing judgment on his proposal I'm just saying that it lacks a lot of detail And his proposal, is at the end of Tracy Way, it's not on, it's not on, Anchor Street. but he's proposing the end of Tracy Way. |
| 03:49:53.99 | Linda Pfeiffer | It's my understanding he mentioned Tracy Way in his proposal because he had received some guidance from other staff regarding potentially putting that in, but that he was revising that. Anyway, yeah, I just, and as to the $150K we're giving to the ambassadors, you know how I feel about that. I'm not happy about that. But you mentioned $100K, another $ hundred K you said in in profit I don't recall that in the budget did we have that in the budget was that in the budget |
| 03:50:27.15 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. Thank you. In the budget, our estimates are $250,000 in revenue for traffic and bike congestion management plan, which is what this is. |
| 03:50:38.53 | Linda Pfeiffer | Thank you. Okay, but $150K for the ambassador. So what's the extra $150K going to? Or the $100K going to? |
| 03:50:47.77 | Adam Politzer | When we actually have it, because it's estimates, when we actually have it, the council can then direct that money to go to other. |
| 03:50:53.87 | Linda Pfeiffer | So it hasn't been allocated. Okay, thank you. |
| 03:50:58.44 | Mayor Theodore | Any other questions? I don't understand that. Any other questions to the city manager? |
| 03:50:58.81 | Linda Pfeiffer | I don't understand that. |
| 03:51:01.97 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. |
| 03:51:01.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:02.03 | Mayor Theodore | Thank you. Seeing none, public comment. Okay. All right, so we'll move on to Um, Councilmember Committee reports Anything? I actually have something to. Okay, so as I alluded to when we talked, I came out of closed session. Supervisor Kate Sears wrote me yesterday, and I will mostly read it because at this hour it's easier and certainly succinct. So, dear Mayor Theodorus, a few weeks ago I told you that I intended to convene a stakeholders group including representatives of the city council, the Golden Gate Bridge District, and Sausalito residents to find a collaborative path forward regarding the district's proposed very landing project. And she did. And actually I announced that, um, I think it was two meetings ago. So. With input from yourself and Vice Mayor Jill Hoffman, I have developed a list of stakeholders representing a broad spectrum of views about the proposed project. All of the stakeholders were involved. in the public process conducted by the city council, the planning commission and the historic landmarks board. The stakeholders meeting will be on Saturday, June 27th at the Bay Model. The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. and continue for most of the day. I will follow up with more specific information, but please hold that date on your calendar. The stakeholders meeting will bring together diverse perspectives, needs and concerns for an open, and constructive conversations that hopefully will allow the group to reach a common understanding of the factors that do or should influence the ferry landing. to explore areas of agreement and sticking points and to identify a collaborative way to resolve the design Operations, Visitor, bike, commuter access and aesthetic challenges, the ferry landing project embodies. I look forward to your participation in the stakeholders meeting. That's. |
| 03:53:03.52 | Linda Pfeiffer | I just want, yeah, and I'd just like to comment on that. |
| 03:53:05.93 | Mayor Theodore | Right. Wait, can we do this? We now have |
| 03:53:10.50 | Linda Pfeiffer | Uh... Okay. |
| 03:53:12.33 | Mayor Theodore | Any questions? Okay. Comment? |
| 03:53:16.21 | Linda Pfeiffer | So I just found out about this today. I know you read the email about two weeks ago, but we didn't know the details. And when I found out the details, I was told. I was not asked for input. I was not invited to participate in the task force. I was not asked for input with regards to the collaboration process. And, you know, I just don't think it the only thing I'm happy about is that Supervisor Kate Sears has finally jumped off the bench and she's actually getting involved in something because she sits on the bridge district board and she sits on the B.C. D.C. Board. It's a shame she didn't get involved last year. We could have avoided this whole thing, possibly. |
| 03:54:05.97 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, any other comments? Yes, sir. |
| 03:54:10.58 | Unknown | Yeah, I welcome this move, and I look forward to the members of the group working together, and I'd like to thank Supervisor Sears for her leadership here. |
| 03:54:27.84 | Mayor Theodore | Anything else? Okay, moving on. We'll move on to I'm sorry. Yes. We'll move on to future agenda items. And We have any council. Oh, by the way, I'm sorry. Public comment on the last item. Seeing none, we'll close that. Moving on to future agenda items. Any council questions? |
| 03:54:50.66 | Linda Pfeiffer | Yeah, I would recommend bike staging as a future agenda item. I noticed we have also an Airbnb policy on the future agenda already listed, I guess, for June 30th, potentially. So just wanted to confirm that. And I would also like to find out when we have the homeless zone policy coming back to us. That would be another future agenda item I'd like to see. And then also the, this is something new. Around 2009, we, historically, if you look at prior city council meetings they're pretty much verbatim minutes you can go back and you can read what each council member said and where they landed and it's a very quick reference review now we have action minutes and for anyone to know anything they have to go through a video which is just very untenable and difficult and I would like to you know consider as a future agenda item consider replacing action minutes and going back to the more detailed minutes for transparency. |
| 03:56:08.91 | Mayor Theodore | Well, on the last item, I recommend that we put it on our list to do when we go over our protocols. The next time, I think that's the appropriate time. Okay, sure. And the other ones are noted. Anyone else? |
| 03:56:15.13 | Linda Pfeiffer | Okay, sure. |
| 03:56:20.97 | Mayor Theodore | Any other reports of significance? So before we adjourn, I mean, I would like to adjourn in the memory of Sally Califf-Gabron, who passed Saturday, June 13th. She was a very important member of the community, really a shining light, and we'll all miss her, so we'll adjourn in her memory. Thank you. |
| 03:56:42.72 | Linda Pfeiffer | I'd just like to say something, too, about Sally. She was just a wonderful woman. She touched so many people. She made a difference in this town, and she will be sorely missed. |
| 03:56:54.38 | Mayor Theodore | . Agreed. Okay. With that, we're adjourned. Good night. |
| 03:57:01.00 | Mayor Theodore | Oh, OK. Actually, that's a good point. And we decided that So we're going to adjourn to June 30th, Tuesday, June 30th, okay? |
| 03:57:13.60 | Unknown | Just so you know, so that would be a little. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:57:17.60 | Mayor Theodore | Okay, good. Thank you. Good night. |
Lexley Brown — Neutral: Suggested reviewing bicycle arrangements and tourism development to create cohesion between tourism dollars and resident needs, based on a fresh perspective as a new resident. ▶ 📄
Tammy Blanchard — In Favor: Urged the council to explore all options, including pilot programs, to mitigate bike congestion, improve tourist access to businesses, and reduce ferry line pressures. ▶ 📄
David Sudo — Neutral: Criticized council meeting inefficiencies, especially around topics like bikes, and suggested limiting question periods and improving respectful communication to streamline proceedings. ▶ 📄