| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:08.05 | Unknown | Good. Everybody, Parks and Rec staff. Just to call you out. We're gonna begin tonight's meeting. Good evening. Welcome to the City Council meeting of Tuesday, March 12. It's just after 7 o'clock. We are coming out of a closed session. which we had, um, Nothing to report. Serge, can I get a roll call? |
| 00:00:46.32 | Unknown | Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:00:48.41 | Vicki Nichols | Here. |
| 00:00:49.46 | Unknown | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 00:00:50.72 | Vicki Nichols | Here. |
| 00:00:51.08 | Unknown | Thank you. Council member Withey? Here. Vice mayor Cleveland Knowles? Here. Mayor Burns? |
| 00:00:54.71 | Vicki Nichols | Here. |
| 00:00:59.23 | Unknown | Rousseff, can you lead us in a pledge of allegiance? Didn't think I saw you back there. |
| 00:01:06.48 | Ida Green | I do. |
| 00:01:08.90 | Ray Withy | United States. |
| 00:01:10.08 | Unknown | Yeah. to the republic |
| 00:01:12.05 | Ray Withy | for wishes. |
| 00:01:12.71 | Unknown | . |
| 00:01:12.91 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:01:12.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:12.97 | Ray Withy | you |
| 00:01:13.03 | Unknown | you |
| 00:01:13.08 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 00:01:13.15 | Unknown | Thank you. One nation. Under God. indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:01:17.42 | Ray Withy | Liberty. |
| 00:01:17.93 | Ida Green | Yeah. |
| 00:01:28.12 | Unknown | Now I'll state that we have no closed session announcements. Is there any public comment on our closed session? Seeing none, closing public comment. I'm now looking for the approval of agenda. We have received a request from staff to pull and continue item number i should have had this number written down already right um 7e There we go. 7E, the Ferry Landside Improvement RFP and Community Outreach Update. We still have more information that's valuable both to this process as well as to go to the public with. So on staff's recommendation, we're looking to continue this to a date in... April, nonspecific at this point, but one of the two meetings in April. |
| 00:02:14.51 | Unknown | Roll call. |
| 00:02:18.41 | Unknown | So if you're here for that item, If we agree here, we won't be hearing it. Do I have a motion? |
| 00:02:24.70 | Joan Cox | I move we approve the agenda as amended. |
| 00:02:28.84 | Ray Withy | Second. |
| 00:02:30.52 | Unknown | All in favor? Aye. So we'll be removing 7E. |
| 00:02:31.38 | Joan Cox | Hi. |
| 00:02:34.72 | Unknown | from tonight's agenda. I'll be making other reminders as we go along, but, uh, |
| 00:02:39.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:39.06 | Jill Hoffman | and make a comment during items on the agenda. |
| 00:02:41.53 | Unknown | Exactly. |
| 00:02:41.83 | Jill Hoffman | they can comment |
| 00:02:44.63 | Unknown | It's no longer on the agenda, so you can make public comment on an item that's now no longer on the agenda. Which brings me to almost Mike, how we looking? |
| 00:02:57.29 | Unknown | We have a special presentation tonight on our Super Bowl winners, which is our next item. I'm going to hold off. |
| 00:03:01.44 | Unknown | I'm going to hold off. Yeah. |
| 00:03:02.52 | Unknown | And do public communications first, we're waiting for one of the award winners to get here through some traffic constraints. So we're going to open up to public communications. This is the time for the city council to hear from citizens regarding matters that are not on the agenda or previously removed from the agenda. Except in very limited situations, state law precludes the council from taking action or engaging in discussions concerning items of business that are not on the agenda. However, the council may refer items on the agenda to the city staff or direct the subject to be agendized for a future meeting. please use the green cards. I have two, both for communications, not on the agenda. I'm gonna call them in order. Sandra Bushman. Bushmaker, Bushmaker. I meant Bushmaker. |
| 00:03:45.51 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening Mayor Burns and council members. I am Sandra Bushmaker, a long term resident of Sausalito and a member of the Council appointed Community Safety and Disaster Preparedness Committee. I have two relevant issues that I wish to bring to your attention tonight. One, I wish to advise the entire council that the committee made and passed a motion at its January 9th, 2019 meeting as follows. The Disaster Preparedness Committee strongly recommends that the Sausalito City Council officially make a policy statement that fire prevention, vegetation management, and debris removal in public thoroughfares, especially trimming vegetation from power lines, is a high priority in Sausalito. I request that this item be agendized for adoption of this policy. Two, my second item addresses a remedy for the ease of administration of emergency housing for victims of local disasters. I have been approached by my neighbors and local residents who informed me of dozens of people who have offered their homes for free to provide temporary housing to victims of local disasters. I will be making a motion. at tomorrow's disaster preparedness meeting as follows. The committee requests that the city council direct appropriate staff, like Lieutenant Bill Frost, to create a registry of those local residents who are willing to share their residences for free to those displaced by an emergency. This request for names and addresses can easily be announced in the currents. Thank you. |
| 00:05:16.88 | Unknown | Thank you for that, Sandra. Faymark. I have no other comments for the public comment period of items not in the agenda. If you have items on the agenda, still fill out a green card. We'll get to those in a little bit. Yeah. |
| 00:05:31.12 | Faymark | Good evening Mayor Burns and city council members. Faymark, resident Sausalito. I want to thank you all for your significant time and contributions to the February 14th landslide here in Sausalito. And I want to thank especially Mayor Burns for your comments when you emphasized that it made a big difference in the immediate aftermath of the mudslide that neighbors already knew each other and that they were looking out for each other. And you encouraged everyone in Sausalito to make it a priority to get to know your neighbors. So as Sandra proposed, and I actually am embarrassed that I didn't even know that this committee existed and I just learned about it and I've spoken Also to my neighbors and to my friends who are residents here in Sausalito. So Russ Irwin and I are one of those people that are going to be very happy to put our name on this registry, should it come to be, to offer victims in a crisis with housing. and I agree that we need an organized effort to provide our emergency responders with these names of those of us who are able to help our neighbors during a time of crisis at any time. The mudslide crisis underscores the importance of long-term neighbors who know and help each other and that is not the case in neighborhoods that are hollowed out with short-term rentals. Thank you for your time. |
| 00:07:07.17 | Unknown | Thank you. Any other public comment on items not on the agenda? Seeing none, we'll close the public communications portion of the meeting. And open up, let's do action minutes. Move approval. of the February 5th, 2019. And we got a second. All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:07:28.47 | Joan Cox | Hi. |
| 00:07:32.03 | Joan Cox | We're too fast for you. |
| 00:07:32.96 | Unknown | We are. We're going great. |
| 00:07:33.28 | Joan Cox | we're going great. |
| 00:07:35.81 | Unknown | Am I on the lick? Council member committee reports. Who has anything of interest for the community to hear? Joan, you want to start? Are you looking for something? Susan, you want to start? |
| 00:07:48.63 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I can start. I haven't had a lot of committee meetings since our last meeting and our last update, but this Thursday the Sausalito Sustainability Commission is meeting at 6.30 in the conference room, and one of the items on the agenda will be the Marin Clean Energy presentation, which I think should be... Very interesting and... We will also have our council member Ray with you there because he sits on the board of Marin Clean Energy. So hope to see lots of people there. |
| 00:08:23.55 | Unknown | Yeah, ready. |
| 00:08:24.76 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 00:08:24.80 | Ray Withy | Um... Marine Clean Energy, we haven't actually had a meeting since the last time I mentioned we haven't had a meeting. There has been, I think, further interesting Um... work done by our Business Advisory Committee. They are, they have formed, had formed two subcommittee is as I previously reported, which we're going to Um, write a short report to GPAC on the downtown area and a short report to GPAC on the Marin ship. And following, one of the GPAC meetings, I think BAC came back and said, you know, we should perhaps be doing something on Caledonia as well. And so last... Weak. last Wednesday, in order to catch up with that process, they held a little workshop in this room with members of the Caledonia business community and anybody else who had a view in order to start getting some, collecting some thoughts about that. And there were a couple of people who were in that workshop in the audience. So I think that's very interesting. And I think it would be important for GPAC staff working with GPAC to figure out when BAC and sustainability and possibly bike and ped will be coming to actually more formally tell us, tell the GPAC. their views. So I thought that was pretty encouraging. We had a GPAC meeting. I'll let Joan update us on that one. |
| 00:10:16.96 | Unknown | One question from that Caledonia Street. Did they appoint somebody to kind of be reps for that overall group to speak to the GPAC. |
| 00:10:25.65 | Ray Withy | What they're doing is now figuring out how they're going to present to the GPAC. So that's still might occur. That's it. Yeah. |
| 00:10:26.14 | Unknown | What their... |
| 00:10:30.26 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:10:30.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:32.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:32.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:32.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:10:32.62 | Unknown | So that's going to be a good one. |
| 00:10:33.03 | Unknown | That's it. |
| 00:10:39.24 | Joan Cox | Great. So I told you at our last meeting that we had made a presentation to BCDC regarding our waterfront management plan that was very well received. And so to continue our implementation of the plan that we proposed, we are now investigating. whether marinas in town will be willing to offer a slip per marina to bring an anchor out off the water and onto a liveaboard slip for a pilot period of six months. So this is a way, we have 18 people living on the water in Sausalito. This is a way to take eight of them, perhaps, and put them, turn them into live aborts. And to start to demonstrate that there is a manageable path forward for providing folks with the services and resources that they need to get back on their feet. And I'll report back on that effort at a subsequent meeting. As What group was that that you had? That is the waterfront... |
| 00:11:50.52 | Unknown | That is. |
| 00:11:52.34 | Joan Cox | Committee. The next Waterfront Committee meeting is Thursday. And then the next RBRA meeting is Thursday evening. |
| 00:12:00.54 | Unknown | Will you be wanting to agendize some outcome from that meeting |
| 00:12:03.46 | Joan Cox | I will be in touch with the city manager on our progress to see if we want to agendize. action. This is an exploratory dialogue now based on our request to BCDC to increase the allocation of liveaboards from 10% to 15%. With that increase, there's a higher likelihood of being able to identify at least one slip per marina for that purpose. We did have a GPAC meeting. Our last GPAC meeting, we discussed Sausalito's sphere of influence. We discussed overwater properties, and we discussed sea level rise and the importance of including these potential constraints in our looking forward planning process for various areas of town, um, And we looked at our upcoming calendar. We're right now looking at a workshop regarding the marineship that would occur probably at this point in May. And we will make sure to advertise that very widely because that's something of great interest to many. |
| 00:13:21.14 | Joan Cox | We attended an MCC MC meeting, most of us, at which we heard from Mike McGuire regarding his housing bills. And he's continuing to... I'm not sure. share and refine those bills, which are an alternative to the one-size-fits-all bill that's SB50. And I'm actually going to be giving a talk on those housing bills in Sacramento next week. Um, And I just think it's. It's immensely important that we continue to ensure that folks are aware of these options, because I anticipate the governor is going to sign a housing bill this year. It just depends which one it will be. And that's all I had. Thanks. |
| 00:14:11.90 | Unknown | Thank you. Jill. |
| 00:14:13.75 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:14:13.77 | Jill Hoffman | I have a. I have a A public interest item that I've been, I know some people know that or will recall that I set up a. Blue Ribbon Committee back when I was mayor with regard to the movie theater and trying to shepherd that project through. And so I just wanted to report that I had what I felt like was a productive meeting today, sort of on potential options for that. So I get asked that question a lot, and I think we all do, about what's going on with the movie theater. So I want people to know that there is, you know, I do still think about that, and we are still moving forward, and we may be setting up another informal committee soon. So if you would like to be part of that effort, let me know. Thank you. That's it. |
| 00:15:06.54 | Unknown | I don't have anything. I can't actually go in through here. I didn't attend any committee meetings. I have a couple coming up. But so in lieu of not having attended committee meetings per se, I did meet with various members of the community, one being today at the chamber, Biz X meeting, a business exchange that we have in the mornings once a month, as well as just one off meetings. It's obviously the role and the position I currently play in the city. There's also an energy, and I think it's an energy that we're coming out of a season. There's talks about businesses. There's talks of what people want to do both inside our community and outside of our community with the impacts onto Sausalito, and they're encouraging, and it's kind of a time of year, but it's also I see that we're going to have some really neat things come in front of us this year and the community itself. So that's my sunshine in lieu of an actual committee report. Do we have anything, Mike? Should we move forward? Let's go ahead. We're going to go ahead and call up Julie Myers to talk about soup-er-bowl winter presentations. |
| 00:16:21.95 | Unknown | And I have a visual for you all. |
| 00:16:23.89 | Unknown | You do. |
| 00:16:25.75 | Unknown | Good evening, council members, vice mayor, mayor. Thank you for having me. We did the Super Bowl in January, on January 26th. We had 13 restaurants who participated. We sold over 200 tickets this year. And we had New this year, Lapperts joined in. We had some non-soup people come in, and Lapperts gave out ice cream. And then Titanic and Sartaj's India Cafe joined as restaurants this year. |
| 00:16:53.64 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. you. |
| 00:16:54.29 | Unknown | And of course, we voted because it's a competition and someone has to win the Lombardi Trophy. Thank you. |
| 00:17:00.60 | Mary Wagner | Perfect timing. |
| 00:17:02.20 | Unknown | Speaking of that person, he just walked in the door. So we had 108 people vote, and our winner this year, second year in a row, was the Sausalito Yacht Club. |
| 00:17:18.55 | Unknown | So this is Dennis, the executive chef. |
| 00:17:22.48 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:17:22.70 | Unknown | And he's here to receive the plaque that I'm going to present to you, that we're Sausalito Yacht Club's win. Thank you very much. And then I have a very special |
| 00:17:29.52 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 00:17:31.95 | Unknown | winner engraved spoon for you. |
| 00:17:33.92 | Unknown | I have a spoon, so I got a spoon. |
| 00:17:37.00 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:17:42.01 | Unknown | For sure. you If I have to. Thank you very much. The City of South Salido. |
| 00:17:45.48 | Ed Labar | City of South Salido. |
| 00:17:46.97 | Unknown | Thank you. You know, one of the things is like the South Salido Yacht Club, it's like a private club, but we are actually also part of the community in South Salido. And part of the things that we do at our yacht club is to provide good food and beverage. And it's also, you know, work with the community and showcase, you know, what we can do in South Salido. Create tasty food that people will come back and Check out what city? |
| 00:18:13.95 | Unknown | and soup they'll vote for. Thank you. |
| 00:18:17.82 | Unknown | Thank you and congratulations. Excellent. Congratulations, both winner and Julie. That was another fabulous event. So fun. All right. We are now to the consent calendar items, of which we have none. So there are no consent calendar items, therefore there are no items to talk about. And we are going to move on to our public hearing. Items. And there are no public hearing items. So we'll be taking no public comment on items that we don't have. Next we're moving into the business items. And first up is 7A, update on the local emergency related storm activity and mudslides. Abbott, I was going to do them all at the end on public comment. |
| 00:19:13.32 | Abbott Chambers | Yeah. |
| 00:19:18.31 | Abbott Chambers | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. I'm Abbott Chambers, your city librarian and director of communications. I'm here this evening to give you an update on the local emergency related to the recent storm activity and mudslides. I'll also be asking you for a renewal of the emergency declaration. |
| 00:19:30.43 | Ed Labar | THE REASON I WANT TO DO, THE REASON I WANT TO DO THE REASON I WANT TO DO THE REASON I W |
| 00:19:39.20 | Abbott Chambers | As far as what I'll be covering, I'm going to do a very quick recap of the mudslide on February 14th. I'll provide a current status update on the mudslide. I'm going to talk about Sausalito and SEMS, the Standardized Emergency Management System. And then I'm gonna ask you to consider two resolutions. The first is a continuation of the local emergency. The second is a designation of applicants agent for non-state agencies. And I'll be happy to take any questions during the presentation or at the end, I or any number of my distinguished colleagues will be able to help with any questions you have. So just to do a very quick recap on the early morning of February 14th, a mudslide hit the Hurricane Gulch neighborhood of Sausalito. The slide started in National Park Service land up above Sausalito Boulevard. Approximately 3,500 cubic yards of earth and mud came down the hillside across Sausalito Boulevard. |
| 00:20:34.83 | Ed Labar | three feet. |
| 00:20:42.74 | Abbott Chambers | took out the duplex at 406-408 Saucelito Boulevard, destroyed an adjoining carport, and continued down the slope where it also destroyed the house at 57 Crescent. and deposited a very large debris pile down at Crescent Avenue. 50 homes were evacuated on February 14th, and in excess of 80 first responders were on site. And this is still from a drone shot of the mudslide area on February 14, starting in the upper left-hand corner with the start of the mudslide area and continuing down into the lower right with the debris pile on Crescent Avenue. So let me give you a status update on the site as it is today. We'll start with the upper slide area. As I reported at my last update report on February 26th, the plastic tarp and wattles are still in place at the top of the slide area. These are to prevent additional debris from coming loose. K-rail barriers are in place on Sausalito Boulevard. That's to catch any more debris that comes down from the hillside and also to protect pedestrians and motorists when the roadway reopens. The site's getting ongoing monitoring from the city's geotechnical engineer for Miller Pacific Engineering. And we heard this from the National Park Service on March 7th. They said, In the last week, we have made arrangements with engineering contracts to continue to evaluate the hydrology of this slope and make recommendations to improve the storm drain system that comes across NPS land. And the city of Sausalito will be working closely with the National Park Service and Caltrans on more permanent stabilization efforts on that hillside. Planning is still underway for debris removal, for that debris pile on Crescent Avenue and the debris field along the hillside. It is a complex challenge for the city and the agencies that we're working with. Intermixed with the mud and vegetation are hazardous materials like asbestos building materials, household chemicals, and fluids from the seven vehicles that were involved in the slide. You can see one of them in the photo there. But the city is consulting with a variety of county, state, and federal agencies about debris removal, and we will be executing a very careful plan. with a variety of county, state, and federal agencies about debris removal, and we will be executing a very careful plan when the time comes where we're sure to be able to have the right people removing the debris particularly the hazardous materials, and that we're taking it to the proper place for disposal. So at present, I don't have a date that I can report for when that debris removal is likely to begin. I also don't have a date for the reopening of Sausalito Boulevard to through traffic. It remains closed in the mudslide area. The city engineer has said that he'd like to see a week of dry weather followed by a weather forecast giving us 10 days of clear weather before he reopens the roadway. He also says that a key indicator will be when there is no water seeping out from the slide area. The good news is that the weather looks good for this week. We have clear weather in the forecast through Monday. The not so good news is that the National Weather Service tells us to expect more rain before the end of the month. And with saturated soils the way they are, That means ongoing risk of mudslides. And we did have another slide. just this past week at the North Street Steps. That's at the south end of Bridgeway. JUST ABOVE THE Tiffany Park. And overnight on March 5th, a piece of the hillside broke off and ended up on top of the steps. And they're temporarily closed. This is another shot that shows you looking up the steps from Bridgeway and you can see the vegetation and mud blocking the stairwell. At this time, we don't have any date as far as when that may reopen, but we will be coming up with plans for stabilizing the slide areas. So let me move to the red tag structures Six structures were red tagged in the wake of the mudslide on February 14. Two of those were destroyed structures. The other four were on the perimeter of the mudslide. And I'll take you through briefly those four structures that received varying levels of damage. The duplex at 428-430 Sauslito Boulevard, that has had its red tag lifted, and residents are back in their homes. That structure also has had its sewer line destroyed. The sewer lateral ran down through the valley there, but that has been replaced by a city-created temporary sewer. Down at the bottom of the hill to the north side, 63 Crescent Avenue, that home, I'm pleased to report, had its red tag lifted on March 6th. They have a temporary means of access to the upper unit, and this is a house that has upper and lower apartment units. Their gas is still out, but I've heard today that apparently the gas line has been repaired, and they're expecting a pressure test for tomorrow. I believe they've been back in their homes without gas, but this will mean that people will have gas service soon. And then I'll finish with two structures that are still red tagged. The first at 402-404 Sausalito Boulevard. This is on the south side of the slide area up at Sausalito Boulevard. Still needs a structural assessment to make sure that it is sturdy enough to be re-inhabited. one of the reasons why we haven't been able to get a structural assessment is that the carport from 406 408 Sausalito Boulevard had collapsed and was leaning up against the building fortunately through the hard work of city staff and a city contractor yesterday we were able to remove that parking deck and a structural assessment should be possible soon The image that you see here, the wood structure to the left, that's the collapsed parking deck. And this is sort of your before picture. And then this is an after picture from yesterday where you can see the deck has been dragged further along the hillside. They used two large trucks with winches to pull the top part of the deck. And in that photo, it looks to me like they're starting to pull the lower substructure of the deck as well. So the good news is... with winches to pull the top part of the deck. And in that photo, it looks to me like they're starting to pull the lower substructure of the deck as well. So the good news is that the folks in 402, 404 may be able to get back in their homes soon. At 412, 414 Saucelito Boulevard, more significant damage. The red tag is still in place. Big problem is that the walkway is destroyed, so there's no safe way to get into the building. Thank you. The carport was also taken out, and that structure will also need a structural assessment before it can be reoccupied. To say a little bit about those affected by the mudslide, City Manager Adam Pollitzer has been holding individual and small group meetings with tenants and property owners to hear their concerns. He's also made available several senior staff members for on-site meetings. In his meetings and in his communications with those affected, Adam has been encouraging people to file claims with the city of Sausalito, with the state of California, and with the National Park Service. But he's also been suggesting or letting people know that they should expect that it's going to be a slow process. in establishing causation for the mudslide. |
| 00:29:17.88 | Abbott Chambers | And if you are a tenant or property owner affected by the mudslide, and you would like to meet with Adam Pollitzer, We ask you to please contact City Clerk Sir Javila And that's true whether you've met with him several times before or if you haven't met with him yet. But please reach out to us. I'm going to pivot a little bit and talk about the Standard Emergency Management System, or SEMS, and Sausalito's relationship with SEMS. SEMS is the state-mandated framework that the city of Sausalito is following through all phases of the disaster. It's also the framework that the city is following to ensure our eligibility for state and federal disaster assistance. And for a little background on CEMS, a little more about it, it was developed in the wake of the 1991 East Bay Hills Fire fire. codified in the California government code in 1993. And CEMS provides a clear and consistent organizational structure for multi-agency and multi-jurisdictional responses. And basically, you can imagine the chaos of lots of different agencies and jurisdictions responding to a large-scale emergency. And what CEMS does is provide a clear chain of command. and clear lines of communication. CEMS consists of five organizational levels, making it very flexible in terms of its response to different scale emergencies. And those range from field response all the way up to the state level. And it covers all phases of disaster response, ranging from mobilization all the way to recovery. To say a little bit about Sausalito and its relationship to SEMS, we are required to use SEMS when a local emergency is declared or EOC is activated. And we must use SEMS to be eligible for funding of our response-related personnel costs under state disaster assistance programs. So I'll say just first line of assistance for our operational area is the Marin County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services, or Marin OES. And the city of Sausalito was in contact with Marin OES from the very beginning of the incident on February 14th. And just to say a little bit more about Marin OES and Cal OES, Marin OES provides emergency management services for the county operational area, including our 11 cities and our special districts. And then Cal OES is sort of like the next level up. and Cal OES is responsible for coordination of overall state agency response to disasters. So the city of Sausalito goes through Marin OES when asking for help from agencies, from state agencies or federal agencies. And Lieutenant Bill Frost is our first point of contact with Marin OES. |
| 00:32:13.81 | Abbott Chambers | Just to give you an example of the kinds of coordination that we've been doing with Marin OES, they have been providing us with advice on the documentation. that we need. to maintain to be eligible for state and federal reimbursement. for our cleanup efforts. They've been giving us advice under the reimbursement process with Cal OES and possibly FEMA. They've been advising us on the status of red tagged homes. They've been assisting with the assessment of our debris pile And they have also helped us by reaching out to Cal OES and other agencies for assistance with the cleanup of the mudslide site. We were planning to meet with them today with Marin OES and Cal OES as well as FEMA. Unfortunately, that meeting at the debris pile was canceled, but it's expected to be rescheduled soon. So I'll wrap up with the two resolutions that we're asking you to consider tonight. The first is the resolution continuing the local emergency. And as a little background, On February 14th, the city manager issued a proclamation of a local emergency. At a special meeting on February 18th, the city council ratified that local emergency. State law requires that the council review the need for continuing a local emergency once every 30 days. That's why we're before you with this tonight. We have consulted with Marin OES and Cal OES, and they recommend that the Declaration of Emergency remain in effect until all the necessary cleanup activity resulting from the emergency has been completed. So our recommendation is that the council adopt a resolution, and that's attachment three in your packets, continuing the declaration of a local emergency. We're also asking you to approve the designation of applicants agent resolution for non-state agencies. That's attachment four in your packets. The resolution designates a city manager, assistant city manager, or director of public works to act on behalf of the city to seek federal financial assistance and assistance under the California Disaster Assistance Act. That concludes my presentation. So again, our recommendations are that you approve those two resolutions that you have for you. And I would be happy to take any questions. And I also have colleagues here who know much more than I do about just about all of these things and would be happy to answer more specific questions. And they are David Bracken, our interim city engineer and public works director. I don't think Bill Frost is here. but we do have our police chief and Mary Wagner, our city attorney as well. Thank you. |
| 00:35:06.07 | Unknown | Thanks, Abbott. Yeah, we woke up Bill early for a meeting this morning at the chamber, which was great. We're going to ask a few questions. I want to remind anybody, if you have public comment on this item, please fill out a green card. We'll get to that in just a moment, public comment for land slide issue. Any questions for Abbott or any of the staff? |
| 00:35:27.41 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I have a question. Thanks, Abbott, again, for not only all your great communication during this emergency, but for another great presentation tonight. Thank you. So thank you for that. So you did include this in your presentation, and that's the debris pile. |
| 00:35:34.95 | Ed Labar | Thank you. |
| 00:35:42.19 | Jill Hoffman | on Crescent and I understand that we don't have a date but I also know that a lot of people are are worried about that and interested in the removal. So it was very helpful on Sausalito Boulevard, for example, when you said, We don't have a date to open it, but we know that probably with a week of no runoff, that's an indicator. So could you just at least give me and the public a sense of what steps need to happen before the city or a consultant or others can start on the debris pile? And I don't know if that's a question for you or for her, so thank you. |
| 00:36:18.09 | Abbott Chambers | So thank you. Dave, what do you think? |
| 00:36:24.74 | Jill Hoffman | Sorry to make you get up. |
| 00:36:26.44 | David Bracken | Thank you. I'm David Bracken, your interim public course director. I would love to be able to tell you that it'll be next Monday. We'll have Majora and Gilotti in there. five dump trucks lined up on the street and get rid of it. That's the way I like to operate, but it's just not that easy. I'm not sure. You know, as Abbott mentioned, we've been working with county OES, state OES, FEMA, We had a meeting at 11.30 today on that. And I have to say it's frustrating. It's not easy. Uh, We really have to develop a management plan, our biggest concern. is that we dot all our T's and cross all our I's. So we don't... We don't jeopardize our ability to get federal or state funding for this. and a management plan. I didn't bring this book up here. to pick out answers. But this is the type of thing that we got this from County OES as an example. you two and a half inches thick. Hopefully we won't have to do this. If I had a guess, I'm going to say, with help of others, with help of some consultants that I've been talking to, We It'll probably be a month or two months. I hate to say that, but at least it's a light at the end of the tunnel for you. You know, there's a lot of different things in that debris power. There's trees and vegetation. There's mud. There's building materials, there's cars, there's you know, all the things that were inside the buildings that could be considered hazardous, the electronics, the TVs, All of that has to be separated out. And then of course there's the personal belongings that we're well aware of, the people would want to try to get. I mean, even if they're as small as a ring or jewelry or something. We don't want to overlook that. And you've probably all seen that mountain of debris It's not going to be easy. but, I mean, as far as just a regular procedure goes, we want to remove the debris on crescent first. And then, pioneer a road right up the middle of that ravine and take a track mounted excavator up and pull that material down and pick it up. I put it in. whatever truck or dumpster, It would be long-end. and take it to the appropriate sites But work our way up there, bring the material down, back-drag that whole hillside, cover it with jute netting, hydra-seed it, and people's lives can go back to normal. But that's a process. I apologize for not being able to say, hey, we'll have it out of there next week, but I can't say that. If you give me a month or two months, then I'll I'll be back here and tell you we're at least well on our way. |
| 00:39:30.92 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you, I appreciate that. |
| 00:39:33.68 | Unknown | I think in the future, we'll very much appreciate that diligence and process. So we appreciate it now and more so, I think, as we go. So thank you for that. Any other questions for staff or Adam? |
| 00:39:44.74 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I just had a second question. So, and again, I'm not sure who this is for, but so on February 17th or the day that we met after and originally declared the emergency. We were talking about the slide both at Sausalito Boulevard and possibly Ebtide. And now we have the slide at the North Street stairs. So is this continuing declaration of emergency, does that encompass all of those disasters? I guess I'm looking at our city attorney. |
| 00:40:17.95 | Mary Wagner | Yes. So we're treating all the storm-related activity that's happened in town as one event. So all those events. all those activities are included. |
| 00:40:29.91 | Jill Hoffman | Great. Thank you. |
| 00:40:31.36 | Unknown | AND WE WILL BE meeting on those once a month until they are complete all those other ones as well. |
| 00:40:38.82 | Mary Wagner | You will need to bring back to the council not less than every 30 days and action to continue. |
| 00:40:43.48 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:40:45.25 | Mary Wagner | the declaration until you actually take action to Call it completed. |
| 00:40:50.92 | David Bracken | college. |
| 00:40:51.36 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 00:40:54.21 | David Bracken | Through the mayor, if I could just add to that, at our OES meeting today, we visited |
| 00:40:56.15 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 00:40:56.41 | Alex Woie | Thank you. |
| 00:41:00.05 | David Bracken | all of those sites, the North Stairs, the slide at the north end of town. I'm Bridgeway. MR PRICE. So they're aware of that and we are at this point encompassing all of that into into one event. |
| 00:41:15.63 | Unknown | Right. Thank you. Seeing other questions from the council, I'm going to open it up to public comment. I have one card. As Jennifer Nix comes up, I want to make an announcement that, Tonight's video on Comcast through CMCM, which is our provider of government channel 26 on Comcast, I believe, is not working. So you're not able to watch this meeting. Thankfully, you're all here. So you get the live. And it's still available online and streaming. Thank you. but Channel 20, Comcast is not working at this time. So if we hear anything different, we'll let you know, but please stay around. Jennifer. |
| 00:41:57.59 | Jennifer Nix | Hi, good evening, Council. Jennifer Nix. And I want to really sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, thank all of you for the time and consideration of looking at my correspondence this week and the op-ed I wrote. And I'm sorry to be the one that has to bring this to you again, but I'm hoping to ask about the task force, because I'm very happy to hear that these women and I share an interest in crisis housing, and I'm sure we all do. but the task force we talked about started because I'm very happy to hear that these women and I share an interest in crisis housing, and I'm sure we all do. But the task force we talked about starting on February 18th I believe we really do need that task force to just come together as positive civic agents again. And we had a lot of rancor about this whole issue. I'm not looking for things to change overnight, but I would like to reopen this conversation And I think the task force is the appropriate place because we could really investigate this and also really meet each other. The task force on? Oh, on what was on February 18th, you talked about starting a task force, looking at a bunch of slides, and I've asked to be on it. And Zach Garza, one of the red tag evacuees also. Because we have an important story to share, and I think it would help this community to understand and see some of the more human stories instead of the rancor about, |
| 00:42:49.32 | Unknown | We have a task force on |
| 00:42:55.43 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:43:00.52 | Ed Labar | I'm sorry. |
| 00:43:00.54 | Unknown | Yes, thank you. |
| 00:43:00.98 | Unknown | you. |
| 00:43:11.44 | Jennifer Nix | short-term rentals. because we don't just do rentals for profit. I mean, I mostly do. Thank you. Crisis housing, that's what I do. I've been doing it for about a year, kind of ad hoc, because so many people needed it. That's why I was ready before noon on Valentine's Day with a place. because we're ready to be. We've helped a young girl escape an abusive relationship. We've helped fire victims. We've been doing this, so we have a a valid perspective and we've been providing some civic value and I just really wanted check in, see if the task force is going to be happening. And I want to invite the women here to please come to lunch. I would love to tell you about what we're doing. |
| 00:43:50.89 | Ed Labar | I'm not doing it. |
| 00:43:52.14 | Jennifer Nix | you know, just come together as a community again, as positive civic agents, because we have an opportunity here to come up with some inventive and you know, flexible housing and crisis housing policy that meets some of the needs that aren't being addressed by the current ban. And you know that there are people in this community that are hurt by not being able to have that income. I am not one of them. but I'm here to speak for them. So I just think it's time to have a conversation about it in the wake of this and for them to hear the story about how Zach and Nancy Garza came to stay with us for free for 11 days, and they were able to stay in Sausalito. They've now signed us. LEASE, AND I SPEAK AS A FORMER LONG-TERM RENTER AND AS A HOMEOWNER NOW. So, I mean, we just need to be more You know, we need to recognize each other's full humanity on this and have a really honest conversation again. So thank you. |
| 00:44:43.26 | Unknown | Thank you. Any other comments? So we have Council Member Hoffman brought up early that we look at a task force regarding this disaster. So there's opportunities for a task force for this disaster, for other disasters, and then short-term rental. And it seems to be convoluted at this point, but we are still looking at the opportunity for a task force related specifically to the disaster. If there's caveats or portions of that that have to do with other items, that's part of that. But I think we just need to first talk about what that task force would do, and we'll get to that point. Any other public comment on this item? |
| 00:44:50.65 | Jennifer Nix | Thank you. |
| 00:45:23.25 | Jeff Jacob | I guess. |
| 00:45:27.15 | Jeff Jacob | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:45:31.72 | Jeff Jacob | Hello, I'm Jeff Jacob. Hello, Mayor, City Council, and citizens of Sausalito. Uh, I'm happy that there is so much RESPONSE TO A mudslide. and people being taken out of their house, crisis housing. We provide that on the anchorage of Sausalito, We do not get any funding from the city. We do not get funding from the state. We do not get funding from the federal government. AND WE PROVIDE HOUSING FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. people going through mental health issues, people who are workers and can't afford the rent, people who have come out of prison, People who have alcohol, and drug problems. that are not treated in the Marin system. |
| 00:46:33.52 | Jeff Jacob | I'm hoping that This year, We treat human beings alike. that we do not ASK PEOPLE. how much taxes they have paid, and give them more services. for more money. THAT WE GIVE everybody a vote. that we give everybody an equal opportunity that we have a level playing field. And the way that I've been dealing with this, for the past. five meetings of the city council is the way that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was dealing with Michael Cohen and Wells Fargo Bank, which is to find clear conflicts of interest in the leaders of our Boards, our mayors, our city council, our city managers, And all of them are required to fill out a form 700. This is why we do not give proper services to people on the anchorage, we do not spend any money for it, is because there are conflicts of interest, specifically from Ms. Jill Hoffman, who has not declared yet, unless she corrects me here, that she is the CEO of a wine company called Quark Z. She is required to declare that on her Form 700 financial disclosure form. She did not. That is the same thing that is happening in Washington, DC. That is Trumpism. And we have to defeat it here in our local areas before we can go on to Washington and deal with it there. Thank you. |
| 00:48:21.80 | Unknown | Any other public? Comment seeing none. I'm gonna close my comment bring it back up here for any other comments and then a motion of three items |
| 00:48:32.74 | Jeff Jacob | Deal. |
| 00:48:34.51 | Unknown | of the |
| 00:48:34.75 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah, I'd like to thank, of course, our city staff for all the hard work they've been doing on the mudslide and other disasters in town. And thanks to Abbott for another great presentation. And I think it's great that Adam is meeting individually with whoever of the victims who want to meet with him, so thank you for doing that, Adam. And I look forward to |
| 00:48:42.76 | Unknown | and other diseases. |
| 00:48:43.39 | Ed Labar | . |
| 00:49:01.73 | Jill Hoffman | forming, helping form the task force and defining what we're going to do with that. I think that's important, not just for the slides that occurred this year, but as an ongoing management tool going forward as we address this issue. |
| 00:49:18.78 | Joan Cox | I also want to thank staff and the community for the way that everybody has responded. Everywhere we go, we run into more people volunteering their efforts. The mayor and I attended a Chamber of Commerce meeting this morning and heard about how all the members of the Chamber of Commerce had banded together in order to offer their support, and how they want to participate in disaster preparedness and assist other members of the city in that effort. And so it's really heartwarming to see how our entire community has banded together in the face of this tragedy. I do believe there is a sequential manner in which we will approach things. And we have to continue grappling with the emergency before we can move on to the next step and use staff resources to establish the task force to address this emergency and how to address emergencies in the future. So I was one of the people who at the very first meeting said, start a task force, but I recognize that We have to invest significant efforts to take care of those people now who were adversely impacted, and then we can start our planning efforts. And I've also asked the city manager, to add this to the scope of work that the general plan advisory committee is doing. Whether it's geologic mapping or whatever efforts we should undertake in putting together our 20 year plan. to ensure that we take those efforts at the administrative level to ensure the safety of our hillside residents. So thanks. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:50:56.41 | Ray Withy | Yeah, very briefly, I just echo all of those sentiments from my colleagues. And the thing that's occurred to me is I've been listening to what we've been talking about the last number of meetings. I just... And again, Abbott and staff and all the first responders, thank you. I'm not quite sure that we've totally acknowledged all of the... help that we get from all our sister agencies. It's very, very important, some of whom are in the room today. Marin can't operate unless it operates like that. And so it's very, very important. The... Marin County Emergency Operations Center that Councilmember Cox and I had the privilege of visiting six months ago or so on, is just emblematic of the hub of communication. So thank you, Abbott, in particular for pointing out that really important, the really important both the agencies, the mission, and the fact that there's a real center there that does really important things. |
| 00:52:22.98 | Unknown | Good. I'm not sure. Yeah. I pretty much did owe everything as well. I will just bring up, since it kind of came up in the public comment, which could have been tied to this by Sandra Bushmaker, in the task force formation, let's really look at what disaster prep picks up as well to alleviate some of that, and that maybe directs that task force more back to this slide only. But let's get all those in the right bucket, because we could utilize, and Sandra's always chiming us to utilize the disaster prep more as well. So I think that's a good opportunity to give that committee a little bit more. Um, um, utilize, and Sandra's always chiming us to utilize the disaster more as well. So I think that's a good opportunity to give that committee a little bit more. So thank you all staff and citizens who have been patient and citizens who have been through this coming out again today. Thank you for being here. As you heard, we'll be hearing this at least once a month, and we'll continue to like to hear from you as well. Any motions? |
| 00:53:13.39 | Joan Cox | I will make a motion that we approve the resolution continuing the declaration of a local emergency related to storm activity and landslides. And that we approve the resolution designating the city manager, assistant city manager, or director of public works to act on behalf of the city to seek federal financial assistance and assistance under the California Disaster Assistance Act. |
| 00:53:33.55 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 00:53:37.23 | Unknown | Let's do a roll call since we're going to the county. All in favor. Aye. |
| 00:53:41.05 | Joan Cox | Bye. |
| 00:53:43.54 | Unknown | That covers five zero. Thank you, Abbott. |
| 00:53:51.26 | Unknown | We are going now to item 7B, which is Saucedo-Marin City School District. I'm going to call up the district. Same process as the last item we're going to hear from the district. If we have any questions, we'll ask. We'll hear from the Willow Creek Academy. And then we'll open up to public comment after hearing from both. I have Tarina. Aida, are you going to? I don't see Tarina. Is she here? Am I not seeing her? Okay. Amen. Do you want us to switch |
| 00:54:22.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:22.47 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:54:22.61 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:54:22.73 | Unknown | you Is Willow Creek OK with that? Presenting first? Work for you guys? And for Willow Creek, I have Jim Henry. AND, YOU KNOW, I'M GOING TO |
| 00:54:34.57 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, if they're not that, let's just... |
| 00:54:36.53 | Unknown | Hmm? |
| 00:54:36.77 | Joan Cox | Break. Do you know, Ida, how long? Do you know? |
| 00:54:41.95 | Ida Green | Thank you. |
| 00:54:42.03 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, fire. |
| 00:54:42.64 | Ida Green | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:54:42.81 | Jill Hoffman | I have. |
| 00:54:42.91 | Ida Green | So she just texted me to say 18 minutes. |
| 00:54:45.73 | Joan Cox | Oh. |
| 00:54:45.74 | Ida Green | Unfortunately, traffic going south. |
| 00:54:47.77 | Joan Cox | Yeah. School district. |
| 00:54:47.80 | Ida Green | Thank you. |
| 00:54:50.91 | Joan Cox | Do we want to talk about the fire? Let's do fire. |
| 00:54:57.07 | Unknown | Chief Tubbs is here. |
| 00:54:57.20 | Joan Cox | Chief Tuggs is here. |
| 00:55:01.69 | Joan Cox | So, Chief Tubbs, we kept you waiting until 11.30 one night. Hold on. Now we're pulling you up early. |
| 00:55:05.22 | Unknown | 7.30. Hold a second. Let's get clarity first before. Do we really want to do this or do we want to hear from the school district? |
| 00:55:12.70 | Joan Cox | 18 minutes is not going to last. 18 minutes. I would say let's get this done. |
| 00:55:16.19 | Unknown | Yeah, because then we're going to still be waiting. |
| 00:55:17.61 | Joan Cox | 18 is. There's the Willow Creek presentation is not 18 minutes, so I would say let's do this. Thank you. |
| 00:55:23.22 | Jill Hoffman | I'm sorry, no disrespect. |
| 00:55:24.37 | Ida Green | you |
| 00:55:27.32 | Jill Hoffman | Can you ask Curtis? you |
| 00:55:30.43 | Unknown | It won't be enough time. It's not an 18-minute presentation. And these guys, they're good at it. |
| 00:55:31.61 | Joan Cox | It's not. |
| 00:55:31.97 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:55:32.03 | Joan Cox | 18. |
| 00:55:36.98 | Unknown | We're going to go with the fire. |
| 00:55:37.20 | Joan Cox | Yeah. I'm ready to go. |
| 00:55:39.10 | Unknown | Thank you. Thanks. |
| 00:55:43.58 | Unknown | but would you like us to go there? |
| 00:55:44.39 | Unknown | Yes, please. Sorry, we're going to go fire. Going wooey. |
| 00:55:50.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:50.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:50.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:50.80 | Unknown | Apparently. I hope he can listen quick. |
| 00:55:50.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:51.15 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:55:51.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:55:51.34 | Joan Cox | . . I hope he can listen quick. It's actually 17 now. you |
| 00:55:55.79 | Unknown | Okay. Well, good evening, Council. We appreciate the opportunity to be before you and the community again. As you recall, we were before you on February 5th talking about the issue of wildfire in our community. |
| 00:55:55.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. . Thank you. It's a good day. |
| 00:56:07.76 | Unknown | We promise that we will be back tonight with a presentation and recommendations to some important steps we can take in Sausalito to help reduce the risks from wildfire. You will recall in our presentation last month, Chief Weber talked about what are the contributing factors that have led to longer and more devastating fires in California. We did this to provide sort of some scope of the risk that we're facing. You will also recall that we introduced you to the Community Wildfire Protection Plan, what we call the CWPP. It's really the foundation from which all of our actions in Marin County stem from. We take a regional approach. As you've heard us say many times over, fires don't realize jurisdictional boundaries. This plan is developed accounting for the unique features and elements of Marin County, such as weather patterns, population density, vegetation characteristics and behavior, and so on. It incorporates the latest in technology that helps us assess properties as accurately as we can. LIDAR technology, one example of that. A little step back in time, I think we all remember in school learning about the fire triangle. There are three elements necessary for combustion, fuel, oxygen, and heat. We have very little control over oxygen, clearly, and a little bit of control over heat, but really what we're talking about is fuel. That's the area that we can have the greatest impact on with reducing the risks of combustion. And that's what tonight's presentation is all about. At the February 5th council meeting, we included a recommendation that addresses legislation enforcement, and that is why we're here tonight. It's the bullet that I've highlighted here in the slide. To propose ratification of legislation that exists through most of the county, however, does not currently exist in Sausalito. |
| 00:58:00.20 | Unknown | A little bit of the roadmap. Again, we were before you in April and June of last year with a community survey looking at where the community's concerns were relative to the risks and what of the things that they might be open to. We provided those reports back to council. We were here on February 5th, as I just mentioned, and tonight we're here to talk about the Wildland Urban Interface Code and propose a ratification on part of the council. And with that, I'll let Deputy Fire Marshal Fred Hilliard walk you through the details of that. Fred? |
| 00:58:40.41 | Fred Hilliard | Good evening, council members and staff. Thank you very much for having us today. As the chief has pointed out, we have been in the process of trying to do a wildfire or wildland urban interface in the city of Sausalito, and we've been trying to do that for quite some time, and so this is the pinnacle of all that hard work. And so we are very excited to be here to talk about this. Some of the historic pictures that I pulled up, this is Sausalito circa 1900. This is the fire department in 1910. And actually what's quite interesting about this picture is in the city of Sausalito currently between the station one and Marin City, there's the same number of people that are in the city of Sausalito protecting it. Better fire engine though. Also like to point out just historically that in 1919, which is 100 years ago, there was a Sausalito fire. It was a pretty destructive fire. It was started as a wildland fire. or as a smoldering burn pile that traveled through the city and destroyed 12 homes, five stores and a church hall. And you can imagine at that time, there wasn't a lot of homes and there wasn't a lot of structures in Sausalito. So this was quite a spectacular event. You can see that the fire is still burning in the background. They also, the newspaper said this was a $75,000 fire. You can probably add about three to six more zeros onto that. And initially, like I said, it started smoldering an outdoor burn pile, and then it traveled rapidly across the towns. So what did we learn and what are we learning from these disasters to improve our odds? And we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot about the what it takes to provide defensible space and home hardening in order to provide a safer environment for people to live within the beauty of Sausalito. What is the WUI? Well, the wild, and you'll hear me say WUI, and I apologize for that, but it's engraved in my brain. It's Wildland Urban Interface. We call it short as WUI. The geographical area where structures and other human development meet or intermingles with wildland or vegetative fuels. And I think if you think about Sausalito, intermingles and vegetative fuels, that's pretty much a lot of Sausalito. with the wild land being, over and surrounding Sausalim. The area is designated by a map. We have to designate what the wildland-urban interface is and the boundaries in order to enforce the codes that we are proposing. And in order to do that, we look at a specific method in which to do that. And that method is we look at population density, we look at fuels, and we look at weather. The potential of wildfire burning numerous houses in a single event is what triggers what we look at as far as the wildland urban interface. So I want to point out this map was right out of the CWPP, which is what the chief was saying earlier, which is the countywide wildfire protection plan. And in this map, this is the entire county of Marin. And I don't, unfortunately, the color variations in this trigger your brain to think green is good. and yellow is not as good and red is bad. But actually what this is, is it's a picture or a map, and this is recent, 19, or sorry, 2016 is when the update of the CWPP was. Green is actually flame lengths that are less than four feet. So it's still fire, it's still burning. Yellow is flame lengths that are up to 8 feet, and the red is higher flame lengths, greater than 8 feet. So just for a kind of conceptual, what that means to fire crews is when they're looking at incidents and they're placing fire crews into those incidents, they are hesitant to send them into yellow unless they can get surrounded, get in and out of there, and have a safety area in which to egress in case the fire overruns them. So this is, again, this is the extreme map for the County of Marin and If we bring it into the average fire season, this map here, which I zoomed in for the city of Sausalito, you can see this is the average fire season. Essentially, you can see where there's spots of red that go all the way down to Bridgeway, and it goes and surrounds Bridgeway and kind of moves up into the hills. That's the red flame lengths. The green, again, is four feet is the flame length height, and then the yellow would be over eight feet. So we have lots of spots in red all the way down to Bridgeway, and these are where the embers could start fires and where there's target areas. And we are aware of these target areas and that's part of this ordinance. So again, This would be the extreme area of during an extreme condition, the red and the yellow you can see are taking over a lot of the green. The green, again, is not good. Green just means lower flame lengths. And you can see where all those high extreme areas are and the yellow is. So what we do is we take this, we look at the weather patterns, we look at the fire behavior, We use a lot of the scientific Um, data that's provided for us to look at where these boundaries should be and then we come up with the wildland urban interface area now I apologize because I really wanted to change the red because red just is not a good color to show but honestly, this is where we feel that all those connecting all those dots and putting the wildland urban interface area in place would be the best for the city and would allow for the most you know, use of the fire code that we're proposing tonight. So what are the risks and how does the code reduce the risk? Well, the risk is anything that's surrounding a structure, so, and the structure itself. So in this map, or this particular depiction, you can see that there's a couple of different zones. And this is really recent. This is what the state of California is using for their public resources code defensible space, and what we use when we look at structure protection and also defensible space. And so just keep in mind as we go through these slides, and you'll see this again. So one of the greatest Thank you. battles that we have in wildfire, especially protecting cities, protecting communities, is trying to defend against embers. Fire embers, direct flame impingement, and embers. But embers are what start the fires the furthest away from where the fire has started. And in this particular video, which I'm not going to show the whole thing, you can see people are leaving. This is a fire where people are leaving the area, and you can just see all the ember production that's landing. all over the neighborhood and in the streets as they're leaving the fire. The people in their cars, other than the fact that, you know, there's a lot of radiant heat, Um, They're leaving safely. But those embers are blowing everywhere and being trapped into Thank you. Dry vegetation, they're being trapped in areas around homes, under decks, in eaves, and so on. So EMBRS, in this case, we look at a couple of different things when we talk about what are we trying to defend. First, we're trying to defend against embers, and that's what we're going to... A lot of the code is designed to attack that. We're also designing direct flame impingement. by removing debris or requiring debris not to be right up against the house, but in a safe distance so that if it does ignite, it's not directly impinging on the house itself. and then also radiation. Well, radiant heat, as you know, if you put your hand close to a candle, Eventually your hand's going to heat up where you have to pull your hand away because it's actually creating heat. What we also look at is that radiant heat and providing a space between those areas so that the structure does not ignite. So Ember Firebrand Exposure, A lot of it, like I was saying earlier, like in this picture, you can see all the embers floating around. And the entry through the vents into the attic and landing in horizontal surfaces such as roofs and arbors is where these embers trap. And when you were, if you've ever seen a fire start or a campfire where you're trying to light the campfire or your fireplace, you try to get, the kindling to ignite and what do you normally do to get that kindling to ignite? Well, you introduce a lot of oxygen rapidly. So you're blowing on it. You're trying to get it to ignite. And so if you can imagine these embers that are flowing around that are trapping themselves in these sections and you have fire weather which produces up to 70 or plus mile an hour winds are just blowing oxygen into these areas where they're trying to ignite the unburnt fuel. the components of this, of the materials and components are the roof edges, the eave vents, And in between the events and the windows in that section would be where we would talk about defensible space and vegetation clearing. Windows, deck, and other attachments and siding is what we're trying to do. REQUIRE SPECIFIC METHODS AND MATERIALS TO DEFEND AGAINST against the embers and the fire. Chapter 7A, which is in the building code currently, is the chapter that is referenced for hardening the home and conditioning the home to resist fire embers and fire brands, and also to provide the structure with a higher level of fire resistance. The code as it's presented, would only be required In new construction and substantial remodel, it is not required that anybody existing would change any type of siding, roofing, or windows. Existing buildings, the code would only apply if you're replacing components. So if you're redoing your roof and you have a shake roof, which you shouldn't have ever. If you ever have a shake roof, you need to get rid of it right now. Shake roof, if you have a shake roof, you could replace it with a comp roof or a class A roof. The class A protection would not allow ember intrusion into the roof, and that's where we see a lot of fires start. The same with the windows would have a temper pain that would resist a lot of the heat transfer, and then the siding would also be a class A siding. Not unlike what's being put on buildings right now. A lot of people are putting the hardy plank up because of the look of it and also it lasts a long time. That's a fire-resistive siding. You can see in this photo when we talk about roofs, I found this to be really helpful to see what happens. This is actually a slate roof. But there's no under protection to the slate roof. It's basically all it is is just the slate roof on top of a felt and then the actual shear underneath it. And you can see from the bottom picture that it burned through underneath because the embers got in behind there and then got into the shear. So what does that mean? Well, it means that there would be a protective layer If it was a slate roof, you could still have a slate roof, But you would have to put a protective layer between the slate roof and the actual under membrane. Areas like gutters, We want people to you know, clear the gutters. You know, it's important to clear the gutters. And we have houses in our community that are wood gutters. They've been there for a long time. And so what can we do? to help with that particular instance. We have people that the gutters are so high that literally you have to have a crane to get to the gutters to clean your roof. or you have to hire somebody who's able to get up into that area to clean your gutters. The code requires that gutters have some sort of way of self-cleaning, and then these are examples of those self-cleaning items. Vents are where fire can intrude either into the attic space or the crawl space underneath. It's not uncommon for the embers to get underneath your house, and I don't know if you've been underneath your house, but I'm sure there's a lot of things that could ignite down there from dust, simple dust and cobwebs to debris that's just been under there since the house was constructed. These particular vents, while you don't have to purchase this specific vent, you do have to reduce the size of the opening of the screening from a standard size to an eighth inch size, but this particular vent I'm not sure. actually has a honeycomb behind it. And if embers get into this, or if direct flame impingement impinges onto the vent, it actually closes the vent off. It'll actually melt close and not let any embers or fire intrude into the crawl space or the attic space. And just for a price point, they're about $30 a piece, so it's not significant. So facts about the structure hardening, which we discussed, is the codes really have been around since the 2000s and regularly updated. I'm actually on the state wildland urban interface task force. We meet on a monthly basis, and we go over... the existing code, but also what we've learned from fires, and also what we're looking to put into the Building Standards Commission for future code development. There are many examples of the structures that are safely surviving wildfires in an average fire incident. And I have to use the word average because honestly, The extreme fires that we've seen Even if you protect your home, you have by doing the structure hardening and defensible space, you raise the odds of survival of that home. You raise the odds. But in an extreme condition, it's hard to say, is your house going to survive? However, in an average fire, what it does do is it provides several things. One, it provides the defensible space so that the fire can't travel fast, and we have the time to get to that fire, and we have the time to extinguish it or redirect it. And it also will slow the progression of fire from home to home, so you don't have structures igniting structures because the siding, the windows, and the roof, and the decking has all been The use of that has been treated with non-flammable stuff. |
| 01:14:44.83 | Fred Hilliard | So again, we are talking about defensible space in the zone. You can see that zone one is within 30 feet, and zone two is the outer between the structure and within 100 feet of the property and neighboring properties. In this particular map, you can see that the 30 feet to 100 feet goes out in every direction. However, like we were talking about before, you can only treat what's on your property. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a community where the neighboring property understands the other property needs as far as defensible space to their structure and provide that. So we work with the neighbors So if you had a home and you need 100 feet and you only had 75 feet to your property line and there was another 100 feet on somebody else's property, we would try to work with the neighbor to get the 100 feet. Or if the neighbor's house needs 100 feet, well then you guys come in the middle and you make the 100 feet of defensible space. But you are not required to provide defensible space onto somebody else's property. Some of the questions that come up is fire prone plant characteristics and flammable conditions, and then common fire plants. And so this list is right off of the Fire Safe Marin website. This website is accessible at firesafemarin.org, and it is the website that we use to house all of the plant species that are fire prone. and we don't want them, they're called pyrophytic plants, and the plants that are non-pyrophytic and drought resistant, so it gives you a list of plants that you do, you can use, and then it also gives you a plants that you should not have on your property. Some of the no-no plants, as we like to say, that's a technical term, is juniper and bamboo. Juniper, even though it's green, is extremely flammable, and four times the height of the fuel is where the flame lengths can be. Unfortunately, a lot of what is part of that juniper plant falls down and dies underneath it, and embers get into it, and it lights off, and it will burn. very strong, very quickly. The bamboo is the same situation. Even green bamboo can easily take down a house or cast fire embers far off because of the small little combustible leaves that they have. So again, bamboo is on the list. And then we talk about mulch and bark, the fibrous bark that you see around IS NOT A GOOD THE FAMILY IS A solution. It basically, it's called, sometimes it's called gorilla hair bark or monkey hair bark, and it's essentially It's fibrous bark, and as you can see in this picture, those are just embers that landed in the bark and they're starting up now. In this particular case, they did a good job of not having a lot of fuel other than the bark itself, but you can imagine if you surrounded this with juniper or bamboo, this would significantly start a fire rapidly. We look at heights for clearance. So... We're not saying that you need to go and take down all the eucalyptus trees in your yard or you need to remove all the... Italian cypress at this point, we're just saying that if you have existing plants, existing species of trees, that you clean up and limb them up. So the eucalyptus trees would be required to be cleaned up at the bases, you know, they shed everything, and limbed up to an appropriate height to keep the fuels, the fire that's on the ground, the surface fires, from traveling into the trees themselves. Because once we have a crown fire, that's when things go awry very quickly. |
| 01:18:42.67 | Fred Hilliard | Excuse me. So this is an example of a vegetation management plan. So if you're constructing a new home, or you're in the middle of a substantial remodel, and you're putting your plans in, you would be required, per this code, formulate and submit a vegetation management plan. And basically what it is, is it doesn't say that you can't use the plants that you want to use, other than if they are on the list as flammable plants from our website, it'll tell you that you cannot use those plants because those are flammable plants. It also looks at spacing, and it has to do with what the slope is of your property and how close to the structure the plants are. |
| 01:19:34.42 | Fred Hilliard | It also gives us the opportunity to use some funding. Currently, we are due to the recent tax measure U, we are now going to have some funding to do some clearing of flammable and vegetation throughout the city. By adopting the wildland urban interface, it allows us to look at those specific areas to trim. It gives us the power to do that. And it also allows us to go after state funding because the grants that are coming out from the state, and there's this pretty substantial, sizable grant that's coming out, they're looking specifically for communities that are doing something other than just saying, please remove my brush. They're looking for firewise communities, which we are now currently establishing in Sausalito. And they're also looking for communities that have adopted some sort of a wildland urban interface or code requiring the removal of vegetation. So vegetation facts. So the proper vegetation management provides for fire breaks to slow the spread of fire to the structure. So we're gonna provide fire breaks. We're gonna look at areas within the city, within the wildland-urban interface where we can actually remove and trim back vegetation so that we would have access. We're gonna look at the removal of fire-prone vegetation. Obviously, we wanna keep the beauty of the city, but we just wanna weed out literally the weeds that are flammable and be able to create a more fire safe area. We're gonna lower the likelihood of the fire ignition from embers and firebrands by creating these defensible spaces. We're going to give trees and plants the space that they need to grow and live healthy, long lives. And if you look around the city, you can see there's a lot of vegetation, and especially trees, that bend. that have these huge bends on them. And the reason they do that is they're looking for light because they're just too impacted with other vegetation. So we need to thin the vegetation in the city. Our vegetation management plans, again, they're only required for new construction and substantial remodels. So that's not something the existing homeowner is going to have to do. However, if the homeowner decides to do a complete landscape change, then they would submit, and we would require them not to plant species that are fire-prone. It allows the properties to be specifically designed for wildfire reduction, and it reduces the threat for structure loss from ember production and direct flame impingement. Again, the fire triangle, as the chief pointed out, very basic, we need three components to sustain combustion. And if we can remove some of this fuel and we can change some of the characteristics of the homes as they're being remodeled or built new, eventually we will have a much safer community when we're in the middle of a wildfire. Some of the resources that I used, that I put on this slide, when we determined what the wildland urban interface area boundaries were and the code, was Fire Safe Marin, the California Department of Forestry, and then the International CODE COUNCIL WHICH IS WHERE THIS ORD, WHERE WE ADOPTED THIS PARTICULAR CODE IS FROM THE 2009 WILDLAND URBAN INTERFACE CODE AND THAT'S WHAT THE DISTRICT HAS adopted and it was adopted in 2011 and it's currently being enforced in other parts of our jurisdiction and that's why we really want to bring it into the city of Sausalito. So with that, I entertain any questions. These are some of the actions that we were hoping to get. Tonight, you could, an option would be to ratify our ordinance, existing ordinance tonight. in order to start this process quickly. And that would give us time so that we can actually get these programs in place prior to this fire season and once we get those in place then we can determine areas that we want to treat immediately I'm not sure. You can return on March 26 or a date to be named from the consent calendar for ratification. IF YOU HAVE ANY questions or want to consider any modifications, you can give staff direction to return at a future meeting. Or if there's specific areas or modifications that you'd like to do to the ordinance, you can provide a written statement describing the reasons for the modification. And then we can take it back to the fire board. and I entertain any questions. |
| 01:24:33.26 | Unknown | Thank you, Fred. Very nice. Excellent work. Any questions for Fred Hilliard? or any fire staff. |
| 01:24:41.77 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I just have my first question. And thank you for the presentation. I just want to say I've sat through a lot of different meetings and presentations by. the county and Southern Marin Fire, and I really appreciate the ability to take the lessons learned from some of our neighboring disasters. So thank you for this. So our staff report did not have an action item on it for this evening, but... Thank you. |
| 01:25:07.67 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:07.69 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 01:25:07.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:08.57 | Jill Hoffman | it said that the recommendation was to adopt the ordinance at a future meeting in April. So is that even possible to adopt this tonight? Or what was the staff recommendation to wait until April for? |
| 01:25:24.01 | Unknown | to ratify. The Pressure. |
| 01:25:27.82 | Jill Hoffman | Well, our staff report said |
| 01:25:31.85 | Mary Wagner | So your actual agenda. |
| 01:25:33.22 | Jill Hoffman | that we consider it a future meeting in April. |
| 01:25:36.14 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. So your actual agenda title considers ratification of the ordinance, and then you actually have a staff recommendation at the beginning and then a different recommendation at the end. I think you could if you wanted to tonight based upon the information that the way it's agendized Go ahead and if you wanted to take action to ratify you could do that tonight You could say come back to us on March 26th And if there was consensus on the council we could put that as a consent calendar item And as, We indicated if you had any questions or wanted further information, we would come back to you at a future date for that. So the Health and Safety Code gives you options on what you want to do. If the council's not prepared to do that tonight, or you don't feel that the agenda was clear enough, we could certainly come back to you on the 26th for that. The recommended motion says introduce and receive the report. It does not say. If you look at the end of your staff report, there's a different recommendation. |
| 01:26:37.82 | Jill Hoffman | Well, it says to consider it a future meeting. |
| 01:26:38.98 | Mary Wagner | That says considered at a future meeting. If the council's not comfortable taking action tonight, we can certainly bring it back to you on the 26th. |
| 01:26:47.45 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. And then did the Legislative Committee or the Emergency, the Disaster Preparedness Committee hear this? |
| 01:26:55.37 | Mary Wagner | I know the legislative committee did not. Thank you. |
| 01:26:57.92 | Jill Hoffman | and |
| 01:26:57.93 | Mary Wagner | And disaster problems. |
| 01:26:59.03 | Joan Cox | preparedness has not. |
| 01:27:00.35 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And then I just had a question. So you talked about substantial remodels, new construction, and certain types of replacements triggering the ordinance generally. Are there other things that are not, that are requirements on property owners that are not triggered by those things? For example, the defensible space, or if you are cited with a hazard, I mean, those are things that would be, are those things that would be triggered without a substantial remodel or new construction. |
| 01:27:37.81 | Fred Hilliard | So, If there's a potential fire hazard regardless of this ordinance, obviously we have to react to that using our current fire code. But what's related directly to this ordinance, the only sections that would be involved is defensible space, and that's from the road to your property. From what we can see from the road itself, you would be required to make that front area defendable. And so you would have to remove flammable vegetation from that area. |
| 01:28:11.19 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, so that's an affirmative obligation on any homeowner within the WUI? Regardless of any work you're doing or not doing. |
| 01:28:19.00 | Fred Hilliard | Regardless of what? you would be responsible to clean up your property, correct? |
| 01:28:25.33 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, okay, thank you. Some people have talked about you get all this defensible space, and then what about erosion? And so as you heard, while you were here, we just had a major mudslide in Sausalito. So could you talk about the intersection between creating defensible space and erosion and if that creates any additional risk. |
| 01:28:52.92 | Fred Hilliard | Absolutely. So we also, again, this ordinance is in the other part of our district over in Tam Valley and steeper areas of Homestead Valley, and we do take that into account. We've had some mature trees that were on the list for removal, and we did not remove them because there was an environmental study done saying that if we remove this tree, it will create an erosion issue, and so that tree was not removed. We're not asking people to just clear their property. It has to be in stages, and it has to be done in a way that's not causing erosion or I'm not sure. We'd be, I guess the best way to put it is we don't want to make a moonscape out of Sausalito. We just want to remove the vegetation that has a higher flammability. So broom, you know, different types of broom and some of the bamboo and juniper and then any other plants, we just basically want them there, but just spaced out a little bit so it's not just one big bunch of vegetation. |
| 01:30:02.31 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, great, thank you. |
| 01:30:03.35 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:30:03.41 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:30:03.44 | Fred Hilliard | Sure. |
| 01:30:05.77 | Joan Cox | And to be clear, this would be at least partially funded by Measure U. |
| 01:30:10.70 | Fred Hilliard | So the, I guess that is correct. We would be clearing properties, or we would be putting programs in place to help with homeowners and property owners clear their parcels using Measure U funds, correct? |
| 01:30:25.65 | Joan Cox | And at our last meeting, Southern Marine Fire offered to us the opportunity to come speak at homeowners associations, et cetera. I know Southern Marine Fire is coming to speak to my homeowners association on March 25. I'm wondering how many other people have reached out to have you do inspections and talks. |
| 01:30:47.21 | Fred Hilliard | Yes, so we absolutely invite that. We try to actually find, we actually go out and try to find these homeowner groups or people that are interested in learning about this and what they can do. And we will do free assessments to any property owner that wants to look at defensible space on their property. And we don't necessarily come with our citation book in hand. We come really as a part of the community to show you what you can do to lower the risk. And then we try to work with you. And now that we have some of the funding, if we get neighborhoods and homeowners associations that would like to do major cleanups, now we would be able to help fund those cleanups with the chipper. |
| 01:31:35.34 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And thank you for your presentation this evening. Thank you. |
| 01:31:39.64 | Unknown | Jill or Ray? That's all the questions from Council at this point. We're going to open it up to public comment on this item. Any public comment? I have no cards. Seeing no hands, no cards. I'm going to close public comment and bring it back up here for final consideration. |
| 01:31:58.14 | Joan Cox | So I recommend that as much as I'd like to take action this evening, I think that we should postpone our action to our March 26 meeting. And we are going to hear back from you all again soon. So I just want to again say thank you for your efforts. Thank you for supporting our disaster preparedness committee, for your responsiveness to our disasters, and for your assistance in helping us prevent future disasters. |
| 01:32:22.76 | Jill Hoffman | I... I agree and we'll put it on the agenda in March for vote. |
| 01:32:27.92 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:32:28.04 | Jill Hoffman | So, |
| 01:32:28.09 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 01:32:28.13 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:32:28.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:28.36 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:32:28.87 | Joan Cox | you |
| 01:32:29.02 | Jill Hoffman | . |
| 01:32:29.59 | Joan Cox | unless there's a |
| 01:32:29.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:30.03 | Joan Cox | ATTACK. |
| 01:32:30.29 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 01:32:30.35 | Joan Cox | on |
| 01:32:30.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:32:30.81 | Joan Cox | Well, we'll do it as a regular, and then the following month, I guess it's. Do we do it twice? |
| 01:32:35.15 | Mary Wagner | Do we do it twice, Mary? No, this is a little bit of a different process. Okay. And I worked with the district staff on that process to confirm it, and that might have led to some of this confusion tonight, so I apologize for that. The district was comfortable continuing it to another date. But you just need to take one action, and we don't have to have a second reading. So we'll take that action on March 26th. Thank you. |
| 01:32:58.65 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you for that. the future. |
| 01:33:00.97 | Ray Withy | And can that be on consent? |
| 01:33:04.05 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. So can we cut? Should we comment now if we have comments? |
| 01:33:08.96 | Unknown | Yeah, please comment. |
| 01:33:11.16 | Jill Hoffman | So I'm glad that this is finally coming in front of us in Sausalito, so thank you for that. It sounds like we're a little bit late to the party in the county. So I think as I mentioned before, we have learned and seen a lot from the devastating fires, to the north and other areas of Northern California and we just need to be. as prepared as we can. So if this is on consent, which for the public that's here means we won't have discussion about it at our next meeting, I really do feel like it's valuable. to take the lessons learned from those communities and to take steps, reasonable steps to protect ourselves here. And reading your staff report, there are additional costs to new construction and to remodeling that come with this ordinance, but on balance. I think that those are worth the increased protection, not only for your own home, but for those of your neighbors and for the community. Again, unless we have some significant public comment or learn something new before our next meeting, I intend to vote in favor of this. |
| 01:34:20.07 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:34:20.09 | Jill Hoffman | to say. |
| 01:34:20.38 | Jill Hoffman | Not really a comment, but a request in the staff report when it's on the consent calendar. Can you also include the link to this on the video to this meeting? And somehow note in there that a full presentation was given tonight. |
| 01:34:28.70 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:34:32.23 | Unknown | Good idea. Great, thanks. For a lot of uses. |
| 01:34:33.25 | Jill Hoffman | Great, thanks. |
| 01:34:37.54 | Unknown | JOIN REY. |
| 01:34:39.41 | Ray Withy | I really have nothing to say other than thank you, Fred. |
| 01:34:42.03 | Unknown | The tea. |
| 01:34:42.47 | Ray Withy | you |
| 01:34:42.64 | Unknown | Yeah, I'll say thank you as well, and then I'm going to open it up to a motion. People watching this at home, maybe not on Channel 26, but we've heard some of this stuff now twice. I'm glad now it's in an ordinance form that we will approve on the 26th, or ratify, excuse me, we don't approve. However, we have the information now in two videos on a lot of the stuff that's really important. And I appreciate you saying that let's link that, and let's keep that link as an important item for our community members to remember. New community members, real estate agents, everybody who's involved with this, the bamboo thing for one. I mean, there's a lot of information in here that homeowners need to hear. So thank you. Who'd like to make this motion to push off to the 26th? We don't need to do that. All right. Just gave direction. We're good. |
| 01:35:20.94 | Ed Labar | off to the 26th, we don't need to do that? |
| 01:35:25.63 | Unknown | Thank you. So now we are going to open it up to the school board, the school district update from Willow Creek |
| 01:35:33.06 | David Bracken | I'm going to go. |
| 01:35:37.77 | Unknown | Jill's going to step up real quick, but I have a couple things to say, so she's going to be back in just a second. So as the Tarina's here and Ida presenting for the school district, we're going to hear from both the school district and Willow Creek Academy and then it opened up to public comment. I'm going to do one more reminder that if you're here for 7E, the Ferry Landing Landside improvements, that item has been continued to a date specific, not specific in April. We're not hearing that tonight. So if you're here for that, sorry. If you're watching on TV, sorry. And as Serge gets this going, Jill will be right back in. |
| 01:36:21.90 | Unknown | Is there public comment getting ready for this? We have our green cards. If you have an idea you want to state, Please fill out a green card. We'll have public comment after both presentations. |
| 01:36:50.30 | Unknown | Katrina, you're up. |
| 01:36:54.52 | Unknown | and Ida. Thank you for being here. |
| 01:37:00.89 | Unknown | Oh, and David. |
| 01:37:07.48 | Ida Green | So I'm glad that the firemen preceded us, because I learned something new. And I was looking at our president of the Marin City community services district and I was like we need to invite them. |
| 01:37:25.04 | Unknown | Thank you for saying that. |
| 01:37:29.09 | Ida Green | So first of all, Mayor Burns, thank you so much for having us here, to the council members, and to Adam. I'm still looking for that picture from Little League. I'll find it. Adam was a little league player on my father's team some years ago. So I must say coming into this building is very Coming into this building is very nostalgic, lots of memories. So thank you for having us tonight. Thank you for your interest in the Sausalito Marin City School District. and we appreciate the opportunity to be before you on tonight. And we absolutely look forward to being able to share with you Um, a lot of the challenges that we're dealing with in the district at this time, not only with the council, but with the community at large. And so with that. I would just like to start by saying that currently the district is searching for our next superintendent. Mrs. Maris, who is by my side, is our interim superintendent, and so we are doing a nationwide search for a superintendent. um, And it'll be similar to our last superintendent search. We are following the process of using a cross-representation of stakeholders from Sausalito and Marin City communities. There's been a good deal of information about the costs of a full-time. time superintendent And While we wish that it could be otherwise, we are looking for a full-time superintendent at this particular time because we feel it's prudent that we search for somebody that is ready to come into the district given all the current conflicts that we have. Um, do not feel at this time that that is that's going to be feasible for a part time person to come into the district. And so therefore we are. looking for a full-time superintendent. And before I turn over to Tarina Maris, I just would like to read a statement that has been read multiple times within our school board. It is now on our district website. And so for some, this is not a new statement, but for others it is. and that. Uh, I would like to make this public that pursuant to government code sections 1180 and 54956.9 and evidence code section 1152, the ongoing discussion with the California Attorney General's Office are confidential under the law. The Sausalito Marin City School District cannot disclose details of discussions with the Attorney General's Office. The district understands that there's a letter from the Attorney General's office dated December the 11th, 2018, that has been publicly disclosed describing the conclusions of a related confidential investigation. A timeline for the resolution of this process has yet to be determined. The district will provide more information to the public when permissible. The district appreciates and respects the community's interest in knowing what is being discussed during the closed sessions as it relates to the Attorney General's investigation. The district's discussions with the Attorney General are working towards an overarching agreement that will identify what the district needs to do in response to the Attorney General's findings. Therefore, the district will then be able to consider community input in determining how we as a community implement a settlement agreement. We realize and understand the frustrations around the unknown. During this interim period of time, we are working diligently to move these discussions along to the point where we can share more information as it relates to the district's next steps. And with that, I will turn it over now to our interim superintendent to remember. |
| 01:42:07.83 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:42:10.36 | Unknown | If you don't mind just for a second, we have a quick question from Council Member Cox. |
| 01:42:11.01 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:42:13.49 | Ida Green | Thank you. |
| 01:42:13.50 | Joan Cox | Yes, ma'am. |
| 01:42:14.35 | Ida Green | Thank you. |
| 01:42:14.48 | Joan Cox | So with respect to that, I very much appreciate hearing that statement. And you did mention that once you, that you will provide more information to the public when permissible, and that once you identify what the district needs to do in response to the AG's findings, you will communicate that with the public. Is it the district's intention to have those communications with the public, before consenting to any stipulated judgment or before entering into any final disposition of the AG's pending action. |
| 01:42:54.17 | Ida Green | I think the response to that is when we are able to have discussions with the general public and the public at large. We will have that green light from the Attorney General and then that is when they will happen. |
| 01:43:05.24 | Joan Cox | But my only question is, will the public have an opportunity to weigh in on on this matter before a final disposition is adjudicated. |
| 01:43:20.18 | Ida Green | And again, I do not, I'm going to Refer back to you, Tarina. I do not believe that that is going to be the case, Ms. Cox. I believe that when we are given an opportunity to come before the public and the public at large, we would have already made some Um, just concrete discussions with the Attorney General and before it goes into a stipulated judgment. That's the whole process of us and doing the negotiation. So if the question is, will the public be able to, sit at the table of negotiating, going back and forth, that would not be the case. Did I answer the question? |
| 01:44:06.67 | Joan Cox | UNDERSTOOD. Sort of, I'll reserve my comments for when it's time for us to comment, but thank you for answering my question. |
| 01:44:08.73 | Ida Green | I'm sort of. |
| 01:44:13.81 | Ida Green | Okay. |
| 01:44:15.51 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:44:16.17 | Ida Green | You're welcome. And with that, I will. Pass it over to Mrs. Maris. Thank you. |
| 01:44:27.31 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. And first of all, my apologies for getting stuck in the parking lot on Southbound 101 this evening. It took me two hours to get here from San Rafael. Not quite what I expected. Beyond that, I do want to say thank you, Mayor Burns, members of the council, City Manager Adam Pulitzer. Like Board President Green, I appreciate the opportunity to address the council and to provide information directly to you. and to the Sausalito community at large. It's obvious to me while I carry my laptop. The two hours didn't allow me to |
| 01:45:08.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:08.23 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. Thank you. Drive to the office and print this. The communities of Sausalito and Marin City enjoy a collective, rare diversity for Marin County. Willow Creek Academy Charter School's enrollment numbers are evidence of this. Sausalito and Marin City therefore have the opportunity and means to close the achievement and opportunity gap for its students. And while neither school has accomplished this to date, I'm confident we can do this together. There are public schools throughout the nation who have accomplished this, so we know it's possible to do it here. The district is currently in the process of setting a course to reinvest towards this goal at Bayside MLK. Principal Finan will speak next to the early visioning surrounding this goal. In order to do this, the district has to be more intentional with its resources. The district is currently resetting its financial position in support of this work. To that end and for the current year, the district deficit has been reduced by about a quarter of a million dollars since it adopted its budget in June. |
| 01:46:25.85 | Tarina Maris | for 1920 and beyond. There are three areas. under development. One. Additional savings are currently under development to create greater operational efficiencies, and they are needed. This is done through ongoing discussions with labor unions, ongoing stakeholder input. and program reconfiguration. more financial information related to the 19-20 vision for Bayside MLK, will be presented to the Sausalito Marin City School Board at its April 4th board meeting. Additional costs associated with the yet-to-be-negotiated. This is number two. Sorry. Sorry. So the second item. for 19-20 is the additional costs associated with the yet to be negotiated MOU with Willow Creek Charter School. Due to the current lawsuit, I'm not able to share more on this topic tonight. but I can assure you that we have been and continue to be engaged in the discussions for 19-20, and I am hopeful we can continue to be. Third, and finally, the district is planning on additional costs associated with the Attorney General discussions. The district is keenly aware and respectful As President Green earlier stated, of the demand for public input and accountability. Specifically, the district holds itself accountable for educating students who have been chronically left behind. NOT AS A RESULT. of a lack of financial investment. That is clear from anyone who looks at the data. but rather from a lack of understanding and commitment to what is needed to ensure that all of the community's children have an opportunity to succeed. It takes far more than money to accomplish what is called for in educating some of the community's most vulnerable citizens. I'm confident the city council appreciates the gravity of this need. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Principal Finan. who will share a little bit about the preliminary vision on the positive changes at Bayside MLK. and most importantly, how we can better invest in the lives of the students we serve. |
| 01:48:49.91 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. I have. |
| 01:49:05.20 | David Finan | Good evening, hi there, happy to be here. I was Mary Wagner's kids principal in San Anselmo, so it's exciting to see her here. That wasn't so long ago, Mary. We just feel older. So this is my second year as principal at Bayside MLK and after 30, this is my 33rd year working in and around education and I have to tell you that this is without doubt the most important work I've ever done and certainly the most rewarding. I'm excited to be here to share our vision for 19, 20, and beyond. We've made significant progress in 20 short months, and I feel like our school is truly poised to return to providing our kids with the complete education that our community expects of us. Bayside was a California distinguished school not so long ago in 2007, which may seem like a long time, but if you work in education, those years go quickly. And we intend to return to those standards in the coming years. In an effort to look forward and not backwards, I'm going to jump straight into the work that has informed the different aspects of our vision for next year and beyond. This was a vision that was shared, This is a shortened version of the vision that was shared with the Board of Trustees last month and will be going forward to the Board likely in April for a vote, hopefully, to approve this direction. Oh. What did I do? Turned it off? Okay. A great deal of work was spent by many of us at this school, and in particular by me, trying to get educated about where the school's been, and to learn from the dedicated staff and members of the community that have been in and around the school, and working and volunteering in the school, so I could understand Just where the school had been and what had gone well and what had been challenging. I also felt like it was important not only to look within but also to look outside. And so I spent a great deal of time on the phone, on Zoom, conference calls, and otherwise, speaking with people from New York City and Denver and Orlando and Oklahoma City and Orange County, L.A., San Diego, and otherwise, and even Richmond and Oakland, of course, trying to get familiar with what is working when you work in a community that is made up primarily of people of color and primarily of people that are living in conditions certainly that are of the lower socioeconomic status, if not in some cases pretty desperate conditions. One of the things that I learned from all the conversations I have, first and foremost, is that the parents of our kids and the community in Marin City cares deeply about the kids and their education and wants absolutely the best for them. And are also fierce advocates for their children and their children's well-being. When we looked around and I spoke to people throughout the country, one of the things that was pretty disconcerting, frankly, we're a school of 110 students, and I'll talk in a minute exactly about our demographics. But one of the things that was really interesting to me was in all the schools that I looked at, people that had remarkable community schools where they provided job training and unemployment services. They had laundry machines for families to come in and clean their clothes. They had therapeutic services for families and children that were provided out of the school. They had healthcare that was provided, or you could at least get referrals to different sort of health care through the school. As well as lots of different interesting academic programs is that it was difficult to find schools truly It was difficult to find schools that had found the equation, the formula, if you will, that not only provided community school-like aspects and support, but also met the academic needs of the students so that kids and families were thriving both social, emotionally, and academically. And that certainly is something that is confounding to me, Because if I think about this little community of Marin City and the work that we are preparing to do, are doing and preparing to do, and then you extrapolate that and you look at a community like Oakland or New York City or those other big communities, it almost seems at times for me overwhelming to think about how to create the formula to really make a difference. What we have done through a lot of different conversation, and this is a list of some other folks that we have worked with, is we feel like the vision that we've put in place for next year and beyond really tackles both the social and emotional needs of our kids. is we feel like the vision that we've put in place for next year and beyond really tackles both the social and emotional needs of our kids and families and also our academic needs. We're currently a student of 110 students, a school of 110 students. 75% are African American, 25% are Latino, and then we have a small, very, very small population, handful of people of other ethnicities. And currently about 82% or more of our students are low income, English learner, and or foster youth. One of the ways that we identify families that are lower socioeconomic is if the paperwork is turned in for kids to qualify for free and reduce lunch. And for families that are in a great deal of stress and distress, sometimes that paperwork doesn't come back. So I would contend that, I think that number's higher than 82%, because I think that we have some forms, I know we have forms that we don't get back. And so those families are not identified as low socioeconomic. I don't know what happened to that slide, but it's okay, I kind of like it this way. neat little rose. One of the things that I learned first from our president of our board, Ida Green, and then also from others, Marilyn and Dr. T and Julius and many folks in the Bayside community that have worked at the school or volunteered on behalf of the community schools, is that it's absolutely essential that we start by looking at what our kids' strengths are. And that we work from a position of asset and not solely from a position of need. The next few slides are going to talk about the needs that our kids have and some of the things that they face. But it's important that we start and identify where our kids have strengths. And certainly this slide is not representative of every kid has all these strengths. But when you walk on that campus and you walk into those classrooms, you see kids with a tremendous amount of resilience. I live in San Anselmo. At our high school, we teach our kids how to have resilience. They get taught how to be resilient in middle school. They have shirts that say Drake High School got grit. Our kids have resilience. They're born with resilience, and they get up and come to school and they're ready to go. And they may not always be in the perfect frame of mind to learn, but they have resilience and they're fighters. And they care deeply about the integrity of their family, the integrity of their community, and although not always demonstrating it, also the importance of their education. There's a lot of determination. There's a lot of persistence, an incredible amount of intelligence. The things that come out of our kids' mouths every day are, to me, just absolutely remarkable. And we have a foundation on which to build, not to build, to rebuild Bayside MLK so that our community can feel good about its neighborhood public school. The last thing I would just say on this slide is that loyalty is such a big deal. And our kids are immensely loyal to one another. They're loyal to their families. They're loyal to their extended families. And one of the things I've noticed being in my second year, which is a rarity at Bayside MLK over the last several years, to have people that come back the next year. When I started, there were six new teachers out of 11, new school psychologists, new mental health interns, new principal. And that pattern of turnover has been maybe the one thing that's been consistent in addition to the dedicated staff and volunteers that have engaged with the school over the years. And it's pretty astonishing when you just come back one year later, the depth of the relationship that the kids feel, and the loyalty that they feel for one another, but also with the staff. To know that these people that they're working with and that they're trusting are the same people that are going to be working with them the following year. Some of our needs, so again, this slide is not exactly the way it was designed, but Without question, our students present with different needs as kids do everywhere. One of the areas that we spend a lot of time with our kids working on is conflict resolution, and how do you solve differences of opinion or disagreements in a thoughtful and reasonable way, rather than immediately jumping to an argument or otherwise. We also have kids, children that live, and it's certainly not all of our children, but children that live in environments where there is distress from time to time, whether it be financial insecurity or incarceration or domestic violence, whatever the case may be. Being regulated and being self-regulated, which are things that I think people that look like you and me at times take for granted, are not necessarily an automatic for children that come from homes that at times are in distress. And so we work a lot on how do we stay regulated, or when we're feeling ourselves becoming dysregulated, What are some techniques and tools that we can use to get back to a place where we can be mindful of the way that we're behaving or we're thinking or we're acting or we're feeling so that we can continue to engage in the learning or whatever the activity may be going on. |
| 02:00:40.18 | David Finan | So this is just a little bit of data that I'm going to share with you from the fall to the winter. So we test our students, do assessments, it's called the measure of academic progress. And we do that three times. Actually this year I think we're going to add, the teachers are asking to add a fourth assessment in June. But we have three scheduled, September, December, and in March. And these are our students. This is a snapshot of our school-wide data, broken... broken down not by grade, but just looking overall at our students. in the area of reading from when they took the assessment the first week in September until they took the assessment in December. Close to 40% met or exceeded their individual growth target. 37% demonstrated growth but didn't meet the target. 24% either declined or did not make any growth at all. In math, a little bit better story here, 59% of our students met or exceeded, 20% demonstrated growth, 21% declined or demonstrated no growth on their individual RIT. And RIT is just the measurement that's used to identify the progress. One thing I want to point out about these two slides, not to pile on with more bad news, but just to be real with one another about what we're facing, is that the individual growth targets, that does not mean that students are achieving at grade level. It means that they're making progress based on where they are. So it's great that almost 40% of our kids met their individual growth target, but that does not mean if they're in second grade that they're functioning at a second grade level. It means that they're making the progress that the assessment tool feels like they should be making if they're learning at a rate that we would want them to learn. Same thing in math. And then finally, just a piece about social emotional. This is a tool that we work closely with Seneca Family of Agencies, which is a really capable mental health providing agency in the Bay Area and I think throughout the West Coast. And Seneca provided our staff, our teaching staff, with a screening tool that they could complete for all the kids in their class. And they were rated on things like peer to peer conflict, dysregulation, signs of depression, or not necessarily depression clinical, but just being down and out, tiredness, hunger, pretty much any category you can imagine that would identify a person of being in some level of distress. 58.8% or 59% of our students were identified by their teachers as being in a high overall risk level emotionally. 23% were identified as being moderate and 19% identified as low. This is absolutely a subjective measure. It's a teacher that's looking at their class and ranking the kids on all those different categories and then it spits out a pie chart that gives us a sense. I will say as a principal of the school that interacts with kids all day, that this data is not surprising to me. I think there's two reasons why this data looks the way it is. First and foremost, because one of the things that we've had to work really steadfastly on at school is creating a culture and climate, so everybody's clear about what's expected and how we behave and what it looks like when you're a thoughtful student at school and in the hallway and in the multipurpose room and on the playground and to school and on the way Home. after school. And so we've needed to continue on a daily basis to better define what that looks like. And then in addition to that, certainly we have kids that live in distressful situations and families that are doing everything they can to keep it together but struggle. And that shows up in school. So just briefly about our vision. So we've put together a vision that really touches on Six different areas, and I'm just going to talk very briefly on each of them. First and foremost, it's essential that in any field, but certainly in education, that teachers and staff be provided with high impact, relevant, timely, current professional development. So that they are prepared to provide students with the education that they need by using the strategies that are proven to be most effective. With the layer of the new Common Core Standards and what that looks like and how we teach reading and writing, math, science, engineering, art, music, and otherwise. So we have spent a great deal of time and resources on professional development. I'll tell you, having been a teacher and having supervised teachers for this is my 20th year, teachers are not always the best students, and they're exceptionally difficult graders on the professional development they receive. If you were to say, among other things, if there was one thing that I feel most proud of, it's the professional development that we've provided our teachers for the last two years, because consistently, consistently, training after training, the feedback has been remarkably positive. I feel like we're hitting exactly what our teachers need and we're responsive to their requests for more of this or less of that and different of this and it's it's been remarkable it's a testament to our classified and credentialed staffs commitment to doing this work well and I also also think it speaks to the choices we made about who to bring in and what to focus on. With regard to integrating culturally relevant content into our school climate and our classrooms, One of the questions I was asked in my job interview was, so, you know, the research is really clear. If children of color can see themselves in the people with whom they work, they will do better in school. There's no question about that. And I was asked a question of some sort about. So what do I think about that? As a white man, what does that look like? And my answer, I don't think, was terribly profound other than I am who I am, I'm here, I feel like I have a great deal of experience and skills that are translatable to this work. But there is no question that if Bayside MLK was a school that had a Latino or African American principal and Latino and African American teachers across the board, that that would be like a 10 out of 10. The reality is that in the United States, 4% of the teaching population is African American. So finding people, teachers of color that are in the area and then are looking to work, and in particular, finding a teacher, let alone a person of color, that can afford to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and start know start at a salary of $65,000 is is not easy but we are really clear about the fact that we have to our climate in our classrooms and the content that we provide our kids needs to be representative of the people that we're working with and so when kids go to the library they need to see themselves on the wall. They need to see themselves in the books that we're working with. And so when kids go to the library, they need to see themselves on the wall. They need to see themselves in the books that are on the shelves. When they're reading stories in classroom and they're doing read alouds or the teacher is sharing a mentor text and reading workshop, they need to see themselves in that book. |
| 02:09:09.67 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:09:17.47 | David Finan | Not the books that I read, books that speak to them and their life and their experiences. So we are working, we're not close to where we need to be with regard to this area. But I can say without question that we have a staff that wants to do this well. With regard to providing social emotional support for students and families, I don't think I need to belabor it. There's certainly a need. And our kids and families come to school with needs. And some are defensive and off-putting and do their best to keep us away from whatever might be holding their family back. And others come and knock on the door and say we need help. Can you help? But it's essential for us to provide our kids with a social emotional support One one aspect I'll just share with you without getting too far into the weeds is is that most a typical school model Is that you you might have an aide pair educator in the lower grades? TKK first grade maybe even second sometimes in some schools and then you have a school counselor and And if kids have social emotional needs, then they'll see the school counselor once a week. Or if they're in crisis, somebody will call the principal or call Julius, our administrative assistant, and you know, put a call into the counselor and the next thing you know, you know, Delonte's being seen and we're putting things back together from what happened on the playground or the seventh grade girl drama or whatever it may be. An aspect of the social emotional work that I'm recommending as part of this vision is that we push it, that we not only have it outside of the classroom, that we push it into the classroom as well. that we have people that are trained at some level with regard to mental health support that are available in the classroom with the teacher so that when things start to go south or a child starts to have a difficult time and the teacher is in the middle of a writing lesson or a mathematics lesson, that the learning can continue while this student can be supported before they're up here and need to leave. When we see that it's happening, we can work through and keep that child in the classroom, keep that child engaged in the learning. Or, if nothing else, not disrupt the rest of the class. |
| 02:11:48.47 | David Finan | So response to intervention is not a new concept in education. Basically the way response to intervention works is there's different tiers. And tier one is what happens in the classroom and the support that a teacher provides. Tier two is for students that need more than just what's offered in the classroom. And then tier three is typically students that are qualified for special ed and receive extra special ed services. I am recommending to the board that we put in place a extremely thorough and well resourced both with people and with curriculum, intervention program in tier two so that we can provide our students with the support that they need, the remediation that they need, to get them to grade level. And that would be in grades first through eighth grade. We have a curriculum instruction coach that started working with us this year, funded through the Marine Community Foundation. And she said to me before the February presentation that I made, we were just sitting around talking, she said, you know, David, I've never heard of a school that doesn't have tier two support. I've never heard of a school that doesn't have a reading specialist or a math specialist. And so part of that piece involves that kind of specific intervention and support for our students. We also have a strategic arts five-year plan. Over the last many years, and somebody else would have to give you the history, but the arts slowly but surely began to disappear at Bayside MLK, and students' exposure to arts, whether it be theater, music, public speaking, visual arts, began to get diminished over time. We have an amazing group of volunteers through the Center for Excellence, which is a foundation that helps raise money to support the arts in our schools. And there's a five-year plan that we are looking to implement to get our kids back engaged with the arts in a manner that's equal, at least equal to their peers in Marin County. And then finally, there's been a lot of work put into creating a community school model so that Bayside MLK could become what I think we would like to see it become is almost like a hub of activity for both adults and children in our community. And when people think about if they have a need, if there's a place to go to ask for support, that they see the school as a place to go. Not necessarily the principal, not necessarily the school counselor, but maybe there's other resources that are available through the school or with a referral to get families or individuals the support that they need. And so we have a community school manager position, which also involves a parent outreach component that is currently funded. It's not currently filled, but we're looking at moving in that direction in the near term. And then finally, I just want to underscore the tier two intervention piece. So this is what our day looks like, our kids' current day looks like. Kids have English, language, arts, there's math, social studies, science. Usually in most schools, social studies and science is not every day. It might be every other day. We also have a whole component of mindfulness. And then our kids also have access now to PE, art, music, garden, and library. So that right there is very much commensurate with what kids receive in schools throughout Marin County. What hasn't been provided are these two bold Literacy and Mathematic Academic Workshop classes, so that's the tier two work that we are that I am proposing and we are proposing to the board be funded so that we can get our kids to grade level and then keep them there and That task in three or four years is going to look different than the task right now Because right now we need to get kids from where they are up to grade level, which is different work than keeping children at grade level. Thank you. |
| 02:16:22.47 | Unknown | Thank you, David. Let's start questions with David since he's there. Good? Yes, please. On that presentation. And then anything? |
| 02:16:27.56 | David Finan | Thank you. |
| 02:16:27.60 | Jill Hoffman | Yes, please. |
| 02:16:32.54 | Jill Hoffman | I have. I have two questions. So this looks like a really fantastic plan for fiscal 1920 and just a dream. So have you costed this out and do you have a budget for this? |
| 02:16:47.29 | David Finan | Yeah, Trina and I are in the, it's easier if you don't have a superintendent that also is a business person. So I've been lucky to have a business person. And I say that meaning only that if your superintendent isn't as wise and knowledgeable as Trina is about the dollars piece, sometimes the sales pitch is a little easier. With Trina, we've been working carefully and looking at ways that we can fund this. I'm not prepared tonight to give you the exact details. We're still looking at ways that we can consolidate and find relief in other areas so that we can identify the dollars to fund this vision. |
| 02:17:25.00 | Jill Hoffman | decision. But it would be a budget increase. Is that correct? |
| 02:17:32.65 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:17:34.39 | David Finan | There's a... |
| 02:17:35.48 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:17:35.50 | David Finan | I think. |
| 02:17:35.57 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:17:35.67 | David Finan | I mean, |
| 02:17:35.75 | Jill Hoffman | you. |
| 02:17:35.87 | David Finan | Thank you. |
| 02:17:35.97 | Jill Hoffman | It looks like you'll be doing extensive hiring to all those. |
| 02:17:38.66 | David Finan | Yeah, but we have some, all I'd say is that we have some ideas that aren't public, that we're working on and ways to save, and I think it's appropriate to save those until we speak with the board at large about it. |
| 02:17:54.47 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. And then the second question I had, you had a slide about the number of children that attend Bayside MLK. And do you have any out-of-district children that attend? I think this came up at one of your recent meetings. I think it was. |
| 02:18:06.70 | David Finan | I think there's, Trina could probably say exactly, I think, is it 17? 18. We have 18 students. Most of the kids are students primarily from, my experience has been primarily from San Rafael. And they're kids of mothers that work primarily in the Sausalito area as nannies or house cleaners. |
| 02:18:27.69 | Jill Hoffman | And is there a cost to the district for that? |
| 02:18:34.38 | David Finan | Well, I guess I would say there's a cost in that we have teachers and staff that help support those kids. |
| 02:18:41.58 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. It's not a drug cost. |
| 02:18:49.63 | David Finan | is when you look at your boss and say, what's the answer? Because I don't know. |
| 02:18:55.45 | Jill Hoffman | Well, I just know in some districts you can have inter-district transfers and they impose a cost on the district that's accepting the children. |
| 02:19:06.29 | Tarina Maris | THE CITY IS Thank you. Yeah, that's probably not that common, but it could happen. That's not what happens at Bayside MLK with Sassalad-Omerin City School District. I can say that the board is currently charging its ad hoc board policy subcommittee with doing a review of all board policies, and at the top of that list is its inter-district transfer policy. So it is a practice that I would say has not been as tight as it could be or should be. When I looked into the numbers and addressed what, in fact, was the number of inter-district transfer students, we'll just say the process needs to be tightened up a little bit. I can say that because the numbers are so low, meaning we have 110 students and generally about 90 in-district students and the rest out of district. our class sizes are very low so To say that there's an incurred cost, there is some incurred cost without question, but it doesn't come with additional staff because our numbers are so low. |
| 02:20:19.58 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 02:20:19.96 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:20:20.59 | Unknown | Any other questions regarding the school from David? I have some for Tarina, so if you want to stay there, Tarina, and we'll see if anybody else. Trina. Thanks, David. On your comment, there's one part I wrote down. You mentioned a goal. Some of your goals have, obviously, the goal is to close the achievement gap. you |
| 02:20:40.99 | Tarina Maris | Yes. |
| 02:20:41.34 | Unknown | Thank you. Is that. Is that for the district, the achievement gap across the district, or just for the one school? |
| 02:20:50.07 | Tarina Maris | Well, so that's a good question. And I probably should back up a little bit and frame the answer before I answer it. or maybe reframe the question. So there is one school in the district and the district has an independent charter school. So when I say district, I'm meaning the one traditional school. BUT I WILL SAY, my comment was intended to mean across the district's traditional school and its independent charter school. I think it's incumbent upon the community to look at the need across both schools, however independent the charter school is. |
| 02:21:28.83 | Unknown | And so some of these programs could help achieve the gap across the district. Without question. |
| 02:21:32.59 | Tarina Maris | across the district, regardless of school. Last summer, President Weinsheimer and Principal Finan and Teresikins, head of school for Willow Creek Academy, began working meeting together to find areas of collaboration. Right out of the gates, the most clear and pressing need that we had as partner schools was to work on that single topic of how do we address the achievement and opportunity gap for some of our students. |
| 02:22:03.66 | Unknown | Okay. And why have you this question is more as your hat as from the county. |
| 02:22:11.90 | Tarina Maris | Okay. |
| 02:22:13.06 | Unknown | as the county or through your representation there looking at Saucel-Litton-Marinsk City School District, What's your largest goal? What do you see the ultimate opportunity for this district? And what are you doing to strive towards that goal? Because this sounds like a great objective, but not necessarily a county's goal for an entire district. |
| 02:22:33.23 | Tarina Maris | No, I don't. Why do you think that? |
| 02:22:35.40 | Unknown | Why would I think just achieving the |
| 02:22:37.23 | Tarina Maris | Yes, I absolutely think that the county's very interested in |
| 02:22:41.51 | Unknown | I think they are too, but is that your highest goal for this district is to achieve that gap? Or would you have a higher goal for the entire district As far as... |
| 02:22:51.64 | Tarina Maris | providing a certain level of education. I think the county's goal for every school district in Marin County, and every school in Marin County, is that it meets the needs of their children. That is plain and simple, far and away, the ultimate goal for the county office. |
| 02:22:51.67 | Unknown | providing a certain level of education. |
| 02:22:53.39 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:22:53.41 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:23:07.65 | Unknown | Okay, and shortening the gap is that. |
| 02:23:10.50 | Tarina Maris | Yes, where there's a gap for a certain subgroup of students that aren't getting |
| 02:23:10.98 | Unknown | where there's a Mm-hmm. |
| 02:23:19.04 | Tarina Maris | all that they need to achieve, then yes, we would want to step in. And we're doing that across. Where I was earlier today was just coming from a county board meeting and listening to a report from Nevada Unified who had received support from the county office specifically on this issue. So it is an issue that extends beyond, certainly beyond Sausalito Marin City. |
| 02:23:43.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:23:43.17 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:23:47.42 | Unknown | So is that, because I just assume that that was an element of good education and its success, is achieving reducing the achievement gap. That is an element. I'm asking this quick, is that what districts or other counties look for as their highest goal as far as providing community public education? Or are they looking at goals that might be higher on some of the testing that takes place or the achievement standards that are placed by the state, are those included in those goals that a county might |
| 02:24:19.28 | Unknown | have for a district. |
| 02:24:23.49 | Tarina Maris | Maybe I'm not fully understanding the gist of your question. |
| 02:24:27.37 | Unknown | What do you want for Sausalito and Marin City School District, the best thing you want for this district? |
| 02:24:31.17 | Tarina Maris | stability, solvency, and not necessarily in this order, stability, solvency, and a commitment to serve all kids. |
| 02:24:44.04 | Unknown | Thank you. Joan, do you have a question? Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.45 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.48 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.52 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.72 | Jill Hoffman | Susan. Well, when you say all kids, you mean all kids in the district. I was very puzzled by your comment that there's only one school in the district. |
| 02:24:47.94 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:24:47.97 | Unknown | to the next one. |
| 02:24:48.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:24:57.58 | Jill Hoffman | So what do you mean? |
| 02:24:59.84 | Tarina Maris | So this is a commonly found debate, and I certainly have heard it on a number of occasions. |
| 02:25:00.33 | Jill Hoffman | by that. |
| 02:25:08.41 | Tarina Maris | But there's one elected school board, and that one elected school board has one school. It also authorizes an independent charter school who has an appointed board, a separate independent charter school with a separate board. So it's two separate entities. And so I don't find it confusing at all. I find it very simple because, in fact, if there's two schools in the district, if, in fact, there are two schools within the district, why would the school district need to contract with itself? So in fact, the district has had a contract with its independent charter school for the last five years. And it's seeking to have another contract after this one expires on June 30th. So there's a separate legal entity between the two entities, and so therefore there are two separate school systems. Now we work as collaboratively as we can. and we need to do a lot better. But as the elected board with Sausalito Marin City School District, it has one traditional school. |
| 02:26:22.08 | Unknown | And that traditional school? |
| 02:26:23.62 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:26:23.64 | Jill Hoffman | Just to follow, but what raised the question is you said you want stability, solvency, and commitment to all kids. You mean all the kids at both? Sure. The independent charter and the. Yes, absolutely. |
| 02:26:33.31 | Tarina Maris | Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Willow Creek is not excluded from that. Every public school, and in fact, you know, |
| 02:26:35.26 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, absolutely. |
| 02:26:41.42 | Jill Hoffman | AND, AND, |
| 02:26:41.63 | Tarina Maris | I appreciate the questions. |
| 02:26:41.74 | Jill Hoffman | I appreciate the questions. I'm sorry, and you're talking about the memorandum of understanding as the contract? |
| 02:26:43.90 | Tarina Maris | Yeah. |
| 02:26:48.12 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 02:26:48.24 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:26:48.88 | Jill Hoffman | I mean, I don't think. I'm an attorney for the city of San Francisco and we have MOUs between every single city department everywhere. So I don't think that's. |
| 02:26:51.14 | Allison Niederer | for the city. |
| 02:26:58.23 | Jill Hoffman | And I'm not sure I understand that argument, but we can leave that for another day. But it's very common. to do that. Well, a charter school |
| 02:27:05.35 | Joan Cox | I did. A charter school cannot exist independent without a traditional school. So there is no school district comprised solely of a charter school. |
| 02:27:15.68 | Tarina Maris | I'm not sure. an authorizer that's the way the Charter School Act was written so that the Charter IT HAS TO BE AUTHORIZED BY A an LEA, a local educational agency. |
| 02:27:28.56 | Joan Cox | Thank you. And it's authorized by an LEA within the same district as the charter school. |
| 02:27:33.84 | Tarina Maris | Not necessarily. No, not necessarily. Charter schools, in fact, I operated eight charter schools when I was in Nevada County, and two of them were all over the state, and six were in three different counties. And in multiple districts. So the charter schools... The Charter School Act created charter schools to provide an opportunity for innovation, and independence from the traditional school delivery system. because the traditional delivery of education back in the early 90s was seen to be too and cumbersome. to too laden with education code. We have an education code that's this thick. And so over time, charter schools have been brought closer and closer into the fold of traditional schools. But... They were truly designed to create an opportunity for parent choice and innovation. you |
| 02:28:31.04 | Joan Cox | And to share that opportunity with traditional public schools. So if you look at the charter of charter schools, their purpose is to innovate and to share those innovations with public schools. Yes, absolutely. It's a collaborative opportunity. |
| 02:28:31.08 | Tarina Maris | and to share. |
| 02:28:43.16 | Tarina Maris | Yes. Absolutely. |
| 02:28:46.23 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 02:28:46.97 | Tarina Maris | You will not get any argument from me on that. |
| 02:28:50.96 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:28:50.97 | Tarina Maris | I had a couple of questions. |
| 02:28:51.11 | Jill Hoffman | I don't think we're trying to be argumentative. I think it's just confusing messaging to the public. |
| 02:28:58.15 | Tarina Maris | I agree that it's confusing messaging to the public because in this community in particular, Um, There's a lot of, it seems to pivot back and forth between Willow Creek's a part of the district but then Willow Creek separate from the district. And it seems to depend upon the conversations at hand that determines which side of that argument or that statement that is made. And I think it does create a lot of confusion for the public. Willow Creek has every right to be the independent public school that it is and to operate as it operates. The district does not operate Willow Creek Charter. Willow Creek's board operates Willow Creek's charter. The district has an oversight function that's defined in Ed Code. It's an oversight function. It's not an operational governance function. So that's why, again, they're two separate entities. um, If Willow Creek were to choose to be What is... commonly termed in education as a dependent charter. meaning they wouldn't have their own board. They'd be truly under the district board. That's an option, too, and there are many charter schools throughout California that function in that way. the state. this charter school has chosen not to do that. |
| 02:30:22.45 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:30:22.87 | Jeff Jacob | Jill. |
| 02:30:23.30 | Joan Cox | Go ahead, Joan. Sorry, Joan. Thanks. OK, I just wanted to talk about some numbers. So I was looking on some websites in preparation for this meeting, and I saw that |
| 02:30:23.72 | Jeff Jacob | Okay. |
| 02:30:23.97 | Unknown | Go ahead, John. |
| 02:30:24.97 | Jeff Jacob | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:30:25.03 | Unknown | No. |
| 02:30:25.51 | Tarina Maris | Thanks. |
| 02:30:26.30 | Tara Seekins | Thank you. |
| 02:30:36.31 | Joan Cox | Um, according to the education website, Marin County, has 33,741 students, 2017 to 18. Does that sound about right? Sounds about right, yes. And 11 different school districts? 18. |
| 02:30:47.02 | Tarina Maris | Sounds about right. |
| 02:30:51.82 | Joan Cox | 18 different school districts, whereas the city and county of San Francisco has 54,063 students In one school district? One school district, one county, yes. So do you perceive an opportunity for some economies of scale In Marin County that could serve all students in Marin County. by reducing the number of districts in Marin County. |
| 02:31:15.64 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.81 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.93 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.96 | Tarina Maris | I think that's an excellent question. And I would encourage all of Marin County, to engage in that discussion. When you have a school district of 100 kids, you fail at economies of scale, full stop. It is, even I would say, I'm not sure. I've spent my entire career either working for or in support of small school districts, and I understand that. the need and the passion around maintaining the autonomy that comes with that. But I always ask, at what cost? and It is an important dialogue. It's an important conversation that I hope all of Marin County engages in, but it is a community decision, and there is a process that, through the county committee for school district organization for changing school district boundaries and consolidating school districts into different configurations than they are currently. |
| 02:32:16.53 | Joan Cox | Is this a process that is on the superintendent's |
| 02:32:20.17 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:32:20.27 | Joan Cox | hierarchy |
| 02:32:21.98 | Tarina Maris | of important tasks. I don't pretend to speak for Mary Jane, but what I would say is she would be open, willing, and fully participant in any conversation around this topic. Thanks. |
| 02:32:40.91 | Jill Hoffman | So I think I think some of your responses might have created more confusion. So we have one school district, and we have two public schools. One is a traditional public school, which is what you're referring to, |
| 02:32:50.60 | Ed Labar | One is. |
| 02:32:54.93 | Jill Hoffman | as the district school. Correct. And then, which is in Marin City. Correct. And we have a public charter school that's in Sausalito. Yes. And you just said that our district only has 100 kids. That's not true. Our district has almost 500 kids. Isn't that right? Thank you. |
| 02:33:14.58 | Tarina Maris | district if you combine both the schools if you if you combine so so let me let me pose this question and maybe this would help. If there was another charter school that opened in Sausalito, Now, by that argument, you'd say there's three public schools and they're all within the district. But the distinguishing factor between Willow Creek Charter and Bayside MLK, the district's sole school. is that Willow Creek does not serve all students. By design, with their charter petition, they determine who they will serve. what grade level they will serve. and who they will serve by design. And they can have account. They can actually turn children away. A district school cannot turn anyone away that lives in the Sausalito Marin City School District boundaries. And in fact, moreover, the district itself actually serves children age three when they are identified for special education. The charter does not. They're very distinctive. differences. in the population that both schools serve. So where it gets confusing is when people try to say there's two schools in the district TECHNICALLY, THAT'S Okay, that's correct, there's two public schools in the vicinity and the geography of Sausalito Marin City. but not technically under the governance of the South Little Merman City School District. Thank you. |
| 02:34:50.34 | Jill Hoffman | What is the responsibility for the district to fund both schools? |
| 02:34:54.71 | Tarina Maris | The district has a responsibility to provide LCFF funding to its charter school. |
| 02:34:54.75 | Jill Hoffman | Is it your district? |
| 02:35:05.43 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:35:05.45 | Jill Hoffman | And is the two schools, is the district considered two different schools? In other words, would you have to do an inter-district transfer to go from one school to the other? No. OK. So any kid that lives in the district can go to either school? Not necessarily. |
| 02:35:19.69 | Tarina Maris | Thank you. |
| 02:35:19.79 | Jill Hoffman | Why would one kid not |
| 02:35:21.04 | Tarina Maris | to go to one school because Willow Creek could be full. They don't have to take every student that lives in the district. because if they're impacted. But that's different from a traditional school. A traditional school doesn't matter whether you're impacted, you still have to take everyone. |
| 02:35:30.86 | Jill Hoffman | DISTRICT. A traditional. |
| 02:35:35.97 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. Today, they're not full. Have they turned anybody away recently? |
| 02:35:42.62 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:35:43.75 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, we'll ask them. Who? Okay. Okay. |
| 02:35:47.85 | Unknown | See. |
| 02:35:50.54 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. What in the percentage of the kids from out of district at Bayside MLK is about 20%. Did I do the math right on that? |
| 02:36:02.91 | Unknown | A little less. |
| 02:36:03.24 | Jill Hoffman | about. Thank you. |
| 02:36:04.54 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:36:05.01 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:36:05.40 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:36:08.71 | Unknown | Well, that's okay. Okay. I think that's enough, thanks. Thank you. |
| 02:36:14.97 | Ida Green | You're welcome. |
| 02:36:20.30 | Unknown | We'll have another round of questions for the public as well. Thank you, Tarina. Appreciate you standing up there and taking those questions. So public comment will be after the Willow Creek presentation. Willow Creek can come on up. Tara and Jim Henry. Jim's here. |
| 02:36:37.53 | Unknown | Jim Henry. Thank you. |
| 02:36:38.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:38.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:36:39.03 | Unknown | Yep, there he is. Thank you all for waiting around. Appreciate your time. |
| 02:37:11.37 | Tara Seekins | All right, good evening, okay. |
| 02:37:14.22 | Unknown | She's not refusing herself or anything. |
| 02:37:14.27 | Tara Seekins | Thank you. All right, good evening council members, mayor, vice mayor, staff, and community members. I'm Tara Seekins, I'm the head of school at Willow Creek. And I'm really happy to be here tonight to talk with you about our programs and community to introduce you to the school if you're not familiar with it already. And then our treasurer, Jim Henry, is going to talk a little bit more in detail about the landscape around funding and some plans around thinking about next year. So I think it's important for everybody to understand that Willow Creek does serve roughly equal numbers of students from Sausalito and Marin City. And in fact, we serve more students from Marin City than from Sausalito. You can see from just the most recent statistics, we serve 176 students who live in Marin City, and 55 of those students live in the Golden Gate Village housing projects. Sometimes that's used as a metric to determine if students are of a particularly high need or may be particularly impacted by some of the factors like that David mentioned around trauma or domestic violence, incarceration, poverty, etc. 55 of our 410 children live in Golden Gate Village. 150 of our students live in Sausalito and 79 live outside our district boundaries. And charter schools are a little bit different from traditional public schools in that we are required to admit students from outside our district boundaries if we have space at the grade level where they've applied. And we welcome them and we believe that they do enrich our community. We have relatively small class sizes in grades K through 4. You can expect to find 20 to 24 students in a class. And the classes are a little bit larger in grades five through eight, with 24 to 26 students in a class. Still, those numbers are pretty low relative to other upper grade classes in the state of California. And we do serve approximately 80% of all of the public school students in 94965, proudly and gladly. Our community is extremely diverse. In fact, I can't think of a school that is more diverse than Willow Creek in that we have no racial majority. About 40% of our students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. And I went ahead and gave you the current guideline for what a family, their income limit if they want to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. For a family of three, they have to have an annual income of less than $27,014 in 2018-19. A family of three meaning like a mom and two kids, for example. That's 40% of the kids at Willow Creek Academy. And of course, we serve another proportion of students, a smaller proportion of students that are more affluent as well. About 30% of our students speak a language other than English at home, and among that 30% of students, we have students who are considered English learners, as well as students who have been reclassified as fluent in English as they've gained proficiency. And we have 32 different languages represented among that group of students. 12% of our students receive special education services on our campus as well. And the photos you'll see throughout are just the photos that I have on my phone when they did something cute or I saw something I liked. I just took those photos and threw them up in there. I want to talk a little bit about our curriculum. We offer project based inquiry driven approach with the goal of true understanding. So in the project-based learning model, students are encouraged to identify problems that they feel passionate about, that they want to solve, or questions that they're really curious about that they want to answer. and then they leverage interdisciplinary strategies to solve the problem or answer the question. And that's a really authentic and motivating way to learn. The students are definitely deploying all their different academic skills, but in service of a much bigger goal that feels meaningful to them. We are committed to mastery of common core state standards and next generation science standards, and we really do believe strongly in supporting our students' social emotional needs as a basis for academic achievement. I think it's absolutely critical to address that as a foundation for all the learning that needs to happen across the school day. In service of supporting our students' social emotional needs, we have responsive classroom philosophy school-wide. You'll see students in their morning meetings or in their class meetings. practicing communication protocols, solving problems together in community with their teachers, and building community so that when misconduct occurs, it feels like something has broken, and that some action needs to happen to repair the harm. And that's the essence of the next piece of the puzzle, which is restorative practices. Really identifying misconduct as an opportunity to improve, as we say. We quote Dr. Maya Angelou. We say, do the best you can until you know better, and then when you know better, do better. And that's the cornerstone of social-emotional learning at Willow Creek. We emphasize global citizenship, media literacy, including common sense media, digital literacy, arts integration, and learning inside and out. Little green shirts and slightly larger navy blue shirts, walking around on walking field trips many times in Sausalito and Marin City. Because we really embrace the idea that a lot of great learning can happen outside the classroom. And we have a lot of fantastic community resources that we can leverage for that learning. I believe that differentiated instruction is the key to closing the achievement gap. I really think that's true. I think that our students come with certainly opportunity gaps as well, and we can definitely leverage resources to help close those gaps. But differentiated, excellent, consistent instruction with a committed teaching team I think that's the key. And we're seeing that happening throughout our grade levels. So some of the supports that we offer for differentiated learning are assistant teachers. We have one full-time assistant teacher in each kindergarten class and one full-time assistant teacher that's shared across the two first-grade classes and another assistant teacher that's shared across the two second-grade classes. So for those 44 kids that are in second grade, for example, they have the benefit of one paraprofessional who can pull small groups of students or provide additional support in class and really help to give students instruction at their level in a strategic way. We also have a primary intervention specialist who is now in the third year of her primary intervention program that she implemented. She's basically case managing the most vulnerable kindergartners, first graders, and second graders, doing academic instruction, small group work, social emotional instruction, and also developing relationships with the students' families. So her first group of kindergartners has been with her now for kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. And they're ready to launch into third grade next year. And we're already starting to think about what kind of, you know, scaffolded support we want to provide to those third graders as they move away from kind of that nest of primary intervention with Ms. Araceli and into a more independent third grade classroom. We also use, we have great content specialists, I should mention them, a math specialist and a language arts specialist. They're both.8 employees, so they're both there four days a week, and they are responsible for coaching our teachers and for making sure that our curriculum across grades K through eight is vertically aligned. So what kids are learning in kindergarten aligns to what they're going to be needing to learn in first grade and to second grade and beyond. That's a really important role at a K-8 school because it's easy to kind of get for things to feel disjointed. So we really like to have those people as our instructional leaders keeping a very close eye on how that vertical alignment looks. And making sure that we're using data to inform all of our instruction. So our teachers will meet with our instructional specialists during their prep time. So for example, both fourth grade teachers might have, you know, one will have, music and one will have art at the same time so that they're free to meet with the literacy specialist at that time where they'll look at map data, which I'll show you in just a little bit, and plan instructions strategically together. We use technology as a tool for enrichment and intervention. And that looks different at different grade levels. You'll see much less of the Chromebooks out in kindergarten. But we do try to get kids used to using technology as a tool. And then when you get up to the middle school, you'll see students using Chromebooks pretty much every day in various classes for research and writing. We have great student support teams, which are interdisciplinary teams of people who are knowledgeable about students. We bring in families, we bring in soccer coaches, we bring in youth ministers. to talk with our counselors, our teachers, our administration team, to try to really help address any issues that are arising at their root causes and in an interdisciplinary way. We have a great after-school program getting even better and enrichment classes, which are free for low-income families through support from the Willow Creek Foundation. So on any particular day after school, you'll see students from all different backgrounds on our campus until 6 p.m. doing Lego engineering, yoga class, cooking class, piano lessons, ukulele lessons. Kind of depends on the trimester, but that's just a sampling. Anyway, that's an important goal for us as well. As you know, you may know, we have great community partnerships, and we really work hard to leverage those partnerships into learning opportunities for our students. And these are just a few of them. I'm going to talk a little bit about our results. So I'll talk about quantitative and qualitative data. We do outperform the state of California and similar charter schools in language arts and math on our state standardized test, which is taken by third through eighth grade students every spring. We're making, I think, steady progress toward closing the achievement slash opportunity gap for low-income students and English learners. And I'll show you that. disaggregated data in just a minute. And according to a lot of the data that we receive, especially from parent surveys and student surveys, our school climate feels positive, joyful, and inclusive. And that's coming from all different constituencies. And I think that is a really strong basis for that hard work of differentiated instruction and in service of the big goal of closing opportunity and achievement gap. So I took these screenshots straight off of the EdData website, which is one of the best places to go to get information about at school. You can look up information about demographics, English learner status, test scores. Financial information is available for districts on EdData. You can find information about teachers and credentialing and things like that. It's really a useful resource. So I definitely encourage you to check that out if you have more questions or want to dig deeper into the data. So you can see that over time, since the CAASPP assessment was implemented, we've seen students in the quartiles, the blue and the orange, that's students who are exceeding standard and meeting standard growing, while students in the bottom two quartiles, that's the pink and the green, which are students who have nearly met standard, that's the pink, and not met standard, which is the green, while we see that proportion shrinking. And that shows, to me, good progress. This is a difficult assessment. The CAASPP is not an easy test to ace. It's not a bubble test. A part of it is, but a lot of it has to do with performance assessment. Students are writing constructed response answers and also doing a performance test that's much lengthier when they're synthesizing different articles that they're reading and coming up with some kind of response in response to a specific prompt. So I'm encouraged by these results. I wanted to also show you our English language acquisition status. You can see that it's a little bit tricky to understand these charts. On the chart on the far side, you can see that there's one A portion of students that are represented in navy blue, those are English learners. and another portion of students that orange and those are our fluent English proficient students. So we are seeing actually over time the number of kids who are speaking a language other than English at home growing. So you can see the number growing over time. You can also see that within that group of students, the fluent English proficient category is growing. And that's encouraging because that means that students are acquiring English proficiency and moving into that reclassified category, which is great. That's what we want all our students to do, especially at a K-8 school, and especially if they come to us in kindergarten by fourth grade. That's a really important goal for us. And then I just included, this isn't really achievement data, but it just breaks out some of the most commonly spoken languages at Willow Creek. And you can see that Spanish is our biggest subgroup, and then followed by just actually bigger growing Russian population, and Urdu is another growing language at Willow Creek as well. Okay, so I broke out desegregated data for low-income students and English learners. And the reason why I chose those two subgroups is that they're our biggest subgroups, and they are also the subgroups that we have identified in our Local Control Accountability Plan, or LCAP, as our priority areas in accordance with the state requirements What do they call them? State priorities, I guess. State priorities. What I'm showing you is map scores in winter 2017 and winter 2018. Just as David said, these are not students, by and large, that are performing at grade level. I want to just be clear on that. The grade level bar is higher than what you're seeing in these bars here. But I did want to show you progress. I wanted to show you progress across basically all the grade levels for our low income students who are making growth in reading. And that to me is really positive. Similar story for low-income students' growth in math. |
| 02:52:33.38 | Tara Seekins | Similar consistency for English learner growth in reading. And again, consistent progress for English learner growth in math. And that, to me, is very encouraging data. We're not going to see this show up on the CAASPP yet because the CAASPP is much more challenging. But I do see that we are building the foundation toward proficiency on the state-standardized test. And more importantly, proficiency in math and language arts that's going to help kids answer questions and solve problems that feel meaningful to them. A few words on school climate as the foundation for all of this good work. We survey our middle schoolers each year. And as I'm looking at some of this data, it looks like sort of low numbers. You know, when I feel like I'm safe at school, 82%. When I feel like I belong at school, 85%. Other students are friendly, 88%. And I'm like, why isn't it 100? |
| 02:53:27.62 | Ed Labar | Thank you. |
| 02:53:27.64 | Unknown | WHEN YOU ARE IN THE |
| 02:53:28.43 | Tara Seekins | But then I think about middle school and I'm like, well, when I was in middle school, did I feel like I belonged all the time or most of the time? No. So I think that might be not that uncommon. But these actually are quite high numbers relative to other middle school data. And it's really encouraging. I think the students, when they're together, From a young age, like starting in kindergarten, they form a very nice group, a tight cohort who care for each other and really you know, enjoy being together and they have a really kind of wonderful relationship. And when new kids come in, bring them into the fold. And it just feels like a really kind and loving and caring community in our middle school. And I'm quite proud of that. And I really like that that's the experience our kids are having in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. According to family survey data, 90% of families say that their student is happy to attend Willow Creek, and 93% say that they absolutely are mostly like the community overall. |
| 02:54:33.36 | Tara Seekins | These are numbers actually from last year's teacher survey. We haven't done this year's yet. But I want to just show you kind of, so this is from a survey done by an organization called Youth Truth that surveys teachers nationally, and we were able to participate in a pilot with them last year. And they show the school's data and measure it benchmarked against a typical school nationally, the other schools that they've surveyed. So in terms of our teachers, they've given positive ratings in terms of engagement and empowerment. 96% of our students, or 96% of our teachers, compared with 80% nationally, gave positive ratings around engagement and empowerment. 92% gave positive ratings around relationships, compared to 86% nationally. 92% of our teachers gave positive ratings around culture and communication compared to 75% nationally. and 88% gave positive ratings around professional development and support, compared to 73% nationally. And I will say a word about professional development at Willow Creek. It's mostly led by our team. very rarely, I contract with other professional development providers. Our literacy specialist, Maya Creedman, and our math specialist, Jennifer Lawrence, have a rotating schedule of deep dives on literacy and math that they deliver to our teachers and engage them with. during our our staff days on Wednesdays. We have one teacher who is an English language development specialist, so she has a lot of skills around supporting students to acquire English when they speak a language other than English at home. She's on the rotation. We have social emotional specialist. We have one of our teachers is a responsive classroom instructor in the middle school program, so he leads professional development. And we have a project-based learning specialist who has completed a lot of professional development through the Buck Institute. related to project-based learning, and so he leads professional development as well. So we've insourced a lot of the PD, and David is absolutely right. Teachers have a tough time after teaching all day, sitting and listening to someone else teach them how to teach, unless it's their peers, in which case it's much easier. So I just wanted to give you a note on why I think some of those numbers are so high in particular. Just to boil it down, I think that some of the most important critical success factors at our school are knowing what our mission is, having a consistent school team. Last year we had, I think we had just one teacher out of 22 certificated teachers who moved on to a different job. And this year it looks like we're going to be in about the same situation. That's very low turnover for a school. And I think that is one of the key factors in making a school successful is consistency of a very strong, committed team. We solve problems creatively and resourcefully and we have cultivated a caring community for our students and families. And I think that really shows. So I'll finish up just by letting you know that we would really ask for your support and our community support. keeping our families at the center of relevant city decisions, And reaching out, you know where to find us, anytime you need input or perspective on issues affecting children, and families, and finally I would encourage you to attend our school events. I just published a calendar of all of our end of year events and there are lots to choose from. Art shows, concerts, we have a family math night coming up. Um, you're most, most welcome to come join us on campus and to just experience this school for yourself. It's quite a special place, and I hope that you can come join us. I did give you copies of our yearbook from last year. Just as you're flipping through that, I feel like it really does capture the spirit of the school, the diversity, and really the beauty of our community. So thank you, and I'll turn it over to Jim. |
| 02:58:55.65 | Unknown | questions. Yeah. |
| 02:58:57.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:02.27 | Unknown | Well, because when I did that, so thank you. Any questions for Tara on her presentation? |
| 02:59:10.30 | Jill Hoffman | I might have a follow-up, if that's okay, but I'll ask after Jim if that's okay. |
| 02:59:13.00 | Unknown | Great, thanks. Jim. |
| 02:59:18.92 | Jim Henry | So apologies, this would have concluded in a much more fun and optimistic tone if I would have gone first and Tara would have finished. So Tara, thank you for your comments. I also want to thank Mayor Burns, the council members, manager, city manager, for allowing us the chance to provide this update about Willow Creek Academy. And I also want to recognize and thank Board Chair Burns. Green. to provide this update about Willow Creek Academy. And I also want to recognize and thank Board Chair Burns, Green, I'm sorry, Board Chair Green, Interim Superintendent Mars, and Principal Panan, I think, has left. getting to that. |
| 03:00:04.91 | Jim Henry | I wasn't going to ask him yet. I'm Jim Henry. As mentioned, I'm a board member at Willow Creek Academy and the school board treasurer. And I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about where we are in terms of governance with Willow Creek Academy and the current state of affairs as it relates to our financial position. Before commenting on that, though, I'm also a proud grandparent of one student at Willow Creek Academy and two as of next fall but I want to recognize before I make comments about governance in the budget Tara and the amazing work that she's done along with the teachers and the rest of the leadership of our staff at Willow Creek she's announced her plan to resign from Willow Creek Academy at the end of this school year which has been announced and pursue her ambition to work internationally in education with underserved students the board would rather she remain with Willow Creek Academy but understands and respects her desires and looks forward to seeing the impact that she'll have on the world and also wishes her all the best for ongoing and tremendous personal satisfaction and fulfillment in her work. We've commenced the head of school search to find her replacement. The early returns on that are very positive in terms of the quality and quantity of the candidate pool. And we fully expect to have a new head of school selected and in place for the beginning of the next school year. The board spends considerable time with Tara and our staff talking about the important issues that she covered. But as I said today, I want to spend a few minutes just talking about current charter school governance and funding and why there is so much focus on that point at Willow Creek. |
| 03:02:13.65 | Jim Henry | So for some, this may be very basic, but I think it's important that we level set. Saucerito Marin City School District is a basic aid district. What that means is our district has property tax revenue in excess of the required state funding or mandated entitlements to our students. About 10% of districts statewide fall into that category, and it's basically because of high property tax revenues and or lower numbers of public school students. The district has total excess revenue as a result, beyond the state required entitlements, of approximately $3.7 million. and out of combined revenue for both schools for the district of over $9 million. So that gives you the magnitude of the additional resources available in the district. Under the current memorandum of understanding that was referenced previously, or our financial arrangement with the district, there's a mechanism for sharing this excess revenue based on state-defined needs, afterpayment for certain shared services, which are primarily district overhead, facilities and utilities costs, and special education. The Memorable Understanding that we have expires this June 30th. although the charter has been reauthorized and approved prospectively by the district. |
| 03:03:50.19 | Jim Henry | This graph is a stark contrast in where we are with funding per student between the two schools. This is not meant to poke or be divisive as it relates to Bayside MLK, but rather to emphasize for Willow Creek Academy the lean budget with which we operate to do the amazing work that Tara just described. And so we are now slightly below the state average funding per student at around $10,000 with Bayside MLK at just under $30,000 per student. And that's after removing all of the administrative costs, district overhead, facilities charges, and special education at both sites. If you add those in, then it's still a three times multiple of funding available. The unfortunate result of that with Willow Creek Academy, even under our current budget, is it is a real challenge just to pay our teachers fairly and try to close the pay gap that our teachers have, who remain because of the mission that they're excited about being part of, in spite of a gap they have with their peers at other schools. |
| 03:05:08.67 | Jim Henry | proposed budget for next year which is really the center of this conversation the district proposed in its budget which is in the board package that was submitted and available for this coming Thursday's meeting And in that proposal for next year, the sharing of basic aid excess is eliminated. For next year, that means a decrease in revenue to Willow Creek of $394,000. It also means that next year, charges will be made to Willow Creek for special education, and we are working together toward a special education solution which is probably the best example of collaboration today but it's something that had been covered by the excess district funds in the past. Facilities will also be charged at the maximum allowable versus a 2% facilities overhead fee currently. The net impact on the Willow Creek budget for 19-20 is actually higher now based on the new second interim budget submissions and close to $1.2 million. Now, whether we call that charges, defunding, or anything else, the reality is that's a million two in, excuse me, it is a million two. I didn't have time to update for the board packet that came out this week. Again, I refer you to page 75 of the district board packet. That number has gone up to a million 184. So that roughly million two is a direct negative financial impact on a budget at Willow Creek, and it amounts to 25% of our operating budget. |
| 03:07:10.97 | Jim Henry | If nothing changes, the impact of that is Willow Creek would have a deficit next year of approximately $800,000. It's interesting to note that in the first interim budget submissions that the expected deficit under this scenario for Willow Creek approximated the expected surplus for Bayside MLK and the district. I know those numbers will change and already have in the second interim budget submissions, but we're still left in a situation with a significant deficit for Willow Creek Academy and a budget surplus at Bayside MLK. Without other changes, that money comes out of reserves. At Willow Creek Academy, our reserve level is now about $1,000,000, decreases it to under $800,000, about $600,000. Willow Creek does not have other reserves to draw from, does not have alternative public funding sources. The leadership team and board are carefully evaluating options to address this budget deficit next year. The reality is that we have very little school overhead. We operate on a lean budget, as I mentioned, and any substantial reduction in funding or reduction in cost would, by definition, result in cuts to the classroom or cuts to critical school programs. So how did we get here? This has been about a year long journey. maybe longer, but March last year, in the budget proposal for next year, for 19-20, the district adopted a budget which proposed what I just described, which is no longer sharing basic aid excess funding and charging the maximum fees for special education and facilities costs. Over the course of the last year, we've repeatedly asked for a dialogue around this issue. While perhaps the intentions have been there to engage in the dialogue, we have not had substantive engagement with the district board to be able to progress on addressing this issue, and that's nine months of time before the current attorney general office letter was issued. And I do recognize the reality of constraints that are in place today that were mentioned with the Attorney General's Office and the inability to move forward at this time. But I'll also mention that this was reinforced January and February, where letters from the superintendent both to the county superintendent of education and also in response to January and February were letters from the interim superintendent both to the County Superintendent of Education and also in response to a letter from the Willow Creek Academy Board that the position remains to finalize the budget cuts no longer share and basic aid excess revenue and also raised a concern about the district needing to reassess the charter renewal in light of these budget realities And further, those letters put a sort of fine point on the inability to officially engage in discussions with Willow Creek in light of the Attorney General investigation. So where does that leave us? not in a great position at this time in that we cannot evaluate, nor do we judge the actions or intentions of the district or the board. We have no visibility, as was mentioned, into the Attorney General's office findings, investigation, or the path to resolution. The clock is ticking. We have students who are enrolling and applying to enroll in our school next year as I mentioned we've started ahead of school search and families are at a point in the year when they need to make critical decisions for their children the lawsuit that we filed recently in the board's opinion was the only remaining action that we could control and was necessary to pursue because inaction was not a responsible move when we're representing 80% of the children that reside in our district and the families they serve. The primary focus of the lawsuit, just to underscore this, is highlighted here where, by state law, charter schools are part of the public school system. Charter schools as such are entitled to fair and full funding, and this was underscored in a California Supreme Court case where, in part, the finding indicated that though independently operated, charter schools fiscally are part of the public school system, they are eligible equally with other public schools for a share of state and local funding. So we stand ready and continue to stand ready to engage with the district when they can do so in a meaningful discussion about our proposal for school funding, to find opportunities to collaborate to put more money into educating our children, find ways to drive additional efficiencies, address our shared challenges and opportunities, and explore structural longer-term solutions, including a combined school in our district. So thank you for listening. And we're available for questions. |
| 03:13:02.47 | Unknown | which we will. which we will have for you and then open up to the public. Okay. Thanks for coming back up. Questions for Jim or Tara. |
| 03:13:06.74 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:13:11.28 | Jim Henry | Can I call Terina up to answer my questions too? |
| 03:13:15.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:13:15.55 | Jim Henry | to the next day. |
| 03:13:15.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:13:15.89 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, I have some questions. So Jim, based on the data that you defunding of Willow Creek did you update your graph that mean that you did the per student graph at the beginning. |
| 03:13:22.61 | Jim Henry | Yes. |
| 03:13:27.55 | Jim Henry | That's eliminating all of the costs from both schools, so I've equalized that issue between the two schools. |
| 03:13:36.29 | Jill Hoffman | But no, the defunding. If you defund it. So if you went back to like your third slide. |
| 03:13:38.74 | Jim Henry | Thank you. Next slide. |
| 03:13:42.06 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, what's the amount first? Let me go back to the slide. |
| 03:13:43.55 | Jim Henry | Let me go back to the slide. Yeah, sorry. We're talking about the same thing. There you go. |
| 03:13:47.19 | Jill Hoffman | This one? Yeah, so how does that change given the cuts? If the cuts are implemented. |
| 03:13:52.86 | Jim Henry | Thank you. For 19-20, if you eliminate the same things I eliminated in this slide, it's the same answer. What happens is if you add the, this is expenditures for both schools, if you add the expenditures that are proposed in the budget for next, and now budgeted for next year, Willow Creek's per student costs go up to about $13,000. Bayside MLK's costs still go up over $40,000. That's a factor of having only 110 or so students at one school versus 400 at another. As was commented earlier, it's one of the consequences of small numbers. |
| 03:13:53.60 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 03:14:07.65 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:14:38.54 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:14:38.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:14:38.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:14:38.83 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:14:38.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:14:39.42 | Jim Henry | Thank you. Does that answer your question? |
| 03:14:41.72 | Jill Hoffman | I think so. One of the questions that I asked Torino was about you know whether kids could go to either school. Do you guys have a wait list or do you, have you, what, tell me about the wait list. |
| 03:14:59.42 | Jim Henry | Tell me about the wait list. Let me ask you to comment on that, please. |
| 03:15:00.13 | Tara Seekins | Thank you. |
| 03:15:03.32 | Tara Seekins | So we do have a wait list at some grade levels. I don't have it off the top of my head, but it's a handful of children, most of whom are from outside the school district boundaries. So we, for example, like this, we just had our first round enrollment deadline passed last Friday. We had, you know, lots of applicants and we were able to admit all in-district students without having to wait list anybody or have a lottery. So that's great news. We may get more applications over the next few months. And we have a second application deadline in July. So if I have 38 kindergarteners enrolled in 40 spaces in kindergarten and six more children move into the school district boundaries between now and you know the start of the school year, then I'll be able to admit two of them but I'll have four on a wait list. Okay. So that's, it is how that works. And so when we create those caps, we try to make them really thoughtfully. Um, We obviously prioritize in-district families, but most of the kids that are on the wait list are from outside the school district because we prioritize and admit the in-district families first. Thanks. |
| 03:16:23.18 | Unknown | I have one more follow-up, that's okay. |
| 03:16:25.01 | Jill Hoffman | So Jim, you mentioned one school for the entire district. So given the issues that Tara just mentioned, If there was one district for the school and it was Willow Creek, would you be able to accommodate the students from all the students from emergency. I mean most of the students now I guess are from emergency anyway. |
| 03:16:48.14 | Jim Henry | So I think there's two dimensions of that, and also defer to Tara for other comments. But one is the physical capacity to accommodate all 500 and some students in one school facility, I think is tight. And in fact, we have challenges which have been an ongoing discussion about the current state of facilities at the Willow Creek campus I put that issue to the side and say the structural solution I think needs to incorporate all the facilities available in the district and where I start from is looking at a combined program that takes full advantage of the resources available in the district and also is under a common administration so you reduce any cost redundancies in combined programs around teacher, professional development, et cetera as an example. |
| 03:16:49.49 | Jill Hoffman | If they close the Bayside in. Yeah. |
| 03:16:56.11 | Ed Labar | you |
| 03:16:56.16 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:16:56.21 | Ed Labar | But... |
| 03:16:56.28 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:16:56.48 | Ed Labar | Thank you. |
| 03:17:52.71 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:17:52.84 | Unknown | which is a school district. |
| 03:17:53.96 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:17:54.01 | Unknown | I Learning tonight from Jill's previous question, Willow Creek has the opportunity to cap. Is that, when we talk about cuts, is that, so Willow Creek, you just say we're taking 300 or 310 and capping that type of number. Is that one of the options that would be looked at to just say we can't take these kids? |
| 03:18:18.68 | Jim Henry | Go ahead. |
| 03:18:21.12 | Tara Seekins | That would mean telling students who are currently enrolled in third grade, for example, a proportion of them that you can't come back for fourth grade. I don't think we would. |
| 03:18:29.63 | Unknown | I want to call it the best option. I have a best option in mind. I'm trying to go through the worst options and find out which is the worst option. Yeah, I think that would be a challenging strategy. |
| 03:18:30.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:18:30.58 | Tara Seekins | . |
| 03:18:37.63 | Tara Seekins | Yeah, I think that would be a challenging strategy. Okay. Yeah. |
| 03:18:44.06 | Jim Henry | I've heard that suggestion before, where you just keep cutting back to what the school used to be in the past, and I and the board agree that we've already successfully managed being able to accommodate substantially all applicants in district, running basically two classes per grade. And so it gets very difficult to start to figure out what classes do you stop and can you do it midstream versus generationally. And then once you open the door to turning people away who are already enrolled, I think that's a very slippery slope and probably not one with a good outcome for the students. |
| 03:19:24.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:19:24.49 | Ed Labar | I don't want to. |
| 03:19:27.16 | Unknown | I think we may have, thank you. I think we may have established, I might not completely understand what achieving the gap is or why that that's an ultimate but what is your ultimate highest goal for your school would you be the ultimate success |
| 03:19:42.85 | Tara Seekins | So it would be a school that feels humane, compassionate, loving, caring, creative, equitable, where all students are performing to the best of their ability in the highest and achieving high grade level standards. It's very close to being actually the school that Willow Creek is on its way to being. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:20:06.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:07.27 | Tara Seekins | you |
| 03:20:07.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:07.35 | Tara Seekins | you |
| 03:20:07.42 | Unknown | you |
| 03:20:07.44 | Tara Seekins | Yeah. Sure. |
| 03:20:09.58 | Joan Cox | I, We heard tonight that these are two separate schools in the district, and that you have your board and that Sausalito And that Bayside MLK that the Sausalito Marin City School District has its separate board. |
| 03:20:29.29 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 03:20:29.86 | Joan Cox | . I recall when we heard from you in 2017 that there was an opportunity in that year to apply for grant funding. and somehow that opportunity was denied. Who denied that opportunity? to Willow Creek to apply for grant funding. |
| 03:20:51.58 | Jim Henry | There was a presentation with a request for the district, made by Willow Creek, with a request to the district board to approve the application for grant funding that was available that would go to facilities. The district board at the time's decision was not to approve that application, which was not binding on whether we ultimately would accept or receive the grant funding but it was denied in the context of the current concerns or turmoil going on related to at the time I think the FICMAT And I might be totally wrong on that. There was a presentation by Willow Creek, which is the only part that I'll definitively state, that was denied by the district board. |
| 03:21:42.27 | Joan Cox | And was Willow Creek able to apply for that grant funding independently from the Sausalito Marin City School District? |
| 03:21:49.02 | Jim Henry | No, we certainly would have done that if that was available. |
| 03:21:53.26 | Joan Cox | You made mention tonight of the basic aid excess sharing. What is the source of that revenue? Or what is the source of the excess? It's primarily property taxes. |
| 03:22:05.98 | Jim Henry | . THANK YOU. |
| 03:22:09.04 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:22:09.36 | Jim Henry | Thank you. |
| 03:22:09.38 | Joan Cox | you Right. Susan, do you have any more questions? |
| 03:22:13.59 | Jill Hoffman | I have a bunch of questions related to some of the issues that David talked about and some of the programming and how that relates to Willow Creek, but it's getting really late, and I know there's a lot of people here to talk, |
| 03:22:25.44 | Unknown | Well, great segue into how many cards we have, which is five. Is there anybody else that would like to comment from the public? Please fill out a card. Vicki, they're green, they're right. Okay, then you're fine. Yeah, I'll try to remember your name when you get up here. So I'm going to open up public comment. Like I said, I have five cards. I'm going to start with Allison Niederer and then David Suto, Peter Van Meter in the hall. |
| 03:22:25.91 | Jill Hoffman | into ME. |
| 03:22:57.66 | Allison Niederer | I applaud the mayor and the council for having this forum. When I first bought a house here in Sausalito, I was told by my realtor, you know if you have kids, you gotta move, because there's really no school option for you here. And at the time, I didn't actually have kids, and I wasn't really swayed by this, but now I do. And I'm proud to be a six-year parent of two children at Willow Creek Academy. It represents our community. It's open minded. It's inclusive. It's project based so kids can have instruction that fits their needs and at their pace. And as you've seen, it's diverse. For those of you who don't know what project based learning is or looks like, come join us on field trips to the Sausalito Historical Society. or the restoration of the Willow Creek, or a tour of Marinship and learn about the origins of Marin City. I've learned more about local history than I would ever find in a book. In fact, today when I went to pick up my second grader or my third grader from school, there's a big poster on the wall that says, Museum of Diversity, how can we collect evidence that shows the positive impact of diversity in Sausalito and Marin City history? And that's their upcoming project. |
| 03:24:15.43 | Allison Niederer | Most importantly, the school is community minded and the leadership is helping to raise children who care about this and the larger community, which is evidenced by my 10 year old who refuses to leave this room and for which I will pay horribly in the morning. You wouldn't know about this sense of community if you attended the recent Sausalito-Marin City School District board meetings. It's really disheartening. It makes me physically ill when I leave these meetings. There's no community unity. There's a lot of finger pointing. There's racism. There's divisiveness. I understand there's a lot of history, and I'm not naive to the challenges that the district faces. But there's a perception propagated by the lawsuit against the district by the Attorney General that the white, his words, Sausalito School, Willow Creek Academy, is unfairly receiving funds needed by the segregated black, his words, Bayside MLK. One school is being pitted against another. The district says there are more high-need students at Bayside MLK, but the truth is that 40% of the students at Willow Creek are considered high-need, more than the entire Bayside MLK student body And yet we don't get extra funding at Willow Creek for this. All the high needs students in our district need to be prioritized no matter what school they attend. Our district has a nine million dollar budget for 500 kids. We should be able to do this. The traditional school has an economy of scale problem, what we call cost structure problem. But the Willow Creek students shouldn't be penalized for this. None of the students in our district should be penalized for this. The proposed budget, have you heard, takes over a million dollars out of the Willow Creek budget, Stout of Green Quarter of the budget. There's not much fat in that budget. |
| 03:26:04.55 | Unknown | Can you wrap it up really quick? Thanks, Allison. |
| 03:26:05.56 | Allison Niederer | Yeah. It's terrifying as a parent to hear this. And back to the Realtors comment, all of us have an investment in our community, all of our property values and our property taxes, which fund our schools are related to how well our schools do. And I hope that we'll stand up for all the kids in the district. Thank you. |
| 03:26:24.20 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. David Peter, followed by Melanie Maharshan. |
| 03:26:30.36 | David Suto | Good evening, City Council. I could probably talk to you for about a half an hour, but I think I'll try to keep it to two minutes. You know, one thing, since we're here in front of City Council, I thought I would posit to staff probably is the City Council needs to be really careful about wading into this just as the landlord of the two biggest private schools in this district and the fact that the city has a very large financial instrument based off the income of those two schools. I would just caution the city council when the attorney general is looking into all these other, that the city just be careful about how they provide their input into this debate at an official capacity. So getting to what I really wanted to say is, you know, Willow Creek was, you know, basically built on the tenant that they could create a small school that wouldn't have a large impact on the rest of the school, but it's grown. And at this point, we have about two times, more than two times as many kids in our school district as we had 10 or 15 years ago. And I think it's evident to me that at this point we have two small public schools and we don't have sufficient funding for both of our schools. You know, we have, recently we have increasing pension and facilities costs. And along with the increasing student population, our costs are increasing faster than district revenues. This year we have something like a $600,000 deficit. And that's where a large part of this, you know, $1.1 or $1.2 million comes from, is trying to close that deficit at our school district, which we absolutely have to. Otherwise we'd be taken over by the state. I think several years ago, this city came to understand that it couldn't meet its obligations under Prop 13 restrictions and provided more money through Measure O. And I think it's really incumbent on this community to look at that again and look at a parcel tax to augment the money that we have if we want to provide the resources we need to for our kids you know 40 to 50 percent of the kids at Willow Creek right now are not performing at grade level and 70 to 80 percent of the kids at Bayside MLK are not at grade level right now. And you saw there's no intervention at Bayside MLK. We only have intervention up to grade 2 at Willow Creek right now. So if a kid has deficits, we don't have any program for them at grade 3 and above. Thank you. |
| 03:29:35.64 | Abbott Chambers | Thank you, David. |
| 03:29:36.16 | Joan Cox | Can I just clarify, David, what were you talking about about the city benefiting from the school properties? |
| 03:29:43.40 | David Suto | We have the COP, which is funded by income from the private schools at the old MLK, yeah, two private schools. |
| 03:29:49.44 | Joan Cox | From L.E.C. Francais. Yeah, two private schools. That has nothing to do with the public school district. |
| 03:29:54.92 | David Suto | School district. But the population at those schools is based on, in some part, about the lack of services provided by the two public schools in our district. |
| 03:30:09.89 | Unknown | It's a nexus we're not going to make. |
| 03:30:10.94 | Jill Hoffman | Hold on, let me make it, I'm going to clarify this right now. We don't own, the city of Sausaleo does not own the Willow Creek Academy campus. |
| 03:30:20.88 | Unknown | He's talking about the two properties. that. |
| 03:30:23.05 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:30:23.07 | Jill Hoffman | He's saying that because Ellie's safe. No, no, no. I know what he's saying now. When he started his comments, he said that we should not wait into this because we owned the public school buildings and we had a conflict, which is what he was implying. |
| 03:30:23.27 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:30:23.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:30:23.34 | Joan Cox | I'm not cognizant. |
| 03:30:24.77 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:30:24.79 | Joan Cox | Bye. |
| 03:30:24.83 | Unknown | No, no. |
| 03:30:25.13 | Joan Cox | I know, I know what he's saying. |
| 03:30:25.97 | Vicki Nichols | I know. |
| 03:30:26.58 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:30:28.42 | David Suto | We should not wait any time. |
| 03:30:32.91 | David Suto | which is why No, the private school building. |
| 03:30:34.58 | Jill Hoffman | in schools. Let me finish. Let's clarify this. The city of Sausalito does not own Willow Creek Academy campus, correct? |
| 03:30:42.09 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:30:42.36 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:30:42.38 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 03:30:42.43 | Jill Hoffman | And we certainly don't own Bayside MLK, which is located in Marin City. |
| 03:30:46.17 | Unknown | Correct. And that's not what I said. He said the two private schools, meaning Lise and No, I did. You can go look at it later. I sent you two private sources. |
| 03:30:51.73 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. THE CITY IS A CITY IS A CITY |
| 03:30:52.03 | David Suto | I DON'T KNOW. |
| 03:30:58.09 | Unknown | Peter Melanie, then Bruce Huff. |
| 03:31:01.23 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. I appreciate the principal and the head of school giving us those reports of their programs. That was very informative and very interesting. I'm also glad that the issue of the financial situation in the district came up tonight. At the meeting of the school board on February 14th, I asked the trustees the question of why. Why are you causing this problem when solutions are readily at hand for equitable funding of all students in the school district? And I'm going to ask that a question again this coming Thursday at the school board meeting. I'm hoping that the members of that board that are in attendance, and I'm sorry that no one can be listening because both the television broadcast and computer streaming have failed here today. And so I'm sorry we don't have an audience that's not in the room. But that question is really, mysterious one for me because there's a lot of answers available regarding that are on the shelf got to be spent. about monies that can be redistributed between the two campuses, the question of the allocation of funds for overhead and administration, et cetera, et cetera, lots of available answers are there and need to be addressed. So I need to know, and I think everybody in this district needs to know, why are the trustees. when I'm using the words behaving badly. It's really that simple because solutions are there. I don't understand it. All students can, in fact, be served by this district. Thank you. |
| 03:32:43.45 | Unknown | Thank you, Peter. Melanie. Bruce Vicki. Yeah, three in. No, no, no, I'll put you in the middle. |
| 03:33:12.07 | Unknown | Something peaceful? |
| 03:33:13.12 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm not sure. Thank you. Hi, Mr. |
| 03:33:30.01 | Melanie Maharshan | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilmembers and staff and thank you to all of our |
| 03:33:30.72 | Ed Labar | Mayor. |
| 03:33:34.65 | Melanie Maharshan | school and district and head of school presenters. I'm Melanie Maharshan, the mom of a Willow Creek eighth grader. I'm here tonight to share a video created by Willow Creek Academy students who reside both in Sausalito and Marin City. The impetus for this video is that there are a lot of ideas about what kind of campus Willow Creek is who goes there, how students learn and interact, and what the school is like. ideas held by people who sometimes haven't had much interaction with the students or the school themselves. When students heard about what some adults think about their school and their experience, Willow Creekers decided to come together to show our community here in Sausalito and in Marin City, but also all over Marin and the state of California, who they are, why they love their school, and why we should too. Students collaborated on the content, shot much of the video themselves, and worked with parent volunteers Stacy Nemo and Tyler Manson on production and editing. |
| 03:34:34.75 | Unknown | Hi, my name is Scarlett. And I go to Willow Creek Academy. Hi, my name is Alois. Bonjour, je m'appelle Kendra. |
| 03:34:41.48 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 03:34:43.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:34:43.50 | Unknown | I must say, |
| 03:34:45.34 | Unknown | Hello, my name is DJ. Thank you. |
| 03:34:46.79 | Unknown | My name is Kieran. My name is Kieran. |
| 03:34:49.44 | Ida Green | My name is Jonathan and I go to Willow Creek. |
| 03:34:51.91 | Unknown | Hi, my name is PJ and I'm a student at Willow Creek Academy. Hi, my name is Hannah. My name is Charlotte. And we go to Willow Creek Academy. Hi, my name is Emery. I love coming to school here. My name is Mizell. I am a little baby. My name is Tessa, we're students at Willow Creek, and we'd like to tell you what an amazing place Willow Creek is. I love the diversity and how everyone is welcome here. |
| 03:35:15.65 | Ida Green | All the kids are nice. It's why I come here. |
| 03:35:18.50 | Unknown | I love it for the healthy food. I like Chef G's cooking. A lot. Pasta, mac and cheese. roasted cauliflower, and apples and oranges. |
| 03:35:29.50 | Unknown | I love it for its diversity and welcoming community. |
| 03:35:32.93 | Unknown | This place is teaching me how to be a kind, respectful, tolerant person. I love it for the academics and the programs that are in place to help us succeed. Thank you. |
| 03:35:41.20 | Unknown | I know we need your support. So please don't cut our budget. |
| 03:35:44.93 | Unknown | We need your support. |
| 03:35:46.58 | Unknown | We really need every penny we have. Because making the world a better place starts here. Because making the world a better, more tolerant, nicer place starts here. |
| 03:35:56.83 | Melanie Maharshan | starts here. |
| 03:35:57.75 | Unknown | here. |
| 03:35:59.09 | Unknown | 13. |
| 03:36:04.54 | Melanie Maharshan | Thank you. So if I could take just another minute, |
| 03:36:08.43 | Unknown | 22 seconds. |
| 03:36:09.70 | Melanie Maharshan | Okay. |
| 03:36:09.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:36:10.97 | Melanie Maharshan | Well, I just... I just want to say that while we're adulting around these kids, as my daughter would say, they're gonna live the reality that comes out of this. And so I know I thank you for all of your questions as we keep that in mind, that they will live this reality. So thank you and namaste. |
| 03:36:32.58 | Unknown | Thanks for the video. |
| 03:36:36.99 | Unknown | Bruce Vicki Alex. |
| 03:36:39.37 | Bruce Huff | Hi guys. As many of you know, I was, I've been involved with the Sausalito Marin City School District for 25 years. I first started when my foster son attended Bayside in 1995. and continued through a board recall. I served on the Board of Trustees for four years as Vice President. along with Steve Frazier and Sherry Thornton. Um, And I'm one of the founders of Willow Creek Academy. Little Creek Academy was founded by parents. It was not by a corporation or an organization. It's not a private school. It was founded by parents of Sausalito and Marin City who cared about their kids. I... This first of all, I commend counsel for holding this hearing and shedding light on this issue. I'm astounded by some of the comments that were made earlier. I'm astounded by Mr. Sudo's kind of quasi threat to city council to stay out of it. the And I'm astounded by the superintendent's statement that the district has one school. I understand the legal basis for that statement, But. I don't understand how any superintendent can look at 500 kids and not think that the district represents all 500 kids. So that being said, THE SCHOOL DISTRICT HAS ONE SCHOOL. representing 110 kids, 90 kids in district, and fewer kids from Marin City than will Creek Services. However, The school district has all of the money. So if you take, if you simply TAKE A BROAD ASSESSMENT. that 80% of the students are serviced by Willow Creek Academy then it would follow that 80% of the tax revenues would come from the community that supports the school. and to watch A school that has been underfunded from the first day, from the day it opened with 32 children. My son was the first student that was enrolled in that school I was fortunate enough to give the first commencement speech to the first graduating class of that school. So I'm very passionate about it. but to listen to THE DISTRICT REPRESENTATIVES THAT control all of the money and represent 20% of the students. to me is a travesty. and it's pathetic. And if there was a way to create a charter district At this point, I would encourage, I would be involved. I would encourage anybody to be involved. and to remove the school from the district. Thank you. |
| 03:39:42.44 | Unknown | Thank you. Vicki, then Alex Canton, and then Jeff Jacob, and then |
| 03:39:51.15 | Vicki Nichols | My name is Vicki Nichols. was not going to speak about this, but I am glad to have the opportunity to come and listen to the presentations. I infrequently go to the board's meetings in Marin City because I am trying to understand these issues. I heard two things tonight that have been troubling to me that I think speak to some of the confusion and strife one of which I hope we can clear up and eliminate. and that is the slide i think it was slide 19 which is the cost per student my understanding is that public schools the public traditional schools are required to have superintendents so from my old budget knowledge when i know that that salary's in there and it's decided divided by a few number of students that cost per student cost is going to be high. We continue to use these per student costs. I think we need to just stop that. Number one. The other thing I'd like to correct based on my understanding, and I'm not saying I'm correct, but these are slight omissions that in these conversations we aren't hearing. And I think they're things that help us not come together, but keep us more separate because we don't have all the information. By the way, I'm not sticking up on either side. And truth be told, I was in the two Bayside classrooms this morning, teaching them history. about the Marin ship and I was at the Marin City School yesterday. So I'm in both the classroom with the historical society. I want all the kids to have the resources they need. Um, But there was a comment made about the grant, and my understanding with that grant is the stipulation of receiving that money and giving that money for A charter school was that the deed then has to be restricted by the district that those facilities can only be used for charter schools. That's a big thing to think about when you're a district and you have a fiduciary responsibility if you've tied up property for future use. I'd like to understand if that was part of the reasoning. I thought I heard that in district meetings. So these are just little examples of things. We're not talking about what the law says that these minimum budgets need to be and reserve funds we know the city has these requirements I think we need to look at all of this and you know I would just stipulate now both of the schools are doing the best they can and they're great, and we forget about that and get down to what can the numbers be in the MOU that everybody can live with, that's what needs to be decided here. And I know what I'm saying is not popular, I'm gonna walk back to my seat, but I feel just like this has not been part of the discussion. Thank you. It just feels like and omitting some of the whole broad discussion that we need to have about how we sort this out. |
| 03:42:54.51 | Unknown | Thank you. Where do I leave off? Alex, Jeff Jacobs, Barbara Sapienza. |
| 03:43:03.46 | Alex Woie | Thank you, Joe. Thank you to the council for hosting this meeting and including Willow Creek in your discussions. Obviously, it's a huge part of our community, as well as Bayside. We've had picnics between our schools trying to encourage one community and I am one of the parents that does support BROADENING OUT. those connections and also just increasing collaboration between the two schools that's essential What I just wanted to point out to basically anyone who's listening that Bayside seems to be doing so much better, the enthusiasm and fortitude. that we're seeing from the current leadership is so encouraging and just a word to just keep going. And it's because we know a rising tide lifts all boats. That said, there is such a tremendous fiduciary responsibility to both schools and the district. It is absolutely essential for Willow Creek to be funded at its current level, if not more. Otherwise, the achievements that have been made will most likely slide back and and that from that point there could be a very unfortunate cascade of people not enrolling and then you know, the school not doing as well. There is still an achievement gap there. and there's a lot more work to be done all levels at both schools and I would just encourage everyone to stay focused on that issue and highly encourage the school board to not cut the funding. It would not serve either school to do that. Thank you. |
| 03:45:08.03 | Unknown | Thank you, Alex. Jeff Jacob, Barbara,. |
| 03:45:17.83 | Jeff Jacob | I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS helping to take care of a three-year-old, so I guess I have a little status to be talking about schools on Friday of this week there will be a strike. climate. among schools in the United States and around the world. This movement was started by a 16-year-old that If the conversation is about money and funding, that we come to a dead end. if it's about the real future of children we have an opportunity to link together Willow Creek and Bayside. We know why there's a lawsuit for the same reason that Martin Luther King spoke about, same three reasons, that have been the plague on the United States for quite some time. racism, here in Sausalito. Materialism, otherwise known as classism, and militarism, which is our prison industrial complex, which hurts the anchor outs and hurts mainly Marin City and the people that go to Bayside, their parents. which makes it much more difficult for them to be able TO RAISE THEIR KIDS. school in Vallejo. And in Berkeley, And around the world, schools around the world, will walk out of their schools and deal with the issue that Marin County has not dealt with. Its officials have not dealt with it. I think because of conflicts of interest, We don't know if Jill Hoffman has any stock in any charter schools. She has not disclosed any of her finances. There will be a recall election here and a politically aware populace and not people who bow down to money anymore. That is over. Marin County produces 41 0.6 metric tons per household of carbon output. |
| 03:47:40.31 | Jeff Jacob | That is 10 times the amount of India It's four times. THE AMOUNT of Mexico, It is three times Almost. the amount of France. |
| 03:47:58.25 | Jeff Jacob | The kids are gonna be the ones who suffer from their parents' mistakes. The reason is because the politicians are voting their pocketbooks and they are not disclosing. where they are earning their money. And the citizens are very concerned, and the children are concerned. This Friday, there will be an action. Thank you. Barbara. |
| 03:48:22.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:48:25.96 | Unknown | Thank you very much everyone for having this Thank you. meeting tonight. I have been sitting here I wanted to be actually, I wanted to bring a cake here tonight that would feed everybody. because I'm a baker. I'm a teacher, I'm a special ed teacher, I'm a psychologist, I feel there's this, attention. that rather than lawsuits, we need to be bringing ourselves together somehow. There's a villa in Pompeii where They do a mystery, and the Villa of Mysteries is a feminine thing, and they break cake together. It's like breaking bread together. I don't like to see one of our schools suing the district. I feel that energy is really negative. It's not productive for our children. I feel as though both of the schools, I love Willow Creek, I've been over there. I love the joy, What Charis said is true. I love Bayside. I've been working there for 14 years once a week. And I've seen the crippling effects of a change that happened with the kids when they left their campus where Willow Creek is. and I've worked beside the teachers for all those years. And what I want to say is that there's something positive happening. And there's a lot of a long way to go. And when I see that $30,000, I can't believe it because I sit with those kids once a week and I don't see where the $30,000 is going for each kid. I really don't see it yet. Maybe someday when we have doctors there and we have family therapy and we have counselors in every room, I'd say, yeah, well maybe it is gonna cost $30 a kid for those 100 kids. and it's going to be a lot cheaper than if they go to prison. So I think we really need to look at these things that we're throwing out and really of, have some kind of communication between the schools because there's good people in both schools. There are absolutely beautiful people in both schools And so I just want to say I want to bring a cake here that smells beautiful and smells like almonds and just wakes us up because these, what we're talking about, I think can be resolved. I don't think that the district is going to shut those kids out. I know these people. I know Ida. I know Bonnie. and I know Josh and I know Carolyn and I know them all and they're not going to shut out We have time. We're under a big pressure now. We're being investigated. We can't even talk about things. I don't know what this situation is. None of us do. But we can't use panic and fear. We really can't. Anyway, thanks for listening to me. |
| 03:51:28.33 | Unknown | Thank you, Barbara. So, Public Lawmen is still open. This, tonight, is an event that we actually have annually. We like to hear from the school district, and this isn't a... you know, like an appeal or a item where we have two sides. But because we had two different presentations and then a lot of public comment, I'm gonna offer either group. Does anybody wanna make a comment from either of the two presentations to clear up any of the information that you may have heard? We're not, I guess, |
| 03:51:56.61 | Unknown | you know |
| 03:51:58.02 | Unknown | Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, very quickly. So would you like to as well, Tarina, if you heard anything? Great, thank you. |
| 03:52:04.05 | Jim Henry | This is just a very quick response to a couple of comments that were just made. I share the wish and hope that things could just get better, but unfortunately that's not a good strategy when you've got serious responsibility with a lot of urgency for young lives and their education. Second, the comment about the 28,000, which seems to have cost a lot of attention. I'm a numbers person. The overhead numbers were deliberately deleted along with any other shared services or the district numbers and anything that was an administrative cost as provided to us by the district, the superintendent's compensation was out of those numbers otherwise it would have been over 40,000 and the last thing was the comments about the grant request that was Simply a request to proceed with an application to keep the option open the district board still had Absolute ability to decide whether or not to proceed. Thank you. Thank you |
| 03:53:08.36 | Unknown | THE END OF |
| 03:53:11.90 | Unknown | So I'm going to bring it back up here. Again, we make comments. We have no jurisdiction on the budget or the grants or anything like that. But we should make comments to what we've heard tonight. So who would like to start? Joan, go ahead. |
| 03:53:24.78 | Joan Cox | Jones. So I want to thank all of the presenters tonight. We are a tough crowd and these are tough issues. Everybody, every year someone asks me what are my top priorities and my top priority for Sausalito is at schools. And it's so frustrating to me because I can't do anything about my top priority other than try to listen, try to understand, try to have conversations. It's super frustrating to be a public official with no ability to uh, no official capacity to weigh in, influence the most challenging issue facing my city, in my opinion. um, It is disappointing to observe two schools abdicating against one another and in litigation instead of collaborating on behalf of all of the district's students. I was so inspired and impressed by the presentations by both of the principals about what's going on in the schools. We have astounding and amazing ideas. concepts and plans to succeed, there's no reason that we shouldn't be collaborating together to carry out those plans on behalf of all of our students. Um, You know, we have a shared history, Marin City and Sausalito, that is also inspiring to me. And I would love to see us come back together in the collaborative manner that we cooperated back during World War II when we built the Liberty ships in the Marin ships. Um, I was very, disheartened to hear the curious statement that there's only one school in the Sausalito Marin City School District and that's the only reason I asked about the grant funding if indeed They are two independent public bodies then one would not be dependent on the other to be able to apply for grant funding If there are if there's only one school then how is the AG finding that segregation exists between the districts two schools? So it makes no sense to me to hear this statement that there's one school. I'm not sure. but I think, There should be I THINK WE NEED TO combine with Mill Valley, I mean there needs to be We need to take our schools and combine and collaborate. Mill Valley is dying for space. We have space. We need students in order to be able to accomplish the economies of scale to spend less money on each kid in order to benefit each kid. As Tarina correctly pointed out, it's very politically challenging to do that. But I have spoken with city council members in Mill Valley who would be more than willing to negotiate some sort of MOU as opposed to a merger. in order to accomplish some of the economies of scale that could benefit both districts. |
| 03:56:37.36 | Joan Cox | Willow Creek is already on record supporting any option feasible to solve the budget issues and achievement gap. And I heard that also from the, from the, BOARD. Members who were campaigning in this recent campaign and so I am hoping that um the district will more thoroughly explore these options. Our schools can benefit from pooling resources, identifying synergies of operation seems to me to be the optimal approach. I'll reiterate what one of our speakers said, which is that $9 million for 500 students should be plenty. So, |
| 03:57:20.00 | Joan Cox | And something that I advocated when I was running for office here is transparency. I believe transparency is key to efficient and appropriate public function. and I think it is an absolute mistake for a lawsuit to be litigated in closed session with no opportunity for the public to weigh in on the decision makers decision making prior to that decision making becoming finalized. And so I think it's absolutely critical that there be some manner in which the public can be informed about what's going on before it is resolved in a final manner. Anything different is absolutely contrary to the precepts of California's Sunshine Act, which asks that we shine a light on all of the decision making of public officials and that the public be able to weigh in and provide their opinions to those public officials before the public officials make their decisions. I received a letter from a resident asking that the city of Sausalito join in the lawsuit filed by Willow Creek against Sausalito Marin City School District. I think that is absurd. I don't think Sausalito has standing nor... you know, the last thing I want to see is this lawsuit happening. I want to see a way for these two agencies to cooperate with one another. So I don't believe our joining a lawsuit is productive. Instead, I want to leave both agencies with two questions, which is how can we be involved and how can we help? Thank you. |
| 03:59:13.23 | Unknown | We'd like to go next. Right? Thank you. |
| 03:59:16.77 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:59:19.14 | Unknown | I will. |
| 03:59:22.78 | Jill Hoffman | Any comments? So just to echo what Joe said, this is not an issue that is within our jurisdiction as the city council, but thank you to Ida and the other members of the Sausalito Marin City School District Board for your time and your effort and your attention to these incredibly important issues. It's not an easy job that you've taken on. But it's not within our jurisdiction it is one of the most important things to any successful community is good public schools and so I feel you know from our role as the City Council that we have to do everything that we can to support the school district to support willow creek and to provide good quality public education to our to the kids and that's the kids in sausalito but it's also the kids in our shared 94965 zip code which is also our school district um i've raised two kids here in sausalito both of of them have attended Willow Creek, and it's something that's allowed our family to stay here. It's also incredibly important to the families in Marin City and in Sausalito to have a place to educate their kids. I couldn't agree more with Mr. Van Hane and with Tara Seekens that the priority needs to be for high needs kids at both our public schools and in closing the achievement gap. This is a struggle nationwide and we are living it here. And I think both schools have taken good steps to get there. So I feel like that should be the priority for our dollars. And I would really hope that the school district can look at all of the kids as a group and prioritize closing the achievement gap at both schools. |
| 04:01:31.07 | Jill Hoffman | I do agree with many of the speakers and with Council Member Cox that we need to find solutions. And we've heard some today. Mrs. Sapienza spoke about cake, which is a wonderful way to start. And we have had one of the things about The Little League, which my son was involved in, and Willow Creek, and the schools, is we have had family to family outreach. And there is dialogue at that level. you But I think there does need to be more dialogue. And I would echo Joan's offer to do whatever it takes to share dialogue, to reach out. I am very supportive. The idea of merging with Mill Valley is very depressing to me because I feel like our school district has so many unique characteristics, just like our two communities of Marin City and Sausalito. And I've already had to send my kids to Mill Valley for a lot of sports programs, but I'll have to say I'd rather have them practicing in the Manzanita Gym any day than at the Mill Valley Community Center. That might be a long-term solution, but it's not really one of my favorites. I do like the idea of figuring out efficiencies and talking about creating one school in our district. Without regard at this point to whether that's a charter school or a traditional school or some hybrid. But I think that that, given all of the administrative costs and the huge budget amounts that have gone into administration at both schools for only 500 kids. I think that's a model that really needs to be explored. And I hope that that's something that the district will take seriously. Other solutions have been a parcel tax, which David Sudow has raised repeatedly. I believe that we should be able to educate 500 children, including a very large number of high needs kids with $9 million. So I am not a big fan of another tax on our jurisdiction, but I'm also not a fan of how our budget discussions are shaking out. I also agree, I do not think that, I would not support, at least at this time, any joining of the lawsuit by the city of Sausalito. And I guess my final point is I do believe in transparency, and it is very frustrating to be continually told that public meetings, that We can't have a discussion because of an investigation that is already finalized. So one of the ideas that I'd like to throw out to the council is given the importance of this budget decision, given the amount of revenue from Sausalito that is involved, is that we reach out to the Attorney General to be involved and to have a close session with the attorney general or to get documents and there is an exception under the Public Records Act that the attorney general can share THEIR OWNERS. confidential information with other public agencies if that public agency agrees to keep that information confidential. So I don't know if our city attorney has thoughts on that, but I would be supportive of a letter. I feel like if the school district is not committed to having an open, session at the end of this discussion with the Attorney General's office and I feel like we need to understand what direction that dialogue is going because of the huge impact that it has on our community. So I do again really appreciate the district coming and I really think these meetings just like our meetings with the fire district and other neighboring public entities are really, really important. And I really appreciate both Willow Creek and the district coming tonight. And I really hope that we can find solutions |
| 04:05:45.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:05:45.95 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-hmm. I do have... |
| 04:05:47.84 | Unknown | up. |
| 04:05:48.76 | Jill Hoffman | I echo both of what my fellow council members said. I think the important thing not to lose though is in this discussion and some of my questions that I had is that I am, I do believe that the number one priority in full goal and focus is excellent schools either in Marin City or at Willow Creek Academy. I mean I think that's our responsibility as a district, as people that live in the district, as taxpayers in the district that we – most of us here are fully committed to that and trying to figure out what's the best way to approach that. in both districts. is why we're here and why we're, why we are, why we're having you here and why we're interested in our public schools in Sausalito. And so thank you so much for coming. I meant to say that first. But thank you to everybody who came and gave their presentations today. know yeah I would be supportive of that of asking the Attorney General for a closed session with us and understanding what's going on and so however we need to do that if we need to agendize that or how we I would I would support that and and beyond that I I want to echo that I hope that we can work toward a solution that supports both the schools because I think it's it's pretty clear that defunding Willow Creek Academy by 1.2 million dollars is not supportive of that school so I would hope that another solution can be found that serves both of the schools. |
| 04:07:22.25 | Ed Labar | You can still leave it either way. I'll do it if you want. |
| 04:07:24.58 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:07:24.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:07:25.09 | Ed Labar | Thank you. |
| 04:07:31.45 | Ray Withy | And thank everybody, thank you to everybody who's here. I learned a lot tonight. And I too was very impressed with hearing from the principals and hearing the programs, and they're very different programs. and the energy and the excitement of the leadership at executing those programs came across. Um, And that's great. I'm not sure. Last time, The school district was here. It was back in 2017. And I'm gonna be quite frank, I lost it. I lost my course. You know, not a good thing to do. Not a good thing to do when you're a mayor, right? In looking back at that, and I always go back and look at hearings, in meetings, I like to hear either what foolish thing was said by whom, and usually it's sometimes me, or often it's me. And things, so I do see the difference and I see things have changed. But in thinking about it, why did I get so upset? And I got upset. THE FAMILY IS For the same sort of reason I'm going to try not to get upset tonight, and that is, I'm not sure. At that time, We had We'd sort of, in the previous year or so, elected a board member to the school board. |
| 04:09:17.95 | Ed Labar | work. |
| 04:09:21.66 | Ray Withy | who was feeling the need to recuse herself. I'm not sure. Because of either a perception or her attorney telling her that she was possibly under some legal jeopardy if she didn't. And that was pretty annoying to me. It's almost like, Certain parties were going out of their way to nullify an election. It's almost a little... I don't know, I was trying to think, you know, is this like Alice in Wonderland upside down? don't make sense? I mean, From what I'm... Because of the lack of transparency now, we're in a situation where We don't know what's going on. No member of the public knows what's going on. Every resident of the district needs to understand that nobody knows. Nobody can be, and I respect the legal, thing. I'm not blaming those who feel that they need to follow what the Attorney General told them, that they can't, you know, I fully respect that. No, my problem is with the Attorney General's office. My problem is that That office has inserted itself into this and has then put a layer of profound secrecy over thing. A deal for how to satisfy the attorney general's issues are going to be made behind closed doors with absolutely no input from any member of the public That is then going to go to a court for stipulation, and only then Are we, the public of the district, going to be told what's been going on? Okay? Every resident, of the district needs to understand that's what's going on. Unfortunately, nobody can hear here tonight, unfortunately. |
| 04:11:46.11 | Unknown | you have videos. |
| 04:11:46.60 | Ray Withy | though, so that will be played. But this is really serious. |
| 04:11:46.75 | Unknown | So that will be played. |
| 04:11:51.97 | Ray Withy | I mean, just stand back for a minute. This is really serious. So then just to, and you almost couldn't make this up, I mean, to then go to the next stage, You know, unless within the last 48 hours this has been cured, We now have another board member. who was recently elected. who was, who, you know, second place on the ticket Thank you. THE END OF you know, And has now been told. And I said, unless it's been corrected in the last 48 hours, it's now been told, He is not allowed, this is Josh Barrow, he is not allowed to actually attend those closed sessions. So, The Attorney General's office has basically disenfranchised one of the elected members of the board. Um... Don't you think as residents we should be a little bit worried? that the power of the state Can actually nullify an election? I'm worried, I'm really worried about that. It's wrong, it's just plain wrong. So just a couple of other thoughts. Hey, Jeff. |
| 04:13:16.37 | Ed Labar | Just go. |
| 04:13:20.84 | Ray Withy | Chill, eh? Um... Couple of other thoughts. I heard someone passionately say This is terrifying as a parent to hear this. Yeah, but it's more terrifying as a kid. |
| 04:13:41.92 | Ray Withy | you know? Yes, Melon is right. They will be living this reality. I know it. I've lived it. It's so deep and burned in my memory. I can remember its details 55 years after it happened. |
| 04:14:02.85 | Ray Withy | So, I really think that you We need leadership from somewhere. the State California isn't providing it. We can do it. We're like bystanders watching the slow motion train wreck. And there's nothing we can do. Nothing. But guess what? You and you and you and me and you is gonna be on our watch that this happened. And there's nothing we can do about it. |
| 04:14:39.85 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:14:40.01 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:14:40.02 | Unknown | you |
| 04:14:41.25 | Ray Withy | Nothing. So let's go a bit higher up the food chain, shall we? Political food chain. It's also going to be on Supervisor Sears' watch. It's going to be on Senator McGuire's watch. It's going to be on Congressman Huffman's watch. It's going to be on Assemblymember McGuire's watch. They've got a bit more clout than we have. We need leadership and we need leadership to emerge from somewhere to help solve this problem. And I dearly hope, for all of the 500 little souls that live in this and go to this district schools, that somebody will step forward and try and solve this problem. |
| 04:15:29.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you all for your comments. And again, to everybody who's been here tonight, thank you for your comments, for your presentations, for putting yourself on the line to be here tonight. I will agree that the highlight is to hear the positive approach to at least two educators and the people involved in educating how they want to deal with the classrooms and the educational process. I love that. And that's why we often have this meeting. This year this meeting has a little different flavor as we've heard. I'm a parent of a child who did go to Willow Creek. I'm a resident obviously of Sausalito and I'm the mayor of Sausalito. in that role as the mayor of this town and my responsibility to the citizens of Sausalito that exceeds maybe the district. And I want success for the district as a parent. I want success for the district as a resident. I want the entire district to be strong. And as a realtor, when I go into a room, I want someone to say, we want to move to Sausalito because it has great schools or school or whatever. I don't care. I don't care what the name is. I don't care if it's got a charter or independent or dependent. I want somebody to say, I live in Sausalito because it's got great schools or I'm moving to Sausalito because it's got great schools or I'm staying in Sausalito because it's got great schools. And I want the person that sits in this chair to tell its constituents that you have a great school. And so that's where I was hoping one of the goals would be, of somebody who got up and said, we want the same thing. We want Sausalito to be on par with Mill Valley, Tiburon, Corte Madera, Larkspur, without any excuses, to have that as the goal, to say this is what we want. So when we make decisions or when we opine or when we set our, what we need, that the goal is at least there. We want something that the other communities around us have. quality education. We don't have to define it. We don't have to call it something. We just want to say it's great quality education. Like the California Constitution says, we should have. we should all have. Everybody. But I'm speaking for the residents of Sausalito. And, To an extent, we have that. Now, I personally would like to see both schools improve and not just closing the gap. I think closing a gap is great, but then I want the gap to raise really high. So yeah, let's bring everybody up, and then let's go a step higher. And let's make another goal to go a step higher so that we are on par with the communities around us, educational opportunity for free public education, regardless of what you call it. So, That's the extent of what we can do here. is set that goal or set that expectation. That's what we do with the fire district. That's what we do with sanitation. That's what we do with transportation. We set the goal for a certain level of quality service for our community. Through that, we might help get involved with those, offer guidance, leadership, peer support, hours. I know we have so many residents that offer hours in the classrooms. We could offer support and be that, but we have to hold the service provider to our community accountable to the highest level that we expect, and we judge that based on the area we are. we have challenges, maybe we have different challenges. I think we have opportunities as well. I think we have tremendous opportunities actually. And I look at, you always say the 900 schools because when I was looking at how great schools were graded, it was back in the APIs and we had 900 schools all around us and we were really happy with an 800 school and a low 800 school because it got distinguished school but still it was, you know, much lower but it was great. I want better than that. I want all of us to be 900 schools or a 900 school or two 900 schools. And if we can't say that that's our goal, I don't know what we're working for. I don't know what we're leading towards. I think we do need leadership and I think it should be a goal that says we want something that's better than what we have Across the board and better than anything we've had in the past So, I would like at some point this body to, and I don't know if tonight's the night, but we need to come to a conclusion on what our expectation is for a service provider. And if it's getting involved in a certain way or getting involved in, those are all parts of it. But we have to say, just like we would to a fire district or a transportation district, any other body else that serves our community, on behalf of our residents, we require a certain level. And that should at least be the goal, and then how do we help that group get there? So, um... That's the passion, and I don't want to be the mayor that says the stupid things either. Not stupid, but passionate things. But I'm turning into it. Thank you. |
| 04:20:20.90 | Unknown | I THINK IT'S A GREAT |
| 04:20:21.32 | Unknown | Thank you. That's the agreement I want us to have. So that we can say, whatever you have to go through, this is where we expect. And I want our residents to say that. I think all of our residents would be here lined up saying, I don't care what you call your school, I don't care what you do, just make sure it's one of the best schools or best districts in the county. That's not... That's not a bad goal to have. So, um, I'll leave it at that. I don't know what our next step is. We've put a couple things out. I think we have a challenge, I mean, we have a discussion to have if we want to pursue that. It looks like we might have a consensus to pursue how we might get involved with the AG process. |
| 04:21:01.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:21:03.64 | Unknown | Is there any other conclusions we'd like to come to as a group? |
| 04:21:07.42 | Jill Hoffman | So just on reaching out to the Attorney General, Should we just authorize a letter? to go out. |
| 04:21:15.34 | Joan Cox | I would authorize the city attorney to figure out how best to reach out and to proceed with that process. in coordination with the mayor. |
| 04:21:24.42 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:24.43 | Joan Cox | All right. |
| 04:21:25.02 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:25.14 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:21:30.22 | Jill Hoffman | And then just on a personal note before we leave, I think this might unfortunately be Tara Seekin's last city council meeting. But anyway, I just want to thank her for her amazing service. I know there's still quite a few months left of school. But it's been really inspiring. So thank you so much for all you've done. |
| 04:21:55.35 | Unknown | Now, I will take my mayor hat off and put when I was a parent at the school hat off, and Tara did an incredible job transitioning and being involved as the assistant head of school as she came in. And then going through the transition when the head of school left and the role you filled and how you brought it up. Amazing. So thank you for that. Any other comments? We have direction. We're good. We're going to take five. The good news is, even if we had kept the ferry landing on, we would have killed it anyway tonight. So that wasn't a staff decision. That was a matter of time. We do have one more item tonight, so stay tuned. Nobody leave. It's a good item. We're going to talk about the fishing pier. Thank you, Steve, for staying here. |
| 04:22:41.97 | Unknown | We're gonna get started. All right, everybody, thank you for staying here tonight. We have a great item. You talk to me. |
| 04:22:50.51 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:22:52.00 | Unknown | You scare me. Thanks. Sausalito Rotary Fishing Pier Rehabilitation Project. And Steve Frazier, you are going to present this. |
| 04:23:02.09 | Steve Frazier | No, actually, I'm going to introduce a couple of people. I'm Steve Frazier. I am a member of the Rotary Club. I've been in it for about 40 years, and I've been on the city council. Believe it or not, I was on the school board, but I won't go there. Anyway, I'm simply going to introduce the president of the Sausalito Rotary Club in connection with the proposed municipal pier that we would like to build for our community with your support of some kind or another. And I'm also here because I'm the most good-looking and dignified guy and a member, so I'm the first one to start it off right. |
| 04:23:02.93 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 04:23:42.01 | Michael Rex | The most harmful. |
| 04:23:43.35 | Steve Frazier | And with that, I'd like to introduce Mr. Ed Labar, who is the president of the Sausalito Rotary Club, and we'll tell you, and then Mike Rex, who is the architect, and that's his work, who has done a great, both of them have done a great job for the committee. Thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. |
| 04:23:59.73 | Ed Labar | Yeah. |
| 04:23:59.87 | Unknown | Thank you, Steve. |
| 04:24:02.99 | Ed Labar | Hi, Ed. And thank you all for hearing us at this late time. We sat through something that I think needed to be heard, and I appreciate your patience. We have a committee here in the Sausalito Rotary dedicated to doing something about the pier, restoring the pier. And I think you all walked by it. And it's not a nice thing to have in this city. It's certainly something that needs to be restored or removed. And right now, it's just leaching creosote into the bay. And it could be something that the city and Rotary could be proud of. And that's what we're working towards. |
| 04:24:03.06 | Unknown | I had to. |
| 04:24:03.38 | Steve Frazier | Thank you. |
| 04:24:47.98 | Ed Labar | We have a committee that consists of myself and Dan Reiner, who's over here from, you know, he used to be with Bank of Marin, but he also was on the water district. And Jeff Kingston is on the board. He's going to be now, I mean, on the committee, and he's now going to be in charge of it. He's an engineer and is also in charge of the development of the new project for the Saucelado Marin City wastewater project that we're working on. And so we've got Steve Fraser, Dan Reiner, Jeff Kingston, myself. And Jim Cimcalo. Okay, don't forget about him because he's real passionate about this as well. Now, we've had quite a few meetings. We've come up through different designs. We started out with a design that was put forth by Mr. Clausen, and we've gone on to other designs. We've reached out for some funding. We went to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation because they've got money left over from the Costco, Busan oil spill that could be used for projects like this. And this fits right under the sort of project that they would fund. When we got the response back from our request for funding, they had a question that would be a question that they should ask. And that is why are we going with a plan that's different than the plan that was submitted to the city. And probably within that question is, is the city still behind this? And also within that question is probably another question, Which is, why didn't the city do it before? And we are going to take one question at a time. But we would like to address first the question of why do we not want to use the original design that was proposed for this fishing pier? And Michael Rex is going to address that in some detail. But that Just to give you a couple of highlights, that old plan required using the old pilings, putting custom stainless steel caps on those. And part of that plan was raising the level of the deck, which made it considerably more expensive and inaccessible. There's really no point in raising the deck because if the pier is underwater, so is the street. that didn't make any sense at all. We have explored different designs, and I'm going to let Mike tell you about that. We need to get this question answered so we can get back to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and hopefully get some funding which would be substantial. And that's really our issue for tonight. Thank you. |
| 04:27:41.32 | Michael Rex | You know me. Hi. Thanks for hanging in there so late tonight. This wasn't going to be my first slide. But our network's down, so. Serge wasn't able to vote. Add, uh, What I wanted to start with But I think you know it. |
| 04:28:05.30 | Michael Rex | It's out in the hallway. And it's... Thank you. This is Philip Franks. Thank you. cartoon. It's 42 years ago, 1977. Sally Stanford was our mayor, Madam Mayor. And guess what they're talking about? That whole cartoon's about trying to restore the fishing pier. |
| 04:28:16.10 | Ed Labar | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:28:27.98 | Michael Rex | We're still at it 42 years later. Um, But we don't give up. You know where it is, so I'm going to go to the next slide. Over those 42 years, the peer kept getting worse. And now it's an eyesore. I mean, That's what's left. Um, And the idea of keeping these old pilings doesn't make any sense to us, particularly because they've kept rotting away all these years. And we think it's a false economy. But we tested this idea with marine engineers and contractors. And every expert we talked to said, we were nuts. The problem with saving them is that you're building something new on top of something old and you're going to be in for a lot of surprises. Our funding is going to be tight and we don't want a lot of change orders. We think that's one of the reasons it killed the project with the city. is you actually had a grant from, the same people we're applying for now. And, um, uh, They want to know why you didn't use it. I'm gonna show you. hit this button. This is Kers-Klausen's plans from five years ago. And where are we here? Here's the pier. Um, You probably remember it's very controversial because it's two feet higher, higher than the sidewalk, it has a handicap ramp going up to it and some steps. Nobody liked it. It went through all kinds of hearings. But at the end of the day, the cost came in way over budget and the grant money was only going to be funded if Salacito would guarantee to cover the overruns and everyone was afraid of the overruns. There's some concrete pilings back here, but all the wooden ones that are rotting away are outboard that we want to replace. Actually, it's probably a good thing it didn't get built because it was going to be ugly. And no offense to Kurz, he was trying to save what he could. I've worked with Kurz Clausen for decades. I think he's near retirement now. He did his best. but you may not know that he was proposing to put stainless steel collars on top and then a stainless steel post to raise the pier up. The pier was going to be raised two feet higher than the sidewalk. And that's because the flood level is at the during a really heavy storm, heavy wind-driven waves, the waves are that level is 10 feet, and that's a height of the sidewalk. Well, we probably know during really heavy storms, you can get waves crashing over that sidewalk. And FEMA says you got to raise, if you're building something new, you got to raise a foot above the flood plain to the lowest structural member. So that's why it's up higher. But nobody wants it that high. We're not proposing to raise it. We're proposing to keep it the height of the sidewalk. That's the height that it is now. And how can you do that if FEMA won't approve it? They don't need to approve it. FEMA's an insurance company, as you know. If it's damaged during a flood, they won't cover it. Soslito self-insured. We're proposing that you insure it, not depend on FEMA's money. But there's also a safety issue. And, um, I'm If you got waves crashing over the sidewalk, you close the pier. Because no one's out there. So we think the safety issue is also resolved. We're proposing the same length pier, 74 feet, but instead of 24 and a half feet wide, we're going to pull it away from the Uh, Trident. We've been working with Bob Friedman, the owner of the tribe, and he's very supportive of what we're doing. You can't wait to see this happen. We want to keep a gap so if it moves differently in an earthquake, it won't push against its private property. So it's 22 feet wide, same exact length, 74 feet. We're going to propose keeping the six concrete pilings that appear to be pretty good shape, but replace the six wooden pilings, or well actually there's almost a dozen, just have six steel pilings. That would be new. And, We're proposing a little dark to see here, but we're proposing a traditional looking pier, something that belongs near a historic center. We have lamps. Maybe these are a little too decorative. We might go something a little more nautical. But this is a little close up. It's a wrought iron railing. It's a wooden deck. The pilings, here's the concrete pilings that remain the steel would be wrapped in a black kind of neoprene to protect it further, and benches and lights. And again, probably a more nautical lamp. We have not only our club as a sponsor, we have two other pretty important sponsors. the Southern Marin, or Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District with Jeff Kinglin and his engineers are going to join us in this effort. We were approached, actually we didn't ask, we were approached by the Southern Marin Fire Department saying can we help you? We'll loan you our boat if you need to do anything from the water. There's some pretty good power there, all volunteers. And Saucedo, you know, we built Gabrielson Park, we built Marin Ship Park, we built two housing projects in town, we could build a pier. This was all Steve Fraser's idea. When he suggested it to me, I thought he was nuts. But when I started looking into it, I thought, you know what? We could do this. I'm confident. We also, besides my office donating services, we went to Miller Pacific, talked to Scott Stevens. As you know, Scott has head up the geotech to investigate the slide area that we saw recently that was so horrible. They haven't said they will donate all their services yet. We're working on that. But they have said if they have to charge, it will be at their cost. We don't have a structural engineer yet. We may need a civil engineer. We're hoping to get as much of those services donated as we can. Um, We talked to two contractors. We went to Bellingham because they're the biggest and the best out there. And they could engineer it and build it. We thought they're big enough. They can afford to donate. But sometimes the little guy gives you the best prize. So we wanted to compare notes and we went to Mid-Cal. Mid-Cal is no fly by night. They built the improvements at Waldo Plain Harbor. They put on all the new bulkheads. They built a pier at the new park at gate six. It's a father and son team. And they've been working in the water for decades. We don't know which of those two we're going to work with yet. It kind of depends on who gives us the best deal. But they both looked at our design, and said, that's what you should build. And don't think for a second you can save those old pilings. So they're right behind us supporting what we want to do here. And these people know what they're doing. I want to show you a proposal we have from MidCal. This is not pie in the sky. This came to us in May, last spring. Of course, it's an estimate, although they call it a proposal. $389,000. I thought it was going to cost more than that. Of course, it probably will. Estimates go up. We're proposing to add a 37% contingency to this, OK? We want to raise about $550,000. We hope it could come in less. And the more we can get donated, the more likely it will come in less. But that number is doable. When we saw that and we knew who it was coming from, an experienced, dependable contractor, specializes in marine construction, we thought, OK, this can really happen. So we filled out, Steve actually filled out this form. We submitted it last month to the Wildlife Foundation. And I want to show you that Rotary's budgeting about $55,000 from our club. We're looking to Sausalito City for maybe $25,000 to $50,000. And maybe it can be added to your CPI list. You've got a budget coming up in June. Maybe you can put some money there. I don't know. But we're hoping you can contribute. We also... We've listed a novel, a Marine Community Foundation. We're looking for $25,000. We want to raise about $130,000. We're asking from the foundation here to close the gap with $400,000. They didn't turn us down. In fact, they came back and asked us some questions, and that's partly why we're here tonight. The first reason we're here tonight is we want to tell you what we're doing. We're hoping we can get some feedback that's positive, at least conceptually. You support what we're doing. You guys tried to do it five years ago and it didn't happen, but now we've got some power behind some community groups to pull it off. |
| 04:38:26.60 | Ed Labar | can get. |
| 04:38:42.03 | Michael Rex | The other thing we're asking for is on a city letterhead, the foundation wants to know, why aren't you building buildings what you asked for before, I think we can answer that from an engineering standpoint. But why did you give up? What happened? What scared you away from pursuing it further? We thought you could tell that story better than we can. And if you could direct staff to maybe put something on your letterhead just saying what happened, factual, I think that would help with this grant, which is pretty important to us. If we don't get this grant, we'll find other funding sources. We intend to see this happen. Rotary takes on projects, and it gets it done. We have that track record. That's it, so any questions? |
| 04:39:33.16 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Michael really quickly on the plan. I don't know if I'm remembering this right, so I'm actually asking some of the people that were involved maybe in the past. I thought one of the reasons for raising it was less chance of boards coming off in a weather event. So because it had wood planks, it had to be up a certain height TO AVOID THOSE BECOMING DISLODGED DURING A HIGH WAVE EVENT AND BEING thrown out into the street. Is that not what the premise of those taller Increased. |
| 04:40:05.57 | Joan Cox | I thought we were actually designing it to standards that had not yet been implemented, but were about to be implemented. |
| 04:40:11.24 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, it was the FEMA high water standard. |
| 04:40:13.96 | Joan Cox | . |
| 04:40:14.03 | Michael Rex | Exactly. It, it, back then they, FEMA was changing their floodplain. Exactly. People think they were doing that for rising seas. That's not the case. What they were doing is that more sophisticated computer systems could study wave action. |
| 04:40:20.31 | Jill Hoffman | Exactly. |
| 04:40:20.83 | Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:40:28.81 | Ed Labar | system. |
| 04:40:31.95 | Michael Rex | And all throughout the country, they came up with site-specific wave wind-driven wave heights which is higher than the flood level. Right. And they raise the flood level by a couple feet everywhere. |
| 04:40:41.11 | Unknown | higher than that. |
| 04:40:47.61 | Michael Rex | And that's what does it. There's two issues here. We're confident if we build something brand new, That's well engineered. It's going to hold up better than something we sit on a bunch of old wooden Obviously, we have to do wave run-up calculations. That's why we're going to marine engineers. for that assistance and we have to prove that it can withstand that force. And You know, we talked, if we had to, we could go to a concrete deck, but we prefer not to. |
| 04:41:23.32 | Unknown | So if it fuels that force, then it's surviving peer pressure. |
| 04:41:24.21 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 04:41:30.94 | Joan Cox | You could not resist. |
| 04:41:32.99 | Michael Rex | It's like, It's a little late for humor, but. All right. Okay. Please. |
| 04:41:37.69 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:41:37.79 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:41:37.88 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.01 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.15 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.22 | Ray Withy | Bye. |
| 04:41:38.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:41:38.37 | Ray Withy | Yeah. |
| 04:41:38.39 | Unknown | Please. |
| 04:41:39.03 | Ray Withy | I embrace it. |
| 04:41:40.02 | Unknown | I'm not saving. |
| 04:41:40.34 | Ray Withy | Save. OK. so i have a question if i may i just like to give us a couple of comments because i was on the city council when this went through i'm the only one that was on the city council when this went through i think um this was this project which was this elevated thing was denied by the planning commission it was appealed to the city council by staff and um much to the disgust of the planning commission, the city council overruled the planning commission on a 3-2 vote. |
| 04:42:00.68 | Unknown | tonight. Mm-hmm. |
| 04:42:16.27 | Ray Withy | Um, Actually, if you're interested, Linda Pfeiffer and Tom Theodoros voted against it. |
| 04:42:17.82 | Ed Labar | Actually, if you're interested. |
| 04:42:22.88 | Ray Withy | Herbie and Jonathan Leon voted for it and I took a long time. It was the swing vote and in the end overturned the planning commission. Turned us into a kangaroo court. But that is a prelude to. |
| 04:42:32.64 | Joan Cox | It turned us into a kangaroo court. |
| 04:42:34.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:42:35.03 | Unknown | you |
| 04:42:35.19 | Joan Cox | That's right. |
| 04:42:35.41 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:42:38.22 | Ray Withy | One of the things of the controversy was actually after the event Michael you and I had a conversation in which You basically agreed it had no charm. It had no, it was, right. It just didn't have it, right? |
| 04:42:51.25 | Ed Labar | Bye. |
| 04:42:51.29 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:42:51.47 | Ed Labar | Yeah. |
| 04:42:56.80 | Ray Withy | But, Okay, and yes, perhaps an error in trying to think through putting it on the existing wooden things, but there were reasons and we seem to have forgotten those reasons, And maybe the reasons were wrong and so, and I'm hoping therefore that everybody's done their homework. The first was, According to our city engineer at the time, We had to make formal findings. to issue a variance. |
| 04:43:24.02 | Ed Labar | Avarious. |
| 04:43:25.56 | Ray Withy | in order to be able to build outside of the requirements of the floodplain zone. That's what was presented here. Go back and look at the video. OK? Adam, maybe you can help me out if my memory is, if I'm sort of going off somewhere. And Jonathan Goldman stood up there and said, the city of Sausalito cannot make these findings. Are you aware of that? |
| 04:43:54.97 | Michael Rex | I was in the hearing. Okay, so there's that. And we're arguing otherwise. |
| 04:43:56.07 | Ray Withy | okay so there's that and we're I'm not sure. Because by the way, I'm supportive for this. So don't get me wrong. I'm just trying to make sure you've actually crossed your T's and dotted your I's rather than the other way around. But Adam. ADAM POSNERALEEUXI- Yes. |
| 04:44:09.28 | Adam Politzer | Yes, I think- What's the story? I think collectively we almost have the story completely |
| 04:44:09.69 | Ray Withy | What's the story? |
| 04:44:16.12 | Adam Politzer | Accurate. The one thing that's missing and the reason why it had to be elevated. for the reasons you just stated. and also because of the material that was being proposed. Was that We only had a grant for $160,000. And so we were using The wood. And so it couldn't withstand The pressure of a storm. And what Jonathan was stating in addition to just that it wouldn't withstand It wouldn't be prudent for the city to spend whatever we were contributing, plus the grant for something that in 20 years could be demolished. I think some person, you know, either on the council or in the community said, We don't care if it only lasts 20 years. It's only $160,000. If it gets wiped out, it gets wiped out. But- But it was the material. The Rotary Club has brought forward which was really key to what Michael shared was the steel pilings because we were not talking about steel piling so it could not withhold with withstand the storm of that magnitude. |
| 04:45:21.02 | Ray Withy | So that's helpful, but. Here's the next issue. which was again heavily discussed during this time by staff, by Jonathan, which was. BCDC had informed them that if they remove the pylons, They're not putting, you're not going to be able to put new ones back in. |
| 04:45:43.28 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 04:45:43.82 | Ray Withy | Has anybody talked to BCDC? |
| 04:45:45.13 | Michael Rex | DC. |
| 04:45:46.60 | Ray Withy | Has anybody talked to BCDC? |
| 04:45:48.74 | Michael Rex | No, because we |
| 04:45:55.97 | Unknown | in the board of vote. You should be at the mic with that, because we want that on record. |
| 04:45:56.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:45:57.10 | Michael Rex | . |
| 04:45:57.18 | Unknown | that come out. |
| 04:45:57.65 | Bruce Huff | at the microphone. |
| 04:46:01.84 | Unknown | Thanks, Dean. |
| 04:46:10.04 | Steve Frazier | I did talk to some staff, I can't remember his name now, at BCDC and told him what we were thinking of doing. There was certainly no comment about can't remove it. My impression was you could, and he was even suggesting that we apply to the, apparently when the Golden Gate Bridge is doing its project, or has done or doing its project downtown Sausalito, they have to provide some additional funding for other marine-oriented uses. And his suggestion was that we should make an application to them to do that. And that's still our intention, but we wanted to wait until we had a somewhat final design and that the city council was in fact willing to support us in a general way without committing them any further than that to this project. So as far as I know and that's all I can tell you, they would be supportive. And I'm not aware and have not heard that he didn't even suggest that, well, you pull the pallings out, you're going to go. You can't do it again. So if we run into that problem, we'll deal with it. |
| 04:47:30.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:47:30.75 | Joan Cox | No. We're not going to approve something that we don't know is going to, we're not going to approve and have something demolished and then not be able to rebuild it. So we're going to sort this out before we, |
| 04:47:39.48 | Steve Frazier | WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE Well, I'm not asking you to approve it. We're not asking you to approve it. |
| 04:47:45.35 | Joan Cox | Not tonight. |
| 04:47:46.18 | Steve Frazier | No, we're asking you to approve the concept of the Rotary Club going forward with this project. But it's obviously city property, and we're asking you to do that. Nothing more. You may decide in the end that it's not a project that you want. That's up to you and the Planning Commission and anyone else. We're open to that, but this is the first step. |
| 04:48:12.92 | Michael Rex | I'd like to add to that answer, of course, in my business, I work with BCDC often because we do waterfront projects. And this is considered pile-supported fill. There's a difference between restoration and rehabilitation. This is what we call rehabilitation, which allows you to rebuild something. But they do like you to save something. it kind of helps fit into that pigeonhole and we're saving Six, half of the pilings, the piles that support it, were saving, okay? We're replacing the timber. with timber, that's repair. It's a rehabilitation because it doesn't replicate what was there exactly and the last thing I want you to know. BCDC allows pilot-supported fill for marine-oriented recreation and shoreline access. That is exactly what this is. And they're allowed to approve it, even if it was brand new for pile-supported fill for those uses. |
| 04:49:12.80 | Ed Labar | Yes. What? |
| 04:49:23.63 | Michael Rex | However, We will definitely be talking to them. way before we get into working drawings or submittal to the city. as we do with all our projects, and make sure that base is covered, Just like we're asking you to look on this conceptually and Do you want us to pursue this or not? will be going to staff at BCDC and as well as the other agencies. There's probably Army Corps, Water Regional Board. We're used to that. It's our business. Okay? So those are the questions you're asking. Could we get something on a letterhead from staff that kind of explains what happened? why you gave up on it, We can explain why we want to do a different design. We know that answer. And then if you could say something about you see Mary in this being pursued. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? |
| 04:50:18.78 | Jill Hoffman | I do actually, I'm sorry. I have a question of Michael. So as part of the design, based on some other peers, at least one other peer that's come before us, there's designs that you can do in the flooring that helps absorb the waves, right? that I've seen on other piers that have come up. So, and we can incorporate that. And so, if you're concerned about waves are going to knock the pier down or it's going to be a problem with the bottom of the pier, I mean, there's engineering things and the different types of flooring that you can use on the pier that makes it absorb the waves easier. Well, sometimes they like that. And I would like to see that incorporated in it if it comes back to us. |
| 04:50:50.82 | Michael Rex | Well, sometimes they like. And you can incorporate that in, and I would like Sometimes they like grates where the water can move up through it. That may not kind of have the soul we want, but it's something we could explore. The other thing, BCDC now wants us to look at rising seas. So they'll be asking us as part of an application, |
| 04:50:58.82 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 04:51:10.80 | Michael Rex | How are you going to deal with it 50 years or 75 years from now if the C is three feet higher? Um, our sort of pat answers will have disconnect hardware and we could raise it. But that won't be the only thing underwater. All of bridge oil will be underwater. So there'll be bigger fish to fry in those days. |
| 04:51:24.29 | Ed Labar | THE FAMILY. |
| 04:51:32.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:51:33.25 | Michael Rex | Yeah. |
| 04:51:35.53 | Unknown | Seeing no other questions. Peter, open up to public comment, and I have one card. |
| 04:51:40.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:51:47.51 | Peter Van Meter | When we moved here 45 years ago, my kids would catch crab off this pier because it was still habitable then. Now, I'm hoping that will be reconstructed in time for my great-grandchildren to do the same thing. So I don't think I want to wait that long, so I'm very anxious to see the Rotary Club move this ahead. Thank you. |
| 04:52:11.06 | Unknown | Thank you, Peter. Any other public comment? Vicki? |
| 04:52:15.97 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. I just this is Vicki and Nichols. I just have a question. What I'm hearing is that you're approving this in concept because this has had no design review. This is in the historic district. You've got Michael's sensitive to historic. components, but the lamps need to be reviewed, they're right next to a landmark building, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I love what the- |
| 04:52:41.03 | Joan Cox | THE END OF END OF THE END OF THE END OF THE END OF Thank you. That's not, this is just. This is not designed, it's going to the planning commission. You'll get your hands on it. |
| 04:52:43.63 | Vicki Nichols | This is a great thing. get your hands on it. This has happened before with non-profits and then the design comes up later, but I'm hearing that it's not. Right. |
| 04:52:50.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Right. Well, a design is going to come up later, but we still get to approve it. |
| 04:52:59.02 | Joan Cox | The city will review it. |
| 04:53:04.44 | Unknown | The public comment scene and we're close public comment and bring it up. Yeah. Pull up. |
| 04:53:10.73 | Ray Withy | WE JUST NEED TO MOVE FORWARD. |
| 04:53:10.75 | Unknown | We just. |
| 04:53:12.24 | Joan Cox | Yes, absolutely. It's just obvious. Yes, absolutely. And thank you to the Rotary Club for pulling all of this together. I'm so proud to be a member of this amazing organization. that is making this happen and to be working with Jeff Kingston on two super important projects and Michael Rex. Really, thanks to all of you for this is a miracle. This was such a shame that we couldn't do this years ago. So kudos and thank you. |
| 04:53:39.74 | Unknown | Uh, we get motion just as long. |
| 04:53:42.56 | Jill Hoffman | I was just going to say I just love this project. And I was absolutely convinced that I voted for this on the Planning Commission until you said that the Planning Commission voted against it. But anyway. Regardless. |
| 04:53:52.55 | Unknown | Regarde. Thank you. |
| 04:53:53.51 | Jill Hoffman | So I'm going to go back when the city's website is on. You may have. You may have. But you know, I just think this is such a crime that this has happened this way and that it's such a great place to sit and enjoy the water. So I'm thrilled. |
| 04:53:53.66 | Unknown | I'm not. You bet. MR. |
| 04:54:11.80 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:54:11.84 | Joan Cox | Next up. |
| 04:54:12.33 | Jill Hoffman | All right. |
| 04:54:14.47 | Joan Cox | All right, so there's no motion in our packet, but I will ask that we direct staff to provide the letter. |
| 04:54:14.71 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. So there's no |
| 04:54:21.69 | Joan Cox | that the applicant is seeking about why this did not proceed. previously. Michael, we're going to ask for your help in putting that together. AND THEN, I would just, I don't think we need a motion. We're just giving staff direction to, proceed cooperatively with the applicant TO PUT THIS PROJECT TOGETHER. |
| 04:54:44.88 | Adam Politzer | And Councilmember Cox, I think the only other request is to approve that they apply for grant funding. They're putting the application in on our behalf. |
| 04:54:55.34 | Joan Cox | Absolutely, so I do move that we authorize the Rotary Club to apply for the grant funding for this project for the peer. |
| 04:55:04.71 | Unknown | or- |
| 04:55:05.48 | Joan Cox | project second |
| 04:55:07.29 | Unknown | All in favor. Aye. |
| 04:55:07.93 | Ray Withy | Aye. 5-0 on that motion. The thing is this letter as to why we didn't move forward, we don't need to make this very complicated. That's right. |
| 04:55:17.70 | Joan Cox | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:55:17.90 | Ed Labar | Very simple. |
| 04:55:19.34 | Ray Withy | It's very simple. The previous design cost too much, and there wasn't enough grant fund in the cover it. Period. End of letter. That was it. |
| 04:55:31.27 | Unknown | Thank you guys for bringing that in. Thanks for waiting so long. |
| 04:55:31.34 | Michael Rex | Thank you. Thank you guys for bringing us. |
| 04:55:34.61 | Unknown | Kill Wednesday morning. |
| 04:55:34.71 | Michael Rex | until Wednesday. We don't hear that our plans are miracles, and you're thrilled about it very often. So very pleased. Thank you. You got us at a good time. |
| 04:55:44.03 | Unknown | you |
| 04:55:44.09 | Michael Rex | Thank you. |
| 04:55:44.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:55:44.72 | Michael Rex | You hear me. |
| 04:55:44.97 | Joan Cox | that more often than most are. |
| 04:55:46.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:55:46.22 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:55:46.25 | Unknown | . |
| 04:55:46.30 | Joan Cox | TAKE A LOOK. |
| 04:55:46.39 | Unknown | . |
| 04:55:46.42 | Joan Cox | Bye. |
| 04:55:46.44 | Unknown | That's Michael. Okay, it's now 940 PM and we're going to move on to number eight. |
| 04:55:54.20 | Unknown | Outside, please. hearing a lot of voices city manager reports city council appointments other council members is there any public comment on items 8b through 8c none I'm gonna close public comment and bring it back up here to the city manager information for council |
| 04:55:58.67 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 04:56:11.82 | Adam Politzer | no report from the city manager but happy to answer any questions from the council |
| 04:56:16.97 | Unknown | You can see me now. Seeing none. Appointments, board commissions and committees. I'm actually gonna make one tonight and that is appointing Susan Cleveland Knowles to the primary position on the TAM, Transportation Agency of Marin board, removing Ray. Ray, do you fall to secondary or? |
| 04:56:35.73 | Unknown | The Pressure. |
| 04:56:36.56 | Unknown | alternate alternate is the position so we with the be alternate and Susan thank you will be the primary rep. |
| 04:56:41.00 | Unknown | Susan |
| 04:56:41.54 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 04:56:41.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:56:41.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:56:45.37 | Unknown | Weakness. Yeah, please. |
| 04:56:46.67 | Ray Withy | You know, I've been on the tambour for a couple of years. It's, I mean, it's all very fascinating. But, I think Susan's expertise in transportation is going to be invaluable to that commission. So good luck. Thank you. |
| 04:57:06.02 | Unknown | Aren't you always giving her a ride? She's so good at transferring. So we also had interviews this evening on the general plan advisory committee appointment and the planning commission. We have interviewed one, two, three, four, five, plus another five, six last time. We still have a pile. Is there any interest to make any |
| 04:57:26.22 | Tarina Maris | seven. |
| 04:57:30.83 | Unknown | nominations at this point since we're here at this time. |
| 04:57:34.27 | Jill Hoffman | So I wanted to get feedback from our general plan committee |
| 04:57:35.06 | Unknown | that feedback from. |
| 04:57:39.55 | Jill Hoffman | uh, representatives on that. Definitely feel like we've interviewed some great people. I would be willing to support a nomination tonight. I don't know how quickly you wanna get someone. |
| 04:57:52.31 | Joan Cox | Well, we're not meeting again for several weeks. So I would like to, since we've interviewed all the others, I'd like to. In the last time, what we did was we narrowed it, and then we gave the opportunity to have other people pulled in to be interviewed, but this time we've just been interviewing everybody. So I'd like to carry through an interview everybody. before we make the appointment. And I think we'll be able to do that before the next GPAC meeting. |
| 04:58:17.74 | Jill Hoffman | Have we closed? Is there an endpoint for the accepting applications? |
| 04:58:22.28 | Joan Cox | the application period closed. Thank you. |
| 04:58:23.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:58:24.78 | Joan Cox | No. |
| 04:58:26.90 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:58:26.92 | Joan Cox | So we do need an endpoint though, right? Well, I wouldn't mind closing the application period. I stood. Okay, so let's close the application period. That's fine. And then let's schedule the rest of the interviews for our next meeting. That's fine. |
| 04:58:33.67 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:58:33.79 | Unknown | application |
| 04:58:34.50 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 04:58:34.51 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:58:37.94 | Unknown | next meeting. |
| 04:58:39.14 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 04:58:39.21 | Unknown | THE RECORD. |
| 04:58:39.46 | Unknown | . |
| 04:58:39.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:58:39.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:58:39.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:58:39.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:58:40.66 | Ray Withy | Yeah, I think it's only proper action. Yeah. |
| 04:58:46.51 | Unknown | Okay, then on item eight, yes. |
| 04:58:46.95 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:58:47.90 | Joan Cox | And have we already interviewed everybody who has applied for the Planning Commission? |
| 04:58:53.16 | Unknown | No. Is there any more planning commissions? We have one person. |
| 04:58:53.23 | Joan Cox | now. |
| 04:58:57.68 | Unknown | We have one more person awaiting to be interviewed. That's Steven. Can't think of his last name right now. |
| 04:58:59.57 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:59:04.57 | Joan Cox | So then I would like to hold off on making an appointment until we've interviewed all the actors. |
| 04:59:08.52 | Unknown | We're also going to go through the list to make sure if there's anybody who put on their G-PAC that they would also go to the planning committee. We just want to double check. We heard one today that thought they had, so we'll run through that list again. So thank you. |
| 04:59:10.44 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:59:13.58 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 04:59:20.57 | Jill Hoffman | That's it. |
| 04:59:20.62 | Joan Cox | application process is still open though for planning planning Commission we should keep it open we have only had three yeah I agree |
| 04:59:23.08 | Jill Hoffman | planning. I agree. |
| 04:59:27.15 | Unknown | Okay. So we're closing. And can I? |
| 04:59:29.41 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:59:29.44 | Jill Hoffman | Can I ask another question of the two general plan advisory committee members? So we have a lot of applications of really good people with different skill sets. Is there any? |
| 04:59:30.19 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:59:30.35 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:59:30.37 | Joan Cox | I don't know. |
| 04:59:30.59 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 04:59:30.64 | Joan Cox | Yeah. |
| 04:59:30.66 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 04:59:42.38 | Jill Hoffman | uh, worth and considering in our next meeting, increasing the number of people on that committee. |
| 04:59:52.49 | Joan Cox | You know, we are fortunate. I'll weigh in and then I'll let Ray weigh in. But we are fortunate that most of our members rarely miss a meeting. and We have 13 members. with a really And so that makes for a very dynamic dialogue. and they really do represent different walks of life. worried that if we go much larger, it could get very cumbersome. We had initially planned to only have 11. And then we increased it to 13 when we first put this commissioned together. So those are my thoughts. |
| 05:00:32.28 | Ray Withy | I sort of agree with that, but I can also see the merits of putting added some new blood to this, to be honest. |
| 05:00:40.77 | Joan Cox | There's a heck of a lot of data |
| 05:00:42.19 | Ray Withy | But there's a lot of data to go through. But we're asking whoever we appoint, |
| 05:00:44.60 | Joan Cox | I'm right. But that's one person. |
| 05:00:46.80 | Ray Withy | to go through that lot. |
| 05:00:48.18 | Joan Cox | It's a mountain of data. |
| 05:00:49.88 | Ray Withy | I understand, but if it's a mountain of data for one person, it's a mountain of data for three people. um, It is... a daunting task for somebody to join this committee right now. But we are asking someone to do so. Would extra diverse opinions and new perspectives I could go there. But I, you know, I could. |
| 05:01:13.97 | Jill Hoffman | So is it worth just having a discussion about it? I mean, I don't think we could make a decision tonight anyway because we didn't agendize it. |
| 05:01:21.86 | Unknown | But let's, I think Ray touched on it. I mean, I'm not. We're considering one or three. So we're considering one or three additionals, because we would go on an odd number. Right. |
| 05:01:23.23 | Jill Hoffman | I mean, I'm not- with. |
| 05:01:30.00 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 05:01:30.03 | Joan Cox | Right. |
| 05:01:30.60 | Unknown | OK. |
| 05:01:31.03 | Ray Withy | wouldn't even be one or three. |
| 05:01:32.28 | Unknown | Exactly. |
| 05:01:34.67 | Ray Withy | But we don't have to make that decision tonight. |
| 05:01:36.21 | Unknown | TO BE ABLE |
| 05:01:38.32 | Joan Cox | Thank you. I'm Yeah. |
| 05:01:42.38 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 05:01:42.40 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry. |
| 05:01:42.47 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 05:01:42.59 | Joan Cox | Okay. |
| 05:01:42.91 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 05:01:42.94 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 05:01:42.96 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 05:01:42.97 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 05:01:43.24 | Unknown | good good I'm gonna close the appointment to boards future agenda items Who has a future agenda item? |
| 05:01:50.47 | Jill Hoffman | So I do. We got an email today from Nancy Hall Bennett about support for SB 50? Five. Five. Sorry, SB 5. So I'd like to, that's Senator McGuire's housing bill. I'd like to. |
| 05:01:58.50 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 05:01:58.52 | Joan Cox | 50? |
| 05:02:07.43 | Joan Cox | Can we just delegate authority to our agenda setting committee to? I just wanna put it out there as a future. |
| 05:02:13.65 | Unknown | that it'll be on the agenda setting |
| 05:02:15.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 05:02:16.98 | Joan Cox | Yeah, but I'd like, she needs it right away, so. THE FAMILY IS |
| 05:02:20.98 | Jill Hoffman | I think it was late, Mark. |
| 05:02:22.33 | Ray Withy | Didn't we start actually thinking in our protocols that we could, the mayor could, I don't know, I can't remember what the protocol was. |
| 05:02:24.10 | Joan Cox | I thought we had a protocol in place. |
| 05:02:30.95 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's part of the protocols. On a form letter, right? |
| 05:02:31.67 | Ray Withy | It's part of the protocols. on the phone. |
| 05:02:33.63 | Joan Cox | Yeah, yeah. |
| 05:02:34.06 | Ray Withy | Yeah. Um, |
| 05:02:35.29 | Joan Cox | THE L.O.C. |
| 05:02:36.38 | Ray Withy | To deal with these very things. Correct. When Nancy needs something fast and we can't bring it up, we think by protocol we pre-approved the mayor to actually approve it. Yeah, I think so too. But I might not be quite right there. Yeah. There's something along those lines. |
| 05:02:38.31 | Joan Cox | Correct. |
| 05:02:44.96 | Joan Cox | Yep. Yeah, I think so. |
| 05:02:48.52 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry. |
| 05:02:49.46 | Joan Cox | I think you are right. |
| 05:02:50.32 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, that's correct. And then we would bring it back as like a consent item. So that, so that, or information- To ratify the- |
| 05:02:57.70 | Joan Cox | to ratify it. |
| 05:03:01.78 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, and then the other, sorry, the other issue is you brought up at the beginning of the meeting an issue about the movie theater and some committee that's still in effect. Is that a city committee? |
| 05:03:14.35 | Joan Cox | It was her blue ribbon committee. |
| 05:03:16.33 | Jill Hoffman | When I was mayor in 2016, I formed a Blue Ribbon Committee to help shepherd, that's when the movie theater closed. and shepherd through the owner how it was going to be repurposed. And so I had a, I think we had a Blue Ribbon committee, Tom Theodorus was also on it, and then other community members. And so they helped sort of vet the concept and the change in the building. The thought was that there were members of the community from disparate groups. They were all in one room. They gave their feedback, and then that helped drive the design. And then when they came to the Planning Commission, it was unopposed. So that was it. And then So recently, I mean not recently, but constantly I get questions like what's going on with the movie theater, why, you know. So I've stayed in contact with those people and in contact with the owner and we had a meeting today about a potential operator and concept for moving forward. And so other people in the community have volunteered to help out on sort of moving that forward and conceptualizing a potential, I mean we'll see, nonprofit that would actually operate the theater. that's just a hypothetical or that's just a potential. It comes down to the landlord and the tenant and who wants to actually rent the space and who he wants to rent to and what the deal is. So that's what I've been working on. |
| 05:04:47.15 | Jill Hoffman | I guess my question really was, is it worth having some update or anything on a future agenda? I mean, I didn't really understand what you were referring to. No, no, I'm sorry. Sorry. |
| 05:04:49.31 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 05:04:54.29 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, yeah. No, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, I just, people had asked about it and it was a committee that I formed a long time ago and so I just wanted to give an update sort of where we were at with that effort. And so I'm happy to come back and give another update. uh, It's going to be a couple of months, I think. |
| 05:05:12.58 | Unknown | Well, yeah, and I think we'll hear from the applicant as well. |
| 05:05:15.90 | Jill Hoffman | as well. |
| 05:05:16.44 | Unknown | Well, I'm going to go. |
| 05:05:16.68 | Jill Hoffman | Sure. |
| 05:05:17.17 | Unknown | Thank you. But. You're not acting as a blue ribbon when you Take information from them and bring it back to us. So now you're just reaching out to the community I was reaching out. Yeah, that seemed to be the place to do it. Okay. It was a reach out no committees form |
| 05:05:24.74 | Jill Hoffman | No, just a report. You were just reaching out to the community to chat with people. |
| 05:05:27.97 | Vicki Nichols | to do it |
| 05:05:32.12 | Joan Cox | . |
| 05:05:32.27 | Vicki Nichols | . |
| 05:05:32.32 | Joan Cox | . |
| 05:05:32.64 | Vicki Nichols | Thank you. |
| 05:05:32.76 | Joan Cox | So I had two things for future agenda items. One is I had asked about an amnesty for anybody who offered a short term rental to an evacuee. |
| 05:05:33.15 | Vicki Nichols | I guess. Thank you. |
| 05:05:34.80 | Unknown | is. |
| 05:05:42.46 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 05:05:43.21 | Joan Cox | That was one. And the other is an update on efforts to secure births in marinas for anchor outs. |
| 05:05:55.15 | Jill Hoffman | as a genitalist. |
| 05:05:56.27 | Joan Cox | as agenda items. And the city manager can You know give feedback about when it would be appropriate to put that on the agenda |
| 05:06:09.26 | Unknown | Any others? I was just thinking of one that we had, you know, we talked with Tom Theodore's, brought it up most recently, about making sure that our business permit plan includes the cycling bike tour companies. And as we actually kind of brought that up in finance, it's really part of that process, but I just kind of want to have that on there so we don't forget it as we get into this next round of conversations on the business license tax. |
| 05:06:34.57 | Joan Cox | So we I thought had made that amendment as a part of the tax measure. |
| 05:06:39.35 | Unknown | WE PROPOSED IT, BUT I DON'T THINK WE MADE. WE HAVEN'T DONE. WE DID. SO WE CHANGED THE ORDINANCE? |
| 05:06:41.24 | Joan Cox | Yes, we did. |
| 05:06:44.53 | Unknown | Okay. So that's all completed. don't need it on the agenda. |
| 05:06:54.45 | Unknown | Any others? Seeing none, we are closing future agenda items. And any other items of significance? Seeing none, we're adjourning the meeting at 1220. |