| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:21.29 | Mayor Withey | Good evening and welcome to the regular City Council, it's also the City Council meeting for Tuesday, July 11th. Sorry, we're a little late in starting this evening. Lily, would you call the roll, please? |
| 00:00:36.85 | Lily | Councilmember Burns. |
| 00:00:38.84 | Mayor Withey | Here. |
| 00:00:39.40 | Lily | Council member Hoffman? Present. Vice Mayor Cox? Here. Mayor Withy. |
| 00:00:45.24 | Mayor Withey | Here. Alan Olson, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight, please? |
| 00:00:54.89 | Unknown | Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America. and to the Republic for which it stands, |
| 00:01:01.13 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 00:01:02.03 | Unknown | one nation under God. |
| 00:01:02.08 | Brandon Nail | One nation. |
| 00:01:04.38 | Unknown | indivisible with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:09.20 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Alan. |
| 00:01:15.73 | Mayor Withey | We held a closed session this evening to discuss two matters of existing litigation. We have no announcements from the closed session. Is there any public comment on those closed session items? Yes. Seeing none. Can we have a motion to approve the agenda please? |
| 00:01:39.68 | Joan Cox | So moved. |
| 00:01:40.59 | Mayor Withey | Second. All in favor. |
| 00:01:42.44 | Joan Cox | I... |
| 00:01:42.98 | Mayor Withey | Night. We have two special presentations tonight. I'm handing over to Chief or Lily or who is leading us off tonight? |
| 00:02:16.67 | John Rohrbacher | So good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. My name is John Rohrbacher, I'm the Chief of Police. And it's another exciting evening for us as we introduce two new employees. both police officers. So the path to get to be a police officer is pretty tough. And the path to get to be a police officer in Sausalito is even more difficult, because we're very particular about who we choose. |
| 00:02:39.20 | Adam Clarecci | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:43.31 | John Rohrbacher | PART OF THE PROCESS TO GET get a job in law enforcement anywhere. involves a significant amount of dedication by the candidates. Typically, they put themselves into the police academy, a five-month process that takes them away from their family and jobs they might have held. And then they if they get a job, but they have to go and feel training, which is usually at least another four months. But the background process that they have to pass covers five main topics, moral character, as you would hope, handling stress and adversity, work habits. interactions with others, and intellectually based abilities. Of those five, there's still another 10 subsets underneath each one. And the candidates have to be vetted through each and every one of those in order to successfully pass a background. And so we're always very proud when we see a couple of fine candidates make their way through that pipeline and come out the other end and wear a Sausalito police officer uniform. And so we're excited to have them here tonight with their families to help them celebrate I'm going to call them up and we'll Thank you. talk about them, and then we'll do a the swearing in and oath. and then we'll do the batch penny. So it'll take just a few minutes. So I always like to get the families an opportunity to do pictures and stuff. So wherever that might work best with the sun. that. So we'll get them up here first. Let's have Adam Clarecci and Brandon Nail come on up I KNOW SOME FAMILIES RIGHT UP FRONT, SO, Why don't you guys stand right here just for a minute while I talk about you. And then we will I'm not sure. maneuver after that. |
| 00:04:32.27 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 00:04:33.96 | John Rohrbacher | So we are excited to welcome Adam Clarice to our team. Adam was born in Placerville. He spent his childhood enjoying athletics and developed a love of the outdoors. He spent his summers camping with his parents, John and Yvette, and his sister Eva, He graduated from El Dorado High School in 2003. and pursued his passion for athletics, baseball in particular, into college where he excelled. He reached the professional ranks in the Anaheim Angels organization and played two seasons before returning to college to finish his degree in business. upon graduating from Newman University, Adam headed overseas to continue his baseball career in Italy. He was named an IBL All-Star and played for the Italian national team. Upon returning home, he began to work in a geotechnical construction company In January 2017, He enrolled in the Napa Valley Police Academy and with the support of his girlfriend Jennifer Kiesa, He excelled both physically and academically He's excited to begin his law enforcement career in Sausalito and looking forward to a bright future, as are we. In his free time, Adam enjoys playing golf, hiking, camping, sporting events, and spending time with his family. So we welcome Adam. Next is Officer Brandon Nail. We welcome Brandon to our team. He grew up in Arroyo Grande, California, and graduated from Arroyo Grande High School in 2008. When he was younger, Brandon and his family enjoyed camping trips together. He also played baseball in high school. After high school, Brandon attended a trade school where he learned how to work on power lines. Brandon spent the last five years working for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, contracting with PG&E for line work. Brandon decided to make a career change and enrolled in the Santa Rosa basic police academy. He graduated in a Sausalito police uniform on May 25th, Ben and his wife, Christine, have been married since 2014. and have been living in Santa Rosa for the last two years. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys watching movies and taking his dog to the beach. So we're happy to have these two. new officers with us, and I ask that now we do the swearing in, really. |
| 00:07:09.33 | Adam Clarecci | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:11.96 | Brandon Nail | . |
| 00:07:13.57 | Adam Clarecci | Well, you gotta hold the right hand, so. |
| 00:07:15.74 | Brandon Nail | I'm going to the pictures. |
| 00:07:18.73 | Adam Clarecci | Right. you |
| 00:07:19.27 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:19.83 | Adam Clarecci | Thanks, sir. I'll hold it. Thank you. |
| 00:07:23.44 | Brandon Nail | Yeah. |
| 00:07:23.84 | Adam Clarecci | Thank you. |
| 00:07:24.03 | Lily | you Thank you. |
| 00:07:24.49 | Adam Clarecci | All right. |
| 00:07:27.77 | Adam Clarecci | Thank you. |
| 00:07:27.81 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 00:07:27.84 | Adam Clarecci | I know. Thank you. |
| 00:07:28.03 | Lily | Raise your hand. Thank you. Hi, and then say your name. |
| 00:07:31.81 | Adam Clarecci | I, Adam Clarecci. |
| 00:07:33.44 | Lily | Do you sound like? |
| 00:07:34.76 | Adam Clarecci | Do solemnly affirm. |
| 00:07:35.91 | Lily | that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United |
| 00:07:40.14 | Adam Clarecci | that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United |
| 00:07:43.12 | Lily | And the Constitution of the State of California. And the Constitution. |
| 00:07:45.46 | Adam Clarecci | and the Constitution of the State of California. |
| 00:07:47.67 | Lily | against all enemies born in domestic. |
| 00:07:50.19 | Adam Clarecci | against all enemies, foreign and domestic, |
| 00:07:52.68 | Lily | that I will bear true faith and allegiance |
| 00:07:55.54 | Adam Clarecci | that I will bear true faith and allegiance |
| 00:07:57.75 | Lily | to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. |
| 00:08:01.68 | Adam Clarecci | to the Constitution of the United States and to the Constitution of the State of California. |
| 00:08:06.33 | Lily | that I will take this obligation freely. Thank you. |
| 00:08:11.43 | Adam Clarecci | that I take this obligation freely. |
| 00:08:13.44 | Lily | without any mental reservation or physical evasion |
| 00:08:16.76 | Adam Clarecci | without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, |
| 00:08:20.07 | Lily | and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties. |
| 00:08:23.88 | Adam Clarecci | and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties |
| 00:08:26.75 | Lily | upon which I am qualified. |
| 00:08:28.36 | Adam Clarecci | upon which I am about to enter. |
| 00:08:50.48 | John Rohrbacher | So Adam, if you would introduce who's to an opinion. And I'm working with Jennifer D. Is it the one? It's typically the prerogative of the chief of police to do batch feeding. But it's much more fine and personal if the officer picks somebody they like more than the chief of police. All right. So we do that. |
| 00:09:09.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:09:32.97 | John Rohrbacher | And Brandon, if you would introduce. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:09:59.62 | John Rohrbacher | All right. |
| 00:10:04.49 | John Rohrbacher | Thank you all very much. and you may all adjourn to the station for your reception. Thank you. It's good. |
| 00:10:14.04 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:10:14.18 | John Rohrbacher | Maybe there's a choice. |
| 00:10:16.31 | Joe Burns | I'm not. |
| 00:10:18.72 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. you |
| 00:10:38.97 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 00:10:40.72 | Mayor Withey | And we have one more presentation, introduction, and Danny Castro, our Community Development Director, introduce us to. |
| 00:10:52.03 | Danny Castro | Thank you, Mary Withy and members of the council. I am pleased to introduce you to our new associate planner, Katie Faulkner. She is the newest member of the Community Development Department. Katie will be responsible for managing development applications within the Planning Division. Katie's previous work experience includes stints as a program specialist for Michael Baker International in Seattle. as a research assistant with the University of Washington Institute for hazard mitigation planning and as a planning intern with the City of Seattle Department of Transportation. Previously, Katie worked with the Sonoma Marin Air Area Rail Transit Smart, and was a planning intern with the Marin County Community Development Agency. Katie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from the University of California, Berkeley. and a master's degree in urban planning from the University of Washington. Katie is local. She grew up in Marin County and currently resides in San Francisco. |
| 00:12:00.22 | Katie Faulkner | I'll just say thanks, Danny, for that introduction. And I'm happy to be here. |
| 00:12:14.80 | Joan Cox | Thank you. of the country. |
| 00:12:22.43 | Mayor Withey | Thank you and welcome, Catherine. Okay, moving on to item number two. This is communications. This is a time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. And as you know, except in very limited situations, state law precludes the Council from taking action or engaging in discussions concerning these items of business, or items of business that are not on the agenda. So I have one speaker card here. so is there any member of the public who would like to of business that are not on the agenda. So I have one speaker card here. So is there any member of the public who would like to speak on any matter not on the agenda? And Bob Boyle? You've submitted a card. I have. Good evening. |
| 00:13:13.22 | Bob Boy | Good evening, I'm Bob Boy, I'm a resident of Galilee Harbor and I've been here for 29 years. And I want to congratulate, this is about the Mono Street Marsh fence, which we finally got one put up. We're very grateful for that because we look at the marsh all the time. We can see the improvement in the quality of bird life. A lot more birds stopping there. They're not being harassed by dogs and so on and so forth. So the fence, from an eco point of view, is working really well. It's ugly, because it's temporary fence. And we thought, why not have a permanent fence? We didn't think we'd get that to the top of the agenda item Funds being what they are. But this year, it turned out there was some money available from CDBG for community projects. So we decided, our RBMA, Michael Rex, designed a grapesteak fence look. And myself and some members of Galilee Harbor decided they would help and try to promote this. And so I got a budget together and found that we could, with volunteer labor, to put the fence together, get $20,000 worth of materials and maybe 10 grand for a guy to dig holes and put posts in, and you could actually build the fence without costing any money to the city. But this money, this $30,000, which Kate Sears, our county supervisor, now says we do have available if we can spend it by the end of September, would have to be spent by the end of September. And this process of getting anything approved in the city is clumsy, as I know. So it is my request to the city council, since the stumbling block that seems to intimidate people, I know it intimidated Jonathan Goldman when I mentioned this to him, is that you have to get a BCDC approval. And normally fences that obstruct and keep the public away from the shoreline are not BCDC good ideas. However, they are very eco-conscious. And as we've known, getting our renewal of our BCDC permit at Galilee, we've worked with staff and found them very amenable to eco-solutions. And I think this is an eco-solution. I think a three-and-a-half-foot picket grapesteak fence that you could stand and look over and that looked really nice would still keep the dogs out, would not obstruct the public, and would be there for quite a long time to enhance the marsh in that path. So I hope that the City Council can find a way to apply for a BCDC permit for the fence so that we could possibly, if not get the fence built, at least by the materials, before September 31st. Thank you very much. thing. |
| 00:15:44.96 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. I mean, I realize that the City Council can't comment on this, but Mary, can staff sort of look into this and see what would be a way forward? |
| 00:15:57.65 | Mary Wagner | Yes. |
| 00:15:57.67 | Mayor Withey | Yes. Thank you. Alice Merrill. |
| 00:16:06.82 | Alice Merrill | Hi. I'm not, I think this is legal for me to talk about. It's a California, proposition that's coming up for the, healthcare For universal health care. It's SB.com. I've got it here on my pin. 562. And I went to a town meeting with our, who is he? McGuire and the other one. And it was very interesting and all I can say is if we could get behind this and have by some miracle this could be voted in, It just might solve the unfunded pensions problems for all the cities. Now how would that be great? And so at least for the healthcare part of it, which is very big. So as something that could really help communities all over the state, this is one that's tangible that I'm hoping people might consider get behind. It will be heroes. Thank you. |
| 00:17:19.53 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Aleph. Uh... Vicky. |
| 00:17:25.35 | Vicki Nichols | Vicki Nichols, something just occurred to me. I had no idea Bob was gonna speak about mono marsh, and I know you can't talk about it, but, I may be able to offer some information that'll help your research. At a recent Planning Commission project, we reviewed all the original documents for Schoonmaker Beach. one of which as a condition of them being allowed to expand the beach and put the sand there was that they do and perpetuity maintenance on the marsh. And at that time, with the applicant in here, from the owners of Schoonmaker, I asked them because I've known that there's been a concern about the condition of this fence. And on the record, this person said they would be happy to pay for this. And since it's a condition of BCDC that that marsh be maintained, I think you could go back to that original document and ask them, not necessarily for a new permit, but they've already conditioned that this be maintained, and this is a way to maintain it. So may speed it up. |
| 00:18:29.61 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Michael Reich. |
| 00:18:31.94 | Michael Rexon | Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.97 | Michael Rexon | I wanted to add a few comments about the marsh. |
| 00:18:37.22 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 00:18:40.88 | Michael Rexon | The fence that we're proposing is repair. We're not talking about a new project. We're talking about replacing an old fence with a new fence that would look very similar, but a little better built, and it would be in the same location. So the thought is it would be an amendment, and it might not even require a permit to do maintenance and repair. It's not like something new. The other thing is if you want to see what it would look like, I could add another agenda item, bring in a drawing. I could also show where it's located relative to property lines. So we're not building on some private property without permission. Frankly, I need to investigate whether it's all on city property or not. And if it's on private property, a portion of it will have to get that approval from the property owner. But I'm certainly willing to help with that. This is an opportunity to really upgrade the quality of that. You may recall that Before that fence went in, the marsh was kind of struggling. People were encroaching into it, and animals as well, and dogs. And when that fence went up, suddenly that marsh started to really prosper. So we need the fence, but it's gotten old and worn out. It was kind of cheap when it went in. Let's upgrade it. Let's work together for how to do it with this money that looks like it would be available. If you want to see what it looks like, I can come in with some drawings and show you. Thank you. |
| 00:20:03.52 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Michael. Is there anybody else who'd like to comment on any item that is not on tonight's agenda? Okay, seeing none. Item three, action minutes of the previous meeting. We got two meetings, June 20th and June 26th. Does anybody have any corrections or changes? |
| 00:20:24.99 | Joan Cox | Move approval. |
| 00:20:26.98 | Mayor Withey | Thanks. |
| 00:20:27.05 | Joe Burns | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:20:28.53 | Mayor Withey | All in favor? Aye. Okay. |
| 00:20:29.58 | Joan Cox | I know. |
| 00:20:31.57 | Mayor Withey | Item number four, consent calendar. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and uncontroversial and require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support and may be enacted by the council in one motion in the form listed below. Um, Public comment, is there any member of the public who would like to comment on any item of the consent calendar? Okay, seeing none, is there anybody up here who have any comments or would like separate consideration for any items? |
| 00:21:08.85 | Joan Cox | I would like separate consideration of item 4B, the request for waiver of planning and building division fees for the educational tall ship boat yard. And the reason I would like it is I would like to, if the council is inclined to refund the fees, I'd like them to do so after the site is restored to its original condition. |
| 00:21:36.10 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 00:21:44.74 | Mayor Withey | What you want to do? Should we pull this? I'm going to make this the very next item if we do pull this. So, okay. Okay, so I'm going to pull this item and make it the very next item. Okay, is everybody okay with that? Thank you. Okay. So, um... |
| 00:21:59.67 | Brandon Nail | THANK YOU. |
| 00:22:03.08 | Mayor Withey | Can I have a motion then for items for A and C through F? |
| 00:22:08.97 | Joe Burns | you I move that we adopt from the consent calendar items A, through, where are we here on the mission? A and C through F. |
| 00:22:26.98 | Mayor Withey | Okay, I'll second that. All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:22:29.19 | Joe Burns | Thank you. Oh, God. |
| 00:22:30.54 | Mayor Withey | Okay, that carries. So let's have item 4B for separate consideration. And Vice Mayor, perhaps it's up to you to explain what you want to do here. |
| 00:22:43.68 | Joan Cox | OK. Well, so typically with construction projects, with public construction projects, 5% of the total project cost is withheld until the project is completed. That 5% ensures that the project is completed satisfactorily to... the public agency. A, I think we should have criteria that by which we vote to refund fees. I don't think every single nonprofit that comes in and does business with the city should automatically be entitled to a refund of their fees. I think this is a very meritorious project that did a lot for Sausalito, but I'd like to see some finding that entitles them to a refund of their fees in the first place, because our our job is to protect the public fisc and we don't want to simply set a precedent of if you're a nonprofit you automatically get a refund of your permit fees because we rely on those permit fees to run the business of the city. If we do decide to refund the fees, I'd like them to be refunded after the site is restored to the condition in which it was found. Thank you for allowing me to provide my thoughts. |
| 00:24:00.57 | Mayor Withey | I THINK WE HAVE A LOT OF I WOULD BE ABLE TO DO IT. I would just like to remind us that in the majority of cases, we waive the fees before the project's even submitted to the Planning Commission. So this happens to be something that we're doing in retroactively because we didn't do it at the beginning. So Mary, could you help us here a little bit? What is the obligation, or maybe Danny, what's the obligations of, what were the obligations of that applicant when they, |
| 00:24:40.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:24:40.31 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 00:24:40.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:24:41.30 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I understand. When they submitted this, what was the requirements for bringing the site back to compliance that |
| 00:24:54.94 | Danny Castro | Thank you, Mayor Withey. There weren't specific actions that were required other than they had a time period in which they were allowed to occupy that portion of the parking lot in that area and to for their purposes of this temporary use, and that it was understood that when this is complete, they will remove it. The actual... temporary use permit does extend until October 17, 2017. Oh, 14, I'm sorry, wrong date, 10 of October. So technically, they do have the minor use permit that allows its location currently there. Um, And that's It's just it's not functioning as it was when it was within that period which they were constructing the Matthew Turner. |
| 00:25:51.54 | Mayor Withey | Okay. THE END OF I mean, if somebody comes for a temporary use permit routinely and it's for, they're gonna put a tent up to do something hold a party, I don't know, whatever it is. Is it just presumed they must bring the site back to what it was? do we actually put something in the permit? I mean, what's our usual process here? |
| 00:26:23.29 | Danny Castro | Well, the usual process is that the minor use permit is expired during the timeframe in which we've given them. Technically, they do have a current minor use permit, however, the use is not intended for that purpose anymore. It's no longer being used for constructing the Matthew Turner ship as well as for the events that were occurring, the temporary events used for fundraising events. That's no longer occurring in the |
| 00:26:55.37 | Joan Cox | I think the question was typically, with minor use permits, how does the city assure that the site that was the subject of the minor use permit is restored following the completion of |
| 00:27:09.03 | Danny Castro | use? Sure. Well, we do We check back with the site. We, if it requires that we inspect it to ensure that it's back to its original condition. I don't have the minor use permit here in front of me, but I do understand that There's typically there's a condition of approval that it be done orderly and neat and that it be restored to its original condition. If there's damage, we typically have the right to require them to place it back. It's also the property owners, interest to ensure that it's back to its state that it was prior to it being used. |
| 00:27:47.38 | Mayor Withey | I mean, sorry, this is private property, right? |
| 00:27:47.55 | Joe Burns | Is there at least This is private property. And there's a lease involved with the parties. |
| 00:27:50.93 | Danny Castro | Thank you. |
| 00:27:50.98 | Mayor Withey | THE END OF |
| 00:27:51.06 | Danny Castro | I'm sorry. |
| 00:27:51.10 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:27:51.35 | Danny Castro | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:27:54.07 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:27:54.13 | Danny Castro | Yes. |
| 00:27:54.38 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:27:57.95 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. In my mind, then, it's up to the private property owner to ensure that it's clear. But I do see Vice Mayor Cox's point. We currently, I don't think, have specific findings that we have to make in order to waive fees. although I can't think of in this situation that if we did have those findings, that we wouldn't find them. |
| 00:28:20.02 | Joan Cox | I mean, I think that in this case, Michael Rex, the applicant, requested it because the project facilitated a public benefit. And so it's important to me that if we grant this application, that we make that finding so that not every |
| 00:28:20.36 | Jill Hoffman | I think. |
| 00:28:37.99 | Joan Cox | nonprofit that seeks a minor use permit, feels entitled to a refund of their fees. |
| 00:28:45.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I agree. I agree, I think you make a good point. |
| 00:28:49.87 | Mayor Withey | Michael, do you want to say something? Let me hear from... |
| 00:28:49.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:28:49.92 | Michael Rexon | Michael, do you want to say something? |
| 00:28:56.72 | Michael Rexon | Yes, hello, I'm Michael Rexon, the architect and applicant. And Joan, I actually think you got a good point. It'd be helpful to have a policy. Maybe we should have some findings. Frankly, it would help applicants like me know when and what for what I could apply for. And I could advise applicants whether we have a good chance at getting a refund because we're all operating in the dark here a little bit. So you can add that to your task list when you get around to it, okay? But we don't have it yet, so here we are. And I have to say that I also appreciate your desire to ensure that the site's restored. But I can tell you there's lots of reasons that site will be restored. First of all, it's a condition of our approval that we committed to. We honor those commitments. It's also we won't have a use permit. It will have expired and will be in conflict with the law. You could abate it if you choose to, although I don't think you'd have to. Because, frankly, Skip Berg, the property owner, wants his property back. And Alan wants to sell that massive tent to recoup the significant investment that he has in it, which he no longer needs. He also, his lease is expiring, and he doesn't want to keep paying rent. So you have some highly motivated parties here on both sides to ensure that that site will be restored. I have to take issue though, Ray, with your comment that the policy has been to refund or not charge for a fee or refund it at a point of application. If that was the case, it hasn't been lately because the planning department tells us they cannot receive an application with a fee because they don't have the prerogative to not require a fee, which makes sense. That's your prerogative. They told us with this application and others that we must pay the fee and then hope to have it refunded later. And this is later, in fact, quite a bit later. We got this far. We didn't want to ask for it earlier until we can get that boat launched. Also, I have to clarify that the tent is still being used for its intended purpose. If you go down there, I was down there today, and you'll see these amazing spars and masts being built. There's still workers in there. There's still saws going on. And absolutely, we're still building the ship. The ship's been launched, but we got all the rigging to do. And that's where we can use the money right now. It's very expensive rigging. We can't sail that boat without it. So we'd really ask that you grant the full refund now, not later. And I'm here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. |
| 00:31:47.66 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Just to remind everybody, two weeks ago, this city council waived the fees for the Calcitas project before it's going in front of the planning commission and also waived any future building permit fees before even a project's been approved. So, just for the record. Is there any other member of the public who would like to comment on this item? Okay, seeing none, okay, what does everybody want to do? |
| 00:32:18.14 | Jill Hoffman | approve the refund of the fees. Should I make a motion? Yeah. I move that we grant the motion, the request has been made to refund the fees associated with Matthew Turner in the amount of $9,125.72. Thank you. |
| 00:32:22.63 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:32:34.04 | Joan Cox | THE CASE IS NOT ABLE TO |
| 00:32:34.34 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:32:34.49 | Joan Cox | I make a friendly amendment? Yes. On the basis that the project provided a public benefit to the city of Sausalito. |
| 00:32:41.38 | Jill Hoffman | which we found. YES. |
| 00:32:43.20 | Mayor Withey | SECOND. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Okay, that motion carries. Thank you. |
| 00:32:44.57 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry. |
| 00:32:45.78 | Brandon Nail | I'm not sure. |
| 00:32:45.87 | Jill Hoffman | I... |
| 00:32:46.19 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 00:32:49.71 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. The President. |
| 00:32:52.41 | Mayor Withey | Okay, item number five is, 5A is a public hearing, which is an ordinance to extend the interim urgency ordinance number 1239, which was adopted on August 30th, 2016, establish a moratorium on the issuance of occupancy use permits for banks, financial services, retail uses in the CR, which is Mixed Commercial and Residential Zone. Danny Castro, our Community Development Director. |
| 00:33:32.68 | Danny Castro | Thank you, Mayor Whivy. Members of the Council, let me just get this PowerPoint going here. |
| 00:34:07.36 | Joe Burns | This would be a good time for Ray and I to announce that Sears has two-for-one jackets on sale right now. So... |
| 00:34:13.21 | Brandon Nail | I'm not. |
| 00:34:17.11 | Jill Hoffman | But you hold no stock in Sears. |
| 00:34:23.22 | Danny Castro | Okay, thank you. I won't repeat because I think you gave a good description of what this item is, but just to give you some background. Let's see if I can do this here. Let's hold on here. |
| 00:34:41.83 | Danny Castro | There we go. On August 30th, 2016, the City Council adopted the urgency ordinance extending the moratorium. This moratorium expires on July 24th, 2017, unless action is taken by the City Council. the Sausalito Municipal Code defines banks and financial services retail uses, as you see here on the screen. I won't read it word by word, but that is the current definition of banks and financial services retail uses. And this came to play, again, over a year ago when the moratorium was put in place. because there was concern about banks and financial service uses taking up tenant spaces along Caledonia Street. And the question as to whether these uses were appropriate as residents local serving businesses for the neighborhood, question was also raised as to its conformity with the general plan in terms of do these types of uses in businesses enhance the mixed commercial residential character of Caledonia Street and do these types of businesses contribute to the pedestrian experience? Here is a map of the city, and in white there is the general area of the commercial residential zone. That includes the Caledonia Street business area and residential area. |
| 00:36:21.77 | Danny Castro | And here is a close-up of the commercial residential zone. |
| 00:36:28.60 | Danny Castro | So since the moratorium was put into place, the planning commission has had two study sessions, one in February 8th of 2017 and May 10th. Planning Commission reviewed the permitted uses in the CR zone. They discussed the impacts of banks, and financial services retail uses. There was also a land use inventory that originally came before the city council when this was discussed, and then was also shared with the Planning Commission in terms of the current inventory of uses on Caledonia and surrounding areas. We looked at the general plan in terms of the policies and programs and looked at its conformity. we looked at What defines a resident local serving commercial land use on Caledonia? Um, And on May 10th of this year, the Planning Commission directed staff to prepare a draft ordinance to amend the zoning to change the definition or refine the definition and to require a discretionary use permit, whether it be a minor use permit or conditional use permit. That draft ordinance, so with that, the draft ordinance is coming to the Planning Commission for their September 6, 2017 meeting under a public hearing. |
| 00:37:53.55 | Danny Castro | And what will happen that, following the Planning Commission's recommendation, it'll come to the City Council, And that zoning ordinance will be amendment will come for your consideration, your final adoption. This provides additional reasonable time that is necessary to complete the city's analysis and to adopt the zoning ordinance amendment. the, The moratorium extension is being asked for one year. And should the zoning ordinance be done ahead of this year extension, that can be lifted. The moratorium can be lifted. |
| 00:38:35.75 | Brandon Nail | you |
| 00:38:35.92 | Danny Castro | you |
| 00:38:35.99 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 00:38:36.02 | Danny Castro | Thank you. for that. once the zoning ordinance amendments is adopted. And staff has taken the following measures to alleviate the condition that led to the moratorium. We presented to the Planning Commission, as I mentioned, the comprehensive land use inventory. We researched and collected other cities' definitions of banks and financial service uses. We researched and collected other cities' zoning ordinances, the type of commercial zoning areas where such uses are permitted, conditionally permitted or prohibited We also drafted a modified definition of banks and financial services that will have the Planning Commission consider in September. And we provided some analysis and the recommendations on the discretionary review process for those types of requests. And then also looked at drafting additional findings that would pertain whether it's a minor use permit or a conditional use permit. And we also just studied the local serving retail businesses and the pedestrian-oriented experience and how that fits with the general plan, and also its compatibility with the surrounding residential uses, which are incorporated as draft additional findings. Staff continues to monitor and guide applicants of new businesses regarding the allowable uses in the CR zone. and we review and issue occupational use permits accordingly. So staff's recommendation to the City Council to approve the ordinance extending the moratorium for one year And that concludes my report. I'm available to answer any questions. Any questions? |
| 00:40:25.96 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Please. |
| 00:40:26.99 | Joan Cox | Yeah. As I understand it, you want to extend it to a year and then come back to us if you're done early. But since you're going to bring it to the Planning Commission in September, why not simply extend it six months? That gives you time to get the ordinance passed, and then you don't have to bring an item back to us to remove the moratorium. Thank you. Is six months adequate to get this done? I mean, it's already been Thank you. |
| 00:40:52.04 | Danny Castro | YEAR. |
| 00:40:53.59 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:40:53.61 | Danny Castro | It's the state law would only allow one extension, one more extension. And so the request is for a year just to give that possibility that if we needed time, additional time or further study, I don't know if the Planning Commission on September will accept the draft ordinance at that time, it could be moved, but certainly you can extend it for lesser time. but again, as if we move forward bring to you a draft ordinance for adoption, that moratorium can be lifted before that year has expired. |
| 00:41:33.72 | Mary Wagner | And Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, if I may as well, we have to bring an item back to you anyway, because we're going to be bringing you the ordinance recommended by the Planning Commission. So I believe that we could combine those items so that if you gave first read on second read, that could include that upon the expiration of 30 days that that moratorium is lifted. And that's typically how we've done it in the past. And I know it sounds like a long time, but as we know, sometimes things take a little bit longer than we expect. So we would request the full year with, we'll use our best efforts to get it back to you sooner than that. |
| 00:42:09.61 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:42:12.23 | David Sudo | QUESTION? |
| 00:42:15.43 | Joe Burns | Hi, Danny. In looking at your previous slide, we were looking at the items to alleviate based on the moratorium. We know of one instance. Has there been other applicants other than the one that kind of brought this about? Is there a trend to try to put office uses into the retail spaces in Caledonia area? |
| 00:42:39.77 | Danny Castro | There has been no application. I'm not aware of any trend. |
| 00:42:44.63 | Joe Burns | Okay. Often the market kind of dictates the difference between retail and office in a dynamic way. So there isn't usually a lot of requests for such. So we're going through a lot of action, which is probably good to have it tightened up anyway. |
| 00:42:55.05 | Danny Castro | such. |
| 00:43:00.39 | Joe Burns | It didn't seem like a big problem. |
| 00:43:00.42 | Danny Castro | And... And Councilmember Burns, This time also was able for us, we were able to really study, you know, because banks and financial services, comma, retail uses are not offices, but oftentimes we think of them as serving as an office. So, you know, right now an office in the CR zone requires a conditional use permit. |
| 00:43:27.03 | Joe Burns | And I didn't mean those types. |
| 00:43:28.11 | Danny Castro | Right. But you make a good point that oftentimes |
| 00:43:28.13 | Joe Burns | Right. |
| 00:43:33.24 | Danny Castro | It's viewed as an office use. |
| 00:43:41.71 | Mayor Withey | Um... Thank you. Sorry, I'm being a little slow tonight. I didn't get a sense here that, and this is partly for people watching at home and members of the audience, isn't, I mean, as Council Member Burns was sort of suggesting there, The real problem here Wasn't it that because of the way financial services have evolved... um, that effectively we would be, it would be a loophole to allow offices onto especially the lower, the ground, the first floor levels, ground floor levels, |
| 00:44:27.90 | Danny Castro | Thank you. |
| 00:44:28.91 | Mayor Withey | and supplant retail space on Caledonia. That was the real problem we were going after here, wasn't it? |
| 00:44:35.46 | Danny Castro | Yes, that and the fact that this definition, which I didn't read word for word, really needs to be RE-FIND. And I think that's what was, that came from from the City Council as sort of direction from the City Council to the Planning Commission and the Planning Commission you know, has reviewed some draft language to redefine what a bank's and financial service use is. So, but yes, I mean, they're one and two in the same and not to supplant what is currently office there. and to promote retail type uses on the ground floor. |
| 00:45:16.55 | Mayor Withey | on the ground floor. Yeah. I was just trying to get to, I understand it's going to be good diligence to compare the definitions of financial services in other jurisdictions. But the fact remains. We don't want hedge funds moving into the lower levels of Caledonia Street as offices. I mean, that's the issue. That's a real issue. |
| 00:45:37.36 | Joe Burns | THAT'S A REAL ISSUE. AND MY POINT IS THAT WOULD BE SCARY IF OUR RETAIL DESIRE BECOMES SO LOW THAT HEDGE FUNDS WANT TO MOVE INTO GROUND LEVEL RETAIL SPACES OR THAT LANDLORDS WANT THEM TO. I THINK THE CASE WE WERE TALKING ABOUT WAS OWNER OCCUPIED OR OWNER USER. I mean, usually that's what you have is a, you know, a 200% rent difference that would keep those from happening. And that's, I think, something else we need to strive for, is that our retail zone is vibrant enough where offices do not want to move into the ground level. |
| 00:46:10.97 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:46:10.99 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? |
| 00:46:11.83 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:46:13.89 | Mayor Withey | Okay, is there any member of the public who'd like to comment on this particular item? Nope. Okay, let's bring it back up here. |
| 00:46:23.97 | Steve Frazier | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:46:26.58 | Mayor Withey | Sure, we have three minutes. Any member of the public can comment on this item. |
| 00:46:32.27 | Steve Frazier | Mr. Steve Frazier. I'm an attorney, and I live at 53 Central and have lived there for over 50 years by now, same house. All I want to say is this. I served on the city council from 1970 to 1974, and one of the things I'm most proud of is that I was only one of five persons, but I pushed for the rezoning of Caledonia Street to make it neighborhood serving, because I was terrified that it would go the way of downtown Sausalito. And the rest of the council, well, actually it was treated too, but the majority ruled to do that, and it has been a local street ever since. Yeah, it's not the town shopping center, but I'm happy as a resident. That's what I want. It's a quiet place to go have a beer or just wander down the street in relative quietude. So I just want to commend the council for its continuing to maintain the street as it is, and I hope that you continue to do so. And it seems like this is a good idea to keep the local resident serving aspect of the street. Thank you. |
| 00:47:47.70 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Steve. Any other member of the public like to comment on this item? Okay. And seeing none, we will close public comment. Bring it back up here. Any other discussion or can we have a motion? |
| 00:48:06.48 | Joe Burns | I move that we extend the Interim Urgency Ordinance Number 1239 for another year. |
| 00:48:16.25 | Joan Cox | Second. Thank you. Bye. we're approving an ordinance extending the moratorium may i make |
| 00:48:21.55 | Joe Burns | Yes, please. |
| 00:48:21.87 | Joan Cox | So I'd like to make a friendly amendment that we move to approve the ordinance extending the moratorium. Do you accept my amendment? Yes. |
| 00:48:32.74 | Robert Tillon | Yes, I do. |
| 00:48:33.57 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:48:33.58 | Robert Tillon | Thank you. |
| 00:48:35.32 | Mayor Withey | Did we have a second? I did. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Okay. That carries four zero. Thank you. |
| 00:48:36.23 | Joan Cox | I did. |
| 00:48:38.01 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 00:48:38.46 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:48:46.32 | Mayor Withey | The next is item 5B, appeal of a planning commission, decision denying a design review permit, tree removal permit, parcel map, condominium conversion permit, encroachment agreement, 446-448 Sausalito Boulevard, and 77 Crescent Avenue. Calvin Chan, our senior planner. |
| 00:49:09.28 | Joan Cox | And Mr. Mayor, point of order, because I heard this matter as when I was still sitting as a planning commissioner and in an abundance of caution, I'm going to recuse myself from the hearing of this matter by the city council. |
| 00:49:17.59 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 00:49:47.31 | Calvin | Thank you, Mayor Whittiggy. Councilmember Hoffman, Councilmember Burns, Hall of Residence, 44648 South Saluda Boulevard and 77 Crescent Avenue, the review of a Planning Commission denial. The denial was in December 15th of 2016. Displayed on the screen are the entitlements that were denied, a design review permit, tree removal permit, parcel map and condo conversion permit, as well as an encroachment agreement. On December 27th of last year, the property owner appealed the Planning Commission's denial. This project was last before the City Council on January 24th of this year. The City Council reviewed the appeal and directed the appellant and the applicant to revise the scale and mass of 77 Crescent Avenue. It also directed the Planning Commission to review the revised design and to determine if the required design review findings can be made. The Planning Commission was then requested to forward that recommendation to the City Council for their review. |
| 00:50:51.64 | Calvin | On May 31st of this year, the Planning Commission conducted a public hearing on the revised project, and they determined that the design review findings for the project cannot be made. |
| 00:51:05.34 | Calvin | Stepping back a bit, here is the original design of the project that was reviewed by the Planning Commission in June of 2016. Here is the denied design that was reviewed in December of 2016. And here is the current and revised design of the project. In response to the council's direction, in January of 2017, the project team, they submitted a revised design. This is what you have in your packet and displayed on the screen. The project plans aim to reduce the scale en masse of 77 Crescent Avenue, which is the downhill property on the upper right of this screen. The revisions to the project are limited to 77 Crescent Avenue. There is an itemized list of the changes to this project, and you can see that on page two of your staff report. I'll now go through some of these itemized changes that I have circled in red circles. To create further distance between the structures and to allow for more planting area, the rear wall of the structure has been pulled forward, three feet six. And the left side of the structure has been brought in one foot seven. Here is the previous site plan. The roof access stairs that are circled in red have been removed. And you can see that removal on this slide here. The main deck and the master suite deck now both terminate in a curved retaining wall and planters in this area. And these small curved retaining walls provide a sort of scalloped appearance to this property, which is the northwest side of the house. And according to the design team, these were made in efforts to tie the overall design together. Here's a side-by-side of the current design and the previous design to increase the visual difference between the two structures on the property and to decrease the perceived mass of 77 Crescent. The height of the structure was lowered. The curved retaining wall on the southeast has been lowered by approximately two feet. This allows the wall to also seamlessly terminate into the hillside. The actual proposed location of the top roof of the dwelling has also been lowered by 5 feet, resulting from significant ceiling reductions. The overall height of 77 Crescent has reduced 3 feet 10 inches from 28 feet 7 to 24 foot 9. Here's a site section of 77 Crescent looking north. The red line that you see on the screen is the line of natural grade. As you can see, most of the property is situated and built into the hillside. Here's a site section looking south. And again, the red line showing the natural grade. |
| 00:53:59.59 | Calvin | A side by side of the current design and the previous design shows that the heaviness of the metal fascia bands have been reduced by nine inches. |
| 00:54:11.91 | Calvin | And on this front elevation, you can see that the garage level has been raised by two feet. And the reason for raising this garage is to reduce the weight or the heaviness and the weight of the concrete wall at the front of the garage, as well as providing better drainage for the driveway. The facades were also lined up a bit, better floor to floor, as you can see on levels two and three. And this change was subtle, but according to the applicant, this was done to create a more cleaner and streamlined look for the project. What you can't see on the inside is that significant internal reorganization was done, and this resulted in the elimination of one bedroom. The total number of bedrooms for 77 Crescent is now three. |
| 00:54:58.77 | Calvin | Here's a side-by-side comparison of the renderings for the current design as well as the previous design. The color scheme of the home has been lightened to reduce the perceived heaviness of the structure. The aphasia bands are also painted in a light gray, and the cedar siding has been lightened as well. The overall design called for a stucco finish on the garage wall. This was the previous design. The current design changes it to a warm-colored concrete. This was done in the efforts to create a lighter appearance for 77 Crescent. |
| 00:55:36.07 | Calvin | So displayed on the screen is a project summary table that compares the previous project to your current project. If you want to follow along, this is page 4 of 8 in your staff report. The current project remains subject to heightened design review as the revised building coverage of 3,680 square feet exceeds 80% of the total permitted building coverage. The revised building coverage is 86.7% of the total permitted building coverage for the site. The proposed floor area ratio, or FAR, is 0.579, and this exceeds 80% of the total permitted FAR of 0.65. The proposed FAR is approximately 89% of the total permitted FAR for this site. |
| 00:56:25.97 | Calvin | At the Council's direction, the Planning Commission, they did conduct a public hearing on May 31st. The Planning Commission ultimately determined that the required design review findings could not be made. They focused their analysis on design review permit findings 1, 3, and 12 displayed on your screen. These were part of the basis for the December 2016 denial of the project, and they found that although the proposed revisions were significant, they were not enough to make these findings. |
| 00:56:57.67 | Calvin | The planning commission, they did recognize the significant efforts that went into reducing the scale and mass of 77 Crescent, but ultimately they determined that the project continues to represent issues of excessive scale, mass, and compatibility to the neighborhood, which consists of a mixture of single and two-family structures. |
| 00:57:21.32 | Calvin | Displayed on the screen are staff's recommended motions for council action this evening. Option one is to deny the appeal and uphold the Planning Commission's denial of the project. Option two is to uphold the appeal and approve the project subject to the revised design of 77 Crescent Avenue. And third is to continue the public hearing this evening for further consideration. That concludes my presentation. Staff is available for questions. |
| 00:57:46.58 | Mayor Withey | Oh, thank you, Calvin. At this stage, do you have any questions of staff before we have the applicant make their presentations? |
| 00:58:00.80 | Jill Hoffman | No, I don't have any questions right now, but I'm going to have some follow up questions, I think of staff. |
| 00:58:04.90 | Joe Burns | I do have a question. I feel like I'm going backwards. I know this answer, but The only reason we're here is for the heightened review. Correct? |
| 00:58:13.88 | Calvin | You are here this evening to review. |
| 00:58:15.18 | Joe Burns | Not us, I'm sorry. The reason this project is in front of any planning commission No? Was there other items? |
| 00:58:21.68 | Calvin | No, so the requested entitlements |
| 00:58:24.21 | Joe Burns | Other than the encroachment. I'm |
| 00:58:28.41 | Calvin | So the project requested a number of entitlements. Right. And these were all denied by the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission looked at the project as a whole, as well as the City Council this evening. All the requested entitlements make up this application. Thank you. |
| 00:58:42.62 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 00:58:42.67 | Calvin | Okay. |
| 00:58:42.86 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Could I just intervene and comment, Councilmember, just to? |
| 00:58:46.15 | Calvin | Yeah. |
| 00:58:50.18 | Mayor Withey | me out in the form in the form of a question just to clarify the this is in heightened design review but the findings 1 3 and 12 is it correct okay are the design review findings correct so even if this wasn't in heightened review we the Planning Commission would still have to make findings 1, 3, and 12. OK. The fact that it's in heightened design review means it's you know, it succeeded, it's gone beyond 80% of certain entitlements, right, which is a reflection of the scale of mass. Is that correct? That is correct. Does that end? |
| 00:59:35.41 | Joe Burns | Is that true? That does, yeah. I knew we had the encroachment in the condo plan and everything, but just looking at the heightened review. |
| 00:59:38.26 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. |
| 00:59:46.07 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Calvin? No. Okay, so... |
| 00:59:50.95 | Joe Burns | And, |
| 00:59:51.17 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:59:51.25 | Joe Burns | Please, please, please. Procedural question, maybe to Mary. How does this look with a recusal and one less council person? What is a 2-1 in either direction? Or we need a 3-0 in either direction, right? |
| 01:00:05.83 | Mary Wagner | No, actually it's just a majority of the quorum. |
| 01:00:08.87 | Joe Burns | THE CONGRESS. |
| 01:00:09.12 | Mary Wagner | That requirement for a 3-0 is a requirement in the municipal code that applies only to the planning commission. I can give you more detail on that, but the bottom line is that doesn't apply to the city council and the normal rule. is absent some other statutory requirement, it's a majority of a quorum. |
| 01:00:28.17 | Mayor Withey | THANK YOU. Thank you, thank you Mary, thank you Calvin. We obviously have the opportunity for the applicant to make a presentation now. I think our standard rule is that you have 10 minutes This is different than the Planning Commission. You have 10 minutes. There will then be public comment, and you will have a further five minutes to either respond to public comment or further your presentation. So... Thank you. |
| 01:01:05.45 | John | WE'LL BE |
| 01:01:06.11 | Mayor Withey | Ten minutes for the team, John. |
| 01:01:06.23 | John | Thank you. And then, yeah, got it. Well, 15 total for the team, however you want to break it up. OK. Okay, perfect. Plenty of time. Okay, so thank you, council members, for hearing us again. Thanks to Calvin for a thorough recap of what's going on. I'll just get right to it. This is the rendering in the neighborhood, a close-up rendering. We did some trying to show some other properties to show how it fits in scale-wise. You're looking at four homes here. Of the four in this particular image that are all directly adjacent, ours is smaller. All ours is the smallest. The one directly adjacent is double the size, and the other two are larger. We'll get into a whole presentation of up and down Crescent from West Street all the way to the top of Crescent and show how we are actually below the average height and the average FAR at this point. So the direction to Planning Commission and to us as the applicant was to revise the scale and mass of it and review those revisions. One thing I want to point out, Calvin is accurate when he says that it was decreased by 5'6". The actual gross reduction, the overall, if you measure from the slab of the garage to the roof, the overall gross reduction is over eight feet. So we came really close to actually eliminating a story. And that happens because, as you know, you take the average height, low point, high point, so we moved the back walls in, the side walls in, lifted the garage, right? So the average, The legal definition is 5'6 in reduction. The actual gross reduction was 8'2 1⁄2. So that was significant. Since the beginning of this project and most significantly since we met with you last, we've had a 23.4 reduction in square footage, gross square footage, which is almost basically a quarter of this building we've reduced it. So we took a direction, we took it seriously, we took it to heart. We didn't see any reason to go back to the Planning Commission without a substantial reduction in scale and mass. So that's what we did. We reduced the coverage by almost 25 percent, exactly by 23 percent. and we increased the setbacks on the rear and the west side of the building as well. So we have a substantial reduction in scale and mass to this building. And this is kind of a graphic depiction of how we did it. And Calvin went through a lot of these with the roof being brought down, the garage floor being come up, the setbacks going in, the reduction in these bands, reducing kind of the massive appearance. What's not shown is it was already gone by now as we removed all of these exterior stairs, which accounted for neither coverage nor floor area, but definitely added a sense of mass to the project to have another three to four feet of stairs wrapping all the way around up the hill. So that's gone. Some of the comments that we got, and we'll look at the findings in a bit, but, Essentially, most all of the planning commissioners acknowledged the significant reduction. Kind of what they all, and this is the first time we heard this, was the lack of neighborhood outreach, which is not true. You can go back through every staff report. This is our sixth meeting. Attached to every staff report is the letters of support, the letters of opposition. and the outreach that was performed. The staff didn't acknowledge that. which essentially a neighbor came up and said, there's been no outreach and no communication. And they believe that over the staff report, the staff presentation, as well as my presentation. but this project has had we have about a two to one in writing letters of support. which 17 supportive letters and eight opposed. And I have copies of all those here. You have them in one of the staff reports from somewhere. Now you'll see a lot more in opposition, but if you go through, it's the same addresses writing the same letters. So it hasn't really changed since the beginning. um, And we've had multiple outreach meetings and continual communication. We've had outreach meetings in my office. that were noticed to the public. We've had outreach meetings at neighbor's house who invited us there and other neighbors. So it's been extensively outreach as well. At some point we did, we kind of ran into an impasse. We have neighbors who didn't want a house there, period, and we want to put a house there, and there's just not a lot There's nowhere to really go from that point to that point. But we continued to talk to them anytime we were contacted. Um, Here's another, these are other quotes from you the planning commissioners as they went through. Speaking again about neighborhood outreach and it's essential, and talks about findings 1, 3, and 12. And we'll get to those in a minute. Commissioner Warner had some interesting comments as well, agreeing about the outreach, saying, He says, there has been no outreach at all And there's been nothing but negative response to this, which is completely inaccurate, as I've just described. a large amount of neighborhood outreach over the last three years. And we have, again, two to one in writing letters of support. Um, Commissioner Nichols goes on to speak about the significant reduction here which she appreciates, and then she goes on to public outreach again. And that's a whole new moving of the goal line. We've never heard this public outreach expressed from the Planning Commission before. Um, Commissioner Kellman. Her comments were kind of a little more administrative and how do they get here and how do they allow this and we'll get into that when we go into the findings. I don't really understand how she got to the conclusion that this lot was probably never intended to have three structures or condomate them. First of all, there's only two structures. And within the general plan, in this medium-high density zoning, it's designated that there could be 75% more density on this property or any property within the zoning. Again, here's what Calvin just showed you. Commissioner Warner made some comments about, he felt that this really needed to be built into the hillside instead of on top of it. And I think this is very clear. I don't know how much more into the hillside we could really build this house. Here's kind of the neighborhood right now. This is putting it in. You can see, again, our project is not nearly as tall as these other ones next to it. And the square footage is, in some cases, less than half of them. We can jump through these so I can save some time. This is downhill on Crescent. You can see a number of... Well, this is huge house. I can't remember the exact numbers. I remember presenting this to the planning committee Yeah, 37, 39. I don't remember the square footage numbers. It's more than double of what we're presenting. I presented it to the Planning Commission and got that approved in a single hearing. Um, This one's a larger house. Even this A-frame, this really unique house, it's actually larger in square footage than our property and due to the lot size, way bigger in FAR. Looking uphill, again, our project would be here. Here's the trussle house, more than double. This is bigger, this is bigger, this is much, much bigger. This is bigger as well. Looking at a survey of the properties, if you look down here, you'll see the average parcel size. What is this? This is floor area and FAR. We're below the average FAR, we're below the average FAR. Not substantially, but I think it's important that we are below the average or at the average. So to say that it's non-compliant or non-compatible with a neighborhood, I think is just inaccurate, in my opinion. I'll just, all of these, these are the homes going up, Crescent. All of these are either larger or larger. Or if they're smaller, they're within 150 square feet. Some of them are, like I said, this one's bigger. That was much bigger and bigger. smaller. Some of them are definitely smaller. I mean, we're not saying we're the smallest house on the block. This is, I don't. |
| 01:09:23.70 | Mayor Withey | We've got two minutes John. |
| 01:09:25.61 | John | Uh... I just think it's important to look at all of these homes. If you haven't had a chance to be up there, you can see the size and mass of these. and how our home is compatible within the neighborhood when we're talking about scale. We do have a two to one ratio of support. Staffs recommended approval from the beginning of this project. I think one's important. The general plan, we are consistent with the general plan. The general plan allows the general people to be able to do the same things. What was it? 17.4 units per acre with the new addition With the new addition, we'll be at 5.73, and we'll only be at 33 of the maximum allowed per density per the general plan. So it is in keeping with the general plan as well as the zoning ordinances. Number three, consistent, we've talked about all this, how it's below the gross floor area, overall heights. We looked at that. Six, the planning commission did agree that our landscaping did meet this finding at our last hearing. We can go through, I don't have time to go through all of 12 because it basically, they said it's not consistent with the guidelines for heightened review. give us a specific guideline, like which part of the heightened review. There's seven findings. They never said it's not consistent, but number three or four or five, they said it's not consistent, and we believe it is. And I guess I'll leave it at that for now. |
| 01:11:00.23 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 01:11:06.00 | Mayor Withey | So you're going to have another five minutes later on. OK. So questions at this stage before we receive public comment. |
| 01:11:17.61 | Jill Hoffman | I do have a question. John, can you I'm looking at an email here from Patrick Shurness. |
| 01:11:24.59 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:11:24.61 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 01:11:25.61 | Jill Hoffman | but it doesn't say his address, I don't see it in the email. Can you tell me where he is? |
| 01:11:28.56 | John | His address, he is the direct neighbor. So our project is 446-448. He is the direct neighbor uphill, which I believe is 452. Okay. I don't know for certain but I believe that's true. But he's a neighbor to our property. |
| 01:11:41.37 | Mayor Withey | That's all from Sol Suhira. Up on Sausalito. |
| 01:11:45.23 | John | Up on South Street. |
| 01:11:45.92 | Mayor Withey | Correct. |
| 01:11:52.08 | Mayor Withey | Joe, any questions at this point? Okay, we'll come back to you guys. I have a question for staff before we move on. Could you help us understand, because I've had a number of folks not understanding that in this R2 point, whatever it is, 25 or 5 zone, that there's a perception that you can't put three dwellings on it. Thank you. So why are Why is one allowed? I'M ASKING THIS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE WATCHING. WHY IS THIS PROPERTY ALLOWED TO PUT THREE DWELLINGS ONTO THIS PARCEL? |
| 01:12:53.95 | Calvin | Okay, so this property is in the R-2-2.5 zoning district. It is part of the two-family residential zoning district that we have in Sausalito. There's a total of nine different residential zoning districts that we have, and this is just one of them. Within the two-family residential zoning district, there's two different categories, and it has to do with the density of development. As you can see on this project summary summary table looking at the row that says dwelling units the density for this particular parcel is one dwelling unit per 2,500 square feet the parcel area is almost 8,500 square feet so you could have at maximum three dwelling units you wouldn't have enough for four dwelling units but you have enough for three dwelling units |
| 01:13:40.42 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I think what confuses people is, you rightly started off saying that This is two family zoning, so most people therefore think two dwellings. |
| 01:13:52.55 | Calvin | Right. So the two-family zoning, that name for that category doesn't mean that you can only have two units on that lot. It refers to the zoning district, which then in turn refers to the density by dwelling unit, which is calculated per parcel. Yeah. Okay, thanks. |
| 01:14:11.44 | Mayor Withey | you Any other questions? No. OK, so why don't we open this for public comment? I'm sure there's members of the public who would like to say something, but I haven't received any speaker card. Oh, I have. . So I have But, well, |
| 01:14:36.95 | Mayor Withey | Uh, Bob Braid, please. You have three minutes, sir. |
| 01:14:47.84 | Bob Braid | Before I start, vote. I think there were five or six, maybe four or five letters that were submitted after the July 5th deadline. Are those being offered into the package? Okay, so I had a request to read one or two of those letters in the event that they had not been accepted. So let me just go from there then. My name's Bob Braid, thank you for letting me speak. I've been living at 95 Crescent Avenue for about 12 years now, and my home is about 100 feet from this property. A couple of things I wanna bring up. One is the question of the Notice of hearing. It seems like the neighbors on Crescent Avenue only were aware of this hearing this past Sunday afternoon when they noticed that a poster had been put up. The hearing was originally scheduled for September 6th. I'm not sure what the requirements are, but there were no letters, no flyers, no walk around, no phone calls, no emails, nothing to notify us until one neighbor walked past and notified the other seven or eight folks. And that being the case, everybody's on vacation or traveling for work. So that would include Richard Vasquez at 69, Crescent, Kathleen or Caitlin Pryser at 75, Nicole and Taylor Jordan, Dan Greening, Marcia Nunley, the Kwans at 93, myself at 95, and Eva Ula Hora at 103. So that's eight families that weren't aware of this meeting tonight. So let me make a couple of quick bullet points. One, the mass and scale of this property are roughly equivalent to a seven to nine story building gouged into the side of a 60% Hill. These photographs are cleverly depicted so they don't show the house above the new property being built in 77. Number two, I don't think that was the spirit and intent of the zoning requirements and zoning regulations. This project is about monetization of a property. It was originally a two, I guess it was a duplex at the top of the hill on Sausalito Boulevard. The individual who owns the property wants to monetize the property by building this house into it. He's mentioned hoping to get somewhere on the order of $2.5 to $3.5 million when he puts it on the market. That's all gonna come at the expense and inconvenience of his neighbors on Crescent Avenue. As far as the public outreach goes, Positive letters probably came from Sausalito Boulevard way above this property. I have a list now here of eight owners, at least eight, who vehemently object to the project. He's resorted to, the petitioner has resorted to deception and misrepresentation to the extent of public outreach. I think I first learned of the project back in January of 15 or 16 and he's never approached me ever again. I live with 100 feet of this project. And the same goes for other neighbors where he's been arrogant and dismissive and confrontational and even trespassing to take photographs. That's it for me. Last remark. |
| 01:18:17.88 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, if you'd just like to wind up with the last few marks. |
| 01:18:19.94 | Bob Braid | Yeah, let me wind up for the last remark. There was a slide resulting in a fatality here in this corner of Crescent Avenue in the early 1980s. A woman, I want to say it was probably at 78 Crescent across the street, lost her life due to a slide, mud slide. This is going to destabilize the hill either during construction or after construction. And in the wintertime, we just saw what can happen around Sausalito with the rains. So another point of consideration. Thank you, sir. |
| 01:18:48.15 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you, sir. David Suda? |
| 01:18:59.56 | David Sudo | David Sudo. I live down the hill on Richardson Street these days. I had the chance to talk to Dave Hulub about this project as he's been trying to go through the planning committee for a couple of years now. And I know he's not the easiest person to get along with sometimes. He's got very opinionated. But I don't think that should stop him from being able to do this project. The recent changes look like they've increased the privacy for the neighbors. I know that was a concern. It's a buildable lot. You have to allow a person to build a lot. Only 80% of the FAR if we want smaller houses than that and we need to change our zoning. It's within the allowable zoning. And it's smaller than all the recent new houses on that street around the corner. All the other houses that have been recently built in the last 10 years have been bigger than this house. So to say it's out of scale to the neighborhood, I just don't understand that. I can't fathom that. You know, the house directly right here in this picture, which is a duplex, that Trestle house, you know, as far as mass on the street, that house is huge. So anything, you know, this looks minuscule compared to that, so I'm just baffled personally when it comes to someone saying mass and size. You know, it's just basically saying, I don't want a house there. And if we have a zoning and we allow a house there, then we have to allow a house there. That's what it comes down to. It's going to be inconvenient for the neighbors, but that's what happens when someone builds a house or remodels a house. It's an inconvenience for the neighborhood. And at some point, some of the houses next door, this house will be remodeled or rebuilt. It'll be an inconvenience for these people. So that's the way we live in Sausalito. We just try to minimize that impact on our neighbors when we do the construction. Thank you. |
| 01:20:25.35 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 01:20:51.39 | Mayor Withey | Thank you, Robert Tillon. |
| 01:20:58.58 | Robert Tillon | Hello. I've lived in Sausalito since 1988 at 14 Sunshine Avenue. And to put my comments into context, I'm the developer of a 785-unit condo project in the Mission in San Francisco, which is the most anti-development place in the city, maybe in the state. And as such, over the past four years, I've become an expert on things like the state density bonus law, the Housing Accountability Act, the Permit Streaming Act, the Housing Element Act, and so on. And I've also become a member of all of the and active in all of the pro-development groups in the Bay Area. So I have four comments on this project. Number one, While I am not a fan of David Holub and he and I have come to blows, almost to blows at times over some of our interchanges over next door. I think he has a right to build this project. It is, if you looked up the list, he's compliant with everything. And he's been run through the mill and he's been responsive. Thing two. I think that if he's not given approval, he will litigate. And he has a very good case, in my opinion. And further, I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal bills myself figuring out how to litigate and threaten the city of San Francisco with litigation. And I personally will help him. Okay? Thing number three, I have testified multiple times in front of the state legislature on all of the tsunami of pro-housing legislation that's coming up right now. and If some of that legislation passes, Sausalito will be in very deep trouble if it gets attention paid to it. And number four, if this project is not approved, I will put the word out to every housing organization in the Bay Area and you will have 100 screaming millennials at your next council meeting. And I will tell you that San Francisco Bay Area Renters Foundation recently filed a Housing Accountability Act lawsuit against Berkeley over a three unit project. So thank you very much. |
| 01:23:08.60 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Thank you. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to make a comment here? No, okay, so I will bring it back to the applicant. I did allow a member of the public to go over, so you've got about six minutes or so, okay. |
| 01:23:28.77 | John | Okay, great. I just want to make a quick statement to respond to Baird. Bob Braid. Bob Braid, sorry. Essentially, listening to his comments, he was speaking for eight properties. As he ran them off again, you'll see those names on correspondence back from 2016 as well. I don't know what happened with noticing the public as far as what the city did for this meeting. That's kind of not our responsibility, and we never do that. We don't know what happened with noticing the public as far as what the city did for this meeting. That's kind of not our responsibility and we never do that. public noticing like that we do for our own meetings. I agree with him. Construction is inconvenient when it's in your neighborhood. It's been in my neighborhood. My guess is most people in this room, it's been in their neighborhood as well. Thank you. It's inconvenient, but it's kind of part of living in essentially an urban environment. We have five-foot side yard setbacks. That's a fairly urban environment. planning development standard. The slide that he spoke about over this winter was on an undeveloped site. the factual reality is when you build a house such as this, we do use geotechnical engineers. They do provide analysis of the hillside stability and soil. And we have another project, not before you, coming soon, similar to this. And they both show the topsoil is a potential slide. Now that's what's removed and shored up with essentially a concrete bunker, and then we put a nice house in front of it. So actually building appropriately can stabilize the hillside more so than destabilize it. That's pretty much all I have to say. I want to invite Steve Frazier up to speak, unless you have any questions for me at this time. |
| 01:25:14.37 | Mayor Withey | Why don't we have a member of your team speak, and then if we have any questions, we'll ask them after. OK. Thank you. |
| 01:25:21.37 | John Rohrbacher | Okay. |
| 01:25:21.68 | Steve Frazier | Thank you. |
| 01:25:28.68 | Steve Frazier | Thank you, Mayor Withey, members of the City Council. I'm Steve Frazier. I'm here to speak on behalf of the applicant. Obviously, I don't have really much time. I probably have two minutes or three minutes left, and we went through this last time. You have four minutes. Four minutes. I have four minutes? Oh, it increased 25%. You should have this letter that I wrote. All right. I don't know if I've had time to read it, but I'm just going to direct your attention to two points. The first is you would go through it and turn to something I called Exhibit A, |
| 01:25:42.62 | Mayor Withey | Four minutes, four minutes. |
| 01:26:05.72 | Steve Frazier | I searched through all these pictures. I probably went through 30 of his pictures because I wanted to picture the neighborhood On Crescent, like the neighborhood on Central, is the area where the garbage truck comes, you meet your neighbor, you greet your neighbor, you carry the groceries up, you see what your neighbor's doing, who his latest girlfriend is, a boyfriend. That's the nature of a little small town neighborhood. It's not the Hall of Hurricane Gulch. It's not Saucydeo Boulevard. I put these guys don't talk to anyone up there. It is that particular street in Box Canyon. And Exhibit A is at Box Canyon. If you look at it, this is all I want to say on this point, you would mentally juxtapose the projected property. onto this site, Exhibit A, there is no way you can make any finding that it is not compatible with that area. The interesting thing is that in order to make a finding or in order to make or take a position that you cannot make a finding, you have to rely on some factual basis. I have gone through the hearing. There is no factual, single factual basis. that the commission addressed or raised that would support its non-finding that it can't make those general plan findings. There are seven elements to the heightened design review. Not one was addressed by the Planning Commission. That is a gross failure, and it is disrespectful as a client, and a violation, as far as I'm concerned, of his due process. This is not an Article 58 hearing. That is the article in the Soviet Union during the 1930s where you went to Siberia because you looked twice at Stalin's photograph. All right, but it wouldn't tell you what you did, but you got 10 years in Siberia, if not something else. The planning commission hearing that I attended was simply an Article 58 hearing and nothing more. There is no factual evidence presented by the commission or discussed by them and I defy anyone on this board to read that hearing and find otherwise. If you cannot support a finding or a decision to make a non-finding based on some kind of factual basis, Whatever it is, floor area, floor area ratio, lot coverage, height, color, materials, design, some basis, height. then you can't do it. You can't make that finding, and they could not. And that is why you have, and I refer to it on page, last thing I'm going to say, on page three or four, I quote, I went through it carefully to look for all the reasons why they shot it down. And I think I have, I guess it's, I can't remember how many I had. There's a number of quotes on page three. One commissioner wanted it to be a Greek monastery because that was really dug into the hillside. The picture of the Greek monastery that he referenced is attached to the end of my other. Another wanted it to be like the temple in Petra. Again, a gigantic structure, massive, stuck into the hillside. This commissioner was not going to be satisfied until it basically became a cave going. That is not the basis on which a public body can make a deliberation and hold it. Staff, they could not do this. This is the last thing I'm saying. They could not do this because staff... recommended the project. Staff did not deny it. And without staff providing you information to deny a project, you can't make that non-finding. So I think that, I know they're hardworking people and they're volunteers, but I think that this council and this city needs to undergo a training session in how to be a planning commissioner. It is unacceptable. Thank you, Mr. Frehley. Thank you. |
| 01:30:25.53 | Mayor Withey | that. It is unacceptable. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:30:33.06 | Mayor Withey | Um... So we've heard from the applicant's team and we've Receive public comment. Bring it back here. |
| 01:30:46.27 | Mayor Withey | I have some, before comments, I have a couple of questions. I don't know if you have any questions. Yeah. Okay, this is to our city attorney. Could we have some clarification about noticing? Because we did advance this to this meeting from initially a proposed thing. I don't know if it's Calvin or you want to comment on that. |
| 01:31:21.28 | Mary Wagner | I'll ask Calvin to speak to the notice that went out with respect to this hearing. |
| 01:31:26.35 | Calvin | OK, thanks. So this hearing was properly noticed. The notice was posted in City Hall on June 29th, online on June 30th, mailed on June 30th, and on site at both frontages on June 30th. |
| 01:31:41.53 | Mayor Withey | The second question I have is... the The Planning Commission, through the transcript and as the applicants pointed out, Um, was very concerned about outreach. And the applicant has indicated that the total letters of support were in the ratio of approximately two to one. Were there any letters of support from any of the Crescent neighborhood versus the Sausalito Boulevard? whoever. |
| 01:32:26.88 | John | Bye. Yes, I believe. Let me find some. |
| 01:32:30.51 | Mayor Withey | I'm happy to have the applicant answer that and then Calvin can support that one way or another. |
| 01:32:32.94 | John | Okay. |
| 01:32:39.55 | Steve Frazier | Amen. |
| 01:32:39.87 | John | Thank you. |
| 01:32:39.89 | Steve Frazier | Thank you. |
| 01:32:40.60 | John | Yes, there are. I can't, most of these, both for and against, don't give a property address, surprisingly enough. A number of the ones against don't even give a name or anything. I'll look through this for a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 01:32:52.98 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Okay, so. We'll look through this for a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we have some other questions here, perhaps. Those were all my questions. |
| 01:33:07.61 | Jill Hoffman | I have some questions based on some of the comments from the public. Mary, and these are legal questions, so I don't know. |
| 01:33:17.15 | Unknown | you know. |
| 01:33:19.24 | Jill Hoffman | You know my concern is if we uphold the Planning Commission decision. THE are we violating, would we currently be violating any state law at this point? |
| 01:33:42.24 | Mary Wagner | So the city council hearing on this project is de novo. And if the city council finds or determines that you can't make the findings that are required for project approval, any one of the findings required for project approval, you have the ability to uphold the planning commission decision based on those reasons. You received a letter today and you've heard from a member of the public tonight indicating or threatening that that violates the Housing Affordability Act and some other acts. I don't believe that's accurate. One of the letters in your packet or that you received as late mail claimed that this was violative of the accessory dwelling unit. Recent statutes, which I also don't believe is accurate. This is not an accessory dwelling unit recent litigating statutes which i also don't believe is accurate you know this is not an accessory dwelling unit it's a condo conversion project for three condominium units with two structures as is indicated by the applicant so my understanding is that if the council determines that it can't make a finding and provides the basis for that and you have that in your staff report that you're within your purview to deny the project and uphold the planning commission's decision. |
| 01:34:55.77 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. |
| 01:35:02.08 | Jill Hoffman | for the applicant's team. And I've just gone through my notes here real quick. I'm not particularly concerned about the people on any other street other than those on the curve of Crescent because obviously the people on the curve of Crescent are the ones that are gonna be impacted. So my notes indicate that 95 Crescent, 89 Crescent, 76 Crescent, 75 Crescent and 69 Crescent are all against the project. and claim that there hasn't been any public outreach or whatever public outreach they've had has been negative. Do you have any... anything to the contrary on that? |
| 01:35:38.27 | John | No, I don't. I believe they are opposed to it. We received letters and in meetings in my office as well as public meetings in the neighbor's house, they were pretty clear that they don't want a house there. They didn't want, it's not this house, it's not the design, it's not the materials, they don't want a house there. We're kind of stuck with that. We would like to put a house there. What was the second part of your question? I think that was it. They will be. It is most visible to them. The construction will be most inconvenient for them. I found at least one or two Crescent addresses that do support it, not the ones that you mentioned. Oh, just a piece, yeah. There was at least... |
| 01:36:06.86 | Jill Hoffman | That was it. |
| 01:36:21.35 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 01:36:30.03 | John | three public, three neighborhood meetings that I can recall in my office and in some neighbors on Crescent invited us to their home and invited their surrounding neighbors. Calvin probably has, I don't know, a stack of emails back and forth between myself, my client, and every. |
| 01:36:33.44 | Katie Faulkner | Uh-huh. |
| 01:36:50.09 | John | The thing is, nobody contacts me, which is unfortunate. So more often than not, I don't get letters until particularly the day of or the day before hearing. Calvin says, oh, this came in, this came in, you should be aware that this came in. Typically, that's way too late for me to really be able to address anything. But we got them at different versions, or I'm sorry, at different points in time sometimes, usually late. Either myself or my client did respond to them. So we did, to say that there was no public outreach, it's just, it's... It's just not true. I don't know how to say it. There's been multiple meetings. And this is public outreach. And when we had our first hearing and we present and they speak and we get direction from planning commission, that's outreach. And we address, they've spoken, we got direction. We try to address that. That's, you know, we're all, in a lot of ways, that's more communication than we get throughout the rest of it. Because if we try to get outreach, we get that stuff the day before the hearing. So we've had, this is our sixth time in this chambers. We've been responsive, as responsive as we can. You know, we've made it smaller. We've tried to address privacy issues. But when the sentiment is we do not want a house there, We're really, you know, We have the development rights. We would like to build a house. It meets every ordinance. It meets every code. It meets the general plan. But there's kind of no middle way between no house and a house. So we're kind of stuck on that one. |
| 01:38:23.82 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:38:27.98 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Yeah, please. |
| 01:38:31.09 | Jill Hoffman | didn't I'm sorry John I do have follow-up did you have any did you have any specific requests for changes to design from the neighbors on that curve |
| 01:38:42.28 | John | Um, we had We had comments regarding the privacy from the side. We minimized the windows. We stopped the deck further around. We got rid of the stairs. Well, actually this last iteration, what doesn't show is when we redid it, we took this angle and we kind of took the house and moved it a few degrees as best we could. So we tried to address that. And what's not clear here, I don't think, no, the landscape plan's not in here, but we've looked at it before. We had a significant amount of trees. and high bushes to ensure that even from the trestle house, the closest trussel house, you wouldn't really see this house due to vegetation, The one further uphill, you would still look back, you would still see it. So we took those mitigating measures. and did it. Other than that, you know, as far as design revisions, there wasn't much we could do. Early on, we did have a wind turbine, because this was supposed to be a microgrid project to fit in with PG&E's environmental fishing microgrid program. And when they reviewed our plans, they said, as it was, long time ago, it's changed a lot since, they said this could be a model program for urban development for kind of semi-off-the-grid projects. We had to take out some of those elements. People didn't want to see the wind turbine. All the neighbors worried about the noise. We didn't have the right data to back up the decibel level, so we just removed it from the project to address a neighbor comment. Additionally, We changed, we had different They felt this wall was oppressive, but it's kind of structurally required. We changed the color of it. It was just going to be a straight concrete wall. We softened it with some colors. So we did respond to neighbors in ways where we could. But again, I don't know how it's a house. It's there. |
| 01:40:46.73 | Mayor Withey | Joe, any questions? |
| 01:40:54.14 | Mayor Withey | Okay. So. Colleagues, thoughts? |
| 01:41:03.69 | Jill Hoffman | I, you know. I've driven that stretch many times over the past few weeks. And I get the objections from the neighbors. Yeah. And I feel like that's the troubling That's the troubling thing. When you come to a neighborhood, you come to the neighborhood, with the neighbors. So I I just need a couple minutes to flip through here and look at this for a second. Go ahead. I mean, as well as some of the other issues that were mentioned by the Planning Commission. Anyway. |
| 01:41:40.78 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I'll, Give a shot here. is obviously a tough item and as council member hoffman said you know neighborhood uh feedback is is really vital um i do kind of you know agree with the applicant that i believe there was a little bit of a misdirection as far as the last meeting in response to uh community feedback I I feel like there's not many people in that area that don't know about this project or don't have the opportunity to uh assist in the discussion um There's just so many elements of this, and I try to boil it down into some, common common spots and looking at, um, we're in a transition period of a piece of open space lot to a house, and that's a scary change. And I get that, and I get this process. I can't come to the conclusion that in 10 years from now, if I drove down this street, that this would be the ugliest house on the block, or the most obtrusive, or the largest, or the most scale. I thought that the design took a lot of neat elements, some of them that I wish had actually stayed. I thought it was a good project. So then, in looking at all of the facts as they've been laid out by staff and the commission over the four meetings in our last one and now this one, There's a lot of information, and it kind of comes down to a few lines and a few points within these three areas that seem most valid to me. And balancing neighbors' opinions and setbacks and heights and the reductions and all of that THE ONE LINE THAT I'M LOOKING AT ON ITEM 1, the scale and mass of the three living units on a single parcel is excessive. Well, as we've determined, three living units is allowed. It should be simply the scale and mass on a single parcel. is that frankly it doesn't matter how many, if we're talking about simple design, aesthetic, it doesn't matter if there's 400 units or one unit in there, it's the same structure. And we're talking about the scale and mass. That's a similar sentence in number three, the project's design of three living units on a single parcel... combined with the scale and mass of the structure is not compatible or consistent. Yes, that is correct. Three units is not consistent, but we've already determined that that is allowed. So it's the scale and mass portion that we're talking about. And I can't come to the conclusion looking at that design that the scale and mass is out of character with the neighborhood. I can, however, make that conclusion if I look at the duplex above it and I can find that perfect spot, whether I'm in a tree on Lower Crescent or wherever I am, that I can see that spot directly and see all those units. I think that would be a scale and mass issue. I DON'T KNOW IF I CAN FIND THAT LOCATION. AND AGAIN, WHEN I DRIVE UP THE STREET IN 10 YEARS, I'M NOT CONVINCED THAT THAT PROJECT IS GOING TO STEP OUT AS SOMETHING THAT DIDN'T WORK. Um, So to me, it continues to go back to the scale and mass, and we based on item 12, THE CITY OF THE CITY OF THE levels as an item of scale and mass. Now that's an actual quantitative number we can look at as far as design review. And I think the feeling was, without being said. that had that been a reduced structure or not this one, I'm sorry, but the previous design had been a reduced structure of one story that scale and mass might fit It doesn't talk about units, simply going back to scale and mass. Well, they've kind of essentially done that. They're probably within four feet of eliminating the entire floor based on the new height. So, IT CONTINUES TO COME BACK. to has the applicant trimmed back the scale and mass that they had been directed to in these four to five meetings. |
| 01:46:31.25 | Joe Burns | And that's the part I'm wrestling with at this point. And it's simply, I think so much of this has been gone over by another body, by us, and it's coming down to does the scale and mass, work on that spot. And I think they have done about as much as they can other than just shaving off that top unit at a higher level as that we've asked from them. So that's my initial feeling is I'm just trying to boil it down to where I feel I'm really placing my look at this and what I'm trying to consider. I think, you know, we can continue to say three units and continue to talk about lot coverage and all that, but I just feel like those questions have been answered. |
| 01:47:27.26 | Jill Hoffman | I do have a question. I'm sorry. This is a question for Calvin. It looks Can you tell me, does this? does this property does it does it encroach on the next door property i'm looking at the |
| 01:47:46.31 | Jill Hoffman | I'm looking at the setback and it looks like it's, I mean, when I look at the picture too, it looks like As I'm looking at it, This is just a real question. |
| 01:47:57.45 | Calvin | It does not. So the line that you I think you're referencing right here. That is the setback line showing that it is setback from the property line. |
| 01:48:03.31 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:48:09.14 | Calvin | Is this the line you were referring to? |
| 01:48:10.44 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, right there at that corner. Does that, because it looks like the driveway goes out, does it not? Does it, is the driveway right on the? |
| 01:48:18.34 | Calvin | The driveway remains within its property. The front property line along Crescent Avenue is right here, and the driveway is part of the encroachment agreement of the driveway extending into the public right of way. |
| 01:48:24.41 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:48:31.54 | Jill Hoffman | So that left hand, that It's hard to say left or right, but if you're looking at that right-hand corner, which is that upper corner, that's within the- Right, it does not encroach. |
| 01:48:38.61 | Calvin | Right, it does not encroach. |
| 01:48:40.30 | Jill Hoffman | Got it. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:48:46.44 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 01:48:47.16 | Mayor Withey | I have another question for you, Calvin. |
| 01:48:49.48 | Jill Hoffman | You, Calvin. |
| 01:48:50.50 | Brandon Nail | you |
| 01:48:52.92 | Mayor Withey | Um, Is there separate findings that need to be made for an encroachment agreement? and the other various parts of this, because we're all focusing on the design review, but there's other pieces of this that are being requested. And is there, Analysis, I didn't hear this in the Planning Commission, you know, is the discussion of all the other components that are being asked for here. um, Just help me out a little bit. Because I know this has been raised by a particular one of the planners. |
| 01:49:33.06 | Calvin | Right. Commission. Sure, so this hearing this evening, this would mark the seventh public hearing this project has had. in front of both the Planning Commission and the City Council. As Mary said earlier, this is a de novo hearing, so all the findings you need to make in order to approve the various entitlements. I've been to every meeting, and the Planning Commission and the City Council, especially at the Planning Commission meetings in 2016 as well as May 2017, they've always discussed every single entitlement. Nothing was glanced over. And in their denial findings, they did focus on the design review permit findings, 1, 3, 6, and 12, that they could not make to not approve the project. But if you wanted to approve the project, you would have to make all the findings, which is probably around 30 findings or so. |
| 01:50:35.65 | Calvin | Okay, thank you, Mary. |
| 01:50:36.70 | Mary Wagner | And they are in your packet. If you look on this really tiny printing. |
| 01:50:36.77 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:50:43.73 | Calvin | attachment to a |
| 01:50:46.01 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, page 3 of 22. They are the encroachment permit findings are included. So all this information, even though sometimes a particular aspect of a project is focused on, when you adopt the resolution, you've seen the basis for all those findings in that resolution, you have the ability of course to modify it, but when you adopt that resolution, you're adopting those findings, making those findings. |
| 01:51:20.91 | Mayor Withey | I understand that. My question really is, um, Let's pick something. Condominium conversion permit findings. I mean, throughout all of this, Has there been any public discussion of findings one through however many there are, I'm flicking, one through 14 of the condominium conversion permit findings. I mean, through this may have been in front of a public body seven times, but I've not yet heard a conversation about the condominium conversion permit findings. |
| 01:52:10.22 | Calvin | They did discuss it at the earlier planning commission meetings. Was it discussed as extensively as the design review permit findings? No, it was not, but it was definitely discussed and part of the basis for them denying the project was the design review permit findings. That doesn't mean that they didn't have any Um, anything else to say about the other findings, but those were the ones that they chose for their denial in December. |
| 01:52:42.62 | Calvin | Bye. |
| 01:52:42.67 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 01:52:55.49 | Mayor Withey | So really my question, Mary, is if the Planning Commission has taken the, Previously, when we heard the appeal, back whenever it was, in January or whenever it was, February, We focused on the design review findings because those were the ones that the Planning Commission make and therefore were the basis of their denial. But let's say tonight we were able to make the design review findings, right? Okay. don't we need to start looking at each of the other findings and ask the question, could we make those as well? The condominium findings, the tentative parcel map, sub-dimension map act findings, I mean, and so on. I mean, this is a complicated project, and it seems that there's only ever a discussion of the design review findings. I'm struggling a bit to understand, because let's say we decided tonight to approve the design review permit. Is there anything in discretionary that we would have to focus on in all of these other findings? That's my question, I guess. That. or maybe the whole findings are, I'm struggling here, so help me out. |
| 01:54:13.61 | Mary Wagner | Sure. So if the council determined to uphold the appeal and approve the project, there is a resolution in your packet to do that tonight, I believe. And that includes all of the findings you would have to make. If there were issues or concerns or questions about the basis for those findings, then now would be the time if the council were so inclined. to have that conversation because you can approve the entirety of the project tonight, but you're right that in order to do that, you have to make all of the findings for all of the discretionary permits that were requested and required. |
| 01:54:57.69 | Mayor Withey | And so really my question then is, I'm sorry I'm being persistent on this. |
| 01:55:09.25 | Mayor Withey | Has there been any analysis? Has the staff made an analysis that all of the other findings outside of the design review findings can be met? |
| 01:55:21.04 | Mary Wagner | Yes. |
| 01:55:21.08 | Mayor Withey | Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, all right, that answers my question, okay. |
| 01:55:31.00 | Mary Wagner | And to rephrase that, Mr. Mayor, the basis for the council's determinations that those findings could be made has been included in a draft resolution. It's just staff's determination that this is a recommendation. So if the council can either agree, disagree, add to, take away from, any of those recommendations. You have that draft resolution in your packet that provides a basis for the council to take that action if it's so chose. |
| 01:56:00.28 | Steve Frazier | So. |
| 01:56:15.80 | Jill Hoffman | This is what I asked. I asked if we could take a short break. And I may ask that we take, you know, it's not unheard of, I think that when you're considering a question as big as this, and with so many different issues that have been brought up THE FAMILY. you know, Can we continue a hearing on this for a short period. so that you |
| 01:56:43.73 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:56:43.75 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:56:43.76 | Joe Burns | outside of tonight. |
| 01:56:45.42 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:56:48.23 | John | if possible with the athlete, Thank you. |
| 01:56:50.24 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:56:52.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:52.05 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 01:56:53.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:53.15 | Brandon Nail | you |
| 01:56:53.84 | Unknown | Before we break, |
| 01:56:54.21 | John | I just wanted to ask if you're going to consider the other elements of the project, which we weren't prepared for. We were denied on four findings. We came in, we prepared for those findings. If we're going to discuss those, I'd like to have the opportunity to at least speak to them in my memory and have Calvin speak as well. |
| 01:57:11.93 | Mayor Withey | No, I understand that. Okay, thank you. No, I fully understand that. You know, the thing is, there's a, you know... |
| 01:57:12.91 | John | Okay, thank you. |
| 01:57:19.67 | Mayor Withey | It's in one sense, if you're denying the project, say at the Planning Commission level, it's fairly easy, because if you can't make the findings for the design review permit, you basically are silent on the rest. I mean, it doesn't mean you've approved the rest. in my view, but maybe you have. |
| 01:57:38.30 | Mary Wagner | The entire project was denied and the basis of the denial was the findings that were laid out in the staff report and in the appeal. The council has the right tonight TO DO anything that the Planning Commission could have done with this project. Approve, deny, change the conditions, Thank you. that we have to continue the project for future consideration. Those are all options available to you tonight. And I appreciate and understand it's a difficult project. It's got a lot of components. And if the council wants to take a recess right now, that's an option. And if you want to continue the project, that's an option as well. If you do want to continue it and you have specific questions or concerns that you want to make sure we address, that would be helpful direction for us to have as well. |
| 01:58:36.03 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 01:58:37.25 | Joe Burns | What do you want to do? I know where your concern is on this, and in listening to the Planning Commissioner and the Planning Commission's meeting in that portion, |
| 01:58:53.77 | Joe Burns | we were then brought to the table on this item. I mean, basically, that was the first time that we've kind of heard that maybe the condominium plan and those things weren't completely vetted. And that might be what the Planning Commission should have done, and it's one person talking about what their body did or didn't do. But I haven't heard any issues on those yet. I mean, there's been a lot of discussion that on this project that has gone way past the three or four items on the design review. And I haven't heard any of those fall into the areas of the encroachment or the, condominium plan or the tree removal. In fact, tree removal was definitely part of it. But the condo plan or the encroachment permit. So it seems like there's been opportunity for someone to say, hey, you know, this didn't look right. |
| 01:59:45.29 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I understand that. I'm just coming from the perspective is I'm cognizant of the fact this is a de novo review. And therefore, it's a de novo review of everything. And we've been focusing just on the design review findings. Now, maybe there isn't anything else to focus on. |
| 01:59:57.39 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:00:03.07 | Jill Hoffman | This is kind of where I'm at, is that... |
| 02:00:03.87 | Mayor Withey | you Thank you. |
| 02:00:07.07 | Jill Hoffman | You know, I am not unsympathetic to the applicant at all. But I feel like I feel like I need more time to review this. I feel like tonight as I sit here and I'm thinking about all the issues that have been brought up in this hearing, that I need some more time to consider this. Um, but, I'm one vote. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. To Mr. McCoy's point, you know, if I don't want to veer off |
| 02:00:39.78 | Brandon Nail | Right. |
| 02:00:39.95 | Jill Hoffman | You know, I don't want to do that. But I do want to make sure that we're making the right decision. And I feel like you know, it's not unreasonable given the scale and size and impact of this project If we need to take a little bit more time to look at it that seemed to me seems reasonable, but |
| 02:00:59.98 | Mayor Withey | Okay. |
| 02:01:05.27 | Mayor Withey | This is completely in our control really, isn't it? City Council control. Okay, I move we continue this hearing until the date certain, September. 12th or whenever 11th. |
| 02:01:31.13 | Danny Castro | you |
| 02:01:35.90 | Danny Castro | I'll share with you, if I may. I would just, it would be very much appreciated if you were to provide some direction that if there's anything in particular you would like staff to bring back to you. |
| 02:01:35.94 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:01:36.09 | Katie Faulkner | Bye. |
| 02:01:37.03 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:01:42.05 | Brandon Nail | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:01:46.81 | Danny Castro | or or not. if it's just more additional time to digest the you know, volume of information, or if you'd like particular information, we'd be happy to |
| 02:01:53.39 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:01:53.40 | Jill Hoffman | How about that? |
| 02:01:57.72 | Danny Castro | bring that back to you. |
| 02:01:59.36 | Jill Hoffman | I... I totally understand that. I'm not sure that I can articulate anything that would be of assistance to you right now. we could say, I mean we could, if we're looking at September date, then we could say by no later than X date, we'll submit areas of concern. |
| 02:02:21.58 | Mayor Withey | Can we do that? |
| 02:02:23.91 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:02:24.03 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:02:29.16 | Mary Wagner | So if you want to meet with staff, you can certainly do that. If you have questions, we always welcome those in advance. So what I'm hearing the council say is you need more time to adequately consider the breadth of this project, which we totally understand, and you've got a motion to continue to a date certain. THEIR TOOLS. one thing we can work with the mayor on as a member of the agenda setting committee is what the next presentation looks like and if you want the full blown project presentation you know walking through. each of the permits that's required for this project and what those findings are, we can do that. we can work with the mayor to figure out what to bring back at that next hearing. I had asked Lily, your city clerk, what the agenda for the September 12th meeting looks like, and if there's an opportunity to put it on that agenda, and I think she was trying to look at that. |
| 02:03:27.60 | Lily | We could fit it on the 12th. Thank you. |
| 02:03:29.51 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:03:29.52 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 02:03:29.56 | Brandon Nail | Yeah. |
| 02:03:29.84 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:03:29.89 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 02:03:29.91 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:03:37.98 | Steve Frazier | I'm just a point. |
| 02:03:41.12 | Mayor Withey | Steve, would you like to use the microphone? |
| 02:03:46.55 | Steve Frazier | I mean, I don't know quite what it is about the condominium conversion aspect or the encroachment permit that requires further study, but that's the council's prerogative, according to Ms. Wagner, and I suppose she's right. I don't usually agree with other council, but... But, you know, one is it's going to shut down the window for any possible construction on the site. It will cost my client a great deal of money. That's probably not your problem, but I'm going to raise it because that's something he would be saying. But this seems like a never-ending process thing. If you raise the issue of the design review, and we go into it exhaustively, I spend most of the day writing a long letter. Obviously, John has done a very thorough job of outlining his changes and making them. And now all of a sudden, we're going to be looking at another aspect of the project. There's nothing to say that there won't be another one after that. So it would at least have put us out of our misery if you could at least because you're not going to learn anything more about the design of this project, if you could at least vote on this aspect of it, and then if you need to meet again because you want staff to take a second look to satisfy Mayor Withey on the conversion issue or some other one, I mean, again, that's probably your prerogative, but at least you can treat the major hemorrhaging in sort of a modified form of triage tonight. |
| 02:05:43.04 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Let me articulate why I don't want us to go sideways here. I'm not trying to derail us. And I'm not trying to send you off in all kinds of different directions either, John. That's not the intention here. I'll be quite frank, I have only focused on the design review findings. If we were to make them tonight, I would feel I would not be doing my job because I haven't looked at anything else. It's that simple. And I've just realized as we've been going along that, in fact, Calvin said there's 30-odd findings to make here. Now, I can... And I'm not confident that the Planning Commission addressed any of it. |
| 02:06:28.35 | Mayor Withey | other than the design review findings and, you know, So I just feel uncomfortable with that. Now, if you want to get it over, we could always deny the project. That's the easy part. |
| 02:06:44.01 | Unknown | you |
| 02:06:44.06 | John | We're certainly not seeking a denial. What I'm having a little trouble with is This project was denied on four written findings provided by the Planning Commission. We only are appeal It was a thoroughly written appeal that spoke to those four findings. They didn't. The Planning Commission, I don't know, you know, there's some assumption of approval by not listing it you would think that they would list all of their reasons for denial. That makes common sense. That we can't make this finding too much encroachment. Condominium conversion is not right for this property. Finding three, finding six, finding 12. They didn't do that. What they did was they provided four written findings for denial. And we appealed those specific four. And that appeal was brought to this body. And we've been addressing those findings and focusing on those because that is the written findings that the Planning Commission provided to us, you, the staff, and that was the reasoning for doing that. That's where our appeal focused, which is probably why that's where your focus focused, because that's all that's ever been presented to you, either from myself or from the Planning Commission or from staff. |
| 02:08:12.08 | Mary Wagner | Just to be clear, Mayor Withey, if the Planning Commission couldn't make one of the findings, it couldn't approve the project. So that's why that happened the way it did and why it came up to you the way it did. What I hear you saying, if I'm correct, is that if the... Council is potentially looking to approve the project and make the findings. You need to focus more on what those findings were or to have that option. |
| 02:08:36.94 | Mayor Withey | Let me give you, all right, let me be very specific then. I, like Councilmember Burns, uh, certainly thinking that the scale and mass I'm not sure. has been certainly Um, worked on very diligently by the applicant to reduce it. OK? Such that I'm really struggling to make the finding about scale and mass and consistency with the neighborhood. But I'm getting there, to be frank. OK? But I'm looking at finding number So it relates to the compatibility with the neighborhood and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Sensitive parcel map subdivision map act findings. finding number five. that the design or improvement of the proposed subdivision is not consistent. Sorry, wrong one. Find the number six. that the site is not physically suitable for the type of development. |
| 02:09:50.83 | Mayor Withey | I haven't focused on that. |
| 02:10:01.68 | Mayor Withey | Which is you'd like a continuation. |
| 02:10:04.15 | Jill Hoffman | I'd like to have more time to consider this project. |
| 02:10:08.43 | Mayor Withey | Okay, so I have a motion on the table that we continue this appeal hearing for date certain, which is September 12th. And I can't remember either what's on the agenda for the 12th Lilly week-up pact agenda. |
| 02:10:25.12 | Lily | I THINK THAT'S A LITTLE BIT. |
| 02:10:27.85 | Joe Burns | Let me look at that. And that we're requesting no new information from the AT THIS TIME. |
| 02:10:39.30 | Joe Burns | We're not asking for anything else for them to do. Because I'd like for them to know if we are. |
| 02:10:44.38 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, no, that's fair enough. But I'm trying to give you, you know, if we're going to either approve this project or deny this project at this stage, I think we, you know, if I definitely knew I couldn't make two design review findings, I wouldn't bother to worry about the others. That's the point. I'm leaning towards, you know, this is a close enough call that we should be looking at the totality of this project. That's where I'm coming from. Okay. We have another council member who... is struggling to make a decision tonight. Okay. which is fair enough. No, it's fair enough. So we're saying you have up there. Option number three, continue the public hearing for further consideration. And I'm not sure that's going to damage the applicant that much. A delay of a couple of months. And I realize that if we need more information from the applicant, staff will ask you. Because you can't come back in your blind. Absolutely. Okay. No. Thank you. No, this is coming back to us. |
| 02:12:00.52 | Mayor Withey | right? So are we okay, Mary, with that? Okay, I realize it's cluttering the calendar. I realize it's going slowly, but, Um... considering I think we're getting close to the right answer here. I want to make sure we're right, especially as we've got some hesitations. Do I have a second for my motion? |
| 02:12:26.70 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 02:12:27.31 | Mayor Withey | Okay. All in favor? you Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. You're opposed. Okay, so that's 2-1. Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:12:36.85 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 02:12:38.03 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 02:12:38.05 | Joe Burns | Yeah, yeah. |
| 02:12:38.87 | Mayor Withey | Okay, we're going to take a break. |
| 02:13:00.34 | Mayor Withey | OK, we're back on the record. Just an administrative spillover matter from the last item. I failed to ask my colleagues, and also did not myself, to disclose any communications with any of the parties in connection with the last thing, which we should normally do at the beginning of each item. So we'll just for the record put that in now, if that's okay, Mary. I have had no discussions with anybody on this, meaning I haven't met with the applicant, neighbors, or anything like that. I did listen to the Planning Commission hearing and I read the entire Planning Commission transcript. |
| 02:13:51.74 | Jill Hoffman | I'm trying to remember, it's been such a long time since the last meeting. I don't believe that I've spoken with. any of the parties in this case, or in this application. I did drive by. the uh property uh i have had conversation with some people in the community um Do I, is that good enough or not? |
| 02:14:19.60 | Joe Burns | I have had no conversation or correspondence with any of the parties. Also watched the video and after receiving this, or actually after the Planning Commission meeting, drove the site one more time to look at the new look. |
| 02:14:39.60 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thank you and sorry we didn't do that at the beginning. Okay, our next agenda item is. Item 6A, response to grand jury, report Marin's retirement health care benefits. Our administrative services director, Melanie Purcell. |
| 02:15:08.91 | Melanie Purcell | Good evening, real quick, we'll... Thank you. |
| 02:15:11.32 | Brandon Nail | Should be up. |
| 02:15:11.81 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. There you go. We received the copy of the Civil Grand Jury Report, Marin's Retirement Healthcare Benefits. The money still isn't there. This is a follow-up from a 2012 report. that was evaluating the status of other post-employment benefits throughout Marin County's public agencies. We affectionately refer to it as OPEB. But basically what, and it's traditionally retiree health. So they had conducted their study in 2012 evaluating what the outstanding liabilities were four public agencies in Marin, And then they came back in 2017 looking at the FY15-16 audits. the public agencies and said what is the liability today. The upshot of this is that liabilities for the majority of agencies have been decreased including for Sausalito. However, the dollars are still quite large in terms of outstanding liabilities. So real quick, I wanted to go through the responses. They requested that we respond to all nine recommendations. and they include a heavy focus on the communications side. of educating the public about OPEB funding as an issue and what the liabilities mean in context of our budget. Each agency should adopt a formal written policy for contributions to its OPEP plan. This has been a frequent discussion item as we go through the budget this year and last year and is anticipated to be an element or actual objective under the strategic plan recommended for council's consideration this fall. We're already. on track for this particular recommendation so we agree with it completely The standard practice, which would be the implementation of the policy, should be to consistently satisfy its formal written OPEB contribution policy. It would be the intent of of staff to recommend that the city council adopt a policy And then each year, we would implement the recommendations of that policy or the structures if you say we're going to donate donate, excuse me, contribute a certain amount to our OPEB funding, that would automatically be included in the budget that's brought forward to city council. Definitely reviewing the policy as well as the practice every other year as part of the biennial budget process. So again, we concur with our recommendation. Each agency's OPEB contribution policy and practice should support a projection under GASB 75 that his OPEB plan assets will be sufficient to make all projected OPEB benefit payments. GASB 75 is the statement that requires government entities effective with this coming audit to include the liabilities and the assets associated with OPEB on the face of their financial statements. So similar to the efforts that we went through two years ago, the 2014-15 budget, in bringing forward the liabilities associated with pension. to the face of the financial statements, this coming audit that you'll see in the fall, late fall, will be including the OPEB liabilities on the face of the audit. What it's asking for us to do is to ensure that our policies comply and concur with the GASB statements. and that we would be projecting out long-term liabilities and funding structures. |
| 02:18:52.53 | Mayor Withey | Melanie, would you like questions as we go along? Absolutely. Okay, so on that one, just to clarify, |
| 02:18:54.95 | Melanie Purcell | Absolutely. |
| 02:19:00.23 | Mayor Withey | GASB 75 kicks in for the 16-17 financial year. Correct. Audit. Yes. Okay, you said this year, but I just wanted to make sure I, yeah. |
| 02:19:06.52 | Unknown | Oh, yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:19:07.18 | Melanie Purcell | Yes. |
| 02:19:10.66 | Melanie Purcell | Yeah, and finance, I'll say this year, I could be referring to any one of the three, so please stop me. This year is last year, this year, next year. Honest. accounting humor. |
| 02:19:23.77 | Joe Burns | This would be a good time for one of those graphs. |
| 02:19:26.62 | Melanie Purcell | Yeah. It is by 16, 17, so the fiscal year that we just finished. Each agency that uses a special reserve fund for post employment should confer to a trust. This does not apply to the city of Sausalito. We already have an existing trust. So some agencies had utilized special revenue funds rather than trust accounts. We have gone to the trust and with last year's budget adoption actually established them as accounting trusts within the city. I do want to make note of this that There is... There's quite a bit of back and forth between the government finance officers community. and the GASB, Government Accounting Standards Board, regarding how those trusts are accounted for on the face of the statements. So you may hear me every now and then say, yes, it says this and this is the other part of the conversation because assets and liabilities are being treated differently Um, And there's a lot of discussion about trying to get a more consistent presentation. |
| 02:20:31.03 | Joan Cox | Quick question on this one. So my understanding is we already have the trust that it's recommending. Yes. So I would not necessarily say this recommendation does not apply to the city of Sausalito. I would rather toot your horn by saying the city of Sausalito has already adopted this recommendation. |
| 02:20:50.14 | Unknown | Thank you. Good. |
| 02:20:52.90 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:20:53.04 | Robert Tillon | point. |
| 02:21:05.38 | Melanie Purcell | Each term of service elected or appointed officials should take a public agency financial class. In principle, absolutely agree. In practice, that is kind of what we're spelling out, is that A public agency financial class is a very broad generic term. So we would like to embrace encouraging elected appointed officials, even our own staff, to become more educated in public agency finances, but recognizing that that can come in a lot of different ways. That's just one of the aspects. We do emphasize, actually just had a conversation about going and meeting with employees even on discussing what structure. is involved in how pensions are funded and what that means and what the changes at CalPERS mean to employees as well as to their employer or So recognizing that there's a lot of different ways to do it. The city of Sausalito does have an emphasis. We have our regular, we bring in an independent actuary each year. to go over our pension, to go over the OPEB. looking at additional educational material. This is one that's definitely all suggestions are welcome for ways to bring this forward. |
| 02:22:20.65 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question about this one. so do you know what they specifically say by public agency financial class? Do they have a list of the classes, or is there any sort of, Thank you. |
| 02:22:34.39 | Melanie Purcell | There is a reference to the GFOA and ICMA literature. But that's the only reference, and those are not actually classes. Those are materials that are written by staff at GFOA as well as volunteers in the profession to try and bring some of this into more layman's language. And there are, I believe, classes at the California League of Cities. Yeah, they mentioned that. |
| 02:22:58.50 | Jill Hoffman | the legal city. So I don't know why why the city would disagree with this. I mean to me it would be I mean, I think we need that. I mean, if you're a city official, such as me, who doesn't have a lot of government experience, um, you know, the advice or the recommendation of the grand jury that a public agency financial class that that should be part of sort of the orientation for a new city council member. I think that's a great idea. |
| 02:23:25.66 | Joan Cox | So this is another opportunity for us to toot our own horn because the city of Sausalito encourages all of its city council members to attend the new mayors and city council members training presented by the League of California Cities, which includes a three-hour public finance. |
| 02:23:44.14 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:23:44.20 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:23:44.98 | Joan Cox | uh, class or tutorial, you could say. |
| 02:23:49.35 | Mayor Withey | That was exactly the point I was going to make. |
| 02:23:50.04 | Joan Cox | Yeah. Yeah. |
| 02:23:51.54 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Thank you. and so I think should be included. |
| 02:23:54.12 | Joan Cox | So I would say, I would just say the city Yeah, agrees with this recommendation. |
| 02:24:01.70 | Mayor Withey | What was the nature of the disagreement? |
| 02:24:04.60 | Melanie Purcell | you |
| 02:24:05.09 | Mayor Withey | That we... |
| 02:24:07.17 | Melanie Purcell | My concern is, and frankly it is a reflection of my own experience with other states that have had statutory requirements without definition. So when it says take A class, What does that mean? And that's the nature of it. |
| 02:24:22.05 | Joan Cox | I think by announcing the class that we take or that we encourage our city officials. |
| 02:24:26.73 | Melanie Purcell | All right. |
| 02:24:26.78 | Joe Burns | THE CITY OF THE CITY OF THE |
| 02:24:29.24 | Joan Cox | Yeah, we are bringing to their attention, if they want us to take something different than what we're announcing that we're taking, they can let us know. |
| 02:24:37.04 | Melanie Purcell | And not each term. Are you comfortable with the other references about the type of training available? |
| 02:24:37.06 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:24:37.07 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:24:37.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:24:37.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:24:43.43 | Melanie Purcell | Particularly for appointed |
| 02:24:43.53 | Jill Hoffman | TO BE ABLE TO DO. I'm comfortable with that. I don't think it was as adequate as taking a you know. taking a financial class. So, I'm glad, I think it's in there, but it's a lesser form of taking it or actually sitting with for a national public agency financial class. I think that's really important. And it says should, not shall. Okay, should, if you can't, that, you know. But, I don't know why you would disagree with that, but I guess we're not. |
| 02:25:12.26 | Joan Cox | I mean, does teaching a public finance class |
| 02:25:15.97 | Jill Hoffman | out. |
| 02:25:16.34 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:25:16.36 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I think it does. So that's how I would go with the recommendations of the vice mayor in that we agree and We also do. City council members do |
| 02:25:26.99 | Joan Cox | We also do. comply with this. |
| 02:25:29.89 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:25:31.07 | Joan Cox | I would not say, I'd say we agree, and the city encourages its city council members because we don't require it. Yes. I think that's fine. |
| 02:25:37.57 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:25:37.58 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:25:38.06 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:25:38.45 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:25:39.19 | Katie Faulkner | Yes. |
| 02:25:39.42 | Jill Hoffman | We don't require it. |
| 02:25:46.65 | Joan Cox | and I would say encourages and pays for the class. |
| 02:25:51.22 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I think that's what we do now, right? Yeah, we do. It's great. |
| 02:25:52.42 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 02:25:52.43 | Joan Cox | Yeah, we do. |
| 02:25:53.36 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. |
| 02:25:58.12 | Melanie Purcell | Okay, each agency should make its CAFRs, audits, and GASB evaluations more readily understandable by the general public. Again, this may be This is actually taken very similarly from the language that Danny Castor provided in your last grand jury response. And that there are legal requirements as well as professional industry standards. that require the format of these particular documents to be presented in a certain manner. However, we do agree that there is no limit to the effort that we can make to make the information more understandable So the agreement is definitely always making the information more understandable. The disagreement is that these particular documents that are cited, are specifically regulated |
| 02:26:44.92 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 02:26:47.28 | Jill Hoffman | So, And here's a problem I have with this. Maybe it's just the way the recommendation is worded. Each agency should make its CAFRS, audits, and GASB evaluations more readily understandable by the general public. It doesn't say readily available. To the general public. Correct. |
| 02:27:07.68 | Melanie Purcell | We do make them readily available. They're all already on our website. I'm not sure. But it's the understandable component. I agree that the information absolutely should be more understandable. And we try to make every effort. take the feedback that you give so that we can make them even more so. but the actual documents themselves. |
| 02:27:27.37 | Jill Hoffman | I guess it's the first sentence there that I have. You know, that we agree and disagree with the recommendation. Well, we don't disagree. We want to be more. |
| 02:27:34.53 | Joan Cox | I agree. Thank you. |
| 02:27:36.25 | Brandon Nail | THE CITY IS A LITTLE BIT. |
| 02:27:36.49 | Jill Hoffman | I agree. |
| 02:27:36.50 | Joan Cox | I agree. |
| 02:27:37.90 | Jill Hoffman | remove the and disagree. |
| 02:27:37.95 | Joan Cox | I also think we should again to our horn by announcing that we received an A from the grand jury evaluation of our website for its transparency and ease of researching I guess. |
| 02:27:59.76 | Melanie Purcell | And they actually do in their report cite Sausalito's transparency efforts. |
| 02:28:04.09 | Joan Cox | So because of that, since they cite us as the example, I don't think we should disagree with their recommendation. I think you should say the City Council agrees and Sausalito will continue to lead the way in transparency and... understandability. |
| 02:28:19.72 | Mayor Withey | But we're not saying you shouldn't make the point about the fact that Thank you. |
| 02:28:23.57 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:28:23.58 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:28:23.62 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:28:23.70 | Mayor Withey | The grand jury needs to understand, I think, that some of these documents. are statutory provided for. We don't have some choices over language use. |
| 02:28:36.16 | Joan Cox | And the last sentence says that staff intends to continue its efforts to ensure the financial information is updated monthly. Charlie shared with us at MCC, Charlie Francis shared with us at MCCMC that some of our financial information is updated far more frequently than monthly. So I would say at least monthly. |
| 02:28:55.17 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. |
| 02:28:55.36 | Joan Cox | Thank you. Because he gave us to understand that some things are automatically Uploaded. onto the OpenGov site as they are entered into the computer system. |
| 02:29:06.90 | Melanie Purcell | there is no automatic update. I'm sorry, but we do make every effort to bring it forward as soon as we have it available. |
| 02:29:14.77 | Unknown | These three documents change? These CAFRs, audits, and gas speed, they don't change? |
| 02:29:19.93 | Melanie Purcell | those change, the GASB evaluation changes biannually, so every other year, CAVERS and audits are annual. And then our financial information at least monthly. |
| 02:29:49.73 | Melanie Purcell | Each agency should have the following downloadable and text searchable documents readily accessible on their website. Last five years of the CAFRs and audits and the last three actuarial reports. So, Sosolito is already ahead of that. It should be noted that the actuarial reports for the pension, go back much further, there's only two reports to date right now on OPEP. And that's compliant with state law. Before the next round of bargaining begins, each agency should prioritize the cost containment strategies to be used including reducing or eliminating OPEB benefits for It should be noted the city of Sausalito has already done that. |
| 02:30:30.20 | Melanie Purcell | So absolutely, we agree. So our actions to date, I just want to kind of bring us through this. We did close eligibility for OPEB. to new employees in July of 2012. THEIR OWNERS. defined contribution. An option was also provided to employees and this reduced the long term liability because it became a fixed dollar amount annually put into deferred compensation in lieu of having OPEB benefits for those employees that had more than three years of service as of July 2012. So you had to be working with the city prior to July of 2009. So the number of employees with defined benefits has been reduced as well as the long term costs. We established and began funding the OPEB trust in July of 2015. ongoing reporting of both pension and OPEB liabilities and trust fund balances. And then the annual presentation and validation from an independent actuary. |
| 02:31:30.26 | Jill Hoffman | I have a general question about the report that I forgot to ask earlier. Should I ask that now? Sure. And this is just a. I don't know why it's not in here, but they addressed the school districts on page 20 of 37, but I don't see the Sausalito Marin City School District. Do you have any idea why that's not in there? Probably not. |
| 02:31:48.99 | Melanie Purcell | It looks. they may not have responded. Okay. |
| 02:31:52.87 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:31:53.86 | Melanie Purcell | They did make note that a number of agencies, that at least three agencies did not respond. But I don't know that that's the case. |
| 02:31:59.08 | Jill Hoffman | But I don't know that that's the case. But you don't know that? You don't know that one way or the other? Thank you. |
| 02:32:02.71 | Melanie Purcell | and find out. |
| 02:32:03.82 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:32:04.31 | Melanie Purcell | There's a lot of school. |
| 02:32:05.32 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:32:05.54 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. . |
| 02:32:05.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:32:06.03 | Joan Cox | we're going to get a report from them next meeting so we can ask them. |
| 02:32:06.25 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:32:16.33 | Melanie Purcell | And finally, I just wanted to review for you, this was part of the presentation on the budget. And we brought through the estimated balance as of June 30th with 7.04. $704,060. What we look at, and this is a little bit contrary to most of our other funds, but we look at the end of the year what balances are available. In establishing the personnel budget, we estimate 2.5 to 3% above salaries, Thank you. that is to be put aside for OPEB. And that stems back to when the trust was originally established. So those contributions are noted in the second section. $145,000 will be accrued back to FY16-17, and assuming nothing changes or the policy does not change, and that is obviously going to be debated, $150,000. is expected at the end of FY17-18, so next June. So the contribution to be accrued back, which will show up then in this coming audit, will be $145,000, bringing our estimated balance to shy of $850,000. |
| 02:33:28.38 | Melanie Purcell | Okay, the future actions for consideration is the funding and usage policy for both pension and OPEP trust funds, part of the strategic planning discussion, but definitely something that we have, all been discussing and talking about the implications certainly of the CalPERS actions in December But looking at not just funding, how much do you put in, but under what circumstances are funds taken out? Establishing negotiation priorities for the labor agreements. Any further changes, i.e., contributions from employees, would be subject to bargaining. That, our contract ends June 30 of 2019. So we would want to start our conversations next summer, probably late in the summer. seek and provide additional training. Again, this is one of those areas where wherever... there's opportunities and there's interest. We want to make sure that we're bringing forward information about the city's finances, not just on a pet and or pension, but definitely anything aspect related to the city's financial condition. Any other questions? |
| 02:34:39.24 | Jill Hoffman | I have a question on these future actions for consideration. I don't understand why they're part of this presentation. |
| 02:34:46.80 | Brandon Nail | Yeah. |
| 02:34:46.92 | Jill Hoffman | . Because this was on the, I'm just looking through the, you know, through the staff report that we had, and the only recommendation |
| 02:34:54.92 | Katie Faulkner | . |
| 02:34:57.65 | Jill Hoffman | you know, and motion that we had was to approve the grand jury. There wasn't anything about established funding used for pension OPEP trust, these three things. |
| 02:35:05.16 | Joan Cox | I was going to say the same thing. And this presentation is not part of the staff report, and it's not published. So this is not part of what was noticed to the public that we would be discussing. |
| 02:35:05.18 | Jill Hoffman | These are pretty big questions. |
| 02:35:15.13 | Jill Hoffman | I don't disagree with any of these three points. I think that's a good question. |
| 02:35:24.13 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. |
| 02:35:24.16 | Jill Hoffman | that's, |
| 02:35:24.36 | Melanie Purcell | These all stem from the recommendations that are noted in the report, and that's why I include them. |
| 02:35:28.21 | Joan Cox | Right, but the motion is to review and approve the response to the Marine Grand Jury, not approve staff actions to, and again, it's a point of order. I don't think it's a big deal, but we have to be very... If the staff is going to recommend that we take further actions, we need to publish that to the public. |
| 02:35:49.49 | Melanie Purcell | Yeah, there's no problem. |
| 02:35:49.88 | Joan Cox | And there's no. |
| 02:35:50.49 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. |
| 02:35:50.52 | Joan Cox | 10 for that recommendation. |
| 02:35:52.93 | Melanie Purcell | Well, that's simply putting it in notice that these are part of something to consider in the future. The recommended motion is the letter. |
| 02:36:00.27 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:36:04.49 | Jill Hoffman | So then I guess what we would want to do is request that these future actions for consideration be considered for future agenda items? Yeah. I think that's a very valid request. Thank you. |
| 02:36:17.15 | Mayor Withey | Could you just go back to that slide, Melanie, please? |
| 02:36:17.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Did you just |
| 02:36:21.05 | Mayor Withey | I mean, I don't want to sound clear, but those sort of future actions are sort of pretty obvious. It's what we're planning to do anyway. So I'm assuming that you provided that slide just for information to counsel. |
| 02:36:43.51 | Joe Burns | I have a question. THE REPORT MADE A LOT OF about pre-funding versus pay as you go, yet didn't ask, and obviously they asked all the jurisdictions what they do, but it didn't ask anybody to where they might stand or have Where? It seems like that would have been a big, since they made such a big deal about that being a success tool, that they would have employed more feedback from the jurisdictions on if they are paid as you go, why, and if they are pre-funding, what's their net gain? But where are we in that? |
| 02:37:26.05 | Melanie Purcell | were a combination. We pay as you go in terms of having our annual obligations that we have to pay for employees that have retired. |
| 02:37:34.76 | Brandon Nail | Yeah. |
| 02:37:35.25 | Melanie Purcell | Then we have an additional contribution to the OPEP trust and that's the pre-funding component. The report emphasizes in particular the nature of the liability. So how much does the organization owe for future costs versus how much is it put aside? When you have pay as you go, you've not set aside any assets. So your liability can go up or down. |
| 02:37:56.54 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 02:38:02.14 | Melanie Purcell | emphasis has been that for a number of them, number of agencies. The liability in total, net liability has come down, but heavily because they have started pre-funding. In our case, in the city of Sausalito's case, it is actually two portions. It has come down because of the pre-funding and it has come down because we have cut off So liability is restricted to a fixed population, |
| 02:38:35.41 | Bob Boy | Yeah. |
| 02:38:40.53 | Mayor Withey | OK, any other questions of staff? Yeah. OK, public comment. Anybody from the public like to comment on this? Seeing none. bring it back up here for any So we have this action to take, right? Okay. Any comments before we get a motion? |
| 02:39:07.40 | Joan Cox | So I will move that we approve the response to the Marin County Civil Grand Jury report, Marin's retirement health care benefits, the money still ain't there, and authorize Mayor Withey to sign said response as amended pursuant to direction given to staff during the presentation this evening. |
| 02:39:25.76 | Mayor Withey | Second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Good, that motion passes. I wanted to make a comment. Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's OK. If I may just. And I think, you know. |
| 02:39:36.46 | Mary Wagner | I'M SORRY. |
| 02:39:37.07 | Katie Faulkner | THE END OF |
| 02:39:45.49 | Mayor Withey | A lot of focus has been on pensions, and a lot of jurisdictions have just ignored OPEP, to be honest, in the past, at least. And I think the grand jury has done a good job of making sure people are aware of that. What I don't think our public is aware of is that we were the first jurisdiction in Marin County to actually start a trust fund. And in fact, we were in the first five, and we may have even been second in the whole state of California. Yeah. |
| 02:40:16.37 | Brandon Nail | country. |
| 02:40:17.38 | Mayor Withey | Sorry? In the country. In the country. And |
| 02:40:17.99 | Melanie Purcell | In the country. |
| 02:40:19.51 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 02:40:19.52 | Melanie Purcell | Thank you. |
| 02:40:22.48 | Mayor Withey | Residents need to understand that. You know, we are way, we've been way in front of this issue. Okay. |
| 02:40:30.93 | Joan Cox | And aside from that, we gave you a hard time about that last slide, but I do want to commend the finance manager for the transparency that you provide to us and how clear your presentations are and really you take a complex topic and make it more understandable. So thank you. |
| 02:40:50.88 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I agree. Thanks, Madam. Okay, thank you very much, Madam. Item 6B, revised policy and provision of sewer lateral inspection services. |
| 02:40:52.30 | Joan Cox | Okay. |
| 02:41:02.98 | Mayor Withey | and our Public Works Director and City Engineer, Jonathan Goldman. Thank you. |
| 02:41:08.85 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I appreciate you all staying so late to hear this item this evening. I'll try to be brief and won't read the staff report, but in short, the city has, as of 1991 or 1992, adopted a policy requiring that private sewer laterals, the city's responsible for the sewer mains and the property owners that benefit from either private laterals that tie directly into mains or the elements of private common laterals. the ordinance requires that those laterals be inspected and brought up to code at the time property is transferred or substantially remodeled. In addition, as in response to settlement agreement. For a lawsuit that the city settled before we were issued our current EPA administrative order, we developed a supplemental environmental program, and an attachment to the staff report has the draft of that particular document. That program was intended to do something that the city's wastewater enterprise wasn't already doing and add further incentives to encourage private property owners, the owners of sewer laterals, to not only find out their condition but also get them repaired. So we have an inspection requirement as well as a program that reimburses for the cost of inspection as well as a cost share and even the opportunity for loans to encourage that those repairs be completed. As a business process, those policies are... sound good and look good and are somewhat effective. On the other hand, based on our experience and the experience of the local realtor community, and I think Council Member Burns will support us in this context, It's a pretty onerous burden for when a property is being transferred for the realtors involved, as well as the prospective buyer and the seller, to get the inspection done. And then the city has the obligation to review the inspection and determine what work is required to be done. then there's the burden on that same group of people perspective the inspection and determine what work is required to be done. Then there's the burden on that same group of people, prospective buyer, seller, and their realtors, to arrange to get the work done. And in order to make sure that we are not inadvertently making a gift of public funds when we do reimburse for the cost of that work, we require that three quotes be received, et cetera, et cetera. So as a result of both our administrative services, service directors kind of attention to this issue, our consultant on the master fee schedule, MBS Government Services, who also did our last sewer rate study, as well as our experience with the local real estate community and the experience of our sanitary sewer coordinator, Pat Guasco, who is incognito in the back of the room this evening, we, as of January of this year, are now charging a fee for both the time spent to evaluate those sewer lateral inspections, as well as we have in the fee schedule the opportunity to charge for providing the service of causing those inspections to take place. So what we are proposing to do, and this item came to the Finance Committee a couple of months ago, I think, and has since been refined a little bit in conversations with a couple of local realtors. But what we want to do is try to improve the kind of overall business process that includes not only the work that historically the realtors and the buyers and sellers have done, but also improves the efficiency with which that information gets gathered and interpreted, and then the responsible parties have the opportunity, while escrow is still open, to figure out how the obligation of bringing sewer laterals into compliance will be dealt with in escrow. And then, to the extent that there's reimbursement, that that process is also sped up and facilitated so this process flow diagram is intended to represent what what we're proposing as a policy change and i think at this point it's really it's it's an item that we thought it was important to advise the full council and the community we were contemplating. It's one that because we have the fee schedule in place, we can implement kind of in a pilot sense, a trial basis, and see how it works. And it's an opportunity to do that without it costing our rate payers or the city more money. And again, the objective is to make the business process more efficient for the buyers and sellers of property, for the remodelers of property, as well as our own internal business processes in terms of getting the information about what the condition of private laterals is, getting the information out as to what bringing them up to code means, and then getting the reimbursements and other financial parts of that transaction, those transactions handled more quickly, more efficiently than we have in the past. So on the screen in front of you, we've got the inspection box, and our intent is when somebody comes into the counter and says, I'm going to sell a piece of property, I want the RBR, and we need to have a sewer lateral inspection. Our intent is that they pay the fees for those services, and the city not only does the building resale report information, but also arranges for the inspection and gets the interpretation of the inspection completed within 10 business days. That's not always going to happen, and it's a noble objective, but I think establishing an objective is appropriate, and until we have some more experience with it, we'll see how successful we are with that. We still have the three quotes requirement associated with the lateral reimbursement program, but I think when we're working with either city staff or contractors in doing some of this investigation work, we have the opportunity to also work with the applicants to try and expedite this process. Pat and I, based on some of our conversations, are reviewing the details of the supplemental environmental program about how this three quotes piece might work. And if we can establish some standards for a perfect cost, for example, for lateral replacement, some of those other things, and allow the marketplace to work without the the strict requirement that three quotes be received or that the time frames within which the quotes are requested is limited so that if the marketplace only provides one quote within a short period of time, as long as we aren't, again, getting into a situation where there's the possibility of the appearance of a gift of public funds. We want to try and streamline this process so that the work actually gets done. And then reimbursement is prompt or |
| 02:49:33.23 | Bob Braid | a |
| 02:49:33.56 | Jonathon Goldman | as another possibility that the city actually contracts for those repairs to be done instead of the money having to move through multiple entities. And then finally, trying to improve the time frames on the reimbursement and the certificate of completion process. So this is a conceptual flow chart. It's, again, something we didn't want to roll out without advising council in the community, but with the fee in place, we intend to start doing this as soon as we're able, unless we're directed otherwise. |
| 02:50:09.56 | Jill Hoffman | I think that's a good question. I need to recuse myself and an abundance of caution because I live in an old neighborhood I mean, I don't know. |
| 02:50:23.43 | Jonathon Goldman | With all due respect, I think everyone in Saucerito. Okay, okay, I'm like, |
| 02:50:26.40 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, okay, okay. I'm like, it's highly likely. |
| 02:50:35.65 | Joan Cox | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:50:36.29 | Unknown | Just to put it in perspective, I've had my sewer lateral inspected three times, but that's packed and justified. |
| 02:50:40.22 | Joan Cox | AND |
| 02:50:44.47 | Joan Cox | As a means for expediting the quotes, would it be possible for the city of Sausalito to put together a list of local contractors qualified and experienced to provide this type of service, to provide to applicants so that you can head them in the right direction? |
| 02:51:07.46 | Jonathon Goldman | Absolutely, and we do that now. But as a practical matter, what happens is that The requirement on the city's part, the city's part that three quotes be received, means that there's always going to be one that's going to be the lowest. And if a realtor, for example, has that quote, has a good relationship with a contractor who we're very comfortable with, they're sometimes being required to pay another contractor simply to generate another quote. And there's an inefficiency there. I'm not. certain that we know necessarily how to solve that problem yet, but finding a faster way to make sure that responsible contractors who understand the code and will, will, Uh, build what needs to be built in compliance with the California Plumbing Code and the applicable standards and do it at an equitable price, that's what we want to have happen and find faster ways to do that. Certainly there are a core, and again, I think Council Member Burns and other realtors in this community probably know very well, as does Mr. Guasco and to some extent me, who those contractors are. But finding a way so that instead of just trying to force someone to prepare a quote, knowing that they're not going to get the work, doesn't really accomplish the public objection. |
| 02:52:41.13 | Joan Cox | Well, I like your idea of putting a cap on the price per square per foot. Because that then evens the playing field. and goes a long way towards ensuring that the city's not making a gift of public funds. |
| 02:52:56.43 | Jonathon Goldman | We have to be careful with that, but... |
| 02:52:57.02 | Joan Cox | In favor of expediting the process. |
| 02:52:59.45 | Jonathon Goldman | But that's the balance we're trying to strike. And again, in a situation where, and I know very well that this happens, where our requirement for three quotes sometimes delays the process and puts Pat Guasco in a difficult situation because those are the rules. And for him to come to me and say, this particular realtor has been trying for a month to get a third quote for this. Can we simply approve reimbursement at the lowest price? I'd rather that we streamline that process. So the answer is yes, faster than absolutely not or something like that. |
| 02:53:42.17 | Joan Cox | Have you considered giving, inviting local realtors in to share this flow chart with them so that they know as soon as someone approaches them to put a house on the market, they should send them to the counter to apply for the sewer lateral inspection? Yes. |
| 02:54:01.56 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, and in fact, we have, now I've done it. The PG&E substation must have just gone down again. |
| 02:54:03.44 | Joan Cox | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:54:10.62 | Jonathon Goldman | We have met with three local realtors already. This process is actually the outcome of a larger meeting, and I think you have late mail from First California Realty, from Sherry Faber, who talked about a meeting that I think she said was only a year ago, but it feels to me like it was two years ago. Maybe that's just my frustration with some of our processes sometimes, The answer is yes, and I think that the concept here is we don't necessarily, I don't necessarily know what the perfect process is, but we want to continually improve it. And so having some experience with the programs that we have now with the, without wholesale changes to our sewer ordinance, which the council has also in the past considered, making some process changes, taking advantage of the fact that we're now charging and having our master fee schedule, the opportunity to recover our costs in providing a higher level of service. We want to continue to evolve in that direction. I'm sure there will be issues, but on the other hand, I'm sure that we can do better than we are. And so that's the objective. |
| 02:55:34.28 | Mayor Withey | Could I just make a comment that we did receive late mail from Sherry Faber. It's been accidentally filed under 5B instead of 6B. And so if you want to find Shira's letter, it's there, right? Yeah, you saw that. Okay. And we have it on the dais. Yeah. What... |
| 02:55:51.34 | Joan Cox | Okay. And we have it on the dais. |
| 02:55:57.28 | Mayor Withey | I've. This is a process, obviously the first part, owner pays the fee, you go along the top line, you start to come down. Let's say an owner says, One minute. I'm not interested in your $1,000, right? and just, they're just starting to remodel. They got a contractor and the contractors just say it was something as trivial as needing to put a clean out. |
| 02:56:27.03 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:56:30.04 | Mayor Withey | in, right? You're not forcing people to go through this process. |
| 02:56:34.19 | Jonathon Goldman | That's correct. |
| 02:56:34.78 | Mayor Withey | If they don't want to claim the $1,000, they don't have to go through that. |
| 02:56:37.18 | Jonathon Goldman | All right. This lower part of the Well, not entirely. Most of the lower part has to do with the reimbursement. But if the reimbursement isn't important, the part that is important is verifying that the work was done with a certificate. We issued a certificate that's transferable. So, you know, three years from now, if your lateral's been inspected and repaired multiple times, three years from now, you have a get out of jail free card with respect to re-inspection, depending upon how much work was done. The other advantage that we have with our new permit tracking software, which isn't online yet, is that the computer will be handling all of that instead of us, you know, staff going through paper files and trying to find what certificate applies where. We had one plan check that was delayed this week. for exactly that reason. It was routed to engineering and sewer because it wasn't clear that a certificate had already been issued. So we want to avoid that, and our mission, it's really a back-to-basics mission, but also a business efficiency mission, is to try to reduce the amount of staff time that we spend on things that aren't really adding any value. Keeping track of different pieces of paper doesn't do that. waiting and relying on the realtor community to find three quotes from contractors who, are saying, I'm not going to get the work, so why should I come give you a quote? and charging them for a quote just so that we can reimburse for the other. I mean, we're just trying to listen, trying to pay attention to what happens in the real world outside of our workspaces and make improvements in our business process that benefit the community. |
| 02:58:36.04 | Joe Burns | Before I ask this question, in the next half hour or so, if I say anything derogatory about point of sale sewer lateral inspections, I'm sorry. Um, But for that, I will say that I think this is awesome. You guys have always tried to work with the real estate community and nobody knows the stuff out there under the roads like in other communities like Pat does. and I'm going to ask some questions as a council member and a realtor, but really for realtors that are watching as well. One of your questions, you know, should we prepare the cellars? This is what we're dealing with in now all the communities. And for a while it was just Sausalito, and then it was Sausalito, and I think San Rafael or something, then Ross Valley, and now Mill Valley. And so everybody's getting on board, which is good environmentally. On our side, it's difficult because they're all a little different. So my first question is, are you sharing this, or will you share this process, at least the jurisdiction taking on the beginning portion? Is Mill Valley or anybody else kind of considering that? standardization. |
| 02:59:47.68 | Jonathon Goldman | STANDING. I'm not aware that anyone else is. I'm remotely familiar with the Ross Valley's processes. And in general, you know, I'm not trying to divert from answering your question, but a larger agency has a lot more capability to, you know, Uh... agilely address these kinds of issues. Assuming that we are successful in improving our business process, I'm certainly happy to share any of the information we have. It's actually the Marine County Civil Grand Jury that was complimentary of our point of sale process and some of our other processes that probably helped contribute to them being implemented elsewhere in the county. I'm also confident and you probably agree with me that if the realtors who aid their clients in buying and selling property in Sausalito, think that this is a significant value add? They will tell. They'll spread the word throughout Marin County and |
| 03:00:51.33 | Joe Burns | They will call. |
| 03:00:54.98 | Joe Burns | and everywhere else in the Bay Area if it's. So currently where we are city informs owner of required repairs replacement. That's often the time we go on the market. wrongly or rightly, but that's often the time that the property hits the market. And then during the marketing time and the escrow time are the blue boxes, unfortunately, and sometimes past that. If there was little arrows coming off of those arrows, is there, are you working on that as well as, you know, |
| 03:01:23.09 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, and specifically, and this came up in some of our recent conversations, And in the real world as opposed to our policy documents or our supplemental environmental program. The fact is that the cost of bringing the lateral up to code is really the only pertinent part of the real estate transaction. |
| 03:01:47.24 | Alice Merrill | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:01:47.59 | Jonathon Goldman | someone has to pay the cost. Yes. In theory, it's possible that it's split between buyer and seller. It really depends on whether it's a buyer's market and a seller's market. Not that I'm a realtor. But being able to nail it down and not have anybody taking financial risk in setting that money aside or causing the work to be done in advance is really the fastest way to get this to work. We haven't really crafted any significant improvements to that part of the process yet, but we heard that very clearly from the realtors we've talked to so far. And it's just like public contracts and bid documents and things like that. It's really about risk transfer. And if the risk is equitably shared and there's some degree of certainty about, it's only going to cost $15,000 to replace this lateral, That's very successful from a business process perspective. If no one knows what it's going to cost, and the amount that's set aside is $15,000, and there's risk that it's significantly more than that, |
| 03:02:58.70 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:02:58.91 | Jonathon Goldman | that's an inefficiency that anything that we can do to improve process-wise benefits the whole community. So we have some work to do there, but some of that comes from how quickly we can figure out what does need to be done. And then if we're able to, and Pat actually suggested this, we have a pretty good database of lateral repairs that have been completed in certainly the whole time that he's been here, and we have the reimbursement history. So we potentially have an opportunity to create a sophisticated sewer lateral cost index, and next thing you know it will have to be published with the CAFR and things like that. But there's the opportunity for that kind of information to be shared and for the marketplace then to, you know, be able to move in and help improve the. |
| 03:03:50.39 | Joe Burns | Good segue to my third question, and it's my final question. I'll wrap it up. Regarding Sherry Faber's letter, at the end she brings up the tracking. Will our permit tracking system solve some of her in our constant issues of where do we stand on a current issue, but also it sounds like it could even let us, we could go and find a property and have an idea of where it stands. |
| 03:04:12.02 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, and to be honest, and I'm kind of taking a professional risk in doing so, but if we, for the money we're spending on that software and for the concept, if we're not able to make that kind of process work better, uh, I just wanted to ask that one. Thank you. I'm in serious trouble, let's put it that way. Good news, thanks, John. |
| 03:04:34.28 | Mayor Withey | I have a question around, I mean, if we just stand back and ask the sort of 35,000-foot level, why are we doing this in the first place? It's obviously because, you know, we've got a lot of broken laterals, right? Do we have any sense from the number of remodels, turnover, and so on, the properties, is what percentage of the sewer laterals, privately held sewer from the number of remodels, turnover, and so on, the properties, what percentage of the sewer laterals, privately held sewer laterals, have actually been replaced and repaired or inspected and found to be in good situation? Do we have any sort of feel for that? |
| 03:04:44.32 | Katie Faulkner | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:05:12.39 | Jonathon Goldman | it. |
| 03:05:12.73 | Mayor Withey | how we're doing. |
| 03:05:12.83 | Jonathon Goldman | how we're doing. Certainly, you know, Pat may have an answer to that, but let me, even without hearing it, remind you that Um, Yeah. I mean, the short answer is yes, we are making some progress. And this was a Moran Association of Realtors argument against the point of sale ordinance at one point is that if you look at the turnover of real estate, it'll take 900 years for all the laterals to be replaced. In a very simplistic world where a single family dwelling or even a multi-unit dwelling is connected directly from their property to the public sewer main, those percentages are relatively meaningful. One of the problems that we have, and I think the last time Pat was here, Adam likes to remind me of it, the last time Pat was here was an incredibly successful neighborhood that came together recognizing that they were all part of a private common lateral. And we only had one house that was being remodeled or sold. But the neighborhood came together and replaced their whole private common lateral. That's really rare. and I One of our objectives in in both continuing to collect information in this process, but also as we move into a much more significant or a much more publicly beneficial asset management approach to a lot of our infrastructure, is to gather information and make it available to the public about how those systems are interconnected. And even if we don't have the authority to require that work be done on property that isn't owned by the substantial remodeler or seller or buyer of a property, at least the information is being gathered. In the long run, I'd love to be able to come back with a program, and this was contemplated with the with the sewer ordinance revision that came to council Did we decide that was maybe 2010 or something? Using information about individual sewer sheds, the catchment area of a given sewer line, comparing the wet weather peak flows to dry weather peak flows, and identifying those sewer sheds with the most significant apparent influent infiltration issues, and then prioritizing those for, instead of giving everyone up to $1,000 just because it's triggered triggered for some reason let's replace all the laterals in the highest I&I sewer sheds at public expense or something like that but accomplish a great deal more in terms of our ultimate objective which is stated in the EPA order reduce inflow and infiltration reduce the amount of water that's getting into the sewer system that doesn and infiltration, reduce the amount of water that's getting into the sewer system that doesn't belong there, reduce the amount of wastewater that gets out of the sewer system by the opposite process, and then reduce the amount that has to be pumped and treated at the wastewater treatment plant. We're a pretty long way, I think, on either count. So, you know, I'm, as you probably know, kind of an incrementalist. We're trying to work with what we have and improve it. There's probably a case to be made, and I think one of the downsides to that draft ordinance revision was that it was, it gave the city more regulatory authority over private property, and I think there's some sensitivity here to that issue. So there's probably a balance to be struck, and I don't know when next steps will happen. I think it's a good question, and I think in some respects, we probably ought to come back with a report that answers the question directly over the last eight years. You know, how many laterals have been replaced? How much money's been spent? Can we quantify? And you saw, The Gate 5 Road sewer project update that was probably on consent several months ago. We're trying to be a lot more quantitative about measuring our performance in capital projects, and I think doing the same thing in this kind of quasi-regulatory context is a good idea. So happy to bring a more detailed report back on that. |
| 03:09:50.33 | Mayor Withey | Any other questions? Members of the public, anybody like to comment on sewer laterals? David. |
| 03:10:02.87 | David Sudo | So I'd like to relay my experience with this. We bought a house right before we went into contract right before it went on MLS. So we started, you know, day there, and we were 60 days, and we had to close at 60 days. And the only way it happened is Pat came in on his day off to sign off on the thing. If it hadn't happened, we wouldn't have closed on our house. And, part of that summer it's a nice day in summer we have a small city staff and if people take vacations in the summer then this timeline gets blown out and we're already built in 23 days. So in you know I'd like to think that I know we have a you good staff here, but just find ways that we can expedite. Maybe there's an expedite fee to hurry along some of this timeline stuff so it doesn't hang out 10 days. Because like I said, we have 23 days built in here already. If it takes two weeks to do the repairs or three weeks to do the repairs, you might miss your escrow window. And then I'll, you know, I'm sure Joe knows that all hell breaks loose occasionally. And another suggestion is I believe where I grew up, it was common for if there was a problem neighborhood, the city would come in and repair the laterals and then place liens on the properties that would come due whenever they sold the house, unless they wanted to pay it off beforehand. And that way the city's not really encumbered with the, ultimately encumbered with replacing the sewer ladders. It's still a responsibility of the homeowners. And eventually, the city gets reimbursed for making improvements. And maybe we'd speed up our compliance with the EPA. Thank you. |
| 03:11:57.32 | Mayor Withey | Thank you David anybody else. No. Okay. We'll close public comment. Is there any action or is this for information on it? |
| 03:12:04.71 | Joan Cox | To give direction. |
| 03:12:07.16 | Jonathon Goldman | and no action is also fine. This is what we're planning to do, and it's really a pilot program at any time, including this evening if there's... |
| 03:12:17.81 | Mayor Withey | Okay. So you're basically going to go ahead with it unless we were going to? |
| 03:12:22.85 | Jonathon Goldman | Yes, we were going to. Right, right. |
| 03:12:25.06 | Mayor Withey | Right, which is good, you know, unless we had some crazy objections or major objections. |
| 03:12:31.31 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you for telling us what you're going to do. |
| 03:12:33.91 | Steve Frazier | up. |
| 03:12:34.24 | Joe Burns | Thank you. I'll make a comment. That's good. Yeah, please. And so, again, we'll speak for the real estate community. I've always supported point of sales on backflow devices and things like that. I've never really liked the surilateral one, but it is what it is. Our industry lost that discussion in the 90s, and we never got it back properly. |
| 03:12:36.01 | Mayor Withey | That's good. Yeah, please. |
| 03:12:55.98 | Joe Burns | Thank you. But for this, again, for our jurisdiction to take a lead in doing stuff like this, I think is... is great and so i'm thank you for doing that and i hope that it works and i hope that we can broadcast it out and if any goal i had is four point of sale sewer laterals is that we get consistent throughout the county and i'm hoping that something works really well and that it can be brought out so thank you for doing this |
| 03:13:21.29 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 03:13:23.89 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I agree, I commend the efforts and the flow chart is amazing. For some reason when I read the staff report, exhibit A didn't at first open up on my uh ipad and so i was reading and i was like oh gosh this is just i mean to read the text and try to follow the flow is very challenging. And when I saw this tonight, I thought, oh, that's marvelous. It's really a picture really does speak a thousand words. I... The reason I recommend the process committance when a house is placed on the market is to avoid the issue that David Sudow ran into. where his clothes could be delayed or not happen because of delays. And you've already mentioned some proposed approaches to expedite the process. I don't think placing a lien on property is efficient, because on behalf of another agency, I have to foreclose on some of those. |
| 03:14:26.14 | Brandon Nail | Thank you. |
| 03:14:26.56 | Joan Cox | That's the only way to collect if the homeowner doesn't sell or try to refinance. And that ends up being costly to a public agency. |
| 03:14:36.60 | Mayor Withey | It's also a cash flow issue. |
| 03:14:38.07 | Joan Cox | Yeah, exactly. |
| 03:14:38.16 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, exactly. Thank you. |
| 03:14:38.98 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:14:39.24 | Mayor Withey | . I mean, the city doesn't have the cash to upfront repairs like that. |
| 03:14:42.91 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:14:46.31 | Joan Cox | So job well done from my point of view. |
| 03:14:49.24 | Adam Clarecci | Thank you. |
| 03:14:50.27 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, this is great. I don't think we should, you know, I think it's good and this is really important to do. For some folks, this is scary, you know. I know very well one property. Right. one particular property whose sewer lateral luckily isn't shared by anybody, so it's not a common lateral, but it does go through an easement for about 200 feet through a concrete retaining wall, down and then before it joins the city sewer system. So you can imagine if there had been a broken pipe somewhere in the retaining wall, on somebody else's property that I had an easement through, you know, that would have been really, really tough. But there's a lot of folks in that situation where they're running lateral through easements, you know. |
| 03:15:48.35 | Joe Burns | You know? and the university, but Pat is seeing this community, |
| 03:15:51.65 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, so thanks guys. |
| 03:15:56.89 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Where are we? Nine minutes behind, goodness. I thought we were way over time. So I've done, we've done all right. Okay, we are now on the miscellaneous item number seven. And is there any public comment on any of the items? I'm not sure. 7A, well, 7B through, F. I've seen none. I'm assuming we're Do we have a city manager report? I'm assuming. We don't. Okay, thank you Chief. Count. Uh, |
| 03:16:48.48 | Joan Cox | Now we're on schedule. |
| 03:16:48.51 | Mayor Withey | Now we're on schedule. So, man. |
| 03:16:56.16 | Mayor Withey | He's probably watching, he's probably watching. Uh... Council member committee reports. I'm happy to go first. Nothing in I don't think we've had a finance committee since the last council meeting. Yeah, there are a couple of things I want to report on. MCCMC. um, |
| 03:17:23.08 | Joan Cox | See, I was going to report that. |
| 03:17:25.49 | Mayor Withey | Well, you don't know which bit I'm going to |
| 03:17:27.07 | Joan Cox | Well, before you report, I'm going to report that our own Mayor Withey was unanimously elected as vice chair of the MCC MC for the coming year. |
| 03:17:38.36 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:17:42.21 | Mayor Withey | I actually wasn't gonna mention that. What I was gonna mention is that some years ago with the leadership of Well... Larry Chu, um, The MCCMC focused on, had a ad hoc pension committee. in which they actually wrote a very interesting report. I think for a period of time, Council Member Pfeiffer was on that committee. It was a representative from each group. So what uh, several members of MCC have proposed and I personally have fully supported is that they reactivate that committee to look again now at pensions and OPEP. One of the failings of the last report is they didn't touch OPEP at all. The other thing is that and it occurs with a lot of the pension discussions I've noticed, is that a lot of the work was done before the PEPPER Act was put in place, and that completely changed the landscape. And so a lot of the solutions that were thought about and discussed pre-PEPPER are totally irrelevant now, and so there needs to be a fresh look so probably in September we'll be formally agreeing to form that committee and so at that time we'll have to decide who we want our representative to be but that's for probably September or October to worry about but I think this is a good I don't know. |
| 03:19:34.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:19:34.65 | Mayor Withey | Oh, is that you? Is that underneath? OK. Sorry. No worries. |
| 03:19:35.46 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. you |
| 03:19:41.91 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. Yeah. So that's, I think, going to be an interesting opportunity, which will then complement the efforts that we're going to be doing Maybe we should be looking at our electronic systems here. So that's MCC-EBC. The other thing I wanted to comment on was TAM, and there were two issues I want to bring up. First of all, TAM is releasing tomorrow for a 60-day comment, I think it's tomorrow, so it will be up on its website, a draft strategic vision for the next time period. So, People may be very interested, transportation is big news and the IJ seems to have something every week on some transportation issue. So this is very timely that TAN's been working on this for about 18 months. um, So I will make sure everybody through staff gets the link to that site. There's another TAM issue which is actually not a great big issue but it's probably going to get some press, so I'm just alerting you when you read it as to what's going on. TAM held a special board meeting yesterday, yes, yesterday, to discuss the fact that, I mean this is technical, but I think it's important for everybody to know this, that the TAM has a staff, you know, X number of employees, they're a fairly modest organization, they have nine staff, 11 staff or something like that. Nine of the staff work through Help me out, LGS, Local Government Services, the Low Government Services organization. And technically, the employees are employees of RGS, and LGS, sorry, Local Government Services, is Local Government Services had a contract with CalPERS to provide retirement benefits to those nine employees. In their wisdom, Cowpers has eventually decided, and this has been also Um, uh, Now, there's been an opinion come down from the Attorney General's Office that, in fact, they are not in fact. Even though they are employees of LGS, for purposes of CalPERS, they're not. And therefore, there's a danger that they would have to withdraw from the system and lose 10 years of service benefits. So it's a big deal for the employees. CalPERS and the Attorney General's Office have put in a plan to be able to transfer the contract from LGS directly between TAM and CalPERS. The only reason I'm, you know, that would not probably that sort of minor adjustment adjustment wouldn't be of, except for the fact that there is a lot of publicity that TAM should be getting out of CalPERS and all of the pension stuff that Um, So probably this is going to be all over the IJ, I'm guessing. So I'm just alerting you to what it's actually about. I think that's all I've got. to say yes. I don't think I have any other report, so please. Thank you. |
| 03:23:34.95 | Joan Cox | I'm just going to add that at the MCCMC meeting, Charlie Francis made a presentation on transparency in local government and |
| 03:23:34.98 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. them. |
| 03:23:44.70 | Joan Cox | notable because he used the city of Sausalito model as an example for all of the other city members of MCCMC. And many had pertinent questions and seemed inclined to adopt some of the similar strategies to the city of Sausalito. So it's great that our small town is a leader in these types of matters. And the only other report I have is that Councilmember Hoffman and I attended a subcommittee meeting regarding the Bridgeway Marina. reviewed the history of the application and identified next steps. |
| 03:24:23.75 | Jill Hoffman | I'm going to ask your indulgence for just a second. Since our last city council meeting, the biggest thing that we all attended was the 4th of July celebration. And I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of our city staff who I think they were all there. I saw every department head in town, including our chief of police, including our city attorney, our assistant city manager, our public works, our finance. Yeah, most definitely our parks and rec and they just, and I was thinking, I don't think any town has the kind of celebration that we have in Sausalito and that we provide more fun for more people. Per capita. Residents in our town. So anyway, that's my committee report, is just to thank our staff for providing us with such a fabulous 4th of July. |
| 03:25:19.15 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I think that's pretty good. I'm not sure. Thank you. |
| 03:25:25.02 | Joe Burns | I mean, a whole day party. |
| 03:25:26.48 | Jill Hoffman | The whole time. |
| 03:25:27.27 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 03:25:31.10 | Jill Hoffman | The Press. |
| 03:25:34.76 | Joe Burns | I have just, the school district is basically dark at this point. After school is out, we do have the superintendent coming to our next meeting, which is great, but I have had no feedback as they've been out to summer break. I'm not sure. Pedestrian and Bike Committee, again, next meeting we'll have on the agenda. My task was to meet, so I just wanted to update that I've sat down with Bob Page and Patricia Pigman, have talked with David a few times in various areas, met with Ed prior, and have been sharing emails with Tom Riley, but we HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO HOOK UP THIS TIME FRAME YET. SO THAT'S COMING ALONG. ONE OF THE ITEMS THAT HAS COME UP THAT I HAVE KIND OF PUSHED AND WANTED TO KIND OF GET AN IDEA FOR THIS MEETING IS AN ITEM THAT HAS BEEN BROUGHT BEFORE, IT'S HAVING A COUNCIL MEMBER LIAISON. or more board observant to Saucydo Plus so that we have a direct line to that and not have to go through the committee. And even designing the circulation committee going forward, we should probably still have that and have that as sooner than later is kind of my feeling. So I don't know if we need any specific We can do that next month, but our next meeting, if we want to bring it up then and talk about it then, it's more agenda item. But I think that's something we should formalize. |
| 03:27:03.00 | Mayor Withey | Yeah, I think our city attorney would probably advise we can't make that decision or discuss that tonight. |
| 03:27:03.02 | Joe Burns | Yeah, I think our city... Yeah. that tonight. |
| 03:27:10.26 | Mayor Withey | But maybe it could be part of that. But then we're prepared for that for next time. I have a question on that then. |
| 03:27:11.10 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. |
| 03:27:11.12 | Joe Burns | THE PART OF THAT PRESIDENT. |
| 03:27:15.27 | Mayor Withey | Is the Will there be a bike and pet committee meeting Prior to the next City Council. |
| 03:27:24.47 | Joe Burns | There was one proposed and it simply, people are out of town. |
| 03:27:31.47 | Mayor Withey | So now. Thank you. So my question is really then, and this is sort of partly future agenda items, partly this, will we be ready? Because, you know, isn't the... I know we want to report on Social Leader Plus and how the programs going and presumably what the revenue looks like and so on. But in terms of the modifications to the Bike and Ped Committee Charter and its expansion and so on, Shouldn't the bike and pay committee get together before we sort of come back and... |
| 03:28:13.15 | Joe Burns | Well, I think in lieu of them getting together was my involvement to meet with them because we were concerned about disbanding without their |
| 03:28:13.44 | Mayor Withey | Well, I think, yeah. |
| 03:28:24.86 | Joe Burns | Mm-hmm. their say. And for the most part, I think, without divulging everything that we've talked about, I don't think there's necessarily a lot of feelings heard like we're stepping out of disbandment. But there's still some issues that we need to discuss. Staff is actually still working on some items that are going to come back to us prior to the 25th as well. And it's answering some of those bullet points. And then I can go back and talk to some of the committee members about those as well. But them not getting together before the 25th, I don't think changes really how that discussion will go. Obviously, we want to have very good updates from our number count and that type of thing going forward. But... Can we sit? |
| 03:29:05.04 | Joan Cox | I mean, even if we don't take specific action next time, I think an update about progress and addressing some of the issues raised at the last meeting would be useful, perhaps give further direction to staff about you know, what we see or what we've learned through our meetings with members of the PBAC. |
| 03:29:22.19 | Joe Burns | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:29:26.08 | Joe Burns | And frankly, a lot of these issues are still the overlap of how we view Saucedo Plus and the PBAC. So as we separate those two, |
| 03:29:33.86 | Brandon Nail | you |
| 03:29:34.98 | Joe Burns | A lot of these things kind of go away anyway. |
| 03:29:36.51 | Brandon Nail | Okay. |
| 03:29:38.60 | Joe Burns | Okay. |
| 03:29:40.12 | Mayor Withey | you |
| 03:29:43.77 | Mayor Withey | Any other reports? No. Appointments to boards and commissions. Yeah, we have a couple of those. |
| 03:29:58.25 | Joan Cox | I've got it right here. |
| 03:30:04.17 | Mayor Withey | So the first one is the appointment to the Stark Landmarks Board. We interviewed three candidates today and There are potentially two more candidates, I believe, Lily, to interview. I would like to propose And there. |
| 03:30:32.10 | Joan Cox | two openings. |
| 03:30:32.89 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:30:32.93 | Joan Cox | you |
| 03:30:33.25 | Mayor Withey | Sorry. Thank you very much. Yes, absolutely. There are two openings with equal terms to 2019, as memory serves. So I would like to make the suggestion that we appoint one person tonight, and then when we've seen the final poll, decide who the second person will be out of the total. So I would like to propose... Nastasja Said? And sorry, Natasha, I've just really messed your name up. I apologize. As my recommendation to join the historic landmarks. |
| 03:31:22.59 | Joan Cox | THEIR OWNERS. |
| 03:31:22.96 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:31:27.67 | Jill Hoffman | That's who you interviewed this evening? Yes. And my apologies, I missed that due to a work commitment, so I'm just, I'm gonna abstain just because I wasn't able to interview. |
| 03:31:29.07 | Mayor Withey | Yes. |
| 03:31:29.42 | Brandon Nail | Yeah. |
| 03:31:35.36 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:31:35.41 | Mayor Withey | Fair enough. No. Fair enough. So we need three votes to make this action stick, right? Okay. |
| 03:31:35.45 | Jill Hoffman | Sure, ma'am. |
| 03:31:46.03 | Mayor Withey | So, Is there any other nominations? Oh, okay. So if with recognizing we've gotten an extension from Council Member Hoffman... for the other three members. Do we agree with that? I agree. |
| 03:32:07.75 | Brandon Nail | I agree. |
| 03:32:10.61 | Mayor Withey | I don't know. So that's one appointment and when we finish the complete interviews, we'll look at the whole pool again and decide on the second one. Okay. The second one is appointment to the general plan advisory committee and this was Oh... Uh... an idea that initially vice mayor and then I had about, um, Because originally the idea was to go for 13, and then I took the group out of it, perhaps not wisely. We have a very diverse group, but I could see a couple of areas where we could fill in some gaps and some experiences. So I would like to propose, and I'm going to be... |
| 03:33:13.46 | Robert Tillon | Oh, that's right. |
| 03:33:15.97 | Joan Cox | to be. |
| 03:33:22.52 | Mayor Withey | apologies for the delay. OK, I got it. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:33:26.81 | Robert Tillon | Yeah. |
| 03:33:39.60 | Mayor Withey | Oh. |
| 03:33:52.14 | Mayor Withey | Do we have to make this appointment tonight? Because I have some questions about the staff report. I don't want to necessarily get into it this hour because you |
| 03:34:03.80 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 03:34:03.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. next meeting. |
| 03:34:05.79 | Lily | You don't need to. The next GPAC meeting is on July 18th. So if you were going to make two additional appointments, they wouldn't be appointed until the earliest on the 25th of July. So they would miss the next GPAC meeting. |
| 03:34:24.33 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY IS |
| 03:34:25.11 | Mayor Withey | Okay. you Okay. Yeah, can we take a, I never realized it's a late hour, can we take a brief recess, Lily I need to ask you a couple of, I need to understand something, because I'm not 100% certain this candidate pool's accurate, so that's why, like, you're, |
| 03:34:47.52 | Joe Burns | on the 74th meeting. |
| 03:34:50.78 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:34:50.79 | Brandon Nail | I have a glass room. You have a glass. |
| 03:34:54.59 | Mayor Withey | Okay, sorry about that short interlude. Lily? |
| 03:34:57.37 | Joan Cox | you |
| 03:35:00.09 | Lily | This is Mr. Mayor, if I may make an announcement. And the staff report for this item, GPAC appointments on page two, there is an error. CJ Speedy was interviewed by the City Council on June 5th and should be included in the candidate pool. |
| 03:35:16.90 | Mayor Withey | So, um, What I'd like to do is, I know it's the mayor's prerogative to nominate, the way in which our process works is to nominate in this case two people, and then ask for any other nominations and then we vote. I'm going to propose one person and ask for uh, Suggestions for a second. |
| 03:35:44.27 | Brandon Nail | Okay. |
| 03:35:44.64 | Mayor Withey | Okay, so I would like to propose Barbara Geiser. who is a very long time resident and was also involved in the last general plan. So I thought bringing that perspective would be a good one to add to the diversity of the group. So that's my nominee for that. is recognizing that from the list we have in the staff report, there's also one other person. Is there anybody else who'd like to add a second person to that? |
| 03:36:20.70 | Jill Hoffman | I do. I'd like to nominate John DeRay. He's also a long-time resident. |
| 03:36:27.17 | Mayor Withey | Does anybody have any other nominations? Jennifer Berry. |
| 03:36:33.61 | Mayor Withey | Okay. Anybody else? No, you're fine. Okay. Let's... |
| 03:36:48.72 | Mayor Withey | So, Lily, sorry. Mr. Mayor. It's getting late, yeah. |
| 03:36:50.37 | Lily | Mr. Mayor. Getting late. Thank you. Sure, what I do right now is I'll call the roll. Each council member can say two names out of those three. |
| 03:36:57.76 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. |
| 03:36:57.78 | Joe Burns | out of that, out of those. that were mentioned. |
| 03:37:00.80 | Lily | So, Councilmember Burns. |
| 03:37:02.98 | Joe Burns | So no discussion, but I am going off of also who's available for daytime meetings. Are you still planning to meet for daytime meetings? It seems like that's |
| 03:37:10.13 | Lily | Right now the GPAC is moving towards evening meetings. Evening meetings, okay. Yeah. |
| 03:37:13.42 | Joe Burns | meetings. Okay. So name two, Jennifer Berry and Barbara Geister. |
| 03:37:24.39 | Lily | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 03:37:25.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:37:25.25 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 03:37:25.40 | Jill Hoffman | John DeRay and Barbara Geisler. |
| 03:37:28.05 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:37:31.83 | Joan Cox | Thanks, Mary Carl. |
| 03:37:31.86 | Lily | Thanks, Mayor. . Thank you. |
| 03:37:32.47 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:37:32.52 | Lily | Thank you. |
| 03:37:32.64 | Joan Cox | John DeRay and Barbara Geisler. |
| 03:37:39.02 | Lily | Thanks Mary with me. |
| 03:37:40.79 | Mayor Withey | Um, |
| 03:37:40.96 | Unknown | . |
| 03:37:40.99 | Lily | Mayor, are they? Apologies. |
| 03:37:41.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:37:45.16 | Mayor Withey | Barbara Geisler and John Deere. So I think, Lily, that's Barbara Geisler and John DeRay. |
| 03:37:56.57 | Lily | That's correct. |
| 03:38:01.06 | Lily | Okay. |
| 03:38:01.14 | Mayor Withey | Okay, thank you. I'm presuming they're still interested. after this time. Future agenda items. We have, um, one more meeting and then the break and we're starting to fill up the September meetings, You'll see in the... attachment, the current future agenda items, we still, the agenda setting committee still has to, look and add some more. Is there any other things that hasn't been mentioned before that we need to add to the list of schedule webinars? Anybody think of anything? |
| 03:38:45.54 | Joan Cox | We did have the request about the marsh, the Mono Marsh. with funding that expires September 30. So if we were going to take action, we So I suggest. Defense? Defense? You mean defense? |
| 03:39:04.56 | Jill Hoffman | Defense? Defense? |
| 03:39:07.12 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:39:07.16 | Jill Hoffman | I WANT TO TAKE A PERMIT. |
| 03:39:13.03 | Joan Cox | that just be added to our list to discuss that agenda setting. and staff can advise how best to |
| 03:39:21.22 | Mayor Withey | Right. I mean, what we need from staff is to understand the BCDC issue on that one, I think. Okay, so we'll add that to the agenda. All right, and any other reports of significance? Almost certainly not, in which case, motion to adjourn. Thank you. |
| 03:39:40.08 | Joan Cox | THE FAMILY IS A |
| 03:39:40.32 | Mayor Withey | Thank you. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. |
Alice Merrill — In Favor: Advocated for state healthcare proposition SB 562 as a potential solution to unfunded pension problems for cities. ▶ 📄
Vicki Nichols — Neutral: Suggested referencing original Schoonmaker Beach conditions to require maintenance of the marsh fence, potentially speeding up the process. ▶ 📄
Michael Rexon — In Favor: Clarified the fence proposal as a repair/replacement in the same location, offered to provide drawings, and emphasized the fence's role in marsh health. ▶ 📄