| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | City Council meeting for Tuesday, March 13, 2018. I'll call the meeting to order and ask Lily to call the roll. THE FAMILY. |
| 00:00:08.37 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:00:08.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm going to go. |
| 00:00:08.42 | Mary Wagner | with you. |
| 00:00:08.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:00:08.84 | Unknown | here. |
| 00:00:10.21 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.34 | Mary Wagner | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:00:10.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.64 | Mary Wagner | Oh. |
| 00:00:10.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.97 | Mary Wagner | Councilmember, here I have our plaques reversed here. Councilmember Cleveland Knowles here. Vice Mayor Burns? Here. Mayor Cox? |
| 00:00:23.59 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | here. And I will make note that although we said we'd call to order in the conference room, we actually are in the chambers. There is no member of the public present, and so we are now going to adjourn to closed session, during which we will consider two matters. D1 is conference with legal counsel, existing litigation pursuant to California Government Code 54956.9A, name of case California Bay Area Renters Association versus Sausalito. And D2 is conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph 4 of subdivision D of section 54956.9, one potential case. Thank you. |
| 00:01:17.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Mr. you Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:24.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Good evening everybody and welcome to the meeting of the City of Sausalito City Council for Tuesday, March 13, 2018. Am I too loud? Oh, |
| 00:01:34.61 | Unknown | What? |
| 00:01:37.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, okay. OK, we're going to pause for 15 seconds. |
| 00:01:47.95 | Kurt Weinsheimer | for meditation. |
| 00:01:49.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna call the meeting to order and ask Lily to call the roll. |
| 00:01:56.01 | Mary Wagner | . |
| 00:01:56.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:01:56.35 | Mary Wagner | Bye. |
| 00:01:56.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | WITH THEM. |
| 00:01:56.86 | Mary Wagner | Here. |
| 00:01:57.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:57.53 | Mary Wagner | Council member Hoffman. you Here. Councilmember Cleveland Knowles. Here. Vice Mayor Burns. Here. Mayor Cox. Here. |
| 00:02:02.90 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 00:02:02.95 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. here. Chris Gallagher, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? |
| 00:02:13.68 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 00:02:13.76 | Chris Gallagher | I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:02:15.98 | Chris Gallagher | of the United States of America. and to the Republicans. |
| 00:02:19.25 | Unknown | Wow. |
| 00:02:19.47 | Chris Gallagher | Bye. |
| 00:02:19.62 | Unknown | for which it stands. one nation under God. Indefensible. |
| 00:02:30.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We held a closed session this evening. There are no closed session announcements. Is there any public comment on our closed session items? |
| 00:02:39.58 | Unknown | that's |
| 00:02:41.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Please step forward. |
| 00:02:49.47 | Jeffrey Chase | The, uh, If you look at the closed session, |
| 00:02:52.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You can address your comments to us. |
| 00:02:54.08 | Jeffrey Chase | comments to us. Thank you, Mayor. |
| 00:02:55.88 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:02:57.13 | Jeffrey Chase | and vice mayor and city council, city staff, and citizens of Sausalito. Closed session means that There is a confidentiality. and that we're not being permitted to hear a case that's in front of the court. The reason I'm assuming now is because there's negotiation over money damages. The case? that's on the closed session, is very important. It's about a house at 77 Crescent Drive. where a man is attempting To build. A room For one person, one extra person here, in Sausalito, California. Marin County now. DOES NOT HOUSE the houseless, of course. It doesn't house people that have come out of Jail, usually. that are destitute. even though they were born in this county. except for one place. In Sausalito, that is. And that's on the Anchorage. We take care of those people. What it says here THE The people that are suing, it's the California Tenants Association, They're suing under It's 65580. It's a law, it says the lack of housing, including emergency shelters, is a critical problem that threatens the economic, environmental issues. and social quality of life in California. that the quote from the director of the people who are bringing the suit is, Wealthy enclaves are breaking the law. with impunity. There is a requirement from the state to provide housing for workers, for people beyond to high income. Sausalito is not doing that. So now from a closed session, It's a half open one. I suggest people do the research for themselves. and find out what I'm talking about. Thank you. |
| 00:05:36.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:05:41.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Um, Next on our agenda is approval of our agenda. I'm going to suggest one change to our agenda. I would like to move item 5C up in front of item 5A. |
| 00:06:02.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, all in favor. I I thank you. |
| 00:06:03.81 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 00:06:06.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK, first thing on our agenda is special presentations and mayor's announcements. Before we commence our first presentation, I would like to make an announcement. And I'd like to invite Keith Brown up to the podium. |
| 00:06:28.06 | Keith Brown | Thank you, Mary Cox. |
| 00:06:29.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Keith is the son of Ben Brown, a long time contributor and volunteer in social and civic opportunities throughout Sausalito. And so he is here to accept a proclamation that I'm issuing to Ben Brown. And so I'm going to read the proclamation. Whereas, Ben Brown, who was raised in San Francisco and whose professional career took him to Portland, Oregon before returning to the Bay Area and settling in our city of Sausalito, has made important contributions to our city and Whereas, for the last three years, Ben has dedicated his time, talent, and intellect to our city's Historic Landmarks Board, continually looking for opportunities for improvements in board functions and city process, always coming prepared with well-thought-out written notes and unfailingly valuing community input. And, whereas, while serving as chair on the HLB for the last year and a half, Ben has encouraged collaborative dialogue amongst fellow HLB members and urged board members to bring their own unique experiences and skills to the discussion. And whereas in 2016, Ben agreed to serve on Sausalito's short-term rental task force to discuss the intricate issues associated with the impact short-term rentals have on our community and provided valuable recommendations for the council to consider. And whereas Ben has also contributed his time to his community by serving on the board of directors of the Terraces Homeowners Association, which manages the townhouse complex in Sausalito, where he oversaw a number of architectural upgrades, repairs, and improvements. And, Whereas, Ben served as the event director of Biscotti and Cars, a monthly car enthusiast group comprised of over 400 members, which is held at Poggio and developed a photographic website for the event. And, And, Whereas Ben was the team captain of the Bocce Giants and was nominated by the Bocce players to speak on their behalf during the design phase of Dunphy Park. And whereas we recognize that this is a challenging time for Ben and his family and want to ensure that Ben knows that the city and residents acknowledge the important contributions he made in a variety of areas to the city of Sausalito and thank him for his efforts. Now therefore, be it proclaimed on behalf of the City Council and citizens of Sausalito that I, Joan Cox as mayor, have the privilege to give special recognition and honor to Ben Brown for his outstanding and dedicated service to our city. |
| 00:09:39.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And I'm going to give city council members an opportunity to speak because I know some of them have also worked closely with Ben. |
| 00:09:48.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, so I was really honored to work on the short term rental task force with Ben. And also while he was on the HLB and I was on the planning commission, sat through. a very large and long number of hearings on the ferry landing project. And all throughout all of those hearings and all of my social interactions with him. He's just a really amazing and wonderful person and always made such an effort to reach out and find out more about the people that he was serving with and to go beyond kind of the task at hand. And, you know, in addition to all the things that Mayor Cox said about his insightful and thoughtful and well-organized comments, it was just and is just a pleasure to work with. So thank you for being here tonight and all our best to you and your family. |
| 00:10:39.26 | Unknown | I too was honored to serve with Ben on the short term rental task force. And I want to really sincerely thank him for his time and effort spent on behalf of our community through the HLB and the various other task forces. And creating and running the Biscodian cars. And it just shows you that that's the type of community that we have. And I think he is a neuroradiologist from Stanford University. So you have a neur neuro radiologist as a captain of the bojee ball team. And that devoted I don't know how many hours to the HLB and to our short term mental task force. was always carried through that level of expertise and that habit of excellence that I'm sure he developed at Stanford and through his career as a neuroradiologist. And used it then on behalf of the citizens of our town, to the benefit of all of us. And the wonderful fun part too about being in a sense of humor, BOTCHA BALL AND THE BISCODIAN CARS AND ALL THOSE THINGS WHICH HE TOOK VERY SERIOUSLY BUT ALSO BROUGHT a tremendous level of heart and warmth to it. So we want to thank him sincerely and recognize his contribution and what a joy it was to be able to get to know him through all of those things. Thank you, Ben. |
| 00:12:10.45 | Joe | I didn't have the opportunity to serve with Ben yet, but I have watched many hours of video. of all of the meetings you guys all were in with Ben. What a class act and a true gentleman. So, you know, the conversations we have had, Recognize that as well. What a great asset to Sausalito Ben has been. And thank you for being here, and I'm glad we're able to do this tonight. |
| 00:12:43.79 | Unknown | I really have nothing to add that my colleagues haven't said. I like talking a lot to Ben because of his clarity, thought processes, he was a great integrator. He's a great integrator of ideas, so thank you. |
| 00:13:11.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Is there any public comment? All right, okay, yes, please step forward. |
| 00:13:26.13 | Crystal Gift | Hi, Crystal Gift. It's been a long time since I've been in these rooms. Usually I come in here, I got a lot of positive things to say, but Today I just got something I need to say and get off my chest. For one, you treat something like garbage long enough it takes |
| 00:13:37.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, wait, this is specifically related to the proclamation for Ben Brown. This is not public comment. Oh, okay, sorry. |
| 00:13:41.93 | Crystal Gift | Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. |
| 00:13:43.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, I'm going to let you sit down so that we can finish this hearing. Okay. And then I'll invite you back up. |
| 00:13:44.88 | Crystal Gift | Okay. Okay. |
| 00:13:48.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Anybody want to comment on the Ben Brown proclamation? I'm going to close public comment. And Keith, welcome to the podium. |
| 00:13:56.96 | Keith Brown | Thank you so much, Mayor and Council members. It really means a lot to know how much it was appreciated. My dad wanted me to share a few words, and I know we all have a lot to get through, so I'll keep it short. My dad really loved this community. He lived in the Bay Area a majority of his life and moved here just in the last decade. And before he was here, his whole life, he was mostly just in community of fellow doctors and academic community, and so when he moved here he was really startled to surprise how deeply fascinated he was by the mix of people who were here in Sausalito. |
| 00:13:59.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | to know how |
| 00:14:31.74 | Keith Brown | And beyond just that fascination, I think he really surprised all of us himself most of all by what a passion for consensus building and for just sort of socially bringing people together that he discovered while he was here. He had always been kind of a wild man in a very independent spirit before that, a fast car driver, go-it-alone kind of guy. So I think amazed, has amazed himself with who he's become in his time here. So between the Historic Landmarks Board and the Terrace Homeowners Association, the Bocce team, Biscotti and Cars, he really found, you know, this very rich community here he's very grateful for. And he wanted me to share that he felt like, especially in those decision-making boards, he was constantly being put to shame by the just incredible brilliance and had nothing but the most respect for the people he got to work with here. And finally, I just want to say that... I would just ask everybody here who knew who knows my dad, to just think of what you want to carry on from him. And I hope we can all carry on the best of my dad into the future. Thank you very much. |
| 00:15:53.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:15:58.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And I know that Ben and Claudia are watching, so we can wave to them. |
| 00:16:05.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, next on our agenda is an update on Sister Cities activities. And I'll invite Monica Finnegan, Susan Rowe, and Chris Gallagher. |
| 00:16:19.78 | Monica Finnegan | We're going to have a line up here because we're letting equal opportunity everybody to talk about their program. But it's great to be back to talk about good news with Sister City. So we want to say thank you for the time and we are going to try to keep it as short as possible. I'm going to introduce Susan Rowe, who's president of the organization, first to say a few words. |
| 00:16:41.16 | Susan Rowe | Thank you Monica, thank you council, thank you so much for honoring our good friend, Dr. Ben Brown, who's transitioning. And it's a wonderful time for Sausalito's sister city to come together. 15 or 16 years ago, when this program was handed off, we just had Sakaiti bubbling, and then Venus started bubbling, and then Qashqai came along, and we have three programs that are robust, self-funded, All volunteer We pay our own way. And it is an honor to be the president of an organization of a small town like we have. When we are able to support three programs, three exchanges. We have changed people's lives in a way I can't begin to explain unless you have gone to one of our programs. And I encourage all council, and most of you have. Joe and Susan will get you out there because you must go experience what happens when we take a delegation and then they come back or then they come here and you homestay. So thank you to everyone here tonight, Monica, Cheryl, Chris, Daryl, who's taking over Sakaide, the Chapmans, everyone in this room. And I'd like to acknowledge our city manager, Adam Pulitzer, for always supporting me and my efforts on Sister City. Thank you. |
| 00:18:17.04 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. THANK YOU. So for those of you who don't know about us, the Sicaide program is a high school student exchange program, Vigna del Mar. We work with women in business and teach them American business practices. And Qashqash, which Cheryl is heading up the last couple of years, is with a youth sailing program. Our board structure is here. We have a lot of opportunity for people to join us. We have a treasurer position open and a couple of other slots. but you can see that it's pretty populated, and we have quite a lot of opportunity for people to join us. We have a treasurer position open and a couple of other slots. But you can see that it's pretty populated and we have quite a few people involved on the board. We have a very exciting year ahead of us. We are working diligently to expand our board. We built a lot of notoriety throughout the county, not just the city, but throughout the county. Thank you. Fundraising for sustainability, we'll be doing a lot of that because we need a lot of moolah. We've got a lot more community engagement that's happening and as Susan said, our programs are very, very robust. More than they have been in the last few previous years. We've developed a new website with a lot of highlights on our programs. Develop quarterly newsletters and we're trying to do a lot of communication and outreach. Our primary focus is sustainability, so we're doing some grants and foundation outreach and we are really working hard on controlling our budget. For those of you who don't know, and I think it should be heard, we have $92,000 in the bank. That's a lot of funding from volunteer work and a lot of the community and a lot of the folks throughout Marin County. But every year for our programs we spend that money and we have to rebuild. So we're really seeking some growth in our funding. We're focusing on expanding our community and you'll hear a little bit more about that. We're partnering with New Village School. They're sending 26th graders to Sakai Day in May. So there's a lot of collaboration with those groups, the Saucy Yacht Club and more. I want to introduce the Sakai Day Council. Daryl Nemiro, nobody can take Dina Hatchwell's place. She's done such a great job. She and Evie really carried this program for five years. But Daryl has stepped in and has a lot of great background in fundraising, which we dearly need. And she's a pretty passionate person. You'll find out when she opens her mouth. |
| 00:20:42.03 | Unknown | . |
| 00:20:44.04 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 00:20:44.16 | Unknown | Your sister. |
| 00:20:45.07 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. Good evening, thank you mayor, vice mayor and council members and also city clerk, manager, attorney. Susan and fellow board members. See you. Oh, can you hear me? So, yes, I am the new chair of the Sakai Day program, and Dina Hatchell and Evie Gilbreth, it's very big shoes to fill, but they're mentoring me through the process. I am definitely focusing on sustaining the program, but also expanding the resources, you know, through city and corporate foundation sponsorships, so we'll be following up on that directly. The exciting part about the program is that we're pretty set for this year. The board that I work with and the council I work with is very committed. And I'm honored to be going to Japan this year to meet our colleagues overseas and kind of just with you, Joan, and so go, um, but also to strengthen the partnership there. And then welcome, um, Mayor Aya and his delegation here in July, which, um, uh, Chris will also go in more detail. But most importantly, I just wanted to say thank you for your time. We're hoping to create more strong partnerships with the city this year. And I look forward to working with all of you. And thank you for your time. |
| 00:22:08.46 | Monica Finnegan | Chris is gonna talk about 30th anniversary, but I think also, can you give some highlights from 2017? Okay. Skip. that, |
| 00:22:16.97 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 00:22:17.00 | Monica Finnegan | DELEGATION. |
| 00:22:17.42 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. All right, so this was the delegation that went to Sakai Day this year. Our chaperones were Lynn Reed, who is on the far left, and then Stephanie Miller, who's on the far right. Not shown in the picture is Mayor Cox and myself. We were taking pictures, I think, or didn't want to be seen in our kimonos. But anyway. There's other pictures of Joan and I in kimonos that is quite entertaining. But anyway, it was great kids. They had great time. And again, you know, the people of Sakaiti couldn't be any more warmer and more welcoming. And we hope to reciprocate when they come here in July. Go the other way. So we had 14 students who went, and many of them received scholarships. So thank you to the community for that. And, again, many of those relationships, it's interesting that many of the kids that we took with us, they were homesteading families here. So, you know, they got to see the siblings from the other side or when many of those kids are excited to come here and stay with their fam the host family that hosted their siblings so it's really gotten to be very um a very family affair that many of them uh sign up way early and we have host families waiting too so that's a that's a good problem to have So this year we're celebrating our 30th anniversary with Sakaide, and by courtesy of Kim Huff, she designed this logo for us, which I think is really great, and it just shows people reaching across the ocean and joining hands, and they're generic people, so they could be kids, adults, whatever. And I did email Sakaide for the correct japanese um writing so and yoshi's approved it so i think it's it does say what it says below in english so you'll be seeing this logo a lot we'll use it on our program and hopefully other um maybe t-shirts and things of that so kim we're you know that's one of the It's a community thing, and Kim just generously donated that for us. So that's wonderful. They put me in charge of parties. I don't know why, but I do. And we're going to have the community celebration at the Bay Model. For those of you who know Mayor Aya or who have been to Sakai Day, he's a big cowboy fan. So we're going to have a barbecue for him at the Bay Model, and there may be an appearance by a horse, and we're going to have square dancing. The square dancer's concerned that the kids won't understand English, but I said don't worry, they'll on. So, Mariah has a special sauce that he uses, and so we're hoping to get some of that in April when we go and use that. But the Skapazis are going to be doing the barbecue for us, and we'll have a square dancer. So get your cowboy boots on and your cowboy hat, and come down and have a good time, and we should look forward to that. There is, maybe Mariah is also a big Snoopy fan, so there is rumor that we may have a Snoopy appearance in his own cowboy hat. This is a picture of the kids that went to Sakai Day this year in the tie-dye in the top right, and then the kids who came to Sausalito last year here, and that was their first day. They had just gotten off the bus, really, literally gotten off the bus. So, again, it's a great partnership, and many of the kids who came to Sausalito were there to welcome us. So I'm in charge of the program with Lynn Reed, and we'll be doing many of the activities we've done in the past muir woods houseboats fire police all of those various things so i'm sure you'll see us around and that's another uh copy of the logo without the writing so we like it both ways so that's kind of what's one tap for sikai day |
| 00:26:38.72 | Cheryl Popp | Hello, everyone. I probably should have brought my glasses so I can see. Okay, we got it. |
| 00:26:44.05 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. |
| 00:26:44.74 | Cheryl Popp | So you already did this. |
| 00:26:46.16 | Monica Finnegan | Yeah. |
| 00:26:46.21 | Cheryl Popp | Thank you. |
| 00:26:46.33 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. |
| 00:26:46.35 | Cheryl Popp | to do. |
| 00:26:46.41 | Monica Finnegan | Do you want to talk about that? Real quick? For those of you who know about the New Village School, they approached us to see if we could partner with them. I mentioned it a little bit earlier. They're taking 26th graders to Sakaide. One of the teachers is from Tokyo and they also have a fabulous taiko drum group. Their school is really interesting in a lot of outward bound things. We're talking to them because they have a Spanish program as well about how to expand that partnership and take some of the students to Vina de Mar Chile. So we're also hoping to foster some relationships with the parents. We're always looking for parents to home stay and to volunteer and things like that. So it'll be, I think, a really great outreach within the community that expands it from little guys to big guys. So we'll tell you more about that the next time. Cash, you're up. Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:27:36.26 | Cheryl Popp | Hello everyone, good morning council and city staff. Thank you for having us this evening. I'm Cheryl Popp, I chair our program with CacheCache Portugal. I think you all know as much about it as I do probably because you've been very engaged, which we appreciate. The biggest thing in our local Qashqash environment is that we have a new Consul General for Portugal in San Francisco. Nuno Matias was with us for years. We adore him. He was wonderful. And Maria... Maria João Lopes Cardoso is the new Consul General in Portugal, and she is just as wonderful. So we are blessed. We have people who are so supportive. Both Nuno and Maria grew up in Qashqai, so they are quite wedded to this program, and we just made her an honorary member of the Sausalito Yacht Club. The primary focus of our program has been nautically oriented. We have a youth sailing exchange program, as you know. We go there one year, they come here another year, just like they do in Sakaita, but the sailing is sail training and racing. We had six of their kids here last year, and we did sort of a successful shift in age. We're dealing with younger kids now, and what a surprise. They kind of behave better than the teenagers, a little bit easier to control. And actually, it was a joyous program. It was wonderful. And most of these same kids are next year going to Cash Cash, this year rather, coming to Cash Cash with us in July. And they'll be staying with most of the kids who stayed with them last year. So it's a great immersion program like Zikaida and really builds some wonderful experience for these kids. And it is a joint program with the Sausalito Yacht Club here in Sausalito, as well as the Sausalito Youth Sailing Foundation, who do a lot of the funding and support it. So we're very fortunate to have them as benefactors um for 2018 as i said we will be going there in june june 29th through july 8th um we're doing a photo night as we have for many years which is a sort of part of the cultural exchange we have with um with portugal it if you've not been to photo at Pines, it's as authentic as it gets in Lisbon in the Alfama district, it's wonderful. We have Fadistas, it's a great program, and they basically underwrite our sailing program. When we go to Cache Christ this year, we're also going to have an adult tour. This is the second year we've done that, and it is, again, promoting this cross-cultural exchange. And we've got 17 people signed up already to go with us, so it's a lot of fun. Jill was part of that last year, or two years ago, rather. The most exciting thing, I'm going to talk about Cal Sadas in a minute, is that we also have some VIP visits this year. The mayor of Kashkais, the vice mayor, a lot of their VIPs. At one point we thought we had the president, but now we're down to the prime minister. We still will take that. It's good. They will be here in June for the dedication of the president. Prasa de Qashqai, which is, I think, all of you were at our kickoff event last Monday. But for the record, I'll just go over it a little bit. The city of Qashqai gifted our city with calzada stones and an artisan to do this beautiful mosaic pavement design. And we've worked with city council, the planning commission. It has been unanimously approved. It will be going in in front of the Bank of America. Construction actually starts next month. And the artisan will be here in May, and he'll start doing the actual art installation. We should be finished by the end of May, and the dedication is scheduled for that week in June. So it's a very exciting project. No other sister city has ever gifted us something like this. And it will be a tribute not only to the Portuguese heritage here in Sausalito, but to our sister city relationship with Qashqai. So we're very excited about it. Thank you for all your support. |
| 00:31:49.94 | Monica Finnegan | Vignette de Mar is my And this is an area where we are working with businesswomen, small business practices. And they have come to the United States, funded by their government. And we have been teaching them American business practices. And it's been a fascinating and very rewarding program. Seven Days, Seven Dreams – they stay in Sausalito Homes, and the one thing I have learned from them, they know how to have fun. I'm pretty serious, and I'm kind of grumpity, but when you are around these women, they're very joyful. They're very appreciative. It's just a wonderful experience. We teach them in the community room in the firehouse, which is a really great space for something like this, so we're thankful to have that opportunity. This year we had a program called the Path to Growth. And we had two days of building foundation, it was kind of like a. Foundation American Business Practice 101, and then we went out into the community and visited businesses. We had 32 presenters this year teaching them, showing them, talking to them, collaborative and shared spaces, new ideas. So it was really rewarding. This year we're going to Vigne de Mar in October, 10th to the 21st right now, and we're going to do a lot of work. We're making the women report back on how we've improved their business. So I'm the task master, and they're the ones that have fun. So that's our exciting news about Vigne del Mar. Karen's not here tonight. We'll talk a little bit about an upcoming event, which we have again been recognized as a beneficiary for this. It's the Sausalito Wine Experience. We had a program in 2017. It was sold out. It was a very, very exciting event, fantastic at the Casa Madrona sponsors and Poggio. It was one of the days of the fire. Thank you. It was the first day that the skies had cleared, but all of the vintners, there were 13 of them, were so relieved to be out of the fire and to be doing something in business, and they were really excited. We raised $40,000 for Sister City. That's a lot of money for us, so it was a good experience. Jill helped. A lot of the people in the room helped on the committee, so thank you for that. The next one is 2018, and it's the date to put on your calendar, September 30th. It gets sold out really fast, so we're urging you to sign up ASAP. Same fortunate experience for this committee to recognize us as the beneficiary. So we're very, very pleased with that, and it will be a lot of fun. I want to talk a little bit about the organization that we are a member of, which is Sister City International. And just to let you know that we're not out there alone, that there's a lot of support and a lot of innovation that we're receiving from them. There are 545 communities that sponsor 2,121 sister city partnerships. It's pretty amazing that we reach out to 145 countries. They've done some analysis on the financial contribution. They're suggesting 525 million comes into the U.S. economy because of these programs. You can see that they're spread out all over the world, and the experiences back and forth are pretty phenomenal. This year, there's a conference which we will be attending, and we'll learn more about what they're offering for us as best practices. And you'll remember that in 2016, Sausalito was recognized as the number one city in the United States for a population of 25,000 and under for our program. So we're very proud of that. |
| 00:35:36.39 | Monica Finnegan | Here we are looking at 2018 and we have several goals that are focused. Obviously, you've heard us talk a lot about sustainable financial. work and we're working very diligently on making that be come to fruition. We are trying to expand our board. We've got so much work that we can't all do it and everybody's burning out. And we like expanding partnerships within the community and our people to people diplomacy is phenomenal. We've reached so many people, so many students, 550 students have been exchanged between Sausalito and Sakide. So we want to thank you again. We've taken more time than we said we would. But it's always great to be here with you. You're terrific supporters for us. And we just thank you so much. |
| 00:36:27.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any questions of sister city folks? OK, seeing no questions, I'm going to go ahead and make another mayoral announcement. Chris Gallagher, would you step to the podium, please? |
| 00:36:49.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | This is a proclamation of the mayor of the city of Sausalito recognizing the dedicated service and contributions of Chris Gallagher to the Sausalito community. |
| 00:37:05.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Whereas, the city of Sausalito is pleased to have the opportunity this evening to acknowledge the many ways in which Chris Gallagher has been involved with and participated in our community, city government, and special events. And, whereas Chris arrived in Sausalito in 1986, serving the Army Corps of Engineers as their education coordinator at the Bay Model and moving on to park manager in 2001. hand, whereas along with this newfound position, Chris immediately became a part of the Sausalito community. at the Bay Model and moving on to Park Manager in 2001. And, whereas along with this newfound position, Chris immediately became a part of the Sausalito community by joining the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce. And, whereas Chris also became involved in city government serving on such committees as the Disaster Preparedness Committee, the Waterfront and Marinship Committee, the Business Advisory Committee, and the General Plan Advisory Committee. And, Whereas Chris did not stop with serving on committees, but also became involved with a plethora of special community events, including promoting coastal cleanup days, joining the local organizing committee for the tour of Amgen bike race, serving on a local committee for the America's Cup, assisting with the annual Herring Festival, participating in several of our sister city events, and volunteering for over 30 years with the ever-exhausting Sausalito Art Festival. And? Whereas Chris made history in Sausalito, becoming one of the founding mothers of our volunteers in public safety and serving as the first president of VIPS and being our grand marshal for a 4th of July parade. And whereas Chris has continued to be an ally to the city of Sausalito on such issues as marine debris, sea track and the kayaks, cleanup of oil spills, including the Costco-Buson incident, emergency shelters, and serving as an anchor out liaison. Now, therefore, and in witness thereof, I, Joan Cox, Mayor of the City of Sausalito of Huron 2, set my hand upon this proclamation, recognizing and thanking Chris for her many, many hours of community involvement, and ask that the citizens of Sausalito also offer their gratitude and thanks to Chris when they pass her on the street. |
| 00:39:30.83 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 00:39:30.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:30.92 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:39:45.55 | Unknown | Thank you. I know. |
| 00:39:47.72 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:40:01.31 | Unknown | Thanks. |
| 00:40:03.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, that concludes this matter. We're going to move on to our next matter. Thank you everybody very much. We're going to move on to recognition of Community Safety Disaster Preparedness Committee Member Tom Perazzo for his CPRS District 1 2017 Community Service Award. This is obviously a night of recognition. |
| 00:40:27.79 | Julie Myers | Hello, City Council Mayor, Vice Mayor. This is Julie Myers, I'm with the Parks and Rec Department. And I'm here to present the California Parks and Recreation Society's District 1, 2017 Community Service Award to Tom Perazzo. To say Tom isn't busy helping the Sausalito community is to say you don't know Tom. Tom is a longtime member of the historical preservation group Native Sons and is the current Grand Secretary. For the past five years, Tom has served on the city of Sausalito's Disaster Committee, where he coordinates disaster preparedness events to instruct citizens on how to become self-sufficient when disaster strikes. Tom also holds an elected position on the Southern Marin Fire Protection Board and served as president this past year. Tom is an active member of the Sausalito Yacht Club and as a retired safety inspector, often makes himself available for construction consulting for anyone who asks. Tom's most recent volunteer duty is serving on the city of Sausalito's 125th birthday party planning committee. Lastly, Tom is a founding member of the VIPs, the Volunteers in Public Safety, which started 15 years ago. The VIPs coordinate with the police to provide a variety of services to help keep Sausalito safe. Tom has been the president of the VIPs for the past seven years and can always be counted on to help direct traffic at every parks and recreation parade. Tom has also been instrumental in securing two vehicles for the VIPs and coordinating scene response to support fire and police. Tom is a person who has made the community better. His quiet strength is an asset to any and all who work for him. So right now, Tom, I'm presenting you the California Parks and Recreation Society District 1, 2017 Community Service Award for Outstanding Service and Support to the City of Sausalito. |
| 00:42:30.99 | Julie Myers | Thank you. |
| 00:42:35.68 | Tom Perazzo | GO AHEAD. When I heard that I needed to be at a meeting and there was an award, I kind of figured why. It certainly has been my pleasure to get involved in the community since I came here. With the Disaster Preparedness Committee and the VIPs. what Sea Point Native Sons do for the community as well as some of the other things. So it's my pleasure. Happy to do it. And thanks. |
| 00:43:17.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And our third presentation is 1C update on age-friendly Sausalito activity, including cars, Sausalito Village, and the home modification program. And we have Sybil Boutelier. And I saw Trisha Smith also. |
| 00:43:34.90 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:43:40.04 | Michael Sheets | backwards. |
| 00:43:40.94 | Sybil Boutillier | but |
| 00:43:41.87 | Michael Sheets | forward, backward. Next slide. |
| 00:43:44.70 | Sybil Boutillier | This is the next slide. Thank you. |
| 00:43:55.11 | Sybil Boutillier | Amen. Good evening, Mayor Cox, Vice Mayor and City Council members. I'm Sybil Boutillier. I serve as the current chair of Age Friendly Sal Salido and Tricia Smith, our past chair. And I will be presenting some information about the end of the first year of our implementation stage of the Age Friendly Sal Salido program. Good. |
| 00:44:33.91 | Sybil Boutillier | So the city council approved the Age Friendly South Cedar Task Force and gave us permission to join the World Health Organization, Global Network of Age Friendly Cities and Communities in 2013. And at that time, the city made a five year commitment for continuing change to improve the age friendliness of the community. And those documents were signed by Ray Withy, who was the mayor at that time. To fulfill the commitment, we've been working through the various stages. The first two years were the assessment, planning, and development stage. And now we have just completed the first year of the official implementation phase. |
| 00:45:25.38 | Sybil Boutillier | So as you know, Moran is the fastest growing county in California or Last I heard, and we already have 69,000 seniors who make up 27% of the population. Here in South Salido, we're already at almost 30.1% of the population. So we've outpaced the county in terms of the number of people age 60 and older. So as you can see, the projection is that over the next 12 years, Salcelito is expected to have an increase of 21% in terms of the number of people who have aged into the population. Older adult category. So it's very important that we plan for this and for the future. So just to review the startup tasks and some of the lessons that we've learned along the way. We conducted the baseline survey, 2,400 surveys were sent out by direct mail. And we received 1,200 back through mail and online, which was a wonderful response. And that was back in 2013. So we joined the WHO and the World Health Organization in 2014. And continued through the process to where we are today. And our approach has been that we didn't always need to invent the wheel, but we could build on and expand or enhance programs that the city was already contemplating. Or that we've learned about from other jurisdictions. And then we can innovate and create new programs when there was nothing to fill a need that became clear as we did our assessment and surveyed the population and stakeholders. We also wrote a number of small grants to help get the program started to Marin Transit, the Board of Supervisors, Marin Community Foundation all participated in helping us get the program off the ground without causing any expenses for the city. |
| 00:48:00.88 | Sybil Boutillier | So to be successful we found that it's really important for longevity to include everybody. And Salcelito is the most wonderful place for volunteers, as you all know, as we've been hearing tonight. So we've worked to establish ongoing programs and annual events in partnership with the various organizations that are represented in these pictures here and particularly with South Salido Village. We, for example, we partnered with South Salido Village and Rotary to do the one big task day. Where they help people move some furniture, turn a mattress over, change batteries, and that sort of thing. The Lions Club honors our cars drivers with an annual barbecue. And we participated in developing a number of age friendly speaker series, workshop events and other things with our primary partner, the village. As well as having booths in the city garage sale and in making a presence in the parade and Halloween events to help people to know what's going on and to invite them to participate. |
| 00:49:34.55 | Sybil Boutillier | So working with government partners was extremely important and real success we feel was reflected in the establishment of government policies and plans and procedures that will carry the momentum of the age friendly movement forward. The ultimate goal is to establish an age friendly movement. Thank you. as a permanent value and continuing process in the community. While maintaining the flexibility to evolve and change according to the changing needs and opportunities. One of our task force members, Charles Kaufman, was selected to be a member of the general plan committee. And we hope that our community action plan can inform general plan policies that touch many of the eight domains of livability, infusing them with an age friendly lens. We encourage more older adults to get involved with the age friendly process and to participate in various committees. One of our goals also was to inspire other cities and communities, especially throughout our county, But as it turns out also in this state, to replicate some of the programs that we've started here. To that end, Patricia and I have both coached a number of cities in the county to help them get started in their own age-friendly programs. And most recently, Sal Salido has gained support and interest in the wider community. Assembly member Mark Levine, learning about our age friendly permit program, has fashioned a bill based on our design and has introduced it as AB 2132 permit fee waiver. Which is changing state building codes to authorize cities and counties to waive permit fees for people over the age of 60 for accessible changes to their homes. So I hope the city can support that bill. And they've... They acknowledge that it came from the seed that Sousalito planted. So Tricia's going to talk about some of the programs |
| 00:51:48.66 | Trisha Smith | And a big thank you to Sybil for doing a great job as the chair of the task force. The first photo up there you see is of these flags. As you see it, several of the intersections now. So the question is always, So how fast do they disappear? Well, I think everybody who wants a flag now has one. I believe. Including Dorothy Gibson got hers. And actually I have given some to some riders of cars who have who live near an intersection. And just want to have one at their home, at a place where there's not a flag set up. So these are very easy to make. I want to do a shout out to Joyce Alexander and Sheila Keough. And I know Sheila watches. every city council meeting. So we are the ones who make the flags now and monitor the intersections. And it's not that hard because they're not disappearing quite at the rate that they were before. So I wanna thank Adam... and Mike, because you both were like, yeah, it's an easy fix. Let's do it. Let's try. And it's been working because they haven't, you know, I can't say that there's been any intersection that has totally empty cans on either side. So I think it's a simple fix. So big thank you to those guys. The other program that's coming up is the Parks and Rec. And, you know, we have somebody, as Sybil said, who's sitting on the general plan. And Sybil, I know, is working with, Mike, just a little reminder about remembering about age friendly parks, especially MLK. So Sybil didn't show me how to do this part. This one? |
| 00:53:34.52 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:53:37.52 | Trisha Smith | Is that one? Yep. Okay, good. |
| 00:53:39.26 | Sybil Boutillier | We're going through the germane. |
| 00:53:41.92 | Trisha Smith | Right. That was domain number one, and then this is domain number two. And this is transportation. So, yes, cars has been a big deal. It's going to be three years in May, so that's pretty amazing. And big thanks to the city council for following through and providing funding for that. It's a simple program that's running very well. And as you can see, we're in the range of about 1500 rides a year that we provide so we started out with more drivers than we currently have we lost a few in the last couple of months probably in the last six months and so we're now looking for a new infusion and we actually have four new drivers that have are coming on board now and that was partly there were people had been with us for three years and some aged out moved broken down cars, whatever, something had happened. It's fun. Volunteer applications that I will leave on the table in case anybody thinks they might like to try it. Joe can tell you something about that. |
| 00:54:44.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:44.61 | Trisha Smith | But one of the other things we also make sure that every one of our riders who signs up to be a rider for CARS is that they also make sure that they put applications into the county for other programs that they might be eligible for. Since CARS is only in the city of Sausalito, we wanted to make sure that people who need rides outside of that, |
| 00:54:44.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:05.52 | Trisha Smith | have access to it. So the picture here shows Marin Transit catch a ride, but there's actually several programs, and I'll leave the flyers on the back, that we make sure that people are aware of and sign up for so that if they need to get beyond Sausalito, they have ways to do that. Oops, backwards, sorry. |
| 00:55:31.43 | Trisha Smith | Oh, it's a logic model. Okay. Anyway, that was a great article that Mark Prado did in the IJ when we started with the CARS program. And for those of you who know Mary Ann Griller, she's a great volunteer. Oh, I see. That's very fancy. OK. And of course, these are the reasons that cars, we've heard this before, why we need it in this town. You know, people are able to put their cars away, especially at night for the library programs, things like that. We don't want people driving in the evening if they're not comfortable anymore, so I'm really happy that we're able to partner with the library mostly for these programs. And we're also doing two of the programs that the library's partnering with, with the Sausalito Woman's Club, coming up in the next two months. So we'll also do door-to-door service for those programs. And let's see, so the other things that are up there, they get four rides, and it's city funded. And let's see if I've got one more going. The other thing, and this is where Sausalito Village and Age Friendly recently partnered. This is the domain three under housing, because there were two, of course, important points that came up for under housing. One was, as Sybil has beautifully written here, strategy one, promote policies and programs that enable older residents to remain in their homes within the community. And two, promote development of additional affordable housing options for older adults. We really do have an incredible option here in Marin County and it's home sharing that has not been really promoted or utilized. And I'm really happy to report that the organization called Home Share Marin, has hired a full-time person named, a director named Christine Ness, and she's fabulous, and she is going to expand this program. When you think about how much affordable housing there is in the empty bedrooms in many of the large homes, in Sausalito and surrounding areas, and all of the county of Marin. This is a way to get people in housing quickly and readily. And there's a lot of positives to it when you talk about security, companionship, all of that. So what the difference is for them, because there was a smaller home sharing program that was happening, is that they They now will do intergenerational. Before it was only senior to senior matches, which doesn't always make perfect sense. So I think intergenerational matches will be great. So this is a free service through Home Share Marin and Sausalito Village and Age Friendly together co-hosted. And we hope to have several more presentations and really start that conversation and get people more comfortable with the idea of home sharing here. Sybil, can I turn it back over to you? Thanks. |
| 00:58:26.47 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you, Tricia. |
| 00:58:34.74 | Sybil Boutillier | So we'll talk about the other main objective that we had under the housing and that was to make it possible for people to remain in their homes. When we did the survey, a large number of people said how important it was. In fact, 98% said it was important for them to stay in the community. And 92%, I believe it came to, said that it was very important for them to be able to stay in their own homes. And as we know, in South Salido, a lot of the housing is not very accessible for people as they start aging and maybe have more disabilities or difficulties in moving around or other issues. We worked with the city community development department to come up with an initial workshop that we did back in October of 2015. Where Kenneth Henry and Michael Sheets, who's going to say a word in a minute, talked to people about the kind of changes that they could make in their homes. Out of that community conversation came the idea of doing something about permits. Because people were unhappy with what they believed and perceived was expensive permits, complex difficulty for them to navigate through the permit process. And so working closely with Danny Castro, Kenneth Henry, and now McKenna Romero, and our own wonderful architect Michael Sheets. We've developed this program, which is this permit. And Michael's going to tell you something about it. Tomorrow we're having our very first introductory workshop for the community and that will be here at 11 AM. And Michael, if you could come up and say a few words. about that and also maybe introduce |
| 01:01:03.34 | Michael Sheets | Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight. The main way we started in doing this is starting with the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prescribes remedies to make buildings more accessible. uh, Doing accessibility for seniors actually goes beyond that, because there's things that Thank you. are not part of that code. I started with looking at the literature involved. So the National Association of Home Builders has a lot of information about it. ARP has information. We have our pamphlet, which was based on a Canadian home insurance company's efforts at it. The United Nations has information about that, as well as sites in Europe, mainly in England. It was a very good one. And guess what? People are aging all over the world, and the remedies are pretty similar where you are. We're not special, even though we're in this special place. So, What we're hoping to introduce to the useful guide is this maintaining your independence. and it says basically you go through on your own working through well do you have problems getting in your front door and are your... EVERYBODY situation will be different and everybody's needs are different. And actually one of the main resources for this would be an occupational organization. health person who's able to evaluate where your conditions are as well as your home. AND HOPEFULLY THAT THIS WILL create a list of projects that people have that will be then met with the generosity of the city of providing them an easy path to be able to get their permits and the work done. So that's what we're going to be introducing tomorrow, and we hope for a good turnout and hope we can generate a lot of projects. So thank you. |
| 01:03:20.23 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you, Michael. The city's been very generous, as you know, in providing this grant program for people who are interested in using the permit to make their homes accessible. Which also will benefit the community in the long term because we'll have more accessible housing stock available as time goes on. So just moving quickly through the rest of the domains, you might have noticed the ones that are checked are the ones that we've got programs going on. And the other ones we'll be getting to over this next period. So we'll be working on strategies to increase the volunteer opportunities and interest and to promote more opportunities for paid work in the community. Especially as we move forward working with the business community. And also, working on some intergenerational activities, which I know Mayor Cox indicated she had a particular interest in seeing us develop further. Lips. |
| 01:04:32.88 | Sybil Boutillier | Right. So civic participation, you've been hearing all about it tonight. And we're very excited to be participating with our age friendly task force member Charles Kaufman in the general plan and Having it considered our action plan as one of the documents that are being reviewed to include as appropriate in that overall plan. Thank you. Just a comment about how wonderful all of the folks are that have been participating in the community life here in Sausalito. I personally am so grateful to be here in Sausalito. I've been here since 1986 and it's just been the most wonderful community in terms of feeling a real part of the community. And it's all the people who are doing all these activities that make that so true. |
| 01:05:51.57 | Sybil Boutillier | So the next domain was communications and information. And our first goal was to increase the channels for communication and using the technology in particular, we've been able to reach out in a number of ways. And the most important thing, of course, is the, quarterly South Lidl Magazine, which has now included a whole senior section. Which is very widely read and used and has brought more people to participate in programs. Also, a new program that's just been introduced by one of our cars drivers, John Walsham has been working with the library to confirm a program where library books can be delivered to people who are home bound. And they can call the library and order the books they want or look online. And then cars drivers during their shift when they have time will pick up books and deliver them to the homes or retrieve the books and return them to the library. |
| 01:07:09.36 | Sybil Boutillier | So in terms of community health, and particularly in disaster and emergency services, we've worked closely with the South Lido Village, our police department and the fire district to put together a number of programs or to promote programs so that more older people do participate. For example, in the RUOK program, which the police department started a few years ago. And which enables the police to reach out quickly to known people who may be isolated or living on their own or have some infirmity and need more urgent assistance in case of a disaster. And the Women's Club has helped us to promote that program among their members as well. We've worked with the village and Rotary to distribute these wonderful emergency prep backpacks to all of the residents of Rotary Housing. And to village members who are interested in receiving them. And Chief Tubbs of the Southern Wind Fire District came and talked to people about disaster planning. And has indicated his interest in going forward and helping further planning so that people can be clear about what to do if there is an event. So where we are now, It is. The end of our first year of this phase, which is a three year phase of implementation, even though we did some early implementation, which the opportunity just came up. So we were able to start cars early and so forth. But we're finishing year one. So we're at this point, we're continuing to encourage more people to get involved and participate in steering the plan. We've been lucky to have Michael Sheets take an active role in the age-friendly permit program. C.C. Brown is willing to go on the open space and parks enhancement effort, which we've been working with Mike Langford on. And we hope to move forward in implementing remaining action strategies. And we'll be joined by our new partner, AARP, which the city gave us permission to join in to their livability, their community, livable communities program this past year, and they'll actually be coming. They're looking for a time on your calendar, possibly in May or when it's convenient for you to come and present a certificate and talk to you about having joined in with AARP and how happy they are to have Sal Salido as part of that large group, which exchanges information and they offer various resources. materials and coaching and they have people on the ground which is great because working with Geneva was a little bit remote. And they are the official representative for the World Health Organization's global network in the United States. So going forward we'll be continuing to evaluate what we've learned and assess the needs and adapt our plans and program as appropriate. Thank you, that's the end of our presentation. |
| 01:10:55.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Interesting. Any public comment? Okay, I'm going to close public comment on Sybil on the age friendly. Okay, sure. |
| 01:11:16.09 | Crystal Gift | Hi, I'm Crystal Gift. I just recently got back. after spending five years being homeless because of Mr. Price, but I found that all the elders in my bay have had their docks removed from them, their floating docks to go to the side of their boats. That is elder abuse, okay? These people have a right to access their homes, and by taking those docks away from those people, you have put our elders at risk. Officers in law telling our elders that they're just going to take their homes away from them, is putting some of them with heart conditions at risk. And I just say that something needs to be done because they have a right to access their home no matter where they live. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 01:11:54.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Would you mind filling out a speaker card? IT'S JUST LETS US KEEP A RECORD OF WHO HAD PUBLIC COMMENT. Director's good. Thank you so much. All right, I'm going to close public comment. Any comment up here? Joe? |
| 01:12:11.49 | Joe | I want to say something really quickly. Thank you, Sybil and Tricia, for all you do for the aging community. And just another plea out to the people watching tonight to sign up to drive for cars. It's such a great program. Four hours a month if you do one shift. Really is nothing. To meet some fabulous people. I've met friends. I'm going to name them. Ninfa, Nina, Thelma, Roshan. I call them my girls. I love seeing them every month. So you can find the time, and it's a great benefit to our community. So I really encourage people watching tonight to find out how they can drive for cars. |
| 01:12:47.94 | Unknown | Some really quick comments. You know, this is one of the organizations I love about Sausalito. You know, it's a group of really talented people come together for this fabulous program that costs the city very little but enhances, you know, tremendously our community. And most of the programs are so smart. They're very simple. They're very impactful. And they're very effective. Like the flags crossing the street. I mean, what a brilliant idea that is. And it costs us almost nothing. And it was, you know, I think you got it done in record time for Sausalito. Thank you. they're very effective like the the flags crossing the street i mean what a brilliant idea that is and it cost us almost nothing and it was you know i think you got it done record time for and the same thing with cars you know it's just a really great idea so anyway thank you to both civil and trisha for your efforts and everybody on your team with um saucer village yeah and the and the home Yeah, yeah, Michael, and in our public works, in our, not public works, but community development, who helped streamline the permit process for aging in place. I think those are all fabulous. Again, very simple, very effective. So thank you very much. I appreciate it. |
| 01:13:47.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sure, I just want to add my thanks to Tricia, Sybil, and the rest of the team. It was really great. We meet monthly, the city council members and mayors from Marin County, and our last meeting was in Corte Madera, and the topic was age-friendly cities, and it was really amazing to hear Corte Madera talk about how inspired they had been by the work here in Sausalito and how the mentoring from Sassolito had really helped Corte Madera institute their program. So that was just really a nice thing to hear. And then I also just want to say some of these great things that you're doing for our aging population are also amazing for our other growing population in town, which is families with children. The flags, I see them used all the time, not just by seniors, but by people with small kids, and it really increases the visibility. And one of the neat things that Corte Madera was starting to look at when we were there is expanding their community center space and programming it with intergenerational programs. And not all of the programs would be intergenerational, That just seemed like a really great idea for moving forward, given our two growing populations here in Sausalito. So thank you so much for all the work you guys do. |
| 01:15:07.78 | Unknown | I'll make it simple and just say thank you very much for all you do. |
| 01:15:14.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The same here, and I do want to add that not only is our program setting an example for other cities in Marin, we're actually setting an example for cities across the country. And so I'm really proud of your efforts and what you're doing on behalf of our city, so thank you. |
| 01:15:36.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, and with that we're going to move on to communications. This is the time for the City Council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda. Except in very limited situations, state law precludes the council from taking action on or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on an item not on our agenda this evening? |
| 01:16:02.12 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. Yes, Mayor. Thank you. And I'll stick to the subject. It's a joke. |
| 01:16:09.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | LAUGHTER I was pleased to hear that, Jeff. |
| 01:16:12.62 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 01:16:15.64 | Jeffrey Chase | So I'll recognize Jeff Jacobs. I'm going to look at you first. |
| 01:16:16.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I recognize |
| 01:16:23.05 | Jeffrey Chase | I was speaking in front of the Richardson Bay Regional Authority. Sausalito has withdrawn from that, which is very interesting, because of course Sausalito is much more affected by the Anchorage than Belvedere, Tiburon, THE CITY IS GOING TO BE the people that are on the committee. The president, Marty Winters of RBRA, after I was speaking Torah, He asked me why I was bringing a religious subject, into a secular meeting. Well, Marin has got a lot of... SUPERLATIVES ABOUT IT, A LOT OF UNIQUE QUALITIES. It's the only free Anchorage. still on San Francisco Bay, It's... Gesundheit. Ms. Mayor? It has... More protected land. then. any county I know of that's contiguous with the urban area And There's one more thing that I found out today. which is a representative in Congress. Jared Huffman. is now the only congressperson who has said, AND I'M GOING TO DOUBLE-CHECK He doesn't believe in God. |
| 01:17:52.52 | Jeffrey Chase | He had said that he was a humanist. They do ask every person in Congress to identify their religion on a questionnaire. Almost everybody says Baptist, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon. He had put agnostic, but now He's saying he's an atheist. |
| 01:18:17.52 | Jeffrey Chase | What has happened in history when There is this trend, especially among very prosperous people. of rejecting religion. is that My people, the Israelites, end up getting the blame. We've been called atheists for a while if you Look at the tapes from Hillary Clinton talking about Bernie Sanders, or her aides, she said, well, let's get it out that He might not believe in God, God being... Jesus in this case. |
| 01:19:04.84 | Jeffrey Chase | I want to say that this matters. |
| 01:19:07.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THANK YOU. |
| 01:19:07.88 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 01:19:08.96 | Jeffrey Chase | This matters and I don't really have enough time to explain why and that's okay. Thanks Jeff. That's gonna have to be all right. |
| 01:19:10.16 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 01:19:10.19 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 01:19:18.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, any other, yes, this is on items not on our agenda tonight. |
| 01:19:25.92 | Crystal Gift | Hi, my name is Crystal Giff and I live in the Bay. I'm speaking on behalf of the homeless and the people in the Bay. We don't have a mailing address. That, Binds people from having... register to vote, actually having a life that takes away our constitutional right. Not to mention that with homelessness, sleeping is not a luxury, it's a requirement to survive. You treat something like garbage long enough, it tends to represent what you treat it like, so it'll be bad about your manifestations. I'm also painting my boat in my remembrance of Van Bowe. I have an art boat out there. And I've already had a couple boats taken away from me, and this is my only home, and I am not going back to those streets. To be a woman on the streets and be a woman that lives out in our bay, it's crucial. It's horrifying, but we're strong and we survive. |
| 01:20:23.87 | Crystal Gift | I believe that people are a mirror image of myself. This affords me the opportunity to change and grow. Our lives are mirrors of each other. this is, I mean... I mean, yeah, we have bad apples out there. Quite a few of them, but they are allowed to be bad apples because we need that type of image. When I can't go to my friend's boat on a dock because I'm an anchor out, And she's going to lose her place to live because I go to visit her, that's discrimination. It's harmful, it's hurtful, it's wrong. I usually try to be positive and on a positive note, if I have one more boat taken away from me, I will fight to the death. |
| 01:21:03.95 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:21:03.98 | Crystal Gift | Thank you. |
| 01:21:04.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:21:04.10 | Crystal Gift | YOU. |
| 01:21:04.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:21:07.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any other comments on items not on our agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to action minutes of the previous meeting. Are there any revisions or may I have a motion? |
| 01:21:18.61 | Joe | So moved. |
| 01:21:19.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second. All in favor? |
| 01:21:20.96 | Joe | Bye. Bye. |
| 01:21:21.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Aye. That motion carries 5-0. We'll move on now to our consent calendar. Would anyone like to remove an item from the consent calendar? Is there any public comment on the consent calendar? you |
| 01:21:35.42 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:21:35.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, please step forward. |
| 01:21:43.57 | Jeffrey Chase | The consent calendar consists of three items. Two of them. are car related. We saw this was two days ago there was a Lamborghini or Ferrari. I'm not exactly certain of my fancy cars coming out of coming onto Bridgeway and the both sides were blocked off by I The police. And It's... fascinating that a place that is known for mariners is now giving all of this recognition towards cars. And for the consent calendar, the parking enforcement, which is a way that the city funds itself, you're asking for $39,000. for a new vehicle that includes last year and the year before, 900 bicycles that had chains around them that were parked downtown. This was enforced by the parking department, and the people had to pay $25, including myself and one of my friends, for getting their bicycles unchained. It was promised here that that would only be for tourists, but it seems that that's not exactly true. The second one on the consent calendar is for street paving, fixing the streets, fixing potholes, etc. for five years is $4.6 million. This is not any capital improvements. This isn't Paving for new parking lots. And this is going on all over the country. Vast expenditure for vehicles and the city relying for its budget on the continued use of a very inefficient way to travel. That's cars. You were talking earlier about the senior program where they have cars that go and take seniors to shop. and to be entertained, and other places. I would like to see that expanded I would like to see more than one person in a 2,000 or 3,000 pound vehicle I would like to see some management of the cars and not just the bicycles, because we're all concerned about an inundation. of tourists. I'm not sure. So I'll stick to the automotive subject. This is something that usually goes by the board and isn't commented on. And I felt like I needed to talk about this. So I thank you for letting me do that. |
| 01:24:38.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you Jeff. Any other public comment on our consent calendar? Seeing none, I'll close public comment, bring it up here for discussion or a motion. |
| 01:24:48.15 | Unknown | I move adoption of consent calendar items for A through C. |
| 01:24:53.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second. All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 5-0. We'll move on to our business items and pursuant to our amended agenda, we will first hear business item 5C update from Willow Creek Academy. |
| 01:24:55.81 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:25:14.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. |
| 01:25:15.45 | Tara Seekins | Good evening, Mayor Cox, Vice Mayor, members of the City Council. My name is Tara Seekins, I'm the head of school at Willow Creek Academy. And I'm here with our board president, Kurt Weinsheimer. |
| 01:25:42.23 | Tara Seekins | And this is actually my first city council meeting. I like it. It's got everything under the sun. |
| 01:25:51.43 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm a school principal. Okay, maybe you've seen a lot. |
| 01:25:52.66 | Tara Seekins | Thank you. I'm a school principal. Okay, maybe you've seen a lot. |
| 01:26:01.30 | Unknown | . |
| 01:26:01.70 | Tara Seekins | . All right, thank you. All right, so I'm going to run through just kind of some basics about our school community, our programs, and some of our results. And then Kurt's going to talk a little bit about how the city council can be supportive and how members of the Sausalito community can be supportive as well. I chose this photo because I think it illustrates the beauty of the kindergarten through eighth grade community. That's Cameron and Antonio, who's actually a seventh grader. But we serve kids in grades K through eight. We serve roughly equal numbers of kids from Sausalito and Marin City. So about 165 kids from each community attend Willow Creek. We have relatively low class sizes, slightly higher in the upper grades. And our community is really diverse. We have no racial majority. About 40% of our kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. That means that their family, like a family of three, would have an annual income of less than $27,000 a year. That's 40% of the kids at Willow Creek. It's kind of a surprising statistic sometimes. 30% of our kids speak a language other than English at home for a total of 32 home languages. Amazing linguistic diversity and 10% of our students receive special education services on our campus. Our curriculum is really unique and that's one of the reasons why a charter school is a really great asset for a community. We have a lot of autonomy with regard to developing our curriculum, to be responsive to our students, to integrate resources from our community. We use project-based learning, arts integration, environmental education, and really emphasize global citizenship. We also know that when we are serving a diverse group of learners, we need to provide a lot of different types of support. Such as primary intervention specialists who case manage our kids in kindergarten, first and second grade. Assistant teachers to support literacy and math development, as well as student support specialists who administer our restorative justice program. We have terrific community partnerships and we're always looking for more. You probably see some familiar logos there and there are many, many more besides. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of our results. And sometimes when principals talk about results from a school, they're talking just about test scores. I'm going to talk about test scores, but I'm going to talk about some other metrics as well. just really making sure that we're looking at a well rounded picture of the Willow Creek programs and community. I wanna underscore the last bullet point on this slide, that we have a really positive, joyful, inclusive school community. And the minute you step foot on our campus, you'll see and feel that. But that's not all we do well. We also outperform the state on the state standardized tests in mathematics. as well as in English language arts. I've also given, in addition to Willow Creek's results and the state of California's results, I've given the results of a charter school that's pretty similar to Willow Creek in demographics and programming. And you can see that we outperform that charter school as well. When I'm talking about test scores, I'm looking at the top two quartiles. Those are the students who have met or exceeded standard. We also give benchmark assessments at Willow Creek, and just to really measure how students are progressing throughout the year, in addition to the yearly standardized tests that students take in May. This is the Measures of Academics Progress assessment, and we use this to really hone in on the progress our English learners are making, as well as our low income students. Those are our two big target areas. So these are the results from winter 2017 to winter 2018 for our low income students. Those are our two big target areas. So these are the results from winter 2017 to winter 2018 for our low-income students. So what's circled over there, you can see the grade levels kind of progressing up first, second, third, all the way up to eighth. And you can see the student's score, and the darker bar is the score from winter 2017. The lighter bar is the score from winter 2018. And you can see if you look at just kind of the first grade line, for example, you can see that the first grade teachers are doing a better job teaching their low income students than they were last year. That's what that tells me. But when I compare that dark first grade line to the light second grade line, I'm comparing last year's low income first graders to this year's low income second graders. And look at how much progress they made. It's awesome. And we're seeing that all the way across the grade levels. So this is low income students in reading, low income students in math, English learner students in reading. English learner students in math. When you look at charts like this, you often don't see the progression that looks like this, especially for strategic student subgroups. So this is really exciting for us. You may be familiar with the state of California's school dashboards. If you're not, I encourage you to Google it and check it out. It's a good way to learn about kind of a snapshot of schools on various metrics. But this is one that talks about school climate. Essentially, when you're looking at the California school dashboard, if a school is performing well, you'll see their subgroups listed in the blue column. If a school district, or in the blue kind of corner up there. If a school district is not performing well, you'll see the subgroups listed in the red or orange corner down at the bottom. This looks great to me. This is a metric of our school climate as measured by discipline. And you can see that we've both made a lot of progress and had very low levels of discipline at Willow Creek, and that's great news. So you can see up in the very top blue column, English learners, African American students, Asian students, multi-ethnic students, low income students, Hispanic students, students with disabilities are all up in that corner where we want to see those subgroups listed. This is one of my favorite metrics, the middle school climate survey. I don't know if you remember your middle school experience, but I would not have answered when I'm at school. I feel like I belong 82% all the time or most of the time. But our kids do. They also answered other students are friendly 90% all of the time or most of the time, that's great. And families have very positive feedback as well as you can see. We surveyed our staff recently and you can see that our staff gave very positive ratings, especially relative to national norms with regard to engagement and empowerment, relationships, culture and communication, and professional development. This is something that I feel really good about because that's been a big focus of my principalship, helping the teachers feel engaged and empowered. These are our teachers. This was our Christmas, our family picture from our Christmas card. But I do think that it really boils down to just a few key factors. Being really clear on our mission, we're going to close the achievement gap. Consistency of our school team, making people feel valued, helping them understand that their work is really meaningful, they want to stick around and stay committed. We solve problems creatively. And we really celebrate a very caring and inclusive culture in our community. So that's kind of the beautiful portrait of Willow Creek, just to warm things up. And then Kurt's going to talk a little bit more about how Willow Creek could use your support in this time that we're in. Thank you. |
| 01:34:29.64 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Thanks, Tara. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Kurt Weinzheimer. I'm the president of the board at Willow Creek Academy and a parent of three Willow Creek students. Um, Thanks a lot for allowing us to come here and talk to you about Willow Creek and the education of kids in Sausalito and Amron City. Um, I think it is really important to reflect on what it is that allows our school to thrive the way it does. And those points that Tara brought up are critically important. And I'm really thankful that I don't think anybody really kind of lives those key aspects and focuses of success like Miss Seekins does. And that type of leadership has really allowed our school to thrive in the way that it has in serving all kids in our community. And that's really the key. THE FAMILY IS GOING TO BE How do we... offer an education for all kids in our community. no matter what town they live in. where they want to go to school, How do we take care of all kids? Because all the kids in Sausalito Marin City that go to Willow Creek or go to Bayside MLK are public school students. And that's a really important thing for people to think about when we look at funding and we look at supporting our kids and our schools. One thing that people don't always realize is, what are charter school students? And the state says charter school students are public school students, just like any other public school student in your district. And as a result, charter school students are. should be receiving the same funding, support, caring, and commitment that we give to any public school students. And that's something that we think is really important for people to understand and to focus on as we look at the future of success for Willow Creek, for Bayside MLK, and for students in our community. |
| 01:36:48.12 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Because... Right now, we're in basically a pretty critical time Um, where There's discussion about the long-term sustainability and support of our schools. And from my perspective and perspective of everyone at Willow Creek is we believe that we've got to support all kids. no matter what school they go to. And most importantly, we've got to support the high needs kids. Those are low income kids, those are English learners. Most of those low income kids and English learners attend Willow Creek. But it means that they're all important no matter what school they go to. But the district right now is proposing something that's really damaging to the heart of our community. They're proposing that you look not at the needs of the students in our community, but you look at the needs of one school versus another. And that us versus them approach, is not going to get us to the right place where we need to be. Collaboration is what we need, not conflict. And I just put this up because this was really jaw-dropping to us. This is actually what the district is proposing tonight. AT THE MEETING, For long-term funding, for the schools in Sausalito and Marin City. This takes a look at their budget estimations for 2019 and 2020. It's estimated that the district will have total revenues of $9 million. to serve. About 550 kids. That's a huge budget. And yet, their decision is that they need to provide Willow Creek with minimum funding and maximum fees. AND THAT, our district receives large amounts of money based on our real estate property taxes that Willow Creek should share in zero of that funding. So the impact of that is, Pretty stark. What that would mean is that starting in 2019 and 2020, Willow Creek, which would be serving 420 of the students in our community, would be receiving about $8,000 per student. That's $2,000 less than the state average. And B side MLK. With 125 students, would be receiving almost $40,000 per student. |
| 01:39:40.36 | Kurt Weinsheimer | That just doesn't add up. That just doesn't make sense. And we've got to get away from this divisive view of one school versus the other. Because this type of money and this type of logic doesn't serve anyone. And I'm hoping that this is just kind of a negotiation approach to kind of start at zero and then come to some common sense conclusion. But I for one don't believe that brinksmanship With our kids, education. is the right way for us to get to the best solutions. I think we've got to think about collaboration. We've got to look at the numbers. And first off, we've got to look at what all our kids need. |
| 01:40:30.87 | Kurt Weinsheimer | So. How can everyone help? So one thing is we really want to make sure that we're keeping our kids at the center of the focus. There is so much noise around in the system. We really need to focus on what do the kids need? And at the same time, please reach out to us. First of all, if you have any questions, So many people have so many questions and perceptions. We'd love to tell you and show you what we're doing at this school and what we're doing for the community. And also, if you have ideas of how you'd like to help, we'd love them, because we are always looking for people to help and support. and also, This school is your school. This school is here to serve the community. So we are always happy to hear any comments. any feedback, and any way that we can give back to the community that gives so much to us. Our students volunteer. They'd love to do more. They go on field trips, but they'd love to help out, and we'd love to be of help. So as we're talking through the future, And as we're looking at where we go together and how we support all our kids, we wanna make sure that we're going at this THE CITY. Open hearts. and open minds. in a way that we can help all the kids in our community succeed. Thank you. |
| 01:42:06.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm going to lead off with a couple questions and then I'm going to turn it over to others for questions. Obviously, this council doesn't have jurisdiction over the school district. But I am curious, when you're talking about funding, to know how much of Sausalito's property tax revenue goes to the school district? And how much of Marin City's property tax revenue goes to the school district? |
| 01:42:34.65 | Michael Sheets | Thank you. |
| 01:42:34.66 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah. I don't actually know the proportions breakdown. |
| 01:42:38.55 | Joe | I could answer it, though I don't have it with me, but Jennifer Conway asked that question, and we found it out from the county. And I sent it to her. I just don't have it, but I could get that. |
| 01:42:50.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, I think... |
| 01:42:50.09 | Joe | I'm sorry. |
| 01:42:52.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Because as you say, the district serves both cities, and it would be interesting to me to know how much of the Sausalito residents' property tax revenue goes to serve the schools that serve the Sausalito residents. Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to others for questions. |
| 01:43:16.89 | Unknown | I WANT TO GET TO THEM TO |
| 01:43:23.23 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Sure. |
| 01:43:23.84 | Unknown | They're about demographics. |
| 01:43:25.52 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yep, happy to. Um, Yeah. A question that people ask, and in fact, government agencies have asked, does Willow Creek represent the general population living in Sausalito and Marin City. That's an important part of any public charter school's charter is to represent the population that lives in the district. And so, We basically did a pretty simple study. We took the 2010 census. of the population within Sausalito and Marin City. And you can see that that's in green. And then we took the population at Willow Creek Academy. And as you can see, we are on index, or we over-index, in every minority, from African-American, Asian Pacific. Latino. And mixed other? The only group we actually under index is on white. But the real focus here is this is what demonstrates that Willow Creek is probably one of the most diverse schools in the state. Definitely. one of the most diverse schools in this county. and that we are really here to serve the whole community, and we do it the best we can. |
| 01:44:49.68 | Unknown | I WAS THERE A SLIDE IN HERE THAT SHOWS THE NUMBER OF KIDS, THE PERCENTAGE OF KIDS FROM MARIN CITY AT WILLOW CREEK AND THE PERCENTAGE OF KIDS AT, DID I SKIP OVER THAT? |
| 01:45:01.95 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah. Yeah, so I also provided data. Is this a slide you were looking for? Yeah. So this shows the students by grade that attend Willow Creek. So as you can see, we've got 165 students live in Sausalito, 169 in Marin City, and then 74 from out of district. |
| 01:45:05.90 | Unknown | I ALSO PREFERING THAT. |
| 01:45:06.59 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 01:45:08.24 | Michael Sheets | Thank you. |
| 01:45:08.28 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:45:26.98 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Um, And it's important to note that this really shows kind of the balance of the student body. And this is what makes Willow Creek so special in our minds. is that we've got kids from all economic, all social, all demographics learning together. um, And, IN THE CITY. experience life and growing up together And this is kind of the whole goal of us building what we believe is a great Thank you. school for this community that represents this community. Are there specific questions about this that I can answer? Thanks. |
| 01:46:14.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | There was an article in the IJ today about a decision that came out from the state, and I was just wondering if you wanted to comment on that. It implied that there were some issues with diversity at Willow Creek, which it sounds, you know, from the data that we've been seeing tonight, that there aren't. |
| 01:46:38.96 | Chris Gallagher | I'm sorry. |
| 01:46:39.03 | Unknown | speak to it. |
| 01:46:40.45 | Chris Gallagher | Yeah, I mean... |
| 01:46:42.07 | Tara Seekins | I think one important piece of the puzzle to understand is that, you know, within this number of students from Marin City, it represents students from many different backgrounds, right? So I think one of the critiques that sometimes arises is that, well, yes, Willow Creek, you may have 169 students at your school who come from Marin City, but those students are relatively privileged in relation to the students who attend the district school, Bayside Martin Luther King. And that's a critique that I hear. One thing that I think, one stat that isn't here that I think is important for the city council and others to understand. Within that group of 169 students, there are 52 who live in the Golden Gate Village public housing development. And that can be a proxy for students who need a lot of support. So that's 52 children at Willow Creek. I don't know what that number is at Bayside MLK. I know that their population is somewhere around 120. So they may have more students with a high level of need. But I wanted to just kind of make sure that that statistic was understood as well, because I think that's an important metric for understanding the level of support that may be needed. |
| 01:48:04.40 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah. And I can also elaborate in that. I think that in reading the conclusions, it looked like they were looking for more evidence. They were looking for evidence around facilities. They were looking for evidence that Willow Creek represented the demographics in the community. We don't know what information the district did or didn't provide. the Office of Education. But we know that they got it wrong on the ground. Because when you look at the numbers, if you want to ask, does Willow Creek represent the demographics of the people living in this community. It's pretty obvious that we do. We educate 75% of all the kids in this district. It's pretty hard for us just not to. from a mathematical standpoint, So, It may be that they just didn't get enough information. or they didn't look at Willow Creek's response to the FICMAT report. in which we provided all of this data and information. Um, And so I think it's a matter of People needing to take a deeper look. at the facts and the information. And then they'd see the evidence that We are taking care of the kids. |
| 01:49:27.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So by way of follow-up, do you have that commensurate data for Bayside? |
| 01:49:36.52 | Tara Seekins | the specific number of students. |
| 01:49:38.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Who live in Golden Gate Village? No, how reflective Bayside is of the overall district population. |
| 01:49:47.95 | Tara Seekins | I don't have it off the top of my head. I mean, I will say that, yeah, we can find that. But I'll say that for charter schools specifically, we are required to take measures to have a school population that's representative of the territorial jurisdiction where we're located. District schools don't have the same requirement. But yeah, that would be an interesting data point to have as well. |
| 01:50:13.88 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then do you have any plans to provide additional data to the press so that they are better informed? |
| 01:50:23.72 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We have provided all of this data to the press over the last two years. And it just doesn't seem like people are all that interested in the facts. I've found that quite often it's kind of, People don't want to let the facts get in the way of a good story. And so it sounds better to have a rich school in one town and a poor school in another versus looking at kind of the reality. |
| 01:50:48.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So... But as I look at this chart, this chart is not easy for me to, at a glance, understand. And so I wonder if it would be helpful for you to give them three snippets of what, indeed, this data represents. Yes. |
| 01:51:06.36 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah, that's a great idea. And we are happy to provide more data and more information because it is really important for people to understand What's going on? |
| 01:51:17.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, other questions? Yeah, could you go back to the slide about the proposed budget? And, So I mean this is clearly, it's obviously a lopsided proposed budget, but do you have a slide about the current difference in per student spending at the district? Or could you just give us those figures? |
| 01:51:40.52 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah, so I don't have a slide on that. But roughly right now, the per student funding is about about. $10,000 for Willow Creek and about $20,000 at Bayside per student. Um, And actually, the district is going to be digging deeper into that so that we can get more data on that. |
| 01:52:02.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And those figures exclude overhead. |
| 01:52:05.68 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yes, that's right. That's right. |
| 01:52:08.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So that takes out the district. superintendents, salary, and all of those figures. |
| 01:52:12.70 | Kurt Weinsheimer | That's right. That's right, so when we look at the per school funding, we're looking at strictly the money that goes into the classroom outside of facilities, outside of overhead. Um, so that we're looking at just in-school funding. So right now, it's a 2x funding per student at Bayside versus Willow Creek. So I don't know what the equitable funding looks like, that seems to be at least equal for, school. I think that when we look at the challenges that we see. It's not a cash problem, it's a culture problem. It's a leadership problem. Um, And I think it's always easier to point to money and facilities and kind of hard things aren't good enough, need to be better. It's a lot harder to look at the things that really make a difference. which are the commitment of the mission dedicated teachers and staff. community. And people ask us, well, you must have so much money, Kids go on field trips. Thank you. Kids don't go on field trips and gold-plated buses, Parents walk them on the field trips. Parents carpool on the field trips. parents that can help help. And parents that can't, are thankful. Our school and our community believes in the common cause. We believe that in the common good, that's how we get there. And that's what funds... are, food program that which funds our after school program that's what supports our school and allows us to do more with less, And I think that if we all work together, Maybe we can share some of those best practices And use. $8 to $9 million we have in this school district. to make this the best school district in the state. |
| 01:54:15.47 | Chris Gallagher | Other questions? you |
| 01:54:17.98 | Joe | AS CLEVELAND, AS CLEVELAND, AS COUNCIL MEMBER, AS SHE BROUGHT UP, THE ARTICLE IN THE NEWSPAPER, I THINK THAT WAS REALLY KEY IN ALSO SOME OF THE COMMENTS BELOW SHOWING THE MISCONCEPTIONS THAT ARE STILL OUT IN THE GENERAL PUBLIC, NOT ONLY ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN OUR COMMUNITY, WHICH IS VERY UNIQUE TO MARIN, AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT THAT, BUT JUST WHAT CHARTER AND PUBLIC CHARTER MEANS, AND IN ONE DIALOGUE, after a few items in the post, it came to, well, then, of course, the tuition at Willow Creek must cover that. So just to clarify for the record, and you could even use a hand signal, what is the tuition at Willow Creek? Willow Creek? |
| 01:55:04.93 | Tara Seekins | It is zero dollars. |
| 01:55:05.97 | Joe | This is a public school so the children that go there regardless of what community they're not paying extra to go there than any other public school. Correct. Thank you. That's correct. |
| 01:55:13.55 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:55:15.91 | Joe | I just wanted to make that clear because |
| 01:55:16.05 | Kurt Weinsheimer | I WANT TO MAKE THAT CLEAR. Thank you. And anyone is welcome to attend. |
| 01:55:24.33 | Joe | Thank you. |
| 01:55:24.35 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Thank you. |
| 01:55:25.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any other questions? Thank you. Okay, I'm going to open it up for public comment. Yes, David. |
| 01:55:36.89 | David | I'd like to thank Willow Creek for the presentation. I just, you know, I find that if we're going to talk about divisive, I'd like to remove that graph from now on from any discussion because it doesn't reflect the cost of Sausalito and Marin City funding to small schools. Small schools require a lot of money, and we have some very high needs kids. I'm not sure if this graph also reflects, on the base MLK side, the special ed kids that require, some of them require in excess of $100,000 a year to send to school. And we have at least a dozen kids like that in our school district. You know, the issue with our schools and the reason why the school district is talking about potentially taking a million and a half dollars a year from Willow Creek is because we're currently running a $400,000 a year deficit. And in two years, if we don't fix it, the county or the state will come in and take over our school system. That's just the plain fact of it is. And The kids at Bayside MLK already know what it's like to take a million dollars out of their program because over the last four to five years that is what has been taken out of the Bayside MLK program, is a million dollars a year. They were making substantial progress in improving So, proficiency in grade level at the school, due to funding that not our community was providing, but that Marin Community Foundation was providing, a million dollars a year to our school district, And it showed that money can make a difference in our school district in making measurable improvement to kids' lives. And, you know, IF WE WANT TO If the community wants to help, what we need to do is find either drastic ways to cut costs or increase the amount of funds that our community gives to schools to do the remission. Thank you. |
| 01:57:44.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Wait David before you go may I ask you a question? Sure. So at the last update to the council regarding the school district, I asked both Will McCoy and Jeff Knowles whether their schools were willing to merge. Because if Bayside and Willow Creek merged, then there would be huge economies of scale realized, which could help with some of these inequities that you reference. The answer I received that evening from Jeff Knowles was absolutely yes. The answer I received that evening from Will McCoy was absolutely not. And I wonder whether that perspective has changed at all since then. |
| 01:58:33.01 | David | I think that that's an ongoing conversation that the community as a whole needs to have. There's also, you know, there's issues with law in California about how that might happen. The school district could easily absorb Willow Creek, but Willow Creek absorbing the school district is fundamentally this problem, would require legislation at the California state level to happen. So whether that's impossible, I don't know. I'm not sure. But you know, really, what that model comes down to is paying our teachers even less money than they get right now. Only one or two of our teachers lives in Southern Marin right now because they can't afford to live here. So paying teachers less money to make it to provide, you know, better services to our children, you know, yes, it helps our children, but as a community, is that the right thing to do for our schools? I'm not sure. |
| 01:59:37.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So as a follow-up, when I moved to Sausalito in 1985, there was one Bayside Academy. on Nevada Street. I sent two foster kids there. I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT. to move, and at one time they were co-located, Willow Creek and Bayside. So who made the decision to separate the schools, and for what reason? |
| 02:00:01.02 | David | as far as i know that was made at the district level by the then superintendent of schools which was i forget her name but um it was made as a cost savings measure to combine uh bayside mlk i mean bay sky the elementary school public elementary school mlk the public uh middle school co-locate them so they could reduce some of the administrative staff and save money. And so that was the reason for that. |
| 02:00:35.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. The vice mayor has a question. |
| 02:00:37.35 | David | Thank you. |
| 02:00:37.38 | Joe | I know you weren't presenting tonight, David, but... |
| 02:00:39.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. Bye. |
| 02:00:39.85 | Joe | Thank you. |
| 02:00:39.95 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:00:39.96 | Joe | I WANT TO BRING LIGHT TO YOU. |
| 02:00:40.59 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | There's a comment. |
| 02:00:42.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:00:48.48 | Joe | Take Willow Creek. can assume Willow Creek and take them over. I don't see that... based on the financial information I'm seeing here as even remotely plausible for a district to assume 420 kids at an average of 8,000 to successfully provide a level of service by taking the direction of the district taking over Willow Creek. |
| 02:01:10.69 | David | I don't know. |
| 02:01:14.29 | David | I'm not, you know, the savings probably wouldn't be as much. There could even be net it could be net more money. But I mean, if you wanted to combine the schools right now Thank you. really the only way to do it right now without changing California state laws for Willow Creek to be absorbed into the school district, not vice versa. |
| 02:01:32.85 | Joe | We have enough lawyers and Sausalito to figure out the law part. But I'm looking at the numbers and I can tell you. |
| 02:01:32.87 | David | Thank you. |
| 02:01:37.98 | David | But hey, you know, and the fact of the matter is, in my opinion, is that both of our middle schools are too small to be truly effective. So I don't know. And there's a lot more kids in this school district that don't go to either school. You know, there's always a possibility that those kids could one day go to our schools. But then we're going to need even more money. So that's kind of a solution that, you know. I just think that we need to, you know, have a serious discussion about not how much do we spend in each school. And I would point out that $8,000 is what the state of California gives to most of the school districts in this state. TO to teach their kids, and that includes administrative costs. |
| 02:02:30.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think they said it's |
| 02:02:31.27 | David | It's 2,000 less than the average across the state. Just from an LCFF funding formula. $8,500. $8,500. So it's not that much less. Now, in a high-cost district like ours, that's not enough money to teach the kids, obviously. But... But it's not just who gets what money. It's that the pie is not big enough right now. |
| 02:03:00.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you David and thank you for allowing us to put you on the spot a bit. Any other public comment? |
| 02:03:06.99 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:03:15.75 | Jeffrey Chase | Uh, Ms. Mayor, I have the information on Bayside and MLK and Kurt and Tara. 7.8% of the people who go to Bayside MLK are classified as white, 90% are Hispanic or black. I'm from a place called Detroit, Michigan. And we, have You know the racial problem there. Thank you. Well, all of the problems that exist across the country exist in Sausalito, California. especially racial division. and income division as well. So... I don't have any children that I know of. that are either in Willow Creek or? Bayside MLK. But the idea that a majority of A vast majority of the black people in Marin County 90 something percent are in Marin City, We are a segregated city here in Sausalito, California, and our schools are segregated. And the idea that charter schools are used THEIR OWNERS AND THEIR OWNERS and to further segregation is deplorable. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IT. It's difficult to say this because these are teachers. I am not teaching children like they are. They are doing something that needs to be done. It's not a question of money. Socrates was able to teach people for free, He was also called an atheist too. This isn't about money. This is about a color barrier in Marin County and and income barrier. I've heard a lot about from the people who have kids at both Bayside MLK and Willow Creek. I hope that this problem is rectified and soon. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:05:25.93 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any other public comment? All right, I'm going to close it. Any comments from the council? |
| 02:05:34.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:36.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:05:36.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:36.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:05:36.17 | Joe | Thank you. |
| 02:05:36.54 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Who wants to go lead off, Joe or Jill? |
| 02:05:39.21 | Joe | Okay, I'll start with kind of a blanket comment that we talked about last time when the district presented to us. And since some discussion came up tonight about the district, How does a city council speak to another board or another agency? Well, the school district, and via Willow Creek in this case, provides a level of service to our tax base. Given that, we get a right to speak to that to that level of service, whether it's a sewer district, which if the sewer plant backed up, I think we'd have people in our audience, fire district, Marin County Water, all sorts of agencies provide a level of service to our community that we get to speak to. So before everybody writes us letters and tells us how we don't have a right to talk about district schools on this board, I think we do because we have responsibility to our community to provide one of the biggest levels of service, which is education. We had an opportunity to talk with a woman, Delaine Easton, running for governor of California. And she spoke about the importance of education, which we all know, but the importance of education as an economic driver, as a tool to our communities. |
| 02:06:55.06 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 02:06:57.51 | Joe | It's a very important issue for us on this dais as well as the district to consider the level of service that's been provided to our community. We pay taxes for a school and we should have a very strong input to that. Um, i want to thank tara and kurt for coming tonight i know you had a big uh other meeting with the district tonight as well we talked a lot about people who provide a service to our community and thank you both for the level you've providing our community and we've talked about the demographic changes that we've seen in our community because of willow creek academy the energy that's provided our community and obviously the educational growth i believe believe that popularity has even spawned the growth of our private schools. And we have nearly 900 kids in our town now getting a daily education, which is threefold more than it was just a few years ago. And that demographic change, granted they don't all live here from their private schools and even some from ours. But that energy change has rippled its way through our retail, through our culture, through our parks, and everything that we see. That's why I get a little passionate about this topic. It's amazing when we look at some of these numbers, the more outlandish they get, you think, Somebody's got to see it. And then you hear some of the information and we've heard it tonight on some of the misinformation that just TELLS ME THAT THE FIGHT NEEDS TO KEEP GOING. AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE ANSWER IS. I DON'T KNOW WHEN SOMEBODY FINALLY WAKES UP AND SAYS, YOU CAN'T HAVE 40% as the highest demographic and call it segregation. I mean, the numbers speak for themselves, unless they're wrong, and I don't imagine they are, because we've all agreed upon them. and I say all being in the district as well. Diverse populations require a diverse educational platform. Marin County is very lucky to have a very great public school system throughout the county, and they have a very and diverse population to teach to and they've done an incredible job. When you get down to this area, it's not the same. And that same platform doesn't always fit the same needs of the children. So what Willow Creek has brought to the table for an educational opportunity to this community is unbelievable and that the children from low-income families from non-English speaking families to get an a good education at a public school is unbelievable. ASSET TO OUR COMMUNITY AND FOR ANYBODY to try to take that away from us, you're gonna have a fight on your hands. So again, I'm, Probably a little closer to this, but looking at the numbers and hearing this argument over and again, it's just unbelievable to me the fight that you guys are up against. But thank you for doing it. |
| 02:09:49.70 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 02:09:49.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Susan. |
| 02:09:50.93 | Joe | you |
| 02:09:51.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, so thank you for being here tonight. You know, I just want to kind of follow up on some of the themes. I think, you know, it's essential for any community to have thriving, successful, safe, and creative schools. And I think really our goal here, either here on the city council or the Sausalito Marin City School District, is to make sure all of the children in our district and in our town have access to good and great schools. And we certainly have the budget in the school district to do that. So I think as long as we're all going for that same goal, that that's really what's critical is keeping the focus on that goal. And I really think that Willow Creek is doing a good job in driving that message and talking about all of the kids in this district. I also want to say that I've had kids at Willow Creek for eight years and I really appreciated what Tara said. She had three points and One of the things that she talked about was just a positive, joyful, inclusive community. And I think that has been a really special thing that Willow Creek has brought to its educational experience. So thank you to Tara Seekins for really fostering that over her career at Willow Creek. I also want to say I think having thriving schools in our district has really enhanced our community. I think people, families with children are settling and staying in both Marin City and Sausalito in greater numbers. That's had an incredible benefit to Sausalito. It's also had a great benefit to Marin City, but I think maybe one of the most important things is that it's allowed programs between the two communities to really thrive. And my kids have benefited from that, whether it's Little League or playing in Rocky Graham Park or benefiting from the food program that Willow Creek and Bayside MLK are collaborating on, sustainable GMO free GMO-free, the only sustainable GMO-free school district in the country. But, you know, those kinds of relationships and really community building between our two communities from both Bayside MLK and Willow Creek have been really wonderful for both, you know, FOR OUR KIDS HERE IN SACSALITO, BUT I THINK ALSO FOR THE WHOLE COMMUNITY. SO I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR PART IN THAT, AND, YOU KNOW, TO BAYSIDE MLK AS WELL FOR WHAT THEY DO. BUT WE REALLY DO IN THESE BUDGET DISCUSSIONS, YOU KNOW, I HOPE THAT THE SCHOOL DISTRICT AND ALL THE EDUCATORS WILL KEEP THE FOCUS ON THE KIDS AND MAKING SURE WE CAN CONTINUE TO HAVE TWO SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITIES. |
| 02:12:53.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:12:53.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:12:53.20 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:12:53.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:12:54.84 | Unknown | Yeah, Taryn, thanks for coming, and thanks for these slides with... with so much information, like specific information, that's really, really, really helpful for all of us. I wish I had had this a little bit earlier, but I'm happy to have it now. I, you know, I agree with the comments that Joe and Susan said, public school in Sausli was crucial to our community. And so, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, as leaders in our community, this is a priority for, it should be a priority for your leaders in your community. And so if people, you know, we lived here almost 18, almost 19 years. You know, when I first moved here, I think the one public school we had was down to about 120 kids. And so when you look at, and I've said it many times tonight, The level of support and volunteerism in our community is tremendous and that's why we have a thriving charter school. It's because people in our community saw the need for improvement in our public school and went to the effort to start a charter school. And it's been a 10-year slog to get us to the point where we are to this incredible jewel of a public school in Sausalito. And so, you know, the challenges that we've had at Bayside should be addressed and I would hope they would be fixed, but we care about all the kids in our community. Once, and look at the numbers, you can't argue with these numbers. 420 kids, 75% of the kids in the district, meaning Sausalito and Marin City, go to Willow Creek Academy. more kids go to Willow Creek Academy from Marin City at 169 students than all of the students combined at Bayside MLK. So when you look at this funding differential, I mean, You know, it's just not, I don't think, defendable. When you look at the there's no racial majority, these criticisms that we constantly hear about Willow Creek There is no racial majority at Willow Creek. 40% of the students qualify for free lunch or lunch. 30% of students speak a language other than English and 10% receive special education services on the campus at Willow Creek. And this is just a recap of what we heard tonight. Thank you for coming. I think you have a lot of support in Sausalito. I think you certainly have it up here on the city council. So, you know, stay in the fight. And thank you for your efforts. you |
| 02:15:20.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THEIR OWNERS. |
| 02:15:20.52 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:15:20.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:15:20.70 | Unknown | . |
| 02:15:20.75 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | all, |
| 02:15:20.97 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:15:21.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | on council member with you. |
| 02:15:23.71 | Unknown | Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. Why that is, there's a little chuckle in the audience perhaps, is that the last time I spoke from this dais on education, unfortunately when the school district was here and Unfortunately, education is an emotional thing. You know, it's probably, it gets to the core of the future of society. the future of our kids, the future of our culture, the future of all of our community, our diverse community. So anyway, I'm not going to lose it tonight. You know, we referenced her. So I agree with everything that was said. And last time I had something to say, I just pointed out to the fact that we got whatever the number is, 545 kids. total. That's what we should be worried about. and we should be thinking of solutions for all 545 kids. And in my view, harming a school that has 425 of them isn't a particularly good start to figuring out how to improve the lot of 545 kids. Now, a reference earlier, a question that was asked about the article in the IJ from Mark Prado. And we're saying, well, you know, I like Mark. He knows his stuff pretty well. You know... It's not that he is necessarily misinformed. I have him in front of me. the actual letter that was referred to because it's on pages four, five, six, seven, and eight of the school board package that's being discussed tonight. It's on the opening pages of the board package for the school tonight. OK. Remember the numbers that we've heard? The numbers we've heard in terms of the diversity in the schools? This is their final conclusion. This is from the California Department of Education. Final conclusion. In accordance with EC Section 47605B5H, the district shall, as part of its oversight obligations, obtain evidence from Willow Creek Academy that the charter school is in compliance with its charter regarding the means through which Willow Creek Academy works to achieve a racial and ethnic balance among its pupils and which is reflective of the general population Thank you. through which Willow Creek Academy works to achieve a racial and ethnic balance among its pupils, and which is reflective of the general population within the territory jurisdiction of the district. A basic premise from a seven page communication. Yeah, seven page communication from our state's Department of Education has just made a presumption. It hasn't bothered to look at the facts. It's just... Our California Department of Education needs to get an education. |
| 02:18:46.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:18:49.01 | Unknown | It's incredibly depressing. But thank you for all the good work you do. |
| 02:18:56.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I don't have much to add to the comments of my colleagues. I also do want to thank Tara and Kurt. I appreciate the clarity of your data on the demographics and on the budget allocation. I do want to let people know that we did invite the school superintendent, both at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year, to come speak to our council. we are still attempting to schedule that presentation from him. And so he had initially planned to come this evening, but was unable to because the school board meetings are scheduled on the same night as our city council meetings. That's something we also reached out to the school district about at the end of last year to request that the schedule be revised so that the meetings didn't all fall on the same night because obviously the people on this dais are interested and invested in what happens with the school district so we're hopeful that the superintendent will be able to make himself available to speak to this council in the near future we hope that you will continue to let us know what we can do to assist you in your charter of ensuring that the future of our kids, their education is preserved. And we will continue to do our homework to figure out in what way, if any, we can have a greater voice in this issue that is so important to our residents. So thank you. |
| 02:20:30.82 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 02:20:30.92 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Thank you. |
| 02:20:31.10 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 02:20:31.22 | Kurt Weinsheimer | Thank you. |
| 02:20:33.65 | Chris Gallagher | You guys ready to keep going? Thank you. You're not. |
| 02:20:41.46 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're going to take a five minute break. |
| 02:20:41.77 | Chris Gallagher | We're going to take a. |
| 02:20:43.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:20:43.10 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 02:20:49.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, as council member Withey just said, we're going to move on to something very exciting, which is the City of Sausalito storm water permit compliance update for 2018. And welcome Lauren. |
| 02:21:01.59 | Lauren | Good evening, Mayor Cox and other members of the City Council. We are in for an exciting evening. It's going to be fantastic. So normally this is a consent item, but because there are some new members on the City Council, we want to give you some education about what stormwater permit compliance is and what the City of Sausalito does and what we are going to be required to do in the future in order to maintain our stormwater permit compliance and continue to improve the discharges that come from our city and go into the bay. So we have another gentleman here who is Rob Carson, and he's from the Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program. He's a program administrator there. He'll tell you a little bit more about what he does. But mixed up is Moraine County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program. They work with the communities in our region to help us comply with these permits. Because otherwise, individual communities would have to do this all themselves. So they are a great assistance to our small communities out here. And he'll tell you a little bit more about what they do. But I'll jump in right now and talk a little bit about Sausalito and our stormwater permit compliance. And I'm going to run through this pretty quickly because most of the information in the report or in the presentation here is in your staff report. So we'll just go through. If there's any questions, you can stop me, but we'll circle back at the end of this program. So very brief history, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, NPDES. You may have seen that on a couple of things. That really is what the permit, the stormwater permit is. And so that's a federal program run from under the Clean Water Act. It is administered basically through the California State Water Resources Control Board. which issues those permits. And so we, the city of Sausalito, is a MS4, which is a small municipal separate storm sewer system. And so that's the type of permit that we get. And finally, the intent of the permit is to regulate discharges into waters of the state. which the bay is one of them. So the activities that the cities have taken with On the council is you've amended and adopted the ordinance. That provides the city and its staff with some regulatory powers in order to manage discharges into the bay. There are a couple of examples right there. We, Department of Public Works, has a couple ways of working to comply with that permit. Engineering Division deals with encroachment permits and projects that are taking place in Sausalito, regulating them for stormwater prevention and pollution programs. installations there and taking a look at what's going on with the release of storm water from those projects if they're making changes to previous services. Maintenance division is responsible for cleaning out storm drains. THE FAMILY. Identifying illicit discharges if we see a contractor out there washing his concrete truck into the gutters, things like that. So there's a number of different areas that DPW works to comply with the permit. THE Interesting activity that's going on right now is that in 2017, the State Water Resources Control Board required MS4s and other small municipalities to submit a trash reduction implementation plan. And there are two tracks for that, track one, track two. Track one is a full capture of trash. So that would be installations in our storm drainage systems that capture all trash before it gets released to the bay. And we don't currently have those facilities in all of our storm drains, so we took a track two. And track two means that we now have to continue to show improvement over time in capturing trash that is over a certain size, which is five millimeters. We measure this trash and document improvements, and we'll go through a couple pictures here, but one of the ways that you do this is you do a visual assessment of your community. And so you take a look at priority land uses and those are within your report those are identified as high density. Let's see if I have that here close by. They are high density residential, industrial, commercial, mixed urban and public transportation stations. If you take a look at this map, those areas in the ochre, yellow, and brown are PLUs in this community. And if we go to the next slide, Overlaying the PLUs here, you will see these. We did a physical assessment of our community, and myself, and Andy Davidson, and Bryant Ho. We walked the streets and then took a look at our community and made a visual identification on the street and the amount of trash that we could observe on that And I'll bring up another um, picture that talks about what that looks like, what is a low, what is a moderate, what's a high, what's a very high. And so this was the assessment that was done in 2017. Now this is going to be updated annually. And so we're going to be working with Mixed Stop on that. And every year we want to take a look at this and we want to reduce reds to yellows and yellows to greens. That's the Some other things that are important for complying with our permit, Bay City's Refuse Company, they provide the street sweeping services for the city of Sausalito, which is an important part of keeping trash from getting into the storm drains. Sustainability Commission that the Department of Public Works closely works with provides educational resources to the community about stormwater quality and pollution prevention. And, of course, mixed mixed up Rob Carson and his crews. So I'm gonna show real quickly now one of the photographs here. And this is also in your report. But this is what the different levels look like. So low trash level, there are your gutters. Hardly anything in there, maybe a cigarette butt, but for the most part, almost devoid of trash. As you continue on, you can see not a lot of trash in the area. If you move into moderate trash level, you're starting to see a little bit more. You're starting to see wrappers, things like that, stuff in the grass on the side. here. That's medium, and then condition C. Now you're starting to see quite a bit more trash in there. Lots of things in the gutter, not getting picked up. And then. Finally, you get to a high level of trash. And this is where you're starting to see significant amounts of trash and debris. So we look at our community with a pretty tough eye. But the way that the state looks at it is this is a very high level of trash. And thankfully, we don't have very many, if at all, very high levels of trash within our community within those PLUs. We do have some that are high. So that gives you an example of what we went out and did when we did the visual assessment. So I did want to be brief because I wanted to let Rob have an opportunity to give you a presentation, tell you more about what Mixed Up does. And myself and Jonathan Goldman and Rob are here to answer your questions afterwards. |
| 02:28:29.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you, Lauren. Any questions of Lauren before Rob comes up? Okay, thank you. |
| 02:28:34.37 | Rob Carson | Thank you. |
| 02:28:34.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:10.31 | Rob Carson | Thanks, Lauren. Thanks for the technical setup. Thank you, Ms. Mayor, and for the opportunity to speak to the rest of the City Council. As Lauren said, I'm the program administrator for the Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program. It is a joint exercise of powers between the 12 cities and towns and the unincorporated county in Marin, serving the purpose of essentially assisting with stormwater compliance. So Mixed Stop was formed in 1993 as a joint effort of the cities and towns to provide kind of a coordinated and consistent approach to protecting water quality and creek habitats. The member agencies implement local stormwater pollution prevention programs and contribute into a county-wide program which is MIXSTOP. I'm not going to go through this, but suffice to say it started all in about 1991 when the state turned to Marin and said, you guys need to start forming a stormwater program to address some basic pollution prevention issues. And so McStop was formed officially in 1993 underneath the Marin Streetlight Acquisition Joint Powers Authority. It's been a long and winding road along the way, first overseen by the city of San Rafael and then transferred to the County Board of Supervisors and finally to the Marin County Flood Control control and water conservation district where we live today the first official permit that the state that we were issued by the state water resources control board was in 2003 and it basically told mcstop and the member cities and towns to to develop a storm water control plan that said these are the the things that we're going to do to prevent pollution, and these are the programs that we think are important, and this is the message, and this is how we're going to get the message out, and this is how we're going to achieve those goals, which worked well for quite a while. I think we had a very unique and fairly strong program focused a lot on creek protections. In 2013 the state adopted a revised statewide general permit for all MS4s. This permit was really prescriptive. It no longer said tell us what you're gonna do. It said here's what you're gonna do in every specific way. So that has been one challenge that McStop has faced and I think has done a reasonably good job of providing the level of support for the specific requirements that came as a result of that 2013 permit. So again, the stated purpose of McStop is to assist the cities and towns with their compliance. McStop is not a permittee under the statewide, water regs or the MS4 program. It is the cities and towns that apply for coverage under that. So McStop is in the position of trying to provide as much support to the cities and towns to meet those goals of preventing storm water pollution, protecting water quality in creeks and wetlands, complying with the actual regulations, and preserving the beneficial uses of the waterways. In general, these are a couple of examples of some things that McStop has accomplished over the past five to six years of the permit term. The permit task required us to develop a number of plans like spill response plans, erosion sediment control plans and procedures and THE PERMIT TASK REQUIRED US TO DEVELOP A NUMBER OF PLANS LIKE SPILL RESPONSE PLANS, EROSION SEDMENT CONTROL PLANS AND PROCEDURES, AND ACTUALLY ESTABLISHING LEGAL AUTHORITY TO IMPLEMENT THE REQUIREMENTS. MIXSTOP'S ROLE IN THAT IN MOST CASES WAS TO MAKE SURE THAT update, compile, develop tools and training for staff and the public about how to comply with each of those. And in the end, it's the city, town, and county's job to actually implement those requirements, perform the inspections, do the actual reporting to the state. I have a relatively small staff. It's myself, Howard Bunce, who's been with the program for quite a long time as an engineering assistant. I have a new engineering tech starting on the 26th, so we're almost at full staff. I had someone from the local program announce that they were leaving, so close. These are some of the reasons why the important work around pollution prevention exists, particularly particularly in Marin we have a lot of special endangered threatened and protected species a lot of rare habitats a lot of actually relatively pristine and productive creeks in terms of salmon and steelhead some of these things are quite rare in the bay area and they still exist here so that's one of the reasons we have a little more to protect here than a lot of urbanized areas and we have an opportunity to do so through the program. So ways that mixed up exists assist local programs is to essentially strategize on implementation strategies work on phase two permit compliance assist with annual reporting to the state and do a lot of public outreach and education. We hold monthly agency staff committee meetings with representatives from each of the cities and towns to talk about what current projects are and strategize on that stuff. We assist with annual reports and stakeholder meetings, produce a lot of guidance documents and educational materials and brochures. We work with STRAW, the students and teachers, restoring a watershed to do watershed and pollution prevention education across the county. We're working, as Lauren intimated, we're working a lot on supporting the cities and towns on trash reduction planning. These are new requirements, and with every new requirement comes a lot of questions and a lot of getting to know ourselves a little bit better, and so that's been the process over the last couple of years. Collaborating with other agencies and then coordinating creek and wetland permitting meetings with outside agencies to ensure that everybody's got the permits they need from these projects, people are doing the work in the creeks the way they should be. So I want to take one half step back and just say Marin's municipal storm drain system is regulated under the Clean Water Act, as Lauren mentioned, through the NPDES program at the federal level. The EPA delegates or offers to delegate that power to the states. California has accepted that and regulates directly through the California State Water Resources Control Board. In other states, the EPA is the direct administrator of these programs. In general, NPDES programs aim to regulate three main activities, industrial activities, large construction projects over an acre, and then municipal storm sewers. Those are the predominant sources of pollutants that go into the waterways in the country. And so there are specific regulations around each of them. The goal is to reduce discharges of pollutants into the storm drain. Our current permit was issued in 2003. It's a general statewide permit. That being said, it's actually enforced by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. So the San Francisco Board staff is the one who actually asks the questions, how are you complying with that regulation, E10, subsection, J, whatever. And so we are answerable to them. It is a five-year permit term started in July 1, 2013. Theoretically, that comes up at the end of June. This year would be the end of the five-year permit term theoretically if everything worked well and smoothly in all bureaucracies we would be issued the next permit on July 1st that's not how things work and so we will be waiting not waiting but actively participating in the review and comment on potential permit language over the next two years. We've been told by the state that the next reissuance will be late in 2019. In fact, it has to be by January 2020 because they gave themselves a deadline in the trash amendments to develop a 10-year program that gets compliance in year 2030. So unless they actually issue the permit with the regulations by 2020, they're not going to make their own deadline. So we anticipate the next permit at that point. This is a summary of all of the permit sections. The slides that follow this, we go into some detail about each thing that McStop does versus the local program. I'm not planning on going through that with you tonight ad nauseum as it's 10 to 10. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have as I go through it but in The permit provisions include discharge prohibition. So basically only clean rain is allowed down the drain. That's the simple way of thinking about what's allowed in stormwater. Nothing but clean rain down the drain. At the beginning of it, there's a lot of program management. Establishing legal authority, McStopp developed a number of model ordinances, which were then adopted by all of the cities and towns over the next year to actually allow them to implement the specific requirements in the permit. MIXSTOP is heavily engaged in the public education and outreach aspects of the permit, so put on a lot of workshops, a lot of staff trainings, a lot of training modules that were provided to DPW to roll out with staff. A lot of construction operator training. We had a training last week up at the Marin Center. Quite a number of Sausalito staff were in attendance of that. It was on construction site operations and erosion sediment control. I think it was pretty well attended training. We're engaged in a lot of public involvement and participation through the Citizens Advisory Committee, as well as involvement with other regional groups like the North Bay Watershed Association and the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agency's Association and the statewide stormwater group, which is CASCA. There's a lot of illicit discharge detection and elimination activities. McStop developed a spill response plan and also assisted identifying all of the outfalls, which are places where storm drain system actually spills into the creek or the bay across the entire county and conducting outfall monitoring of those. So there's some of our crew out there in the field and back in the lab processing some of the samples. At the outset, it was hypothesized that we had about 1,460 outfalls in the county. Turned out it was closer to 2,350, so about a 60% increase over what we thought the number of pipes falling into creeks were. Pretty interesting activity to sort of get into the weeds of, oh, where are our actual connections from these private street drainage systems into the creek? We also went through a process to identify certain businesses that were identified in the permit as being high priority in terms of potential illicit discharges, developing procedures to monitor them, and tying in with folks like the CUPA program, the Certified Unified Program Authority, which is in charge of hazardous waste and materials in the county. They oversee a lot of these priority businesses like gas stations and vehicle maintenance places that have the potential to to discharge a number of pollutants into the storm drain system Thank you. Um, I'm going to skip over some of this. Construction site management is a big part of the stormwater permit. So active construction site, having erosion and sediment controls in place so that you're not getting things piling up out into the gutter or track out from construction sites onto your streets that you've just paid to have Bay City Refuse sweep so nicely. So there are requirements in the permit that every municipality maintain a list of active construction sites, know which one of those need erosion sediment control plans. Those that have those, are they implementing them? Are the things they're putting in place effective? Are they keeping pollutants out of the creek, off the streets, out of our storm drain system? So that is part of the program. McSTOP has developed a number of tools. At this point, we're essentially providing support and training to the municipalities as they implement these requirements. There are requirements around specific inspection frequencies. This is our model construction site with layers of BMPs. I wish they all looked like this. They almost never do, especially this winter when everybody decided, I guess, winter's over until this week. In addition, section E11 of the permit is about municipal operations. This is the sort of know thyself section of the permit. Get to know what facilities you own and operate. Are any of them have the potential to create pollution? What mechanisms do you have in place to stop that from happening? So we did a comprehensive inspection and assessment of all the facilities in the county that were owned by municipalities, identified which one of those needed further and ongoing maintenance. For the most part, most of the cities and towns had one, and that is their DPW corpyards tend to be a pollutant hotspot. It's actually not tend to be. It's actually specifically named in the permit. You will consider this a pollutant hotspot, whether it is or to be it's actually specifically named in the permit you will consider this a pollutant hotspot whether it is or isn't so those get regular inspections from this point forward in addition we developed a number of best management practices for all kinds of municipal activities from street sweeping to storm drain maintenance to litter collection to you name it. We've helped to develop stormwater pollution prevention plans for hotspot facilities. One of the last sections of the stormwater permit is post-construction stormwater management. So these are permanent stormwater controls for new and redevelopment projects around basically managing stormwater from development projects, trying to protect water quality, implementing low impact development designs like swales, rain gardens, bioretention facilities. These are permanent best management practices, and as such, they require maintenance. And so I'm going to skip over this. In a nutshell, permanent stormwater controls MR. The approach is essentially to look at the site, think about site design, think about runoff treatment, think about peak runoff controls, and then facility maintenance. We've developed a guidance manual at the regional level that's used in Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Marin counties to provide guidance for new and redevelopment projects. There are several categories of them, but in general, it's defining the development envelope, minimizing grading, respecting setbacks from sensitive aquatic habitats. and limiting roofs and pavings, other impervious areas. And then once you've done all that, everything else is getting dispersed to vegetated areas or is being sent to actual bioretention facilities at the end of it that are going through a specific sand compost mix that's designed to actually remove pollutants. The trick in that is that those things require maintenance, and so there are requirements in our permit that anybody putting one of those stormwater treatment facilities in needs to sign an operation and maintenance agreement and record that with the deed of the property so that it runs with the deed, so every successive owner of that property is aware, oh, that thing in the corner isn't just a landscaping feature, it's actually a stormwater facility. I better not just put saw it over the top of it or something like that. We're also required by the permit to assess how effective we are at doing our job and preventing pollution. The irony of this is that we can't fail because otherwise we're not in compliance with the permit. So it's a little ironic that we're told to assess ourselves on this, as opposed to the state performing actual audits of it, which they do. But this is a first step. It keeps us honest. It keeps us saying, what can we do better? Are there improvements we can make in our program? Lastly, one of the main things that McStop has done in the past is participate in water quality monitoring or total maximum daily loads, which are the sort of regulatory mechanism by which the water board says how much of a particular pollutant is allowed to go through your system into the receiving water. In Sausalito, you're lucky enough to be part of two TMDLs, the Richardson Bay Pathogen TMDL, and everyone in Marin County and Sonoma is subject to the Urban Creek Diazinon, or pesticide-related toxicity TMDL. So on that, McStop led a two-year monitoring program to look at pesticides in water and sediment samples from around Marin. What we found was essentially what we told the water board we were going to find, which is we're no different than every other urbanized area in the state. We see trace amounts of pesticides. We see the same game of whack-a-mole that happens when a pesticide is heavily regulated. They come up with a new one. It takes about three, four, or five years before we start noticing, oh, there's actually aquatic toxicity that's related to that particular pesticide. This is a problem. So they get heavily regulated, and then they come up with a new one. So we see the same things in our creeks that we see in regional and statewide pesticide monitoring. So there's still continued work for us to do to meet those goals. This is sort of looking forward. We're engaged with the regional and state board on the next permit reissuance. We're engaged both in regional and statewide working groups to evaluate proposed language as soon as we see it to try to, well, essentially negotiate what these regulations look like. This is sausage making at its finest. These permits are hundreds of pages long, and they were clearly written by 100 different people. So it's really important to stay really engaged in the permit negotiating process, because that's when we can say, hey, Section E6 directly conflicts with what you're telling us to do in E10, and this doesn't really make a lot of sense. And, hey, we've tried this for five years, and we found no value in it. Do we really need to keep doing it? And those kinds of negotiations will happen. As Lauren entered into the trash regulations, which the state adopted in the trash amendments that the state adopted in 2014, which they begun to issue us marching orders on, which was the track choice, the choice between track one and track two that Sausalito had to make last September. This coming December 2018, everyone will be required to turn in an implementation plan to the state that says, this is how I'm, these are my trash problems, these are where they are, these are my priority land uses, this is my plan to attack that over the next 10 years. This is what it's going to look like, this is what I'm going to try. The state estimates about $777 to $791 per resident per year. When I do that math for Sausalito, it's about $57,000 a year for 10 years. So just over half a million dollars over 10 years. I suspect that number is a bit low. Just based on some basic analysis we've done and the fact that Sausalito is a relatively small community, you're going to be a little bit higher on the bell curve of cost per capita than some larger cities. And lastly, the Water Board has intimated to us that there's a high likelihood that the next permit will include requirements in both the PCB and Mercury TMDLs, both of which Marin County is named in, but to this point, we have never had permit requirements around those. So I will keep you all posted on developments as those come out, and I'd be happy to come back and provide an update to the board on that. I probably already ran through most of this. The State Board will amend our next permit to require trash reduction program be developed by 2030 in commercial, industrial, high-density residential and transit stops. No trash larger than 5 millimeters. So that's the back end of a cigarette butt, just for reference. That's the size target that we're trying to prevent being discharged out of the storm drain system into the bay. Trash capture devices in storm drains will be required. Track one means you're putting those in everywhere. That's probably not feasible. In fact, for Sausalito, it won't be feasible. You've got outfalls that are below the tide line. You've got various things that make that particularly challenging. AND you probably will be implementing some level of trash capture devices, which go in line in the system. They require maintenance to make sure they're still flowing and they don't cause localized flooding problems. We're also finding that there are really high likelihood that things like volunteer street cleanups, plastic bag bans at the state level, polystyrene bans perhaps at the local level, other things like that have the potential to create significant advantages towards meeting the trash reduction goals. As I can say, in the East Bay, they've been under these trash reduction requirements for about seven years. And in a number of cases, plastic bags used to be the most common thing they pulled out of their storm drain systems. After they put in local bans, this predated the statewide plastic bag ban, those numbers went down to about 5% of what they used to pull out in terms of plastic bag numbers. So those types of bans actually do have a significant environmental benefit on the ground. So, and then as Lauren alluded to, how we prove to the state that what we're doing is just as good as putting in full trash capture devices everywhere is by doing visual trash assessments on the street, actually getting out there and looking what's on the street now. McStop has been managing a project for all of the cities and towns over the last couple of weeks. You may have seen Conservation Corps North Bay crews cruising through your city about two weeks ago. They did on-land visual assessments in every city and town in Marin across the last three weeks, close to 800 on-land visual assessments. They definitely put in the miles. But they logged everything that they did into a mobile app. So as they were doing it, I could actually watch the assessment dots show up on the screen, could track how they're doing. It'll be a nice way to feed that data back in to the local decision-making about where your trash problems really are and where, because the state said, you know, commercial, industrial, high-density residential. Well, not all commercial places are the same. Not all high density residential areas are the same. I think we've shown time and time again that a commercial area on one side of the street may look such and such a way. On the other side of the street, it may look a different way. That may be because of management of a particular site. It may be because of clientele. It may be because of whatever varied reasons there might be. And so it's important to sort of gut check whether you actually have a trash problem and what the nature of it is. Briefly, I'll run through what the budget process is for McStop. We present our budget to both the Marin Public Works Association as well as the Marin General Services Authority who have budgetary oversight over McStop. They review the budget. They make the recommendations to the Board of Supervisors who actually adopts the budget. This current year's budget was about $824,000. That did include a contribution of $100,000 to bolster our reserves, which allow us to take on unexpected projects and contracts during the mid-year or requirements that come from the state. THESE WERE THE CONTRIBUTIONS THIS YEAR. So Sausalito paid in about $21,000 into the overall program cost for this year, representing just over 2.6% or so. Sorry. Yeah. |
| 02:54:16.07 | Rob Carson | In addition to the fee that you pay to support the work of McStop, you also pay a fee directly to the state for the privilege of being regulated onto the statewide stormwater permit to the tune of about $6,300. The state continually says this number is going to go up, and then they don't bill us for the difference they said it was going to go up. So it's been flat for the last four or five years. That's great. We'll hope to keep it that way, but it may go up with the next reissuance. In general, the proposed budget for next year is a significant drop over this year's, mainly because we had more reserve funding available than anticipated due to savings on a couple of projects. I expect roughly the same would be proposed for next year. In fiscal year 2021, it's harder for me to anticipate given the unknowns in a new permit. There could be new requirements like the PCB or mercury TMDL that have significant cost implications. But we've been told by the state that they're anticipating keeping the permit mostly the same with just some tweaks around the edges. So if that's true then we'd hope that those numbers would remain flat. The contributions are done using a formula that calculates based on area and population. Um, And I guess that's it. Happy to answer any questions you might have. |
| 02:55:45.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Great. Any questions? there's a test following this meeting. |
| 02:55:50.64 | Joe | I have a list of them. I love this stuff. OK. But I'm going to hold off because of the respect to my other council members. I don't want to demonstrate my depth knowledge of the SWEP program. So I'm going to hold my questions. |
| 02:55:57.37 | Unknown | I'm not going to be a |
| 02:56:07.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | although I call it Swippy. Swippy. Any questions? |
| 02:56:09.82 | Unknown | to. |
| 02:56:14.38 | Unknown | I'm not sure who I'm directing this question to. So obviously we have this permit infrastructure, let's call it that, that has been in place and it's I think really doing really well. But then we've also got the EPA order that you know, social you know, neighbors are under. And then we have the actual state of our storm water system. And in some cases lack thereof, or not even knowing where they are. Right, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but well our public works director is going, no, that's not an exaggeration. Could someone address the fact that are we, because of the state of our infrastructure, ever going to catch up. On the stormwater side, and I think Jonathan's standing up here. I'm partly wearing, you know, budget hat because we're going to be talking budgets over the next months. And I just want to put this in. I think I'd like Jonathan to put this in the context for us of the overall state of our infrastructure, stormwater infrastructure, if you may, if you would. |
| 02:57:40.15 | Jonathon Goldman | Thank you. Jonathan Goldman, your public works director and city engineer. The question you asked is a tricky one, so I'm not going to answer it directly. The fact is that we have no choice, and it's not really, I think, a matter of catching up. It's a matter of continuing to take this information into account manage our assets which is another thread that you and I I think have resonated on historically which in part means even knowing where they are knowing what size they are what condition they're in for example to the extent that materials leaving our storm drains of sizes greater than five millimeters aren't trash, that's kind of an important issue. So our task as staff and then ultimately through the budget process with council and then in the best of all worlds with the opportunity to apply for grants from other agencies and continue to work the process is you all that we can do. I don't know that there's ever a catch up. And the way as some of us who've been in both in the stormwater used to be considered nonpoint source pollution with advances in both, and Rob mentioned it for example in the context of plastic bags in the East Bay. Once people recognize that it's a bad idea for there to be plastic bags in the Bay, the combination of regulations, education, and then improvements in the way we manage our assets results in an improvement to the environment. The trick for us, though, is to make sure that we can pay for it and prioritizing our expenditures. So I know that as early as Friday, we get to continue some conversations with Finance Committee about budgets. We actually have the benefit, and I won't belabor this too long, but I appreciate the opportunity to talk because I haven't gotten to talk all evening. Thank you. the opportunity with SB 231, as I recall, to conceivably bring our stormwater system into a combined enterprise with our wastewater system and then be subject to rate-setting process that is much more flexible and, I think, much better reflects the regulatory climate that exists. I would love to be able to say that we'll be caught up tomorrow or in my lifetime, and I can't. Doesn't mean we don't need to try and need to continue to try, but I think it really is a continual process. It's a continual quality of life, quality of environment process that we have a moral obligation to pursue. |
| 03:00:54.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:00:55.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And just as a quick follow-on, Violation of our NPDES permit, the fiscal impact of that could be $25,000 a day fines. |
| 03:01:09.02 | Jonathon Goldman | I'm sure that that's true and attitude always counts in my experience, having worked for entities, a couple of entities now that have been fined. I would far rather Um, openly address an issue like that and and far rather do our best and be able to document that we're, and demonstrate that we're doing our best to comply, and that we subscribe to the objectives that the federal government and the state have established in permitting us to operate a combined stormwater system. |
| 03:01:50.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, just going back to your question, I guess I didn't quite understand what's meant by catching up. Do you mean catching up in terms of compliance or catching up in terms of having infrastructure replaced at a rate? you know, so that the infrastructure in place is adequate to serve the purpose. |
| 03:02:13.02 | Jonathon Goldman | And you know, Councilmember Withey asked the question. My response was, you know, in the more absolute sense. We are not in a position to replace our infrastructure in its entirety in any reasonable period of time. So if that's what he meant by catch up, then I answered appropriately. |
| 03:02:19.98 | Daryl Nemiro | you know, |
| 03:02:36.02 | Jonathon Goldman | It's... |
| 03:02:36.14 | Unknown | It is what I meant by catch up. I was trying to get to the point of understanding of the state of our infrastructure and how much it's like peddling uphill or what's the analogy we got where there's so much of basic infrastructure to do. This is sort of, and so I'm just teeing this up for the budget. |
| 03:02:59.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's typical of many municipalities who defer maintenance on things like storm water and sewer for decades. until. |
| 03:03:08.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And in terms of that capital infrastructure, is there any plan to phase in the trash capture mechanism? Or does the fact that you go on to track one, I mean, I can't remember which track is which, but if you're |
| 03:03:10.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:03:24.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | the one that doesn't include the trash capture is their |
| 03:03:25.50 | Jonathon Goldman | THE FACT THAT THE FACT THAT |
| 03:03:29.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | any benefit to kind of phasing in trash capture? |
| 03:03:32.45 | Jonathon Goldman | Trash capture. And we actually already have one trash capture device installed in a vault in the Marin ship upstream of an outfall that we had to settle a lawsuit about. non-stormwater discharges from that storm drain segment. as part of the Dunphy Park project, plan to install another significant trash capture device to deal with the stormwater catchment that runs right down here along B Street and out falls to the bay on Dunphy Park. part of our challenge and opportunity is accurately mapping what we have, accurately describing it in both hydraulic capacity context, pipe diameter, as well as condition. And that, as it turns out, is a fairly significant process in and of itself. When we find, for example, that And I have one slide in the PowerPoint presentation for Finance Committee on Friday, clearly depicting a piece of corrugated metal pipe. And I don't want to spend too long at this, but the history of how our infrastructure was built here is fascinating in its own right. in that we're conveying an awful lot of storm water that the state of California generates with a highway and a lot of the infrastructure that was built to convey that is ours to maintain. We have the same kind of rather what's the word, molasses-like development process in the Marin ship where there was no stormwater infrastructure there, it was underwater. Bechtel in a hurry built a shipyard and in a hurry we, won the war and now there's no shipyard, but the infrastructure that was built to deal with storm water for the, I don't know how many years the shipyard operated, let's say five years, wasn't designed to last 80 years. So, It is an asset management process, and unfortunately, because the point source regulations focused on wastewater, on sanitary sewage, it's not unfortunate, I think that was appropriate. Discharging untreated wastewater to the bay was a bad idea, but we did it for a very long time before that stopped. But we now need to apply that same asset management technology to a storm drainage system for some of the same reasons, but we don't have the dedicated revenue stream for it. It's that iterative process that we absolutely need to continue to be involved in. And staff's responsibility is to tell you what we need to do and do so in a politically and economically feasible context so that you're able to make informed decisions about what to appropriate funds for and just keep that process going. |
| 03:06:49.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any other questions of staff? Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comments. |
| 03:07:05.60 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you for the presentation. storm sewer runoff and garbage, and especially thanks to Jonathan for saying this is a moral problem. This is the first time that I've heard that kind of language here. The rainfall that happened This morning and last night was the biggest of the season. So far, I can tell because my cockpit train goes right into the bilge, so I know exactly how many buckets I have to bail out. |
| 03:07:46.79 | Jeffrey Chase | Martin Luther King, was assassinated during a garbage man strike April. WILL BE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of that event that was in Memphis. And as I can see now, every issue here has a bigger picture. It's going on across the country and in my life and even in the Torah portion. So I'm just going to, I'll say that the Torah portion for this week is Leviticus 1, and this is what we have children read first, even though it's kind of like You want to be a politician? Well, first, you're going to have to learn about sewers and garbage. before you can do anything else. So the Torah portion is about something called the burnt sacrifice. Korban is the word in Hebrew. where It's completely destroyed. it's the ox or the bull or the goat or the duck or just Some matzah meal. We have to be able to take the garbage that we produce and get rid of it. Marin County has a lot of responsibility here. They're in Southern California. What they're doing is they're telling people not to take showers. or flush their toilets excessively during a rainstorm to prevent the runoff. What happens when there's a runoff, I've come back from a trip once, and there was a big rainstorm that I missed. And when I came back, there was a lot of runoff from the overflow of the sewers, and there was a lot of dead wildlife floating upside down on the bay. I'm happy to hear that there wasn't an issue also with fecal coliform because that has been used by the San Francisco Chronicle and the television stations specifically against boat dwellers that they've called us honeypot, People without any evidence No visual evidence. And |
| 03:10:07.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you, Jeff. |
| 03:10:08.38 | Jeffrey Chase | you |
| 03:10:08.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bye. Any other public comment on this item? |
| 03:10:10.50 | Jeffrey Chase | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:10:12.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, seeing none, our action for this matter is to receive and file. Is there any comment from council members before we receive and file? All right, we thank Lauren, thank you to Rob Carson, thank you to our Public Works Director, Jonathan Goldman. We're going to move on to Abbott Chambers. Abbott, we're only 1.5 hours behind for your presentation. Thank you so much. |
| 03:11:04.72 | Abbott Chambers | Okay, just had to see if I could get my own clicker to work. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the Council. Thank you for having me on the Late Show tonight. I am Abbott Chambers, your Director of Communications and City Librarian. We're going to be talking now about draft public engagement guidelines for the city of Sausalito. As far as what I'll be covering, I'm going to start with the report from the Marin Civil Grand Jury that prompted the draft of these public engagement guidelines. Then I'll go through in some detail the draft that we've prepared of those public engagement or PE guidelines. And then I'll be seeking direction from council. If you have any direction as far as revisions to the draft that we've prepared. Thank you. The goal or my hope is that we'll be able to approve these PE guidelines at the next meeting that you'll have on March 27th. This is the cover of the grand jury report that prompted the draft of these PE guidelines. It's a Marin County civil grand jury report, Public Engagement in Marin, a Pathway to Inclusive Governance. It was issued on June 15th of 2017. And in the grand jury report, they defined public engagement as, quote, a broad range of methods through which government agencies provide the public with more and better information about and meaningful opportunities to influence government decisions. The grand jury made 12 different recommendations, and recommendation number one was that each agency, Sausalito included, without a formal PE plan should develop either a PE plan or a PE guidelines tailored to the needs of their public. In defining what the grand jury meant by public engagement guidelines, they say, any agency can gather their existing engagement strategies in a simple document, which can evolve over time with community input. The process of creating the guidelines does not need to be expensive or take a lot of resources. And they contrast the PE guidelines with a formal PE plan, which tends to be a much longer strategic document, 10, 25 pages long, that goes into a lot more detail and tends to be a much longer strategic document, 10, 25 pages long that goes into a lot more detail and tends to be the sort of plan that will be in place at a larger municipality. In our response to the grand jury, which was approved by the City Council on October 10th of 2017, We replied, the City Council believes that the PE guidelines approach is advantageous for a community of Sausalito's size, and will direct staff... to develop such guidelines and went on to say that we would adopt the PE guidelines by April 1st, 2018. So let me take you through the components of the draft PE guidelines that we've prepared. We start out by emphasizing the importance of public engagement in the city of Sausalito. Then we go on to provide a framework. for city staff and their approach to public engagement We identified the tools available to city staff for public engagement. And our goal in creating the guidelines was to keep it to one page, which is a somewhat audacious goal. But the thinking behind it is one page means an easily referenced document for a staff member of the city. I've reviewed a lot of these public engagement plans. and they tend to be really thick and heavy going with a lot of heavy public engagement plans, and they tend to be really thick and heavy going, with a lot of heavy verbiage about how great public engagement is. And what we're really looking for is something very practical for staff to have on hand. And by being brief, not only is it more immediately accessible to staff, but it's also easier for us to update. And this is a screenshot of those guidelines. You have a copy in your packet tonight. And if you're watching from home, from the agenda online, you'll have a link to these draft guidelines. So taking you through the draft PE guidelines, we start out by establishing the importance of public engagement to the City of Sausalito, saying the staff and elected officials of the City of Sausalito believe that transparency and an informed citizenry are essential to good government. By informing citizens about issues and involving them at an early stage, the city makes better decisions with more community understanding and a broader base of support. Then we go on to spell out the methodology. for public engagement in the city, saying, based on their expertise, input from city management, and any formal direction from the city council, city staff will begin by estimating the level of interest in an issue in the community. Thank you. For issues of moderate and high interest, city staff will identify the goals of the engagement process and create a timeline for the deployment of specific communication methods. |
| 03:16:03.14 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:16:07.00 | Abbott Chambers | So let me take you through this levels of interest concept. We're suggesting that issues of low interest within the community would be ones, the resolution of which would have a low impact on the community. for medium level of interest issues. The resolution of that issue would have a moderate impact across a broad cross-section of the community or a significant impact for a specific population within our community. And then for high, we're looking at issues that would have a significant impact across the broad cross-section of the city of Sausalito. So just to give you some examples of these different levels of interest. For low, we're thinking about city council consent calendar items. Actually, probably most of the items tonight would fall into this low category. In addition, most of the items that come before the planning commission and other boards and commissions of the city of Sausalito. Medium level. Looking at some of the recent issues that the city has considered, the Southview Park playground equipment decision, the drone ordinance, and the Turning Street Dock and boat ramp ordinance are all examples. And then examples of high interest issues, the Saucedo ferry landing, short-term rentals, the marijuana ordinance, and our general plan update. So let me take you through the communication tools that we spell out as available to staff in their public engagement toolkit. And within this low level category, we have public notices, many of which are required either by federal, state, or local law. updates to the city website. In this case, this is the public notices page within the community development section of our website. Commission items, so agenda items on our boards and commissions that are noticed per the Brown Act. Updates in Sausalito Currents, which is our weekly e-newsletter, we currently have about 3,000 subscribers, and it's opened by just over 1,000 people every week. For Currents updates, for these low-interest items, we're thinking that they'll mostly be listed as updates from boards and commissions in addition to department updates, those two sections of Currents. Moving to the medium level classification, we're thinking here that city staff would be selectively deploying low level tools in addition to these tools. So we're not saying, you know, at this medium level, this is just what people will be using. It's basically you've got this additional level of communication tools to tap into. They include feature articles within Currents, News items on the city website featured on the city's homepage and in our news section. postings to social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Nextdoor Using our community survey tool, Open City Hall, Um, making special outreach to affected populations. In this case, this is a letter that the Parks and Recreation Department sent out to residents of Old Town about the Southview Park project. Creating a special email distribution list to people who identify themselves as interested in a particular topic. This is another instance of Southview Park. continuing with Southview Park community meetings about the issue, And also, with Southview Park here, story polls. So actual physical examples for the community to explain a project that's underway or proposed. |
| 03:20:00.79 | Daryl Nemiro | post. |
| 03:20:02.85 | Abbott Chambers | Closing up then with the high level communication tools. Again, we're saying that staff would be able to choose their tools to deploy from both the low and medium level tool sets, plus these other tools that they can use, which would include workshops and tours. This is a photo of the Marinship walking tour that was part of the general plan update process. Press releases to local media. Hot Topics page on the city website. I think we have about six or seven of the pages now that are intended as aggregations of an issue for city residents to educate themselves about a particular topic. Special City Council meetings, this may look familiar. This was a meeting, a ferry landing meeting at the IDES Hall last fall. Special postal mailings like this postcard that was sent out to all city residents about the ferry landing project. Exhibits are special displays. Also, Ferry Landing, this is an example of one of the posters that was up in the Litho Street lobby during the project discussion phase. And last but not least, banners at strategic locations around town. This is an example of a banner that was, I believe, on the fence of the basketball courts in Robin Sweeney Park. Other locations for banners include the fishing pier and the north gateway to town. So just to recap the PE guidelines to close here, My presentation, we're saying that city staff will begin by estimating the level of interest in an issue in the community. as low, medium, or high. taking into account input from city management That staff will then arrange for the appropriate communication tools corresponding to the projected level of interest. That for issues of moderate and high interest, city staff will identify the goals of the engagement process and create a timeline for the deployment of specific communication methods. And I think this one is really essential. We can have the best toolkit possible, and I think we do have excellent communication tools at hand. But it's essential that city staff get on top of an issue early and get word out in the community, keeping in mind also, We as staff members of the city of Sausalito want to learn from the community. What feedback do we want to help make the decisions that we have to make for our city? Continuing with the recap, the communication methods and level of interest will be subject to change based on input from the public and direction from city management. There's no reason why if something that staff had thought of as a low-level topic of interest generates a lot of public comments, it gets elevated. It's the kind of thing that's happened quite regularly, I believe, in Sausalito, whether it's low moving to medium, medium to high. But part of... The intention here is not to be rigid, but to be flexible and to be prepared to adjust as circumstances change. And on that theme as well, we really want the PE guidelines to be a living document. We're going to be learning a lot as we go about what's working and not working with our communications. We also, having a one-page document, will be able to update it more quickly. Communications tools are going to be changing if we look at how much things have changed in the last 15 years. So that concludes my presentation, and I'm asking that... You receive and file this presentation and provide any final direction on a final draft for adoption on March 27th. Thank you. |
| 03:23:51.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you, Abbott, and thank you for that one-page idea. That's audacious. Any questions of Abbott? |
| 03:23:55.86 | Abbott Chambers | AUDATION. |
| 03:24:01.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Really excellent presentation, and I think the lack of questions really testifies to how thorough your presentation was. So thank you for that. Thank you. Any public comment on this item? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to. |
| 03:24:17.32 | Jeffrey Chase | Yes. Thank you. |
| 03:24:18.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 03:24:19.03 | Jeffrey Chase | Let's go. Okay. Fire. is what this is. So it might be a kiss of death for me to thank Abbott and to say that we always have to judge whether our government is doing... a majority of good things, or a majority of bad things. And because we have a library here, I say, that There's a reason not to be upset with the things that are wrong, the things that I'm pointing out, all the time. so much that I'm boring myself. I'm talking too slowly and I'm saying that I feel guilty because I'm wearing an Anchor Out Chronicles t-shirt And this was a zine that we were doing. And here's Abbott on top of operating the library, having to be the communications director and also the movie producer. for Sausalito. that because the movie theater has been closed now for a very, very long time, Abbott is running the movies in Sausalito, California. So I just want to say thanks, Abbott, for everything that you do. Mm-hmm. I'll do better. |
| 03:25:45.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks, Jeff. Okay, seeing no further public comment, our recommendation is to receive and file this presentation and provide direction on a final draft. Is there any direction from council? All right, then by consensus, are we prepared to receive and file? Thank you. |
| 03:26:01.69 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 03:26:02.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Great, okay, mission accomplished. Thank you so much Abbott. |
| 03:26:05.00 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you so much Abbott. |
| 03:26:06.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:26:07.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | With that we're going to move on to item 5D, approve a letter opposing California State Assembly Bill SB 827. This came from, as a recommendation from our League of California Cities, Nancy Hall Bennett, who's making the presentation on this. |
| 03:26:27.97 | Mary Wagner | I have a very brief presentation. Okay. So Senate Bill, I don't have a PowerPoint, but Senate Bill 827 is a bill introduced by Senator Weiner that would exempt certain housing projects from local building height limitations, densities, parking requirements, and design review standards. The housing projects would be exempted if they're within a half mile of a major transit stop, which is a defined term, which for Sausalito includes a ferry terminal which is serviced by bus service. The League of California Cities is opposed to the bill and is urging jurisdictions to write letters of opposition to the bill. We provided a draft letter for your consideration this evening in opposition to the bill. |
| 03:26:30.11 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 03:26:32.52 | Daryl Nemiro | Thank you. |
| 03:26:32.54 | Unknown | Senate Bill 8. |
| 03:27:12.64 | Mary Wagner | which you may review and direct staff to send tomorrow. |
| 03:27:16.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you |
| 03:27:16.60 | Mary Wagner | And that concludes my presentation. |
| 03:27:18.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Any questions of Lilly? I will say I had a call from a resident on Nevada Street today who said he knows he's swimming uphill, but he believes that Sausalito should not oppose SB 827 because Sausalito needs to... be more sympathetic to the need for more low income housing. |
| 03:27:50.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks. |
| 03:27:52.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right. |
| 03:27:53.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any comment or I'll entertain a motion? I have some comments. Okay. So first of all, I do, let's say, not disagree with the person that you spoke to today in the sense that I do think we need to address housing both in Marin and in Sausalito. |
| 03:27:57.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:28:12.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I... I looked at the draft letter. We got several letters urging that we oppose SB 827. And one of them was a copy of a letter from Mill Valley, or attached to one of them. And I thought that the Mill Valley letter took an approach that I liked a little bit better, which was to note some of the efforts that Mill Valley is already taking and some of the aspects of their general plan, housing element, that contribute to some of the goals that Senator Weiner is probably trying to achieve through his bill. So, you know, I just thought that that was a good, I'll just read the paragraph from Mill Valley that doesn't exactly apply to Sausalito but would be possible. City of Mill Valley housing element provides a structure that allows for flexibility engaging what a local jurisdiction can do and meeting its housing goals including housing affordability, neighborhood quality and character, equal housing, sustainability and government collaboration. We should not lose sight of this process that is currently in place and works. You know I think quoting to our own housing element and some of the aspects that we worked hard to achieve in that process would be good. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance today to go back and look at our housing element to pick out. some of those elements and if we can't do that on this letter I would really encourage us in the future when we write to our state legislators to express opposition that we are as constructive as possible and note the efforts that we are making to achieve the goals that they are proposing to meet. Because usually there is a valid public purpose at stake and it's just a question of how the best approach is to meet that goal. |
| 03:30:11.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I totally endorse that approach. There is no deadline on this. We've received correspondence from numerous residents urging that we take swift action on this. But there is no deadline, and it would be very easy to tailor a letter that makes reference to our very low and low-income strategies, the fact that we are ahead, even though our arena allocation was never intended to be a quota. If you treat our arena allocation as a quota, we are way ahead of every milestone for our very low and low income housing allocation, except for moderate. |
| 03:30:22.68 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:30:22.97 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. |
| 03:30:55.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're behind on building the moderate housing that was projected to be built during this period of time, but not very low and low income. And Danny Castro provided a letter to us that enunciated those statistics, and so I would be more than happy to write a paragraph. You could either delegate the authority to tailor the letter and have the city manager sign and send it out, or we can bring it back here for approval on consent at our March 27 meeting. So what do folks think? |
| 03:31:31.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'd be happy to delegate. I'm not trying to slow this process down and I'm not opposed to opposing the bill. I just would like the tone of the letter to be more constructive if possible. |
| 03:31:43.70 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I totally endorse your approach. |
| 03:31:45.44 | Joe | Yeah, I'm in no hurry to get it out if it takes a little while to do that. Would putting the job to housing ratio also... I would love... |
| 03:31:52.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I would love to include that. And again, I have, I carry around in my backpack a little sheaf of papers that has all of that data. So I can very easily assist with getting that. |
| 03:32:04.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I like that. So I'm happy to delegate it to the mayor and city manager if others are willing. I think we're all on the same page. |
| 03:32:15.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, do you need a motion on that, Lily? Okay, then we have direction to staff. We have consensus on the dais. Okay, great. |
| 03:32:23.56 | Unknown | Madam Mayor, one thing that might be worth |
| 03:32:24.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. |
| 03:32:27.83 | Unknown | taken up in some future time is just as Abbott has developed, and I think rightly so, this public engagement platform, if you like, so you've pre-thought through some things of how you do it, a lot of jurisdictions set up a sort of process by which it does these sort of things. So for instance, if the league makes a recommendation, then depending upon what stage a bill's at, the city council is automatically delegated to the mayor the ability to write, some things like that. It'd be worth just putting together a sort of legislative platform that goes through our thinking process and allows us to a bit more formalize how we do this rather than You know, when do we do it? You know, Nancy's written to us saying, you know, go, go, go. You got to do it. Let's. And actually, the league has some of these platforms, it has some models for this. So it might be worth looking at them. |
| 03:33:34.23 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I'd like to go ahead and refer that task to the agenda setting committee, which did a stellar job of revising our protocols for our last meeting. If that's okay, is that okay with everybody? |
| 03:33:49.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 03:33:49.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Okay, so Lily, will you add that to the list for your agenda setting committee? Thank you, Ray, that's a great suggestion. Okay. Next is our public hearing item. Mary, we've caught up. We're only 40 minutes behind now. |
| 03:34:08.30 | Mary Wagner | you |
| 03:34:08.37 | Unknown | you |
| 03:34:10.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:34:10.09 | Mary Wagner | If Abbott was the late show, I'm the late, late show. So this is your last item this evening and it is on an amendment. |
| 03:34:10.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | AND YOU CAN SEE THAT. Thank you. you |
| 03:34:23.59 | Mary Wagner | the Sasoleta Municipal Code regarding the construction ordinance. So some background, in 2009 the city council adopted ordinance number 1199, which modified the Sasoleta Municipal Code regarding time restrictions on operating construction devices in residential zones. Ordinance 1199 did the following. So the first thing it did is change the hours of operation of construction devices in residential zones by reducing the weekday hours from what was 8 AM to 7 PM to 8 AM to 6 PM. And then it also prohibited work on holidays. |
| 03:35:07.67 | Mary Wagner | During the discussion of the ordinance on its first read, the council directed staff to modify the ordinance to allow work on holidays by homeowners. And they also directed that a new section was added to define what holidays officially recognized by the city were. Recently, staff noted that there was a typographical error in the publishing of ordinance 1199 and the existing code language at the time regarding the time frame for work on holidays officially recognized by the city. Which was 9 AM to 7 PM was retained and the new language prohibited was not included. Therefore, instead of that section reading like this on the screen, it read like this. And this is what's in the code today. |
| 03:35:59.96 | Chris Gallagher | and do all of your work on holidays. |
| 03:36:02.43 | Mary Wagner | So in reviewing the staff reports from October 6th and October 20th, 2009, it's clear from the first read on October 6th that the intent of the ordinance was to prohibit work on holidays by non-homeowners. It was during the first read that the council directed staff to extend the exception granted to homeowners allowing constructed activities on holidays on sundays and to holidays so there was an existing allowance for homeowners to work on sundays and they directed staff to include holidays as well therefore it was a typo in publishing codifying the ordinance to allow the construction work by non-homeowners on holidays and this draft ordinance before you this this evening corrects that error. So our recommendation this evening corrects that error. So our recommendation this evening is to waive the first reading and introduce the ordinance by title only. you |
| 03:36:57.07 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Any questions of staff? Any public comment? you Any comments from the dais? |
| 03:37:03.94 | Unknown | Actually, I do have a question. Yes. Okay, so in the end, |
| 03:37:05.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. |
| 03:37:11.16 | Unknown | We've corrected the ordinance so that we haven't taken away the rights of a homeowner to do what they want, right? |
| 03:37:24.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE CITY IS A LITTLE BIT OF |
| 03:37:24.41 | Unknown | Okay. Okay. |
| 03:37:26.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, then I will move that we waive first reading, read by title only, and introduce an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito amending section 12.16.140.A of the Sausalito Municipal Code to correct a typographical error in drafting of ordinance number 1199 by prohibiting work on holidays officially recognized by the city by non-home owners. |
| 03:37:50.75 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second. |
| 03:37:51.68 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Aye. That motion carries 5-0. Thank you, Lily. |
| 03:37:52.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bye. |
| 03:37:57.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, we're going to move on to our city manager report. Is there any public comment on our items 7B through 7F? Seeing none, we'll turn it over to Adam. Thank you. |
| 03:38:10.75 | Adam Politzer | Thank you, Madam Mayor and council members. I have two items to report out on. The first is in the last 24 hours, 18 hours or so, there's been some discussion through Facebook, email, and correspondence from Kate Sears' office that there's some issues up on Wolfpack Ridge in terms of public access and the dispute between public access and private road. So staff is looking back into this. At least a year ago, if not longer, this issue came to a head where folks were using the road to access the trail system up there in the national parks system. property owners brought to the city's attention that this is a private road and access isn't available to the public so we worked through a pretty onerous process including the assessor's office to to to reach a conclusion that the parcels up there are in fact private so that's what we've shared with members of the public that are asking about access to the trail system. Our public works director working with the National Park Service has identified that the Spencer Head Trail is accessible at the park and ride there at Spencer Avenue where people can park and then access the trail. I've asked the city attorney and our community development director and our public works director to recircle back on the information that helped us reach this conclusion just to double confirm. Unfortunately, there are folks that are upset about the access changing over time. And potentially are going to stage a protest up at Wolfpack Ridge and make this an issue. I assured the mayor earlier today that our police chief is on top of it working with the park service, working with county sheriff and the CHP to be prepared if, in fact, a protest does materialize on Saturday when the folks that are advocating for a protest are asking people to show up. We hope by the conclusion of tomorrow or Thursday that we can put out a joint statement statement with the National Park Service that's working with staff at this moment. You know, to help reduce the stress in the community on access to open space. So once we've confirmed our position, or reaffirmed our position, we'll put that out in a public statement and then also put it out as a press release. It'll be on the high level list of things that we'll do in terms of our website, getting information out, and through Nextdoor, Facebook, and the other sources. But I just want the council to be aware that this is rather new news in the last 24 hours or less and that staff is working to resolve it. The other is more positive. It's, I think, council members received a letter from Sausalito Plus. It was, the letter was actually sent to Sausalito Bike Return. Sausalito Bike Return has had an opportunity to actually sit down at Deb and Ed Fotch's house and meet with Ed, sorry, meet with Lee. Lisa Scopazi and Deb Fudge had an opportunity to sit down and kind of review what the program that Sausalito Bike Return had proposed to the city council. From there, we met last Friday, the chief, Deb Fudge, Lisa Scopazi, and I, and went back through the program and made a few minor changes. I consider them minor. Some might consider them significant. But one of them was some confusion that was raised at the last meeting that Council Member Burns had brought forward in terms of just looking at how we were counting the number of counting the bikes as they came in, three days versus seven days, and making sure that we were apples to apples. And so we went back and looked at the records and in fact, Sausalito Plus did count seven days a week, starting in April all the way through the middle of October, which in this case would be October 14th. the Susceladal Bike Return has agreed to staff station one up at Alexander Avenue seven days a week starting April 1st through October 14th. We also found another mistake that we had made, which was we were asking Sausalito Bike Return to staff station one from 11 to 5 PM, when fact South Souda Plus staffed it from 11 to 4, which I think will help the Scapazes and South Souda Bike return. Because that person now at 4 o'clock can come down to the ferry landing and help with the ambassador services that are needed from 4 o'clock on. We reviewed the need to bring Sausalito Plus staff on board with Sausalito Bike Return. They are knowledgeable, they bring expertise. They, I think, a lot of them had a lot of fun working and were great ambassadors to the city. So Lisa and Deb Fotch went through that list of folks that they strongly recommend that we hired. And they confirmed on Friday when the chief and I that Lisa has already started contacting them and Deb Fotch has also contacted them and putting them in contact with Lisa and John Scopazi. So we're actually thinking that that's a really positive. move because why we train people that did a good job last year and bring bring them back. Um... It was another area that Lisa Scapazi had already made significant progress on, which was their manual, but at the urging of Saucer Plus, why reinvent the wheel? And so Deb Fudge was willing to share their manual with Lisa, and Lisa was going to incorporate things in there that she didn't have in hers as they bring on employees and make sure that they're trained and and ready ready to take the streets and for this upcoming season just have a few more things here that I think is worth noting you know looking at the peak season and recognizing that weather will dictate how many staff they're going to need and how many staff they're not going to need. It was important that everyone recognizes that they will have a pool of staff available if in fact there's a lot of people there. A lot of people down at the ferry landing, a lot of bikes that are coming into town. They have the ability to staff up and then the opposite obviously if it's a rainy winter day. So I'll just skip to the end of this and say that what was really, What I was really pleased about was that Deb has and will continue to meet with Lisa on a regular basis as needed. Deb said that she was happy to meet with the chief and I as needed, and especially as the season goes. But I wanted to assure the council that I think that we have a good partner with Sausalito Plus, especially with Deb Fudge as we go through this transition. And that I think that the chief and I are both very confident in social bike return as we head to the beginning of this program, which will kick off on March 23rd. So those are the two items that I wanted to report back on. I thought that it was important as we prepare for the bike return program and the congestion management that's ahead of us. We know that we have a significant change in how the The area is going to be managed in terms of needing a reservation to get in the queue and also not being allowed for the queue to be outside of the queuing area that for this season the district has agreed with the city to manage. So we'll come back in May with an update and a report and hopefully, you know, good smooth sailing as we launch the season. I just want to share those two items. Happy to answer anything else that's come to mind. But that concludes my report. |
| 03:47:28.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:47:29.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:47:29.75 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks. |
| 03:47:30.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:47:30.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:47:30.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:47:30.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE Okay, I'm very concerned about the bike. Okay, great. |
| 03:47:35.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So back on the Wolf Backridge issue, some of the media that I saw referenced communication from the director of DPW that the road was public. is that there is not that correspondence. |
| 03:47:56.36 | Adam Politzer | Probably a year or two ago that was our position because it had been used by the public. But the homeowners started to complain to the city saying that the road is not public. And so when we went through the process of identifying if it was private or public, it came back that our records and the county assessor's records showed that it was private. |
| 03:48:27.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:48:32.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So Adam, if there's more, can you please, how about if we agree that they'll provide an update to agenda setting committee and we can decide whether this needs to come to the council as an agenda item if there's some dispute or some action that needs to be taken? |
| 03:48:47.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, that would be great. I mean, I think it's a really important issue and just a lot of sentiment about it and |
| 03:48:52.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Madame America. Thank you. I'm just concerned about us discussing a substantive issue that's not on the agenda. |
| 03:48:55.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm not sure. |
| 03:49:02.44 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I think what I was trying to report out was that by the end of Thursday, we should have reaffirmed our position and we'll send that information out to the council as well out to the community at that high level communication using high level communication tools that Abbott shared earlier. So we don't need to wait until agenda setting, we'll send information out to the council this week. |
| 03:49:28.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's great. We have 22 pages of comments from various members of the community on this issue. So just depending on the disposition, we should just, this could be fluid and something we want to consider. further action on. Council member committee reports. |
| 03:49:49.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you |
| 03:49:49.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you |
| 03:49:49.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:49:49.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:49:49.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | wants to lead off. I can be quick. Okay. There was a sustainability commission meeting last week, and there were a lot of interesting issues, but I think the two to highlight are there was an excellent presentation from Robert Haley on zero waste, and I think he highlighted some new issues in the markets around what China and other countries will actually accept in terms of recycled materials and what they'll process and the price of that and how that might impact us here. And then the other issue is the Sustainability Commission is going to consider an off-site for strategic planning for the upcoming year. They had highlighted sea level rise last year and they have some new members and want to take a look at their agenda for the coming year. That's all. Joe? |
| 03:50:49.97 | Unknown | the Waterfront Working Group meeting on February 27th, and we discussed various issues regarding |
| 03:50:59.03 | Crystal Gift | enforcement of these prohibitions in certain areas where waters are in the dust. |
| 03:51:05.97 | Chris Gallagher | I'm going to go. Great, Joe. |
| 03:51:11.08 | Joe | I don't have anything to report in the past, but I'm really excited about March 26th when the bike and ped gets back together. |
| 03:51:16.75 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 03:51:17.02 | Joe | We have some new friends for David to play with. |
| 03:51:19.52 | Unknown | I'm going to go. I'm not. |
| 03:51:20.82 | Joe | He's already he's so excited he's already here waiting for it. So the bike and ped will be reconvening on March 26th and we're excited. |
| 03:51:27.80 | Chris Gallagher | Congratulations. Ray, anything? Thank you. |
| 03:51:31.46 | Abbott Chambers | Thank you. |
| 03:51:32.92 | Unknown | No, not really. We got a finance committee coming up on Friday. It's a real sort of kick off to the budget. So that's going to be fun. Last week, I represented us up in American Canyon. Well, represented us, represented MCCMC properly as a member of the executive board of the North Bay division. We had a quarterly League of California Cities dinner evening and the theme up in Napa County was brought together the fire chief's sheriff of Napa and Sonoma and talked about the fires and Actually, the panel discussion was basically about the first eight hours of the fire. And all I can say is, you know, it is pretty scary when it's late on a Sunday night and you don't know what's going on. Because my take-home message from that evening was they didn't know what was going on. the napa county fire chief was out in his truck in his pickup truck trying to figure out where some of the fire was and he was calling into his dispatch center saying well have you got any calls for area abc He said, no, there's no fire up there. He said, well, I'm in it. I'm in the fire. And so there was just so lack of information, in part because of the time of day and because of all the reasons. It was a little scary. When we had our little fire here up in Spencer, we had our emergency operations center open within 30 minutes or something. Well, it was 2 in the afternoon or 1 in the afternoon. Imagine if it had been 10 o'clock at night. |
| 03:53:36.37 | Unknown | MAKING A LITTLE BIT OF |
| 03:53:37.35 | Unknown | And that was the take home message for me. Imagine something happened here at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night. So. |
| 03:53:46.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, I attended a disaster preparedness meeting this evening. And one of the things announced is that there will be a disaster preparedness workshop put on by Southern Marin Fire and that will be attended by our friends over at the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It will take place on April 14 from 10 a.m. to 1130 a.m. at the Bay Model. And our disaster preparedness committee also established a regular meeting date and So and we will be filling the final vacancy on that committee this evening. I also attended a meeting with our fire chief. It's my sort of semi-annual meeting with him in which we discussed the importance of fire chief. devising for Sausalito and evacuation plan or evacuation options and also applying for grant funding to fund the repair of our stairways throughout Sausalito that could be used in as an evacuation plan. And we also discussed fire station 2, he's going to go up there and He understands it to be used right now for storage for the city of Sausalito, but he's just going to familiarize himself with that station and its capacity to be used in the event of an emergency. Okay, so that's all on Councilmember reports. We're going to move on to appointments to boards, commissions, and committees. D1 is appointment to the Community Safety Disaster Preparedness Committee. We interviewed two individuals, Joe Paulino and Sandra Bushmaker. I'm actually going to open it up for nominations. |
| 03:55:42.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'll nominate Joe Paulino. |
| 03:55:45.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Are there any other nominations? |
| 03:55:50.71 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:55:53.47 | Unknown | that. Thank you. |
| 03:55:57.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No, not yet, but we are in the process of |
| 03:55:58.61 | Unknown | We are in the process. |
| 03:56:01.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | revising our proposed policy for boards and commissions and alternates that the agenda setting committee will be bringing back to the council for consideration. Thank you. |
| 03:56:12.58 | Unknown | I'd like, I don't want to make an alternate nomination, but I'd like to consider Sandra. for the alternate position if we have an alternative. |
| 03:56:19.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Absolutely. They were two great candidates. Yeah, they were great. |
| 03:56:21.09 | Unknown | Yeah, they were great. |
| 03:56:21.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I totally agree. I totally agree. Okay, so. Yeah. So, Lily, will you make a note? So by acclamation, we are going to appoint Joe Paulino. But when and if we designate an alternate position on this committee, we would like to go ahead and invite Sandra Bushmaker to serve as the alternate. |
| 03:56:48.21 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. I'm establishing tonight my first blue ribbon committee. It is a committee concerned with rewriting some of our zoning ordinance to... ensure that our zoning ordinance comports with the 15 new housing bills that were enacted at the end of last year. To date, the members of the Blue Ribbon Committee are Melissa Blaustein, Russ Irwin, Susan Cleveland Knowles, and myself. And when and if we expand the membership of that committee, I will so inform the Council. |
| 03:57:20.67 | Chris Gallagher | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:57:27.48 | Unknown | Madam Mayor, I have some questions. You know, we have periodically had blue ribbon committees formed, whatever they are, because I don't know what they are. And we've got in our ordinance task forces, we've got committees. We've got committees that are under the Brown Act. We have committees that are staffed by staff. We have committees that aren't staffed by staff. COMMITTEES THAT ARE UNDER THE BROWN ACT. WE HAVE COMMITTEES THAT ARE STAFFED BY STAFF. WE HAVE COMMITTEES THAT AREN'T STAFFED BY STAFF. |
| 03:57:28.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. |
| 03:57:59.12 | Unknown | What's this one? |
| 03:58:00.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So it's essentially an ad hoc committee. It is for a limited purpose and a limited term, which will probably end with my term as mayor. And it is really to fill a gap. This is an objective that the city council has expressed an interest in, but we won't be able to identify funding to pursue this until July with our new budget. And so this is a committee comprised of volunteers who want to undertake this task before we have the funds to hire outside council to assist the full budget. |
| 03:58:33.02 | Unknown | Will it be using any significant staff time? |
| 03:58:33.29 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So, I'm going to go to the No. |
| 03:58:36.11 | Unknown | I'm not sure. Yeah. |
| 03:58:38.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:58:39.04 | Joe | The President. |
| 03:58:42.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Ad hoc, no. Not agendized and not Brown Act. Ad hoc. |
| 03:58:47.45 | Unknown | OK, thanks for that clarification. |
| 03:58:48.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. Clarification. Certainly. Okay, and then I do want to announce some additional appointments long overdue. for our Marin Bay Waterfront Adaptation Vulnerability Evaluation Bay Wave. I'm appointing Jill Hoffman. For our MIRA, I'm appointing our Vice Mayor Joe Burns. That's Mira. M-E-R-A, it's the Law Enforcement Communication Equipment committee and I don't know what the acronym stands for. |
| 03:59:27.66 | Unknown | It's spelled emergency without the E. We're in emergency somewhere. It's OK. |
| 03:59:32.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's okay. Yeah, response something. |
| 03:59:33.43 | Chris Gallagher | Yeah, response something. |
| 03:59:35.62 | Michael Sheets | Thank you. |
| 03:59:36.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And for our City Council ad hoc working group for the machine shop, I'm appointing Susan Cleveland-Knowles and Jill Hoffman. And that's it for appointments for this evening. Thank you. Okay, any questions on future agenda items? or discussion? Yes. |
| 04:00:02.84 | Unknown | Go ahead. So and this is it may already be on the list, but do we have an agenda item for disaster preparedness plan or disaster, whatever you want to call it, evacuation, citizen information, what do you do in an emergency? |
| 04:00:19.23 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We do not have that as a current, again, the April 14 workshop at the Bay Model is the first step, but we don't have that specifically as an agenda item. Lily, will you just add that to our list of future agenda items, and we'll figure out how to get that in front of us. |
| 04:00:19.52 | Unknown | presentation. Well, I'm going to go. |
| 04:00:26.69 | Chris Gallagher | is, |
| 04:00:34.45 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. Yeah, I'm not sure what to call it, but actually our interview tonight with Sandra Bushmaker made me think about that. Like, yeah, what do you do? Yeah. |
| 04:00:37.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 04:00:38.13 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:00:40.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, great. Thank you. All right. All right. Other reports of significance? I have an item on future agenda items. Okay. Shoot. |
| 04:00:46.63 | Joe | Thank you. |
| 04:00:46.65 | Unknown | All right. |
| 04:00:49.77 | Joe | I have an item on future agenda items. We have... Thank you. AS A COUNCIL A COUPLE TIMES TALKED ABOUT THE NEED FOR ALTERNATES OR NOT. AT THE AGENDA SETTING COMMITTEE, WE we looked at some options the staff put together as far as naming maybe renaming if we're going to call something's committees something's commissions something's board something's trustees we have a plethora of different names for now we decided to keep that as is and then looking at a plan to consider at an at a future meeting having alternates applied to each committee other than planning commission or historic landmarks. THE COMPANY IS A PLAN TO CONSIDER AT A FUTURE MEETING HAVING ALTERNATES APPLIED TO EACH COMMITTEE. OTHER THAN PLANNING COMMISSION OR HISTORIC LANDMORKS So there was a couple ideas brought forth, whether they're, how they vote. We put on paper here a hybrid that includes, not that piece of paper. |
| 04:01:46.34 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, we can't have a substantive discussion about this tonight. We can just put it on our future agenda. |
| 04:01:53.09 | Joe | a hybrid of ideas for you to look at for a future agenda item. |
| 04:01:57.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Great, and does Lily have a copy of this? Okay, wonderful, thank you Joe. |
| 04:02:04.88 | Joe | Thank you, staff, for putting that together. |
| 04:02:06.23 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Job well done. Any other future agenda items? Any reports of significance? Okay, in that event, I'm going to adjourn our meeting this evening in honor of Bill Kirsch. So Bill Kirsch passed away about 10 days ago. He was a Sausalito eclectic abstract painter and architect and one of the founders of the modern Sausalito Art Festival. He designed, coordinated, and organized the festival in 1965 and 1966 with artists Al Garvey and Michael Bray. In addition to painting and raising a family, Bill worked full-time as an architect since 1958. He designed over 400 structures that include art galleries, custom and market homes, ranches, restaurants, floating homes, bed and breakfasts, and commercial buildings. Many of his projects won awards and were published in more than 30 books, magazines, and newspapers, as well as featured in two films. Bill lived on a houseboat here in Sausalito where he built a floating studio where he was able to paint. Bill's philosophy always was that understanding our environment is important for peace, joy, and creativity in our lives. He believed Sausalito was the magical place that allowed that to happen. He and Felicity felt lucky to have found a place where this was possible. Thank you. The city of Sausalito was lucky to have him. And so I'm adjourning this evening's meeting in his honor. Thank you, and we're adjourned at 11.14 p.m. |