| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.32 | Heidi Scoble | Bye. |
| 00:00:00.44 | Unknown | that |
| 00:00:00.94 | Heidi Scoble | Could the clerk please call the roll? Yes. Councilmember Riley? Here. Councilmember Burns? Here. Councilmember Cox? Here. Vice Mayor Withey? Here. Mayor Cleveland Knowles? |
| 00:00:04.86 | Joan Cox | Yeah. Bye. here. Here. here. |
| 00:00:10.91 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 00:00:10.93 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | year. Um... Thank you. We are going to have a first item with a closed session, which is Conference with Real Property Negotiator under California Government Code 5495 6.8. The property is 100 Humboldt Avenue, Sausalito. This is the Yacht Club property. Is there any public comment on this item? |
| 00:00:37.70 | George Thomas | I'll say that again. |
| 00:00:40.28 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, I'm sorry. I think there's a fan on maybe, or get closer to my microphone. So our first item. is a closed session, a conference with a real property negotiator, and the property is 100 Humboldt Avenue, which is the Sausalito Yacht Club property. And we are now taking public comment on that item only, and you'd have three minutes to talk. Is there anyone who would like to comment on this item? Okay, seeing none, the council will adjourn into closed session, and we will be back at 7 o'clock. |
| 00:01:12.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Good evening everyone and welcome to the Sausalito City Council regular meeting of Tuesday, March 10th. Lea Grace Gilbert, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? |
| 00:01:25.11 | Unknown | I'm not sure. I'm sorry. to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic |
| 00:01:29.77 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:01:29.82 | Heidi Scoble | to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God. |
| 00:01:35.07 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:01:39.26 | Unknown | indivisible with liberty. |
| 00:01:40.98 | Kevin McGowan | Amen. |
| 00:01:41.67 | Heidi Scoble | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:01:41.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:01:45.91 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, thank you. The city council met in closed session to discuss a real property matter for a conference for the real property negotiator for 100 Humboldt Avenue, which is the Sausalito Yacht Club. We have nothing to report from that session. Thank you. So we'll go on to approval of the agenda. So moved. |
| 00:02:10.86 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Second. |
| 00:02:11.86 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that motion carries five, zero. |
| 00:02:12.69 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I... |
| 00:02:17.71 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | so we will move on to special presentations and mayor announcements so i'm just going to open the meeting this is not on the agenda you may notice something different in city hall tonight we have created some social distancing because of covid19 or the coronavirus so i'm just going to present a little bit of information for the community about this situation so that everyone is on the same page. It's a dynamic and rapidly evolving situation and we have new information and new recommendations coming out daily, if not more often. There's a lot of understandable fear and anxiety and uncertainty around this issue. So I just want to emphasize a couple of points. First, I just want you to know that the city, including myself as mayor, the whole city council, our city manager, and all of the city staff, are working. with the health and safety of our residents and those of our neighboring communities as our top priority. In Marin County, it's the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, which is the lead agency on issues related to the coronavirus. They have declared a state of emergency in Marin to organize and coordinate efforts. The governor and neighboring jurisdictions such as San Francisco have as well. We're in daily contact with Marin Health and are implementing their recommendations as they develop. We are also working with our partners at the state and federal government. As of today, the guidance that we have received for public gatherings are that gatherings of 100 people or more, which usually our city council meetings are not, are discouraged. And if we do have such meetings, that we should take measures such as we are tonight to create additional space, to discourage handshaking and other hugging and other nice greetings, and to create other spaces. So if we do have more than the people that can fit in this room, we have space in our conference room and space downstairs where this meeting will be broadcast so that we can all spread out and keep the social distancing. We are also promoting messages as we always do, that our meetings are broadcast and streamed. Um, online and that you can always provide public comment in email which we do read and respond to personally i've just asked our city clerk to put up the marin county update so i'm not going to go through all these things which i think we've all heard numerous times washing hands covering your cough or sneeze etc but please be aware of all of these actions and to stay home if you are not feeling well I would also encourage folks to sign up for updates. The county, put the county website here. They have a way that you can sign up for email updates and that you will get all of their alerts. If you're at higher risk, and there's a definition for that, over 60 or have certain illnesses, you should also take additional precautions. And those are also found at this website. Thank you. Lastly, we would really encourage you to use the Marin County Health and Human Services website, use the Center for Disease Control website, and other reputable institutions and not rely on other types of social media where a lot of rumors are circulating. and to make sure you fact check your information. So I just want to encourage everyone to follow these recommendations and we can work together as a community to interrupt the spread of the virus. So I apologize for the long announcement, but I think there is just a lot of conversation going on. And so I just wanted to make sure that everyone's aware of what we are doing here at the city. So next, I am going to move on in our mayor's announcements to our 2020 Super Bowl winner. Julie Myers. Hark and wreck. |
| 00:06:51.12 | Julie Myers | Over here, over here. Here's to get my seat. Hi, I'm Julie Myers. I'm the Recreation Supervisor in Charge of Special Events for the City of Sausalito, and I'm here to award the 2020 Super Bowl, the Soup Crawl winner to the Seafood Peddler Restaurant and Fish Market. |
| 00:07:17.63 | Julie Myers | It was a phenomenal event. We had 13 restaurants and 350 people bought wristbands. The past was 200. So Mike says that's 150% more, but I don't know about his math. |
| 00:07:33.51 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Well, great. Thanks for creating another fantastic event. And congratulations to the seafood peddler. That's really awesome. |
| 00:07:38.86 | Unknown | It's really awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. |
| 00:07:41.98 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Good. Would you like to say a few words about what you were serving that day? Or why it was so special? |
| 00:07:43.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:07:46.86 | Unknown | It was so good. We do have a really good clam chowder and a fish market and restaurant here in South Salido 303 Johnson Street. You're all welcome to come and visit. and try for yourself. Right? Seafood is really good for you, too. Stay away from meat. |
| 00:08:04.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, thank you. We'd offer to come shake your hands, but we could do an elbow bump instead. |
| 00:08:18.10 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So, and I also would like to thank all of our other restaurants in town who participated in that great event. Okay, so now the second item under mayor's announcement. We're doing something a little different tonight. We had a family forum. that preceded the city council meeting downstairs. And I'm just very excited to welcome everyone to this event tonight. I think this is part of a larger conversation that we've been having around our strategic plan and our general plan about lots of important issues that are facing our community, sea level rise, our age friendly programs, and a lot of other things. But one of the things that has really risen to the top during my time here in Sausalito is the kind of how vibrant our community with families, with children has become. And it's really just been a big turnaround during I moved here in 2001. And it's just really exciting to see on the street and in the community and our broader 94965 community how many families with children are really settling in and contributing just amazing things to our community. So I asked city staff tonight if they would kind of highlight some of the things that we're doing as a city for families with children. And earlier we had a lot of other service providers talking about the great things that they are doing as well. So welcome Abbott Chambers, our director of communications. |
| 00:09:50.54 | Abbott Chambers | Thank you, Madam Mayor. And hello, good evening to the rest of the council, to members of the community. I'm Abbott Chambers, your city librarian and director of communications. And I'm here as part of today's family forum to kick off a presentation about city of Sausalito programs and services for kids and families. We have an illustrious group of city staff members presenting this evening. We're going to hear from Children's and Young Adult Librarian, Julian Randolph. He's going to tell us about Sausalito Library programs and services for kids and families. We're going to hear from Recreation Supervisor Julie Myers, who will be talking about special events from Parks and Recreation. Parks and Recreation Director Mike Langford will tell us about parks and recreation programs and facilities for kids and families. And we have Public Works Director Kevin McGowan with us to tell us about the Safe Routes to School program. Before I move to our presenters, I just wanted to say a few words about tonight's open house. This is a photo from that open house. It was held down on the lower level of City Hall. The goal of the open house was to introduce the community to all the wonderful programs and services available to kids and families in the 94965 area. We had 15 participating organizations. Each organization had a table set up. They had information about their organization. They had freebies. They had one or two staff members answering questions from the public as well. And I should add that this is only a subset of the larger community of services and organizations available in our community. and we've created a web page on the City of Sausalito website at Sausalito.gov slash families that has a more complete list. And with that, I would like to turn the microphone over to our new children's and young adult librarian, Julian Randolph. |
| 00:11:49.39 | Unknown | Great. |
| 00:11:49.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:11:53.59 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Welcome, Joanne. |
| 00:11:54.69 | Julian Randolph | Thank you. Thank you, mayor and city council for organizing this event and for letting us speak and thank you to the community as well. So I just want to tell you about a few of the things that the Sausalito Public Library does to serve children and their families in the community. So we currently offer four weekly story times and one stay and play. The story times are designed for children ages three and younger and their caregivers. And story times are important in many different ways. They introduce children to books and help build early literacy skills. In addition, our story times also introduce children and their families to library services and provide the children with group experiences. Additionally, as one of the initial stages of language acquisition is auditory processing, the repeated rhymes and songs that children hear weekly at these storytimes are very important for vocabulary development, as are the picture books that are utilized as the children can connect the story they are hearing with the images they see. We also offer a series of weekly afternoon programs which are designed for children ages four and up These programs occur on Wednesday afternoons from 3.30 to 4.30 p.m. We have an art studio to engage children's creative expression. We have a building club, which encourages children's fine motor development, as well as spatial reasoning and analytical skills. And we also offer a monthly family movie. This photo is from last year's summer reading program where they did a drive-in movie. So the children first showed up and decorated a vehicle to sit in while they watched the movie. |
| 00:13:42.74 | Julian Randolph | And the Sausalito Library also organizes an annual summer reading program. The summer reading program has a reading challenge with finishing prizes, bi-weekly raffles, and There's also eight weeks of programming. Within that eight weeks, we have 24 programs, which are in addition to our regular weekly story times. We are also currently, just in terms of regular year programs, we're organizing two book clubs, one for 8- to 10-year-olds and one for 11- to 13-year-olds. Now I would like to talk briefly about the collection in spaces. The Sausalito Library has a pretty robust children's collection, which has a lot of different physical materials as well as audiovisual materials and digital materials. So we have picture books, board books, early readers, transitional chapter books, fiction, DVDs, CDs, audiobooks, and nonfiction and biographies and graphic novels. Show you. some slides. We also have two foreign language collections within our juvenile section and we're hoping to build these and make them a little bit more robust. They're a little small at the moment so we have French and Spanish offerings. |
| 00:15:05.44 | Julian Randolph | And our young adult materials, in terms of physical materials, we have graphic novels, fiction, nonfiction, and biographies. Our audiovisual materials for young adults are interfiled in our adult collections. The CDs, audiobooks, DVDs are interfiled with the adult materials. The teen librarians across MarinNet are currently working to build up the audiobook, an e-audiobook, an e-book. offerings that we have on OverDrive. And so we're curating book lists each month that are available on the OverDrive Marinette Teen homepage. And so we're really trying to build up the digital collection for our teens and to promote it to them. We are always open to feedback, both on our collection development as well as our programs, and I welcome any feedback from the community. I have enjoyed my first two months here at the Sausalito Public Library and look forward to continue to work with the community. I would now like to introduce Julie Myers, the Recreation Supervisor for Parks and Rec. |
| 00:16:22.43 | Julie Myers | I'm back. Welcome back. I thought I'd let you know that. Yes, I do the special events for City of Sausalito, and here are some of the special events that not only are just kid-centric, but they're also ones that our families really enjoy and come to. So you might see a few on there that you're like, hmm, maybe not, but they really are, because our families love to come to our events. And our first one, which is coming up, is our Easter Parade Egg Hunt and Bonnet Contest. It's in its 40th year, celebrating its 40th year this year. We give out about 7,000 eggs and have about 1,000 kids that come down and enjoy the time. We have a children's musician and a bonnet contest where kids decorate bonnets and then ladies from the women's club |
| 00:16:24.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'm back. |
| 00:17:11.97 | Julie Myers | judge them and they get prizes it's really fun Um, Jazz and Blues by the Bay, a lot of families really enjoy to come down to this event. And I love that top picture because if you look along the rocks, all that is is kids playing in the rocks. And I think there are frogs or crawfish? Crawfish. Crawfish. Using bologna and salami. Yes. Oh, crabs. So. |
| 00:17:31.61 | Unknown | Cropfish. Using bologna and salami. Yes, I... |
| 00:17:36.34 | Julie Myers | We love kids at Jazz and Blues, except when they climb in the trees, but that's okay too because they're coming and having fun. And the 4th of July parade is wonderful because a lot of our kid organizations and families come and be part of the parade and they get to walk in the parade and throw out candy or just perform or just be part of our parade. The 4th of July picnic is a big deal for our families and for all of our residents. You can see that the kids love the egg toss and the tug of war. That's a big deal here for our children. But it's a great event. We usually get about a thousand people at 4th of July picnic. And the fireworks and concert, the kids and families come out to that as well. So it's enjoyed by all. The annual chili cook-off, we have kids who come as part of the families and just enjoy it and eat the chili, but then we have kids who, as you can see, help cook the chili. And it's great to see families come out and be part of the chefs and be part of the behind the scenes of the chili cook-off. And then our Halloween parade, Trick or Treat Lane and Haunted House, is one of our main kid-centric, events. We have the parade where the kids walk down Caledonia Street and end here at Robin Sweeney Park where we have Trick or Treat Lane. What's great about it is we have about a thousand kids start the parade and then when we get down here they're all trick or treating. So it takes them another ten minutes to get to the, get to the, uh, Trick or treat lane. So, and then the haunted house is a big deal. We have a kid-friendly haunted house with the lights on, where the little kids can go through it. And then we turn off the lights and have the full haunt for everyone to enjoy. And families love our haunted house. And then Breakfast with Santa is our final special event for kids of the year. And we do two seatings and sit about 70 people in each seating. And the families come and enjoy it with friends, and it's a big deal. It's at the Sausalito Yacht Club, and as you can see, Santa arrives by boat. Okay. And now I'd like to introduce Mike Langford, the Director of Parks and Recreation. And before. |
| 00:20:09.50 | Mike Langford | Thank you very much, Julie. And I want to acknowledge Julie was instrumental in putting the event together this evening prior to city council, and she deserves a hand for that as well. |
| 00:20:17.88 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:20:23.59 | Mike Langford | So as Julie said, my name is Mike Langford. I'm the Parks and Recreation Director and I'm gonna tell you about the parks and excuse me, the programs and facilities Um, Had this been maybe a week or two later, we would have had our new recreation supervisor do this. He started on Monday, and we will bring him to you in the following weeks for a full introduction. But for now, you're stuck with me. So for a small town, we have a good variety of parks, facilities, and programs. We actually have 19 parks within the city, and six of those parks have playgrounds. Of course, the predominant one is Robin Sweeney Park, right out here in front, as well as Mary Ann Sears Park, which is also known as Harrison Park. Um, We have two main recreation facilities besides the parks. First one is the recreation center, which is downstairs right here at City Hall with three different rooms. We have an exercise room. We have a meeting room, or we call it the Edgewater room. In fact, you saw photos of that. The library was doing some programs there. and we also have a game room. Now, soon we hope to have another facility, and that will be our partnership with the Sausalito Community Boating Center, which will be down at the foot of Napa Street or right next to Dunphy Park. |
| 00:21:43.79 | Mike Langford | first youth programs we have a A fantastic partnership with, actually this is the play, yeah, we have a fantastic partnership with Mount Tam Adventures. Jeremy Williams, who runs that. He runs our summer camps. Lego creations camp as well as a flag football camp but with either the camps they do other activities as well as you can see with the multicolored earth ball there. This is our third year running camps with him and the registration this year is just blowing up. We've got so many parents that want to participate in a local camp right here in Sausalito rather than going to Mill Valley or Tiburon or elsewhere. We have an after-school enrichment program where we partnered with Willow Creek School. Right now, for this current class session, we have approximately 115 registrants. Of those, 100 are unique registrants, meaning we have about 100 kids And some of them have signed up for more than one class, and that's how we get to 115. 97 of those kids live in the 94965 zip code, and we have 18 other kids that come from other zip codes. Everybody that's at the school or in the 94965 zip code gets the resident rate. And Willow Creek School also has a sponsorship program or scholarship program for kids that need a little bit of extra help so that they can participate in the programs as well. We have recreation programs here at the Parks and Rec Center. We've had ballet. This is also our Music Together Marin program. class that's very popular with the moms and the kids. |
| 00:23:33.40 | Mike Langford | And now I'd like to introduce Kevin McGowan, who's going to talk about our Safe Routes to School program. |
| 00:23:47.03 | Kevin McGowan | Good evening, Mayor, members of the City Council. I'm Kevin McGowan with Department of Public Works. Every one of our projects that we embark on as far as the capital project program always includes some safety aspects, no matter what, and looking at multi-modal aspects. However, I just wanted to highlight a couple different projects that are within Sausalito in relation to the Safe Routes to School. AND One of the first ones that we are moving forward with is the Coloma Street Improvement Project. And that has to do with installing a sidewalk and making improvements on one side of the MLK Park And the funding for this is supported by a grant fund However, the funds themselves aren't available for several years, I think that The last I heard that the design funds will be available as of next fiscal year with the construction funds to follow the year after that. So a couple details, this is a very busy slide, but I simply wanted to show that When we first looked at this project, it was a lot larger than just Coloma Street. It had to do with improvements on corners of Bridgeway, as well as connectivity through the park itself. The actual project itself is very localized towards Coloma Street right next to the field itself, making improvements and possibly a mid-block crossing right where the pathway comes in from MLK to Coloma Street itself. So we're gonna take a look at that to see if that's feasible. and take a look at improvements associated with that. There's about $400,000 associated with this specific project. And again, that's supported by a grant fund. Another project that we're moving forward with, hopefully after school is out, is to do some striping improvements on Nevada Street. Now Nevada Street is slightly, the lanes themselves are slightly wider than 12 feet, and the intent is to try to make some improvements to that roadway. So if you're not quite sure where Nevada Street is, it's off of Bridgeway and services a school, and I forget the name of it. Thank you so much. Little Creek Academy and Robin's Nest. |
| 00:25:54.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Little Creek Academy. And Robin's Nest Preschool. |
| 00:25:59.18 | Kevin McGowan | Thank you, I appreciate the help. Now the striping improvements will basically relate to putting in a fog stripe that delineates the lane itself and adding some wits for bicycles to travel up and down the road to get to the school itself as well as making improvements to the crosswalks. A little bit more detail, these full lanes for cycling aren't quite to the standard that we would like, but we're going to try to do our best to stripe them anyway. And with that, your staff is here for questions. And thank you very much. |
| 00:26:35.34 | Unknown | Okay, great. Thank you. |
| 00:26:40.30 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So thank you very much to city staff. So we focused this presentation tonight on city staff because if we were to let every organization in the community have a full presentation, we'd be here until midnight. So as Abbott showed, there's just a lot of organizations doing a lot of amazing things in town. So thank you for that. Are there any questions or should we? move into public comment. I would just like to add to Julie's presentation. For those of you whose children are getting a little older, one of the great things that the Recreation and Park Department has done is it's an employment center for all of our over 13-year-olds. So once your kids get to be 14, they can work for Park and Rec during the summer and get paid well and have fun at all the fun events so now I'm going to open it up to a public comment so if anybody who would like to speak just wants to line up behind the podium and let us know what you love about what Sausalito is doing for families what we can do better and any ideas that you have or anything else you want to address everybody will have three minutes And please state your name. before you start. |
| 00:27:52.06 | Gregory Taylor | Gregory Taylor. A lot has happened out on the Anchorage since the last time I spoke from this lectern. We are now experiencing. |
| 00:28:02.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Mr. Taylor? I'm sorry, we are going to have general public comment right now. This is public comment on the family forum. |
| 00:28:05.76 | Gregory Taylor | right now. I jumped the gun. So I will get a chance. |
| 00:28:12.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And we also have an item on the waterfront and the anchorage on our agenda. |
| 00:28:16.54 | Gregory Taylor | Thank you. |
| 00:28:17.96 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Schedule for 930. |
| 00:28:21.42 | Unknown | Well, okay, all right, we'll wait around for that. Well, I want to talk about the first part of your presentation about COVID. I sent an email to Matthew Willis this afternoon talking about how disappointed I am. that. the RBRA and Sausalito continue to destroy people's homes on the Anchorage. put in them. in harm's way of this encroaching virus when the safest place for them right now are their boats. Beth Pollard. the executive director. She replied to me, she said, oh, we're not doing that. Well, what about Barbara Solil? What about Aaron Lee Fowler? What about their home? What about Charlotte, Gola, and Sue and Y'all? And I'm coming up here, I know, I wanna say thank you to all these wonderful people who are presenting, but when I go out there and I see these three, boy, I've never seen a city council with three cops. there's something seriously wrong going right here and I feel that there has been an abdication of responsibility right now. And I got involved in this because my friend lives out there right now. And every time she comes home from work, She doesn't know if she's going to have a house. So I need to see some real responsibility on your end that you can't that just because you've left the RBRA doesn't mean you can advocate responsibility you need to bring the RBRA back to Sausalito so members of the community can speak. Instead of just saying it's all hunky-dory here and what we love about Sosso, they don't know. There's things that are going wrong right now, and I've got to stand up and say it right here so you can all hear it. That's what I need. People need to understand that people's lives are in jeopardy. Thank you. |
| 00:30:08.93 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. So now that our presentations are over, we're going to go back to a practice that I started at the beginning of the year, which is that if you appreciate, we're going to try to be civil at our meetings and avoid disruption. So if you appreciate something that the speaker said, instead of clapping, you can do this. And otherwise, just let people have their three minutes at the microphone and we will all listen respectfully so thank you and thank you to the speaker uh lily aaron |
| 00:30:46.00 | Aaron Roller | Hi there, I'm Aaron Roller and this is Lily Roller and we are here to present, well let's let Lily start. |
| 00:30:55.99 | Unknown | . |
| 00:30:56.03 | Lily Roller | . |
| 00:30:56.08 | Barbara Salzman | Okay. |
| 00:30:56.23 | Lily Roller | Thank you. Okay, so my name's Lily Roller and I lived in Switzerland and there I would bike all around and then when i moved back home i said biking to school since i was ten every single day and i started to volunteer for safety patrol and there i started to notice a whole bunch of problems in the roundabout so uh... i'm like What are we gonna do about it? So I got the school project for science and so I took a science study and of everything, of all like the cars coming by. and where they're going And out of that, I made this game called School Tag. That is using this tag here, is a game, I guess you could say, to have students walk to school, bike to school, take the bus to school, and they put this tag on their backpacks. And when they get to school, they tag in, and they get points for it. And on their bikes, they'd have tags on their bikes, so they get even more points for biking to school. And if they're walking, they get more points by tagging into stations on the way to school, and taking the bus, they can take a tag and tag in at the bus stops. And for this, you get more points. And with the points after every season, you get prizes. And there's also leaderboard. So students can get really competitive. And this really enforces them to walk and bike to school. |
| 00:32:33.95 | Aaron Roller | Thank you. So, |
| 00:32:35.39 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Aaron, do you want to start your time? |
| 00:32:37.36 | Aaron Roller | Yes, please. |
| 00:32:38.04 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 00:32:39.59 | Aaron Roller | What Lily really started was a movement. She inspired myself and others to actually get the community to find their way to school in a different manner, to reduce traffic and make the experience healthy, but then also making it safer around campus. What we're seeing here is the wolf pack and the bike train and actually bike to school day and big events. That's some of the goal. But we still have this problem with the roundabout. So what we're seeing here is a visualization of Lily's traffic study. The before on the left and the proposed on the right. And I'm working with the principal of Willow Creek Academy. I was able to reroute traffic basically duct tape the kindergarten parking lot there and what we're seeing here is how we actually was able to reroute the traffic for a safer drop off following Essentially what Safe Routes to School recommends, one-way traffic. And now what we're seeing here as a result is the only vehicle that can come onto campus, the bus here dropping the kids off. Since then, we actually have been able to get TAM to fund some crossing guards because now all the children are on the streets and the cars are coming through. but we're able to actually have some safer results But now we still have more work to do, because what we're seeing here is the bike train. And there's no bike lanes. And the cars are squeezing the children there on the curb. We're also... to, you know, we spend our time encouraging the children to ride through town, but yet It's a difficult town to ride through, especially when we see commercial vehicles like this in the red zone. You know, it's hard enough bringing your own children through there, but when you are bringing others, it's a real challenge. So that's why we're here today. to encourage the city council to continue working What we're looking at here is the 2011 feasibility study, gate 6 to the ferry. And this is the safe route to school. You know, this is the dream that I have where someday I can help the children bike to school. We're coming up on Nevada Street here where the children from Caledonia could get there on the opposite side we could actually have the marin city children riding uh riding down that way or simply uh you know the the tourists and and the commuters getting through town on this separated bike path so i really encourage you all to uh to uh work with us and and i'm I'm here for you if you need any work at all to make it happen. Thank you. |
| 00:35:31.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, Aaron and Lily, for all the work you've done. And we're going to try to... Thank you. Lily is a eighth grader at Willow Creek Academy and Aaron is on our bike and ped committee. So great video. |
| 00:35:48.81 | Diane Bracob | So that's a great question. Great segue. My name is Diane Bracob, and I'm a parent of a seventh grader at the school you just saw, the film of Willow Creek Academy. Just a quick background story. In 2012, my husband and I were living in San Francisco and needed to find a kindergarten elementary school for our then four-year-old and heard about this great charter school in Sausalito. So we pulled up stakes and moved across the bridge. And here we are, speed up or fast forward to 2020. And we and our 12-year-old have come to know and love this town, all of its people, and this lovely, lovely school So I just want to... put in a little plug for Willow Creek Academy. SEGUE TO THAT One of the things I think about with Willow Creek Academy, one of the hallmarks is that it's a real community school. Lots of parent involvement, lots of parent participation. I see a couple of Willow Creek parents and former parents up there on the dais. We also love the incredible diversity with its no racial majority. I think of it as a very international school, and these are my own words, but I really think of it as the United Nations of school, mostly because of the population in Marin City, not just African American and Latino, but also we have about 32 languages spoken at our school at home and a lot of English language learners as well. So that builds the diversity at Willow Creek along with a very, very dedicated, very, very a group of teachers and staff. Can't say enough about them. But I think about, you know, in 2020, eight years later, how this school has really changed our town and our demographics. And I'm told, for example, that before Willow Creek was there, there was not so many families and children. For example, we'd never had a children's librarian, I'm told, before 2000, 2001, when the school started. So I'm just kind of thinking historically, looking back on all these years, and I feel that Willow Creek Academy has changed our town for the better, along with Bayside and MLK. There's a lot of unification talk now, and I hope that goes forward. But I just want to say what a great experience this has been, and I feel like I'm really part of this incredibly juicy, wonderful town. Happy to be here, and it was because of Willow Creek. So thank you. |
| 00:38:46.10 | Leah Gilbert | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:38:46.60 | Heidi Scoble | Okay. |
| 00:38:46.99 | Leah Gilbert | I'm Leah Gilbert. I just want to say thank you for the family forum. I have, I'm one of the co-founders, if you will, it's a very loose group of the Sausalito Mamas group, I've been up here before. We have over 100 families in Sausalito, and those are families primarily with kids under the age of five. I'm sure a lot of you have noticed that there are a lot of strollers in Sausalito as of late. We moved here in early 2016, and even since then, it's totally exploded. I thought, how are we going to have kids here? I don't think there's any kids here and they are here big time. So I want to say thank you. I also want to highlight something that I love about Sausalito. In this forum I got to talk with Paul at Play Marin and he doesn't have any programs for little littles but just in talking with him he's so open to creating a little soccer |
| 00:39:37.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:45.84 | Leah Gilbert | team for toddlers, which is so amazing. And I think that that really speaks to the spirit of the 94965 zip code and why I love living here. I also want to mention that Us who have the little littles, I know that there's a lot of conversation happening right now around Willow Creek and unification. And that's very, very important, but also what's really important is we are losing a preschool, and it's an affordable preschool option, and that is Sparrow Creek at the end of the school year. I do know a lot of families personally who are being affected by this and now do not know what to do. They're looking at very expensive options or driving their kids out of town. So that's something that I wanted to highlight because it's very, very close to sort of what we're going through right now. But we love it here. We want families to stay. And I think that that starts at the very beginning with involving families and having all these wonderful things for kids of all ages. So we're super excited to be here. |
| 00:40:45.24 | Unknown | Thank you. Great. Thank you. |
| 00:40:50.65 | Nikki Finneman | Hello, good evening. My name is Nikki Finneman. I am a member of the 2019 Sausalito Chili Cook-Off runners-up team. And a very excited incoming parent of a kindergartner at Willow Creek Academy and a parent also mourning the loss of the preschool that was just mentioned, Sparrow Creek School. |
| 00:40:50.80 | Leah Gilbert | you |
| 00:40:50.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:40:50.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:40:51.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:40:51.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:41:00.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:41:13.38 | Nikki Finneman | head over heels in love with Sausalito and very drawn to this extremely vibrant, diverse, intergenerational community that is infinitely more colorful than everything in the surrounding area. In fact, as I've dragged my family around the world in eight countries over the last 20 years, I was petrified to move back to the U.S. I've been serving abroad as a diplomat and serving my country and there's nothing scarier than coming to the United States with preschool aged children because of the sheer expense of it. We couldn't have been more drawn to Sausalito and I really want to thank Julie Myers for creating absolute magic that has us endeavoring to stay, endeavoring us to put down roots for the first time in my entire life. And I will say that very little would drive us away except for the inability to stay. And to the preschool conversation, there are five and a half options for pre-K age children in Sausalito specifically. It expands to six and a half, seven, if you include Marin City. Only half of those are affordable. After 45 years, we are losing a champion for children in the closure of Sparrow Creek. And on the wing and the prayer that a nonprofit foundation can live on, specifically in that spot or in downtown Sausalito, we really are expecting and hoping and trusting that the city council will look upon that favorably and be very cooperative. So thank you for your time. |
| 00:42:54.35 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:42:58.50 | Erin Brewster | Hi, I'm Erin Brewster, and about a year and a half ago, my husband Andy, little four and a half year old daughter Grace, And I were in Brooklyn and knowing we were going to have to move to the Bay Area and trying to find a good community. and we basically decided on where we could get into a preschool that seemed like a good preschool for us, and Sparrow Creek had room, they didn't have a waiting list, they were affordable, we liked their approach, That is actually the reason that we decided to move to Sausalito, That was in October, and now we are hook, line, and sinker, like in love with this city, in love with the community. We did not want to, we don't want to live anywhere else. So now we've bought a home here. All of our friends are here. We want to raise our children here. We don't want to leave ever. And our concern is that you know, a school brought us here, a school brought lots of us here, this affordable option, this wonderful approach to education. and I worry about schools not being able to keep families here and our community being able getting priced out of the market and so i think you might be talking about um kind of Airbnb and those kind of regulations. And I just want to say as a homeowner who actually has an ADU that we could rent out, I am very opposed to the ability to rent out. on sort of a short term basis because I'm worried about what it's gonna do for the real estate prices for families who want to raise children here and want to stay here. We just want to stay here forever. We love it. I want to give like amazing props to the city staff because I think the magic is really all of these events, every event that was here, literally everyone we went to with our daughter, music in the park. should have won the chili cook off. Our kids next year, next year we're going to. |
| 00:44:57.53 | Unknown | kids. |
| 00:45:00.76 | Erin Brewster | and we're taking we're taking down those buckeye boys and We got a table at Jazz by the Bay. Like, the longer we stay here, the more we love the community. And I've heard sort of rumors about families moving away because they don't feel like they're gonna have school options and we're, very concerned about that because we feel really welcomed in this community and want to stay here forever. So thanks so much to the city for all that you guys do. I've never lived in a city like this that does this much for children, and I hope you keep it up. And we love it. and hopefully we can keep having a really good school in our community. |
| 00:45:37.00 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you. |
| 00:45:41.54 | Connie Mittendorf | My name's Connie Mittendorf. And a little about me, my parents actually met and were married here in Sausalito. I'm not sure. Back in the 70s, they lived and worked here. And unfortunately, when I was a kid, we had to move away. Um, In part, it was because of affordability, schools. It's not a very easy place to raise a kid, at least back then. And now part of the reason we came back is because of the family-friendly nature of Zoslito. Now it's changed the programs that this community has put in place. And I just want to say how much I appreciate living here and having all these programs in place. My kids love it, and I am very happy to be back. So thank you. |
| 00:46:23.90 | Unknown | Right. Thank you. |
| 00:46:27.75 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Sure. And if there's anyone else who would like to speak, if you could just come up, that would be great. |
| 00:46:36.03 | Unknown | Nobody said anything about the Bocce League, which is not a children's program, but some of us are in our second childhood, and it keeps us out of mischief. So the new courts are awesome. Thanks, Mike. It's just gonna be great. My comments are in writing, if anyone's interested. |
| 00:46:44.49 | Unknown | and it missed it so good. |
| 00:46:57.82 | Unknown | and I'll be very brief. Dear Mayor and Council Members, thanks for your service to our community. I've been a resident of Sausalito since 2002. I'm a professional financial analyst In fall 2018, the city of Sausalito proposed Measure M, a BLT equity measure, and published a voter information community update to encourage voters to approve the measure. The voter information publication is available on the city's website. The name of Measure M, Equity Measure, implies equal treatment of all businesses. The publication says that Measure M will make the ordinance fair for businesses of all sizes. The drafter of the voter information publication relied on data from neighboring and tourist communities to validate the rates being proposed for four categories of businesses. The drafter's interpretation of this data promised the voting public that the proposed rates would be aligned with neighboring communities as well as fair and equitable. The city offered no other rationale for the proposed rates. Voters approved Measure M and implementation began in 2020. However, an analysis of the data presented to voters indicates that implementation of the measure accomplishes the opposite of the equity and fairness the city promised. As shown in the table below, there's a lot of data and information in this publication. As shown in the table below, Measure M systematically undercharges businesses in category one an average of $2.21 per $1,000 of revenue, less than the data suggests. and overcharges businesses in Category 3. an average of $1.41 per $1,000 of revenue, more than the data suggests. Thus, the city of Sausalito is discriminating against one category of businesses in favor of another based on data. that supports an opposite approach. The city of Sausalito should not tolerate this discrimination, especially after promoting Measure M as a move to ensure equality and fairness. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks again for your services. Yeah. |
| 00:49:44.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, thank you, sir. Thanks again for your services. Yeah, and thank you. If you can hand the documents to our clerk. And so your comments, you fooled me with the Bocce comment. I thought you were gonna talk about family. So this is general, this is public comment on the family forum right now. And then we will have general public comment about items that aren't on our agenda in just a moment. Welcome. |
| 00:50:11.59 | Unknown | Hi, good evening, everyone. I should have been in the line just after the gentleman speaking. I want to show my appreciation to the city and all the staff and the great place that we moved here two years ago with my two kids. And we don't want to move away again. And part of the reason is that we build a great community. And the reason is mostly driven by the school of Sparrow Creek. So just putting my voice up, I'm not going to last three minutes, but finishing on a different note, close to my friends, and we'd like to have a strong position and hopefully be able to work with the city because we are concerned right now about our kids but we I think we are we want to put some time for the next generation and if there is anything we can do to help there's a core group of parents that will talk to the headmasters and and the foundation and also be enjoyed to work with you if in any way possible |
| 00:51:14.35 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. Is there any other public comment on this item? Okay, well thank you. I wanna thank everybody that came today to the Family Forum and for all of you who spoke about things that are going on in town I really appreciate it I have been raising my two children here for the last 15 years and have just really been amazed and pleased and proud of how this vibrant community has flourished beyond kind of the amazing age-friendly work that has been going on here and the other segments of the population. So it's just been great to see. Do other council members have any comments before we move on? Great, okay, well thank you very much. And we are gonna move on to general public comment. So this is a time in our agenda where any member of the public can comment for up to three minutes on items that are not on our agenda tonight. And I would just like to remind the community that we do have a waterfront update on our agenda tonight. So is there any general public comment? Okay, please come forward. |
| 00:52:41.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh. |
| 00:52:42.03 | Heidi Scoble | Is that, okay. |
| 00:52:56.14 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So we do have, |
| 00:52:58.28 | Mark Bainbridge | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:52:58.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:52:59.08 | Mark Bainbridge | Thank you. |
| 00:52:59.09 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. a waterfront update on our agenda tonight Jeff so you might want to hold off on these comments until our agenda item |
| 00:53:09.54 | Jeffrey Chase | I think it would be best if I did it now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:53:13.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So if it's on the agenda item, then we're going to take public comment on... |
| 00:53:16.73 | Jeffrey Chase | It's not exactly on the agenda item, no. This is about the children too. |
| 00:53:22.77 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Well, so we're done with the family forum. |
| 00:53:24.68 | Jeffrey Chase | Understand. |
| 00:53:25.37 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So this is just your regular general public comment. |
| 00:53:27.77 | Jeffrey Chase | understand. |
| 00:53:28.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. All right. |
| 00:53:31.97 | Jeffrey Chase | Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor, City Council. city workers and remaining citizens of Sausalito we do have children on the Anchorage Last winter I was a mani for a three year old on the vidora boat. Our march now. on Sundays is being led by two parents and their six-month-old child. The children. of the people who choose or are not able to have money can cooperate with the children who have more comfortable circumstances. We do not have a true community. So I'd like to show you a little movie about our march. What? |
| 00:54:27.37 | Jeffrey Chase | As a native Detroiter, I was born surrounded by water. So it's no accident that I find myself still living on the water. This time as a member of the Motley Flotilla, floating on the most natural part of the bay. But like many birds and bees and entire ecosystems, This original culture faces extinction too. An alphabet soup of government agencies, the RBRA and the BCDC, are threatening to remove 100% of the boat people and their crafts here by April 1st, April Fool's Day. but only if they have enough money for this destruction. Facing off against this bulldozer of boat busting are 100 or so sailors. We are stowaways on a luxury ship called Marin County. not dodging icebergs, but desperate to find friendly places to land on shore. From the time of the Miwoks, through the Spanish, Mexicans, and finally Americans. Richardson's Bay has accepted each invader while refusing their property lines and landlubber ways. Come and join us on our march. to keep our homes and lives. |
| 00:56:11.89 | Jeffrey Chase | So I'll speak over this. Thank you for letting me show this. And the reason that we're doing this is because we love this place, not because we're trying to impose any way of life or any We're here out of love, and we're here out of concern for you as well. |
| 00:56:32.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, thank you. I'm going to make an announcement now. So this is general public comment for Ida. That was a great video. Thank you, Jeff. Um, This is general public comment for items that are not on our agenda item 7b is a waterfront management plan update, which is a discussion of all of the efforts around Sausalito and what is happening on the water. So if you would like to speak to that agenda item, you need to speak under item 7b. If you speak on waterfront issues right now, then we will not allow you to have public comment on that item when we have it. Okay? So. But this is not a time on our agenda to talk about anchor out issues or waterfront issues. That is on our agenda. We have a whole item, and we can discuss it later. Okay? |
| 00:57:26.63 | Unknown | Thank you. you Yeah. |
| 00:57:29.15 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay? |
| 00:57:30.48 | Councilmember Burns | Mayor, I propose if anybody does speak to an item now, they won't later on that item? Yes. Is that correct? Okay, thank you. |
| 00:57:33.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. Well, I, |
| 00:57:39.25 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So this, but to be fair, this is what we do every week. We have agenda items. So if you are speaking about the waterfront, I'm going to ask you to stop and to sit down and to wait until our agenda item. Okay? |
| 00:57:53.18 | Jeffrey Chase | if they're not gonna be here at 10 p.m. for another two hours, I think it's fair that they get to speak |
| 00:58:00.06 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So Jeff, there's no speaking out from the audience. And if that happened, every single city council meeting, our entire public comment would be at the beginning. So that wouldn't be fair to everyone. So sir, are you speaking about the waterfront? |
| 00:58:13.81 | Gregory Taylor | No, ma'am. |
| 00:58:15.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, go ahead. |
| 00:58:18.39 | Gregory Taylor | Gregory Taylor. A lot has happened on the Anchorage since the last time I spoke from this lectern. We are now experiencing a humanitarian crisis that is bordering on genocide. |
| 00:58:26.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We are now experiencing a humanitarian crisis that is on genocide. So I'm going to ask you to stop. So this is on our agenda. Okay. This is on our agenda. |
| 00:58:38.50 | Gregory Taylor | I'm trying to listen to her. I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. Could you please repeat what you just said? |
| 00:58:42.86 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | on our agenda. You understand that? So this, you can comment on something not on our agenda, or you can wait. |
| 00:58:44.64 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. |
| 00:58:48.90 | Jeffrey Chase | So this is what's happening on the Anchorage, so people know now. This is what happens on the Anchorage. Okay. |
| 00:58:54.80 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So we understand. So are there members of the public? So. |
| 00:58:58.89 | Jeffrey Chase | I'm addressing the mayor. |
| 00:58:59.83 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Amen. Jeff, we are Jeff, please. |
| 00:59:02.48 | Jeffrey Chase | completely open for |
| 00:59:04.27 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | No. What kind of speech you got? |
| 00:59:04.29 | Jeffrey Chase | No. Thank you. Thank you. No. Thank you. |
| 00:59:09.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 00:59:09.86 | Unknown | THE FAMILY IS NOT |
| 00:59:10.03 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, officer. |
| 00:59:14.63 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, thank you. Okay, let's just, I'll take. |
| 00:59:16.51 | Jeffrey Chase | All right. this for. |
| 00:59:18.70 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Let's take a deep breath. These are the rules. We have general public comment for anything in the world that is within our jurisdiction that's not on our agenda. We do this every week. Then we have an agenda. And then we talk about those items at that time. So we are doing the same thing that we do every single week. Okay, are there members of the public who have general public comment that they would like to share with us? So, Thank you. Jeff, I would like to allow you to stay. |
| 00:59:48.70 | Jeffrey Chase | TO ALLOW THEM TO THE This is a plan that is not the Anchorage plan. It has nothing to do with us. It has to do with the authorities. OK, so we're going to. |
| 00:59:56.51 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so we're going to... |
| 00:59:57.95 | Jeffrey Chase | It is not our agenda item. |
| 00:59:59.72 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Jeff, this is the last warning. We're going to suspend the meeting and take a recess. |
| 01:00:03.32 | Jeffrey Chase | Take a recess. Last morning, April 1st. Thank you. |
| 01:00:07.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Jeff, you had your three minutes. Now it's time for other members of the public who would like to speak to speak, okay? All right. So please stop talking. Please be respectful. |
| 01:00:19.97 | Jeffrey Chase | that. |
| 01:00:20.04 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. So I apologize. So I apologize, ma'am, you have three minutes to speak about anything that is not on our agenda this evening. |
| 01:00:30.53 | Piper Perot | Okay. Oh, it's a little stressful. and I appreciate this is an emotional topic. I would like to update, good evening. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you. I would like to update the city council as to our save Travis Marina petition. We have almost 14,000 people who've signed so far, and |
| 01:00:42.87 | Ann Libin | Yeah. |
| 01:00:43.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:00:55.11 | Piper Perot | What it is we're asking is we want National Park Service to negotiate a long term contract with Travis Air Force Base to continue as the operator of. the Travis of the marina and the boat shop at Fort Baker. We feel that the current RFQ process, the National Park Service has started, is flawed, is based on flawed and outdated information. because it is based off your 2000 Fort Baker plan. Should I continue? Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:01:28.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'm going to restart your clock so that you have a full three minutes without being interrupted. Okay. |
| 01:01:34.47 | Piper Perot | Okay. We feel that the current RFQ process National Park Service has started is flawed and outdated because it's based off the year 2000 Fort Baker plan. which has erroneous information about Travis Marina, It says that the marina is only for military yacht club members, which simply isn't true. It's actually been open to the public since 1998 when Travis took over operation of the marina. and boat shop. Also, the Fort Baker Plan and current RFQ doesn't at all acknowledge the value that Travis Moreno offers the public. any of their documents that the immense value that Travis Marino actually does offer public, it is in fact an irreplaceable service-driven operation that is beloved by the community, by veterans, by tourists, and by Travis. servicemen and women so we are basically I come here again to ask you, City Council, to please adopt a resolution to tell National Park Service to stop the current RFQ process and negotiate directly with Travis Air Force Base a long-term contract so they may continue as the operator of the boat shop and marina at Fort Baker, as it is in the best interest of the public. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware, but the current RFQ process, Page one of it, National Park Service is asking for a for-profit, is asking for a partner, excuse me. to pay at least full market rate rent for that property, which of course, if Travis Air Force Base were to pay that, then it would no longer be able to be giving the money to their servicemen and women for their morale, welfare, and recreation fund. So it would no longer be feasible. for Travis Air Force Base to remain the operator. of the marina. is another issue with the current RFQ process. So I would love your support. And there's 14, almost 14,000 other people who would love for city council to say something about this issue. |
| 01:03:33.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And I know we received correspondence from you, but do you mind stating your name for the record? |
| 01:03:39.03 | Piper Perot | Yes, my name is Piper Perot. Great. And I did not hear back from city council my last email that I sent you guys. So I wanted to make sure that you knew this is very important to us. |
| 01:03:41.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 01:03:49.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, thank you. We have gotten the correspondence. Okay, thank you. Next speaker. |
| 01:03:49.73 | Piper Perot | Thank you. |
| 01:03:55.03 | Mark Bainbridge | Hi, my name is Mark Bainbridge. And I'm drafted tonight to be here. And I'm a biology teacher, high school biology teacher, at Star Academy up in San Rafael. And I have a boat in Horseshoe Bay. And so I spend a great deal of time there on the water, some of it doing research, some of it basically opening my students' eyes to what an amazing, amazing resource it is, and some of my time actually working with the service members who come Fourth of July throughout the summer and so forth, getting them out in the water and so forth. And I'm just here to tell you that from the eyes of a biologist, it is an incredibly unique place because the volume of water, fresh water and salt water that mixes in that little tiny marina produces a plethora of life that is really unique to just about any place on earth. And I've been all over earth. It's a very, very unique place. So I just want to give it some props. |
| 01:05:13.61 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. |
| 01:05:15.50 | Councilmember (Unknown) | To clarify, Horseshoe Bay is where the Yacht Club is, correct? |
| 01:05:18.93 | George Thomas | you right behind you. Thank you. |
| 01:05:20.78 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So the- |
| 01:05:20.89 | George Thomas | Right behind you, right here. |
| 01:05:22.79 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so speaking to the Travis Marina issue. |
| 01:05:27.38 | George Thomas | Hi, I'm George Thomas. I'm also here to speak on behalf of Travis Marina, which is in your beautiful paintings right behind you. My dad was stationed there at Fort Baker before he went over to the Philippines during World War II. And I try to make this as short as I can. Please help us save Travis Marina at Fort Baker. |
| 01:05:28.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | AND I'M GOING TO BE |
| 01:05:32.55 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 01:05:32.82 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:05:50.62 | George Thomas | and please adopt a resolution to support Travis Air Force Base in retaining this operation. It is a very special place. I'm a veteran and don't want to see it changed into a deep pocket venue. I think we have enough of that all over our lower Marin. I grew up here in Marin. My dad was stationed here, like I said, during World War II, before he went over to the Philippines. It's such a special place now, as you guys also know. It is open to all. It's affordable. And it's very important to support our veterans. Also, Like Piper said, we have almost 15,000 signatures on a petition to help us save Travis Marina, as it is, and not a deep pocket venue. Any support you guys could do, we'd appreciate it. |
| 01:06:52.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. Next speaker. And could you state your name for the record, please? |
| 01:06:58.27 | Tom Gangitano | Yes, Tom Gangitano. |
| 01:07:01.12 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 01:07:01.34 | Tom Gangitano | One of the owners of Gene Hiller menswear for the past 44 years. I want to say good evening to the state council and staff members. |
| 01:07:01.39 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | one of the owners. Thank you. |
| 01:07:07.66 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 01:07:09.83 | Tom Gangitano | I want to bring to your attention something that I come here as a representative of the merchants in town. We've grouped together to try to promote our town in this critical situation that has taken hold. The hotels, restaurants, and merchants have all gotten together on Caledonia and Bridgeway, and we're commencing a marketing program. joining our emails and networking our mailing list to capture the local clientele that is held captive in the county, in the Bay Area. We don't have any tourists coming into town. I took a picture today of the parking lot in town and you probably see it. Thank you. So we're going to do a marketing campaign, shop locally. We're going to give away gift certificates and merchants. We're going to have discounts for locals, but we need participation from the city, obviously. I've been through this in 2000, and I've been through it in 2008. And immediately, the city has helped the merchants jump on this event and capture the local business, which is here. So if one of the things you can do is permit free parking through the month of April, we can begin to promote that as our merchants to our local clientele. So I'm asking that request and hope to hear from you all later. Thank you. |
| 01:08:40.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you very much, and thank you for coming tonight. |
| 01:08:47.00 | Alice Merrill | Hello, I'm Alice Merrill, and I'm going to talk about Travis Marina. I'm one of those 14,000. And... |
| 01:08:47.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Hello. |
| 01:08:47.50 | Tom Gangitano | Thank you. |
| 01:08:47.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:08:47.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:56.06 | Alice Merrill | I remember when the Fort Baker was up for grabs, as this feels the same. This yacht club and this marina feels up for grabs right now. And Amy Belser was on the council. I don't know if she was mayor or just on the council at the time, but she was fierce in her help to get what's there now, which, believe it or not, is small potatoes compared to what was proposed by the various different developers. And it's just a wonderful place. And if the Air anything more than a one-year lease in the last 20 years or however long they've been there, They would have done a lot of improvements, but when you only have a one-year lease, you don't. if they would just respect, if the National Park Service would just respect what's there, give them a good long 20-year lease and let them thrive. And anybody can go there, anybody from anywhere in the world. It's not exclusive. And it's just would be a shame. to have once again, the powers that are always looking for the bottom line big bucks, which is what sounds like is happening and certainly was what was happening when Amy was on the council. And I just hope that you guys will support this because once it's gone, it's gone. Thank you. |
| 01:10:38.80 | Rochelle Cerosi | Hi, my name is Rochelle Cerosi, and I am here and to support Travis Marina. I've been going to Travis Marina about 14 years with my family and kids. |
| 01:10:41.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:41.23 | Alice Merrill | And I am. |
| 01:10:41.61 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:10:50.47 | Rochelle Cerosi | And as you mentioned earlier, how wonderful Sausalito is because it is such a kid-friendly place. This is a kid friendly place. The kids can go and play on the beaches. They can run up in the bunkers. I also feel, if, Travis Marina is not given a long-term lease, what will be lost? We'll be losing a place for families, history, We'll be losing benefiting military. And what will be gained? you'll have a place that comes in that only serves one type of person. Whereas right now, this place serves everybody. It's a very inclusive and diverse place and it's a very special place. And to give it to one type of person. It wouldn't be fair, and it wouldn't be Sausalito. So thank you for your time. |
| 01:11:42.23 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Is there any other general public comment? OK, great. Thank you for coming back and sticking around for general public comment. |
| 01:11:53.64 | Unknown | Um, So my public comment is that I am going to call out members of the. of the council because I didn't feel valid. and I didn't feel valid an appeal that I had against 416 Napa when my neighbor, Mark Rushford, Um, brought an appeal and it resulted in five new variances on 416 Napa that largely affected me. And as a steward for that property, which is behind 416 Napa, I felt it was my responsibility to look after those interests, which were privacy, the property had moved higher, in my opinion, and the tree had come down, which was a 70 foot tree, so lots of privacy was lost. My challenge here is I'm calling out where I think there should have been conflicts because only two persons on this board, Ray Withy, and Mayor Knowles came to the property and could properly consider it. So when you bring an appeal, it's a lot of effort. It's a lot of money. In my case, it was $1,800 because it got thrown back to the design review. as this council did a de novo design for that ADU. And So I had to go back for 1800 at the design review to get back here to ask a question to Joan Cox, which was, why did you say that ADU had to have a door facing me? And I thought, it's odd because it really would impact me. And... It occurred to me that maybe she had met with Michael Rex, the architect prior. And I've said that I think there's a bias between Joan Cox and Michael Rex. And Joan Cox did tell me that She actually came to my property to consider it. So I was considered for my appeal, for which I paid 18 plus 38, which is $5,600. You get 10 minutes. And I was considered at close to midnight. And when I asked the question, she yawned at me, which didn't really answer the question. So I don't think I was validly heard. I also called malarkey because she said that she came to my property. My property is fully gated. And I've been accused of having security cameras. So... I'm still calling malarkey. So I think you either bent the truth or you broke it. I don't think you were at that property. And... I think you should have conflicted yourself out if you have something going on with Michael Rex in favoring him. Joe Burns suggested to me that he was very good friends with Mark Rushford. So as $50,000 had been offered per the owners of 416 Napa by Mark Westward's counsel, And that got debated and it's a heated point. to push everything into my backyard I'm wondering if Joe Burns also said he was at the property. Now my property was actually at my property and could actually consider. So I'm here because I don't feel valid. on behalf of any other constituent, you don't really want to spend all this effort and be heard at midnight and not really be considered. So that was my point. |
| 01:15:02.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, great. Thank you very much. Okay, are there any other members of the public who would like to comment on items not on the agenda? And just for those of you who were here, we are not able under the Brown Act to discuss items under public comment. We may be able to put items on a future agenda item. So we're gonna move on to item number three, action minutes of the previous meeting. Are there any corrections to our minutes or a motion? |
| 01:15:30.58 | Joan Cox | Move approval. |
| 01:15:31.42 | Councilmember (Unknown) | second. Thank you. |
| 01:15:32.15 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that motion carries 5-0. We're moving on to item number four, council member committee reports. |
| 01:15:33.04 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I... |
| 01:15:42.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Is there anyone who would like to start? |
| 01:15:46.95 | Councilmember Burns | I'll start. Great. I was just there not too long ago. so are you missing it yet two main topics that I've met with have been economic development and the school unification desegregation process first being the economy development I attended the March 27th meeting that was televised and I think very self-explanatory within that video as well as the document that was produced unfortunately I missed yesterday's meeting which I think councilmember Riley can speak to but then I'll also say that councilmember Riley and I had a meeting on biz the business advocacy group and the HPD and looking at what we can do so we're positioned to say that we'd like maybe for that to be agendized to come up with a plan that we have it we want to throw it at you. |
| 01:15:55.61 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Are you missing it yet? |
| 01:16:49.52 | Councilmember Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:16:49.56 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We will definitely consider that at future agenda items. Thank you for having that discussion. I appreciate it |
| 01:16:49.57 | Councilmember Burns | Great. We will. |
| 01:16:53.84 | Councilmember Burns | Thank you. You bet. And then the second item was the last week's unification desegregation process with the school district. As I stated at the last meeting, it's kind of a dual process where we have back-to-back meetings, one being to discuss the unification, the two schools and then the second to talk about desegregation and which sole plan is to unify the two schools however the district is not acting as it is in this process of desegregating I mean unifying it's acting in the process that it's going to go with one school and that one school and one program had a strong representation at the last unification meeting with millions and millions of dollars proposed for an abundance of services and opportunities for grants to help pay for those services but I would say just a rough glance it was nearly tripled the budget that the school has to work with so that continues to be a disappointing process in that frankly the numbers that have been proposed don't match the numbers I mean the process that's taking place both by the district as well as the desegregation group Um, |
| 01:18:14.69 | Councilmember Burns | And I will end with that. |
| 01:18:15.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Great, thank you. on that. Absolutely, yes. |
| 01:18:20.58 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Further comments? So after the mayor asked Councilmember Burns and I to serve as liaisons to the schools, I've jumped in. There is a lot to learn, a lot to catch up on the complexities. In the past few weeks, I attended a unification meeting, a Willow Creek Academy board meeting, a desegregation advisory group meeting. Tomorrow I'll attend the Sausalito Marin City School District Board meeting. And I've met many parents within the community. I've come away with a few conclusions of these meetings I'd like to share. As we heard tonight, it's extremely important to the vitality of Sausalito. that we have a high performing Kate Wade school in our district. I further believe that a high performing school is enhanced by a very integrated and diverse student body. Not only improves the performance of school, but attracts students to our community from outside our community. And it's evidence as Willow Creek, we saw it's rapid growth. I met one woman with a child there who came from the north because her child was in an all white school. And she wanted to be in an integrated school. I believe unifying our two schools. BAYSIDE MLK AND WCA IS A TOP PRIORITY. And in doing so, we will achieve a high performing, well integrated, diverse student body. I spent time at Bayside MLK, very impressed with what they've achieved in the last three years, making great progress. I'm pleased to know that our school district is the top funded school district in Marin. Not only do we have a lot of money, we have two great campuses. So. There's two big issues that I've concluded. This is long, but I think it's important. Two big issues. The first is retaining our teachers and staff. The second is retaining our students who are leaving us. Right now, Willow Creek Academy with its current budget is underfunded by the district and is will have to the current budget layoff at least 17 highly qualified teachers and staff. We're in a market where it's hard to retain and attract teachers. And we're ready to lay them off. Yet, when you look at the unification plan, It says we need more teachers. So we're about to lay off teachers that we then need to try to attract other teachers. I think that's a big mistake. Secondly, there is no unification plan. We need clear. clarity on what the unification plan is and we need to accelerate it to retain our students. Because the uncertainty is scaring families away. We have lost 45 students this year, which is 10% of our district population just due to uncertainty. So we need to do two things. We need to get the district to fund WCA until we are unified, so we retain our teachers, and have clarity of unification plan. And I plan to address that tomorrow night. Finally, I encourage the community to attend the March 28th fundraiser for WCA at Harmonia, because until there's clarity of funds, we have to help them survive to unification. I joined a joint business advisory and hospitality committee yesterday, where we went through the recommendations from the land economic study, 30 recommendations, and we prioritized those 30 recommendations and made some adjustments. Those will be coming forward on our next council meeting. And then finally, I attended two waterfront meetings and I will defer to Councilmember Cox to give us an update on those. |
| 01:21:58.39 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you very much. |
| 01:21:59.94 | Joan Cox | Thank you. So we did have two waterfront committee meetings, and we also had two additional meetings with Senator McGuire. I reported to you at our last meeting about the first meeting. in person meeting with Senator McGuire. We've since had two additional one hour meetings with Senator McGuire. Thank you. And I actually will report on that in more detail during our Waterfront Management Committee agenda item. |
| 01:22:29.89 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. |
| 01:22:30.23 | Joan Cox | But in addition to those meetings, Council Member Riley and I did have a waterfront management meeting with the chief, in order to prepare the staff report and PowerPoint presentation which is in your packets for this evening. And then we had another meeting yesterday. morning that included Barbara Saltzman from the Audubon Society, who I believe will be here this evening to share her thoughts with us during that agenda item. And then in addition to those meetings, I attended a general plan advisory committee meeting on March 3 with the mayor. Thank you. |
| 01:23:12.47 | Unknown | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 01:23:12.62 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:23:12.80 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:23:13.02 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:23:16.15 | Councilmember (Unknown) | along with Councilmember Cox, I attended a sewer committee meeting and I got an update on a preliminary study that's being done that this council approved a while ago. To look at the very beginnings of the feasibility of combining the Sausalito THE END OF THE END OF THE sewer collection district with the marine city's sol solito we have two sewer districts the district that runs the plant and that pumps the sewer up over the hill to the plant and then the district run by the sewer operation run by the city of sol solito which is the collection system that goes into the pipes that get pumped up so it makes a lot of sense to see if there's any way to combine those operations um and uh create more efficiency meaning we can get more work done for the money um i think we will know more in the April-May timeframe and we will then i'm sure be receiving a report from the consultant and staff who are doing the work on that really a good piece of news that came out of that meeting i thought was that as you know we've had some major major problems with the major high-pressure sewer lines in gates six road gate five road that are basically continually especially in high tides being infiltrated with seawater and seawater is then being pumped up into the plant which is causing major major problems in terms of plant operations the microbial mechanisms that cut some work on the sewage do not like saltwater but the good news is we thought we were gonna have to spend many many many millions of dollars on that it turns out the work that we did last year and the year before, which was selective encasing of certain areas, is working very well. And we won't have the data until we put pumps on to test it. But this is really encouraging because it possibly means that we can divert money to other more critical issues so that was really really good news and I also attended a drill down Marin meeting in my former capacity as MCCMC president and then also a Bay Wave meeting |
| 01:26:07.98 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. |
| 01:26:08.79 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. |
| 01:26:09.42 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. No one mentioned, but it might worth mentioning for the public that we did have in between our two city council meetings, we had a, very interesting special meeting on our strategic plan last week we took a deep dive into the I can't remember the policies and goals or what we're calling them of the strategic plan and went on to the implementation measures so that was interesting the outline of our strategic plan is on our agenda from our last meeting and we will consider adoption of the strategic THE OUTLINE OF OUR STRATEGIC PLAN IS ON OUR AGENDA FROM OUR LAST MEETING. AND WE WILL CONSIDER ADOPTION OF THE STRATEGIC PLAN LATER IN APRIL OR MAY. BECAUSE OF THAT, I MISSED AN MCC-MC MEETING, MAYOR'S COMMITTEE AND COUNCIL MEMBERS MEETING ON HOMELESSNESS, WHICH I ATTEND QUARTERLY, AND I WILL TRY TO GET AN UPDATE ON THE MATERIALS FROM THAT MEETING the materials from that meeting to share with the council we did have a transportation Authority of Marin board meeting which I don't think that I've reported on but I think the main item that came out for me from that meeting was that Sausalito was the only jurisdiction in Marin that has not taken advantage of money free money from TAM for EV charging stations and electric vehicles for our city fleet so we should or my opinion is that we should pursue that available funding I also attended a meeting of the Marin Bike Coalition and other local Sausalito bike advocates in what was termed a bike soiree where they presented lots of interesting ideas about making biking safer in Sausalito for residents and children. And as Councilmember Cox noted, we had a general plan committee meeting last week. And next week we will be considering two very significant elements of the general plan. We will be talking about the health and safety element, which will contain a lot of recommendations from our landslide task force. And we will be considering the sustainability element, which will contain numerous recommendations about sea level rise climate change and other very important issues so that next meeting is next Tuesday March 17th it will be in the council chambers and I would really encourage anyone who is interested to attend. I think that is all of mine. So moving on from council member committee reports we will take up our consent calendar. Are there any discussion or is there a motion? I'm sorry, I need to take public comment. Is there any public comment on our consent calendar? We have four items on the consent calendar tonight. singing. |
| 01:29:14.03 | Joan Cox | approval of the consent. |
| 01:29:14.98 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:29:15.02 | Joan Cox | calendar. |
| 01:29:18.01 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Second |
| 01:29:18.86 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the consent calendar passes 5-0. Okay, we have no public hearing items, so we are going to move on to our business items. We have two this evening. The first one on our agenda is a report from the Community Development Department on short-term rental enforcement. This is a quarterly report. Just to note for the public, our key staff person on this item, Lily Whalen, is carefully following Marin County health policy, and because she did not feel well, she is at home, so we thank her for that, and we are going to have her walk through her presentation over the telephone. And we also have. |
| 01:29:19.75 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Bye. |
| 01:30:12.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | while we're waiting for Lily. |
| 01:30:17.83 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We also have, from staff, we have Ulrich Binzer from the Host Compliance. We have Irma Goen, our Senior Code Enforcement Officer, and Jason Inay, Code Enforcement Officer. So thank you very much to all of you for being here. And you might want to scooch up towards the front in case we have questions. So thank you. |
| 01:30:47.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Welcome. So just give us a minute while we get Lily on the phone. |
| 01:30:53.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:30:54.69 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And just a reminder before we get started with Lily's presentation that she is in real time on the telephone, but she has a 10 second pause. She can see what we are looking at, but there's a 10 second pause on the video feed. So if we need her to move slides around, I will need to let her catch up with our questions for just a a reminder. Okay, welcome, Lily. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. |
| 01:31:26.03 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. Great. Okay. So good evening, everyone. My name is Lily Whelan, and I'm your Community Development Director. |
| 01:31:31.86 | Unknown | and I'm not sure if you're |
| 01:31:34.72 | Lily Whelan | I do apologize that I am joining only by phone this evening, and I hope that you're able to hear me clearly throughout this presentation. If you can't, just... |
| 01:31:43.61 | Unknown | Thank you. Yeah. |
| 01:31:44.42 | Lily Whelan | Please interrupt me and let me know. And thank you to Heidi this evening for assisting me with advancing the slide. |
| 01:31:51.81 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So just a second, Lily. Can everybody in the public hear, Lily? |
| 01:31:52.35 | Lily Whelan | Right, Lily. |
| 01:31:55.54 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | If you can't, you might want to move up a little. Okay. Everybody can hear you. Thanks. |
| 01:31:57.36 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. Great. Perfect. So I'm joined this evening by Jason and they and Irma Gowen. They are the city's code enforcement officers. hopefully in the audience if they can raise their hand |
| 01:32:09.24 | Unknown | AND THE OTHER THING IS |
| 01:32:11.94 | Lily Whelan | and also OREC Denver. Ulrich is the founder and CEO for Host Compliance. so we can move to the first slide with the agenda on it. is. So tonight I'll be providing a quarterly update on short term rental code enforcement covering the last three quarters. I'll begin with a brief background and then dive into the update on code enforcement action and then end with upcoming steps we've experienced and how we are taking steps to overcome them. And everyone. data presentation. |
| 01:32:49.40 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:32:49.56 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. Okay, great. Perfect. So we'll go to the next slide, please. And this should be the background slide. So in terms of background, short term rentals are prohibited in Sausalito. The council has been discussing short-term rentals over a number of years. In November of 2018, the council, during their discussion of a pilot program to allow short-term rentals under limited conditions, and took action to increase the city's code enforcement officer from a one day a week officer to a three day a week officer |
| 01:33:22.26 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:33:22.38 | Lily Roller | Thank you. |
| 01:33:22.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:33:23.65 | Lily Whelan | for all code enforcement cases. And then the council also authorized the city to enter into a contract with host compliance, which is a leading provider of short term rental. compliance monitoring and enforcement solutions for local governments I think 2019 the council provided direction on short-term rentals, which included I THINK THAT'S A PROHIBITION continuing the prohibition on short-term rentals and prioritizing code enforcement efforts delaying consideration of the pilot program for a year to see how effective code enforcement actions would be under the current prohibition. The council also gave directions to provide quarterly updates on the effectiveness of the ban, which is what we're doing this evening. Next slide, please. Staff provided a first quarterly update on short-term rental activity to the Council in June of 2019. That quarterly update covered the month of February through May 2019 and also provided some preview June numbers. We provided a second |
| 01:34:27.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:34:27.47 | Unknown | I'm going to go ahead and |
| 01:34:28.83 | Lily Whelan | quarterly update on short-term rental activity to the council in November of 2019, which covered the months of July through September. |
| 01:34:31.89 | Unknown | and |
| 01:34:37.19 | Lily Whelan | As June was only partially reported on in the first quarterly reports, and not included in the second quarterly report, we decided to align the first quarter reporting period with the month of April through June 2019 and then provide a more robust second quarterly report for the month of July through September. |
| 01:34:51.43 | Unknown | and then, |
| 01:34:57.82 | Lily Whelan | Therefore, we'll cover quarters one and two reports this evening. We'll also cover quarter three, which was from October through December of last year. And then finally we'll get |
| 01:35:08.25 | Unknown | AND THEN FINALLY, |
| 01:35:09.89 | Lily Whelan | A little preview of the fourth quarter. and the final quarterly report, which will cover the month of January through March. of this year. |
| 01:35:21.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:35:21.03 | Lily Whelan | Yeah. |
| 01:35:21.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:35:21.33 | Lily Whelan | The final quarterly report is expected to be available in April, the next month. |
| 01:35:26.53 | Unknown | and I'm not sure. |
| 01:35:28.13 | Lily Whelan | And next slide, please. |
| 01:35:32.23 | Lily Whelan | So you should see a chart on the screen right now. This chart provides a summary of quarters one, two, and three from 2019. And I'm just going to go through what the lines on the chart mean. The top blue line shows the total advertised rental listings on all platforms. So this is for both long term, which is over 30 days, and short term, which is under 30 days. The total rental listings are the number of total listings, including multiple listings for one property. So for example, If one property has a listing on three, different platforms it would count as three rental listings on this particular line on the chart |
| 01:36:08.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:08.65 | Unknown | on this. |
| 01:36:09.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:09.48 | Unknown | the line. |
| 01:36:09.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:36:11.74 | Lily Whelan | The orange dashed line shows the total advertised listings on all platforms for both long-term and short-term listings. So the total unique rental units are the number of total properties listing on all platforms. So for example, |
| 01:36:27.24 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:36:27.72 | Lily Whelan | if one property was on multiple platforms, this would equal one unique rental unit on this line. Moving down the dashed gray line is the total number of advertised short-term only rental listings. the |
| 01:36:44.07 | Unknown | All right. |
| 01:36:44.41 | Lily Whelan | that we're going to have The blue line shows the total number advertised short term and long term unique properties that have been identified by host compliance, meaning we've tied an address to the listing. And then the dotted green line shows the total number of advertised unique short-term rental properties that have been identified by host compliance. So this is the line that we are trying to get as close to zero as possible through this enforcement effort. And then I want to highlight the net between the dark, solid blue line and the dotted green line and these are the short term rental properties that host compliance has not been able to identify yet meaning that they're still working on tying |
| 01:37:26.61 | Unknown | able to do that. |
| 01:37:30.15 | Lily Whelan | the address, the listing. and I'll see you next time. |
| 01:37:32.06 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:37:32.08 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. |
| 01:37:32.10 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:37:32.25 | Lily Whelan | indicated this delta using a red arrow on the right hand side of the chart. Next slide, please. |
| 01:37:42.66 | Lily Whelan | So this graphic here shows the code enforcement process for short term rentals being a three stage process. So the first stage is identification. In this stage, host compliance scrubs over 50 websites, which provide platforms for individuals to list short-term and long-term rentals and identifies the address of the listing and the property owner. |
| 01:38:01.04 | Unknown | and, |
| 01:38:05.29 | Lily Whelan | address data is hidden from listings. and that makes it really time consuming or sometimes impossible for staff to locate the exact properties and identify owners using a manual approach. If staff receives a complaint regarding a suspected short term rental, staff checks to see if the suspected rental has already been identified by host compliance. If the rental has been identified, will document the complaint as a part of the code enforcement case file If the rental has not been identified, staff will notify host compliance of the suspected rental, use code enforcement and get investigative tactics to gather evidence. The investigation stage yields either a property which is compliant meaning that it's a long-term rental or there's no rental activity. or it's non-compliant, meaning it's a short-term rental. the second stage is enforcement in this stage when host compliance or staff has identified a short-term rental that uses the procedures in the South Florida Municipal Code. |
| 01:39:12.13 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:39:12.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:39:12.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:39:12.37 | Lily Whelan | regarding code enforcement. And the first step is a courtesy notice. Seth has created two different categories of properties to receive these differing levels of courtesy notification, and that is based on past identification or contact with the city. And these courtesy notices are generated and sent by host compliance. If the courtesy notice is not complied with within the time period specified in the notice, staff will then move on to the next step in the process. which is a compliance order. If the compliance order is not complied with within the time period specified, staff will move on to the next step in the process, which is an administrative citation. the person receiving the citation may contest the citation by requesting a hearing within 10 calendar days from the date of service of the citations. And then the last stage is monitoring. I mentioned before manual monitoring a large number of properties is practically impossible as listings are constantly added, modified, or removed. Post compliance, that's where house compliance comes in and they routinely and systematically monitor listings to capture changes to a single listing. And then they also... |
| 01:40:20.80 | Unknown | now. |
| 01:40:22.16 | Lily Whelan | that have been added. And then they look for listings that also have been removed, and they note that in their database. If a short term rental listing has been added or a long term rental listing modified to be a short term rental listing, enforcement stage will be initiated for that that rental unit. that's his. Staff also has a number of tools to monitor properties, including undercover operations. Next slide, please. |
| 01:40:52.62 | Lily Whelan | So this is... This slide shows the four different categories. of a notification that staff and host compliance created to determine the level of initial notification. And categories one and two are the courtesy notices and category. three is the compliance order, and category four is the citation. They won't. go into detail about these, but I am available to answer any questions if you have them. Next slide, please. This slide shows the first quarter reporting for this program, which was April through June of 2019. of the 55 courtesy notices sent In quarter one, 26 properties either removed their listing or modified their listing to rent more. in 30 days. Of the remaining 29 properties, 23 properties migrated to category 3 and required compliance orders. Of those 23 compliance orders sent in quarter one, eight properties either removed their listing or modified their listing to rent more than 30 days in this quarter. |
| 01:41:51.16 | Unknown | 30-day |
| 01:41:52.83 | Lily Whelan | and the remaining 15 properties that received a complaint. A compliance order. And those were mostly delivered in mid-June. We're given time to respond in the following quarter. Next slide, please. This chart shows the trends in listings during the first quarter. The blue line shows that during the first quarter, the number of total short-term rental listings being advertised dropped from 97 to 40 listings. That orange line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings being advertised dropped from 80 to 32. |
| 01:42:23.39 | Unknown | being. |
| 01:42:23.71 | Unknown | I've got a question. |
| 01:42:27.00 | Lily Whelan | The gray line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings that were identified by host compliance being advertised dropped from 65 to 26. The number of total unique short-term rental listings which had not been identified by host compliance. drop. from 15 to 16. Next slide, please. the fine shows the second quarter reporting for the program, which was July through September of 2019. of the seven courtesy notices sent in quarter two, five properties either removed their listing or modify their listing to rent more than 30 days. The remaining two properties responded to the letter in the following quarter and became compliant. |
| 01:43:08.31 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:11.59 | Lily Whelan | of the 15 compliance orders sent in quarter two, fixed properties either remove their listing or modify their listing to rent more than 30 days in the quarter. |
| 01:43:16.09 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:43:20.95 | Lily Whelan | Of the remaining nine properties that receive compliance orders, four properties were moved to a Category 4 and sent citations The city paused on sending citations after this initial delivery in order to review hearing and citation appeal processes under the NRM director while I was out on leave. The remaining properties that received a compliance order in this quarter ended up becoming compliant and either quarter three or quarter four without having to escalate to a citation. Next slide, please. |
| 01:43:54.47 | Lily Whelan | So this chart shows the trends in listings during the second quarter. |
| 01:43:58.08 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:43:59.39 | Lily Whelan | The blue line shows that during the second quarter, the number of total short-term rental listings being advertised dropped from 37 to 30 listings. |
| 01:44:01.52 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:44:05.18 | Unknown | that's not going to be advertised. |
| 01:44:08.66 | Lily Whelan | The orange line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings being advertised dropped from 31 to 25. The gray line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings that were I hope you're going to be Um, drops from 21 to 13. And the number of total unique short-term rental listings, which had not been identified by host compliance increased slightly from 10 to 12. Next slide, please. |
| 01:44:41.02 | Lily Whelan | This slide shows the third quarter reporting for the program, which was October through December of 2019. |
| 01:44:46.00 | Unknown | I'm not sure. |
| 01:44:46.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:44:47.89 | Lily Whelan | uh, the one courtesy notice that was sent in this quarter, no proper, |
| 01:44:51.60 | Unknown | that. |
| 01:44:52.84 | Lily Whelan | it, the property did not remove their listing or modify. They're listening to rent more than 30 days. It was determined that the mailing address for that particular property was invalid and therefore the notice was resent and ultimately And unfortunately, ultimately, it was not responded to. And therefore, this property was moved to a compliance order. |
| 01:45:12.85 | Unknown | . |
| 01:45:13.54 | Lily Whelan | Of the three compliance orders sent in quarter three, two properties either removed their listing or modified their listing to rent more than 30 days in this quarter. |
| 01:45:19.21 | Unknown | to get started. |
| 01:45:19.25 | Unknown | days. |
| 01:45:19.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:21.14 | Lily Whelan | of their meaning. property that received a compliance order, the responsible party did not respond to it. |
| 01:45:26.33 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:45:27.19 | Lily Whelan | and therefore they were sent a citation. However, the mailing address for that particular property was later to be determined and valid. Next slide, please. THIS IS A chart shows the trends and listings during the third quarter. The blue line shows But during the third quarter, the number of total short-term rental listings being advertised |
| 01:45:45.91 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:45:46.36 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:45:46.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:45:48.93 | Lily Whelan | Increase. from 28 to 37. The orange line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings |
| 01:45:54.85 | Julie Myers | So, |
| 01:45:55.97 | Lily Whelan | being advertised increased from 26 to 32. And the gray line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings that were identified by host compliance and being advertised |
| 01:46:02.09 | Julie Myers | THINK. |
| 01:46:06.07 | Lily Whelan | increased from 14 to 16. and the number of total unique short term rental listings that had not been identified by host compliance increased from 12 to 16. The increase in rental listings during this reporting quarter were a different trend than the prior two quarters where we saw a steady declined in listings. In conversations with health compliance, staff was informed that this type of increase is common during the winter months to the holiday season when property owners |
| 01:46:32.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:32.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:32.08 | Unknown | Thank you. THE HALL. |
| 01:46:32.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:46:34.73 | Lily Whelan | or renting short term during November and December months. Other reasons for this upward trend are typical fluctuations in listings, including new short-term renters coming to the market. |
| 01:46:44.04 | Unknown | and you're going to be coming to the market. |
| 01:46:46.83 | Lily Whelan | are not aware of Los Alitos restrictions and existing short-term renters who are playing cat-and-mouse or hide-and-seek games of activating and deactivating listings, which we will identify and talk about later on tonight in this report. Next slide, please. |
| 01:47:05.80 | Lily Whelan | So this part of my report aims to give a little preview of the fourth and final quarterly report, which will cover. the months of January through March of this year. The data in the table on this slide represents half |
| 01:47:15.89 | Unknown | data. |
| 01:47:18.52 | Lily Whelan | of the data that will be collected during the fourth quarter recording period. which is information from January through about mid-February of this year, You can see that we sent nine courtesy notices and two compliance orders and one citation up to mid-February. Next slide, please. |
| 01:47:37.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:38.72 | Lily Whelan | This chart shows the trends in listings from the first month of the fourth quarter to the middle the fourth year. fourth quarter. the blue line shows that during their first quarter, during this particular |
| 01:47:51.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:51.07 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 01:47:51.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:47:51.71 | Lily Whelan | half of this quarter, this fourth quarter, the number of total short-term mental listings being advertised. They study at 28 listings. Similarly, the orange line shows that the number of total unique. short-term rental listings being advertised to a study at 24 listings. And then the gray line shows that the number of total unique short-term rental listings that were identified by host compliance, increase. from 11 to 15. |
| 01:48:17.04 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:48:17.07 | Lily Whelan | . |
| 01:48:17.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:48:17.18 | Lily Whelan | number of total unique short-term rental listings which had not been identified by hosts |
| 01:48:17.23 | Unknown | And number |
| 01:48:21.78 | Lily Whelan | compliance decreased from 13 to 9. Next slide, please. We should be on a slide that says next steps right now. in February of this year upon my return from maternity leave, I reviewed code enforcement procedures with code enforcement staff with a focus on short-term rental procedures. in March. I don't know. March. Second last week, all properties that had previously received either a courtesy notice, a compliance order or a citation |
| 01:48:50.44 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:48:54.18 | Lily Whelan | which were not, which were still not in compliance, received a final compliance order. And this was a total of nine properties that were in violation. the compliance order was either served on a responsible person or posted on the property in addition to being sent via regular mail and certified mail. As of today. five of the nine properties that were |
| 01:49:18.48 | Unknown | that. |
| 01:49:18.57 | Unknown | were |
| 01:49:19.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:19.33 | Lily Whelan | out of compliance are now in compliance. If the remaining four properties continue to be out of compliance by Thursday, which is the deadline in the letter, we will swiftly begin issuing citations to those properties. We will provide an update during the fourth quarterly reporting period next month on code enforcement progress. Next slide, please. and this slide should say challenges. Those complaints and staff have recognized the number of challenges involved in monitoring short-term rentals online. First, there's a constant flow of incoming short-term rental advertisements from operators who don't know the rules in addition to operators who are ignoring the rules and hoping to not get caught. For those who don't know the rules, a courtesy notice we have found usually stops the behavior. For those who ignore the rules, code enforcement staff will be issuing a final set of compliance orders. as I said, and then we will be immediately initiating the administrative citation process. We have Also notice that some operators are clearly aware of the city's rules and are trying to conceal their actions in a variety of ways. |
| 01:50:33.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:33.36 | Heidi Scoble | Okay. |
| 01:50:33.48 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:50:34.17 | Lily Whelan | Short-term rental operators have the ability on online platforms to turn their advertisements on and off or modify the settings with a click of a button. In some cases, In some cases code enforcement staff has found that Listings are turned on in the evening hours and on weekends when community development department staff is not engaged in enforcement and then turned off after the bookings are made. So to address this, in addition to host compliance's routine and random monitoring, Code enforcement staff will be randomly monitoring suspected offenders during all hours of the week. including evenings and weekends. In some cases, we have also found, we've also suspected that operators are soliciting their property as a long-term rental. However, when approached by would-be short-term renter, they have the ability to modify their settings to allow for a less than 30-day rental. So to address this particular issue, code enforcement staff will be conducting undercover operations to ensure compliance Next slide, please. |
| 01:51:39.98 | Lily Whelan | the spreadsheet by community notification. we have been updated updating the community on the short term rental issue through the fossilite occurrence. And this slide shows the dates that articles about enforcement specific to short term rentals went out in the current staff included in the current articles and then also in letters sent to property owners information about HomeMatch in Marin, which connects senior homeowners with extra rooms |
| 01:52:05.58 | Lily Whelan | with home seekers who need an affordable place to live. as a whole that some of these folks who are Renting short term can find a long term renter. Next slide, please. the slideshow said community reporting. |
| 01:52:21.00 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 01:52:22.42 | Lily Whelan | Post-compliance offers two ways for community members |
| 01:52:25.96 | Heidi Scoble | I'm sorry. |
| 01:52:26.03 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. addresses that are potentially in violation. |
| 01:52:27.77 | Heidi Scoble | and violation. |
| 01:52:29.26 | Lily Whelan | So there's a short-term rental telephone hotline, and then there's also an online form to submit a complaint. Both reporting options are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for neighbors to report non-emergency problems related to short-term rental properties. Once reported, host complaints immediately transmit the report to the city of Los Salinos code enforcement officer to investigate. So far we have received 37 submissions The hotline and online portal went online early last year. and that, That was 24 reports from the online complaint form and then 13 from phone calls. All reports are investigated as they are received. Jeff also reached out to the South Little Police Department to gather statistics on complaints prior to February of 2019. |
| 01:53:18.83 | Unknown | you're not going to be |
| 01:53:19.04 | Unknown | Right. |
| 01:53:20.98 | Lily Whelan | We found that the police department software system is designed to conduct queries based on addresses or specific dispatch codes and the police department did not have the ability to conduct this universal and comprehensive search for complaints about short term rentals specifically. However, if the council is interested in this information, staff could request and work with the police department to conduct a search using the addresses that we have in the host compliance system. for past and present short-term rentals. and present that information in our final quarterly report, if that would be helpful for the council. Next slide, please. This slide should be about COT. So this, the city. The courtesy notices and the compliance orders that were sent to property owners indicated that the city is collecting. transient occupancy tax or TOT for any unpermitted short-term rental activity |
| 01:54:14.72 | Lily Whelan | occurring on or after January 8th. and that's the date that the council took the action. that you did to proactively enforce this ban. |
| 01:54:21.79 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:54:25.25 | Lily Whelan | compliance provides a portal where the submittal of gross receipts and short-term rental operators were directed to upload their gross receipts within a given amount of time. gross receipts will be used to assess the TOT that is owed to the city. and, you know, |
| 01:54:40.12 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:40.54 | Lily Whelan | The short-term rental operators do not upload their gross receipts. We will be providing them with an estimate of their gross receipts based on the number of days the unit was available for rent at their listed nightly rate. and then invoice them the TOC that they owe to the city. |
| 01:54:51.81 | Unknown | and |
| 01:54:55.09 | Lily Whelan | Additionally, property owners may face penalties and interest if they fail to pay the COT. POT has not been collected to date. that will turn to its focus turn its focus to the collection of TRT in the April timeframe. And we need to hire a consultant to collect COT depending on the complexity of collection. We're still looking at that. Next slide, please. with your rights. to the budget and cost to date in November of 2018 the council appropriated funds to both increase contract services with CSG for code enforcement And that was up to $137,280 annually. |
| 01:55:35.93 | Unknown | one. |
| 01:55:40.19 | Lily Whelan | And this was an increase from a one day a week to a three day a week head enforcement officer. It depends greatly depending on the day and what the code enforcement officer is dealing with in terms of His or her case was. |
| 01:55:53.75 | Irma Goen | Thank you. |
| 01:55:54.86 | Lily Whelan | But, I did ask Jason. kind of a breakdown generally, how much time he has in the past spent on short-term rental activities versus other general activities. activities, code enforcement activities. And he has estimated that about 40% of his time on average is spent on the short term rental issue. So we use that information to estimate how much we spent out of that total allotment I'm not sure. for the last two fiscal years on the short-term rental issue for code enforcement. They also have the fee from host compliance, and it's just shy of $15,000 annually. |
| 01:56:33.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:34.09 | Joan Cox | and we're going to have a |
| 01:56:34.18 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:35.21 | Lily Whelan | So using those numbers, we've calculated that to date, the city has been approximately |
| 01:56:39.22 | Barbara Salzman | Thank you. |
| 01:56:39.26 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:39.27 | Joan Cox | Bye. |
| 01:56:39.29 | Barbara Salzman | Thank you. |
| 01:56:39.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:56:40.05 | Lily Whelan | eighty two thousand dollars on enforcement services related to short-term rentals and January of 2019. Next slide, please. |
| 01:56:51.66 | Lily Whelan | No action is requested of the council this evening. It's just a receiving file. this report, but I am available for questions to the council. I wanted to remind the council that we have over at from host compliance in the audience. And then we also have Irma. Allen and Jason and A, our code enforcement officers, to help with any questions. I'd like to also take this opportunity to introduce Irma as a new addition to our code enforcement team. Irma has had over nine years of experience in law enforcement as a community service officer and also a records supervisor. She's had over 11 years of experience in code enforcement in particular, working with the city of Salinas, and then most recently working with CSG in code enforcement for cities including Seaside, Arena, Lasagna, Monterrey, Carmel, Los Santos Hills, and the Valley. Irma has had extensive experience conducting enforcement for short-term rentals and we are pleased to be working with her |
| 01:57:46.35 | Barbara Salzman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:57:48.21 | Lily Whelan | So that concludes the presentation this evening and we are all available for questions that you might have. Thank you. |
| 01:57:55.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you, Lily. That was a very thorough and excellent presentation. And welcome to Irma. We're glad to have you here. Are there questions from the council for either Lily or our other speakers? |
| 01:58:11.46 | Joan Cox | I had a question. |
| 01:58:12.20 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 01:58:12.66 | Joan Cox | Hi Lily, it's Joan. Hi Joan. Hi, thank you for your great presentation and for making the effort to present it to us telephonically when you're under the weather, we very much appreciate it. When we approved the hiring or the increase of the amount of code compliance to be spent on short term rentals, we projected that we would be able to offset some of that expense with revenues from TOT and from citations. If I understand your report, we've not collected any revenue on either of those fronts yet. Is that right? Yes. That's correct. Okay, and have you created any projections based on The statistics from host compliance about what level of TOT we might collect or should we wait until April for that report? |
| 01:59:10.88 | Lily Whelan | I would think that |
| 01:59:11.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:11.67 | Lily Whelan | I think we should wait until April when THE END OF My report to the council in June of last year |
| 01:59:18.20 | Lourdes Esquivel | and |
| 01:59:18.54 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:20.14 | Lily Whelan | At that time, we had received information from THINK. I think there were six properties that had submitted their gross receipts, and I had estimated at that time, about $25,000. I think, and TOT owed from those particular properties. of I did check last week before this report to see if others had submitted any of their gross receipts and they hadn't since June. we need to do. kind of a more focused effort to everyone again, So get them to submit their gross receipts And if they don't, then we need to do the next step of doing the estimate of how much TOC they owe and then invoice those properties. That's going to take some time and dedication to do. And we'll turn our focus to that in April, and I'll have some better numbers for you then. |
| 02:00:17.22 | Joan Cox | And if you could include the projected expense of a consultant to assist with collection of TOT if that's what we end up needing, could you do that as well? Yes, I will definitely include that. And do you believe that the collection of TOT will act as a further deterrent to short-term rentals? |
| 02:00:42.22 | Lily Whelan | uh... That in combination with the citations that will be Issuing the first citation is a thousand dollars the second is two thousand and a third THE FEDERAL. |
| 02:00:55.32 | Joan Cox | Okay. |
| 02:00:56.03 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. |
| 02:00:56.25 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. So I think that will be a as well. |
| 02:00:59.98 | Joan Cox | So some of these properties that are getting their first citation actually have more than one offense, but we're not, we're only going to cite them for the first offense since we haven't previously cited them, or are we sending them citations one, two, and three if they have multiple offenses? |
| 02:01:15.97 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. |
| 02:01:16.01 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:16.02 | Lily Whelan | We will be. starting the so for the four properties that are currently out of compliance right now, they're still out of compliance as of Thursday. they will get a citation for one thousand dollars. And if they don't comply with that, then they'll get a citation for $2,000. And if they don't comply with that, they'll get a citation for $5,000 and on. |
| 02:01:31.97 | Joan Cox | I'm with it. |
| 02:01:36.02 | Joan Cox | And what is the timeframe between each citation, each successive citation? Is it day by day, week by week? |
| 02:01:42.82 | Unknown | I believe it is day by day, but I'll look to Jason to confirm that. |
| 02:01:49.34 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So Jason, could you please come to the microphone? Sorry, it's just, it's okay. So state your name and your position, and then if you could answer the question. |
| 02:01:49.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:01:58.82 | Jason Inay | My name is Jason and I am a code enforcement officer under contract here at the city of Sausalito. I would like to say something about the question about deterrence through TOT since you mentioned that. I have directly spoken to property owners and they are aghast at the cost. And it seemed to me, I was left with the impression that they don't really want to experience that any longer. As far as what was the other question that you had? |
| 02:02:24.10 | Joan Cox | How far apart is Citation 1 from Citation 2? |
| 02:02:28.54 | Jason Inay | It's, |
| 02:02:29.33 | Joan Cox | Is it day by day, week by week? |
| 02:02:30.63 | Jason Inay | week by week. They have a 10 to 15 days usually to respond. Right. And then the code says that we can basically give them a violation for every day that we can prove that there is existence of a violation. So that could be through a screenshot or through contact or any of those things. But that really depends on how the city wants to actually do it, whether it's by mailing. So since we're only sending the second mailing, it would only be that second citation phase or the third mailing being the third and subsequent citation phase. Does that answer your question? |
| 02:03:03.81 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:03:03.82 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, thank you. |
| 02:03:04.65 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:03:05.04 | Jason Inay | Thank you. |
| 02:03:07.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, other questions? |
| 02:03:08.53 | Jason Inay | Thank you. |
| 02:03:08.55 | Councilmember Burns | Yes. Lily we have at the beginning of the presentation we last year in January moved code enforcement from one day a week to three day a week and Now I see two code enforcement officials Are we still three days a week with the two bodies that are both very happy and gave big smiles and waves when you introduce them? |
| 02:03:33.27 | Lily Whelan | We are, yes. Jason is with us one day a week. And Irma is with us two days a week. |
| 02:03:40.22 | Councilmember Burns | Great. Thank you. |
| 02:03:40.88 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. |
| 02:03:44.76 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Hi, Lily, I just want to thank you for presenting in great detail. I'd like to ask the CEO of Host Compliance a question. Thank you for joining us tonight. Lily gave me a great walk through of your platform. It's impressive. I guess my question comes to the efficacy. Today we have 24 unique properties, of which 15 we've identified via address. The community will send to me very often that there's a lot more than 24 short term rentals out there just by doing searches. So maybe you could answer the efficacy of how accurate is that 24? |
| 02:04:21.63 | Ulrich Binzer | Yeah, no, so Ory Binzer, CEO of Host Compliance for the Record. I think the first thing to understand, and I think Lily did a good job explaining it in the report, is that there's a big difference between what you see online, which is ads, or what we call listings, and the actual unique number of short-term rentals. And there are essentially two reasons why there's a huge difference between those two different kinds of numbers. The first thing is, as Lily explained, many people advertise their property on multiple websites. So when you just go online and search for short-term rentals in Sausalito, you will easily be double-counting a large number of listings and maybe wrongly assume that these are all unique properties, which they're not. They're actually the same properties being advertised on multiple websites. So that's the first thing to acknowledge. The other thing is that there are a lot of people who, because of the enforcement efforts and all the good press work that the department has made, have changed their listings to basically not allow bookings for shorter than 30 nights. So they'll still be on these websites. So you can go on every day all day long and find, in this case, dozens and dozens of these properties that may look like short-term rentals to a person who's not as experienced with this particular industry, even though they're not short-term rentals because per the definition of the ordinance, they advertise for 30 nights or longer, which is not within the definition. So I think it's important to understand that even though there might be 100 listings out there, that has nothing to do with the unique amount of actual rental units. So what we need to focus on is essentially the difference between what we call the unique short-term rental units, which is 24, and the 15 we have identified. So there's nine properties out there that we literally cannot find. And I will be the first to admit that that's embarrassing. I wish we could find more. But I also will point out that there was 100 when we started. So the ones we are left with are the ones that are playing the cat and mouse game. And it's not like we're not trying, trust me. And I also think Ruma and Jason are spending a bunch of time trying to find these by actually walking around the neighborhoods, and it's not easy because they're not posting any exterior photos, they're not using real names, they're like deliberately not accepting reviews. They're doing all sorts of things to hide. And so, so, so like long story short, I think it's actually been incredibly effective if you look at the program overall. There are two things you could do to make the program a lot more effective though. You could actually be much more aggressive on issuing citations. So the cities that have close to 100% compliance are the ones that literally will send a citation whenever you find someone. And they will send out like $1,000 citations a day. That you can do. And then the second thing you can do is you can have people who you catch sign an affidavit as part of the enforcement process, where you basically say, or the person who signed it will say, I now understand these rules, and I understand the next time you catch me, it's $5,000. And that will make him think twice about doing it again. So if that's what you really want to do, there's definitely ways to do it. But just accept that there will also be some legal costs in defending that policy, because some people will sue the city, and you'll have to expect that. So did that answer your question? Yes. Good. |
| 02:07:21.18 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:07:40.35 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Before you go, do you have other questions? Well, |
| 02:07:45.35 | Heidi Scoble | I have a question. |
| 02:07:45.53 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Exactly. One last question, thank you, Mayor. And this is possibly for Lily. So last year we spent $82,000 and we removed 83 short-term rentals, about $1,000 each. |
| 02:07:48.15 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 02:07:57.16 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I assume that we now have 24 that we're going to try to reduce. It'll cost us $82,000 because the software is fixed and we have staff. So it'll come about $3,000 per unit. If we get down to 0, there is no revenue we're generating. This is going to be an ongoing expense that we incur. |
| 02:08:10.51 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 02:08:10.83 | Leah Gilbert | Bye. |
| 02:08:10.91 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:16.65 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Because if we're down to zero, we're not collecting TOT, we're not collecting fines or citations. So I think it's one thing we just have to put into our budget. Is that a, I'll turn to a question. Is that an accurate assessment? |
| 02:08:30.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:30.86 | Lily Whelan | Thank you. |
| 02:08:32.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:08:32.61 | Lily Whelan | If you hit down to zero, then the cost will be, we would still want to keep monitoring Retaining host compliance to help us with that. and using code enforcement staff is if a renter does pop up. So if it's down to zero and a short-term rental pops up, Most compliance will find it. And then we'll start the code enforcement process and eventually issue a citation if they don't respond to the compliance order. that theoretically if they don't If they pop up. AND RESPOND TO THE COMPLAINT ORDER then there's no citation that follows from that. If they do it again, then we can issue a citation. I think there's the possibility of getting to a citation stage, but you are correct that |
| 02:09:22.92 | Unknown | you. |
| 02:09:24.84 | Lily Whelan | there will need to be money continually put into this program to continually monitor |
| 02:09:30.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:09:30.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:09:31.49 | Lily Whelan | I don't know. THE END OF THE END OF THE platform. And co-enforcement staff to be available to assist if we need them. |
| 02:09:41.95 | Lily Whelan | Did that answer your question? |
| 02:09:44.00 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. |
| 02:09:44.03 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Yes, thank you. I'm not sure who this question is for. Maybe for you, Ulrich. Or it could be for our city attorney. What is, in other jurisdictions, what has been the experience of, once you actually start issuing citations, how easy is it to get that money paid? And what's the process if somebody says, well, I'm not paying that. |
| 02:10:16.43 | Ulrich Binzer | Yeah, so we've worked with about 100 other California cities, of which I would say 30 have bands similar to Sausalito. And the process in other cities is a little bit more aggressive. So they will issue a citation much more quickly, so they don't give first, second, or third warnings. They just go straight to citation, and they do daily citations. And then when they have issues collecting it, they just lien the property. It costs about $18. It's very simple. And then if and when the house sells, they get the money back. So it's a lot cheaper than hiring a collection agency, for example, to try to get it. It may take a little longer to get the money, but most people don't want to lien on their house, especially not these people who are investor-owned properties, and they are looking to sell them probably in short term after they get shut down from short-term metals. So that's what other cities have done with great success. Thank you. |
| 02:11:12.15 | Unknown | Great, thank you. Irma, did you want to add something? |
| 02:11:17.43 | Irma Goen | A key factor is when we're not finding the properties and someone mentioned that there are properties out there that are conducting the short-term rental is the hotline, so the neighbors will will report the properties And so when it comes down to, we are going into the citation process, the administrative citations. Um, so, um, An experience in Monterey that Jason and I have worked in we collected approximately $83,000 in a four month period. And so we have a lot of time. just by issuing citations in the lower numbers, the 100, 150, and 200. 200 daily fines as well so the most that I in particular issued were $10,000 for for just one property and we have gone to superior court and we have Won the five cases in Monterey as well. So I don't know if that helped with the question that you had |
| 02:12:16.23 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Actually, while you're at the microphone, I have a question for you. So I think the staff report said there's a slide about complaints, and it looks like in the past six months the complaints have gone down dramatically so that we are seeing about zero or one complaint per month in this area. Is that correct? |
| 02:12:38.92 | Irma Goen | Yes, I wasn't here during that time, but yes, it is correct, per Jason's report as well. |
| 02:12:46.38 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. And are those complaints from direct generally, or maybe this is a question for Jason, are those complaints generally from direct neighbors that are having specific issues with the short term rentals? Or are they people that are finding particular properties online? Thank you. |
| 02:13:04.77 | Irma Goen | I'll let Jason in. |
| 02:13:05.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, thank you. |
| 02:13:05.69 | Irma Goen | Okay. |
| 02:13:09.67 | Jason Inay | For the most part, the complaints are... |
| 02:13:10.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | For the most part- |
| 02:13:11.34 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:14.46 | Jason Inay | Sorry. |
| 02:13:14.83 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:15.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Hold on, Lily, did you want to say something? |
| 02:13:17.45 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 02:13:17.97 | Lily Whelan | Sorry. |
| 02:13:18.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:13:18.97 | Lily Whelan | Just based on, I've reviewed the majority of the complaints that have come in through the online complaint form and then the phone calls and I would Just if I had to give a guesstimate, my sense is about 60% are neighbors and the other 40% are that folks to have found different listings online. But Overex might have a better sense of that. |
| 02:13:48.38 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Jason, does that conform to your? |
| 02:13:50.39 | Jason Inay | That's fairly correct, but what the report doesn't reflect is when a property owner or a resident who's complaining about someone calls in directly to code enforcement, which happens a few times a month as well. Those are only recorded in the comments section of our software for tracking the short-term rentals, and that is not something that's collected as a metric by host compliance. That's something that we just keep in track for ourselves. That's where we keep a lot of the proprietary information that we don't want to reveal to the public anyway. |
| 02:14:22.40 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so about a couple a month, is that what your estimate is? |
| 02:14:24.53 | Jason Inay | Yes, that's correct. At this time, it was initially when I first started here in about a year ago. It was much more frequent, and just as the decline has occurred in the graphs that you were shown, so has the phone calls. |
| 02:14:38.48 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, great. Thank you. And then I just had one more question for Ulrich, if you don't mind coming back to the mic. Okay. So you had just answered in another question that you work with about 100 jurisdictions, and you've given us some sense, especially in the citation field, about what we might be able to do that might be more efficient. So do you have any other kind of just from looking at this whole area from your kind of broader position, do you have other recommendations or other things that you have seen work in other jurisdictions that are particularly effective? |
| 02:14:45.50 | Jason Inay | to the mic. |
| 02:14:46.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:14:46.26 | Jason Inay | Thank you. |
| 02:14:46.28 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:15:21.72 | Ulrich Binzer | Right. I think maybe take a step back. I actually think that what the city has been doing is very impressive. I think the results speak for themselves based on the numbers. So I would say that you guys are doing very well relative to other cities with bans. Cities that have bans of short-term models are always having this cat and mouse dynamic that is happening. And I think Lily and her staff has done a phenomenal job actually staying ahead of this and so it's not like I can point to another city and say if you just did it this way it would be a lot better a couple of things you could do that that would require changes to the ordinance and city of West Hollywood California is a city that also have a ban on short term minerals what they've they've done is that they've put in a very innovative find schedule. So the way that they essentially determine what the citation is, it is as a factor of the advertised nightly rate. So this puts a much higher citation for people who rent out the mansion than someone who's renting out a spare bedroom. And it's an escalating factor. So I believe it's three times the nightly rate multiplied by the minimum stay. So if someone, for example, is renting out for $200 a night and a five-day minimum stay, then it would be $3,000 for the first find. If someone's renting out for five times a month, that would be five times bigger citation. So that's one thing you do, because that serves as a very strong deterrent for anyone irrespective of the type of property they're renting. So you don't end up essentially over penalizing the small fish and just giving the big fish a slap on the wrist. So that would be one idea. And the other thing you could do, and this would require city attorney approval, is also make it actually a criminal violation. Like in Denver, they put people in jail for this stuff. And that works as a very strong deterrent as well as you can imagine. |
| 02:16:17.60 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:16:17.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:16:24.20 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:16:40.52 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:16:40.86 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:16.65 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you. And what about the other jurisdictions that allow some limited number kind of other restrictions? How are those programs working vis-a-vis the outright bans? And have you seen any particularly successful models? |
| 02:17:20.99 | Ulrich Binzer | it. |
| 02:17:32.80 | Ulrich Binzer | Yeah, so I think the issue that was brought up by council tonight is that you don't really have a strong revenue source here. So therefore, the general taxpayers have to end up basically paying for this monitoring and enforcement. Cities that have taken a less restrictive view on short terminals have the ability to collect licensing revenue, permitting fees, as well as TOT from people who are operating throughout the year. And as such, they can get an incredibly high return on investment in these enforcement initiatives. But obviously, that's not possible with a ban. So the cities that have tried to come up with a middle ground, what they do is that they permit primary residence to rent out their homes, so they do not allow investor-owned properties. They do allow primary residents to rent out their house. And the thinking goes that if people are living in the house, first of all, they're going to be very thoughtful about screening their tenants. They're not going to rent it out to bachelor parties and bachelor parties and things like that. Secondly, since they live in their house, they have obligations such as jobs and school obligations and things like that. And therefore're not going to rent out all the time some cities and further supplement the private residency requirement by an annual cap on the number of nights allowed to rent so for example 60 or 90 120 days to make sure that people don't rent all the time to at the expense of the neighbors so those are ways that some cities have solved this compliance cost issue by essentially generating a revenue source, but still trying to mitigate the affordable housing implications and quality of life implications for the neighbors. Thank you. |
| 02:19:19.25 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, well, I don't know if you remember, but we did look at some similar items last year. And I think one of the main concerns that was expressed by a number of residents was that the primary resident criteria would not be enforceable, that that would be difficult to enforce. And how has your experience been with that? |
| 02:19:22.44 | Ulrich Binzer | Thank you. |
| 02:19:45.94 | Ulrich Binzer | been with that. I can't opine on that. Like, 80% of California cities have exactly that rule and have no issues enforcing it. There are sort of a couple of things that you need to do to make it right. One is you need to build a permit application process that require a couple of things. One thing is that the applicant has to actually submit evidence of private residency, such as a driver's license where the address matched the property that you're trying to get a permit for, voter registration, potentially utility bills similar similar to what you do for school enrollment. And to my knowledge, I don't think there's a lot of issues with people enrolling kids even though they don't live in Sausalito. It's a similar type of process. The second thing is you have people sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that says they truly are the primary resident. And that's, again, where criminal liability come in. So, again, the city of Denver, they actually have criminal liability on that affidavit. And most people think twice about doing that if they don't truly live there, realizing that the consequences are pretty severe. So I don't think that is a valid concern based on my experience. |
| 02:20:48.77 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you, Joe. |
| 02:20:51.66 | Councilmember Burns | And it was very close to what the mayor just asked in that you, so I'll just change my question a little bit. You stated there were 30 cities similar to Sausalito, similar in that they have 100% banned, no coastal commission zone, no, like Carmel, we always assumed was 100% banned, but it turns out they're not. They were letting some people grandfather in under a license agreement. So it seems like every town that I've stumbled across that had 100% banned turned out to have a couple little allowances along the way. Who truly is like our town that has 100% no equivocal ban? |
| 02:21:30.49 | Ulrich Binzer | Yeah, so I'd say Monterey is the only one I would say is 100% ban and doesn't have any kind of Sony exemptions for, for example, launching of hotel zones or grandfathering program. Okay. And as Irma pointed out, Monterey has a very vigorous enforcement program. They do sting operations and they've been very successful in collecting very high fees, but they also had five lawsuits. Thank you. that they did win all of them, but it's a lot of resources that went into defending those lawsuits. West Hollywood is another, would you say? West Hollywood do allow hosted stays, meaning if you're renting out a room and you're physically present as the host during the duration of the stay, you're allowed to do it. |
| 02:22:12.15 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Actually, that just raises one other question for me. So for hosted stays, what's the success of enforcement? |
| 02:22:18.71 | Ulrich Binzer | I would say it's similar to bands. You obviously have to issue a permit to the host that do hosted stays and that's not the issue. The issue is that all the people who are doing non-hosted stays are doing the same kind of cat and mouse games as the people are doing in Solita now. So it's not that materially different from an enforcement success. |
| 02:22:39.81 | Councilmember Burns | Does the affidavit work in those cases as well? |
| 02:22:40.21 | Ulrich Binzer | Thank you. Affidavit works in those cases as well, but only if the city is willing to vigorously prosecute people who are violating the rules. Okay, thanks. |
| 02:22:52.24 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, okay, thank you. Thank you for our enforcement. Oh, looks like Jason has, sure, come on up. Do you have to, Jason, you have to come to the microphone. Thank you. |
| 02:23:02.60 | Jason Inay | So I have done enforcement in Monterey as well, and I've had to generate declarations, and we've had cases where I didn't work the original case, and there was an affidavit signed by the property owner in previous years, and that was pivotal in winning the hearings, because as soon as they saw that they had a signature of an affidavit, they didn't even try to fight the fines, they just paid the fees, and they were in the thousands. So I think that's something that you need to hear. |
| 02:23:26.89 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And they were. |
| 02:23:30.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Good, thank you, that's very helpful. Okay, we are going to, no more questions, we are gonna turn it over to public comment. So if you would like to speak on short-term rentals, please come to the microphone and you can line up if there are more than a few. So, ma'am, I'm sorry, you need to come all the way to the microphone. And the reason I'm asking this, just so that I'm not picky, we have people listening at home, and they can't hear you unless you are speaking into the microphone. So please state your name and let us know what you'd like to say. |
| 02:23:58.65 | Lourdes Esquivel | Oh, I see. So please. My name is Lourdes Esquivel and I will love to be able to rent my house when I'm traveling. To supplement my income. I don't see anything wrong with that. And I think South Salito will benefit with a tax that you could great with this. And also I believe there's not enough hotels in South Salito for all these travelers that would love to enjoy this area. They're wonderful families, usually couples, parents with children that cannot afford a hotel here. And I think it will be a good thing for everybody. |
| 02:24:43.37 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Right. Good. Thank you very much. Anyone else? OK, seeing no additional public comment, this is not an action item tonight. But are there any comments from the council? It sounds like, you know, we want to finish out our year report that will be ending in April. It also sounded like we have some good suggestions. Thank you. And perhaps ways to improve our enforcement efforts so we could consider those. Any other comments? Go ahead. |
| 02:25:23.70 | Councilmember Burns | Um, |
| 02:25:27.48 | Councilmember Burns | No, no, I'll wait. I'll wait. |
| 02:25:29.25 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Congratulations. So thank you, Lily, for a really excellent report. Thank you to staff. Great to have you here. And thanks for your efforts on this. I think pretty amazing progress on reducing the number of short-term rentals and complaints. All right, we will move on finally to our item 7B, Waterfront Management Plan update. Thank you to the members of the public who patiently waited to comment on this item. We are going to start with a presentation by Chief Warbarker. |
| 02:26:10.66 | John Warbacher | Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of the Council, members of the community. My name is John Warbacher. I'm serving as your Chief of Police. In the package tonight for this item, I included a staff report. I included the letter that we received from the BCDC. I included a sample of one of my monthly responses to BCDC. But more importantly, IANTLY I INCLUDED THE SLIDES FOR TONIGHT'S PRESENTATION. HOPING THAT WHAT WE WILL GET FROM THAT IS FEEDBACK FROM YOU TO BRIDE US DIRECTION FOR MEETING WITH BCDC ON MARCH 25TH. SO WE ENCOURAGE YOUR COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS. I'M NOT GOING TO REVIEW THE STAFF REPORT. I have 33 slides to get to, and some of them are things you've seen before, so we might go over those. But if you want me to slow down, just say so. So the background is not new, but we include it every time because it is part of the public record and we want to make sure that we get that in front of the BCDC when we have our meeting with them. This is just a review of our priorities set by you, the city council, and what were our highest priorities and then the lower priority item. Again, nothing new there. We did come back to you in, actually over two years ago to modify the priorities just a bit because we were looking to get your authorization to do immediate enforcement with our 72-hour ordinance and then also to defer some enforcement on some of our occupied boats. We adopted the term legacy anchor outs for those individuals. And relative to that topic, a little quick research showed us that our legacy anchor outs, and there's about five or six of them, range from age 68 to 80. And I put that up there as a point of I there's not really a big rush to try and move those few people off the water in our opinion. So our authority to regulate this was at one time more of a contested item. We believe that we've put that to rest. The Code of Federal Regulations is very clear and we had a law firm help us with that and we published a white paper that you the city council adopted and as a matter of public record. So staffing has been very important for us, again, with the authorization of counsel. We hired a couple of part-time people back when we started in July of 17. to conduct our surveys and we have been doing nearly monthly surveys. I think we're up to like 28 or something like that now since that time. We get assistance, of course, from the Coast Guard, when needed, but also we hired a new A PART-TIME MARINE PATROL OFFICER STARTING A COUPLE MONTHS AGO. His name is Kenji Baraj, he's retired from the California Highway Patrol, and we'll introduce him a little bit later. There's not been time to do that yet. But he does certainly have a significant maritime background. So this is just a slide that we put in. This is a snapshot from the last survey that we conducted. And it shows the steady downward decline in the number of boats on soft feet of water. In fact, since that survey, which has now been like two or three weeks, there's actually just 12 boats, not 13. This is another important slide for us is the No new boats. And so we have a couple of months of that. The boat that was new in December is a commercial fishing boat that comes and goes, and we just keep track of it. But we did count it, in all fairness, as a new boat back in December. It's still around now, but it will probably leave the waters after the fishing season is over. |
| 02:30:25.56 | John Warbacher | So, We received a letter from the BCDC in December after we had attended a meeting in San Francisco with the enforcement committee, and that letter's attached to this report. I believe you've already seen it before tonight. And there was some things that the BCDC's looking for us to do, and we looked at that as, frankly, we had done most of the things already listed in that letter. And, however, there was some cleanup left to do, and this is just a slide documenting a few of those items where we sent some notices to people who had some marine balls that were not authorized and a couple of boats that were not occupied but were being left and stored on Sausalito water. two of those vessels left right away after receiving the letter. One very cooperative man has been working to have his boat leave Sausalito and still on track to leave sometime at the end of March. And then the unauthorized mooring balls were removed from South Sea to water by their owners. And so we look at that as just a continuation of our cleanup not gigantic numbers, but when we're down to this few boats and we're involved, that's what's left. So with the eelgrass, There's three slides that list direct language that I've included in each of the monthly reports to BCDC. I did not write this. This was written by Sage Tezak. Sage is in her, what I call her, day job. She's a GIS research analyst and scientist for NOAA, and she's quite fluent in this type of environmental concern and wrote this slide, the language in this, and it's also in my staff report and has been in each of the letters I've sent to BCDC. So it's this paragraph. this paragraph. and this paragraph. So I don't really see the need to read them, but that's word for word what we are including. So they've asked for us to include that in each of our reports. So moving on, as we look forward to other items that need to be taken care of, the opening of Dunphy Park is on the horizon, it's looking pretty good. we wanted to replace the Thank you. the markers that delineate the protected waters of Dunphy Park with new markers. And the Army Corps of Engineers is gonna help us with that. There's no cost to us for them to do that. We need to do a little bit of research about making sure we have the boundaries correct. That's all been done. And so it's just a matter of installing them there were there were some markers there before but there uh they were you know somehow they removed or lost to the sea so we have new ones in place and of course we have enforcement sections that allow us to enforce no anchoring within that zone as depicted on on that map so uh we wanted to make sure that the slide was included because we're asking BCDC for the permit to put them in. And the BCDC replied that this is actually a fairly straightforward permit, costs $100 and doesn't require a lot of time. So we anticipate that those markers will be up at or about the same time that Dunphy Park is open. |
| 02:34:08.85 | John Warbacher | And this is a snapshot of what the vessel markers look like in our first two product. This is as a result of the surveys that were done in February. And, um, So of course the purple ones are ours, the red ones are the County Marin water, and the blue ones are the City of Belvedere's waters. So this is a picture taken just a couple of weeks ago, looking north over the Spinnaker. It's just showing how our water is pretty clear. Some of the completely clear water is, of course, the channel. And, uh, We don't, I mean, that typically has some free passage through it. It is not typically clogged up by anybody. And this is another view just looking from the north looking south, and you can actually see part of the Dunphy Park construction going on, and the tourney basin in the upper left corner of that photo. So that's a result of our work. I wanted to show that in a picture form. We have a lot to be proud of in our efforts, and the results that we've achieved. And a little bit of reminder again for our BCDC presentation, again pictures of boats that were removed as being marine debris, more pictures of boats that were surrendered under the grant for us to take and destroy. under a program called the vessel turn-in program that's part of the boating waterways grant conditions is to accept those and and we're happy to do so. And, of course, this is the start of a little bit of the statistics about all of our enforcement work. We wanted to make sure that we're keeping up with the... goals and the priorities that the city council has set uh... you recheck just a few days ago when we made the slide is that out of the twelve boats left in Saucelito Water, three of them are currently not registered or documented. And I really can't say that they might ever be. So just to be realistic about it, it's hard to say. But nine of them are and are good about doing that. We have been posting copies of our ordinances on boats when necessary. That hasn't actually had to happen for a while. Um, because our numbers are fairly static. So again, a recap of some of our enforcement efforts, again, for BCDC's benefit, about the boats that we removed and some of the boats that were impounded and then later turned back over to people who wanted them or not. We currently still have a boat that is under impound, not yet sorted out about what's gonna happen with that, but it's definitely not been destroyed. accruing some impound storage fees on our behalf while we work that out. No gigantic rush to make that happen. And it's just moving along here. So we did unoccupied moorings, I covered that already. We did again another annual debris cleanup event. It would be our third that we did. It's a very productive rush to clean up help people clean up the debris on their vessels so that during the winter, during those heavy winds, and we certainly have seen some of those this season, that those items don't end up in the water. And that's a team effort with us and RBRA and Army Corps of Engineers and Mariners County Health and Human Services. It puts people on the boat to help collect information from people who might be interested in some services. And so we like doing that event. And that's an example of what that looks like. We put a rather large debris box on the Allied Mariner, a boat that belongs to Parker Dive Service, and boy, those guys work hard. They get a lot of stuff in that box. And then, so, we wanted to have a bit of an overview for BCDC's benefit about the concerns about the What the public safety impacts look like, again, some of this is a reminder. We're very happy that to date, and I don't mean to jinx anything, but this year no one's perished. And that's been a goal for us for a long time. One person is one person too many. And even though we've had some really significant windstorms that have pushed the boats around, |
| 02:39:06.52 | John Warbacher | We continue to operate, or not operate, but actually to host the mobile care, the mobile shower program. We weren't able to get new statistics for you a little bit out of our control. But the people that operate that are great, the Downtown Streets team, And frankly, not a problem for us at all at any time. And happy to have it here. So back to a more new topic. Our Safe Harbor program is rolling along, has some progress to report. I've done some of these in previous letters to BCDC, but for you to know that since November of last year, we had our first boat be accepted into one of the marinas, and then a little bit you know we had a second boat accepted that resulted in a really nice article in the marine independent journal about that vessel and its occupant and then our third boat that is nearly ready to be taken into harbors you got to have a little bit of work done on it. The owners taking care of that And again, this is in cooperation with those marinas and each of them might have a little bit tiny bit different rules But they are much involved in helping us And have been great partners in the safe harbor program. We look forward to continued success with that And partnering with the Ritter Center to make that happen And I think I said some of this already with the Ritter Center And again, if necessary, I'll slow down later, but I want to make sure I get through all these real quick. show the money. That's part of the issue here. THEIR OWNERS. you with the council approved for us to spend some seed money twenty five thousand dollars Uh, to get started, we are waiting still for the cash funds, the California Emergency Solutions and Housing Grant funding to take place. The RFP has only recently been released, as I understand it, and Ritter Center is gonna be the ones that write the RFP for us. It's not like there's any money in the bank tomorrow for that, so it'll be a little while. We are still under budget, under our first $25,000, And I know that the city manager has asked the Marine Community Foundation to consider partnering with us if it turns out that after we've spent our first $25,000, we could ask them to help us out with some bridge money until we get to the cash funds being available. We're looking at other things as well. listed on the slide, and all of those take a great deal of time. to work forward. But again, we're just early into this. We're really happy that we were able to get the first two people into safe harbor over the winter um and speaking to them they they could not be more appreciative of not being in danger and being subject to the weather and really really good folks So that's what I said already, sort of running ahead of myself here trying to get through this. about our third person and we're working on some others it takes a a bit of times. And I know that Councilmember Cox will talk about this a little bit, but I had a marker in here so that BCDC would know that there has been some meetings with Senator McGuire and Councilmember Cox and our city manager Adam Pulitzer along with Kate Sears and the Arbor area executive director, Beth Pollard, who's here tonight as well. And so I'm going to let Council Member Cox talk about that. Let me see what I have left, though, first. Not sure, ready for those yet. And so that's our last slide. So I'll go back to that. And leave that with you for the moment. |
| 02:43:10.03 | Joan Cox | Thank you, Chief. And I do want to acknowledge that we have Executive Director Beth Pollard as well as Curtis Havel here from RBRA. Curtis has been routinely attending our meetings, and we're grateful for that as well as for your success and activity out on the water. The chief mentioned the enforcement letter that we received from BCDC in December. After receiving that letter, Sausalito started informally meeting with Beth and Curtis and the chief and the city manager and Waterfront. Team. to continue to identify ways that we might collaborate in meeting BCDC's directives. Um, And then a couple of weeks ago as I previously reported Senator McGuire reached out to request a meeting with Sausalito's city manager and myself, Kate Sears on behalf of RBRA and... RBRA's executive director. um, the as reflected in the PowerPoint presentation the purpose of the meeting was to identify a way for the 2 agencies to align |
| 02:44:15.54 | Heidi Scoble | I'm sorry, it's very hard for her to speak. You are allowed to photograph in this room as long as you don't interrupt the proceedings. So that's, I believe it's... |
| 02:44:21.90 | George Thomas | you Thank you. |
| 02:44:22.84 | Heidi Scoble | Right, so no flash that close up. It's very hard for us to concentrate. Thank you. |
| 02:44:28.57 | Joan Cox | Mm-hmm. So the purpose of the meeting was to identify a way for the two agencies to align on an approach to respond to BCDC's directives. to create a plan to address and resolve the damage to Richardson's Bay natural habitat. As the budget process is finalized for the upcoming year, Senator McGuire may be able to identify some one-time funding to assist us in financing and aligned upon solution. So we've now had three one-hour meetings with the Senator and the proposals for managing Richardson's Bay. We have heard from RBRA have evolved. As of this morning's meeting, The proposal is as follows. Identify the eelgrass zones as identified in the environmental report commissioned last year, and align on a plan for eelgrass restoration. That's step one. Step two, undertake an enhanced enforcement. Remember, the enforcement is not against any boats on which folks are living. The enforcement is against unoccupied boats being stored on Richardson's Bay. And preventing new boats from mooring in Richardson's Bay for longer than 72 hours. In conjunction with those enforcement and management efforts, step two is to undertake a pilot program to create 15 moorings, which would ultimately be utilized as recreational moorings, but interimly used to assist in enforcement efforts on Richardson's Bay. The mooring study performed last year would need to be further refined to identify the ideal locations for the 15 moorings. Assuming BCDC approves this approach, additional environmental study will likely be necessary and negotiation with the towns of Tiburon and Belvedere will be necessary. to obtain permission for the placement of some moorings in their waters, as well as identifying additional points of access if feasible. Step three is to identify a Southern Marin site and partner with a nonprofit agency to create permanent supportive housing. to assist in transitioning anchor outs off the water into permanent housing. Senator McGuire has undertaken similar programs with great success in San Rafael and Novato. Senator McGuire has indicated he may be able to identify some one-time funding to assist us with the expense of the further environmental study that would be required by this approach as well as the permanent housing. So if this council agrees and if RBRA agrees, the senator would like to send a joint letter to BCDC from the three agencies, notifying them of the collaboration between our respective agencies in accomplishing a mutually acceptable solution to address BCDC's directives. I think it's important to note that the December 2019 enforcement letter from BCDC did not require that all boats be removed from the Anchorage by March 31, 2020 rather They asked us to come back to them with our long-term plan for addressing eelgrass restoration, and Um, managing the anchor out issues. So, Ahem. With the appropriate environmental review and negotiation of appropriate siting of the 15 moorings and identification of an appropriate Southern Marin site for permanent affordable housing, Tonight. I'm seeking council approval to align on this approach as a preliminary path forward. I want to reiterate what the Chief said, which is that while we are inviting the legacy anchor outs in our waters to participate in our safe harbor program, we are not taking any enforcement action against those legacy anchor outs, who do not choose at this time to transition off the water, and we've told BCDC this very thing each time we've appeared in front of them for the last year. Thank you for the opportunity to report on our chats with Senator McGuire. |
| 02:48:23.21 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, thank you. Thank you, Chief. Is there one more slide? |
| 02:48:26.40 | John Warbacher | one more slide? Actually, just to this slide now. Thank you, and you have questions, so I'm happy to go back. Could you actually just |
| 02:48:32.39 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | back Could you actually just go back to your second class, to that one? Okay. So, |
| 02:48:34.96 | John Warbacher | to that one. |
| 02:48:38.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. This is kind of revised at this point. up. |
| 02:48:43.68 | Joan Cox | This is the exact slide that I presented to you at our last meeting. These are our requests of BCDC. |
| 02:48:47.33 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 02:48:50.31 | Joan Cox | We want clarity that we're not We are not interested in undertaking enforcement against the five or so legacy anchor outs remaining in our waters. We're seeking clarity. regarding enforcement of BCDC policies. We are, want support for our safe harbor program and BCDC has previously said that it would temporarily increase Sausalito's live aboard allocation for 10 to 15 percent to facilitate transition from anchor out to safe harbor We would love to have. a permanent. 5% increase in liveaboard capacity in our marinas. |
| 02:49:30.36 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 02:49:30.91 | Councilmember Burns | Can I ask you a question on that? Thank you. |
| 02:49:33.78 | Joan Cox | I call it. |
| 02:49:33.82 | John Warbacher | Thank you. |
| 02:49:33.83 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Sure I just want to. Did you have anything further in your presentation. |
| 02:49:34.04 | John Warbacher | Thank you. |
| 02:49:34.05 | Joan Cox | Sure. I just want to. |
| 02:49:40.62 | John Warbacher | Do I have anything additional? Yeah. No, I'm just standing by to answer questions. |
| 02:49:41.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Burns. Thank you. |
| 02:49:48.25 | Councilmember Burns | the additional 5%. Thank you councilmember Riley the additional 5% Obviously that would be very low income. Are we gonna need those in our next arena? Should we wait until we have? That I have not yes, and I know |
| 02:50:03.36 | Joan Cox | So we may need it in our arena. uh it is very low income housing it does qualify as very low income housing However, If we pass, the RHNA counts those people who actually move into the housing commencing with the cycle. So it's going to take us some time. A. the marina operators right now are not interested in accommodating additional anchor outs until we adequately demonstrate our ability to manage and enforce existing policies on the bay. Once we are able to remove the additional 40 boats that are just empty and floating in Richardson's Bay and once we demonstrate our ability to prevent New. anchor outs from mooring in Richardson's Bay, I think some of our marina operators may be interested in increasing their capacity for liveaboards, but it will take time. |
| 02:51:00.67 | Councilmember Burns | Did you say the cycle begins when they move in? |
| 02:51:04.40 | Joan Cox | The ability to count them against our arena quota counts when they move into the |
| 02:51:12.92 | Councilmember Burns | Is that what we're considering the GPAC conversations regarding senior living in the Marin Chef? |
| 02:51:17.55 | Joan Cox | We're, what we're doing is waiting for our house. So we have to create our housing element in the next two years that commences the cycle in 2023. Okay. |
| 02:51:28.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So I think we'll just put a pin in that question. I do think we have ongoing questions about what and when counts for our arena. And I know Councilmember Cox has very strong opinions about that from a legal perspective. But I would also like to have either our city attorney or other counsel look into that. But I think that might be a future. It crosses over this issue, our GPAC, and others. So thank you for identifying it. Okay, we do have Executive Director Beth Pollard from RBRA here, we've got Curtis Havel, we have Barbara Salzman from Audubon. Do you have questions now for the Chief? I have a question. I think she came in, no? |
| 02:52:10.92 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I have a question. |
| 02:52:13.74 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | No. OK. |
| 02:52:14.55 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:52:15.40 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:52:15.41 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:52:15.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I think she's back. |
| 02:52:15.44 | Joan Cox | Yes. I apologize for not acknowledging Barbara. There you are. I could not see you from my seat. Thank you for being here. She snuck in. |
| 02:52:23.04 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | you for being here. |
| 02:52:25.84 | Joan Cox | Okay, so do we have |
| 02:52:26.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Questions for the chief, yes. |
| 02:52:27.78 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Yes, Chief, thank you for the great presentation. I know the answer to this question, but I want to ask it so that we have clarity from public comment. Earlier, public comment implied that we have removed three individuals from both of them that lived in full time. So my question is, have we removed Any boats that have full-time liveaboards on them |
| 02:52:50.11 | John Warbacher | No, not we have not in Sausalito. We have not removed any occupied anchor outs. |
| 02:52:56.37 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. |
| 02:52:59.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, we will get to you, Jeff. Any other questions? |
| 02:53:08.36 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:08.38 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Um... Great. We will open it up to public comment, and we would also love to hear as part of that from our colleagues from RBRA and Audubon as part of our public comment. So, okay. I am, just for the council, I am going to let Jeff speak again because I did not stop him when he first spoke. So I apologize for that. But that's where we're going to go. All right. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. And welcome. |
| 02:53:37.27 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:53:43.82 | Gregory Taylor | Thank you. Gregory Taylor, a lot has happened out on the anchorage since the last time I spoke from this lectern. We are now experiencing a humanitarian crisis that is bordering on genocide. Let's go back in time 60 days. Then you, the Sausalito City Council, were on safe, high, firm ground. It feels nothing like that now, does it? Now it feels like you are hundreds of miles out at sea in shark-infested waters on a leaking, sinking ship. A leaking, sinking ship sold to you by Beth Pollard. I know Beth Pollard. Beth Pollard is friendly to me. I am friendly to Beth Pollard. We are friendly to each other. But I know. that Beth Pollard is not a friend. Beth Pollard is a professional. A hired gun brought in by an entity... An entity that has no connection, love, or affection for Sausalito or its people. Beth Pollard is not a leader. She is a misleader. Beth Pollard's job is to trick you, intimidate you, and bully you into making decisions that do not serve or protect the good people of Sausalito. Beth Pollard told you that getting rid of the anchor outs would be quick, painless, and easy. How's that working? How is that working out for you? How much more could one town and its people take? We can have a safe, clean, healthy harbor, an environment that's good for birds, fish, eelgrass, people, and future generations without disappearing an entire segment of our population. The anchor outs. It is time to turn our backs on Beth Pollard and never speak her name again. If this sounds harsh, remember. drastic times. call for drastic measures. Explain to the RBRA and the BCDC that the 72-hour rule is not a good fit for Sausalito, and that your new course of action is not to eradicate the anchor outs, but to love, cherish, and protect them. If upon hearing this, the BCDC threatens you with a $5,000 a day fine for not complying with their previous demands, say to them, please address all your concerns in writing to our attorneys. Sausalito City Council, I trust you. I have faith in you, and I will be watching you, and I love you. |
| 02:56:52.80 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you, Mr. Taylor. Jeff? |
| 02:56:59.50 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Due to our earlier misunderstanding, you will get three minutes of public comment. |
| 02:57:04.73 | Jeffrey Chase | Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, city council. |
| 02:57:12.06 | Jeffrey Chase | This is to Joan Cox. I'd appreciate if she paid attention. While I spoke, It says here, By March 31st, 2020, submit a plan with timelines to transition all other vessels off the water. |
| 02:57:32.88 | Jeffrey Chase | This is a day I also heard from Beth Pollard at an RBRA meeting April 1st. April Fool's Day. the original community, From Drake and Ayala. the ones who create much less damage than the people on the land. Eelgrass, Barbara Saltzman, is basically endangered by nitrogen runoff. not by crop circles, from anchors and lines and chains. That is the science. If she and others say eelgrass is endangered, by the anchorage specifically, as are the herring or the birds or the fish. We know. That is not so. to take one segment of the community and to stigmatize them and to demonize them. To pull up their moorings, Chief Rohrabacher, enforcement has been taken against the legacy, Anchorage as well. My morning was pulled up right as I was about to run for city council. Ray Withy told me I did not have residency. when I was over the underwater streets. The idea that you continue in enforcement with four boats left, with aged elderly people on board, and are using your political wiles to hurt. to punish to imprison to torture The most vulnerable population in Marin, while housing two people in a so-called safe harbor program Well, It's enough to make cooler minds than mine, just a little upset. but we will remain With our equanimity, we will not lose our cool here. If we went to your houses and told you you were causing environmental damage, which you all are, as every human being does, and told you you had to vacate, you would not be very happy about this. I am hearing many things that are just simply not true. So every Sunday, we will be marching. Thank you. |
| 03:00:06.68 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, Jeff. Is there any additional public comment on this item? Yes, please. |
| 03:00:18.24 | Piper Perot | I decided to come back when I heard that this was happening. I have not been following this situation very closely. I've only heard, I know there are from many people who this is a concern |
| 03:00:18.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I just. |
| 03:00:31.66 | Piper Perot | many of my friends in Sausalito who are not here and who probably never come to city council meetings, a lot of people do care about this and a lot of people do care about the anchor outs. And I would just like to say for myself, as a full-time Waldorf teacher, I am considered low income. But the things I saw here for rehabilitation, homelessness, I could be considered homeless if I didn't have a special situation which allows me to live in Sausalito as a caretaker. |
| 03:00:56.66 | Unknown | Oh. |
| 03:01:02.57 | Piper Perot | So, I first thought, wow, great, I could be in Sausalito, maybe I could live on a boat. And oh, maybe I could be in San Rafael and be in a mobile home. RV. No, because now you can only be in an RV in San Rafael for one hour before they cite you. There's a seriously discrepancy between people who get services and the huge percentage of people who cannot afford to live here who are the teachers, and other service people of the community. So I find this to be extremely disturbing, this idea of, EEL GRASS TAKING PRECEDENCE OVER people's lives and the humanity of of our community. And I, as a full-time working citizen, cannot afford to live here. Seeing houseboats near me being sold for almost a million dollars with new owners coming in who don't even live here, It's untenable. A houseboat that's being rented right now for $5,000 a month is outrageous. And as I mentioned, my salary $60,000 a year is considered very low income in this area. I think under $100,000 is considered low income. But I'm not the kind of person that would be going to the Ritter Um, rehabilitation, I don't even know their exact title, excuse me, or receiving aid from Marin Housing. or other such entities. So this discrepancy is huge. There is a huge number of people that cannot afford to live here. And I feel like targeting people like the Anchorettes, there has to be a solution where there is not enough housing. and to be attacking people and forcing them off their boats. I have heard from other friends in houseboat community who know people who are anchor house who had whose boat has been taken so I'm not clear on this statement that keeps being made that no occupied boats were were taken that I know that that is not true. So I am concerned about the information and the priorities here. So thank you. |
| 03:03:12.00 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you very much. |
| 03:03:15.07 | Piper Perot | Thank you. |
| 03:03:15.09 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So, yes, Beth Pollard, welcome. |
| 03:03:21.69 | Beth Pollard | Thank you very much. First of all, I want to thank Council Member Cox for your presentation about summarizing our meetings with the Senator and also really express my appreciation to Sausalito and to Senator McGuire for stepping in and really helping us to work together. I think having us approach the issues collaboratively, collectively, with the Senator's help is gonna be extremely good outcome. Notwithstanding some of its challenges, notably with respect to the access issues that Council Member Cox mentioned, There are a lot of issues to be explored and further discussions that will need to take place. |
| 03:04:00.79 | Unknown | place. |
| 03:04:01.61 | Beth Pollard | I wanted to just make a couple of points about current activity as well as pending activity for the Richardson Bay Regional Agency. that the Board of Directors is undertaking. First of all, to clarify that the enforcement priorities that the Board of Directors have set are focused on unoccupied vessels and preventing new vessels from settling in to residency on the bay. We have some additional unoccupied vessels that the harbormaster can comment on further that we're working on currently. also putting an extreme focus on preventing New ones from settling in, we're hiring some additional staff to assist us with that. and really have seen the numbers drop because of the efforts that are underway. It's not without its controversy and complications, certainly, and we understand the human dynamics that are involved in such efforts. and we are working as best we can to find ways that we can help people transition off the water, and outreach to them for any kind of services that they may need. Going before the board of directors this Thursday night will be ideas for a a draft transition plan outline The board of directors has not yet adopted such a plan. They'll be addressing that this Thursday night at their meeting. What staff is presenting to them are a series of draft transition vision as well as draft transition principles and actions. I just want to cover just briefly, so you're up to date on what the proposals are. Besides the vision, the draft transition principles are to prevent additional vessels from extended stays. protect and promote eel cross growth. Accommodate registered legacy anchor outs on vessels that meet RBRA requirements and realize a decreasing number of live aboard vessels over time. And there are various approaches to how the board of directors may choose to undertake those specific actions, we've tried to present as staff some various alternatives that they can consider either separately or in combination. And so we would expect that after Thursday night we would have a better understanding of what you're sending to BCDC in response to their expectations that the agency initiate action to address the vessels and initiate the disclosure of a draft transition plan. |
| 03:06:30.25 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'm sorry, could you just repeat? You said the four elements of the transition plan, no extended stays, protection of eelgrass, and then I missed the second, the last. |
| 03:06:40.04 | Beth Pollard | And like Sausalito, look for ways to accommodate. I'm calling registered legacy accounts so we know who they are. |
| 03:06:41.71 | Unknown | like, |
| 03:06:49.32 | Beth Pollard | We have a lot more than you have in your waters, so we do want to make sure we track them. So accommodate registered legacy anchorettes on vessels that meet arbitrary requirements. And again, that would be something the board would determine what requirements would be expected of them |
| 03:06:53.81 | Unknown | Red. |
| 03:06:54.11 | Heidi Scoble | How many? |
| 03:06:54.70 | Unknown | THE FAMILY. |
| 03:07:05.52 | Beth Pollard | One approach is the requirements that are in the Arboriore Code for seaworthiness and registration, waste management, and so forth. But that will be up to the board to determine which requirements or in any particular order they want to expect those. And then lastly, realizing a decreasing number of liveaboard anchor out vessels over time. |
| 03:07:30.16 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. And do you have a sense of how many legacy anchor outs are in your population? |
| 03:07:36.79 | Beth Pollard | We, um, We anticipate right now that there's about between 90 and 100 occupied vessels. out there. We don't know how many persons, I can't tell you how many persons. We did attempt to make a count. a count of 92, we also recognize that that may need to be become more accurate and that's why we would undertake a registration process. |
| 03:08:03.48 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And any questions for Beth? Curtis did you want to say anything are you |
| 03:08:15.46 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh, Alice, I'm sorry. I thought you were stretching, go ahead. No? I'm sorry I didn't... I will speak. |
| 03:08:24.24 | Alice Merrill | I really, really am sorry that I'm here again. I just, I'm always harping on the old days and how we just keep changing everything and keep gentrifying everything. When we talk about legacy, and the people are from between 68 and 80, And when they're gone, that's it. That means that there aren't any more people living in Sausalito waters. officially according to this. So that means that that, that history is gone. And I just wish that we had the vision to be somehow more funky. There's a lot that's happened to get people out there and to be able to be on the water and to live a life that is different than my choice or your choice. And when we say to get people housed, you know, not everybody wants the same thing I want or you want. And it sounds like a lot are out there on the other side. But the point of all of this conversation is to have nobody there. And we've lost something then. And I know that the... Thank you. I see, I describe this as a lack of respect on both sides often is seen. We landlubbers don't respect people's wild and crazy ideas, I have trouble often respecting Jeff's wild and crazy ideas, but But we have, you know, we're a group of wild and crazy people here in Sausalito. So let's somehow accommodate instead of just have a plan to eliminate. That's what this is. And so if it is and that's really what it is, let's call it that. And I'm sorry about that. Thank you. Thank you. OK. |
| 03:10:57.53 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Um, So yes, if you'd like to speak, this is the time. |
| 03:11:06.27 | Curtis Howell | Good evening, my name is Curtis Howell. I'm serving as the Harbormaster of Richardson's Bay. And it's an anchorage. And I think the focus is to return it to that of an anchorage so that people can come and drop anchor and stay for a while and then. |
| 03:11:10.93 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Fuck them. |
| 03:11:22.25 | Curtis Howell | continue on their adventure. Currently we have 126 vessels in the Anchorage. Of those 13 are new, of those 13, 10 are occupied. So it presents a new challenge in terms of how we address that and how we respond to that. Of those 10, at least three of those are folks who have been on the anchorage previously in different boats. When the sheriffs conducted their survey back in August of 2019, they counted vessels, not people. So it was a survey of boats in the Anchorage. As Beth mentioned, we've been collecting data over time. Right now, we've got about, I'd say between 92 and 95 occupants of vessels out there. Many of the vessels aren't currently registered. Many of the folks residing on vessels don't actually own them or it's not registered to them. Just today, I was out with Chief Wu from Belvedere, and we're currently working on an initiative to have about nine vessels in the eastern portion of the Anchorage that are in Belvedere water. shift those westerly. And that opens up a really nice area for the folks at the Romberg Center and scientists that are working to study eelgrass. It gives them a good swath of area to look at eelgrass propagation, recovery, that kind of thing, particularly as it relates to eelgrass. vessels that were anchored in the middle of the eelgrass patch. We're also going to be looking to try to push vessels in the northern part of the Anchorage south. Right now the density in that particular area of the anchorage is lower. and that's got some good eelgrass resources up there too. So it's hopefully we'll be successful on both those fronts. But during today's patrol, we met two different vessel occupants who actually have two boats apiece. So when I first started the job it was interesting how there were numerous individuals in the Anchorage that had multiple vessels. And that's truly not keeping with the intent of an anchorage. An anchorage isn't where you park all your extra boats. It's not where you go to sell your boats. It's not where you store your boats. really a responsible vessel owner, and that's what we're talking about here, |
| 03:13:46.79 | Unknown | Right. |
| 03:13:48.22 | Curtis Howell | putting their vessel into a marina where they can take proper care of it and use it properly. I'm not sure. Sir, can you give me a little bit of space? Thank you. I appreciate it. You're very distracting. |
| 03:13:59.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, sir, can you back up a little bit? We are in the middle of a meeting, thank you. |
| 03:14:05.87 | Curtis Howell | Moving, moving, Thank you. So it's, you know, most, many of the vessels that were you know, multiple vessels owned by one person. A lot of those have been removed. So we're experiencing success on that front. |
| 03:14:21.21 | Gregory Taylor | Thank you. |
| 03:14:24.79 | Curtis Howell | And then the. |
| 03:14:27.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so just finish your thoughts. Very well. Okay, and if you could speak a little bit closer to the microphone, that would be great. |
| 03:14:30.46 | Curtis Howell | Thank you, everyone. |
| 03:14:36.35 | Curtis Howell | And then to the matter of vessels that were disposed of that somehow people were claiming they lived on, the RBRA has not been removing vessels that people are living on. somebody made mention earlier of Aaron Lee Fowler, uh, her vessel being removed, she had, she had brought a new vessel into the anchorage. and essentially abandoned her old vessel. she was not living on the old vessel. You can't live on two boats at one time. If you have any further questions about details or numbers or certain aspects of the anchorage, I'm happy to respond to questions. |
| 03:15:15.50 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you. |
| 03:15:18.52 | Curtis Howell | You're going to drink. |
| 03:15:19.35 | Jeffrey Chase | you |
| 03:15:20.17 | Curtis Howell | Thank you. |
| 03:15:20.21 | Jeffrey Chase | Think about it. |
| 03:15:25.90 | Barbara Salzman | My name is Barbara Salzman. I'm President of Marin Audubon Society. And I've been here before through the years. I came tonight prepared to speak to the presentation by the chief of police. But with all this new news, I guess I'm gonna have to raise some issues and it raises a lot for me. There are the four points. The first one is eelgrass restoration. Am I correct about that? Sounds wonderful. We're all for eelgrass restoration. My question is, is it for? current impacts or is it for impacts in the future where the Is there going to be some moorings proposed, or there are some moorings proposed? Is it for impacts that might result from the 15 moorings that are proposed? The second point is for increased enforcement. I've been asking for that for years, so I don't have any questions about that. I encourage, and increased enforcement and I must say, I meant to start out with this, but I was so distracted by all of this. I think Sausalito has done an absolutely wonderful job Um, um, protecting the bay, in an extremely sensitive way that's been I'm sure very helpful and useful. to help people that are on the water, that want to get off, even if they don't want to get off. I mean, the purpose for this exercise is a 30-year-old, as I think most of you know, a plan that BCDC and all the jurisdictions agreed to 30 years ago, and finally you're implementing it. And I hope that you're a model for continued efforts by RBRA and yourselves. But anyway, the third point, Is 15 moorings, that's a concern. We're not for increased moorings. We would want to know more details. I don't know if there are details yet, but we would want to know details that would make sure that it's not permanent because the history of RBRA, love Beth Pollard and Curtis, um, They're not the ones making all the decisions here. And it's a real concern. that you could lapse into I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS. less enforcement and they would become permanent. And this is not what we're all here working for. Finally, the permanent housing, I have a question. Sounds great, as long as it's on land. Nobody said that it was on land. It wouldn't be on the water, so okay. So that sounds pretty good, too. And... Anyway, we look forward to getting more information about this. And how we can get that, I guess it's still being developed. It seems like a really new. Okay, well, I look forward to hearing more about it. Thanks. |
| 03:18:37.46 | Unknown | Okay, thank you. |
| 03:18:38.94 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Bye. |
| 03:18:38.96 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:18:39.00 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. If there's anyone else who would like to comment publicly, if you could come stand up for the microphone, that would be great. Okay. |
| 03:18:44.80 | Ann Libin | Thank you, my name's Ann Libin and I work with the Conservation Committee of Marin Audubon. I am also the mother of a marine biologist with a PhD that was based on research on seagrass, some eelgrass, some tropical grass. And I just wanna remind the council because I think Sausalito has done an admirable job of two things one is taking care of the waters of Richardson Bay The portion of the eelgrass bed in Sausalito may be small, but Richardson Bay as a whole, is a very vital habitat Eelgrass, under federal and state law, is a habitat of special concern. And Richardson Bay has the second largest eelgrass bed in the entire San Francisco Bay region. So you're doing important work. Eelgrass actually is a more important store of blue carbon than trees. So this is a special habitat if you have concerns also about climate change. And it is a buffer against storm surge and waves, so it is a nature-based way of protecting your area from the sea level rise impacts that could happen to this town. The reminder is that the letter from December from BCDC, requires that by March 31st, 2020, You must initiate all appropriate actions to remove from Richardson's Bay. All marine debris. Those are boats that are not seaworthy. Unoccupied vessels, which the town has done a great job on. unregistered vessels, So the vessels that are currently occupied by not registered, someone has to figure out how to get them registered. Or else remove them. within a short time of March 31st. and vessels occupied by persons who are not able to control the vessels during storm events. or the vessels that are endangering or threatening to others. So that does include probably a very small subpopulation of the occupied vessels in Sausalito. And unfortunately, quite a large proportion of the vessels that are in the waters controlled now by the RBRA. The other point is that I think the effort to move people into marinas or into permanent safe housing is admirable. If any town or county were to place homeless people in the conditions that exist on many of these vessels, it would be illegal because those are unsafe, unhealthful conditions. Okay, thank you. There's no running water and no electricity. |
| 03:21:52.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | There's no running water and no electricity. Okay, thank you. Okay, is there any additional public comments? |
| 03:22:00.08 | Julie Myers | Okay. |
| 03:22:01.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Seeing none, we will close public comment and bring discussion up here. I'm just going to start with one comment. I am a little bit concerned about being asked to bless an idea that we just learned about, not in writing at the dais. So I'm just going to share that. And then I have some specific comments. But I appreciate all the time and the work that you and the city manager and the waterfront committee have been doing. You know, I think there's a lot of, a lot in there that we should talk about. And, um, So, I mean, is there some extreme urgency to this or? |
| 03:22:51.02 | Joan Cox | The senator was hoping to send a letter to BCDC in advance of our March 25 meeting. And we first heard of this three-point or four-point plan at 8 a.m. this morning. So I'm not asking you to bless the plan. I'm asking to bless the effort to collaborate with RBRA in this direction. |
| 03:22:56.02 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 03:23:03.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:23:14.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, and actually I'm just going to use my prerogative to comment first tonight. So I have, I bring this up pretty much every time we talk about the anchor out and waterfront plan, and I will bring it up again. the first three things that you spoke about, I think have, um, a lot of potential. I don't know where the 15 mooring number came from. So I, I just don't have any background on that. Um, I am very concerned about the environmental issues, but I am also exceedingly concerned about the community, the humanity, and the history. of the anchor out population to Sausalito. Many of our presentations done by our police department start with the very long history of people living on the Anchorage. And I feel like we started, this council voted on a plan to address some very real concerns about our anchor out situation and set up priorities to remove unoccupied vessels and marine debris and people who are a hazard to themselves or others and and deprioritize kind of legacy anchor outs. But, and that was a decision made before I joined the council, and I think it was a good decision, and we've made really excellent progress. But we are getting to the point where we are actually deciding by attrition, as I think Alice Merrill noted, that we are eliminating essentially the anchor out population. And I don't feel like a conscious decision was made that and I'm not sure that's the right I'm not I'm not sure exactly what the right answer is about whether it's possible to have a sustainable environmentally viable population living on the water I have been told by councilmember Cox who I think probably has one of the most informed perspectives that BCDC will not allow that I am not sure about that in our current housing and homeless crisis in California. So I'm just going to throw this out there for the council's consideration. I would like to add to the list of things that we are cooperating and talking about a proposal to explore, not commit to, whether there is a long-term, viable, environmentally sustainable model for some number of anchor out population. without any limitation on how that could be achieved. And to have that conversation, I do not feel like that's a decision for Sausalito by itself to make, or with a misunderstanding of where the state, what their position on this at this point in history. So I don't know if that's possible, if the discussions are too far down the road, but I would like to have a regional discussion about that. So that's, that thought. I am very supportive of the increase in the 15 to 15 percent liveaboard population, and I would, whether that's safe harbor or otherwise, I think that's something we absolutely need to pursue. And my last point is, I think it would really behoove us to, with the last small number of anchor outs that we have in Sausalito Waters who are not registered, if there's anything that we can do to help achieve that registration. So I don't have a proposal for how we would do that. tonight, but just like we are trying to help the people who are taking advantage of our Safe Harbor program, to achieve registration and other safety issues. If these members of the legacy anchor out population are generally law abiding citizens, have been pumping out, and have been otherwise complying with our requirements, I think that it would behoove us to help them achieve that status. So those are my comments. I'll open it up. Thank you. |
| 03:28:11.77 | Joan Cox | May I ask the city manager to address your proposal about BCDC's perspective on a permanent anchor out population? So we've heard from, and I don't know his title, Brad? Yeah, has said at several of our meetings. And also, the BCDC meetings are recorded. You're welcome to watch and hear the really... somewhat strident comments from the enforcement committee in carrying out their perceived charter. |
| 03:28:47.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, and I'm not questioning that that is that person's perspective, but that person is an enforcement person. And at the same time, the governor and other state officials are asking us to look at navigation centers and housing opportunities up at the top of Spencer and every other place that there's any state-owned property. So I think the conversation has shifted, and the conversation at different levels is happening in different contexts. So I do understand BCDC's official enforcement position, but I just am not sure. And again, maybe it's just my ignorance, whether that is a position that would be shared further up the command at BCDC at this particular point in time. |
| 03:29:40.44 | Adam Politzer | Can I just comment just to clarify what Councilmember Cox was stating? It's not the staff position what the enforcement committee reminded all of us that were in the audience. It's state law. So state law would need to change. And it doesn't mean that it couldn't change. But right now they were being asked by R.B. Ray at that particular time to allow folks to live on the water and they don't have the ability to grant permission to do so. |
| 03:30:14.77 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I understand that. |
| 03:30:18.25 | Joan Cox | . And indeed we have to change state law The Macris Petrus Act right now limits the liveaboard And so in order, the process to change that state law is to demonstrate that this is a regional issue affecting eelgrass, herring, migratory birds, all the way up and down the western seaboard. That is the path forward. to lobby to have that state law changed. either temporarily or permanently to increase the liveaboard Um, ability from 10% to 15% personally having now met with a number of anchor outs and visited a number of anchor out boats and been on the waterfront during several of our winter storms. I I am not in favor of having inexperienced mariners living on the water. It is extraordinarily dangerous. I watched an anchor out, who's now a member of our Safe Harbor Program, almost lose his life as he was trying to save his boat. that had broken loose from a mooring. He's out on a little dinghy going around and around being buffeted up and down by the waves. It was scary as heck to watch. And what we have are people who are offered boats cheaply who have no idea what the dangers they're facing in our currents and our storms. any program for anyone to live on the water, I think, has to be accompanied by extraordinary safety measures. And I'm far more comfortable with having people who enjoy that lifestyle have a birth at a slip where they are safe and have access to showers and electricity and other necessaries of life. |
| 03:32:09.81 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yep, and I think those are all very valid perspectives, and I actually am not talking about starting with an outcome. I'm talking about have we followed the right process to get to what looks like is now the outcome. I think that's more my point. |
| 03:32:29.30 | Joan Cox | Yeah, and so we received an enforcement letter from BCDC. It's in your packet. It's very clear about what we're required to do, and if we don't want to do it, I agree with the city manager. We're going to have to seek revised state legislation in order to not follow state law. |
| 03:32:53.34 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Mayor, I'll just make a comment on the Waterfront Committee. I appreciate a lot of the work that's been done. I relate this similar to our short term rentals conversation. Thank you very much. |
| 03:33:02.29 | Councilmember Burns | Thank you very much. |
| 03:33:06.27 | Councilmember (Unknown) | There can be no exceptions to a ban until we know that we have enforcement on short term rentals. We are at the point of demonstrating short term rentals and conversation came up saying are there ways we can accommodate some of our community? now that we know how to enforce. We've demonstrated that enforcement can work on the water, removing marine debris, removing unoccupied vessels. And now we have a legacy community that we're comfortable because they're mariners. I listened to Alice and I listened to Jeff. And there is a history, right? We want to preserve our history of maritime. We want to preserve the waterfront. We want to preserve the marine ship. And so I guess I'd be open to what a proposal is of What is a constraint secure safe way? I don't know what the answer is. What we don't want to do though is return to the unenforced wide open, drag your old boats in and just ditch them here. But I also listen to the community and there is some great salt that comes off the water. |
| 03:34:22.73 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:34:24.87 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. |
| 03:34:24.89 | Councilmember Burns | I agree, I thought that was clever, because I was gonna bring up kind of that short term rental discussion too, but that aside, And to compare it with another discussion, fire has no boundaries. This discussion has no city boundaries. And I love that we have 12 and RBA has 90 whatever. We all have the same amount because they all come ashore in Sausalito. Every boat that gets worked on gets impounded in Sausalito. All that is Sausalito. So we have. We can say we have 12 or 13. We have 96. Anchorage does not know a city limit line that again aside I appreciate in the leadership that councilmember Cox has shown in this and her drive to get this done the safe harbor program though I have I would say concerns you know I question the numbers that we get for the dollars we spend it's a program we have to have That we look first to an ideal of protecting a certain legacy in perpetuity, I think is something that I have always came to this council with the understanding that I would like to support a true Mariner living on the water. I'm not even sure Joan do you know if we increase the labor boards do we have to go through a secret process. |
| 03:35:43.65 | Joan Cox | No. If we did it on a temporary basis, no. Right. If we did it on a more permanent basis, perhaps, but BCDC, in order to change the MACRIS-PETRIS Act, would probably have to undertake a CEQA process that we could piggyback on. |
| 03:35:59.88 | Councilmember Burns | Okay. So, The irony too is, and it's in the first sentence of the BCDC letter, where the influx of boats. What's the influx? Started 50 years ago? This is something that's been complicit in their from from them for 50 years, I mean, We're not We just didn't show up with boats all of a sudden they said hey you got to stop that they let it occur for years and years and years so I would like for them to find a way to maybe partner with us and in a different way than drawing a line between cities and kind of dividing us. But we do have to get, and this to me is the whole conversation, we have to get everything, we're still focused on everything short of that legacy person. We have to get that off the water quickly because those are what's breaking loose, short of a legacy being the unoccupied, the unregistered, the unsafe, that stuff. first priority. But I really appreciate the work you have done, staff has done, that you have Senator McGuire involved. So nice work. |
| 03:37:23.04 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Well, I think the – I want to echo what Council Member Burns said in terms of the leadership of the Waterfront Group and the work of staff. the I think now the re-establishment of a I would argue a more productive collaboration with the establishment of a, I would argue a more productive collaboration with RBRA, which is I think good. Welcome the new harbormaster, that's great. So there's been progress in the past, |
| 03:37:55.24 | George Thomas | Good. |
| 03:38:10.17 | Councilmember (Unknown) | but there's been, but I think, what I'm hearing the mayor say, I, I sort of agree with that, you know, it's perhaps time to ask, well, where's all this really going? And we kept saying, well, we need, you know, Yes, it's like short-term rental. I mean, good point, guys. You know, we got a show we can enforce, but we're still quite out of balance between what's going on in, I call it the county waters, especially this county and Belvedere waters, in which, you know, There's a lot going on out there. And, you know, I personally would like to see a bit more time is to understand what the community that is there, what's there, right? Right. whatever, Sausalito is being impacted and nobody seems to be talking about the fact that our land side, shore side, Um, is being impacted. Services are having to be provided for which we are not being compensated by the county. It's just that simple. The burden is on us in terms of the land side access and everybody has the right to come ashore of course and it's very important. But it's Sausalito who's for the bad actors out there and there's a lot of really good people forming a community and they come here and they talk to us, Jeff you're one of them. And you know, but there's some bad actors out there as well. And that's impacting us. And that needs to enter into the discussion. and I haven't seen it yet enter into the discussion. I think there's movement. I really welcome the senator's leadership here. I think that's good. I mean, it's got to be good, right? And, uh, So in terms of what you're asking for us to do tonight, I would certainly support moving forward in discussions along those lines and welcome the senator's leadership in that. That certainly I would do. But in terms of number of more, you know, and the whole issue of finding a southern southern marine based um affordable housing i mean that's a whole nother discussion that is almost like a separate agenda item right i mean that could go on for and be |
| 03:40:35.19 | Unknown | to. |
| 03:40:55.76 | Councilmember (Unknown) | That could take. Thank you. |
| 03:40:57.72 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 03:40:57.74 | Councilmember (Unknown) | a long time to discuss. So I'm encouraged by the fact that people are working together and we've sort of beginning to sort of figure out what our common goals are. But I think we've got a fair amount of time to, it's gonna take another fair amount of time to advance the ball here. at some point we are going to be forced to make a decision, each one of us, what's our preferred endgame here? |
| 03:41:31.39 | Councilmember (Unknown) | And hopefully the various teams working on this are gonna move towards a collaborative end game where the legacy anchor outs are provided for where Our land side impacts are provided for. The eelgrass is restored and protected. But I'm really very, very nervous of the concept of solving our, quite frankly, our housing crisis by putting people on the water. That, you know, most... see most Places in the world like Sausalito often do have, you know, you, I'm not a boater, I'm not a sailor, I'm not a boater, I'm not a mariner, so, you know. But, you know, I like having friends who have boats who take me out, you know. So, what I've noticed, and I've been in different parts of the world, you know, you sail somewhere and there's a place to be able to drop anchor safely. You know, you visit. for a while you do what you need to do and you know you're moving on as a true mariner well um you know is that our concept at the end and then as part of that transition process we're going to have you know figure out a way to accommodate the legacy um anchor outs or saying i don't know the conversation's got to proceed so anyway i'm there's lots of this that We just need to have more discussion, more time, but I welcome the leadership of all of them, including Council Member Cox, and in particular included now Senator McGuire, and all of the RBRA team and so on. So I know I didn't really say much there, except that this is a difficult, a cultural problem. It's at the core of some of what Sol Solito is, and it's going to take a while to sort this out. |
| 03:43:26.66 | Unknown | I don't know. |
| 03:43:41.68 | Joan Cox | So, Madam Mayor, the request of the council tonight is A, to extend our, we're about at the end of our six-month pilot program for Safe Harbor. We'd like to extend that, assuming we are able to identify funding to keep it viable. We'd like the okay to make this presentation to BCDC on March 25, including the overview of Senator McGuire's program and then we'd like Direction to continue to explore Senator McGuire's program with him and RBRA |
| 03:44:20.75 | Joan Cox | Of course, we would not undertake anything without coming back and presenting it to the council for approval. |
| 03:44:28.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. So we've got those three items, obviously just receiving and filing report and approving the PowerPoint Extending the safe harbor and then I think the last one is just the Senator McGuire's |
| 03:44:44.69 | Joan Cox | To continue to collaborate with RBRA and Senator McGuire on identifying a mutually agreeable path forward. |
| 03:44:53.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I mean, I think we would all be comfortable in welcoming the collaboration that has been started and moving forward the components. You know, we may not all be in 100% agreement about whether all the components are there. So, or with every component. |
| 03:45:13.38 | Councilmember Burns | Yeah, I I'm not ready to support 55% increase permanently in marinas for safe harbor going from 10 to 15%. until we know more, frankly, or at least until we have more success with Safe Harbor. |
| 03:45:34.02 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And I'm in favor of increasing it regardless of whether we use it for safe harbor or not. I'm not sure. |
| 03:45:41.46 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I think it's a great asset to have. It just creates more affordable housing. |
| 03:45:47.97 | Councilmember Burns | for our community. |
| 03:45:48.41 | Councilmember (Unknown) | TO BE ABLE |
| 03:45:48.50 | Councilmember Burns | And I think it should be discussed as an affordable housing option, and not just as it says here for transition to safe harbor. |
| 03:45:59.74 | Joan Cox | To be clear, BCDC has already given us permission to increase it temporarily to 15% per marina. solely for safe harbor. at my long-range goal is as I've communicated previously is to make that a permanent live-a-board solution but we have to undertake great effort to make that happen. |
| 03:46:21.00 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so that's not on our plate tonight. |
| 03:46:22.40 | Joan Cox | That's not on our plate for tonight. |
| 03:46:24.31 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so the two action items seem to be extend the safe harbor program and approve the draft PowerPoint. Correct. So is there a motion on that? |
| 03:46:34.65 | Joan Cox | and |
| 03:46:34.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:46:35.38 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I second. |
| 03:46:36.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | in favor aye any opposed hearing none that motion carries five zero and then I think |
| 03:46:37.47 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Hi. |
| 03:46:44.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | with the caveats expressed about the current collaboration and proposal with Senator McGuire, I think we're all comfortable without objection having Council Member Cox and Riley move that forward and our city manager. Thank you. Okay, so thank you again for all of your hard work on these issues. Thank you for all the public comment that we received. |
| 03:47:03.98 | Unknown | NEWS. |
| 03:47:10.54 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We will move on. So city manager reports, city council appointments, and other council business. There will be one public comment on this item. Is there any members of the public who would like to comment? |
| 03:47:26.73 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, seeing none, we will start with appointment to the Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committee. Just a second. |
| 03:47:42.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I would like if it is amenable to the rest of the council to hold off on the alternative appointment tonight. There's another applicant or two that have come in. So, but... I think we can move forward with the appointment of the regular member. Sorry, I'm just opening up on my okay. |
| 03:48:19.51 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And I'll open it up to nominations. If there aren't any others, I will nominate Kieran Culligan, who we interviewed on February 25th. |
| 03:48:37.23 | Joan Cox | Yeah, I would second that. |
| 03:48:39.14 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that carries 5-0. |
| 03:48:40.15 | Joan Cox | Bye. |
| 03:48:45.04 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | and we'll move the appointment of the alternate to our next meeting. And then the library board of trustees, I just have to say, I thought we had an amazing group of applicants for this particular board of commission. So that was very difficult, but I would like to nominate Brandy Vouse, who I think during her day job is at the Barrier Discovery Museum. Are there any other nominations? This is for the library board of trustees. I think we only have one. |
| 03:49:03.60 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:49:03.62 | Unknown | of Apple. |
| 03:49:03.98 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:49:29.95 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | vacancy, which is the alternate. Yes. So it's for the position of alternate. Thank you. Are there any other nominations? Yes. |
| 03:49:36.76 | Unknown | Are there any |
| 03:49:39.57 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I have a second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that motion carries. |
| 03:49:42.69 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 03:49:49.71 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And we will continue just for the council's information, we will continue with interviews for other boards and commissions in April. |
| 03:50:00.88 | Councilmember Burns | because we had heard from two on community disaster. Yep. |
| 03:50:04.15 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yep, so we're just trying to find that we're trying to move through these. A few at a time. But yes. Okay, moving on to 8D, future agenda items. |
| 03:50:18.07 | Joan Cox | Madam Mayor, I recorded two tonight potentially. One is the Travis Marina issue, and the second is the free parking for merchants in April. |
| 03:50:18.19 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | America. |
| 03:50:26.60 | Councilmember Burns | Yeah, and I had Travis too, but I would like to hear from Laura, Superintendent Laura Voss, Joss. |
| 03:50:32.64 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:50:32.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. Thank you. |
| 03:50:35.62 | Councilmember Burns | I know she put out one. |
| 03:50:35.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, and unfortunately, I think with the transition, that meeting might have fallen off our calendar. So we do need to get a regular meeting back on the calendar. her. |
| 03:50:47.40 | Councilmember Burns | I know she sent us one almost press release when this first started. Right. But I think they need to address this. |
| 03:50:50.46 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Mm-hmm. Right. |
| 03:50:55.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yep. So the vice mayor and I will get that meeting set up and hopefully have something to report back and agendize it at the appropriate time. So we'll put that on future agenda items. |
| 03:51:09.04 | Joan Cox | And then free parking for merchants in April, could we possibly put that on consent at our next meeting? Thank you. |
| 03:51:15.62 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:15.64 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:51:15.82 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:15.92 | Joan Cox | you |
| 03:51:15.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | date. |
| 03:51:16.72 | Joan Cox | and the |
| 03:51:16.78 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:16.90 | Joan Cox | Next. |
| 03:51:17.46 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | March 24th. |
| 03:51:17.64 | Joan Cox | March 24th. |
| 03:51:19.09 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 03:51:19.52 | Joan Cox | I'm sorry. |
| 03:51:19.75 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:23.90 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I'm seeing... |
| 03:51:25.42 | Councilmember Burns | and that would have a plan on how it's going to track people and what the fiscal impact is yeah. |
| 03:51:31.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Is that something we think we can manage? Thank you. |
| 03:51:36.73 | Adam Politzer | Yeah I talked to Mr. Gangitano earlier today and he had shared that the Hospitality Group had a meeting Yesterday, and they're meeting again on Friday. I've asked the police department to pull to date parking revenues from in three different categories, all parking in the downtown zone. which is Johnson to basically on deans. And then. We'll break that into two categories, the parking lots, revenues collected in the parking lots for the month of March. So basically these two weeks and then the revenues collected on the meters. So we may come back with a proposal similar to our free meter holiday party, holiday funding efforts that we do for the humanitarian grant. |
| 03:52:20.50 | Unknown | Oh, they... |
| 03:52:28.00 | Adam Politzer | or we may look at the shortage of parking in Sausalito over these last two weeks, especially this week, and say there's no loss of revenue based on the coronavirus impacts. |
| 03:52:43.43 | Unknown | Okay, great. |
| 03:52:44.45 | Councilmember (Unknown) | May I add another item? Yes. I don't know if this belongs on the agenda, but I welcome the public in our meetings. The gentleman with the camera today was disruptive. We have to allow them here, but is there a way we could say that the public can't go certain spots, like right behind Adam or right behind any one of us, and maybe have an area for the public where they can take photos from and record? |
| 03:52:44.50 | Unknown | And another item? Yes. |
| 03:53:05.31 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. So the city attorney can correct me, but I believe the rule is that you do need to allow videotaping and photography as long as it is not disruptive. We, in other boards and commissions that I represent, there's kind of a line that the public is not supposed to cross. I mean, like in a courtroom. Yes, so if we kind of made a rule about that, and I'll turn to the city attorney, I think if we made a rule, I think we could enforce that. I just didn't feel comfortable this evening establishing a rule that wouldn't cause greater- Is that something the legislature- |
| 03:53:45.13 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Is that something the legislative committee could propose? |
| 03:53:47.78 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I don't, sure, or I think we could just do it next week. I mean, not at our next meeting. |
| 03:53:53.67 | Mary Wagner | Sure, I'm happy to actually and then even work with Russ and or |
| 03:53:57.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | us. |
| 03:53:58.99 | Mary Wagner | on ensuring that the videoing of the meeting isn't disrupted. And I think you need to take into account disruption of people who are trying to speak on the podium. So there might be a little bit more to it in making sure that we hit all the highlights, but we're happy to work on that. |
| 03:54:01.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 03:54:07.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:07.67 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Yeah. Podium. Yeah. |
| 03:54:08.43 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:08.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:08.57 | Piper Perot | Yeah. |
| 03:54:15.02 | Councilmember Burns | It has to include intent to intimidate. |
| 03:54:16.03 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I think you also have got to figure out, say there were 10, |
| 03:54:22.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:54:22.05 | Councilmember (Unknown) | Thank you. Where would they be? |
| 03:54:24.67 | Joan Cox | We had 10 on the day after the landslide when we met that Monday. And they all lined up right here. |
| 03:54:27.72 | Councilmember (Unknown) | That's right. That's right. They were professional press. They knew what they were doing. |
| 03:54:32.35 | Joan Cox | They knew what they were doing. |
| 03:54:33.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 03:54:34.03 | Councilmember Burns | Because of the media credentials. |
| 03:54:34.66 | Councilmember (Unknown) | THE FAMILY. I'm sorry. |
| 03:54:35.60 | Joan Cox | Financials. Exactly. |
| 03:54:37.65 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, so I would suggest that if staff thinks this is something that should go to the legislative committee, that's fine. If it can just come here, I would prefer to just do it quickly and get it done. So thank you. Good suggestion. Anything else for future agenda? I don't know. |
| 03:54:52.80 | Councilmember (Unknown) | I was actually going to add that as well. Okay. Thanks, Tom. |
| 03:54:55.01 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Great, okay, other reports of significance? Seeing none, we will. Oh, I'm sorry, did I skip over the city manager information? Sorry. Thank you. |
| 03:55:10.40 | Adam Politzer | We're okay, thank you. Okay. |
| 03:55:11.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. okay thank you to the city manager all right um and there is just um in the interim between the beginning of our meeting and the end of our meeting we did get further guidance from rin health to folks who are in a heightened category about avoiding large gatherings so i really think this is just you know evolving and we should all be checking our emails regularly to make sure that we're giving accurate information to anyone we might speak to so stay safe and have a good night and our meeting is adjourned |
| 03:55:46.66 | Joan Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:55:47.20 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | you |
| 03:55:51.34 | Unknown | When I say I was wrong. Thank you. Dark shadows, hard and light. Nothing but misery. I can't excuse it. Oh, oh, oh. I just can't hide |
| 03:56:07.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:56:07.64 | Unknown | Bye. Crying I still love you. |
| 03:56:17.19 | Unknown | . you you . you you . |
Aaron Roller — In Favor: Supported Safe Routes to School efforts. Presented Lily Roller's 'School Tag' game to encourage walking/biking to school and showed traffic rerouting at Willow Creek Academy to improve safety. Highlighted lack of bike lanes and commercial vehicle issues, urging council to continue working on safe routes, referencing a 2011 feasibility study for a separated bike path. ▶ 📄
Lily Roller — In Favor: Introduced 'School Tag,' a game she created as a science project to incentivize students to walk, bike, or bus to school using tags and points, aiming to reduce traffic and promote safety. ▶ 📄
Diane Bracob — In Favor: Praised Willow Creek Academy for its community involvement, diversity (no racial majority, 32 languages spoken), and positive impact on Sausalito's demographics. Noted the school changed the town for the better and supports unification efforts. ▶ 📄
Leah Gilbert — In Favor: Thanked the city for the family forum and highlighted the growing number of young families in Sausalito. Expressed concern about the closure of Sparrow Creek preschool, an affordable option, and urged support for keeping families in the community. ▶ 📄
Nikki Finneman — In Favor: Expressed love for Sausalito's vibrant, diverse community. Thanked Julie Myers for creating family-friendly events. Highlighted the loss of Sparrow Creek preschool and urged the council to support affordable preschool options to retain families. ▶ 📄
Erin Brewster — In Favor: Shared that Sparrow Creek preschool attracted her family to Sausalito. Praised city events and staff for creating a welcoming community. Opposed short-term rentals (Airbnb) due to affordability concerns and emphasized the need for school options to keep families in town. ▶ 📄
Connie Mittendorf — In Favor: Appreciated Sausalito's family-friendly programs, noting the town has become more welcoming for families compared to the past, and expressed happiness at being able to raise children here. ▶ 📄
Anonymous (Bocce Commenter) — Neutral: Briefly thanked Mike Langford for new bocce courts (noting it's not a children's program). Then shifted to a detailed critique of Measure M, arguing it discriminates against certain business categories based on flawed data analysis, contrary to promised equity. ▶ 📄
Anonymous (Parent) — In Favor: Expressed appreciation for the community and city staff. Highlighted Sparrow Creek as key to their decision to move to Sausalito. Offered to work with the city and other parents to support affordable preschool options and retain families. ▶ 📄