| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:18.14 | Councilmember Cox | Bay Conservation Development Commission, advising that the enforcement branch will be moving again in September and inviting us back to update on our progress. So I will be proud to update our progress. RVRA is hoping to have the results of their mooring study to report at their next meeting in July. |
| 00:00:46.03 | Unknown | and plan this on site. Thank you. I had a community safety disaster preparedness committee meeting. We discuss one item that's going to be on the agenda tonight as far as task force. And the other pertinent item that we talked about really in kind of a larger scope is communication. Communication with the company for our fire district that we work with. It's mostly related around fire prevention. not fire prevention, but yeah, safety guide that we want to get in the hands of all residents, whether it be electronically or in the paper version, getting that updated, printed, and available. There's always questions and this type of information goes in one ear and out the other sometimes. So if you have a printed document that you can have at home, the community feels very valuable and I'll work on that. Again, I'll have a different discussion later this evening on the slide task force. Any other data reports? Seeing none, we're now going to open up consent calendar items. And we have three items on the calendar i'm going to open up public comment on all three uh first do we have any conflict on any of these recusals anything so we're good on all three uh i have one card at this point um joe silverman any other public comment on consent items by a by b by c if so please fill out a card or stand and raise your hand or a gentleman. Please fill out a card again. This will happen. |
| 00:02:20.03 | Joe Silverman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:20.11 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:20.40 | Joe Silverman | Thank you. |
| 00:02:20.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:02:20.95 | Joe Silverman | Thank you. Thank you. Joe. Good evening, Mayor, Council members and fellow citizens. My name is Joe Silverman and I'm a seven year resident of Sausalito. Out of concern and care for all of us, I came out to the meeting last week to speak about 5G antennas and installations last week. I would like to ask the council to remove from the consent agenda item 5B, the amending of ordinance 1271, chapter 1040, 10.45, concerning standards and criteria for wireless telecommunication facilities. Our Marin neighbors, including Mill Valley and San Rafael, have taken a different tap than we have so far and are actively looking at how to protect their municipal rights to make decisions about these installations. Instead of just accepting the overreach by Washington, I would hope that we will also align with our larger Marin community, the U.S. Conference of Mayors who opposed the FCC move, as well as draw courage from the California Fire Department Union's successful objection to placement of antennae or fire departments on the basis of the health risk. Also, looking at the ordinance as it's written and comparing it to some other ordinances that I looked at briefly, I know the main reason that there was eagerness to get it passed was to have a benefit of being able to, quote, design issues and aesthetic issues and have that in place. But I think there's a lot that we can build out in that area as well. Other cities get very specific about colors, about flat nonreflective paints, about limitations of visibility of cabling. And as far as I can tell, we haven't included a lot of those aesthetic items yet in our ordinance. And my third point I would just like to make is that we all know that things can be much more impactful with community involvement. And I just hope that this serious issue will warrant more community involvement and more conversation and more thinking about health and safety as we move this forward. There are far too many highly visible, deeply respectable opposing views and opposing data to the lobbyist-written Telecommunications Act and its recent 5G additions to give up our best judgments as a community. We all have inalienable rights for the pursuit of happiness, privacy, and safety. So for the reasons above, I hope we will remove item 5B for the consent agenda until further comments and consideration. Thank you. Show me your hands. Thank you. |
| 00:05:33.14 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:05:33.26 | Joe Silverman | Thank you. |
| 00:05:33.33 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:05:33.73 | Joe Silverman | Yeah. |
| 00:05:34.04 | Keith Stone King | The Press. |
| 00:05:36.37 | Councilmember Cox | We asked staff to bring this back to us. When is it coming back to us? Has the agenda setting committee scheduled a day |
| 00:05:45.97 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 00:05:57.97 | Sonia Hanson | You've all heard a lot from me this week on this very subject that I'm saying after about now, which is about wildfires in Sausalito and how we're addressing them and how we're not addressing them. And I firmly believe the Southern Wind Fire District is addressing them as best they can with the resources they have, and they're doing more of aelyn. I think city management and the city council is not addressing this at all. We've not had a public forum. We've had no effort to involve the community and it's time to change. We don't know when something's going to happen, but it could happen at any point, and we are completely unprepared. So I know what you're sending to the Marin County Grand Jury. And I disagree with it. I think what you're saying you're prepared for is not true. And I hope that you do something about it quickly. Thank you. |
| 00:06:55.41 | Councilmember Cox | I have a question. Did you attend our forum in |
| 00:06:58.26 | Sonia Hanson | or, |
| 00:06:58.50 | Councilmember Cox | All right. |
| 00:06:58.51 | Sonia Hanson | I'm going to go. |
| 00:06:58.53 | Councilmember Cox | is your |
| 00:06:59.04 | Sonia Hanson | Amen. Thank you. |
| 00:07:00.76 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:07:00.77 | Sonia Hanson | Thank you. |
| 00:07:00.79 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:07:00.98 | Sonia Hanson | our community prepared this forum? The forum that was at the same time as the city council meeting? No, I was sick and I said something to Fred about that. So I did not pretend that. I realized there have been, I believe I counted four meetings since January where the chief or someone from the fire department has presented information to you and asked for a vote. you There was a forum at the main bottom, and I have to say, who the heck knew about it? Not everyone needs the purpose. There has been no effort made to really involve this community, and I think it's a shame, and I hope you correct it soon. Thank you. you |
| 00:07:48.18 | Unknown | So... Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:07:56.28 | Nancy Osborne | as Mayor and Council Members, I'm Nancy Osborne, and I have to make a comment supporting what Sonia just said. I have tried desperately to reach PG&E regarding high-tension wires that have always been cleared every year with lots of growth. It runs right off of 101 all the way down to Marin Avenue alongside our property PennLocal. And I left all sorts of phone messages on the PG&E representative. And the only time I talked to her, she said, we got 700 miles to cover them. That was it. And that was about four months ago. However, that isn't what I'm here to speak to too much. I couldn't tell comment at all. I am here to speak about the 5G and really what I'm here to speak about is the fact I was on the original telecommunications committee that drafted what is now 1045, I believe, which is over 20 years old or close to 20 years old and it's I think maybe been amended once it is sadly out of date and what I'm here to ask for is for and what they gave us when they appointed that committee was they gave us a moratorium on any applications for wireless installations while we wrote what has become the wireless standards that have been adopted and the report that's been adopted and used for almost these 20 years. I would like to ask first all, that you establish a moratorium for a year, appoint a new committee, and look into those existing wireless ordinance. Because this 5G, I don't think people realize, as Joe Silverman was pointing out. It's inspired neighboring communities to ask for ordinances that limit them to residential only and certainly our ordinance was residential as the least preferential installation for all wireless and it certainly and we hope be supported for 5G. But 5G is going to be a total saturation, the amount of installations being called for, and it needs to be looked in more deeply than with the existing ordinance. The other thing that having a moratorium and a new committee would do would give you the opportunity to see what all the last 10 years, what's happened. We have put a lot of teeth into that ordinance in case certain requirements were not met. May I finish for just a minute? I think if we had a new ordinance, a new committee setting, they could go back and look at the results and see how these providers, the sprints, the AT&Ts, have they made their reports as demanded by that? Have they paid any fines if they recruit them? There are a lot of things that could be evaluated. Thank you. |
| 00:11:25.05 | Unknown | Let me ask if there's any questions for you. Is there any questions for Nancy? |
| 00:11:28.38 | Nancy Osborne | The other thing I would like to make sure is that the people doing the testing would provide gene. We're not even sure that they have updated equipment to test for that move. Anyway, I hope that you will consider putting together a new committee to test and giving us a moratorium while they do it. Thank you. |
| 00:11:50.49 | Unknown | . |
| 00:11:50.57 | Nancy Osborne | Thank you. |
| 00:11:54.53 | Unknown | Any other public comment on consent items 5A, 5B, 5C? Seeing that, we'll close the public comment, bring it up here for comment, request, or mention. you Yeah. Yes. |
| 00:12:14.97 | Unknown | earlier. |
| 00:12:16.03 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 00:12:16.67 | Unknown | Well, |
| 00:12:17.03 | Councilmember Cox | And our next meeting is July 16. So I would like to incorporate Sonia's comments to, significant comments, to the response to the grand jury. Oh, Pete. |
| 00:12:20.52 | Unknown | the light. |
| 00:12:37.97 | Unknown | that we're going to be. |
| 00:12:38.04 | Unknown | the ones that conflict with our |
| 00:12:39.78 | Councilmember Cox | No, but I want to contemplate those. In other words, I want to integrate the relevant comments to the grand jury report. And I also think there are some other things that the city is doing. Well, you want to pull this item? It's up to you. I'd like to comment on this item. |
| 00:12:39.79 | Unknown | No. That's true. |
| 00:12:56.97 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. You know, the city has allocated $50,000 in its budget for emergency preparedness. The chief has written dozens of letters to various insurance companies to assist homeowners in obtaining lower-cost insurance. The Southern Wind Fire has visited many HOAs here in town to provide advice about fire protection and vegetation management, including my own, and is bringing their chipper. So I believe that we can do more to communicate to the grand jury the efforts that the city and Southern Green Fire are already undertaking that our residents are obviously unaware of. |
| 00:13:46.11 | Jill Hoffman | I'd like to comment on the same item. Yes, please. I agree with Council Member Cox's comments. And also, I'm wondering, well, I would agree that the response should be amended with some of these comments and reviewed. I believe there were some other. sections that may need to be edited to be more accurate. So it's part of that process. But since we have until July 18, I think there's time. I think there's time we go. |
| 00:14:21.21 | Unknown | So I appreciate the comments that we received from the public. I also found the chief's responses adequate. I personally would prefer to spend our time on kind of more active hearings and efforts to address our emergency preparedness situation than the grand jury report. I mean, I think the response is adequate. I think the comments that were made were interesting and the chief's responses were good. If there's a willingness of the entire council to continue that item until July, that's fine. It could have any response to a grand jury report, but I would say always be better with it's done. Thank you. I prefer to put our efforts towards more programs in South Salido, more homeowner talks, like the one that your homeowner's association, you see my neighborhood is very interested in having one. So personally, I'd like to see us actually get down to the work and to continue to be with the community outreach that we do. But I'm also happy to have the report revised with us. |
| 00:15:35.38 | Unknown | Chief, did your board look at this response? No, our meeting is at the end of the month, so they'll be reviewing the document at that time. Okay, and if there's any public comment, they can accept it, or even our council members can do public comment to their process as well, since they're elected board, correct? |
| 00:15:49.98 | Chief Parks | That is correct. Same for the citizens of Sausalito, since the fire district is there, our department are invited and they're probably |
| 00:15:57.03 | Unknown | as well. I suggest that's a good path. since they do have elected board. And I think also it's a good time to remind the community that is watching or the community that might read this in paper or watch later, yes, if you have received information, it is up to the residents to commit your property to fire safety. And as we all are, as the city, as the city, as the county, we all need to do it and I think we've attended a couple meetings where we have worked collaboratively as a group to do that. We all have property here that needs to be cleaned and prepared. We have the opportunities for the community to step up and create fire safe communities. I think that is a huge takeaway from this document and hopefully directs people that are paying attention to this to go to FireWise website with fire safe communities and find out how they can get bullying on this. We would work in collaboration with our community resident events that I think are fabulous. I know the chief is very much looking forward to that type of process in our community. So for that, I think it was a very good discussion and document. But good to know that your board can still hear this and that we can move forward at that time. |
| 00:17:21.08 | Sonia Hanson | Excuse me, do I have any time left? I didn't use my three minutes, Joe. |
| 00:17:21.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:17:25.94 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:17:26.38 | Sonia Hanson | We'll give you one minute. |
| 00:17:26.97 | Keith Stone King | The Press. |
| 00:17:27.97 | Unknown | The Press. |
| 00:17:28.85 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:17:29.98 | Sonia Hanson | you you |
| 00:17:34.58 | Sonia Hanson | Continuation. I'm responding to what Joe, our mayor, just said. And most of it was about how we as residents need to be taking responsibility and doing what needs to be done. That is my point. The city, with the city on land, you are not taking responsibility. And believe me, I'm not going to be the only resident up here saying, why the heck are you not committing to this issue? The fire district is, but they don't have limitless funds. I do not see that this city has done much of anything. You haven't had a town hall meeting. You have not addressed all the public land that we own as a city that we are responsible for. Who's going to take care of that? Cypress Ridge is being taken care of thanks to the fire department, fire district. There's going to be a time they run out of funds. They don't have unlimited funds. What are we as a city, you as a representative of our city government, what are you going to do to take this on? Because you have it yet. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.06 | Unknown | I'm looking for a motion. |
| 00:18:36.87 | Sonia Hanson | Thank you. |
| 00:18:36.89 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE I'll put a comment first, which I reopened and then I'm just... Is there more public comment? Is there a question? More public comment, right on. Sorry, didn't catch the card. If you're looking to speak for this item or any item, please go out and bring the card and then to our city clerk, and we will have other comments. |
| 00:18:54.34 | Unknown | you |
| 00:19:02.96 | Chris Johnson | My name is Chris Johnson. Related to this slightly different tangent, I'd like to consider ways to expedite situations where there's a public right-of-way and a citizen is willing to bear the cost of clearing it because it's adjacent to their property and i've been going through this process for about nine months now with degrees that are overhanging the driveway and i'm willing to pay for everything it's just a really long slow process if there's an objection i get it there's a process that needs to be followed but nine months is a little bit long. So I'd like to think about ways to enable us to supplement what the will be ordinance and measure you and everything that's going on. |
| 00:19:54.09 | Councilmember Cox | Can I ask a question? Who are you working with on behalf of the city to try |
| 00:19:58.04 | Unknown | the public right of way adjacent to your property. an individual's name or? Yeah, an individual's name. Who is your point of contact at the city? I'm working with Lauren Ambergis. |
| 00:20:04.92 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:20:12.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:13.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:13.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:20:15.00 | Unknown | Senator Bushmaker, is there any others? Thank you. |
| 00:20:21.28 | Sandra Bushmaker | the dignity council and staff, mayor, vice mayor, Sandra Bushmaker, long-term resident of Sausalito, and former sitting in the hot chair myself. I just would like to bring to the council's attention again that the disaster preparedness committee passed a motion 5-0 in January 9th, 2019, asking the council to adopt |
| 00:20:21.75 | Unknown | Thank you. Bye. |
| 00:20:45.20 | Sandra Bushmaker | A. policy that fire prevention, vegetation management, and debris removal especially trimming vegetation from power lines is a high priority in Sausalito. It's simply a policy statement. The Disaster Preparedness Committee requested this council to adopt. To my knowledge, nothing has happened with that adoption of that policy. It's a simple step forward in at least giving our residents the knowledge that this council treats this as a high priority item. Secondly, I wish to announce that the neighbors who have property adjacent to the National Park Service, we learned through the Disaster Preparedness Committee that the National Park Service will partner with private parties in order to remove the vegetation at the private party's cost. But they will partner with private owners here in Sausalito to remove debris from the National Park Service land. So I want to make that available to our residents as well. Thank you. |
| 00:21:26.85 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 00:21:53.12 | Unknown | you attended the walk on Cypress Ridge. Yes. Lauren Burst, what the city was on that? Yes. What did Lauren commit to removing a dead tree and clearing stuff along the paths and spot cutting a great deal of that? |
| 00:21:56.94 | Sandra Bushmaker | Yes. Yes. |
| 00:22:08.03 | Sandra Bushmaker | Did you have a vacation in there? At Cypress Ridge, yes. We were there too. So you know that was the case. Thank you. |
| 00:22:08.13 | Unknown | You know, you're... Thank you. |
| 00:22:08.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:22:15.57 | Sandra Bushmaker | And or seeking. |
| 00:22:20.06 | Annie Dorsey | Good evening council members. I'm Annie Dorsey, long time resident of Sausalito. I don't stand up and do this very often, but this issue about fire safety in our town has really ignited my passion. here and I am concerned that our city council has not given this issue the priority that it deserves. Just one example of this is the Firewise Communities situation. It's a national program. Marin County is the leading county in the country for communities signing up for Firewise participation and Sausalito is no is the leading county in the country for communities signing up for Firewise participation. And Sausalito is nowhere among those signatories, those participants in Firewise. And I can't help but fault our community. city government for not reaching out and educating the public about what is available to them in terms of fire safety and not prevention, fire safety. I also am wondering if the city council might reappropriate some funds currently designated to fluff up the High-end. high-end tourism in our downtown neighborhoods. to help homeowners assess the fire danger on their own personal properties and possibly even subsidize some of the removals to help people clean up their own properties. I think that's all I have to say at this time. I'm going to go on, but I won't. |
| 00:24:03.05 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Any other comment? Any other public comment? Seeing none, I'll public comment on consent items. |
| 00:24:13.07 | Unknown | We just asked you to add to that last point. So there have been a number, we have had at least three hearings here, and another hearing at the Bay Model, and a hearing at the Community Disaster Preparedness Meeting, at which many of our respected officials, fire officials, have presented and have given out a lot of information about how individual neighborhoods can't become firewise communities. So if you were at one of those meetings, I think would have been a good chance to receive that. Also our community disaster preparedness committee meets every month or every month. But I also, the chief has people available to come out and talk to neighborhoods. So while we are on this topic, I think it would just be important I've heard you say a number of times how you are willing to come out to educate neighborhood groups, to organize chipping days, to talk to people about their properties, about the plants on their properties. I was up touring Wolfpack Ridge for an appeal that we had to do. And one of your chief, sorry. That is. Chief Parks. Chief Parks. Okay, that's right. talking to two homeowners about how they could clear brush and take care of the property around their homes and they had just called him and he had come on a saturday um to talk to them so maybe i don't know if there's more that you want to elaborate on but given that we have a number of people that are here and are very concerned i i think your resources are are really amazing and you have been at everything that we've had and you've reiterated this and so perhaps you could do so again. |
| 00:26:11.82 | Chief Parks | Yeah, I think you stated it quite well, but just again to sort of maybe reinforce that. The first thing I guess I would want to acknowledge is I appreciate the interest in the community and certainly in the council and the support for this issue, the critical nature of it, and taking actionable steps. That's something that clearly our role as public servants in the public safety lane is really vitally important to us. Our community is challenged just like a lot of communities with getting information out. And what we find is despite our best efforts in trying to saturate, there seems to be barriers that we can't penetrate. We often find that a lot of the people who come to our presentations are the same people. So we sort of have a saying, it feels at times like we're preaching to the converted. And what we're looking for are those people in the community who perhaps have not been touched by this information For us to make a difference in lowering the risks in our community, it really is about a partnership. It's not only about a partnership between the government agencies, but with our community. And this is where Firewise, I think, is a really important program. The fire marshal was just reminding me, we actually have three Firewise communities in the city of Sausalito. and the beauty of this program is that it forces in way, residents to become engaged in reducing risk in their own neighborhoods. And clearly this is not something that the fire district or the city can do on their own. It really is about us as a community coming together. And so to your point, the fire district remains wholly committed. However we can support the community, whether it's at an individual property owner level or a neighborhood level, that's what we're here for. We want to help reduce the risk in this community. And we want people to reach out to us because if our efforts are not saturating the way we want, the other way we get it is a request coming in. So thank you for that comment. |
| 00:28:06.74 | Unknown | Thank you. What's the best way for the public to reach you? Is there a website, your email address, |
| 00:28:13.03 | Chief Parks | Yeah, we certainly have contact information on the website. The fire marshal's office is out of station one down on Johnson Street. That would be the primary point of contact, would actually be our fire marshal Fred Hilliard. And his contact information is on the website. And we certainly can make it available to the city through the currents. |
| 00:28:35.38 | Keith Stone King | Uh... |
| 00:28:35.96 | Ray | Chief. Sorry, I'm using my voice. We went through Measure U last fall. And could you remind me, and I'm sorry, I didn't know we were going to talk about this in a step, otherwise I would have given you my answer. I forget the numbers. Can you give me a rough idea of how much money, part of what the use of those funds are for fire prevention, fire safety, these very programs. Can you give me a sense of how much money is set aside from Measure U for that? |
| 00:29:26.10 | Chief Parks | Yes, so the measure will generate approximately $2.9 million a year for the district. And we have dedicated $1 million of that $2.9 specifically for wild land risk fire reduction. |
| 00:29:42.00 | Unknown | The Press. |
| 00:29:46.59 | Unknown | Got your notes? |
| 00:29:48.97 | Unknown | motions. Thank you. |
| 00:29:51.92 | Councilmember Cox | I did want to comment on item 2B, 5B, just because we did hear from various members of the public. And I want to remind the public that this will come back to us for action on August 27. That will include a postcard to residents so that they're aware. Oh, so I thought we were going |
| 00:30:15.04 | Mary Wagner | into a mailing? Yeah, the direction from the council was that a mailing wasn't going to be for that item, but that if there were revisions in the future to the regulations, that we would come back with you then and your community development director asked for that specific direction. |
| 00:30:31.96 | Councilmember Cox | So on August 27th, we will hear how other communities grapple with this issue so that we can be informed about our options. But that in the meantime, it's better that we adopt something than that we leave nothing, because the something is better than the nothing, knowing that we are going to be taking a closer look at this at our meeting in August. |
| 00:30:56.47 | Unknown | Great, and just back on the grand jury report, I think I already said my opinion of how we should deal with that today, but I really appreciate the concern about fiber safety in our community, and we are taking numerous steps, and of course, it's a work in progress, and I appreciate the community keeping that on the highest priority, and I would encourage everyone to use all channels. I will commit this week to posting on Facebook more information about Fred Hilliard's information and for getting that out. I know that Abbott Chambers has communicated regularly in the current, but hopefully he can use this opportunity to renew that this summer. And so I just want to appreciate everybody who came back to speak about this issue. |
| 00:31:44.86 | Ray | I was going to add that, you know, I think as a city council giving direction to the city staff, it would be, is there anything the city can add through its communication vehicles to assist our fire district in particular putting to packaging a communication, set of communications that really focuses on the neighborhoods and fireworks and so on. Is there anything to do? Because I want to reiterate what I said last time, and is we have a fire district that is providing fire services for us including prevention and education and management. We had a measure that provided funds in part as the chief has told us to do this. This is our fire department. The district is our fire department. And so significant resources are being extended on this. |
| 00:32:23.12 | Joe Silverman | Thank you. |
| 00:33:00.95 | Ray | I think that's important to understand what the city can do. The city gave up property tax to have a fire district to be able to do this for us. And so let them do their jobs. And we should ask the question, is there anything that we can do to help and enable them? Chief, thanks a lot. But that's sort of, I'm sure there is some things we can help with. But that seems to be the message. Because in the end, as I say, it's your, our fire department. Yeah. |
| 00:33:30.97 | Chief Parks | and that's certainly how we view the relationship. The one thing that I would add with the Measure U dollars, you know, being very sensitive to the importance of communication with the community. And while we work very closely with Abbott to publish stuff regularly in the Currents, and we certainly use the social media sites of the district, we recognize, again, as I mentioned earlier, that communicating with the community is always a challenge despite your best efforts and outreach there's always an audience that you know you seem to miss and so we're looking to do some new things starting July 1 when our funding starts to come in and we allocated some funds out of the measure use specifically to increase the amount of communication to the community one of of the things that we feel that's very, very important is that the taxpayers entrusted us with these funds to go and make a difference in reducing the risk. If we don't communicate those steps that we are taking, how do they know that we're leveraging those funds? And so we feel an obligation with that trust. So I think you'll see an increase on the district side of working with the city in the volume |
| 00:34:08.61 | Joe Silverman | Yeah. |
| 00:34:37.02 | Unknown | going out. Can I also answer, a gentleman who wrote these questions, which is valid. And we hear, you know, how do we communicate this to the public so often, it almost becomes rhetorical. But I challenge, and we had the community disaster preparedness committee take up the task of turning that from almost a rhetorical question to a very |
| 00:34:37.75 | Chief Parks | Okay. |
| 00:34:58.98 | Unknown | objective process and they're going to develop a kind of matrix of all of the messages we want to get out for all potential safety issues from earthquakes to slides to floods to flood fires to safety issues and then all mediums that are available from social media to print media to flyers and bags at grocery stores to neighborhood contacts there's a plethora of contact points, there's a lot of messaging, and there's a plethora of contact points. There's a lot of messaging, and there's a lot of people impacted by the message. So that community is actually going to look at a very comprehensive way to do that communication when it comes to that community safety and disaster preparedness envelope. And because we constantly battle that, right? Hey, how do we reach? How do we get more out there? Well, we have to start really putting |
| 00:35:48.03 | Ray | after that. And if I can just add in one point, which is the thing that I've witnessed, especially in the county and beyond in the region, is that it is really only the fire departments and the districts who can because of the scale and the communication, you know, people don't have to reinvent the wheel. They're being invented, you know, up north where the fires happen and the collaboration between the fire districts and the various fire chiefs is enabling a scale that we couldn't possibly imagine. We just need to help them, you know, make sure that what they're doing is communicated to our residents. Trey, I think a lot of discussion. |
| 00:36:38.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:36:39.77 | Ray | . |
| 00:36:39.97 | Unknown | I want to get information. |
| 00:36:43.35 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:36:52.97 | Unknown | I'm motion up here. |
| 00:36:55.75 | Unknown | And here's the consent calendar. |
| 00:36:57.96 | Unknown | Second. All in favor? Aye. That passes 5 to 0. Please do contact the fire department with your questions. That would be very valuable. It wasn't a question. with your. |
| 00:37:15.39 | Unknown | We are now up to seven public hearing items. So moving from consent if you're at home. We're now moving to public hearing item on proposed sanitary fee effective 2019, housing Thank you. |
| 00:37:41.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:41.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:37:44.39 | Unknown | Good evening, Mr. Mayor and the Council. This is Staff discussion on the background for the public hearing today, which is on establishing new sanctuary sewer rates for the city. Just as some background, I know we talked about this in prior meetings, but for those who weren't here, the city's last rate study was completed in 2014, and rate studies are typically established for a five-year period. The rates that were established in 2014 are good through this fiscal year, which is through June 30th of 2019. And therefore staff have brought in MBS consultants and myself to develop a new rate study. And the rate study was discussed during several required meetings. The sewer rates have a fixed component and a volumetric component based on average water use, and they are collected through the tax rule for sewage collection only. There's also another rate that's collected by Sausalito Marin City Sanitary District. It's a separate rate, a separate process, a separate hearing. |
| 00:38:04.05 | Adam Politzer | background. |
| 00:38:55.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:10.09 | Unknown | And also to summarize, the rates that were established cover cost of service in a manner that's equitable and manages risks. There are three components of cost. The operating cost, which are your administrative cost, your engineering, your operations, your company cost. There's also debt service on two vehicles, the 2015 civil revenue bonds, and also a state revolving loan that was issued in 2011. And the rates must cover anticipated capital needs, and that includes pump station improvements, specifically a Whiskey Springs pump station improvement over on Paloma, pipeline replacements on an annual basis, and also reserve and planned funding for annual repairs. This slide shows the current sewer rates, and these are the rates that are effective through June 30th of this year. They do vary based on the classification of property owners, single family, single family attached, duplexes, multifamily, and commercial. All pay different rates. There's also a volumetric charge that's assessed for average water use, for residential and for the winter water use, and for commercial and for the annual water use. And these classifications did not change in the current rate study. It remained the same. MPS completed their rate study, which involved three steps. They first looked at the financial plan and the revenue requirements. They looked at the cost of service to allocate the revenue to the various classifications and then developed the rate design. In terms of costs, the costs that are covered by the rates include operating in capital costs. The operating costs average about $2 million per year. This is a 2% increase per year over the five-year period. The debt service on the revenue bond averages $427,904 per year, and that's an established cost. And the repayment on the state revolving loan fund is $67,373 per year, and it's also a pre-established cost. |
| 00:41:26.04 | Adam Politzer | every year. |
| 00:41:29.36 | Unknown | In the current rate structure is an allocation of approximately 1.1 million per year capital expenditures, and that targets about 3% of your sewer system being replaced every year. And in addition, there is a $1.2 million target for reserves in the rate structure. The resulting rate structure as was discussed previously increases 4% per year. And the rate structure is shown here. The blue on the bottom shows your operating costs. The red in the middle shows your debt service. And the green shows the capital component. The capital component is really the component that is changing through this process to provide a slightly more aggressive replacement program than the city has had in the past. And then the dotted lines, the dark black dotted line, hopefully those who are watching can see the difference, shows what your coverage would be with current race. and as you can see, at the end of the period there, the black line will not cover anticipated expenditures. The blue dotted line shows how the rates will cover the anticipated expenditures. There are a couple of other components involved in the rate structure besides just pure cost, and that was the relative distribution of cost by customer class, and that's really based on the information from the tax rules that were gathered since the current rate study of the percentage of different classifications, and also the volumetric component, which brings in 2018 water usage data. So as published in the public notice and also in the prior staff information that was provided to counsel prior to issues of the public notice, this slide, which is very small, and I apologize for that, shows the proposed rates. They do begin with the numbers that were shown in the previous slide. And just to give you an example, the single family is currently 546.48, and that rate does increase 4% per year over time to a final value of 730.27 in year five. The other classifications change similarly. |
| 00:43:45.56 | Adam Politzer | you |
| 00:44:02.42 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 00:44:06.98 | Unknown | you |
| 00:44:07.03 | Unknown | you don't they either go down or Well, so I'll explain that. So they do start in 2019 at a different level. They don't go up by 4% from the current because this current rate structure has to reallocate all of the costs based on the proportion of customer classes and also relative water use. So the 2019-20 number is a new baseline. And then the rates increase 4% over that 2019-20. |
| 00:44:37.82 | Unknown | Okay, which is from a resident's perspective, unless you own a single family home, all of the other categories are going down. |
| 00:44:44.69 | Unknown | Correct. |
| 00:44:45.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:44:45.97 | Unknown | end up going down. |
| 00:44:52.28 | Unknown | And so highlights that we brought forward prior to the issuance of the public notice and that I'll re-emphasize here is that the proposed rate structure does enable the city to continue to provide the level of service that it needs to and has been to protect the environment and its residents. The rate structure does manage rate impacts without significantly compromising the capital replacement needs. The updated sewer rates do continue to ensure equity for ratepayers and there are rebates available for low-income residents. And without continuing to update these rates, the city does not have the money needed to continue to accept sewer upgrades. And that was established through the rate study and the development of the financial plan. And the funds would to address the sewer system would come at the expense of other essential city services. you So recap of the rate setting timeline. In April 30th, there was council discussion and action was authorized to begin the 45-day comment period. The day after, within the week after that council meeting, the notice of public hearing that is required by Proposition 218 was mailed out to each property owner. Also, the information was published in the local paper and was posted here in the city. The public comment period is a mandatory 45-day comment period, and that comment period ends today. And today there is a recommendation to report to the public hearing. And the public hearing would involve opening the hearing, hearing comments, receiving all protests, written protests, including protests that have already been received by the city. And as of yesterday, the city had received four protests and NBS group's hotline had received seven calls of fairly by nature. |
| 00:46:49.80 | Adam Politzer | and the other. |
| 00:47:01.11 | Unknown | After all of the votes, or the votes, the protests are received, then the public hearing will be closed. The council would count the protests. If the protests amount to more than 50%, the simple majority of the property owners, then the council can take no action on the rate. But if less than 50% of protests are received, the council can then decide whether the council would like to take action on the rate. Thank you. on the rate, but it's less than 50% of the process that receives accounts and then decide whether the council would like to take action on the rates and establishing the rates for the next period. If the new rates are established, they would show up on the December tax rule and they would be retroactive to July 1st, 2019. |
| 00:47:45.86 | Unknown | I'm sorry, I jumped ahead of myself. So I've gone through this slide already. Four protests were received at seven calls via hotline as of yesterday. Also of note, the protests can be received from the property owner or from the resident, even if the resident's not the property owner, but only one protest can be counted per property. So the number that we calculated that was comprised 50% is 1,751 protests that would be received in order for the council to not take action in the neighborhood. |
| 00:48:25.62 | Unknown | Now, answering the question. |
| 00:48:26.58 | Unknown | Thank you. Are there any questions for the community? |
| 00:48:26.60 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 00:48:29.84 | Councilmember Cox | Well, I have a question on one of the protests, but perhaps I should ask that after we open the table. you |
| 00:48:38.09 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 00:48:38.11 | Councilmember Cox | Yes. |
| 00:48:38.44 | Ray | Thank you. Thank you, David. Could you sort of move up to 35,000 feet and explain this strategy over the long term. Thank you. and of a review, periodic review, and including the buckets, the expenses, and the gap of improvement. I mean, that is something that is contemplated is the strategy over a long term, right? Could you explain that? And is there any other model for considering our aging sewer systems, is there any other model that can be used other than this periodic process? Sorry, I realize that from some of the commentary we're getting, I think some sort of commentary about the overall strategy. |
| 00:49:41.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:49:47.45 | Unknown | Well, so the strategy that has been in place by the city since about 2009, I think it was about 2009, has been to implement an asset management approach to sewer management. So the asset management approach, we're trying to even out as much as we can the repairs and the replacements. We're trying to extend service life as long as we can to get as much out of each piece of pipe and each punctuation as we can. It's difficult to do because you have to be very flexible because the data is always changing, because the system is always aging, or you're putting new things in or surprises come up. You know, a part of the system that you might have thought was good turns out to not be so good, and then you have to reprioritize. So the asset management approach does look at the system on a regular basis. For rate setting, five years is a very common time period to look. Agencies do project out longer than five years. They project out 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, agencies that we work with. But when you do that, you always have to revisit every three or four or five years because so much information changes. And I haven't actually seen a 10-year plan that looks the same in five years. The-year plan is always changing but it's just a way to kind of stay ahead of kind of the courage so I would say I hope I can answer all your question but the approach that the city's taken is very standard and I think it's progressive and I think it is aggressive with the amount of replacements that are rejected here. And I think it's needed. And it's needed because you do have an old system. It's not older than a lot of systems in this area, especially the northern part of the Bay Area. But it is an old system, and these systems are reaching the ends of their design life, and we don't want to replace the whole thing at once when the whole thing fails. So what this does is it does allow you to fund things that have to get replaced now, but also to do for work that can get replaced a little bit later, and in five years take another look and decide what the next five years holds. |
| 00:50:05.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:51:43.76 | Adam Politzer | Not only them. |
| 00:52:10.68 | Unknown | you |
| 00:52:14.09 | Jill Hoffman | Vivian, how much the rate increases, how much annually over the current rates will it bring into your system? Bringing in revenue to the rate? |
| 00:52:25.85 | Unknown | There's an operational and maintenance component also, and I don't have all of the numbers. Maybe you can answer the question about all of the numbers. From the capital perspective, it's about 1.1 million per year to be invested into the sewer system. |
| 00:52:40.09 | Jill Hoffman | enough differential between the current rates and the increased rates. |
| 00:52:45.22 | Unknown | Oh, man. That would be the entire rate with 3 and 1.1. I don't know what the differential would be. Thank you. |
| 00:52:53.97 | Unknown | I have some kind of details. I think I'm going to promote it. Okay. So currently, rate revenue is about $2.7 million from sewer rates, and what we're projecting by the end of the five-year period, it would be about $3.3 million. So we're going up $600,000, $700,000 in total. Is that annually or total? Total over the five year period. So it goes up like $100,000 a year. A little bit more for standards. |
| 00:53:14.23 | Jill Hoffman | Is that annually or total? |
| 00:53:24.56 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:53:24.59 | Nancy Osborne | Okay, thanks. Thank you for that. |
| 00:53:28.58 | Unknown | Any other questions for you? All right, seeing none, I am gonna open up the public hearing. And this is the public hearing. We are gonna require cards, so if you have an item, if you wanna speak to this item, the public hearing, and comment on this proposed rate increase, please do fill out a card. So we can have you on record. I have one Keith Stone King, which I'll call up first. This is on the sewer rink, Robert, not you. Thank you. |
| 00:53:58.16 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:53:58.43 | Keith Stone King | Yeah. |
| 00:53:58.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:53:58.88 | Keith Stone King | on. |
| 00:53:58.99 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 00:54:00.03 | Keith Stone King | The Press on public protection, on basically so, Fukushima is very hot. There's a classic floating island out in the middle of the ocean. We take that and dump that into Fukushima, it'll level underneath and it'll start building up here. |
| 00:54:12.47 | Adam Politzer | Take that. |
| 00:54:17.24 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:54:18.17 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:54:18.24 | Keith Stone King | that pattern. |
| 00:54:18.71 | Keith Stone King | you |
| 00:54:18.80 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:54:18.81 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:54:19.03 | Keith Stone King | . |
| 00:54:19.40 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:54:19.52 | Keith Stone King | Keith. |
| 00:54:19.96 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:54:20.01 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, council members and mayor. You should have in your packet, and also open up currency content, |
| 00:54:24.40 | Keith Stone King | you Okay. and also open up current consciousness in the water. |
| 00:54:35.54 | Keith Stone King | should have in your packet a memorandum that I supplied yesterday in that the rate increases on the sewer stuff actually is not an administrative function, but based on case law, is a legislative function which would have to be voted by the residents of Sausalito. Going back several years when Doug Bancher was mayor and Bill Zackler was on the city council, we had a situation of the same nature applying to MLK. And those that wanted to increase the parcel tax were major CEO. And I and some other people got together and we protested because we said it was not a good deal. And Major C was defeated and the city council had to go back and redo their budget to incorporate how they were going to pay for MLK at that time. This, I think, falls in the same situation in the sense that if we are going to have a parcel tax, it needs to be voted on, and not just by the property owners, but by the entire population of the city of South Salido. And I've given you case law that came out and we've got three attorneys on this council that should be able to figure it out. I'm just a poor accountant. |
| 00:56:28.60 | Keith Stone King | So that's all I got, so thank you. |
| 00:56:32.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:56:34.39 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 00:56:34.42 | Unknown | Andrew McBerry. |
| 00:56:40.55 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening again. Sandra Bushmaker, resident of Sausalito. Quick question. Does this rate increase address the Schoonmaker beach pollution where we have repeated signs put up to not drink, swim, or enter the water? Maybe that's a question. I don't know who to direct this question to. I've been approached by several residents, including a three-year-old little girl who couldn't go into the water because it was so gross. So and next door had a discussion just today on this very subject of Schoonmaker. So what's happening? Is it just a bloom of algae, or is it E. coli, or what's the problem? |
| 00:56:57.88 | Annie Dorsey | you. it. |
| 00:57:25.53 | Unknown | I don't think we have the ability to answer you on that question at this point, but we can try to answer online on why you can. |
| 00:57:31.07 | Sandra Bushmaker | Okay, well I think it's a public health issue too. It's a serious issue. If we're going to be increasing the rates for our sewage treatment, our sewer lines, that we need to be able to assure the public that we're not going to have spills. Appreciate it. Thank you. Irene Heats. |
| 00:57:31.56 | Unknown | Well, I think |
| 00:57:52.96 | Sandra Bushmaker | My name is Irene Deetz and I'm a small property owner. I own a small apartment building in Sausalito. which I've known for many, many years. My sewer taxes of the two combined are over $11,000 a year. I have one sewer line which we just recently updated. And I'm just wondering, she stated the fact that this went into effect in 2009 and 3% of your sewers are supposed to be replaced a year. At that point we should have 30% of your sewers replaced. And I'm wondering if that's taken place. I feel that the cost of your sewer in Paris future plans are out of sight. I don't know how other people afford it, it's killing us. Thank you. |
| 00:58:53.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:58:58.23 | Unknown | We'll leave this open for any other public comment, public hearing, on this public hearing. Is there anybody else coming up? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment and now take comments from council members. |
| 00:59:20.20 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um, So I would like to get I'm in this question answered. Have we replaced 30% of our sewer system since, our sewer collection system since, |
| 00:59:34.97 | Unknown | I would say not. I mean, I haven't done the numbers, but 30% is a significant number of miles to your sewer system. I have been involved in the work that has been done. There has been a lot of work done. The sewers and hurricane gulch were fixed. Spinnaker pump station was installed at the grease interceptor, installed on grease issues, anchor pump station was upgraded, the infiltration and inflow issue in Gate 5 Road has changed significantly with work there. So it's been very challenging, and actually the new rates and the new plan reflect what we learned from 2009. It's been a very challenging time replacing your sewers for many reasons. One is because they're very difficult to replace because your streets are extremely congested. And so replacing the sewers takes a lot of thought and a lot of work and a lot of surprises come up along the way and as a result it's very expensive to do so. Also you have groundwater from the proximity of a lot of your infrastructure to the bay and the the way that the groundwater moves through. There's a lot of relic soils and unknown structures underground. I mean, it's just very, very complicated underground in the city of Sausalito. So we've learned a lot through the past years of replacing sewers. And that information was brought into the analysis for the next five years of what we think it'll cost to continue to replace sewers. But there has been priority replacement throughout the way. I would say not 30%, but a lot of work has gotten done. And if you look at the sanitary sewer overflow records for the city that are available publicly, there's been a significant, significant decrease in sanitary sewer overflows. And that's the result of all the work that was done. |
| 01:00:35.46 | Adam Politzer | like |
| 01:01:43.10 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, if I can, I'm sorry, I just want to add to it because Vivian's been a big part of our team over the years, but I want to remind the council that in 2009 or around that time, we actually went to the ratepayers to increase the rate because we needed to increase our maintenance of the existing sewer line. So we made a purposeful statement to go from one sewer employee to four. And that was part of our original plan in 2009 so that we can go through and actually maintain the system and inspect it, video it, and make repairs where we could. Then in the next great study, we went from four employees down to three, which is where we are today with the capital program and took out the loan at that point to front load that effort. So I think it's important to recognize that each rate study we have a strategy. So it wasn't course of this 10 years improving and replacing pipes. It was actually starting from zero with maintenance and then moving to replacement. |
| 01:01:43.27 | Unknown | to me if I can |
| 01:02:50.92 | Councilmember Cox | And so, but now the rate structure that we're looking at now anticipates that we will undertake replacement of 3% of our system per year. And you believe that's feasible based on the lessons learned in the last 10 years. |
| 01:03:08.82 | Unknown | Yeah, so the capital projections that we included to develop the rate at that rate of replacement does include all the lessons learned that we have gained, you know, the lesson that we have learned since 2009. So no guarantees, of course, because we don't know what we're going to find on the ground, but we're planning for difficult sewer replacement for the next five years. That's part of the plan and we're going in with our eyes wide open and we've tried our best to make sure we're spending for that. |
| 01:03:48.36 | Councilmember Cox | And then the protests, so you mentioned the protests that have been received as of yesterday. We received another one on the dais this evening. And this protest states that, or alleges that the increase is not fair because what about when there's one large unit and one small unit in a duplex, yet they're billed identically. And also, are ADUs considered duplexes, and are those homes billed accordingly? |
| 01:04:22.43 | Unknown | So maybe Kim can answer the question about how the rates are distributed by property class, but the rates are established per property class and not based on the size of the home. And that is, and Mary can probably provide more information on that, but that is a method that is used to establish these rates and there's precedent for that. you |
| 01:04:47.24 | Unknown | The only thing I'd add to that is there's a fixed charge and a volumetric charge. So if there's a larger unit and a duplex, if there's more people in the home and they're utilizing more water, and so more water is going back down into the sewer, they would pay more on the volumetric part of their bill. So there's be, there's an equity adjustment there if there's more utilization of the sewer system. And then is there a separate classification |
| 01:04:47.29 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:05:16.74 | Unknown | And then is there a separate classification for APLUs? |
| 01:05:19.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:19.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:20.28 | Unknown | You know what, on eight, like an accessory dwelling unit? Correct. I'm actually not quite sure if, |
| 01:05:24.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:24.51 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:05:24.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:24.67 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 01:05:29.04 | Unknown | is that ADU would be a full EDU. Because the customer classes are single family, simultaneously attached, and multi-family. I'm not quite sure on the ADU. I just have to get back to you on that. |
| 01:05:43.90 | Unknown | Okay. The public comment is we're closed and moved on. We actually have to speak to a plan here. So we have no longer other comments here. |
| 01:05:51.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:52.48 | Unknown | Questions? |
| 01:05:52.97 | Unknown | I have one question. |
| 01:05:53.39 | Unknown | I did work. |
| 01:05:54.03 | Annie Dorsey | to get the information. |
| 01:05:54.32 | Unknown | from many people. |
| 01:05:54.97 | Unknown | I'd just like to get the city attorney's opinion on the points raised by Mr. Stone King. Thank you. you And it's my understanding that this is, in the presentation, we were, it was explained that if more than 50% of the property owners protest, then we are not committed to vote on this. But otherwise, there's no vote required. you |
| 01:06:19.64 | Mary Wagner | Correct. So there's a special category in Prop 218 for property-related fees, such as sewer fees, water fees, other similar types of fees that go through this protest-ary process. The cases that were summarized in the attachment talk about the public's ability to referend or submit a referendum for something that was put in place through this process. So that doesn't say you have to put it out to a vote, it just says it's subject potentially to referendum. The other cases that are cited deal with special taxes, not property related taxes, that do require the two thirds vote of the public. |
| 01:07:00.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:00.80 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:07:00.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:01.18 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. Mr. President. |
| 01:07:05.65 | Jill Hoffman | Oh. This might be going from area or. So is there any requirement that the sewer services and the district sets that we have, that it has to be funded via the rate payers? In other words, the city owns the sewer system. I know that we have a district and we have rate payers, but is there anything that prevents the city, in other words, the city council from budgeting money, revenues to support the sewer district as opposed to having a rate increase. |
| 01:07:42.03 | Mary Wagner | So the city's sewer rate is used to finance the city, the portions that the city owns and controls, not the district's portions of the lines or the treatment plant. So we've gone through that discussion a lot about the two separate pieces. And it's actually, I think, the reverse. So what the sewer rate, the sewer fees can't be used to fund other projects. If the council wanted to use general monies to fund sewer projects, I don't believe that's prohibited. But so it's the reverse. The special, the sewer fund can only be utilized for sewer projects. |
| 01:07:56.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:07:56.96 | Adam Politzer | you |
| 01:08:19.59 | Unknown | you |
| 01:08:21.69 | Mary Wagner | any other time. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:08:28.98 | Unknown | Amen. you We're now going to receive any written protests, any further written protests, and then we're going to do our count. Seeing no other written protests coming up. We'll close the public hearing and count the protest votes. And I think staff has a total now. |
| 01:09:16.06 | Unknown | We have received a total of five written protests. |
| 01:09:23.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:23.73 | Unknown | to affirm we have received five protests, which is less than a simple majority, allowing us to take action on the recommended motion. |
| 01:09:38.45 | Unknown | which I know will be safe. Exactly. And we have five bullet points on our recommended motion. |
| 01:09:46.41 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:09:46.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:09:47.04 | Councilmember Cox | So, Councilmember Whitney and I sit on the subcommittee for the South Sudomeren City Seward District and have worked on this project in conjunction with members of the South Sudomeren City Sewer District. And the city council carefully considered various levels of rate increases to balance the importance of keeping rates reasonable with the importance of repairing and maintaining our aging sewer system. And Sausalito, like many municipalities, faces a challenge of long deferred maintenance. And many municipalities lack the wherewithal to undertake any kind of catching up on deferred maintenance. And so I'm very pleased that our consultant was able to come up with a plan for us to undertake these difficult repairs at a rate of 3% per year within a 4% rate increase. So I'll be very interested in this. |
| 01:11:08.41 | Unknown | We had looked at 3% per year originally. That led to a 12% annual rate increase. So the rate increase of 4% is a lot of percentages here. The proposed rate increase will repair the system at a rate of 2% per year. |
| 01:11:24.63 | Councilmember Cox | I thought in your presentation tonight, I heard you say at a rate of 3% per year. I was taking notes. |
| 01:11:31.26 | Keith Stone King | Yes. |
| 01:11:32.41 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah, I think in your presentation, you said 3% of the year, because I'm... So I'll have to go back and look at the numbers. |
| 01:11:47.97 | Unknown | I'm sorry. Thank you. |
| 01:11:51.51 | Councilmember Cox | Okay, well I misremembered from our prior hearing on this rate increase where we ended up and we did look at a lot of percentages. In any event, I still think it's a positive action that we are actually undertaking the difficult sewer repair, sewer line repairs, particularly given the challenges in reaching our pipes and our busy streets and the volumetric challenges of our groundwater system. I also am pleased about our reduction in sewer spills. I clearly recall more than 10 years ago when we were having frequent sewer spills, so I'm proud of the positive direction on that. And so overall, I'm in favor of this rate increase. |
| 01:12:45.29 | Unknown | Great, okay, just will echo all of those comments. We have had two hearings on this matter already and went extensively through the choices and the desire to have a prudent management of our aging infrastructure in a sustained way versus the impact on our rate payers. And we found that this particular solution with a 4% increase and a 2% improvement plan per year was the best balance of those two factors. I agree with everything that Council Member Cox said. And I would also just like to add that for the multifamily buildings, I realize that one commenter stated that it's already too high, but I think you can take some comfort in the fact that for multifamily, the rates barely go up. I think it's over 40 years, it will last less than $50. So that was the lowest category of rate increase for home-to-family. So I realize that you already think that it's unacceptably high, but I hope that that is |
| 01:13:53.04 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:13:58.48 | Unknown | consolation. And so I want to thank Vivian for all your work on this. |
| 01:14:09.04 | Unknown | Motion, comments? I'm a volunteer. I'm a volunteer. |
| 01:14:17.83 | Ray | Yeah, I also agree with the comments that Councilmember Cox and the Vice Mayor. I asked the question about what's the strategic model here we're using to upgrade our sewer. And basically we're looking at number one, long term. Number two, a prioritized asset management approach and in the long run that strategy is the best strategic model that for a better strategy strategy is the best strategic model for a better strategy. infrastructure, for a system of our age and the status of our system. It's the best model to balance, as I understand, as I've come to understand it, between the rate increase and what we get for it. The only other possibility which would be of such a magnitude it would dwarf our multiples of our general fund budget would be like a big bang less to everything at once but in the end that may very well be less efficient not withstanding the fact that you know a newer community might get get into that to fix a certain set of problems. Or if there's a community where most of the houses will build later in the summer, you could do it with one big bang. We can't do that here. included you using money You'd be using money the wrong way. This is the most efficient use of capital. This method of raising it and this method of spending it. |
| 01:16:14.39 | Jill Hoffman | So, I'm sorry, I have to ask with regard to the proposed sewer rates. Our stack report says 4%, your powerpoint says 4% increase. Am I missing? So it's a 4% increase. It is. you you Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. So I'm, you know, I too am pleased that we're looking at this issue. This is a huge issue that we have to fix in Sausalito. And something that we've talked about on the Finance Committee a lot about how to address it. Where I'm going to differ with my colleagues tonight, I believe, is that I don't feel like we should be imposing this burden on the property owners of Sausalito. Especially a 4% increase, which is a 20% increase at the end of the five-year period. I think this is, for some people, it's substantial, and for some people it has a large negative impact. I'm looking at our capper for this year. 31% of our budget, the largest portion of our budget, comes from property taxes. So we're taxing our property owners twice. And so when I look at the concerns that I have about our budget and our budget process this year that I'm going to talk about later in this meeting, I have even more concerns about how we're spending our money and who's who's benefiting spends of our money. And are we doing this in a, are we looking at our budget in a responsible way in order to address the most high priority problems that we have in Saskatoon yet. And so, and I, especially when I look, when I ask, that's why I ask the question, what will this increase bring in to our, to our sewer fund here at $100,000? I look at the budget as it's proposed tonight and that we've been talking about for the past six weeks. And, you know, with regard to shifting that burden away from the individual property owners that are already taxed and already composed 31.7% of our budget to the rest of our general fund revenues at $100,000. To me, it looks like for a priority as a city council, we should be looking at that way to fund this differential to fix our aging sewer system. And also, frankly, we need to be looking at this in a much more substantial and long-term way, about how, where the most likely areas for failures are, and how to most effectively address those. So respectfully, thank you to our consultants for their hard work. I know this was a big effort and a big push. And I did not specifically call this out earlier in our meetings, because my about the budget, I had hoped would be alleviated. They are not. I'm gonna address those later in our meeting. So respectfully, I'm gonna vote no on this. |
| 01:19:08.18 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you for all your work on this. I'm not sure what what other option there would have been. I mean, we could take it out of the general fund, which is revenue sourced by property taxes, or it could be paid through property taxes. So I appreciate the process that we've gone through, the number crunching that Vivian has and her staff have brought to this process, and really that we have somebody who does look at this in such a deep manner for our community over a long period of time. So thank you for that. Thank you for the public comments and the concerns. I think we do need to continue to look at at ways to reduce our fees at property owners. I think that's a very valid concern. And this has various aspects to it that ultimately we should be looking at how we can do some of these things efficiently. I know that it is very costly to do road construction. It just is. So thank you for everybody working on this. I'm not ready for much anymore. |
| 01:20:20.63 | Councilmember Cox | Can I move we waive full reading of the ordinance and read by title only an ordinance of the City Council of the City of Sausalito modifying chapter 18.12 of the Sausalito Municipal Code establishing sewer charges for any lawful person with a sewer utility and adopt the ordinance and that we find that the adoption of the ordinance is statutorily exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act. |
| 01:20:46.31 | Unknown | Let's do a roll call, please, sir. Council member Cox? Yes. Council member Hoffman? No. Council member Whitney? Yes. Vice mayor Cleveland Knowles? Yes. Mayor Burns? |
| 01:20:52.34 | Alice Merrill | No. |
| 01:20:57.50 | Unknown | and then we'll be able to get it. Yes, that motion passes four to one. |
| 01:21:05.57 | Unknown | We are now ready for our budget. fiscal year 2019-2020 adoption. Julia Carter will kick us off. This is item 7B on your agenda. We're still posting, are we still soundless? Okay. It's gonna be a lot of you can watch the recording later. I do remind the audience that is here, this is item 7B if you wanna speak to this item, fill out a card. You can even hold it, then if you hear something, then you can turn it in. But just be prepared. Okay. |
| 01:21:39.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:21:44.66 | Keith Stone King | Look at that. Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:22:02.98 | Julia Carter | There I can be for you tonight is adoption of the fiscal year 2019-2020 budget. There are two resolutions in the packet for your adoption. The first one is adoption of the budget itself. It's a very non-capital budget and we've talked about it before. It's a second year of the two-year cycle. You adopted the first year resolution a year ago on June 26th and today we want to use the second year resolution. Thank you. the first year resolution a year ago on June 26 and today we want to use about the second year resolution that completes this two year cycle. And the second resolution is establishing again appropriation limit for 2019-2020 which is state mandated requirements. So this is very routine. I then as well we calculated again mandated appropriation limit for the shares budget and I'm trying to report that we are on the limit as was expected and we shouldn't be able to express in this particular item here so so the two resolution included in your packets as attachments and the last four attachments. And that's what we would hope you would approve again with this presentation. |
| 01:22:24.52 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 01:23:17.71 | Julia Carter | Tonight we will talk about budget timeline and highlights, what changed since the last meeting, last week. We'll quickly go over the budget overview and hopefully move to staff implementation. Tonight's meeting concludes our budget process. At the last meeting we took your direction, we finalized the budget recommendations, and we are bringing you the final budget for adoption tonight for the formal adoption. So over the next few slides, let's go over the budget highlights. I would like to walk you through what changed since the last meeting. But first, let's look at the big picture view. So the general fund revenues are projected to be 19 million. It's about 9.4% of the revised budget and 6.6 over the adopted. Again, this number is excluded transfers. We want to give you a comparison for your analysis and general fund total expenditures. 20.2 million, which is 3.9% over the revised, 4.9 over the adopted, again, before the transfers. This is just what the budget looks like before we start with the funding in funds. |
| 01:24:11.46 | Nancy Osborne | Thank you. |
| 01:24:41.85 | Julia Carter | We'll talk about the balancing on the next slide, but the 2.2 million does include the one-time capital and operating transfers of 2.2 million, which is the last bullet in the slide. But if you take this transfers out of the equation, we do show some structural surplus when we compare a few rates in revenues to a few rates in expenditures. And again, we'll go into this in details in one of the few slides. So now, What was added in the budget? Last Tuesday we discussed three categories of changes with you, I don't want to reopen this conversation again, so just wanted to kind of refresh your memory and assure you these changes, these three categories were already added into the budget. The first one was the CIP list of new projects, new CIP projects that were added to the budget. Since last meeting we added another emergency preparedness, geological mapping study, and as per year direction last week. And again, we will go over this in more details, we allocated funds for this project. The second category of additions include the department request, they equal about 219,000, most of the whole of them are general fund funded. And category 3, equal the additional least of immune departments and serious diseases. So altogether, this recommendation is increased by channel fund budget by 481,000 and that includes additional allocation of measure O of 105,000 dollars. No, it will change since last Tuesday. We made only three changes to the budget since last week. We increased business license tax revenues, as we told you we will. We added additional 500,000 and that's general fund revenues. We matched it to the estimate that was provided to us by HDL last November. after this or during the time when the measure was adopted, We created a new safety project, as I've already mentioned, and allocated 50,000 of Measure O funds to be funded. So this project is funded by Measure O, so we're building this in as a transfer out of general fund to general capital fund. And we funded a 12-month Safe Harbor Program as per year, a separate action item last week. So that was the assumption of 177,000. And this is funded in Thailand's funds, so it's no chain of funds. Now let's look how these changes affected the Chair Fund budget. You may remember this slide from the last week's presentation You just saw on the previous slide, the general expenditures of 2.2 million. So that's the combination of these three numbers right here. So, a very few expenditures of 18 million, one time transfer to World's Compensation Fund of 0.9 million, and the capital transfers of 1.2 million. So that's our 2.2 million. But when you take this one-time transfers out and compare the operating revenues to operating expenditures, you can see this very nice structural surplus of almost a million dollars. But yet, we want you to keep in mind that this structural surplus helps upset the drawdown on the fund balances. So you can see the net change to the channel fund is 1.2 million. And that's also listed in the top of this slide. So we are pulling money from the fund votes this year. is money at one time, so your structure will be balanced in some, and our reserves are still healthy. But keep in mind, in this perspective, that we are drawing down with reserves. Now let's go Take a closer look at the budget. and talk a little bit more about the revenues and expenditures. So the general fund revenue is projected at 19 million. It's about 6.9% of the regionally adopted budget. This quite substantial increase in revenues is primarily due to two revenue measures that passed last November, that's increasing DOT and business license tax. It also increased the parking fees as you may remember and now this upcoming budget is going to benefit from This increase in revenues fully from July 1. Interesting fact that 78% of general fund revenues come from taxes and top three revenue sources, which is property tax, sales tax, and the TOT generate about 68% of the general fund revenues. Over the next three slides, I want to go and look a little bit closer into the strategy sources, just for educational purposes, for the public to understand where the money come from and how the finances of the strategies are being distributed. So let's look at the property tax first. Property tax is the city's largest revenue source. It generates about 5.4 million a year. We are projecting about 2% increase for the upcoming budget is based on the information we received from the company. But interesting fact here that each property tax dollar that's only the home owners pay, bring only 13 cents to the general fund of the city. And this 30 cents actually includes, well it's a relatively small red stripe right here as you can see. Keep in mind that this includes access ERAP distribution, which is actually not guaranteed each year. So if you don't found here So, so this base share is only 11 and a half cents. on the roller. And as you can see on this chart, married count and school districts are the biggest recipients of the dollars, from tax dollars. |
| 01:31:43.02 | Julia Carter | And just in case you're wondering what access ERAP revenues are. ERAP is a mechanism that was enacted by the state during the recession in 1992 to shift local taxes from serious counties and special districts to the State-Controlled Education Revenue and Inpatient Bank. So the state uses this fund to reduce the obligations to the schools to meet minimum funding requirements. And any access funds, once the requirements are met, be refunded back to the local agency. So that's how we get this two cents on the dollar every year. But again, this is no guaranteed funds. Yeah, I'm here. Now let's look how we compare it with our series around us. Again, I believe it knows that every homeowner pays the same 1% of the property value. |
| 01:32:36.16 | Adam Politzer | in it. |
| 01:32:36.40 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:32:43.77 | Julia Carter | But not everyone knows that every city gets very different share of the strategies. Proposition 13 that was voted in 1978 said uniform rate and developed local government shares of property tax. The local property tax shares vary significantly from city to city and you can see it on this chart right here. This table provides the comparison of other cities of the county and you can see that City of Sassolian is not property tax-reached city. Actually, our share is quite significant the lower than the county average. We only get 11.5 cents on the dollar, when the county average is 16.2. |
| 01:33:40.01 | Julia Carter | Now let's look at our second largest revenue source, and which is sales tax. The fiscal year 2019-20 projects about 3.7 million in sales tax, that includes about 1.3, or more would be below, 1.27 in measure O. We are projecting 2% increase of the revised budget because this information is based on our third-party consultant assessment for the year. And that's been proven to be true in the last year's projections. Seems to be solid to improve in the budget. The tax rate is 875 percent, so the one purchase, the one dollar purchase will result in a little bit under nine things. In sales tax, you can see that six cents of this will go to the state of California to fund the schools, community colleges, and the state general fund. the one and quarter cent going to bring counts itself and each seed they get. and the state general fund, the one and a quarter cent going to bring accounts itself and each city gets one cent to the city general fund and the city of Sausalito has the add on tax of half percent measure O that generates as we mentioned, but a little bit over 1.2 million a year. |
| 01:35:14.80 | Julia Carter | Our third largest revenue source is a TNT, or transit occupancy tax. For the fiscal year 2019-20, we project about 1.8 million, or 4% of the revised budget. City of Sassalina has four hotels with 120 available rooms. As I mentioned before, last November, social interactions voted on the measure L that increased the TOT rates from 12 to 14%. And this year we are building an assumption in the budget and we are being a little bit conservative here. We might get a little bit more revenue since we want to get a sense of the actual performance. And if needed, you'll bring an adjustment to you during the mid-year. I don't have statistics for the city of Sausalito itself, but according to Marin County Visitors Bureau, Marin County, receives about 14 million visitors a year. Again, interesting fact that about 12% of them are foreign, 24 from other states, and about 64 from other parts of California. And we put another piece of statistic that is available to us from Golden Gate Ferry, the city of Sosolida gets somewhat between 3,100 in slow months like January to about 10,000. visitors a month who come to the just back there. Again, the 14% utility rate generates about 1.8 million in this year, 19. |
| 01:37:13.75 | Julia Carter | Mel and Silver Road to your own fund expenditures. Yes. Fiscal year 19, 20 general funditures of 24 20.2 million is about 3.9% increase on the revised budget. And you can see the biggest share of this pie is the employee salaries and benefits. It's about 12% or 60, 12 million or 60%. And the reason for this is that most services are provided in house. And it's followed by the contract services and transfers as the next work pieces of the pie. These are the same numbers, but same categories that provide historic year to year comparison. And once again, we can see that the total expenditures project to go up by about 4.9%. If you look at it before the transfers, And all the items at the bottom, we can show all the segments or categories of expenses in the order. |
| 01:38:27.63 | Unknown | to the hospital. |
| 01:38:29.57 | Julia Carter | Thank you. from largest to smallest. So sell-as and bank it's about 60%, contract services about 17, actually 18% transfers about 17 and materials and supplies about 5% the general fund budget. And you can see that the biggest jump from the revised to adopted is in transfers as we discussed last week as well. And we included the same slide from the last week's presentation here. I don't think we need to go over this again, just to describe the different largest differences. You can see the list of capital and period of expenditures and transfers that we included in the budget. |
| 01:39:00.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:39:19.30 | Julia Carter | One thing I want to point out again, that we are not budgeting the environment of all that we receive, So we are leaving about 300, keep in mind with the note we put on the slide, we are leaving about 382,000 EJRO fund and we plan to re-evaluate this bill in the mid-year once we identify new projects that will be eligible for funding. And we will use these funds, we expect to use these funds at that time. Now to conclude our review of general funds, let's take a look at budgetary reserves. The fiscal year 1920 ending fund balance is projected to be 8.1 million. City Council previously approved the various contingencies and the reserve policies, so all of them remain untouched or actually the way they are. And this everything counted in, this leaves the fund balance of general fund of about 1.6 million. You can we can see this is a significant drop from fiscal year 2019-20, but as we discussed earlier, this is due to one-time transfers from the general fund. But altogether general fund, agent fund balance of 1.8.1 million is about 45% of the status of the recent expenditures, which is a good indicator of the status of fiscal health. |
| 01:41:03.37 | Julia Carter | Now very briefly, let's look at the old funds altogether across all 23 funds that the city has. Currently, in your attachments, you have attachment three that lists all individual fund balances and funds of structure for individual funds. So this 23 funds are combined on the slide in these five categories, but again, if you have questions in mutual funds, Thank you. So these 33 funds are combined on the slide in these five categories, but again, if you have questions in mutual funds, by the way, who can have it would be in full-on attachment number three. |
| 01:41:39.89 | Julia Carter | And to summarize everything we discussed so far, The fiscal year 19-20 budget, total budget. across all funds of 38 million is structural balance The fiscal year 1920 general fund includes 19 million in previous, 2.2 million in expenditures including capital and one-time transfer, so 2.2 million. The city's general fund financial positions have needs to be strong with almost a million dollars in structural surplus and about 45% or 8.2 million in Indian total fund balance. Mission rules 1.6, the humanities of native, from France. The upcoming year, a CEP program of 5.4 million is quite aggressive as you can tell, it includes 30 capital projects and At the staff level, we are fully committed to continue addressing your current and future priorities and I'm happy to work with you on those. And at the end of my presentation, I just want to take a moment to thank finance staff, especially Amina Borey and Calumet Ford for helping to put this budget together. I also want to thank the Department of Health for time and commitment that they put working with us during this process with us on this presentation. I want to thank city manager for his leadership and guidance for the balanced and sustainable project to you. And I want to thank you, city council, for your leadership and strategic vision in setting budget priorities based on his work accountability. And back to the recommendation item before today. So two resolutions is on the table about the budget and about the established again appropriation of fiscal year 19-19. with that and the focus on that situation. |
| 01:43:54.21 | Unknown | Thank you, Yulia, and we are going to ask you some questions. I'm going to remind the audience if you have a question or comment you would like to make, or if you have public comment on this item, please pull out a green card and get it to the table here so that we can call on you. I have two right now, David Sudo and Carol Rebell. But first, we are going to ask a question and clarity from the council. |
| 01:44:16.03 | Councilmember Cox | Joan. Julia, one of the resolutions you brought to us is the YAN resolution. And attached to that resolution is a one-page sheet that describes how the spending limit for the upcoming year was established. And that contains objective figures with very little judgment. Is that right? Thank you. |
| 01:44:40.28 | Julia Carter | That's correct. So it's just the, again, when it was approved back in 1979, so it was set at the time and being adjusted every year by specific factors that are all over the Department of Finance. |
| 01:44:55.03 | Councilmember Cox | based on our population and our spending. Thank you. |
| 01:45:07.20 | Unknown | Thank you. I asked you this by email today that I didn't have the time to. Can you go back to the sales, the property tax, revenue slide? That shows, yeah. So if I'm understanding this correctly, of every dollar that a property tax that a property owner of Sausalito pays to the state, Sausalito gets 11.5 cents back, as Mill Valley gets 25.8. Yes. So I don't understand why that is. |
| 01:45:39.97 | Julia Carter | It's not this time. Thank you. It was said by preposition 13 back in 1978. So there's some form law that was established in 1978 and that's the way that we... |
| 01:45:46.48 | Unknown | So there's some formula that was established |
| 01:45:52.03 | Unknown | find city distribution. |
| 01:45:53.92 | Julia Carter | Thank you. |
| 01:45:55.44 | Unknown | Okay. And there's no ability without a statewide measure to change that allocation? No. Okay. |
| 01:46:04.56 | Julia Carter | Thank you. All right. I do not know that. Yeah, you can tell this piece right here. In order to change the distribution, it has to be even kind of that it's taken because it has to be agreed upon by all the parts involved and all the Other cities of the Poyle Valley would probably love Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:46:31.03 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 01:46:31.17 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:46:31.86 | Ray | you |
| 01:46:31.93 | Unknown | you |
| 01:46:31.98 | Ray | Thank you. . The The reason why this appears so dramatic is that, Julian, could you go back to your dollar bill, is that, of course, when we did measure D and we annexed our fire department to Southern Marine Fire, you know, we, that transaction was a property tax transfer transaction. And so if you were to add up now the, now there may have been some extra, no, it. No, there is no extra. If you add up 0.13 and 0.11, you get 0.24, which is pretty close to where Navalny is, that has its own fire department. If we had not done that deal, we would have ended up with an expense structure which dwarfed our general fund budget because of the scale and what we would have needed to build the fire |
| 01:47:44.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:44.12 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 01:47:44.22 | Unknown | I'm not going to read it. |
| 01:47:44.37 | Ray | I'm not going to relitigate measure D, but that's actually the reason why |
| 01:47:45.20 | Unknown | and the people. Thank you. you |
| 01:47:50.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:50.09 | Ray | . |
| 01:47:50.35 | Unknown | That's very helpful. |
| 01:47:56.10 | Ray | at a surround, annex of a service to |
| 01:48:05.68 | Unknown | Next question. |
| 01:48:11.15 | Unknown | All right. We're going to open up to public comment. Public comment on item 7B. I have three cards. Are there any others who would like to comment on this? Probably the first up, Carolyn Revell, then David Sudo, then Sandra Bushmaker. |
| 01:48:35.98 | Carolyn Revell | and Mayor Burns members of the City Council. I'm here representing Sausalito Beautiful. I'd like to acknowledge the challenging role of the City Council in reviewing and approving the City's budget. There's no greater responsibility or harder job for a Council than advocating funds through the budget process. We want to thank the Council for working so constructively together to balance priorities. Sausalito Beautiful appreciates that the Council has been responsive to our advocacy, which has included meeting with city staff, attending finance committee meetings, and making our case before the council on several occasions. We're very grateful that the council has acknowledged the importance of replacing and adding trees on Caledonia Street, on downtown Bridgeway, and at MLK Park. As we all remove vegetation for fire prevention, it's critical that the city plant the right kind of trees in the right places. Because of the unique relationship between the city and Sausalito Beautiful over the past five years, our public green spaces have shown marked improvement from enhancements to the medians, relandscaping at Bolanar Plaza, around the fire and police station, to neighborhood improvements. When the council allocates funds for Sausalito beautiful projects on public land, there's a multiplier effect. We supplemented city funds for two of the Bridgeway Medians with fundraising of our own to relandscape a third median. We raised funds to restore Poets Corner. We paid a landscape architect for a tree plan for MLK Park. And we will match the $25,000 into tonight's budget for MLK trees by raising an additional $25,000. Our Green Thumbs volunteers have supplemented the work of city maintenance crews at Tiffany Park, Second Street Garden, Vina del Mar. We painted the Easterby bus stop. We needed the new planted beds at the post office. All right. crews at Tiffany Park, Second Street Garden, Vina del Mar, who painted the Easterden bus stop, who even planted beds at the post office. Our partnership benefits all of Sausalito. And we are here to thank you for the work that the council is doing on behalf of our community. Thank you for including our project in the budget. And thank you for continuing our construction partnership. |
| 01:49:36.30 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:50:00.16 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 01:50:39.23 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 01:50:39.25 | Unknown | The President. P.S. Udow, Sandra Bushmaker, Stonehenge. |
| 01:50:48.83 | David Sudo | Good evening, Assistant Council. This is a question and a comment. One is I wasn't sure in this final budget whether it included the two line items that were talked about last week for the PIVAC, which are diploma street crosswalk and bookmark kind of funding for the Bridgeway Bikeway. I didn't see them as mine items in tonight's documents. The other thing I would just remind us for future, this budget and future budgets is, you know, we've been going over the general plan, the existing general plan, there's a tremendous amount of projects that were in our 1995 general plan that are still yet to be completed and have no funding or no mechanism to complete. And as we look at a new general plan, which is going to include many of those same projects, I think the city needs to do a better job of proactively looking at how they're going to accomplish items that they're not on the 20, you know, 2035 plan or 2039 plan too. Some of these projects would make a tremendous difference in safety and convenience for our residents and would materially help residents in the data box. |
| 01:52:14.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:52:16.36 | David Sudo | Thank you. |
| 01:52:16.40 | Unknown | Thank you, David. Senator Bushmaker. |
| 01:52:24.09 | Sandra Bushmaker | Senator Bushmaker, resident of Sausalito. I have five points that I want to make on the budget. Number one, why are we using zero-based budgeting? Has the council and the finance committee weighed the advantages and disadvantages of zero-based budgeting? The main disadvantage being that the bureaucracy created with zero-based budgeting within a company or city can take enormous amounts of time, effort, and analysis that would require extra staff. Has the City Council taken that into consideration? got me answered okay number two i did not see uh any tot taxes from short-term rentals on the budget presentation so i want to know what's happening with that number three uh the one-time transfers after 2018 how did this all happen i don't feel that i've gotten an adequate or the public has gotten an adequate explanation on how this occurred. Number four. How did this all happen? I don't feel that I've gotten an adequate, or the public has gotten an adequate explanation on how this occurred. Number four, the $50,000 for geologic mapping, I don't think it's going to be sufficient. I think it's going to be more than that. And have we received any estimates, or is this just money pulled out of the data? best guess as to what it's going to cost and as for the fifty thousand dollars that the city has allocated toward vegetation management i think that that is not going to be enough i do recall reading in the materials that sausalito received 450 000 dollars of measured new money for the vegetation management. So I don't think a half million dollars is gonna do what we need to do to clean up our fire hazards here in South Slicko. And my last point is, Doesn't the fire district impact the 11%? And I think Council Member will rudely address that particular issue. I also want to raise the question as to whether we are continuing to pay for our new building constructed at Caledonia and Johnson and pay rent to the Southern Marin Fire District. So those are the points I'd like to see addressed. |
| 01:54:51.27 | Unknown | Put it against it. |
| 01:54:58.56 | Sonia Hanson | Thank you again, Sonia Hanson, and I am like a poker record. I'm up here once again to say, why are you not addressing wildfires in this town? There is $450,000 that has been allocated by our fire district, and we have 20.5 acres. That $450,000 is not coming into this town. A small portion is coming into this town. What needs to happen in this town is to save everybody's life, property, We need to really be serious about this, and that means allocating money for it. And the $50,000 for the map, that's not doing it. The city has a lot of debt fuel sitting on city property, and you do not address what you're going to do with it, and yet the fire district, I was just talking to the chiefs again, is going to be coming to the residents and saying, you need to clean up your yards. And that's fair enough. But what is the city going to do about what the city has and is responsible for? You're not addressing it. And I really wish you would. And there is $150,000 that's been added for some sort of economic development, which I think is attached to that marketing presentation that was at the last meeting, or maybe it was the meeting before last, that you rejected, but you left it open for another one. Why are we spending $150,000 worrying about getting high-end tourists and not taking care of the fuel that's spinning all around us and is going to burn us down. I don't understand your priorities. And once again, I'm going to ask you, please have a town hall meeting. It's the only way you're going to get the citizens of this town aware. of a more kind of ingenuity. |
| 01:56:53.25 | Unknown | Any other comments? Any further comment on the budget item? Sending no hands for cards. We'll close them with comment. Bring it up here for our comments and adoptions. Sure. |
| 01:57:07.03 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:57:07.24 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:57:07.40 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:57:07.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:07.96 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:57:08.25 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:57:08.27 | Councilmember Cox | I'd like to ask the city manager what the city's plan is for evading the dead fuel sitting on city property. Thank you. |
| 01:57:22.26 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. Thank you for the question. I think you heard Chief Tuggs talk about our partnership, and I think what's important, and I echo what the Chief said in his email correspondence, having public discussion and getting public feedback and input on what's important to the community is really important. And echoing some of the comments from the Council members earlier in response to the Chief's comments, is that your to the community is really important. And echoing some of the comments from the council members earlier in response to the chief's comments is that this is a team effort. It is going to take our residents, our fire department, our public works department, and then our local agencies that we work with here in Sausalito and on the one-on-one corridor to come together to resolve these issues. As we've heard in presentations in the past, the ambers, the fires, the winds don't know boundaries. They don't know property lines and they definitely don't know the difference between Sausalito and Marin City or the county or the parks, park service land. So since the fires in the North Bay two years ago, we have been working on strategies and together with the chief and our now retired public works director, Goldman on ways to move forward. And part of this strategy by the district was to ask the residents to help aggressively fund a program. So as the chief shared earlier today, it's $2 million a year. And out of the $2 million, a million is dedicated towards vegetation management and at this moment in time uh 400 thousand dollars is is is earmarked for vegetation management of that million you heard the chief say earlier communication has to be part of this of this formula so again it's this year's plan starting in July 1 on educating and communicating and holding forums going to neighborhood associations and home arts associations to meet in all different ways to help communicate how we can work together as one team with the same goal with reducing our risk. We've heard the mayor talk about this and vice mayor Susan Cleveland-Knowles also bring this up on the county-wide approach. How are we working collectively? And that effort is what stimulated the grand jury's response to ask cities to get serious about this issue. Unlike most cities in Marin County, we do have a now, we now have a dedicated revenue source to help fund this. Other cities, as we currently speak, are talking about another countywide bond measure to put on an upcoming election. And it's because they don't have a funding source so that's something that is still being discussed and needs to be worked out because cities like Cormoran, Mill Valley and Sausalito which have dedicated funding sources we don't want to tax our residents again for what we just went to them as for their support so that's a bigger discussion but the 50,000 that is earmarked right now will help us. It will help with our efforts through Public Works. There is money in Public Works on vegetation management. And as our new Public Works Director comes on board later this summer, early this fall, that person, too, will work in transition with Dave Bracken, our interim director, and Lauren Invertis, our maintenance division manager, and with our fire chief. And not to be excluded from this, also in this school that has been meeting for over two years, is our police chief. Because when we had the fire up on Rodeo, office 101, we activated our evacuation in our police department with the help of the VIPS. In that neighborhood, started evacuation of people that live in harm's way. So our police department's also a key component of this effort. So I can promise this community that the city is taking this very seriously and that our department heads are working collaboratively here within our own structure and then we are working collaboratively with our regional partners to make sure that we maximize our efforts and the district obviously is a big player here in the county that alone serving our district if the mayor Mike, I can respond to a couple of these other questions that came from the public the one related to the pedestrian bike community items two of those items will propose and we'll move forward so we are pledging 25,000 for design services to look potentially at the bike lane buffering project and then the money for Columbus Street and for the crosswalk has been identified. So those monies are in the budget. Zero-based budgeting, it's a modified zero-based budgeting. It's not the pure modified zero-based budget. That's something that the Finance Committee will look at as we look at the next two years' structure. But we just didn't automatically approve everything that was in the budget and just roll it forward. It had to be defended, justified, and supported by the Council and the community as it came forward. So it's not your true zero-based budgeting that, as former mayor shared, does take a lot of staff time and expertise to go to a true zero-based budgeting process. There's arguments that have been heard over the last 10 years of why we should go to that. We're proposing a modified approach and that was laid out in one of our very first budget discussions, probably during the mid-year budget discussions. A TOT for the short-term rentals was projected at roughly $18,000 based on what we collect between January when the council took action and the balance of our enforcement program. Hopefully that number doesn't increase because we hope to continue to enforce our ban on short-term rentals. I would recommend the public go back to the mid-year budget discussion that was held back in May when we talked about the transfers and the issues. The next meeting of the council meeting, we had a variety of attachments that were color coded that tracked these changes that were revenues versus expenses. And then, as always, both Eulia Carter, our Administrative Services Director, and I would be happy to meet with any members of the public that would like to continue that discussion. $150,000 for the business economic development number, as the council said at the last meeting, is a placeholder. We want to invest in our businesses as demonstrated in the sales tax and hotel tax. Those are our number two and number three revenue generators. So if we can invest in our business community to increase our sales tax numbers and our sales tax revenues and our tot revenues off peak season filling the the hotels 120 rooms that we have off beat without contributing to more tourists. That's the goal and that's the intent and the council is interested in hearing proposals on how to accomplish that. So it's an earmarked item number that is not spent unless we accept the plan. If we don't accept the plan, if nothing comes forward that can be accepted, that money can be reappropriated at the interior budget. So it's not a commitment to spend the money without a proposal that makes sense to the city council. That's it. |
| 02:05:46.26 | Unknown | Thank you. Any other questions? Where are we? We closed but we're coming. We had our first question from Council Member Cox. Any other questions from Council members? Any comments then from council members and motion? |
| 02:06:10.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:06:12.15 | Nancy Osborne | I'll start. |
| 02:06:12.74 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:06:18.14 | Jill Hoffman | I have expressed my concerns throughout this budget process with my confidence in the budget. Particularly, and I've also expressed my concerns throughout the fall and continually in this process with regard to my concern about the elimination of a finance director position in favor of an assistant city manager position. I hope that the rest of my comments are not going to be taken as a personal criticism of Julia Carter, who's our Assistant City Manager. I know that she has worked a Herculean task to try to get this budget, get our books closed for 2018, and get this budget in front of us. My comments are based on just the facts as they've been presented. My concerns continue and they continue to mount and I believe to proceed on this path without a course correction is irresponsible. I have expressed this to the city council meetings. I've expressed this personally to the city manager. My concerns are with mistakes which were made last year at our City Council budget presentations, and misrepresentations that were made to the City Council and the public regarding fund balances which drove our decision-making process. Substantial and numerous mistakes have come to life were made in carrying out actions voted on for the two-year budget. These failures required retention of an outside accounting firm, VTD, in the fall of 2018 and in order to close our books. The books for fiscal year 2017-18 should have been closed in July of 2018, but they were not finally closed until April of 2019 when the capital was finally presented to the city council for the year. Retention of the same accounting firm is also necessary in order to close our books for this fiscal year ending June 30, 2019. It appears to me that the staff knew about these accounting and fiscal management mistakes as early as December of 2018 and likely prior. Yet at no time was I, as a city council member, informed of this situation. Nor was this situation presented to the Finance Committee. Instead, it was merely added to the April 30, 2019 agenda as a mid-year budget review and adjustment, which for the first time revealed large corrections to fund balances and other accounting corrections were necessary. On my request, the mid-year review was sent back to the Finance Committee for further analysis, yet it was returned to City Council at the very next meeting in substantially the same form with no real analysis of the impact of the mistakes or corrections necessary. I was the only City Council member not to approve the mid-year adjustments as they were characterized. Because of mistakes made in June of 2018 and after, there were approximately 12 significant necessary transfers of approximately $8 million between funds. including the recognition that the deposit of $775,000 into the pension trust fund was never made. It transferred the workers' compensation fund of $567,666 Approved in June 2018 was not reported or made. Transfers for the IT strategic plan and triker's treaty removal in the amount of $45,000 approved in June 2018 were never made. Transfers from the general fund to workers' compensation fund and the general liability fund declared negative balances were necessary. Other corrections have been necessary. I have requested a list of specific necessary actions from the assistant city manager. This has not been produced. We have had a decrease in a net position of negative $3 million in our budget from 2017 to the year that ended in June of 2018. Our OPEP debt increased $3,281,000 in one year because we stopped making payments to this fund. In April of 2016, sorry, April 16th of 2019, the city's monthly comprehensive annual financial report appeared on the consent calendar. Discrepancies were noted but not included in the HAPA report. No mention was made of the substantial discrepancies that would be revealed with the mid-year budget presentation. At the next meeting, on April 30th, the mid-year budget presentation was called a mid-year budget review. It was not briefed through the Finance Committee. No real explanation has ever been given about why the mistakes occurred and what their impact has been other than what we've seen with the substantial transfers in the settlement funds. |
| 02:11:06.55 | Jill Hoffman | On May 28th, for the first time on the consent calendar, it was revealed that there was a necessity for an outside accounting firm of Varenek Triaday & Company to close the books for 2018. And that this retention of this firm was also necessary to close our books for this year of the year ending June 2019. It was also revealed on the Kinson calendar for the first time on May 28, 2019, that the tragedy reports required by state law had not been prepared or presented in recent memories. Tonight, I propose that the City Council clearly set policy that a finance director be hired to manage our budget and accounting, as well as to provide advice on a strategic financial plan going forward to halt the nearly 10-year downward trend in Sausalito's net financial position. Our budgets have been largely reactionary in the last few years, dealing with deficits in various areas that we've been trying to address. We have not had a long-term comprehensive review of our budget and how to move forward. We have got to stop. using our fund balances in order to meet our everyday requirements. That is why I voted no on the sewer rate increase earlier on our budget, early on our agenda. I believe these two things are related and you must be looked at in a comprehensive manner. We cannot continually go back to the taxpayer for increases in taxes when we fail to responsibly and effectively manage our budget. And most respectfully and would regret, I vote no on this budget, but I do vote yes on the Ganimity. |
| 02:12:59.12 | Unknown | The ban resolution. We'll get the motions in a bit. |
| 02:13:04.91 | Councilmember Cox | Can I ask a question? I do want to ask a question about one comment Councilmember Hoffman made, which is that our OPEV debt increased $3 million in one year because we stopped making payments to this fund. Can I ask the city manager to address that? |
| 02:13:19.88 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I'll make one comment on that. It's been delayed for a year, and then in the previous year, the council made the decision not to fund the OPAT and transfer that contribution to the pension trust. So we made a conscious decision one year not to. We are late this year, but we are making that payment before the end of this year. |
| 02:13:42.51 | Jill Hoffman | And this was a matter that we discussed yesterday during the meeting, correct? |
| 02:13:46.96 | Adam Politzer | That's correct. And what our administrative services director, assistant city managers shared with the council in the past is that there's many variables. So it wasn't just those direct funds being deposited into those accounts that affect the numbers that Councilmember Hoffman shared. There are lots of variables there. And I'm sure that if you'd like those details, you'll be a card to kiss your hand. |
| 02:14:12.58 | Jill Hoffman | Well, we looked at the CAFR yesterday, and those are numbers directly from the CAFR, right? The comprehensive assessment. We looked at the page numbers and that was the facts. That our OPEB debt increased by 3 million in one year. Thank you. |
| 02:14:29.94 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:14:30.03 | Julia Carter | If I may address some of these issues as well. So as city manager indicated, so the council made a decision, much here to defer payment from OPEC to pension trust, and I just want to record that we did make, in fact, this payment to the trust. We just paid this money yesterday to the pension trust to account for this fiscal year 18-19 budget. And if you may recall in the mid-year budget adjustments we actually added some of the transfers included additional contribution to the OPEP trust that fell off and we didn't because of the vacancy you didn't have the administrative services director during the time to make the payment by the time the fiscal year in 1718 ended, we actually put OPEP contribution back on the books as part of the new year. And we made this payment as well to the OPEP. So we cut up, up to the same. As soon as the budget will go, the budget is adopted, we will make contribution to the trust for the fiscal year 19 20 as previous July. And back to the point that the unfunded liability does increase every year, but that's normal thing to expect for every single city, regardless whether you make contributions or not. Because there are so many different factors and so many different actuarial assumptions that go into this and that's what we discussed during the meeting yesterday. That includes the agent from the actuarial assumptions to the life expense series, the assumptions of the return of investments and things like that. |
| 02:15:17.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:16:13.07 | Julia Carter | And we actually continue doing the actual evaluation every two years, as we're supposed to on the schedule. So we actually completed one for fiscal year 17-18. So that's on schedule, and the next one we'll be doing two years. |
| 02:16:36.74 | Keith Stone King | The Pressure. |
| 02:16:43.14 | Keith Stone King | Yeah, go ahead, go. |
| 02:16:49.77 | Julia Carter | Well, and just for there, my responsibilities do include managing finance department. |
| 02:16:58.85 | Ray | Okay. So, We go through an exercise every two years, which is the preparation of the resource allocation plan. That's also associated with the update of the strategic plan, which has a two-year cycle. This time last year when we adopted the resource allocation plan, I indicated that there were, it was risky and it was, you know, |
| 02:17:30.88 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:17:32.80 | Ray | Thank you. I said it was risky and I identified several areas of risks. One, our ability to create new revenue streams. That has been significantly ameliorated by Measure Allen N. So as far as I'm concerned, that risk was taken care of. The second risk was the unknowns around the fact that we will be in labor negotiations |
| 02:18:07.26 | Ray | No. risk remains over. The third was that I was looking at the trends as in particular contract services and sold them running very high accelerating and was concerned that we had a lot of basically unknowns there that was going to hurt us. also were by . delivery. Bro. All right. choice. We drew down some of our reserves to put into capital investment. That's not a mistake. That's an absolute planned decision. We've been building up reserves to a very large level, and we withdrew some. Now, as with any risk, I'm not a fortunate seller. The accelerating contract services that he did materialize. As I said, we got the revenue, but what was something that I clearly didn't plan for was the risk that there was a lot of mistakes made in the preparation of that. And that was the reality. Those mistakes were made in the preparation of, by the staff at the time, that two-year research application plan. That person is no longer with it. Now, we've hired an administrative services director who also has the title of assistant city manager, who has come in, hired staff, appropriately hired expertise to figure out what the hell is going on and figure out the mistakes that were made. Much of the transfers of the finance committee authorized and is reflecting in this budget, are transfers to correct those balances. So I'm actually very comfortable that we have a finance department who absolutely knows what's going on. It is that finance department that unearthed the fact that there was a whole bunch of mistakes made in 2018. So we now are in the second year of this resource allocation plan. The mid-year budget was about finding all those mistakes and correcting the projections for this year's budget. But many of them are. things that need to carry forward into this year's budget. And so what has actually happened is that |
| 02:21:04.36 | Unknown | you |
| 02:21:06.91 | Ray | By correcting those mistakes, there was, in my view, we've had to draw down on the fun balance to levels that I'm only just comfortable with. We, and this is, this part of it isn't particularly a science. We have put what we regard as minimum absolute line items for reserves of different categories, and we've got that. And then we've got another category, which is like undesignated reserves. And that could be zero, because we've already put our risk management contingencies, 10% budget, shortfall, disaster, etc, etc, we've put all of those in place and then we're saying, yeah, but we want something more we want some extra reserve and that then comes based on financial experience gut level feeling is to be honest as to what that should be and in my view that should be not less than a million dollars for a city our size I think our I think India would probably agree with. So you can see I'm becoming a little uneasy that we have a projected fund balance that includes only 1.5 million of those undesignated reserves. But you've got to remember that some of it is designated because we're holding back 300 and somethings worth of measure O funds that have not yet been transferred to capital. So we're getting near that 1 million, which makes me free. 1 million in addition to all the other reserves that we've got. Okay? So that makes me personally a little free. And it also means that we cannot go into fund reserves Thank you. me personally a little freezing. And it also means that we cannot go into front reserves as we start preparing the next other |
| 02:23:32.96 | Ray | I'm sorry for going on a bit, but I think it's important that you decide. So I think what our finance department and our finance committee have done is sort of taken some pain, sort of restructured some of the fund balances so that they're in the correct status or posture, whatever you want to call it. |
| 02:24:09.31 | Ray | The point, however, is that just because we've achieved through this projections, which I think are going to be pretty good, because this budget has been torn up, is that we have a structural surplus of close to a million dollars. okay and that all sounds great and it sounds like my god they've to a million dollars. Okay? And that all sounds great and it sounds like my God, they've made a million dollars. Except we've also agreed that we're going to fund capital to the tune of the full measure of amounts. which means that Next year, the following year, you know, soon as we approve this budget tonight, and hopefully if I start talking, it will be sooner rather than later, right? You've got to start thinking about the next two-year resource allocation classes tomorrow. Okay? Because we've got a structural surplus of a million dollars. But by my estimation, for 2020-21, we're going to need somewhere in excess of 1.3 million. And we already know we've got a built-in unfunded actuarial liability increase from CalPERS, which I think for next year is going to be $200,000 and so on. So you've got, there's some challenges. So just because we have that surplus doesn't mean we have challenges. It would be nice to make a full capital transfer eventually and also have some retained earnings so we can start building up our fund balance again. That has been quite enormous discipline as we move into the next two year resource allocation plan. The expenditures are going to have to be very carefully looked at because we can't afford to waste anything because of the |
| 02:25:55.94 | Unknown | No. |
| 02:26:13.29 | Ray | Thank you. It's not a structural problem, it's a challenge that I think we probably have, I'm sure we have the capacity to resolve, but I don't want anybody to think, I don't want staff to think that just because we've got a million dollars of structural surplus that we're in any way not facing a significant challenge. The final thing I want to say, and then I really will shut up, is were this next, the next two-year resource average? that we've got to start thinking about now, has, by design, this isn't an accident, by design, is going to be happening as we're completing the general plan. So the general plan, the next cycle of the strategic plan, the next start of the resource allocation plan is all coming together. And this has been planned, started with Charlie Francis, over six years ago. This is long-term, real strategic financial management that's been going on here. The thing that we've had is due to some mistakes. Back in 2018, we had a bit of a hiccup. But luckily, we have the professional staff to correct. So I've told you my crazy test. But I think we cannot agree with some of the sentiment of Council Member Hoffman that the change, there's got to be a change of direction. But a change of direction is we can't, as a matter of policy, allow the general fund reserves to be used moving forward. That's got to be the policy. It's the only way to create the discipline to make sure that happens. All right. Oh, one last thing. I just had to go on. I think, and I can measure it, I can say it again in future agenda items, but if I do wait, I'll forget. We heard tonight some public comment about we're not spending enough and we're not focusing enough on the fire hazards. And in particular, that every neighbor, every resident is being asked to clear their yards, get all their I think this was the point Sonny made, they clear up all of the debris in the yard okay with the view that the city on this public land is in the same situation. Well I would say that a very useful study to determine the extent to that and if that's true and what is the plan to clear it up. So I think that's a few, that's more, that's outside this budget. This is something we should be doing. So I agree with Sonia on that. Now I'll start. |
| 02:29:14.97 | Unknown | The Press. Yeah. |
| 02:29:18.70 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:29:18.72 | Unknown | Sorry, sorry everybody, I told too much. |
| 02:29:18.90 | Ray | Sorry, sorry everybody. I told too much on the finance floor. I know. |
| 02:29:22.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:25.94 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 02:29:25.95 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 02:29:25.97 | Keith Stone King | Yeah. |
| 02:29:26.19 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 02:29:26.21 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 02:29:27.07 | Ray | All right. |
| 02:29:28.27 | Keith Stone King | you |
| 02:29:28.50 | Councilmember Cox | So I just want to add two things to Councilmember Riffey's comments. One is I do want to remind us of the very hard work we invested last year on a 20-year plan to keep our budget in the green through the anticipated, known, have no doubt it's coming, zenith of pension obligation. So we projected out, based on various actuarial tables, exactly what our pension obligation will be at its height, even anticipating that the rate of return predicted by CalPERS will continue to go down and the unfunded liability will continue to go up. So we hired a firm that looked at all of those scenarios and then we looked at a 20-year plan to smooth out our contributions each year to ensure that we'll have enough in our reserves and our general fund plan to meet those obligations at their height without bankrupting the city or having to undertake a reduction in force or other draconian measures to meet our obligations. So we did that work last year and we are still on track to comport with the plan we put in last year to avoid huge issues arising from that. So we made our $775,000 this year, and we have already identified the monies we decided last year would be needed this upcoming year to put into that fund. So that's already in progress and on track. In addition, as Julia pointed out, a lot of the drawdown on reserves that we're doing this year is a one-time drawdown for capital projects. And so when you're really in trouble is when you're drawing down your reserves for ongoing expenses. But here, we are doing a one-time drawdown of reserves that we had purposefully built up over years in order to accomplish the capital improvements that we needed to do. And so while we do, I agree with Council Member Withey, while we do have to carefully manage our path moving forward to ensure that we manage our capital projects and our other expenses in a responsible way, we are accomplishing some tremendous accomplishments last year, this year, and next year in terms of some capital improvements. Improving our parks, investing in infrastructure, and investing in safety preparedness and other critical needs. And so I believe that the decisions that we're making in this budget carry out the two-year resource allocation plan that we commenced last year. We've added some things due to some unforeseen issues like the mudslide, but we're still on track and we're still within acceptable parameters. If you looked at Uliya's PowerPoint presentation, we're still at 45% in terms of our comparison of revenues to operating expenditures. And so I think that by objective standards, we're still in a healthy position and we just need to be vigilant moving forward. |
| 02:33:20.96 | Unknown | Thank you. Actually, not too much to add to both Council Member Whitby and Council Member Cox's comments. I'm glad that you mentioned our strong investment in capital projects and that that's one of the main reasons for the drawdown on some of the funds, because I think that's been a really important decision. It's been very proactive and conscious. And I think it will pay off for the community in a number of ways. I also just wanted to say that I do appreciate the hard work |
| 02:33:21.65 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:33:51.62 | Adam Politzer | No. |
| 02:33:57.49 | Unknown | by Ms. Carter in addressing mistakes that were made and bringing them up proactively and that, has been very valuable and very Obviously, not. the best situation, but I think you've handled it very well, and that we've gotten through that. And that's also kind of making transfers for the capital improvement projects and workers' compensation that weren't made at the appropriate time is another reason, you know, for doing again some of these funds. So those are necessary steps that I am glad that we're making. I'm also, you know, it hasn't been mentioned yet, but I am pleased that we had a very robust discussion from the community and that some of our main community groups did have an active participation at the Finance Committee and the City Council. So thank you to the business community for pushing on reinvesting some of the extra revenue that we have this year, part due to the TOT increase. Thank you to Cecilia Beautiful for pushing on investments in our parks and also for the extra contribution to raise money from our community to match some of our expenditures and also thanks to some of our boards and commissions, most notably the PBEC for coming forward with some really good proposals. So I'm glad that David Sudeau was here tonight. But I think those are all important additions to our budget. And I, you know, as Council Member Cox said, I do agree with you that we need to build up our fund balance again and get particular attention in our next two-year budget process to look at that wisely, but also to take into account the general plan of adoption and how that will play out better. major expenses going forward so that we don't end up where we did before where we had a great general plan, a lot of implementations. So looking forward to that process. And I think we can go to Julia one day. I don't think she can see us. |
| 02:36:26.40 | Unknown | Thank you. Maybe tomorrow. Thank you. And thank you for all your comments. A couple years ago when we had this discussion on the budget and I was still a freshman councilman, I kept, we had this conversation over and over and over again every year on whack-a-mole with expenses. You know, what are we this expense, that expense. And I thought that communities in general, in this community was not having a broad enough discussion on revenue. And we did look then at the increases of the taxes that Councilmember Whitley discussed. But that wasn't good enough for me because that's just going back to the same pie and cutting it up more and more and more. And I don't think communities continue to go back to the same source. We had to make more pie. We had to get bigger pie. We had to get more new sources of revenue. One of the deals we made with the business community, and I'll tell you why we made this deal, or at least why I saw it as important, is if we increase this DOT, that we can use that money to grow a pie. So we can use a portion of that to go back and get a new market of money, but we don't have to keep going back to the property owners and the business owners and the residents and we can finally go to a group that's coming here and use that to help manage our tourism money, like our tourism numbers like other communities do, balance out times of year, reduce impacts, increase revenue, all sorts of stuff that a lot of communities are doing. Something else other communities are doing are business improvement districts, where if the business owners, mostly the hoteliers, get together and do a self-assessment of that TOT, they can take that money, they can take a 1%, put it right on their bill, take that money, put it into a nonprofit, and spend on advertising. They could have done it before we did our DOT. And had they done that, without our control, they could have just advertised and ran up a lot of August and July business. I think by us getting involved in that process is the ideal situation for us to have a role in managing the impact of tourism. And that's why I think it's very important that we use the money from TOT to turn around and reinvent how we grow our pie and grow at the right times of year and have a more efficient plan. We've talked about this before. Out of message in the market, the message will be delivered for us. We have to take that message back. I'll be happy to meet with anybody anytime to talk about those proposals and we have a conversation going on now with staff in the business community. So I think revenue was extremely important that we continue to look at that. I'm appreciative of where we have come. But as we've heard and as we've agreed, we need to keep that bar going up. Because we are low in a lot of areas. RTLT tax is extremely low. for our general plan, our general fund compared to other communities. So anything that we can do to grow that, I think is great. I'm so happy to have this conversation about our capital improvement. And as I told somebody today in an email, it has been an unprecedented run of what Saucido has accomplished with their capital improvements in the last few years, let alone the things that were thrown at us with emergencies. And we did it with, towards the end, with an interim part-time public works director. So what we've accomplished this year is absolutely amazing. And I wish Lauren was here that we talked about the dead trees that we've removed because those are all the chipper things that we've been throwing at MLK and the parking lot at the park here that we won't be able to use anymore to throw chipper branches. Because we have removed a lot of dead trees. And we have called up DBW and said there's a dead tree on city property over by this lot we're concerned about or this house or this property. so I think that we have and I'm not saying we're complete, I'm not saying once we do about these things all of a sudden, poof, we removed every dead tree, but I'm not going to accept that we have not been removing dead trees, and that we have not been at least applying some resource to the management of our property. So I am, and I'm glad you guys had all the conversations on all the other stuff. I appreciate all that. I appreciate that this budget will be passed tonight, I believe, as the finance committee changes. And that you guys had great moment, so I appreciate that. And I appreciate all the work your staff has done, really, all of them. I mean, a lot of bodies in there pushing numbers around. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. |
| 02:41:15.04 | Councilmember Cox | I move we adopt the fiscal year 2019-20 annual operating and capital budget. Thank you. |
| 02:41:20.31 | Unknown | Second. Do a roll call, please, sir. Council member Cox? Yes. Council member Hoffman? No. Council member Whitby? Yes. Vice mayor Clinton Knowles? Yes. Mayor Burns? Yes. I do. |
| 02:41:25.40 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:41:25.42 | Alice Merrill | Yes. |
| 02:41:25.76 | Councilmember Cox | you |
| 02:41:27.50 | Alice Merrill | No. |
| 02:41:31.97 | Alice Merrill | Yes. |
| 02:41:32.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:41:35.04 | Unknown | budget passes, four to one, and we have one more Thank you. |
| 02:41:38.45 | Councilmember Cox | I move. We adopt a resolution of the city of Sausalito establishing the appropriation agreement for fiscal year 2019-20 pursuant to Article 13B of the California Constitution. |
| 02:41:40.79 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:41:40.84 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:41:40.96 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:41:41.00 | Unknown | We're talking. |
| 02:41:41.37 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 02:41:42.19 | Unknown | resolution. |
| 02:41:52.98 | Unknown | and Surgeon. Council member Cox? Yes. Council member Hoffman? Yes. Council member Whitney? Yes. Vice mayor Cleveland Homes? Yes. |
| 02:41:58.06 | Alice Merrill | Yes. Yes. Thank you. |
| 02:42:04.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:42:04.13 | Alice Merrill | Yes. |
| 02:42:04.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:42:05.03 | Unknown | Yes, that motion passes 5-0. And that wraps up our subject item and our public hearing items. We will, how are we doing? Does anybody want to take an individual break as we go on to 6-A? No. We're going to take a break. |
| 02:42:25.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:43:07.02 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:43:10.26 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 02:43:14.55 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yeah, but I mean on the actual resolution, like what you said. It's the same meeting date. No. |
| 02:43:56.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:01.78 | Unknown | There you go. Thank you. |
| 02:44:38.20 | Unknown | I think it's good. Thank you. and put figure one on the screen. |
| 02:44:42.10 | Unknown | Figure 1 on the screen. |
| 02:44:44.41 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:44:44.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:44.44 | Mary Wagner | you |
| 02:44:44.53 | Unknown | So I'm going to be addressing that in my comment. |
| 02:44:44.82 | Mary Wagner | Yeah. |
| 02:44:45.03 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:44:45.05 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:44:45.07 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:44:45.29 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:45.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:45.35 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:44:49.98 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:44:50.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:50.18 | Mary Wagner | Bye. |
| 02:44:55.97 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 02:44:56.21 | Unknown | No. Amen. Oh, that's how do you do that? Thank you. |
| 02:45:02.91 | Unknown | I said that too, very late. Next. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Can you show us? Which one are you talking about? I was talking about the RMP document. It's about a seven-page document. |
| 02:45:13.87 | Unknown | you Yeah. clarity. |
| 02:45:14.95 | Unknown | Why they were so I was talking about the RFP document. It's about a civil big document. |
| 02:45:22.83 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. It's one of the attachments. And we scroll down to the figure one. It's way near the end. |
| 02:45:25.79 | Unknown | That's one of the attachments, Sergeant General. |
| 02:45:34.97 | Unknown | probably 50 games old. to picture that. |
| 02:45:49.97 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you because I'm going to ask you as I'll come up. Appreciate the help. Let me know. |
| 02:46:01.43 | Unknown | I know, that's a fascinating thing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:47:30.86 | Jason | So I've already carried Give me one second. Let's go. |
| 02:47:46.15 | Adam Politzer | spend doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Yeah. |
| 02:47:50.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:50.86 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:47:50.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:51.03 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:47:51.08 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:47:52.21 | Adam Politzer | How's that quick break going? |
| 02:47:52.28 | Unknown | How's that? Bye. |
| 02:47:53.11 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:47:55.23 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:47:55.25 | Unknown | I chose to sell instead of go to the bathroom. Just wanted to look it up. Yeah. |
| 02:49:06.41 | Chris Johnson | Thank you. |
| 02:49:06.97 | Unknown | All right. |
| 02:49:08.03 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:49:11.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:49:15.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:49:52.97 | Unknown | Thank you. here. |
| 02:49:54.49 | Mary Wagner | The rest of the old drivers. you Thank you. Thank you. Can you help Ryan with some questions? you |
| 02:50:19.04 | Unknown | All right, let's go. |
| 02:50:20.51 | Unknown | We are now up to item 68, up to the on Sarsidong Ferry landslide improvement, side improvement and RFP, Brian Warrick. |
| 02:50:29.35 | Chief Parks | Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of council. I thought in the interest of time, we'll jump ahead into the report and PowerPoint into where we last left this with you. We can always go back if you'd like. The council will probably recall that you got your last update on this project in January 2019, when Jonathan Bowman was the public works director, and he informed you that through November you had paid the design and visioning firm Hayes & Associates $29,000 and the city at that point had been advised that the city's procurement process to hire that particular firm was not consistent with the federal funding that was being used for the project. At that point, the public works director stopped work on the design and visioning and began work on an RFP to comply with the federal funding. So this is kind of where we're going to pick it up from here. The RFP that was discussed with the council in January has now been completed by the public works department and was issued on June 7th, earlier this month. It was issued with two two different options and the various design and visioning firms have the choice of proposing on one or both what are being called packages. The first package is for visioning and so-called schematic design which would take the design of the work to a 30% completion level and then there would be a second selection process to finish up the design work. The second package would be to do visioning and a 100% design. The original deadline to reply to the SARFP was at the end of this month. That has been extended recently by another week since we did the council report so it's now been extended from the end of june to july 5th two key points on the selection process here the city staff will review the responses and then make a recommendation as far as awarding either the a or b package but the key point here is if the a package is ultimately recommended and approved by the City Council that whoever that particular firm is will not be able to compete for the rest of the design work because obviously you can't design and then you know compete for something you designed. Project milestones that Public Works is estimating for the project are for clothing design phase workshops this fall to initiate construction of phase one in the fall of 2020 and then complete phase one in July 2021. Now since we sent you the staff report literally late this afternoon as in around 4 p.m. we got an update from the bridge district on their portion of the work and one of the things that public works has been trying to do in this project is to sync up the work that the city is doing and the bridge district so that one the amount of time that the businesses are impacted is minimized and number two to the extent that both agencies can be in the trenches etc is coordinated. So essentially where the bridge district is as of late this afternoon is they tell us that their construction drawings and tech specs are not complete, that they anticipate submitting a permit application to BCDC by July 19th. And if they meet that, they are anticipating that it will take BCDC roughly three months to approve their application, which would take them to October of this year, and then immediately after that approval, they would submit their final Army Corps of Engineer Permit application, and upon issuance of that permit by the Army Corps, they would hope to advertise construction of their work by the end of this calendar year, by December 30th. And if that occurs, they're anticipating they can award the construction contract by March 2020 and have all construction complete by the end of 2022. In terms of fiscal impact, going back to the staff report, the project at its baseline design essentially is a $2.5 million project. $2.4 million would come from federal funding and district. $100,000 would be the local match from the city. And in the budget, what you will see is in 18-19, the estimate was $240,000. In the coming year, $500,000 in the balance of project funding in future years. Because of the delay in design, it is likely that those numbers will change and the schedule will move out as we indicated in the previous slide. In terms of the pass-through agreement, the way the, as I understand it, the funding is working for both the federal funds and the district funds, the city has a pass-through agreement with the district so that essentially the city gets reimbursed by the district both for the $400,000 that the district is contributing and also the $2 million in federal funds. The city does not bill the feds directly. It goes through the district. The district also observed in two public works that some of the staff time that the city has expended on this project to date is reimbursable. And so that is an area where public works is going to explore making some expense claims. So those are the highlights in terms of what has changed from January to today to June. And also I think the key information is both the issuance of the RFP earlier this month and the updated information from the Bridge District. So with that, I'd be happy to field any questions. |
| 02:50:29.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:10.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:42.94 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. |
| 02:53:43.19 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:54:59.35 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 02:55:59.75 | Chris Johnson | Those are the high-techs. |
| 02:56:20.05 | Unknown | Great, thank you. Any questions for Brian? Questions are Brian Seamanian quickly? |
| 02:56:27.03 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 02:56:27.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:56:27.19 | Ray | In light of the sort of most recent information you received from the bridge district, then we would not be completing our construction or starting our construction until they've completed theirs. So this is pushing the project out by several years, isn't it? Can I respond to that? A year or so. |
| 02:56:48.72 | Adam Politzer | Can I respond to that? You heard, sir. Yeah, I think what Brian mentioned earlier and what has always been our intent is to find some level of overlap. So we absolutely do not want to complete our project before the district has made significant progress. But we also want to maximize working in coordination, which is our commitment together in value engineering. So if we have trenching work in mining utilities, let's try to do that in cooperation so that we can, you know, we can have obviously those financial benefits. But there is clearly going to be them in front of us, and then at the right time in terms of our coordinated effort is where our program, because what we are ideally trying to reduce is the impact on our residents, the impacts on the above tide, the impacts on the yacht club, and the impacts on the revenue that we generate out of parking lots. one. |
| 02:57:41.20 | Ray | Sure. And so if the bridge district is now on that timetable, doesn't that take the pressure off a little bit for us? And the reason why I'm asking that question is, you know, when this was first and last presented, there was significant pushback from folks who were involved in the general plan. They wanted to see more of a phased approach so that the general plan could catch up with, you know, vision for the land side improvement. Seems like we could easily do that now in light of this timetable. |
| 02:58:03.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:58:04.07 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:58:29.92 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 02:58:29.95 | Councilmember Cox | But don't we have deadlines to spend some of the money in order to preserve our access to the funding, to the grant funding? |
| 02:58:37.34 | Adam Politzer | The bridge district has taken that position. We have consistently shared with the bridge district that we can't spend our money without aligning with their schedule. We can't design something for the future without knowing when the future is going to occur. Our needs on December 2022 may be very different than our needs today. So I think what Council Member Withey has indicated in terms of the pressure being relieved is that we want to have a robust and engaged community discussion on the visioning. And that's part of the general plan, and that's part of what Council Member Withey was concerned about when this discussion happened back in January was that it didn't seem that we were aligned with the discussions in general plan. So to Council Member Cox's question is that yes we want to start the process but we don't want to end the process without knowing if that date's going to stick. That date you know they can only be in the water during certain times of the year and as they shared in their email which we've been attached here which is this is all optimistic this is all recognizing that they get through the process and we know from our own experience at dumpy park that just touches the water's edge that getting those permits from bcbc and yarmulke were very intense and prolonged. So we are optimistic that 2022 is the date that this project is done, and it's our intent to dovetail on the completion of that date. |
| 03:00:16.25 | Councilmember Cox | In reviewing the RFP, there's a site plan in the RFP about the site for the proposal being sought. It looks to me as though the scope of work includes the Yacht Club and does not include the existing project. Is that intentional? |
| 03:00:37.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:00:38.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:00:38.27 | Adam Politzer | You brought this to our attention earlier today and haven't had a chance to circle back based on staff's availability, but we'll look into that. |
| 03:00:45.90 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. I said if you look at the site map, there's a one-page map of the downtown area. And the scope of this project does not include the New Del Mar Plaza find, but it does include the outlook and does not include the area in front of it and above the tide and the part of the burial. And so it just was confusing to me. So I wanted to confirm that staff had indeed identified the intended site area for the scope of work. |
| 03:01:22.01 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. Do you have any questions before I open up the comments? |
| 03:01:24.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:01:24.69 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. Thank you. I'm curious. I suspect the answer is no, but is there any type of an inflationary multiplier for the delay? As we've learned, construction costs, when we first looked at this in 2015, are substantially different than I suspect construction costs are going to be in 2019. And this is all due to the bridge district's delay in implementing the plan that we sort of thoughtfully and extensively reviewed and approved back in 2015. Any talk about that or any? |
| 03:01:50.88 | Nancy Osborne | to go. |
| 03:02:00.99 | Jill Hoffman | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:02:01.26 | Adam Politzer | As you may recall, this is basically a grant from the federal government. So there is no built-in in the federal government, to Council Member Cox's comments, is expecting this money to be spent. So there are two different projects. There's the landslide and the water side. And so the feds are wanting to know what's the delay on both of these projects. Obviously, the water side could be argued that it's been delayed for eight years because of the duration of their project. Our position is that until we approved the settlement with the district and the pass through agreement our clock didn't start but there is no inflationary numbers built in but our conversations with the bridge district goes back to when there was originally $4.2 million available, and the feds took $2 million out of that, or had some change, out of that equation because of the original delay. So we anticipate that we can reapply for those funds once we get a shovel into the ground, and then we expand the project to include lots, lot three in particular, and then we expand the project to include lots, lot three in particular, and the path of travel to lot three, and obviously where the buses are parking out on Humboldt. |
| 03:03:17.40 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, thank you. And I also had a question about the December 6, 2018 meeting. And on, well it's a paragraph, it's page 129 of 254. The staff report says at that meeting the city was advised that its selection process to retain design and visioning team did not comply with the applicable federal transit administration requirements and the funds expended by the city on design and vision services would not be allowed to count toward the city's $100,000 match for the project. Can you explain a little bit more and how we fixed whatever problem there was with that? I can answer that. |
| 03:03:51.86 | Adam Politzer | or and that's what we're doing. |
| 03:03:57.82 | Adam Politzer | I can answer quickly instead of turning any want to add to it. |
| 03:04:01.53 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. To go out to redo. OK, sorry. OK, so this is the fix. |
| 03:04:06.35 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, we thought we were in compliance. We were working in collaboration with the district. We understood what the requirements were for the feds in terms of the design service team, what the components are there to be made up. And we sent that information to the district. They didn't object. And what was important for us was to have local design team that understood the dynamics of the community and the relationship between our business community, yacht club and our residents and so based on the proposal that was submitted to the city that the council accepted we were off on our merry way downstream they came back and said you technically needed to request three other sources to bid on your project didn't matter if they actually bid we needed to at least extend the invitation to three other vendors and we did not do that and that's now what we are going through the process this is the correct the district did not inform us of that when we left the station back in june |
| 03:05:11.97 | Jill Hoffman | Was there any fiscal impact to the city from that? I mean, the sentence would not be allowed to count for the stage 100,000 matches. Did we spend something on that, or is that just |
| 03:05:12.89 | Adam Politzer | in time. |
| 03:05:23.25 | Adam Politzer | Other than that original design services, that's all that we've expanded today. |
| 03:05:28.98 | Unknown | All right, thanks. All right, I'm going to open this up to public comment. I have two cards right now, Peter Van Meter and Michael Rex. Are there any other speakers that would like to speak to this item? Very landing... |
| 03:05:42.83 | Unknown | Thank you. And, Serge, if you could bring up attachment one while I pass this up. |
| 03:05:42.95 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:05:50.84 | Unknown | because classes are done. |
| 03:05:58.27 | Unknown | Thank you, Councilmember Cox, for bringing up this point about the scope of work. See how I need it. |
| 03:06:03.52 | Sonia Hanson | See, I need every mage here. |
| 03:06:06.12 | Unknown | I read every page. I'm sure you did. Okay, so as you can see, as Council Member Cox pointed out, this does not include the existing plaza area or consideration of any other plaza area. And I have passed out a suggested revision to this and extra copies to go over the staff table where, in fact, the designers can propose an area that fixes the plaza area. I've also suggested that Tracy Way be included in the study area. It's an open question as to whether that street should be included in this project or not. And in fact, because your RFP has already gone out, you can exercise a provision in your paragraph 2.E to amend your RFP. And I suggest that, in take action as soon as tonight to in fact direct staff to prepare that amendment to correct your project area description. Secondly, the RFP does not exclude the idea of looking at an extended project to be completed in phases over a period of time. But it also doesn't make a proactive point of suggesting to the respondents of the RFP that they look at a multi-phase design solution, particularly the people that are going into the Plan B approach here. So that you can look at the $2.5 million budget as phase one of a project that would include much more improvements over a period of time. And with the suggestion that their infrastructure improvements under the ground basically in the affordable phase one include the elements that would be appropriate for the completion of the project to a greater extent than the ultimate solution at the end |
| 03:07:28.15 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:07:28.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:52.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:07:52.97 | Unknown | The President. |
| 03:07:57.90 | Unknown | I'm Michael Racks, local architect, and I'd like to make a few suggestions so it would be a more effective process. Your objective that you had before is good, although I'd like to propose a couple minor tweaks to it. The objective to focus on improving bicycle, ped, vehicular circulation. You might add boat. We've talked about a small place for small boats to come to shore. We should look at all circulation, including waterborne. And I don't think you can look at how to promote improving circulation without looking at how you link the study area to where what the sources are of that circulation. So while you have a very specific study area, you have to look outside that for the connections to the roots that serve that area. I think that should be made clear. Where are people coming from and how do they get to the study area? The other one is I ask that you direct your consultant to look at past studies. This study area has been studied a lot and we shouldn't start from scratch. For example, North-South Greenway. How does that link? We had Measure A funds to study gate 6 to the ferry landing. Why don't we look at that? We have a Magisauci to a downtown planning and transportation committee. Let's dust off that report and look at it. How about our recent general plan public workshop at the Spinnaker? There were some good ideas that came out of that provisioning. There was even the recent studies that the Hays Group did and the public input Thank you. At the Spinnaker, there were some good ideas that came out of that provisioning. There was even the recent studies that the Hays Group did and the public input that was given to that group. So please direct them to study those, research those good ideas and not forget about them. The last one is public process. I think it was a flawed process to start with some ideas, the two plans. Well, there's plan A, B, and C, and that's what the public can comment on. You know, what you should start with is existing conditions, point out what your objectives are, and let the public provide input without a canned approach to start with. Okay? and I agree wholeheartedly with two of Peter's comments. We should broaden the study area, but not just include Tracy Way. I would include El Fratel as well, and the shoreline between the hotel and the Yacht Club. Those are essential to pull this all together. And I agree with his comments about phasing. There should be some suggestions for future phases beyond the 200K. Thank you. |
| 03:10:50.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:10:50.41 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:10:52.05 | Unknown | Thank you. Any other comments? |
| 03:11:09.97 | Sandra Bushmaker | tonight. I just wanted to bring to your attention with regard to this project. In the Mercury News dated May 2019, a nonprofit out of Richmond called the San Francisco Estuary Institute has recently produced a report on sea level rises that we should take into consideration when evaluating this project. So that's new data, it's a new nonprofit out of Richmond. Once again, the name of it is the San Francisco Estuary Institute. Thanks. |
| 03:11:50.08 | Unknown | Any other public comment? Seeing none, we're right up here for comments and direction of staff. Back on council. Thank you. |
| 03:11:59.02 | Ray | So I can go first race. Well, thank you. I agree with Michael Racks. I agree with Peter Van Meter. And that this needs to be a good thing. Now, especially because my sense is that we are on a different time course, we need to be figuring out how this fits into a long term kind of food downtown period. This isn't any longer just a separate, isolated project. It needed to be because it was on a faster time track and it was going to sort of drive, you know, the tail wagging the dog or whatever imagery I want to use, you know, for the general plan. That doesn't need to be the case anymore. Except for the fact that we need to make sure that we're far enough along that we're not either |
| 03:12:54.36 | Unknown | I'm not. |
| 03:13:08.40 | Ray | accused or in fact, slow down the process. You know, we certainly don't want that. But anyway, so I'm questioning now the timing of all of this. You know, I just don't understand. So maybe Adam you can help me out of that care. Because I don't see now the urgency that I did see at the beginning of the year. So, same question, same question. |
| 03:13:47.02 | Adam Politzer | Question, question. |
| 03:13:49.66 | Ray | Do you want to get more questions? Yeah, I mean, that's it. That's really it. I think everything that Peter and Michael added as concepts are absolutely what the general plan will be doing for this area. because we've got to have a vision for the downtown, the downtown circulation. And it was the folks that were on the bike and peg committee and the general plan that came and looked at the first pass of this design and said, wait a minute, what's going on? You know, how is this consistent with what we've been discussing? |
| 03:14:28.10 | Councilmember Cox | you I mean, if we're going to incorporate it into the general plan, we have to finish the visioning of the general plan this year in order to get the EIR underway in time to finalize the general plan. And so the visioning is scheduled to be done by October. It's now June. So I don't think we're too early to have a design team on board to interact with our feedback. |
| 03:14:56.80 | Ray | Thank you. No, that's fair enough. No, that's fair enough. I actually agree with that. But that would say that we started with 30% and sort of start moving it along a bit because if we get full, I don't know what it was, a vision in a full design, that's beyond a schematic design. A full design is a full design. We don't need a full design. This is just a question. |
| 03:15:22.66 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. to undertake the work. It's not to complete the work. This is just to undertake the work. |
| 03:15:27.19 | Ray | Thank you. Well, then what's the difference between visioning and schematic design, and visioning and full design? I know what architect says the difference. |
| 03:15:34.52 | Councilmember Cox | Those are options. Those are options. So, proposers can propose to do either just package A or both package A and package B. I understand. But package B may not get done for a year. It's just the hiring the consultant to do that. |
| 03:15:54.16 | Unknown | My concern is that we spend money in analyzing Plan B and General Plan based on the pool that we have currently set up for really Plan A. And we have to do a schematic at any point at any time. We have the talent in the room and in our community to do all sorts of schematics. But to have anything that we're really going to work off of is going to cost us money money. But we're not budgeting, or we don't have a plan for. So if we're going to start doing Plan B and then general planning, and you think we're going to use this consultant, that money's going to go away pretty soon, and we're going to get one painted white stripe for our funding. So we have to commit completely and fully to Plan A, and then have a separate plan of attack for B, C, general plan, all of that. But I'm concerned about taking those profits, or those efforts out of |
| 03:16:31.27 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:16:45.31 | Adam Politzer | Mr. Mayor, can I just comment? I want to make sure because we may be using the package A and package B incorrect. Can I admit? What's important here is that what the district was also pointing out to us based on how we awarded the design contract was that at the end of the 30 percent, and then we would have had to go back out to RFP for the rest of the project. And that design team would not be eligible to bid on that. And so as we saw with the Valhalla project, you had a terrific designer get it through approval, and then they changed designers. And that designer, regardless if it was accurate or not said we can't do this and they changed the design midstream went back to the planning commission made the change and now they're building a different project which you know took over two years of discussions with the community you know all types of of outreach working with staff to come up with what the council and the planning commission originally designed. We may not get anybody to submit an RFP. It's not a lot of money, especially for these bigger firms and the engineering components of this and the underground responsibility that would need to be engineered is significant. So we're asking, the market's going to tell us, right? We're going to see if there's someone that is interested in being the design team for the entire project. We can phase how we want them to move forward in the project. That's the council's discretion. But what we can't do is go, wow, we really like this design team. How do we keep them if they only bid on phase three? So the market is going to tell us if we have anyone interested in either one of those, you have the authority once you award the contract on how you want to phase that work and at what pace you want to phase that work. Mm-hmm. |
| 03:18:54.72 | Jill Hoffman | to follow up on some of Ray's comments, can we provide direction to the whatever firm or I suppose whatever firm we think we're going to go with on incorporating and referencing these prior, you know, this prior work that's been done. I mean, I agree there's been a lot of work by a lot of different groups for this downtown area and also also, general plan, what's the purpose of our downtown? So I don't want all that to be lost. And the other is some kind of separate visioning that's going to go on with these guys. |
| 03:19:32.05 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, the answer is yes, and it's just similar to what we've done with Duffy Park. You had a volunteer group for 10 years working on a conceptual plan. They also held community meetings, and they were consulted, and their plans are as a reference tool for the professional design team that we use. So all of the studies and efforts that have been put forth by the community over the years. We can give that to when we award the contract, we can direct them to use those tools. Just as I believe Bob Hayes, Robert Hayes and Associates was using in their effort to come forward with that baseline design. |
| 03:19:32.27 | Jill Hoffman | Amen. |
| 03:20:16.33 | Adam Politzer | I had to... |
| 03:20:16.68 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:20:16.82 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:20:16.97 | Unknown | I haven't seen anything that we've done in our town that would say going out to bid in 2019 for 2022 project is too early. We've really stretched some of these things out for a long time. I agree with that. If it's just the plan A, the 2.5, I don't see a lot of changes happening in a one or two year period to that plan. Now as we get into, and I want to have that bigger discussion, I want to have that, how do we use the plaza, how do we use the park, I want to have all that discussion. I think it's very important. I just don't think we should do it for this project right now. I mean we should, but we got to do it. |
| 03:20:35.53 | Ray | Especially the suit. |
| 03:20:44.06 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:20:44.09 | Keith Stone King | I'm not. |
| 03:20:44.48 | Adam Politzer | I'm sorry. |
| 03:20:44.73 | Chris Johnson | I don't know. |
| 03:20:44.95 | Adam Politzer | I don't know. |
| 03:20:58.03 | Ray | careful how we include that. Yeah, but I mean, Peter's made the critical point here, which is, I mean, within the cycle, we got 2.5 million, and that sounds like a huge amount of money. It's not, you don't get much. You don't get much for 2.5 million, but nonetheless, we don't want to sink 2.5 million into something that we're planning that our eventual plans would rip up. I mean, hopefully, what we're going to put in is going to have a useful life of longer than the ultimate, you know, when we eventually find funds to do the ultimate vision. So I think that's the only point. Yeah. That's the only point. I think the part that's going to be |
| 03:21:14.72 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 03:21:19.02 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 03:21:22.80 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:21:45.95 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:21:47.98 | Unknown | I think it's going to be such a small project by the time we get to 2042, two and a half million dollars. I think we're talking about that a little bit. |
| 03:21:54.04 | Ray | I think it's about 80. |
| 03:22:02.74 | Adam Politzer | Can I, sorry, if I can comment again. I think that the RFP is written broadly, purposely, so that it doesn't eliminate options. It also doesn't preclude that the budget is $2.5 million. So as they go through the process and the direction that the council gives when we award the contract, and as the design team comes and gives council updates of whatever public outreach they're undertaking, their project may come back at $6.8 million. And all we have is $2.5, but as we phase in these additional projects, that gives the council and the community an opportunity to look at how are we going to fund and prioritize those additional expenses. So I don't think that what is before you tonight eliminates, and as Peter Van Meter shared, there isn't anything that keeps it from happening, but there isn't anything purposefully focusing on it. I'm committed. |
| 03:23:06.65 | Unknown | So in terms of tonight, it doesn't look like we have an actual action. but we can give direction. |
| 03:23:13.97 | Councilmember Cox | Right. |
| 03:23:14.31 | Unknown | So I would like to propose |
| 03:23:27.14 | Unknown | So... I think the main thing is that any phase one should not preclude or be determinative of any major circulation changes in the downtown unless it's aligned with the timing of the general plan. And then secondly, I think all of the points raised by Peter Van Meter and Michael Rex should be included in the RFP, I think. The space does not seem aligned for the correct space, as you pointed out. The circulation could include any kind of voting access, just as an option. I think it is really important how the area fits into other circulation routes there, the other streets. I just looked at what past studies the RFP called on the consultant to look at, and they were only the ferry landing improvement project documents. So I agree that we should be burned. And what was the other one? Here goes it. So I would give that direction, but obviously we want to hear the other ones. I think it's... and reported that they are at stake. |
| 03:24:54.97 | Councilmember Cox | I agree with my fellow council members. I do think we need to extend the due date of the RFP and issue an addendum. And the addendum needs to revise the site area that is the subject of the RFP. And then I think that I agree with Peter Van Meter that the RFP should make it more clear that this, because we don't want at some point to have our designer, if they propose for the entire project, we don't want the project to grow and have the designer precluded from participating. We don't want to have to start over with another designer because we now have the ability to do lots two and three. And so the RFP needs to be clearer that as additional funding is identified that it is the goal ultimately to address a larger site area. |
| 03:25:55.47 | Councilmember Cox | And then I agree with my fellow council members on, upon a board, that consultants should be directed to review past studies and that, we definitely need to have an approach that allows us to dovetail from this project to neighboring projects. In addition, I have said since I was a planning commissioner considering this project that the land side and the water side improvements need to encompass a holistic plan integrated one with the other. And I'm not sure that is adequately described in the RFP. So I recommend extending the RFP due date, taking a week to update the RFP to incorporate the comments from the council members so that we are giving more clear direction to our proposers. And we're not precluding them from participating in the full-fledged project, whatever that turns out to be. Thank you. |
| 03:27:05.89 | Unknown | I think we're good with all that. Staff, can we do an amended and then add a week? |
| 03:27:10.98 | Adam Politzer | Well, we can amend it and it purposely brought forward tonight so we can take direction and make those amendments and include that. But I think the deadline date to reply to July 5th was taking into account with the bringing this back to council for selection at its July 16th council meeting. If we choose to extend the deadline, then we're looking at coming back to council in August. And I don't think that that's the end of the world, but if the council agrees, then that gives the design teams more time to complete the application. And I think that's fine. |
| 03:27:56.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:27:56.26 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:27:56.27 | Unknown | you I agree. All right, we are up to item 6B. I did just check with who we have somebody on call waiting. And we have public comment for 6B. The Press. |
| 03:28:31.97 | Unknown | Okay, well, you. you Except 6B, we've done the department of criminal enforcement, all of the quarterly approach. |
| 03:28:34.51 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:28:43.44 | Adam Politzer | Hold on one second, Lily. We've got to get a screenshot. |
| 03:28:47.59 | Keith Stone King | you |
| 03:28:47.90 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:28:47.96 | Keith Stone King | Thank you. I'm gonna go. Thank you. |
| 03:28:53.97 | Unknown | Okay. Oh. |
| 03:28:55.91 | Lily Lillian | So good evening Mr. Mayor, council members. I am Lily Lillian, your community development director, and I'm joined this evening by Jason Inay, who's the city's code enforcement officer. And then we're also dialing in right now by Teresa Oh, who is general counsel for post compliance. Or Benzer, who is the CEO and founder of post compliance, was scheduled to be able to phone this evening for this meeting by Canada and emergency to attend to. So Teresa, thank you. Yes. Thank you. of post-compliance was scheduled to come up on this evening. This meeting is an emergency to attend to. So, Theresa, thank you for the answer. So tonight I'm going to provide a quarterly update on short-term and self-enforcement covering the months of February through May of this year. I'll begin with a brief background and then dive into the update on post-conforcement actions and end with upcoming next steps. |
| 03:29:22.57 | Unknown | Yes. Thank you. |
| 03:29:23.96 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. |
| 03:29:42.45 | Lily Lillian | Thank you. So in terms of background, short-term rentals are prohibited in San Salido. The council has been discussing short-term rentals over a number of years. |
| 03:29:49.03 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 03:29:52.51 | Lily Lillian | In November of last year, the council, during their discussions of a potential pilot program to regulate short-term rentals under limited conditions, took actions to increase our co-enforcement officer from a one-day-a-week officer to a three-day-a-week officer to cover all general co-enforcement issues in the city. And then the council also authorized the city to enter into a contract with host compliance, who is a provider of short-term rental compliance monitoring and enforcement solutions for our local governments. In January this year the council provided direction on short-term rentals which included continuing the prohibition on short-term rentals in Sausalito and then also prioritizing food enforcement members and then delaying consideration of a pilot program for a year to see how effective code enforcement actions could be under the current prohibition and active enforcement. And then also the council decided to appoint a stakeholder group, conduct a community survey, and then the purpose of tonight's item, which is provide quarterly updates on code enforcement actions. The contract with host compliance was signed on January 30th of this year. During the months of February through March, host compliance was at work identifying those physical addresses of all of the listings. Of short-term rentals on almost 60 hosting websites that were advertised in South Slito. During the same period of time, staff was drafting template letters in a variety of categories, which I'll cover, for host compliance to to use in the notification process and also we were conducting research as far as which properties in the past have been identified by the city of South Carolina to operate a short-term rental. And then we also created different levels of notification categories. So these levels of categories were determined to decide which properties were going to receive what type of notification initially. So the category one notice was a courtesy notice sent to all property owners identified by those clients as operating a short-term rental that had never been identified in the past by the city. And those folks received a courtesy notice and were required to comply within 10 days of the notice. Category 2 notice were... A notice sent to all property owners identified by host compliance as operating a short-term rental, and then they were also had been identified by the city in the past through a courtesy notice in the past by the city, and they were required to comply immediately. Category 3 were short-term rentals identified by host compliance that were sent a compliance order, and those properties had been identified by the city in the past as operating a short-term rental and had also received a compliance order, had been issued fines or had an agreement on file with the city to not rent short-term rental. and they were required to comply with the notice immediately or fines would be issued. And then category four is a citation, the citation level of notice. So those properties, we don't have many at this point from this last batch, but those properties identified the code host compliance as being a short term rental and having received a compliance order during this recent code enforcement action. We received a question from the public regarding fines and how immediately fines need to be paid. So fines issued for administrative citations are due immediately upon service of the citation. The citation is not paid within 30 days of issuance. And the fine is overdue unless that person files a timely appeal hearing request and then also a hardship waiver request. The city can assess a late penalty up to 50% of the total fine for any overdue fine and the failure of any person to pay the fine assessed by the citation within the specified time period could result in a lien against the property the use of small claims court or any other legal In April and early May of this year, the first round of Category 1 letters, Category 1 through 3 letters were distributed to properties which have been identified by the Hill's compliance. So overall 51 letters were mailed out. Out of the 48 courtesy notices that were sent, 23 properties either removed their listing, that was 18 properties, or they modified their listing to rent more than 30 days, and so that was five properties. And this resulted in a 48 compliance rate for those initial batch of courtesy notices that were sent out. three properties that received a courtesy notice contacted staff providing extenuating circumstances. And so those circumstances ranged from property owners' tenants doing the short-term rental and the tenant needing some time to work with their property owner needing some time to work with their tenant on getting the listing removed. Or we also found that there have been current property owners that were identified in the dispatch letters that went out that there's actually a listing for their property from a prior property owner. So we're working with the current property owner and Airbnb to try to get the listing One clerks notice was sent back to the city, returned to sender, and staff has resent that letter to the correct, to an alternative address. And then the remaining 21 properties that received courtesy notices did not respond to it, unless properties were moved to a category three and received compliance orders. And those were sent in early June. Of the three compliance orders that were sent in the April and the May time frame, three properties, all three properties responded to the order. So one property removed their listing, one property modified their listing to rent more than 30 days, and then the third property owner contacted staff with an address issue, so we reissued the compliance order. The chart on this screen shows the tracked advertised activity for both short-term and long-term rental since Osledo since October of 2018. The chart shows a steady decline in advertised rental since the council took earlier action in January of this year. Another significant decline in advertisements can be seen after the letters were sent out in late April and early June. And in fact, active short-term rental listings dropped by 34% once the first batch of letters were received. The relevant line to look at in this chart for advertised unique short-term rental properties is the yellow dashed line on the screen here. This shows the trend in advertised unique short-term rental properties over time. The green line shows that advertised unique short term rental properties, which have been identified by post compliance to date. So you can see that started in February after the contract was signed. And as of this month, Post Compliance is still working to identify 13 advertised short-term rental listings. So that's actually matching the listing to the physical property address. And those are the hardest for us to identify right now. From October of last year to January of this year, post-compliance have identified 156 unique rental units, so those are both short-term and long-term rental unit listings. This 156 number is the number that was reported to the council during the November timeframe we were discussing using post-compliance. And this is a mix of both long-term and short-term rentals. During the same period of time, so October through January, most complaints had identified 127 short-term rental listings. So these are some properties you list on multiple sites. These are not unique properties, but the total listings. And then also 107 unique short-term rental properties. So that's that yellow alignment. We see that after the council's actions in January, the number of advertised unique short-term rental properties dropped from 107 immediately to 70. And in February, post-compliance began to tie advertisements to actual property addresses. And they had identified 50 to 60 units at that point. But no co-enforcement actions were taken until late April, as they identified. So the drop from 107 to 70 unique short-term rental property seems to be a result of the council's action in the January timeframe and staff's advertisement of that action in the current articles. The corresponding drop in listings of both short-term and long-term units indicates that most of the short-term rental listings from January to February went inactive or offline, with only a handful of listings likely moving over to a 30-day or more listing model. And host complaints is limited in their ability to see the detailed listings prior to because they a customer as they wouldn't have the information necessary to tie their particular listing to a particular company. The scrap on the screen here was not included in the staff report, but was prepared in response to a question from the community that you received as late mail. It shows the breakdown in housing type as reported by the hosts for all the properties that have received letters to date. Those that have not complied are in red, and those that have complied are shown in green. And you can see that the most common housing type is the house. But there are also apartments, condos, townhomes, studios, and floating homes. |
| 03:39:36.03 | Lily Lillian | Staff has been updating the community on the short term rental issue through the South Ledo Currents. The following council action on January 8th, we sent that an investigation on January 11th, apprising community of the actions, and then on January 25th and March 22nd, additional current articles provided the community with an update on the next steps and enforcement action and encouraged short-term rental providers to cease their activity. And also included in the current articles and then also in each of the letters that went out information to property owners about moving to a long-term home sharing model and we let folks know about HomeMatch, which helps senior homeowners with extra rooms to connect with home seekers who need an affordable place to live. With regard to community reporting, host complaints offers two ways for community members to report addresses that are potentially in violation of the regulations. So the first is short term hotline, and the number is here on the screen. And then the second is an online form to submit a complaint. And these options are available 24 seven for neighbors to report. issues with short-term rentals or report short-term rentals in general. Once reported, host compliance transmits this information to code enforcement staff and the investigate. So, so far we've received seven submissions from the online complete form and five from telephone calls and all reports have been investigated. With regard to TOT, the courtesy notices and compliance orders sent to property owners indicate that the city is collecting transient occupancy tax for any unpermitted short-term rental activity that occurred on or after January 8th of this year, which is when the council took your action. Post-compliance and WePayTour provides a portal for the submittal of groceries and short-term rental operators were required for the letters that went out to upload their gross receipts onto that portal within a given period of time and the gross receipts will be used to build property owners for the tot owed to the city gross receipts submitted to date from four properties have resulted in 6 500 dollars in to theOT owed to the city. And the site will be in the process of invoicing property owners to the TOT in the coming months. A very conservative estimate of the TOT owed from unpermitted short term rental activity occurring on or after January 8th of this year is just shy of $20,000. But based on the birth receipts submitted to to date i've estimated that a more realistic estimate of the tot owed is about thirty thirty three percent more or about 25 000. if short-term operators do not upload their gross receipts for the unpermitted activity the city will be providing them with an estimate of their gross receipts and that will be based on their advertised monthly or nightly rate and the number of days you know is available for that. And then property owners may also face penalties of interest if they fail to pay the COT. Looking at next steps, in early June, host compliance sent out a second batch of category one, so those are the courtesy notice letters, and then category three, those were the compliance orders that followed up through the folks who did not respond to the courtesy notices. And staff and host compliance will be working in tandem to continue to issue courtesy notices, compliance orders, and then subsequently fines for properties that relist and citations for properties that don't comply with the compliance orders. Staff will be again also separately invoicing property owners for the TOTO as well as following up with property owners who have not submitted their gross receipts in order to be billed for the TOTO.. And the next update on the short-term rental enforcement effort will be provided in September of this year, and it will cover June through August. And that concludes the GISTF report. There's no action that's required to receive a file recommendation. And I'm available for any questions. We have Teresa on the phone, and then we have Jason also in the audience. |
| 03:43:59.08 | Unknown | Any questions? Any questions? Jill? |
| 03:44:02.27 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. On one of the slides, you listed a number of hotline complaints and forms. I think the number was 12. Do you have a knowledge of those 12? How many were confirmed? |
| 03:44:24.46 | Lily Lillian | I don't have that, I don't have that, but I can bring that back to you. I think there were a number that the majority, I think we had already had in this system. And then I think there were some that are, right now showing the fair printing over 30 days. So we're looking at those properties as well. |
| 03:44:26.64 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:44:44.00 | Jill Hoffman | Okay. And I know we received one email from a resident who received one of your letters that they were getting a hit on post-compliance, but it was apparently either an error or, I mean, her home was actually listed on those compliance, I think. Or not on those compliance, but one of the platforms. But it was by a previous owner or something. And she was having trouble getting that removed from the platform, from the Airbnb platform, is there a process now that we can advise residents that if you get a hit like this, this is the process, has that been streamlined at all or is it still a struggle to get the platforms to remove the listing? |
| 03:45:27.03 | Lily Lillian | It is a struggle. I spent about an hour on the phone with Airbnb last week trying to get the process streamlined for our citizens here. And I did eventually get a number to call and the words to say to Airbnb for these property owners. I'm also available to sit in my office or wherever they'd like with the property owners so we both can be on the phone with Airbnb if that's helpful. Okay. We are working. I'm aware of two property owners that are in that situation right now, and we've reached out to both of them with those options. |
| 03:45:42.49 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:45:49.78 | Unknown | Go ahead. |
| 03:45:55.99 | Jill Hoffman | Okay, great. So now, but at least now there's a process where, you know, people want to reinvent this process to get their posting removed, hopefully. |
| 03:46:03.92 | Lily Lillian | Hopefully. I have not yet seen Airbnb remove the listing, but we are working on it. And we have let those property owners know that code enforcement actually |
| 03:46:04.43 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 03:46:14.05 | Jill Hoffman | As far as we're concerned, the matter is all. |
| 03:46:14.08 | Lily Lillian | As far as we're concerned, the better. |
| 03:46:17.13 | Jill Hoffman | And then the third one, do you have a sense of how much staff time has been saved by using first compliance as opposed to the old system where a staff member would have to do all this incredible research? I don't have a good number. |
| 03:46:29.98 | Lily Lillian | hours for you. But it's a significant amount of time. OK. OK. |
| 03:46:34.53 | Unknown | I have a tag along to that question. We did increase our code enforcement personnel. Can you or Jason give an approximate and really breakdown of his full allowance, how much are applied towards code enforcement, say, building planning or code short amount? |
| 03:46:34.55 | Lily Lillian | you Thank you. |
| 03:46:52.98 | Annie Dorsey | Sure, I'll bring you a reason for that. |
| 03:46:54.36 | Unknown | Okay. John Yoo. So this will be our last question. Then I'm going to go to another comment I have. Sandra Bushmaker, any other members that want to make a comment to this item? Thank you. |
| 03:47:09.82 | Jason | Hello, Mayor and Council members. My name's Jason. To answer your question with regards to how much time I spent finding someone that those complaints can't find, it took me three hours to find an address for someone that we got a return center from. So I had to use open intelligence in order to find that. So I had to go through a bunch of different websites. It's very time consuming and not cost effective in my opinion. And your question again, Mayor, we'll- About how much of your time is split between short term rentals and- 20 to 30% of the day, depending on the day. Some days there's nothing and some days it's the whole day. It really depends. And then it also depends on if there's a health and safety issue with normal code enforcement. Because that will take priority because mold or whatever else is going on. So I imagine we're making some great strides in our building department as well since we're completing |
| 03:47:09.90 | Unknown | Those are your favorite. |
| 03:47:37.90 | Jeff Nolts | Money. |
| 03:47:57.98 | Unknown | untried. We'll have that ready for reporting. Thank you. All right, we're open to public comment now. Anybody, Sandra, anybody else, please follow the card. |
| 03:48:11.82 | Sandra Bushmaker | Good evening again. I'll be quick. Senator Bushmaker, long-term resident. You received a letter from Sam Chase dated June 17, 2019. It contains numerous questions that I would like to see addressed by the council or the planning department. I'm not sure to whom this should be directed. My concern is that some of these hosts may have gone underground by either operating out of their own day-by-bye book or by posting a 30-day minimum and booking a shorter term. So that's an issue I'd like to bring to the council's attention that I think needs to be addressed. And lastly, with regard to the community survey, I don't believe one is necessary. You were presented, the council was presented 600 and some signatures on a petition in January. I think that's a good representative. sample of the voting members of Sausalito. |
| 03:49:14.27 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:49:14.57 | Sandra Bushmaker | face. |
| 03:49:14.98 | Unknown | Any other public comments? Seeing none. Any other public comments? Come up here. Any comments? Let's move this one along. We have an information only, so thank you Lily. |
| 03:49:31.23 | Councilmember Cox | you |
| 03:49:31.63 | Unknown | Thank you, Theresa. |
| 03:49:34.33 | Councilmember Cox | Hi, Theresa. |
| 03:49:35.18 | Unknown | Great chatting with you. Thank you. Okay, sorry we have questions for you. Thanks for being here. |
| 03:49:44.38 | Unknown | OK. |
| 03:49:49.18 | Unknown | I want to come on. |
| 03:49:50.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:49:52.02 | Unknown | All right, next up, it's Austin and Warren City School District. Council Committee update, Council Member Cox and Council Member Hoffman present. |
| 03:50:03.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:03.31 | Councilmember Cox | So as we announced at our last council meeting, Councilmember Hoffman and I have continued to meet with various members of the community and stakeholders concerning Bayside NLK and Willow Creek Academy and identifying various resources and pathways to improve the quality of education and the long-term viability of both schools to ensure that all students are provided the best possible education. At our last meeting, it was requested that we prepare either a resolution or a letter. I think we decided on a letter. So we have included, as late mail, a draft letter for your consideration that would be addressed to Superintendent Mary Jane Burke with copies to various other parties that we believe should be advised. The city's commitment to advancing This is an important issue. You don't forget to step over. You're right. My apologies. |
| 03:51:31.78 | Councilmember Cox | copies of the letter are available on the table for the |
| 03:51:44.61 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:51:55.97 | Jill Hoffman | I had a version up here, I think it was an earlier version. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Um... Yeah, so if you look on page two, paragraph three, and the paragraph under that, the next two paragraphs, or the first paragraph, paragraph three. Yeah. And then it's published. |
| 03:52:28.03 | Councilmember Cox | That's fine. In other words, this is talking about the value of economies of scale. Yeah, but that was my story. |
| 03:52:38.03 | Jill Hoffman | I just want to delete those two. |
| 03:52:39.42 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:52:44.95 | Jill Hoffman | No, I mean, do you want to discuss that? I mean, those are the two paragraphs that I suggested that we could do. So we want to have a |
| 03:52:53.29 | Unknown | Do you want to talk about the line? Yeah, sure. So this is the paragraph three. |
| 03:53:05.27 | Councilmember Cox | Well, I certainly think that's the new consensus already built around this idea that's actually. Well, we recommend the district undertake the competence and feasibility study to examine the statistical and financial issues implicated by such a merger |
| 03:53:18.03 | Jill Hoffman | to go with Tyson. |
| 03:53:19.14 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:53:19.16 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Yeah, I don't agree with that. I mean, I think that's, I don't think we're ready to recommend that, or I'm not ready to recommend that we- I'm not ready to recommend the two schools. |
| 03:53:21.47 | Councilmember Cox | I mean, I don't know. |
| 03:53:22.01 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 03:53:33.60 | Jill Hoffman | So you don't think they want to say I'm sorry. Sorry. |
| 03:53:35.66 | Councilmember Cox | is what is happening? |
| 03:53:45.86 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, sorry, my apologies again. Yeah, okay, so you're just saying I'm going to merger the two schools. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly, sorry. |
| 03:53:47.59 | Unknown | Yeah. Yes. What time is it? 1130? Yeah. |
| 03:53:56.40 | Ray | Thank you. |
| 03:53:56.56 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:53:56.59 | Ray | Yeah, but now that's being discussed, does that there are 19 school districts paragraph |
| 03:53:56.60 | Unknown | Yeah, that's being |
| 03:54:06.27 | Ray | actually directly speak to the merger of schools, the schools, and doesn't it lead to a bit of confusion as to what your real point is? |
| 03:54:16.10 | Councilmember Cox | I'm not attacked. |
| 03:54:16.79 | Ray | you |
| 03:54:16.97 | Councilmember Cox | of the 19 schools paragraph. I think the point is we have right now two full administrative teams managing two schools with a total of less than 500 students and that's foolishness. |
| 03:54:19.28 | Ray | It's very valid in terms of consolidating school districts. The point is, |
| 03:54:34.64 | Ray | Yeah. But you're mixing it up with the consolidation of districts. |
| 03:54:37.51 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. you So I would say take out the 70-100 paragraph. Thank you. I agree, which Council Member Hoffman had been admitted in a red line that I missed. |
| 03:54:53.15 | Unknown | And I haven't been able to read this completely thoroughly, but I would also think that we should mention what you just mentioned in paragraph, in bullet. The thing mentioned number one in the first paragraph, the $10 million total revenues and less than 530 students. Yeah. which I think is an attribute. |
| 03:55:17.98 | Councilmember Cox | So it will say with 10 million in total revenues and less than 550 students, total students. |
| 03:55:27.12 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:55:35.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:55:35.29 | Jill Hoffman | Enjoy. |
| 03:55:35.75 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:55:41.64 | Unknown | the committee about the decision to have this letter be addressed to the superintendent as opposed to |
| 03:55:50.04 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:55:50.07 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:55:50.97 | Councilmember Cox | So we copied the AG, the county, Mark McGuire. But when we discussed this before, we talked about sending a letter to Mary Jane Burke with our recommendations. |
| 03:55:54.44 | Sandra Bushmaker | I mean, |
| 03:56:11.03 | Unknown | I didn't think I'd do that, but we should also copy this. |
| 03:56:17.34 | Unknown | with him. |
| 03:56:21.78 | Unknown | There was a lot of discussion on how far we should go with this. And we kind of already set a benchmark on what we all agreed on a certain level and the task force was going to take it to how far can we go. Did you consider it all if we want to join in the lawsuit, if we want to go any other routes? Yeah. |
| 03:56:38.93 | Sandra Bushmaker | So, |
| 03:56:40.02 | Councilmember Cox | again, through the community feedback from various people, it feels as though joining a lawsuit is counterproductive. The lawsuit is already being maintained by those directly affected by it. We don't have, other than the community interest that's described in the last paragraph of this letter, we don't have jurisdiction. So, and also, I believe that an approach of mediation and collaboration appears to thus far be far more productive than coming out swing. |
| 03:57:18.97 | Jill Hoffman | I agree with that. I think we did touch on that a bit, but I think at this point, the community leaders in both communities, in Marin City, from the Marin City District, and also from the City Council, we've been talking as well, and I think we're moving down the right path, I think, with collaborating with community leaders and encouraging consolidation of the two schools. So I think right now, it's good, but we would, I mean, we could revisit that issue later if we need to. |
| 03:57:53.04 | Unknown | Thank you. All right, well I have two public comment cards, Jeff Noles and David Sudo. Are there any others that would like to comment on this issue? General's. Thank you. |
| 03:58:12.33 | Jeff Nolts | Good evening, council members. My name is Jeff Nolts. I'm a Saucelero resident and a member of the Willis District Academy Board of Directors. I really am here to not so much to speak to the letter, although I appreciate the work that the committee has done talking to the community, including me. I wanted to update the council on what's happening now, just the most recent developments. The district board is poised this Thursday to adopt a budget along the lines that's described in the letter that will take the $4 million in discretionary revenue and allocate all of it to 20% of the students and roughly one third of the high need students. There's still been no dialogue whatsoever on that. We recently submitted to you the exchange of letters that happened when Board President Kirk Weinheimer wrote to the district board and asked again for dialogue. And the response we got was a letter from yesterday from the lawyer for the district saying, no, we have no interest in speaking to you, which was consistent with the position at the case management conference, which is that they're also not interested in mediating. Both the superintendent Burke and will agree to indicate that they would like to mediate. The district is not interested. But I also wanted to make a couple of comments about that letter from the district's lawyer. There are legal arguments made in that that our school's lawyer will respond to that are incorrect, but the most notable thing in that letter, I think, that was touched on in the draft letter that we looked at tonight, is that it says in substance that there is a two-class system, that there is a school the district board should care about financially, and that's the traditional school, and one that is not their problem, and that's the charter school, 80% of the kids. And it goes on to say, in substance, that's mandated by the education code. Now, I want to point something out that people probably aren't aware of or isn't in the front of their minds right now, which is that is pretty much the exact opposite of what this district board said in response to the FICMAT report about three years ago, two and a half years ago. The district board wrote a very long response to that report and said it had been vetted by their lawyers. Experts in law have looked at it. And that report said, there's two ways to look at this situation. We look at it as all kids matter, allocate resources according to need, and not based on which school, public school their parents choose. The other viewpoint is you allocate according to school. You prioritize the students who go to the traditional school. And then they said, the education code does not mandate this. That is the second point of view. It doesn't speak to it and leaves the discretion to the district board. |
| 04:00:10.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:10.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:00:10.28 | Unknown | Mr. President. |
| 04:00:57.30 | Jeff Nolts | The only thing that changed between that report and now is the composition of the district board and who their lawyer is. The law didn't change. So this letter from the lawyer is driven by politics, not by law. And my question to the district board is whether you agree with this as a matter of policy, because that's what's important. Kevin, anybody have any questions for me? |
| 04:01:19.03 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:01:19.67 | Jeff Nolts | Thank you. |
| 04:01:23.47 | Unknown | Next up. |
| 04:01:32.55 | David Sudo | I'm sorry, I think it would be a lot more cogent at 7.30 or 8.30 than 11.30. I'm glad that we had a budget discussion here today because I think school district in general has the same issue. If you want to imagine where they are, imagine if Sausalito didn't have the measures L, M, and O, and was struggling to put together a budget right now with the same kind of pension issues we have here with increasing maintenance costs and and increasing special ed needs last year this closing budget they have they ran a deficit of five hundred thirty four thousand nine hundred seventeen dollars if they did nothing with that deficit to close that deficit for next, the state would come in and take over our school district. And they would use the basis of that last BICMAC report to run our school. That's the period end of what would happen if we didn't make any budget changes. I was just reading the budget packet for tomorrow. They ran into discrepancy and even with all the custom making for Willow Creek next year, they only have a $286,000 surplus. That's all the legal room we have in our budget right now. If we ran in deficit, they're already at the 5% minimum reserve. If they run in debt, the state will come in and take over the school reserve and run for us and make all the decisions for us. I think, you know, and I think my takeaway for this letter right now is I'm fine with most of the letter except for the item one bullets. I think some of those numbers should just be taken out. They're extremely divisible when you put them in, and it really depends on how you look at the numbers and things like that. Under our old MOU, we hit $300,000 in maintenance and utilities costs for Willow Creek's campus. And when you look at the budget it was counted against Bay State MRK and at our current ADA that's almost $3,000 a student. So I would really appreciate if we just take those figures out, we can acknowledge that much more per student is spent at one school, but putting in numbers that are highly dependent on how you count them is not a good idea. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:03:18.69 | Unknown | No. |
| 04:04:03.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:04:07.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:04:07.72 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 04:04:07.83 | Unknown | you |
| 04:04:13.77 | Alice Merrill | I'm not. Oh. I'll go back to my, one of my original Alice Merrill things that I, um, I don't know if I'm wrong in this, but that I don't think that the city council's job is to run the school district. And that I just don't. I just think the city council needs to run the city and the school system needs to run the schools. And so to weigh in, so completely five people for one point of view is, it just seems wrong to me. And it is one point of view. All of you are completely copacetic about the situation. And it is, not everyone is, feels that way in this town and i know a lot of people do but not everybody does so that you're not representing me in this decision at all not a single one of you is which is too bad you know i mean that's what job is, but it isn't to represent me in the school system. It says here that it stated a general principle of full and fair, this is the alleged funding that should be equal to what a similarly situated district would receive. So I think'm not sure if i got the right place but at one point when i finally started paying attention there was really a mess in the school district a mess and there was a school board that had four people from the willow creek academy in one way or another, and one person from the Marin City community on that school board. And it was so weighted for Willow Creek to have everything it wanted. And those kids from who got shuttled off back to Marin City, and they didn't have teachers, and they didn't have books, and you can say it was a lack of leadership, but who... who hired the leadership. It was a school board that had four people who were Very representative of Woodrow Creek. They hired the leadership to to lead the kids at NRK Bayside. And it was a disaster. And to not at least acknowledge that that was how it was and to just pretend that we shouldn't look at old stuff. We should need to move on is wrong. And we need to apologize, and then maybe we can move on. Thank you. |
| 04:07:20.95 | Unknown | Alice, can I ask you a question? |
| 04:07:23.26 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. |
| 04:07:23.28 | Councilmember Cox | So what about this letter is unfair in your mind? We're asking for three things. We're asking for equitable funding. We're not telling them what that is. We're just asking for equitable funding. We're asking for transparency. And we're asking to explore a merger. So what about the letter is unfair? |
| 04:07:42.97 | Alice Merrill | . that those points, you know, they sound fine. The school district should, the school district should care about everybody. I mean, I just, I don't know if a school merger, you know there was one school, I do, |
| 04:08:04.03 | Councilmember Cox | which is pretty fine. It was not doing fine. I had kids in that school. It did not do fine at all. |
| 04:08:05.54 | Alice Merrill | was, Thank you. |
| 04:08:06.25 | Unknown | Amen. |
| 04:08:06.63 | Alice Merrill | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 04:08:09.52 | Unknown | We'll go. |
| 04:08:11.97 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 04:08:12.03 | Alice Merrill | them. then get in there and make that school work. Don't start another one and then say, we're the be all and the end all. Get in there and make that school work if you had kids at the time. you So if you're going to go to one school, you're going to have similar situations. So get in there and make the school work. And so if you're willing to do that, that's harder than just sending your kids to private schools. Thank you. |
| 04:08:49.90 | Jeff Nolts | Thank you. |
| 04:08:55.99 | Unknown | Thank you, council members. It is late. |
| 04:08:56.45 | Jeff Nolts | Thank you, Council Member. |
| 04:09:03.11 | Unknown | I just have to follow up on what Alice said about we cannot forget the harm that was done at Bayside El Moque. They got several decimated school years under the current MOU that's sunsetting this month. It's been in place for five years. And, It did undercut, it did underfund Bayside MLK. It led to all kinds of cuts of programs and teachers and changing things up to try to save money, and it totally destabilized that school. And. a lot of those kids may never recover from that. And that is heavy. That is so heavy and so terrible. So, you know, some changes came about and some people advocated to deficit spend because they were locked into this MOU for five years. And rather than give the kids another decimated school year, they said, we have to deficit spend. And they did. And last Thursday, I went to the school board meeting. You know, it's been a long, hard climb back up for those kids. And we keep hearing report after report of like, oh, it's still not very good. Oh, it's a little bit better, but this is... Last Thursday, we heard a wonderful report. And David Pinnate said, better than I expected, hard as we've been working, this is bordering kind of miraculous. Thank you. . So I think the tremendously good news I THINK YOU'RE ABLE TO GET and the direct oldest, you know, how great things are there. They've been good, there's great things going on there. So now we've got two schools that are pretty stable. My thing all along has been that we have to stabilize and take care of the kids at Bayside, and okay, we cannot leave them. 80% of the kids may go to Willow Creek, you know, that does not give anybody license to harm those kids. So I'm not pointing blame at anybody. I'm saying this is a new day. The MOU has finally sunsetted. We have a new budget. |
| 04:11:11.80 | Adam Politzer | day that MOU has finally seen You can't. |
| 04:11:17.73 | Unknown | You know, the extra, the million that Willow Creek is not getting that they claim they must have, that they are due, was a million taken away from the other kids at Great Harm. So now we're at this point, we do need to combine schools. And we do need to move forward. peacefully, we need healing, we really do. And we're going to end up with a school with two-thirds of kids from families of color There's just this whole beautiful opportunity to have a really wonderful modern school that millennials will support. They care a lot about social justice. I wish I think we're gonna acknowledge that and get on about the peaceable good thing. I hate that we're telling our kids, I'm sorry I'm going over, but I hate that we are telling the kids of our district that you have to give us our money or I mean, it's just terrible what we're telling our kids. |
| 04:12:23.96 | Richard Bonet | Thank you. Richard. |
| 04:12:26.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:12:26.15 | Richard Bonet | Go. Can we agree to at least one or is there? Thank you. |
| 04:12:30.10 | Unknown | No more. |
| 04:12:30.52 | Richard Bonet | Thank you. |
| 04:12:33.49 | Unknown | Unless you're sitting there. |
| 04:12:33.71 | Richard Bonet | so you can't wait Hi, my name is Richard Bonet, a 38-year resident at Sausalito, and passionately interested in the outcome for the kids. I've tutored at Bayside for the last 20 years. |
| 04:12:36.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:12:53.22 | Richard Bonet | First, let me address this group. Earlier it was said, you don't run the school district, and that's absolutely true, and you don't represent the district. You represent Sausalito, not Marin City. You do not represent the population of the school. So be careful how you exert your force, and you have some force, officially or not, be careful. You're stepping outside your bounds to some extent. Now, having said that, I really appreciate the kinds of things I heard tonight. Without question, there needs to be an improvement in the way the schools are being run. I think what needs to happen, and I say this, I've said it two or three times already today in different meetings, we need to take the best of all the different schools, put them together. Willow Creek has done a great job. They had a million dollars a year of extra money to play with for the last five years, had allowed Terra to build a tremendous school, and I support that. But let's take the best of the different schools, put it together, and whether it's a charter school or a district school, it doesn't really make much difference. I was at the board meeting of Willow Creek tonight, and I said, you know, it probably would result in more money to what is now Willow Creek if it weren't a charter school. Thank you. you And probably we have more control over the overall situation. So I think merging the schools makes sense. I think that it will be economically better, but it's a long way from solving the achievement gap. The achievement gap is a much bigger issue, but let's get this thing done first so we can stop all the bickering and so forth, and go to work on really solving the achievement path, which is a major task. Thank you. |
| 04:15:20.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:15:20.57 | Richard Bonet | you |
| 04:15:20.62 | Unknown | All right, who wants to make first comment? |
| 04:15:33.03 | Jenny Waring | Go ahead. |
| 04:15:35.12 | Unknown | Thank you. you |
| 04:15:36.22 | Jenny Waring | Amen. |
| 04:15:36.23 | Unknown | Oh. of the technology we use. |
| 04:15:38.26 | Jenny Waring | Thank you. I'm Jenny Waring from Sausalito, the owner, and I'm Cat State. I want to just comment. Most of my sentiments have been expressed. I'm extremely concerned about what has happened to a generation of children in New Orleans City with the advent of the charter school. I think the charter school has done tremendous things for Sausalito. I'm not opposed to the charter school in any way. I have, I and a lot of the people that I talk to in Sausalito, so you're aware of the fact that you, that Sausalito doesn't speak as one voice on this subject, are extremely concerned, unsettled, about the immorality of what we see as having happened in the form of indifference to the consequences of the charter school to the children who didn't go to the charter school. On the subject of transparency, I'm trying to skip ahead and not repeat things that have already been said. |
| 04:16:53.15 | Jenny Waring | I'll quote from the famous letter that you guys got from Dennis, Lulliver, and Kelly. The board agrees that dialogue is generally a very positive approach to addressing concerns. Yet, the opportunity for meaningful dialogue has not been apparent. There can be no question that lawsuits stifle rather than foster dialogue. This is because once a lawsuit is filed, the entity sued does not want its words to be twisted or otherwise used against it by the party seeking relief. That seems to me to be self-evident in my life experience. It's self-evident that parties don't get together and let their hair down and have open and productive conversations when they are in litigation. So it seems a little farcical for all of the hair pulling that's going on about a lack of open dialogue once litigation has been entered into. Finally, I want to briefly address the constant complaint that Willow Britt supporters give that Bayside MLP grievances are embedded in the ancient past and that we should just let bygones be bygones. In fact, nothing could be far from the truth. The children at Bayside didn't begin a recovery process of this year when, as David Suda pointed out, deficit spending was incurred to try to begin to restore some of the programs that they've been cut for them. So it's as late as the 2017-18 academic year. No counselors, no certified teachers. You've heard. Don't let me. So thank you for your willingness to be open-minded and recognize that this issue is not one that you can parachute into and understand its complexity. |
| 04:18:57.37 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 04:18:58.33 | Jenny Waring | I'm not going to need it. |
| 04:18:58.97 | Unknown | Any other public comment? Seeing none, we're closed public comment. Officially closed then. Back up here for comments. I'll start. |
| 04:19:13.80 | Unknown | I've talked about this before. If you were here throughout most of the meeting, first couple hours, we talked about this fire district. We talked about the fire district for a long time. Fire districts, we don't operate the fire district. That's a separate fire district with a separate board. We have a great relationship with the fire district. We find that's a very valuable service to our community as we do education. We're not trying to run the school district. We're trying to say how important the school district is to a city. And I think we're all in the consensus there. But let's not mix the two up. We're not running it. We're saying we have an absolute responsibility to the members of our community to speak to that special district. Just like we did the fire district for the first couple hours of this meeting. And we went to the sanitation district if they came here or MMWD. David, I would love it if Sausalito was the highest revenue town per capita in the state of California. I would love that with the budget that we were dealing with tonight, but it isn't close. So comparing our budget situation to say what if we didn't have those things, that's what we're comparing. We have a school district with the highest per capita and it has been for a long time and I have right here a 2008 API ranking, 731 with Bayside score with one white person. That's the state of California document, so they're wrong. Ross spends $5,000 more a year per student than we do. I think we have to, if we're going to really talk about solutions, we've got to start really talking about solutions and not saying I don't want to hear from that group because they shouldn't be talking about a solution because they don't qualify because we're a separate board or something. That's just, that changes the conversation completely. I'll let the others come in as well. Thank you. |
| 04:21:03.81 | Nancy Osborne | you |
| 04:21:03.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:21:03.96 | Nancy Osborne | to the understand that democracy. |
| 04:21:05.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:06.58 | Unknown | you |
| 04:21:06.63 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 04:21:06.90 | Unknown | Thank you. you So thank you to Jim and Joe for reaching out to numerous community members and for all your work on this and for the points of the letter. I generally agree that this is a very well balanced and reasoned letter and appropriate from our standpoint. I just want to address two issues. One is this issue of kind of retribution or reconciliation. And I think that the spirit of reconciliation is where we need to be now. And I think it is clear that there have been a lot of mistakes made in the school district. and other places. And if there is blank, to go around on that issue. but I also picked their space. for reconciliation. And I was very happy to be at the meeting at Royal Creek a couple of weeks ago where there was a little bit less of a public meeting format and a really good opportunity to have people talk and to apologize for things that happened. I've been a parent at Willow Creek for the past 11 years. I don't know parents that wish, you know, our kids go to school with the kids from our city, their friends, it's one community. I don't know people personally that have anything but care and compassion for the kids that they send MLK in addition to the kids that attend Willow Creek. I think that we all need to just look at it in that way. And I think it is good to recognize that some things happened that were not correct. But I also think that it's not correct to repeat those mistakes. Willow Creek is providing service to high-need kids, 170 or 190 of them, based on services that will be cut if the district or approves the budget that they sent to group. So the exact same thing I was just describing about things that some kids will never recover from might just be that cycle maybe about to start over. I just don't feel that that's a good place to start rebuilding trust and to rebuild a positive path forward. So we need to take care of all of the kids. I mean, the kids at least said, okay, absolutely. But not to, in the process, damage other very different children. So, you know, I think that's not something that we can address in this letter. But I just think it's an important theme and something that I think more community dialogue and more one-on-one conversations and more outreach is necessary to achieve. |
| 04:24:38.66 | Unknown | I had another point, which I know I had to deal with the equitable allocation of funding, but I think that's adequately addressed in the aisle. Sorry. But anyway, these are hard issues. I want communities to start learning about for a very long time. I feel fairly optimistic with a number of recent conversations that there is a lot of goodwill to move forward. pretty disappointed in the letter that you saw you Thank you. you a positive step forward, but hopefully they can be convinced that dialogue will be valuable. |
| 04:25:25.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:25:29.17 | Jill Hoffman | I think, you know, We do listen and we take to heart the comments that we're not elected this school board. Yes, that is correct. But, you know, the context of these are kids in our community, 80% of the kids in the community go to Willa Creek Academy, and when you're talking about a service provider, you taking money away that's been collected from property tax in Sausalito, and you're moving that from 80% of the kids in the district to 20% of the kids in the total district, that causes us concern. And I think that as elected leaders of this community, that's something like any other service provider that we would weigh in on with regard to our community. I think we've been very careful, and in Councilmember Cox's draft of the letter, which I appreciate, very careful to be fair and state our goal of equitable funding and transparency. And One School for All, which by the way also addresses the Attorney General's concern that Bayside MLK is a racial segregated school, voluntarily segregated, but segregated nonetheless, of 80% or racial majority of African Americans. And so I also want to reiterate that my perspective is heavily informed by the comments by Terry Harris-Green at our community forum. Make amends. Move forward. goal is best school in the district for all the kids in the district, period. And I support that. |
| 04:27:19.63 | Unknown | you |
| 04:27:25.74 | Ray | I really can't have anything. |
| 04:27:33.03 | Ray | to what my colleagues have said. It is important for the city of social media that all the kids in the district as a whole thrive and therefore it's our concern because as Councilmember Hoffman has indicated, you know, there's a lot of kids who live in Sol Solito who are a mentor. What has actually encouraged me is that we're having this dialogue and I think there's got bit of gulp lump in the throat and sort of suck it up and just on one side recognize what the other side's feeling. Right? In both ways. And I can understand that any group I can understand feels that they've been harmed. there is going to be a, they're going to want to hear that things may not have been right in the past, things may have made, we may have made mistakes. But then the other side's going to be willing to also suck it up and just move on. so that all the kids are of benefit. So I'm actually encouraged that this dialogue's happening. There's discussion and I know I can't contribute very much. I really can. There's been some good work done by my colleagues. And there's been some great outreach. And there's been some good discussions. And slowly, each one has got to try and find a place moving forward and shake off the path. |
| 04:29:47.97 | Adam Politzer | Mm-hmm. |
| 04:30:03.62 | Ray | on both sides of this. Shake it off. Got to. The kids' futures are at stake. And I know some of you just disagree with that. But it's the only way you get to a solution. |
| 04:30:23.56 | Unknown | I agree with that, Ray. And I think an additional part of that is part of it is shaking it up, and part of it is accepting responsibility from the past on many parts. Then a big step forward in that and saying that, you know, we did maybe not speak up enough for, not, it wasn't the funding for the kids at Bayside, but for the way that the money was used was completely inappropriate to cut where the cuts were. And the total amount of funding, I think the total amount of funding is probably fine, but at least the way it was allocated that, as has been described, was a grave of justice. And so I think taking that personal responsibility myself, and hearing other-shaped responsibility for that is very important and a valuable step. to be able to move forward. |
| 04:31:28.67 | Ray | I was very encouraged to hear. They saw it. I thought that was good, that was right. you know. So, Thank you. |
| 04:31:49.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:31:49.63 | Ray | you |
| 04:31:50.31 | Councilmember Cox | Joan. I'm just very grateful for all of the various stakeholders who have been willing to sit down and share their views and their goals and their objectives and try to align on a path forward that will serve all of the students in Sausalito and Learning City. And I'm optimistic that this dialogue will continue. When I hear the chair of the CSD, you know, advocating for one school that serves all students, you know, the community services district doesn't have jurisdiction over the school district either. But I think that in order to solve this problem, all of our community leaders have to participate to whatever extent they're able. And so I'm proud to invest whatever time and effort I can in bringing people together or devising solutions or brainstorming. You know, we each have something different to contribute, but this is a community issue that it will take a community, a village, to solve. So I'm encouraged by everyone's willingness to participate in the process, and I'm optimistic that we're moving in the right direction. But I do agree that, you know, reconciliation and taking responsibility is an important thing. in the right direction. But I do agree that, you know, reconciliation and taking responsibility is an important aspect of that process. |
| 04:33:25.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 04:33:25.48 | Councilmember Cox | you |
| 04:33:25.53 | Unknown | you Thank you. Thank you all for coming up tonight. and then state your word. Appreciate it. |
| 04:34:01.07 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. I know. |
| 04:34:14.66 | Sandra Bushmaker | Thank you. Thank you. I do have one item to speak to, and that is the Mudslide Task Force. I'm strongly in favor of it. The 95 general plan requires the city to do updated geologic and hydrologic studies of our hillsides, and I think we need to update what we've got. And that's one of the reasons I think the task force can be helpful to the City Council in identifying which studies need to be updated. I want to read from page 716-16 of the 95 general plan. Quote, the most effective strategy is to avoid placing structures |
| 04:34:57.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
Sonia Hanson — Against: Criticized city's lack of action on wildfire preparedness, absence of public forums, and insufficient community involvement. ▶ 📄
Nancy Osborne — Against: Supported removal of 5B, requested a one-year moratorium and new committee to update the wireless ordinance, and emphasized need for compliance evaluation. ▶ 📄
Chris Johnson — Neutral: Raised issue about slow process for clearing public right-of-way vegetation, seeking ways to expedite when residents bear costs. ▶ 📄
Sandra Bushmaker — Neutral: Highlighted pending fire safety policy from Disaster Preparedness Committee and announced National Park Service partnership for vegetation removal. ▶ 📄
Annie Dorsey — Against: Expressed concern about city's priority on fire safety, noted lack of Firewise Communities participation, and suggested reallocating tourism funds to fire safety. ▶ 📄