| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:07.78 | Ray Withey | Welcome to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council for Tuesday, April 18th. Debbie, would you take the roll please? |
| 00:00:15.32 | Unknown | Councilmember Burns? |
| 00:00:16.65 | Ray Withey | present. |
| 00:00:17.02 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman. Um, Councilmember Weiner is absent. Councilmember, or no, Vice Mayor Cox here. And Mayor Withing. |
| 00:00:27.40 | Ray Withey | here. The council will be going into closed session to discuss three matters. Uh, Seeing no member of the public, there's obviously no public comment at this point on closed session. We'll adjourn. |
| 00:00:40.94 | Joan Cox | May I make an announcement, Mr. Mayor? Please, please. I will be recusing myself from two of the matters that you will be discussing in closed session because of a conflict of interest, or because of my proximity of where I live causing a potential conflict of interest. Thank you, Vice. |
| 00:00:42.71 | Ray Withey | Please, please. |
| 00:00:57.15 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Vice Mayor Cox. We'll adjourn into closed session. |
| 00:00:57.95 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:17.89 | Ray Withey | Good evening and welcome to the regular City Council meeting. for the city of Sol Solito on Tuesday, April 18th. Would you, Debbie, please take the role. |
| 00:01:35.04 | Unknown | Council member Burns? |
| 00:01:36.47 | Ray Withey | Present. |
| 00:01:37.00 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman? Present. Vice Mayor Cox? Here. Mayor Withey? |
| 00:01:42.67 | Ray Withey | here. Unfortunately, Councilmember Weiner is unwell this evening and can't join us. |
| 00:01:55.64 | Ray Withey | Tom Prosser, would you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight, please? |
| 00:02:02.46 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.48 | Louis Tenwinkle | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.66 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.68 | Louis Tenwinkle | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.80 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.85 | Johnston Melbostead | and the nations. |
| 00:02:02.97 | Louis Tenwinkle | Yeah. |
| 00:02:03.19 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:02:03.34 | Louis Tenwinkle | Thank you. |
| 00:02:03.45 | Joe Burns | . |
| 00:02:03.54 | Louis Tenwinkle | I'm not sure. |
| 00:02:04.01 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:02:04.03 | Alden Bevington | of the United States of America. |
| 00:02:04.20 | Kevin Kiefer | Thank you. |
| 00:02:04.31 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:02:04.58 | Kevin Kiefer | Amen. |
| 00:02:05.19 | Joe Burns | I say something. |
| 00:02:05.92 | Kevin Kiefer | America. Thank you. |
| 00:02:06.56 | Louis Tenwinkle | Thank you. |
| 00:02:06.58 | Kevin Kiefer | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:06.91 | Alden Bevington | and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty |
| 00:02:07.10 | Kevin Kiefer | to the Republic. |
| 00:02:07.98 | Adam Colbreth | Thank you. for a while. |
| 00:02:08.48 | Joe Burns | which is Sam. |
| 00:02:09.28 | Adam Colbreth | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:12.18 | Joe Burns | Thank you. and just |
| 00:02:14.56 | Alden Bevington | Thank you. |
| 00:02:14.57 | Joe Burns | for all. |
| 00:02:15.22 | Alden Bevington | Thank you. |
| 00:02:18.39 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Tom. |
| 00:02:23.82 | Ray Withey | We held closed session this evening to discuss three matters. There are no announcements following those closed session. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment, however, on the closed session items? Seeing none. |
| 00:02:39.84 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Mr. Mayor, may I simply announce that I recused myself from the discussion of items D2 and D1 due to potential conflict of interest. |
| 00:02:50.05 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Vice Mayor. Item. |
| 00:02:54.30 | Kevin Kiefer | you I submitted a card to speak on that. |
| 00:03:01.22 | Ray Withey | You did indeed, I'm so sorry. Please, Kevin Kiefer. |
| 00:03:06.99 | Kevin Kiefer | Thank you for this opportunity, Mayor. I have a question, and I know it can't be answered, but I like to ask questions anyway. Concerning the property negotiation, I'm confounded because I feel that there is possibly a land swap, a proxy type land swap that's being bantered. And I hope that no insider trading information has gone out from this council to any groups or committees. other than the public in general. And that's just the comment I have. |
| 00:03:53.23 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Just to be certain, is there any other member of the public who'd like to comment on closed session items? You'll have an opportunity to talk later about items not on the agenda. Peter, yes, please. |
| 00:04:10.03 | Peter Romanowski | Just excuse my ignorance, I mean, we don't know everything. And I assume it's not against the Brown Act, right? It's something in closed session that you can't really reveal to the public. Is that what it's about? |
| 00:04:14.27 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:04:29.22 | Peter Romanowski | What is it about? |
| 00:04:31.85 | Unknown | What is it about? I can't say it's a closed session. |
| 00:04:38.32 | Peter Romanowski | I'm sorry. |
| 00:04:38.38 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:04:38.45 | Peter Romanowski | OKAY. |
| 00:04:38.96 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:04:39.16 | Peter Romanowski | Thank you. |
| 00:04:39.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:39.19 | Peter Romanowski | This is the first time. |
| 00:04:39.40 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:39.46 | Peter Romanowski | Thank you. Can you say what it was about, at least? |
| 00:04:42.45 | Unknown | Well, there were three items on the closed session agenda. One was property negotiations at 225 Locust Street. One was a claim that's been filed against the city by the Terraces Homeowners Association, and then another one was an anticipated litigation item. |
| 00:05:00.89 | Peter Romanowski | Got it, got it, got it. I'm just curious, just curious. Thank you so much. God bless you. Thank you. |
| 00:05:05.03 | Ray Withey | Thank you. OK. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to comment on item 3D? Okay, seeing none, moving on. Approval of the agenda. I would like to make the comment that on item 6B, the COP Oversight Committee update. Not 100% certain we have anybody here to do that, but we will see how it goes as the evening progresses okay So can I have a motion to approve the agenda with that caveat? So moved. |
| 00:05:46.73 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:05:46.75 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:05:46.76 | Joe Burns | Second. |
| 00:05:47.10 | Ray Withey | you All in favor? Aye. Thank you. There are no special presentations and mayor's announcements, in which case I would like to call on item number two, communications, and this is the time for council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. So, you know, if you have something to say about anything on consent, if you have something to say about the later business items, this is not the time to talk. This is the time to talk if your item is not being covered later on. So is there any member of the public who'd like to? I have only. One card here, and that's from Tom Parrazzo. Um, |
| 00:06:31.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:06:31.92 | Ray Withey | you |
| 00:06:32.09 | Unknown | Tom. Thank you for the City Council, City staff and fellow citizens. On behalf of the Solicitor Disaster Preparedness Committee, I would like to end. invite citizens to our spring disaster preparedness committee, neighborhood DAY. on the anniversary of the 111th Grand Great San Francisco Fire and Earthquake. where over 3,000 people lost their lives and a great portion of the city was destroyed and or damaged. We're announcing this event to coincide with that. We're holding public meetings on Saturday at 10, 11, noon and 1 p.m. You only need to attend one of the four meetings. These are half-hour meetings with question and answer and following. and we will cover the subjects of neighborhood response groups and the Get Ready program. This event is free. to be held at the Emergency Operations Center at Fire Station 1, at 333 Johnson Street. The goal of the neighborhood disaster preparedness awareness day is to educate the public regarding the importance of preparing themselves their families and their neighbors, to best handle disasters and emergencies. they may encounter. The neighborhood response groups is a new uh, action item that is crossing the country. The goal of a neighborhood response group is to educate the public regarding the importance of preparing themselves. their families, their neighbors, to best handle disasters and emergencies, they may encounter. Disaster preparedness, I'm sorry, neighborhood resource groups are being formed across the country. The Twin Cities has a program that's about a year old And this is to gather neighbors together to prepare together. for a disaster and to be on their own, for maybe five to seven days. that we kind of preached those 72 hours. But we're finding with some of the major events that it could be longer. So on Saturday, we'll be telling folks how to DEVELOP A NEIGHBORHOOD RESOURCE GROUP, how to hold their meetings, how to get training, what kind of emergency supplies and equipment they should have, And the fact that they could do meetings and training with the support of the Disaster Repairness Committee. And then we'll talk a little bit about Get Ready, which is a program where people can take classes to get ready, And the CERT, which is, certified emergency response training. Those classes are also coming up We've had this announced in the currents. We hope that it will be announced again in this week's currents, as well as put on neighborhoods so we can get people. I want the city council and all citizens to take a look. around their neighborhood, and see if they've got people that should come to this meeting. Thank you. |
| 00:09:40.55 | Ray Withey | Tom, thank you very much, and thank you for all the work that you and your committee do. Adam. Cobreth? Cobreth. Cobreth. Sir. |
| 00:09:53.09 | Joe Burns | Oh, bro. |
| 00:10:00.24 | Ray Withey | I have no other card, so if anybody wants to speak on items that are not, I now have some more cards. |
| 00:10:06.97 | Adam Colbreth | Thank you. |
| 00:10:07.08 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:10:07.13 | Unknown | That's okay. |
| 00:10:07.53 | Ray Withey | you Thank you. |
| 00:10:07.94 | Adam Colbreth | Thank you, everybody. My name is Adam Colbreth. And I'm going to speak about bocce ball again. I spoke about it last time, but I believe I need to speak again about bocce ball. It's my first time in the league. The name of the team is Red Rooster. That is Red Rooster. And over the winter, I groomed the court just about, I mean, dang near every day, folks. And, you know, but we had all those rains. You know, it's like court number one just, oh, man, just kind of went to hell in a handbasket. And it's just upsetting, folks, because – I mean, you could... you got three points and you see that bocce, you want that fourth one, and then you roll that ball, y'all, and then boom, it goes the other way. And you know right there in your head that you had it going the right way, right? I'm not sure what it is because I've been looking at the course. I grew them today as well, but I'm pretty sure it's either a mole or perhaps – do we have groundhogs here in California? Do we have groundhogs? No groundhogs. Well, I mean, there's something. And anyway, I believe that if we just get a little bit of oyster shell, y'all – I mean, I don't know how much oyster shell costs. I have no idea. But, I mean, I'm telling you, if you just deliver it there and dump it there, I'll do all the work myself. And I promise you it'll be the finest bocce ball court in the land. I mean, in the land, folks. And, you know, it's funny because, you know, like I think someone saw me kind of grooming the court every day. And on Christmas, a rake appeared right there at the box. It was like I felt like Sausalito was giving me a rake for Christmas. And so I, you know, took the rake and I raked the courts. And then when the season started this spring uh they took the rake and they put it in the box from me and so i didn't have my rake no more because i don't have a key to the box but uh i went and spoke with linda today in the recreation department she gave me the key and i went and got the rake out so now i have the rake back so i'm raking it again and uh it's looking good but i mean the rake's not going to do it all we need more oyster shell that's the point i want to drive into your oyster shell we need oyster shell um so uh once again we're all looking for bocce here in sausalito uh a bocce if you don't know folks it's four points that's as good as it gets bocce uh four points red rooster go red rooster That is that. |
| 00:12:47.98 | Ray Withey | Thank you very much. Peter Robinovsky. |
| 00:12:56.26 | Peter Romanowski | God bless you all. My name is Peter Romanowski. I am standing in line to be the next high priest and czar of Russia. Behind Peter Romanov, who lives in San Salmo, by the way, and the czar of Russia, you know. Wes Morin, Stephen Romanoff. Now, my name is Romanowski, but I am not a member of the Tsar's family. But I will say this much, that if Peter Romanoff, who is the next in line to the czar, doesn't do its job as the head of the church as all czars and kings are supposed to be. Trust me, I will take his place. In the meanwhile, In the meanwhile, I am the Archbishop of Sausalito. not only the bishop or archbishop of Sausalito, but of probably the west coast. and probably the Western Hemisphere, the 13th pope, According to St. Malachi, the first bishop of Ireland is going to be called Petrus Romanus, you know, the restorer of the church. Ironically, Peter Romanowski is Petrus Romanus in Latin. Now, Pope Francis wouldn't dare take the name. He's the 113th Pope. And he's supposed to be the Petrus Romanus, the restorer of the church. So he took St. Francis's name, Thank you. who was the restorer of the church at the time, he was. And I'm not bloating myself up. I just know that every human being on this earth has the capability of being a president or a pope or a bishop. There is no limit. The only limit is our imagination and our education, so to speak. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE And I just want to read something from the scriptures here. Okay. It says, give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish. and wine unto those who are of heavy hearts. Let them drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more. Open thy mouth for the dumb, in the cause of all such that are appointed to destruction. meaning the homeless. quote, alcoholics and drug users, right? appointed to destruction, which the city councils of every state are appointing the homeless and the anchor outs to destruction. It says open thy mouth for the dumb, the mentally ill, the uneducated, poverty ridden, homeless people, right? Okay, in the cause of all such that are appointed to destruction, open thy mouth. Judge righteously, it says, and plead the case of the poor and needy. And of course, it starts off with, It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine or for princes. Anyways, you get the idea. This is the last proverb. So go easy on the poor and alcoholics. |
| 00:16:03.14 | Ray Withey | I don't know. Thank you very much, Peter. Geoff Jacob. You didn't indicate which agenda item, but I'm assuming it was this one, Jeff? Did you want to talk on this matter? Communication, please, sir. |
| 00:16:25.08 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Council, City Manager and Concerned citizens. Thanks, Peter, for talking about Francis. San Francisco Bay is of course, named after this person and that's where we live as well as on Richardson Bay. It said the Pope, Pope Francis released a letter TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF ASSISI, which is where Francis left after he stripped off all of his clothes And he gave them back to his father, who was a very prosperous person in that village. And the pope said this. He said, renouncing all earthly goods, he unchained himself from the enchantments with the god money, which has seduced his family. And the pope went on to say, the scandalous reality of a world marked by a gap, between an immense number of indigent people, often deprived of the most basic necessities, and the minuscule number of the rich who possess the majority of wealth, and think they can determine the destiny of humanity. Now Francis took off all of his clothes and the Pope here calls it a divestment. We're going to be talking about this more. You're going to see this in the newspapers and such. A divestment from the city councils, from the state, and from the federal government. Of the mixing of public and private, using public office to gain private means. Um, The Pope says this, he says, the divesting, which is when Francis took off all of his clothes and he was naked in front of the priest of Assisi, the divesting is a mystery of love. It does not mean despising the world, how could it? The world comes from the hand of God. Goods must be used according to a hierarchy of values that gives First place. to love. This is the last day of Passover. And... This is the portion, I'll just read a little bit of it. It says, a twig shall sprout from the stock of Jesse. With the spirit of wisdom and insight, counsel and valor, he shall not judge by what his eyes behold. He shall judge the poor with equity and decide with justice for the lowly of the land. He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouth and slay the wicked. with the breath. of his lips. So Chag Sameach, Herbie's not here, but Jonathan Goldman in the back. That means happy holidays. |
| 00:19:28.81 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Geoff. I have no other cards. Is there any other member of the public would like to talk about matters that are not on the agenda. Kevin. |
| 00:19:42.95 | Kevin Kiefer | Thank you, Mayor. My name is Kevin Kiefer. So staying on the topic, of the restoration. There's been a lot of spiritual restoration spoken about, but I'd like to talk about restoration of the public trust and the public trust revenues. as a living beneficiary of the public trust. I also have a I also have a responsibility as a trustee, a co-trustee of this living trust. Even though the trusteeship has been granted or amended to be in control of the local governmental agencies, It's about time that we revoke the trusteeship from the local government agencies, for they are in violation. This city itself is in violation of the trusteeship. It needs to be removed from the hands of local government and restored to the hands of the living beneficiaries until we can find an adequate trustee that will meet the needs of the trust, of the public's trust. And the hijacking of the public's trust is a serious matter, and it needs to be dealt with. And this problem is not going away, so you need to face it. Thank you. |
| 00:21:21.89 | Ray Withey | Thank you, sir. Is there any other member of the public who would like to comment on any item that is not on tonight's agenda? Yes, please, sir. Please, sir. Come forward. And if anybody else would like to talk, if you'd like to fill in a card, that'd be very helpful. |
| 00:21:41.45 | Johnston Melbostead | All right. Uh, Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.22 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.24 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.36 | Ray Withey | So, |
| 00:21:43.39 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.49 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.54 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. |
| 00:21:43.57 | Ray Withey | members of the council? |
| 00:21:44.69 | Johnston Melbostead | Staff, people of Sausalito, thank you for letting me speak. It's something that kind of bugs me. I enjoy my coffees at Starbucks in the morning, and sometimes it stretches out to an hour and a half or so. And I see quite a few tourists... who Not seeing the sort of inadequate signage for to keep them, to prohibit them from locking their bikes on the sidewalk, make the mistake time and again. And they get nailed pretty heavily at 25 bucks. to get their bike out of Hawk. I'm not so sure that I have any argument with the ordinance itself, but the signage is pretty inadequate. It was put up a long time ago apparently, and a lot of the signs that are on each parking meter are completely faded. So if you guys would do something about making the signage more visible. And also, we have a lot of people that come to Saucido that don't speak English. And so we have large signs that are in English. And the word designated parking area might not be something that the average Asian tourist on a bicycle might understand. So, Maybe we could do it in international graphic symbols or something to make it easier for them. I lived in Europe a bit, and they generally have several languages on all of their meaningful signage. I thought maybe we could be returning the courtesy to people that come to visit our town. It's not a very welcoming scenario to have your bike locked up when the signage is not adequate. And it just seems like kind of a mean grab. And plus, these people don't have any opportunity to take it up with the city council or with the chief of police or something. They're here for an hour. They have to pay their $25 to get their bike back to the rental place so they pay a fee or a fine to them. It's kind of problematic. Maybe we could do something about the signage. That's it. Thank you. Could we have your name for the record, sir? Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce my, I thought everybody knew me. |
| 00:23:43.76 | Ray Withey | Thank you. you |
| 00:23:47.50 | Johnston Melbostead | Johnston Melbostead. |
| 00:23:49.12 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:23:49.95 | Johnston Melbostead | Still. |
| 00:23:51.03 | Scott Diamond | Thank you. |
| 00:23:51.08 | Johnston Melbostead | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:23:53.77 | Ray Withey | Sir. |
| 00:23:54.86 | Scott Diamond | My name is Scott Diamond and I wasn't aware that there was a $25 fine for not parking in the designated parking, I'm handicapped and I live in this town And I ride my bike to do business in this town. and I don't think that I should be required to walk, say a block to the bank to make a deposit. So I noticed that the, bike. wreck that was in front of the bank has been sawed off and removed So I hope that this will be reconsidered because I really I have a hard time walking and I certainly hope that I don't have to pay $25 if I don't feel like paying $3 to park my bike rather than drive my pickup truck to the bank. |
| 00:24:50.03 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Sir, please. These are for items that are not on the agenda tonight. |
| 00:24:55.93 | John Burke | Not on the agenda, would that be including the adoption of D? the taking over of the land, the water in Saucyedot, you call it city waters? that is on the agenda and we can't speak of that |
| 00:25:10.28 | Ray Withey | That is for later on, sir. There will be. So we can speak of this later? Yes, absolutely. |
| 00:25:11.93 | John Burke | Okay, so we can speak of this later? Yes, absolutely. And I hope Herb feels better. Thank you. Yes. |
| 00:25:15.98 | Ray Withey | Thank you, I'm sure he will appreciate that. Okay, any other member of the public who'd like to comment on a matter that's not on tonight's agenda? Okay, seeing none, we will move on. Item three, action minutes of the previous meeting. We both have March 28th and April 4th. Do we have a motion to approve as submitted or any changes required? I have a motion to approve as submitted. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed, see and none, that passes for 0. Consent calendar. So items listed under the consent calendar require no discussion or expected to have unanimous council support and may be enacted by the council in one motion. So first of all, is there any member of the public who would like to comment on any item? There are items 4A to G. Is there any member of the public who'd like to comment now i do have a number of cards all on item 4d so i will call your names in order and um i do have one card which i don't have a name on but i'll get to you um don't worry. So the first person is Chad Carvey and you wanted to talk on agenda item 4D, sir. |
| 00:26:56.72 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:26:56.74 | Chad Carvey | My name is Chad Carvey. For the record, as a school principal for 29 years and as a sailor, I learned to keep things simple when the water gets muddy. So here's what I believe and what I know. Number one, that people have lived on their boats in the bay here in Sausalito for decades, if not over a century. Number two, that they have done so with nearly no negative impact to our environment as opposed to all the houses on land in Marin, which have scared away countless species that once roamed this area, bear and elk. The anchor outs have not displaced any known species of marine mammal or sea life, especially the local eelgrass, since the most recent studies clearly show that the eelgrass growth has exploded over the past 20 years, excuse me, 40 years of scientific measurement. Number three, that Sausalito waters are known amongst cruisers worldwide as a resting place and a place to set sail. And we have a duty and responsibility to preserve our rich maritime history for generations to come. Number four, and I personally know that over the past five years, the number of boats in our bay has grown too high. And there are a number of boats that are unsafe and unsightly and unseatheworthy. And a number of people who are not prepared for the challenges of life afloat. And that is a fact. And that is a problem. That there, number five, there is an active group of anchor outs who meet monthly, help each other, clean up and remove vessels, agree upon standards of seaworthiness and safety that are higher than Coast Guard requirements, and who are dedicated to a safe, sightly, and well-managed anchorage, and that there are other groups of anchor outs with varying levels of organization that are also working towards a better anchorage on their own and with their own ideas. Number six, that the city of Sausalito has had a love-hate relationship with their, and I do mean their, anchor out community, for we are just as much a part of this town as you are. Including, as an example, the recent loving city council statement that says, I quote, the city has also consistently indicated its desire to assist mariners who occupy seaworthy vessels that are maintained, licensed, and registered and have sewage services to remain in Richardson Bay. And then at the last City Council meeting, the City Council voted to remove this wonderful, inclusive language, and the City Council voted to do just that. Please tell us how removing such a wonderful, simple, basic statement is supposed to increase our trust in you and our faith in you. Number seven, that we know that Sausalito City has already had a 10-hour anchoring rule for near-shore waters, and we know that the Sausalito Police Department Police Department thankfully has not regularly enforced that ordinance. Now our city council is simply renewing this same legal statement and actually tightening and giving it more teeth and yet hinting to us that they don't plan to enforce it on live aboard anchor routes but rather just to remove the unsafe unsightly vessels. What can you say or do to increase our trust in your intention? That number eight Is that it? Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Please assuage our worry on this point. Thank you. |
| 00:30:01.23 | Adam Politzer | Thank you, sir. |
| 00:30:07.90 | Ray Withey | Uh, David Levin? |
| 00:30:15.87 | David Levin | Good evening, I'm David Levin, I'm an attorney at Legal Aid at Marin. Here first to certainly recognize the importance of protecting the waterways and enacting reasonable regulations, but want to register our concern because at Legal Aid we've been monitoring a series of ordinances across the county aimed at people living in their vehicles and RVs. And this ordinance raises some of the same issues and concerns for us because I'm sure you all saw the grand jury report that came out about a week ago, and you must be familiar with the housing crisis in Marin, but there's a good chance this ordinance not only will impact people who are living on the anchor outs, but also seems to have some serious legal defects that I just want to quickly run through here. First of all, there's a problem with vagueness in the ordinance because it leaves a lot open to interpretation as to what is personal property that could lead to a violation. There's also a question of whether proper notice will be given because if people don't understand the meaning of this ordinance, makes it very difficult to make sure there's no violation. And finally's not clear what opportunity there could be for a hearing when there's a dispute over a violation and I wanted to draw your attention to an ordinance in Sacramento City Ordinance 8.112 addressing somewhat similar issues but it seems like a much more productive way that Sacramento ordinance focuses on seaworthiness of the vessels at issue, also involves Coast Guard standards, and has a very specific procedure for hearing when there's a violation that's disputed. So I urge the council to take another look at this and consider the Sacramento alternative. Thank you. |
| 00:31:57.05 | Ray Withey | Thank you, sir. |
| 00:31:57.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:32:01.82 | Unknown | Barbara Sapienza? |
| 00:32:10.40 | Barbara Sapienza | Thank you very much. I am 24 year resident of Sausalito and I am here to speak about I'm not sure. the anchor out situation. and I wrote an article For the San Francisco Chronicle that appeared on April 6th after your March 14th meeting. And I'd just like to read it to you, it's short. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE In 2007, I started writing a novel about the anchor out community in Sausalito. My novel comes out just as the waters of Richardson Bay are boiling over in controversy. After a hellish winter, the anchor routes face the loss of their anchorage and nautical home. I live offshore. and each stormy night I ache. thinking of the vigilant people waiting, working, and protecting their crafts. On February 17th, two people were rescued clinging to their 14-foot boat capsized near Clipper Yacht Harbor. One person remains missing. A month later, Liverboard spoke to the Sausalito Council of the serious threat their vessels could be seized. an amendment to Sausalito laws makes it unlawful to berth, anchor, moor, store, or beach any boat Thank you. Lieutenant Bill Frost, Sausalito Police Department, spoke of the effort to remove marine debris and obstacles, resulting in liveaboards having to vacate. Anchor out spoke about their love of the water, their livelihoods, and the lack of affordable housing. I heard the richness of their pleas. Each of us deserves a refuge to call our own. We need positive solutions for dealing with the real problems of refuge, sewerage, disposal, and public access. From our safe place on land, it's easy to call the shots that might devastate people's lives. As a community, we need more humanity for people who make their life on the water. The community, us, needs to offer assistance. The council, you, agreed to postpone a decision until May. Will you assist the anchor routes in keeping their vessels, provide assistance in registering boats, sanitation, and practices that will protect the ecology of the bay, or clear out the anchorage of this community? Anchor routes have taught me much about living. Listening to their stories of living on the sea, rowing in daily for their bread, gives me courage. Guided by the sea, which hulls and tosses them mercilessly, threatened by gale force winds, horrific swells, torrential rains, wild currents, they exhibit a willingness to surrender and a determination to hold on. We could all use a little more of that in our daily lives. and interactions with one another. So I just wanted to say that I really, I know you have humanity in mind, and I hope you'll make the right decisions. |
| 00:35:14.47 | Unknown | Thank you, Barbara. |
| 00:35:19.84 | Unknown | Paul Smith. |
| 00:35:29.76 | Paul Smith | Good evening, Mayor, Councilman, Councilwoman, ladies and gentlemen, my name's Paul Smith. My wife, Barbara, and I own a 50-foot Calkins Motor Sailor that's on a mooring out in the Anchorage. And the mooring was put in in the 90s, but we bought it five years ago. And I have to say that our experience here in Sausalito with the entire community, enforcement authorities and people that are living out there and the people of the town has been 100% positive. We love this place. We love it. And it's easy to acknowledge that there are problems, and we recognize the council's attempt to deal with these problems. And I believe that I know we, and probably most of the people here, and most of the people out in the Anchorage are in sympathy with your efforts to deal with this and your efforts to coalesce the various regulations into 1604. That being said, I also believe that we all have the common interests of the bay in mind. But within your changes to 1604 is this time bomb called 6.0. And I believe that 6.0 should not be, I would respectfully ask that you seriously consider keeping 6.0 in there. I don't believe it's enforceable and I don't believe that it represents the best interest and even the best interest of the communities involved. A new 6-0 could be is simple as vessels anchored or moored for more than 72 hours must obtain and display a permit for the vessel and or mooring from the chief of police or harbormaster subject to the requirements of harbor harbor management plan that harbor management plan could simply could start with vessel owners seeking permits for more than 72 hour moorings must provide current proof registration or documentation. Current information, contact information rather, a viable septic management plan and maybe other things that you might decide are important. This information can be logged and printed on a weatherproof tag for the vessel or the mooring and the mooring. A reasonable fee could cover administrative costs. Permit tags on moorings and boats would allow quick assessment by enforcement authorities and provide security for owners who wish to leave their vessel or mooring with good reason to believe that it will be there when they return. Thank you so much. |
| 00:38:23.49 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:38:28.80 | Ray Withey | Carolyn Carvey. |
| 00:38:39.01 | Carolyn Carvey | Good evening, I'm Carolyn Carvey, a local resident from childhood. My husband and I are business owners here in Sausalito, members of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce, Christ Church Episcopal, and Sausalito Lions Club. Our company, the principal auctioneer, raises millions of dollars each year for vital causes. And our clients include the US Olympics team, SF 49ers, Twitter, Pixar, Sir Richard Branson, Ocean Elders, and many others. As well as local nonprofits such as the Sausalito Rotary Housing, Sausalito Art Festival, Matthew Turner Tall Ship Project, Marine Mammal Center, Marine Humane Society, Lark Theater, Reed School Foundation, St. Hillary, and many, many more. And we are anchor outs. We live full time on our beautiful 43 foot sailboat, Walk On. In two years we plan to set sail on a long awaited 10 year circumnavigation voyage. Of the past 13 years, ten of them have been full time on our sailboat in Sausalito. Over the past two years, my husband and I have watched the Anchorock community come together, organize themselves, respond to concerns presented by the city council, RBRA, and Sausalito community in both action and ideas on how we can effectively manage the Anchorage. We have heard a few supportive comments, some important community input meetings, and some vital meetings with the city manager. But despite this, the general stance as shown by this current vote being taken tonight by the city council has done little to clear the air of confusion. And to progress towards a positive, fruitful relationship of trust and beneficial change where we work together as allies to manage our beloved bay in a safe, sustainable, and passionate way. There is much talk these days of sanctuary cities. These are places that agree that we cannot simply deport local residents, whether they are legally here or not, without care and compassion. So give us a sign. Where is our safety, our sanctuary? You are about to pass a law that continues to state that we are illegal, with the dangling possibility of it now being enforced. This sends a message to our community that are reading our newspapers, listening to this broadcast, that you do not honor the heritage of us mariners who wish to live on the sea. Sausalito is a salty town with salty characters on land and at sea. We are liberal, compassionate people that think outside of the norm. People in Sausalito and the towns surrounding this bay are very unique. We do not want to become perfect Jim and Kerry, Truman Show, cookie cutter town, stale, bland. We need our characters. Sausalito wouldn't be the same without the houseboats and the characters that filled them and still do today. Even the houseboat wars have their intrigue. It was important that we cleaned up and managed the disarray and the dangers and the pollution of some of the original houseboaters, but we don't, don't we love the history to tell the tale? Same goes with our anchorage. People come to Sausalito to see the houseboats, but they also come to kayak around the anchor routes and smile in amazement at our very unique lifestyle. People are fascinated with our lives. It takes courage to live on the wild waters and to see out many of the storms. It is the beauty of the sea and living a simpler life with almost zero impact on the environment that takes us through those stormy nights. It is the community that we build, help wrestling down a breakaway jib, talking about the last blow. We are ambassadors for cruisers sailing in from abroad and from those on holiday weekends stay. |
| 00:41:44.96 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Much more to say, but thank you. Thank you, Carolyn. |
| 00:41:45.01 | Carolyn Carvey | I need much more to say, but thank you. |
| 00:41:52.82 | Ray Withey | Greg Baker. |
| 00:42:05.43 | Greg Baker | Good evening, I spoke to you before, and you know who I am. Live on my boat anchored out in the bay. I've lived out there off and on for 50 years. And I've seen this kind of thing happen before. where somebody decides that the anchor outs are no good or they're making a mess or whatever. And I'm concerned about this ordinance and also the fact that I have an 11 year old goddaughter, Liberty, who you heard talk, and She has a boat out there. Now, I'm poor, no question about it. I'm living basically on Social Security in a small security job that I've worked for someone And we can't afford to go in a marina. AND To take her off the water would be a terrible thing to do. I mean, she's our future. AND I I'm just concerned about this and the enforcement of it. I'd hate to get the police department. I've worked with the police department for a long time. They all know me. As a matter of fact, Stacy is here tonight. Thank you. Knows me very well. And I'd hate to get in a tussle with them if they're forced to impound my boat or my goddaughter's boat i would find that an extreme imposition Plus the fact you'll have me living under a tree over here in the park with Beau. So think about what you're doing. And also think about the fact that Yeah. in the future. You look at the city council and see what they did. Now I know you weren't involved in this, but it took 15 years to get a firehouse and a police station built in the same place. There's something wrong with that. There was too much, I don't know what was going on. I couldn't figure it out. And they built them in the same place. And I think it only took a year to actually do the building. Anyway, just think about this very carefully. Have your conscience be your guide. Thank you very much. |
| 00:44:12.53 | Ray Withey | Thank you sir. |
| 00:44:16.49 | Ray Withey | Kevin Koefer. |
| 00:44:24.36 | Kevin Kiefer | Thank you again, Mayor. My name is Kevin Kiefer. I ventured aboard sailboat into the Sankridge nearly nine years ago. I set the anchor and it's settled. And apparently so have I. And I have joined a settlement of anchor outs. These waters have been settled. It is a fact. It cannot be changed. Nothing you do, nothing you amend, nothing you strive to create through these amendments can change the fact these waters have been settled for the first time in history by anchor outs. So you can try and get rid of us. You can try and get us to sell out like the houseboats did, to sell out like the recreational boats have, But you've got a problem. We can read. and we remember. So you can continue on and try and push through these amendments and read them by title. beyond understanding, it's not just vague, It's beyond understanding. What you're trying to do is you're trying to dredge up a rum runner law from the early last century and act as if it's something that you just pulled out of the hat. Nobody's running around here. Nobody's crashing into your shores, unloading cases of alcohol. |
| 00:46:11.12 | Kevin Kiefer | The problem here is that you are attempting to cover up your misuse of the Thailand revenues. For decades upon decades, millions upon millions of dollars, the Thailand's revenues have been misappropriated. And this city is a trustee of that trust. and is now accountable for the mistrust. So you must deal with this problem. You must speak to us about this problem. You must speak to the public about what happened to the public's trust. Where have these revenues gone? Where have they been invested and reinvested? Where's the equity? Where is the inequity? This must be dealt with. and it must be dealt with by this council. not by any other council. No matter who you want to point the finger at. This council has to deal with the problem. |
| 00:47:11.28 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Thanks, sir. you Um. |
| 00:47:18.34 | Ray Withey | Doug Storms? |
| 00:47:20.03 | Douglas Storms | please. |
| 00:47:24.06 | Douglas Storms | Douglas Storms, 700 Waldo Point. Couple things, I would like to just highlight that, I don't know if you know this, but it's about 7% of the liveaboards, at least 7% of the liveaboards in Richardson Bay are vets. They're from Vietnam era and later on. They've been involved in different wars fighting for this country. you know, defending the Constitution. Um... And now this law, I believe, although it doesn't impact all of them, because some of the vets that are liveaboards are anchored across the channel. But I'm not going to split hairs. It's all one body, Richardson Bay. You can choose to withdraw from the RBRA and claim your own waters, but it's one body. Nature doesn't recognize the difference. And mariners, when there's critical matters, they're going to anchor in a safe manner. It doesn't matter whether it's in our barrier jurisdiction or the city of Sausalito. They're going to do what's right as captain of their vessel. So not only are the vets, but my problem is that you haven't completed a implementation plan. And so what you're doing is you're trusting the chief of police to implement policy. If he doesn't do it and the officers under him do not do it correctly, things can go wrong very badly, very quickly. There's been examples that I have cited in the previous three, four months, the actions that they've taken removing illegal moorings that are working ground tackle. They basically applied arbitrary and capriciously the law. They haven't been uniform in enforcing the removal of illegal moorings. And I've given testimony to this and I've said there's 13 working ground tackle that was brought up and it caused in this winter a severe problem with people having to scramble. When they come back to their mooring that's not there. then they have to scramble and put out emergency ground tackle. Not a good idea in the winter time. Time doesn't permit, I only have a half a minute, and I can go through this and the ordinances. If you go up on the beach in 12 hours, you get a misdemeanor, one month or $500 fine. You have to remove your vessel within 72 hours. The reality is, from 30 years of diving out there experience, your vessel goes up on the beach during high tide. You're not going to get it back until the high tide comes. But your ordinance says that you will remove it. |
| 00:50:30.17 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:50:30.90 | Douglas Storms | So thank you very much. |
| 00:50:34.80 | Ray Withey | Uh... |
| 00:50:40.28 | Ray Withey | John Burke. |
| 00:50:47.15 | John Burke | You guys, again, sorry to hear Herb's sick. but, uh, One quick question. Do any of you own a boat? Do any of you own a boat? When was the last time you were on the waterfront? On the water. but nobody can speak of that. You don't own a boat, you haven't been on the water. OK, so anyway, as you make this adoptment of the ordinance 12, what is it now, 1244, what is the rush in doing so? Why are we doing that so quick? Is there some sort of underwater land swap that's going on between the parking lot there and just that piece of waterfront? Is there something we don't know about? Is there a behind the whole deal going on? Is there something there that you're not saying? Again, you're leading the public trust astray. We have no trust in you. OKAY? AND I GOT TO TELL YOU, WE'RE Okay, you're no response, you're cutting it out, we're gonna be forced to defend our homes. Do you understand that? And you would defend yours like I will defend mine. So count on that. If this continues, we are going to have a serious, serious problem. So you guys should really think about that. Plus, you're out of jurisdictions. Period. They aren't your waters. This is federal water. And you should understand that as well. So I don't know what you guys are thinking or how far you're going to go with this, but just try to remove another boat, and I think you're going to see how far we can go. |
| 00:52:25.82 | John Burke | Thank you. |
| 00:52:25.84 | Unknown | that. |
| 00:52:25.97 | John Burke | Thanks. |
| 00:52:26.04 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:52:31.00 | Ray Withey | Jeff Jacob. Where are you, Jeff? There you go. |
| 00:52:36.57 | Unknown | Jacob, where is he? |
| 00:52:45.02 | Jeffrey Chase | Hello again. Um... |
| 00:52:50.42 | Jeffrey Chase | This... This ordinance, which increases the penalties to $500 and a jail sentence for having a boat out here making instant criminals. of 40 people. also includes the house boaters and the liveaboards And it says they have to get a certificate of occupancy. And they have to go to the planning department if they want to change the outside of their boats. So I think, All of the people who live at Gate 6 and Galilee Harbor are going to be, and all of the other places are going to be very, very interested in that. So this is not the anchor outs alone. We have allies here, as you can see. I'm very proud of the way that this group is expressing themselves. how polite and how much they care about you even though you voted four to nothing on the first reading, to pass this ordinance. And it would take a very extreme act of bravery for you to reverse that and vote it down, especially since now it's on the consent calendar. It's not being looked at alone. I appreciate every single person that I heard talk. And I've seen the development. of their speeches in three minutes, they're able to express a little bit of themselves, If you look at what happened when this began a year or so ago, And the way that the meetings were then versus how they are now. I think that we could not be giving you any more respect and being any more polite than we are. |
| 00:54:44.72 | Jeffrey Chase | I talked last week about a bicycle light and how that brought me into the political game. Well, there was, and I said there was another man named Gandhi who also did that. He said, a failure to observe a rule about carrying headlights on bicycle after dark is something no man will feel remorse for. This is what Gandhi wrote. Indeed, it is doubtful whether he would even accept advice kindly about being more careful in this respect. But he would observe any obligatory rule of this kind, if only to escape the inconvenience of facing prosecution for a breach of the rule. Such compliance is not, however, the willing and spontaneous obedience that is required of what Gandhi calls satyagraha, which is truth force. So I will be doing my best to make sure that our opposition, when and if you vote for this, is nonviolent and is under the rubric of Gandhi and MLK civil disobedience. Thank you very much. |
| 00:55:48.55 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 00:55:53.43 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:55:53.45 | Ray Withey | Scott Diamond? |
| 00:56:05.65 | Scott Diamond | I moved to Sausalito Waterfront 60 years ago and have watched City Hall either turn its back on the waterfront or worse, orchestrate its demise ever since. Currently, the city of Sausalito owns the three most blighted pieces of property on the Sausalito waterfront. No private citizen would be allowed to be so negligent, but rather than take responsibility for its inaction and ineptitude, It seems to be choosing to point the finger and be inept yet again. If you pass this law, you are considering will make the waterfront much more unsafe than it already is. If you require boats to move every three days, Thank you. not only Will you be guilty of elder abuse? You will be encouraging the destruction of eelgrass and the marine environment in general. When people move every three days rather than stay on a well-set mooring, There will be more boats getting loose and causing damage and loss of life. Is that what you wish to encourage? In a town where you basically can't change a fence post without consulting an engineer, it's hard to imagine how you consider yourselves qualified to pass maritime laws you know nothing about. You are creating an environment where no resident can leave for vacation, business, or family matters for more than two and a half days without fear of losing their home. Who are you people? Is this how you would like to be treated? Do you consider yourselves practitioners of the golden rule? There are problems out on the bay, but this isn't how to solve them. I feel all my time would probably be better spent talking to the ADA I have the feeling your minds are made up and you don't wish to be confused by the facts. Surprise me. |
| 00:57:59.28 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:58:04.72 | Ray Withey | John Lee Hudson. |
| 00:58:10.74 | Unknown | But y'all didn't think I'd be back down here this soon. It's so good to see all of you. Thank you, honorable mayor, honorable counsel, and other officers of the city. Ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes when I was listening to all this, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I think it's sometimes kind of like old Matt Taibbi over there at the Rolling Stone magazine. He lives up there on the nicer part of New York City. We'll see him sometimes up east side. He looks out there at the tenant houses and says, sometimes we lose contact with how those people feel. And how they have to live. And I think the former gentleman made a good point here. I really don't think y'all even want to do what y'all are doing. It may be that y'all came about this by accident. Thank you. not really thinking it out like you really wanted to. And that's why I almost left and I decided, well, maybe I should remind y'all When you all look at how the other people feel and what they may be going through, I think it's a way of having a win-win situation, where there's always a way to please everybody to some degree. I mean, people may have to pay a price for it, a small, like I said, a $5 or $10 fee. for an extension of time. But we shouldn't want to... you know, forget the whole city. And I think if we don't think about that aspect of how there could be a fee, That would be reasonable to give people a reasonable time that they need, whether they're going to stay or whether they're leaving there. boats for a few days. And they could post this little that they've paid their their fee, but I really think that's what you all want to do. And I think maybe we just hadn't opened the doors wide enough for y'all to see through the windows. I really appreciate y'all. I don't have the erection jokes for tonight. Oh, yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:00:06.66 | Unknown | Thank you. Frank Smiller? |
| 01:00:17.74 | Frank Smiller | I'd like to wish everyone here a good evening. I'm a United States Navy veteran, Vietnam era. I've been around the water since I was three years old. And I'll be 64 Friday. So, Let's cut to the chase here. The first problem that I had with the government here in Sausalito concerns some theft many years ago, back in 1987, of tools, a Lorrain C, which is a navigational radio, a VHF FM radio, and a shortwave radio transceiver off of a sailboat which I was living aboard anchored out. I contacted the Sausalito Police Department concerning this and was told that they could not help me. Now, you guys are going to have to make up your mind. Are you or are you not in jurisdiction out there? you're going to have a little problem with the feds. the United States Coast Guard. and the U.S. federal government designates any navigable waters, your channel. at Anchorage. The bay, the Sacramento River, etc. As being under federal jurisdiction, United States Coast Guard. that would also be the commandant of this district. who happens to be an admiral. If you wish to play with an admiral, go for it. But it didn't work out so well the last time this happened. I believe the gentleman that was, um... on the very focus of that little incident actually may be here today. Although I'm not gonna mention any names. the city of Sausalito wound up with their name a bit smeared. things of their own. misguided actions. So you've got that, and then you've got the other concern I have. Having been around the water in the world, and unfortunately had to recover bodies. Safety at sea is my primary concern. All these people out here, I'm concerned about their safety, whether I even like them or even know them. |
| 01:02:41.67 | Frank Smiller | This is something that I think they're doing more about as far as the anchor outs and the live boards than the city is. And this is actually rather sad to me. Now, I'm also considering AND I THINK THAT'S A areas several locations for webcams which will have the anchorage under a 24 hour On the web. so that we can see exactly what's going on out there and who's moving what. Thank you very much. |
| 01:03:22.27 | Ray Withey | Thank you, sir. |
| 01:03:22.88 | Frank Smiller | Thank you. |
| 01:03:27.79 | Ray Withey | Alden Bevington? |
| 01:03:33.32 | Ray Withey | And this is the last card I have, so if anybody else would like to talk on any item on the consent calendar, please fill in a card. Thank you. |
| 01:03:44.18 | Unknown | Hold on. |
| 01:03:44.97 | Peter Romanowski | Without the sign-up. |
| 01:03:45.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:03:46.13 | Ray Withey | No worries, Peter. |
| 01:03:51.74 | Alden Bevington | Hi, my name's Alden Bevington. I live on a vessel called Sanctuary, possibly ironically, within Sausalito city waters. The vessel's been there for 40 years, to my understanding. There's so much that could be said, but the first point that I'd love to just bring to everybody's awareness is that there is absolutely, it is not necessary at all to copy-paste an ordinance from a special area plan that is widely regarded to be obsolete and needs to be rewritten. There's a lot of context and nuance that could be written into this ordinance. It's not. There is, you know, I was asked by Councilman Burns to give some clear examples of how something has changed because you all seem to think that because these things could have been enforced that nothing is changing. The fact is that it's not about could, it's would. There's a reason why the RBRA would not pass something like this right now without caveats or guidance. Because we're in a process. And just like, from what I know, when I read this 16.460, according to the law, on the 18th of May, I would be in violation, face up to 30 days in jail. My vessel could be impounded and I could be fined $500 unless I get permission from the chief of police. But for some reason nobody knows whether the chief of police will even give this permission. And I have to say If you all want Thank you. You talk about maybe you have some intention or whatever. All I know is that the first writing of this and reading of this had removed the provision about the chief of police giving permission. So where there's smoke, there's fire. And I think it's very clear that this could be written different. This could be much more specific and less vague, and that we could ratchet down the tensions and antagonism between different parties by not taking these kind of actions so that we can continue the process of making solutions that really work. We've been doing it. It's almost like we hadn't based on this. Thank you. I actually feel afraid. None of you can tell me I can get no assurances. How do you think that I feel? Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:07:01.83 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:07:01.87 | Alden Bevington | Yeah. |
| 01:07:01.88 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:07:07.67 | Ray Withey | Is there, I have run out of cards, so is there any other member of the public, Peter? Would you like to, and if there's anybody else who would like to talk on any item on the consent calendar, please fill out a card, Peter, please. |
| 01:07:24.02 | Peter Romanowski | All right, thank you again. My great grandfather came to San Francisco and set up the finished Siemens mission on Church Street in Castro. when it was Scandinavian and Finnish and bathhouses and saunas and And he also ministered to the waterfront people in Sausalito in 1890s. And so I'm an answer to his prayer. I was born in Sweden. And, um, I don't know how I ended up here for over 50 years now. I married a sea captain's daughter, Ernest Niles Kettenhofen, who's former supervisor, and the biggest land holder in this town at one time apparently. He built the, he owned the ICB building, the 3030 Bridgeway building, He owned a whole plaza across the street and go on and on and on about that. I married into wealth and power and influence and I've run for office 12 times. But I've lost every election, but I learned a lot. I learned enough to initiate the recall of Pamela. Who's the DA's name? That was... It was my idea to initiate the recall, right? So we lost the recall, but we set That gave the impotence to recall Gray Davis over raising registration fee on cars. And we are quite capable. It's very easy to recall. to start a recall move on anybody that votes. for this amendment and also enforceability. Oh. Nobody's been able to enforce any regulation out there forever. 70% of the world is water, and it's God's country. But I would say this, do the carrot thing. Designate some moorings. I've been out there 30, I've had a boat out there since 1983. I am the oldest living. single human being on San Francisco Bay. No single person has lived on the bay uninterrupted longer than me. And we have, evicted. Neptune. as a Christian, of course. And so I got some influence. I'm grandfathered in. I mean, I can't be removed. |
| 01:09:49.98 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:09:50.70 | Peter Romanowski | I mean, Neptune is gone, man. Uh... I'm grandfathered in. I was grandfathered in long ago, so I'm not concerned about the Saucelito ordinance because I'm not in Saucelito waters, so to speak. But I am concerned about all those that that may have to be moved across and die. We've had three or four people die in the past couple of years. 80 people. A year jumping in front of trains in San Francisco. Every week somebody jumps off the bridge. Nobody talks about it. So give us a break. God bless you. |
| 01:10:25.14 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Peter. |
| 01:10:30.31 | Ray Withey | Okay. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to speak on any consent item matter? Please, sir. |
| 01:10:37.83 | Louis Tenwinkle | Hi, Louis Tenwinkle, the Anchorage. you're going to put a lot of people in harm's way having to go out on the other side of the channel. Whoever thought this up, I saw one. When you guys first thought this up and I'm going, well, this is kind of weird, what are they doing? Well, it's, you know, obviously going to make push everybody over to the other side of the anchorage And then, we're kind of going, oh, there's way too much going on over here. We can't have this, and then kick everybody out. So that's one thing you guys are doing. THEIR OWNERS. the effect is going to be on all the people that are going to go, have to go over to the other side and push everybody out of the way and move around and be like a Oklahoma land grab. You know, Just to go on the other side of the channel is quite a big deal from the covered side of the channel, which is in Sausalito waters, you know, prime parking. |
| 01:11:31.78 | Louis Tenwinkle | it's going to be a big impact. not looking forward to it, not looking to see it. I personally had a really nice boat AND, uh, Didn't have it registered. I went and registered it even. But you guys still took it. It got crushed, destroyed, we'll be talking about that later. but you know, go along with whatever And it just doesn't work. THE FAMILY. You guys have already decided what you're doing. And it's going to be on your guys' head when people go on the other side of the channel and all this happens that we're talking about. Everybody here had something good to say. And think about it. You guys are in a hell of a position right here because this is all on you. I'd like to know the real intentions of it. I don't know. Maybe there isn't any. Thank you. |
| 01:12:20.15 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:12:24.79 | Ray Withey | Okay, is there anybody else who would like to talk on any of these consent matter items? Seeing none, we'll close public comment. Is there any member of council that have anything to say before we have a motion on the consent calendar? No, no. Could we have a motion then, please? |
| 01:12:52.58 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Sure, I move to approve the consent calendar. |
| 01:12:57.47 | Ray Withey | Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, good. All in favor. |
| 01:13:00.43 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. Thank you. |
| 01:13:02.76 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:13:02.96 | Ray Withey | Aye. Any opposed? |
| 01:13:02.98 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:13:03.40 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:13:05.20 | Ray Withey | None. Seeing none, that motion carries 4-0. Thank you. Okay, item 6. Item 6A is the general plan update. |
| 01:13:23.90 | Ray Withey | If any of you would like to leave, please do so quietly so we can move on to the next item. Thank you. And Danny Castro, our Community Development Director. Thank you. Good evening. |
| 01:13:40.10 | Danny Castro | Good evening, Mayor Withey and members of the council. I'm here to present the initial outreach for the general plan effort and the general plan advisory committee recruitment. |
| 01:13:51.27 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 01:13:55.29 | Ray Withey | Could we just pause for a second, Danny, while people who want to leave, leave? And if people who want to leave, if you could do so quietly, please. Thank you. |
| 01:14:13.41 | Ray Withey | Okay, Donnie. |
| 01:14:15.20 | Danny Castro | Thank you. So to provide some background, the general plan update is underway. As you all are aware, At your February 28th meeting, the contract was awarded for the M Group to assist the city with the general plan update. And at that same meeting, you appointed, the City Council appointed four members to the General Plan Advisory Committee, and that's Mayor Ray Withey, Vice Mayor Joan Cox, and Planning Commissioners Janelle Kelman and Bill Werner. The General Plan Advisory Committee, and you'll see the acronym of GPAC, and I'll reference GPAC. The GPAC held meetings on March 22nd and on April 4th. where they primarily discussed the formation, the composition, role, and mission statement of the General Plan Advisory Committee. the initial outreach for the general plan update effort and the recruitment process to add seven more members to the GPAC for a total of 11 members to the general plan advisory committee. This evening, What I'm seeking from the City Council are five items. One is to approve or provide revisions to the mission statement and the role of the General Plan Advisory Committee. We have drafted a mission statement and role. And in the following slides, I will show that. Number two, to approve the venues and the media outlets to be used to advertise the planning effort and solicit applications for the GPAC membership. Number three, approve or provide revisions to the outreach materials. The following slides will show the outreach materials that were prepared by the M group, reviewed by staff, and also the general plan advisory committee. Number four, decide if the GPAC membership should be limited to Sausalito residents or open to property owners and or business owners that do not live in Sausalito. And finally, number five, to approve the general plan advisory committee selection process. So item number one, the General Applied Advisory Committee GPAC mission statement, And I'll read this to you. It's short enough. The mission statement of the General Plan Advisory Committee is to facilitate, in concert with city staff, consultants and the public, the update of the 1995 Sausalito General Plan, the General Plan Advisory Committee will promote a general plan update that respects and enhances the natural and built environment in Sausalito, recognizes future development opportunities and limitations, and conserves the cultural, artistic, business, social, and neighborhood diversity and character that is embraced by the Sausalito community. |
| 01:17:15.09 | Danny Castro | Separate, but yet related to the mission statement, is the role of the General Plan Advisory Committee. And what this does... is indicate that this is a council appointed committee consisting of 11 members. It's an advisory body. And it will be a committee that is formed for the duration of the general plan update process with a number of functions. And those are all bulleted here. I won't read each one of those, but we can certainly come back to the slide if you wish to look at the specific functions that have been identified for the role of the GPAC. |
| 01:18:00.23 | Danny Castro | And also related is the general plan advisory committee term expected to meet monthly. However, more frequent meetings are maybe necessary throughout the planning effort This is consistent with the the general plan work plan that the M group has provided as part of our two and a half to three year process, And at the completion of the general plan update, the intent is to dissolve the general plan advisory committee. Item number two is the initial outreach for the general plan effort and the GPAC recruitment. THE GPACT reviewed a number of different media outlets and venues for getting the word out. One of the reasons why the M group stood out when we were awarding the contract was the fact that There was a very robust community outreach program that we felt was very important for Sausalito. And so there are a number of types of ways to get the word out that we have identified, and we're seeking the city council's input as to whether all of these outlets for this initial outreach is good. And I'll go through these. A direct mailer that will go to all postal addresses or to residents only. The... A printed ad on the MarinScope and the Marin IJ, an advertisement printed ad and online or online the announcements at all public meetings, and online advertisement through the general plan update and city websites. may be aware that we currently have a general plan, Sausalito General Plan Update webpage now. There was a current sortle about a couple weeks ago and we'll continue to to inform the public about our website. Different social media outlets, Twitter, Facebook, and Nextdoor, and Sausalito Current's weekly electronic newsletter, again, as I mentioned. And then we do have an interest list now that's growing of residents and community members who wish to be on this email list to be notified of meetings, any workshops, etc. And then sign-up sheets also that would be available for pickup at the City Hall that, and I'll go into a little bit more detail about that, but that also allows you to check off the interest list that you may be, the interest areas and topics that you may be interested in. And then business window postings if that's something that we'd like to do. So number three is the outreach materials. And these following slides will actually show the copy and the graphic text of these. outreach materials. This is, it's very large here, but this is a five by seven cardstock mailer, the front of the cardstock mailer. |
| 01:21:11.74 | Danny Castro | This is the back of the cardstock mailer. that again 5 by 7 that Has a tagline, you know, Sausalito is embarking on a general plan update. It indicates what a general plan is, what it serves and what the purpose of a general plan Um, and then how you can participate. The intent here is to be, concise yet thorough of what a general plan is and enough information that if you really wanted to get into more details, you certainly can go into the general plan web page. and also get involved. This also serves the purpose of if someone wishes to actually apply for the seven more seats on the general plan advisory committee. And so it provides the information there with an online application. This would be an example of the one-sided advertisement in the MarinScope, in the Marin IJ. In your materials, you have the various sizes that these newspapers would allow us to print, starting with a 1-8th page to 1-4th page to 1-1th page, the different costs for that. And in total, with the mailers to all residents or postal addresses, the online advertisement as well as print on the newspapers That would total about 5,000. It could be less if you decide to scale back on that, but that's about, for this initial outreach effort, this is about the cost. And this is a PowerPoint slide should Um, The purpose is for all future meetings, all commission boards or committee meetings to share it, all public meetings. about the general plan update. As you're aware, the City Council and the Planning Commission meetings do live stream, and so this is a good opportunity and sort of a commercial break that we could do throughout the general plan update. |
| 01:23:17.73 | Danny Castro | And then these are sign up sheets that could be provided at all meetings, available at the public counters, both at the administration office and the library as well as the community development department, brought to meetings. So if people wanted to fill out the form and also indicate where their interest areas are, we then can keep this list. And as we go throughout the general plan within the next three years, when there are topic areas of interest, we will make sure to notify particular members who wish to participate |
| 01:23:55.48 | Danny Castro | Finally, oh, well, down to two more items. Item number four is the composition of the general plan advisory committee. the GPAC had some discussion on this item and in the end did not make a recommendation, but there was discussion as to other the GPAC members be limited to Sausalito residents or allow membership to property owners and or business owners that do not live in Sausalito. It's been the M Group's experience with other cities who are updating their general plans and their GPACs are about 50-50 split in some cities in terms of whether they can limit to residents only or to allow non-residents to serve in the capacity of a GPAC member. Some discussion from the current GPAC was that The GPAC should be composed of only Sausalito residents and that non-residents, such as property owners and business owners, will certainly have the opportunity for input and involvement at workshops and meetings and events, especially as the particular topics are discussed. There was also discussion that perhaps a couple seats, on the GPAC be available to non-residents who are outstanding, very engaged or involved in the community, or representative of a community group. |
| 01:25:21.29 | Danny Castro | THE Selection process, which is the final item that we wish to seek your input. on The GPAC was a bit hesitant and did not make a recommendation on the selection process for the GPAC members. Mainly because they would like to see the level of interest. and how many applications are received after the May 17th deadline. I think it's important to review the objectives of selecting the general plan advisory committee and the addition of the seven members. It is M group and staffs and the current GPAC members Um, believe that it is important that the process that the applicants and the public understand that it's a transparent process. and that it's clearly identified. the objectives. Do I have that up here? I'm sorry. There, that's it. to develop a selection process that is transparent, that the seven members added to the four current members, represent a broad variety of interests with consideration of their geographic location by neighborhoods, and to achieve the full GPAC membership of 11 members by the end of May. so that, um, the full GPAC is ready to review and audit the current general plan by mid-June. And this aligns with the general plan update schedule. So one of the last slides I'm going to have here is the proposed schedule from now until the end of May, with the intent that we have a full GPAC by mid-June selected and ready to go. So here is, Staff's recommended selection process. if four 14 or less applications are received I'm not sure. Staff prepares a summary matrix, that identifies the candidate's areas of interest, and their geographic location by neighborhood. We will provide that to the city council, in which the city council would then conduct interviews and then appoint the seven members from that. The number 14 seems like a random number, but it was really twice the number of of seven seats and we felt that that was a a good enough number to represent a pool of potential candidates. If greater than 14 candidates were received, THEN STAFF WOULD Prepare a summary matrix, identifying the candidates areas of interest and their geographic location by neighborhood. Each current GPAC member selects their top 14 choices. So that's the current four members. Staff will tabulate and prioritize the rankings based on the top choices that are provided by the GPAC members. GPAC narrows the list of candidates to 14 based on the rankings and areas of interest, again, and geographic representation. and then the city council would interview the 14 and appoint the seven members. |
| 01:28:33.26 | Danny Castro | And here's just an idea of what's been included in the application materials and as well as the interest list just for the general public, anyone who is interested, of the different interest areas and topics. that also fall within the seven elements of the general plan. |
| 01:28:54.91 | Danny Castro | Here's just a very quick sample of a summary matrix that's not complete, but just to get an idea that we would list everyone's name, their areas of interest, as well as their geographic location where they reside. That will help us then sort of populate and start to prioritize and rank. the members. |
| 01:29:17.83 | Danny Castro | SO THIS CALENDAR, Schedule shows that at the April 4th meeting, the GPAC did review these materials. It has since been refined. It's presented to you tonight on April 18th. The idea is that if you provide direction this evening, This gives staff and the M group the go-ahead to initiate the recruitment process as well as the mailer sent for the general you know, initial outreach of the general plan update, We would begin that as soon as tomorrow. the mailer would be sent and received. between the period of April 28th and May 3rd. We would have applications due by May 17th. the applications would then be distributed to staff and submitted to GPAC or the city council. We review and prioritize these finalists on the week of May 22nd, by the week of May 30th Council may have to have a special meeting with the intent of interviewing and selecting the final seven members and then we would then have an 11 member general plan advisory committee. So this is just the last slide here that identifies the five items that I am seeking your direction in order to move forward with this aspect of the general plan. And with that, that concludes my report. Heather Hines from the M Group is also here. She's listening in. She, if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer that and if you have any questions of Heather, she's available too. |
| 01:31:02.72 | Ray Withey | Oh, thank you, Danny. And welcome Heather. OK, let's start off with any questions of either Danny or Heather on any aspect of this. Joan and I have obviously heard all this before having been on the working group. Joe. |
| 01:31:26.87 | Joe Burns | to ask this question then. Thank you, Danny and Heather. So when we talked about this initially, how fun on the general plan, are you having fun yet? I'm having a lot of fun. OK, good. |
| 01:31:35.36 | Danny Castro | I'm having a lot of fun. |
| 01:31:37.15 | Joe Burns | Um, Thank you. one of the questions you know and we're looking at the venues and the media outlets i think that's a bigger discussion for the entire process as we establish ourself in whichever medium we choose we probably want to stay consistent in that medium so if we if we start establishing a newspaper presence combined with an online i think it's more than just making one-off decisions for the for the selection and then notifications and and things as we go for the next two plus years. Is there a long term look at how many times we might be advertising what our entire cost might be through the entire scope of the general plan update process and then apply that to what mediums might benefit us as we make that initial decision now? It seems like it's more of a larger discussion than making one-off decisions as we go. |
| 01:32:28.84 | Danny Castro | Yeah, I think the intent here is to, this is the initial outreach that would advertise the general plan update is underway, and that intended to reach a wide audience, while also seeking the interest of those who are applying for the general plan advisory committee as we get into the various workshops and meetings, I think that through our current general plan web page and our interest list, we would be able to then use those mediums to to get the word out. And perhaps not that we need the newspaper. I don't think at those. at those times during the So I think if I'm answering your question, is that it's this initial outreach that I think is important to get the word out. |
| 01:33:19.56 | Joe Burns | Yeah, and I do too, and I just want to... start looking at are we gonna be considering $5,000 media buys six times over the course, one time, 10 times? Because that kind of plays the lecture. |
| 01:33:28.13 | Danny Castro | I don't foresee that. |
| 01:33:29.03 | Ray Withey | to the future. |
| 01:33:29.08 | Danny Castro | Thank you. |
| 01:33:29.60 | Ray Withey | Yeah. |
| 01:33:29.72 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:33:29.75 | Danny Castro | Thank you. |
| 01:33:29.77 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:33:29.79 | Danny Castro | No. |
| 01:33:29.99 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:33:32.34 | Ray Withey | Um... What was the incremental cost of the newspapers? Because that's the one that I got some questions as to whether we would want to bother, but if it's in the hundreds of dollars, okay, you know. |
| 01:33:45.46 | Danny Castro | We had both the MarinScope and MarinIJ. The MarinIJ has a larger outreach and readership But MarinScope is also a newspaper The cost for the print ads ranged from $250 to $750. and you're talking about starting at the 1 8th page, 2 1 half page. I would suggest in the middle if I think a quarter page is probably adequate. The Marin IJ, a little bit more in cost, ranging from $750 to $31.50. |
| 01:34:07.49 | Barbara Sapienza | Thank you. |
| 01:34:07.54 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:34:07.55 | Barbara Sapienza | to the next episode. |
| 01:34:17.49 | Danny Castro | their one quarter pages, 1,500. and that's for the print ad and then the the online advertisements are much, much less in cost. |
| 01:34:27.31 | Ray Withey | Yeah. Okay, thank you. |
| 01:34:29.20 | Danny Castro | Frequency is the key to newspaper advertising. |
| 01:34:30.94 | Ray Withey | Yeah, yeah. Chill. |
| 01:34:31.28 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:34:34.01 | Ray Withey | Thank you. you Thank you. Thank you. Any questions at this point? No? Any other questions? No. Okay. Let's... hear from the public and we may have some more questions. So, um... |
| 01:34:58.95 | Ray Withey | Um, Shelby van Meeder. |
| 01:35:09.10 | Shelby van Meeder | Hello. |
| 01:35:10.67 | Ray Withey | Good evening. |
| 01:35:12.56 | Shelby van Meeder | I, as you know, most of you know by this time, represent South Little Beautiful. I'm the founder of South Little Beautiful, and we are very excited about the general plan update and have been told that we'll have a part in determining what happens with our landscapes over the long term And we're very excited about this. So tonight, I just wanted to mention a couple of things. |
| 01:35:32.45 | Barbara Sapienza | you |
| 01:35:37.21 | Shelby van Meeder | I've gone over what Danny just presented and looked at the forms that are being used. And I just thought I would point out that a concern might be at this early stage. Just in terms of the forms that people can sign up on or that people who are interested in joining the committee can sign up on, there are no particular references, as I see it, to our landscapes. There are terms like land use, general land use, community design maybe, open space and parks, but I think it's a little late because I see this goes to the printer tomorrow, but we would very much be interested in, or I should perhaps speak for myself, would be very much interested in attracting people who really care about our landscape. So if this terminology can be just shifted a little bit so that it's a little more clear someone may have an interest in this field, they could actually apply and or express interest. So with that in mind, I will only ask at this point that as we go forward here, and we know we'll be working with you all As we go forward, any places within the general plan where landscapes can be given appropriate consideration, since we all, you the city, have invested so much money in landscapes over the years. And we're just concerned that this be part of the general plan from here on, and I think we'll all benefit from that. So thank you so much for listening. |
| 01:37:14.78 | Ray Withey | Thank you, shall we? I only have one other card. Peter Van Meter. And if anybody else would like to... Ah, I've got some more cards submitted. Peter, welcome. |
| 01:37:33.38 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. Yes, I guess it is sort of a family affair, but I have different topics. First of all, I think it is really important that you do include some business owners or others that are not necessarily residents. We have a number of people who have long experience in town, |
| 01:37:36.40 | Ray Withey | you |
| 01:37:50.34 | Peter Van Meter | high quality, participation in the past a background of knowledge, particularly in certain geographic areas, and I would definitely include a select number of those. Maybe it's two people or whatever out of year 11, so that you have that perspective, because those people have a lot to offer. Secondly, I think that the concept of this matrix and evaluating people based on geography and areas of interest is fine, but I'm very concerned that there's not a check box on that application for somebody who can offer an overall vision or a broad perspective because if you're just going to be choosing people in their geographic location in town or their particular area of expertise, I think that you may find that they're going to be eliminating some people who can offer. a bigger view and not just focusing on one particular area because they might be excluded from the selection process because they fail in getting a check mark in a particular box. Those would really be my two comments and I hope that we're not too late on that printing because I'd love to see a little box added for something, words such as broad vision or something of that nature. |
| 01:39:01.18 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Peter. Melanie Marchant. |
| 01:39:17.68 | Ray Withey | Hi, Marilyn. |
| 01:39:19.13 | Melanie Marchant | Hi, everybody. Melanie Maharshan, Suslita resident. around a circle. Um, Speaking to the point of whether or not only residents should be on the GPAC, I think it's really critical that everyone who's in our community be able to participate so that we get adequate representation of the diverse points of view of our city. And it sounds to me like our honored that we're going to have. well, I'll say guest, but Nuno Matias from Cascades, Portugal, would probably qualify to be on the GPAC, but that many of our partners here in the city who have been with us, for instance, businesses for a long time who serve on committees who are really an important part of the fabric of our city, would not qualify potentially to be a part of this important steering discussion for our city. It just doesn't make sense to me. I think anybody who pays taxes in this town and who contributes to the fabric of our community really should be able to have a voice in this. So I think we should strongly consider having businesses as well as people who work in our city on the GPAC. Thank you. |
| 01:40:35.19 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Jeff Jacobs? |
| 01:40:48.13 | Jeffrey Chase | Thanks, Melanie. Also the anchor outs, of course, since we are still here and now you have begun a movement I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS. Let's talk about the plan, the general plan, since that is The topic here. The M group is charging $750,000 for this general plan. That might be one of the reasons why you're rushing this through, so they don't have to tar their fingers with what you've just done. To me, that proves one thing. THAT MONEY RULES. that they're being paid $750,000, so they're gonna come up with the idea that anybody that has $750,000 has a right to participate in the plan. The plan for Sausalito is going to be This. You've just begun. A movement. to unite some of the wildest, craziest, and I say crazy in a good way, people that there's no other way that they could have been united except for your vote. that Marin County, |
| 01:42:07.77 | Jeffrey Chase | has 3.5% of its people on assistance, government assistance. It is the second least of all the counties in California. Other counties, many of them that voted for Donald Trump, have 40%. on general assistance. You cannot take care of your poor. You cannot take care of your homeless. You cannot take care of the people who were born in Marin that are living on the anchorage. You cannot take care of your workers. 60%? come from outside the county every day, and they cannot afford money. TO LIVE HERE. THAT INCLUDES THE POLICE, THE LIBRARIANS, And the teachers. What kind of world are you trying to create here? I'm curious about that. And I understand the Brown Act says that for good reason that you cannot respond to public comments, except for two exceptions. One of them I used in the last meeting, that's future agenda items that we can demand a vote and of course you can vote or not vote as you see fit. The other one is if there is an emergency situation. There is now an emergency situation. You have condemned... A group of people, we are the only ones that take care of the homeless here in Sausalito, of the mentally ill, of the unemployed, of the people that are in poverty. and of the people that have got out of prison, |
| 01:43:51.38 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 01:43:52.12 | Jeffrey Chase | and you do not take care of them. |
| 01:43:54.64 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:43:54.65 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 01:43:54.84 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:43:54.97 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. That's an emergency. |
| 01:43:59.09 | Ray Withey | Thank you. I have one last card, Vicki Nichols. |
| 01:44:12.76 | Vicki Nichols | Good evening, Mayor Withey and council members. Vicki Nichols, I wanted to bring up one thing that I saw in the mission statement, and perhaps I looked at it quickly and I didn't see the staff report back there, I didn't see the word historic in there. I saw cultural and I saw neighborhood, but I didn't see historic. And that's a big component of our current general plan. So I'd lobby for at least that word getting in there and particularly the um, plan being formed in that context that we have a rich historical history here. Second, The thing I noticed was on the mailings, your success of your plan is gonna be built on your initial good outreach, and it sounds like you have a really good outreach program in mind, but I'd like to just say that I think 50% of Sausalito is rentals, and Often these mailers go to the landowners. In my case, my owner lives in Belvedere. So if he gets them, he doesn't tell us, but he doesn't even want to get them. The management company gets them, so we never get them. So if there could be a method that's by the number of units in the building, even if you say unit one, two, or three, without the names, at least you'll get seven there that usually we can pass out or we try to get everybody in the building. The banners work, if you know when you're gonna have your meetings, a week before people look at the banner on Bridgeway and down by, the Trident when they're walking around. And I just wanna say that you can already see some interest here. You're gonna have 11 members. There's a lot of interest in various topics, but my understanding is that as you're going through this, you'll have the subject matter, and as that section comes up, there'll be a lot of input, so someone will still be able to participate with whatever their subject is. I know in Nevado's doing theirs right now, and I saw Stephanie here, I think Mill Valley is, but I'm not sure, but in Nevado's, they're going topic by topic, opening it up for broad discussion and comment, so I don't know if you're gonna do that, but that seems to work. And I would just plug again that Thank you. I think we're getting great value from M Group and this price I think is very reasonable and I think we'll get a very good job. And thank goodness our housing element is already done to address some of our homeless issues in our housing. Thank you. |
| 01:46:44.82 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Vicki. Is there any other member of the, please. |
| 01:46:54.35 | Kevin Kiefer | Thanks for the opportunity to speak. My name is Kevin Kiefer. I live in the Anchorage, the settlement community. that is in the Anchorage. It's never been. correctly addressed within former general plans. So now that the M group is receiving three quarters of a million dollars to update, is it going to be just regurgitating your old general plan or the fiction of the old general plan back at you? Or is the M group actually going to challenge you to really, excuse me, to really update the general plan? And to take bold steps. Because they are very well insured for liability for errors, omission, and negligent action. Hopefully those aren't intentional errors, omissions, or negligent actions. Hopefully, fiction will not prevail over the friction that will be caused by the truth. And the truth will be known through this general plan update. Thank you. |
| 01:48:11.54 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:48:16.69 | Ray Withey | And I have a card for Richard Weaver. |
| 01:48:26.10 | Richard Weaver | Thank you. I hope you all sleep well at night. Obviously the truth is so. Not so obviously, however the truth is. So what? I hope that's not the premise that you guys are working on. |
| 01:48:57.39 | Ray Withey | Sir, do you have anything to add? |
| 01:49:01.83 | Richard Weaver | My time's not up. I'm waiting to think here. Uh-huh. the most exciting time of life is now. In it lie the virtues of yesterday and dreams of tomorrow. Now is a time for doing things planned and a time for planning things to do. Be ever aware of it lest it flee from you. Be always alert, let's the thief take it from you. If you so lived now, yesterday will not have been in vain, nor will tomorrow be filled with false hope or empty promise. yesterday was, tomorrow will be. Only now is. |
| 01:49:54.02 | Richard Weaver | Thank you, sir. Take a deep breath and hold on. |
| 01:50:01.77 | Richard Weaver | do not yield my time. |
| 01:50:06.58 | Richard Weaver | is very important to me. I have only very little left, you see. |
| 01:50:44.44 | Richard Weaver | It's very important to relish time, isn't it? to enjoy it. to live it fully. your own expectations instead of the demands of another? |
| 01:51:00.17 | Richard Weaver | I think it is. I think it's a wonderful thing, Tom. Time to reflect. time to acknowledge, time to explore. on to investigate. Time to expose. |
| 01:51:20.39 | Richard Weaver | And I believe that both of our times are just about up. Thank you very much. |
| 01:51:29.42 | Ray Withey | Thank you, sir. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to comment on this matter. Okay, seeing none, we'll close public comment. So we need to give some direction to staff. I think the items are up there. Who would like to... Kick off some comments here. Commission statement, roll, any comments? |
| 01:51:52.55 | Joan Cox | I had one comment on the mission statement. Two comments. The second sentence of the mission statement says the GPAC will promote a general plan update. That sounds to me like we're going to advertise it. So I'd like to perhaps consider encourage instead of promote. a general plan that respects, blah, blah, blah. And I'd also like, in consideration of Vicki Nichols' comment, after the word cultural, I'd like to add the word historic. So it conserves the cultural, historic, artistic, business, social, and neighborhood diversity and character. |
| 01:52:30.59 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:52:30.60 | Joe Burns | Anybody have any comments, questions? Did you bring that up at the commission? |
| 01:52:35.28 | Joan Cox | We already gave some refinements, but we have not seen this version until this meeting. |
| 01:52:35.63 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I'm pretty gay. |
| 01:52:44.54 | Jill Hoffman | I don't have any objections to those. I think those are good. |
| 01:52:47.11 | Ray Withey | Yeah. Okay, good. So Danny, you've, Heather, you. Oh, that's not all the comments though. No, no, just on the mission. |
| 01:52:52.74 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Just on our mission statement. |
| 01:52:54.58 | Ray Withey | Okay? We're good with that? |
| 01:52:57.45 | Joan Cox | then on the |
| 01:52:58.33 | Ray Withey | If you could go to the Next one. Advisory Committee, roll. |
| 01:53:01.33 | Joan Cox | Yeah. where it says, The last thing says make a recommendation. I feel as though the GPAC is going to make recommendations to the Planning Commission and this, I know, everybody, I'm a stickler, so I would say recommendations instead of a recommendation. Completely agree. |
| 01:53:20.56 | Joe Burns | the very last |
| 01:53:21.55 | Joan Cox | The very last bullet. |
| 01:53:22.39 | Ray Withey | I know it. |
| 01:53:22.95 | Joe Burns | Oh, God, thanks. |
| 01:53:22.97 | Ray Withey | point. |
| 01:53:23.46 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:53:24.62 | Ray Withey | Any comments on that? Any other comments on this roll? No. Okay, good. Danny, Heather, you're fine with that. What was the next item that you, if you could go to the recommendation slide. It's makeup, I think. There was like five or six on there. you wanted comments on? |
| 01:53:51.89 | Ray Withey | Okay, number one's done. Okay, media outlets. So do we want to do all the media outlets? And really the question is, do we want to bother with the newspapers, it seems to me, is the only question. |
| 01:54:04.16 | Jill Hoffman | I, yeah, I'm somewhat skeptical about whether or not that would achieve what we want to do, and it's expensive, and I think we have other outlets. Yeah. Since we're mailing, |
| 01:54:11.97 | Joan Cox | Since we're mailing, you |
| 01:54:13.20 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:54:13.22 | Joan Cox | to all the residents. |
| 01:54:13.96 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:54:13.98 | Joan Cox | precedence. |
| 01:54:16.26 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but I take Vicki Nichols' comments, though, that can we perhaps make sure that |
| 01:54:16.93 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:54:22.76 | Jill Hoffman | that our mailers are actually going to the people that are living here instead of some other location. I think that's a really valid point. |
| 01:54:28.46 | Joan Cox | And so the great thing about the mailing houses is, I know from recent experience, they do return things that aren't deliverable. So then you have an opportunity to correct whatever was undeliverable about them. |
| 01:54:35.56 | Ray Withey | opportunity. |
| 01:54:39.34 | Ray Withey | I mean, coming from a you know, wearing an old campaign hat, you know, people who are renters who live in whatever, are residents and voters and therefore the voter and therefore. Registration list. They're on the registration list so they should be getting it. You should be getting it. |
| 01:54:52.96 | Joan Cox | REGISTRATION. So that's what we're doing. |
| 01:54:59.04 | Joe Burns | I mean, it's just how you choose to mail. You can mail to owners or you can mail to owner occupies. Well, we want to make sure we mail shortly to a resident. |
| 01:55:02.35 | Ray Withey | We want to make sure we mail shortly to as broader group as possible. that we all in agreement with Dr. |
| 01:55:09.79 | Danny Castro | And I think the difference is there's the broader group is the postal addresses, but we can verify and make sure that it reaches the broader so that it's both |
| 01:55:18.29 | Joe Burns | Right. And you put to current resident, not if you put to current resident in those as opposed to a name, then it'll stick with the address. If you put it to a name, it'll... Thank you. |
| 01:55:28.87 | Joan Cox | Right, it might come back. |
| 01:55:28.89 | Joe Burns | BELIEVE. |
| 01:55:30.19 | Danny Castro | Thank you. |
| 01:55:30.22 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:55:30.24 | Danny Castro | OK. |
| 01:55:32.69 | Joan Cox | And then I do agree with the... you know, counter materials, PowerPoint slides in the various meetings, the other outreach approaches I thought were very well conceived. Thank you. |
| 01:55:47.91 | Ray Withey | Okay, everybody okay with that? Okay, approve, provide revisions, the outreach. Did you get clearance on this? Ah, sorry. |
| 01:55:51.74 | Joe Burns | The outreach. Yeah. |
| 01:55:54.45 | Unknown | I think we didn't quite. |
| 01:55:56.90 | Ray Withey | Yeah, I think we didn't quite. |
| 01:55:59.36 | Unknown | Thank you. Yes, okay. So we eliminate newspaper completely. Eliminate newspaper. |
| 01:55:59.90 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:56:00.02 | Joan Cox | Yes. So we eliminate newspaper completely? Eliminate newspaper. |
| 01:56:02.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:02.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:56:02.98 | Ray Withey | Yeah, eliminate print newspaper. Print newspaper, yeah. |
| 01:56:10.52 | Jill Hoffman | And I have one, I'm sorry, I have one. I'm gonna need your guys' help for this. Sure. So, and I know when Shelby Van Meter came up and talked about landscaping, |
| 01:56:13.86 | Cameron | Sure. |
| 01:56:14.32 | Barbara Sapienza | So, |
| 01:56:19.01 | Jill Hoffman | Where was her suggestion that we include that? So I have a suggestion for that. |
| 01:56:20.90 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry, my notes are not good. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. On two different places. In the application, there is a list of areas of interest. And I think that on the first line, there's one that says architecture slash community design. It should say also slash landscape. Thank you. And the same is true on the materials that will be at the counter. You have a list of the areas of interest, and the fourth one down is architecture slash community design. It should also say slash landscape. Okay. And then I'd also like to suggest to Peter Van Meter's point that on the application, a square be added for prior similar experience. |
| 01:57:06.12 | Danny Castro | . Prior, similar? |
| 01:57:08.35 | Joan Cox | Prior similar experience. |
| 01:57:13.50 | Joan Cox | And then on the outreach materials. On the application, you already have on the last page of the application that they're aware that the general plan update is a three-year effort, but I think that bears repeating on the... on the |
| 01:57:38.27 | Joan Cox | in the application where it says, are you available to attend daytime meetings, evening meetings? I think it should also include, are you able to make a three-year commitment? The reason being, on the housing element, it was very disruptive when someone who had worked with us for half of the effort resigned in the middle and a new person had to get up to speed. It was very challenging, as Ray can tell you, for the new person. So, you know, it doesn't mean that someone would be disqualified for that reason, but I think it's important to emphasize the importance of the length of the commitment. |
| 01:58:19.65 | Ray Withey | Okay. |
| 01:58:24.61 | Ray Withey | Danny, Heather, did you catch all that? Everybody okay with that? Okay, number four. Should the advisory committee be limited just to social legal residents or open to a broader set of stakeholders, my words? |
| 01:58:42.50 | Joe Burns | Yes. I think this is a big one, right? I mean, we have a lot of a lot of areas and it's hard to hone in on them and find the specific nuances for each. I do support having business on there. I'm not necessarily concerned whether they are resident or not. As far as business, I would be more concerned about the business type that we have, office-style business as well as retail-style business since those are two very... different zoning applications and business use applications within the general plan that maybe they be specified on what type of businesses. We don't necessarily have two restaurants and then nobody from the professional services. So if we were to break down business, I would be more concerned about the type as opposed to whether they are also a resident or not a resident. And then on, uh, Yeah, I got to get used to with these glasses. Yeah, I think that's, oh, on Peter's note, yeah, getting back to the... to who else would be on there. Broader, I was wondering if maybe an at-large position or somebody that kind of encompasses that broader. They don't have to fall into a specific role, but they have had past experience, but that type of thing. So, and maybe Danny could help identify that. Thank you. |
| 02:00:13.44 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I think I agree to a certain extent with Joe that I think we need to have or at least have the opportunity for people that are property owners or business owners. And as Melanie said, Melanie Marchand said, you know, people that pay taxes here, they still pay taxes here. They're a property owner and they're a business owner, and they have an interest in the health and well-being of our town. But I do see the need that it should be heavily, you know, resident-centric as well. So if we're talking about seven seats, then maybe a policy, maybe not hard and fast, but maybe a policy that a certain number of seats are residents and a certain number of seats would be non-residents. But my understanding is we're going to vet these anyway. whatever the applications are so the numbers, you know. |
| 02:00:57.58 | Joe Burns | Well, if we agree like two are business, we could say no more than one is a non-resident or something like that. |
| 02:00:59.49 | Jill Hoffman | MORE THAN ONE. Right, yeah, something like that. Yeah, something like that. And I'm not sure. Go ahead. |
| 02:01:04.72 | Joan Cox | Danny has a Danny had a suggestion in there, the second suggestion in your menu of three was, heavily focused on resident participation. So I would be, AND I THINK THAT'S A willing to do that. I do believe that the perspective of residents who live here is different from businesses who earn money here. And so I do think it's important to But again, The GPAC is not exclusive. This process will be open to every single community interest that's out there. We will be involving the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary, the Lions. Every business owner will have an opportunity to participate in this process, whether or not, however many members of each. section is on the G pack. |
| 02:02:00.31 | Ray Withey | Yeah, my thoughts are that why tie our hands? We're after the best people that we can get, the best minds we can get, the best thinkers that bring the most diverse experience, whether it be geographical, whether it be their role in town, whether their perspective in town, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And in the end, we appoint them. |
| 02:02:04.05 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:02:26.04 | Ray Withey | My suggestion is we don't start playing with numbers and trying to figure out numbers, but just rely on the fact that we're not going to exclude non-residents, but it's up to us to then decide who is the best, and if there's... a few non-residents whose particular stakeholders, that's up to our discretion. That's how I... Yeah, so we're not putting the solutions out right now. |
| 02:02:45.46 | Joan Cox | With that said, I think it's important that the selection process be a little bit different from what you outlined. So you had said that the process should focus on |
| 02:02:53.61 | Peter Van Meter | said. Thank you. |
| 02:02:58.98 | Joan Cox | areas of interest and geographic representation. With respect, I think the I'm not sure. The candidate applications need to be reviewed in their entirety. And there should not be a focus that's limited to their geographic representation or their interest, but rather to their qualifications to serve the community on this committee. |
| 02:03:22.86 | Ray Withey | And I think as a council, we would presumably seek some sort of geographical diversity. But that shouldn't be the primary driver, is your point, I think. |
| 02:03:30.92 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:03:34.69 | Joan Cox | Correct, and we have some already. |
| 02:03:35.21 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:03:37.02 | Joan Cox | on the GPAC with the four of us. We're all from different areas. |
| 02:03:37.05 | Ray Withey | Thank you. with. |
| 02:03:38.97 | Danny Castro | Right. And if I can just comment on that, I think we can certainly tailor the summary matrix to include all of those points so that that would be included So those are the factors in which we would then populate that and narrow the list. |
| 02:03:55.39 | Joan Cox | . I think you can populate the matrix with those areas, but where you describe the process, I think we can't say that we're narrowing it based on areas of interest in geographic representation. I think you have to give latitude correct qualifications. |
| 02:04:08.13 | Jill Hoffman | Latitude. I'd like to speak back to the resident versus non-resident issue. I think that in order to have confidence and credibility from the town, from the residents who are, you know, or interested in this issue, I think that we do need to have some sort of, at least maybe not a hard and fast rule because I do want to have that flexibility if we do have great candidates. But I think it needs to be clear for, the people of the town that this is an effort for the town, not necessarily for any particular interest group, I guess you might say. |
| 02:04:50.02 | Barbara Sapienza | Thank you. |
| 02:04:51.06 | Jill Hoffman | So. I do think that we need to have some sort of number of the seven that are residents, and then another number that could be either or. Just to make sure that we know that there's always going to be, as residents, that we know that there's always going to be that voice on the thing. So I mean there's seven. |
| 02:05:11.08 | Barbara Sapienza | So, |
| 02:05:12.68 | Jill Hoffman | whatever, if you want to do four residents and three maybe, you know, or something. I don't know. I mean, yeah, five residents and then two that may or may not that we have flexibility. I mean, just as a starting point, we can always change that later, I suppose. But that's kind of what I'd. the direction I'd like to go, especially for this first round. And I'm guessing that we're going to have great candidates that are both residents and business owners. would be my guess. So I don't know. Anybody else have any thoughts on that? I would support that. |
| 02:05:43.68 | Joan Cox | I would support. |
| 02:05:46.72 | Jill Hoffman | And Danny, you could help me with some language. Danny, if you could. |
| 02:05:49.06 | Ray Withey | Danny, if you could go back a couple of slides. You have some options up there, and we could perhaps... Uh, |
| 02:05:57.69 | Joan Cox | The second. |
| 02:05:58.33 | Ray Withey | Okay, preference given to residents, however, exceptions could be made for, you know, I wouldn't, I mean, yes, everybody should be outstanding candidates. So preference should be given, but exceptions could be made for, you know, candidates with relevant experience, surely, is what we're saying. |
| 02:06:16.28 | Joan Cox | Yeah? Yeah, that's what I was suggesting. |
| 02:06:17.89 | Ray Withey | So preference given to residents, however, exceptions will be made for candidates with relevant experience. |
| 02:06:25.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Can we say something like non-residents not to exceed X number. |
| 02:06:30.37 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:06:30.42 | Joe Burns | If you wish, if you wish. Let's first consider our pool. A lot of our talent, you mentioned Chamber, Rotary, Lions, our staff. |
| 02:06:30.54 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:06:32.23 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 02:06:41.43 | Joe Burns | these aren't necessarily residents. So a lot of our, I mean, not that they should be, but there's a lot of talent that aren't business owners or residents. They are high-ranking business employees. They might work for a bank, but they don't own the bank, so they're not a business owner. So I think we have to be fairly careful on our limitations. I'm not sure. I would easily support something that says a majority of or a number that have to be residents, but I don't want to get too confined in are they an owner? Because in our general population, we have some people out there. |
| 02:07:10.10 | Ray Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:07:15.12 | Ray Withey | you |
| 02:07:15.18 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:07:15.87 | Ray Withey | OK, someone come up with some language. Give it to Donny and Liz. Are we sort of? |
| 02:07:16.24 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:07:20.36 | Joan Cox | All right, preference given to residents. However, exceptions could be made for outstanding candidates. |
| 02:07:27.43 | Ray Withey | With Ronald and Shakespeare? |
| 02:07:28.49 | Joan Cox | With relevant experience, not to exceed |
| 02:07:33.27 | Vicki Nichols | STICK. |
| 02:07:34.55 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:07:34.56 | Jill Hoffman | No, no. Not to exceed two. Two. I'm going to throw out two. I would go with two. |
| 02:07:39.20 | Ray Withey | I go to. Thank you. And we can always change that down the road. |
| 02:07:42.92 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:07:42.94 | Ray Withey | I'm sorry. |
| 02:07:43.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:07:43.12 | Ray Withey | Everybody happy? |
| 02:07:43.15 | Jill Hoffman | Everybody happy. |
| 02:07:45.69 | Ray Withey | So we're happy. Thank you. Danny, Heather, you've got all you need. |
| 02:07:45.77 | Danny Castro | Great. Heather, you to make sure. We've got what we need. |
| 02:07:54.02 | Ray Withey | All right, very good. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you very much. And we are going to take a five minute break. |
| 02:07:54.51 | Danny Castro | Thank you so much. |
| 02:08:03.13 | Ray Withey | Thank you. So we are temporarily adjourned. |
| 02:08:07.98 | Adam Politzer | The injury part registered because he got in control. |
| 02:08:12.06 | Unknown | Is she talking to anybody? |
| 02:08:13.93 | Adam Politzer | We told her that she needs to talk to counseling and they'd offer counseling to everybody. You got to go. |
| 02:08:15.11 | Unknown | Thank you. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:08:21.24 | Unknown | Oh, yikes. |
| 02:08:35.38 | Ray Withey | Okay, thank you, and welcome back. This is the Sausalito City Council meeting for April 18th. Um. We are skipping item 6B. That is being moved to a later date. And, if that's okay with everybody. And we will move on to item 6C, which is the Transportation Authority of Marin update and complete streets information. And it's my great pleasure to welcome Diane Steinhauser, who's the Executive Director of the Transportation Authority of Marin, or TAM. And tonight, we are not going to use any acronyms. We're going to define all our acronyms. And it's also my great pleasure to welcome Councilmember Stephanie Moulton-Peters of Mill Valley, former mayor of Mill Valley, and who's currently the chairperson of TAM. So welcome, Stephanie. |
| 02:09:46.29 | Unknown | Thank you very much Mayor Withey and council members, city manager and staff. It's a pleasure to be here in your beautiful council chambers. I just want to say that we appreciate the time. you're making to let us present to you. It's an informational presentation. We want to give you an idea of what we are doing in Sausalito specifically and in Marin County, and to answer any questions or take your comments. So thank you again for having us this evening. Now I'll turn it over to Diane. |
| 02:10:14.84 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Thank you. Good evening. |
| 02:10:17.76 | Unknown | the |
| 02:10:17.97 | Ray Withey | day |
| 02:10:18.62 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to come and speak briefly this evening, Mayor Withey and members of the council. I'm going to pause here while we locate our fascinating and informational PowerPoint, which will keep your attention and wake you up. So the rest of the evening goes smooth sailing, and you're more informed than you've ever been when it comes to transportation. We're out doing some educational briefings and what we're doing in each city, town and with the county is talking about what kind of funding we have, what we're learning from the public, our transportation needs. We've been doing a lot of surveying and outreach and we wanted to hear from you a bit on what you believe some of your needs might be, if you so choose. We're not here with any action in mind. We want to make sure you understand what our sales tax covers. We might pursue a renewal that sales tax in a future year. We haven't made that decision yet. So we're kind of on an educational tour at this point. And I want to make sure that I leave some time for questions, so I'm going to whiz through this. And if you have a question, feel free to interrupt, and I'd be glad to get to it. Congratulations. We understand you had a very successful launch here recently, and we're very pleased that we're able to capture this beautiful photo regarding your event back here earlier in April. This was not an April Fool's joke, even though it occurred on April 1st. Tamboard. Tamboard is a fully representative board. We have all 11 cities and towns represented, and all five members of the board of supervisors. In each county around the Bay Area, there's a transportation agency that's a county-wide agency, and this is ours. The counties vary in terms of membership. We're very fortunate in that we've got a full membership of representatives who make decisions regarding transportation. I'm going to talk a little bit more about what some of those decisions are. I wanted to do just a very quick setting with respect to why is there so much traffic? So we're doing surveys and we're hearing a lot about traffic. And we know that we've had quite a growth in traffic in recent times, and we are working at trying to find solutions on how to manage that traffic and give people options to travel. And this was a projection that was developed by MTC and ABAG back around two years ago, And it shows how many jobs we were expecting to get into Marin between 2010 and 2040. So over a 30-year period, 16,800 jobs. Well, guess what? From the state, we learned that between 2010 and 2015, we added 13,500 of those 16,000 jobs, and I understand And we're well over 14,000 now. So we're bringing a lot of workers in. You can see them in terms of worker trucks. You can hear about teachers, firemen, et cetera, talking to those organizations. We're struggling with providing sufficient housing, and therefore we're importing a lot of these workers into Marin. Our job growth has been much higher than what was expected. So you can see just a rough graph here, information we got from Caltrans in terms of traffic on Highway 101 from 2010 when we were coming out of our recession up till 2013, and we're going to be adding a few more years. This is going to climb even higher. We've had over a 150% rise in traffic on 101. My condolences if you need to travel on 101. There's about a seven and a half, eight mile backup every night from roughly Sir Francis Drake, all the way through Southern Marin at times to the Golden Gate Bridge. I will occasionally get calls from the Golden Gate Bridge telling us to get our traffic off of their bridge, which is stuck there. But this is kind of just some of the background, a lot of job growth, not a lot of housing. We do have some pass through traffic, not as much as we expected with respect to people coming through Marin to get to the East Bay and I'll talk about that more in a minute. So we did an origin and destination study, good timing. We learned that about two to three percent of traffic on 101 in the evening commute is coming across the Golden Gate Bridge headed to the East Bay. So it's not a very big amount. There was some conjecture that was as high as 10 or 12%, but that's really not what we saw. We bought 75 million pieces of data from various organizations, companies that collect cell phone data, GPS data. Anything you have on in your car, you are now traceable. And we hired a team, consultants, and they did quite a bit of manipulation of the data. We're able to do these kinds of charts for all our jurisdictions. You can see here a breakdown of where Sausalito residents travel to work every day. Let me go now, just with that setting in mind, let me talk a little bit about funding, local funding. We have a 20-year transportation sales tax. It's half a cent, half a percent, and it was passed in 2004, and it expires in March 31st of 2025, so towards the end of 2024. That sales tax, we decided what to spend the funds on here in Marin with a voter-approved measure, generates about $25 million a year right now. We also have a $10 vehicle registration fee. It generates about $2 million a year. What do we get from the federal government? About $2 to $3 million a year. And what we get from the state is about $2 million a year. Now, we did see a recent increase in funds available from the state, so we're going to make a little adjustment on this chart. But the point I'm trying to make here is the local funds are very important. So that local sales tax and that local vehicle registration fee that voters passed here in Marin mean a lot to the transportation money that we have available. We're one of 24 counties in the state that have a countywide transportation sales tax. We added three new ones this past November, 24 out of 55. So, you know, we're getting close to half of the county statewide. Eight of the nine Bay Area counties have a transportation-related sales tax. Solano does not. We passed our sales tax on the fourth try. So we learned a lot from the first three tries in terms of what the public found acceptable and what they did not. Our self help because we're a county that helps ourselves that has passed our own sales tax we get some automatic funding from the state. Part of that new state measure distributes a bit of money to each of those 24 counties, kind of as a match or reward. And this is one of the reasons that counties try and pass these transportation sales taxes, is it attracts other funds, particularly in this case from the state. Here's just a brief overview of the new state program. This was passed on April 5th by the legislature and approved by the governor. It's called the State Road Maintenance and Rehab Program, and it's going to help fund shortfalls in road maintenance and rehab. This is just a graph of the Caltrans state highway funding needs. You can see from 2004 up through 2016 how those needs have grown. And the funding goes partway to meeting those needs, but not all the way. That's true of our local streets and roads here in Marin as well. Here's some of the components contained. in SB1, and I'm going to talk a little bit more here in a minute about Complete Streets. That program is projected to bring about $8 million a year for all of our jurisdictions countywide in guaranteed funds. The projected amount for Sausalito is $286,000 in additional funds. Marine Transit and Golden Gate also are going to receive some additional funding for transit operations out of that program that was approved. We're going to have a $0.12 increase in gas tax, additional increases on diesel fuel, and some additional vehicle license fees that are part of that program. So let's talk about our half-cent transportation sales tax. It goes to four general areas. I want to talk about each of these briefly. But first, this is just a quick view of how our sales tax has ebbed and flowed with the economy. We started out fairly strong and saw growth up through 2007. We dipped down in 2008-9, and we've climbed back up steadily since. As mentioned earlier, in fiscal year 16-17, we're looking to collect a little over $25 million. We get this information from the Board of Equalization. This is the top 25 taxpayers in Marin County. This list is for 15-16. If you looked at this list in fiscal year 5-6, so 10 years ago, you would have seen a few more car dealers. You would have seen not as many gas stations and not as many of the big box stores. So we've got Target, Costco, Home Depot, and others, and even Whole Foods, which you wouldn't have seen 10 years ago either. Local transit, I'm very pleased this evening to have with us Nancy Whelan. She's the general manager for Marine Transit, and she's going to be talking a little bit about that piece of our sales tax that goes to transit and what that does in Sausalito. So here's Nancy. |
| 02:21:10.18 | Nancy Whelan | Thank you, Diane, and thank you, Mayor Withey and council members. I'm very happy to be here tonight, talk a little bit about transit service. |
| 02:21:17.15 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | just using that right now. |
| 02:21:18.07 | Nancy Whelan | You're there. OK, great. Marine Transit is the local transit provider, I'm sure you know that. And we offer fixed route service, we offer services to students, as well as Muir Woods Shuttle and the Stagecoach to West Marin, as well as ADA Paratransit Services and other services to seniors and people with disabilities. Um, We, looking back to 2004 when Measure A was passed, we were facing a significant shortfall and deficit. We would have been canceling service. When the measure passed, we've actually been able to now add about 34% more service since 2004. And most recently, just in June of 2016, we added 19% more service, responding to what we knew our customers wanted, which more frequent service more direct service and adding some express routes which we'll see a little bit of here in Sausalito with the passage of measure a we've been able to expand all of our key transit programs serving seniors students and some of the less densely populated areas of Marin County our annual operating budget is about 28 million dollars million there, and that donut chart shows the sources. I know it's a little tough to read, but the most important one is that Measure A provides about 40% of all of our revenue. The state and federal sources account for about 25%. There's a variety of sources up there kind of at the top of that. And as Diane mentioned, state and federal transit funding has been declining, generally, and we've been increasingly dependent on the local sources of funds. We did get a little boost here with SB1, but just a little one, about $600,000 to $800,000 a year. Whoops, I hit that too fast. I'm not sure. In terms of the services that we provide, the largest share of services we offer are fixed route services. And here in Sausalito, Marin Transit operates three routes every 15 to 30 minutes daily at the Sausalito ferry. These routes combined carry about 1300 passengers a day. Route 17 operates from Sausalito to the Depot in Mill Valley through Strawberry and then up to San Rafael Transit Center. And some later evening service on that route provides service workers here in Sausalito with a means of getting around by public transit. Our rural Route 61, that's a stagecoach, goes between the ferry and Bolinas on weekends and from Marin City to Bolinas weekdays. And June last year we had an express route, 71X, to provide faster service between southern, central, and northern Marin. Prior to the addition of the 71X, riders traveling between Sausalito and Nevado, should there be that trip, would be on local routes coming off the freeway multiple times and they might need to transfer at the San Rafael Transit Center. And it would take over an hour, probably, to make that trip. And now, with the 71X, you're able to make that trip in less than 45 minutes. So it's been pretty popular, and we have a rider here in the house tonight. In addition, Golden Gate Transit, of course, operates three routes at the Sausalito Ferry and an additional three routes at the Spencer Avenue bus pad. Golden Gate Service is focused, of course, on commuters going into San Francisco. And we coordinate our services with them through transfers and that sort of thing. And in the past year our coordination has resulted in the more frequent service along the highway 101 corridor so that today between the routes operated by Golden Gate and the routes operated by Marin Transit, you can get a bus every 15 minutes at most of the freeway bus pads on 101. We also operate the Muirwood shuttle. When Highway 1 is open, we usually start the shuttle service the first weekend in April. This year, due to the road closure, we will probably begin operating in May. Last year, we carried more than 124,000 riders on the two routes, the 66 and the 66F. It was about a 12% increase over 2015. On average, 17% of weekend and holiday visitors to the park arrive on the Muir Woods shuttle. It's a very popular service, and, of course, parking is somewhat constrained up there at the park. In 2016, the number of people who drove or rode in a car to the shuttle dropped significantly, and the number who arrived using other modes increased. For example, in 2016, 37% of the riders who boarded the shuttle in Sausalito took the ferry and arrived on the ferry. So we're getting some more cars off the road that way. We have nearly 25% of all of our riders on marine transit are under the age of 18. We offer transit routes that are scheduled to meet the bell times of schools in some areas, as well as a discounted youth pass program. Here locally, you have the Route 115. We have students who ride the Route 61 to get to Tamalpais High School. And we offer a youth pass program that allows unlimited travel on Marin transit routes anywhere in the county at a cost of $175 for six months, $325 for a year. And in 2015-16, a total of 214 annual passes were distributed to the local schools, and all of them were distributed for free to income-qualified students. We also started a new program in 2015 in partnership with the College of Marin. And that's where students who are enrolled with the college can use their ID to ride any of our services as well. And they do that for no additional charge. There's a student fee for the service, but everyone pays it. And they get a sticker and they get to ride any of our buses. And there are about 500 students a daily, 500 student trips daily on our service using the Com Pass as it's known. And then I'm sure you know Marin County has been ranked the second healthiest county in California. And its residents can expect to live longer than residents anywhere else in the country. As people are living both longer and healthier lives, they need more than the basic lifeline services. They also need ways to get around that are convenient, cost effective, and preferably don't involve driving. To help meet these needs, we provide a range of services under what we call the Marin Access brand. And that includes our ADA complimentary paratransit services as required by federal law. More than 5,000 paratransit strips were provided in Sausalito this last year. We provide a taxi subsidy program called Catch-A-Ride, where the same day rides are provided to seniors and people who are paratransit eligible. And over 1,000 passenger trips provided in Sausalito last year on that service. And then we work with volunteer driver programs to reimburse volunteers on a mileage basis, empowering riders to find their own driver. And then we reimburse them, and we also support community-based volunteer programs in Marin, including the Sausalito Village and Call-A-Ride Sausalito Seniors, which together provided almost 2,000 passenger trips in fiscal year 16. So it's been a very successful program as well. And lastly, within this suite of services to seniors and disabled people, we provide information, enrollment, counseling. and referrals on transportation for Marin seniors through our Travel Navigators program. And so that's been a really good program. We're doing more and more outreach with that to let seniors know and other people know about the types of services available to them. All the services I've gone over tonight are funded in some way with Measure A, and so it wouldn't be possible without the 55% that we get for those services. So I'll take questions later. After I'll turn it back to Diane. Thank you. |
| 02:29:04.10 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Thank you, Nancy. I want to talk a little bit now about another piece of our transportation sales tax, which is our carpool lane project through San Rafael. In April of 2010, we celebrated the opening of the last 3.2-mile segment of new highway lane through San Rafael. This project, if you look at this chart, the earlier phases of this overall project were funded from state and federal sources, the boxes on the left. By the time we finished the last phase of the project over Porto Suelo Hill, we were over $60 million in cost, and we had about a dozen fund sources. the $25 million that came out of the sales tax was very useful in that the board and I were able to go and seek grants and convince some of the larger regional and state agencies to put funds into the project. So the leveraging was very effective because we had that sales tax money to work with. This is that project under construction about 2008. You're going to see a new lane on the highway, a bike and pedestrian facility, and the first mile of smart train was actually built as part of a highway project in Marin County. We had to move the train over 50 feet to make room for the new highway lane both directions and the bike path over the hill. The voters approved the bike path specifically as part of the highway project. That was a very important feature to close a gap in the bike system. The next thing I want to talk briefly about is our local streets and roads funding. To date, we've handed out over $26 million from the sales tax to local jurisdictions. As of fiscal year 15-16, Sausalito has received about $718,000 with $900,000 projected to to come to you in additional funds. The local street and road funding comes to you at the beginning of the fiscal year. You get to decide what to spend it on. It's very flexible. And you send us a simple invoice, and we send the funds. This is based on the number of population and lane miles of road in each jurisdiction is how the money is divided up. There was also funding that was approved as part of our combination of federal money and some other local funding for your South Gateway Improvement Study and for the Gate 6 project. I want to talk a little bit about Complete Streets. When the public approved the sales tax measure back in 2004, TAM included a requirement that all road projects must consider the needs of all roadway users. Where feasible, very important concept, any locally defined bike and pedestrian projects or transit improvements would be implemented at the same time that the roadway was improved. This was a growing concept that was trying to take a paving project and expand it to consider sidewalks or bike lanes or transit stops also landscaping utilities other things ended up being folded into these projects now for our sales tax measure, this became a consideration that you, as a local jurisdiction, would make to look at the project and determine if it was feasible to include any other improvements besides the roadway paving signal and other work that's typical in a public works project in earlier years. This was all based on the feasibility and the local jurisdiction's determination of feasibility. So this was our measure a sales tax requirement. along came a couple of pieces of legislation in particular So this was our measure a sales tax requirement. Along came a couple of pieces of legislation, in particular the Complete Streets Act of 2008, which required that municipalities incorporate the concept of complete streets in the transportation element of their general plans. MTC took that AB 1358 requirement and folded it into the federal funding that MTC makes available. So, complete streets is a policy element under MTC's federal funding policy. It expects the needs of all users to be considered when a local street, road, or highway project is reconstructed. The local jurisdiction, however, retains authority over what is being built. So this is not taking away any of the authority you have to determine what is the right project in your community. There are procedural requirements. You have to document that you considered bikes, pedestrian, transit, and why you may not have chosen to proceed with those parts of a project. There are no housing expectations or requirements at all in the complete streets policy. And again, I want to emphasize that both with the MTC policy, the requirement is to consider, and with the Measure A sales tax policy, the requirement is to consider and where feasible. That decision is yours. None of these policies take that authority away from you as the owner of the asset. We also have under our Measure A program a number of major roads underway we were the substantial the sales tax was able to substantially fund the southern planning area improvements on miller avenue the fourth street west end project in san rafael and upcoming improvements on third street out in west marin sir, Sir Francis Drake, through Samuel P. Taylor Park, which had practically returned to gravel, was able to be improved. And then improvements on Novato Boulevard up in the northern planning area, and you may have been reading in the past year about improvements on Sir Francis Drake from Highway 101 up into the town of Ross, a project managed by the county. The last thing I want to just briefly touch on is our school program. So we're very proud of our Safe Routes to School program. Here's a list of some of the projects that we've been able to provide funding for in Sausalito. And we've distributed probably about four, four and a half million out of this Safe Pathways portion of Safe Routes. And we're very pleased to have gotten good applications from Sausalito and been able to make some of these improvements around some of your schools. We have an education and encouragement program. We are active in these schools in the Sausalito area. We're encouraging and training kids to consider walking, biking, and taking transit to school. I want to talk finally about some of our outreach and what we've learned. Back in 2015, we did a series of surveys. These were mostly at the county fair. We had about 600 surveys, most of which, over 80% were filled out by residents. We also had a couple of open public workshops where people came and we asked them to fill out surveys. We asked what projects were most important to people. And you can see here the list of replies that we got in terms of projects. With respect to what priorities would people like to have considered with respect to investing in funding congestion relief road maintenance yellow school bus or service came up as strong priority so this was spring summer of 2015 this past fall of 2016 we went out with a survey that was mostly distributed by cities through their next-door websites and Facebook. We got 3,814 responses. We were hoping to get 1,000. We asked people what would make a better future for transportation in Marin, and these are some of the answers we got there. You'll see some new aspects being proposed, as well as some of the other things that we found out the year before in terms of road maintenance, first last mile, access to transit, et cetera. The infrastructure for walking and biking had mostly to do with eliminating safety conflicts, where bikes, pedestrians, and cars were running into conflicts with each other. So there was an emphasis on safety in terms of how we invest in the future of walking and biking trips. Richmond-San or Fell Bridge Access, the Barrier Toll Authority, which is kind of a sister agency to MTC, is working on a project to open up that third lane on the Richmond Bridge. It's under construction right now. It'll go eastbound. It'll be open in November. We'll have some approach improvements. We'll start this summer on Drake and eventually some work up at Bellum as well so people can get to the bridge more easily. Nancy talked a little bit about planning for our aging populations, our seniors. We are hearing a greater need than we have funding for regarding senior mobility. First last mile access to transit, we're working closely with two programs, Emergency Ride Home and a Lyft partnership program to try and provide people options to get to and from smart. And so if anyone's interested in learning more about that, we have a team together that is providing some hands-on ambassador-type work regarding that SMART access. And SMART, we understand, will be open for service from Santa Rosa Airport up in northern Santa Rosa Road, all the way down to San Rafael sometime in late spring. And spring ends June 22nd, so we think they might start June 21st. We're not sure. But stay tuned for that as being a big new thing and new option for folks here in Marin. So with that, I'll stop and answer any questions that you might have. And thank you for your time. You've been very patient. Appreciate it. |
| 02:40:24.91 | Ray Withey | Diane, thank you very much for a very comprehensive presentation. Thank you. Questions? Questions of... Thank you. |
| 02:40:39.22 | Joe Burns | Please. Thank you, Diane. That's my first kind of education on both TAM as well as the complete streets. And it's interesting. I guess really the first one was we looked at the South Gateway improvement study at this council and thank you for those funds. What it told us is we're going to need a whole lot more funds. |
| 02:41:02.62 | Paul Smith | . |
| 02:41:03.21 | Joe Burns | WHERE IS THAT TYPE OF MULTIMODAL access point on your list and considerations? |
| 02:41:12.75 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Well, I'll tell you, I took some time to go through the study and look at all the four major segments and some of the improvements recommended there. We would probably like to work further with your team or your public works in particular and see what priorities that they might want to place. We do have annual bike and pedestrian funds that you can apply for. We also know that both our local street and road funds and the state's funds that they're sending down for road maintenance and rehab, that bike and pedestrian improvements are eligible. What we're seeing in a lot of jurisdictions is attention to safety. What are your biggest safety challenges? So you might want to consider how to prioritize the safety features. And what we did for Miller Avenue, and we'd be glad to work with you, is, you know, what is your package? What funds do you have available? What funds do we see on the horizon? and can we put kind of a perspective together for your corridor and see what we can do to plan this. for the corridor as a whole and project out a few years as to what we think might be coming in. It's kind of interesting. I emphasize safety because we are hearing from councils and from the public that they are very interested in traffic congestion, operation of local streets in terms of traffic signals. They want to make sure bikes and pedestrians are accommodated, but they also want to make sure The local electeds, including Tam, is taking a look at the high congestion. that exists and the struggle with respect to businesses, getting employees to and from. their workplaces. So, you know, it's, it's, there's no unique emphasis on bike ped, but I, I will make a we should all keep focusing on safety and those conflicts that we see between bike pad and traffic. |
| 02:43:22.21 | Joe Burns | And I think that's what we are identifying in that as well. Yeah. Great. Thank you. |
| 02:43:24.34 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:43:25.39 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:43:26.75 | Joan Cox | I had a similar question. I appreciated your Again, like Joe, this is my first go round on this. And I appreciated your explanation that the JUDY WOODRUFF. local infrastructure funding is based on number of miles of roads. But I wonder, for a city like Sausalito, if it might also be appropriate to look at the impact of traffic on the roads. You know, we have Bridgeway, which is the alternate bridgeway to the bridge. And so we probably incur a whole lot more impact, perhaps on our two miles of of roads than many of the other TAM jurisdictions do. So we have 11 counties. I did the math. If we were getting, you know, one-eleventh of 26 million, we'd be at 2.3 million instead of 718,000. So no. |
| 02:44:29.34 | Joan Cox | So I'd love to see Tam take into consideration impact and traffic not just raw number of miles. Well noted. And then the other comment I had, I was so happy to hear that you're committed to safe routes to school. One route that is really challenging for us is our tunnel between Marin City and Sausalito and we have students we had a murder there six years ago there's still no lighting it's full of graffiti we actually have people in town who would love to get busy and assist and put money and time and effort and there's some sort of jurisdictional quagmire over who is allowed to do what in that tunnel and we would love any help and I throw this out to every agency that has any that makes any mention of this area because I think we would love to have everyone's help in navigating that issue. |
| 02:45:39.96 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | No pun intended. |
| 02:45:40.00 | Joan Cox | No pun intended. |
| 02:45:41.95 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | provided some substantial funding to the county who's working with the city on lighting. I'm not sure exactly where that project is at, but let me follow up with your staff and get an understanding and make sure there's not something missing there with respect to that location. |
| 02:45:59.57 | Joan Cox | And again, you might be on to something that I'm just not aware of because I'm new to all of this. But that is something that, you know, as someone who drives through that tunnel every day, I would be scared to walk to Target. You know, and yet it's an easy walking distance from my house. So I just I can't imagine our young kids having to experience that on a daily basis. |
| 02:46:02.86 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | of. Because it's, |
| 02:46:23.84 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | We've been trying to pay some attention to that. There's quite an investment in the bus facility on the other side. There's been investments on DynaHue going into that area. And then we most recently, like I said, heard from the county and the city, your city, on the lighting. So let us do a little follow up on that. All right, thank you so much. |
| 02:46:48.10 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 02:46:52.39 | Ray Withey | Diane, thank you. As I said, that was a very comprehensive presentation. One of the things that I know was on people's minds some months ago when we were debating it in the first part of the year was regional measure three. Could you put that in context for us and help us understand what that was, what it is, and how it fits into the grand scheme of things? |
| 02:47:16.01 | Diane (Transportation Agency Representative) | Absolutely. So Regional Measure 3 is the piece of our funding program that actually is the regional slice. It's the toll funds. We benefited from previous toll fund programs, such as Regional Measure 2, which was passed in 2004. MTC is considering raising the tolls. Now, they don't control the Golden Gate Bridge, separate agency, but they control the other seven Bay Area toll bridges, including the Richmond San Rafael. They're considering raising the tolls on the bridge from $5 to $6 and maybe even $7 during the peak period. What will the funds go towards? There'll be some essential, what they've proposed, and this is all at the very early stages of discussion, but the initial proposals, we've got to maintain and operate the bridges, number one, and we should be looking at some projects in terms of projects in these toll corridors that are actually going to benefit the traffic on the bridges. They would look at the toll increases being a fee, so it would be a 50% plus one majority vote, not a tax. And they're putting a plan together right now. I've been reporting out to the public works and city managers and will keep doing so. Maybe we can come back in the future. This is gonna move fast, I think, in the next six months in terms of what MTC puts together. Our MTC commissioner is Damon Connolly now with the retirement of Steve Kinsey, and he'll be very active in promoting the projects in Marin. The TAM board adopted a suite of projects that they would like considered. They include the Transit Center in San Rafael. You'll notice, In the transit presentation that the local transit kind of migrates and is timed with regional transit and with SMART at that San Rafael transit hub. There's a plan to rebuild that transit hub to make it more effective. So that was one of the candidates we're seeking funds for. A direct connector from 101 to 580 northbound. So right now, if you want to go across the Richmond Bridge, and you could see it in our survey, let's improve access to the bridge. So right now, you get off at Drake, you go through the traffic lights in Larkspur Landing Circle, you go to Bellum, you wait for that traffic light. Why can't we build a direct connector? That is included on the list that the TAM board adopted. Our Marin-Sonoma Narrows, it may be far away from Sausalito, but it's a very important corridor in terms of importing workers down from Petaluma, Sonoma. I hear from the Marin County Office of Education how many of their teachers actually live in Petaluma and even up in Roanoke Park in Santa Rosa. So finishing the Marin-Sonoma Narrows, which we're almost done adding the carpool lane through there. We've got a little piece left in Marin. Let's see if we can get toll funds for that. And then finally, what should we do with Highway 37? Highway 37 is another east-west route. Should it be a toll road added to the Bay Area's toll program? It's a very expensive venture. If you look at any of the BCDC projections or other projections we've gotten from UC Davis, it's going to be underwater. It closed three times this past winter, just with King Tides, and it's going to keep closing. And it's a lifeline corridor for the North Bay. So what do we do with 37? We tuck the little money into studying 37. So we have a suite that we're promoting. This will be legislation. The legislators will put together this regional measure three toll legislation that allows voters to consider this. It'll probably be on the ballot in June of 2018. That's our understanding, an increase in tolls. But hopefully we get some good stuff from that. We look at traffic on 101. |
| 02:51:18.46 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Is there any other questions before we invite public comment? Okay, so would any, thank you Diane. We may have some more questions for you. But at this point, let's open this up for public comment. So is there any member of the public who'd like to talk about this particular agenda item? |
| 02:51:46.44 | Adam Colbreth | Yeah. |
| 02:51:47.13 | Ray Withey | Jeff, please. |
| 02:52:03.09 | Jeffrey Chase | Passover has passed and now, We're in the book of Shemini. which is Leviticus, going up to Jubilee. |
| 02:52:17.47 | Jeffrey Chase | It's in seven weeks, we're doing a count, we're on day seven now. When we get to Jubilee, We're going to have freedom. We're going to get rid of this prison industrial complex. that is punishing the people who produce the least carbon output, That is the poor people of this country and of this world, the people on bicycles, and the people who walk, And the people on sailboats, too. I didn't hear anything about carbon output. They've measured... The sea level rise. Since the beginning of this century, eight inches. and forecast if we continue This insanity... of sending carbon into the upper atmosphere 3,000 pounds of steel. encompassing normally one person. in their car. What does Sausalito have to do with this? Well, Sausalito now... is chaining up bicycles. Over 500 bicycles chained up. The promise was that it would be The tourist bicycles that would be chained up, That hasn't happened. It's local bikes too. What that does is discourage BICYCLES. We discourage pedestrians too. You cannot walk. When it's raining on the streets of the hills of Sausalito. It's for cars only, the absolute least efficient way to travel in the world besides a plane. |
| 02:54:20.64 | Jeffrey Chase | I think it's time to declare another emergency. that tomorrow, There'll be a group meeting. about climate change and sea level rise. And what's going to happen to Marin? Marin, marine, coastal area, sea level rise will affect the richest people. First, right here in Marin, You're going to build walls. like your president, our president, Donald Trump, to stop the sea from coming in. How much is that going to cost? It's time to think about this a little more seriously. |
| 02:55:05.23 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Anybody else from the public who'd like to? Kevin. |
| 02:55:17.34 | Kevin Kiefer | My name is Kevin Kiefer. I'm an anchor out. Been anchored out for nearly nine years. I used to have vehicles until the last one was taken by the Sausalito Police Department. And it was towed up to somewhere in Sonoma County. And of course, the police department told me that no, it must have been stolen. until I found it a couple months later, popped up on Craigslist. to be sold. So that's the last time that I decided that I was going to be driving. But I also decided I was going to stay here and figure out what the hell is going wrong with this city. That's just one of the little things that keeps me here. fighting for my For my rights and for the last nearly three years, I've been going up to the Civic Center on a bus. How many times have I gone to court to defend myself at the Civic Center NEARLY THREE YEARS. for the same charges, frivolous charges from this police department. Three years, 13 judges. What the... is going on here. because it's here in this room. So I have some questions for the Transit Authority. How are the underwater streets of Sausalito maintained? By whom? Using what funding? There is no marine fuel tax for road enhancement. How are the leases of the underwater streets of Sausalito taxed? |
| 02:57:08.60 | Kevin Kiefer | The users of the underwater streets of Sausalito, why isn't the redwood, the old Redwood Highway Bridge, the Sausalito Bridge, why isn't that a toll? What's going on? If anything should be toll, that bridge should be a toll bridge. Think all the money you could make like that. |
| 02:57:29.88 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Any other member of the public like to address the council on this agenda topic? Okay, seeing none. So, again, thank you to everybody who came. Is there any other comments on this matter? No. So, thank you very much. I joined TAM in January, and I've had three meetings, My golden role is for the first three meetings, keep your mouth shut, otherwise you should make a fool of yourself. So that's basically what I've been doing, keeping my mouth shut, but listening. And I appreciated listening tonight, so thank you for coming. Thanks. |
| 02:58:15.62 | Ray Withey | Okay, moving on to item two. 6D, which is an update on proposal for Bruchway Marina. update on a proposal for Bridgeway Marina, which is 225 Locust Street And, I don't know if there's a staff member who's going to introduce us. |
| 02:58:48.67 | Ray Withey | Thanks, folks. |
| 02:58:57.48 | Michael Rex | Mind it. |
| 02:59:01.96 | Joe Burns | you |
| 02:59:04.53 | Michael Rex | I like it. |
| 02:59:10.67 | Adam Politzer | So Mr. Mayor, I'll introduce this item and introduce our two guests tonight as well. Lily Whalen, almost called her by her maiden name. Lily is out ill this evening, so she would have introduced this item, but I will. I think the staff report is pretty self-explanatory. It gives a little bit of history of this project and both the city attorney and I have been a part of this for quite some time, city attorney even longer than I have. But this goes back to the city working with, at the time, Evan Gossage, who owned the property. Eventually that property was auctioned off at the courthouse steps in San Rafael. And the city was there in the effort to buy the property. And that was not successful. Dan Morgan and Cameron. were the folks that came to the city after and announced that they had purchased the property and wanted to work with the city. And we've been working with Cameron ever since. Dan separated his relationship with the property, and Cameron is now representing Bridgeway Marina. Over the course of the last year and a half, two years, Michael Rex has joined Cameron to work with Cameron and the community to move the project forward. The working group, which consisted of staff and council members over that period of time, have met with Michael and Cameron, and as recently as last January, the council received an update that Michael Rex provided. excuse me, provided to the council and that presentation And the conceptual plan is in your packet. Thank you. And we've asked Michael with the change of the council, with Councilmember Burns and Councilmember Vice Mayor Cox joining the Council that we thought it was important as we now move to the next phase of this project to make sure that all five council members are brought up to speed of where we are. And so we've asked Michael to come and give that presentation representing Cameron, and Cameron is also here to answer any questions from the council. So that's the brief introduction of what we think is just an update of the project and then council can give whatever direction they would like. But we would recommend that the working group be appointed and work with staff to meet with Michael and Cameron to go through the next steps. So that concludes my report and I'd like to introduce Michael Rex. |
| 03:02:17.31 | Michael Rex | Hi, thank you. |
| 03:02:18.29 | Ray Withey | Michael, just before you begin, sorry. The presentation that Michael is going to give, we don't have that presentation, I believe. |
| 03:02:27.86 | Adam Politzer | I don't think we got the presentation prior to the publication. |
| 03:02:31.20 | Joan Cox | Publication. 2016 presentation. |
| 03:02:33.34 | Adam Politzer | So that's the presentation that was provided to the council back in January 2000. Sure. So that, for anyone that has their iPad, they can go back to it right now. Good. And for anyone that saved that packet, they have it. If they didn't save that packet, we'd be happy to reprint it for you. Thank you. |
| 03:02:53.91 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Sorry, Michael. I could send this to you. |
| 03:02:53.93 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:02:57.25 | Michael Rex | you'd like. Thank you. Okay, thanks. I wanted to thank Adam and for you for this opportunity to update you on our progress and I also want to thank Adam and Mary for working with us over this extended period of time. I want to add a little bit to Adam's history here. Cameron and his partner bought the property eight years ago. And we really had trouble moving forward with both parties. And it took Cameron about four years to purchase the property and control it and buy out Dan Morgan. And it was only after that occurred that we were really able to find a consensus and move forward with the project. |
| 03:02:57.86 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry. |
| 03:02:57.91 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:02:57.96 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 03:02:57.98 | Ray Withey | THANK YOU. |
| 03:03:52.33 | Michael Rex | We've been planning it for about two years, although we've been somewhat in a hiatus for the last year. You can see by the date on this presentation was over a year ago. But a lot's occurred in those eight years that both Morgan and Cameron owned the property. You may not recall, but that place was in dire straits. It was, the building was in shambles. It had no siding. It had no windows. It had no deck. It was completely covered and boarded up with plywood and looked extremely unsightly. And it sat that way for many years under Gossage's control. And there were lots of serious safety issues, utility issues, you name it. So they inherited a mess. And they made great strides to clean it up and make it look better. A lot of that While we haven't been pursuing the plannings in great detail, we hope this year we will. And however, since this presentation, the focus has been on further upgrades to the marina. And a lot of things have occurred. Both the main building and the small building that's out on the pier were fully fire sprinkled. The main building had only about a 10% sprinkler system, barely operable. Now it's fully sprinkled. meets code in terms of fire sprinkler safety. A monitoring system's been added. I think all they need left is a little bell on the small building. They had to put in a backflow preventer for that system. And in addition, they had to put in a new water service main to upgrade the pressure, all at great expense. They also completely replace the domestic water system with new pipe, so the water's healthy and clean. On electrical, there's been significant upgrades to electrical. All of this work has been done in conjunction with the fire marshal and our city building inspector. And on the electrical end, they've upgraded the the peak load demand actually there's a test coming up tomorrow for that Everybody has to turn the power on all at once and make sure that the circuits don't blow They've replaced about 20% of the risers for the electrical pedestals And more will be in the works in addition They've reduced the number of boats The city was very concerned about boats accumulating a year ago. Some of the boats were so jammed in, they couldn't be taken out to open water in an emergency. And seven boats have been removed from the harbor. Last year, we told you there were 71 boats, and now there's 64. And their arrangements are now safer. So that's all good news. THE, THE, THE THE, THE, THE THE, THE, THE, THE THE, THE THE, THE THE THE, THE THE THE, THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE THE Also, last June, with the working group, my office produced a list of outstanding issues that we still have to work on within our working group. And there's three pages here. There's still a few outstanding issues that we need to work on. So we need to keep meeting with our working group, but we haven't had a meeting for quite a while. So I think we can go down this list and get our homework done, okay? So that's sort of the background. While we haven't been working on the planning too much, we've been trying to get the place safe. So moving forward on the planning, let me kind of walk you through. what's proposed, that was now, and here's the future. Let's see, just to move forward, I could just, yeah. First of all, I want you to know there's There's actually eight parcels owned by Bridgeway Marina. There's the marina here, and there's six city blocks, although the majority of them are water. And then outside the channel, there's two more. And these green patches show where eelgrass has been mapped. You can see there's very little, almost no eelgrass in this area. Cameron would like to expand the marina onto this block. Not on these blocks because of the eelgrass and also because the city would like to acquire these two parcels. Your general plan says that the Dunphy Park, one of the goals of the city is to expand Dunphy Park and to preserve open water off the park and widen the view outward. So to acquire these two parcels would be consistent with the goals of the general plan. And let's go to the next one. Here's an older aerial view. This was when the old police station was still there. And the vacant lot that's owned currently by Bridgeway Marina, the land portion, was used for a parking lot. That is really the only land that the marina owns except for where the building is occupied, the rest of city streets. And there really isn't adequate parking on the property now for the existing burrs, much less an area to park to expand the burrs. So we'd like to correct that situation. Okay. So the only place to park, we need 83 parking spaces. And I laid out a parking lot here. It fits just great on that open space. Well, it's a vacant lot. It's private property. It's not open space. But it's vacant. And I don't think there's too many people that get excited about turning that peninsula property into a parking lot. BCDC doesn't care for it either, parking cars along our shore. And we'd like not to park there, but we have to park somewhere. And so before I came aboard and there was negotiations between, and when Dan Morgan still was a partner with Cameron, there were negotiations with the city to swap places. the land here for use of the city streets. In fact, they drafted, I think there was a kind of a draft agreement in the works. But that all came to an end when there was a buyout by Cameron. I got involved, and we started getting more serious about it again. Where that led was a concept that the city would acquire these two parcels, land and water, in exchange for use of the streets for parking, In other words, we're proposing a park where It's currently paved and where cars park and leave the vacant lot alone. But also include the Edgewater Marina. There really probably isn't an economic reason to improve this marina that the city owns. This bulkhead has failed and the docks are in bad shape. But if we added this to the improvements to the Bridgeway Marina, it would be improved with private money, and there would be an economy of scale to have that area improved along with the marina. We also wanted to include in the deal use of Donahue, the underwater street, where the expanded marina would cross the public street. uh, And the city would get a pretty good deal here, actually. If you look at the numbers, let me go to my notes briefly here. |
| 03:12:47.69 | Michael Rex | You would, these two lots, they're each about 2.2 acres, so you would get 4.4 acres in exchange for use of these streets, which equal So the city, no, I'm sorry, 1.1 acre. What? This is 4.4, and the streets are 1.5. So you'd be getting three times the amount of area in that deal. We originally proposed it be just a land swap, and that we asked for a quick claim of the streets and fee title to the streets. The city didn't like that in our working group. They said, no, that's not how we're going to do it. We want title and ownership of these parcels, and you get a long-term lease similar to other city-owned property like Madden's Yacht Club or the the marina or the Saucyut Yacht Club. We're okay with that if it's a long enough term and favorable rate. What will determine whether it's equitable is that we need to have the property appraised. And negotiate a fair trade, trade for the ownership of these parcels for a long-term pay. Lease with favorable terms. If you just look at the land, apart from the broad area, The land the city would acquire, so 39 acres, that's almost.9 acres, not a full acre. And, again, the city's getting a better deal. The use of the streets are the.7 acres. So you're getting a 14% benefit. Plus, we think shoreline property's worth more than $15. the streets. AND I THINK IT'S A LOT OF So that's basically the concept that's proposed. We've had no discussion whatsoever what the terms of the lease are, its length or cost or anything. We felt the first thing that has to happen is this appraisal of those two blocks of private property. OK? So if we can accomplish this, arrangement, we can prepare and submit a development application. And this is a preliminary concept that we've been showing to the working group. It's evolved quite a bit from where we started in those discussions over about a year and a half time. And I just want to show you a few highlights of it. We're providing the 83 parking spaces, and that 83 parking spaces include nine spaces for the public. It provides all the parking we need for the marina and the use of these buildings, plus shore access parking for nine cars. We'd repave the streets. We'd landscape them and maintain them. The burrs, we go from the existing, these burrs would remain, they exist, be upgraded, but the rest would be rebuilt. And they'd be rebuilt with concrete, very heavy concrete floating docks that are wide enough and heavy enough to serve as wave dampers, similar to how Schoonmaker protects Air Marina. Okay. And we have the fairway coming down the middle. Right now, boats come out in this area to get into the burrs. We're keeping all the private circulation inside. And so outside would be a public tie- for visiting a yachtsman on a reservation basis and for a fee, similar to how Clipper does it or Madden's. But it would provide a place to tie up if you're a visiting boater. And we have a float here where small boats could pull out of the water like kayaks or something and access shore. uh... The number of births would expand by only 30% from the 71 that we started with to 92. Right now, we have about 48% live aboards. That's way more than the BCDC 10%. This application would show 10%. And we expect through attrition that between now and when the project's approved and built, that as liveaboards move out, they'd be replaced with recreation births to get down to that 10%. And of those nine births, two of them would be permanently deed restricted to always be affordable for birth rent and managed by a nonprofit wouldn't be managed, probably would be managed by the county housing authority. We also propose a shoreline trail that's 10 feet wide that goes the whole length of the property. Again, that would be built and maintained. We want to expand the deck, and I'll quickly show you why. If you go back to the aerial photo, the building used to be a Marine Service building, and these were ways where, in fact, I remember big boats pulled out on those ways. It wasn't that long ago. Well, this is just a disaster, and the environmentalists are telling us, just leave it all there. If you dig it all up, you release all these toxics. And we don't want to look at it, so we're proposing to simply deck over it. And that deck would be fully available to the public with benches and whatnot as part of the shoreline access trail. For the buildings, we're proposing no new buildings, okay? We simply want to utilize the buildings that are there. Right now, they're underutilized. And we are not able to grant any tenants long-term leases at this time. So what would be used for the buildings? Here's a little building. and then the main building, which is 9,600 square feet, two-story. We're proposing marine service uses on the ground floor that are completely consistent with the CW zoning. We'd like to put some leaseable storage in the back corner. There's an elevator and stairs and mechanical room, and this is the harbor office and harbor restrooms and shower. So this is an ancillary use to the harbor, and mechanical and circulation are also ancillary use. So the marketable uses are some storage in the back and these marine uses that would open out to the outdoors. Upstairs we'd like to put applied art, which as you know are architects or landscape architects, all the applied art uses that are allowed in the zoning ordinance. And to give you some idea what those uses would be, Oops, I missed one. Sorry. Here's the uses that are allowed in permitted uses in the CW. You can see them there. We'd like to focus on these uses. So there's our idea of some of the marine uses. There's some other, we're not proposing a school, but we'd like to really promote the recreational, marine recreational uses. We, We need a CUP for the liveaboards. We thought the zoning ordinance says you need a CUP for the warehousing. Staff came back and surprised us. They said, well, we're not going to do that. That's only for an ancillary use to the marina. Even though zoning ordinance says with the CUP you can have warehousing. We don't want a lot of mini storage, but we'd like to rent it to possible storage to non-birth holders. So staff says we need a zoning amendment for that. I think that's debatable, but we'll find out. That's another outstanding issue with a working group, OK? We clearly need Uh, a zoning amendment for applied art on the second floor, because that's not noted in our zoning ordinance. However, That doesn't quite seem fair because right next door, if you recall, Pat Koppel could put a real estate office on the second floor right next door to us with a conditional use permit. And why she needs a conditional use permit and we need a zoning amendment, I kind of have to wonder. Not only that, right next door, to them is... that concrete building at 1306 Bridgeway. And there's a landscape architect on the ground floor and an architect on the top floor. And they're right next door. All are applied art. Actually, a PEX office is not applied art. It's an office use. So, We're willing to apply for a zoning amendment, but I don't think we're being treated fairly. And I think we all have learned from the Pet-Coppel debate that marine service doesn't work very well on the second floor. And when that second floor sat empty for years, the city finally got real about it. You're going through your general plan rewrite right now. We think the zoning ordinance for the uses in the CW is kind of obsolete. There used to be working boat yards in the central waterfront. Well, there aren't anymore. And so this is an opportunity with our new general plan to rethink some of those uses. And maybe by then we won't need this zoning amendment. Time will tell. So just to kind of wrap up here, next steps, OK? And, um, First of all, we need this appraisal. What's that land cost that we're going to offer to the city for what we think would be a fair price? And the appraisal is about $8,500, and we're talking about splitting it with the city. We'll pay half, you pay half. It benefits both of us. We have a proposal from Walter Carney at Valbridge Property Advisors down in San Jose. And the only thing is, is we're recommending that they have three different appraisals. We recommend, again, it's one appraisal for all six parcels. OK. And let me show you. And I'm trying to get to the end here. Go back to the big map. where you see all six parcels. We think there should be one appraisal for the two parcels here next to Domfee Park. because that one we want to trade for the use of the streets, okay? I'm not sure. There could be a separate appraisal for the two little parcels outside the channel and a separate appraisal for the two parcels to the south. We're not prepared to really give up on those parcels. But we said, while we're getting an appraisal, let's find out what they're worth, and if the city offers enough, well, maybe Cameron will change his mind. But right now, in fact, on the list of outstanding issues, we're only proposing to swap these two parcels for use of the streets, not all parcels. of the others, not all six. So if we go ahead and give this appraisal, I think the proposal from the appraiser was to just give one appraisal for all six parcels. And I don't think that'll give us the crucial information we need, nor is it consistent with our point of view. So that's the first step. The second step is we need to start talking about the lease terms because we've never had that conversation. And we need ongoing, we need to reconvene our working group so we can go over the remaining outstanding issues on my June Second, letter. And then, Ultimately, in fact, Adam's kind of hoping prior to July, we can draft either a memorandum of understanding, or Mary, I think you suggested an exclusive negotiating agreement. And we told the city we're not going to, we can't go ahead and submit a formal application like this unless we can show where we're parking cars. So a prerequisite for submitting this application is this agreement, executive negotiating agreement between the city and the property owner on the use of those streets. And we want that formal. We want it approved and signed by the city. And with that in place, we will prepare and submit a formal application for improving this property and selling to the city those 4.4 acres of land and water next to Dumpy Park. So with that, any questions? |
| 03:27:29.46 | Ray Withey | Okay. So in the grand scheme of things, there's been some work but not much since last January. when you presented to council previously. Correct. |
| 03:27:45.00 | John Burke | CRAP. |
| 03:27:47.15 | Ray Withey | Okay, do we have any questions? I've got a couple of questions, but I don't need to go first. Is there any questions? Why don't you were on the working group? I was on the working group. |
| 03:27:59.14 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 03:27:59.67 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:27:59.68 | Jill Hoffman | TO BE ABLE TO I was on the working group. Do you have your pointer? So thanks Michael, thanks for coming in. |
| 03:28:07.57 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 03:28:14.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So one of the questions I had was, This parcel right here. So this is part of that old, municipal dock, right? |
| 03:28:23.55 | Michael Rex | Yeah, it's called Edgewater Marina. It's owned by the city. |
| 03:28:26.63 | Jill Hoffman | And so what your proposal for that, and I can't really tell from this plan, is to rehabilitate this and have it be- |
| 03:28:35.29 | Michael Rex | We would like control over it, we'd like to add it to the marina project. We'd rebuild that private expense, the bulk of it's failed here and it's in really bad shape. We'd replace the docks with new docks. We'd maintain it, manage it, it'd be part of the lease from the city. with a city. |
| 03:28:55.54 | Jill Hoffman | But this would be— But this would be— These would be slips that would be controlled by you and rented by you as part of the marina? |
| 03:29:02.16 | Michael Rex | Right. It would be in our lease, and we'd improve it and control it. |
| 03:29:06.97 | Jill Hoffman | At least that's your proposal. And get revenue from it. |
| 03:29:07.74 | Michael Rex | And get revenue from it. Although there's not very many bursts there. I'm not sure it really financially pencils out. But we don't want a city-owned and perhaps derelict neighbor. |
| 03:29:19.84 | Jill Hoffman | So if we could. If we could go forward to the map that shows the different parcels. If you could just scan forward to that. I had a couple of questions about those. |
| 03:29:28.73 | Michael Rex | Yeah. I'm just using this. |
| 03:29:32.70 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:29:33.88 | Michael Rex | That shows all the parcels. Yeah, that's fine. Is that the one you want? Yep. |
| 03:29:35.20 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, that's fine. Is that the one you wanted? Yep, that's fine. |
| 03:29:36.78 | Michael Rex | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:29:36.80 | Jill Hoffman | So I think, you know, in our discussions, you know we're interested obviously in these parcels this one you're gonna have to have because you're expanding out over it right that's part of the project and over the street so you've got to go over the street and then |
| 03:29:46.47 | Michael Rex | That's part of the project. |
| 03:29:50.94 | Jill Hoffman | you're going to get out here. |
| 03:29:50.98 | Michael Rex | Right. Right. |
| 03:29:52.92 | Jill Hoffman | you know clearly were also interested in these to, I think, or we're interested in what's going to happen to these two. Part of our discussion last year was that these would be retired in some sort of conservation manner, especially given the eelgrass here. uh... and then these two parcels are mystery to me What are your plans for those two parcels on the other side of the channel if you want to hang on to those? And what I don't really understand what the value is of two water parcels in the middle of a bay Where there's no, you know, are you planning to build a marine out there or what? |
| 03:30:21.05 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 03:30:21.33 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 03:30:25.69 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:30:25.91 | Michael Rex | We don't have any plans, per se, for these two parcels or these two parcels. However, that can change. The possibility for these two parcels could be a mooring field. If the city ever works that out with BCDC and regional agency or whatever. But if there is a possibility, that could have a mooring field on it. And it could be private. We could put in a mooring field if it was permitted and provide access to it and maintain it and collect rent on it. That's a possibility. Another possibility for all four of these parcels, the city said, well, hey, part of the deal, you're going to have to put a deed restriction that can never be developed. And we said, no, we're not going to do that. And the reason we wouldn't do that is because that would remove all value. They actually have value. It's questionable what their value. It's limited. But you can sell tidelands that you then do deed restrict as off-site mitigation for development somewhere else in the bay. Developers will go buy. If they can't mitigate environmental impacts on their property, they can go buy and preserve marshland elsewhere as an offset, and there's a market for that. And so if we did restrict it, it can never be developed. That makes that market zero value. And this marina that we're proposing, |
| 03:31:38.72 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:31:38.75 | Barbara Sapienza | Thank you. |
| 03:32:04.12 | Michael Rex | It's going to be extremely expensive for the number of bursts we're getting, and we're not adding a lot of square footage, or we're not adding any square footage to buildings. So the revenue potential to improve this is thin. And so if there's a possibility that we can help fund these improvements by some sale or some mooring, off-site mooring use, well, that's something we want to consider. And if we give them away now, unless the city's willing to pay enough for them, that's why, well, let's get them appraised and find out what they're worth on the open market. That'll inform us all about it. We see no harm in finding that out. But right now, those aren't on the table for the reasons I just explained. |
| 03:32:49.93 | Jill Hoffman | So I had a picture, can you someone bring that up? I had a picture that was taken of the marina in the last few days. And I had some questions about some of the boats that are out there. |
| 03:33:08.61 | Unknown | Yeah. That's. |
| 03:33:10.98 | Joe Burns | DJ's on. |
| 03:33:15.92 | Jill Hoffman | I saw it. |
| 03:33:16.66 | Unknown | It was here. It was in the next step. Thank you. |
| 03:33:22.01 | Jill Hoffman | I saw it on the home page, you know, the screensaver page at the bottom earlier today. It was done as well. |
| 03:33:35.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:33:36.02 | Nancy Whelan | Thank you. |
| 03:33:36.04 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:33:36.05 | Unknown | Yeah. Yes. |
| 03:33:40.24 | Barbara Sapienza | Thank you. |
| 03:33:41.15 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thanks. So here's my question. So this is a picture that was taken in the last couple days. And so these boats, all of these boats here, appear to be either on city streets or they're anchored on your... property. And so my question is, Are any of these boats on moorings that are operated by Bridgeway Marina Or is there some other business relationship between any of these boats that are anchored out here and Bridgeway Marina? |
| 03:34:16.43 | Michael Rex | I'm not sure. We'll have to ask Cameron that because I don't know that. I don't know. |
| 03:34:19.76 | Cameron | Okay. |
| 03:34:20.70 | Michael Rex | Yeah, my key. |
| 03:34:23.88 | Cameron | Good evening, Ms. Hoffman, Mayor Withey. No, those are anchor outs. They have absolutely no relationship with us. Southman. |
| 03:34:33.50 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. So you're not operating any commercial moorings out here, and no one has paid you rent for moorings or to be anchored on these waters? |
| 03:34:34.95 | Cameron | And you're. |
| 03:34:41.61 | Cameron | Absolutely not. We have made repeated efforts to get rid of them, frankly, in cooperation with Sausalito Yacht Harbor, the Madden family. And unfortunately, we've been unsuccessful. |
| 03:34:59.26 | Jill Hoffman | Is anybody operating these as commercial moorings out here? |
| 03:35:02.74 | Cameron | Not that I'm aware of. We have certainly not been involved in anything remotely like that at all. |
| 03:35:10.55 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:35:10.67 | Cameron | Thank you. |
| 03:35:11.26 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:35:11.31 | Cameron | Thank you. |
| 03:35:11.35 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:35:11.58 | Cameron | ever. |
| 03:35:13.03 | Jill Hoffman | Anybody have questions? |
| 03:35:15.13 | Cameron | Thank you. |
| 03:35:15.14 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Cameron. Okay, thanks. |
| 03:35:16.14 | Cameron | Thank you. |
| 03:35:16.16 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:35:16.26 | Cameron | . |
| 03:35:16.29 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:35:16.58 | Cameron | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:35:16.76 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks. |
| 03:35:18.05 | Cameron | And I've given written authority to, I think, Bill Price and the city to take action. |
| 03:35:25.99 | Jill Hoffman | OK. Thank you. |
| 03:35:29.57 | Ray Withey | Any other questions? Do you have any questions? Joe? Thank you. |
| 03:35:36.03 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:35:40.46 | Ray Withey | Okay, let's open this up for public comment. So any member of the public who would like to comment on this agenda item? Jeff, you are a stand-in, so I am presuming you indeed wish to comment. |
| 03:36:08.86 | Jeffrey Chase | A man named Saul Alinsky, a community organizer, from Chicago. who's organizing the black people there, poor people. Mainly. And they already know what their relationship is with their government, and sometimes it's not so pleasant. They're not that hard to organize, like the anchor outs now, as even Cameron's saying that, uh, He wants to... come to an agreement with Bill Price to remove the boats. I think maybe one of them is mine. I don't know. |
| 03:36:49.12 | Jeffrey Chase | Well, Saul Alinsky... towards the end of his life, and maybe this is why his life ended early, said, The people we have to organize are the middle classes and the upper middle classes and the upper class. Now I realize how difficult that is. There was no such thing as zoning. in cities anywhere in the United States of America. until the automobile came in. Then all of a sudden the automobile needed a place to park. I'm going to be talking about this. This marina, too. Okay, this is a zoning issue for this marina. California Coastal Commission says that public access must be granted for any place specifically below high tide, but any place that is on the waterfront. And any traditional uses that were happening before. Bridgeway Marina came in. Must continue. |
| 03:38:14.32 | Jeffrey Chase | That hasn't happened here. |
| 03:38:22.69 | Jeffrey Chase | So, |
| 03:38:26.89 | Jeffrey Chase | I guess I have a question for you. which is the first reading of the ordinance was, it said that any houseboats or liveaboard boats, Had to get a certificate of occupancy. and go to the planning department. before they changed anything on the outside of their boats. Is that still in the ordinance? |
| 03:39:01.12 | Jeffrey Chase | Nobody's going to answer that question. FOR ME. So it's called We the People. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not life, liberty, and property. There was a big debate in the Constitutional Convention about that. |
| 03:39:14.80 | Ray Withey | Thank you. I think who... |
| 03:39:17.37 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. Okay? It's not property, it's happiness, big difference. This is how revolutions begin. This is not how they end. |
| 03:39:27.86 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Not here in this |
| 03:39:28.12 | Jeffrey Chase | Not here in this council chambers. |
| 03:39:30.48 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to comment on this agenda item? Kevin? |
| 03:39:39.42 | Kevin Kiefer | Uh, Thank you, Mayor. uh, Could we please hire |
| 03:39:48.00 | Ray Withey | Please have a little quiet in the audience. Thank you. |
| 03:39:50.80 | Kevin Kiefer | Concerning this plan, am I the only one that can't see that and that Donahue streets and Turney streets are already partially occupied by the marina? And now you're talking about Now leasing the marina, the streets that it already occupies. How does that work? So there are a pile of anchor out boats. in the proposed waters of this land swap, proxy land swap, whatever it is. Those votes must be moved by the force of this city council And good luck with that. because you're already seeing what you're creating is a bunch of fiction here. You won't even look at this plan. and look at the fiction that's already created. Why is there a 60-foot tugboat sunk on Donahue Street? Why has it been sunk there for three or four months? Why does the owner say that it was sold to the harbor administrator of the Richardson Bay Regional Agency. That it's in his possession. More criminal malfeasance, more transfer of public funding for private gain. Just goes on and on and on. More fiction on top of more fiction. |
| 03:41:25.45 | Ray Withey | Anybody else like to comment on this agenda item? OK, seeing none, we'll bring it back here. So what does staff need of us? |
| 03:41:42.05 | Adam Politzer | We don't actually we don't need anything. We will move forward and continue to work with the property owner and representatives. We are asking that the council reappoint the working group. So from the two council members to join the working group. But they can do that at a later time if necessary. But we'll get back together with Cameron and Michael here and move forward. |
| 03:42:11.94 | Ray Withey | And the appraisal? What's happening there? |
| 03:42:15.77 | Adam Politzer | we already have authorization there. Because of the dollar amount. Okay, fine. |
| 03:42:20.93 | Ray Withey | All right. Any comments? No. Okay. All right. Cool. Thanks a lot. I think we've got everything we need. Thank you for that update. |
| 03:42:32.66 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:42:35.34 | Ray Withey | So, uh... On to item number seven, which is our city manager, council member reports, our city council appointments or other council business. And at this point, um, If there's anybody who would like to comment on any of Items number 7B to 7F, now's your chance. Okay, seeing none. |
| 03:43:04.35 | Jeffrey Chase | THE FAMILY. Yes, yes, I do. Yes, I do. |
| 03:43:09.08 | Ray Withey | Go for it. |
| 03:43:13.31 | Ray Withey | You have three minutes. These are items 7, B, C, D, E, and F. |
| 03:43:22.27 | Jeffrey Chase | Yes, and one of them is the future agenda items. I brought this up. last meeting, and this is about the impeachment of Donald J. Trump for emoluments. It's not only in the US Constitution, it's in the California Constitution. Anybody on this council City manager, lawyer. Department of Public Works, I'M NOT GOING TO BE That is using their public position to make private money. It is breaking the emoluments clause. That is why Donald Trump is going to be impeached in our hearts first. And then it's going to happen, not in the Senate and House at first, they're all Republicans. But the Republicans and the Democrats, it doesn't seem there's a big bit of difference here. It seems like the Democrats, Democratic Marin is under thrall to the money interest just as much as Donald Trump is. So that makes it easier for us. Because now... ALL OF THESE BOARDS, that are not giving the sovereignty to the individuals or to we, the people, That's in the Constitution, this is the future agenda item on the impeachment of Donald Trump. And for this board as well, if you are making money off of your public office, at all. One penny. |
| 03:45:04.70 | Ray Withey | Jeff, could you? |
| 03:45:05.30 | Jeffrey Chase | Okay, so what we had here, we had a lawyer named Levin, |
| 03:45:06.36 | Ray Withey | What was that? |
| 03:45:10.53 | Jeffrey Chase | He's a Levite. These people are to have no inheritance and no portion, no underwater parcel, no overwater parcel. No parcel in the air. These people, all the Levites and the Kohens, still exist to this day. And this board is modeled in part off of that. As we say in the Pledge of Allegiance, we are under God. If that's gonna mean anything, and it's not just lip service, Then it's time to pay attention. So there's a choice. You all know How much money you're making off of this? I haven't done a lot of investigation. There are other people that have. |
| 03:46:02.75 | Jeffrey Chase | You have two choices. One. is to give up that money that you're making off of your public office. |
| 03:46:16.42 | Jeffrey Chase | The other one is to resign or be impeached yourself. That's the only way we're going to deal with the madness in Washington. It's right here, too. |
| 03:46:26.70 | Ray Withey | Thank you. Um, I would just like to remind everybody and Jeff you in particular there is no need when we have a microphone to shout into the microphone There's just no need. Bye. |
| 03:46:47.88 | Ray Withey | Thank you. So, city manager information for council. |
| 03:46:56.05 | Adam Politzer | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, just a few updates here. The bicycle management and congestion program that Chief Roebacher is overseeing has had a good start. Sausalito Plus is out there working hard, a reminder to all Sausalito residents and Marin County residents that if you like to park downtown, you can park for free. We do not charge South Florida residents or Marin County residents that if you would like to park downtown, you could park for free. And we do not charge South Dakota residents or Marin County residents to park in the parking lot down on Tracy Way. The weather has obviously interrupted some of the activity down there, and so that's been, you know, a blessing and a curse at the same time. The blessing is that we have less people coming into town. The curse is that we're not getting a real good measure of the volume of activity and the staffing levels needed to manage it. So we'll continue through this week of one more week of spring break. and then it'll dial down for a little bit as we go into Memorial Day weekend when it then it cranks back up. Unfortunately, as many of you may have heard, we had the bike return program start on Friday and actually very successful day of over 250 bikes returned that customers were happy to give to them. And then based on the operation of bringing those bikes back to San Francisco, they were returned later in the evening than the bike companies had hoped. And that created some concern from them and they've asked that the program be halted until they can work out some of the logistics. It's unclear if we'll be able to work through those logistics based on some of the conditions that the bike companies may be placing on the return program. But Lisa Scopazi and John Scopazi are working with them and I know that Chief Robacher and Jim Swindler from the Glongate Ferry District will also be working closely with them to encourage a way forward. Because the one day that it operated was successful in helping us manage the bikes and give the customers another option to move forward as we go into the program. We're still scheduled to bring back a report to the council in July on the status. Obviously, if we have challenging circumstances or need additional direction from the council, we'll bring back an item sooner. But I wanted to make sure that the chief and staff are working on this issue and hope to resolve it. The ferry district actually brought in seven additional boats on Saturday to accommodate the lack of the bike return program versus the three that they had brought in on Friday. So the district recognizes that they do need to make sure that they're bringing in enough boats to reduce the impacts. I was out there for most of the late afternoon on Saturday and things seemed to be running smoothly. Had an opportunity to talk to the Scalpazes, talked to Dr. Fotch and Deb Fotch out there on site, talked to Jim Swindler who worked the entire day managing the queue with two of his staff members. So from my perspective, Saturday went fine, but it would have been nice to see the bike return program in operation. The two quick other items. And I thought I wrote them down. Oh, I did. Our finance committee meeting was moved from 10 o'clock to 9 o'clock, so we're meeting tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock to start the budget process, and we'll be talking about capital projects at this meeting tomorrow. And then that information will come back to the council for further discussion. There's a new task force that the board of supervisors, Marin County Board of Supervisors, has created. They've had their second meeting. I've been invited to attend their meeting in the task force's Marin Chronic Homeless Action Task Force. And it's co-chaired by Damon, Supervisor Damon Conley and Supervisor Katie Rice. So it's really looking at housing first and looking at the folks that are in most need, which are the chronic homeless. And we anticipate that in Marin County there's roughly 200 that fit that category. And so we're looking at programs countywide that could assist us in this effort. I would imagine in the next two or three months that we'll have County Health and Human Services come and present and give us an update on this effort. But I wanted to make sure that you heard that this is something that I'm participating on representing the city managers group. City managers group appointed me and Larkspur city manager to sit on this task force. And I'll give you updates as information comes forward. Last on the list is that the school district, members of the school district from the parents, I don't know if it's the official PTA or from the Willow Creek Board. They have reached out to the city to host a town hall meeting and we'll offer them obviously our facilities here to hold it. I'm recommending that if they think that this room is large enough that they hold it in this room so that we can televise it and record it if this room isn't large enough you know then you know we can look and do what we did at the spinnaker when we actually had the rbra meeting there and we actually had that videotaped it's not live but the meeting was recorded and then people were able to to watch it at a later time but i want you to that they've reached out to the city and we're working with them to help accommodate a town hall meeting and then we would publicize that through the currents and our other, and post it on our website calendar. That's my report for this evening. Happy to answer any questions from the council. |
| 03:53:30.77 | Ray Withey | Thank you, Adam. Any questions for Adam? No. Okay. Council member committee reports. I'm sorry. |
| 03:53:41.50 | Joan Cox | I attended a sustainability committee meeting on April 13. And I think I mentioned to you at the last committee meeting, we saw a presentation from San Francisco regarding the neighborhood event that was mentioned to us earlier this evening about being prepared for emergencies and actually they had an event at the Bridgeway Marina. which was very successful. And the very thing that our disaster preparedness chair was discussing with us, a pilot for that was held successfully at Bridge Bay Marina using some of the guidelines provided by the city of San Francisco. That's been doing this now for many of their myriad neighborhoods. So, um, By better readying ourselves on disaster preparedness, we can actually be eligible for additional grant funding as for being more resilient in the event of emergency. So it's all worthwhile and exciting to be participating in that. |
| 03:54:49.83 | Ray Withey | Thank you. you |
| 03:54:51.01 | Joe Burns | Anybody have anything else? I do. And I didn't even speak with Council Member Hoffman on this, but with our schedule change the last week, our meeting with the school district board did not overlap for the first time. And I realized that late and was able to get over there in time for the, a good portion of the school district meeting. And for the first time see with my eyes, the situation that's occurring, which is almost a little surreal when you sit there and see that it's really, it's a five member board, but it's only occupied by three members, because the two members that I guess would represent, |
| 03:55:08.88 | Barbara Sapienza | Right. |
| 03:55:32.83 | Joe Burns | the majority of the Sausalito children that go to Willow Creek Academy are recusing themselves through a conflict of interest, which we've known about, but it's unique to see. You know, a school board that doesn't really represent our community's school. And it's been, it was talked about right there at the meeting, how it, It doesn't represent our school. There was some interesting public comment. One broke down what our school district looks like in the other thousand school districts in California. And if you take out the basic aid component with just two schools, one being a charter, with a lot of diversity, and you take these four or five criteria, It comes down to only one school in the state of California, or one district in the state of California that is similar to ours. So when a district has to recuse because of a conflict of interest, there's no precedence for that, because there's no precedence for a district like ours in the state of California that has the same makeup. So there's some interesting things going back and forth at that meeting, and I was glad to get to attend it and see it firsthand. |
| 03:56:55.95 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:56:56.05 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:56:56.09 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:56:56.10 | Ray Withey | Okay. And I was going to report on TAM, but Diane did it for me, so yeah. |
| 03:57:03.19 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:57:04.54 | Ray Withey | Okay. Appointments to Boards, Commissions and Committers. I'd just like to say a few things about the Parks and Rec Commission. We have interviewed a lot of very outstanding candidates. And I think what I'd like to recommend, assuming I don't get any pushback from my colleagues up here, is that we tonight appoint a small ad hoc subcommittee of the council made up of two council members that over the course of the next either two weeks Thank you. a small ad hoc subcommittee of the council made up of two council members that over the course of the next either two weeks, if it can be done in two weeks or four weeks, but come back at either the next council meeting or the subsequent council meeting. you to make recommendations to the full council on a recommended five persons to appoint. That's what I'd like to see and I'd like to First of all, ask whether Council Member Burns would lead that effort. I'd like to. And ask if who else would like to join that effort. Would you? Is everybody happy with? |
| 03:58:20.56 | Joe Burns | Everything. |
| 03:58:20.82 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:58:21.10 | Joe Burns | I'm happy. |
| 03:58:22.39 | Ray Withey | with that. So either in the next, and I think this is a good process because it will allow the subcommittee to really digest and give us some advice, having reread the charter and constitution of the. Parks and Rec Committee, and knowing what we have to do would be good. So thank you for doing that. |
| 03:58:43.13 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And Mr. Mayor, if I may, part of the park and rec committee commission is arts pursuant to the action we took on consent calendar tonight. and I'd like to ask that the city forward to us. I know there's a large list of, applicants for that part of the committee. So as we are working on filling the Parks and Rec Commission, I'd like to also see us interview the members who are interested in the Arts Commission aspect of that. |
| 03:59:16.96 | Joe Burns | I'm curious what that number is. How many? I saw at least 10, I think. |
| 03:59:17.09 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry. |
| 03:59:20.83 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:59:21.09 | Joe Burns | That are within the last couple of years. |
| 03:59:23.17 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:59:24.71 | Adam Politzer | The President. |
| 03:59:26.48 | Joe Burns | Yeah. |
| 03:59:26.71 | Joan Cox | you |
| 03:59:26.76 | Joe Burns | Thank you. . |
| 03:59:28.69 | Ray Withey | Okay. |
| 03:59:28.92 | Joe Burns | I'm sorry. |
| 03:59:28.98 | Ray Withey | Okay. |
| 03:59:34.06 | Ray Withey | I think We also probably should look at this working group who, for Bridgeway Marina, your still on that, right? Yes. Yeah, okay. Yes, sir. So we need, Tom Theodoris was the other person |
| 03:59:47.39 | Unknown | Yes. Yes, sir. |
| 03:59:57.07 | Ray Withey | I'm open to suggestions. Anybody want to do this? I'm happy to step up if not. |
| 04:00:03.97 | Joan Cox | I'm interested. It does certainly entail some planning issues with which I may be somewhat familiar. Thank you. |
| 04:00:14.77 | Ray Withey | Okay. So we've got, uh, |
| 04:00:21.71 | Ray Withey | Council, we've got Joan and Jill, Councilmember Hoffman and Vice Mayor Cox. for the Bridgeway Marina Working Group. And future agenda items. Agenda setting committee continues to meet. We've got a long list you've seen in the package. Is there anything that anybody has picked up from the community or otherwise that we'd like to add for our agenda set in discussions? |
| 04:00:57.62 | Jill Hoffman | I have one. concern that I think with regard to the bike pedestrian, I think we need, someone to return earlier than July. and i believe sausalito plus has a non-voting seat for a council member so we might want to think about if the instead of somebody instead of having them come back like on a regular basis report we could appoint a member to their seat. If memory serves me, but not tonight, but just, let me just put that out there. for your consideration. |
| 04:01:37.63 | Ray Withey | Okay. generally in a sense also where are we with the bike and peg committee? I mean, is that meeting, are we picking up on any new issues there? So that's not for discussion now, but maybe we need to understand what the bike and peg committee is gonna do. Is it gonna be morphed into a transportation circulation committee to help us with the general plan, or is it, you know, we're looking for staff to come back on that. The one thing I would reiterate though, I would agree with Councilmember Hoffman, I mean, we made it very clear that bike return was an essential component that this council expected. Okay, and if the bike companies are not cooperating, then they need to be invited to the next council meeting to explain themselves. |
| 04:02:30.03 | Joan Cox | I would like to have that, I would actually like to see that as an agenda item and for us to be able to offer some guidance about some steps we might take to encourage their cooperation. |
| 04:02:43.83 | Ray Withey | So I think this is something that is going to be prominent, I'm guessing, in our agenda setting committee, because I feel very strongly about this. Okay. All right. Are we cool? All right. With that, if there's nothing else, we're adjourned. |
Peter Romanowski — Neutral: Asked for clarification on what the closed session items were about, acknowledging ignorance of the process, and received an explanation from staff. ▶ 📄