| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:06.04 | Unknown | Oh, and we got your new one, right? You got me a new one. OK. Sure. Okay, I'll grab that. |
| 00:00:12.97 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, you could have worked with something else, I will. |
| 00:00:15.05 | Unknown | It was Lee Williams. |
| 00:00:15.07 | Unknown | I'm going to tell you that the meetings are |
| 00:00:16.03 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:00:16.21 | Unknown | uh, |
| 00:00:16.55 | Mayor Burns | So, please. you |
| 00:00:17.78 | Unknown | So, okay, I'll bring it back. |
| 00:00:18.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:18.96 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:00:19.76 | Unknown | guys. |
| 00:00:20.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:20.11 | Unknown | Absolutely. |
| 00:00:20.80 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:20.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:00:29.73 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:00:30.93 | Unknown | Thank you. Thanks. |
| 00:00:33.75 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:00:33.97 | Unknown | Hello. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. |
| 00:00:36.38 | Serge | you And then you get like two emails per day. |
| 00:00:40.06 | Unknown | that made no sense to try. |
| 00:01:01.96 | Unknown | literally |
| 00:01:06.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:06.10 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:06.11 | Serge | Hello. Hi, Susan. Good morning. Morning, Serge. Hi. You're in speaker now. |
| 00:01:09.35 | Unknown | It's a good one. |
| 00:01:09.54 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:01:09.61 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 00:01:09.86 | Unknown | Thank you. Okay. |
| 00:01:17.13 | Serge | We haven't started yet, so give us a couple more minutes. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:01:30.55 | Serge | FUN. Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.51 | Serge | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.54 | Serge | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:31.61 | Serge | in the club. |
| 00:01:31.76 | Unknown | I love it. |
| 00:01:32.07 | Serge | Thank you. |
| 00:01:32.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:32.37 | Serge | Thank you. |
| 00:01:32.45 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. you Thank you. |
| 00:01:34.04 | Serge | you |
| 00:01:35.97 | Unknown | you |
| 00:01:43.49 | Serge | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:02:19.91 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 00:02:33.53 | Unknown | Yeah, so. |
| 00:02:41.25 | Serge | It is. Yeah. I'm sorry. |
| 00:03:03.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:03:37.06 | Unknown | Thank you. It's past eight minutes, that comes slowly. |
| 00:03:47.51 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:03:50.22 | Unknown | Perfect kiss, I have night. You're in my month now reports to by you. |
| 00:03:54.97 | Mayor Burns | and finish by 10. |
| 00:03:56.16 | Unknown | All right. |
| 00:03:56.67 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:03:56.97 | John Rohrbacher | Thank you. |
| 00:04:00.28 | Mayor Burns | All right, good morning. We're going to call this special city council meeting to order. It is Friday, November 1st, and it is 8.30 AM. Serge, will you take a roll call, please? |
| 00:04:11.54 | Serge | Councilmember Cooks. Thank you. |
| 00:04:12.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:12.99 | Mayor Burns | All right. |
| 00:04:13.06 | Serge | Thank you. |
| 00:04:13.07 | Unknown | you |
| 00:04:13.48 | Serge | Council member Raley? Councilmember Withey? Yep. Vice Mayor Cleveland Knowles. Thank you. |
| 00:04:20.88 | Mayor Burns | The mayor burns. given that we have a special meeting and I'm going to forego the pledge and do approval of agenda. |
| 00:04:28.87 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:28.88 | Mayor Burns | you |
| 00:04:29.04 | Unknown | So moved. |
| 00:04:30.01 | Mayor Burns | Second. All in favor. |
| 00:04:31.57 | Unknown | I. |
| 00:04:31.84 | Mayor Burns | I'm sorry. Bye. I'm going to go with that as 5-0. So we have one business item today and it is the item of the public safety shut off local emergency resolution ratifying the city manager to of the existence of a local emergency. John Rohrbacher is going to present, and I know we have public comment, or may have public comment, we'll open that up after the presentation. Chief. I'll go. |
| 00:05:09.62 | John Rohrbacher | Good morning everybody John Moorbacher your chief of police before I start my presentation I just wanted to Say boy did we have a lot of fun last night That's not on the agenda tonight, but Halloween downtown. We had a lot of people downtown so Anyways, okay back back to our public safety power shutoff proclamation |
| 00:05:31.25 | Unknown | you |
| 00:05:35.74 | John Rohrbacher | So I just developed some slides. It's just a quick timeline so that we are making a record of what happened. And then we'll be asking for you to extend the local emergency for the next 60 days. So our story started on the 23rd. It actually was really, think about that, that's just a week and a day ago, but it sure seems like longer. we were advised about the red flag It actually was really, think about that, that's just a week and a day ago, but it sure seems like longer. We were advised about the red flag alerts by PG&E and that we should be thinking about preparations for the public safety power shutoff, which we as an entire group of city employees started to do. Then on the 25th, the PG&E said that it was going to happen. We were going to have a public safety power shutoff the combination of things that that occur to make them feel that's necessary course was weather it is severe high winds low humidity really high temperatures and some fires that already started by then And so the next day, because of that, then our Marin County Office of Emergency Services, which is our operational area, Emergency Operations Center and city staff we began a partial activation of the Emergency Operations Center here in Sausalito So what that means for us by the way is we don't actually have to go staff that With people then open up the building itself at the fire station when we do a partial activation We call that in monitoring mode. We have web connection now called web EOC or web emergency operations center So we're able to do that remote from the police department itself, which is far more convenient, but it actually tracks every single thing that we do as a city and, again, helps us prepare a better record. But by 5.30 that evening, power started going off all throughout Brynn County and, of course, many other counties, 38 as a matter of fact, of fact 38 counties but by about 530 we had zero power in Sausalito |
| 00:07:49.06 | John Rohrbacher | And that, just skipping over the events of the weekend itself, by the morning of the 28th, our city manager, Adam Pulitzer, issued the proclamation of a local emergency. And so that's good for a seven-day period until brought to you, our elected officials, for ratification. So interesting that very same day, we get an all clear from PG&E saying, things are good, we're going to start putting power back on. They say the window is 24 to 48 hours. Some places, not in Sausalito, but some places started getting power fairly soon. We were on that far end of that 48 hour scale. So by the 29th, electricity is restored to Sausalito. I use the word majority because when we were looking at the last report from PG&E that day, there was actually two connections in Sausalito someplace that didn't get connected when everybody else was done. But that was incremental. But we went to... Sleep that night with two people. We don't know who they are. We don't know which customers they were But there was actually two connections left over and then by the next morning they were connected So we, you know, we're, we're, concerned about the public safety power shutoff and what happened and that if it's going to happen again, And there's a lot of conversation that we're going to be having about that in follow-up. There's certainly going to be after-action reports and, you know, more statistics. Something we'll bring back to you later about some numbers, some things that happened here for you to consider because there's action that still needs to be taken. And... But in this particular case, we were thinking we were going to have, as soon as power went back on, that they were going to just go ahead and turn it right back off. And it was that kind of back and forth, back and forth for a couple of days that actually was pretty aggravating in order to be able to serve our community and tell them what was going on. Frankly, we didn't know either. Thank you. So just as a background here, it's the California government code section 8630 that allows and authorizes our city manager acting in his role as the emergency operations, you know, authority to declare the local proclamation and that's included as part of your package where he in fact did so. And then there's actually a significant amount of wording in 8558C of the government code describing the local emergency. And it includes, of course, sudden and severe energy shortage. And I think that we would all agree that's what happened. So I wanted to point out one more thing, too, that as a result of some of what's going on, the governor had declared that he was going to Help out some and this is not retroactive money by the way, but he's has a 75 million dollar program For state local governments to impact the damage, you know to mitigate what happens going forward And so we intend to participate in that process And the governor's earmark some of that money, so it's not necessarily competitive But it's done by area area population like some of the bigger cities are getting like a million dollars this small somewhat smaller big cities are in line for a half a million and I believe that in our local area we are in for in Marin County we're at a minimum of $150,000 to apply for and so we'll be working together as a team here as La Cita to do just that |
| 00:11:52.19 | John Rohrbacher | So before I put up the last slide asking for you to approve the resolution, I wanted to take again a little bit of your time to point out, I just have three photos here that Abbott was kind enough to supply to me. One of the things that happens in these kind of events is we hope for is that people can count on us And there's a strong sense of community here in Sausalito. All of you as residents surely know that. but the city hall became the community center for people and it's a really vital role and there's a lot of energy to be felt from that and every single city employee in in sausalito had some role in making that community opportunity happen this is right here in this room um every electrical outlet occupied and then some. This is amazing photos. This is one from the library, looking down in the |
| 00:12:50.78 | Unknown | . |
| 00:12:55.91 | John Rohrbacher | And then another one from the ground floor And so that to me says a lot. I know it's not part of the official presentation, but I couldn't let it go. There's just too much to be captured by those moments. So thank you for indulging me for that. So what we really need from you now is to adopt a resolution that ratifies and modifies if you choose to, the proclamation of a local emergency. The modification would only be as if you were to not want it to go its full 60 days. But instead, we are asking you just to ratify it and have it run its full 60 days. But if we feel it needs to be turned off sooner, we'll come back to you with that. |
| 00:13:38.65 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:41.86 | John Rohrbacher | So I'm prepared to take any of your questions. |
| 00:13:44.04 | Mayor Burns | Thank you, Chief. Any questions for the Chief to this point? Yeah. |
| 00:13:48.59 | Unknown | One comment, first off, I do want to thank the city staff for doing an excellent job. Those photos tell a lot, I think it's great for the community. And then the roll out of that and pull off a wonderful Halloween, so thanks to the staff who organized all that. I'm curious, how did our seniors do during this? Were there any issues with seniors with medical conditions? And second question, I'll just now that you finish, I'll be finished. |
| 00:14:09.84 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:14:13.15 | Unknown | Any learnings after four days, what we would need to do to prepare for like a year from now if this were to happen again? You don't have to answer that maybe, but I'd like to learn at some point. |
| 00:14:24.12 | John Rohrbacher | Yes, so we have to go backwards on that. We actually have a we've learned a lot and have a lot to take you know, from lessons on this going forward, I think we did fine, but it was a pretty crummy week for people. We prepared as best as we thought we could. We're happy to report that we didn't suffer any crimes that occurred in Sausalito as a result, and then the same for you know, other kind of damage, because we had severe winds that occurred here during that same time period. You know, we did have 20 boats break loose in Richardson Bay, and then because of the wind direction, which was the opposite of what it usually is, they all came into Slausita water, so, There's a lot that was happening at the same time. In terms of your question about our seniors, we're very concerned. I'm There's multiple layers of programs to address that. We in the police department, we have our R U OK program. And, you know, we are aggressive in encouraging people to sign up for that so that we can check on people. When we were first envisioning that program many, many years ago, we thought of it like if something was going to happen in a particular area or if we knew like power was out and you know, the south end of town. You know, the officers have a All right. mapping log in their patrol cars available to them that will show them how many people have signed up for RUOK in a particular area. in fact, the whole city, but they could go to that area and then start doing individual checks on people in an area affected by that. And that's worked for us very well over several years. But in this case, it was the whole city. And so, you know, everybody I think was on, I guess, a little hypervigilant to try and take care of our seniors. I don't know of any particular case or example to directly answer your question, where you know something bad happened to somebody who got shut in or and and nobody was there to help them I'm hoping that One story won't come forward, but I don't know of any now. |
| 00:16:43.67 | Mayor Burns | Thanks, Chief. I'm going to open up to public comment. If there's any public comment you would like to make, please do. State your name, and then I'll have you fill out a card afterwards, just so that we'll have your full name. But you have no problem. You have three minutes. Take your time. |
| 00:16:59.20 | Unknown | Thank you. So my house, we have a sewer ejection system, and we live at the bottom of a long driveway, and we have a sewage tank that pumps, and a sump pump that pumps it up to the street, and off it goes. And we're a family of four. I have an 8-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter who have been taught to flush the toilet and to wash their hands. And they were very careful not to. And every toilet in our house was full to the brim with urine. But there was a few mix-ups with flushing a few times, which is normal for that age. I called the city of Sausalito on, I believe, the third day of the power outage and I spoke to Kevin McGowan who was very helpful. I also called the permit department building permits and I said I've just made an appointment for Generac to come and set up a permanent generator that would run on natural gas. What kind of permits do I need to do or what do need to know before I purchase one and have it installed to make sure I can get a permit and be in compliance and everything and they said that's fine but there's a noise ordinance and I thought a noise ordinance when there's an emergency like this like this is not something I'm going to use to run my house on a daily basis. This would only kick in when the power cuts off. So that's one issue. I hope that someone can allow those type of generators so we don't have other problems. And I understand noise ordinances, but I think this is a special circumstance. On the fourth day of the power outage, my sewer alarm went off. It just runs on a small 9-volt battery. you And I called Kevin McGowan because I was in a panic. And he sent out, he was very kind. I have so much thanks and gratitude for him. He sent up some non-first responders, but great guys that work in the sewer department here. And they could not hook it up. They took the lid off. I did not have very much room to spare. They went to my neighbor who has the same sump pump and sewer tank system. Hers was starting to come out. I was about to evacuate with my children for fear that someone would accidentally, in the middle of the night, even flush a toilet or |
| 00:19:19.19 | Unknown | accident. |
| 00:19:22.73 | Unknown | let another drop of water go down the drain because I didn't want sewage all over my house. I called Kevin yesterday and I said how many sewer ejection systems are in the city of Sausalito and he didn't know and he said that a lot of the houseboats have them too and I feel very strongly that, you know, you were talking about the elderly earlier and I had a small generator that I took to my approximately 100 year old neighbor and was going into the city and buying her gas to the house warm. I think the elderly need to have backup power. I think people, on medical devices need backup power, and I think people with sewage ejection systems need emergency backup power because I would hate to see the city of Sausalito overrun with sewage. Yeah. |
| 00:20:13.19 | Mayor Burns | Yeah, no, you're completely correct. Thank you. Thank you. you I think that's a big discussion to have, but you're... You're right, and thanks for bringing it to our attention. Appreciate it. Any other public comment? Seeing none, we'll close public comment and bring it up here for comments. |
| 00:20:29.29 | Unknown | I want to echo the thanks from Councilmember Wiley of our first responders. I was very, as someone monitoring our Safe Harbor Program, I was very aware of the issues on Richardson's Bay. So not only were our first responders looking after our residents, they were responding to literal emergencies where people's lives were at stake on Sausalito waters. I met with a resident last night during our Halloween event who let me know that just the opposite of us, Mill Valley preemptively closed their library at 10 AM on the morning of the expected power outage. And so I just want to emphasize how grateful I am for the responsiveness of our city staff who rallied to increase the availability of our public services. And to ensure that all of our residents were taken care of as best we could during these challenging times. So we always make it clear that our priority is to our residents. And so I'm just so very proud of all of our staff and of all of our volunteers and of all of those who collaborated to mitigate the huge impact of this challenging event. |
| 00:21:52.50 | Unknown | I won't repeat that, I fully echo that. what has been said. I came down here several times during the event to see how things were doing down here and it was remarkable. I mean, I think the Chief, I'm glad you did share those photos because they actually show the sense of community and um, In talking to residents, there's pretty much been nothing but positive feedback I've received on the response of the city and its staff. And so that's great. It was fantastic. And, of course, everybody is frustrated, but they weren't frustrated with you guys. They were frustrated with PG&E and the situation. So anyway, well done. Thank you. |
| 00:22:48.98 | Unknown | you I echo those same comments and also I think we should acknowledge we had a number of good merchants that stepped up with their generators and provided service. Joan and I bumped into each other for a much needed coffee one morning at Drivers, so thanks to our local merchants as well. And I think the community in Adam's note when he acknowledged that everyone was in good spirits and collaborating and sharing power. It was great to see and that a lot of that goes to the environment that I think our city staff set up. So thank you. Thanks, Tom. Vice Mayor. |
| 00:23:23.47 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:23:25.06 | Unknown | Yeah, so I think you guys have covered everything in terms of thanks. I mean, it just really is amazing what our city staff was able to accomplish with no and to maintain a great community environment. Council member Riley also just hit on, you know, it was great to have our private businesses, drivers, Molly Stones and others staying open and providing a community service in addition to a lot of much needed supplies for people. I mean, both drivers and mollies were just packed. during these events and they work hard and over time to keep up. So I think that's great. Um, You know, I would just like to say that there's situation is so hard for people and you know, is not a way that communication from PG&E And, um, the you know, just kind of fact that this is supposed to be something that we all just accommodate to. I think we've got to work hard with our state representatives, with the county. and with the governor to come up with some positive next steps to rein in this situation and make it more manageable. |
| 00:24:41.18 | Mayor Burns | Thank you. And then I'll, first before I make comments, I want to ask, Did you get to meet Kevin? McAllen. Any idea? I think you're gonna meet him really soon. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Nice one, you guys. Why did you get that on film? So thank you again for everybody. One comment I want to make is looking forward, and to look forward, I want to look past the two major fires seasons we had in 2017 and 18. The common message, and I remember Mike McGuire, Senator Mike McGuire, saying it over and over again, as well as Jason Weber and many of our fire personnel, this These wind events and these hot winds coming from the northeast in late October when everything's dry and the low humidity, that is a new normal of climate change. And as we've always said for the last ten years, consider climate change. Climate change is here. It's not the future. We keep thinking like, well, what's going to happen? It's here and it's impacting our infrastructure. This, as frustrating and as inconvenient as it was, and I know it was for all of us, and from our cell service providers to our energy provider, we have some obvious infrastructure gaps. But this is what we need to focus on, because climate change, if it really is responsible for the high winds as the senator and everybody else has made in the last couple years, that is our new impact. We don't see that it's going to change in the next few years, but our infrastructure can change. our levees. our anchors, our bridges, our roads, our dams, our power. All that is at risk as this climate changes, and it's not happening in the future, it's happening in the present. So I am so thankful that our community has learned another lesson without tremendous peril. We've learned this with some frustration, but we're going to get better at this as communities, as a state. But for now, I really want to applaud from staff to businesses to our community at large. Job well done, Sausalito. So thank you all, and I'm looking for a motion. |
| 00:26:56.99 | Unknown | I move we adopt a resolution ratifying and modifying the proclamation of a local emergency made by our city manager and the Office of Emergency Services. |
| 00:27:04.76 | Unknown | Second. |
| 00:27:05.21 | Mayor Burns | you All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:27:07.59 | Unknown | I. |
| 00:27:10.00 | Mayor Burns | WENDY ROCKOFF. For the record, that was 5-0, including the satellite of Vice Minister of Cleveland Knowles. That is it, that is the end of our business items. We are going to adjourn into a closed session. And, um, Since we're going to adjourn in, I'll take any public comment on closed session now. Is there any public comment on our closed session item of anticipated litigation pursuant to California Code 54956.9? you Seeing none, we'll adjourn to close session. |
| 00:28:32.12 | Unknown | Thank you. I'm going to be always accomplished. Thank you. |
| 00:28:35.75 | John Rohrbacher | Yeah. I think you should put it in a box because we're going to need it until we get a song. |
| 00:28:36.71 | Unknown | Mr. President. Yeah, I'm not in my... Thank you. |
| 00:28:40.98 | John Rohrbacher | Thank you. |
| 00:28:41.01 | Unknown | you |
| 00:28:41.16 | John Rohrbacher | Thank you. |
| 00:28:41.38 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:28:41.50 | John Rohrbacher | Thank you. |
| 00:28:42.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |