| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:13.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:16.20 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:00:21.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:21.56 | Ulrich | Thank you. |
| 00:00:24.74 | Unknown | Here you can have mine. |
| 00:00:42.66 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:42.67 | Debbie Pagliaro | Thank you. |
| 00:00:43.03 | Unknown | Just make sure she doesn't have one. |
| 00:00:47.18 | Debbie Pagliaro | It's been so good. Thank you. Thank you. you |
| 00:00:52.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:22.35 | Unknown | Joan, do you see Jill's text? No. 8 p.m. |
| 00:01:25.13 | Unknown | Hey. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.38 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, just as to lay. |
| 00:02:16.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Good evening everybody and welcome to the regular city council meeting for the city of Sausalito for Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 7pm. I will call the meeting to order and ask Serge to call the roll. |
| 00:02:30.15 | Unknown | Councilmember Withey? Here. Councilmember Cleveland Knowles? Here. Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 00:02:33.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | here. |
| 00:02:37.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Councilmember Hoffman is delayed. She should arrive around 8 p.m. this evening. |
| 00:02:43.16 | Unknown | Vice Mayor Burns? Mayor Cox. |
| 00:02:46.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | here. Mike Monsef, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? |
| 00:02:53.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bye. |
| 00:02:54.03 | Ulrich | I pledge allegiance to the flag. |
| 00:02:54.97 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:02:55.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Black. |
| 00:02:56.07 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:02:56.44 | Ulrich | of the United States. |
| 00:02:57.34 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 00:02:57.46 | Ulrich | Thank you. |
| 00:02:57.71 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:58.53 | Ulrich | to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under God. |
| 00:03:03.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:03:03.88 | Ulrich | Thank you. |
| 00:03:03.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The rule. |
| 00:03:04.42 | Sonya Hanson | with liberty or justice. |
| 00:03:05.23 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Justice. |
| 00:03:06.06 | Charles Kaufman | For all. |
| 00:03:16.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:03:20.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We did not have a closed session this evening, so there are no closed session announcements and there will be no public comment on that. May I have a motion approving our agenda? |
| 00:03:34.26 | Ray Withey | So moved. |
| 00:03:35.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second. All in favor? Thank you. |
| 00:03:37.50 | Ray Withey | I'm not sure. |
| 00:03:37.58 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:03:37.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Aye. That motion carries 4-0. |
| 00:03:37.74 | Ray Withey | I. |
| 00:03:38.31 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:03:40.64 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | First up on our agenda this evening is a special presentation from Marin Municipal Water District. And Jonathan Goldman welcome. |
| 00:03:53.12 | Unknown | Um, Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council, staff, members of the community. I prepared a contact information slide for a gentleman who's not here. Michael Vaughn is here, so I'm sure he'll be delighted to have Vaughn Peterson get any questions or comments. |
| 00:04:08.68 | Unknown | question. |
| 00:04:09.04 | Mike Bond | or. |
| 00:04:09.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:16.28 | Mike Bond | Good evening, Mayor Cox, Councilmembers, Mr. Pulitzer and Mr. Goldman. My name is Mike Bond and I'm the engineering manager with the Marin Municipal Water District and I'm delighted to be here tonight and thank you for this opportunity to speak to the Council. The Marin Municipal Water District runs the largest system of infrastructure here in Marin County that we use every day. without which there would be an immediate health crisis and you don't see it. And we want to change that. We want you to know more about us. That's why I'm here tonight. We're in the business of delivering you a service. We've been doing it for over 100 years, and we plan to keep doing it for a long, long time. It's important that you know where your water comes from, how it got to you, and also the people behind that service. |
| 00:05:09.54 | Mike Bond | What kind of organization is the Marin Municipal Water District? To give you a sense of the operation that we run, over the last 10 years, we've invested $200 million of your money in your water system. This includes upgrading your two water treatment plants so that they'll survive an earthquake, that we can keep operating them if an earthquake were to happen. We've also replaced 74 miles of pipe, and that's about seven miles per year, which is pretty respectable in the water industry. But we have to do that. We have 900 miles of pipe here in Marin County. And the average age of that pipe is 70 years old. So we're in kind of a race to replace that piping before it wears out. |
| 00:05:54.62 | Mike Bond | If you were to take that pipe, the 900 miles of pipe, and lay it end to end from here, and starting here in San Francisco, you'd go all the way to Vancouver, British Columbia. Almost every single mile of that pipe runs in roadway that we don't own. It runs in local towns, cities, and counties. And we've worked very hard to coordinate our pipeline replacement and all of our projects with all the local agencies, because the way we look at it, we all serve the same customers. And we want to minimize the impact that our projects have on our customers as much as possible. By the way, here in Sausalito, over the last 10 years, we've invested, we've completed 21 capital improvement projects and have invested $2 million upgrading storage tanks, upgrading pump stations, and replacing 13,000 feet of pipeline. Most recently, we completed our $1.4 million fire flow improvement project on Filbert, Spencer, and San Carlos. Now that project replaced 3,500 feet of pipe that was installed 110 years ago. Teddy Roosevelt was the president when that pipeline went in place. The original pipe was also undersized. So not only did we replace it with stronger pipe, but we enlarged the pipe so that the hydrants in those neighborhoods will now see more water during an event. So they will flow at a higher rate. And anyone who had to drive on those streets during our project, thank you for your patience. We greatly appreciate that. Over the next 10 years, we'll be investing another $200 million of your money in your water system. We're going to continue upgrading our water treatment plants, replacing old pipe, replacing storage tanks, and upgrading the entire system. That $200 million also includes about $3 million to replace about 2,600 feet of pipe that was installed in 1927 here in Sausalito, up on Cable Roadway, El Prado, and Morata. And we'll be coordinating that project with Jonathan when that time comes. 100% of our capital dollars are invested in your water system. We need to take care of what we have. And we do this because we want the water system that anytime somebody turns the tap on today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now in a home, or in a business, or in a school, or in one of Sausalito's great restaurants. We want that fresh, good-tasting water to continue to flow out. So thank you very much. Thank you, Jonathan. |
| 00:08:33.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you very much for the update. Did you have questions? Thank you so much for being here and for updating us regarding MMWD's progress and planned path forward. Our next presentation is on a favorite topic here in Sausalito, aging. Debbie. |
| 00:09:01.52 | Debbie Pagliaro | Good evening, Mayor Cox and council members. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Debbie Pagliaro and I work part-time for the city assisting staff and council with special projects. So I'm here. to introduce this special element Special presentation tonight on the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Under normal conditions, Mike Langford would have been doing this introduction, but unfortunately, he was unable to attend tonight and I seem to have been volunteered. |
| 00:09:32.68 | Unknown | you |
| 00:09:33.12 | Debbie Pagliaro | I believe it is because in just a few short months, I will be of that age. Setting that aside, I am glad to be able to make this introduction. I was going to begin with a Quick bio on those... who will be speaking tonight. But I'm afraid that they become so highly educated and experience. that introduction alone would have taken up all of their allotted time. So I'll leave it to them to do any of the introductions about themselves. And we'll go on from there. So coming before you tonight, is Christopher Sickles. He's the Chief Officer of Institutional Advancement and Gordon Lithgow, who is the chief academic officer. They'll be speaking briefly. about the Buck Institute. excuse me, its mission, goals, new developments, and strategy for the future, among other things. following their presentation and any questions that you might have for them. Sybil Boutier will follow up with a very brief update on Sausalito's age-friendly grants and funding, and I see she snuck in a PowerPoint presentation, so you'll be getting that along with it. This is kind of, for her presentation, it's somewhat of a prelude. to a few upcoming council meetings where she will be giving other presentations. With that, I will begin with Gordon Lipka. |
| 00:11:07.01 | Gordon Lithgow | Good evening Mayor Cox and Council members. Thank you very much for this opportunity to come and tell you about the exciting developments going on at the Buck Institute right now. And actually I'm going to start by inviting you all to come up. Everyone in this room, please come and visit us. We love showing off our amazing building and talking about our science. The building is an architectural masterpiece designed by a Chinese American I.M. Pei. It's in a fantastic location on Mount Burdell. And on any summer's day or any day where there's a little bit of sunshine, this is a spectacular visit, and I will personally take you around. When the buck opened in 1999, it was probably something like 10 or 15 years ahead of its time. At that point, a few scientists around the world were beginning to think about studying the biology of aging, this process that we all undergo. And most people were studying it in animal models. I came to the buck studying tiny little nematode worms, microscopic worms, and trying to understand the secrets of aging in these animals. and we were altering our lifespan and finding mutations that made them live twice as long and finding compounds that made them live twice as long and finding compounds that made them live longer. And we're just trying to understand what we were doing there. But along with me, there was people who were very interested in human diseases, breast cancer specialists, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, and so on. And it took us probably six or seven years to realize that we were all working on the same thing. And that really the fundamental breakthrough is understanding that normal aging, the normal aging process, is causing the diseases of late life. Not just associated with, not just a risk factor, but causing. Aging causes Alzheimer's. It causes adults cancer. And so for the last 10 years we've been working on this concept. And it's very exciting because, as I just said to you, we can change aging at will in simple animals. And now we can change aging rates at will in mammals including mice. So you bring the idea that aging is caused by, sorry, that human disease is caused by aging And the idea that we can manipulate aging, you bring those together and you get something very special. So now we have drug-like molecules that not only extend the normal lifespan of animals, but also prevent disease, prevent Parkinson's disease, prevent Alzheimer's in animal models. So the next phase for the buck, and something we're fully engaged in now, is translating this knowledge that we've built over the last 15 years or so into something that's meaningful for human health. In other words, interventions and preventions of human disease. We recently announced the opening of a new centre for women's reproductive senescence at the Buck of Reproductive Longevity. This is a $6 million initiative. We also have a new initiative on artificial intelligence and how it can be used in drug design to enable us to develop medicines. And we're really going down a road of translation and clinical science. We're in an expansion mode. We're hiring new faculty, and we have a strategic plan to build out the campus to its full capacity. That would result in 40 research groups here in Marin. We occasionally get a little bit frustrated because we're in Fairfax or Ross or even Novato, and someone will say, what's going on up there? except we're known all around the world. We're known in China, in Japan, in India. My personal PhD student is from Tehran in Iran. We have two women on our PhD program from African countries. So we have a really diverse group of people from all over the world, 34 countries represented at the buck currently. We're a gem in the rough here, and I hope you'll come up and see the place if you haven't been already and bring your friends. I'm going to turn it over to Chris Cycles now to talk about the strategic plan and how we're going forward. |
| 00:14:35.12 | Christopher Sickles | Thanks for having me. So we have a very tight-knit group up there. We have about 220 scientists at this point. And we're going into an absolute growth period. And so we're asking the residents in Marin County and our public officials to hear our story about where we're going and then how they can get involved. So from a people standpoint, we have the 220 expert scientists from around the world. We'd like to grow that to more like 400 people. And so that keeps the critical mass of the scientists collaborating with each other and sharing ideas. Within that, we would be building two more buildings up at the Buck Institute. So the first one would be a translational research building. So Gordon and all the other scientists have built this wonderful basic science platform. Now we're gonna build the translational research building so that information moves to clinical trials. Right behind the translational research building will be a new clinical geroscience building. So we look at our work from a personal level. So with that kind of clinical geroscience building, a person can walk in there at any point in life And believe me, we're getting a lot of folks in their 20s that want to start preventing disease now that are coming in our front door and saying, how do we learn or work with you? So people of all ages could come in and essentially say, please tell me what's the best practices as the authority on aging, and what should I do at this point in my life to live a long and healthy life? So we're not the types of folks that are saying that people can live forever. What we're really saying is you can have another 25, 30 years of healthy life with your family and your friends. So that clinical geroscience building will be personalized, but the information that is coming out of the basic science leading to the translation and the clinical best practices will be used by people throughout the world. On top of that, we have a brand new lifelong learning program. So we've had thousands of visitors over the years, and we've been seeing 2,000 or 3,000 kids a year that come in from the local schools from all over the Bay Area. And the adults kept saying, what about us? And so now we have a pilot program that's just starting in the next couple of weeks where we would have a six-week program that our faculty teach to people about what really is going on in the field of aging and the research behind it. So we're in the high growth mode. I can sit here and talk for hours about our 10 cores, et cetera. That's on our brand new web page, which is www.buckinstitute.org. Please take a look at it. And I'll follow up with what Gordon said. And feel free to come up at any time. Like he said, the man must have a new pair of shoes every month, the number of tours we're doing. But we're really in the growth mode, and now is the time to jump on board with us. So thanks for having us. |
| 00:17:46.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you so much. I will share that I visited the Buck Institute back in March for a luncheon where I heard all about the experiments being done with worms on aging. Which believe it or not, there are many similarities and much we can learn from worms about the effects of aging on humans. So I was fascinated, it's a gorgeous facility. And so thank you so much for coming down to share a little bit about yourselves with us. |
| 00:18:19.67 | Christopher Sickles | Thanks for having us. |
| 00:18:38.86 | Debbie Pagliaro | And Sybil. |
| 00:18:46.62 | Sybil Boutillier | Good evening Mayor Cox, Vice Mayor, Council Members. My name is Sybil Boutillier, I'm Chair of H Friendly Salcedo. And I'm just going to be doing a, giving you sort of a quick horseback ride through the granting process that we've gone through in Age Friendly South Salido and where we are now. |
| 00:19:17.88 | Sybil Boutillier | See. The right question. . That's not working. trying to |
| 00:19:35.04 | Sybil Boutillier | Okay. I'll be here. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. So. Just real quickly, getting started on our Age Friendly Project, we began, as you remember, with a citywide survey. That was dozens of volunteers, I'm just gonna move quickly through this, dozens of volunteers created the survey as, Part of their contribution, we inputted data from 1,200 responders and including 3,500 additional comments, index responses and comments. We did that with $2,200. 2,400 surveys were sent out to people age 55 and older in South Salido with self-addressed returned envelopes. We got 1,200 back, which was an amazing response. Mike Stone of Molly Stone's created vinyl banners for us that were hung over Bridgeway by Dennis Webb, and so everybody contributed to that process. One of the major programs we started very early was the Colorado South Salido Seniors, which provides up to four free one way rides per day for anybody age 60 who's a resident of South Salido. We wrote a Marin Transportation Prop B Competitive Gap Grant. And we're honored to receive $15,000 for that project. And that lasted us for 18 months. And primarily this rides on volunteers who've donated nearly 3,000 hours plus gas and personal car insurance. to make this a very successful program in South Salido. Individuals such as Trisha Smith have also participated with spent bits of money here and there that were needed as we went along. I don't know. Then we started our Age Friendly Strategic Action Plan as part of our joining the World Health Organization, Global Network of Age Friendly Cities. We asked for some help to get started on that plan and received a $10,000 grant from Marine Community Foundation, which we matched with 5,000 competitive funds from the Board of Supervisors Community Grants. One of the projects we did was emergency planning, during which we distributed survival backpacks to all the residents of the senior housing in South Salido. Rotary Housing purchased 24 of the backpacks, and South Salido Village contributed to that as well, not only in training, but also in funding. $160 worth of the cost, Rotary contributed $1,760 to pay for the backpacks. Our own Lieutenant Stacy Gregory from South Slito Police Department gave some of the training as well as Southern Marin Fire Chief Tubbs and South Slito Village volunteers. for the pedestrian crossing flags to make our corners safer for folks where there's not lights to help with the crossing. We started that up with help from our very close associates at Salcedo Village, who donated $360 for the materials for the flags, which we made ourselves. A group of us got in there with hammers and and got busy. Jonathan Goldman's Department of Public Works installed holders at several of the corners. And most recently, in fact, we were contacted by him with word that some citizens had requested that another corner should have flags. And so we collaborated with them and got that corner covered as well. And part of that includes monitoring the flags. So there's an ongoing process where citizens are going down daily to make sure the flags are distributed appropriately across the different corners at the crosswalks. |
| 00:24:21.66 | Alice Merrill | was. |
| 00:24:22.00 | Sybil Boutillier | So that was a very low impact cost and a very good result. So currently, we have all of those grant funds have been used in full except for this one, which we recently received from Department of Aging. And this grant was $5,000 to sort of help us get started in the planning of our evaluation. As you remember, the World Health Organization agreement was that we do a five-year strategic action plan. Thank you. and Then we look at our gap analysis and see how well we've done and start looking at the future. Right now we're getting ready to evaluate. We're in our fourth year now. So this money is going to help us start with that. I recently attended a World Health Organization conference in which the evaluation was one of the highlights, and that was a very good learning opportunity. And so we have about $3,000 left in that grant, and that will help us get started on this process as we look at what's still left to be done, which includes some of the things where we've recently contacted the Chamber of Commerce and are looking at some possibilities there. And we're working with Mike Langford on the park development at Martin Luther King Park, where there'll be some senior features as part of the plan. So... Um, I just want to mention that there have been so many contributions from all sectors of the community. I'll just call out a couple of them, there's just too many to mention. But South Salido Lions Club has been a partner from the beginning. They do an annual barbecue for volunteers and other businesses contribute raffle prizes and so forth. And South Salido Rotary has allowed us to use the Sharma Rita Room for free for many of our activities. And these have been very important ongoing elements that have allowed us to do our work well. So as you can see in this report, we've accounted for $39,580 in cash grants. to age friendly initiatives over the last four years. This does not account for contributions of funds and staff support. Contributed by the city itself. but this doesn't begin to capture all the contributions Thank you. Um, including dozens and dozens of residents and friends of South Salido who've happily invested their time and resources to make South Slito a genuinely world-class, all-age friendly community. And the result of this collaborative effort are in and I think you might agree that so far it's been a really big success. And very cost effective. Thank you very much. |
| 00:27:32.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right. Thank you so much, Sybil. Thanks for your report. |
| 00:27:42.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, next on our agenda is 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 anyone who would like to comment on an item not on our agenda this evening? Yes, please step forward. |
| 00:28:17.32 | Patricia Robinson | My name is Patricia Robinson. Oh, excuse me. I'm not acknowledging you. I would just like to... |
| 00:28:29.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Are you here to talk about short term rentals, Patricia? |
| 00:28:32.64 | Patricia Robinson | It's regarding short-term. |
| 00:28:35.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, well, that is something that's on our agenda, so this is not the time for that comment. We will be hearing that item around 9 p.m. this evening, and you're welcome to comment at that time. |
| 00:28:46.06 | Patricia Robinson | Excuse me, it's not about short-term rentals. It's regarding rentals as far as what I consider to be gouging. |
| 00:28:55.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, can you pull that microphone down so that you can be heard? Great. |
| 00:29:01.03 | Patricia Robinson | Um... I just wanted to let everyone know about what's going on. regarding large conglomerates coming in and buying up the apartment buildings. because of the experience we've had in our apartment building. For instance, there's only a part-time manager there who works for four hours, five days a week. and often is working from a coffee shop and is very difficult to contact. On one occasion on the weekend, the building alarm went off and the fire engine arrived, but there was no manager or anyone else in authority. to deal with them. as the part-time manager does not work on Sunday or Monday. when a resident contacts the area manager for him to explain what water base and sewer base charges are on the rent bill. He says he doesn't know more about He, in fact, never calls texts or emails to explain why we have these charges. Previous to the new management, the following charges were included in the rent and are now, in addition to the rent, Garbage is $83 a month. for each resident. and we have 25 residents. The trash is $85.54 a month for each resident. The blatant poor treatment and lack of care and safety of the long-term tenants is evident by the following incidents that have occurred since the new owners took over. Cars sprayed with paint over spray. kitchen countertop glue, giving us headaches and nausea, and in one case a tenant almost passing out. nails in tires from work being done in the building resulting in flat tires, towed tires, cause. and tire replacement and repairs. workers' trucks blocking us. in early in the a.m. when we had appointments. and the attendants having to seek out the owners and the difficulty because of the language barrier and the part-time apartment manager not arriving until 10 o'clock. The garbage is being piled up so high at the side of the building that the garbage collector asked what was going on. and In my opinion, I feel that the new management has blatantly as well as subtly made it clear They don't value the long-term tenants. And for those of us who are elderly, we deserve to be treated fairly. I have lived in my apartment for 19 years. and recently had heart surgery. Currently, there are at least eight older tenants who reside here. I'm concerned that we are being supplicated forced from our long-term residents. Oh, that's my time, is it? Yes, thank you. OK. |
| 00:31:49.76 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | What time is it? |
| 00:31:51.43 | Beth Rowe | Thank you. |
| 00:31:51.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Would you mind sharing your letter with our board clerk so that we can read it? Absolutely. Okay. |
| 00:31:55.22 | Patricia Robinson | Absolutely. |
| 00:31:58.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So we can't take action on anything here, but we will consider what action is appropriate. |
| 00:32:03.82 | Patricia Robinson | Yeah, and I need to inform you that I did talk to the district attorney's office and they have taken action. |
| 00:32:11.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, all right, so if you share your letter with the board clerk right up here, Serge Avila. |
| 00:32:20.89 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Jeff Jacobs. |
| 00:32:36.57 | Jeffrey Chase | Hello, Madam Mayor. City Council. staff and citizens of Sausalito. I'm happy to see, Madam Mayor, that The Buck Foundation, as he was talking about, the Buck Foundation spokesman, as he was talking about aging, was looking at the audience. And I know how much you want to see my face and every expression on it. trying to make me Focus forward. when I speak, and I think I'm going to do that for the rest of these three minutes. I'll be taking these three and one more three And that's it. No applause. The portion for today is from Noah. That's Noah. If people have been following what I speak about here, It's about boats. Bicycles. and budding flowers. i.e. community gardens. |
| 00:33:42.68 | Jeffrey Chase | Noah's very appropriate for an anchor out to read. It says this, These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man. He was perfect in his generation. Noah walked with Jah. What that means is not that Noah was perfect. You'll see later on in the story. that he invents the vineyard and then immediately gets drunk. Again, appropriate for an anchor out to read. It says this, this is Genesis chapter 6, number 11. The earth was corrupt before God. The earth became full of robbery. Noah was commanded, make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. I've been spending a lot of time on the Vedora. It's a 95-foot boat with the bowsprit out there. It says this, you shall make a skylight for the ark, And to a cubit, you shall finish it to the top. We've been working on the top, on the skylight, I found this after I'd been doing that. It's amazing how the synchronicity is working. |
| 00:34:51.76 | Jeffrey Chase | I'm going to talk a little bit about community gardens. I'm now on number four. This one was at Old Town Joe's. There was an orange tag put on it from the Marin Health Department. because they gave away free tea and coffee. without health department approval. When so many things are against the law, discrimination comes. Because it can be applied to everybody, but of course it's not. It's applied selectively. That garden now He's producing some squash. There's beautiful marigolds there. Sausalito must be free for community gardens. Noah builds one. And I'm building one too. |
| 00:35:36.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:35:37.60 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:35:40.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | any other public comment on items not on our agenda? All right, we'll move on to action minutes of the previous meeting. Are there any revisions to our action minutes? |
| 00:35:56.08 | Jill Hoffman | I move we accept the meeting minutes of the previous meetings of September 25th. |
| 00:36:01.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second all in favor aye that motion carries for 0. |
| 00:36:03.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Aye. |
| 00:36:06.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We'll move now to our consent calendar. Ahem. Matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, are expected to have unanimous council support, and may be enacted by the council in one motion in the form listed below. I have received several comments regarding item item 4C on our consent calendar, I would like to pull item 4C and we will return it as a business item at a future meeting. Any objections? |
| 00:36:44.07 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, is there any public comment on our consent calendar? All right, see you next. |
| 00:36:51.50 | Jeffrey Chase | There is. This is about item 4C. Uh, Bicycles is, yes, so are you pulling this? Okay, I'll have a question for you. Are you pulling this to discuss this, |
| 00:37:00.82 | Stuart Keel | THE FAMILY IS NOT ABLE TO |
| 00:37:00.88 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | He's a move kit. We're pulling it. |
| 00:37:06.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | As a business item, this will have a full discussion rather than being on our consent calendar. |
| 00:37:10.21 | Jeffrey Chase | So that's going to be coming up. At a future meeting. First business item, second, third. How's that going to work? |
| 00:37:11.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | AT A FUTURE MEETING? No, at a future meeting, not tonight. |
| 00:37:16.12 | Jeffrey Chase | At a future meeting. |
| 00:37:18.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, do you have public comment? |
| 00:37:19.06 | Jeffrey Chase | Okay. Uh, no. |
| 00:37:22.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:37:22.85 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:37:22.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Seeing no public comment, I'll bring it back up here. I am going to... recuse myself from item 4E, and so I would ask for a motion concerning items 4A, 4B, 4D, and 4F. |
| 00:37:46.76 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'll make a motion to approve items 4A, 4B, 4D, 4E, and 4F on the consent calendar. |
| 00:37:53.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:53.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:37:53.38 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:37:53.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:37:53.41 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:37:53.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE I'm sorry, 4F. you Yeah. |
| 00:37:58.16 | Ray Withey | Second. |
| 00:37:59.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All in favor? Aye. That motion carries 4-0. |
| 00:38:00.42 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 00:38:00.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:38:00.67 | Ray Withey | Okay. |
| 00:38:00.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bye. Now I'll- Can I just make one small comment on 4F? Yes, please. So I had asked for 4F to be on the agenda at our last meeting, and this is a motion for the city council to take a no position on Proposition 6 this fall, and I just wanted to note on the staff report that |
| 00:38:04.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Yes. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:38:27.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Proposition six would reduce our funding for expenditures on street paving by $1.3 million per year. So I'd just like the public to be aware of that, that we would lose significant public funding if Prop six passes. |
| 00:38:48.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Great, may I now have a motion concerning item 4E? |
| 00:38:53.34 | Jill Hoffman | I MOVE WE ADDED for you on the consent calendar? |
| 00:38:57.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Second. All in favor? |
| 00:38:59.36 | Jill Hoffman | Hi. |
| 00:39:00.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That and I will abstain so that motion carries 3-1 with Cox abstaining. All right, we'll now move on to, Item 6A, our general plan update. And I believe we have Christy Bascom here to provide, oh, and Lily Whalen, to provide us with a progress report. |
| 00:39:22.92 | Lily Whalen | Thank you, Mayor Cox, council members, good evening. I am Lily Whalen, your Interim Community Development Director. I'm here just to pull up the PowerPoint for M Group and to introduce Christy Bascom, who's here. She's a principal with M Group, and she will be giving the presentation this evening. |
| 00:39:44.00 | Christy Bascom | Thank you, Lily. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council. This is an exciting milestone in the general plan update process. has been underway for some time, over a year and a half. reach an exciting milestone in that the data gathering effort of all this, which is the longest in terms of Heavy lifting as well as time is complete. Kind of some of the big picture discussions have begun regarding overarching community goals, starting to look at some policy framework, and more detailed examination and discussion will be underway shortly. The community has been very engaged, very responsive. It's been exciting to be part of the effort. And the General Plan Advisory Committee has continued to put a great deal of thought and perspective into the discussions that have taken place to date. We're expecting some passion and excitement at some upcoming meetings as we get into the policy discussions. Normally, the City Council receives monthly progress reports from M Group in a written form, but we're here to give one in person this evening because we're reporting out on several different items here the first being that we are transmitting the completed executive summaries for the comprehensive existing conditions report which really ties a bow on that first phase of the general plan update process. The last time these came to the city council was at a joint meeting with the planning commission at the end of May. We made some final refinements and tied up the executive summaries and so those are now posted to the project website and are available for anyone in the community to have access to. So we're officially transmitting those to the council this evening. The second item we're here to talk about is just a report out on the second phase of the general plan update process, the visioning phase. We'll review just very briefly the efforts to date and the next steps in the visioning process. The third item that we're here to provide the council is a transmission of the draft community goals that has been reviewed by the general plan advisory committee And we're bringing forward to the council tonight to have you take a look at those and offer any feedback that you may have. And lastly, we're seeking input from the city council on a a very big issue and very big topic. in Sausalito, which is the preferred approach to begin planning for the marineship and the general plan update process. So I'm going to cover the first three of these items and then my colleague Melinda Vaida is going to cover item four. So the transmission of the comprehensive existing conditions report is just providing those to the city council. So we'll just jump very quickly into item number two, which is an overview of the Phase II Visioning and Progress Report kind of where we have been so far, where we're going with the next steps in the general plan update process, and give the council an opportunity to weigh in on the community goals that the general plan advisory committee has been looking at. So kicking off the visioning process, The biggest event we've had so far, which we had some amazing participation from the community in, was a community workshop. on June 23rd, we got great participation, terrific input. members of the public and attended the community workshop, provided input on community priorities, overarching goals that should be considered for the next general plan. So the output from the community meeting came back to the general plan advisory committee over the course of three meetings. Thank you. where the GPAC talked about some of the their thoughts on creating and refining the 1995 general plan community goals to be more appropriate for 2018 in Sausalito. So the GPAC has been looking at community goals. Those will be presenting to the council this evening. And then the next phase in this process is to start examining some possible policy scenarios. And that will be something that we're doing with the GPAC at the next meeting. So this graphic is just meant to kind of visually layout for you the remaining steps in the visioning phase of the project. So at the meeting on November 16th, we'll be looking at three different potential policy alternatives and having that conversation with the GPAC about what might be appropriate and that ranges from What we are calling a business as usual policy alternative, which is just to make some minor refinements to the general plan, bring some things up to standard. We'll be taking a look at some possible scenarios under the second alternative, which has some strategic adjustments made from a policy perspective. Land use policy, circulation, open space, community design and the like. And then a third policy scenario we're calling the values-based growth scenario, which has some more tweaks and a little bit more of an innovative approach. So it'll be something that we're talking with the GPAC at the meeting in October. And then as we get into December and January, You can see kind of rain falling down this graphic here. We'll be having conversations with the general plan advisory committee. taking some of the input and feedback that we've gotten there, doing some additional analysis, going out to the community, community workshops, informal coffee chats, And then we will have a Broad Community Workshop, much like the one we had on June 23rd. And fingers crossed we'll have the same level of participation and involvement from the community. before some of the feedback from all of that comes back to the Planning Commission and City Council for input and eventually, distilling down into what might be a preferred policy alternative for the general plan. That will then go back to the General Plan Advisory Committee and then to the Planning Commission and City Council at the left or rightmost part of the slide there. Now all of this is expected to take place between October all the way into the beginning of next year and up till May or June when we'll be back in front of the city council. with what we hope is a Preferred policy alternative that's been through a number of different discussion points, a number of different groups, has gotten some good community input, and that will be what we use to start crafting the general plan. The third item that we're reporting out to the City Council today is the draft community goals. These have been. reviewed, refined, reworked. edited and discussed at three different General Plan Advisory Committee meetings in July, August, and September. I know there are a number of different GPAC members in the audience today, so I'm hoping They'll also provide some perspective on their thoughts on how the community goals developed. These are refinements from the 1995 community goals. The intent of this general plan update was to not throw out the old and create a new one. but to take what was crafted in 1995 and make sure It can be refined to be reflective of the community that is Sausalito today. There was... broad general consensus from the General Plan Advisory Committee On the goals, which are in the memo that has been provided to you. Most of the discussion surrounded goal number five, which has to do with the Marinship. So I know. from the consultant team and I think staff as well. And I imagine the GFAC is very interested in hearing the council's perspective. If you have any feedback to provide on any of those goals, goal number five in particular. There was an acknowledgement at the General Planned Advisory Committee, that these goals are not set in stone. This is a long process, this is one A snapshot in time of what the general plan advisory committee sees as the community goals at this point. But as we move forward with the policy process and those discussions, there's definitely recognition that these goals will continue to be refined throughout until they're solidified in the very end with the adopted general plans. So at this point, we're definitely seeking any city council input that will help guide these policy approaches that the general plan advisory committee will be looking at. Anything that can help guide the GPAC's future work and inform us at the consultant team as well. on things that are very important for the council to be considering as we're looking at some policy recommendations for the general plan. So I'm gonna turn it over to Melian right now, unless there are any questions, I'm happy to entertain. |
| 00:48:40.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Before we do that, there's a question. |
| 00:48:43.30 | Christy Bascom | Sure. |
| 00:48:44.57 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Christy. Given everything outside of the actual GPAC committee, what the community has seen and what we have participated up here. We had that great meeting you talked about at Spinnaker on the visioning and a lot of ideas on the board. The next step both in the paragraph in here and from what we saw, goals really coming out of the prior plan |
| 00:49:14.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:49:16.33 | Jill Hoffman | How did that interact with the vision, and where did the vision go? And is that out in space right now? Does that come back in? What happened to the ideas that came about? Because it seems like we hopped right back into a box. |
| 00:49:29.19 | Christy Bascom | Well, what we did was certainly at the community workshop, there were two different exercises, talking, getting soliciting community input on the overarching priorities and also the existing goals that were in the general plan and asking the different work table groups to make some refinements to those, change them wholeheartedly if they wish, but provide some great feedback on that. Our intention was, when we look back at our work plan, was to take a lot of that input and try to craft a overarching vision statement for the general plan update. However, once we got into discussions with the general plan advisory committee, it became very clear that people were very comfortable with the, the 10 goal kind of framework, and so we kind of moved into looking at those broad community goals and decided that maybe a better approach at this point would be to look at the goals, figure out how those could be updated for now, start getting into some policy discussions, and then come back and craft the vision statement for the general plan once everything had come together and it really started to gel and make sense as to what Sausalito's broad vision was. |
| 00:50:36.38 | Jill Hoffman | So that was kind of a reactionary path? You took different maybe than? |
| 00:50:38.31 | Christy Bascom | It took different. Yeah, we like to try to stay nimble and try to respond to how the community and the GPAC, in this case, since we're working with a group of 13, citizens who are in charge of making some recommendations and facilitating this process and we want to make sure Working with them as well as possible and kind of responding to how how they want to do things. So |
| 00:51:03.77 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:51:06.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Can you just describe how you see these goals fitting in with the general plan? I mean, are they... I know San Francisco has 10 priority policies that are supposed to resolve inconsistencies in the general plan that were adopted by the voters. Is this something like that or is this a? |
| 00:51:27.82 | Christy Bascom | I think we see this, and again, they will be refined and they will change and evolve over time as we get into more of the details of the general plan, developing a policy framework. But these are intending to be kind of overarching goals that kind of drive what the community will be looking at and try to give an overall flavor of what the community's desire is for the policies in this general plan. |
| 00:51:54.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK, I think just at some point, maybe this is later down the road, it needs to be clear. So when we're looking at our general plan and trying to decide in future actions what's consistent with the general plan, we need somewhere to put these policies. Or do we have to find projects consistent with the policies? |
| 00:52:15.09 | Christy Bascom | Right, certainly the policies- |
| 00:52:15.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, it's a legal – the general plan is a legal framework. Yes. So – Of course. Anyway, I just – |
| 00:52:18.36 | Christy Bascom | Yes. Of course. |
| 00:52:21.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, they seem good, but I, It's not clear to me right at this moment how they will fit into the legal analysis of what's consistent with the general plan. |
| 00:52:31.57 | Christy Bascom | The community goals, similar to the existing general plan, where they kind of live up front and they just set the kind of set the broad flavor of the document. future. Element specific goals, policies and programs will be developed from here. Just kind of keeping these all in mind is the broad umbrella. |
| 00:52:50.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. And then another question, you talked about these three alternatives, the business as usual, strategic adjustments, and values-based growth. And that's for the entire general plan or that's for various aspects? I mean, because it would seem to me that some issues might warrant different treatment. |
| 00:53:12.71 | Christy Bascom | Definitely, and that will be a discussion that we'll be having with the general plan advisory committee next week. there will definitely be some parts that don't fit cleanly into any of those boxes, and that's what we're hoping to hear from the General Plan Advisory Committee also. The three alternatives are really just their kind of flavors, scenarios that we're just trying to gauge if the general plan advisory committee and by definition the larger community is comfortable with a more business as usual approach, something a little bit more in the middle or something a little bit more with a little bit more potential for change and evolution. There will be parts that we'll be having this conversation with the GPAC next week. There will be picking from this box and putting it in this box. There will definitely be a lot of moving around. But we wanted to give the GPAC something to respond to to kind of start that discussion. But we do not expect that. Any of the scenarios that we've put together will be are the right answer exactly as written right now. They're really just something for the GPAC to chew on and something for them to respond to. So it should be a really interesting discussion. |
| 00:54:26.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, thank you. |
| 00:54:28.82 | Christy Bascom | Great. |
| 00:54:29.09 | Kate Rose Dixon | Thank you. |
| 00:54:39.01 | Melinda Vaida | Thank you, Councilmember Cox. So the item number four on the agenda for this item is to discuss a couple of questions that we'll have on the last slide related to the marinship. So connected to the discussion about what are the appropriate alternatives so that we can look at the right issues and try to understand their implications, then blend it together to formulate a preferred option. Obviously, each of those alternatives is going to have some sort of perspective and some sort of... impact on what's happening in the marineship. There are a number of issues that need to be addressed in the marineship, and so all of the alternatives will touch on it. What we'd like to have is a discussion with the council or input from the council on what should be looked at or what are some of the key things in the marineship that you'd like to see, what are some of the answers that you'd like to have through this whole alternatives evaluation process. So we have a little bit of history just to set the stage. For those who are I don't know. of the answers that you'd like to have through this whole alternatives evaluation process. So we have a little bit of history just to set the stage for those who are either new to the MarinShip or trying to understand the various nuances here. This has been a long, evolving area of town, obviously a deep military history, stemming back, obviously, to the 40s and World War II. The key kind of transition point happened just before the 50s when the land was sold into private and public hands, and then different visions started to evolve and different activities started to take place within the marineship. And that happened over a half-century, I should say. The marineship-specific plan was adopted in 88 and took effect in 89. And this has really guided development in the area. Very specifically, the marineship-specific plan is somewhat unique as far as specific plans go in the level of detail and the level of direction that it had provided. |
| 00:56:08.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:37.19 | Melinda Vaida | Not good or bad, it's just there is a significant level of detail in there, and that's given a lot of structure. It's also, over the years, as demands have changed, raised some issue points that need to be discussed. At the heart of the Marinship Specific Plan are 21 goals that guide development, and these talk about the land uses that are allowed, the development capacities that are allowed, the anticipated circulation impacts, and how to mitigate the undesirable impacts on circulation. When the Pacific Plan was adopted, just like with the General Plan, the Zoning Ordinance followed suit and became the implementation tool for the Marinship Specific Plan. So in 1989, there were a series of amendments to |
| 00:57:17.47 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 00:57:17.62 | Mike Bond | that they're going to be |
| 00:57:17.69 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 00:57:19.63 | Melinda Vaida | city code that memorialized what the specific plan had called for. In that process, it wasn't a perfect reflection, and we have identified a number of inconsistencies between the Marinship Specific Plan and the zoning ordinance, and this has, over the years, caused some confusion, but the way that these instruments work, the Marinship Specific Plan prevails wherever there has been a discrepancy. So part of this process will involve that housekeeping, making sure that everything is legible and understandable and that the policies and standards are simpatico with one another as we move through the general plan update. In 1995, the community did adopt the general plan, and it memorialized the marineship specific plan, which had preceded it, and thereby created harmony between those two documents, which is going to be critical as we go through the general plan update. And then in 2013, following several years of identifying some of these potential, not potential, but some of these issues that were emerging over the years, I mentioned the inconsistency between the ordinance and the Marinership Specific Plan and sort of the evolving economic and social needs of the community. There have been various efforts to try to understand what is and what is not working. And so there were small studies that targeted very specific issues and there was a large study that commenced in 2013 and ended in 2015 led by the Marinship Steering Committee whereby a consultant was brought on board to facilitate a pretty robust community engagement process. A number of one-on-one and small group interviews were done to try to understand what is and what is not working and what are those issues in the marineship. And a report was published. We incorporated the findings of that report within the Comprehensive Existing Conditions Report. You have that, I believe it's Chapter 2. And it's also available on the general plan update website because it's critical background information as we start to look at what could happen in the marine ship. Um... Thank you. This is better this way. Just to put things into context, I've touched on this a little bit, but the direction for the marineship is right now detailed out in the marineship specific plan. The position of a specific plan within this general hierarchy of regulating development investment in the community is as this pyramid shows here. We're working on a general plan update right now. The general plan update, or general plans in general, provide direction for the whole community and specific plans and implementing regulations like the zoning ordinance need to comply with general plan policy. So as we move forward, as I said, with the general plan update, we have to be very mindful of what the specific plan currently says, what directions the general plan should provide to that document, and how that document should evolve. There is also discussion about whether or not that document is the best way to articulate the desires for the marineship, whether it adds an extra layer of confusion in this regulatory process, whether the policies within the specific plan could be subsumed within the general plan. This, for the scope of what is currently provided for the Marinship area, there's nothing that would prevent the general plan from speaking to all of the issues that are addressed in the specific plan. So it's a community choice. It's a preference, one that we're asking your input on tonight of do you see a desired path forward in terms of should there be a general plan which directs a specific plan and a separate specific plan that details out what the general plan gives direction on? Is there a preference to see the specific plan merged into the general plan? or is there some other alternative that you have considered that you feel we should be aware of? |
| 01:01:10.68 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Hey, Milan, can I interrupt you? Yes. Do we have this PowerPoint on our dais? |
| 01:01:12.67 | Melinda Vaida | Yes. |
| 01:01:16.66 | Melinda Vaida | the staff. |
| 01:01:20.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So that, and why not? |
| 01:01:29.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, that's been a really hard and fast rule for our GPAC meetings, and I'm sitting here trying to follow along, and you're covering a lot of stuff, and we don't have this. So can someone email it to us? |
| 01:01:39.62 | Melinda Vaida | Okay. Yep. Thank you. I don't know if we have a connection right now, but we can get that out. |
| 01:01:50.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm looking on, so it's not in I legislate, is it in Granicus? And it's not in my printed out packet. |
| 01:02:06.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, sorry to interrupt, Milan. Our dais is full of stuff tonight because we got so much late mail, so I just was looking around for it and I couldn't find it. |
| 01:02:19.61 | Melinda Vaida | Um, This is just encapsulating the typical structure of how these policies and regulating instruments relate to one another. And again, that structure or any preferences towards that structure as a group that is implementing all of these pieces, your feedback on whether that's been working, this is the current structure. We have a specific plan and a separate general plan. We'd love to hear your input on that. I mentioned earlier that there had been a number of studies, a number of efforts to understand what is and what is not working in the Marinship, including that Marinship Steering Committee study. And then also as part of the general plan update work that we reported on in the conditions report, we did our own due diligence and tried to understand. The Marinship Steering Committee was active between 2013 and 2015. Some time has passed. Yeah. We wanted to check in, make sure that those findings were still accurate, still relevant, and if anything was missing. We had a more robust look at the community and were required to look at a more comprehensive set of issues. So it felt appropriate to ask some of the same questions and really try to dig in. What we're really seeing is overlap and interest... |
| 01:03:13.94 | Jay Baer | search. |
| 01:03:17.02 | Gordon Lithgow | the time. |
| 01:03:34.29 | Melinda Vaida | shared interest in a number of issues, including preserving some of the historic and unique qualities of the marineship, preserving access to and from the waterfront, addressing sea level rise, dealing with subsidence, the related issue of subsidence, and ensuring that this is a resilient area that is serving the community in the multiple ways that it currently serves the community, both fiscally, culturally, economically, |
| 01:03:35.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:04:02.00 | Melinda Vaida | Um, At the same time, there is a divergence of opinion on what the marineship could become or should become over the next 20 years, which is the scope or the horizon for the general plan update. There are some members of the community looking at the marineship as an area that needs to be preserved, particularly focusing on the working waterfront aspects of it. And because of the sensitivity of the industrial and working waterfront and marine oriented businesses there, there is a sensitivity to change and the potential for gentrification and some of the complications that arise with bringing in new uses into this predominantly industrial area. Then there are other visions that say, yes, those are all very good and important things, but we are seeing an area that has the potential for new and additional development that would serve the community and a number of the interests of the community and needs of the community. And they generally see the marineship as an area where change and innovation are appropriate. However, on both sides, whether there is any change that is envisioned, there's extreme sensitivity to making sure that that change is done right. And the issues and the potential ramifications of any of those changes are taken into consideration. And so it's not a one side's right, one side's wrong kind of scenario. It's looking at the potential implications of any of the choices one way or another and then coming to terms with what serves the community best. That is the process that we're going to be going through through the alternatives. It is going to be putting out some of those ideas, testing out, seeing what the implications are, seeing what the value added is, and seeing what the potential, as I said, implications are, and then making that judgment call. And there is certainly a shared recognition of the importance of the Fair Traffic Initiative Ordinance 1022 and how it regulates land use and development within the marineship. As part of the general plan update, we are evaluating and considering an alternative that looks at what could happen if the initiative was not in place and what could be done with the marineship and areas outside of the marineship that are affected by the initiative with respect to the goals for Sausalito, not a blanket remove the initiative and change everything kind of scenario. So I mentioned there's the question slide, and this is where we're at now. It's really two things that we'd love to hear from the Council as we start to formulate these alternatives and think about the marineship's role within them. Again, is there a preference to the governing structure for what happens in the marineship? Does the Council like the specific plan structure, the existence of a specific plan that provides more detail than you would typically see in a general plan? Or for the sake of simplicity, should we harmonize the two and incorporate them into the general plan? Or do you just not have enough information at this point and we should look at it further? And then the second one is as we look at these alternatives, what are the types of land use, circulation, open space, and community design issues in the marineship that you feel should definitely be included in one of the alternatives? Which ones would you feel should not be on the table at all because they're not appropriate? And any other kind of qualifying remarks that you can provide for us as we start to look at land use, circulation, open space, and design? Thank you. |
| 01:07:37.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Any questions? |
| 01:07:43.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. If there are no questions, I'm going to go ahead and open this up for public comment. |
| 01:07:57.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And I have some speaker cards here. So we'll start off with David Suto. |
| 01:08:16.77 | David Suto | Hello, David Sudo. Thank you for letting me speak. Some of these are specific to tonight and some of them were just more specific to the general plan. One thing that I think was brought up in the general plan advisory committee is I think we should really have an equity statement in that plan. It's something that other cities are doing and I think You know, we have these statements about preserving character in our goals, but personally, we might have a very culturally diverse set of residents, but we're somewhat lacking in losing both our economic and ethnic diversity in town. And I think it's important we have an equity statement to make sure that we enhance our diversity in those respects rather than the trend that's going to happen if we don't have a statement, which is just going to be more of a monolithic environment of people who may have a lot of different viewpoints but are coming from the same place in life. Um... Another important thing that I think we need to have, we had this general plan, and we've had a general plan. We had the previous general plan, and a lot of items on that general plan did not get accomplished. I think it's really important to have a transparency document, a communication document, of how our plan is being implemented as we move forward for the next 20 years. We need to have each item on our plan on the chart. It needs to have what the status of that is, whether it's being worked on or whether it's not being worked on, what resources are being used, and what funding needs to be done, and what the timeline is for completion. I think without that kind of framework, we're going to be here in 20 years. At least some of us will be here in 20 years. And we'll have the same set of general plan goals, and we still want to have accomplished them. So I think that's really important. And then some specific... Moving to transportation, I just want to... And this is an example. I was just looking at Oakland's website today because they have a lot of, they do a lot of work and they have a much bigger staff than us to work on things like this. And for their pedestrian plan, they have four metrics. There's safety, equity, responsiveness, and vitality. And they use those to look at each one of their goals and to see and to measure them for their importance towards their goal set. And I think that is another interesting way to look at it rather than a set of kind of amorphous goals that we have right now. Thank you. |
| 01:11:19.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Wait, David, we have a question for you. |
| 01:11:24.15 | Jeffrey Chase | Yes. |
| 01:11:24.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, David, just going back to your equity issue. Were you suggesting that a goal be added to the 10 about equity or that one of the existing 10 goals be revised to include an equity component? |
| 01:11:38.35 | David Suto | Bye. I mean, I think... It would be great if we had its own goal because it gives it more strength. But certainly there's a couple of them in there that could be tweaked to strengthen their equity statement. |
| 01:11:52.00 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Do you have any specific suggestions? |
| 01:11:54.18 | David Suto | No, but I think there was some talked about in the General Plan Advisory Committee before. |
| 01:11:57.13 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 01:11:57.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:11:57.20 | Jay Baer | Me too. |
| 01:11:58.11 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, |
| 01:11:58.48 | Jay Baer | The General Plan Advisory Committee. |
| 01:12:03.79 | Jan Johnson | Okay, thank you. Bruce Huff. |
| 01:12:17.89 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then Adam Krivata. |
| 01:12:19.03 | Bruce Huff | See you next time. |
| 01:12:19.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:19.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:12:19.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:20.85 | Bruce Huff | Hi, I'm Bruce Huff. I moved to Sausalito 38 years ago, lived here for 22 years, but probably more importantly, have spent a minimum of eight hours a day, five days a week for 38 years in the Marin ship. I'm a business owner. I've been active in Sausalito socially, politically, in its business and civic life. I am. someone who started my businesses before the Marine Ship Specific Plan was passed and have survived the years that it's been in effect. The Marineship Specific Plan, in my opinion, is not a planning document. It's a social document. It set out social goals and tried to implement them in legislation that deals with land use. It has been, in my mind, an abject failure and should be retired. The Marineship Specific Plan is contradictory. It's It fails to accomplish any of its goals. And if we incorporate it within the current general plan, It's looking at our future in a rearview mirror. There are two very distinct zoning districts in the Marin ship. And I think the conversation should occur within those zoning districts. I think the Marineship Specific Plan Because of its complexity and its contradictory nature, should simply be retired. And that if the conversation is going to occur, and the conversation is certainly going to occur, It should occur. within the zoning districts themselves. Thank you. Um... |
| 01:14:36.41 | Bruce Huff | I guess that's all I can really say. I actually believe that the plan is non-tweakable. It's not adjustable. It's failed in every single aspect, it's encouraged, disinvestment in property to those who adhere to the Marinsa-specific plan, It's resulted in blight. significant blight. It puts a significant land mass in Sausalito in jeopardy. of sea level rise, of all the environmental impacts that we feel today. And the only successful projects in the marine ship specific plan, or in the marine ship, That's it. |
| 01:15:23.46 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks. Thanks, Bruce. Thank you. |
| 01:15:25.45 | Bruce Huff | Thank you. |
| 01:15:25.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You're welcome. Adam Cubazzi. |
| 01:15:28.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:28.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then |
| 01:15:29.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:15:29.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:15:30.02 | Unknown | Alice Merrill. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the council. I'm here to thank you for initiating this process, which is a costly process. involves incredible amount of hours of volunteer time, community input, and now we reached to a point where We understand opportunities for the future. Heidegard, Our work so far as a compilation of efforts that led to a clear definition of what opportunities we have for the future, what kind of social legal we can build, And how we should proceed. in shaping our general plan to realize improvements to our community. The 10 goals are one to few because the 10 goals talk about everything, community character and circulation and everything, but they do not mention the preparation for protecting our income producing commercial waterfront. I think we need to talk about engineering along with planning. As a matter of fact, the M group should have close collaboration with our city engineer's office to figure out how and what land areas can be planned for the land uses for the next 20 years and what areas we shouldn't even consider without major investment. And my concern is that we will not have the money for the major investment if we do not protect our commercial waterfront. I think we should add one more goal to our goals, and that is undertake, and that's a council action, not up to the general plan advisory committee to initiate the necessary engineering studies that will inform us how to proceed about land use planning where we may not have land in 20 years. Thank you. |
| 01:18:01.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Alice Merrill, and then Peter Van Meter. |
| 01:18:09.56 | Alice Merrill | Hi. Alice Merrill. Hello. I'm here to talk about the working waterfront as well. I... It's a really, really important part of our community and has been for a long time and there are many boat yards actually that have been shut down, mostly because dust and things like that that were too close to to the development downtown and so Madden and Lewis and I can't say them all but there are a lot of boat yards that have been shut down. And the marineship is the only place where they can still be. And if that gets gentrified or gets used differently and what maybe the landowners would say is the highest and best use from their point of view, it will be the end of that. For my own personal place, I live on a boat. And I have wanted to have it hauled out for six months now. But because of the fact that there are wooden boats around, I keep getting pushed back because there's a wooden boat that keeps about to sink. six months now, but because of the fact that there are wooden boats around, I keep getting pushed back because there's a wooden boat that keeps about to sink. And that has happened quite a number of times in the last six months. So it's a very important resource. And if that goes away, I think that's a good thing. What I live on can't go across the bay. It's not seaworthy enough. So it's an odd situation, but we really need to really, really protect that and not just just let it go to development, which is what the landowners want in my world. And they came knowing what it was, knowing what the uses were, and I'm hoping that this whole organization will remember that this is really important, and it's not just the ways, not just the railroads, but their rigors and there's just all kinds of people down there that are connected and Please don't let it go away. Thank you. |
| 01:20:41.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Peter Van Meter. And Peter, I have two speaker cards from you, but we're just going to hear one comment. And then Rand Siegfried. |
| 01:20:51.68 | Peter Van Meter | Right, I would like to come back and comment before you adopt the goals, but I'll talk on marinship now. |
| 01:20:57.53 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're taking one public comment for the whole marineship item. All right, thank you. |
| 01:21:00.50 | Peter Van Meter | All right, thank you. We'll stick to friendship because I think this is such an important topic that I actually have written out a statement on this one. As Christy pointed out on September 4th, |
| 01:21:01.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 01:21:09.73 | Peter Van Meter | The GPAC was polled and the consensus was that we have one general plan document All appropriate policies and programs can be in one place, in one concise form, with clear understanding and implementation methodology. The GPAC came to this conclusion after 15 months of study, through its understanding phase, all the issues to be addressed in general plan, and I support this conclusion and hope that you do too. Now the M group has made it clear, and it seems obvious to me, that all the factors affecting the marinship can be more than adequately addressed in the various elements of the general plan and a separate plan element is not warranted for this district. At the next meeting of the GPAC, as pointed out tonight, on September 16th, we'll be asked to review alternative frameworks for developing these policies. |
| 01:21:57.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:57.34 | Peter Van Meter | But to do this effectively, we need to have a decision here tonight about whether it will be a specific plan or not. While no decisions have been made yet on the scope of any rework of the plan, one thing is clear from GPAC's deliberations so far. In order to meet the goals that hopefully you'll be adopting here tonight, the limitations of Ordinance 1022, and I might add Ordinance 1128, must be removed. One important example comes from the conclusions of the Sausalito Business and Economic Development Study, commissioned by the city and completed in 2012 by the Marine Economic Forum. Many of the businesses with high municipal revenue generation and strong multiplier effect would occupy traditional office space, something that is currently limited by Ordinance 1022. Thank you. By whole high multiplier, we mean supporting business services and in-town spending. And this will be part of the economic sustainability goals of our general plan. Eliminating the ordinance restrictions does not dictate development. It rather gives us the flexibility to plan for an economically resilient Sausalito that retains the quality of life desired by its residents. My prediction is that there will be very little change in Sausalito with the new general plan as we work together to formulate a new vision, one that will pretty much be like the old vision. Please accept and plan for the likely need to include a vote of the people for ordinance repeal of Ordinance 1022 in your timeline of adopting general plan and go without a specific plan decision tonight. Thank you. |
| 01:23:45.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Peter, before you leave, I want to thank you for your update, which is attachment three, to our general plan update regarding the community goals. Was there anything you wanted to add to that written update that you've already provided to us? |
| 01:24:03.06 | Peter Van Meter | Well, I was going to comment on the goals and offer some purpose of the general public, but I will simply say that the goals are not plan elements. They're going to be woven throughout the plan and be criteria for developing policies and programs within each one of those plans. And I hope that you do, in fact, do adopt those goals as the first cut of those here tonight and put in the editorial comments that I've suggested. |
| 01:24:26.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. All right, Rand Siegfried and then Chris Gallagher. |
| 01:24:33.82 | Rand Siegfried | Hello. Thank you for having me. And I am one of the wooden boat owners here, but my boat's not sinking, so I didn't knock you off the list going on the ways. In fact, it spent nine months on the hard over in Mrennenship taking a good boat and making it fantastic. And so I just want to reiterate what a valuable part of that community. And Sausalito. A large part of Sausalito is the waterfront, is the history, is what it is. And having a working waterfront, I think, is critical to who it is. Right now, we're splitting our time between Wyoming and here. And I spent 35 years in Palo Alto. When I moved there, it was a vibrant, diverse, interesting community with lots of different businesses, lots of different things going on. When I left several years ago, I was ready to get out. It's monolithic, it's a horrible place. So I just really want to reiterate, don't let that happen. And the way you don't let that happen is keeping businesses that are real, that are doing things, that people are employed in, that people go have a beer after work out of. important stuff in life as opposed to the monolithic nature of a lot of cities and what happens after you get a little gentrification. And I think the best thing that could come out of a 20-year plan would be set in stone that that is going to be there so that some investment could be made. Why not? I mean, you know, let's have some direction that says, yes, nobody's going to take a business and invest if they're Don't know what's going to happen next year. Let's make it real. And it is a very, very important part, not only to Sausalito, to the Bay Area, to everything that's working. And I think I'm short-winded, but that's what I had to say. |
| 01:26:47.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Chris Gallagher, and then Tim Walsh. |
| 01:26:58.69 | Chris Gallagher | Hi, City Council, and I'm Chris. I'm also a member of the GPAC committee, but Milan, failed to give you even further background information about the topic of the Marin ship. And that is the WAM committee that was formed back in 2008, actually, by then Mayor Amy Belser. And that was made up of a huge diversity of people that had a diversity of interest down in the Marin ship. And I'm very proud to say I think half of them are here tonight. So that is a testament to what this topic is and how important it is. I was lucky enough, I don't know if lucky is the right word, but I was proud enough to be the chair of that committee. And two of the biggest topics that came out of the result of that was the city needed to update the general plan. which I'm proud to say. We're- doing that. And then second was to decide on the marineship specific plan. I'm not going to repeat what Peter and Bruce have said. I totally agree with them. I think that there can be a happy medium between maritime uses and everybody tends to use the word development as a dirty word, and it's not. I think you can do a lot of neat things. I think the maritime history is being preserved down in the Marin ship. I think you can do a lot of neat things. I think the maritime history is being preserved down in the Marin ship. I think the building of the Matthew Turner is an example of that. And the number of committees and people, volunteers, who came together to make that happen is just a huge example of how important this is. And I just don't want to see this continue to be kicked down the road. I just, this has been very near and dear to my heart since I came off of that committee. I went to the BAC for five years as a member of the public, I wasn't a member of the BAC, the general plan on the budget. So we really need to make a decision on this, you know, make it happen. And I think there can be a happy medium and a nice balance between the two, between preserving the maritime and looking at ways to make it better down there for everybody. Thank you. |
| 01:29:24.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Tim Walsh and then Steve Sicon Steve Sicon |
| 01:29:29.94 | Tim Walsh | Good evening, my name is Tim Walsh. I just wanted to thank everybody for the opportunity and also for the thought and diligence that went into the general plan so far. I just simply support the ideas that have been teased out just lightly this evening that deserve more time for Marinship rather than lumping it together in a general plan. I think there's so much that will impact the city of Sausalito and Marin County that it deserves the time to devote to make sure the balance is maintained and the growth is considered. Thank you. |
| 01:30:11.59 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Steve Sicon and then Melissa Blaustein. |
| 01:30:22.14 | Steve Sicon | Hello. My name is Steve Sacon. I'm a 10-year resident of the houseboats in Sausalito. I live in Varda Landing now. I'm also a real estate broker. I'm a city planner as well. One of the things that strikes me about the waterfront in Sausalito is that it seems like it's a victim of non-decisions. And I do support a specific area plan, but I also support some sort of happy medium where development can happen and it's not stagnated so much that it's a standoff where it's either development or maritime activities and it seems like particularly with regard to the houseboats what I'm finding with a lot of my transactions is that the houseboats many of them are older they're 34 years old they need to have attention and there are very few possibilities Thank you. I'm finding with a lot of my transactions is that the houseboats, many of them are older, they're 34 years old, they need to have attention and there are very few possibilities of places to take those houseboats out and to work on them. And I'm talking to a couple of the business owners down there, in particular Bay Area Boatworks, they're kind of, they're worried about the prospects for their continued existence. And what it seems to me is that as long as that's the case, then there's a question about the viability of the existence, the long-term existence of the houseboats. If there are not places for that type of work as well as work on actual vessels. So I would just like to suggest and promote the idea of a specific plan that takes into consideration the possibility that both these activities can happen together. There's plenty of space down there. It seems like there's been neglect for a long time. So maybe we can do development, and we can also make it a high priority for the continued existence of maritime activities that support both houseboats and sea vessels. Thank you. |
| 01:30:51.48 | Jay Baer | that it's |
| 01:32:10.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Melissa Blaustein and then Casey, Ken Peterson. |
| 01:32:16.84 | Melissa Blaustein | Hi, council members. Thank you so much for hearing from me. I think it's clear based on what everyone said this evening that few people would argue about the historical significance of the Marin ship. and the businesses that it support and the importance that that be preserved. However, as a member of the Sustainability Commission, but speaking as a resident of Sausalito, I'm personally very concerned about the climate impacts that we're susceptible to here in the community, being along the water. And I think that it's clear that at the time of perhaps the Wham Committee, but not necessarily the Marinship specific plan, we weren't in such a dire situation to address the impacts of sea level rise. |
| 01:32:53.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:55.35 | Melissa Blaustein | In my view, the issue of the marinship continues to be put off and put forward on committee after committee. And from a climate perspective, we just saw a very troubling study today, which says we have less than 10 years to do something or we're in big trouble. So just from the perspective of really dealing with and addressing the sea level rise issue and how we need to take steps to really address what we're susceptible to, I would say that since it was already decided to be rolled into the general plan when it was not initially addressed, whatever will move forward these climate action issues more quickly, I would be in favor of. Thank you. |
| 01:33:30.19 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Ken Peterson, and that's the last speaker card I have, or Casey Peterson. If there's anyone else who wants to speak, please fill out a speaker card. |
| 01:33:41.18 | Casey Peterson | Hi, I'm Casey Peterson. I'm a third generation owner at Clipper Yacht Harbor. Ken Peterson's my dad. I just wanted to, being one of the bigger properties on waterfront in the marineship, I wanted to ensure everyone here that the marine industry is not going anywhere, at least on our property. Our boatyards, our yacht sales, all the marine companies are very profitable for us. And owning a marina, they are good for us to have for our business as well as for their business they're not going anywhere but right now our economy is great when it starts to go down being a recreational thing that is when our industry starts to dry up a little bit so being able to to be more flexible in our zoning ordinances, again, we're not getting rid of any of our boatyards. KKMI is one of our best tenants. We have mechanics, yacht sales. They're not going anywhere. But our second story offices are harder to fill when the economy is not doing as great, being recreational. So if we had flexibility to have applied art or whatever percentage we could get to apply to it, would be great for us because that is the situation we are in now. Just wanted to, again, ensure everyone that our boat yards and mechanics are not going anywhere. Thank you. |
| 01:35:02.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. All right, Pat Zook, then John DeRay, and then Stuart Keel. |
| 01:35:13.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:35:13.16 | Pat Zook | Hi, thanks for your time. I have two points to make, one is that Regarding the information we have to base our decisions on, as far as the marineship is concerned, I think there are some significant gaps that I would hope we could fill. Specifically, you've heard anecdotal testimony about how viable and valuable and enduring some of the marine ship services are. We have not really had good information as to really what's down there. There is a big push. in the Marineship Steering Committee process on the part of some folks to focus on dollar generation, revenue generation, city profits, But without the understanding of what exactly is being generated on the marine ship in terms of service revenues, people working, and so forth. We cannot and should not make the decision to throw it away or replace it with so-called higher revenue generating businesses, most of which reside in offices. Secondly, I'd like to point out that The reason for the initial initiative and the specific plan was the march of those office buildings from West Harbor down to Skip Berg's place. And the perception at that time on the part of the community that this was the kind of progress that we didn't want, that we wanted to preserve an industrial area. It's not been a failure in that regard, although uh, And I will say, you know, office development has proceeded in the marinship Even so, under the existing regulations. I don't particularly care whether you throw away the specific plan or not. But I do care that pieces of it and parts of it that are valuable be included in our planning documents. So if you're going to throw it out, don't throw it out. tease it apart. and see what's worth keeping, I hope. Thanks. |
| 01:37:21.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. John DeRay. And then Stuart Keel, and that's the last speaker card I have. |
| 01:37:30.95 | John DeRay | i'm john de ray i'm also a member of the general plant advisory committee thank you for giving me the time tonight i wanted to just talk briefly about the industrial aspect of the marine ship being on the gpeg is a great responsibility as you know and i take it very seriously the two things that really motivated me to research this topic is I heard for many months anecdotal statements at our meetings referring to the marine industry or as dead or dying That was one thing. The other thing was, Being a lifelong white collar pencil pusher Before I make any recommendation that's going to affect the jobs and lives of people working in the marine industrial business, I wanted to really find out what was going on down there. So for that first item, I simply looked at some data regarding the boating industry. I found some data from 2016. Recreational boating is $8.9 billion industry in California. In the Bay Area, it's split into two districts. District 2, $375 million. District 12, $72 million. 2016 data. Since then, The unemployment rate is at a 70-year low. Average hourly wages are at a post-recession high. And most importantly, personal disposable income is at an all-time high. So it turns out it's not dead or dying. It's actually thriving nationally. It's thriving in California, and it's thriving in the Bay Area. Then I decided to go down to the Marin Ship. I actually started going down there during the tall ship process and got to meet people got to talk to people they're still those people are scattered throughout the the boating area of the marine ship working down there and you recall the local pride that we had in in the launching of the matthew turner they were partly responsible for that so i talked to shipwrights i talked to riggers diesel engine repair people I even talked to the auto body shop and the auto repair shop. I read all the reports and I went to the walking tour and the stakeholder meeting. And what I found was a group of people that work very, very hard and they serve this community and they have a great reputation in doing it. These are people that generally do not have the time or the experience to come here and to speak out for themselves So I personally do not discount the work because it's not white-collar. I don't think you would either So is it the best and most productive use of that land? No, I don't think so I suppose you could probably find businesses to draw more tourists from San Francisco. That's what you're looking to do And if there's an unproductive area down there, we need to look at specifically what business conditions are causing that lack of productivity and do something about it. So my point is I urge you to dig a little deeper. There's a lot of history down there and it would be a tragedy if we lost it. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:40:32.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:40:32.61 | John DeRay | . |
| 01:40:35.19 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And Stuart Keel, and that's the last speaker card I have. On this topic. |
| 01:40:41.70 | Stuart Keel | Hey, my name's Stuart Kiel. Thank you, City Council. I've been around Sausalito for the last 20 years, had boats here, been involved in A lot of situations, I'm the port captain of the Classic Yacht Association for the North Bay. That includes Sonoma and Marin. One of our boats has done 75 opening days, been in the same family since 1940, who we've worked on for three years here in Sausalito, one of the boat yards down below. And what really is Sausalito? I mean, if you ask anyone in the world, What do you think of Sausalito? What are your impressions? It's the waterfront. and part of the waterfront are the boat yards. And one of the boat yards I've had personal dealings with for over 20 years, that's Bayside Boats, and one man runs that like a director of the film. He knows every single thing of every single boat at any particular time for the last 35 years, and it's not a major corporation, it's being run by that fellow and by all the workers that are there. At low tide a couple of months ago, I was walking out to my boat, and I saw what looked like a horseshoe. And I got some rubber waiter boots and walked out, and it was a horseshoe. It was caked. with all sorts of crud on it. And it goes all the way back probably 100 years at least, where before we had engines to pull the boats out of the water, they used horses. And they'd take the horseshoes and just chuck them out. And I found a couple of those down there. So the fellow that was talking here showing all the stuff, I don't know all the details of the general plan, But he said three times, at least three times, that I counted. We're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work. and what works are the boat yards and the waterfront. And if you try and change that, you've changed the entire essence of Sausalito. It can become like any other place in the world. So I strongly encourage you to respect the nautical situation. The couple of wooden boat people that mention it, those boats need a place to be hauled. And the work is done in a very, very proper manner. with professionalism and environmental concerns extreme environmental concerns. And I encourage you to you know, retain the waterfront. And I also suggest, and I've talked to a bunch of people about this, is doing a waterfront festival. not only retaining it, but emphasizing it. something like the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. Stretch that whole thing along and bring a bunch of older boats, the fishing boats, have some cars dancing, and make it and celebrate the waterfront. Thank you. |
| 01:43:45.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THANK YOU SO MUCH. |
| 01:43:45.61 | Stuart Keel | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:43:45.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:43:45.71 | Stuart Keel | much. |
| 01:43:45.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you All right, with that, we're gonna close public comment and bring it up here. So... Christy, I'm clear that item four, these are the questions we're being asked to address for item four, but do you have another slide that summarizes the other things you're asking us to do tonight? |
| 01:44:08.81 | Christy Bascom | Item four was the one section where we're looking for direct input from the City Council. The others were reports, transmittal documents, we're happy to answer any questions, but no particular input is sought. |
| 01:44:11.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | for the Mariners? |
| 01:44:22.21 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:44:23.20 | Christy Bascom | I read about the goal. |
| 01:44:24.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. And the goals. |
| 01:44:25.52 | Christy Bascom | Accept the community goals. Again, no specific questions there, but any input that the council would like to provide or refinements, we're happy to accept that as well. |
| 01:44:34.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:44:41.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I do wanna point out the goals, one thing before we all start commenting, which is that Peter, on page one, Uh, 18 and 119 of your packet has provided some further refinements to the wording of the goals I'd like to us to consider adopting all of his refinements with the exception of goal five. I applaud his... his goal of making this goal less cumbersome, but Because the goal encompasses so many things, in my humble opinion, it should remain as the GPAC enunciated it. But I would like... to have us consider adopting his other proposed revisions on pages 118 and 119. All right, so who would like to lead off? |
| 01:45:43.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Could I suggest that we just take these two discussion items, finish with the goals, and then talk about item number four? Would that be acceptable? Yeah, absolutely. |
| 01:45:46.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sure. Sure. |
| 01:45:52.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, absolutely. So. We heard the goals are a working document. This is where they stand now. We did hear a request that we add... uh, Thank you. a better equity statement into our goals and Peter has requested that we add a beautification sub goal and then Adam has requested that we discuss a goal about, or that we at least obtain, well, his correspondence suggested that we add something into our goals having to do with the impacts of sea level rise. |
| 01:46:45.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Um... Madam Mayor, I don't, yeah. I don't have a page 118 in my packet. I don't know. I can't find what you're looking at with Peter's suggestions. |
| 01:46:56.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:46:56.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:46:56.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:46:56.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Exhibit three. Thank you. |
| 01:46:57.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:46:57.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's exhibit three at the back of your packet. |
| 01:46:57.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | IT'S A LITTLE BIT OF THE CITY. |
| 01:47:01.59 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's attachment three. Yeah, so... |
| 01:47:03.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, so. Attachment one, attachment two. So you see this on the bottom here, these page numbers, 120? Okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes it easier. Does that make sense now? Yeah. Okay. All right, she found it. Yeah, good. Thanks. |
| 01:47:17.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:47:19.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then I should add, there was correspondence that I received from Meg Fawcett that I thought I had forwarded to Serge and Lilly to forward to the rest of the city council, but it doesn't look like it's in our packet. So that somehow didn't work, but it also recommended adding to goal six a statement about Sausalito's by describing the infrastructure as public landscaping to enhance livability, civic pride, and economic vitality. And I understand that was something that the GPAC might have discussed, um, |
| 01:47:57.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That is Peters, that's at the bottom of page 119. |
| 01:47:59.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | PARTICIPATING. |
| 01:48:00.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | as Peter's goal He advocates for a beautification goal and he says I |
| 01:48:06.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, then that's similar language also proposed. |
| 01:48:08.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's identical language. |
| 01:48:09.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK. |
| 01:48:09.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:48:10.00 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:48:10.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Mm-hmm. Good. So we have it in front of us. All right, so who has feedback on the goals? |
| 01:48:20.72 | Jill Hoffman | I guess I have a question. How do we address asking for clarity on some of these? Do we ask it to you as the chair, to staff, to the consultant? I just think for us to hear and the community to hear how some of these, and I don't need to wordsmith all of this. I know that was done in depth through the committee. But just a little definition, especially as it relates to the diverse culture. Thank you. So we can see how we work in the equity statement and where it goes. So what is the cultural diversity and then in the next paragraph, diverse culture that was discussed that we're protecting? |
| 01:49:11.01 | Susan Sammels | So Christy, did you want to answer that? |
| 01:49:11.19 | Jill Hoffman | Christy, did you want to answer that? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller. |
| 01:49:20.15 | Christy Bascom | I would love to be able to provide a clear and concise answer. The reality is, as the two members of the council who are involved in the GPAC as well, The goals, they were discussed, they were revised. It was a collaborative process, so it would be hard for me to speak and say why the ultimate language was why the GPAC settled on the ultimate language that they did. |
| 01:49:46.72 | Jill Hoffman | Right. Ultimately, they did as a body all accepted, obviously. They collaborated on the actual terminology. That's correct. Yes. Just trying to define it. |
| 01:49:51.24 | Christy Bascom | That's correct. |
| 01:49:52.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:49:54.78 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:49:58.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, if there are no other questions, are there any comments on the goals or the suggestions that we've heard from the general public about revising or refining those goals. |
| 01:50:13.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I have a couple of comments on goal number one with the maintaining the small scale residential neighborhood recognizing geographical, architectural and cultural diversity. while supporting a range of housing options. Our housing element and state law, I think, talk about a range of housing options for all economic segments of the community and i'd either like to suggest that for this evening or to have the GPAC. consider that as these goals evolve over time. I thought the goal number six with the appropriate level of public service is a little bit of a non, it just doesn't sound very aspirational. Appropriate level of public service just seems not what we would really like to have in our town. I think it should be a high level of public service or something to strive for. I also thought that goal eight about, says provide a variety of circulation options. through and within Sausalito. As we've been talking about on the Sustainability Commission, the GHG emissions are Um, Global climate change in California is being driven over 50% by transportation uses. And in Marin County, that is also true. It's over about 50% of our climate change is being driven by single-use automobiles. And so I would personally like to see more of a addition to the circulation options that at least provides a goal of enhancing sustainable transportation options or options. We live in a really transit-rich area here, and to have a circulation goal that doesn't recognize our great bike opportunities, public transit, and other sustainable options seems a shame to me. So I would suggest either again tonight or moving forward with the GPAC that you think more about sustainable circulation. Thank you. So those are my three main comments. I think these are really great start. I think it's really hard to come up with goals like this. In terms of the additions that people have suggested, I like the modifications that Mr. Van Meter proposed. know there was a lot of debate about the public landscaping as an important part of our infrastructure. That's also an important part of our infrastructure to me, so I would like to see that added and then I guess I did have a question about sea level rise is going to impact this town so dramatically. Um, And number seven is about safeguarding the natural environment. But I don't think it really goes far enough. Is there another goal? Sorry, I've lost my place. But anyway, I think sea level rise and addressing that should be highlighted perhaps in number seven. |
| 01:53:39.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. So what I'm hoping is that we here, since these are not, I'm hoping we will avoid wordsmithing here tonight. These are preliminary goals that will evolve through the process. So I would hope that we would give direction to the M group to incorporate our feedback back to the GPEC as the goals continue to be. refined does that sound good to everybody. Okay, I'm seeing consensus on that. So who else has feedback on goals? No, OK, none. Joe. |
| 01:54:17.12 | Jill Hoffman | So other than just hearing what Susan had to say, and we're seeing a lot of crossover between circulation and sustainability, and maybe paragraph eight takes some of that as well. in the aspect of transportation and greenhouse gas, I think sea level rise, as you mentioned, does need to also have its own, maybe not its own place, but be referenced a little stronger, maybe even in, |
| 01:54:46.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, I'm actually rereading number seven, and it's pretty... It's pretty strong. It does say climate change, sea level rise, and subsidence is in there. |
| 01:54:55.81 | Jan Johnson | Yeah. |
| 01:54:59.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So maybe it's okay. Ray, anything? Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Joe. |
| 01:55:07.63 | Ray Withey | Let me just make a couple of general comments, if I may, Madam Mayor. Sure. |
| 01:55:11.20 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sure. |
| 01:55:16.55 | Ray Withey | I've been involved in a ton of, a lot of different strategic planning exercises over the last 30 years. This is the stage that I find incredibly frustrating. Every time I've been involved, I've found this stage completely frustrating because a lot of energy is, in my view, wasted wordsmithing something that's a draft that we haven't even done any real analysis on what we're talking about. And so what it should be is a guideline for now, a draft form that we then keep moving along. And as we get deeper and deeper into the analysis and an understanding of the policies and programs, we can ask now, does this goal make sense in this context of now what we learn? So I'm willing to back off. And I really appreciate we're not wordsmithing goals tonight. That's not what we should be doing. |
| 01:56:13.68 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. I know what my fellow council members are saying. |
| 01:56:18.92 | Ray Withey | But the more general point is, to be quite frank, I'm getting frustrated by this process. I was initially frustrated because we weren't interesting enough people, enough of our residents generally in the subject. We had very little traction, but I think that's been improving significantly. The problem is there's a number of people I have for the last month been in conversations with people where they're just basically scratching their heads saying, what's this group done? How much money have we spent and what have we actually done? We haven't really talked about anything. We haven't really made any decisions. Um, And so the conversation is moving in the nice direction. But my fear is for those who have become engaged, you're rapidly going to lose them unless you start making it really meaningful of decisions, of real decisions that need to be made to affect the plan over the next 20 years. We're still talking in this swirling around in this abstract level that the average person doesn't know what we're talking about. and we need to get out of that. Because if not, we're going to cause damage, and I'd sooner shut the process down than cause that damage. So we really have to get away from the abstract and start talking about really what are the options, for example, in the marine ship. What are they? Protecting the working waterfront, which is what I agree with, what does it mean? What does it actually mean? What do you need to do to do it? These are the conversations we now need to have. And my fear is that we're going to start moving into policies and be arguing about words of policies and still not having this conversation. So we're at a critical time where we have got to change how we're doing business. |
| 01:58:37.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Okay, um... I agree with my fellow council members. I've given my feedback, I think we should adopt or incorporate Peter's comments with the exception of comp that to goal number five. And, Of course, as this process progresses, we should continue to consider and respect the diversity on many different levels within Sausalito. So. That's it on goals. We have a conference call scheduled for our next item, and I don't think we're gonna finish the marinship piece of this discussion in three minutes, and so we have a specially set conference call that has to do with short term rentals, but it's only supposed to last about five minutes. So we are going to adjourn this item for five to ten minutes so that we can hear this conference call concerning enforcement. for short-term rentals and then we will resume our discussion and complete the discussion and Thank you. with feedback on the Marin ship specific plan and the Marin ship. All right, so Debbie, are we ready to dial? |
| 02:00:14.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Mm-hmm. Yeah, so who we're going to be chatting with is a gentleman by the name of Ulrich, who runs an organization called Host Compliance. Is Lilly here in the room? |
| 02:00:34.19 | Bruce Huff | Thank you. |
| 02:00:35.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK. |
| 02:00:41.52 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We have a PowerPoint in our packet that is here for reference from Ulrich. While we're getting him on the line, a little bit of background. He used to live in Tiburon, and he served on a committee in Tiburon that was considering short-term rentals in Tiburon. Tiburon ultimately prohibited short-term rentals, but in serving on the committee, Ulrich became aware of... significant data needs that would be needed to understand, monitor, and enforce whatever short-term rental policy would be adopted. And so he's going to give us a brief overview Is he available, Lily? Yes. He's going to give us a brief overview of his service and what it can do. If Sausalito were to adopt a short term rental pilot program and if Sausalito were to hire a compliance assistant, it would not necessarily be host compliance. There are at least a half a dozen agencies out there, so Sausalito would go out for an RFP to hire its compliance monitor. This is simply informational to give folks an idea of the data that's available and how compliance could be managed. |
| 02:02:26.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:02:31.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Take a break. |
| 02:02:33.35 | Jill Hoffman | Got a problem? I'm sorry. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:02:39.67 | Jill Hoffman | I think I got a little brief on it. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:02:43.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | for our later item. You've got to get them before you said it. |
| 02:02:45.66 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:02:46.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:02:51.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So does this take a while? Should we start talking about other stuff or? |
| 02:02:57.34 | Lily Whalen | It's supposed to be pretty instantaneous. Ulrich is at the airport right now, just to let everyone know. |
| 02:03:16.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It worked the other morning like a charm. We tested it, Ray. |
| 02:03:29.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, I'll tell you what. While they figure out this technology, we're going to start our discussion on, oh, |
| 02:03:42.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're just starting over. |
| 02:03:44.26 | Sonya Hanson | out. |
| 02:04:06.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, we have such a full agenda, we are gonna start our discussion on the marineship. So, Lily can you just put that other slide back up for now while you and if you're able to get him and Let us know. |
| 02:04:25.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So can we look at that slide or will that blow your chance, your trying to start the meeting? Okay, okay. Okay, who wants to lead off on thoughts about the marineship? |
| 02:04:43.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | How about if we start with the members on the G-PAC? Because you guys know really what's going on. |
| 02:04:46.74 | Lily Whalen | Yeah. |
| 02:04:46.96 | Unknown | I would play. |
| 02:04:52.85 | Ray Withey | Thank you. I'd make the recommendation. Okay, first of all, |
| 02:04:57.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:04:57.05 | Ray Withey | Thank you. |
| 02:04:57.07 | Unknown | I'm not going to be a |
| 02:04:57.56 | Ray Withey | We haven't really discussed, we've done a lot of data analysis on the Marin ship. |
| 02:04:57.59 | Unknown | We're going to be |
| 02:05:04.16 | Ray Withey | There's a lot of the existing condition reports. This may need to be supplemented. We haven't talked about it enough. Um... The marine ship, in my view, the marine ships. |
| 02:05:18.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | . |
| 02:05:19.75 | Ray Withey | Aha! Saved by the bell. |
| 02:05:19.78 | Unknown | Ah. |
| 02:05:20.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 02:05:20.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:20.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | save All right, does that mean he's on? Okay. I knew if we got started. |
| 02:05:27.90 | Ulrich | Hello, can you hear me? |
| 02:05:32.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Hi, Ulrich. |
| 02:05:34.19 | Ulrich | I'm ready. |
| 02:05:35.53 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, can you see us or hear us? |
| 02:05:39.81 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know. |
| 02:05:40.86 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:05:40.91 | Jill Hoffman | Hello. |
| 02:05:43.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:43.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh. |
| 02:05:43.60 | Unknown | Thank you. Can you hear me? I cannot hear you. Yes, we can hear you. |
| 02:05:46.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes, we can hear you. Can you hear us? |
| 02:05:50.35 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:05:54.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:05:54.34 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right. Hello, hello. Yes, can you hear us all, Rick? |
| 02:06:00.47 | Ulrich | another project of last wave, |
| 02:06:00.84 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:06:00.98 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. and I'm not ready. |
| 02:06:02.65 | Unknown | stars. |
| 02:06:03.19 | Unknown | Sorry. |
| 02:06:03.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:04.37 | Ulrich | How good. So I have. Thank you. |
| 02:06:08.72 | Unknown | All right, hello. Can you hear us? I can hear you now. Okay, great. Thank you for your patience with me. |
| 02:06:08.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. THE FAMILY. Hello. Can you hear us? Okay, great. You can hear us now. |
| 02:06:16.40 | Unknown | Great. Good. |
| 02:06:17.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, Ulrich, we're going to literally take about five minutes to zip through. your PowerPoint. While we were waiting for technology to catch up, I already filled people in about your background, your work with the town of Tiburon. So let's jump right into the heart of the matter. |
| 02:06:38.47 | Unknown | Sounds good. Okay, good. So what I wanted to do with you was just share a little bit of information about what is happening here in Sosolito as a list of short-term rentals. And then also give you a little bit of background on how other cities are using technology to solve their compliance and enforcement issues. So just to start with the numbers, right now in SOS of Lido there's been about 34% growth in the number of short-term rental listings over the last year. So right now, there's about 180. So when you do the math here, there's 187 listings in the city, which represent 156 unique short-term rental units. So obviously, something that's keep in mind as you think about policy and also sort of like the future of the industry, because there's no sign that this growth is slowing down. In terms of the types of properties that are being rented, about 90% of the homes that are being rented out in Sausalito right now are what we call entire home rentals. So traditional vacation rentals, where as the renter, you get access to the entire unit during the duration of your stay. So there is no one essentially present to keep taps of them, like the host is not there. That's something to keep in mind as you think about the implications of that. The average rental rents for $245 a night, so obviously fairly high nightly rate. About 60 percent of the rents in Sosolito are in single-family dwelling units. |
| 02:08:16.55 | Ulrich | family dwelling units. |
| 02:08:22.30 | Unknown | In terms of best practices for enforcement and how we potentially could be of help, whatever way the city decides to go on enforcement, I think the first thing to acknowledge is that doing the enforcement work manually is very time-consuming and difficult. So the city obviously tried out this on their own a couple of years ago when they hired a third party to essentially try to track down all these listings. And I think if you were to ask CSG consultants who are the ones who were contracted to do it, it was incredibly time consuming because there literally are rentals on dozens of websites and... the rentals constantly change over. The address information is not provided on the listing, so you have to do a lot of detective work to actually figure out where they are. And obviously, the eventual platforms are not willing to share that information with the city. So the things that we do with about 150 other cities across the country and 50 in California is that we provide technology that enables the city to deal with all the different aspects of short-term mental compliance monitoring and enforcement. So obviously, depending on where you go and the pilot, if you do need some kind of registration system, we can do that. But no matter where you end up on that question, there will be a need to identify operators who are advertising out there. That's a service we call address identification, where we literally scan the 50 largest vacation sites every week, take an inventory, and then do all the detective work to provide the city with the list of addresses as owners. We can also follow up on that work by notifying people who are operating without the proper permits or in violation of a ban. We can do that using the city's form letters and letterhead and so forth. We can also figure out who are the ones that operate the most, so the people who have a lot of rental activity, we can identify those so code enforcement can focus the efforts on those operators. And finally, we operate a 24-7 hotline service that makes it very easy for neighbors who are experiencing issues with short-term rentals to report compliance issues to the city and for the city to take action on those. So that's the five-minute overview of what we do. I hope you're able to hear me, and I'm here to answer any questions you may have. |
| 02:10:51.19 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We heard you just fine. Now, Ulrich, you had another slide that showed the cost. |
| 02:10:57.98 | Unknown | That is correct. |
| 02:10:58.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, there we go. |
| 02:11:00.52 | Unknown | Good. So the way our services are priced is that we essentially price everything based on the amount of work that needs to be done, which is obviously directly correlated with the amount of listings and rental units out there. |
| 02:11:07.00 | Ulrich | Thank you. |
| 02:11:16.10 | Unknown | So assuming that you guys wanted to work with us, depending on again what services you want, the annual pricing for each of the services would be what you can see on the screen. So for example, the Adverse Identification Service would be about $6,000 a year. If you wanted us to do all the follow up with all the letters, it would be about $3,000 a year. If you wanted us to give you granular data on the rent select for each rental, that would be another $3,500. If you want us to run the hotline, it would be about $2,000. In total, if you wanted our entire program for the city, it would be about $15,000, which I think is about a third of what you paid CSG consultants to do their part-time help a couple years ago. |
| 02:11:55.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then Ulrich, that 15,000, however, only covers you sending form letters to observed violators. It does not include the city of Sausalito's code enforcement officer having to actually go out and collect the money or or defend against claims or lawsuits from people who think they've been improperly cited or fined. Is that right? |
| 02:12:26.89 | Unknown | That's absolutely correct, right? But what this service does is it really frees up a lot of time. So instead of spending code enforcement time doing all the administrative work and all the desk detective work and all the sort of like labeling and mailing notices and all that stuff, you can take that time and reallocate it for the underground enforcement work and for these sort of like more in-depth cases. So just to give you a couple of data points, for example, the city of Denver uses our solution and they run their entire program with one person. This is a city that has 5,500 short terminals versus your 200. |
| 02:13:06.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. Hi, this is Susan Cleveland-Knowles. I was on the short term rental task force where you presented before a couple years ago. I believe at that time, You said that an annual fee for the number of short term rentals generally that we had at that time would cover all of the costs of your service. Is that still correct? |
| 02:13:31.94 | Unknown | Yeah, absolutely. The pricing that I'm showing here covers all the fees associated with our services. So, that's absolutely clear. But again, if you are going to hire someone in code enforcement to run your program and pick up the phone and answer questions from certain citizens that are not, so the emergency or hotline questions. That we will not cover. |
| 02:13:51.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That we will not call. Yeah, the question I was asking is if we have a permit fee of, for example, $150 per host, your service is usually covered by that permit fee. Is that correct? |
| 02:14:01.17 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:14:07.26 | Unknown | That's absolutely right. So most of the cities that we work with who allow it and have a permit fee as well as a TOT requirement end up making a lot more money from their program than they pay us. So just to give you some data points, like the city of Nashville, Tennessee collected $7 million of TOT last year, and they paid us $200,000. So we've got about 35 times return on the investment. |
| 02:14:36.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, and I have one other question. When you were presenting to the short-term rental task force, at that point in time your company would not do business with a city that banned short-term rentals. Is that still the case? |
| 02:14:52.56 | Unknown | That is not the case anymore. So the market has evolved a lot. We've gotten a lot bigger. At the time, we were concerned about the risk of litigation from Airbnb. We have since gotten so big that we think that that risk is very small because it would just be very stupid of them to sue 150 cities for enforcing their own rules. But at the time, we only had maybe 30 customers, and we felt that that was more risky. But now we serve a lot of cities that have bands, such as the city of Monterey, and the city of Carmel by the sea, and the city of Formosa Beach, and the city of Napa and other places like that. |
| 02:15:25.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And do you think your enforcement efforts are similar in both types of cities? Ones that have limited programs and ones that have bans? |
| 02:15:35.59 | Unknown | The places that have bans tend to be much more difficult, to be very frank, the reason being that Short-term rental hosts in cities that have vans tend to go through great efforts to try to hide their location in illegal activity. So we end up spending a lot more time trying to track them down. We're still able to do it. I was just at the APA conference in San Diego today presenting in the city of Monterey. One of our clients was there, and they have a complete pane of short terminals. And when we started out a year ago, there were 200 illegal listings, and now after a year of enforcement, there are seven left. |
| 02:16:17.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, great. |
| 02:16:18.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:16:18.79 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:16:18.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:16:18.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And Ulrich, if we wanted to hire you, if we kept a ban in place, you require a minimum three year commitment to work with a city that has a ban in place. Is that right? |
| 02:16:32.64 | Unknown | Yeah, and that is because we have two ways to go about it. We can increase our pricing because it is three times as much work, or we can ask for a longer commitment to spread out our cost of setting up the program and doing all this work. So we found that the three commitment works. If it doesn't work for you, we can also talk about alternative pricing, but I just want to be clear that then the pricing will be higher than what I'm showing on the screen here. |
| 02:16:59.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, you all have Ulrich's full PowerPoint presentation in your packet. Are there any other questions of Ulrich while we've got him on the line? I see none. Ulrich, thank you so much for making yourself, oh, sorry, Jill just thought of one. I do. |
| 02:17:15.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Or this is. from the email exchange that we had earlier, yesterday, I think, about the types of reports that you can get directly from the platforms to find out, you know, the volume that's going with each unit and also the revenue. And so can you tell us about those two reports? Yeah. |
| 02:17:35.48 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:17:38.84 | Unknown | Yeah, so the way that the short-term rental websites generally work is that they operate on a commission basis. So typically, they charge a percentage of the gross rent, which means that they have a need to essentially explain to their customers, the short-term rental hosts, how much the fees are going to be that they're charging the hosts. The way they do that is that they essentially provide a booking report or rent selectivity report that shows essentially what stays were booked through their platform, how much money was charged to the renter, and therefore what the commissions are. That data is very helpful to us from an enforcement perspective. So when we conduct audits on behalf of our clients, we essentially ask these short-term rental hosts that we're auditing to provide those specific reports because we know exactly where they are and what they look like and what they should say. The question that was raised yesterday was, do any cities essentially require every host to provide those reports every month? And my answer to that question was no, because one of the trade-offs you always have when you're trying to get compliance is essentially minimizing the red tape while getting as much information as you think is necessary to essentially make sure that people comply with the rules. So the way that most cities go about it is that they say, When you self-report your taxes, you essentially just type in the amount of gross revenue and the number of nights that you rent it and then pay your taxes. And then what most cities do is they only require people to actually provide that detailed backup information when there is a suspicion that some people are violating the rules or under-reporting taxes. And so it's more of a sort of selective approach used only when there is essentially a good sort of like reason to believe that there might be something going on that should be going on. And that in our experience provides minimum amount of red tape by maximizing compliance because you audit as many or as few as you think is necessary based on our red tape activity data. |
| 02:19:53.93 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So, but we would have a method to hold a permit holder accountable if we thought they were renting more than whatever we've decided is the maximum. And it would be via those exportable reports. |
| 02:20:04.03 | Unknown | Exactly. That's exactly right. So the way I would recommend doing it is if you say, for example, there's a 90 day limit a year or whatever you decide on, what we would do is we would track these platforms for signs of rent selectivity beyond the 90 days. And then when that happens, or even if you get close to 90 days, we could then automatically send them a letter and say, hey, we would love to get additional information. Can you please provide the following reports? And then they could do that online. |
| 02:20:37.38 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:20:37.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:20:37.70 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. All right. Quick question, Ulrich, on your stats. You had great numbers as far as how many current listings we have, even the average rent. Do you have approximate number on how many nights those active listings are rented a year? |
| 02:20:57.11 | Unknown | I do, but I unfortunately didn't include in this presentation, and I don't think I can pull it up in real time. But we do have that type of information to us. Okay. |
| 02:21:07.53 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Can you give us a rough order of magnitude? |
| 02:21:10.86 | Unknown | It would be guesswork, and I don't want to be on record for saying something. I don't know what I'm talking about. So I can look it up, but I unfortunately can't give you the numbers. |
| 02:21:19.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, we're going to hear this item again on October 30, so we can get the data from you in the meantime. All right, Ulrich, thank you so much for making yourself available from an airport, no less, and for putting together this PowerPoint presentation for us. It's very informative, and we're very appreciative. |
| 02:21:25.78 | Jay Baer | Yeah. |
| 02:21:30.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:21:30.94 | Unknown | Hi. |
| 02:21:37.25 | Unknown | Great, thank you so much. Yeah, enjoy the rest of your meeting. |
| 02:21:40.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Oh, yeah. Good luck with that. |
| 02:21:42.60 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:21:43.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:21:43.36 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:21:46.03 | Unknown | I'm going to hang up unless you have other questions. |
| 02:21:48.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No, thank you. |
| 02:21:49.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:21:50.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, Lily, can you put our slide back up? Okay, Ray. Thank you. You were saying, |
| 02:21:57.60 | Ray Withey | I was, as I said, saved by the bell. |
| 02:21:58.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's a very crucial point. |
| 02:22:05.32 | Ray Withey | Okay. Um, I think we must try and separate the concept of retaining the current marine ship specific plan versus Seeing the need down the road for there to be a new specific plan. Those are two very different things. And I think the GPAC reached the conclusion, or at least a majority did, reached a consensus. I don't think we voted. We did not. |
| 02:22:35.84 | Jay Baer | We did not. |
| 02:22:38.78 | Ray Withey | The better way to go was to take up the recommendations of the Marineship Steering Plan Committee way back in 2015, which was this should all be rolled up and discussed in the context of the general plan. And there's no reason why the Marineship Okay, we're not saying get rid of the zones. We're not saying eliminate the marine ship as a place that needs special zoning. We're not saying that. What we're saying is. in the general plan. It was alluded to earlier that our marine ship specific plan is unique. It's unique in the sense that it was designed to stop things happening. And you know, Bruce and I can disagree. disagree on whether the plan was successful or not. In terms of stopping things happening, it was successful. But there's been consequences of that stopping things happening, and the consequences are blight and an underperformance economically. That doesn't mean we've got to maximize. It doesn't mean we have to have the absolute best economic use out of every unit there. That doesn't mean that at all. What it means is we need to find the right balance so that the marineship is rejuvenated, and what's the best way to make that happen? There needs to be some changes there. We haven't discussed what they are, other than very abstract terms, perhaps changing the boundary of the industrial from the waterfront. But other than that, there's been very little discussion. I mean, All you have to do is really open the WHAM report, as Christine's told us, right? And nearly all the solutions are there. We haven't talked about it. We haven't talked about it. So to have this confusion of the marine ship specific plan, it did its job. Whether you like what it did or not, it did its job. It's now time to be retired. A specific plan normally lasts a shorter number of years, five to seven years. They're normally booster plans by nature. Economic development plans in order to do something for a short period of time to give an area a boost. That's what usually a specific plan is used for because there's something. We don't, the plan we currently have is to stop things happening. So my view is the GPAC was on exactly the right track. We need to roll up this discussion in the general plan. And then at the end of that process, when we know what we want to do with the Marin ship, we then ask the question, now do we need a new specific plan or not? That's what we should be doing. So that's my recommendation how we proceed. |
| 02:25:37.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And Ray, one comment by one of the... members of the public who spoke was that if we do decide that the MarinShip specific plan as it currently, if we decide to say thank you and goodbye to the MarinShip specific plan as it currently exists, I think they were urging that we still consider what pieces and parts of that plan should be included in our general plan document. |
| 02:26:04.55 | Ray Withey | I absolutely agree with that because there are some parts of the marine ship specific plan the policy concepts need to be kept, no question. But until we start talking about it, we're not gonna be able to get there in my view. So that's my recommendation on the Marin ship, that we move forward in the context that it's part of Sausalito. It's part of the general plan. We've got to make it part of the general plan, whether we like it or not. It's part of Sol Solito. Therefore, the only question is, are we going to try and write two plans at once, or are we going to decide what we want to do and then later ask the question, is there a need for a specific plan? Now we know what we want to do. |
| 02:26:51.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | All right, Jill, does that give enough background? |
| 02:26:56.02 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah, I'll see you at some point. |
| 02:26:58.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I agree with much of what Ray said. I don't fully agree that the Marin ship specific plan is responsible for all of the blight that we see in the Marin ship. I believe that some of the blight we see in the Marin ship is a result of the manner in which landowners manage their lots in the marine ships, such as issuing no long-term leases, keeping everybody on a month-to-month, which prevents any meaningful investment by businesses in their business. And so I think that there are some business owners who have purposely kept their land on short term leases or kept it fallow in an effort to wait out the city of Sausalito deciding to rezone to a higher and better use. And so I don't believe that all of the blight in the marineship arises only from the constraints of the marineship specific plan. Aside from that, I fully agree with Council Member Withey. I think that the Marinship specific plan as It exists today, has outlived its usefulness, although components of it need to be respected and preserved. I think the manner in which the GPAC should proceed is to consider this and every zone in Sausalito in a holistic manner. And then once that visioning and policy work has been done, we can decide as Ray suggests whether it can all be embodied in one general plan or whether there is still some utility to be accomplished. or even an economic boost to be accomplished by enunciating a new marine ship specific plan. |
| 02:29:09.30 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:10.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I had a couple of follow-up questions mainly based on the ordinances, and ordinance 1022 and 1128, and so both of those in our packet, Both of those say they can't be amended without voter action. And ordinance 1128 can't be amended without voter action. So if we're talking about changes to some area, specifically the marineship, I think is obviously what we're talking about right now. It doesn't make sense to me to talk about changes or evolutions or what are we going to do with that going forward. If you're talking about an ordinance that affects that, that requires voter action. So I don't know if the plan is to come up with however that fits in with those new plan and however that fits in those ordinances. But then you're still... going to have to go to a vote. So... You know, I'm not really sure of the point of the whole thing, if you're you know, taking a whole, to Ray's point, a whole lot of effort, a whole lot of money, a whole lot of consultant time, on a plan that ultimately may or may not be approved by the voters. So, I mean, that's my... That may be my biggest concern about our conversation right now. |
| 02:30:29.42 | Jill Hoffman | Well, the good news is the whole community is here tonight, so we can vote. |
| 02:30:33.15 | Bruce Huff | Yeah. |
| 02:30:33.22 | Unknown | vote. Thank you. |
| 02:30:36.22 | Jill Hoffman | I really appreciate what the two committee members had to say. And I think we're all in agreement. But I think you want to hear it from us, and the community wants to hear it, so I'll say that. We want to protect the water based businesses and the maritime uses, not only as they are, enhance what they are. I can see them being better. More not just more economic, it doesn't always have to be dollar driven, they could have a broader scope, they could be more inclusive, they could be a lot of things, I don't think they'll get there by staying stagnant. My fear through this process is what we don't do Mother Nature will do for us. And I think that's our biggest risk at this point. Ten years that we heard about tonight is kind of a new number. Maybe not to some people, but that definitely puts a little more urgency to the matter as far as getting through this process. That pretty much gets us into a general plan and a couple changes later we're right into that time frame. So if you want to hear from at least the council at this point, and I'm saying those uses in the marineship are extremely vital to our culture, our economic diversity, resiliency. And given it at such a unique spot on the bay, I see that happening for a long period of time. So it's something we should invest in. From all I've heard as far as the specific plan and how the committee talked about it, I think it has run its course and does need to be incorporated into the general plan. I support that discussion and mostly because of what Ray said is, It's the beginning of the discussion, all the details still need to be worked out. But for that point of it, yeah, I think you got my support on that element. |
| 02:32:46.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:32:48.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Great, yeah, I too think that the discussion that the GPAC had on the specific plan and how to deal with that is correct, that it should be put aside for now and then incorporated into the general plan and then as the process winds down, figure out if another newer specific plan is warranted. I think hearing the presentation, the discussion and public comment tonight, one of the things that still I come back to every time I think about the marineship or we talk about the marineship is that the WAM report was just an amazing, thorough, report that covered, it had a huge variety of people involved in it from every different perspective, It has amazing recommendations and I just really kind of feel like we should start with that and not retread. And so I haven't been. in the GPAC meetings on this subject, I have read that report a couple of times now, and I'm just kind of continually amazed at the amount of good work that was done by that group and thoughtfulness and care. So I would just hope that that is held front and center as discussions continue. I think the other... issues that I heard tonight that are so important and that the things that I feel like need to be addressed in the marineship are sea level rise, circulation, and, and infrastructure. There's a lot of good things happening in the marinship, a lot of economic vitality, but you can't get around. It's the roads are crumbling, they're sinking, The sewer system is uh, Aging, stormwater drains need improvement. Those things are not gonna fix themselves. And so any plan moving forward needs to balance some kind of revenue generation to improve the infrastructure and have something stable moving forward with our main goal to maintain the maritime character and keep the history that's there. So that idea, and this was said many different times, of balance and flexibility, I think need to be our watchwords moving forward as we consider the future of the Marin ship. I believe, as a couple of speakers said, that both things can happen together, that we can protect and preserve what makes Marin ship important, and improve the infrastructure that's just so necessary to keep the Marin ship the way it is. Otherwise, as Vice Mayor Burns just said, nature will take over. That area is built on fill and it's sinking and sea level is rising. So we really need to address those issues. So those are the kind of things I hope the GPAC will consider as they move forward and I think Hopefully we can find some good solutions. |
| 02:35:59.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And so with those comments in mind, is it fair to say that... We're not going to comment further on land use this evening, aside from the unanimous goal across this council of maintaining our working waterfront, our maritime uses, But the GPAC still needs to collect data and we've asked for more economic data about the marine ship and continue with its process. So I think there's consensus that we will, Thank and say goodbye to the Marineship Specific Plan, preserving those aspects of it that are still relevant and important. that will work on one overall general plan that respects all the different zones in Sausalito. And that when all of the work is done, we'll consider whether a new marine ship specific plan is appropriate. for whatever reasons, and it will be important in considering, the land uses aside from preserving our waterfront and our maritime uses and light industrial that we consider Thank you. the other challenges with circulation infrastructure and sea level rise. |
| 02:37:18.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I need to add one thing just based on the comments that were made. Um, So one of the issues with the Marin ship is that it's not owned by the city. The streets aren't owned by the city. The infrastructure is not owned by the city. Unless I'm wrong, someone speak up. And so I think to Councilmember Clevel-Null's point, and I think some of the other comments that were made too, unless it's already built in there, unless they're already discussing it, I think that has to be clearly addressed in any time you talk about the marine ship or infrastructure or investment or what are you going to do with the tax dollars because That's one thing we struggled with a few years ago when we were talking about redoing the curbs and sewers and things around the city. the southern part of the Marinship is what's appropriate for investment from the city into public money into private property? And that's what it is, it's private property. And so, and I'm not commenting one way or the other on |
| 02:38:16.50 | Jay Baer | in. |
| 02:38:16.72 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:38:16.79 | Jay Baer | I'm not sure. |
| 02:38:19.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | where I would fall out at the end of the day, but I think that has to be clearly addressed and appropriately. I think that's the appropriate time to address it. And if we want to come up with a solution and state the public Public good one way or the other and and articulate that in our planning process and so I think that's one of the biggest issues that we struggle with down there and why you see some of the the blight that you see so I Anyway, if everybody agrees, I'd like to add that in there. |
| 02:38:49.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's fine by me. I will add that in deference to Chris Gallagher, who's standing up, that the federal government is one of the largest landowners down in the Marin ship. It's not us, but it's the federal government. |
| 02:38:59.86 | Jay Baer | But it's not. |
| 02:39:02.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And yes, they are not a blighted area. um, But, so there are private landowners and there's the federal government, so. |
| 02:39:14.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:39:15.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, okay, any other comments? M Group, do you have what you need? Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry, public comment is closed on this matter. But it will be coming back, I promise. Okay. With that, we'll move on to our next agenda item. Does anybody need a five minute break? No, we're good? We've got a whole raft of people here to talk. So, okay, Lily, short-term rentals. |
| 02:40:17.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Go ahead, ready when you are. We're ready. Good evening again. Guys, can you hold it down? We're going to move right into our next agenda item. |
| 02:40:20.98 | Lily Whalen | Bye. |
| 02:40:25.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks. Thank you. |
| 02:40:27.86 | Lily Whalen | Good evening again, Madam Mayor, Council Members. Again, I am Lily Whalen, the Interim Community Development Director for the City of Sausalito. And tonight I'll be giving the council a presentation on a discussion of short term rentals in Sausalito. So for a brief agenda, I will first be providing some background on the existing regulations. that the short term rental On the existing regulations in Sausalito. I'll be also talking about the short term rental task force's recommendations that they put forth in 2017 and the council direction from that time And then I'll provide some discussion topic areas such as background on enforcement through the Sausalito Municipal Code, an update on code enforcement, an update on the recent Marin County short term rental legislation that was adopted this year. An update from our legislative committee. Also what a pilot program could look like if the council considered one, including a menu of options, a potential timeline for implementation, and potential fiscal impact. And then I'll end with options for the council to consider and ask for direction. |
| 02:41:32.81 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 02:41:32.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And then I'll- |
| 02:41:37.00 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So Lily, this is about a 15 minute presentation? |
| 02:41:45.59 | Lily Whalen | So in terms of background, short term rentals are the rental of a home, dwelling unit, bedroom, room, or rooms in a dwelling unit for a period of less than 30 days, and short term rentals are currently prohibited in Sausalito. Despite their prohibition, short term rental activity has continued and has significantly grown over the years with the services provided. like Airbnb and the RBO online. In 2015, the council began to study the issue and directed staff to implement a short term rental code enforcement program which the council appropriated $50,000 for code enforcement and directed staff to proactively enforce the regulations. In July of 2016, the council formed the short term rental task force who conducted a survey, held meetings and forums, and their efforts are documented on the city's website. In December of 2016, the council adopted increased specific penalty fines of $1,000 for a first violation, $2,000 for a second violation, and $5,000 for the third and subsequent violation. Council held multiple meetings from 2015 through 2017 to discuss this issue. In February of 2017, the Short Term Rental Task Force recommended a pilot program for the council's consideration. That pilot program is in your packet. The council ultimately decided to continue to prohibit short term rentals in Sausalito and address them as a part of the general plan update process. The legislative committee revisited this issue on September 24th and October 2nd of this year and provided direction which I'll discuss a little bit later in the presentation. |
| 02:43:29.17 | Lily Whalen | Despite their prohibition, short term rentals are being advertised in Sausalito on hosting sites. And currently it's estimated from the numbers that host compliance gave you this evening, that 187 listings representing 156 unique short term rental units are being advertised in Sausalito. The number of short term rentals being advertised from 2017 to the present has increased by 34% as reported to you by host compliance. Code enforcement of short term rental violations in Sausalito as all code enforcement is on a complete basis. In many cases, it's difficult for the code enforcement officer to verify a listing is tied to a particular property. And it's also difficult to prove that the subject property is hosting a short term rental by verifying that the payment for the rental is taking place. From January 2017 to the present, the city has received 34 complaints about short-term rentals. Of these complaints, 14 cases were issued courtesy notices or compliance orders, and those properties cease their violation. |
| 02:44:42.23 | Melanie Maharshan | Thank you. |
| 02:44:42.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:42.27 | Lily Whalen | Thanks. going back and forth. You're one slide behind. |
| 02:44:43.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:44:43.84 | Unknown | You're one slide behind. |
| 02:44:44.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:44:45.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:45.61 | Lily Whalen | There you go. Yeah, eight of those, so eight of the cases were closed after citations were issued and property signed an agreement to not conduct short-term rental activity. Eight cases were closed after it was discovered that the properties were not operating short-term rentals or there was a lack of evidence. And four cases are still pending investigation. Staff has provided a list of code enforcement activity regarding short-term rentals from 2013 to the present in the staff report. |
| 02:45:16.25 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | question for you. |
| 02:45:17.05 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'M GOING TO BE ABLE TO |
| 02:45:17.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sure. |
| 02:45:18.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Are most of the complaints from neighbors, or are the complaints more generalized, like somebody goes online and sees that there's somebody hosting, I mean, are they direct complaints like there was a loud party last night or are they for the whole. |
| 02:45:34.99 | Lily Whalen | For the whole, most of them are direct complaints from neighbors. |
| 02:45:37.79 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 02:45:38.00 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you. |
| 02:45:40.84 | Lily Whalen | A map showing the general location of the complaints we received about short-term rentals from January 2013 to the present is provided at the right-hand side of the screen. And a map provided by host compliance showing the location of short-term rentals advertised in Sausalito as of September 2018 is provided on the left-hand side of the screen. Those maps are also in your staff report. The majority of the task force recommended using the services of host compliance to provide the tracking and monitoring of short term rentals operating in the city. Using these services, updated data would be provided to the city on properties that are hosting short term rentals, the number of days rented, and a self reporting mechanism to track and remit taxes. Other services host compliance provides, as they shared with you this evening, our 24-7 hotline. which is a contact number for any complaints that host compliance would address by immediately contacting the local contact person responsible to respond and remedy the complaint. They would also provide monthly staff reports on the short-term rental tax compliance, And they would also work with the city on sending out form letters that could include a courtesy notice, compliance orders, and citations. |
| 02:47:01.76 | Lily Whalen | The majority of the task force recommended establishing a short term rental pilot program to regulate short term rentals with the issuance of permits in Sausalito. As recommended by the task force, the pilot program would be for one to two years, as determined by the council, with regular reviews of program compliance costs and permit fee revenues, and then also a sunset to revisit the program by the council. The application for permit would include numerous conditions that must be complied with for the duration of the permit, including but not limited to provisions for parking, trash noise, good neighbor policies, limited on the number of days per year that the property owner or host would be able to rent their entire homes and requiring that the permit holder is a primary resident of the home. |
| 02:47:55.49 | Lily Whalen | going to walk through the recommendations of the task force for the pilot program. First, the permit would be available to a primary resident of the dwelling unit and no person could claim to be the primary resident of more than one dwelling unit. This means that the task force recommendations would allow a tenant who is a primary resident to apply for a permit. The short term rental of the unit would be limited to 90 to 180 days per year. If the rental is for the entire home, the maximum number of days would be determined by the city council. There would be no limit to the number of days per year if the short term rental was only for a portion of the home. They would be required to obtain a business license. They would be required to sign an agreement to comply with procedures for reporting and payment of transient occupancy tax or TOT. They would be required to comply with a subset of health and safety codes to be determined by city staff. They would agree to provide each tenant with a copy of a good neighbor handbook to be created by city staff. to include provisions regarding parking, trash, and noise. In addition, the application in the Good Neighbor Handbook would include a statement to remind applicants that they must comply with any applicable provisions of an HOA agreement. a timeshare ownership agreement, Condo board regulations, tenant organization rules, lease, or other agreements or covenants that apply to the dwelling unit that was under the permit. They would have to designate a local contact to be available 24-7, and that local contact would be defined by the council. Their permit number would be displayed on all advertising prominently. The permit application. would have to include a plan for compliance with additional conditions which could include that they demonstrate that parking can be provided for the short term rental unit. And that they must make the short term rental guests aware of garbage arrangements. They would agree to ensure that their tenants' compliance with all provisions of the good neighbor handbook. And the permit holders would be responsible for the behavior of their tenants. The entrance door to the short term rental unit would be clearly posted with a standardized sign or a symbol to notify the guests that they're knocking on the right door. In terms of administration, the task force recommended that the permit fee range in costs from $150 to $500 and the fee to be determined by the city council. The permit would be valid for one year with an annual renewal. And staff would recommend an annual licensing fee or a renewal fee to pay for, as we talked about a little bit earlier tonight, if you were to retain a vendor like host compliance. We'd also require administrative and compliance staff to be retained as necessary to implement and ensure compliance with the program. the creation of a page on the city's website. that would talk about all the regulations, permit applications, and the good neighbor policies. And the recommendation was similar to Mill Valley's website. The creation of an informational packet for permit holders, the creation of the Good Neighbor booklet. The establishment of grounds for revoking the permit and associated penalties. And that the good neighbor booklet is to include a provision that the permit holders to notify neighbors of the short term rental use of his or her unit. And the city would make a list of all short term rental permit holders available to the public and published on the city's website. And then finally, the SOSLITA host group would act as ambassadors to the program and could be a resource to guide applicants with the program. In terms of enforcement, the task force recommended that the city retain host compliance and contract for all available services that they provide. The host compliance again would provide that 24 seven hotline. And then we would also maintain the current penalty structure of the $1,000, $2,000. and $5,000 for the violations. And then finally, there would be revocation of a permit for two years upon a third violation. That's also a component of the pilot program. |
| 02:52:22.33 | Lily Whalen | The task force discussed whether to require a discretionary review process to issue the permit. That would be similar to a conditional use permit process that would involve notification to neighbors. in a public hearing with the zoning administrator or Planning Commission. and then appeal rights to either the Planning Commission or the City Council. The majority of the task force recommended that the short term rental permit not be a discretionary permit, but that a set of conditions are established that are required to be complied with. And that the consequences for violation are three strikes rule where we would revoke the permit for a period of two years before a host could reapply for a permit. The majority of the task force did recommend notification to the neighbors, but only that a permit has been approved and to provide information for issuing complaints to the city. If the council were to consider a discretionary permit process similar to a CUP process, the short-term rental fee should be increased to cover staffing costs for that process. |
| 02:53:32.29 | Lily Whalen | In August of this year, the Marin County Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance to regulate short term rentals in unincorporated Marin County. In general, the short-term rental pilot program prepared by the task force is more detailed and restrictive than Marin County's newly adopted ordinance. However, there are a couple of components that could be considered to enhance the pilot program, including signage and notification. The Marin County regulations require that the public be notified that a short term rental is available on a particular property either by posting exterior signage that would have a sign shown that provides the name and contact information of the local contact person and the hotline number for complaints in the street address of the short term rental. Or the other option is written notification to all properties within 300 feet of the property, using either door handle hangers or letters with information about the location and the short term rental. And then the contact information of the local contact person and the hotline number for complaints. And that notice would be provided ten days prior to the owner applying for a new business license or renewing the business license. An additional enhancement could be that the consideration be paid to the Marin County regulations, which provide some additional details on what needs to be in the Good Neighbor booklet, including noise regulations, parking regulations, emergency access, and garbage regulations. The legislative committee of Sausalito met recently and is recommending that the council discuss the merits of the following components. One is to prohibit ADUs or accessory dwelling units from being rented on a short term basis. Two, requiring reporting directly from short term rental platforms or the permit holders themselves. to report directly to the city. Modeling the Marin County regulations as I just discussed. Four is requiring that the short term rentals be hosted by the person renting out the unit's primary residence and or having a site manager located in sausalito who's available Thank you. 24 hours a day during the rental period. Sorry, there's a lag here. |
| 02:55:52.64 | Lily Whalen | The other recommendations are to prohibit short term rentals in areas of the city where the street width to which a parcel is accessed from is less than 16 feet, similar to the ADU. Regulations. and then also including a requirement in the permitting process where the applicant is required to verify that short-term rental is allowed via a lease or the CCNRs. The legislative committee also wanted the council to discuss whether or not there should be a limit on the number of permits of the city's issues. And staff has looked briefly at five cities that have a cap on their short-term rental permits. Napa of 101, Santa Cruz 450, St. Helena 25, Morro Bay 250, and Pacific Grove 250. To inform this discussion, we've also provided to you information on the population of the city of Sausalito and the number of housing units that were in the city as of the 2010 census. And we've given you those potential cap numbers based on the percentage of housing units on the screen here and in your staff report. |
| 02:57:02.98 | Lily Whalen | Lastly, the legislative committee is recommending the council discuss if there should be a requirement to conduct an inspection of the site for health and safety concerns prior to the permit issuance. And there are examples of other cities that require this, so we could generate a list of those health and safety issues in consultation with the building official. And then the permit holder should also be charged for that inspection. Thank you. In considering a pilot program, if the council is to consider a pilot program, we've provided a menu of options in your staff report that incorporates the short-term rental task force recommendations, the Marin County legislation enhancements, as I discussed, and then the questions from the legislative committee. And then we've also included a column for discussion points. We've also provided a timeline for potentially returning to the council if you were to consider a pilot program that includes returning to the council on october 30th with a review of a draft ordinance that has a sunset in it and then subsequent planning commission and city council hearings in november and december If zoning ordinance amendments were directed, staff's requirements are to provide a notice in the newspaper and post it at city hall. 10 days in advance of a Planning Commission hearing and the City Council hearing. The council, of course, can direct additional notification as you would like. |
| 02:58:33.33 | Lily Whalen | In terms of the fiscal impact of prohibiting short term rentals. Post compliance has indicated that the cost for their services is approximately $15,000 per year, as you heard earlier. And they can provide those services even if the city continues the ban. The legislative committee also requested that staff investigate other vendors who provide some services similar to host compliance. And we have found three additional vendors that seem to be competitive with host compliance. And I've spoken with one of them who seems to be very competitive, so we would recommend an RFP process to vet the vendors and select one, if that's what you choose. |
| 02:59:18.97 | Lily Whalen | In terms of the fiscal impact of allowing short term rentals, the finance department has estimated that the city could generate Approximately $243,000 annually in TOT, given some factors, the existing TOT rate of 12%, 150 short term rentals with an average nightly rate of $200, and a limit of 90 days per year if the rental is for the entire home. And then we've also deducted a conservative estimate of 25% of the tax revenue, out of the tax revenue to assume that that would be spent on code enforcement and compliance services. And the revenues increase when you adjust those numbers, as we've given you a couple scenarios here in the table. |
| 03:00:06.83 | Lily Whalen | We also wanted to mention that the additional fees that would generate funds to pay for a permit review, including city inspection, And ongoing code enforcement could be a one-time permit application fee and an annual licensing fee set by the city council resolution. And then a business license would also be required. And the revenues in this table do not consider those additional funds. So with that, staff is recommending that the council receive this presentation. and provide direction on how to address short term rentals including Continuing the current prohibition on short term rentals in Sausalito, continuing the prohibition. with assistance from a vendor like host compliance. Number three would be continue a short-term rental. Thank you. pilot program with host compliance or a similar vendor for code enforcement enhanced services with modifications potentially, including the Marin County regulations enhancements or any of the legislative committee suggestions. And that concludes my staff report and we're available for any questions. |
| 03:01:14.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Any questions of Lily? |
| 03:01:15.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Okay? I think a couple years back, we also had some information about other jurisdictions in Marin and their approach to short-term rentals. And it might have been in your staff report, but I missed it. Could you give a brief overview? you |
| 03:01:33.94 | Lily Whalen | I don't have that information at the tip of my fingers. I know it was provided in the 2016, I think, staff report. And we can go back and update that information because I know there have been changes since that time. |
| 03:01:40.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And we can go back and update that information. Yeah, that would be great. Great. It would be great to see that. |
| 03:01:47.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, if there are no further questions, we're gonna start public comment first. Okay, Ray? |
| 03:01:55.73 | Ray Withey | Lily, I don't want to put you on the spot, but we've received a lot of mail that implies implies either that we're all incompetent or two, that we just don't have the resources of the city or we don't have the will or the desire to actually enforce our current ordinance. I mean, you're right there in the thick of it, you know, you've got now the department you're looking after. What's your thoughts? Why can't we enforce what is going on? |
| 03:02:38.72 | Lily Whalen | So the good news is that this problem is not unique to us in Sausalito. There are other communities that are having grappling with this and having difficulty enforcing bans. I think that there are a couple different factors that play into the difficulty with this. First, it's difficult to tie a listing to a particular address, as you heard from Ulrich this evening. It's also hard to tie an address to a listing, vice versa. So when we get a complaint either from someone who lives next to a short-term rental or Sometimes it's hard to prove that that is actually being advertised as such. It's also difficult in some cases to show that that unit is being used as a short-term rental and money is being exchanged for that use. Okay. And then I think it's also important to have a consistent, dedicated code enforcement process for code enforcement of short-term rentals that doesn't rely on the fines to pay for that code enforcement process. I think you saw when the city dedicated some funds we were able to track down rentals that were being used for a short-term basis, and we brought them into compliance at a point without having to issue fines. What broke down at that point was going back and ensuring compliance. And as we operate on a complaint basis right now, we don't do that. We don't go to the websites every day to see who's advertising their short-term rental and if they said that they wouldn't. |
| 03:04:17.36 | Ray Withey | And just as a follow-up, and then I agree we should take public comment. If we contracted with an outfit such as Host Compliance or one of their competitors, how would that help you enforce whether or not we have a pilot program? Okay, say we still maintain our ban. how could a deal with, say, host compliance help you actually with the enforcement process? And that applies whether we got a pilot program or not, because there's still going to be someone outside who's not compliant. |
| 03:04:58.18 | Lily Whalen | So they have the software and the manpower to do all the data scraping that we don't have so they can look at all the I think he said upwards of 50 websites that provide this type of platform. And they would provide that information to the city, they would also take charge of sending out those courtesy notices, the compliance orders, and the administrative citations, which does take a lot of time for city staff to do that. They also would, they have a system of reminding themselves to send out those letters and stay on top of it too. So staff would come into play once those citations were sent out and the calls started to come in with the city staff, so it would be helpful. |
| 03:05:45.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:05:46.22 | Ray Withey | Okay, thank you. |
| 03:05:47.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So Lily, as a final follow on that, do we now have staff with the time to do that work? I seem to remember that in our budget we approved a half time code enforcement position, which is tasked with all of the code enforcement throughout Sausalito, which is significant. |
| 03:06:08.56 | Lily Whalen | So a lot of the time is taken up sending out those preliminary letters, sending out and formatting the compliance orders, and then sending out the administrative citation. So if we were helped to a point where we're at the administrative citation and then we needed to, at that point, collect fines or deal with an appeal, if that was the case, it would be... |
| 03:06:27.73 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:06:28.27 | Lily Whalen | It would be helpful. |
| 03:06:29.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | us. Okay, we're going to take public comment. First on the list is Sybil Boutelier, followed by David Souto. |
| 03:06:49.42 | Sybil Boutillier | Thank you, Mayor Cox. My concern about short term rentals is that obviously housing is a very tight situation here in Sal Salido. We also have the situation where so many people in our community are older and are looking at ways to remain in the community while downsizing their living situation. And having the smaller units in particular going out on short term rentals means that there's less of that kind of opportunity available for folks who want to remain here. Those are my main concerns. Also, I would just mention that there's been a big effort by the Commission on Aging and other elements in the county to encourage people to develop junior accessory units in their homes, specifically for long term rentals so that people would have options if they want to stay in the community and downsize. So those would be my concerns about this kind of a program and I just wanted to comment on that. Thank you. |
| 03:08:05.34 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. David Suto and then Kate Rose Dixon. |
| 03:08:13.81 | David Suto | So my preference is that we would not start allowing short-term rentals. I'm not sure if we have a ban right now on listing on a website. If we don't, we should probably have that in some kind of find mechanism. I personally, when this first showed up on our agenda, I went on Airbnb, and I was able to, I believe, locate about four to five houses that were readily identifiable. One of them is in my neighborhood, and I noticed today someone leaving that property that did not appear to be a permanent resident. So I would also say that rooms in this town are in high demand. If you have a room to rent and you want to rent it, you can probably do it in well under a week. Um. it There's no shortage of people who want to rent places on a month-to-month basis in this town. And these are artists, restaurant workers, and local shop workers for the most part. And if those people can't find housing here, they add to our traffic issues. Because instead of walking to work, they have to drive from San Rafael or Nevada or somewhere like that, which is important. I think if we do allow short-term rentals, they need to be the primary residence. We should require compliance from these host sites, that they give us data that we need, so that we're not paying to find that data, or we minimize our costs. I think also we need a really good discussion about code enforcement as far as health and safety. Do we need sprinklers? Do we need emergency exits and ADA accessibility? Things like stairways and handrails, these are places that people are only going to stay for a day or two. They might not know where the exit is in an emergency. And we don't want to have discriminatory housing where people with accessibility issues can't rent places if we're going to create this as an open environment. Also, I think as we look at this and we look at our general plan, we should be looking at what we can do to encourage bed and breakfasts, additional bed and breakfasts in our commercial zones where these type of businesses belong. Thank you. |
| 03:10:41.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Kate Rose Dixon and then Yasmin McCrane. |
| 03:10:59.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, then we're going to go right on to Yasmin McCrane and then Alice Merrill. |
| 03:11:06.24 | Kate Rose Dixon | Okay, great. Thank you. I just first want to start by thanking you for all your time and your effort on short-term rentals. I've been to pretty much every public forum that you've had and listened to people on all sides of the spectrum. I was recruited by Danny Castro to be on the short-term rental task force. So I've really heard all different perspectives, and I just wanted to thank you for keeping an open mind and keeping the ball moving forward. I think that first off I want to say I'm fully in support of your proposed short term rental pilot program. I think it's a really smart and well thought out solution and having heard so much feedback, Over this time, I think you've really hit the nail on addressing so many of the detailed points that people have brought up in a really smart way. I think it's a great program to test and to see what happens. And you have a set period that you can test it for, and I think that's great. I also am a big believer of supportive of the parameters and the controls you put in place to have strict enforcement of all the violators of the rules. I really believe hosts should play by the rules. And I think your pilot really ensures that that happens. I also think that hosts should clearly communicate with their guests what those rules are and provide the good, neighbor guide during the booking process and meet with guests in person. I think that's a really big thing. I think from listening to the feedback, really where the issues happen is when it's not the primary residence owner interacting with the guests. I also think it's when the hosts are kind of not trying to abide by the rules. And I think this program really has enforcement to do that and eliminate the bad actors that we've talked about in the past. I also think that the host should be fully responsible. to get the licenses that you've outlined and report and submit the reports and all the TOT to the city. Therefore, they'll be helping with the realization of your general plan for the city. I did read in the agenda about the additional features you're considering for signage and notification. And I do think there's some pros and cons on those. The only cons I was wondering about is potential heightened safety issues. If there's big signs on the street that say this is a rental unit, could there be increased burglary or safety issues for the neighborhood. But maybe something on the door so that it's clear for a guest to know that that's where the property is. Also, if you did do signage, to do something that's consistent with our community and the aesthetics of the community, so thank you. |
| 03:14:09.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Alice Merrill, and then Peter Van Meter. |
| 03:14:20.18 | Alice Merrill | Hello, Alice Merrill. I have to say that I have been going along thinking well, if we could make these legal then we can have the enforcement and then we can get the taxes and et cetera, et cetera. But I have been talking to people around town who are more affected than I am because they're in the neighborhoods where these are happening. but also just chatting with people And I have to say, I've come around. And I, you know, We have people who are doing this and it's actually illegal right now. So to be a good host, right now is interesting. Because it actually is illegal right now. So I think... that Other towns are actually trying to figure out how to stop this, and I don't know how you stop. this social media extravaganza that we have going, I don't know how you do it. And I'm not entirely certain, I think it's a great idea, but on the other hand, The problem for the big abusers is really big. And people will buy big fancy houses and then just rent them out for a little while. Then we have people who are being run out of their small apartments because somebody wants to rent it every other week and make as much as they might make in two months. And so once again, we have people who we aren't being able to address our, well, what our general plan is, which is to have affordable housing. And have diversity in housing. So for so many reasons, I don't think we should do this pilot. I actually think that we should really try to enforce these and stop these. I really do, and I hate to say that, because I don't really like stopping things like that. I think it's good. |
| 03:16:44.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | gone too far. |
| 03:16:45.63 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 03:16:45.68 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you, Alice. Peter Van Meter and then Jan Johnson. |
| 03:16:54.15 | Peter Van Meter | I think there's one action that you can take as soon as you can put it on your agenda, and that's to put out your RFP for enforcement. Because no matter what you do, whether you just continue 100% ban or you have a pilot program or you do something else, enforcement is going to be the key. And $15,000 is like nothing. I mean, offer to pay him 20, 30, $40,000. I mean, seriously. So they can really do the job and really track these people down, no matter what it is, whether you just want to comply with them paying their TOT or enforcing a ban. Now, I also have heard that there may be some jurisdictions somewhere around the country that have tried to get the listing websites to basically identify back to the local jurisdiction the units on their sites and make that a rule to actually post your listing on their site. I understand that's going to be a difficult and expensive process, but it might be something to form a coalition with other communities that are faced with this same dilemma to try to pool your funds or actions or whatever to try to make that happen even on a statewide or potentially national basis. |
| 03:18:05.35 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Jan Johnson and then Susan Sammels. |
| 03:18:09.99 | Jan Johnson | you |
| 03:18:10.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:18:10.97 | Jan Johnson | I'm opposed to short term rentals and I would like to see host or a similar organization hired to enforce whatever you decide. 187 units times $1,000 you pay for them for more than three years that their contract requires. Sorry, let me get this up. The housing element states that you want to maintain diversity and affordability of housing and the small town quality of the town. Removing 3% of the rentable property in town for short term rentals is in direct contraindication to your housing unit or housing element goals and will get us into problems with the, I think it's RH requirements from the state so i think that there's no way around that contradiction if you do decide as someone who lives in an area with a lot of these already i think you should both post it on the door and you should notify the neighbors every time it's rented there should be a 24-hour person we can contact and if it's not the property owner it needs to be someone in the city that we can call at any time as i read about the 16-foot street limit which i think is a good idea but i'd also like to address housing the 200 block of bridgeway has 13 units with no parking whatsoever The 300 block of Richardson, which is my side street, has another 13 units with four parking. slots available for those 13 units. You put in someone coming in with three or four cars. You put a dire hardship on the locals who are trying to live there. So I would really hope that you say no to the pilot and no disrupting rentals at all. We need housing for people who want to live here. People who buy allowing people to buy homes and then do primary residence, but they have three primary residences around the state that they're already renting out on Airbnb is a contradiction to us needing to have residents and taking care of them. Thanks. Thank you. |
| 03:20:34.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Susan Samuels and then Beth Rowe. |
| 03:20:40.87 | Susan Sammels | Hi Susan Sammels, I'm here to speak out against the short term rentals as well. I'm surprised we've gotten to the point of seriously considering a pilot program when cities and communities all over the world are trying to constrain. and or ban short-term rentals due to the negative impacts on their communities. I hope the council isn't seriously considering the short-term rentals as a means of income generation because it's clearly not a benefit for the community as a whole. We already struggle with tourism issues, and this just creates another level. I'm dubious about compliance by the majority of the short-term rentals given the number of short-term rentals operating illegally. I can't believe it. another level. I'm dubious about compliance by the majority of the short-term rentals, given the number of short-term rentals operating illegally. Again, I mean, it's hard to imagine. the whole issue of compliance when not to point fingers or be accusatory, but these people aren't complying with the law right now. I don't believe this, I mean, I think this will certainly have an impact on ADUs and our housing requirements necessary for the state. And basically I hope the council will adopt host compliance or some other service to enforce the current ban. Thank you. |
| 03:22:00.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Beth Rowe and then Melanie Maharshan. |
| 03:22:06.44 | Beth Rowe | I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to read this or I'll faint. Um, So I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Beth Rowe. I've lived in Sausalito for four years. I volunteer and I value my place in this community. I have a historic house and adjacent apartment. I have poured all my resources into restoring the home and grounds so that it is now an attractive residence in the neighborhood. I paid $24,225 in taxes. and my taxes have gone up over $2,000 since I moved here. I am 77 years old, and I don't want to move. I am the face of Airbnb. I have attended all the forums on STPs, and there are a few misconceptions I would like to correct. Short-term rentals led to an increase in crime. It is simply not true. Tourists spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars getting to Sausalito and then many hundreds more to stay eat out and shop. Why on earth would they do this to break into cars and houses? renters take up available parking. Renters arrive in one rental car, and often, if they are from Europe, no car. if the same space was rented long term to a couple they would have two cars, and if they had a teenager, three cars. Noise is a problem. There is a noise ordinance in place, and if there is a problem, It can be handled by the police. Noise is not exclusive to STRs. Long-term ranchers can also be disrupted. Short-term rentals take away from the affordable housing. When I recently advertised in Zillow, a three-bedroom house rents for $9,000 a month and a studio rents for close to $3,000 a month. There is no affordable housing. An occasional inconvenience in parking or single disturbance does not require an ordinance and expense to the town of enforcing that ordinance. I also think that credible complaints from residents who have genuinely experienced an incident in their neighborhood should be heard. I find less credible people who just think they don't like STRs. or those who would prefer Sausalito to be a gated community. I think the council has to weigh carefully the time and cost to the city of satisfying the complaints of a few. 34 complaints in a year. In addition, local businesses and restaurants would feel the effect and residents who need the extra income might have to leave. That takes away diversity. I have copies of my statement. |
| 03:24:59.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You can give it to the board clerk. Thank you. Melanie Maharshan and then Jay Baer. |
| 03:25:10.16 | Melanie Maharshan | Madam Mayor, council members, staff, and neighbors, I'm Melanie Maharshan, Sausalito resident and mom By day, I head up social media for a global insurance firm. In case there's any confusion, I don't work for Airbnb. There are many things I think they can improve on, in fact, so I'm happy to see they have more interface with cities now. And if we do go down the road of the pilot, I highly recommend having them remit the taxes, as Marin County does, and using the service like host compliance as Truckee does. I'm familiar with short term rentals from family homes in Truckee and Pacific Grove and I've tourism lodging board for three years. As our 2017 election showed us, 75% of Sausalitans voted for candidates. who advocated for regulating home sharing that is well controlled for the needs of our community. The city has conducted many polls showing the majority of Sausaledans support fair, sensible regulations. And it's probably good to point out that thousands of Sausaledans are registered with services like Airbnb and and use their services when they travel, including a number who, for some reason, speak in opposition to it here. The program you're looking at today does a really good job of balancing things for our city. What's being proposed are some of the strictest regulations in California. in real terms, stricter ironically than our band. What's been proposed is well tailored to preserving Sausalito's housing stock. Residential requirements, capping the number, overall capping nights rented. We'll ensure that it's being kept at a level that lets Sausalitans offset some of the cost of living here, age in place during retirement, save for college or pay off student loans, all things we want to support our residents in doing. The recommendations incorporate effective tactics from other California cities, like requiring a local contact. For the record, mine is only ever being called because the barbecue tank ran out of gas. I think having a licensed contractor to certify health and safety requirements is a good step. And I would just say that most cities manage things only with a registration fee and process, which could make our business license not necessary under the circumstances, given the limitations we're placing on it. I think there are some missteps other cities have made. I think it's important to keep the registration process very accessible, requiring use permits would create costly and time-consuming administrative processes and a barrier to getting into compliance. For signing and notifications, Pacific Grove quickly disbanded its notification process because it created confusion. and unnecessary concern where there had been few issues for years. Putting a sign on a home is a security concern for me as a mom, and I think hosts should really be held to a very high standard for way finding and coaching their guests. Regarding complaints, I like host compliance except in corroborating data. Because while issues should be accepted firmly, I think there's also the specter of vigilante complaints that have been seen in other cities. Thank you. Thank you so much. |
| 03:28:12.07 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Mm-hmm. |
| 03:28:13.47 | Melanie Maharshan | JB. |
| 03:28:14.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | and then Jake Beyer. |
| 03:28:18.74 | Jay Baer | Hi, thanks a lot. My name's Jay Baer. I'd like to just come out in favor of the pilot program. I think that The 200 or so units that are being taken up by short-term rentals are not going to have a significant effect on solving a housing shortage that's far beyond that number. I think that the opposite is true and that the flexibility in home sharing provides ways for people to age. and be able to afford to stay in Sausalito and not be booted out with the high property taxes and things like that. Thank you very much. Thank you. |
| 03:28:51.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:28:51.58 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 03:28:52.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Jake Beyer and then Leah Gilbert. |
| 03:28:59.91 | Jake Beyer | Thank you all for being here and listening. So I have two main concerns about this. I own a house with my wife and kid. Our property, our plot borders four other properties that are all investment properties with long-term renters. And one of the concerns is, and it may be mitigated in some of the conditions you have, around the premium that you can charge for short-term rentals of 20 to 30 percent. The revolving door of tenants at a short-term basis is going to be much higher. To go into detail about, well, I think one thing that makes the situation in Sausalito very unique is the proximity of the homes, the noise. And in theory, we do have noise violation restraints around 10 o'clock and so forth that can limit that. But in practice, I've stayed in Airbnbs all over the world. This tends to be a problem if I'm lucky, and if it's not as windy as it is tonight, I can hear if my neighbor's going number one or number two. And I'm sure there's other people like that here. So I don't see a scenario where... |
| 03:30:04.64 | Jay Baer | You know? |
| 03:30:13.40 | Jake Beyer | We have, and this is, we talked about using the income to help people age, excuse me. That's an edge case, not a use case. 90% of the homes that we're talking about are entire homes. Less than 10% or nearly 5% are actual part of a dwelling. So I think those are important things to consider. |
| 03:30:20.71 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:30:36.42 | Jake Beyer | Thank you. |
| 03:30:37.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Leah Gilbert and then Nathan Scripps. |
| 03:30:45.95 | Leah Gilbert | Hello. We bought our house. We've been in Sausalito just a little bit over a year. We bought our house in June of last year. We're super lucky, I feel like, to live here. My biggest concern with the short-term rental program going through is that I am a relatively new parent, and we really want to stay in Sausalito. We really want to foster a community of families who have children. When we moved here, we thought, oh, my gosh, we're not going to meet any other young families. That's super not the case. I'm part of a mom group and there's nearly 50 of us with more that are messaging us every day and the majority of those moms are First time moms with kids under two. That is a huge population. All those people are going to be hopefully going to Sausalito schools. Unfortunately, I'm only one of a handful of parents who is fortunate enough to own our home. A lot of those families are wondering if they're going to be able to stay in Sausalito because of the rising cost of rents. I think that having short-term rentals is definitely going to increase the cost of rents because somebody's going to look at a property and say, I can make a lot more money in 90 or 180 days of rental than I will in 12 months of a year to a family. That's pretty much our main concern. You know, we just we really want to stay and we really want to build that community. And it's so nice having lived in cities for the last 10 plus years of my life. that to walk down the street and see people that I know. And I fully understand that we live in a tourist community and I love them. I just know when are the times to go walk down Bridgeway and when are not. I love being able to walk into drivers and meet new families and I just think that that's going to be severely cut down with bringing on more and more short-term rentals. Also, even though there is a ban, we did, even after purchasing our house, find our own house on Airbnb. So that was a little alarming. So the enforcement is definitely a concern because it does take a long time even using a company. to be able to That's crazy. You know, make sure that those houses are not staying on Airbnb even after other people have purchased them. Um, geez, we were really nervous. |
| 03:33:08.26 | Unknown | I'm really nervous. |
| 03:33:09.86 | Leah Gilbert | If somebody was going to come knocking on our door like, hey, we rented this house this weekend. Nope, we didn't. So that being said, safety is a little bit of a concern with having a young child. I know that the majority of Airbnb renters are good people, but it still is a concern. The background checks that are being done are pretty limited as far as I understand from companies like Airbnb. I keep picking on them, but they're not the only ones. So that would be another major concern, having little kids in the neighborhood. You just don't know who's there. |
| 03:33:39.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Nathan Scripps, then Russ Irwin. |
| 03:33:48.79 | Nathan Scripps | Hello, thanks for taking the long time to hear from everybody this evening. I just wanted to say very shortly, I've been an Airbnb user for a long time. And why I really liked it is because I was traveling for work every single week of the month, and I was staying in hotels for work every single week of the month, and I hated hotels as a result of that. Staying in Airbnb where you could actually get a taste of what it was like to live in an area and get a taste of what it was like to be a local in an area is what I really enjoyed about it. And unfortunately, over the years, it's become apparent that more and more opportunities for Airbnb owners are to create hollow homes. You walk in, the cupboards are empty, the art on the wall is generic and fake and probably came from Ikea, as did most of the furniture. And what I'm mainly concerned about is that Sausalito becomes a neighborhood full of hollow homes. And as we all know, that this town is run by volunteers. And when you have short-term rentals instead of long-term renters, when you have people that are buying investment properties instead of household and family kind of legacy properties, you do run into those issues. I'm not suggesting that the... Pilot, as you suggested, mitigates all of those issues, but I do know that We've already got 187 some odd properties ignoring the ban, and we... If we open up the opportunity for more to continue and participate, we open up the opportunity for people to invest in properties and create those hollow homes that I don't want to stay on an Airbnb either. Thanks. |
| 03:35:15.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Russ Irwin and then Fay Mark. |
| 03:35:21.69 | Russ Irwin | Hi, Russ Irwin. You know, half of our residents are long-term tenants. They're long-term renters. I can't see how this program benefits half of our community. I think it puts them at risk. I wrote an article and put it in Nextdoor back in July. The next day I got an email from this woman in, actually in Whiskey Springs, where they're not supposed to do this at all, who said she was being booted out. because her landlord, whoever owned that condo, was going to turn it into a vacation rental. And was there anything I could do to help her? And I said, No, I can't, other than I actually suggested she contact the homeowners association. They have to enforce it themselves there. So this can't benefit half of our community. There's just no way it benefits them. So who does it benefit? Benefits investors who want to make money. Some of the speakers here this evening, and at least two of the people who have written letters that I know, They're asking for short-term rentals to finance their multiple homes. They had homes in Paris, San Diego, Truckee, Pacific Grove. Those are their second homes. Those are income properties. They want to be able to rent their home here so they can make money off both. If you flip this around, And look at. those communities where they have their second homes And them as the owners, what are they? They are financial investors of real estate in those communities. They're not residents. They can't be a resident here and be a resident there. That's what will happen to us. Just flip this around. we will be encouraging people because this is money to be made. We all know that. That's why this whole discussion goes on. There's money to be made. you've recognized the risk because you've got a million caveats on this program. Those are all intended to mitigate the risk. Well, what are we taking the risk for? so that we can punch holes in the fabric of our community like Swiss cheese. literally randomly take houses and convert them into income property, perforating the neighborhoods around them. Half the houses on my street or half the properties on my street are long-term tenants. I know them. A lot of them have been there longer than I have. But, they're all at risk when this program gets lit up. because those landlords can make more money. This system can be easily gamed. You gotta be the permanent resident, fine. My property manager becomes the permanent resident. I give them a long-term lease, they're the resident of record, and they game the system, they manage the property for me. It's easy to game this. What you can't do is make those houses be permanent residents again. THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:38:22.66 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Faye Mark and then Jane Criss. |
| 03:38:25.80 | Faye Mark | Good evening and thank you for your time because I know as volunteers and members of this community, it's a big commitment. And this is a large part about why I'm standing here today because my concern with short term rentals is that your seats are in jeopardy of being filled in the future. Mayor Cox and Council Member Withee, 20 months ago you voted against a pilot for short term rentals. This evening I'm asking that Council Members and Vice Mayor Burns, Council Member Cleveland Knowles and Council Member Hoffman join in with Mayor Cox and Ray Withy to vote no on a pilot for short-term rentals. In Sausalito, we have a very special and unique 50% blend of both long-term, owner occupied residents and long term renters. We all come together. to enjoy neighborhoods in our city events. We all come together to fill both civic and civil seats as volunteers. We support our elderly community through volunteer programs. We support local environmental needs. that people from outside of our community are not aware of and can't be held accountable for. We rely on all of these people to support our schools, to protect our children. |
| 03:40:12.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:40:14.79 | Faye Mark | This all creates community in our neighborhoods. I do not want personally as a neighbor a revolving door or a motel. I want to know that the elderly woman who lives across the street from me has her parking space available for her. Because all of the neighbors know, who she is and that that's her parking spot. And even though it's public, we know That's where she parks. And we know that it's important to catch the extra six inches close to the cutout, curb cut out so that our neighbor can park behind us. It's a squeeze, but they can get in there. And you know, when people, when our neighbors come home late at night, there's nothing more discouraging than to have to park three blocks away because somebody came into the neighborhood and didn't understand And shouldn't be expected to understand, quite frankly, But they don't, and they're not aware of what the needs are of that community. So I ask you all tonight to vote no, thank you. |
| 03:41:30.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Jane Criss, and then Mark Criss. |
| 03:41:35.84 | Jane Criss | I'd just like to add my voice to the people who are opposing the allowing short-term rentals. Obviously, there are many, it's problematic on many, many levels. the housing. and I'll just be brief, I'm not going to mention I go through the whole list, but My main concern echoes what Faye just said about the contribution to community. And housing is obviously a zero-sum game in Sausalito, which I think it's obvious to everyone that we have a very delicate balance here between tourism and permanent community members. And the delicacy of that I don't think can be overemphasized. The other thing I'd like to say is that the enforcement, some of the enforcement plans seem, I think a really close look has to be taken as to whether those are realistic. As an example, how do you possibly know whether an owner is having a personal interaction with their renters? So I would urge you to continue the ban, the current ban on |
| 03:42:30.72 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 03:42:59.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:42:59.71 | Jane Criss | short. |
| 03:43:00.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. Mark Criss, and then Charles Kaufman. |
| 03:43:07.20 | Mark Criss | Hello, and thank you for taking the time to hear community comment. My wife, Jane, and I, who you just heard from, have been homeowners in Marin County since 1989, and we've lived here in Sausalito since 2008. We moved from Inverness, where we lived in West Marin for some time, and if you're interested in a case study of what goes wrong with short-term rentals, take a look at Inverness. Strongly encourage you, in fact, to consider several case studies, including perhaps talking to the folks in Monterey, if you haven't already, who have successfully, apparently with help of compliance, shut down short-term rentals. So I would strongly urge you to continue the ban to bring in enforcement for compliance. If you look at Inverness as an example, when you have people who just come in and rent for a weekend, you end up not having the kind of community that others have spoken for more eloquently than I could. I think it ultimately comes down to what kind of a community do we want. If we want a community of families, as we heard from, or professionals or people who are committed to the community and want to do volunteer work and other ways contribute to the great town that we have, we need to provide long-term rentals, not short-term rentals. When you end up with a hollowed-out community, as what's happened really in Inverness to a large extent, that community fabric is destroyed. It's hard to put any one finger or number on it, but you can see it really deteriorating before your eyes, and you lose that kind of reason why people really come here and want to live in a place like Sausalito. So I would encourage you, as part of your process, to examine what the experiences have been in other communities, both the successes and the failures, and in particular, look at towns like Inverness that have experienced this problem in a big way. Thank you. |
| 03:45:11.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. Charles Kaufman, then Sean Calloway. |
| 03:45:17.43 | Charles Kaufman | Good evening. I happen to live in Whiskey Springs, and I'm the HOA president there. The standard for condominiums, and realize how tight that property is, we have 156 units on a very small footprint. That means there's a lot of requirement for knowing how to go about routine living there, such things as recycling, composting, parking regulations. Use of the swimming pool, noise behavior. and the normal kinds of things you have to be around to learn about how to be a good neighbor in that kind of community. Now the CCNRs, the Regulations for That Kind of an Association, similar to those at the Anchorage, which has the same policy. We do not allow short term rentals. Because the city doesn't enforce the current band, you put a big burden on us as a volunteer organization. because it's very difficult for us to do that in enforcement. If you were enforcing the ban, as you should, because isn't the city responsible for ensuring that laws are obeyed, regulations are followed? That would be a very big benefit for us. Secondly, the argument about it's a way to make money to stay in your home. Look, we don't allow people to serve alcohol in their homes provide personal services, run a restaurant or their kitchen, bored animals in their house. We don't allow those kinds of things, even though they would all generate money, to enable people to remain living here. That's a very weak argument. It's like the idea that I have a right because it's my private property to do as I wish. That is not true. You live in a community and we all have to share in this process. I would strongly urge that you actually go about the business of enforcing this. Because we already have a problem with the same thing you have heard earlier. investors who will come and buy a unit, turn it into an income generating mechanism, they're external, they have no contact with the renters, they use it, intermediate agents, or they use the website for transactions, there is almost no personal contact. And you will not be able to, this is not very difficult to game this system. This can easily be done by people who have an interest in doing it. And the money is sufficient for them to have that interest. We already live in a hyper-commercial society. Why do you want to add to that? We should be making Sausalito an oasis that functions as a community, not one more income generating activity. Thank you. |
| 03:47:57.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Sean Calloway and then Kate Storr. |
| 03:48:03.11 | Sean Calloway | Good evening, committee, neighbors. Hello. Just three quick points. I think on the staff's recommendation to hire an outside service for compliance, to me it's a no-brainer. I think something that was missing in the financial model was the income side that would be generated through fines. If we have 100 and something non-compliant people, if even 50% of those are fined at the minimum, that covers the nuts, so to speak. the cost of their service for the year. Just quick math. Second part is, you know, I am a VRBO. We've traveled and stayed in VRBOs. I can see both sides of the argument. I will say that there's, I'm a little confused about owner occupancy versus taking part of the dwelling, because it seems to me that most of these are full house dwellings from what our friends showed us, right, they're taking the whole home. And that means that basically nobody is onsite to monitor this. So I think that's another compliance issue. which takes me to another budget model, which is if you're saying 90 days at $250, that's over $20,000 a year, and the city's looking at $20 or $200 as a fee. Seems like it should be much higher because of the compliance, and if you do consider going forward, that the fee should be much higher because the costs, the direct and indirect costs are gonna be much higher than we're anticipating for compliance. And finally, I'll just say in terms of community, I think that one of the things we all enjoy about Sausalito is that we do know our neighbors, and that's a wonderful thing, and that's why I'm here. And I feel like we've given up a lot as a community, basically the entire downtown, to tourism and commercialism for the weekends. And I think that there's a balance of going up into the hills and knowing we're a community as opposed to we're just all part of a good vibe. So I just ask you to consider that a lot of us, I know my neighbors and myself feel very strongly that we're a strong community and that's why we're here. So thank you for your time. |
| 03:50:10.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Kate Storer, and then Sonia Hansen. |
| 03:50:21.77 | Kate Storr | Kate Storr, I was a member of the task force as well. I actually wrote my comments and I won't say more on that, but I did want to clear up what I'm hearing as a point of confusion. One of the specific things that the task force did was limit short term rentals to primary residences. in terms of residence is defined as what you report in your tax income as your primary residence. And the goal of that was actually to prevent just the kind of things you're talking about vacation rentals, people renting out properties long term that they're not ever in, right? Properties being purchased for the purpose of being rented as short term rentals. So I just wanna just clarify that that the pilot program as it's presented is actually intended to prevent that kind of conversion and to preserve our affordable housing. The other sort of misconception I wanted to to clarify is that we have a lot of data in this process and one of the things we discovered is that actually most people list their house once maybe they rent it once so though we may have 189 listings not all of those are active listings the majority of people may rent once go on vacation for two weeks and then they never rent again right that's the most scenario. So consider in your mind the property rights of people who want to rent their house. You may want to rent your house out and go on vacation, right? And then the final point that I just wanted to make was that this is intended to be a pilot program. So I think we as a city really need to continue to learn and evolve. We were not effective in compliance and banning it. The question is, would regulating it be effective? And I think that's why the task force recommended going ahead with the pilot program to see if that was possible. And I recommend the council try it. I think we might have some effect with it. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:52:22.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sonia Hanson, then Sam Chase. |
| 03:52:31.88 | Sonya Hanson | My name is Sonya Hanson. Good evening to the council, staff, fellow residents. This is a thorny issue, and it's one we all, I think, feel very strongly about one way or the other. And if you read my letter, you know how strongly I feel about it. I still have steam coming out of my ears. They're clean. But there's steam. I have great concerns, first of all, about the pilot program. I look at it and it says, I have my glasses. Oh, thank you. I did this the last time, too. Good God. Yes. So I'm looking at table two, and I'm looking at the second, conditions for granting a permit. It says no permit, no limit to the number of days per year for short-term rental if rental is only for a portion of a home or an attached or detached unit. That sounds to me like an ADU. And yet somewhere else it says ADUs cannot be used as short-term rentals. This pilot program is so undefined, I don't see how anybody can think they know what this means. It is all over the place. So, I also want to say a dear friend and neighbor of mine spoke earlier, and she does have a short-term rental, and it's important for her. I understand that. There are lots of different feelings about this. I do feel strongly that to the west of Bridgeway in this town is our residential area. It's what we have away from the tourists. we're going to lose that. the 50% rentals, and the home ownership. People are gonna sell their houses at some point, if this continues at 34% a year, and then it escalates, and it escalates because it's legal, And I don't care how much money the city makes. If it's a miserable place for residents to live, who cares? So, I'm going to leave with just a final word about what I wrote to you earlier. And I do not mean it as a slur against you, but I mean it as a reminder. The hypocrisy and just plain greed that ooze from the proposed plan are disheartening, to say the least. Short-term rentals are driven by greed and self-interest. It is not about sharing. It is about making money. No news there. We are all, after all, human. The charge of a good government is to set policies for the good of all, and that almost always includes curbing self-interest. I do not have a quarrel with individuals who are guided by self-interest. We all are. I do have a quarrel with our elected and appointed government officials when they endorse laws that indulge individual self-interest at the expense of the community they purport to represent. One final note. |
| 03:55:31.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sorry, Sonia. No, it's done. Thank you. |
| 03:55:34.73 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:55:37.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sam Chase and then Tom Theodorus. |
| 03:55:43.46 | Sam Chase | Well, you're going to continue to hear a lot about enforcement, unfortunately. Essentially, I'm very concerned about these short-term rentals. I think that it basically is an invasion of short-term visitors and tourists into our tranquil residential neighborhoods. I request that you preserve our current zoning laws which have given residents our tranquil area of town as you've just heard. They're well designed. and are a significant part of the reason many of us live here. SDRs have been well documented to disrupt this peaceful... atmosphere that we enjoy. You need to, as you've heard, we've got to commit the resources to any regulation that we've come up with. And certainly the current regulation, we just don't have the resources to enforce that. Lilly needs a lot more, and whether it's home compliance plus additional staff, it needs to happen. This will require financial commitment, but it will pay off in the long term. That's what happened with residential area parking when it was first introduced. People were ignoring that for a long time and then the police clamped down on it. And I'll tell you, when they clamped down consistently and hard, The problem went away. And then enforcement became a lot less onerous and expensive task. |
| 03:57:20.96 | Unknown | that. |
| 03:57:21.28 | Sam Chase | Thank you. I think it's absolutely mandatory that you demonstrate, first of all, before you even consider a pilot, that you can in fact enforce our current laws. And If you can't do that, that's got to be the simplest thing to enforce. If you can't enforce our current laws, you certainly are not going to be able to enforce a sophisticated pilot program like this. That thing has got more bells and whistles and ands ifs and buts and I can't imagine somebody and trying to enforce that. Once you get on top of enforcement, you're gonna be in a lot better shape. I'm not sure. Finally, please don't reward the violators with another pilot program. We just heard that 34% growth last year in this. This thing is compounding with violators. Don't put the horse cart in front of the... Horst, enforce the law, current laws first, then consider a well-controlled pilot. It's got to have its own belt in enforcement. Process in any pilot if you ever do it in the future. Thank you |
| 03:58:40.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Tom Theodorus, then John Kehoe. |
| 03:58:49.05 | Tom Theodorus | Theodorus Reed Lane, Mayor Cox, Council Members, It just seemed, since this is the first time it's come to the I'm not sure. City Council from the task force. We're way ahead of it. We're talking about all the deals, details of this plan. We should be talking about whether, if we're gonna do it because we already have a ban and why. And I'd like to hear all of you tell us why we're gonna do this because It's gonna benefit a very small minority, jeopardize our housing and the character of our neighborhoods, and maybe generate some money, but that's speculative, and it's not a great amount of money. The previous item before this was our general plan, and anything that needs to be done needs to be consistent with our general plan. I did not see anything in the staff report or anything that the task force did relating to the general plan, and just a couple of provisions from it, and I have it written. The first two overall community goals are protect and enhance Sausalito as a residential community, all caps. Second one, protect the present character of Sausalito's residential neighborhoods. We need to measure this. Other in the housing element, we have maintained and enhanced the quality of existing housing and ensure that new residential development is compatible with Sausalito's small town character. We have continued to conserve existing rental housing stock by limiting the conversion of rental units to ownership or non-residential uses. And there's other parts. ADUs, our housing element, I think, we worked. This was the Civil War. And by the way, that was for, I think we fought over 113 units or some others, and we're giving away 200 units without even a consideration. It really doesn't make any sense. On the enforcement side, we really haven't given it a shot. We put $50,000 once, didn't work. Sausalito has been very successful in their enforcement. Has anyone ever dealt with Pat Bosco on sewer lateral? |
| 04:00:56.27 | Unknown | Lateral? |
| 04:00:58.94 | Tom Theodorus | Kenneth Henry on housing, Mac, our motorcycle guy, we can do this if we have some will. We should get them to give their cousins and sisters and we'll hire them and put them in here. And the good news though, I was very happy to hear in host compliance, there's a trend toward being able to enforce these bans. So we really need to keep continuing enforcing the ban. And again, I think it's just naive to think that if we can't enforce a total ban, we can enforce anything less than a total ban, and we need to. Get host compliance or whoever. We need to get someone in-house who's willing, and give them the money. And the other thing is, when we did the cameras for CloudView, we have laws, and you have the duties to enforce the laws. We don't look at it at a profit center. We have laws, and if we lose money on it, we have to enforce our laws. So I encourage you to continue the ban. THANK YOU. |
| 04:01:50.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:01:51.00 | Tom Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 04:01:51.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. John Kehoe, and then Pat Zook. And that is my last speaker card. So if there's anyone else who wants to be heard on this, please fill out a speaker card. |
| 04:02:02.45 | John Kehoe | Great. Thanks for taking the time to hear from your community. I'm going to quickly read something from my wife who couldn't make it. Since my family and I have been directly affected by a landlord who preferred to rent to short-term tenants than long-term tenants, my husband and I moved to Sausalito from San Francisco about six years ago, right before our daughter was born. We came here looking for a family-friendly neighborhood in which to raise our daughter. For the most part, we found it with a safe neighborhood, an amazing preschool, lots of family-friendly community events, and parks. After two years of residence out of the blue, our landlords gave us notice in writing that we had to leave because they were going to do capital improvements on their properties. Whoever verbally told us that they intended to list on short term rental. We had only a few months in which to find a new rental. Juggling a two year old, a generic yellow lab, significant business travel by my husband. Clearly, we were successful. and finding a new place. However, at a huge cost to our savings and quality of life. We seriously questioned why we left San Francisco where we felt more valued in the community, with stronger tenant rights. We really love our life here, but clearly, a decision in favor of STR would reshape the character of the town, creating instability, a family unfriendly neighborhood. And now I'll just speak for myself. It's been said here, it changes the character of our neighborhood. Where do you want to live? talk about the value of your properties. the value of the properties will go down people don't want to live here except for short-term tenants. It changes the character, and we're very much against it, and I hope you vote against changing our neighborhood any further. Thank you. |
| 04:03:51.45 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 04:03:51.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you know, |
| 04:03:57.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. All right, Pat Zook. |
| 04:04:04.12 | Pat Zook | I don't think at this point I can add anything new to this discussion and I'm glad to wrap it up. It's been a remarkable collection of people who spoke, I think, passionately. and eloquently about their feeling for this community. I'm afraid. very much afraid that you will move forward with a program at this point. I think it would be premature, I agree with Peter. The first thing you should do is set up the infrastructure to enforce anything that you might decide to do, including keeping the ban. Hire whoever and give the city the resources it needs to enforce whatever rules you decide to implement. uh, It did strike me that the program presented by staff is problematic. How are you going to find out and enforce, well first of all, Staff said if somebody's renting a room or a part of their home, they can do so 365 days a year. Exactly how are we going to suss that one out? That's just an invitation to somebody to say, well, I'm just renting out a room to a family with two kids and a dog for the weekend. I happened to be not around when you called. It's a non-starter in terms of protection of a neighborhood character. um |
| 04:05:33.16 | Pat Zook | Third, I didn't say this in my letter, but I think this is really a neighborhood issue that neighbors perhaps should be able to decide. It shouldn't be up to the city as a whole to change the character of the entire city. If neighborhoods want to allow in short term renters, maybe that should be the neighborhood prerogative. I hope you don't do this. I'm afraid you will. If you do, please let it be no longer than a year with a sunset provision and adequate tracking of complaints. I suspect there will be quite a few. The staff report, by the way, referred to 150 as a limit. Most communities that, you know, they used 3%. The average in what they quoted was 2. That would be something on the order of 89 units, not 150. If you use a per capita limit, it would be, I did the math, 43 units for the town of Sausalito with 7,000 people. And finally, somebody said, don't worry about it. People only rent their houses once or twice a year. There is an Airbnb site with some statistics that contradict that. I don't know that the Airbnb site or the AirDNA site is accurate. You can get those kinds of figures from Uh, your consultant, I would Suggest you find them out before you rely on that kind of a statement |
| 04:07:08.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:07:08.84 | Pat Zook | Thank you. |
| 04:07:08.85 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Okay, with that, I'm closing public comment and bringing it up here for discussion. Who would like to lead off? Okay, right. |
| 04:07:22.47 | Ray Withey | So, Well, apparently, Faye, you know how I'm going to vote. But... I... I am not going to support this pilot program. But I think I'm in a minority. I'm not often in a minority up here, but I think tonight I'm likely to be. I just don't like the idea of renting for less than 30 days in our neighborhoods. I can see both sides. And I've stayed in Airbnb. occasionally. It is leading. No matter how many bells and whistles or you try and you know, indicate about the sharing economy and for people like Me, you're going to think I'm a Luddite or something because I don't think, you know, I'm not sort of gung-ho on this. It is leading to the commercializations of our residential neighborhoods. It's just that simple. And I don't agree with that. We have a very fine balance. You know, Sausalito, this job up here is about balancing. It's a balancing act all the time. You're trying to weigh the pros and cons, and in the end, sometimes you're making a At least bad decision. Okay, here you don't have to do that. A couple of years ago when the short term rental task force met and we first got introduced to host compliance, there was a tantalizing Um, carrot being offered. at the time, which was We... The compliance company, and I'm sure there were others, can help clean up all the illegal activity for you. But will only do that if you allow and have a short term rental program. That was the deal. Now, host compliance has changed its tune, it's changed its business model. And that's great. So in my view, I fully agree. I mean, there are some folks who I agree with tonight who I don't often agree with. We joke at the general plan committee that sometimes when you know, Peter Van Meter and Pat Zook can agree on an issue, then we've gotta have a round of applause and a cheer, because, you know, and here again tonight on this issue they're agreeing. There is absolutely, it is ludicrous to think that you're going to be able to enforce a complex program when you can't enforce an outright ban. It is absolutely ludicrous. Now, Host compliance and others are saying, well, we're relaxing this. We can work for you anyway, even if you have a total ban. So the landscape's changed because of that. I'm now saying maybe we should throw more money in enforcement. We should definitely hire one of the compliance companies. And... Let's have a pilot program of enhanced enforcement for a year. If you can bring down all the illicit activity, all the illegal activity, then it might be worth considering a pilot program because I am sympathetic for someone who wants to stay in their large home that they've had for years in Sausalito and rent in a room is a good way to cover some rent. I'm sympathetic to that. But in the balancing act... I'm afraid I've got to tell you, no, you can't do that, because overall, even though I am sympathetic to you doing that, the overall effect to the whole community is damage. Finally, as I said, I realize I think I'm in a minority. I think there are three votes to move forward. So I would suggest to my fellow council members that if you're gonna move forward tonight, you think very carefully about the length of the pilot program and all of these bells and whistles. Um, and also, We've got to ask the question, what do you actually want to see as a result of the pilot program? What are you measuring? What's going to be regarded as a success? What's going to be regarded as a failure? Okay. Well... from this council member's perspective, if you can enforce... an outright ban, then you can start getting fancy with a pilot program. So that's my view. Uh, And I'm happy to talk about specifics of the pilot program if there's obviously a majority to move forward because I have some ideas on that. I mean... The idea of rent in ADUs is absurd. I mean, considering how the years that we've spent developing a housing element of which ADUs was one of our key affordable components, to actually throw that away and allow ADUs as short-term rentals is mind-bogglingly irrational. I just can't think of anything other to say. I'm sorry if I'm offending people, but it's just impossible to conjure how that is within the realms of reason. So as you can see, I'm not in favor of this. |
| 04:13:25.01 | Unknown | Oh, no. |
| 04:13:26.51 | Jill Hoffman | Do you mind? |
| 04:13:27.34 | Unknown | Go ahead. |
| 04:13:27.71 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 04:13:27.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:13:28.32 | Jill Hoffman | I have so much to say. But what I wanted to do first is I have some information I'm going to pass out to council, I'm going to give the rest to staff. There's a couple available. I'll read most of the numbers on here. I heard a lot of people talk about the impact on long term rentals. I didn't hear one number. I heard like one number, but I didn't really hear any evidence. I ran some numbers and I would like to share them with people. Here, just take them all down. Um, Because I don't see that as an issue with the regulations that we're posing here. |
| 04:13:56.43 | Jay Baer | with the |
| 04:13:59.44 | Jill Hoffman | Long term rentals, I ran 48 comps out of MLS in the last year. And I have the averages on here. The averages for a one bedroom is $35.27 a month. That's $42,000 a year. Two to three bedroom, that's $5,000 a year. $5,000 a month. And a four bedroom is $8,750. A month. $105,000 a year. Those don't have TOT taxes, those don't have registration, those don't have house cleaning preparation, utilities, household supplies, platform listing fees, all that expense to come off of it. Now on a non-regulated program, like we currently have, it does pay to have a short term rental, because you're not paying any of those TOT. You're not paying for the registration, and you don't have a limit on days. So that number does net out higher. But if you have a regulated program like we're suggesting, and I don't think anybody's suggesting we don't have a regulated program. Then just at 150 nights, at an extremely high nightly rate of 300, 450, and 600, much higher than what this gentleman said was our average. The highest you get is 69,000 compared to 109 on a long term rental. The numbers are here. I'm happy to go over with anybody. I have all the comps available if you want to check them. But that's the type of thing I was hoping that the people would have brought forth is the actual, where is the comparison of these numbers? Everybody came up and said they're concerned about long term rental. LA said they were concerned about long term rental. a limit. So it doesn't impact their long-term rental programs. It hasn't had an impact on long-term rental programs when you have a regulated approach. If you don't have a regulated approach, it may have an impact on your long-term rentals. So that's the first bit of information I think is very valuable for us to look at when we're considering a program. Then there's a lot of other caveats that have come up in this conversation. I think just starting from the bottom up. Why would we regulate something if we can't control it now when it's completely banned? I'm trying to think of where I've heard that argument before. I think I've heard it for the last 20 years in marijuana. 40 years, maybe. We can't control it. So why would we make it legal? Well, you know what, sometimes regulation does help control things, and I think we're experiencing that now. So I think there's a very strong precedence for when you can't actually ban something. that sometimes regulating it gets you to that goal. we shouldn't use property to make money. Well, we do, in long term, that's exactly why ADUs are built. They're not philanthropic. People build ADUs and junior ADUs in their property so that they can get revenue, so that they can stay on their property. We do use real estate to stay in our houses. The fabric of our community, that is a tough one. I wanna look more at that. I would like to know the numbers. If we have 187 rentals, which I agree, they're not all rented at the same time, and we do a program at 100 or 150, do we get a reduction? Would that reduction mean that our character the lack of character increases or decreases. That's probably a good discussion to have and I don't think we're ready to opine on that tonight but I'm not sure our character is so fragile that it's going to detract by having less short term rentals than we have right now. Because that's what the goal of this program is, is to have less short term rentals than are occurring right now. That's why we're having this discussion. We're not having it for money. I mean, money's great. It's going to pay for the cost of compliance and to bring that number down. Um, Second homes, somebody talked about People use these, they have second homes in multiple communities. Yes, second homes are often used on short term rental programs. But they're not going to the long term rental market either, they're second homes. So it is a way to get revenue off of something that otherwise would sit. I wrote down Caledonia Street because we hear a lot from the Caledonia Street merchants about how they're really on a fine line of existence it's really hard for them to exist in a residential based only economy. They need more shopping. That's why we lost our movie theater. So if we decide to remove an element of visitors, note that we are removing business from Caledonia Street. And that does in fact impact our entire community. So when you talk about character of the community, I think a movie theater is a big impact. Monterey came up. Monterey reduced their There are short term rentals from 200 to 7. And I looked up Monterey currently has a $17 million TOT revenue. So they're making a lot of money on their hotels. Their property tax revenue is only 9.8 million. So it's almost, their TOT tax is almost double their property tax. That would mean that our TOT tax would run around 10 million to be equivalent to that type of ratio. So I'm not sure Monterey has really cut out Rentals, they just have a tremendous amount of hotels that we'll never ever have. Same with Napa. But I think those types of numbers should be included in the equations when we talk about what other communities are doing, because other communities aren't like Sausalito. So- |
| 04:19:48.85 | Jill Hoffman | I think there's A lot of discussion to be had on a pilot program. I don't think any of us came here expecting that what we had written down over a year ago was what we're going to stamp tonight. It needs a lot of tinkering. So when you come up with, hey, how are we going to do this, or we don't know how this is going to work, yeah, we don't. We have to fine tune it. That's what we're going to discuss. I think it really is crucial to look at numbers, to look at the impact zone of how many nights, how many permits we're going to allow, how we're going to enforce that. The guy said when you have a program and you have permit numbers and you're enforcing a regulated program, you do reduce your non-regulated product. That's what the goal is. So I think there's a lot of information here. I could go on on some of the details. I would love to chat more with anybody about the long term rental impact and what a regulated program would do to long term rentals. Again, I have the numbers on what our long term rents are and they're extremely expensive and many nights of a very expensive short term rental program to max the same amount of money on a short term rental. So, I'd love to chat with anybody on that separately. I'll hold it off for you further. MEN. |
| 04:21:08.82 | Unknown | you |
| 04:21:16.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No, you don't get to choose that, sorry. |
| 04:21:19.01 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:21:24.97 | Kate Storr | You can go. Jill. |
| 04:21:27.99 | Unknown | Susan's good night. Thank you. I'll go again. |
| 04:21:30.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bill and I were on the short-term rental task force together, and we've listened. I mean, we have... |
| 04:21:33.49 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 04:21:38.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | heard this discussion for a long time. So like many of the people in the room tonight, I came to this issue as not a fan of short-term rentals. I'm still not a huge fan of short-term rentals. I don't like the way that a lot of the new disruptive business models started off in local communities. Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, they disrespected local regulation and local character. Um, in order to make a profit. So I get that. I sat on the short-term rental task force. We had a lot of different meetings. And I have talked through campaigning last November, knocking on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of doors in this town. I have talked to so many different people about their views on this issue. Like tonight, there are people who are very passionate on both sides of the issue. But really surprising to me is that most people were very moderate. They didn't have hugely strong feelings. They knew people who hosted, and they knew people who had lived next to unruly hosts. So they understood. the range of impacts to the community. And I think what we tried to do on the short-term rental task force was to come up with a moderate and a reasonable approach to having a pilot to allow short-term rentals in Sausalito with absolute minimum impact to the neighborhoods and to the community in a way that could work. And we listened to many, many residents who rely on income from short term rentals to stay in this community. We listened to numerous seniors. We listened to families with young kids. We listened to people who needed to support kids going to college. and who really wanted to stay in this community because they really love it. One of the things that was my absolute, I probably said this so many times that the other members of the committee, wanted to kill me was that If short-term rentals were gonna decrease the housing stock in Sausalito, I was not in favor. We have had so much trouble getting people in town to accept new housing units or new affordable housing units that I will not tolerate loss of housing units. So that was my absolute main goal. And we got that. You have to be a permanent resident of the unit in order to host under the pilot program. That's part of the proposal. So if you do not live in the unit, and the way it was originally conceived, that could be the ADU, or that could be the single family house, or it could be the duplex, then you cannot register to host. And we were told during the short-term rental task force meetings that under federal law, permanent resident is a definition that you have to live in that Residence at that address for more than 180 days a year so there's been a lot of talk tonight about the fact that the pilot would detract from the residents, detract from the neighborhood because we would lose permanent residence. We would lose your neighbor. Under the pilot as it's conceived, That's not the case. Your neighbor would still be your neighbor And they would go on vacation, or they would spend part of their year visiting parents, or whatever, and they would host during that time. And then we had a lot of bells and whistles, as have been discussed, to address the other negative impacts. So in all these conversations, I ended up feeling comfortable. I ended up, Mr. Theodora said, why do we need this program? I was really convinced after talking to so many people that this was a really valuable tool for them to stay in a very highly unaffordable area and to retain their homes. and to continue to be members of the community. I have to say that of the people that I know who have hosted, They are some of the most amazing volunteers and members of our community. They give countless hours of their time to a host of different excellent interests. And they sit on boards and do other things. So I think that I was satisfied by the end of the process that we had come to a really good result and that we should try it for a short amount of time. If it doesn't work, I am absolutely 100% Thank you. willing to move to a ban and see how well we can enforce that. In any case, these compliance companies have assured us that they can enforce the regulations that we adopt. So I would like to move forward with the you know, assumption that that's correct. In either case, whether we do a ban, we definitely need to hire a compliance company. And if we do the pilot, we definitely need to hire a compliance company. These issues are too complex. and two-time intensive for full-time staff. I'm not gonna talk about all the various recommendations from the legislative committee until we kind of have a sense. I respect everyone in this room who spoke tonight and all the other people that have spoken on this issue. And I really am just happy that people care so much about the community and about the character but um you know i've i've met so many people on both sides and so many people in the middle that i think sausalito is going to be we are going to retain our community character regardless so i'm i am not concerned about that um and i think if we do move forward with a pilot, we have come up with a really great starting point for all of the things that minimize the negative impacts, and that we need to stick with those. you know, and see if that's something that can work here. So those are my thoughts. |
| 04:28:41.00 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I will go. Yeah. |
| 04:28:43.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Sorry, I just wanted to add one more thing again on the why should we do this. There's not only the residents here. A number of people spoke tonight, it was interesting, who were against short-term rentals here, but use them regularly to vacation. And I find that interesting. I've never done a short-term rental. And I wish they had been prevalent when my children were very young. What I've heard from so many of my friends who travel using short-term rentals is it feels like you're at home. You can bring your kids, you don't have to order hot water to heat up your bottle. from room service, you are in a neighborhood. You're not in the tourist area of a particular town or a city. And that brings a value to people of understanding different communities. And I do think it's interesting that a lot of people that want to come. to towns want to experience. the town. and not the tourist shops and that. So I respect that. I don't think that's a compelling. issue, but I have... I think it is one of the values that short-term rentals bring. Sorry. |
| 04:29:53.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's okay. |
| 04:29:54.31 | Jane Criss | Thank you. |
| 04:29:54.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:29:54.38 | Jane Criss | Thank you. |
| 04:29:54.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:29:54.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So first I want to say I genuinely appreciate all of the feedback that we've received. We received dozens of letters, we have heard from dozens of people this evening, and that's what really informs the tough decision making that we have up here. I will say earlier this year, I voted in favor of distribution of marijuana, even though I personally absolutely abhor marijuana. drug use, marijuana, or anything of that nature, but I felt it was my obligation as member of the city council, to represent the members of the community, and so I voted against something that I personally I would have liked to prohibit. I voted in favor of something I personally would like to prohibit. I think it is so important up here that we look at the greater good of our community. And through your comments, through the very eloquent letters that we have received, I am convinced, I am fully aligned with Council Member Withey in opposing in continuing our ban on short-term rentals. I think there is a very delicate balance between the tourists and the residents already. When people purchased their homes here in Sausalito, they purchased in residential communities, counting on that they would continue to live in residential communities, not that their neighbors would turn into revolving doors of short-term rentals. I have been a short-term renter one time, and we did not bring one car. We did not bring two cars. We brought five cars to a house for a girl's 40th birthday weekend. And we raised havoc on the deck, in the house, You know, we enjoyed our time singing, walking outdoors, and we were in a resort community, so I guess we thought that it wouldn't be objectionable. But here in Sausalito, what makes us so charming is that our houses are closely nestled on the hillside, And so we don't have the luxury of space between neighbors, and therefore the impacts of short-term rentals, including garbage, noise, waste, parking, are felt very well. that much more than they are where homes are not so closely nestled. um, A council member this evening said that they would not tolerate the loss of housing units. and you have to be a permanent resident of the unit in order to host under the program but we heard tonight that the majority of existing short-term rentals are whole homes not shared and you know i agree with council member withy if we can't enforce a ban how are we going to enforce the nuances of this program and by the way i helped to enunciate many of the nuances of the pilot program because I'm very concerned that I am in the majority up here. And that I am going to be overruled by my fellow council members. And if we're going to embark on this treacherous road, I believe we have to do so with lots of constraints. By the way, down in the San Diego area, a community adopted a pilot, or actually adopted an ordinance with lots of constraints. And what did Airbnb do? They're now funding a ballot measure to allow short term rentals without all of the constraints imposed by the community. So be careful what you wish for. When we built our homes, we established impact fees, building and sanitary codes for residences in neighborhoods, not for hotels, motels with high turnover. Our our neighborhoods are zoned residential. If we are to adopt this pilot program, we're looking at changing the zoning. If I were a homeowner whose zoning got changed after I purchased, I might have an issue with that. um, It concerns me that The short term rental platforms do not stand behind the cities that allow short term rentals. Mike McGuire stood in these chambers several years ago and proposed legislation that would facilitate the cities being able to obtain the data they needed from the platforms directly in order to enforce whatever regulations they had regarding short term rentals. Unfortunately, that bill went down. And was not. due to the huge amounts of money poured into lobbying efforts by the short term rental platforms. And then, We do have to consider how we will manage parking for short-term renters who occupy neighborhoods that require residential permits. Um, The short term rental pilot program does include a zone in which no short term rentals would be allowed because the streets are already too narrow. We had a short term rental on Sausalito Boulevard earlier this year that caught on fire. The owner was in Washington, DC. A fire truck came charging up the road and took out two cars on its way to put out the fire at the house. So I absolutely am concerned about the health and safety of our residents if we allow the additional parking impacts that will surely accompany short term renters. I share the concern of many of the people who spoke this evening about the breakdown of our community. Our volunteers enable us to accomplish everything we do here in Sausalito. Short term renters have no skin in the game of preserving the spirit, security, and neighborhood cohesion that is vital to keeping Sausalito, Sausalito. On the other hand, buyers and long term renters are putting down roots, which benefits all of us. Half of our residents are already renters. Short term rentals. Vice Mayor Burns' statistics aside, I am concerned that short-term rentals put long-term renter tenure at risk, just as we heard this evening from one of our speakers. Mm-hmm. um, |
| 04:37:03.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | A commenter said we are not suggesting having a non-regulated program, but that's exactly what we're suggesting, because we've already demonstrated our absolute inability to enforce regulations that have been imposed. In the recent survey that the city council commissioned by FM3, congestion was listed as the number one or number two problem by 59% of Sausalito residents. So why in the world would we exacerbate an already existing problem by inviting additional tourists into our town and by inviting them to populate now not just our downtown, but also our neighborhoods on the hill. |
| 04:37:49.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | housing stock. Right now, we have ARENA. That is a number imposed upon us by Sacramento that we have to identify as potential new housing units. We have already met our arena. We are on track for low income and very low income. And that's why it's critical that ADUs not become a part of any pilot program if one is adopted. But what we have failed to meet is our moderate housing. If we deplete our residential housing stock by turning residences into short term rentals, there are bound to be consequences from Sacramento. So... And the final thing I think is that authorizing short term rentals will inflate home values, making difficult housing market even more cost prohibitive. If my home is not only located in scenic Sausalito, but also has a track record of success of generating income from short term rentals, it's going to increase my property value. And so the very goal that some of my fellow council members think we are meeting by adopting a short term pilot program, we're doing just the opposite. Instead of increasing the affordability and allowing people to stay in their homes by adopting a short term rental program. We're artificially inflating home values, making it even more difficult to get your foot in the door into the housing in Sausalito. So for all of these various reasons, not all of which are my original thoughts, but which I've gleaned from all of the correspondence and all of the comments that I've heard from you and others over the last several years, including when I was campaigning for office in 2016. I oppose, um, I support continuing our ban on short-term rentals. |
| 04:39:41.12 | Jane Criss | Just... |
| 04:39:44.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, as usual, when we start these conversations, we all agree on almost like 80% or 90%. Like there's very few comments that have been said today. that I don't agree with. We started this whole process with short-term rentals from the city council perspective of looking at it because we were such a failure at compliance. And how do we manage this going forward? Because we had been such a failure and continue to be a failure. The thought was, especially two years ago when we presented the program, was that we had to have a program in order to engage host compliance. So I think we're all in agreement up here that we need to engage. host compliance. I'm a little bit, You know, surprise that we're back here today because two years ago, the city council voted for this to go back into the general plan. And I'm surprised that Mayor Cox is the mayor, and this is now on our agenda, and it's back before us, even though she's voting no. So that perplexes me that she would put it on the agenda, push it as she has through the. system through the legislative committee. to get it to this point and then Just to vote no. It could have just stayed in the general plan as the city council voted. two years ago. But. I am in favor, and I have been, and I've talked to many people, that I am in favor of a small plan in order to test it to see if we can do it with a sunset provision. So, I'm still in favor of that. I agree that We were, you know, we're all in agreement that we don't want the character of our town to change. that What we have now with, ironically, what we have now with the illegal units as they are is about or less of what we would do with a pilot program. So you would see The same amount of impact that you see now, which is not much, but the ability to actually effectively address problems. And part of the program is if you have a CCNR or you have a lease that prohibits short-term rentals, then those are off the table. ADUs are off the table, junior ADUs off the table. neighborhoods that have very narrow streets and presumably limited parking off the table, because that's part of our ADU map. A sunset provision of one year, I agree with if we're looking at tweaking tweaking the program. |
| 04:42:29.53 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | no impact on the housing element or general plan. I agree with that, of course. |
| 04:42:42.85 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I agree with permits should only be given to individuals who demonstrate that it's their property or primary occupancy address. Short term rental should be hosted, renters should not be permitted to receive um, short term rental permits, we need to Think about that one. We need to address that. Every property should be inspected. I think we want to make sure they're safe. So I don't know if I don't know if we want to go forward with specifics on the plan at this point. So. Thank you. |
| 04:43:20.77 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Is there consent? I'm not sure, are you voting to move forward with the pilot program? Okay, so then we should give direction to staff about what the pilot program is. They're going to come back to us on October 30 with a proposed ordinance. |
| 04:43:35.70 | Jill Hoffman | Well, we already have a proposed ordinance. We should add some work. |
| 04:43:42.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We don't have a proposed ordinance. |
| 04:43:44.59 | Jill Hoffman | We have proposed wording. |
| 04:43:46.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We have proposed, we have menu of options. |
| 04:43:49.62 | Jill Hoffman | So we'll discuss those. |
| 04:43:50.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're going to go through the menu of options on pages 128 through 132 of All right. |
| 04:43:58.01 | Jill Hoffman | Well, those are pretty big things because I'm hearing that Jill and I are about 100 units off in our expectation here. So if that, excuse us, we're still having a meeting. |
| 04:44:06.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:44:09.59 | Jill Hoffman | We're still here. We're gonna go home for another couple hours. |
| 04:44:12.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm sorry, Jan, public comment is closed. We will hear this item again on October 30. You're welcome to come back and ask questions then. |
| 04:44:19.78 | Jill Hoffman | It's not closed yet. We're still coming. No, no, no, no. She's asking... |
| 04:44:22.29 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | She's asking if she can ask Questions? The answer is no. Public comment is closed. including questions. |
| 04:44:32.52 | Jill Hoffman | So, We have a consensus here of three of us supporting it, if we're largely different on our expectations of the pilot, we should probably talk about those before we go a lot further. I'm losing the crowd here. |
| 04:44:48.38 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well... |
| 04:44:48.85 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:44:48.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You lost them when you announced how you were going to vote. So, all right. What's the length of time, guys? One year, six months, one year. |
| 04:44:48.89 | Jill Hoffman | You lost them when you announced how you were going. |
| 04:44:57.76 | Jill Hoffman | We're discussing that now. Yep. |
| 04:44:58.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yep, right now. page 128 or 8 of 14 on this item. |
| 04:45:06.56 | Jill Hoffman | I say a two-year sunset with a one-year automatic date of... |
| 04:45:16.75 | Jill Hoffman | of check-in analytics. |
| 04:45:18.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's fine. I think it should be shorter. We're calling it a pilot program. Two years is not a pilot program. |
| 04:45:26.32 | Jill Hoffman | But the success or failure of it might take two years. It's taken us a long time to get here. I did a vacation rental here in 1992. |
| 04:45:26.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE FAMILY. |
| 04:45:35.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think it should be a year. I think we need to have a full, as opposed to six months, we need to have a full year cycle of metrics with the full tourist season. |
| 04:45:44.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:45:45.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:45:45.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So we, okay. But it needs to be a year from when the whole, I mean, this is going to take time to organize because the permit will be, I mean, you're going to need a lot of. |
| 04:45:52.40 | Jay Baer | Yeah. |
| 04:45:52.54 | Leah Gilbert | Thank you. |
| 04:45:52.56 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 04:45:59.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We need to do an RFP. To get a permit, you have to show proof of residency. You have to show all these other things. A good neighbor policy needs to be developed. So it can be a year from long term. |
| 04:46:14.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | lunch but So we're looking at passing an ordinance on December 11th this year. |
| 04:46:16.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 04:46:25.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK. |
| 04:46:28.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's the timeline in the staff report. |
| 04:46:29.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, so all I'm saying is the pilot should run from the issuance of the first permit, not from the adoption of the ordinance. Because otherwise you're not going to have any time. |
| 04:46:31.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | saying is is. Thank you. |
| 04:46:39.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | because otherwise, But if we're not ready to go on December whatever. Yeah, we'll see how it goes. |
| 04:46:46.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. So I, Anyway. Right. Regardless of what, from what date, I think there's three votes for one year. RAY? One year? Well, I'm voting against it. Right, but now that we're overruled, we have to dicker about what it's going to look like. |
| 04:47:08.33 | Ray Withey | As far as I'm concerned, therefore, as short as possible. Yeah, OK. |
| 04:47:10.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, okay. All right. |
| 04:47:11.85 | Ray Withey | All right. But the three positive votes are going to determine the thing. |
| 04:47:16.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, Jill is saying one year. Okay. |
| 04:47:18.55 | Ray Withey | Okay. |
| 04:47:21.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The The number of STRs. Thank you. |
| 04:47:26.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Oh, OK. So I, you know, |
| 04:47:31.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:47:31.21 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:47:32.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I was looking at between two and three percent of housing stock, which is like whatever the math is on that, 120 or something. No, it's 83 if it's 2%. Okay. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. around 3%, I think. |
| 04:47:45.35 | Unknown | 89 to 100. |
| 04:47:46.70 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Because if you look at, so there's 100 and something now, or do you want to, okay, here's some good discussion point then. We want to maintain what we have away. |
| 04:47:52.78 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We want to maintain what we have away. Because they're coming back to us on October 30. So please give us a proposal for two or three percent. We'll make the final decision on, tell us what that number would be. We'll make the final decision on October 30. |
| 04:47:55.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 04:48:04.50 | Ray Withey | 2% or 3% of what? |
| 04:48:06.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | of the number of residences which Lily provided us in our staff report. |
| 04:48:12.70 | Ray Withey | Okay, so it's not the total number of residences, the total number of dwelling units. |
| 04:48:14.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:48:17.35 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. Sorry. And not all of which are eligible to have STRs. . |
| 04:48:23.57 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, |
| 04:48:23.81 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:48:23.93 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, and an interesting thing too is whether or not the rentals are active or not active, right? Like we're thinking. |
| 04:48:24.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 04:48:32.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The number we were given by OREC was 192, there's a lot of, listings on there that aren't actually active and they're not, you know. So I don't think that should be a driver. of what we're gonna look. |
| 04:48:43.99 | Jill Hoffman | I propose 100 flat, even number. |
| 04:48:47.42 | Ray Withey | Can I just offer a perspective? And again, I'm in the situation here where I'm going to vote no against this anyway. But... |
| 04:48:49.44 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, not in. |
| 04:48:57.59 | Ray Withey | I find the concept of limiting the total number of permits to be highly offensive. I mean... Can you imagine the situation? where I'm living next door to somebody, the city's decided that they're gonna allow short-term rentals, and I'm living next door to somebody who somehow has managed to get a permit, where there is a limit, and I am totally excluded from doing the same thing. |
| 04:49:25.35 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No, no, no, I think it should be a lottery system annually, just like our way finding signs by the Chamber of Commerce. |
| 04:49:34.78 | Ray Withey | So I disagree. |
| 04:49:34.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:49:34.85 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:49:34.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So, |
| 04:49:36.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:49:36.62 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We did not discuss a cap during the the task force process. I think there's a lot of pros and cons and a lot of discussion about how you would actually run it. I would prefer, I mean, it's 10 of 12. We have several more items left on our agenda tonight. |
| 04:49:57.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I think we're going to punt one of those items. |
| 04:50:02.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK, well, can we pause and decide to do that? |
| 04:50:07.54 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So, Adam, is there any issue with our punting marijuana to our next meeting? |
| 04:50:08.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm just not sure it's worth it. |
| 04:50:14.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, we're going to, I'm making an executive decision. We're going to punt marijuana to our next meeting. Well, are there people here that want to speak on that? |
| 04:50:18.59 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks, Josh. Well, are there people here that want to speak on that? |
| 04:50:22.24 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Is there anyone here tonight who's here to speak about marijuana? Seeing none, we're gonna continue on our short-term rental. Discussion. |
| 04:50:35.42 | Jill Hoffman | I'm proposing 100 because I don't think we're going to have a whole lot more than that. If we have 187 that show up occasionally on the site, and we start adding TOTs and registration and rules and a permit fee and everything, I think a lot of the bad actors are going to go away or end up going illegal and we're going to catch them with our new enforcement program. I think that 100 would, I can't see it being more than 100. If there was a discussion to not have a cap, that's fine too. There's just not a, there's not more than a hundred good actor qualified properties that are going, that are currently active. They're going to make that number. So, |
| 04:51:20.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's fine, and to Ray's point, this is a pilot program. This is only to see how it goes for us trying to manage it for a year. If we can't do it, then it goes away. This is done. |
| 04:51:34.70 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Next, how many days per year can they rent? The staff report suggests between 90 to 180 days per year. |
| 04:51:47.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think I was 90. 90. |
| 04:51:48.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | 90 days, Mary. Is that what you said? |
| 04:51:52.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | you. Thank you. |
| 04:51:53.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | What? What'd you say? |
| 04:51:54.54 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I said 90, but I... |
| 04:51:54.64 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I said. Thank you. |
| 04:51:56.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:51:56.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:51:57.38 | Jill Hoffman | I would go 120, but I had 150 and 200 on my... members what they pencil out at. |
| 04:52:01.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:52:01.46 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:52:01.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:52:01.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:52:01.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | church. Okay, we're all in agreement that the dwelling must have a primary resident, and no person can claim to be the primary resident of more than one dwelling unit. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Agreement to comply with procedures for reporting and payment of TOT. Must obtain a business license. compliant Okay? |
| 04:52:23.38 | Jill Hoffman | business license, registration, and TOT. |
| 04:52:29.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So. I think that the business registration should be, if there's a permanent program, that will implement that at that time. I mean, I'm not sure how that |
| 04:52:43.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So the way this was laid out and what Ulrich recommended was that the registration fee pays their services essentially. |
| 04:52:50.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Right. The, |
| 04:52:51.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:52:52.19 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The permit fee. |
| 04:52:53.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Yeah, the permit fee. So are you suggesting no business license tax? |
| 04:52:56.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, if we gauge the- |
| 04:52:57.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | They're a business now in our neighborhoods. |
| 04:53:01.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, so then we'll use the business. So are you suggesting we use the business tax? |
| 04:53:01.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 04:53:07.39 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think we should have. The permit fee, is that what you're saying? Is that what you mean by business license? No. Okay, so the permit fee would pay for |
| 04:53:07.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No. |
| 04:53:07.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:53:07.85 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:53:12.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No. |
| 04:53:14.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 04:53:16.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | the permit fee would pay for the host compliance cost. The $15,000 a year would be covered by the permit fee, however that pencils out. Okay. |
| 04:53:23.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So you're saying they pay both? |
| 04:53:25.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I don't, yeah, I'm not sure that you need a business license. |
| 04:53:27.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We never talked about business registration at the time. Yeah. We talked about |
| 04:53:31.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 04:53:32.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:53:34.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, maybe we can... |
| 04:53:37.43 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Look, we heard testimony tonight from someone who said they're going to make a ton of money. They should be having, if they're running a business, they should pay a business license tax. We should have a registration fee for them to register. That covers the cost of inspecting their home to make sure it's got egress and sprinklers and access, whatever the minimum basics we decide are important. |
| 04:54:08.09 | Jill Hoffman | What is our BLT flat fee for residential rentals? proposed. |
| 04:54:15.74 | Adam Politzer | It's going to be 125. |
| 04:54:16.63 | Jill Hoffman | 125. |
| 04:54:18.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's peanuts. Thank you. So 125 plus whatever registration fee we Um, Thank you. Decide upon. |
| 04:54:25.91 | Jill Hoffman | Well, let's decide on 375. |
| 04:54:28.14 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:54:28.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK. We can't just set a random Thank you. |
| 04:54:31.72 | Jill Hoffman | Well, |
| 04:54:32.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That's what we're doing. No, I mean, it has to be, it has to comport with the cost of the running the regulatory program. We can't set a round of- Do we have to do a fee study, Mary? |
| 04:54:32.09 | Jill Hoffman | forward to it. |
| 04:54:32.97 | Unknown | you |
| 04:54:41.81 | Unknown | Do we have to do a fee study, Mary? No, I mean, no. The permit fee is basically the cost of issuance of the permit. It's what we do with all our fees. It's a bit of an estimate based on experience for issuing those types of fees. |
| 04:54:58.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So there's a cost to inspect, there's a cost to pay host compliance. |
| 04:54:59.58 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:55:03.15 | Jill Hoffman | And Ulrich was very clear that |
| 04:55:05.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | 200 is too low. Ulrich was very clear that 200 is too low. |
| 04:55:09.03 | Jill Hoffman | that Tennessee had $7 million in TOT and $200,000 fee to them, and so he was attributing the cost to them coming out of the TOT. That was his comment completely. |
| 04:55:20.01 | Unknown | And I don't think we need you to set the permit fee tonight. I think what we're hearing though is you want a permit fee that covers the cost of issuing the permit as we're legally required to do. |
| 04:55:23.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:55:28.96 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:55:30.59 | Unknown | application of a business license tax. And, um... TOT. Right. So we can come back to you with some suggestions for that. But as part of after the ordinance is in effect, we would have a fee resolution to adopt that fee for the issuance of the permit. |
| 04:55:48.09 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. All right. |
| 04:55:48.99 | Unknown | Uh, |
| 04:55:51.65 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Agreement to provide each tenant with a copy of a good neighbor handbook, people are good with that. Compliance with a subset of health and safety codes to be determined by city staff. Can you come back to us with recommendations on that? Yes, okay. So, Because it has to be, so designation of a local contact available 24-7. |
| 04:56:14.30 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 04:56:14.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 04:56:14.37 | Alice Merrill | THE END OF THE END OF THE Thank you. |
| 04:56:16.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Permit number must be displayed in all advertising. That's one way to enforce this. |
| 04:56:20.44 | Unknown | That's why. |
| 04:56:22.55 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, permit application to include plan for compliance with additional conditions which may include parking, and STR guest is made aware of garbage requirements. Mm-hmm. |
| 04:56:35.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, these are all from the pilot, right? Yes, yeah. |
| 04:56:37.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes, I'm just zipping through them. |
| 04:56:38.89 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I don't know. |
| 04:56:40.13 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Entrance door to the STR unit must be clearly posted with standardized sign or symbol so the short term tenant will know they are knocking on or opening the correct door. |
| 04:56:49.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think we need some further input on that because of the safety issues. It could be some sort of symbol, it could be whatever. |
| 04:56:56.64 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, this is a standard size sign or symbol. Something, something other than saying |
| 04:56:56.99 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:57:01.25 | Jill Hoffman | Which we should have in general for fire safety anyway. I mean, for our residences to not have addresses or properly marked doors is a bigger community issue than for short-term rentals. I'm having a heart attack and the fireman can't find my door. |
| 04:57:04.40 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, |
| 04:57:10.12 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | been. |
| 04:57:15.25 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yep. Okay. requiring additional notification provisions similar to Marin County ordinance, either signage or written notification within 300 feet. So that was not part of the pilot program. That's something the legislative committee put in front of you because it's part of the Marin County program. Yeah. |
| 04:57:35.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, I heard a lot of comments, and we got written comments that people had concerns about that, and people who were actually opposed to short-term rentals in general didn't like the idea of additional signage in their neighborhoods. So I would be inclined at this stage not to include that, unless we hear strongly by the 30th that. Can I just... |
| 04:57:55.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | ask for clarification on that. So this is require additional notification, and this is just when you're applying for the permit? Yeah, you notify your neighbors that you're applying for a permit. |
| 04:58:02.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, you notify your neighbors that you're applying for a permit. OK. So they know. So... Thank you. So I think a symbol on the door, but when you first apply for permit, you have to notify your neighbors you're applying for the permit. within 300 feet. |
| 04:58:23.28 | Jill Hoffman | I think that's an automatic. I'm not sure what you're saying on the door. The door is a- |
| 04:58:23.41 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think that's not a matter. I'm not sure. What you just said, that the entrance door to the STR unit must be clearly posted with, I'm suggesting a symbol instead of a sign. so that the renter knows this is the short-term rental door. |
| 04:58:39.31 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I don't want to do anything that suggests it's a short-term rental door. I'm saying we should have addresses on all of our... properties, but |
| 04:58:46.60 | Ray Withey | So, um, Thank you. Thank you. Just as a point of clarification here, what happens then? You're going to notify all the neighbors within 300 feet that you have applied for a permit |
| 04:59:05.41 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:59:05.63 | Ray Withey | And so what does staff do when 20 neighbors show up at the desk complaining? And you've said it's over the counter, it's not discretionary, nothing. So what does staff do? Thank you. |
| 04:59:17.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | The staff. |
| 04:59:17.51 | Ray Withey | What position have you put staff into? |
| 04:59:20.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Staff provides them with a booklet, the good neighbor booklet, that is prepared for the short-term rental. Look, that's one of the reasons I'm opposed to this, Ray, but I think that if you're going to have a revolving door with people coming and going, you need to let your neighbors know so that your neighbors know your house is not being burglarized. |
| 04:59:43.36 | Unknown | and we look forward. |
| 04:59:44.38 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. We're not setting up regulations in good faith. |
| 04:59:44.80 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:59:47.21 | Jill Hoffman | This reminds me a lot of the cannabis story. I hate to keep bringing this up, but we're going to overregulate it to the point of failure, because that's going to really play in the hands of some people. |
| 04:59:55.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Listen, this is not your only bite at the apple, so we're giving ups and downs to staff tonight so they can come back with a proposed ordinance and you can comment on that on October 30th. So I'm just trying, our job tonight was to say yay or nay and then give direction to staff for an ordinance. |
| 05:00:12.02 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think we're just trying to understand what this M and N is. Madam Mayor. |
| 05:00:20.34 | Lily Whalen | May I? So the purpose of the Marin County regulations for notification was to provide notification for neighbors indicating that there was going to be a short-term rental in their neighborhood, give the address, provide the 24-7 hotline, and I think the local contact information. So it was more of a- |
| 05:00:38.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So after or before? |
| 05:00:39.91 | Lily Whalen | Before the business license was issued. But there was no appeal period. So it was a notification to the neighborhood that a short-term rental was going in and provide the numbers in case there were complaints. |
| 05:00:50.90 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 05:00:55.35 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I think the direction is include that and if somebody has a reason to exclude it, we can discuss that on the 30th. |
| 05:01:00.13 | Jay Baer | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 05:01:00.20 | Alice Merrill | That's good. |
| 05:01:03.25 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. Next was provide direction on reporting requirements, reporting directly from short term rental platforms or requiring property owners to have the platforms report to the city of Sausalito. I think the plan is to adopt the host compliance or one of its competitors. Thank you. |
| 05:01:22.00 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, but then Airbnb still reports it too. |
| 05:01:22.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. and host compliance has said they can have, can get the necessary information from Airbnb if necessary. Clear, Mary? OK. Prohibit short-term rentals in areas. So we right now have an overlay zone where ADUs are not permitted as of right. You can still apply for a CUP because of the narrowness of the streets and the importance of fire engines being able to get through. So the proposal is that that same overlay map apply for short-term rentals as for ADUs. |
| 05:02:02.31 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:02:02.35 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 05:02:02.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I agree. Okay. Thank you. |
| 05:02:05.32 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, I mean, we can talk more about it on the 30th. I don't know what people think about that. Thank you. |
| 05:02:09.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. |
| 05:02:09.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:02:10.01 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. ADUs are not to be permitted to use as short-term rental. We've already come up with a number of permits. |
| 05:02:15.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | the number of permits. So we got correspondence from staff And it was our, so if you have to be a permanent resident of the unit, What makes an ADU different than a house? |
| 05:02:33.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | It's smaller, and it is part of our... low-income housing stock by... |
| 05:02:38.98 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I know, but you can only rent it if you actually live in it. So you're renting it. |
| 05:02:44.26 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | What if you live in the big house? |
| 05:02:45.87 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You can't rent it. |
| 05:02:47.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, so that would have to be clear. I still don't think, I don't think, I think there should be an absolute preclusion on ADUs or junior ADUs. |
| 05:02:49.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So that's the. |
| 05:02:57.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Raising out of his head, yes. |
| 05:03:00.46 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay, well, we can do that for the pilot. I just, that doesn't, it's not what you are actually saying, and they're just not adding up. |
| 05:03:03.42 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:03:08.70 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Making ADUs available for a short-term rental means they're now no longer available for families. |
| 05:03:08.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Because you have to be a |
| 05:03:15.48 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | They are, because you can only host if you live in it. |
| 05:03:18.91 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Right, so you occupy one bedroom and the other is occupied by the short-term renter. |
| 05:03:24.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No. You have to occupy the unit. An ADU is a unit. |
| 05:03:25.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:03:31.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So it's just like a single family home. I mean, I just, I'm... I'm happy to have this discussion, I just think that there's a disconnect in what you're saying. It's not the loss of the housing unit, just like it's not the loss. of a housing event. |
| 05:03:44.93 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I will believe that when we demonstrate that we can actually enforce these regulations. I don't believe. were able to enforce these regulations. So for now, I would prefer ADUs not be part of the available housing stock for short-term rentals. |
| 05:04:00.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK, I mean, I don't, I just don't. understand I mean, if we can't enforce this, then we can't enforce this, and then I think we're all Well, I think... Against it. So... |
| 05:04:11.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think the fear is that people are going to evict people in their ADUs and start renting. |
| 05:04:13.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:04:13.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 05:04:13.53 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:04:21.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | My position has always been I don't think so it's the people that live there that are renting their unit when they're gone and and you have a different kind of motivation. |
| 05:04:29.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Please don't call me. |
| 05:04:30.61 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 05:04:30.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Bye. |
| 05:04:30.71 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 05:04:30.78 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | from the audience. |
| 05:04:31.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. you have a different kind of motivation when you rent to a long-term renter as opposed to a short-term renter. in my experience, the type of people that we're looking at, there's not much crossover. Either you rent long term or you rent short term and you're not going to do, there's reasons why you would do one or the other. So Susan, the reason that you would want to take ADUs off at this point is the fear that the person that got the ADU for the purpose of housing stock is going to evict their renters in the ADU for the purpose of being able to rent short term. |
| 05:05:04.06 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm not suggesting we take them off. I'm just not understanding... I think the principle is exactly the same. I agree. And I think we got an email from staff that said that the principle is the same. If we want to test the enforcement first and then apply it to ADUs, that's a different question. But I just want to do it for the right reason. |
| 05:05:08.70 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think the principle. And I think we got an |
| 05:05:25.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:05:25.47 | Jill Hoffman | I kind of initiated that email because I was questioned that not all ADUs are for the housing stock. Some ADUs and junior ADUs are for family or personal use. |
| 05:05:37.69 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So why don't we do this? Why don't we ask staff to have host compliance or ask staff to look at what other jurisdictions do and also see what host compliance thinks about enforcement? with accessory dwelling units and if there's any difference. If there's not. |
| 05:06:01.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I continue to think, at least for the pilot program, ADUs should be prohibited. We're allowing 100 units. I think there's plenty of units without including ADUs in that 100 for the pilot program. |
| 05:06:14.92 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, we don't know that. Well, we have 100. Okay. So I'd like more information by our next meeting personally, but what do you guys want the default to be for the next meeting? |
| 05:06:29.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm okay for the pilot program saying no ADUs or JING or ADUs. Just because I don't want people, the thought that people might be displaced because of the program. And I think that's, I don't know. I would definitely say that with ADUs. |
| 05:06:42.49 | Jill Hoffman | I would definitely say that with ADUs. The junior ADU is really a lot different than renting your bedroom out with a kitchen in it. So I would say no on ADUs, but junior ADUs. But then that gets into, again, |
| 05:06:49.49 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:06:49.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm not sure. That's right. |
| 05:06:55.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, it's a pilot program. Let's see if we can enforce it and we can revisit it. |
| 05:06:56.75 | Jill Hoffman | if we can |
| 05:06:59.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Speaking of which, I would like to have quarterly reports on the status of this pilot program. |
| 05:07:07.60 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Everybody okay with that? Yeah. |
| 05:07:09.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. We already talked about the permit fee staff is going to come back to us. Permit valid for one year with annual renewal. assuming the pilot program continues beyond one year. Administrative and compliance staff to be retained as necessary to implement and ensure compliance. So I think we have to hire a platform. I think we also have to have a full-time code compliance officer, not a half-time as we now have. |
| 05:07:35.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | with House compliance. |
| 05:07:37.15 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah, host compliance only sends letters. They don't actually go collect the fees or knock on the doors and talk to people. or hear the appeals when someone says, I shouldn't have been fined, or go to court when someone complains. All they do is send a template letter that they create with us. I'm not sure. |
| 05:07:58.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I'm not sure. I think that we should wait and see what the burden is gonna be. And if we need to hire a part-time person, we should start there. And if that needs to be a full-time person, that's fine. |
| 05:08:12.97 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, I'm suggesting a part-time person. Right now we have a half-time person. I'm suggesting we hire the other half. |
| 05:08:13.58 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | a part-time person. Right now we have a have- |
| 05:08:19.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | to do short-term rentals. Thank you. |
| 05:08:22.94 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So we have two halves that make a whole? We have one half. |
| 05:08:24.83 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We have one half. I'm suggesting we increase that to a full-time person who can spend half their time, if necessary, on code enforcement. Can I just clarify? |
| 05:08:33.83 | Jill Hoffman | Can I just clarify? I think that's probably relevant since we're trying to shut down the non-compliant properties, we're gonna need a body |
| 05:08:40.22 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:08:40.24 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 05:08:40.26 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 05:08:40.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We need a body and. |
| 05:08:40.36 | Jill Hoffman | WE NEED A BUSH. |
| 05:08:40.75 | Adam Politzer | I think what the mayor is suggesting is that we are contracting out half a body. I think what you're asking for is to contract out. |
| 05:08:45.51 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yes. I think what you're asking for is the |
| 05:08:50.03 | Adam Politzer | Full. full equivalent. |
| 05:08:52.56 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Correct. |
| 05:08:52.93 | Adam Politzer | So you should not hire a new employee? |
| 05:08:53.99 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No. Okay. Thank you. FTE. um, OK. Great. Provision for reporting and collection of TOT tax. It just needs to have one of those. We'll review it when it comes to us. Creation of a short term rental page on city website that provides clear regulations. Everybody's in agreement with that? |
| 05:09:15.75 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 05:09:16.35 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Creation of STR informational packet and a good neighbor booklet for short-term tenants. Everyone's agreeable with that. Establishment of grounds for revoking the permit and associated penalties. Lily went over that tonight. Three complaints... three valid complaints and you're suspended for two years. Thank you. |
| 05:09:36.13 | Unknown | the program. |
| 05:09:37.80 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Good neighbor booklet to include provision that short-term rental permit holders to notify neighbors of the short-term rental use of his or her unit. That's already part of our permit process. Sausalito host group to act as ambassadors to the program I'm not sure what that means. What is the Sausalito host group? |
| 05:09:55.03 | Jill Hoffman | That is a separate group taking this project on to make sure it works. |
| 05:10:02.10 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I don't think that's something we can legislate. I mean, that's something... that. |
| 05:10:07.33 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We can ask. |
| 05:10:07.59 | Jill Hoffman | can happen. Do you want to ask? |
| 05:10:08.74 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:10:08.89 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:10:12.16 | Jill Hoffman | you want to do it now or do you want to wait have them we can have it |
| 05:10:16.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I think any ordinance or resolution would just open that discussion. Right. I mean, we can't require that. Thank you. |
| 05:10:26.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I agree, I think we can ask them and get feedback before |
| 05:10:29.03 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | meeting. |
| 05:10:30.47 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:10:30.50 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | OK. Fair enough. We've already talked about enforcement. The last thing is maintain the current penalty structure of $1,000 for the first violation maintain the current penalty structure. and Yeah. Okay, is that enough for tonight, Mary? Okay, good. |
| 05:10:46.20 | Lily Whalen | Thank you. |
| 05:10:48.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:10:48.39 | Lily Whalen | Lily, you have a question? Madam Mayor, I just wanted to point out a process question. So in the staff report, we provided a timeline for you to take this through an ordinance adoption. Great. Because of the Planning Commission hearings falling on November 7th and no other hearings in November, we would have to notice for the Planning Commission hearing prior to the October 30th Council date. So I just want to make sure everyone understands that there would be notices going out prior to the action by the Council taken on the October 30th date. |
| 05:11:06.87 | Unknown | I'm hearing that. |
| 05:11:07.14 | Jay Baer | Thank you. |
| 05:11:17.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:11:18.09 | Lily Whalen | Thank you. |
| 05:11:18.11 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | If we can always take it off if we decide not to move forward at that time on the 30th or if we need more time. Okay. Next on our agenda, we're skipping marijuana, we'll punt that. |
| 05:11:33.80 | Ray Withey | Madam Mayor, I don't think we've actually voted on this. |
| 05:11:37.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | We're not voting. This is giving direction to staff. We'll vote on it next week. meeting I think. |
| 05:11:45.83 | Ray Withey | So we've not made a decision to move forward with the pilot program? |
| 05:11:51.82 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. I will entertain a motion to move forward with the pilot program pursuant to the direction that we've just denunciated for staff. |
| 05:12:06.07 | Jill Hoffman | Second, you want to roll call? |
| 05:12:07.16 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | No, I'm not making a motion. I'll entertain a motion. |
| 05:12:08.40 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, shit. |
| 05:12:11.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So it's agenda is- That was not funny. |
| 05:12:11.96 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | That is true. |
| 05:12:14.59 | Jill Hoffman | that would be classic. |
| 05:12:18.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | So I would look to staff and the city attorney, but we're agendized for a discussion. |
| 05:12:26.18 | Unknown | Well. |
| 05:12:26.37 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And right? |
| 05:12:27.29 | Unknown | We were just seeking input from the council tonight about whether you wanted us really to return with the pilot program for your consideration on the 30th and if so, Thank you. We wanted your your direction on all the items you've given us direction on tonight |
| 05:12:40.95 | Ray Withey | And how do you know that the council has given you direction to move forward with a pilot program until you take a vote to figure out if the council's given you direction to start a pilot program? |
| 05:12:51.60 | Unknown | I think staff understands that we've been given direction to draft an ordinance for you to look at on the 30th, at which time you'll vote on whether to send it down to the Planning Commission for consideration and a recommendation to the council. |
| 05:13:04.35 | Jill Hoffman | I don't mind making a motion or we could have the minutes reflect. Do you have a preference? |
| 05:13:09.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Ray, if it's important, it's fine with me. It's not important. |
| 05:13:09.80 | Ray Withey | I think they're fine. Thank you. I'm just looking at the process. |
| 05:13:16.08 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:13:16.44 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:13:21.72 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | I mean, I think three of us have indicated that we're supportive of this and that We're not going to vote until we see the ordinance. I mean, that's... |
| 05:13:32.63 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Okay. All right, we've removed item 6C, so we're moving on to the... |
| 05:13:38.26 | Jill Hoffman | You know, How long is 6C? |
| 05:13:39.18 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:13:41.19 | Jill Hoffman | do we, |
| 05:13:44.85 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Yeah. |
| 05:13:45.65 | Jill Hoffman | OK, forget it. |
| 05:13:47.28 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Is Josh still here? Yeah. How long is your report, Josh? Five minutes? |
| 05:13:48.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. No, okay. |
| 05:13:53.36 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | There's a lot for us to consider. Okay. I'll tell you though, November 13 is full, thank you, Nathan. November 13 is a full agenda as well. and so is October 30. Okay, city manager report. First of all, is there any public comment on items 7B through 7F? Seeing none, Adam, city manager report. |
| 05:14:18.05 | Adam Politzer | Only one item for the people that are going to watch earlier or later this morning. We have the mobile shower tour on the 11th, Thursday 11th. We posted that in the Currents. We're canvassing the neighborhoods for the people that want to come and look at them at at least four different sites. and then on the 23rd, Tuesday the 23rd, the community workshop will be here in the city council chambers. We will videotape that and the showers will also be available in the parking lot here at City Hall. as potential additional site. for the council's consideration. when we bring this back in November. |
| 05:15:00.88 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Adam, I'm sorry, could you give me those dates again? I wasn't writing them down. The viewing or whatever. It's in the currents also. Yeah, it's October. |
| 05:15:07.32 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 05:15:07.34 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And in the currents also. |
| 05:15:08.33 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Yeah, it's October 11th, Thursday, October 11th. So there'll be a tour... of the facilities at at least four different locations and then the community workshops will be Tuesday night at 6 PM. here in the council chambers October 23rd. And the showers will also be available for viewing that evening. |
| 05:15:31.30 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. |
| 05:15:31.84 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thank you. Thank you Adam, and thank you for getting those events organized. All right, council member committee reports. |
| 05:15:43.23 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 05:15:43.26 | Jan Johnson | None. You know I do legislate. |
| 05:15:46.86 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Well, legislative, we've covered everything, so. We had a legislative committee meeting scheduled for tomorrow that got canceled. So, |
| 05:15:57.51 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. If you'd like me, I just would share that we did have an RBA meeting yesterday and we've been- |
| 05:16:04.76 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | A RBRA working group meeting. Working group. |
| 05:16:06.82 | Adam Politzer | meeting there's an RBA board meeting on Thursday night the 11th at 530 in Tiburon but we've invited the executive director of the RBA to come to our November 13th council meeting to give us an update and then talk about the actions that they are proposing that they are considering on the 11th and then actions that they will be considering in November |
| 05:16:15.33 | Jay Baer | THE FAMILY. |
| 05:16:35.27 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | If there are no other council member committee reports, I'm moving on to appointments to boards, commissions, and committees. I am this evening establishing a business community working group. I'm appointing to that business community working group, Vice Mayor Joe Burns and council member Ray Withy if they will accept the appointment. |
| 05:16:55.76 | Jill Hoffman | And what is this committee? Thank you. |
| 05:16:57.45 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Thanks. This is to start to work on the $50,000 that we have in establishing metrics that we have allocated in our budget for to spur tourism. |
| 05:17:13.83 | Jill Hoffman | And are we going to invite other members, or are you going to invite other members? |
| 05:17:17.04 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | You are the working group. You can invite whomever you like. |
| 05:17:18.59 | Jill Hoffman | That would be great. |
| 05:17:22.67 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | Is that okay? with you. Okay. In addition, I think some of us think I've already done this, I'm not sure I have, so removing Susan Cleveland Knowles from the machine shop working group and replacing her with Ray Withey who was on that before. So that committee is now comprised of Ray Withey and Jill Hoffman. |
| 05:17:48.17 | Susan Cleveland-Knowles | And Lily is feverishly trying to schedule a meeting, and this will be coming to the council, I think, in the next one or two meetings for an update. Okay, I think it's on our October 30 agenda. Future agenda items, they're all there. Anybody have any comments on future agenda items? Okay, other reports of significance? All right, then we stand adjourned at 1216, my worst record yet this year. Thank you everybody for cooperating through a challenging evening. |
Jeffrey Chase — Neutral: Spoke about biblical references to Noah, boats, and community gardens, advocating for freedom for community gardens in Sausalito and highlighting selective enforcement of regulations. ▶ 📄