| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:03.86 | Mayor Withey | Good evening and welcome to the Sausalito City Council meeting for Tuesday, May 2, 2017. Lily, will you call the roll please? |
| 00:00:08.52 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 00:00:13.46 | Unknown | Councilmember Burns? |
| 00:00:14.32 | Mayor Withey | Here. |
| 00:00:14.96 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman. Present. Vice Mayor Cox? Here. Mayor Withey? |
| 00:00:20.11 | Mayor Withey | We are moving into a brief closed session to discuss item D1, which is conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Because of the proximity to the location, Vice Mayor Cox will recuse herself from this item. |
| 00:00:40.09 | Jill Hoffman | I will indeed. Thank you. |
| 00:00:41.58 | Mayor Withey | Is there any public comment on this closed session item? Seeing none, we will adjourn the closed session, and hopefully we'll be back in about seven minutes. |
| 00:01:05.32 | Mayor Withey | Good evening. Welcome again to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council, Tuesday, May 2nd. Lily, would you call the roll, please? |
| 00:01:16.80 | Unknown | Councilmember Burns. |
| 00:01:18.14 | Mayor Withey | PRESIDENT. |
| 00:01:18.89 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman? Present. Vice Mayor Cox? Here. Mayor Withy? |
| 00:01:23.95 | Joe Burns | here. David Suda, would you lead us in the pledge tonight, please? with allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:46.78 | Unknown | Thank you, David. |
| 00:01:56.42 | Mayor Withey | The council just met in closed session to discuss an existing litigation matter. As we announced before closed session, Vice Mayor Cox recused herself from that closed session meeting in light of her proximity to the addresses in question. Is there no closed session announcements? Is there any public comment on the closed session? No. items. Seeing none, we'll move on. Item 3E is approval of the agenda. So moved. |
| 00:02:40.12 | Jill Hoffman | SECOND. |
| 00:02:41.20 | Mayor Withey | All in favor. Aye. Aye. |
| 00:02:42.30 | Jill Hoffman | Hi. |
| 00:02:46.74 | Mayor Withey | There is no special presentation or mayor's announcements this evening. Item number two is communications. This is communications. This is the time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda this evening. And as you know, except in very limited situations, state law recludes the Council from taking action or engaging in discussions concerning any items of business that are not on the agenda. I have one speaker's card for communications for items not on the agenda, and that's Bob Zadig. So Bob, if you go, and if anybody else would like to comment at this open time, please fill in the speaker card and hand it to the city clerk. Thanks. Good evening, Bob. |
| 00:03:39.29 | Unknown | Good evening and thank you for the invitation to allow me to speak for my three minutes. I could use three hours, but I'll take the three minutes. but started now. I'm here, something has been on my mind for a really long time. I'm passionate about governmental affairs. I'm in my head active about politics. I think about it all the time, policy, things like that. The impetus of my being here is Councilman Weiner's resignation, and therefore we need to find a new council member. And then I asked myself who in their right mind would want to devote so much time gratuitously for such a difficult job. And I realized the answer is probably very few people. I'm also I, of course, observe the obvious. When we have council elections, it is hardly a robust campaign. You have to drag people and persuade people to run and then to serve. And then once in a while, like Councilman Weiner, they, for whatever reason, had enough or whatever. I'm not speaking for him, but it's just an observation. And so I said, what's going on? What's wrong with the process? And what could be done to fix it? And I thought I would forgive my presumption, but share a thought I had to make all of those problems a lot better. It is my recommendation, my suggestion, my invitation that you consider. Adding as a budget item, a small stipend for each city council member to hire at the expense of the city, what I will call a legislative assistant or an intern. Interns would be college students, maybe master's students with a political background, those who want to become involved in local affairs, and they would be paid probably a pretty low wage, maybe $15 an hour, and my thought would be they would be assigned to each council member, and they would do a huge amount of the reading that is required by a council member if you want to do a competent job. It would be an intern available for a council member to use as they wish. The advantages of this process would be we would encourage students to become active in local politics at a young age. There would probably be competition among students for the jobs, because they'd be interesting work. The job of a council member becomes less demanding, and therefore we are more likely to have high quality applicants, people who have a lot of other things going on in their life and would like to serve on city council but simply cannot make the sacrifice necessary to do a competent job. Everybody would win. And I'm also troubled in my observation by the fact that there's so much information a council member has to have to do the job right. And if you're deprived of the information, you don't do a good job. And knowledge and information is power. And if, for example, staff has a lot of the information and council members have a lot less, they're not able to balance the competing interests of staff members versus council members. I think it will be a very modest expense with enormous benefit to the city, to the council, and to the students who are selected. |
| 00:06:51.02 | Mayor Withey | I'm sorry. |
| 00:06:58.87 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Bob. |
| 00:07:12.40 | Mayor Withey | Okay. I think you want to talk. This is Mark Calver. You want to talk on items that are not on the agenda tonight, right? Yeah. Please, come to the microphone. |
| 00:07:29.21 | Mark Culver | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:31.69 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:07:31.71 | Mark Culver | Okay. Yes, hi, my name's Mark Culver, and I'm in Anchor Out. And I'm an itinerant anchor out. I sail to Mexico in the winter. I come back here for the summer, and I work in Saucero. I have my own business, stem to stern, work on boats, do deliveries, give sailing lessons. Thank you. Anyway. I have anchored all over the world. And Sausalito, I hate to say it because I love Sausalito. I've been here over 25 years. one of the most beautiful places I've ever sailed into, is the most unfriendly Court. in the world. Because we have people that don't like looking at boats. They consider them landfill. OK? I mean, I'm a sailor. I don't live, I live on a beautiful yacht that is seaworthy. and it's anchored well And I come here and I stay and I spend money in town and I work here and then I take off. I usually go to Mexico in the winter. come back. The thing is, There's a lot of people that anchor out that are service industry people. They work in restaurants. They might be waiters, waitresses, cooks, et cetera. Where are they going to live if they can't live here? They'll be on the streets like San Francisco. That's a disaster, right? And they're really not causing a problem. The one thing I would like to do with them is teach them, some of them, not all of them, but a few of them, how to anchor. A lot of them don't have the right anchor, or they don't know how to anchor. I was at Dumfrey Park when this woman was trying to teach some people about anchoring, and she said, you drop your anchor, you pile all the chain on top of it as fast as you can to push it in the mud. That's called a fouled anchor, the worst thing you can do. The worst thing. And there is a system to anchoring. And, I have never drug anchor in my life, and I've anchored all over the world, because there is a way you do it. You have the right anchor, the right amount of chain, the right scope. And these people need to learn that, okay? The other thing is, there are some boats out there that I don't think should be out there. They're used as storage. They're just covered in stuff and no one even lives on them. THOSE BOATS SHOULDN'T BE OUT THERE, BECAUSE YOU NEED TO BE ON YOUR BOAT. And I agree, if you agree, people should stay with their boat and make sure it doesn't drift into Tiburon or anywhere else. But that said. I think people have a right to anchor because that's where they live. And if they can't do that, I mean, we're kind of losing the culture of Sausalito. At one time, there was nothing but boats out there, and those people looked in the hills, and there was nothing but trees. Now they're looking at houses, and the people in the houses are complaining about looking at the boats. All right. Anyway, I just want to say, you know, I'm going to be out there until October, and then I'm sailing south. Thank you, sir. But I support the anchor outs. Thank you. |
| 00:10:45.25 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, sir. Thank you. THE FAMILY IS Vicky Nichols did you wanted to talk at this one okay. |
| 00:11:00.57 | Vicki Nichols | Good evening, Mayor Withey and Council. I wanted to bring to your attention tonight, perhaps you were going to address this later, and I know there's some people in the audience that may be more informed than myself. But I'd like to note the passing of a really dedicated citizen, Sausalito Abe Christensen, very untimely, only 47 years old. Abe was a member of Rotary. I'm quoting from his obituary here, and I think there may be others in the audience that could fill in more. But my limited knowledge of Abe was his Consistent dedication to civic projects, his always positive attitude. He was, according to his obituary, he was an early entrepreneur with a tree business, and then he switched over to become a CPA. Perhaps you're going to do this. I'm not sure. I just wanted to make sure it didn't go without being acknowledged. He and his wife had just celebrated their 10th anniversary, his wife Laura. He loved nature and planted more than 1,000 trees. So he's asking that his wishes were that there would not be a public service, but to honor him, please take a hike, plant a tree, or go out in nature in his memory. In lieu of flowers, he's asked that donations be sent to the Sausalito Rotary Educational Fund. so if you'd adjourn in his memory. In lieu of flowers, he's asked that donations be sent to the Sausalito Rotary Educational Fund. So if you'd adjourn in his memory, that would be nice. Thank you. |
| 00:12:36.37 | Unknown | Thank you, Vicky. Thank you. |
| 00:12:39.03 | Jeff Jacobs | Uh... |
| 00:12:39.98 | Unknown | Jeff Jacobs. |
| 00:12:45.45 | Jeff Jacobs | Hello, Mayor and City Councils, City Workers, and Audience, I've been reading Torah portions for a long time. There are some people, Adam amongst them, that say that they enjoy that. I was doing it specifically for my... PALS WHO ARE ALSO JEWISH, BECAUSE IT'S A LITTLE MORE, IT'S, I KNOW A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT, LET'S PUT IT THAT WAY. AND NOW THAT HERB IS GONE, THINGS ARE GOING TO BE A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT FOR ME. I've also had my ears clean, Mayor, so maybe my volume control will also be a little bit different. $40 that cost. I'm gonna read this as the Torah portion. for today, It's, which is called after the death. It's almost five weeks we have a person named Lee Ashley, who has been missing for five weeks. And she borrowed my kayak and she is lost at sea. This does happen out here. This is a real life. It's a little more dangerous than living on land most of the time. But the people are able to do it most of the time. It says this in Ezekiel, it says, and the word of the Lord came on to me saying, son of man, the house of Israel is becoming dross onto me. All of them are brass and tin and iron and lead in the midst of the furnace. But, And I'm changing this a little bit. They are turned into silver. I wouldn't change the Holy Torah at all, and I can't do that. But the message of this, because I've only got a minute and a half left, is... Out of death comes life. out of the last council election where there were three people running for three open seats, and I heard here some pride in not spending extra money for a council election, that we, instead of doing that, we invigorate politics. We're willing to spend money to have the people come together and air their views, discuss them, and come to a good resolution. So I've been going to other agencies as well as this one, to talk about this and one of the ones I went to is LAFCO. I don't know if you're familiar with that, it's agency formation committee. Anytime there's a boundary dispute between any towns and agencies, they will come in. They did that in San Diego and they formed a small craft harbor district. I have two pages that was given to me by King Simmons. He's the head of LAFCO and he says we can do that with a vote in Sausalito. Once we have 50 signatures, I'd like this vote to be along with the vote for the successor to Herb Weiner and not just have somebody appointed to the position. I'd like to have actual elections in Sausalito with debates and discussion and civil disagreement and not just complete consensus and four to nothing votes. You people aren't gonna be able to resolve your differences now cuz you don't have five. But you've got four, I don't want it all unanimous. |
| 00:15:48.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:15:51.46 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:15:51.48 | Unknown | Mr. Peterson. |
| 00:15:51.97 | Lon Peterson | Thank you. |
| 00:15:52.22 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:15:52.24 | Lon Peterson | Thank you. |
| 00:15:57.74 | Lon Peterson | Good evening, Mayor and Council. Wanted to give you a quick update. Lon Peterson, I'm with the Marin Municipal Water District. And I'm here tonight to basically share that we're holding a public hearing on may 16th at 7 30 to introduce a proposal for a rate increase specifically for a bunch of infrastructure upgrades and so i i passed out the mailer that we sent out to over a hundred thousand people in marin we've had multiple meetings but in addition to coming here tonight we also just wanted to continually reach out to the cities and and some of the the customers that we support, and so that's really why I'm here. IN ADDITION TO COMING HERE TONIGHT, WE ALSO JUST WANTED TO CONTINUALLY REACH OUT TO THE CITIES AND SOME OF THE CUSTOMERS THAT WE SUPPORT, SO THAT'S REALLY WHY I'M HERE. SO REAL QUICK, A FEW THINGS ABOUT MMWD. We have 62,000 connections, over 190,000 customers. and that we serve 147 square miles specifically Sausalita gets their water from Bon Tempe and from the Bon Tempe treatment plant. So in the current upgrade, we're currently doing a seismic upgrade on that. So if you guys haven't been to the water treatment plant, I would encourage you to go check it out. It's really incredibly beautiful, but it also produces some of the most pristine water in Marin, which is what you guys get. A couple other things, too, is so we have over 900 miles of pipe stretching out through the entire Marin County which really if you think about it it's from here all the way into Canada but most of our infrastructure that is in Marin is really not seen but you don't see most of it outside of some treatment plants and some of our storage tanks. But that being said, the recent upgrades, or excuse me, the increase, will be replacing pipes, seismic upgrades, storage tanks, and then also a lot of maintenance on our watershed to ensure its reliability and also for fire protection. So that's all I had. If you guys have any questions or would like to have us back for more info on any specific projects, feel free to reach out to me or anybody at the Water District any time. Thank you. You're welcome. Good night. |
| 00:18:13.48 | Mayor Withey | I have no more speaker cards, sir. If anybody else would like to speak, please fill out a speaker card. Yes, sir. |
| 00:18:20.99 | John Burke | Good evening, John Burke. Again, I hope Herb is feeling better. I hope Herb is feeling better. Could you speak in- |
| 00:18:29.53 | Mayor Withey | Could you speak into the microphone? We can't hear it. Sure, I hope Herb is |
| 00:18:31.06 | John Burke | I hope Herb is feeling better. Okay. You know, I don't know why he's not here. It's kind of funny. But as your, I know he did. As this goes, We're way ahead of you. OK, so last ditch effort, but we're way ahead of you. OK, the way you guys have handled this matter, IS DISGUSTING. I don't know when the last time any of you went down and looked at the waterfront, been on the waterfront, or even experienced the waterfront. Why you don't answer the people's questions? Why are you up there? What are you doing? Your $300 a month is almost exterminating and you totally settled community for decades. And you are willing to wipe this out for what? To sit there and not even give an answer and look at me like I'm stupid or something? is pathetic You guys have no integrity for anything that's happening around in a community. You have segregated us. You've shut off our mail. You have stopped every garbage source, every bathroom source. Who the hell do you people think you are? I mean, seriously, communities are made to grow. And what you're doing here is going to be recognized, believe me, it's on its way. And you are gonna have to bear the burden Okay, for this. And I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand the ramifications of carrying a burden for exterminating a community. Because you're going to have to tell your grandchildren and your children this. And I hope it goes down in history. Because you're not going to be looked at as a very formidable group. Period. at least in my eyes. and the way I see you. I don't think you belong up there. Thank you. |
| 00:20:14.44 | Mayor Withey | Could we have your name for the record, sir? No. |
| 00:20:19.37 | John Burke | So you don't know it? John Burke. |
| 00:20:20.63 | Mayor Withey | John Burke. Thank you very much. you Is there any other member of the public who would like to address the council on matters not on the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to item number three, which is the action minutes of the previous meeting. Is there any... Questions, comments, corrections, or if not, can we have a motion? |
| 00:20:46.97 | Mary Wagner | MOTIVATED. |
| 00:20:49.61 | Mayor Withey | So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:20:53.34 | Danny | Bye. |
| 00:20:55.41 | Mayor Withey | that motion carries. Okay. Item number four, the consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and uncontroversial, require no discussion, and are expected to have unanimous counsel support. It may be enacted by the counsel in one motion in the form listed below. Is there any public comment on any of the three items on the consent calendar? |
| 00:21:25.01 | Jeff Jacobs | Yes. |
| 00:21:26.97 | Unknown | . |
| 00:21:29.90 | Joe Burns | Please. |
| 00:21:38.06 | Jeff Jacobs | I'll just make this quick, as quick as I can do it. The Marin Organizing Committee met on Sunday at Col Shafar about the issue of the housing element, specifically about houselessness and low-cost housing in Sausalito. We have one building that's right next to here for low-cost housing. There's about a dozen seniors living in there. We have no other low-cost housing except for the people that live our liveaboards at the marinas and the people who live on the anchorage. So we'd like to move towards a community where the workers and the people that they work for are living in the same community. That is sustainable and that is justice. |
| 00:22:22.94 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. Any other member of the public wish to comment on any consent calendar items? Seeing none. Is there any questions, comments? from my colleagues on the consent calendar if not could we have a motion |
| 00:22:40.43 | Jill Hoffman | I don't have any questions and I'll move after I make my comment. But I just wanted to give a shout out to the library. in Abbott's work and note that their film series, the documentary film series had a total of 695 people attend. this year. So great job for them and I moved to |
| 00:22:53.81 | Unknown | Um, |
| 00:22:58.35 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. Move to adopt a consent calendar. So like. |
| 00:23:03.78 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. So the consent calendar is approved. There's no public hearing item tonight. |
| 00:23:08.88 | Jill Hoffman | Aye. OKAY. |
| 00:23:19.56 | Mayor Withey | And so we move on to item six, our business items. The first item is item 6A. |
| 00:23:32.62 | Mayor Withey | I wish this was not on the agenda. but it is. So we are here to discuss procedures fulfilling the City Council vacancy. And I believe Mary, our city attorney, will I'll lead off the discussion. Thank you. |
| 00:23:54.12 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. This is a report on the procedures for filling vacancy on the City Council. |
| 00:24:05.88 | Mayor Withey | Did your microphone work in- It's on, I'll talk louder. Okay, it's a little difficult because of the fans. So I request everybody to try and speak a little louder. |
| 00:24:07.54 | Mary Wagner | It's on, I'll talk louder. |
| 00:24:15.77 | Jill Hoffman | Do we have this presentation? |
| 00:24:18.98 | Mary Wagner | You do not have this presentation, but all of the information is in your staff report. This isn't working, can you just? forward one. one. Thank you. So the procedures for filling a vacancy in elective office are set forth in the government code. As you're aware, Council Member Weiner resigned effective April 18th of this year. Under the government code, the city council has 60 days, that is until June 17th, to either fill the vacancy by appointment or call for a special election. Because this vacancy occurs in the second half of Councilmember Weiner's term, you would appoint or call the election for the remainder of the term, that is until November of 2018. |
| 00:25:05.89 | Mary Wagner | I'm going to go briefly through both of the options that you have, and then I'm happy to answer any questions. So if the council were to determine that they wanted to seek to fill this vacancy by appointment, there's no set or mandatory process that's set out in the government code. Staff has made one recommended option that the council might want to consider, and that is to fill the position in the same manner that you fill positions on appointive offices in the city, boards, commissions, or committees, going through a notification, an application procedure, an interview, and then an appointment. Depending upon the outreach that the council wants to conduct, we estimate that would probably cost about $2,000. And the majority of that cost, if not all of it, is related to a proposed mailer to all the residents in the city. The other option that you have is to call for a special election. And due to the timing, that election would be in November of 2017. The June and the August special mail-in elections are not available for this position because it doesn't meet the statutory time frames. The seat would remain vacant and filled by the election. If this is the option that the council wanted to pursue, we would return to the council with a resolution calling for a special election on or before June 17th. We did reach out to the registrar voters to get an estimate of the cost of conducting a special election, and it's approximately $32,000. That's $6 per registered voter, and there's 5,300 and something registered voters in Sausalito. The costs have gone up significantly because a lot of jurisdictions have had to move to moving their elections to the even numbered years. So that is one of the reasons for the increased cost. Our recommendation is that you provide direction to staff on filling the vacancy on the council by appointment or special election, and then direct us to return on May 23rd with the report and the related documents to implement that direction. There's more detail in your staff report about particularly if you chose to fill this by appointment. I'm happy to answer any questions about that or any other of the information or questions that you may have. And the city clerk assistant city manager is available as well. |
| 00:27:32.01 | Mayor Withey | Thank you very much. |
| 00:27:37.00 | Mayor Withey | Could I, I know we may very well have some questions up here. Could I, if I may, I'd like to kick off with a couple of make sure clarifying questions. So... May 23rd is up there because that's the date of our next council meeting, I presume. |
| 00:27:58.12 | Mary Wagner | Correct, and then your next meeting after that, I believe, is June 6th. So you have essentially two regular city council meetings between now and June 17th, which is the deadline to act. You could, of course, call a special meeting, and you already have one or two of those on your calendars for upcoming meetings. actions. |
| 00:28:17.10 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thank you. you If we were to... uh... start off by considering appointing someone and interviewing folks. And then we decided down the road that either no suitable candidate or we couldn't reach a consensus on a candidate. Then that doesn't preclude us from by June 17th, having passed passing resolution no later than June 17th to actually move towards the special elections accurate. |
| 00:28:58.80 | Mary Wagner | That's correct. Okay, thanks. |
| 00:28:59.37 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thanks. |
| 00:28:59.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:01.40 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Thank you. |
| 00:29:03.74 | Jill Hoffman | I have a couple. Mary, with regard to the cost, is it, so today as we sit here, it's $32,112 and whatever. change. Is it possible that if more jurisdictions in our in Marine County want to call for an election that that cost would go down? It's just as we sit here today, or do we know that? |
| 00:29:26.98 | Mary Wagner | It's possible. We reached out to the registrar and got the best estimate that we could get as of today. |
| 00:29:33.86 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:29:35.84 | Mary Wagner | It's possible. |
| 00:29:35.87 | Jill Hoffman | It's positive. Okay, it's possible because there may be other initiatives that come on the ballot and that cost then would be divided, then it would be divided down. Have I got that right? |
| 00:29:50.62 | Unknown | I'll echo what the city attorney just said. It's possible, but not likely that it would drop significantly. |
| 00:29:56.68 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. Okay, I have another question. |
| 00:29:59.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:59.35 | Tricia Smith | CHIEF. |
| 00:29:59.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:59.73 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 00:29:59.75 | Jill Hoffman | So also Mary, thank you for providing the government code Title IV, Section 36512. And I was looking at that and on page two of that, |
| 00:30:16.54 | Jill Hoffman | under what I think is section |
| 00:30:24.08 | Jill Hoffman | It looks like to me, it's hard to read this, but I think it's section E. E1, the resigning city council member may cast a vote for the appointment. if the resignation will go into effect upon the appointment of a successor. |
| 00:30:38.73 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:30:38.75 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know. |
| 00:30:38.97 | Mary Wagner | I... |
| 00:30:39.76 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 00:30:39.83 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:30:39.85 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 00:30:39.96 | Mary Wagner | Councilmember Hopkins. |
| 00:30:40.72 | Jill Hoffman | That's okay. But I don't believe that's the case here. I believe Council Member Weiner has resigned and the vote on the appointment will be the four of us. Thank you. |
| 00:30:47.89 | Mary Wagner | Correct. The subsection that you're referring to only applies if the council members are elected by district, and that's not the case here. So the resignation is effective as of the date of the resignation, and that council member no longer participates. |
| 00:30:53.78 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, okay. |
| 00:31:00.33 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:31:02.98 | Joe Burns | Yeah. |
| 00:31:03.05 | Jill Hoffman | That's all I have right now. |
| 00:31:03.13 | Joe Burns | Thank you. go. Mary, could you update us on the process some other communities may have taken? I know there's been some other vacancies in Marin County recently. What process they are taking or have taken? |
| 00:31:13.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:31:16.87 | Mary Wagner | I believe Tiburon followed a process similar to what's outlined in your staff report, which is to take in applications, review the information, and then conduct interviews. But the range is wide from just immediate appointment on the date that the item is brought forward to this more robust process, if you will. I think that the more standard process seems to be to go through some kind of an application and interview process, if you choose to appoint. |
| 00:31:51.87 | Joe Burns | And then I had one question on the special, another question, on the special election. We file on June 17 to have it by June 17. Then everything falls into play as it normally would. There would be an August date for pulling papers, getting signatures. Everything that we've done with previous elections would go into play. |
| 00:32:15.32 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:32:15.41 | Joe Burns | Seated after the election, so maybe December, and really coming onto the dais in December, but effectively then January. Thank you. |
| 00:32:25.60 | Mary Wagner | Correct. |
| 00:32:26.04 | Joe Burns | THANK YOU. |
| 00:32:31.56 | Mayor Withey | I was a little surprised that we're going to require a Form 700 to be filled in during the application process. I don't remember that as being. something that I had to do back in 2012. We did. We did. To sign |
| 00:32:49.44 | Mary Wagner | We do. I did. to sign up to run. |
| 00:32:52.63 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 00:32:52.65 | Mary Wagner | If I may, Mr. Mayor, that's at the council's discretion. What we tried to provide you with in that section of the staff report is the criteria that are utilized when you run for office. So 18 U.S. resident, citizen of Sausalito, registered to vote, because those are requirements to hold office. We added the form 700, but if the council chose or thought that that would be a chilling effect on people applying, you could take it out. We thought it was important that people realize that that is a requirement of holding public office. |
| 00:32:53.80 | Mayor Withey | You're a fan. |
| 00:33:21.17 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I see. I can only imagine the rules have changed in the last five years, because it's not what happened in 2012. But that's OK. If that's what's required now for filing in August, then we should do it for the application. OK. Thanks for that clarification. Any other questions before we take public comment? |
| 00:33:44.15 | Jill Hoffman | I do. I do. I just have one. I'm just looking at my calendar because I was adding the date on my calendar. And it looks like it's a Saturday. So is that really the last day or is it the 16th? |
| 00:33:55.06 | Mary Wagner | It's really June 17th, but... |
| 00:33:55.17 | Jill Hoffman | It's a good thing. |
| 00:33:55.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:33:58.87 | Jill Hoffman | Bye, Jessica. |
| 00:34:00.47 | Mary Wagner | ON OR BEFORE JUNE 17. Okay. It's 60 days from the effective date of the resignation. |
| 00:34:09.64 | Mayor Withey | Okay, and my last question is, We have, is there a |
| 00:34:22.63 | Mayor Withey | reason why the interviews have to be held on at one time? I mean, it may be that an applicant isn't available when we've said all the interviews are going to take place. Does it have to be on one day, or can it be spread out? |
| 00:34:39.32 | Mary Wagner | It can be spread out. It can be at special meetings, at a regular meeting, whatever the council chose to do. |
| 00:34:42.84 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Okay, thank you. OK, if we have no more questions up here, then let me open this for public comment. And I only have one card here for this item. So if anybody would like to speak on this item, could you please fill out a card? Meanwhile, Keith Soenking. |
| 00:35:14.30 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:35:18.79 | Keith | Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I came specifically to encourage the council to vote for appointing the filling of the vacancy. I think it's, one, cheaper. Two, I think you will have a lot of members, including myself, that have been on the council prior on there and understand what's going on. And we do not waste a lot of time where you have a full city council aspect by waiting for the special election. And at the same time, it looks like we'd save about $30,000 in not holding a special election. So I would encourage you. Probably the only thing I would add to what Mary said in regards to interviews is that once you've done your interviews and you made your selection, I would say make the top three selections, announce it to the public, and then let the public make their comments before you make your final vote. Okay. As a CPA, a mediator, I think that would be the best route to go on there. And you've got several good members that were on there. the past council that are here tonight, and I understand they're gonna apply for the position as well. |
| 00:36:52.24 | Unknown | Thank you, Keith. |
| 00:37:04.46 | Mayor Withey | Wendy Richards? |
| 00:37:13.59 | Unknown | Thank you. Good evening. Hello. |
| 00:37:13.66 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:37:13.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:17.54 | Unknown | In contrast to Keith, I am a strong advocate of democracy. I believe $6 a voter is... Nothing to pay for getting our voices heard and standing up for democracy. I think this goes way beyond Sausalito. In the environment we're in today, I see this as an opportunity for us to take the lead in maintaining and reinforcing educated voters and an educated electorate across our nation. So while I know this is a very local issue and I think it is important, I think we also need to recognize that once someone is appointed, that statistics show that that gives them an advantage. They get the incumbents' advantage once an election happens. And I believe it is critical with the number of major issues coming up, general plan update to be one in particular, contracts, pensions, all kinds of major issues coming up that we allow the voters to choose to make that selection. One final point is that we have a lot of new residents here in Sausalito and a special election will give those new residents a chance to understand the issues, to speak out on those issues, and to select what could be a deciding vote on this five-person council. So I urge you to call a special election, and I thank you for your service on behalf of our town. Thank you. |
| 00:38:47.90 | Unknown | Thank you, Wendy. Peter Van Meter. |
| 00:38:57.45 | Peter Van Meter | Yes, thank you. As a sitting council member, I was participating in this process. when Sally Stanford died in 1982. we are faced with exactly the same decision. or we had a remaining term that set the same criteria as you have in this circumstance here. So it was a question of a point or have an election. And we went through that process and we opted on the approach of saying, let's find someone who is a, senior member of the community who is highly respected, who will be non-controversial and so on. So we chose Earl Dunphy. You know, obviously a revered name in Sausalito. And so Earl was appointed to serve out the balance of Sally's term. Well, we learned that Even figures of this alleged stature may be, in fact, controversial. And so the appointment was not universally lauded. you by all members of the community. I feel that the appointment while his politically expeditious And if I was hitting on the council, I'd probably think, well, this is a great opportunity to pursue a particular approach to the way you want to manage affairs of the city. but I would come around from that position and say I think the election is a proper way to go. And I would highly recommend based on my experience that you consider the election and not the appointment. Thank you. |
| 00:40:34.77 | Unknown | Thank you, Peter. |
| 00:40:37.52 | Peter Van Meter | I'm not sure. |
| 00:40:37.89 | Unknown | Jeff Jacob. |
| 00:40:41.98 | Unknown | Could I hand these to the council members that haven't seen this? If they're interested so you can go along. Yeah. Okay. Okay. |
| 00:40:48.51 | Joe Burns | Yeah. |
| 00:40:56.76 | Jeff Jacobs | That's okay. |
| 00:41:03.90 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 00:41:04.84 | Jeff Jacobs | I loved Herb. He gave me $50 to register my boat. He knew I would be involved in this fight. this nonviolent loving fight, we're doing it for for more than just ourselves. What I've given you is something I got from LAFCO, and I think it would be good if every government agency started with the LAF somehow. This group specifically is involved when there is an inter A dispute between towns or agencies, as I said, What it says at the beginning of the small craft harbor district, here it says, the governing body which is established by law to administer the operation of a small craft harbor district... is composed of a five-member elected board of directors, all of whom shall be registered voters. And I'd like to stop there for a minute. John, I know, is a little hot-headed, but the fact is that it was right before the election that the mailbox was taken away from 100 people out there The anchor outs. Many people there aren't registered. The streets of Sausalito go under the water. I'm registered. I did not vote in the last election. There was an issue. That was the biggest one to me, and it wasn't the candidates. It was provisional ballots, that many of the ballots were put in white envelopes and then never counted. So what this enables here is once we get 50 signatures, and we go to LAFCO and they approve it, we have a special election. At the same time, perhaps, as an election for a council member for a small craft harbor district, five member board of directors, we administer this harbor ourselves, I don't know exactly what the borders would be, I just got this two days ago from Keene, who's the executive director. Once we get the 50 signatures, we go to them. They approve this at LAFCO, and then there is a special election. It's very important that we have democracy. I wanna say amen to the two people that said that. We did not have that last time here in Sausalito for a variety of different reasons. I am on a boat called Jubilee. The Jubilee portion is gonna be read in three weeks across the world. Jubilee is freedom, it's forgiveness, it's fruit trees. It's a positive good news message. And all politics must of course be local and be ourselves as individuals. And the first line of Jubilee is this. It says, declare freedom throughout the nation, and to all the citizens therein. A couple things to think about That, one, it's on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. It is American law as well as in the Torah. The second one is there is a nation. We're not just individuals. Let's come together in Sausalito and bring democracy back. Thanks. |
| 00:44:07.28 | Unknown | Thank you. Vicky Nichols. |
| 00:44:16.98 | Vicki Nichols | Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. I would first like to agree with the points that Wendy and Peter made and also expressed that I think election needs to be held. While Peter mentioned that Sally Stanford was, her replacement was found in the 80s, I believe, we have more current history, and that is that when former council member Amy Belzer passed away, we did hold an election, and that was 2004, 2006. It was within this century. I also would reiterate, I believe it was within this century. I also would reiterate, I believe it was Wendy's point about our demographics are changing somewhat. We have a lot of young families that I would like to see getting more involved and weighing in on our general plan, how they want to see our community work, giving them an opportunity to be more involved. If you go the interview route and decide that, we need, I hope, that you will stress to the individual that this is a working council. You're all seeming to get along very well. Things are moving forward. There's not a lot of conflict with individuals' points of view that are dominating the meetings, which I really appreciate. And that the person that you're considering have those commitments in mind to move the city forward and really they're gonna have to be committed. As you all know, it's a lot of work. So if you can find someone like that, I'm loathe to spend the city's money, but I think in this case it's warranted. Thank you. |
| 00:45:58.05 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to talk on this matter. Okay, gonna close public comment, bring it up here for comments. Who wants to go first? |
| 00:46:15.34 | Tricia Smith | I'm not going to go. |
| 00:46:17.62 | Joe Burns | All right, I will go first. As the newest member to the council, one of two, in an uncontested election, I'm up here by the grace of 150 votes. So I'm not sure I can only get the uncontested election part of the last election. I think we went through a process and Looking at doing the same thing again this next season, as far away as it is, seems like a great exercise in theory to say we're going to open it up to the public in a vote. I... I feel that if the council interviewed listen to public comment, which wouldn't be provided in a special election, but listen to public comment and interview these people, And had a consensus on this dais. it would probably be the same person that would have won a special election. Not necessarily, I said it's my feeling. It's not tested, it's my feeling. I just feel that that's probably where we sit if we had that process. I think we should reserve the opportunity to look at both cases and choosing one now eliminates the other. We're choosing an appointment, we still have both opportunities in play. So I wouldn't necessarily limit ourselves to exclusion at this point. So I'm trying to weigh that with the democratic process. I understand that point and giving the public the opportunity to both vote as well as use public comment and public forum to express their desire and that can still happen in an appointment. I think it gives us a lot more opportunity to dig a little deeper than a special election in an off season that frankly I don't think is going to be fair to the winner who then waits basically until January before they get started, February before they get their first real impactful meeting, and then have a couple months before they have to file papers for their 2018 election. If we appoint that person sooner than that, they have an opportunity to participate in the general plan update that much longer. They have an opportunity to participate in the ferry terminal discussions. All the discussions that were brought forth in our letters, that person gets to participate in. And then they go to an election in 2018 with a little more information under their belt than having really started basically in February. in a special election process. So those are the types of details I've been trying to weigh in this process. And on the surface, I think it's really easy to look at the buzzwords of democracy and those things. I think the law was written for a purpose. And when you're considering all the elements of what we recently had in an election, it being an off season and the time framing of it all, I'm currently tending towards the appointment with then further discussion on what that looks like. |
| 00:49:29.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:49:36.14 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:49:39.87 | Jill Hoffman | Well, we're all trying to work our way through this, right? So no one up here has been through this before. And it was a surprise to me. And I think it was a surprise to everybody up here. And as our mayor said earlier, we are sorry to see our fellow council member leave the council. So actually, I'm kind of going through the same evolutionary process that Peter Van Meter was talking about. It sure seems. you know, when you're trying to balance what's the best course of action for the city and what encourages us to be I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE encourage us to be efficient. and encourages us to do the business of the city with the least amount of distraction. Um, then it certainly seems like appointment would be the way to go because it is for a shortened period of time. I find myself leaning toward an election. And the reason that I'm leaning toward that is because an election, a contested election, It's a voluntary thing. My fellow council member pointed out a very good point, that that's a tough thing for anybody to have to sit through and go through, having done one myself. So it is a daunting thing, and you may be looking at a different pool of candidates than you would for the appointments. And I'm not excluding one or the other at this point. I want to listen to what my fellow council members say. If we decide to do an appointment, or at least embark on the appointment process, we can reserve the rights to still call for an election. before June 17th, regardless of what the interviews produce. And so you look at and you think about me, I might be one of the most frugal people up here. I like to be very, very careful about how the city uses the public funds, the taxpayer's money, how are we using it. But in this case, it's what's the cost of democracy? And we know exactly what that cost is today. It's $32,112. And to me, that's an acceptable balance as I sit here today. |
| 00:51:54.46 | Jill Hoffman | This is definitely a challenging issue. And I... empathize with the points of view that we heard from the speakers as well as both of my fellow council members. And I do think it bears mentioning that we're all still reeling a little bit from the unexpected resignation of Herb Weiner after his decades of service to the city. I can really only go on past experience as Council Member Burns pointed out. We ran in what ultimately became an uncontested election. Two of the people who signed up to run signed up on the last day, and one of them shared that he only signed up because he was drafted the prior weekend. And so where we had an opportunity to observe democracy in play, we didn't have a lot of people willing to take up that mantle of service. that. When the council held a special election for Amy Belzer's position, she passed away towards the beginning of her term. So there was a huge amount of time left to serve within her existing term. Under the law, we no longer would have an option about whether or not to hold a special election if someone had passed away in the first half of their term. Here, we have a resignation, and if we hold a special election, As again, Council Member Burns pointed out, the new person will not effectively take office until January. We will be left with only four of us sitting here on the council. for the rest of this year. that's a good question. And then If they want to run again, they will have to pull papers in August, eight months later. So I am struggling to get up to speed quickly as a freshman council member myself after serving eight years on the planning commission. So even with a wealth of city experience, it is a huge lift to try to get up to speed midstream. um, historically, the elections we have here in town that don't coincide with a presidential election, we don't have a great turnout. And so for all of these reasons, I am at the moment, and of course I respect Jill's frugality with how the city spends money. So for all of these reasons, I am leaning at the moment toward keeping our options open, opening the field to see who applies, seeing if a candidate acceptable to the majority of us applies, and if not, then we can still go back to the special election. |
| 00:55:07.03 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I sort of agree with everybody, even though there may seem to be inconsistencies, I don't think there are, because I pretty much would agree with the Vice Mayor that, and that, let's keep our options open. And so, I'm certainly leaning towards... initially go on the route of an appointment, Seeking candidates, interviewing them, and if either no suitable or... no consensus candidate, no candidate that a majority can agree on, then obviously we will move towards a special election. If we make a decision now, we're foreclosing the opportunity of appointment. And that doesn't make sense to me. So that's where I'm leaning and just Also, I think it's important that I would like to, if we end up finding good candidates and we do appoint, my criteria for appointment would simply be... I THINK I'M GOING TO BE you know, If they've got some past experience and can hit the ground running, I would prioritize that. If I feel that they bring the same spirit of collaboration, cooperation, and congeniality, which I think that we've established among ourselves here, that would be an important criterion. And I would not hold any sort of, in my mind, litmus test on policy issues. That's not what I think this is about. This should be about finding, you know, someone who, as I said, could hit the ground running and understand the complexity, try and quickly get up to speed with the complexity of some of the stuff we're dealing with. But if we can't find such a candidate, then obviously we would move towards a special election, and we've got until... basically the 16th of June to make that decision. That's what I think. |
| 00:57:25.96 | Jill Hoffman | Mr. Mayor, may I make one other comment, which is I received a letter from a resident who said that if we decided to move in the direction of appointment, he'd like to see one more question added to our questionnaire. So I just wanted to toss it out there and see how the rest of the council feels, which is, can you provide three or more examples over the past 24 or 36 months where you have provided either written or verbal communications to the council on any issues that you've been concerned about yes or no if so please attach copies of the correspondence you provided or identify the meeting and issue you spoke vote verbally about |
| 00:58:10.93 | Mayor Withey | I would possibly expand that to our boards and commissions, but rather than just exclusively the council. Agree. Okay. Okay. |
| 00:58:18.89 | Jill Hoffman | Agree. If I could just add a caution to that. Doesn't that go back to your litmus test? Doesn't that go back to... by definition if you're appearing or you're speaking about a certain issue. that. that might I mean, I don't know. because I'm just sort of working this through my head right now. |
| 00:58:36.43 | Unknown | just sort of. |
| 00:58:38.69 | Mayor Withey | Well, |
| 00:58:39.33 | Jill Hoffman | I mean, I just, I was just thinking about the participation aspect. |
| 00:58:42.32 | Mayor Withey | So are we, I think we're trying there to, through the question, to interrogate, if you like, the participation versus the issue. Correct. Correct. But inevitably, the issues would arise. |
| 00:58:51.72 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:58:51.78 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. |
| 00:58:55.28 | Jill Hoffman | the issues with the drugs. Right, yeah, I mean that, depending upon regardless of how that person you know, feels at this time that might be a reason for someone to vote or not vote for that person without having to express that. I don't know. So that's my only caution, and this is just off the top of my head as well. |
| 00:59:14.61 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. And remember, I was not suggesting that's a policy we should adopt. I was just explaining what my process would be in my head, that's all. Okay, so where do we want to go here? I mean, Can you live with the idea of this two-step process? If we sort of start off with the appointment route, and if we can't get there, we move to the general special election? |
| 00:59:42.29 | Jill Hoffman | I can live with it because it looks like I'd get outvoted anyway. In the spirit of congeniality and cooperation. Collaborative cooperation. Yeah, collaborative. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. |
| 00:59:50.09 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:59:55.08 | Jill Hoffman | If it was me, I would just call for it. I think I would just call for the election today, but that's fine. |
| 00:59:55.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:55.15 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 00:59:55.16 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:59:55.20 | Tricia Smith | Okay. |
| 00:59:57.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:59:57.05 | Tricia Smith | I think. But that's fine. |
| 01:00:00.21 | Unknown | Yeah. OK. |
| 01:00:01.22 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:00:03.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:00:03.50 | Jill Hoffman | So the request- |
| 01:00:03.99 | Tricia Smith | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:00:04.03 | Mayor Withey | Could you craft a motion? Yes. Yes. |
| 01:00:04.55 | Tricia Smith | to move Thank you. |
| 01:00:05.46 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, so I move we provide direction to staff to first undertake a process to fill the vacancy on the City Council by appointment. And... to adopt the process set forth in our staff report. If we pass that motion, I'd like to talk about when we might schedule a special meeting and to consider applications received by May 17, which is the deadline suggested in our staff report. |
| 01:00:43.95 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:00:43.97 | Mayor Withey | Second. |
| 01:00:44.37 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:00:45.47 | Mayor Withey | THE FAMILY. Do you want a roll call vote or should we do it? Okay. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. That passes 4-0. Okay. |
| 01:00:51.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:00:51.29 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:00:51.39 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 01:00:51.70 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:00:51.73 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:00:57.03 | Mayor Withey | You wanted a... |
| 01:00:58.07 | Jill Hoffman | So in the... process outlined in our staff report, it calls for a mailing to go out this week and for applications to be due. on May 17. I'd like to recommend that we hold a special meeting on May 22. or which is prior to our next meeting of May 23, to interview THE FAMILY IS And if we don't get a significant number of applicants, we could always cancel that special meeting and simply cover it as part of our normal business on May 23. |
| 01:01:43.15 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, my only concern is that If we make the interviews date certain, then, you know, Why do we need to? I mean, in the sense that, Let's say someone's traveling. Let's say somebody has a business engagement. I'd like to see some flexibility if they couldn't make that one date. That's all. |
| 01:02:07.20 | Jill Hoffman | I am only making the suggestion because some of us up here have challenging calendars. Don't lie down. Councilmember Hoffman and I both travel quite a bit, and so I was hoping by scheduling the meeting enough in advance we would both be able to |
| 01:02:15.08 | Mayor Withey | I'm trying. |
| 01:02:15.38 | Peter Van Meter | . |
| 01:02:22.52 | Jill Hoffman | accommodate that date. |
| 01:02:24.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but if someone can't make the 22nd, there's alternatives. I agree. Not too many, though. Skype. |
| 01:02:27.06 | Joe Burns | I mean, yeah. Got it. |
| 01:02:31.53 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but we can, I mean, some of these people out here, these faces, |
| 01:02:31.97 | Peter Van Meter | Bye. |
| 01:02:32.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:02:32.10 | Peter Van Meter | I'm kidding. |
| 01:02:35.66 | Jill Hoffman | I would recognize them. I could interview them over the phone. you know, or But yeah, so 22nd, but then if someone can't do that date, then they just need to let us know. I agree. |
| 01:02:44.14 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 01:02:44.32 | Peter Van Meter | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:02:44.78 | Jill Hoffman | That's fine. |
| 01:02:45.18 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, if I may. Yes, please. |
| 01:02:46.06 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, please. |
| 01:02:47.81 | Adam Politzer | In the past, and I think it was related to the housing element, we would schedule the the issue that we thought was most important for the regular meeting and Then we would move the other city business to a special meeting So you could hold the interviews for the 23rd And then we can move the other items To either that Monday or another date, but you're probably because of the time constraints But in my in my opinion probably the most important Discussion and And so because the public already has the 23rd as a council meeting on their regular calendar, so people that follow us regularly, you may want to consider that option. |
| 01:03:29.85 | Jill Hoffman | To be clear, I'm suggesting interviews occur on the 22nd, that the appointment occur on the 23rd, or on June 6. After public comment, I really liked the suggestion of narrowing the field and then having public comment on you know, at least some of them, depending on how many people apply. but I'm not sure. So that's just a point of clarification. don't think we should make an appointment during a special meeting that's not one of our regular meetings. |
| 01:04:02.08 | Jill Hoffman | Right. I think that that was because the interviews will not be public or will they? |
| 01:04:08.93 | Mary Wagner | Yes, they would. Just like your interviews for boards and commissions are public. |
| 01:04:10.03 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, they were. Thank you. Okay. But they wouldn't be here from the dais broadcast that kind of meeting. |
| 01:04:17.98 | Mary Wagner | Basically, they're held in the conference room, but members of the public are allowed to attend. |
| 01:04:21.77 | Jill Hoffman | OK. |
| 01:04:22.13 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:04:22.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:04:22.68 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:04:22.79 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:04:22.92 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:04:22.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So I think the thought is that especially depending upon how many number of applications we get that we would interview on the 22nd, and then we would have overnight to sort of think about it. |
| 01:04:34.87 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I'd like to get a date on the calendar for that, and then we determine what it's going to be. If we do get 8, 9, 10, I like Keith's suggestion as well, that we narrow it down and make it more of a public comment opportunity on one of those as well. |
| 01:04:52.93 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:04:55.22 | Mayor Withey | I also don't want to rush the process. We do have until June 16th. Right. And so, again, I'm trying to get some flexibility in here. If we still haven't, I mean, say we had 20 candidates. I don't think that's going to happen. But there's no reason we can't move into the following week and eventually appointed June 6th if we're |
| 01:05:16.28 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. Correct, we could do some interviews on May 22, and on May 23 we could schedule when the next interviews would be. |
| 01:05:19.69 | Mayor Withey | We could do Thank you. On May 22. |
| 01:05:22.02 | Joe Burns | you |
| 01:05:22.68 | Mayor Withey | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:05:23.03 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:05:24.63 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:05:24.67 | Joe Burns | Okay, so... But for us with kids and summer break, let's get something on the calendar. |
| 01:05:31.26 | Mayor Withey | Well, okay, well, let's get May 22nd on the calendar, at least as a placeholder, if that's possible. I don't like scheduling at the dais, but... I'm not sure. |
| 01:05:41.96 | Adam Politzer | . |
| 01:05:42.25 | Mayor Withey | you you |
| 01:05:43.03 | Adam Politzer | So I'm hearing that all four council members are available on May 22nd. |
| 01:05:49.56 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I don't know. |
| 01:05:53.51 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:05:54.59 | Mayor Withey | But let's put it on and hopefully I am. I don't have my calendar with me. |
| 01:06:00.44 | Jill Hoffman | I was just speaking for myself. |
| 01:06:00.66 | Mayor Withey | That's why I don't like scheduling on the day. |
| 01:06:01.98 | Joe Burns | on the dais. Well, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. |
| 01:06:06.33 | Mayor Withey | But let's put it on and then, you know. Yeah. |
| 01:06:10.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Tentatively. Thank you. |
| 01:06:12.91 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 01:06:13.15 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. you |
| 01:06:14.03 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other comments here? We're all done. Is there anything? |
| 01:06:17.64 | Unknown | Is there anything else staff needs from us? Mr. Mayor, there was mention of an additional question to be added to the application. |
| 01:06:27.36 | Jill Hoffman | I think we can ask questions during the interview. I support that question in the interview. If there's not universal agreement, I would say let's keep the application as is. |
| 01:06:30.46 | Unknown | I support that. |
| 01:06:30.97 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:06:30.99 | Joe Burns | Bye. |
| 01:06:31.04 | Mayor Withey | Bye. |
| 01:06:31.05 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:06:31.09 | Mayor Withey | QUESTION. |
| 01:06:31.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:06:31.41 | Mayor Withey | Sure. |
| 01:06:31.47 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:06:31.49 | Mayor Withey | So. |
| 01:06:31.91 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:06:33.77 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 01:06:38.92 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 01:06:39.03 | Mayor Withey | Okay, good, good. All right, this item's done. Thank you very much. And thank you for the public comment. Okay, the next item, 6B, is the general plan update review of proposed outreach program. And Danny Castro, our community development director. Thank you. and others. |
| 01:07:04.89 | Danny | Good evening, Mayor. With the members of the Council, as you all are aware, the general plan update is underway. General plan outreach materials were mailers were sent out to all postal addresses. I think most of us have received the mailers. Those mailers indicate how one can get involved and participate and sign up, as well as apply for the General Plan Advisory Committee if one is interested, and that deadline is May 17th. But generally, it provides, I'll also put you to a website, which is SausalitoGeneralPlan.org. Um, What I'm here this evening to do really is to introduce you to Christy Bascom, who is with the M Group, who will make a presentation of the proposed outreach program for moving forward on the general plan update. The general plan advisory committee met last week and was presented with this proposed outreach program, and we're here to present this outreach program to you. |
| 01:08:13.82 | Christy Bascom | Thank you, Danny. Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. So as Danny noticed, general plan update in the recruitment for the general plan advisory committee. And just to let the community know that the general plan update is underway. has been launched. If you have not already, hopefully you will soon be receiving the postcard in the mail, which was sent to all the Sassalito residents. The ads have been placed and running in your local media. And applications, as Danny noted, are being accepted and encouraged through May 17th. So that's kind of the launch of the general plan update and the recruitment for the general plan advisory committee. What I'm going to go through this evening is the larger public outreach and public engagement strategy to get the broader community involved in the broader general plan update. |
| 01:09:12.90 | Christy Bascom | And I'll try to make sure I know how to. |
| 01:09:19.25 | Christy Bascom | use your technology here. |
| 01:09:24.80 | Christy Bascom | I'm just going to do the PowerPoint side right there. |
| 01:09:32.31 | Christy Bascom | Thank you. So in terms of an overview of the outreach strategy, we have several goals of what we're trying to accomplish here. Basically, we're providing an overarching framework and kind of a roadmap for public engagement activities for the general plan update throughout the two- to three-year process that this is going to take. The goal is to engage the widest cross-section of the community as possible, provide both large and small group formats, formal events, as well as informal and more casual gatherings, in-person as well as online opportunities for people to be engaged in the process. So we're looking to engage several different kind of target groups, we're calling them, one being just the community members at large, residents at large, business owners, property owners, just anyone who is interested in the general plan update process in Sausalito. In addition to just the broad community, we'll also be looking specifically to outreach to members of the city's official bodies, commissions, committees, advisory groups, task forces, as well as engage technical advisors and members of regulatory agencies and then also private organizations and nonprofits that are active in the community. So we're really trying to reach a very broad cross-section of people to get them involved in what they're interested in in the general plan update process. This is a visual only, just a graphic that's meant to kind of convey just the breadth of different events and opportunities, meetings, workshops, talks that we'll be having over the course of 2017, 18, and 19. And it's kind of broken up into the different phases of the general plan update. And again, this is just meant to visually represent that during the first phase, the understanding phase, where we're doing all of the. THEIR OWNERS. initial research and really getting to know the community. You can see that there are a wide variety of different outreach opportunities in phase one. Phases two and three are the vision and plan development. And again, each one of those circles represents a different type of workshop, meeting, stakeholder group get together, and then as well as in the adoption phase, that's when we start getting into the more formal public hearings. But through it all, we have a variety of different outreach opportunities, which I'm going to break down for you just a little bit more here. So I mentioned there are both public meetings, so kind of in-person type events and opportunities, as well as some online engagement. So I'll talk about the public meetings first. As you're undoubtedly aware, certainly two of your council members are, we have the general plan advisory committee meetings that have already started taking place and which we're looking to further populate with additional members. So this is the advisory body that's facilitating the general plan update. They have formal monthly meetings. Agendas are prepared for these. All of these meetings are open to the public, and so these are being broadcast and noticed. So members of the public are welcome and encouraged to attend. In addition to the GPAC, General Plan Advisory Committee meetings, we're holding pop-up workshops throughout the course of the general plan update, and five of those are planned. So pop-up workshops are more informal opportunities to meet with the public out in the community. So we set up at, try to piggyback on other public events that the city is already hosting. And so these are whether it be farmers markets, outdoor concerts, just events that are happening in the community, These are engaging and more discussion oriented, and they're really meant to meet people out where they already are. It's not meant to. drag them to yet another meeting that they have to attend separately, but it's to actually meet them out in the places that they are in the community. In addition to the pop-up workshops, we have five planned community workshops and forums. So these are the larger, more structured meetings. They're set at critical points in the project where community-wide input is really critical to the process. So the idea here is there would be discussion and brainstorming through some hands-on exercises, but this would be a large, more kind of formalized event. We also have eight planned stakeholder meetings. So this is where the consultant group and staff are meeting with targeted group members, stakeholders, on special topics. So this topic's ranging from economic development to neighborhood issues, historic preservation, and so forth. So these stakeholder meetings are intended to be very feedback-oriented and very fact-finding, where we're looking to talk to specific groups who have specific areas of interest and specific information about particular topics. In addition to stakeholder meetings, we also have four walking tours that are planned. So these will be group tours in specific areas. to kind of develop a better and deeper understanding of an area, a particular site or particular issue. that will help spur some conversation. So the concept behind these is that they tend to be more casual and more informal. We don't have the exact locations picked out yet or the exact timing for the walking tours. Our thought is that as we get along further in the general plan update process, some of those in particular issue areas or particular sites that really merit a walking tour will kind of reveal themselves and then we'll plan those accordingly. We also have four informal coffee chats. These are kind of drop-in discussions where both staff and the consultants will be available to talk about the general plan update, the process, and engage some community members in Thank you. discussion on land use and policy alternatives that are being considered. So lastly, for the public meetings, we have the Planning Commission and City Council study sessions that will be scheduled throughout the course of the General Plan update. So there are 14 of these that are planned over the course of the two to three year process. So this is really an opportunity for the staff and the consultant team to gather input from the Council Planning Commission. in refined policies. on particular issues or topic areas that are affecting the community. as they relate to the general plan update. So these will be held at key project milestones when we're really refining the community vision outlining the general plan goals and objectives, evaluating policy alternatives, and then of course, once we're getting closer to the end of the document, and we're reviewing the draft and final general plan and the general plan EIR. So those would be all the kind of public meetings or in-person ways that community members can be engaged? We're also hoping that they will be engaged through the general plan update website that Danny mentioned where we're having links to event announcements, documents, organizations that are helping out with the general plan update, and where we'll be posting all the meeting agendas, handouts, minutes, and meeting summaries. We'll also be doing an online survey through Peak Democracy. So these are surveys that can gauge community interest in particular topics or issues. and we can initiate those at any time, at any point through the process. Lastly, we're promoting general plan update events and outreach through the Sausalito Currents newsletter. keeping the community informed and involved in the process. So articles are written by both city staff as well as the consultant team. intending to provide summaries of major milestones and links to related documents and resources. So, in keeping with the online engagement, this is just a very quick snapshot. of the traffic that's coming to the project website, the general plan update website. So the graph on the left there shows the website traffic. both since it was initially initiated in March. So you can see the three months there, March, April, and then |
| 01:17:30.63 | Unknown | . |
| 01:17:30.95 | Christy Bascom | Excuse me, just the couple of days we've had so far in May. So we have the total number of page views, visits, and then unique visitors. And then over here, the graph on the right is the actual connections. So people not only visiting the site, but actually doing something there. Signing up to receive information about the general plan update, leaving a comment, or also filling out and responding to a general plan advisory committee application. So this is one of the online tools that we are using. And so far, we found this to be very successful. People are going there. Hopefully once they have an opportunity to read the postcard that they received in the mail, we'll get even more traffic to the website, finding out about the different events, things that are going on, and hopefully encouraging people to engage in the general plan update process. So the council feedback that we're looking at for this evening is just your general thoughts on the outreach program. Is what we have proposed here, the variety of different things, is it sufficient? Thank you. And are there any adjustments needed at this point that the city council sees? And also, does the city council have any guidance to provide staff and on particular groups, committees, organizations, or others to connect with during the planning effort for the stakeholder meetings. So in the memorandum that was provided to the City Council, we listed a lot of different city committees and boards, different nonprofit organizations, regulatory agencies. So if you see anything there that we missed or anything that we should keep in mind, we would appreciate the council's feedback on that as well. That concludes the presentation part. I'm happy to answer any questions that the council may have. |
| 01:19:15.15 | Unknown | Thank you, Christy. |
| 01:19:17.73 | Mayor Withey | Okay, questions. This has been, was reviewed by the General Plan Advisory Committee. committee, the current core group. Vice Mayor and I have already seen this. So. questions. Any questions? |
| 01:19:43.65 | Joe Burns | I don't question I guess comments were in the comment. Thank you. |
| 01:19:47.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:47.59 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:19:47.96 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:19:47.99 | Joe Burns | Yes. Yeah. |
| 01:19:49.10 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I'm... The online surveys, will those be anonymous or will they require the respondent to identify themselves? |
| 01:19:57.85 | Christy Bascom | There are opportunities for both. People can either register on Peak Democracy and leave a comment with their name attached to it. They could also leave it anonymously. and they are categorized differently. |
| 01:20:11.38 | Jill Hoffman | I'm You've received a bunch of comments already. How may we review the comments that you're collecting? |
| 01:20:19.33 | Christy Bascom | That's something that we need to sit down and discuss with staff to see if that would be provided to the general plan advisory committee as is, we should bring those forward. when we're talking about the particular topic items. Right now we're just collecting them, and we'll make sure we circle back with staff to find out the most effective way to get that information to the committee. |
| 01:20:38.73 | Jill Hoffman | Because we, okay, I'll reserve my comment. And then on your timeline, you still have several key activities scheduled in August when we had notified you that we are dark in August. So is it possible to reschedule the pop-up meeting in the Marinship and the, and all five walking tours to a month other than August when the city council is on recess. |
| 01:21:09.52 | Christy Bascom | Absolutely. The schedule is a visual graphic just meant to represent all of the things that are happening over the course of the time. We did have that conversation. The General Plan Advisory Committee made notes of all the different events and activities that we had Tentatively kind of filtered for that for the month of August for all three years. We'll shift those accordingly. THANK YOU. |
| 01:21:34.42 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I do have a question. Just for the people who are watching that may not have gotten the postcard at home, what's the website for the general plan update? It is Sausalito General Plans. |
| 01:21:46.03 | Christy Bascom | And is it live? It is. It has been since March. |
| 01:21:50.17 | Jill Hoffman | Does it have a section in there where people can submit comments that can be seen? |
| 01:21:56.41 | Christy Bascom | It does not, no. Comments that are submitted are just submitted essentially as an email to a collective address where we are collecting those. So the Peak Democracy online surveys does have that capability. So when we launch a survey on any particular topic, it will have opportunities to leave comments and people can comment on other people's comments. And that is more iterative and interactive. On the website, it's meant to receive just another means of receiving comments, but not displaying them. |
| 01:22:29.98 | Jill Hoffman | I think it's something that I But you would have that capability on the website to do that, to add like a comment section or... You know, so that's more interactive. |
| 01:22:41.21 | Christy Bascom | I'm sure the technology absolutely exists. I think it That's something we might want to talk with staff in the general plan advisory committee about. I guess as long as we made it, of course, known to people that when you provide a comment, it's going to be a public comment that stays on the website as a posting, then that could certainly be done. I guess we'd want to weigh the pros and cons of doing that. |
| 01:23:06.05 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. OKAY. |
| 01:23:12.87 | Mayor Withey | Do we have any other questions before We seek public comment? No? Okay. |
| 01:23:42.55 | Mayor Withey | Oh, now I understand. K-SOR. Sorry. I was having trouble with your handwriting there for a second. |
| 01:23:51.02 | Kate Storr | Uh-huh. Kate Storr, resident in Sasauito, not a doctor, despite my handwriting. I don't know. |
| 01:23:58.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:23:59.95 | Kate Storr | I just wanted to make a comment after watching last month's video about the selection process for the General Plan Committee. And I noticed that diversity was not mentioned at all by the council. And I just wanted to raise that for you to consider. And not just racial or ethnic diversity, but gender diversity, age diversity, retired versus working, and so on, so just wanted to put that in front of you and say that should be a goal as you think about members of that committee. Thanks so much. |
| 01:24:31.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:24:37.50 | Unknown | Jeff. Jeff Jacobs. |
| 01:24:42.29 | Jeff Jacobs | Hello again, Mayor and Council. A gadfly is one of the plagues that the Pharaoh suffers. I don't consider myself a gadfly here. The last thing that Herb said for public consumption was in the IJ article about the anchor outs. And that was one of the big reasons that he's not here. I think anybody that was here for every meeting in the last couple years would know that. that I pointed out to him that it might not be a great thing to vote for. He abstained the first time, the second time he called in sick, and the third he resigned. And I've talked about emoluments And that the way to deal with that is to give up the emoluments the way that we have public office and achieve private gain from that. That's how we're going to deal with our federal issues. And now here in the local and state arenas as well. Three out of the four people spoke for a public election. Now the M group, I'll talk about this, they're being paid $750,000 for this. That's 20 times the amount that it would be for an election, which would be $30,000. I'm very disappointed that you haven't called an election, and After I spoke, What I said is that when we get 50 signatures and we go in front of LAFCO to have a harbor water district, they approve this or not, as the case may be. And they seem very willing to listen now, as does our representative Mark Levin. We have another Levite in the house. Then there is a special election here in Sausalito. the harbor district only to vote That will cost money, but democracy is going to cost a little more than somebody coming in for a planning commission, collecting $750,000 and then leaving for the next town. When we have 92 members of planning departments in Marin County and Sausalito both, What this says, it says at the election, this is now an election for a small water district, if a majority of the qualified voters within the proposed district vote in favor of formation, the district shall be established. |
| 01:27:03.97 | Jeff Jacobs | I've only represented three issues here. In the whole time I've been here, Herbie said, we'll see. I say we'll be. Bicycles, boats, and budding community gardens. Bicycles, we've gone backwards. 22 bicycles chained up last week. Very bad for carbon output in Sausalito. Not very nice to the tourists. Second one is the boats. You have now made them illegal pirates officially. And if you do not enforce the law, people will have no respect for the law at all either. The third one is budding community gardens. I formed the committee with CAT originally and has been obstructed every inch of the way and there are no community gardens in Sausalito. So that's why I'm here to bring all those three Bs. Not will see, mayor will be. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:27:53.84 | Jeff Jacobs | What do I do? All right. Fight back. Fight back, Sausalito. |
| 01:27:59.76 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. David Suda. |
| 01:28:07.12 | David Sudo | David Sudo, I just wanted to make two quick notes. You know, we have some very vigorous next door conversations about similar items to this. I think, you know, as long as we can create some rules, I think having an open forum and having kind of an outline area where we can discuss different general plan issues in a respectful open forum online would be a great addition. We have a lot of different viewpoints and a lot of people seems in town are much more comfortable recording their ideas online rather than coming to meetings and sitting for hours and maybe getting a chance to talk or maybe not getting a chance to talk. The other thing is I would encourage us to figure out a process in these workshops that allows for some creative thoughts. I've seen in some of these meetings where we end up with a predetermined script and it doesn't allow for a lot of working in tangent or working maybe in unexpected areas where we can find opportunities for growth in this community. Thank you, David. |
| 01:29:18.97 | Mayor Withey | I have no other cards. Is anybody else? Keith, please. |
| 01:29:27.55 | Keith | I apologize to the council for not putting my name in the second time. When we were building the trying to find the location for the fire and police departments, you One of the elements that we ran into, and I headed up the outreach program for that, was getting the people off the ferry, off the buses, out of their cars to come to the meetings. that's something I didn't really see here in how they're going to do that as far as getting those people to the meetings. In regards to the comment of the previous gentleman of doing it online, we found that... PEOPLE. by being there together, interreacting when presentations were made, did much more success in getting the people to understand and approve what finally came out as the final chapter on that. So I'll be glad to be around to work with the committee if need be. But those are elements that need to be addressed in getting the people who are actually out of their cars, out of their homes, get down to wherever you're holding a special meeting that night. Keep those meetings short for duration and keep them open for a lot of questions and public input at that time. It works. So thank you. |
| 01:31:02.98 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. Any other member of the public like to talk about this? OK. We'll close public comment. And. Comments and direction. I don't think there's any action. There's just direction, feedback and direction requested. |
| 01:31:28.20 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I think this is a good start, I think. I'm happy to see that we're starting. I would like to see some sort of ability for people to post comments, especially, and I've been looking at the website just now. I know we have different sections of the general plan. that we're going to be looking at that can be taken out separately. And reports pertinent to those sections can be posted. And I hope that we're going to move toward that. I don't see that right now on the website, so I hope that it we get it sectioned down so someone's just interested in the circulation. Chrissy, are we moving toward that on the website? |
| 01:32:16.43 | Christy Bascom | Once we get into the discussion of the different topic areas? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We'll have all the reports that we produce, all the deliverables will be up there. |
| 01:32:20.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:32:25.07 | Jill Hoffman | Good, good. Yeah, so it's easy for people to find them. And then I would hope that we have some kind of public forum ability. Because people now are used to that. And they're used to posting their comments on Nextdoor, or when they read an article in a newspaper. And so I think that's helpful. We have really smart people in town that maybe are too busy to come to a meeting, and they see an issue, and they can post about it, and at least that comes to our attention. So anyway, I think that would be helpful. |
| 01:32:52.97 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I'm going to further that and even a little bit on David Sudo's point on using the online or even I believe it's fairly easy to put a Twitter feed onto a website where people can do an at general plan update or whatever the address is and provide some of that creative, especially as we get into the vision portion of this, where we're kind of looking for creative ideas outside of the box that come more in that type of medium. I think we see that opportunity through websites, Twitters, Nextdoors, and to be able to capture those, especially going forward in that vision area. But before I finish, because I won't start again, great work to date. Thank you for the committee for what you've gotten to this point. That was a very easily understandable timeline, even though it doesn't look so easy on the board. It feels good that we know we have a very strong path ahead. |
| 01:33:57.50 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. I want to thank the M group for revising the materials that were presented between the GPAC meeting and this evening. You asked for feedback on additional groups, and I'm sure you'll get plenty of that over time. For the moment, I noticed that you have the Army Corps of Engineers, but there's not the federal government. And at some point, we're going to have to interface with them about circulation and other issues in the marineship, perhaps, as a part of this process. Also, the outreach program mentions a bunch of other organizations in town, the Remington Dog Park Association, MLK. I think ICB, those artists should also be included as a topic of outreach. In terms of the comments that are collected, we're getting ready later this month to appoint members to the GPAC. I think it's really critical that somehow you find a way to communicate those comments to us. Otherwise, what's the point in collecting them if the decision makers aren't provided with the feedback from the general public? That's really critical, in my view, that we get to see that feedback since we can't, even if it's not intended to be public in some manner, perhaps provided to us in summary fashion of some sort, but We depend on the feedback from the residents. And as I inferred or implied earlier, we need to reorganize the key activities that are in August. I realize we're on a tight timeline, but we have a bunch of staff activities, design review, economic input, as well as a bunch of... resident activities scheduled in August that I know some of the city council members would like to attend. So I think that needs to get revised as quickly as possible. But overall, I think great job. I don't see any great. revisions needed to the outreach program and in terms of guidance on particular groups to connect with during planning for the stakeholder meetings, I would recommend that you work with staff to put together some suggestions and bring that back to the GPAC. |
| 01:36:27.33 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. Yeah, again, I agree with everything I've heard. I don't you know, there isn't one way to do outreach and therefore the broadest way to do outreach, I agree that we should have, you know, we should encourage people to come to meetings and, you know, be there in person, but some people can't. And so I do like the idea of finding a way so that people can post comments that everybody can see and get a dialogue going on the, I know it's how Nextdoor works that seems to work pretty well. I think, so Christy, do you have enough info to sort of work through and then come to the next GPAC meeting with, um, incorporated some of those thoughts, yeah? Yeah, okay. Okay, good. Thank you very much. Now, time check. Can we do one more item before the break, or are we... |
| 01:37:33.11 | Unknown | Thank you. Sure. |
| 01:37:34.39 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. Good. Yeah. |
| 01:37:35.81 | Unknown | Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. |
| 01:37:38.20 | Mayor Withey | Okay. All right. So our next item, 6C, is an age-friendly Sausalito program report. |
| 01:37:55.89 | Mayor Withey | And you're all going to have to excuse me because, |
| 01:38:01.49 | Mayor Withey | And that's, yeah. I mean, sorry. |
| 01:38:03.35 | Unknown | Sorry. |
| 01:38:07.53 | Mayor Withey | Sorry, I managed to get through an hour and a half. |
| 01:38:10.55 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 01:38:13.07 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I know. Put your button on your lookout. No, just kidding. |
| 01:38:19.97 | Unknown | you |
| 01:38:29.71 | Mayor Withey | Mike. |
| 01:38:30.03 | Mike Langford | Okay. Well, good evening, Mr. Mayor and City Council. Mike Langford from the Parks and Recreation Department. One of the great things about Sausalito, of course, is its people and all the task force, committees, commissions, and general volunteers. And, of course, we are going to be recognizing all of them next Thursday at the Spinnaker at the volunteer recognition event. But as Park and Recreation Director, I get to work directly with many of these groups. And it's a fantastic group of people. Their energy is great. They have great ideas. And a few years ago, this thought about Sassado being called age-friendly came up. Well, instantly there was a group of people that said, yes, we should do that. The city council endorsed it, and there was a task force put together. And so what we have today is Tricia Smith from that task force, and she's been there from the very beginning. She's going to give the council an update on a little bit of the history, where we are with the task force and where the task force is going in the near future. So with that, Tricia Smith. Amen. |
| 01:39:31.70 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:39:31.98 | Mike Langford | Welcome Trish. |
| 01:39:33.81 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:39:33.83 | Mike Langford | Thank you. |
| 01:39:34.17 | Tricia Smith | Hey, guys. Nice to see you. I was here in November, and... It's nice to be back and see the new faces, and sad to see the empty chair. Anyway, in November, it was really wonderful because that was when we brought the strategic plan to you, the three-year action plan. And it was unanimously voted on. So we appreciate the support. So today, it's going to be a brief update Let's see if I do this right. Just a reminder why, especially for the audience, maybe who's at home or here, why an age-friendly sauce ladle? Why did we even think that this was important back in 2013. And it was actually, so it was four years ago that a small group of us got together. It was in April, so it has been four years, and then we came to the city council in July of that year. But a big reason was the statistics for this county and the city are pretty staggering. I'm sure you hear it when you go to community meetings, especially in the county. our population here in Sausalito of older adults outpaces the county and the state with 30.1% age 60 or over. So that's pretty big. So what are we going to do for the future? Well, we were really looking towards a vision of a city that works for everyone of every age and every ability, and using the general plan as part of that. Really having, as this general plan is being put together, looking through an age-friendly lens as each decision is made. So when we started, we used the World Health Organization's guidelines. That was what was best available at the time, and they really had already seen on a global world setting what was happening with the aging boom. So they had already set up these guidelines that we followed, which the first step was the assessment. And so in 2013, we did that age-friendly survey, got a 50% response. So that was pretty huge. 2,400 mailed out and 1,200 returned. So that really helped us to put together step two, which was the three-year community action plan. We had a lot of good information, but also at the same time, we had already snuck into step three, which was implementation. We have already started a lot of the programs that we had started to discuss in the strategic plan. And so that's what I'm going to review today is what we have been doing and what the next steps are. So the current programs and partnerships, and I've listed them briefly here, but I'm going to go through each one. So cars, pedestrian flags, the relationship partnerships with Rotary, Sausalito Village, and additional partnerships. So cars. Cars is two years old, May 1st. And that's a big thank you to the city council, really, who helped to make that happen with your votes and your support. By the numbers, we have 32 drivers. And I think that's a good thing. the city council really who helped to make that happen with your votes and your support by the numbers we have 32 drivers so each one of them does a minimum of four hours per month so that means that they're generally doing one of the four hour shifts a month the month before they sign up for a 10 to 2 shift we have only lost two drivers in the two years. And one was due to, he really did age out. He was having some health problems, and the other had caregiving duties. So I think that says a lot that we've been able to maintain all of those volunteers through the two years. We have over 120 riders currently signed up. You do have to sign a waiver, short application and a waiver to ride. An average of 170 rides provided per month. Well, this varies. It goes from 140 to 200. You never know. Is it the weather? Is it an event that's happening? Who knows? It was lower in December and January, the holidays, people out of town, but it's been booming in March, April, May. so we also added last year the city-wide evening events so those are generally events that are free and open to everyone and so most of them are the city's library events although we do a sausalito arts festival we did the sausalito women's club for the poetry night which was a partnership with the library so we do we say an average because it's between six and 14 there's a lot lot more library events, I've noticed, in January and February, so we do a lot more. And an average of about 200 volunteer hours per month because there are volunteers other than the drivers who keep this program running. And then part of this is the lunch about town, and I'll talk about that a little more when we have some pictures. But here I just want to show you. Okay, so Herbie, although Herbie never drove for cars, he has been the best marketing machine because he's had that magnet on the back of his car. Actually, he hasn't had that one because that one did get stolen. He has the new smaller ones that are not as, they don't have legs. They don't walk away the same because they're not as lovely as those big ones were. Thelma in the center is one of our biggest writers. And then look who's there, Joe, who has been with us. And thank you, just keeps going, and we really appreciate it. Thank you. Very loved by all the writers. And the Lunch About Town, so this happens monthly, and it's between Sausalito Village and Carr's. Different month, a different restaurant every month. Sometimes we go out of the box, and we do Sausalito Presbyterian Church. They host us and do this gourmet meal. That's one of the photos that's there. But look who's there in the corner. That's Yoshi from Sushi Ron. That was a real coup. In November, we were at Sushi Ron. He opened up the patio. He did a five-course meal that he presented. This was closed because to only Sausalito Village and Cars riders and volunteers because space. But that was a happy day because that was a very senior-friendly price that he provided that meal for. That was very fun. I'm hoping that that can happen again. So another program that came about this year was the pedestrian flags. the Estrine Flag Program. And I want to thank Adam especially because I said, Adam, what do you think about this idea? And he was really great and just said, I think that's a good idea. We should try that idea. And we first tried it with the city flags, you know, the ones that they use on the construction sites. And those did have legs. Those did walk away really fast because they were nice, hefty. I think they're $5 a piece on those. So a group, we now have flag makers. We have four monitors and makers. The fourth one came on. Patricia Pigman mentioned she thought that there should be the intersection right at Drivers. And I'm all for adding an intersection if somebody's willing to monitor that intersection and help with flag making. So far it hasn't cost the city anything for the flags. We do take care of that. We've had to make 100 so far. And they're doing pretty well. I think we have more trouble on Caledonia Street, surprisingly, than we do on Bridgeway as far as one's walking off. But my husband and I were sitting at drivers today, outside, and watched these two little ones. They knew exactly what to do. They grabbed their flags, marched across, and put them right in the bucket, and off they went. So it was really, that was kind of fun to see. What we do need is permanent. signs. If you look at the ones that Mike has made for me, the stickers, you know, they're peeling off the rains taken most of them. So I have had a request in to get permanent signs, especially at the intersections on Bridgeway, which we know are successful. It's still a trial basis on Caledonia. But the other pictures to show it's not only for the older folks. Age-friendly means it's for everybody. So the strollers, the kids, When I monitor, I grab the flags and I go across the street. It is astounding to me when I go back without a flag, the difference, I'm always measuring that. People do stop when you hold that flag. It's just another way, another way for them to notice you in that intersection. And with all the tourists, the bicyclists, we need every cue that we can use. So anyway, I think it's been a simple and successful program. And it's a partnership with Sausalito Village volunteers help with that, too. So one of our partnerships is with Rotary. And there's Mike. Mike Langford, who knew? You all know already. He is like jack of all trades. He was really very helpful that day. And he had to go backtrack on a couple of houses. But it's, you know, what a wonderful thing. Rotary and Sausalito Village and Age Friendly coming together. And whoops. Or as my senior chore day, it seemed to... Well, one little stat is missing. Oh, there it was. Sorry. I jumped ahead. So there were 10 of us, 10 volunteers. We each worked the four hours between 10 and 2, and we served 25 seniors who had signed up for this. It used to be they just used to change batteries in the smoke detectors, but a lot of them have those 10-year smoke detectors now and don't need that. turning a mattress moving a potted plant moving a piece of furniture One gal and I were putting legs on a piece of furniture that you know She just couldn't pick it up herself and put the legs on the furniture So it was really wonderful to do it Joe you were with us last year and I think a bag of an egg bag meeting held you up this year. You weren't able. But he did follow up and did two or three of the visits. We had a couple of boo-boos that we did, and you had to go take care of too. between Probably Mike and Joe could do chore day, just the two of them. But anyway, it's fun for the rest of us all to participate, and we appreciate it. So Sausalito Village is a very important partnership. I'm the president of Sausalito Village and have been for the last two years. It's important because it's really the legs on the ground. We have 100 volunteers already. So it was natural that we would manage cars because we already managed a transportation program. So we already have committees who do emergency preparedness. So we did a grab-and-go backpacks. We already have volunteer opportunities. And when you look at what the guidelines are for World Health Organization, all of these things fall under the domains. Volunteer opportunities, employment opportunities are important. So technology assistance tomorrow Where's my husband? Excuse me. Could I have those please? Oh, they're not there. Jeez. Okay, they're somewhere. I think they're in the back of the car. When you leave tonight, you're going to see an A-frame out there advertising tomorrow's presentation. It's a free presentation to learn the tricks of your iPad and iPhone. And so it's these types of things that Sausalito Village is able to do these age-friendly programs because we have the volunteers and the ability to do it. We do health care, and so what he was looking for was the flyers, which I thought were in the back of my car, but I'm gonna put them on the table if I find them. 10 o'clock tomorrow in this room, so if anybody can make it, that's great. Again, it's free. Health care advocacy is something that we offer. Exercise opportunities, and social activities, all important age-friendly domains. Here's photos of all of those things. Just last weekend, the gentleman on the left is the CHP officer who did a driver training for seniors. And the emergency backpacks, and then that's our seniors in motion movement class. So we have additional partnerships. We have David Suto here from the Lions Club. And, you know, the Lions Club still does our barbecue every year, and it's really great. It's a big volunteer appreciation for cars and Sausalito Village. The Women's Club, the emergency preparedness committees on both, we share our information. So there's a lot of things we try to do with the Women's Club, Sausalito Police Department. They're there. If we have an issue, Stacey and I work closely. If there's an issue that we see maybe with a cars driver or a rider or a Sausalito Village member that we think the police department just want to check to make sure they're involved in the RUOK program, we touch base. So it's an important relationship. Marin Transit, they ceded the money for cars in the first place. So they're important. Commission on Aging, Department of Aging, and Marine Community Foundation, who's also provided funding when we were doing the strategic plan. So fostering and building new partnerships. We're always looking for new partnerships in town. This is the Lions Club course, and then Stacy. Stacy. So what is next? So we have to maintain our status as a who-recognized age-friendly city, and so therefore the task force is committed to taking on these next steps. We're gonna continue the current programs I was just talking about, and continue to develop new programs. We're going to maintain the partnerships we have and develop new ones. In just two weeks, I think, Sybil Boutilier is gonna be here and she's gonna unveil our next program, which is the Age-Friendly Home Modification Program. So we're going to hopefully provide input on the general plan, continue to work with Age-Friendly Marin, which is a support group of other age-friendly cities in Marin County. AARP, you know, so the World Health Organization is on the world stage, but right here nationally, AARP has taken the lead as far as age-friendly. And Syyl Boutilier went to the California meeting in Pasadena last week. And because we've already done so much work here, we will almost automatically get recognition as an age-friendly city under AARP as well. So this is my last update to the council as chair of the age-friendly Sausalito task force. I've done it for four years. I think we've accomplished a lot in that time, and I am ready to step aside, and Sybil Boutilier will take over as chair of the task force, and we'll be recruiting also new membership for the next phase, which is really looking at monitoring and reporting, which is also part of the requirement to the World Health Organization. So to you, I say thank you. It's been a pleasure to come up here and speak to you since 2013, and I've always felt welcome by everyone, and we have had only unanimous votes, which is hard to say in this last few years. I really will always treasure that. And I hope that you'll always give the ongoing, I'll still be involved at the task force, but give the new chair the same support. So thank you. |
| 01:55:19.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:20.06 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:55:20.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:20.82 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:55:25.02 | Mayor Withey | questions. Tricia, thank you very much for that superb presentation. Any questions? |
| 01:55:34.00 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:55:34.02 | Mayor Withey | I'm not. Okay, no questions. Open this up for public comment. Is there anybody in the audience who'd like to comment on this agenda topic? |
| 01:55:53.69 | Jeanne Fiddler | . |
| 01:55:53.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:55:53.81 | Jeanne Fiddler | Thank you. |
| 01:55:56.45 | Joe Burns | Yeah. |
| 01:55:57.12 | Jeanne Fiddler | Yeah. Bye. if I have to. |
| 01:56:02.89 | Unknown | Hello, everybody. |
| 01:56:02.94 | Unknown | Bye. Bye. |
| 01:56:04.70 | Unknown | My question is regarding the production of the flags. You have just mentioned holding up for crosswalking. you Do you ever Do you ever partner with private organizations for sponsorship? |
| 01:56:22.64 | Unknown | So, |
| 01:56:23.23 | Tricia Smith | We have not so far, because they're very inexpensive to make so far. They're about 30 cents a piece that we're making them for 40 cents a piece. So thank you. |
| 01:56:38.13 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:56:38.16 | Tricia Smith | you |
| 01:56:38.40 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 01:56:38.55 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 01:56:39.22 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Anybody else like to comment? Mike. Okay. Let's bring it back up here. Tricia, that was wonderful. And I'm just going to I mean, personally, I can't believe you're not going to be doing this after four years. So I think Sausalito, everybody here, I know thanks you personally, but all of your team as well for unbelievable work. We are recognized certainly in the county, but I'm sure beyond as having the premier program in this. |
| 01:57:31.79 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. I mean, what a spectacular benefit this has been for our town. And again, using just very simple ideas to bring a huge benefit to these people, the town, and the people that you're able to help. It's just what a great program. And thanks to you for your leadership in pushing this forward. this program, but the CARS program and the other programs that you've worked so hard on. So thank you on behalf of the town for everything you've done for us. |
| 01:58:01.68 | Joe Burns | Yes, and I'll say thank you on behalf of the town, and thank you for encouraging me to get involved, because I have absolutely loved it, and I look forward to my time with my ladies and driving them around. I get to test out new material, and it's always my favorite day of the month working with them, so thank you. |
| 01:58:19.23 | Jill Hoffman | you And I'll just echo the comments of my fellow council members. Tricia sought me out when I announced I was running for office and sat me down to educate me about what was going on here in town, as well as on the county level. And it's really, I've also met with Grant Colfax, and it's really impressive how well Sausalito is recognized and what you've been able to accomplish in four years. So kudos and thank you. |
| 01:58:45.45 | Mayor Withey | So congratulations to Age Friendly. Thanks a lot. |
| 01:58:56.47 | Mayor Withey | At this point, I'm going to suggest we adjourn for a short break, and we'll be back shortly. Thank you. |
| 01:59:32.48 | Mayor Withey | Okay, let's resume. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE Item six. D. review the process for the Phil Frank statue. Danny Castro. Thank you. |
| 01:59:45.78 | Danny | Good evening again, Mayor Withey and members of the council. To give you some background, again, this is the review of the Phil Frank statue. In April 27th of last year and February of this year, the Planning Commission approved a design review permit for landscape, hardscape improvements, and interpretive elements to the public plaza space surrounding the ice house located at the corner of Bridgeway and Bay Street. That address is 780 Bridgeway. The applicant is Sausalito Historical Society and Sausalito A feature of the project, the Phil Frank statue, was presented to the Planning Commission but was not included in the project approval. The Planning Commission felt that the procedures for consideration and approval of the acceptance of public art are not clear and that the City Council should provide direction on the appropriate review process. The Phil Frank statue is a life-size bronze statue. It's 5 feet 10 inches, his height, by 2 feet 9 inches at its widest. Phil Frank, just a few of his highlights, is a co-founder of the Sausalito Historical Society, a resident of Sausalito for 34 years, and was a respected San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist. The statue is proposed to be placed adjacent to the Ice House in the plaza area. And I'll go through a set of plans. You'll see where that location would be. The statue currently resides at the Sausalito Historical Society on the second floor of City Hall. So I'm gonna go through about eight slides. I may go through them quickly and we can return back to them. I'm giving you the Ice House Plaza plans that were approved by the Planning Commission in February, but showing the Phil Frank Statue in its context. So here are some illustrative photo simulations of the plaza. And to the very right of the screen, you see the statue of Phil Frank. The plaza itself had some updates to landscaping as well of incorporation of bench and seating and various interpretive elements. Here's another view as you're looking at it. If you were crossing the street, for example, Here is a site plan that shows the ice house at the corner there, ice house building. And then the improvements to the plaza to its left. The Phil Frank statue is identified here as C. |
| 02:02:42.19 | Danny | Here are some of the interpretive elements just to give context to what was approved. A donor panel would be included as a backdrop. and here's some of the materials for that. And here's a photograph of the Phil Frank statue that's, again, at the second floor of City Hall. |
| 02:03:08.31 | Danny | So a recent chronology of review, this began in 2012, and this is just the recent chronology in which the City Council authorized the Sausalito Foundation to proceed with the formal application of the Ice House project, which included the Phil Frank statue to the Planning Commission for a design review permit. Later, the Planning Commission did approve of that year, approved to the project. That entitlement had a two-year expiration. Entitlement had a two-year expiration, and that entitlement expired in June of 2014 without an extension, nor did the project commence at that time. In December of 2015, the Historical Society and the Foundation submitted a new design review permit with an updated project design, landscape, and hardscape improvements, not including the fill frame statue, although we had seen its proposed location. It wasn't included in the actual request. It was a first phase of the materials for the update to the plaza. In 2016, April 2016, the Planning Commission approved that phase one, which is the landscape and hardscape improvements, and a condition was included that stated that the addition of the interpretive elements be submitted for Planning Commission review as a later phase, phase two. That came to the Commission on December, and It was submitted, and then in February of this year is when it was approved, but not including the Phil Frank statue. The Municipal Code, Section 10.54050, lists the architectural and design features of selected projects for which a design review by the Planning Commission is required. It identifies that local public capital improvement projects and local public enhancement projects, which will appreciably change the appearance of the area, is subject to design review. The Ice House Plaza and its improvements did follow the appropriate review and approval process with the Planning Commission. Public artwork is not listed as an architectural or design feature subject to design review. And staff finds that public artwork is not subject to design review. by the Planning Commission. The staff did some research and discovered that resolution number 4510, 4510, was adopted in June of 2010. establishes the policies and procedures for the acquisition, placement, and care of gifts and bequests of artwork. It defines artwork as includes but is not limited to all paintings, murals, inscriptions, stained glass, fiber work, statues, reliefs or other sculpture, monuments, fountains, arches, or other structures intended for ornament or commemoration. Uh, The Phil Frank statue fits within this definition of artwork. The resolution also establishes the procedures relating to the acceptance of the artwork, its site selection, funding, engineering requirements, maintenance. alteration or modifications to such placement, and then also seeks the Parks and Recreation Department under the direction of the city manager in determining the appropriate location of any art that's accepted to the city. are accepted by the city. AND I THINK THAT'S WHAT I The process in Resolution 4510 begins with referral to the city manager and then referred to an arts commission, who then refers the artwork to an advisory group. That advisory group then recommends, makes their recommendation in terms of accepting or rejecting the art to the Arts Commission the Arts Commission makes its recommendation to the City Council, and the City Council being the final decision-making body on whether to accept or reject any proposed gifts of artwork. So given that we have an established process that's still in place and effect, here are options for the city council's for review of the Phil Frank statue. To number one, accept the artwork. Absence the existence of an arts commission, there is no operative process in terms of having that go to that commission. And the City Council can simply base their decisions on the guidelines for acceptance of public art. That's provided in Resolution 4510 under Section 3. Another option is to reject the artwork, again, basing your decisions on the guidelines for acceptance of public artwork, art. Option three is to refer the artwork to the Parks and Recreation Commission for further review and recommendation to the City Council. The Parks and Recreation Commission, with its new composition and the additional of art seats to the Parks and Rec Commission, would be consistent with Resolution 4510 in terms of its referral to the Parks and Recreation Commission. They are not formed yet, so it will take some time. But if you were to refer it to this commission, it would then come back to you to the City Council for its final acceptance or rejection. And finally, number four is to establish other procedures and policies for accepting gifts if you wish not to follow the procedures that are currently in place. And that would entail either rescinding or modifying the resolution 4510. That concludes my part of the presentation. We do have Dana Whitson and Jerry Taylor, who may wish to add more to my presentation. more and I would invite Jerry over. |
| 02:09:41.82 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. Can't see my notes. |
| 02:09:50.15 | Jerry Taylor | Hello Mayor Withey, friends, And I think everybody in this room I consider a friend And this is about a statue for our friend, Phil Frank. And we all know what Will Rogers said, never meant a man he didn't like. I never met anybody who didn't like Phil Frank. And some of us revere him and literally put him on a pedestal like he is up in the office right now. But we're taking the pedestal away when we get them downtown. Um, Thanks to Danny and Adam for squeezing us in so quickly. We appreciate that. Unfortunately, a couple of the key members of our team, specifically Annette Rose, who's the president of the Saucer Foundation, our partner in this, and Susan Frank, obviously Phil's widow, are out of town, couldn't turn around and make it this quickly. But nevertheless, we appreciate this opportunity so quickly. I'm not sure. And following me will be Dana Whitson and Bill Hines, key members of the team that have been working on this plaza now for several years. The initial funding for this project by the Sausura Foundation was actually specifically to raise money for the statue. people gave for that statue. When things didn't get completed and the Historical Society got involved, we looked more at the overall plaza and what we could do to make that more of an asset to the city. And the city helped. The public works shut down, cleaned out those trees, which we initially thought were gonna have to be cut down. And then the city changed its mind and decided those canary pines are valuable treasured things. And they thinned them out. And the plaza looks a lot better than it did three years ago already. We've got hundreds of people who've donated to this whole plaza, including the statue, which has been in it, as you've heard, from the very beginning. We have a principal. sponsor of that statue, the Sausura Art Festival Foundation built that statue to give to us. They have also pledged a major contribution of matching funds to match the cashes we've been raising to complete this plaza. We've gone to the community groups. The Lions Club has made a very significant contribution, as has the Saucer Women's Club and the Rotary Club. There are a lot of former council members who are members who have contributed on our list of donors, expressing their support, not with good wishes, but also with money for this. THIS PLAZA. THE FAMILY. THE CITY. This is being given to you with very minimal expenses. There are some things we have asked for you to help us with. We're getting good indications from Jonathan that they're working in with the priorities he's establishing with Adam, the priorities you're establishing. But don't THROW A RENCH IN HERE. and delay this any further. WE WANT TO GET THIS DONE. We want to put smiles on our face and walk out and have a hurrah down at Smitty's and spades in the ground and get that plaza so we can lift that statue down in the plaza. Thank you. I'd like to have Dana Whitson come up and Make some intelligent rather than raw, raw comments now. Thanks, Dana. |
| 02:13:14.33 | Dana Whitson | I'd like to cheer you on too because really this is a community outpouring of love for someone that contributed. endlessly to the community. and And the money that came forward wouldn't have come forward had it not been for the love of Phil Frank and the appreciation of what he's done for this community. I went back and talked about, or Checked how many public notices and advertising in the currents where we talked about the applause of the statue. There were over 20 of them. The statue was It started, as Jerry said, from the very beginning. The Parks and Recreation Commission worked for multiple meetings with the Art Festival Foundation to It helped. give guidance on the statute, review the plans for it. And they approved it in concept in 2009. The city council gave unanimous approval in concept for the project and the statute. The planning commission. as was pointed out, gave unanimous approval of the project with the statue in 2012. There's been a lot of approval, but I think more importantly is that the people that gave money for this project, did it with the understanding that it was going to be part of this tribute to Phil Frank. So we're hoping that... you will go ahead and give your blessing for us to move forward with this. It's been a tedious and frankly too long process. have raised over $240,000 in funds to get this done and we'd like to start construction as soon as the The tour season is over, so we ask for your support. Thank you. |
| 02:15:25.97 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. We'd like to invite Bill Hines, you've probably met him before, with internationally renowned SWA group. |
| 02:15:36.87 | Bill Hines | Thank you, Jerry. I'll be brief with my comments. Just to echo everything that Dana and Jerry had to mention today, I did not know Phil Frank personally, but through the process of working on the design of the project, I've gotten to know a number of people who have a great deal of respect for Phil and want to honor him by situating this statue in the courtyard. My observation from a design perspective is that the location of the statue is literally within feet of where it was shown in the original planning commission submittal. And it sounds like the resolution that was discussed with putting the option of the sculpture toward the Parks and Rec Commission has been in effect since 2000. So I think that that would have governed the initial process that the sculpture would have gone through when the plans were originally approved by Planning Commission and And so I'm thinking based on that, that the additional steps of going through an approval process for this sculpture is probably not necessary on that basis since it wasn't done that way when the original submittal was put into the planning commission. I THINK IT'S A LOT OF I also think that the way that I read that resolution, it seems to talk about funding and sort of details for the sculpture. And now that a significant number of individuals have contributed a significant amount of money to the project and the sculpture, and the sculpture is actually built, that in terms of that review process, you know, we may be kind of well into that process and that, you know, initiating something like that may just add time to a process that already feels somewhat belabored by the people who are really trying to champion the project. So unless you have any other questions for me, I think that's all I have to say today. |
| 02:17:53.14 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Okay. So either of Danny or Jerry or Dana or we can, let's figure out what questions we need to ask and who to ask them of. And then I'll open this up for public comment. Yeah. Yeah, we're in question time for the council. |
| 02:18:24.17 | Jeanne Fiddler | Are you on to public comments? |
| 02:18:26.53 | Mayor Withey | Not yet, in a few moments, but I'll call on you first, I promise. OK, questions? |
| 02:18:27.48 | Jeanne Fiddler | I feel like. |
| 02:18:33.97 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT |
| 02:18:35.73 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. The situation of the statue Is that something that the Planning Commission ruled on in this most recent? Well, first of all, Danny, you went through the timeline and you said that the Planning Commission did not approve the statue. But in effect, what the Planning Commission said is that they didn't have the jurisdiction to accept the art. So they weren't denying the project, they were simply saying it's not within their purview to accept the art, which has not yet been accepted by the city. |
| 02:19:13.27 | Danny | Yeah, I mean, that is correct. I mean, they made sure to indicate in their in their decision that it was something they felt the city council needs to weigh in on. |
| 02:19:24.77 | Jill Hoffman | And then in your opinion about what the Planning Commission purview is, you said it's not in their purview to accept the art. But would it be in their purview to discuss or determine the placement of the art as a part of the design review? |
| 02:19:42.67 | Danny | After further research in Resolution 4510, Staff does not believe it's the Planning Commission's purview. However, the city council can determine that from a design review, perspective, the placement and its location, Could go to the Planning Commission if you direct that. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:20:05.84 | Jill Hoffman | The reason I ask is I was on the Planning Commission that approved this in 2012, and I don't recall it being in the path of travel that it now is. So would it not be up to the Planning Commission to look at things like circulation and appropriateness of placement? Those are factors that the Planning Commission considers in design review. Yes. |
| 02:20:31.84 | Danny | Certainly. |
| 02:20:32.43 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:20:32.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:20:32.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:20:34.41 | Jerry Taylor | Could I answer that though? I could call it a stick of that one. |
| 02:20:39.30 | Joe Burns | Please start. |
| 02:20:44.97 | Jerry Taylor | I joined the board of the Historical Society in June of 2014, and within a couple months, we jumped into and got involved in this. The plans that were shown to me at that point in time had the statue, if you imagine walking out the front door, it was sort of at a 45 degree angle to the right between the sidewalk not too far away from where the traffic box is now. One of the things, concerns we had was putting that right in the middle was a traffic problem. So we relocated farther away from the street back along what you might have perceived as being the back railing or the back fencing of the garden area. So we think we have a preferred area that eliminates any things like that and concerns people may have had about accessibility for strollers, chairs, whatever, this has moved it back out. |
| 02:21:35.82 | Jill Hoffman | The reason I ask the question is that Bill Hines said that there had been a prior approval by the Planning Commission and so this is sort of unnecessary, but it is correct. I mean, it was this location of the statue has been significantly moved since the Planning Commission first approved the project. Correct? Correct. |
| 02:21:55.75 | Jerry Taylor | That is correct. |
| 02:21:56.52 | Jill Hoffman | And the initial approval by the Planning Commission had an expiration date, which expired with no request for an extension. |
| 02:22:03.37 | Jerry Taylor | that has to do with the unfortunate circumstances in the Saw Soda Foundation. I can go into that if you like, |
| 02:22:10.58 | Jill Hoffman | No, I'm a huge. |
| 02:22:11.09 | Jerry Taylor | There was no there there. |
| 02:22:14.29 | Jill Hoffman | I'm a huge supporter of this project, as I obviously voted on it in 2012. But I want to, I'm also a huge supporter of process. So I just want to understand the process and make sure |
| 02:22:17.08 | Jerry Taylor | Obviously voted. |
| 02:22:26.34 | Jill Hoffman | I understand. the proponents understand. the process. I think those are my questions for now. |
| 02:22:34.00 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Over on to my left, any questions? |
| 02:22:39.25 | Jill Hoffman | I do have some questions. This is, and this is, |
| 02:22:40.26 | Mayor Withey | Please. |
| 02:22:43.47 | Jill Hoffman | This is probably a question for Mary. Because I'm looking at the resolution 4510, that... looks like it became effective May 16, 2000. And there's a lot of shells in this. Like, and that means that there's very little discretion, right, when you see a shall. Two of nine advisory group for public art under section B. There shall be created an advisory group for public art The art advisory group will consist of a pool of 5 to 15 members who shall serve on an ad hoc basis at the discretion of the Sausalio Arts Commission. Any vacancy on the committee shall be filled with a regular meeting. Arts Commission. Under section C on the next page, Referral to the advisory group, the Arts Commission shall refer the proposed artwork to the advisory group for public art review. All recommendations on acceptance or rejection of proposed gifts of artwork, Decided by two-thirds majority vote shall then be referred to the Arts Commission. |
| 02:23:50.60 | Jill Hoffman | upon complete and on section D upon completion of his review the advisory groups recommendation arts commission shall make its recommendation for acceptance or rejection of the offer by the city council and then section E the final decision the City Council make the final decision on acceptance or rejection of proposed gifts of artwork. So has there been any vote by any city council on acceptance of a gift of artwork? |
| 02:24:16.10 | Jill Hoffman | Not that I'm aware of. Okay, so we haven't had a decision by the city council to accept this piece of art. as an initial question, Um, you know, then I guess prior to that, you're looking for The thought behind this, I'M ASSUMING, because obviously I wasn't on the city council in 2000, resolution number 4510 is a very involved you know, resolution very specific about a very robust group, you know, of, you know, the advisory group for public art. My assumption is that the thought was at that time, A recognition that we wanted to have a process for accepting public art. in Sausalito and we wanted to have people with expertise to review that and give a recommendation to City Council, although it's up to the City Council, as it is tonight, to accept and make the final decision. |
| 02:25:22.82 | Jill Hoffman | I, is my, in my, is my, Conclusion here, correct that even though we don't have these groups anymore, the advisor group for public art, and we don't have the Arts Commission that ultimately it would be up to the City Council to vote to accept this piece of art. Correct. |
| 02:25:42.85 | Mary Wagner | There's actually a statute in the government code that says the city council is the body that accepts gifts. So- |
| 02:25:49.72 | Jill Hoffman | Are we being asked to make that decision tonight? Thank you. |
| 02:25:52.39 | Mary Wagner | You have the option to make that decision tonight, certainly. Ultimately, it is the council's determination to accept or not. |
| 02:26:00.92 | Jill Hoffman | As a side note, I think we probably want to revisit this resolution 4510. Absolutely. And sort of clean that up a little bit. |
| 02:26:06.83 | Jeanne Fiddler | Absolutely. |
| 02:26:11.81 | Jill Hoffman | you know we've I think the point we're at now is that with the parks and rec Commission, we've decided to add two seats to that. It was five, now it's seven, with the thought that those two extra seats are going to be art seats that will provide advice and counsel to the city council on pieces of art and recommendations on whether or not we should accept art, although a much less robust process than 4510. So anyway, all right, so I think I brought us up to date. Let me look back at my notes. |
| 02:26:46.05 | Joe Burns | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:26:46.98 | Joe Burns | To be clear then, we're forgoing 4510 in lieu of the government code that gives the city council the authorization to accept the art. |
| 02:26:55.55 | Mary Wagner | The city council has the the option to accept the artwork and 4510 assumes that same obligation that ultimately it's up to the city council. What 4510 did was establish a review procedure leading up to that acceptance or not by the city council. You no longer have an arts commission, you don't have the advisory group, so that can ultimately now be brought up to you. And then you can determine the process that you want to follow. or if you wanna go ahead and take action to accept it tonight. |
| 02:27:30.12 | Joe Burns | authorization. |
| 02:27:30.97 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Okay. |
| 02:27:34.19 | Mayor Withey | Danny, could you put the chronology back up there? I may not have a question when I relook at that slide. |
| 02:27:47.20 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Your first sentence, the first one there. City Council authorized the Sausalito Foundation to proceed with a formal application of the Ice House Plaza project, including the Phil Frank statue, to da-da-da. OK. What was the, I mean, in that discussion at that city council meeting on May 1st, 2012, Did the city council not effectively accept the art because it was saying move ahead? I mean, |
| 02:28:23.38 | Mary Wagner | Certainly, Mr. Mayor, you can make that argument that six years ago yesterday, five years ago yesterday, doing math, that that occurred. The word is not explicitly in the motion or action by the council, so we thought it important to come back to the council for clarification. And also for the direction to enter into an agreement with the Sausalito Foundation on the ongoing responsibilities for the installation and maintenance and insurance of the artwork. |
| 02:28:41.93 | Peter Van Meter | Okay. |
| 02:28:58.25 | Jill Hoffman | And to follow on your question. |
| 02:28:59.43 | Mary Wagner | Yeah, please. |
| 02:29:01.99 | Jill Hoffman | In 2012, there also existed an Arts Commission, but it had no one on it at that time either, isn't that right? Correct. There would have been no Arts Commission, as there is not tonight, to refer that question to. |
| 02:29:13.35 | Unknown | NOT. Yeah. |
| 02:29:15.76 | Jill Hoffman | one. |
| 02:29:16.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. When was the statue completed? |
| 02:29:20.71 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:29:21.91 | Jill Hoffman | Let me ask you, I can ask you, was it completed on June 13th, 2012? |
| 02:29:27.44 | Jerry Taylor | No, the first time I saw it was about A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, IT HAD BEEN IN A GARAGE ON Turning Street. It had been in a warehouse in Novato, and I got to see it at the art festival. It was the first time I saw it. and I posed for a picture in my turkey costume. Can I clarify just a little something? There's a lot of public art which you may think of that you own that is owned by People like the sauce of the foundation. The artwork down the hallway, for instance, is not, to best my knowledge, owned by the city of Sausalito, but it's owned by the Sausalito Foundation, it's here on loan. I believe there is statuary in a similar situation. So we have not particularly proposed in our application that you accept it as a gift but rather to accept this placement of this in the park. And so that, I'm not saying we wouldn't agree to it, but we don't, we, Historical Society does not own that. It belongs to the Sassueta Art Festival Foundation at this point in time. |
| 02:30:44.91 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. can ask another follow up when on June 13 2012 |
| 02:30:47.14 | Jerry Taylor | Please. |
| 02:30:52.25 | Jill Hoffman | when the Planning Commission approved the Ice House Plaza project including the Phil Frank statue, was there, what was the representation of the statue they were looking at? Was it the dimensions that it is now or? |
| 02:31:05.05 | Jerry Taylor | And let me, I don't believe it was constructed at that time, but we can answer that question. |
| 02:31:08.39 | Jill Hoffman | Right. No, no, no. |
| 02:31:09.38 | Jerry Taylor | . BUT LET ME ADD THERE'S ANOTHER THING IN THERE THAT'S NOT SHOWN. AND THAT IS AFTER THE MAY MEETING THE COUNCIL REFERRED IT TO THE PARK |
| 02:31:09.48 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 02:31:12.59 | Jill Hoffman | AND THAT'S WHAT I'M GOING TO |
| 02:31:17.94 | Jerry Taylor | AND THE PARK AND REC |
| 02:31:18.16 | Unknown | and the way. |
| 02:31:18.39 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 02:31:20.20 | Jerry Taylor | AT THE END OF MAY ACCEPTED THE And so one of the things in |
| 02:31:23.74 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:31:25.53 | Jerry Taylor | The discussion is it should go to park and rec for approval of the plans, and it did. |
| 02:31:31.96 | Dana Whitson | I think I can clarify this. The design of the statue was done in consultation with the Parks and Recreation Commission in 2009. |
| 02:31:41.82 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:31:42.42 | Dana Whitson | And the design of the statue was completed and in the plans. for the plaza and there was actually a maquette of the statue and a diorama showing what it would look like and where it was placed. It's not that far away from the original placement, the only modification was made just to get it out of the direct path of traffic and put it closer toward the plantings still meets all the ADA access requirements as far as um, traveled by the public, but The statue has been well established for a long time, and the art festival, in fact, did not even cast it. I was like, I'm sorry. gotten all of the approvals which would have been after the council unanimously gave their blessing In 2012, and the Parks and Recreation Commission gave their blessing and the Planning Commission gave their blessing for the statue. |
| 02:32:58.29 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:32:58.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:32:58.66 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:33:00.72 | Mayor Withey | Um... Based on what Jerry said, I'm now very confused. |
| 02:33:05.35 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 02:33:05.36 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:33:07.12 | Mayor Withey | Who's going to own this thing? What's the... I mean, what's the... |
| 02:33:11.18 | Jill Hoffman | And I'm worried about noticing because what was noticed was a meeting to adopt a resolution accepting the Phil Frank statue. |
| 02:33:15.81 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:33:15.98 | Mary Wagner | . |
| 02:33:19.27 | Mary Wagner | Mr. Mayor, if I may, I mean, I think ultimately what the council is being asked is, do you want the Phil Frank statue in the Ice House Plaza? AND I believe that the agreement and the understanding with the Sausalito Foundation or the Sausalito Art Festival Foundation, whoever ultimately owns it currently, can be worked out because everything that is in the proposed or a draft agreement would say that the city's not responsible. for Anything to do with a statue, maintenance, but we do control whether it remains or not. So those types of details could be worked out in the agreement with the parties. And ultimately, I believe the council's being asked, do you want it there? |
| 02:33:59.14 | Mayor Withey | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:33:59.50 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:34:05.18 | Mayor Withey | Okay, any other questions before we open this for public? Thanks Jerry, thanks Dina. Any other questions or? No, okay. Could you also put back the options slide and leave us there. Okay, so let's open this for public comment. And I don't have any cards, but I know some of you want to speak. Sean, please. I promised you would go first. |
| 02:34:36.03 | Jeanne Fiddler | I'm Jeanne Fiddler. And I wanted to say as a longtime docent with the Historical Society, I'm one of the dwindling few that worked at the Ice House with Phil. And the Ice House is filled. It's his completely. He poured his heart and soul into the place He got his father to paint the walls. He got down on his hands and knees and finished the floor, put together all that beautiful display of the history of Sosileta. He loved I loved the ice house and it was because Amy Belzer, that he got the ice house to be a visitor's center I think that Michael Rex probably agrees with that. And so I always felt that the Ice House should be named after Phil. instead of the history room up above because it was so much part of him. And it's gone around the world. Now it's had so many thousands of people. They've got excellent docents in there. And it's an absolute treasure for Sars-Leader, and it's all because of film. |
| 02:35:53.91 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else like to comment? David. |
| 02:36:08.73 | David Sudo | David Sudo. I don't think I ever met Phil Frank, but when I first lived here, I remember reading his cartoons. And I know Jerry, and I'm in the Lions Club with him. And I think this is one of these situations where the city council is merely being asked whether we want this statue or not. It's a really simple question. It's a yes or no. and I think if you know we don't don't currently have a statue, I believe, of any person in town, but if San Anselmo can have statues of fictional people, I think we can have a statue in Sausalito of, you know, a well-respected person from Sausalito who created fictional characters. I think it adds a certain ambiance to the downtown. And this new plaza that everybody once built down there is going to be such a great addition into the downtown, really clearing up a dark section of kind of, right now it's kind of an ugly section of the downtown and just really making it a much nicer area. I think we just need to go ahead with this. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:37:30.32 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you, David. |
| 02:37:32.65 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 02:37:32.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:37:33.03 | Mayor Withey | Anyway, shall we? |
| 02:37:37.83 | Unknown | I think out of respect for Phil and for Susan and for the Historical Society and for the Saucena Foundation, which really has provided so much public art for our community, I think that it's a very wonderful idea to put a statue of Phil in the plaza, in the Ice House Plaza. And as John said, it's a great location for him to stand because he did make that happen and did complete it. So my thought is please do seriously consider placing the statue in the plaza. Thank you. |
| 02:38:15.14 | Unknown | Thank you. Please. |
| 02:38:18.28 | Joe Burns | you |
| 02:38:26.24 | Unknown | just another enthusiastic support for this. I work in the Ice House one day a week, And the plaza is going to be a great addition. Now we've got that little bench out there and people are lined up on it. It's going to be wonderful to have a... more attractive space, and especially with the interest of Phil's statue. People are very interested in the history of our town. He was a wonderful asset. We sell his books in the little store there, and I think it will be wonderful. I really want to add my great enthusiasm. |
| 02:39:05.46 | Unknown | Thank you. Anybody else? Vicky. |
| 02:39:14.37 | Vicki Nichols | I would like to speak to not this particular statue or its approval or not, but more back to the question of what is our criteria for accepting public art? Right now it sounds like we have none because of the dissolution of the art commission. And I agree that 410 4510 is outdated because we don't have that but when I'm I guess when I'm looking into the future about is you know we had a big issue before on the mermaid statue. And I don't know if you were all here. But that was going to be given to the city and when it came down to the nitty gritty of the agreements and the licensing rights and who could own the pictures, et cetera, et cetera, that could not be reached. And that's why it's still sitting down at the Shell Station. So what I'm concerned about is what's the criteria in the future for accepting art? What is relevant? I, as I said, in the planning commission meeting, Phil Frank is literally my neighbor. He taught me when I started docening, I worked with him for over six years. I had nothing for the most respect for him and fondness. So for me to have to speak like this is very difficult. So it's not really about him as a person, but as you're hearing, everyone loved him. What do we do when we get other requests for statues or whatever without any policy and wanting it to be placed certain places? And I'd also like to say that this project has been approved. The only thing that you're not talking about is the statue. So this project can start. It's been approved. So as I sulk back to my seat, I felt I'd be remiss if I didn't say that. But I think we need some kind of discussion about a process that's a little broader than an individual that we all love, which of course has a lot of support. What do we do with that? person that we are not that fond of? How do we do this fairly? Or how do we let people know before the art comes to us already done? This was made way before these approvals started. I happen to know that. Thank you. |
| 02:41:43.59 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to comment on this item? Going, going, gone. Okay. We'll bring it back up here. Questions and then comments. Yeah, please. No, no. Let's carry on questions if we need them. |
| 02:42:03.81 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Has, um, And I don't know if this question goes to the staff or I think Anyway, has there been any claim that the statute that was approved or the representation of the statute that was approved in 2012? that the actual statue is not a fair representation of that. In other words, is anybody claiming that, hey, we approved this, but now we've got that? Or is a statute consistent with the representation that was made? In the plans that was approved. Right? Yeah, okay. It seems I haven't heard anything, so I just wanted to make that clear. I'm not aware. Okay, thanks. |
| 02:42:44.61 | Peter Van Meter | Okay. |
| 02:42:45.02 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:42:45.07 | Danny | I'm here. |
| 02:42:45.32 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:42:45.46 | Danny | Thank you. |
| 02:42:45.59 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:42:45.61 | Danny | Okay. |
| 02:42:45.69 | Peter Van Meter | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:42:50.08 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Who wants to go first? |
| 02:42:57.17 | Adam Politzer | I just, if you don't mind, Mr. Mayor and council members, I just want to clarify a comment that Planning Commissioner Vicki Nichols shared about the mermaid. |
| 02:42:58.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:42:58.59 | Mayor Withey | If you don't mind, Mr. |
| 02:43:09.08 | Adam Politzer | she is correct that there were terms of the agreement that couldn't be met but the actual mermaid statue went through that process i was the park and rec director at the time and sat on many of the our commission meetings and the art commission actually came formally to the council and recommended not accepting the mermaid and the council accepted the art commission's recommendation so not only could we not come to terms in terms of what the artist was asking but the art commission actually rejected um and made that recommendation to the council |
| 02:43:47.66 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thanks for that clarification. I tell you what, I'll go first. Um... It seems to me that, well first of all let's I agree with what I've heard up here that we've, it's sort of resolution 4510 as far as I'm concerned is too old to worry about in my view. Thank you. What it does say, however, which I agree totally with Planning Commissioner Nichols that we need process and so Remember that we do not have an Arts Commission and what we decided to do is I don't know, last meeting or two meetings ago, whenever it was, that we would expand the remit of the Parks and Recs Commission. We would add two more commissioners to that commission, and each of those two commissioners would be artists or art-focused, having art experience, and that these matters would be dealt with by that new Parks and Rec Commission. So that's what we decided. It obviously, clearly to me, that one of their first jobs, once we've got the full seven members, is to work on what's our best process and let's make some recommendations to city council perhaps as to what the process for this sort of thing is. So that's the first thing. If this was a de novo project that was coming here, I would honest, and we didn't have all this history, I would honest, and we didn't have all this history, I would say that the city council should pause, should push this to the newly formed Parks and Recs Commission of full membership, and they work out a process and go through it and then come back here. But that's going to take time. Because of the history, because it's already been accepted once, accepted once, then personally, I'm comfortable moving ahead tonight. But that's just my personal opinion. I don't see the reason for a delay, I don't see the reason when The new commission has to work out a whole set of processes before it could even review it. My view is, and then it's got to come back here anyway. I'm quite happy to short circuit all of that and make a decision tonight. I don't know if anybody else agrees with me. |
| 02:46:39.55 | Unknown | I'll go. Bye. |
| 02:46:41.69 | Joe Burns | I will agree with you. And I would say that Other than the ownership item that I hope we can work out at a staff level so that we have that clarity in how it matches 4510 and just for further authorization. It's all I was looking for tonight is that we do have the legal authorization to make this right. And saying that we do, I'm ready to vote for it and say yes. |
| 02:47:13.70 | Jill Hoffman | I, um, Well, first of all, Resolution 4510 applies to the acquisition, placement, and care of gifts and bequests of art. It is now clear this is not a gift or a bequest of art, but rather a loan. So we're apparently not being asked to accept this art. We're being asked to place art that is being loaned to us, if I now understand Jerry Taylor and the Historical Society. So. And that takes me back to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission did not weigh in on where this art should be placed because it was the Planning Commission's understanding from looking at the minutes and it was staff's understanding from looking at the staff report that this was a bequest of art that needed to be accepted by the city. The only reason I think it's important to decide where this statue should be placed is that I collided with a similarly dark bronze statue in the middle of a walkway in Santa Cruz 20 years ago and fell and sprained my ankle. So when the Planning Commission first approved the plans, this art was outside the doorway, not someplace someone would be likely to traverse late at night. It is now proposed to be placed adjacent to a bench in a walkway where people are likely to be traversing at night. And so I perceive it as a safety issue, and I think this is something that the Planning Commission should weigh in on in terms of where it should be placed. And that is what the City Council, if you go back to the chronology, that is what the City Council directed back in 2012, that it go to the Planning Commission for design review. So I remain committed to that process. I don't think it needs to delay the project. I don't have any issue with the Phil Frank statue being down there. I agree with my colleagues that it definitely does belong there. And as a Planning Commissioner, I voted in favor of that in 2012. But in 2012, it was not intended to be placed where it is now. on behalf of the city have an issue with its placement now. But I think the project could proceed while that small detail is worked out. And the one final thing I would say is since it is not a bequest, since we are not being asked to accept it, There has to be some agreement about who is going to maintain it and those kinds of things. If it's a city. If it belongs to the city, the city undertakes the maintenance obligation, or perhaps the historical society or someone else is going to maintain it. But if it's not being bequested to the city, we have to understand who's going to be responsible for it. If it gets damaged, who's liable for it. If somebody collides with it and is injured, who's liable for that? et cetera. |
| 02:50:29.54 | Mayor Withey | Before I... Yeah. PASS IT ON TO COUNCILMEMBER HOFFMAN, IF I MAY. |
| 02:50:31.48 | Jill Hoffman | Uh, |
| 02:50:31.72 | Unknown | the |
| 02:50:32.68 | Jill Hoffman | Good. |
| 02:50:32.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:36.25 | Mayor Withey | Just ask another question now. Have there been any discussions about the agreement, how we're going to deal with this, or has there been any... you any sort of discussions about maintenance and ownership maintenance, etc. Or were we just gonna I mean, as Joe rightly said, I mean, we could, you know, this is something staff can deal with, you know, as routine course of business. But has there been any discussions to date is my question. |
| 02:51:09.33 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. you There's been, Mr. Mayor, there's been some preliminary discussions and even some work on potential agreement. But we also want to make sure that we look at what the history is with the other four pieces, other statues in town. And again, as shared, I think both Dana Whitson, former city manager, and I learned the hard way that all of this artwork that we thought was ours is the Saucena Foundation. I believe that's probably the case with most of the artwork that is out in the community. That the Saucena Foundation, again, it's just the nature of our town and the historical society, and now age-friendly and Saucena beautiful. It's just how our town works. These groups come together, and they become the owners of this, and we collect things, and we give them to them, and then they display them and rotate art and what have you. So from my perspective, I think we can handle that at the staff level is working on what the agreement and the maintenance and liability, And if we come back to the council after, you know, at a later date, once you've made a decision tonight on what you want this to do, we can always come back with an agreement, you know, under consent for you folks to approve that may include us receiving it as a gift and then gifting it back to the Sausalito Foundation. You know, that's, you know, so I don't think you have to delay your decision tonight for us to work through those details. |
| 02:52:38.43 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. Before I have my colleagues continue with their comments, Dana's itching to talk. So I'm willing to open public comment for that. So please. |
| 02:52:55.37 | Dana Whitson | I was just going to point out, I don't think the foundation nor the historical society have a preference. how you want to do that. The reality is it's a bronze statue and, um, It can last for many, many years, and there's quite a few pieces of bronze downtown that have been there over 100 years, and they have not deteriorated. we're happy to do whatever you would like us to do. |
| 02:53:22.71 | Unknown | Thank you. Jerry, go on. |
| 02:53:24.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:24.68 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. |
| 02:53:24.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:24.80 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. |
| 02:53:24.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:24.99 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. John, one of the things you said about the safety, one of the conditions we've met with the police department, and they insisted on changing our lighting plans early on, and we've consulted with them about that. And whereas there wasn't going to be a lot of lighting in that area, now there is going to be exactly for safety reasons. So we've attempted to address that. |
| 02:53:47.13 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. All right, I'll close public comment again. |
| 02:53:51.28 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sure you had it. |
| 02:53:52.24 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, and I'm taking Joan's comments and trying to work with those in understanding THE PLANNING COMMISSION eliminated the statue in their determination just because it was public artwork not based on the ownership is that correct it's just public artwork is not listed as an architectural design feature subject to design review. So that was Whether we owned it or not was not the case, though that was mentioned up there. But that's not the case for the Planning Commission not including it. |
| 02:54:27.95 | Jerry Taylor | Thank you. I have a lot of work in the game. |
| 02:54:33.53 | Danny | The Planning Commission did not make that conclusion that it was not under their purview. But, did not find that it was very clear and wanted the city council to then review the process and to and give that direction should it either come back or not come back to the Planning Commission. |
| 02:54:50.31 | Joe Burns | Okay. OK. So we could design, we could tell Planning Commission that public artwork should be considered subject to design review if we wanted to. |
| 02:55:03.37 | Danny | You could, and as Vice Chair Cox mentioned, that it could be more focused on its placement. |
| 02:55:13.02 | Unknown | MAKING A LITTLE BIT OF |
| 02:55:19.15 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. Mr. Mayor just to give you another option you can also direct that to the Public Works Department, which would also, as their responsibility of looking path to travel and ADA and circulation, take that direction from the council as well. |
| 02:55:39.77 | Mayor Withey | I mean, presumably it's public works that would advise the Planning Commission anyway on that matter, right? Okay. |
| 02:55:48.44 | Jill Hoffman | I get to talk now. |
| 02:55:50.21 | Tricia Smith | Bye. |
| 02:55:52.76 | Jill Hoffman | I think it sounds to me like we're all in agreement that the statue should be somehow accepted although I'm not sure what I don't know what we would be voting on or what the motion would be denied because we're not really sure what we're getting. I'm kind of struggling with that right now at this point. Part of my analysis is that the statute was presented in 2012 to the Planning Commission. It was agreed to in principle. People relied on that. Fundraising was done. people of the town invested in this piece of art. And it's substantially similar to what was approved and what people relied upon. So I would think that that would be a basis for us to accept it, and that's in quotes, because I don't know legally what we're accepting. And so obviously placement of the statue, we want it someplace where it's not going to cause a trip hazard or things. So I think, I feel like it either, I feel like at this point We as City Council could direct staff in principle that we want to Um, THE STATUE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE you know with the plan that was originally submitted and approved in 2012 that we would direct staff to work out the agreement with the with the group about what that is actually going to look like, consistent with the other statues in town and other public work, other public artworks that we have in the same type of manner. And that if that couldn't be worked out, similarly to what problems that have occurred in the past, that would have to come back to City Council. um, And we may have to address that again if the terms of the agreement can't be worked out with city staff. |
| 02:57:39.36 | Mayor Withey | That sounds like a perfect motion to me. |
| 02:57:41.13 | Jill Hoffman | And... Do I have a second? Yeah, and then it will come, if it has to come back, does it come back on the consent calendar? |
| 02:57:52.62 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I would second that motion if it included a referral to the Planning Commission for the placement. Yeah, that's fine. |
| 02:57:53.82 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:57:58.97 | Jill Hoffman | Anybody have a |
| 02:57:59.97 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:58:00.03 | Jill Hoffman | to that. |
| 02:58:00.74 | Joe Burns | All right, eh? I wasn't listening to that. |
| 02:58:04.01 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, man. |
| 02:58:04.61 | Joe Burns | I did. |
| 02:58:07.46 | Jill Hoffman | She said to work out an agreement consistent with other works of art in town and either come back on consent or if they're unable to reach agreement, come back to us for further feedback. But in principle, the motion is that we would agree to move forward with including the Phil Frank statue as a feature in the Ice House Plaza. And then my suggested amendment is to include a referral back to the planning commission for for proper placement in consultation with Public Works or whomever else. Since the Planning Commission specifically did not address those types of issues with respect to the statute, because... it was seeking direction from the City Council. And the other reason that I seek that review process is that that was part of the initial direction of the City Council in 2012. |
| 02:59:12.14 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:59:14.17 | Joe Burns | Council sent it to commission who sent it back to us and we're sending it back to the commission now. |
| 02:59:19.19 | Jill Hoffman | with a narrow scope. So it's already, the whole project, the design review has now been approved twice by the Planning Commission, once in 2012 and once in 2017. |
| 02:59:29.94 | Joe Burns | This resolution is starting to sound a lot like 4510. |
| 02:59:32.44 | Jill Hoffman | But the other thing I'd like to give direction is to ask staff to bring back to us a resolution to rescind. |
| 02:59:32.47 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:59:32.58 | Unknown | THEY SAID. |
| 02:59:32.86 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:59:38.41 | Jill Hoffman | resolution 4510 and give direction to refer that back to the newly created Parks and Recreation Commission to make recommendations |
| 02:59:39.31 | Joe Burns | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:59:39.88 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 02:59:46.80 | Mayor Withey | I agree with that. Do that as a separate matter after we sort this out? |
| 02:59:49.89 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:59:51.71 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, because I'm not sure I want to send it back to commission, frankly. Neither do I. I think public works are quite capable of figuring out where this should be placed. So I mean, I personally don't need it to go back to the commission unless, I mean, if we can't reach resolution, it's going to have to, I suppose. |
| 02:59:55.27 | Unknown | A NUMBER OF PEOPLE. |
| 03:00:08.59 | Jill Hoffman | What? What do you want to go back to the commission? So Joe, the planning commission specifically did not comment on it. And that's the problem. |
| 03:00:12.43 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:00:15.12 | Joe Burns | Simply because it was not in their purview under design review |
| 03:00:15.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:00:15.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:00:19.47 | Jill Hoffman | no it's not that it wasn't that it wasn't it said that Procedures for consideration and approval of acceptance of public art are not clear. And ask for the city council to put up. But if we can go back to the chronology The City Council in 2012 referred it to the Planning Commission. |
| 03:00:40.43 | Jill Hoffman | May 1, 2012. |
| 03:00:40.51 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor. And Mr. Mayor, I think it's important to recognize what our community development director said. After further review, that's what Joe, I think, Joe Burns is referring to. And so you may ask Danny after we go through this slide that Vice Mayor Cox is pointing out that we go back to part of the earlier, part of Danny's presentation that staff gave further review that gave you the authority to and did not have this authority with the planning commission. |
| 03:01:15.04 | Jill Hoffman | It was not clear at the Planning Commission meeting |
| 03:01:17.03 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:01:17.76 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:01:17.81 | Jill Hoffman | what the who had what authority so what's the advantage of the Planning Commission over Public Works planning I think I know |
| 03:01:23.46 | Jill Hoffman | I think I know you'll be. It's just, I mean, maybe I'm prejudiced having been on that commission for eight years, but that is their job. They are experts in circulation, placement, design review, integration with other elements, and the May 1, 2012... um, resolution by the city council, directed the Saucedo Foundation to take it to the Planning Commission. |
| 03:01:50.48 | Mayor Withey | Which the Planning Commission then approved. |
| 03:01:50.50 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So, With the exception of the Phil Frank statue, |
| 03:01:54.58 | Mayor Withey | No, no, no, I don't believe that's true in 2012. |
| 03:01:58.53 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, that's true. But now the Phil Frank statute has been |
| 03:01:59.47 | Jill Hoffman | But it's moving. move. In 2012 it was |
| 03:02:02.48 | Jill Hoffman | In 2012 it was right outside the door. |
| 03:02:03.59 | Jill Hoffman | outside the door. Yeah. And while the public works may mechanically say this works as a path of travel, the other design elements and things we Is that going to add a substantial amount of time to it to send it back to planning commission? DANNY. |
| 03:02:18.58 | Danny | Mr. Thank you. you know, they meet twice a month. We would just need to make sure that We can put it on an agenda that has room within the next month or month and a half. |
| 03:02:31.69 | Jill Hoffman | Because the only thing, it's a very, very narrow scope. It's just, does it work here? Check. Right? Right. And then it goes, and that doesn't stop the city staff from working with, so that can all go on simultaneously. Contemporaneously. Yeah. The negotiation of the |
| 03:02:37.29 | Peter Van Meter | And it, |
| 03:02:45.37 | Jill Hoffman | Contemporary. Thank you. |
| 03:02:48.04 | Jill Hoffman | with the Associate of Health |
| 03:02:48.97 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:02:49.03 | Jill Hoffman | AND THE FAMILY FOR THE |
| 03:02:49.96 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:02:50.57 | Danny | The Plaza project has been approved. That's received its entitlement. So that can move forward. |
| 03:02:53.67 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:02:53.71 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. I'm not going to move. Thank you. |
| 03:02:56.24 | Danny | Thank you. |
| 03:02:56.26 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:02:56.27 | Danny | Thank you. |
| 03:02:56.29 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I was just talking about the agreement between the Sausage Foundation and the city for whatever we're going to call that. Well, there was a motion on the table and then there was an amendment to the motion. You accept the amendment? Yes, I accept. I second the amended motion. |
| 03:03:06.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:06.58 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:03:06.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:06.87 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF |
| 03:03:06.95 | Unknown | . |
| 03:03:07.14 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:03:07.19 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 03:03:07.28 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 03:03:07.46 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 03:03:08.42 | Jill Hoffman | Exactly. |
| 03:03:11.12 | Jill Hoffman | ALL IN FAVOR. |
| 03:03:11.68 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:03:11.71 | Joe Burns | Yes. |
| 03:03:11.93 | Unknown | you |
| 03:03:12.00 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:03:12.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:12.54 | Joe Burns | . Design architect. Has it been Sam? |
| 03:03:18.40 | Tricia Smith | Anybody have anything more to say? |
| 03:03:21.30 | Joe Burns | Are you sure, sir? |
| 03:03:23.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:23.02 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:03:23.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:03:23.09 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:03:23.21 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:03:23.59 | Mayor Withey | Anybody have anything to say? |
| 03:03:23.65 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:03:23.75 | Unknown | Uh, |
| 03:03:24.39 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:03:26.41 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:03:27.14 | Tricia Smith | HERE. |
| 03:03:27.49 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:03:27.51 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:03:27.64 | Mayor Withey | Nope. Okay, let's vote on this. So the motion is basically the motion that we'll light plus this go, I would just, maybe by further amendment make sure that it gets on the next available planning commission. This should be a short item. This does not need to slow this down. |
| 03:03:48.57 | Unknown | Ah. I agree. |
| 03:03:50.90 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. I'm not sure this is really necessary, but it's the only way we're going to get the votes up here. |
| 03:04:01.43 | Mayor Withey | Do you want to call the roll, Lily, please? |
| 03:04:06.84 | Unknown | Council Member Burns. |
| 03:04:12.50 | Joe Burns | Dang it. Aye. |
| 03:04:16.18 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman? Yes. Vice Mayor Cox? Yes. |
| 03:04:21.10 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:04:21.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:04:21.22 | Jill Hoffman | here with you. |
| 03:04:21.78 | Mayor Withey | Yes. Okay. |
| 03:04:25.20 | Jill Hoffman | May we also give direction to staff about Resolution 4510? |
| 03:04:29.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:04:29.32 | Mayor Withey | Yes, I think that's a good idea. |
| 03:04:31.42 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:04:31.43 | Jill Hoffman | So, Okay, so let me just, can I just short comment on that? I'm sorry. I think we do need to resend 4510, but we also need direction for a new process. |
| 03:04:43.43 | Mayor Withey | Correct. |
| 03:04:43.82 | Jill Hoffman | So I think that legislative committee or something, I don't know. Yeah, probably. |
| 03:04:50.80 | Mayor Withey | I think actually that this should be reviewed by the newly formed Park and Rights Commission, which include the artists. The two artists. And they come back to City Council with a process. |
| 03:04:57.91 | Jill Hoffman | The two artists. |
| 03:05:02.60 | Jill Hoffman | I like it. |
| 03:05:03.12 | Mayor Withey | Are you okay with that? |
| 03:05:04.03 | Jill Hoffman | I'm fine with that. |
| 03:05:05.28 | Mayor Withey | You okay with the direction? Okay, this matter's close. Thanks a lot. Thank you. |
| 03:05:10.55 | Joe Burns | OK. |
| 03:05:11.68 | Mayor Withey | Our next topic. |
| 03:05:19.88 | Mayor Withey | Review and consent to proceed with signed permit application to the Planning Commission for proposed Sausalito entry marker sign, consideration of request for waiver of signed permit application fee. Danny. |
| 03:05:37.53 | Danny | Thank you, Mayor Withey. I'm here again for this item. The request is from the Sausalito Beautiful, Sausalito Lions Club, and the Rotary Club of Sausalito, who are jointly seeking to apply for a signed permit to construct a Sausalito entry marker at the north entrance into Sausalito. This evening, what we're asking the City Council is to review, provide any direction, and if so, consent to proceed with the signed permit application to the Planning Commission and the other request is to waive the application fee of $1,680. The rationale for the fee waiver is that the signed project is solely a citizen volunteer effort where all labor and materials are expected to be donated or funded by the two service clubs as a gift to beautify the city for its residents and visitors alike. The municipal code states that the city council may waive any fees required under this title for any nonprofit organization, public body, district or agency of federal, state, county or municipal government or under other circumstances that the city council in its discretion justifies such a waiver. I'm going through jumping right into the staff recommendation because I would like to bring Michael Rex, who's a representative of the three service organizations, to make a presentation on the project. But staff's recommendation is for the City Council to review, provide direction, and consent to proceed with a signed permit application, which will be reviewed by the Planning Commission, and also to waive the required application fee. And with that, Michael, I have plans that, I mean, these slides correspond with the plans. |
| 03:07:37.41 | Michael Rex | Good evening. I'm Michael Rex. I volunteer my time to help these community groups move this initiative forward. We're calling it the Entry Marker because it's marking the entry into our town. We see it more than just a sign. It sort of sets a pace. And this project was initiated by Saucydo Beautiful in their endeavor to engage the community to beautify our town for residents and visitors. And they suggested a volunteer effort. And they went to both the Lions Club and the Rotary Club of Sausalito and said, would you two groups consider a joint venture? As far as I know, we never have. I'm a member of the Rotary Club, and I don't, probably for like 30 years, I'm not aware we've ever joint ventured. So this would be the first time. The concept was first conceived by Tom Wilhite, a landscape designer. I kind of received a doodle on an envelope as a starting point, but I thought it was good as a concept. And we... We worked with city staff to coordinate work in the right-of-way and the city's program of safe routes to schools and the improvements at that end of town in the right-of-way that have been in the planning for a long time. We also worked with the board of directors for the Sauciot Beautiful. They considered the design, provided input, and it was vetted by that board. And it was approved by the board of directors of both the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. When we started out to develop the design, we established some key objectives. The first one is to keep it simple. We wanted something that was dignified and that would be durable and long lasting. So I'll kind of walk you through it. First of all, the location, this is Ebtide going up to MLK. And right now there's a mechanical box here to control the traffic light. There's a sign here that Rotary Club and Lions Club announced where they meet. And we'd like to place the entry marker in that location with the redwood trees as a backdrop and relocate the existing Rotary and Lions Club across the street over to this corner and improve its appearance. So that's its location. And you can see here's Ebtide and Bridgeway. And the entry marker would be here at a low wall. The sidewalk's going to be widened to seven feet. So it's safer for kids to walk along. And we thought instead of just placing a stone wall here, Here'd extend it as a bench height to kind of integrate the marker with the topography. So here's a straight-on view. It would be stone masonry. This is a heavy timber. It's basically 12 inches square. And the wording would be recessed, probably laser cut, with the back face painted white. It could always be restored. And the landscaping would be all indigenous natural plant material, very rural poppies and wild lavender. This would be the new Rotary and Lions Club sign. We picked up the heavy timber for columns. Right now they just sort of teeter on a single center post, which isn't so great. So we'd be getting actually two signs. We did some CAD modeling to kind of put it in perspective. Here the could, the wall's battered, it's not just vertical, and it becomes a bench as it proceeds to the south. And we also propose some artwork. How about that, another statue. We better get this policy in place folks, because we're proposing another statue. Although this one's much smaller. And there's been some controversy about the pelican. That's what that is. In fact, I don't think the Sausalito Beautiful Board was unanimous on that one element. But why the pelican? I think that, first of all, we wanted to... say something about Saucido that makes it a special place. And first comes to mind, we're a waterfront village. So we wanted something that suggests waterfront. Also, I think Saucido is known as an art community. So opportunities to create public art should be something that we consider. But more than that, we wanted the entry marker to be memorable. And without the pelican, it'd be very static. With the pelican, it has personality and becomes more fun. It would be bronze. It would be casted by a fine artist who we have in mind. And it would be mounted in a very secure fashion to prevent vandalism or theft. If it was destroyed or stolen, we'd have to cast another one. But I think the Pelican actually adds an element that will make it more memorable. Uh... That pretty much gives you what we're proposing. What we're here for tonight is because we're proposing to build something in the right-of-way, staff felt it was appropriate that it should come to the council first. Do you want the use of public land along Bridgeway here for this purpose? Because if not, it stops here but if if you think this project has merit then it would go to public hearing before the Planning Commission as a sign application and that would be our next step the both Lions Club and the Rotary Club are prepared to fully fund it and both materials and labor and we're Thank you. Lions Club and the Rotary Club are prepared to fully fund it, both materials and labor. And we're asking, because it's fully volunteered, you waive the fee. SO THAT pretty well sums it up. So I'm here for questions. Thank you. |
| 03:15:01.12 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Michael. Do we have any questions for Michael or staff? |
| 03:15:08.34 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. Why the pelican? Why not a seal or a seagull? We have the iconic Sausalito seal. |
| 03:15:18.77 | Michael Rex | Well, we have a seal at the other end of town. It could be a seal. We wanted something that looks like it belongs on a wall. Somebody said, how come it's not a sailboat? Well, that doesn't fit on a wall too well. It belongs in the water. We considered it an egret until we realized that Tam Valley has an egret on their entry marker. Could be a seal, except. We already have one. We thought a shorebird kind of fits and We notice that... The Sausalito Beautiful has this Pelican. Yes? Yeah. I didn't hear that. Thank you. |
| 03:16:02.09 | Jill Hoffman | Oh yeah, village, yeah. |
| 03:16:03.64 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Yeah. Also, a pelican is a very dignified bird, and they're very common on our waterfront. They were almost extinct here, and now they've come back, so we thought we'd celebrate. that bird. |
| 03:16:17.04 | Jill Hoffman | I was going to ask why not a brown pelican, since that's the species that we rescued and released five years back. But now that you say that it's going to be in bronze, that's at least closer to the brown pelican that we rescued. |
| 03:16:32.77 | Michael Rex | PELICAN THAT WE Maybe green, but. |
| 03:16:35.17 | Jill Hoffman | Um, Next question, why not incorporate Rotary and Lions with the marker sign? And also, why not say welcome to Sausalito instead of simply saying Sausalito? |
| 03:16:49.22 | Michael Rex | Good questions. Both are considered. Questions are asked and considered. We originally had welcome, and it was thought superfluous. We thought it also gave a little bit of a commercial quality to it. We also, this is for residents as well, and we thought that just to mark your entering our town was the purpose, and we didn't need to clutter it with more words. We also, frankly, if you go back to our objectives, keeping it simple, we felt that adding the club medallions to the sign would create a distraction and make it more complex. We also were concerned that if we start doing that, other community groups would want equal time. And all of a sudden, we lose control over where this heads. It would have to be a much bigger surface to carry more information, and it starts again losing its purpose, which is announcing the town. However, if other groups do speak up and do want equal time, it would be quite easy to add another sign board or extend this. It would seem to me it'd be better to expand that one as a standalone. You enter the town and then just beyond that, it announces the organizations. The concern that was expressed though was that should you have one sign or two? Two is more clutter. One would be condensed. But we thought if we're worried about clutter, putting it all into one place is actually clutter. And that's why we propose what we show you tonight. |
| 03:18:53.42 | Joe Burns | Is the relocation of this sign included in this submission or is that going to be a separate application? |
| 03:18:58.67 | Michael Rex | submission or is that going to be a separate application? No, it's part of the project. It has to be because we have to relocate it. This is where it would go. It's on the site plan. We've designed it. It's part of what we're asking the Planning Commission to consider and approve. |
| 03:19:12.69 | Joe Burns | Thank you. Okay. |
| 03:19:17.79 | Michael Rex | this one project. Oh, I didn't mention lighting. There'll be two very simple landscape spots shining up at it. We didn't want to internally light it. We thought that looked kind of commercial. The lighting would actually be pretty low level and directed right at the marker. We try to keep that pretty simple. We're going to have to work out where the power comes from. Maybe it's solar. We haven't got that far with staff yet. Also, the question of who owns it and maintains it, we would like the city to accept it and maintain it. |
| 03:20:07.27 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions of Michael or staff? OK, thank you, Michael. Let's open this up for public comment. Is there anybody who'd like to? |
| 03:20:12.62 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:20:20.28 | Mayor Withey | Tyron. |
| 03:20:25.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:25.12 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:20:25.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:25.24 | Tricia Smith | Good evening, Ron Albert. Didn't see you, Colin. |
| 03:20:25.27 | Ron Albert | Good evening, Ron Albert. I didn't see you come in. Ron Albert, 66, George Lane Sausalito, former councilperson. I'd like to begin by thanking you all for your public service. Thank you for doing what you do. And I wasn't here at the beginning of the meeting, but I'd like to acknowledge and thank Herb Weiner for his years of service on the council. |
| 03:20:27.20 | Tricia Smith | Yeah, yeah. |
| 03:20:49.44 | Ron Albert | I was the president of the Rotary Club 2013 to 2014, three years ago. And at that time, Alan Banks, who's here tonight, was the president of the Lions Club. And I can't quite remember at what point in our term, but Shelby got us together and talked about this joint project, and I was all excited about doing it during my one-year term three years ago. as rotary club president so a number of things intervened so here we are now and i am the past president but i'm just here to give my endorsement to the project um uh council members cox's questions were um you know as to why certain decisions were made those some of those same questions were being kicked around three years ago. And I remember people jokingly saying, were made, some of those same questions were being kicked around three years ago. And I remember people jokingly saying that we didn't want to put welcome to Sausalito, lest there be pushback from the residents who were so upset about the volume of tourists coming in. But I don't know if that was a consideration, but I like the very simple. design. It's very clean and elegant. And the only, the pelican I'm not quite, you know, I'm not locked into, but otherwise I really like what Michael and the other collaborators on this project have come up with, and I'm here to support it. Thank you. |
| 03:22:27.36 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Ron. Anybody else have anything to say on this? |
| 03:22:33.90 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:22:33.93 | Mayor Withey | No. |
| 03:22:33.96 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:22:34.06 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:22:34.13 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:22:34.15 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 03:22:38.92 | Mayor Withey | Back up here. OK, folks, I went first last time, so come on. Yeah, go. |
| 03:22:48.12 | Jill Hoffman | So yeah, thank you for all your hard work and again, It's always amazing to me the amount of work that people will do in this town for free and donate their their skills and I'm always very appreciative of that. I did call Michael this afternoon and ask him, why a pelican? I don't get it. So I understand. He explained it to me and I still, you know, respectfully, you know, I think you're coming to Sausalito, You know, I just, anyway. I don't see that as iconic Sausalito. I don't see that as setting the tone when you come in for people. What are we expecting... What are they expecting when they get here, and what's the tone you're setting? I mean, it looks beautiful, but I just And what I said was a sailboat. And of course, he said the same thing. Why would a sailboat be on top of a wall? But to me, that's, I mean, we're about sailing. We're about seafaring. We're about, that's kind of how I see our community. That's really my only criticism of it is it's lovely and I like it. Yes, of course, I think we should waive the fee. We've got all this great work that's been donated to our city. And yes, in the public right of way, that's fine as well. And I agree with moving. Rotary and Lion, their sign over, I think that makes a lot of sense too. And keeping other markers off the sign, I think I like the design, the clean and simple design. So that's my only, those are my only comments. |
| 03:24:17.41 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:24:17.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:24:17.64 | Joe Burns | Thank you. Thank you for the work. I like the project. I remember those early discussions about it being there and doing this, and so I'm glad to see it come to this point. I actually like the Pelican. I was kind of hoping for a shape of the United States made in license plates and put that there to depict Sausalito. Yeah. But what was the bird out here on Robin Sweeney Park that was up in the air? WAS THAT A PELICAN? Yeah, so we have precedence with pelicans, yeah. So I like the design. I look forward to the Planning Commission looking over the materials to see if they fit into all their applications. I'm okay with waiving the fee. The one part that just seems a little off to me in the presentation is the setting of the new sign. That seems like that should take a little more forefront in this document in this process. There's no pictures of the location. There's a note of where it will be, but not really a good idea of where it's going to be on that other corner. That's a new location of a sign where this is an existing location, so it's pretty easy to sign off on something that's already there, but that's a whole new location and idea that probably should have a little more information provided. And I'm sure, again, Planning Commission will go deeper into that. But I thought for this presentation, it doesn't even say it until the very end that, oh yeah, and we're relocating the other one to another spot. That's kind of a big deal, I think, because it's into a whole new area that we haven't had assigned. So I'd just like to see a little more on that, but otherwise, I like it. |
| 03:26:01.90 | Jill Hoffman | I largely agree with my fellow council members. I am concerned about the location of the Rotary and Lions Club sign. When I travel elsewhere, I'm a member of Rotary, I'm always delighted to see you know, Rotary Club. I mean, they're recognized internationally and I think it's really important that whatever location is chosen be a prominent location so that people who are visiting our town from elsewhere realize that we have Rotary and they are welcome to show up to the lunch and be welcomed and as we are when we travel elsewhere. I agree with waiving the application fee. I agree with putting it in the public right of way. I, too, question the pelican. But I don't object to particularly again, I had forgotten about the Robin Sweeney pelican, but I do know that we were commended for our rescue efforts of the brown pelican several years ago. |
| 03:27:04.45 | Mayor Withey | Okay. I have no view on the pelican. Thank you. |
| 03:27:14.58 | Mayor Withey | So, um... |
| 03:27:20.21 | Mayor Withey | I was initially bothered that there's now two signs instead of one, but... THE sort of elegant design, I can see, Michael, why you wouldn't want to clutter it with that, with designs. I get that part. And, you know, Of course, we waive the application fee. No, that's no issue for me. So as far as I'm concerned, this is one I'm happy the Planning Commission to grapple with. What do we need in terms of a motion review? Provide direction, we've done that. So we need a motion to consent to proceed Thank you. with the signed permanent application to the Planning Commission for the proposed Sausalito entry marker sign and waive the required application fee of $1,680 for a signed permit. So I'll make... |
| 03:28:26.11 | Jill Hoffman | And also consent to having it in the public right of way. |
| 03:28:28.90 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, consent to having it in the public right away. So that's, I'll make that motion. |
| 03:28:32.81 | Jill Hoffman | Exactly. |
| 03:28:33.03 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:28:33.13 | Mayor Withey | you All in favor? Aye. That motion carries. Thank you. |
| 03:28:35.04 | Joe Burns | Bye. |
| 03:28:45.99 | Ron Albert | Thank you. |
| 03:28:46.17 | Joe Burns | Let's do that. |
| 03:28:52.81 | Mayor Withey | Okay, please note, at exactly 1045, we'll start item 6F, which is fiscal year 2017-18 budget development update. |
| 03:28:57.63 | Joe Burns | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:28:57.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:29:11.93 | Mayor Withey | Melanie Purcell, our Administrative Services Director. |
| 03:29:22.03 | Melanie Purcell | Good evening. I wanted to give you all an update on the budget process for this year. I'm noticing that the screen is looking a little cramped and weird. Pardon? No, this is actually the OpenGov transparency site for the city of Sausalito. I wanted to start, what we've done, the finance committee has met to... go over revenues, projected revenues for next year, kind of touching base on where we're at this year, and start looking at the operating departments and capital. With this being a biennial process, we really went through the heavy lifting last year to develop a two-year plan. This being the second year, the intent is that there should be very few changes in operations as well as capital. So I wanted to just kind of go over where we're at on a revenue basis in particular, and then the Finance Committee has also looked at capital projects and public works. So I... |
| 03:30:27.46 | Melanie Purcell | The city maintains this site It's through what's called OpenGov and we actually, every month load up our most current information from our accounting system, Springbrook. And this allows us to take a look at what's happening in terms of revenues to the city or expenses to the city. Expenses are accurate to the month, but we also keep note because taxes are seasonal. They're not collected on a straight linear progression and neither are some of our other fees and services. So revenue side of things, this tells us what we have posted to date. But we always take a look at it and kind of look at where we've been in prior years. |
| 03:31:17.34 | Melanie Purcell | So I'm actually gonna take us to a different report real quick. to show you how this looks. The nice part about this is anyone can go online and see the reports. That's part of why I wanted to show this off a little bit, because this is on the city's website under finance. If you go to departments, administration, and then finances on there, you can look to the very bottom of the page, it shows you the transparency site. This shows you what's been posted through March for four years, or three years plus the budget. And so you can see that we tend to be running. AND I THINK THAT'S A Pretty close to on track on the expense side, but going back to revenues. This allows you to filter on the other side. It shows you that we're actually doing quite well. Transfers in, we're doing a better job of making those happen on a monthly basis than we did perhaps last year. But our taxes are looking very similar, slightly better than they have in the past. Our other fees have been very similar to what they've been in the past. This prorated column here, the jagged column, shaded column there, is based on a linear proration. So that's part of why it's a little awkward when you look at revenues compared to budget, because it does not take into account seasonality. This is why I like this particular budget to actual report, because then you can look at how it's behaved in prior years. So taxes are a big one. We get the majority of our revenues at this point. Property taxes are continuing strong. Sales tax have been, as you can see, fluctuating quite a bit if you look at that pink bar. They went up, they went down, they back up. We're expecting those to be relatively flat heading into 17, 18. We're expecting property taxes to continue the reasonably strong growth at about 4%, 4.5%. The Hassenst sales tax goes to capital projects. You can see that that's continuing to grow pretty well. And then TOT is also standing pretty stable. It is not showing a lot of growth, but neither is it declining, which is also good news. So overall, we're seeing some pretty stable growth in our revenues. And that's just a good affirmation that our projections are pretty close and that our data is holding true. |
| 03:33:50.89 | Melanie Purcell | You can see the other fees that have come in, other activities. I am going to filter real quickly so that I can show you Um, only the general fund or only the governmental funds this time. makes it a little easier to look at the data. |
| 03:34:11.88 | Melanie Purcell | You can see that our franchise fees are pretty stable. Everything is pretty much moving along as expected with no major shocks to the system. So that was the primary information I wanted to provide so that you could see that when we look into there are our crystal ball a year ago, we actually did a pretty good assessment of where we're at and so we do not expect to make any significant changes in our projections going forward. That includes, however, also not making adjustments for the change in parking fees that went into effect last month. We will wait and see how those behave, how customer behavior with our parking fees, the meters, actually comes in. So we would bring forward an amendment next January mid budget, if we see that there's a reason to adjust that up or down, presumably up. Also, when we come forward at the budget adoption with a master fee schedule, which will mostly affect this building and permits. We will bring that, we will not make a recommendation as part of the budget itself to adjust these revenues per se. significantly to reflect the change in the master fee schedule, we would ask to adopt the master fee schedule and then come back as we see how behavior changes. Because oftentimes when you As you adjust, you don't want to make a one-for-one assumption in your revenues. So if you increase fees by 5%, you don't assume that you're going to have a 5% increase in revenue. It could alter depending on what's going on in the market. |
| 03:35:51.02 | Melanie Purcell | Any questions on the revenue side? |
| 03:35:54.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:35:54.46 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. There's one other piece I am going to share real quick, I just want to let you see. On the report side, you see these budget to actual sheets, one of the things that our staff, Heather. put together, our new administrative analyst, is actually putting together excluding construction. So we have an excluding construction report that allows us to see everything that is strictly an operating expense taking out the capital projects. So this allows a little more comfortable look at how we're doing year over year with removing the spikes and valleys related to capital. |
| 03:36:53.42 | Melanie Purcell | So this is the report that was presented to the Finance Committee on April 19. I'm using it because it's certainly an efficient way of presenting data. Some of this will look very familiar to you. We've talked earlier this year about how the capital project lifecycle goes forward, starting with where the ideas come from, how we look at the study, going into a design and funding, actually doing design and then developing construction funding. Some of these activities do happen somewhat simultaneously and others run concurrently. But this is the general process and how we end with our new assets that we need to budget for maintenance. |
| 03:37:35.90 | Melanie Purcell | I wanted to just show we are currently, this is the status update that was provided. And I'm just going to go through these really quickly. This is all information that actually was presented to council in a very similar format at the mid-year budget. And there are no significant changes at this time. We're actually just as an MLK facilities update, we are in the process of receiving the proposal from ABM, Building Solutions for Phase 2, which would be the interiors energy projects. That should come to the council in late June, early July. License plate readers are installed and operational. The IT strategic plan, we are in the process of the second phase that you all approved earlier this spring. We're in the purchase stage and installation. Permit tracking software is heavily underfoot. We actually have a two-day intensive review of some of the coding for that this week. |
| 03:38:42.82 | Melanie Purcell | You can see sidewalks work, these are all recurring projects that take place and are all under way. All of these represent contracts that also come back to city council. Part of the reason I'm racing through them as we go. Okay, supplemental capital items. This is an area that we ask staff to start looking at anything and everything that could possibly be on their list of projects that need to be addressed in the next five years. The message has been very clearly delivered, if it's not in the budget, it doesn't happen. So trying to really project forward, build a foundation for our next biennial and heading into the strategic plan and then the general plan implementation two years out from that. Some of these do have legal considerations and some of them do have other funding opportunities. So occasionally we will have projects show up mid cycle that we want to consider. We do in fact probably have a project this year that we will need to consider because of Expediency is probably the best term. We're seeing failures in the AC system. that supports the IT server room and as all of us have become incredibly dependent on Information technology, it's critical that we do not allow all that investment that we've just put in, go to waste. So part of these projects you'll see kind of clustered together. These are all predominantly expected to, if in doubt, I put them under the general capital improvement fund. So we're still exploring other opportunities. The majority of these are simply to get them on the radar. so that everyone knows that these are coming. They're significant projects, particularly the city hall, waterproofing, roof, flood, all of that together is, it's due for, the roof is over 30 years old. It's, the building is old. So we're running into what do we need to do to maintain the viability of this structure as a very active public facility. I mentioned the cooling load project, that is the IT server room overheating |
| 03:40:53.56 | Melanie Purcell | Let's see, I'm going back real quick, we have some estimates toward the bottom with the Damages coming as a course of the storms this year those are still in development and looking at whether or not those projects are necessary to do this summer in anticipation of it a Another storm year. where we might find other sources of funding such as insurance or FEMA. get our call back. this week from FEMA, so we're anticipating some opportunity for funds related to the storm damage this spring. |
| 03:41:29.78 | Melanie Purcell | Vehicle replacements are actually anticipated in the system. These are fully funded, the majority of them other than in sewer. So where it says fleet, that is actually an already pre-funded vehicle to be replaced. But you see there's quite a bit of anticipated projects that are now being able to be fed into the system. It's not anticipated we would bring any of these back for funding in this upcoming fiscal year. So the Department of Public Works. We reviewed kind of the initiatives that have been implemented this year or in the process of. We've seen a lot of work obviously on the medians and those require and are utilizing enhanced maintenance. dedicating staff to construction management and we're in the process of going forward with the contract maintenance foreman. For 2017-18, again, very minor activities, but really looking in concert with the master fee schedule, how we plan and set aside funds. the resources needed to do plan review, permit review, all affecting our sewer system and our storm drain system. These are areas that are governed both financially under state law as well as operationally under state law and would become really aware that we need to take some actions to ensure their sustainability as well. We want to increase safety training, this is an area that obviously is critical with work comp and simply public safety as well. THE FAMILY. All of our staff are in the best position possible for that. And again, looking at updating the ordinances. That's not necessarily a financial implication, but an operational impact that could have some financial implications, both on the revenue and the expense side, but needing to ensure that we're protecting the resources of the city to the best possible. So. the finance committee gets to meet tomorrow morning as well to talk with the other operating departments and continue this process but I wanted to bring you up to speed with what two of your members have already been involved in. There is also included in your packet a letter from Sausalito Beautiful expressing their support for continued efforts in the capital improvement arena as well as maintenance. So any questions? Thank you. |
| 03:43:56.70 | Unknown | and that. Thank you. |
| 03:43:59.58 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, thanks, Parliamentary. Thank you. I'm going to have some questions later on, but please. |
| 03:44:06.35 | Jill Hoffman | Um, Please forgive me as I continue to get my head around our budget. That's one of the most challenging aspects of this new job for me. One of the revenue categories jumped out at me because we keep hearing about it from our anchor routes, and that is the Tidelands revenue. As I understand it, there are constraints on the way we spend that revenue. Is that right? Correct. And how do we manage that? |
| 03:44:39.00 | Melanie Purcell | We actually, I'm gonna show you where it's at. |
| 03:44:41.25 | Jill Hoffman | Well, first of all, revenue, I forget now how much it was. It was a significant, yeah. |
| 03:44:58.31 | Melanie Purcell | Okay. This is the expense side of the Tidelands Fund. So you can see that it is heavily involved in the operations, professional services. These are all designed to support activities at the waterfront. So we receive rent revenue from people that we lease, restaurants, And We receive the revenue back. That revenue must be placed back into activities on this waterfront. So that includes enforcement and that includes capital in particular. There is traditionally, when you look at the CAFR for the last few years, you will see what's a deficit. At the what for the last few years? The CAFR, I'm sorry, the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the audit, indicates a deficit position. And the reason it does that is there is a deferred revenue. The bulkhead project that was undertaken some years ago was actually pre-financed heavily by private party in exchange for reduced future rent. So I put that out there because it's clear that there's not this amazing wad of cash or an amazing deficit either. |
| 03:45:34.52 | Christy Bascom | At the what? |
| 03:46:05.03 | Melanie Purcell | So I'm going to show on the revenue side of things. It runs 400,000, and that is mostly rent revenue. |
| 03:46:16.73 | Jill Hoffman | And that's for people like the Spinnaker and- |
| 03:46:16.86 | Melanie Purcell | And that's for people like the spin. Correct. |
| 03:46:19.88 | Jill Hoffman | you Mm-hmm. |
| 03:46:21.92 | Joe Burns | So 300 and something is that, is that further amount? This shows 740. Thank you. |
| 03:46:31.04 | Mayor Withey | Here's the mic, Joe. |
| 03:46:33.26 | Joe Burns | Yes. |
| 03:46:34.01 | Joe Burns | This shows 747. |
| 03:46:36.29 | Joe Burns | this shows 747,000 so 340. because... |
| 03:46:41.16 | Melanie Purcell | There was some anticipation of grant revenue. That's actually on the budget side of things. So you'll see some intergovernmental that relates to grants and drawdowns. At this point, that's the budgeted figure that's not |
| 03:46:57.13 | Joe Burns | Got it. |
| 03:46:58.75 | Melanie Purcell | not what we actually have. So we adjust our expectations. We do receive grants on occasion that are totally tied to typically capital projects on the waterfront. They can't be used for anything else, and we only recognize them When... We only spend them when we actually get them. |
| 03:47:14.83 | Jill Hoffman | But for example, the Tourney Street ramp is a Waterfront project. And are we getting grant funds for that? And would they be reflected here? |
| 03:47:18.66 | Melanie Purcell | Waterfront Project. |
| 03:47:23.96 | Melanie Purcell | No. |
| 03:47:24.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Street is in. |
| 03:47:24.97 | Melanie Purcell | in the general capital improvement fund. And no, we do not have grant funds associated with that. |
| 03:47:34.22 | Mayor Withey | Further questions? |
| 03:47:39.08 | Mayor Withey | Okay, my question is, And I'm sort of... having a sort of senior moment at the moment because I can't remember what, how we, the supplemental capital Did we talk about a process for how to program, prioritize and program those into the six-year capital improvement plans? |
| 03:48:08.19 | Melanie Purcell | The idea is that we at this point would list them as part of the considered projects. We would not actually recommend them for funding per se. The recommendation that we've kind of talked about is, and with the concurrence, if finance committee is agreeable, to roll them into consideration in the fall because we'll be starting a much more aggressive deep dive into the capital project as a result of strategic planning. in November, December. in anticipation of the next biennial, with the exception of a couple of projects that timing is such, we really have to do something. We don't want to necessarily give the impression that we're guaranteeing funding. And with some of these, we don't have enough data to say yes. It needs to be done in year three or year five or whatever. We would like that time, but we definitely wanted to get them on your radar so that you're aware, because some of them are quite large. And we know that there's an issue. For example, the roof of City Hall. We know it has to be done. When? is open for some debate, how much is definitely open for some debate. But it also leads into bigger questions. at are directly related to the strategic planning. What do we intend for the life and the use of this building? What do we want to talk about as part of the general plan, even the life and use of this building? So it's really more of anticipatory. than direct slotting into the plan. |
| 03:49:29.86 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, I remember that. I completely spaced on that. But what are the project, but so nothing on the supplemental capital You said other than perhaps a couple of projects would be in this coming fiscal year. Nothing's really in this coming fiscal year other than |
| 03:49:54.20 | Melanie Purcell | Potentially the IT server load projects and any storm damage work that we need to do. We would likely, if we were to do Depending on the conversations with FEMA over the next month or so, we may incorporate recognition of any FEMA money, as well as any supplemental that we would have to attach to that. to do storm damage work. And then, like I said, the IT server room is the most eminent of these projects. |
| 03:50:20.18 | Mayor Withey | So do you think we'll program those two into the capital improvement? |
| 03:50:24.44 | Melanie Purcell | At some level. |
| 03:50:24.92 | Mayor Withey | program. |
| 03:50:25.65 | Melanie Purcell | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:50:26.56 | Mayor Withey | in this cycle. Thank you. |
| 03:50:27.73 | Melanie Purcell | Yes, I think we have to. |
| 03:50:27.76 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Okay. Okay, thanks. |
| 03:50:31.17 | Melanie Purcell | recommend it. |
| 03:50:36.42 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Oh, okay. Is there anybody in the public who'd like to... Say anything about the budget process? OK, seeing none. This is just for information tonight, I believe. Is that right, Melanie? Yeah. OK. And so. What's the? Just looking ahead a little bit, could you remind us of where we're going with the budget time-wise over the next month or so? |
| 03:51:16.29 | Melanie Purcell | The finance committee meets tomorrow and has a pretty hefty meeting on its plate. And then I'm going to be requesting the finance committee to try to schedule in one more meeting, potentially the last week of May. |
| 03:51:18.10 | Mayor Withey | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:51:28.53 | Melanie Purcell | The budget itself is slated to come to the City Council June 6th for initial consideration. And then June 20th, I believe, is the actual adoption date. So there is, you know, this is considered for your discussion is if you want to schedule a special meeting. for consideration or for additional information. Certainly I encourage any and all of you, let's sit down and talk and walk through any one-on-one questions. I think that was beneficial for council last year. Certainly helped me understand where people were coming from. But at this point, the finance committee will be very close through its operational review tomorrow. And then I'd like to ask for one more meeting with Finance Committee. And then it's up to the council whether you would like to have a special session. AND I THINK THAT'S A at some point as well. |
| 03:52:22.61 | Mayor Withey | When will the Finance Committee see the first roll up of the whole thing. |
| 03:52:28.87 | Melanie Purcell | The whole thing. That's the meeting I'd like to get set up. That's the one you're trying to schedule. |
| 03:52:32.94 | Mayor Withey | That's the one you're trying to schedule. |
| 03:52:34.32 | Tricia Smith | Okay. All right. Thanks. |
| 03:52:34.59 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:52:37.41 | Tricia Smith | Does anybody want to say anything? |
| 03:52:40.75 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:52:40.85 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 03:52:40.92 | Mayor Withey | No, no, there's no action needed. So thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Move him right along. |
| 03:52:54.83 | Mayor Withey | Um... We have a variety of reports, city manager reports and others. Is there any public comment on city manager reports, et cetera? Seeing none, in that case 7a, 7b, City Manager information for council. |
| 03:53:15.11 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor and Council members, I have no new information of significance, but happy to answer any questions of the Council. |
| 03:53:27.65 | Mayor Withey | Nope. Okay. Thank you. Council Member Committee reports. Thank you. Is there anything to report on? |
| 03:53:36.71 | Jill Hoffman | I have a few. |
| 03:53:37.94 | Mayor Withey | OK. |
| 03:53:38.43 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:53:38.70 | Jill Hoffman | but I tried to confine them to one-liners. So I attended an MCC-MC homeless committee meeting. It focused on mobile showers, and they recommended adoption of a one-year pilot program to provide mobile showers in a couple of locations in Marin County. I asked that any such program include a coordinated entry component. In other words, that if someone's coming to take a shower, they have to sit down with a case manager to help to get them off the grid, back on the grid, because otherwise it's at odds with Housing First, which believes that if you don't provide housing first and then the supportive services, you simply build complacency in the existing situation. I'm not sure. MCCMC, most of us were there. We heard a presentation on managing floods in Marin County, and then they indeed went forward and adopted the MCCMC Homeless Committee's recommendation to allocate funds that had been allocated elsewhere for the homeless but not used towards a one-year pilot program for mobile showers in Marin County, with sites to be determined. Sustainability committee met, and we heard from one of our members about construction of sustainable communities and associated resource analysis. And we also brainstormed about ideas for community education regarding planning for sea level rise. So you guys will start to see some community events throughout town to better educate ourselves and our residents about sea level rise. The GPAC committee met, but you heard all of that tonight, so no need to rehash. And the legislative committee met, and we discussed interpretation of the VMU ordinance and decided, I think for now, that it was written as intended and is being interpreted appropriately. We also heard about some ADU regulations that the city must adopt or else be constrained by the existing state regulations. We gave some direction to staff about some findings that we might be able to make to ensure that the required regulations are appropriate to Sausalito's constraints. |
| 03:56:10.58 | Joe Burns | Great. |
| 03:56:10.83 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:56:10.95 | Joe Burns | Thanks. Anybody else? I'll just say that we have not met with the Bicycle and Ped Commission. They have not had a meeting. Okay. |
| 03:56:21.97 | Mayor Withey | Um, |
| 03:56:25.41 | Mayor Withey | Well, Finance Committee we've heard about, GPAC we've heard about, MEC, MCC, MC we've heard about. Tam, you heard from Diane, the Executive Director, last time and basically what she indicated we were going to do the following day we did, which was basically start looking at a visioning plan. I don't like that word, but I don't like the word visioning, but that's neither here nor there. The only other one to report on is the MCCMC... sort of political liaison legislative committee. What I realize is that it would probably be very helpful for the council if we, what they provide every month is mainly the league, but... the League of California Cities, but also the consultants that work for MCCMC, provide a list of hot bills that they're tracking, monitoring, whatever. I will in future include that spreadsheet in these committee reports, so at least you've got, you know what at least the League MCC, MC are worried about at this particular time. And there's some horrible legislation going through right now, Sacramento. I mean, just absolutely horrible. So I will start providing that because I think that would be very useful for folks. Sorry I didn't. I just only started thinking that would be really useful. And then, so that's all I really got. So let's move on to appointments to boards, commissions and committees. And I want to take a little... I think I'm allowed on this agenda topic take a little deviation and just make a comment. And the comment I'm gonna make is, We've now, and I'm more concerned to counsel representation on committees and and we've just lost a council member. We don't know when we're going to have a new council member. If we go the appointment route, it will be sooner than if we go the election route. I will take it upon myself to review all the assignments and ask a question, because some may need to be redistributed, I'm thinking for instance, Omit, you know, if we've got some things that need to be dealt with, you know, we've only got now council member burns on omit because herb is left so um maybe we can agendize for the next meeting a a review of those in case you know if we if we were going to point and get someone quickly i'd hold off but i don't know where we're going so maybe we should just from a rigorous perspective see which ones urgently need to be reassigned does that make sense Okay. So also, so then appointments to boards, commission, and committees. Our major topic here is the appointment to the Parks and Rec Commission. If you recall, we asked an ad hoc group of Council Member Burns and Hoffman to review and make recommendations, it's my understanding that tonight we're only considering appointments to the five at-large members, and that we still, because we're still in the interview process, we will be at a subsequent meeting appointing the two art. |
| 03:59:42.36 | Tricia Smith | of the program. |
| 04:00:20.93 | Mayor Withey | Correct. Is that correct? Correct, yes. |
| 04:00:23.28 | Jill Hoffman | And the appointments this evening have different durations. |
| 04:00:25.90 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:00:25.93 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:00:25.96 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 04:00:26.22 | Joe Burns | So, |
| 04:00:26.54 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:00:26.69 | Joe Burns | Joe, you're going to have |
| 04:00:27.77 | Mayor Withey | to the next episode. |
| 04:00:27.83 | Joe Burns | that's not a problem. We had, as the mayor pointed out, we had 13 applications that we all interviewed. And we had nice interview packets provided by staff that Jill and I... Councilmember Hoffman and I took together and went through again and looked at each each applicant we conferred with the park staff with Mike Langford and We narrowed down to five names So we have five names that we would like to submit to you for approval And then we have applied a very scientific process on the appointments with terms. We did, however, want to work with staff on maybe just going term expirations instead of three. So not to put this process on us each year, but to have three terms that expire in 2019 and two terms that expire in 2020. Would that work? So it kind of goes three and two as opposed to one, three, and two. Is that off a resolution? |
| 04:01:47.75 | Unknown | The resolution that was adopted by council at the last meeting specifies the term lengths for each of the members. Thank you. |
| 04:01:56.61 | Unknown | . |
| 04:01:56.70 | Unknown | you |
| 04:01:56.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:56.82 | Jill Hoffman | I'm direct can can we make a motion direct snap to come back to change it. |
| 04:01:56.85 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:01:57.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:58.17 | Jill Hoffman | and can we make a |
| 04:01:59.50 | Unknown | It's always dirty. |
| 04:02:00.01 | Jill Hoffman | Sure. |
| 04:02:00.02 | Vicki Nichols | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:02:00.06 | Jill Hoffman | Correct. |
| 04:02:00.46 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 04:02:00.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:02:00.73 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:02:00.75 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 04:02:16.36 | Joe Burns | Okay, go for it. Did that resolution have... Then another breakup make up for the two art council, art commissions, and they fall into two separate terms as well. |
| 04:02:28.85 | Unknown | It does. The first term of one of the artist members shall be for two years. The first term of the other artist members shall be the full three years. |
| 04:02:42.85 | Joe Burns | Okay. So one of them just says for one year then on the wreck. |
| 04:02:50.41 | Unknown | Correct. Yeah, the member at large is one member at large shall be for one year. Two members at large shall be for two years. Other two members at large shall be for the full three years. And that's just the first term. |
| 04:03:03.69 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 04:03:05.72 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 04:03:05.90 | Joe Burns | Well, without further ado, would you like some names? Yeah. |
| 04:03:07.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but hold on. So what we're going to do, though, is we're going to point two for two years and three for three years. |
| 04:03:14.12 | Joe Burns | and then come back with a change. |
| 04:03:15.91 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 04:03:16.64 | Joe Burns | Okay. Sound good? |
| 04:03:18.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:03:18.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:03:18.76 | John Burke | Thank you. |
| 04:03:18.78 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 04:03:19.00 | John Burke | Thank you. |
| 04:03:19.01 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:03:19.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:03:19.10 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:03:19.13 | Unknown | of this record. |
| 04:03:19.86 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:03:19.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:03:21.43 | Joe Burns | OK. So our names are, of the applicants that we went through, Jamie Bruning-Miles, Bradley O'Brien, John Lama, Susan Harriman, and Ken Schwartz. Right. |
| 04:03:41.97 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Thank you. And do you have recommendations for... which one gets the two, who gets the two years, who gets the three years. |
| 04:03:54.08 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:03:54.30 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 04:03:54.55 | Joe Burns | We do. And we thought of keeping that. We could produce that now. And then again, if they want to make recommendations back, if they say, hey, this kind of works better, we can amend that as well. We're open to amending that if they're not |
| 04:04:11.26 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:04:11.28 | Unknown | it's not even. |
| 04:04:11.82 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:04:11.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:04:11.87 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:04:11.89 | Joe Burns | They point to you, yeah. They are. So they are. In the two-year terms, Jamie Bruni-Miles, Bradley O'Brien, John Lama. Three-year terms, Susan Harriman and Ken Schwartz. |
| 04:04:29.62 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:04:29.72 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:04:30.30 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 04:04:30.57 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:04:31.71 | Joe Burns | you |
| 04:04:32.88 | Mayor Withey | No, I think procedurally, is there any other... nominations. or Are we ready to vote on... the recommendations of the ad hoc committee. I'm certainly, I don't know about |
| 04:04:48.45 | Jill Hoffman | Give me one second, because I didn't have any warning. So I'm just looking at my notes that I took from each interview. Give me just one second here. |
| 04:04:52.81 | Tricia Smith | Thank you. |
| 04:04:53.78 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:04:53.95 | Tricia Smith | you |
| 04:05:21.12 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:05:22.00 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Okay. I'm perfectly happy. Thank you for your work and perfectly happy to accept the recommendations of our ad hoc committee. So I propose I make a motion that we do that. |
| 04:05:42.03 | Jill Hoffman | and the Yes, but I would also like to give direction to staff because everybody that we spoke to, we asked if they'd be interested in serving on other boards and commissions because they were all so well qualified. And they all, I think without exception, said yes. So I'd like to include the people that we didn't appoint this evening. somehow include them in a pool to be available for other boards and commissions because we specifically asked them that. We have other boards and commissions that need staffing, And we seriously chatted with some really qualified people. |
| 04:06:17.87 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, if I could weigh in on that, because that was absolutely what we wanted to make sure that we... access the talent we have, expertise. And so what we thought perhaps we would do and propose for those people that weren't chosen, we had different ideas about how they could be involved with the Parks and Rec Commission. one of the applicants we thought would be a really great school's liaison and Mike agreed there are a couple other two or three applicants that he thought would be really good I think it's a 501c3 support group, the RECRs, REC, ERS. So we were going to contact them and see if they would like to become involved with the parks and rec in that way with the thought that even though we don't have official alternates for the park and rec commission that these would be the likely people that in two years then they might want to be considered for. But to keep them involved of course and only if they wanted to do that. But that was kind of our thought process when we were looking at these exceptional applicants. But I agree they should be in the hopper for. |
| 04:07:25.96 | Joe Burns | Yeah, it'd still be in that |
| 04:07:26.33 | Mayor Withey | It's still. |
| 04:07:26.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:07:26.81 | Mayor Withey | . |
| 04:07:28.73 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 04:07:28.75 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:07:28.78 | Joe Burns | OKAY. |
| 04:07:28.95 | Mayor Withey | I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE Okay, good. How do we still have to vote on this motion, I think? |
| 04:07:35.75 | Jill Hoffman | With that, I second your motion. |
| 04:07:36.92 | Mayor Withey | Okay, so all in favor? Aye. Okay. |
| 04:07:38.54 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. I didn't catch a second, sorry. I seconded Ray's motion. |
| 04:07:44.10 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Oh, yeah, I made the motion. Yes, you did. It's getting late. Come on, guys. And question for staff. Could you work out how to... |
| 04:07:46.72 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, you do. |
| 04:07:48.37 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:07:49.81 | Jill Hoffman | Hold on. |
| 04:07:50.21 | Joe Burns | Um, |
| 04:07:56.09 | Mayor Withey | handle and deal with, because I mean, we saw some superb candidates. I fully agree. We saw some superb candidates. And also, |
| 04:08:00.78 | Tricia Smith | Mm-hmm. |
| 04:08:06.72 | Mayor Withey | Uh... One of the things I've, a number of people have mentioned to me is that sometimes when they apply, they don't, some feel they don't hear from the city straight away. So could we have it as a standard routine process that no matter what, when somebody puts an application in that we have a standard process that within X number of days, we automatically send a response that says, thank you for your application, da, da, da, or something like that would be helpful. Or maybe you do already, but... |
| 04:08:39.45 | Joe Burns | YOU'RE DOING IT. |
| 04:08:39.73 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 04:08:39.76 | Joe Burns | OK. Super. And Lily, will you notify these five? Or does that come from Mike? |
| 04:08:40.21 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 04:08:40.45 | Mayor Withey | Super. |
| 04:08:45.43 | Unknown | We'll take care of that, and we'll also notify the folks that weren't selected this time. We usually invite them to submit applications for other open boards and commissions. If you have ideas of boards and commissions that we should be directing them to, I'm happy to discuss with Council Member Hopman and Council Member. |
| 04:09:01.85 | Jill Hoffman | YES. of a problem. THE CITY IS A COMPANY OF |
| 04:09:04.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:09:04.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I'll be here tomorrow for the finance committee so I'll come a little earlier still late one of the 2. |
| 04:09:10.32 | Mayor Withey | super so Thanks for that. Okay, where are we? Future agenda items. There's the ongoing developing list, at least through to the recess in August, and agenda setting we'll be working on the second half of the second part of the year. We're already going to be close to halfway through, over halfway through by the time of the recess. Is there anything right now that... we need to, you want to flag for agenda setting committee to review? Yes. Yes, please. |
| 04:09:47.60 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. I, Interesting that you mentioned the legislative committee to the MCCMC, because there are three bills that I'd like to consider having the city of Sausalito oppose, in addition to the fact that our lobbyist does. One is SB649, which would take away our discretion on the placement of 5G antennas. |
| 04:10:11.32 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 04:10:12.39 | Jill Hoffman | Number two is AB 1479, which would impose fines on the city for delay in responding to Public Records Act requests. So Public Records Act requests can sometimes seek very voluminous materials that have to be reviewed and privilege reviewed before they can be produced. And this would, I think, in my opinion, unfairly impose fines on cities that didn't meet certain rigid criteria for response times. And the third is AB1250, which would ban the city from entering into certain contracts, outsourcing certain services, including contracts to avoid the payment of salaries and benefits. So no more hiring independent contractors. |
| 04:10:58.96 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Can I... Yeah, okay. So I would view that perhaps more an overriding agenda item is we need to discuss how to handle such matters. We could get bogged down talking about 20 bills up here, and that's not our job. So I think agenda-setting committees should actually put on the agenda a discussion about how we do this. How we've done it in the past is rely on MCCMC or on the league to advise us. If we're going to make independent conclusions, I'm very, very, very concerned that we're going to end up here spending hours talking about Sacramento instead of dealing with city politics. So let's have that discussion. I agree. Are you okay with that? Yes, absolutely. Okay, cool. |
| 04:11:46.80 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. I agree. Yes, absolutely. |
| 04:11:52.59 | Mayor Withey | All right, any other reports of significance? And, um... |
| 04:12:03.39 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 04:12:06.04 | Mayor Withey | Oh, there was one other thing I forgot to mention in my committee reports. Not quite there. I attended poetry reading night at the Women's Club and read a poem. Thank you. And so did Abbott Chambers, and he did a fantastic job, and I just wanted to say that. |
| 04:12:26.32 | Jill Hoffman | Give us a line. It's 11.30. |
| 04:12:29.61 | Mayor Withey | It's too late for poetry. |
| 04:12:31.79 | Jill Hoffman | I wondered lonely as a cloud that floats on higher valent |
| 04:12:32.80 | Mayor Withey | as a cloud that flows |
| 04:12:33.88 | Jill Hoffman | It's a great day. |
| 04:12:37.19 | Mayor Withey | With that, I totally agree with something that Commissioner Nichols mentioned at the beginning and would like to adjourn tonight's meeting in memory of Abe Christensen. So thanks. Okay, with that, we are adjourned. |
Mark Culver — In Favor: Spoke as an anchor-out resident, advocating for the rights of liveaboard boaters, criticizing unfriendliness towards them, offering to teach proper anchoring, and noting some boats are improperly used as storage. ▶ 📄
Vicki Nichols — Neutral: Announced the passing of Abe Christensen, a dedicated community member, and requested the council adjourn in his memory, suggesting donations to Sausalito Rotary Educational Fund. ▶ 📄
Jeff Jacobs — Neutral: Discussed a missing kayaker, criticized lack of competitive elections, and proposed an election instead of appointment to fill the council vacancy, referencing LAFCO for potential harbor district formation. ▶ 📄
Lon Peterson — Neutral: Representing Marin Municipal Water District, announced a public hearing on May 16th for a rate increase to fund infrastructure upgrades like pipe replacements and seismic improvements. ▶ 📄
John Burke — Against: Strongly criticized the council's handling of waterfront and anchor-out community issues, accusing them of neglect, segregation, and attempting to exterminate the community, questioning their integrity and fitness to serve. ▶ 📄