| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:02:36.38 | Rebecca Kilgore | This is Rebecca Kilgore, and you're listening to Radio Sausalito. |
| 00:03:40.42 | Unknown | you |
| 00:08:43.93 | Mayor Burns | With that? Yeah. OK. |
| 00:08:54.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:08:54.88 | Mayor Burns | We do the... |
| 00:08:55.36 | Unknown | . |
| 00:09:01.67 | Mayor Burns | Yep. All righty, hello. Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is, I'm going to call the meeting in order. We are going to go into closed session. First, I am announcing that we have items D1 and D2. D1, Conference with Labor Negotiators Pursuant to Section 54957.6, Agency Designated Representatives Charles and Sloan, Charles Sakai of Sloan Sakai conference with legal counsel number two existing litigation initiation pursuit to California government code section 5 4 9 5 6.9 a Gordon versus Salido I I'm going to open up public comment on the closed session items. I have seven... cards. Do we anticipate any more than the seven? Yeah, so if you're gonna speak, please fill out a card and give it to our city clerk. In that we do want to get into our closed session on this very purpose so that we can have these types of discussions. I'm gonna ask if you would do your comments in two minutes We want to hear from everybody. If you have to go three because it's that important and there's information that we haven't heard before, if it's information we've heard before, I'd prefer if you would do it in two. But if it's new information, please, but we do want to honor our relationship and get into our negotiations. That is what our charge is for tonight as well. So first up, I'm going to call Tula Biederman. |
| 00:10:36.66 | Mayor Burns | the clock at 2 and we'll see if she has |
| 00:10:40.96 | Tula Biederman | All right. Good evening, Council. I'll do my best to keep it concise. Thank you. |
| 00:10:44.72 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:10:46.14 | Tula Biederman | All of our managers make over $100,000 a year. Our city manager makes over $200,000 a year. They work hard and have experience and education and deserve to be fairly compensated for their efforts. It makes sense to pay them well because you wanna hire the best managers possible. But you have to understand that the same principle applies to those lower on the ladder. The gamut of work experiences of all our city employees represents a high stress environment requiring a dedication and level of on the job experience that cannot be understated. If council and management think they can't afford to keep these employees, how can we afford to keep working here? We will continue to face a massive recruitment and retention problem until we create a workplace where qualified people want to and can afford to stick around. If you're worried about the long term financial viability of the city of Sausalito, think of the cost of the hours of staff time spent recruiting, interviewing, training, and supporting new employees. Consider the decreased quality of service our residents receive when a new hire or contractor is thrown straight into the fire and expected to know the ins and outs of our unique city because their colleagues don't have time to thoroughly train them. Sassolito has so many longtime residents and business owners who have formed close working relationships with city employees over the years. The value of the trust we build and the institutional knowledge we hold cannot be quantified in a compensation study or manifested in a contractor who's struggling to stay afloat. City employees and potential applicants know when we are getting a good deal and when we're not. And we talk to each other. We organize. We hold meetings. We get drinks after work. We will not accept a deal that short changes part of our unit, especially those who already make the least. The holiday party is nice. The customer service and act of kindness awards are nice, but none of these gestures of recognition pay our bills, shorten our commutes, or give us more quality time with our families. None of these gestures close our counters for a lunch break each day or provide meaningful respite from trying to do three people's job at once. These acknowledgments are nice, but without actual meaningful support, Day in, oh, am I over? |
| 00:12:44.79 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, just finish your thought. |
| 00:12:44.99 | Tula Biederman | Thank you. day in and day out, they feel hollow and they feel insulting. Please give us a fair contract. We deserve a 4% cost of living adjustment, a realistic commuter benefit, and the respect of our management and our elected officials. Please act tonight. |
| 00:12:58.12 | Mayor Burns | Please act tonight. you Thank you. Aaron Wilson. Followed by Kenneth Henry. |
| 00:13:13.48 | Erin Wilson | I'm trying to make it shorter, I appreciate the time crusher. |
| 00:13:16.02 | Mayor Burns | Okay. Kenneth, you're next if you want to line up, and then we'll be all prepared. After that, we have Pat Quasco. |
| 00:13:23.65 | Erin Wilson | All right, Mayor Burns and City Council members, as you guys all know, I'm Erin Wilson, I'm the children's and young adult librarian here in Sausalito. I spoke as did five other SEIU members at the last City Council meeting. As you guys remember, the audio wasn't working, and the city has now deleted the video archive as well of our talks. Since the last city council meeting, the city has raised their COLA offer from 2% to 2.5%. This is obviously a step in the right direction, but I wanted to draw your attention to the city's proposal to deny even a 2.5% COLA to 12 of the 28 SEIU positions. They believe that we are making too much money compared to comparable jobs in comparable cities. We have serious concerns about how they determine which cities in which positions were comparable. For example, they present Novato as a comparable city. But the cost of housing in Novato is much less than here, and if you drive from 40 minutes outside of Novato, you get to much cheaper housing, Roanoke Park, Petaluma, et cetera. You drive from 40 minutes from Sausalito, you can't even make San Rafael. You can make San Francisco, San Francisco, Higher cost of living. So also in comparing positions between us and other cities, We are responsible for a wider range of knowledge a children's librarian here, I have more responsibility, knowledge-wise. In any case, I got lost there for a second. trying to Skip my words. Yeah. In a small city, there's more knowledge responsible for each employee versus in a larger city where there's more people doing one job. So how can you compare a librarian position here where there's four full-time librarians versus in San Rafael where there are 17? Under the city's proposal, all four of the library positions would be denied a COLA at all, including the library assistant two, which is the lowest full-time position in the entire city. Five people in that position in 12 years. We're not paying enough to keep qualified employees. I love being a librarian and I love being a public servant. I chose this career knowing I would make financial sacrifices And I love serving Sausalito, but I cannot and will not impoverish myself and my family. That's what it would be to not get any coal at all. |
| 00:15:34.50 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Thank you. Kenneth, then Pat. Pat, you're on deck, followed by Katie. Thank you. |
| 00:15:44.59 | Kenneth Henry | Council members, good evening. I'm here to talk about THEIR OWNERS. the small workforce that we have and the information that we, Thank you. RFC. have just been shared that. We're now looking at unfair compensation. and I personally feel I'm here for a job interview. I'm one of the employees who receive zero, zero, and zero for all three years. My position as a building inspector is more than a building inspector. I do so much more for the city. I have a lot of responsibilities that take me out of just a building inspector. THE END OF THE END OF THE category. Our compensation was based on Novato, and Novato is not a comparable city. They have a building official for building inspectors, plenty of workforce to maybe overlap or take the position of a single person. In this department, I've been a single person for many years trying to do just about everything across the board, even the permit technician's position, who in the last eight years, we've had to deal with 13 different permit technicians I've seen the top pop off the community development department I've seen the bottom fall out of it Thank you. And keeping staff is a high priority, should be. And one of the wage studies, as you see, certifications I'm probably one of the top inspectors in the county of Marin I may even be one of the top inspectors in the Bay Area. And I bring myself to the city to donate 150%. I think a lot of people know me and the job I do. And it's comparable with the rest of the crew. We have a very small THE END OF THE END OF THE employment or employees, we're very busy. The employees. If they're gone for a day, their work is not done, it waits till they get back. So I ask that you consider a comparable wage study if we're gonna do a comparison. And, um, You know, Let's see. Um, That's pretty much it. We're gonna try to stay. I love this city. Um, I think the compensation for these employees needs to be re-looked at, and I ask for your |
| 00:18:06.17 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Kenneth. |
| 00:18:10.66 | Mayor Burns | Katie, you're on deck. You can take Pat's seat there. Pat Gwasko. |
| 00:18:14.42 | Pat Quasco | Good evening, Council. President Burns, Vice President Cleveland Knowles, Ms. Cox, Council Member Whitley, and Council Member James Hawkins. I'm I figured I'd spend a little time with the group tonight, so I'll make this short. The sewer division of the city of Sausalito Public Works continues to struggle to keep staff after providing extensive and required training, training such as CWEA, California Water Environment Association, certifications in order to just control what goes on with your collection system. CalOCA required confined space entry training, comfort person excavation shoring training, biological sampling training, supervisor training, sanitary sewer overflow training, class B vehicle licensing for driving vehicles over 26,000 pounds. We have several vehicles that require the proper licensing in order to operate. safely. Training on various electrical gas and equipment. Specialized training on how and what equipment to use to clean, monitor and maintain sanitary sewer collection systems and how to respond to sanitary sewer overflows. Of course, we also have to inform Cal operate opposite emergency services whenever there's a category one, two, or three sanitary sewer overflow. in the California Integrated Water Quality System database. I'm not sure. What I've noticed over the last several years are, Workers get hired onto the city. We train them, we get them certification, we make them viable products for the marketplace in this very select category of operations maintenance. And then then we don't try to retain them by kind of low-balling the cost for keeping employees It creates real challenges for your collection system, which is aging, becoming fairly decrepit, we do have very low overflows only because we clean the thing at least twice a year, all 20 miles of it. people. I'm asking that you reconsider some of the numbers I looked at currently that I know are not comparable with this industry, especially for certified and qualified electric system maintenance staff. And frankly, For Kenneth Henry, he is the best inspector in this county. And to lose him would be a huge mistake. So that current position is pretty much a cold slap in his face. Thank you. |
| 00:20:32.82 | Katie Faulkner | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:20:43.65 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Pat. Katie Faulkner. |
| 00:20:50.84 | Mayor Burns | Bryant, you're on deck. |
| 00:20:53.72 | Katie Faulkner | Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council, and members of the public. My name is Katie Faulkner, and I'm an associate planner here at the city of Sausalito. Tonight I'd like to talk about the issues affecting my department. For those of you who don't know, the Community Development Department issues permits for a variety of things, including new construction, renovation, and new businesses. Every day we work with a variety of residents, property owners, business owners, and real estate, construction, and design professionals. We work hard to provide the best customer service that we can. and to help the people we work with reach their goals. Every day I try to provide the public with clear and accurate information I try to provide timely responses and I try to process their permits as quickly and efficiently as I possibly can. But lately my department has been struggling with issues of staff turnover and retention. The community development department usually has a full-time permanent staff of seven. But right now, three of those seven positions are being filled with temporary contract workers. And over the past couple of months, I've seen how inefficient it is to have this kind of turnover and how it takes time away from the services that we provide. Every time we lose somebody, the city loses something. We lose time. because even somebody who's experienced has to be trained in our ways. And during the training period, you have two people doing the job that usually one person does, and it takes longer because we're explaining as we go. we also lose institutional knowledge. While we can brief somebody on their new assignments, it's just not the same as having a staff member who personally knows the long history of some of our projects. And I imagine that it's frustrating for the people on the other side of the counter that we work with. because each time they come in they see a new face, they have to explain their projects over again to the new staff, They don't know who to contact when they have a question, and they have to wait longer for their reviews and permits. I know there are a lot of different factors to consider under these contract negotiations, but I encourage you to weigh how the benefits package you are considering tonight might impact the ability of the city to retain workers. Thank you for listening. |
| 00:23:08.71 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:23:13.94 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Bryant. Julie, you're next. |
| 00:23:15.36 | Bryant Ho | Hi, everybody. I'm Bryant Ho. Thank you, City Council, for having me to speak on this closed session item. Some of you may know me from the engineering department. I've been working for the city now for about three years. I couldn't ask for a more interesting and challenging job in a municipality. I signed up to be a steward in the labor negotiations because, unlike some of the other people in your staff, I have a little bit more free time, no family, less of a personal life, I guess. So I can devote time to trying to fight for my fellow coworkers. Thank you. Everyone in this room means a lot to me, including the people of Sausalito. I signed up to work for you guys and you girls. I made a lot of really good friends working here. But I've, and we all work together to support the community. I've also had to say goodbye to a lot of people in just the short amount of time I've worked here. It's like I've lost count of people that, you know, I've truly become friends with over my course of working here. It scares me to see what the proposal from management was, because I'm afraid that I'm just going to have to keep saying goodbye to people, as I'm sure is kind of the theme of a lot of the speeches tonight. So I ask you to please support the Sausalito worker proposal, and thank you for having me. |
| 00:24:44.68 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Ryan. |
| 00:24:49.50 | Mayor Burns | Julie Genie. Not Julie. Julie Ben-Gini. |
| 00:24:50.94 | Julie Ben-Gini | Julie. Thank you. Thought I had a new middle name there for a second. Um, Mayor, council members, thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk tonight. I thought I'd give you a little bit about my story. And the fact is, is that I love this job. I love it, you guys can see it every day. And then the quality of work. You can see it in my enthusiasm. I love the people I work with. I even love the management. They're great too. And I love the residents of Sausalito. I've made a lot of great friends and gotten a lot of great support from people. But I've made a lot of sacrifices to be here. And I know I'm not the only one. One of the reasons why I love this job is I have this job is because I'm blessed. I'm very blessed to be here. And I'm blessed because I live in my grandmother's home, and I've inherited it. And that's the only reason why I can afford to live here or work here. And I live in Richmond, and it's not a great neighborhood. It's not the worst neighborhood, but it's not a great neighborhood. And the sacrifices I make are... I have the police department on speed dial. I call them enough that they know me. I have a pit bull Rottweiler to make me feel safe so that I can sleep well at night. I have to deal with the crime, the prostitution, the drugs, the crackheads that walk by every day. There's even bullets in the house across the street, bullet holes in the house across the street from my house. And these are the sacrifices I make to be here because I love it. And I want to serve you guys. I want to serve this city to the best of my ability. And I know that there are other people who feel the same way. And I just want to ask you guys to give me an opportunity to be able to continue to serve and do the best job I can. Thank you. |
| 00:26:44.52 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. . Thank you. Jeannie. |
| 00:26:50.92 | Jean Walker Harvey | Thank you Mayor Burns, I'm Jean Walker Harvey and I am, and thank you council members, I'm a, the chair of the Library Board of Trustees, but I'm here as a resident, a very happy resident, and a children's book author. So I so appreciate all the work of all of our employees of the city, but I'm talking today about, this evening about what I know the best, which is the library, and I'm Having worked or volunteered on the board for the past three years, I am absolutely amazed by the quality and expertise and dedication of our library staff. and I know I'm biased, but I feel the library is very much a heart of our city. Besides the books and services offered by the library, there have been such amazing programs for all ages of children and adults. And it's also a refuge. It's a community center. It has so many programs. And those are brought to us by our amazing library staff. AND It's tough, as we know, with the cost of living in Sausalito, and I just want to be sure that we can show how much we value our staff of all of the city, but I specifically know the work very well of the library staff, and to value them. So I appreciate your giving them your utmost consideration. Thank you. |
| 00:28:29.03 | Mayor Burns | Great, thank you. |
| 00:28:34.58 | Mayor Burns | Thank you all, I have no more speaker cards, so I'm going to close public comment at this time. And we are going to adjourn to our closed session on this topic. Serge, can you put something on the screen saying that we're going to have a delayed start and then we'll be back out and AS QUICK AS WE CAN. |
| 00:29:04.06 | Unknown | way United States of America. . which stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. |
| 00:29:15.08 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. I'm not. We did have a closed session on two items, as you can see on our agenda. Conference with labor negotiators and conference with legal counsel. We have no announcements from that closed session. |
| 00:29:26.94 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:29:26.96 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 00:29:28.87 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah. |
| 00:29:31.42 | Mayor Burns | And I'm now looking for an approval of the current agenda. Move. |
| 00:29:36.28 | Councilmember Withey | Second. |
| 00:29:37.36 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Aye. 5-0 on the agenda. |
| 00:29:38.32 | Councilmember Withey | Aye. |
| 00:29:42.13 | Mayor Burns | Special presentations and mayor announcements. I'm gonna call up Susie for our first one. |
| 00:29:52.26 | Mayor Burns | Sorry, Susan Patterson, HR manager. |
| 00:29:54.96 | Susan Patterson | Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and council members. I'm Susan Patterson, I'm the Human Resources Manager with the city of Sausalito. And as part of my favorite part of my job is I get to introduce our new employees. So I'd like to tell you about David Raffo. David was hired. with the city on May 13, 2019. But David was actually hired as a part-time rec leader too In November, of 2017. So David's background includes For 15 and a half years, he worked for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, National Park Services in San Francisco as a maintenance worker zone steward. Some of his accomplishments has been his tenure as his own steward, which included rehabilitation and painting of historic structures, planning and maintaining large areas of lawn and native grasses, planting and preserving of our California coastal native plants, repairing and maintaining trails, supervising groups of volunteers to accomplish many of the projects in the park. For 12 years, David also served at the Presidio of San Francisco's Fire Department and held the position as Fire Captain. David resides in Sausalito and has for 21 years and says he feels a real connection to his community. He enjoys having the opportunity to be a part of preserving its beauty and allure. As a landscape worker one, he's also a father of a six year old and he understands the importance clean, accessible parks and public areas. Please welcome David to the city of Sausalito. |
| 00:31:41.99 | David Raffo | Thank you very much and good evening. Susie pretty much said it all. It's an honor to work here and live here. And I love the crews I work with, Public Works Department and Parks and Rec. They're a great team. And I look forward to working here for many years and helping beautify the parks. If you see me out on the street or in the parks, come up and introduce yourself. Thank you. |
| 00:32:07.63 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:32:08.30 | David Raffo | Thank you. |
| 00:32:08.32 | Mayor Burns | Welcome, David. Thank you. Come on up and shake our hands. |
| 00:32:31.10 | Susan Patterson | Thank you. |
| 00:32:33.94 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Susan. I'm now going to ask Our city manager, to give a really quick update on something that you may or may not have heard, but a longtime fixture in this town, Herb Weiner, suffered a health incident this last week, and I'd like the city manager to give us an update. He has been, Adam has been down there with Herbie throughout this last week and is right by his side. So, Adam, if you could just give us a quick one. |
| 00:33:05.75 | Adam Politzer | Yes, thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. On Monday, July 8th, Herb Weiner had a cardiac event around 11 o'clock that morning. Rushed to the hospital after visiting the fire station at Fire Station 1 on his own. They took him up because it was serious and off to Marin General Hospital he went. Herb is still in critical condition in ICU. He's with his sister who flew out on Wednesday night, Wendy Mack, who's with him. And he's also supported by his niece, who's in Boston at the moment, working with the doctors and Herb's sister and me as he goes through his healing process here. He's making positive strides in the right direction. I'm going to go ahead and get started. and me as he goes through his healing process here. He's making positive strides in the right direction, but still very early in the event that he had, so we're still in very critical care. But we hope to have more positive news to share in the weeks to come, and that concludes my report. |
| 00:34:15.76 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. I don't think there's a person in this town that hasn't been touched in some great way by Herbie. And I know the five of us love, adore, cherish, and expect him to be back here in our chamber at some point. And that's what we're all hoping for. So thank you for that. And best to Herbie. Now, I'm going to really shift gears and go to something that Herbie would absolutely love, does love, and will come back to love. And that's our sister cities program. And as part of my mayor announcements, I'm just going to separate from our committee reports. Something's happened in our city this last week where we had a delegation from Cachecais, Portugal, delegation of children come over and spend a week with us and host families and then sail against our racers. And a regatta that was on this last Saturday. You might have seen them in the parade. It's always so fun for us to experience children or anybody coming from our sister city program, but mostly the kids. So I wanted to honor all of our sister city programs. This last night, two nights ago we had a delegation of Marin kids that we're sending to Japan, Sakai City. It's a very active program. Tonight I have a flag hanging, it's the burgee of the Club Nuval sailing program in Qashqai. We're going to take a picture, I think you just got it, Abbott, that I'm going to send to the mayor of Qashqai, thanking him for sending his children. Yeah, let's all do a wave to the Mayor Carlos. And with Carlos's great eyes, he'll see that I have a tie from the Club Nuvall Yacht Club as well. So that's something I just wanted to make a note that when you saw those kids, how special that program is to our community. So thank you all for that, Jim Meyer, Cheryl Popp, Susie Rowe from the Qashqai group, and Harrison Chapman, Daryl Nemiro, and Monica Finnegan from the Sakai Day group. And we still have to hear from Vina Del Mar this year. So we have three active sister cities, and it's wonderful to see in our community. Thank you. Public communications, this is the time on the agenda that we open up the opportunity for the public to speak to us on items that are not on this agenda. Communications two, I don't have one from Jeff yet, looks like I'm getting that. Again, items not on, you'll have three minutes. And items that we hear, we do not take action. We may direct staff or agendize for future agendas. Paul Dines, you're up first. |
| 00:37:06.70 | Paul Dines | Good evening. Mayor Burns and the distinguished council members. Adam, nice to see you, and thanks for the report on Kirby. |
| 00:37:19.97 | Paul Dines | prepared some remarks i should be able to complete them in three minutes My name is Paul Dines. For those of you that don't know me, most of you have met me over the years, but for those of you that don't, I'll give myself a brief introduction. My name is Paul Dines. I moved to Sausalito first in 1983, and I've lived in Southern Marin since. I am a father of three sons. I am a merchant marine officer with the rank of captain I've held for over 25 years. I'm a small business owner with Marino O'Neill and we own a business called SF Bay adventures and a couple of boats the schooner free to be in Simba were tenants in Sausalito Yacht Harbor and Schoonermacher you I was appointed to the Wham Committee I really enjoyed my service to the community. And finally, I'm the Commodore. excuse me, of the Master Mariners Benevolent Association since 1867. I'm here as a representative from the Sausalito Working Waterfront Coalition. and our constituents include a network of interdependent maritime trades business owners, property owners, employees, artists, inventors, educators, installers, fabricators, and residents. and we are stakeholders and advocates and we participate in an industry that supports over 400 floating homes and over 2,000 boats representing around $500 million worth of base asset value. we're familiar with the I'm sorry. GPAC committee and we've been watching the process and we're familiar with what's been going on There are certainly many commendable actions have been taken, but we feel as though the process has overlooked some key insights, and we've sought to illuminate some of those our community is often misunderstood. in that regard. I've, brought with me this evening THE FAMILY. and I brought copies for the town council, and I can distribute these now or at the conclusion of my remarks. As directed, please? Yeah, please. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Paul. |
| 00:39:40.43 | Unknown | Thank you, Paul. |
| 00:39:53.31 | Mayor Burns | Great. We'll make sure it gets delivered. |
| 00:39:58.49 | Paul Dines | Thank you for your indulgence in that regard. I hope we've provided one for each of you. And so here's what we're after. we would like to make a presentation on the September 7th meeting of the GPAC committee Thank you. AND AS PART OF THE you know stakeholders in the group we're asking the town council but more in particular the M group for an opportunity to present on September 7th for 20 minutes five minutes on the arts five minutes on maritime five minutes on industrial five minutes for questions comes out to 20 minutes if everything runs on time My real world experience tells me it might be a half an hour, but We'd like to provide some guidance regarding the revision of the general plan and the good work initiated by the M Group. Thank you so very much. |
| 00:40:45.00 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. We will discuss at future agenda items we might bring this up. Excellent. Thanks, Paul. |
| 00:40:49.78 | Paul Dines | Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:40:52.51 | Mayor Burns | Susan Gordon, are you speaking on 7A, the Medflow debris? |
| 00:41:01.05 | Mayor Burns | Okay, I'm gonna mark that and then we'll get back to you. Alice Merrill. |
| 00:41:09.49 | Mayor Burns | It's going to be like that. ELLIS? |
| 00:41:13.96 | Alice Merrill | I'm speaking about the Marinship and the G-PAC and all that. It is, but the Marinship isn't. |
| 00:41:24.01 | Unknown | It is, but the Richard doesn't, so. |
| 00:41:25.92 | Alice Merrill | My name is Alice Merrill and I want to encourage you to remember that that's so important down there. That we have plenty of hotels and et cetera's and we need to keep that, we need to keep that. It just makes me so sad to think that there are some of you who think that development down there is coexistence is possible, and it's even a good idea, but if you really It just makes me really sad to think that you guys would be even considering turning any part of that into more commercial other than the things that Paul just said. And so I will continue to say that. Thank you very much. |
| 00:42:20.58 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Jeff Jacobs. |
| 00:42:32.61 | Jeffrey Chase | Hello, Mayor. Hello, City Council. City Manager and staff and citizens and my anchor out friend Daniel. Hello Herbie, wherever you are. used to think I was coming here because He's Jewish, I was Jewish, I was gonna speak to him when I was reading the Torah every time I showed up. Adam would. Listen to it. I'm not sure how much everybody else did, but some of the people that I live with out there asked me not to do it, so as an experiment I stopped. And you can decide whether that was an improvement or not. I'd like to read a little bit now for Herbie, and may he be healed. Rathina, which is... the route of Rafael, San Rafael, And it means be healed. heard. |
| 00:43:32.42 | Jeffrey Chase | This is kind of a funny bit. the Torah portion. THE CITY IS A Balak is a king. Balaam is... A prophet that actually talks with God, not an Israelite, Not Jewish. And... He's going to curse. the Israelites. under orders from his king. He's getting paid for this. This is his profession, but he really does get to speak with the highest. That voice is there for him. And as he goes, The she donkey saw the angel of the Lord stationed on the road with his sword drawn in his hand. So the she donkey turned aside from the road and went into a field. Balaam beat the she donkey to get it back onto the road. In Hebrew, the word for the angel of the Lord here is, Satan. Satan, if you... I'm going to pronounce it in a different way. I love that I went from the Torah to straight social justice. I was asked to do this. I signed a paper for the court saying, I would vigorously THE FAMILY. our beef with Schoonmacher's marina. that is, endangering the lives of people, That is against the law that Sausalito signed with them, conditional use permit. and the marineship specific plan. I've also talked with Ms. Hoffman on email and in person about conflict of interest in Form 700. I checked cases, Ms. Hoffman, and the only case that's been filed, lost. And the person who filed it had to pay attorney fees. California just passed a law saying the President now has to reveal his finances. If we can't do it in California, we certainly are not going to be able to tell Mr. Trump to do it in Washington. Thank you very much. Let's be real and not hypocrites, please. Is there any other public comment? Anybody else? |
| 00:45:34.41 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:45:38.68 | Mayor Burns | Jeff, thanks. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Is there any other public comment? Anybody else like to? |
| 00:45:47.72 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:45:47.74 | Mayor Burns | No. |
| 00:45:53.42 | Mayor Burns | Can you do it really quickly? Ellis, thanks. Yeah. Yes, really quick, sorry about that. |
| 00:45:59.06 | Alice Merrill | know if you all know but Chuck Donald died and he passed away very comfortably and I think it would be really fun if somehow we can have a party in his honor, because he was a really great guy. |
| 00:46:13.64 | Mayor Burns | very good information and we'll put that down Thank you for that, Alice. Anybody else, any other public comment? Items not on the agenda. Seeing none, I'll close public comment. And now look for. Action minutes of the previous meeting. Any comments? |
| 00:46:32.10 | Jill Hoffman | I will move approval, but I do also want to comment how much I appreciate the additional detail in the minutes. So I don't know if we changed vendors or how that happened, but they are amazingly better. So thank you to staff for that. |
| 00:46:49.36 | Jill Hoffman | And I do move approval. |
| 00:46:49.60 | Mayor Burns | So noted. |
| 00:46:51.98 | Unknown | you you |
| 00:46:53.21 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Aye. Aye. Next up we have our consent. calendar. Items on the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion. Unless there is an unanimous vote to- |
| 00:47:08.13 | Jill Hoffman | So we skipped council member committee report. |
| 00:47:09.83 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, yeah, we missed Councilmember. I was so excited about consent. |
| 00:47:13.61 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:47:14.66 | Mayor Burns | Let's do council member committee reports. Joan, why don't you go first? |
| 00:47:17.58 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, dear. Okay. So I have a few. For committees. So I attended the MCC-MC Legislative Committee. Many of the housing bills have been turned into two-year bills. However, 1486 and 1487 are still pending. I and Alice Fredericks, members of the MCC-MC Legislative Committee, will be meeting with Damon Connelly, |
| 00:47:17.82 | Mayor Burns | year. Okay. |
| 00:47:40.07 | Jill Hoffman | Um, and Assemblymember Chu and other members of the Board of Supervisors regarding uh, SB 1487 tomorrow morning. Um, Ray Withy and I have attended two GPAC meetings since we last met, at which we've heard from the remaining boards and committees in Sausalito, including. the Pedestrian and Bicycle Committee, the Disaster Preparedness Committee, and I. butchering some of their names. the Historic Preservation Committee, the Sustainability Commission, So we've now heard from all of the boards and commissions And we have another meeting tomorrow evening at which we will be considering the Marinship workshop coming up on September 7, as well as... additional topics that we want to be sure are covered in adequate detail councilmember Hoffman and I have attended two meetings one meeting of the Working Waterfront Committee at which we talked about additional fundraising for our Safe Harbor Program and one meeting of our Waterfront Committee at which we discussed negotiations with Bridgeway Marina to bring them into compliance with our codes and with BCDC and other matters. Mayor Burns and I met with a staff representative of Mark Levine to go over our perspective on upcoming housing issues. The city manager and I met with BCDC to commence our request to increase our liveaboard allotment from 10% to 15%. percent I attended a meeting with nearly all of our council members with the with Bernardo from Cache Cache Portugal and who also I attended a meeting with nearly all of our council members with the with Bernardo from Cache Cache Portugal and who also marched in our 4th of July parade And then many of us also attended the Sakai Day launch party last Sunday. |
| 00:49:44.78 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Any other committee reports from our committees? Thank you. |
| 00:49:48.86 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:49:48.95 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:49:48.97 | Councilmember Hoffman | We do. So we had an OMIT committee meeting today where we addressed some of the Issues with MLK. and mayor and I attended the launching of the new fireboat Liberty at the Sassu Yacht Club and our mudslide task force met twice since our last meeting the first time was just to with Councilmember Withey the first time. and he was not able to come with us, or meet with us a second time, but the first time was mainly to talk about scope and mission and the second time we met was to more specifically talk about what we wanted to accomplish between now and the first of September so the idea is that we're going to do some look at some very specific things on the micro level of the general plan from 1995, that section that talked about geo hazards basically and you know seismic issues and see, compare that with where we are with our ordinances and how have we comported with that recommendation in the 1995. and what's out there. information do we already know. So in other words, what information's out there gathering information? and working with the public works department department on Where we already know there are some hot spots or trouble areas in the city. as we move through providing reports the City Council on what we can do to I'm not sure. Take care of problems before their problems and also look at the macro of defining what the problem is. Is it a hydrology problem? Is it a what type of rock do we have? And then address that. And then also address possible funding sources and funding mechanisms that we may want to look at once we define what we think the path forward is. And that will come back to the City Council, hopefully in a recommendation, sometime in October, if not before. |
| 00:51:52.05 | Mayor Burns | Great, thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:51:57.97 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Some of the items have already been discussed. Omid, Jeep, General Plan. I just want to mention I've been working with our Business Advisory Committee They are getting prepared, along with the Hospitality Committee, to have a joint meeting to discuss economic development. This is actually a rather important meeting. It's coming up this week. So we're looking forward to that. And we've got a whole minute. I attended a TAM meeting as alternate when our vice mayor was away. It turned out to be a fairly meaty meeting. Um... We set and passed the reserve fund policy, the strategic plan, the 19-20 annual budget, and also a significant allocation of funding to all the cities for their routine road repairs. So that was actually, turned out a pretty important meeting. And the final thing I want to talk about is... uh MCCMC, that's the Marin County Commission of Mayors and Council Members. Just step down. from the presidency of that Um, That's not the point I want to make. The point I want to make is that MCC over the last two years has been working on a new report on pensions and OPEB and we have a draft that's up on the website there. Importantly by the next council meeting in the which is August 27th. I believe We will have finalized that full report and I will submit a brief Memo in writing with a link to that Report and I'm doing that so principally so that if any of our residents are interested in reading it and it's pretty long but the executive summary of 20-odd pages is worth reading you will find that Sausalito is one of the leaders in Marin County in addressing this issue and I was very proud of our city now I was, I played a minor role, I was one of the writers of that report, one of the drafters, there were everybody was, there was a member of each council, several members of each council, who attended who were part of that committee Councilmember Cox and then I think Councilmember Hoffman also substituted in But the important thing is that many of the actions that we've been taking over the last four to six years is highlighted in that report. And as I said, this city has been leading probably Marin County as a whole in steps to take to deal with those issues so our resident when our I will submit a brief memo that has the link to that for our committee reports for the August meeting and I would encourage all of our residents to To read it. It's good reading. Thank you |
| 00:55:53.60 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Ray. Susan. |
| 00:55:55.51 | Councilmember Withey | Great. I've been to two meetings. First, there was a second recent meeting of the Transportation Authority of Marin kind of out of sync with its normal fourth Thursday, last Monday, the 8th. And we approved several major road improvement projects, including 580 101 connector, preliminary engineering and then Nevada Boulevard, Third Street Project in San Rafael. and a Sir Francis Drake rehabilitation project We also approve funding to Marin Transit with the Measure A and Measure AA funds to the tune of $19 million. And then at our next meeting in two weeks, we will consider candidates for a new executive director for the Transportation Authority. That was that. And then last Thursday, I attended the Sausalito Sustainability Commission meeting. We had a sustainability commissioner here from San Anselmo, where they're about a year ahead of us on their plastic ban, plastic food container ban. So as everyone remembers, we adopted that ordinance, but we have a year to work on implementation. So that commissioner was able to talk about some funding that they had gotten and efforts that they had taken to educate the business community on alternative products to use. So I think that will be the next steps there. We also talked about EV charging stations and emission reductions in Sausalito. |
| 00:57:37.47 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. And I have two committees to report on. One is the Community Safety Disaster Preparedness Committee, working really on two elements in that. And most of that committee is, you know, it's communication and messaging. And the first item is maybe looking at some type of matrix almost so that we have a a ton of messaging to get out, from different types of potential disasters and community concerns to the many mediums that they can go into, whether it be, you know, from word of mouth campaigns to neighborhood door knocking to sirens to mirror radios to whatever. So it's quite an extensive matrix style of communication document that I'd like this committee to put together and one of those items is a citizen's guide to disaster preparedness and this is a product that we have online the committee is found funding and would like to print off a lot of these to get them into the hands of residents for pre-reading so that they have knowledge of what to do in case of a disaster very valuable reading this is not just something the committee is put together quickly it is complete with information from all of our agencies a lot of very specific information to our community as well as broad information from earthquakes to fires and floods and so forth so look for this hopefully in the fall fall that citizens will have a chance to get that in their hands and always look at the websites that we're constantly bringing up from our own website to the fire safe. I think from now through the end of the year, we'll probably have something regarding potential emergencies on our agendas as we do this evening as well. The other committee meeting that I attended is the pedestrian and bike committee that met last night. They're kind of winding down from their most recent trip to the GPAC that was discussed earlier. I thought that was extremely valuable on all the components that were presented from the various groups that night, but a lot of content. That committee has a ton of information. They approach things from ideas to engineering and present and presenting it out there two items that we discussed last night was actually the g-pack and how they follow through on that especially related to maybe stairs and the in the pathways the other item was the red curb issue downtown and how that could or could not invite issues related to some traffic circulation problems right there on the princess area princess downtown area so we're kind of deferring that out to some of our other departments but that's what the PBAC is working on as of now and we have a big activity of work we're gonna to have a couple meetings dark here as a council, but that doesn't mean our residents don't keep doing things, that our staff doesn't keep doing things, and that we will keep doing things and attending meetings. So you might not see us for a month up here, but we'll be out there. Now I get to do my consent calendar. |
| 01:00:39.97 | Jill Hoffman | So Mr. Mayor. Just as a point of order, I am going to recuse myself from Item 5D. |
| 01:00:42.65 | Mayor Burns | Yeah. |
| 01:00:46.47 | Jill Hoffman | We have received a request to remove Item 5M. |
| 01:00:50.30 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, I'm going to get to those. I'm going to open a public comment |
| 01:00:52.05 | Jill Hoffman | of the |
| 01:00:52.12 | Mayor Burns | Okay, yeah. Okay. So matters listed under the consent calendar are considered routine and non-controversial, require no discussion, and are expected to have unanimous council support. I just said that 15 minutes ago. We will listen to public comment at this time. If anybody would like to request a removal of a consent calendar item, you may do so. I have one. Jeff, what item would you like to remove? |
| 01:01:19.57 | Mayor Burns | All right, you can dress if you'd like. |
| 01:01:29.28 | Jeffrey Chase | Hello again. I've heard from this dais I'm hoping that the council is paying attention to me since I'm looking at you right now. |
| 01:01:39.74 | Jeffrey Chase | Ray? Even though I wasn't allowed to run for a council Thank you. Well, you weren't sure I was in the district. It's not like I'm quitting. |
| 01:01:49.81 | Jeffrey Chase | I've heard money described here as being precious. I've heard in other meetings of cities It called magic. IN THE TORAH, WE It's a shekel, and it can be kadosh, holy kadosh, kadosh shekel. holy money. What I'm looking at with these items here, 5F. Professional consulting service, no price. 5H, 9,860 for a planning advisor. 5I, 17,607. for a contract permit technician, and 5M-12,256. for a destinationsauselito.com website. There are dozens. of planting people in San Rafael for the county. There are many here in Sausalito. When we. are, HIRING PEOPLE. to come from outside and giving them money, but they do not work for the government. We don't know exactly how they're hired, what the situation is. We have an issue with the financial forms that we are demanding from the president now to run in California, but we're not filled out by a council member here. We don't know what connections there are between the council and these many consultants. I think we have the talent here to do all of those things. If there was a consultant involved, in what happened to Dunphy Park With the 63 trees gone, The avocado without its loving partner cannot reproduce. the flattening. the halving of the number of people that can go to the cruising club. I don't know how consultants were or were not involved in that. I don't know whose interests here on the council or in the city were or were not involved in that. We must have complete transparency, this is not just in all the holy books. saying that the people who are going to be the leaders making the decisions cannot be involved financially in the decisions they make. It's in the Republic by Plato with the Guardians. Let's take this very seriously. We can't be resistance to what's going on in Washington until we are clean ourselves. Thank you. |
| 01:04:28.30 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Any other public comment on consent items? Seeing none, I'll close public comment. We have, as Council Member Cox said, we're going to recuse her vote on 5D, 5M, |
| 01:04:41.94 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Is remote practice. |
| 01:04:43.41 | Mayor Burns | The 5M, it was requested to be removed, but it was more than that. It's requested to be heard as an item on August 27th. So we're taking something from consent and making it a business item for a $12,000 extension of a current contract. Is that something we want to do? |
| 01:05:03.52 | Jill Hoffman | I don't know the reason for the request, I see no reason to. hear that as a business item. |
| 01:05:11.59 | Councilmember Hoffman | I think we got an email asking to remove it from the calendar. |
| 01:05:16.01 | Mayor Burns | And to hear it on August 27th. So before I remove it from consent and set up for your gender items at the end of the meeting, I want to make sure that we're all comfortable with that. |
| 01:05:20.40 | Councilmember Hoffman | I'm looking for. |
| 01:05:26.03 | Mayor Burns | THE REASON. |
| 01:05:26.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:26.91 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Well, as it's been requested to be removed, we can put it back on consent on August 27th, if we wish. |
| 01:05:31.65 | Mayor Burns | Right. Thank you. |
| 01:05:34.67 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:05:34.69 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:05:34.79 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:05:36.28 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, talk to the request. They want to be heard, though. |
| 01:05:36.95 | Jill Hoffman | they want to be heard. |
| 01:05:38.76 | Mayor Burns | if we're honoring their request. |
| 01:05:40.12 | Jill Hoffman | So they can hear public, they can make public comments. |
| 01:05:42.22 | Mayor Burns | Great, thank you. Okay, so- And then we also- |
| 01:05:43.72 | Jill Hoffman | And then we also had an amendment to item 5A. Thank you. |
| 01:05:50.23 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:05:51.82 | Mayor Burns | Amendment from the chief to Susan Cleveland Knowles has been |
| 01:05:53.08 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:05:57.03 | Mayor Burns | in everybody's hands, so we're all good? |
| 01:05:58.47 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All good, great. Shall I make a motion? |
| 01:06:02.80 | Mayor Burns | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:06:02.87 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Bye. |
| 01:06:02.87 | Councilmember Hoffman | Hold on. So I have to recuse myself from item 5F, or I'm going to recuse myself. And then Thank you. I want to vote no on item 5.0. That's the sewer. I voted no on that before, so I want to vote no on that again. And then on 5.C., That's the renewal of the contract with Mason Associates. I have a reason why I want to vote no. I want to vote no on that. I can state it in a sentence, and then you guys can decide if you think we want to remove it or not. So my issue with Mays and Associates is that, as we all know, and as I've talked about throughout this process, is that there were some issues with the way the budget was – |
| 01:06:36.47 | Katie Faulkner | You guys can decide. |
| 01:06:51.72 | Councilmember Hoffman | way that our finances were managed last year and way the budget system budget proposal happened and all of that stuff so I'm not I'm uncomfortable with hiring the same people that did the CAFER in the last 15 years. and extending their contract another two years, sorry, last 13 years and extending their contract another two years to make it 15 years total. best practice is that you rotate your auditor every five years We're now talking about someone that's been around for a long time. I feel strongly we need a fresh set of eyes on this this year. and to do the audit and fully address whatever it was that happened last year, that should be fully reflected in the audit. This is not a comment on Maize and Associates. This is a comment on I think it's time for a pair of fresh eyes, and I'm not comfortable certainly with extending their contract out another two years. I did discuss this with Adam, and I understand that... You know, there may be delay issues if we change auditors at this point and getting our audit done, our CAPRA done. I feel like that's worth it and that based on everything that's happened in the last year and a half, we need a new set of fresh eyes and auditors. So that's why I'm voting no on 5C. I'm happy to discuss it for you. |
| 01:08:07.63 | Mayor Burns | Yeah. |
| 01:08:07.86 | Kenneth Henry | you |
| 01:08:09.33 | Councilmember Hoffman | Sure. |
| 01:08:11.44 | Mayor Burns | and offered. Would you consider a vote of one year on just to get the current one done and then going to a process to reopen the bidding and the process to look at a different company for the following year? So it's not a two-year, it would be a one. |
| 01:08:12.96 | Councilmember Hoffman | area. |
| 01:08:13.59 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 01:08:28.03 | Councilmember Hoffman | I think that needs to happen, but here's my issue with that. This CAPR is gonna talk about what happened from July 1st. |
| 01:08:34.98 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:08:35.96 | Councilmember Hoffman | through June 30th. That's when all of the transfers for funds were made, you know, the investment wasn't made in the pension fund I want to be sure we have a fresh set of eyes on that. |
| 01:08:47.94 | Unknown | So, |
| 01:08:48.75 | Councilmember Hoffman | I understand. |
| 01:08:49.70 | Mayor Burns | Great. |
| 01:08:50.07 | Councilmember Hoffman | your concern as well um |
| 01:08:51.60 | Councilmember Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:08:51.64 | Councilmember Hoffman | Ms. |
| 01:08:51.65 | Councilmember Withey | THE PEOPLE THAT THEY ARE |
| 01:08:51.72 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:08:51.74 | Councilmember Withey | Mr. Mayor, I endorse that. |
| 01:08:51.86 | Mayor Burns | Mr. Mayor, I endorse that. I have another comment from Susan as well. |
| 01:08:53.19 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:08:55.32 | Councilmember Withey | Yes, I was going to say the same thing. I actually had already for the – I do not have particular concerns about maids and associates, but I do have concerns that we have not gone out with an RFP for 13 years. So I would prefer to approve it for one year, to send it to the finance committee, to discuss whether it would be appropriate to go out for an RFP because it did seem like an excessively long period of time despite the issues and the unique issues raised in the staff report. So I am more comfortable with when you're... I'm getting Joan. |
| 01:09:27.80 | Mayor Burns | I'm getting Jones nod as well. Correct. We can nod on that. Okay. So we have consensus on 5C for at least that portion. And, Jill, we heard you. Yes. Thanks. Okay. Great. Thanks for that type of amendment, Jill. |
| 01:09:29.20 | Councilmember Withey | Correct. |
| 01:09:34.92 | Councilmember Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:09:34.94 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks. |
| 01:09:41.64 | Jill Hoffman | May I make one comment also? So we heard an objection to 5F. I want to just state for the record that 5F has no fiscal impact to the city because it is being paid for by the applicant. |
| 01:09:53.87 | Mayor Burns | Just recuse, correct? On F? Just recuse. |
| 01:09:59.17 | Jill Hoffman | I don't. All right. No. you |
| 01:10:01.30 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, sorry. I think Jill's recusing because. |
| 01:10:01.84 | Jill Hoffman | I think Jill's recuse. Yes, but I'm making a public comment. I'm making a comment in response to public comment on that item. |
| 01:10:04.96 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | public comment. Oh, okay. |
| 01:10:09.69 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I'm setting the record straight. |
| 01:10:14.01 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, all right. You got this down? This is going to be a complicated one, but I got it. We need a scientist to do this one. I think I got it, okay. |
| 01:10:14.11 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:10:14.14 | Unknown | Okay, all right. You got this down? But I got it. We need a scientist to do this one. |
| 01:10:20.86 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So I move approval of the following consent items. 5A as amended by the memo from our police chief. 5B, I'm 5E, 5G through 5L, 5N, and 5P. |
| 01:10:45.80 | Jill Hoffman | And why not? Oh yeah, yep, yep, got it. |
| 01:10:50.54 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? |
| 01:10:51.28 | Unknown | you Aye. First motion passes 5-0. Okay, I move approval. |
| 01:10:51.87 | Jill Hoffman | I. |
| 01:10:55.97 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | of consent item 5c with the modification that the renewal of the contract be just for one year and with the direction to city staff to put send this to the Finance Committee for review of an RFP for auditors. |
| 01:11:15.19 | Mayor Burns | you Thank you. |
| 01:11:15.31 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 01:11:15.78 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. All in favor? |
| 01:11:18.69 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:11:18.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:11:18.72 | Alice Merrill | All right. |
| 01:11:18.76 | Jill Hoffman | Right. |
| 01:11:18.97 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. One nay. Let's do a roll call. |
| 01:11:21.13 | Alice Merrill | Yeah. |
| 01:11:25.56 | City Clerk | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? No. Councilmember Withey? Yes. Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles? Yes. Mayor Burns? |
| 01:11:27.09 | Jill Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:11:31.83 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. |
| 01:11:35.88 | Mayor Burns | Yes. That motion passes. 4-1. Okay. |
| 01:11:39.41 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I move approval of consent item 5D. |
| 01:11:46.78 | Alice Merrill | Second. |
| 01:11:49.45 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Well, we're going to abstain one. OK, let's do the roll call. |
| 01:11:54.40 | City Clerk | Council Member Cox. Thank you. |
| 01:11:55.74 | Jill Hoffman | abstain. |
| 01:11:56.77 | City Clerk | Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:11:58.43 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:11:59.31 | City Clerk | Council member Withey? Yeah. |
| 01:12:00.74 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:12:00.77 | City Clerk | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles? |
| 01:12:02.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:12:02.85 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:12:02.92 | Councilmember Withey | Thank you. |
| 01:12:03.46 | City Clerk | Mayor Burns. |
| 01:12:04.37 | Unknown | Yes, that motion passes 4-0-1, abstain. I move adoption of consent calendar 5-2. you |
| 01:12:10.44 | Jill Hoffman | I'm not sure. |
| 01:12:10.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:12:11.93 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 01:12:16.05 | Mayor Burns | roll call please. |
| 01:12:18.61 | City Clerk | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Councilmember Hoffman? |
| 01:12:19.56 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. Abstain. |
| 01:12:21.85 | City Clerk | Councilmember Withey? Yes. Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles? Yes. Mayor Burns? |
| 01:12:25.34 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:12:27.08 | Mayor Burns | Yes. That passes forward. |
| 01:12:28.97 | Unknown | 4-0-1 abstain. Um, |
| 01:12:32.24 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:12:33.97 | Julie Ben-Gini | fight. |
| 01:12:34.40 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:12:34.42 | Unknown | five |
| 01:12:34.96 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We don't know I move that we Continue item 5m until our August 27th meeting |
| 01:12:45.37 | Unknown | Second. |
| 01:12:46.94 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Aye. |
| 01:12:47.89 | Unknown | Aye. That passes 5-0. |
| 01:12:50.52 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And finally, move adoption of consent calendar 5-0. Thank you. |
| 01:12:55.30 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 01:12:55.73 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Roll call, please. |
| 01:12:59.89 | City Clerk | Councilmember Cox? |
| 01:13:01.14 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:13:01.42 | City Clerk | Thank you. Councilmember Hoffman. |
| 01:13:03.63 | Councilmember Hoffman | No. |
| 01:13:04.49 | City Clerk | Councilmember Withey? Yes. Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles? Yes. Mayor Burns? |
| 01:13:07.56 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:13:09.49 | Mayor Burns | Yes. That passes four to one. I'm trying to do the math, it looks like it was 32 to two with two ties. But that was, thank you for that, that was my most aggressive, active consent calendar to date, halfway through and that was fun. I really like that, so nice process. Well now I've done that, can I go home? Yeah, you can go get a shortbread. |
| 01:13:27.43 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Now I've done that, can I go home? |
| 01:13:33.25 | Mayor Burns | All right, we are through consent. We're up to our business items. Seeing no public hearing items, we are on to business item. First item is 7A. calling up Andrew Davidson. Somebody wake up Andrew, there he is. award debris removal project. Andrew Davidson is our senior civil engineer. |
| 01:13:59.61 | Andrew Davidson | Thank you, Mayor, Council. Hello, my name is Andrew Davidson, senior engineer in your Department of Public Works. I'm going to provide an update on the debris removal project resulting from the mud flow of February 14. Originally this item had a recommendation to award a contract to environmental resources for removal of the debris on Crescent Avenue and the debris field between Sausalito Boulevard and Crescent Avenue and to award a contract to Harrison Associates for construction management, technical and administrative assistance for the debris removal work and for the development of plans, specifications for utility and roadway repair. These, however, are no longer staff's recommendations. I'll first provide you with some background and timeline on the debris removal project, prior recommendations, and then staff's revised recommendations. |
| 01:14:55.99 | Andrew Davidson | In April, the city entered into a professional service agreement with Harrison associates under the contracting authority of the city manager. And then in May, the council approved a second amendment to the agreement. As part of Harris's work, they develop bid documents for a debris removal project. On June 7th, a notice to bidders and project documents were published on the city's website, and the notice was emailed to plan rooms in conformance with the cost accounting policies and procedures manual, and contractors were contacted directly. |
| 01:15:25.47 | Katie Faulkner | manual. |
| 01:15:28.27 | Andrew Davidson | The project was also advertised in the Marin IJ twice. |
| 01:15:35.69 | Andrew Davidson | On June 11th, the City Council adopted a resolution authorizing an extension of construction hours for the debris removal project to Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., excluding city holidays. On July 9th, six bids were opened, lowest being Environmental Resources bid of approximately $800,000. Their bid was determined to be responsive to the bid documents. During the bid period, the city issued a request for proposals seeking a qualified firm or team with the ability and experience to provide comprehensive technical and administrative assistance. Proposals were due to the city prior to 4 p.m. July 5. At that time, the city was in receipt of one proposal, that submitted by Harris and Associates. The fee for the requested services was approximately $860,000. The three tasks to be provided as part of the proposal are Task 1, technical studies, design and necessary plans, specifications, and estimate in support of debris removal, utility repair, and street repair. Task 2, construction management for the debris removal, utility repairs, and street repairs. And Task 3, the project administration for grant coordination, documentation, compliance, permitting, and reporting. In essence, that portion for compliance with FEMA during construction. |
| 01:17:05.64 | Andrew Davidson | The three tasks include necessary professional services that extend beyond the debris removal. After the debris is removed, a portion of the project is complete. The next phase of the work will be the restoration of public storm drain and sanitary sewer utilities between Sausalito Boulevard and Crescent Avenue, as well as the repair of Crescent Avenue. The extent of those repairs are unknown because we've got the debris all over it. |
| 01:17:30.41 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 01:17:32.42 | Andrew Davidson | The debris removal work will include debris removal from private properties. In order for this work to occur, private property owners will need to sign a right of entry agreement with the city of Sausalito. and is required by state law. The council is required to review the need for continuing the local emergency, which was declared by the city manager on February 14th and ratified by the city council on February 18th, and thereafter, every 30 days or less. Now we'll be going into a period where review of the local emergency by the city council must occur at least once every 60 days. So as I previously stated, tonight we were going to recommend award of the contract for the debris removal to environmental resources and the professional services agreement with Harris and Associates. So now to the recommendations that will be made this evening. Since opening the bids and the proposal for the debris removal project, city staff became aware of specific FEMA procurement requirements related to socioeconomic affirmative steps which the city did not perform during the bid and proposal period. |
| 01:18:45.01 | Andrew Davidson | Without taking these steps, any FEMA funds received by the city would be at risk for being demanded back for noncompliance with FEMA procurement requirements. This ultimately leads to the recommendation that the city thank all bidders and proposer for their submissions and that the city council reject all bids and proposal for the good and sufficient cause that not rejecting them places FEMA grant funding at risk. So this is a list of the socioeconomic features that we're not complied with. the city staff has a list of the correct what we believe are the correct next steps and they are to authorize rebidding and requesting proposals for the project per fema guidelines following council actions staff will take the necessary steps to comply with the fema requirements including contacting the small business administration and minority business development agency of the department of commerce and include identified firms in the distribution of the notice to bidders and the rfp |
| 01:19:51.76 | Andrew Davidson | After the project is rebid and the RFP reissued, staff is asking that the City Council authorize the City Manager to award a construction contract to the lowest responsive, responsible bidder, provided that the bid is within approved budget, and waive any minor bid irregularities, and reject all bids, and rebid if deemed necessary. Negotiate and award a professional services contract to the most qualified entity within the provisions of the Sausolean Municipal Code, provided the proposal is also with an approved budget. Return to the City Council if the City Manager determines it is necessary for the awards. It authorizes the city manager to return to the city council for awards if the city manager deems it necessary or advisable. The city manager is also directed to return to the city council after awards at the earliest opportunity for ratification, which is anticipated as the August 27th meeting. Staff is also recommending that the city council adopt a separate resolution continuing the declaration of a local emergency related to storm activities and landslides. staff does not see better alternatives than what is being recommended. Specifically, a word of the project, or the RFP at this point, puts FEMA public assistance grant funding at risk. However, allowing the city manager to award contracts within the suggested framework allows flexibility and timing of contract awards. as does allowing the city manager to accept rights of entry agreements after review by the city attorney. |
| 01:21:35.16 | Andrew Davidson | I've added a little slide here about communications. Tomorrow, letters will be mailed to affected property owners, inviting them to meet with city and consulting staff to provide information and answer questions. Tomorrow, a letter will also be mailed to affected tenants, letting them know that during the debris removal process, spotters will be on site in case recoverable personal items are located, and requesting that a list of items that may have survived the mud flow be provided to the city to help with the spotting activity. In addition, the frequently a frequently asked questions document will be placed on the city website and updated frequently related to construction. |
| 01:22:20.54 | Andrew Davidson | So here are the staff recommendations. First adopt the resolution rejecting all bids and proposals received for the debris removal project. Thank you. you Authorize rebidding of the project and reissuance of the RFP. Authorizing the city manager to award the contracts for the project and accept right of entry agreements to allow access onto private property. Find that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA, per CEQA guidelines. find that the project is exempt from design review as provided for in the Sausalito Municipal Code because it will not result in an appreciable change in visual appearance. and also continuing the declaration of a local emergency related to storm activity and landslides. And that concludes my formal presentation. I'm available as our other staff |
| 01:23:10.96 | Mayor Burns | consulting staff thank you Andy and I'm gonna ask are there any questions for Andy Group here any questions seeing none. Thank you stay there. I'm gonna open up to public comment. You don't have to stay there, but don't go home I'm gonna open up to public comment. I have one card if there's any others, please do fill out a card I have a card from the 4th of July parade judge Susan Gordon . |
| 01:23:40.97 | Susan Gordon | Amen. So is it my understanding that and now having to put it out to bid again, and we have to wait another 30 days. before it can be approved. which is pushing us back into The rainy season, oh dear. Well, I came here tonight because I really want to go see my family. And I haven't been able to. It's really important for me to reconnect with them So I'm glad to see that there will be a letter that will go out, so I'll have an opportunity to sit down and talk with somebody. so I can make arrangements so I know what a timeline is. I would appreciate that. So from my understanding, All the funds that you will be receiving from FEMA, continue to do it properly. I'll go to the city. None of that is provided to the homeowners. Am I correct? you |
| 01:24:47.91 | Susan Gordon | I only have one correction I ask that we might correct in the report. You keep every report I ever read, they keep putting 406 and 408 as the first house down the hill. That's not correct. The first house was the one next door. 412 and 414. That was the first house hit by the slide. There is documentation in regards to the owners and the people of the tenants who live there. and also video. So that house was hit in the carport with the four cars, came over and sliced our foundation, and then we went down the hill. That's all. but I think You know, this is really a headache, isn't it? But thank you so much for staying in there and keep I don't understand how I thought we had hired Harrison associates to oversee that we were properly filing. and then we didn't file properly. Thank you. |
| 01:25:54.16 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Susan. And I'm going to, if there's no other public comment, any other public comment? Closing public comment, I'm going to ask Andy, just to kind of, on Susan's question on timeline, I think that is very valid. Because the window is getting smaller, but there's still a slight opportunity. And can you just talk to that on how we can do what you're proposing here and still make a time frame, a time window with the reins? |
| 01:26:19.02 | Andrew Davidson | with the rains we are losing about 30 days there's no way to get around that so hopefully we will start construction in mid-september that would be the goal and the official the bid documents have a 90 calendar day bid period and that's tight and that would push us into December three months out. Hopefully the majority of the work can take place while it's still dry or during less intense storms. |
| 01:26:45.38 | Katie Faulkner | you |
| 01:26:51.37 | Andrew Davidson | That's what we have. We will have to, as I mentioned in the report, and you've probably seen in the various staff reports, part of the project, the future project, is repairing, redoing the storm drain system that, |
| 01:26:52.25 | Katie Faulkner | Yeah. |
| 01:26:52.48 | Unknown | We will have |
| 01:26:53.04 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 01:27:04.50 | Andrew Davidson | extends from Sausalito Boulevard down to Crescent Avenue. That's still going to be out. That was never going to be done this winter. So we will probably have to be diverting storm flows down Sausalito Boulevard or finding other ways to control the flows off of that hill. But that was always going to be the case. |
| 01:27:20.51 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. And if you could just give Susan sit down and actually Susan there and answer a question really quickly |
| 01:27:30.27 | Jill Hoffman | And Mr. Mayor, can we ask the city attorney to answer Susan's question about the FEMA funding? Sure. |
| 01:27:34.65 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:27:34.77 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 01:27:34.79 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:27:37.22 | Mary Wagner | So Susan Gordon was correct. The FEMA funding that the city is seeking is to reimburse the city for the cost of the debris removal. It is not funding to private property owners for the loss of their structures or income related to their rental units. |
| 01:27:55.56 | Mayor Burns | Any other comments on this item? |
| 01:27:58.11 | Jill Hoffman | I have no questions, I have comments. |
| 01:28:03.09 | Mayor Burns | I want you to make a comment, Joe. |
| 01:28:04.22 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Well, first of all, I want to thank Andy Davidson for attending a seminar in Sacramento where he became alert to some additional requirements of the FEMA funding and so ended up saving the city a boatload of money so thank you Andy thank you for your diligence in ensuring that you're on top of this project Um, I endorse all of the recommendations. I think we have to take the conservative route to ensure that we get the funding. I think that I would like to... I would like us to adopt a process to ensure that our RFPs go out correct the first time. the second or third RFP. that we've had to revise or reissue. and I personally am a procurement public contracting specialist, so I would love to offer my services to consult with staff in reviewing RFPs to be sure that they are um, uh, complete and I don't know who it is we're using right now, but I feel as though we can save some time and some money by making sure that things go out correctly the first time. And I'm not saying that there wasn't valid reasons that we've had to reissue the ones, but I'd like to see us take steps to ensure that we improve our process moving forward. |
| 01:29:40.79 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Other comments? Raise. you She was. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:29:48.76 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I concur with this as well. Obviously, we have to take the conservative approach. It's very unfortunate. Um, And whereas I, in the abstract agree with council member Cox, I think This just points to the over complexity with which the federal government basically FEMA in particular and It's very difficult for a small city to actually be able to play in this world, unfortunately. So, I think it's a very unfortunate example of that. But I would urge us to do whatever we can to make this process occur as fast as possible. especially with the horizon of the rain and storm season. Thank you. |
| 01:30:52.61 | Councilmember Withey | yeah so concurring with both council members who've already spoken i do think it is important to have checklists for various kinds of procurements and federal anything that requires federal reimbursement is a different |
| 01:30:52.63 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 01:31:07.75 | Councilmember Withey | So I think that if, especially in this world where we are now hoping for federal reimbursement, we really do need to have those procedures well in hand. You know, I would just hope that any letter that goes out tomorrow informing property owners about this comes with our sincere, I think we were all trying to get this done so quickly and to, you know, it's already burdened by the bureaucratic requirements of reimbursement and then to have this on top of it I think I can only you know I am disappointed but I can only imagine that the people who are directly affected at the site to kind of have to continue to live with this debris pile next door is just a very unfortunate and disappointing results. So to the extent that we can convey that in some manner that's appropriate, I would hope that we could do that. I would also like to offer or to encourage staff to get three of us together, even for 30 minutes, to approve the issuance of the contract on the first possible day that we can do that. Because the August, if it goes out this week, it's rebid this week, it would be ready to issue sooner than our August 27th. So you don't want to delegate? |
| 01:32:36.65 | Jill Hoffman | So you don't want to delegate the city manager? The recommendation is to delegate that authority to the city manager. |
| 01:32:40.77 | Councilmember Withey | Oh, we can do that? Oh, when I first talked to, that was not possible. Okay, I'm sorry, I missed that. Okay, great, perfect, then we don't have to get together. |
| 01:32:44.27 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:32:47.89 | Jill Hoffman | And then to have us ratify it at our next meeting. Jill. No, yeah, yeah. Okay, perfect. |
| 01:32:50.81 | Councilmember Withey | Okay, perfect. So that's great. Sorry, I missed that. It's in the amended staff. |
| 01:32:52.88 | Councilmember Hoffman | . |
| 01:32:56.71 | Councilmember Hoffman | So, yeah, thank you to the staff and to Andy for catching that. Thank God, right? So we learned something new. That's the good news. And I also look, you know, at the staff report that we're also looking for a reimbursement from the state of California. So I'm guessing that there are documents also comport with the state of California requirements. But I just wanted to point that out as well. And just the same, you know, this is unfortunate. No one's happy about this. I think and then but I know everybody's working very hard to To get us back on track. So I support all the recommendations |
| 01:33:29.74 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. I agree with everything. You know, we were all frustrated, but understand the process that got us here. We just want to take the next step, and that's the sentiment, but the objective reality is we have to continue on the path that we're taking so that we get this reimbursement. Something that the council member Withey said that makes me think that maybe this isn't something that the league might want to look at a process within all small cities to have almost a template of how we do this. Because there could be other future disasters in our state and it would be great to have a resource to tap into for small communities like ours. They may very well have one already. And they might, but we're going to find out for sure now. |
| 01:34:06.03 | Katie Faulkner | And they might, but I'm |
| 01:34:07.16 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:34:07.28 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 01:34:07.39 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:34:07.42 | Katie Faulkner | Bye. |
| 01:34:09.46 | Mayor Burns | All right, thank you. I'm looking for the motion. |
| 01:34:12.08 | Jill Hoffman | I move adoption of our two draft resolutions. The first, rejecting all bids and proposals received for the debris removal project, authorizing rebidding of the project and re-insurance of the RFP, authorizing the city manager to ward the contracts for the project within the project budget, and accept rights of entry agreements, and the second one, continuing the declaration of a local emergency related to storm activity and landslides as well as finding that the project is categorically exempt from CEQA, per CEQA guidelines section 15269, and finding that the project is exempt from design reviews provided for in Sausalito. Municipal Code section 10.54.050B14. |
| 01:34:53.18 | Councilmember Hoffman | Second. |
| 01:34:54.75 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Aye. That, |
| 01:34:55.77 | Jill Hoffman | Hi. |
| 01:34:58.47 | Councilmember Hoffman | Do we need to also continue the declaration of work? |
| 01:35:00.34 | Jill Hoffman | Those are in the two resolutions that I moved. |
| 01:35:02.53 | Councilmember Hoffman | Oh, okay. Okay. |
| 01:35:03.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:35:06.06 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Did I say that already? Yes. Aye. Okay, yeah, that passed 5-0. It may be 10-0 if I asked it twice. |
| 01:35:07.66 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yes. |
| 01:35:07.97 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:35:07.98 | Councilmember Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:35:08.02 | Jill Hoffman | Aye. |
| 01:35:08.49 | Councilmember Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:35:12.56 | Mayor Burns | So thank you, Andy, for that. Thanks for the process as well as all the work you're doing on that. Next up we have 7B, PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoff Review and Wildfire Preparedness Efforts for the City of Sausalito. We have a team coming up, Fred Hilliard, our Division Chief Fire Marshal, Mark Van Gorder, PG&E Government Relations. We've seen Mark recently at a MCC MC meeting. Scott Barnes, did I see else? Scott didn't make it. Instead we have Ted. |
| 01:35:43.89 | Mayor Burns | Great, so welcome gentlemen. Let you take over, and I'm glad there's people in the audience. I hope this is something that is obviously videoed, and this is very important for our community. So thank you for being here and presenting tonight. |
| 01:35:56.97 | Unknown | Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, Council, and staff. On behalf of the Fire District, we're very appreciative to have the opportunity to address you this evening. And, uh, So we want to, in the presentation, we want to highlight some of the work that we've done on wildfire mitigation, currently. what we've done in the past and what we're going to be doing in the future as well. We have a fantastic partnership with the city. And once more, I want to say, remember, we're your fire department. So we're all on the same team together. And without any further ado, I'd like to thank our friends from PG&E for being here as well. And I'd like to introduce, to run the presentation, Fire Marshal Chief Fred Hilliard. |
| 01:36:43.90 | Fred Hilliard | Thank you very much. you So important to talk about what's going to happen with public safety when the power shuts down and also what we're doing to prepare for wildfire for the season because, as you can see, it's already starting to get warm. And the projection right now is that the season is really going to be kicking off in the next 30 to 60 days. So we are definitely making a lot of effort in the city and in the district to to get on with the measure you funding to provide chipper days and provide shaded fuel breaks and to work with city staff, our continued effort. So, The beginning of my presentation, a lot of this is gonna be covered by the presentation by PG&E, but specifically I just wanted to bring to the attention of the Council and the citizens when is this going to happen the pg need a shutdown? What we have been told is going to happen during the red flag warnings, when there are low humidity levels, when there are high winds above 25 miles an hour and with gusts over 45 miles an hour. A key here is when the moisture content of the fuel conditions are low, and that is a really hazardous time. That is when everything is what a lot of people classify vegetation as kindling. So when the moisture levels are low, that is when it is really important that no sparks start fires. I'm not sure. Real-time observations by PG&E, they have a wildfire safety operations center, which I'm sure they will be discussing, and they'll also have PG&E crews out and about the area. Notifications, we're understanding that the notifications will occur 48 hours prior to the shutoff, then 24 hours prior to that. just prior to the actual shutoff, during the outage, and then upon restoration of power. Customers PG&E will contact by phone, text messages, and emails, and then public websites, social media, and local news. What are local agencies gonna do? Local agencies are gonna use Alert Marin Nixle. media releases if it's early enough that we can do that. signboards, social media, And when is that gonna occur? Well, the initial alert, if it's 48 hours prior, we can definitely get most of the alert the notifications out using those methods. A second alert will go out. within 24 hours of that. And then a third alert would be just prior to shut off. As much as PG&E does their best to give us a real time frame, they can't tell us what minute the power's going to go off. So we have to... I'm not sure. Look also at weather patterns and wind in our own fire departments, our fire district, and we have to send out notifications when we feel there's a possibility of PG&E shutting off the power. We're also gonna have alerts during the shutoff period. and alerts at the restoration period. What are the, you know, how long is the power going to be out? What are the periods? These are. Essentially the criteria that we've been told by PT&E of when the outage is gonna occur and how long it's gonna occur and they'll be getting into this as part of their presentation. So I want to touch on. The fire triangle. I like to always bring this slide with me wherever I go because it does a really good job of depicting what we can do to control some of the possibilities of wildfire and the progression of fire. And the fire triangle is a good representation of exactly What makes fire? Oxygen, heat, and fuel are required in order to have a fire, a sustained fire. So what can we do right now to remove one of those in order to... not have fire, and that would be fuel. So to prepare for that and to prepare for a wildfire, there's a couple of things that you can do to prepare yourself in the event a fire happens. Of course, go bags, we talk about that at every possible time that we can get in front of the public. And that would be a bag that you would have next to your bed or in your house that would have the essentials that you could take with you in the event you have to evacuate quickly. an escape plan. An escape plan is very important. Especially the practice component. We talk about escape plans and everybody says, I have the escape plan. And then I say, do you practice your escape plan? And then it's silence. So important to practice. It's important to practice with your neighbors because as we saw in the North Bay fires, neighbors helping neighbors is why so many people lived in that catastrophic fire. It's important that you throw to the side maybe some of the things that you don't like or can't deal with with your neighbors, and come together on this one topic of getting together for one common understanding, and that's saving your life. Prepare your home. to leave it alone. because when you leave your home, It may be a while before you go back to your home. So you need to prepare it for what we call the Ember Shower. And the ember shower is no different than a rain shower, except for it's not rain, it's burning material. So you wanna create the defensible space, you wanna clear your gutters and decks, and close all your doors and windows. And we will be starting in the next week a defensible space inspection program that the engine companies of the district will be going out on, as well as fire inspectors that we have. to look at all homes that are in the Wildland Urban interface As many as we possibly can visit, we have quite a few and it's a lot, it'd be a monumental task to get it done. all in the year with the staff we have, but we are going to do as many as we possibly can. So when we come through the neighborhood, and we do an assessment and we leave a note on your door. It's not a citation. It's a friendly reminder at the beginning to make sure that you are cleaning and you're taking care of not just your home but your community. And we hope that you will take that into consideration. account. because we will be going back to re-inspect to make sure that these are getting done. Preparing your community is also very important, especially in the city of Sausalito. Right now, and in the past years, we have worked really well with the city staff and DPW for removal of flammable vegetation. One of the projects that's going on right now is Cypress Ridge. We've met with DPW, and we've met with a member of the Disaster Preparedness Committee, and we've walked the area, and we're looking at removing substantial amount of vegetation from that ridge area. It will provide us access to a water tank. It will provide us access to the fire roads and getting behind the freeway areas if we need to, if a fire were to start from the freeway. But also it is a large one of the large areas of vegetative growth where a fire that started in that area could progress quickly into the city. We're looking at these areas within the city right now. to do wildfire hazard mitigation. |
| 01:45:06.73 | Fred Hilliard | So how do we prepare? We have evacuation drills. One of those drills is happening shortly here. The Sausalito North area in Nevada Street, North and Cleveland, we invited the houseboats, which typically are not in the Southern Marine Fire Protection District. They are in the city, obviously, but they are going to participate in this evacuation. Approximately 1,300 homes will be in this, and this is one of the annual drills that we're going to try to do. Postcards. We want people to understand what they need to do. We want people to be informed of what they can do to lower their risk and also to prepare themselves for fire. if one should occur. Postcards, we're going to be sending postcards out. one per quarter, is what we're planning on doing at this point. And we're going to send them to all residents. We're going to send them to every resident in the fire protection district. and the postcards will have seasonal information on it. Summertime, it'll be clear your brush. Wintertime, we'll be careful with the Christmas trees, and so on. Educational information is plentiful. We have a lot of information, not only on our website, but in all of our fire stations. Included in that is firesafemarin.org. FireSafeMarin.org has a ton of information on evacuation programs, evacuations, not just the evacuation component, but defensible space, plants, plants that are sustainable plants, and some that are pyrophytic that you should remove. And pyrophytic means very flammable. As many of you know, this last ballot measure, Measure U was passed, providing the Fire Protection District with $1 million towards the Fire Prevention Division. What we are doing with that $1 million is some of these programs that are listed here. We're improving public outreach and education We're doing annual vegetation management inspections. We're doing road widening for vegetation removal projects so that we can get the fire engines up the street and it provides you a better, safer zone to leave if you have to. We're also doing litigation and enforcement or legislation and enforcement in the areas of the people that, well, they simply don't want to do it. Increase chipper days. We're planning on many chipper days throughout the district and Sausalito. especially in the areas that haven't been treated in quite some time. That will be an opportunity for individuals to cut their vegetation, bring it to the street, chip it, and haul it away. We want to increase the awareness of the Firewise community, and with some of that funding, we'll be able to help communities that want to get involved, the blocks and the HOAs, with doing assessments and also helping with vegetation removal and creating defensible space. Ongoing work with the city-owned properties is a high priority on our list It has been for years and we have been doing that with the city We've also added to our force. We have now three new fire inspectors that are working with the fire prevention division. Two are dedicated specifically to wildfire hazard mitigation, and they are year-round. So in the winter season, we'll be looking at doing some of the bigger projects, some of the areas that are most impacted by vegetation and trees and thinning those areas and then additional funding for vegetation programs These are some of the the events that are happening in your neighborhood. Chipper Projects, the Terraces HOA is June 27th. |
| 01:49:19.23 | Unknown | Boo-hoo. |
| 01:49:19.66 | Fred Hilliard | doing the chipper program up there. The neighborhood up in San Carlos Avenue, we're bringing chippers up there, and a big roadside clearance on July 29th, which you can see it's quite a few areas. We're also looking again at the wide area fuel break in the Cypress Ridge area, and then hazard assessments we were doing at Wolfback Terrace and some other areas within the 300 block of Sausalito Boulevard. |
| 01:49:50.06 | Fred Hilliard | Again, these are all projects that we're working with the city as well. we've directed the fire inspectors to work with city staff to look at areas within the city that we could use some of the funding that we've received to mitigate some of these dense forested or densely vegetative areas. And also we're working with private property owners that own bigger parcels that have more vegetative risk. So, Projects that we've worked on with the city, you can see there's several projects that we worked on in 2018. And with the city DPW vegetation removal to date, we've already removed 43 tons. of flammable vegetation this year since January. So most of the meat of this presentation is with PG&E because I'm sure that's what everybody wants to hear about. When is the power going to be shut off? But I listed questions on here. I'd be happy after they've done their presentation. I'll stay. You can ask whatever questions. But I've listed both myself and Battalion Chief Scott Barnes, our Vegetation Management Program Manager. And we are always here and willing to talk to you at any time. It might be kind of hard Sunday night. any time to talk about vegetation and or wildfire risk reduction or evacuations so again you're welcome to come to our board meetings we do discuss this these are in our board packets we talk about these specific things as well as you know, any of the public that has any questions related to fire prevention, or anything with the fire department, they could come directly to us and to our board meetings, and they can voice whatever concerns they have during our public comments. So with that, I'd like to introduce. |
| 01:52:06.20 | Mayor Burns | I'd like to interject. |
| 01:52:09.21 | Fred Hilliard | Fred. |
| 01:52:09.26 | Mayor Burns | Fred, are you going to introduce me? I'm over here. |
| 01:52:13.65 | Bryant Ho | Oh, sorry. |
| 01:52:14.19 | Mayor Burns | Are you going to introduce the PG&E guys first? Because we're going to ask you questions first, if you don't mind. Sure. Can we do that? Okay. How would you like to do that? Yeah, since you're up there and we kind of just heard that side, before we kind of go to that group, let's just, do we have a couple questions? Yeah. |
| 01:52:18.49 | Bryant Ho | Sure. Can we do that? Okay. Yeah. |
| 01:52:26.05 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, and I don't know if this is for our city staff or for Mark or for one of the chiefs, but I know that the county of Marin is working with PG&E to establish backup power. |
| 01:52:41.07 | Unknown | Oh, it's on power. I thought you were doing his. |
| 01:52:43.23 | Jill Hoffman | So I'm asking what is our plan to power emergency services, what are we doing? Are we gonna be on the list with PG&E identify you know, a compilation of generators and batteries and other things. to ensure that we can keep our OES up and running and essential city services during any extended power outage. |
| 01:53:08.39 | Fred Hilliard | Sure, great question. our new buildings which were built in 2010 are completely backed up with generator power so they're able to work run for several days and then if we need to call in more fuel for those to run so our fire station and the police station are fully operational if the power goes out we also have solar power as well Um, For other services, it's, you know, the city, I'm sure, has a plan. I can't answer that question. I don't know what that looks like. But we do receive quite a few questions from the public as far as what do we do with backup power. And a lot of people are going to generators, and a lot of people are actually going with the solar, specifically the Tesla power walls. So there is a community, now that the PG&E has announced that they're going to have power outages for up between three to five days, people are planning for that, and we're working with them to establish a safe way of having backup power. |
| 01:54:14.81 | Adam Politzer | I'll just add that City Hall is also backed up on generator and in power outages in the past, especially during the winter. We've opened up the library and the Edgewater room for warming places, for people to come and warm in the evening, and also recharge their laptops and their phones. |
| 01:54:33.32 | Mayor Burns | Any other questions for Fred? |
| 01:54:37.64 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Fred, thanks for that. Do we have on websites, whether the city website, yours, what a resident needs to put in a go bag? Yes. |
| 01:54:51.76 | Fred Hilliard | Yes, yes we do. And we have links to, We do have some links to places where you can purchase those go bags. But what we like to tell people is, you know, there's a whole bunch of different companies that make go bags that are somewhat prepared. You still need to put your clothing items and some of your personal items and medications in it, but, yeah, you can find those online as well. |
| 01:55:18.17 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And the second question is for the city staff. A couple of residents asked me actually today, knowing that this presentation was on, what are the regulations that we as a city impose on a property owner if they want to put a generator in? Thank you. And I don't expect an answer for that now, but at some point could you get that out in the currents or something? You know There's a difference. There's a difference between getting a temporary, you know a portable type generator Which you can house versus what they need to do to put a permanent one in which is a whole different ballgame But I'm wondering if the city could somehow address that and get it on some a website website and current those are all my questions |
| 01:56:09.24 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah, thank you for a great presentation. So you mentioned these inspections slash assessments. So could you just describe what a resident could expect to see if you come to their home? Are you walking around looking from the street? Are you actually kind of walking downstairs and going into the backyard? Just sort of so people kind of understand what they might expect when you show up. |
| 01:56:36.00 | Fred Hilliard | Sure. So obviously the right to privacy, we cannot actually step on any property passed between the street and the front door. We have the right to go to your front door so that we can knock on the door so we can do assessments from the street. We can see a lot from the street. What we're going to be looking for is essentially CAL FIRE. their assessment program mirror almost exactly what they do, which is they look at gutters, they look at flammable vegetation from the road, clearances around the house, just making sure that any grasses, flammable grasses, that are cut down to no more than four inches, And then removal of your brooms and stuff like that, as well as limbing up trees so that if fire is on the ground, it can't get into the trees and such like that. And that's also on our website. You can find that information as to what our assessments will look like. |
| 01:57:42.74 | Councilmember Withey | Okay, but you'll be walking up to the front door and not sort of... |
| 01:57:44.60 | Fred Hilliard | to the front door and not. |
| 01:57:48.02 | Councilmember Withey | poking around. Yeah. |
| 01:57:49.41 | Fred Hilliard | Yeah. No, we're not going in anybody's backyard or side yards. We're actually, most of it is from the road assessment. As we drive up the road, we have people that, we have inspectors or firefighters that are going to inspect the properties, and they fill out a form and they put it, you know, just tape it to the front door. But no, we are not going in people's backyards. |
| 01:57:50.64 | Councilmember Withey | Okay. I'm not sure. |
| 01:57:57.07 | Councilmember Withey | Okay. |
| 01:57:57.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:10.97 | Councilmember Withey | Okay, great. |
| 01:58:11.43 | Fred Hilliard | And less invited. |
| 01:58:12.78 | Councilmember Withey | And then secondly, you talked about public outreach and postcards, and I'm also wondering if you have a social media campaign or kind of a other forms of communication. I mean, there's obviously some people read a postcard, some people don't only get their information here. So. |
| 01:58:31.60 | Fred Hilliard | Yeah, we are going to mimic everything with both social media and with postcards. Our social media site is pretty robust. If you are following us on Facebook, we post almost every day of different things, whether it's incidents that have happened during that day or prevention material. So all that is going to go both We're going to continue with the social media, but we're also going to be doing mailers. |
| 01:59:06.37 | Councilmember Hoffman | All right, great, thank you. |
| 01:59:10.37 | Councilmember Hoffman | Hi, thanks for coming, as always, great to see you guys. how do we invite you in? Like, we want you to come and look, theoretically, hypothetically. If somebody wanted you to come and look at their backyard or look at their, you know, property that you wouldn't normally see from the street, how do we go about doing that? |
| 01:59:30.07 | Fred Hilliard | So it's free service that we would be happy to do. You just call the fire station. You can call the Fire Prevention Bureau. My number's up there. And then we also have it on our website. It says free house evaluation. We don't give you a citation. We come there to just talk to you about vegetation management and also how you can harden your home to prevent a fire starting from wildfire to your house so you just get a hold of us and we'll be happy to come out and take a look now the firefighters that are going to be walking around they're also going to be knocking on doors so if you happen to be home and you want to talk to them they'll be willing to talk to you |
| 02:00:20.81 | Lauren Appertis | You're gonna have to introduce yourself, sir. My name is Lauren Appertis, maintenance division manager. I just wanted to add to what Fred has said here. And this here is just a list of some of the projects where we have had community members contact the city of Sausalito, or actually more accurately contact either the city of Sausalito or the fire department and say, |
| 02:00:20.88 | Mayor Burns | You're going to have to introduce yourself, sir. Thank you. |
| 02:00:39.73 | Lauren Appertis | we want to have somebody come onto my property. So these are different locations where I have met with Ryan Boykin, who is the fire inspector, and have determined that there are management that was required and some of these are removal of dead trees removal of vegetation pulling away shrubbery from property lines things like that so that has happened since 2018 all of these different locations we have a couple that are scheduled up for the next couple of months but it is as easy as that calling the fire department or calling the department of public works and then i'll refer that call to the fire department |
| 02:01:20.26 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Lauren. Any other questions? Great. We're going to hear from PG&E and Mark. If anybody is planning to do a public comment on this, green card we're gonna open up public comment after this presentation and welcome. |
| 02:01:48.58 | Mark Van Gorder | Good evening. you My name is Mark Van Gorder, and I'm the senior public affairs manager I'm not sure. for Pacific Gas and Electric in the North Bay area, so that's Marin County. and Napa. And I apologize for looking over these. I just can't do the bifocal thing yet. So I'm gonna look down here with these and look at you over these, I apologize. So I'm here tonight to talk briefly about our community wildfire safety program. I thought that was an excellent presentation, not just overall, but really I think we can kind of quickly move through some of the slides that focus on the public safety power shut off. What I would say to mayor, council members, and the city manager are two things. One, it's provided this presentation in your staff report. It's also available on the city's website link with the agenda that has a link. So if anybody's watching at home and says, well, gee, you went through that slide kind of quickly, I'd like to look at it longer. My suggestion would be going to the city's website and looking at the agenda, and there's that link with this presentation. I think it's under late communications. So I will try and move through this slide deck somewhat quickly. take questions afterwards and if we need to come back to a slide we can do that if that's okay, Mayor. |
| 02:03:04.43 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, great. |
| 02:03:04.95 | Mark Van Gorder | And then following me will be Marty Hunt, who's our project manager, and he's gonna make a brief, brief presentation about Golden Gate National Recreational Area and some of the power things have come down to the city. you real quick again uh Each one of these points will be addressed in the subsequent slides. I just put it up here to give you an overview. of our three pronged approach about monitoring conditions. as we've already mentioned, some of the safety measures that we're putting in place and some of the system hardening and resiliency, but we'll focus a lot on the safety measures here tonight. So safety, we have a 24 hour, seven days a week safety operations center. Real quick, we're simply watching all the time, and especially if we have wind events, so it's monitoring the weather and keeping in touch with Cal OES, Marin County Office of Emergency Services, constant communication and coordinating, see if we see those conditions start to emerge that would give us concern. We're expecting to have 1300 weather stations installed by 2022. These links here, again, they're available in the presentation if you download it. And that will take you to a great selection of many weather stations that you can look at right now. They're not just PG&E weather stations. And there are hundreds to look at in this area. We're also looking at getting additional high definition cameras for real time monitoring. Anyone can go take a look at those cameras um, I can provide later, I don't have it here now, but I can provide a list of locations of the cameras that we do have currently. and we'll update the city manager and we'll share that information with Fire and our other first responder folks. But at this alert wildfire.org, You can't move the cameras around. That's up to the first responders, but they're available to look at. |
| 02:05:04.44 | Unknown | you |
| 02:05:05.91 | Mark Van Gorder | but, We have a regular a vegetation clearance program where we come through Marin County and we're constantly moving vegetation from around the trees. It's no different than defensible space around homes. Protect the homes and remove vegetation, protect the electric lines and remove vegetation. And so what we're trying to do Typically, we would have a a safety zone in the past. Thank you. and the diameter out from our electric lines, the enhanced vegetation management program that hasn't begun yet, but eventually will, and working with property owners, working with municipal property owners where you have public rights of way or something in vegetation, our objective is to go all straight up. not just out and around, to avoid the possibility of the limbs falling into the trees. Sorry, the limb's falling into the lines. I don't know. What Marnie will be talking about a little bit more in depth is our wildfire safety inspections. So you're probably familiar with these towers. These are transmission lines. They're carrying 60,000 volts, 115,000 volts. They'll come into a city's substation whether or not that's in Mill Valley or here, Nevada, it comes into the substation and from the substation, it goes out along what we normally think of being telephone poles, we call them power poles, because more often than not, they're there because they're carrying electricity and then we have the communications partners underneath the electric lines. That's what's bringing electricity to homes, unless it's neighborhoods where it's been undergranted. During these inspections, we are identifying priority urgent work that needs to be performed, more routine work that needs to be performed, and there is a strong focus in what we call these tier two and tier three areas. Tier three is very high fire threat areas, tier two is high fire threat areas, and we're prioritizing them. you have some of these high fire threat areas very close and nearby. Golden Gate National Recreation Area is one of them. This is very quick. We're walking, we're droning, we're helicoptering. If in areas where it's deep terrain, we may be going out on ATVs for visual inspections and finding out what work we need to do. . We prioritize that work. and we start getting going on it. Again, Marty will talk about some of this. It's been in the newspaper, it's been on television news. Some of the towers that we're finding that need some priority work. And the good news is that we're finding the work and we're starting the work right away. Um, Again, I'll go through this somewhat quickly if you have questions. Simply put, as quickly as possible and where we can, we're installing stronger poles, stronger wire, wire that if a bird or an animal or a tree hits it, won't necessarily arc or spark, in some cases it has a coating around it, not all the wire does, but in these areas we're trying to add these kinds of these kinds of benefits. And then we have reclosers. The only thing I'll mention quickly here about the reclosers The way that these are set up with the reclosures if a branch or a tree animal, something gets onto the line, I THINK I'M GOING TO BE it'll open up and stop the flow of power to make sure that The line hasn't come down or what not. during the wintertime, very helpful. It can close back up. and make sure it sends a burst of energy down the line and if the branch or whatever was on it is cleared, The power is restored quickly. And in the winter time, this helps speed up reliability and gets people energy quickly. You get the flicker at home. And you're good. In the summertime, we do not want this happening. We don't want there to be the possibility of a line that's come down on the ground and test to find out that the burst of energy ignites something on the ground and you have a windy day or something like that. So we disable these. which means that unless we have you know devices with remote capabilities where we can make sure that the line is safe and good, we will visually inspect The short summary of that is, it will take longer to restore power if we have to shut power off, because we have to visually inspect these areas. This is simply a graphic that goes through what you're what fire was just talking about, these are the conditions that we're gonna be looking at at the Fire Safety Operations Center in the event that we may ask for a public safety power shut off. |
| 02:09:52.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:09:54.83 | Mark Van Gorder | 50% of Pacific Gas and Electric Service Territory has tier three and tier two service areas. We are telling all of our five million customers to be prepared for the possibility that they may have a one, two day, up to a possibly five day power outage. Here's why. 50 miles away from here. The wind may not be blowing here. It may be a calm day. the humidity may be even somewhat higher, but there may be an area that's being served by one of the large transmission lines. And if that's feeding in to the system here, as it goes down from a large to a smaller, to a smaller, and then to the substation, if we're in that stream of feed, of electricity. and Marty might be able to talk about this in more detail, You can get caught up in that, even if it's an event that is... some distance away. So we may not have conditions like that here. but we have to be prepared for it. This is the notification process that's already been discussed. We will begin working. This is customer. communications we will be working with the city manager fire chief county OES and others who we expect may be impacted hopefully 72 hours before the event but certainly prior to talking to the customers so the city manager fire chief and police chief and you are not bombarded with calls and you're saying i don't know anything about it Once the weather's all clear, we will patrol and inspect, as I mentioned, we will isolate and repair damage. We will try and get to as many priority customers as possible, so we will say, try and get the most people we can possible. We are currently working with again city management, fire, and public works to identify what we call the critical facilities. So sometimes a water pump or a treatment plant or making sure that What other critical facilities, maybe there's a medical facility nearby, get those folks on with power first. restore the power. notify the customers, maintaining constant communication on sort of roughly a 12 hour basis, six to 12 hour basis with regular cadence calls that everyone in the impacted area can dial into. This is simply the many, many ways that we're trying to get people to get them information about our program. There's pgne.com, wildfire, forward slash wildfire safety. Encourage everybody to update their cell phones, their emails, you can add multiple numbers. And this is how we're doing our outreach. And then for folks who have more questions, we have the 866 number here. Email is wildfiresafetypg.com. And again, and there's the link. One other link that I'll mention is www.prepareforpowerdown.com. It has a lot of helpful information, but I also encourage folks to, to use their local resources. So as was already mentioned, Southern Marin Fire District already has a wealth of information, probably best to locally get their information there first. So with that, I think it would probably help if Marty could make his presentation about Golden Gate National Recreation Area and we're available for questions. Yeah, we'll do that. |
| 02:13:19.94 | Mayor Burns | Marty, come on up. Welcome. |
| 02:13:25.30 | Marty Hunt | Good evening, thank you mayor, council members and staff for having me. I'm Marty Hunt. I'm the manager of the electric transmission northern region or north coast region which goes from the Golden Gate Bridge to Eureka. and I'm responsible for repairing the wildfire, things that the Wildfire Safety Inspection Program found and then me and my team repair those challenges or things that we found in the field. One of the ones I wanted to talk to you today is, it's called the Ignacio Alto Sausalito line that runs from Novato down about the 101 corridor, stays between 101 and the Baywater. About Marin City, it turns inland and then goes up into the GGNRA Park, up to the top of the ridge and then back down into your substation in Sausalito. The line's about 100 years old. We have spent many an hour discussing why did they pick that route when they did, but We got what we got, and we don't know for sure. So what happened during the Wildfire Safety Inspection Program the lines that feed Sausalito, and those are the two lines. There's a Sausalito with those two lines. There's a number one and a number two. They happen to be on the same structure as they run down. So while there are two circuits that feed Sausalito, they are essentially on one failure point, if you will, which is a single tower. Normally our network is designed to have multiple paths, but the way Sausalito is fed, it's sourced from that Ignacio substation. And so that's just the way the grid is set up today. So during our inspections, we were inspecting the towers that run up into the Wild Oak Valley, which is one of the, if you guys are familiar with GGNRA, one of their most sensitive habitats. There's spotted owls, there's salamanders, there's creeks in the bottom. It's a very sensitive habitat to the park. During one of the detail inspections, we found one of our towers, specifically Tower 103, one of the four legs had been severely undermined by the creek that's in the bottom of that canyon. when we evaluated the rest of the towers, they were not in great shape either, whether it's corrosion and different things like that. So there was a real concern that should tower 103 topple into the creek not only would it Endanger people on the trails in wild oak valley, but it could affect the other towers along that line Thus pulling down many towers as opposed to a single failure you've read in the news where a crane crashes into a single tower and we do a restoration this would have been roughly 10 towers and about a mile and a half of circuit which would resulted in quite a long project to repair So we went to the park with this evidence and said, guys, this is what's going on. We sat down with the park and said, we need to repair this line in an immediate emergency-type fashion. With the park, we sat down and worked with them and found a new path to go from the edge of Tennessee Valley Road up and it's the Alta trail I don't know if you're familiar right along the ridge top so we're installing a new line a temporary line that goes fuck basically follows that ridge line follows the Alta trail and then stays out of the park down below you guys have seen and heard the helicopters in the air and all of that that's the work that's going on and we're put in about 90% of the conductor by now all the poles are in because of the sensitive habitat we had to hand dig many of those holes they're three feet in diameter and about 14 feet deep and so and the park asked that we not use any tracked or wheeled vehicles to do that so the we hired people a lot younger and stronger than I to carry materials and equipment to those areas and dig those holes and then we were able to fly the dirt out again using the helicopters and so that works been done the line is mostly intact and then we're doing the last bits of repairs to that and then we'll be cutting that new line into service within about a week to 10 days and then we're doing the last bits of repairs to that, and then we'll be cutting that new line into service within about a week to ten days, and then the last piece will be to remove those old towers from the valley, and we're using, if you're familiar, I see lots of nods, but the old rifle range on Bucker Road will be taking the towers there for further analysis and a deep dive into. They're about 100 years old, so there's a lot of people that would like to get their hands on them and test them, look for aging and any sort of things like that. Um, If that's what's going on with you guys, I wanted to let you know, I will be reaching out to your fire marshal. We've been doing a lot of veg clearing up on Donahue Court and I think that's, I believe, I couldn't tell on the slide but I think that's what you guys called the Cypress Ridge and we've done a lot of clearing up there just to do our stuff. So I think I wanna invite the fire marshal to come up and see what we're doing and maybe we can talk more a little bit about veg clearing and things like that working together. But with that, that's roughly with a project. I'm trying to be very respectful of time. I can describe it in very much detail more, but basically that's the project we're on, and we are trying to wrap it up. Like I said, by the end of the month, we should see all the helicopter stuff ending and the things returning so long. |
| 02:18:48.89 | Mayor Burns | excuse me, when it's all said and done, then there'll be poles as opposed to the old towers. |
| 02:18:54.27 | Marty Hunt | That's correct. |
| 02:18:54.86 | Mayor Burns | Okay, and the same height or even a lower height? They're a little bit lower. |
| 02:18:58.22 | Marty Hunt | but you can see them from the ridge. at the Starbucks there at Donahue Court or Donahue Plaza. If you look up, you can see a couple of the new poles just on the edges of those trees. But yeah, they're wood poles, guy anchored, but they're a little bit shorter than the towers. |
| 02:19:04.52 | Mayor Burns | Yeah. |
| 02:19:04.79 | Katie Faulkner | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:19:19.16 | Mayor Burns | Great, any questions for Marty and Mark? A lot of information. I applaud it. Yeah, we have questions. |
| 02:19:24.73 | Councilmember Hoffman | This is a question maybe for our public works or I don't know who. But if you have trees in Sausalito and you can see that the trees are intertwined with the power lines, who do we, if you're a homeowner, who would you call? And who's responsible for that, I guess, is the second one. |
| 02:19:46.79 | Lauren Appertis | Lauren Umberthus, her maintenance division manager. There's a couple different ways you can do it. You can contact the Department of Public Works. and we can refer it to the right people most of the time if it's power lines those are the lines that are at the very top of those poles and you'll often be able to tell that by seeing that the trees have been modified the lower lines are generally lower voltage lines which are either cable or which don't typically get maintained. but then they're not as much of a fire hazard if they break. If they break, then they get contacted. But you can contact the Department of Public Works. Let us know that you have a concern, and we can contact PG&E or the proper utility company. |
| 02:20:25.36 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Be real clear on that and then let Mark call to respond. If you see any wires and you don't know what type of wires they are, contact either PG&E directly or our Public Works Department. |
| 02:20:36.65 | Lauren Appertis | And I would actually modify that. If you see a wire that's down that is broken, feel free to call up emergency services. And the fire department will come out there. They'll make sure that it's safe. So that's the first thing you do is you can contact 911. They'll take a look, and they'll refer to the property utility. |
| 02:20:55.86 | Mark Van Gorder | So great question. Everything that was just said is absolutely accurate. There is a point that I'd like to make, there's some confusion about this that I just experienced. property owners are responsible for their service drop. So if you look up and you see the power poles and you see the very top lines going down the road, there's your electricity and then usually it'll come down to a transformer and then from the transformer is the line that goes down to a weather head or something that's on your home. That is the property owner's responsibility to clear from vegetation. That said, for safety reasons, we encourage every homeowner who wants to go out and trim or trees or whatnot away from those lines. to call PG&E. 800, you can look it up, 800-743-5000. let the customer service person know that you're trying to clear some vegetation away they will come and turn off the power, disconnect the power on the service Then you or whoever you hire to come and clear vegetation away on your service drops can do so safely. If you have a branch that's growing very close to the lines, PG&E will come and take care of that for you. They don't want you anywhere near the transformer or those lines. But sometimes you have a bush or a tree or something that's right near the house and it's not anywhere near those lines, just call and they'll come and shut the power off and call them back when you're done And also, I'd like to make one quick plug. Uh, Is Andy still here? Did he leave? No, he left. He is a smart guy. He's got work to do. I just wanted to say that we work with the city for a long time, but there's a lot of stuff that we do in the public right-of-way. A lot of stuff we do with vegetation and gas and whatnot, and just in coordination with public safety with landslides, and that sort of thing. It's been great. He holds our feet to the fire and he makes sure that we're doing right by the city And you know as you can see bright guy goes to conference and comes back and saves a bundle of money And so he's I think he's always watching out for that city and just the whole department is So there are other departments that are great to work with as well, but Public Works has probably been one of the ones that we work with most frequently. So it has been a real pleasure to have somebody. I was on the City Council for eight years, so I appreciate staff always bird-dogging things and making sure they're doing the right thing and keeping us on our toes. And at the same time, making sure that our work gets done so that we have safe, reliable electric and gas. I want to make my quick plug in there. |
| 02:23:28.98 | Mayor Burns | Thanks, Mark. That was a nice plug. Appreciate that. Any other questions? And I'm going to open up public... One question. Yep. Sorry, Ray. Thank you. |
| 02:23:36.41 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | THE FAMILY. for Marty, was it? Marty, yeah. So, The... The new work you've done, put the new line in the polls on the, I can't remember what, the Ignacio something Sausalito line. |
| 02:23:56.45 | Marty Hunt | Ignacio Alto Sausalito. |
| 02:23:57.43 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'll leave it. Okay, all right. I'm not sure. You indicated that the old line had the vulnerability of two circuits on what? Is the work you've done still carrying the two circuits? Is that vulnerability still there? |
| 02:24:13.89 | Marty Hunt | So yes and no. No, the new circuit does not. We put in individual poles for each circuit, one or two. However, down by Tennessee Valley Road, where the circuit heads out north towards Marin City, that it goes back on single poles or single towers again. But the new work is not like that. They're separated by about 35 to 50 feet. It varies from the various old sections along the way. |
| 02:24:30.66 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:24:40.87 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Have you made any of this, the status of this available to the public on website or websites at all? Or is this pretty? |
| 02:24:51.33 | Marty Hunt | No, sir, we've given out some press releases. I know the press is all over it. But we don't have a website that we've put it on. I can give some information to Mark that shows roughly what we're doing from a high level. We try not to put too much detail out on the open web, but I can give Mark some information that he can share that's kind of a high level of what's going on. |
| 02:24:54.86 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I know the press is all over it. Yeah, okay. |
| 02:25:09.66 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 02:25:09.98 | Mayor Burns | STOOD. |
| 02:25:10.37 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. you |
| 02:25:13.01 | Mayor Burns | Okay. It's actually been entertaining on Next Door. Yeah. Anywhere from the Russians are invading us to hikers. I know. Fine. |
| 02:25:18.57 | Marty Hunt | Yeah. |
| 02:25:18.89 | Unknown | anywhere from the Russians Do you have hikers? Thank you. |
| 02:25:22.99 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:25:23.04 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And you can see the copters from the, yeah. Okay, thank you. And can I just say, Mark, I really appreciate all the communication you do. It really is great, and thanks for also coming last month to MCCMC and doing that. So you're a busy man, so thank you. |
| 02:25:25.05 | Unknown | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 02:25:48.00 | Mayor Burns | Glad I wore a tie. Is there any public comment on this issue tonight? Any public comments? I didn't get any cards yet, so open and now closing public comment on this item. Closing remarks on our part? |
| 02:26:06.44 | Mayor Burns | We're not done yet. I have something. I've just got to be able to see here in a little bit. Just poke my eye with my glasses. Um, I do want to, again, and something because Lauren Umbertus was here, I just wanted to address back to the amount of work that the city is doing, the fire district is doing, the relationship with the parks around us, with PG&E. And just, we saw two numbers, 70 tons and 40 tons. That's a lot of stuff. And, you know, and Lauren went into a deeper dive on how many trees that was and, you know, permitted trees that we've had to take out. Whether they're fire danger or dying, which is fire danger, there's a lot going on. And we've now had multiple meetings for the community here, and we're going to say it one more time. Get a go bag. Understand where you're going to be when the power goes out. I know where I'll be. I'm going to be the shower because that's where I know where the power goes out. But know your plan and clear your yards. where you're gonna be when the power goes out I know where I'll be I'm gonna need a shower because that's where I'm when all the power goes out but no know your plan and and clear your yards make your house safe we're gonna continue that message and I think that's gonna be just a common common statement from this council |
| 02:27:12.27 | Councilmember Hoffman | I am. Thank you. A question I think for the city staff you know, when you think about I'm trying to remember the last time in Sausalito we were without power for more than two days. But when you think about three to five days, that's a quantitative difference than overnight or a day or two. So I'm just wondering... you know, us as a community how we've thought that through, that people are going to be able to have to live past the time. Because I've been through this in the Midwest when you have a big storm comes through and you really don't have power for a week or further. You know, when you live past, you know, what's in your refrigerator. You can't, you know, it's not good anymore because you're just past it. Things like that. I haven't heard it tonight and I haven't heard it anywhere, but we might want to think about how do we operate as a community when we get past that point of three days, right? Because that's a different thing. And then you really do have to, even if you, you know, go bag is when the fire is coming down the hill, right? But you can't just leave your house when you don't have power for two or three days, right? Most people don't have the ability or the finances to be able to do that. So, yeah. I mean, I have thought that through, but I think as a community, we sort of need to take a look at the long, you know, sheltering maybe in Sausalito or how we may handle that. So I just wanted to call that out. |
| 02:28:41.71 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. IT'S NOT A LITTLE BIT. great anything else thank you guys thank you all for being here tonight for your travels Marty I don't know how far you came but appreciate you All right, well, I'm not feeling too sorry for you. Yeah. |
| 02:28:58.47 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. We had no action on that, obviously, but now we have a general plan update by Lily. Anybody wants to go out really quickly? Run, run, run. Lily's going to sit up for a little bit here. |
| 02:29:49.97 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, we're going to get started. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, we're starting. Sorry. Great. |
| 02:29:52.57 | Lily Whalen | Great. |
| 02:29:52.85 | Mayor Burns | Lily Whalen, our Community Development Director. |
| 02:29:52.87 | Lily Whalen | you Thank you, Mr. Mayor, council members. So this is a quick item updating you on the progress report of the general plan update activities. Last report was in June, your June 11th meeting. So since. That last progress report, the GPAC has held two meetings, and that completed the series of stakeholder meetings where the boards and commissions were coming to the GPAC to give an update. of policy issues specific to the purview of each of those groups. So on May 21st. |
| 02:30:25.94 | Unknown | you |
| 02:30:26.17 | Lily Whalen | Thank you. sorry, on June 25th, the GPAC heard from Parks and Recreation Commission and the Community Safety and Disaster Preparedness Committee, and then on June 4th, the GPAC heard from the Hospitality Business Development Committee, the Historic Preservation Commission, and the Bursary and Advisory Committee. And then upcoming activities include tomorrow night's GPAC meeting, where the group will discuss sea level rise and the Marinship Workshop. And then they'll also begin a discussion of outstanding issues which a GPAC members feel have not been adequately addressed or for which a GPAC decision has not been deliberated. And then on the July 30th GPAC meeting, M group will use part of that meeting to propose for a GPAC consideration key takeaways from the groups that did come to GPAC over the last few months that can be incorporated into the policies and programs to be developed for the general plan update. And then there will be a series of meetings regarding the marinship. And so the first is on Saturday, September 7th. That's our marinship workshop, community workshop at the Spinnaker. The time has been set from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. And again, the GBAC will be discussing the format of the meeting and then noticing for that meeting as well tomorrow night. And then on September 17th, there'll be a GPAC meeting to discuss the results from the workshop. And then shortly after, there'll be a city council meeting to discuss the workshop as well. And that concludes my staff report, and I'm available for any questions. |
| 02:32:00.90 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 02:32:01.22 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:32:01.25 | Jill Hoffman | We have some. I have one, actually. Can you go back, Lily, one slide? So at the July 30 meeting, the GPAC will be considering key takeaways that can be incorporated into policies and programs. Will those recommendations then be coming to the City Council at their August meeting? |
| 02:32:21.03 | Unknown | Yes, the next meeting, there would be an update in August, yes. |
| 02:32:24.95 | Jill Hoffman | But not just an update, but actually if there is decision making to be made about policies and programs to be developed and incorporated into the general plan, I want to make sure that the City Council has the opportunity to weigh in on those recommendations |
| 02:32:41.55 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:32:44.00 | Mayor Burns | That's great. September 7th, Marinship Workshop. We had a request earlier to public comment from Paul Dines on their group that seems to be kind of brought into one voice. Will they get some time? I know you probably haven't got the agenda set completely, but could it be time made for kind of a group like that? It's almost a committee-style group. |
| 02:33:05.87 | Lily Whalen | So I have it on my notes here tonight to talk with and I anticipate they'll bring it up tomorrow night at the GVAC meeting. |
| 02:33:07.00 | Mayor Burns | Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:33:10.86 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Perfect. I mean, one of our agenda topics tomorrow night is what's the format of the workshop. So it's a perfect opportunity to do that, I think. |
| 02:33:16.15 | Mayor Burns | Right. |
| 02:33:19.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:19.22 | Mayor Burns | Perfect. |
| 02:33:19.77 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:33:22.58 | Mayor Burns | And then... |
| 02:33:26.81 | Councilmember Withey | I also hope in addition to format, that you'll really talk about outreach. and getting not just kind of, you know, clearly people who are involved are watching this. We've had a number of people come, but I think the broader community as well and how to get that perspective. |
| 02:33:48.63 | Jill Hoffman | So do you have a recommendation? Because we have sent postcards, we have done everything we can for our prior workshop And we get like 100 people, and that's out of 7,200. |
| 02:34:01.22 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah, I mean, I'm not a PR outreach person, but I mean, I do feel like, that it has been successful where there have been actual people standing in front of either Molly Stones or events or crowded places kind of. Outreaching social media is another form of outreach. It has to be, we might consider paid advertising through social media targeted. I know we do that from the city sometimes. In addition to conventional, other community organizations, Sausalito Beautiful, the Women's Club, the schools. |
| 02:34:49.74 | Mayor Burns | And there's a consultant being paid. They can maybe have some ideas since they do this in other areas. |
| 02:34:49.77 | Councilmember Withey | there's a consultant. |
| 02:34:56.15 | Mayor Burns | Sorry. No, no, no, that's great. |
| 02:34:57.01 | Unknown | No, no, that's great. |
| 02:35:00.22 | Mayor Burns | The meeting, and again, I really appreciate the committee's presentations, and I think they are performing what I thought was kind of the visioning step, because they're saying, based on their purview in their committee, here's what we'd like to see. We'd like to see a trail here, or circulation change here, or steps being used here. So they're kind of providing that, what's the community gonna look like? But I don't know if they're skilled in then boiling that down to, well what would the policy look like or how does it transfer into a general plan comment or land use number or something. That question was brought up to one of the groups, hey, can you put that in the terms of general plan? And they were kind of like, no. |
| 02:35:45.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:35:45.25 | Mayor Burns | But meanwhile, there was no comment from the groups that could put that into contextual And so I'm hoping at some point we get all this information from people saying this is what the city should look like at some point with these items. But that somebody's going to say, and here's how it fits into a general plan, and here's what you guys should consider. And I know that's coming, but there was a lot to say for a committee to kind of. to do that. |
| 02:36:11.87 | Lily Whalen | And in the fall, the M group will be, there's a series of meetings scheduled where the M group will be going through element by element, taking all the information that they've gained and kind of outlining each element with putting them in the context of programs and policies. |
| 02:36:28.12 | Mayor Burns | It's a lot now. I mean, we've been, they've been hearing stuff for... |
| 02:36:33.89 | Jill Hoffman | Six months. |
| 02:36:34.90 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:36:35.02 | Jill Hoffman | more. |
| 02:36:36.82 | Mayor Burns | Well, I thought, again, I thought from all the various committees, everybody's just brought in a lot of good, a lot of content, a lot of stuff. |
| 02:36:46.04 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Mayor, for attending our last meeting. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. You haven't mentioned CEQA. Are we on track with CEQA and with preparation of the EIR? Are we going to be doing that simultaneously with some of these other meetings? What has been the decision on that process? |
| 02:37:02.56 | Lily Whalen | So M group is waiting until the Marinship workshop happens and September happens so they have direction on the alternatives with regard to the Marinship. And then there'll be a scoping meeting that starts the CEQA process right after that point. and the EIR work wouldn't start at that point. |
| 02:37:20.51 | Jill Hoffman | For future timelines, can you include the CEQA process so that we have certainty that that will be, that will, that that EIR will be published, reviewed, whatever mitigation That that is just happening contemporaneously with our other work. |
| 02:37:42.06 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Alice, do you have any public comment? See, now we're getting to the point where you just call on the public. You did. Thank you. Appreciate that. Closing public comment. Any other comments for Lily on this file and receive? Thank you, Lily. Thank you. Good seeing you. Next up on our business items, 7D. |
| 02:38:05.30 | Jill Hoffman | We are only seven minutes behind. |
| 02:38:06.21 | Mayor Burns | We are catching up. And this might even go quicker. Dorothy E. Gibson, 2010, Trust Bequest to the City. Mary Wagner. |
| 02:38:16.27 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the City Council. The City has been formally notified that it is the beneficiary of a generous bequest from Dorothy Gibson. She specifically left her home at 429 1⁄2 Johnson Street to the City for the explicit purpose of being used to provide moderate and low-income housing for one or more full-time employees of the City of Sausalito, including employees of the City's police and fire departments the city has until September 12th to make a decision to accept the bequest if the city chooses not to accept the bequest the Golden Gate Council of American Youth Hostels Inc is the next entity who would be in line to receive the property We did obtain a preliminary title insurance report to see what the status of the property was. There are no recorded liens against the property. We also had Kenneth and Henry, your building inspector, go out and meet with Heidi Snowden, the trustee of the trust, to do a walkthrough of the property. He sent me some kind of bullet point notes about the property, but indicated that in the event the city accepted the gift and wanted to use it for housing, there's probably some work that would need to be done, particularly things like electrical and plumbing. So you'll notice in the financial impact section of the report, I indicated while there's no impact to the city financially to accept the bequest, there may be some impact to actually make improvements to the property. So tonight we're just looking for your direction on any additional information that would be helpful to you to make this decision and also see if anybody wants to reach out through staff to the trustee to go and visit the property. I think that would be appropriate as well. So it's a pretty brief item for you tonight, and I'm happy to answer any questions. |
| 02:40:20.30 | Councilmember Hoffman | Um, I'm super excited about this. What a generous, wonderful thing to be given to the city of Sausalito and specifically the people that work here. in Sausalito. enthusiastically I support accepting the gift. Is there a timeline when we have to? September 12th. |
| 02:40:41.12 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:40:41.14 | Councilmember Hoffman | Oh, sorry. |
| 02:40:41.16 | Mary Wagner | Oh, sorry. Okay. There's a statutory time frame in which you have to accept it. It's September 12th. So the plan would be to return with whatever additional information the council directs tonight and then put it on your agenda for action on February. |
| 02:40:47.28 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:47.40 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:40:47.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:40:47.50 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:40:55.18 | Mary Wagner | August 27th. |
| 02:40:56.65 | Councilmember Hoffman | Great. I think, yes, and I'd also like to visit the site, and I'd also like to... Reach out to Various groups or nonprofit groups that focus on affordable housing and see if they'd like to partner with us to do some of the basic repairs that need to be done and possibly making as many units out of the house as within the footprint of the current footprint of the house. Obviously, Rotary Housing comes to mind, but I think there are other private people that would want to help and partner with that. I think it's a wonderful thing that has been given to our city. Of course, there are things that we have to work through and how to manage it, but I think it's great. And thanks so much to Dorothy and to... Leave it to us. |
| 02:41:45.50 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I was actually, I was going to say all of those points. So thank you. What zoning district is it in? Do we know that? Is R2.5? Okay. So, and it was a single family home? |
| 02:42:01.75 | Mayor Burns | Well, and it was a single family home. hit three out of the side of the need and tried on the offensive |
| 02:42:06.39 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, okay. And is it a single family home? |
| 02:42:11.03 | Mary Wagner | That's my understanding, yes. |
| 02:42:12.01 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, because the logical thing would be to convert it into a duplex if we could find the money to do so. It's very, very small. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. Anybody know the square footage? 900? Okay. |
| 02:42:17.93 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY IS NOT ABLE TO |
| 02:42:18.00 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:42:18.02 | Mary Wagner | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:42:18.26 | Jill Hoffman | Do so. It's very, very small. Oh, really? |
| 02:42:20.94 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. square footage? Yeah, once a day. 900? Okay. Well, thanks. |
| 02:42:26.22 | Unknown | that. |
| 02:42:26.42 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | you |
| 02:42:26.52 | Mary Wagner | Thank you. |
| 02:42:26.64 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 02:42:27.57 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:42:28.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:42:28.57 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 02:42:28.62 | Mary Wagner | That was part of the information Kenneth sent. Let me see if I can find that for you. |
| 02:42:31.69 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, yeah. So very generous. I think we would find that we would find folks who would donate to actually relieve the city of the burden of the repairs that need to be done before it could be rented. I feel pretty confident about that as well. So that's great. I see absolutely no reason that we wouldn't accept it. |
| 02:42:56.87 | Jill Hoffman | So just legally, Mary, it is to be used to provide moderate to low income housing for one or more full time employees of the city of Sausalito. So if we were to accept it, I would like to know legally, would we accept it? pursuant to the imposition of a deed restriction because even at 900 square feet, That is not affordable. That is that we had to decrease the size of our accessory dwelling units in order to ensure that they would fall within the affordable category. In Mill Valley, in Sausalito, we were worried that even at 750 square feet, |
| 02:43:37.57 | Councilmember Withey | You mean the technical definition by the state? |
| 02:43:39.16 | Jill Hoffman | The technical definition by the state. So the state, we adopted an ADU policy at 700 or 750 and the state increased it to 1,000. So we had to adopt a junior ADU policy to maintain affordability. So I'd like to know legally how we would carry out this Um... condition. that has been placed on the donation. |
| 02:44:03.47 | Mary Wagner | So two things to respond to that. I did contact the attorney for the trust and ask the question of how they see implementation of this, should the city choose to accept it. He indicated he didn't envision a deed restriction, but that it would be enforced through just kind of community. I'm just reiterating the conversation. I also included in your packet what was included as part of the discussions, I believe, on the housing element, the information from the state about those very calculations you're talking about. So the ADUJ-ADU was more of a conceptual what is affordable. If we're renting it to someone for compliance with state affordability, you have to look at income, family size, and then determine what the appropriate costs are for rental or for acquisition for housing. So it's going to be driven by actual salary numbers. We can certainly run some of that for you based on what the city's current salaries are. Exactly. Maybe we'll look at police and other types of positions and what would qualify as moderate income. |
| 02:45:11.95 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah. I would really want to know how many. I mean, if we're going to accept it, we need to fill it. It's the deed. The restriction is very restricted, actually. city full-time city employees and they have to make less than $82,000 and for |
| 02:45:25.84 | Katie Faulkner | and |
| 02:45:30.88 | Councilmember Withey | the state calculations that will include any other, you know, any other income that they have, benefits. You know, so do we have full-time employees at enough numbers that we will be able to keep this, dwelling full. And if we can, I think it's obviously such a generous gift, but if in practice we're gonna have trouble meeting this requirement, then I think we need to know that ahead of time. |
| 02:45:52.15 | Katie Faulkner | Yeah. |
| 02:45:52.20 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:45:52.26 | Katie Faulkner | Thank you. |
| 02:46:03.82 | Mayor Burns | And I was already working on that we're not gonna have anybody, or we may find two people that fit into the category that qualify for that. When we, no, but people that, I don't know, maybe there's five. it's very it's very slim number that's going up next month When we look at the second option, a hostel, that's not allowed use. So they're kind of not really considered a viable second option. At what point does probate, yeah? |
| 02:46:40.54 | Mary Wagner | Sorry, just to respond to that. So there's no restriction that I'm aware of on the hostel's use of it, so they could accept it and potentially sell it. So they're not limited in the same way that the city is limited to provide housing or to even utilize it as a hostel. And then they would sell it. |
| 02:46:53.05 | Unknown | to provide housing or to even utilize it. AND THEN THEY WERE. you |
| 02:46:57.86 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:46:57.96 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:46:58.03 | Mayor Burns | Okay. |
| 02:46:58.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:58.13 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:46:58.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:58.16 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. short of that I'll still ask my question because it might still have to remember Because this was done so long ago and might not be relevant to the wishes of Dorothy, which is to provide affordable housing, would a probate court look at restructuring that modification to allow the city to still perform her wishes within a more appropriate context? |
| 02:47:25.11 | Mary Wagner | So interesting question. Because this is a trust, it doesn't go through probate. The wishes of the original creator of the trust are carried out by the trustee of the trust, who is Heidi Snowden. |
| 02:47:37.82 | Mayor Burns | Okay, so then that probably does alleviate that the court's going to be, or anybody's going to be looking at how we do deed restriction. |
| 02:47:44.67 | Jill Hoffman | Well, the purpose of a deed restriction is to ensure that the intention of the bequest is carried out after we're no longer on the council, the trustee has completed their duties and and our successors have forgotten or never knew about the intentions of Dorothy. So that's the purpose of the deed restriction. I get the purpose. |
| 02:48:08.85 | Unknown | I get it. |
| 02:48:09.41 | Mary Wagner | So sorry to interrupt. I think there's kind of two points of deed restriction question. The grant deed would very likely include this exact language. This property is hereby granted to the city of Sausalito for the purpose of blank, exactly what it says in the trust. Whether or not there's an income restriction, I don't believe that that is a requirement. |
| 02:48:31.94 | Jill Hoffman | And then my next question had to do with the city's administration of this. you know who is so it's deeded for the city to be used to provide moderate so does that mean the city is responsible for maintaining keeping the property maintained paying property taxes in other words or are those born by the person living there. So I'd like an analysis from the staff of what the expense to the city would be to administer this bequest, including Um, you know, the administration of successive tenants, any maintenance of the property, and other expenses relating to the oversight. of that home. |
| 02:49:29.02 | Councilmember Hoffman | you |
| 02:49:32.70 | Councilmember Hoffman | I was just gonna say that sounds like a committee of some kind. Or a task force to try to. and sit down. figure out how we want to administer that, but I'm happy to have staff do it. |
| 02:49:46.08 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I would have thought staff is capable of figuring that one out. |
| 02:49:50.30 | Mayor Burns | Or we can give it to the mudslide disaster |
| 02:49:54.07 | Mary Wagner | but we know who to reach out to if we need some help. |
| 02:49:54.27 | Councilmember Withey | No. Yeah. Thank you. And just, I mean, following up on that, you know, that does include in this chart, if we are gonna kind of use currently acceptable definitions of moderate and low income, the city employee can be charged you know up to 2,490. you know, a single person, dollars a month. |
| 02:50:19.83 | Mayor Burns | goes moderate. |
| 02:50:20.93 | Councilmember Withey | with their moderate income. I mean, so the city would potentially be getting income that even if you know, they're not paying the property tax, we can use that money. to pay property tax. Right. |
| 02:50:33.82 | Councilmember Hoffman | Right, I assumed they would pay rent. |
| 02:50:35.97 | Jill Hoffman | you |
| 02:50:36.02 | Councilmember Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:50:36.12 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:50:36.24 | Councilmember Hoffman | Oh, absolutely. |
| 02:50:36.27 | Councilmember Withey | Absolutely. |
| 02:50:36.71 | Jill Hoffman | It is because it's to provide moderate to low income housing. So the rent would be within those parameters. |
| 02:50:40.59 | Councilmember Withey | Thank you. Yeah. It would be income parameters. I was just saying in addition to expenses, we should also consider income. Correct. So net. Correct. |
| 02:50:48.15 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I mean, that's a pretty wide band, moderate to low income. Moderate, I mean, moderates, you know, for Marine County is a fairly big number. |
| 02:50:52.39 | Councilmember Withey | I thought that was great. |
| 02:50:53.03 | Katie Faulkner | it. |
| 02:50:54.95 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah. |
| 02:50:59.10 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:50:59.17 | Unknown | I know. |
| 02:50:59.42 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:51:02.71 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:51:02.73 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:51:02.78 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:51:02.82 | Adam Politzer | Can I, Mr. Mayor, if I can just add, you know, we, obviously the city has a property manager, so all of the city's property, you know, is managed, including seeking tenants, working with public works on maintenance. And then there are some examples, the city of Tiburon, I think they may have seven units that are available for their employees that's managed by the city. And then I know the city of Cormorantia also has at least one unit. So there are some folks that we can reach out to to look at how they manage a similar program for their employees. |
| 02:51:02.85 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I love you. |
| 02:51:03.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:51:03.12 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:51:38.44 | Mayor Burns | So I think the direction is to, oh yeah, is there a public comment? Any public comment from Alice or any of the other public that's here? Seeing none, we'll close public comment. I think we're all in agreement, right? We want this. |
| 02:51:50.91 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:51:52.51 | Mayor Burns | That's the direction anymore any specific |
| 02:51:56.97 | Mary Wagner | No, thank you. I've got that, and we'll bring it back to you with that information for your consideration in August. |
| 02:51:57.35 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:51:57.37 | Mayor Burns | . |
| 02:51:57.46 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:52:02.18 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. And then we'll confirm our direction with the financial backing. |
| 02:52:05.74 | Mayor Burns | Yeah. Yeah. Fine, yeah. |
| 02:52:11.21 | Mayor Burns | Great, seeing that item is done, we are on to City manager report. Hey, take your time, Adam. We're good. work. She was like, oh, I'm sorry. |
| 02:52:19.87 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:52:19.90 | Mayor Burns | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:52:19.97 | Adam Politzer | ahead of time. I'm going to let you enjoy an early evening. I'm happy to answer any questions from the council. |
| 02:52:21.23 | Mayor Burns | I'm going to let you know. |
| 02:52:27.00 | Mayor Burns | I will then state thank you again for your update on Herbie and all the time you've been spending on our city treasurer. I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE Appointments to boards. Is there any public comment on items eight through E through C, E, B through E, seeing none. Appointments to boards, commissions, and committees. |
| 02:52:55.27 | Mayor Burns | You might wanna go to commercial break when I do this. Um, make sure I have the right word on my phone. What are you? No, these are. |
| 02:53:08.97 | Mary Wagner | No, he's kidding. Good Lord. |
| 02:53:17.90 | Jill Hoffman | The staff reports are pretty clear. |
| 02:53:19.50 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, so we just want to make sure that I'm reading this part right. We have appointment to the Sustainability Commission. We heard from three people tonight, Taylor Orr, Lauren Wiley, Teresa Mock, and we had previously interviewed Randy Brown in February. We have one position to fill on sustainability. |
| 02:53:46.76 | Mayor Burns | Are we going to do the, okay. |
| 02:53:51.80 | Mayor Burns | I WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE |
| 02:53:53.10 | Councilmember Withey | So there's one full time member and one alternate. |
| 02:53:56.32 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:53:57.59 | Jill Hoffman | And we also have to accept a resignation and reappoint Robin. |
| 02:54:01.61 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:54:05.15 | Mayor Burns | So I'm first gonna ask for a motion to accept the resignation. |
| 02:54:07.93 | Jill Hoffman | So moved. you |
| 02:54:08.73 | Councilmember Withey | Second. |
| 02:54:09.47 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Aye. Aye. Reappoint Robin Parvin. So moved. |
| 02:54:13.06 | Councilmember Withey | So moved. Second. |
| 02:54:14.90 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? |
| 02:54:15.63 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:54:19.43 | Mayor Burns | All right, I am going to make a nomination for the position for Lauren Wiley. |
| 02:54:28.66 | Jill Hoffman | For the full time member. For the full time position. |
| 02:54:30.19 | Mayor Burns | Full-time position. All in favor? Aye. Or any other nominations? |
| 02:54:34.83 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:54:34.92 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:54:34.97 | Jill Hoffman | Aye. |
| 02:54:35.59 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:54:40.03 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 02:54:43.37 | Mayor Burns | Any other nominations, closing nominations? All in favor? Aye. Aye. |
| 02:54:46.36 | Unknown | Aye. |
| 02:54:48.65 | Mayor Burns | So Lauren Wiley is on 5-0. |
| 02:54:54.48 | Unknown | and then the alternate. |
| 02:55:00.67 | Mayor Burns | Serge, have we received any other applications since this has gone in? |
| 02:55:08.18 | Councilmember Withey | You know, I'm interested in hearing other council members' opinions. I know some members of the Sustainability Commission were still in the process of reaching out to folks to see who might be interested. So one option would be to wait on the alternate or we could move forward with one of the existing candidates. |
| 02:55:27.95 | Jill Hoffman | I was just very impressed with Taylor Orr, who's a very young woman who was very involved with sustainability in college. And I would love to see us start to populate some of our boards and commissions with some of our younger folks in town. |
| 02:55:33.83 | Councilmember Withey | And I would like to thank you for that. |
| 02:55:40.63 | Councilmember Withey | Yeah, I'd support that. |
| 02:55:42.13 | Mayor Burns | I nominate Taylor Orr. for the alternate position. Are there any other nominations? I've seen none. All in favor of Taylor Orr for the alternate? Aye. |
| 02:55:51.43 | Unknown | Hi. |
| 02:55:52.63 | Mayor Burns | you Taylor passes 5-0. |
| 02:56:04.47 | Mayor Burns | We also looked at Historic Preservation Commission tonight. We have... |
| 02:56:13.13 | Mayor Burns | A One opening on that commission, replacing Heather Wiles. We heard from tonight Sean Mercer, Angela Wildman, and Elizabeth Conlon. This is a little harder for me. I nominate Angela Wildman for the position on historic preservation. Are there any other nominations? |
| 02:56:45.97 | Mayor Burns | Seeing none, second on Angela. All in favor? |
| 02:56:50.76 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:56:50.95 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:56:50.98 | Jill Hoffman | you Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.11 | Mayor Burns | Aye. |
| 02:56:51.49 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.55 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.57 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.59 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:56:51.71 | Mayor Burns | Yeah. So Angela Wildman assigned to Historic Preservation Commission. Parks and Rec Commission, we have received Thank you. |
| 02:57:06.81 | Mayor Burns | We have not received the. We don't receive it. We just, we've received that he will not be reappointed. Jamie does not, he stated in writing he's not going to be reappointed, correct? Because we received something from John and Raylene that they were, but we confirmed that Jamie is not. seeking reappointment to their term. |
| 02:57:29.78 | Councilmember Withey | This says in our staff report, it says that all have asked to be reappointed to a second term, all three. |
| 02:57:37.39 | City Clerk | The only person who's not been able to do a second term is Bradley O'Brien. |
| 02:57:44.81 | Mayor Burns | Okay, that was the one. So Bradley did say he was not, that's what I meant. Bradley was not, okay. |
| 02:57:51.27 | Jill Hoffman | So do you want me to move to reappoint three members? |
| 02:57:52.66 | Mayor Burns | So, |
| 02:57:59.61 | Mayor Burns | to reappoint all three? |
| 02:58:00.61 | Jill Hoffman | I move we reappoint Jamie Bruning-Miles, John A. Lama, and Raylene R. Gorham. |
| 02:58:05.87 | Lily Whalen | Second. |
| 02:58:06.50 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? Aye. So Jamie, John and Elaine retain their next term and now to replace. |
| 02:58:07.32 | Jill Hoffman | Bye. |
| 02:58:07.64 | Lily Whalen | I'm not sure. |
| 02:58:07.78 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:58:07.81 | Lily Whalen | Thank you. |
| 02:58:07.93 | Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:58:15.10 | Mayor Burns | Bradley O'Brien. We had one interview specific to tonight. That was Donya Gilmore. We previously heard from both Ruthie Heneda and Randy Brown. AND I THINK IT'S A |
| 02:58:35.39 | Mayor Burns | I will nominate Ruthie Hineda. Is there any other nominations? |
| 02:58:49.26 | Mayor Burns | Seeing none, second on Ruthie. |
| 02:58:51.28 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 02:58:52.34 | Mayor Burns | All in favor of putting Ruthie Haneda on Park and Rec Commission? Aye. Aye. That passes five to zero. |
| 02:58:58.20 | Unknown | I. |
| 02:59:06.66 | Mayor Burns | Employments to the library trustees, we don't have, okay. |
| 02:59:16.86 | Mayor Burns | We're going to reappoint one, two, three, four. |
| 02:59:21.86 | Councilmember Withey | So moved. |
| 02:59:24.17 | Mayor Burns | and that is Jean Walker Harvey, Nora Sawyer, Robert Woodrum, and Linda Samuels. |
| 02:59:29.56 | Jill Hoffman | To move Linda Samuels from the alternate to the full status. |
| 02:59:31.29 | Mayor Burns | to the full status. Inuver to the status, correct. |
| 02:59:33.59 | Jill Hoffman | Second. |
| 02:59:34.50 | Mayor Burns | All in favor? |
| 02:59:34.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:35.14 | Mayor Burns | you I. |
| 02:59:35.46 | Jill Hoffman | THE FAMILY. |
| 02:59:38.72 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:38.74 | Mayor Burns | that. |
| 02:59:38.97 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 02:59:39.04 | Mayor Burns | This is 5-0. |
| 02:59:44.05 | Mayor Burns | Yes, Ray. |
| 02:59:46.78 | Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I think. it would be helpful to get a redo, a list of all the Thank you. folks who are on the various boards commissions and in particular who's terming out? and i just my gut says that someone's going to turn out on the planning commission So, um, We might want to start thinking about that. |
| 03:00:17.16 | Jill Hoffman | And I'd also like to share with Respect to boards and commissions the chair of the historic preservation committee urged that we be vigilant in selecting folks with background in that specific area in historic preservation. and other technicalities relating to their subject matter to ensure that they have a qualified team for performing their work. |
| 03:00:50.64 | Mayor Burns | And I think we have. |
| 03:00:53.09 | Councilmember Hoffman | Especially for Historic Landmark Board and for Planning Commission. Do we have anything on our website that sort of lists criteria or sort of what we're looking for for those appointments? That might be helpful. I mean, I don't know because I haven't sat on those, but from the chairs of both of those committees, it might be nice to get a list of This is sort of the scope of who we're looking for. These are the skills that are necessary to be able to do this job in a meaningful manner. this volunteer job. and look at it. |
| 03:01:20.66 | Councilmember Withey | I mean, we don't, for those two bodies, the Historic Preservation Commission and the Planning Commission, we don't have slots, like some places have, you know, an architect, or an engineer, or a |
| 03:01:32.56 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 03:01:35.73 | Councilmember Withey | other things, so we don't have that. So it would need to be pretty general. But I think there is a long list of possible skill sets that are helpful in either of those. |
| 03:01:41.40 | Councilmember Hoffman | But again, |
| 03:01:47.32 | Councilmember Hoffman | I think we look at that too. When we're selecting for a planning commission, we look at it and say, okay, we have an architect. We have two architects, now we need a planner. Or a lawyer. But yeah. |
| 03:01:51.22 | Councilmember Withey | We look at it and say, okay, we have an architecture. |
| 03:01:53.35 | Katie Faulkner | like, wait, wait, wait, wait, |
| 03:01:53.68 | Councilmember Withey | TODAY. Or a lawyer. But yeah. I mean, to that point, I would actually also like to consider redoing our application I mean, it's very long, but the relevant information is very sparse. And I would like to encourage people, in addition to why do you wanna be on this commission, to really list relevant professional certifications or backgrounds that will actually qualify them. |
| 03:02:19.74 | Mayor Burns | We're talking about to take under advisement, not to make it a prerequisite, correct? No. Great, because we have none for our job. |
| 03:02:22.44 | Councilmember Withey | No. |
| 03:02:27.72 | Mayor Burns | So I really hate to put too much on the commissions. |
| 03:02:29.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:02:29.16 | Jill Hoffman | We don't know. Too much on the commissions. That's not necessarily true. Obviously, the residents evaluate us in some fashion, so. It's not a popularity contest, I would say. |
| 03:02:40.93 | Mayor Burns | So, Serge, so an update of some kind. I know we also have openings still on CSDP. |
| 03:02:45.84 | Jean Walker Harvey | Thank you. |
| 03:02:45.90 | Unknown | you |
| 03:02:45.95 | Jean Walker Harvey | Still. Yeah. |
| 03:02:47.33 | Unknown | I would have. |
| 03:02:49.30 | Mayor Burns | so we have a few great thank you for that future agenda items I'm gonna throw out one because I've been remissed to do this we have to do a resolution for the League of California voting delegate for the October meeting so we need to do that on the 20 August 27th meeting and I have that I can get it to however we're gonna put it on there but we need to then vote on that so voting delegate for the league, anything else? |
| 03:03:20.25 | Jill Hoffman | the Paul Dynes GPAC thing. |
| 03:03:21.97 | Mayor Burns | I had that on there, and we're going to push that for the GPAC tomorrow night. |
| 03:03:29.03 | Mayor Burns | Any other items? We have five minutes to chat about them if you'd like. see no other future agenda items any other reports of significance seeing none we are adjourned 950 |
| 03:03:44.79 | Jill Hoffman | Woohoo! I think that's a record. |
| 03:03:49.65 | Jill Hoffman | Well done. you |
Erin Wilson — In Favor: Notes city's COLA offer increased to 2.5%, but 12 of 28 SEIU positions would receive zero COLA. Criticizes wage comparisons to cities like Novato due to cost of living differences. States library positions would receive no COLA, impacting retention. ▶ 📄
Kenneth Henry — In Favor: Building inspector who received zero COLA for three years. Argues his role involves more responsibilities than a typical inspector and that Novato is not a comparable city. Emphasizes the need for a fair wage study to retain qualified staff. ▶ 📄
Pat Quasco — In Favor: Discusses extensive training required for sewer division staff and high turnover due to low compensation. Warns of risks to aging infrastructure. Supports Kenneth Henry, calling him the best inspector in the county. ▶ 📄
Katie Faulkner — In Favor: Associate planner describing high turnover in Community Development Department, with 3 of 7 positions filled by temporary workers. Highlights loss of institutional knowledge and inefficiencies, urging council to consider compensation's impact on retention. ▶ 📄
Bryant Ho — In Favor: Expresses fear of losing more colleagues due to low compensation. Asks council to support the SEIU worker proposal to improve retention and morale. ▶ 📄
Julie Ben-Gini — In Favor: Shares personal story of sacrificing living in a high-crime area to afford working for the city. Loves her job and asks for fair compensation to continue serving. ▶ 📄
Jean Walker Harvey — In Favor: Resident and Library Board of Trustees chair praising library staff's dedication and programs. Urges council to value and compensate staff fairly given the high cost of living. ▶ 📄