| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.40 | Unknown | . |
| 00:00:05.70 | Unknown | . Bye. . Bye. |
| 00:00:28.62 | Unknown | . . you . Oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, |
| 00:01:39.90 | Jill Hoffman | Good evening and welcome to the Tuesday, September 13th regular city council meeting. Debbie, could you please call the roll? |
| 00:01:49.72 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Council member Weiner. |
| 00:01:50.97 | Councilmember Theodorus | THE CITY. |
| 00:01:51.54 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Councilmember Theodorus? Present. Councilmember Pfeiffer? Here. Vice Mayor Whitty? Here. |
| 00:01:52.64 | Councilmember Theodorus | Present. care. |
| 00:01:56.10 | Debbie (City Clerk) | Mayor Hoppin. |
| 00:01:57.48 | Jill Hoffman | presence. Thank you. Could we have Ms. Cheryl Popp lead us in the pleasure of allegiance, please? What do we do? Thank you. I'm glad. |
| 00:02:09.99 | Cheryl Popp | the state of the republic. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:15.20 | Unknown | indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:02:19.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Well done. Closed session announcements. We have no closed session announcements. Do we have any public comment on closed session items? We had no closed session items, so we have no public comment. Do I have a motion for approval of the agenda? |
| 00:02:36.04 | Councilmember Weiner | So moved. Second. |
| 00:02:38.45 | Jill Hoffman | All in favor? |
| 00:02:39.06 | Councilmember Weiner | Bye. Bye. |
| 00:02:39.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Motion carries. I have a brief announcement before we start our agenda. Many of you have been concerned and interested in the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District's intent to build a new ferry terminal in Sausalito. Tonight, I provide an update on this issue. Thank you. The Sausalito City Council was prepared to consider the bridge district's request for Sausalito's consent to the district's revised plans for major alterations, additions, and improvements to the Sausalito ferry terminal as required by Sausalito's lease agreement with the district. When, on September 2nd, the district withdrew its request for Sausalito's consent under the lease agreement. The district informed Sausalito that in its opinion, Sausalito's consent for the district's proposed project is not required under the lease agreement and that because the proposed project is regional, Sausalito has no land use authority over it and no legal authority to limit or control the size of the ferry terminal expansion, which is located in the heart of Sausalito's historic waterfront on lands owned by Sausalito under public trust. Sausalito strongly disagrees with the district's contentions and therefore was compelled to file a lawsuit in Marin County Superior Court in order to defend and confirm Sausalito's sovereign authority and legal rights. We hope that the district will reconsider its position and once again work cooperatively with Sausalito to design and construct an improved ferry terminal that appropriately balances the equally important objectives of improved regional transit, environmental protection, and the preservation and protection of Sausselo's historic waterfront held in a public trust. Thank you. And now, on to our next item on our agenda. We have in recognition of the Sausalito Sister Cities program for the 2016 Best Overall Program Award, Mike Langford. |
| 00:04:38.44 | Mike Langford | Good evening, Mayor, City Council members, and... Welcome back. because all had a good break. as short as it was. It's my privilege tonight, I've done this a few times, but this is a very special occasion, to introduce some members of the Sausalito Sister Cities. I've been working with them since I started here almost nine years ago. Just a few months ago, I had the pleasure of driving the van with some of the kids from the Japanese program, and it was really neat to see them the first day, very shy, reserved, and by the end of the short week that they were here, they had changed. They'd become more comfortable with the American lifestyle, with my driving, and everything else we in Sausalito had to offer, and this would not be possible. My experience, as limited as it was, would not be possible without the Sausalito Sister Cities. So I would like to thank them for giving me the opportunity to do that. But now I'd like to bring up members of the sister city to talk we're gonna have This is where you draw the blank on the name. I know Susan Rowe and Monica Finnegan. There we go, Susan Roe and Monica Finnegan, who I both know their names very well. It's just one of those stand in front of a microphone and forget things. |
| 00:06:01.02 | Susan Rowe | Thank you Mike, thank you Park and Rec, thank you City Council members, Mayor, Adam. Thank you so much for your support after all these years. Everyone in the audience here who has been a participant in Sausalito's Sister City program knows what it is like to have three sister cities, and we won this award this year thanks to Monica, who decided she was going to turn in a paper to Sister City International And we won. go ahead and tell them about the award and we're sharing in this. Then we'll show you a brief PowerPoint. But honestly, my heartfelt thanks to everyone here and everyone in the audience for Sister City Program. It was a gift to me. |
| 00:06:46.06 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. It was a gift to all of us. Susie, stay up here with me. Before we go too far, I'd like to have everybody on our Operations Council stand up. so you can see some of the hard work of you, Tom. Cheryl Plough. Tom Clark. Bob Gold. |
| 00:07:08.99 | Monica Finnegan | So we were here about six months ago to give you sort of a what we're going to do kind of overview. And now we're here to talk about a lot of things that we've done and some of the good news that has occurred with that. As you all know, we have three sister cities. We're not going to elaborate on that, but that's a lot of moolah that we have to raise. and a lot of logistics that we go through every time we have an exchange. This year, we did a lot of moolah raising with the Come Fly With Us in May. And it was a fantastic success. We're really, really pleased with it all. Everybody pitched in. It was the first time we'd done three together. There's some characters you might recognize there. And another couple characters. |
| 00:07:50.19 | Cheryl Popp | you |
| 00:07:51.28 | Monica Finnegan | and we were very um... pleased to offer some thanks to everybody that has helped us, especially Mike Langford. and Una. And of course, we gave an award to Susan for her great leadership. Then we moved into July and August. AND I THINK IT'S A GREAT Jim Meyer and Cheryl Popp and the Chapmans took us all to Qashqash. And here's some of the students that went with us. And here's some of the adults that drank their way through the town. |
| 00:08:21.91 | Cheryl Popp | Come on. Thank you. |
| 00:08:23.95 | Monica Finnegan | Does anybody have anything they want to add that went with us? Thank you. |
| 00:08:28.61 | Councilmember Theodorus | Yeah, I don't think... I don't think they remember. |
| 00:08:34.45 | Monica Finnegan | We had a really terrific time, and thanks to Jim and Cheryl for putting everything together. While we were there, as you can tell from Harry, that Portugal won the soccer award, so it was pretty raucous the night after. Then we move again into July, right? We just get home, and here we are with 12 students and two chaperones, and that was Evie Gilbert and Deena Hatchwell's effort of really putting together a fantastic program. these students experienced the diversity of the Bay Area, something that they don't experience in Japan, We are now up to about 500 students that we've exchanged back and forth between both cities. And here are some of their smiling faces, Jazz by the Bay. A couple of giggly girls. There's a lot of that going on. And then just recently at the art festival, Mayor Aya came, and he wanted to study the art festival to see if they could replicate it in Sikai Day. So there's a few of the folks that you see. It was a fantastic event. Sold out, 800 tables. $3.50 a ticket, they raised a lot of mo. In March and April 2017, we were expecting seven women from Vignette de Mar to come visit us. This is a photo of what we did last year when we went to visit them. and some of the happy faces that we're anticipating seeing. We've been mentoring about 40 women in the program there and we're really looking forward to everybody's participation here with us in giving them more training and more business sense and more wine drinking. |
| 00:10:07.14 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 00:10:07.57 | Monica Finnegan | So, Sister City International. THE FAMILY. WE HAVE A LOT OF We didn't really have that much activity with them before, Tom came up to me about a year ago, and he said, Tom Clark. you. But Tom came up and he says, you should really look into that. I think we deserve an award. So I went in to look up the requirements for what's needed and found that they have a ton of resources, and a ton of things that they're doing across the country and the world. One of the reports which I've sent to Adam, they've completed a measures that matter overview of 545 communities, 2,121 sister city partnerships, and 145 countries. So the United States as a nation receives about $525 million of contribution to the economy each year from the sister city programs around the country. One of the things that we're going to try to do this year is validate our contribution to Sausalito, because I think we really do quite a bit with all of the travel and the... work that we do. The best thing that we did come out of that relationship with them was we did receive the best overall program It's also Lido sister cities for a city that's population less than 25,000 people. And this was fantastic because I think with all the successes that we've had, we've got so much wonderful momentum going. We've got a great team that's working with us. And to be recognized nationally, We all should be proud, not just our team, but all of us should be proud that we are on the map as number one best overall program. So that's what we're celebrating tonight. Susan was a given the award. by the chairman of Sister City International, Bill Borum. and he came to our Sakai Day opening ceremony and was blown away by everything that he saw. So as I said, we're on the map. And here is. |
| 00:12:10.50 | Susan Rowe | the prestigious award and we are hoping to put it in the display case at City Hall at some point where we have an appropriate box or a lacquer something that we can put it up on a pedestal but this will be sort of the permanent award like an oscar if you will for sister city and the city of sausalito because we are joint and we are together and we are one thank you Thank you, Monica. |
| 00:12:43.81 | Jill Hoffman | Now, hold on, hold on. We have a special proclamation this evening for the Sister Cities program from the city of Sausalito. Whereas the city of Sausalito began its first sister city relationship in 1960 as part of the President Dwight D. Eisenhower's People to People program with the city of Vigna Del Mar, Chile. And whereas in 1988, the city formed a second sister city relationship with the city of Sakai de Japan was formed, Whereas in 2013, the newest relationship with the city of Qashqai, Portugal was entered into. And whereas the three programs are now organized under the umbrella of the Sister Cities, Inc. And whereas all three programs are active with high school student exchange, a women in business exchange, and a youth sailing exchange, respectively. And whereas there are 545 communities in the United States hosting such programs. And whereas there are 2,121 sister city partnerships in 145 different countries. And whereas Sister City International recognizes sister city relationships that demonstrate outstanding accomplishments in their ongoing programs. and whereas our own sister city Sausalito Sister Cities Inc. was recognized and awarded the first best overall program for populations less than 25,000 by the sister city international now therefore be it proclaimed that the mayor and city council members of the city of Sausalito hereby applaud the sister cities Inc. for their outstanding work in providing three very strong sister city programs and be it further acclaimed that all members of the city council also recognize those who effortlessly volunteer many, many hours to make these programs run so flawlessly. In witness thereof, I, Jill James Hoffman, mayor of the city of Sausalito, have here unto set my hand and caused the seal of the city of Sausalito to be affixed on the 13th day of September 2016. Thank you and congratulations. |
| 00:14:41.41 | Monica Finnegan | Wow. |
| 00:15:09.93 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 00:15:20.43 | Jill Hoffman | OK, on to the next exciting thing on our agenda. We have the mayor's blue ribbon committee is going to do a presentation on the movie theater here in town over the proposed plans for the movie theater by Danny Castro. |
| 00:15:54.09 | Danny Castro | Good evening, Mayor Hoffman, members of the Council. On behalf of the Blue Ribbon Committee on the Sausalito Marin Theater, I'm pleased to introduce a special presentation on the Marin Theater project. |
| 00:16:10.70 | Danny Castro | In the fall, about the fall of 2015, to give you some background, the Movie theater at 101 Caledonia Street announced it's closing, that it would be closing its operation. And the last date of its operation was January 24th, 2016. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. A lot of neighborhood concern and community concern was It was expressed about this closure. And in January 2016, Mayor Hoffman announced the appointment of a Blue Ribbon Committee The purpose of this committee was to investigate the theater closure Meet with the property manager and maintain communication with the property manager. Look for possible temporary uses. while the property manager and the property owner were looking for a permanent a permanent operator in the building. Also to look for interest from one or more arts related nonprofit organizations to provide an entertainment venue, whether it be films, lectures, performing arts, at the site, again on a temporary basis. And also provide updates to the community via the Sausalito Currents, Nextdoor, and on a Facebook page that was created. The Blue Ribbon Committee members, here's a list of all the names. They are comprised of residents, business owners in town, and also two city council members, Mayor Hoffman and Tom Theodorus. And then also staff, myself, and the city manager, Adam Paul Observer. The committee met four times in January. And in February, there was a tour of the theater with the property owner, property manager. so we can look at the existing condition of the theater. And then the last two meetings in June and in August is when we were aware that there was a potential project in the works. And so we were gaining some information regarding that. In terms of the project review process, the, well, we were, now, there is an application that has been submitted. So we're pleased to receive an application from the property manager and property owner. And the process requires that it go before the historic landmarks board. which is because the building is over 50 years in age. It was built in 1909. It requires that the Historic Landmarks Board review the existing building. and the proposed design and if it would have any historic significance, whether those new improvements have any impact on those improvements. That was done on September 1st of a few weeks ago. The Historic Landmarks Board determined that there was no historic significance, although there, it definitely was. a part of Sausalito's history that there wasn't a significant architecturally or its location. The next step is the Planning Commission, and that's going to occur on October 5th under a public hearing. There are a number of permits that the project will require, and it's a design review permit, a conditional use permit for its use, an encroachment agreement, and a signed permit. So that's coming up under a public hearing before the Planning Commission. I will turn the podium to This project team, which is James Toe, the property owner, Bruce Huff, the property manager, Zach Rocket with Roe Rocket Design, who will give you a preview of this project that will come and will undergo the project review by the Planning Commission. I'll just remind everyone that the This is a special presentation. It's a project preview. and it will go before the Planning Commission for its proper review. you The applicant is not seeking the city council's direction or action this evening, but really just to provide information and give the opportunity for the council and for the community to see a project preview. So with that, I'm going to turn this to Bruce. |
| 00:20:40.98 | Bruce Huff | Good evening, Mayor. and Council and thank you Mr. Castro for the introduction. actually taken a lot out of what I had to say. Um... I think that it's somewhat important to understand where we've been, to understand where we're going here. And so prior to the design team stepping up, I just wanted to give a little recent history to the theater and how we ended up where we are. We've been managing the theater since the late 80s. in 1989 he you Thank you. where 1990 Pacific Theaters, who was the operator of the theater, came to us and said they didn't want to renew the lease and they wanted to closed the theater and they had no more interest in being here. luck prevailed and Driving Miss Daves, he played in the theater for 16 weeks straight. And Pacific Theaters took another look and decided that Sausalito was a demographic within itself. It did not fit into the general demographic of the county. It did not fit into general theater demographics. And so they decided to go forward, we negotiated at least with them, and converted to a three screen theater. And at that time, There was a 400-seat single-screen theater with the entry on Pine Street. Pacific Theaters made an application, we moved the entry to Caledonia Street, ended up being three screens. with slightly less seating. I think it was 393 seats. Pacific Theaters was actually relatively successful in the early 90s. They had figured out how to place films to this demographic. And it did really well. They sold their entire chain to Century Theaters about 95 or 96. The operators of Century Theaters lived in Sausalito, were from Sausalito, but certainly didn't understand the demographic. And the theater immediately lost business. It immediately lost patronage, and it just suffered from lack of attendance. Century Theaters sold their entire operation to Cinemark, in the late 90s. Cinemark is a national chain, probably the biggest chain in the nation, and continued in the same vein of what plays in Novato would be successful in Sausalito, which obviously is not the case. The attendance suffered to a point where, by our calculations, there were 36 people a day in a 393 seat theater. And the, in the, And Cinemark had a series of options to exercise. In November of 2015, they informed us they were not going to exercise their option and they were leaving. Um... We were contacted by Ms. Hoffman and several city council people, we agreed to serve on the the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Committee, But we immediately, um, started a marketing campaign nationally where we called every single national, regional, and local chain that exists. And that took about two and a half months. the We had some people fly out from the East Coast. We had some people come over from San Francisco and Oakland. We showed it to California Film Institute. But at the end of the day, there's zero interest in a 393-seat theater. So we started talking to A COMBINATION OF PEOPLE. restaurateurs and theater operators. And we solicited interest from them, we got interest from them, we have interest from them. They're local operators, but primarily, They've helped us. in the design of this facility. And where we haven't gotten the lease, we're not prepared to disclose who they are, and they don't want us to disclose who they are. We're very confident that the design and the work that everybody put into this has come up with a concept that will serve the public. And we'll invite people into the theater and we'll retain the entertainment use. We're applying for a mixed use design, which includes on the first floor a restaurant. and a two screen theater. We're reducing the seatage in the theater, primarily through the use of larger seats, reclining seats, and things of that nature. One of the theaters is designed to have a stage, so there can be lectures, there can be live performances. And Then on the second floor, we plan for offices, which is an off use. We appeared before the Historical Landmarks Board on September 1st, as Danny Castro mentioned. There's, they concluded that there's no historical significance to the structure. We The city conducted a traffic study, a parking study, The result of the parking study, the way I read it, states that there is a significant net reduction in parking demand from what we're proposing, and that there is more than ample parking within the area that they consider to be a three to five minute walk from the theater. And parking will actually be part of the conversation, I'm sure, in the planning commission because we have some ideas of our own. Thank you. Thank you. Um, But the... primary direction of the structure itself. was to. kind of reduce its impact on the neighborhood. It was to soften its presence on the corner. It was to present a design that invited people into the, invited the public into the facility. It's something that I think interacts very well with the street. And it's a design that I think adds significantly to the vibrancy and the life of Caledonia Street. Um, With that, I'd like to invite Zach Rocket. from, you know, Roe Rocket Design up here to show you the design. |
| 00:28:25.50 | Zach Rocket | Thanks, Bruce. Thanks to the members of the council for allowing us to introduce you to the project. show you through our presentation. This is the location, 101 Caledonia Street, along the Caledonia Street corridor, as noted in this aerial view. We started the design process. really by looking at kind of the history of the structure and by looking at the history of the street there along the frontage of Caledonia. So upper left corner is one of the earliest photos we could find of the building kind of shortly after it was built. I think this photo was probably in the 1920s. And what was interesting to us in comparing these old photos relative to what we all know as the theater in the lower right- corner was initially the fact that it was a mixed use building. It was two stories fully occupied. The ground level was an auto garage and the upper floor was a gathering space. There were kind of openings and windows along Caledonia, both floors and along the Pine Street side as well, which you can kind of see in the middle upper photograph. This is the corner of Caledonia and Pine here. The interior of the structure is quite remarkable at the upper level. It has these wonderful timber trusses that we're working to preserve. And this photo on the right of the upper level was quite interesting, I thought, just in terms of how the building has been used at the upper level in the past. And then kind of in the middle of the century, the building was converted into a single-screen movie theater, and the entry was moved from Caledonia Street around the corner to Pine. At this time, the exterior facade was changed considerably. The parapet along Caledonia was modified in its shape. Exterior materials were modified from a wood siding to something more like concrete or plaster and as a result of the program becoming a single screen movie theater, The need for the windows was removed, and the building became pretty quiet and blanked. And in the early 90s, the building was renovated to its current state of affairs, which is the three screens. So they kind of rotated the theaters into the short dimension of the building parallel to Caledonia Street, and they reoriented the entry onto Caledonia. So that's kind of the condition as we know it. So looking at Caledonia Street in a few block radius, I think it's interesting to note that it's a pretty eclectic mix of architectural styles and of building kind of scales, right? So you have anything from a very small kind of one-story storefront with a gable parapet to kind of more probably 50s, 60s style apartments to larger buildings. Kind of immediately across the street is the market at the corner of Pine and Caledonia opposite the theater, etc. But I think the point of this image is to kind of demonstrate the kind of interesting eclectic mix of buildings along the street. And so jumping into a quick kind of rendition on the floor plan, on the left of the screen is the current layout of the three theaters, kind of oriented parallel to Caledonia. And on the right is the proposed new floor plan. And so what you can see in the proposal is that we're retaining approximately similar sized theaters, albeit we're converting the location of what's labeled as Theater Three into a kind of more appropriate entry lobby and opening the corner of Pine and Caledonia for a restaurant function. And so the proposal is to maintain a kind of similar recess for the entry up a similar number of steps to the main floor. We're improving what is now a kind of exposed accessibility lift by putting in a new elevator that will be kind of multi-stop, that will serve the sidewalk into the entry level. And then if you take a left-hand turn as you get into the building, you'll find the restaurant with a proposal to have kind of floor to ceiling glass walls at the corner to expose kind of the inside of the restaurant to the exterior and vice versa and then to the right you'll have a kiosk for the theater so that would be snack bar ticket sales etc. Upstairs, via a new stair, kind of in both corners, would be a single plate of office, taking over for kind of what is now the projection offices and a large amount of storage. And so then looking at what might occur to accommodate these new functions on the inside of the building, what might occur on the outside of the building. And so we've gone through a series of transformations that we'd like to propose to kind of modify the exterior. And so we started by looking at kind of what are the prominent kind of architectural datums of this building that, you know, have some interest to us and probably to the general public along Caledonia. The first from the top down is the top of the building or the ridge line of the roof. The second is the eave along the Pine Street street frontage. And then the third is the marquee as it currently exists, recognizing the underside of the marquee as an interesting canopy that projects out into the sidewalk. And so then in thinking through how we might begin to operate on the existing shell and renovate it, we start by looking at the roof and identifying that, you know, the addition of the kind of stepped parapet that came about in the kind of 40s, 50s does do some work to kind of make the building seem larger than it actually is. And so our proposal is to restore the gable form of the inside of the building or of the roof trusses, which is this red dashed line, and trim off all of the yellow kind of extensions of the Caledonia Street wall. And I think this would work in a subtle way to open up view corridors for the kind of hilly residential neighborhood behind the theater. And then in the light gray, you'll see the proposed locations of the new openings. And so this image is a view of the new roof and then the proposed openings at the corner and then upstairs at the office space. And then kind of in the spirit of the building as it has existed for the last 60 years of being kind of a quiet form without a lot of exterior kind of penetrations and not a lot of light bleed coming from the second floor, we're proposing to reclad the upper volume of the building with a timber screen. And we're thinking of this as a kind of veil to the windows of the office that will be spaced wide enough to kind of see through and get kind of nice views through light and air, et cetera. But we'll also kind of decrease the activity at the upper level of the building that has kind of become common for this structure. And in thinking about that kind of ultimate material that we're wrapping around the building, the timber screen, we began to research a lot of the kind of history of Sausalito. And one thing that immediately began to fascinate us was the dry docks down around the Gate 5 area that were built in a wartime effort to construct tanker ships. And architecturally, what has been really fascinating to us are the scaffolds that were built around these structures, or that were, in fact, these structures, these timber scaffoldings that allowed the workers to kind of craft these huge ships in between. And so in taking that as a kind of inspiration, in thinking through the way the volume of the building could get clad with a kind of warm, inviting material like timber, we began to reinterpret the kind of forms and the logic of the structures of these scaffoldings and use that as the logic for the exterior materials of the building. So on the left you can see the existing building and the proposed diagram of the new screen, the kind of historic photo, and then the beginnings of the building. So on the left you can see the existing building and the proposed diagram of the new screen, the kind of historic photo, and then the beginnings of a rendering. of the upper level. And so this series of slides kind of walks you through diagrammatically the transformation of the parapet, current parapet condition, recognizing the gable form behind it, and then leading to the proposed kind of new exterior of the building, which is effectively you know, the bulk of the new exterior material is this veil, as we're calling it, wrapping around the existing kind of walls of the building. And so in this image, this is walking across the street along Pine Crossing Caledonia. You see the large expanses of glass kind of giving people views in and views out from the restaurant. The new entry or the kind of modified entry shifted slightly up Caledonia is located here, and then the marquee gets basically spread out as a new canopy along the sidewalk that holds the datum of the existing marquee, and then above that you get this condition of this varying spaced timber screen that is tighter spaced kind of where it's over solid wall and gets more open where it's over glazing and so then zooming in to the entry of the building this is a proposed view kind of walking up to the to the front door you can see the door for the for the new lift is here the proposed new signage roughly in a similar location as the existing, and then the kind of location of theater times and movie names, et cetera. What's also interesting and I think an interesting advantage to this existing condition of the building are the steps up. And so you step up kind of 24 inches, 24 to 30 inches above grade to get into the building, and that allows the restaurant to kind of float just slightly above the sidewalk. So there's a very interesting relationship between kind of diner and kind of person walking along the sidewalk. So you can see that kind of slightly raised condition of the restaurant floor there. This is a view looking north on Caledonia, kind of more on Pine Street, looking at the Pine Street's facade and how the timber screen wraps along and works to provide a kind of similar effect on Pine Street, which is a more residential street. It's providing kind of a similar situation as is there now without a lot of openings on the upper level. We are proposing to wrap the corner of the restaurant with glass around to the side. And then a zoom in of that kind of corner turn of the restaurant along the Pine Street facade. Here you can see the relationship of the restaurant floor to the sidewalk, the condition of the canopy, which provides for kind of a longer moment of coverage along Caledonia. |
| 00:39:27.98 | Zach Rocket | And then finally, the kind of view back to Caledonia, looking again at the screen above the office windows and the restaurant below. And I think that concludes the architectural presentation. I think James Toe, the building owner, has a few words that he'd like to share as well. |
| 00:39:47.35 | James Toe | Hi, just wanted to introduce myself to the council. I've met some of you before, not all of you. Also wanted to thank you for having us present to you tonight. Thank the Blue Ribbon community. the committee for setting this up. you were letting us present to you this evening. I'm not sure. One thing I would like to add, you know, we are right in the middle of this process. Danny Castro and Calvin Chan have been extremely helpful with us throughout this process. We understand there's still a long way to go, so we're looking forward to any feedback, the community. Council members, Planning Commission have for us. The big planning commission date is on October 5th, Zach, Bruce, and myself. are available to all members of the community, and we look forward to your feedback and the dialogue. So thanks. |
| 00:40:43.09 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you for coming and presenting this to the City Council. |
| 00:40:46.94 | Unknown | Quick question, those materials weren't available, are they going to be made available to the public? |
| 00:40:55.01 | Zach Rocket | Yes, yeah, they are. We're in the process of building a website that will have the images available. |
| 00:41:01.55 | Unknown | Yeah, but they should be added to the agenda. Adam? Well, this was a presentation. |
| 00:41:04.52 | Adam Politzer | Well, Thank you. Well, this was a presentation from the Blue Ribbon Committee. The application is actually on file with the Planning Commission and the planning staff. So the application is available to the public. Thank you, Adam. Will these materials- |
| 00:41:12.13 | Unknown | Right. Thank you, Adam. Will these materials be added to the agenda? We'll add this to the website. |
| 00:41:17.86 | Adam Politzer | We'll add this to the website. |
| 00:41:19.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:41:21.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:41:21.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, thank you. On to the next on our agenda. Thanks for coming guys, I appreciate it. You're welcome. |
| 00:41:38.39 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, Mike Langford, you have an introduction? |
| 00:41:44.40 | Mike Langford | Yes, I do. I'm back again, again with good things. As many of you know, Anita Wong worked at the Parks and Recreation Department at the front desk for approximately nine years. She moved upstairs and took a position with the Community Development Department. leaving a big blank downstairs, and it was a... We didn't know what we were going to do and then Brian, who I'm going to introduce here, came in as a temporary person and we said, wow, we've got our person. And so we hired him and Brian's been with us permanently for a few months now. And it's my pleasure to introduce Brian Valley, who is our administrative assistant working at the front desk at Parks and Rec. And if you haven't met him, you need to come down and talk to him. He's a great guy and very friendly and his customer service skills are |
| 00:42:11.32 | Mike McKinley | as a temporary. |
| 00:42:34.67 | Mike Langford | off the hook. I have people calling me telling me how good he is. |
| 00:42:39.58 | Unknown | Okay, well, watch out. Yep. Okay, thank you. |
| 00:42:40.83 | Mike Langford | Yeah. |
| 00:42:44.10 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:42:49.25 | Mike Langford | Say a few words, right? |
| 00:42:50.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:42:50.90 | Brian Valley | Just thank you for the opportunity. I'm a South Leader resident, and I'm really looking forward to serving the community. Thank you. |
| 00:42:58.60 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. In brief, excellent. Oh, do you want to come and shake our hand? Welcome. |
| 00:43:04.13 | Mike Langford | I wanted to say Brian's so good when he left on vacation, he gave us this list of things to look out for. And things that he had already done in preparation for his being gone, such as just pull the old calendar off and the new one's right behind it. Oh my God. He's thinking, he's watching out for me and he's watching out for all of us down there taking care of us. And we're again, so happy to have Brian with us and working for us downstairs at Parks and Recreation and he's a definite asset to the city. |
| 00:43:17.95 | Nancy McKinney | Oh, my God. |
| 00:43:31.49 | Jill Hoffman | Great. Thank you. Okay, Jonathan, you have an announcement as well, very exciting evening. |
| 00:43:39.45 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the council and staff, and members of the audience here, as well as at home and in perpetuity. Jonathan Goldman Public Works director and City Engineer and ADA coordinator. I too am pleased to announce a new addition to the Department of Public Works. In our engineering division, we have, I'm delighted to announce that Bryant Ho, who's our new assistant civil engineer, joined us actually on July 25th,th 2016 so he's had plenty of opportunity to run away since then and has not chosen to so I'm grateful for that he is holds an engineering training certificate from state of California in civil engineering. He has a bachelor's of science degree in civil engineering from Sacramento State University. And Bryant actually joined us from Sonoma County Water Agency where he was an operations engineering intern. He enjoys rock climbing in his spare time. um, And as I indicated, he has already proven to be an essential asset to the engineering team in aiding our department as an expediter for planning, building, and sewer lateral project reviews, capital project management, and in many other key areas. So I would appreciate it if you would join me in welcoming Bryant to our City of Sausalito team. |
| 00:45:18.78 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:45:25.09 | Bryant Ho | Hello, Madam Mayor and City Council members. It's an honor to be working for you and for the city of Los Alitos. It's been a lot of fun so far, and I look forward to continuing working with you. |
| 00:45:38.54 | Jill Hoffman | Great, thank you. |
| 00:46:03.13 | Jill Hoffman | All right, moving on to our next agenda item, we are now on item number two. Communications. This is a time for City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. Except in very limited situations, state law precludes the Council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. The council may refer matters not on the agenda to city staff or direct that the subject be agendized for future meeting. Please make sure you have completed a speaker's card and turn in to the city clerk if you would like to speak during this time. Do we have any cards? No one approaching. Very good. Moving on. We're on to item three on the agenda, action minutes of previous meetings. We have three sets of minutes on our agenda today. Would anybody like to make a motion? on these items to approve all or one. |
| 00:46:58.70 | Councilmember Weiner | I move that we approve the action minutes set forth in items 3A, B, and C. Second. |
| 00:47:07.51 | Jill Hoffman | All in favor? |
| 00:47:08.32 | Councilmember Weiner | Hi. |
| 00:47:08.40 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 00:47:08.99 | Councilmember Weiner | you |
| 00:47:09.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. Motion passes. Okay, 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 in the form listed below. There will be no separate discussion of consent calendar items. However, before the council votes on a motion to adopt the consent calendar items, council members, city staff, or members of the public may request that specific items be removed from the consent calendar for separate action. In order to request an item be pulled, you must have completed a speaker's card and turned it in to the city clerk. Items will only be removed from the consent calendar by vote of the council. items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda when public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from the consent calendar by vote of the council. Items removed from the consent calendar will be discussed later on the agenda when public comment will be heard on any item that was removed from the consent calendar. Do we have any public comment on consent calendar items? No. Do we have a motion to approve the following actions? There's only one on the consent calendar, and that's approve the request for waiver fees in the amount of 1,831 for Galilee Harbor Community Association's Maritime Day 2016 event. Do we have a motion to approve? |
| 00:48:24.81 | Unknown | So moved. Second. |
| 00:48:27.49 | Jill Hoffman | All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Moving on. Congratulations, Galley Harbor. Well done. |
| 00:48:28.10 | Unknown | I |
| 00:48:34.61 | Councilmember Theodorus | Well done. |
| 00:48:36.91 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 00:48:37.85 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 00:48:38.97 | Jill Hoffman | Public hearing items, none. Item five, public hearing items, we don't have any tonight. Item six, business items. Item 6A is a report and update from the Humane Society Animal Care and Control with Nancy McKinney. Oh, okay, welcome. |
| 00:49:00.45 | Nancy McKinney | Thank you. Thank you for inviting us here tonight. And with me is Captain Cindy Machado, who runs the Animal Services Division of the Marin Humane Society. And we began this calendar year sending out written updates to all the cities that contract with the JPA for Animal Services. And we started in January, and the last written update was in June. And each time we keep saying we're happy to come and stand in front of city councils and give a personal update of the services that we provide each city. So thank you, Adam, for taking us up on that offer. We just want to have two parts to our presentation. Cindy will share with you more information about specifically the services that we provide to the citizens of Sausalito through the contract and then I'll come back and talk about some of the programs and services we provide Sausalito that's not covered in the contract and then we can open up for any questions if you have |
| 00:50:00.17 | Cindy Machado | Okay, thank you. Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. It's, I think, our first ever, so we're really pleased to be here, so thank you. So it's been a really fun, busy year at the Humane Society for us. We've had lots of different service calls to Sausalito. Your city manager gets an overall call. printout of all the different calls that we do each fiscal year and I just want to give you a quick rundown on some of those calls that we've handled in Sausalito we had a total of 419 service activities in the fiscal year which means we were here with an officer at least 419 times for a variety of reasons I don't know do any of you want to guess on what the top area of service is |
| 00:50:47.49 | Jill Hoffman | Raccoons. |
| 00:50:48.23 | Cindy Machado | Very good. You win the prize. Wildlife. Wildlife is our number one reason that we're down here quite a bit. And last fiscal year, we actually handled 79 wildlife emergencies, 75 complaint investigations, and 29 domestic emergency calls. I don't know. Sometimes bites and aggressive animal calls result in potentially dangerous animal proceedings, which I'm happy to report we only had two in the city, one of which was a dog that was not declared potentially dangerous, and the other was declared potentially dangerous and actually resulted in an appeal in Superior Court, which means that it was a dog that is a rarity for us. And that dog recently was relocated out of Marin. So you're pretty safe from potentially dangerous dogs and vicious dogs, and I better knock on wood. We have done quite a bit on wildlife coexistence down here. You were the second city that got to experience the coexistence issues with coyotes. And so your residents from many, most of your neighborhoods in Sausalito have had an experience to see a coyote, learn about hazing techniques, how to coexist with them. We get quite a few wild animals on the harbor side, water side, so pelicans with fishing material attached to them. We've had a couple sea lions that we worked with the Marine Mammal Center on. So we continue to see. Sick wild sea birds that show up on shore that we often respond to. So your residents are really savvy when it comes to wildlife. They don't hesitate to call us. They know not to feed wildlife, not to handle and touch wildlife, so we're really thrilled about that. dog licensing is an area that we would really love to increase our partnership with the town and with your residents to make sure we have as many dogs licensed as possible. That's our biggest revenue that you get. percentage back. So we can help matters by having a link on your website that directly links to our website to make it easy for people. And we really want to encourage people to get their dogs licensed. Looks like we handled approximately 93 complaint patrols. These are areas of your town where citizens are complaining about dogs off leash, loose dogs, menacing dogs. And our hot spots there are Martin Luther King Park, as well as Liberty Ship Way. You actually have one commercial groomer that we inspect, and you had three exhibitors. So we often have street artists that use animals to solicit money, and those people all require a permit, and we inspect them, and you have three of those in Sausalito. We investigated 31 complaints, and you only had 12 bite incidents, and bite incidents are when a domestic animal breaks the skin of a human. And an interesting side note, three cases of wild animals that were tested for rabies. No rabies in Sausalito, fingers crossed. And then lastly, just a couple things. We really love promoting disaster preparedness for pet guardians. So we are always happy to do neighborhood groups, work on drills, work with your city staff to make sure that your public is prepared for a disaster with their pet. We've learned from experience that people won't leave when they're evacuated unless they can bring their pets. We have a whole really rich thorough program on disaster preparedness for pets that we'd happily share with your residents. And then the other bigger issue for us was really being on top of monitoring the GGNRA dog management plan, which, as you know, borders many of your local neighborhoods. And our attempt at monitoring that was to make sure that that plan was consistent with your local residents in areas where people like to bring their dogs. And we received a lot of comment from Sausalito residents which helped us prepare our findings and substantive comments to the GGNRA. And I'll save the favorite story for last, which is, and this may or may not be true, but my understanding is a 25-year-old dog, Chihuahua, blind and deaf, found his way up on Highway 101, just above Spencer. Our officer rescued him, He was injured. He ended up at the pet emergency clinic for veterinary treatment as an emergency, and lo and behold, he had a microchip. which no collar, no tag, but the microchip enabled us to make immediate contact with the owner, where she was immediately reunited with her pet at the hospital and all worked out well. But we love those happy stories, we have lots of them. And we're here to help your residents as well as anything that you need from us anytime. I'm going to ship it back to Nancy, and she's going to talk about the other programs that we do. |
| 00:56:06.17 | Nancy McKinney | And Cindy's been with the Marin Humane Society for decades and has lots of experiences running our animal services and their disaster drills. She recently is one of the rare certified animal welfare administrators. So we're really lucky to have her and utilize her as a resource. But there's a lot of programs and services Marin Humane Society provides that's not part of the contract but part of our nonprofit side of the house, so to speak. And I just want to highlight a few because it makes an impact in our community, particularly in your city. Our humane education programs, you know, a lot of times when you hear the word humane society, you just think that we're all just about dogs and cats. But it's wildlife, it's teaching respect and empathy, it's compassion. And we have a humane education program that provides a lot of different services that we've been evaluating with the help of Dominican University and understanding that there really is a change in the attitudes that the children have about being respectful and empathetic to all living beings, whether they have two feet or four feet. We also have a program called Share a Book, and this is where volunteers and trained dogs are teams, and they go into libraries and schools to help kids improve their reading skills. And so we do share a book where the children come and they read to the dogs, and we have seen that there's been improved reading skills with that. So we have a big share book team. They have an ongoing program at the Willow Creek Academy in Sausalito for the last six years. Last week they started a new school year and are back again. And they read weekly to the third grade class in the school library. And the teacher at Willow Creek, this is kind of a fun fact, Ann Siskin, was our Humane Educator of the Year in 2013. So we've honored her for helping that program go. We've had a lot of summer reading programs in the past at Sausalito Library. And we'd love to start that back up again, it's been kind of absent there. And we are starting a new share a book reading program at the Manzanita Child Development Center in nearby Marin City in the fall and have an after school program. Our summer camp programs have been very popular. A lot of Sausalito children have been coming to them. And we're actually adding more day camp programs throughout the school year. And one summer camper from Sausalito this year also adopted an animal during camp. So that was an added bonus. We participated in what's called the Anchor Out events at Dunphy Park with the police department and public health nurses for the last four years. And last October, we provided 15 bags of dog food, 10 collars and leashes, six coupons for free vaccinations, which was the most ever, and cat food, and of course, lots of poop bags, because we want them to be responsible pet guardians, even if they live out on the boat. So we provide a lot of resources to low-income seniors, those who are homeless, to help make sure their animals are vaccinated, spayed and neutered, and responsible responsible we also have some share clients and those are low-income seniors in Sausalito that request pet food assistance so they can keep their animal in their home as long as possible we so besides just adoptions and education we also do pet training classes workshops so again people can learn about being more responsible. And we've even branched out and rented space in a dance studio in Sausalito and are offering the opportunity to have clients come for classes at the studio as opposed to driving up to Novato. And that's proven to be very successful in the last year. We've offered four different classes to over 50 residents of Sausalito, so that also means to 50 canine participants. We are the oldest nonprofit organization in Marin, and we're happy to also be providing animal services on a contractual basis. We're rare to be a Humane Study that enjoys and participates providing both animal services as well as the Humane Study. So thank you for the opportunity for us give you a little bit more information. We hope this was helpful. If you have any questions for either one of us, we're happy to answer them. |
| 01:00:25.09 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you for coming and thank you for that. Very nice presentation. Do we have any questions from the City Council? |
| 01:00:33.44 | Unknown | Thank you for that presentation and thank you for everything you do for us. I had a question about the street performers. I personally have lobbied to ban animals used in street performing. I've seen a lot of abuse. In fact, I once called the Humane Society to report abuse about a, well, there's one chihuahua that's been used with glasses, you know, affixed to his head for hours on end, a cockatoo flipped back and forth when visitors come and, you know, kind of thrown on strangers to land. I just don't think it's a good idea. So I was wondering, does the Humane Society, do you, Do you have any recommendations for like other cities or towns that have banned the use of animals in street performing that we might be able to take a look at? |
| 01:01:31.15 | Cindy Machado | We would love to talk to you more about that. It is an issue. We're aware of the issue. the ones you describe. We are one of the few counties that has a permit ordinance in Marin County. Many jurisdictions don't have them. The only thing close is a ban on all animal displays. So the hard part is determining which ones should be banned, which ones should be allowed. |
| 01:01:55.16 | Mike McKinley | Thank you. |
| 01:01:55.23 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 01:01:55.26 | Mike McKinley | which, |
| 01:01:58.24 | Cindy Machado | there's definitely a trend towards banning displays with exotic animals, so the bird would be fitting into that. |
| 01:02:05.54 | Mike McKinley | getting into |
| 01:02:06.77 | Cindy Machado | We, We regulate how the animal can be used and they have to pay a permit fee. They pay $500 for a permit to do that. And so that alone we hope discourages the ones that are soliciting that probably shouldn't be. but it hasn't they managed to get money quite easily |
| 01:02:27.01 | Unknown | Yeah, and I know other cities actually do have bans on street performing animals for humane reasons. So perhaps that's something I'll bring to this council about. |
| 01:02:39.38 | Cindy Machado | We'd love to help draft it and get some feedback. The other thing that's tied into many of that is You know, animals on the street with people in general, sometimes they are put in situations that are harmful. whether they're soliciting for money or hitchhiking. So we always will send an officer to do a welfare check. So if anyone see something that they don't think is right, just please call us. We'll send an officer right away and check them out. |
| 01:03:05.24 | Unknown | I think one of the challenges is that if you have, like I've witnessed, you know, abuse or my perception of abuse because of things on animals for hours, and... you know, but but the officer's not standing there for hours. They don't see that. And so... I don't know, I think perhaps taking a look at the Bye. the legislation might be the way to go. So, thank you. |
| 01:03:32.23 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:03:32.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.47 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you both for the presentation. I have a question you have on your list of wildlife coexistence. But I was asking, we're getting more and more sightings of particularly coyotes, but we see a lot of deer and we see foxes and things that |
| 01:03:35.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:35.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:03:50.28 | Councilmember Weiner | be more associated as real wildlife and some that conflict with some of our urban living. So what do you recommend? Do you do any wildlife relocations? Or what type of service do you offer when, let's say, we have a coyote in the yard or a deer jumping over, and some of them get stuck, and things like that? |
| 01:04:10.99 | Cindy Machado | Coyotes and deer are the big issues for sure. We just actually had a coyote coexistence presentation last week with 70 people at our shelter. If that's a forum that we'd like to do down here, we'd be happy to do it. It's illegal to relocate wildlife, so what we really want to do is work with the existing structure of that wildlife family, so to speak. There's a lot of research that's been done about working instead of removing one, which creates a void where 10 others want to come in, so you have more of a problem. It's better to work with the existing animals that share that territory. So generally our message is, Don't feed them. don't have a situation in your yard or in your environment that attracts them. This type of time of year, coyotes are really taking advantage of manzanita berries. or blackberries, or fruit trees. So making sure that all of that's picked up off of the ground, that ripe fruit is removed, that compost piles are maintained, garbage has got tight-fitting, all the basic wildlife coexistence strategies. With coyotes especially, we really want to encourage hazing, which is a technique to just scare that animal. They're so adaptable, they're so smart. Your residents have gotten really good at it in some areas. The coyotes know which neighbor not to go visit and, unfortunately, which neighbor they like to hang out with. And feeding wildlife is a big issue. So for deer, and just across the water in Belvedere, we're dealing with a lot of deer issues over there. And the bottom line is All of these wildlife creatures are gonna be looking for the easiest way to get food, shelter in a place to rear their young. So that being said, just take out as many attractants as you can. Visit our website at www.marinhumanesociety.org. We've got all kinds of information on all the different species we live with and we're happy to take phone calls and further educate anybody on those topics. So haze coyotes, don't feed wildlife, call us for more information, and best advice, learn to coexist, and that solves most of the problems hands down. |
| 01:06:22.43 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:06:22.87 | Cindy Machado | You're welcome. |
| 01:06:24.08 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. Thanks very much. |
| 01:06:29.75 | Jill Hoffman | Public comments? Do we have any public comments on the Humane Society? My apologies. Thank you. |
| 01:06:34.93 | Unknown | Yeah, I'll take this one. |
| 01:06:38.44 | Jill Hoffman | No, that's fine. I got you. |
| 01:06:41.45 | Unknown | Hello, Bear. |
| 01:06:42.44 | Jill Hoffman | How are you? |
| 01:06:42.48 | Unknown | Thank you. How are you? City manager I'm happy that there are people here for this council meeting, though most of them left after their agenda item was over. Um, This is from the portion for this week. and for the Humane Society, I guess, it applies. It says, you shall not plow AND I WANT TO TALK ABOUT and an ass together. This is Deuteronomy... THE FAMILY. 22.9. Okay. What we have here in Sausalito OF WHICH I I, uh, I saw an article in the paper about the man who was CARE TENDING CHINA CAMP. HE PASSED, HE DIED. This year, And he said, there used to be in this bay 10 times as many fish AND BIRDS, as there are now. What we consider as our normal life with our sister cities, getting on airplanes and going from Chile to Sausalito and from Sausalito to Chile or to Portugal. GETTING IN OUR CARS, and getting on our streets, Every single thing that we do goes down into that bay, into that water, and kills those fish. We have no more commercial fisheries in the bay. They're all gone. The crabs were They might have come back, I'm kosher so I don't eat crab. Salmon. Crab. Herring. All of them. And this is through what we consider normal life. So I'm a little bit, and I'll speak in favor of my friend Peter who has the Chihuahua, Linda. And you know that dog I'm not, I don't love his act all the time, but I don't feel like I need to have an opinion on it. and the bird, it's the same way. But what we're doing to the wildlife of not only San Francisco Bay, but of all over the world by our normal life is what we need to examine. Thank you. |
| 01:09:20.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, any other public hearing, public comment? Yes, sir, if you could approach the podium, please. |
| 01:09:35.33 | Mike McKinley | Mayor, council members, hi, my name is Mike McKinley, I'm your emergency services coordinator. And I'd just like to thank Humane and be aware that we're very, very cognizant of the animal and the sheltering issues, lessons learned from Katrina, Other disasters have been Um, all after action and put into operational plan. So where every exercise that we have and all exercises in the future animal care is critical. And so I just wanted to pass that on that we're very aware of it. Thank you. |
| 01:10:08.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Any other public comment on this item? Any city council discussion on this item? No one. Okay, all right, moving on to item 6B, Marin Telecommunications Agency, welcome. Barbara Thornton, Executive Director. |
| 01:10:35.47 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, and thank you to the Humane Society for coming. Thank you. And thank you for all your work. Thank you, thank you. |
| 01:10:37.85 | Unknown | Thank you. And thank you for all your work. Thank you. |
| 01:10:40.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:40.73 | Unknown | Thanks, Tom. |
| 01:11:10.32 | Barbara Thornton | Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council Members. Thank you very much for having me here tonight. I'm Barbara Thornton with the Marin Telecommunications Agency. And I was asked to come and talk briefly about some current things that are going on with the Marin Telecommunications Agency, some work that we're doing on updating our strategic plan and then taking a look at governance and voting for the agency itself. you um, So, I'll do a brief presentation and then can open it up for questions and discussion of the council. One of the things I know that was of interest with regards to this presentation is for the council to be able to provide some input to Tom Theodores, who is Sausalito's MTA board member, as we come up and take a look at approving the strategic plan and particularly the governance and voting items. So just a brief overview regarding the strategic plan. Our last strategic plan was approved in March of 2008, and since that time a lot has changed in broadband, telecommunications, cable TV and video. So the board felt that they wanted to review the strategic plan and update it based on the many changes that have happened in the environment. The board had a workshop in January 2016. They reviewed the draft plan in August 2016 and will be considering it for approval at one of the upcoming meetings before the year end. As a part of reviewing the strategic plan, the board also said that they wanted to take a look at, get more information about governance and voting. And this came from, Some of you may remember you were on council in 2014, the MTA was working and negotiating the updated dedicated access provider agreement with the media center. And at that time, the media center asked for some franchise fees to help support them for a bridge period, an interim period. When we converted to the state franchise, we should have been able to get 1% of the gross revenues as peg fees, which would fund the media center. However, since MTA had gotten over $3 million up front, When we negotiated our initial agreement in 2006, Comcast said that they would not give us any of those 1% peg fees until such time they had recovered that over $3 million they'd given us up front. So MTA had negotiations with Comcast and entered into a settlement agreement such that they would provide half a percent rather than the full percent for a period of time until such time that they recovered the over $3 million. So that resulted in MTA for a bridge period of three years to provide additional funding out of franchise fees for the media center so that they can continue their operations, run the pay channels and the media center. So this was a concern. It was a very difficult situation for the board at the time because in almost 20 years of existence, the MTA had not voted franchise fees for something of this magnitude. When the board. initially considered this in 2014, they actually put in place a more stringent voting process, since it was such a large impact on the members. So as a result of that, as we were reviewing the strategic plan and updating it, the board also wanted to talk about governance and voting and So I'll provide more information in that later in the presentation. One of the things from the strategic plan that the board became Um, more solidified in the understanding of was that MTA's core strength is in the unity of its members, in that we have nine cities plus the county of Marin that serve together in a joint powers agency as the MTA. And through that, they're able to meet objectives, attain goals, and achieve efficiencies and capabilities they could not if attempting to act on their own. And some of the examples of this are one was negotiating the original cable franchise in 2006. We would not, each individual city would not have gotten any upfront money. But because of the power of all of our cities and the county negotiating together. We're a much more powerful negotiating party and we're able to get some money so we could start the media center. Another area here is in the channels, the government channel, which broadcasts your meetings, and then there's the public and the education channels. Those were granted to MTA through the franchise agreement. If each individual city tried to operate a government channel, it would be much more costly for them than participating in MTA and sharing the cost of a single or as we get more programming to government channels and sharing that amongst all of the entities. So the draft strategic plan has four strategic directions and this kind of gives you an idea of what MTA is involved with. One is to perform the cable franchise administration and items including customer service assistance. So if customers are having a really difficult time with Comcast or AT&T with regards to their cable TV or the billing, those types of things, they can call MTA and we will be able to escalate those and do that regularly with the companies to get satisfaction for your residents and businesses. We also are able to jointly then have provider audits because the providers pay us franchise and peg fees based on their gross revenues, but they don't always do that appropriately. And so we're able to, as a total entity, have an audit done, share the cost of that audit, and frequently get additional money back for the cities. We did that this last year. We had the AT&T audited and we got approximately $35,000 additional franchise and peg fees that they had not paid us that were due to each of the cities. The other thing that MTA does is support and oversees the public education and government access. This includes the three channels that have been allocated to MTA for use by the entity. and the media center. So this is administered through a single contract with the media center called the dedicated access provider contract. And MTA oversees that and sees that all of the requirements in that agreement are met. The third strategic direction is to provide coordination, policy guidance, and advocacy related to telecommunications. and that's telecommunications in the broad sense, including cable TV, video, broadband, internet, as well as voice services, which have become an issue of recent times. And we do that on behalf of MTA's members and their communities. And the last element of the strategic directions is to support broadband infrastructure expansion services and accessibility. And this can be very broad, but what we've narrowed it down to in the strategic plan at this point, based on funding availability, is primarily focusing on the MIDAS network, which is the Marin Information Data Access Services Network. That's the private data network that all of the cities use and the county so that you can transmit information It's a very secure network, high speed, and again, we were able to negotiate the cost of that down based on the larger buying entity of the total county and all of the cities. And the city of Sausalito uses this. I think you do backups to Marin IT on it as well as your police and use it. The city uses it. And, um, It's also used to get the video from this council chambers to the media center, so it provides a secure high-speed network for the data transportation. So then as I said, the MTA board in conjunction with updating the strategic plan wanted to also take a look at governance and voting and see what we're currently doing and what some other options may be should given the experience of the Franchise V bridge funding that we're giving to the media center, which will end at the end of this year or first quarter next year. So the current agreement of formation, which is the document that established the MTA and provides for the procedures to be followed, identifies that a meeting is composed of at least six members of the board. We have ten total members, and that constitutes a quorum. And a majority of the quorum is necessary to approve any action of the board, except for the four items listed below, which requires approval of not less than six members of the board. So if we only have six members at the board, all six members have to approve the enactment of an ordinance, the approval of a final budget, initiation of litigation, or the creation or assumption of indebtedness. And as I mentioned, the board is 10 members currently, six is a quorum. So the MTA board and the subcommittee, the Finance and Policy Committee, have been considering I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BE ABLE TO governance and voting options. One they're looking at is to continue with the current voting requirements, which is that a minimum of six members would have to approve the budget or something related to the budget. however, for the media center bridge funding, the board felt that that was such a big decision and had such an impact for its members. They increased the approval requirement to a super majority of 75% of the franchise fee. would have to approve I'm not sure. going forward with the bridge funding. So that was a higher threshold than what would be our regular one. Other governance and voting options that Greg Stepanisic, our legal counsel, wrote up and that was in your staff meeting had to do with a unanimous vote, super majority vote, weighted voting, two tiered voting, and opt out voting. And these are the ones that the MTA's been considering. And they've somewhat narrowed it down to one, continuing with the existing voting requirements, which gives them the flexibility to increase the thresholds for unusual actions. And they felt that the media center funding was once out of about 20 years that that type of thing had occurred. And then, so perhaps continue with the existing voting requirements. However, as a result of that voting, Larkspur decided to pull out of the MTA because they felt that their single vote was not able to sway the overall vote of the board. So they've pulled out and the impact on that is that then the shared costs for each of the remaining members goes up slightly. on an overall basis. THE first four of those options, the unanimous vote, the super majority vote, the weighted voting and a two tiered voting. the board sees as giving power to the minority, such that the board may not be able to approve undertaking work that would benefit both the agency and its remaining members. And so those are not under such serious consideration at this point. The board was looking, in addition to continuing as is, also looking at perhaps an opt out voting. However, an opt-out voting is most appropriate when you're voting on something that if the agency chooses to opt out, then they also would not get the benefit of whatever program is being voted on. Now in the CMCM bridge funding, that would not really have been appropriate. Since if an agency decided they did not want to participate in the bridge funding, they would still have the benefit of the media center and the channels. And the effect of that would be that the remaining members would be paying an increased amount for the bridge funding while an agency is not paying for it but would still get the benefits. An opt out voting process is most appropriate if you're, If you have some programs that if a member opts out, they will not get the benefits. And the board is concerned because that's not really, we haven't really experienced that type of thing. Because the value of the MTA is sharing in the various programs. in order to share the cost and share the expertise, rather than being able to break off something that you only get benefit if you pay for it. Um, And then there's another, when the board has thought a little bit about the opt out voting, they said, well, perhaps. we could consider opt out If there is something above a certain limit, like a certain percentage of the budget or a certain amount, like maybe $50,000 a year, some level that Below that, the board could go ahead and vote on it as regularly they would do. And if it's above that, then the opt out option may kick in. And the concern with the opt out is that if an agency opts out, it increases the cost to the other participants. And So these are kind of the one and three and four bullet points are the ones that the board's particularly considering at this point. So as far as going forward, the MTA board will consider the voting requirement at an upcoming meeting as to whether to make a change and if so, what change would be appropriate. and in order to alter MTA's voting requirements, it will require an amendment to the agreement of formation, and in order, to approve an amendment, it must be approved by each of the members governing bodies. So each of the city councils would have to consider the amendment and approve it. And it takes 100% approval of each of those councils prior to becoming an amendment. So it's quite a big hurdle to get over to make an amendment to the agreement of formation. And with that THEIR OWNERS. I will open it up for discussion and questions. |
| 01:27:55.31 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Do we have any... Questions or discussion from the city council? Any questions for you guys? Should I start with Tom? Tom, you're a member. Okay. Tom sits on the MTA for South City Council. Go ahead, Ray. |
| 01:28:15.42 | Unknown | Thank you for that presentation. Could you give me some context, some understanding of the size of the agency, your annual budget? And then in the composition of the board, you said there were ten members, one's the county, nine cities slash towns. Are the big citizen, is San Rafael Novato, part of this, along with the county. And so the budget and the The general size of the agency. |
| 01:28:47.18 | Barbara Thornton | I think it's a good question. Okay. The agency currently has 10 members. It's the county and nine cities. The two cities that are not a part currently of MTA is the city of Novato, and initially they did not join the MTA because they had a different cable TV company, and so had totally different negotiations with regards to franchise agreements. And that's what brought the MTA together initially back in 1997, 1998, was so that all of cities whose franchises were expiring to negotiate together as a single entity and have more power against the cable company. Larkspur pulled out of the MTA a year ago over the issue of the franchise fee payments to the media center. MTA's operating agency budget is approximately $250,000 a year. The total revenues that the agency gets is over $4 million. the way it reads as far as the total franchise fees come in, MTA, allocates those out to the cities based on their percentage of the total, less MTA's operating budget of about 250,000. |
| 01:30:07.62 | Barbara Thornton | is that? THE END OF THE |
| 01:30:10.02 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 01:30:10.04 | Barbara Thornton | Thank you. |
| 01:30:10.06 | Cheryl Popp | Well... |
| 01:30:10.90 | Barbara Thornton | I'm sorry, I could just add that Sausalito is about 5% of the total franchise fees. Your revenues is about 5% of the total. |
| 01:30:19.51 | Unknown | about play Yeah, that gets to what I was going to ask, thank you. |
| 01:30:27.15 | Councilmember Weiner | I do just want to make a clarification as on Some of the structural things that we're looking at at this point is the voting, but it's also in conjunction with the expansion of MTA's role, and there'll be additional costs included in that, correct? |
| 01:30:43.67 | Barbara Thornton | Actually, through the strategic plan, we've actually are narrowing down the role of MTA Initially, in the workshop in January, it was broader, but as the years progressed and I've worked with the Finance and Policy Committee and then what I presented to the board, THE CITY. It includes telecommunications in the broad sense, but under that last item, |
| 01:31:12.46 | Barbara Thornton | The fourth strategic direction support broadband infrastructure expansion services and accessibility. |
| 01:31:13.59 | Mike McKinley | Yeah. |
| 01:31:19.18 | Barbara Thornton | We're really focused on what we're currently funded for, which is to help support the MIDAS and its expansion. as well as trying to work with competitive providers to get better pricing on that for all of the cities in the county. Now, the last couple of years, I have been actually on my own time on behalf of MTA participating in trying to expand broadband which is internet services, out to West Marin and working with the Public Utilities Commission where there's been some funding available where we can get up to 60 or 70 percent funding for infrastructure projects. And in West Marin particularly, but there's other parts throughout Marin, THE CITY. They don't have internet access. They can get it on their cell phones, which is very limited. if the hills aren't in the way and it's very expensive for data for what we would normally use. You can't really apply for jobs and many other things don't necessarily work on your cell phone. So we recently, encouraged a broadband provider, a competitive broadband provider, to come into Marin, develop a project, starting with Nicasio, that has no landline, no fiber, no cable, THEIR OWNERS. broadband, the only access they have to the internet is through their cell phones, if they can get reception at their home, which many of them can't. So we were able to get through the PUC, this provider made application for a $2.5 million project and the PUC is gonna be funding $1.7 million of that. and then the remainder is being raised from private parties. So that was kind of the first step, and then that provider's going to work on getting further out into West Marin, where still they don't have broadband. Now an advantage of that is we now have a competitive broadband provider. In Marin. And so we can start to get some competition. to Comcast, in fact I just got a request from Mill Valley resident, you know, says AT&T barely provides, I mean, broadband internet is so slow, If it's even available. And Comcast therefore is pretty much the only one we have and the prices are therefore not competitive. And I've watched this throughout the state and the US that as you bring in other providers then even Comcast starts to reduce their rates. So that broader sense is not really funded currently in the MTA. budget, but we do have it in the strategic plan should at any point in time the board and the cities want to allocate some resource to that. because it benefits the businesses as well as the residences through our county and as internet becomes so much more important, competition becomes so much more important. |
| 01:34:20.66 | Councilmember Weiner | But part of it, but the proposal is, and you're characterizing it as already in strategic plan, but the idea is that we're going to increase the budget so that these services can be expanded, correct? |
| 01:34:31.19 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:34:31.60 | Barbara Thornton | I don't sense It depends on the board and what they want to do. As I worked on the strategic plan, initially that was in the strategic plan as desired actions and through the Finance and Policy Committee they said, take all of the broad expanse of broadband things and essentially put it below the line at this point because it's not funded. |
| 01:34:59.87 | Councilmember Weiner | Well, it was on our agenda last time, the discussion, and we had this, that there's going to be using MTA funds to fund expansion of broadband into West Marin and that type of thing. But anyway, so we can focus on the voting, but there's also discussion of additional funds, including additional staff, for |
| 01:35:01.65 | Barbara Thornton | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:35:20.74 | Councilmember Weiner | that we have to do. you may perceive as being in the strategic plan, but that you'll be taking on or funding rather than doing it in your spare time as you have been, correct? |
| 01:35:32.33 | Barbara Thornton | Yes, but like I said, I'm not sure that there's the willingness on behalf of the board to do that. |
| 01:35:38.53 | Councilmember Weiner | Part of it is that these discussions going in parallel so yes i mean the idea is if we're going to expand some of what mta does there are those on the board that are concerned about paying more fees toward it some of the franchise fees that would otherwise go to the city so we can focus on the voting now but these two things are to have more funding, potentially more payment of fees or toward services and then of course now the voting issue. So we can |
| 01:35:41.70 | Barbara Thornton | Yes. |
| 01:35:54.42 | Mike McKinley | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:35:59.96 | Mike McKinley | Yeah. |
| 01:36:00.02 | Barbara Thornton | Yes. |
| 01:36:00.36 | Mike McKinley | Thank you. |
| 01:36:11.48 | Barbara Thornton | Thank you. Well, I can expand just a little bit on the broadband. Where MTA has made a very minor investment in broadband was that they allocated $10,000 out of that $250,000 to leverage $30,000 from the county, which then helped get the $1.7 million to build broadband out in Acacia. So where we can leverage to date, where we can leverage a small amount to get a much larger benefit, the MTA had approved $10,000 for one year. or actually each of two years, so $20,000, which is a very small investment to get what was able to be accomplished. |
| 01:36:59.66 | Councilmember Weiner | And just to clarify before we go into public comment is that we're going to be looking at our potential voting structure. We're not talking about our relationship to the media center at this point or giving them any other fees. And that's we've done that before. This is just about how we will vote on in the future where we'd allocate additional fees to anything, correct? |
| 01:37:21.21 | Barbara Thornton | Yes. And the, just as FYI, regarding the media center, they are, whoops, Um, They are doing very well financially at this point. They've really gotten into their stride. As I said, the additional funds that MTA has been paying WE'LL, UM, terminate either the end of this year or first quarter next year. They will then get the full 1% peg fees from Comcast And that will keep them operating well on a going forward basis. So there's no anticipation that there will need to be something in the interim as we had recently. |
| 01:38:02.69 | Unknown | I have two quick questions. One is, and thank you for that presentation, and Tom, thanks for your commentary because it also gave some more context. What is, was the trigger for looking at this governance issue, the Larkspur departure? Was it the bridge loan for the media services? |
| 01:38:28.04 | Barbara Thornton | Yes, because the board felt that there's great benefit in all of our cities working together, sharing costs on things that were, you know, such as the media center and that type of thing. So the board... was disappointed that Larkspur pulled out over that issue. And so that was one of the reasons they wanted to take a look at it. Not that they necessarily wanted to change it, but they wanted to see what we currently have, what some other options are so that they could make a conscious decision for going forward. |
| 01:38:57.62 | Unknown | If one of these strategies, I think you mentioned option, was it one and three or two and four? I can't remember. But anyway, if one of the options you looked at would have resulted in a different Outcome? would it have meant that the bridge loan may not have been approved for media services and that they might have struggled and folded? Um... |
| 01:39:31.91 | Barbara Thornton | Well, I guess if the opt out was in place, then some entities could have opted out. and that would have increased the cost to the remaining entities in order to have the peg channels in the media center. Now with Larkspur pulling out of the MTA, they no longer have access to the peg channels. Thank you. they would have to go out and get their own peg channels from Comcast and set up all of the equipment required to be able to do the programming, transmit it to Comcast at a tremendous cost, above what their cost was as a shared service. |
| 01:40:10.67 | Unknown | So I just wanted to get clarity on that, what triggered this. And then also, I mean, it sounds to me like the process worked. I mean, if you were able to provide that important bridge funding to keep the media services alive, |
| 01:40:26.68 | Monica Finnegan | Yes. |
| 01:40:27.16 | Unknown | and give them that critical funding. It was a shame you lost Larkspur, but you're saying that if they had been able to just opt out, then perhaps they would still be a part of the group, is that your point? |
| 01:40:40.10 | Barbara Thornton | Yes, and I can't speak to, I don't know for sure what Larkspurs, I can't speak for them, but they had said they would like to have had an opt out option. |
| 01:40:40.13 | Unknown | Thank you. AND I THINK IT'S A |
| 01:40:51.93 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Barbara, what's the total? the budget for the media center. |
| 01:40:57.46 | Barbara Thornton | It's roughly $800,000. And that funding comes from the peg fees that MTA receives from the providers, the Media Center also does what they call fee for services for various of the cities where they operate the cameras. They have a very good lucrative contract with the city of Novato. to do their meetings. And they do fundraising, both from businesses and the public. So they have various sources of income. |
| 01:41:34.40 | Jill Hoffman | Do we pay to transmit our meetings through the media center? Sorry. No. |
| 01:41:41.52 | Barbara Thornton | I just... They're not here operating the cameras. Okay. And to put it on the channels, you do not have to pay. |
| 01:41:50.74 | Jill Hoffman | Does Larkspur get, since they pulled out, does Larkspur get their percentage of the peg fees? |
| 01:41:55.50 | Barbara Thornton | Yes, they do, and they should be paying those to the media center. |
| 01:41:59.19 | Jill Hoffman | But I mean, but they don't use the media center. So are those paid directly to Larkspur now? |
| 01:42:03.72 | Barbara Thornton | They're paid directly to Larkspur. But they can only be used for video. They can't use them for their general fund or anything like that. They can only use it for capital for video. |
| 01:42:12.90 | Unknown | Right, for a pig, okay. Okay, thanks. I have one more quick question. So I know when you're saying Comcast and AT&T, were you looking at just the internet with the streaming, or were you also looking at the traditional television? Because I ask because I use LMI net for my internet, which is really, I mean, I've been happy with it, and it's very inexpensive because I got tired of Comcast. And LMI.net is. You'll have to tell me. They're in Berkeley. |
| 01:42:42.55 | Barbara Thornton | I've never heard of that company, you'll have to tell me. Okay. Um, So the... Franchise and peg fees that MTA receives and then ultimately the cities receive is based on gross revenues for video only. So cable TV, not internet and not telephone. |
| 01:42:49.87 | Cheryl Popp | FRANCHISE AND PAY Steve. |
| 01:43:02.36 | Unknown | Okay, yeah, LMI.net does not do the traditional cable. They're just internet streaming and land aligns. |
| 01:43:06.32 | Barbara Thornton | Cable. Right, so you're not involved with the franchise fees on the customer side. |
| 01:43:09.93 | Unknown | So you. |
| 01:43:14.20 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, any other council questions for Ms. Sorten, thank you. Do we have any public comment on this item? I see no one approaching. Okay, so council discussion? Barbara, you can stay there or you can sit down. It's up to you. I'd be glad to stay here in case any questions, yeah. |
| 01:43:32.33 | Councilmember Weiner | I want to thank Barbara for coming tonight and for all the work you do. You do a fantastic job for the MTA. So it's really, really wonderful what you do. And I certainly personally support the work we do. I mean, there are different Larkspur is withdrawn, and certainly |
| 01:43:33.25 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:43:47.43 | Councilmember Weiner | I support us being in the MTA and the kind of work they do and such. And for me, I'm looking for guidance, because this is an important structural issue as we go forward, and all the cities are dealing with it. As you say, they're going to have to go through their councils. But it's important that the representatives have an informed decision now, and then so that hopefully everyone can go back to their councils. And there's differences of opinion on the board. Traditionally, I think Sausalito before me was Council Member Leon, have taken a little narrower view. There's the narrower versus the broader view of the MTA in terms of its work, and most of it looks at distribution of franchise fees and a lot of attended work around that, which I think is very important for us in dealing with the media center. Right now, we're really looking at, there is the issue the MTA has to deal with of somewhat of an expansion or however you might have phrased it, but mainly it's about this voting. And as you look up here, I think some of the thing that we have to keep in mind is whether we go there and we're not talking about the voting for the general budget or how it divvies things or what it's currently doing. We're talking about extraordinary, potentially, fees that would come up before the board. And whether we would have choice in that. And I think what we're looking at, and certainly what I've been advocating, but I want to see what counsel, and I would certainly vote whichever or whoever succeeds me, votes on, is that... that of course the current voting is perfectly fine for the things that are within the mta's current um objectives and such. We're talking about when they come to extraordinary items, are we going to be able to have others potentially commit our franchise fees, which we rely on in our budget. And that's important. Now, that's not saying we wouldn't do it. It means we would have a choice that if something came up that was extraordinary, that we would have the opportunity to vote on it rather than have a vote go on. Now, we would have a de minimis role, as Barbara said before. We're not going to be doing this on every little thing, but if these are major things. And because we're a joint powers agency, we could be committed, at least theoretically, to more than our franchise fees. I mean, there's no theoretical limit to, I mean, if they're indebtedness, if the board voted. So it's important to look at this in many, correct? I mean, at least in a theoretical view. So the thing I want to... |
| 01:46:24.94 | Mike McKinley | And... |
| 01:46:30.59 | Councilmember Weiner | Now we'll turn to the practicalities a little bit. If you look at number one, we're looking at continue existing voting requirements with flexibility to increase thresholds for unusual action. What happened in 2014 was there was a flexibility to increase the thresholds. And what happened was they said that 75% of the franchise fees would have to vote for the media center, which really gave either the county or San Rafael the option to opt out, so to speak, or veto it, and all the smaller. So we have to be careful of that type of thing and supermajorities. The opt-out one seems to be one that would protect us. And again, when we opt out, we could still vote yes. It just gives us choice on these additional fees. And... So we don't know. And there are, even San Rafael, I think, sometimes seems to be a little bit more sympathetic, so I give them a lot of credit. And I think it really boils down to which cities prefer this expansive view of the MTA and which cities really view that they have to be careful of these franchise fees, and that's number one. And I think San Rafael, I get that sense. So there's a little bit of split. It's not all big and small cities. And, of course, Larkspur already has taken this position. This has caused them to leave. So we have to have guidance. And in the end of it, it's going to be whether we would go with maybe the current one or one that would give unanimous votes. The only thing that would really protect us being small would be the opt-out, because otherwise we could get outvoted and then it would be subject to the majority's vote or whichever voting block would vote on this particular thing. So I think that's it and I'm certainly happy we brought it here because it's a difficult issue. All the cities are wrestling with it, and we want to make sure that I know what our council wants to do with it. |
| 01:48:29.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks. Anybody want to weigh in? Oh, go ahead, Linda. So I sat on the MTA. the first year that I was elected. So I have a little bit of background. And that was the year that Larkspur pulled out. So I talked a lot with the Larkspur representative about why they were pulling out and understanding the issue. And so, yeah, I think it's very important to keep an eye on, you know, how the fees are spent. It's not, you know, it's not necessarily found money. It's part of our budget, and we have to keep an eye on it for the people of Sausalito. That's our responsibility. Secondary is how it affects the rest of the county and the rest of the systems, particularly the media center, but ultimately it's up to us to safeguard the assets of Sausalito. So I think absolutely the opt-out has to be part of it. If there had been an opt-out then then Larkspur would still be part of it. And as a municipality, you know, you have to have that ability to protect your own interests. And so I think that's paramount. I don't know why that wouldn't be in there. If it's not important enough for somebody to vote for it and support it, then it's not important enough for somebody to vote for it and support it. And don't have the option to opt out without having to leave the mta so i think from my perspective i think that's i think you're right on that tom um and then and then you know the voting as it exists i you know i think now where you have you have a quorum of six, but you still require a six vote on some things, I think that's appropriate that you wouldn't want to have go below six for those four items that you listed that needed a supermajority. So that makes sense to me as well. So anyway, anybody else? |
| 01:50:18.00 | Unknown | Yeah, I would just say thank you for your presentation. And I would just say that Tom and Jill, you've had a front seat in the trenches here, so I would defer to your judgment on this. And I would concur that it certainly sounds like that the opt out would, Larkspur would still be a part. |
| 01:50:44.49 | Unknown | Right? |
| 01:50:44.77 | Unknown | Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. |
| 01:50:44.87 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:50:48.36 | Unknown | I still am a little unclear as to what you'd actually be opting out of. In the sense that, let's start doing some hypotheticals, in the sense that you've got an annual operating budget of $250,000 a year-ish, I think you said. What becomes an extraordinary item? You're going to approve, the JPA board is going to approve its budget every year, presumably, its operating budget. So presumably there's some variation in that from year to year, maybe go up slightly or go down slightly or whatever. What would... Let's say the staff came to the board and said, we want to increase the operating budget by $100,000. So you've added 30%, 35% or whatever to the operating budget. So do you need some quantitative threshold over and above what your average operating budget's been to say, that something's extraordinary, otherwise I don't know how at an operational level or at a board level you actually define what you're talking about. |
| 01:52:01.75 | Councilmember Weiner | I think Parker. |
| 01:52:01.95 | Unknown | Am I making any sense? No. |
| 01:52:03.60 | Councilmember Weiner | No, no, I understand exactly, and we wrestled with that a little bit, but part of it is what I'm calling de minimis is budget goes up, or even if there were additional duties that they may not have done, we haven't defined it yet. Barbara, maybe you can speak to some of the numbers that were thrown around, but certainly we wouldn't want to be coming to council every time that was something that might be extraordinary, whatever that might be, and that would include increases in budget year to year. But again, if someone said, well, we want to finance additional only lack of examples, broadband in West Marin, and we want to create all these test centers or something, and we think this is great and it's going to cost us $250,000 or whatever the number is or more, we want to be able to vote on these extraordinary things. And I don't know, and Barbara, you can speak to it again, I don't know that we know this, but as we're looking at some of this, we're looking at our, when the strategic plan has been reviewed, we're looking at our structural makeup here, and so we want to make sure. And I think the issue with the additional franchise fees to go in the media center sparked this. And as was said, Larkspur's departure over their lack of control over that. We don't know. Maybe you have other examples. And would you also speak to what kind of numbers we were talking about for the de minimis type thing? |
| 01:53:25.63 | Barbara Thornton | Yeah, the de meninas that the board had talked about, and they didn't know for sure what it would be, but they said, well, maybe it's $50,000 a year, less than $50,000 would not be extraordinary. Or maybe it's a percent of the budget, maybe 20% of the budget increase, which on a $250,000 budget would be the $50,000. So at that last meeting, they saw the strategic plan, and then they talked about the voting and governance in light of that. So they're thinking about it, and I think that's why Tom's wanting to get some input, you know, or how could we do that? But the thought was de minimis might be something like $50,000 or less a year. |
| 01:54:09.98 | Councilmember Weiner | And that's to the whole board, not Sausalito Sherpa. No, that's the whole board. |
| 01:54:12.72 | Barbara Thornton | No, that's the whole board. So Sausalito would be 5% of that. which would be. |
| 01:54:19.97 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. Did that answer your question, Ray? And I'm not sure that we have many examples, but at this point, thankfully, because we're not, I don't think Barbara's planning to do too much more than that. |
| 01:54:29.47 | Barbara Thornton | No, and the board was wrestling with, you know, the opt-out works if you have separate type of projects. Yeah, exactly. |
| 01:54:36.12 | Unknown | you you you know. Thank you. |
| 01:54:37.00 | Barbara Thornton | And in MTA, we haven't had that. So that's what the board is wrestling with. And they said, well. |
| 01:54:42.62 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 01:54:43.60 | Barbara Thornton | Maybe some de minimis amount, 50,000 or 20% or some percent of the budget. |
| 01:54:49.69 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara, for coming. I appreciate it. Sure. |
| 01:54:53.96 | Councilmember Weiner | Any guidance for me or do we have to get sense of that? |
| 01:54:55.12 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, do we need to take a vote or something? |
| 01:54:57.16 | Councilmember Weiner | you |
| 01:54:57.35 | Jill Hoffman | Well, |
| 01:54:57.67 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:54:58.53 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:54:59.78 | Councilmember Weiner | Yeah, yeah, I actually... |
| 01:55:00.27 | Councilmember Theodorus | I actually, in Rofield. |
| 01:55:01.72 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.04 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.06 | Councilmember Weiner | you |
| 01:55:02.11 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.12 | Councilmember Weiner | you |
| 01:55:02.18 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.21 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.60 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.66 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.82 | Councilmember Theodorus | you |
| 01:55:02.97 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. |
| 01:55:02.99 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:55:03.04 | Councilmember Weiner | Thank you. Well, you know, actually, let me, I think I have some. So I would make a motion to direct, the Sausalito representative to MTA, because that may change after the next meeting or will change, to vote to continue the current voting requirements for all matters other than those that require additional financial commitments on behalf of Sausalito, including distribution of franchise fees that would otherwise be distributed to Sausalito, for matters that require additional financial commitments on behalf of Sausalito, other than de minimis commitments to be determined, Sausalito's representative shall vote for the opt-out provision in the voting. |
| 01:55:45.29 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. I'll second that. Good. All in favor? Aye. |
| 01:55:51.43 | Councilmember Weiner | Hi. |
| 01:55:52.38 | Jill Hoffman | Very good, motion passes. |
| 01:55:54.08 | Councilmember Weiner | Thanks, Barbara. Thanks for all the work. Thank you for coming. |
| 01:55:54.12 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks Barbara, thanks for all the work. Thank you for coming. Sure. Thank you. Okay, so. That's the end of our business items. And now we're moving on to Item 7 on our agenda, city manager reports. Do we need to take a break? We haven't had a break. We want to keep going. |
| 01:56:16.97 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:56:18.55 | Jill Hoffman | Not long. I don't think. Adam, what do you think? Do we need to take a break or no? |
| 01:56:19.63 | Adam Politzer | Okay. |
| 01:56:23.12 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:56:25.20 | Jill Hoffman | Task force is going to be fast. you Okay. Five minutes. Okay. Five minutes. |
| 01:56:39.22 | Mary Wagner | I want you to |
| 01:56:40.64 | Cheryl Popp | you |
| 01:56:40.90 | Mary Wagner | . No. |
| 01:56:47.19 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry? All right, we're back in session after our five minute break. OK, so the item 7B, we're just going to move on to council member committee reports. Danny, do you want to talk about the task force? The we're gonna circle back to city manager yeah. Thank you. Okay, Danny, go ahead. |
| 01:57:12.28 | Danny Castro | Just briefly give some background. Thank you, Madam Mayor. At your July 26th meeting, I presented a report on the two community forums that were held that the council had asked that a working group be formed and two community forums were given as well as a survey. And the city council, directed that a task force would be appointed in September, which is where we are now, for some particular items to discuss and continue the discussion. One was to include devising a plan to work with the platforms I'm not sure. THE FAMILY. discussed the potential for developing an ordinance, whether it was restrictions on short-term rentals or to develop regulations on short-term rentals. Also, the concern about accessory dwelling units and the potential impact on accessory dwelling units. Also to possibly work with Host Compliance, which is a company that has been assisting a lot of cities around now, and they've been making their rounds, which they have a database that helps determine who is operating short-term rentals, and it would assist code enforcement efforts. So those are just some of the items that I believe the council was looking at this task force to then take on. You did mention that it could be |
| 01:58:38.94 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 01:58:41.94 | Danny Castro | THE END OF THE END OF THE any members of the City Council who would like to be on this task force, potentially Planning Commission members, and then any residents who expressed any interest. on moving forward with some policy thinking and decisions. |
| 01:58:58.43 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. I'm ready at this point to form the task force. We don't have the specific names. We can announce those later. you know, THE PURPOSE OF THE TASK FORCE WOULD BE, AS DANNY SAID, TO LOOK AT THE DIFFERENT ISSUES. I THINK THE RESULT OF THE FORUMS THAT WE HAD LAST YEAR WAS THAT THERE WAS SUPPORT FOR SOME FORM OF SHORT-TERM RENTAL PROGRAM IN SAUSALIDO, WHAT THAT MAY BE AND HOW THAT MAY you know, restricted going forward or if there is one, a pilot program, that's something that the task force would sort of further investigate and come back to the city council with a recommendation on either an ordinance or Either way, an ordinance proposal either way or or some sort of pilot program. So I would think that we would have, and I'm thinking two city council members, We would talk to the Chair of the Planning Commission to see if a planning commissioner should be on it I was thinking one or two planning commission members members of members of the community And we've reached out to members from Bucs. Members of the community, Danny's reached out to members of the community from both camps of yes, we want and no, we don't. Or if we do, we want very, you know, a lot of restrictions on it. Which is fine because we like robust discussion in Sausalito. And so I don't know, you guys have any thoughts on that or any input? Anybody have a burning desire to serve on the task force? Thank you. |
| 02:00:44.72 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 02:00:44.81 | Jill Hoffman | What? |
| 02:00:45.08 | Unknown | I have a comment. Sure, go ahead. Well, my take was different, respectfully. My take was that there was strong support for keeping things the way they are, for not moving on with, for keeping |
| 02:00:45.77 | Jill Hoffman | I have a comment. |
| 02:01:04.28 | Unknown | a short-term rentals illegal. And that there was concern about the group that was initially formed because there was a sense that they leaned towards the pro-short-term rental faction. So, I don't know my personal opinion it was is different my perception So I'm thinking you don't want to serve on the task force. I don't want to serve on the task force and I would not support changing the status quo. |
| 02:01:47.50 | Councilmember Weiner | And as another person who is not going to serve on that task force, I agree with Councilmember Pfeiffer. I don't think, I think the. |
| 02:01:47.77 | Unknown | it. |
| 02:01:53.52 | Unknown | I think. |
| 02:01:57.08 | Councilmember Weiner | forums or whatever we had were were interesting to get people's anecdotal uh unfortunately i think because of the makeup i don't think we can draw any conclusions i tend to agree with council member pfeiffer i think whatever the task force goes in i think that their mission should be whether or not we we have a short-term rental uh ordinance and if so what it should be so i i so i don't accept the premise that that the community has already said we should have one And on that, I also, I think when we look at our other task force, I really think we should be limited to city council members, planning commission, possibly HLB only because I think people on committees, people that are used to dealing with our land use issues, understanding the issues relating to parking, housing, the housing element, all these kinds of things. So in most of our other tests, we do it all different ways. But I would probably start off with a group of council members, planning commissions, and possibly if you wanted to make it a larger of HOB. |
| 02:02:57.11 | Unknown | I would also submit it to the Brown Act, and I would record it. Yeah, I agree with that. This is a real... powder keg issue, hits affordable housing supply, hits a lot of things, renters losing their rentals. I think that this is a real sensitive topic. Okay, thanks. Go ahead. |
| 02:03:18.96 | Councilmember Theodorus | Well, I'll just remind you that It's not a committee. |
| 02:03:23.38 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 02:03:23.63 | Unknown | you |
| 02:03:23.70 | Councilmember Theodorus | It's a task force. So you have the ability to pick |
| 02:03:24.68 | Unknown | you |
| 02:03:24.73 | Cheryl Popp | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:03:28.39 | Councilmember Theodorus | YOU THINK YOU SHOULD BE ON IT AND BE ABLE TO PUT A TIME LIMIT ON IT. |
| 02:03:32.00 | Jill Hoffman | OK, yeah, thanks. OK, so we're going to go forward with forming the task force. I agree that it should be subject to the Brown Act and that it should be recorded. I'll appoint myself to the task force. And it doesn't. you Either one of you guys want to serve? No. Okay. That's me. Okay, that's me. And then I do think we need to have members of the community. So we'll have one or two members from the community on the task force. I like the idea of having a planning commissioner on it. I like the idea of having an HLB member on it. So we're going to move forward with that. And then they'll come back with a recommendation. That's only a recommendation, city council. There will be public hearings, you know, whoever. |
| 02:04:15.07 | Councilmember Weiner | Whatever happens, happens. And I'm not sure when you're planning to appoint, but I would think since we're only a couple months after the election, there's going to be reshuffling. I would suggest that we do it immediately after the election. Because then you know who's on the council, you know who's on the planning commission. There are definitely changes coming up. And the HLB also, we're making some appointments up. |
| 02:04:35.60 | Jill Hoffman | I, I, um, I take that into consideration, but that would leave us into December. I don't want to wait that long. So I'm going to form it, and then we'll shoot to have our first meeting either before the end of September or 1st of October and come back with some sort of status update as we go forward. But I certainly understand there's going to be a shuffle. Thank you. |
| 02:04:56.02 | Unknown | I think maybe what we should do is have a motion on the floor on that, on whether or not to form it, and then a vote. |
| 02:05:05.02 | Jill Hoffman | I don't agree with that because it's a task force, so we don't need to have a motion. |
| 02:05:10.03 | Councilmember Weiner | Well, wait a minute. One thing is we can, but if a council member wants to vote on whether, well, first of all, do we on task force, but if a council member wants to subject it to a vote, I think we should, and I think we should entertain that motion. |
| 02:05:23.78 | Unknown | Mary, my understanding as a general law city, can one council member the mayor has the same authorities as a council member, can one person just create I mean, because we don't know. So I mean, I'm just asking. Mary? |
| 02:05:45.53 | Mary Wagner | If you give me a second, I'm going to actually pull up the provisions of the municipal code that deal with this. Thanks. |
| 02:05:48.77 | Jill Hoffman | THANK YOU. Okay, it's either going to be a task force or a blue ribbon committee. |
| 02:05:54.16 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Maybe I can help why Mary's looking at this. |
| 02:05:55.85 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Yeah. |
| 02:05:58.73 | Adam Politzer | One of the things where I think may be confusing this is that in the past when it's been a task force. or a Mayor appointed task force or committee. I'm We actually identify the people. So what I think that I'm hearing the mayor suggest is that she's asking for the authority to give the Planning Commission the ability to appoint a member to the task force, an HLB member. the ability to be appointed to the task force And then two or three at-large members of the public. So she's asking for that discretion. That's different than what we've done in the past because we normally say these are the people that the mayor is going to appoint, and then you list the names. So we may want to ask the mayor to clarify what her objective is here. |
| 02:06:44.94 | Unknown | I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THE MAYOR can can list people that she or he wants to appoint, but the council majority can also submit names, and that the council majority has to approve that. No, I'm not saying that. |
| 02:07:04.65 | Cheryl Popp | for. Thank you. |
| 02:07:06.94 | Unknown | I'd like Mary's reading on that, because there was a lawsuit about... |
| 02:07:09.76 | Mary Wagner | Lawsuit. So a couple of, I'm happy to answer the question about what your municipal code provides and then perhaps a suggestion that might help move this forward. So the provisions for appointments to boards and commissions are set forth in Chapter 2.58 of the Municipal Code. And what it says with respect to task force and working groups is that council appointments to those groups are not necessarily governed by the provisions of 2.58 so that you don't have to go through the interview process you don't have to apply the same restrictions but it doesn't delegate that authority to make those appointments to one member of the council and I know that this has come up in the past and it always ends up being a little bit of a tricky um issue for the council especially when you're trying to react to it from the dias one suggestion I would have is that you allow us to write this up for you and bring it back to you at your next meeting and that way you can then take it up as an agenda item and decide how you want to move forward with it then |
| 02:08:02.71 | Mike McKinley | Thank you. |
| 02:08:02.73 | Jill Hoffman | and bring it back. |
| 02:08:05.36 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:08:09.80 | Unknown | That's fine. Because Mary, wasn't there a lawsuit like in the 80s or something when a mayor appointed someone to something and another council member Did you recall that? Thank you. |
| 02:08:27.10 | Mary Wagner | Well, that actually was before my time. It was Ziegler and Miskel. But I believe that that's accurate, that there was some debate. So I just think it's important we get the laws cleared. How appointments were made so that these provisions came as a result of that. |
| 02:08:28.90 | Unknown | Ziegler and Miskell. |
| 02:08:34.34 | Unknown | Yeah, so I just think it's important. |
| 02:08:36.02 | Jill Hoffman | It's important we get the laws cleared. It was a lawsuit. Yeah, well to be clear though, I'm not saying that we're going to have an ordinance. I'm saying I'm going to... I WANT TO APPOINT A TASK FORCE TO address this issue and then it would come back to city council. And we would talk about it and vote on it at that point. |
| 02:08:54.76 | Councilmember Weiner | THE TASK FORCE. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT FORMING THE TASK FORCE. |
| 02:09:13.40 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but you don't want to debate whether or not it would be done. You just don't want it to be done. |
| 02:09:16.86 | Councilmember Weiner | No. |
| 02:09:16.91 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know. No, no, no. You're trying to delay it. I mean, we discussed this a year ago, Tom, and you wanted to have community forums, which we had. We had a survey that went out to the community that we had. I don't know what percentage responded back. It was a Danny wasn't it 60% said that they were interested more than 60% interested in having short term rental. So their support for it. |
| 02:09:17.03 | Councilmember Weiner | no, I, |
| 02:09:24.91 | Mike McKinley | that went out to the |
| 02:09:40.30 | Jill Hoffman | from the community what it's going to look like, I don't know, and that's why I want to support the task force. Mary, if you could look at it for next time, we'll put it on the agenda and we'll discuss it. at the next city council meeting. Thanks. |
| 02:09:52.43 | Councilmember Weiner | And we should consider myself and possibly Councilmember Pfeiffer may want to be part of this as well. Maybe I will reconsider until it comes, because you'll have to reappoint. But I think it's really. |
| 02:10:04.16 | Jill Hoffman | I think that'd be great. |
| 02:10:05.29 | Councilmember Weiner | Yeah. |
| 02:10:06.29 | Jill Hoffman | We like robust discussions in Sausalito. Okay, moving on. Our next agenda item, B2, is the September 15th RBRA meeting. |
| 02:10:22.45 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, Adam, did you have some comments on that? |
| 02:10:25.68 | Adam Politzer | Thanks, Madam Mayor and council members. RBRA board is having a meeting this Thursday here in the council chambers on September 15th, I believe at 5.30 PM. And in your packet, We sent as late mail the RBRA agenda, their minutes, their reports, and in the packet was a report from the interim executive director of RBRA, Rod Gold, who many of you have had the opportunity to speak to directly and or meet at our MCCMC that Sausalito hosted earlier this summer, late spring. And because the RBRA report was not posted before our packet went out in the mail and posted on our website, the mayor and I both felt that it was important that we put a placeholder on our agenda to have a brief discussion. absent knowing what was going to be in the report that came out late Friday afternoon, I believe after five o'clock, And We were a little bit surprised with some of the recommendations that were not in the report, and some of those recommendations were things that the mayor and I and our police chief, John Robbacher, had discussed with the interim executive director, Rod Gould, at previous meetings. So taking a few steps back, what the RBRA board directed staff to do, working with the county administrator back in May and then later in June, was to work with the city managers, the surrounding Richardson Bay agencies, so the city of Sausalito. The city of Mill Valley. the city of Belvedere, the city of of Tiburon and the fifth member is the County of Moran. From May to this point, we've been looking at an enhanced enforcement strategy, and we've talked about this at various levels throughout the year, going back to late January when Chief Robacher drafted a staff report for council's consideration, and Lieutenant Frost presented that PowerPoint presentation to the council. On the dais this evening, if you flip to the back of the document, you can see the staff report that John Robacher drafted. And then the PowerPoint presentation that Lieutenant Frost presented to you. And we thought that it was important as a reminder that we gave this presentation back in January about enhanced enforcement in Sausalito's waters. And here we are in the middle of September looking at an enhanced enforcement policy that is very similar to what we presented to the council back in January. which is good news at the end of the day. a start, which is better than what we feel has happened previously to that. But in the report, one of the areas that we asked and was discussed several times was that the city of Sausalito pays 35% towards the RBRA budget. And we have agreed on the on the initially we have agreed that we don't want to get into a discussion about the funding formula at this time we want to be focused on the enhancement program. But the cost to the city on the budget is 35%. So, What that means to the city, just as similar discussion that Larkspur exercise with MTA was their only option was to opt out of MTA. And for Sausalito not to move forward with the budget as proposed, then we would have to also give notice to withdraw. Well, the language in the attached agreement that's also a part of what was on the dais here, has a provision on how to withdraw, and it's restricted. And it's restricted that you have to give notice on December, prior to December 31st, six months prior to the end of the fiscal year. So you would give notice by December 31st that you were exiting RBRA, withdrawing from RBRA, and come June 30th of the next year, which in this case would be 2017, we would no longer be part of RBRA, and nor would our expenses that are contributing to the RBRA budget be charged to the city of Sausalito. So we've asked that for the September 15th rbra board meeting that they have a discussion on this to actually change that provision or soften that provision or provide a interim solution on that provision so that we would not be required to send the letter of withdraw prior to December 31st to protect our rights and our dollars that are committed to this in case this enhanced enforcement Strategy doesn't work. and why this is important. is that if we don't exercise are. right to withdraw by December 31st and the Arbery Board makes no exceptions to that policy. They don't extend it. They don't suspend it. They don't have it Provide any other options then if in fact we go forward as good neighbors with a handshake that we trust that our forward action is going to have positive results and If in fact it doesn't, we get to June, we get to July and it's no different than it is today or no different than it was six months ago or no different than it was a year ago or a year and a half ago, then we are stuck in financially. until June. 30th of 2018. and assuming that the enhanced budget, if you read the report, it says that this is the strategy, they're looking for RBRA's consent that we should move forward, and that's a difficult word today, consent. But there is consent that we should come back, staff should come back in November with a proposed budget. And that proposed budget would then be voted on by the five RBRA members. And assuming that there's going to be an increase to the proposed budget, because it's an enhancement, enforcement enhancement budget, then our share of the 35% would increase. If you go back, and it's one of the other attachments here about in the middle of the document, going back to May of 2015 when Ben Berto, the clerk of RBR8 came and presented. the various Richardson Bay management proposals, there was a variety of funding scenarios. And the scenario that was recommended by the RBA board, was scenario three. In scenario three, let me make sure I I WANT TO DO THAT. |
| 02:18:05.27 | Unknown | Do we have that in front of us, Adam? |
| 02:18:06.87 | Adam Politzer | It's in the attachment here. |
| 02:18:08.22 | Unknown | I mean, it's a big attachment, so we're in the attachment. |
| 02:18:10.90 | Adam Politzer | Let's see where my friend put it. |
| 02:18:22.08 | Adam Politzer | So it's near the middle and it is right before Chief Roebacher's staff report. And it's labeled on the top, RBA budget scenarios fiscal year 2015, 2016. |
| 02:18:41.48 | Adam Politzer | It's about halfway through. |
| 02:18:46.65 | Adam Politzer | everybody have that in front of them and the scenario that the arbitrary board was recommending back in 2015 in May of 2015 was scenario 3 which Sausalito's contribution if that if that board with our representative would have voted in favor of scenario 3 we would have gotten a bill for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars $180,985. Right now, we currently contribute roughly $94,000. You can see back in 2014-15, the adopted budget Sausalito's share then was $88,205. So we would have had an increase to our budget if the board would have approved that budget that evening back in 2015. Our increase would have been $92, hundred thousand dollars Sausalito said no as I'll talk about here in a moment we're going to recap what happened which is also important for me to share it with the council but it it's But that's why this is important. So if Rod Gould, the executive director of RBA, comes back in November after the RBA board says, yes, we think your enhanced enforcement strategy is sound, and I'll just... briefly describe the four enforcement items that they are going to focus on. And that's abating marine debris is number one. and this is all in their report. Number two, all vessels on Richardson Bay must have either current federal or state registration, so they must be registered just like vehicles are on our streets. Remove all unattended and illegal mooring balls. There are mooring balls out there that someone else has placed, not the city of South Salido, not the county of Marin, and definitely not RBRA. So go out there and remove all of those illegal unattended mooring balls. And any illegal business on Richardson Bay should also be forced to cease from doing business. So those are the four enhanced strategy objectives that we are putting before the RBR board on Thursday night. And staff working with the mayor and our chief, we support that as the first step. Not the last step, but the first step. in this process. But it's also critically important that we preserve our right to withdraw if, in fact, as we go into the spring or even into the late summer, our strategy is not working. And or Rod Gold, who is, in fact, the interim executive director, is, in fact, a retired city manager, decides to go back and retire after he finds out that this is a very difficult and challenging job and so we are now absent a director of We've been. We've been absent, including the city of Sausalito, at least from the city manager's position. We have not been actively involved in the enforcement activity, and I think that all five agencies that are a part of it, again, Mill Valley, Tiburon, Belvedere, the county, and Sausalito, we haven't been actively managing what's been going on in the water. And so now that everyone's attention has been had, I think that it's time and the strategy that's being proposed should work, but we have to protect because without this, we are in this, and assuming that the budget increases just to deal with the enhanced budget which is not yet known and will be proposed in november if if we don't enact our right then we are in this to june of 2018 which is obviously something that that we can't support In addition here, and I'm wrapping this up here, in addition, we suggested in our minutes, or in our meetings, and in our notes and discussions with our BRA staff, that it's important to reflect what has happened over the past 15 months. And I want to walk through that a little bit here and it's in the attachment. It's in the letter that we're proposing that the council give direction tonight for us to actually send to the Arborian members tomorrow. Thank you. And so we're going to ask for you to approve sending this. But if you turn to the second page, so you've got the front page of the RBA, of the packet that staff gave you this evening, and you turn to the second page, and starting on the top, you'll see the bullet points there. And what is important here is to recognize what happened. So on May 17th of 2015, and I'm reading this into the records, I think it's important for anyone that's watching at home or anyone that wants to come back and exactly what Sausalito did or didn't do, it's in the room. |
| 02:23:47.14 | Unknown | Where are we, Adam? Thank you. first page of this. |
| 02:23:53.23 | Adam Politzer | And page, turn the page. |
| 02:23:54.16 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 02:23:54.56 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:23:54.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:23:54.95 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. |
| 02:23:56.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:23:57.13 | Adam Politzer | and then there are as series of bullet points. So... why so I'm suggesting that it's important that the record be reflected and that's why we've included in in the letter that's why we asked them to put it in the staff report because there was discussion in the past as you remember that Sausalito was rejecting all of the proposed solutions that RBRA was bringing forward and to this point in time I can't find in the minutes going back to May starting on May 17th of 2015, any solutions being proposed other than the solutions that Sausalito was recommending. So I think it's important that the record shows that. So on May 17th, 2015, the Arbery Board voted to approve the concept of the Anchorage Work Program contemplated by scenario three, Scenario 3 budget. Sausalito's mayor, who is sitting in as the alternate to Councilmember Weiner, who is a representative, Councilmember Theodorus was the member representing Sausalito that evening, abstained from voting and cited the need to vet the budget and work program with Sausalito City Council. So we didn't vote, and the board agreed not to vote until Sausalito could have this brought to its council. On May 19th. We agendized it very quickly, obviously. On May 19th, 2016, the RBA clerk, Ben Berto, presented the Anchorage program and the summary of the March 14th Anchorage workshop that was held at the Bay Model to the City of Sausalito, to the Sausalito City Council. |
| 02:25:36.42 | Adam Politzer | As you all remember, because it felt like it was yesterday, it's also requested additional public meetings but be held to gather more community input. There was a lot more shared at that meeting, but that was the synopsis of what happened at our council meeting, was that we felt that there was more public meetings needed. So on November 12, 2015, the City Council and RBRA, or the City of Sausalito and RBRA, hosted a community meeting at the Spinnaker Restaurant in Sausalito, where over 250 members of the public participated. And then following that, we obviously felt that there was no clear consensus from our community or from the anchor outs or from any of the folks that were attending that there was a clear path forward. So we asked our chief to work on this and to bring back a program to deal with at least our waters. So on January 26, 2016, the South City Council received a report from Chief Robacher, on the Richardson Bay Vessel Anchoring and Public Safety Report, which is also attached in your packet. It's available online to the community. They can go and watch the presentation on our archive Council meetings, just going back to January 26th, where the strategy to focus on vessels that are being stored or being used as trash, debris, property storage, insensual water was proposed. And that's when the strategy to get rid of marine debris and unoccupied vessels that were being used as storage, roughly 130 vessels into that category. And so that was what we were citing as our opportunity. Now, reminder, when you go back to the Chief's report, there was roughly 65 vessels in Sausalito's waters. there's over 180 vessels in the county's waters. So our problem for Sausalito to manage is actually a lot easier in terms of just dealing with the number of vessels that are either unoccupied, marine debris, or other categories of trash being stored on Sausalito's waters. But as the chief also shared at subsequent meetings, working together is obviously the primary objective so that we work on the entire bay, not just on South Littes waters. So we continue to meet with RBRA staff and our RBRA partners throughout this extended time. At the February 2016 RBRA meeting, All of this information is pulled from either our minutes or from the minutes of our RBA meetings. But the February 2016 RBA meeting, RBA committee, RBI clerk. Ben Berto reported that the enforcement strategies that the City of Sausalito He reported on the strategies that the city of Sausalito was proposing. So he shared, here's what City of Sausalito talked about in January. We want to get your feedback at the meeting of our RBRA members. Then in April, so then continued discussion occurred between the RBRA members and city staff. At the April 14th RBRA meeting, RBRA City Clerk Ben Berto reported that there appears to be consensus of support from the RBI to focus on enforcement and the RBI clerk went on to state that this year's budget and work program is oriented to do just that including coordinating with our partner agencies so the budget that they were proposing was to be focused on enforced enforcement, which we all know was not the case. On May 6, the mayor joined myself and Chief Roepacher at a meeting that Senator McGuire hosted. with representatives of elected officials, managers, and law enforcement agencies including this county sheriff and Sausalito Police Department. Um, a, The action from that meeting was a working group of the RBRA city managers led by the county administrator would work together to develop an enhanced enforcement strategy and make budget recommendations for our various considerations. On June 2nd, RBRA hired Rod Gould as the interim RBRA Executive Director. And at its June 9, 2016 RBRA board meeting, the RBRA clerk, Ben Berto, recommended adopting the current member contribution budget for 2016-17, which means no increase to the budget to what we were paying, which was $94,000, would remain $94,000, dollars while efforts to continue to develop an ongoing work program including enhanced performance and enhanced enforcement are worked out and so before you tonight and before the board of RB array is that recommendation which in in from our perspective is what we recommended to our council and to our bra back in january so we're pleased that they've taken our recommendation but we wanted to make sure that the public and the community recognized that there was no other strategy that was put forth before the arbore board or our city council other than the recommendation that our chief made working with myself and and the mayor and so There is no action other than we're asking the council to direct staff to submit the letter that's attached here with the supporting documents, which are the attachments of the various budget scenarios, Scenario number three, which was their recommendation. And the staff reports that the chief provided to the city council back in January. And inside this letter, obviously, records and documents the actions of the RBI board and the city of Sausalito. We asked for those dates to be included in the board's packet, that history, because we thought it was important and they were ignored. And obviously, we're not included, because you can see it's not included. and nor was the recommendation for a discussion of the board on the option to withdraw. And it's not exclusive to Sausalito, it's to all its members. If anybody, any of the five agencies feel that we're going the wrong direction, or this is really a Belvedere, Marin County, and Sausalito issue, because Mill Valley, It really isn't impacted at all in terms of their location. Tiburon is also protected based on the sensitive waters that surround Tiburon and Richardson Bay. So it really ultimately becomes a Belvedere and county issue. And so the other agencies, they may also say, you know what, we don't think this is working and we would like to exercise our right to withdraw. But that's not what I think the outcome is going to be. I think the outcome is going to be let's trust our chief, let's trust our county sheriff to work with RBRA to actually exercise this first phase, which is being recommended before the RBRA board, and see if it actually can reduce the 250 vessels that are out on Richardson Bay today and protect Sausalito's waters to the extent that we had proposed to the council back in January. I'm happy to answer any questions and that concludes my report. |
| 02:32:57.52 | Unknown | I'm happy to answer that. Thank you. Okay. So Adam, I just have a clarification. The question you said there were no other PROPOSALS SET FORTH, BUT ACTUALLY on I think it was May 19, 2016 and January 26, 2016, I actually made motions i believe or articulated a request to include the removal of anchor routes that were residents on the bay because the bay is not supposed to be a place for people to live on the bay and my i believe my motion was also to enforce the codes, the two codes on the books that confirm that the bay is not supposed to be used for housing, which is code 3.04.010, Richardson Bay Code, anchoring beyond 72 hours without permit from Harbor Master, and code 16.04.020, Saucelittle Municipal Code, mooring in Saucelittle Waters in excess of 10 hours without Chief of Police's written permission. And those hour restrictions and the requirements for permits and permissions were to prevent people from long-term living on our bay. That is called Bayfill. So I just wanted to clarify that I had made those recommendations. They didn't pass, but that's what I want. |
| 02:34:31.56 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, and you absolutely, Council Member Pfeiffer made those comments and made that recommendation. What I am actually citing here is the RBRA staff nor the RBRA board made any recommendations for enhanced enforcement that was any different than what we did. And I'm saying that because there are some comments being made from the other jurisdictions that Sausalito kept rejecting RBRA's proposals for enhanced enforcement. And I'm stating that the RBRA board, nor has the RBRA staff proposals for enhanced enforcement and I'm stating that the RBRA board nor has the RBRA staff made any recommendations different than what our staff has. But here in our council chambers and even at the workshop that was held in Spinnaker, there was a lot of different ideas that were put forth and I'm not discrediting that, I'm just saying that I want to set the record on what happened at the RBRA meetings and what happened and what recommendations came from their staff and from their board. |
| 02:35:28.01 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. Adam, do you need a motion from us to, okay, anybody want to make a motion? Oh, public comment? Do we have, it's a city manager's report, but yeah, public comment? Anyone? Sure. I don't know. All right. Go ahead. Why not? Is anybody going to sue us about that? |
| 02:35:51.70 | Unknown | I think it's on the agenda for a quick moment. I wanted to suggest adding one letter and also correcting it, adding one sentence and also correcting a typo. So at the bottom of the third paragraph, it says the withdrawal would be effective. It's actually withdrawal. And, um, In 2017, 90 days from, sorry, 180 days from March 1, 2017 is August 28, 2017. |
| 02:36:23.59 | Jill Hoffman | Are you kidding? |
| 02:36:24.08 | Unknown | So you're |
| 02:36:24.12 | Jill Hoffman | So you're. |
| 02:36:24.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:25.01 | Unknown | You don't count much. in a daycare. |
| 02:36:27.93 | Jill Hoffman | Are you counting backwards from the date? Are you counting forwards from the date? I would like to suggest |
| 02:36:28.01 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE records from the I would like to suggest adding the following sentence to the end of that paragraph so that it's clear to the RBRA why this amendment is so critical to the city of Sausalito and this process. So the sentence would read, it is important given the great importance and critical impact of upcoming decisions by the RBRA that may not be fully analyzed and decided by the current December 31, 2016 deadline, that Section 24 be amended so that Sausalito can continue to productively participate in this process. |
| 02:37:04.04 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. Any other public comment on this item? OK. Thank you. further council discussion on the suggestions made during public comment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Public comment, I mean not public comment, sorry, council discussion. |
| 02:37:23.28 | Unknown | Are we on council discussion? So I would move to adopt the language that Commissioner Joan Cox suggested and the correction of the typo, whatever the two nits she caught. |
| 02:37:24.28 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:37:37.19 | Cheryl Popp | Yeah. |
| 02:37:39.77 | Unknown | and to add enforcement of our codes to remove the rules. residential anchor outs on the bay. Any other comment from council members? |
| 02:37:58.97 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:38:00.95 | Unknown | That's a motion, if there's no second, then I would recommend someone make another motion if you're not going to second mine and at least accept Jones. |
| 02:38:00.96 | Cheryl Popp | That's a motion. |
| 02:38:13.97 | Jill Hoffman | Is there with regard to the proposed sentence language that that Commissioner Cox, is there any issue with that? No, okay, so then I would make the motion that we send the letter that we add the corrections and language that Commissioner Cox proposed. Second? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No? Motion passes. Very good. Thank you. |
| 02:38:35.83 | Cheryl Popp | Bye. |
| 02:38:41.80 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and moving on to, do we have any appointments to boards and commissions? Have anything going on? We didn't, okay. Future agenda items. Yes. Yes. |
| 02:38:53.04 | Unknown | councilman i have a couple one is um ban the large tour buses from southern sausalito they just keep breaking the laws they they keep going um out in that side of town when they're not supposed to it puts a terrible burden on residents to have to snap photos of the license plates or write them down or note the time. The police chief and the police department has done an outstanding job. When we contact them, they're very responsive and they get right back to us. But the bottom line is, in my mind, that this is just, we should not be using police staff time chasing phone calls with these buses. The other comment I would make is that it's just plain dangerous. And these buses, when they turn, when they're going downhill, they can't stop on a dime. So if a child or someone fell on a bike in the middle of the road, it would be someone would die and the other thing is when those buses go down to the bottom of South Street and they're turning right on what is it second they stick out over into the oncoming lane of the traffic going uphill. It's quite dangerous. They simply, especially those huge on-off buses and hop-on-hop, I mean, they just don't have, they're just not built, you know, for that. So, you know, anyway, I know that they banned these these big buses period uh in a tam tam valley i know supervisor sears did that and i supported her move on that and you know we may even consider um that not with the chartered tours that coming in from the north end of town, but Well, anyway, I don't want to bleed into another issue about the buses, but ban the tour buses, at least from the southern Saucyote, both entering and exiting. The other issue is drone legislation. We need to get ahead of that before it gets out of hand. The Golden Gate Bridge District has passed legislation. When I brought it up earlier, I was told, well, we're going to wait for the feds to come up with something but you know other jurisdictions are passing legislation so I've heard from a lot of residents of concern about that with privacy and number three ban the leaf bolt blowers I've had so many residents email me about this the noise pollution with the leaf blowers And then the fourth one has to do with my concern about the street performers using animals to generate revenue. That's just very sad, very, very sad. I've seen things that I was really embarrassed were happening in our downtown. Okay, with respect to the exploitation of these animals. Okay. |
| 02:42:12.87 | Councilmember Weiner | JUST A QUESTION ON THE FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS. DO WE HAVE A REPORT ON THE BICYCLE SITUATION COMING UP ON ONE OF THE NEXT AGENDAS? BECAUSE WE HAD DONE THAT PERIODICALLY. OF COURSE WITH OUR RECESS WE HAVEN'T HAD IT FOR A WHILE. |
| 02:42:23.71 | Jill Hoffman | Of course. that we're going to have. Yeah, a wrap up, a bike wrap up. Yeah, I think that's in October. Yeah, yeah. |
| 02:42:32.09 | Susan Rowe | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:42:33.24 | Jill Hoffman | you Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any other future denies? Okay. Okay, in that case, I think we're adjourned. And no other reports? No other reports of significance? No, no one. Fellas, no one? No, okay, thank you, we are adjourned. |
Mike McKinley — In Favor: As the emergency services coordinator, thanked the Humane Society and affirmed that animal sheltering issues are critically integrated into the city's disaster preparedness plans and exercises, noting lessons learned from past disasters like Katrina. ▶ 📄