| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:04.17 | Heidi Scoble | So Granicus is up and running and now we're just working on our CMCM. So we're up and running and live Good evening, Mayor Cleveland Knowles, members of the city council. This meeting is being held pursuant to section three of executive order N-29-20 issued by Governor Newsom on March 17th, 2020. And all members are joining this meeting telephonically through Zoom and is broadcast live on the city's website and on cable TV channel 27. |
| 00:00:33.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Karen Grove, COB OSMP, 2020. And before I announce that we will go into closed session, I just wanted to note that due to the extreme Each in California, there are potential rolling blackouts scheduled that may impact Casa Alito. If that does happen this evening during our open session meeting we will reconvene likely in a special meeting and we'll provide notice of that meeting as soon as we can so with that i am going to call the first item on our agenda which is or closed session items. We have four items, a conference with real property negotiator, conference with legal counsel. and two other conferences with real property negotiator. And could I ask the clerk to see if there is any public comment? |
| 00:01:36.17 | Heidi Scoble | There are no additional public participants in this meeting at this moment. |
| 00:01:40.89 | Councilmember Cox | And Mayor, I would like to announce that I will be recusing myself from discussion of items D3 sorry, of item D4 due to my proximity to the subject of the negotiations. |
| 00:01:55.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And with that, we will adjourn into closed session and we will reconvene in open session at 7 p.m. this evening. |
| 00:02:03.45 | Tom Riley | Mayor, do we need to have a roll call? |
| 00:02:06.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh, I'm sorry. We do. Thank you very much. So could the clerk please call the roll? Thank you. |
| 00:02:11.06 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Riley? |
| 00:02:12.65 | Tom Riley | here. |
| 00:02:13.38 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Burns? |
| 00:02:15.06 | Ray Withy | here. |
| 00:02:15.72 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cox. Here. Vice Mayor Withey. |
| 00:02:19.59 | Ray Withy | here. |
| 00:02:20.41 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Cleveland Knowles. Thank you. |
| 00:02:22.17 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Sure. |
| 00:02:22.39 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. All members are present and there is a quorum |
| 00:02:25.31 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, and thank you for that reminder. So with that, we will, is there anything else I forgot? All right, so with that, we will go into closed session and reconvene at 7 p.m. |
| 00:03:03.44 | Heidi Scoble | CM is turning on and I'll let you know when it's live. and CMCM is live, so we are ready to begin the meeting. What we will do is we're admitting all the participants right now. |
| 00:03:15.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, great. Should we give you a minute to do that? |
| 00:03:18.55 | Heidi Scoble | We have one person that's waiting to join in, and I will let you know it should be less than 15, 30 seconds. |
| 00:03:26.56 | Unknown | What are you looking for most? I'm looking for most who's been a breakthrough tonight. You know, Michelle, about her last night, was the I'm sorry, Disposal has quit having power. on their Zoom calls with our family. |
| 00:03:46.76 | Heidi Scoble | Oh. Okay, so we're still waiting for Janelle Kelman, who is in. |
| 00:03:53.02 | Unknown | THE FAMILY IS IN. I was just... |
| 00:03:54.68 | Heidi Scoble | Now we're ready to go. Let's see, we have some muting issues going on right now. Okay, we're ready to go. |
| 00:04:04.72 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay so welcome back we are coming back from the post session to the regular meeting of the Sausalito City Council. |
| 00:04:10.93 | Heidi Scoble | Oh. |
| 00:04:11.20 | Unknown | I don't think. |
| 00:04:12.78 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:04:14.08 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I think we do still have some moving issues. can make sure we resolve those, that would be great. Um, So we are back from open session and I just want to acknowledge that we have a very special guest with us tonight. We have Councilmember Jill Hoffman who is still on active duty. Welcome Jill. We have missed you. carrying on without you, but pleased to see you here tonight. Would you like to? Do you have any words for us? |
| 00:04:54.43 | Jill Hoffman | Maybe. Sure. Can you guys hear me? |
| 00:04:56.32 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:04:56.47 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 00:04:56.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'm sorry. |
| 00:04:56.56 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:04:57.62 | Jill Hoffman | Oh, great. Yeah, well, I'm excited to be on my way back. I'm not back 100% yet. I'm back in the United States. And I'm currently finished on Sunday. I finished two weeks of quarantine, which was very exciting, successfully finished two weeks of quarantine. And right now I'm in the out processing demobilization process. So that should be done. hopefully by midweek next week, and then I'll be headed back to Sausalito. So That's very exciting for me. Very exciting for me and my family. So yeah, we're very excited. So thank you. |
| 00:05:36.69 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We're really glad you're back in the US and that you're safe and sound. And we're looking forward to having you back in South Ludo and when you are able uh back on the council although we also want to thank you for leaving us in the capable hands of uh interim member uh council member riley so |
| 00:05:54.34 | Jill Hoffman | Yeah, thank you. Thank you for Tom, especially thanks for everybody, my family and everybody who sent their, |
| 00:05:54.42 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 00:06:00.75 | Jill Hoffman | Good wishes for both of us, both my family and myself, and I appreciate it. As soon as I will be able to retake my council seat when I'm officially released from active duty, which is gonna take some paperwork drill and probably mid to late September, I'll be able to retake my seat. So I'm excited for that. And thanks to everybody. Thank you. |
| 00:06:20.29 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, well, thanks for dropping in and hope you'll continue to join us as the meeting wears on, but if not, we'll hope to see you soon. |
| 00:06:30.45 | Jill Hoffman | Thanks very much. Yeah, thank you. |
| 00:06:30.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Yeah. Great to see you. All right, with that, I will say that in closed session, we took no actions and have No closed session announcements. We have an agenda tonight. And I would ask that the council move to approve the agenda unless you have any I would note just for the public, that there is the threat of a power interruption tonight in Sausage Polito. We have not heard anything definite but possibility So if there is a significant power outage, we will adjourn our meeting or we may just have it adjourned for us and we will give notice and we convene a special meeting to continue this hopefully next week or at the earliest that we can. So hopefully that won't happen this evening, but if it does, That will be our protocol. So with that, do I have a motion to approve the agenda? |
| 00:07:35.44 | Peter Van Meter | I'm moved. |
| 00:07:37.48 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Second. |
| 00:07:38.57 | Peter Van Meter | Second. |
| 00:07:39.79 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Heidi, could you please call the roll? |
| 00:07:42.46 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Councilmember Riley? |
| 00:07:45.14 | Tom Riley | YES. |
| 00:07:45.93 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Burns. |
| 00:07:47.32 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 00:07:48.11 | Heidi Scoble | Council member Cox. Yes. Vice Mayor Withey? |
| 00:07:51.74 | Tom Riley | Yeah. |
| 00:07:51.92 | Heidi Scoble | Yes. Mayor Cleveland Knowles. Thank you. |
| 00:07:54.37 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. that motion carries five zero. Okay, we are on to our first agenda item, special presentation, Mayor's announcement. We have one item on the agenda. Welcome Abbott Chambers. Thank you for being here. I'd hoped by, |
| 00:08:05.09 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:08:13.88 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | this point in August that we would have better news on the COVID front, but we are still in the thick of it. So really appreciate your continuing your good work on keeping everyone up to staff. |
| 00:08:26.69 | Abbott Chambers | Thank you, Madam Mayor. That was my hope as well, but I'm happy to be here with you tonight and say hello to the other council members and to soon to be returning council member Jill Hoffman. Let me go ahead and share my screen. |
| 00:08:50.02 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:08:52.88 | Abbott Chambers | Okay, so another COVID-19 update. And as you know, I'm Abbott Chambers, your director of communications. As far as what I'll be covering in my presentation, since the council has been on its summer break, it's been about six weeks since my last presentation. So I'll basically be catching you up with status updates for the county And for Sausalito, And when I'm finished, I will be happy to entertain any questions. So we'll start with the Marin County COVID-19 update. And look at a timeline. So it's been almost exactly five months since the shelter in place order went into effect here in Marin County. And that was put in place by our public health department. About a month after that, the public health issued its order on face coverings, mandating face coverings in most public settings. And because the COVID-19 case rates were declining and hospitalizations were declining, the county began a phased reopening of the Marin economy in May and June, with every week or every two weeks, new business sectors reopening. Unfortunately, that came to a halt in early July when Marin was added to a state of California monitoring list due to increased COVID-19 activity. So why did we go on the monitoring list? Well, according to this data, it was because of elevated COVID-19 transmission, the number of new cases that we were seeing in Marin, Also increasing hospitalizations. and limited hospital capacity. And this was at the time that the outbreak was particularly acute at San Quentin State Prison. And that was putting pressure on local hospital capacity as well. The consequences of being on the monitoring list. Basically, we are bowled into the state. The state sets the limits for us now on what sectors that we can have open. Fortunately, we had not moved much beyond the state baseline here in Marin. So in addition to essential businesses, a wide variety of businesses and activities remain open. But some businesses and activities did shut down again in July based on the addition to the monitoring list. And those include indoor restaurant service, general office space, indoor malls, and hair salons, and barbershops. And in the case of indoor restaurant service, that was an order from the state on July 13th that essentially closed indoor restaurant service for the whole state, regardless of whether you're on the monitoring list or not. And the reason why these businesses are closed is because COVID-19 is most likely to be transmitted in indoor spaces. |
| 00:12:10.43 | Abbott Chambers | It turns out that Marin was sort of under the state monitoring list bar as far as there still being some activities, businesses and activities that we could allow, even though we were on the monitoring list. So on July 20th, outdoor service was allowed at hair salons and barbershops here in Marin. And then on August 10th, outdoor operations for gyms and fitness studios, and also outdoor operations for a variety of personal services businesses. The county also plans to allow hotels and short-term rentals to reopen. on August 24th. The asterisk is there is because the county has set some benchmarks that we will need to meet as far as COVID-19 case rates before they will definitely go forward. And they plan to make that decision on August 21st. So what will get Marin taken off of the monitoring list? This is a little bit convoluted, but according to Marin Public Health, the most important factor is that we get the number of new cases over the past 14 days below 100 per 100,000 residents. And we need to be below that threshold for three consecutive days. And at that time, we can come off the monitoring list. And some counties actually have started coming off the monitoring list. I believe San Diego County was removed today and Santa Cruz County yesterday. In the case of Marin, The number that the state was reporting on its monitoring website Yesterday was 161 per 100,000, so we remain significantly above that threshold. I should add also that, as you've all probably heard, the state is having some reporting problems as far as test results, so that number may actually be higher. I'm not sure. former Ren. The 100 per 100,000 population translates to about 19 new cases per day. So we need to get down below that. And the number reported for yesterday was 32. I should also add that even if we are taken off the monitoring list, it remains somewhat unclear exactly when we can start reopening businesses and activities and the state plans to issue a clarification about that. But at this time, it's unclear whether it's three days or maybe 14 days. Schools are also subject to the monitoring list. Counties are allowed to reopen for in-classroom learning if they've been off the list for 14 days. And for schools that's public, private, and parochial. There are a couple of exceptions. Elementary schools can reopen with approval from Marin Public Health if we get between 100 and 200 new cases per 100,000. over a 14 day period. And schools may also apply for a waiver from County Public Health, if they can provide assurances that they can meet certain safety targets, things like being able to provide classes outdoors. But despite those exceptions, public health does say that no schools will be allowed to open for in-classroom learning before September 8th, which is the day after labor day under any circumstances. Just then looking quickly at the data, these are daily newly reported cases for Marin County. And you can see from the trend line, just looking at the bars that we did have a spike in you know, running from late June into mid July. It does seem to be coming down. But again, there are still some results to be reported. So those numbers may be a little higher, in fact. hospitalizations, and this is looking back to June. You can see a similar spike in early July. And that number has been coming down. This also seems to suggest that case rates are also coming down for Marin and re-informing that previous slide because these are numbers that are strictly Marin County. We're not getting this data from the state. And I'll just close this section by saying, you know, we can all do our part to get Marin off the watch list and get our schools open, get sectors of our economy open if we continue to wear our masks, wash our hands, and maintain social distance. So now we'll move on to a brief update for Sausalito. And we'll start just looking at activity in our downtown area. As has been the case for months now, there is no weekend ferry service to Sausalito. And according to Golden Gate, the Golden Gate Ferry, they have no immediate plans to reinstitute ferry service. Our police officers are seeing very few rental bikes coming through town. And they report also that the number of visitors that we're seeing in the downtown area and the usage of our parking lot strongly correlates to weather. So on a beautiful day, like just this past Saturday when it was so warm, but actually a little cooler in Sausalito than elsewhere in the Bay Area, we actually did see almost 100 percent our parking lots almost 100% full. That said, we're not getting reports that there is excessive congestion in the downtown area. The Our parking services folks report that for this calendar year compared to last year, our revenues are down about $25. 25%. Our police department is also reporting that they're seeing a high incidence of mask wearing in the downtown area. I can just confirm that from my recent walk through downtown when I took this photo. They're also reporting that we've received very few calls about SIP shelter in place violations and only a couple of messages forwarded from Marin County that came in through the SIP violation at marincounty.org email address for reporting businesses in violation of shelter in place orders. The City of Sausalito has a number of programs to facilitate activity in the downtown area. Our Community Development Department has issued a large number of temporary permits to businesses and restaurants to allow outdoor dining and vending. We have our ambassador program with an ambassador at both ends of the downtown area, encouraging people to wear masks and maintain social distance. They also are now distributing disposable masks to people. And our police department is distributing packets of masks to local businesses that request them. And then just in general, our police departments in monitoring our downtown area continues to focus their efforts on education about shelter in place restrictions, rather than on writing citations. Also happening in the city that the city has made possible is the temporary closure of Caledonia Street on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for outdoor dining between Pine and Johnson Streets. This is a photo from a recent sunny, warm Saturday evening. And the city of Sausalito continues to offer a full range of services. the Just to give you some examples here, our Parks and Recreation Department is offering their summer camps, now transitioning to after school programs and learning pods. library offering curbside pickup service. Our community development department now offering a virtual service counter for building and planning permits. Park projects continue here in Sausalito with the Southview Park Improvement Project just recently underway in Hurricane Gulch. And as with tonight, our boards and commissions continue to operate at full function on meetings over Zoom. That concludes my presentation. And I would be happy to take any questions or refer your questions to other city staff members. |
| 00:21:44.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much Abbott for another very thorough presentation. do i have uh questions from council members before we turn it over to public comments |
| 00:21:57.51 | Tom Riley | This is Tom. I have one question for Adam, or Abbott. On the days of good weather when our lots are full, have we considered raising our parking to offset our losses in revenues |
| 00:22:10.07 | Abbott Chambers | I'll give a brief answer and then we'll defer if our police chief or one of our captains or even Adam could chime in. But we did raise the rates to our summer rates, which are higher. And that was a fairly recent development where we did decide to do seasonal rates. But I don't know if any additional rise in rates has been considered. |
| 00:22:37.07 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I'll just add in there. Thank you, Abbott. and very good question Council member Riley As you see on the consent item, we have a parking item on there and included in that staff report is recognition that there's an opportunity for us to look at our parking regulations and policies and rates. And I think with the great work of our parking coordinator, manager here in Elliott Hall. We'll be looking at that over this next month and bringing something to the council probably later September or October. |
| 00:23:14.85 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. I think that sounds like a really good idea. And also, Adam, you may want to just note that there are free parking programs for residents who want to avail themselves of the downtown parking lot. Councilmember Cox. |
| 00:23:33.58 | Councilmember Cox | Two questions. One thing I see a lot as I'm walking or driving through the downtown area is that Although the restaurants are very good about maintaining six feet between tables and then the people sitting at the tables are within their own bubble, That six feet does not always extend to passersby. And not every passerby, unfortunately, because they're outdoors, is wearing a mask. And so I wonder if there's a way to manage the path of travel for passers-by when we have restaurants utilizing the sidewalk areas for outdoor dining. So that was one question. Second question is Dunphy Park is getting ready to reopen. And I've seen other parks in San Francisco and elsewhere that have drawn like chalk circles in the park to identify what appropriate social distancing is. And I wonder as we first opened Dunphy Park, if there's any approach to that we can undertake to ensure there's proper social distancing as people start to enjoy one of our most favorite parks. Thank you. |
| 00:24:52.89 | Abbott Chambers | Okay, for the first question as far as passers-by, I don't have an answer at hand, but I'd either defer to Adam or I will say that I will confer with our folks at the police department and check with our colleagues at other cities and see how they've handled such things. Adam, did you want to add anything? |
| 00:25:15.62 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I can respond to that. Um, I'm Mayor Susan Cleveland-Knowles and our Councilmember Joe Burns. join me on a call with the rest of our City councils and other representatives of the county looking at various enforcement and recover activity. Um, It's kind of split up into three areas here. We have the police department, throughout the county and the sheriff's office, really focusing on the mask. wearing and compliance and based on education. And as you pointed out in Abbott's presentation earlier, through the leadership of this committee, which is chaired by the Vice Mayor of San Rafael and the Vice Mayor of San Anselmo, Um, we all went out, the entire county went out and purchased masks at 24 cents a mask. And so that's why we are making them available to the public, we're making them available to our retail businesses as well to make sure that there is no excuse for someone not to wear a mask with the ambassadors, the police department and our merchants handing these out. So that's kind of number one. Number two, and you've read about this in the paper, is a discussion about a task force to work with the retailers that are not under the Department of Environmental Health Services, that the county has that responsibility. Thank you. And so the county. has responded to at least 12 um, I think we have a lot of calls regarding our restaurants potentially not keeping that distance of the chairs. It's easy to put the tables apart but people move the And sometimes our restaurants are not paying enough attention to make sure that they keep that social distance that's required. Environmental Health is actively working with all of our cities to continue to monitor that. Um, The. The specific question of Jones there is working through, of Joan Cox or Councilmember Cox there, working with our code enforcement officers, our building officials, our public works staff. We have the application for all of these businesses to go through that requires us to maintain that clearance and distance. So we'll continue to monitor this. And there's a fine line because our sidewalks are only so deep. And the restaurants that abut those sidewalks with outside dining, we're just trying to do the best we can to keep a fine balance there. But right now, there are a lot of different agencies working on this, and we will continue. |
| 00:28:04.04 | Abbott Chambers | do so. And then Joan to your second question, excuse me Council Member Cox to your second question about Dumpy Park. Yeah, I'm sure we'll consider options for encouraging social distancing at Dumpy. social distancing circles in Gabrielson Park, I believe have been very successful. And I believe that there's other learning as well from parks in the Bay Area that we'll be able to take into consideration as we're coming up with plans. |
| 00:28:37.77 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. I bet any additional questions, Ray, Council Member? |
| 00:28:44.18 | Ray Withy | Um, Yeah. Abbott, has there been any discussion at the city level and maybe Adam at the county level. Um, around the fact that they're just because we've talked about our downtown, I've talked about this before, We've got a downtown. that, the reason. Pre-COVID, why we were worrying about downtown. was a congestion problem and the congestion problem everybody thought was created by bikes. But in actual fact, it was created by people and not enough walking space in the downtown to accommodate those people that's what was going on downtown By definition, therefore, Almost. If that was the case when there's a lot of people, even if you start dialing back the people, The fact remains you cannot achieve social distancing in our downtown in some, in many areas of it, period. Therefore, That's okay. You just recognize that. But that means that surely masks. In an area where you can't, by design, create social distancing, MASH should be mandatory. And the reasons, legitimate policy reasons, for not making them mandatory, has been the fact of equity, social justice, in the sense that not everybody has access. the fact that we're providing access So there's absolutely no excuse. for anybody in the downtown not to be wearing a mask Why are we not therefore because of the unique circumstances of the whole geo-projecture you know, socio-geography of our downtown. it's impossible to maintain social distance. So why don't we do that? I'm going to |
| 00:30:52.97 | Abbott Chambers | Select that one to Adam. |
| 00:30:57.44 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Can I just jump in through on this question? So I did visit some family this summer and one of the great, I saw a couple of really innovative ideas and other jurisdictions, but one of them was kind of an area that also had a fairly bustling downtown, kind of had these really attractive, nice signs all around the downtown. |
| 00:31:14.67 | Unknown | I'm going to go. |
| 00:31:20.19 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | You know, you're entering the downtown masks required. and sort of set up a zone as opposed to establishing ordinance or kind of penalties or something like that. It was just a very clear demarcation |
| 00:31:27.67 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:31:33.98 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | you know, you're coming into a congested area, Yeah. |
| 00:31:36.63 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:31:37.10 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And they were very attractive. They were permanent. They didn't look slapdash. And it just kind of established, like, you're in a crowded area. Please wear your mask. And I thought it was an inviting, attractive, way to kind of, um, recognize that in congested areas, that's really the best practice. |
| 00:31:55.95 | Ray Withy | Yeah. I mean, obviously we should hear public comment, but I mean, in comments, I think I'm going to basically say, well, why don't we do that? |
| 00:32:04.83 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. We can. and suggest that the only issue and then that's maybe a question for the city manager would be expense. |
| 00:32:13.64 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, and Ray, there's robust discussion going on and pros and cons throughout the county here. at the city manager's level, at the police chief level, and with our elected officials that serve on these various committees, including board of supervisors sitting on these committees. And you appreciate this being a scientist. There is a science component of this on how likely you are to be infected by COVID-19. based on the amount of exposure you have at any given time. What makes it challenging for law enforcement is that there are right now too many loopholes. If you're exercising and why definition of exercising includes walking. includes biking, includes hiking. So Fairfax, for example, or West Marin, you know, they have the same issue, they're making the same point when you're on a narrow trail, you can't maintain social distancing when you come up against someone without a mask. So there is robust discussion going on. And as as the mayor just shared and she shared these in these public meetings, we may just have to go alone. Sausalito Tiburon is an example where we have this hyper congestion, maybe a West Marin Fairfax. We may need to create a downtown zone, as the mayor is suggesting, where masks are required at all times, regardless of the activity. |
| 00:33:35.11 | Ray Withy | Yeah. Well, I have some more to say, but let's... reserve it to the comment section. |
| 00:33:44.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, other questions before we? turn it over to public comment. Okay, seeing none, we will ask for public comment and because this is our first public comment of the evening, If our clerk could explain how to I do that. |
| 00:34:06.21 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you, Mayor Cleveland Knowles. At this time, members of the public may address the city council regarding this agenda item regarding the COVID-19 update. Public comment will be accepted by video or audio audience participation via Zoom. Video or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you'd like to make a comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application and you'll be called upon when it is your time to speak. To raise your hand from the phone, press the star nine, button on your phone. Each speaker will be notified when the time has elapsed. |
| 00:34:40.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Sarah Silver, Great Thank you, I see one member of the public with their hand raised Sandra Bush maker welcome. |
| 00:34:48.53 | Sandra Bushmaker | Let me just get my video here. All right, I just, good evening everybody. Welcome back from your summers. And I would just like to highly support the mandatory mask in the downtown area. I was here the whole summer and observed many conditions that I think were not helpful. or helpful. And I would highly support the mandatory mask zone. downtown, actually throughout the entire town, if you want my frank opinion on it. Uh, because we know that masks help. And our numbers continue to go. I just got Marin County's numbers a few minutes before the meeting started and we're over 63,000 cases now. not counting San Quentin or Yeah. senior living facilities. So our numbers continue to go up. They have not dipped once since May 2nd. So I think that that's justification enough to have a mandatory. mask. ordinance. temporary order of the police department. I don't know how mechanically you want to do that, but I would highly support it. Thank you. |
| 00:36:09.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Faye Mark, welcome. |
| 00:36:33.19 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 00:36:33.26 | Faye Mark | Thank you. Sorry. Good evening. Madam Mayor, City Council and staff. In the fall of 2017, Johnson Street neighbors donated $250 each to beautify the street and purchase 17 purple pony plum trees, a utility-friendly, fast-growing, deciduous tree with a mature height of 20 feet that produces fragrant blooms in the spring, develops purple leaves in the summer, and is tolerant of our urban environment. Funds not used for the purchase were collected and placed in a city account that funded a professional aesthetic pruner to minimize the weight of the top of the tree. |
| 00:37:10.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Can I just interrupt you for just a minute, Faye? Is this general public comment or comment on our COVID presentation? |
| 00:37:11.01 | Faye Mark | Thank you. |
| 00:37:16.42 | Faye Mark | I apologize. It's general public comment. |
| 00:37:18.92 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, well, you've gone far enough. So if you want to take your general public comment now, we'll just hear the rest of it, or I can just call on you during general public comment. |
| 00:37:27.49 | Faye Mark | I apologize. I'd be happy for you to call on me during general comment. |
| 00:37:32.59 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt, but. Great, thank you. All right, I do not see any other hands raised on our COVID update. so i will bring it excuse me back up to the council oh i'm sorry uh chris durbin has her hand raised and this is public comment on cobit 19. |
| 00:37:54.05 | Chris Durbin | Yes, it is. I just I heard something briefly that Abbott said about learning hubs. I'm not sure. I'd like to hear more about that. And I know that that's something that Willow Creek is pursuing. And the Bayside MLK has quite a different plan So, I'm just curious why we're, hearing what Willow Creek is doing, and what they said I'm okay. So. These are our schools. Thanks. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:38:27.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Okay, is there any additional public comment on COVID-19? All right, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council. um, And Adam Pulitzer looks like he might have a comment. |
| 00:38:46.89 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, just on the last comment there related to the school pods Our Parks and Recreation Director and Abbott are working with the school district and also working with our schools at the MLK campus at Eptide there with the Lise and New Village School. So we are working with all of the schools trying to come up with creative locations here in Sausalito to support our students at all of the schools. If you'd like to talk to our park and rec director or our city librarian. our clients, I'm sure that they would enjoy that conversation. and be able to provide more information. |
| 00:39:33.13 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. Okay. Further comments? Ray, it's on, oh, Joe, why don't you go ahead. |
| 00:39:42.92 | Joe Burns | I didn't mean to raise I'm not sure. Adam referenced meetings that the mayor and I attend with various members of councils across the Marin on Friday afternoons. through the MCCMC. |
| 00:39:59.17 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:39:59.20 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:39:59.52 | Joe Burns | they're often attended by somebody from County Health. About two months ago when the county got their really nice website up and flowing with. numbers of infection rate per kind of jurisdiction because it wasn't quite city limit, it wasn't quite zip code, but it was some really nice defined maps throughout Marin of who was infected in that geographical location. I'm not sure. And then they have their overall stats for the county. Well, the mayor asked a very simple question, I think is, hey, can we find out the stats for the, at the time I think there was 20 and we were high for our number of residents. We have the stats for Sausalito. It helps us manage with proper measurements of the of the information. Well, they said they'd get that to us. A couple of weeks later, Max Corton was at the meeting and I said, Hey, you know, we'd really like to get a breakdown of that information. Yep, at another meeting we will. meeting after two months. hey, is there any chance we can get the information on the infections that are happening in Sausalito because it would be great to know, are these parents of kids that are in camps? Are these people who work in a visitor related business? Are these adults that go hiking in the hills? you know, mass, absolutely. All these things are absolute, but if we're gonna apply a data nexus to health orders, Let's see what the data is. It turns out, as what Max said, is they did look into it finally, and they only had information about half of the positive test for for us. So if they only have half the information on the positive test for us, what does that mean for the rest of the county? And I'm not questioning their, they're resolved to do these things or that we should be wearing masks. But When they say that a number has to be met for hotels to open, yet they don't have the data that's properly attributed to that nexus of what a hotel opening or closing might be then we're just kind of shooting out you know, closures without there being a direct nexus between the health order and the data. So. That was very frustrating because to me, and I don't think it was as much to the mayor and the county city manager, It was frustrating to me because we have to use practical data to make decisions that are impacting the economy, let alone people's businesses, whether they close for good or stay open, And they can't just be, you know, based on, well, if the entire county rate goes up or down, we might open a hotel here and there. unless you can prove the nexus between that hotel and that number that they're judging. So that was kind of frustrating. And I get that this is all new for us. And these are people that have jobs that are really, really tough right now. but, um, The bottom line is we all have to just wear a mask and cut this thing out completely. But there's not necessarily the data-driven information that I thought we'd want at this point that says here's when business is open. |
| 00:42:51.05 | Unknown | we all have to get into it. |
| 00:43:02.06 | Joe Burns | that the number we are looking at actually does relate to that opening. Just wanted to bring that out there. I didn't want to be Debbie Downer with it, but that was alarming to me to find that out at the last meeting. |
| 00:43:18.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, and just to be clear, Joe, I did share your frustration about that, but I also feel like this is a nationwide problem that people who are testing positive are not necessarily either being able to be contacted by contact tracers or if they are contacted, a lot of people are not even answering |
| 00:43:35.69 | Joe Burns | Absolutely. |
| 00:43:36.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So I mean, I think part of it is the county perhaps, but I think it's also a more global- |
| 00:43:36.99 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 00:43:42.09 | Joe Burns | Absolutely. But remember our county is taking a more aggressive So they're saying they must have data that they're |
| 00:43:46.59 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 00:43:50.56 | Joe Burns | opposite of the state's data, yet they don't. That's, if it was just going along with the state, I get it, but they're saying we're going harder than the state, more lenient than, or more restrictive than the state, but there's no data to support that they should because they don't have the data. |
| 00:44:07.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Vice Mayor. |
| 00:44:10.69 | Ray Withy | Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. I think this is an important discussion because you know, you've got to be careful when you're relying on making decisions based on Processed information if the information isn't quite correct you run into a problem there. you know, We know that there is an issue with regards to the testing and reporting of the testing. Luckily, That we shouldn't let be a distraction because it is a distraction. And what the fundamental issue is is how we're going to get our arms around both the economic recovery and the containment of this virus. one obviously influencing the other. In terms of the containment of the virus, very good. I'm not sure. There's a lot of research to do. processes to develop in terms of testing, contract, contact, tracing, and all of that infrastructure which we are stumbling along. in putting in place. but it will eventually get there. But it's a disgrace how we're stumbling along trying to put that in place. The other side of the coin is all of that infrastructure is wasted or I'm not sure. you know, used a lot less efficiently the investment into those resources If we don't do from a social situation, primarily masks, Um, the ability to change our social interactions. And why I keep harping on the downtown is that you know, the governor Way back, and I remember, I watched his speech live, about that bringing businesses on, it was going to be like operating a dimmer switch. And yes. We've pressed up the switch a little bit. And then we got a bit shaky, and rightly so, and we backed off and dimmed it slightly. OK. And that's okay, that's a good analogy. But there's another thing that everybody keeps forgetting, it's what I wanna keep harboring. but I'm gonna keep harping on it. The governor also indicated, not in the same speech, but in the later speech, that local governments need to take control. They need to exercise their powers. The state can't put, while we can create this, image of this dimmer switch and create an overall You know. hierarchy that you can follow. In the end, if you want to make more stringent or cleverly constructed gut. issue guidelines for your particular jurisdiction, go ahead and do it. That is what we're facing. It's also a little uniquely positioned in Marin County. It absolutely needs to come up with some customized actual law. about how to operate in particular in our dams. because there is no way by any reasonable analysis that you can say, that if you're not wearing a mask in our downtown you are able to maintain social distance. That is impossible. |
| 00:47:52.78 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I think I saw Councilmember Riley. wanted to speak. |
| 00:47:57.66 | Tom Riley | Yes, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman Burns. Vice Mayor, for your comments. agree with them. Um, A couple of thoughts. I do think we are unique. Um, In any given day when it's beautiful weather, our parking lots fill up. I don't know how many parking spots we have, but let's say it's 700. and each vehicle has two people on it. That's 1,400 people coming into our town. We don't know where they come from. |
| 00:48:21.57 | Unknown | So, |
| 00:48:23.75 | Tom Riley | We don't know what county, what restrictions they have. And they're visiting us in our downtown. And if we're going to have a transmission outbreak, it's likely going to come from that versus within our own community. And so I am supportive of a kind of a mask zone downtown. I wouldn't make it 24 hours. I would just do it on the peak times, probably on weekends and from 11 to 4 or something like that. but I think, We need to recognize that we have a lot of people but we don't know what protocols and restrictions have been imposed on them. I do. I also wanted to thank Abbott for a great presentation. Once again, you have a very difficult job tremendous presentations. And finally, I am pleased to share the Chamber of Commerce is very aligned at addressing, uh, stopping the spread. They printed out 150 mask required signs. with the Love Sausalito logo, and I've distributed them to all merchants, and it's pretty much prevalent in every merchant window. so that it's reinforced. that masks are required in our downtown, especially if you're going into one of the merchants. And I do like the mayor's suggestion of, if we have nice signs during the mask zone period, |
| 00:49:35.70 | Unknown | And I do. the administration. Thank you. |
| 00:49:41.56 | Tom Riley | we can bring those protections. I'll finish my comments there. Thank you. |
| 00:49:47.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Councilmember Cox, do you have anything to add? your |
| 00:49:53.50 | Councilmember Cox | I wanted to, it was interesting that Sandra Bushmaker quoted statistics that did not include San Quentin. And when Joe was talking about the number of incidents in town, I was thinking, oh, I wonder if any of our incidents include San Quentin. guards because I know that there have been illnesses amongst the guards. But I think because these numbers are determinative of our ability to move forward and address the adverse economic impacts of this pandemic that we need to segregate the San Quentin statistics from the rest of the statistics because those statistics are solely under the jurisdiction of CDCR. None of our local jurisdictions have any control over how those prisoners are managed. And I know that the state is finally starting to pay attention because they need to take swift action to address those inadequacies. But in the meantime, Marin County should not be penalized for a segment of the population that has rampant incidences of COVID-19 and over which we have no control. |
| 00:51:16.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. So just as a matter of information, that Marin COVID website, does categorize all of the San Quentin cases and the nursing home cases under separate categories. And then each city is also categorized so the number of incidences per 100 000 that are shown for each town or jurisdiction. As Joe said, it's not exactly, um, Like the 94965 is broken up and Mo Valley has different jurisdictions. Anyway, our numbers are They're still high, but they're kind of, I think other jurisdictions are kind of actually coming more in line with our incidences. |
| 00:51:58.30 | Joe Burns | Yeah, we're not the highest anymore. |
| 00:51:59.98 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Right, and I would also say to counter some of the, I mean, we are definitely not out of the danger zone, but I would say one of the most encouraging statistics to me. is that at the beginning of July, there were over, I think, 25 hospitalizations. And when I checked yesterday, there were zero. So that, and that is a statistic that is not affected by this data issue. that the state is experiencing. So there are reasons to be hopeful, but I agree that we need to be watchful and the San Quentin Some of the folks were hospitalized in Marin, which is also does add to our risk of spread. So just to follow on a couple of the points that were made, I am very supportive of a initiative to really encourage mask wearing in the downtown. I like the idea of starting in our high traffic times. Um, as a start. and high traffic during the weekends. I would love to see more active signage, more mask masks, providing masks to people who are coming I would also say I am not entirely sure that the mask wearing lack of mask wearing is confined to out-of-towners. I have observed. Oh. personally. So I think we need to take an equal educational perspective on both fronts. I would love to see some banners. I would like to see more as people enter our parking lots. more signage there and as people, especially bicyclists, come into town. So I am supportive of that and would look to our city manager and staff to advise us how best to do that if we need to act you know, if we can just start this educational campaign and have it as such, and then maybe move to an ordinance if we feel like we're not getting good compliance or, you know, whether we need to take some formal action at another meeting. But we really do need to, as Joan, Councilmember Cox said, our economic recovery is contingent on our performing well. in combating COVID. And so it's not only the right thing to do from a health perspective, but it's also the right thing to do to to get back to our schools reopening and to our economy So I don't know, Adam, if you wanna comment tonight or if you wanna reserve that for our next meeting, but it's up to you. |
| 00:54:43.11 | Adam Politzer | I think that was excellent feedback and always appreciate the public's feedback as well. We welcome all ideas, all creative ideas. So please email us with those types of ideas. And I think that the council... gave us enough direction tonight and so we can work offline to do some of those things are quite easy for us to accomplish. And we'll move on that other things we will need to bring back to council on september 8th for further discussion |
| 00:55:11.34 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And then I would just also like to add on to Council member Riley's comment. I am very in favor of demand management parking procedures so that to be very flexible in terms of our parking rates so that when we have high demand that our rates can be higher and when we have lower demand they can be lower. So there's ways to |
| 00:55:32.91 | Unknown | Again. |
| 00:55:36.66 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | further explore that and including our resident and 94965 discounts that we'll talk about a little later that would be great. Any other comments before we move on from the sidem? |
| 00:55:50.63 | Ray Withy | I just reinforced the demand parking management, you know, We've been talking about this for six, eight, seven, eight years. We should just put it in place. |
| 00:56:01.53 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, thank you. All right, well, maybe we can under future agenda items, maybe we can also Add that. COB, Jean Gatza, Okay, so now we are going to move on to general public comment and I know we have at least one member of the public Bay mark who would like to comment, so we will. start with her if she is still available and then I see one other hand raised as well so is Miss Mark still with us this evening |
| 00:56:32.66 | Faye Mark | Yes, I'm here. |
| 00:56:34.01 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, good. I will start your three minutes and I apologize again for diverting your comment. |
| 00:56:40.70 | Faye Mark | Oh, actually it's my apology, Madam Mayor. So hello again, in the fall of 2017, Johnson Street neighbors donated $250 each to beautify the street and purchased 17 purple pony plum trees, a utility friendly fast growing deciduous tree with a mature height of 20 feet. that produces fragrant blooms in the spring and develops purple leaves in the summer and is tolerant of our urban environment. Funds not used for the purchase were collected and placed in a city account that funded a professional aesthetic pruner To minimize the weight on the top of the tree. remove inside branches and shape the tree to continue its growth to be parallel to the street and sidewalk to minimize growth towards the street and to prevent interference with vehicles and to keep the sidewalks clear of limbs for pedestrians. For the last three years, old and young neighbors cared for the trees, helping them to remain healthy with deep watering and mulching. And we also received excellent support from Lauren Umberitus. This three-year dedication and effort was almost sidetracked today had the neighbors not caught a tree trimming organization Following the requirements of their customer, Southern Marin Fire to reduce flammable vegetation, and to improve access for emergency vehicles. Southern Marin Fire was very responsive to my call and very respectful of my request to allow us to continue to manage the long-term maintenance of the trees. As the project lead for a Marin Countywide Fire Smart Education Landscaping Program, And as a board member, a fire safe Marin. I work closely with our fire officials Hello, Chief Welsh. to educate homeowners on defensible space. I appreciate and understand both sides of the delicate balance between fire mitigation safety and sustainable landscaping practices. that continue to support our delicate ecosystem. Trees and plants offer many benefits including protecting and encouraging wildlife reducing pollution, sequestering carbon and reducing stormwater runoff reducing erosion and stress. Having served as a founding member and president of Sausalito Beautiful, I also care about the beauty of our trees. I walked a few of our neighborhood streets with Southern Marin fires, vegetation management specialist And together we agreed that we could do a better job with the tree trimming and vegetation management to achieve the vegetation management priorities of the fire department without leaving scars on trees and plant vegetation that will take decades to heal and in some cases will be irreparable. Our town is filled with heritage trees and sudden oak death is not to be taken lightly with our fragile oaks. If chainsaws and pruning shears are not properly disinfected between cuttings, One disease tree will lead to another and to another. Tonight, I'm requesting a meeting between our city manager and Chief Welsh to discuss how we can do a better job at hiring arborists who have expertise in tree and plant pruning. Please, let's keep Sausalito beautiful. Thank you. |
| 00:59:56.50 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. I see Curtis Havel is also here with us tonight, our Harbor Master with RBRA. |
| 01:00:19.63 | Curtis Havel | Good evening. Welcome, or good evening, everybody. My name is Curtis Alville and I currently serve as the harbour master for the Richardson's Bay Regional Agency. I just wanted to pop in and give you a quick update on what's happening out in the water there. We're currently at a count of 125 vessels of those 125, approximately 100 are occupied. uh, We have dialed back our active abatement efforts during the pandemic. The only vessels that we've removed since the shelter in place order dropped was to remove a handful of sunken vessels, I believe the count was three, And then just last week we retrieved a vessel that was adrift and being towed by an anchor out to the Army Corps of Engineers. So that vessel is disposed of as well. We have also had a few voluntary turn-ins that we have disposed of Beyond that, we've been making good progress with the implementation the transition plan. So back in that's a great question. I guess it was July the RBRA Board of Directors adopted a transition plan One is implementation of the safe and seaworthy program. whereby vessels can or folks on vessels can apply to and they can become a part of the And, work towards obtaining a legacy status which is essentially gets them a limited period of time, additional time in the anchorage, provided that their vessel becomes seaworthy. The other two big programs of the transition plan are the implementation of a habitat management plan for eelgrass. I'm happy to announce that we've hired Rebecca Schwartz-Lessberg from to assist us with that. We are currently applying for grants and making progress on that front. The other big probably the biggest thing of the transition plan that we're working on is the roll out of you know continuing to do our outreach trying to find alternative housing for folks out on the anchorage that that really don't want to be there anymore I'm happy to we are making good progress there. We have three individuals right now that are we've been in very close conversation with and teams are partners from the social worker community and outreach community. have done assessments on these three. There's another four in the wings that we are looking forward to working with. And now begins the challenging aspect of actually trying to place them in housing. I'm not sure. my contractor, Andrew Henning, that's working with RBRA. It feels very positive that we will have at least three of these folks housed before the winter comes. And what's nice about that is the three individuals are on vessels that are particularly vulnerable. So not only have they been assessed and rated per the outreach program. But it would be great to get them into a safer housing situation before the winter comes and get those vulnerable vessels off the water. As always, if anybody ever has questions or Please don't hesitate to call me. All my information is at rbra.ca.gov. Thanks. |
| 01:03:39.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, great, thank you. We have Susan Shea, welcome. And if there's anyone else who would like to comment on public comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom app. |
| 01:03:53.09 | Sonia Hanson | Hi, it's actually Susan Shay's phone, but I've hijacked it. Oh. It's Sonia Hanson speaking. |
| 01:03:57.79 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right. |
| 01:03:58.47 | Sonia Hanson | I just want to reiterate, what I wrote to all of you today in an email. And I said that I was asking the question I was formally asking you to provide public information on this. And so I want everyone to understand I've made this request publicly and the request what I'm asking you to do. is to let all of us know what's happening with the toxic waste pile next country park. apparently there's I heard earlier that you're planning on opening Dunphy Park soon, which is great. But what is a city going to do with all that toxic waste and what is the cost Who's doing it? Where is it going? And when is it going to happen? I think this town deserves an answer to that. Thank you. |
| 01:04:43.69 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much for that question. Whoops, my video got turned off. don't know how. All right. I do not see any additional public comment. And we will make sure that either in the current or future staff report, we. get an answer to that question. Okay, I see Chris Durbin's hand raised. So I'm gonna, once again, just ask if anybody As public comment, please raise your hand now. Okay, Chris Durbin, welcome. |
| 01:05:14.02 | Chris Durbin | Thank you. I was just looking back at your forum on racial justice. I was looking to find the video from that. I... I don't find it. Uh... listed there. The meeting that was held after on July 7th is there, but at one point there was the forum on racial justice was also there. And along those lines, I would hope you would, I know that in the Sausalito Currents, there were some notations made of a few things that are being done. that, a lot in reference to that, letting Marin City people have parking passes. Um, Nothing about Golden Gate Village. which is a huge issue. where we could really help. Sausalito could really be of help. So I just want to say strongly, please put the video back up of the of the forum. on racial justice. And can you please address your progress on that. every every meeting. It's so important. It was important enough to have a forum Please, please. don't drop the ball on that. Thank you. Really appreciate it. |
| 01:06:40.67 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, great, thank you. I believe there's one video up for that meeting, but we will ask our clerk to make sure and confirm later in our meeting. Okay, I'm gonna close general public comments saying no additional hands raised. And we'll move on to the action minutes of the previous meeting. which is July 7th. Were there any corrections or comments on those minutes. |
| 01:07:15.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, seeing none, do I have a motion? |
| 01:07:22.98 | Ray Withy | I move approval of the minutes. I second that. |
| 01:07:27.14 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 01:07:27.97 | Heidi Scoble | Bye. |
| 01:07:28.60 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:07:28.61 | Heidi Scoble | Could the clerk please call the roll? Councilmember Riley? Thank you. |
| 01:07:32.93 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:07:33.39 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Councilmember Burns? you |
| 01:07:34.97 | Tom Riley | Yeah. |
| 01:07:35.03 | Heidi Scoble | Yes. |
| 01:07:35.40 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 01:07:35.41 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 01:07:35.43 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 01:07:35.62 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Vice Mayor Withee. |
| 01:07:39.30 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 01:07:39.31 | Heidi Scoble | Yes. And Mayor Cleveland Knowles. |
| 01:07:42.11 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, thank you. That motion carries five zero. So the next item on our agenda is council member committee reports, but given that we are quite behind in our timing and that we have a couple of important business items I was going to suggest that we move on to those especially because we have our fire chief and other staff here for their presentation. Is there any objection from the council to do committee reports after our business items. Okay, thank you. And we do have some good council member committee reports as well, and those are important, just wanna make sure we get to our guests this evening. So I will move to our consent calendar. I have a number of items on consent. I do just want to note that we have a couple of great follow-up items from our forum. Racial justice on July 7, small but important steps. including the body worn camera contract, which we had committed to in our budget. the Eligibility for anyone in the 94965 for our Sasolido resident. parking program. So that's a great addition as our manager noted earlier and ... and trust. So those are some great steps that we're taking in the short term. I would like to note in response to some public comment on the body worn camera items. But I think it was page five of the chief staff report. He did indicate that he has been working with a group of interested community members on a policy for the use of the body worn cameras. So the first step is to acquire them, but then there are a lot of issues about how to use them and maintain the data. training, et cetera. Some of those community members reached out to me and asked to make sure that the chief's commitment also included a commitment to have a public hearing on the policy once it is developed. assured me that that would happen. He also welcomed the council's input in choosing or helping to choose the members of that committee. So that may be a future agenda item. So I just wanted to add those points of clarification. . Council members have Any additional comments on the consent calendar? |
| 01:10:37.70 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, Council Member Cox. |
| 01:10:39.96 | Councilmember Cox | Mayor, I just would like to note that I will be recusing myself from items 5L and 5M because they concern actions to property in close proximity to my residence. |
| 01:10:54.45 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And I would like to also toot our horn on 5M and the completion of MLK Park. that. Well done on behalf of staff. Okay, seeing no other comments on the consent, I will open it up to public comment on consent items 5A through 5M. there's any members of the public that would like to comment, please let us know. |
| 01:11:25.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I am not seeing any hands raised. Heidi, could you confirm that? |
| 01:11:30.60 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Cleveland Knowles, there are no additional hands raised. |
| 01:11:34.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. We will close public comment on the consent calendar and if Someone could make a motion excluding 5L and 5M. That would be helpful. So we can take those separately. So Council Member Cox may recuse herself. |
| 01:11:50.29 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you, Mayor. approval of consent calendar items 5A through 5K. |
| 01:12:00.01 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I have a second. |
| 01:12:01.53 | Ray Withy | Second. |
| 01:12:03.17 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Heidi, could you please call the roll? |
| 01:12:05.60 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 01:12:08.81 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Riley? Thank you. |
| 01:12:10.43 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:12:11.40 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Burns? |
| 01:12:12.99 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:12:14.02 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cox. Yes. Vice Mayor Withee? |
| 01:12:17.77 | Tom Riley | Yeah. |
| 01:12:18.04 | Heidi Scoble | you Mayor of Cleveland Knowles. |
| 01:12:20.69 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. And do I have a motion on 5L and 5M? |
| 01:12:28.69 | Ray Withy | I move adoption of consent calendars items 5L and 5M. |
| 01:12:37.46 | Heidi Scoble | Great. Could the clerk please call the roll? Council member Riley? |
| 01:12:42.13 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:12:42.84 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Burns? Thank you. |
| 01:12:44.21 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:12:45.17 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cox? recusing myself. Excuse me. Vice Mayor Withee? Yes. And Mayor Cleveland Knowles. |
| 01:12:54.72 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | yes so that motion carries is approved for with one recusal and the earlier motion 5a through 5K is approved unanimously with 5-0. Thank you. Thank you for that. Great, and now we will... Move on. to we have no public hearing items tonight. move on to our business items. And so this item, the first item 7A on our agenda is the City Acquisition and Financing of the Bank of America building. And I am happy to see that our city attorney has turned on her And Camera, we need to act as two entities this evening. And I need to call a joint meeting of both the Sausalito Financing Authority, which is also, contains the members of the city council and the city council of the city of Sausalito. So I would like to call to order that meeting and ask our who has called something else in this context to please call the roll. |
| 01:14:10.66 | Heidi Scoble | Chair of Cleveland Knowles. here. Vice Chair Withy. |
| 01:14:15.99 | Unknown | I'm not here. |
| 01:14:17.14 | Heidi Scoble | Director Cox. here. Director Burns. |
| 01:14:21.21 | Unknown | I'm sorry. |
| 01:14:22.24 | Heidi Scoble | and Director Riley. |
| 01:14:24.80 | Tom Riley | THE END OF |
| 01:14:27.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, with that, I will call the item 750 Bridgeway City Acquisition and Financing. And before we have our staff report, I would just like to Thank both council member and council member Riley for their hard work on this also our city attorney. has been working on this for several months. And especially thank our economic development advisory committee for their multiple meetings on this issue and for their good work. So with that, I will turn it over to whoever is appropriate. |
| 01:15:07.70 | Mary Wagner | Thank you Madam Chair, members of the Council and the financing authority. Mary Wagner your City Attorney And Heidi Skobal, the city clerk, has offered to help me run the PowerPoint for this presentation. So Heidi, if you could pull that up, please, that would be great. |
| 01:15:29.53 | Mary Wagner | While that's coming up, I would just want to mention Obviously, this item is for consideration and action on the city's acquisition and financing of the former Bank of America building at 750 Bridgeway. In addition to myself, Yulia Carter, the Assistant City Manager Administrative Services Director, Brian Quint of Quint and Tim Inc. our bond counsel and Scott Smith of CSG Advisors um, our financial advisor. And of course, along with your council working group of Councilmember Burns and Riley, are all also available for questions and as is your city manager. Next slide, please. |
| 01:16:11.48 | Mary Wagner | So the staff is recommending that the council take two actions tonight, and there are two resolutions before you. The first is a resolution approving the acquisition of 750 Bridgeway. The second is a resolution approving the financing that's being proposed. And then we are also asking that the financing authority adopt a resolution approving. the financing. And all the documents related to the financing were included as part of your packet as attachments to the staff report tonight. Next slide, please. So a little bit about the building and some of this you've already seen when we had this discussion in July. As you know, the building was constructed in the 1950s, and it's historically been used as a bank. It's 0.11 acres in size, and it's improved with a 5,875 square foot leasables commercial space. It's obviously located in the heart of the downtown area immediately across from Casa Madrona. Madrona, Poggio, and |
| 01:17:11.02 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:17:13.25 | Mary Wagner | pillar menswear and adjacent to the ferry landing. In early 2019, the city became aware that B of A was proposing to close this branch Recognizing how important this building is and its location, city staff reached out to the B of A to determine its plans and began a dialogue about the city's potential acquisition of the property. in May 2019. The bank ceased operating at this location for walk in customers, but did continue to have the ATM in place. And the building's been vacant since that time. With direction from the city council, staff engaged in negotiations with B of A for the city's acquisition. of this important property. Next slide, please. |
| 01:17:57.97 | Mary Wagner | So we have entered into a purchase and sale agreement. The purchase price to the city for 750 Bridgeway is $2 million. It also includes the leaseback of the existing ATM. under the terms of the agreement? The city has until August 31st of this year, to finalize its inspections, look into the financing, receive public input, and consider alternative uses before finalizing the purchase. And as you're aware, the city can cancel the acquisition prior to August 31st. I did include this information here because it came up during the EDAC discussions that for the duration of the ATM lease only B of A can use the ground floor of the building for what's defined as retail banking purposes, and I included the definition here for you. Retail banking uses are allowed on the second floor of the building, but there are some limitations on signage. Next slide, please. |
| 01:18:58.36 | Mary Wagner | We included some information about the zoning and the general plan designation for this property. The parcel is designated under the current general plan as waterfront. And it includes this description that you have on the screen in front of you and also in your staff report. So I won't read it again. Next slide, please, Heidi. We also included some information regarding the zoning. The property is located in the waterfront zone, outside of the downtown historic district. And the purpose of the waterfront zone is to protect the waterfront area while promoting marine-oriented uses that benefit and need a waterfront location. Next slide, please. This table that was also included in your staff report includes all of the uses that are allowed under the city's existing zoning regulations in the W zone. And again, I won't read them all for you, but if you have questions, we can pull that back up. Next slide, please. We also included the surrounding land use designations here. They include obviously waterfront, Public Institutional, Central Commercial, and Public Park. obviously Gabrielson and Vina Del Mar. Next slide, please, Heidi. |
| 01:20:14.70 | Mary Wagner | So part of the decision in front of you tonight, you're being asked to take action on the proposed financing. So the city has the option of paying cash for the purchase by using general fund reserves. or by financing the purchase by paying over a period of time. And we have suggested that's about 20 years. A direct placement lease financing has been proposed, whereby CSG advisors as our financial advisor We'll solicit interest from qualified institutional investors to provide funding for the building purchase. And then we'll do that at the lowest cost financing to the city that we can. Next slide, please Heidi. We also included the information in the purchase and sale agreement in ATM leaseback. about the rents that the city will be receiving for this 150 square foot property. It's important to note that the document references a lease back of the entire building. But because B of A has been able to complete what they call the demising work to separate this ATM from the remainder of the building and make it secure. that we no longer need to have that lease back period. So they will just continue leasing the area of the actual ATM and the room that's needed behind it to maintain that equipment. So the lease begins at a $2,000 per month for, um, Years one through five, that equates to a $13.34 per square foot. I'm not sure if you're a lease rate, the lease rate then increases over time every five years. up to 3,147 in the final lease years, 21 through 25. That equates to a $21 per square foot lease rate. Next slide, please. We also included some information that your administrative services director pulled together regarding potential lease rates for the rest of the structure. She looked at a report from Cushman and Wakefield, North Bay Market Beat, that listed the average asking rate for commercial real estate in Bryn County. that's, for the second quarter of 2020, that is through June 2020. is $3.42 per square foot. Sausalito's average remains a little bit higher at 467 a square foot. And in addition, information that we utilized in the appraisal of this property estimated $3.25 per square foot. based on a blended rate that included the second floor. Next slide, please, Heidi. At the council meeting on July 7th, the council directed and asked that the newly formed Economic Development Advisory Committee, EDAC, Hold public hearings and make a recommendation to the council on the acquisition and use of the building. EDAC held three public meetings, one on July 20th, one on August 3rd, and one on August 5th. discuss, take public input, and make a recommendation to the Council? During this process, staff created a virtual tour of the inside of the building, which is available on the city's website, and a link to that tour was included in your Staff report. On August 5th, the EDAC voted unanimously to recommend that the council acquire the building because it presents a unique opportunity for the city to control the shape and character of the downtown. They did encourage the city to explore initial uses for this building that are consistent with the results of the survey that we'll talk about next. They also recommended the ultimate goal of transitioning the property to a 100% civic purpose after the initial commercial use that would help recover the acquisition cost. Next slide, please. So here we have some information about the survey that was conducted by city staff. It was released on July 23rd. And it had seven questions. The survey closed on Sunday, August 2nd, and we received 539 responses. Of those 539, 219 respondents are classified as quote unquote registered. meaning they provided mailing addresses. And about 74% of those respondents agree that the city should purchase the building. And then you have listed here the top 10 community-oriented land uses. that were identified for the building along with the percentages of people who who wanted those types of uses. won't read through those but we can come back to that if you would like In addition, in response to the question about the acceptable temporary uses while the building is being prepared for a long-term use, The top five responses included pop up restaurant or retail. special event space, art studio, or art gallery retail space. Next slide, please. So again, our recommendation after you take questions and public comment, is that the council take two actions. One, to adopt a resolution approving the acquisition of the building. And two, a resolution approving the financing. And then again, we're asking that the financing authority then take a separate action to also approve the financing. The two actions by the Council, if you would like, could be combined into one motion or you could do them separately. And then we would need you to take a separate action as the financing authority. With that, that concludes my presentation. I am available for questions, as is the rest of the team that I indicated at the beginning, include Eulie Carter, Brian Quint, Scott Smith. And of course, the city manager and your council working group of council members Burns and Riley. |
| 01:25:42.10 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much, Mary, for a really excellent presentation and staff report. And thank you, as I said before, to everyone else who's been working on this. Are there questions from council members? Council member Cox. I'm sorry, before you go, Councilmember Burns or Riley, is there anything you'd like to add to the the presentation from the city attorney. |
| 01:26:07.21 | Tom Riley | No, I thought she was very thorough. Same thing. |
| 01:26:11.65 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, Councilmember Cox. Thank you. |
| 01:26:15.02 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. One of the letters we got from John Cox, no relation to me. stated that one of the concerns of his was the ability of B of A to have any voice in city council's use of the facility, he recommended that be deleted from the contract if not already done so. |
| 01:26:38.32 | Mary Wagner | Thank you, Councilmember Cox. B of A has no Thank you. authority or decision making ability to influence the Council's decision about the future uses of the building. Aside from the ATM lease back and aside from the restriction that I mentioned regarding retail banking services. Those are contractual obligations in the purchase and sale agreement and the lease. |
| 01:27:01.76 | Councilmember Cox | And for what period of time does the prohibition on commercial banking last? |
| 01:27:06.96 | Mary Wagner | for so long as the ATM remains on the property. |
| 01:27:10.79 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 01:27:13.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, are there additional questions? Okay, well, why don't we open it up to public comment? Let's see if there are any members of the public with their hands raised. |
| 01:27:34.38 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I know we have gotten some correspondence on this issue. And maybe Council Member Burns or Riley, you could just briefly summarize some of the public comment that you received at the EDAC. |
| 01:27:53.30 | Swen Kolkerman | We have a hand. |
| 01:27:55.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | There we go, Peter Van Meter. Peter, welcome, would you like to speak? |
| 01:28:03.15 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | you're muted, just hold on one sec. |
| 01:28:08.93 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, let me try now. |
| 01:28:14.33 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Can you say something, Peter? |
| 01:28:15.52 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 01:28:15.54 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:28:15.57 | Peter Van Meter | Yes. |
| 01:28:16.82 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | OK, sorry, you were muted. |
| 01:28:17.85 | Peter Van Meter | Bye. |
| 01:28:18.68 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right. |
| 01:28:19.03 | Peter Van Meter | Okay. You tell me if it's appropriate time to make a comment. I was asked to participate with Monica Finnegan of the EDAC to work on a building pro forma. to assist in the acquisition decision. And any comments I have in connection with that, should I make those now or should I wait until that becomes the topic of discussion later? |
| 01:28:44.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I think this is a great time. So if we can restart Peter's time, He was asked to perform this, I think, by the EDAC. Great. Thank you. Okay. |
| 01:28:53.53 | Peter Van Meter | First of all, I'd like to congratulate Monica on the excellent work she did. She really dug deep. and did a lot of work in putting together this pro forma for the acquisition and hold period in the initial years. Very professional, very complete job. My participation was relatively minor in that, but I do have a comment. And I think part of it that I would like to emphasize is the fact that there is gonna be a risk reward scenario relative to acquisition of this building. Now, I know the city would love to just complete the purchase of the building, which including closing costs might be a total of say 2 million and then put it out in the lease market and have a tenant assume all of the expenses of converting that building to another use for say a short term commercial use period like five years. Now in the analysis that Monica and I did, it looks like those costs for that initial period of time could be very substantial. in the range perhaps of $500,000 to $600,000 the company conversion of the building to other uses, the financing costs, the carrying costs, permit costs, architectural engineering. In other words, dozens of elements that go into the analysis and conversion of a property. To me, the risk question is, will you be able to find a commercial tenant who will pay a reasonable rate to cover debt service costs considering their offset for the financial investment they'll have to make particularly if you want to have a short term lease like five years. in the hope of recovering those conversion costs during the period of that time. In the event you can't find a tenant willing to do that, in the city. is potentially on the upfront costs to, you know, on the hook for those costs. which could be another $500,000 to $600,000 in the worst case scenario. So, My question in your decision making is, is the city prepared to have additional general fund. dollars set aside in a reserve or to be drawn from your existing reserves. to face that probability of that worst case scenario. I think you need to very carefully consider those. risk reward of acquiring this building. and the extra costs that the city will have potential exposure to after the close of escrow on the property. Thank you. |
| 01:31:12.14 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you, Peter. And I see Yoshi Tomei is here with us tonight. Welcome, Yoshi. |
| 01:31:20.96 | Yoshi Tomei | Hi there. Good evening. |
| 01:31:23.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:31:23.38 | Unknown | do then. |
| 01:31:24.52 | Yoshi Tomei | Hi, Dax. So I do support for purchase of the building because it is the center of the town. Uh, If city or we cannot manage control of the building, it could become another T-shirt shop. I think it's really, really important for us to what kind of business coming to downtown. Downtown used to be only the tourists. anymore. the restaurant Angelino's and the Poggio, we do have many local residents support the patronize local restaurant. like to see something like a public event location art music fairs and food venues at the location city on the order parking lot, possibly middle of the summertime, they can extend the parking lot to having bigger event location in the center of the town. We could have not just for the tourism and for the local residents and the business town enhanced local beautiful Sassari Rock. I have done part of a winter festival middle of the summer, we do have a lot of tourist visitors coming from all the place, but the wintertime, it's dead. This kind of place is perfect for us to build for local businesses, restaurants, everywhere can get together having some event location. |
| 01:32:55.23 | Unknown | or, |
| 01:32:55.61 | Yoshi Tomei | when city have a bigger meeting, something else working with the dislocation. For me, it's a great opportunity to sit on we can manage our destination direction with Sassara where we're going. So I strongly suggest to city to purchase the building and that we can build a future, better South Salida. Thank you. |
| 01:33:20.32 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much. Next, I see Aaron's iPhone. Welcome. |
| 01:33:31.56 | Unknown | Hi, thanks for the time. And I think it's a fantastic opportunity. to purchase this building. I'm glad to see that we're not going to be passing it up I agree with Peter wholeheartedly. We need to make sure that We create lease terms that are attractive enough to the right folks to come in and put together a really terrific place to showcase Sausalito culture and food and and all the things that we have to offer. Even more importantly, especially in this time, It's important that we create a place that residents and visitors can rally around and support together. a fantastic job. that everybody did and look forward to seeing what we can do with it. |
| 01:34:35.08 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Monica Finnegan. member of the EDAC. |
| 01:34:42.65 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. |
| 01:34:46.27 | Monica Finnegan | Hi, good evening. I just wanted to sort of follow along on some of the comments that Peter made. And just let everybody know based on the research that we did, We looked at all of the vacant space along Bridgeway and, uh, that area we looked at some of the properties that were her sale We looked at some of the office and we definitely found out that the market rate pricing along Bridgeway. is about half of what we're anticipating charging for or looking at rent recovery to pay debt service here. And I think the fact that the city has negotiated such a fantastic opportunity for us to acquire this property, we would be basically paying of what some of the other properties in the market are asking for purchase price. So well done on that side of the fence. And I wanted to also underscore that every transaction has a lot of ways of negotiating and to finding the best balance for both owner and seller And We, when we ever, whenever we have purchased a property or we work with clients who are buying or selling properties. We always, always look at the worst case. So we just have an understanding. But in my experience, everything that we've purchased or everything that we've worked on We've never really had a worst case come to fruition. It's just one of those safety nets that we look at. that $500,000. is something that I'm hoping can be mitigated in all of the negotiations that we might do with a prospective tenant. I would also like to say that in the past couple of days I have spoken to a couple of tenants who might have an interest And they're not scared by some of the things that they see in the marketplace right now. This one to say that yes, the worst case is there. But I think the upside is more in favor with the city I also heard some comment somewhere. within the area of folks that I spoke with. that there seems that there could be a backup offer or some offer of expression of interest from somebody else. And I think that just sort of, again, underscores the idea that there is interest in the property. There are developers out there that are collecting pools of money. And at a half price opportunity, this property could be Um, purchased or if we felt like we needed to sell it, we could certainly sell it at a rate higher than what we're paying. So those are my comments. And I thank you guys for a job that's really well done, in my opinion. |
| 01:37:26.90 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, Monica. Sam Rubin, welcome. |
| 01:37:38.78 | Sam Rubin | No. Ah, there we go. So, Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Just like the support. all those who have spoken in favor. I think it's a wonderful opportunity for us, as Yoshi said, for us to define what we wanna see at the heart of our downtown. And I also think it's a wonderful opportunity for us to look at how we might begin to implement some of our sustainability I think it's a great location to consider putting in EV chargers as a way to not only bring more tourists in who we want without adding to the pollution of it. of the area, but also while providing opportunities for our local citizens to enjoy downtown, utilizing their electric vehicles. So I'd like the council to vote in favor and also to consider uses that embrace our future as a leader in what sustainability can be for a small seaside town. Thank you. |
| 01:38:27.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Okay, I don't see any additional hands raised. Could our clerk confirm? |
| 01:38:35.66 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Cleveland Knowles, I'm confirming that there are no additional hands raised. |
| 01:38:40.32 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Sarah Silver, Great I am going to close public comment and. start off the discussion of the City Council and Finance Authority. uh, Joe or Tom, do you wanna lead us off or do you, Mayor or Council Member Cox? |
| 01:38:59.34 | Joe Burns | I'll um... I'll just mention a couple things because they were addressed and I want to thank Peter their work at the EDAC meeting, I'm sorry, the Economic Development Advisory Committee meeting They were both concerned that we had not looked at pro forma style numbers which we had in public and will admit that we did not bring either the appraisal or the pro forma that we used in the procession to the public. Because those are valuation negotiations that we were going through and they contain numbers that also the future negotiations that we're going to be having. But in those documents, we did take into consideration exactly what Peter was asking. that there will be, that there will be certain dollars that the city may have to spend what's called BSUP. AND I WANTED TO TAKE A LOOK AT and then TI's that we didn't want to discuss those specifically in public and we still won't, but all that was considered both in the appraisal and then in the, in the valuation that. I presented in close that said, here's a number that's devalued, here's a number that we're getting. So I appreciate Monica bringing it back to the circle of, yeah, for the decision we're making today, it works. You initially asked Mayor if we'd start kind of on what some of the EDAC comments were, and that was really such a valuable process. And first of all, to have that committee and what they bring as individuals, and then the conversation that they had as far as opening up to. people chiming in to say, you know, let's do this and let's do that. And I think one of the key things that came about that conversation. is the long range look at this property. and I wrote down and I don't mean to be kind of funny, but it's not a unicorn. It can't be everything to everybody. It still is a building and it needs to do certain things. And I think we kind of came to the conclusion that early it's going to play, well, very early it might play a part for temporary uses that can really benefit our community as we go through COVID. And then a period of time where it kind of earns its keep as a building in our portfolio that pays for itself. And then in the longterm, it becomes that pinnacle of a civic location that the entire area is planned around. So In that regard, over a period of time, I think we got some very good input from the community on how that, how this property will transpire. At this point though, we are fairly focused on on the next few years of getting it into the hands of a master tenant that can do what we most appropriately talked about, which is complimenting the businesses around it and the structure around it while really being committed to a regional resident, you know, what we call local resident, and the uses that we have more control of, you know, off season, certain evenings, something that brings the community together, something that brings our greater regional community together. something that again, compliments the area around it. And I think we'll get that out of that building. As we've talked about in other presentations, We've always owned... parking lot too and Sam brings up such a great point and you know had we looked a little further and we did talk about, you know, maybe EV would have been in parking lot two, that's kind of not necessarily part of the BA purchase, That is, I'm not sure. parking lot to does become, you know, a much more valuable parking lot. as we utilize this building. So I think we have done a tremendous amount of work as a community. and had a great conversation both in the social media surveys and I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THIS through our negotiation and then in the public domain through EDAC where we talked about the uses. I'm excited to complete this next step get this into our portfolio as a financing What are we? A financing committee. corporation. authority, financing authority to really get this going here and the next steps are as exciting, frankly. the next steps when we really do start working with a tenant at some point in this structure tonight. I want us to also kind of agree on a future step of of pushing this into the city staff, our city manager, attorney, assistant city manager that that group has been working with this to, um, to start propelling that next step from the staff level. I understand this has been very community driven, but we're gonna go back into a phase of fairly negotiated process that it's not going to we're not going to be you know every meeting talking to the community about where we are as far as a tenant or those type of things we need to we need to now do some city work on this but With that aside, what the community has done and the information we got, I think was fantastic. And the support of the rest of the council, I'm ready to vote for this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:44:17.06 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you, Council Member Riley and then Council Member Cox. |
| 01:44:21.28 | Tom Riley | Okay, thank you, Madam Mayor. First, I'm very excited about this project and having worked on it with Council Member Burns. I want to thank the 11 member EDAC committee. This was their first assignment right out the gates. They stepped up, came together as a team, and ran, I think, a very effective set of three meetings gathering input. So my thanks to them. Um, Coming out of that, Um... The comments and the ideas we heard from the public were very similar to the survey. In the survey, we listed the top 10 things. But also there was a good discussion around using the facility as a civic center and even like looking at an opportunity to revision in a plaza, which there was some momentum and ideas around. And the EDAC came back with a recommendation of, you know, let's pay back the building and look long-term of how we can use it as a more civic plaza. I thought it was a strong recommendation Um, There was concern from the community How could we purchase a building without a pro forma? of a specific business use. And we could not put together pro forma because we wanted to get community input on the business use and have alignment from the community. And that's when Monica Finnegan and Peter Van Meter stepped up and said, let us put together a financial analyst of the worst case that will help the decision and i thank them for stepping up and putting together a tremendous report. And one of the things that stood out with Monica's letter was In the worst case, if we are exposed with that 500 to 600K, we already have the opportunity to resell the building and not get into a financial hole, which I think is a very safe spot. I want to thank Yoshi for his comments. It was very reassuring for one of our most successful business persons in our town to give us the confidence that he could envision a successful business there that could change the shape of our town. So thank you, Yoshi, and thank you for your great meals and service to our community. And then finally, the public has really stepped up. um, The EDAC meetings had a lot of public comment A lot of great ideas. Nextdoor has had tremendous comments and discussions, emails. and even the survey. I'm very excited about this. I'm very excited about the support from the public. And I do believe this is an opportunity for us to not only reshape our downtown around the bank, but the properties around it. And so I think this is a wonderful idea look forward to supporting. |
| 01:47:04.95 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Council Member Cox. |
| 01:47:08.53 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. I also want to thank the EDAC and especially Monica Finnegan and Peter Van Meter for putting together that pro forma was very helpful. information Um, I agree with our former Councilmember and Mayor Tom Theodorus that this purchase is a no-brainer, as he said in his email to us. I would like to know to follow on to council member Burns comment about the city staff getting to work. I would like to confirm that we're going to manage, you know, the property management aspect of this property will be conducted in-house as is most of the property management of city properties. And the same with respect to any marketing efforts that may occur unless something is brought back to us. So I would like to confirm those. items if possible as we assess. you know, the financial aspects of this. Thank you. |
| 01:48:14.48 | Unknown | All right, thank you. Do you have any comments? |
| 01:48:19.61 | Ray Withy | Um, Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor. Okay. I mean, Tom Theodore has summed it up as you Rightly said, Council Member Cox, it's a no brainer. Why? But why is it a no-brainer? Well, It's a no brainer because In the end, we're purchasing an asset. that has the potential and needs to be revenue generated We're purchasing it. at low risk at a pretty good price. And because of the nature of the credit of the city we're going to be able to finance this at a pretty reasonable ongoing rage. to I can't remember what the numbers were last, you know, a modest amount per month. that's you know, really manageable. Thank you. |
| 01:49:22.06 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:49:22.94 | Ray Withy | So in the worst case scenario, where you can actually rent the building for a period of time. You actually have considering the value of the asset and its potential and the sub-side potential have a pretty low carrying cost. So I'm not worried about that. That's actually a And the investment needed in sort of any preliminary work needed to bring the building up to snuff so that we can. get an even more attractive tenant, yes, there may need to be some investment. But in the end, What is clear from the numbers and the analysis that's been done Our ultimate downside protection is just sell the building. Um, So, What we've done here is have the opportunity in front of us of acquiring an asset, acquiring a building, that is of central strategic importance into our downtown. But even if it wasn't, It's still a sound. financial investment because the cash flow danger, downside, of not being able to cover the cash flow for it, right? is, far more less. than the upside potential. And what this is doing for us is creating options. We don't know what the building is going to be right now. We don't know what, you know, exactly how this will evolve in the next 6 to 10, 6 to 12 months. But what we will have done is found a low risk strategy for actually creating enormous options for our residents, for our community, for our city, for our community, for our residents. So, That's why. think correctly. Um, former mayor Theodora said, this is a no-brainer. |
| 01:51:19.19 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Thank you everyone. I just like to add to the comments. And thank you. Thanks. I did watch some of the deliberations of the economic development advisory committee and I read their letter. that they wrote to the city council. And I did just wanna say that from kind of their first work product as a new Committee, I was very impressed with the thoroughness of the analysis, the questions that they asked the way that they to comment and the letter that they go to us, so I want to just thank them for that thorough. review and for their extra meetings over the summer. I agree with all of the comments that have been made from the public and my fellow council members, that this is just an incredibly important and strategic property. And You know, that is important to me that we not only acquire property for the sake of it, but that it adds value to our role. as civic stewards. I really think that this is a great opportunity to kind of do a reset on some of the issues that we've been talking about over the last couple of years about the downtown. and the types of businesses and tourists that it attracts. And I think having the opportunity to hold this property can help us kind of revision. the downtown over time. And, uh, You know, I just love some of the excitement and conversation and ideas that have come out of it. You know, it can't be everything to everyone, but just the conversation that it has sparked and the way that people express what they would like to see our town be and kind of the that center is just exciting to me to hear. So I really appreciate all of the comments that we've gotten. I also think it will be a great Thank you. sort of synergy with the efforts that we are undertaking with the ferry land side improvements and some of that visioning as well. So in a way to kind of get all of the spaces that we have downtown working cohesively together. And then lastly, I would just like to echo Sam Rubin's comments and put in a plug. for having whatever use is there be kind of a sustainability hub. and demonstration for visitors and residents about new technologies and innovative ways to look at greenhouse gas reduction and other sustainability goals. I think we could do that regardless of use and maybe even get some grants to help renovate the building in a way that is demonstrates some very good building strategies for using sustainable products and |
| 01:54:23.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:30.79 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:54:32.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | could be a real model. So hopefully we can find some synergy there as well. So I am very supportive and unless there are further comments, I'd ask our city attorney to call up the last slide that she had. Are there further comments or? Questions? Okay, seeing none, Mary, could you bring up the slide for our action. So as I understand it, we have two actions that we need to take as the city council. And we have been advised by both Mary and bond council that we can take those actions together. So I would recommend that we do. And then we need to take one action as the finance authority. So do I have a motion on our council actions? |
| 01:55:22.76 | Joe Burns | I move that the council adopt a resolution of the city council approving acquisition of 750 bridgeway, the B of A building. and that we approve the form and authorize. authorizing the execution and certain lease financing documents in connection with the Financing of the acquisition of the former Bank of America branch located at 750 Bridgeway. |
| 01:55:46.71 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Do I have a second? |
| 01:55:48.92 | Tom Riley | I would like to second that. |
| 01:55:50.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, before we call the roll, I just want to confirm with the city attorney that we're handling this appropriately. |
| 01:55:56.82 | Mary Wagner | Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. |
| 01:55:58.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Good. Heidi, could you please call the role of the city council? |
| 01:56:03.01 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Riley? Yes. Council Member Burns. Yes. Council member Cox. |
| 01:56:09.20 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 01:56:09.98 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Mayor Withey. Yes, yes. Mayor of Cleveland Knowles. |
| 01:56:14.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, and that motion carries five zero. So we have concluded our I would like to now act as the financing authority and ask one of the directors of the authority to make a motion to make a motion. on that action. |
| 01:56:32.22 | Councilmember Cox | I move. The financing authority adopted resolution of the board of directors of the Sausalito financing authority approving the form. and authorizing the execution of certain lease financing documents in connection with the financing by the city of Sausalito. of the acquisition of former Bank of America branch located at 750 bridgeway in the city and directing certain actions with respect to. there too. |
| 01:56:53.13 | Ray Withy | And I will second that. |
| 01:56:55.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. And then just again confirming with Mary that we have I made that motion correctly. |
| 01:57:00.79 | Mary Wagner | Yes, thank you. Chair, Cleveland Noles. |
| 01:57:05.50 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, good. And then Heidi, could you please call the role? Thank you. |
| 01:57:11.99 | Heidi Scoble | Director Cox. |
| 01:57:12.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:57:13.01 | Heidi Scoble | Bye. |
| 01:57:18.68 | Heidi Scoble | Director Cox? Yes. Director Burns. Thank you. |
| 01:57:22.58 | Joe Burns | Yes. |
| 01:57:22.80 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. |
| 01:57:22.86 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 01:57:23.56 | Heidi Scoble | Director Riley. |
| 01:57:25.12 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:57:26.26 | Heidi Scoble | Vice Chair Withey. |
| 01:57:27.71 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 01:57:28.57 | Heidi Scoble | Chair Cleveland Knowles. |
| 01:57:32.01 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, and that motion of the finance authority passes unanimously five zero. Karen Hollweg, And now I understand that I should join this meeting of the social financing authority and reconvene as the city council. I do not believe we need to take role again, but I will check with our city attorney. |
| 01:57:53.63 | Mary Wagner | Correct. Madam Mayor, no need to take roll again. Thank you. |
| 01:57:56.70 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so the meeting of the finance authority is adjourned. And now we will go to item 8A, which is our fire season update, which unfortunately, as we hear this update, there are fires raging so this is very appropriate and very timely I understand I will turn to our city manager but I believe that due to the fires in Napa and a power shut off there that our PG&E representative will not be able to join us tonight, is that correct? |
| 01:58:33.81 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. I heard from our PG&E representative Mark Van Gorder that due to the power outage, in Napa where he lives and that the need for him to be available for EOC for the County of Napa due to the fires, it was unlikely that he was going to be able to join us tonight. So unfortunately, it appears that he was called in to serve on the EOC. for the county of Napa. So we can continue that item. We can continue his portion of the item if you would like. |
| 01:59:03.56 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 01:59:10.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, I think that would be appropriate and hopefully schedule him at a time in the near future, given that these issues are are recurring, but we still have an incredibly important presentation about reducing the risks from wildfire and a review of the 2019-2020 activity and next steps from our Southern Marin fire representatives. Welcome Chief. Kebs? I think you're going to kick us off or no, as we've got |
| 01:59:40.34 | Unknown | Yes, good evening, Madam Mayor and Council. Give me a moment here to share my screen for the presentation. |
| 01:59:50.76 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:57.07 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Welcome. Thank you for being here and thank you for waiting. I know it's late. |
| 02:00:02.67 | Unknown | our pleasure. Let me just bring this up here momentarily. OK. So again, good evening to all of you. And we're pleased to be back with you tonight giving you an update on our collective efforts with respect to reducing the risks from wildfire. Given our weather over the past several days, this is timely and a great reminder of the importance of these efforts. Having said that, I'd like to add that this has been an excellent year for the city and the district in large part due to the funding from Measure U. which has allowed us to accomplish so much good work. And as you were starting to note, Madam Mayor, joining us tonight is our Fire Marshal Fred Hilliard and our Operations Chiefs Tom Welch. So very quickly, I hear the main points that we would like to address tonight. And move on to my next slide, little journey here that we want to take. So though we know the council's intimately aware of the events that led us here, for the benefit of those who may not know, we want to briefly touch on those high points so that we can connect the dots in our presentation tonight. As we discuss our next steps, it's important for us to reflect on what was the catalyst for this good work. |
| 02:01:21.81 | Unknown | In 2017 and 2018, Northern California experienced two of the worst fire seasons on record. Both the intensity and destruction of these fires as well as their proximity to Marin County greatly contributed to a heightened awareness of the risk and renewed energies to address these threats to our region. As a result of the 2017 North Bay fires Marin County Board of Supervisors directed Chief Jason Weber to develop and present a report. On the North Bay fires and to present an after action report that included steps that could be taken to reduce the risks of a similar event within Marin county. The process included multiple sessions with the public and culminated in a final report to the board of supervisors that included a series of recommended actions. One example of where this council took action from that report was the ratification of the WUE code in 2019. |
| 02:02:17.80 | Unknown | The Marin County Fire Department was not the only agency that participated and contributed to this report. All local governing agencies and their fire departments were a part of this process. The lessons report initiated a number of actions, including the grand jury report and the development of a countywide approach to reducing risks. And our city council was especially focused on learning what lessons could be applied and visited the areas impacted by the Tubbs fire and this included our own chief Welch's story of personal loss and efforts that night during the Santa Rosa fire. |
| 02:02:55.45 | Unknown | California has a long history of wildfires. The fire service has a long history of taking actionable steps in both reducing the risks from wildfire and containing those fires that cannot be prevented. California has the best mutual aid system in the world. And each year our firefighters respond all over the state to suppress these catastrophic fires. But if we can prevent the fires from happening, this is a better strategy. and where the fire services focus tremendous energy and resources at the state level, but not always at the local level until recently. The city and fire district have taken a number of important steps towards reducing those risks. We just want to cover those of what activity has gone over. We've gone over in the last year and a half. So after the fire lessons of 2017, the Southern Marin Fire District in the city of Sausalito embarked on a journey to increase risk reduction efforts through education, enforcement, engineering, and emergency response strategies. In November 2018 our voters approved Measure U, which provided in part 1 million in new funding that was directed towards fuel reduction and educational outreach services. During 2019, the council took multiple actions to further our efforts, including the ratification of the district's wildland urban interface code. council and community were updated in our efforts to reduce risks and increase educational and awareness outreach And in March of this year, Marin County voters approved measure C, which will add additional funding to our wildfire risk reduction efforts and resources. Our Measure U funding this past year has resulted in a significant impact to reducing these risks. This past year, we removed over 790 tons of biomass, increasing the safety of evacuation routes, creating new fuel breaks for the communities of Cypress Ridge, Willow Land, Willow Lang, excuse me, Rodeo Avenue and Olima Street. and removing vegetation from private property by a chipper day program. We've also increased the number of FireWise communities by four for a total of 10. And finally, we have provided 109 personal home assessments that have both provided education for the homeowners as well as actionable steps that they can take individually to reduce risks on their own property. |
| 02:05:17.51 | Unknown | Over the past two years, we've seen significant efforts that are contributing to reduce the risks from the threat of wildfire. But this process is not a destination, but rather a journey. We will likely always have work to do, but the priorities we set and where we focus our resources is a key element to reducing these risks. As a result of a CAL FIRE grant awarded to the district this last year, we were able to employ the services of XMR FIRE to conduct a WUI hazard and risk assessment within the Southern Marin Fire District and City of Sausalito boundaries. Using the latest technology and fire analytical tools, it resulted in effectively a CWPP for our area. The importance and value of this report is that it provides a roadmap and how we best apply our resources and funding to focus on our highest risk areas first. We'll be back at the September 22nd council meeting with a presentation on this report. board of directors of the fire district also adopted a preliminary budget this year that increases our vegetation removal by approximately $169,000 for a new total of $623,000 for FY 20 and 21. We'll continue to invest these monies in our existing programs of chipper days, paved road fuel reduction work, fuel breaks and firewise communities. We've also dedicated some Measure U funds to increase our public outreach and educational efforts. The adopted budget for the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority provides further funding for defensible space inspection programs and local mitigation programs. We're currently in the process of recruiting and hiring two limited term defensible space inspectors. They'll be in the field daily conducting inspections of property and working with homeowners to answer questions and provide educational support to help our privately owned properties reduce risk from wildfire. We'll also use the defensible space inspection reports to continually refine our data regarding risks throughout the city and the district. We're also excited to begin the process of developing a long range acoustical device system through the city and the district. These devices are part of a redundant public notification system providing both an audible warning sound as well as a public messaging sound. will be able to fund three of the Plan 7 LRAD sites this year through Measure C funds. We anticipate funding the additional four sites with Measure C funding next year. Our long-term plan is to marry the systems of Mill Valley and Southern Marin to create an entire Southern Marin network. And finally, it'll be important for our citizens to see how measure U and measure C funds are being spent and in our budget. Our budget documents call these funds out separately so that there is clarity to ensure that the dollars are being spent as approved by the voters. There are a number of projects that are not necessarily funded by measure you or measure C, but are part of the important work will be doing this year. We're going to begin with the city to identify the current steps lanes and paths that may be a part of our overall evacuation plan. but we need to conduct this assessment. From that, we hope to develop a plan that will include the initial clearing of those SLPs and provide an ongoing maintenance plan to ensure they remain viable. We'll keep the council updated on this work. We received a Cal Fire grant in the amount of $843,000, a very large grant, the highest in our district's history and the largest in Marin County this year. It's a multi-year grant that is currently underway and be completed by March, 2024. It is designed to create a fuel break that is approximately four and a half miles in total length. That is between developed properties in Tam Valley. and adjacent open space and parkland. It is designed to build upon and connect the few non-contiguous projects that have already been completed. And finally, we'll return to the council to conclude the physical year with an annual report listing the accomplishments and outcomes and teeing up the next steps. So in summary, over the past almost two years, our community, this council and the fire district have taken a number of monumental steps to reducing the threat from wildfire. We still have much good work to do, but we are certainly in a better place today than we were a little over two years ago. I applaud the Council for their leadership and support and helping your fire district take the important steps necessary to reduce the risks and threats from wildfire and with that i'm happy to answer any questions. |
| 02:09:49.89 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you so much for that. Very thorough presentation and thank you both to Chief Tuggs and Fire Marshal Hillard, excuse me, for all of your hard work. It looks like you've been exceedingly busy and I think you're presentation and what's happening kind of as we meet just reminds us that while we've been battling COVID, There's other emergencies don't stop. We need to keep our eye on the you know and stay vigilant on this important issue as well. So with that, I will ask if there are any questions from council members for either Chief Tubbs or our Fire Marshal. does not look so. So I will, I see we have at least, Joe, are you good? Okay. I see we have at least one member of the public who would like to speak. If there are other members of the public who would like to speak, please raise your hand in the Zoom application or I think it's press star 9, Heidi, on your telephone. Carolyn Revell. Welcome. |
| 02:11:00.44 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. Am I? Am I unmuted? |
| 02:11:04.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | You're unmuted and there you are. Right. |
| 02:11:07.31 | Carolyn Revell | and I'm Carolyn Revelle. I live at 515 North Street. I greatly appreciate the efforts made by Chief Tubbs and the council regarding fire danger, and also the work PG&E is doing to address power cutoffs during the fire season. Given the magnitude of the fire issue, it may seem trivial to talk about bay views, but as you well know, one of the key delights of living in Sausalito is the view that many of us enjoy. During these long COVID stay at home months, waking to an unobstructed view of the sunrise or gazing at night at the moon's path on the water have been my solace. But a few weeks ago, I returned home from an outdoor class just after 10 a.m. to find that a new PG&E power pole festooned with equipment was being installed on Fourth Street, smack dab in the middle of my precious view. Like my neighbors, I had received no notification of this pending construction or why it was needed. There was no public outreach. Sausalito has a well-established public process that includes soliciting neighborhood opinion as part of any new development or renovation project. Neighbors views are always a major consideration. Mr. Van Gorder was going to tell us of PG&E's of improvements to address PSPS events that include installing sectionalizing devices on the transmission and distribution system to reduce the number of customers affected by PSPS events. He also spoke of improving customer notifications and working more collaboratively with local agencies. Unfortunately, we tried for several weeks as neighbors to ferret out information on the rationale for installing this new poll and possible solutions. A group of us neighbours wrote you the council I'm sorry. a letter asking for help before we knew the role of the equipment, which we now know is our sectionalizing devices. Public Works Director Kevin McGowan instructed Senior Engineer Andy Davidson to reach out to us which he did, we're very grateful. PG&E's Greg Wright subsequently did answer questions that we sent him. And he set up a meeting yesterday. with other PG&E representatives that Kevin attended. We're very grateful to Kevin, to Andy, and to the PG&E staff for their time. My neighbor Brad O'Brien will at some point describe yesterday's meeting in more detail and our hopes for future relocation. of the sectionalizing device after the fire season is over. We encourage the city to press PG&E to develop a comprehensive strategy for meeting the challenges of changing climate, including fire and more severe storms, rather than simply adding new above-ground poles and wires. We specifically ask that the council and particularly DPW staff stay engaged with us. as we try in coming weeks to work in a collaborative manner with PG&E representatives to address our immediate problems. Thank you so much. |
| 02:13:59.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Thank you for both for writing and for your public comment. I'm sorry that Mr. Van Gorder is not here tonight. So again, we have Susan's iPad. Susan Shay's iPad. |
| 02:14:18.91 | Unknown | Welcome. |
| 02:14:25.10 | Heidi Scoble | Sonia Hansen has been unmuted. |
| 02:14:27.82 | Sonia Hanson | Unmuted. There we go. OK. |
| 02:14:28.32 | Heidi Scoble | There was a lot of people. |
| 02:14:29.84 | Sonia Hanson | Thank you. Yes, once again, I've stolen the iPad. So I Appreciate the presentation from the Southern Marin Fire District. I have one question. And that is where are the evacuation plans? If the wildfire was to come in here this season, we would fry in our cars or our houses or I mean, there's no way we're going to get out of town and we have no idea what the plans are about where we should go depending on our neighborhoods. I would encourage you if you haven't already, arranged for fairies to come to this town. as soon as there is a fire. and we could all head to the water and get out possibly. But, We don't know what the plans are. So, as much as we, cut down the brush and do whatever we do, if a fire comes through this town, We're toast. And, So I'm just requesting that evacuation plans be presented to us sooner rather than later. Thank you. |
| 02:15:27.17 | Unknown | Great, thank you. |
| 02:15:28.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:15:28.30 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:15:29.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We have Holly Holderman. And I'm gonna take all the public comment and then if we are able to get answers to public questions, we'll do that at the end. |
| 02:15:40.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:15:40.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Holly, hold it. |
| 02:15:41.97 | Unknown | Welcome. |
| 02:15:44.99 | Heidi Scoble | Holly has been unmuted and asked to share her screen. |
| 02:15:49.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:15:58.93 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So Holly, we are not hearing you. |
| 02:16:05.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I don't know. Heidi, it does look to me as if she is muted from our end. |
| 02:16:12.91 | Heidi Scoble | Yes, she just needs to unmute her microphone. So a prompt should have been sent to her saying that she has been unmuted by the host. But there she is. |
| 02:16:24.24 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So there's Great, welcome. |
| 02:16:32.78 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Ms. Holderman can you speak so that we can see if we can hear you you do appear to be unmuted. |
| 02:16:50.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So Heidi, could you please provide our phone number And maybe she could try to call in. It's on our agenda for this evening. And while we are doing that, I will recognize when And, uh, |
| 02:17:08.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:09.21 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Hopefully we can get Miss Holderman on the phone. |
| 02:17:10.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:17:11.99 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | about to come back. |
| 02:17:16.92 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, Swen, I think you are unmuted and you will have three minutes to speak. |
| 02:17:23.91 | Swen Kolkerman | Hi, my name is Swen Kolkerman. Good evening. Can you hear me? |
| 02:17:27.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, we can. Thank you. Welcome. |
| 02:17:28.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:17:29.14 | Swen Kolkerman | Hi. I've lived at three 19 four street now for 16 years. And, um, I also want to appreciate the efforts made by the fire department and the city council PG&E regarding or fire safety. I wanted to just point out a concern I have about the ongoing maintenance of above ground power lines in our community and in particular, The power line that was recently installed here in front of my home and in front of my neighbors as well. Um, The above ground power lines do emit electromagnetic frequencies that present a health risk to my family and my children and my neighbors. And I wanted to make that mentioned. Um, I'm also worried about the threat of electrical explosion at some of these large installations that are right outside our windows. very close within yards of our windows. that, could threaten I'm not sure. X. the breakage of glass, those units were to have some kind of a malfunction. Um, And that said, I'd also like to encourage the City Council to push PG&E on alternative solutions such as undergrounding lines instead of adding new lines and poles to the neighborhood. Thank you. |
| 02:18:51.96 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Okay, do we have any update on Ms. Holderman? |
| 02:19:01.16 | Heidi Scoble | I am trying to find contact information for Holly Holderman. I was just going to pull up |
| 02:19:08.92 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So I was asking you to just provide our call-in number. |
| 02:19:08.99 | Heidi Scoble | I like that. |
| 02:19:12.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh. |
| 02:19:13.36 | Heidi Scoble | Yeah. Yes, I have that. |
| 02:19:14.47 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes. |
| 02:19:16.70 | Heidi Scoble | Excuse me. So in order to call into the city, you can dial area code one dash six six nine dash nine zero zero dash six eight three three. And again, it's one. |
| 02:19:34.18 | Carolyn Revell | Thank you. |
| 02:19:34.20 | Jill Hoffman | And again, it's one. Thank you. |
| 02:19:37.51 | Heidi Scoble | I know someone needs to write this down, but it's 1-669-900-6833. In the meantime, would you like me to try to unmute Holly again? |
| 02:19:53.05 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, please. Let's try one more time. And then I see that we have one additional member of the public. or Ms. Holderman can call in on the telephone number just provided. But yes, please try to unmute her. It looks like. Ms. Holderman, it looks like you are unmuted. Would you like to public comment? |
| 02:20:11.66 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Unfortunately, we still cannot hear you. Ms. Holden. |
| 02:20:15.02 | Heidi Scoble | Ms. Holderman, excuse me for jumping in. There may be an issue with the microphones. So Ms. Holderman, if you could look at the bottom of your screen to the left there should be a microphone icon. If you click on the microphone icon, there's a little carrot next to it. You could see what type of speaker you have currently. and just adjust it to what you're using. |
| 02:20:41.80 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so in the meantime, we will move on to Mary. |
| 02:20:50.12 | Timothy Ryan | OK. Hello? Hello. Yes, hi. This is Timothy Ryan. Mary is my wife, and we are residents at 3094th Street, and you'll be able to see us potentially in a few minutes. But what I'd really like to emphasize here, and we have all worked very closely together as neighbors, but, you know, this is a huge impact to a very small part of Sausalito. And we understand there's a greater benefit, but we want you to understand that there's a huge cost, both physically, emotionally, financially, that this, again, as already has been presented, there was no advance notice other than potentially a power outage, you know, for maintenance. And yet then the end result is this, you you know very obtrusive system in our community and so we really want you to understand that that as mentioned already pg&e is very cooperative and very engaging we've we've reached out to them at very high levels and we respect their judgment but yet we all want to work together and you know including the neighbors pg&e and we really need support from the City Council of Sausalito in order to find a much better solution to this particular problem than what has been implemented so far. So that's what we really would like to make an emphasis on, and we look forward to your support. Thank you very much. |
| 02:22:16.59 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you, Mr. Ryan for calling in. Bradley O'Brien. |
| 02:22:22.86 | Bradley O'Brien | Yes, can you hear me? |
| 02:22:24.22 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yes, we can. Welcome. |
| 02:22:26.05 | Bradley O'Brien | Great, well, thank you. My name is Bradley O'Brien. I also live on 4th Street. And just for a point of reference, that the PG&E poll we're talking about is the poll that was installed at 7 a.m. in front of Herb Weiner's house. So I think everyone probably knows where that is. Tim and and not Hollywood, Tim and Carolyn Spinner already talked about some of the visual aspects of the poll. I like to talk about two things. one kind of a micro discussion and the other a macro discussion, how we can bring the city council and the town into solving some of these problems on both four street and across the city. In terms of the 4th Street Pole, As Carolyn mentioned earlier, we did have a subset of our 4th Street, North Street group meeting PG&E yesterday. And I will say to PG&E's credit, it came with four different persons from PG&E, had public outreach people and also some technical people. And PG&E was very prepared for the meeting. So I'd like to give credit to PG&E for that. So that was a good first step. Kevin McGowan from the city also participated in that meeting. So I'm sure he can update the city council on some of the details of that meeting. The outcome of yesterday's meeting with PG&E was there were two. One, we agreed with PG&E and with Kevin that we would move forward jointly to try to find a creative solution to the 4th Street poll. Because it is blocking views and it's not an appropriate device to be put on 4th Street. what we are now at what we are asking in terms of that part of my comment is that the city council get fully vested in the fourth on fourth street um what we are now at what we are asking in terms of that part of of my comment is that the city council get fully vested in the fourth street north street conversation with pg&e and that the city council insists that a government representative of pg&e also be involved in those discussions um so that's that's the first step we would like Secondly, during the discussions yesterday, A new piece of information was relayed to us by PG&E, and that is that 4th Street, a very small segment of 4th Street actually between North and Richardson Streets, is a major electrical conduit for PG&E. So apparently some of the major electrical appliances and power structures flow through 4th Street on this probably 200-yard block. So what we are in light of the importance of this segment of fourth street and it may include portions of North street and central street. We are asking the city council to initiate a PUC rule 20 a request to fund the undergrounding of the wires on this small segment of four street and if appropriate portions of central street and also north street. Those are the micro level comments in terms of the macro level. I should tell you that I used to be on the underground committee when such a committee existed, that was probably 15 years ago. My goal then was to seek to underground the entire city. I think it was premature then because people weren't ready for it. But I think that the fires that we're having and public safety, I think now is an appropriate time to revisit that question. Mr. O'Brien. |
| 02:25:31.97 | Heidi Scoble | Mr. O'Brien, your three minutes has elapsed. |
| 02:25:34.85 | Bradley O'Brien | of the I have one more minute. I'll move very quickly. |
| 02:25:39.10 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We're trying to be fair to everyone that's coming tonight, but I think we've heard your main point. |
| 02:25:43.90 | Bradley O'Brien | Right, thank you. Thank you. |
| 02:25:47.14 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right. So why don't we try one more time with Ms. Holderman. Heidi, could you please unmute her and we'll see if she's figured out |
| 02:25:59.71 | Heidi Scoble | Ms. Holderman has been unmuted. |
| 02:26:02.19 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. Ms. Holderman, you're able to speak to see if we can hear you? |
| 02:26:03.47 | Heidi Scoble | in this. |
| 02:26:11.08 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And I have not seen that she has been able to call into the number. So I am really sorry. about this issue and hopefully we can get it remedied. I'm gonna read out if you appear later in our meeting, I would be happy to give you three minutes to speak. Ah. |
| 02:26:26.74 | Holly Holderman | Hi. |
| 02:26:27.87 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh, there you are. Great. |
| 02:26:30.50 | Holly Holderman | I've been here the whole time. I've got you on the phone and I've got you on my screen. |
| 02:26:36.82 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Right. |
| 02:26:37.17 | Holly Holderman | So I don't, can you hear me? |
| 02:26:38.96 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We can hear you perfectly. You've got three minutes to give your comments. Welcome. |
| 02:26:44.33 | Holly Holderman | Okay, so I'm not really good at public speaking, especially to people I don't know, so I've written something that I'll just read to you. So it took four years out of my life and a good part of my life savings to renovate my home in the Old Town neighborhood of Sausalito. I would have never invested the amount of time and money it took to complete the project if my home did not have spectacular bay and San Francisco views. During my dealings with city planning, building department and my new neighbors before any building was done, I was assured that Water views are 100% protected. To say that I was in shock when I woke up on July 24th in the middle of the set of a Godzilla movie would be an understatement. The views from my main living area are ruined. At first I was none. Then I cried for three days straight. And it's been like experiencing a death in the family for me. As I understand from the PG&E data, the views, the quality of life, and the property values of several houses on 4th Street and North Street. 4th Street and North Street were selected to be sacrificed without consultation for the benefit of the rest of Lower Hurricane Gulch. Is it just me or is this eminent domain without the procedures, protections, and compensation? What country am I living in? The realtor in charge of selling Herb Weiner's house next door at 315-4th has told us that the real estate comparables can lose between $100 to $250 a square foot in value when water views are obstructed. Since my home was newly renovated and was done with top quality materials, my loss in market value could be as high as $450,000. |
| 02:27:56.65 | Monica Finnegan | Thank you. |
| 02:28:20.16 | Holly Holderman | Where was the city of South Toledo when this assault occurred? Why weren't we included in the planning process for this major installation? What about real estate taxes that were paid in advance for a property value that dropped in the blink of an eye on July 24th? Aren't we entitled to a rebate? We need the city of Sausalito and PG&E to work diligently with us in earnest and in good faith to relocate this new sexualizing device to a safer place in a far less obtrusive location. |
| 02:28:51.58 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you very much for your comment. I'm glad you were able to join us. All right, I do not see any additional hands raised. So we will close public comment. on this item and bring it back to the Council, I am going to suggest. that if there are any comments or questions about the update from Southern Marin Fire that we take those now. and let Chief Tubbs and his staff go and then maybe have a discussion with our staff about the status of PG&E and 4th Street, as I do not believe that Southern Marine Fire probably has a role in that. Is that correct? Chief Tubbs. |
| 02:29:37.65 | Unknown | That would be correct. |
| 02:29:39.24 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. So if that's is that okay with council members, given the lateness of the hour. Okay. |
| 02:29:45.58 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:29:45.63 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Great. So, you know, again, I would just like to thank the chief and his staff for all their hard work for reminding us of the importance of these issues and for really taking the lessons from last year's really horrendous fires to heart and acting on that information and being incredibly diligent. It also looks like you've been able to identify an amazing array of funding sources to implement your good work. So, I just want to thank you for that work as well, for getting additional funding to address our southern land fire needs are there other comments from Council members. Councilmember Crockett. |
| 02:30:31.89 | Councilmember Cox | I would like to give the chief an opportunity to address the comment from. one of our residents about evacuation routes. This is something we have covered numerous, at numerous city council meetings and at numerous forums, community forums, |
| 02:30:40.66 | Unknown | So, |
| 02:30:49.92 | Councilmember Cox | and is part of our neighborhood readiness program. Could you please reiterate for our concerned residents Um, the Southern Marin Fire and the city stand. on evacuation routes. |
| 02:31:09.79 | Unknown | Yes, Councilmember Cox, I'll first of all, give Chief Rohrabacher an opportunity to discuss evacuations as primarily law enforcement is responsible for coordinating that activity. We're in a support role with them and happy to fill in the gaps after John has jumped in. |
| 02:31:35.79 | Adam Politzer | I don't think Chief Robacher is on the call at this point. His item, his primary item was on consent. I don't see the chief here. |
| 02:31:47.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, well maybe we could make sure that we get that information. Perhaps that would be given the time of year that that might be something to consider for an upcoming occurrence. |
| 02:31:58.34 | Councilmember Cox | Well, may I just comment, Mayor, in the absence of the Chief, |
| 02:31:58.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Bye. |
| 02:32:05.20 | Councilmember Cox | that we don't have a specified evacuation route. There is no single evacuation route that is appropriate for any emergency that we might have. If we have a water-based emergency, the evacuation route is different than if we have a fire emergency. If we have a fire emergency downtown, the evacuation route is different than if we have a fire emergency on the hillside. And our emergency preparedness department undertakes drills every year to ensure our readiness to address emergencies. But the bottom line is that we rely on Nixle and on various other notification methods to advise residents at the time of an emergency about what their evacuation route is for that emergency. So it's super important that residents sign up for the various notification methods which are available on the Southern Marin website and on the city's website so that they are properly notified as soon as any determination is made. But it's, you know, we have 7,000 residents, only two roads in and out. And so it's super challenging. even on the best of days. So that's why it would be misleading and actually a disservice to residents to publish a single evacuation route, which could be entirely inappropriate given the type of emergency phase. |
| 02:33:37.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you for emphasizing that. And also I know we're working on multiple plans, including stairways, including water-based. evaluation methods. Councilmember Burns. |
| 02:33:49.00 | Joe Burns | And last year we did have at least one meeting out at MLK, the evacuation planning exercise, and we'd hope to have more. We're also looking for bodies on our community service disaster prep committee. So a good plug for that. We'd like to get more people involved because part of that is the communication outreach and working with getting both documents that we have already produced out into the community, as well as a quicker conversation with the community. But as council member Cox said, the message continues to be We just simply have limited routes. Everybody has to take the responsibility to look at which way they would go if a fire is coming this way. Where is your exit and evacuation that way? And everybody needs to take that role on their own to look at their particular evacuation patterns we would have help from from the water side we would have help from our police and then our fire would be busy fighting the fire but there's not a simple answer and there shouldn't be a simple answer because it's a very complex process when it happens but I hope that this you know post COVID we get back into having more of our evacuation plan exercises that was very helpful at MLK. |
| 02:35:10.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, Vice Mayor, looks like you would like to speak. |
| 02:35:13.76 | Ray Withy | Yeah, thank you everybody. Thank you, Chief. Uh, Tom, Fred, thanks a lot for being here. Um, you know, The thing about evacuation which we've been trying to we've sort of said it tonight, but I think needs to be So I think Councilmember Cox and what Councilmember Burns have said are really important. There is no one evacuation plan. So basically your evacuation plan is a real time thing. that's going to be, know, essentially mobilized by our police department, by our fire. district. by all the good work of, and we're gonna have processes to make sure that we understand. Here's what we need to do though, because people are concerned. They're concerned that there isn't a master plan. What they're concerned about is They don't know what to do. So, What I think needs to happen is part of initiatives that have been going on really well with you know, neighborhood watch, the various community groups that are being formed. I'd like to see part of each of those community groups you know, dedicate a bit of their time to figuring out within their little community, within their network, what's their evacuation plan, get some advice. from our police department and our fire department, which I'm sure they will be, willing to do to these neighborhood groups to say, Under this scenario, you need to do this. Under this scenario, you need to do this. You need to be flexible. And so this is what I'm saying is this is an ongoing discussion that needs to be had, and I'm really glad you're here because This is, this concept of embedding the concept of disaster preparedness into the neighbourhoods coordinated hopefully by our you know, rejuvenated disaster preparedness committee. is going to actually really You need to start embedding it into the community and that's how you do it through the neighborhood groups. And I'm sure you guys would be would help. that. process. Sorry. Yeah. |
| 02:37:47.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Oh, that's great. All right, good. I think we've addressed that issue. Council member Riley or anybody else. Did you have any you'd like to add? |
| 02:37:55.51 | Tom Riley | I'll just give a short comment. I thank Councilmember Cox for notifying me that I should sign up for Nixle. And I think we should track how many of our residents have signed up for Nixon CAA for communication methods. But thank you for that. |
| 02:38:10.33 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:38:10.36 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:38:10.41 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 02:38:10.55 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Good point. All right, so thank you so much to Southern Wind Friar for being here tonight. And you're welcome to stick around for our discussion about PG&E and or for the rest of our meeting. But otherwise have a good evening gentlemen and thank you again for the. thorough presentation and really hard work. |
| 02:38:32.62 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 02:38:34.19 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, I hope you're not too busy in the next. always for the |
| 02:38:37.99 | Unknown | We have a conference call right now with the chiefs for the fires in the area. |
| 02:38:38.46 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | We have a couple of questions. |
| 02:38:42.32 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, well, we'll let you cut to it. |
| 02:38:44.32 | Unknown | Thank you very much. |
| 02:38:44.72 | Unknown | Right. |
| 02:38:44.74 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | THANK YOU VERY MUCH. |
| 02:38:45.65 | Unknown | Bye-bye. |
| 02:38:46.76 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right. Okay, so sounds from the comments from the public and from what I understand from staff that There was a good, meeting yesterday with PG&E, at least a good start. I can completely understand the shock of waking up one morning and having an installation that appeared apparently overnight. I can assure you that the city was not Thank you. aware of this either. And so this is this process issue is sort of a larger issue that I think we need to address with PG&E separate and aside from the the incident on 4th Street, which is definitely also needs to be addressed individually. So I don't know Kevin or Adam, if you want to add anything at this point, we've had a number of requests from the community to continue putting pressure on PG&E, to get and keep their representatives at the table. and a number of other things. So before we have council member comments, do you want to speak to those issues? |
| 02:39:57.25 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, Madam Eric, I echo your comments there. What I am pleased to hear from the members of the public is that PG&E is in fact meeting and speaking with us and in what I'm understanding is is also listening and trying to come up with some solutions. I'm very pleased with the comments about our public works director, Kevin McGowan and our senior engineer Andy Davidson. When this first, when this issue first came to our attention, We obviously reached out to PG&E immediately and demand it. that they come to the table. and work with the community and help us understand what's going on because clearly they didn't do a good job of reaching out to the city or the community to even help us understand why, in fact, of all the PSPS equipment that needed to be placed in Sausalito, that was the location that was designated in the south end of town. So, The council as well as the community has our continued commitment to work with PG&E and with the community members to hopefully bring forward a resolution that satisfies everyone's needs, but more importantly, continues to address the safety needs that we all are seeking as we go in to these fires. challenges, fire season challenges. With that, I would ask the council to continue to have staff I work with PG&E in the neighborhood Unfortunately, Mark was not, Mark Van Gorder from PG and he was not able to be here tonight. But he did say that he would join us at our next meeting. So if we don't have any forward movement on this, then I would recommend that we ask Mark to come with the appropriate members of PG&E to address this issue and then council can take further action if needed. You heard some of the recommendations from the public. I think that would be the right opportunity to further discuss how the council or board of supervisors or our elected officials in Sacramento can help us deal with these types of events that are very unfortunate and disappointing. |
| 02:42:18.90 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you for that. Other vice mayor and then councilman Bacchak? |
| 02:42:23.77 | Ray Withy | Yeah. |
| 02:42:28.04 | Ray Withy | Look, I've had a lot of dealings with PG&E through MC. Now, that's mainly on the power procurement side of that business. I've been there for... of the nature of the organization Abandon. very intimately tracking and understanding their bankruptcy proceedings, how the organization is developing. et cetera, et cetera. Um, We have... both on the power safety shutoffs and now over this, a major you know, incident of a bureaucratic organization stumbling in. in the context of looking over their shoulder, worried about where the next litigation's coming from. and blundering their way into neighbourhoods, AND you know, We gotta fix this. And it's got to be fixed by a dialogue between the local level, PG&E, the county level, You know, CPU, the whole works, it's all gotta be sort of brought together. And this is bigger than Sol Solito. We are just having to, this is an example of something of. where PG&E, does not have their systems together to be able to do this, with any degree of art. And. It needs to be facts. And we need to find the coalition of groups that are going to fix it. |
| 02:44:10.61 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, thank you for that. Yes. have any suggestions about that. But anyway, Council Member Cox. |
| 02:44:18.24 | Councilmember Cox | Um, I'm going to follow up on Holly Holderman's comment. She mentioned eminent domain, but it's actually the cause of action is inverse condemnation when a public agency seizes from you a property right without due process. And I will tell you, I also have had extensive dealings with PG&E um, The dealings I've had as a council member with our representative Van Gorder have been largely positive and with MCC MC legislative committee. The dealings I've had not as a council member, but as a municipal lawyer handling issues in other jurisdictions have not been so positive. And I will say that one way to get their attention, unfortunately, is through litigation. So I want to caution those who, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not giving legal advice, but I wanna caution those who are attending our meeting this evening and that if they intend to take legal action against PG&E, there are certain deadlines that apply and the deadlines are fairly short. So if you intend to protect your rights, please don't rely only on conversations. Please make sure you do everything necessary to properly respect your rights. And the cause of action is inverse condemnation. I share the outrage. I reached out immediately to the city manager I, the, The fact that that decision was made so arbitrarily It actually wasn't made arbitrarily. They actually planned it, but that it was made in a vacuum without consulting the city or any of the neighbors is reprehensible. I agree, we need to partner with the neighbors, and with our friends at PG&E. to, identify a resolution to this sooner than later. And to prevent this from happening, elsewhere. Thank you. Right. |
| 02:46:22.89 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:46:22.96 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 02:46:22.96 | Joe Burns | I agree and I think you Vice Mayor and Councilmember Cox for your comments. That's exactly right. I want to appreciate our staff for getting on this right away, working with the community. We hear Carolyn, Mary, Bradley, Holly, Sven. It's hard to hear your story. I really appreciate your restrained demeanor to tell that because |
| 02:46:23.03 | Unknown | I, |
| 02:46:49.27 | Joe Burns | That's. quite a lot to deal with to wake up and see your view that we know is so important in our town to be diminished like that. So thank you for your process in this and you got our attention. We hear you and I'm glad that our staff reacted quickly and I look forward to us being involved as this process goes forward as needed because I think we're all on the same same line here. So thank you. |
| 02:47:17.28 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | JoAnne Hanrahan, And so Council member Riley everything. |
| 02:47:19.78 | Tom Riley | Yeah, just one short comment and in support of what the other council members have said. I do want to remind us it was just four months ago. Another family, the Chernoff family on Woodward Street. |
| 02:47:24.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.23 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Bye. |
| 02:47:24.39 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:47:24.42 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 02:47:24.52 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:47:28.89 | Tom Riley | came to City Council. with concerns about a poll with guide wires through their property and we're getting no response from PG&E I do think we need to talk to PG&E about an escalation of the person that we can work with that they're responsive to these things and then of course better notification going forward but we have two residents in four months with similar issues |
| 02:47:54.66 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I just echo everybody's comments. I mean, it's absolutely unbelievable the amount of public process that occurs in every other instance in California and locally that you could even contemplate doing something like this without involving the neighbors. It's just such a kind of arrogant behavior. I really I'm sorry for what you've gone through. So I think staff is committed to continuing to work with you. We hope that we'll get Mr. Van Gorder here at our next meeting and hopefully by that point, We won't need to be having this discussion, but if we do, we can continue it. at that point. I would also just like to echo the comments that were made about undergrounding. I know that several of our council members have been working on that issue as well over the years. It is something that I think is the future that we do need to recommit to. I think the comments that maybe we're getting a perfect storm of an environment to support undergrounding might be true. And I would definitely be supportive additional efforts in that as a solution for this particular instance, if that process is the right one to follow, but just overall, as something that we really need to be steering towards for so many different reasons that were mentioned by members of the public. So that's what I would add. on that front. um, And with that, I think unless anybody has further comments, we can move on to our next item. I'd like to thank all the members of the public who came tonight. to speak to us about this item. So thank you for your time. And then I've lost my place in a jungle. So, all right, I think this would probably be the right time to go back to council member committee reports, and then we can move on to item nine after that. So we will go back. to item number one, number five. No, number four, council member committee. And the first committee report we have is an update there's been a lot happening and update from Council Member burns and Council Member Riley. on the Sausalito Marin City School unification process and other school issues. |
| 02:50:25.77 | Tom Riley | Correct, I think I will lead off with an update and then Councilman Burns will follow with additional comments. |
| 02:50:26.05 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:50:31.93 | Tom Riley | And we've prepared just comments and we'll stay within the 10 minute limit that was suggested. As shared in the past at city council, it's very important for our community to to have a high performing K through 8 school in the district. We have a really unique opportunity to deliver just that, set ourselves apart from other districts, |
| 02:50:49.03 | Unknown | Hello. |
| 02:50:54.68 | Tom Riley | by having one of the most diverse and well-integrated schools in state, that leverages its amazing assets, it's our community, our staffs, two campuses, and our tremendous financial resources. Council Member Burns and I have attended several Board meetings to both WCA and the school district. and also joint study sessions or updates come from that. I'm putting your report there's actually very good progress toward unification with the school district and Willow Creek Academy board working in unison and working well together, which is different from in the past. And that's a very positive report from what I've observed. It was a very important Willow Creek Board meeting just a few weeks ago where they reaffirmed their commitment to a successful unification in the shortest time possible. They unanimously agreed to unify as soon as January 2021 and no later than the fall of 2021. This unanimous direction really set aside, you know, made sure that everyone was aligned in the same objectives going forward. They then set a goal to have all unification planning complete by November 30th in order to meet the January objective for the soonest possible unification Subsequently, I attended a school district in WCA |
| 02:52:16.71 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:52:21.77 | Tom Riley | joint study session. where the discussion was around the WCA proposed timeline the work that needs to be accomplished. I will share it is no small task of what needs to be accomplished by November 30th. I was amazed in taking notes. There are at least eight different work groups or work streams that need tremendous work in the next few months. And I'll step through what I captured. The first is governance. How will our new unified school be governed? will be elected board only, will it include appointed members Will there be a governing transition body that ensures families from both schools are represented? There's a lot of just governance as these two schools come together and build trust with one another. What kind of school will this be? will be a traditional public school will be a public charter school. Will it be an independent charter or will it be a combination thereof? These discussions still seem to be underway. We have two tremendous campuses, but how will we use them? There's many ideas of will we use both? Should we consolidate to one? but simple questions of like which grade levels on which campuses Will we have one kitchen or shared facilities? Will we have two libraries? Will they be different or will they be overlapping? Will there be, where will sports be played? Where will administrative offices be placed and so forth? tremendous work on facilities. Then we have to combine the staffs. there needs to be a process to level the staff across the two schools, You have one school that's traditionally a union, one that's not. Pay levels are very different. And we need to kind of go through that process. And then we have to have equitable handling of any potential layoffs across Bayside, MLK, and WCA. And these discussions have started. Once all that's done, they're got to involve a union and there's extensive union negotiations and that'll include pay, benefits, tenure, How do we handle non-credential staff? How do we handle layoffs and so forth? Tremendous work. Then we have to work on the curriculum. What will be the curriculum for the new school and how do we bring the best of both? And the curriculum is not just a traditional math and reading and language, but what are we doing around arts, music, and cooking programs and so forth. then we have to put together the finances And a lot of our beliefs is that a unified school should have leverage and we should have, you know, duplicate resources that we can be much more efficient. |
| 02:55:03.76 | Tom Riley | but that work needs to be done. We have to have a combined budget And it includes things like what are our student to teacher ratios? And the schools have had different ratios and we need to agree on that. If those seven items aren't enough, We also have to contend with COVID. and the complexities of COVID in education. And one of the things I was very pleased, the two boards agreed that COVID is not going to be a reason to slow down or delay the unification process. However, COVID does make it much more complex. When you think of class sizes, we heard earlier about pods. Do we have pods? What are we doing for remote learning? If we're doing remote learning, Where is the equipment coming from? How do we help families get access to the Internet? So everything here, I went through eight major work streams that have to be completed by November. This is no small task, and it's not a task for three or four people. We really need the community to step up, bring expertise and help, And I must admit there is a lot of the community involved in this process, but I did want to point out the, the significant task at hand. But the good news is unification is moving forward. One last thing, I have my notes. I just learned actually just yesterday that One of the judges in Marin County recently supported one of the arguments for Will Creek that the students had not received adequate funding from the district for fair education. And that judge's support is important because I think now at the The two boards are working together and working in unison Hopefully past disagreements are past them. And we can look at using funds that the district has to help educate all of our students in this coming year and during unification. We need to focus on retaining our best staff, retaining our students and families. And drive towards a very successful unification. So that's the update I wanted to provide. And I will ask Council Member Burns further advice. |
| 02:57:21.24 | Joe Burns | Thank you, Councilman Riley. That was great. And I appreciate the document that you put together that we went over that you had that detail. There has been so much to follow in this conversation. And just really quickly go back to December, we started kind of two tracks of conversation, a unification process and a desegregation of the school process. We quickly merged those together in that this unification solves the segregation, but there was never a plan B to the segregation issue. We never embarked on, well, if unification doesn't happen, what else can we do? So unification became the entire discussion. It is the sole, Um, elimination of the segregated school. Again, a lot of us wanted unification prior to the attorney general's ruling, and that was based on what wasn't working in our district on an economy of scale. There simply was not enough students at one campus and the campuses and the administration and the district expense was overburdening the limited number of students we had and the money. So that was the original drive of unification. It became a great tool to desegregate And, There was a tremendous amount of work done and I, I can't thank the people who We're involved in all that through December, January, February, right up to the time we hit COVID. And then with numerous Zoom calls since then, And as Tom said, the unification became a joint process between the two school boards, the Willow Creek Board and the school district board And once they started having joint meetings, it really picked up a synergy. And it has been fascinating both to watch But the talent pool in that group is really impressive. We have retired administrators. We have people who work in facility. business leaders and you know from Erika Smith, Lexi Molism, Cynthia Nemo, Jim Henry, Joanna Vandenberg, Yeah. than the school district itself Jeff and Kurt. It's been a tremendous group bringing together so many great ideas and going through those eight streams that Tom mentioned Um, They have the talent pool to do this. in the district leadership under Dr. Itoko Garcia he has a lot of the resources on where to kind of build a school process like this. |
| 02:59:57.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:57.72 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 02:59:57.74 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:59:57.97 | Joe Burns | So the step that they're at now as Tom mentioned, you know, with the date, there's also simultaneously looking at a facilities bond. And It's a beautiful. beautiful facilities outcome of two upgraded campuses of over $40 million. $8.5 million from what I can tell alone just goes to kind of that upper end I mentioned earlier, the district offices and the administrative offices. But as you see as this thing starts playing out, we don't quite have that economy of scale number being discussed yet. We're building two school campuses, we're putting them $40 million, $50 million, $60 million There's been a lot of discussion on how we're going to trim that top layer of expense that's been a burden in our school district for decades. So I think that's kind of the next challenge for the group is how do we actually now trim. Um, there's, We'll be bringing together about 480 kids. We might lose a few in that in some of the district transfers. There's a great conversation on how do we really grow the district once we get a school district up and going and a really good school, How does Marin City build more housing and how do we Um, But the The timing of the facilities bond just seems... potentially early in that they would like to go forth soon. now. And, a lot of the conversation still is either based on surveys or this group and then we don't have a true unification yet. It seems more like we might want to unify and really know what the product is going to look like. and then maybe plan not only the facilities, but then what the future growth looks like in the next 10, 15, 20 years, as far as how many people do we need, how many kids do we need to build for? So, um, I think the community really needs to look at that aspect. Do we have the enough knowledge now. to go out for a very aggressive bond but, Without a doubt, both campuses need it. We have a lot of work on the Nevada street campus where Willow low maintenance for so many years. It's, it needs a lot of help, um, to put more kids and to get the most out of the Phillips street campus needs a lot of money applied to it. The growth that's in this, uh, some of these budgeting items from, you know, more athletic fields to performing art classrooms, multi-purpose rooms, all these things are definitely needed. Um, and they're needed to make the world-class school that these people have worked so hard and these committees have worked so hard to get to. So it's not a matter of need, it's more just a matter of are they on the right timing. But again, They have the bandwidth, their group, to figure this out as far as the experience level, and the people that have done these types of considerations in other areas of business before. Um, I don't know if it's our place to make a recommendation on any of that at this point. But as Tom mentioned, they're on a very aggressive timeline to unification and They're on a very aggressive timeline to um, get the facilities bond going and those once once you get going in that I get that you want to go fast they're faster than maybe the pace that even the AG suggested in the judgment but they're going in a good direction and have good people on it. So we need to really keep looking and looking in the way of how does it get to that common goal that council member Riley mentioned when he kicked this off of we want quality education for all kids in the 94965. And I believe we have a group that's dedicated to doing that right now. |
| 03:04:09.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you both for that update. Much appreciated. Are there questions? or other comments from council members at this point. All right. |
| 03:04:21.83 | Councilmember Cox | . |
| 03:04:22.72 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Go ahead. |
| 03:04:24.36 | Councilmember Cox | I would just like to thank our working group, Tom Riley and Joe Burns, you know, this is one of the most frustrating issues as a member of the city council because it's one of the most important issues to the city but an issue over which we have no actual jurisdiction. So the manner in which we coordinate, collaborate, and communicate with the Saucyote Marin City School District is a paramount. importance and I'm really pleased with the efforts of my fellow council members and with with, you know, I completely endorse the steps moving forward that we need to continue to take to ensure that we have excellent education for all students in Sausalito and Marin City. |
| 03:05:17.92 | Unknown | Great, thank you. |
| 03:05:19.41 | Ray Withy | Yeah, I would just add to that. Thank you. I agree with all of the comments and thank you very much for that very Um, important update. I mean, it's important that all of our residents, or at least those who've chosen to change, tune in or tune in subsequently here Um, know your perspective so thank you very much I would say that the most important thing right now is and, With all these issues and this complexity and this degree of complexity that Council member Riley has I'm sure correctly identified in terms of the hydraulics of all the and how it's all NEEDS TO Martial on. is there's a real danger that. people want to get things done now or get it finished or get it instead of letting time go by to let the There's the dimension of time that reaches a resolution, it slowly gets there. but it gets there. And I worry that the deadlines that have been imposed, either artificially or judiciously, And I think that's what I'm saying. I'll do it anyway. I WANT TO BE ABLE TO BE ABLE TO how could end up to a good solution. That's what I worry about. if that makes any sense. |
| 03:07:06.78 | Tom Riley | This is Tom. to concur with you, Vice Mayor. Unification is very, very important, but what's more important is a successful unification. And because you can't have a bad unification, it's poorly planned and we get off on the bad foot Right. And things slow down. So it's successful in occasion. In my private career, I've done many mergers. Um, none as complex as this because this involves public entities. Um, But I would hire Accenture as a consulting firm to manage, project manage mergers like this. We need, you know, I've yet to see kind of Gantt charts and there's a lot of work to be done. everyone is in earnest to get there. but it has to be well thought out. I do think having a deadline to have planning completed is a good catalyst to get there. And if you don't, you know, you're better off waiting for a successful unification, but hopefully we get there by January. |
| 03:08:12.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | PB, Sarah Silver, A great Thank you for all those comments definitely agree with both those last comments that the goal is excellence and a successful unification, I think, kind of focusing on the metrics that you know both we as a city council and, more importantly, the school. District and will pre-court as educators want to see through this process will be important so that we can evaluate how the process is working so obviously closing the achievement gap that many of our district students. experiencing. Experience is one of the top ones. Also, you know, for me, And I think for the city council, parent and family retention, growing a school district, you know, are also very important goals. Um, and having successful unification. So I wanna thank Joe and Tom for their hard work on this and for highlighting some of the issues that are coming forward. Should we each do additional committee reports and then we'll take public comments. Great, does anybody wanna start or I just have one? |
| 03:09:32.03 | Joe Burns | I could talk about EDAC and B of A, but probably covered already tonight. |
| 03:09:36.57 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I think we'll cover that. |
| 03:09:38.14 | Joe Burns | I make another pitch that we need to get, community service disaster prep applications need to find some residents who are interested and we saw another purpose for tonight to look at not just evacuation time of an emergency response as well as so preparing but then also all the mitigations to keep you from having those responses so If you're out there and listening, we could use some bodies on that wonderful committee. |
| 03:10:13.88 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, Jo. Tom? |
| 03:10:18.40 | Tom Riley | Very quickly, Council Member Burns and I are liaisons to the business community. What that really means is we are staying very close to the Chamber of Commerce. um, President, CEO, and the board members are doing a great job working with our businesses. Regular weekly Zoom calls talking about regulations and restrictions and answering questions. My favorite topic, the Love Sausalito Business Fund has now supported 11 of our small businesses that are at risk of closing. I thank everyone in the community that has made contributions. And I'm going to thank those in the community who will make contributions because that will be my ask at the end. But these are businesses we know. kitty's place saucito fitness tivoli Decor, Studio 333, Saucyuto Automotive, Love Marin, Hair Solutions, Katia Glass Jewelry. |
| 03:10:51.15 | Unknown | that we're going to have. |
| 03:11:14.25 | Tom Riley | These are businesses we pass every day, we see, and we need to help them stay in business, and many more need help. You've seen the signage I mentioned earlier. Also, the Chamber has produced a new Love Sausalito mask, which I had one to demo here, but Joe is showing it. There's Love Sausalito Mask. Mine is somewhere. Um, that if you donate a hundred dollars to the love, sell, sort of business fund, you will get that in your mailbox and you'll probably, um, Rick. you know, support our merchants. Um, Caledonia Street has been a success despite the bad weather that we have had there in the wind storms and blowing tables. But we have learned how to set up, take down, how the restaurants can work together. We are moving into the good weather season And one of the things we hope to do is upgrade the service levels, better quality tables, better signage and barriers. Um, Finally, I participated in a waterfront committee with Council Member Cox, and I'm sure she'll give a great detailed update and mayor i will leave to you if you want to update on the blue ribbon committee work we've done so far so thank you |
| 03:12:43.12 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Councilmember Cox, would you like to? |
| 03:12:47.88 | Councilmember Cox | Sure. Um, I was going over the meetings and I realized why I didn't feel as though we had much of a break because in the six weeks that we were gone, I attended 17 city meetings. Thank you. So... out. Um, I attended an MCC MC legislative committee meeting and I transmitted the written materials from that meeting that summarizes the legislation that's being considered by our legislature and the m the um Marin county mayors and council members group position on some of that legislation. As council member Riley said, He and I have met with city staff and others as part of our waterfront committee. to advance our waterfront management plan. We did that because we had to make a report to BCDC, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission on July 9. Then we had a follow-up meeting with them on August 13. They are actually very pleased with the progress of Sausalito in identifying a compassionate yet efficient water management plan that seeks to take care of those of our numbers who are living on the water but also is committed to bay restoration. And you heard a little bit of that this evening in public comment from the Richardson's Bay Regional Agency Representative Curtis Hobble. I've attended a couple of those meetings during our break. And Beth Pollard has retired. Rebecca Schwartz-Lessberg has left Audubon Society and Marty Winter has moved to Tiburon. And so he's no longer a member of the Belvedere Town Council and no longer a member |
| 03:14:46.69 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:14:48.87 | Councilmember Cox | of the Richardson's Bay regional agency, which is- |
| 03:14:53.61 | Unknown | Wow. |
| 03:14:54.51 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah, which is a shame. He was. |
| 03:14:56.62 | Unknown | Sure. |
| 03:14:57.02 | Councilmember Cox | very collaborative member of that organization. We've been continuing to meet with Senator Mike McGuire to advance the three-pronged plan that Curtis Hubble made reference to this evening, which is to continue to manage the waterfront advance bay restoration, especially eelgrass restoration, but also identify temporary and long-term housing for those of our population most in need. Um, Mm-mm. So we've met with the Senator a couple of times. We also have a consultant assisting us in meeting with the California Housing and Community Development Department, which has identified grant funding, which must some of it, which must be utilized this year, some of it, which may be utilized next year and has advised us on how to learn more about those sources of funding. and how to apply for them. One of those actually might be able to help us with our Safe Harbor Program. for which we are awaiting. County funding, which has been delayed over nine months. Council member Riley and I met. six times with Bridgeway Marina to negotiate deal points for a letter of intent to get that Marina properly permitted, something the city has been working on 10 years. And we hope to actually bring a proposal to the council sometime in September for their consideration. then the mayor and I, have been meeting as part of the general plan working group. update you on those events. And finally, Most of the people, most of the council members attended the chamber of commerce meeting on August 12th to hear our city manager give a state of the city report to. the Chamber of Commerce. Thank you. |
| 03:17:02.79 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. Vice Mayor, do you have anything or? |
| 03:17:06.74 | Ray Withy | Um, yes. Well, unlike, uh, council member Cox, I've attended virtually no meetings at the last, uh, month, but, um, let me give you a brief update on, uh, |
| 03:17:06.79 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:17:20.65 | Ray Withy | MC Clean Energy We are heading into an important strategic planning meeting in September, a Zoom, so a six-hour Zoom strategic planning meeting. strategic planning meeting. I can't wait. So, um, But one of the really important things that Marine Clean Energy have been working on is the need to build assets to actually catalyze and accelerate the adoption of renewable energy. And so last month, and actually one of what will be one of my sort of final contributions to that organization, I joined I was appointed to their what's called their bonding committee, which is a committee to evaluate raising a very significant amount of financing via a particular financial vehicle that utilities are able to utilize. To be able to purchase renewable assets or systems that are parts of renewable assets to really be able to accelerate the adoption of that. So I'm very pleased to be able to be working on that project with the staff. And hopefully beyond the strategic planning meeting uh, September will be moving into the fall into hopefully some significant decisions around building assets, financing, et cetera. So it's an interest in time to be sort of moving on from that, but it's, uh, uh, I've seen Marine Clean Energy grow from you know, just about to move from Marin into Richmond to now be basically dominant in five cancers. So. So I'll be reporting on that effort, which will be my final sort of reporting out on MCE. In addition to we're going through the procurement process of of balance getting the next strategic allocation, energy allocation plan in place. And we're also going through the annual audit on the audit committee. So we're finishing that up in the next few weeks. So there's a lot going on in my involvement in there and also trying to figure out how to sort of exit out of some of these organizations, you know, because you realise I'll be leading the council. in December. So the same applies to the League of California Cities, where Joe and I are both stepping off the North Bay Division Board, and each of us are there through different appointment processes. So there's that coordination to do with the league. And then on the league front, I think it's scheduled for September... can't remember the date. But anyway, the League is hosting Senator McGuire for a sort of morning, early morning thing to discuss what's going on up there and what is sort of wishing to be. So Denise Athas, who's the mayor of Nevada, who is a member of the League of California Cities Board of Directors, and an executive officer of the League, and I, as the Vice President of the League, will be hosting McGuire for this public forum. Sorry, I don't remember the date. September something. I'll make sure Heidi lets everybody know that. Sorry. Ninth, maybe. |
| 03:21:35.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | All right, Ray, thank you for that update and for that depressing reminder that you will be stepping off these important boards, but there'll be a lot more time to talk about this, but I do really wanna thank you for your service, especially on the Marin Clean Energy and for that update. It's such important work that you've been doing so many years and the steps towards renewables and clean energy is just, really amazing, so I wanted to. |
| 03:22:05.09 | Ray Withy | Well, it's exciting. We're getting there. It's really exciting. |
| 03:22:07.18 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | It's really, Yeah. |
| 03:22:09.11 | Ray Withy | So, I mean, we're a national leader. |
| 03:22:12.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Yeah. |
| 03:22:12.73 | Ray Withy | this. |
| 03:22:13.02 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Thank you for that update. And we'll go for the other issues. |
| 03:22:16.92 | Councilmember Cox | And Mayor, may I just say that council member Withy is correct, the Zoom meeting with him and Senator McGuire is September 9 at 8.30 AM. |
| 03:22:26.18 | Ray Withy | Thank you. Thanks, John. |
| 03:22:29.24 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Karen Hollweg, Okay, well, thank you for the updates I have so I attended my first pedestrian bicycle advisory committee meeting last night. I want to thank Councilmember Burns for being the liaison for many years and I hope that I can fill his shoes. It's a great committee. I'm really excited. to be the new liaison. We received a report from Superintendent Garcia about the kind of general field and facilities plan and how the circulation in terms of pedestrians, bicycles and traffic flow would go and the committee gave some good input and feedback. on that very nice presentation from the superintendent. Uh, Next was consideration of how to use TAM funds. We have almost $60,000 to improve safety. kind of a safe route to school on Nevada State. So that's a little tricky given the width of that street and a couple of different options. So we're still, the committee is still considering exactly how that will look, whether it'll be narrow bike lanes on both sides of the street or kind of a contraflow lane on one side of the street. So there were some good ideas. around that, but maybe We'll need some community outreach. on the Contra flow lane if there's any loss of parking for neighbors there. |
| 03:24:12.93 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:24:14.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And then we had a very interesting discussion on our general plan statement on race equity and inclusion And both got some feedback on the policy which the committee unanimous, kind of the general policy which the committee unanimously um, approved, but I think everyone on the committee felt like, okay, this is a good policy. Maybe it could be a little more. Robust, but now let's get to the plans, programs and policies. Like let's put actions. into these So that was great. the chair of the committee, Erin Roller, And Remember Regan Fulton gave kind of a really nice PowerPoint that they had put together about joining the 94965 physically through a pedestrian and bicycle tunnel. just kind of in a very high level conceptual level. presentation that really highlighted how 101 perpetrated kind of systemic racism by putting a freeway right between the two communities. and kind of the idea of a tunnel, I think, at our racial justice forum and In July, I had a Christmas. Thank you. Um, pedestrian and bicycle bridge. But just this idea of really kind of unifying physically and, and, you know, I think everyone realizes that the current situation with the underpass. It is really less than ideal from so many different, standpoints, both a racial justice standpoint, but also just emergency evacuation, it's subject to flooding, Um, you know, it's not pleasant even with our new lighting, it's not that pleasant to walk or bike through. So how can we kind of move beyond the separation of the freeway. So that was just a great start to that conversation and look forward to to more putting more meat on the bones and obviously getting input from impacted neighbors. in the 94965. So it was just a start to the conversation, but nice. And then upcoming topics are bike circulation and some congestion that's happening with bicyclists in front of the bathrooms now that There's not bike parking that's very apparent elsewhere and multi-use repaving between the Mill Valley kind of Sausalito bike path there, and then the gate six construction that's upcoming. Um, Karen Hollweg, Councilmember Riley and I convened the blue ribbon task force. to find innovative sources of funding. We're really excited to have a couple pilot programs to both focus on the parks and on sustainability efforts. So we'll be um, you'll be hearing more about those coming up but kind of completing our funding in Southview Park but also looking for community support of kind of ongoing park maintenance just in the next year or so while we're in our COVID crisis. Obviously that's, you know, should be part of our general fund budget in normal times, the maintenance. And then also I am meeting Also separately with two members on sustainability issues. So I want to thank Sam Rubin and Greg Thompson, Thomas Thompson for their input on those. So we'll be bringing those back to the Blue Ribbon Committee. and general plan issues that Joan mentioned, we are working to get the new public review draft of the actual general plan out because we had some really good community input on new policies. both on racial equity, sustainability, so we want to get that draft out as quickly as possible. So we've been meeting with M Group to to get a new complete draft finalized for public input and review. So that, those are my updates. Elaine McLaughlin, Alright, so we can open it up to public comment on all of these. initiatives. If there is anyone who would like to comment, if you could please raise your hand in the Zoom application. I see David Sudo, good evening. Thanks for your participation on the feedback. |
| 03:29:05.16 | David Sudo | Good evening. Thanks for a great meeting tonight. A lot of information going on. I thought I would just comment on the bond for the schools and why it's not really as rushed as it might seem. I'm not sure. if we pass a bond this year uh, my understanding is an architect wouldn't be hired until April. of next spring. and Um, money wouldn't be collected from people's taxes until at least next fall. And it wouldn't happen until we actually kind of start construction. Um, for, plan for that construction. But I also understand that once we finalized plans it could be up to two years before they get approved by this state And it could be a so it could be a four year process. And generally, these kinds of bond elections only happen every two years. So if we don't get it done now, the earliest we can get completed is in about six years. So that's why. there's an urgency to the bond measure happening this year is that if we want any of the children who are in K through six right now to to enjoy the facilities of a bond, we'd have to get it passed this year or they'd actually be, in the middle school by the time we got anything done at all. Thank you. |
| 03:30:40.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Is there any additional public comment? I see Chris Durbin. Welcome back. |
| 03:30:58.64 | Heidi Scoble | Chris has been unmuted. |
| 03:31:04.74 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So her mute is still showing. Chris, I think you need to unmute on your side. Thank you. |
| 03:31:10.41 | Chris Durbin | Thank you. |
| 03:31:10.42 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Got it. |
| 03:31:10.96 | Chris Durbin | Thank you. I wanted to speak to the report about schools unifications. um, I reached out to council members Burns and Riley earlier today to say I hoped that they had reached out to Itoko Garcia, Dr. Garcia. get his input because he's leading this effort. and This effort began last September. and has been robust for almost a year. And I, would really strongly encourage you to have Dr. Garcia present. to the council. Um, the issues which Councilmember Riley said are not resolved. I disagree. I think many of them have been resolved. and Um, just think it would only be fair to have Dr. Garcia present to you. This is a really important process. A year ago, just a year and a few |
| 03:32:23.64 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So Chris, I think we've lost your internet connection. You may want to stop sharing your video and that might improve your audio connection. |
| 03:32:36.49 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So if we could stop the clock, please. I cannot, or I may be frozen. Can anyone else here, Ms. Durbin? |
| 03:32:44.42 | Councilmember Cox | She it's Chris. |
| 03:32:45.97 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. So let's stop the clock. She probably can't hear us if we can't hear her. |
| 03:33:02.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So yeah. But now it looks like she's lost her connection completely. Okay, she had a minute and 35 seconds left on her time. So if she's able to rejoin the meeting, we will Go back to her. Is there any additional public comments? Heidi, I'm not seeing additional public comment. Do you see any other hands raised? |
| 03:33:29.14 | Heidi Scoble | There are no other hands raised at this time. |
| 03:33:34.40 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I'm just gonna give 30 seconds to see if we can get her to rejoin. |
| 03:33:50.77 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | And if she calls back in, could the court Please let us know. |
| 03:34:03.26 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, so for the time being, we are going to move back to our regular agenda and we will start on |
| 03:34:03.31 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 03:34:11.69 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Item number nine. And Heidi, if you could just let me know if Mr. Ben was able to reconnect with the meeting, we will let her complete her public comment. So we have city manager reports, city council appointments and other council. business and we will take All. Couple items on here, including library trustee appointments. We'll take public comment on all items under item nine. at this point. Are there any members of the public who would like to comment? |
| 03:34:49.90 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay, I am not seeing any hands raised. So I will close public comment on item nine. The first item under item nine is our city manager information. Welcome, Adam. |
| 03:35:09.96 | Adam Politzer | Thank you, Madam Mayor and council members. It was nice to have the committee reports in advance of the city manager's report. And there are a lot of those meetings that I get to attend sometimes as an active participant or sometimes just like our public via Zoom. um, So I won't cover too many items here except for Just want to reiterate, the good job that Abbott Chambers did for the COVID-19 update obviously since July 7th, this is our first public update via the council meetings. |
| 03:35:46.99 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:35:49.23 | Adam Politzer | But that information is also being made available through The Currents and on our website. And there is a lot of activity, as you heard tonight, not just here in town, but countywide. And several of our council members sit on county committees as well as several of our staff. to work together to deal with the impacts from COVID-19 their social impacts and their strong feelings on both sides of the equation here. on when and where we should wear masks. People need to wear their masks. It's as simple as that. And I think that's a message consistently shared by our council members and by the county health official. It is making a difference and it really is important that we carry on in that way. I also want to give a shout out to Julia Vieira from the Chamber of Commerce. Julie is also on almost all of the meetings that I'm now on. There's a variety of subcommittees countywide that Julie also sits on. And then as Councilmember Riley shared, she's doing an excellent job of keeping the lines of communication open with our business community, with several of the council members and other city officials from fire, police. And I know that she has PG&E coming to her meeting later in September to give their business landlords and tenants an update on what to expect with the PSPS events that are scheduled later this fall. So a big thank you to Julie for her leadership. and working with us as partners here. Um, The other area that I wanted to just comment on briefly and we'll bring forward an update here later in September but as the council discussed during the budget discussions We are actively working on shared service opportunities with our neighbors here in the county. and obviously there are opportunities at the low-hanging fruit. opportunities to share services and then others that will take more time. You know, one of the big ones that we heard a report earlier this spring was our efforts with sewer consolidation. That is silently moving forward. as council approved as entering into a contract with our sewer consolidation, expert to look at those opportunities and we'll bring the report back to Council. later this fall, even if it's just an update early this fall, even if it's just an update and we'll have an update to our sewer committee So council member Cox. and Council Member Withey have another committee to report on the progress that we're making there. Um, But in addition to sewer, we're having discussions about fire, I'm sorry, police shared services with the city of Mill Valley. We had a report back in May, the end of May, from our chief talking about some of the things we could do now and we are actively doing sharing services now. And obviously there's other opportunities to expand expand on that. Public Works, clearly there's an opportunity even if we're just sharing contracts. If we're putting contracts out to bid, be it for street improvements, obviously we can get a better price if we increase the volume of streets that we're trying to pave at any given time. So the city managers in the county are continuing to work with me as we move forward on some of these items, including planning and building as another area that we're working collectively. So I just wanted to make sure that in addition to all the great committee reports that the community understands that the impacts, the financial impacts of COVID-19, clearly are real. No one is disputing the financial impacts nationally, statewide, countywide, or here locally. And under our best case scenario, we passed that that point. we had the good bad and the ugly of scenarios we're clearly past the good and we're about to pass um you know the the middle version that we took the middle scenario that we took. And we're now heading towards a significant threat. on our budget here as we go into the second quarter. We're still in the first, we've got another month But as we've been following along, our businesses aren't opening up anytime soon. and the impacts of COVID-19 aren't going away anytime soon. So we'll bring forward to council here in the near future. an update from our sales tax provider with HDL. HCL represents most of the cities, if not all the cities here in the county, including Sausalito. So an opportunity to look at those forecasting dollars as we had projected. And you'll find in some cases we're actually performing better than we thought. And then in other cases, we have challenges that maybe we weren't anticipating. So, you know, it's not all terrible news, but clearly we don't see any immediate relief in the future based on what we're watching here in the county statewide and nationally. Um, Councilmember Riley talked about our efforts working with the business community on extending outdoor dining and working with our businesses to help them as best we can. And we are looking at Caledonia Street. We'll be bringing Caledonia Street for the next stage of this pilot. which right now we're only closing on parts of Thursday night, parts of Friday, parts of Saturday, we're reopening every night. So we wanna look at the next phase of this. So we'll have a public meeting. We'll give the public the opportunity to share on their input, we'll work with the business community, and again move the pilot to the next stage, which is have the street closed Thursday through Sunday night so that we don't have all the breakdown and set up impacts that come with that. Plus what Council member Riley shared, you'll look at some upgrades to the area to again, celebrate our community and see if the Caledonia Street. discussion as we look at next spring and summer. can transition to something that the community can really benefit from. So we're at step one of the Caledonia street process. And we have several months of public opportunity to discuss this. But it is a big discussion item as we found out earlier this spring when we had 250 something people on next door. asking us to close the whole street. We didn't do that, but we want to test it and get feedback from the merchant and from our residents and continue that discussion as we move forward. Lastly, I just want to respond to the question about Dumpy Park. in the contaminated soil. Yes, we know there's contaminated soil. and costs associated with Dunphy Park. as the council knows, and we'll respond back to the letter that we received. in the comment we received tonight. we actually had a council item on this item back again when we were meeting in the council chambers and we have a budget for it and we have a plan and so the intentions is to remove that soil but you can imagine because it is contaminated there's a real process that we have to go it's not just picking it up and moving it to some other site there's a process uh there's permits uh and and and Lauren and Bertis, Kevin and McGowan, and Lauren and Bertis are working diligently to have that soil removed, and that is our intentions while the weather is still good. So hopefully when we come back in September with an update on all of our parks, we'll I would love to be able to tell you that soil has been removed. They're working diligently to do just that, and we will make sure that we provide an update to the individuals that have commented on that. And we'll include that in the current so that all will benefit. I'm going to end there and thank everyone for all their hard work. And again, a particular thanks to the staff who continue to really work hard serving our community. |
| 03:44:44.83 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Karen Hollweg, Great Thank you for that any questions it sounds like Council member thoughts question. |
| 03:44:49.62 | Councilmember Cox | Yes, we have heard a couple of times tonight about the ongoing adverse financial effects to the city's finances. I am wondering when the Finance Committee is going to start convening again, because I think that committee plays a super vital role in being a liaison between city staff and the city council. and weighing in on some really challenging decisions that I think will be in front of us. I'm not even sure at this point who's on the finance committee, but I know I typically get notice of the meetings and I've not seen a meeting happen in months. And I'm sure that's because you know, you know, and such. but I would like to find out from the city manager when, He plans to convene that again |
| 03:45:41.04 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, that's Madam Mayor, if you'll Go ahead. It's a very good question and clearly we were waiting for information. to come back on the fourth quarter, which we've now received. and we're trying to pull information from the first quarter, which were two-thirds through the first quarter of the year, and then have a meeting with the Finance Committee, which is Mayor Susan Cleveland Knowles and Vice Mayor Ray Withey. So it's our intention to do that in September. And then the heavy lifting is, you know, we're going to be on a real heavy course going forward. I do remind the council it's no different than what we shared back in April and May. Right now we just have a moving target. the impacts of what are happening at the federal and state level, especially with the uncertainty of the next round of federal dollars clearly has an impact. And not knowing what dollars, even though we've submitted the application, what dollars we're going to get from the first round of money that was made available to the state. It hasn't been released. But those are all conversations that you pointed out that would be worth having at the first round. finance committee. |
| 03:47:01.04 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Great. Thank you, Adam, and I was going to also thank you, Joan. I was going to mention future agenda items that we were talked when we were in our budget process about regular updates to the city council and hoping to get that on the agenda for one of our meetings in September. So thank you. mentioning that. Anyone else have questions for the city manager? Yes, right? |
| 03:47:29.22 | Ray Withy | No, really questions, just a comment on some of the discussion that's just occurred. I think that we are facing as important a set of decisions you in October. let's say, and September, October around the budget. than that we did in April, May, June. And this was going to be one of the things I was going to reiterate what you've just said, which was, you know, on future agenda items, this is something that we need to make sure we fully understand. And, you know, this is, I think, based on my, I guess, sort of gut look at the whole thing. the numbers, I think we're going to find that we're really going to have some tough decisions that we can't delay that have to be made sooner rather than later, because the faster you make the decision, the more room you've got for maneuver. |
| 03:48:39.44 | Unknown | Ooh. |
| 03:48:42.63 | Ray Withy | And that's what we're going to be facing. And we're going to be facing that. within a month. |
| 03:48:50.39 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Right, but I do think we do need to look at our data and You know, I haven't seen that yet. So I don't disagree with you, but I think we need a report on that as soon as we can get. reliable information. But yeah, I don't think... None of the things in the upside scenario have transpired. So it's not going to be good. Okay, any other questions or comments on the city manager's report? All right, so we will move on to 9C, which is appointments to boards, commissions and committees. And the only item we have on that is Library Board of Trustees resignations and appointments. So I just like to kick off that item by thanking Robert Woodrum for all of his service to the library board and for all that he and Terry do for the Community. So I'm sad to report that the reason he is resigning is mentioned in our staff report that they are moving out of town. So thank you. Thank you to Bob and to his family for their participation. Our staff report also notes that Brandy Vouse is an alternate and could move into the full-time space on that. So I would like to suggest that we, do that. I'm also open to other thoughts. I thought all three of the people that we interviewed for a possible alternate position were good. Um, And I do have one candidate i'd be happy to advance tonight, but if folks would rather either. wait on that or we look at the applications, I'm happy to wait, but I would like to move Brandy to For voting position. |
| 03:50:53.53 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:50:56.36 | Joe Burns | I'll move, do we move Brandy and I would be, interested in your recommendation and support |
| 03:51:03.77 | Ray Withy | I, and I'd second a council member Burns, both of those recommendations fully support the year. suggestion and then who do you want to nominate? |
| 03:51:14.84 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So all of the three candidates were really excellent and I thought Brat would bring different things to the library board of trustees but I got John Oppenheimer would be a particularly good appointment. |
| 03:51:29.52 | Joe Burns | So moved. That's what I'm doing. |
| 03:51:31.13 | Unknown | That was good. |
| 03:51:31.95 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry, are there any other nominations for the alternate position? And it has been a while since we did interview interviews. So if Mr. And there is no longer interested, we can come back at our next meeting. |
| 03:51:47.21 | Joe Burns | I know he hasn't moved. He drove up my street yesterday. |
| 03:51:49.40 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.42 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.43 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.59 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.62 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.70 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:49.72 | Councilmember Cox | Thank you. Oh. |
| 03:51:51.39 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:51:51.41 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Okay. |
| 03:51:52.02 | Councilmember Cox | I will second Council Member Burns motion. |
| 03:51:56.52 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Does the motion include the appointment? Thank you. and that is just a problem with |
| 03:52:01.57 | Joe Burns | Brandy up to full-time John is alternate. |
| 03:52:05.13 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | it. Heidi, could you please call the roll with a motion and a second? |
| 03:52:10.65 | Heidi Scoble | Okay. |
| 03:52:10.72 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | to get the |
| 03:52:10.78 | Heidi Scoble | Council Member Riley. Thank you. |
| 03:52:12.32 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 03:52:12.88 | Heidi Scoble | Thank you. Council member Burns. Thank you. |
| 03:52:14.53 | Tom Riley | Yes. |
| 03:52:14.93 | Ray Withy | Thank you. |
| 03:52:15.98 | Heidi Scoble | Councilmember Cox? Yes. Vice Mayor Withey. |
| 03:52:20.06 | Ray Withy | Yes. |
| 03:52:21.06 | Heidi Scoble | Mayor Cleveland Knowles. |
| 03:52:22.88 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Karen Hollweg, Yes, that motion carries. And again, with thanks to Bob Woodrum, and congratulations to Sandy and John. Moving on to future agenda items. We have mentioned COVID budget update. I We. you know longer term item was undergrounding uh that i mentioned i think i heard the city manager Talk about an update on parks in September. Does anybody have other items that they'd like to add. |
| 03:52:58.03 | Councilmember Cox | Mayor, you mentioned earlier a meeting on the general plan to go ahead and adopt some of the new programs and policies drafted by our consultants. |
| 03:53:09.46 | Unknown | Absolutely. |
| 03:53:10.03 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | So we will add that to a future |
| 03:53:12.51 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:53:12.71 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | I'm amazed. |
| 03:53:13.81 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:53:14.28 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | possibly consider a special meeting on that issue so that we have time to discuss. Anyone else? All right, seeing none, thank you for a full and productive meeting tonight and back to our regular meeting schedule. I think our next meeting is on September 8th. And with that, we can adjourn and wish everyone a good night. And thanks to those of you who hung in with us. to the end. |
| 03:53:48.29 | Joe Burns | We avoided a power outage. |
| 03:53:50.85 | Mayor Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 03:53:50.89 | Councilmember Cox | Yeah. |
| 03:53:51.17 | Joe Burns | Yes, yay. |
| 03:53:52.34 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 03:53:52.56 | Councilmember Cox | Thanks, everybody. Thank you. |
| 03:53:54.31 | Tom Riley | Thank you. |
| 03:53:54.34 | Joe Burns | Thank you. |
| 03:53:54.90 | Tom Riley | Thank you. Good night. |
Chris Durbin — Neutral: Asked for more information about learning pods and school programs mentioned in the presentation, specifically what Willow Creek and Bayside MLK are doing. ▶ 📄